Hanoi MI6 station

Welcome! I’m Tom Griffin and this is my intelligence history newsletter. Feel free to share this article with the button below.

The ‘Hanoi Hilton’: Hoả Lò prison in 1973 (US military, public domain). According to Paddy Hayes, this was one of the locations on which Daphne Park provided intelligence to the Americans during her tour three years earlier.¹

The Hanoi Station of the British Secret Intelligence Service was particularly significant during the Vietnam War when the CIA lacked independent coverage in North Vietnam.

A station existed in 1947, when the Chief Controller Pacific, Dick Ellis, embarked on a tour of the Far East.²

According to Joseph Burkholder Smith, the CIA station in Singapore consulted its British counterpart about intelligence gathering soon after the French withdrawal in the mid-1950s.

We in Singapore were soon affected by the major concern the creation of the government of South Vietnam had become. Bob [Jantzen] had to huddle with [James] Fulton to discuss what help the British could provide in the way of intelligence reporting on North Vietnam, since our Saigon station had no assets at all that could provide any information.³

While the US closed its consulate in Hanoi when North Vietnam was created, its British counterpart remained open. Daphne Park biographer Paddy Hayes reports that this was due to a deal between MI6 and the Foreign Office, which allowed the intelligence service to nominate one of the consulate's two diplomats in return for funding.⁴

British diplomats reached Hanoi on an air route operated by the International Control Commission under the 1954 Geneva accords. The flights started from Saigon with stopovers in Vientiane and Phnomh Penh.⁵

As Britain did not recognise North Vietnam, British officials did not have diplomatic status, and had to present their credentials to the External Affairs Bureau of the Administrative Committee of the Hanoi Municipality.⁶

Despite their limited access to officials and restricted movements, MI6 officers were able to report on North Vietnamese morale and the impact of American bombing in the city.

A full British ambassador was not accredited to Hanoi until 1976, after the end of the Vietnam War and the unification of the country.⁷