A woman's place

From a guide to recruiting spies written by Maxwell Knight in April 1945. Knight was head of the training division of MI5, the British domestic intelligence service. The document was released last year.

There is a very long-standing and ill-founded prejudice against the employment of women as agents, yet it is curious that in the history of espionage and counterespionage a very high percentage of the greatest coups have been brought off by women. It is frequently alleged that women are less discreet than men, that they are ruled by their emotions and not by their brains, that they rely on intuition rather than on reason, and that Sex will play an unsettling and dangerous role in their work. My own experience has been very much to the contrary.

During the present war, we have investigated probably hundreds of cases of “loose talk,” and in by far the greater proportion of these cases the offenders were men. In my estimation this is due to one principal factor: it is that indiscretions are committed from conceit. Taking him generally, Man is a conceited creature, while Woman is a vain creature. Conceit and vanity are not the same: a man's conceit will often lead him to indiscretion in an endeavor to build himself up amongst his fellow man, or even to impress a woman; women, being vain rather than conceited, find their outlet for this form of self-expression in their personal appearance, dress, etc.

It is not entirely true that women are exclusively ruled by their emotions, and it is to be hoped that no officer, when selecting a woman for training as an agent, will choose the type of woman whose makeup is overemotional. On the other hand, the emotional makeup of a properly balanced woman can very often be utilised in investigation; and it is a fact that woman's intuition is a direct result of her rather complex emotions. That a woman's intuition is sometimes amazingly helpful and amazingly correct has been well established, and, given the right guiding hand, this ability can at times save an Intelligence Officer an enormous amount of trouble.

On the subject of Sex, in connection with using women as agents, a great deal of nonsense has been talked and written. The first consideration for choosing any agent, man or woman, should be that the individual in question be a normal, balanced person. This means that, in connection with Sex, they should not be markedly oversexed nor undersexed. If oversexed, it is clear that this will play an overriding part in their mental processes; and if undersexed, they will not be so mentally alert and their other faculties will suffer accordingly. It is difficult to imagine anything more terrifying than for an officer to become landed with a woman-agent who suffers from an overdose of Sex, but as it is to be hoped that no such person would be chosen for the work, there is no need to go further into this point.

It is true, however, that a clever woman who can use her personal attractions wisely has in her armory a very formidable weapon. Closely allied to Sex in a woman is the quality of sympathy, and nothing is easier for a woman than to gain a man's confidence by the showing and expression of a little sympathy. This cannot be done by an undersexed woman. However, it is important to stress that I am no believer in what may be described as Mata Hari methods. I am convinced that more information has been obtained by woman-agents by keeping out of the arms of the man than ever was obtained by sinking too willingly into them, for it is unfortunately the case that if a man is physically but casually interested in a woman, he will very speedily lose his interest in her once his immediate object is attained, whereas if he can come to rely upon the woman more for her qualities of companionship and sympathy than merely for those of physical satisfaction, the enterprise will last the longer.

The aforegoing rather cold-blooded statements must not lead an officer to ignore the possibility of a woman-agent genuinely falling in love with an opponent. There is always an outside risk of this, but I can state quite definitely that in twenty years' experience, I have never known a case of this occurring.

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