MI7 MI7 , the British Military Intelligence Section 7 ( now defunct ) , was a department of the British Directorate of Military Intelligence . Part of the War Office , MI7 was set up to work in the fields of propaganda and censorship . History . In February 1915 a Directorate of Special Intelligence was formed which in turn gave rise to MO7 , a branch of the War Office concerned with press publicity ; it was MO7 which gave the first war correspondents permission to visit the Western Front in May 1915 , ensuring that the military authorities would maintain control over the correspondents ' work . In January 1916 , as part of a reorganisation of the Imperial General Staff , a new Directorate of Military Intelligence was created and MO7 became MI7 . Organisation . Military Intelligence Section 7 ( MI7 ) was organised in a series of sub - sections distinguished by lower - case letters in brackets . The precise duties of these sub - sections varied with time , but may be roughly summarised as follows . Surviving documents . As a branch of military intelligence , the service maintained strict security , and paperwork was routinely destroyed . When MI7 closed , a further large - scale destruction of papers was organised . However , a large number of documents from MI7 ( b ) were preserved by an operative of that branch , Captain James Lloyd , and these were discovered after his death , when his property was being sorted and cleared in 2012 . The archive consisted of two broad categories of articles written between 1917 and 1918 - the " Tales of the VC " some 90 or so stories of individual heroism by men from all over the Empire can be seen on the websites of the National Library of Wales ( ) and on the Europeana 1914 - 18 website ( http : / / www . europeana1914 - 1918 . eu / en ) . Samples of the remaining 60 or so articles can be found in " MI7b - the discovery of a lost propaganda archive from the Great War " which can be downloaded from the internet . In fiction . The name MI7 has often been used in fiction as the title for an intelligence agency or organisation similar to the actual MI5 or MI6 , with the film makers apparently unaware that the organisation actually existed . In the Bond film " Dr . No " ( 1962 ) there are two explicit references to James Bond working for MI6 ; strangely one of these ( where the words are spoken by ' M ' ) has been dubbed to " MI7 " , although the speaker ' s lips clearly say " MI6 " . Rowan Atkinson ' s character of " Sir Johnny English " from the spy spoof films " Johnny English " and " Johnny English Reborn " is an MI7 agent . In St Trinian ' s 2 : The Legend of Fritton ' s Gold , former Head Girl Kelly Jones now works as an M . I . 7 agent . Confusion concerning MI7 today . The repeated suggestion that MI7 continues to operate in the United Kingdom ( with little or no supporting evidence ) is likely to arise from two popular misunderstandings . Firstly , the various references to " MI7 " in fiction ( see above ) , which some people have taken as fact . Secondly , many websites make explicit reference to MI7 ' s continued operation , usually citing it as a secret Government department for investigation of the occult or supernatural . Such websites tend to be the work either of conspiracy theorists or on - line games players who have constructed such elaborate website material that the casual viewer may not always be able to distinguish fact from fiction .