MI6 the History of the Secret Intelligence Service 1909-1949: Keith Jeffery

The book MI6 The History of the Secret Intelligence Service 1909-1949 by Keith Jeffery, a historian at Queen’s University Belfast was published on 21 Sept 2010. The book tells the story of a spy agency founded in 1909 with a single staff by the name Mansfield Cumming. It talks of how MI6 spied actively on the US during the 1930s before concluding that “it was more productive to be friends with the US than continue to treat it as an intelligence target.” It gives an account of Operation Embarrass, in which British agents blew up ships in Italian ports to deter post war Jewish refugees from sailing to Palestine. The book also mention that post World War II, MI6 researchers worked on silent weapons, knockout tablets, safecracking tools and exploding filing cabinets.