INSIDE THE COVERT WORLD OF

HER MAJESTY'S
SECRET INTELLIGENCE SERVICE

STEPHEN DORRIL
"In-depth research for the serious student and entertainment for the well-informed spy buff."
—Publishers Weekly (starred)
 Digitized by the Internet Archive
in 2014

https://archive.org/details/mi6insidecovertw00dorr
Illlllillll
Also by Stephen Dorril
The Silent Conspiracy: The Intelligence Services in the 1990s
zvith Robin Ramsay
Smear!: Wilson and the Secret State
with Anthony Summers
Honey trap: The Secret Worlds of Stephen Ward
Inside the Covert World of Her Majesty's
Secret Intelligence Service

Stephen Dorril

A Touchstone Book
Published by Simon & Schuster
NEW YORK LONDON TORONTO SYDNEY SINGAPORE
TOUCHSTONE
Rockefeller Center
1230 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10020

Copyright © 2000 by Stephen Dorril

All rights reserved,
including the right of reproduction
in whole or in part in any form.

First Touchstone Edition 2002

Originally published in Great Britain in 2000 by Fourth Estate Limited

TOUCHSTONE and colophon are trademarks

of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

For information about special discounts for bulk purchases,

please contact Simon & Schuster Special Sales:
1-800-456-6798 or [email protected]

Manufactured in the United States of America

10 987654321
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

ISBN 0-7432-0379-8
0-7432-1778-0 (Pbk)
CONTENTS
List of Acronyms vii

Preface xiii

PART ONE: FROM HOT TO COLD WAR 1

1 The Second World War 7

2 Reorganisation: Special Operations 18

3 Containment 35

4 'Uncertain Allies' 49

5 The World-View 58

6 Propaganda 71

7 Roll-Back 81

PART TWO: THE FRONT LINE 91

8 Germany and the 3 x 5s 95

9 Austria: The Shooting Gallery 118

10 Rockets, Bombs and Deception 133

PART THREE: THE SOVIET EMPIRE 161

11 Intermarium 165

12 The Promethean League 185

13 Belorussia 215

14 The Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations 223

15 Poland 249
VI CONTENTS

16 The Baltic States 268

PART FOUR: THE BALKANS AND RUSSIA 301

17 Greece and the Creation of the Para-State 305

18 Yugoslavia: The Golden Priest, Stolen Treasure and the Crusaders 328

19 The Musketeers in Albania 355

20 The NTS and 'Young Russians' 404

21 The British and Scottish Leagues for European Freedom 425

PART FIVE: THE CHANGE 451

22 The European Movement and 'the Battle for Picasso's Mind' 455

23 Rolling Back 'Roll-Back' 483

24 The Technical Fix 518

PART SIX: THE MIDDLE EAST 529

25 'Unbroken Dreams' 533

26 Palestine 543

27 Cyprus 550

28 Iran: 'Unequal Dreams' 558

29 Suez: Assassins and Thuggery 600

30 The Macmillan Doctrine 652

31 The Musketeers in Yemen 677

PART SEVEN: MODERN TIMES 701

32 The Secret Intelligence Service 703

33 The Last of the Colonial Wars 729

34 The Slow Death of the Cold War 746

35 The New Agenda 758

36 On Her Majesty's Secret Service 783

NOTES 801

INDEX 863
LIST OF ACRONYMS
ABN Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations
ACC Allied ControlCommission
ACEN Assembly of Captive European Nations
AGUE American Committee for a United Europe
AIOC Anglo-Iranian Oil Company
AIS Anglo-Greek Information Service
AK Armia Krajowa - Polish Home Army
AKEL CypriotCommunist Party
AMG Government
Allied Military
ANA Arab News Agency
ANC African National Congress
ASIS Australian Secret Intelligence Service
BAOR British Army of the Rhine
BCC Belorussian Central Council /British Control Commission
BCR Belorussian Central Representation
BCSO British Central Scientific Office
BFM British Free Movement
BK Balli Kombetar - National Front (Albania)
BLEF British League for European Freedom
BLO British Liaison Officer
BMEO British Middle East Office
BND Bundesnachrichtendienst
BNR Belorussian National Republic
BoT Board of Trade
BSC British Security Co-ordination
BUF British Union of Fascists
BW Biological weapons
CBDE Chemical Biological Defence Establishment
CCF Congress for Cultural Freedom
VI II 1 1ST OF ACRONYMS

CFEU Conseil Francais

5
pour
1
TEurope Unie
J:

CI Counter-intelligence
CIA Central Intelligence Agency
CIB Central Information Bureau
CIC Counter-intelligence Corps
CIG Central Intelligence Group
CIO Czech Intelligence Office /Congress of Industrial
Organisations
CIOS Combined Intelligence Objectives Sub-Committee
CO Constitutional Organisation (Greece)
COCOM Co-ordinating Committee
COI Co-ordinator of Information
COSEC Co-ordinating Secretariat of National Union of Students
CPA Communist Party of Albania
CPGB Communist Party of Great Britain
CPI Central Personality Index
CR Central Registry
CROWCASS Central Registry of War Crimes and Security Suspects
CRPO Combined Research and Planning Organisation
CRW Counter-revolutionary warfare
CSDIC Combined Services Detailed Intelligence Centre
CW Chemical weapons
DAD Department of the Army Detachment
DCIS Directorate of Counter-intelligenceand Security
DFP Directorate ofForward Plans
DIS Defence Intelligence Staff (Norway)
DP Displaced Person
DSZ Delegation of Armed Forces (Poland)
EAM/ELAS National Liberation Front /National Liberation Popular
Army (Greece)
ECA European Co-operation Administration
EDC European Defence Community
EDES National Democratic Hellenic League
EEC European Economic Community
ELD Union of Popular Democracy (Greece)
ELEC European League for Economic Co-operation
ELINT Electronic intelligence
EM European Movement
EOKA National Organisation of Cypriot Combatants
ERP European Recovery Programme
EUF European Union of Federalists
EVW European Voluntary Workers
EYC European Youth Campaign
 LIST OF ACRONYMS IX

FANY FirstAid Nursing Yeomanry

FBI Federal Bureau of Investigation
FHO Fremde Heere Ost - Foreign Armies East
FIAT Field Information Agency (Technical)
FOIA Freedom of Information Act
FLOSY Front for the Liberation of South Yemen
FYSA Fund for Youth and Student Affairs (US)
GC&CS Government Code and Cipher School
GCHQ Government Communications Headquarters
GIS German Intelligence Service
GNA Greek National Army
GRU Soviet Military Intelligence
HOP Croatian Liberation Movement
IAEA International Atomic Energy Agency
ICFTUE International Centre of Free Trade Unions in Exile
ICR International Red Cross
IDC Imperial Defence College
IDEA Sacred Bond of Greek Officers
IGCR Inter-Governmental Committee on Refugees
ILP Independent Labour Party
INA Iraqi National Accord
IPG Imperial Policy Group
IRD Information Research Department
IRO International Refugee Organisation
ISB Information Services Branch
ISC International Student Conference /Intelligence and Security
Co-ordinator/ Committee
ISLD Inter-Services Liaison Department
ISOS Intelligence Section, Oliver Strachey
lUS International Union of Students
lUSY International Union of Socialist Youth
JIB Joint Intelligence Bureau
JIC Joint Intelligence Committee
JICMEU Joint International Committee of the Movement for
European Unity
JIO Joint Intelligence Organisation
JPS Joint Planning Staff
JSTIC Joint Scientific and Technical Intelligence Committee
KGB Soviet Ministry of State Security
KKE Greek Communist Party
KONR Committee for the Liberation of the Peoples of Russia
KYP Greek Central Intelligence Service
LAF Lithuanian Activist Front
X LIST OF ACRONYMS

LCC Latvian Central Council

LCS London Controlling Section
LFA Lithuanian Freedom Army
LLY Labour League of Youth
LNC Movement of National Liberation (Albania)
MEC Middle East Command
MECAS Middle East Centre for Arab Studies
MFV Motor Fishing Vessel
ME DO Middle East Defence Organisation
ME ID Middle East Information Department
MGB Soviet Ministry of State Security
MI(R) Military Intelligence (Research)
MLSF Movement of Lithuania's Struggle for Freedom
MoD Ministry of Defence
MVD Ministry of Internal Affairs (USSR)
NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organisation
NCFE National Committee for a Free Europe (US)
NCIS National Criminal Intelligence Service
NDFLO-AG National Democratic Front for the Liberation of Oman and
the Arab Gulf
NDH State of Croatia
NEA Near East Association
NEABS Near East Broadcasting Station
NEI Nouvelles Equipes Internationales
NID Naval Intelligence Division /Northern Information
Department
NKVD People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (USSR)
NLF National Liberation Front (Aden)
NRC National Research Council
NSA National Security Agency /National Student Association
(US)
NSC National Security Council
NTS National Labour Council (Russia)
NUS National Union of Students
OAU Organisation of African Unity
OB Order of battle
OCB Operation Co-ordination Board (US)
ODESSA Organisation der ehemaligen SS-Angehorigen
OEEC Organisation for European Economic Co-operation
OGPU Unified State Political Directorate (USSR)
OIS Omani Intelligence Service
OKW Oberkommando der Wehrmacht
OMi Nazi Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories
 LIST OF ACRONYMS XI

ON7A Rnrpp^n vJl. PpodIp'^

Lll CCl Ll of Prntprtinn
X vZWU'Xt- J X XwLt;\wLXWXl
^^
I Yup^oqI^^via^
X t^l^^Xd V XCl
Li. /

OPC Office of Policy Co-ordination

ORD Oman Research Department
OSA Offirial Sprrpt*; Art
oso Office of Special Operations
OSS Office of Strategic Services
OUN Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists
PAP Peoole's Action Partv fSin^aDore)
PDO Petroleum Development (Oman)
PEU Pan-European Union
PFLO-AG PoDiilar Front for tVip T iV)pr^^tion of tlip OminipH Ar?iV) Cliilf

flater
lXd.l,V-X PoDular
X Vyii^l^XCXX Front
X X\_/XIC X\_/X kX LV- Liberation
for the — V-X LXwX of J (Xl.^ C4. L V-'X Oman
X^^XXLCAXL and
CIX LVX the
CX LV

Arab Gulf)
X XXU.L/
l^XX V_l f

PHP Pnc;t-l-rn<^tilitip<=; Plannino" Siib-Cnmmittpp

PKI Tndonpciian
XX L\^vyX
L\..lI7XC4.X I Commnni^t
V^v^XX LXX L^X Partv
X U.X L l.X<J L L y

POMEF Political Office with the Middle East Forces

PoW Prisoner of
X X xl:/\_'X LV-x
v^x war
vv i^x

PPR Polish Communist Party

PPS X V/XX\_ y and
Polirv Planninp"
LvX X
\A.XXL4.X LX IXX X //Parti
Staff
^ X Ponnlairp
VX X KJ tXXt4.XX Svripn
y X XV_.X
L.L4.X C-I.X V_- L

PRO Public Records Office

PSIS Permanent Secretaries' Intelligence Services
PSL Polish Peasant Party
PUSC Permanent
LV-X Under-Secretarv's
X V-X XX LdX
V>'XI.V^V_-X X
L dX y
k Committee
V_^\_/XX LXX LX V_ V_ I. \J L LV^X.,

PUSD Permanent Under-Secretary's Department

PWB Psvrholociral
X y V_X t-_XV Warfare
LXXXL4.XV^ Rranrh
IV-'XV-' tXX LV-X
t4.X ¥ V X-/X L

PWE Political Warfare Executive

ROC Radiation Operations Committee
ROD Russian Liberation Movement and Army
ROVS xixLV- Russian
W^hite
T V XX cxl:7^xv4.x L Armed
±xxxxL\.\^ Services Union
ixvyx
i^v^ X V xv_.v-i-7 X I

RRF Russian Revolutionary Force

RYA Royal Yugoslav Army
SAP Sultan's
C^I^XLCIXL Armpd Forrp f^Oman)
O .TxX XX L^vi X yv.yXXlClXiy \.7X V_vZ

SAS Special Air Service

SB Sluzhba Bezpeky — OUN-B secret police (Ukraine) / Stay
Behind
SBS Snerial Roat Sniiadron
SCI special Counter-intelligence
SCLL Supreme Committee for the Liberation of Lithuania
SDECE Service dp Oonimentation Fxtprieiire et de
Contre-Espionage
SDLP Social Democratic and Labour Party (Northern Ireland)
SED East German Communist Socialist Unity Party
SHAEF Supreme Headquarters Allied Europe Forces
XI 1 LIST OF ACRONYMS

STMF Spniritv Tntplli P'Pnrp IVTiHHIp Fa<if

STS QpfT'pf Tntpllip^pnrp Sprvirp

wTN. La Sorip^li^t" Pp^rtv of C^vf^p^cf^

SLEF Scottish League for EuroDean Freedom

SOE Sopcial ODPrations Executive
SPA Snerial X WXXLXV.C4.X Artion
1^ V,XC4.X Politiral XV. LXV^X LJ.

SPC 1^ v..\_XCXX Pnlirv

Snprial
k,.' X \^XXV. y C~^ommittpp
X^WXX LXX LX L LwV'

SPP Slovene Peoole's Partv

CJlJtrClcll IvclUgtrt; C>v_l cCl 111
DllaLtzglL Del V ICcb Ullll

SWG y X xd. Wnrkinp"

Svria
L_/ V \_/x XN.XX
» C^rmin
Xv i-x

TEA X ^ %A. X—^ V^X V-X L^V^ Corn

kXWX LU.X Defence
National ^_-V_/X (^Oreece^
X K^K^K^K^ I 1

TUC XrpiHpci Tin inn C^^ono-rpcc

UAR T InitpH A rah RpmiWic

UB WIryarl
T X ZjC1\-4. X-/eZj Ly XeV-ZjeX U L VV d. —
Rp7r)ipr7Pnstwa X V_/XXijX I Spcnritv
PoliciVi t^^eV-LAXXLy Sprvirp
cyCX V XV^C

/A.dlllllll&LlclLlVJll VJl CJlcllt. iZ)t,v_U.llLy y 1 U-tiUbld Vlcl^

TnitpH F)p'mr*PT;^fiP
TV^XlXLC;V.4. Rpciicfanr'P
L-'CXl IL/V_1 Cl LH^ IXCOlOtCll r^TO';^niQ;^fio'n
IV_C \yi.xLClXlijCll.LKJll ifliiianiPi^
\^l-ilLl lUCll LlCiy

TLJTrill a'hor'al T^or^l ar'a'Hi/^n r\T Tn ri oti onon

/l?r»i^riocia i
1 llld Ltrl ctl LycLldl d LlUl I Ul 11 ILlt: pel ILlcl iLt: ^Ivl lULlccsld^

TIFM LJlllLtLl J_jU.1L/ L/C iVlL; V elllcl IL

vJ JTi. V 1\ TLJTL'faiTii aTi Qiinfomo

T i r^oTati/^n i'r\iin<^il
JS.1 dll lldl I iDLlUlelllt; L/lUt;ldLlL>ll V_UU.11L11

UN United
X IX LV^
V-/ Nations
X ^ LX WX
\-X LkJ

TIMRR A LJlllleU iXdLlUllcJ Ivtrl ULtiCt; dllLl IVclldUlllldllLHl /A.LllllllllaLldtlLHl

TnifpH
TLJllllCLl M;^tir4n<; V V dl C^tittipc;
iNdUlL»ll5 AA/^jr Vw-illllCO C^rtTTTmi<;<;ioTi
V^L/ll 111 IISOIL'I I

UPA T IWrainian
XVX dXX LXdX Tnmiro'pnt
XX Li3 LXX c^eX L
L L Armvy
.ixX XX I

LJllllC-Ll OldLco llllL'lllldllL'll iDclVlLc;

WACL World Anti-Communist League

WAY W^orld Assemblv of Youth
WFDY World Federation of Democratic Youth
WiN Freedom and Independence (Poland)
WOSM War Office Screening Mission
YAR Yemen Arab Republic
PREFACE

This book concentrates on the postwar activities of the Secret Intelligence

Service (SIS), more commonly known as MI6 - the designation of the War
Office liaison section attached to its headquarters during and after the Second
World War. For far too long our view of MI6 has been distorted by the
Establishment's and media's obsession with the activities of traitors such as
Kim Philby and George Blake, and the Security Service's (MI5's) hunt for
moles, real or imagined.
The book attempts to restore some balance by focusing on what the Service
was actually up to during the Cold War - namely, covert 'Special Operations'
and the primary task of gathering intelligence. These operations are placed
in the context of official British foreign and political policies.
Researching secret agencies - and there are few more secret than MI6 - is
obviously a difficult task. Although seemingly committed to a Freedom of
Information Act (FOIA), and, in opposition, one of the secret state's sternest
Labour Foreign Secretary Robin Cook has accepted MI6's argument that
critics.

no documents should be released into the Public Records Office (PRO); indeed,
MI6 is specifically excluded from any proposed FOIA. The argument goes that
the Service must protect its methods and sources; though names can always be
blanked out and the fact is that secret service methods have hardly changed for
two thousand years. Bascially, agents are recruited through bribery, blackmail
and harassment, and targets are put under surveillance and so on for the
gathering of intelligence. Only the technical means change, and they are
constantly being superseded by private-sector developments.
That is not to say that there are no documents available. As academic
Richard J. Aldrich has successfully shown, secret material relating to MI6
can be found in the archives of related departments, while archives in the
United States provide a rich and largely untapped source. But as Cold War
historian John Lewis Caddis suggests, human relations, particularly in and
between secret agencies, cannot always be reconstructed from documents.
Xl\' PRtTACE

'Conversations occurring in corridors or over the telephone, or at cocktail

parties/ Alex Danchev adds, 'can at times shape events more decisively than
whole stacks of official memoranda that find their way into the archives/ In
order to unravel the activities of MI 6,
one has to dig deep and sift manner of the
carefully, in the
some intrepid anthropol-
archaeologist, but also acculturate, like
ogist, to a strange and secretive society whose intricate social

and professional networks are familiar to their members but

quite baffling to the outsider, whose currency is the informal
understanding, and whose transactions consist chiefly of
unwritten and sometimes unspoken agreements.

In the main, this book has been researched with the notion that there is
far more in the public domain than anyone has realised - least of all the
secret agencies. Indeed, a few years ago the Foreign Office's own Security
Department was surprised to discover that there are numerous open sources
identifying intelligence officers.
Given a work of this size, it was decided to split the book into several
parts, each dealing with different areas and aspects of the Service's activities;

this will enable the reader to dip into a particular area of interest. Within
each part, the chapters run chronologically across a specific timeframe. The
prime focus is the European continent, and some areas of the Service's oper-
ations and and Africa,
intelligence-gathering, principally in South-East Asia
are not dealt with in any great detail. It is intended that these areas will be
covered in a separate volume on the Security Service, dealing with MI5 and
MI 6 involvement in counter-insurgency in the Third World. A study of MI6's
worldwide stay-behind networks, popularly known as 'Gladio', will be
published at a later date.
Secrecy has become an end in itself, and has more of a psychological than
a practical element in its continuing hold and fascination. As George Simmel
suggests, secrecy offers 'the possibility of a second world alongside the mani-
fest world; and the latter is decisively influenced by the former' - and not
always for the good.
The reality is that we are in a world that is exploding with information,
even if much of it is valueless and serves only to overwhelm our ability to
analyse it. This, though, is only the beginning. Up until now, MI6 has played
a successful rearguard action in protecting itself, but it cannot do so for ever.

The era of open-source intelligence isupon us. The reality is that secrets are
increasingly difficult to protect, and it would not be a great exaggeration to
suggest that there are no real secrets any more.

For encouragement and help with sources and information, I would like to

thank John Hope, Richard Norton-Taylor, Peter E. Newell, Phillip Knightley,

 PREFACE XV

Mark Watts, Michael Baigent, Armen Victorian, John Birks, Alan Lawrie,
Stuart Brown, Kees van der Pijl, Tim Kelsey, Mark Phythian, Henrik Kabala,
the Polish ex-Servicemen's Association, friends in Estonia, Morris Riley for
his research on Oman, and the late John Maclaren.
There are a number of key writers to whom I owe a large debt for their
previous contributions in opening up research in the intelligence field - in
particular Tom Bower, whose biography of one of the Service's Chiefs, Sir

Dick White, was a landmark in this area. I may not agree with a number of
his conclusions and interpretations, but he certainly deserves great credit
for his pioneering efforts. Similarly, the American lawyer and former State
Department researcher John Loftus was largely responsible, with his fellow-
writer, Australian Mark Aarons, for revealing in detail collusion between the
extreme right-wing, anti-communist emigre groups and MI 6. If the text deals
at length with the entangled and often obscure factional and controversial
politics of the emigres, it is because they are integral to any understanding
of MI6's sponsorship of these groups and their operations in eastern Europe.
It was necessary to overturn a number of the oft-repeated myths and miscon-

ceptions that surround the emigres. On Suez, the work of Keith Kyle and
Scott Lucas proved essential, as did that of Mark Urban and James Adams
on contemporary developments, Peter Wilkinson and Michael Smith on the
Special Operations Executive, and Sir Reginald Hibbert and Nicholas Bethell
on Albania.
This book could not have been completed without the sterling and greatly
appreciated efforts of the staff of Huddersfield public library. They managed
to make available through the British Library lending system hundreds of
books from around the world, as well as many obscure articles. Institutions
such as this are a precious local resource that should be nurtured and properly
funded.
I was fortunate in obtaining grants from the K. Blundell Trust and the
Royal Literary Fund, and I am extremely grateful for their help, which came
at a crucial time. The book was long delayed partially owing to a debilitating
My agent, Andrew Lownie, was a welcome source of encouragement
illness.

during this trying period, while my publishers were hugely sympathetic. 1

thank my editors, Christopher Potter and Clive Priddle, for their great
patience as deadlines were missed. Partners of writers put up with a lot.

Thankfully my wife, Stephanie Smith, has been immensely supportive.

Stephen Dorril
Netherthong, West Yorkshire, April 1999
PART ONE

FROM HOT TO
COLD WAR
Where the Chief of the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), Major-General Sir
Stewart Menzies (pronounced 'Mingiss'), celebrated 'Victory in Europe' (VE)
day is not known, but more than likely that he was standing at the bar
it is

of White's Club where much of the informal business of intelli-

in St James's
gence work was still undertaken. To an outsider, as Menzies drank pink gins
with his friends from the upper echelons of British society, it would have
appeared that little had changed since the founding of the Secret Service
more than thirty years previously.
Born in 1890 to wealthy Scottish parents, Menzies went to Eton, where,
with 'his good looks, fair hair and blue eyes', the 'golden boy' was 'the model
of an Edwardian schoolboy hero'. When, in 1912, his father died, his mother
married Sir George Holford, a lieutenant-colonel in the Life Guards, the
regiment of his new stepson. Also very rich with links to the Royal Family,
Holford was equerry to both Edward VII and George V. Menzies treasured
the royal connection to the extent that he later helped foster the legend that
he was the illegitimate son of Edward.^
Involved in heavy fighting at Ypres, Menzies won the DSO and in further
action in 1915 was awarded the Military Cross. Transferred to general head-
quarters, he was assigned to Military Intelligence with responsibility for field
security and counter-espionage. Along with his fellow majors in 1(b), Menzies
helped form a small dining club - a feature prominent throughout British
Intelligence - in which they 'could exchange views more intimately than in
4 PART ONE: FROM HOT TO COLD WAR

the Mess'. Friendships made at the club endured and it continued to meet
during Ascot week - racing was one of Menzies's abiding passions - and
regularly at the Travellers Club.^
Regarding intelligence as 'high politics and a rough game to play', Menzies
learned in France the valuable lesson for the future that intelligence was 'a

commodity of a special kind; it not only has value in itself, but is a vital
munition in the in-fighting between competing strategies and organisations'.
He remained in the intelligence game after the First World War, joining the
Secret Service as personal assistant to its eccentric one-legged chief, Mansfield
Gumming, who was known as 'C'.^
The Secret had been founded in October 1909 as the
Intelligence Service
foreign section of the Secret Service Bureau with the task of collecting
evidence of German planning for an invasion of the country. It was not long,
however, before Mile, as the foreign section became known, was concentrat-
ing its efforts on 'Red Russia'. In 1923 Gumming died 'in harness' and was
succeeded by the highly professional former Director of Naval Intelligence,
Rear Admiral Hugh 'Quex' Sinclair, who was known as a 'terrific anti-
Bolshevik'.^
One observer claimed that Menzies remained in the Secret Service for
'psychological' reasons. He was 'by nature very reserved - even at times
diffident' and found more congenial 'to remain in the shadows and exert
it

covert influence'. Officers found him 'a shy, quiet man who displayed 'an
aloofness which served him well in maintaining a barrier around him'. This
barrier, a junior officer, Desmond Bristow, came to believe, 'whether created
purposely or not, kept the crawling members (arse lickers) of the office at
bay, and there were quite a few'. One senior colleague remarked that
Menzies's cover was 'superb' - 'he posed as himself. A high Tory, a country
gentleman, he spent much of his spare time hunting foxes with the prestigous
Beaufort Hunt, whose social connections added to his chief asset in intelli-
gence work - 'his network of like-minded persons throughout Whitehall and
the upper reaches of society'.^
Menzies was appointed head of MI6's Military and German sections,
reaching the rank of colonel in 1932. Seven yearslater, he was promoted to

brigadier and soon after succeeded Sinclair, whose health had failed, in the
post of Ghief. In truth, Menzies would not have been the first choice of
Ghurchill, who did his best to prevent him becoming 'G' - the unofficial title
- but hewas to serve the new Prime Minister loyally. During the war, Menzies
hardly had a social life and rarely left his desk at Broadway Buildings -
symbolically sited between Buckingham Palace and Parliament Square. He
continued the tradition of allowing his senior officers unlimited access to G's
office with the consequence queues formed outside his room at the end
'that

by lights, which showed whether or

of the corridor, imperfectly controlled
not he was occupied'. The result was that he was overworked and took
 PART ONE: FROM HOT TO COLD WAR 5

no leave, and his work suffered from his weariness. One of the Service's
up-and-coming stars, Kim Philby, recognised the 'horrible responsibilities
that world war had placed on his shoulders' with the 'ever-present threat of
a summons from Churchill in one of his whimsical midnight moods'.^
Although he remembered him with 'enduring affection', Philby did not
consider Menzies a great intelligence officer: 'His intellectual equipment was
unimpressive, and his knowledge of the world, and views about it, were just
what one would expect from a fairly cloistered son of the upper levels of the
British Establishment,' Young officers who worked alongside Philby agreed
with the assessment. Hugh Trevor Roper (Lord Dacre) later wrote that, while
Menzies was 'personally considerate, patently just, patently honest ... no
one could claim that he was a brilliant Chief. Another colleague. Conserva-
Robert Blake, adds that he was no 'spymaster'.^
tive Party historian (Lord)
While acknowledging that the successes of British Intelligence during the
Second World War were 'very great' and were 'a major factor in the victory
of the Western Allies', Blake recognises that 'they had nothing whatever to
do with spies or espionage'. Indeed, MI6's wartime intelligence-gathering on
Germany had been poor, and if it had any agents of its own there, 'the
secret has been remarkably well-kept'. Its American counterpart, the Office
of Strategic Services (OSS), whose 102 missions into Germany had far
outstripped MI6's thirty-plus, had been concerned that much of the infor-
mation MI 6 shared with it was merely duplicates of material already received
from other intelligence services. The few reliable Secret Intelligence Reports
said to be based on 'SIS agents in Germany' turned out to be camouflaged
'Ultra' intelligence from the cryptanalytic agency, the Government Code and
Cipher School (GC«&:CS), at Bletchley Park.'
Philby had recognised that Menzies's 'real strength lay in a sensitive
perception of the currents of Whitehall politics, in an ability to feel his way
through the mazy corridors of power'. He had been quick to claim authority
over the use of Ultra - the name given to the deciphered intercepts that
emerged from GC&CS - which had managed to break the German Enigma
machine code ciphers. In this privileged position, he regularly presented the
Prime Minister with the 'golden eggs' of the latest intelligence on German
military plans. While Menzies 'bathed in the reflected glory cast upon him
by the work of the boffins and eggheads at Bletchley the truth was that
. . .

SIS could not claim exclusive responsibility for any of the major intelligence
coups of the war'.'^

Menzies, for one, realised that besides its astute control over the code-
breaking successes, MI6's reputation rested on the 'significant contribution' of
the Special Counter-intelligence (SCI) units, whose function was to 'receive,
record and use certain information emanating from specially secret sources'
- i.e. Ultra. They were controlled by the counter-espionage Section V, which
'stood at the very intersection of these two currents, exploiting the first [Ultra]
6 PART ONE: FROM HOT TO COLD WAR

[o promote the second [SCI units]'. The SCI units were also responsible for
'
undertaking the penetration of enemy intelligence services and for the special
exploitation of captured enemy agents'. If MI6's reputation was to survive
postwar world, Menzies knew that it would all depend on the deve-
into the
lopment of Section V - 'the brightest feather in C's cap'.^°
Philby was also aware that for those officers engaged in the bureaucratic
in-fighting to develop Section V, the previous six years, during which MI6
had concentrated its war with Germany to the total exclusion
resources on the
of intelligence-gathering on the Soviet Union, had been a mere interlude in
the traditional battle with the Bolsheviks. The transition from 'hot' to Cold
War was short. Before the war had even ended, Menzies was turning his
attention to tackling the Soviet Union, though it would take until the end of
the forties before the politicians would let MI 6 off the leash to engage fully
in Special Operations.
CHAPTER 1

THE SECOND WORLD

WAR

During the war, MI6's counter-espionage Section V underwent an effective

expansion. With a responsibility for the security of signals intelligence in the
field, the section successfully exploited the use of what was known as ISOS
(Intelligence Section, Oliver Strachey) reports - the generic term for decrypted
German signals intelligence traffic. MI6 had no history of counter-espionage
work and learned how to use double-cross agents and mount 'I'toxication' or
deception operations - designed to confuse the enemy as to its true intentions
- from Paul Paillole, deputy of the French counter-espionage section of the
pre-war Deuxieme Bureau. Much had depended on the abilities of the section
head, Felix Cowgill.^
Cowgill had been recruited in March 1939 from the Indian Police, for
whom he had made a special study of communism. He brought years of
counter-espionage experience to bear on his post, but had no experience of
Europe, having spent the previous twelve years running penetration agents
in the Comintern's network in Bengal, most recently as Deputy Commissioner
of Special Branch. had been understood that he would eventually succeed
It

the Deputy Chief and former head of Section V, Valentine 'Ve-Ve' Vivian,
as the resident MI6 expert on communism and director of a new operational
department dealing with the subject. Cowgill's ablest student within the
Section was the successful head of its Iberian subsection, Kim Philby."^
While Philby shared with his colleagues a genuine desire to defeat Nazism,
he also acted as an agent for the Soviet Union's People's Commissariat for
8 PART ONE: FROM HOT TO COLD WAR

Internal Affairs (NKVD). His Soviet handlers' main priority was to ascertain
w hat subversive and espionage work MI6 was engaged in against the USSR.
As an essentially defensive Vigilant' organisation, primarily concerned with
security and threats, both external and internal, against the USSR, the
NKVD's prime objective was to root out subversion from wherever it might
originate. Philby recalled that as soon as he began to work in MI6 in July
1940, his Soviet control 'began to demand information . . . But I constantly
reported that MI 6 was not engaged in any subversive and espionage work
against the Soviet Union ... MI 6 was not permitted to engage in it then; the
USSR was Great Britain's ally. But Moscow didn't believe it, it didn't believe

it for a long time.' To their general incredulity, Philby could only report,
correctly, that MI6 did not have a network of agents inside the Soviet Union.
The NKVD then assumed that if the British were not directly involved, they
must be working through the Poles and the Czechs, but, once again, Philby
had to disabuse them of that idea.^
For a long time, Philby was viewed with deep suspicion by his Soviet
handlers. It was a situation which only changed when it seemed certain that
Germany would lose the war and he was able to report to Moscow what
they wanted to hear. Senior MI6 officers had begun to think about the future
and 'what the primary target of their activities would be after the defeat of
the Axis powers'. They had come to the conclusion that MI6 'would have to
deal with the secret service of the USSR and the intelligence services associ-
ated with Communist Parties in other countries - in short, with international
communism, whose authority, of course, had increased a great deal due to
the imminent victory over fascism'. The Service's leadership had decided on
a modest start to combat the future threat and had established a small archival
and non-operational records section. It was given the task of studying past
records of Soviet activity, primarily related to the struggle against inter-
national communism, and the collecting and collating of current material.
It was a harbinger of work which, in time, acquired great significance. Its

establishment, however, had not been prompted by Soviet activities abroad

but by events much closer to home.'^
During April 1943, Security Service (MIS) watchers had tailed a long-term
member of the Communist Party of Great Britain's (CPGB) Central Committee,
Douglas Springhall, to a clandestine meeting with Ormond Uren. When
arrested in June, Uren, a secret CPGB member who worked in the Hungarian
section of the sabotage and resistance organisation, the Special Operations
Executive (SOE), confessed to passing on to Springhall details of SOE
communications and policy on eastern Europe to demonstrate that he was 'a

Communism'. When another of Springhall's contacts, Olive

sincere believer in
Sheehan, a Customs and Excise clerk at the Air Ministry, was similarly arrested,
she disclosed in her defence - quoting a source in the Security Service - that the
British were withholding vital intelligence from the Russians.'^
 THE SECOND WORLD WAR 9

In light of the Springhall case, Vivian instigated a discreet inquiry which

reported to Menzies in August 1943. Its conclusions ran counter to then
current Foreign Office thinking and displayed the built-in prejudices of the
security services. 'The contradictions between Great Britain and the Soviet
Union', Vivian suggested,

are as great as those between and Nazi Germany

Britain . . .

Soviet Russia is can obtain benefit from

our friend only while it

this friendship. It does not trust us and will exert all efforts in

espionage activities against us even in years of friendship. When

it will obtain everything it can from a friendship, it will inexor-

ably activate all the secret forces against the ideals for which
Britain struggles ... In this way our most dangerous enemy
after the war can turn out to be the secret aggression of Soviet
Russia . But we must not permit this error - we cannot trust
. .

the Russians in the same way we can trust, say, the Czechs and
Americans or give them information which might betray an
important or sensitive source or allow officers of local Soviet
intelligence to study our organisation anywhere.

On 13 August, whether by coincidence or design, Menzies met with the

Permanent Under-Secretary at the Foreign Office, Sir Alexander Cadogan,
who had responsibility for MI 6 and for harmonising its overlapping, and
sometimes conflicting, functions with those of SOE and MI5. Menzies warned
Cadogan that he had 'Communists in his organisation'.^
The Security Service wanted to take action against the Communist Party
and, in particular, those working in government departments. In October,
MIS's Roger Hollis, who monitored the activities of the CPGB, submitted a
report to the Home Office in which he stated that the Service was 'aware
that the Soviet Government was actively engaged at the present time in
obtaining espionage information concerning the British Government'. The
Soviet espionage organisations, Hollis revealed, 'seemed to operate through
two channels: one directly through the Communist Party, utilizing the Party
organisation and the Communists who are in the armed services and the
Government to collect espionage data'. The second espionage group 'is appar-
ently completely separated from the Communist Party and operates on . .

a diplomatic level'. This involved the Soviet embassy and the various trade
commissions which enjoyed quasi-diplomatic immunity.'
In a minute to Churchill on 28 October, Duff Cooper, the chair of the
Security Executive, which nominally controlled the Security Service, outlined
MIS's case. Churchill agreed with it in principle and, in November, the Home
Secretary recommended that, in order to plug any leaks, 'all departments
engaged on secret work should be advised to transfer known Communists,
as notified by MIS, to other departments'. He had wanted the policy made
10 PART ONE: FROM HOT TO COLD WAR

public, but Churchill demurred, concurring with the advice of his unofficial
intelligence adviser, Desmond Morton, that 'MI5 tends to see dangerous men
too freely anci to lack that knowledge of the world and sense of perspective
which the Home Secretary rightly considers essential'. Churchill ruled that
a secret panel of the Security Executive would decide what action was neces-
sary on cases submitted by MIS. The existence of the panel was not finally
notified to the secret departments until February 1944.^
Close to MI6 work, but 'a greyer eminence than
in his intelligence
Menzies's, Morton was no friend of the left'. He was 'deeply
'certainly
concerned with the spectre of post-war European communism', and this
included a personal interest in the various governments-in-exile and national
committees in London. In early April 1944, in the pre-planning period for the
invasion of Europe, Churchill expressed concern that communist members of
the French National Committee were coming to London. In a secret telegram
to Duff Cooper, who had left the Security Executive for a post in Algiers,
Churchill warned that the French representatives would not have access to
any British secrets. He added: 'I suppose that you realise that we are weeding
remorselessly every single known Communist from all the secret organisa-
tions. We did this after having to sentence two quite high-grade people

to long terms of penal servitude for their betrayal, in accordance with the
Communist faith, of important military secrets.' On the 14th, Churchill simi-
larly minuted Cadogan: 'We are purging all our secret establishments of
Communists because we know they owe no allegiance to us or to our cause
and will always betray secrets to the Soviets, even while we are working
together.'^
While limited investigations, which consisted of little more than checking
names against secret lists of known communists (negative vetting), did take
place, there were no purges - at least not in the secret establishments. Dissatis-
fied with the Security Executive secret panel procedure, MIS would not risk
revealing its sources and only submitted one case. Cowgill later recalled that

there had been one relatively low-level inquiry inside MI6 but it led only to
the dismissal from Section V of a secretarial-grade assistant. Her schoolmaster
husband had turned up in MIS Registry records as a member of the Scottish
Communist Party.
Within MI6 there was a natural suspicion born of senior officers' anti-
Bolshevism and a belief that Stalin's Russia would not be a durable peacetime
ally. When SOE suggested allowing NKVD officers to operate in parts of
the British Empire in order to run their agents for the war effort, MI6 refused
to countenance the idea. The NKVD was regarded 'enemy
as a potential
organisation',and Menzies expressed 'grave concern' at the effect co-oper-
ation in Europe would have on its networks. When, in turn, MIS suggested
setting up its own liaison arrangements with Soviet security agencies in
London, Menzies advised that 'it would be a waste of effort and an embarrass-
 THE SECOND WORLD WAR 11

ment'. The Russians were 'more interested in penetrating our intelligence

than in helping', he added. Mindful of the MIS reports, Menzies admitted
to James Angleton of the OSS's counter-espionage division, X-2, which liaised
in London with Section V: 'We've been penetrated by the communists and
they're on the inside, but we don't know exactly how' (my italics)."
And that was the point. Despite the presence in its ranks of senior officers
who had operated against the communists in India, MI6 lacked any precise
intelligenceon the modus operandi of the Russian Intelligence Service, its

structure and its relationship with local communist parties. It is, therefore,
more than a coincidence that in March 1944, a month before Churchill
communicated his fears, Menzies had 'nominally' reconstituted the anti-
communist Section IX. Its head was Jack Curry; his deputy was Harry Steptoe,
recently stationed in Shanghai.^^
Philby had a low opinion of Curry, who was 'hampered by deafness',
and thought his deputy 'a near mental case'. Fellow officer Malcolm
Muggeridge liked Steptoe: 'A little cocksparrow of a man with a bristling
moustache, a high voice, monocle and lots of suits, ties, hats and shoes', who
was 'a master-hand at letting fall the technical terms of espionage (letter-box,
chicken-feed, cover, etc.) thereby giving an impression of effortless expertise'.
In contrast, the about-to-retire Curry was an experienced former MIS officer

who had co-operated with MI6's Vivian and Cowgill in the 18(b) policy of
interning fascists. Phillip Knightley is probably correct in his assertion that
Section IX's first role was a 'counter-espionage one' before it became an
'offensive espionage operation'.
Philby's Soviet controllers had immediately seen the significance of the
new section and ordered him to work towards becoming its head. Luckily
for Philby, the idea that in peacetime Section V would take over IX's functions
caused a certain amount of friction with MIS, which had responsibility for
counter-espionage. Section V thus became 'a fulcrum for the application of
political leverage'. Philby exploited the feuds within the intelligence
community and 'nearer home, the jealousy felt by Vivian for Cowgill'. He
succeeded in ingratiating himself with the 'enfeebled' Vivian and effectively
undermined Cowgill's standing with 'C. During mid-May 1944, Philby was
left in charge of Section V as Cowgill was absent in Canada and the United

States, helping to negotiate a signals intelligence (SIC INT) agreement on

co-operation on cryptanalytic exchanges - known as BRUSA.^"^
On the eve of the Allied invasion of France, Section V, whose staff roster
had risen to 2S0 officers, became increasingly important to the Allied counter-
espionage effort. It had already begun analysing recently captured Gestapo
files and the increasing volume of Axis security records which fell into Allied

hands. The files were to be used in the capture of leading Nazi agents as the
Allied armies moved into occupied Europe. Much of the early work of compil-
ing and editing of this intelligence haul was undertaken by another former
12 PART ONE: FROM HOT TO COLD WAR

MI5 specialiston Communism, Robert Carew-Hunt. Covering a specific area,

such as Spain and Portugal, the 'Purple Primers' listed 'all that was known
about active members of the Abwehr and Sicherheitsdienst'. After GC&CS
crvptanalysts had cracked the Abwehr ciphers, MI6's Registry overflowed
w ith a self-updating trove of signals intelligence with names of officers, agents
and safe houses. This success gave MI6 'the right to be the senior Allied
counter-espionage service'.

While the events on the western front remained the top priority, by the
summer of 1944 British and American cryptographers had already begun to
focus on the future. Bradley F. Smith speculates that besides dealing with
the sharing of Axis-signals, the Brusa agreement 'embraced neutral and even
Allied military SIGINT' - i.e. Soviet traffic. The question of when Britain
began to target the communications of its then chief ally remains a sensitive
subject. In his official history of British Intelligence during the Second World
War, Professor Hinsley asserts that, in the wake of Germany's attack on the
USSR in June 1941, work on Soviet communications, codes and ciphers ceased
for the duration of the war. Is this true?
At Bletchley Park, GC&CS continued to read the output of German intelli-
gence organisations which had broken Soviet codes, particularly those gather-
it was reading the cipher of
ing signals on the eastern front. In particular,
whose signals intelligence organisation was listening to Soviet
the Luftwaffe,
communications and passing them back to Berlin. More importantly. Smith
has uncovered documentary evidence that, in early 1943, Bletchley began
directly intercepting Soviet traffic.
This change reflected the views of officials at the highest levels of the
intelligence community. A member of the Joint Intelligence Staff, Noel Annan,
recalled that as early as February 1943, the chair of the Joint Intelligence
Committee (JIC), Victor Cavendish-Bentinck, had written an indiscreet
memorandum which had an 'off-the-cuff whiff of prescience about the post-
war world'. Cavendish-Bentinck wrote that

since Stalingrad ourimmediate strategic objectives had

changed. Until then had been in our interest to do all we
it

could to take pressure off Russia. Now that the tide had turned,
it was in our interest to let Germany and Russia bleed each other

white. We would find it easier to effect a landing in Europe, and

Russia, however sentimental the British people might be about
her, was likely to be a troublesome customer at the end of the
war.^^

Cowgill told Philby that fifteen people were already working at GC&CS on
Soviet ciphers and that Menzies had proposed adding more people to work
on deciphering. That Bletchley had been engaged in this area was confirmed
 THE SECOND WORLD WAR 13

by Menzies's Foreign Office adviser, Robert Cecil. He recalled that with the
dissolution by Stalin of the co-ordinating body
worldwide communist
for
parties, the Comintern, on MI6 instructions GC&CS had been 'intercepting
and decrypting the instructions that were being sent from the Kremlin to
partisan groups and resistance movements under Communist control as to
the tactics to be adopted as the day of liberation drew nearer '.^^
The first steps in a Anglo-American intelligence alliance acting against
the Soviet Union began in the months before D-day when order-of-battle
(OB) specialists met in London. The British team, led by Col. F. Thornton
and Maj. N. Ignatieff, who both 'harboured engrained hostility to the Soviets
and deep suspicion of Stalin's future intentions', exchanged intelligence with
their American counterparts on the ability of the Red Army to tie down
German units. Liaison officers, such as Col. Firebrace, who dealt with their
Russian counterparts in London on intelligence matters, held similar preju-
diced views. They were unwilling to admit that the Soviets had been 'gener-
ous' in handing over material about their own forcesand information on the
German on the eastern front. Instead,
divisions they reported 'the most nega-
tive possible view of the Soviet intelligence-sharing effort' until this was
'gradually formalized and then served as the basis for a general conclusion
that the prospects for "post-hostilities" co-operation with the USSR were
extremely bleak'.
These negative views were taken on board by the chiefs of staff, who
were also beginning to consider the nature of the postwar world. In August
1943, they had established a Post-Hostilities Planning Sub-Committee (PHP)
chaired by Gladwyn Jebb, who was in immediate conflict with the chiefs'
insistence on the identification of the Soviet Union as the only potential enemy
after the defeat of Germany. Jebb described PHP members as 'would-be
drinkers of Russian blood'.
Even with 'special security treatment', Moscow was quickly informed of
the PHP deliberations because one of the 'Ring of Five', Foreign Office official
Donald Maclean, was passing on details of the main discussions. Soviet news
agencies soon began referring to 'nests of Fascist opposition' in the West.
Diplomats attacked the reports, but a deputy under-secretary, Geoffrey
Wilson, observed that there was more to the Soviet complaints than officials
might suppose. 'If we make the necessary allowance for Soviet terminology
... it has an element of truth in it. The people who, whether consciously or
unconsciously, are doing their best to wreck the Anglo-Soviet alliance, are
by no means confined to "obscure people without honour in their own
country".' In a reference to the PHP, Wilson noted that 'the suspicion and
even hostility of the Service Departments towards Russia are now becoming
a matter of common gossip'.
Just five weeks after D-day, the PHP's 'wild acolytes' recommended that,

if faced with a hostile Soviet Union, German help might prove 'essential' to
14 PART ONE: FROM HOT TO COLD WAR

Britain's sur\'ival. On 27 July, the chief of the Imperial General Staff, Viscount
Alanbrooke, wrote in his diary after meeting the Foreign Secretary, Anthony
Eden: 'Should Germany be dismembered or gradually converted to an ally
to meet the Russian threat of twenty years hence? I suggested the latter . . .

Germany is no longer the dominating power in Europe - Russia is. She has
\'ast resources and cannot fail to become the main threat in fifteen years from

now. Therefore, foster Germany, gradually build her up, and bring her into
a federation of Western Europe.' These views reached the ears of Foreign
Office officials. In August, Senior Foreign Office official Orme Sargent
reported that the chiefs of staff and 'certain high-placed officers' were speak-
ing of the Soviet Union as 'enemy number one', and even of 'securing German
assistance against her'.^^
These were not isolated opinions. In Washington, the former Director of
Military Intelligence and head of the British Military Mission, General F. H. N.
Davidson, enquired of one of President Roosevelt's confidential advisers
'whether the United States could be counted on to march with Britain in the
"next war" against Russia'. At that stage, such a view was regarded as
belligerent and the response from the White House was distinctly
disapproving.^^
The chiefs of staff presented their long assessment to the Foreign Office
in October, noting that 'we cannot afford to eliminate from our mind the
conception of an expansionist and perhaps eventually aggressive Russia'. A
British diplomat in Moscow, Frank Roberts, thought that the chiefs were 'not
only crossing their bridge before they come to it, but even constructing their

bridge in order to cross it'. were worried that the 'simple military
Officials
mind' would signal an all-out preparation for war with Russia. Despite
Foreign Office objections, the chiefs sought Eden's agreement that contin-
gency planning for a war with Russia would be allowed to continue but
confined 'to a very restricted circle'. Such ideas were too sensitive for the
Foreign Office, which limited the circulation of PHP texts - though Donald
Maclean received copies - and ensured that hostility to the Soviet Union was
downplayed. Eventually, the Foreign Office withdrew from the committee;
a decision 'welcomed' by the military planners who were now free to persist
with their 'anti-Russian extravagances'.^^

Following the success of the invasion of the Continent and the realisation
that theend of the war was in sight, it became evident that the control or
independence of the countries of Europe ultimately rested on the strength of
Russian arms. In October 1944, Churchill continued with his policy of
asserting a right to be heard on Europe's future and struck his famous
'percentage' deal with Stalin. It accepted that the Soviet Union would have
an almost free hand in Romania and Bulgaria in return for Stalin's recognition
of British predominance in Greece and of joint Soviet and Allied influence in
 THE SECOND WORLD WAR 15

the future of Hungary and Yugoslavia. What set the pattern for the immediate
postwar world, particularly in relation to what was about to happen in eastern
Europe, was not, however, the actions of Stalin but Churchill's plan for Italy,
over which he was prepared to have 'a good row' with the Russians.
In a policy that undermined East- West Union was
relations, the Soviet

not allowed a role in the Allied military government in saw

Italy. Churchill
the country 'primarily as a joint Anglo-American responsibility' and did
not bother to consult Moscow on the surrender terms which Stalin, quite
reasonably, viewed with deep suspicion. 'Hawks' among the British diplo-
mats, who already saw the Cold War on the horizon, ensured that they only
'informed the USSR but did not consult it' on major policy issues. Churchill
lacked the foresight to see that his stance on Italy was bound to be interpreted
by Stalin as a harbinger of things to come. Stalin had little alternative but to
interpret Churchill's attitude as an insult, which he repaid in kind by refusing
the Allies a role in eastern Europe.
A few diplomatic figures had argued for a tripartite form of control which
one senior official believed would 'mean that we and the Americans would
have the day-to-day possibility of cross-examining the Russians on their inten-
tions towards the Allied countries and Eastern Europe generally'. The military
rejected such a plan, a decision that suited Stalin. Historian Herbert Feis has
written that 'the Soviet Government was to maintain that the Italian set up
was a good and fair model for use in nations liberated by the Red Army'. In
one sense, Stalin was happy to see the British and MI6 interfere in Italy's
political affairs since he was, according to one writer on Italian resistance,
Charles Delzell, 'quite willing to leave events to Anglo-American manage-
ment as long as he could exercise similar undisputed sway over his sphere
of eastern satellites'. American officials realised that the decision to minimise
Moscow's role in occupied Italy 'might give the Russians a convenient excuse
later on to restrict Anglo-American activities in Romania, Bulgaria and

Hungary'. Which is precisely what happened: the Americans reluctantly

acknowledged that, given the Italian analogy, it was 'only natural and to be
expected'.

MI6's Foreign Office adviser, Robert Cecil, had also turned his thoughts to
the future. 'If the freedom, for which the West had fought, was to be
preserved', Cecil concluded, then 'the task of keeping track of international
Communist activities would soon have to be resumed.' In August 1944,
Philby, who had expected to begin work on the illegal organisations of the
Nazi Party and, when the war ended, to work in Berlin as chief of counter-
intelligence, was informed that Vivian wanted to appoint him the operational
chief of MI6's anti-communist work in place of Curry.^^
Cowgill received no warning of Vivian's decision, and it was only on his
return from a tour of inspection of SCI Units in liberated Europe on 23
lo PART ONE: FROM HOT TO COLD WAR

October that he discovered that Philby had achieved his goal of heading
Section IX. He had done so by stressing his willingness to collaborate with
the Security Service, which was involved in an ultimately unsuccessful battle
to incorporate Section V into MIS. 'At one stroke', Cecil bitterly recalled,
Philby 'had got rid of a staunch anti-communist and ensured that the whole
post-war effort to counter communist espionage would become known in
the Kremlin. The history of espionage records few, if any, comparable master-
strokes.' Ironically, Cowgill would resign from MI6 because of his 'opposition
to the redirection of energies in British counter-espionage from Germany to
the new Soviet threat'.
The creation had been welcomed in the 'warren of wooden-
of Section IX
partitioned offices and windows' of Broadway Buildings by
frosted-glass
senior officers because 'it seemed to hold out the prospect of a continued
MI6 foothold in post-war counter-espionage work'. Older officers also saw
an opportunity to 'stay at their desks drawing a salary for a few more years
pending retirement'. Junior officers, who thought their superiors 'lunatic in
their anti-communism', were happy that Philby had been promoted and
pleased that 'at least one communist should have broken through and that
the social prejudices of our superiors had, on this occasion, triumphed over
their politicial prejudices'.^^
The new rapidly expanding anti-Soviet department was not yet fully
operational, but Philby began to recruit staff, including Robert Carew-Hunt,
head of Section V's subsection dealing with North and South America, who
prepared background papers on communism, and Jane (Sissmore) Archer, a
trained barrister from MIS's B Division, who was an expert on Soviet espion-
age and the Comintern.^°
Who sanctioned Menzies's expansion of the section or, for that matter,

GC&CS's Soviet signals initiative is unclear. Cecil spent his last years trying
to expose the inconsistencies and propaganda inherent in Philby's account
while ignoring the more interesting question of why he allowed IX to expand
at a time when the Foreign Office was still dampen down hostility
trying to
to the Soviet Union. Any official go-ahead would appear to have been the
result of pressure from the military. Indeed, Menzies shared the military
view on Russia and, according to future Chief Dick White, he 'ordered the
resumption of operations without Churchill's knowledge because he knew
that the Soviets would be a major problem'.
MI6 began to make use of captured Soviet soldiers liberated by the
advancing Allied armies in the West. Nazi collaborators and former members
of the Baltic Waffen-SS, who had sought refuge in Sweden as the German
defence collapsed, were recruited by Swedish and British Military Intelligence
- 'neither of which asked too many questions about the Baits' wartime activi-
ties'. The first link between MI6 and former SS men, they were used to gather

intelligence on the Soviet armies as they swept across eastern and northern
 THE SECOND WORLD WAR 17

MI6 had made contact with resistance organis-

Europe. By the end of the year,
and renewed relations with anti-communist, pro-
ations in the Baltic states
German exile groups such as the Promethean League and Intermarium, which
the Service had sponsored before the war.^^
CHArTER2

REORGANISATION:
SPECIAL OPERATIONS

Although hostilities continued, by 1945 senior officers in The Firm' - as MI6

was affectionately known to its staff - knew that the end was not far off and 'an
air of relaxation wafted through the narrow corridors' of head-
quarters. Colleagues drank to the future in the small Seniors' Club in the base-
ment of head office, where they talked shop about the lay-offs and cutbacks,
or were already intriguing about promotion and appointments abroad. Those
officers that had decided to stay initially had little to do, and a number, such as
Desmond Bristow, deployed their espionage expertise in the serious endeavour
of discovering which pubs had been supplied with rationed beer.^
knew, however, that MI6 would soon be
All officers of whatever rank
faced with its traditional enemy - Russia. Indeed, it seemed to Hugh Trevor
Roper and other wartime entrants that the professionals, who were 'lunatic
in their anti-communism', sometimes regarded the war as 'a dangerous inter-
ruption of the Service'. The younger officers were invited to the Chief's office
- the 'August Presence', as it became known - where they heard Menzies
declare that 'we are in a rapidly changing world, politically and economically
. Basically, it is becoming clear that Germany will slowly become our ally
. .

and the Russians our enemy.' In anticipation, the summer months were spent
reading books and papers on Marxism, communism and the Soviet Union.
'A real war had just ended,' Bristow recalled, 'and something which became
known as a "Cold War" was beginning.'^
It was also self-evident that this war would be 'in a special sense an
 REORGANISATION: SPECIAL OPERATIONS 19

intelligence conflict'. In looking back Cold War, Michael Herman, a

at the

senior intelligence official who served in the Cabinet Office, concluded that
'never before in peacetime have the relationships of competing power blocks
been so influenced by intelligence assessments. Never before have the collec-
tion of intelligence and its denial to the adversary been such central features
of an international rivalry. The Cold War transformed intelligence into a
major element of the peacetime international security system.' Menzies had
no illusions about what the policy-makers, strategists, the military, the
Foreign Office and politicians would require of MI6, but as he considered
the options he must have wondered whether it could deliver. Would Menzies
be able to reform a service that in many ways reflected his own limited
outlook? And would the 'coherent and relatively well-ordered' British Intelli-

gence 'community' which, academic Richard Aldrich has noted, emerged

only during the Second World War, retain its overall coherence beyond 1945?^
Trevor Roper had his doubts. When he looked around Broadway Build-
ings as he was about to re-enter civilian life he noticed 'flitting like shadows
in the crowded wings' the same 'part-time stockbrokers and retired Indian
policemen, the agreeable epicureans from the bars of Whites and Boodles,
the jolly, conventional ex-naval officers and the robust adventurers from the
bucket-shop'. These people realised that MI6 would have to absorb some of
the new 'immigrants', but it felt to junior officers that those responsible for
recruitment wanted to ensure that they took on only 'those who would
sustain, not imperil, the old fabric' of the pre-war Service.^
Similarly, Aldrich concludes,moves to perpetuate the coherence of the
intelligence community 'lost their way in the bureaucratic and political
upheavals at the end of the war'. Those upheavals had a great deal to do
with the intense and bitter rivalry that had developed between MI6 and the
sabotage and resistance organisation, the Special Operations Executive (SOE).
And behind the rivalry lay the uneasy relationship between intelligence-
gathering, which was MI6's primary task, and the organisation of 'Special
Operations' (SO) - psychological warfare, assassinations and paramilitary
activities - which were the responsibility of SOE.^

There were many inside SOE for whom the war 'had become a way of
life and who were convinced that the Baker Street headquarters or something

like it would have an important role to play in the uncertain post-war world'.

This particularly applied to the CD or Executive Director, Colin Gubbins, who

was already thinking in terms of combating the postwar threat of communist
domination of the Balkans and eastern Europe.^

Gubbins's 'deep hatred of Communism' had developed in north Russia, as

ADC, in 1919, to General Ironside of the Archangel Expeditionary Force
which supported the White Russian, anti-Bolshevik forces fighting under the
command of Admiral Kolchak. He then served in Ireland, where he became
20 PA RT ON F : F RO KA H OT TO CO L D WAR

an adniirer of the IRA's Michael Collins, whom he regarded as the guerrilla

fighter pnr excellence. A Russian-speaker, during the thirties Gubbins worked
in the War Office's Soviet Section of the Military Intelligence Directorate. As
a member of the small General Staff (Research), later Military Intelligence
(R), which operated under the wing of MI6's own sabotage Section D, he

researched guerrilla warfare with responsibilties for organisation and recruit-

ment. In 1940, Gubbins was seconded to the new SOE, where 'his suspicions
of Soviet motives were far better informed and far more deeply held than
those of most of his colleagues'.^
Gubbins's desire to keep SOE as an anti-communist vehicle was, however,
hindered by the rows with MI6. In February 1944, in the wake of several
JIC reports that attempted to deal with SOE-MI6 controversies in Europe,
Churchill had resigned himself to 'the warfare between SIS and SOE which
is a lamentable, but perhaps inevitable, feature of our affairs'. SOE had
become unpopular within Whitehall because of its independent attitude and
its determination to 'resort to and encourage every form of terror'. Above

all, MI6 was 'determined that SOE's charter should not be prolonged beyond

the end of hostilities'.

It was a view shared by the Foreign Office's Orme Sargent 'who remained

unhappy about SOE's intimacy with the exile governments in London',

particularly those from the Balkans.^
Nevertheless, by the spring of 1944 senior officers had started to plan for
a postwar role for Special Operations. Gubbins, in particular, pressed for a
decision, as he feared losing his best men to other organisations. During
April, Douglas Dodds-Parker, one of the original members of MI(R) who
'had not only an extraordinary wide acquaintance' but whose 'manipulation
of the old boy network was exceptional', encouraged junior minister Harold
Macmillan to lobby for future Allied control commissions in newly liberated
countries to include a small element of SOE Macmillan had been
officers.

impressed by the SOE British Liaison Officers (BLOs) he had met in Italy
but, in August, his proposal was vetoed by the Foreign Office. In contrast to
the American OSS, no representatives were sent to Hungary, Romania and
Bulgaria, as there was no desire to extend reciprocal arrangements to the
Russians for Italy and Greece.^
By October, senior SOE figures were ready to consider Russia as a new
enemy. They argued that the organisation should think about setting up
agent networks to deal with the potential threat, and Gubbins ordered that
a list of its agents in central Europe be drawn up. He minuted: 'It is considered
most desirable that contact should be maintained with them to form a nucleus
of tried and experienced agents capable of rapid expansion in the event of
another war.' City and business figures were to be approached to provide
the agents with cover as foreign representatives of British firms. He added
that 'there are many people both within and outside SOE who have wide
 REORGANISATION: SPECIAL OPERATIONS 21

business and commercial contacts and will be willing and anxious to help in
this scheme'.
A draft proposal on SOE's future by Robin Brook, a senior officer respon-
sible for the western theatre, was redrafted by the minister in charge. Lord
Selbourne, as The Role of SOE
Immediate Post- Armistice Period' and
in the
submitted for discussion to the Selbourne wanted SOE missions
War Cabinet.
to operate in all European countries and to work against potential German stay-
behind networks and subversive organisations. His plan was rebuffed by the
War Cabinet deputy and Labour leader, Clement Attlee, who 'resolutely set his
face against the establishment of anything in the nature of a "British Comin-
tern" '. Selbourne once again redrafted his paper for Churchill with a more
'defensive' view of SOE, in which he suggested that it 'should not be amalga-
mated with [MI 6] because the methods and techniques are very different'.
Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden, however, was sure that 'the only sound plan
in the ultimate future will be to place SO and SIS under the same controlling
head'. As in the American OSS, the two tasks - intelligence-gathering and
special operations - would be combined in one organisation."
Gubbins tried to retrieve the situation and appealed directly to the chiefs
of staff, who requested further views on the future of SOE. On 30 November,
the chiefs accepted Eden's minute but agreed to Foreign Office control only
as a 'temporary measure'. Like Selbourne, they preferred War Office control
with SOE having its own head, who would them on all
deal directly with
operational matters. Throughout the winter of 1944/5, Selbourne and
Gubbins continued to plan operations in the context 'of SOE's self-appointed
post-hostilities role', believing that it was 'very much an SOE responsibility
to prevent the outbreak of civil war' as the Germans withdrew from parts
of Europe. Gubbins was able to put in place forty missions in Italy, where
Churchill feared the development of a civil war similar to that in Greece.
At the same time, MI6 planners staked their own claim to a future post-
hostilities role. In late February 1945, Kim Philby presented the Foreign Office
adviser, Robert Cecil, with 'the charter' of Section IX. Cecil, who claimed that
his vision of the future was 'at once more opaque and more optimistic', was
taken aback by the scale of demands which included the establishment of a
substantial number of overseas Section officers under diplomatic cover. Cecil,
who acknowledged that Philby 'foresaw more plainly than I the onset
later

of the Cold War', sent the memorandum back, suggesting that the demands
be scaled down. Within hours, Ve-Ve Vivian and Philby had descended upon
Cecil, 'upholding their requirements and insisting that these be transmitted
to the Foreign Office. Aware of the fact that I was in any case due to be

transferred in April to Washington, I gave way.' Cecil consulted with 'the

* This may explain a number of well-publicised arrests in the late forties and early fifties of
British businessmen in eastern Europe.
22 TAUT ONE: FPvONA HOT TO COLD WAR

Office' - ho does not say with whom - on the financial implications and the
increased diplomatic cover. He later reflected 'with a certain wry amusement
on the hypocrisy of Philby who, supposedly working in the cause of "peace",
demanded a large Cold War apparatus, when he could have settled for a
smaller one'.''
became the pre-eminent department of MI6 and the
Section IX quickly
same age as Philby, who had joined the Service
best officers, primarily the
during the war, transferred to the Section. A worldwide empire was slowly
created with a headquarters staff of sixty officers and another sixty officers
overseas, equipped with personal ciphers for direct communications to
Philby. Their mission was 'to keep Philby informed about Soviet, American,
British and French intelligence activity in their areas of operations and to
establish working relations with the local foreign counter-espionage and
security systems'. It was agreed, however, that they would have little contact
with their French and Italian counterparts as their services were held to be
infiltrated by Soviet agents.
Philby recognised that he was in 'an idiotic situation'. 'If all my operations
against the Soviet Union and the Communist movement failed every time, I

would soon be fired. If I achieved success every time, I could do significant

damage to the Soviet Union. There was no single way out of the situation.
In every case had to make a decision.' What Philby, in his role as a NKVD
I

agent, did not do was make a priority of penetration of the enemy intelligence
services - the 'acid', as Anthony Verrier calls it, 'which eats into the enemy's
vitals, causing collapse - sometimes - at a moment not always easy to predict'.

This lacking factor, Verrier correctly asserts, 'enabled Philby to be a traitor

secure from detection for many years'.
This was not entirely Philby's doing because he was just following long-
The MI6 training manual from the period includes a
established practice.
four-page memorandum on the recruitment and handling of agents in
'normal, not wartime, intelligence operations'. MI6 practice for recruiting
agents stated that

such persons are initially recommended to the service either by

a friend already in the service or by particular alumni of the
service designated for this purpose Both MI6 and MIS have
. . .

such former officers appointed for this purpose, particularly

those who are connected with British universities ... By far

the largest number of British agents are not 'agents' properly

speaking, but voluntary informers.

It goes on to state that

the successful intelligence service will not normally recruit

employees and then infiltrate them into any situation. Any such
 REORGANISATION; SPECIAL OPERATIONS 23

attempt will almost certainly be crude and unsuccessful. On a

long-range basis the British method is to take a person who
is young and newly engaged upon a career useful to British
intelligence and so to pay him and otherwise assist him as
increasingly to develop his usefulness over an extended period
of years.

Given that the evidence suggests that the majority of political warfare oper-
ations involved the use of 'agents of influence', MI6 strategy for recruiting
agents had clear advantages. However, it was only successful in building up
networks of sympathetic supporters and front groups. Where MI 6 singularly
failed to achieve greater success was in recruiting agents to penetrate enemy
and opposition organisations.^^
A number of internal reviews into the structure of the intelligenceand
security community were being undertaken within Whitehall in which a
variety of bureaucratic scores were settled. Perhaps acknowledging that he
would lose out in this internal battle, Gubbins had already made his own
arrangements to ensure that some semblance of an SO capability would be
in place after the war. Considerable sums of money were put into the mass
production of specialised weapons and wireless equipment which were obvi-
ously too late for Europe, or even South-East Asia, but Gubbins made no
effort to halt their manufacture. Indeed, he busied himself trying to build up
some kind of post-hostilities network, even in areas that the Foreign Office
had deemed off limits. One of his most trusted colleagues, Harold Perkins,
travelled to Prague to contact SOE's resident agents. In signals back to
London, he recorded their wartime cover and stressed that 'the continuity of
the stories should not be broken'. In Budapest, another officer revealed that
'the few agents we had are blown. A new would have to be
organisation
built up in cells initiated by our past agents and helpers. We must assume
'^^
that in the event of trouble all our past collaborators would be arrested.
In order to secure a permanent role in Germany, the head of SOE's
German directorate, Gerald Templer, was given the responsibility of
developing contacts with the 21 Army Group. Working in parallel, Peter
Wilkinson planned for the Clowder Mission for southern Austria to be
attached to the 8th Army in the British Zone of Austria. Their plans, however,
were frowned upon by JIC chair Cavendish-Bentinck, who did not have a
very high opinion of Gubbins, and Orme Sargent, who minuted that SOE
must not be allowed 'under cover of this kind of proposal to continue oper-
ations in the post-hostilities period'. On the ground, however, SOE units
were integrated with the army in Germany and Austria to carry out a number
of unspecified 'special assignments'.^^
With Gubbins absent abroad, in May 1945 Selbourne commissioned a final

draft paper on SOE's future. He explained that

24 PART ONE: FROM HOT TO COLD WAR

in \'iew of theRussian menace, the situation in Italy, Central

Europe and the Balkans, and the smouldering volcanoes in the
Middle East, I think it would be madness to allow SOE to be
stilled at this juncture. In handing it over to the Foreign Office
I cannot help feeling that to ask Sir Orme Sargent to supervise
SOE is like inviting an abbess to supervise a brothel! But SOE
is no base instrument, it is a highly specialised weapon which
will be required by HMG whenever we are threatened and
whenever it is necessary to contact the common people of
foreign lands.

It was regarded as an unimpressive document not least because it largely

rested on the idea of a resurgent Nazi 'Fourth Reich' underground which
officials soon realised would not materialise.^^
In the twilight of the Churchill administration. Lord Lovat accepted the
temporary post of Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, responsible
for the functions of the Ministry ofEconomic Warfare, including oversight
of the remnants of SOE when were taken over by the Foreign Office.
these
Lovat was a supreme example of the way the British intelligence community
operated through the old-boy network and family ties. At the outbreak of
war, he joined the Lovat Scouts, which had been raised by his father for the
Boer War but now specialised in irregular warfare. Lovat then commanded
the Field Craft Wing at the Inverailort Irregular Training Centre in the
Western Highlands, and went on to be awarded many gallantry awards as
leader of Commando Unit No. 4, which had been inspired by the paramilitary
formations adopted by Gubbins at the beginning of the war. At the time
of the Warsaw uprising, Lovat had been sent to Russia as a member of a
parliamentary delegation intended to bolster the Soviet alliance. Quoting
Byron, Churchill wrote to Stalin that he was sending him 'the mildest-
mannered man that ever cut a throat'. ^'^

With the support of Lovat and encouragement from Gubbins, in May the
chiefs of staff set up a 'SOE Evaluation Committee' which sought 'an
unbiased opinion' from regional commanders. While some of these reports
spoke highly of the military value of SOE, others called for 'closer co-ordina-
tion and control at every level'. This became the central issue as the Foreign
Office and the chiefs fought for effective control - which hitherto had been
noticeably absent - over MI6 and SOE's tendency to play a 'semi-lone hand'
and to develop its 'own foreign policy' had resulted in, Richard Aldrich
suggests, 'a great deal of administrative friction both in Whitehall and at
headquarters level of the major operational theatres of war'.^^
The Foreign Office had still not turned against the Soviets, though certain
individuals and particularly factions in the military, which supported SOE
lobbying for a post-hostilities role, were already thinking of the next war.
 REORGANISATION: SPECIAL OPERATIONS 25

Orme Sargent had been encouraged in calling for a 'showdown' with the
Russians by his friend Robert Bruce Lockhart, who told him that 'the Anglo-
American armies in the west could go through the Russian armies quite
easily because of their enormous preponderance in armour and air power'.
Throughout the spring of 1945, virtually every JIC policy discussion reflected
fears of Soviet intentions and argued for 'getting tough with the Russians'.
Churchill even telegraphed Field Marshal Montgomery directing him 'to be
careful in collecting German arms, to stack them so that they could easily be
issued again to the German soldiers whom we should have to work with if
the Soviet advance continued'. Montgomery later admitted that the secret
order had been issued. Churchill went as far as to ask the Joint Planning
Staff (JPS), which had taken on the military's post-hostilities planning func-
tions, for a report, known as Operation UNTHINKABLE, on the possibility
of taking on Russia.^^
It was assumed that the Third World War would start on 1 July with ten

divisions of German troops joining with British and American divisions in

launching an attack on the Soviets between Dresden and the Baltic. The study,
which was presented to the Prime Minister on 22 May, only five days after
the formal surrender by Admiral Doenitz of German forces, concluded that
'the best we could hope for was to drive the Russians back to about the same
line the Germans had reached. And then what? Were we to remain mobilised
indefinitely to hold them there?' On the 31st, the chiefs of staff rejected the
report as unfeasible and insisted that Britain should be thinking in terms of
defence.
week after VE day, Churchill had lamented in a meeting with
Less than a
his ambassador to Moscow, Archibald Kerr, that 'the Soviets were dropping
an iron screen across Europe from Lubeck to Trieste, behind which we have
no knowledge of what was happening'. Churchill's fears were reflected in a
23 May JIC paper on 'Relations with the Russians', which laid particular
emphasis on the exchange of intelligence and technical information. The
Russians were characterised by 'suspicion' and 'an obsession with security
and prestige'. The report concluded that 'no Russian request should normally
be granted unless some request of ours to which we attach importance is
granted in connection with it'. This distorted picture of wartime intelligence
co-operation with the Soviets, which painted a dismal picture of the prospects
for the future, enjoyed a wide circulation and was frequently cited by those
trying to point British 'post-hostilities' policy towards the USSR into a more
'realistic' and assertive direction.^"^

Official recognition that a chill now ran through attitudes towards the
Soviets was made plain on 26 June 1945, when the Air Ministry issued a
general order that 'all and otherwise, which
intelligence reports, technical
had hitherto been sent, or made available, to the Russians, either by automatic
inclusion on a distribution list or otherwise are no longer to be so disclosed
26 PART ONE: 1-ROM HOT TO COLD WAR

except w hen a comparable quid pro quo is arranged'. As Bradley F. Smith

in^tes, it marked a shift in British intelligence priorities from 'securing intelli-

gence from the Russians about the Germans to acquiring intelligence on the
Russians from the Germans'. Three days later came confirmation that British
intelligence was actively compiling OB intelligence on the Soviet Red Army.
The War Office's MIS declared that the bulk of its information on the Red
Army had been derived from the Germans, especially from low-level wireless
'Y' intercepts and captured documents, as well as from Japanese intercepts

and material secured from the Poles, who had managed to break the Soviet
Air Force ciphers. In the judgement of MIS the time had come to interrogate
British-held German PoWs in the hope of gathering intelligence on the Soviet
Union.

Like other services, MI 6 was subjected to general but limited inquiries into
reorganisation. Commissioned by Churchill, a committee headed by Sir Find-
later Stewart, formerly chair of the recently disbanded Home Defence Execu-
tive, looked into the reform of the Whitehall intelligence structure in the
context of the amalgamation of the three service ministries in a new Ministry
of Defence. The inquiry was 'somewhat toothless' in that Cavendish-Bentinck
had already persuaded the chiefs of staff that the intelligence structure should
remain intact. With the approval of the military chiefs, he also set in train
the creation of the Joint Intelligence Bureau after noticing that 'there were
junior officers in the intelligence divisions of the Air Ministry, War Office
and the Admiralty all doing the same job, writing the same things, gathering
the same information, most of it not secret in any way. I thought this should
be rationalized.'^^
Meanwhile, Menzies resisted pressure from the Foreign Office to appoint
Cavendish-Bentinck as his Vice-Chief, preferring to surround himself with
military men whom he could trust.
Instead, he appointed Major-General John
wartime Director of Military Intelligence, as his deputy and
Sinclair, the last

successor-designate. Menzies did bring in an outsider as his Assistant Chief.

A 'quiet and experienced organiser'. Air Commodore James 'Jack' Easton
had been the RAF's Assistant Director for Intelligence with responsibility for
providing facilities for MI6 and SOE's operations. He was respected by the
younger officers as a 'subtle intelligence officer who was quick to see the
order out of any chaos presented to him' and whose 'intelligence was manifest
as soon as he started speaking'. Philby considered him 'dangerously smart':
Easton 'never raised his voice, but could kill with a word filled with irony and

sarcasm'. Unfortunately, given that the Service needed a shake-up precisely in

those very sections where their power was unquestioned, 'the coterie of

swashbuckling old Russia hands, who disdained the notion that a man with-
out "green thumbs", insensitive to the world spies, should exercise authority',
tended to report direct to Menzies and Sinclair. These 'Robber Barons', 'safe-
 REORGANISATION: SPECIAL OPERATIONS 27

guarding their territorial perquisites and responsible for all tasks within
them', were, Anthony Verrier acknowledges, 'certainly immune from intro-
spection about organisation and methods'. They ensured that 'no root or
branch reorganisation was considered or attempted'.^'
Cavendish-Bentinck, too, was called upon to look at the future organisa-
tion of MI6. The committee included the JIC Secretary, Col. Denis Capel-
Dunn, and two senior Foreign Office officials, Neville Bland (whose proposal
that MI 6 officers be given the same conditions of service as civil servants
had already been accepted by Bevin) and Ivone Kirkpatrick, the latter having
been considered by Menzies as his possible successor. The final report
presented to the chiefs of staff on 5 June 1945 recommended that GC&CS
be give extra funds, while Menzies was instructed 'to hoard all the money
he could before the war ended because we knew that after the war the
Treasury wouldn't give a penny if it didn't have to'. The JIC chair was later
told that this had been achieved.^^
It remains an intriguing but largely unanswered question how MI6

managed to fund its SOs in a period of great austerity - the actual amount
allocated to the Secret Intelligence Service by the secret vote which went
through Parliament was quite small. While a large percentage of its budget
was hidden away in other departments, particularly the Armed Services, it
is uncertain whether this was enough to cover expensive SOs such as the

large bribes and subventions paid out to assets and agents, particularly in the
Middle East. It has been alleged that US intelligence covertly used Operation
SAFEHAVEN funds, which had originated with the gold hoard that the
Germans had plundered from Europe, as 'black currency' for operations in
Italy in the late forties, though the CIA has denied it. However, a knowledge-
able insider source has suggested that a portion of this tainted gold was,
indeed, used by MI6 to fund its SOs. Certainly, MI6 agents engaged in
black-market operations of the kind successfully exploited by SOE in the Far
East, while offshore banks and tax havens have been rumoured to have acted
as channels for the Service's dirty money.^^

In early June 1945, an ad hoc committee was set up to consider SOE's immedi-
ate future. It consisted of Cavendish-Bentinck, representatives of the chiefs
of staff and the Treasury, Menzies and Gubbins, who found himself heavily
outnumbered. Cavendish-Bentinck recommended that 'SOE should become
a wing of the SIS and that meanwhile every effort should be made in the
interests of efficiency and economy to unify the activities of the SIS and
SOE'. He added on the 22nd that 'we must cut our coat according to our
cloth and if we produce a large establishment it will be turned down, and
there will be no Special Operations organisation in peacetime'. On 16 July,
under pressure from Menzies, Gubbins finally accepted the fusion of the two
organisations.^^
28 PART ONE: FROM HOT TO COLD WAR

Increasingly, SOE operations overlapped with those of MI6. With hostil-

ities Germany at an end, Menzies sent Philby to Athens and then Frank-
with
furt, where he saw the chief of Allied Intelligence in Europe, General Long.

The aim was to organise operations for the gathering of military and political
intelligence about the situation in the territories in Germany and eastern
Europe occupied by the Red Army. War Planning soon became an integral
part of MI6's activities and much thought was given to the setting up of
anti-Soviet Stay Behind (SB) networks throughout Europe.^^
When Churchiirs 'caretaker' government was defeated by the Labour
Party, Lord Lovat, who had responsibility for SOE, was among the ministerial
casualties. It had not been a happy time for Lovat, for 'within the year the
military curtain rang down on Special Service'. This was not entirely true
but was believed by those on the Right who had wanted to preserve SOE,
which, according to Robert Cecil, was 'liquidated with almost indecent haste'.
SOE historian M. R. D. Foot claims that the new Prime Minister, Clement
Attlee, ordered that SOE and its networks were 'to end immediately' and
were 'closed down at 48 hours notice'. He adds that Foreign Secretary Ernest
Bevin 'signed SOE's death warrant on lines laid down by Eden in 1945' and
agreed that components of SOE would come under the control of MI6. It

was not an arrangement met with the approval of Cecil, who believed
that
that 'if relations with SIS had been more cordial, one first-class organisation
could have been created out of the best of two elements but the chance was
missed'.
The truth, Richard Aldrich discovered, was that 'on the contrary, many
components of SOE marched out of the Second World War into the Cold
War without breaking step'. In fact, a few SOE units - protected by the
military - in Germany, Austria, Iraq, Iran and in the Far East, continued to
operate without any effective Foreign Office control. On 11 September, Colin
Gubbins learned that Bevin had agreed to the amalgamation of SOE with
MI6. Bevin thanked Gubbins for his contribution to the war effort and
disclosed that 'C would be the common executive head. Thus elements of SO
were amalgamated with other clandestine bodies and official organisations,
enabling important continuities to be maintained in personnel and doctrine.
It was not an ideal solution for SOE's supporters but it met 'the universal

recommendation for much closer control of special operations'.^^

'Because of its poor wartime record', Patrick Seale records that Menzies
'had to fight for the Service's existence in the face of scepticism from the new
Labour government and rivalry from other agencies, such as SOE'. With the
SO problem now solved to his satisfaction, and in order to make the Service
more responsive to peacetime intelligence-gathering, in September Menzies
appointed MI6's own Reorganisation Committee to review the workings of
the Service. It was chaired by the Director of the Passport Control Department,
Maurice Jeffes, 'a capable, if colourless, administrator'. It also included the
 REORGANISATION: SPECIAL OPERATIONS 29

Secretary of the Planning Staff and Production Committee, Alurid Denne,

who had control of the USSR region; Chief Staff Officer Christopher Arnold-
Forster, a naval officer who was about to retire to rejoin a City stockbroking
firm; Capt. Edward on the
'Eddie' Hastings, another naval officer serving
Joint MI6/GC&CS Committee David Footman, the
of Control at Bletchley;
head of the Political Section; John Cordeaux, a former Naval Intelligence
officer who had run the wartime Dutch Country Section and represented
the 'G' sections, which administered overseas stations and supervised their
operations; and finally Section IX's head, Kim Philby, representing the inter-
ests of counter-espionage.^^
Meeting throughout October and November 1945, the committee worked
against the background of the defection of Igor Gouzenko, a cipher clerk at
the Soviet embassy Ottawa who, in September, had sought asylum in
in
Canada. He was followed by others and 'as spy after spy fell like skeletons
out of the cupboard, indignation rose that the Soviet Union should have
organised such networks of agents and sympathisers to steal secrets from
their Allies during the war'. It came as no surprise to the anti-Bolsheviks of
MI6, but the Gouzenko case had a direct effect on the security services. The
committee looked at the question of how the Service could best counter Soviet
Intelligence and undertake espionage work against the Soviet Union. Philby
reported to his Soviet controllers that the 'Committee members expressed
the thought that the priority in work against the USSR should be given to
the issue of studying the achievements of the Soviet Union in its work on new
secret weapons, particularly uranium bombs'. Scientific intelligence-gathering
.^^
was given particular priority
The fundamental question that the committee considered was whether
MI6 should be organised along geographical lines by country or by functional
specialisation, focused upon subjects such as economic, political and scientific
intelligence. A compromise was adopted and, henceforth, MI6 was divided
into five directorates. The two most important were:
Production (II) - responsible for operational intelligence-gathering and
organised on geographical lines with regional Controllers covering northern,
western and eastern Europe, the Middle East and the Far East, with another
for London-based operations.
Requirements (III) - responsible for analysis and distribution and organ-
ised on functional lines.
The other three directorates were Finance and Administration (I), which
was administered by an SOE officer; Training and Development (IV), which
addressed the growing demand for technical resources and was again run
by a former SOE officer, John Munn; and what would become increasingly
important, the War Planning Directorate (V).

