MI5

Military Intelligence, Section 5
MI5 Headquarters at Thames House, Millbank, London
Formation	1909
Founder	Vernon Kell
Parent organization	UK
Headquarters	Thames House
Type	intelligence agency
Subgroups	•  MI5/A Branch •  MI5/B Branch •  MI5/C Branch •  MI5/D Branch •  MI5/E Branch •  MI5/F Branch •  MI5/G Branch •  MI5/H Branch •  MI5/K Branch •  MI5/T Branch •  Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre •  Irish Joint Section
Staff	3,961
Interest of	Christopher Andrew, Richard M. Bennett, Katherine Horton, Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament, UK/Home Office/Investigatory Powers Tribunal
Exposed by	Cathy Massiter, Tony Robinson
Subpage	•MI5/A Branch •MI5/B Branch •MI5/C Branch •MI5/D Branch •MI5/Director General •MI5/E Branch •MI5/F Branch •MI5/G Branch •MI5/H Branch •MI5/K Branch •MI5/T Branch
MI5 (Military Intelligence, Section 5), is the United Kingdom's domestic counter-intelligence and security agency and is part of its core in the main British domestic intelligence service.

MI5's correct title is "The Security Service".

Official narrative

MI5 is the internal "Security Service" of the UK State, based at Thames House, Millbank London on the North bank of the river Thames. Map Since 1989, its principal statutory basis is the "File:Security Services Act 1989.pdf". Its main responsibilities are "protecting the UK against threats to national security from espionage, terrorism and sabotage, from the activities of agents of foreign powers, and from actions intended to overthrow or undermine parliamentary democracy by political, industrial or violent means".

The following is from the UK National Archives - Intelligence Records section:

"MI5 started life in March 1909 when, following a recommendation of the Committee of Imperial Defence, the Secret Service Bureau was founded by Captain Vernon Kell (K) and Captain Mansfield Cumming (C) who were responsible for counter-espionage and gathering overseas intelligence, respectively. The extreme secrecy surrounding its operations is reflected by the fact that the sole copy of the sub-committee report regarding its foundation was placed in custody of the Director of Military Operations at the War Office: CAB 16/232 . During August 1914 Kell and his small staff were absorbed into the Directorate of Military Operations as MO5 (g). The following year MO5 became part of the Directorate of Military Intelligence, assumed the title MI5, and was made responsible for upholding the provisions of the Defence of the Realm Regulations and the Aliens Restriction Act in the face of German espionage. Following the Bolshevik revolution in 1917 MI5 began to concentrate on the perceived threat of Communist subversion, which (together with Irish terrorism) was to remain a principal theatre of operations until 1989."

"The majority of MI5 records are retained under section 3 (4) of the Public Records Act (1958). They remain exempt from disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act (2000). However, since 1999 approximately 2000 'historical' files have been transferred to The National Archives. These cover a wide range of subjects and individuals that have fallen under the purview of MI5 since its inception. These include files on MI5 operations during World War One; German spies and intelligence agents, renegades, double agent operations, espionage cases, Japanese, Hungarian and Italian intelligence agents, SOE agents, right-wing extremists and fascists, Soviet intelligence officers, communist 'front' organisations, pacifists and refugees; German and Soviet intelligence operations, the ARCOS raid and British fascism; the History of the Security Service, the 'Curry Report' and MI5 section history's; Soviet, Pro-Nazi and Zionist organisations; Jeffrey Hamm, compromised SOE agents and investigation of leaks of information to German intelligence."

The Millbank Entrance to Thames House

History of political involvement

Monitoring UK Prime Ministers

The Mail on Sunday reported in April 2010 that MI5 bugged Downing Street under five UK Prime Ministers between 1963 and 1977. The bugs were initially ordered by Prime Minister Harold Macmillan. After a brief gap they were reinstated by his successor, Alec Douglas-Home. It is not clear whether Edward Heath and Harold Wilson were told of the surveillance. Historian Stephen Dorrill suggests this revelation appears to justify Wilson's belief that he was being spied on.

