A most apparent sign of the presence of Chinese intelligence services in Hong Kong is this plaque outside the People’s Republic of China National Security Office there (above). This essay is as a companion piece to greatcharlie’s proceeding essays on Chinese intelligence services. For the scholar who is a regular reader of greatcharlie, the essay will hopefully be an interesting discussion on the function of intelligence services in China with respect to functions of services in the United Kingdom and the US. However, this essay has the additional purpose of serving as a vehicle to assist students. For students, this essay aims to ignite an inner-conversation of issues reviewed, in this case concerning intelligence, to promote their recognition of additional parallels and the development of further insights. Hopefully, students will evoke thoughts from their respective sources and lessons, but also from personal experience, and worldviews, and produce strong insights.

For a one man shop as greatcharlie, reviewing a voluminous quantity of sources in the preparation of the July 31, 2020 and August 31, 2020 posts entitled, “China’s Ministry of State Security: What Is This Hammer the Communist Party of China’s Arm Swings in Its Campaign Against the US? (Part 1 and 2 respectively), was, to a degree, an exercise in large data processing. Yet, while engaging in that consuming, yet satisfying process, the thoughts of greatcharlie’s founder and editor hearken back to an assignment received as an undergraduate at Columbia College, Columbia University in a course “The Politics of Policymaking.” The course instructor, Roger Hilsman (1919-2014), who was also the student advisor and mentor of greatcharlie’s editor, asked students to construct an essay or, as he dubbed it, a “thinkpiece,” in which they were required to present their “observations, meditations, ruminations, assumptions, and hypotheses” that billowed up after reading a primary or secondary source directly related to a foreign and national security policy topic covered in his class. (The source greatcharlie’s editor used, at the suggestion of Hilsman, was Glenn Paige’s The Korea Decision (June 24-30, 1950) (Macmillan, 1968).) However, Hilsman’s goal with the assignment was to encourage students to move away from simply regurgitating what was studied and writing the derivative college essay. Instead, he wanted students to evoke thoughts from their respective sources and lessons but also from personal experience, and their albeit youthful worldview, and draw from them their best insights on the topics they chose. For Hilsman, a phenomenal educator, the assignment was not founded upon some understanding of the requirements of analytical work in international affairs developed in the abstract, but rather, developed upon substantial experience preparing his own analyses and supervising and mentoring subordinates and colleagues in their analytical work in the US military, intelligence, and diplomatic arenas; real world! More specifically, Hilsman’s background included: studying at US Military Academy; service in Merrill’s Marauders and command of an Office of Strategic Services guerilla warfare battalion in Burma in World War II (Hilsman’s valorous service is superbly related in his memoir, American Guerilla: My War Behind Japanese Lines (Brassey’s, 1990)); his work as a military planner for NATO and the Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe; service in the administration of US President John Kennedy as Director of the Bureau of Intelligence and Research for the US Department of State; and, service as Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs in the administration of US President Lyndon Johnson.

Hilsman would not only transmit his sagacity through his “The Politics of Policymaking” course, but through discussions on policymaking and analysis that he had with students during seminars held at his residence were marked not only by the inspiration and encouragement he would give to students in their research and career plans, but also by a frankness and realism that would give them a leg up in future endeavors. The reminiscences Hilsman would share directly with greatcharlie’s founder and editor during office hours were from those periods of his life that are perhaps the most intriguing in his biography. During lectures, he would always provide a riveting anecdote from his experiences during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis to accompany his “pearls of wisdom.” The student-teacher relationship between Hilsman and greatcharlie’s founder and editor was mentioned in a March 8, 2016 greatcharlie post entitled, “An Look at Stephen Marrin’s ‘Improving Intelligence Studies as an Academic Discipline’ and Remembering a Professor and Friend, Roger Hilsman.”

For student readers, this essay, divided into three segments, aims to ignite an inner-conversation of issues reviewed, in this case concerning intelligence, to promote their recognition of additional parallels, and to stimulate the development of further insights. Hopefully, by focusing on the topics discussed, students will evoke thoughts from their respective sources and lessons, but also from personal experience, and worldviews, and produce strong insights. The essay also aims to foster conscious critical reading of scholarly works by student readers. Some emphasis is placed on the sources themselves. Hopefully, reading about spies and spying makes this unsolicited bit of mentoring all the more interesting. For scholars who are regular readers of greatcharlie, the aim of the essay is to provide an edifying discussion on the function of intelligence in China relative to intelligence functions in the United Kingdom and the US. This essay also stands as a companion piece to greatcharlie’s preceding essays on Chinese intelligence services. While as a thinkpiece this essay may be limited in scope, greatcharlie surely has not touched bottom of its well of ideas on the subject of Chinese intelligence services. For greatcharlie, this “multipurpose” essay is only a part of its process of worming out the story of Chinese foreign intelligence and counterintelligence. Rapiamus, amici, occasionem de die. (Friends, let us seize the opportunity from (of) the day.)

MPS officer finger-wags a warning to photographer in Beijing (above). Except for experienced hands on China policy and the Chinese intelligence services and national security via diplomatic, intelligence, defense, military, or law enforcement work, most in the West have likely never heard of either. MPS is an organization under the State Council in charge of the country’s internal and political security and domestic intelligence. MSS, also under the State Council, is responsible for foreign intelligence, counterintelligence, and internal security as well.

I. MPS and MSS: Keystones of Chinese Intelligence

Two relatively quiet but absolutely key elements of the Chinese government that impact its foreign and national security policies: the Ministry of Public Security (MPS) and the Ministry of State Security (MSS). Except for experienced hands on Chinese foreign and national security policy and Chinese intelligence services via diplomatic, intelligence, defense, military, or law enforcement work, most in the West have likely never heard of either. MPS is an organization under the State Council in charge of the country’s internal and political security and domestic intelligence. MSS, also under the State Council, responsible for foreign intelligence, counterintelligence, and internal security as well. Their impact stems firstly through providing consumers in Beijing of analyzed information to include the Communist Party of China leadership, the Party’s key organs responsible for foreign and national security policy, government ministers, senior executives of relevant ministries and organizations of the State Council, as the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, with data that may shape their decisions. They additionally share what is collected and analyzed with the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). At times, that information is also collected and analyzed with the help of the military. The impact of the MPS and MSS is also demonstrated through contacts their officers and operatives respectively have daily with officials and staff of foreign governments as well as personnel at all levels of Chinese and foreign businesses engaged in international trade, high-tech-firms, defense contractors, financial institutions, academia, and organizations from all fields in China and worldwide.

The true foundations for MPS and MSS were laid during the revolutionary period in which the Communist Party of China sought to establish its rule. In the early 1930s, two intelligence services existed. One was centered in Shanghai and the Communist Party, the other was based in the Chinese Communist government that existed in Shaanxi where Mao Zedong established his base after the Long March. The later intelligence service proved to be the stronger of the two. By the late 1930s, it was replaced by a newly created Social Affairs Department (SAD) within the Communist Party. Within the years of struggle against Imperial Japanese forces in China, there was the Yan’an Rectification, from 1942 to 1944, in which Mao consolidated his paramount role in the Communist Party of China. Yan’an was also the part of the ten year period in which: Mao established his premier role in the Party; the Party’s Constitution, endorsing Marxist-Leninism and Mao Zedong thought as its guiding ideologies, was adopted (Mao’s formal  deviation from the Soviet line and his determination to adapt Communism to Chinese conditions); and, the postwar Civil war between the Communists and the Kuomintang. Prior to 1949, the Communust Party of China’s main intelligence institution was the Central Department of Socialism Affairs (CDSA). CDSA was placed under the control of Kang Sheng, a longtime political associate of Mao with a linkage from the past to Mao’s wife, Jiang Qing. With the Communist Party’s victory over Chang Kai-shek’s nationalist forces in 1949, a full array of government intelligence organizations were created to supplement Party-based intelligence services such as SAD. CDSA would draw information from foreign news agencies and open sources.

The Zhōnghuá Rénmín Gònghéguó Gōng’ānbù (Ministry of Public Security of the People’s Republic of China) or MPS was established as China’s principal intelligence service at the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949. It, too, was placed under the leadership of Kang Sheng. CDSA fell into the hands of Li Kenong, a Deputy Chief of Staff to People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Chief of Staff Chou Enlai and a vice minister for foreign affairs. The main role of the MPS, as with all previous Chinese intelligence services, was to serve the interests of the Communist Party of China. According to Xuezhi Guo in China’s Security State: Philosophy, Evolution, and Politics (Cambridge University Press, 2012), it took on the role of a security service in a manner based on Soviet and Eastern Bloc models. It eventually received responsibility for all aspects of security, from regular police work to intelligence, counterintelligence, and the suppression of anti-Communist political and social groups. That led to receiving  official jurisdiction over counter subversion, counterintelligence, and the conduct of espionage in Macau, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. Overseas during the 1950s, most Chinese diplomatic missions accommodated the MPS with an Investigation and Research Office for intelligence collection staffed by CDSA personnel, with analysis performed by the Eighth Bureau, publicly known in 1978 as the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations. In 1953, CDSA became the Central Investigation Department (CID). In China, the MPS presence was nearly ubiquitous, as it kept a watchful eye on China’s population. It was energetically engaged in monitoring Chinese who returned from abroad. To cope with what it determined to be errant citizens, MPS ran labor reform camps. MPS personnel were known for behaving harshly among its own citizens. 

MPS made its way through the turbulent 1960s with the Cultural Revolution and dynamic changes in politics in the 1970s with the loss of Mao and the coming of Chairman Deng Xiaoping. By 1983, there was considerable frustration within the Communist Party of China with the high volume of secret information being leaked to the West. This was particularly true with regard to information about debates occurring within the Communist Party and reports of poor economic and social conditions within China. In reaction, counterespionage responsibilities were transferred from the MPS to a new organization known as the Zhōnghuá Rénmín Gònghéguó Guójiā Ānquán Bù (Ministry for State Security of the People’s Republic of China) or the MSS. The Communist Party of China’s first big mission for MSS was to place focus on students in both China and abroad. Students had left no doubt that there was reason for the Chinese leaders to hold such concern after the Tiananmen Square protests. Chinese leaders struggled to deal with fallout from it. The sense of danger that students posed to the country was promoted with the announcement by Chinese authorities that some 200 Chinese had been accused of spying for the Soviet Union. When the reorganization of MPS was completed in 1983, it was temporarily left with only traditional police functions. Nevertheless, the change turned out to be quite positive as both organizations were allowed a new beginning so to speak.