Beneath the Controllers were the Production or 'P' officers, who super-
vised operations in two or three countries and were responsible for chan-
30 PA HT ON E : F RO M H OT TO CO L D WA

no ling
I intelligence gathered abroad to Broadway. Requirements was
subdivided into 'R' sections, each responsible for a particular subject - Politi-
cal (1), Air (2), Naval (3), Military (5), Economic (6),
(4), Counter-intelligence
Financial (7), GC&CS/GCHQ which pinpointed what
(8) and Science (9),

intcn niation was required from the five geographical T' sections. This basic

pattern of organisation remained unchanged for many years.

In 1948 refinements were made to the system with three Chief Controllers
- Kenneth Cohen, Chief Controller Europe, John Teague, CC Mediterranean,
and James Fulton, CC Pacific - overseeing the eight control areas, which
often had overlapping responsibilities.
Since 1931 MI6 has been forbidden to operate within Britain's three-mile
limit, and under the Controller Production Research (CP2) the UK Station's

function was officially to act as a staging point for officers sent into areas
where there was no MI 6 station or where operatives faced particular diffi-
culties. The station employed 'buggers and debuggers' to run arm's-length

operations, including those against foreign embassies in London which, tech-

.^^
nically, were not on British territory
Under the new system Kim Philby controlled the key area of Requirements
counter-intelligence (R5), which replaced Section IX and took over Section
V. Philby was still responsible for supervising the worldwide collection of
all anti-Soviet and anti-communist material, intelligence which, according to

Philby's reports to the Soviets, was used 'to discredit individuals in Soviet
embassies and communist activities in other countries, to create provocations
against them, to force or encourage them to defect to the West'. A great deal
of attention was paid to interrogating former Soviet PoWs and other displaced
Russians. Philby discovered that the mostly low-level defectors did not know
very much about the Soviet Union but were 'very eager to tell whatever they
thought British intelligence officers wanted to hear'.^^

The committee's final report concluded with a 'design of something like a

Service, with enough serious inducements to tempt able young men to regard
it as a career for life'. It helped that a number of older officers were pensioned

off as the Service pruned sections left over from the war, and that Bevin agreed
to place officers within the Civil Service pay and benefits structure, which
included an allowance for school fees w^hen stationed abroad. Unfortunately,
the positive aspects were undermined by Menzies who, while accepting its
broad thrust, could not bring himself to cut out more of the dead wood which
the plan demanded. Old and trusted colleagues became the Controllers of the
Production sections, who, with their own individual and often outdated ways
of operating, which harked back to earlier battles against the Bolsheviks, had
seemingly learned little from the changes that had been ushered in by the war.
Basking in the glow of perceived wartime success, as the younger officers were
to discover, they were to have a crucial, highly distorting and damaging effect
on the effectiveness and efficiency of the Service.^^^
 REORGANISATION: SPECIAL OPERATIONS 31

On 27 November, Findlater Stewart's own report was finally delivered to

the Cabinet Secretary, Sir Edward Bridges. A suggestion that in order to avoid
wasteful duplication MI 6 and MIS should share a combined headquarters in
London was rejected. Instead, the report 'favoured MI6's continued covert
life with an added limited capacity to undertake clandestine SOE -style oper-

ations'. It would appear that the inquiry had little impact within MI 6, though

the Service did lose its prize asset, control of the cryptanalytic agency at
Bletchley which reverted to Foreign Office supervision.^^^
It was also recommended that 'the time-honoured parallel system, which
had so neatly divided the nation's intelligence and security responsibilities
since 1909 between MIS within the Empire and SIS elsewhere in the world,
was endorsed'. This was accepted by the Prime Minister after the Colonial
Office insisted that outside agencies were not welcome 'on the grounds that
disclosure of such could have a disruptive effect'. Careful limits were to be
put on their activities. 'Even in the colonies acceding to independence, where
SIS could have expected to move in, the British government decreed that
MIS should keep its monopoly.' Known as the Attlee Doctrine, this drawing
of the frontier between MI6 and MIS operations only finally broke down
'when Commonwealth countries such as Cyprus or Ghana became involved
with foreign powers - and so entered SIS territory'.^^
Senior MI6 officers detested the Doctrine, but those officials 'who forecast
that the new generation of governments were likely to be the main mischief-
makers of the future were earmarked for Whitehall's dustbin of embarrassing
discards'. The Doctrine also applied to the dominions of Canada, Australia
and New Zealand where MI6 was, too, excluded. The Doctrine was later
held responsible by MI6 officers 'for the misleading British assessments of
African and Caribbean developments'.'*^

Having lost the battle to retain SOE as a separate organisation, Gubbins,

with his deputy, Harry Sporborg, and Director of Finance, John Venner, who
had been engaged in secret efforts to retain SOE's financial accounts, ensured
that the transfer of SO technical assets and resources went smoothly. It was
agreed with Menzies that Gubbins would deal with MI6 Vice-Chief John
Gubbins issued a memorandum that recommended
Sinclair. In a parting shot,

'the establishment of a worldwide network of dormant SOE agents, ready

to spring into action on the outbreak of the third world war, backed up by
an extensive production of material of a sort designed for special operations'.
While the military agreed with the broad thrust of his proposals it was
realised that financial restraints made full implementation impractical. A
more modest appraisal was undertaken by the JPS, but even this proved too
much for the Foreign Office. Sir Alexander Cadogan would only agree that,

in times of tension, 'when we pass from a green light to an amber light

period, SOE should then set up their organisation in approved countries
32 PART ONE: FROM HOT TO COLD WAR

abroad to meet the threat which has taken shape. Meanwhile, in our view,
their preparations for such expansion should be confined to this country.'
Sporborg protested to Cadogan that this would be no more than a 'study
group' which would be incapable of meeting the requirements in time of war.
The December 1945, recommended acceptance of
chiefs of staff agreed and, in
the PS paper on the future of SOE. Thus, in essence, tentative agreement
J

was reached on the foundation of what became a European- wide SB network,

popularly known as 'Gladio'.^^
Gubbins's appointment was terminated on 1 January 1946, but the final
decision on SO was taken, according to the diary of the Chief of the Imperial
General Alanbrooke, in mid-month after much informal, high-level
Staff,

discussion. By the time the new JIG chair, Harold Gaccia, and Menzies
attended a meeting of the chiefs of staff to discuss SOE, Alanbrooke had
already taken the matter up with Sinclair. They had decided that 'by amalga-
mating the Secret Intelligence Service with SOE, we could provide a
combined organisation that would function automatically in Peace and War'.
The amalgamation took effect from 15 January. Two days later, the chiefs
confirmed that an SOE 'liquidation party' under John Musson was carrying
out the exercise, though it took several months before the process was
complete. 'Liquidated' were SOE's technical facilities, including the cipher
section which had been kept open until May by the 'mercurial codemaster'
Leo Marks, and the supply of various 'Q' devices such as false passports and
documentation, miniature cameras and microphones, specialist munitions
and weapons used in assassinations and sabotage. The latter were 'asset
stripped' and combined with MI6's 'Technical Aid' and 'Documents' support
sections into a single Technical Section, housed at Artillery Mansions, near
Westminster. Similarly, the training section based at Gosport was merged
into MI6's Training and Development Directorate with input into the General
Tradecraft course.^^
During July 1946, the War Office began its own investigation into the
and organisations' and their relation to MI6 activities.
'Control of special units
The resultant SO directive, which was approved by the Foreign Office,
contemplated two forms of SO activity, namely 'covert support to British
national interests where threatened, and the maintenance of an organisation
capable of quick and effective expansion in time of war'. The first were known
as current and were part of the 'revamped SOE units' of the SO branch
which was headed by Harold Perkins, who formally handed over all the
existing SOE networks. These units would eventually be involved in oper-
ations such as detaching Albania from the Soviet bloc (or orbit, as it was
known within MI6 and The second, and in Gubbins's
the Foreign Office).
view by far the more important, were 'prospective' and were planned in
anticipation of war and enemy occupation. These came under the remit of
MI6's new Directorate of War Planning which seems to have operated on
 REORGANISATION: SPECIAL OPERATIONS 33

the activistagenda of the chiefs of staff. Its first head was SOE's Brig. John
Nicholson, who had been GSOI with the Middle East forces. Executive
responsibility for the SO units lay with the Controller in London, and under
him regional controllers in Cairo and Singapore. In turn, they were directly
responsible to the Vice-Chief of the Service, John Sinclair. War Planning
officers were attached to Area Controllerates to oversee planning for sabotage
and subversion operations, and the recruitment of stay-behind networks. In
addition. War Planning officers under Brian Franks helped develop SOE
strategy, with the SAS taking on the role of the wartime British Liaison
Officers (BLOs).""
Some of the older MI 6 officers resented the intrusion of the SO operatives
into their hallowed ranks. According head of the SOE mission in
to the
Greece, and later of the SO contingent inside MI6, Montague ('Monty') Wood-
house, 'after SOE was disbanded, only a few ex-SOE officers were incorpor-
ated in SIS, and only in junior positions. Almost all senior positions in SIS
were held by war-time intelligence officers, who regarded special operations
with disrespect.' David Smiley was one of the old SOE hands who 'got the
impression that they regarded us as a lot of bungling amateurs'. Gubbins,
however, continued to maintain close ties with Menzies, and observers recog-
nised that SOE, which continued to 'lurk within' MI6, had a disproportionate
influence to its size. This was particularly noticeable in Balkan and Greek
affairs, where its stranglehold on operations in the last two years of the

war meant that 'the post-war SIS emphasis in this area concentrated on
"counter-revolutionary" activities' .^^
New entrants to the Service, many of whom happened to have been
employed by SOE, had to make few adjustments. While they 'found them-
selves being trained rather haphazardly, for tasks' such as 'agent running on
classic intelligence lines', they also found themselves undertaking 'an
opposed [defended] river crossing' as 'so many had done in the war'. Their
former head, meanwhile, did not just quietly disappear into business and
retirement. Biographer and intelligence insider Peter Wilkinson intrigues with
his comment that Gubbins 'no longer had any formal responsibility for special
operations', which vanished 'into the mists of "official secrecy" '.^^
Gubbins's heart was still with SO and a great deal of his spare time was
spent setting up the Special Forces Club in Kensington. Besides acting as a
social club and charity for Resistance members, it helped 'maintain a world-
wide network which could be activated in the event of a future war and
provide the nucleus of national resistance which experience had taught him
would otherwise take years to develop'. Recruitment for later Balkan oper-
ations was largely conducted through the club by Gubbins, assisted by Doug-
las Dodds-Parker and Gerry Holdsworth. Likewise, in the absence of a

formally sanctioned full-blown covert operations programme, 'dining clubs'

and 'awards clearing houses' for former 'secret armies', specialised units.
34 PA RT ON E : F RC^ M H OT TO CO L D WAR

such as MI 9, and even Admiral Godfrey's Naval Intelligence Directorate

acted in a similar capacity, displaying the British habit of informal links and
the enduring use of the old-boy network for conducting SO.
While it was true that 'clandestine services shrank rather than expanded'
after 1945, of the SO operatives remained on call. A number became
many
entangled numerous worldwide counter-insurgency campaigns when the
in

British had to deal with guerrillas who had been (and the irony was not lost
on those involved) trained and armed by SOE during the war. It was only
natural that to counter them former SOE officers were recalled for duty, first
in Palestine and then in Malay a.
Despite the disbandment of SOE as an independent centre, and in the
face of strong Foreign Office opposition, some regional SOE organisations
still 'managed to survive until 1947, independent of and often in parallel

with MI6 representation'. Increasingly, however, SO and the more aggressive

intelligence-gathering, which had had a degree of autonomy under the protec-
tion of the military, would require the approval of the Foreign Office.
Belatedly and gradually, the Foreign Office would impose its view of the
Cold War on the Secret Intelligence Service.
Over the winter of 1945/6, MI 6 reorientated itself to take on the Soviet
challenge and developed, one of the new intake, George Young, thought,
into 'a well-trained corps speaking every known tongue and a few unknown
ones, experienced in separating fact from forgery, and with specialist qualifi-
cations in the professional crafts ancient and modern'. A leading figure in
Military Intelligence, Major-General Sir Kenneth Strong, concurred, later
boasting that the latter years of the Second World War and the beginning of
the postwar world were 'in a sense the golden age of British Intelligence'.
'Fortunately', Young wrote, 'Menzies remained in the saddle until 1952,
during the rundown of defence and military organisations. His successors
benefitted for at least a decade from his methods and influence.' Others
begged to differ.*^
CHAPTERS

CONTAINMENT

During July 1945, the Foreign Office's new Permanent Under-Secretary, Orme
'Moley' Sargent, was lunching with a colleague when they heard news of
the Labour Party's decisive general election victory. Sargent descended into
'the depths of gloom, prophesying a Communist avalanche over Europe, a
weak foreign policy, a private revolution at home and reduction of England
[sic] to a second class power'. Shortly after, he produced a memorandum,
'Stocktaking after VE Day', which stated that 'Britain was still a Great Power'
and that its main enemy was the Soviet Union. Britain, Sargent argued, had
to maintain its interests in the countries of eastern Europe, though Romania
and Hungary were thought to be already lost to Soviet domination. 'Further',
as historian John Saville noted, 'he developed an early version of what much
later came to be known as the "domino" theory'. Britain needed to take

action in these countries else, if they fell to the Soviets, its position would be
threatened 'further west' in Germany, Italy, Greece and Turkey.^
These assumptions were shared by the chiefs of staff and the Joint Intelli-
gence Committee QIC), which provided the military with a report to the
effect that a hostile Soviet Union would be ready to launch a premeditated
war by 1956. Using this report, in July 1945 the military's Joint Planning Staff
(JPS) produced a digest based on a series of regional appreciations, 'The
Security of the British Empire', which outlined British strategic requirements
for the postwar world. With regard to M16 and the Government Code and
Cipher School (GC&CS/GCHQ), the chiefs gave a high priority to 'national'
36 PART ONE: FROM HOT TO COLD WAR

or strategic' intelligence and, in particular, Soviet strategic weapons devel-

opment."
Most officers inside MI6's Broadway offices regretted the removal of
Churchill from Downing Street - Robert Cecil recognised him as 'a hard
taskmaster; but to consort with him was to consort with greatness' - but they
had little to fear as the election of a socialist government did not bring about
any major break in foreign, defence and intelligence policy. Indeed, Attlee
'promptly removed any threat that the secret organisations might not survive
into peacetime', while the 'permanent government' tried to ensure a seamless
continuation in all three interlinked areas.^
Sargent recognised that Britain was not strong enough by itself to with-
stand Soviet power and needed to enlist the help of an ally. 'The process of
inducing the United States to support a British resistance to Russian
penetration in Europe', he minuted, 'will be a tricky one, and we must
contrive to demonstrate to the American public that our challenge is based
on upholding the liberal idea in Europe and not upon selfish appreciations
as to our position as a Great Power.' An alliance with the United States was
thus not the overriding aim of Britain's foreign policy, but the means by
which to hang on to its imperial past by building on the rhetoric of saving
Western civilisation from the Soviet threat.^
John Saville has written that Foreign Office officials, aloof from the econ-
omic realities of Britain's bankrupt state, 'appeared incapable of assessing with
any degree of realism the world that was emerging from the massive blood-
letting of the Second World War'. Professor F. S. Northedge adds that they

never doubted that Britain's old position in the Middle East and
other such areas of the world would sooner or later be restored
to more what it always had been. Arabs, Iranians and
or less
even Jews would get used to the idea that Britain, by reason of
her long experience, was the natural agency to govern them, to
define their various needs, including defence, and to guide them
on their way to prosperity and security.

Whitehall, Saville concludes, 'lacked a sense of history, a recognition that the

balance of political forces in the world had changed and was continuing to
change'. Officials were unwilling or unable to understand the opportunities
opened up by nationalism.^
Harold Laski told friends that Labour would 'turn the Foreign Office upside
down', but these illusions or 'deeply ingrained beliefs', which Lord Franks later
described as 'the habit and furniture of our minds', were also generally
accepted within the higher echelons of a Labour Party that had little intention
of instigating a 'socialist' foreign policy. Outgoing Conservative Foreign Secre-
tary Anthony Eden had been particularly keen to see the robust anti-communist
Ernest Bevin take over in the Foreign Office. Bevin's private secretary, Frank
 CONTAINMENT 37

Roberts, underlined the close postwar understanding which amounted to a

bipartisan foreign policy: had worked under Eden throughout the war and
'I

was often used by Bevin as an intermediary to keep Eden informed or to get his
reactions.' Eden admitted that there were no important differences on foreign
policy between the Conservatives and the new Labour government.^
Professor Alan Bullock's monumental biography of Bevin presents a
picture of 'a towering Foreign Secretary who seemed to have an almost
unerring sense of direction and was the inspiration and the focus of responsi-
bility for a series of initiatives which sought to defend British interests against
Soviet encroachments and threats at the beginning of the Cold War'. In reality,
Bevin was a Cold War warrior par excellence and the dupe of far cleverer
minds in the Foreign Office. He was semi-literate and his officials wrote the
majority of his telegrams, which he did not always read. Control of the paper
flow was easily achieved since the minister, who had a preference for broad
generalisations rather than details, and who faced an enormous workload,
was hardly ever in the office because of ill health. His speeches in the House
of Commons, which did not always make sense, were tidied up for Hansard.
Officials were content that he made few changes within the department, so
ensuring that the traditional methods of formulating policy were retained.
The sensitive aspects of the Cold War and views of Soviet policy continued
to be 'developed outside of the Cabinet Room in ad hoc meetings with a few
selected Ministers and officials'. The main points of policy were thus set by
'a relatively small group of officials in the Foreign Office who took advantage

of the force of Bevin's personality'.^

Bevin's much-trumpeted anti-communism appealed to right-wingers. He
told former senior SOE official and Conservative politician Douglas Dodds-
Parker: 'Leave communism to me. I know all about it. I have been fighting
it in the unions for thirty years.' He certainly had a familiarity with communist
tactics as former leader of the Transport and General Workers' Union, but it

was a world away from international relations, and it could, as a previous

admirer, Denis Healey, admitted, 'lead him astray'; in fact, it became more

of a hindrance than a help. Like his officials, Bevin was convinced that the
Russians were intent on destroying the British Empire, and he shared the
same blind spot in that he regarded Western motives as pure, while
'irrationally expecting the Soviets to seethem in the same manner'. At the
same time, he made and gave no legitimacy to Soviet threat
'no allowance for
perception'. By the autumn of 1945, with the massive victories and sacrifices
- as many as 27 million dead - on the eastern front still fresh in the memory,
Bevin was comparing Stalin to Hitler. Eden was already having reservations,
believing that Bevin was 'hysterical' in his relations with the Russians and
was leaving Britain with 'few friends'.^
If there was a major Labour figure who had a real grasp of the emerging
landscape, then it was the taciturn Prime Minister, not Bevin. Attlee opposed
38 PAPvT ONE: 1 PxON\ 1 lOT TO COLD WAR

Bo\ ill's pow er politics and as a pre-war internationalist wished to build up

the United Nations (UN) as an effective counter to aggression. It was a policy
that the chiefs of staff considered 'defeatist', accusing him of 'practically
preaching unilateral disarmament'; while within the Foreign Office it was
'sabotaged' by Sargent, who 'laughed' at the UN. Influenced by private
briefings from 'the original and independent strategic thinker'. Sir Basil
Liddell Hart, Attlee threw down a challenge to British foreign policy. In
October 1945, he asked rhetorically in the Cabinet 'where the danger now
lay' and bluntly asserted in the Defence Committee that 'there was no one
to fight'. He argued that Britain should pull out of the Middle East as it was
strategically unimportant. Bevin vigorously resisted after officials filled his

mind with Union approaches the

visions of the 'domino theory': 'The Soviet
Middle East as an artichoke whose leaves are to be eaten one by one.'^
Attlee questioned the prevailing orthodoxy that the Soviet Union was
committed to world domination. He refused to see the Soviet Union as a
major threat that required a military doctrine which he believed, correctly,
was beyond Britain's manpower or resources. Innovatively, he viewed foreign
policy through the eyes of the Soviets, suggesting that 'we must at all costs
avoid trying to seek a cure by building up Germany or by forming blocs
aimed at Russia'. He acknowledged that Egypt was 'a British satellite' and
thought it unfortunate that Russia had not been invited 'to share responsibil-
ity' for the Suez Canal. 'Our claim that we occupy these positions as trustees

for the rest of the world that can trust our disinterestedness is not likely to
be generally accepted. '^°
To the consternation of officials and Bevin, in early 1946 Attlee was quite
willing to abandon Greece and Turkey. With the Foreign Office's Christopher
Warner hovering over his shoulder, Bevin 'quite deliberately struck up
images of appeasement', warning that the Soviet Union 'had decided upon
an aggressive policy based upon militant communism and seemed to . . .

stick at nothing, short of war, to obtain her objectives'. The military added
that there was 'little or no obstacle in Europe to a Russian advance to the
western seaboard ... It was therefore essential to conduct an offensive from
bases in the Middle East against the Soviet Union war-making potential.'
Unmoved, Attlee wrote to Bevin that Soviet policy might be dictated by fear
of another war: 'Fantastic as this is, it may very well be the real grounds
of Russian policy. What we consider merely defence may seem to them
preparations for an attack.' Attlee worried that 'if Britain adopted the
proposed stategic plan, subsequent preparations and moves would . .

increase suspicion and contribute to the possibility of war occurring'."

We now know from the recent declassifying of eastern European and
Soviet archives that Attlee's analysis was substantially correct. Two
commissions appointed by Stalin and headed by senior officials from the
Commissariat of Foreign Affairs, Maxim Litvinov and Ivan Maisky, to study
 CONTAINMENT 39

postwar reparations and peace treaties, concluded that the main Soviet goal
should be to ensure a durable peace, enough for the USSR 'to become so
powerful' that 'no combination of powers . . . could even think' of threatening
her. That would require 'about ten years for the healing of the wounds
inflicted by war', a war
had led to material losses which surpassed 'the
that
national wealth of England or Germany' and which constituted 'one-third of
the overall national wealth of the United States'. Fearing that an anti-Soviet
bloc would emerge around the Allies, Litvinov argued that 'we must seek
some kind of co-operation, in order to have at least a few decades of peace'.
Unaware of the 'percentage agreement' betwen Churchill and Stalin, he
thought in terms of a 'maximum sphere of interests' which the Soviet Union
could claim.^^
Remarkably free of Marxist-Leninist dictates, the Maisky/ Litvinov recom-
mendations formed the basis of Stalin's strategy at Yalta and Potsdam, and
his search for 'a protective territorial belt around the USSR, to neutralize the
resurgence of its traditional geopolitical rivals, Germany and Japan'. Stalin
wanted to be a 'partner in managing the world'. In their study of the new
evidence, two Russian historians, Vladislav Zubok and Constantine
Pleshakov, conclude: 'At no point did Stalin's demands and ambitions in
1945-46 exceed the maximum zone of responsibility discussed by Litvinov
and Maisky. In fact, in some cases Stalin's moves in the international arena
were more modest in scope.' During 1946, Stalin 'kept restraining "revolution-
aries" not only in Iran, but also in Greece and other places where he did not
want to provoke premature confrontation with the British and Americans'.
Christopher Warner was unwilling to consider such heresy, and he
continued to work behind the scenes to create a committee under Foreign
Office control to counter the Soviet threat. The initial move came in January
1946 when the JIC prepared an analysis of the Soviet Union's capabilities
and intentions. The report led to Frank Roberts, then diplomat in Moscow,
sending to London throughout March a stream of telegrams on Anglo-Soviet
relations which were to have a considerable impact within the Foreign
Office.^^

Not a Russian-speaker, Roberts was helped by 'an excellent and very

sensible expert on the Soviet scene', George Bolsover, who went on to head
the London School of Slavonic Studies, in which capacity he maintained close
ties with MI6. There was also a pre-war Foreign Office 'Intelligence Officer',

J. H. Adam Watson, later of the Information Research Department and a key

figure in Washington, co-ordinating information policy and Special Oper-

ations (SO) with the Americans. The special section they established to report
on the Soviet press proved to be an invaluable source for the Moscow tele-
grams. Roberts concluded that 'we are faced with a Soviet policy designed
to advance Soviet interests at every possible opportunity, regardless of those
of its allies, and it now seems regardless even of treaty obligations'. He went
40 PAllT ONF: FROM HOT TO COLD WAR

on to outline an 'alarming' situation in which 'Soviet security has become

hard to distinguish from Soviet imperialism and it is becoming uncertain
w hether there is, any limit to Soviet expansion'.
in fact,
hi receipt of the telegrams, Warner called for a counter-propaganda

campaign to fight communism and backed Roberts's proposal for a body to

study Soviet activities. In truth, however, Roberts had not been dogmatic in
his approach and was advocating a realistic assessment which judged that
'these people were hostile but if you handle them the right way you can live
with them'. Warner slapped down such views and insisted that they not only
collate material but, in a mirror image of Soviet covert planning, co-ordinate
Foreign Office departments in a high-level global British response. Warner
concluded: The first essential is to treat the problem of Anglo-Soviet relations
in the same way as major military problems were treated during the war. It
calls for the closest co-ordination of political strategy, for a very thorough

study embracing every aspect of Soviet policy - not forgetting the ubiquitous
activities of the communist parties directed, if not controlled in detail, from

Moscow.' At his request, in April 1946, the 'Committee on Policy Towards

Russia', or 'Russia Committee', was created to analyse Soviet thinking and
make policy recommendations. Composed of Foreign Office officials, during
its weekly meetings it was required to plan Britain's counter-strategy with

particular attention paid to what Warner described as 'the Russian campaign

against this country'. The committee maintained close contact with the JIC
'with a view to co-ordinating intelligence and policy at every stage'. The
intention was to mobilise world opinion in co-operation with the United
States and, 'to a lesser degree', France.
At the first meeting of the Russia Committee, chaired by Oliver Harvey,
on 2 April, Warner rejected Soviet claims regarding the need for security as
a catchword to cloak a foreign policy of aggression. On 7 May, the committee
considered Warner's lengthy memorandum, 'The Soviet Campaign against
This Country and our Response To which he warned of the Soviet
It', in
Union 'practising the most vicious power politics' in which 'the Soviet
Government are carrying on an intense campaign to weaken, deprecate and
harry this country in every possible way.' Warner added that 'we should be
unwise not to take the Russians at their word, just as we should have been
wise to take Mein Kampf at its face value'. He based his assessment on three
points: the return to the pure doctrine of Marxism-Leninism-Stalinism; the
intense concentration on building up Soviet industrial and military strength;
and the revival of the bogy of external danger to the Soviet Union. In a bleak
assessment, Warner dismissed Soviet claims of 'war weariness' and Soviet
suspicions of western behaviour. While recognising that the Soviet Union
would not get involved in another war 'for at least the next few years ... As
in the case of Hitler and Poland, they may miscalculate. The time might,
indeed, come when they were actually ready to consider war as a deliberate
 CONTAINMENT 41

aim, and perhaps at no distant date/ He believed it was important 'to attack
and expose the myths that a new Germany is to be built up for use against
. . .

Russia' and that Britain had 'aggressive designs against Russia'.

Warner advocated a 'defensive-offensive policy' with a propaganda
campaign backing social democrats with 'all such moral and material support
as is possible, without going as far as actually to endanger their lives or
organisation'. Acknowledging that this had already been undertaken 'in
certain cases and on special occasions', he added 'it has not been accepted as
a principle that we should do so'. But now the situation required 'exceptional
methods to strengthen the hands of friends in the coming elections in France,
the Social Democrats in Germany and to help the Austrian Government to
resist communist infiltration and Russian intimidation'. Warner's memor-

andum was very influential in formulating foreign, defence and intelligence

policy and, according to one historian, ranked 'as a British equivalent to the
Truman Doctrine a year later'.

In May, the Russia Committee drafted guidelines for a counter-offensive

propaganda campaign to be planned by Ivone Kirkpatrick, who had organ-
ised similar activities while working alongside Menzies for British Intelligence
during the First World War. He also drew on his Second World War experi-
ence with the Special Operations and Political Warfare Executives as wartime
controller of the BBC European Services, though he had been vitriolic in his
criticism of the management of both organisations. Recommending that the
campaign be educative, Kirkpatrick suggested 'that the BBC Home Service
be approached though the BBC's Governors; that the Royal Institute for
International Affairs (RIIA) should be approached with a view to the
inclusion of suitable material in their publications; and that the Foreign Office
should endeavour to influence the home press and foreign correspondents
in the right direction'. Abroad,

the support of the BBC's foreign service should be enlisted; that

the Central Office of Information should be requested to carry
suitable material in the feature articles which it placed in large
numbers of foreign newspapers and also in newsreels and docu-
mentaries; and finally that the Foreign Office arrange for visits
to Britain by foreign trade union leaders, politicians and publi-
cists who could be relied on to take the opportunity of dissemin-
ating British propaganda on their return.

Kirkpatrick drew an analogy with wartime SO: 'The V sign was emblazoned
all over the world. But at the same time we acted. We parachuted men, money

and arms into occupied territory Propaganda on the largest possible scale
. . .

was co-ordinated with our policy. The result was a success.''*^

These proposals prefigured a 'liberation' policy and were certainly a decis-
ive moment in the formation of the Cold War. It would be wrong, however.
42 PAllT ONF: FROM HOT TO COLD WAR

to assume that the Russia Committee was any kind of all-embracing co-ordin-
ating or overseeing body in respect of the intelligence services. The strongest
impetus for a counter-strategy continued to emanate not from the Foreign
Ottice but from the military. Many of the MI6 operations that Warner hinted
at, and those ranged against the Soviet Union - such as those Michael Herman
has termed 'intrusive' intelligence-gathering, v\^hich ventured into Special
and Political Action (psychological warfare) - had been set in train with the
sanction of the chiefs of The evidence suggests that, in terms of a
staff.

counter-offensive, the military and MI 6 were in advance of the Foreign Office

bv about twelve months. During this period MI6 did not have a Foreign
Office liaison officer looking over the shoulder of Menzies, who to a great
extent reliedon the support of his friends among the military. While the
Chief had access to the Prime Minister and, seemingly, met regularly with
Bevin - though there appears to be no documentary record of such meetings
- he did not have the close relationship with them which he had enjoyed
with Churchill.^'^

It was also true that once the broad parameters of policy were set, the

means of achieving results were largely left to Menzies's discretion. Oversight

was minimal and often non-existent. Liaison by the JIC chair, Victor Caven-
dish-Bentinck, who was briefly inserted into the hierarchy as the Foreign
Office representative following Robert Cecil's departure in April, was simi-
larly disrupted in August 1945 when he was appointed an ambassador. As
Cecil noted: 'These drastic changes coincided with the post-war reorganis-
ation of MI6 and Philby's setting up of Section IX. It was a bad moment to
relax Foreign Office supervision over MI6.' Indeed, the position of Foreign
Office adviser was not resumed for another seven years.^°
Gladwyn Jebb wrote that the Foreign Secretary 'welcomed the new
committee and took much interest in it', though others have suggested that
Bevin was 'not yet willing to authorize wholesale implementation of its

recommendations ... for tough counter-propaganda methods'. The extent of

Bevin's commitment to SO remains a matter of dispute. The writer closest
to MI6 thinking, Anthony Verrier, believes that Bevin was 'an enthusiastic
supporter', while academic Richard Aldrich considers that he was 'never an
enthusiast of covert activities'. There is a third opinion which suggests that
Bevin was a relatively strong enthusiast for such operations, but was reluctant
to endorse them until he had resolved the dispute with the Prime Minister.
Attlee's opposition to Foreign Office strategy was not countered until the
beginning of 1947; until then, Bevin had no room for manoeuvre and, in
effect, it was Attlee who refused to give the Russia Committee free rein. Once

released from that constraint, Bevin probably sanctioned more SO - even if

only indirectly - than any other postwar Foreign Secretary.^^
Certainly, Bevin was initially far from convinced by the Russia Commit-
tee's strategy, partly because of its expressly anti-Soviet stance, which he
 CONTAINMENT 43

knew would be opposed by Attlee and the Left of the Labour Party. The
Foreign Secretary wanted a more positive approach extolUng the virtues of
social democracy. Raymond Smith provides evidence that the hardliners,
Warner and the new Permanent Under-Secretary, Sargent, remained
convinced of the strategy and manoeuvred Bevin into supporting a 'counter-
offensive' campaign by consciously playing on the social democratic theme.
Within the space of two years, the theme had been abandoned and replaced
by an explicitly anti-Soviet message.^^
A publicity sub-committee of the Russia Committee was set up to consider
propaganda measures that might be approved. Gradually, officials chipped
away at Bevin's wariness as they considered action on a country-by-country
basis, beginning with Iran. The Foreign Secretary eventually agreed to a
propaganda campaign in Iran which 'proved to be the hammer and chisel'
by which officials gathered support for their strategy. The same tactic was
adopted 'for the whole of the Middle East and also in respect of certain
matters in Germany'. At the same time, contacts were made with the
Dominions, Colonial, India and Burma Offices and with the Control Offices
for Germany and Austria, where officials were 'drawn into the Foreign
Office's anti-communist stratagem'. Backed by opinion from missions over-
seas, the Russia Committee discreetly began to reformulate its counter-
strategy in an attempt to secure Bevin's approval. This led to a call for more
'ideological' reporting from the missions in order to determine which local
groups 'subscribe in reasonable measure to the fundamental thesis of social
democracy and which are inspired by the pseudo-communism of Moscow'.
Officials also played on the conviction that there was a 'Communist Fifth
Column' whose target was 'top warmonger Ernest Bevin'. Furious, Bevin
exploded: 'What have 1 done for them to be getting at me?' With Bevin's
sanction and Attlee's go-ahead - he had no scruples about domestic security
operations - Warner instructed MI6's counter-espionage department, R5, and
MI5's F Branch to prevent infiltration by crypto-communists into 'innocent'
international delegations from western countries. He especially emphasised
Russia's 'clever trick' of establishing international federations of various kinds
under the control of communists, prime examples being the World Federation
of Trade Unions and the proliferation of peace congresses. According to
George Young, MI6 'had no difficulty in establishing who was manipulating
the whole complex, and the sources of funds'. Investigations were also
ordered into the International Student Congress which met in Prague in
August 1946, prompting further inquiries into the management of the British
National Union of Students.^^
By September 1946, the controller of the BBC's European Service, General
had been conscripted to the Russia Committee to seek 'guidance'
Sir Ian Jacob,

on policy towards the Soviet Union. Sargent was subsequently able to minute
that 'the BBC are over the whole foreign field extremely helpful and co-oper-
44 PART ONE: FROM HOT TO COLD WAR

Although by then many low-key action programmes were in place,

ati\ e'.

Warner and others were concerned that the Prime Minister was still uncon-
vinced of the need for a 'defensive-offensive' policy. A more hardline
approach was required. In early November, senior diplomat Sir Nigel Ronald
told the Russia Committee that 'we shall without question have to have
recourse to the most unusual methods: but then we are dealing with most
unusual people'."^
On 1 December 1946, in a self- typed letter, Attlee informed Bevin that he
was 'worried about Greece' and concerned about the drain on Britain's limited
resources. He thought that the 'strategic importance of communications
through the Mediterranean in terms of modern warfare is very much over-
rated by our The Middle East is only an outpost position.
military advisers . . .

I am beginning to doubt whether the Greek game is worth the candle.'

He warned that even if America gave economic assistance to Greece and

Turkey, Britain should not be expected to continue military obligations. When
Foreign Office minister Hector McNeil cabled Bevin that there was con-
siderable reluctance to continue British commitments to the two countries,
the chiefs of staff hit back with a report, 'Future Policy towards Turkey
and Greece', which stressed their importance and that 'American assistance
was essential' in Greece to combat the 'bandits'. Still not deterred, Attlee
made 'a cool and rational' - also described by John Saville as a 'socialist' -
criticism of Foreign Officeand the chiefs' policy which he characterised as
'a They were propping up 'essentially reactionary'
strategy of despair'.
governments which 'afford excellent soil for the sowing of communist seed',
with the result that Britain was seen as 'supporting vested interests and
reaction against reform and revolution'. He went on to question the assump-
tions made about the ideological basis of the Soviet Union and its apparent
aggressive desire for world revolution. Finally, he called for serious negoti-
ations with Moscow.^^
Attlee's attitude 'stunned' Foreign Office officials. Immediately, they
began to co-ordinate their response with the chiefs of staff. On 9 January
1947, they replied that negotiations were unacceptable and Bevin rebuked
the Prime Minister, accusing him of 'appeasement': 'It would be Munich all

over again, only on a world scale, with Greece, Turkey and Persia as the
first victims in place of Czechoslovakia.' Isolated and shaken by Bevin's
memorandum, Attlee was faced by asked by
the rebellious chiefs, who were
the Chief of the Imperial General Staff, Montgomery, 'whether they were
prepared to resign rather than give way over the Middle East'. Sir Arthur
Tedder and Admiral Sir John Cunningham 'agreed wholeheartedly'. When
the Prime Minister was informed of their resolve, he capitulated to the over-
whelming pressure. Thus was the course of the Cold War set with the militar-
ists gaining the upper hand, though there was a twist.^^

On 29 January, Chancellor of the Exchequer Hugh Dalton recommended

 CONTAINMENT 45

to the Cabinet that 'as it is absolutely out of the question for the UK to
shoulder such a burden, we should cut our losses and abandon Greece'. Six
days later, the British ambassador in Washington, Lord Inverchapel, informed
the Americans of the decision and, on 21 February, at three o'clock, the
First Secretary at the Washington embassy, and former MI6 officer with the
wartime British Security Co-ordination (BSC), Herbert Sichel, delivered a
historic note on blue paper to an old friend, the head of the Near East Division
of the State Department, Loy Henderson, announcing that Britain would be
withdrawing aid from Greece as of 31 March.^^
The main obstacle to the Americans taking on Britain's interventionist
role in the Cold War was thought to be the prominent isolationist Senator
Arthur Vandenberg. MI 6, however, had prepared the ground well. In his
thesis on the role of British Intelligence in wartime American politics, Thomas
Mahl suggests that MI6 planted three 'social companions' close to Vanden-
berg. The three women were Mrs Mitzi Sims, who claimed close ties to
BSC head William Stephenson; BSC agent Elizabeth Thorpe, who was better
known by her nom de plume 'Cynthia'; and Eveline Paterson (Lady Cotter).
Cynthia, whose 'loyalty to her employers', according to the secret BSC
history, was 'complete', and whose importance 'it would be difficult to over-
emphasize', operated by singling out top men and then seducing them.
Eveline Paterson moved in diplomatic circles and was intimately involved
with Vandenberg in the crucial 1945-48 period. Using this unique access, the
Service helped impel the senator to put his considerable influence behind
Truman and an was more sympathetic towards
internationalist stance that
British policies. Mrs Paterson was companion during the drafting of the
his
'Vandenberg Resolution', which paved the way for the Senate to pass, on 11
June 1948, the North Atlantic Treaty. Considered by the FBI to be a British
Intelligence agent, Mrs Paterson appears to have been 'run' by the American
pro-British BSC /OSS veteran Donald Downes, who had run Cynthia during
the war.^^
Debate still continues about the reasons for the sudden British announce-
ment on Greece. Was it purely a financial action following a disastrous winter
for the economy? In fact, as we have seen, the decision did not arrive out of the
blue, but was 'the culmination of long-term discussions within and amongst
several government departments, in which strategic factors were probably
as important as financial necessity, realpolitik, or political pressure'. Robert
by this decision - which directly led to the launch on
Frazier suggests that
12 March of the 'Truman Doctrine' and the aggressive ideological crusade
against communism known as 'containment' - 'it may not be too far fetched
to consider that Britain started the Cold War'.^°
In his biography of Bevin, Francis Williams suggests that the Foreign
Secretary
Ab PART C^Nl'; FROM HOT TO COLD WAR

shrewdly assessing in his mind the current state of American

opinion and cumulative effect upon it of Russian policy decided
that the time had come to force the American administration to
a major policy decision ... It was a declaration deliberately
designed to bring America fully into the defence of Europe . .

Judging by its developing consequences Bevin's carefully timed

act must be seen as one of the most decisive strokes in the
history of diplomacy He had achieved his first purpose.
. . .

W. N. Medlicott had 'hatched a tricky plot', though, of

accepts that Bevin
course, he had been forced by Attlee's insistence on moving
into the position
out of Greece. It is entirely possible that the Prime Minister's capitulation to
the chiefs of staff was dependent on that policy being implemented, thus
forcing Bevin to turn to the Americans. John Saville has pointed out that it

is compromise that included major reductions

possible to see the outline of a
of troops in Austria, Trieste, Greece and Japan, considerable reductions in
the Middle East, and evacuation of India and Burma by 31 March.^^
Bevin and the Foreign Office still saw Britain as a world power, and any
comparative decline in economic and military strength was viewed as 'a
temporary rather than a permanent phenomenon', which could be 'rectified
by combining the resources of Western Europe with those of the British
Empire'. He held, however, extraordinary ideas on the Empire, which Ronald
Hyman has described as 'neo-Palmerstonian cosmoplastic dreams'. This was
expressed by Bevin's absurd version of the 'Third Force' in which attempts
to organise a western European Union were related to a Euro- Africa bloc
linking Europe to the Middle East and Africa. Bevin's idea was to exploit -
and that is the correct term - the 'invisible empire' of the Sterling Area, which
'included 1,000 million people', with the aim of dealing with the dollar 'area
on a basis of equality'. In practice, the Sterling Area proved to be a financial
burden that hindered economic recovery .^^
Behind the Third Force lay the idea of Britain retaining an independent
role 'in the first rank of global powers'. It would be based on 'post-war
economic recovery and a middle democratic socialist way between the harsh
and conflicting ideologies of unfettered American capitalism and repressive
Soviet Communism'. In order to sustain its role. Foreign Office officials recog-
nised that, in the short term, while economic recovery took place, Britain
would be dependent on the Americans for economic and political support.
It was acknowledged, however, that Britain's relationship with the United
States - built on an unprecedented degree of wartime co-operation - had
'increasingly developed into one where Britain was very much the junior
partner', and this had 'aroused concern and resentment amongst British
elites'. In the long term, the Foreign Office was confident that Britain would
regain its independence from the United States.^^^
 CONTAINMENT 47

would also have to avoid being drawn into a federal European

Britain
system, which would threaten relations with the Commonwealth, although
there was no reason to oppose a loosely based, non-federalist western Euro-
pean Union. Bevin and the Foreign Office found European integration increas-
ingly unacceptable as France, Italy and Belgium were regarded as thoroughly
penetrated by Soviet communism. There was a resultant fear - and the idea
of disease was never far from their minds - that dealing with communist
and unstable governments might result in 'contamination'. To avoid this, the
Americans would be required to help block the spread of communism and
stabilise British imperial influence. United States anti-colonialism would be
blunted, Bevin believed, by sharing with it the exploitation of Africa's stra-
tegic raw materials and by appeals to anti-communism.
Bevin 'appears to have had no ideas of how to proceed with his grandiose
plans'. What did take place was a series of counter-insurgency campaigns,
mostly conducted by MI5-backed local security forces as part of the Attlee
Doctrine, against nationalist and democracy-seeking movements, which were
rarely communist-backed as the propaganda alleged.
These campaigns and the Bevin Cold War enterprise were kept afloat by
the valuable Marshall Aid dollars which flooded into the Treasury. As econ-
omist M. Keynes acknowledged of an earlier American loan: 'thus it comes
J.

out in the wash that the American loan is primarily required to meet the
political and military expenditure overseas'. American dollars allowed Britain
to pursue the domestic and foreign policies that had brought about the
balance of payments crisis. With Attlee's strikingly accurate prognosis side-
lined, Britain continued to maintain a grandiose global defence structure that
involved a massive military commitment to the Middle and Far East, even
though the loss of Singapore during the war had openly revealed the limits
of British imperial power.^^
Britain's military presence remained, however, either too outdated or
deficient in numbers to back up Bevin's dreams of world influence. Without
'the gunboats', much of the burden would have to be left to the limited
resources of the intelligence services. This was recognised by the chiefs of
staff who, in May 1947, as austerity began to bite, issued a definitive statement

on 'Future Defence Policy'. They noted that within the Soviet Union 'the high
standard of security achieved renders our collection of intelligence difficult
and makes it all more likely that Russia will have the advantage of
the
surprise at the onset'. The chiefs concluded that 'it is also of the greatest
importance that our Intelligence organisation should be able to provide us
with adequate and timely warning. The smaller the armed forces the greater
the need for developing our Intelligence Services in peace to enable them to
fulfil this responsibility.'^^'

In turn, this would lead to an expansion of SO. As Richard Aldrich argues,

during the war covert action and subversion were 'peripheral compared to
48 PART ONE: FROM HOT TO COLD WAR

the ^rand strategic direction of the war'; it was armies which won the battle.
\n the Cold War, however, 'subversion and other forms of covert action
w oil Id increasingly constitute central instruments in this struggle'.^^
CHAPTER 4

'UNCERTAIN ALLIES'

In the postwar intelligence world, Stewart Menzies had one card which he
could play to advantage, namely the immense goodwill and respect that were
shown by allies to the Service following victory. Dick White wrote of his prede-
cessor in the Dictionary of National Biography that foreigners found in Menzies
'the personal embodiment of an intelligence mystique they believed character-
isticallyand historically British'. This 'contributed to his international influence
and was a potent factor in establishing the Anglo-American and other Allied
it

intelligence alliances'. The Chief - who made only one trip abroad during the
entire war - must have known, however, that deep down such influence and
alliances rested largely on myths and that, while a 'special relationship' with the
Americans on intelligence co-operation was constructed, each side remained
ambivalent about the other's motives and intentions.
At the beginning of the war the Cabinet had accepted a chiefs of staff
report that Britain could only continue to fight with any chance of success if

the United States provided economic and financial support. It thus became
essential to move America from its policy of isolation, and a prime role in
achieving this objective was tasked to MI6 and its North American station,
the British Security Co-ordination (BSC).
The BSC internal history (known as 'The Bible' to former officers), which
offers a fascinating insight into MI6 field craft, reveals that the Service's
operations in this covert war against the isolationists in the United States -
code-named '48 Land' - mostly involved 'political warfare' (or psychological
50 TAPvT ONE: FROM HOT TO COLD WAR

w arfare as the Americans called it). BSC officers recruited members of the
press and radio, used the leaders of the eastern establishment to front as
directors a number of groups that were secretly controlled by the British,
subsidised news agencies, planted stories, manipulated opinion polls, and
smeared opponents. So-called 'combat funds' were used to legally harass
targets, while litigation was favoured as a means of gaining further publicity

for additional disinformation. Officers rarely met with sub-agents, such as

journalists and academics; instead, they operated through intermediaries or
agents recruited in the host country.^
According to Ernest Cuneo (code-named 'Crusader'), who acted as liaison
between the White House, the various US security and intelligence agencies,
and British intelligence, the BSC campaign of trying to push the United States
into war was a great success. Indeed, it was 'a pushover', reminding Cuneo
of the Chaucer line, 'He fell upon her and would have raped her - but for
her ready acquiescence.'^
Out of this success, which resulted in Lend-Lease and other economic
and arms initiatives, grew the notion of a 'special relationship' between the
United States and Britain. It has been persuasively argued by Susan Ann
Bower that this special relationship was based on a myth created through
British propaganda efforts to help bolster Britain's foreign policy concerns.
The Americans were largely concerned, as Clive Pouting has written, with
realpolitik - 'making some cool calculations about where their national inter-
ests lay'.^
By the beginning of 1941 Britain was 'as near to bankruptcy as it was
possible to go without actual default'. At which point, the country was forced
to liquidate on a massive scale its financial and commercial assets in North
America, handing over in the process its entire gold reserves. It was then
forced to hunt around for further scraps of gold to pay the demanding
Americans, whose attitude Churchill described as like that of a 'sheriff
collecting the last assets of a helpless debtor'. But that was not all; Britain also
transferred all its major technical and intelligence secrets to the Americans.
Britain's claim to be an independent power had collapsed to the point where
the country was, in effect. Pouting suggests, 'a client of the United States'.
The myth of the 'special relationship' was thus sedulously cultivated, 'in part
to help support the dreams of strategic strength but also to disguise Britain's
real role ... itwas both convenient and comfortable to believe in the identity
of interests between the two countries, the shared heritage of the "English-
speaking peoples" and American magnanimity'.*
There was, of course, some substance to the notion of a special relationship
and the idea was promoted by MI6, 'the Friends',
in the intelligence field,
with their American 'Cousins'. Charles Ellis, who had been stationed in Wash-
ington as deputy to BSC's head Sir William Stephenson when the US entered
the war, was credited by senior US wartime intelligence officer David Bruce
 'UNCERTAIN ALLIES' 51

with helping to set up the Office of the Co-ordinator of Information's (COI)

Secret Intelligence branch. As important, but largely unrecognised, was the
contribution of Walter Bell, a former barrister who had helped run the small
pre-war MI 6 office in New York when the United States was regarded as an
'intelligence backwater'. Bell joined Ellis in the BSC, where he played a key
role in the early days of the COI's successor, the Office of Strategic Services
(OSS), and when posted back to London was appointed the MI6 liaison
officer with the OSS.'
Initially, MI6 was the senior partner in the Anglo-American intelligence
relationship; a position that was reinforced by
Donovan's signed agree-
Bill

ment with Menzies which barred OSS men from

running operations into
Europe. In addition, MI6 officers 'assessed the intelligence and passed along
as much product as they felt their American juniors could profitably assimi-
late'. The Americans supported the arrangement because, as the head of the

Secret Intelligence section, Henry Hyde, later recalled: 'OSS owed everything
to the British services. Everything - even such technical matters as suitcase
wireless sets, one-time pad ciphers, and all manner of devices used by secret
services came to us through Menzies's generosity.'^
Menzies's air of superiority - another case of the Greeks teaching the
Romans - owed a great deal to the spectacular success with Ultra and the
breaking of the German Enigma code machine. It was, however, misplaced.
As Ponting has pointed out, 'when the British fought alone they were. . .

unable to take advantage of the information they were receiving because of

their lack of military power'. Churchill had been well informed about German
military intentions but 'could do little to counter them. Intelligence could
play its full part only when British inferiority in manpower and equipment
had been replaced by American superiority in both areas. '^
Wartime MI6 officer Malcolm Muggeridge recalled 'those Elysian days'
when the first OSS officers arrived in London, but realised 'how short a time
the honeymoon lasted!' The British set-up was soon 'overtaken in personnel,
zest and scale of operations, above all, in expendable cash!' The change came
after D-Day, when the OSS broke the accord with Menzies and began to
deploy its units in large numbers in Europe. By 1945 the Americans had
taken effective charge in some theatres of operations. American Intelligence
officer Lawrence Huston admitted that 'our very close relations with British
Intelligence remained good but not nearly as close. Our interests were grow-
ing apart in the Middle East.' Increasingly, OSS officers took a more indepen-
dent line and a number viewed their relationship with MI6 with a certain
cynicism, and were wary of co-operating too closely with their British 'allies'.
OSS officers joked that they were fighting to 'Save England's Asiatic
Colonies'.*^

According to the official history of the CIA, the British had 'allowed
American officers to observe the inter-relationships of their services and the
52 PART ONE: FROM HOT TO COLD WAR

w orking of their intelligence system, for reports to the OSS and benefit of
the American system'. The Americans did not, however, regard this solely
as an act of disinterested friendship. Aides close to President Roosevelt
thought that M16 had used this closeness to 'penetrate' the OSS and that,
therefore, its war would be 'seriously impaired'. The
usefulness after the
OSS was seen as too dependentupon British sources for its information.
Short-sighted officials in the Foreign Office hoped and believed that this
dependence would continue after the war. In summing up the success of
British intelligence strategy in the United States, in August 1945, J. G.
Donnelly commented that 'the Americans, without necessarily knowing it,

are bound to continue to see the world in large measure through the British
window'. Donovan's failure to be appointed to head a postwar centralised
intelligence service, primarily because of his pronounced anglophilia, was
proof that that would not be the case.'^

Collaboration between Britain and the United States seemed to change

littlewith the ending of hostilities, but a number of joint committees. Alec
Danchev observes, 'soon withered and died', while 'others eked out a precari-
ous existence on the coat-tails of the old wartime Anglo-American aristocracy'.
Danchev stresses, however, that it was not all decline: 'The organisation was
moribund; but the animating spirit was never completely quenched. At Ameri-
can behest, co-operation went underground.' While many British Intelligence
officials were willing to make it known that they had a new enemy - the Soviet

Union - in their sights, it took longer for the Americans to adjust their view.
With the war against Japan still raging, the Americans remained amicable
towards the Russians and, unlike the British, were still willing to exchange intel-
ligence with their partners in the Far East. Substantive collaboration with the
British continued on scientific and technical information exchange, intelligence
assessments and operations. In particular, this was true in the burgeoning field

of electronic communications, where the British aimed for '100% co-operation'

with the Americans on signals intelligence (SIGINT).^"
The initiative in transforming the wartime collaboration into a postwar
SIGINT alliance - the true heart of the special relationship - was taken by
the British,who, despite an undoubted brilliance in cryptanalysis, realised
that it would be they who would need partners and not the other way round.
The foundations were laid during a spring 1945 world tour by the head of
GC&CS at Bletchley Park, Sir Edward Travis, his assistant, Harry Hinsley,
and Commander Clive Leohnis of the Admiralty Operational Centre. The
aim was to transfer redundant personnel and resources from Europe and the
Middle East to the Far East for the war with Japan. At the end of April, the
trio began talks in Washington with representatives of the army, navy and

State Department, and were encouraged to discover that the Americans were
already persuaded of the need for an Anglo-American attack on Soviet codes
and ciphers.
 'UNCERTAIN ALLIES' 53

Much was dependent in this field on personal relationships. A good

example of this informal 'underground' was provided by MI6's scientific

adviser. Professor R. V. Jones, who was responsible for establishing with the
American Eric Ackerman a unit at Obernkirchen which monitored Russian
radar. According to colleagues at the main US signals intelligence-gathering
agency, the Army Special Branch, 'although this was almost the only British
effort in the field, it made it well worthwhile for them to exchange information
with us'. By June 1945, informal agreements had also been reached between
officials of the British War Office and US War Department on intelligence-
sharing arrangements and for collecting material - code-named RATTAN -
on the Soviet Union. 'There is no other field in which it is so essential that the
British and ourselves work closely together,' an American official reported,
'because when a nation begins to throw its weight around here, there and
everywhere, it is a good idea to have an accurate idea of how much weight is
involved.' The Americans were similarly impressed with the RAF's 'excellent'
methodical early 'Ferret' flights to plot Russian radar, while the two sides'
photographic reconnaissance organisations began to share their maps of vari-
ous parts of the world.
When the US administration began to think in terms of a peacetime central
intelligence agency, officials turned to the anglophiles in the intelligence
community to create its outline. OSS man and former New York lawyer
William H. Jackson put forward a proposal to take advantage of the intimacy
of US-UK military relations to make a thorough study of the British Intelli-
gence system, before the 'Foreign Office got around to regarding Americans
once more as foreigners'. During July 1945, Jackson spent two weeks in
London, where it appears that his principal informant was the soon-to-be
departed Foreign Secretary, Anthony Eden. Jackson submitted his report to
Bill Donovan and James Forrestal, Secretary of the Navy and an influential
voice in intelligence matters. Highly sympathetic to the British approach to
the organisation of secret intelligence, the report established in government
circles the idea that Jackson was an expert on British Intelligence. With King-
man Douglass, a friend of Menzies who had been the senior US Army Air
Force intelligence liaison officer in the British Air Ministry in London during
the war, Jackson was an influential adviser to the War Department committee,
looking at the problem of unifying the intelligence services.
In seeking a solution, the Americans drew on British experience. A
remnant of the BSC lingered on as part of the Treasury delegation to the US
dealing with the European Recovery Programme, while MI6's Walter Bell
returned to Washington to provide guidance as First Secretary to the British
ambassador. Lord Inverchapel. Other intelligence personnel had been secon-
ded to the British Joint Staff Mission where MI6 liaison officer Tim O'Connor
had been advising on cryptanalytic collaboration. In London, the appointment
of former BSC deputy Charles Ellis (who was much admired by the Ameri-
54 PART ONE: FROM HOT TO COLD WAR

cans tor his contribution to the development of their own intelligence service)
as M16 Controller for North and South America was seen as a sign of further
close co-operation on intelligence matters.
It became clear, however, that there would be a divergence of goals
betw een the two countries, and in some areas, for instance South-East Asia,
Britain would be heavily dependent on American willingness to share its
resources. The collapse of power in that region appeared to make little or no
impression on British perceptions, but it did on the Americans. Despite
Charles Ellis's promotion to Controller for South-East Asia and the Far East,
e\'en the most sympathetic US Intelligence officials became increasingly wary
of sustaining Britain's continuing colonial ambitions. By October 1945, when
Tra\'is, Hinsley and Group Capt. Eric Jones returned to Washington to resume
negotiations on peacetime SIGINT collaboration, the JIC was reporting that
problems had begun to creep into the intelligence exchanges, with clear signs
of an American reversion to isolationism. Opposition to intelligence co-oper-
ation, though initially only in the SIGINT field, was overridden by a presiden-
tialedict to the US military: 'In view of the disturbed conditions of the world
and the necessity of keeping informed of technical developments and possible
hostile intentions of foreign nations ... it is recommended that you authorize
continuation of collaboration between the United States and the United King-
dom in the field of communications intelligence.' It gave the Joint Chiefs of
Staff carte blanche to 'extend, modify or discontinue this collaboration, as
determined to be in the best interests of the United States'.

Around this time, the anglophile David Bruce visited London as part of
a survey on events in Europe. After dining with Menzies, Bruce persuaded
Allen Dulles, who was helping to reorganise American intelligence, of the
value of a centralised service. Following an intense bureaucratic turf battle
between the services, state and the White House, on 22 January 1946 the
Americans established their new agency, the Central Intelligence Group
(CIG), forerunner of the CIA, which was set up - unconstitutionally - as
an interim intelligence-gathering co-ordinating body for the National
Intelligence Authority. The CIG employed many former OSS officers
sympathetic towards the British, including its chief of plans, Henry Hyde,
and Acting Deputy Director Kingman Douglass. Menzies struck an intelli-
gence-gathering agreement with Douglass in order to share material in
common studies on the Soviet order of battle (OB), with the result that a
permanent CIG Liaison Group was stationed in London. They attended meet-
ings of the newly created Joint Intelligence Board, which covered a 'complete
exchange of information from all sources and all subjects except
commercial'.
During February and March 1946, Menzies also chaired a secret Anglo-
American conference in London to settle the details of a joint SIGINT agree-
ment with the US military. Also acting on behalf of the Canadians and
 'UNCERTAIN ALLIES' 55

Australians - the 'White Commonwealth' - Menzies reached an agreement

which expanded upon the CIG-Joint Intelligence Board accord. During July
and August, on behalf of the new CIG director. General Vandenberg, Jackson
and Douglass were in London to further study the British intelligence system.
Their subsequent report greatly 'influenced the development of the Central
Intelligence Agency'. To some American intelligence officials, including the
anglophiles, this proved to be a misguided influence. Ernest Cuneo later
blamed the CIA's illegal covert activities on the OSS tradition which he
believed had developed from the British Security Co-ordination. The British,
he argued, 'should acknowlege some responsibility for starting us down the
primrose path'.^^

A visible sign that a special intelligence relationship existed was the group
of British officers who were attached to the CIG in Washington. They
included Peter Parker, later chair of British Rail, who had served during the
war in a 33rd Corps counter-intelligence unit on the North Burma border.
He had been dispatched with an American unit to Tokyo in October 1945
and was sent Washington to head a CIG section
the following spring to
analysing captured German and Japanese documents for information on the
new enemy. Alongside Americans and Canadians, Parker 'distributed infor-
mation over a wide field: military, political, technical and commercial'. The
CIG, Parker recalled, was 'about as sensitive a spot as most for a young man
to register the realities of peace breaking out between the Allies'.
The transition from the heroic image of the Russian people to a nation
from whom captured German intelligence was deliberately hidden was hard
to swallow for Parker: 'It is easy now to appreciate the prompt logic of the
West in squaring up to Stalin, but then I believe it puzzled some young men
wretchedly: it did me.' Parker felt the 'chill of it long before I knew to call
it the Cold War'. Within months of the Menzies-CIG accord, he also felt a
change in the special relationship. He 'detected that key documents and
analyses were not reaching us; there was an uneasiness in relationships with
senior Americans [and] what had been an Allied intelligence team was
coming unstuck'. Worse was to follow when loyalty checks were instigated
for the flimsiest of reasons and the British were made unwelcome. It was not
all one-sided, though. The head of MI6's R5 section, Kim Philby, was ordered

not to inform the Americans about his work. Unless it was deeply secret,
there did not appear to have been at this stage any Allied co-ordination of
counter-espionage.^^
Agency (CIA) in
Shortly after the formation of the Central Intelligence
June 1947, relations with the Americans were formalised by the 'CIA-SS
(British Secret Service) agreement' which, building on the CIG-JIB accord,
gave approval to the practice of not running operations in each other's terri-

As Richard
tories. Aldrich notes: 'Like their wartime predecessors, this agree-
ment was not always strictly observed.'^"
56 PART ONU: FROM HOT TO COLD WAR

In the same period, British signals intelligence-gathering was undergoing

its own reorganisation. GC&CS, where by late 1945 some six thousand
personnel were assigned to work on strategic cryptanalysis and SIGINT, had
been transferred from Bletchley Park to Eastcote, north-west London. During
Juno l'')46, Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) was
the
c^fficallv its successor, although the name had been previously
established as
used as a cover. Responsibility for GCHQ was transferred from MI6 to the
Foreign Office, which reflected the Service's loss of influence within White-
hall. GCHQ was now tasked to take on new priorities. Alan Stripp, an

Intelligence Corps officer who was monitoring Iranian diplomatic traffic from
a tiny outpost at Abbottabad in north-west India, recalled that by 1946 officers
had taken a crash course in Russian: The Cold war was already beginning
to concentrate everybody's minds. '^^
Problems, however, arose over the SIGINT negotiations which were put
on hold following the controversial sale of British Rolls-Royce Nene and
Derwent jet engines, and, allegedly, jet aircraft, to the Soviet Union. The
British chiefs of staff and security services were angry at the sale of what
were, in fact, in an era of rapidly developing technology, obsolete designs.
Even more so were the Americans, with senators accusing British ministers
of all kinds of treachery and threatening to curtail the flow of vital Marshall
Aid dollars. Intelligence co-operation was put 'under review' while the
disclosure of the 'sources of American intelligence', 'methods of acquisition'
and 'information pertaining to cryptography and cryptographic devices' was
stopped. Not long afterwards the Foreign Office reported that the flow of
intelligence on a range of military subjects, in particular conditions in the
Soviet Army, which passed through the machinery of the Combined Chiefs
of Staff in Washington, was 'disappointing'. British officials were forced in
April 1948 to issue a statement to the effect that 'no aircraft had been sold
to Russia since the end of the war, and that no engines on the secret list had
been or were going to be supplied'.
The statement paved the way for the signing in June 1948 of the formal and
final UKUSA Agreement, also known as the UK-USA Security Agreement or

'Secret Treaty', between the SIGINT agencies, GCHQ and the National Secur-
ity Agency (NSA). It divided SIGINT collection responsibilities among the

First Party (the United States) and the Second Parties (Britain, Australia,
Canada and New Zealand). It has remained the most important and resilient
part of British Intelligence's 'special relationship' with the United States. The
prolonged negotiations were an indication that the agreement had finally
been resolved very much on US terms. Britain may have had the brains -
GCHQ's cryptanalysis was highly valued, and had access to sites in the
Commonwealth denied to the US - but it was the Americans who provided
what was most vital - finance and, eventually, the technical knowhow."^
The Americans were also moving into the area of Special Operations (SO)
 'UNCERTAIN ALLIES' 57

in Europe, which, at first, was welcomed by a cash-starved MI6. Britain's

withdrawal from Greece and Turkey led to a reassessment of her economic
position. A December 1949 CIA estimate concluded that Britain's financial
difficulties would lead to a reconsideration of its overseas commitments, but
it would probably make every effort to avoid taking drastic action. There was
an awareness of 'inevitable post-war competition and possible confrontation
between Britain and America', which would be 'focused in intelligence
instead of public diplomacy'. The US viewed Britain as a declining power,
and while it was 'prepared to be conciliatory to a certain degree in public',
it intended to use the CIA 'to secure American objectives in private'. The

CIA was not there 'to bolster a fading British presence'.

In turn, MI6 officers worked to ensure that British policy-makers did not
become 'over-dependent on information from foreign services', but 'kept
intact and secure our potential for intelligence-gathering and independent
action'. Senior officers were not impressed with the last CIG and first CIA

director. Rear Admiral Roscoe Hillenkoetter, who lacked 'a cutting edge'. He
believed that SO generated 'noise' which directed unwanted attention to
clandestine intelligence-gathering. He opposed sponsoring the exile move-
ments because his experience in wartime France had shown that guerrilla
tactics and resistance movements 'yielded inadequate returns'. Anti-

American attitudes were widely held within Broadway, which ordered its
field officers not to share intelligence with their opposite numbers in the CIA.

At the Madrid station, Desmond Bristow exchanged 'insignificant' infor-

mation with the local CIA representative, Al Ulmer, but was aware that 'such
an open rapport with our American friends' had to be kept secret from head
office, since it would 'certainly not have been appreciated'.^^

It was soon apparent to Malcolm Muggeridge, however, that in the post-

war world the CIA/NSA network, 'with ramifications all over the world,
came to outclass our once legendary Secret Service as a sleek Cadillac does
an ancient hansom cab'. This led to a certain amount of resentment. While
itwas true that a 'special relationship' did develop between the British and
American intelligence agencies - though more particularly between GCHQ
and the NSA, where personal friendships were especially close - they
remained, in George Young's phrase, 'uncertain allies'.
CHAPTERS

THE WORLD-VIEW

While it is true that today's Secret InteUigence Service (SIS) is primarily an

intelligence-gathering agency which has no official role in analysis and
research, this has not precluded MI6 from having its own world-view.
Within its ranks, during the late forties and early fifties, MI 6 had a small
intellectual circle of 'brilliant young academics' who had joined the Service
at the beginning of the war. Not necessarily on the Right, and including

social democrats and former communists who had turned against 'the God
that had failed', they had railed against older pre-war officers - the 'old
buffers', who were seen as 'laughable and inefficient', and obsessed by the
'Bolshevik Bogey'. They had, however, come out of the war profoundly anti-
communist, and it was not long before these 'young turks' were promoting
and reinforcing the orthodoxy of an expansionist Soviet Union with a leader
bent on world revolution. Their analysis tended to be hampered by an adher-
ence to a classical view of Marxism which they believed Lenin had adapted
for world revolution and Stalin had adopted as his political creed.
MI6's intellectuals were organised around the Political Section (Rl), which
advised the Chief on developments around the world and assessed the value
of political intelligence before it was forwarded to the Foreign Office. Rl's
prime purpose was to supply the 'missing links in the picture presented by
Foreign Office reports'. While it was true that the Service did not enjoy
enough power to formulate policy, which was left to the Foreign Office, the
possession of information from secret sources did, as Kim Philby discovered,
 THE WORLD-VIEW 59

give the Service 'a power of decision in individual cases'. It was also
certain
true that Rl's officers and assets were highly capable agents of influence, and
leading publicists and journalists such as Malcolm Muggeridge were allowed
to read its reports.
The Section was headed by David Footman, an acknowledged expert on
Soviet communism. The son of a parson, he had won a Military Cross in the
First World War and after a period in the Levant Consular Service had joined

the Service in 1935. Footman had written a number of scholarly works on

Russian revolutionary history, but he was not highly regarded by officers, who
thought him only 'competent'. Foreign Office adviser Patrick Reilly made the
curious remark that 'he was emphatically not the man to commission any study
of Stalinist policies'. He was regarded with a certain amount of suspicion
because of his association with left-wing intellectuals, and Menzies went so far

as to suggest that Footman had suppressed anti-Soviet intelligence.^

MI6's leading theorist was Robert Carew Hunt, who laid out his critical
views on Marxism in two books - The Theory and Practice of Communism (1950)
and Marxism: Past and Present (1954). These academic texts attempted to
're-examine the basic concepts of revolutionary Marxism'. Working inside
the anti-communist section (R5), he developed his theories from discussions
with MI6 'insiders' and 'Sovietologists', such as Isaiah Berlin, A. J. 'Freddie'
Ayer and Leonard Schapiro.^
A pre-war lecturer in philosophy at Oxford, Berlin was a noted authority
on Karl Marx. Son of a Riga timber merchant who fled the Bolshevik Revol-
ution, Berlin served with the Ministry of Information, then in the Washington
embassy's Survey Section, producing weekly political summaries, and, over
the winter of 1945/6, in Moscow. Ayer had served during the war with the
British Security Co-ordination (BSC), the Special Operations Executive (SOE),
and as an attache in Paris. A barrister, the austere Schapiro had been brought
up in St Petersburg and was a fluent Russian-speaker. During the war, he
worked for the BBC monitoring service and then with MI5, before being
posted to the Intelligence Division of the Control Commission in Germany.
He returned to the Bar in 1946 and later became a lecturer in Russian studies
at the London School of Economics.

A less-publicised member of this loose-knit group was the established

writer and close friend of Berlin, Goronwy Rees. A former communist who
broke with the Party at the time of the Hitler-Stalin pact, Rees had served
as an intelligence officer with the Planning Staff (Operations) of the 21st
Army Group. He was then appointed senior intelligence officer to the staff of

Sir William Strang, political adviser to the commander-in-chief. Field Marshal

Montgomery, in the Control Commission in Germany, where he was respon-
sible for diplomatic relations with the Russians. He left Germany in Novem-
ber 1945 to become part-time director of a firm of general engineers, while
continuing in the afternoon to work alongside Ayer in the Political Section.^
60 PART ONE: FROM HOT TO COLD WAR

Another important voice was Hugh Seton-Watson, who had served in

eastern Europe until 1941. He was then transferred to the SOE Yugoslav
section in Cairo and, in January 1944, moved to Istanbul, where he built up
contacts with prominent Balkan refugees who flooded into the city. In late
l*-)44, he was promoted deputy in charge of the Danubian group - the
Bulgarian, Hungarian and Romanian sections of Force 133 at Bari. Bickham
Sweet- Escott thought his deputy 'knew more about this part of the world
than any other Anglo-Saxon I have met'. With his 'encyclopaedic knowledge',
Seton-Watson helped convince London that Mihailovic's lieutenants in Yugo-
slavia were collaborating with the enemy, and that Tito was a better bet for
military support. When attempts to put SOE liaison officers into the newly
occupied Danubian countries were stood down, Seton-Watson transferred to
London, where, following a short period on loan to the intelligence division
of the ControlCommission in Germany, he joined MI6. Although he officially
returned to academic life at Oxford in 1946, he remained close to MI6 as an
adviser on communist and Balkan affairs, and during the summer of 1946
he travelled extensively through Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, Romania and
Hungary. In the following spring he revisited Czechoslovakia and Hungary,
and made a study of Greece. Seton-Watson was later recruited by George
M
Kennedy Young to an 16 analytic team to help produce high-grade studies
on Soviet intentions and policy-making.^
Another later recruit was the leading Soviet expert and programme organ-
iser for the BBC's Overseas Service, Malcolm Mackintosh. Having served in

the army during the war in the Middle East and Italy, he had seen the Red
Army in action at first hand, and over the winter of 1945/46, as a member
of the Allied Control Commission in Bulgaria, had witnessed the behind-the-
scenes manoeuvring of Soviet commissars.^
Head of station in Vienna in the late forties. Young later recalled that MI6
did not go along with the thesis that the West had played a part in hardening
Cold War attitudes. 'That was not how it looked to those who were involved.'
Mackintosh accepted that 'the victorious march of the Soviet Army into East-
ern Europe, Manchuria and Korea' had given the Soviet leaders 'an opportu-
nity to resume the export of Communism'. Soviet leaders were telling their
people that 'the war they had just won was by no means the end of the
struggle . their mission was the overthrow of capitalism, not merely the
. .

defeat of this or that nationalenemy '.^

Recently returned from the Moscow embassy, where he had helped
formulate Frank Roberts's influential telegrams, to take up the post of Director
of the London School of Slavonic Studies, George Bolsover also believed that
approach policy from a fundamentally ideological stand-
'Soviet statesmen
on 'Soviet Ideology and Propaganda' at Chatham House
point'. In his lecture
on 11 November 1947, he dismissed the argument that Stalin and his
colleagues used ideology 'as an instrument for maintaining their power at
 THE WORLD-VIEW 61

home and extending their influence abroad'. He warned against this tempting
theory because it 'suggests the possibility of solving fundamental problems
by various international "deals" among the Big Three or at least the Bigger
Two'. For Bolsover, Soviet policy could only be made 'coherent and intelli-

gible if interpreted in terms of Marxism-Leninism', the essence of which was

dialectical and historical materialism.
Mackintosh believed that the occupation of wide areas of Europe and the
Far East had extended the borders of the Soviet Union, and 'provided bases
from which a policy of expansion could be carried on'. While Poland,
Romania and Bulgaria were being turned into Soviet satellites, the new fron-
tiers of the Soviet base were 'being tested for soft or undefended spots where

further penetration might succeed or protection zones set up'. In western

Europe the situation was more confused. According to George Young, during
the summer of 1946 MI6 had 'intercepted' Soviet 'instructions to Western
Communist Parties, including the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB),
to foment civil conflict'. If this is true, it has an echo of similar material which
had come to the attention of Section IX over the winter of 1944-5. In the
event. Mackintosh accepted that, despite communist opinion in Italy and
France which rated their chances of success as high, 'nothing, however, was
done, and there is excellent evidence that Stalin was against any attempt to
seize power'. Instead, an attempt was made to strengthen the communist
position inside the coalitions in France and Belgium based on a 'general
strategic decision against attempts to seize power in countries beyond the
reach of the Soviet Army'.^
A Germany, where the Russians
different state of affairs existed in East
were 'well-advanced' with communist state. Young
their plans to create a
was disturbed that, 'while the Western allies were faithfully and literally
observing the Four Power agreements, the wretched East German Socialist
stooges, who were used as a front while the Communists were put in positions
of power, could only wriggle feebly'. In conversation with Young, the East
German communist leader, Grotewohl, admitted: 'I have a pistol in my back.'
In Czechoslovakia, where President Benes and his non-communist ministers
were held in international esteem. Young thought that 'a little more discretion
was required' in order 'to lull American suspicions while their forces were
still at full-strength in Germany'. While assuring western visitors that there
was a Czech road communist Prime Minister, Klement Gott-
to socialism, the
wald, 'brought Ministry of Interior, police and trade union "factory guards"
under strict control, seduced the Left Wing of the Socialist Party and even
found some willing instruments in the People's and Nationalist Parties'.^
Mackintosh suggested that, in the three years to 1947, the evidence pointed
to a Soviet strategy of 'territorial expansion of the Soviet heartland by gaining
control of countries and provinces bordering the Soviet Union, whether
allied (Poland, Yugoslavia and Greece), ex-enemy (Bulgaria, Romania and
62 PART ONE: FROM HOT TO COLD WAR

Hungary) or neutral (Persia and Turkey), but to adopt a more cautious atti-

tude in countries out of reach of Soviet military power (Italy, France and
Belgium)'. Seton-Watson set out the Soviet blueprint in his 1950 book The
communists seized control
East European Revolution. 'During the first stage the
ot most of the "levers of power" - in particular the security police, the army
general staff and the publicity machines/ During the 'bogus coalition' second
stage, thegovernments still contained non-communist parties, 'but these are
represented by men chosen no longer by the party membership but by the
communists. The essential feature of this stage is that . . . any bourgeois
parties . , . are driven into opposition/ In the third stage of the 'monolithic
regime': 'There is a single communist-managed "front", with one hierarchy,
one centralised discipline and one organisation.' All open opposition is
'suppressed, and its leaders either escape abroad or are arrested as "spies of
the western imperialists" and either executed or sentenced to long prison
terms'.
Seton-Watson argued that secret policeman in the eastern bloc had an
interest in the maintenance of international tension. 'As long as it is believed
that imperialist Powers are straining every muscle to infiltrate spies, agitators
and saboteurs' into their countries, 'so long will the maintenance of a huge
host of secret informers, uniformed and plain-clothes policemen, concen-
tration-camp guards, and special elite formations of political troops be justi-

fied'. Thus, unwittingly, MI6's intrusive intelligence-gathering operations in

eastern Europe contributed to maintaining the repulsive system of 'ordinary
people acting as spies on their friends and neighbours, of disappearances
and show trials'. Seton-Watson added that 'the interests of the police and the
political class require that the people of the Soviet Union and the popular
democracies should live forever in the shadow of war'. Did he conversely
believe that western intelligence agencies had a selfish interest in propagating
the myth of a Soviet Union bent on world domination?^^
During August 1947, the US Central Intelligence Group (CIG), which was
slowly being transformed into the CIA, circulated an evaluation based on
papers retrieved from the burglary of the safe of a Soviet satellite's chief of
mission. The contents of the document were microfilmed before being
returned to the safe. What is interesting about this document, whose authen-
ticity was accepted by the intelligence agencies, is the different interpretations
given to the contents.
For the hardliners, it outlined a Soviet strategy to prevent the expulsion
of communists from western European governments as a prelude to Marshall
Aid. The chief of mission had proposed 'strike movements and social agitation
in Italy, France and Belgium destined to weaken the governments in these
countries'. In Italy a general strike would be instigated to overthrow de
Gaspari and install a communist administration, to be followed by the victori-

ous drive of the 'Greek partisans' towards Salonika. The paper also called
 THE WORLD-VIEW 63

for the destruction of Balkan opposition to Russia - which, as Trevor Barnes

was 'an important clue to a source of tension between Stalin and Tito
suggests,
which was to have momentous consequences a year later'. To the cautious, the
document revealed a split within the Kremlin between the hawks - supporters
of the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Vyacheslav Molotov, who believed in
pursuing the proposals outlined above - and the doves around Minister of
Foreign Trade Anastas Mikoyan, who argued that the satellites were a burden
and that the Russian economy could not sustain an offensive stance. Although
these were only discussions and proposals, it is likely that the find was highly

regarded within intelligence circles, given the fact that M16 had no sources
in Russia.
Within MI 6, events in eastern Europe, about which George Young claimed
the Service was 'well-informed', were viewed with confusion and growing
anger; in particular, the 'nonsensical' percentages formula which Churchill
had agreed with Stalin. Typically, there was frustration at the lack of action
by the West. 'We were not prepared'. Young recalled, 'to take the minimal
risks of exploiting internal weaknesses of the Soviet Bloc by active political
warfare.' He claimed that, through defectors, MI6 knew by the autumn of
1947 that the Soviets intended 'to bring to heel' Yugoslavia and Czechoslo-
vakia. An attempt at reassertion by right-wing Czech socialists in November
was quickly 'countered by a demagogic Communist campaign for punitive
wealth taxes and the seizure of large estates. Socialist will collapsed as they
resigned from the Prague government.' It was apparent that the communists
would launch a takeover in Czechoslovakia, 'but nothing was done to bolster
up the will of those Czechs who might have resisted what was in fact a
skilfully conducted bluff '.^'
Similar consolidation of Soviet political control over East Germany was
carried through 'without any attempt on our side to impede or delay it. One
needed to have no illusions about Pieck, Ulbricht, Grotewohl and other East
German politicians. But nothing was done to exploit their internal jealousies
or their resentment at the Soviet pressureon them: some of them would gladly
have re-established their links with the West if the channels had existed.' In
Hungary, Soviet plans for 'rigging the impending elections were allowed to
go on without Western challenge'. MI6 suggestions that the British govern-
ment 'use some of its considerable unorthodox skills to assist its Hungarian
Social-Democratic comrades' were dismissed by the Labour Party chair, Sam
Watson, on the basis that if they did so 'the Rooshians will behave like
rampaging beasts'. MI6 officers came to believe that there was an unwritten
assumption that 'Warsaw, Prague and Budapest had ceased to be part of
Europe and nothing further should or could be done about them'.^'^

The area where all MI6's impressive expertise might have been expected to
bear fruit was in the Balkans, where SOE had been intimately involved. It
64 PART ONE: FROM HOT TO COLD WAR

was a region where Britain still sought to defend its perceived special inter-
ests. Indeed, MI6 had poured agents into the area from places such as Austria,
Itah' and Turkey, from where it ran major SO and intelligence-gathering
operations. Despite their best efforts, and, in particular, Hugh Seton- Watson's
insights and the investment of financial and human resources, MI6 failed to
deli\ er intelligence on the major event of the period, namely the Stalin-Tito
split.

