MI6’s Cold War cash to pay for ‘black ops’

MI6 ran a multi-million pound Cold War slush fund to pay for secret operations in the Middle East and North Africa, declassified files have revealed.

Sir Stewart Menzies, the head of the Secret Intelligence Service, used the Whitehall bank account for so-called ‘black ops’ which supported British policy and aims in the troubled regions.

The slush fund paid for plans to carry out assassinations and topple unfriendly regimes. The account, which contained £1.4million – roughly £39million in today’s money – was shrouded from Government ministers, Whitehall mandarins and even MI6’s own finance director.

A document from the National Archives warned the cash would have allowed the powerful spy chief to carry out his own unofficial foreign policy.

Details of the account, held at the exclusive but long- closed Holt’s bank at 22 Whitehall, shine new light on how MI6 worked and on Britain’s role in the Middle East. The paper was uncovered by Dr Rory Cormac of the University of Nottingham.

MI6 archives are closed but the document appears in a file declassified as part of a recent release from the Cabinet Secretary’s secret and personal archive.

MI6 was supposed to be funded by a secret vote of Parliament and under the political control of the Foreign Secretary.

Sir Stewart came clean to officials about the money when he was getting ready to step down from MI6 in 1952. Where the cash came from remains a mystery.