Michael Smith (born 1952) is a British author who specializes in spies and

espionage Espionage, spying, or intelligence gathering, as a subfield of the intelligence field, is the act of obtaining secret or confidential information ( intelligence). A person who commits espionage on a mission-specific contract is called an ...

. He is also a former member of the board of the Bletchley Park Trust. Smith is a former soldier and

journalist A journalist is a person who gathers information in the form of text, audio or pictures, processes it into a newsworthy form and disseminates it to the public. This is called journalism. Roles Journalists can work in broadcast, print, advertis ...

best known for obtaining and publishing the documents collectively known as The Downing Street Memos. The

Downing Street memo The Downing Street memo (or the Downing Street Minutes), sometimes described by critics of the Iraq War as the smoking gun memo, is the note of a 23 July 2002 secret meeting of senior British government, defence and intelligence figures discus ...

itself was an official record of a meeting of the British war cabinet held in July 2002. It revealed the disclosure by Sir

Richard Dearlove Sir Richard Billing Dearlove (born 23 January 1945) is a retired British intelligence officer who was head of the British Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), a role known informally as "C", from 1999 until 6 May 2004. He was head of MI6 during ...

, then the head of the British

Secret Intelligence Service The Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), commonly known as MI6 (MI numbers, Military Intelligence, Section 6), is the foreign intelligence service of the United Kingdom, tasked mainly with the covert overseas collection and analysis of Human i ...

(

MI6 The Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), commonly known as MI6 ( Military Intelligence, Section 6), is the foreign intelligence service of the United Kingdom, tasked mainly with the covert overseas collection and analysis of human intelligenc ...

), that the intelligence to justify an invasion was being "fixed around the policy". The

was in fact just one of eight documents obtained by Smith which showed that President

George W. Bush George Walker Bush (born July 6, 1946) is an American politician and businessman who was the 43rd president of the United States from 2001 to 2009. A member of the Bush family and the Republican Party (United States), Republican Party, he i ...

and Prime Minister

Tony Blair Sir Anthony Charles Lynton Blair (born 6 May 1953) is a British politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1997 to 2007 and Leader of the Labour Party (UK), Leader of the Labour Party from 1994 to 2007. He was Leader ...

agreed in April 2002 to invade

Iraq Iraq, officially the Republic of Iraq, is a country in West Asia. It is bordered by Saudi Arabia to Iraq–Saudi Arabia border, the south, Turkey to Iraq–Turkey border, the north, Iran to Iran–Iraq border, the east, the Persian Gulf and ...

; that they planned to "wrongfoot"

Saddam Hussein Saddam Hussein (28 April 1937 – 30 December 2006) was an Iraqi politician and revolutionary who served as the fifth president of Iraq from 1979 until Saddam Hussein statue destruction, his overthrow in 2003 during the 2003 invasion of Ira ...

to give them the excuse to do so; and that they used flights over the southern no-fly zone of Iraq to begin the air war against

in May 2002, with "spikes of activity" which they hoped might provoke Iraq into reacting and giving them the excuse to go to war. Smith won a British Press Award in 2006 for Specialist Writer of the Year. The award was for his work in revealing the

. Smith obtained the first six of the eight Downing Street Memos while working for the ''

Daily Telegraph ''The Daily Telegraph'', known online and elsewhere as ''The Telegraph'', is a British daily broadsheet conservative newspaper published in London by Telegraph Media Group and distributed in the United Kingdom and internationally. It was foun ...

''. The second set of two documents, including the

itself, were obtained while he was working for the ''

Sunday Times ''The Sunday Times'' is a British Sunday newspaper whose circulation makes it the largest in Britain's quality press market category. It was founded in 1821 as ''The New Observer''. It is published by Times Newspapers Ltd, a subsidiary of N ...

''. He has also worked for the

BBC The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is a British public service broadcaster headquartered at Broadcasting House in London, England. Originally established in 1922 as the British Broadcasting Company, it evolved into its current sta ...

and contributed to

The Raw Story ''Raw Story'' (also stylized as ''RawStory'') is an American progressive news website. Its reporting is a combination of syndicated articles, aggregated material, and its own independent reporting. With its focus on "news that's downplayed by m ...

and ''

New Statesman ''The New Statesman'' (known from 1931 to 1964 as the ''New Statesman and Nation'') is a British political and cultural news magazine published in London. Founded as a weekly review of politics and literature on 12 April 1913, it was at first c ...

''. He is the author of a number of books, including the UK Number 1 bestseller ''Station X: The Codebreakers of Bletchley Park'' (1998). This was subsequently televised and updated in 2011 as ''The Secrets of Station X: How the Bletchley Park Codebreakers Helped Win the War''. Other books by Smith include ''Killer Elite: The Inside Story of America's Most Secret Special Operations Team'' (2006), which was updated in May 2011 to include the first accurate account of the killing of

Osama bin Laden Osama bin Laden (10 March 19572 May 2011) was a militant leader who was the founder and first general emir of al-Qaeda. Ideologically a pan-Islamist, Bin Laden participated in the Afghan ''mujahideen'' against the Soviet Union, and support ...