The Foreign Office had been reduced to despair about Anglo- Yugoslav
relations. In late July 1946, Churchill's former private secretary and Foreign
Office official John Colville wrote that 'secret information showed that the
Yugoslav regime was actively doing all that it could to bring about Commu-
nist world revolution, with aid to the Greek rebels as only one of its moves
and with Britain as its special target'. Robert M. Blum records that President
Tito pursued an aggressive regional policy,

laying claim to territory in Austria and to the British and Ameri-

can occupied port city of Trieste. He fuelled the Greek civil

war in hopes of absorbing an expanded Macedonia. He signed

treaties of friendship with Moscow and with other Soviet bloc
countries, integrated his economy into the Soviet-bloc system,
brought in Soviet military and economic advisers, and, alone
among East European leaders, enthusiastically rejected partici-
pation in the Marshall Plan. With rare exceptions, Tito's propa-
ganda organs piped a chorus of praise for the Soviets and scorn
for the West.^'

Tito, who had been committed to establishing popular fronts under clear
communist control, was dissatisfied with the all-party coalition governments
that had been established with Stalin's consent throughout central and eastern
Europe. Tito 'favoured a communist offensive, while Stalin, aware of the
international position of the Soviet Union, favoured a more cautious
approach'. Thus, when in September 1947 Stalin summoned the first meeting
in Poland of the Communist Information Bureau (Cominform), which aimed
to co-ordinate propaganda among communist parties, and made him its de
facto leader, Tito 'mistakenly assumed he was to head a new international
committed to a revolutionary offensive not only in Eastern Europe but in
Greece and even Italy and France'. In his speeches Tito announced that the
time had come to resume the advance towards socialism by means of popular
fronts which would break with the 'parliamentary cretinism' of coalition
politics. Shortly after, a number of eastern European communist parties, and

those led by former resistance fighters in France and Italy, reorganised their
parties into mass populist movements.^^
Geoffrey Swain argues that 'if support for the popular front "from below"
is taken as a touchstone, then the Cominform had become Tito's international'.
 THE WORLD-VIEW 65

Indeed, MI6 saw its foundation as confirmation that the world had been
divided into two warring camps and 'a declaration that the Soviet Government
regarded itself as engaged in a major struggle against the non-Communist
world in both Europe and Asia'. During 1947, the Joint Intelligence Committee
(JIC) placed growing emphasis on 'political infiltration and the promotion of
unrest' by the Soviets, and asserted that Stalin believed that 'the capitalist world
is about to collapse'. It was largely untrue, but it suited western perceptions
because battle had now been joined in the Cold War.^^
The general view was summed up by the British ambassador in Moscow,
Sir Maurice Peterson, who cabled London that it was time 'to return blow
for blow and to embark on open political warfare against communism'. Chris-
topher Warner advocated nurturing organised resistance to communist
influence in the Commonwealth and to Soviet attempts to control various
international federations. He wanted a 'ministerial lead to encourage and
strengthen the efforts already being taken so that it could be more effectively
organised'.^^
Bevin responded by manipulating the Marshall Aid ideal. Reporting to
the Cabinet on the recent meeting in Paris, the Foreign Secretary argued on
8 July that 'it is have [the Soviets] definitely out than half-
far better to

heartedly in'. Confrontation had replaced the idea of negotiations since 'any
other tactics might have enabled the Soviets to play the Trojan horse and
wreck Europe's propects American assistance
of availing themselves of . . .

at least the and we know where we stand with them.' Britain

gloves are off,

and America were now working together as an increasingly 'effective and

aggressive team'.^'^

A former British Intelligence official, Michael McGwire, later concluded

that

if there were still doubts in Stalin's mind about the thrust of

Western policy after the Foreign Ministers' meeting in Moscow,
these would have been finally dispelled by the proposed Euro-
pean Recovery Programme The Anglo-French stance at the
. . .

Paris meeting, following as it did on the heels of the Truman

declaration, the stone-walling on reparations at the Council of
Foreign Ministers, and the eviction of the Communist members
of the French and Italian coalition governments, appears to have
finally convinced Stalin that the West was indeed on the offen-
sive against Communism. Not only was co-operation no longer
a practical option, but even the possibility of 'peaceful co-exist-
ence' was in doubt. The hard-line pessimists therefore moved
into favour in Moscow.

Far from being, as the West assumed, a sign of the resumption of the
Soviet drive for world revolution, the creation of the Cominform, whicn came
60 PA PvT ONE : F RO h\ H OT TO CO L D WAR

onl\ a w eek after President Truman's speech introducing the doctrine of

'containment', indicated, as Robert Frazier suggests, Stalin's 'assumption that
the Truman amounted to a declaration of war'. While Soviet policies
doctrine
appeared to be aggressive and to be based on an offensive strategy, Stalin
w as actual 1\' engaged in a defensive foreign policy which required the reining
in of all the communist parties worldwide in order to retain control of their

acti\'ities. When French Communist Party member Jacques Duclos told the

Comintern that 'France was fast falling under the influence of the United
States and that something had to be done quickly to reverse this trend', Stalin
stamped on any ideas of an insurrection. Moscow 'had decided to consolidate
its gains in Eastern Europe' and now was not the time for 'opportunism'.^^

The Cominform, in Beatrice Heuser's opinion, was an attempt at centralis-

ation, and its first meeting was designed to bring the parties, particularly in
Yugoslavia, into line. This reflected a factional dispute within the Kremlin
which remained largely unknown to western intelligence, though the filched
documents from the safe of the Soviet satellite chief of mission gave an
indication of such divisions. The ideological faction led by Andrei Zhadanov,
the senior Soviet representative in the Cominform, was in favour of 'following
a radical, revolutionary line to stage strikes and overthrow colonial powers',
which 'found favour with the Yugoslavs'. The rival conservative, anti-western
and isolationist faction led by fellow Soviet delegate Georgi Malenkov
supported 'the centralisation and consolidation' demanded by Stalin, who
'had a deep dislike for coups and revolutions and personally preferred
gradualism'.
In retrospect, Malcolm Mackintosh refused to accept this analysis. While
he agreed that Zhadanov headed a domestic faction, it was 'not certain that
he was anything more than Stalin's mouthpiece in foreign affairs'. He added
that there was 'no move away from Cominform policy after his [Zhadanov's]
death in August 1948', and that 'it is probable that in foreign affairs the

personal role of Zhadanov has been exaggerated'. The reality was that MI6
did not know. As George Young acknowledged, compared to the wealth of
material from intercepts and agents about Soviet activities in Germany and
Austria, MI6 had no from inside the Soviet Union and
reliable intelligence
lacked 'high-grade intelligence on Russian intentions and policy-making'. It
was another decade before MI 6 or the CIA had even a low-level mole in
Moscow.^^
'In the sense of collecting information', former senior intelligence official

Michael Herman has written, 'the West picked itself off the floor in 1945.'
An academic specialist in intelligence studies, Herman has also noted,
however, that 'Russia was deeply secret; in the late forties we had only the

sketchiest ideas about it . . . we were in a continuous struggle to open

windows on to the Soviet Union'. Junior Labour foreign minister Christopher
Mayhew recalled that 'at that time our knowledge of the Soviet Union, and
 THE WORLD-VIEW 67

especially of the blacker elements of Soviet oppression, was extremely limited.

We had few secret sources of intelligence; defectors were few and far between;
the movements of western visitors were strictly controlled; and the Soviet
media gave little away.'^^
MI6 found itself in a double bind. Despite worsening relations between
the USSR and the West, and Bevin's apparent dissatisfaction with the intelli-
gence he was receiving, the Service was expected to abide by the conditions
set by the government which barred direct intrusive operations inside the
Soviet Union. Officially, limited arm's-length operations were allowed in the
satellite countries, and Menzies interpreted this broadly to include Soviet

states such as Ukraine and those in the Baltics and the Caucasus, but the
intelligence take was poor. Where the West did win the intelligence battle,
Herman concludes, was in collating and analysing these slithers of infor-
mation. After 1945 the JIC, chaired by the head of the Foreign Office Service
Liaison Department, remained the focus of strategic intelligence and an
important link between the military, the diplomats and the intelligence
community. Membership of the JIC included the heads of the^armed service
intelligence departments and of MI6 and MI5. It retained subordinate
regional JICs that had developed within wartime commands in Europe, the
Middle East and Asia.^^
George Young recalled that there was no systematic study of 'the top
Soviet power structure, in the armed forces and the KGB'. The practice in
the Foreign Office was 'to take each intelligence report in a separate docket,
comment on it and file away'. Thus, information from both overt and covert
sources was 'never properly assessed'.
The spark that ignited the communist split was Tito's decision in January
1948 to station Yugoslav troops on Albanian territory. This, and Tito's
continuing supply of arms to the rebels in the Greek civil war, caused
unwanted complications for Moscow and led to Stalin's belief that the Comin-
form needed to be disciplined. Given his long absences through illness, it
took time for Stalin to crush the Zhadanovite faction and bring Tito down
with it. But once under Stalinist control, the Cominform attacked the Yugoslav
communists for their incorrect line on home affairs and, more importantly,
for their foreign policy, which it equated with Trotsky's 'left slogans about
world revolution'. In February, Tito was summoned to Moscow and told by
Stalin to end support for the Greek communists.
Given that Tito regarded himself as the communist International's most
loyal agent, it was not surprising that Stalin's ejection of the Yugoslav commu-
nists in March stunned them, nor that the decision was kept secret. Basing
his assessment on rumours, in mid-June British ambassador Charles Peake
cited several recent developments which indicated that Tito was in trouble
with Stalin. The Foreign Office's Southern Department was confident,
however, that neither the 'the top Yugoslav Communists nor their colleagues
68 PART ONF: FPvON4 HOT TO COLD WAR

in the other Orbit countries will fail to toe the line if the Kremlin gets tough'.
I he appearance of communist unity in the Soviet bloc was finally shattered
on 28 June 1948 whenCzech newspaper. Rude Pravo, announced that the
a
Cominform meeting in Bucharest had 'expelled Yugoslavia from the family
of fraternal Communist parties for pursuing domestic and foreign policies
hostile to the Soviet Union'. The Foreign Office and MI6 had not anticipated
the action and it was to prove to be a major intelligence failure.^^
When reports of Tito's dispute with the Comintern reached the West, the
news was received with 'scepticism if not outright disbelief. A scholar on
the Soviet Union, Adam B. Ulam, stated that 'any man who, prior to June
1948, would have predicted a break between Tito and Stalin would be entitled
today to be honoured as a prophet with occult powers of predicting the
future but certainly not as an expert basing his prognosis upon factual
evidence'. Snippets of intelligence appear to have been picked up by agents
of the US 430th Counter-intelligence Corps in Austria, and MI6's George
Young later claimed to have had foreknowledge from agents within the
Balkan communist parties. If there were raw intelligence reports on the subject
they remain classified. There is no indication that officials dealing with Yugo-
slavia had any inkling of the internal disputes with Moscow. A prime problem
was that the American and British embassies in Belgrade were under siege
and their diplomats were 'virtually unable to function', the British faring
only a little better because of 'a small residual feeling for their contribution
during the war'.^^
Proof of the lack of intelligence comes from Bevin's minister liaising with
MI6, Hector McNeil; though there was no love lost between the minister and
the Service. Dining shortly after the split with New York Times correspondent
Cyrus Sulzberger, McNeil 'sneered at British and American intelligence
services and diplomats for not knowing about Tito's fight with Stalin'. McNeil
was never going to be a favourite of the security services. A socialist since
his student days, he was a heavy drinker who explored London's seamier
side with Guy Burgess, his private secretary from January 1947 until mid-
1948. Burgess, who had been in MI6's Section D at the beginning of the war
and had spent a period with MIS, was in a prime position from which to
inform the Soviets. He had access to the yellow boxes in which MI 6 sent their
reports and also managed to make a copy of the key to the safe containing the
secret reports to which only Bevin, McNeil and Orme Sargent had access.^^^
The Foreign Office continued to regard Tito as a Soviet puppet even after
unmistakable evidence to the contrary. Bevin believed the split was a 'put
up job'. A former communist and head of the Labour Party's International
Department, Denis Healey, who had
deep knowledge of the socialist and
a
communist tactics in Europe, was by a discussion with the Foreign
'startled'

Office's Evelyn Shuckburgh concerning the split. Shuckburgh suggested that

'it might have been a trick to deceive the West'. Healey replied that 'no one
 THE WORLD-VIEW 69

of any political understanding could believe that governments, even when

led by Communists, can conduct their affairs as if they are secret agents'.
Policy towards Yugoslavia, however, remained one of 'masterly inactivity '.^^
Beatrice Heuser concludes that 'Western diplomats overlooked the
disagreements about foreign policy and if they noted them, they still failed
to see their overall significance'. Theembassy did receive information
British
via the Czech embassy which confirmed that the split was due to foreign
policy differences, but diplomats assumed that Tito had yearned to break
away from the Soviet Union, which was demonstratively not true. Two days
after the Cominform communique, the British charge-d'affaires in Belgrade,
Cecil King, reported that the 'Yugoslav Party are attempting to set up their
own brand of communism in opposition to the Kremlin Party line. This is
one of the most important developments in the whole history of Communism.
For the first time there is a chance of establishment of a heresy upon a firm
territorial base.' King thought that its attractions both to other Balkan states

and to the western communist parties would be 'strong indeed', and

suggested that Albania would follow the lead.^^
It would take six months before the West accepted that there had been a

major split between Moscow and Belgrade. The problem was 'exacerbated
by the West believing that nationalism would have a more profound effect
on Tito's thinking than ideology'. Christopher Warner had been told the
previous year by Charles Peake in Belgrade that there was 'no chance what-
ever' of splitting the communist parties along 'Muscovite-Nationalist' lines,
but he refused to accept the analysis. In reality, Tito was driven by ideology
and 'probably took Marxism-Leninism more seriously than did Stalin'. The
Titoists' ambition 'seemed to be that Yugoslavia should be regional leader
of a Communist Balkans within a wholly Communist Europe'. And if proof
was needed, following resumed arms shipments to
the split the Yugoslavs
the Greek rebels, who acknowledged that 'Stalin showed himself to be hostile
to any revolutionary struggle in any country in which his control was not
assured'.^^
MI6's Robert Carew-Hunt undertook a study of the pre-war Comintern
in the belief that its postwar successor, the Cominform, would follow the
same pattern. There was, however, no 'genius' such as Willi Munzenberg to
spread the Marxist gospel through fronts, agents and fellow-travellers. The
Cominform was not 'a hotbed for intelligence agents', nor was it 'riddled
with Stalin's secret police'. A West German intelligence official, Dr Gunther
Nollau, concluded that

during the nine years of the Cominform's existence not a single

Cominform agent was arrested in the free world. Not a single
passport was impounded that could be shown to have been
'fixed up' by the Cominform ... Is one to assume that the
PART ONE: FROM HOT TO COLD WAR

Cominform worked in such secrecy that its activities could

remain undiscovered? If so, it must be the only intelligence
service to have achieved this feat for so long. Between 1947 and
l'-)56, hundreds of Soviet, Polish, Czech or Hungarian agents

were caught in Western Europe, but never a Cominform agent.

Why was this? The answer is because there were no Cominform
agents."*"^
CHAPTER 6

PROPAGANDA

Social Democrat peer Christopher Mayhew was always proud of his role in
creating the Foreign Office's semi-secret Information Research Department
(IRD), which for thirty years poured out a stream of Cold War propaganda.
It is regarded as one of the Labour Party's few successful interventions into
the secret world. The truth, however, is that from the start Mayhew was
hoodwinked.
Even a Foreign Office history of the first year of IRD admits that it 'evolved
from plans drawn up in 1946', when hardliners on the Russia Committee
pressed the Foreign Secretary, Ernest Bevin, to implement an anti-communist
propaganda campaign. This was true, but, in fact, the Russia Committee was
merely reviving elements of the wartime Political Warfare Executive (PWE),
which had not been completely abolished.^
It was only in May 1945 that the PWE, which had had a precarious

existence, achieved single ministerial control under the Foreign Secretary; at

which point it went into 'liquidation', mostly because in the changeover from
war to 'what was expected to be peace, political warfare was regarded as a
contradiction in terms'. That view did not last long and, on 3 August 1945,
when the director of the Special Operations Executive (SOE), Colin Gubbins,
wrote a farewell letter to PWE's former
head, Robert Bruce Lockhart, he
urged the need Propaganda organisation both in Europe
to revive 'the Black
and the Far East', and argued that it should be combined with what remained
of SOE. Lockhart took up the idea with Bevin, who, two weeks later.
72 PAPvT ONE: FPvOM HOT TO COLD WAR

appro\ ed Lockhart's recommendation that PWE continue in Europe and the

Far East so long as military government existed. Subsequently, a number of
psychological warfare specialists 'found billets in the various information
serx'ices of the Government'. PWE was officially subsumed within the Foreign
Office's Political Intelligence Department, headed temporarily by Major-
General Kenneth Strong, while Ivone Kirkpatrick monitored its activities.

Bruce Lockhart was pleased that there was some continuity but concerned
that the 'best talent' would be allowed to leave.^
In mid-July 1946, Bruce Lockhart met with Strong, who was now head of
the new Joint Intelligence Bureau (JIB). They were eager to maintain some
continuity of PWE in view of 'the serious international situation', and wanted
to press the Labour government into setting up a peacetime psychological
warfare unit. Aware of the divisions within the Labour Party, and the fact
that there was still residual support from the war for the Soviets, Bevin vetoed
their ideas.
Bevin wanted to pursue a more positive option of extolling the virtues of
the 'Third Force', which was intended to help Britain retain an independent
role in the first rank of globalpowers in 'a middle democratic socialist way
between the harsh and conflicting ideologies of unfettered American capi-
talism and repressive Soviet Communism'. The officials did not, however,
give up on their plans. Indeed, Strong hoped to keep the continuity of PWE
in his own JIB. Other officials cleverly manoeuvred Bevin into supporting
their 'counter-offensive' campaign by consciously playing on the social demo-
cratic theme, in which they never truly believed. Gradually, the officials began
to chip away at Bevin's wariness as they considered action programmes on
a country-by-country basis. Agreement for a propaganda campaign in Iran
'proved to be the hammer and chisel' by which officials continued to gather
support for their strategy. Despite the Foreign Secretary's apparent reluctance
to pursue it, campaigns were soon evolving in other countries. At the same
time, pressure was brought to bear by the chiefs of staff, who wanted to
renew political warfare. Christopher Warner later admitted to Bruce Lockhart
that the impetus for the IRD was the result of a paper submitted by hardline
military figures, such as the RAF's Sir John Slessor, at the Imperial Defence
College (IDC).'
In the wake of the announcement of the formation of the Cominform,
which was perceived by British officials as the vehicle for subversion of
western European democracies, the more hardline officials in the Foreign
Office 'found an important ally' in the Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Chris-
topher Mayhew. In effect, Mayhew, who during the war had responsibility
for SOE and had served in one of the 'secret armies', the Phantoms, became
their unconscious front man.
In October 1947, Bevin had come under attack from Soviet Foreign Minister
Molotov at the United Nations, and had been subjected to a torrent of anti-
 PROPAGANDA 73

British propaganda. Furious at not being able to respond with well-researched

information on the Soviet system, Bevin ordered Mayhew to organise some-
thing. Mayhew replied with the idea of a 'propaganda counter-offensive', with
the recommendation that a small separate Foreign Office department be set up
to supervise the programme, which would give specific support for the Third
Force' position. With the approval of Attlee, a meeting was called with a trio
of the Foreign Office's senior officials: Sir Orme Sargent, Ivone Kirkpatrick and
Christopher Warner. The Foreign Secretary, however, was not then convinced
that such tactics were necessary, and Warner's proposals remained unap-
proved until late in the year, after the Cominform declaration against the
Marshall Plan in November and the breakdown of the Council of Foreign
Ministers in December, which led to a hardening of attitudes.^
On 6 December, Mayhew submitted a paper on 'Third Force Propaganda'
which advised the Foreign Secretary to 'proceed quietly at first, being careful
to stick to the truth and to balance anti-communism with anti-capitalist argu-
ments so as to reassure the Parliamentary Labour Party'. Bevin and Attlee
agreed to Mayhew developing his low-key ideas for a 'Communist Infor-
mation Department'. Officials, however, wanted something more hard-
hitting, with Sargent calling for the creation of a special organisation for an
'offensive' against the Soviets, while the chiefs of staff wanted 'certain "black"
secret operations'. Warner took the proposals to the Russia Committee and
rejigged Mayhew's paper, drawing 'more extensively on the political argu-
ments of his own 1946 draft than on the concept of the "Third Force", about
which he had in any case expressed doubts'.^
Only then, in the wake of the failure of the November Moscow Council
of Foreign Ministers, did Bevin - and the Cabinet - endorse the Foreign
Office's memorandum, 'The First Aim of British Foreign Policy', which
accepted earlier proposals from the Russia Committee. It was a belated
triumph for the hardliners in the Foreign Office, and the Russia Committee,
now chaired by Gladwyn Jebb, was at last free to take the offensive against
communism. Bevin, however, was still not prepared to abandon the 'Third
Force' concept. In his presentation of the case to the Cabinet, on 5 January
1948, he said it required 'us, as Europeans and as a Social Democratic govern-
ment, not the Americans, to give a lead in the spiritual, moral and political
sphere to all democratic elements in Western Europe which are anti-
communist and, at the same time, genuinely progressive and reformist,
believing in freedom, planning and social justice - what one might call the
"Third Force" '?

Three days later, the Cabinet finally accepted the need for anti-communist
machinery as devised by Warner and Mayhew and set out in 'Future Foreign
Publicity Policy'. Bevin told his colleagues that 'the only new machinery
required will be a small section in the Foreign Office to collect information
concerning communist policy, tactics and propaganda and to provide
74 PART ONE: FROM HOT TO COLD WAR

material for anti-communist publicity'. Mayhew recognised that 'since anti-

communist propaganda would be anathema to much of the Labour Party, it
would have to be organised secretly'. But his concern was not just with the
repercussions within the Labour Party. In a minute to Bevin, he commented
that 'one of the problems that constantly faces us in anti-communist publicity
work is media which are definitely non-official so as to
to discover publicity
avoid undesirable diplomatic and political repercussions when certain issues
are raised'.^
A taste of the anti-communist counteroffensive came to the fore six days
later, on 14 January, with the surfacing of 'Protocol M'. Its text, which was
published in the Berlin evening paper Der Kurier, appeared to be a blueprint
for a campaign of communist-inspired industrial subversion and sabotage in
the Ruhr, Germany's industrial heartland in the British Zone. Highly detailed,
it provided names of agents involved and set out a three-stage timetable

which would lead to a general strike in March 1948 as part of the Cominform's
campaign to disrupt the Marshall Plan. On the 15th, The Times reported that
British authorities in Berlin regarded the document as 'genuine', while the
Daily Herald headlined its article with 'Plot to wreck Marshall Plan'. The
following day, the New York Times provided the additional information that
the British had been monitoring a courier service involved in the planned
subversion, and that the Foreign Office had confirmed the authenticity of the
document. By coincidence, or more probably by design, the document gave
backing to intelligence reports received ten days previously concerning 'a

Russian directed propaganda and sabotage organisation (FAST BOWLER)',

which was said to be engaged in the infiltration of German trade unions,
involving many of the same individuals featured in the Protocol M allega-
tions. Within the British Zone, the British authorities distributed copies of
the text widely as part of the propaganda effort backing new anti-communist
regulations which they were seeking to impose.^
Simon Ollivant, who made a study of the Protocol M controversy, is

correct in suggesting that it was probably not the work of Mayhew's new
machinery, which was not yet operational. Ollivant adds, however, that 'it

is most probable that it was handled by those who were in the process of
setting it up'. These included Ivone Kirkpatrick, the supervising under-

secretary in charge of the German Political Department, who was planning

more repressive measures against the communists of the KPD. Kirkpatrick
had asserted that 'we should not hesitate to hit back hard and use fairly

unscrupulous methods'.
The day after Protocol M was publicised, Christopher Warner, who had
succeeded Kirkpatrick in charge of Information Services, outlined to the

Russia Committee the responsibilities of the new department's organisation,

to be known Northern Information Department (NID). First,
initially as the

it would have 'an offensive branch attacking and exposing Communist

 PROPAGANDA 75

methods and policy and contrasting them with "Western" democracy and
British methods and policy'; secondly, 'a defensive branch, which would
be concerned with replying to Soviet and Communist attacks and hostile
propaganda'; and finally, 'a positive branch which would deal with the
"build-up" of the Western Union conception'. The Foreign Office reported
that it had managed to obtain extra funds for the new propaganda
department.
In February, Warner had dined with Bruce Lockhart and had sought
advice on how best to proceed and who to recruit. Warner had already
appointed as the NID's head Ralph Murray, who had served with the PWE
during the war, while Bruce Lockhart recommended Harman Grisewood for
recruitment. Murray's first decision was to change the organisation's name
to avoid confusion with the Naval Intelligence Department. Kirkpatrick was
made responsible for recruiting 'contract' staff, including writers with
wartime experience in propaganda and eastern European emigres. Eight
permanent officials were recruited, including Guy Burgess, who had been
employed for a short period by Hector McNeil before the junior minister
became embarrassed by his behaviour and offloaded him to the new depart-
ment, where he 'showed a dazzling insight into communist methods of
subversion and propaganda'. Others who supervised the work were the
Kremlin-watcher Robert Conquest and Jack Brimmell, who was recruited
from the Russian Secretariat, which read all the main Soviet periodicals.^^
In the cramped offices of Carlton House Terrace, eight 'desks' were estab-
lished for geographical areas such as eastern Europe, Africa, China and Latin
America, as well as to cater for economic affairs. The Information Research
Department's work was divided into two categories. Category A consisted
of analysis of intelligence collected by other agencies and Foreign Office
departments which was not to be published. Category B consisted of
'briefings' which were disseminated to the media, academics, trade unions
and foreign officials for their own use. Many of the first briefings concentrated
on conditions inside Soviet Russia, including the existence of gulags and
slave labour. During the summer, the briefings were supplemented by the
weekly production of confidential 'digests', which presented 'general news'
and 'specific interests' on current relations with 'Soviet Russia, her satellites,
and with the principal national and international agencies involved'.
The Russia Committee authorised the IRD to develop channels to dissemi-
nate its work. Norman Reddaway, Mayhew's private secretary, who had also
served in the 'Phantoms', passed Soviet material on to trade unions, the
labour movement and to the International Secretary of the Labour Party,
Denis Healey, who was 'an important source on European communist move-
ments'. Others in contact included labour attaches abroad, who became the
link with the Trades Union Congress (TUC) at home. An anti-communist
organisation, 'Freedom First', which had been set up by leading TUC figures.
76 PART ONE: FROM HOT TO COLD WAR

was also subsidised. The link was unintentionally exposed in late 1948
during the Lynskey Tribunal into political corruption, though few noticed
at the time. IRD briefings were supplied to a large number of selected
MPs and journalists, including the editor of the Daily Herald. Material was
also placed with news agencies, notably the Arab News Agency, which had
been established by MI6, and the London Press Service. It developed close
links with a syndication agency and various publishers leading to the estab-
lishment of a publishing company. Ampersand, to print anti-communist
books.''
Chaired by Mayhew, the Colonial Information Policy Committee was
established by the ministerial committee on anti-communist propaganda to
co-ordinate programmes in Britain's colonial possessions. The IRD estab-
lished its most important regional office in Singapore, with an additional
office in Hong Kong, to provide material for South-East Asia. Agreement

was made with French and Belgian authorities in Africa to counter nationalist
movements while, from its inception, IRD began exchanging information on
'publicity' with the United States State Department and overseas missions.
Mayhew had been wary of upsetting Labour's left wing and the latter
exchange appears to have been undertaken by Foreign Office officials without
his co-operation or knowledge. He thought that the British effort, based on
social democratic values, was superior to American propaganda, which he
described as being 'crude'. He was certain that there was insignificant
co-operation with the infant CIA, though Tom McCoy, who acted as the
Agency's liaison with the IRD throughout most of its life, revealed that there
was a close relationship both at the planning stage in London and Washing-
ton, and at field stations throughout the world. In the Far East, Ralph Murray
made sure that arrangements existed so that 'our respective operations
complement one another', while in the Middle East there was 'full and
complete co-operation', though efforts were made to ensure that there was
no impression of a 'joint operation'.
While officials initially paid lip-service to the Third Force idea, they were
soon calling for something stronger. The chiefs of staff, always fascinated by
the clandestine, had from the beginning wanted to transform the IRD into a
peacetime equivalent of the PWE with a capacity for secret 'black' operations.
While allowed to implement a 'defensive /offensive' programme, the depart-
ment was not authorised to conduct subversive operations. Bevin was not at

this stage willing to allow the propagandists free rein. This view may have
been reinforced by the Protocol M
episode, which was beginning to unravel
to the embarrassment of the Foreign Office.
After a 'careful and exhaustive investigation' of the provenance of Protocol
M, Hector McNeil was forced to backtrack in the House of Commons on 19
April 1948, stating that its authentiticity was now 'in doubt', though, he
added, the plan was corroborated by recent developments and by other
 PROPAGANDA 77

information 'already in our possession'. The results of the investigation

revealed that the document had been obtained from 'a reliable informant' in
the Social Democratic Party - the party close to the British authorities - called
Kielgast. Insisting that thedocument might still be genuine, officials stated
that had been 'very good anti-Soviet propaganda'. Only later did officials
it

reveal that its author had been a one-time agent of the Americans called
Hahn. Released records indicate that the Foreign Office knew at an early
stage that the document was a possible forgery. 'Consequently, the decision
to promote it', observes Simon Ollivant, 'was not so much a simple error of
judgement but a deliberate act of policy.' It was exploited to expose a
perceived communist threat even though intelligence reports indicated that
British fears were misplaced. Ollivant concludes that the Foreign Office's
'keen interest in audience reaction - their monitoring of the operation - was
the characteristic behaviour of deceivers, whether professional magicians or
aspiring propagandists. These and other features of the story indicate that
the Foreign Office's handling of the Protocol was more skilful than first
impressions might indicate. '^^
In May
1948, an ad hoc ministerial committee was established by Bevin
to oversee and control IRD activities, but it met only three times over the
next three years. The effect was that IRD escaped ministerial scrutiny and
gradually its activities became more hardline. As in so many areas of the secret
world, informal arrangements for the 'day-to-day conduct of anti-Communist
propaganda overseas' became the norm. At an Imperial Defence College
lecture on political warfare, Bruce Lockhart privately discussed with John
Slessor a scheme for the co-ordination of political warfare by a high Foreign
Office official or someone with a seat on the chiefs of staff. The role fell to
the secretary to the chiefs. General Leslie Mollis, who chaired the Inter-Service
Committee on Propaganda Dissemination (the head of the IRD attended its
meetings), which included MI6's Stewart Menzies, Christopher Warner and
the JIC chair, William Hayter. From the beginning, IRD officials were thus
able to interpret the guidelines in the broadest terms and, within a year, the
organisation had been transformed into an aggressive anti-communist
crusade engaged in The social democratic theme was, to
'political warfare'.

all intents and purposes, dead, replaced by a projection of western principles

and practices. Increasingly, Mayhew was sidestepped by Foreign Office

officials who tended to have a poor opinion of a minister who was prone to

change his views: one day he was 'like a right-wing Tory and next like a
left-wing Socialist'.
When Mayhew later claimed that the IRD was a 'well-kept secret' which

was making reference to the domestic audience, primarily

'did not leak', he
left-wing Labour MPs. In November 1948, Mayhew had ordered the transfer
of Guy Burgess whose behaviour he deemed unsuitable. According to
Michael Smith, not long afterwards 'a Soviet Bloc newspaper carried a
78 PART ONF: FROM HOT TO COLD WAR

roniarkabh accurate article on the secret organisation'. It was cruelly ironic

that its exposure should happen at the very moment that Bevin gave the
go-ahoad for a more aggressive campaign against the Soviets.
Be\ in haci previously ruled out anti-communist propaganda to Iron
Curtain countries, 'taking the view that HM Government should not incite
people to subversive activities if they were not in a position to lend active
assistance in overthrowing their regimes'.By the beginning of 1949, however,
'offensive' propaganda began to be linked with subversive operations within
the Soviet orbit. Ad hoc groups considered the development of more 'subvers-
ive propaganda'.
The IRD maintained a strong relationship with the BBC. It supplied
material, 'provided it was neither quoted directly, nor attributed to the
government as being official policy'. The BBC was an ideal conduit for IRD
material because it was, as one former official described it, 'in a class by
itself. The Corporation was regarded as semi-independent and an authoritat-
ive source of factual information which, of course, made the insertion of
material from IRD 'briefing papers' so much more effective and productive
in terms of propaganda. The IRD regarded its relationship with the BBC as
perhaps its most important, and it became, according to one former IRD
operative, 'the official source for Bush House's East European services'.
The former head of the wartime German Service, Hugh Carlton Greene,
who had worked in close collaboration with the PWE, was appointed control-
ler of the BBC's External Services to the Soviet Union and eastern Europe.
When Bruce Lockhart was asked his advice on the BBC's broadcasts to the
USSR, he suggested that the IRD should be engaged in 'truthful' broadcast-
ing. The Director of Overseas Broadcasting, General Sir Ian Jacob, formerly
Military Assistant Secretary to the Cabinet, told him that, instead, Mayhew
was urging the BBC to 'lambast the Russians in our Russian broadcasts'. A
member of the Russia Committee, Jacob had apparently agreed to 'temper
its broadcasts to accord with the national interest'. He had also agreed to

consider IRD's idea to 'plant' stories 'to draw [the Soviets] out on subjects
to which we would like to know the answers'.
In June 1949, after a tour of Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria and
Poland, the journalist and MP
Vernon Bartlett, a psychological warfare
veteran who had worked during the war for the PWE, met with Christopher
Mayhew, Norman Reddaway, Robert Conquest and other IRD officials. Bart-
lett informed them that the propaganda put out by the BBC 'encouraging

elements hostile to the present regimes' was premature and 'only had the
effect of endangering the elements'. With the Stalin-Tito split still fresh in
his mind, Mayhew, however, saw an important distinction between 'trying
to overthrow satellite regimes altogether and trying to prise them away from
Moscow without altering their communist complexion'. The Foreign Office
agreed but wanted to go further, and felt that 'it was important to keep them
 PROPAGANDA 79

in good heart by a vigorous propaganda which would show that we are alive
to what was going on behind the Iron Curtain'.
Ian Jacob was troubled by the tough stance demanded by Mayhew and
his officials. There was a delicate balance to be struck because the relationship
with the IRD undermined the BBC's claim of 'complete objectivity
clearly
and independence'. Hugh Greene later played down the IRD link and defined
the External Services' propaganda role as being 'to get our audience to accept
our view of events', with a subsidiary objective 'to shake faith in Stalin'. He
did not think that 'it should be any part of our objectives to contribute to
the overthrow of the Soviet regime or to "liberate" the Soviet peoples'. It

was, however, Greene later recalled, 'certainly part of our aim to keep alive
their links with the West and the belief that somehow, someday . . . things
might be better and Russian rule might be shaken off. He believed that in
broadcasts directed from Britain to eastern Europe the BBC was 'always
careful to avoid any hint of encouragement to sabotage or revolt'.
In December, the ad hoc ministerial committee on anti-communist propa-
ganda agreed that all restrictions on subversive propaganda in communist
countries should be removed. It endorsed the IRD, which was no longer a
passive organisation, engaging in 'propaganda in other countries designed
to stimulate subversive activities in the Soviet orbits'. The IRD worked closely
with MI6's anti-Soviet section, R5, on these operations. Now funded from
the Secret Vote, which enabled it to execute covert and semi-covert operations,
the IRD began recruiting on a larger scale, using intelligence officers from
some of the wartime propaganda agencies such as the PWE, and a number
of emigres from eastern Europe. The IRD would eventually have representa-
tives in most British embassies abroad. It became a service department 'on
call' to support the latest anti-Soviet projects of other agencies and depart-

ments. The 'offensive' message dominated and, whereas other information

agencies contracted, the IRD's staff expanded to over three hundred people,
with sixty in the Soviet section alone.^^
Opinion within MI6 was divided on the IRD's merits. Many officers
believed that it was too 'low-key' and 'defensive' for effective work, while
in the recollection of one former MI6 officer, the IRD was involved in 'some
of the more dubious intelligence operations which characterised the early
days of the cold war'. 'Non-attributability' became the central feature of the
circulation of information, as did the wartime technique of 'surfacing'
rumours and disinformation - i.e. planting stories in third countries or foreign
publications which could be recycled domestically. Although IRD apologists
have always denied it, 'black' material such as forgeries, lies and fabrications
was disseminated for use by its own outlets and by MI6-funded radio stations
and news agencies. By the organisation's engagement in these 'cowboy' oper-
ations, however, the more worthwhile tasks became tainted.
Christopher Mayhew believed that the IRD was extremely successful. It
80 PART ONE: FROM HOT TO COLD WAR

nia\ ha\ 0 beenon some levels, but a number of diplomats were turned off
by its straightforward anti-communism which they found counterproductive.
Mayhew is certainly to be praised for highlighting, in the late forties, the
and the gulags in the Soviet Union. Just as factually
existence of slave labour
correct was the substance of the attacks on Stalinism. But such efforts were
undermined by their origin in a covert agency; secrecy does ultimately
corrupt, and the moral high ground was lost as soon as the tactics used
became no different from those of the Soviet propagandists. More, perhaps,
would have been achieved by openness and honesty.
The reality, which seemed to escape Mayhew, is that the members of the
'secret state' have always been extremely successful at manipulating the
Labour Party. Labour MPs know, or want to know, very little about the
workings of the security and intelligence services, and invariably leave
matters to officials. Ironically, it was a Labour Foreign Secretary, David Owen,
who in 1977 closed down the IRD because of its contacts with right-wing
journalists and propagandists who were actively anti-Labour.
CHAPTER?

ROLL- BACK

By Committee
1948, in the absence of full-scale war, the Joint Intelligence
(JIC) had concluded that the Soviet Union would continue to employ Cold
War methods to weaken the western powers by fostering nationalism in the
European colonies and creating unrest and civil war in western countries by
means of political blackmail, infiltration and subversion. Despite alarmist
intelligence reports, 'nothing happened'. The same view held after Tito's
defection from the Soviet sphere, but again Moscow did not move.^
Nevertheless, Bevin ordered the Foreign Office to review the security situ-
ation in Europe and, in particular, the Greek civil war. The 'Bastions Paper'
reported that 'Soviet policy aims to control Greece'. It was seen as 'a particularly

weak bastion in the defences against Communism', being 'one link in a chain
of bastions along the perimeter of the Soviet sphere, where the Russians had
established themselves solidly'. The paper concluded that the measures taken
so far - Marshall Aid, the Brussels Treaty, the Truman Doctrine and actions to
prevent a communist victory in and France - were not enough. A battle
Italy

remained to be fought in Germany, Austria, Trieste, Greece and Turkey, and if

one of these 'bastions' was to fall then the others would follow.^
Despite Stalin's failure to suport the Greek insurgents, Greece 'inclined
the British Government to adopt a confrontational attitude towards Soviet-
directed world Communism'. The chiefs of staff's backing of 'special oper-
ations' for a 'subversive war' against the communists became the spur for a
wave of covert-action operations by the intelligence services. These, however.
82 TAPvT ONE: FROM HOT TO COLD WAR

required some form of centralised planning rather than the ad hoc arrange-
ments then in place. Following pressure from the chiefs and the Foreign
Office, discussions began on the need for a 'permanent Cold War Planning
Staff. As Richard Aldrich suggests, this 'constituted a critical turning-point
in the higher direction of the British Intelligence community'. The chiefs
pressed for military participation in the planning, while a 'forecast of Russian
moves' from the Foreign Office was accompanied by a request for major
offensive measures far beyond previous propaganda efforts.^
A September 1948 paper by the armed services' Directors of Intelligence
reviewing communist policy concluded that 'the only method of preventing
the Russian threat from ever materializing is by utterly defeating Russian
Communism'. Montgomery wrote in
In reviewing the paper. Field Marshal
his diary that 'We could not win the "cold war" unless we carried our
offensive inside Russia and the satellite states. In fact, what was required
was a world-wide offensive, using every available agency. To date we had
failed to unify our forces to oppose Soviet "cold war" aggression.' Besides
calling for counter-action, the Directors agreed that the whole question of
intelligence on Russia should be reviewed. 'Perhaps at this late hour there
will be a proper set-up to control and direct this very important aspect of
our national defence. It must also be hoped that the clock is not on the point
of striking.' The chiefs of staff called for a body not only to oversee the
direction of the conflict but also to control 'all executive action'.^
The JIC and chiefs' papers were considered at a conference on 9 and 10
September, chaired by the Minister of Defence, A. V. Alexander. Speaking
for the chiefs, in a blistering critique aimed at Bevin, Lord Tedder deplored
the present conduct of the Cold War. He said that it appeared to be
based solely on the Information Research Department (IRD), which was
'completely inadequate' when the requirement was the employment of
measures 'short of actual shooting'. Suggesting an interdepartmental plan-
ning body to co-ordinate the response, he qualified his criticism by adding
that it 'should not be taken out of the hands of the Foreign Secretary'.
For the Foreign Office, Ivone Kirkpatrick pointed out that the chiefs were
'incorrect' in presuming that the only Cold War propaganda
IRD was
mechanism. He added Committee was 'in fact the Cold
that the Russia
War Planning Staff whose membership would now be expanded to include
'

the chiefs. Although officials agreed on the danger of 'losing the Cold
War' and the need for an accelerated response, Kirkpatrick warned that
'the Foreign Secretary was inclined to the view the covert activities would
not pay a dividend'.^
Pressure was also applied by the Commandant of the Imperial Defence
College (IDC), John Slessor, an important background figure during the Cold
War who had been engaged in the wartime air drops of SOE agents. Senior
strategists used the influential IDC as 'a forum for detailed discussion of the
 ROLL-BACK 83

prosecution of the Cold War' and called in a report by Slessor for 'expanded
machinery and a planning section for "day-to-day operations" '.^

The idea of destabilising eastern Europe achieved a measure of interde-

partmental support when the enlarged Russia Committee, with Tedder as
the chiefs of staff's representative, met for the first time in late November.
Chaired by Gladwyn Jebb, it considered a paper, 'British policy towards the
Soviet orbit in Europe', that advocated a policy of offensive rather than
defensive containment. The paper had been written by Robin Hankey, who
had opposed SOE's role at the end of the war and had taken over from
Warner as head of the Northern Department. Having served in Warsaw
between 1945 and 1946, and primed on Marxist-Leninist texts, Hankey had
a deep suspicion of Soviet motives. Taking on board the military recommen-
dation of a 'roll-back' stance (i.e. rolling back Soviet control of eastern Europe),
the committee called for 'relatively long-term' operations to loosen the Soviet
hold on its The planners assumed, mistakenly as it turned
orbit countries.
out, that 'thewar-weary populations of Eastern Europe would require little
encouragement to rise up and overthrow their totalitarian governments'. The
short-term objective aimed at 'promoting civil discontent, internal confusion
and possibly strife in satellite countries so that they will be a source not of
strength but of weakness to Russia'. This was to be achieved through a revival
of robust use of psychological warfare and Special Operations (SO) methods.^
This was a major step forward, but intelligence officials remained largely
scornful of Foreign Office efforts. 'There was still a generation of senior
Foreign Office George Young recalled, 'who had an inborn dislike
officials',

and who had spent their wartime years trying to sabotage

of any sort of action,
the SOE saboteurs.' They remained hesitant of special operations which, 'by
their very nature, were difficult to control and often cut across the mainstream
policies of more orthodox departments'. While he recognised that the political
atmosphere within Whitehall had changed, by the time the restrictions were
lifted Stewart Menzies discovered that it was one thing to advocate aggressive

containment or roll-back but 'to find the resolve and resources to implement
special operations against a foreign power was quite another'.*^
As Young discovered, 'there was always a case for doing nothing'. An
activist would find himself gradually 'enmeshed in a web of gentlemanly
procedures and left to eat his heart out in a room at the end of a long corridor
with some imposing description of his office, but in fact damned with the
invisible but effective label of "difficult"'. This was 'sufficient to keep the
brakes on'. And, indeed, as Richard Aldrich notes, Bevin 'wavered when
faced with the challenge of taking widespread actions against Albania and
Yugoslavia'. Some Russia Committee members stated 'that it was important
to realise that the satellites were lost to us for the time being and that we
should preserve our attack for places where the battle was actually joined,
in Berlin, Greece, China and South-East Asia'.^
84 PART ONE: FROM HOT TO COLD WAR

At the end of the year. Young's carefully cultivated sources among the
eastern European communist parties reported that the Kremlin was calling off
general re\'olutionary activity in Europe. This was particularly interesting',
Young recalled, 'as the Berlin blockade was still operating, the French and
Italian communists were at their most obstreperous and Molotov at his most
obstructive.' Young believed that if Stalin was 'ruthless' once he acted, he
'was always cautious before he moved'. Tito's determined reaction to the
Soviet attempts to undermine his position was seen as leaving 'the Russian
dictator uncertain as to his next steps in consolidating his Eastern and Central
European dependencies. The Western response to the Berlin blockade was
unexpected.' The Soviet response was to advise the Austrian Communist
Party, which Young had spent his time in Vienna trying to penetrate, 'that
revolution would have to be postponed, perhaps for decades, and that it
might even have to go underground'. Malcolm Mackintosh noted that 'no
plans for the conquest or subversion of any major Western country were put
in hand, notwithstanding the fact that in two of them, France and Italy, the
'^°
local communist parties were the largest single parties.
In a more confident frame of mind. Tedder looked forward to the collapse
of the Soviet regime 'in the next five years'. General agreement was given to
his idea of a 'small permanent team which will consider plans' and to bringing
in the Americans 'at as early a stage as possible'. At a meeting in December
1948, the head of the BBC European Services, General Ian Jacob, suggested
that the Foreign Office 'like the service Ministries should have a director of
plans'. In February 1949, Bevin approved the setting up of the Permanent
Under Secretary's Committee (PUSC), which would be responsible for long-
term planning. Working closely with the Russia Committee, the PUSC
included Foreign Office officials specifically responsible for security and intel-
ligence. It absorbed some of the important machinery of the Service Liaison
Department which had been headed by Victor Cavendish-Bentinck, then
Harold Caccia and, finally, William Hayter. It excluded chiefs of staff
representation as Bevin resisted a larger role for the military in Cold War
planning and the supervision of operations. He would not 'agree to an offen-
sive policy involving the encouragement of subversive movements', as such
activity 'would require the revival in peacetime of the PWE and SOE'. Bevin's
resistance did not last long, however, and was soon ground down.^^
The Foreign Office was influenced by Cecil King's dispatches from
Belgrade and, in February 1949, noted 'the emergence of Tito as an anti-Soviet
deviationistand opponent of the Soviet Union's hegemony over the Orbit'.
This development, the Northern Department concluded, 'may in the long
run, prove more important than the degree of consolidation so far achieved.
As long as he is successful in retaining control, Tito is a reminder to the
Soviet Government of the continuing dangers of defection within the camp
and a source of encouragement to anti-Soviet elements within the Eastern
 ROLL- BACK 85

European Yugoslavs still hoped for a reconcilation

countries.' In truth, the
with Stalin, and it was months after the split before they considered
developing any new doctrines. Indeed, Beatrice Heuser asserts that 'there
was no such thing as "Titoism" which, in reality, was an invention of the
'

western press. On this misperception, the British and Americans hoped to

use 'Titoism' as 'an erosive and disintegrating force within the Russian
sphere', and built around it a new aspect of their liberation policy, namely
that of 'encouraging' other communist governments to 'follow Tito'.^^
While resisting a full-scale covert response, in mid-February Bevin did
identify three immediate objectives: to save Greece; covert encouragement of
Tito's Yugoslavia; and thirdly, 'detaching Albania from the orbit'. Bevin now
accepted the policy that Fitzroy Maclean, a hawkish cold warrior who had
developed a close relationship with Tito at the end of the war, had been
pressuring the Cabinet to accept, namely 'keeping Tito afloat'. Once Bevin
received the authority of the Prime Minister, 'special machinery' was required
to implement the Albania operation. In early March, Air Chief Marshal Slessor
called for a counteroffensive by 'specially qualified staff who would make
use of 'all appropriate economic and political weapons'. At the same time
the new Foreign Office Permanent Under-Secretary, Sir William Strang,
submitted a proposal for 'a small secret committee' which would include
Gladwyn Jebb and the MoD's Maurice Dean. A permanent 'Cold War sub-
committee' of the Russia Committee was thus established which became
known as the 'Jebb Committee'.
MI6 now had the political backing to support eastern European resistance
movements through propaganda by infiltrating exiles who were
'but also
trained to organise insurrections' witharms and aid. Menzies told the JIC
that he intended to make good use of a captured wartime German report
compiled by a Russian PoW which provided 'suggestions for political warfare
against the Russians and containing plans and a map for military action in
support of this policy '.^^

The committee also had a domestic agenda. Kim Philby refers to the 'Jebb
Committee' as the 'Committee to Fight Against Communism'. According to
Philby, it had responsibility for planning psychological warfare operations
primarily against Soviet-backed peace fronts and conferences. These included
MI6's London station working against delegations to Britain from socialist
countries and their representatives residing here, the recruitment of British
merchant seamen, and the use of the British press and media, which was the
responsibility of a special department known as BIN/KOORD. Some of
the 'dirty tricks' were farcical, with MIS agents disrupting conferences by
'impregnating lavatory paper with an itching substance at halls hired by
communist organisations'. Years later, a former junior MI6
and Guar-officer
dian journalist, Mark Arnold-Forster, told Labour minister Tony Benn that
while MI6 'take no interest in domestic polities', there had been one occasion
86 PAPvT ONE: FROM HOT TO COLD WAR

w hen there was to have been a peace conference which was

in Sheffield,
reall)' just a Clem Attlee ordered
cover for support for the North Koreans, and
it to be stopped'. On that occasion, MI6 arranged 'to bug every single tele-

phone within half-a-mile of the conference centre and had set up recording
devices'. Arnold-Forster added, smiling: 'Wasn't Clem Attlee a marvellous
Prime Minister?'^'^

During July the Russia Committee agreed that the objective should be 'to
weaken the hold of Moscow over the countries which it at present dominates;
to resist, and if possible to curtail, the influence of Communism with its

proclaimed hostility to Western ideals and interests'. It was to be undertaken

by 'propaganda, inducements and covert activities as may be appropriate'.
Yugoslavia was to be used as a propaganda wedge that would emphasise
the treatment the country had received at the hands of Moscow. A PUSC
paper circulated to ministers on 'British Policy Towards Soviet Communism'
cautioned that 'actions involving a serious risk of war or likely to encourage
fatal resistance should be avoided'. The first step would be to establish 'a

modus operandi with Yugoslavia to detach Albania from the Soviet orbit, and
to encourage the emergence of "national deviationism" in other countries'.
During 1949, MI 6 kept a watch for any threat to Tito's position in the form
of a Stalinist coup or invasion. The JIC reports were particularly alarmist,
expressing fears that the Russians might resort to arms. After pressure was
applied with the offer of economic assistance for curtailing arms supplies to
the Greeks, Tito gave a private undertaking to Fitzroy Maclean that 'no
other help would be given to the rebels'. By the summer, intelligence reports
showed that Tito was keeping his word. Twelve months later telephone taps
from Austria indicated that Tito's chances of survival had improved with the
lessening of a Soviet military threat. There was, however, a fear that Tito
might be the target of a Soviet assassination squad and, according to senior
Yugoslav figures, MI6 provided intelligence to Tito on such attempts.^'
In their studies of 'Anti-Stalinist Communism', Foreign Office officials
were forced during 1949-50 to admit that the Yugoslav expulsion from the
Cominform may have delayed the development of more independent tenden-
cies in western communism. They acknowledged that they had overestimated
'the drive for independence of the communist regimes themselves' and that,
far from supporting the break, the Italian and French communist parties had

come out against the Yugoslavs. Despite these reservations, the roll-back
policy took hold.^^
The Foreign Office, Richard Aldrich suggests, was 'hesitant and uncom-
fortable when presented with the option of covert activities', though there
was 'an initial desire to stay in step with the United States'. Indeed, there
was reluctance toexpand the programme, but it is untrue to say that Britain
'cannot be said to have a particularly activist tradition when compared with
parallel intelligence communities in the United States, France or the Soviet
 ROLL-BACK 87

Union'. A French Intelligence study concluded that Bevin had a 'nonchalant

attitude' towards SO with the embarrassing consequence that he 'found it

necessary to lie to the House of Commons while covering up for SIS oper-

ations he had not even been consulted about'.

The majority of the special operations of the late forties and early fifties were
initiated by the British and then taken over by the Americans. It was primarily
lack of money which accounted for the smaller scale of involvement, and the
requirement that MI6 never took credit for successes. Though the KGB, which
was essentially a defensive organisation, is assumed to have had a long
activist tradition, in fact there is little evidence that, except for a number of
assassinations and kidnappings directed against British and American SO
assets in Germany and Austria, it engaged in any SO activity in western
Europe. Certainly, there was nothing to compare with MI6's record, which
included stay-behind nets in most European countries, the sending of agents
and weapons, even if only on a limited scale, into the Soviet satellites, and
the direct attempt to overthrow the communist regime in Albania. Even so,
within the Foreign Office enthusiasm for SO continued to waver, and after
1949 was short-lived. It was the military which supported an aggressive
policy. When MI6 was finally given the green light for SO in support of
'liberation' strategies against the Soviet bloc, it found 'its in-house capabilities
inadequate and so was forced hastily to reassemble old SOE sections'.
In one sense, however, it is clear that the initiative had already been lost.

George Young's sources in the communist parties alleged that Stalin was
now turning to the Far East. In Europe, according to Hugh Seton-Watson,
the communists had been unable to achieve stage one of the takeover by way
army and bureaucracy' of France and Italy. Stalin
of the 'infiltration of police,
realised that 'war is not a good risk for the Soviet Union until she has won
control of Germany', but he recognised that prospects were much more
favourable in Asia, where 'state machines are fragile and economic misery
is growing'. Indeed, Young's sources told him that 'Moscow's consolatory

guidance to the inner councils of European communist parties, who had

obediently put the brake on direct revolutionary action, had been that hand
in hand with the Chinese, the USSR would spearhead a Communist drive
round South-East Asia'. This change in communist tactics was 'reflected in
directives to the Asian Communist parties in 1948, probably transmitted
during the Conference of "Progressive Youth of Asia" and the Congress of
the Indian Communist Party, both of which were held in Calcutta early in
1948'. According to Young, after these meetings 'the tactics of the Communists
in all Asian countries changed from co-operation with the non-communist
nationalists to extreme and often violent opposition, sometimes culminating
in armed uprisings'. The global concept was for 'an extension of Soviet power
under the pretext of attacking "colonalism" in its various forms'.^^
Behind this assessment lay an intelligence conspiracy theory of truly global
88 PART ONE: FROM HOT TO COLD WAR

proportions. Young believed that the 'Bandung Conference and Nehru's

sympathetic compliance with Soviet policies indicated some progress along'
what he termed 'the curve of the global outflanking movement'. By which
he meant that Stalin's move to the Far East was the prelude to subversion
in the Middle East and Mediterranean, which would then seep back into

Europe, 'thus fulfilling one of Lenin's obiter dicta that World revolution would
be won on the banks of the Ganges'. Even the liberal Seton-Watson was to
write that 'the struggle between the West and the Soviet Union for the support
of Asia and Africa will decide the future of the world'.
During 1948, there did indeed occur revolutionary upheavals in Malaya,
Burma and Indonesia, whose Communist Party representatives had attended
the Youth Congress. This, however, only reflected the fact that explosive
nationalist situations already existed in these countries. The irony - given
the West's enthusiastic support of Tito against Stalin - was that the only
European communist delegates to attend these conferences were members
of the Yugoslav Communist Party. Under the influence of the soon to be
disgraced Zhadanov, the Yugoslavs advocated to their hosts 'insurrection as
opposed to compromise'. Mistakenly, the British blamed the outbreak of
violence on Stalin and proceeded to pursue a policy of 'containment' in
South-East Asia.^^
Major resources were redirected by MI6 towards the region, but the first
test was not encouraging. Western intelligence failed to predict the attack by
the North on South Korea middle of the night of 25 June 1950. Despite
in the
evidence of major military assistance which has recently come to light, Korea
- which was of no strategic value to Britain - was not part of a master plan
nor symptomatic of a general aggressive shift by Moscow, but 'a piece of

Stalinist opportunism that went badly wrong'. Looking back. Lord Franks,
who was ambassador in Washington during this period, admitted that 'we
got it wrong in the sense that it wasn't part of a concerted stepping-up of a
Russian threat. I don't think this was there.' That, however, was not how it

looked to Whitehall. Junior minister Kenneth Younger wrote in his diary that
'a North Korean army invaded South Korea, and set in motion a whole train
of action of which the consequences are still largely guesswork'.
The outbreak of the Korean War was followed by an update by the Joint
Planning Staff on 'the spread of Communism' for the chiefs of staff's commit-
tee. The 11 July 1950 report estimated that 'war is not inevitable but that the

circumstances in which war is most likely to occur will be when Soviet leaders
may consider themselves strong enough to risk a major war of indefinite
duration regardless of Western reactions; this may be for 1955 onwards but
the estimate is based on very slender evidence'. The planners warned the
chiefs, however, that 'the possibility that war may break out at any time
before or after 1955 cannot be disregarded'. They outlined the four Cold War
methods of extending 'Russian Communist control' used in the years since
 ROLL-BACK 89

1945 which would be deployed by Stalin: a) by supporting a coup d'etat by

pseudo-constitutional means as in Czechoslovakia; b) by political pressure
as in Poland; c) by the support, either directly or indirectly, through satellites,
of communist rebellion as in China; d) by Russian-inspired military aggres-
sion by a satellite as in Korea.
The chiefs, the Foreign Office and MI 6 now all believed that the time had
come for a counter-offensive as 'the present extension of Soviet control and
domination has now begun to impinge directly on the Commonwealth's
ability to defend its vital interests and to meet its commitments to its allies.
Further expansion must be resisted.' The planners presented a checklist of
important Cold War areas 'whose loss in peace would jeopardise our . . .

basic strategic requirements and prejudice the ability of the allies to fight a
major war'. Europe remained at the top but Korea was now put second
because of its potential knock-on effect. 'If the forces of the United Nations
were to fail to stem the drive of militant Communism
in Korea it would be
a major defeat for the Western Powers, and would shatter the faith of the
free countries of the Far East and South East Asia in the ability of the Western
powers and the United Nations to defend them from Russian domination.
Repercussions would, in fact, be felt in other parts of the world, notably
'^^
Western Germany.
The main effect of the Korean War upon Britain was that it shifted the
views of the American administration. In Washington, Franks reported that
Britain was now regarded as 'a dependable ally'. MI6 was happy to see the
promotion within the recently created Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) of
covert-action-oriented operatives and the appointment, in October 1950, of a
new Director, General Walter Bedell Smith, Eisenhower's wartime chief of
staff. Bedell Smith had even considered appointing as deputy a Britisher,

Major-General Kenneth Strong, Eisenhower's former head of the intelligence

staff. MI6 was, however, happy with an avowed anglophile, William H.

Jackson, in his place. The new Director was praised by George Young because
he 'put the house in order, and gave the CIA a set of firm goals, so that
when Allen Dulles [Deputy Director of Plans responsible for covert action]
took over [in 1953] he could indulge in his passion for sudden operational
sallies without worrying about the base'.^^

Relations between MI6 and the CIA subsequently became particularly

close, with joint planning on a number of special operations. Nevertheless,
this was to be short-lived.
PART TWO

THE FRONT LINE

In the months leading up to the end of the Second World War, MI6 was
already thinking in terms of the next conflict - its officers now had to mop
up and neutralise those potential Nazi stay-
the remnants of the Third Reich
behind units determined to bitter end. In the immediate
hold out to the
aftermath, intelligence nets had to be dealt with for any signs of a Nazi
revival in an effort to stamp out any such awakening in its infancy. MI6's
extensive files on the Nazi Party, intelligence and SS officers were to be put
to good use in dealing with the thorny problem of rooting out war criminals.
At the same time, MI6, Special Operations Executive and intelligence
officers belonging to various obscure units flooded into Germany determined
to retrieve the secrets of the Nazis' intelligence agencies. They also aimed to
plunder the latest technological advances and seize information on nuclear,
missile and biological and chemical warfare developments. Although the
British were extremely well prepared and successful in gathering intelligence,
it soon became apparent that they had failed to gain their share of the techno-

logical prize, being outclassed by the Americans with their almost unlimited
resources. It was a pattern repeated throughout the emerging Cold War.
Once established in Germany and Austria, MI6 soon turned its intelli-
gence-gathering efforts towards the East and, initially, was extremely success-
ful, on the Soviet Union found in Nazi intelligence
exploiting the intelligence
agency The Service was able to make good use of low-level defectors
files.

among the numerous Soviet displaced persons who found themselves

94 PART TWO: THE FRONT LINE

trapped in Germany. This source of intelligence on the Soviet Union soon

began to dry up, however, and major Soviet security operations during 1946
led to the arrest of entire chains of agents and the break-up of intelligence
networks. Double-agent operations also collapsed and became totally unpro-
ductive.
Germany and Austria now emerged as the front line of the new intelli-

gence Cold War. In order to fill the gap on Soviet military plans, MI6 increas-
ingly turned to using Nazi intelligence officers with experience of the eastern
front.Many, it turned out, were wanted war criminals with unsavoury
records.They had, however, run agents in the East and, in desperation, MI6
used them to revive anti-communist networks in eastern Europe and the
Soviet Union.
CHAPTER EIGHT

GERMANY AND
THE '3 X 5s'

On the back of the major news stories splashed across the world's headlines
during the period 1996-7, centring on the deposit of vast sums of 'Nazi Gold'
in Swiss banks at the end of the Second World War, there appeared other
interlinked allegations including the claim that the gold stolen from Jewish
victims of the Holocaust had been used to plan and underwrite a postwar
Nazi revival. Despite the orchestrated releaseand publicising of official docu-
ments, few, if any, of the allegations were new
or even true.
Indeed, well into the postwar period, journalists had propagated the myth
of the 'Fourth Reich'. The Sunday newspapers paid a great deal of money
for tales of former Nazi leaders who had laundered huge quantities of Reich
gold abroad in preparation for the Nazi rebirth. Writers popularised the
myth of a brotherhood of former SS officers which had organised secret
underground networks such as Die Spinne (Spider) and ODESSA (Organisa-
tion der ehemaligen SS-Angehoriger). These were said to have organised the

landing of top Nazis by submarine off the coast of South America where
they were destined to revive the old order. The truth was somewhat different,
certainly less glamorous and a great deal more shabby.^
Investigating 'The Nazi Menace in Argentina', author Ronald Newton
found that the historic record had been left 'booby-trapped with an extraordi-
nary number of hoaxes, forgeries, unanswered propaganda ploys, and
assorted dirty tricks'. The most successful disinformer or dupe was the Ameri-
can Ladislas Farago, 'a somewhat Hemingway-esque figure with a strong
% PART TWO: THE FRONT LINE

Hungarian accent and a confidential manner', whose 'good connections with

the CIA and secret services of several European countries enabled him to
investigate and publish on a non-attributable basis' a series of half-correct
tales. He spent the war years in Naval Intelligence and during the fifties

worked for Radio Free Europe, exhorting eastern Europeans to revolt. Farago
alleged that there had been 'a vast enterprise' involving the transfer of Nazi
funds to South America in an operation code-named Land of Fire (a reference
to the archipelago Tierra del Fuego). According to Farago, as late as June
1944 heavily guarded armoured trucks carried the consignments across
Germany and France to ports in southern Spain where U-boats took aboard
Martin Bormann's precious cargo and then sailed to Argentina. 'The
submarines arrived at intervals of six to eight weeks throughout 1943 and
1944, keeping up the flow of the "treasure".' Two were supposed to have
'arrived on July 23 and 29 1945, weeks after V-E Day', with the cargoes
unloaded by sailors stranded in Argentina from the scuttled pocket battleship
Graf Spee. This 'myth', which was revived during 1997 by a local newspaper
in Patagonia, appears to have surfaced first in September 1962 in a German
newspaper, Kdlnische Rundschau. An anonymous reporter detailed the transfer
from Germany during 1944 or early 1945 of several hundred million pounds'
worth of gold by way of Spain to Argentina, where it was used to make
possible the escape of two thousand high-ranking Nazis. There is a suspicion
that this story may have originated with Express journalist Sefton Delmer.^
There is a great deal of intelligence speculation but little in the way of
hard and in the 'conspiracy theory' presented to the
fact in Farago's writings

press during 1996-7 by the World Jewish Congress. As Newton discovered,

much of the 'Fourth Reich' myth had originally been perpetrated by British
Intelligence, which fanned United States fears that the Nazi hierarchy would
find sanctuary in Argentina, Britain's traditional 'golden market' in South
America. The Foreign Office recognised that German families and companies
were a 'valued if not indispensable element' which, if removed, would allow
the United States to assume economic supremacy in the region. In order to
influence opinion in Washington, MI6's station, the British Security Co-ordin-
ation (BSC), resorted to an extraordinary range of propaganda using the
advertising agency J. Walter Thompson as consultants, and a BSC subsidiary,
LatAmer Ltd, to run operations. By February 1943, based on Government
Code and Cipher School (GC&CS)-deciphered German radio traffic, the BSC
possessed 'almost complete information about the more important parts of
the German intelligence set-up' in Argentina. This revealed that there was
no Column' and that Nazi infiltration was virtually non-existent.
'Fifth Even
so, by mid-1944 British propaganda efforts had convinced the United States
that Argentina would become the centre of a Fourth Reich.^
The 'hoax' had, in fact, been born in September 1943, when the British let
it be known that they had learned from 'most secret and certain sources'
-
 GERMANY AND THE 3 X 5s' 97

a double agent run by a Colonel Russell, though more likely through Ultra
- that an Abwehr agent, Ernst Hoppe, was travelling to Argentina. Hoppe
was meet a U-boat off the coast of Argentina, carrying a
said to be planning to
large amount of money belonging to Nazi officials to be invested in Argentine
property. Other 'secret reports confirmed' the story, though none stood up
to the simplest scrutiny; knowledgeable Foreign Office officials had their
own suspicions. In January 1944, Evelyn Shuckburgh reported: 'That a lot of
Germans are already here with a lot of their money is a constantly repeated
assertion which we have been unable to confirm. The story is always being
renewed by communist or refugee newspapers in Montevideo, picked up by
the Moscow press, and returned here with circumstantial details attached.'
At the end of 1996 the World Jewish Congress released a previously secret
letter written in February 1945 by the US Treasury Secretary in which Henry

Morgenthau stated that 'Argentina is not only a likely refuge for Nazi criminals
but also has been and still is the focal point of Nazi financial and economic
activity in this hemisphere'. He added that the Nazis had been estimated to
have invested over one billion dollars in Argentine businesses, ranches, banks
and insurance companies. These estimates were, the report admitted, based on
'conjecture'. Shuckburgh had reported that 'Our Friends' (i.e. MI6) could find
'no evidence' to back up these types of claims. While on temporary secondment
in early 1945 in London from the Buenos Aires embassy's intelligence unit,
Gerald Warner reported that American officials had been trying for months to
run down these stories and rumours. They had, however, apparently
discovered the true source and had found the rumours to be baseless.^
The US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) had investigated infor-
mation alleging that 'various top ranking Nazis were escaping to Argentina
or had invested money. Investigation to date has failed to disclose that the
Germans have attempted to transfer their funds to Latin America for the
purpose of seeking a safe haven, nor has any information been developed
that Nazi officials have escaped to Latin America.' The source of the allega-
tions, which formed the basis of numerous newspaper articles, turned out to

be the reports of the 'fire-breathing' Colonel Spraggett on Radio Atlantic, a

short-wave station that broadcast seemingly authentic messages from
Germany to Argentina. In fact, the station was located near London and was
part of Sefton Delmer's black propaganda operation to persuade ordinary
German soldiers that their leaders were deserting them for South America.
Apparently, the purpose had been explained to the Office of Strategic Services
(OSS), but its London station chief, William Casey, had not informed his
rivals in the FBI, which had jurisdiction in the region. For political reasons,
the gaffe was never made public by the Americans, primarily because the
idea of a Fourth Reich was useful to the US State Department, which was
orchestrating the 'Safe haven' investigations that were designed to eradicate
postwar German economic influence in South America.^
^8 PART TWO: Tl 1 F FllONT 1,1 N

Elements of the hoax had been believed within sections of the British
intelligence community had been used to justify prolonging the
or, at least,

existence of a 'Special Operations' capability. Lord Selbourne, the minister

responsible for the Special Operations Executive (SOE), had in his final
submission in May 1945 referred to the revival of Nazism as a reason for
continuing SOE's remit in Germany and Austria which, he recognised, would
constitute the front line of the Cold War.
A mysterious SOE unit, known as ME 42, was attached to the military
intelligence component of Field Marshal Montgomery's 21 Army Group, in
Germany, after Executive Director Colin Gubbins had made representations
to the chiefs of staff and 'much pressure' had been applied by Harry Sporborg
on the commander-in-chief of the British Army of the Rhine (BOAR), General
McGreery. The chiefs of staff would give the Foreign Office no details of
what they called ME 42's 'extremely useful work', though Gubbins had made
it known that he wanted it to be involved in 'unattributable propaganda,

clandestine counter-intelligence activities, the pursuit of enemy assets and

looted property, and the building up of a long-term SOE organisation'. A
number of '12 Force' personnel who had served the German and Austrian
sections of SOE joined with SAS members in forming a War Crimes Investi-
gation Unit in Germany to track down SS men involved in mass killings.
While this found favour with the Foreign Office, there was concern that some
of the ME 42 operations were directed against the Soviets. Robin Hankey
subsequently voiced his conviction that they were of a 'dangerous political
character' and resolved to restrain such activities, but he was not entirely
successful.''

It helped that Major-General (later Field Marshal) Sir Gerald Tempter,

who had headed SOE's unsuccessful German X Section, was put
for a time
in charge of all intelligence matters in the British Zone of Occupation in
Germany. Facing the Russian Zone and the divided city of Berlin, the British
Zone ran from Kiel in the north to Bonn in the south, where it met the French
and American zones. Tempter's military intelligence staff occupied an elegant
casino at Bad Oeyenhausen, a small spa town a few miles north-west of
Herford in Rhine- Westphalia. From there, and at another centre at Munster,
General Bill Williams, Montgomery's former principal intelligence adviser,
'began to construct an impressive empire, which extended via the regional
British Control Commission (BCC) offices throughout the British Zone'. The
Intelligence Division had about four thousand personnel with regional offices
in each 'Land' and an advance headquarters in Berlin. As with the German
section of the Foreign Office, the various branches of Military Intelligence
employed former German intelligence officers for several years.^
MI6 operated their own large
stations under cover of the Political Division
of the Control Commission, the Civil Affairs administration and intelligence
sections of 21 Army group. Within the British Zone, MI6's main centre of
 GERMANY AND THE '3 X 5s' 99

Operations was established at Bad headed by Harold Shergold, a

Salzuflen,
former master at Cheltenham Grammar School and wartime military intelli-
gence officer in the Middle East and Italy. It also had an outstation within
the British consulate at Diisseldorf. In the 'spy swamp' city of Berlin, MI6
had its main Olympic building with
station in offices adjoining the former
additional offices in the BCC building at Lancaster House, where officers
under 'light cover' were attached to the BCC's Intelligence Division, run by
the former chief of staff of the 14th Army, Brigadier J. S. 'Tubby' Lethbridge.
The Intelligence Division's main task was liaison with the numerous British
intelligence and security units that operated in Germany and supplying the
various denazification tribunals with relevant intelligence. Counter-espionage
was run by Brigadier Dick White, who was transferred from MIS to Supreme
Headquarters Allied Europe Forces (SHAEF) after several notable catches.
White discovered to his dismay, however, that there was little in the way of
a co-ordinated security and intelligence plan for postwar Germany.^
In February 1945, as Allied armies entered Germany, a joint MI6, MIS
and OSS Counter-intelligence (CI) G-2 War Room had been created to deal
with enemy secret intelligence and subversive functions; this, however,
excluded locally inspired subversive or resistance groups. It was jointly
chaired by MIS's T. A. 'Tar' Robertson, fresh from his 'double-cross' successes,
and Robert Blum of the American X-2. Robertson informed the French that
itwas an Anglo-American body and that they could not be part of its directing
staff, though they were allowed arm's-length representation.

Conceived by its effective chief, Dick White, the London CI War Room
tightened communications between the analysts and the Field Security
sections, thus releasing the talents of the senior Special Counter-intelligence
(SCI) detachment in Germany. The SCI task was to interrogate and make use
of captured German Intelligence Service (GIS) agents, transmit intelligence
collected in the field from the GIS through secure channels
London, and
to
pass on from the CI London War Room special information about the GIS
which was not suitable for transmission through ordinary channels. In
addition, SCI officers were to penetrate the pro-Nazi resistance and stay-
behind networks that had begun to show up in the Intelligence Section, Oliver
Strachey (ISOS) material, and counter any subversive or terrorist actions.
German 'hit squads' had allegedly been issued with 'poisoned aspirin tablets,
chocolate bars and sugar' (later developed for use by Gladio agents). They
had also developed 'a cigarette lighter that could kill any smoker who used
it'.^

A special edition of Section V's German primer had also been prepared
for wider dissemination as a SHAEF
document entitled 'German Intelligence
Services'. The rust-red, six-inch-thick volume contained thousands of names
compiled from 3 x S-inch file cards by Robert Carew-Hunt, who prefaced it
with an apt quotation from Hamlet (Act IV, sc. V): 'When sorrows come, they
100 rAPvT TWO: THE FRONT LINE

come not as single spies, but in battalions'. By the time counter-intelligence

officersbegan work in Germany itself, the Central Personality Index (CPI)
had over one hundred thousand cards which consisted of counter-intelligence
suspects and Nazi or other German organisations that were otherwise not of
CI interest. The thirty sets of CPI were widely distributed for targeting
suspects for arrest by MIS through the Civil Security Liaison Officers, includ-
ing four to 21 Army Group. The CPI information was augmented by interro-
gation reports from Camp 030 which dealt with agents and suspect agents
of the Abwehr, the Gestapo and the SD, who had been investigated and
interrogated by the Field Security sections. In addition, a Commission for
Criminal Organisations, headed by Colonel Airey Neave, formerly in charge
of 'Room 900' of the MI6 offshoot MI9, was created to interrogate Nazi
prisoners suspected of war crimes.
According to research by John Loftus,
the British gave the Americans their
card on the Nazi officials, so that there would be a joint Allied effort
files

to arrest suspected war criminals after the war. In return for this valuable
intelligence coup (which was to be the foundation of the OSS and Counter-
intelligence Corps (CIC)'s anti-Nazi database), 'the British demanded an
unusual system for post-war interrogation of Nazis'. There were three tiers:
'low-ranking Nazis could be interrogated unilaterally by the Americans,
provided that summaries were sent to the British; some Nazis would be
questioned only at special centers in Germany such as Camp King, where
British interrogators would be able to interview them as needed'. Camp King,
near Oberusal, was formerly the Luftwaffe's primary interrogation centre for
captured British and American fliers during the war. In mid-1945, it was
seized by the Americans and transformed into a holding centre for the high-
est-ranking Nazis and intelligence personnel in captivity. About two hundred
SS, SD and Abwehr men were placed on British payrolls and assigned to
write 'histories' of their wartime experiences with particular emphasis placed
on material about the USSR and eastern Europe. Leading Nazis in the final
category were to be flown to London for debriefing. According to Loftus,
'the Americans faithfully complied', but when the British recommended that
the War Room become the basis of a combined Anglo-American anti-Soviet
intelligence centre, they were reluctant to co-operate.
Dick White discovered that 21 Army Group 'boasted a motley collection of
officers', whom he blamed for 'shallow thinking', and no counter-intelligence

organisation of any note. Many of the best officers had been demobbed and
the Control Commission officers often lacked experience or were of low
calibre. The small staff was soon overwhelmed by the avalanche of intelli-
gence and interrogation reports of Nazi suspects. In consequence, with staff
largely ignorant of what was really going on, the British Zone became a safe
haven for wanted Nazis, a fact that was soon reported in American news-
papers. Even before hostilities had ceased, a number of senior Nazis had
 GERMANY AND THE '3 X 5s' 101

made approaches own necks and

to British Intelligence, seeking 'to save their
perhaps win a some comfort by selling the only commodity they had
life of
to bargain with: information'. They were initially rebuff ed.^^
In November 1944, Karl Marcus (alias Carlsen) had arrived in France
disguised as a deserter but, in reality, on a mission for Walter Schellenberg
for whom he acted as political adviser. Marcus had been sent 'to get in touch
with the Lord Vansittart', former Permanent Under-
British, particularly

Secretary of the Foreign Office, with proposals for peace negotiations. He

was brought to London for interrogation whereupon he disclosed 'valuable
military and counter-espionage information regarding Sicherheitsdienst plans
and intentions,German participation in [communist] activities in Greece, a
new secret German weapon, the training of Polish partisans [for service
against the Russians], and purported German military intentions in the West'.
Despite this information, Marcus does not appear, initially at least, to have
been taken very seriously.
Nor, while the war was in progress, was the head of the Fremde Heere
Ost (FHO), General Reinhard Gehlen, who had begun plotting his future in
October 1944. He 'had no illusions about the course of the war' and 'had
known for months that the game was up'. His only concern was 'what could
be salvaged from the inevitable wreckage of unconditional surrender, and
how it could keep him afloat as Germany and its leaders went under'. Gehlen
was convinced would not be long before the Western powers recog-
that it

enemy was their present ally, the Soviet Union. They

nised that their ultimate
would then require his services and those of his co-conspirators in the FHO
who could provide them with 'expert knowledge of the extent and real nature
Gehlen believed that the FHO files contained
of the Soviet threat to the West'.
'the fullest,most up-to-date information in existence on the Soviet Union's
military capability, resources, performance and leadership'. Determined to
exploit this valuable asset, towards the end of the war Gehlen organised a
secret approach to the British through Hermann Baun, who was in charge
of agents of the Frontline Reconnaissance Detachments or Walli units, who
operated behind Soviet lines. In return for asylum, Gehlen offered his organis-
ation and 'priceless files on the Soviets'. To his surprise, the British turned
down the offer but did move to exploit the capture of Gehlen's officers at
Flensburg.^^
MI6 had committed some of its best officers to Germany, and those experi-
enced counter-espionage officers in place were regarded as being particularly
adept at squeezing information from interrogated Nazis. Faced with the task
of recruiting informants to infiltrate the numerous self-help organisations for
escaping war criminals and the neo-Nazi groups which were being revived,
there was an
increasing readiness to exploit the skills and knowledge of ex-SS
officersand overlook what crimes they might have committed. It was a
messy business in which investigators frequently cut deals - sometimes with
102 PART TWO: THE FRONT LINE

financial incentives that could be used to advantage on the black market -

in order to land more important fugitives or coerce them into betraying
former colleagues who could also be recruited as informants.
The investigators' task was made easier by access to the co-ordinating
CPI unit which had been established at BOAR and its store of card files on
war crime suspects. Building on the CPI cards system was the Central Regis-
try of War Crimes and Security Suspects (CROWCASS), which was estab-
lished in Paris in May 1945, following a call by the Supreme Commander in
Europe, General Dwight Eisenhower, for international co-operation in hunt-
ing and prosecuting war criminals - an inter-service, inter- Allied card data
file used for intelligence purposes in postwar Europe. The extensive political-

biographical information on mostly German nationals on the thirty-six thou-

sand cards was compiled from British and American agents in eastern Europe,
along with captured Nazi records and informant debriefings. Set up by a
British officer, the CROWCASS lists cross-referenced the names of fugitive
war crime suspects with the rosters of more than eight million people being
held in the six hundred or more Prisoner of War (PoW) and Displaced Persons
(DP) camps in Germany, Italy and Austria. An enlargement of the list was
compiled by the United Nations War Crimes Commission (UNWCC), which
was charged with collating evidence on war crimes. Individuals were
screened by Field Security and other intelligence officers to see whether they
were on the CROWCASS list or not: if so listed they were to be arrested.^^

The majority of the postwar, pro-Nazi self-help groups existed in name only,
while 'others were groups of wayward adventurers who operated briefly and
spasmodically during the chaotic post-war months, then faded into oblivion,
accomplishing The most famous group, ODESSA, later promoted by
little'.

it was not 'a world-wide

the thriller fiction of Frederick Forsyth, did exist, but
underground league of old Nazis financed from South America with Nazi
gold, which arranged the escape of the Third Reich villains from Martin
Bormann downwards and, with the secret assistance of the Vatican, smuggled
them out of Europe'. In reality, as Ladislas Farago with his early privileged
access to American CIC and OSS secret files acknowledged, ODESSA was
'actually little more than a shadowy consortium of a handful of freelancers
and never amounted to much in the Nazi underground'. There never was a
single coherent unified structure; the archives instead suggest that 'numerous
little groups of old SS comrades which sprang up often used the term, with

its hint of remoteness and mystery, to lend themselves more importance than

they possessed'.
The real purpose of these scattered groups was not to found a 'neo-Nazi
international' but to serve as self-help societies, supplying forged papers to
help their members stay alive and evade arrest. It would be wrong, however,
to suggest that there was no hint of 'conspiracy' in the setting up of and use
 GERMANY AND THE '3 X 5s' 103

of escape routes. The first Nazi underground 'ratline' was founded by former
Hitler Youth leaders in the winter of 1945-6 and involved German trucking
companies transporting wanted fugitives to remote hideaways. The most
active group was the Brunderschaft (Brotherhood), which had its beginnings
in a British PoW camp at Neueundorf in 1945-6. It was started by a former
staff officer. Major Helmut Beck-Broichsitter, and a former SS lieutenant-

colonel, Alfred Franke-Gricksch, who began working for MI 6 from 1945 and
was allowed to bypass the denazification procedures. was closely associated
It

with the flying ace and hardline Nazi Colonel Rudel, whose own Kamerad-
enwerk was well funded by his many friends among German financiers. The
reality was that all these groups were under close surveillance and thoroughly
infiltrated by British security and intelligence agencies which 'from time to
time used nationalist groups for their own purposes, but in any case at all
times securely controlled them'. In truth, they were unable to operate without
British Intelligence turning a blind eye to their operations.
Investigation of the neo-Nazi self-help organisations overlapped with, and
was quickly supplanted by, the intelligence requirement for information on
Soviet activities in Germany and eastern Europe. Many leading British mili-
tary and intelligence authorities believed that the West lacked adequate
organisation to take effective counter-intelligence measures against the
communist threat. In Germany, there was a great deal of espionage activity
by the Soviets, who set up a number of spy rings and attached so-called
'experts' to the numerous 'technical reparations commissions' which travelled
throughout the Allied zones as intelligence-gathering fronts. To counter the
threat, British intelligence agencies began to recruit ex-Nazis to infiltrate
these organisations, other front groups and the German Communist Party.
In February 1946, British intelligence officers requested authority from the
Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) 'to release at their discretion, certain cate-
gories of interned individuals connected with the German Intelligence
Service'.
It soon became clear, as Christopher Simpson has noted, that the 'same
cross-checking capabilities that permitted the location of thousands of fugitive
Nazis also created a pool from which the names of thousands of "suspects"
who might be useful for intelligence work could be drawn'. It has been
alleged that, in particular, CROWCASS was manipulated by
the American
officer in charge of its lists, Leon G. Turrou, European emigre and
a central
zealous anti-Bolshevik. In order to ease their recruitment, war criminals were
not prosecuted and requests for information on Nazi suspects were mislead-
ingly returned, marked 'no information'.
Under the cover of Neave's war crimes unit at Flensburg, officers from
MI9 and the War Office's MI 14 interrogated a handful of officers who had
been members of General Gehlen's FHO unit and were willing to trade
information for their release. On this occasion their offers were nol turned
104 PART TWO: THE FRONT LINE

down and MI6 moved to exploit their capture. During the autumn of 1945,
MI9 and MI 14 officers assembled around fifty former Abwehr, OKW (Ober-
kommando der Wehrmacht) and FHO officers at a 'hush-hush' camp at
Ostend, administered by 21 Army Group headquarters. British interrogators
began to look systematically for additional German intelligence officers who
had served on the Russian front or in the eastern sections of the GIS.^°
Gehlen's personal representative. Col. Scheibe, an 'arrogant Nazi' who
had been in charge of the FHO's daily situation reports and was responsible
for preserving the Gehlen papers, was the first to be interrogated. He revealed
a good deal of information about Gehlen to the British, who arranged through
the Americans for his name to be removed from the list of prisoners held in
US custody. In the same month, the British dug up in the Flensburg area a
set of the documents that Gehlen had microfilmed. These were sent to the

Joint Documents Center at Hochst. Soon after, a small reconstituted FHO

group was ensconced at Camp King, producing reports on the strength of
the Soviet Army based on their files from which MI6 extracted the maximum
intelligence. At the same time, the US Army picked up a unit of the Wehr-
macht wireless interception regiment attached to the FHO which had surren-
dered intact, around which the nucleus of a German external intelligence
service would be built up.^^
Early in 1947, the British moved another of Gehlen's former assistants,
Lt-Col. Adolf Wicht, with a few other Abwehr and FHO officers, to the

British intelligence headquarters at Munster. Wicht, who from 1943 until the
end war had headed a FHO group that evaluated the interrogations
of the
of Soviet PoWs, had salvaged some of his personal files and was asked to
put together a series of reports on his experiences for use in the espionage
battle with the Soviets. Military Intelligence had the idea of developing Wicht
as an alternative to Gehlen. MI6 officers who read the reports were, however,
less impressed with the results. Philby had made his own study of Gehlen's
reports: 'I knew about the Gehlen unit from the summer
of 1943 onwards
... It seemed to be no better than the other sections of the Abwehr, which
means that it was very bad indeed. No exaggeration.' He revealed that MI6
wasted eighteen months on Gehlen before dropping him - 'not because they
were disillusioned in him, but because the contents of his office required
enormous funds'. MI6, which felt the money was beyond its means, 'made
a clever move' - they handed Gehlen over to the Americans as 'a friendly
gesture'. The Americans latched on to him. Wicht was squeezed dry and
then passed on to Gehlen, who recruited him with open arms to his 'Organ-
isation'.^^

MI6 and MIS maintained a close level of co-operation with their US

counterparts but 'this did not preclude them from competing with the Ameri-
cans for informants and spy networks and attempting to maintain their
perceived (if not actual) position at the top of the intelligence heap in the
 GERMANY AND THE '3 X 5s' 105

western zones of Germany'. The Americans, however, had more resources

and were able to pour in a large number of intelligence officers, who swarmed
across Germany looking and intelligence specialists. The British
for scientists
were often outgunned and outclassed by the Americans, who bought up or
simply pinched some of the best agents. But tight-laced British officers did
not rate the CIC. Antony Terry, a German-speaking British commando who
had been taken prisoner in the ill-fated St Nazaire raid, worked as an interro-
gator of high-ranking Nazis at the London Cage. He 'never felt happy' dealing
with the CIC Germany. 'They seemed very haphazard in their job
officers in
and they didn't keep their files very secure They were forever posturing,
. . .

glamourising themselves as spy-catchers, but in my estimation the American

OSS and British Intelligence were more professional.' Many undoubtedly
experienced officers left the CIC soon after the war and were replaced by
raw recruits who had little aptitude for the work. Even worse, the British
thought, was the French intelligence service, which was riddled with pro-
Soviet communists and considered a hostile organisation second only to the
USSR agencies.^^
In Washington, Military Intelligence had asked the newly created Central
Intelligence Group to take over the Gehlen Org. but it declined, while the
CIC remained distinctly unfriendly. It was not until July 1949 that responsibil-
ity for the four-thousand-strong Org. was formally assumed by the CIA's
Office of Special Operations, headed by Richard Helms. According to Allan
Dulles's biographer, the CIA
had neither time nor experience to build its own networks.
Instead the new agency had to make do with co-operative
ventures cobbled together in haste and trust: arrangements with
foreign intelligence services professing similar targets and inter-
ests, as Gehlen offered. Only gradually did the dangers in such

collaboration become evident: the contrasting agendas of the

two services, the ease with which the communist side could
penetrate and manipulate the German networks, for instance,
and the destructive effects of admitting former Nazis into the
American Cold War effort.^^

As Kim Philby had predicted, and despite the propaganda to the contrary,
the Gehlen Org. was to prove 'a constant irritant' to the American intelligence
community. Much of it was, however, of its own making. It is not often noted
but, during the war Gehlen had relied on wireless interception for much of
his intelligence and did so into the late forties. It was his American handlers
who persuaded Gehlen to run agent networks in eastern Europe. This proved
to be a major mistake. Many of the sensitive posts were given to the old-boy
Nazi network of East German refugees, who proved to be riddled with Soviet
agents. The Org.'s intelligence-gathering capabilities behind the Iron Curtain,
lOo PART TWO: THE FRONT LINE

lacking proper professionalism, were judged 'poor to dismal'. Worse, 'a

consummate political operator', Gehlen used the Org.'s Special Operations

Unit as a vehicle for developing contacts at all levels of the West German
government and state institutions. Even so, the American agencies treated
his reports with respect, with the result that Gehlen's slanted intelligence
was to have a distorting effect on the course of the Cold War.^^

For reasons that remain unclear, MI6 preferred to spend their limited
resources on Gehlen's great rival, the 'smooth and wily' Walter Schellenberg.
A 'university-educated intellectual gangster' and skilful political manipulator,
he was generally regarded as a 'sorry specimen of an intelligence officer'.

