It was established to replace and centralize the operations of the individual intelligence agencies of the Federated Malay States and Straits Settlements under one, Pan-Malayan organization for the entire Peninsular.
[1] It was modeled closely after the MI5, the United Kingdom’s domestic counter-intelligence service, in that it was primarily tasked with information gathering and had no executive powers to detain or arrest.
It was replaced by the two Special Branches of Malaya and Singapore which both fell under the control of the respective Deputy Commissioner of Police in each territory.
[10] Thus, upon the suggestion of the MI5 and the colonial governments in Malaya and Singapore, the MSS was established in September 1939 by Arthur Dickinson, the Inspector General of the Straits Settlements Police.
Each LSO would then produce intelligence reports to be sent to the Chief Police Officers of the concerned states in addition to MSS headquarters in Kuala Lumpur and Singapore.
[22] To share the information had been gathered by LSOs, the MSS began releasing a fortnightly report named the Political Intelligence Journal (PIJ).
These reports largely focused on potential Indonesian expansion and political activities in Malaya, Malay nationalism, Communism, and labor unrest.
All this was much to the concern of Lieutenant Colonel Dalley who wrote to the Governor Sir Edward Gent in March 1947 and stated the MSS was short of thirteen European officers.
The service received heavy criticism from High Commission Sir Edward Gent and Commissioner-General Malcolm MacDonald for not predicting or forewarning the MCP’s violent uprising in June 1948.
[34] In addition, he states that “the information he provided in the MSS’s Political Intelligence Journal was diffuse and spread over a wide range of topics, without necessarily singling out the CPM as the main target.”[34]