COURTING A RELUCTANT ALLY - National Intelligence University

many of the same problems of inter-Service rivalry and inadequate resources thatbeset U.S. intelligence.British Intelligence StructureIntelligence in The United KingdomLike U.S. intelligence in the 1930s, British intelligence consisted of a numberof organizations. Also like the U.S., the British had a counterpart to ONI,the NID, and a Military Intelligence Division (MID), similar to the U.S. Army’sorganization of the same name. Additionally, since it had a separate Air Force,the British had an Air Intelligence Division to support that Service’s requirements.Unlike the U.S., however, the British Foreign Office was much moreactive in intelligence matters than the U.S. State Department. In addition to itsresponsibility for overt diplomatic missions, the Foreign Office was also incharge of Britain’s clandestine HUMINT activities and ran the Secret IntelligenceService (SIS), better known as MI6. Another feature that distinguishedthe British intelligence system from the American system was the use of interdepartmentalintelligence branches to deal with intelligence functions thatbecame more developed in the interwar period. Examples of these activitiesinclude: the Security Service (MI5), which handled domestic intelligence andcounterintelligence; the Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS),which dealt with all SIGINT matters; the SOE, with responsibility for covertaction; the Political Warfare Executive, which analyzed foreign press and propaganda;and the Combined Services Detailed Interrogation Center, whichdealt with Prisoner of War (POW) interrogations. 38British intelligence differed from the American system in one other importantway, and that was in the area of interdepartmental coordination and cooperation.This is not to say there were no interdepartmental rivalries or friction among thecomponent members, because, in this respect, the British system closely resembledthe American one. Francis Hinsley, who wrote the official history of Britishintelligence during World War II, notes that prior to the war it was understandablehow various intelligence departments, each of which had responsibilities to thecentral government and to their own organizations, “were naturally reluctant toexchange reliance on inter-departmental bodies for their own long-establishedcontrol of the acquisition, the interpretation, and the use of whatever information38 Francis Hally Hinsley and others, British Intelligence in the Second World War: Its Influenceon Strategy and Operations 1 (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1979), 4, 90, cited hereafteras Hinsley, British Intel vol. 1; Alan Stripp, Codebreaker in the Far East (London: Frank CassPublishers, 1989), 148; Smith, Ultra-Magic Deals, 20. The GC&CS was also known as BletchleyPark, the location where analysis of intercepted communications was conducted.10