The Right MI6 – MI5 Officer for the Job
BOOK REVIEW: A Faithful Spy: The Life and Times of an MI6 and MI5 Officer
By Jimmy Burns / Chiselbury Publishing
Reviewed by: J.R. Seeger
The Reviewer – J.R. Seeger served as a paratrooper in the 82nd Airborne and as a CIA officer in multiple field locations. Seeger has written eleven novels. Eight in the Mike4 series about a family that served in the special operations and intelligence community from World War II to the present and three in the Steampunk Raj series about two families of intelligence officers on opposite sides of Great Power conflict in the first two decades of the twentieth century.
REVIEW —There are many books available to those interested in the early days of the US-UK special relationship. Most focus on the more “daring-do” joint operations in World War II and the early Cold War. What is often forgotten is that these operations were managed and supported by seniors both in the field and in their respective headquarters.
These American and British intelligence officers worked hard to smooth over the differences between the nascent American intelligence community (OSS and the early CIA) and the established British intelligence community (SIS and SOE). Many of these officers worked as seniors in the field as the early Cold War progressed into a series of post-colonial conflicts.
In A Faithful Spy: The Life and Times of an MI6 and MI5 Officer, that serves as a biography of Walter Bell, the reader gets to see the career of one of these men transitioning from MI6 to MI5, from foreign intelligence collector to counterintelligence and counterinsurgency field manager.
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The Right Man for the Job
The British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS or MI6, used interchangeably in the book) recruited Bell in the late 1930s, as Europe teetered from one crisis to another based on the political and military conflict between Western democracies and totalitarian states.
Good fortune placed Bell in the New York SIS office when the war started. While his supervisors were often very political figures, Bell spent the war working to establish and improve the UK relationship with the FBI and the nascent “central” intelligence service known first as the Office of the Coordinator of Information (COI) and eventually, as the Office of Strategic Services (OSS).
Bell’s successes in New York resulted in a reassignment in London working directly with OSS London Station and most especially, with David Bruce – an early OSS senior assigned to run European operations from London station.
After the war, Bell was temporarily assigned to the UK Embassy in Washington as the aide to the ambassador. This assignment provided him with a ring-side seat to the early Cold War and the creation of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
Following this assignment, Bell transferred to the British Security Service (BSS or MI5) and served in assignments in post-colonial Asia. This new assignment also meant Bell was in the counterintelligence field during the late 1950s and early 1960s, amid revelations of the Cambridge Five Soviet spy ring that rocked the British intelligence establishment.
In each assignment, Bell proved to be a man focused on delivering excellent intelligence as well as creating a good working relationship with foreign liaison officers, whether they were Western allies or intelligence leaders in newly independent countries.
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A nuanced understanding
Author Jimmy Burns has produced a detailed biography, based initially on the papers of Walter Bell which he significantly enhanced via archival research. The reader has a chance to gain an understanding of how decisions were made and how conflicts were avoided based on the actions of many more famous than Bell.
The book also details failures in British foreign affairs in the post war world resulting from Bell’s colleagues in the British intelligence and diplomatic service, who were unwilling to accept the transformation of the British Empire to the British Commonwealth of Nations or, in the case of the Cambridge Five, individuals who worked purposely against British interests. Burns offers a nuanced analysis of Bell and his colleagues. Except for the British traitors, none of Bell’s colleagues end up consistently heroes or villains, which is, of course, what anyone who has served in a national security position knows, is the nature of the trade.
There are small errors in the book that should have been identified by a careful edit. Burns states that the CIA was created in July 1948, when even a cursory search of the history of CIA would have revealed that the correct date was September 1947. In several of the vignettes clearly based on diaries, dates – sometimes months – are not consistent with the continuity of the story.
Any author will tell you that these are small errors that creep into a book and the author will not see them. An editor should catch them. While not an error, it is important for the reader to come to the book understanding that this is a story told from the perspective of an English gentleman who may not have always understood (or even cared) about the complex nature of wartime Washington politics or American intelligence culture. We can assume however, that he understood overall American culture, since he was married to the daughter of an American war hero, General Carl Spaatz.
On balance, this is an excellent book for anyone interested in the “special relationship” between the US and UK intelligence communities or anyone interested in the complex nature of the early Cold War and post-colonial period of the 1950s and 1960s. It belongs on the shelf of any researcher interested in an era that seems long past but continues to influence our 21st century world.
A Faithful Spy earns a prestigious four out of four trench coats
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