Sidney Reilly - Career With British Intelligence

Career With British Intelligence

Throughout his life, Sidney Reilly maintained a close yet tempestuous relationship with the British intelligence community. In 1896, Reilly was recruited by Superintendent William Melville for the émigré intelligence network of Scotland Yard's Special Branch. Through his close relationship with Melville, Reilly would be employed as a secret agent for the Secret Service Bureau, which the War Office created in October 1909.

In 1918, Reilly began to work for MI1(c), an early designation for the British Secret Intelligence Service, under Sir Mansfield Smith-Cumming. Reilly was allegedly trained by the latter organization and sent to Moscow in March 1918 to assassinate Vladimir Ilyich Lenin or attempt to overthrow the Bolsheviks. He had to escape after the Cheka unravelled the so-called Lockhart Plot against the Bolshevik government. Reilly told various tales about his espionage deeds and adventurous exploits. According to Reilly, he earned and lost several fortunes in his lifetime and had many wives and mistresses. He claimed that:

• In the Second Boer War he disguised himself as a Russian arms merchant to spy on Dutch weapons shipments to the Boers.
• He procured Persian oil concessions for the British Admiralty, the so-called D'Arcy Affair.
• In the disguise of a timber company owner, he gathered information on the Russian military presence in Port Arthur, Manchuria, and reported to the Kempeitai, the Japanese secret police.
• He spied on the Krupp armaments plant in Germany.
• He volunteered for the Royal Flying Corps in Canada at the start of World War I.
• He seduced the wife of a Russian minister to obtain information about German weapons shipments to Russia.
• During World War I, he donned a German officer's uniform and attended a German Army High Command meeting.
• He saved British diplomats in Brazil.
• He attempted, but failed, to engineer the downfall of the Russian Bolshevik government.

British intelligence adhered to its policy of publicly saying nothing about anything. Yet Reilly's espionage successes did garner indirect recognition.

After a formal recommendation by Sir Mansfield "C" Smith-Cumming, Reilly, who had been commissioned into the Royal Flying Corps in 1917, was awarded the Military Cross on 22 January 1919, "for distinguished services rendered in connection with military operations in the field." Cook claims the medal was bestowed due to Reilly's anti-Bolshevik operations in southern Russia, but espionage historian Richard Deacon states the award was given for Reilly's clandestine activities in World War I. Reilly had allegedly parachuted behind German lines on a number of occasions. Once, disguised as a German officer, he spent three weeks inside the German Empire (Deutsches Reich) gathering information about the next planned thrust against the Allies.

"Reilly was dropped by plane many times behind the German lines; sometimes in Belgium, sometimes in Germany, sometimes disguised as a peasant, sometimes as a German officer or soldier, when he usually carried forged papers to indicate he had been wounded and was on sick-leave from the front. In this way he was able to move throughout Germany with complete freedom."

Deacon asserts in History of the Russian Secret Service that in April 1912, Reilly was an Ochrana agent with the task of befriending and profiling Sir Basil Zaharoff, the international arms salesman and representative of Vickers-Armstrong Munitions Ltd. Another Reilly biographer, Richard B. Spence, claims in Trust No One: The Secret World Of Sidney Reilly that during this assignment Reilly learned "le systeme" from Zaharoff. To Zaharoff, "le systeme" was the strategy of playing all sides against each other in order to maximise financial profit.

Cook counters in Ace of Spies: The True Story of Sidney Reilly (pg. 104) that there is no evidence of any relationship between Reilly and Zaharoff. According to Cook, Reilly was more of a con artist. Reilly claimed to have been employed by the British Secret Intelligence Service since the 1890s, but he did not volunteer his services nor was he accepted as an agent until 15 March 1918, and was effectively fired in 1921 because of his tendency to be a rogue operative. Nevertheless, Reilly had been a renowned operative for Scotland Yard's Special Branch and the Secret Service Bureau, which were the early forerunners of the British intelligence community.

On 18 May 1923, Pepita Bobadilla, an actress and the widow of Haddon Chambers, dramatist, married Sidney Reilly at the Registrar Office in Henrietta Street, Covent Garden, Captain Hill acting as witness.

Author Michael Kettle has claimed in Sidney Reilly: The True Story of the World's Greatest Spy (pg. 121) that despite having been fired by SIS, Reilly possibly was involved with Sir Stewart Graham Menzies in the forging of the The Zinoviev Letter in 1924.