Book Review: Frederick Forsyth's 'The Outsider" My Life In Intrique'

Veteran journalist and author Joseph C. Goulden offers a good review of Frederick Forsyth's The Outsider: My Life in Intrigue for the Washington Times. 

Let us hope that certain passages in this memoir by British thriller writer Frederick Forsyth do not cause trouble — perhaps fatal trouble — for authors who follow his example and use their profession as a cover for work for intelligence agencies.

For those of you unfamiliar with the thriller genre, Mr. Forsyth is at the top of the pack. He has succeeded because his 15 novels, most of them best-sellers, have a definite ring of authenticity. Mr. Forsyth spent his early years as a journalist, beginning with a provincial British newspaper, then with the Reuters news agency and BBC, with assignments throughout Europe and Africa.

A shrewd reporter, Mr. Forsyth eschewed the egotism endemic among too many journalists. He developed what he termed his “Bertie Wooster mode, an adopted persona based on P.G. Wodehouse’s witless hero: helpless, well-meaning, affable, but as dim as a five-watt bulb.” The contrived bumbler pose enabled Mr. Forsyth to mingle with African war lords, mercenary soldiers, and drug dealers who took him as “the harmless fool with a British passport.” Despite his innocent guise, Mr. Forsyth never lacked bravery — at age 19, he had been the youngest pilot in the Royal Air Force, and his girlfriends included the mistress of the East German defense minister.

Drinking late-night beers in the 9th Arrondissment of Paris, a red-light district, the young reporter was an unnoticed presence who “stared vacantly at the wall” and listened to military dissidents rant about their idea of killing former President Charles de Gaulle, who had decided to end France’s domination of Algeria. Once he left the BBC, Mr. Forsyth holed up in a friend’s apartment and, in 35 days, wrote a novel on a plot to kill de Gaulle, “The Day of the Jackal.” A string of subsequent best-sellers brought him international fame.

Mr. Forsyth also had developed a reputation as a hard-nosed reporter with both a conscience and a zest for the truth. He recognized early-on the mass starvations in strife-torn Biafra, a human tragedy which the British foreign office chose to ignore.

But the government included a strong dissenting voice — the Secret Intelligence Service — he called it “the Firm” — which preferred to deal in hard facts rather than political opinion. Mr. Forsyth’s reporting from Biafra attracted the attention of an SIS officer who shared his disdain for what he called the “cowardice” of the government. The officer needed a trusted “source on the ground” whose eyes-on evidence could rebut charge of media exaggeration. Mr. Forsyth willingly became the SIS’s source, continuing his journalistic work all the while.

You can read the rest of the review via the below link:

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/nov/1/book-review-the-outsider-my-life-in-intrigue/  

Britain’s Top Fictional Spy Also Its Greatest Intelligence Asset

Peter Apps at Reuters.com offers a column how Ian Fleming's iconic James Bond character is the United Kingdom's greatest intelligence asset.

In the 62 years since James Bond first appeared in print, there's no doubt he has helped boost the reputations of his real-life counterparts in British intelligence.

Now, Daniel Craig - the truest to author Ian Fleming's original vision since Sean Connery, if not ever - is back on screen in "Spectre." The franchise is as strong as ever.

In reality, however, the decades since Fleming first penned "Casino Royale" have been distinctly mixed for the United Kingdom and its spies.

For sure, the Secret Intelligence Service - traditionally known to its members as SIS and to the rest of the world as MI6 - and its sister service MI5 retain a world-class reputation. They are in good company. The reach and skill set of those two agencies - responsible for foreign and domestic intelligence, respectively - are more than equaled by signals intelligence specialists Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ). Britain's special forces - the Army's Special Air Service (SAS) and Royal Marines' Special Boat Service (SBS) are also legendary.

They have, however, been far from infallible. Even as Fleming wrote of their prowess in the early 1950s, some stellar embarrassments loomed.

Throughout the late 1950s and 60s, Whitehall (one-word shorthand for the UK's version of the State Department, the Pentagon and CIA and FBI headquarters) was torn apart by slow-burning scandal as news emerged that some of Britain's most trusted intelligence officials had in fact been spying for the Soviet Union. More recently, there have been controversies over officials' complicity in torture and rendition, as well is the small matter of their intelligence-gathering related to Iraq's non-existent weapons of mass destruction.

