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A Concise History of the British Secret Service

Bond. James Bond. MI-6 agent 007 with a license to kill.

Since the mid 1950s, the suave, sophistocated and sexy secret agent known as James Bond, created by the famous author Ian Fleming, has introduced us bit by bit to the world of the British Secret Intelligence Service…the SIS…more commonly known as MI-6, or Military Intelligence – Section 6.

But why is it MI-6? Why not 9? Or 3? Or 2? Or 45? What does “MI-6” actually mean and where does it come from?

This article will delve into the murky and fascinating depths and history (as far as can be discovered) of the British Military Intellgence Service, of which MI-6 is just a tiny part.

The History of Military Intelligence

Those letters and that number are magical, aren’t they? “MI-6”. Bam! We enter a world of nightclubs, cocktails, black-tie evening-dress, guns, car-chases, espionage, amazing fight-scenes and raunchy one-night stands. But MI-6 is just one small section of what was once a much larger military intelligence network. So what was it and where did it come from?

British Military Intelligence as we know it today was born in the early years of the 20th century. In 1909, the War Office in Great Britain authorised the creation of the “Secret Service Bureau”. The Secret Service Bureau was made up of a series of military intelligence departments. Over the decades, they increased and decreased in size and function. At their height, though, the military intelligence departments numbered nineteen in total. They were…

MI-1 – Codes and Cyphers. General codebreaking.
MI-2 – Geographic information on other countries.
MI-3 – Further geographic information.
MI-4 – Aerial Reconnaisance.
MI-5 – Security Service, responsible for internal national security (still operational today).
MI-6 – Secret Intelligence Service, responsible for espionage, etc (still operational today. James Bond is an MI-6 agent).
MI-7 – Propaganda.
MI-8 – Communications security and signal-interception. MI-8 was responsible for scanning airwaves for enemy radio-activity.
MI-9 – POWs, enemy & allied. POW debriefing, aid to allied POWs, interrogation of enemy POWs (until 1941).
MI-10 – Technical analysis.
MI-11 – Military Security.
MI-12 – Military Censorship.
MI-13 – Section unused.
MI-14 – Surviellence of Germany.
MI-15 – Aerial defence intelligence.
MI-16 – Scientific Intelligence.
MI-17 – Secretariat for Director of Military Intelligence.
MI-18 – Section unused.
MI-19 – Enemy POW interrogation (from 1941 onwards, taking over some of the duties from MI-9).

The Secret Service Bureau was in active duty from the early 1900s through both World Wars and onto the Cold War. Many departments were created as a direct result of the two World Wars, while others were created in response to the Cold War starting in the late 1940s, running to the 1980s. Over the years, departments changed functions or ceased functioning entirely, although some lasted for a considerable time before that ever occurred.

MI-8 was responsible for radio-surveillence during the Wars, tapping telephone-wires, scanning radio-frequencies for enemy radio-activity and helping to track down enemy agents by intercepting their messages to find out more about enemy activity.

MI-9 might be familiar to anyone who has studied the famous “Great Escape” of March, 1944. MI-9 was responsible for the aid of allied POWs and allied secret agents. MI-9 sent cleverly-disguised pieces of contraband to allied POWs and agents working behind enemy-lines, in an increasingly ingenious number of ways. Phoney aid-organisations and charity-groups were created which sent over “care-parcels” for allied POWs. Inside these parcels, which, on the outside, came from “family” and “friends”, were items such as maps, matches, compasses, knives and other escape-aids, which the allies put to good use.

MI-6 remains the most famous section of the Secret Service Bureau because of its exposure created by author Ian Fleming and his world-famous “James Bond” novels and series of films, which continues to this day. Fleming was ideally suited for writing such gripping and exotic spy-novels. During the Second World War, he had a post working for British Naval Intelligence, and his work as an intelligence officer during the war exposed him to codes and spies and espionage, a perfect background for James Bond…which probably also explains why Bond also holds the rank of “Commander” in the Royal Navy.

