The Black Door: Spies, Secret Intelligence and British Prime Ministers. Richard Aldrich
‘Eat Before Reading’: A Short Essay on Methodology
‘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 Churchill1
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.
Harold Wilson evoked the dark side of intelligence. He was convinced that plotters within MI5, MI6 and especially renegade generals in the Ministry of Defence were out to undermine his government. Notably terrified of the South African secret service, known as ‘BOSS’, he chose to develop close personal relations with the Israeli secret service Mossad instead. Speaking with American officials