Juliet Armstrong is an 18-year-old file clerk in 1940 when fate, in the form of the British Security Service otherwise known as MI5, plucks her out of her routine and throws her into the dodgy world of "
counter-subversion." Together with a couple of recording engineers, Juliet spends days crouched over listening devices in a London flat, eavesdropping on conversations that her boss, Godfrey Toby, conducts next door with his visitors, all of whom are "fifth columnists," or British Nazi sympathizers.
Ramakrishna accordingly writes that security officials, at the direction of Singaporean, Malayan, and British leaders, appropriately launched Operation Coldstore in 1963--a
counter-subversion raid that detained without the need for trials more than one hundred subversives.
Further, Little "Red Scares" explores the many faces of
counter-subversion between 1921 and 1946.
Anyone who insists that what happened in Canada reflected something other than a reasoned response to specific conditions, suggesting "subservience to Moscow," is guilty of following the same path as the Canadian security state, its
counter-subversion squads, and its undercover agents (324).
British agents were skeptical of American claims that the star was a communist threat, with John Marriott, the head of MI5's
counter-subversion branch, calling the US allegations "unreliable."
John Marriott, then head of MI5's
counter-subversion branch, was not convinced that the absence of a birth certificate was an issue of concern for the intelligence services.
That's fine, but Stella Rimington, who joined MI5's
counter-subversion branch in 1983, could still claim it was right to monitor Arthur Scargill during the 1984-5 miners' strike, because he was trying 'to bring down the government', which is fundamentally different.
Dame Stella Rimington moved from
counter-subversion to become director of counter-espionage in 1986.
She moved with the
counter-subversion department to MI5.
Under Communist China's
counter-subversion law, public criticism of the regime is an offense punishable by life imprisonment.