Schellenberg was interrogated and debriefed by British Intelligence officer

Stuart Hampshire, who was not too impressed by his wartime abilities: 'I

was by how naive his conception of how things worked in England

struck
and how Churchill might think or behave, how ill-instructed he was.' An
interrogator from the US Air Force, G. W. Harrison, wrote in his report that
'his demeanour has not produced any evidence of outstanding genius as

appears to have been attributed to him. On the contrary, his incoherency and
incapability of producing lucid verbal or written statements have rendered
him a much more difficult subject to interrogate than other subjects of inferior
education and humbler status.' A United States military court had tried and
convicted Schellenberg of helping to trap and exterminate Jews in France; he
was, however, quickly given clemency and, following British intervention,
was freed by the US High Commissioner for Germany, John McCloy. Schel-
lenberg subsequently became an adviser to MI 6 in London and was then
flown back to Germany to reconstitute an intelligence operation similar to
the Gehlen Org.''
MI 6 then began to seek out Schellenberg's former colleagues for the new
unit to be based on the SS Service, the Sicherheitsdienst. One of MI6's first
catcheswas Karl Marcus, already in British hands, whose services had been
previously discarded. Marcus had been the co-ordinator of agents in Byelo-
russia, known asV-men, who controlled the SS networks of White Russian
collaborators, and he knew the identities of SS agents throughout eastern
Europe. His role was to recruit former colleagues for Kim Philby's Section IX
and work in co-operation with Lord Vansittart, whose unofficial propaganda
activitieswere co-ordinated with the Service's anti-communist operations.
Those recruited included SS and SD officers with knowledge of Stefan Band-
era's Ukrainian nationalist resistance movement, OUN-B. They had retained
their contacts with Bandera's men, who were now scattered in DP camps
throughout Germany. In order to increase his effectiveness, Marcus was
appointed mayor of a small town in the British Zone of Germany, from where
word spread that MI6 was recruiting intelligence specialists. Marcus was
able to supply the all-important 'persil' certificates - i.e. whitewashed docu-
 GERMANY AND THE 3 X 5s' 107

ments such as faked identity cards - and assistance to his old friends, includ-
ing a Dr Emil Hoffman.^^
Hoffman belonged to the inner circle of a neo-Nazi underground umbrella
group, Deutsche Revolution, which had dreams of rebuilding National Social-
ism in Germany as part of a West European Union bulwark against the Soviet
Union. Other neo-Nazi groups in the British and American zones linked up
to Deutsche Revolution, including one led by a former Panzer Corps officer,
Ernst Janke, and Kurt Ellersiek's Organisation Suddeutschland. Some of their
members were planning for armed guerrilla 'Werewolf resistance detach-
ments against an anticipated Soviet attack, though a number were regarded
as agents provocateurs employed by British Field Security. From the beginning,
the northern part of the network had been penetrated by British Intelligence,
and Hoffman was widely assumed by his fellow-conspirators to be working
for the British, a fact from which he derived his importance within the
Deutsche Revolution. Hoffman reported to a British Intelligence officer, a
Major 'Kruk' (Crook), and fed him information about other SS fugitives, one
of whom was Klaus Barbie.^^
Barbie had been an early SD recruit, successfully specialising in tracking

British-backed agents parachuted into the Low Countries and France. Barbie
later became where news of his vicious activities
the Gestapo chief of Lyons,
in infiltrating and breaking resistance groups quickly filtered back to London.
Barbie was marked down for future interrogation about the betrayal of British
agents, while the French regarded him as a war criminal. He had featured
in the first UNWCC list published in December 1944, and appeared before
the war ended on a CPI card as 'a dangerous conspirator'. He also appeared
on the first edition of the CROWC ASS lists in July 1945 as wanted for murder
and subject to 'automatic arrest'. According to one of John Loftus's sources.
Barbie was 'first and foremost a British agent', and it was during his time in
their employment that the records of his atrocities and brutal war crimes
were sanitised. 'His status was mysteriously downgraded to security suspect',
which may explain why the British have consistently refused to declassify
its records on him. Tom Bower has noted that the British destroyed most of

their archives concerning the occupation of Germany, which, as he points

out, was a convenient means of concealing their 'own unsavoury dealings
with the Nazis'.^''

Barbie was on and survival was uppermost in his mind. Contrary

the run
to the image often presented. Barbie was no master spy. He had been 'reduced
to the existence of a petty criminal', stealing and making small deals on the
black market. On his travels around a ravaged Germany he peddled forged
papers, by which route he eventually came into contact with the clandestine
groups of SS men and Nazi officials found throughout the western occupation
zones. In particular, he made contact with a circle of old comrades who
ensured their safe asylum by selling their expertise to the Allied intelligence
108 PAPvT TWO: THE FRONT LINE

agencies. Through this circle Barbie came into contact with Hoffman and
MI6.
The code-named Barbie's group 'Red Lilac'. He was responsible
British
and identifying intelligence officers in hiding for Schellen-
tor talent-spotting
berg's new British-backed service. He became particularly adept at setting
up safe houses and courier systems for the growing roster of recruits for
M16's anti-communist research programmes based on leading strategists of
Alfred Rosenberg's Omi Institute, which had dealt with Nazi policies for the
eastern front.^°
In March 1946, a joint British /American long-range covert counter-
iiitelligence operation, NURSERY, penetrated a number of the National
groups and arrested over a thousand suspects, effectively
Socialist subversive
destroying the underground organisation. It was, however, soon replaced by
'a rather nebulous but evidently effective organisation, mostly of former

SS officers', which maintained an underground railroad for escaping Nazis.

During the autumn, things began to go seriously wrong for the network after
Marcus quarrelled with Hoffman, who quit in pique and 'promptly teamed
up with MI6's rivals in Military Intelligence'. In doing so, he helped expose
the Deutsche Revolution network.^^
Based on Hoffman's information on the Deutsche Revolution network.
Military Intelligence moved in on Barbie. In early November, he appeared
in Hamburg, where he was involved in organising a clandestine association
of former SS officers. There, he was arrested by Field Security officers who
had inserted into the group a penetration agent - a former Waffen-SS cadet
known as 'Mouse Acker'. He claimed that Barbie, who had access to an
arsenal of buried weapons, was planning a number of murders and was
intending to escape to Denmark. The arresting officer told Barbie: 'Well, my
dear friend, we are not Americans. You are not going to run away from us.'
Taken to a British safe house. Barbie spent two days in makeshift cells in a
requisitioned villa, with two other suspects. Although locked in separate
cells. Barbie and his two companions still, somehow, managed to escape.'^^

Tom Bower has speculated that 'Barbie was allowed to escape'. He had
been prematurely detained on information that proved to be unreliable, and
so once the action had been set in motion it was decided to allow him to
escape in order to continue surveillance of his organisation, thus hopefully
exposing more conspiring SS officers. Barbie never really forgave the British
for his arrest and their failure to protect him: 'I lost all interest in the British,

and all faith in their promises.' When, over Christmas 1946, Emil Hoffman
tried to persuade him to return to the British, Barbie refused, fearing re-arrest.
Given certain assurances, he was persuaded to meet Hoffman's controller.
Major Crook, at Bad Godesburg on the southern edge of the British Zone
but, still suspecting a trap, he failed to appear and, instead, headed for Munich
and the Americans. That, at least, is one version of the story. Another suggests
 GERMANY AND THE '3 X 5s' 109

had squeezed Barbie dry and, with his usefulness to

that British Intelligence
them over, simply passed him on or 'loaned' him to American agencies; first
to the highly secretive Department of Army Detachment (DAD) and then
the CIC.^^
On the night of 22/23 February 1947, dozens of British and American
security officers launched the highly successful Operation SELECTION
BOARD, which swooped on underground neo-Nazi political
the illegal
groups belonging to Deutsche Revolution. 'Bereft of its key personnel and
its financial support, what was left of the Nazi underground was judged to

be helpless and moribund.' There were over ninety arrests, which included
all but one of the movement's major figures. The exception was the head of

intelligence for the group - Barbie, who was responsible for the procurement
of false papers, printing equipment and the smuggling of refugees. Barbie
had been high on the arrest sheet but was protected as a valuable source and
was helped to make another escape.^"^
Not long after. Barbie was introduced Dr Emil Augsburg, a veteran of
to
the Amt VI (Department 6) of the SS RSHA, Nazi Germany's main security
headquarters. The SS's chief Soviet political expert during the war, Augsburg
had been one of the leaders of the Berlin-based Wannsee Institute, the special
research centre on the Soviet Union which had an extraordinarily rich collec-
tion of files on eastern Europe. Although born in Lodz and, according to
official Polish sources, of Jewish parentage, this did not affect Augsburg's
entry into the SS, where he was eventually attached to Adolf Eichmann's IV
B4 department handling the Jewish question, and then as head
'special tasks'
of a mobile killing squad on the eastern front, where he obtained 'extraordi-
nary results' in murdering Jews. He also served on Himmler's staff in
Gehlen's 'Polish Section', infiltrating agents into Poland. Despite his war
record in special tasks, with his wide knowledge of Slav languages and
eastern European politics, Augsburg was a natural target for Allied Intel-
ligence.^^
Augsburg fled to Italy at the end of the war, where he sought and found
assistancefrom circles close to the Vatican. After a year or two, he returned
to Germany under the alias 'Dr Althaus' and initially worked for the British,
though his first loyalty appears to have been to Gehlen. Augsburg acted as
a gate-keeper for the exchange of information among groups of informants
working and was an important
for different Allied intelligence services,
source of information for Barbie's network. According to the American GIG
officer Allan Ryan, it was understood that Augsburg was working for the
British during 1947.''

By March 1947 the US agency DAD had no further use for Barbie and
in April he was passed on to the GIG, despite the fact that he was on their
wanted list. The man who proposed him was an old wartime colleague, Kurt
Merk, who worked for both the British and Americans, though they later
110 TART TWO: THE FRONT LINE

dropped him when his claims of knowledge of a vast ex-Nazi intelligence

network failed to materialise. The CIC agent running Barbie thought that
the SD man could prove a valuable tool in the intelligence war against the
Soviets in Germany, specifically against Soviet-sponsored organisations and
intelligence operations in Germany, France and eastern Europe. There were,
however, two conditions on his employment, namely that he sever all connec-
tions with the neo-Nazi underground and that he reveal details of British
efforts to employ Selection Board personalities as intelligence sources. His
first task was to produce a report on the British recruitment of SS men -

'which unsurprisingly is no longer to be found in the CIC records'. Barbie's

controller, Erhard Debringhaus, has admitted that the Allies had hoped to
exploit the Deutsche Revolution subgroups and that former SS and Nazi
leaders were allowed to escape the denazification process and re-emerge in
postwar German politics. It seems that their exposure through Selection Board
may have been the result of rivalry between MI6 and Military Intelligence.^^
In a report at the end of May to CIC headquarters in Frankfurt,
Debringhaus wrote that

Barbie impressed this agent as an honest man, both intellectually

and personally, absolutely without nerves or fear. He is strongly
anti-Communist and a Nazi idealist who believes that he and
his believers were betrayed by the Nazis in power. Since Barbie
started to work for this agent he has provided extensive connec-
tions to French intelligence agencies, to Banat German circles

[refugees from the German minority in Yugoslavia], to high-

ranking Romanian circles and to high Russian circles in the US
Zone.

From a safe house in Augsburg, Barbie displayed some skill at penetrating

local cells of the Communist Party
in Bavaria. In the cold light of day the
results turned out to be and though the reports he produced from
'trivial',

'scores' of his subagents in eastern Europe were taken seriously, there is no

evidence that they were anything more than the product of 'paper mills' with
.^^
little intelligence of relevance or veracity

In the end, the system that evolved for denazification quickly collapsed under
pressures at home and problems in the field. British intelligence officers such
as EricMorgan, who interrogated senior war criminals in Germany, England
and Belgium, acknowledged that the enormous displacement of people in
Germany made 'screening virtually useless'. An Austrian Jew and former
SOE agent who was recruited by the army, Roger Elliot, found that he had
been made responsible with a Dutch colleague for the screening of twenty-five
thousand internees. Despite taking the post seriously, he realised that the
task was impossible and that 'the biggest war criminals could have got
 GERMANY AND THE 3 X 5s 111

through our fingers'. He had only been asked to assess whether a particular
German was 'a danger to security or of interest to Intelligence'.^^
The same situation existed in Austria, where George Berman, attached to
the intelligence staff of the British Army, encountered similar problems. There
were also logisticalproblems involved in screening potential suspects. A year
after the war, one million former combatants - among them 200,000 Poles,
nearly as many from the Baltic states, 110,000 Ukrainians, 40,000 Yugoslavs
and many Hungarians, Russians and other central and eastern Europeans -
still resided in the DP camps. When exiles from eastern Europe began to

seek residence in Britain and the Commonwealth, Military Intelligence shifted

the burden of screening on to Home Office officials, who had no records
against which to check names for war crimes. In turn, the Security Service,
which concentrated on 'communists', had little interest in war criminals, who
did not in their view constitute a security risk.
In hunting down quislings, collaborators and war criminals from eastern
Europe, CROWCASS proved to be an inadequate tool because only 2,500
names on the consolidated list were non-German. The problem was that
the Soviet Union refused to co-operate with CROWCASS because to have
done so would have 'left it open to investigation of the various crimes the
Soviets had themselves committed in the years of the Stalin-Hitler Pact, such
as the Katyn Forest and the later forced deportation of suspect Baits and
Poles'. In consequence, the CROWCASS lists did not include Soviet-derived
suspects. Eastern Europeans guilty of war crimes had little to fear from Allied
investigation teams which, guided by CROWCASS and the UNWCC
list -

which also excluded eastern Europeans, since the Russians had refused to
participate in it - were almost exclusively concerned with Germans and
Austrians.'*^
Even so, there was little eagerness to pursue Germans. The head of the
London CI War Room, Martin Furnival-Jones, informed MI6, MI5 and the
OSS's X-2 that as of 1 October 1945 no new CPI cards would be produced.
By the autumn, the War Room had been reduced to just thirty staff, and
within a year of VE day, it had shut down with its Registry dismantled.
During April 1946, each of the participating services received a portion of its
files. Subsequently, one of T. A. R. Robertson's assistants at MI5 delivered

to Col. Gerar-Dubto of French Intelligence several tons of documents, includ-

ing the complete order of battle of the German secret services supplemented
by biographical records. The story went that the MI5 officer had discovered
the haul in Frankfurt, but no one in London was interested: 'With the
disappearance of the central collecting point for Allied counter-espionage
went the basis for the efficient co-operation that had marked the assault
against the German intelligence services.
In addition, the political climate had changed. The Cold War was emer-
ging and the steam had gone out of war crime investigations. By the summer
112 PART TWO: THE FRONT LINE

of the British and Americans had adopted a policy seeking Germany's

1*^)46

which was followed by ending any thoughts of punitive action against

fa\ oiir

the former enemy.

By this juncture CROWCASS had turned into a monster archive with
over forty thousand records, and the British and Americans gave up the task
of controlling it. With a requirement to find reliable anti-communist assets,
they concerned themselves solely with selecting German officers and agents
likely tobe of interest to their intelligence agencies. Nazi-hunter Simon
Wiesenthal was 'devastated' to discover from his intelligence contacts that
the western allies were using former Nazis for intelligence-gathering. He
was told that they needed them 'for the future, and not information on the
past'.^2

MI 6 and were particularly concerned with gathering

Military Intelligence
intelligence on Soviet zone in Germany. At the beginning
activities in their

of 1946, they took charge of the Naval Intelligence Forward Intelligence Unit,
which had specialised in commando-style operations against enemy shore
establishments with the purpose of capturing personnel and documents of
intelligence interest. It was being wound down in Hamburg, and the head
of MI6's Dutch Section (P8), George Blake, was appointed its nominal
commanding officer, replacing Captain Charles Wheeler, a Royal Marine who
went on to become the BBC correspondent in Washington. The unit had
conducted the interrogation of U-boat commanders in Kiel, and these contacts
proved useful to Blake in developing agents. Using the unit as cover for
secret service operations, Blake organised networks in the Soviet Zone, which
would gather intelligence on the Soviet order of battle and on political and
economic developments. By the spring of the following year, Blake had
succeeded in building up two networks in East Germany whose members
were nearly all former naval and Wehrmacht officers.^^^
Germany, according to Sheila Kerr, was 'a major base for intelligence
operations. Communications between the Soviet Union and the Eastern bloc
were routed through the Soviet Military Command in Germany.' She adds
that British Intelligence 'used human and technical sources of information'
to garner intelligence on what was happening in East Germany, where the
communist-controlled Unity Party held sway. MI6 officers in Germany had
wanted to help the Social Democrats, who were being bludgeoned into joining
the Unity Party, 'but nothing', recalled George Young, 'was done to exploit
their internal jealousies or their resentment at the Soviet pressure on them:
some of them would gladly have re-established their links with the West'.
In place of covert assistance. Young's colleague John Bruce-Lockhart ran a
series of black propaganda campaigns in which 'forged statements of Swiss
bank accounts were dispatched from Zurich to senior government officials
in east Berlin in anticipation that communist censors would open and query
the contents'. In addition, 'embarrassing documents' about East German
 GERMANY AND THE '3 X 5s' 113

officials were 'surfaced' for use as blackmail. Other forgeries were sent to

West German communists 'to stimulate distrust among party members'.

Young adds that 'some German Communists for a time nourished hopes that
Berlin would one day again rival Moscow as the intellectual centre of Marxist
thought, but the proponents of their abortive Euro-communism gradually
disappeared, and the obedient [Walter] Ulbricht took over'. MI6 had good
intelligence on the political deliberations and pressures from Moscow, having
recruited 'one source close to Ulbricht'.
MI6 anti-communist operations overlapped with the requirement to create
networks Europe and gather intelligence as the Iron
to penetrate eastern
Curtain began rapidly to close. Even while the war was still raging and
entering its final stages, MI6 officers had made secret contact with pro-fascist
elements among the central and eastern European nationalist groups. British
Intelligence saw the potential value of their pre-war connections with organis-
ations such as the Promethean League, Intermarium and the Ukrainian
OUN-B in again mounting anti-Soviet espionage operations. These groups
had recent experience in fighting communism, having participated in brutal
anti-guerrilla campaigns against popular, well-organised partisans. Western
intelligence officers were attracted to those exiles who had retained contacts
and supporters in their homelands. In particular, they gave backing to the
more militant collaborators in the belief that their 'tight discipline, dedication
and experience in conducting underground military and political activities'
were qualities lacking in the more moderate groups.^^
While the British Army was forcibly repatriating thousands of soldiers,
including minor collaborators, to the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, MI6 and
Military Intelligence officers were simultaneously recruiting a number of
quislings and war crime suspects for their own operations. While Allied
files may have been regarded as an inadequate tool for investigating eastern
European war criminals, they now came into their own as a talent-spotting
tool, even though, in practice, CROWCASS had for 'administrative reasons'

collapsed in May 1946. CROWCASS was moved in June to Berlin and the
office was closed down during the following summer, with the lists trans-
ferred to the Berlin Document Centre. This did not, however, affect the files
being used for recruitment since over two hundred uncollated separate lists
and sub-lists remained in circulation while the card index, which was at the
heart of the system, remained intact. When intelligence agencies wanted to
request information on individuals applying for a visa, they sought infor-
mation from the massive 'Central Registry (CR)' in Germany, where the
3 X 5-inch CR cards took up a space approximately ten by twenty feet.
Although it was true that eastern Europeans made up only 10 per cent of
the CR files, they were, according to John Loftus, 'sufficient to identify the
top two or three hundred collaborators in each Eastern European country
and to pinpoint their post-war residence in the Allied zones of Europe'. Each
114 PART TWO: THE FRONT LINE

request for information was logged, which, as Loftus discovered, remains

'the best ex idence for passive government assistance to Nazi immigration by
ignoring incriminating data'.^^'

British IntelHgence officers actively protected their recruits from the

clutches of their Field Security colleagues, whose task it was to arrest and
interrogate suspects before handing them over for trial. Not long after the
end of hostilities in Europe, the British had already begun to provide training
and logistical support to the exiles for infiltration operations into their home-
lands to obtain intelligence. This quickly developed into mounting guerrilla
incursions which included, according to one informed source, joint British
and American targeting of Romania and Albania, using assets identified by
former Nazi intelligence officers. These operations are said to have been run
out of Frankfurt by a British Intelligence team under the cover of the British
High Commission office in the IG Farben building, with its partner in the
planning the American DAD. The chief British Intelligence officer, whose
responsibilities are said to have included these emigre operations, was Leo
Long, later suspected of being loyal to Moscow.^^
The Soviet and Yugoslav authorities soon became aware of these oper-
ations as communist agents had quickly penetrated the DP camps and the
emigre organisations that MI6 and others were attempting to revive or
construct. Soviet intelligence networks effectively uncovered the use of Nazi
collaborators and alleged war criminals, but few in the West wanted to know
or were willing to take on trust communist accounts, couched as they were
in the language of Cold War propaganda. What was apparent fairly early on
in their genesis was that the recruitment of these extremist elements, who
used terror as a tactic against all who would not help them, was counterpro-
ductive. The militant nationalists alienated those left in the homelands, whose
support was vital, and helped push them into the embrace of the communists.
As one commentator observed, Tnstead of increasing support in these coun-
tries for the West, and undermining communism, the result was the
'^^
opposite.
The attention paid by the Soviets to the dubious agents being run by MI6
for their eastern European exile operations quickly began to cause severe
embarrassment. Once they had been squeezed of useful intelligence, MI
wanted rid of the worst cases, and worked to help them leave Europe by
means of various 'ratlines'. Similar thoughts existed within US Counter-
intelligence which watched with alarm moves by the French to extradite
Klaus Barbie for war crimes. In order to escape detection. Barbie was shifted
around obscure and highly secretive units. As so often was the case, they
were loath to simply dump an agent who knew so much about their work.
He thus, paradoxically, became a security risk who had to be protected. In
turn, fearful that once in French custody he would reveal his ties to their
own intelligence service, the British - acting through their intelligence liaison
 GERMANY AND THE '3 X 5s' 115

at the high commission - insisted that the Americans solve the problem by
shipping Barbie out of Germany down one of the ratlines.'''^

In helping their comrades, the safe-help neo-Nazi networks did not have 'the

enormous resources of the one agency that took care of more Nazis than all
the others combined - the refugee bureau of the Vatican'. The postwar ratline
to South America had partly developed out of Allied escape lines built up
during the war to rescue PoWs who, following the Allied landing at Anzio
in January 1944, had made their way to the neutral Vatican.^"
An atmosphere of intrigue has always been associated with the Vatican,
but it is apparent that there was no Catholic intelligence service. According
to David Alvarez, Holy See was usually no more informed about events
'the

than many secular powers .The vaunted international network of priests

. .

and faithful was chimerical.' It was, however, useful for running a ratline.
The British created a secret Organisation in Rome for Assisting Allied Escaped
Prisoners-of-War, under the command of Sam Derry, who reported to
Norman Crockett of the escape-and-evasion outfit MI9. The British minister
at the Vatican, Sir d'Arcy Osborne, supported Derry's efforts and revealed

its existence to Giovanni Montini, head of the Vatican's secretariat for inter-

national affairs and at the heart of Pope Pius XII's clandestine affairs. Helping
to run the escape line was Osborne's assistant, Hugh Montgomery, a devout
Catholic and homosexual lover of Montini, the future Pope John Paul I. It
would be surprising if MI6 had not had some kind of 'handle' on Montini.
At the end of the war, Derry joined MI6, taking over from Crockett as head
of MI9.'^
The Pope had asked Montini 'to supervise Vatican efforts for the resettle-
ment of millions of refugees and displaced persons who swarmed into
Germany, Austria, Italy and France'. Officials offered shelter to escaping
German officials, among were war criminals who were offered a place on
ratlines to evade capture. One, which led ultimately to South America, ran
out of Germany through Austria into the Free Territory of Trieste and then
to Italy which, fighter ace Hans Ulrich Rudel acknowledged, was the transit
point for virtually all the escape routes. Those sponsored by ODESSA and
travelling on to the Middle East embarked from Bari. The Brotherhood had
contact with the Rome Association of Officers - former Italian and German
fascists - and, in particular, with Bishop Alois Hudal of Pontificio Santa Maria

deir Anima. In the thirties, Hudal had sought areas of co-operation between
the Catholic Church and Hitlerism as part of an anti-Bolshevik alliance.
Former Nazis regarded him as their own 'scarlet pimpernel' who, as 'the
spiritual director of a band of pro-Nazi clerics in Rome', was 'the chief impre-
sario of the Vatican's rescue efforts'."^^

Hudal's primary role was to supply essential travel documents which

were obtained from Montini, whose Refugee Bureau issued 'identity certifi-
lib PART TWO: THE FRONT LINE

cates' to 'stateless and displaced persons'. During 1945, Montini's section

released a number of regular Vatican state passports to a handful of important
Nazis who disguised themselves as clerics. Montini also headed the Church's
international welfare organisation, Caritas Internationalis,which also aided
fugitive Nazis. Additional documents were obtained from the French High
Commissioner for Germany, Francois Poncet, who, as head of the Inter-
national Red Cross (ICR), furnished travel certificates to British and US
Intelligence. Security contacts informed Simon Wiesenthal that those destined
for the Middle East 'received their vital travel documents from the Egyptian
Red Crescent which had people working with the ICR in Geneva'.^^

Britain retained a strong interest in South America, and the Foreign Office
reported that in order to protect its investments and ensure economic stability
in the region - in particular Argentina, where pre-war Germany, too, had a
significant financial interest - German methods and discipline would still be
needed. This would require an influx of qualified German technicians and
specialists; in practical terms. South America needed plumbers, mechanics,
builders and electricians. In order to achieve this, each country was to have
a strict quota for immigrants for these occupations. These quotas were partly
filled by minor Nazis and from eastern Europe with would-be
collaborators
escapers fitted to each category and 'given forged papers and a crash course
in Spanish or Portuguese'.
During the summer of 1947, sponsorship of the ratlines was taken over
by the Americans and organised by the senior officer of the 430th CIC in
Vienna, Major James Milano, an intelligence officer well known to the British.
Milano had begun his intelligence career as part of Operation TORCH
in North Africa, where his unit's training programme had been undertaken
by MI6's Lt-Col. Charles Boyle. In late 1943, Boyle was responsible for the
intelligence course at Castellamare di Stabia, near Sorrento, which prepared
Allied intelligence officers for duties in occupied Italy. The course dealt with
'war criminals and what to do with them, the Nazi Party, paramilitary organ-
isations, displaced persons, and the history of the country'. Milano was
subsequently decorated by the British with an OBE for his exploits as an
undercover agent in Italy. He then worked closely with British officer Col.
Peter Lovegrove, who headed the planning sessions for the occupation of
Austria.
In Austria, Milano ordered the chief of CIC operations, Lt Paul Lyons, to
'establish ameans of disposition of visitors'. Lyons's first step was a meeting
with Monsignor Draganovic, who was close to Hank Bono, formerly of the
420th CIC in Italy but who was working in intelligence in Trieste, where
Draganovic had an office. Lyons struck a deal with Draganovic, who used
the money to fund his own ratline, on a means to move exiles and 'defectors'
out of Europe, though by the time the 430th took over most senior collabor-
 GERMANY AND THE '3 X 5s' 117

ators had already made their way down The Americans wanted
the ratline.
them out of Europe, fearing that if they were caught by Soviet Ministry of
State Security (MGB) agents they might reveal details of their interrogation
by British and American intelligence agencies and their employment in Allied
secret operations. Milano and Lyons claimed that they did not deal with
Nazis, SS or SD men - only bona fide defectors from the Soviets. They did,
however, admit that 'as time went by it sometimes became necessary to
bend the rules'; which, in reality, meant including former Vlasov officers,
Belorussians, Ukrainians and Baltic DPs, who had served in the German
Army and in SS units. They were sent south in US trucks and clothed in
American uniforms, a support group ensuring that there was no trace of the
fugitives' true identities.^^
Through CIC officer Dominic Del Greco, the Americans developed close
relations with their MI6 and MIS counterparts at the British military head-
quarters in Klagenfurt. Milano had worked in Italy during the war with
'Butch' Groves, a senior MI6 case officer who operated under cover of British
Army Intelligence in Graz, and in Vienna in an 'unspecified capacity'. The
head of the British Field Security Section dealing with counter-intelligence
in Austria, Captain Archibald Moorhouse, agreed to see the American-
sponsored convoys across the Austrian border into Italy, while Milano's old
MI6 mentor, Charles Boyle, served on the Graz-based Austrian Quadripartite
Censorship Committee, which was responsible for the censorship and moni-
toring of mail and telephone communciations between Austria and South
America.^^
By the end of 1947, the hunt for Nazis and war criminals had effectively
ground to a halt in Rome. While there were units of the CIC which continued
with impressive work, they were told to keep their hands off war criminals
living in the US Zone in Austria who worked for British or French Intelli-
gence. One such figure who did eventually go down the ratline to South
America in 1950 was a 'mechanic', Klaus Altman, otherwise known as Klaus
Barbie.^'
CHAPTER 9

AUSTRIA: THE
SHOOTING GALLERY

Britain's postwar relationship with Austria proved to be difficult because the

country was seen as a former part of Nazi Germany. It was enemy territory
and the British 'did not deviate from this position for some years after the
war'. Indeed, the Austrians had to wait for a decade for a treaty of indepen-
dence and genuine freedom while the Cold War was fought over their
country.^
In the British view, despite the fact that stringent control had made oppo-
sition to the Nazis in Austria unlikely, the internal resistance had proved
'disappointingly weak and without much consequence for post-war Austria'.
Official policy encouraged the resistance groups but 'without committing us
to support one group or another'. When a number of resistance leaders were
released by the Germans during 1942, they continued to organise as the '05'
group under Dr Hans Becker. Slowly built up over the next two years, at the
end of 1944 a Swiss Liaison Office was established in Zurich as a channel to
the West. Its existence was made known to the Allies by Fritz Molden, who
contacted the US Office of Strategic Services (OSS) in liberated Paris and
provided it with intelligence about the Wehrmacht and the German war
economy in Austria and northern Italy.
A Provisional Austrian National Committee was established in December,
consisting of right-wing and Liberal spokesmen, but this was comprehen-
sively destroyed by the Gestapo in February 1945. Arms were dropped in
March to the few resisters remaining, but the great coup, which 05 planned.
 AUSTRIA: THE SHOOTING GALLERY 119

never took place - though key personnel made sure that note was taken of
their own limited role. Itwas not until the spring that Karl Gruber, who had
spent the whole of the war working for a German firm in Berlin, returned
to Austria to engage in last-minute resistance action as head of the Tyrolean
underground. As one account later noted, Gruber displayed a 'strong element
of political ambition'.^
Shortly after the liberation of Vienna in April, the Soviets installed the
old socialist leader Karl Renner as Chancellor of a provisional Austrian
government. The British and Americans disliked his apparent popularity with
Stalin, but the government had been able to ward off attempts by the Austrian
communists personnel in positions of power in the wake of
to install their
the arrival of the Red Army. The communists were further undermined by
their poor showing in the November polls, which illustrated their lack of real
support.
Secret Political Warfare Executive (PWE) directives had been vague about
the relationship between Austrian underground activity and the country's
future, but the Allies decided that they needed young anti-communists who
could be entrusted to look after a free independent Austria. Very quickly,
the small number of resistance workers found themselves employed at the
highest levels within government. The dynamic Gruber headed the Foreign
Ministry, while Molden was appointed his senior political aide. The Ministry
was particularly important to the Allies since Austria lay on the frontier
between East and West and, in the immediate aftermath of war, it was feared
that the country might be absorbed into the Soviet sphere of influence.^
Politically conservative, Gruber quickly impressed the Americans with his
'can do' attitude, providing a western-orientated counterweight to Renner.
Under Gruber's stewardship, 'Austria's attachment to the West went far
beyond the limits even of a formal diplomatic alliance'. It was, noted British
intelligence officer and later Telegraph journalist Gordon (Brook) Shepherd,
'allowed to grow into an exaggerated subservience to American foreign policy
which on occasions even proved embarrassing to the other members of the
Western alliance'. Both Gruber and Molden retained their wartime 'clandestine
links', particularly to American intelligence. Molden married the daughter of

senior OSS officer and later CIA chief Allen Dulles, while Gruber continued to
provide documents to the US Army Counter-intelligence Corps (CIC) 430th
Detachment, and did so until at least the early fifties. The British, however,
considered these pioneer cold warriors to have too close a relationship with
the Americans and resented their influence. MI6 even sought to convince the
remaining resident OSS representatives that Molden had been a German spy."*

Austria was divided up between the Allies into four sectors with Britain
being responsible for the provinces of Styria and Carinthia in the south-east,
including 'a tiresome frontier with the truculent Yugoslavs'. Vienna was also
partitioned into four, but the Allies were allowed to roam at will in a city
120 PART TWO: THF FRONT LINE

that was second only to Berlin as a centre for espionage. Intelligence oper-
ations would frequently erupt into violence in what was dubbed 'the shooting
gallery', where constant reports of Russian soldiers on the rampage made

the atmosphere tense.

Employed by the Information Services Branch (ISB) of the Allied Control
Commission (ACC) in Austria, Suzanne Fesq recalled that over the winter
of 1945 'a sinister feeling of menace hung over the city, stalking the streets
and pervading the air, so that you didn't even feel secure in your own home.
At any time of the day or night, a great battering on the door could bring
doom and disaster. People, once kidnapped, were never heard of again, so
that you never knew what fate to expect, and the very few who did escape,
never dared tell.' Fesq had worked for the Psychological Warfare Branch
(PWB), supplying news information to the Special Operations Executive
(SOE), and was then attached to the 'Queer Unit' of the news desk of Allied
Information Services in Trieste. In 1947 she married the controller of the ISB,
Charles Beauclerk (Duke of St Albans), who had served in Military Intelli-

gence and Psychological Warfare.^

The were strictly forbidden to enter the Russian Zone but with a
British
special pass were allowed to travel through the territory in order to reach
their own region. 'Sometimes, for no reason at all,' Fesq writes, 'passes were
torn up, vehicles confiscated and travellers sent back on foot through
sno wed-up mountains. Every day new tales of incidents in the Russian zone
came to light, and nobody undertook the journey lightly.' She was appalled
at the repatriation of Russian PoWs and their treatment in the camps where

there were many suicides and murders.^

Beauclerk and Fesq stayed at Sacher's Hotel in the Ring, which had been
requisitioned for senior British officers and where the writer Graham Greene
'usually breakfasted in his room on pink champagne'. Still an active part-time
MI6 agent, Greene was researching the screenplay for The Third Man and
'sniffed and soaked up the putrid atmosphere with the appreciation of a
connoisseur'. Also staying in the hotel was Marsha Poutschine,* a former
Reuters reporter covering the Russian front, who worked as a Russian
interpreter for the ACC. She translated for British Intelligence and often came
into contact with senior Soviet officials. A White Russian from St Petersburg
- her family had escaped to Britain following the Bolshevik revolution - she
was a 'Monarchist' who was dedicated to the destruction of the Soviet state.

When she reached Vienna in July 1945, Miss Poutschine asked Colonel Alan
Pryce-Jones, an intelligence officer attached to the staff of the deputy
commander-in-chief. General Winterton, about the official attitude to the

Soviets: 'Were we or were we not supposed to treat them as Allies?' Pryce-

Jones replied that 'officialpolicy remained the same, to establish good

* She later married the British consul in Vierma, (Sir) Alan Williams.
 AUSTRIA: THE SHOOTING GALLERY 121

relations with the Russians and to make a success of our work with them
here in Vienna'. She soon found, however, that this was difficult to achieve.

A report by one intelligence officer noted that 'from the attitude taken up by
our people here, one would think that the Austrians and not the Russians
had been our Allies during the war'.^
Despite her antipathy towards, even hatred of, the Soviets, Marsha Pouts-
chine came to see that many of the stories about the Russians - a number
originating from Information Services - were exaggerated or simply untrue.
Suspicion on both sides was high and others shared her pessimism that it
was helping to divide the former allies. A combined intelligence report was
sent to the War Office and the new Labour Foreign Secretary, Ernest Bevin,
which concluded: 'We were not claiming to know the rights and wrongs of
these attitudes; we merely wished to point out that the two sides were drifting
dangerously apart, becoming enemy camps partly as a result of avoidable
misunderstandings.' Unfortunately, the report was ignored.*^
Somewhat oddly, the resident MI6 was sympathetic to all things
station
Russian. The passport visa officer, George Berry, had been pre-war head of
station in Riga and then, during the war, in Moscow. Poutschine often dined
at Berry's flat with two other officers. Colonel Gordon-Smith and 'Alec'. The
evenings were 'devoted to listening to Russian music and to looking at slides

of the Soviet Union, lapsing into Russian as they reminisced at length'. After
warnings from Berry about the dangerous Soviets, she was persuaded by Alec
to undertake 'swarming operations'. Driving with forged documentation and
semi-official approval into the Soviet Zone and across the border into Czecho-
slovakia, they picked up minor on the Soviet occupation forces,
intelligence
mostly from Red Army soldiers who became openly friendly on meeting an
Englishman. Alec 'believed the more we knew about the Russians the more
chance there was for peace and better relations. It was important to discover
the true state of affairs. We could then avoid misunderstandings which might
lead to serious trouble between us.' Rather curiously. Alec added that 'among
Europeans only Russians were truly democratic at heart' - by which he meant
that they were not hindered by hierarchy or class in addressing one another.''
Berry's successor as head of station was George Kennedy Young, who
had been put in charge of supervising the liquidation of the foreign espionage
sections of the German intelligence agencies and collecting evidence of their
success or otherwise against British targets. A journalist. Young went back
to Fleet Street after demobilisation and was sent as the British United Press

correspondent to Berlin, where he engaged in unofficial intelligence-gathering

on the Red Army. Young, however, had been surprised and disappointed by
the general lack of interest in serious foreign news and, in 1946, had been
willingly recruited into MI6 by John Bruce-Lockhart, a friend from
St Andrews University. He was offered the post of head of station in Vienna,
which he found to be 'a challenge and inspiration'.^^
122 TAPvT TWO: THE FPvONT LINE

Young's first task was to weld into a competent team the wartime MI6
and SOE personnel who had finished up in Austria attached to the 8th Army.
B\' July 1945 the Austrian provisional government had been in place for three

months, but the local SOE station had not been disbanded along with other
military-based units. Despite fears that the continued presence of SOE in
Austria would lead to 'duplication and confusion' in clandestine activities -
British Troops Austria had its own own military counter-intelligence and
security units - SOE was allowed to retain a presence. The chiefs of staff
supported its Deputy Director in London, Harry Sporborg, who argued that
SOE should be permitted to stay 'so that our contacts in Austria which
have been built up over the past few years should not be lost'. Against the
reservations of the Foreign Office, the chiefs of staff had agreed that it would
be 'unwise, with Europe in the present unsettled state, to lose these valauble
SOE contacts'.'^
On the ground, however, SOE was impeded, and its information from
these high-level contacts, which 'had been hard to obtain', was reluctantly
handed over to British Troops Austria. SOE was 'then diverted from its
network of Austrian agents to conduct routine interrogations with prisoners
in security compounds'. When in September the chiefs of staff learned what
was happening they were angry that the identity of SOE officers might be
compromised by the mundane security work, and that the usefulness of their
Austrian contacts might 'be destroyed' and 'their lives endangered'. These
contacts, the chiefs reported, 'could only be approached in special ways' and
'certainly cannot be transferred at will'. Accordingly, they 'reprimanded'
British Troops Austria and instructed SOE's remaining twenty-four personnel
to resume work on their 'long term role', which was discussed with the
Special Operations chief of station, Edward Renton.^^
The head of the Foreign Office's Northern Department, Robin Hankey,
was dismayed by SOE's survival in Austria, and officials expressed horror at
the enthusiasm of some of its officers for freelance operations of a 'somewhat
dangerous political character'. Hankey warned that 'the Russians are watch-
ing us and we must be particularly careful not to allow any activities of the
cloak and dagger variety to continue under our auspices'. There was a
suspicion that, besides 'maintaining certain contacts', SOE might be involved
in shadowy and undefined 'primary operational tasks' which could have 'the
most dangerous repercussions'. As historian Richard Aldrich notes, 'Hankey's
fears were well grounded'; one sensitive operation in October involved its
officers 'lifting most valuable' and 'essential' film of German rocket tech-
. . .

nology from the Russian Zone. MI6 slowly took the place of SOE but eight
officers still remained in December 1945 and, despite Foreign Office reluc-
tance, they continued to operate alongside MI6 into 1946.^^
One Cold War special operation involved releasing hydrogen
early
balloons carrying propaganda leaflets across Soviet lines. MI6 scientists work-
 AUSTRIA: THE SHOOTING GALLERY 123

ing at the training school, near Gosport, had developed the technique from
Japanese specialists captured at the end of the war. They had designed and
constructed the Fugo high-altitude balloons which were big and buoyant
enough to carry a high-explosive bomb. SOE officer David Howarth, who
had been responsible for ferrying agents on the 'Shetland Bus' to and from
Norway, retained links with MI 6, which called him up when 'they had a
simple and ignominious job to be done'. For this operation, Howarth was
sent under cover as an army captain to 'a charming provincial town', Graz,
in Styria, in the south of Austria. From Graz, he drove east towards the
Hungarian border, where he helped release six or eight balloons a night: 'It
was all unspeakably secret, from the Russians and their allies, and from the
Austrians too, and the rest of the British Army.' The operation, while regarded
by Howarth as 'reasonably harmless, naughty rather than wicked', was
suspended after a couple of months when one of the balloons drifted back
into Austria, causing embarrassment to the authorities.^^
With the support of his deputy, George Young put together a formidable
team who were 'later to spread out into overseas stations as star performers'.
Helping Young were other colleagues in the embassy and officers in the 'Int.
Org.' - the intelligence organisation of the Austrian Control Commission
which included a liaison officer to the embassy-based station, who was
usually a representative of R5, the Service's counter-espionage section.
Personnel included Young's deputy, Patrick Martin-Smith, MC, a devout
Roman Catholic who had served with the Commandos before joining SOE's
Special Force No. 1 missions in north-east Italy and Slovenia. He continued
to work with SOE in Austria before being assimilated into MI6. Maj. Cyril
Rolo had served on the General Staff in the Western Desert and East Africa
(as did Young), and later with in Italy and Austria. On joining MI6 in
SOE
1946, he was posted Commission in Vienna, where he headed
to the Allied
a sub-station at Klagenfurt. SOE officer Charles Gardiner, CBE, born Israel
Gold, was the son of Austrian Jews who emigrated to Birmingham to work
for a firm of silversmiths. Gardiner had worked with Martin-Smith in Slovenia
and Italy. Naturalised as a British subject in 1946, 'his perfect knowledge of
German and of the local Austrian scene, added to a distinct flair for Intelli-
gence work, made him a natural choice'.
Young believed there was 'little doubt as the immediate postwar Soviet
aim of bringing Austria under communist control', but he was happy to
discover that 'the Austrian Ministers, who nowadays do not get much credit
in the British media, showed themselves tough and resolute: some of them
had suffered in both Dolfuss's and Hitler's concentrations camps'. Those such
as Dr Bruno Kreisky, who became Foreign Minister and then Prime Minister,
were former SOE 'collaborators' in Scandinavia, where they found exile
during the war. Others were close to the leading MI6 asset in Vienna, Edge-
worth 'Edge' Leslie, who had adopted the country as his own, wearing
124 PART TWO: THE FRONT LINE

lederhosen 'to the manner Employed before the war in the prestigious
born'.
firm of soHcitors Slaughter and May, which supplied numerous recruits to
the intelligence services, he also worked for Dansey's Z-network. Leslie spent
the war years in Berne working for Allen Dulles and SOE's John McCaffery:
'By the end of the war many of his Austrian friends were people of influence
who had not collaborated with the Nazi regime. Extraordinarily, the post-war
Austrian Government was formed in his house at Igls above Innsbruck'.
Young thought that there had been a time 'when we seemed prepared to
let Eastern Austria go the same way' as East Germany, but it did not happen.

The credit for this, he later wrote, 'must go to the Austrians themselves, who
stood up to Russian bullying even though on occasion "counsels of wisdom"
were being pressed on them by Western "friends" '.

Young could have been referring to Dr Kurt Waldheim, who joined the
Austrian Foreign Ministry in December 1945 as personal diplomatic secretary
to Karl Gruber. FritzMolden was responsible for Waldheim's vetting,
contacting the American GIG and OSS, which told him that 'there were no
charges against Dr Waldheim with respect to any Nazi past'. In January 1946
the Allied Denazification Bureau's responsibilities were handed over to the
new Ghancellor, Leopold Figel, with instructions to carry out a thorough
purge of the government's administration. Almost immediately, rumours
began to surface that Waldheim was under investigation.^^
Dr Waldheim's concealed past probably had less to do with his alleged
Nazi connections than with his wartime intelligence activities. He had not
been a member of the Nazi Party - though his wife had joined - but did
support Party-sponsored organisations. There is little or no evidence of pro-
Nazi views, and he appears to have been a bureaucrat who even expressed
anti-racist views. Waldheim's disputed military record is, however, another
matter.^^
Between 1942 and 1944, Dr Waldheim served as an intelligence officer
(03) in the Ic unit of Military Intelligence with General Lohr, of Army Group
E. Stationed in the Balkans, Army Group E fought one of the most brutal
and ferocious guerrilla wars in modern European history. The US Justice
Department Report, which provided the basis for the 1987 decision to bar
Waldheim from entering the United States because of his activities in the
Balkans, stated that Lt Waldheim would have 'drafted orders on reprisals,
made recommendations based on the interrogation of prisoners, provided
intelligence data to military units arresting civilians and co-operated with
the Nazi intelligence arm in its tasks of deporting and killing prisoners'.
During the forty-five-day Kozara campaign against Tito's partisans in the
summer of 1942, thousands of Groatian partisans and civilians died in battle
or in the concentration camps as a result of Saiiberungen ('cleansing') oper-
ations. Gorpses of civilian hostages hung on makeshift wooden gallows all
 AUSTRIA: THE SHOOTING GALLERY 125

the way from Kostajnica to Banja Luka. When, fifty years later, reporter
Robert Fisk visited Kostajnica, a transit point for thousands of child prisoners,
he discovered that civilian prisoners had been routinely shot only a few
hundred yards from Waldheim's office. The Jasenovac concentration camp,
where prisoners had their heads cut off with saws, was only a few miles
down the road. 'Yet he was to say later', Fisk reported, 'that he did not know
'^^
about the murder of civilians there.
According to a colleague, Waldheim's expertise lay in his dealings with
the resistance groups. With a knowledge of Serbo-Croat, he 'knew exactly
what the atmosphere was like in the Serbian Chetnik camp'. It was the same
with the Ustashi, whose collaboration was 'for the most part his doing'. For
his services in Kozara, Waldheim was awarded a silver medal with oak leaf
clusters by the fascist Ustashi leader. Ante Pavelic. After service in Greece,
Waldheim returned to Yugoslavia and, in late 1944, took part in meetings with
Dreza Mihailovic's chief of staff over negotiations to allow the anti-communist
Chetniks to contact the Allies. During the forced retreat of Army Group E,
General Lohr, who was desperate to avoid surrending to the communists,
sent Waldheim - his English-speaking non-Nazi intelligence officer - west
on a mission to the British Army, which was nearing Trieste. Waldheim did
not get through and ended up in Klagenfurt, though 'it was during these
^°
last few weeks that Western intelligence became aware of Waldheim'.
In 1988 the Ministry of Defence released a report into allegations that
Waldheim had taken part in the murder of British servicemen captured in
Greece. It was curiously circumspect about his past, and Robert Fisk
condemned it for failing 'to address one of the most critical issues surround-
ing men like Dr Waldheim in post-war Europe: the suspicion that they gave
their services to the British and American intelligence agencies after the war
and that their wartime activities were thus "forgotten". Dr Waldheim and
his colleagues had an intimate knowledge of the communist forces in the
Balkans at the end of the Second World War - when many Allied leaders
thought they may have to fight the Soviet Union.' British intelligence officers
attached to the 8th Army in northern Italy had come across Waldheim's name
during interrogations of a captured Wehrmacht intelligence
officer. They then

compiled a listtwo hundred German intelligence officers working in the

of
Balkans, including Waldheim, which they handed over to the OSS in April
1945.'^

Knowledge of his intelligence activities helps explain his subsequent

internment in the PoW camp near Bad Tolz, in Bavaria. This was an interroga-
tion centre that specialised in questioning 'prisoners of interest' to US military
intelligence. 'What made Waldheim interesting was his knowledge of
Communist organisations and partisan tactics, which he had acquired as an
Ic officer.' Waldheim was an expert on Yugoslavia - 'knowledge which would

be highly prized in the post-war world'. This was particularly so because most
126 PART TWO: THF FPvONT LINE

of Army Group E's intelligence staff had been captured by the Yugoslavs. A
reliableanti-communist, Waldheim had a wealth of information about a
country 'which the Western allies might have to invade at any moment'.^^
Yugoslav leader Tito had been asserting his country's right to appropriate
parts of South Carinthia and Styria, including the important city of Klagen-
fiirt, which had seized at the time of the German surrender. When
his troops
the British intervened, arguments over disputed territory threatened to turn
violent. In the fierce propaganda battle that followed, 'not only did Belgrade
accuse British forces in Carinthia of encouraging guerrilla incursions into
Slo\'enia by Ustashi "refugees", it also claimed that the western Allies were
providing notorious war criminals with safe havens in their zones in Austria.
In addition, Belgrade was enraged by the increasing reluctance of the western
powers to approve - or even respond to - Yugoslav attempts to extradite
alleged war criminals.' A great deal of this was true, as no more than 5 per cent
of Yugoslav requests were honoured. It was also a fact that anti-communist
refugees were being used by MI 6 in a campaign to acquire valuable intelli-
gence about Tito's regime. Belgrade further alleged that many Wehrmacht
intelligence officers, who had served in the Balkans, were now working with
MI6 in Austria - Tending their expertise to a Western effort aimed at desta-
bilising Yugoslav border regions'.
Waldheim may have been one of these former officers. Certainly, his
political support of the Catholic Church's anti-communist campaigns was a
major factor in his career. Besides his closeness during the late forties to

representatives of the Catholic-sponsored Slovene nationalists, he also had

contacts with Mitja Ribic, deputy chief of the Slovene branch of state security
and future Yugoslav prime minister. There were rumours that Ribic helped
Waldheim back the Alpa-Adrica movement which proposed 'a cultural union
of Catholic Slovenia and Croatia with Austria, Italy and Catholic southern
Germany'. This was part of the Vatican and MI6-run Intermarium project
which had the support of the Austrian
for exile operations in eastern Europe,
government (see Chapter 11). According to one source, the Austrian liaison
to Intermarium was Dr Waldheim.^^

The intelligence-gathering priorities for George Young and MI6 were 'Soviet
troop deployment down the Danube and the Kremlin's longer-term inten-
tions, while keeping an eye on Tito'. He accomplished the first by encouraging

the desertion of disillusioned young Red Army soldiers, whose low-level

intelligence 'soon confirmed the steady rundown of Soviet forces and their
replacement by static units of virtually untrained conscripts'. More important
long-term intelligence came from the retrieval of Luftwaffe records that had
been hidden following the end of hostilities in Lower Austria, now in the
Soviet occupied zone. From forward airfields in the Soviet Union, the
Germans had carried out a systematic photo reconnaissance of a large part
 AUSTRIA: THE SHOOTING GALLERY 127

of the country. The were now buried close to a Red Army

results of this
checkpoint. Young arranged newsagent and bookseller - set
for a Klagenfurt
up in business by SOE - to deliver regularly a complimentary copy of a
'girlie' magazine to the post. 'One day when the soldier was happily studying

the pictures, the van halted along the road and the driver and mate - a former
Luftwaffe officer who had helped bury the plates - dug furiously, retrieved
the mass of material and stowed it in a specially constructed compartment.'
Using the photos and incoming intelligence, MI6-recruited Luftwaffe officers
were able to monitor and keep a regular check on Soviet airfields.^^
On the frontier of the Cold War, Austria was regarded by MI6 as a key
area from which to collect intelligence on Russia and the Soviet satellites,
most notably Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania and Tito's Yugoslavia.
Major sources of information were political refugees, deserters from the Red
Army, Displaced Persons (DPs), anti-communist groups and Catholic organ-
isations, and undercover agents who had worked for the British during the
war but now found themselves trapped behind the Iron Curtain. British
Intelligence made a priority of setting up underground routes of escape and
communication, with those heading for Vienna secretly transported down a
'ratline' to the British Zone for debriefing. Attention was paid to the screening

of political refugees and close liaison was maintained with Allied counter-
intelligence units. Young's major success was in persuading Czech and
Hungarian refugees to return home and infiltrate the Communist Party in
the expectation that they would be sent on activist courses and gradually
rise up the party hierarchy.^^
As part of the military's 1947 Operation LARWOOD, MI6 created contin-
gency plans for active resistance in the event of an invasion by Yugoslav
troops. The Yugoslav /Austria border dispute was left unresolved by the
January Big Four conference of foreign ministers at Lancaster House, which
Waldheim attended as the Austrian delegation secretary. It was shortly after
the conference that, following the execution of General Lohr for war crimes,
the Yugoslavs began an investigation into Waldheim's wartime activities.
The first accusations were made in a Yugoslav file submitted to the United
Nations War Crimes Commission (UNWCC) in London, charging him with
'putting hostages to death' and 'murder'. Michael Palumbo has suggested
that the file was prepared against Waldheim for purposes of blackmail,
pointing out that despite extensive research not a single document has been
uncovered implicating him war crime. At the same time, Yugoslav secur-
in a
ity agents sent a list Wehrmacht officers on the UNWCC list -
of former
Waldheim's name was prominently featured - to Colonel Gonda of the Red
Army, in the knowledge that Soviet Intelligence was interested in recruiting
Austrians, often by blackmail. According to a Yugoslav security agent, Anton
Kolendic, the Soviets were 'particularly angry with Gruber, whom they
considered to be a British agent'. He heard Gonda 'talk about an incident
128 PART TWO: THE FRONT 11 NF

that LcHild be staged to compromise Gruber. Hence their interest in Waldheim,

w hc^ was Gruber's secretary.' There was also talk of 'exposing' Waldheim in
order to embarrass his boss, while another agent claimed that 'the Yugoslav
secret police were going to recruit him but the Soviets let them know that
he was already recruited'.
In the wake of a rapid rundown of British troops, Larwood's contingency
plans were abandoned in mid-1947 - though communist infiltration from
Yugoslavia and elsewhere was still seen as a threat. Through his agents in

the eastern European communist parties and from defectors. Young claimed
that he was warned in the autumn of Stalin's break with Tito - a claim that
is not in the diplomatic record. Stalin's expulsion of Tito from the Cominform

was reflected by the Soviets dropping support for Slovene separatists in

Carinthia, which opened the way for Austria to commit itself to the West.
By this stage. Foreign Office officials considered the Austrian government to
be anti-communist and solidly attached to the West, though more allied to
the United States than Britain. 'One did not need to be a dupe of Communist
propaganda', Gordon Shepherd recalled, 'to know that, during these years,
the American High Commissioner was potentially the most powerful man
in Austria, or to see that Austria itself was, for all practical planning purposes,
already considered part of NATO'. The West had faith in officials such as
Dr Waldheim, who was appointed in 1948 to the number- two post at the
Austrian mission in Paris. This was the beginning of his diplomatic rise; he
was eventually to attain the post of Secretary-General of the United Nations.^^
Tito apparently viewed Waldheim as a 'pliable' and 'Soviet' man, who
had 'likely ties to the United States' and was thus an ideal person for the
UN job. It was later discovered that the UNWCC held file No. 79/742, which
listed Waldheim as a Class A suspect, while the June 1948 CROWC ASS 'Final
Consolidated Wanted List' included him as suspect No. 313622 - wanted for
^'^
'murder'.
The Foreign Office and the Department disliked UNWCC
US State
because it was an which was not solely
international inter- Allied organisation
their preserve. It was difficult to control the smaller nations, who were
actively seeking to prosecute alleged war criminals and took no account of
the political realities of the emerging East- West conflict. The British and
Americans thus attempted to shut down UNWCC as quickly as possible.
'Their first step was to choke the Commission by systematically denying it
funds and personnel.' When members wanted to extend its activities, the
British and US delegations blocked them. The British then tried to close it
immediately, but were persuaded to let the budget run until the end of the
year,when final evidence for cases had to be submitted. The Commission
was subsequently wound up on 31 March 1948, when those accepted as
prima facie cases were 'packed away in cardboard boxes to await a decision
by the United Nations' as to what was to be done with the forty thousand
 AUSTRIA: THE SHOOTING GALLERY 129

files remaining in New York. The UN's assistant secretary-general in charge

of its legal department, Ivan Kerno, declared that the files would remain
closed 'in all but the most extraordinary circumstances'. A who had
Slovak
known Allen Dulles since the end of the First World War, Kerno appears to
have been employed by British Intelligence when serving with the wartime
Czech government-in-exile in London. He subsequently became an informant
for US Intelligence and is understood to have been an agent of the CIA
during his period at the UN.^°
At the height of the Waldheim controversy in 1988, The Times expressed
the view that his case might have been covered up by the British. The MoD
report on Waldheim mentions the allegation that he 'had been of assistance
to British Intelligence', but, as Robert Fisk pointed out, 'instead of stating
flatly that he was not (which would go some way to dismissing claims that
the British deliberately destroyed wartime records about him) the ministry
reported blandly that "it has been the practice of successive governments not
to comment on speculation or allegations concerning intelligence matters" '.^^

George Young left Vienna in 1949 'with the sense of a job well done'. The
new Second Secretary and head of station was Peter Lunn, a Royal Artillery
officer who had been seconded to MI6 during the war and, as the hard-

working head of P3, had supervised operations in Austria and Germany

before taking command of the Hamburg station in 1947. The son of Sir Arnold
Lunn, also intelligence-linked and head of the well-known travel agency and
populariser of skiing abroad, Peter was slightly built and had a marked lisp.
Before he joined the Vienna station, Lunn - who skied for England in the
1936 Olympics at Garmisch - managed to find time to train with the British
Olympic team at St Moritz.^^
A 'zealot and militant anti-communist' Roman Catholic who was regarded
as a highly effective officer, Lunn conceived the idea for one of MI6's most
productive postwar operations. While leafing through reports from a source
in the Austrian Post, Telegraphs and Telephone Administration, he noticed
that a number of telephone cables linking the Soviet Army HQs, units and
airfields ran beneath the British and French sectors of Vienna. Lunn called
in Peter Taylor, a former communications officer with Montgomery in North
Africa and now a telephone engineer attached to the Post Office Technical
Department experimental station at Dollis Hill, and asked him to study the
feasibility of attaching a telephone tap to the cables. Taylor confirmed its

feasibility and a Col. Balmain, an experienced private mining consultant,

agreed to construct a tunnel from the basement of a police post to the main
telephone cable running between the Soviet headquarters at the Imperial
Hotel and their military airfield at Schwechat. Lunn obtained approval from
head office in record time and money was made available for Operation
CONFLICT, though the Foreign Office was not informed. Lunn received
130 PART TWO: THE FRONT LINE

unctfticial approval from the ambassador, Harold Caccia, a recent chair of

the joint Intelligence Committee QIC), but he was only told once the project
w as up and running. Lunn was obviously aware that the Foreign Office
would not have approved, and Caccia only did so because 'I couldn't look
at m\ self if there'd been an invasion and I denied the chance of getting the

information'.^-^
The operation was an immediate success and led two years later to the
setting up of two more cable taps. SUGAR ran from a specially established
imitation jewellery shop. Gabions, managed by an Austrian Jew, Mr Prior.
Commercially successful, out of its profits MI6 managed to finance the
rumiing of the operation. LORD was run from a smart suburban villa in the
French sector inhabited by John Wyke and his wife. Partly of Dutch origin,
Wyke had been in the Dutch section during the war and was MI6's leading
technical expert. A tunnel was dug from the cellar by British Post Office
workers disguised as Royal Engineers, while a detachment of Royal Military
Police undertook guard duties. The Dictaphone cylinders containing the inter-
ceptions were collected each day by a laundry van - a favoured cover for
British Intelligence operations. An early operation whereby an MI6 officer
would collect the tapes from a schoolgirl strolling in Schoenbrum Park appar-
ently ended in near-disaster when the officer was mistakenly arrested on
suspicion of child molestation.^^
Conflictproduced a mountain of material which needed to be processed.
Eventually, it became too much for the Austrian station and the processing
was transferred to London, where RAF planes arrived three times a week
with special drums from Vienna.
MI6's transcription service had been set up after the war by Wilfred
Dunderdale with a 'big crew' of about a hundred Poles and White Russians.
Highly secretive, Dunderdale insisted on direct access to 'C, avoiding assis-
tant chief Jack Easton in order, as he saw it, 'to protect his operation'. Most
of the crew were old and, although it was not realised at the time, a number
had been recruited by the Russians in Paris before the war. In order to deal
with the enormous output of Conflict, a specially created Y Section was based
at Carlton Gardens under Col. Tom Crimson. A former commanding officer

of the Irish Guards, always immaculately dressed in dark pin-stripe. Crimson

was one of a number of army personnel who joined MI6 after the war to

supplement their pensions. His personal assistant was Pamela Peniakoff,

widow of 'Colonel Popski', the legendaryWhite Russian, wartime leader of
the No. 1 Long-Range Demolition Squadron. A number of members of the
wartime Polish intelligence service joined Y Section, whose administrative
officer, Mr Newell, also recruited the daughters of White Russian emigres as
translators.^^
Once transcribed, the Vienna material was passed on to a section of twelve
army and RAF officers with a good knowledge of Russian. It was then
 AUSTRIA: THE SHOOTING GALLERY 131

collated into a regular bulletin on the Soviet armed forces in Austria for
MI6 and military customers. According to a former MI6 officer: They were
important operations and the customers became very excited about them,
particularly the defence establishment. They really thought they were on to
something.' Among the recipients of the 'take' was a grateful CIA, which,
while unimpressed with the quality of the information, was - initially, at
least - starved of alternative sources.^*'
By the end of 1951, the CIA was co-operating with MI 6 on the Vienna
tapping operation. Carl Nelson of the Office of Communications had
conceived of a similar plan to Lunn's, unaware that MI6 were already tapping
into the Soviet land-lines. Nelson's intervention forced MI6 to let the CIA
into the secret, and he helped install a further five taps in and around Vienna.
The original tap at Schwechat, however, proved to be the most valuable
source. According to Harold Caccia, its most important scoop was 'clear proof
that the Soviets had no intention of launching an attack' through the Balkans.
It to have, the CIA confirmed, 'enormous significance for the disposition
was
of American troops during fighting in Korea'.
In 1950 Lunn left Vienna to become head of the Berne station and was
replaced by (Charles) Andrew King. A former member of the Communist
Party, King had been a pre-war member of Dansey's Z-network and had
served abroad during the war in Switzerland. His homosexuality - normally
regarded as a security risk - was tolerated within the Service and had not
prevented him serving as Controller of Austria. King's deputy in Vienna was
Gordon Alston. A 'dark haired soldier with twinkling eyes and a strong sense
of adventure', Capt. Alston had served as the intelligence officer with the
Middle East Commandos before joining David Stirling's SAS unit in the
original raid on German shipping in Benghazi harbour. In late 1943, Alston
was employed by MI6 as part of Fitzroy Maclean's mission to Yugoslavia
and Tito. Returning to Vienna as head of the visa section was George Berry,
while in Graz and Klagenfurt were the two cover posts of 'civil liaison
officers', occupied respectively by R. Rosslyn Penney and Anthony Goschen.

The Int. Org. liaison officer to the embassy staff was Anthony Cavendish, a
young officer who had been transferred from the much larger German station
after falling out with Donald Prater - another former member of the Commu-
nist Party.^^
The ending of the Vienna tunnel operation was seemingly 'hushed up'
when 'a tram, passing over the tunnel where it went under a road, suddenly
caused the tunnel to collapse and the tram to sink into the resulting deep
depression!'. Its success, with its faint echoes of Bletchley's triumph against
the German wireless traffic during the war, have a direct impact upon
was to
the Service. Crimson's deputy within Y George Blake, recalled that
Section,
there were 'senior officers in MI 6, especially among those who were directly
in control of "Y", who believed that the future of spying lay in the technical
132 PART TWO: THE FRONT LINE

field and that in time the human element would become less and less impor-
tant'. There lay in the future the possibility of 'clean' operations without the
messy and time-consuming necessity of running and controlling agents in
the field.'"
CHAPTER 10

ROCKETS, BOMBS
AND DECEPTION

At the end of the war, MI6 was tasked by the Joint IntelUgence Committee
QIC) with gathering intelligence on the Soviet production of weapons of mass
destruction, and specifically nuclear weapons development. The Service's
internal reorganisation in the autumn of 1945, therefore, laid a particular
emphasis on gathering scientific intelligence. Against such a closed and secur-
ity-conscious country as the Soviet Union, however, this was to prove
immensely difficult, and was to present MI6 with a major headache as for
many years the Service's obsessive secrecy hindered any assessment of its

true capabilities in this area.

During the war years of close co-operation with the United States on the
manufacture of the atom bomb, atomic intelligence had been part of scientific

intelligence, but with the end of hostilities it was decided to treat it as a

separate department in a direct arrangement between the Foreign Office and
the Atomic Energy Directorate in the Ministry of Supply, codenamed Tube
Alloys'. MI6's former scientific officer attached to the Air Ministry, Dr R. V.
Jones, recalled that 'it was also argued that atomic matters were too secret
to be entrusted to the normal scientific intelligence organisation, and that the
Americans would only share their information with us if specially secret
arrangements were made'. Jones thought 'that argument was already hollow'
as the McMahon Atomic Energy Act 'had all but severed exchanges with
Britain in atomic matters'.'
Dr Jones knew that the true explanation for hiving off atomic intelligence
134 PART TWO: THE FRONT LINE

was 'more likely to be found in the personal motives and ambitions of those
w h(.> had jumped on the atomic bandwagon and who wanted to keep every-
bod\ else off. Maybe they thought that they alone were fit enough to be
entrusted with the awesome responsibility of atomic developments or maybe
they had less worthy motives.' His sarcasm was specifically aimed at Eric
Welsh, with whom he had fought bitterly for control of postwar atomic
intelligence - a battle that Jones lost.^
Born in 1897, Lieutenant-Commander Eric Welsh served during the First
World War in Naval Intelligence, where he was provided with a cover story
or 'legend'. In 1919 Welsh was placed with the Norwegian paint company.
International Paints and Compositions. Recruited to MI6 for his knowledge
of Norwegian, Welsh helped establish at the beginning of the Second World
War a joint Anglo-Norwegian Intelligence Service whose primary objective
was to monitor the movements of the German battle fleet around the
Norwegian coast. Continuing his links with Norway - his wife was a niece
of the composer Grieg - he was involved with the Commando raid on the
heavy-water plant in Norway, but had no specialist knowledge of nuclear
matters. In fact, Welsh had once remarked to MI6's Dr Jones: 'Who ever
heard of heavy water?' He boasted of 'being the only regular SIS officer with
a scientific degree', though in fact he had no scientific training. Despite this
handicap, Menzies made Welsh responsible, in May 1942, for atomic energy
and all aspects of scientific and technological intelligence. He handled the
liaison with Tube Alloys, thus relegating Jones to a support role.^
A short, rotund ladies' man, who drank and smoked to excess, Welsh
was said to be 'an excellent operational organiser' and a 'master of dirty
tricks'. While he supported the efforts of Dr Jones, he revealed little about

his covert work and sources, and managed to manoeuvre out of the office
Jones's assistant, Charles Frank, who had quickly rumbled Welsh. In retro-
spect, Jones suspected that Welsh 'was beginning to use me, as he ultimately
used others in more eminent positions, as a puppet'.^
Welsh's efforts were not entirely negative. MI6 was able to keep abreast
of the progress of Anglo-American atomic relations and latest developments,
'since he had persuaded our own authorities to send their signals to America
over our office link, which was especially secure'. Even so, Welsh did this
by bypassing the MI6 office in Washington, the British Security Co-ordination
(BSC), and relying instead on his own representative, (Sir) James Chadwick,
a Nobel physicist from Cambridge who directed the British team working
on the bomb in America. An influential voice on policy-making in the atomic
field, Chadwick kept 'his eye open for British interests in the American

Atomic project'.^

When the Anglo-American Intelligence Committee was formed in Novem-

ber 1943 to deal with atomic matters, Welsh ensured that all copies of docu-
ments went to his representative at Tube Alloys, Michael Perrin, but not to
 ROCKETS, BOMBS AND DECEPTION 135

Jones. A former ICI employee, Perrin regarded the committee as a 'trivial

exercise'. In turn, Welsh, who was generous with the view that no serious
German bomb programme was under way, refused to share any details with
an increasingly frustrated Office of Strategic Services (OSS), which supplied
technicaland scientific intelligence to the 'Manhattan Engineer District' - the
London-based body that co-ordinated information on atomic energy. This
was probably 'nothing more complicated than the bred-in-the-bone jealousy
of intelligence organisations for sources'; but, henceforth, Welsh 'held the
whip hand in all nuclear intelligence matters', which, Jones concluded, was
'disastrous to Scientific Intelligence generally'.^
The end of the war was followed by 'a year of madness' as Scientific
Intelligence was reorganised. After lobbying from the Naval Intelligence
Division (NID), the JIC created a special committee chaired by Professor
Patrick Blackett,which included Dr Jones, the Scientific Adviser to the War
Office, Charles Ellis, and the NID's Edward Gollin. 'Many in senior posts
were exhausted by the strains of war', and Dr Jones found that they were
'not interested in undertaking a fundamental appraisal of Intelligence for the
post-war world'. His wartime experiences had shown 'the desirability of
keeping the collecting and collating sides of the work as intimately together
as possible, and it was this aspect that had given me such an advantage over
all other branches of intelligence, where they had been separate'. On the
basis that MI6 retained control of human (HUMINT) and
signals (SIGINT)
intelligence-gathering, Blackett rejected Jones's argument and recommended
that the three service ministries retain their own separate Scientific and Tech-
nical Intelligence Sections, with an additional Section (R9) inside MI6. Given
that there was to be no overall co-ordinating head, Dr Jones realised it would
inevitably lead to confusion and duplication.^
Blackett's recommendations were approved by the JIC, which accepted
Jones's argument that the new sections should be, at least, housed in one
building. Even this, though, proved to be unsatisfactory, as the near-derelict
leased premises in Bryanston Mews were distant from the services and MI6
headquarters. In one bizarre episode, when the landlord showed some
prospective buyers around, 'they turned out to be members of the Russian
trade delegation and they had quickly to scramble to pull down the MI6
charts on the walls'.^

MI6 liaison was maintained via the Joint Scientific and Technical Intelli-
gence Committee (J STIC), made up of thirteen representatives. Menzies
disliked Blackett'sunwieldy proposals and tried to persuade Dr Jones to stay,
but he had had enough: 'To add to the craziness of the scheme, Blackett
overlooked the fact that Atomic Intelligence was not part of it. This was going
to be done by Welsh and Perrin entirely independently of the main Scientific

The JIC had also acquiesced in 'an irregular

Intelligence organisation.'
arrangement' made with the Americans by Sir John Anderson, who super-
136 PAPvT TWO: THF FRONT LINE

vised the Tube Alloys Directorate, whereby another authority, 'the Anglo-
American Combined Tube Alloys Intelligence Organisation', would operate
in parallel with the JSTIC with Welsh's representative as its head. Disliking

the new arrangements, and openly unsympathetic to the new socialist govern-
ment, Jones returned to Aberdeen in the autumn of 1946 to take up the post
of chair of natural philosophy.

