MI6 and the Machinery of Spying is a study of the organisational evolution of Britain's Secret Intelligence Service (SIS aka MI6). It traces the development of the agency's internal structure from its inception until the end of the Cold War. The analysis examines how SIS' management structure has been driven by its operational environment on the one hand and its position within the machinery of British central government on the other. Particularly close attention is paid to the agency's institutional links to its consumers in Whitehall and Downing Street, as well as to the causes and consequences of its operational organisation and provisions for counter-espionage and security. The book presents a detailed response to assertions that the SIS was historically chronically mismanaged and badly organised, and to claims that it is unaccountable to political and public oversight. MI6 and the Machinery of Spying provides a critical evaluation of where SIS' organisation actually contributed both to its failures and its successes.
It also argues that where SIS activities have resulted in public disasters and scandals the reason has usually been less its lack of accountability and control than the very high degree of control and direction exercised by opportunistic politicians and the senior Civil Servants.