. Smith's book ''Foley: The Spy Who Saved 10,000 Jews'' (1999) led to Frank Foley, the

head of station in

Berlin Berlin ( ; ) is the Capital of Germany, capital and largest city of Germany, by both area and List of cities in Germany by population, population. With 3.7 million inhabitants, it has the List of cities in the European Union by population withi ...

during the 1930s being made

Righteous Among the Nations Righteous Among the Nations ( ) is a title used by Yad Vashem to describe people who, for various reasons, made an effort to assist victims, mostly Jews, who were being persecuted and exterminated by Nazi Germany, Fascist Romania, Fascist Italy, ...

, the highest award the Jewish state can award to a

gentile ''Gentile'' () is a word that today usually means someone who is not Jewish. Other groups that claim Israelite heritage, notably Mormons, have historically used the term ''gentile'' to describe outsiders. More rarely, the term is used as a synony ...

. According to Jewish aid workers, Foley saved "tens of thousands" of Jews from the

Holocaust The Holocaust (), known in Hebrew language, Hebrew as the (), was the genocide of History of the Jews in Europe, European Jews during World War II. From 1941 to 1945, Nazi Germany and Collaboration with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy ...

, giving them visas and passports to which they were not entitled, going into the concentration camps to get Jews out, and in the period after

Kristallnacht ( ) or the Night of Broken Glass, also called the November pogrom(s) (, ), was a pogrom against Jews carried out by the Nazi Party's (SA) and (SS) paramilitary forces along with some participation from the Hitler Youth and German civilia ...

in November 1938, hiding five or six Jews in his home every night. ''Foley: The Spy Who Saved 10,000 Jews'' was republished by Biteback as a Dialogue Espionage Classic in 2016. Before becoming a journalist, Smith was a member of the

British Army The British Army is the principal Army, land warfare force of the United Kingdom. the British Army comprises 73,847 regular full-time personnel, 4,127 Brigade of Gurkhas, Gurkhas, 25,742 Army Reserve (United Kingdom), volunteer reserve perso ...

, serving for nine years in the Intelligence Corps. After leaving the Army, he worked as a journalist, initially for

BBC Monitoring BBC Monitoring (BBCM) is a division of the British Broadcasting Corporation which monitors, and reports on, mass media worldwide using open-source intelligence. Based at New Broadcasting House, the BBC's headquarters in central London, it has o ...

. He then joined the ''Daily Telegraph'' where he worked as an assistant foreign editor, then a news reporter and finally Defence Correspondent. In 2005, he joined the ''Sunday Times'' where he specialised in defence and intelligence issues. Smith left the ''Sunday Times'' in 2012 to become a full-time author.About Michael Smith. Retrieved 21 November 2016.
Smith has written 16 works of non-fiction. His first novel ''Ritter: No Man Dies Twice'', a detective/spy thriller set in

Nazi Germany Nazi Germany, officially known as the German Reich and later the Greater German Reich, was the German Reich, German state between 1933 and 1945, when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party controlled the country, transforming it into a Totalit ...

during the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

was published in February 2022.

Books by Michael Smith

*Elphick, Peter and Smith, Michael : ''Odd Man Out: The Story of the Singapore Traitor'' (1993, Hodder and Stoughton) *Smith, Michael : ''New Cloak, Old Dagger: How Britain’s Spies Came in from the Cold'' (1996, Gollancz) *Smith, Michael : ''Station X'' (1998, Boxtree) *Smith, Michael : ''Foley: The Spy Who Saved 10,000 Jews'' (1999, Hodder and Stoughton) *Smith, Michael : ''The Spying Game'' (2003, Politicos) *Smith, Michael : ''Killer Elite: The Inside Story of America’s Most Secret Special Operations Team'' (2007, St Martin's Press) *Smith, Michael : ''Six: A History of Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service'' (2010, Biteback) *Smith, Michael : ''The Emperor's Codes'' (2010, Biteback) *Erskine, Ralph and Smith, Michael (editors): ''The Bletchley Park Codebreakers'' (2011, Biteback) *Smith, Michael : ''Britain’s Secret War'' (2011, Andre Deutsch) *Smith, Michael : ''The Secrets of Station X'' (2011, Biteback) *Smith, Michael : ''Bletchley Park: The Codebreakers of Station X'' (2013, Shire) *Smith, Michael (editor): ''The Secret Agent’s Bedside Reader'' (2014, Biteback) *Smith, Michael : ''The Debs of Bletchley Park and Other Stories'' (2015, Aurum) *Smith, Michael : ''The Anatomy of a Spy'' (2020, Arcade) *Smith, Michael : ''Ritter: No Man Dies Twice'' (2022, Safe House) *Smith, Michael : ''The Real Special Relationship'' (2023, Arcade)

Notes

{{DEFAULTSORT:Smith, Michael 1952 births Living people British male journalists British military writers The Sunday Times people 20th-century British journalists 21st-century British writers 20th-century British male writers