In the 1950s, with Great Britain licking its wounds from the Second World War, Fleming’s novels of a suave, dnner-jacketed spy who flew around the world combating evil was exactly what people wanted to read. Something exciting and escapist, so that they too, could escape from their own, dreary, rationed, postwar lives. It was because of Fleming’s novels that MI-6 has remained so famous today.

The End of the Secret Service Bureau

The MI sections began to become defunct in the years during and after the Cold War. With no “hot” war to fight (a ‘hot’ war being one with actual military engagements), many of the MI sections became useless. There were few if any POWs, there was no Germany to fight and there were few, if any, aerial engagements. One by one, the sections were closed down until eventually, only two remained. The two sections that still had a practical use to the British Government outside of an actual military conflict: MI-5 and MI-6, concentrating on internal, national security and on collecting international intelligence respectively.


Thames House, London. MI-5 HQ


Secret Intelligence Service (MI-6) HQ, London

Today, MI-6 still captures the public imagination as the ultimate secret intelligence service, this despite the fact that it is little more than a WWII-era relic of a once large and complex intelligence network. A book was published recently as an official history of the Secret Intelligence Service, covering MI-6’s history from 1909-1949. Who knows how many of those things shown to us in those glitzy Bond films were ever real?

 
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The Four Great Chinese Inventions

The Chinese are famous for all kinds of things. Kicking butt, cooking weird and wonderful food (fried grasshopper, sir?) and the One Child Policy. But for centuries, the Chinese have also been famous as a country of inventors, bringing us such wonderful things as pasta, fortune-cookies and mahjong.

Okay I lied. Only one of those inventions are actually Chinese. Pasta was invented in Italy and fortune-cookies were invented in California, USA. Neither of them is actually Chinese. Mahjong, the famous Chinese tabletop game with a reputation for gambling, was invented by a Chinese empress to play with her servants when they were bored, with the distinctive rectangular blocks first being made out of ivory.

But of all the things that the Chinese gave the world, the four most famous and probably, most important ones, are paper, gunpowder, the compass and woodblock printing. These four things are traditionally called the “Four Great Inventions of Ancient China”. In Chinese, they’re called the ‘Si Da Ming‘ (literally “four big inventions”). Without them, the modern world as we know it today, probably wouldn’t exist. How could we have our printers and scanners without paper? Or how would a German guy named Gutenberg have gotten the idea for the moveable-type printing-press if he hadn’t known that the Chinese could print first? How would all our ships and planes and boy-scouts have found their way around without compasses and most importantly, how could we have produced better weapons without the invention of gunpowder?

China’s a massive country. It really is. See if you can find it on a map, and you’ll see what I’m talking about. It seemed fairly obvious that with so many people crammed into one tiny place, the Chinese were bound to invent something sooner or later, to improve their hectic lives. Which of the four inventions came first?

Papermaking

Paper. So simple. So wonderful. So versatile. Used to wrap parcels, cover walls, write on, fold intricate cutesy shapes out of and the answer to the prayers of millions of people on the millions of toilets all over the world. What is paper and how did the Chinese invent it?

As any tree-hugger will tell you, paper is made from wood. The first kind of ‘paper’ was called ‘papyrus’ and it was invented in Ancient Egypt. It was made from the reeds of the papyrus tree, which grew near the River Nile. Of course…papyrus trees don’t just grow anywhere, so people needed a better material than papyrus. Vellum (calfskin leather) was excellent quality for writing, but it would be like writing on silk. Very pretty, but damned expensive. The world needed something better. Something easier to make. Something cheaper. Something like…paper.

Enter a guy named Cai Lun (pronounced ‘Chai Lunn’). Cai Lun was a smart guy. He lived from 50-121AD, allowing the Mortal Coil to springboard him up to the Cloudy Place at the ripe old age of 71. He had to be smart to live that long! And he had to be smart to get his job, too! What was his job? Cai Lun was doing very nicely for himself as a courtier to Emperor He, fourth emperor of the Eastern Han Dynasty. Of course, being a courtier to the Chinese emperor meant that Cai Lun wasn’t a complete man…ahem. Chinese law dictated that the only men living in the Imperial Household were the Emperor and his male family members. Cai Lun was a eunuch.

