Security Service release

Introduction

Highlights of the latest Security Service (MI5) release include files on the Scottish poet Hugh McDairmud, British Communist security chief Betty Reid, and The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem. The release also includes original Second World War German propaganda leaflets and photographs of German techniques for camouflaging sabotage equipment.

This is the second release of Security Service records since the full implementation of the Freedom of Information Act in January 2005. Though exempt from the Act, the Security Service will continue to make its records available. This, the thirteenth Security Service release, contains 305 files, bringing the total number of its records in the public domain to nearly 2,800.

As with previous releases some two-thirds of the records are personal files relating to individuals (KV 2), with a small number of subject files (KV 3), policy files (KV 4), organisation files (KV 5) and list files (KV 6).

The majority of files are from 1939-45 but there are a considerable number from the inter- and post- war periods, dealing with a range of groups and subjects, including: right-wing extremists; German agents and intelligence officers; British Communists and suspected Communists, the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) and related groups; Soviet intelligence agents and intelligence officers; Comintern; various Jewish groups suspected of being sponsored by the Communists; one double agent case; and German espionage activity in the Second World War period.

Of the personal files in this release, the most notable include those relating to the poet Hugh McDairmid, film score composer Hanns Eisler, Betty Reid (responsible for security in the Communist Party of Great Britain), Kuno Weltzen (the agent believed to be responsible for providing the information that resulted in Leslie Howard's plane being shot down) and the double agent BRONX.

The personal files are listed under the following categories:

There are also a number of 'untitled' personal files (KV 2/2084-2097), that is files relating to individuals that do not fit squarely into the above categories.

The subject files (KV 3/152-235) contain papers on German espionage activity in Latin America during the Second World War, Hungarian wartime espionage, Abwehr activity in France, Portugal, Italy and elsewhere, arranged by Abwehr unit and largely derived from post-war interrogations and captured documents. There is also a collection of original German Second World War propaganda material.

This release includes policy files (KV 4/278-313) dealing with a wide range of matters, including security liaison with post-independence Ireland, the camouflaging of Second World War German sabotage equipment, policy on the interrogation of Second World War enemy prisoners in British hands and post-First World War military administration of occupied territory.

Highlights of the release include:

• * Scottish poet Hugh McDairmid
• * Original Second World War German propaganda leaflets
• * German techniques for camouflaging sabotage equipment
• * Kuno Weltzein, agent thought responsible for providing the information which led to the shooting down of Leslie Howard's plane
• * SIS assessment of German intelligence organisations in France
• * Renegade broadcaster and relative of the founder of the scouting movement, Ralph Baden Davenport Powell
• * British Communist security chief Betty Reid, who later believed that she had hired a Security service 'plant' as a home help
• * Campaigner for the rights of black Africans in South and South West Africa Rev Michael Scott
• * Austrian anti-Fascist film score composer Hanns Eisler
• * Files on the development of intelligence liaison between Britain and Ireland
• * Double agent BRONX.