Cecil Shipp
 Cecil Shipp  (spook) | ||||||||||||||
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Deputy Director General at some point in the 1980s
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Cecil O. Shipp was Deputy Director General of MI5 at some point in the 1980s, possibly 1982-1988[1].
Background
Cecil Shipp attended West Leeds High School.
Career
From 1946 until 1948 he served in the intelligence corps in Germany. He had a temporary job teaching Russian at Joint Services School for Linguists then joined MI5 in June 1952.[2]
In 1967 he was posted to security intelligence far east involved in counter-intelligence during Indonesian confrontation. [2]
1972-1975 he was British Intelligence Liaison in Washington DC.[3]
He was "considered a master interrogator with an unusually retentive memory. He interrogated members of the Cambridge spy ring."[2]
Cecil Shipp was Deputy Director General at some point in the 1980s. Exactly when is a matter of discussion, although at least one author has dates 1983 to 1985.[4] He was awarded a CB and an OBE.
Shipp, combined, the a staff member recalls, "a very distant manner with an air of superiority'. He was given the unaffectionate nickname 'Lettuce' (derived from his initials 'COS', also used as an alternative nickname). To many of the staff – even at middle-management level – senior management seemed remote and out of touch.[5]
Stella Rimington gave a pen-picture of him in her autobiography[2]:
- "After I had been in the Sovbloc agent section for about three years or so, and was again wanting to move on, I pressed to be sent to do similar work against the Provisional IRA. My director at the time was Cecil Shipp, whom I had first come across in my first year in MI5 when he was in charge of the group investigating the ramifications of the 1930s Cambridge spy ring. In the interim Cecil had been in Washington as liaison officer to the CIA and the FBI and had established a reputation as an interrogator and a counter-espionage expert.
- Like all the best counter-espionage officers, Cecil was a details man. He did not feel comfortable, even as Director, unless he knew everything that was going on; not for him the delegation of the operations to the desk officers while he got on with the strategy. He wanted to see the papers and make his own mind up, then he would call you in to discuss what you were doing while puffing clouds of cigarette smoke over you and the files. This detailed approach could slow things up, particularly later when he became Deputy Director-General and files would be incarcerated in his cupboard for days while action ground to a halt.
- He was the man who had been open minded enough to post me as the first woman in the agent section and I had a lot to thank him for. But for me to run agents against terrorists in Northern Ireland was a step too far even for him. He told me firmly, 'A family needs its mother,' and who is to say he was wrong? My daughters would certainly have agreed with him if they had been asked."[2]
References
- ↑ http://wlbhs.x10host.com/CecilShipp.htm
- ↑ a b c d e http://wlbhs.x10host.com/CecilShipp.htm
- ↑ https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP96B01172R000100060001-5.pdf
- ↑ The A to Z of British Intelligence By Nigel West, p.150
- ↑ https://readfrom.net/christopher-andrew/page,75,143898-the_defence_of_the_realm.html