The surveillance was ended on the orders of Prime Minister James Callaghan in 1977. Callaghan nevertheless denied in the Commons that No. 10 had ever been bugged.

Details of the bugging were due to appear in Professor Christopher Andrew's 2009 official history of MI5, The Defence Of The Realm, but were removed at the insistence of the Cabinet Office.

Vetting Ministers of State

Once a new Government has been formed MI5 briefs the incoming Prime Minister on any Ministerial appointments it thinks may be of concern to 'national security'. MI5's director general, Sir Stephen Lander told Radio 4: "In 1997 therefore the way the then cabinet secretary and I agreed we would deal with it... was that I would produce the summaries, one sheet for each of the individuals that we thought we should make a comment on... and if the prime minister said I'm thinking of making X secretary of state for defence, they [the cabinet secretary and the prime minister's principal private secretary] would say 'well prime minister, you might like to read this from the security service'."

Undermining Scottish Independence

In 2007, The Scotsman claimed that documents had provided "the first incontrovertible evidence that the state spied on the SNP in the 1950s". The documents showed that "Agents from MI5 and Special Branch infiltrated the party as part of a campaign to undermine support for Scottish independence".

Human rights problems

Binyam Mohamed case

In February 2010, the Security Service was sharply criticised in a draft judgement by the Master of the Rolls (head of the Court of Appeal) Lord Neuberger over its role in the case of Guantanamo detainee

Binyam Mohamed:

as the evidence in this case showed, at least some SIS officials appear to have a dubious record when it comes to human rights and coercive techniques, and indeed when it comes to frankness about the UK’s involvement with the mistreatment of Mr Mohammed by US officials. I have in mind in particular witness B, but it appears likely that there were others.

Senior Management

Mark Hollingsworth and Nick Fielding give the following list of senior officers

• Director General (DG)
• Deputy Director General (DDG)
• Director and Co-ordinator of Intelligence (Northern Ireland)
• Legal Advisor to the Security Service

Management Board

According to the MI5 website, the Director General, Deputy Director General and Legal Advisor make up the Management Board of the Service, along with seven branch Directors. The board is supplemented by two Non-Executive Directors from outside the Service in an advisory role.

Branches

The following list is taken from the 2003 edition of Hollingsworth and Fielding's Defending the Realm: Inside MI5 and the War on Terrorism and may now be somewhat dated. This is supplemented with branch descriptions from the MI5 website in italics where these seem to match Hollingsworth and Fielding's account.

There are some differences between the two accounts. According to the website, international counter-terrorism and counter-espionage are the the responsibility of a single branch, suggesting that Hollingsworth and Fielding's D and G branches may have been merged or re-organised. The website also lists a separate Information Services and Technology Capability branch, suggesting that information technology may have been separated from H Branch.

