Women make better spies than men despite being 'vain creatures' as male operatives are too 'conceited' and lack intuition, according to MI5 guide made public for first time
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.
Legendary MI5 spymaster Charles Henry Maxwell Knight, codenamed ‘M,’ who was said to have been the inspiration for James Bond’s boss
Double agent Olga Gray was recruited by Maxwell Knight. To the public, sharp-eyed Olga Gray would only ever be known as ‘Miss X’ — in the words of one Scotland Yard detective, ‘the bravest girl I ever knew’
‘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.
Director General of MI5 Sir Ken McCallum speaking during a preview for the MI5: Official Secrets exhibition at the National Archives in Kew, west London.
Maxwell Knight's 1945 Operations Guide
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.’
MI5: OFFICIAL SECRETS EXHIBITION
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.
The lemon used for writing in invisible ink, produced in evidence at Karl Muller's trial
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14559463/Women-make-better-spies-men-despite-vain-creatures-male-operatives-conceited-lack-intuition-according-MI5-guide-public-time.html
The peroxide blonde who was Britain’s bravest spy: How Olga Gray risked her life to stop the Soviets stealing our war secrets despite being crippled by insecurity
- Olga was 24 when she was recruited by the MI5 spymaster Maxwell Knight
- One of his informants noticed her at a Tory garden party in Birmingham in 1931
- Olga worked for ‘M Section’; her task was to penetrate Communist movement
- Her spy skills brought her into contact with senior figures in the Communist Party of Great Britain, including Harry Pollitt
When Olga Gray arrived for work as a secretary each morning at the Communist Party HQ in King Street, Covent Garden, her colleagues greeted her with a burst of raucous lyrics.
‘Shame on you, Shame on you, Oh fie fie!’ they sang, ‘Olga Pulloffski, you beautiful spy!’
The prewar music hall song, about a seductive secret agent who ends up in front of a firing squad, had been a hit for Henry Hall and his Orchestra when Miss Gray started work in 1935. This serenade had been a running joke for the comrades of King Street ever since.
What none of them began to guess was that this diffident young woman with a peroxide bob and an hourglass figure really was a spy — an MI5 agent sent to infiltrate the revolutionary network.
Ultimately she would do more than anyone to bring it down and help get its leaders put on trial. But in doing so, she put her life in terrible danger from Moscow’s assassins and the British Communists she betrayed.
To the public, she would only ever be known as ‘Miss X’ — in the words of one Scotland Yard detective, ‘the bravest girl I ever knew’.
Olga Gray was 24 when she was recruited by the MI5 spymaster Maxwell Knight, after one of his informants noticed her at a Conservative garden party in Birmingham in 1931. She had a frank, combative demeanour that made her seem afraid of no one.
But her outward confidence belied a secret self-loathing. A wretched childhood had left Olga convinced no man would ever love her.
Her father, a journalist, bullied her in secret. Continually accusing her first of being too much a tomboy and then too feminine, he would sometimes lash out violently. She tried to tell her mother but was not believed.
When Charles Gray died at Passchendaele in 1917, ten-year-old Olga felt only relief.
By the age of 24 she was still living at home and working as a commercial secretary — the ideal skill for a female spy, Knight believed.
The invitation to do undercover work was flattering and Olga found Knight, who was six years her senior, charming and attractive. His voice was rich and mellifluous. But she did not fall in love: ‘I didn’t have any sexual feeling for him,’ she said, ‘largely because I didn’t see how he could possibly be attracted to me... at the time I felt totally unfeminine.’
Knight told Olga she would be working for ‘M Section’ and that her task was to penetrate the Communist movement. Above all, she should try to find any evidence of links between Moscow and the Communist Party of Great Britain [CPGB]. Her codename was M/12 and her pay two pounds ten shillings a week.
Her first step was to attend meetings of the blandly left-of-centre Friends Of The Soviet Union [FSU] and wait to be approached — what Knight called ‘trailing your coat’. He told her to play the wide-eyed innocent, an ‘ordinary, interested and sympathetic enquirer’ who was curious about the Soviet Union.
The FSU was in fact a Communist ‘front’ funded by the Soviets. One of the organisers approached Olga on her second visit and, when she described herself as a part-time secretary, asked if she might do voluntary clerical work for the Friends.