During the summer of 1945 the chiefs of staff completed a detailed report
on Soviet capabilities which 'emphasised the radical scientific and technical
de\'elopments that had recently taken place in the field of "weapons of mass
destruction" and in associated methods of strategic delivery, particularly the
guided rocket'. In comparison with Soviet strategic offensive and defensive
capabilities, everything else was considered of lesser importance. The chiefs
and the JIC made acquisition of technical intelligence from Germany on these
areas a top priority.*^

The had wanted and assumed continued close co-operation with

chiefs
It was a naive belief which displayed
the United States in the scientific field.
a lack of foresight about the real power of the United States and the shape
of the postwar world, where Britain would be very much the junior partner
or even rival in intelligence affairs. It was true that Air Marshal Sir John
Slessor had advocated on 16 June that if co-operation 'proves impractical -
and for commercial reasons the Americans make it so, though I believe we
have both of us more to gain commercially from co-operation than from
competition - then our secret scientific intelligence organisation should be
extended to cover the United States'. He was, however, embarrassingly wide
of the mark when he added that the 'Americans are insecure people and I
do not believe we should have any serious difficulty in finding out all they
are doing if we are prepared to spend the money to do so. Conversely their
secret intelligence is amateur to a degree and I do not think we should have
much to fear from them.'^°
The first evidence that American capabilities had been underestimated
came with the collapse of the Third Reich, when British Military Intelligence
engaged in a systematic operation to locate scientists and related personnel
who had used their skills for the Nazi cause. In a forerunner of similar
programmes to recruit Nazi intelligence officers and other collaborators, a
specialised team concentrated on the capture of German laboratories, indus-
trial patents and similar useful hardware. Britain and the United States jointly

created a Combined Intelligence Priorities [later Objectives] Sub-Committee

(CIOS) to co-ordinate efforts to seize particularly valuable targets. Delegated
to co-ordinate the operation, the JIC chair, Victor Cavendish-Bentinck, did
not, however, 'possess the experience to understand or assemble technical
details of weapons design and manufacture', being more used to supervising

the gathering of pure intelligence.^^

 ROCKETS, BOMBS AND DECEPTION 137

Raids on behalf of CIOS were carried out by subordinate teams such as

the 'Sugar Force' in Italy and the T-Force in France, Holland and Germany.
These units had only minimal armed strength, but they travelled with accom-
plished linguists. Western scientists and police specialists, which permitted
them rapidly to identify and capture knowledgeable experts and technologic-
ally useful materials. Initially, the Americans were outclassed by the
professionalism of their British counterparts, but this was, as Tom Bower points
out, 'deceptive'. The British had no executive powers and saw themselves as
largely providers of information to the Supreme Headquarters Allied Europe
Forces (SHAEF). Britain's attempts at plunder were, in fact, either too gentle-
manly or else totally undisciplined. The personal assistant to Rear Admiral John
Godfrey, Director of Naval Intelligence in Room 39 at the Admiralty, Ian Flem-
ing, had created a naval team, the 30 Assault Unit, with the express purpose
of locating technical intelligence, such as details of the latest submarines and
torpedoes, but the unit ended up employed as 'armed and expert looters'. The
T-Forces were no more effective, and British efforts were soon overwhelmed
by the resources available to the much more aggressive Americans.^^
Out of military liaison units which, with the Americans and Russians,
were entitled to venture into each other's zone of occupation, grew the Field
Information Agency (Technical) (FIAT) groups. One of the British subgroups,
the Enemy Personnel Exploitation Section, specialised in targeting German
scientists with particular reference to Nazi Germany's rocket programme.
In the three-way battle with the United States and the Soviet Union to
secure German rocket secrets, Britain - against whom over a thousand rockets
had been fired - had a distinct advantage in that 'British Intelligence knew
more about the V-2 and the men who had developed the world's first and
only long-range rocket than either the Americans or the Soviets'. As under-
secretary in the Ministry of Supply and chair of the Flying Bomb Counter-
Measures 'Crossbow' Committee, Duncan Sandys - Winston Churchill's
son-in-law and commanding officer of the Royal Artillery's first Z anti-rocket
battery - had overseen the collation of all intelligence gathered by MI6 on
Germany's rocket operations. Although this was a military failure, in that it
appeared far too late to affect the outcome of the war, technical experts knew
that the V-2 was a weapon of the future and urged the intelligence agencies
to make the tracking down of Germany's rocket specialists and their technical
documents a priority.
Almost inevitably, Britain came second to the Americans in the race -
known as Operation OVERCAST - to garner the rocket secrets. This was
primarily because British rocket experts simply handed over to US intelli-

gence officers nearly 90 per cent of their target intelligence and received
little in return. This included all the information they had gathered on the
manufacture and launch site at Peenemunde during the secret weapon inves-
tigation, a remarkably detailed Target Information Sheet, complete with aerial
138 PAPvT TWO: THE FPvONT LINE

photographs pinpointing the last Nordhausen, as well as the names

V-2 site at

of ke\' personnel. Also handed over was MI6's major coup - the Osenberg
List. Detailing the names and responsibilities of senior German rocket person-

nel, which analysts had cross-referenced against captured SS files, the list
had been discovered stuffed down a toilet at Bonn University.^^
Armed with this priceless intelligence haul, American troops and technical
specialists reached Nordhausen first and, in late May, despite an agreement
that ensured that all captured war material was to be equally shared, trans-
ported fourteen tons of documents into the American Zone in order to deprive
The haul was then sent to Camp Ritchie, Maryland.
the British of the booty.
one hundred V-2s were covertly transported to
In addition, in early June,
the Antwerp docks, where British Intelligence officers could only stand by
and watch as they were shipped off to the United States.
On 13 October 1945, 21 Army Group's Field Marshal Montgomery sent
a top-secret message to the secretary of the Advisory Committee on Atomic
Germany a
Energy, revealing that in the course of the Allied advance into
special missionknown as ALOS was 'sent to carry out an investigation into
the progress made by the Germans into the development of nuclear energy'.
General Groves's ALOS mission included an MI6 field team headed by Eric
Welsh, who was determined to retain as much as possible when it came to
sharing the prospective nuclear information from Germany.^^
Leading the MI 6 mission to obtain German nuclear intelligence was Sir

Charles Hambro. 'Enormously tall and athletic, with broad shoulders, broad
eye, and a broad smile', and from a distinguished line of Norwegian bankers
from Denmark, Hambro was 'one of the most respected men in the City'. In
the same house at Eton with Gladwyn Jebb, of the Foreign Office's Russia
Committee and former adviser to SOE, and Stewart Menzies, Hambro knew
his way around the secret world. Besides being head of SOE, he had also been
in charge of its Scandinavian section, where he worked in collaboration with
Welsh. When Hambro left SOE in 1944, he went to Washington as head of
mission of the innocuous-sounding Combined Raw Materials Board, which
had a secret role in allocating scarce and vital uranium ores. He also sat on the
Combined Development Trust - aka the 'Insecticide Committee' - which had
been set up in June by Britain and the United States in order to control world
supplies of weapons-grade uranium. Code-named the 'Murray Hill Project',
it aimed to prevent the Soviet Union from acquiring ore for its own project.^'

In April 1945, Hambro and his assistant David Gattiker were hot on the
trail of the uranium ore that the Germans had seized from Union Miniere in

Belgium at the beginning of the war. It had been tracked by the Americans to
a German firm, near Stassfurt, deep inside the Russian Zone. In a clandestine
operation, over a thousand tons of ore - the bulk of all the available uranium

supplies in Europe - was eventually recovered and shipped to Britain. In

addition, Britain and representatives of the Czech government-in-exile had
 ROCKETS, BOMBS AND DECEPTION 139

held talks on plans to mine ore in Czechoslovakia. Unfortunately, the Czech

chief of intelligence. Colonel F. Muravitz, had passed on to Soviet agents the
minutes of these talks, which concluded with British interest in shipping
processed ore from the Sudeten Mountains. It was the Soviet Union, therefore,
which signed a secret agreement with the Czech President, Edvard Benes, to
exploit the uranium mines at Jachymov, which had been the world's main
source of the ore in the early part of the century.
On 22 April 1945, along with an ad hoc American T-Force, Hambro, Perrin,
Welsh, Dr Jones and the GC&CS
(Government Code and Cipher School)
Ultra specialist Frederick Norman descended on Horb, where Germany's
principal nuclear scientists, research laboratories and their only nuclear pile
were located. Dr Jones saw this as a 'heaven sent opportunity for Britain
to get back into the atomic intelligence game'. Simultaneously, German's
remaining stock of heavy water was recovered. Six days later, in Rheims,
Hambro negotiated a deal with the Americans, who had no legal jurisdiction
over the matter, for the captured leading German atomic scientists to be
detained for up to six months 'at His Majesty's pleasure'.^''

Hambro and Welsh selected the top German experts for debriefing either
at a special centre at Gottingen or at RAF Tempsford, a former SOE launching
site for resistance teams destined for France. As part of the operation, ten
physicist members German 'Uranium Club' were brought back to
of the
Britain for interrogation. They were remanded into the custody of Welsh at
Farm Hall, a Georgian country house near Cambridge, which had been SOE
Special Training School Number 61. Not only had it been a staging post for
agents going out, it had also served as an interrogation centre for returning
agents and their captives. Dr Jones had subsequently persuaded Menzies to
turn it over to MI6. In an operation code-named EPSILON, Welsh had the
place completely wired with microphones in the bedrooms, dining room and
library, which monitored the conversations of the scientists. Weekly resumes
of the transcripts were circulated to Perrin, Dr Jones and his assistant, Charles
Frank, offering an unparalleled source of information about Germany's
nuclear effort. During 1945, dozens of German scientists, including a number
who had initially been handed over by the Soviets, arrived at Tempsford in
total secrecy for 'indefinite interrogation' to determine whether they should

undergo further unspecified 'special treatment'.^"

The British were also looking to acquire technical information and documents,
and an overt British Enemy Publications Committee was set up in 1945
expressly to import the huge cache of German classified scientific information.
It failed to function, however, because it had still not managed to set an

appropriate exchange rate for the trade in journals. In an attempt to fill the
vacuum, MI6 set up its own networks and fronts to develop British scientific
publishing.
140 PART TWO: THE FRONT LINE

The first meeting in the Cabinet Office of the

Scientific Advisory Board
took place on 25 November by
John Anderson, supervisor
1946, chaired Sir
of the Tube Alloys Directorate and chair of the newly created United Kingdom
Atomic Energy Committee. The secretary was Professor Robert Hutton, an
authority on specialised metals, while other distinguished scientific advisers
on the board included Sir Wallace Akers, Sir Charles Darwin, Sir Alfred
Egerton, Sir Richard Gregory, Sir Edward Salisbury and later Sir Alexander
Fleming and Edward Appleton. These were largely established figure-
Sir
heads for what was, in fact, an MI6 front, as evidenced by the attendance of
Charles Hambro, who acted as Eric Welsh's representative. One outcome of
the meeting was the forging of a relationship with the old publishing firm
Butterworth.^^
The emissary from the board to Butterworth was Count Vanden Heuvel,
a shadowy MI 6 officer who had been chief of station in Berne during the
war. Dutch by birth, 'the epitome of a diplomat with his imperial whiskers
and black homburg' and known to many as Tanny the fixer', his prime
postwar role was in the recruitment of 'Z' agents - journalists, publishers
and businessmen. One was Butterworth's joint managing director. Major John
Whitlock, a former SOE officer and 'intelligence veteran' with 'a reputation
as a freemason and likeable rogue'. He had been at the board meeting with
fellow-director and SOE officer Hugh Quennell, who enjoyed some prestige
at Butterworth, though others saw him as 'an insufferably arrogant and xeno-

phobic Englishman'. A solicitor in the City, Quennell had acted for Hambros
when the bank purchased a quarter of a million Butterworth shares during
the war.^^
The idea was to develop scientific new company -
publishing through a
Butterworth Scientific Publications - using the expertise of a talented German
exile who had also been at the initial board meeting, Dr Paul Rosebaud. He
was to edit a proposed journal using German scientific papers and the reports
of 'correspondents' placed abroad. An Austrian scientist, Dr Rosebaud had
been at the outbreak of war an editor at Springer Verlag, the leading publisher
of scientificbooks and journals in Europe. He knew many top-level scientists
working in the nuclear field throughout Europe and became a particularly
important catch for Eric Welsh, for whom he obtained 'certain technical intelli-
gence', which he passed on at great personal risk. Rosebaud was subsequently
invited to Britain to work and, in November 1945, was smuggled out of Berlin
in military uniform by Welsh. With MI6 support from Welsh, Hambro and
Vanden Heuvel, Rosebaud helped to establish a Springer affiliate in London
with an initial stock of a hoard of books that had been hidden in the Herb-
erstein castle and retrieved by the British. Both 'novices in the world of
science', Quennell and Whitlock leaned on 'the cloak and dagger man',
Vanden Heuvel, was through the MI6 man that they received the
for advice. It

reports from Rosebaud. Though Vanden Heuvel had a 'meagre knowledge of

 ROCKETS, BOMBS AND DECEPTION 141

science', it 'nevertheless elevated him to the status of expert compared to

that possessed by the other laymen present' at the publishers. No doubt it
was Welsh who was really behind the operation.^^
An important player in this MI 6 network was Captain Robert Maxwell,
MC, later publisher of Mirror Newspapers and plunderer of the company
pension fund. In November 1945, Maxwell, a Czechoslovakian emigre who
spoke eight languages, including Russian - a rare skill in the British Army
- was employed in the British Zone in Germany as an interrogation officer
at the Intelligence Corps HQ at Bad Salzuflen, near Iserlohn. He was involved
in interrogating scientists, but whether he knew Welsh is not known.
German
Maxwell met Hugh Quennell, an officer in the Control Commission,
certainly
when he moved to the Press and Publicity Branch of the British Information
Service in Berlin. During 1946, he also came into contact with 'the Kaiser',
Dr Ferdinand Springer, the owner of Springer Verlag, whose fortunes were
then at a low ebb. While still working at the Control Commission, Maxwell
became a director of a firm that later offered to distribute Springer's journals.^^
Butterworth Scientific Publications failed to prosper and in 1948 a joint
company was created with their German partners Springer Verlag - Butter-
worth-Springer. It was incorporated in April 1949 with Butterworth's Quen-
nell and Whitlock as directors, while Maxwell was appointed managing
director, with Dr Paul Rosebaud, on attachment to MI6 and working freelance
for Butterworth, editor of its scientific journals. Rosebaud's reports on visits
to Springer 'tended to reach Quennell via Vanden Heuvel, who got to know
Robert Maxwell through Whitlock'. Unfortunately, the new company was
not a great success and Butterworth, which felt that Springer enjoyed the
most advantages from the deal, decided to withdraw. There followed protrac-
ted negotiations organised by Vanden Heuvel and, in May 1951, Butterworth
agreed to sell its interest to Maxwell for £13,000. Agreeing also to a change
of name to Pergamon Press, Butterworth set aside a considerable debt of
£10,000.''

As his official biographer, Joe was 'more

Haines, acknowledged, this
money than Maxwell possessed at moment, so he borrowed. He first
that
went to Sir Charles Hambro.' Who introduced Maxwell to Hambro varies
with the different accounts. Haines says it was via the Board of Trade (BoT);
Maxwell said it was Whitlock; Betty Maxwell claims it was Vanden Heuvel,
Hambro's business 'fixer'. Whoever it was, the meeting gave rise to a City
legend that Hambro had been so impressed by the forward-looking Maxwell
and sufficiently persuaded of his business acumen that he ordered the chief
cashier to give Maxwell a cheque book with authority to draw cheques up
to a total of £25,000. In fact, the 'legend' was no more than a cover story.
The meeting certainly took place, but the matter of money had already been
fixed by MI6.''
An ad hoc meeting of MI6 officers to discuss scientific publishing took
142 PART TWO: THE FRONT LINE

place at Broadway with Desmond Bristow, recently returned from Spain, an

R5 officer, Tim Milne, a wartime member of the Inshore Patrol Flotilla and
Control Commission officer in Germany, Stephen Moir MacKenzie, Gerald
Cruickshank and Vanden Heuvel. Along with a plan to set up Marshalls
Travel Agency to organise the Service's travel arrangements, the committee
also agreed to advance £25,000 to Maxwell in order to buy the shares for the
new company that was to become Pergamon Press. Maxwell was at the time
being run as an 'agent' by George Young, who appears to have used him
during his time in Vienna for his Czech contacts. Eventually, moving into
the publication of Soviet scientific journals, Pergamon quickly became the
world's leading authority on Soviet bloc publishing. Some of the money
invested certainly came from the 'progressive banker' Charles Hambro, who
was then providing the BoT with financial advice and acting as a benefactor
to MI6 good causes.^^

The Germany required firm policy guidelines on

intelligence agencies in
future acquisition and recruitment operations. In December 1945, the JIC
Secretary, Colonel Haddon, was informed of concerns that the 'few hundred
individuals' who were to be employed in the UK and then returned would
have 'an inside knowledge of our latest service secrets and the lines on which
we are now working'. In considering the security aspects, the JIC concurred
that theGermans would quickly discover Britain's latest scientific and techni-
cal secretsand recommended that they be employed for a maximum of one
year, to 'suck them dry'. Even this proved too much for the conservative
Home Office and MI5, which feared a 'Trojan horse' was being created. The
intelligence agencies asked whether 'in the event of another emergency' they
ought to be 'prevented from returning to Germany? '^^
Similarly, the JIC was particularly agitated by information that the
Russians were attempting to recruit large numbers of scientists and tech-
nicians. Paul Rosebaud informed MI6 that a number of the leading scientists
had decided 'to collaborate as closely as possible with Russia especially
. . .

those who have some knowledge in secret weapons'.^'*

By the summer of 1946, MI6 estimated that there were 12,000 skilled
scientists and technicians available in the western zones of which 2,800 were
regarded as 'eminent'. With reliable reports that newly opened Soviet research
institutes were recruiting Germans, MI6 warned that 'the result of this intake
of Germans will be very greatly to speed up Russia's industrialisation plans,
and to contribute substantially to Russian war potential'. MI6's proposed
solution was drastic. One thousand scientists in the British Zone should be
'quarantined' for up to two years and 'rehabilitated' by compulsory training
for other occupations. Turning this down as unworkable, intelligence officers
in the Control Commission suggested that four hundred should be 'removed
as soon as possible from Germany, whether they are willing to go or not'.'^^
 ROCKETS, BOMBS AND DECEPTION 143

Alarmed by the MI6 reports, the deputy chiefs of staff were also concerned
that Britain was suffering 'an acute shortage of scientists and technicians in
all fields'. They recommended that more German scientists be brought into

Britain in a more efficient manner. In an effort to deny their talents to the

Soviets, a list of targeted scientists employed in aviation and missile design
- most of whom had already been working for more than a year for the
British in Germany - was compiled by British Intelligence. The chiefs were
also worried by reports from Sweden of Soviet rocket tests in the Baltic. In
response, MI6 teams of exile agents were sent into the Soviet orbit tasked to
look for evidence of Russian atomic energy and rocket developments. The
rocket reports, however, turned out to be false, and Dr R. V. Jones was able
to show that the alleged tests were, in fact, meteorites.^^
MI6 officers in Germany were also tasked with recruiting scientists from
the Russian Zone. They were convinced that 'there is an opportunity now to
obtain high-grade intelligence from these men which will enable us to build
up an almost complete picture of Russian scientific and technical activities
in Germany and make it possible to forecast more accurately than we can at
present the progress of Russian development of weapons during future
years'. It was a naive conviction, but during December 1946, as part of the
effort to deny the Russians certain scientists who were listed 'on account
of their scientific or technical eminence in certain warlike subjects', British
Intelligence launched the highly secret Operation MATCHBOX, which
planned the escape of German scientists from the Soviet Zone. The Enemy
Personnel Exploitation Section of FIAT was responsible for targeting men
who had worked on engines for submarines - a subject that particularly
interested the British - and research chemists for IG Farben.^^
Although the War Office's MI 10 had made assessments that Germany -
reliant on World War formulae - had produced no new gases, chemical
First
warfare investigators, headed by Commander A. K. Mills of the Ministry of
Aircraft Production, discovered at the I. G. Farben complex the development
of lethal new strains of nerve gases. A key figure was the company's chief
chemist, Walter Reppe, who was subsequently found guilty at Nuremberg.
US Army officers were able to arrange his temporary release to work on
reports for the Army Chemical Corps, but American plans to send him to
the United States fell through when the British stepped in and transported
him to England. The British also captured General Walter Hirsch, head of
Wa Pruf 9, the Wehrmacht's main chemical warfare section, and Rudolph
Ulm at a chemical warfare experimental station at Spandau.
Besides using German research to further British efforts, the investigators
were also looking for clues to Soviet capabilities in the chemical and biological
warfare field. Sources about Soviet developments were limited to speculation
based on the evidence of refugees and captured German and Japanese intelli-

gence assessments which suggested that the Soviets had begun research in
144 PART TWO: THE FRONT LINE

the early thirties. The interrogation of German chemist Professor Richard

Kiihn revealed that all documents relating to a new nerve gas. Soman, had

been buried in a disused mine shaft, but Kuhn understood that the documents
had been retrieved by the Soviets and taken to the Karpov Institute in
Moscow. By 1946 MI6 believed that the Russians had an entire reassembled
factory on the banks of the Volga devoted to new agents. Intelligence was,
however, inadequate in all areas, and MI6 and other agencies were unable
to check out the reports from German files. In the end, much of the speculation
was based on clues picked up from reading Soviet scientific literature, and
this lack of intelligence led to alarmist reports about Soviet capabilities and

willingness to use biological and gas warfare in any future conflict.^^

The Matchbox 'evacuations' were run by 'one of the various intelligence
agencies in Berlin' which operated an 'underground railway' to a secret
address in the British Zone 'to which a candidate should proceed under his
own arrangements'. The agency also sought to gain 'intelligence coverage of
Russian sponsored research and developments in the Soviet zone and, if
possible, in Russia itself. Messages were sent by agents of exile groups to
target groups deep inside the Soviet Zone. 'Candidates' then made their way
to a 'transit hotel' at Bad Hermannsborn where 'special arrangements' were
made for denazification.^^
'Intelligence exploitation' of those that managed to escape was carried
out by 'intelligence agencies in Berlin' or following 'evacuation to the UK'
where, by mid-January 1947, forty Germans were 'in residence' for interroga-
tion. In March, British Intelligence began dumping German scientists on
Commonwealth countries, including Canada and Australia. Twenty scientists
were sent to Canada, including four wartime I. G. Farben chemists. A top-
secret message in early April from Brigadier 'Tubby' Lethbridge, head of the
Control Commission Intelligence Division, to the commander-in-chief noted
that forty-eight of the scientists on the British lists of likely 'evacuees' were
working on V-2 rockets, jet engines and radar. He added that their disappear-
ance would thus 'have a serious effect on Russian research'.
Western intelligence agencies continued to systematically monitor and
assess the worth of individual scientists in Germany with the most important
secretly registered on an 'Objectives List' by the Anglo-American Combined
Allocations Board. At the same time, British Intelligence not only monitored
their movements but also scrutinised all applications for foreign travel. A
'watch list' was compiled of those employed in the Soviet Zone, noting the

names of those who might be attracted by a western offer. Seeking any

route to deny their services to the Russians, the British offered the Germans
attractive terms of employment in Commonwealth countries. On British
advice, as part of Operation PAPERCLIP, Washington reversed its previous
policy and began encouraging emigration to South America and to the
Commonwealth as an effective means of denying scientific expertise to the
 ROCKETS. BOMBS AND DECEPTION 145

communists. More German were secretly resettled in North

scientists

America, but Canadian and Royal Canadian Mounted Police security

officials

officers 'thoroughly distrusted background checks conducted by the CIA and

British Intelligence' as a number of these men could be classed as Nazi war
criminals.^^
BACKFIRE was the code-namefor a British project for the complete
technical analysis of those V-2s thatremained in British hands. At a former
German Navy artillery range near Cuxhaven, British rocket experts interro-
gated key Peenemunde personnel who helped in the test launch of V-2s into
the North Sea. British Intelligence made an intensive effort to persuade the
German V-2 experts not to sign with the Americans and instead accept
employment in Britain. In the end, however, none accepted the offer, but a
few were brought to London for further interrogation, including the main
target, Werner von Braun. He 'thought the British might be unfriendly to
me, but I found I was wrong'. There followed a 'friendly shop talk' with Sir
Alwyn Crow, the man in charge of developing Britain's top-secret missile
programme at the Rocket Propulsion Research Establishment at Westcott,
near Aylesbury.^^
'The entire discussions', recalled Major Robert Staver, who ran the London
end of the US scientific intelligence team, 'centred on how the British might
form a research group of the German scientists; would not these men who
were planning to leave for the United States reconsider as the British might
have more to offer them; if not, who would be left behind who would be
important for such research; and would it not be possible to have the group
work in a joint British-American project possibly in Canada?' The senior
scientists would not be moved: 'We despise the French, we are mortally
afraid of the Soviets, we do not believe that the British can afford us, so that
leaves the Americans.' The discussions went on at length but, typically, there
were no technical interrogations. The British were able, however, 'partly by
chicanery, and partly through clever staff work ... to gain possession of
many of the most important German engineers who they used on Backfire'.
The retention of the engineers turned out to be a secondary success; the
best rocket scientists went to Russia and America. Nevertheless, the British did
manage to gather together nearly a thousand Germans at the isolated area off
the Dutch coast where hundreds of Wehrmacht PoWs were employed as
construction crews. Units of officers had spent months scouring France and
Germany for 'enough V-2 parts to reassemble rockets' but they were discovered
to be 'barely operational'. Inevitably, Backfire was something of a damp squib
and, by September, 'only three rockets had been launched'. Britain had effec-
tively lost the missile race to the Americans and to the Soviets."*^

Menzies appointed
In an attempt to regain the initiative, in early 1948 Stewart
a three-man 'Defectors Committee' to collate quarterly reports on attempts
146 PART TWO: THE FRONT LINE

to recruit Russians. Chaired by Assistant Chief Jack Easton, the other two were
Robin Brook, a former senior SOE officer who had been personal assistant to
Gladwyn Jebb and in charge of the organisation of resistance in France,
and an officer formally attached to the War Office, James Fulton, a wartime
intelligence officer attached to 21 Army Group and subsequently seconded
to the Political Division of the Control Commission in Germany. Easton told
Tom Bower that the results 'were not impressive'.
MI6's first defector was the head of the Soviet Reparations Mission in
Bremen, Colonel J. D. Tasoev, who fled to the West in early May 1948. Much
to MI6's enduring embarrassment, Tasoev changed his mind almost as soon
as he landed in London. While he was kept in detention in Hammersmith
police station, senior MI6
pondered what to do next. Legend has it
officers
that Harold Perkins suggested drugging and dumping the Soviet into the
North Sea from an aeroplane. Wisely, Menzies vetoed Perkins's solution and
Tasoev was accompanied back safely to the Soviets in Berlin, but not before
sparking off a minor diplomatic incident and a few awkward questions in
Parliament.^^
The Service had much greater success with its second major catch. Colonel
Commission on missile devel-
Grigori Tokaty-Tokaev, chair of the Soviet State
opment, where he had had unique access to information on Soviet policy
discussions in an area about which the western intelligence agencies were
particularly lacking. He told MI6 about the initiation of a major programme
in April 1947, backed up by a substantial cadre of Soviet scientists with
lengthy experience in missile research.^^
Tokaty-Tokaev had also been a lecturer in jet engine technology and
rocket propulsion at the Zhukovsky Air Force Academy in Moscow, and had
enjoyed a long career at the elite Institute of Engineers and Geodesies. At
the end of the war, he had been transferred on the orders of Stalin to Berlin
with instructions to help in the kidnapping of German scientists who might
assist the Soviet missile research programme. As the senior scientific adviser
to the Russian commandant in Berlin, General Ivan Serov, Tokaty-Tokaev
was ordered to contact Professor Kurt Tank, Focke-Wulf's chief aircraft

designer, and Dr Eugen Sanger, a jet propulsion expert, who, if they refused
to to the East, were to be kidnapped. 'Nobody will interfere
go voluntarily
with you,' Serov told him. 'But remember. Comrade Stalin relies on you
to produce results.' Tokaty-Tokaev, however, was unable to recruit either
specialist, which displeased the Soviet dictator, who declared that the number

of captured German specialists of the highest calibre was 'a very poor sum
total . The British got Busemann, and perhaps Tank, and now the French
. .

have got Dr Sanger. '^^

Professor Tank, who had been displeased at his reception by the British
in London, had been warned off by British Intelligence after he made prep-
arations in November 1946 with twenty other aircraft designers to contact
 ROCKETS, BOMBS AND DECEPTION 147

the Russians. Instead Tank, 'with microfilm of his fighter-plane designs

hidden safely in his trousers', and carrying false documents, used a ratline
through Denmark for Argentina. The British did manage to recruit before
the Russians another Focke-Wulf jet-fighter designer, Hans Multhopp, a
former Nazi Party member who worked until 1950 with other German
aviation experts at Farnborough. They could not prevent, however, another
Nazi Party member, supersonics engineer Otto Golling, who had been work-
ing in London, from venturing in 1947 into the Soviet Zone in Austria, where
he sought residence.*^
When Serov ordered further kidnap operations, Tokaty-Tokaev 'under-
went a During October 1946, Soviet arrest squads had
crisis of conscience'.

and arrested numerous scientists and technicians

systematically searched for
during Operation OS V AKIN. Trains had taken the unwilling to Moscow,
but a similar operation in the following January 'fizzled out' as many of those
on the wanted list had already fled to the West. Tokaty-Tokaev was opposed
to the kidnap operations and had considered defecting to the Americans, but
his plans went awry when he became the target of emigres, probably from
the anti-Soviet National Labour Council (NTS), who were kidnapping Soviets
on behalf of US Intelligence: 'I was hunted by emigre organisations dating
from the revolution; they asked me to put them in touch with underground
movements in the USSR; they also tried to persuade me to desert to the
West.' Tokaty-Tokeav had joined various underground dissident nationalist
groups in the thirties, in reaction against Stalin's policies, and had maintained
contacts with opposition figures from his native Ossetian people in the
Caucasus.'*^
The emigres did attempt a kidnap but Tokaty-Tokeav managed to escape.
(MGB) would arrest
Fearful, though, that the Soviet Ministry of State Security
him for contacts with the organisation, he decided, in the late summer of
1948, to defect to the British. 'He was received in Berlin by the local SIS
station and flown straight to London, where he was debriefed at the Special
Liaison Centre, at Section V's old offices in Ryder Street', headed by
Commander Wilfred Dunderdale. One function of this 'highly-secret' sub-
office, which was staffed mainly by elderly emigres, was to process defectors.
A major catch for MI6, Tokaty-Tokaev was also 'a godsend' and a test case for
the handling of defectors by the Foreign Office's newly created propaganda
organisation, the Information Research Department (IRD). He was that rare
figure - 'a genuine ideological defector'.*^
After a long debriefing on the state of Soviet missile development, Tokaty-
Tokaev was passed on to the IRD, which had been instructed by Foreign
Secretary Ernest Bevin to arrange the publication of a pamphlet based on his
'Notes on Bolshevism - Communism'. It proved, however, to be 'a less than
happy experience'. The author caused considerable confusion by disclosing
his existence before the pamphlet was ready. In September, the IRD circulated
148 PART TWO: THE FRONT LINE

Digest #5, detailing the circumstances of his break with the Soviet regime.
He described how the Soviet Union, which he said was preparing for a third
world war, had degenerated into a Nazi-style dictatorship, run by slave
labour. This hard-hitting counter-attack was provided to information officers
in British embassies, the BBC and selected journalists. On 7 September, a
London press conference to announce Tokaty-Tokaev's defection undid much
of the preparation when it turned into a near-brawl between British officials

and Russian journalists.^^

Although the IRD was supposed to rein in Tokaty-Tokaev, in January
1949 a series of articles by the defector appeared in the Sunday Express 'which
were so virulently anti-Communist that their effect was questionable'. Jebb
of the Russia Committee was not impressed, and Christopher Mayhew
thought them 'too highly contrived or unoriginal to carry conviction'. This
did not, however, prevent the IRD from publishing later in the year his views
on 'Soviet warmongering' in a pamphlet entitled 'Inside the Kremlin'.
Tokaty-Tokaev went on to collaborate with one of his debriefers to write
three books, Stalin Means War and Comrade
(1951), Betrayal of an Ideal (1954)
X (1956), but it was his information on missile development which proved
to be the most useful. Quite what Tokaty-Tokaev told MI6 remains a matter
of conjecture. He later told Nicholas Daniloff that he 'did not pass on what
were regarded by the Soviets as secrets. General discussions, yes, but not
details.' In the sixties, he was appointed head of the Department of Aeronaut-

ics and Space Technology at the City University, London.^^

Tokaty-Tokaev proved to be the last major defector for many years. By

1950 the flow to the British had dribbled to only cooks, mechanics and low-
ranking soldiers whose sole value was as 'talent spotters' - 'identifying those
Russians and others whose defection would be valuable'. There was little

further success in this area. While eighty-three Russians had come into the
hands of British Intelligence during 1948, the following year the figure had
dropped to twenty-eight, and by 1950 was down to a miserly seventeen. An
analysis of the files on the defectors undertaken in the spring of 1951, by an
officer 'who had been employed for the last five years on the interrogation
of Soviet defectors', made depressing reading and called into question the
extent of the 'valuable intelligence' gathered. The majority had belonged to
lowly ranks in the Red Army and had fled to the West 'because of their
association with German women'. Ideological defectors accounted for only
3 per cent of the total. For young, ambitious MI6 officers serving in Germany,
"^"^

such as John Taylor, 'the failure to attract defectors was heartbreaking'.

While the flow of defectors had virtually dried up, a steady stream of
German PoWs released by the Soviets made the long journey home. During
the spring of 1949, the Joint Intelligence Bureau (JIB) employed eight German
linguists at Bad Driburg, a small Westphalian spa town, and later at Herford,
in a special unit interrogating the 'Dragon Returnees'. Fed and comfortably
 ROCKETS, BOMBS AND DECEPTION 149

lodged, they were questioned on what they might have learned of intelligence
value to the Allies during their captivity. The range of JIB interests was
wide, covering economic, industrial and technical intelligence. One of the
interrogators, Denis Hills, was 'asked to concentrate on the work of German
engineers who had been involved in Soviet rocket development, based on
the V-2, notably in Krassnogorsk'. A team of German specialists and draughts-
men worked with the interrogators - 'without them, the quality and detail
of our reports would have been immeasurably poorer'. Working under the
JIB supervisor, Dr Stern, Hills's own German assistant was Dr Plessner, an
expert on jet propulsion from Peenemunde.^°
A year later, even the Dragon Returnees as a source of intelligence had
become a mere trickle.More alarmingly, the exercise turned out to have been
a complete waste of time and effort. When, in the mid-fifties, MIS's Peter
Wright reviewed the files at the Defence Scientific Intelligence Unit in North-
umberland Avenue, he discovered that no one at MI 6 had bothered to process
the material, which was 'stacked up in dozens and dozens of dusty volumes'.
Based on the limited intelligence at their disposal, the Allies assessed
Soviet capabilities in the rocket field as being poor, but Werner von Braun
warned that with the facilities available, the Russians would be able to
construct a good team of experts. While the cream of the German rocket team
had been recruited by the United States, and a number of key personnel had
been denied to the Russians, the Soviet Union did have possession of the
wartime production plant at Nordhausen which was still in reasonable
condition. They had also managed to entrap into their employ a 'brilliant
engineer', Helmut Grottrup, who headed the Soviet Institut Rabe - the cover
name for the resumption of the Rocket Enterprise.
The fact was that the prediction of capabilities and intentions in the Soviet
rocket programme was full of uncertainty and continued to be so into the
late fifties, when spy aircraft and later satellites made a massive advance in

surveillance capabilities. MI6 'had little raw data to go on and based assump-
tions on the rate and state of Britain's own missile development', and the
intelligence which Col. Tokaty-Tokaev had been able to supply. A good deal
of the economic intelligence on which the development of weapons was
based came from overt sources, while much was still provided 'by what the
Germans had accumulated in terms of maps, aerial photographs and PoW
interrogations'. The detailed reports on destination, equipment and inven-
tories removed from locations such as Peenemunde at the end of the war
were added to the reports of interviews with 'repatriated Germans who had
worked on the Soviet missile programme'. One difficulty with these sources,
Peter Hofmann found, was that 'their reports were often disparate and they
were usually repatriated before production of any missiles began'. The large
number of such reports did, however, provide 'a foundation for other sources
to build on, including information on various rocket production and develop-
150 PART TWO: THE FPxONT LINE

ment installations and the test stand at Kaputsin Yar', on the east bank of
the Volga.--
The limited state of intelligence-gathering remained the same when, in
September 1952, MI6 and the CIA held a major joint conference on 'Soviet
Guided Missile Intelligence'. What was available was acknowledged as being
'based on the intelligence of early Soviet exploitation in Germany', most of
which had come from Tokaty-Tokaev. The colonel informed the conference
that: 'The immediate aim of the Soviets is to get a selection of reasonably

effective guided missiles into service as soon as possible. They are prepared
to accept relatively unsatisfactory weapons available today rather than wait
several years for greatly improved designs. They will go for modifications
which show some improvements and can be achieved quickly.' Hofmann
notes that during the joint conference, as had been the case over the previous
seven years, 'certain performance characteristics are assumed; given these
characteristics, projections of various stages in the programme are made given
whatever other intelligence information is available'.

Throughout 1947, the JIC had repeatedly made the assertion that 'our intelli-
gence about Soviet development of atomic weapons is very scanty'. An April
1948 JIC report, 'Sigint Intelligence Requirements', while obviously directed
towards signals intelligence-gathering, had a wider focus which was also
applicable to MI6. The JIC's 'Priority 1' targets, whose requirements reflected
the JIC's 'future hopes rather than current capabilities', were:

1 Development in the Soviet Union of atomic, biological and chemical

methods of warfare (together with associated raw materials).
2 Development in the Soviet Union of scientific principles and inventions
leading to new weapons, equipment or methods of warfare.
3 Strategic and tactical doctrines, state of training, armament and aircraft
of:-

a) Soviet long-range bomber force.

b) Soviet metropolitan fighter defence force.
4 Development in the Soviet Union of guided weapons.^^

In the July 1948 report, 'Soviet Intentions, Interests and Capabilities', concern-
ing atomic weapons, the JIC argued that: 'Existing estimates of the date
when the Russians began their programme and their ability to overcome the
technological difficulties involved suggest that they may possibly produce
their first bomb by January 1951 and that their stockpile of bombs in
atomic
January 1953 may be of the order of 6 to 22.' This was a worst-case scenario
and constituted 'the maximum possible based on the assumption that the
Russian effort will progress as rapidly as the American and British projects
had done'. The JIC officials did not believe that it would be capable of doing
so. The Soviet Union, however, would take the same length of time as the
 ROCKETS, BOMBS AND DECEPTION 151

United States to build the atomic bomb; four years since the go-ahead was
given for the all-out project in August 1945. This was a major intelligence
failure and reflected MI6's inability to penetrate the Soviet government and
administration at any level. In contrast, by the beginning of 1945, Soviet
Intelligence 'had a clear general picture of the Manhattan project'. Klaus
Fuchs had handed over all the reports prepared in the New York office of

the British Diffusion Mission, while Alan Nunn May had even presented the
Soviet embassy Ottawa with microscopic amounts of uranium-235. The
in
British never achieved such levels of success, and the JIC had to rely for its
assessments on meagre scraps of intelligence.^^
The JIC report acknowledged that

the manufacture of atomic weapons demands not only a high

standard of scientific knowledge and the application on a very
large scale of difficult industrial techniques, but also the use of
large quantities of Uranium. The most reliable present estimate
that can be made of Russian progress indicates that the limiting
factor is their supplies of Uranium. At the present time it is

considered to be most misleading to attempt to forecast how

much Uranium will be available to any Russian project beyond
January 1952 since this depends on two unpredictable factors:
a) the discovery within Russian-controlled territory of new high-
grade deposits, which is believed to be unlikely, and
b) the success the Russians will have in developing a practicable
process for large-scale extraction of the small percentages of
Uranium present in oil-shales, large deposits of which are avail-
able to them.

MI6 intelligence, apparently based on reports

Earlier in 1948, the JIC received
from their agents in the exile groups, that an enormous labour force was
mining uranium ore at Aue in the Soviet Zone in Germany, near the Czech
border. The Anglo-American Tnsecticide Committee' had been unable to stop
the deal between the Czechs and the Soviets on the supply of uranium ore.
The Americans, and almost certainly the British as well, sent agents recruited
from the exiled Yugoslav National Committee, headed by Radovan Popvic,
into Czechoslovakia to obtain information on the mines. Similarly, reports
were received that in Bulgaria high-grade uranium deposits had been
discovered by the Soviets using captured German documents. British and
American Intelligence subsequently recruited agents from the Turkish
minority in Bulgaria to penetrate the mining complex at Bukovo, in the
Rodopi Mountains.^*'
Aware of the intelligence interest, the Soviet MGB used the opportunity
to launch a deception operation, designed to conceal the existence of huge,
newly discovered uranium deposits in the Urals. According to one of the
152 PART TWO: THE FRONT I INE

agents inxohed, Pavel Sudoplatov: 'A game developed in which some of

these Turkish agents were fed with carefully inflated figures of the mines
production.' Based on the Bukovo figure, the intelligence assessment was
that the Soviet Union would not be able to obtain enough uranium to sustain
any atomic project, or at least not until the fifties. In the end, the Soviet Union
was to gain most of its uranium ores from the mines in the Urals and East
Germany, which were to prove more productive than those in Czechoslovakia
and Bulgaria."^^
Whether these penetration operations were co-ordinated with the Ameri-
cans is not clear because nuclear matters were one area of Britain's 'special
relationship' with the United States where a full and frank intelligence
exchange did not exist. During February 1946, the United States had been
rocked by public revelations from the Igor Gouzenko affair in Canada about
the extent of Soviet espionage within the wartime atomic programme. The
result was that Congress passed the McMahon Act, which imposed drastic
restrictions upon the exchange of atomic intelligence, making it an offence
to divulge any information to foreign states, including Britain. As Alec
Danchev notes in his study of the 'Very Special Relationship': 'The British
badly underestimated the McMahon Bill which was very much a pattern in
British atomic diplomacy.' The man chosen to try to break this impasse was
Dr Wilfred Mann, who, in October 1948, was invited by 'the Admiral', Eric
Welsh, to take over as the MI6 Washington representative of the Directorate
of Atomic Energy, liaising with the CIA. Responsibility for collecting intelli-
gence on atomic energy had been transferred in February 1947 from the
'Manhattan Engineer District' to the Central Intelligence Group, as the
Nuclear Energy group within the Scientific Branch of the Office of Reports
and Estimates, and then to the newly created CIA.^^
In the late thirties, Mann had worked with Niels Bohr in Copenhagen.
During the war, he was employed by the Ministry of Supply in the Directorate
of Tube Alloys, but did not take part in any nuclear work, being involved,
instead, in the general area of Scientific Research and Development. From
the end of 1941, he liaised with the Russian trade delegation and from the
spring of 1943 served as a physicist with the British Central Scientific Office
(BCSO), exchanging information with the Americans in Washington, where
Eric Welsh's representative, the leading British scientist James Chadwick, also
had an office. For his contribution to the war effort, Mann received the
Medal of Freedom. After hostilities ceased, the BCSO became the British
Commonwealth Scientific Office, where Mann dealt with classified matters
covering a wide range of scientific issues but, again, not nuclear physics.
During the autumn of 1945, he returned to teaching at Imperial College in
London, and during the following April was offered the post of Principal
Scientific Officer in the new Directorate of Atomic Energy, a branch of the
Ministry of Supply that had taken over the responsibilities of Tube Alloys.
 ROCKETS. BOMBS AND DECEPTION 153

In July 1946, Mann was posted to the National Research Council (NRC) of
the Canadian Atomic Energy Project laboratories, at Chalk River, and, within
a month, became UK representative on the United Nations' Atomic Energy
Commission Scientific and Technical Committee, which considered the
control of atomic energy.^^
Before taking up the liaison post, Mann consulted in London with the
highly secretive 'special group' responsible for atomic intelligence within the
Directorate of Atomic Energy. It was headed by Welsh, who retained his
reputation for deviousness to the extent that he even excluded the Chief
Scientific Adviser in the MoD, Henry Tizard, from his deliberations. In Wash-
ington, Welsh introduced Mann to the local MI6 representative, Peter Dwyer,
'a witty and congenial colleague with a good sense of humour'. An Oxford

graduate from an artistic family, Dwyer had worked for Fox Films and
Movietone News in the thirties before being recruited by MI 6, in 1939, to
work in Paris. Then, after the fall of France and a period as head of station
in Panama, he was posted to Washington as a South American expert for the
British Security Co-ordination (BSC), where he was regarded as 'one of its
better people'. Kim Philby, who took over from Dwyer, soon discovered that
he had 'a great deal more to him than just wit'. A skilled counter-espionage
officer, Dwyer was responsible in 'a brilliant piece of analysis' for identifying

atomic bomb spy Klaus Fuchs, after narrowing the investigation down to
two Dr Rudolf Peierls and Fuchs.^°
scientists,

Dwyer warned Mann that his posting would be difficult as the previous
incumbent, Gordon Baines, had been turfed out of his office in the CIA
headquarters, telling colleagues that such liaison was no longer worthwhile.
The special nuclear energy group in the CIA continued to be completely
fettered by the restrictions of the McMahon Act and members, who took
precautions not to be seen talking to him in public, warned Mann that the
relationship was now cold. Although personal relations remained cordial and
friendly, there was no co-operation on the American side in transferring
information for fear that their own group might be disbanded. He was,
however, able to broker a small intelligence exchange.
number of deciphered Soviet intercepts relating
In possession of a small
to their atomic bomb experiments, Mann, who was known within the British
embassy as 'the atomic bomb', was able to give the 'voraciously eager' Ameri-
cans raw and processed intelligence reports. In return, he received from the
Atomic Energy Commission - the body responsible for all nuclear develop-
ments in the US, both military and civil - non-restricted technical information,
which Mann thought 'only just made the task tenable'. The lack of real
co-operation created substantial difficulties in trying to predict the timescale
for the production of a Soviet bomb, which was MI6's prime concern.^^
On 29 August 1949, to the shock of British Intelligence, the Russians
exploded their atomic bomb. An American WB-29 of the long-range detection
154 PART TWO: THE FRONT LINE

project, 'Snifden', had returned from a 'weather' flight near Kamachatka, in

the SoN'iet far east, to its Pacific Ocean base with evidence of the bomb's

detonation. As a member of a small, secret team, Mann attended the White

House 'war room' where, in a hurried briefing, 'I learned that a radioactive
cloud had been detected and then followed by the US Air Force from the
Pacific, across America and to the eastern shores of the Atlantic'. There had

been, it would appear, considerable deliberation about informing Britain

because of the provisions of the McMahon Act. Although a 'Modus Vivendi'
had been drafted in January 1948 whereby the Americans made concessions
on the release of atomic energy information in return for Britain releasing
more of its uranium stockpile and rescinding its wartime veto on use of the
bomb, leading US officials in the atomic energy field ensured that information
remained restricted.^^
On 5 September, Dick White, the deputy director and head of counter-
espionage at MIS, called Michael Perrin (deputy controller-general of Atomic
Energy, Technical Policy, at the Ministry of Supply) to his office. Perrin,

whose colleagues at Tube Alloys had thought little of his scientific ability
and advice on nuclear policy, was well known in Whitehall and 'moved with
perfect ease in the committee rooms and club dining rooms where so much
of the business of government was done'. He had a reputation for 'efficiency
and discretion, if not great flair', and if someone needed to be consulted
about a delicate matter relating to atomic energy, Perrin was the natural
choice. White handed Perrin a transcript and a FBI report that showed that
a British scientist had leaked information to the Soviet consulate in New York
about the Manhattan Project. Perrin instantly realised that the culprit was
Klaus Fuchs.^^
Such news might have stopped all Anglo-American co-operation, but five

days later there was a cross-Atlantic top-secret teletype discussion with Perrin
and Welsh in the American embassy in London about the 'radioactive cloud'
which was now drifting towards Europe. Menzies and MI6 agreed to
co-operate and quickly dispatched to Washington radioactive fall-out samples
which a RAF Halifax from Aldergrove airbase, near Belfast, had managed
to gather over the Atlantic.^^
On 18 September, Menzies took Perrin to see the Prime Minister at
Chequers to brief him on the latest developments. Using Peter Dwyer's secure
channel to Menzies, President Truman cabled the news that they had 'ninety-
five per cent proof that the Soviets had detonated a nuclear device. On the
23rd, Truman, who remained sceptical to the last that the Soviets had the
enormous capability required to construct a bomb, publicly announced there
was 'evidence that within recent weeks an atomic explosion occurred in the
USSR'.''
The former wartime liaison officer between the American agencies and
the BSC, Ernest Cuneo, left a sensational claim among his personal papers.
 ROCKETS, BOMBS AND DECEPTION 155

He asserted that the former head of the BSC, Sir William Stephenson,
informed him that the Soviet Union would explode its first atomic bomb 'on
or about 27 September 1949'. 'When Sir William gave me this staggering
information on 18 February 1948 - a year and a half in advance of the event
- I asked him how good the source was. He answered: "Triple A, Triple 1".

I how do you know?

asked the question which never should be asked: Exactly
"We have a window," Sir William said. Moles were then called "little
little

windows".' Cuneo claims that he transmitted the information to 'US authori-

ties'. It seems extremely unlikely - no other such evidence has come to light

- and the fact remains that MI6's inability to predict accurately the Soviet
Union's possession of the bomb constituted a major intelligence failure.
had accepted the advice of the JIC that the
Hitherto, the chiefs of staff
Soviets might achieve an atomic capability by the early fifties, probably in
1952. Overnight all the intelligence and military and political assessments by
the military and politicians became redundant. Fears were exacerbated by
the Klaus Fuchs atom bomb spy trial in January 1950, after which the chiefs
concluded that Soviet atomic development was now 'much more advanced
than it was thought to have been'. It had been assumed until that point that
Russia's vast superiority in conventional forces - itself a gross overestimate
and another major intelligence failure - was no longer balanced by America's
sole possession of the nuclear threat. The chiefs 'reflected with discomfort
upon Britain's position now that a nuclear armed adversary might quickly
reach the Atlantic seaboard in a future war'.^^
The failure led to a greater degree of co-operation between Britain and
the United States on atomic intelligence and the restrictions of the McMahon
Act were tentatively loosened during 1951, but fuller disclosures had to await
a revision of atomic agreements in 1958. Mann, though, was involved with
a series of discussions in London on joint efforts to assess Soviet nuclear
production capabilities which led, at the beginning of the year, to MI6 and
the CIA correlating their estimates. Nevertheless he felt that his efforts had
been thwarted by the arrival in Washington, in October 1949, of the new
MI6-CIA liaison officer, Kim Philby: 'My immediate reaction when I learned
later of his defection was to feel that all the work I did during the eighteen
months that we were together had been an almost complete waste of time.'^^
Mann left Washington and returned to Shell Max House
in April 1951
where he represented the Directorate of Atomic Energy at the fortnightly
meetings of the Cabinet Advisory Committee on Atomic Energy, chaired by
Sir Roger Makins. Finding the post of a temporary civil servant 'unfulfilling',

he resigned to take a position with the National Bureau of Standards in

Washington. Perrin also left in the summer, depleting MI6's limited expertise
in the field of atomic intelligence. In Washington, Mann was replaced as
attache by Dr Robert Press, who had joined the Directorate of Atomic Energy
in 1948.''
ISc, PART TWO: THE FRONT LINE

Until his death in 1954, MI6's atomic intelligence-gathering

remained in
the hands of Welsh, who, senior MI6 officers eventually concluded, was 'a
complete charlatan'. For a decade he had been able to hoodwink the different
departments and the Americans over the nature of his 'hush-hush' work.
George Young, who undertook a review of Welsh's work, discovered that
'he did his best to impress the US Atomic Energy Authority (AEA) that his
work for "C" was too delicate to be revealed, while his MI6 colleagues were
told that this applied to his AEA liaison: if need be his confidential exchanges
with the Americans were invoked as a further excuse ... In fact, MI6 intelli-

gence on Soviet nuclear development was practically nil.'^°

CODA: DECEPTION
In parallel to the quest for scientific intelligence were operations based on
'scientific deception'. The vehicle for these activities was the London Control-
ling Section (LCS), a highly secret department in the offices of the War
Cabinet involved in deception planning. Working in wartime on strategic
matters as part of the Joint Planning Staff aim had been to divert
(J PS), its

enemy resources away from planned and to direct them

Allied operations
against imaginary operations devised by LCS officials. This had involved
such famous operations as 'The Man Who Never Was' and 'Monty's Double'.
The C-in-C Middle East, Field Marshal Sir Archibald Wavell, had outlined
the LCS modus operandi in a memorandum - 'Aids to surprise with particu-
lar Reference to Deceiving, Mystifying and Confusing the Enemy on the
battlefield'. The ruses included 'false information or disguise', 'feigned
retreat', 'encouragement of treachery' and 'weakening of the enemy's morale'.
He foresaw the importance of 'signals deception' and the need for intelligence
on the enemy's thinking. Essential to successful deception was secrecy, which
required that participants were not always aware of the motives behind an
operation. This was
a 'separate war' of political and psychological warfare
which meant MI6.^^
for 'professionals',
When, in September 1945, LCS controlling officer Col. John Be van left, it
seemed that the deception agencies had been disbanded. The chiefs of staff,
however, decided to allow the LCS to continue in peacetime on 'a care
maintenance basis', with the 'objective of maintaining a reservoir of the
and knowledge learned during the war'. Bevan's successor.
specialist skills
Col. Ronald Wingate, a former member of SOE and JPS, kept it alive by
holding dinner parties at his club for former members. He ensured that the
mysteries of deception remained secret by getting LCS members 'to swear
never to discuss publicly what it was they had done', since 'we might have
to take on the Russian General Staff '.^^
Situated in Churchill's former war rooms, the postwar LCS worked closely
with the chiefs of staff, MI 6, M 15 and a number of scientific advisers. In 1947,
 ROCKETS, BOMBS AND DECEPTION 157

John Harvey-Jones of Naval Intelligence, who had qualified as a Russian

interpreter from the special course at Downing College, Cambridge, joined
the LCS. He found it 'a pale shadow of past glories', consisting of just 'three
of us', the victim of the 'decentralisation of British deception capabilities'.
Resources were 'parcelled out' to other departments, such as MI6, 'as the

need or opportunity was not an entirely happy experience as

arose'. It

Harvey-Jones discovered that there was no overall or central direction, but

this did not 'preclude endless and bitter inter-service warfare, which seemed

to take precedence over the common goal of resisting the onward march of
Russian influence'. Despite this, he believed that 'the work I was doing was
worthwhile'.
In mid- 1950, another chiefs of staff review of the LCS recommended that
'the technique of deception, suitably modified to present conditions, could
play a useful role in our defence preparations'. It was put on an operational
basis in aCold War context and renamed the Directorate of Forward Plans
(DFP). A and intelligence
centre for the study of operational physical, radio
deception techniques, the Visual Inter-Service Training and Research Estab-
lishment (in 1951 it changed its name to the Joint Concealment Centre), was
set up to work under the overall direction of the DFP. Responsible for stra-
tegic deception, the DFP operated on a worldwide basis and had eight officers
^'^
- five in London, one Middle East and two in Singapore.
in the
Key staff included John Drew, who during the war was employed by the
deception 20 Committee and after in the Cabinet Office. In 1951, he took
charge of intelligence issues and cover plans in the MoD, and had direct access
to MI6 headquarters. Noel Wild had run black propaganda operations for
the Political Warfare Executive and later headed SHAEF's own inter-Allied
deception staff. Engaged postwar in 'unspecified intelligence duties', he was
posted to Greece with the British Military Mission and then to the War Office,
before being seconded to MI6. From 1950, Wild advised the chiefs of staff
on subversion and counter-insurgency. He believed that 'Soviet activities and
finance were behind many of the troubles at home and abroad' and that
'many contemporary troubles were the work of communist agitators'. Brig.
Dudley Clarke was 'an expert in unorthodox warfare and clandestinity', who
had founded the Middle East A-Force. An operational 'genius', he had taken
charge of Gen. Eisenhower's deception section at SHAEF for the invasion of
France. In the postwar years, Clarke remained 'as mysterious and impen-
etrable as ever, and was rarely heard or seen outside his small circle'. Head
of public opinion research at Conservative Central Office, in 1952 he joined
the DFP to work with MI6's own deception unit and helped advise the
Australian Secret Intelligence Service on deception techniques.^^
Harvey-Jones did not share his colleagues' views on the machinations of
the Soviets. He recalled that time after time, 'we would ascribe to the Russians
degrees of premeditation and intricate organisation of interrelated but dispar-
158 PART TWO: THE FRONT LINE

ato e\ ents, in widely disparate parts of the world, that we, with all our
sophistication, would have been hard put to pull off. No account was taken
of 'the deeply ingrained patterns of behaviour and the all-embracing bureau-
cratic nature of the Soviet regime which made such intricacies nearly imposs-
ible'. He thought aim was to start to rebuild their homeland,
that 'their
ravished and devastated as it was. Given the poverty of their resources, the
ineffectiveness of their organisation and the size of their task, it was obvious
that they had more than enough to do for many years to come.'^^
But what did the peacetime DFP actually do? At a low level,, we know
that the services were involved in the radar camouflage of equipment and
the use of decoy lighting, but at a strategic level little is known. We can only
speculate at what 'resisting the onward march of Russian influence' actually
meant in practice. Churchill expected the DFP to 'confuse and mislead' the
KGB and 'to put ourselves in a position to do this if war comes'. Wild and
Harvey-Jones give the impression that the DFP used its expertise to monitor
and unravel alleged Soviet deception operations. In 1945, a leading wartime
operator, author Denis Wheatley, suggested that 'in peacetime, after the great
reduction of our forces, military deception would be almost valueless in
persuading our potential enemies that Britain was to be feared'. But it could
be done, he argued, by 'scientific deception'.
Wheatley envisaged creating a dummy secret base which would be visible
to reconnaissance aircraft. would subsequently be leaked that the base
It

'possessed a new scientific weapon of great power - perhaps one which

would enable us to bombard Moscow with atom bombs - then not considered
possible - or something of that kind'. The chair of the chiefs of staff committee,
Dickie Dickson, thought the idea 'sound', and it may be that something
similar was put into practice. When recalling MI5's use of emigres during
the fifties for deception purposes, Peter Wright revealed that 'an entire depart-
ment of the Foreign Office' provided MI5 with 'chicken feed' to be given to
double agents to pass on to the Russians. According to Wright, it consisted
of 'wholly unbelievable faked secret documents about weapons we did not
have, and policies we had no intention of pursuing'.
The obvious area for using scientific deception was, as Wheatley envis-
aged, nuclear weapons. As Brian Cathcart, author of a history of Britain's
Struggle for the Atom Bomb, has written, 'somebody was duped' about the
true state of British weapons development. And, on Cathcart's evidence, it
was the British public first, and then perhaps the Russians. It is entirely
possible that deception was aimed at three particular areas - one, to hide the
fact that Britain was building the atomic and then the hydrogen bomb; two,

to suggest that Britain had more bombs than it actually had; and three, that
its nuclear arsenal was an 'independent deterrent'.

The decision to go ahead with Britain's atomic bomb was taken at the
Cabinet Committee Gen 75 on 25 October 1946, when Attlee and Bevin deter-
 ROCKETS, BOMBS AND DECEPTION 159

mined that the country should have an 'independent nuclear deterrent'. The
Foreign Secretary exclaimed: 'We've got to have a bloody Union Jack flying
on top of The determination to embark on this 'grandiose folly', which
it.'

cost £100 million, was, Anthony Verrier believes, 'governed by a belief in

national prestige and international status, coupled with a marked, if veiled,
distrust of the United States. Britain's atom bombs were not built primarily
to deter the Soviet Union, but to reinsure against an American failure to do
so/''
It is now known that the number of nuclear bombs that Britain possessed
in the was much lower than the figures bandied around. A chiefs of
fifties

staff sub-committee undertook a consideration of the requirements to counter

a Soviet nuclear threat which was expected to emerge by 1957. It estimated
that this would two hundred nuclear warheads, but this was never
require
achieved. There was only enough plutonium to produce fifteen to eighteen
bombs annually from 1951 onwards and, as Peter Malone discovered, this
proved to be an overestimate. This makes a mockery of a 1956 estimate in
the Guardian - which, of course, may have been the result of a deception -
which suggested that Britain's stockpile was 'at least a thousand'. Similarly,
the United States had very few bombs - perhaps 'five or six' - in the immedi-
ate postwar period, though a production drive may have pushed the figure
up to fifty by the end of 1948, when B29s arrived in East Anglia, providing
a near-permanent nuclear presence on British soil. Details of the US store
were probably passed on to Moscow by Donald Maclean, who was in a
perfect position to help his Soviet controllers with the tonnage of uranium
bought by the Americans. In turn, the Soviet Union probably had a stockpile
smaller than fifty up to mid-1953, when the first series-production bombs
entered the nuclear arsenal.^^
The Macmillan government, in particular, is revealed to have been
'extremely economical with the truth in its statements about nuclear matters'.
Declassified US files from the early sixties show that the British government's
claim that its nuclear deterrent was 'independent' had little basis in fact. In
the immediate aftermath of the 1958 US-UK agreement on the exchange of
nuclear information, British scientists at Aldermaston were handed a carbon
copy of the design for the US warhead for the Polaris missile. Historians'
accounts have always stressed that the Polaris warhead was British-designed,
one of the key factors that made the missile 'independent'. As Mark Urban
has revealed, 'few secrets of the Anglo-American special relationship were
more sensitive than Britain's dependence on American help in building its
atomic bombs. Washington and Whitehall conspired to keep the secret from
a British public which might have questioned the "independent" status of
the bomb."^
We now know that the British 'H-bomb' exploded in the South Pacific in
1957 was not, in fact, a genuine hydrogen bomb but a very big A-bomb
160 TAKT TWO: THF FRONT LINE

supplemented with hydrogen fuel. The first hydrogen bombs had failed to
meet expectations and the tests left the scientists deeply disappointed. The
government, though, had boldly declared them a great success and, in order
to retrieve the situation, the so-called H-bomb test was organised as a decep-
tion. The Americans were not deceived by Macmillan's sleight of hand,
suggests Professor John Bayliss, but the Russians probably were. He adds:
Tf deterrence was a psychological game, Britain had its part to play in empha-
sising, perhaps even exaggerating, the disastrous consequences of aggres-
sion.' Which is precisely how Denis Wheatley had envisaged the role of the
LCS in peacetime.^^

In July 1951 the Cabinet Secretary, Sir Norman Brook, warned Prime Minister
Clement Attlee of intelligence fears that Russian agents could arrive in
London with suitcases full of kits to make an atomic bomb, which could be
put together in a garage. Based on meagre intelligence, a great deal of specu-
lation and amid fears of what the Soviets might be capable of, it was a perfect
example of the problems faced by, and failures of, scientific intelligence-
gathering and analysis in the late forties and early fifties. Failure was masked
by disinformation and deception.
A Tube Alloys analysis stated that
an atomic bomb might be broken down into a number of parts
and introduced into this country in about 50 small packages of
moderate weight. None of these packages could be detected by
instruments as containing anything dangerous or explosive, and
even visual inspection of the contents would not make identifi-
cation certain. The bomb could subsequently be assembled in
any premises with the sort of equipment usual in small garages
provided that a small team of skilled fitters was available.

Quite rightly, Attlee appears not to have been unduly concerned. This same
scenario was publicised by the intelligence services in the seventies, when
storiessuddenly appeared in the press about Soviet special forces, Spetznaz,
and when world terrorism was at its peak. The scenario resurfaced again in
the mid-nineties following stories, w^hich proved to be untrue, about the
alleged sale of weapons-grade plutonium from the states of the disintegrating
former Soviet empire.^'*
PART THREE

THE SOVIET EMPIRE

For many of the pre-war officers who remained in MI 6 after the war, the
battle with the Nazis had been a mere interlude in the continuing struggle
against the Bolsheviks. In their rush to recommence intelligence-gathering
on the Soviet Union they were willing to recruit, without discrimination,
agents who only months previously had actively collaborated with the Nazis
and in some cases had been responsible for atrocities against Jews.
MI6 turned to their pre-war contacts in the emigre world and attempted to
revive organisations they had financed in the thirties, such as the Promethean
League and Intermarium. When officers discovered that they were no longer
effective, MI6 resurrected the former Nazi-sponsored Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of
Nations (ABN). The neo-fascist ABN, controlled by Ukrainian nationalists,
was the most extreme and most important of all the exile organisations during
the Cold War. A high point came in the mid-eighties when its leader was
welcomed White House by President Reagan.
to the
Emigre politics are factional, bitter, convoluted and always controversial.
The following chapters attempt to correct some of the misconceptions found
in previous accounts by writers on intelligence, and to make sense of the
postwar manoeuvrings which paralleled the jockeying for position in emigre
special operations by and French Intelligence, and later the CIA.
British
For many Poland and among the emigres in the West
years, discussion in
about the underground remained a taboo subject. Polish archives covering
this area were later destroyed on the orders of the government because the
lo4 PArvT THREE: THE SOVIET EMPIRE

conflict was seen as a 'shameful period with Poles fighting Poles'. Poland is

now a freeand active democracy, but for other countries that suffered under
Stalin and the Soviet yoke, and collaborated with the Germans, it has proved
difficult to face up to the past.
SS veterans marched through Riga;
In Latvia during the spring of 1998,
while in Lithuania thefirst trial in any of the former Soviet countries of an

alleged war criminal was undertaken only following intense pressure from
the West. Ukraine, the sixth largest country in Europe, continues to slide into
economic ruin, still controlled by corrupt politicians and the secret police.
Similarly, Belarus remains divided between extreme nationalists and the
former communists still unsure of its relationship with Russia.
Little changes in the intelligence world, and today MI 6 officers use the
Baltic states as a staging post for missions into Russia. The former southern
states of the old Soviet Union are once again an arena for the 'Great Game',
while control of the Baku oilfields is a major prize for shady businessmen
and oilmen, often operating under cover of the intelligence services. In the
old Intermarium states MI6 opened liaison offices with
has, in recent years,
its counterparts in Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic.

All the emigre groups referred to in the following chapters are either
inactive or collapsed many years ago. Yet they all provided a bloody legacy,
leaving deep and long-lasting wounds in both the emigre and home
communities which, in many cases, have not healed, MI6 bears some
responsibility for aiding the emigres' romantic illusions. The idea of rolling
back the Soviet Empire was never more than a dream and, in reality, often
a nightmare.
In intelligence it is argued that necessity is the mother of invention, over-
riding all ethical considerations, but in the case of the emigre groups the
results did not justify the moral vacuum. The intelligence flow from behind
the Iron Curtain never developed beyond a trickle, and quality was thin at

best. What did arrive in the West cost the lives of many thousands of national-
ist guerrillas.
CHAPTER 11

INTERMARIUM

The dream of a postwar Pan-Danubian [Con] Federation* from the Baltic to

the Aegean under Habsburg rule - a sort of recreation of the Austro-
Hungarian Empire - was kept alive by Austrian monarchists under the direc-
tion of pretender to the throne Archduke Otto von Habsburg. The monarchists
had the enthusiastic support of Winston Churchill, who, like many of its
adherents, had been a member of the Brussels-based right-wing Pan-
European Union (PEU), founded in 1922 by Habsburg and Count Richard
Coudenhove-Kalergi as 'the only way of guarding against an eventual world
hegemony by Russia'. Churchill had laid out his support for the 'United
States of Europe' in the Saturday Evening Post in February 1930: 'Let the British
Empire, excluded in this plan, realise its own world-spread ideal. Even so,

the mass of Europe once united, once federalised or partially federalised,

once continentally self-conscious - Europe with its African and Asiatic
possessions and plantations, would constitute an organism beyond compare.'
Churchill's conception,which for a time had its supporters within the Foreign
Officeand MI6 - of a federal Europe but with the Empire still intact - did
not change for the next twenty years.
Churchill's and Coudenhove-Kalergi's conception of a federated Europe

* There are differences between a 'confederation' - meaning independent states in alliance -

and a 'federation' - states surrendering certain powers of sovereignty and forming a common
government but with individual decision-making on internal affairs.
166 PART THREE: THE SOVIET EMPIRE

was enthusiastically 'seconded by various Central European Federal Study

Clubs' located in London, Rome and Paris. The clubs had been created by politi-
from the Russian-dominated countries who, in turn, formed the
cal exiles

mox ement known as Intermarium. Meaning 'between the seas', Intermarium

was founded in Paris in the mid-thirties by a former Tsarist general. An anti-
communist Catholic lay organisation, it brought together an alliance of militant
emigre groups from central Europe. A 'secret international organisation', it
recruited as members 'people whose homes are to be found in the "intermare"
- that part of Europe between the Baltic, the Black Sea, the Aegean, the Ionian
Sea and the Adriatic. The desired goal of the sixteen nations was to create a
cordon sanitaire within central Europe and to liberate their territories from the
Soviet Union. Proclaiming the necessity of a powerful anti-communist Pan-
Danubian [Con] Federation under the name Intermarium, the aim was to hasten
the overthrow of the USSR. Before the Second World War, the organisation
received support and funding from MI6 and French Intelligence for its anti-
communist operations. Within MI6 it came under the remit of Stewart Menzies
and, in Paris, the emigres' friends. Commander Wilfred 'Biffy' Dunderdale, his
deputy Tom Greene, and Charles Ellis.^
Although not expressly fascist, Intermarium members shared many of the
characteristics and anti-Semitism of the clerical-fascists. The depression of
the early thirties had ravaged central Europe, one historian wrote, 'like some
medieval epidemic cancerous cells, already diagnosed in the political
. . .

body, throve on its depredation. In the end, it claimed the very concept of a
liberal society as its victim and the soul of Europe already exposed to the
ideologies of violence and inhumanity.' A number of central European leaders
actively collaborated with the Nazis, employed by the Abwehr as pre-war
'agents of influence' as well as informants on other emigre groups. According
to American intelligence records, when the Wehrmacht marched into eastern
Europe, Intermarium became 'an instrument of German intelligence', though
there is evidence that the MI6 were never completely severed.^
ties to

Following the German Anschluss in 1938, MI6 was ordered to undertake

operations in Austria under the control of Menzies, who began to recruit
among the underground monarchist 'cells' which made contact with the West.
Among the refugees was Count Coudenhove-Kalergi, who fled Austria when
the PEU offices in the imperial palace were occupied by the Nazis. In London,
where his ideas elicited a ready response from Catholic circles, Coudenhove-
Kalergi called for the unification of Europe around a Paris-London axis which
suggested, for the first time, a prominent role for Britain.^
Pan-European Committee, which received
In early June 1939, the British
the support of the banker to the exiles, Warburgs, held its inaugural meeting
in the House of Commons, chaired by 'a true Empire-builder', Leo Amery,
the man who had introduced Churchill to the count. Victor Cazelet, the British
liaison to the head of the Polish government-in-exile. General Wladyslaw
 INTERMARIUM 167

Sikorski, took charge of the secretariat. His presence confirmed Polish interest
in ideas of federation and a 'Central European With the outbreak
solution'.
of war, the revival of federalist ideas was, Feliks Gross and M. Kamil Dizie-
wanowski point out, not accidental.

The shaky independent existence of Central and East European

states between the wars had ended in political catastrophe; and
it had become obvious that the isolated nations of this region

could survive only as long as Germany and the Soviet Union

were militarily weak or genuinely peace-loving The future
. . .

security of Central and Eastern Europe called for new answers,

since a zone of small and weak states could guarantee neither
political nor economic stability.

A federal solutionwas pushed vigorously by the Polish foreign minister in

exile.Count August Zaleski, a member of the Pan-European Committee,
Zaleski was also a prominent member of the Central European Federal Study
Clubs, the backbone of Intermarium. More hardline than Sikorski, he resigned
over a Polish accord with the Soviet Union which failed to indicate the
position of Poland's eastern border with Russia."^
Through intermediaries, Menzies established clandestine relations with
the poverty-stricken Habsburg who, with Vatican support, travelled to Paris
in October 1939 to talk to French, Czech and British officials and politicians.
His MI6 contact was Commander Kenneth Cohen, responsible for 'higher
political tasks'. He did not rate Habsburg very highly but Menzies arranged
that 'a subsidy be paid to Archduke Otto, one that was not short of £50,000
a month'. Cohen was amused by the Archduke's insistence that he walk
backwards when he left 'his tawdry little bedroom'. Otto later left for the
United States, where he promoted his ideas of a Catholic state called Danubia.
In March 1942, the Deputy of the British Security Co-ordination in New York,
MI6 officer Charles Ellis, revealed to 'Q', the head of the Office of Strategic
Services (OSS), William 'Bill' Donovan, the existence of the hidden subsidy
with a view to the Americans taking over the funding. Although the Ameri-
cans had little faith in Habsburg, Donovan was willing to support Count
Coudenhove-Kalergi, who also moved to the United States where he
continued to lobby for his own Pan Europa project.^
Although Coudenhove-Kalergi had the support of Churchill, the Foreign
Office was irritated by his activities and 'his addiction for forming Unions
out of some ill-assorted partners'. They disliked the fact that, during the war,
the Prime Minister continued to back the anti-communists among the central
European federalists because, as senior Northern Department official Geof-
frey Wilson pointed out, 'there is little evidence that the Soviet Union will
be prepared to agree to federation in Eastern Europe after the war'.
During the spring of 1942 the issue of a federation was broached with
168 TART THREE: THE SOVIET EMPIRE

the Soviet foreign minister, Vyacheslav Molotov, who rejected such ideas
outright. Molotov said that 'the Soviet government had certain information
to show that some federations might be directed against the Soviet Union';
which in the case of Intermarium was certainly true. When the United States
swung round to the Soviet viewpoint, the fate of the federalist plans was
sealed. By 1943, when the Czechs concluded an alliance with the Soviets, the
idea of a Balkan federation was The socialists, social demo-
effectively dead.
crats and those in the centre abandoned the scheme - they continued,
however, to support ideas of federation and played an important role in
founding the postwar European Movement - leaving the right and extreme-
right groups to pursue the project. But this did not discourage the Poles,
whose main political parties at the core of the resistance still believed that it

would be possible to create such a federation in spite of Russian opposition.

Likewise, a few officials in the Foreign Office continued to support ideas of
federation and sought encouragement from the Vatican, whose postwar
policy, it noted, would 'favour the creation of a large Danubian federal State,
if it gives promise of stability and is not controlled by Bolshevik Russia'. In

pursuit of this objective, as early as February 1943 the British ambassador to

the Holy had embarked upon the task of presenting
See, Sir Percy Osborne,
the Vatican with, in his own words, the 'anti-Bolshevist bogey dope'.^
In the same month, there were meetings concerning German peace
proposals headed by elements in the SS which looked to the postwar world. In
Berne was stationed Claude Dansey's principal lieutenant of the independent
Z-network in Europe, Frederick 'Fanny' Vanden Heuvel, a director of Eno's
Fruit Salts, whose status as a papal count gave MI6 an entree to the Vatican.
Vanden Heuvel met with the head of the OSS station, Allen Dulles, and a
representative of the head of the SD's (Sicherheitsdienst) international depart-
ment, Walter Schellenberg. Dulles is alleged to have told his friend of twenty
years. Prince Max Hohenlohe, must avoid the excesses of
that the peace
Versaillesby permitting the existence of a 'Greater Germany' which would
include Austria and a section of Czechoslovakia. This 'Federal Greater
Germany' would be part of 'a cordon sanitaire against Bolshevism and pan-
Slavism' which, in association with a 'Danube Confederation', would be 'the
best guarantee of order and progress in Central and Eastern Europe'.^
Although the Allied agreement on an unconditional peace scuppered the
SS-proposals, Dulles planned to 'pick loose the secondary Axis allies -
elements of his envisioned Danube Confederation - ahead of the advancing
Red Army'. In particular, he made plans for Bulgaria, Romania and Hungary,
where 'contacts with MI6 remained unbroken'. He wanted to exert 'certain
subversive pressures' on these countries by establishing secret contact with
'influential members of the ruling classes who are not regarded as whole-
heartedly in sympathy with the Nazis'. One such leader was Romania's
Marshal Antonescu, who sought a 'Confederation of south-western and
 INTERMARIUM 169

central Europe . . . [in] co-operation with democratic governments of the

West'. Dulles's plans had supporters within the Vatican, where British
representative Sir Osborne was guided by Father Krunoslav
Percy
Draganovic, Secretary of the Confraternity of San Girolamo and representa-
tive of the Ustashi and Croatian Red Cross. Moving in the highest Vatican
circles, from early 1944, Draganovic began to lobby the British in favour of

the Pan-Danubian Con-Federation, delivering a lengthy memorandum on the

subject to Osborne.^
was still thinking in terms of a postwar Danubian confeder-
Churchill, too,
ation or even a Habsburg restoration which, he told the War Cabinet, would
be centred on Vienna. In early 1944, Churchill established a Central European
Committee which distilled the views and advice of a small coterie of central
European experts and propagandists centred around Chatham House's Royal
Institute of International Affairs. The committee promoted the creation of a
Confederation of Central European Nations under London's control, which
a small number of hardline anti-communist officials in the Foreign Office,
notably Orme hoped might contain Soviet power in eastern Europe.
Sargent,
The committee's which found favour with Churchill, proposed a
report,
western-backed multinational Danubian state with Austria at its centre. It
was envisaged that Austria would be detached from southern Germany and
that Vienna 'would once again become master of the Danube region'.
Churchill wrote to President Roosevelt: 'As you know the idea of Vienna
becoming the capital of a large Danubian federation has always been attrac-
tive to me, though I should prefer to add Hungary, to which Uncle Joe is
strongly opposed.' Nor did the emerging military and strategic landscape
affect the Vatican's view. At the beginning of 1945, in a review of postwar
hopes for Europe, Pope Pius XII favoured an anti-communist Central Euro-
pean Federation of Catholic states, 'which would stretch from the Baltic to
the Black Seas'. As late as July 1945, with the Red Army occupying most of
the Danubian region, the goal of a federation remained a British priority
because 'any other seemed unacceptable'. The British sought to directly
influence and shore up their support in central and south-eastern Europe,
and the idea of a pan-Danubian 'federation' still carried weight in intelligence
circles. The concept remained a general, if imprecise, objective because the

planners still required the protection of Britain's most important communi-

cation routes to the eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East. This was
pursued as a realistic goal, and it was naively hoped that the Soviets would
recognise the value of a federation. The Dulles brothers, though, were not
to play a part in the construction of an anti-communist league along the
Danube."
As the Red Army rolled across the Austrian border, MI6 unveiled its plan
to launch a 'political league against Bolshevism' and to provide 'material
aid for anti-Soviet counter-espionage and paramilitary operations'. British
170 PART THREE: THE SOVIET EMPIRE

Intelligence and, more particularly, the remnants of SOE were convinced

that it would not be long before war broke out with their former Soviet allies,

and they were determined to prepare for such an outcome. By the summer,
a number of Mlb's most experienced officers and Balkan experts were already
well established in the British Zone in Austria. Officers were posted to Graz
and Klagenfurt under cover of the 'Civil Liaison Office' to penetrate the
emigre groups in order to recruit suitable foot-soldiers. Using a well-
established tactic, masonic lodges were created to attract 'the most eminent
leaders in the Balkans'. MI6 was said to be 'in a hurry and didn't want to
lose any time', and its officers did not discriminate in their efforts which
included giving 'succour even to Nazis and the Ustashi'. A network of emigre
centres was established in Italy, Austria and Germany, as well as Paris and
London, which reached into all parts of the Balkans. The vehicle for this
renewed anti-Bolshevik crusade was the MI6-backed Central European
Federal Study Clubs and their militant umbrella group, the revived pre-war
organisation, Intermarium. The nucleus of East-Central federal thought,
Intermarium was reactivated at the end of 1944 by intelligence personnel and
officers and men of the Polish Second Army Corps in Italy. Its journal was
immediately smuggled into Poland under German as well as Soviet occupa-
tion, and stimulated an interest in the cause of European integration.^^

In London, a study club with support from MI6 and the Polish govern-
ment-in-exile was resurrected under the presidency of August Zaleski, and
its secretary, Karel Locher, who had worked in the Czech Foreign Office.

With representatives from Slovakia, Latvia, Estonia, Ukraine, Romania and

Yugoslavia, one of its first acts was to create, in October 1945, a refugee and
propaganda organisation, the 'Scottish League for European Freedom', which
would be responsible as an MI6 front group for 'rescuing' a number of the
Intermarium assets (see Chapter 21).
Equally involved in Intermarium was French Intelligence, following an
order from President de Gaulle - a strong advocate of a Pan-Danubian 'federa-
tion' - to adopt an aggressive campaign 'to gain the sympathy of the peoples

of Eastern Europe'. The Deuxieme Bureau station in Austria was tasked with
creating a counterweight to British plans in the region, based on contacts
made in thirties Paris with intelligence networks in Innsbruck and Freiburg.
On the ground, however, from the beginning of the project, MI6 officers
tentatively liaised with their French counterparts to co-ordinate operations.
Within a year of the war's end, MI6 had helped to build up Intermarium into
a well-developed movement which was regarded as 'the only organisation of
international character ... for combatting the Russians'. A fourteen-page 'Free
Intermare' charter was published, appealing to the Estonians, Latvians, Lithu-
anians, Poles, Ukrainians, White Ruthenians, Czechs, Slovaks, Hungarians,
Romanians, Serbs, Croats, Slovenians, Albanians and Greeks, 'to subordinate
sovereignty to a higher European authority'. The problem was that the
 INTERMARIUM 171

internal divisions among the national groups were all too noticeable and
there was a tendency 'to deposit all these quarrels on the lap of this future
authority'/^
While the Poles were a major influence, the top echelon of Intermarium
became increasingly dominated by ex-fascist leaders and known collabor-
ators. It organised around a core of Croatian Ustashi, Slovakian Hlinka Guard

and Hungarian Arrow Cross members and a sprinkling of extremist Poles,

Ukrainians, Slovenes and Latvians. Many were 'regular go-betweens for
[MI6] and Abwehr agent-handlers, veterans of the Prometheus nets the
British had rigged between the wars'. They included:

• Miha Krek, president and leader of the Catholic Slovene People's Party,
who operated through the Assistant General of the Jesuits, Monsignor
Anton Preseren, who was the leader of a powerful group of Slovenes
within the Vatican which received 'help from the English'.
• Krunoslav Draganovic, the 'quasi-official' representative of the Croats
to the organisation. A Catholic priest, he was wanted as a war criminal
for helping to persecute Croatia's Serbian minority.
• Casimir Papee, who had been Poland's ambassador to the Vatican
since 1939. His fellow-countryman, Myz-Mysin, was 'the group's coun-
ter-espionage expert in Rome'.
• Monsignor Ivan (John) Buchko, who was regarded as 'the spiritual
leader of the Ukrainian resistance movement' and had extremely good
Vatican connections.
• Ferdinand Durcansky, who had been the Slovak Foreign and Interior
Minister and was wanted as a war criminal for helping to slaughter
Slovakian Jews.
• Ference Vajta, a senior Intermarium leader and the organisation's chief
propagandist in the 1946/7 period. He had been hidden by the emigre
underground in one of the many monasteries in the Rome area.^"^
Vajta had been a leading anti-Semite in the Hungarian clerical-fascist Arrow
Cross party. Since the early Rome, he had operated
thirties as a journalist in

in underground emigre politics, working on behalf of the Hungarian secret

services with contacts with a number of western intelligence agencies. A
'generally unsavoury' character, Vajta was a trusted and loyal agent of the
Nazis in Budapest, and during 1944 served as Consul General for the regime
in Vienna. In this role he organised the escape routes for 'refugees' - fleeing
Arrow Cross members - and helped save 'the great majority of Hungary's
bourgeoisie and aristocracy' from the advancing Red Army. At the end of
the war, Vajta had been placed on a 'Black List' of wanted war criminals and
was detained by the US Counter-intelligence Corps (CIC) and interned for
a short period at Dachau. He was, however, quickly released on the orders
of an anonymous British Military Intelligence officer. Vajta was soon active
172 PART THRFE: THE SOVIET EMPIRE

in attempts to revive Intermarium, and during the summer of 1945 worked

tor both French and British Intelligence. He had one priceless asset, namely
access to the 'treasure' which became the prime source of Intermarium's
funding. Known as a 'conceited adventurer true to only money', in the last
months of the war
Vajta had stripped Budapest of millions of pounds' worth
of artefactsand industrial equipment which he shipped by rail to the Allied
zones in Germany.
Intermarium and its intelligence assets were intimately linked to the Vati-
can, which worked in close collaboration with British and French Intelligence.
On 25 June 1945, representatives of the notorious Croat Ustashi had made
contact with Archbishop Andreas Roharcher of Salzburg, in the American
Zone and had asked for the Pope's assistance in creating an
in Austria,
independent Croatian state and support for a Pan-Danubian 'federation' as
a bastion against the Serbian-backed Yugoslavia. Roharcher approached the
Allies and offered to put the Ustashi at their disposal; a proposal the British
immediately accepted.
Intermarium's most active branch was in Rome and joined with the Vati-
can, according to a US CIC report,under 'direct leadership of the Pope', in
the battle against 'atheistic communism'. The branch campaigned amongst
the Allies for permission to establish a volunteer anti-communist army for
use in an imminent war against the USSR. Its leading members were deeply
involved with the Vatican officials responsible for the various relief

programmes, which served as cover for the smuggling to the West of fascist
fugitives out of eastern Europe. These senior Vatican priests and bishops
simultaneously became leading officials in Intermarium. The Vatican did not
discriminate and any Catholic, including Nazis and their collaborators, was
able to seek assistance from the Church. Intermarium was one of the first

organisations to campaign openly for freedom for Waffen-SS PoWs.^^

The use of the Catholic Church in the anti-communist struggle was
discussed by the Foreign Office's Russia Committee in May 1946. The majority
view was that it was necessary to keep a distance, but 'there were some
suggestions that opportunities might occur in the future for using the influ-
ence of the Vatican on specific matters'. The committee was of the opinion
that as the Catholic Church was one of the most powerful anti-communist
influences 'it might be of advantage, without directly seeking the co-operation
of the Vatican, to assist the Church in deploying its influence by facilitating
the movements of its emissaries, or by other inconspicuous means'. It was
recommended that the representative at the Vatican should be 'furnished
with information regarding Communist activities for use in his contacts with
members of the Papal entourage'.
By mid- 1946, Intermarium was sufficiently strong for an intelligence-
backed 'large-scale propaganda campaign' to be launched in the Italian
Displaced Persons (DP) camps. Large sums had been placed at its disposal
 INTERMARIUM 173

to produce a regular bulletin in Rome and distribute its charter in the camps.
By the second half of the year, the relationship between the British and French
intelligence officers on the ground had developed into a high degree of
co-operation in clandestine planning. This was promoted as an example of the
Third Force'. 'Europe for the Europeans, without Russia and the Americans'
became the slogan of Intermarium, which hoped to exploit what was viewed
as the inevitable conflict between the United States and the Russians. The
Anglo-French alliance did not survive for long because it became apparent
that the British wanted total control of the project, and they gradually took
the initiative away from the French.
American intelligence officials recognised that the MI6 men were 'very
clever and very hard, harder even than the French and better prepared'. De
Gaulle, the main architect of the French strategy, was soon out of power, and
not long after 'the Vatican retired from the circle of French interest'. Declining
offers to direct all emigre politics from Paris, in July 1946 many of the Interma-
rium leaders broke off relations with the French. They relocated to Rome
under British protection, and established close contacts with the Vatican and
anti-communist Italian politicians. Relations between the Vatican and MI6
over the British handling of Intermarium were, however, not always harmoni-
ous, as the Vatican wanted a more robust approach.
The Poles and British could no longer afford to carry the financial burden,
and funds began to dry up, forcing the Intermarium leaders, in July 1947, to
seek American assistance. Vajta was in a powerful position; he was one of
the few men who knew the details of the Hungarian industries that were
re-established in Italy at the end of the year following his successful negoti-
ations with the Italian government of de Gaspari. A number of Intermarium's
leaders subsequently transferred their loyalties to the United States, where
they found senior positions in CIA-financed and controlled fronts such as
Radio Free Europe, Radio Liberation and the Assembly of Captive Nations.
The existence of the National Committee for Free Europe later helped improve
their situation, providing 'useful occupations' for the exiles, including
'.^'^
'preparing blueprints for their liberated countries
Among those Intermarium countries which the exiles hoped to 'liberate'
were Hungary, Romania and Czecho /Slovakia.

