398 • OFFICIAL HISTORIANS
Casey, later President Ronald Reagan’s director of central intelli-
gence.OFFICIAL HISTORIANS.Most of Britain’s clandestine organiza-
tions have long had a policy of preparing official histories, not for
publication but as internal reference works.GCHQcommissioned a
series of 13 histories of individual sections in 1945, which have been
declassified and released to the National Archive.MI5’s wartime his-
tory, written by Jack Curry, has also been released, and a postwar
history of the Security Service is under preparation by the organiza-
tion’s official historian, Professor Christopher Andrew.
Special Operations Executive’s internal history, written by Pro-
fessor William Mackenzie, was published in 2000, and theHistory of
the Political Warfare Executiveby David Garnett, written in 1946,
was published in 2001. Professor M. R. D. Foot was commissioned
to writeSOE in Francein 1962 and Christopher Woods has com-
pletedSOE in Italy.SOE in GreeceandSOE in Yugoslaviahave yet
to be finished.
TheSecret Intelligence ServicecommissionedNeil Blairin 1967
to write an official account of that organization’s wartime record but
it remains unpublished.
The major official history projectBritish Intelligence in the Sec-
ond World Warwas headed by ProfessorSir Harry Hinsleywith
help from SIS’sCharles Ransom. Published in five volumes, the
first in 1979, the series’ fourth volume,Security and Counterintelli-
gence, was coauthored byAnthony Simkins, and volume 5,Strate-
gic Deception, was written by Sir Michael Howard.
OFFICIAL SECRETS ACTS.The first Official Secrets Act was
passed in 1888 as a result of the acquittal of Charles Marvin, a part-
time employee of the Foreign Office charged under the Larceny Act
of the theft of a government document, details of which were pub-
lished in theGlobe. The Anglo-Russian Treaty was then highly secret
and when the foreign secretary, Lord Salisbury, denounced the news-
paper it responded by disclosing all 11 clauses of the agreement. The
case against the person responsible for the leak, Marvin, collapsed
when he appeared before the Bow Street magistrate and showed that
he had stolen nothing, but had memorized the text in its entirety. The