In the West, certainly the most significant, largest, and most powerful intelligence services reside in the US. However, the foundational intelligence services that was the model upon which the main US intelligence services have been based–as well as the services of many other countries–are those of the United Kingdom, namely the Security Service, known popularly as MI5, and the Secret Intelligence Service, known popularly as MI6. To provide a common point of reference regarding the type of intelligence services and activities performed by MPS and MSS, greatcharlie, perhaps going out on shaky ground, points to parallels between their roles in China and the roles of the Security Service and Special Intelligence Service MI6 for the United Kingdom. Before going forward with discussion here, it seems appropriate to at least broach some of more apparent distinctions between the services of the two countries. Two prominent works, central to the discussion here, are Christopher Andrew, Defend the Realm (Knopf, 2009) and Stephen Dorril, MI6: Inside the Covert World of Her Majesty’s Secret Intelligence Service (Free Press, 2000). Both scholars undertook Herculean tasks respectively and managed to fulfill them marvelously and masterfully. Both texts respectively hold richly textured accounts of intelligence activities at home and around the world, the British Empire as it still was for a time in the 20th Century. Both are major contributions to the scholarship on intelligence in the United Kingdom.

A clear-cut comparison of MI5 and MI6 side-by-side with MPS and MSS is admittedly not possible. Plainly, there is no moral equivalence between MI5 and MI6 and their opposites, MPS and MSS. What the United Kingdom and Chinese intelligence services would call successful operations based on the respective goals of political authorities are quite disparate. Officers of the respective countries’ intelligence services are certainly not birds of a feather. Additionally, and importantly, MI5 and MI6 are the opponents of MPS and MSS, and visa-versa. Enlarging on the point of the political authorities they obey, the respective societies and political authorities, that the intelligence services of the United Kingdom and China serve, are considerably divergent, and founded on disparate philosophies. The United Kingdom is a parliamentary democracy under a constitutional monarchy. Despite having the structure, the veneer, of being a multiparty system at the national level, for all intents and purposes, China is a single party, Communist, police state. 

Quaeritur belli exitus, non causa. (Of war men ask the outcome, not the cause.) At a basic level with regard to intelligence services, moral principle and philosophy, in this case whether recognized as being based on Judeo-Christian values, Liberalism, Capitalism, Communism, Socialism, Maoism, or otherwise, is not method. Method is method. Philosophy is philosophy. Moreover, in the intelligence industry, results are what matter most. To that extent, at the basic level, the work of the two services are going to have sufficient likenesses to suggest parallels and comparisons. It is on such a basic level that the parallels and comparisons have been made in the discussion here. With this in mind, hopefully scholars will be open to considerations presented.

Two MPS officers operating high-tech optical equipment in Beijing (above). To provide a common point of reference regarding the type of intelligence services and activities performed by MPS and MSS, greatcharlie, perhaps going out on shaky ground, points to parallels between their roles in China and the roles of the Security Service and Special Intelligence Service MI6 for the United Kingdom. Before going forward with discussion here, it seems appropriate to at least broach some of more apparent distinctions between the services of the two countries. A clear-cut comparison of MI5 and MI6 side-by-side with MPS and MSS is admittedly not possible. at the basic level, the work of the two services are going to have enough likenesses to suggest parallels and comparisons. It is on such a basic level that the parallels and comparisons have been made in the discussion here.

Using MI5 as a Yardstick to Gauge MPS and Its Activities

The Security Service, known informally and hereinafter referred to in this essay as MI5, is the United Kingdom’s government agency assigned with managing the country’s internal security. It is authorized to investigate any person or movement that might threaten the country’s security. Although MI5 is responsible for domestic counterespionage, it has no powers of arrest. MI5’s motto is: Regnum Defende (Defend the Realm). The Secret Intelligence Service, known informally and hereinafter referred to in this essay as MI6, is the United Kingdom’s government agency responsible for the collection, analysis, and appropriate dissemination of foreign intelligence. MI5 has only a few thousand employees. It is headquartered in London, at Thames House. MI5 is a component of a vast intelligence apparatus in the United Kingdom. Reportedly, command and control is directed via no less than four entities: the Central Intelligence Machinery, the Ministerial Committee on the Intelligence Services, the Permanent Secretaries’ Committee on the Intelligence Services, and the Joint Intelligence Committee. Communications intelligence is the responsibility of the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), which works closely with the Communications Electronics Security Group, while a number of agencies manage military intelligence under the aegis of the Ministry of Defense. Even London’s Metropolitan Police, or Scotland Yard, has its own Special Branch concerned with intelligence.

While MI5 is the agency responsible for the internal security of the United Kingdom, it primarily provides security services and intelligence operations within England and Wales. Its current role was best expressed by the Crown Minister in 1945, with regard to its postwar raison d’être: “The purpose of the Security Service is defense of the Realm and nothing else.” MI5 reports to the Home Secretary of the Home Office. It may be confused as being a domestic law enforcement organization, but it is far from that. To perform the internal security function, MI5’s activities include: domestic counterintelligence; counterespionage; counterterrorism, counterproliferation, and cyber work within the country and protective details for many top government officials. Its officers do not have authority to arrest citizens. When needed, MI5 will work in close cooperation with London’s Metropolitan Police Service (headquartered at New Scotland Yard) and other local police agencies within England and Wales. This is especially when it concerns their efforts to fight domestic terrorism. MI5 may also interface with MI6 when foreign intelligence and domestic intelligence activities intersect.

It cannot be overemphasized that MI5 is a secretive organization. Well back in 1931, the firm instruction to a new employee was: “No one, not even our own families, should be told where we worked or for whom.”  The existence of MI5 was not acknowledged officially until 1979, when Mrs Thatcher unmasked Sir Anthony Blunt as the Fourth Man in a statement to the House of Commons. Its head was publicly named for the first time in 1991. It was also at that time when some previously classified information about MI5, such as the number of its employees and its organizational structure, was made public. During the past three decades, MI5 worked its way through a number of scandals–to include incessant hunts for apparently nonexistent moles–that further tarnished its reputation in many circles. Reflective of British culture, members of the intelligence services, from top to bottom, were unwilling to display any disappointment or hurt and never looked to cry on anyone’s shoulder. They remained reticent about attitudes toward them and placid, straightforward, as they performed their work. Somewhere along the line, a solution was found. The decision was made to release their stories, not to drain themselves out, but let little bit find its ways into the public marketplace to unmask appearances public relations-wise. Through the use of surrogate voices, a sudden fracture in the marble reveals the interior. The inner life. Studies were commissioned to tell their stories, to the extent possible.

Most relevant in Andrew’s Defend the Realm to the examination of MI5 in this essay, are anecdotes loaded with insights on events that were in their time of the utmost importance. Those cases chronicalized, carefully selected from MI5’s storied past, and detailed the complex nature of MI5’s modern day work is revealed. Additionally, from Andrew’s work, one receives a picture of MI5 as a tightly-knit institution, in which many officers keep body and soul together, and others actually thrive, in its atmosphere of secrecy. Based on what has been made public, in an investigation of a threat to the United Kingdom, MI5 officers will usually seek to gather covert intelligence directly. Often, they operate openly and declare themselves as representatives of foreign intelligence services to their host country. The methods used by MI5 officers vary widely, and are often limited only by their ingenuity. Armed with a suite of the latest high-tech tools for surveillance, they will use it to eavesdrop, tap telephone calls and communicate secretly. Normally, MI5 officers will recruit spies to obtain intelligence on their behalf. 

More formally, a spy working for MI5 is known as a “covert human intelligence source,” but in the United Kingdom, spies are more commonly referred to as agents (Interestingly, in the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), a covert human intelligence source is called an “informant” rather than an “agent.” Such agents have been consistently referred to as operatives by greatcharlie.) MI5 agents will do far more than just inform about people and events. Agents secretly provide private information to which few or no others might have access, as well as classified information to an officer. An agent will probably not be a professional “spy” but an MI5 intelligence officer will usually provide them with some basic instruction in tradecraft, espionage methods. The human relationship between intelligence officers and their agents remains a key element of espionage.

MI5’s earliest precursor was a secret service formed in 1569 by Sir Francis Walsingham, who later became secretary of state to Elizabeth I. What came to be called MI5 was formed in 1909 under the leadership of Vernon Kell, then a captain in the British army, to identify and counteract German spies then working in the United Kingdom. It performed that task with great effect. MI5 originally stood for “Military Intelligence [Department] 5.” (In fact, there were a number of departments within the Directorate of Military Intelligence–MI1 through MI19–which dealt with a range of issues. MI1, for instance, was responsible for code-breaking, and MI2 handled Russian and Scandinavian intelligence. The responsibilities of these departments were either discontinued or absorbed into The War Office, MI5 and MI6 and, later, the Government Communications Headquarters.) After World War I, MI5 remained in place as part of the United Kingdom’s effort to centralize control of intelligence functions. In 1931, MI5 was renamed the Security Service, but was still commonly known as MI5 then as it is today. About the time it was renamed, MI5 was paired with MI6, under the Defence Ministry and functioned with a “combined staff” of only two men. Kell, MI5 founder, remained in charge of the agency until 1940. During World War II, with far more staff, MI5 enjoyed a considerable number of successes. One was the Double-Cross System, which fed disinformation to Nazi Germany. For the most part, however, it is recognizably difficult to measure MI5’s success, since it can only be judged by things which do not happen, such as the prevention of sabotage. 

There was initial period of confusion at the start of World War II as a MI5 was inundated with work and had too few staff at all levels to handle it. Missteps led to “life-saving” reforms with the coming of Sir David Petrie in April 1941. MI5 is better known in the war as having achieved great success in uncovering Nazi agents in the United Kingdom. Captured Nazi records studied after 1945 indicated almost all of the Nazi agents working against the United Kingdom were captured. The exception was ine the committed suicide. MI5 managed to recruit a number of the enemy agents to become counterespionage agents for the service and fed false information to the enemy concerning military strategy during the war. MI5 executed the famous “Double Cross” system which was a deception that supported the success of the D-Day Invasion at Normandy in 1944. A proud episode for MI5 was its defense of Gibraltar from enemy agents and saboteurs throughout the war.

MI5 engaged in a hard fought struggle with Soviet, Eastern Bloc and Chinese espionage efforts in the United Kingdom. The situation was made more difficult was the rise in IRA terrorism during the Troubles. One MI5 renowned victories was its uncovering of Soviet Union’s most valuable agents was exposed. However, MI5’s record during the Cold War, actually was mixed. There were a number of widely publicized blunders during that period. The Soviet Union was found to have deeply penetrated MI5, as well as MI6 which reportedly undermined the public’s confidence in the organization.

Low morale reportedly plagued MI5 after the end of the Cold War and the Good Friday agreement of 1998, which led to massive cutbacks. The agency’s focus would eventually shift after the Cold War from counter-espionage and counter-subversion to counterterrorism. That shift was given greater emphasis following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in the US, and counterterrorism became a role of the utmost importance following the July 7, 2005 and July 11, 2005 terrorist bombings in the United Kingdom. MI5’s ranks were filled out rapidly, and within it was a renewed sense of purpose. Today, counterterrorism operations still account for much of MI5’s activities. 

