Indeed fundamentalist leaders were meeting in European cities and attending flight schools both there and in the United States. Given that we now know that most of the 9/11 hijackers were from comfortable backgrounds who scarcely suffered the plagues of poverty and unemployment, not only makes the statement irrelevant, it makes it just plain wrong.

Finally, Dorril is most definitely presenting his material with an agenda. Far from a balanced perspective, he seems to blame the lengthy Cold War squarely on not only the failures of the MI6, but the whole of Western intelligence. "While Soviet policies appeared to be aggressive and to be based on an offensive strategy" writes Dorril, "Stalin was actually engaged in a defensive foreign policy which required the reining in of all the communist parties worldwide in order to retain control of their activities." He cites an instance where Stalin, on the fears of a member of the French Communist Party, refuses to take an interest in France succumbing to US influence, instead choosing to focus Soviet efforts in Eastern Europe, as a lack of evidence of Stalin's global ambitions. As any student of history knows, things are rarely that cut and dry, and any academic who expects to be taken seriously should not allow their interpretation of any event, especially one as huge as the Cold War, be so easily shaped by their political leanings.

For these few shortcomings, if you've got the interest, and indeed, the patience, as well as the ability to recognize Dorril's politically-charged conclusions, MI6 is an excellent resource for information about the names, events and circumstances that shaped the enterprise of Her Majesty's Secret Service. Ian Fleming would be jealous.