The FCO security files
Documentary resources are at a premium when it comes to the recent history of the British intelligence services. MI6 does not release its archives at all, while MI5 releases peter out in the 1960s. I have seen minutes of the Joint Intelligence Committee from the early 1980s, and more recent files may exist.
The extent of the interface between the intelligence services and the rest of government is one factor in favour of the researcher. MI5 and MI6 originated as a deniable arm of Whitehall, and their relationship with other departments has only grown in recent decades.
The odd bit of information about the intelligence services often turns up in the open files, although it sometimes depends on knowing that a particular official was an intelligence officer in the first place. Recently, I went prospecting in the files of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office's Security Co-ordination Unit as a possible source of such snippets. I hope to produce some substantive posts based on the results in the coming days. In the meantime, here is a typical example of the 'nuggets' that turn up.
It comes from FCO178/8, a file released in January last year,covering counter-terrorism cooperation with the Middle East in 1984. The reference to 'Box 500', a well-known synonym for MI5. The reference to the Mojahidin is presumably to the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK), an Iranian opposition group, which was designated as a terrorist entity until 2009 in the UK, and 2012 in the US, but has since gained vocal support from some British and American politicians.