Although he had no physical ones to speak of, Cai Lun had a lot of stones. This guy invented paper! Prior to Cai Lun’s existence, most documents were written on bamboo. A bamboo shaft was chopped up and the characters of the text were written on it in vertical shafts and these shafts were then sewn together. Completed, a bamboo-text looked like this:

Although it looks pretty darn cool, can you imagine having an entire bookcase of this stuff? The damn thing would collapse! The Chinese wanted something that was easier to make, faster to make and of course…lighter! Lighter than the huge fagots of text that they were carrying around!…And a fagot is a bundle of sticks, if you’re wondering…go ahead, look it up in the dictionary.

Traditional Chinese paper, as invented by Cai Lun in the year AD105, was made up of…junk. Basically. He used plant-fibres, particularly, the fibres of the mullberry tree (favourite diet of the silkworm) and the fibres that come from hemp, along with other junk, like old rags and fishnets. Ground up, mixed up, pounded out and left to dry on a flat surface, Cai Lun was able to make paper out of all this trash. Of course…these days paper isn’t quite made the same way, but Cai Lun showed us all that it was possible. Over the years, he and others like him, refined the papermaking process until we have what we have today.

Note that I type ‘years’. Not months. Not weeks. Years. Chinese paper, though easy in theory, was notoriously difficult to make. Although the Chinese had mastered the art of papermaking, they were exceedingly adverse to anyone trying to pinch their ideas. Other countries such as Korea, Siam and Japan all tried to copy the Chinese, but without the proper instructions, they failed. One possible reason for this was because Chinese paper was incredibly thin. So thin that it was only possible to write on one side of it. This delicacy added to the difficulty experienced in making it.

It took centuries, but eventually, paper spread around the world, appearing in Europe at the close of the 1300s, where it was being produced in places such as Germany, Spain and Italy.

And so Cai Lun had changed the world. Emperor He was suitably impressed by this…paper…stuff, that he rewarded Cai Lun handsomely, with the usual corporate bonuses of the day – Lots of money, a chunk of land…and an aristocratic title! Fancy, huh? Unfortunately, it didn’t last. Emperor An, the sixth emperor of the Eastern Han Dynasty was not happy with all the riches that his uncle, Emperor He, had given Cai Lun, and attempted to arrest him. Cai Lun wasn’t about to be sent to jail, so he had a bath, put on his very best clothes and committed suicide by poison in AD121. Although Cai Lun wasn’t able to live out his natural life, his invention, paper, continues to live on to this day.

Woodblock Printing

Woodblock printing comes along next during the 9th Century (the 800s). It is unclear who invented woodblock printing and likely, no one person was responsible. It was, however, the next logical step. You had paper. Now you needed a printer. And sooner or later…a computer with Windows Vista on it, as well. But for now, mankind needed a printer. Woodblock printing originated in Asia around the mid 800s. It was a tricky and delicate way to print stuff, but it did work. First, you needed a flat slab or board of wood. Then, it was necessary to carve a relief-matrix in the piece of wood. This meant carving out every single little stroke of each Chinese character so that when the block was inked and the paper was pressed, the characters would show up nice and dark and black, and everything else was white. Hard enough to do in English, almost impossible in Chinese! And then don’t forget…you had to do it in reverse, or else the text would come out in mirror-fashion! Unless you were Leonardo from Vinci, they would be completely useless!

Woodblock printing took a lot of skill and time and patience, so whatever it was you wanted to print, you had to be damn sure of, first! Once the matrix had been carved and inked, it was necessary to lay down some of Cai Lun’s beautiful paper, and then press or roll it firmly over the inked matrix. The result looked something like this:

It wouldn’t be another five or six centuries until Gutenberg invented his moveable-type printing-press, but the Chinese had shown us that printing was possible. It was very difficult and expensive, but yes, it could be done.

Gunpowder

Probably everybody’s favourite classical Chinese invention is the stuff that goes ‘Boom!’. Also known as ‘gunpowder’.