• A Branch - Operational Support (Operational Capability)
  • A1A: Technical Operations, such as covert entry and audio and video surveillance.
  • A1F: As above, but on longer term target sites.
  • A2A: intercept transcription.
  • A3 and A5: Technical support for operations, including specialised covert photography and lockpickers.
• B Branch - Human Resources (People and Security)
  • B1: Protective security for MI5 including building security and staff vetting.
  • B2: Personnel.
  • B7: Training and recruitment.
• D Branch - Non Terrorist Organisations
  • D1: Vetting of non-MI5 personnel.
  • D4: Counter-espionage. Targets include Russia and China.
  • D5: D Branch agent runners.
• G Branch - International Terrorism (International Counter Terrorism, Counter Espionage, Counter Proliferation)
  • G2P: Counter-proliferation
  • G3A: C-ordination of threat assessments.
  • G3C: Countering threats from South Asia, e.g. Sikh militants.
  • G3W: International terrorist threats not covered by other sections.
  • G6: G Branch agent runners.
  • G9A: Libya, Iraq, Palestinian and Kurdish groups.
  • G9B: Iranian state and Iranian dissident groups.
  • G9C: Islamic extremists.
• H Branch - Corporate Affairs (strategy, policy, finance and facilities)
  • H1 and H2: Liason with Whitehall, the police and the media, covert financial enquiries, management policy including information technology.
  • H4: Finance.
  • R2: Main Registry
  • R5: Restricted 'Y-boxed' files.
  • R10: Registry for temporary files.
  • R20: Administers GCHQ material.
• T Branch - Irish Terrorism (Northern Ireland Counter Terrorism)
  • T2A: Republican and loyalist terrorism in Great Britain.
  • T2B: Liaison with local Special Branches and agent runners responsible for investigating Irish terrorism in Great Britain.
  • T2C: Threat assessment for Irish terrorist groups.
  • T2D: Researches Irish terrorist groups.
  • T2E: Liaises with Metropolitan Police Special Branch, based at Scotland Yard.
  • T5B: Investigates arms trafficking
  • T5C: Counters Irish terrorism in Continental Europe, including the Republic of Ireland.
  • T5D: Irish terrorism in the rest of the world.
  • T5E: Studies terrorist logistics
  • T8: T Branch agent-runners, includes a Northern Ireland-based section.

Defunct Branches

• C Branch - Protective security
• E Branch - Empire and Commonwealth counter-subversion - 1953-1971
• F Branch - Domestic counter-subversion
• K Branch - counterespionage 1968-1994

Related organisations

• Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre
• Centre for the Protection of National Infrastructure

People

Directors General

• Major-General Sir Vernon Kell - 1909-1940
• Brigadier Oswald Allen Harker - 1940-1941
• Sir David Petrie - 1941-1946
• Sir Percy Sillitoe - 1946-1953
• Sir Dick White - 1953-1956
• Sir Roger Hollis - 1956-1965
• Sir Martin Furnival Jones - 1965-1972
• Sir Michael Hanley - 1972-1978
• Sir Howard Smith - 1978-1981
• Sir John Jones - 1981-1985
• Sir Antony Duff - 1985-1987
• Sir Patrick Walker - 1987-1992
• Dame Stella Rimington - 1992-1996
• Sir Stephen Lander - 1996-2002
• Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller - 2002-2007
• Jonathan Evans

Bugging of 10 Downing Street

The official narrative of MI5 was established with the publication in 2009 of Defence of the Realm, the first authorised history of MI5, which claimed that, while MI5 kept a file on Harold Wilson from 1945, when he became an MP – because communist civil servants claimed that he had similar political sympathies – there was no bugging of his home or office, and no conspiracy against him. However in 2010 newspaper reports made detailed allegations that the bugging of 10 Downing Street had been omitted from the history for "wider public interest reasons". In 1963 on Harold Macmillan's orders following the Profumo Affair MI5 bugged the cabinet room, the waiting room, and the prime minister’s study until the bugs were removed in 1977 on Jim Callaghan's orders. From the records it is unclear if Harold Wilson or Edward Heath knew of the bugging. Professor Andrew had previously recorded in the preface of the history that "One significant excision as a result of these requirements (in the chapter on The Wilson Plot) is, I believe, hard to justify" giving credence to these new allegations. However Wright declined to let them see the files on Wilson and the plan was never carried out but Wright does claim it was a 'carbon copy' of the Zinoviev Letter which had helped destabilise the first Labour Government in 1924.