Bond and his fellow fictional British operatives, however, allow UK intelligence to project an image that goes well beyond the niggling issues of reality.

It might have only the most tangential relationship to what really happens, but it still has real-world impact.

A couple of years ago at a drinks reception in Washington, a former CIA official told me he believed neither he nor anyone else in the U.S. government would ever turn down a briefing from British intelligence. It wasn't just about the quality of the material, he said - good though it often was.

Even the phrase "British intelligence," he said, had a mystique, glamour and style that was intrinsically fascinating. He suspected British officials were well aware of it, he added, and deliberately styled themselves accordingly.

You can read the rest of the column via the below link:

http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2015/10/27/britains-top-fictional-spy-also-its-greatest-intelligence-asset/   

Frederick Forsyth On The Spying Game

Frederick Forsyth, veteran journalist and author of the classic thriller The Day of the Jackal and The Outsider: My Life in Intrigue, offers his view of the spying game in his column in the British newspaper the Express.

Sir Francis Walsingham intercepted letters, eased them open with a hot razor, read, copied, resealed them and had them delivered to the unsuspecting enemy agent.

His tricks – trailing suspect arrivals, drawing up lists of those they visited, employing serving knaves to listen at door panels – could have come straight from John le Carré.

If the practice became something of a British speciality, so did writing about it and the tradition has never died.

Wilkie Collins in The Woman In White, Erskine Childers with The Riddle Of The Sands, John Buchan with his agent Richard Hannay, were all writing and enthralling more than 100 years ago.

And we pioneered great detectives such as Sherlock Holmes. Spooks and ’tecs, they became our national speciality and still are.

But what about the real thing? What is the point of espionage? Simply, it is one word: forewarning. In a perfect world our country would have no rivals, no enemies, no one wants to do us down.

But we all know it is far from perfect. This country has had – occasionally internally, always externally – enemies who lust to see our diminishment, even destruction.

Today IS has us on its insane death list. We need to know what plots are being prepared against us, who is behind them and when they will come.

You can read the rest of the column via the below link: 

http://www.express.co.uk/comment/expresscomment/612916/The-spying-game-Frederick-Forsyth-MI6-espionage

Frederick Forsyth On His Role With British Intelligence, Espionage And NSA Leaker & Traitor Edward Snowden

Fredrick Forsyth, the author of the classic thriller The Day of the Jackal and The Outsider: My Life in Intrigue, spoke to the Gloucestershire Eco about his role with British intelligence, espionage and the NSA leaker, spy and traitor Edward Snowden.

Frederick Forsyth spoke of espionage past and future in his rare appearance at Cheltenham Literature Festival.

Discussing his memoirs 'The Outsider: My Life in Intrigue', his own recent admission to a past in espionage and the future of it following the Edward Snowden affair, Frederick was warmly welcomed by a capacity crowd.

Saying Edward Snowden's actions were "The biggest betrayal of the last five years and probably for the next 10…he walked out with the equivalent of 10 million secret documents . That's massive. " Frederick said that the future of espionage will be purely electronically driven.

"He gave it to world terrorism and its really all our defences, so most intelligence, most espionage to come will be anti terrorist and more than 95 per cent of it today is electronically gathered , not far from here at GCHQ,
You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.gloucestershireecho.co.uk/Cheltenham-Literature-Festival-Frederick-Forsyth/story-27915130-detail/story.html

Unmasked: SIXTH Man In Cambridge Spy Ring Sent Nuclear Secrets To The KGB Allowing Russia To Develop Their Own Atom Bomb

Andrew Lownie, the author of Stalin's Englishman: The Lives of Guy Burgess, unmasks the sixth man in the notorious Cambridge spy ring that included Kim Philby and Guy Burgess in the Daily Mail.

For more than 50 years, the identities of members of the infamous Cambridge Spy Ring have been the stuff of debate and fevered speculation. Four – Donald Maclean, Kim Philby, Guy Burgess, and Anthony Blunt – have been unmasked as Soviet agents. 

