The British Intelligence Services Quiz

Answer: GCCS

GCHQ were previously known as Government Code and Cipher School. GC&CS were responsible for communications and decrypting messages. The most famous example of this was when the British decrypted the ENIGMA Machine messages in the Second World War.

Answer: C

The Codename for the head of MI6 is "C". The name came from Sir Mansfield Cumming who was the first boss of MI6. Allegedly the head of MI6 always writes in green ink and signs any documents with the name C.

Answer: Security Service

MI5 deals with threats to national security. They work closely with many law enforcement agencies such as Special Branch, GCHQ and the police.

Answer: Secret Intelligence Service

MI6 counters threats from abroad. The existence of MI6 was not formally recognised until 1994 though many people assumed that it existed before then.

Answer: Vauxhall Cross

Vauxhall cross has been the HQ of MI6 since 1995. It sits on the embankment of the Thames in London. It was rumored to cost around £130 million to build. Much of the building is below ground to protect the most sensitive areas, while the layout of the building is protected by the Official Secrets Act.

Answer: Government Communications Headquarters

GCHQ has two missions - signals intelligence (sigint) and information assurance. Sigint works to provide the government with information to help stop terrorism and serious crime and information assurance works to protect British infrastructure, making sure critical networks (water, communications, power) are safe from hackers and viruses.

Answer: Special Operations Executive (SOE)

The SOE was not a section of MI6; they were separate organizations although their functions at times overlaped. SOE was set up on Winston Churchill's instructions and was answerable to him. Its primary aim was to train men and women as operatives in enemy occupied Europe and spend information back to London on troop movements etc, and to assist and organize the resistance movements.

The executives in MI6 had no time for SOE and couldn't get it shut down quickly enough when WWII ended.

Answer: 1909

Captain Vernon Kell and Captain Mansfield Cumming jointly established the Secret Service Bureau to counteract German espionage. Kell was in charge of intelligence within the British Isles and Cumming was in charge of foreign intelligence. They later split into MI5 and MI6.

Answer: The Cambridge Five

The Cambridge Five were Kim Philby, Donald Maclean, Guy Burgess and Anthony Blunt, plus one other, though speculation ran for many years as to the identity of the fifth member. Now however it is widely accepted that there were more then five members since three other people have confessed and there are many more suspected.

The group apparently originated from an exclusive society to which they all belonged, known as the Cambridge Apostles.

Answer: 19

They ranged from MI11 which was responsible for codebreaking, MI2 which dealt with Russian and Scandinavian intelligence and MI4 which handled aerial reconnaissance. All these services have been dissolved or absorbed into MI5 and MI6 as it is only these two still in existence (officially).