Michael Smith

Michael Smith    ( author,  journalist)
Born	1952

Michael Smith is a British author and journalist who joined the British Army aged 15. After service with the Royal Artillery, he became a member of the army’s Intelligence Corps monitoring "terrorist" and Soviet bloc communications. Smith studied Arabic before working for three years in the Middle East collecting intelligence on groups operating in Syria, Iraq and Lebanon. He also took part in Britain’s secret war against communist rebels in Oman, as part of a small unit providing intelligence for the SAS. Smith then spent four years in Europe, becoming a German interpreter and producing reports on the activities of the East German armed forces.

Journalist

Smith left the army in 1982 to join the BBC Monitoring Service, which listened in to radio and television broadcasts from around the world. It was here that he began his career in journalism. Smith left the BBC in 1990 to become a newspaper journalist. He wrote on eastern Europe for the Financial Times and the Sunday Times before joining the Daily Telegraph, where he was "Defence" Correspondent and covered a number of conflicts around the world.

Smith reported on the 1991 Gulf War and various conflicts in the Balkans – twice going into Kosovo under fire to meet up with the Kosovo Liberation Army during the 1999 war. He also reported extensively on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Smith wrote on defence and security issues for the Sunday Times and New Statesman.

On 6 July 2005, National Public Radio reported:

British journalist Michael Smith writes about defence issues for the Sunday Times of London. He's the journalist to whom the so-called Downing Street memo was leaked.

The memo – the minutes of a 23 July 2002 meeting of Britain's War Cabinet – reveals that President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair began the war on the Iraq before Bush received congressional approval and before a UN vote.

Smith also was leaked a memo from March 2002 to Blair from Foreign Secretary Jack Straw stating there was no evidence that Saddam Hussein had any weapons of mass destruction.

Author

Smith is the author of numerous books on intelligence and special operations including:

• Elphick, Peter and Smith, Michael : Odd Man Out: The Story of the Singapore Traitor (1993, Hodder and Stoughton) ISBN 978-0340587621
• Smith, Michael : New Cloak, Old Dagger: How Britain’s Spies Came in from the Cold (1996, Gollancz) ISBN 978-0575061507
• Smith, Michael : Station X (1998, Boxtree) ISBN 978-0752221892
• Smith, Michael : Foley: The Spy Who Saved 10,000 Jews (1999, Hodder and Stoughton) ISBN 978-0340718506
• Smith, Michael : The Spying Game (2003, Politicos) ISBN 978-1842750049
• Smith, Michael : Killer Elite: The Inside Story of America’s Most Secret Special Operations Team (2007, St Martin's Press) ISBN 978-0312362720
• Smith, Michael : Six: A History of Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service (2010, Biteback) ISBN 978-1906447120
• Smith, Michael : The Emperor's Codes (2010, Biteback) ISBN 978-1906447120
• Erskine, Ralph and Smith, Michael (editors): The Bletchley Park Codebreakers (2011, Biteback) ISBN 978-1849540780
• Smith, Michael : Britain’s Secret War (2011, Andre Deutsch) ISBN 978-0233003375
• Smith, Michael : The Secrets of Station X (2011, Biteback) ISBN 978-1849540957
• Smith, Michael : Bletchley Park: The Codebreakers of Station X (2013, Shire) ISBN 978-0747812159
• Smith, Michael (editor): The Secret Agent’s Bedside Reader (2014, Biteback) ISBN 978-1849547406
• Smith, Michael : The Debs of Bletchley Park and Other Stories (2015, Aurum) ISBN 978-1781313879
• Smith, Michael : The Anatomy of a Spy (2020, Arcade) ISBN 978-1950691166
• Smith, Michael : Ritter: No Man Dies Twice (2022, Safe House) ISBN 978-1739754006
• Smith, Michael : The Real Special Relationship (2023, Arcade) ISBN 978-1956763683

 

A Document by Michael Smith

Title	Document type	Publication date	Subject(s)
Document:Inteview with Michael Smith	interview	27 July 2005	Downing Street memo

 

Event Participated in

Event	Start	End	Location(s)	Description
WEF/Annual Meeting/2013	23 January 2013	27 January 2013	Switzerland WEF	2500 mostly unelected leaders met to discuss "leading through adversity"

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