The Black Door: Spies, Secret Intelligence and British Prime Ministers

by Richard Aldrich, Rory Cormac

The Black Door explores the evolving relationship between successive British prime ministers and the intelligence agencies, from Asquith’s Secret Service Bureau to Cameron’s National Security Council. Intelligence can do a prime minister’s dirty work. For more than a century, secret wars have been waged directly from Number 10. They have staved off conflict, defeats and British decline through fancy footwork, often deceiving friend and foe alike. Yet as the birth of the modern British secret service in 1909, prime ministers were strangers to the secret world – sometimes with disastrous consequences. During the Second World War, Winston Churchill oversaw a remarkable revolution in the exploitation of intelligence, bringing it into the centre of government. Chruchill’s wartime regime also formed a school of intelligence for future prime ministers, and its secret legacy has endured. Margaret Thatcher, Tony Blair and David Cameron all became great enthusiasts for spies and special forces. Although Britain’s political leaders have often feigned ignorance about what one prime minister called this ‘strange underworld’, some of the most daring and controversial intelligence operations can be traced straight back to Number 10.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Politics, Espionage, Audiobook

624 pages, Hardcover

First published February 11, 2016

Reviews

[Cold War Conversations Podcast · Rating 4 out of 5]

Compulsory reading for future Prime Ministers

Richard Aldrich and Rory Cormac have put together an immensely readable and well researched book. Their style keeps the book from being a dry history and brings events to life and details many stories I hadn’t even heard of.

The different “relationships” the various Prime Minister’s had with intelligence are fascinating and directly impact on their use and understanding of intelligence.

Whilst the wartime sections covering World War 1 and 2 are interesting I found the more recent sections, particularly Blair, Brown and Cameron even more so. Written before the Chilcot report it would benefit from an update in the light of that report.

A must read for intelligence enthusiasts as well as those interested in contemporary political history.

Authoritative and very readable whilst not sensationalist.

[Gary · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is superb; it is a fascinating history of the establishment of the modern British secret services in 1909, and their relationships with every prime minister since then, up to and including David Cameron. I hope the authors add an annex or additional chapter every time we change PMs in the future, though that won’t happen, of course.

It is interesting that the British government felt almost compelled to create the Security Service (MI5) in 1909, not because they especially wanted to but because from about 1900 till then, a number of authors had been writing exciting and compelling (though not always very realistic) novels about Imperial German spies stealing all our secrets and secretly planning war. One of the best ones was The Riddle of the Sands, which was made into a popular film in the late 1960s. It’s a very good book, and worth a read. The continual publication of these novels unnerved the public and led to demands for Britain to root out all these alleged spies and fight back in the espionage war, and that was a major inspiration for MI5’s creation.

The Security Service, thankfully alternatively known as MI5 and not the SS, is similar in scope to the American Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in that it deals with internal security and protecting our domestic life. Its sister organisation is the Secret Intelligence Service, aka SIS or MI6, and this deals with gleaning intelligence abroad. It is MI6 that the fictional James Bond works for, and is equivalent to the American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Then there is the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), which produces ‘sigint’ (signals intelligence) via telecommunications intercepts; this is equivalent to the American National Security Agency (NSA). There are also Army Intelligence and Naval Intelligence, and other, smaller agencies have popped up from time to time to supplement their efforts. Naval Intelligence was the really professional and successful agency during WWI.

GCHQ superseded the Government Code and Cipher School (GC&CS) which was located at Bletchley Park during WWII, and the first agency to use rudimentary computers to break enemy codes. The UK is now at the forefront of espionage tradecraft along with its main ally, the USA, though many other countries have large and effective intelligence agencies, including Iran and Israel.

This book is divided into a chapter for each prime minister since 1909 and their individual attitudes to, relationships with and control of the intelligence apparatus available to them. Some were deeply involved and enthusiastic consumers of intelligence while others thought it a dirty business and did not want to engage with it. Some, such as Winston Churchill, Clement Attlee and David Cameron, made important procedural changes that made the intelligence services both more relevant to central government and policy-making, as well as providing access to and engagement with the heads of the services.