Not all of the anecdotes that Andrew offers spotlight the valor of its officers. There are some of the rather lurid intrigues. They include a cast of cheats, schemers, supplanters, unsavory allegiances, and unimaginable acquaintances. One dare not imagine the sensibilities of the errant individuals behind them. In the discussion of the work done within the analytical shops of MI5, the finer shades of analysis and deduction are spotlighted. Information was looked upon pathologically as the source of motives, clues, indications, and implications. With that analyzed information, MI5 leaders would speak truth other power, whatever it came upon, no matter how offensive, it was told straight.

Zhao Kezhi, State Councilor of the People’s Republic of China and the Minister and Party Committee Secretary of the Ministry of Public Security, with the top police officer rank of Police Commissioner General (above). MPS senior executives are influential members of the Communist Party of China senior ranks, What often compels the Communist Party of China to select requirements and direction for Chinese Intelligence is not necessarily based on Maoist thought as much as political expedience, necessity, and personal interests. As a consequence, finding the truth is not always the main goal of MPS in its intelligence, counterintelligence, or law enforcement pursuits. That is the type of relation that Chinese intelligence services have with the Communist Party from their very beginning.

Intelligence Work of MPS

If one placed the history of Chinese intelligence alongside that of the United Kingdom, one would find that the craft of intelligence was studied in China long before the idea of formally organizing intelligence activity was manifested in 16th century England. The most illustrious expressions of intelligence concepts and methods in China was in Chapter 13 of The Art of War, a treatise dating from the 5th century by the Chinese military strategist Sun Tzu. Chapter 13 focused on the importance of developing good information sources, and identified five specific types of intelligence sources along with ways to best manage each. However, the lineage of modern Chinese intelligence services,  as noted earlier, have more recent beginnings in the era of Mao. Similarities between MPS and MI5 exist insomuch that it is the Chinese intelligence service charged with internal security and domestic counterintelligence activities of China. It investigates and acts against any person or movement that might threaten China’s security, but unlike MI5, its officers have the power to arrest. In addition to its performing those standard domestic functions as an intelligence service, MPS is very much tied to the Communist Party of China to maintain control of the population and maintain the Communist order. To that extent, it has remained obedient to the ever shifting requests and requirements the Party issues to it. To be more specific concerning the responsibilities of MPS, they include: preventing, stopping and investigating criminal activities; fighting against terrorist activities; maintaining stability and order; administering to transport, fire fighting and dangerous objects; administering to household registration, identification cards, nationality as well as entry, status and exit of Chinese and foreign nationals; maintaining border security; protecting persons, venues and facilities as designated by the state; managing gatherings, parades and demonstrations; supervising public information networks; supervising security concerning state organizations, social organizations, enterprises, institutions, and large construction sites; and, guiding community security commissions.

The Communist Party of China has hardly proven to be pristine in practicing what it preaches. What often compels the Communist Party of China to select requirements and direction for Chinese Intelligence is not necessarily based on Maoist thought as much as political expedience, necessity, and personal interests. As a consequence, finding the truth is not always the main goal of MPS in its intelligence, counterintelligence, or law enforcement pursuits. Normally, finding the truth is sine qua non among intelligence and counterintelligence services, and law enforcement. To fail to find the truth, well-aware that one holds a paucity of facts, information and data, is to fail oneself. Naturally, being aware of the existence of information that contradicts one’s initial hypothesis and doing nothing to dig deeper is counterintuitive.  Having stated that, in the intelligence industry, the slightest deviation from the course ordered on an investigation to satisfy the requirements of the powers that be throw the rules out of the window. However, when tasked directly by the Communist Party of China, the truth lies in what the Party says the truth is. If MPS officers were to present findings from an investigation that held information contradicting the truth as declared by the Communist Party of China, they would unlikely garner understanding from their respective national provincial, or municipal senior executives and managers. In the best case scenario, the ironic admonition might come from on high to stick with the primary problem instead of rooting around at “extraneous matters.” That is the type of relationship that Chinese intelligence services have had with the Communist Party from their very beginning. They are charged with the responsibility for ensuring the tranquility of order. From outside of China, one can freely call the well-experienced intelligence officers who fill the ranks of MPS as tragedians, specializing in a very tragic role for their country.

Manifestations of Political Pushes from Behind in MI5’s Past

In examining MPS, it cannot be stressed enough that it is a political creature of the Communist Party of China. MI5’s circumstances are not remotely similar. MI5 is not an organization designed intrinsically to service the political interests of political authorities. However, there have been occasions when political authorities have misused the vital security arm by using pressure to influence its actions, for purposes that were questionable. Shockingly, the MI5 carried out secret surveillance of the colonial delegations which came to London to discuss terms for independence in the 1950s and 1960s. Andrew gives a disturbing account of the stealthy gathering of intelligence on the delegates attending conferences which negotiated the independence of Cyprus and Kenya. The Home Secretary, Rab Butler, cynically condoned these operations on the grounds that “obviously the product was of great importance and of great value to the government negotiators”.

In most of the British Empire, claims Andrew, MI5 contributed to a smooth transfer of power through the work of its liaison officers. However in Guyana, where United Kingdom Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill wanted to “break the Communist teeth,” a shameful exception was witnessed. MI5 obediently provided support for the United Kingdom and US covert action to oust the democratically-elected Cheddi Jagan from power. Andrew claims that the dominant intelligence agency in the years leading up to Guyana’s independence in 1966 was the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). However,  MI5, and thereby the government of the United Kingdom, nevertheless had a hand in the affair. 

In the present day, such outcomes are certainly not intended in MI5, an organization tasked and trusted to protect and serve the United Kingdom. To ensure that remains so, the Ministerial Committee on the Intelligence Services exercises regular ongoing oversight of intelligence activities. Through this committee, the Prime Minister, with the assistance of the Secretary of the Cabinet, exercises authority over the daily operations of the British intelligence and security communities as a whole. The Home Secretary oversees MI5, as well as the National Criminal Intelligence Service and Scotland Yard. To the extent that there is always the need for such a degree of oversight from above, one must never overlook the shadowy side of the business. It is at the core of intelligence work. There is a reality that by doing the dirty work, the people of the United Kingdom are allowed to sleep peacefully at night. When the situation is dire and urgent enough, use has been made of agent provocateurs who may take direct action to maintain their bona fides within their groups for the organization’s purposes.

Today, officers join and serve MI5 with the belief that its work has much to do with the wider good. As the targets of MI5 efforts are the terrorists or the war criminals or the nuclear proliferators. There is an understanding how the need to approach a matter of the utmost importance with the most effective method available can subordinate all else. Whether or not exigent circumstances permit, there at least exists the earnest aim among them to defend the values of the United Kingdom’s liberal democracy. Unlike its counterpart in the Chinese intelligence services, MPS, causing harm to the free people of their own country, who are living within the law, is never the intended purpose of MI5. Indeed, while also ostensibly tasked and trusted to protect and serve the people of their country. MPS keeps a boot not only to the neck of criminals and true threats within China, but of groups of innocent citizens labeled as undesirable by the Communist Party of China, and doing that appalling work at the Party’s behest, to be frank, could be ascribed as an essential part of their raison d’etre.

Other Ugly Truths

As long as humans are involved in an organization and its plans and activities, rarely will outcomes be perfect. It could be expected to be imperfect shaped by mistakes, misjudgments, biases, and emotions. To that extent, there is no purpose here to establish MI5 as a paragon of moral behavior. In its history, mistakes were made. Pointing to them means admitting to the truth. (Interestingly, the historical record indicates the nearly contemporary national intelligence service has suffered from its share of mistakes.) What can be greatly appreciated in Defend the Realm is that Andrew tells the MI5 story straight. The ugly truth as told, creates some disappointment, yet from it, lessons were certainly made available that would allow for the organization’s improvement. According to Andrew, recruitment within MI5 was perhaps the most outward expression of inward thinking in the organization. It was surely not acceptable by today’s standards intellectually, morally, ethically, and professionally. Indeed, within the organization itself, MI5, a public service, did not advertise openly for recruits before 1997. Up to that point, recruitment was based on personal recommendation. This was a narrow social group, many of whom had served in India or elsewhere in the Empire. To that extent, the organization was sure to recruit “from good Anglo-Saxon stock.” Reportedly, male officers listed their recreations as cricket and hunting, while female officers were graduates of elite schools and universities

Right up to the mid-1970s, the post-war Security Service refused to recruit Jews on the grounds that a dual loyalty to both Israel and the United Kingdom might create a conflict of interest. This was “inexcusable,” Andrew rightly observes. There was also a very disturbing attitude taken toward Blacks interested in joining the Security Service. In 1949, then Deputy Director General Guy Liddell told the Joint Intelligence Committee: “It was true that niggers coming here often went to the C[ommunist] P[arty].” That fact that he held such appalling racist views were reinforced when he explained there was no doubt in his mind that “West African natives are wholly unfitted for self-rule.” There was a sour spirit to it all. Yet, that was the spirit of the moment. A sort of “pigs in clover” self-satisfaction influenced and distorted thinking in the world of that past era.

While MI5 was busy keeping some citizens out of its intelligence service, its rank and file was surprised to discover who they had let in. In 1951, as the result of the decrypted telegram of the Soviet Union’s Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti (the Committee for State Security) or KGB, that any of the Cambridge Five–then current or former all MI5 or MI6 employees, who were recruited as spies by the Soviets in the 1930s when they were young misguided Communists at Cambridge University–were identified. The bombshell revelation sent shock waves through the halls of MI5. In response, MI5 initiated an investigation that lasted 30 years in order to get to the bottom of the matter.

Among other unfortunate episodes for MI5 was the “Wilson plot” of the 1970s in which United Kingdom Prime Minister Harold Wilson was accused of being a Soviet agent–the information came from the CIA’s Counterintelligence Division, James Jesus Angleton based on claims of questionable source. MI5 investigated the claims and found them to be false. There was also the “Death on the Rock” case in 1988 in which MI5 with Spanish authorities were alarmed about three members of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) Belfast Brigade who travelled to Spain. It was presumed that they planned an attack against British troops in Gibraltar. MI5 intended to capture the IRA members with the assistance of the British Army’s Special Air Service Regiment cooperation of Spanish Authorities, but all three were killed in the process.

Zhao Kezhi, State Councilor of the People’s Republic of China and the Minister and Party Committee Secretary of the Ministry of Public Security, with the top police officer rank of Police Commissioner General (above). MPS senior executives are influential members of the Communist Party of China senior ranks, What often compels the Communist Party of China to select requirements and direction for Chinese Intelligence is not necessarily based on Maoist thought as much as political expedience, necessity, and personal interests. As a consequence, finding the truth is not always the main goal of MPS in its intelligence, counterintelligence, or law enforcement pursuits. That is the type of relation that Chinese intelligence services have with the Communist Party from their very beginning.