A fifth is believed to have been the Bletchley Park and MI6 officer John Cairncross. Now author Andrew Lownie has unmasked a sixth Soviet spy at the heart of the Establishment – a brilliant MI6 physicist who sent nuclear secrets to the KGB which allowed the Russians to develop their own atom bomb…

To his colleagues in MI6, scientist Wilfrid Mann was known as ‘Atomic Man’, the conduit between Britain’s nascent nuclear programme and the team of specialists working under Robert Oppenheimer on America’s Manhattan Project in the desert of New Mexico.

But he also had a secret life as a Russian spy, working in the office next door to his fellow KGB agents Donald Maclean, Guy Burgess and Kim Philby in the British Embassy in Washington from 1943 to 1951.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3223851/Unmasked-SIXTH-man-Cambridge-spy-ring-sent-nuclear-secrets-KGB-allowing-Russia-develop-atom-bomb.html

You can also read an earlier post on Andrew Lownie's new book via the below link:

http://www.pauldavisoncrime.com/2015/09/new-biography-reveals-nortorious.html

Thriller Writer Frederick Forsyth Reveals His Cold War Intelligence Work And Tells Of His Early Newspaper Work

Matt Leclerc at kentonline.co.uk offers a piece on one of my favorite writers, Frederick Forsyth, author of The Day of the Jackal and other classic thrillers.

With the publication of Forsyth's The Outsider: My Life in Intrigue, Forsyth is speaking of his early life doing intelligence work for the British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), commonly called MI6 by the press and public.

He also speaks about his early days as a journalist.

Ashford-born author and journalist Frederick Forsyth today revealed his past working as an MI6 operative at the height of the Cold War.

Forsyth, famous for his espionage novels including The Day of the Jackal and The Odessa File, speaks about his time working undercover for more than 20 years in an interview with The Sunday Times. 

He started out working for his hometown newspaper, the Kentish Express, as a 17-year-old cub reporter in 1956 before starting his National Service.

In the interview, published today, he tells of his time working in East Germany, running several missions to help out MI6 throughout the 1960s and 1970s.

It comes as he publishes his memoir called The Outsider.

Speaking to Sky News this morning he said: "It doesn't do any harm now to mention various adventures that were had way back. We're talking a long time ago.

"It was the Cold War, it was serious and dangerous.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.kentonline.co.uk/ashford/news/author-reveals-his-espionage-past-42479/ 

Spy Who Came In From The Cold: True Story Of KGB Defector More Gripping Than Le Carre

Guy Walters at the British newspaper the Daily Mail reports on the true and dramatic story of Oleg Gordievsky, co-author of KGB: The Inside Story, who escaped and defected from the Soviet Union.

You can read the story and view a video clip via the below link:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3151625/Spy-came-cold-thanks-packet-cheese-onion-crisps-true-story-gripping-Le-Carre.html 

Ghost Of British Master Spy And Traitor Kim Philby Returns To Cambridge

Neil Tweedie at the British newspaper the Telegraph offers a piece on the Cambridge Spies conference.

Give me the child and I’ll give you the man, said the Jesuits. The KGB, on the other hand, believed that indoctrination could wait until a little later in life. But there was no disagreement between the two regarding the best place to recruit spies. From the time of Elizabeth I, when Roman Catholic zealots plotted the Protestant queen’s downfall, to the 1930s, when it incubated the so-called Magnificent Five of Philby, Burgess, Maclean, Blunt and Cairncross, the University of Cambridge has been a breeding ground for treason and espionage.
 

This weekend, that tradition will be celebrated – if that is the right word – at the first-ever conference on the Cambridge Spies to be held in Cambridge. An audience of academics, laymen and intelligence officers will gather at Trinity College, which produced four of the five, to listen to Kim Philby lecture on the art of betrayal.
 

The most notorious traitor produced by Britain in the 20th century will speak from beyond the grave on a tape smuggled out of Russia to the West. In a recorded address to an audience of KGB officers, Philby, a long-term Soviet mole at the heart of the Secret Intelligence Service, MI6, instructs them in how to handle agents in the field. Speaking through an interpreter, the man who sent hundreds of agents to their deaths behind the Iron Curtain, even manages a joke or two.
 

“The most important thing the tape does is to provide a possible answer to the biggest unanswered question about Philby’s exile in Russia,” says Professor Christopher Andrew, Britain’s leading historian on intelligence and a keynote speaker at the conference. “Here is this man, a super hero, who even has his face on Soviet postage stamps, and yet he is denied the supreme honour of Hero of the Soviet Union, an award bestowed on KGB agents of much lesser significance. Why?”