The FSU soon discovered that Olga had formidable talents at organising an office. What Knight realised was that she also had a phenomenal memory, being able to recall entire conversations while noting clothes and mannerisms in detail.
After a year she was taken on by one of the most senior figures in the CPGB: Percy Glading, an East Ender who had been fired from his job as an engineer at the Woolwich Arsenal because of his Soviet sympathies.
As Olga described him to Knight, he had full lips, lank hair and wore large round glasses that made him look like an overgrown schoolboy. He was also regarded as one of the most dangerous activists in Britain, a paid CPGB organiser who was married to a Russian woman.
Knight told Olga she would be working for ‘M Section’ and her task was to penetrate the Communist movement; she should try to find any evidence of links between Moscow and the Communist Party of Great Britain. She was taken on by one of the most senior figures in the CPGB: Percy Glading (above), who had been fired from his job as an engineer at the Woolwich Arsenal because of his Soviet sympathies
Olga posed as what she called a ‘Moscow-sympathising trendy’. But this was very different from her real life. In October 1932, weeks after beginning her new job, she joined Ealing Ladies Hockey Club, to take the edge off her loneliness.
Most of her new friends were well-off, privately educated girls who lived in Kensington — the very opposite of Percy Glading and all he stood for.
At Glading’s office in Gray’s Inn Road, Central London, she was soon working longer hours and meeting prominent revolutionary figures. She was taken on trips to the Continent with delegations from the anti-war movement. Everything was reported back to her spymaster, Knight.
In 1934 she was approached by the General Secretary of the CPGB, Harry Pollitt, to tackle her most far-reaching task yet — smuggling a message to high-ranking Communist agents in India.
But Pollitt had bungled the planning of her mission. She was going to Bombay with no plausible cover story and during the monsoon season, when no tourist would visit. She was expecting to stay only a few weeks, which would also look odd.
Worst of all, as Knight wrote: ‘The Party... did not realise that an unaccompanied young Englishwoman travelling to India without some very good reason stood a risk of being turned back when she arrived, as a suspected prostitute.’
MI5’s spymaster was put in the odd position of helping the Communists to ensure their mission didn’t fail, so his agent was not exposed. Knight and Olga had to come up with a better cover story... but not one so good the Communists might get suspicious. Then Olga was on her own.
On June 11, 1934, she set out for Marseille, where she boarded ‘a vile little boat’, probably a mail packet taking post and a handful of travellers. She spent the voyage fending off the advances of a male admirer, who proposed marriage.
Her self-esteem was still so low that she decided his affection was aroused solely because she was ‘the only single girl travelling’.
In 1934 she was approached by the General Secretary of the CPGB, Harry Pollitt (above), to tackle her most far-reaching task yet — smuggling a message to high-ranking Communist agents in India
In Bombay, as the rain came down in torrents, Olga spent almost all of each day indoors. Her mind began to play tricks and she became convinced one of the Indian Communists had been arrested. The police would drag her name out of him.
She was housebound, lonely and scared: ‘I realised I wasn’t playing spy games any longer.’ It was three weeks before she received a message to return to London.
This mission won Olga the full trust of Glading, who had secretly been training for revolution at the International Lenin School, in Moscow — an academy for bright young Communists, where they learnt the tradecraft of espionage.
But it also took a gruelling toll on her nerves. She wanted to quit, but this was not the time — not when Pollitt had offered her the job of his personal assistant at Party HQ... known at MI5 as The Kremlin.
No British agent had ever gained access, and now Olga was to be the boss’s secretary. As well as typing correspondence and taking minutes, she was expected to stitch secret reports into the lining of Soviet sailors’ greatcoats, to be smuggled back to the USSR.
The quality of her new intelligence was exceptional. MI5 now had proof of Pollitt’s links with Moscow and details of the Party’s cipher system, which was based on a book. This enabled government codebreakers to decrypt wireless communications between the Soviet Union and London.
Her colleagues trusted Olga implicitly. It was generally believed that she and Glading were having an affair, though she denied this. But her nerves were in tatters.
During the Blitz, Olga drove an ambulance, and she was in London towards the end of World War II when she met a young Canadian air force officer. He was immediately smitten. Within weeks he had proposed — and just ten months after they were married, Olga became a mother
In July 1935 Olga had a breakdown and was taken to the National Hospital for Nervous Diseases. She felt she was looking over her shoulder all the time.
