MI5 to release files on Hess and Mata Hari

by Michael Smith
The Daily Telegraph, Saturday 23 January 1999

M15 will open the contents of its registry of personal files to the public for the first time next week with the release of all the material it holds on Mata Hari, Rudolf Hess and Roger Casement. The move follows the service's decision that it should not hold back personal files that would otherwise be released unless they would cause "substantive distress" to those involved or to their relatives.

MI5 released its First World War files in 1997, but it was forced to keep back the files on Mata Hari, who was executed by the French as a spy, and Casement, hanged by the British for seeking German support for Irish independence. The endorsement of M15's new policy means they can be added to next week's release, the first of two covering the Second World War. It also contains the personal files of the 13 German spies executed in the last war.

In addition, M15 will release a history of its operations from 1908 to 1945 which covers the first Cold War against the Bolsheviks and the rise of Fascism. When it was first written, the history was to be seen by only five people and remained locked in the director general's safe throughout the Fifties and Sixties. It not only covers MI5's battles with the Soviet, German, Italian and Japanese secret services, but also its turf wars with the British secret service M16. Nevertheless, it will be the files on Hess and Mata Hari that are likely to excite the most interest.

Hess, Hitler's deputy, flew to Britain on a bizarre peace mission in May 1941. He was "debriefed" for more than a year by M16 before finally being taken to a hospital for psychiatric treatment. There has been continued speculation that he was lured to Britain by elements within British intelligence which, despite the release of large numbers of Foreign Office files on Hess, has refused to go away.

Although historians will see the new release as an opportunity finally to dispel the conspiracy theories attached to Hess, the public's interest is more likely to focus on the First World War spy Mata Hari. Margarete MacLeod was the former wife of a Dutch army colonel who fell on hard times and, while performing as an exotic dancer in Berlin under the stage name Mata Hari, was recruited to work for German intelligence. Despite her age - she was 40 when she was recruited - Mata Hari attracted a large number of admirers to her dance show during which she slowly stripped completely naked.

After being trained in the use of invisible ink, she was dispatched as a spy but was so ineffective in garnering any useful pillow talk that the Germans wrote her off as "a dud shell". Mata Hari was arrested in London in 1916 and interrogated by MI5, but released. She was arrested again a year later by the French and shot as a spy.

The new guidelines on what personal files should be released state that in no circumstances can references to someone being a prostitute be made public. But other forms of immoral activityare clearly not covered by this directive. The material in Mata Hari's file is believed to include a list of some 20 German officers with whom she admitted having been "on intimate terms".

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