HUNGARY
Following the occupation of the country by the Germans in March 1944 and
the collapse of the government led by Admiral Horthy, approaches were
made in to the West by representatives of Hungary - including
September
one led by Archduke Otto von Habsburg and a secret mission to British
headquarters in Italy - to save the country from Soviet occupation. It was
not to be. The Germans seized Horthy and in October installed as prime
174 PAPvT THPvEE: THE SOVIET EMPIRE

minister the fanatical fascist Arrow Cross leader, Ferncz Szalasi, whose regime
'fed its warped and frustrated patriotism on bestial anti-semitism'. Szalasi
was executed after the war. Among the million Hungarians who fled from
the Soviets was a small but extremely active Arrow Cross element which
maintained strong links between the exiled communities, revered executed
war criminals as martyrs and supported former Nazis as reliable anti-
communists. Elements of British and American Intelligence proceeded to
scour the DP camps to recruit Arrow Cross members for operations into
Hungary.
Unlike in other eastern European states, in November 1945 a genuinely
free election was held in Hungary which was won by the Smallholder's Party
with 60 per cent of the vote. The Allied Control Commission under the control
of the Soviet Union's representative would not, however, allow the party to
take up more than 50 per cent of the seats in the cabinet. With a foothold in
government, the communists then began a propaganda campaign to deni-
grate the Smallholder's Party as 'a nest of reaction'. The main attack came
in the early months of 1947 when the communist-dominated Interior Ministry
security service (AVO
- Allamvedelmi Osztaly) discovered a nationalist
conspiracy by the 'Hungarian Unity Society' - 'alleged to have as its objective
the re-establishment of the Horthy regime as it had existed before the German
occupation of Budapest'. The ultra-rightist conspirators had, the AVO
claimed, collected stores of arms and planned to set up a rival government-in-
exile in the event of a communist-dominated government. The conspiracy
provided the communists with an opportunity to strike at their opponents
and pro-western elements in Hungary. Controlled by Gabor Peter, the AVO
- housed in the old headquarters of the Arrow Cross secret police - began to
investigate several parliamentary deputies, including Prime Minister Ferenc
Nagy and President Tildy. While the investigations took place, Nagy was
away on holiday in Switzerland and he resigned without returning to
Budapest.^^
With the deposing of the pro-western Nagy, the Soviet-aligned govern-
ment launched a series of 'faked trials, political purges and an oppressive
police rule'. Naively, members of the Smallholder's Party made contact with
western intelligence agents, thus providing the communists with a propa-
ganda coup that they exploited to the full. During the course of one day in
1947, over one hundred British agents disappeared from the streets, 'leaving
MI6 bankrupted'. These were 'carriage-trade informers' on whom Claude
Dansey's Z-network had relied since the thirties, and included 'many sophisti-
cated Jewish businessmen'. Intermarium was one instrument used to create
trouble for the communist regime and push the interests of the exiles. A
resident MI6 officer in Vienna was responsible for recruiting refugees and
Arrow Cross 'patriots' from the thousands who had sought sanctuary in
the DP camps in Austria. Recruits were given money, accommodation and
 INTERMARIUM 175

received basic training and instructions at an MI6 training camp at

Furstenfeld.^^
In the spring of 1947, Intermarium leader Vajta, whom Nagy had
denounced as a 'Nazi', was arrested in Rome by the Allies after the Hungarian
government accused him of being a 'war criminal'. He was, however, released
after the intervention of the Vatican and senior Italian politicians. During
September another attempt was made for his extradition, but after a meeting
with British and French intelligence representatives, Vajta was able to leave
with Vatican assistance for Spain with an American visa. In Madrid he set
up a new organisation, the Continental Union, to attract emigre leaders away
from the British-controlled Intermarium. Launching a vitriolic propaganda
campaign, Vajta accused Intermarium of being 'penetrated by British free-
masonry and Soviet agents'. His outburst and activities became an embarrass-
ment to his new American sponsors, but despite evidence from the US
European Command that identified him as a war criminal, Vajta was allowed
in December to enter the United States.
In September 1948, a British agent, Kavan Elliott, was arrested in Budapest
by the AVO and, after interrogation, expelled from the country. Elliott had
been employed before the war by MI(R). An explosives expert, he had been
stationed in Sofia at the beginning of the war as a military attache, later
working for the Balkan Intelligence Service, and had developed a relationship
with the charismatic leader of the Bulgarian Agrarian Party's left wing, Dr
Georgi Dimitrov, who was funded with SOE gold to build a resistance
network. Elliott later helped him escape to exile, firstly to Yugoslavia and
then to the West. Dimitrov subsequently worked for an SOE radio station
in Palestine for Free Independent Bulgaria, and was alleged to have been a
conduit for funds to Serbia, which may have been true since both projects
were run by SOE's resident Bohemian, Archie Lyall. The Communists later
accused Dimitrov, who was close to the Serbs, of being a pawn of SOE,
which had a grand strategy to bring Bulgaria and Serbia together in a new
Balkan federation 'dominated by Britain'. After a period in Yugoslavia, Elliott

was captured by the Germans and imprisoned as PoW in Colditz. Dr Dimitrov

later became leader of the Bulgarians in exile in the United States and along

with Nagy a leading member of the CIA-backed 'Green Internationale', the

International Peasant Union.^^
Immediately after the war, Elliott was posted to Germany with responsi-
bilities to investigate the Nazi Labour Front (Deutsche Arbeitsfront) and
stayed on as a member of a mysterious unit. Special Operation 3. He was a
close friend and colleague of senior MI6 officer Archie Gibson, who was
responsible for running agents behind the Iron Curtain. In late 1946 Elliott
travelled to Budapest, ostensibly as a private citizen and businessman
employed by Unilever. He was not an MI6 'Established Intelligence Officer'
but was one of the Service's 'Unofficial Assets', and later admitted that he
176 PART THREE: THE SOVIET EMPIRE

was 'running errands' for someone at the British legation. That was the
Second Secretary, Harry Morris, a former City solicitor and banker with the
National Provincial who had served with SOE in Gibraltar and then from
1943 with MI 6 in Spain and Portugal.^^
Acting as a courier for Elliott was Ted Sanders, employed by the
Hungarian subsidiary of the US International Telephone and Telegraph
Corporation. Born in St Petersburg, Sanders had served in the Intelligence
Corps during the war and was later attached to the British Military Mission
in Budapest. Also in contact with Elliott on his trips to Vienna was Antony
Terry, a journalist with Ian Fleming's Mercury News Service, which organised
the foreign correspondents for the Sunday Times. Terry, who worked part-time
for the Sunday Times, was employed for a short while by MI6 and reported to
the head of station in Vienna, George Young. Not used to trusting intelligence
officers, Terry regarded Young as someone who would 'back one up to the

hilt . and even though he stood up for his principles and had no illusions
. .

about the frailty of human nature, there was never the slipperiness one felt
in the others '.^^
In his biography / Spy, Geoffrey Elliott suggests that his father was colla-
borating on a Vatican project - i.e. Intermarium -
an anti-corrm\unist
for
Balkan federation which was being pursued by the head of the Catholic
Church in Hungary, Cardinal Mindszenty. He suggests that Elliott, who had
moved from Budapest to live near the cardinal's residence at Esztergom, was
responsible for 'orchestrating the lines of communication between Mind-
szenty and the Vatican'. A later show trial alleged that these lines ran from
Mindszenty to the Budapest head of Actio Catholica, Miklos Boresztoczky,
via 'an official trusted agent of the British power . . , well-versed in secret
matters', to the 'correspondent' at the Vatican, Actio Catholica's director,
Zsigmond Mikalovics. The plans included schemes to restore the Hungarian
crown to the Habsburgs, while Actio Catholica, using funds raised in the
United States, organised anti-communist propaganda in the West. Three more
agents belonging to the Elliott network were hauled in by the AVO during
December 1948.''
Inside Hungary resistance to the communists persisted. Eighteen-year-old
Paul Gorka was studying architecture in Budapest and helping to guard
Cardinal Mindszenty when, in the late forties, he helped organise the Catholic
Resistance Movement, which linked up with MI6 in Vienna. The leader of
his group was Bela Bajomi, a former naval officer who owned a textile factory
in the capital. Bajomi managed to escape to Vienna underneath the carriage
of one of the few trains leaving Hungary for Austria. Once in Vienna, Bajomi
contacted MI 6 and was asked to organise a group for resistance and intelli-
gence-gathering activities.'^

A number of patriotic young Hungarians were recruited for courier duties:

'Their task was to slip over the border into Hungary, contact reliable friends
 INTEPJVIARIUM 177

and organise movements, sabotage and above all information gath-

resistance
ering.' A typical low-level agent, Gorka collected information on heavy indus-
try, mining and transport for his MI6 contact in Vienna, 'Mr Thompson'. He

carefully noted the types of Russian vehicles, armour and tanks and their
number plates which enabled MI6 to compile a breakdown of the Russian
units stationed in Hungary or in transit through the country. The group also
provided details on the construction of the largest Russian military airport
in eastern Europe.
Gorka claims that the group's most important intelligence-gathering coup
was sight of Russian documents that detailed contingency plans for the
complete takeover of the country and government by their Hungarian
puppets in the event of the further deterioration of the situation in Yugoslavia.
Interestingly, Gorka reveals that once relations between Stalin and Tito had
been settled to the satisfaction of the West, MI 6 began using Yugoslavia as
a launching padsending couriers and agents into Hungary. Yugoslav
for
worked hand in glove with their MI6 counterparts. One
intelligence officers
Hungarian agent told Gorka about a meeting in Belgrade for an infiltration
mission with a wartime SOE officer who had undertaken undercover oper-
ations into German-occupied Serbia.
In addition to military information, Gorka network was
recalled that his
asked to provide MI6 with 'low-grade information of no real use
little or . . .

for example, the positions of bus terminals, vehicle registration numbers, the
production of milk and butter'. The requests often baffled the group, which
saw no relevance to their resistance struggle. The group put their information
on 'white-carbon paper, which we used by writing between innocent sound-
ing lines, held it up to the light of a window, and then posted it to Vienna
to a Herr Johann Voessen' - an MI6 safe house. Unfortunately, the method
was unsophisticated and the couriers' letters were often intercepted: 'As so
often happened many were caught at the border, often with the secret police
lying in wait.' In 1949, Vladimir Lieszkovszky, a former air force cadet and
later student of aero mechanics, was arrested and sentenced to ten years for

spying on behalf of British Intelligence. Another MI6 agent and courier,

Nandi Fain - a former Hungarian Army officer who had escaped to the
West in 1948 - was arrested during the summer of 1950 and received a life
sentence.
Bajomi was 'kidnapped' by Hungarian agents in Vienna and executed in
April 1951. Soon after, Paul Gorka was arrested, tortured and imprisoned for
life. He was eventually freed in October 1956 during the 'Hungarian Uprising'
through the efforts of the Hungarian Freedom Fighters (HFF). He
subsequently escaped to Britain and became deputy leader of the HFF move-
ment. With good reason, Gorka remained bitter about his betrayal and the
way MI6 had used the resistance, concluding that after so many security
failures 'the spymasters were more agent provocateurs than secret intelligence
178 PART THREE: THE SOVIET EMPIRE

agents'. Many of the anti-communist centres on the Austrian side were

thoroughly penetrated by Soviet and Hungarian agents. The operational fail-

ures were eventually listed in a communist-produced series of White, Blue

and Grey propaganda books which detailed the trials of Hungarian 'spies'
who worked for western intelligence agencies.^^
In late November 1949, a month and execution of a number
after the trial
of senior communist officials accused of working for British and American
Intelligence, the Hungarian secret police arrested Edgar Sanders. Despite
British Foreign Office and US State Department protests, he was sentenced
to thirteen months' imprisonment. In December the Hungarian government
nationalised all major industries and foreign-owned plant, including IT&T.
There followed a number of trials directed against 'counter-revolutionary
traitors and foreign agents', a number of whom were undoubtedly working
for MI6.''
Fourteen members of the Anti-Bolshevik Guard were arrested and
imprisoned in 1950. Led by General Ferenc Farkas, a former Hungarian intelli-
gence who commanded Szalasi's army against the Russians, the
officer

MHBK was one of the main resistance organisers in the West working with
MI6. It was in contact with 'cells' in Hungary through the courier Imre
Horvath, a former army officer, who had recruited agents among members
of the military police. But it, too, collapsed. In the period from 1948 to 1952
hundreds were arrested and imprisoned, while over forty-five people were
executed by the Soviets for alleged spying activities.^^
Exiles such as Paul Gorka blamed Kim Philby for the betrayal. While it
was true that, as head of Section IX, Philby certainly had knowledge of the
early recruitment of Hungarian exiles via Intermarium and, as station head
in Washington, had overseen the transfer of former Arrow Cross assets to
Canada and Australia, by the time of the major arrests he was out of the
intelligence loop. The security lapses were more likely the result of low-level
infiltration of the numerous and often badly organised anti-communist
groups - a number of which were secret police fronts instigated by Soviet
agents.

ROMANIA
During the Second World War, Romania was run by an authoritarian regime
- predominantly Iron Guardist in character - which had been set up in
September 1940 under the leadership of the non-Guardist and pro-British
General Ion Antonescu. He had decreed that 'if Germany flourished under
a Fiihrer and Italy under a duce, then Romania should recognise him as the
"Conductor" The Iron Guard was built around the idol worship of Captain
'.

Cornlieu Codreanu of the Legion of St Michael, who had dedicated himself

to the task of 'purging Rumania of Jews, foreigners, communists and Free-
 INTERMARIUM 179

masons'. Under the leadership of a known assassin and terrorist, Horia Sima,
the Guard, with their distinctive green shirts and silver crucifixes, practised

a unique brand of nationalist Catholicism - 'a cult of death'.

The Germans used the Iron Guard as a means of controlling Romania
and placed several of its officials in key government posts. Subsequent
internal conflict between Antonescu and Sima led in January 1941 to the
Guardists attempting to seize power. In the 'bestial pogroms' that followed,
Guardists went on the rampage, killing communists, liberals and Jews. A
number were skewered on meat hooks with their throats slit, others were
skinned alive, while some were forced to kneel and were beheaded. Even
their German sponsors were appalled, and the rebellion was eventually put
down by The
the SS. leaders were sent to Germany but were only put under
'protective custody' as 'Hitler kept them as a threat to be used against Anton-
escu's government if he should contemplate leaving the Axis'. In August
1944, when pro-British assets and the young King Michael organised a coup
that was intended to oversee a return to democracy, the Nazis resurrected
the Iron Guard as a 'National Government'. Before the Guardist leaders could
be infiltrated across the border from Vienna, however, the Russian Army

swept into the country and they were forced to flee to safety.^^
One observer who monitored the arrival of the communists, who had
been guests of Stalin in Moscow, blamed the resultant political upheaval in
Bucharest on the British and American intelligence services, which continued
to support and encourage the old conservative parties - the National Liberal
and Peasant Parties - 'in their fight against the leftists'. Embarrassed by the
failure of the left to garner widespread support among the population, the
Soviets were 'forced to intervene', safe in the knowledge that with the British
fighting the communists in Greece, the Allies would have no grounds on
which to protest.^^
Horia Sima and his Guardists had been able to slip away in the postwar
chaos of Europe and resume their political activities. Sima (aka 'Civat')
survived in an Italian DP camp where he avoided detection until October
1945, when the Iron Guard 'came out of hiding'. He was surprised to discover
that his colleagues had not perished but 'had regrouped and organised
committees to help the refugees in all the occupied zones'. This required
protection and which was secured from British, French and American
finance,
intelligence agencies, desperate to discover what was happening in the newly
occupied territories in central and eastern Europe. French Intelligence had
placed a priest in the British Zone in Germany with the specific task of
co-ordinating Iron Guard recruitment. Similarly, the British used former Nazi
intelligence and SS officers, who had had contact with the Guard during the
war, to earmark potential recruits in the camps. Taking on yet another iden-
tity, Sima made his way to France before finally flying to Madrid, where he

established an Iron Guard headquarters. As other Guardists left the DP

180 PART THREE: THE SOVIET EMPIRE

camps, they were helped to emigrate to Canada and the United States under
the aegis of the Romanian Orthodox Church and the sponsorship of British
hitelligence.'^
Within a short space of time, returned to the country to
Stalin's agents
put in place the foundations for one of the more repressive regimes in eastern
Europe. All of which was monitored by Leslie Nicholson, who, after a few
months studying the new communist threat, was posted to Bucharest in late
1945 to set up an MI6 station. Nicholson had to create new intelligence
networks after Colonel Archie Gibson had been forced to abandon a number
of Polish intelligence agents in Bucharest as the NKVD closed in on his
activities. The tactics of the communists under the leadership of Gheorghi-Dej,

who had returned from Moscow with Stalin's approval to establish a pro-
Soviet regime, were designed to hinder the new government led by the
National Peasant Party. It found that its actions were severely hampered by
organised bands, a number of which included Iron Guardists who had
changed political allegiance to the communists. Insidiously, the communists
increased their power through the internal security ministry, forcing the
government to stage a series of 'show trials' which played on claims of foreign
intervention and backing for anti-state forces.
In May 1946 the 'Great National Betrayal Trial' opened in Bucharest with
Ion Antonescu and his associates accused of treason and war crimes. Anton-
escu was subsequently shot, but a number of Guardists who had also been
convicted were spared as the Soviet Ministry of State Security (MGB) had
call on their security expertise. In March 1947 there was a bungled coup

attempt organised by 'a still-active splinter' of the US Office of Strategic

Services (OSS). According to Christopher Simpson, 'it was undertaken with-
out the knowledge of the State Department which was then in negotiation
over US investments in the Ploesti oil fields'. British Intelligence, which had
yet to establish a significant intelligence presence, was asked to help, but
Foreign Office policy deemed that it would be disastrous if genuine evidence
of Anglo-American interference fell into communist hands. In July a number
of pro-British politicians who had helped with the coup in 1944 were arrested
and charged with plotting to overthrow the government. Others in exile,
such as former minister and leading Intermarium figure Grigore Gafencu,
were sentenced in absentia. Clever deployment of agents provocateurs enabled
the authorities to arrest leaders of the National Peasant Party, including leader
Ion Mihahlache, accused of forming a 'military group', who were attempting
to flee the country: 'There is evidence that a few supporters of the party had
talked rashly about armed resistance to communism with American agents.
Although the leaders were not directly implicated, plans had been made to
bring them out of Romania by air.' The conspirators were rounded up by
Romanian security police, tried in November, and sentenced to solitary
confinement for life. The trial, which came seven weeks after the execution
 INTERMARIUM 181

in Sofia of the Bulgarian peasant leader Nikola Petkov, 'shocked the non-
communist world which appeared powerless to do anything'
Once in power, the communists installed a well-developed political terror
machine, the General Directorate of People's Security, the Securitate. With
over five thousand officers, on an extensive network of informers
it relied
and scores of Soviet advisers. It was and conspiracy
also a crucible of paranoia
thinking. Communist leader Gheorghi-Dej immediately instigated a purge of
the government.
In early 1948, Minister of Justice Lucretiu Patrascanu was targeted by the
Soviet advisers, who claimed that he was protecting opposition National
Peasant Party leaders and was thus sabotaging the country's 'march towards
Communism'. At the end of April, Patrascanu was detained on Gheorghi-
Dej's orders and was never seen again in public. It was later revealed that
he had been taken to Securitate headquarters where he was interrogated for
over a year about his alleged links with 'the British Secret Intelligence Service'.
Patrascanu eventually escaped the interrogators by committing suicide, slash-
ing his wrists with a razor blade. It was, however, a long and painful process.
'In order to prevent detection of the source of the razor blade Patrascanu
broke it into small pieces and then swallowed it.' This did not end the investi-
gation. Before he died, security officers fed him laxatives, but 'although they
managed to piece together the object the gastric juices had removed any
traces of fingerprints'. The Securitate never did find any evidence of a link
to

CZECHO/SLOVAKIA
During the thirties, which had evolved under the
the Slovak People's Party,
leadership of Monsignor Andrej Hlinka, had adopted an increasingly extreme
pro-fascist programme. It centred on Slovak independence and the dismem-
berment of the Czechoslovak state, which had only been created at the end
of the First World War. Hlinka died in September 1938 and was replaced by
another Catholic cleric, Monsignor Jozef Tiso. In the wake of the Munich
crisis, an 'independent' Slovakia, a Nazi satellite, was created in March 1939

under Tiso, who suppressed all political parties other than the Slovak
National Front. Tiso's grip on the country depended on the specially recruited
paramilitary organisation, the 'Hlinka Guard'. It had been formed out of the
nationalist's most radical wing by Foreign Minister Dr Ferdinand Durcansky,
whose stormtroopers put into practice the September 1941 anti-Jewish laws.^^
Following the end of the war, Durcansky was condemned in absentia by
the democratic Czechoslovakian government as a war criminal responsible
for destruction of the Slovak Jews. An Intermarium fugitive, he was listed
in 1946 by the United Nations as a Category A war criminal, and in the
following year was 'condemned to death by the Slovak National Council'.
182 PAKT I HKEE: THE SOVIET EMPIRE

In exile, with help from the Vatican and British Intelligence, Durcansky
continued to plot for Slovak independence through his anti-communist
Skn ak Liberation Movement. In June 1947 the New York Times reported that
he was in Italy, 'where he broadcasts daily to Slovakia and is in constant
touch with the underground'. The Czech government announced that leaflets
proclaiming that a new government would soon seize power in Slovakia
with Durcansky as premier were being distributed throughout the country.*^
The contact between the underground in Slovakia and emigre centres in
Vienna and Paris was 'Stefan Ilok', who had links to French, British and later
American intelligence agencies. In 1944 Ilok began working with a branch of
the French resistance known as Arc-en-Ciel or Rainbow,* protecting French
officers who had escaped from German camps by supplying them with false
identity papers. Leaving Slovakia with diplomatic status, Ilok headed for
Italy to negotiate with the Americans for supplies for the insurgents. His
group, however, was captured and imprisoned in the Mauthausen concen-
tration camp in Austria. Liberated by Patton's Third Army, he made his
way back and renewed contact with the guerrillas fighting the
to Slovakia
communists. Ilok eventually returned to Vienna 'to alert and arouse the West
to support Slovakia's cause, to raise money for the underground and to serve
as a liaison between the underground and the free world'. Much of the work
was taken up with supplying the intelligence services with 'information on
Soviet troop movements in Austria and in the East European satellites'.^^
In September 1947, a Czech commission headed by General Ferjencik
announced that they had uncovered a 'massive conspiracy' to overthrow
the government. Durcansky's network had been thoroughly infiltrated and
numerous documents were produced linking scores of Slovak politicians to
it. The subsequent anti-fascist purge, which spread into every corner of the

government, was followed by a communist counter-coup. It occurred so

quickly that the British consul wondered if Durcansky had not staged the
whole affair:

Durcansky's subversive organisation . . . appears undoubtedly

to exist, though it does have a curious aspect. The evidence
collected is so complete and well-documented that it is difficult

to believe in the genuineness of the movement, and Dr Frastachy

believes that the participantswere inveigled into it by Agents
Provocateurs The whole thing, I was told, smacked of elabor-
. . .

ate stage management: But it seems to have been effective,

whether or not that was its purpose, in giving a handle to the
instigation of the purge.'^^

* These escape-and-evasion groups would later become the foundation of the French
stay-behind network known as Glaive.
 INTERMARIUM 183

With the spotlight on his activities, Europe was no longer considered safe
for Durcansky - by now Intermarium president - and he was sent down a
ratline to exile in Argentina. MI6, in the shape of Kim Philby, had attempted

to transfer Durcansky and their Slovak assets to the Americans, but they
were wary of recruiting such an open Nazi collaborator. In September 1950,
the CIA sent a negative report on Durcansky to the US immigration authori-
ties, which forced the British to find him a new home. Even though the British

were obliged to admit that they knew that Durcansky was a war criminal,
in December MI6 helped him leave Argentina via London for Canada using
a UK visa. Although officially listed as living in Ottawa, Durcansky
subsequently 'spent most of his time in London and Germany' working for
the MI6-sponsored ABN.'^
Driven out of Czechoslovakia by the communist takeover in 1948, Josef
Josten set up the Free Czech Information news agency in London with help
from MI6 and the Foreign Office's Information Research Department. Josten
had served with the Allies in the Czechoslovak Brigade on the western front,
and from June 1943 was employed editing texts for the BBC in London on
behalf of a military propaganda section. At the end of the war, he was posted
by SHAEF to Radio Luxemburg before returning to Prague and the Ministry
of Foreign Affairs. Dismissed when a communist 'Action Committee' took
over the ministry, Josten was forced to flee with his wife to the West, eventu-
ally reaching the US CIC headquarters at Camp King in Germany, where
other Czech politicians were installed.
Another Czech forced to flee from the communists was army general
staff officer Colonel Prochazka, who helped create in London the Czech
Intelligence Office (CIO), staffed with former colleagues. Financed and
supported by MI 6, it established offices in Frankfurt, Munich, Zurich, Berlin
and Vienna. Making contact with the Czech underground, the CIO provided
a highly successful courier service for its intelligence operatives, who had
allegedly managed to penetrate the Communist Party and government
departments. In Prague, Dr Potocek, a director of the First Czechoslovak
Insurance Company, ran a network of twenty paid and 'unwitting' agents.
The network was eventually exposed in the spring of 1956 when an informant
passed to the military attache at the Czech embassy in London copies of
reports which Potocek had passed to MI6. They included detailed information
on new Soviet tanks and poison gas being manufactured for the Warsaw
Pact armies. Code-named 'Light', the informant, Charles Zbytek, had served
in England during the war with the Free Czech Army and had joined Col.
Prochazka's staff as a poorly paid clerk.'*^

Light's information enabled the Czech security service to close down 'a
lethalnetwork within Czechoslovakia, destroy a Czech resistance movement
and effectively sabotage an anti-Czech organisation located in neighbouring
countries, such as West Germany'. With the enthusiastic help of the KGB,
184 PART THREE: THE SOVIET EMPIRE

they also successfully managed to place their agents within the British spy
net. It soon became apparent that the CIO's operations werefailures, and in
1958 MI6 decided to withdraw The CIA's East Euro-
financial co-operation.
pean desk was informed that the network had been compromised and, during
the following year, a team of MI6 officers toured NATO countries warning
their security services that 'the Czechoslovak service was so effective that at
least as much attention should be given to it as was being given to the KGB'.^^
CHAPTER 12

THE PROMETHEAN
LEAGUE

In the aftermath of the Bolshevik revolution, a number of 'governments-in-

exile' and 'National Committees', under the Ukrainian leadership of Dr Roma
Smal-Stocky, a minister of the exiled Ukrainian Democratic Republic, organ-
common front, the Promethean League of the Nations subjugated by
ised a
Moscow (soon abbreviated to the Promethean League). It represented 'all the
minority nationalities of the former Russian empire' - Azerbaijan, Georgia,
the Don and Kuban Cossacks, North Causcasia, Yukestan, Idel-Ural, Ukraine,
Crimea, Ingria, Karelia and the Komi (Zyryan) Region. Initially, the
Armenians were not represented as enmity existed between them and the
Georgians, whom they feared would dominate an independent Caucasus.^
The League was primarily an organisation for Ukrainian and Georgian
aspirations. After the FirstWorld War, with eastern Ukraine controlled by
the Soviet Union and the western areas part of Poland, the main centres of
Ukrainian emigration were established in Warsaw and Paris, the latter becom-
ing headquarters for the League and the State Centre of the Ukrainian Demo-
cratic Republic. Under the leadership of the 'heroic' figure of Ataman Simon

Petlura, the State Centre was styled as a Ukrainian government-in-exile and

often acted within the framework of the Promethean League. The State Centre
and the Prometheans, who were generally known as 'Petlurans', denounced
'the absence of real autonomy in the Soviet Union and stand ultimately for

a "federal state of nationalities" '. They, therefore, did not support the extreme
Ukrainian nationalists known as the 'integralists'.^
186 PART THREE: THE SOVIET EMPIRE

A self-acknowledged 'conspiring underground movement', in 1925 the

League had begun organising in clandestine fashion in Bucharest, Istanbul,
Helsinki, Prague and Paris, where it came into contact with leading figures
in M16, such as Wilfred 'Biffy' Dunderdale and Stewart Menzies, who began

to administer covert support and finance. Under the presidency of Smal-

Stocky it 'planned common action for the liberation of all peoples concerned'.
From Prometheans also had the support of
the early thirties onwards, the
the Polish government and the French secret service in 'a Franco-Polish effort
to instigate an anti-communist revolution in Belorussia and Ukraine'. The
League 'played a large part in Polish aspirations for the development of a
bloc of states in Eastern Europe, stretching from Finland to the Caucasus, in
which Poland could become a true great power by exercising her "natural"
position of leadership'. According to Soviet specialist John A. Armstrong, the
Ukrainian leaders of the Promethean League, who were secretly anti-Polish,
were, 'of course, aware of the Polish aims, but in their overwhelming desire
for liberation of their peoples from the Communist yoke they accepted the
assistance of the Warsaw government'.^
The League developed rapidly, especially in Czechoslovakia, where
Thomas Masaryk showed great sympathy for the non-Russian nations, as
did Poland, which gave permission in 1936 for three hundred officers of the
Polish Army to attend a Promethean Congress in Warsaw. This fed the para-
noia of Stalin, who considered the Polish and Czech intelligence services
to be fellow-conspirators with MI6. The Promethean concept of a dynamic
revolution inside the Soviet Union drew inspiration from Count Coudenhove-
Kalergi's Pan-European Union. According to one of its leading Ukrainian
figures, the First World War Polish hero General Pavlo Shandruk: 'the Polish,
Baltic, Turkic and Mongolian revolutionaries sympathised with these ideas

as did many anti-communists in the West'. There was contact between Smal-
Stocky and Coudenhove-Kalergi but this did not progress very far as the
count 'did not take into consideration Eastern Europe in his plans'. France
was supportive but 'Poland was the key in this new European constellation'.
In the interests of the Pan-European Union, the Ukrainian government-in-
exile ordered its contract officers in the Polish Army to defend the Polish
republic. However, this was not always successful.^
British intelligence officer John H. Watson made a tour of the Polish
Ukraine during the summer of 1939 and reported to the Foreign Office that
'the Poles also sometimes realise that the "Promethean policy" of setting up
a Ukraine State under Polish protection would have much more chance of
successful realisation if Poland could count on the loyalty of her own Ukrain-
ian minority and if the talent which is now wasting itself in hopeless oppo-
sition could be trained into an efficient civil and military cadre, loyal to
Poland and capable of filling key positions in the Russian Ukraine'. The
problem, as the Foreign Office realised, was that the majority of the Prome-
 THE PROMETHEAN LEAGUE 187

thean-backed Ukrainian Committee in Paris had emigrated from 'Greater

Ukraine' many years before and, it was felt, had 'very little connection with any
part of Ukraine at all'. Despite this perceived weakness, the League was a major
target for Stalin's security ser\Tces, and in Poland was heavily infiltrated by the
People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (NKVD). As evidence of the effec-
ti\^eness of the League's propaganda campaigns, its leader, Smal-Stocky,

claimed that what lay behind the 1938 Moscow trials of Bukharin and other
senior communist officials was an attack on the Promethean ideology. Primar-
ily from the non-Russian regions, the accused had been charged with 'dismem-

bering the USSR' into the constituent nationalist parts, and of having contacts
with the intelligence services of foreign states, primarily the British, though the
Germans were regarded with increasing respect.^
Covert links between eastern European nationalists such as the League
and the Wehrmacht, the Abwehr and the Nazi Party had begun in the late
twenties. Members of German Military Intelligence, which developed close
ties with dissident nationalists in Poland and the USSR, had hoped to make

use of these groups in any struggle with the Soviet Union. Despite the fact
that during the thirties the Promethean League had been attacked by some
German officials as a 'Polish invention'. Admiral Canaris's Abwehr took over
much of the network. Gradually, the thin veneer of democratic ideals to
which the League paid lip-service was replaced by a more authoritarian
stance which found favour with the Nazis. The principal contact with the
League and other emigre groups was through Alfred Rosenberg's Ministry
for the Occupied Eastern Territories, Ostministerium (OMi), which from 1943
onwards had a substantial input from the SS.^
In the late thirties, a small War Office section, GS(R) (General Staff
(Research), made contact with the Promethean League. In the expectation of
war with Germany, Colin Gubbins undertook two secret air trips to the
Continent, first to the Danube and then to the Baltic, where he looked into
the possibility of organising netw^orks of anti-Nazi guerrillas. Returning in
the spring of 1939, Gubbins contacted the Warsaw branch of the League as
a member of an official British Military Mission to Poland. Responsible for
producing papers on guerrilla warfare under the auspices of MI6's Section
D, which was beginning to plan sabotage and sub\'ersive action against Nazis,
Gubbins's official task was to set up an MI(R) unit in Poland which would
organise stay-behind netw^orks. He also took the opportunity to make contact
with senior PoUsh army officer Pavlo Shandruk and the Polish liaison to the
Promethean League. Gubbins then secretly visited Belgrade, which was the
centre of Section D's Balkan operations and home to many White Russians,
including a large contingent of the League's adherents. With the announce-
ment Non- Aggression Pact on 23 August 1939, the use of
of the Nazi-Soviet
the exile groups became an even more attractive proposition.^
Foreign Office co-ordinator of the MI6 and Military Intelligence-backed
188 TART THREE: THE SOVIET EMPIRE

'subversive action' by the exiles was Fitzroy Maclean, who had travelled
extensively in the Caucasus. On the Russian desk of the Northern Depart-
ment, Maclean was seen as 'the most hawkish of hawks' and had a growing
reputation as a Soviet specialist.As a junior Foreign Office diplomat during
the mid-thirties, Maclean had served in the Paris embassy, where he became
a close friend of the MI6 head of station, Wilfred Dunderdale, who had
served in the Black Sea area during the First World War. Most of Dunderdale's
contacts were in the White Russian exile community, and one of his tasks
was to support the many anti-communist organisations that had the backing
of MI 6. Maclean was introduced to these emigre circles by Dunderdale.
Despite their close and enduring friendship, and the fact that he was 'quite
a friend' of Stewart Menzies, Maclean always denied that he was working
for MI6. While there was never any formal link, and he was broadly sceptical
of espionage carried out by agents, he had, while on a trip to the Soviet
Union before the war, used the opportunity to take photographs which were
duly passed on to the Service. According to another friend, Douglas Dodds-
Parker, Maclean was a 'doer' and remained in touch with MI6 throughout
his career.^
The signing of the Non- Aggression Pact came as a severe shock to Britain.
Maclean was subsequently asked to draw up a document detailing ways of
dismembering the Soviet Union and making trouble with the Russians 'by
stirring up the minorities'. In October, Maclean produced a 'Memorandum
Respecting the Soviet Threat to British Interests in the Middle East', which
suggested that Muslim hostility to the Russians could be exploited by British
Military Intelligence agents, creating havoc in Transcaucasus and the Central
Asian republics of Armenia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikis-
tan, which were occupied by the Russians. 'Appeal would have to be made
to such religious feelings as still exist amongst the population, to any national-
ist or any anti-Russian feelings they may have, and to the bitter hatred which

the present regime is bound to have engendered in many classes of the

population.' Maclean recommended that 'use could be made of the natives
of the frontier regions of Afghanistan and Iran, who are practically indis-
tinguishable from the corresponding tribes on the Soviet side of the frontier'.
These could 'establish contact with disaffected elements in the Soviet Union
itself, and raise the standard of revolt in as large an area as possible'. He

suggested that there was a need for a forward base from which to send
agents across the frontier into the Soviet Union. The likely countries were
Afghanistan, Turkey and Iran, although he thought that the most promising
was Sinkiang, in China. He urged that 'preparatory measures' should be
taken without delay in setting up 'an organisation to foment trouble within
Soviet-occupied territory'.*^

The project centred on the oil wells of the Baku, which were of strategic
importance. The British business journal The Near East reported that 'Baku is
 THE PROMETHEAN LEAGUE 189

greater than any other oil city in the world. If oil is king, Baku is its throne!'
A Caucasian uprising in 1924 was, the New York Times reported, 'being
financed and directed from Paris' by 'powerful financiers' and 'former
proprietors of the Baku oil wells'. Already, by the winter of 1938, British
agents were busy in the Caucasus region 'with a view to establishing ... a

bastion for the protection of British oil interests and against potential growth
in Germany's appetite to infiltrate India in the event Germany succeeded in
marching into Ukraine'. According to the American State Department, MI6
'is not blind to the reported ambitions of the Nazi extremists to reach out
^°
eventually for the Caucasus and neighbouring oil fields'.
The planning was entrusted to a small circle of hardline anti-communist/
Soviet intelligence officers, many of them born in the Soviet Union, who were
to play a key role in the postwar exile operations. Indeed, the project was to
be both a forerunner and a blueprint for later operations. Its MI 6 liaison
officer was Charles 'Dick' Ellis, who was
draw on his own experience
able to
and knowledge of the exile movements and the Baku region. Born in Sydney,
Australia, twenty-four-year-old Ellis fought immediately after the First World
War in the Baku on the Caspian Sea's western shore alongside the British
Military Mission under Major-General W. Malleson. After completing
language studies at Oxford and the Sorbonne, Ellis joined the Foreign Office
as a diplomat before transferring to MI6 in 1924. He was then posted as a
Passport Control officer to Berlin and finally to Paris, where he operated
under journalist cover within the large White Russian community. During
the thirties, working alongside Dunderdale, Ellis was Menzies's main
representative with the anti-communist groups and the resident expert on
what Stalin called 'the nationalities question - the euphemism for unrest
among non-Russians making up half the population of the USSR'.^^
In Paris, Ellis married the sister of a White Russian, Alexander Zilenski;
his brother-in-law became one most valuable sources. Through him,
of his
Ellis made contact with another White Russian, Waldemar von Petrov,
who, in turn, was friendly with one of the best-known of the exile leaders.
Prince Anton Vasilevich Turkul, who was to become one of Ellis's key agents.
Turkul had been a general in the Tsar's army, and after the 1917 revolution
joined the counter-revolutionaries in the White Army. Turkul and other White
Russian officers were eventually evacuated from Gallipoli to Paris by the
sympathetic French government which, along with the British, had financed
much of the anti-Bolshevik effort. In Paris, Turkul worked with the White
Russian Armed Services Union (ROVS), which supervised a secret sabotage
and terrorist group - the Russian Federation of ex-Combatants - run by
General Alexander Kutepov, a long-standing MI6 agent who also established
a counter-intelligence service - the Inner Line. Both were supported and
helped financially by Menzies. One of MI6's leading agents inside the Inner
Line during the twenties was Claudius Voss, Turkul's superior in the Balkan
m \\\\U THREE: THE SOVIET EMPIRE

section of ROVS. Voss and Turkul went on to help create the anti-communist
hut pro-Russian National Labour Council (NTS), which was supported by
M16.'-
From this complex web of ties which reached into German, French and,
seemingly, Russian intelligence services, Ellis was able to forward to London
a mass of information. Unfortunately, headquarters was to discover that much
of it was faked, produced by the many exile 'paper mills' that proliferated in
Paris. The majority of these organisations were riddled with double agents
working for either the Germans or the Russians, or had been discredited by
the numerous scandals that surrounded the emigre community. Inevitably,
reliance on the emigres as a source was to lead Ellis into a world of double-
dealing and blackmail.
In 1940, the Security Service's expert on Soviet espionage, Jane Sissmore
Archer, received information from the Soviet defector Walter Krivitsky to the
effect that Soviet Military Intelligence (GRU) had recruited a pre-war Abwehr
agent, Waldemar von Petrov. When an Abwehr officer was interrogated after
the war, he confirmed that von Petrov had claimed to have had an excellent
source of high-grade intelligence inside MI6. He said that he had worked
through an intermediary called 'Zilenski', whose source, 'Captain Ellis', had
supplied documents revealing MI6's 'order of battle' and information about
specific secret operations, including the tapping of the telephone of the
German ambassador in London, von Ribbentrop. Disturbed by the allega-
tions, MIS sought permission to interrogate Ellis, but MI6 refused,
contemptuously dismissing the allegations by suggesting that the German
officer had faked the evidence. Years later, however, Ellis was to admit to

the substance of the charges, though he denied being recruited as a German

agent. He had handed over detailed organisational charts to the Germans
and acknowledged that he had been a translator of decrypts from the embassy
tapping operation. He excused his behaviour by claiming he had run into
money difficulties because of the small salary he received from MI6. He had
been forced to borrow money from his brother-in-law, who had used the
opportunity to extract information from him which he then sold to the
Germans. came to look on the White Russians as 'a double-crossing lot
Ellis

of bastards who would sell intelligence to whoever would pay them'. Which,
of course, was entirely true.^^
A number of Ellis's wartime colleagues refused to accept his confession,
though Montgomery Hyde, who had been one of them, later acknowledged
the evidence. Ellis was clearly not liked by some colleagues - 'a horrible little
man' - and a number of attempts were later made by the 'young Turks' to
publicise his treachery. Chapman Pincher, whose information 'was supplied
by an MIS officer' - clearly Peter Wright - and confirmed by MI6 officers
Nicholas Elliott and Christopher Phillpotts, went so far as to suggest that,
besides being a German agent, 'there are strong, but unproven, suspicions
 THE PROMETHEAN LEAGUE 191

that Elliswas also a mercenary spy for the Soviets'. Which roughly translates
as - there was not a shred of real evidence.^^
Bearing in mind the Service's initial support of Ellis and the dismissal of
the charges, there is a suspicion that he was later made a scapegoat in order
to hide a more disturbing fact, namely that he had been trading information
with the Germans on the orders of Menzies. MI6 was at its core an anti-
Bolshevik organisation; indeed, 'Quex' Sinclair was known as 'a terrific anti-
Bolshevik', and its late entry into gathering intelligence on Nazi Germany
was half-hearted at best. This may be partially explained by Sinclair's pro-
appeasement stance and the large number of MI6-linked people in appease-
ment circles. Until the end of 1938, MI6 believed that Hitler's ambitions lay
in the East, and that he was 'devoting special attention to the eastward drive,
to securing control of the exploitable riches of the south, and possibly more,
of Russia'. Such intelligence was met with by Prime Minister
indifference
Neville Chamberlain, who told the Cabinet that a Russo-German conflict over
Ukraine was no concern of Britain.

Some of the intelligence that reached the Cabinet may have originated
with Ellis, who knew thatAdmiral Wilhelm Canaris, chief of the Abwehr,
had secret plans to use the White Russians in operations in Ukraine and
southern Russia. Canaris was co-operating with many of the same organisa-
tions as those sponsored by the British, and there is evidence that on occasion
they worked in concert. The Abwehr had apparently collaborated with the
British in central Europe and the Balkans in counter-intelligence operations
against 'communist agents who had begun to flood into Western Europe
to provoke revolutions in support of the Kremlin'. Anthony Cave Brown's
suggestion that Canaris's eventual takeover of the emigre organisations was
undertaken with MI6's knowledge and encouragement is probably correct.
In the meantime, MI6 was still engaged in plans to thwart Soviet expansionist
claims and to deny the Germans access to oil for its war machine.
British secret service officials and the chiefs of staff, in co-operation with
their French counterparts, quickly began to prepare plans to damage the
German-Soviet Pact by creating subversion in Russia in order to cut off the
supplies of strategically important goods such as oil. An early December
report for the chiefs on 'The vulnerability of Russian oil supplies' was submit-
ted to the War Cabinet. At this stage, the Cabinet would only sanction contin-
gency planning because ministers feared driving the Soviets, once and for
all, into the German camp. There was also a fear of retaliation against Allied

oil interests in Persia and Iraq. Initially it seems that it was the French who

led the way, organising - on 20 January 1940 - an Anglo-French conference

which was held in Beirut on the subject of stopping Germany gaining oil
from the Caucasus.
Three weeks later, the Cabinet asked the chiefs to revise their plans. On
8 March, they submitted a revised study, 'Military Implications of Hostilities
1^^2 TART THREE: THE SOVIET EMPIRE

w ith Russia in 1940', which outlined methods by which the Allies could strike
at the Baku oilfields. It suggested that if the oilfields were knocked out then
90 per cent of the resources would be unavailable to Stalin's increasingly
oil-thirsty customer, Nazi Germany. The plan envisaged RAF bombers taking
out the oilfields in an operation which, French Intelligence suggested, would
leave the Baku in a sheet of flames, with the refineries possibly out of action
for years. In mid-March, MI 6 entrusted its expert on aerial photography.
Wing Commander F. Sidney Cotton, with organising air reconnaissance of
the area by the clandestine Photographic Development Unit. Simultaneously,
thousand French troops stationed in the Middle East, under the
sixty
command of General Maxime Weygrand, were earmarked to venture into
Soviet territory in Transcaucasia. In the final part of the project, British Intelli-

gence would use the exile groups to foment unrest in the Caucasus and Soviet
Central Asia. On 17 April, General Weygrand telegraphed headquarters that
preparations for bombing were well advanced.
the oilfields
The Maclean memorandum assumed that the Russians might use the
opportunity of war to undermine the British sphere of influence in the East
by invading Afghanistan and Iran. In recognition of this possibility, the chiefs
and General Wavell asked MI(R), which until that point had been 'a centre
of repressed frustration', to form a unit in Cairo - 'to be ready to take action
against any Russian incursion from Transcaucasia across Iran towards India'.
The officer in charge was Colonel Adrian Simpson, a former deputy managing
director of Marconi who, during the First World War, had been ADC to the
Grand Duke Nicholas in the Russian Army's Caucasus 'Savage Division'.
Simpson's deputy was Douglas Roberts, a specialist on Russia's southern
flank and an influential member of MI(R)'s inner Special Operational Plan-
ning and Action Group - forerunner of MI6's postwar Special Operations
and Political Action Branch. Roberts was a leading figure in MI6 in the late
forties. Born in the Caucasus at the turn of the century, the son of the British

consul in Odessa, he had served for a period as ADC to General Peter

Wrangel in the White Russian Army campaign against the Bolsheviks. During
the twenties, he worked in the timber trade in Finland and Russia, where he
doubled as an 'illegal' intelligence asset. Roberts was subsequently posted as
a Defence Security Officer (MIS) to Istanbul, which remained for many years
the centre of British Intelligence operations into the Soviet Union.
Back at the Foreign Office, following the sudden collapse of the Polish
forces, Fitzroy Maclean contacted the MI6-backed Promethean League. On
the outbreak of war, the Paris branchhad issued a manifesto which declared
a pro-Allied stance and began to organise an all-Ukrainian leading political
centre in the struggle against Germany and Russia. Gubbins, meanwhile, had
been put in command of the Number 4 (Polish-Czech) Military Mission in
Paris. The Poles had the best special services in Europe, and Gubbins learned
from Maclean that MI6 was still financing the Prometheans, who were spread-
 THE PROMETHEAN LEAGUE 193

ing ideas of 'subversion and sabotage among the oppressed peoples of the
Caucasus and Soviet Central Asia'. Serious consideration was given to the
establishment of an independent Ukrainian state in the Polish Ukraine area
through 'determined attempts' at propaganda and subversion. With the
co-operation of the Paris branch, Gubbins also began to recruit a Ukrainian
legion to aid Finland.
In February 1940, a Russian-speaking MI(R) officer. Captain Tamplin, and
his colleague. Major Gatehouse, had travelled to Finland to interview Soviet
PoWs who had been captured following the brutal Finnish-Russo 'Winter
War', which had resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of soldiers.
Their orders were to assess the possibility of using the former Red Army
soldiers in a planned Franco-British operation against the Soviet Union. A
banker by profession, Guy Tamplin was an ideal choice for the operation.
After service in the First World War on the Lockhart Mission in Russia, he
lived for a long period in Riga, capital of Estonia, becoming a specialist on
the Baltic states and on eastern Europe. On the basis of extensive interroga-
tions, the two MI(R) officers concluded PoWs were so traumatised
that the
by their experience as Soviet citizens that there was little possibility of them
making decent recruits. Most were barely literate, and years of NKVD-
inspired propaganda and sheer terror had left them totally ignorant of the
outside world. Tamplin and Gatehouse believed that the likelihood of using
these prisoners as a military counter-revolutionary force was 'nil'. There was
little point in appealing 'to the average citizen of the Soviet Union to take
active measures against the present regime . . . They have lived through
terrible experiences in the present war, and do not mean to risk a repetition.
This risk they would certainly not take voluntarily . . . Their greatest hope is

for an end to the war, so that they might creep home to their families.' The
only glimmer of positive aspiration was seen amongst the sizeable Ukrainian
contingent.
This measured report was seemingly forgotten when the war was at an
end and the West, and MI6 in particular, began to resurrect the various
anti-communist organisations with a view to launching anti-Soviet oper-
ations. A not-disinterested commentator, Nikolai Tolstoy, believes that the
authors were harsh in their assessment, neglecting the innate sense of patriot-
ism of the PoWs: 'It was this spectre of counter-revolution which haunted
Stalin's walking and sleeping. GULAG slaves, the Poles, the Baits, Caucasi-
ans, Ukrainian peasants . . . the list was endless. The collective hatred of
millions of injured people was a fearful vision to contemplate.' The West
played on these fears, often in a purely cynical manner, using the various
exile movements to foment non-existent revolts and, thereby, sent hundreds
of emigre agents to almost certain death. The simple truth of these actions,
however, is that revolutionary change only usually occurs in a period of rising
expectations. The later revolts in eastern Europe took place when controls had
194 PART THREE: THE SOVIET EMPIRE

boLMi temporarily relaxed and the population saw an opportunity for

increased freedoms. Total repression, as experienced under the yoke of totali-
tarian Stalinism, invariably produced a state of trauma - not the seeds of
re\olt.~'

As Tamplin and Gatehouse acknowledged, an exception to the rule were

the Ukrainians, though they were in a slightly different position in that Poland
and Stalin had never been able to impose over western Ukraine the same degree
A sizeable proportion of the population
of total control that existed in the east.
supported nationalist aims - a flame that had not been extinguished. Even so,
the MI(R) officers concluded that 'the overthrow of the Government can only
be achieved by foreign military intervention'. This was accepted by a number
of senior Foreign Office officials, who concluded that Ukraine is 'so well
controlled by the Soviet Government and so "atomised" by the precautions
taken to prevent anything like a concerted political movement or the propa-
gation of any political views other than their own, that there is no chance of
any anti-Soviet movement developing'. Nor was there a 'chance of creating
an armed uprising without military assistance from abroad'.^^
The Promethean League was something of a dis-
Paris branch of the
appointment to engaged in little activity - which ceased
Gubbins; it

completely when the Germans invaded France. Its leaders were arrested and
a number were to die in prison, thus enabling the League to proclaim after
the war that its members had not collaborated with the Germans. Despite
the fact that a number of Petlurans were, indeed, anti-German, and that the
leading pro-Polish, pro- Allied Ukrainian publication Ukrainske Slovo was also
anti-German and anti-Hitler, it was still The Paris declar-
a misleading claim.
ation of support for the Allies had received a cool response by other Ukraini-
ans, especially those in Warsaw where the real power lay. In December 1939,
the Warsaw branch had refuted the declaration and insisted that it would
continue the struggle for nationalist liberation.^^
The and French continued to revise their plans for military action
British
in the Caucasus, though the chances of success were slim - a fact noticed by
the Abwehr, which sent Paul Leverkuehn to Tabriz, north Persia, to monitor
the progress of the Allies. In his opinion, an aerial assault was unlikely to
succeed, though he considered Baku highly vulnerable to a land invasion.
Through poor security, a copy of Maclean's Baku plan found its way into
German hands. When the Wehrmacht captured Paris in June 1940, copies of
the joint Anglo-French plans were discovered in the French Foreign Ministry.
The confidential files of the French General Staff were also retrieved, along
with those of General Gamelin's Inter-Allied Section, which included the
complete records of highly secret discussions between Allied commanders-in-
chief. Among documents was the Baku bombing plan, copies of which
the
were sent by The plans were
Hitler to Stalin as evidence of perfidious Albion.
publicised in the German press on 4 July.^^
 THE PROMETHEAN LEAGUE 195

Despite this setback, as late as May 1941 the chiefs of staff in London
studied plans to bomb the Caucasus oilfields; however, the Anglo-French
projects were found to be impractical due to Turkey's unwillingness to risk
war with Russia. Even when Hitler struck at the Soviet Union on 22 June
1941, the British-led Promethean operation was not deemed totally irrelevant.
The day before Barbarossa was launched, the Special Operations Executive
(SOE), which had taken over the War Office's assets, agreed to send oil
demolition experts from the Middle East into southern Russia. Two days
later, as a matter of urgency, the Joint Planning Staff in London ordered SOE
to make preparations for infiltrating sabotage agents into the Caucasus, an
operation code-named 'G(R) 16' Mission. Bands of Kurds, Armenians and
Georgians were to be flown into the Caucasus to blow up the oilfields. The
Russians were not told of the planning and it was only in late November,
when the Germans suffered their first setback near Rostrov, that G(R) 16 was
dismantled. Air Marshal Sir John Slessor later wrote that 'the feature of these
discussions which, in retrospect, really makes one's hair stand on end is the
air - not perhaps of complacency, but of acceptance, with which we viewed
the prospect of enlisting Russia among our active enemies'.
When Soviet forces advanced into the western Galician areas of Poland
and Ukraine, leading members of the League decided that 'German captivity
was preferable to falling into the hands of their arch-enemies'. Led by the
head of the Warsaw branch, Smal-Stocky, they reached Lvov, from where
they were safely evacuated by the Germans - 'probably through special efforts
of Admiral Canaris who hoped to preserve the group for future use against
the Soviet Union'. The man who organised the rescue was Dr Georg Leib-
brant, a 'pro-Ukrainian fanatic' from Odessa, who was head of the political
department in Alfred Rosenberg's OMi. Although the Promethean League
was declared illegal and a number of its leaders were imprisoned in Warsaw,
it was not long before they were allowed a degree of free movement in

German-occupied Poland. Friendly and close relations were maintained with

the Abwehr, which assigned 'contract officers' and employed certain leaders
on plans for Ukraine. Many Ukrainians had been employed as officers in the
Polish Army, and they were quick to denounce their former employers; Pavlo
Shandruk supplied the Germans with a list of Polish officers, who were
subsequently purged and shot.^^
Leibbrandt shipped off other League members to Prague, where Smal-
Stocky later insisted that the Gestapo had interned him for the duration of
the war. It was, however, an open arrest, and Leibbrandt ensured that the
Prometheans received funds and research assignments. The relationship with
the Germans was, in fact, so close that when Leibbrandt's private Ukrainian
adviser, Alexander Sevriuk, met with Smal-Stocky in Warsaw on 9 April
1941, he tipped him off about the forthcoming invasion of the USSR. The
Promethean leaders then began seriously to plan the establishment of a
r)b PAPvT THPvFE: THE SOVIET EMPIRE

Ukrainian government. At the same time, leadership of the Caucasian

committees passed to Mikhail Kedia, a politician of extreme pro-German and
anti- Russian convictions with many contacts in the SS and Abwehr, who

campaigned for the 'joint struggle of all non-Russians against the Russians'.
In the midst of this collaboration, the Soviet NKVD took the opportunity to
plant its own agents among the League's ranks.^^
The Germans now had control of the Promethean assets, and three months
after the invasion of the Soviet Union, in the wake of the general Soviet
confusion, there was a wide and sustained revolt of the Moslem Mountaineers
in the north Caucasus. Though relatively little is known about this rebellion,
its careful clandestine organisation, synchronised outbreak, and effective
character appear to place among the most important anti-Soviet uprisings.'
it

The rebellion paved the way for a change of regime and, when the Germans
entered the area, the Mountaineers afforded them a 'genuine welcome'.
The Germans needed to gain access to the vast oil reserves of Baku, and
in the spring of 1942 Rosenberg's OMi renewed its contacts with 'govern-
ments-in-exile' and 'national committees' established in Berlin, Paris and, in
particular, Turkey. Pressure had come from Turkey, whose support Germany
wanted to encourage, to sponsor groups from countries on
its borders. The

Turks took a special interest in the Triukic-Muslim areas such as the Crimea
and Azerbaijan, and in the Caucasus as a whole. This was, however, a very
contentious policy area, with deep divisions over orientation which enabled
the emigres to exert some influence on German policy. Within the OMi, and
between it and other agencies, there was a conflict - the advocates of the
'federal' solution to conquered territories, which had the support of Rosen-
berg, Georgian Prince Nikuradze and the Promethean League, argued against
the promoters of the extreme 'nationalists', who saw in the federalist schemes
a threat to German rule. The federalists were also hostile to the pro-Turkish
orientation that clashed with the idea of a Georgian-led Caucasus. The nation-
alist faction was led by Professor Gerhard von Mende, a young Berlin lecturer

on Turkic and Muslim groups and head of an economic section in the OMi,
who became, in effect, the 'master protector' of the non-Russian national
groups operating under German control.^"^

Promethean leaders recruited by the OMi included Cafar Seydahmet. A

representative abroad in 1919 of the Crimean Parliament, he was leader of
the volunteer Tartars who were organised into six German auxiliary military
units, which the extreme nationalists saw as the nucleus of a future 'Crimean
Army'. In Turkey, Ayaz Ishaki led the refugees from central Asian Idel-Val,
who dreamed of a state 'from Kazan to Samarkand'. An old socialist-
revolutionary and leading writer, Ishaki had been sent in the late thirties on
a special mission to Manchuria by the Promethean League to organise a
common front in Asia.^°
Aryan racial theories and Hitler's known hatred of the Slav peoples
 THE PROMETHEAN LEAGUE 197

ensured that the idea of drawing on the discontent of the various enslaved
nations of the Soviet Union was not fully implemented until the tide of war
had turned against Germany. Eventually, the deteriorating situation in the
East forced the Nazis to use more and more eastern nationalist-based
battalions. A crippling lack of manpower obliged the Germans to lower the
standards of purity necessary to enter the SS and to reverse its anti-Slav
policy. Enthusiastically, the SS began to accelerate the recruitment of Ukraini-
ans and Belorussians. Aided by the Prometheans and extremist nationalists,
recruiting began in the various police groups, including those who had served
with SS mobile killing units, which had murdered tens of thousands of Jews
in eastern Europe.
Still unwilling to concede the idea of an independent state, in March 1943
Ukrainian nationalists of the Promethean persuasion were allowed to form a
Ukrainian force to fight 'godless Bolshevism'. Sanctioned by SS-Reichsfiihrer
Heinrich Himmler, recruitment began in May, and by 3 June eighty-two
thousand volunteers had reported to the enlistment offices. This was enough
for eight complete SS regiments. The proposed SS Division, however, could
only hold three infantry regiments; so five further regiments were formed
under German Police Command. These were known as the Galizischen
SS-Freiwilligen-Regimenter 4-8, and became notorious in actions against
Jews, partisans and other 'sub-normals'. By October, the Ukrainian Division
(or Galizien, as Himmler insisted on calling it) was renamed as the
officially

14. SS-Freiwilligen Division 'Galizien' and, later, XIV Waffen-Grenadier-

Division der SS (Galizien Nr.l). The majority of its personnel were Galician
Ukrainians who voluntarily took the oath: 'I swear by God this holy oath,
that in the struggle against Bolshevism, I will give theCommander-in-Chief
of the German Armed Forces, Adolf Hitler, absolute obedience, and if it be
his will, as a fearless soldier, I will always be prepared to lay down my life

for this oath.' Needless to say, the British and Americans who, following the
war, gave succour to the former Ukrainian soldiers of the division never
published this oath of loyalty to Hitler.^^

Ukrainian hopes and expectations were nearly extinguished when in July

1944 the eleven thousand-strong division was virtually destroyed at the Battle
of Brody in western Ukraine. Those who escaped, along with other Ukrainian
units, formed the core of a new Ukrainian SS infantry brigade regrouped in
Silesia. By the end of the year, the division was rebuilt to the full strength

of eleven thousand, with eight thousand volunteers from the SS Training

and Replacement Regiment 14 and battalions from the under-deployed
SS-Waffen-Grenadier Regiments. Following the Battle of Brody, the division's
commander, SS-Brigadefuehrer der Waffen SS Fritz Freitag, received the
Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross and issued an order of the day in which he
proclaimed: 'We all vow the Fiihrer that in our new undertakings it is our
intention to fight through together until victorious over the Bolshevik hordes
r\S PAKT THPvEE: THE SOVIET EMPIRE

and their Jewish-plutocrat helpers/ In early 1945 the division was renamed
the 1 Ukrainische National Armee. Under the command of Promethean
General Pavlo Shandruk, the First Ukrainian Division wore standard German
uniforms, sometimes with Waffen-SS-issued arm shields featuring the
Galician lion. In all, seventy-five thousand Ukrainians were in uniform/^
There remained a few nationalist elements increasingly disillusioned with
the Germans, and knowledge that the Soviet Red Army was beginning
in the
began to hedge their bets on the future. In May
to close in these elements
1943 Russian Prince Turkul had attempted to make direct contact with the
head of the US OSS in Berne, Allen Dulles. Unsuccessful, he turned to a
go-between. Prince Irakly Bagration, 'the pretender to the non-existent Geor-
gian throne and one of Turkul's inner circle'. The previous September, the
Germans had promoted Bagration as chief of their collaborationist Georgian
Committee but, not long after, he managed to travel to Switzerland. Later in
the year, the 'Promethean Underground' in Poland succeeded in making
contact with its 'old English friends'. These 'friends' are not identified but
are probably Colin Gubbins and members of MI6. According to the League's
own account, it then began to conduct 'a series of actions' and to make plans
to transfer Promethean assets to the West.^^
Since the autumn of 1944, a young Waffen-SS officer, Dr Fritz Arlt, had
been trying to form a quisling Ukrainian National Committee, but a stum-
bling-block had been the terms demanded by the extreme nationalists. In late
January 1945, Pavlo Shandruk met with the head of the recently created
Committee for the Liberation of the Peoples of Russia (KONR), Andrei
Vlasov. Although the Ukrainians formally opposed subordination of their
national committee to the KONR, Shandruk agreed a modus vivendi which
gave the Ukrainians a degree of independence. Eventually, Shandruk, who
had actively collaborated with the Nazis in anti-Semitic campaigns, received
the consent of Rosenberg to head the committee and the support of Stefan
Bandera, leader of the pro-western Galician-centred Organisation of Ukrain-
ian Nationalists(OUN-B) - though his rival, Andrei Melnyk (OUN-M), was
not enthusiastic (see Chapter 14). On 17 March 1945, the Germans officially

recognised the committee.

Their world falling apart around them, the emigres were living in a night-
marish existence of fantasy in which, right up to the end, they continued to
fight over the minutiae of deals and alliances, believing that some miracle
was at hand which might deliver their independence. There were expectations
that the Allies would continue the war, enlisting their support in an attack
on the Soviet Union; others were looking for a means of escape. OMi's von
Mende, who 'felt more at home in the more or less unreal world based on
hopes for the future than in the immediate economic or military problems
of the day', assumed responsibility for creating national committees among
the exile groups. He travelled extensively, making contacts with the emigre
 THE PROMETHEAN LEAGUE 199

leaders, including the Promethean League in Turkey. OMi sponsorship of

these national committees pandered to the almost pathetic desire of the
emigres to achieve official recognition, but also acted as a means of providing
them with 'papers and quasi-diplomatic documents with which to
of state'
'depart with relative immunity to Bavaria, Northern Italy or Switzerland'
and from there into the hands of their former 'friends' among the Allies.^^
One such emigre contemplating the future was General Shandruk, who
announced in a proclamation from the Ukrainian National Committee that
the First Ukrainian Division was officially the Ukrainian Liberation Army.
Shandruk considered it good policy to retain as many Ukrainian soldiers as
possible in the West - 'at least those who are the most conscious patriots
among the youth because, in his opinion, events could unexpectedly create
favourable conditions to employ them in the interests of Ukraine'.
Instead of engaging in battle with the Russians, the First Ukrainian
Division was moved by Germans to Slovakia and found itself fighting
the
Tito's partisans in Yugoslavia.With Tito's forces and the rapidly advancing
Red Army bearing down on them, the Division began to withdraw westward
in the direction of Vienna and into Carinthia. The division's SS minders, Dr
Arlt and Professor von Mende, recognised that the war was lost and accepted
the demand made by Shandruk to dispatch a delegation to the Allied Military
High Command with the aim of persuading them that his soldiers should
not be handed over to the Soviets. Roma Smal-Stocky and Shandruk hoped
to present to the Allied Command 'a large united multi-national assembly
of groups opposed to Russian Communism imperialism' - i.e. the assets of
the Promethean League. The contacts made by the League at the time of the
MI6-backed Baku project were to prove invaluable, but quite how the division
finally made it into British hands remains a mystery.^^
During the division's journey towards Allied lines, which was eased by
the intervention of Dr Arlt, Shandruk linked up with Father John Hrynioch,
chaplain to the Ukrainian Nachtigall battalion. Hrynioch told him in detail
about the existence of a nationalist political committee in Ukraine (UHVR),
and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA). Thought was given to letting the
division fight its way through to the homeland to link up with the UPA, but
this was regarded as being impractical. Instead, Shandruk moved on to

Prague where, on 11 April 1945, he made contact with Cossack leaders and
'his old friend', Smal-Stocky, whose surveillance by the Gestapo was lifted

on the orders of Dr Arlt. Despite Gestapo restrictions on his movements,

Smal-Stocky had retained contact with Allied 'friends' and told Shandruk
that he would get in touch with 'London'. Who his link was is not known,
though Harold 'Gibby' Gibson, who had been the MI6 head of station in
Prague at the outbreak of war, was now in Istanbul, where his officers had
responsibility for the various national committees and governments-in-exile
that belonged to the Promethean League. Another possible link, SOE's Harold
200 TART THREE: THE SOVIET EMPIRE

Perkins,who had a special affinity with the Polish assets, was at the time
running agents into Czechoslovakia/^^
After two days in Prague, the Division proceeded across the Alps to Graz,
where Smal-Stocky had advised Shandruk to seek immediate contact, through
'neutral and Allied Intermediaries', with the British High Command as soon
as Allied troops reached Austria. With the news that British forces had entered
Spittal and were moving towards Klagenfurt, Shandruk sent emissaries to
the Polish liaison officers belonging to General Anders, commander of the
Polish 2nd Corps, requesting that he intervene with the Allies on Ukraine's
behalf. Shandruk also arranged for the head of the security police of the
nationalist OUN-B, Mikolai Lebed, to send envoys to the British. Two were
killed on the way, but a third, with Dr Arlt acting as interpreter, did manage
to get through to British forces approaching Klagenfurt, where he made
contact with a Canadian-born intelligence officer of Ukrainian descent.
Employed by British Intelligence, the officer was attached to SOE's Special
Force No. 6, working closely with another friend of the Ukrainians and Poles,
Auberon Herbert. The envoy was able to set out the national position of the
Ukrainians, asserting that they should not be regarded as Soviet citizens. Dr
Arlt subsequently brought back written permission for the division to march
to the rear of the British troops. The chief of staff of the British division.
Brigadier Toby Low, told a Ukrainian representative, Dr Makarushka, that
he had been informed about the First Ukrainian Division 'from above'. This
would appear to have derived from the initial contacts following Smal-
Stocky's intervention from Prague.^^
On 8 May 1945, just hours before the final ceasefire took effect, the
reassembled Division started its westward march, crossing the front line near
Raastadt, before marching across the border at Klagenfurt into the waiting
arms of the British forces. Despite loud protests from the Soviet command,
a highly disciplined unit of over eight thousand Ukrainians was held by the
British 5th Corps near St Veit and Spittal, headquarters of the British occupa-
tion forces for northern Italy. Following 'political talks'. Father Hrynioch
rejoined the division while General Shandruk was able to persuade the Allies
that the division, which contained a number of war criminals, was wholly
composed of Polish Galicians - i.e. non-Soviets.^°
A further column under the command of General
of 1,300 Ukrainians
Shandruk had made it through to Judenburg in the American Zone, where Dr
Arlt obtained permission for them to proceed to Salzburg. The First Ukrainian
Division was instructed, on 28 May, to cross over to Italy and Udine, where
it reached Camp 374 at Bellaria, near Rimini, on the Adriatic coast. In late
June, the 1,300 men eventually made and were directed to the
it to Spittal
staff of the British Corps, near Klagenfurt. They were then taken to a camp

at Agathenhof to be supervised by one Major Rutter. In October, the Division

was transferred to another camp nearby at Cesnatico. While the British did
 THE PROMETHEAN LEAGUE 201

place the Ukrainians in a PoW cage, they were assigned as 'Separated Enemy
Personnel (SEP)'/a distinction which to the Ukrainians at least denoted their
special status'. Once in the PoW camp, the Ukrainians kept to their military
formation, adding the Ukrainian insignia to their German uniforms for the
benefit of the British, and resumed political activities. As Mark Aarons and
John Loftus point out, the SS Division was 'the only Axis unit to survive the
war intact, under arms and with their own officers'. Indeed, the Division was
not only not disarmed, but 'in many cases more arms were issued'.

Riccione, south of Rimini, was the location for a number of vast PoW camps
which, during the summer of 1945, housed thousands of Germans, Yugoslavs,
Russians and Ukrainians. Their fate was to become an increasing problem
growing tension between the former allies of
for the British, reflected in the
the West and the Soviet Union. Until June 1946 the Foreign Office had stuck
doggedly by the terms of the Yalta agreement, permitting Soviet repatriation
missions to scour PoW and DP camps in order to identify their citizens.
The majority returned home voluntarily, but those left were regarded as
collaborators or war criminals.
In July 1945, Allied Forces HQ Caserta transferred Major Denis Hills to
Bellaria, a few miles north of Riccione, to report on the eight thousand soldiers
of the First Ukrainian Division who were being held. Hills was a distinctive
and appropriate choice, a self-acknowledged fascist at Oxford University
who, although he had lost this extremist edge, was still a man of the hard
right and an ardent anti-communist. He was later proudly to boast that he
had shielded the eight-thousand men from forcible repatriation.
Hills admitted that with few resources 'proper screening was impossible'
and that it had not been his concern to 'to winkle out "war criminals" He '.

told Tom Bower in 1989 that he 'knew about the SS and I was wary, but I had
to make up my own mind about these people'. Even though there may have
been Ukrainians in the Division who had been employed in the concentration
camps and murder squads, the army. Hills said, was 'not interested' in war
crimes. Before each soldier could be grilled by a member of the Soviet mission
- which regarded Hills with grave suspicion - he coached the Ukrainian camp
leader. Major Yaskevycz, on what stance to take. He was moved by their
expressed hatred to the mission officers of the Bolsheviks and their desire not
to return to the Soviet Union. Accusations of war crimes were dismissed by
Hills and the British officials as Soviet propaganda, though it is certain that
a large number of the Ukrainians had served voluntarily in the Waffen-SS,
while others had been drafted in from police units directly involved in mass-
acres and deportations or were former concentration camp guards.'*^
Hills's immediate task was to establish the identity of the Ukrainians,
who were regarded as 'some sort of border Poles' from Galicia. Impressed
with the 'extreme national consciousness' of the First Ukrainian Division,
202 PART THREE: THE SOVIET EMPIRE

Hills readily accepted accounts by its soldiers of their origin, even though
his Polish friends despised them as 'fascist bandits'. He acknowleged that
'legally they should have been returned' and admitted disobeying orders to

detect the estimated 50 per cent who were really former Soviet citizens. 'The
solution I adopted was to register the inmates as displaced civilians - which
was not strictly true: there were former officers among them - and to encour-
age them (unofficially) to disperse.' It was claimed that many of the worst
war criminals disappeared because of lax security, but Hills helped a number
of Ukrainians escape down a crude ratline that had been established by a
young Uniate priest who 'set up a temporary refuge for them in a building
in Rome'. Hills's superior in Rome 'didn't discourage' his efforts but
'preferred to know nothing official about them'.^^
The division's last commander, Pavlo Shandruk, eventually settled in
Munich, the centre of Ukrainian nationalism in exile, where he remained in
contact with the division via Bishop Ivan Buchko, a high-ranking Vatican
official.Buchko watched over the affairs of the Ukrainian Church and the
First Division which he regarded as 'the flower of the Ukrainian nation'.
Buchko was able to inform Shandruk that the division's soldiers had been
'reclassified merely as confines'. Playing a large part in securing the freedom
of the division from repatriation, Buchko worked closely with the Ukrainian
leaders in the DP camps, including Promethean League leader Roma Smal-
Stocky, who had pre-war links with the Allied officers in charge of the camps
in Austria and Germany. Buchko was particularly active in lobbying Sir
D'Arcy Osborne, the British representative at the Vatican, where there was
much concern over the Division's fate.'^^

Ukrainian lobbyists conducted an aggressive propaganda campaign to

secure the release of the division. The chair of the Division's Civil Adminis-
and Military Council
tration in Munich, A. Paliy, issued a number of memor-
anda about its possible fate to the exiled anti-communist groups in Britain.

Of particular importance was the Ukrainian Relief Committee in Great Britain,

chaired by a Canadian /Ukrainian RAF captain, Gordon Bohdan Panchuk.
Other groups, such as the British and Scottish Leagues for European Freedom,
pleaded the Division's case to Foreign Office officials and politicians, arguing
that its personnel should be set free and not sent back to the Soviet Union.
The right-wing Catholic Labour MP for Ipswich and doughty champion of
anti-communists everywhere, Richard Stokes, became the Division's cham-
pion in Parliament. In early 1946, Shandruk and Paliy learned that their
efforts had been successful and that the Division would not be sent back but
would, eventually, be allowed to settle in Britain.^^
In August 1945, Denis Hills returned to Riccione to take part in Operation
KEELHAUL, the repatriation, by force if deemed necessary, of a number of
Russians. Hills found that the mood had changed since repatriation first

began in 1944. At that time there was little or no sympathy for sending back
 THE PROMETHEAN LEAGUE 203

to the Soviet Union Russians who were technically deserters and traitors.