When she left hospital, Olga was determined to make a fresh start. She took a job in advertising and warned Maxwell Knight she was finished with spying. But the very people she had been betraying had become some of her closest friends, and she could not sever all connections with Glading and Pollitt.
Inevitably, they wheedled her back. In 1937, Glading asked her to run a safe house for him. He would have his own set of keys. Meanwhile, Olga could live there rent-free.
Her conscience compelled her to inform Knight. She hated to be drawn back into the game, but recognised her duty — and agreed to rejoin M Section.
With Knight’s help, Olga found a flat that met all MI5’s requirements as well as Glading’s. The main entrance had to be visible from the other side of the street, where a team of MI5 watchers would be installed. She chose a ground-floor apartment in Holland Park, West London, and set about furnishing it with Kremlin money.
Before long, Glading held a meeting at the flat with a ‘Mr Peters’ — a middle-aged man of 6ft 4in, according to Olga’s precise description, with a dark moustache and gold teeth. His real name was Theodor Maly, and he was one of Moscow’s top spies.
‘Mr Peters’ wanted Glading to steal the blueprints of the secret 14-inch naval guns under construction at his old workplace, the Woolwich Arsenal.
Now it was Glading’s turn to feel the strain. The would-be revolutionary started to drink heavily, and one night he came to the safe house and poured out his woes. Olga made a good listener.
‘Mr Peters’ had even worse problems. During Stalin’s infamous Great Purge of 1937, he was falsely accused of being a Nazi collaborator and summoned to Moscow. Rather than endure a life on the run, he returned, knowing he faced a death sentence.
New handlers were sent — ‘Mr and Mrs Stephens’, intent on collecting the naval blueprints. The plan was to smuggle the documents out of the Arsenal, photograph them at the safe house, then return them. For a trial run, they photographed a map of the London Underground.
On the day of the operation, the MI5 watchers observed ‘Mrs Stephens’ enter the flat with ‘a large oblong parcel’. Olga tried to snatch a look as the plans were laid out on a broad table, but she was shooed out of the room to make tea. Three hours later, the Russians left and Olga was left with 42 negatives drying on strings in her bathroom.
M Section could have swooped then. But Knight was convinced there were other key figures in the plot who had not yet been identified, and arrests were delayed so long that ‘Mr and Mrs Stephens’ were able to escape the country — with the blueprints.
Their success made Glading and his comrades overconfident. They planned another mission. More blueprints were secreted out of the Arsenal, for an anti-submarine device, an anti-tank mine pistol and hundreds of pages of top secret documents.
This time there would be no delay. On the concourse of Charing Cross Station, moments after taking possession of another oblong parcel, Glading was surrounded by plainclothes policemen. As he was led away, he said nothing.
Olga caused a press sensation at the preliminary trial. ‘This slim, bob-haired blonde, English to judge from her accent,’ reported a breathless Time magazine, ‘arrived curvesomely sheathed in clinging black, and kept shifting her handsome fur piece with the sinuosity of Mae West, as she testified before a bug-eyed judge.’
But it was a British policeman who gave her the epithet she deserved. He called her ‘the bravest girl I ever knew’.
Glading and his co-conspirators were sent for trial at the Old Bailey. Olga’s ordeal was not over — while she remained a witness, she was in constant danger of a Soviet assassin. One leading Communist was overheard to say he ‘would not be surprised to hear that Miss X had been hit on the head with a stick’.
Olga was put up in a nondescript hotel with a bodyguard outside the door, unable to go out for weeks. All she could do was rehearse her evidence — and on the stand, she was ruthless. Reporters noticed that Glading refused to look at her.
He was sentenced to six years’ hard labour.
The judge commended Olga but spared her another appearance before the Press.
‘I do not propose to call her into court,’ he said, ‘but I think that young woman must be possessed of extraordinary courage, and I think she has done a great service to her country.’
This was the end of Olga’s spy career. She could never work undercover again. MI5 bought her dinner at the Ritz, gave her a cheque worth about four years’ extra salary, and dismissed her.
But it was not the last time she would serve her country.
During the Blitz she drove an ambulance, and she was in London towards the end of World War II when she met a young Canadian air force officer. He was immediately smitten. Within weeks he had proposed — and just ten months after they were married, Olga became a mother. She finally believed she was worthy of love.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-4845218/Britain-s-bravest-spy-Olga-Gray-thwarted-Soviets.html
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