The Real History of MI6

SpyCast

History, Education, News

4.4 • 1.7K Ratings

🗓️ 1 November 2010

⏱️ 31 minutes

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Summary

Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service, better known as MI6, is James Bond’s home agency and one of the world’s most secretive organizations. The British government did not even admit that it existed until the 1990s. Yet, in connection with its centennial year, the service has commissioned an outside scholar to write an official history of its first forty years. Peter chats with Professor Keith Jeffery, the only outsider who has ever seen the MI6 archives and given their penchant for secrecy perhaps the only one who ever will in our lifetimes. Drawing on his new book, The Secret History of MI6, 1909-1949, Professor Jeffery shares “how it actually was and how it’s actually done.

Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to the CyberWire Network, powered by N2K.
0:07.0	Hello. Hello and welcome to Spycast from the Secret Files of the International Spy Museum
0:19.7	in Washington, D.C.
0:21.8	I'm Peter Ernest, the Executive Director of the Museum. I served for some
0:26.0	36 years in the Central Intelligence Agency, largely as what is called an operations officer
0:31.6	or a case officer.
0:33.1	Every month will be bringing you interesting talks
0:35.9	with visitors, with authors, with others who
0:38.6	have something to do with the world of intelligence
0:41.4	and espionage. My guest today is Keith Jeffrey, who is a professor of history at Queens College
0:49.8	Belfast, obtained his PhD from Cambridge, and has taught at universities in Northern Ireland and Australia.
0:57.1	He has written extensively on British and Irish military and intelligence history, and he was commissioned to do an authorized history of MI6, which is of course the
1:09.9	British equivalent, the closest there is really to CIA, our Central Intelligence Agency.
1:16.2	And it has just been published and he's graciously agreed to be with us.
1:21.7	Keith Jeffrey, welcome. Well, it's a pleasure to be with us. Keith Jeffrey, welcome. Well it's a pleasure to be here. You're in the
1:25.4	states now for a tour, I take it. Well ten days in New York and Washington. I'm not
1:31.3	allowed to go anywhere else, possibly for security reasons
1:34.8	or perhaps the publisher can't afford to send.
1:37.0	Well, security reasons certainly sounds more glamorous than the publishers means.
1:43.8	Let me, I'd like to take this from the point of view.
1:46.5	This is an extraordinary book.
1:49.7	The fact that MI6, which is referred to it as MI6, also the Secret Intelligence Service, right? SIS.
	...

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