The Communist Party of China’s Political Manipulation of the MPS Today

It would appear that the leadership of the Communist Party of China is usually distressed exceedingly when even the mere suggestion is made that some underlying evil is present in the decisions and actions of the Chinese government towards its own people. There is the insistence by the Communist Party of China that it acts only in their best interests and the thinking behind each choice is gifted by what their Western counterparts would call scruple. Thus, when any reports, photos, or videos of the actual treatment of ethnic and religious minorities in China are secreted out of the country and headlined in the West or anywhere else in the world, it is nothing less than an absolute disaster. The belief among Communist Party of China’s leadership and members that China’s Communust society is near perfect and would be best for the world is a belief in a false reality. The prospect of any citizen or any foreigner, unmasking the appearance created by Beijing of China being an advanced industrialized society and superior culture truly seems to terrify the Communist Party of China. Burned rotten by somewhat regular investigative reports and exposé documentaries, written and produced in the West, they, without fail, will attempt to cover their traces rather than spill it out. Government and Party spokespeople will roar about China’s innocence and the false and bizarre nature of what is reported. Trying to figuratively get the toothpaste back into the tube has never worked though. Focusing on what it can control, the Communist Party of China engages continuously in an effort to grease the wheels of citizens thinking to ensure that it always slides in its favor and toward appreciation of the Communist Revolution. To stanch the thickening of misgivings among the Chinese people toward its actions, ever present are warnings to citizens to guard themselves against foreign agents, look upon foreigners with some suspicion, and be cognizant of the possibility of unwittingly giving cause for foreign agents to trace them and spot them as potential recruits as spies and informants through seemingly innocuous contact.

The Communist Party of China has long acknowledged that there is always a threat that could arise from the “unsuccessful” education of Chinese citizens. A symptom of that would be the attraction to materialistic symbols of success for the former bourgeoisie class apparatus of success: business success, homes, cars, things constructed around people. It was what identified them as being above the proletariat, the working class. In China, given its relative prosperity, there exists the fear among leaders of the Communist Party and government bureaucracies that the bourgeoisie existence of the West would insinuate itself in the thinking of Chinese citizens and become a preference in their minds. Any aspiration created for what the West has to offer not under controlled circumstances could figuratively spread among the people much as a virus, infecting the proletariat, potentially creating some mass disaffection toward the system. Perhaps such sensibilities reveal a secret doubt that Chinese citizens could see that so-called ideals of Maoist Thought and Marxist-Leninism had been betrayed or perhaps were simply Utopian, and that they would desire great changes. Communist Party of China leaders determined long ago that the response to this threat needed to be strong enough to match “the severity of the disease.” 

As part of its efforts at population control, the Chinese government insists that the people keep a watchful eye over threats to the new system. It was understood that the reactionary, the counterrevolutionary, most often “hiding in the shadows,” posed the greatest threat and was viewed as anathema. It was in the performance of the mission to discourage, punish and obliterate that threat that the MPS earned a reputation for being the horrifically oppressive cats paw of the authoritarian regime. The MPS has interfered in interactions and relationships between citizens, ordered citizens to spy on their fellow citizens, demanded that they betray one another, regularly performed intrusive and demeaning searches of citizens’ person, homes, and workplaces. There have been arrests of many innocent citizens, accompanied by abusive and endless interrogations. The shadow of sudden death hangs over the head of any individual in MPS custody.

As of late, what should be of greatest concern is the approach the MPS has been taking toward foreign visitors. (The matter is elaborated upon later in this essay.) As a practice, foreigners, especially, Westerners, are closely observed and often investigated by provincial offices and local MPS stations. Under such circumstances, there is always a real possibility that one might be arrested or “briefly” detained for questioning, would be created. Foreign visitors who have faced such treatment have almost immediately become the center of a frightful international incidents, which is actually the goal of Chinese authorities. Regardless of one’s status in the US, it can happen in China. Reportedly, the attempt has been made with some foreigners to persuade with the pressure of interviews, interrogation, and detainment or use certain manipulations to convince them to let themselves go and reveal “the truth.” Telling the truth would mean copping to preconceived ideas held by their interrogators about their alleged wicked missions against the People’s Republic of China. The treatment of Chinese citizens detained by the MPS for even lesser “offenses,” is always decidedly worse.

The Beijing Municipal Public Safety Bureau Office Building (above) MPS counterintelligence officers will regularly collect and closely review reports on a foreigner’s behavior via informants among neighbors in the vicinity of their residence and locals among colleagues at work. They would be interested in knowing if they have engaged in behaviors that would make them open to recruitment. Their attitudes toward China and its system would be important. The friendships they have made would be of interest. Assessments of what type of temptations could be used to bring them to China’s side will be based on observations of the foreigner’s lifestyle. MPS officers have no qualms about exploiting individual weaknesses.

Multi cives aut ea pericula quae imminent non vident aut ea quae vident neglegunt. (Many citizens either do not see those dangers which are threatening or they ignore those that they see.) Spin concerning the maltreatment of ethnic and religious groups is propagated through narratives in the state-run news media of how much the Communist Party of China is doing to protect China from enemies, domestic and foreign, at the hands of which the Chinese people have suffered for so long. Nevertheless, a good number of Chinese people are aware that one cannot know with certainty what is real from what one hears from the government. However, holding a secret doubt about the system in China can lead to a solitary despair. The secret doubt becomes dissatisfaction with one’s work and one’s situation which can become a full-blown loathing of the system. Soon after may come the rejection of authorities. In response to conditions forced upon them, being subjected to humiliations, Chinese citizens of some ethnic and religious minorities have acted in protest, releasing a sense of frustration. Becoming vocal may relieve his sense of frustration for the moment will only open the door to far greater problems. To Chinese government authorities, it represents nothing less than a social dissembling within those groups.

Loyal Communist Party members can hardly understand that any other citizen’s disillusionment or disappointment in government efforts to respond to their needs could be based in logic. Thereby, the attitudes of those citizens are irrational and reactionary. Surely, those approached by MPS display intense emotions, very likely overwhelmed by great fear and sheer terror, given an expectation the worst will befall them given the organization’s reputation, would avail themselves to be apprehended and held indefinitely as their situation would immediately be converted into a psychiatric issue. After all, any charge will do. The goal is to cull the so-called threatening population by plausibly arresting benign citizens and warehousing them away from their homes. One can only imagine that it would mean for those declared to have psychiatric issues to be placed in the hands of medical professionals linked to the MPS. MPS officers are apparently not timid to draw very false, aberrant, far-fetched inferences from fact collected during investigations. Of course, no professional ethics, no moral principles founded upon religion, and no less spiritually based philosophy of humanism could not obstruct such actions. Ethnic and religious minorities must feel akin to big chickens in a world of foxes.

A principle is a precise standard, a course of conduct you are committed to, a way of life that you live by. Adherence to principles, has little meaning to the Communist Party of China unless the principles adhered to are those of the Party. Publicly available sources show that Beijing considers Falungong, Tibetans, Uyghur Muslims, democracy activists and pro-independence Taiwanese undesirables as they adhere to principles and a way of life adverse to that insisted upon by the Communist Party of China. They have been named the “five poisons” that constitute the greatest threat to Beijing’s rule. Tibetans, Uyghur Muslims, in particular, are essentially looked upon as vindictive ill-balanced creatures of China’s hinterland.

As noted here MI5 unfortunately has a record of past mistakes and poor judgment, too, and fortunately from that history, lessons have certainly been learned. Yet still, making mistakes and misjudgments is a far cry different from being deliberately bad, acting the name of injustice and engaging in cruelty, based on a contrived motive and without any reasonable provocation. MPS currently engages in activities which, not to apportion wickedness, manifest just how different the two intelligence services really are. MPS, as an organization, espouses great anger about ethnic and religious minorities, dubbing them activists, reactionaries, counterrevolutionaries, and terrorists, and for the sake of the Communist Party of China and the Communist Revolution, has done what it does best, acted aggressively toward such “threats.” If one is of a ethnic group or religious groups at variance with the Communist Party of China, and consequently under the thumb of the MPS, one will have the sense of being in contact with an evil of an exceptional nature. In recent years, egregious abuses have increased through government policies under the pretext and justification of fighting the “three evils” of “ethnic separatism, religious extremism, and violent terrorism.” 

Tibet is an autonomous region in the People’s Republic of China. The region has historically been the home to ethnic Tibetans, among others ethnic groups. It is the spiritual home of Tibetan Buddhism and the traditional seat of the Dalai Lama. China  has long considered Tibet to be part of its historical empire. In 1951, China occupied Tibet and took control of the region. Many Tibetans believe the region was illegally incorporated into China and have pressed for independence. A Tibetan independence movement has been calling for the independence of Tibet and political separation from China. That independence movement is largely supported by the diaspora of ethnic Tibetans worldwide. During periods of repression and martial law in the region, it is believed that the Chinese government has killed thousands of Tibetans. The Chinese government has referred to Tibetans as one of “the five poisons” threatening China’s stability. Omnis enim ex infirmitate feritas est. (All savageness is a sign of weakness.)

Tibetans detained by MPS officers facing judgment in court (above). China has long considered Tibet to be part of its historical empire. In 1951, China occupied Tibet and took control of the region. Many Tibetans believe the region was illegally incorporated into China and have pressed for independence. A Tibetan independence movement has been calling for the independence of Tibet and political separation from China. That independence movement is largely supported by the diaspora of ethnic Tibetans worldwide. During periods of repression and martial law in the region, it is believed that the Chinese government has killed thousands of Tibetans. The Chinese government has referred to Tibetans as one of “the five poisons” threatening China’s stability

Regarding the Uyghurs, the Chinese Communist Party is waging a targeted campaign against Uyghur women, men, and children, and members of other Turkic Muslim minority groups in Xinjiang, China. Abuses have included coercive population control through forced abortion, forced sterilization, and involuntary implantation of birth control; the detention of more than one million Uyghurs, ethnic Kazakhs, ethnic Kyrgyz, and members of other Muslim minority groups in internment camps; forced labor in facilities nearby or affiliated with the internment camps; the destruction and closure of mosques and other religious sites, prevention of youths from participating in religious activities, forced political indoctrination or “re-education.” A commonality among the homelands of the different ethnic and religious groups in China is the fact that they are depressed regions with unemployment, poor infrastructure and many structures tumbled down. Interdum volgus rectum videt, est ubi peccat. (At times the world sees straight, but many times the world goes astray.)