The authors conducted an enormous amount of research into their subject, and this is demonstrated on the one hand by the fact that there are about 100 pages of notes, and on the other, and much more fascinatingly, by the many revelations that they found in the public domain but which remained (to me, in any case) unknown. Just one example is this: many people who have watched The Crown series (which is a fictionalised account of the lives of the British Royal Family) will have noted that Prime Minister Harold MacMillan’s wife had a long-term relationship (which MacMillan knew about) with a Conservative MP and later peer, Lord Boothby. What most don’t know is that Boothby was also having a homosexual affair with Ronnie Kray, a notorious psychopathic East End gangster – one of the Kray twins – so one of the most notorious British gangsters was having sex with a man who was also shagging the prime minister's wife. This is shocking even now but was explosive in the Sixties.

More up-to-date, the UK also spied on fellow EU member countries while negotiating the Maastricht Treaty opt-outs. The revelation that the NSA had spied on EU leader such as Angela Merkel came as a bit of a shock a couple of years ago but I guess it shouldn’t have – this book states that they and us (us being the UK) have been spying on friend and foe alike for decades.

The book describes many other situations which were political dynamite facing prime ministers throughout the 20th and 21st centuries – who was spying on whom, what they knew and what they did about it. Geopolitics features heavily, of course, with our relationships with both enemies and friendly nations described in terms of intelligence gathering and policy-making. Its limitations are that there are a few places where the authors state that what really happened ‘remains a mystery’ which I guess means that even newly released government documents, interviews and diaries have all fallen short – or someone destroyed the evidence.

The book is very well set out and written. It is easy to read and exciting enough to be considered a real page-turner for those interested in politics, espionage and how the two fit together. I must read it again soon, but next time I will have a highlighter pen to hand so I can pick out the really juicy bits. Highly recommended.

[Tim Pendry · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Black Door (a reference to the front door of 10 Downing Street and nothing more sinister) is not a conventional history of intelligence nor a work of straightforward political narrative, it is a review of the relationship between British Prime Ministers and their intelligence and security apparat.

From this perspective, it is competent, useful if a little uninspiring, a combination of broadly sound summary analyses of the relationship at each stage in modern British history and a series of extended anecdotes about the crises and challenges the relationship faced during tenures.

The general story is one of the increasing importance of intelligence but also of increasing complexity and of how different Prime Ministers coped with the secret world. Where it is perhaps most useful is in helping us to judge the abilities at different times of different national leaders.

The academic team involved in the book is experienced but, and this is admitted in an appendix, victims of the paucity and often unreliability of evidence. It is perhaps uncharitable to say also that they are stuck with an institutional interest in maintaining good relations with Government.

This has two effects. The first is that, as we have noted in articles elsewhere, the narrative may be a coherent and plausible narrative but one that is not necessarily wholly consistent with the reality of decision-making and power relations. There is a lot of white space here.

The second is that there is a notable shift in the book over time as the evidence base changes, Towards the end, there is greater and greater reliance on official inquiries into errors, self-serving memoirs and material appearing because of clashes with the media or Parliament.

The final analysis is of David Cameron and it is decidedly odd. The first section is almost hagiographical and yet the subsequent accounts of his conduct of foreign policy suggests a man and a system blundering around Libya and Syria without a clue. I mean - without a bloody clue!

The book was completed before the Revolution of June 23rd (Brexit), the fall of Cameron and the rise of Theresa May who has substantial intelligence experience in her own right as former Home Secretary but there is a fair and intelligent conclusion that bears reading with care.

However there seem to me to be too much trust in the official apparat. Colin Wallace is simply dismissed as having no reputation (well, he would wouldn't he, after all the dirt thrown at him) and there is relatively little consideration of the indigenous political police aspects of the case.

You would think that the use of the security apparat to subvert the trades unions in the 1980s was an aberration but we know this was never so. There is barely any mention of foreign power interference after the disquisition on Wilson's alleged paranoia over BOSS and MOSSAD.

There is reference to the Information Research Department but a huge lacuna in not discussing the vast budgets allocated more recently to psychological operations and no hint of their role in trying to manipulate domestic public opinion to political ends - notably in relation to Russia and Syria.