Like woodblock printing, Chinese gunpowder (known today as ‘blackpowder’) was invented sometime in the 800s. It is generally believed that Chinese alchemists (an old-fashioned term for a scientist or a chemist) accidently created gunpowder while mucking around in their labs one day. It’s unclear exactly how this happened, but what is known is that the alchemists were trying to make the Elixer of Immortality. Without any philosophers stones, magical mirrors or wise, homosexual wizards around to help them, they were doing it largely by trial and error. And then, they discovered it. The Elixer of Immortality. Or at least, it did grant immortality in the sense that when you detonated enough of this stuff, it released your immortal soul to the heavens. So they did get there in the end.

The ingredients to classical Chinese gunpowder were startlingly simple. Hell, you could probably make it in your kitchen right now. Sooner or later it might show up on MasterChef (“And here’s one we prepared earlier!…”). How simple was Chinese gunpowder? It had only four ingredients! Charcoal (which you can get from your fireplace) potassium-nitrate (‘saltpetre’, which can be extracted from human urine), realgar (a form of sulphur) and…honey.

Mixed in the correct ratios and baked at 200 degrees for two hours…okay I kid…you could make gunpowder. Gunpowder was predictably, very unstable and it didn’t take much to set it off. As one text states, after mixing up those ingredients, the unfortunate alchemists could have burnt…

    “…their hands and faces…and even the whole house where they were working…”

So as you can see, pretty powerful stuff. That excerpt was taken from a 9th century Chinese religious text.

Gunpowder changed the world. With it, mankind could produce all kinds of scary weapons. Pistols, muskets, musketoons, blunderbusses, cannons, artillery-pieces, grenades and fireworks (another awesome Chinese invention). Before the invention of dynamite, gunpowder was also used in construction to blast holes in rocks!

The Compass

The compass is a tricky thing to date. Like the needle that we know it for today, its date of invention swivels and wobbles and spins around like a toddler who just discovered a revolving computer-chair. The first mentions of magnetism in Chinese texts date back to before Christ. The first practical compasses which were used for navigation, however, date from the 11th and 12th centuries, between about 1040-1120.

The traditional Chinese compass was the “ladle and bowl” or “spoon and bowl” style of compass. They looked like this:

Like all great inventors, the Chinese made things to be multifunctional. You could use the compass to find your way to the restaurant and then eat dinner with it at the same time.

Chinese studies with magnetism and its affect on metals (well, iron, really) date back to the 4th century BCE, but the compasses that we know today were born in the 1100s. The Chinese were quick to see the benefits of the compass. With a constant North-Bearing, navigation was now possible. Chinese navigational compasses had the ‘bowl’ part of the compass filled with water, with the lodestone, compass-needle or ‘spoon’ floating on top. With the lubrication of the water, the lodestone could move around freely, giving navigators a clear sense of their direction. It’s partially thanks to the compass that in ancient times, the Chinese had one of the biggest navys in the world! With such a big navy, it was necessary for the Chinese to know where they were going. So a form of the now-famous compass-rose was created. Unlike the modern one (which has 32 points), the Chinese rose had 48 different reference-points! Imperial eunuch and famous Chinese sailor, Zheng He, made frequent mention of compass-bearings during his oceanic travels.

And so there you have it. The four great inventions of Ancient China. And probably the biggest irony is…the title of the Four Great Inventions was a term coined by the ENGLISH…not the Chinese…who found out about it, and decided to pinch it for their own publicity purposes.

 
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Albert Fish: The Original Bogeyman

Albert Fish,
Albert Fish,
Children were,
His favourite dish!

Not many people would remember that rhyme today. And probably even fewer people would remember the fellow named Albert Fish…which is probably just as well, considering who he was.

Growing up, all children are invariably taught never to talk to strangers, never to wander off, never to take candy from people they don’t know and never to follow someone they don’t know to somewhere they don’t know, or to get into a car with a driver they’ve never met.

Well. Albert Fish was living proof (if ever any was needed), that such rules aren’t just around to scare kids out of their wits at night, and if you’ve any naughty kids who aren’t listening to their parents about keeping away from strangers…the story of Mr. Fish might bear repeating.