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/features/10786005/Ghost-of-master-spy-Kim-Philby-returns-to-Cambridge.html

Note: Ben Macintyre has a good book on the notorious spy coming out soon in the U.S. called A Spy Among Friends: Kim Philby and the Great Betrayal.

John Le Carre On John Bingham And The Inspiration For George Smiley

The British newspaper the Telegraph offers a piece on John le Carre's response to the claim that John Bingham, the MI5 officer le Carre based his character George Smiley on, despised le Carre's portrayal of British spies.

He is one of Britain’s most celebrated of literary characters of the twentieth century - a spymaster who personified the country’s Cold War intelligence battles. 
 

Now, his creator, John le Carré, has shed new light on the inspiration behind George Smiley, and defended himself against accusations that he had "hurt" his former mentor in the secret service, on whom the character was partly based. 
 

The author, who worked for both MI5 and MI6 during the 1950s and 1960s, has written to the Daily Telegraph to respond to accusations in Tuesday's newspaper which claimed that John Bingham, his former boss, had “deplored” the author’s portrayal of the intelligence services. The letter said Bingham had “not been treated as respectfully as he deserved by his protégé”. 
 

That intervention, from Lord Lexden, a Conservative peer and historian had, in turn, been prompted by revelations in last week's Daily Telegraph about Bingham’s achievements during the Second World War.     

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/10676670/John-le-Carre-on-the-inspiration-for-George-Smiley.html

You can also read an earlier post on John Bingham via the below link:

http://www.pauldavisoncrime.com/2014/03/british-mi5-officer-who-inspired-george.html 

MI6 Had 'Blind Faith' In Kim Philby For Years After Soviet Agent Fears

Peter Day and Neil Tweedie at the British newspaper the Telegraph offer a piece on how British intelligence had faith in British intelligence officer Kim Philby, despite the evidence that he was a traitor and a Soviet spy.

MI6 continued actively to protest the innocence of Kim Philby for years after he helped fellow Soviet agents Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean to flee to Russia, according to a newly released Downing Street file. 
 

The head of the Secret Intelligence Service said it would be “un-English” to brand Philby a traitor on suspicion alone, pointing out that the master-spy had helped unmask other Soviet agents, including Maclean.
 

“It is entirely contrary to the English tradition for a man to have to prove his innocence even when the prosecution is in possession of hard facts,” argued Major-General Sir John Sinclair, chief of the SIS in the mid-1950s. “In a case where the prosecution has nothing but suspicion to go upon there is even less reason for him, even if he were able to do so, to prove his innocence.”
 

The blind faith placed in Philby by his old service despite compelling evidence of his treachery is disclosed in documents prepared in 1963 for Harold Macmillan, the prime minister, after Philby’s defection to the Soviet Union from Beirut in January of that year. Sinclair’s defence, dating from 1955, is contained in the previously Top Secret file.     

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/defence/10552357/MI6-had-blind-faith-in-Kim-Philby-for-years-after-Soviet-agent-fears.html 

Identity Of Double Agent Killed By MI6 in WWII Revealed: How Ian Fleming Helped Cover Up Secret That Stayed Buried For 70 years

 

Kerry McDermott at the British newspaper the Daily Mail offers a piece that reveals a secret from War World II.

Foreign Office files kept secret for more than 70 years have revealed details of how Mi6 kidnapped and killed a French double agent during World War Two - and ordered the creator of James Bond to help them cover it up.

In July 1941 British Intelligence learned that 'deeply trusted' Captain Pierre Lablache-Combier - a Royal Navy commander recruited by MI6 and posted to Spain - had divulged secrets to the Nazi-backed French Vichy government. 

James Bond writer Ian Fleming (seen in the above photo) - then a Naval Intelligence officer - issued an official report stating the officer was 'missing believed drowned'. In fact, the 'complete double-crosser' was killed as Secret Service operatives scrambled to smuggle him out of Spain.  

You can read the rest of the story via the below link:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2330825/Identity-double-agent-killed-MI6-WWII-revealed-newly-released-files.html

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy Almost Perfect, But For The Politics

 

Andrew Roberts at the Daily Beast likes the new film version of thriller writer John le Carre's Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, but he dislikes the anti-American, anti-west politics.