Surveillance

In July 2006, parliamentarian Norman Baker accused the British Government of "hoarding information about people who pose no danger to this country", after it emerged that MI5 holds secret files on 272,000 individuals—equivalent to one in 160 adults. It was later revealed that a "traffic light" system operates:

• Green: active — about 10% of files
• Amber: enquiries prohibited, further information may be added — about 46% of files.
• Red: enquiries prohibited, substantial information may not be added — about 44% of files

 

Events carried out

Event	Location	Description
Clockwork Orange	UK	UK deep state campaign carried out to discredit the government of Harold Wilson
Dublin and Monaghan bombings	Dublin Eire Monaghan
Operation Crevice	London UK	A raid launched in the UK on the so-called "fertiliser bomb plotters".
Project Rich Picture

 

Documents by MI5

Title	Document type	Publication date	Subject(s)
File:2010 07 14 PUB Binyam Mohamed Civil Case - Secret Services Memos Exhibit 19.pdf	memo	14 July 2010	Binyam Mohamed UK/Torture
File:2010 07 14 PUB Binyam Mohamed Civil Case - Secret Services Memos Exhibit 20.pdf	legal document	14 July 2010	Binyam Mohamed UK/Torture
File:2010 07 14 PUB Binyam Mohamed Civil Case - Secret Services Memos Exhibit 21.pdf	memo	14 July 2010	Binyam Mohamed UK/Torture
File:2010 07 14 PUB Binyam Mohamed Civil Case - Secret Services Memos Exhibit 22.pdf	memo	14 July 2010	Binyam Mohamed UK/Torture

 

Related Quotations

Page	Quote	Author	Date
"Open government"	Investigatory Powers Act 2016    Investigatory Powers Commissioner (Additional Directed Oversight Functions)       (Security Service agent participation in criminality) Direction 2017 The Prime Minister, in exercise of the power conferred by section 230 of the Investigatory Powers Act 2016 ("the Act), directs the Investigatory Powers Commissioner as follows: Citation and Commencement 1. This direction may be cited as the Investigatory Powers Commissioner (Additional Directed Oversight Functions (Security Service participation in criminality) Direction 2017 2. This Direction comes into force on 1st September 2017. Additional Review Functions 3. The Investigatory Powers Commissioner shall keep under review the application of the Security Service guidelines on the use of agents who participate in criminality and the authorisations issued in accordance with them.       Signed:       Date:
1989	“In one sense MI6 and MI5 have got it right, are, in fact, a brilliant success. Faced with their biggest crisis of the post-war period, the end of the Red Menace which justified the budgets, the careers and the gongs, they have emerged with budgets renewed, new agendas approved; untouched by the politicians, unsupervised by anyone, still - we are not supposed to laugh - still accountable to the Crown not Parliament ( i.e. to no-one). Both MI6 and MI5 have reacted to the new conditions post Cold War in thoroughly competent, even creative ways. Needing something something to justify the budget, MI6 picked the international drug trade. Far as I know, since MI6 joined the 'war against drugs' the price of cocaine and heroin in the UK at street level has halved: it is now cheaper to get off your face, as they say in Hull, on smack than it is on alcohol. And didn't I read a few months ago that MI6 had persuaded Clare Short to task them to provide her with early warning of coups in the developing world? An honest-to-goodness license to do anything, anywhere. Only a Labour government, timid and ignorant, would fall for a proposal as preposterous as that one. MI5 hardly paused for breath after losing the KGB 'threat' contained in the Soviet