Richard Aldrich - The Black Door - Spies, Secret Intelligence and British Prime Ministers

William Collins

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First published in Great Britain by William Collins in 2016

Copyright © Richard J. Aldrich and Rory Cormac 2016, 2017

Richard J. Aldrich and Rory Cormac assert the moral right to be identified as the authors of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

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Cover design by Kate Gaughran

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Source ISBN: 9780007555475

Ebook Edition © April 2016 ISBN: 9780007555451

Version: 2017-03-29

To Joanne and Libby

(two espionage experts)

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Abbreviations and Acronyms

Introduction

PART ONE: CREATING SECRET SERVICE

1 Herbert Asquith, David Lloyd George and Andrew Bonar Law (1908–1923)

2 Stanley Baldwin and Ramsay MacDonald (1923–1937)

PART TWO: THE WINDS OF WAR

3 Neville Chamberlain (1937–1940)

4 Winston Churchill (1940–1941)

5 Winston Churchill (1942–1945)

PART THREE: THE HOT COLD WAR

6 Clement Attlee (1945–1951)

7 Winston Churchill (1951–1955)

8 Anthony Eden (1955–1957)

9 Harold Macmillan (1957–1963)

10 Alec Douglas-Home (1963–1964)

PART FOUR: DÉTENTE AND DISSENT

11 Harold Wilson (1964–1970)

12 Edward Heath (1970–1974)

13 Harold Wilson (1974–1976)

14 James Callaghan (1976–1979)

15 Margaret Thatcher (1979–1990)

PART FIVE: TURBULENT TIMES

16 John Major (1990–1997)

17 Tony Blair (1997–2007)

18 Gordon Brown (2007–2010)

19 David Cameron (2010–2016)

Conclusion: Prime Ministers and the Future of Intelligence

Appendix I: Key Officials Since 1909

Appendix II: Key Intelligence and Security Machinery

‘Eat Before Reading’: A Short Essay on Methodology

Picture Section

Acknowledgements

Notes

Bibliography

Index

About the Authors

About the Publisher

‘C’ – Chief of the British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS)

CCC – Churchill College Cambridge

CIA – Central Intelligence Agency [American]

CIGS – Chief of the Imperial General Staff

CND – Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament

Comint – Communications intelligence

Comsec – Communications security

COS – Chiefs of Staff

CPGB – Communist Party of Great Britain

CSC – Counter Subversion Committee

CX – Prefix for a report originating with SIS

DCI – Director of Central Intelligence, the head of the CIA

DIS – Defence Intelligence Staff

DMI – Director of Military Intelligence

DNI – Director of Naval Intelligence

D-Notice – Defence Notice to the media covering security issues

DOPC – Defence and Overseas Policy Committee

Elint – Electronic intelligence

FBI – Federal Bureau of Investigation [American]

FCO – Foreign and Commonwealth Office

GC&CS – Government Code and Cypher School

GCHQ – Government Communications Headquarters

GOC – General Officer Commanding

GRU – Soviet Military Intelligence

IRD – Information Research Department of the Foreign Office

ISC – Intelligence and Security Committee

ISI – Inter-Services Intelligence [Pakistan]

ISP – Internet Service Provider

JAC – Joint Action Committee

JIC – Joint Intelligence Committee

JTAC – Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre

LHCMA – Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives

MI5 – Security service

MI6 – Secret Intelligence Service (also SIS)

MIT – Turkish Intelligence Service

MoD – Ministry of Defence

NATO – North Atlantic Treaty Organisation

NSA – National Security Agency [American]

NSC – National Security Council [American]

NUM – National Union of Mineworkers

OSS – Office of Strategic Services [American]

PKI – Indonesian Communist Party

PLO – Palestine Liberation Organisation

PSIS – Permanent Secretaries’ Committee on the Intelligence Services

PUSC – Permanent Under-Secretary’s Committee of the Foreign Office

PUSD – Permanent Under-Secretary’s Department

PV – Positive vetting

RAW – Research and Analysis Wing [Indian]

RUC – Royal Ulster Constabulary

SAS – Special Air Service

SAVAK – Iranian Security Service

SBS – Special Boat Service

Sigint – Signals intelligence

SIS – Secret Intelligence Service (also MI6)

SOE – Special Operations Executive

TASS – Soviet Press Agency

TUC – Trades Union Congress

Ultra – British classification for signals intelligence

UKUSA – UK–USA signals intelligence agreements 1948

WMD – Weapons of Mass Destruction

This is my own true spy story …

Winston Churchill 1

On Saturday, 6 September 1941, Winston Churchill stood on a pile of bricks outside the newly built Bletchley Park. Here, in the Buckinghamshire countryside, the mysteries of the German Enigma encryption machine were being patiently unravelled. Each day the codebreakers’ product was fed to a prime minister in Downing Street who was beside himself with anticipation. Now, with some emotion, Churchill expressed his profound gratitude and explained to the codebreakers how they had already transformed decision-making at the highest levels, and with it the course of the Second World War. A decade later – and now approaching his eightieth year – Churchill was back in Downing Street. His keen interest in intelligence had not diminished. In 1952, top-secret spy flights took pictures over Moscow at the express instruction of the prime minister. Over Minsk and Lvov, his airborne intelligence emissaries were greeted by a formidable wall of Soviet anti-aircraft fire.

Churchill also relished covert action. In 1953, he positively purred with enthusiasm over a joint CIA–MI6 plot that had overthrown the government of Iran. This underlines the way in which intelligence was not just a secret window on the world for Britain’s leaders, but also a discreet means of manipulating it. In 1956 Churchill’s successor, a furious Anthony Eden, neurotic and plagued by ill-health, barked into a telephone that he wanted Egyptian President Nasser destroyed by MI6. Harold Macmillan’s government drew up what he called a ‘formidable’ plan for Syria which involved assassinating several leaders. Alec Douglas-Home added Indonesia’s President Sukarno to the list of foreign leaders that prime ministers wished to see toppled using Britain’s intelligence agencies. However, when Harold Wilson asked for the liquidation of the Ugandan dictator Idi Amin, officials responded with horror, and refused to investigate the options. When secret intelligence took extreme risks, it was usually at the direction of Downing Street.