The Man Behind the Monster

Hamilton Howard Fish was born in 1870, the son of Randall Fish, who was old enough to be his grandfather (at age 75!). Considering that Hamilton Howard Fish’s first and second names were the same as a pair of famous watch-companies (The Hamilton Watch. Co. and the Howard Watch. Co), it’s probably not surprising that soon after his birth, he changed his name to Albert. Okay seriously, he wasn’t named after a pair of watch-manufacturies (The Hamilton Watch. Co. didn’t exist when Fish was born). He was actually named after Hamilton Fish, a distant relation who was the 16th governor of the State of New York.

Albert Fish’s life was miserable at the best of times. His family had a history of mental illness; a branch of medical science generally misunderstood in the 19th century. How severe was his family’s mental instability? Well…one of his uncles was a maniac, one of his brothers was locked in a lunatic asylum, another brother of his died from the condition commonly known as “Water on the Brain”, his mother was prone to hallucinations and a sister of his was also diagnosed with an undisclosed “mental affliction”.

All in all…not a happy family.

Young Albert was a homosexual masochist (a person who derives pleasure from pain); something that he discovered about himself from a very young age. When in school, he discovered that he enjoyed being caned. He had affairs with other boys and even got a job at a local bathhouse, just so that he could see other boys undress!…and he wasn’t even twenty yet!

Fish’s sexual experimentations grew more and more extreme as the years continued. By his early twenties, he became a prostitute, a homosexual rapist and had developed a highly disturbing fascination with castration. Amazingly, despite all this, he did actually get married and produced six children of his own!

Not surprisingly, Fish’s marriage did not last, and his wife soon left him. His mental state went spiralling out of control as he continued raping and molesting boys from as young as five years old and upwards. He developed a fascination with self-harm (the less said about that, the better) and began to suffer from hallucinations, claiming that God told him to do things to children. Doctors diagnosed Fish with religious mania.

The Attacks Begin

By the 1920s, by which time Fish had already served two jail-terms for molestation, he had well and truly started the actions for which he became infamous: Abucting, torturing and killing children. He often selected younger children, African-American children or those with mental retardation. His most famous kidnap-and-murder victim was Grace Budd.

Grace Budd lived with her parents, her sister and older brothers. She was just ten years old.

It all started one day in 1928. Edward Budd, one of Grace’s brothers, put an advertisement in the local newspaper (the now defunct ‘New York World’). He said that he was an 18-year-old lad looking for a job on a farm somewhere in the country. Interested employers should come to the Budd home to see if Edward was suitable for work on their properties.

If young Edward knew who was about to show up on his father’s front doorstep, he probably would’ve burnt down the building where the New York World was printed! On the 28th of May, 1928, Albert Fish came calling. Only, he wasn’t Albert Fish, the infamous rapist and sexual deviant…he was Frank Howard, a farmer living in New York state. Edward Budd wasn’t home, but Fish met young Grace and became very interested in her.

The next time Fish called, he met Edward and agreed to hire him. He also met Mr. Albert Budd I, Edward and Grace’s father. Fish asked if he could take Grace to his sister’s house. There was a birthday party there that the girl might like to attend. Once the party was over, Fish could return Grace back home. Mr. and Mrs. Budd thought this was a wonderful idea, and agreed to let Fish take their baby girl to his sister’s ‘birthday party’.

It was a trap, of course. There was no birthday party. And Mr. and Mrs. Budd would never see Grace again.

Once the Budds realised that Grace had been abducted, they contacted the police, but despite frantic efforts, the child was not found. Nothing more was heard until one day in 1934, a full six years later. On that day, Mrs. Budd received a letter which was unsigned. Not being able to read due to her illiteracy, she left the letter alone, until one of her sons returned home to read it for her. The text of the letter is written below (with original spelling retained). It is not for faint of heart…

    Dear Mrs. Budd.

