Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) and the Butler Report: Fallout, Reform and Legacy

The Butler report had significant implications for Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service (commonly known as MI6). Though much has been said about the report’s findings and the follow-up work of the Butler Implementation Group, much less has been said on the impact of the Butler report on the service internally and the wider effect it had on SIS’s ‘openness’ and public engagement in the long term. Butler also saw changes to the service’s structure, collection and agent verification processes. The article provides the first significant study of Butler and SIS, arguing that the report was an important catalyst for change in the service’s history. Nevertheless, change took considerable time with the process of reform starting before Butler’s conclusions were reported in July 2004 and ending long afterwards with a return to what the service had done well previously. The article argues that set against the wider context of SIS’s history, some of the reforms implemented were not radical and were, in effect, a return to ‘back to basics’. The article also argues that Butler was an important contributory factor to broader efforts to build a public image for the service - a process that is ongoing today.