The new movie version of "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy" is as good as cinema gets: subtle, taut, intelligent, gripping. The normally jaded audience at the theater where I watched on the Upper West Side of Manhattan burst into unaccustomed applause at the end. Because the book was written by the now obsessively anti-American John le Carré, it had the inevitable despicable moral equivalency one has come to expect from his work (more on that later), but stylistically, the film could hardly be bettered.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/12/11/tinker-tailor-soldier-spy-almost-perfect-but-for-the-politics.html

I liked the novel and the TV miniseries based on the novel. And despite having the same objections as Andrew Roberts, I plan to see the film as well.

I wrote about le Carre's spy world in a previous post that responded to le Carre's unfair attack on the late Ian Fleming.

As for le Carre’s realism, I’ve spokened to a good number of former and current CIA and military intelligence officers who object strongly to the moral ambiguity found in his novels. Most Cold War intelligence officers were, like Bond, patriots who were dedicated to fighting communism.

British, American and other Western intelligence officers were certainly not like their utterly ruthless KGB and Eastern bloc counterparts who were defending a totalitarian, evil empire. There was a moral distinction between the Cold Warriors that you will not find not in a le Carre novel.

William F. Buckley Jr, the late author, columnist and political talk show host, noted that films and novels in the 1960s and 1970s often portrayed CIA officers as no better than the KGB.

Having served briefly as a CIA officer, he objected. Buckley, who wrote his own series of spy thrillers, believed the CIA and the Western intelligence services were a force for good in the Cold War. I agree.

You can read the rest of my piece via the below link:

http://pauldavisoncrime.blogspot.com/2010/08/spy-writer-vs-spy-writer-john-le-carre.html

You can also read my Philadelphia Inquirer review of John le Carre's latest novel via the below link:

http://home.comcast.net/~pauldavisoncrime/pwpimages/LeCarreOurKindOfTratiorReview.jpg

A Look Back At How The FBI Used 'Ultra' Intelligence In World War II

The FBI web site offers an interesting historical piece on how the FBI used "Ultra" intelligence during World War II.

Winston Churchill and Dwight Eisenhower thought the intelligence was vital to Allied victory in World War II. Eisenhower is said to have called it “decisive.” Churchill was reported to be even stronger in his assessment to King George VI.

The intelligence was called “Ultra’’—because it was so highly secret—and it consisted of intercepted and later decoded radio and cable messages sent by the Nazis to their clandestine networks in Europe and South America during the war. Ultra was launched by British intelligence in 1941 and ultimately became a cooperative Allied effort.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/2011/october/intelligence_100611/intelligence_100611?utm_campaign=email-Daily&utm_medium=email&utm_source=fbi-top-stories&utm_content=36260

Arab Spring Has Created 'Intelligence Disaster,' Warns Former CIA Bin Laden Unit Chief

 

Michael Scheuer, the former CIA bin Laden unit chief and the author of Osama bin Laden, told the British newspaper the Guardian that the Arab Spring has not been a good thing for West intelligence services. He suggests that America bring back the rendition program.

The Arab spring has "delighted al-Qaida" and caused "an intelligence disaster" for the US and Britain, the former head of the CIA unit in charge of pursuing Osama bin Laden has warned.

Speaking at the Edinburgh international book festival, Michael Scheuer said: "The help we were getting from the Egyptian intelligence service, less so from the Tunisians but certainly from the Libyans and Lebanese, has dried up – either because of resentment at our governments stabbing their political leaders in the back, or because those who worked for the services have taken off in fear of being incarcerated or worse.

You can read the rest of the story via the below link:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/aug/28/arab-spring-intelligence-disaster-scheuer

I interviewed Michael Scheuer for Counterterrorism magazine a while back. You can read the piece via the below links:

http://home.comcast.net/~pauldavisoncrime/pwpimages/QandAMichaelScheuer.jpg

http://home.comcast.net/~pauldavisoncrime/pwpimages/QandAMichaelScheuer2.jpg

http://home.comcast.net/~pauldavisoncrime/pwpimages/QandAMichaelScheuer3.jpg

http://home.comcast.net/~pauldavisoncrime/pwpimages/QandAMichaelScheuer4.jpg

Note: The above photo was provided by Michael Scheuer.

