| Jane Archer | |
| Other Names: | Jane Archer |
| Honorific-Suffix: | OBE |
| Occupation: | MI5 Security Service officer Secret Intelligence Service officer |
| Birth Name: | Kathleen Maria Margaret Sissmore |
| Birth Date: | 11 March 1898 |
| Birth Place: | Bengal, British India |
| Death Date: | September 1982 (aged 84) |
| Death Place: | Devon, England |
| Nationality: | British |
| Spouse: | John Oliver Archer |
Kathleen Maria Margaret Sissmore, OBE (1898–1982), was known as Jane Sissmore and then Jane Archer after her marriage in 1939. In 1929 she became the first female officer in Britain's Security Service, MI5, and was still their only woman officer at the time of her dismissal for insubordination in 1940. She had been responsible for investigations into Soviet intelligence and subversion. She then joined the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), but when Kim Philby, later to be exposed as a double agent, became her boss he reduced her investigative work because he feared she might uncover his treachery.
In his memoirs, Philby wrote, "After Guy Liddell, Jane was perhaps the ablest professional intelligence officer ever employed by MI5". Following management changes in MI5, she returned there in 1945 or 1946.
Jane Sissmore, the daughter of John Edmund Angelo Sissmore and Kathleen Maud Forbes-Smith was born in Bengal on 11 March 1898 and moved to London in her early childhood with her parents and elder brother. Sissmore became head girl at Princess Helen's College, Ealing and was recruited to MI5 in 1916 as an eighteen-year-old clerk. She has been described as "one of MI5's most remarkable wartime recruits". In her spare time she trained to be a barrister, becoming the fifth woman to be admitted to Gray's Inn, and, after obtaining first-class exam results, was called to the bar in 1924.[1] The day before World War II broke out Sissmore, still MI5's only female officer, married Wing Commander John Oliver "Joe" Archer, CBE, who became the liaison officer between MI5 and the Royal Air Force. Jane Archer died in Dorset in September 1982.[2]
John Oliver Archer (22 September 1887 – 15 September 1968) was born in Walton-on-the-Naze. In 1916 he married Esther Chilton and they had two children born in 1917 and 1922. Esther died in 1930. Their son, John Chilton Archer, also became a wing commander in the RAF but he was killed in action in 1943.[3]
In the Great War Archer started serving in the ranks of the Seaforth Highlanders with whom he gained the Mons Star. In the Royal Field Artillery he gained his pilot's licence in 1915 and served in the Royal Air Force in South Russia. This continued after the war had ended and in 1919 he was awarded the OBE, followed by the CBE in 1920. Upon taking command in India he was in 1926 promoted to wing commander and he returned to Britain in 1931 to work in the Air Ministry. He retired from military duty in 1935 but continued in a civilian role. In 1940 he was re-commissioned as a group captain to serve throughout the war in the Directorate of Intelligence as liaison officer with MI5.[4]
Appointed to MI5 in 1916 as typist/clerk, by 1929 Sissmore had become Controller of the Registry and of women staff.[5] At the time, and until 1940, Vernon Kell was director of MI5. Sissmore was awarded the MBE in 1923 as an "Administrative Assistant, General Staff, War Office" and in 1929 moved to B Division (investigations and inquiries) where she was in charge of investigating Soviet intelligence and subversion activity. This made her MI5's first woman officer and she was to become what Christopher Andrew has described as a "formidable interrogator".[6]
In 1937 Roger Hollis applied to join MI5 and Kell asked Sissmore to make an informal assessment of him which she did at her tennis club, also involving the then still junior Dick White. The formal interview panel rejected Hollis but he was nevertheless employed on Kell's decision provided Sissmore took responsibility for him. Thus Hollis became Sissmore's assistant (and went on to become MI5 Director-General in 1956).
Jane Archer's 1940 debriefing of Walter Krivitsky was done using the name "Mrs Moore" and it has been described by Christopher Andrew as "the first really professional debriefing of a Soviet Intelligence officer on either side of the Atlantic".Krivitsky had been a Soviet agent in continental Europe who had defected to the West in 1937 and whose revelations in the United States in September 1939 had created a press sensation. In particular from a British point of view he revealed that two Soviet agents were currently working in Britain – the one whose surname he was able to give was quickly identified, tried and convicted of spying. His description of the other agent (cryptonym) was more elusive. Archer suggested Krivitsky should be invited to Britain to be interviewed and he agreed to this.
The debriefing by Archer took four weeks and, to let Krivitsky feel he was highly valued, at the start she was accompanied by Valentine Vivian, head of counter-espionage at SIS, and Jasper Harker, head of B Division and Archer's boss. Then Archer took over the lead role and elicited a great deal of information. Archer's report (a "masterly analysis" according to Nigel West) was 85 pages long and much of it subsequently became incorporated in an MI5 overall review of Soviet intelligence activity.
Krivitsky's disclosures might have made it possible to work out that both Donald Maclean and Kim Philby were Soviet agents but this opportunity was missed. Andrew argues that the clues were too slight to have been usable. Chapman Pincher considers that Archer and Hollis were at fault but largely absolves Archer because she was almost immediately moved to completely different work. Hollis then filled her old post. Archer's debriefing completely transformed the understanding of the top echelons of MI5 about current Soviet espionage activity in Britain – they now realised it was extensive whereas only a year earlier it had wrongly been thought non-existent. In January 1941 one such Soviet agent Anthony Blunt, who was working within MI5, passed Archer's entire report to his Soviet controller.
In October 1940, MI5 moved offices from unlikely temporary premises at Wormwood Scrubs Prison to the even less likely Blenheim Palace. At a top-level meeting at that venue in November Archer criticised Brigadier Harker, recently appointed acting director of MI5, for incompetence. Harker, who had previously been her head of division, then dismissed her. Concerning this Guy Liddell, director of counter-espionage, wrote of Harker "but for his incompetence, the situation would never have arisen" but he also thought that Archer had "unfortunately gone too far". Shortly afterwards David Petrie was appointed as the next director general and Harker was made his deputy – indeed Andrew's view is that Harker's dismissal of Archer probably contributed to Harker being put out to grass. For the rest of the war MI5 employed no other women as officers although several did work at this level of seniority.
Archer straight away took up a post in the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) and was placed in charge of Irish section, within Section V, involved in analysing intelligence about suspect Irish political organisations.[7] Espionage was not involved but an information service was provided to Whitehall of "events of political or public interest in Eire" – SIS had become involved because MI5 had refused to take this on.
Later during the war, in 1944, Archer transferred to Section IX which was concerned with Soviet and communist counter-intelligence with Kim Philby as head of section. It was unfortunate for both Archer and SIS that Philby, later to be unmasked as a Soviet "mole", recognised her considerable abilities. In his memoirs My Silent War Philby wrote: