Milne in his memoirs noted that MI6(V) never issued an official history of its wartime activities. [24] While the lack of official documents makes such a history impossible to any outsider (and probably at this stage – due to extensive weeding of files by MI6 in the postwar period - to any insider also), we can obtain a view of some of its activities at home and abroad through the documents of allies who worked with MI6(V), British documents released to the National Archives, and the memoirs of officers who served with or alongside of the Section.
MI6(V) had a number of geographical and functional subsections, a system set up by Col Cowgill as the section began to expand (staffing figures are presumably for the height of expansion):
Va, with a staff of five, dealt with the Americas, the Far East and Indian Affairs worldwide;
Vb, again with a staff of five, covered Western Europe;
Vc liaised with MI5 and the London Reception Centre - for interrogating refugees – with a staff of two, while VcR liaised with the MI6 Central Registry. (Tim Milne stated that the desk covered eastern Europe and the Middle East, but this was covered by Ve);
Vd was the Iberian section, headed by Philby, which had a total of six officers in 1941. Other members of the original Vd team included Tim Milne, Desmond Bristow (who arrived in September 1941), Jack Givens, Frank Hyde and Arthur G Trevor-Wilson. The whole of MI6(V) at that time was about 20 officers and 20 to 25 secretaries and cardists, [25] having expanded from a total of three officers in 1939. [26] Prior to D-Day in June 1944 MI6(V) personnel had risen to 250 officers. [27]
Ve studied Eastern Europe (including Russia) and the Middle East (including Turkey), with a staff of five;
Vf covered the European German-occupied countries, Scandinavia (including Iceland and Greenland) and the Baltic countries, with a staff of two;
Vh dealt with censorship overseas, staffed by a single officer;
Vx was responsible for double agents and deception plans, and was staffed later in the war by Desmond Bristow and Rex Hamer;
Vl, Vr, V/RVPS, V/Photo, V/Driver, V/Translations, V/TP (teleprinting) and SP/SD were functional supporting services (V/RVPS was also reportedly the liaison with the London Reception Centre – see Vc above); [28]
Vw was a research sub-section, run by Hugh Trevor-Roper.
From August 1941 to April 1943, the staff of Vw issued forty-six brief reports on the wireless stations used by the enemy, plus an occasional biographical list of the Axis spies in individual countries. While valuable, the product was so highly sensitive that Cowgill wanted to restrict its dissemination, despite favourable comments from other ISOS customers. This therefore added yet another issue of contention between Cowgill, his subordinates in Vw, and other ISOS customers, and increased the view within the intelligence community that Cowgill was being difficult and unreasonable in his wish to restrict dissemination of ISOS material to a minimum. This view was encouraged by both Trevor-Roper and, more surreptitiously, by Kim Philby, who gained friends in other department by giving them unofficial access to material forbidden by Cowgill.
Trevor-Roper and his staff believed they needed to share the information and get feedback from other agencies to assist them in their understanding of the ISOS decrypts. This created a tension with his superiors in MI6(V) and the RSS (Radio Security Service), a separate agency which was responsible to MI6 “for the interception and discrimination of ISOS”, [29] which was not lightened even after Vw was removed from MI6(V) and placed directly under the chief of MI6 as the Radio Intelligence Service in May 1943. Within months Trevor-Roper was trying to exchange knowledge of radio traffic with the Russians without getting the prior approval of Cowgill. Even this ill-considered move was not enough to reduce Trevor-Roper’s growing influence inside and outside MI6 regarding analysis of ISOS decrypts. His participation in a couple of inter-service committees gained him allies in MI5, Dick White and Guy Liddell being two of the more senior officers, and within MI6 he had an admirer in Patrick Reilly, Personal Assistant to the Chief.
MI6(V) worked closely with the MI5 section running the double agents in Britain who were used for deception. Despite attempts by MI5 to take over MI6(V) during the war, on a working level the relationship between case officers was good, with regular interaction on casework and also in certain cases on a social basis too. MI6(V) passed over to MI5 several double agents working against the Abwehr. Some of MI6’s agents such as Dusan “Dusko” Popov (codenamed TRICYCLE), moved between the continent and the UK, and sometimes operated further afield, such as in Iceland, Canada and the USA as well as in Iraq and Persia to the East. Through Popov, MI6 also recruited his brother (DREADNAUGHT) in Yugoslavia, who was being employed by the Abwehr; while sub-agents FREAK (the TRICYCLE network W/T operator, the Marquis Frano de Ruda), GELATINE, METEOR, and BALLOON, who were based in Britain and ostensibly part of TRICYCLE’s British network, were more firmly under the control of MI5.
According to Tom Bower’s book “The Perfect English Spy”, MI5’s DA Section B1a was not created until about October 1939, inspired by discussions on deception through controlled enemy agents between MI5 officer Dick White and the French Deuxieme Bureau. [30] MI5’s first Double-Cross DA, Arthur Owens (codenamed SNOW), was already on their books. Owens had originally been passed from British Naval intelligence to MI6 for handling. When his MI6 Case Officer, Col Edward Peal, had been informed by MI5 at the end of 1936 that Owens was playing a double game – they caught him writing to a postbox known to be used by other Abwehr agents - he was passed to the control of MI5. [31] In 1939 he collected a W/T set from a London Railway station left luggage office and began regular contact with the Abwehr, under the supervision of his MI5 Case Officers.
Section V’s Growing Role and Importance
It was not until Col Cowgill began expanding the section’s role that the importance of MI6(V) (to both the future of MI6 and British Intelligence generally) became apparent. The expansion was necessary in order to take advantage of the ISOS and ISK decrypts abroad, and Cowgill was one of the first to recognize the potential for MI6. He also realized the benefit of controlling ISOS as a means to fend off attempts at a take-over by MI5.
Anthony Cave Brown claimed that “in all, 130 male and female enemy agents became CEAs. Most of them came from the Abwehr in Iberia, and most of those through warnings provided by Philby and his colleagues in the Iberian section”. [32]
The importance of ULTRA as a wider source of intelligence was realized very early by Sir Stewart Menzies, the chief of MI6, who was also fighting suggestions within the government that MI5 and MI6 should be merged. He was therefore happy for the rapid expansion of MI6(V) abroad as well as at home, as a means to demonstrate the usefulness of the service to other government departments. As a result, the rapid appointment of MI6(V) staff with their own direct communications to MI6’s London headquarters, and mostly outside the direct supervision of the local Head of Station, became a source of resentment in some stations abroad, especially where the other MI6 staff was not ULTRA-indoctrinated. It was of little surprise that Menzies saw the creation of military CE units as another way to demonstrate MI6’s abilities to the military. As Andrew Boyle states in his book, “The Climate of Treason”:
“Indeed, when Cowgill proposed that joint Special Counter-intelligence Units should be attached to the Allied army staffs for the French North African landings, the scheme was approved at the highest level.” [33]
In