The official list of a thousand Russians to be repatriated had already been

halved by a Major Simcock, who was responsible in the DPs Division for
dealing with the Soviet Repatriation Missions. It then became the task of
Hills to grade the list by classifying the DPs into three categories: 'Black'
denoting that they were war criminals who should be returned; 'Grey' denot-
ing Nazi collaborators, which indeed was a grey area, and 'Whites' - victims
of Nazi oppression.
his long-term intention had been 'to reduce the
Hills later admitted that
list minimum', which he did by reclassifying many and inventing
to a bare
new categories. With the help of the Vatican, the British authorities changed
the rules so that within the total of those considered for repatriation, four
hundred 'Blacks' became 'Greys'. Hills was eventually able to whittle the
Russian list down from 500 to 180. In May 1947, under Operation
EASTWIND, these final 180 British-held Russians were rounded up and
taken under armed guard to the local railhead and put on a sealed train for
surrender to the Soviets at St Valentin, on the zonal border in Austria. Acting
as a Russian interpreter on the packed train was a distraught young British
intelligence officer, Alexander Wainman, who heard many of the Russians
say that they would rather be shot than sent back. Professor Wainman
reported the distressing scenes to George Young, the MI 6 station commander
in Vienna. 'Appalled at the evident inhumanity of the continuation of so
brutal a policy'. Young passed on the damning evidence to his chief, Stewart
Menzies, and handed it on personally to the political adviser in Vienna, Sir
Henry Mack, 'who was equally disgusted'. A strongly worded protest was
subsequently dispatched to the Foreign Office, which was under strong pres-
sure from the Vatican and Richard Stokes, MP. Foreign Office officials
informed MI6 that 'no further operations of this nature were contemplated'."^*^
While there was certainly genuine concern, MI6's approach was also prag-
matic. The repatriation process was interfering with its own operations to
gather intelligence on what the Soviets were up to in the newly occupied
countries in eastern Europe. At the same time as British soldiers were forcing
unwilling Soviet and non-Soviet citizens back into Russian hands, other
British troops were helping to assist defectors to escape from the Soviet Union
to the West. One of the British officers involved in Operation HIGHLAND
FLING was James Scott-Hopkins, who later told Nikolai Tolstoy that his

were well known in resistance circles inside the USSR. A

unit's activities
product of Eton and Oxford, and later a senior Conservative MP, on leaving
the army in 1946 Scott-Hopkins joined Military Intelligence, undertaking a
course in Russian and specialised training in interrogation. A year later, he
was approached by Stewart Menzies, who wanted him to feed MI6 with the
information collected from the defectors as part of Highland Fling.
The main beneficiaries of the unofficial change of policy on repatriation
204 PART THREE: THE SOVIET EMPIRE

were the eight thousand Ukrainians of the First Ukrainian or 14th Waffen-SS
Galician Division. Britain would decline to return anyone who had been
resident or a citizen outside of the Soviet Union's 1939 borders. In January
1947, Brigadier Fitzroy Maclean arrived in Rimini to work with the Special
Refugee Screening (SRS) Commission, which had been set up the previous
December. Maclean's unit had to work to a September deadline to screen the
Ukrainians before the Italian government regained control of the camps, at
which point any occupants were likely to be turned over to the Soviets. The
aims were to check that no adverse information was held against individual
refugees and to track down the 'most wanted'. There were, however, officials
inside British Intelligence who were prepared, in the opening rounds of the
Cold War, to countenance the use of collaborators, quislings and war crimi-
nals in the battle against a new enemy. The benefit of the doubt was to be
extended to those who had actually taken up arms on behalf of the Nazis.
In effect, if not by intention, anti-communism, not criminality, became the
criterion by which they were judged. As it was cynically expressed at the
time, and as Maclean's biographer acknowledges, 'increasing the pool of
freedom fighters' meant beating the deadline of 'R-Day', when the Italian
government would take over responsibility for the remaining DPs.^^
After two weeks with the SRS Commission, Maclean moved on to Rome
and reported to the Foreign Office that he had been able to screen only a
small fraction of the total held. The screeners had relied on the Ukrainians
themselves for the history of the division, which was obviously and notably
partisan. Maclean reported that the 'Camp is organised on political-military
lines under a fanatical Ukrainian nationalist leader [Captain Yaskevych] who
formerly served with Skoropadski [the leader of the short-lived German
puppet republic of the Ukraine in 1918]'. Maclean further reported that 'most
of those interrogated have admitted freely that they volunteered to fight for
the Germans'. Indeed, most had been captured in German uniforms and
there were 'indications that some may have served in SS units'. Although,
when interviewed in 1989, Maclean was 'fairly clear' that there was 'every
probability that there were war criminals amongst them', no further action
was taken to check on their wartime activities.
The lack of action did not surprise those British intelligence officers in
Vienna monitoring the situation, who were aware that it was unrealistic to
expect any serious screening to be undertaken. Only twenty men were
subjected to cursory screening out of the 8,272-strong First Ukrainian
Division. The security officer. Major G. H. Redfern, stated that 'Intelligence
organisations could not carry out any intelligence screening of DPs with
their present resources'. In reality, officials considered screening 'undesirable'
because would delay Operation WESTWARD HO!, the DP labour recruit-
it

ment scheme, which was expanded to include Ukrainians for settlement in

Britain. The order of the day became to protect a valuable anti-communist
 THE PROMETHEAN LEAGUE 205

resource, and security screening was subordinated to the need to speed the
movement of the Ukrainians out of Italy, a country that the Foreign Office
feared might be taken over by the communists.
On 23 March 1947, at a late-night meeting. Foreign Office junior ministers
persuaded the Prime Minister to agree to the Ukrainians entering Britain. It

would seem that 'on the other side of the house', MI6 had put pressure on
the Secretary of State, Hector McNeil. When, in June, the Soviets protested
that the Ukrainian Division contained former policemen who had undertaken
killings during bloody anti-partisan operations and should thus be treated
as war criminals, McNeil responded by falsely claiming that there had been
'exhaustive' screening of the division whose soldiers were, he maintained,
'ex-Wehrmacht personnel'. When challenged in the House of Commons,
McNeil was supported by Richard Stokes, who insisted that the Ukrainians
desired only independence and loathed the 'Muscovites' and the Germans
equally. McNeil's brief was written by Foreign Office officials who had
accepted a long memorandum on the virtue of the Division from the Supreme
Ukrainian Liberation Council, the offspring of the wartime collaborationist
Ukrainian Liberation Committee headed by Pavlo Shandruk, the division's
last commander. Officials also relied on a heavily sanitised version of the

division's history by Gordon Panchuk, which had been supplied to him by

the head of the Division's Military Council, A. Paliy. Panchuk headed the
Central Ukrainian Relief Bureau and was founder president of the Association
of Ukrainians in Great Britain. With Panchuk's help, members of the division
were quickly dispersed to Canada or the British Zone in Germany, with the
majority settling in Britain.^^
According to former Conservative MP Rupert Allason (Nigel West), a
number of the Ukrainians were brought to Britain at the behest of British
Intelligence to work as secure language specialists. Seeking two hundred
native Russian speakers as teachers for MI6 and other intelligence officers,
at the end of 1947 the Joint Intelligence Committee approached Home Office
departments handling aliens and immigration. A Home Office official who
dealt with the Galicia Division later admitted that she knew that some of
these people were of interest to the security services and, in particular, MI6.
Immigration officers, who had been unable to screen any individual members
of the division for suspected war crimes, subsequently located a thousand
suitable candidates for the War Office, which ran the courses. According to
Allason, some of the Ukrainians later 'openly boasted about the atrocities
that they had committed against Jews'. Those boasts 'must have been known
to the British government'.
In his February 1947 report, Maclean had added one provision to his
recommendations, namely that wherever the Ukrainians were sent 'their

existing politico-military organisation should not be allowed to remain in

existence'. The Promethean League, however, had quickly resumed its work
206 PART THTvEE: THE SOVIET EMPIRE

through the energetic efforts of Pavlo Shandruk, who had helped to gather
together its scattered members in the DP and PoW camps. He made contact
with representatives of the different nationality groups, including the Slovaks
and Dr Josef Pauco, the Belorussians and a number of
their representative,
Poles, with a view to re-establishing the League's authority. By the end of
1945, the Prometheans had also resumed their pre-war relationship with
Menzies and MI 6. This had not gone unnoticed by the Soviets or US Intelli-
gence, who both described the League as an arm's-length operation by British
Intelligence to re-arm Ukrainian neo-Nazis under cover of General Ander's
Polish Army.''
In the immediate postwar period, the Polish government-in-exile still

harboured hopes of establishing a large 'East European Federation', which

would include all the nations under Soviet domination. The proposed vehicle
for these fantasies was to be the Promethean League. Shandruk had estab-
lished contact with Polish officers Major Ponikewski and Captain Alexander,
who put him in touch with the Promethean members in London - General Tad
Pelczynski, Colonel Tadeusz Schaetzel and Stanislaw Paprocki. The Polish
government-in-exile in London Shandruk that they were willing to
told
finance the League. Until the end of the war, Polish covert activities had been
secured by a British Treasury loan which was to be repaid by the postwar
Polish government. However, when the communist regime in Warsaw was
officially recognised by London and Washington in July 1945, the Poles were

left to rely on their own meagre resources to maintain their political activities

which, despite drastic reductions, could not be sustained for long. MI6 was
required to make up the difference.^^
On 20 April 1946, a congress was held in The Hague at which the organisa-
tion's name was changed Promethean Atlantic Charter League. Dr
to the
Smal-Stocky was again elected President, with Georgian leader Dr George
Nakashidze his deputy. Financed and backed by MI6, the Prometheans were
once again fully functioning, and they began to rebuild their propaganda
programmes for battle with the communists. In an expensive exercise, MI6
created and sponsored a number of League-linked 'front' organisations,
including the New Union for Turko-Tatar Independence, 'Idel-Urala', and
the Northern Caucasian National Committee, which directed selected Prome-
thean agents for guerrilla and spy training at a British camp at Bad Homburg
in AlliedGermany.
League activities largely centred on Turkey, which was in the front line
of the developing Cold War. It was MI6's main base for intelligence work
in the Balkans and central Europe and for operations directed against the
Soviet Union and its southern flank. Turkey shared a long border with the
Soviet Union, which had been discontented with the former's policy during
the war. Stalin objected to the German-Turkish treaty of June 1941, which
had facilitated Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union, and to agitation
 THE PROMETHEAN LEAGUE 207

among pro-German 'pan-Turk' groups which campaigned for the disinte-

the
gration of the USSR in the hope that regions in the Caucasus and central
Asia with Turkish populations would become independent or join with
Turkey. The disputes between the two countries, which largely centred on
the border and revisions of treaties, continued after the war with hysterical
press campaigns on both sides. Stalin claimed a slice of eastern Turkey, plus
the right to put Russian bases on the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles, the
main thoroughfares for Soviet shipping. To protect its independence, Turkey
clamoured for military aid from the West, playing on Allied fears of losing
communication links to the Middle East.^^
Istanbul was a spies' paradise, with a British embassy building 'crammed
from top to bottom with intelligence operatives engaged in various forms of
skulduggery'. The Yugoslavs were looked after by Roman Sulakov, a White
Russian MI6 officer of 'appealing charm and boundless energy', who had
been resident in the city since 1926. Many refugees from communist countries
made their way to Turkey, where they were debriefed by the efficient Turkish
secret service, whose head. Colonel Peredzh, had worked for the Royal Yugo-
slav Intelligence. He was also employed by MI6 on a monthly retainer to
supplement his meagre salary. The refugees all had 'to provide detailed
documentation, including several photographs, in order to get a visa . . . the
authorities were well informed as to where everyone was and, quite often,
what they were doing'. Unfortunately, while this should have been an excel-
lent source of information on what was going on inside Soviet-controlled
eastern Europe, the intelligence passed on to MI6 was of 'low quality owing
to poor interrogations'.^^
The MI6 liaison officer with the Turkish secret service was the Passport
Control Officer, Arthur Whittal, whose merchant family had settled in the
country before the First World War. 'With their knowledge of the country

and the language they gave valuable help to HMG in various ways.' The
family was also related by marriage to the wartime head of station, Harold
Gibson. Born in pre-Bolshevik Russia, 'Gibby' Gibson, who was replaced in
1944 by Cyril Machray, had immersed himself in anti-communist White
Russian circles in order to cultivate sources. Unfortunately for MI 6, while
the exile groups with spy networks in eastern Europe and the southern flank
of the SovietUnion supplied the local station with information, most of it
turned out to be fake - again a product of the numerous 'paper mills'
operating in the area. Kim was their only way of
Philby recalled that 'it

garnering finance to keep themselves and their dreams going'. MI6 officers
had to spend much of their time 'devising means of smoking such operators
into the open, so we could judge what price to put on their work'. They
rarely succeeded and, in spite of the care taken, Philby admitted that 'several
of the exiles made regular monkeys of us'.^^
* X- *
208 TART THREE: THE SOVIET EMPIRE

Promethean League supporters were also able to draw on the expertise of

the Nazi specialists who had been recruited by Philby's Section IX and other
departments of MI6. Operation APPLEPIE in western Germany, run jointly
by the British and the Americans, had aimed at finding and debriefing
members of the SS head office department RHSA-Amt VI, who were respon-
sible for intelligence work
relating to the USSR. One of the more successful
catches was Nikolai N. Poppe, a world-renowned Russian scholar on the
minority groups of the USSR, who had been born in 1897 in the Chinese
province of Shantung, where his father was secretary of the Russian consulate.
When the Wehrmacht took control of the region, he actively collaborated
with the Nazis in the creation of a quisling government for the Karachai
minority, and provided information on the passes leading across the moun-
tains into Transcaucasia. When the Germans evacuated the Caucasus during
the winter of 1942, Poppe went with them and helped set up the SS-sponsored
Wannsee Institute in Berlin. Poppe later justified his actions by claiming that
his objective was 'to join the Germans temporarily by retreating with them
into Germany, in order to emigrate to Great Britain or the United States'.
Part of the SS-run 'Geography Foundation', the Wannsee Institute think-
tank was the setting, in January 1942, for the conference that agreed the 'Final
Solution'. In turn, the institutewas controlled by the Amt VI (Intelligence)
section of the SD, whose head, Walter Schellenberg, considered the establish-
ment of the institute as one of his most successful achievements. At the end
of the war, Poppe was arrested by an American CIC officer, but managed
to talk his way to freedom and fled to Herford, in Westphalia, in the British
Zone in Germany. There he lived undetected until early 1946, when he
managed to find a place at a United Nations Refugee and Rehabilitation
Agency (UNRRA) camp for Estonians in Hamburg. In July, Poppe was
warned by a British female intelligence officer to flee, as a Soviet mission
was on his trail. Accused of being 'an active agent of the Gestapo', for helping
the Germans gain the support of the Kalmucks, he was wanted for extradition
by the Soviets.^"
The official response of the Foreign Office and the Intelligence Division
in Germany was that Poppe could not be located. In fact, the Control Office
admitted that it knew where he was but 'it was never our intention to hand
over Poppe'. He was already being handled by British Intelligence in the
shape of a 'Captain Smith' and a South African-born officer, 'Gottlieb', to
whom he handed his unpublished manuscript on Mongolia. The Foreign
Office officials continued to mislead the Soviets, claiming that 'we are genu-
inely unable to trace him', even as Thomas Brimelow was discussing Poppe 's
case with F. Pickering of the Intelligence Division of the Control Commission.
There were Foreign Office plans for Poppe to be 'somehow spirited into
from Berlin' and given work at a British university. Poppe had
[Britain]

managed to forward a letter to Professor Gustav Haloun, a Sinologist who

 THE PROMETHEAN LEAGUE 209

had escaped Nazi Germany and was teaching in the Chinese department at
Cambridge University, seeking his help to leave Germany. Poppe did receive
an invitation, backed by leading British orientalists, to teach at Cambridge -
but it came to nothing when his MI6 minder informed him that the British
government had refused him a visa. In the meantime, the British created a
new identity for Poppe and played for time. Senior Foreign Office official
Christopher Warner hoped that Poppe could 'disappear' to carry on his
specialised career.^^
Before his return to his farm in Northern Ireland, 'Captain Smith' spent
many months debriefing Poppe, who was transferred to an intelligence centre
for German specialists at Alswede, near Liibeck. According to Poppe, most
of the other specialists of interest to MI 6, who included Baits and scientists,
had been 'smuggled out from the Eastern zone'. Soviet requests for his extra-
dition were received sympathetically by British officials who knew that Poppe
had lied about his background; return, however, was no longer viewed as
an option since the intelligence services regarded him as a security risk. In
December 1946, Major-General Shoosmith told the Control Office that 'if he
returned to the Russians he would reveal under interrogation the names
and possible locations of former colleagues,which would result in further
demands for extradition of people who are subjects of an important investi-
gation'. This was Operation Applepie, which intelligence officer D. E. Evans
informed Thomas Brimelow at the Foreign Office 'is an attempt to collect all
the information which the Germans had about the Soviet Union'.
Living in the British Zone in Germany under an assumed name, Poppe
was still unable to obtain a British visa so, in the spring of 1947, British
Intelligence approached the Intelligence Division of the US Army at Frankfurt
with a request for help. A top-secret memo to the Deputy Director of Intelli-
gence explained that while Poppe's presence was an 'embarrassment', he
was still a 'valuable intelligence source'. MI6 wanted to know 'if it is possible
for the US intelligence authorities to take him off their hands and see that
he is sent to the US where he can be lost'. While awaiting an American
response, in the summer of 1947 Poppe was visited by 'Mr Morris', a British
who took him to Wolfenbuttel near the
intelligence officer of Polish origin
Soviet Zone; here he was reunited with his family. In September his son was
sent to Holland and then England, where he was provided with employment.
Meanwhile, Poppe was transferred to a counter-intelligence centre at Brake,
near Lemgo, where his language were used during interrogations of
skills

defecting Russians. In the following year, still under the protection of British

Intelligence, which provided him with a new identity and cover story, Poppe
was returned to Herford to teach Russian at an intelligence school for British
officers.^^

Poppe was by now in a bad physical and mental state and, according to
one American report, looking like 'a walking skeleton', was 'contemplating
210 PART THREE: THE SOVIET EMPIRE

suicide'. In May 1948, accompanied by a British intelligence officer, he was

transferred from the British to the American Zone for a debriefing and meeting
with Carmel Offie, officially the political adviser to General Lucius Clay, US
Military Governor of Germany, but also representative of the secret Depart-
ment of Army Detachment (DAD). Offie and DAD officers - most of whom
went on to join Frank Wisner's Office of Policy Co-ordination (OPC), for whom
Poppe would work - were heavily involved in transferring former Nazi anti-
communist assets to the United States. Towards the end of January 1949, Poppe
received an invitation from an American university and was sent to Camp King,
near Oberursel, where he was again debriefed as part of the 'historical study
group' project, before finally leaving for the United States, in May 1949, under
the BLOODSTONE programme. Poppe was the first man to be shipped down
the official USCIC ratline. The British and Americans genuinely did not believe
that he was a war criminal, though they knew he was a collaborator, and used
the escape line to keep him out of the clutches of the Soviets. Poppe kept up
contacts with leading British Sinologists and Turcologists; his past was soon
forgotten. In 1950, Poppe was elected a member of the Royal Asiatic Society
and, in 1978, was received as a fellow of the British Academy.

In February 1947, Kim Philby was posted to Istanbul to replace Cyril Machray
as station head. Operating under cover as First Secretary: Tt was his first
overseas posting and, in the light of the continuing tension between the USSR
and Turkey, it was a highly appropriate one for the former head of Section
IX.' Philby's priority was to recruit agents for short-term missions and, for
extended periods, others who would be able to establish lines into the USSR.
'His zone of activity extended throughout the countries of the Caucasus, the
Donbas and the Ukraine. He located people who had left these areas of the
USSR before or during the war, and who still had relatives in Georgia,
Azerbaijan and Armenia, in the regions of Stavropol, Krasnodar, Rostov-on-
Don, Ukraine and the Crimea: and when he found them he suggested that
they return to their countries in the services of Great Britain.' Philby was an
'energetic enthusiast' for these plans, which were 'regarded with high hopes'
in London. His superiors were 'convinced that if several groups of people
were sent into Georgia or Armenia, and informed locals that they were from
the outside world and gave them some gold, the locals would start weaving
a spy network for MI6 and prepare a rebel movement against the authorities'.
In order to advance the operation, Philby established a good relationship
with the head of the Istanbul office of the Security Inspectorate, whose help
was essential. He also had the assistance of five fellow-officers in the embassy,
including the Second Secretary, a 'capable and companionable deputy', Here-
ward Attlee, and a 'sturdily enthusiastic junior' Third Secretary, the Honour-
able John Wilson, a wartime naval officer.^^
To prepare for the operations, Philby and his deputy undertook a survey of
 THE PROMETHEAN LEAGUE 211

the rugged frontier bordering on Transcaucasia for the War Planning Director-
ate. The infiltration operations were designed for the setting up of stay-behind

networks in the southern areas of the Soviet Union and the Caucasus in the
event of war. In early 1947, MI6 officers met with a Turkish representative in
Switzerland to discuss using the various exile groups under the Promethean
League umbrella. In turn, the representative contacted the groups with
confirmation that MI 6 was willing to back them with training and finance. The
outlook for infiltration operations was, however, not as promising as it would
have been Tf Stalin, immediately after the war, had not deported to central Asia
and Siberia whole ethnic groups, such as Crimean Tartars, Chechens, Kalmyks
and Karachai, which were accused of having collaborated with the German
invaders'. Other alleged 'nations' such as Cossackia and Idel-Ural, which were
members of the League, were purely artificial concepts, owing a great deal to
Nazi ideas of a divided eastern Europe ruled by Germany; with the war ended
they lacked the necessary support for survival.^^
was CLIMBER, which was designed to infil-
Philby's principal operation
trateMI6-backed Promethean agents into Georgia. 'His plan, which was
approved by MI6, was to start by sending five or six groups of five or six
people in for several weeks. But it became clear quite quickly that it would
not be easy to find volunteers for these missions.' An emissary was sent to
Noe Jordania, president of the Georgian Menshevik government-in-exile in
Paris and one-time head of the independent Republic of Georgia, which
fleetingly came into existence in the confusion following the October Revol-
ution. A leading figure in the Promethean League, Jordania had worked with
MI6 officers 'Biffy' Dunderdale and Tom Greene before the war, and was
one of the few members to adhere to the Allied cause in 1939. Unfortunately
for the operation, the emissary dismissed Jordania as a 'silly old goat' and
Climber was launched with 'deep mutual suspicion'.
The Georgian exile movement did manage to recruit two 'climbers' in
France who were trained in London in 'elementary diversionary techniques'.
In co-operation with the Turks, MI6 set up a reconnaissance mission to find
safe houses and a reliable means of communication. The operation itself was
a disaster and was one of a number in Turkey and the Middle East that were
betrayed by the Soviet agent Philby. In their early twenties, the two volunteers
had been born in Paris and knew nothing of the Soviet Union. On Turkish
insistence they were put over the frontier opposite a Red Army garrison:
'One was shot within minutes of crossing the border. The other was never
seen again failing to make any communication.' When Philby later defected
to the Soviet Union, he learned of the fate of one of the young men, Rukhadze,
from the chair of the Georgian KGB.* 'It was an unpleasant story, of course

* Ministry of State Security, which succeeded the NKGB, People's Commissariat of State
Security, in March 1946.
212 PART THREE: THE SOVIET EMPIRE

... I knew very would be caught and that a tragic fate awaited
well that they
them. But on the other hand, was the only way of driving a stake through
it

the plans of future operations.' A number of Armenians were found for

another Promethean operation and induced to venture into the Soviet part
of their homeland, but they, too, were 'pitilessly sacrificed to the vengeance
of the MGB':-'
Although there was no Russian contact with Philby in Turkey, he was
able to keep in touch with his handlers by the simple method of writing
letters to his Foreign Office friend and fellow-traitor in London, Guy Burgess.

Philby kept the MGB 'fully informed of these operations, which were usually
carried out by the British, only occasionally by the Americans'. According to
his control in London, he would provide names of agents and sometimes the
date and place of the infiltrations. 'We knew in advance about every operation
that took place by air, land or sea, even in mountainous and inaccessible
regions.' The Soviets were careful, however, 'not to use his information to
conduct a systematic dismantling of the networks concerned. If the operations
were of major importance and could cause great damage, we took appropriate
action - but otherwise we tended to do nothing, because Philby had to show
results to his superiors.' The MGB did 'turn' a number of the captured spies
but 'with such subtlety that Philby was able to continue his work for the
British with a solid veneer of success'. Only two of the cases Philby betrayed
during 1948/9 survived, though it that, even without his
has to be said
actions, the chances of the operations succeeding were remote indeed.
In 1949 Philby returned to London, where he had a meeting with
Commander Anthony Courtney of Naval Intelligence about extending the
anti-Soviet operations into the Black Sea area. A Russian-speaker, Courtney
had served before the war in the British legation at Bucharest, a centre for
the various emigre groups, where he was pressed into service for MI6 by
the head of station, Edward Boxshall. Having served in the Royal Navy
during the war, in January 1946 Courtney was put in charge of the new
Russian Section 16 of the Naval Intelligence Division. 'It had become clear
that, with the elimination of Germany and Japan, plans concerning the

"potential enemy" of the future must already be orientated towards Soviet

Russia which their Lordships had entrusted primarily to myself.' Courtney
. . .

was one of the first exponents of the art of 'Kremlinology', and his views
were carried from 1947 onwards in the Spectator, where he wrote articles on
the Soviet Union under the pseudonym 'Richard Chancellor'. As head of the
Russian Section he worked in close co-operation with MI 6, and was on
personal terms with Stewart Menzies. 'I had certain ideas involving the use
of fast surface craft and submarines in co-operation with MI 6, and I felt sure
that the Royal Navy had a great deal to offer in this respect ... It was in
pursuance of these ideas of mine that discussions took place about the feasibil-
ity of obtaining information from the Black Sea area.''^^
 THE PROMETHEAN LEAGUE 213

Philby listened to Courtney's proposals 'with interest, for he had a wide

knowledge of Turkish affairs and his support was essential if Naval Intelli-

gence was to make any contribution to the common effort in the Black Sea,
where our information was deplorably scanty'. Courtney was initially
disappointed that nothing appeared to come of his ideas, though he regarded
it as 'typical of our more general experience of MI6 and Foreign Office

resistance to any practical initiatives for the improvement of our intelligence

effort'. In fact, Philby had already considered the idea while stationed in

Turkey. 'After it was shown that diversionary operations on land were

impossible, Philby suggested doing it by sea. The idea was to send patrol-
cutters from Riza to the Soviet side somewhere between Batum and Sochi.
London agreed, but asked that there be Turkish support, for without it the
expedition would fail.' Turkish secret service support for the project was
apparently enthusiastic.^^
Run by MI 6 Middle East specialist and another member of the Whittal
family, Michael, the infiltration operations began and were
after Philby left

based on Prince's Island, the Mamara, in Turkey, from where agents were
sent by boat across the Black Sea and landed in deserted spots in the vicinity
of Sukhumi, Sochi or further north towards the Crimea. Caucasian anti-
communists were recruited in Istanbul by the North Caucasian Emigration
Society - another MI6 front organisation. Again, the operations were a disas-
ter, resulting 'in yet another successful deception operation by the Russians'.

In the knowledge that security had been breached, MI6 eventually mounted
their own double-cross operations.^^
According to Pavlo Shandruk, 'external circumstances' prevented the
League from being fully revived. During the summer of 1947, MI6 had tried
to create an exile body to co-ordinate and organise the activities of all the
emigre groups that it covertly supported. Together with another international
emigre organisation. Freedom International, the Poles joined the Promethean
League to the Anti-Bolshevik League for the Liberation of Nations (ALONS),
but it was not a success. An attempt to merge the Promethean League with
the extreme nationalists of the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations (ABN) was
initially abandoned because the younger, more militant members of the ABN

were against the League's Polish orientation. It was still sponsored by the
Polish government-in-exile and seen and cautious in its
as too old-fashioned
approach. The Poles, however, were running out of money, and MI6 had no
choice but to force the issue. In July, MI6 fused the other main emigre group-
ing, Intermarium, with the ABN and then, in September, the Promethean
League followed suit.^^
Shandruk and the League blamed the Allies for failing adequately to
support them. 'They had all the political centres and armed formations of
the non-Russian nations for the establishment of democracy and peace in the
East but no action followed.' This was not quite true, but it did take a while
214 PART THREE: THE SOVIET EMPIRE

for the Britishand Americans to offer support, by which time many felt that
the moment to strike had passed. Disillusioned, Prince Nakashidze left for
South America and, in 1947, Smal-Stocky emigrated to the United States,
where he joined the faculty of Marquette University. Before he left, Smal-
Stocky had transferred the leadership of the League to Shandruk, who began
working with the Americans. This was not a success, and he acknowledged
that as the 'man responsible for the political and diplomatic actions of the
Ukrainian government-in-exile', he had miscalculated the actions of the Allies.
By 1949, Polish finance had ended, curtailing meaningful activities. Shandruk
came to regard his efforts as 'idle dreams' and, in October, he took the advice
of Smal-Stocky and also found refuge in the United States.^^
The Promethean League did not, however, completely disappear. Besides
the Georgians, the most important and active component of the organisation
were the Belorussian emigres who worked in close collaboration with the
League's leaders. In the dying days of the Third Reich, Shandruk had met with
representatives of Belorussian political groups, including President Radislaw
Ostrowsky, whose views he found 'very instructive'. 'He stated openly that
he would go hand and hand with me, he would use all his prestige in my
support, and that if we were any Ukrainian national military
able to form
units under the political sponsorship of the Ukrainian National Committee,
the Belorussian National Committee would have its forces join ours. He was
also unequivocally opposed to German proposals of any subordination of
national committees to [Vlasov's] KONR'. General Anders's Polish Army in
Italy had taken under its wing the fugitive Belarus Division, which
protective
created a pool of anti-communist MI6-backed resistance fighters for oper-
ations in their homeland.
CHAPTER 13

BELORUSSIA

Belorussia (now known as Belarus) lies in an area between the Baltic states
and Poland in the west, Ukraine in the south, and Russia in the north and
east. The Belorussians, also known as the 'White Russians' or 'White Ruth-

enians', have thus been subject to the buffeting of history as their more
powerful neighbours have fought over their territory.
Following the Bolshevik suppression of the German-backed Belorussian
National Republic (BNR), the 1921 Treaty of Riga cut the country in half -
with the western Catholic region ceded to Poland while the eastern Orthodox
part went to the Soviet Union. This effectively also divided the Belorussian
nationalists into two antagonistic factions. A socialist Polish senator and
former cabinet member of the BNR, Radislaw Ostrowsky, was seen as the
only person capable of uniting all the warring nationalist factions, but he
was a highly controversial figure - accused of receiving Bolshevik gold to
fund his subversive activities. Ostrowsky's attempt at collaboration with the
Poles ended in 1928 with his arrest for fraud.
The French had a long history of engagement in Poland and Belorussia,
and used the MI6-sponsored Promethean League to instigate a Franco/
Polish-backed 'anti-communist revolution' in the region, through the
'Abramtchik Faction'. Funded under the umbrella of the League by MI6's
Stewart Menzies, its head in Paris and leader of the western nationalists was

Dr Mikolai Abramtchik, who also took handouts from the Vatican. Assertions
by emigre historian Nicholas Vakar that Abramtchik 'undoubtedly was
216 TART THREE: THE SOVIET EMPIRE

connected with, and inspired - perhaps led - by the Communist under-

ground', have prompted accusations that the Belorussian leadership was
controlled by Soviet spies. This
an oversimplification, for any ideological
is

commitment they held was subordinated to the nationalist cause and, like
all zealous converts, they became increasingly authoritarian as the fulfilment
of theirdream became ever more remote. By the mid-thirties, 'persecuted by
the Poles and betrayed by the Russians', Ostrowsky 'turned to fascism'.^
The nationalists were treated as desirable anti-Polish elements by the
Germans, who realised that they could act as guides for the Wehrmacht's march
eastwards into Poland and, later, Soviet Russia. An attempt was made to build
a Belorussian 'army of liberation', and through Georg Leibbrant, the chief of
the Nazi Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories (OMi), Alfred Rosenberg
approached V. Zacharka, head of the BNR in Prague. Soviet forces entered the
Polish, western part of Belorussia in September 1939, and in the new year Stalin
ordered a purge of nationalist elements. Nevertheless, many Belorussians
managed to escape to Germany, where Dr Franz Six - later responsible for the
mobile killing units that would sweep away thousands of Jews in the Soviet
Union - recruited thirty leading nationalists for Operation Barbarossa. On the
eve of the German invasion, these 'foster-children' of the SD intelligence service
met secretly in Berlin to plan a new Belorussian administration, though they
were regarded by the SS as anti-German 'conspirators', covertly organising for
an independent state 'which would be directed as much against Germany as
against Great Russia'. The SS, therefore, rooted them out and promoted those
pro-Nazi nationalists with strong anti-western views, such as Ostrowsky,
Franz Kushel, Stanislaw Stankievich, and Dimitri Kasmowich.^
Assembled with collaborators in Warsaw, Ostrowsky was entrusted with
organising the puppet apparatus around the capital, Minsk, while Stankievich
had responsibility for Borissov. Ostrowsky's men - taking their lead from
his rants against the 'Jewish Kremlin' - took control of the region in a bloody
act of slaughter carried out by Belorussian members of the Einsatzgruppe B,
run by Dr Six's assistant, Friedrich Buchardt. In Smolensk, Kasmowich cleared
the area of Jews and communists. During September and October 1941, Stank-
ievich and Kushel sanctioned the massacre of men, women and children.
By 26 October, Kushel's deputies had helped to liquidate over thirty-seven
thousand people, raping 'girls they expected to shoot' and smashing 'in the
heads of whatever infants they didn't flip alive into mass graves'. Even the
SS were shocked by the savagery.^
Despite the brutal methods, Belorussia was increasingly plagued by Soviet
partisan activity. In September 1943, Belorussian overlord Generalkommissar
Wilhelm Kube was assassinated and replaced by SS Brigadefiihrer General
Kurt von Gottberg, who ordered the deployment of nationalist units in anti-
partisan operations. Minsk became an embattled fortress. Meanwhile, the Nazis
dissolved a number of pro-nationalist Belorussian committees and deported tlieir
 BELORUSSIA 217

leaders to Germany but, alarmed by the military had no choice

situation, they
who had been
but to bring them back to bolster the regime. Mikolai Abramtchik,
entrusted by Zacharka with 'preserving the idea of Belorussian statehood and
independence', returned, but von Gottberg decided that the person to form a
'central Belorussian authority' was Ostrowsky. On 21 December 1943, a Belo-
russian Central Council (BCC) was created and eventually a 'Belorussian
army', whose members wore the national white-red-white insignia.^
On 27 June 1944 - with the 'sound of Red Army guns echoing in the
distance' and 'under the watchful eye of SS officers' - a thousand BCC
'delegates' met in Minsk for an All-Belorussian Congress. An adherent of the
'Fiihrership' principle, Ostrowsky was president. Although Belorussia was
now savaged by Soviet partisans, he claimed the Belarus Legion was ready
to fight Stalin's 'bandits'. German surveys had shown that Ostrowsky and
his conspirators were emigres with no following, but they were loyal and
they continued to collaborate with the Nazis to the end. The BCC did not
survive, and on 29 June 1944 its members were evacuated to Berlin, where
they reorganised as a national committee under the supervision of Professor
Gerhardt von Mende, a deputy in Rosenberg's OMi, who was regarded as
'a great friend of all non-Russian peoples enslaved by the Bolsheviks'.^

Stankievich was appointed Intelligence Minister, while Abramtchik was

made responsible for liaison with other governments-in-exile. Belorussians
who reached Germany were reorganisedinto the 30th Waffen-SS Grenadier
Division, the Belarus Legion, under the command of General Kushel. The
legion fought on the western front until the end of the war, with a number
of legionnaires recruited into the Otto Skorzeny-trained 'Black Cat' guerrilla
forces, which were parachuted in behind Russian lines. These stay-behind
nets were supplied with weapons until the spring of 1945, but they proved
to be a failure, as most were mopped up by the NKVD, which successfully
planted agents among the remaining units and within the Belarus Legion.^
As the war closed, Belorussian envoys were dispatched to the Allies with
an offer to turn over to them 'a vast espionage network behind Soviet lines'
and an active anti-communist guerrilla force. It was decided that the best
chance for safety lay with the Polish government-in-exile in London and,
through Promethean League contacts in France and Switzerland, Abramtchik
was able to conclude a deal with the Polish leader. General Wladyslaw
Anders. In the spring of 1945, the legion made contact with Patton's Third
Army, and its soldiers were interned as PoWs near Regensburg, in the Ameri-
can Zone in Germany. The presence of the Belorussians, however, soon
became an embarrassment, since the camp was effectively controlled by Franz
Kushel, who used his position to recruit for a guerrilla army, the White
Ruthenian Veterans League. Fearing possible exposure, the Americans
decided to allow legion members to 'quietly escape' to the nearby French
zone. The French subsequently approved the establishment in Paris of an
218 PART THPvEE: THE SOVIET EMPIRE

exiled Polish Military Mission,which served as a cover for recruiting leading

Belorussians. The western Belorussians under Abramtchik, manoeuvring for
independence from Ostrowsky, Kushel and Stankievich, volunteered to work
with French Intelligence (Service de Documentation Exterieure et de Contre-
Espionage - SDECE). His colleagues were provided with para-diplomatic
status as members of the Polish Military Liaison, which helped launch covert
operations on behalf of the SDECE which, between 1948 and 1954, parachuted
almost one hundred French-trained emigres into eastern Europe.^
Meanwhile, the eastern leaders under Ostrowsky had moved into the
British Zone, where they were provided by British Military Intelligence with
cover posts in the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Agency
(UNRRA). Ostrowsky used his network to collect information which he then
sold to the British and Americans. Unfortunately, the 'intelligence', which
largely consisted of captured NKVD documents and manufactured infor-
mation, was used to settle old scores in a reign of terror in the DP camps.
The Allied Operation TOBACCO was intended to flush out Soviet agents
among the DP but the information was largely disinformation originating
with Soviet agents active in the camps.
MI6 knew precisely who best to enlist for its Belorussian exile operations,
partly from pre-war ties but also because it had recruited a major war crimi-
nal, Friedrich Buchardt, commander of one of the mobile killing units around
Minsk. As chief of Emigre Affairs for the SS, Buchardt acquired an encyclo-
pedic knowledge of the various collaborators in eastern Europe and Russia.
In exchange for immunity from prosecution, Buchardt offered to trade his
seminal work on political warfare on the eastern front. The Treatment of
the Russian Problem During the Period of the National-Socialist Regime in
Germany'. Laying particular stress on the role of native collaborators in SS
operations, the paper was written soon after the German surrender, with
additional material provided to British Intelligence by other former SS
officers. Completed in 1946, the study was 'an invaluable source' whose

information, when was regarded as 'precise'.

tested against later intelligence,
It was particularly manual for future emigre operations, illuminat-
useful as a
ing, as it did, the mistakes made by the Nazis.
The French and Poles worked closely with British Intelligence, which
transported a number of Belorussian leaders to London, where they were
provided with funds and found employment as translators. Kasmowich was
recruited by MI6 and lived in England under the name 'Zarechny', while
Abramtchik also became a frequent visitor to London. 'Academic centres'
and 'research organisations' were set up where 'ex-Nazi diplomats and intelli-
gence officers helped them map out new strategies for the Cold War'. Accord-
ing to American investigator John Loftus, Abramtchik's staff were employed
at a private research institute known as the Francis Ckryvana Library, where
his portrait hung prominently in the lobby. Publishers and printers poured
 BELORUSSIA 219

out a stream of propaganda books and pamphlets for the emigre groups of
the Promethean League, glorifying their nationalism under Nazi Germany
and condemning Soviet ethnic actions against minority groups. Throughout
1945 and 1946, a team of former Nazi collaborators, issued with false papers
identifying them as discharged Polish officers, toured the DP camps gathering
together the dispersed members of the Belarus Legion. They were then
provided with forged documentation by Father Maikalaj Lapitski, an Ortho-
dox priest and former collaborator.^^
Factionalism was rife among the exile groups and the battle to control
the Belorussian community was bitter. Ostrowsky, who was well known
for his collaboration with the Nazis, was soon engaged in reorganising his
supporters into a more acceptable organisation. At the end of 1945, the Nazi-
created Belorussian Central Council was transformed into the Belorussian
Central Representation (BCR), but it did not end the factionalism. In Novem-
ber 1946 a Belorussian National Centre was set up as 'an inter-party organisa-
tion with a platform all anti-Soviet trends and groups'. It failed
embracing
to unite the warring parties, and the nationalists, once again, split.
In an attempt to break Ostrowsky 's ties to MI 6, Abramtchik - another
collaborator but, unlike Ostrowsky, not known to have been involved in war
crimes - created his own BNR, which claimed its lineage from the First
Belorussian Convention in 1918. The constitution adopted in Paris, in Novem-
ber 1947, stated that Abramtchik was 'the only legal supreme representative
it received funding
of the Belorussian people'. Primarily a Catholic grouping,
from the Vatican, the Polish government-in-exile and a number of inter-
national anti-communist sponsors, which enabled Abramtchik to travel
throughout western Europe and the United States, organising 'BNR Council
Sections'. Abramtchik's action was viewed by other nationalists as 'undemo-
cratic and and he was accused of 'dictatorship, sectarianism
unconstitutional';
and political trickery'. In thewar of words that followed, Ostrowsky's BCR
was, in turn, accused of being infiltrated by communist agents and run by
war criminals. 'In order to avoid any further scandal', MI6 'transferred their
loyalty to Abramtchik and cut their links to Ostrowsky '.^^
With Ostrowsky's past an increasing embarrassment, MI6 exiled him to
Argentina. It gradually became apparent, however, that the Abramtchik
Faction, which was racked by 'continuous inner strife and splits', was itself
riddled with communist agents. To add to the suspicion, Polish communists
and Soviet agents compiled a dossier on the whereabouts of a number of high-
ranking Nazi collaborators within the organisation, which received wide-
spread publicity in exile circles. On the advice of Dr Gerhard von Mende - 'the
patron saint of the Belorussians', who now acted as a high-level talent-spotter
and adviser to MI6 on East European exiles - MI6 decided to bring back
Ostrowsky as a replacement for the increasingly discredited Abramtchik.^"*
While both groups continued to make claims about contacts with the
220 PART THREE: THE SOVIET EMPIRE

underground in Belorussia, most testimonies agree that the anti-Soviet guer-

rillas had been almost entirely liquidated by 1946. Nevertheless, Ostrowsky

continued to claim the support of '50,000 Belorussian partisans' under the

command of guerrilla veteran General Vituska. Scattered in the forests and
depths of Belorussia, these guerrillas were said to be attacking tanks and
armoured police and troop patrols. Abramtchik, too, operated in a fantasy
world, presenting medals to a non-existent guerrilla army. Nicholas Vakar
recognised that the Belorussian nationalists seemed 'to live a diluted sense
of reality' with 'an amazing capacity to believe anything they wish to believe'.
Likemany emigres, they existed in 'apocalyptic expectancy of the final settle-
ment' when their hopes would be fulfilled.^^
Despite the evidence, or lack of it, MI 6 continued to sponsor the Belo-
russians. In December 1947, Ostrowsky, along with several other ministers
of the former quisling government, began to 'rebuild an organisation dedi-
cated to the unity of all White Russian people in exile'. By the following March
he had revived the BCR as a government-in-exile, nominating ministers and
diplomats, and he had issued an appeal to Belorussian emigrants to recognise
the BCR as 'the only legitimate representative of the Belorussian nation'.
Appointing himself head of the Belorussian 'Liberation Movement', plans
were made to send teams based in the British Zone in Germany on missions
to the old country. Abramtchik's supporters continued to boycott these efforts
and launched a fresh campaign to discredit Ostrowsky's men, but these men
were now regarded as good anti-communist assets and had the protection
of MI 6, which dismissed Soviet accusations of war crimes as smears and
communist propaganda. Even when Stankievich was picked up as a war
criminal on the Soviet wanted list for 'aggressive questioning' by the US CIC
and provided the interrogators with a partial confession, he was released on
the intervention of the staff of the military governor of the American Zone
in Germany, General Lucius D. Clay. British Intelligence told Clay's staff that
Stankievich was a victim of Soviet vilification.^^
There was, however, little and this had an
let-up in the Soviet attacks,
effect, forcing leading members The collapse of the
to seek a safer haven.
Promethean League and the departure of leading spokesmen to the United
States encouraged a number of Belorussian members to join them. At the last
conference of the Belarus network at the Backnmangg DP camp near Stutt-
gart, in June 1949, a motion was carried to transfer Belorussian assets to the

United States, where there would be greater safety and access to new financial
and material support for the nationalist cause. Franz Kushel, who had been
working for the Americans since 1947, moved, in May 1950, to New York,
where he ran the Abramtchik Faction. Responsibility for it was shared
between MI6 and the Americans, through the Office of Policy Co-ordination
(OPC)-sponsored Belorussian American Association, which consisted almost
entirely of new emigres.
 BELORUSSIA 221

By the beginning of 1951 Ostrowsky's BCR was established in Washington

under a new name, the Belorussian Democratic Republic in the USA, in
order to appeaseits American hosts. Nevertheless, the factional in-fighting

continued. Ostrowsky told American intelligence officials that the

Abramtchik group was 'honeycombed with Soviet agents', thus confirming
CIC reports that some of its senior officials had links to Soviet Intelligence.
When OPC chief Frank Wisner sought confirmation of these reports from
MI 6, its Washington liaison officer, Kim Philby, 'dismissed the accusation
with the claim that this was merely sour grapes and just part of the internal
dissension expected in exile groups'. MI6 was, at the time, short of funds,

and wearing the hat of the former head of Section IX,which had recruited
the Belorussians immediately after the war, Philby wanted 'to unload the
troublesome Abramtchik on to the OPC Wearing his other hat as a Soviet
agent, Philby was both damage the exile programme by sustaining
able to
the atmosphere of distrust among the groups and betray the infiltration oper-
ations into Belorussia, which had recently been launched. Wisner chose to
accept the advice of Philby, recognising that he had greater experience in
this area.^^

Philby was quite happy Americans to take over responsibility

for the
for the Abramtchik Faction because, by the spring of 1951, the infiltration
operations using his men were near to collapse. 'The few parachutists that
had been sent to Belorussia had been captured or killed. Several turned up
at news conferences to exhibit the British or American equipment with which

they had been supplied and to proclaim themselves as having been Soviet
agents all along.' Philby's exposure at the end of the year as a possible Soviet
agent led Wisner to drop the Abramtchik Faction and shift resources to
Ostrowsky. 'Those that had previously been an embarrassment to the Ameri-
can authorities now became attractive propositions.'^^
With the approval of MI 6, Ostrowsky moved to London, where he worked
on a new joint MI6/OPC operation to penetrate the Soviet Union. Co-ordin-
ator of these paramilitary operations was Dimitri Kasmowich, whose cover
post was as an accountant for the US Army in Germany. He was assigned
the task of recruiting volunteers in Britain, the United States and Germany.
During 1952, in order to challenge and overcome the 'chauvinistic groups
which sabotage the common anti-communist action', the OPC attempted to
unite the nationalists by setting up a broadly based Belorussian National
Liberation Committee in Germany under the leadership of Kasmowich. It
did not come to anything, primarily because of Abramtchik's anger at the
loss ofAmerican funding. He retaliated by releasing the information that
Kasmowich was 'a former communist official and a major Nazi collaborator',
who was now employed by MI 6. With his cover blown, Kasmowich 'fell into
a depression and began drinking heavily'. On the orders of Ostrowsky, he
was expelled from the Belorussian Liberation Movement which 'led to further
222 PART THPvEE: THE SOVIET EMPIRE

factionalism'. The in-fighting within the Belorussian camp was seemingly

endemic to all the exile communities in the West.^°
With the collapse of the Promethean League, its Belorussian leaders,
Ostrowsky and Stankievich, became leading lights in another MI6-backed
umbrella organisation, the more extreme and militant Ukrainian-dominated
Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations (ABN). Smal-Stocky recognised it as 'a revolu-
tionary underground movement which called for a common continuous
revolution of all subjugated nations against Soviet Moscow', which upheld
and promoted the League's ideas. A close reading of the League's own propa-
ganda suggests that the ABN, which was controlled by Stefan Bandera's
facticm of the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists, OUN-B, acted, in effect,
as the military wing of the League. Ostrowsky would eventually become
vice-president of the ABN. Despite the ever-continuing in-fighting among
the exiled Belorussian nationalists, and his supposed expulsion from the
movement by Ostrowsky, Kasmowich remained from 1954 until his death in
1991 the representative of the Belorussian Council in the Central Committee
of the ABN. He was also one of the Belorussian representatives to the World
Anti-Communist League (WACL) and, in 1967, a co-founder of the European
Freedom Council.^^
With the end of the Cold War, Belarus finally achieved independence
from the Soviet Union, but the vast majority of the ten million population
wondered whether it had been worth the wait. Shunned by the West and
neglected by Russia, the country had an economy that could not survive the
shock. In turn. President Lukashenko gained power on a wave of popular
support with his aim of economic reintegration with Russia. The nationalists,
whose leaders found political asylum in the United States, once again found
themselves in a minority, with the national flag abandoned and Russian
adopted as the official language. During the election. Lukashenko linked the
opposition nationalists to the wartime collaborators with the Nazis. A leading
Belarus writer predicted a gloomy outcome: 1 see a despotism coming of a
more fascist form. The communists were at least civilised in their fight against
'^^
the national movement.
CHAPTER 14

THE ANTI-BOLSHEVIK
BLOC OF NATIONS

Operational names are usually chosen at random, but the choice of the code-
name INTEGRAL for the MI6-backed exile operations into mainly western
Ukraine was clearly deliberate.
The thirties movement in central and eastern Europe of 'integral national-
ism' did not, in the main, live by a cohesive ideology but rather propagated a
set of irrational, even mystical beliefs which 'conceived of the solidarity of all
individuals making up the nation'. It completely opposed the Marxian concept
of class and class struggle. Totalitarian in concept, it deified the nation to the
point of racism: nationalism was 'based on feelings, which are carried by the
racial blood'. Historian John Armstrong observed that the nationalists 'in some

respects went beyond the original Fascist doctrines'. Indeed, they had much
in common with the Romanian Iron Guard, the Hungarian Arrow Cross, the
Croatian Ustashi and the Latvian Thunder Cross.
The young western Ukrainian nationalists of Galicia despised the way in
which their elders in groups such as the Promethean League had compro-
mised with the Poles. They put their faith in the illegal Organisation of
Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), modelled on the Bolshevik concept of party
organisation and the successful guerrilla operations of Michael Collins and
the Irish Republican Army (IRA). The OUN was led by 'Colonel' Eugene
Konovalets, who made contact with German Military Intelligence, the
Abwehr, which was regularly supplied with intelligence by the nationalists
in western Ukraine. The intense interest shown by the Nazis in the Ukrainian
224 PART THRFF: THE SOVIET EMPIRE

prc^hlcni aroused the anxiety of the Polish government and provoked a series
of trials, banishments and executions which created in the OUN a hatred of
'the Polish orientation'. This culminated in the murder of Polish Interior
Minister General Peiracki in June 1934. The Polish authorities arrested a
number of OUN leaders who had conspired in attacks on Polish officials,

including Stefan Bandera, Mykola Lebed and Yaroslav Stetsko. At the begin-
ning of 1936, a Warsaw court handed down death sentences which were later
commuted to life."

In May 1938 Konovalets was assassinated in Rotterdam by means of a

bomb disguised as a box of chocolates handed to him by an 'illegal' Soviet
agent, Pavel Sudoplatov. Following Konovalets's death, the movement turned
to Colonel Andrei Melnyk, a moderate of dignified military bearing. He faced,
however, a strong, extremist opposition led by the younger generation of
activists centred around the anti-Polish, anti-Russian Stefan Bandera, a 'folk
hero' to many Ukrainian exiles, who was chair of the executive of the OUN
in western Ukraine.^
Fromthe mid-thirties, MI 6, under its chief. Admiral Sir Hugh 'Quex'
Sinclair- previously head of Naval Intelligence in the Intervention' years
against the Bolsheviks - patronised Bandera's extremist faction, which had
been condemned by the League of Nations as a 'terrorist syndicate'. Open
to a variety of offers, Bandera's followers were recruited by the MI6 head of
station in Finland, Harry Carr, and used as a network of informants inside
the Soviet Union (since Bandera was in prison it is unlikely that Carr actually
met the OUN leader as some accounts suggest). Carr, who was attracted to
Bandera's brand of anti-communism, soon began to deliver funding and
support for operations to infiltrate agents across the Finnish-Soviet border
- although Galician Ukrainians, with their peculiar accents, would have been
easily recognisable in the Soviet Union. Whether Carr knew about the German
connection or indeed co-operated with the Abwehr on operations is still
unresolved.^
Andrei Melnyk, Richard larii and Colonel Roman Sushko, who was head
of the OUN military organisation, continued to develop close ties with the
Abwehr and opened an 'excellent communications' channel to Admiral
Canaris. He 'cared little about the details of the OUN's programme'; what
mattered was that it was a 'nationalist fascist group'. At the end of 1938, the
Abwehr used OUN
activists to encourage Ukrainian nationalism in Ruthenia
- a province in eastern Slovakia, renamed Carpatho/ Ukraine - in a bid to
undermine the Soviet Union and Poland. When the Ukrainians were ordered
to submit to Hungarian rule in the area, they resolved to proclaim their own
independence under an OUN supporter and priest, Monsignor Augustine
Voloshyn. He created the Carpathian Sic Guard to persecute Jews, gypsies,
Poles and Czechs, and to defend the Ukrainians against Magyar incursions.
Declared a republic on 14 March 1939, Carpatho /Ukraine retained its inde-
 THE ANTI-BOLSHEVIK BLOC OF NATIONS 225

pendence for precisely twenty-four hours until the Hungarians moved against
it. Voloshyn's ill-fated cause did, however, provide hope for the nationalist

aspirations of the OUN. Subsequently, thousands of these Carpathian Ukrain-

ians went into exile in Germany, expanding the ranks of the OUN and acting
as a recruiting pool for Abwehr secret military formations.^
Alfred Rosenberg, whose Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories
(Ostministerium - OMi), would be responsible for administering the
conquered eastern territories, had already decided that although the OUN
was 'entirely unfit to lead a political operation to seize hold of the population',
the nationalist formations could be used in the expected attack on Poland to
carry out intelligence duties and 'aim at the annihilation of the Jews and
Poles' behind enemy lines.^

In the confusion that followed the German and Soviet invasions of Poland
inSeptember 1939, Bandera and Lebed were released from Warsaw's Swiety
Kroyc prison and immediately began to challenge the authority of the leader-
ship. Bandera first went to Cracow and then to Italy to meet Melnyk to
discuss the differences of opinion that existed between the OUN leadership in
Rome and the younger, pro-Bandera 'Home Executive Committee' in western
Ukraine. Bandera's representative at a nationalist convention in Rome, Jaros-
lav Stetsko, called for a dynamic person to lead the nationalist cause. The
reasons for the dispute are obscure but at its heart was the wish to launch a
more aggressive policy in pursuit of Ukrainian independence. The conflict
came to a head during the following January when Melnyk was dismissed for
'tolerating traitors among the party heads' - a forerunner of much fratricidal
in-fighting. One reason for these intense and bitter disagreements was a
Soviet deception operation which infiltrated NKVD agents into the Nazi
Party training school with the intention of 'forcing these gangsters to annihil-
ate each other in a struggle for power'. Another element revolved around
the willingness or not of the differing OUN factions to intervene in the
Russo-Finnish War which broke out in 1939. Attempts by Carr and MI6 to
infiltrate Banderite OUN agents into Russia during the short war floundered
and badly misfired. They did, though, set an example for a more militant
policy.^
It would appear that MI6 gave considerable thought to using OUN assets
though given the logistical
to trigger a revolt in the Soviet eastern Ukraine,
problems it is hard to believe that the plan was in any way a serious prop-
osition. In March 1941 the Second OUN Congress led to a split in the national-
ist ranks, breaking it into two camps - OUN-M[elnyk] and OUN-B[andera].

The latter proved to be the most effective, with its call for 'revolutionary
action' for 'national liberation'. USSR, the
Prior to the invasion of the
Germans poured money into Bandera's group (claimed by its members to be
about twenty thousand strong) with the result that OUN-B became even
more closely tied to the Abwehr as key Melnyk supporters, such as Richard
226 TART THREE: THE SOVIET EMPIRE

larii,who had a direct link to Canaris, changed sides. Bandera ensured his
grip on the organisation by appointing the ultra-loyal Stetsko as his first
lieutenant; while Mykola Lebed entered a Gestapo training academy at
Cracow, establishing the 'Ukrainian Training Unit' and creating the Sluzhba
Bezpeky, the OUN-B's 'ruthless' internal security service. According to one
OUN eye-witness, Mykyta Kosakivsky, Lebed led his men in torture sessions
which included beating naked Jews with iron bars and burning the open
wounds into which salt had been poured.^
In April 1941, the Abwehr gave the go-ahead to the OUN-B leadership to
organise its sympathisers into two armed military formations, under Abwehr
programmes code-named 'Nachtigall' and 'Roland'. The latter was formed
in Austria under the unofficial command of Colonel Iraii, for reconnaissance
and sabotage duties in Ukraine. Officially led by German officers, with the
Abwehr's Professor Theodor Oberlander in charge of the political side,
Nachtigall had an unofficial Ukrainian staff headed by Roman Shukhevych,
leader of OUN-B's military section. Both units wore German uniforms with
blue-and-yellow collar badges: there were never any Ukrainian uniforms. A
Greek Catholic Uniate chaplain. Father John Hrynioch, who had worked for
German intelligence, was appointed to Nachtigall. He helped facilitate

contacts between the Italian secret service and Uniate groups in Galicia and
Rome.*^
When Operation Barbarossa was launched, on 22 June 1941, the OUN-B
in Cracow formed a 'Ukrainian National Committee'. Nachtigall advanced
with the Wehrmacht to Lvov, reaching the city in the morning of 30 June,
while Roland was dispatched to southern Bessarabia. Three days later, Lebed
arrived in Lvov with the tail-end of the Sonderkommando 4b of Einsatz-
gruppe B. Prior to their withdrawal, Soviet NKVD personnel had slaughtered
three thousand political prisoners, mostly Ukrainian nationalists and a few
Jewish Zionists. Stacked from floor to ceiling with dead bodies, the police
cells were said to have been flooded in blood. Inevitably, retaliation and
revenge were swift. OUN-B militiamen attacked the Jews. General Korfes
recalled seeing, on 3 July, 'Banderists hurling grenades down the trenches'
. . .

which 'contained some 60-80 persons men, women and children'. In the
. . .

weeks that followed, deserters from the Nachtigall unit and the Sonderkom-
mando murdered over seven thousand Jews and Poles - the latter's addresses
supplied by OUN-B to the Gestapo lists. Andre Pestrak was an enthusiastic
recruit to the Ukrainian military police who was put in charge of a unit
attached to Einsatzgruppen C (it replaced 'B' on 11 July), which massacred
thousands of Jews in 'cleansing operations'. After the war, Pestrak moved as
a DP to Britain, where he died in 1989. The Ukrainians were used for the dirty
work in the pogrom 'Action Petlura', and in the ghetto-clearing operations ii"i

Warsaw and Lublin. Sonderkommando 4a confined itself 'to shooting of

adults while commanding its Ukrainian helpers to shoot children'. An esti-
 THE ANTI-BOLSHEVIK BLOC OF NATIONS 227

mated nine hundred thousand Jews disappeared from the Ukraine during
the German occupation.
Informal agreement had been reached with the Germans, particularly
Canaris's Abwehr, that the Banderites couldengage in political activities
in Ukraine and
in return for military clandestine collaboration. This loose
agreement was, however, liberally interpreted by the OUN-B, which assumed
that it had been given a free hand. The OUN-B wanted an independent
government, allied to Hitler's Reich, which would consolidate 'the new ethnic
order in Eastern Europe' through the 'destruction of the seditious Jewish-
Bolshevist influence'. On behalf of Bandera, who had remained in Cracow,
the OUN-B's chief political officer, Wolodymyr, wrote to Adolf Hitler asking
him to 'support our ethnic struggle'. Following hard on the heels of Nachti-
gall, Stetsko arrived in Lvov on 30 June ready to organise a hastily summoned

'National Assembly'. The Assembly proclaimed an independent Ukrainian

state in the name who had been recalled to Berlin by the
of Stefan Bandera,
Supreme Command of the Wehrmacht, and his lieutenant, Jaroslav Stetsko,
who assumed the title 'Head of the National Assembly'. On the local radio
the Uniate priest attached to Nachtigall, John Hrynioch, read out a pastoral
letter that praised the Germans and recognised Stetsko as Prime Minister.
The OUN-B also succeeded in obtaining a statement of support from the
Uniate primate. Metropolitan Andreas Sheptytsky. These moves had the full

support of the bulk of Galician youth, who defected from the Melnyk faction
to the OUN-B, but disturbed the Wehrmacht officers who had helped organ-
ise Nachtigall.

The announcement of an independent Ukrainian state went against Nazi

policy, but German officers were initially reluctant to take countermeasures.
Hitler, however, who considered Ukraine a territory for exploitation and
colonisation, and thought the Slavs to be 'subhuman', was not prepared to
tolerate nationalist ambitions. Professor Oberlander's personal appeal to
Hitler to the effect that a great opportunity was being lost was brushed
aside with crude racist language. A German Foreign Office official told the

Ukrainian Foreign Affairs Minister in the National Assembly, Volodymyr

Stakhiv, that the discussion regarding the liquidation of the Ukrainian govern-
ment, which took place in Hitler's headquarters in the presence of Ribbentrop,
Keitel, Himmler and Hitler, 'only lasted a few minutes'.
The 'exhilarating days', as they were later described in OUN-B publi-
cations, were soon brought to a close. Accordingly, within a few days, the
so-called nationalistgovernment was disbanded and told to withdraw the
proclamation. This the Banderites refused to do and, on 6 July, a number of
its leaders were arrested by the SS and kept under house arrest in Berlin.

They were, however, allowed to carry on with political activities, and Stetsko
was able to consult with the ambitious security chief and Home Affairs
minister in the Lvov 'government', Mikolai Lebed, who, under the nam dc
228 PART THREE: THE SOVIET EMPIRE

l^iicnr 'Maxim Ruban', had escaped arrest and was delegated to take
command of all OUN-B activities.

Meanwhile, 'marching groups' of OUN-B (and OUN-M) personnel

mo\ ed eastwards behind the German Army further into the Ukraine in an
attempt to set up nationalist administrations. With the arrest of Bandera and
concerned that they might rebel, the Germans withdrew and
the Nachtigall
Roland units from the front where they were
lines to Frankfurt-an-der-Oder,
later united into a single formation, Schutzmannschaftbataillon (Guard

Battalion) No. 201, which in 1942 was sent to Belorussia to fight Red partisans.
Many of the officers refused to accept the posting and were imprisoned in
Lvov. In contrast, Melnyk's more moderate and accommodating OUN-M
had zealously retained its own contacts with the Wehrmacht and, once the
OUN-B administration was set aside, took over the reins. This resulted in
bloody civil strife between the two factions.Lebed played a leading role in
the terror that followed with his elite Sluzhba Bezpeky (SB) - which was
modelled on the Gestapo - assassinating those Ukrainians who refused to
join OUN-B's enforced united front. Tt was highly effective and fractious
and completely without scruple.' Two OUN-M leaders were shot in the back
on 30 August by an assassin who was immediately, and conveniently, killed
by Ukrainian police. Eventually, the in-fighting was put down by the SS: 'The
'^^
separatists, only recently privileged, promptly became pursued pariahs.
On 15 September 1941, the Gestapo arrested two thousand Ukrainian
nationalists. Melnyk was put under house arrest, while Bandera, Stetsko and
a number of other leading OUN-B members were transferred from Berlin
and confined as 'privileged' internees within the Sachsenhausen concen-
tration camp. Other Ukrainian nationalists were less lucky and were executed
or later died in Auschwitz, including Bandera's two brothers, who had cement
poured over their water-soaked bodies. Although, on 4 October, a 'Wanted'
notice was put out for Lebed, he was never arrested. Lebed had friends in
high places, while his deputy. Father John Hrynioch, had retained the favour
of German Intelligence. Bandera and Stetsko were still permitted to continue
political activities and continued to pursue the goal of an independent state.
At least once during 1943 Stetsko was allowed to travel to Poland to confer
with Lebed. An outstanding organiser, Lebed was soon 'secretly pulling the
strings' within OUN-B, and as his own political ambitions grew, he gradually
developed an intense factional rivalry with Bandera, who remained trapped
in Germany. As one emigre writer noted, it is these 'facts' which gave 'full
meaning to the political and personal dividing lines within the post-war
Ukrainian emigration'.
Any British plans for a revolt in eastern Ukraine collapsed following the
German invasion, which forced the Soviet Union to align itself with Britain
and its allies. In these changed circumstances, foreign policy dictated that it

was in Britain's interest to preserve the integrity of the Soviet Union, whose
 THE ANTI-BOLSHEVIK BLOC OF NATIONS 229

economic wellbeing would be severely undermined by the loss of Ukraine.

Any MI6 actions that might indicate British support for the Ukrainian nation-
alists were, therefore, curtailed. Indeed, surveillance against pro-German
Ukrainian organisations was stepped up and MI6 exchanged information
with its counterparts in the United States and Canada, where emigre support
and funding were particularly strong. MI6 was of the
for the nationalists
opinion that all North America were 'directly or
the nationalist groups in
indirectly influenced by Berlin'. At the same time, MI 6 made efforts to moni-
tor developments inside Ukraine, though intelligence-gathering was to prove
difficult.^^

Inside the Ukraine, during the spring of 1943, OUN-B guerrillas - made
up of German-trained police and military formations who had killed their
German officers and abandoned their posts - assumed the title of the Ukrain-
ian Insurgent Army (UPA). Its commander, under the nom de guerre of Taras
Chuprynka, was senior Nachtigall officer Roman Shukhevych. To the end of
the year, Galicia was subject to intense Soviet partisan activity, and OUN-B
forces led by Bohdan Kruk - sometimes referred to as the Director of the
UPA Red Cross - were recruited to pacify the countryside. More often than
not these various formations were engaged in a civil war, sometimes fighting
different nationalist factions, occasionally the Germans, often the Soviets, but
mainly the Poles. Despite the execution by the Germans of a number of
leading members of his organisation, Andrei Melnyk continued to support
the Nazis; a stance that was to 'prevent his faction from playing a major
political role' in postwar nationalist affairs.

During 1943, a number of PoWs and deserters from the Red Army and
from non-German SS units, including Belorussians, Georgians, Azerbaijanis,
Turkestanians, Cossacks, Armenians, Uzbeks, Tartars and even Russians,
went over to the UPA 'to form a national formation of enslaved peoples'. In
emigre myth-making accounts of this period, Ukrainians portrayed the UPA
as 'the third military and political force in Eastern Europe' which soon became
'the champion of all revolutionary forces representing not only the resistance
movement of Ukraine, but all the subjugated peoples of Eastern Europe, the
Caucasus and Central Asia'. Rosenberg's OMi and German Intelligence saw
this as an opportunity to co-ordinate resistance activity against the Soviet
Army and sponsored a committee of subjugated nations. On 21 and 22
November OUN-B nationalists in Zhitomir set up an 'Anti-Bolshevik Front'
to co-ordinate the activities of the 'enslaved' Soviet ethnic minorities. Toler-

ated by German was attended by thirty-nine

Intelligence, the conference
delegates representing twelve peoples of eastern Europe and Asia with the
common slogan 'Freedom of the Individual - Freedom of the Nations'. The
front was a direct precursor of the postwar Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations
(ABN), though the nationalists continued to deny its Nazi origins.
Just before the Red Army reconquered eastern Galicia in the summer of
230 TART THRFF: THE SOVIET EMPIRE

l'-)44, 'the supreme and only guiding organ of the Ukrainian people for the
period of its revolutionary struggle', the Ukrainian Supreme Liberation Coun-
cil (UHVR), was created at a meeting in the Carpathian mountains, on 12
July, by the OUN-B to unite all the factions. It was intended to garner popular
support, provide a broader organisational base for the resistance and serve
as an underground political guiding body for the UPA 'until the formation of
the government of an independent Ukrainian state'. Shukhevych was elected
secretary general, Mykola Lebed general secretary of the Foreign Represen-
tation (ZP UHVR), with Ivan Hrynioch and Bohdan Kruk on its council. Its
formation went too far for the Germans, and a number of its leaders were
temporarily imprisoned. The deteriorating military situation, however, forced
the desperate Nazis to seek allies where they could and, in August, Himmler
sanctioned a secret SS programme. Operation SUNFLOWER, designed to
co-ordinate German and OUN efforts during the German retreat from the
Soviet Union. The UPA insisted that the negotiations be kept secret in order
to keep alive the myth that it did not co-operate with the Nazis. In October,
as Ukraine finally came under Soviet control, Melnyk, Borovets, Bandera and
Stetsko were released from detention to organise a final defence. According
to the UHVR constitution, its centre would always be in Ukraine and only
one delegation was permitted to leave Ukraine to go abroad - the ZP UHVR.
Late in the year, SS favourite Lebed left Galicia for Rome, where he made
^'^
contact with high-level Vatican networks.
The centre of nationalism reverted to its traditional strongholds in Galicia,
where the number of fighters was never to exceed fifty thousand - though
nationalists optimistically claimed over eighty thousand. The final drama was
played out in an atmosphere of confusion and in-fighting as the Germans
tried to entice the OUN to join with the anti-communist Vlasov movement
but were rebuffed as there was 'fratricidal hatred' between the pro-Russian
leaders of the Vlasovarmy and the anti-Russian Ukrainians. During 1943 the
idea had been common that Germany and the Soviet Union would exhaust
themselves in battle and that, with the help of the Allies, the nationalists
would be able to assume control of western Ukraine. The destruction of so
many German divisions during 1944 put paid to such fantasies, though some
Ukrainians did not lose hope that it would not be long before rivalry between
the Allies erupted into armed hostility and, in anticipation of that event,
OUN-B began to send emissaries to potential allies in the West.^°
Despite the intense hatreds aroused, there were attempts to establish
contact through the London-based Polish government-in-exile with British
and American intelligence agencies. OUN leaders did not manage contact
with the London Poles but low-level negotiations did take place in Lvov in
November 1943 with members of the Polish underground 'Armia Krajow'
(AK), and it seems that the AK radio link with London was used to pass on
messages to British Intelligence about the UPA /OUN. The OUN-B next
 THE ANTI-BOLSHEVIK BLOC OF NATIONS 231

turned to Italian Army officers who were returning home, and persuaded
them to take with them their emissaries disguised in Italian uniforms and
help them contact British and American troops. Early in 1945, a senior OUN
figure and former head of the 'Ukrainian Police' in Lvov, Yevhen Wreciona,
made a covert journey from Slovakia to Switzerland, where he met with
British intelligence officers at the embassy in Berne.
In anticipation of the coming struggle with Soviet forces, Shukhevych
broke up the UPA armed formations into underground cells and attempted
to preserve a 'bridgehead' that would hold until hostilities erupted. UPA
units around Volhynia and in Galicia were able to develop and equip a
large and efficient underground force utilising thousands of tons of arms,
ammunition and other war material left behind by the retreating German
Army. This was initially a highly successful strategy, with up to two hundred
thousand Red Army troops tied down and more than seven thousand officers
killed. By the beginning of 1945, in south-west Ukraine and eastern Poland,

UPA units - some still led by German SS officers - continued to attack the
Red Army and Polish militia. The UPA - primarily a guerrilla fighting force
- soon found itself isolated, which the OUN-B regarded as proof of the
weakness of the military strategy. In May the nationalists were facing a Soviet
Army that was at the height of its power. A conspiratorial and terrorist
faction, the OUN-B believed that 'a totalitarian state could be damaged only
by a totalitarian organisation striking from below'. Its conviction was that
the UPA soldiers 'had chosen the fastest route to death, though one decorated
with Despite the superior Soviet forces, over the next two years a
laurels'.

near war ensued with 'counter-revolutionary bandits' in effective control

civil

of many villages and rural districts.

At the war's end, many leading members of the OUN fled west to avoid
capture by the occupying Red Army. As they did so they forged links with
the remnants of the fascist Slovak Hlinka Guard which had also continued
its guerrilla war against the communists and supplied the Ukrainians with

many of their weapons. After holding out with a few thousand of these
troops in the wild Slovakian mountains, Bandera eventually surfaced in the
BritishZone of Germany, where he re-established contact with MI6, claiming
with some justification that his group was organising a rebellion in Ukraine.
MI6 was desperate to gather intelligence on what was happening behind the
Soviet lines in the newly occupied territories and was willing to recruit agents
without judgements on their past activities. Harry Carr believed that 'his
single-minded purpose was to continue the interrupted struggle against
communism'. It was inconceivable that Carr and his colleagues did not know
about the atrocities committed in Galicia, but it mattered little. To his subordi-
nates Carr would not have been 'in the least sympathetic to any inquiries
about Bandera's past. His overriding concern was the current campaign
'^^
against Stalin.
232 PART THREE: THE SOVIET EMPIRE

A War on the 'Ukrainian Nationalist Movement and Resist-

Office report
ance in Ukraine' - which was valid to March 1945 - is a model of its kind.
Seemingly accurate and fair in its assessment, it could only have been based
on OUN sources, probably backed up with Soviet intelligence, possibly
German intercepts of Red Army signals and MI6 intelligence-gathering. It
concluded that with 'the inevitable Sovietisation and Russification of the
Western Ukraine under Soviet rule it will be seen that Ukrainian nationalism
has little prospect of being anything more than a nuisance to the Soviet Union
in future years of peace'. It was not what MI6 or the OUN-B wanted to
hear.""*

Bandera's second-in-command, Yaroslav Stetsko, escaped to Austria,

where he managed to avoid the attentions of Allied units. Major Stephen
Dattner had been sent to Klagenfurt in command of the 310th Field Security
Service (denazification) unit to arrest and interrogate suspected Nazi war
criminals. Using 'black lists' compiled by MI6's Section V, Dattner's task was
to unearth and detain important Nazi officials, SS members and collaborators
known to be in the area. Dattner was 'deeply concerned and astonished',
however, to discover that Stetsko was openly engaged in organising OUN-B
political activities, even though he was on the 'black list' and subject to
automatic arrest for his crimes. Downplaying his murderous past, Lebed had
established himself in Rome as 'foreign minister' of the Ukrainian Supreme
Liberation Council (ZP UHVR) and was active in talks with Vatican Uniate
Bishop Ivan Buchko. Lebed also arrived with a treasure trove of intelligence
material on the Ukrainian resistance movement. Following close behind was
Father John Hrynioch, who had been awarded the German Iron Cross for
his work with the Nachtigall battalion. By the spring of 1945, Lebed had
established contact with the US Office of Strategic Services (OSS) in Berne.
In Switzerland, the former Abwehr agent and chief of the German-Ukrainian
police in Lvov, Vretsonia, offered his services to American Intelligence, as
did, in Munich, Volodymyr Stakhiv, minister of foreign affairs in the Stetsko

'government'.
When and Melnyk, who had
the Soviet authorities realised that Bandera
found refuge were once more organising campaigns in
in Switzerland,
Ukraine, they demanded their and other anti-Soviet Ukrainian nationalists'
extradition. According to his daughter, Natalia, Bandera and his family were
'constantly obliged to flee from one place to another to avoid discovery.
Berlin, Innsbruck, Seefeld .The Soviet Ukraine Republic delegate at the
.
.'

United Nations charged that Bandera and Melnyk were running special
schools to train cadres in sabotage and intelligence work against the Soviet
Union, and listed numerous atrocities committed by them. Although
dismissed as smears and propaganda, the charges were essentially true. The
western intelligence agencies responded by helping OUN leaders to go into
hiding to escape the Soviet investigators. On the instructions of his British
 THE ANTI-BOLSHEVIK BLOC OF NATIONS 233

handlers, Bandera fled to Munich, in the American Zone, where he reformed

his OUN-B organisation. During 1946 Soviet military officials repeatedly
demanded Bandera's extradition, but US officials informed them that they
had no knowledge of Bandera's whereabouts. Natalia recalled that they
moved from Munich to 'Hildesheim, and finally a lonely house in the forests
of Starnberg were the places in Germany and Austria where we lived'. Even
though they had accurate information on his past, US CIC officers fore-
warned Bandera of the Soviet moves and, in an operation code-named
ANYFACE, he was kept under surveillance to protect him from Soviet assas-
sination and kidnap attempts.
New attempts were made to unite the different factions* and a conference
of Ukrainian delegates, held in March 1946 with the aim of creating a common
platform and front for the liberation of Ukraine, produced a policy that
rebuked all 'totalitarian mono-party' trends and condemned all acts of terror-
ism. It was clearly directed at the Banderites, and it was no surprise, therefore,
when the OUN-B refused to take part in a so-called Ukrainian Co-ordinating
Committee. In April, with the backing of MI6, the OUN-B created an over-
arching organisation for all the former pro-fascist nationalist exile move-
ments, reconstituting the Nazi-sponsored 1943 Anti-Bolshevist Front, as the
Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations (ABN). Well-produced leaflets and posters
appeared in the occupation zones of Germany, the source of whose funding
was, according to CICunknown. The true source, besides their own
reports,
funding efforts from the DP camps, was a secret subvention from MI6.^^
In June 1946 OUN-B's annual conference produced a hard-headed
appraisal of the international situation with regard to the Soviet Union,
power was on the decline. Even though the
correctly concluding that British
OUN-B was sponsored by MI6, Bandera had repeatedly warned his
supporters that they would have to rely on 'our strength'. The OUN-B had
wanted to send agents back into the Ukraine as quickly as possible, but
these ideas 'were not immediately re-embraced by MI6 despite their repeated
advances'. This resulted not in an abandonment of the links with British
Intelligence but in an increase in the use of conspiratorial methods. OUN-B
would take material support from where it could, while retaining an intense
distrust of the Americans. Since January there had been contacts between the
OUN-B and the US embassy in Warsaw. The head of OUN-B intelligence had
met with the American station chief for the purpose of sending propaganda
material abroad. This was received in the autumn by the assistant naval
attache, but 'there is little evidence that anything was done with it'. In fact,

* In the immediate postwar period, OUN-Bbecame known as OUN-r (revolutionary) and

continued to attract young nationalists who had military experience in the Waffen-SS Galician
Division or the UP A. Melnyk's OUN-M, in turn, changed into the OUN-s (solidarist) and
continued to enjoy centres of support, especially in Paris. To avoid confusion, I will continue
to use the older terms.
234 PART THPvEE: THE SOVIET EMPIRE

OUN-B was 'more of a headache to American intelligence than a boon'. In

Germany, American intelligence agencies found by Stefan Band-
'the price set
era for complete co-operation involved types of political recognition and
commitments to his group which no American in Germany was in a position
to make'. The divide was widened following the insertion into OUN-B head-
quarters of a CIC agent who managed to photograph 'eleven volumes of
their secret internal files'which contained proof that the majority of its
members 'had worked for the Gestapo and the SS as policemen, executioners,
partisan hunters and municipal officials'. The Americans simply could not
understand the intense bitter and deadly rivalry between the different nation-
alist factions.-^

The OUN-B gained dominance over its rivals by control of the DP camps
in Germany, Austria and Italy, where the traditional enemy, the Russians,
were not admitted to the MI6-backed International Committee for the DP
and Political Emigres, which had been formed just after the war in Hanau,
Germany. Within the camps eastern Ukrainians lived in fear of being repatri-
ated to the Soviet Union, and the prospect of internment in a labour camp,
or death. Western Ukrainians, who were mostly followers of Bandera, were
exempt because of their Polish origin. The easterners, therefore, tried to prove
citizenship of the western region, but they would only be 'helped to escape
the repatriation if they would accept the Bandera-Stetsko leadership'.^^
During the summer of 1946, following the establishment of liaison with
the US CIC by Roman Petrenko - a senior member of OUN-B's secret police,
the Sluzhba Bezpeky (SB) - the OUN-B embarked on a reign of terror in the
camps. Father Hrynioch had acted as the go-between when the CIC office
in Rome made an approach to Lebed, after which Petrenko offered the SB's
services in eliminating communist agents. On 22 July, the SB handed the
CIC a list of alleged communist refugees, mostly, but not exclusively, in the
Frankfurt am Main area. In response, the Americans arrested several hundred
people who were questioned and in many instances tortured by OUN-B
members dressed in US military uniforms. The torturers included Lebed. Yet
out of all those arrested, only 1 per cent of the cases turned out to warrant
further investigation; were set free within a few months 'for lack of
all

evidence'. This made the Americans more cautious and, as time went by,
the OUN-B's secret police largely took over what was known as Operation
OHIO.
The atmosphere of denunciation was heightened by Stetsko's accusation
that Melnyk's OUN-M followers were both Gestapo and NKVD collabor-
ators. In turn, Melnyk accused one of Bandera's closest assistants, Richard

larii, of being a Soviet agent (Polish communist publications said he had been

a Gestapo agent). Headed by Mykola Matwiyeko and Ivan Kashuba, the SB

launched a killing spree in which more than one hundred Ukrainians were
murdered. A few were undoubtedly Soviet agents but most appear to have
 THE ANTI-BOLSHEVIK BLOC OF NATIONS 235

been DPs who, for various reasons, opposed the OUN-B, objected to black
market activities, or were members of more moderate, but still anti-
communist, Ukrainian groups. Another reason why some were eliminated
was that they knew too much about the Ukrainians' pro-Nazi past and partici-
pation by OUN supporters in the mass murder of Jews, Poles and 'Red'
Russians. Personally directing Ohio were Lebed, Stetsko, Stefan Lenkovsky,
Father Hrynioch and Stefan Bandera. In Kornberg, Mitten wald, Munich and
other camps in Germany and Austria, many DPs were questioned, tortured
and killed. Mittenwald had an underground torture chamber which was used
by the SB until the summer of 1948. A private flat in a camp near Kornberg
served for interrogations during 1946 and 1947, while, in 1949, another
interrogation chamber was set up at Regensberg. In the two years to 1951, a
bunker in the basement of the DPs' hostel at Furnchstafe, in Munich, was
the scene of SB torture. According to a former CIA employee, 'in the
Mittenwald camp American intelligence used techniques borrowed from the
Nazis by burning murdered bodies in large bread ovens. To compound the
horror these were the very same ovens used to bake the bread for the hungry
residents of the camp.' The CIC-sponsored organisation that cremated at
least twenty victims in the ovens was the OUN-B.^°
According to Fletcher Prouty, who was responsible for US Air Force air

support for CIA missions overseas, a series of assassinations was undertaken

by 'the best commercial hit men you have ever heard of. Known as 'mech-
anics', they were 'Ukrainians, mainly. Eastern Europeans, Greeks, and some
Scotsmen. I don't know how the Scotsmen got in there, but there they were.'
Prouty asserts that teams of 'mechanics' were used in cross-border infiltration
operations to rescue agents and in the murders of alleged Soviet agents.
During 1947, a joint British/US emigre espionage network infiltrated with
agents organised by Soviet and Czech Intelligence was 'liquidated' as part
of Operation RUSTY. To mask the deaths, the killings were attributed to
factional violence among rival Ukrainian groups.
The war inside Ukraine -
which killed an estimated thirty-five thousand
members of and Russian secret police and troops in the two years
the Polish
following the end of the war - was kept going by a campaign of terror during
which OUN guerrillas cut off the arms of those peasants who assented to
collectivisation. The majority of Red Army units stationed in Poland were
involved in trying to rebuild the country, and it took time for the Ministry
of Internal Affairs (MVD) to create the Department to Combat Bandits, which
successfully began to organise a network of informers in the countryside. In
a brutal campaign against the 30-40,000-strong UPA, whole forests were
burned and extensive use was made of counter-gangs. Polish Brigadier-
General Ignacy Blum later admitted that the UPA had succeeded in setting
up ambushes, destroying militia outposts, laying waste to deserted villages
and blowing up bridges. The terrain was an advantage for the insurgents, as
236 PART THREE: THE SOVIET EMPIRE

were their treacherous fighting methods and excellent intelligence-gathering

methods derived from access to captured MVD organisation and operation
manuals. The man responsible for leading the anti-bandit campaign. Col. Jan
Gerhard, acknowledged that 'the Banderites with their conspiratorial style
. . .

. were the best organised'. The OUN-B 'ruthlessly' controlled the Supreme
. .

