Apart from MI6, were there any other MI Sections?

Yes. In the First World War there were eventually ten MI (Military Intelligence) sections of the War Office. By the end of the Second World War there were seventeen. During the First World War the actual number and precise functions of the sections varied almost year to year to match the needs of the war effort. Few had anything to do with secret intelligence or covert intelligence operations. The same was true during the Second World War. In both World Wars the forerunners of all three modern British intelligence and security agencies were to be found among the MI sections.

At the outbreak of the First World War, the Foreign Section of the Secret Service Bureau under Commander Mansfield Cumming, whilst still funded by the Foreign Office, was brought under the supervision of the War Office Department of Military Operations. This had assumed overall responsibility for all of the British Army's intelligence collection during wartime. Up to the end of 1915 the Service was listed under the Directorate of Special Operations under MO Section 6. MO6c was Cumming's organisation and MO6b exercised many of the duties that eventually fell to GCHQ. In the same directorate, at least during most of 1915, was MO5, which became the Security Service.

In January 1916 the Directorate of Military Intelligence was created and MO6 retained the same functions with the new title MI1. MO6c became MI1c whilst MO6b became MI1b. MO5 became MI5. Of the other sections in the MI structure, MI9 was most closely associated with MI1c. Although its duties included postal censorship, MI9 was also responsible for the provision of false documentation.

The First World War MI section known as MI6 was one of those that had very little to do with SIS. Instead it dealt with legal affairs, finance and much else that could not be easily fitted into any other MI sections. Although its specific functions changed more between January 1916 and the end of the war than almost any of the other MI sections, at no stage was it engaged in collecting secret intelligence or mounting covert intelligence operations.

With the end of hostilities, the Directorate of Military Operations and Intelligence downsized its intelligence effort considerably although it retained its wartime structure. In 1921, SIS, which had never fitted perfectly into the military organisation, returned to its pre-war place under the auspices of the Foreign Office but was still often referred to as MI1c. Confusingly, there continued to be a small War Office MI1c section with the role of liaising with SIS.

For much of the interwar period the MI structure that had existed in 1918/19 was maintained. But as the world slid inexorably towards war again, the MI structure was both revised and expanded. By the end of the Second World War there were seventeen MI Sections in the War Office (numbered 1-19 - 13 and 18 do not appear to have been used). Once again, most were performing purely military roles in contrast to the secret activities of SIS, the Security Service and what later became GCHQ.

By the late 1930s the War Office MI1c liaison section had become MI6 and increasingly the new title came to be commonly applied to the secret organisation. Of the other sixteen MI sections created by the end of the war, SIS worked most closely, as it had during the First World War, with MI9. But the Second World War MI9 had entirely different responsibilities from its predecessor. It dealt with prisoners of war, escape and evasion. SIS officers staffed part of MI9 and ran its clandestine escape lines in northern Europe. Other sections, such as MI4, were customers for SIS intelligence.

Apart from MI6, were there any other MI Sections?

Further Reading