Directorate of Military Intelligence

Directorate of Military Intelligence

Agency overview
Preceding agency	Department of Topography & Statistics
Dissolved	1964
Superseding agency	Defence Intelligence
Jurisdiction	Government of the United Kingdom
Headquarters	Horseguards Avenue Whitehall London
Agency executive	Secretary of State for War
Parent department	War Office

The Directorate of Military Intelligence (DMI) was a department of the British War Office.^[1]

Over its lifetime the Directorate underwent a number of organisational changes, absorbing and shedding sections over time.

History

The first instance of an organisation which would later become the DMI was the Department of Topography & Statistics, formed by Major Thomas Best Jervis, late of the Bombay Engineer Corps, in 1854 in the early stages of the Crimean War.^[2]

When the War Office was subsumed into the Ministry of Defence (MoD) in 1964, the DMI was absorbed into the Defence Intelligence Staff.^[3]

Sections

During World War I, British secret services were divided into numbered sections named Military Intelligence, department number x, abbreviated to MIx, such as MI1 for information management. The branch, department, section, and sub-section numbers varied through the life of the department, however examples include:^[4]

Name	Activities
MI1	Codes and cyphers. Later merged with other code-breaking agencies and became Government Code and Cypher School (now known as Government Communications Headquarters).
MI2	Information on Middle and Far East, Scandinavia, US, USSR, Central and South America.
MI3	Information on Eastern Europe and the Baltic Provinces (plus USSR and Scandinavia after summer 1941).
MI4	Geographical section—maps (transferred to Military Operations in April 1940).
MI5	Counterintelligence.
MI6	Liaison with Secret Intelligence Service and Foreign Office.
MI7	Press and propaganda (transferred to Ministry of Information in May 1940).
MI8	Signals interception and communications security.
MI9	Escaped British PoW debriefing, escape and evasion (also: enemy PoW interrogation until 1941).
MI10	Technical Intelligence worldwide.
MI11	Military Security.
MI12	Liaison with censorship organisations in Ministry of Information, military censorship.
MI13	Undocumented Intelligence and Special operations
MI14	Germany and German-occupied territories (aerial photography until spring 1943).
MI15	Aerial photography. In the spring of 1943, aerial photography moved to the Air Ministry and MI15 became air defence intelligence.
MI16	Scientific Intelligence (formed 1945).[5]
MI17	Secretariat for Director of Military Intelligence from April 1943.
MI18	Officially used only in fiction. Theorised (with little evidence) to have been responsible for identifying and destroying communist organisations in German occupied territory and attempting slow the Soviet advance in order to ensure the Allies reached Berlin before the Soviets. May also have assisted with the US's efforts to recruit and capturing Axis defectors and prevent them from defecting or being captured by the USSR.
MI19	Enemy prisoner of war interrogation (formed from MI9 in December 1941).
MI (JIS)	Related to Joint Intelligence Staff, a sub-group of the Joint Intelligence Committee. Axis planning staff.
MI L(R)	Russian Liaison.

Two MI section-names remain in common use, MI5 and MI6, in most part due to their use in spy fiction and the news media.

"MI5" is used as the short form name of the Security Service, is included in the agency's logo and web address. MI6 is included as an alias on the Secret Intelligence Service website, though the official abbreviation, SIS, is predominant.

While the monikers remain, the agencies are now responsible to different departments of state, MI5 to the Home Office, and MI6 the Foreign Office.

Directors of Military Intelligence

Directors of Military Intelligence have been:^[6]
Director of Military Intelligence

• 1886–1891 Henry Brackenbury
• 1891–1896 Edward Francis Chapman
• 1896–1901 John Charles Ardagh

Director General of Mobilisation and Military Intelligence

• 1901–1904 William Nicholson

Director of Military Operations

• 1904–1906 James Grierson
• 1906–1910 Spencer Ewart
• 1910–1914 Henry Wilson

Director of Military Operations and Intelligence

• 1914–1916 Charles Callwell

Director of Military Intelligence

• 1916–1918 George Mark Watson Macdonogh
• 1918–1922 William Thwaites

Director of Military Operations and Intelligence

• 1922–1923 William Thwaites
• 1923–1926 John Burnett-Stuart
• 1926–1931 Ronald Charles
• 1931–1934 William Henry Bartholomew
• 1934–1936 John Greer Dill
• 1936–1938 Robert Hadden Haining
• 1938–1939 Henry Royds Pownall

Director of Military Intelligence

• 1939–1940 Frederick Beaumont-Nesbitt
• 1940–1944 Francis Henry Norman Davidson
• 1944–1945 John Alexander Sinclair
• 1945–1946 Freddie de Guingand
• 1946–1948 Gerald Templer
• 1948–1949 Douglas Packard
• 1949–1953 Arthur Shortt
• 1953–1956 Valentine Boucher
• 1956–1959 Cedric Rhys Price
• 1959–1962 Richard Eyre Lloyd
• 1962–1965 Marshall St John Oswald

References

1. "History of the Ministry of Defence". Mod.uk. Retrieved 2009-06-19.
2. The Puppet Masters, John Hughes-Wilson, Cassell, London, 2004
3. Dylan, p. 184
4. "SIS Records — War Office Military Intelligence (MI)Sections in the Second World War". Sis.gov.uk. Retrieved 2009-06-19.
5. Aldrich, Richard James (1998). Espionage, security, and intelligence in Britain, 1945–1970. Manchester University Press. p. 66. ISBN 978-0-7190-4956-9.
6. "Army senior appointments" (PDF). Retrieved 7 November 2015.

Sources

• Dylan, Huw (2014). Defence Intelligence and the Cold War: Britain's Joint Intelligence Bureau 1945–1964. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0199657025.