Embassy and its Trade Mission, before acquiring the domestic terrorism franchise from the Met Special Branch and beginning the process of hyping up the animal rights and green activists as a new terrorist threat. (And they are getting a new definition of terrorism run through the Houses of Parliament to support it.) Of course, only the politicians and some of the media - the handful who are paying any attention at all - take the talk of the war on drugs seriously. MI6 don't, I am sure; any more than they seriously intend to provide Clare Short with an early warning of coups in the Third World. At the higher levels of MI6, MI5 and all the rest they must be chortling in the senior dining rooms at the incredible gullibility of the British political class - and this present lot in particular.”	Robin Ramsay
2016 Investigatory Powers Act	Investigatory Powers Act 2016    Investigatory Powers Commissioner (Additional Directed Oversight Functions)       (Security Service agent participation in criminality) Direction 2017 The Prime Minister, in exercise of the power conferred by section 230 of the Investigatory Powers Act 2016 ("the Act), directs the Investigatory Powers Commissioner as follows: Citation and Commencement 1. This direction may be cited as the Investigatory Powers Commissioner (Additional Directed Oversight Functions (Security Service participation in criminality) Direction 2017 2. This Direction comes into force on 1st September 2017. Additional Review Functions 3. The Investigatory Powers Commissioner shall keep under review the application of the Security Service guidelines on the use of agents who participate in criminality and the authorisations issued in accordance with them.       Signed:       Date:
Intelligence agency	“There is something very wrong indeed with the UK security services, which are most certainly not a force for freedom or justice. That MI6 can be headed by as extreme a figure as Dearlove, underlines the threat that the security services pose to any progressive movement in politics.”	Craig Murray	11 January 2019
Craig Murray	“The naive view of the world as “goodies” and “baddies”, with our own ruling class as the good guys, is for the birds. I witnessed personally in Uzbekistan the willingness of the UK and US security services to accept and validate intelligence they knew to be false in order to pursue their policy objectives.”	Craig Murray	13 March 2018
UK Independence Party	“Unbeknown to many, UKIP too had early roots in Britain’s intelligence services. In 2001, former Conservative Party chairman Norman Tebbit called for an independent inquiry into revelations that UKIP had been infiltrated by MI5. In a televised interview on BBC News, Tebbit said: “A chap came to me and said UKIP had been infiltrated by the British intelligence services and then he gave me two names of people and from various ways I came to the conclusion that I was absolutely and completely certain that these people — although they had left the service and the Foreign Office some years earlier — in fact had been intelligence agents.” As Tebbit explained in a Spectator article that even Douglas Murray recently endorsed, he “half-heartedly” made his “own inquiries” after a source inside UKIP raised the concerns with him, “and unexpectedly struck gold... I am perfectly sure that the individuals had been active agents, although both would claim to have retired some years ago.” Tebbit had not suggested that UKIP’s leadership was aware of the intelligence operation. At the time, Nigel Farage admitted that he could not discount Tebbit’s allegations.”	Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed	11 May 2015