The close relationship between MI6 and the media can be guessed from anecdotes but it is never seriously uncovered and I find it hard to believe that these relationships were not part of the tool kit of successive Prime Ministers. The handling of spin is treated somewhat obscurely.

Many things are elided over - for example the story of the subversive operations in Russia and East Central Europe in the early Cold War - while the account of relations with America falls into that 'Greece to their Rome' and 'restraining the nutters' narrative beloved of the establishment.

Other matters are taken at face value such as the standard Cold War narrative about Litvinenko, Blair is given an understandably rough ride (while being admired for his intellectual talent) yet the account of Syria does indicate why we should be very cautious about chemical weapons' claims.

To be fair, covering a century of spookery in under 500 pages is not going to allow much in-depth analysis or the inclusion of everything but the choices seem to be dictated more by what the public has already noticed than by what may actually have happened to whom and why.

Throughout this is a book written in good faith but one senses an undercurrent here of a team dependent on access and a little too ready to take on the noble narrative of the secret state as soon as it is clear they cannot get access to the 'actuality'.

By the time we get to Gordon Brown an air of desperation sets in with seedy gossip about immature New Labour advisers taking advantage of Chinese honeypots. This contrasts with more solid material about the core period between Chamberlain and Thatcher.

This core - showing us just how bad a Prime Minister Chamberlain was, how brilliant and dangerous Churchill was, how good Attlee was, how their successors tried to make sense of things - is excellent and readable. There is much to learn that feels reliable.

The struggle over domestic policies seem to have collapsed when it came to the national interest. Wilson was as much engaged in restrospectively wasteful and useless decline of empire petty wars as his Tory predecessors. Churchill wanted good relations with Moscow as much as Wilson.

Thatcher's ideological re-envisioning of that national interest, extending the Cold War from defence to offence and shifting from watching communists to fighting indigenous Leftists marks a break that seems to have encouraged the eventual total integration of State and Leader.

This is often presented as reaching its apogee in Blair who seduced the intelligence apparat on his sofa to their subsequent embarrassment but that integration has continued, become formalised through the NSC and has created a National Security State such as we have never seen before.

There is much meat in here - far more than a light review can cover - about how Power extends and expands and how many good people inside the system try to maintain some ethical compass against the demands of ideologues and the emotions of politicians.

Dark deeds have been done at many times in our history and errors taken place but the basic system is attempting to be ethical about what is existential - the Defence of the Realm. The bad people tend to come from outside as political entryists or be rogues derived from poor management.

This brings us to today and Aldrich and Cormac's conclusions. What we get is a picture of massive information overload amidst mounting global chaos in which sophisticated war rooms seem to be no guardian against higher level misjudgements using dossiers that are inspired guess work.

The current two contenders for Prime Minister offer divergent but reasonable solutions. The British look as if they will go with that of May which is essentially to strengthen the State apparat by giving it yet more powers while trying to build trust by putting those powers on a sound legal basis.

Jeremy Corbyn's model appears to be to treat the problem of chaos with a strategy of wu-wei, simplifying matters by intervening less (though he gives himself wiggle room on humanitarian matters) and talking more.

National security is currently not as much a driving force in the election of our next Prime Minister in two weeks as Brexit and economic and social policy but it is probable that the majority are minded to May's position in any case.

The British public - one of the lessons of the book - do not have the Gestapo complex of the Europeans or the quasi-paranoid attitude to the security services (perfectly justified) of the Americans, partly because the dirty deeds are done in private to foreigners.

Yet many are getting edgy on both sides of the political divide about political and even commercial access to vast amounts of data that may eventually comes from our toasters and biochips in our forearms. May seems to be promising to address these fears with state-of-the-art legislation.

Of course this state-of-the-art legislation will also be used to meet a number of security state needs as well and we can expect the final Bill to be a lighning rod for a major debate within the political class on just what sort of security state we will tolerate in return for its claimed protection.

May's model of a framework of trust that keeps the dirt limited to the necessary, under the carpet, within a framework of basic protections for British liberties is probably what most people want. They want terminal action directed at threats and otherwise not ever see the sausages being made.

