Has MI5 really emerged from shadows?

WHEN Eliza Manningham-Buller was working as a teacher in London in the 1970s, the story goes that she stumbled out of a cab on the way to meet a blind date and walked straight into a lamp-post.

The object of her desires is said to have mistaken her state of dazed confusion for swooning admiration, with suitably amusing consequences.

That story appeared in a newspaper diary column in May this year, just after it was revealed that Ms Manningham-Buller - the ex-schoolchum of the Princess Royal and former teacher of the TV chef Nigella Lawson - had been selected to take over from Stephen Lander as head of MI5.

But it was more than an amusing diary item. It was also testament to how much MI5 has changed in the years since Stella Rimington took over in 1992 that anything at all should be known about the early love life of one of the most important figures in the British security establishment.

There was a time when only a few people outside that establishment knew the identity of the head of Britain’s internal security service (apart from, cynics might argue, the Russian and US security services, their wives, husbands, staff, an assortment of Cambridge professors and the Hampstead dinner party circuit).

Yet is MI5 really emerging from the shadows?

As Ms Manningham-Buller gears up to begin her new 150,000-a-year job, former MI5 officer David Shayler goes on trial at the Old Bailey accused of breaching the Official Secrets Act.

Shayler, a former MI5 officer, faces six years imprisonment over his claims that MI5 holds files on prominent politicians, including Peter Mandelson and Jack Straw, and that it ignored warnings that might have prevented bombings in London in 1993 and 1994.

He has claimed that his revelations are in the public interest, but the prosecution in the case - which is not expected to begin in earnest until next week because of legal arguments - is persisting in its attempts to have the case heard in camera to prevent further disclosures.

Shayler, who arrived at court yesterday accompanied by his girlfriend, Annie Machon, sat in the well of the court to listen to a familiar round of legal argument.

Middlesborough FC’s most famous fan faces three charges under the Official Secrets Act. They allege he disclosed information, disclosed information obtained by interception of communications and disclosed documents.

Ms Rimington, too, faced criticism when she published her memoirs, entitled Open Secret, with some people questioning whether it was appropriate for someone in such a sensitive position to court publicity.

But despite the inconsistencies, gone are the days when Margaret Thatcher would send her cabinet secretary Robert Armstrong half way round the world to try to prevent the publication of the memoirs of a rogue MI5 agent.

The attempt to suppress Peter Wright’s Spycatcher, which ended in humiliation with Armstrong obliged to admit that he had been "economical with the truth", was an important lesson learned.

Since then, MI5 has edged nervously towards the light and it was the appointment of Ms Rimington ten years ago that marked the most dramatic change.

She was the first head of MI5 whose identity was publicly announced and with that disclosure came other changes: the service was to become more open to public scrutiny and more accountable to parliament.

A few years earlier, the Tory minister Michael Howard had complained that: "so far as official government policy is concerned, the British security and intelligence services, MI5 and MI6, do not exist. Enemy agents are found under gooseberry bushes and intelligence is brought by the storks."

Now, instead of relying on friendly dons to tap up suitable operatives at Oxford and Cambridge, MI5 is openly recruiting for staff.

Buoyed by the success of the BBC’s drama series Spooks, which glamorised the profession in a way designed to appeal to a younger audience immune to the clichd charms of the James Bond movies, it has even launched a website.

Would-be spies are advised that MI5 wants staff of "the highest integrity, resilient, sensitive to others and open to new ideas and working practices". They should also have good interpersonal skills, be good team workers and have qualities of self organisation and the ability to get things done."

Their purpose, the site says, is to protect national security and economic well-being, and to support the law enforcement agencies in preventing and detecting serious crime.

It says: "We do so by collecting and disseminating intelligence; investigating and assessing threats, and working with others to counter them; advising on protection; and providing effective support for those tasks."

But even in the exciting and open new world of MI5, 2002, some things cannot change: "It is important from the outset that you should be discreet about your interest in joining the service," the adverts warn.

Yet some suspect that the new, open, MI5 is only prepared to let people see what it wants them to see.

When Martin Ingram, a former military intelligence soldier who had access to some MI5 reports, tried to blow the whistle on army dirty tricks in Northern Ireland, he and the newspaper which wanted to run the story were hit by a High Court gagging order.

The prosecution was eventually abandoned, but it convinced some people that MI5 was still not prepared to embrace fully the new spirit of openness.

As Professor Hew Strachan, of the Scottish Centre for War Studies at Glasgow University, noted at the time of the publication of Ms Rimington’s memoirs two years ago: "Where there has been greater toughness is Northern Ireland, which is an ongoing political issue, where people involved could become terrorists’ targets. There may be a level of secrecy involved which runs counter to our present notion of public accountability."