 

Employees on Wikispooks

Employee	Job	Appointed	End	Description
Richard Barrett	Director of Global Counter-terrorism
John Collard	Spook	1946	1952
Nick Day	?
Stephen Lander	Unknown	1975
Stephen Lander	MI5/T Branch/Director	February 1992	1994	MI5 took the lead role against the IRA from the Metropolitan Police on 1 October 1992.
Stephen Lander	Head of T5	1991	1991	This may have been a simple renaming from G5, after "terrorism" was moved to its own (T) section in 1990.
Stephen Lander	Head of G5	1990	1990
Stephen Lander	Unknown	1985	1985	B2. Dates are unknown, but he had this job in Autumn 1985. He proposed ending the traditional practice of placing new MI5 officers in F2 Section to learn the basics of counter-subversion work. This was strongly opposed by Director F.
Stephen Lander	MI5/H Branch/Director	1994	30 March 2006
John Masterman	Civil Assistant	1939	1945
Davey Neligan				Double agent
Andrew Parker	Director of Global Counter-terrorism	1 September 2001	2005

 

Related Documents

Title	Type	Publication date	Author(s)	Description
Document:Gerald James 2007 FOIA Appeal Statement	legal document	2007	Gerald James	Gerald James' appeal statement in the matter of the UK government refusal to release documents which would support his allegations of SIS orchestration of events and people that resulted in the destruction of his company, Astra Holdings.
Document:Getting it Right	article	2011	Lobster Magazine	A realistic appraisal of the functioning and lack of EFFECTIVE political oversight of the UK Secret Intelligence Services
Document:How British journalists are seduced by the Ministry of Defence and spooks	Article	28 September 2021	Richard Norton-Taylor	In the world of the spooks, few in the media raised questions about the root causes of terror attacks in Britain even when Eliza Manningham-Buller, then head of MI5, warned that the invasion of Iraq would increase the terrorist threat in Britain.
Document:How To Spot A Twitter Troll	Wikispooks Page	2 July 2019	Craig Murray	Exposure is the simple way to nullify the vast state propaganda programmes on social media
Document:How to spot a Twitter troll	blog post	2 July 2019	Craig Murray	Exposure is the simple way to nullify the vast state propaganda programmes on social media
Document:MI5 DG Speech 16-9-10	speech	16 September 2010	Jonathan Evans	Speech by Jonathan Evans, as Director General of MI5, to the "Worshipful Company of Security Professionals" in October 2010. The "Worshipful Company" (ie livery company of the City of London) tag hints at the Masonic and occult nature of the British establishment in general and its Intelligence and security structures in particular.
Document:MI5 and MI6 pay out £12m to Britons held in Guantánamo	webpage	11 August 2011	Christopher Hope
Document:MI5 and the Christmas Tree Files	book extract	1988	Mark Hollingsworth Richard Norton-Taylor
Document:Mrs. May & MI5 In Disarray	webpage	11 June 2017	Matthew Jamison
Document:Our Secret Servants - The Shayler Affair	Article	1 January 1998	Robin Ramsay	MI5 and its schizophrenic relationship with government
Document:Speech by Head of MI6	speech	28 October 2010	John Sawers	A speech by then Director General of MI6 to The Society of Editors about the work of the SIS's and their relationship with the media.
Document:The Broader View Reveals the Ugliest of Prospects	blog post	17 June 2019	Craig Murray	I find it hard to believe that I live in times where Julian Assange suffers as he does for telling the truth, where a dedicated anti-racist like Jeremy Corbyn is subjected to daily false accusations of racism and to US and security service backed efforts to thwart his democratic prospects, where the most laughable false flag is paraded to move us towards war with Iran, and where there is no semblance of a genuinely independent media.
Document:The postwar photographs that British authorities tried to keep hidden	article	3 April 2006	Ian Cobain	The British military and security services are no strangers to torturing their prisoners when they judge it necessary.
Document:Theresa May's personal role in facilitating terror attacks	video	5 June 2017	Dan Glazebrook	Theresa May and her Cabinet are complicit in murder. They are war criminals. If the principles established by the Nuremberg Tribunal after World War II were applied, they would be hung.
Document:UK Intelligence And Security Report, 2003	report	June 2003	Richard M. Bennett Katie Bennett	A compendious summary of the UK Intelligence And Security agencies, including people, events and places.
Document:Whitehall Farce	book review	12 October 1989	Paul Foot	James Rusbridger: "Secrecy turns otherwise rational people into fascistic nutters; secrecy allows untold billions of pounds and endless energies to be wasted in unnecessary intelligence; secrecy pollutes the political process, muzzles what is left of the independent press and makes a mockery of Parliament and elections."
File:Gerald James 2007 FOIA Appeal Statement.pdf	legal document	2007	Gerald James
File:GeraldJamesStatements.pdf	legal document	2007	Gerald James
File:Osp8.pdf	report	November 2005		The selection criteria and process for deciding on the selection of Intelligence records for declassification and inclusion in the National Archive
File:Security Services Act 1989.pdf	legal document			The Security Services Act 1989
File:Spycatcher.pdf	ebook		Peter Wright	Memoirs of former senior MI5 officer Peter Wright.
File:Ukintell0809.pdf	report	2008		UK Intelligence and Security Committee Annual Report 2007-2008

 

A document sourced from MI5

Title	Type	Subject(s)	Publication date	Author(s)	Description
Document:MI5 DG Speech 16-9-10	speech	MI5 Worshipful Company of Security Professionals	16 September 2010	Jonathan Evans	Speech by Jonathan Evans, as Director General of MI5, to the "Worshipful Company of Security Professionals" in October 2010. The "Worshipful Company" (ie livery company of the City of London) tag hints at the Masonic and occult nature of the British establishment in general and its Intelligence and security structures in particular.

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