British Spy And Traitor Kim Philby Was Disillisioned By Communism When He Died In The Soviet Union

The British newspaper The Guardian reports that British spy and traitor Kim Philby was disillusioned by communism and his personal failures at the end of his life.

Philby, according to his Russian wife, drank heavy and expressed his disappointment with communism as the defector ended his days in the Soviet Union. Philby died in 1988 before the fall of the Soviet Union, so he died not knowing that he spied for the losing side.

You can read the newspaper story via the below link:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/mar/31/spy-kim-philby-disillusioned-communism  

Bonding With History: Meet the Real James Bonds in The Secret History of MI6

TIME's News Feed offers a piece on the new book about the British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), better known as MI6, called The Secret History of MI6, 1909-1949.

The piece notes that a British World War II intelligence officer, Wifred "Biffy" Dunderdale, a former boxer and friend of James Bond author Ian Fleming, was the model for the character of Bond. 

Although Dunderdale, like two famous spies in history, Sidney Reilly and Richard Sorge, was a womanizer, drinker and lived through some dangerous times, I don't think Fleming based his character that closely on him.

Other than some of his early journalism, I've read nearly everything Fleming has written, as well as nearly everything written about him. I believe his fictional character was based on a good number of British military commandos and SIS secret agents Fleming met during World War II. Bond was also based in part on Fleming himself.

Fleming wrote that Bond was intended to be a "blunt instrument" used by the government to combat Her Majesty's enemies. Bond was also intended to be a blunt instrument that Fleming could use to carry along the action in his thrillers.

The man of action was based on the real commandos and secret agents, but Fleming said he also added his own personal "quirks and characteristics" to the character.

He gave Bond his likes and his dislikes and his personal style. Bond, like Fleming, wore a Rolex watch, Sea Island Cotton shirts and dark blue suits. Bond, like Fleming, liked scrambled eggs and Vodka Martinis. Bond, like Fleming, was a womanizer.

In The Secret History of MI6, an authorized history, author Keith Jeffery writes about the real men and women who served in SIS from the service's beginning in 1909 to the early post-war years. The book is a companion of sorts to The Defense of the Realm, an authorized history of the British Security Service, MI5.

As the British finally open up their secret files, one discovers that Fleming's Bond stories, generally thought to be outlandish (the films more so than the novels), were based on true events in the history of crime and espionage.

You can read the TIME piece via the below link:

http://newsfeed.time.com/2010/09/23/meet-the-real-james-bonds-fast-cars-but-no-license-to-kill/

You can also go to my earlier post and read a review of the book via the below link:

http://pauldavisoncrime.blogspot.com/2010/09/secret-history-of-mi6-british-secret.html

The Secret History of MI6, 1909-1949

I recently received a copy of historian Keith Jeffery's The Secret History of MI6, 1909-1949. I look forward to reading the book and I plan to write about it in an upcoming issue of Counterterrorism magazine.

Below is a review of The Secret History of MI6 from the British newspaper The Telegraph:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/bookreviews/8020550/MI6-The-History-of-the-Secret-Intelligence-Service-1909-1949-by-Keith-Jeffery-review.html

The British Culture of Assassination in WWI: Communists Were Lured With the Promise of Sex, But Were Met By Assassins

Duncan Gardham, the security corespondent for the British newspaper The Telegraph, wrote an interesting piece about the British culture of assassination during World War I.

A generation before Ian Fleming dreamed up his character James Bond's license to kill, the British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), also known as MI6, was involved in assassinations.

Gardham's source is a book called Six: A History of Britain's Secret Intelligence Service, Part I, a new history of the intelligence service written by former military intelligence officer Michael Smith.

The book details how a Cossack Colonel, working as a British agent, lured several communists, including Soviet officials, to a lakeside villa with the promise of sex. The communists were then tortured and killed.

The book also covers Sidney Reilly, the British agent known as the "Ace of Spies," who planned to kill the entire Soviet leadership in 1918. Reilly (seen in the above Telegraph photo) was in turn murdered by the Soviets.

You can read the newspaper piece via the below link:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/defence/8010063/Communists-lured-to-their-deaths-by-MI6-with-promise-of-sex.html