MI5 releases new batch of files

MI5 releases new batch of files

04 April

The 26th release of files from the Security Service MI5 reveals secret plans including assassination plots and use of poisons after the Second World War. This release contains 180 files, bringing the total of Security Service files at The National Archives to 4,725.

Many of the files are available at DocumentsOnline. You can download them for free for one month.

Listen to Professor Christopher Andrew's podcast about the latest release.

Possible terrorist attempts to assassinate Ernest Bevin, Foreign Secretary (KV2/3428) 1945-1946

This file details possible terrorist attempts to assassinate Ernest Bevin, Foreign Secretary at the time, including a threat from terrorist groups operating outside of Palestine. It suggests the plot to assassinate Bevin may have been in response to his speech at the Labour Party conference in Bournemouth which had caused 'considerable bitterness amongst the Jewish community in Palestine'. The file also indicates that the terrorists planned to target other leading British political figures, including Winston Churchill.

View file KV2/3428.

Vladimir Mikhailovich Petrov/Evdokia Alexeyevna Petrova (KV2/3439 - 3440) 1946-1955

Almost a third of the files in this release deal with the high-profile defection of Soviet agents Vladimir Petrov and his wife Evdokia to Australia in 1954. This famous Cold War incident was a turning point in Australian history and provided MI5 with the first definitive information on the whereabouts of the missing diplomats, and members of the Cambridge spy ring, Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean.

Files KV2/3439 and KV2/3440.

Use of poisons by the German Sabotage Service (KV3/414) 1944-1945

Interrogation of captured German sabotage agents revealed that they had been trained in the use of poisons for various purposes, including suicide, assassination, poisoning water wells and contaminating food. German plans to use poison as a post-war weapon included the addition of poisons to alcoholic beverages, the injection of poison into sausages, arsenic in cake and bread, poisoned Nescafe, sugar, aspirin, German cigarettes and chocolate. In particular, the file discusses the use of poisonous cigarette lighters that killed the smoker, poisonous powders and brown pellets which when placed in ashtrays vaporised with the heat of cigar or cigarette ash, killing anyone nearby.

File KV3/414 .