They may be ‘vain creatures’, but a ‘properly balanced woman’ makes for a better spy because men are too conceited, according to an MI5 operations guide going on show for the first time.
Legendary MI5 spymaster Charles Henry Maxwell Knight, codenamed ‘M,’ who was said to have been the inspiration for James Bond’s boss, secretly called for the recruitment of more women in 1945, suggesting MI5 could do with their ‘amazingly helpful’ intuition.
In a spy operations guide being made public as part an exhibition at the National Archives exploring the 115-year history of the Security Service, he wrote that women should be prized as agents, as long as they aren’t ‘over-emotional’ and neither ‘markedly over-sexed nor under-sexed’.
Contrary to the portrayal in James Bond novels where Ian Fleming once wrote of ‘blithering women who thought they could do a man’s work’, in real-life ‘a very high percentage of the greatest coups have been brought off by women’ in espionage, Knight wrote in 1945.
The spy chief believed men were more likely to blow operations due to their conceit and ‘loose talk’.
‘Now there is a very long longstanding and ill-founded prejudice against the employment of women as agents; yet it is curious that in the history of espionage and counter-espionage a very high percentage of the greatest coups have been brought off by women,’ Knight wrote.
‘It is frequently alleged that women are less discreet than men; that they are ruled by their emotions, and not by their brains: that they rely on intuition rather than on reason: and that sex will play an unsettling and dangerous role in their work.
‘My own experience has been very much to the contrary.
‘During the present war, M.S (a section of MI5) has investigated probably hundreds of “loose talk”, in by far the greater proportion of these cases the offenders were men.
‘In my submission this is due to one principle factor: it is that indiscretions are committed from conceit.
‘Taking him generally, Man is a conceited creature, while Woman is a vain creature.
‘Conceit and vanity are not the same.
‘A man’s conceit will often lead him to indiscretion in an endeavour to build himself up amongst his fellow men, or even to impress a woman.
‘Women, being vain rather than conceited, find their outlook for this form of self-expression in their personal appearance, dress etc.’
Knight ran one of the most successful networks of agents in MI5 history, with recruits including Olga Gray, who helped uncover a Soviet spy ring within the Woolwich Arsenal in 1938.
Known as ‘Miss X’, the daughter of a Daily Mail Night Editor was recruited in 1931 to infiltrate British communist groups.
Another recruit was Joan Miller, his secretary and second wife who broke up a German spy ring.
Other MI5 exhibits revealed for the first time include a 110-year-old lemon which was used as evidence against wartime German spy Karl Muller.
Muller used lemon juice as invisible ink to inform on British troop movements. A warm iron was passed over a letter to reveal the secret messages.
When he was arrested, the lemon was found in his overcoat. He was executed by firing squad at the Tower of London in 1915.
In total, 20 items have been loaned from MI5’s archives, including surveillance equipment.
The exhibition includes modern-day artefacts such as a Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA) mortar bomb fired on Downing Street in 1991.
Knight suggested recruiters should avoid ‘overemotional’ or ‘over-sexed women’ adding: ‘If over-sexed, it is clear that this will play an overriding part in their mental processes and if under-sexed they will not be mentally alert and their other faculties will suffer accordingly.
‘It is difficult to imagine anything more terrifying than for an officer to become landed with a woman agent who suffers from an overdose of sex, but as it is to be hoped that no such person would be chosen for the work.
‘It is true, however, that a clever woman who can use her personal attraction wisely has in her armoury a very formidable weapon.’
His memo continued: ‘The emotional make-up of a properly balanced woman can very often be utilised in investigation, and it is a fact that women’s intuition is a direct result of her rather complex emotions.
‘That a woman’s intuition is sometimes amazingly helpful and amazingly correct has been well established; and given the right guiding hand, this ability can at times save an Intelligence Officer an enormous amount of trouble.’
Yesterday at the launch of the exhibition, which will open to the public on April 5, MI5 Director General Sir Ken McCallum said it marked a new chapter for the organisation: ‘We’ll never be able to talk about everything we do. To do so would give away information that would be useful to the UK’s adversaries.
‘However, you’ve also seen that we are much more open than MI5 was in the past.
‘This exhibition is an example of that openness.’