The revelations come in the first authorised history of the SIS, MI6: The History of the Secret Intelligence Service 1909-1949, by Professor Keith Jeffery. The book was published on Tuesday.

Operation Embarrass? You bet: Britain's secret war on the Jews | The Jewish Chronicle
In late 1946, the government asked the SIS to develop "proposals for action to deter ships' masters and crews from engaging in illegal Jewish immigration and traffic". Around £13,000 was spent on the operation.

A SIS report stated: "Action of the nature contemplated is, in fact, a form of intimidation, and intimidation is only likely to be effective if some members of the group of people to be intimidated actually suffer unpleasant consequences."

Options put forward for the campaign included the use of sabotage devices, tampering with a ship's fresh water supplies and crew's food, or setting fire to ships in port.

SIS chief Sir Stewart Menzies suggested blaming the action on a specially-created Arab organisation. The agents were instructed to devise failsafe reasons for their presence abroad and were told that if rumbled, "they were under no circumstances to admit their connection with the government".

Prof Jeffery said: "The book really does show the James Bond side of it. Embarrass is closer to the perception of the spy image than other stories in the book."

In summer 1947 and early 1948, the plot led to attacks on five ships in Italian ports. The British made it a priority that no one was on board in order to avoid casualties. One ship was a a "total loss" and two others were damaged.

The British set up a notional organisation - Defenders of Arab Palestine - which claimed responsibility for the work against Jewish immigration.

Operation Embarrass ended in April, before the UK pullout from Palestine the following month. But Prof Jeffery concludes that the campaign had little or no effect. One SIS officer wrote that the failure to carry out a planned operation to disable the President Warfield ship in the summer of 1947 had been the biggest missed opportunity.

Instead, the renamed Exodus set sail with 4,500 Jewish refugees, leading to one of the most infamous episodes in the battle to create Israel. British forces seized the Exodus off the coast of Palestine. Three people died and the immigrants aboard were forcibly returned
to Europe.

"The cost," said one SIS officer, "both direct and indirect to the government, must have been enormous. All of this could have been spared if the Foreign Office had permitted the SIS to take the appropriate action against the President Warfield."

Prof Jeffery said: "After the disaster with the Exodus, the SIS guys pretty much said 'we told you so'. They could have blown its rudder off and averted the crisis.

"This was a fantastic job for me. I was like a child in a sweetshop. But I also feel this is part of the accountability process. British taxpayers funded these operations. You might say after 60 years what difference does it make, but you can tell it does. People will look at this and put the record straight.."

The Times, Saturday September 18, 2010
During the summer of 1947 and early the following year attacks were made on five ships in Itallian ports...

...In one case, a mine was recovered by divers and "its English origin established" but the harbour master thought that this was "not surprising as the Arabs would of course be using british stores"...

...In order to divert suspicion from the British, a notional organisation called Defenders of Arab Palestine claimed responsibility for work against Jewish immigration. Letters prepared in Broadway on typewriters of appropriate nationality and posted in Paris were sent to the British Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary, among other prominent personalities, and major newspapers, implicating Soviet Russia in the immigration.

Additional sources:
New book documents early years of MI6 - Yahoo! News
news.yahoo.com...

LONDON (AFP) – The UK's foreign intelligence agency MI6 published the first authorised history of its early years Tuesday, revealing the exploits of both real-life James Bonds and its worst ever traitor.

"MI6" was written by Keith Jeffrey, a history professor at Queen's University in Belfast who was granted access to unseen archives from the shadowy agency's creation in 1909 until the start of the Cold War in 1949.
...

Jeffrey says talk of agents having a "licence to kill" was, however, a myth, with the MI6 archives showing that the agency was involved in the illegal killings of only two people in the period the book covers.

But its agents did bomb five ships as part of a "Operation Embarrass", a campaign to discourage post-war Jewish refugees from sailing to then British-controlled Palestine.

I've posted this as another hint to those who trust implicitly in their elected officials and their government organisations. They cannot be trusted when out of sight so remember that everytime they refuse to allow public accountability (9/11, 7/7, Gitmo, etc.)

As Prof Jeffery said: "...You might say after 60 years what difference does it make, but you can tell it does."