Regarding religious minorities, during the first thirty years of its existence, the Communist Party of China committed itself to making atheist Marxism the fundamental ideology of the country. depriving the Chinese people of their constitutional right of religious liberty. There is a clarity and certainty that comes from being able to know another’s origins. One place to look to identify, research, is to study a the  of culture, history, customs, that may shape the subject’s attitudes and behaviors, worldview. Adherence to religion, culture and identity as well, stiffens resistance to authoritarian pressures and coercion, and girds uncommon perseverance. To that extent, the Communist Party of China surely fears citizens’ adherence to their religions and cultures, and the rejection of Communism. In response to that threat, Beijing has formulated and implemented new policies, regulations, and legislation impacting religious freedom have been created and implemented, particularly since 1979. The idea of it all being to surgically strip citizens of their ethnicity, culture, and religion, thereby smother the individual’s identity, leaving the individual with nothing to grab onto, except Mao’s teachings on Chinese Communism. In the report of the US Congressional Executive Commission on China (CECC), 2017 Annual Report 127 (October 5, 2017), it is noted that Chinese authorities commonly prosecute Falun Gong practitioners under article 300 of the People’s Republic of China Criminal Law. That information was found on the official Chinese government “anti-cult website.” In February 2018, a woman in Beijing was convicted of “using cult organizations to obstruct the enforcement of laws” under article 300 of the Criminal Law. The woman was sentenced to one and half years in prison and a fine for publicly advocating “the evil cult Falun Gong.” Falungong, essentially an anti-Communist China spiritual group, was banned by Beijing in 1999, having been labeled an “evil cult.”  In 2014, a leader of the Church of Almighty God, a quasi-Christian group also known as Eastern Lightning, was also convicted of “using cult organizations to obstruct the enforcement of laws” and sentenced to four years in prison. That church is now officially banned.

Reportedly, MPS has detained or otherwise restricted the freedom of Catholic leaders in both the underground and official churches. The government has reportedly pushed for Chinese Catholic bishops to be selected through the patriotic religious organizations and then ordained by Chinese bishops without the involvement of the Holy See. Chinese officials have also reportedly subjected Protestant Christian beliefs and practices to a wide range of restrictions. Beijing reportedly pressured unregistered house churches to join the officially recognized religious organization, the Three-Self Patriotic Movement. Protestant house churches faced raids during church gatherings, eviction from meeting spaces, and official bans on worship. Martin Luther King, Jr. said that “The moral arc of the universe bends toward justice.” While that may be true, it surely has not bent so much in China’s direction yet. Iniqua nunquam regna perpetuo manent. (Unjust rule never abides continually.)

Uyghur citizens seated in formation in a detention center (above). Regarding the Uyghurs, the Chinese Communist Party is waging a targeted campaign against Uyghur women, men, and children, and members of other Turkic Muslim minority groups in Xinjiang, China. Abuses have included coercive population control through forced abortion, forced sterilization, and involuntary implantation of birth control; the detention of more than one million Uyghurs, ethnic Kazakhs, ethnic Kyrgyz, and members of other Muslim minority groups in internment camps; forced labor in facilities nearby or affiliated with the internment camps; the destruction and closure of mosques and other religious sites, prevention of youths from participating in religious activities, forced political indoctrination or “re-education.”

II. The Role of the MSS in China’s National Security Bureaucracy

As aforementioned, Chinese intelligence services, in terms of task and purpose, work within an authoritarian government and must be viewed as a different kettle of fish than the services of the United Kingdom. Having created the space and acquiring the flexibility over the past few decades to allow the service to evolve into the elite, very capable intelligence service the Communist Party of China originally wanted it to be, MSS senior executives and managers have now figuratively declared “game on” to China’s competitors and adversaries. The mission, as originally intended, has not changed much since 1983. Overall, it is now defined as collecting solid intelligence from the inner workings and the very top of foreign military, diplomatic, political, economic, financial, scientific, educational, media, communications, and social institutions. By conventional wisdom, one might proffer those are its priorities. It is surely what Beijing wants now and it is what MSS is chasing after. Its tactics, techniques, procedures and methods are surely more refined than ever before. As previously mentioned, Western intelligence services until recently have habitually underrated the abilities of Chinese intelligence services. That was a mistake. Central to greatcharlie’s understanding of China’s intelligence services and their activities are the writings of Peter Mattis. Since leaving the CIA where he was a highly-regarded analyst on China, Mattis has published a number of superlative essays on Chinese intelligence and counterintelligence. Mattis’ writings evince an appreciation of the depth of thought, organization, and planning Chinese intelligence services have put into building up their organizations and conducting operations in all areas. To that extent, he proffers that the West as of late has been facing very modern, competitive Chinese intelligence services that make use of tactics, techniques, procedures, and methods at a level equal and in some cases far more competitive than those of Western intelligence services. As he explained in a September 2012 article in Studies in Intelligence entitled, “The Analytical Challenge of Understanding Chinese Intelligence Services,” Chinese writings on intelligence bear remarkable similarity to familiar US definitions of intelligence functions and goals. He reminds that Sun Tzu taught that “foreknowledge” (xianzhi) allowed commanders to outmaneuver opponents. However, he notes more modern definitions range from “activating [catalytic] knowledge” (jihuo zhi-shi) to information to protect national security, domestic stability, or corporate interests in a competitive environment. Mattis goes on to state that Chinese military scholars today frame intelligence as a distinct subset of knowledge, defined by its relevance to decision makers and a competitive environment. Specifically, intelligence is transmittable (chuandi xing) and is knowledge that satisfactorily (manzu xing) resolves a specific decisionmaking problem. He further asserts that empirically, Chinese intelligence officers consistently have demonstrated the use of widely practiced professional tradecraft, having successfully exploited for political and military intelligence purposes agents with vulnerabilities familiar to anyone who follows the subject.

The Minister of State Security, Chen Wenqing (above). Chinese intelligence services target a broad range of national security actors, including military forces, defense industrial companies, national security decision makers, and critical infrastructure entities of the United Kingdom, the US, and other advanced industrialized countries. Lately, the chief feature of the intelligence war between those countries and China has been the economic front. Indeed, economic espionage, one might venture to say, holds perhaps a prominent place among the bread and butter activities of the MSS and is best known to industries around the world most of which could easily become one of its corporate victims.

Using MI6 as a Yardstick to Gauge the MSS and Its Activities

Everyone on the outside has their own version of what MI6 is and does. Looking at MI6 as a yardstick to understand the MSS, the two organizations pair up to the degree that both are foreign intelligence services. The United Kingdom’s MI6, formally the Secret Intelligence Service as mentioned previously, is the government agency responsible for the collection, analysis, and appropriate dissemination of foreign intelligence. It is also charged specifically with the conduct of espionage activities outside of the United Kingdom’s territory. The MI6 motto is Semper Occultus (Always Secret), but the organization states as its mission: “We work overseas to help make the UK a safer and more prosperous place.” Much as MI5, MI6 has only a few thousand employees. It is headquartered in London, at Vauxhall Cross. It is a component of the same intelligence apparatus in the United Kingdom as MI5. 

MI6’s four main areas of focus are: countering international terrorism, combating weapons proliferation, supporting stability overseas and securing the United Kingdom’s cyber advantage. Countering international terrorism means exactly that, protecting the United Kingdom from terrorists. Performing that task entails: gathering and assessing intelligence; conducting investigations and disrupting terrorist activity; preventing people from becoming terrorists; and, protecting critical national infrastructure and crowded places. Through gathering intelligence and disrupting operations, MI6 plays an indispensable role in the United Kingdom’s counter weapons proliferation efforts directed at combatting the international proliferation of chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear weapons. Working in cooperation with key national and international partners as the US, MI6 also helps to ensure that the United Kingdom’s weapons exports never fall into the hands of terrorists. Instability and conflict overseas leads to weak governments and poor national security, and nurtures a fertile environment in which terrorists and organized crime groups can thrive. Using agents, the MI6 provides intelligence to government policymakers and decisionmakers and provides early warning indications of potentially hostile threats. Most often that information can lead to early political intervention to prevent prolonged instability. Cyber threats are a key security risk to the United Kingdom, as they have the potential to disastrously impact individuals, organizations and governments. Global and ever becoming increasingly complex, cybercrime has the unusual characteristic of having the potential to rear its ugly head and reach out from anywhere in the world. The MI6 provides secret intelligence to help protect the UK from current and emerging cyber threats across a range of adversaries such as hostile countries, terrorists and criminals. Additionally, MI6 conducts counterintelligence operations via a furtive counterintelligence section, but it is generally understood that the organization shares that work with MI5.

In order to meet the challenges of their work, MI6 officers are highly trained in the tactics, techniques, procedures, and methods of their profession. Within intelligence services, as noted earlier, it is referred to as tradecraft. High on the list skills learned and honed are espionage techniques and the use of agents. Often MI6 officers may operate openly in their host country, declaring themselves as representatives of the United Kingdom’s foreign intelligence services. Otherwise they will work covertly under the cover of other official positions such as diplomatic staff or trade delegates. Some MI6 officers may operate under non-official cover to conceal the fact that they work for an intelligence service. That usually entails posing as a business person, student or journalist for example. In some cases MI6 officers will operate under “deep cover,” meaning they will use false names and nationalities. In the intelligence industry, such officers operating under such cover are referred to as “illegals.” They operate without any of the protections offered by diplomatic immunity. MI6 officers typically seek to establish networks of agents whom they can use over a sustained period of time, so that they can obtain a reliable flow of information. As it was stated in the aforementioned discussion on MI5 agents, MI6 agents operate by exploiting trusted relationships and positions to obtain sensitive information. They may also look for vulnerabilities among those handling secrets. They may be aware of flaws in their organization’s security that they can exploit. Recruiting agents, both foreign and domestic, who can provide intelligence on terrorist plans and organizations is of the utmost importance to MI6 officers.

MI6 was constituted in its present form in 1912 by Commander (later Sir) Mansfield Cumming as part of the United Kingdom’s attempt to coordinate intelligence activities prior to the outbreak of World War I. In the 1930s and ’40s it was considered the most effective intelligence service in the world. Following the rise to power of Adolf Hitler in Germany, MI6 conducted espionage operations in Europe, Latin America, and much of Asia. When the US entered World War II, MI6 helped to train personnel of the US Office of Strategic Services (OSS). As mentioned, it was the organization in which Hilsman served. Much of OSS’ foreign intelligence and counterintelligence tradecraft was adopted from MI6. Indeed, the CIA still uses much of it today. Reportedly, many “old boys,” veterans of the OSS are fond  of saying, “The Brits taught us everything that we know, but certainly not everything that they know.” The two organizations worked closely during the war. MI6 has since cooperated extensively with the OSS’s successor, the CIA. MI6 senior executives, managers, and officers refer to the US intelligence organization the “American cousins.” Details of MI6 operations and relationships have rarely appeared in the press. In the mid-1950s, the public reacted with consternation when it was revealed that MI6 had been penetrated by double agents who had served the Soviet Union since the 1930s. It was not until the 1990s, that the head of MI6 was publicly named for the first time. Still, information about MI6 is still much more closely guarded than that about MI5, which carries out internal security and domestic counterintelligence activities. The agency has the power to censor news accounts of its activities through the use of “D” notices under the Official Secrets Act. MI6 reports to the Foreign Office.

