James Edward Edmonds - Military Intelligence and MI5

Military Intelligence and MI5

Edmonds passed the two-year staff course at the top of his class. He was understandably marked for work in military intelligence and was posted to the War Office Intelligence Department in 1899. He served as an Intelligence Officer in South Africa from 1901 – 1904. In 1904 he was appointed to the Far Eastern desk of the War Office Intelligence Department following the removal of an Officer found to have made basic mistakes in the role. He performed well, rising to be the head of the now renamed Military Operations Directorate 5 (MO5) in 1907, by which time he was a highly experienced intelligence officer.

Edmonds was arguably the leading army intellectual of his day, as a child living in France he had witnessed the Franco-Prussian War and had studied the German Army ever since. He developed significant German links and was critical in convincing Ministers of the credible German spy threat in the build up to World War I. He is widely credited as being a significant pioneer of intelligence in the departments that developed into MI5, the British Security Service.

Edmonds was a key supporter of the appointment of Captain Vernon Kell to the Secret Service Bureaux, the direct predecessor of MI5 of which he became the first head.