    In 1894 a friend of mine shipped as a deck hand on the Steamer Tacoma, Capt. John Davis. They sailed from San Francisco for Hong Kong, China. On arriving there he and two others went ashore and got drunk. When they returned the boat was gone. At that time there was famine in China. Meat of any kind was from $1–3 per pound. So great was the suffering among the very poor that all children under 12 were sold for food in order to keep others from starving. A boy or girl under 14 was not safe in the street. You could go in any shop and ask for steak—chops—or stew meat. Part of the naked body of a boy or girl would be brought out and just what you wanted cut from it. A boy or girl’s behind which is the sweetest part of the body and sold as veal cutlet brought the highest price. John staid [sic] there so long he acquired a taste for human flesh. On his return to N.Y. he stole two boys, one 7 and one 11. Took them to his home stripped them naked tied them in a closet. Then burned everything they had on. Several times every day and night he spanked them – tortured them – to make their meat good and tender. First he killed the 11 year old boy, because he had the fattest ass and of course the most meat on it. Every part of his body was cooked and eaten except the head—bones and guts. He was roasted in the oven (all of his ass), boiled, broiled, fried and stewed. The little boy was next, went the same way. At that time, I was living at 409 E 100 St. near—right side. He told me so often how good human flesh was I made up my mind to taste it. On Sunday June the 3, 1928 I called on you at 406 W 15 St. Brought you pot cheese—strawberries. We had lunch. Grace sat in my lap and kissed me. I made up my mind to eat her. On the pretense of taking her to a party. You said yes she could go. I took her to an empty house in Westchester I had already picked out. When we got there, I told her to remain outside. She picked wildflowers. I went upstairs and stripped all my clothes off. I knew if I did not I would get her blood on them. When all was ready I went to the window and called her. Then I hid in a closet until she was in the room. When she saw me all naked she began to cry and tried to run down the stairs. I grabbed her and she said she would tell her mamma. First I stripped her naked. How she did kick – bite and scratch. I choked her to death, then cut her in small pieces so I could take my meat to my rooms. Cook and eat it. How sweet and tender her little ass was roasted in the oven. It took me 9 days to eat her entire body. I did not fuck her tho [sic] I could of had I wished. She died a virgin.

The Budd Family was horrified and disgusted at the letter and demanded police-action. By examining the envelope which carried the letter, and its postmarks, the police were eventually able to track down Albert Fish to an address at 200, East 52nd Street, Manhattan. Officers and detectives waited for Fish in his bedroom until he arrived home. William F. King, the arresting officer, confronted Fish with the evidence and the accusation of murder. Fish agreed to be taken in for questioning, however at the last minute, he tried to slash King with a straight-razor! King successfully disarmed Fish and arrested him, taking him off to be questioned.

Under questioning, the police soon discovered the true barbarity that bubbled away inside Fish’s head. He had not actually intended to kidnap Grace, but had actually wanted to kidnap Edward (and a friend of his), take them to the woods, strip them naked, tie them up, castrate them and leave them to bleed to death.


Albert Fish, shortly before his death

After the initial questioning was over, Edward Budd and his father Albert, were driven to the police-station by investigators, to positively identify Fish as the man who had kidnapped their sister and daughter. When Edward spotted Mr. Fish, he threw himself on the old man, screaming out: “You old bastard! Dirty son of a bitch!” and had to be physically restrained by police!

Trial and Execution

For the kidnapping, murder and cannibalisation of Grace Budd (amongst others), Albert Fish was sentenced to death. The court-case was one of the most amazing ever seen, and it took some pretty extraordinary pieces of evidence from the prosecution (such as an x-ray photograph of Fish’s pelvis, with nearly thirty nails permanently embedded in it!) to show the court that Fish really was the sick and twisted manical lunatic who would, and did, kidnap, rape, butcher and eat children and teenagers.

The trial of Albert Fish lasted all of ten days. On the last day, the jury, who had seen such morbid pieces of evidence such as x-rays, photographs and even Grace Budd’s skull and who had heard testimonies from both the Fish and Budd families took less than an hour to find Fish guilty of murder. The judge promptly sentenced Fish to death. Obviously, Fish was not pleased about this…but he livened up a bit when he discovered he was going to be electrocuted in the electric-chair, and thanked the judge for the sentence and opportunity.

In 1935, Fish was sent up the river to the state penitentiary, Sing Sing Prison, New York where, on the 16th of January, 1936, Albert Fish was executed by electric-chair. He was sixty-five years old.