George Kennedy Young

Who was George Kennedy Young?

George Kennedy Young, CB, MBE, M.A. was a deputy director of MI6, and later involved in British right-wing politics. He was also a merchant banker.

George K.Young attended St. Andrews University, University of Burgundy, University of Giessen, and Yale University. He was commissioned as an officer in the King's Own Scottish Borderers regiment but later transferred to British Intelligence, where he became an expert in the methods of the Italian Fascist police system and those of the German secret services.

Before World War II he was on the editorial staff of the Glasgow Herald, and after the war he joined the Foreign Office, serving in diplomatic posts in Vienna, the Middle East, and, from 1953, in Whitehall — where he specialised in economic and defence intelligence work. His dissatisfaction with the Macmillan government led him to resign as Deputy of MI6 in 1961 and enter merchant banking.

In his book Inside Intelligence, Anthony Cavendish, a friend and colleague of Young, includes a seventeen-page summary of Young's career. According to Cavendish, Young's intelligence career started in World War II.