Dorril, Stephen. MI6: Inside the Covert World of Her Majesty's Secret
Intelligence Service. New York: The Free Press, 2000. 907 pages.
This is the first comprehensive history of MI6, and the level of detail
is astounding. "In the main," Stephen Dorril writes in the preface, "this
book has been researched with the notion that there is far more in the
public domain than anyone has realised -- least of all the secret agencies."
A committed historian such as Dorril, who collected public data for nearly
20 years, is worth more than any number of former spooks who decide to
publish a memoir. James Bond stories make better movies, but they serve
mainly to titillate and perpetuate. More importantly, popular entertainment
and shallow reporting obscure the larger ethical dimension of sanctioned
covert thuggery, pursued in the name of greater empire. This narrative of
the cold, hard facts is a timely antidote to our monocultural media.
Dorril doesn't try to push a particular theme. Instead he outlines the
political situation, names the players, quotes obscure memos, describes the
results, and then moves on to the next MI6 outrage. Through this, however,
the reader senses Britain's decline as a superpower, and the feeling among
its elites that they could keep it going indefinitely with ever more clever
covert games. And it still continues. The last chapter covers some of the
difficulties MI6 has experienced since their familiar cold war enemies have
disappeared. This includes Richard Tomlinson, MI6's latest whistleblower.
ISBN 0-7432-0379-8
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