Truth Telling and the Defence of the Realm: History and the History of the British Secret Intelligence Service

摘要

The British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) was founded in 1909 as the result of a joint initiative of the Admiralty, the Foreign Office and the War Office. It is, as Keith Jeffery reminds us, 'the oldest continuously surviving foreign intelligence-gathering organisation in the world.'2 From its inception, SIS's culture of secrecy was at once an article of faith and a matter of policy. The experiences of the First World War and its violent aftermath only strengthened this veneration of secrecy.3 In 1924, British Foreign