Directorate of Military Intelligence

For the Israeli directorate, see Military Intelligence Directorate (Israel).

"MI16" redirects here. For other uses, see MI16 (disambiguation).

Original MI5 logo. Believed to be pre-1955 or as part of their 1950s to 1970s official insignia^{[citation needed]} It features the Eye of Providence, also known as the all-seeing eye

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 in 1964, the DMI was absorbed into the Defence Intelligence Staff (DIS), with some functions divested elsewhere in the MoD.

Present

Two section titles, MI5 and MI6, remain in colloquial use in the United Kingdom and elsewhere to refer to the Security Service and the Secret Intelligence Service, although neither organisation has been officially titled as such since the late 1920s.

Sections

During the First World War, 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:^[3]

Name	Details
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, USA, USSR, Central and South America.
MI3	Information on Eastern Europe and the Baltic Provinces (plus USSR, Eastern Europe and Scandinavia after Summer 1941).
MI4	Geographical section — maps (transferred to Military Operations in April 1940).
MI5	Liaison with Security Service, following the transfer of Security Service to the Home Office in the 1920s.
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	Not used (except in fiction).
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).[4]
MI17	Secretariat for Director of Military Intelligence from April 1943.
MI18	Not used.
MI19	Enemy PoW interrogation (formed from MI9 in December 1941).
MI (JIS)	Axis planning staff.
MI L(R)	Russian Liaison.

• British military attaché in St Petersburg, Colonel Alfred Knox.

References

1. ^ "History of the Ministry of Defence". Mod.uk. http://www.mod.uk/DefenceInternet/AboutDefence/History/HistoryOfTheMOD/. Retrieved 2009-06-19. 
2. ^ The Puppet Masters, John Hughes-Wilson, Cassell, London, 2004
3. ^ "SIS Records — War Office Military Intelligence (MI)Sections in the Second World War". Sis.gov.uk. http://www.sis.gov.uk/output/Page471.html. Retrieved 2009-06-19. 
4. ^ Aldrich, Richard James (1998). Espionage, security, and intelligence in Britain, 1945-1970. Manchester University Press. p. 66. ISBN 9780719049569.