[Beth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating and well put together. The research undertaken drips from the pages. The history of what has gone on is written to thrill.

[Susan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating, readable, informative: it was like peeping through the letter box and catching sight of what happens in the big house across the road.

[Harry Buckle · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent and very readable. As this is a chronological review of a fairly specialised subject it could could easily have been a predictable re-hash of much that is well known. But the author gives us the timeline, the back ground and the reasons for the approach used at the time. Much like Boris Johnsons recent book on Churchill it brings to life and fills in many answers about matters that changed history. Truly a good read.

[Jacob Stelling · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good narrative charting the changing British intelligence establishment and its fluctuating relationship with Downing Street and respective Prime Ministers.

Although this book focuses largely on the attitudes of individual PM’s structures and attitudes towards intelligence and gives details of some key details during their tenures, I would perhaps have preferred to see more long term analysis (as was seen on key themes such as Northern Ireland and terrorism).

Overall, a good read casting light on the British secret state.

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

A study of the relationship between each Prime Minister since the establishment of the modern British intelligence agencies to the period of David Cameron.

What comes through strikingly is that the relationship was down to the whims of those involved on any given day, and that formalisation only really came from the creation of the modern National Security Council. The pros and cons of the different levels of interest in intelligence matters from PM’s could be a risk and an opportunity, but as shown here, almost all premiers become adherents to what they see as the proper place for intelligence in policy making. Even if this wasn’t always the right place!

The authors shed light on perhaps the most important aspect of intelligence, ensuring it is actionable by decision makers, rather than its collection per se. Relying on significant public records releases in the UK and the USA, certainly for the earlier periods, this is an authoritative study.

Written in an accessible style, it is easy for the reader to dip into individual chapters in specific leaders, as well as reading in one go to understand the evolution of the relationship.

Recommended.

[Callum · Rating 5 out of 5]

I thought this book was such a great read. Gives a chronological history of British intelligence and with lots of context. You will undoubtedly learn little bits about British politics along the way.

[David Warner · Rating 2 out of 5]

