Top secret MI5 files of First World War go online

Top concealed MI5 files of First World War be on the point online

10 April 2014

The National Archives is formation over 150 top secret MI5 files suitable online for the first time. This forms work of The National Archives' First World War 100 programme of digitised releases and events to impress the centenary.

The files contain a treasure of material about organisations and individuals involved in espionage or inferior to surveillance during the period of the First World War. They are dividend of the wider security service private file series (file reference KV 2) held through The National Archives.

Dr Stephen Twigge, Records Specialist at The National Archives uttered: 'The files in The National Archives' crowd reveal the importance of the negligence service in safeguarding the nation for the time of the First World War. Now that we be in actual possession of made the files available online for the reon that part of our First World War 100 advertisement, people across the globe can be the er of the secret history behind the contest of nations for themselves.'

Highlights within the files embrace:

Edith Cavell (KV 2/822): British cherish, arrested, tried by German military court and executed. The file contains photos of Nurse Cavell's sedate and other martyrs' headstones at the situation of the execution in Belgium. The photos were sent the agency of the French authorities to MI5 to go by on to her mother. There is a note in response from Edith Cavell's chief, thanking them for the photos.

Mata Hari (KV 2/1 and KV 2/2): obvious female spy and entertainer, convicted and executed toward espionage on behalf of Germany. The toothed includes photos from publications and newspapers hither and thither her arrest, conviction and execution including learning and an interrogation report.

Sidney George Reilly (KV 2/827): in the same state-called 'Ace of Spies', who worked for British Intelligence in the Soviet Union subsequent to the revolution. He was lured back into the USSR in 1925, arrested and executed. The toothed reveals that Reilly was a Russian-born Jew who was engaged in vocation activity in New York in 1915, while he came under suspicion from the Russians since being a German spy. The toothed includes a picture of him and his wife, the actress Pepita Bobadilla, in a newspaper clipping on their marriage as well viewed like their marriage certificate and reports of bigamy.