David Petrie

Not to be confused with Dave Petrie.

Sir David Petrie
Allegiance	United Kingdom
Service	MI5
Rank	Director General of MI5
Born	9 September 1879 Inveravon, Banffshire
Died	7 August 1961 Sidmouth, Devon
Nationality	British
Occupation	Intelligence officer, Police officer
Alma mater	Aberdeen University

Sir David Petrie, KCMG, CIE, CVO, CBE, KPM (1879–1961) was director general (DG) of MI5, the United Kingdom's internal security service, from 1941 to 1946. He was described as "a rugged and kindly Scot, with...immense physical and moral strength"^[1]

Early life

David Petrie was born on 9 September 1879 at Inveravon, Banffshire, the second surviving son of Thomas Petrie, master millwright, and his wife, Jane Allan. After taking an MA degree at Aberdeen University, Petrie entered the Indian police in December 1900. He served for three years in the Punjab and was then seconded (1904–8) to the North-West Frontier Province as quartermaster and adjutant of the Samana Rifles (Kohat border military police). After acting as assistant to the deputy inspector-general of the Punjab criminal investigation department (1909–11), he was moved to the Department of Criminal Intelligence (DCI), responsible to the Home Department of the government of India, and there became assistant to its assistant director.

In December 1912 bomb attack on the viceroy, Lord Hardinge, in Delhi led to an investigation by Petrie and his investigation took until he February 1914 when he managed to arrest the terrorists. He received the King's Police Medal. The outbreak of the First World War resulted in an upsurge in the activities of militant Indian nationalists, partly because so many British troops were being transferred to the Western Front. In a gun battle with Sikh revolutionaries at Budge-Budge on 29 September 1914 Petrie was wounded, and a subsequent infection meant convalescence back in Britain.

Work in India

After his convalescence Petrie returned to India in 1915; at this stage the DCI was concerned about contact between Indian nationalist rebels and German intelligence agents in neutral Siam. Petrie was attached to the British legation in Bangkok for six months from August 1915 as an intelligence officer. His reports convinced the government of India that it needed its own overseas intelligence network to counter the local intelligence threat and ordered Petrie to set one up. He recruited agents during a tour of Singapore, the Dutch East Indies, the Philippines, Hong Kong, China, and Japan, and directed their operations from August 1916 to November 1919, while ostensibly vice-consul in Shanghai. He was honoured with the CIE (1915), OBE (1918), and CBE (1919).

Petrie was offered the directorship of the DCI in 1919, but turned this down on the grounds of exhaustion. In 1920 he married Edris Naida (d. 1945), daughter of W. Henry Elliston Warrall, a sea captain; there were no children. In 1921-2, he escorted the Duke of Connaught and the Prince of Wales during their visits to India and worked again in the Punjab in 1923 as senior superintendent of police in Lahore. As a member of the royal commission on the public services in India (1923–4), he pondered the rate at which Indian personnel should be admitted to the higher echelons.

In 1924, when Cecil Kaye, the Director of the DCI retired, Petrie this time consented to become director, renamed it as the Intelligence Bureau of the home department of the government of India. It co-ordinated the efforts of provincial police forces to combat terrorism and communal violence and used informers to monitor the activity of the non-co-operation movement. Attempts by M. N. Roy to establish communist cells were comprehensively thwarted, for which Petrie received much credit. Knighted in June 1929, he left the intelligence bureau in 1931 to become first a member and then chairman (1932–6) of the Indian public services commission. He also chaired the Indian Red Cross Society.

On his retirement from Indian service in 1936 Petrie spent some time in East Africa and the Levant. He assisted his old friend and colleague Sir Charles Tegart in reporting on reorganization of the Palestine police (December 1937–January 1938) before settling in Britain. His career appeared to be at an end until he was commissioned into the Intelligence Corps and posted to Cairo in May 1940 as a result of World War II. Six months later he was recalled to London and asked to become director-general of the Security Service (still commonly known as MI5, its designation prior to 1931). Petrie hesitated to accept.