Stephen Dorril’s work, MI6: Inside the Covert World of Her Majesty’s Secret Intelligence Service, is a true reflection of the organization, its people and its history, what it has done and where it has been most influential . Dorril, a meticulous observer and chronicler of the security services, demonstrates an understanding of everything one might have thought about MI6. Through the text, readers learn that MI6’s postwar activities were mired in prewar attitudes and practices. Many in the United Kingdom imagined the foreign policy task dividing up the world with US and other global powers. Instead, the preoccupation was the Soviet Union and the Cold War. In chronicalizing the Cold War segment of MI6’s history, Dorril fills the pages with anecdotes of its most spectacular failures, stirring successes, unsavory plots and bizarre missions, the real-life cloak-and-dagger world is exposed. There is a discussion of Operation Stalin, which exploited the Russian dictator’s paranoia and led to the execution of thousands. There is another about the tunnel MI6 dug beneath the Berlin Wall. During the Cold War, in the intelligence war, it seems that there was no opportunity, in the midst of his work against the Eastern Bloc and more the Soviet Empire, to view matters from a broader or humane perspective. Surely, with the benefit of hindsight, it is easy to enumerate all of the mistakes, poor choices that were made. By 1992, influence abroad had been lost in the Middle East, most of Africa and large swathes of Asia. The United Kingdom was not exiled and isolated as some might suggest. It was then and remains a key partner to the US with its superpower status, and often takes lead from the US, the main push was to abrogate the world’s resources. In the post-Cold War era, there was once again a sense, particularly in the administration of US President Bill Clinton of the West’s entitlement to the world’s spoils. That rush to take what was available was intensified by the need to get to what was out there before the People’s Republic of China did. Political power seemed to embrace corporate power. As a consequence, there was the appearance that corporate power was supported by government power. MI6, one of the great information-gathering organizations of the world, was put to that task, placing some strains on the service.

The book presents a well of extraordinary characters. As alluded to earlier, the lion’s share of what was told is meat and drink for those who enjoy spy novels, but it is all real. Yet, in addition the book presents the similitudes of the intelligence industry with profoundly human stories. The world of the intelligence officer is often a dank and grey one, visceral, boring at times. There is a drudgery about agent running. Doing chores in the analytical shops can be tedious. One is invited to understand the suffering and sacrifices of MI6 officers. Prerogatives are surrendered, loves, passions, moral ambiguities, moral compromise. Many officers fall off, finding satisfaction in other professions and pursuits, others engaged in betrayal, a few entered the device with the objective of spying. As with MI5, MI6, as a dynamic, intelligence service, operating worldwide, has a history riddled with complexity. Stories of unpleasantness are even found in Dorril’s authorized study, too! The more counterintuitive these acts are from the past, the more puzzling they are. In such an old, but odd profession, if one finds oneself doing odd things, the hope would be to catch oneself out when one is so far out of bounds that nothing good is being accomplished.

The People’s Republic of China Embassy in Washington, DC (above), home to the MSS resident in the US. Much as it was the case during the Cold War with Soviet and Eastern Bloc intelligence services, it remains a penchant today among the Chinese intelligence services, to troll the émigrés who have made their way out of those countries. They will go as far as to twist their tails to garner their cooperation as operatives and informants. There is almost an insistence that even having left China, the émigrés must accept China’s iron rule. It may appear to be daylight madness, nevertheless, it is happening. In the recent case of an New York City Police Department officer was alleged to be supporting the intelligence activities of the Communist Party of China’s intelligence organ, the United Front Work Department. That case brought to fore the fact that Chinese intelligence services work hard at compelling overseas Chinese to take part in economical and technical espionage, whether through patriotic appeals or simple threats.

Present Day Focus and Operations of MSS

MSS, as well as other Chinese intelligence services, target a broad range of US national security actors, including military forces, defense industrial companies, national security decision makers, and critical infrastructure entities. Lately, the chief feature of a defacto intelligence war between West and China has been the economic front. Indeed, economic espionage, one might venture to say, holds perhaps a prominent place among the bread and butter activities of the MSS and is best known to industries around the world most of which could easily become one of its corporate victims. To understand the intelligence efforts of MSS, one must understand how guIding concepts from Deng Xiaoping led to a decision by Chinese intelligence to make economic espionage an even greater emphasis. Under the Second Chairman of the Communist Party of China, Deng Xiaoping, China began authentic economic reform partially opening China to the global market. China’s economy grew rapidly soon afterwards. In a five-year economic plan 2006-2010, the Communist Party of China outlined that China must maintain fast and stable economic growth and support the building of a harmonious society. The Communist Party of China’s aim was to raise the country’s gross domestic product by 7.5% annually for the next five years. In order to achieve such rapid economic growth, However, countries such as India and Vietnam had begun competing with China to offer cheap manufacturing bases for Western companies. Further, the increased demand for raw materials such as oil and iron ore, and new environmental and labor laws led to cost increases, making manufacturing in China more expensive which caused some factories to close. China sought to diversify its economy, for example, through the manufacture of better made high end products. However, that diversification of the economy required the Chinese to increase their knowledge of design and manufacturing processes. Espionage has offered a relatively cheap, quick, and easy method to obtain information that could help Chinese companies remain competitive. Many of China’s largest companies are state owned, or have close linkages to the government, and receive intelligence collected by Chinese intelligence services. Those firms have also proved to be capable of engaging in commercial espionage themselves. To get an idea of how well the MSS operates, one only needs to consider its ongoing activities in the US. Without the intention of tarnishing or being beastly toward US intelligence and  counterintelligence services, and law enforcement, they have been unable to prosecute a successful, fruitful, and victorious campaign against Chinese intelligence services operating in the US and against US interests globally. Readers might recall from previous posts on the subject, greatcharlie noted that Western intelligence services until recently have habitually underrated the abilities of Chinese intelligence services. Further, in previous US administrations, particularly in the administration of US President Barack Obama, a somewhat relaxed attitude resulted in policies on China lost in the wilderness that failed to genuinely protect or promote US interests. The delinquency and lethargy of previous administrations also allowed for the steady progress of China versus US power and further advances in technology. The burgeoning threat was apparently not fully discerned or appreciated. 

In response to past US missteps, Chinese intelligence services presumably placed a laser focus upon enhancing and adjusting their approaches to US targets. As a product of their success in recruiting officers and contractors from the US intelligence services, Chinese intelligence services have apparently managed to better understand what the US has been doing to try to recruit Chinese intelligence officers, operatives, and informants is prioritized. To the extent, US intelligence officers and contractors recruited as spies are typically tasked with actions to support Chinese counterintelligence requirements. Doubtlessly, the collection of information on what MSS foreign intelligence has been doing has been insufficiently analyzed in light of information collected on US counterintelligence surveillance strategies and technological capabilities would inspire audits in Chinese intelligence services to better assess how closely its operatives were being monitored and how US counterintelligence managed to see a number of MSS efforts straight. If Chinese intelligence services actually hire hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of officers, operatives and informants, it stands to reason there would be a number of bad apples among them. If not, one must become reconciled with the fact that Chinese spies do not go astray so often.

Foreign Intelligence Operations of MSS

Successful multifaceted activities of Chinese Intelligence services have included: conventional espionage; outright intellectual property theft via corporate and academic institutions worldwide, and cyber attacks. For a good idea of how MSS conducts conventional espionage today, Ryan Clarke, a senior fellow at the East Asia Institute, a Singapore-based think tank, boils it down well in a July 31, 2020 Asia Times article entitled, “The Face of Chinese Spying in Singapore.” Curiously using MSS efforts primarily in the US primarily as an example, Clarke asserts its intelligence operations are highly targeted and tethered to specific state goals. He explains: “These types of operations are quite simple with relatively few moving parts, which is why they are replicable at scale.” To illustrate the variety of targets attacked by MSS, Clarke says: “We’ve seen operations against a range of American targets, from Covid-19 vaccine research to the F-35 fighter jet program.” With regard to the collection effort, Clarke goes on to propound: “The general approach is to establish target priorities and then proceed to collect what appear to be rather innocuous inputs with relatively limited value when viewed in isolation. Sometimes the information may not even be classified. This is done on a massive scale in-country with a parallel synthesis-fusion operation in China itself.” Putting such a massive and energetic effort into perspective, Clarke maintains: “The strategic logic is that, in the aggregate, this massive collection and synthesis-fusion effort will yield unique findings and insights which the Chinese Communist Party can leverage across a range of domains.” The Idea that a massive synthesis-fusion operation exists to mine useful intelligence from piles of information collected was also proferred and the analytical operation was conceptualized in greatcharlie’s July 31, 2020 post entitled, “China’s Ministry of State Security: What Is This Hammer the Communist Party of China’s Arm Swings in Its Campaign Against the US? (Part 2).”

So far as is known publicly, counterintelligence services of the countries Chinese intelligence services have struck, to include the US, have yet to get to the bottom of their business in their countries in order to put an appreciable dent in their work. One might imagine that trying to spot, intercept, neutralize, and recruit significant numbers of Chinese intelligence officers, operatives, and informants has become an exercise in chasing shadows. This has likely left senior executives and managers of many counterintelligence services in a mute frenzy. For the US, in particular, long gone are the opportunities such as the relatively facile recruitment of the MSS officer Yu Zhengsan back in 1985. Then, when MSS was barely up and running for two years, Yu Zhengsan, a mid-level MSS officer from a well-connected political family, was allegedly aided by the CIA allegedly in escaping China and defecting to the US. Once in US hands, Yu provided investigative leads for US counterintelligence services to capture Larry Wu-Tai Chin, a retired CIA language analyst, who had spied for China since the 1940s. If Chinese intelligence services actually hire hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of officers, operatives and informants, it stands to reason there would be a number of bad apples among them. If not, US counterintelligence services must become reconciled with the fact that, today, Chinese spies do not go astray so often. That is, there must be nothing so creative that US counterintelligence services are doing or offering to encourage them to do so.

Prior to the coming of the administration of US President Donald Trump, economic espionage by Chinese intelligence gained real traction. Startled US government officials began to sound the alarm particularly over the destructive impact of Chinese commercial espionage upon US national security. Intrusions by Chinese actors into US companies and other commercial institutions harm both the individual companies and the overall US economy, to the benefit of China. Indeed, in July 2015, Bill Evanina, who was the National Counterintelligence Executive in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and remains in that position as of this writing, stated point blank, “Economic security is national security.” Nevertheless, the vociferous statements of those tasked with defeating China’s operations had no real effect on the course of the administration of US President Barack Obama and Chinese intelligence activities steadily intensified. In response to counterintelligence and cyber defense missteps, Chinese intelligence services seem to have placed a laser focus upon enhancing and adjusting their approaches to US targets.

It is important to note that much as it was the case during the Cold War with Soviet and Eastern Bloc intelligence services, it remains a penchant today among the Chinese intelligence services, to troll the émigrés who have made their way out of those countries. They will go as far as to twist their tails to garner their cooperation as operatives and informants. There is almost an insistence that even having left China, the émigrés must accept China’s iron rule. It may appear to be daylight madness. However, while it is madness, it is happening. Clearly, the Communist Party of China must think it makes sense or they would be acting in this way. In the recent case of a New York City Police Department officer was alleged to be supporting the intelligence activities of the Communist Party of China’s intelligence organ, the United Front Work Department. That case brought to fore the fact that Chinese intelligence services work hard at compelling overseas Chinese to take part in economical and technical espionage, whether through patriotic appeals or simple threats. To be more precise, they will twist the tails of émigrés by threading to harm family members still living in China if cooperation was not provided.