For a work of history, this book has simply too many obvious factual errors for the reader to be entirely comfortable with the judgements of its authors, such as wrongful dating - the most egregious of which being placing Operation Mincemeat in 1944 and associating it with the Normandy landings rather than in 1943 and the invasion of Sicily - and simple mistakes which lead one to question the value placed on the sources, such as citing Edwina Currie as a cabinet colleague of John Major, when, whatever her past relations with the prime minister, she was just a backbencher recording gossip. To be fair to Aldrich and Cormac, these errors do not invalidate their thesis that the story of the British civil intelligence agencies since their foundation in 1909 has been one of progressive official institutionalisation and a contemporaneous increasing centralisation under the political authority of the prime minister and the co-ordination of the Cabinet Office. However, what they do mean is that the historical accuracy of the evidence can be disputable, so that as a history of the intelligence services and their relationship with prime ministers this book is both incomplete and unreliable, while still serving as a useful work of analysis as to how over time, through evolving administrative systems, and from the differing personalities and aptitude for intelligence use of individual office holders, the current (as of 2015) mechanisms of prime ministerial interaction with the intelligence agencies and their product have come into being. Had the authors written a book focusing on this current system, explaining its development through reference to previous experiences and drawing analogies where applicable from the past, it may well have been more successful, but instead, interleaving past events with political analysis, Aldrich and Cormac have written a narrative history, which has simply not achieved its aims - the analysis, particularly regarding recent events is often good, but the history is often poor and decontextualised.
Part of the problem lies in the narrative methodology. Aldrich and Cormac have chosen to break up the period 1909 to 2015 into chapters dedicated to each prime minister in chronological order (Churchill and Wilson therefore get two chapters each), which while allowing examination of each prime minister's distinctive approach, is too artificial and arbitrary, and undervalues both continuities and how differing governments often faced the same challenges, relying often on the same personnel and organisational structures, while organisational changes were usually piecemeal and the result of intelligence problems that came about under previous governments. It might therefore have been more sensible to have approached the evidence thematically, analysing how the prime ministers as a collective dealt with, for example, war, internal subversion, terrorism, intelligence sharing, etc, showing change and continuity and the evolution of Number 10's handling of intelligence in relation to these issues. Such an approach, as well as being more effective, would also have avoided the unbalanced weighting of chapters by which short-tenured prime ministers such as Douglas-Home and Brown are given almost as many words as Churchill's wartime ministry and the consequential administrations of Thatcher and Blair, and which would also have allowed more detailed examination of the role played by intelligence in determining policies that contributed to the end of the Cold War and the so-called War on Terror.
The style of writing is quite breathless, with events coming one upon the other, often conveyed in an excitable yet knowing style, although not always chronologically, sequentially, or in a manner which properly reveals how individual intelligence operations and their central organisation impacted one upon another, or how prime ministers receiving ongoing intelligence on a wide-varied number of political issues at the same time, tried to form a coherent and holistic approach to interpreting the evidence received. For prime ministers, intelligence is just one part of the information deluge they receive daily, and often subsumed as they regularly are by domestic crises, not necessarily regarded as the most important, particularly when experience encourages questioning of its quality. It is the bread-and-butter problems of the economy, cost of living, and public services that are of primary concern, so that foreign and security issues, with which the secret services are concerned, have little impact electorally, as Churchill's defeat in 1945 and Blair's re-election in 2005 show, and why prime ministers remain focused primarily upon domestic matters. It is only at times of foreign crisis or terrorism that a prime minister can turn his or her attention fully towards intelligence, which is why they are so dependent upon high grade material that can inform their policy choices, but because this book is concerned only with those secret agencies and their intelligence as consumed by prime ministers, it can give an exaggerated impression of how much time prime ministers spend on such matters.
Similarly, such a focus on Number 10 obscures the important roles other ministers, particularly the Foreign, Home, and Defence Secretaries and their departments play in intelligence . There is no doubt that since the 1980s intelligence has become more centralised under the prime minister, but other ministers remain consumers, while the Home Secretary for MI5 and the Foreign Secretary for both MI6 and GCHQ retain parliamentary accountability and operational responsibility for these agencies, and are intimately involved in policy formation based upon the intelligence of which they are both consumers, and, in their ministerial roles, the providers. Too often, the image given is of a single channel of intelligence inexorably flowing towards Number Ten, when in fact much is operationally in the province of ministers who themselves act as political filters, helping to determine how intelligence is shaped and presented to the prime minister. As much as the UK political system has come to appear presidential in recent times, it remains one based upon Cabinet government, and even though a strong, determined prime minister can drive a single policy, as Chamberlain did with Appeasement in 1937-39 and Blair over Iraq, they still require Cabinet colleagues' support.