Head of MI5

MI5, responsible for defence against espionage, subversion, and sabotage, was near collapse in 1940, riven by internal feuds and overwhelmed with reports of suspected ‘fifth columnist’ activity and demands for security ‘vetting’. Winston Churchill had dismissed its long-serving chief, Sir Vernon Kell, in June, but his temporary successor, A. W. A. (Jasper) Harker, had made little difference. It was Stewart Menzies, head of the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS or MI6), who now put forward Petrie, but Sir David refused to take charge without examining the situation for himself. His report, dated 13 February 1941, revealed that rapid expansion of MI5 (from thirty officers in 1938 to more than 200) had produced haphazard recruitment, inadequate supervision, confusion in the chain of command, and general demoralization. Having emphasized the seriousness of the problem, he agreed to tackle it—on the understanding that the director-general should be master in his own house. Petrie suspected that previous interference by Lord Swinton, chairman of the security executive, had exacerbated factional struggles. He formally took over on 24 April 1941.

The mere presence of Petrie appeared to improve the atmosphere inside MI5. A powerfully built man, with a steady gaze, square jaw, and military moustache, he was straightforward, firm, and decisive, combining a thorough grasp of practical intelligence work with the skills of an unspectacular but effective manager. His manner with subordinates was rather formal; he called even those closest to him by their surnames, and some sensed an air of Scottish puritanism about him. Very industrious, he briefed himself with great care for meetings, where he generally spoke little but to the point. His writing style could be long-winded and pompous, and he made scant effort to cultivate influential people, yet his reliability helped restore official confidence in his top-secret department.^[1]

Petrie ended wrangling within MI5 over the new Hollerith punched-card filing method by ruling in its favour, and reorganized the divisional structure of the service to allow its B division to concentrate on counter-espionage. Since autumn 1940 Guy Liddell had been successfully developing the ‘Double Cross System’, whereby captured German spies were used to feed false information to Berlin. There was much friction between MI5 and the SIS over access to decrypted signals intelligence from the Radio Security Service, and Petrie grew exasperated. The two secret services seemed competitive rather than complementary in some matters. MI5 did not operate more than 3 miles outside the British empire, while the SIS managed British intelligence and counter-intelligence in foreign countries. Petrie proposed in April 1942 that the SIS counter-intelligence section should be incorporated into B division of MI5, but prolonged negotiations came to nothing, despite his argument that the ideal demarcation between MI5 and the SIS was functional (defensive–offensive) rather than geographical.

In 1944, after the D-day landings surprised the Germans, Petrie claimed that MI5 had totally defeated enemy espionage in Britain. In reality, their handling of the double agents through the "double cross" operation also perperated extensive and highly successful strategic deception programmes. Post-war study of German intelligence (Abwehr) archives confirmed this. In retrospect, however, this triumph had to be set alongside a serious failure: the inadequate surveillance of Soviet spies. Petrie sensed that the Russian espionage which MI5 uncovered was the tip of an iceberg, but the Foreign Office urged restraint and MI5 had itself already been penetrated, by Anthony Blunt).

Petrie was awarded the KCMG in 1945, as well as American, Dutch, and Czechoslovak orders. Though the new Labour government viewed MI5 with some suspicion, he succeeded in resisting any reduction in its powers or remit. Attlee disregarded his recommendation of Liddell as a successor, however, and appointed Percy Sillitoe as director-general when Petrie retired in 1946.

He died in Sidmouth, Devon, on 7 August 1961.

References and sources

1. ^ ^{a b} The Times, Obituary, August 8, 1961

• R. Popplewell, Intelligence and imperial defence: British intelligence and the defence of the Indian empire, 1904–1924, 1995
• F. H. Hinsley and C. A. G. Simkins, British intelligence in the Second World War, 4: Security and counter-intelligence, 1990
• D. Petrie, Communism in India, 1924–27, 1972
• T. Bower, The perfect English spy: Sir Dick White and the secret war, 1935–90, 1995

External links

• Brief details, MI5

Government offices
Preceded by Brigadier 'Jasper' Harker	Director-General of MI5 1941–1946	Succeeded by Sir Percy Sillitoe

Persondata
Name	Petrie, David
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	9 September 1879
Place of birth	Inveravon, Banffshire
Date of death	7 August 1961
Place of death	Sidmouth, Devon