Can the spooks be spooked?

Respected Cambridge historian Christopher Andrew has been chosen to write the official history of MI5, but Anthony Glees is not convinced that one man can tell the full story of UK Intelligence

Scholars who gathered in Gregynog, Wales, last month for Britain's premier Intelligence conference were excited to learn about the latest research, from the war on terror to plots by ex-spooks and Tory MPs. But everyone is well aware that the best Intelligence revelation is not due until 2009.

This is when Christopher Andrew, professor of history at Cambridge University and a keynote speaker at the meeting, will publish the first official history of UK Security Service MI5.

Andrew's unprecedented access to the service's archives will, we hope, provide the answers to many questions. It might reveal the nature and extent of its rivalry with the Secret Intelligence Service MI6, especially in Northern Ireland; how it fought British fascism; its apparent success in discovering Nazi spies and its failure finding the most important Communist ones. We hope we will also get to know about MI5's role in British politics. Did it really suspect Harold Wilson of being a Soviet agent and did it conspire with others, including Lord Mountbatten, to try to get rid of him? We might even get to judge the merit (or otherwise) of the case against it made by former officers such as Cathy Massiter or David Shayler.

And who better to tell the story? Andrew, one of the "fathers" of British intelligence history, has many important studies to his credit, including two given to him by the spooks. While no one can doubt his qualifications, there are nevertheless grounds for unease. Andrew's research will not be easy, not least because MI5 has destroyed 110,000 of its files covering subversion, the area of greatest public interest. Lost information is not the only worry. Andrew's project is being micromanaged by the service. Like the UK's other secret agencies, it is wrestling with public relations in the aftermath of the Iraqi weapons of mass destruction fiasco and a broader scepticism.

Moreover, Andrew, formally on the staff list as MI5's official historian, is obliged to give the service a boost.

MI5 did not need an official histo-rian. It could have put all its remaining "dead" records in the National Archive and left historians to a free-for-all. If we compare the work done today by younger scholars such as Rod Bailey or Neville Wylie on the Special Operations Executive, using recently released files, we find a history much more interesting than the lacklustre official one.

Alternatively, MI5 could have invited a team of historians to write the official history, which is best practice elsewhere, each with their own perspective and strengths. As a group, they would have been almost impossible to manipulate. I suggested this to MI5 when I was working with them on materials I found in the East German Stasi archive. They were not impressed.

But there are two other reasons for anxiety about Andrew's project.

Supposing he were to conclude that MI5's past was largely a catalogue of failures. Is it likely he would be allowed to publish? The omens, unfortunately, are bad. The record of British Intelligence in seeking to manage the flow of secret material to the public domain by using chosen individuals of high repute as its "agents" has often been appalling.

The awful story of government scientist David Kelly is the most recent example. His official duties included "communicating of Iraq WMD issues externally by providing contributions to international institutions, the media and the press". This made him an integral part of the public relations strategy of the intelligence community. His outstanding career in weapons research was rightly seen as a reason why the media and the experts would trust him. What is more, he was, despite theories to the contrary, a hawk, not a dove, convinced that Iraq possessed WMD. But his underwriting of the Government's case did him no good.

Sir Richard Dearlove, then head of MI6, went out of his way to castigate Kelly posthumously for "discussing one of our (top-secret) reports, which is what he is discussing with a journalist without authorisation... it is a serious breach of discipline".

Leaving to one side the point that the Government had put that top-secret report (the now discredited "45-minute warning") into the public domain, Sir Richard's view seemed justified. Those ignorant of his duties (as I had been) argued that Kelly was foolish to speak to the media. But explaining the WMD issue to the public was exactly what he was paid to do. His tragedy illustrates the dangers that exist for scholars who become media tools for British Intelligence.

Andrew has been here before. He was chosen for his latest commission not just because of his standing but also, as MI6 told the Parliamentary Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC), because Andrew was "a safe pair of hands" who had been "security cleared and had signed the Official Secrets Act". What does "safe" mean - shutting up when told to do so? And should any academic historian, writing for the public, be required to sign the Act? I have done so myself while on secondment to the Home Office engaged on the War Crimes Inquiry in 1988-89, as have other academics. But there is a world of difference between working with the secret agencies in private, as I did, and working for them in public, as Andrew is.

Andrew first helped British Intelligence when asked to co-author a book with former KGB officer turned double agent Oleg Gordievsky. The next commission was to write with another MI6 agent, Vasili Mitrokhin. As the ISC showed, British Intelligence banked on the Mitrokhin Archive, as it was called, to show it in the best possible light. In fact, it blew up in its face. The service's director, Stella Rimington, and her successor, Stephen Lander, were heavily criticised by the ISC for "serious failures" in dealing with the Mitrokhin material. Andrew, quite properly, escaped censure, the ISC noting that he was a "distinguished academic and a good choice" for the project.

The story began on March 22, 1992 when Mitrokhin, chief archivist of the KGB, turned up in a Baltic state capital, bearing notes on the juiciest files to which he had access, dating from 1917 to 1984. MI6 told the ISC that the material had been "of exceptional counter-intelligence significance, illuminating past KGB activity against Western countries and promising to nullify many of Russia's current assets". The Americans labelled it the "biggest counter-intelligence bonanza of the postwar period".

MI6 was keen to let the public learn of its coup. So it "approached" Andrew for a new book in 1995, an idea that won the approval of the then Foreign Secretary, Malcolm Rifkind. But there was a small snag. The Mitrokhin affair was an intelligence bonanza not just because it was clever of MI6 to have netted the agent but because he showed that there were Soviet spies in the UK who had never been caught. The service had to persuade Andrew not to ask to see things that might embarrass British counter-intelligence. He was shown "only the historic cases contained in Mitrokhin's UK material".

The book appeared in 1999 and readers saw there were indeed no "live" names in it. In fact, much of the contents were taken, fully sourced, from publications already in the public domain. Andrew disclosed the existence of two "historic" KGB agents but was allowed to refer to them only by their code names, "Hola" and "Scot". MI6 thought it had been smart. All the British public would know was that thanks to the service, Mitrokhin was working for Britain. That, in MI6's view, was enough.

But the strategy foundered even before publication. On learning in autumn 1999 that the BBC was making a series on spies, for which I was a consultant, MI6 handed over the Mitrokhin story to gain publicity for Andrew's book. David Rose, an investigative journalist working for the BBC, was able to unmask the two agents as "Granny" Norwood and a former Scotland Yard detective called John Symonds.

Instead of accolades all round for British Intelligence, MI5 found itself in the dock for failing to catch spies. Its injured response made matters worse. It explained that none of Mitrokhin's agents had been a serious threat to British security. An embarrassed Andrew was left to explain why, if Mitrokhin's evidence was chiefly unremarkable, his book was so important.

It is obvious why British Intelligence should want to exploit academics, using their reputations to relay "truths" about it. But objective historical inquiry is not best served by this method. To be its official historian, Andrew had to become MI5's servant. This is the wrong way round.

If its history is to be objective, MI5 must become the servant of historians. As the parliamentary oversight committee emphasised, "the possibility that the Security Service could use its control of the retention and destruction of files to rewrite the historical record" is a real one. Can a lone historian challenge the power of the secret agencies? Even if he does not try to do so, he can still cop it. Remember David Kelly?

Anthony Glees is professor of politics at Brunel University's Centre for Intelligence and Security Studies.