In the two greatest foreign policy failures of the postwar age, neither Eden over Suez nor Blair in Iraq acted alone, both were supported by senior ministers, Selwyn Lloyd at the Foreign Office in the former case, and Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, and Geoff Hoon at the MoD, in the latter, while Cabinet collective responsibility was maintained - just like with Appeasement, the Cabinet fully supported the policies of the prime minister and accepted his and senior colleagues' assessment of intelligence (the very few ministers who disagreed resigned). Unfortunately, as well as underestimating the important part played by ministers in developing intelligence-based policies and in carrying them out, particularly the Defence Secretary with regard to military decisions, there is also a lack of appreciation, except in the 2013 vote against military action in Syria, of the importance of Parliament in providing the context within which government uses intelligence. Appeasement did not happen in a vacuum, it was a policy overwhelmingly supported by MPs, while the Suez Group in the 1950s had a strong influence on foreign and colonial policy far beyond its numbers, and it was often this political context which set the terms by which prime ministers decided what intelligence to seek and how to deploy it.
Without the historical context, Aldrich and Cormac are prone to see prime ministerial intention as the driver of intelligence, whereas in reality intelligence is but a small part of how policy is formulated, and often is used/misused to support policies already decided upon for strategic and tactical reasons. The prime example of this is Iraq, where intelligence was used by the Blair government in support of a geopolitical strategy already formulated: the wholesale support of the Bush Administration's interventionist actions against perceived enemies in the Islamic world after 9/11. It is clear that the US Defense Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, and his neoconservative advisers had very soon after the Al-Qaida attacks decided upon Iraq as a threat to be neutralised, even as evidence showed that Iraq had nothing to do with those attacks - indeed Al-Qaida was an enemy of the Baathist regime of Saddam Hussain, while elements within the US ally, Saudi Arabia, were active supporters of the terrorists - and that in late 2001, the UK government was originally horrified by the US focusing on Iraq, with the consequent fear that this would divert attention away from Al-Qaida and its Taliban allies in Afghanistan, which is exactly what happened. However, for still opaque reasons, during 2002, Tony Blair became convinced by the Bush Administration's decision to target Iraq, but as so-called regime change is illegal in UK law (although not US law: Bill Clinton in 1998 had made the removal of Saddam official US policy), he understood that the UK could not join with the US in military action unless authorised by the UN Security Council, and hence the decision to make WMD the casus belli and to utilise intelligence to justify military action and obtain a UN resolution authorising force. In pursuit of this, Blair authorised the publication of intelligence to support his policy. It was this that was novel and dangerous, since it tied the secret services into an already determined policy, undermining their independence, and led to a situation whereby intelligence rather than being a multi-sourced means by which policy could be developed became in effect a propaganda tool, with evidence published without caveats and with accompanying assertions that the original intelligence could not support because the policy demanded that they lead to the single conclusion that Iraq possessed and was capable of deploying WMD against its neighbours. The trouble was that this was not only untrue, but a proper evaluation of the intelligence should have in fact led to an assessment that the WMD that Iraq had possessed, but not used, at the time of the Gulf War in 1991, had been destroyed. Intelligence had become the handmaiden of politics.
In fact the Defence Intelligence Agency had evidence from a high ranking defector from Saddam's regime that Iraq's WMD had been destroyed by 1995, but that Saddam for political reasons had not wanted this to be known. There therefore was intelligence within the Ministry of Defence that completely contraverted the narrative of the Blair government in 2002-3, but this evidence as well as not being published was at no time presented to the JIC. It is this episode that reveals a major weakness of this book, its lack of interest in the DIA and ignorance of the role of the Chief of Defence Intelligence and his staff in intelligence gathering in the MOD. Between 1991 and 2002, WMD and their proliferation were primarily a Defence responsibility, and it was the DIA who employed the weapons inspectors who evaluated intelligence of WMD. So, in theory, the DIA had 'ownership' of WMD policy, and yet in 2002 the lead organisation with regard to Iraq and WMD was MI6, an organisation with no scientific specialists in the field. The question is therefore why was this the case? and the most likely answer is political, in that Blair preferred to work with MI6, with whose Chief he had developed a close relationship, because it was easier for him to control how the intelligence