The People’s Republic of China National Security Office in Hong Kong (above). MSS counterintelligence certainly would do whatever possible to intercept, neutralize, and recruit foreign intelligence officers, as well as their operatives and informants in China and those working in locations close to, and on matters concerning, Chinese interests in other countries. As with almost any other counterintelligence organization worldwide, necessary attributes must be present to initiate a counterintelligence investigation on a suspected “foreign spy.” The primary means to confirm their identity is through careful study and observation of the subject and thorough research of all available information. It is a process similar to selecting a target for recruitment. Covert audio and video monitoring in the residences, vehicles, offices, hotels frequented and homes of friends of the suspected foreign spy. Passive collection by informants will also be used to eavesdrop on the individual’s conversations.

MSS Counterintelligence

MSS shares the counterintelligence role with MPS. The primary mission of organic MSS counterintelligence elements is the infiltration of all the foreign special service operations: intelligence and counterintelligence services, as well as law enforcement organizations worldwide. Its primary targets hands down are its chief competitor, the US, the bordering Russian Federation, and Australia and New Zealand. The advanced industrialized countries of Western Europe would also fall under its watchful eyes although China has not achieved prominence in their space. Second would come Taiwan, India, Pakistan, Nepal, Mongolia, and Iran which it trusts up to a point.  China must also measure its national interests, and particularly its national security against Japan, South Korea, Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines, Malaysia, and Singapore. China has also stepped up intelligence operations throughout Africa to support and facilitate its effort to extend its geopolitical influence and acquire oil, rare Earth minerals, and fish. Africa is estimated to contain 90 percent  of the entire world’s supply of platinum and cobalt, 50 percent of the world’s gold supply, 66 percent of the world’s manganese, and 35 percent of the world’s uranium. Africa accounts for almost 75 percent of the world’s coltan, which is a key mineral required for the construction of electronic devices, including cell phones. Well over 10,000 Chinese firms are operating on the continent with 25 percent located in Nigeria and Angola. China has also expanded its military presence in Africa, rivaling the level of US military equities there.)

A Difficult Comparison with MI6 Counterintelligence

Making a proper comparison between MSS counterintelligence operations and those of MI6 is difficult due to the fact there are only soupçons to go on with regard to that United Kingdom intelligence service. One aspect of that work already noted here is that counterintelligence responsibilities among the United Kingdom’s intelligence services have been divided between MI5 and MI6. In Nigel West’s Historical Dictionary of British Intelligence (Scarecrow Press, 2014), one of his many superlative reference books on the subject of intelligence, not surprisingly one can find at least some reference to the work of MI6 in that province. As explained in the Historical Dictionary of British Intelligence, in the United Kingdom, counterintelligence is the discipline devoted to penetrating the adversary’s intelligence structure and protecting one’s own organization. (This is significant for a number of other intelligence services take a different approach to the matter. In the CIA and the FBI in the US and in the erstwhile Soviet Union’s KGB and the Russian Federation’s Sluzhba Vneshney Razvedki (Foreign Intelligence Service) or SVR, for instance, counterespionage operations are organic to the work of their organizations’ counterintelligence sections.)  West notes that during World War II, the MI6 counterintelligence section was designated Section V, the romance numeral five being the cause of considerable misunderstanding and confusion for outsiders.

With regard to counterespionage, in the Historical Dictionary of British Intelligence, West notes that responsibility for such operations lies primarily with MI5, although inevitably the Secret Intelligence Service and Government Communications Headquarters as well occasionally encounter evidence of hostile activity and investigate it. During World War II, counterespionage was acknowledged as an interagency discipline that overlapped different organizations and in 1942, was the motive for an attempt at amalgamation, which was ultimately rejected. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, MI5’s commitments were reevaluated periodically, and the counterespionage branch, designated K in 1968, was absorbed to a new D Branch in 1994 

To elaborate further on MSS counterintelligence, certainly it would do whatever possible to intercept, neutralize, and recruit foreign intelligence officers, as well as their operatives and informants in China and those working in locations close to, and on matters concerning Chinese interests in other countries. As with almost any other counterintelligence organization worldwide, necessary attributes must be present to initiate a counterintelligence investigation on a suspected “foreign spy.” The primary means to confirm their identity is through careful study and observation of the subject and thorough research of all available information. It is a process similar to selecting a target for recruitment. Covert audio and video monitoring in the residences, vehicles, offices, hotels frequented and homes of friends of the suspected foreign spy. Passive collection by informants will also be used to eavesdrop on the individual’s conversations. The surveillance effort may not always be easy going. A foreign intelligence officer’s trade craft may be superb and all of his or her interactions and moves might appear authentic. The foreign intelligence officer’s movement technique could make maintaining surveillance on the subject difficult. For any counterintelligence services, that type of professionalism in an opponent can pose a challenge. Oddly enough though, it will result in increased suspicion among some.

Shifting a bit from United Kingdom intelligence efforts to elaborate more effectively on this point, federal indictments and criminal complaints against MSS foreign intelligence operatives and informants caught in the US indicate that they are generally tasked, as most field operatives and informants of any intelligence service, as intelligence collection requirements demand. As noted in greatcharlie’s August 31, 2020 post entitled, “China’s Ministry of State Security: What Is This Hammer the Communist Party of China’s Arm Swings in Its Campaign Against the US? (Part 2),” from what can be learned from indictments and criminal complaints about such cases that are made public, in almost all of the MSS taskings of those intercepted operatives and informants, certain counterintelligence aspects can be discerned. Those aspects appear aimed at providing ways to assist MSS counterintelligence in identifying and locating foreign intelligence officers, operatives, and informants, particularly in China, or assist in devising ways to intercept, neutralize, and recruit them. Typical counterintelligence aspects in takings that include collecting information on how the US intelligence services communicate with officers, operatives, and informants overseas. In order to develop ways to counter the efforts of US counterintelligence services against MSS foreign intelligence officers, operatives, and informants, MSS counterintelligence would want to know how the organization is set up to confront adversarial networks of spies, who is who, where they are situated, and what exactly are they doing. Understanding the surveillance strategies of US counterintelligence services, particularly the FBI, would inform MSS counterintelligence of what layers of surveillance are usually being pressed on MSS foreign intelligence officers, operatives, and informants in the US and how to devise better ways to defeat them. Technological capabilities would inform MSS counterintelligence whether all along US counterintelligence services have had the capability to monitor its activities or whether they have the capacity and have simply failed to use it effectively. The collection of information on what MSS foreign intelligence has been doing ineffectively in the face of US counterintelligence surveillance strategies and technological capabilities would undoubtedly inspire audits to better assess how closely its operatives were being monitored and how US counterintelligence managed to see a number of MSS efforts straight. (If one were to mine through the US Department of Justice’s very own indictments and criminal complaint against those few Chinese officers, operatives, and informants that have been captured, reading between the lines very closely, one can find to more than few open doors that might lead to successes against existing but well-cloaked Chinese intelligence networks and actors. The particulars of those real possibilities will not be delved into here. Not one case has been a “wilderness of mirrors.” It is hard to know what to make of how things are currently transpiring.)

FBI wanted poster for hackers Zhu Hua (left) and Zhang Shilong (right) of the Advanced Persistent Threats 10 (APT 10 Group) which acted in association with the MSS Tianjin State Security Bureau. In its intelligence campaign against the US, EU Member States, and other advanced industrialized countries, the MSS has taken a multidimensional approach. Three apparent dimensions include: illicit technology procurement, technical collection (cyber attacks), and human intelligence collection. Cyber attacks are perhaps the most prolific type used against industry advanced industrialized countries. This dimension of Chinese intelligence collection is also perhaps the most aggressive. Hackers locate doors that they can rapidly pass through and grab whatever might be within reach. It is by no means a supplemental or mere attendant method of espionage relative to running operatives and informants. It is a full-fledged  dimension of China’s intelligence campaign strategy.

MSS Electronic Intelligence

In its intelligence campaign against the US, EU Member States, and other advanced industrialized countries, the MSS has taken a multidimensional approach. Three apparent dimensions include: illicit technology procurement, technical collection (cyber attacks), and human intelligence collection. Cyber attacks are perhaps the most prolific type used against industry advanced industrialized countries. This dimension of Chinese intelligence collection is also perhaps the most aggressive. Hackers locate doors that they can rapidly pass through and grab whatever might be within reach. It is by no means a supplemental or mere attendant method of espionage relative to running operatives and informants. It is a full-fledged  dimension of China’s intelligence campaign strategy. If human intelligence were the only focus, constraints on manpower resources would always be a big problem to overcome. Cyber collection complements all other forms of attack well. Typically, Chinese spokespersons from the People’s Republic of China Ministry of Foreign Affairs or the Communist Party of China, itself, will issue declarations seemingly designed to create the false impression that China was engaged in a lex talionis of allegations with the US on cyber espionage. Perchance the aim in doing so was to distract the world from the reality of its one-way abusive and criminal cyber attacks to obtain classified information from the federal government, intellectual property from private firms, and research from academic institutions in the US.

When GCHQ Was Part of MI6

For a time, MI6 also enjoyed having an organic technical surveillance capability. That technical surveillance capability today resides in an independent intelligence agency known as the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ). GCHQ grew out of the Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS), established in November 1919. During the 1920s and 1930s, GC&CS had considerable success in its efforts to decipher German and Soviet transmissions. Once Nazi Germany acquired the Enigma machine, with its apparently unbreakable ciphers, in the late 1930s, GC&CS greatly stepped up its efforts. In August 1939, just before war broke out in Europe, it moved its headquarters to Bletchley Park outside London. There its cryptanalysts undertook Operation Ultra, the breaking of the Enigma cipher—a project whose details remained classified until the 1970s. Renamed the Government Communications Headquarters in 1942 to conceal its activities, this leading communications intelligence agency of the United Kingdom. Through GCHQ, MI6 enjoyed a number of successes during World War II, most notable among them being the Ultra program to break German Enigma ciphers. Today GCHQ functions similarly to the US National Security Agency (NSA) Working in coordination with the NSA during the Cold War, it greatly escalated its efforts. Reportedly, it participates in the Echelon global surveillance network. Much of what is known about how GCHQ is organized was provided publicly in James Bamford’s famous 1982 book on NSA, The Puzzle Palace (Houghton Miflin Harcourt, 1982). Knowing how GCHQ is organized allows one to infer with at least some degree accuracy, how it functions. According to Bamford, GCHQ at that time had six directorates. Among these were the Composite Signals Organization, dedicated to radio intercepts; the Directorate of Organization and Establishment, whose functions were chiefly administrative; the Directorate of Signals Intelligence Plans, concerned with long-range planning and management; and the Joint Technical Language Service, which intercepted foreign communications. Bamford stated that the largest and most secretive directorate, the Directorate of Signals Intelligence Operations and Requirements oversaw codebreaking activities. 

