A FORMER spy, who made his name as a journalist by exposing the memos about 'dodgy' intelligence on Iraq, is making fresh waves with his new book describing the murky history of British secret agents.

Michael Smith is a former member of the Army Intelligence Corps who later become a journalist.

The intelligence expert, once close to the heart of government, now writes from his home in Stoke Row, in the Chilterns near Wallingford.

Mr Smith made his name in 2004 as defence correspondent of the Sunday Times, exposing the Downing Street memos which rocked the Bush and Blair administrations with suggestions that the intelligence that sparked the war in Iraq was ‘fixed’.

His book is based on years of research in public record offices, revealing Boy’s Own stories of invisible ink, hollow teeth and secret documents hidden in a toilet cistern, as well as gory James Bond-style assassinations.

His book, Six: A History of Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service, describes the slow torture of the Russian guru Rasputin.

There are also sword-stick assassinations in the street and a British officer who wakes to find a sack tied to his door containing the remains of one of his agents.

He said: “People have accused me of exaggerating, because the subtitle is Murder and Mayhem, but it’s all there in the facts.”

On the whole, he says British Intelligence did a professional job. “At one stage, we had Trotsky’s secretary and Stalin’s secretary – both were British agents.”

Recounting one of the incidents covered by the book, he says: “In Sweden, a White Russian who opposed the revolution lured Bolshevik couriers to their deaths with the help of his attractive 16-year-old daughter.

“He would chain them up and interrogate them, then garrotte them. There were four or five of these deaths, like those of a serial killer. The Swedish police treated it as a murder investigation and he was hanged.”

As for those Downing Street memos, and the ‘sexing up’ of intelligence dossiers, he argues it was just the latest in a long history of political interference in intelligence.

“It was also used to justify the Allied invasion in northern Russia after the First World War, when we went in with too few troops.,” he says.

“There’s a definite parallel there. And throughout the 1930s and 1940s, politicians would reveal intelligence to make a political point, damaging our ability to gather information.”

In 1929, a document showing German preparations for war was suppressed, he said.

His book ends on the eve of the Second World War. He plans to bring out part two next year, taking the story up to date with the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

He has produced several books about “the real James Bonds”, and is now writing a novel set in Second World War Germany, sparked by research into plots to kill Hitler.

Six: A History of Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service 1909-1939 is published by Dialogue at £19.99.