he received was framed, particularly in view of the also close working relationship his director of communications had with the chairman of the JIC, something he could not have had with the DIA in the MOD. It wasn't so much a case of the 'sexing up' of 'dodgy dossiers' that led to intelligence failure in Iraq, but that the Defence Intelligence Agency was kept firmly out of the decision-making loop, so that its more balanced technical appraisals, and, importantly, the high grade human intelligence it possessed that Saddam's WMD had been destroyed, could not undermine policy decisions already decided. This book was published before the damning Chilcott Enquiry reported, but both reveal how the Blair government misused intelligence and how overly informal decision-making processes led to an unnecessary and highly destabilising war unjustified by the totality of intelligence that should have been available to policy makers. Ultimately, this was a result of the politicisation of the intelligence agencies by a government that regarded all organs of government as political agents to be used by Blair's core group of advisers in Number 10 to carry out the government's political and media aims, and not as independent bodies providing validated evidence from which policy could be formulated. Once Blair brought the secret services into the realm of political advice and made their senior staff into political agents, it allowed him to use these agencies for political purposes, and to create a harmful governmental paradigm where public bodies, including the intelligence services, are validated not by the quality of their product and the work they do, but by how much what they do conforms to the policy objectives set by the prime minister and government, and where senior public servants, who should be independent, are co-opted into being agents of and spokesmen for government policies often poorly formulated for political advantage and excessively focused upon messaging and media influence. This is nothing less than a corruption of government.
The best chapter in this book is the conclusion, which provides a sure-footed analysis of the intelligence challenges faced today. However, the big question remains as to how useful intelligence has been in informing prime ministerial decision-making, especially when prime ministers - over Appeasement, Suez, and Iraq - are capable of ignoring intelligence unfavourable to their policies, and where so much of the intelligence is simply confusing. There is absolutely no doubt of the importance of intelligence in operational and tactical decision-making when in the hands of properly trained officers, but this book, perhaps contrary to authorial intention, shows how often intelligence is misused by prime ministers and even how the systems by which it is provided to them are open to political abuse - even in the case of Cameron, whom the authors praise for establishing the National Security Council as a body well-suited to forming decisions based upon intelligence, he wanted to launch an attack on Bashir Al-Assad's Syrian regime in retaliation for a chemical weapons attack when the intelligence at the least was unclear, and in fact may not have supported assertions that Assad was culpable. In such a situation, as late as 2013, whatever the conflicting intelligence, the decision still remained a political one based upon political and strategic decisions, and it was only parliamentary defeat - a political not intelligence matter - that prevented the government from perhaps making the same military blunders based upon faulty intelligence that Blair had made. If prime ministers are to continue to cherry pick intelligence to fit with their political determinations, then the system still needs reform, and then either the JIC needs to become a cut-out and the only body which provides verifiable multi-sourced intelligence to Number 10, or intelligence needs to be focused upon operations, with prime ministers and the Cabinet setting the strategic policies which the intelligence services can then inform. Intelligence officers must not act as policy advisers. There should be a clear firewall between intelligence gathering and analysis and policymaking, and the intelligence services should keep their distance from politics, providing an agreed intelligence assessment independent of political considerations upon which ministers acting collegiately can act. There is no reason why the heads of the secret services should be in personal contact with the prime minister. They should where possible keep their distance from policymakers and focus entirely upon the production of good intelligence which can then be evaluated by the Joint Intelligence Committee before presentment to the prime minister and Cabinet by the National Security Adviser. Such a mechanism would sterilise the intelligence services from political interference, while ensuring prime ministers could not improperly use their power to determine what intelligence is provided or what expert interpretation is placed upon it before, seeing the considered intelligence in the whole, they then make policy choices informed by intelligence but incorporating other advice, such as diplomatic and military. Such a system, unlike with Iraq, would, when things went wrong, allow for a determination of where errors were made, either in the intelligence itself, its analysis, or in the political decision-making. However, it is unlikely prime ministers will want to give up their personal links to the intelligence and security services, and so likely that political mishandling of intelligence will remain a risk, particularly when prime ministers seek to become involved in operational matters or act as their own analysts of intelligence. If there is a lesson to be learnt from the last century or so, it is that intelligence and politics simply do not mix.