Returning to the discussion of MSS technical collection, it can include the use of high-tech tools covering phone calls and all forms of messaging to relatively low level actions against electronic equipment such as mobile phones and computer networks. While technical intelligence collection, cyber attacks by Chinese intelligence services upon targets in the US, have been deplorable, the skill displayed and their list of accomplishments has been impressive. What have essentially been standard targets of cyber attacks from Chinese intelligence services in recent years have been those levelled against US national security decision makers and government organizations, particularly during the Obama administration. The objective of that targeting has been to access any classified information they might possess. Through that information, MSS would surely hope to develop insight into highly sensitive US national security decisionmaking processes.

MI6 in the Political Realm: A Bad Mix

There is much beyond the controlled bearing, composure of MI6 officers and the organization itself. From what has been revealed, their efforts have been defined by hard work, establishing solid foundations, diligence and forethought, practicality and organization, determination and dependability, passion and drive. Creativity is combined with thoughtful effort and hard work to manifest positive energies, opportunities and results. 

As aforementioned, the Ministerial Committee on the Intelligence Services exercises regular ongoing oversight of intelligence activities. Through this committee, the Prime Minister, with the assistance of the Secretary of the Cabinet, exercises authority over the daily operations of the British intelligence and security communities as a whole. MI6 answers to the Foreign and Commonwealth Secretary. The Foreign Secretary receives assistance from the Permanent Secretaries’ Committee on the Intelligence Services. Finally, the Joint Intelligence Committee draws up general intelligence needs to be met by MI6. It also prepares National Intelligence Estimates.

As with officers in MI5, speaking truth to power is also the charge entrusted to leaders of MI6. Yet circumstances have often been complicated enough to spoil adherence to that. One might say how MI6 has performed, has really boiled down to leadership. Indeed, the intelligence services may have figuratively been wonderful horses but the chief or key senior executives–no names here–may have been less-than-perfect jockeys in matters of high policy. Admittedly short on specifics of such cases here, yet with all conspiracy theories aside, it may be enough to say the resources and capabilities of MI6 allegedly have reportedly  on certain occasion been used by political leaders to turn a situation that might not necessarily stand in their favor due to interests beyond those urgent and important to the United Kingdom. Some believe it was really seen during the Iraq War when the United Kingdom followed the US into the whole affair which was unfortunately founded on false intentions,  namely weapons of mass destruction were being produced by the regime of the erstwhile Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. Tragically, MI6 became the alleged coauthor and signatories to misleading information

When misgivings and disfavor might have been expressed what may have been proposed from the top, it may have been the case that  the powers that be would brook no denial. Those too concerned of their position or being politically indebted, might have seen themselves with little option but to follow orders. Those who see themselves as pragmatists, may explain away a decision to go along thoroughly with a suggestion from on high as an effort to simply adapt in a shifting world. They may not have seen themselves as keepers of some sacred flame. The fatal mistake occurs when the choice is made to play along thoroughly. No proper MI6 or MI5 officer would be expected to shrink at the last. If the organization’s leadership had decided to disappoint the political leadership, they might not only have been forced to surrender the coveted privilege to serve their country in the intelligence services. To many in the intelligence service, that idea would be anathema. Such thoughts likely broke through any defenses their minds raised against them. Additionally, after their departure they might find the whole force of the state on his or her back. L’homme c’est rien—l’oeuvre c’est tout.

Assuredly, Parliament, which provides oversight of MI6, has a process for ascertaining the truth about such matters. The principal oversight committee for British intelligence is the Central Intelligence Machinery, based in the Prime Minister’s Cabinet Office. It oversees the coordination of security and intelligence agencies. It also acts as a mechanism for assessment and accountability, observing and reporting on the performance of specific agencies. Further, it more directly intelligence operations as it is also concerned with tasking and the allocation of resources.

To discuss such issues concerning MI6, even if it is just a part of a mere commentary on MSS, is to walk out on shaky ground given many who may read this post may be invested in maintaining the image of the organization and may have previously been invested heart and soul in its work. While admittedly greatcharlie has sought to be sensitive to the concerns of those readers, doubtlessly, the soupçons discussed here will still be an issue of contention in some quarters and there will surely be those disposed to quarrel most bitterly over it. All the same, what is opined here is only what has been publicly discussed by those familiar with the issue. To that extent, not being aware first-hand of it all, greatcharlie would not like to swear by it.

There is no legal “right to know” what is undertaken abroad in the name of the United Kingdom’s security, what it costs or how it is run. Reportedly, beyond mere concerns exposing any classified information about MI6, to write about MI6, even today, risks harassment and prosecution. Former members and current commentators are fully aware of this and have complied thereby allowing the organization to remain beyond any educated public scrutiny. In the past, any dissident reports of its operations were effectively snuffed out. The agency has the power to censor news accounts of its activities through the use of “D” notices under the Official Secrets Act. As one might imagine, this reality does not sit well with the citizens of the United Kingdom. There is a perception among many in the United Kingdom that such behavior brings the organization more closely in sync with that of MSS, an organ of an authoritarian government, than it should in a free society. Civil rights groups and average citizens argue that the policy of total should be reconsidered and scrapped, should not be disparaged as rubbish in any quarter.

Meeting of the Politburo of the Communist Party of China (above). Changes in both competency and necessity have favored an increase in MSS influence in foreign policymaking. One change was the decision of the Communist Party of China wanted MSS looking further abroad than minority groups on China’s periphery. Another change was the expansion of Chinese interests abroad. The real threats to China were no longer seen as coming from traditional internal security concerns but from countries capable of stopping China’s access to trade. By successfully building up its foreign intelligence capabilities to meet this challenge, MSS managed to increase its influence and favor with political authorities. Apparently, it was understood in the Communist Party of China that foreign intentions can best be monitored and resolved with intelligence.

MSS in the Political Realm

MSS was stood up to rectify the deficiencies of the previous iterations of the intelligence function in the Chinese national security apparatus. With its inception, MSS added new dimensions to China’s foreign intelligence scheme while freeing MPS to revamp existing capabilities and explore and adapt a new as well as more technological set of cards to play in the intelligence game so to speak. MSS represented a reimagination of the intelligence collection process abroad and the counterintelligence struggle against outside powers. MSS also represented the tidying up of old ways of conducting its business, and a modernization of Chinese intelligence that was long overdue. The MSS generally appears to have adhered to the non-politicization  of the service. This is not to say that occasionally shifts away from that position by some senior executives has not impacted the organization. MSS elements, particularly at local levels, often have provided protection services for the business dealings of Communist Party of China officials or their well-connected friends. However, the Ministry rarely appears connected to any elite political maneuvering or purges. Since 1983, only the purges of Beijing Party secretary Chen Xitong (1995) and Shanghai Party secretary Chen Liangyu (2006) were rumored to involve the ministry. In the wholesale purges after the fall of Bo Xi laid and Zhou Yongkang, the Beijing State Security Bureau chief Fangfoss Kent and Vice Minister Qiu Jin were ousted precisely because they exploited MSS resources to back particular leaders in their political struggles against each other.

Of course, the foreign policy influence of intelligence services depends on the quality of their inputs and their leadership’s influence with key policymakers. If an intelligence chief is not influential, then his service’s influence depends on performance. The MSS’s role in policymaking could be rising as China’s overseas interests expand. When China entered the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001, the thought was that there would be an influx of foreign business into China. That was a concern. At the time, the response was to make greater use of MPS. However, changes in both competency and necessity have favored an increase in MSS influence in foreign policymaking. When direct political power is absent, influence usually relates to merit and necessity. Senior foreign policymakers would eventually want the MSS in the room, contributing to the discussion. The Communist Party of China’s leadership wanted an MSS looking further abroad than minority groups on China’s periphery. The MSS’ foreign intelligence service is now more similar to the CIA. Another major change was the expansion of Chinese interests abroad. The real threats to China were no longer seen as coming from traditional internal security concerns but from countries capable of stopping China’s access to trade. Apparently, it was understood in the Communist Party of China that foreign intentions can best be monitored and resolved with intelligence. By successfully building up its foreign intelligence capabilities to meet this challenge, MSS managed to increase its influence and favor with political authorities. Indeed, MSS has managed to move from backstage, second to MPS, to frontstage, up from behind its bureaucratic competitor in internal security.

The Way Forward

As indicated in its introduction, this post serves as an expatiation of a technique learned long ago for directing one’s thoughts upon developing ideas and insights on issues in international affairs and other subjects of interest. Given its subject matter, it hopefully managed to satisfy the experienced scholar, academic, and policy analyst. By showcasing the generation of ideas and insights on subjects, hopefully it satisfied the desire of students to see examples and will become a subject of inquiry for some. 

By their very nature, insights are inherent to the writer, unique in that way. At least, they should be. No truer are the words, “everyone is entitled to an opinion.” The ideas and insights of the novice writer have a right to be aired equal to that of experienced, published authors in the various fields. Note, however, that eccentric, whimsical, and outlandish ideas are seldom useful and never desirable. In some respect, the process of generating ideas and insights is a form of self-exploration. One’s mind must be open to all reasonable considerations and all plausible possibilities. Nontraditional students should try to apply sensibilities shaped by a multitude of experiences. The length and breadth of their knowledge and experience may allow for a broader understanding of humanity. That is what the world will most appreciate reading.

Saepe stilum vertas, iterum quae digna legi sint scripturus. (Often must you turn your pencil to erase, if you hope to write something worth a second reading.) It is perfectly in order to feel a bit timid about drawing inferences and sharing them for others to review. Accept those awkward feelings, but write down all of the ideas and insight that may develop inside anyway. Have at it! To enhance one’s ability to summon up new ideas and insights, study, understand, and consider the deeds of personalities. Ruminate on events in relation to those that proceed them and meditate on what the future may bring. Build on that thinking. Strive to forecast decisions that may shape what might come and proof one’s efforts by watching events unfold in the news. Some of the best ideas and insights may come at inopportune times. Whether one is struck with a coruscating flash of logic, or has a nagging thought on an issue that builds throughout the day, notes must be kept of it all. At one’s earliest convenience, write those ideas and insights down in a notebook, on a pad, or on the back of an envelope. If one can, type them up on an electronic device. Organize them as bullet points if that is easier, however, one must make certain that enough is recorded to ensure that actual ideas are being expressed and that they “feel” compelling. Avoid simply jotting down statements of fact, or worse, simple fragments of your thoughts. State your conclusions about matter! Each expression can be fleshed out and tidied up with editing later. Sticking to this course may not be easy at first. After a time and with honest effort, one should become accustomed to it. Optimally, a writer will effectively generate enough ideas and insights to allow for the selection of more reasoned, potent, and eloquent among them for inclusion in a draft essay. The ability to increase quantity and improve the quality of ideas and insights produced will come with practice. Plus novisti quid faciendum sit. (You have learned more what has to be.)