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>There is no doubt that MI5 was effectively rubbish in the spy vs spy games during the Cold War. This is not even remotely true. At one point they knew of ever
by ciarannolan 6y ago
>There is no doubt that MI5 was effectively rubbish in the spy vs spy games during the Cold War.
This is not even remotely true. At one point they knew of every single KGB spy in the UK.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oleg_Gordievsky https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oleg_Gordievsky
- TallGuyShort 6y agoYou're confusing MI5 with MI6. One is domestically focused, the other is internationally focused.
- ciarannolan 6y agoI don't think I am. Once they had Gordievsky, MI5 could use his knowledge of all KGB activities in the UK to root out spies, and they did.
- secfirstmd 6y agoThey most certainly did not. They didn't know about Norwood amongst others until after Mitrokhin. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melita_Norwood https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melita_Norwood Plus their successes were towards the end of the Cold War. They were effectively neutered by their own arrogance, ego and class blinding foolishness in the Russia sense until the 80s.
- mhh__ 6y agoNorwood retired when Gordievsky was still in Denmark if I have my dates correct, which is probably why he never heard about her (he never made it quite to the top of the tree). "I did what I did, not to make money, but to help prevent the defeat of a new system which had, at great cost, given ordinary people food and fares which they could afford, a good education and a health service" (As with most Soviet spies she lived the lie until she died)
- CrazyStat 6y agoThe quote from the article was > The terrible truth that began to dawn in the 1980s was that MI5 - whose job it was to catch spies that threatened Britain - had never by its own devices caught a spy in its entire history. Which is correct. MI5 only had that information thanks to the work of MI6, not by its own devices.