[Erik Graff · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the story of the British espionage establishment (MI5, MI6, SAS etc.) told within the context of ministries from Asquith to Cameron. Written for a British public, American readers may be interested, as I was, in what is included, what excluded. I was particularly surprised at how little emphasis was put on the Cambridge spies, how much on U.S. intelligence leaks.

[Ali Khosravi · Rating 5 out of 5]

A brilliant and forensic history of the British Intelligence agencies and their relationship with successive British Prime Ministers. Rory Cormac and Richard Aldrich have a masterly ability to piece together a narrative from archive material. They are undoubtedly Britain's top intelligence historians. (Though in the wrods of Douglas Hurd Professors of hindsight, but aren't all historians?).

There was just one factual error in chapter 15 when discussing the Iranian revolution, where the authors had got the names of two Iranian Prime Ministers mixed up. They were telling the story of how one of Shah's former Prime Ministers (meant to say Amir Abbas Hoveyda) was quickly tried and shot in his cell by the revolutionaries, but instead of Hoveyda, they mentioned the Prime Minister of the time and after the revolution, Mehdi Bazarghan.

[Thomas Francis · Rating 4 out of 5]

A strong account of the changing role of the PM in the intelligence services, and a good overview of some of the key challenges and changes in the services over the 20th century. Some very interesting anecdotes and stories along the way. One area I would have liked a little more detail on was Northern Ireland, which appears periodically but with little commentary on HMG/PM strategy and objectives, as well as the transformation of NI into a surveillance state - but perhaps that was beyond scope of the work. It would also be very interesting to see a comparative analysis with other executives in the future, particularly with France and Germany.

[Dоcтоr · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent insight into history of the British Secret Services, their operations, and difficult decisions that Prime Ministers had faced.

Well researched, and very well written. Highly recommended reading.

[Paul Waring · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent coverage of the role of secret intelligence in the UK since 1908. I was surprised that this book takes the tale up to the present day, as the delay in releasing intelligence material is often 30 years or more. Definitely worth a read if you are interested in the subject.

[Lee · Rating 5 out of 5]

A thrilling overview of the chaotic, murky and often bonkers relationship between U.K. heads of state and the intelligence services.

Dense and well-researched but still easy to read, this book is a fascinating, if sometimes terrifying, tour of a hidden part of 20th-century history.

[Elie-Joe Dergham · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting account of history. The book unveils the relationship between UK government and its intelligence services. The book covers from the early 1910 till our present day covering Prime Ministers such as Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher.

[Björn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Serious, solid book on the subject but also forward looking.

[Malcolm Greig · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not the easiest read but we’ll worth persevering.

[Noel F · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really good read. Very insightful into how PMs approached espionage and used it.

[Dominic · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reinforced my views of Gordon Brown

[Gareth · Rating 5 out of 5]

An extremely well researched, written and referenced book which gives a thoroughly fascinating insight into the relationships between 20th and 21st century Prime Ministers and their security and intelligence organisations.
The authors' writing style moved through what would possibly be a narrow and uninspiring subject, with remarkable interest.
I would thoroughly recommend this book to anyone with an interest in contemporary, political history.

[Outimb]

This book goes through every British prime minister from Asquith and David Lloyd George all the way to David Cameron. It gives a detailed description and quite juicy stories about each prime minister and their relationship with the "secret state". It covers everything from the times of amateur spies to the latest technology used to find out delicate secrets of allies and enemies alike, from covert operations to the problems of sharing information with friendly allies or in the House of Commons.
Some prime ministers have been more reluctant than others to use the information provided by secret services but the vast majority of politicians have been utterly fascinated by it. Churchill wanted to have raw intelligence, he was a DIY intelligence analyst. At the other end was Harold Wilson who was totally convinced that there was a plot against him by British and American intelligence services. Tony Blair was also eager to be in the know and kept a close watch whereas Gordon Brown was keen to micro manage everything.
How do politicians and decision makers decide what is significant information and what can be discarded as speculation or a red herring? How do they decide which international conflicts to get involved in? Mistakes have been costly in the past. There is now such a huge amount of information to digest and analyse that it's humanly impossible for one person at the top to make decisions about war and peace. This book reveals the complexity of gathering information, co-operation between international secret services, who spies whom. It also raises some very troublesome questions about how intelligence material is being used to justify military action overseas or closer to home.

[Doug Eberlin · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent history of Britain’s intelligence services and their relationship to Downing Street and the prime minister of the day, starting with Asquith before WW1 until David Cameron. I liked that the book covered PMs before Churchill and Attlee, who are credited the most in creating the modern intelligence agencies.

The book expertly explains how the best PMs handled intelligence as well as the biggest mistakes Prime Ministers made when handling intelligence such as Chamberlain with appeasement, Eden with Suez and Blair with Iraq. I recommend this book for anyone interested in intelligence, foreign policy or Whitehall.

[Peter Dunn · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a comprehensive examination of how UK prime ministers, from Asquith to Cameron, have interacted with intelligence. If there is one line of text from this book which sums up its analysis it is that “Above all prime ministers must not interpret “top secret” as meaning “true” “.
….and if you want a spoiler on which PM comes out best in this book then the answer is that it is Clement Attlee (who is credited for bringing intelligence into the framework of an “orderly system fit for the cold war”. Alec Douglas–Home also doesn’t fare badly.

[Howard · Rating 4 out of 5]

Audible