Council, the UHVR, while the SB security groups attached to UFA units
made them hard to penetrate.^^
Most fighting took place in western Ukraine: there was only limited resist-
ance in the east and very little took place in what would have been assumed to
be the promising territory of Carpatho-Ukraine, where there was continuing
conflict between the OUN-M and OUN-B. In many areas the hard winter
of 1945/6 extinguished the UFA insurrection. The offensive by the Soviet
anti-guerrilla units inflicted 'huge losses' on the Ukrainian insurgents and
after 1946 morale 'declined sharply' with only small pockets of resistance.
Courier links with the UFA broke down in May 1946, and to keep the illusion
going fabricated reports were handed to their intelligence sponsors. Fhotos
purporting to show military action in Ukraine were stage-managed in the
Bavarian forests, while radio broadcasts from a transmitter inside Ukraine
reporting on UFA successes were discovered to emanate from no further
than a room next door to OUN-B headquarters.^^
The final blow came in March 1947, when Foland's deputy defence minis-
ter. General Karol Swierczewski, was killed in a UFA
ambush. This led in
the following month to a pact between the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia and
Foland to co-ordinate their anti-guerrilla operations. Later that month, the
Folish government launched VISTULA, a large-scale operation to wipe out
the UFA and to resettle the peasants from the south-eastern sector into the
former German lands of the north-western provinces. It was a brutal
campaign: 'extermination battalions' and 'pseudo gangs', made up of
defectors from the underground and locals pressed into the front line, fought
alongside MVD units. The communist authorities ordered mass deportations
and the forced recruitment of villagers to spy on the nationalists. These were
quickly identified and eliminated by the SB, the OUN's security service, but
there was never any certainty about whether they were genuine or not. The
SB tactics eventually alienated the OUN's support among the peasants.
During the spring, further attempts at contact between the UFA and the
Americans were made when the US vice-consul in Warsaw and an Associated
Fress correspondent travelled to the UFA headquarters in Fresovo, Slovakia,
to 'familiarise themselveswith the actual situation of the Ukrainian National-
ist Underground'. The visit did not lead to any reconciliation with the Bandera

faction; instead, the Americans decided to collaborate with the known 'sadist

and collaborator of the Germans', Mykola Lebed, who was beginning to

distance himself from Bandera. Following a number of approaches, the
Americans finally accepted Lebed as an intelligence asset and arranged to
 THE ANTI-BOLSHEVIK BLOC OF NATIONS 237

smuggle him from Rome to Munich, where his handlers helped set up a
'Liberation Council', with substantial funding from US Army Intelligence.^^
Moves were made by a Ukrainian Co-ordinating Committee to create a
governing body to co-ordinate military activity in Ukraine, but once again
the Banderites refused to join. Even though they remained a destabilising
factor in Ukraine emigre MI6 continued to back them to the hilt.
politics,

Support also came from the Vatican, which lobbied the British and Americans
to render material assistance to the Ukrainian nationalists, and the Uniate
Church, which 'maintained intensive contacts with guerrilla leaders and
secret representatives of the Vatican'. During the summer of 1947, MI6 moved
to enlarge the ABN into a body to co-ordinate and organise the activities of
all the emigre groups it covertly supported. In July, MI6 joined the federalist
Danubian grouping, Intermarium, with the ABN, and then, in September,
added the Polish-orientated Promethean League. Not all the emigre groups
joined the ABN because of the dominance of the Ukrainians and the OUN-B.^^
By July, Vistula had reduced the UPA to a small underground force.
The organisational structure had been destroyed and the Soviet government
announced that 'all counter-revolutionary fascist bands under German
command had been annihilated'. The guerrillas were reduced to living during
the winter months in appalling conditions in underground bunkers. Isolated
from the world, such conditions 'generated severe psychological effects'
among the guerrillas. While there was still some fighting, UPA commander
Roman Shukhevych knew that the military struggle was over, and in the
autumn ordered the remaining battalions under the command of Major Bayda
to escape to the West. From an assembly point near Przemysl, they managed
to fight their way over the mountains, through Czechoslovakia, to the Ameri-
can occupation zones in Austria and Germany. During what became known
as the 'Great Raid', a considerable number of guerrillas died along the 1,500-
mile route.
In September, a delegation of OUN-B crossed into the American Zone
where, after initial thought was given to sending them back, they were interned
for interrogation in order for US Intelligence to decide 'what disposition is to
be made of them'. In April 1948, General Clay's representative, Carmel Offie,
met with three of the leaders, who told him that their nationalist groups were
'ready to revolt'.They wanted an aggressive propaganda campaign to publicise
the actions of the UPA, the 'striking arm' of the UHVR, which they claimed
was 'engaged in an armed conflict with the Soviet troops in Ukraine'. In reality,
the conflict was all but over. From 1948 onwards, UPA actions increasingly
took the form of terrorist acts such as the assassination of prominent communist
officials. Unaware of the reality, Offie tried to interest the State Department in

the Banderites but was brushed off. The thinking was that 'we have to be
very careful not to give too much encouragement to Ukrainian Nationalists
because of the effect this might have on racial Russians'.
238 PART THREF: THF SOVIET EMPIRE

In Germany there was no let-up in the increasingly irrelevant political

manoeiix ring which was becoming ever more obscure in its reasoning. The
Banderites finally agreed to join the Ukrainian Co-ordinating Committee
though they insisted that it recognise the UHVR as the only revolutionary
body having the exclusive right to direct the UFA
and formulate foreign
policy. In June the Ukrainian National Council was
set up in West Germany
as an official provisional government. The Promethean Andrew Livitsky was
made president, with the elderly social democrat Mazepa as Prime Minister
and Stetsko vice-premier. The British Foreign Office thought that there was
a chance that the council might prove to be 'most important' and finally
resolve the factional problems. It was not to be. Because of its strength on
the ground inside Galicia and other parts of western Ukraine, the OUN-B
demanded majority representation on the executive committee. When this
was refused, it declined to take seats on the executive and insisted that the
council should be treated as only the foreign representation of the UHVR.
The refusal to co-operate cloaked another spate of in-fighting and a bitter
battle by the so-called 'moderate' wing of the OUN-B led by Lebed and his
Vatican allies for control of the UHVR.^^
Although an 'avid' supporter of the OUN-B, by the spring of 1948 the
Vatican's Ukrainian contact for Intermarium, Bishop Buchko, had become
impatient with Bandera's intransigence and Fiihrer style of leadership.
Buchko thought Bandera, who saw himself as the leader of the 'Foreign
Branch' of the UVHR, had become 'an overrated extremist' whose army was
'largely dispersed and lacking all types of necessary equipment'. Lebed and
Father John Hrynioch, who claimed to be in contact with the military leader
of theUFA, Shukhevych, regarded themselves as the 'foreign representatives'
(ZP UHVR). It was an obscure differentiation which centred on whether the
government- to-be should be based in Ukraine or abroad. In August, Lebed
and Hrynioch had a secret showdown with Bandera in Munich. After they
had explained their plan to develop the UHVR's 'foreign representation' as
a second supra-party body, Bandera furiously attacked them as 'opportunists'
intent on weakening the OUN-B. Lebed retorted that the UHVR 'hoped,
some day, to set up a free democratic government which is divorced from
all dictatorial pressure'. Denouncing the OUN-B's 'trend toward Fascism',
Lebed's group quit the session. Bandera retaliated by ordering his organisa-
tion to avoid all contact with the new American-backed Ukrainian centre in
Augsburg. Increasingly, the splits within the nationalist movement mirrored
differences between the British and Americans on how to pursue the struggle
in Ukraine.
In late 1948 a new, enlarged ABN - including the most extreme of the
nationalist groups in its ranks - was formally launched with Yaroslav Stetsko
assuming the presidency as the OUN-B seized supreme power. Besides fund-
ing a number of its constituent members, MI6 provided a huge amount of
 THE ANTI-BOLSHEVIK BLOC OF NATIONS 239

finance to the ABN. The source of the money was hidden by having the
funding directed through Vatican intermediaries. In November, the Inter-
national Press Bureau released the 'Chuprynka Plan', accredited to the head
of the UPA, which envisaged the division of the USSR and eastern Europe
into four distinct regions: Serbia, the Caucasus, Turkestan and the 'Scandinav-
ian-Black Sea Unit'. As the British Foreign Office recognised, it was a
restatement of the aims professed by the Federal Clubs of Central Europe
and their parent body, Intermarium, which was now part of the ABN. A
Foreign Office official concluded that it betrayed little real interest in federal-
ism and, instead, 'admits the superiority of one nation [Ukraine], the most
powerful, over the rest, as in the present Soviet system'.^^
During 1949 more changes took place within the various Ukrainian associ-
ations, the result of which was their gradual takeover by the Banderites.
Initially, differences between the factions were patched over with in-fighting

absent from the Second Congress of the Ukrainian National Council in June.
This did not, however, last long, as Bandera insisted that his group be allowed
complete control over the UHVR and of all paramilitary activity in Ukraine.
He, therefore, demanded that the Banderites on the executive committee be
'used as the channel through which all action should be carried out'. This
was unacceptable to other political centres, such as that led by Lebed, and
the short-lived coalition once again fell apart. At the end of the year, the
Banderites reissued their ultimatum, but the council refused to consider such
an uncompromising stance.^^

Lebed soon fell foul of the rival Bandera faction, and the CIA - which
with other US agencies had recently broken off relations with Bandera -
helped smuggle him to the United States under a false name. Reaching New
York in October 1949, Lebed continued to work for the Ukrainian under-
ground on behalf of his American sponsors. Another arrival was the new MI6
liaison officer with the CIA and Frank Wisner's Office of Policy Co-ordination
(OPC), Kim Philby, who tried to interest the Americans in taking over the
entire British-funded Ukrainian network. During meetings with State Depart-
ment officials, Philby also requested that they take over other emigre groups
because of his service's lack of funds. The Americans initially balked at the
suggestion because of the known fascist past of the extremists such as the
Banderites. Philby did, however, persuade Frank Wisner to run joint oper-
ations with MI6 and, in time, US aversion to the extremists of the OUN-B
diminished, thereby facilitating the emigration of a large number of DPs
in western Europe to North America, where they constituted a substantial
recruiting pool for operations.^^
The British government had sent, on 13 July 1948, a secret telegram via
the Commonwealth Relations Office to all Commonwealth governments with
a proposal to end Nazi war crime trials in the British Zone of Germany. It
explained that for reasons of political expediency - 'future political develop-
240 PART THREF: THE SOVIET EMPIRE

mtMits in Germany' - had come to 'dispose of the past as soon as

the time
possible'. No would start after 31 August that 'would particularly
fresh trials
affect cases of alleged war criminals, not now in custody, who might

subsequently come into our hands'. The British government believed that
'punishment of war criminals is more a matter of discouraging future genera-
tions than of meting out retribution to every guilty individual'. As a result
of this new policy, MI6 took the opportunity to transfer large numbers of its
former Nazi-sponsored emigre assets to Canada and Australia, and to the
United States, where Congress passed the Displaced Persons Act in the same
year.^^

North America, Kim

In his role as the senior British Intelligence officer in
Philby persuaded the Canadian authorities to make an exception to the
blanket exclusion of former members of the Waffen-SS. His efforts were
indirectly aided by a well-known Ukrainian-Canadian leader, Gordon
Bohdan Panchuk, director of Canadian postwar relief work, who informed
his government that Division members had passed British security checks
and that they had only joined the Wehrmacht to defend their homeland
against the Russians. Backed by heavy lobbying from ultra-right-wing Cath-
olics, on 31 May 1950 the Canadian Cabinet passed an order-in-council to

admit several thousand men who had served in the Waffen-SS Galicia
Division, including several alleged war criminals using false identities.
Screening of these men was rudimentary and often undertaken by inexperi-
enced officials with little knowledge of the Nazi regime.They were over-
worked, with up to thirty-five interviews a day, and made no attempt at a
physical search for SS tattoos. Using a simple 'negative clearance' criterion
for the screening process, the system could only have worked if the screeners
had had were absent since they 'depended almost
effective sources; these
exclusively on British Intelligence', which was primarily interested in looking
for security risks - communists - not war criminals. Canadian security had
had access since 1947 to the Central Registry of War Crimes and Security
Suspects (CROWCASS) war criminals but failed to circulate them:
lists of
'They were simply filed away and forgotten.' Even if the screening had been
efficient, it is unlikely that it would have worked: 'MI 6 duped the Canadian

authorities, where there was no offensive intelligence agency, into admitting

immigrants by supplying them with false documents. '^^
The British Foreign Office played along with the deception. On behalf of
the Foreign Secretary, L. Scopes wrote to Canada House on 4 September 1950
with respect to a Canadian inquiry on the status of the Ukrainians:

While in Italy these men were screened by Soviet and British

missions and that neither then nor subsequently has any
evidence been brought to light which would suggest that any
of them fought against the Western Allies [some units fought
 THE ANTI-BOLSHEVIK BLOC OF NATIONS 241

against the Americans in France following D-Day] or engaged

in crimes against humanity. Their behaviour since they came
been good and they have never indicated in
to this country has
any way that they are infected with any trace of Nazi ideology.
When they surrendered to the Allied forces at the end of
the war, they were members of the 1st Ukrainian Division of
the Wehrmacht which was formed in September 1944, and
which was only in action once (against the Red Army in Austria
during April 1945) being employed in training and guard duties
in Austria and Yugoslavia during the rest of its existence. Some
of its members, however, appear to be survivors of an earlier

formation known as the 14th Galician Grenadier Division. This

was also a Wehrmacht unit, as an attempt by the Germans to
make it into an SS Division having apparently been resisted by
the Ukrainians themselves. This unit seems to have been formed
about July 1943, and to have been destroyed at the Battle of

Brody in June 1944.

Although Communist propaganda has constantly attempted
to depict these, like so many refugees, as 'quislings' and 'war
criminals' it is interesting to note that no specific charges of war
crimes have been made by the Soviet or any other Government
against any member of this group.

Rarely have there been so many untruths in such a short statement.

In December1952, at the request of MI6, the Canadian government set
up a committee on defectors which permitted the entry into the country of
'defectors' who did not meet normal security requirements. The term 'defector'
became a convenient euphemism for allowing in former Nazis posing as anti-
communists. Secrecy was paramount, and a three-country agreement between
Britain, the United States and Canada ensured that information about these
'defectors' could only ever be released with the joint consent of all three govern-
ments. When the Canadian authorities did eventually investigate the role of
MI6 in transferring its emigre assets to their country, the inquiry was hampered
by the 'disappearance in the early seventies of files relating to the subject of
Nazi war criminals'. They had been replaced at some stage with a 'false docket'.
Similarly, immigration records had been destroyed as a matter of course, and
when a huge batch of files was found to have escaped destruction, investigators
were informed that the files had been destroyed weeks before. The protection
of Nazi assets went as high as the then Prime Minister's office where 'Louis
St Laurent and his aides were personally involved in communicating with the
alleged war criminals, their protectors, and those that would have had them
expelled from the country '.^^
* * >«
242 PART THREE: THE SOVIET EMPIRE

During 1949 there was a debate within the Foreign Office's Northern Depart-
ment regarding 'Ukraine, Ukrainian Insurgency, and Emigre Organisations',
and the feasibility of an alternative to Soviet rule. Officials regarded the
resultant paper considered in March as 'scarcely relevant', as there was no
question of an alternative government. The idea of using the various exile
groups to foment rebellion within Ukraine had already come too late. The
UFA had been reduced to pockets of token resistance and, in September, the
UFA commander belatedly recognised the reality of the situation and ordered
the deactivation of the army and its transformation into a purely underground
resistance network. Starved of accurate intelligence, MI6 knew little about
the realityon the ground and went ahead with schemes to parachute agents
into the region, in the expectation that they would be welcomed into the
arms of a well-organised guerrilla force. The Foreign Office thought that, at
best, the OUN-B and other emigre organisations could only be used for
'information and intelligence purposes' and with 'financial or other encour-
agement of their internecine quarrels being carefully avoided'.*^
Run by Harry Carr, MI6's Northern Division controlled INTEGRAL -
the operation to send agents into Ukraine. Ukrainians, primarily belonging
to OUN-B, were trained at the Special School in Holland Fark and run
by officers operating from bases in Turkey and under cover of the Control
Commission in Germany. The officer in charge of the operation was Colonel
Harold 'Gibby' Gibson. Working with him was Hubert O'Bryan Tear ('always
known as OBT'), a former SOE officer in the French RF Section and German
Control Officer, who was later posted to the small station in Moscow. The first
group of three was dropped from an RAF aircraft, without wing markings, in
the Kiev region in July 1949, and other Banderite groups followed during
the next ten months. MI6 appears to have infiltrated most of its spies into
the western regions of Ukraine. Czech wartime pilots had perfected a work-
able but highly dangerous method of evading Soviet radar screens by flying
at only two hundred feet across the Russian border and climbing at the last

moment to five hundred feet, the minimum height for a safe parachute drop.
Soviet ground crew monitored every flight and shot at some but the planes
'survived every flight'. While the drops were successful, nothing more was
heard from the agents and they were assumed to have been captured. Accord-
ing to his Soviet handler, Yuri Modin, 'during his tour of duty in Istanbul,
Philby had already helped us wreck several attempts to send in agents. He
did the same thing from Washington.
Since August 1948, the Folicy and Flanning Staff of the US State Depart-
ment, the controlling body for OFC operations, had been considering the
issue of 'Ukrainian National Liberation'.A senior figure from the OUN-B
had contacted Secretary James Forrestal directly with an offer of
of Defence
the services of an estimated hundred thousand Ukrainians, mostly from the
'Bandera party', in the western zones in Germany. As to making use of
 THE ANTI-BOLSHEVIK BLOC OF NATIONS 243

these 'dissident elements in combating Communism', it had been decided in

Washington CIA, but it was to be handled
to give the responsibility to the
'in some special manner under Frank Wisner', who was already recruiting
'shock troops' for 'roll-back' operations. The US National Security Council
advocated establishing relations with the resistance groups as a means of
acquiring intelligence on Soviet 'mobilization in the area'. The OPC as well
as the Soviet Division of the CIA's Office of Special Operations (OSO) began
parachuting emigre agents into Ukraine, infiltrating 'as many as seventy-five
guerrillas into the region over a four-year period'. On 5
September 1949, two
agents were landed near Lvov, in the CIA's first deep penetration of the
Soviet Union, and later, four parachutists were dropped in the Carpathian
area. OSO operational head Harry Rositzke realised that 'they would not
survive' and blamed unrealistic operational demands by the Pentagon.
According to a formal complaint placed before the United Nations by the
USSR, the security police captured four US-backed and former Nazi
exiles
collaborators within days of the first parachute drops. The agents were
interrogated and then shot.^°
A Soviet amnesty for UPA members launched week of 1950
in the first
proved to be particularly effective as eight thousand guerrillas handed in
their weapons. Many had originally fled into the forests to escape conscription
to the coalfields. In March, the supreme commander of the UPA, Roman
Shukhevych, acknowledged by the Soviets as 'a bold man, competent in
clandestine work', was killed by the MVD in a village near Lvov, after being
trapped in an underground bunker. While this did not end UPA activities,

and itwas true that small-scale resistance went on for a number of years,
the UPA was no longer able to inflict major losses on the Soviet forces or
pose a serious threat to the communist administration. MI6 knew little of
this and continued to parachute agents into eastern Poland, between Lvov

and Bridy, near Ternopol, and between Kolomiya and Kamenets, where
Ukrainian, Polish and White Ruthenian insurgents were still thought to be
fighting the Soviet Army. Looking for a safer route to Ukraine, British para-
chute drops were switched to aircraft taking off from Cyprus or Malta, while
the Americans favoured bases in Greece and West Germany.
It was against this background that Harry Carr made his first trip to

Washington in early 1950 to consult with his American counterparts on the

Polish and Ukrainian operations. Welcomed by Philby, Carr met with the
avowed anglophile Harry Rositzke, who, along with the CIA analysts,
appears to have had a much more realistic view of the Ukrainian operations,
having already concluded that the OUN/UPA guerrillas 'could play no
serious paramilitary role' in the event of a Soviet move against the West.
Instead, Rositzke's group favoured using the guerrillas as a temporary base
inside the USSR for espionage. Their agenda was dominated by the failure
of the initial missions and the effect on future plans. OSO planned six drops
244 PART THREE: THE SOVIET EMPIRE

in 1950, while MI6 hoped to send in at least two more teams. The requirement
for co-ordination concerned not only which groups were receiving Western
support but also the intended dates of the missions and predominantly techni-
cal information. Their object was to avoid clashes.' All this was discussed in
front of Philby, who took the notes for future reference. Unfortunately for
the Americans, Carr was only willing to discuss the broad outline of his
operations, which they felt was unsatisfactory. Philby recalled that the Wash-
ington talks were largely taken up with 'skirmishes' about Stefan Bandera,
who was regarded by the Americans as highly disruptive. The British,
however, 'put up a stubborn rearguard action'.
In May 1950, the Banderites continued their spoiling tactics and finally
withdrew from the National Ukrainian Council in Augsburg. The Banderites
regarded the sudden emergence of various nationalist groups in Munich -
such as 'the supposedly democratically inclined' Ukrainian government-in-
exile, led by Mykola Liwycky, Director of Press and Information of the
Ukrainian Information Bureau, and the Committee for the Liberation of the
Ukraine from Bolshevism, which ran 'Radio Liberation' - as manoeuvres by
the Americans and their Russian emigre advisers to create divisions between
the Ukrainian nationalist groups. At some point in 1950 Bandera secretly
visited Washington in an unsuccessful attempt to establish better relations
with the Americans. Increasingly, the Banderites focused their energies on
the ABN, which took on a more neo-fascist character. This did not worry
MI6, though it was concerned about its own lack of funds for such groups
as the Treasury coffers were increasingly empty for special operations. The
ABN was still able, though, to collect considerable funds from its supporters
in Canada, and its mood remained buoyant.^^
Several teams of agents, their numbers ranging from four to six, para-
chuted into the Soviet Union during 1950. Two of these missions disappeared
without a trace. The operations were, however, compromised from top to
bottom. Pavel Sudoplatov of Special Tasks and Ilarion Kamazuk, an MOB
operator, had planted an agent in the surviving Bandera group which had
made its way to West Germany, where MI6 'picked them up and carried
them to England for training'. Bandera, who was increasingly concerned
about the lack of radio communications with the UP A, had decided to send
his head of the security service (SB), Mynon Matwijejko, to Ukraine to restore
the movement. Meanwhile the planted Soviet agent kept in contact with his
handlers by mailing a coded postcard, informing them 'of the Matwijejko
group's route back to Ukraine'. He revealed details of their planned landing
and instructions were given to the Soviet air defence command not to attack
the British plane that was from Malta carrying Matwijejko. 'We not
flying
only wanted to protect our own man, who was with them,' Sudoplatov
'^^
recalled. 'We wanted to take them alive.
In March 1951 Philby gave his friend and Foreign Office traitor Guy
 THE ANTI-BOLSHEVIK BLOC OF NATIONS 245

Burgess, who was leaving the Washington embassy for London, 'the names
and arrival points of three groups of six men who were to be parachuted
into Ukraine'. This information eventually reached MGB/KGB officer Yuri
Modin, through another member of the 'Ring', former MI5 officer Anthony
Blunt. Modin acknowledges that he 'made good use of it'. In the late spring,
the British dropped the three parties in an area within fifty miles of the
nationalist stronghold of Lvov, and others on the territories of Ternopol and
Stanislaw. Again, none of the teams reported back.^^
In April, a high-level conference was heldin London between MI 6 officials
and a CIA team. The occasion was European tour by Allen Dulles, recently
a
appointed Deputy Director for Plans in the CIA, with responsibilities for
Wisner's OPC and the OSO. Once again, a row broke out over the Ukraine
operations and the appalling record of Bandera, which the OSO officials
claimed was hindering recruitment and proving to be positively counterpro-
ductive. The Americans claimed that there was no evidence that OUN-B
commanded any substantial support in Ukraine. Despite the failed operations
and the continuing urging by Dulles to abandon Bandera, Carr steadfastly
refused to break the relationship. The operations continued, partly because
of the belief that thirty-five thousand Soviet police troops and Communist
Party cadres had been eliminated by OUN-B/UPA guerrillas in Ukraine
since the end of the war. If true, it was all in the past; forced collectivisation
implemented during the year cut vital supplies to the underground. The
resistance was simply no longer effective.^^
In May, Bandera's representative, Mynon Matwijejko, and his team, which
had been under constant surveillance since landing in Ukraine, surrendered
voluntarily to the Soviet authorities. After a month of interrogations by Pavel
Sudoplatov, Matwijejko 'realised that except for the names of secondary agents,
there was nothing we didn't know about the Ukrainian emigrant organisations
and the Bandera movement. He was taken aback by my recital to him of the
biographies of all their leaders, bitter conflicts between them, and details of
their lives.'Somehow, Matwijejko managed to escape his captors, but gave
himself up after only three days when he discovered that the OUN-B network
in Lvov was not functioning. He learned that much the same experience had
faced the original two teams parachuted into Ukraine in 1949. What existed of
the local movement had been inflating its intelligence reports to London and
Munich. Matwijejko decided to co-operate with the debriefers and, at a press

conference staged by the Ukrainian authorities, denounced the Bandera move-

ment, using 'his authority to appeal for national reconciliation'. Further
denunciations came from 'W. Kruk', whose earlier recruitment by the NKVD
had been a major intelligence coup. A senior UP A commander, his arrest and
'turning' had enabled the Soviets successfully to thwart a number of oper-
ations. Pardoned by the Supreme Soviet Presidium, Kruk later became an
archivist of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR.^^
246 PART THREE: THE SOVIET EMPIRE

Carr's refusal to break with the OUN-B was partly based on his know-
ledge that the Americans were increasingly relying on Reinhard Gehlen and
his Organisation, for whom MI6 had little time or respect. While Gehlen
claimed that Bandera was 'one of our men', his American intelligence advisers
had helped block Bandera's access to the Org. Gehlen was able, however, to
warn the CIA that Bandera's group inside Ukraine was, in all probability,
penetrated. He did have access to information on Bandera from the Ukrainian
'specialist' Theodor Oberlander, political adviser with the Nachtigall battalion

which swept into Lvov in 1941 and who later became a minister in the Bonn
government. After surrendering to American troops at the end of the war,
Oberlander had been sent to London to an Anglo /American Intelligence
Service camp for debriefing. Thereafter, he was 'handed from office to office'
before returning to West Germany, where he was 'allowed' to go under-
ground.^^
Frank Wisner was also using Gehlen for the OPC /CIA's own Ukrainian
operations. The first of three OPC /CIA missions involving five of Wisner's
Gehlen-backed agents was dispatched into Moldavia, between south-east
Ukraine and Romania, in mid- August 1951. A former Red Army PoW and
a Soviet deserter, who had served in the Vlasov army, were instructed to
make their way separately to Ukraine and the Caucasus before making their
escape via Turkey. The ambitious project was terminated when, soon after
they arrived, their radios went quiet. A month later, another agent was
dropped into Belorussia, but only lasted a few weeks before being picked up
by the Soviet secret police. Two further agents similarly disappeared. Moscow
Radio later announced that the insurgents had engaged in gathering intelli-
gence for 'imperialist intelligence' and 'ideological diversions'.^^
Given the continuing lack of success of the Bandera agents, the MI6
hierarchy could no longer stand idly by, and so a discreet secret review of oper-
ations was undertaken. Carr was able to retain control of the Baltic operations,
and the establishment of a 'Joint Centre' with the CIA in the I. G. Farben build-
ing in Frankfurt for anti-Soviet operations was agreed. The MI6 liaison officer
between headquarters in Germany and the centre was Michael Lykowski, alias
Mike Peters, who joined the CIA's George Belie to manage the project. Lykow-
ski and Belie paid 'tens of thousands of dollars to Ukrainian agents who often
reappeared wearing new clothes, boasting the ownership of new cars and host-
ing champagne parties in the nightclubs. Occasionally, they disappeared from
Frankfurt for ever.' These 'special training' schools in Germany were found to
be riddled with Soviet agents, and as with other unsuccessful emigre operations
it was often less a case of Philby betraying the networks than of low-level Soviet

agents infiltrating the emigre community at every turn.^^

Although the infiltrations carried on throughout 1951/2 produced little
intelligence feedback, the American-backed Gehlen programme was stepped
up in the summer of 1952 with regular parachute drops. In August and
 THE ANTI-BOLSHEVIK BLOC OF NATIONS 247

November American planes dropped more agents in south-west Ukraine.

Sixteen agents were lost on at least five missions mounted during 1952/3.
British losses in this period are unknown, as are those of the separate OSO
operations. Despite the failures, 'as the flow of ''intelligence" radioed to West
Germany increased, MI6 confidently assured customers in Whitehall that it
was running a reliable network'. It was only later that it was discovered that
those few agents who did manage to radio back were acting under Soviet
instructions. As in Poland, the agents had been turned and the Soviet radio
deception soon bore fruit. Unlike other deception operations this one did not
run for long, and the cases were publicised in the Soviet press at great length.^^
In May 1953, the Soviet newspaper Pravda reported the execution of four
Ukrainians alleged to have spied for the United States. A year later, Soviet
radio announced the execution of V. O. Okhrymovych, who had parachuted
into Ukraine from an American plane. A leading figure during the war in
both the OUN and the UHVR, Okhrymovych had left for the West after
1945 on a 'special mission'. The official Soviet communique stated that he had
revealed the identities of 'his accomplices in espionage activities in Ukraine'.
Taking into account the general communist-style propaganda language in
which they were couched, the communiques issued following the executions
were, in fact, remarkably accurate. One reason for subsequently publicising
the cases at the United Nations was that the Soviets took the insurgent threat
seriously and could not allow the risk of its revival while the deception
operation was played out.^^
It was apparent, indeed blindingly obvious, to both MI6 and the OUN-B
that the Ukrainian networks were totally compromised. Bandera, who had
always been ambivalent about foreign support, took the initiative and began

to draw away from and American sponsors. In the mid-fifties he

his British
'tried to create an even smaller, more secret network', which made him 'a
target for Soviet assassination efforts'.^^
Ukrainian guerrillas fought in numbers until at least 1948 in the western
provinces of Ukraine. According to two CIA-trained radio operators, who
remained to the bitter end, the last major UPA was crushed by Soviet
unit
security troops in regimental strength in November 1953, though small
pockets of resistance continued for another three years. In truth, it took the
Soviets only four years to suppress OUN /UPA.
During the Second World
War, the OUN /UPA believed that the Germans and Russians would exhaust
themselves and that as a result they would emerge as a 'third force' which
would win Ukrainian independence. Similarly, when the Cold War began,
the nationalists expected a confrontation leading to war between the West
and the USSR. They were wrong on both counts. The problem for the Ukraini-
ans, who were torn by ethnic, ideological and political divisions, was that they
suffered from what Alexander Buchsbajew has called 'suicidal romanticism'.
There never was a chance that they would succeed.*"*
248 PART THRFE: THE SOVIET EMPIRE

There were a number of additional reasons for the nationalist failure.

Even though the OUN
was extremely security-conscious, as early as 1940
the NKVD had high level. Although there
infiltrated the organisation at a
were contacts with counterpart organisations in the West and with British
Intelligence, no material supplies were delivered to the guerrillas in Ukraine.
Gradually, the war of attrition reduced the quantity of weapons and ammu-
nition available for a sustained campaign. Christopher Simpson argues that
'what this meant in strategic terms was that the guerrillas received neither
the military support they needed to survive as an insurgent movement nor
the patient camouflaging that might have permitted them to exist as spies.
Instead, they were used as martyrs - some of whom died bravely; some
pathetically - and grist for the propaganda mills of both East and West.' This
is a view shared by one senior American diplomat who described the role

of the OUN in these campaigns as 'little more than puppets in the hands of
back-stage agents'.
The real problem - about which MI6 may have reached the correct
conclusion but which it refused to impart to its emigre agents - was the same
as that reported by Maj. Gatehouse and Capt. Tamplin when they interviewed
Russian PoWs in Finland. 'Contrary to the widely held belief, Buchsbajew
concludes in his study of guerrilla warfare, 'even the popularly backed, well-
armed or highly motivated insurgents cannot succeed against a modern totali-
tarian state.' Harry Rositzke came to the conclusion that the Ukrainian
operations were 'not worth the effort'. In retrospect, he realised that after the
Czech coup in 1948 there were 'no resistance groups in Eastern Europe . .

or none that could be trusted'.

The nationalists had wished to unite the whole of Ukraine into a new
independent state, and in pursuit of this goal told the West's intelligence
agencies that Ukrainian resistance after 1945 was spread throughout the
region. In truth, resistance was mainly limited to the former Polish territories:
Soviet west Ukraine and certain districts west of the Curzon Line which were
left to the Poles after 1944/5. There was
a deep and unbridgeable divide
between the western and eastern regions of Ukraine. It is a tragic irony for
the nationalists that, despite their often heroic efforts, the same division exists
today. The 1994 general election split the country down the middle, with
nearly 90 per cent of western Ukraine voting against the eventual victor, who
came from The most vocal opponents of the result, who
the eastern region.
threatened the stability of the country, were the still-active Banderites. The
preceding year, seven hundred former members of the Waffen-SS Galician
Division, the majority now living in Canada and the United States, with a
contingent of eighty from Britain, held a reunion in the nationalist stronghold
of Lvov. Most remained unapologetic about the past.^^
CHAPTER 15

POLAND

News of the Warsaw Uprising by the PoHsh Home Army (Armia Krajowa -
AK) reached London on 1 August 1944, surprising critics of the executive
director of the Special Operations Executive (SOE), Colin Gubbins, who was
identified in some circles with a small group of conservative, anti-communist
Polish officers who were in favour of keeping the Home Army intact for
eventual use against the Russians.
The Poles, recalled Peter Wilkinson, who had travelled to Poland in July
1939, 'had cast their spell over Gubbins, appealing particularly to the romantic
side of his nature'. As chief of staff of a British Military Mission that was
part of a Military Intelligence (Research) operation - funded 'from another
organisation' (MI6) - Gubbins had tried to set up a stay-behind network that
would operate behind German lines in the event of Poland being overrun
by the Nazis. As the prospect of war grew, Gubbins, who had spent time on
the Polish desk, where officers nicknamed him 'Gubbski', developed close
personal links with members of the Polish Mission in Paris and officers of
the Polish General Staff. When the MI6 Paris station had been evacuated to
London in June 1940, Commander Wilfred 'Biffy' Dunderdale (code-name
'Wilski') started a P5 section which concentrated on the many Polish groups
he had cultivated in pre-war France.^
Polish Intelligence enjoyed a healthy respect in MI6 circles - justifiably
so, because of the major role it played in the success enjoyed at Bletchley
Park by the Government Code and Cipher School (GC&CS) in signals cryp-
250 PART THREE: THE SOVIET EMPIRE

sis. The first steps in breaking the Enigma machine code, as used by
tana 1\
the Germans, were made in early 1933 by Marian Rejewski of the PoHsh
Cipher Bureau, using stolen instructions from French Intelligence. The British
did not manage to break the Enigma ciphers until after they had been given
access to Rejewski's work at a secret meeting with the Poles and the French
in the Pyry Forest, near Warsaw, in July 1939. It was Dunderdale who brought
an intact Engima machine to London 'in a heavily escorted diplomatic bag
and met at Victoria Station by Stewart Menzies . . . dressed in a dinner jacket
with the rosette of the Legion d'honneur in his button Dunderdale washole'.
also chief liaison officer to the ultra-secret Agency by Major-
Africa run
General Rygor Slowikowski {nom de guerre 'Dr Skowronski'), who had gath-
ered intelligence on southern Russia for the Second Bureau of the Polish
General Staff, on the eve of war. The agency was the 'most extensive and
efficient Allied intelligence network' operating in Vichy-governed French

North Africa during 1941-2, playing a leading part in the planning of Oper-
ation TORCH, the Anglo-American invasion of Algeria and Morocco in
November 1942. In Algiers, Slowikowski worked closely with Colonel
Anthony Morris of MI6's Inter-Services Liaison Department.^
SOE created a parallel section to MI6's P5, EU/P, responsible for Polish
minorities, which was taken over in July 1941 by a former Baltic shipbroker,
Ronald Hazell. The Polish country section was run by Major Mike Pickles,
another member of the Military Mission to Warsaw, as was SOE's overall
director (MP) for Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary, Harold Perkins, one
of Gubbins's most loyal and trusted supporters. A former proprietor of a
textile factory in southern Poland, Perkins was described by Peter Wilkinson,

regional controller in charge of liaison with the Poles, as 'larger than life in
every dimension'. With the help of the Polish VI Bureau, Perkins helped
design the cylindrical containers for arms and essential supplies that were
dropped by parachute all over Europe.^
Gubbins had been one of a small circle of British friends in London trusted
and consulted on a wide range of subjects by the head of the Polish government-
in-exile. General Wladyslaw Sikorski. The circle included the liaison officer to

the Poles, Conservative MP Major Victor Cazalet, a close friend of Lord

Selbourne, head of the Ministry of Economic Warfare, which controlled SOE.
Cazalet and Selbourne were members of the Imperial Policy Group, an anti-
communist /Soviet grouping of right-wing Tories who advocated 'imperial
isolationalism' for the British Commonwealth and Empire. The IPG was
viewed in some quarters as favouring the defeat of Bolshevism above that of
war with Germany. Its secretary, Kenneth de Courcy, was close to Menzies and
his White's Club network of MI6 officers. Hostile to any body that challenged
its efforts at policy co-ordination on Poland, the Foreign Office disliked these

political contacts and, in particular, the role of Sikorski's closest Polish collabor-
ator and 'eminence grise', Dr Jozef Retinger, another of Gubbins's friends."^
 POLAND 251

A pragmatic leader. General Sikorski had been working for a rapproche-

ment with the Soviet Union, with a view to reconstituting a new Polish state
at the expense of Germany. The announcement by Berlin Radio on 13 April
1943 that the bodies of about ten thousand Polish officers had been discovered
in mass graves in the Katyn woods dashed such hopes. While the Soviet
Information Bureau in London dismissed the discovery as a 'fabrication', the
Polish government-in-exile stated that, following the German 'categorical
statement that they were murdered by Soviet authorities in the Spring of
1940, the necessity has arisen that the mass graves discovered should be
investigated and the facts alleged verified'. From that point on, diplomatic
relations between the Poles and the Soviet Union remained in abeyance. This
had a direct effect on the British government, which was determined, in the
interests of the war effort, to preserve a good relationship with the Soviets.^
Sikorski's death on 4 July 1943, when the aircraft bringing him back to
London, which also included Cazaelet on the passenger list, crashed on take-
off in Gibraltar, was a devastating blow to the London Poles - one from
which they never fully recovered. Churchill 'showed little sympathy' for
Sikorski's successor as prime minister, Stanislaw Mikolajczyk, one of the
general's main allies in London who, from 1941 to 1943, had been deputy
premier and minister of internal affairs in the government-in-exile. Leader
of the Polish Peasant Party, Mikolajczyk was virtually unknown in British
circles and lacked international experience, although he was a seasoned poli-
tician who shared Sikorski's pragmatic approach to foreign policy. Churchill
repeatedly told him that the western powers were not prepared to go to war
with the Soviet Union over Poland. 'The essential fact was that control of
Poland was seen as vital by the Soviet Union, as it was not by Great Britain
or the United States.' Mikolajczyk accepted the realities of Poland's fragile
position and that he would have to make 'concessions on matters of prestige'
which the London Poles, who followed a rather romantic view of history,
would not accept.^
Gubbins had numerous official dealings with the Polish leader and had
a high regard for his 'courage, integrity and commonsense'. Likewise, Miko-
lajczyk, who had been responsible for the clandestine civilian administration
inside Poland and also for the mobilisation of Polish communities abroad,
was well disposed towards Gubbins and SOE. Supported by Lord Selbourne,
Gubbins took more seriously than most the commitment to Poland and the
resistance, particularly during 1944 when the Polish underground state
increasingly turned its attention to the problem of power in postwar Poland.
But as the chiefs of staff acknowledged in January, 'special operations in
Poland are bound up with political considerations to a greater extent than
in any other country'. Once the Warsaw uprising began, voices in the British
intelligence community were raised, accusing Gubbins of 'having encouraged
the Poles for personal ambition to embark on this desperate adventure which
252 PART THREE: THE SOVIET EMPIRE

ran clear counter to the directives SOE had received from the Chiefs of Staff '7
Some had indeed expected, because of Gubbins's support,
PoUsli quarters
that supplies would be forthcoming at the critical moment. There had been,
however, a misunderstanding in the message sent to the AK (Home Army),
primarily due to the Polish VI Bureau continuing to send messages in their
tnvn ciphers, without reference to any British agency. Gubbins had, in fact,
adhered strictly to the policy of the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC), which
had concluded, after consultation with SOE, that responsibility for any upris-
ing must be left to the Poles. Tt was recognised that Polish resistance would
not be of any use to the more important invasion of Europe.' The false hopes
were generated by people inside Poland. While the Red Army waited on the
other side of the Vistula - probably not then in a military position to help
the heroic Polish fighters of the Warsaw whom
Stalin regarded as
uprising,
a 'handful of power-hungry adventurers and criminals' - 'the flower of the
Polish underground, perhaps 200,000 people, were killed by the Germans'.^
The uprising effectively destroyed the power of the London-controlled
underground and split the pro-western politicians in Poland and abroad into
two camps. Those who supported Mikolajczyk worked for a compromise
with the communists in Poland in the hope of supplanting them through a
formal alliance with the Soviet Union. Mikolajczyk's resignation as Prime
Minister in November 1944, however, was welcomed by the Foreign Office
because 'it meant the end of those silly Poles'. The opposing group, which
took over power in the London government-in-exile, believed that the Polish
question would be satisfactorily resolved only if confrontation, which they
sought, arose between the western powers and the Soviet Union. Increasingly,
the Foreign Office viewed these internal squabbles with disdain. The Home
Army was no longer of strategic interest and was viewed 'as a major impedi-
ment to the establishment of good post-war relations with the Soviet Union'.
Likewise, SOE's co-operation with the Polish resistance was to be 'strictly
subordinated to the search for an Anglo-Soviet agreement'.^
Senior SOE figures did not, however, view the situation in quite the same
light as the Foreign Office. In October, Harold Perkins wrote in a confidential
memorandum world peace is now the increasing
that 'the chief threat to
divergence becoming evident between Russian aims and the policies of the
western allies'. He wanted to keep SOE's Polish agents active so that they
would be able to set up new intelligence networks and organise resistance
cells against any Soviet-controlled regime. He added that there were

few Englishmen who possess knowledge of Russia,

a first-hand
of Russian mentality, and of Russian methods. The Poles on
the other hand have several thousand persons having those
qualifications and being at the same time bitterly hostile to
Russia, although friendly to us. In the event of war with Russia
 POLAND 253

they would be of inestimable value to us. They represent an

asset which should not lightly be discarded.

While the envisaged supplies for Warsaw did not materialise, the Home
Army had not been entirely without support. Up to October 1944, SOE had
covertly dispatched for 'military and political purposes ... at least £35,000,000
in gold and currency', using secret Polish couriers. These massive amounts
worried the chiefs of staff, who 'feared that portions of this money and the
air-drops of arms intended for sabotage operations against the retreating
Germans would be salted away to be used in a fight against the advancing
Soviet armies'. Only after pressure from Gubbins was SOE allowed to send
a Military Mission to Poland to assess what resistance was left. Led by Colonel
'Bill' Hudson, it consisted of Peter Kemp, Peter Solly-Flood, and two Poles,

Anton Popieszalski (aka Tony Currie) and Roman Rudkowski, an air force
colonel. Hudson discovered that the majority of the Polish agents dropped
into the country had failed to survive the German occupation, the Warsaw
uprising and the Soviet People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (NKVD)
murder squads. The official files record that by the beginning of 1945 SOE
was expending little effort on Poland but, according to Peter Wilkinson,
Gubbins, who was increasingly relying on emigre sources, was spending 'a
disproportionate amount of time' on the country. Wilkinson adds cryptically:
'by no means always on SOE's business'.
Large sections of the London-controlled Home Army, which had been
ordered to make themselves known to the advancing Soviet Army and to
offer to fight alongside it, were critical of the government-in-exile's moderate
policies and refused to lay down their arms. Once the fighting had finished,
the Soviets demanded that the AK units be subordinated to the Soviet-
controlled Polish Army or be disarmed and interned. Unfortunately, the Red
Army had alreadyambushed and destroyed some AK units, and, as the
British feared, a number instead preferred to remain underground as part of
a clandestine anti-communist network. On 19 January 1945 the Polish GHQ,
after consulting with Gubbins, formally disbanded the AK, but at the same
time activated the organisation known by the cryptonym Nie (Niepodleglosc
- Independence), which was intended to carry on the political struggle. The
extreme right-wing nationalists also vowed to remain as a conspiratorial
force, arguing that the underground should prepare to destroy pro-Soviet
and communist forces. It, too, based its strategy on the assumption that armed
conflict would break out between the West and the Soviet Union, and so
directed its energies to preparing for a rebellion inside Poland for when that
day came.^^
In response the NKVD unleashed a terror campaign, intended to destroy
the underground, against the same forces with which, a few weeks earlier,
it had on occasion co-operated. By early 1945 the communists were equating
254 TAPvT THREE: THE SOVIET EMPIRE

the AK w ith the Gestapo. In January, SOE officer Major Pickles reported
to the Foreign Office that the NKVD was still the only real authority in
So\'iet-occupied Poland: The rest is fiction.' The next month SOE reported
that the Russians were 'plundering the population in an alarming manner'.
A March SOE report described 'the position of the Poles after the entry of
the Russians' as 'far worse than before'. The 'Red Army completely devas-
tated the countryside, looting absolutely everything moveable'. By then most
Polish villages had a cell of one or two communists which, according to
Pickles, comprised 'the poorest peasants who were attracted by promises of
land and drawn, generally speaking, from the dregs of the population, who
had everything to gain by any sort of change'. Lord Selbourne and Gubbins
made regular representations to the Foreign Office on the situation in Poland
but officials remained unwilling to intervene, still reluctant to damage Anglo-
Soviet relations.
The spring offensive weakened the underground forces - as many as fifty
thousand members of the AK were arrested and transported to Siberia, as
were the leaders of the new political organisation Nie - but was not
completely successful. The security forces were small and heavily infiltrated
by members of the underground, with many officers unwilling to kill their
fellow-citizens. It took until May 1945 for the Internal Security Corps (Korpus
Bezpieczentswa Wenetrznego - KBW) to be formally set up and trained.
Under the control of the Supreme Political Commission to Combat Banditry,
special 'agit-prop' groups attached to counter-insurgency units spread dissen-
sion and propaganda that portrayed the underground as terrorists who killed
peasants and who were intent on depriving the people of the fruits of peace.
The western powers failed to respond to the arrests of resistance leaders,
again fearful of a confrontation with Stalin over Poland, and refused to coun-
tenance any overt support to the underground.^'*
During the summer of 1945, the Polish communists developed a twin-track
strategy, allowing former opponents into government as the price to be paid
for western recognition of the provisional government. In June, Moscow
allowed Mikolajczyk to return to Poland as deputy prime minister, with his
Peasant Party (PSL) given five out of the twenty seats in the cabinet. With
Mikolajczyk's return, the London government-in-exile ceased to enjoy any
significant role and the struggle for power was played out within government
between the PSL and the communists (Polska Partia Robotnicza, PPR), which
continued to combat the underground. Closely watching these events were
the staff of the British embassy in Warsaw, which occupied most of the fourth
floor of the Hotel Polonia. While not a nest of spies, it did include its fair
share of intelligence and former SOE personnel.
Ambassador Victor Cavendish-Bentinck, who had recently vacated the
chair of the JIG, had a long association with Poland, having served there as
a junior diplomat after the First World War. Somewhat cold and austere, he
 POLAND 255

was sympathetic towards the Poles, being well aware of Polish 'achievements
in clandestine as well as overt warfare against the Germans', and regarded
the Polish intelligence personnel as 'the best people by far'. The counsellor
in the embassy, Robin Hankey, whose father. Lord Hankey, was regarded
as the creator of the JIC, had also served in the embassy before the war.
Press attache Patrick Howarth had served with SOE in the Middle East and
Italy, and was an old Polish hand, having run operations with the Poles in

Cairo. A pre-war journalist, Howarth had replaced Denis Hills on the quar-
terly journal Baltic and Scandinavian Countries, run by the Baltic Institute in
Gdynia, during the brief Anglo-Polish honeymoon. Another former journalist
on the staff was Michael Winch, who, in 1939, had written an interesting
eye-witness account of the short-lived Carpatho-Ukraine Republic, where the
German-backed local authorities had treated him as a British spy. Vice-consul
Alan Banks had served with MI6 in Dakar, West Africa, while the resident
MI6 officer was a 'colourless chap', Lewis Massey. A fluent Polish speaker
- his mother was Polish - Massey acted as interpreter for the ambassador.
The Russians protested to the British that SOE radio networks in Poland,
supposedly closed down at the end of the war, were still active. The Foreign
Office, anxious to recognise the new Moscow-controlled regime, demanded
that they be closed down, but Harold Perkins resisted. He knew that Menzies
was, 'without doubt', 'very interested in the question of Polish communi-
cations in view of the excellent intelligence which is obtained via these chan-
nels'. Eventually, an agreement was reached for SOE to retain control of the
Polish radio messages - 'in view of their bulk and the dislocation of intelli-

gence operational importance that might be caused'. When the Russians

continued to complain that the British were still supporting 'terrorist activi-

ties', Perkins simply handed his Polish networks over to MI6.^^

Polish contacts with western intelligence agencies, particularly MI6, made
in the pre-war period were not lost during the war and were carried on into
the immediate postwar period. These lasted until about 1948. The head of
Polish Intelligence with the Polish government-in-exile in London, Colonel
Tadeusz Wasilewski, had helped MI6 recruit some of its best sources on
Germany. Although officially attached to the Ministry of Defence, Colonel
Stefan Mayer - an extremely important figure in Polish Intelligence (though
not, as is sometimes described, its head), who had played a role in the Polish
efforts to break the Engima machine code - was employed by MI6 after the
war. It would seem that MI6 also had access to the files of the head of the
Polish Deuxieme Bureau during the war. Colonel Gano. The official view
was that they had 'disappeared', but rumours persist that he handed them
over to the British, who had them destroyed. It would appear, however, that
they were entrusted to Mayer, who acted as a weeder of Polish documents
for MI6.^'
According to the untested sources of newspaper editor Stewart Steven,
256 PART THREE: THE SOVIET EMPIRE

MI6 ran another intelligence and covert operations network outside of the
Warsaw station, headed by 'Captain Michael Sullivan', a former SOE officer
who spoke tluent Polish. 'Sullivan's' father was a paper manufacturer whose
business had been almost exclusively with the Poles. was As soon as Poland
liberated, 'Sullivan', who had worked in eastern Europe during the war, went
there undercover as head of a British relief agency to set up a network
that became 'the hub of the huge anti-communist, anti-Russian resistance
movement'. Steven gives a lurid account of 'Sullivan's' activities during 1945,
which ranged from psychological warfare operations, resulting in bread riots,
to helping incite anti-Semitic demonstrations. In 1946 Perkins, who was now
responsible for MI6 operations in Poland and Czechoslovakia, posted to the
MI6 station as assistant military attache another former SOE officer, David
Smiley, as a replacement for Major Seddon. Smiley remembered Perkins as
'a big man, full of fun', who insisted on 'joining me for the more hazardous
and exciting missions'. The Polish authorities later declared Smiley persona
Germany and his regiment, the Blues,
non grata for spying, and he returned to
as second-in-command. By May, many of SOE's former agents in Poland
had been arrested by the NKVD. 'In many cases, we understand they are
charged with being British agents,' an official noted. Perkins was frequently
mentioned by the new regime in Warsaw during the subsequent show trials
of alleged spies.^^
In the immediate post-hostilities phase, Poland was in chaos, with the
country in economic and physical ruin. War had left Warsaw a devastated
city but not, at least for the first postwar year, a police state. There was indeed
considerable freedom of expression, and the British embassy did not want
for information. According to Cavendish-Bentinck, however, the Communist
Party gradually asserted 'a complete grip on the administrative machine. The
press is regimented.' The Russian and communist-controlled 'Security' police,
manned by 'Corner boys, pimps and thimble-riggers', produced 'an atmos-
phere of terror'. He acknowledged in reports to London that the PSL enjoyed
considerable support, and if elections were held at the end of 1945, 'this party
would certainly secure over sixty per cent of the votes cast'. He added that
the Polish communist clique who controlled much of the government
'have no intention of abandoning power if the elections should go against
them'.^^
As a result of the arrests in May, a new conspiratorial organisation, the
Delegation of Armed Forces (Delegatura Sil Zbrojnych - DSZ), had been
created under the command of Colonel Jan Rzepecki. A military formation
that sought to curb uncoordinated resistance, it succeeded in gathering
together the old AK network, but its organisation was far from complete
when, in August, it too disbanded following the formal dissolution of the
underground state. In the amnesty that followed, most of the AK/DSZ core
did not, however, reveal themselves to the communists. Several underground
 POLAND 257

groups established the co-ordinating commission of political parties, known

asThe Centre', to which, in September, out of the remnants of the AK/DZS,
another military organisation was established. Freedom and Independence
(Wolnosc i Niepodlegtnosc - WiN), which geared its tactics closely to those
of the legal opposition, the Peasant Party (PSL). WiN had been conceived as
an underground organisation that would provide a moderate rallying point
for former members of the AK who took the view that a continuation of
the armed struggle would be counterproductive. While it allowed for the
liquidation of 'particularly harmful persons' and was prepared to undertake
armed resistance to prevent the nation's destruction, it aimed not to provoke
the Soviets. It backed co-operation with the coalition government, recognising
that 'the maintenance of good political relations and economic co-operation
with the Soviet Union' was 'necessary and positive'.
Following his arrest in November, WiN's commander. Colonel Jan
Rzepecki, publicly called for an end to underground armed activity. This
was not universally accepted by the WiN rank and file, who regarded it

as a straightforward military organisation. Almost alone among the Soviet

satellites, the underground continued throughout 1945/ 6 to play a significant
role in keeping alive the official opposition movement in a period when the
communists knew that they were still weak. The security problem in the
countryside remained serious throughout the second half of 1945, with
around, according to Ministry of the Interior figures, eighty thousand activists
in the underground. Special action units of the extreme nationalist National
Military Union (Narodowy Zwiazek Wojskowy - NZW) carried out 'pacifi-
cation' raids against pro-government villages, while the well-organised
Ukrainian nationalist UPA underground army remained a major problem
along the south-east border. A 'veritable no man's land', where guerrilla
activity assumed the proportions of a civil war, the 'Wild Fields' were a no-go
area for British Intelligence officers. One man who did manage to report back
from the area was the 'mysterious' Auberon Herbert, who, David Howarth
recalls, unexpectedly turned up in the area as the Polish correspondent of
the Tablet; clearly on a low-level intelligence mission.
A major reduction of Soviet troops on Polish soil took place during the
winter of 1945/6, which Mikolajczyk thought provided new opportunities.
In January he told Cavendish-Bentinck he 'was certain that the Communist
leaders would think out other plans to remain power when the elections
in
go against them' but that it would be difficult for them to 'remain in office
without the active support of the Russian Army ... if it came to a clash
between the Army and the people the Polish soldiers would refuse to act'.
In March, Cavendish-Bentinck feared that any escalation of the underground
attacks might spark an uprising that would result in stern retaliatory
measures by the Soviets, including the return of troops. The British ambassa-
dor contacted individuals connected to the underground, urging restraint
258 PAKT THRHt: THE SOVIET EMPIRE

and a dispersal of forces to avoid repression and the imposition of a perma-

nent military dictatorship. There was a view that it was more important to

keep the country together and not risk even further repression by the Soviets.
Ml 6, which was primarily concerned with protecting its intelligence-
gathering networks, took a similar view. On the other hand, the Service had
been tasked with preparing for a potential East/West conflict and wanted
the underground to preserve its forces and be ready for that moment. When
the international situation began to look bleaker, MI6 asked the Polish under-
ground to prepare a stay-behind network. The Poles did not, however, always
believe what MI 6 was telling it and viewed the Service with some suspicion.
There was a great deal of bitterness, with the feeling that, having fought side
by side with them during the war, the British had let them down.^^
The communists alleged that the underground were taking their orders
from the 'well-known Russophobe' General Wladyslaw Anders, a cavalry
officer in the Tsarist army prior to the revolution and then in Polish units in
Russia. Captured by the Soviets in 1939, Anders had organised Polish forces
under Soviet command in 1941 and had then, in the following year, led
Polish soldiers out of Russia. Transferred to the command of the Supreme
Headquarters of Allied European Forces (SHAEF) of General Eisenhower,
Anders's forces were used in several gallant campaigns against the fascists
in North Africa and Italy, contributing, in particular, to the Allied conquest
of Montecassino in 1944. At the end of the war, Anders's Polish Army was
scattered throughout Italy, West Germany and Austria. Warsaw claimed that
the Polish Corps were being kept in existence and reorganised in the western
occupation zones in Germany in order to carry out subversive activities
against the Polish government. Both sides believed that a new war would
soon break out, and the communists were alarmed that Anders's army might
receive help from the remnants of the Home Army within Poland. There was
undoubtedly an element of justification in these fears.
In renewing a pre-war friendship, Harry Carr, head of MI6's Northern
Division, instructed his officers to make contact with General Anders, who
was encouraged to re-establish relations with his officers in Poland. Surviving
members of the underground maintained contact with the Polish govern-
ment-in-exile and with MI6 in London, while a number of these groups had
contact by courier or wireless with Polish forces in West Germany and Britain.
In addition, some of the extreme nationals had managed to move to West
Germany to link up with other groups in order to carry on the fight against
the communists. It was also obvious that Cold War attitudes were hardening.
The Foreign Office paper of October 1946, 'Strategic Aspect of British Foreign
Office Policy', advocated a state of armed preparedness against Soviet pres-
sure, as it was vital to prevent particular countries from succumbing to
communist domination. was considered essential 'to support and encourage
It

as far as we can our friends in those countries, and so to keep alive in them
 POLAND 259

the connection with the Western democratic ideas which our policy towards
them represents. The best hope of this is born
in Poland, since the Poles are
conspirators/^^
Gradually, however, the communist PPR began to nationalise the security
apparatus until Soviet troops and Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD, which
succeeded the NKVD) units were no longer required to quell the under-
ground. Political control over the internal police was tightened, which enabled
the Soviets to keep a low profile during the elections. In conversation with
Cavendish-Bentinck, Mikolajczyk spoke only of their role 'behind the scenes'
in the top echelons of the PPR, the security apparatus and in directing the
campaign against his party. The Soviets continued to be active over the winter
of 1946, but their actions were well concealed. They were also helped by the
fact that, while guerrilla actions had caused real anxiety, once the police and

political forces had taken the upper hand, the existence of the guerrillas could

be 'used as an excuse for repressive measures' against Mikolajczyk's legal

PSL party. Government propaganda portrayed the PSL as 'the legal facade
of a reactionary guerrilla underground movement', while Mikolajczyk was
denounced as a 'British agent' and accused of secret dealings with Anders -
'on behalf of his masters, the British imperialists'. Finally, two political trials

were staged to incriminate Mikolajczyk.^^

In June 1946, a referendum on the question of abolishing the senate was
opposed by Mikolajczyk's PSL. The openly fraudulent referendum proved
to be a public relations disaster, and the communists directed their anger at
the British ambassador, who had delivered a note to the Polish government
drawing attention to the 'grave irregularities' in voting. Polish security tight-
ened their surveillance of Cavendish-Bentinck, who had been using his
private aeroplane as a 'peering machine' to ensure that he was well informed,
visiting the estates of landowners whom he had known in Poland during his
earlier posting in 1919. They then tried unsuccessfully to have him made
persona non gmtaP
A technique favoured by the security police was 'the blockade', whereby
agents kept surveillance for a numberweeks on the home of 'a suspicious
of
character' and arrested everyone who called on him. A 'blockade' was
imposed on the flat of Cavendish-Bentinck's long-time family friend Count
Ksawery Grocholoski, but the ambassador, who had notice of the count's
imminent arrest, made the injudicious move of visiting him. According to
Reuters correspondent John Peet, who later defected to East Germany: 'The
Count had apparently been caught red-handed in possession of stolen secret
government documents and was kept prisoner in the bathroom awaiting
visitors. A distinguished-looking foreigner rang the bell and was cuffed with

handcuffs. There was speculation in diplomatic circles that "Bill" had gone
on a little low-level spying of his own.' A former member of the Home Army,
Count Grocholoski was charged with being an underground agent, wno had
260 PART THREE: THE SOVIET EMPIRE

collaborated with the Germans and was conveying secrets to the British.
Cavendish-Bentinck wrote that the real object of his arrest was 'to deter us
in the future from attempting to make any contact if we should so desire
with the underground movement'.
In a second trial beginning on 4 January 1947, just two weeks before the
Polish general election, former Home Army officer and commander of WiN
Colonel Rzepecki 'confessed' that Mikolajczyk had given him advice that
'had caused him to continue armed resistance to the government with his
guerrilla forces, despite the amnesty'. Five days before the election. Count
Grocholoski was sentenced to death, and the following month Cavendish-
Bentinck was forced to leave the country.^^
After the and the fraudulent elections, the Polish government began
trials

to move PSL and in particular Mikolajczyk. Fortunately, the last

against the
head of the Polish underground state and a leading member of the PSL,
Stefan Korbonski, had maintained contact with reliable sources inside the
government. A communist official, whose life Korbonski had saved during
the Warsaw uprising, tipped him off that the security police intended to
arrest him along with other members of the executive committee of the PSL.
Korbonski told Mikolajczyk, who initially considered staying in the country
to influence world opinion. When other sources, however, informed the
British and American embassies that he would almost certainly be tried and
executed, Mikolajczyk made secret plans to leave. According to former SOE
official Douglas Dodds-Parker, he was rescued 'with Bevin's willing help'
in an MI6 exfiltration operation using former SOE personnel organised by
Gubbins, who had informed Mikolajczyk that he was about to be 'liquidated'.
Co-ordinating the effort was a secret unit of Allied officers in Berlin which
helped smuggle out politicians, scientists and intelligence sources throughout
eastern Europe via an 'underground railway'. One of its agents told the Nezu
York Times: 'We get some hot customers, hot with the breath of the Russian
pursuers on their necks. '^^
On 17 October 1947, Mikolajczyk sought the assistance of the First Secre-
tary at the American embassy in Warsaw, George Andrews. After he had
consulted with his opposite number in the British embassy, officials worked
quickly and suggested several possible methods of escape. A plan to smuggle
him out of the country in a coffin was dropped in favour of helping him to

get to the Baltic port of Gdynia. Three days later, carrying only a toothbrush
and jumped into the back of a truck where he was
a revolver, Mikolajczyk
American report on the escape, by another
joined, according to the official
-
person probably an MI6 officer. After a long and dangerous trip through
numerous checkpoints, Mikolajczyk finally reached Gdynia where, 'through
the contrivance of an old SOE hand and wartime associate of his named
Ronald Hazell', he boarded a British ship disguised as a British naval officer.
'A gentleman with the character of a bank manager', Hazell had been
 POLAND 261

employed in shipping with the United Baltic Corporation and had occasion-
ally worked for MI6. A member of Gubbins's circle, he was a close friend of
Harold Perkins and a member of the pre-war Military Mission to Warsaw.
Vice-consul at Galatz in 1940, after wartime service in SOE, Hazell was
appointed vice-consul of Gdynia in March 1947, as a cover for MI6 duties.^*^
Mikolajczyk set sail for freedom on the Baltavia, reaching England at the
end of October. In the interests of security, he had not informed his colleagues
of his plans, and this led in some quarters to bitterness and accusations of
'ruthless calculation'. Korbonski and his wife also managed to escape from
Gdynia on a Swedish ship for Gothenberg, but other members of the PSL
were not so lucky. A number were caught on the Czechoslovakian border,
and under duress revealed the connivance of the British and American
embassies in the escape of Mikolajczyk.^^
Mikolajczyk initially stayed in London, where his wife had remained after
his return to Warsaw end of the war. His stay was marked by a
at the
propaganda campaign partly centred around the activities of the British
League for European Freedom (BLEF) and the Mid-European Studies Centre,
which employed exiles to undertake research on historical, cultural and politi-
cal subjects in their respective countries. The BLEF was close to the Poles,
who, according to the president of the Polish Ex-Servicemen's Association,
respected the organisation because 'it knew about the situation in Poland
better than most'. In November 1946, Mikolajczyk told a Royal Institute of
International Affairs meeting that he had decided to flee to the West because
he thought his death might well have led to revenge and unnecessary blood-
shed from his own supporters, which would have given the communists 'the
chance to drown the people's opposition in blood'. It was clear, however,
that he was not wanted in London by the Polish government-in-exile and,
at the end of 1947, Mikolajczyk moved to the United States, where he was
destined to play 'a lone hand'. There were deep divisions within the American
Polish exile community, and many disliked his attempted policy of cohabi-
tation with the communists. Frustrated, he organised and then dismissed his
own committee, eventually promoting 'his own politics in second exile'. In
truth, Mikolajczyk's considerable reputation was entirely destroyed by his
defeat and subsequent flight from the country, bringing to an end the oppo-
sition activity of the PSL. Patrick Howarth was to report that following his
departure 'further darkness descended on Poland'.^^
The WiN network of around sixty thousand activists and supporters
retained a considerable degree of organisational coherence until late 1946.
This was partly because the security police - the 'Red Gestapo' - found it

difficult to break into the underground, where each cell consisted of five
personnel linked to the next by only one person. Underground activity
cell

appears to have reached a peak in September /October, which coincided with

renewed security operations, with more troops and officials killed than at
262 PART THREE: THE SOVIET EMPIRE

any time since the end of the war. By January 1947 guerrilla activity had
markedly declined. The underground had been severely weakened by the
security campaigns during the election period, with heavy losses within the
political and military leadership. During the previous October, the president
of WiN, Franciszek Niepokolczycki, and seventeen other members of the
supreme command had been arrested, while the new supreme command
under Wincenty Kwiecinski was rounded up in early January. Regional
networks and provincial commands were devastated by the arrests. Acknowl-
edging that a full-scale insurrection would not succeed, the underground had
hoped to sustain the spirit of the opposition, but the crushing of the PSL in
the fraudulent elections had sapped its strength, resulting in a slump in
morale. Another amnesty during February /March saw fifty-five thousand
supporters of the ex-AK leave the underground, even though many suffered
persecution.^^
During June the British embassy reported that Poland 'seemed calmer in
the past three months than at any time since 1945'. It was thus an odd time
for Carr's Northern Division to launch a major covert intelligence-gathering
operation, BROADWAY, which involved dropping agents and equipment
into Poland to make contact with the resistance.^^
On the back of a Soviet attempt to encourage the remaining Poles in
Britain to return home, MI6 took the opportunity to recruit agents among
the targeted exiles. A number of Polish Army personnel did go back, and
though most returned to low-level jobs, a few were promoted into senior
posts and were able to provide MI 6 with valuable information, at a time
when any information obtained from behind the Iron Curtain was treated
like gold dust. Through these connections, MI6 retained contact with WiN

and the recently established coalition of emigre Poles in London, the Polish
Political Council. The information was, however, only fragmentary, as the

MI6 agents sent into Poland were invariably arrested or killed. In 1950,
Warsaw Radio reported the break-up of another network. Former Africa
Agency head Rygot Slowikowski, known as 'the birdman' to the Polish
communists, who reviled him, was mentioned in one espionage trial in
Warsaw with 'insinuations that he ran a post-war network and that the
accused was one of his agents'. Slowikowski's old MI6 friend Anthony Morris
was at the time stationed as assistant military attache at the embassy in Rome,
from where many operations into eastern Europe were run.^^
Since 1944 the underground had been broken up by the security forces
five times, but had managed to reorganise and rebuild itself. By 1947, when
a determined drive by the Polish security police wiped out the remaining
cells of resistance, it was thought that WiN was finished. Just before WiN

was broken up by the security police, however, the organisation sent delegates
to Paris, London and Washington with the news that it was being built up
again. 'Miraculously', in 1949 a Pole with 'impeccable resistance credentials'.
 POLAND 263

Glowny WiN, escaped to the

Stefan Sienko ('Wiktor'), secretary of IV Zarzad
West and made London
contact in with General Anders. The general still
had over 110,000 Poles under arms in the United Kingdom, in the Polish
Resettlement Corps (PKPR), 'marking time against the imminent Communist
collapse'. Sienko told Anders that WiN 'still existed; with funds and equip-
ment from the West, it might be revived' to carry out 'espionage, subversive
activities and sabotage'. WiN would be able to mobilize thirty thousand
guerrilla fighers. Anders informed MI6, whose officers - especially those
involved in operations in the Baltic - renewed their acquaintance with the
Polish delegates.
Communications were established with WiN during the summer of 1950.
The London WiN Centre maintained contact with the WiN Home Organisa-
tion in Poland mainly by letters from 'family' to 'friends outside', and by
occasional meetings between the two sides arranged by a WiN courier to the
West. This soon became too big an operation for the British to undertake
by themselves. According to former CIA officer George Muslin, Operation
Broadway 'got too expensive for the British and they passed it on to us'. In
November, with the Korean War fresh in their minds, an agreement was
reached in London between the Office of Policy Co-ordination (OPC)/MI6
and Pawlem Sapieha, Colonel Aciolek and Edward Kulikowski of 'WiN
Centre Abroad'. OPC officers Walpole Davis and John Evalovsky subse-
quently moved to London as control officers for the operation.^^
MI6 and the OPC were quickly engaged in an effort to build up WiN as
part of the resistance network throughout eastern Europe. Soviet troops
would have to pass through Poland if they advanced into western Europe,
and the military planners hoped that WiN could slow them down if war
came. It was even mooted that the other operations in eastern Europe would
be used to 'divert and distract Soviet attention from the main target: Poland'.
Agents were parachuted into the country in an operation reminiscent of SOE
activities during the war. MI6 and the OPC began to pump in money - well

over one million dollars of gold sovereigns with which to bribe officials -
arms, sophisticated explosives, timers for sabotage targets, and radios. MI6
and the OPC marshalled virtually the entire Polish emigre movement abroad
in support of the 'WiN Home Organisation', which claimed to attract enor-
mous support. OPC chief Frank Wisner boasted it had at its command 'the

loyalty of 500 activists, 20,000 partially active members and 100,000 sympath-
isers who were ready for service in the advent of war'. Wisner backed up

his claims with 'photographs of burnt-out tanks and gun-ravaged police

buildings' which had been smuggled to the West 'to prove the underground's
success against the communists'. Wisner insisted that all WiN needed was
anti-tank weapons 'to drive the Red Army out of Warsaw'.^^
During 1951 WiN claimed to be steadily building towards becoming an
effective fighting force capable of delaying any Soviet advance to the west.
264 PART THREE: THE SOVIET EMPIRE

Simultaneously, the demands of the WiN which MI6/

guerrillas in Poland,
OPC and the military continued to support, grew dramatically, and special
operations officers only balked, according to Tom Bower, when a request
came through to send an American general so as to bolster the resistance.
This did not, however, arouse any great suspicions, since WiN had begun to
smuggle out reports and documents revealing the Soviet order of battle and
its military capabilities in eastern Europe. 'This intelligence apparently came
from WiN moles inside the Defence Ministry. '^^
Unfortunately, the British and American efforts lacked the required
professionalism. Anders and the London WiN Centre declined to provide
MI6 and the OPC with any details about the Home Organisation in Poland.
There were still residual feelings of distrust towards their former allies, and
it was felt that security was paramount; the smaller the circle of those with
knowledge of the identity of WiN agents the better. The London Poles
preferred to operate in the 'quiet and dark'. The counter-intelligence staff of
both agencies were naturally appalled by this potential security lapse, which
broke every rule of clandestine work. The operation was thus deprived of
the basic information needed to exercise control over the people involved. It

was an example of professional carelessness in a general spirit of over-

confidence and arrogance, characteristic of the period. When the agencies
discovered that the majority of agents parachuted into Poland had quickly
fallen into thehands of the authorities, they changed tactics and sent in agents
in the guise of businessmen attending trade fairs. These were regarded as
having a better chance of survival than dropped agents. The optimism proved
to be misplaced, however.^*^
MI6 and the OPC went on with the operation regardless, and corners
were cut because, in the words of Wisner's deputy and chief of the OPC's
East European Division, Frank Lindsay, over whose desk all the WiN material
passed, 'we were fighting a war and it was all in the short term'. The chiefs
of staff on both sides of the Atlantic wanted results and were pushing their
respective intelligence services to achieve them quickly. The excessive
demands of WiN's Home Organisation had, however, raised doubts about
its soundness, added to which were the dark suspicions about the MI6 liaison

officer in Washington, Kim Philby, who had attended meetings where the
WiN operation had been discussed. But when James Angleton voiced fears
to his trout-fishing partner, the CIA director General Walter Bedell 'Beetle'
Smith, and Allen Dulles to the effect that WiN was a Soviet deception oper-
ation along the lines of the twenties' 'Trust', they preferred to bow to Wisner's
conviction that WiN was a legitimate resistance organisation. Angleton
continued to argue that deception had been the Russian Intelligence Service's
but he was ignored.
'^^^
classic tactic since Tsarist times,
WiN, though, was a target for a limited counter-espionage investigation
when Bedell Smith asked General Lucian Truscott, retired commander of the
 POLAND 265

Fifth Army, to reassess the Agency's covert operations into eastern Europe,
Truscott travelled to Germany in April 1951 to see 'what those weirdos are
up to and put the lid down'. He was not impressed by WiN controller Walpole
Davis, and the fact that no useful intelligence had been delivered. On viewing
the training of exiles, he declared that 'these agents won't survive . . . the
emigre groups are certain to be penetrated'. This accurate forecast was
dismissed by MI6 and the OPC, which continued to accept WiN's credibility,

preferring not to consider the possibility of a deception operation. Menzies,

according to Stewart Steven's source, held the view that 'once you grant the
enemy a mind so supreme that it thinks of everything, you are left with no
choice but to do nothing'. 'But WiN was leaking like a sieve,' recalled a
participant. 'The Polish militia were told in advance and the men were picked
up as soon as they touched the ground.'By mid-1947, the Polish security
forces had thoroughly penetrated WiN, and there came a point when the
guerrillas did not know who to believe or trust. According to Jan Gerhard, a
colonel of the General Staff in charge of operations, 'thanks to our intelligence
agents, we had precise information about WiN' which was used to turn a
number of its leaders. Among those arrested were infiltrators who were
allowed to escape and set up false networks.
The Polish security service, Urzad Bezpiecznstwa (the UB or Bezpieka),
had captured the WiN leader, Sienko, who agreed to co-operate with the UB
as a double agent, as he could see no possibility of continuing the struggle.
The WiN Home Organisation courier to the West was kept under tight
surveillance, unaware that all meetings with the London Centre representa-
tives in Poland took place in UB -arranged safe houses. The whole WiN
Home Organisation network, it turned out, was a huge, elaborate deception
operation orchestrated by the MGB. The intelligence reaching them from
Warsaw was Soviet disinformation. The Polish security forces had even
staged mock battles to give WiN credibility, and had taken over the clan-
destine radios supplied by MI6 and the OPC. George Muslin subsequently
discovered that 'the whole agent-running programme in Germany had been
infiltrated by the communists before we took it over. We learnt this when
one of the agents managed to get back out of Poland and told us we'd been
had.' Muslin claims that 'we closed down the whole operation, abandoned
it on the spot', but it was not quite like that.^^
Although there was no explanation for why the Soviets chose this particu-
lar moment to expose the deception, it would appear that the MGB decided
to roll up the WiN operation after the exposure of the 'Kolberg Ring' in West
Germany. Colonel Gregor Kowalski, a former Polish cavalry commander who
had escaped in 1939 to Britain, where he was appointed adjutant to Col.
Sikorski, was one of the few officers to return to his homeland afer the war
and to be trusted by the communist-dominated Polish government. At some
stage he changed allegiance and, during 1948, was sent undercover to the
266 PART THREE: THE SOVIET EMPIRE

British Zone of Germany

head of a Polish reparations mission to found
as the
an espionage network, the Kolberg Ring, which ran successfully for three
years. Concerned mainly with the question of German rearmament, Kowalski
renewed his friendship with a number of British officers, whom he began
to cultivate for information. A counter-penetration operation that planted
'chicken-feed' in the ring finally closed it down in May 1952, when MI5
arrested Maria Knuth, the sexual bait in honeytrap operations run by the
ring. According to author 'E. H. Cookridge', whose information was often
derived from senior MI5 officer Guy Liddell, the destruction of the ring led
to the uncovering of other Polish-backed spy networks. This was possibly
the factor that forced the Soviets finally to reveal their own highly successful
deception operation.^^
The UB proceeded to arrest about a hundred people, most of whom were
put in prison; others were tortured and a few executed in secret. Beginning
on 27 December 1952, to the general disbelief of MI6 and OPC officers. Radio
Warsaw broadcast a series of programmes exposing WiN, revealing that the
resistance network had been a puppet of the UB since early 1948 when the
commanders of the WiN Home Organisation, J. J. Kowalski (Kos) and his
deputy, Stefan Sienko, 'sought out the Communist authorities in Warsaw,
heartsick with the realisation that what was intended initially as a "continu-
ation of our activity during the Nazi occupation" had degenerated into
"criminal, anti-Polish activity" The West had been sending gold straight to
'.

theUB coffers which, in turn,funded the entire deception operation. The

WiN Home Organisation leaders announced that they had not been able to
reveal the structure of the organisation 'for the simple reason that it did
not exist'. Besides the fabricated deception material that WiN transmitted to
London, 'the only information which we sent them after repeated and insist-

ent requests was the menu from one of the Warsaw restaurants'.^*
The WiN debacle had a dramatic and debilitating effect on James Angleton
and other western counter-espionage officers, including a small group of his
supporters in MI6. Although Philby was blamed for the betrayal, Angleton
reasoned that the organisation had been compromised well before the MI6
officer was briefed on its activities. Philby's true role, Angleton argued, was
to provide the necessary feedback on WiN and other underground groups
to his Soviet handlers. On the basis of the information he provided, the Soviet
deception planners were able to modify their information to fit in with the
thinking, prejudices and desires of the MI6 and OPC officers running WiN.
'The point was not that these movements were betrayed,' Angleton claimed,
'it was that they were made credible to the CIA [and MI6]."^^
The Radio Warsaw broadcasts coincided with the last radio messages
received from western-trained operators in Ukraine and provided the
communists with a major propaganda coup. The deception had served to
draw out genuine Polish resisters so that they could be caught and, thereby.
 POLAND 267

convince the Poles that opposition was useless. Coming soon after the election
of Eisenhower, which encouraged the idea of rolling back communist control
in eastern Europe, it also - very effectively - taught the West a lesson about
meddling in eastern Europe, where Soviet totalitarian control remained as
tight as ever.
CHAPTER 16

THE BALTIC STATES

Throughout the twenties and thirties, MI 6 had used its stations in Scandinavia
and the Baltic states to build up an extensive range of contacts and operatives.
The head of station in Finland, from where the majority of cross-border
operations to insert agents into the Soviet Union for intelligence-gathering
or as couriers to the anti-Bolshevik underground took place, was Harry Carr.
Teams of guerrillas from General Kutepov's Combat Corps were 'sent across
the Finnish border to assassinate communist officials with the hope of creating
conditions for a wider revolt; terrorist actions which only led to more
repression'. An austere and dedicated anti-Bolshevik, Carr formed strong
links with White Russian emigres and members of the dissident nationalities
and minorities within the Soviet Union.
It helped that Carr had been born, at the end of the last century, near

St Petersburg, where his father was the manager of British-owned timber

mills. The family emigrated to England to escape the Bolsheviks, but Carr

returned in 1919 to Murmansk as an interpreter to the head of an expedition

to overthrow the new Soviet government. General Ironside (whose ADC was
future Special Operations Executive (SOE) Executive Director Colin Gubbins).
It was a venture which, Tom Bower believed, 'influenced Carr's whole life'.

Eventually evacuated as the expedition collapsed, Carr joined MI6 and was
posted, in 1921, to Finland under the traditional light cover of an Assistant
Passport Officer. After five years, he was appointed head of station in
Helsinki. His appointment coincided with one of the lowest points in the
 THE BALTIC STATES 269

Service's history, as it had just been revealed that a major anti-Bolshevik

network, the Monarchist Association of Central Russia, better known as the
'Trust', had been thoroughly penetrated as part of a highly successful decep-
tion operation run by the Unified State Political Directorate (OGPU) - later
absorbed into the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (NKVD), the
forerunner of the Ministry of State Security (KGB).^
According to Bower, Carr had the necessary characteristics, even if they
were idiosyncratic, to make him an ideal intelligence officer. In the end,
however, they would also cause his downfall. 'A hypochondriac, who
avoided any kind of physical discomfort', even to his own staff Carr was an
'obsessively secretive' man. A colleague claimed: 'It's said that he even slept
with a handkerchief stuffed in his mouth.' His belief that 'security was an
end in itself often distorted his judgement about sources and helped cover
up the fact that much of his 'secret' material either came from 'completely
open sources' or had simply been 'manufactured'. As chief of operations in
Helsinki, Carr relied on his 'garrulous bon viveur' assistant. Rex Bosley, who
spoke the difficult Finnish language, his associate in the Latvian capital,
Riga, Leslie Nicholson, and Alexander McKibben in Tallinn, Estonia. 'Sandy'
McKibben had been born in Moscow of wealthy Scottish parents and spoke
fluent Russian and Estonian. Established as a timber dealer in Tallinn, he
was forced to abandon his business because of the Bolsheviks. MI6's anti-
communist campaigns were top-heavy with senior MI6 officers such as Carr's
closest friends, the Gibson brothers, Archie and Harold, who had been born
in pre-Bolshevik Russia and whose families had had business interests in the
Baltic or Soviet Union. The most important were the former timber merchants
such as Cyril Cheshire, the half-Russian chief of station in Sweden, Brigadier
Douglas Roberts, and the Sillem brothers in Riga, who had owned a brewery
in Estonia on the border between Russia and Finland. Drawing on these
contacts, McKibben developed a wide-ranging intelligence-gathering network
among military, political and security circles in the Baltic states. A particularly
rich source of information was the Director of Military Intelligence in Estonia,
Colonel Villen Saarsen - 'as he was for the Germans for whom he was
also providing services'. In general, MI6's pre-war intelligence-gathering and
recruitment of agents was. Bower concludes, 'amateurish in the extreme'.^
With the signing German-Soviet Pact and the declaration of war,
of the
the Baltic states took on renewed significance for British intelligence-gathering,
often controlled from Sweden, which became the major refuge for those Baits
fleeing the Soviets and later the Nazis. One such was an anglophile and former
professor of English at Estonia's Tartu University, Ants Oras, a valuable pre-
war contact for the British embassy in Tallinn, where his brother had worked
as a secretary. Russian tanks crossed the Baltic borders on 17 June 1940 and,
despite occupation by the Red Army, Professor Oras maintained contact with
MI6 via the Anglo-Estonian Friendship Society. When he was implicated in
270 PAKT I I nu t: l ilt SOVIET EMPIRE

espionage activity by the NKVD, Oras managed to evade capture and escape
to Stockholm, from where he helped organise a courier service to the resistance
in Tallinn. When the Germans invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, eighty
young Estonians who had found refuge in Germany were recruited by the
Abwehr. Using swift motor boats and then low-level air-drops, they were
inserted into Estonia and linked up with the 'Forest Brotherhood' commanded
by Colonel Leithammel. At the same time, the British embassy staff in Helsinki
moved to Sweden, where Carr became First Secretary responsible for targeting
the Germans. For many of the older MI6 officers, however, the war was merely
an interruption in the battle against the Bolsheviks. As Bower notes: 'It took a
long time for them to realise that the world was a different place. '^
It might be assumed that before the war the Baltic states were a democratic

oasis, faced as they were by the totalitarian regimes of Hitler and Stalin. Their
fate was often seen in tragic terms but, in reality, Estonia and Latvia had
been themselves near-dictatorships, which partially explains why they
endured some of the worst atrocities and mass killings of the entire Second
World War. Estonia was 'cleansed' of the few Jews there, while more than
two-thirds of the Jewish populations of Latvia and Lithuania were wiped
out. The Germans were helped in the massacres by collaborators in the locally
recruited security battalions; in Latvia many were members of the fascist
Thunder Cross. The three countries were also a recruiting ground for the SS,
and while Lithuania was 'largely written off as a racially inferior hotbed of
discontent', Latvia and Estonia provided 'an untapped source of troops'.
Many of the worst collaborators were later recruited by MI 6 for anti-
communist operations, with little regard to their past.^
The director-general of the collaborationist Latvian administration was
General Oskars Dankers. Beneath him, and a key figure in the internal Latvian
security apparatus, was Vilis Janums, head of the personnel department of
the Home Affairs committee, responsible for all police units. Taking its name
from the notorious paramilitary 'Arajs Kommando' had the task of
its chief,

isolatingand executing Jews, gypsies and communists. During August 1941

the Arajs Kommando massacred fifteen thousand Jews and between
September and December another twenty-nine thousand were deported for
execution under guard of the Kommando. The mass deportations and shoot-
ing of Jews had been organised by the Latvian 'Kommando' in Riga, headed
by the Director of Operations in the Ministry of Interior, Lieutenant-Colonel
Robert Osis. A former Latvian Army officer, Osis had been recruited before
the war by MI6's Leslie Nicholson for intelligence work. Talks in February
1942 between the SS and General Dankers resulted in an official appeal
for Latvians to form 'Schutzmannschaft' police units. The recruitment was
organised by the head of the Ministry of Interior's Committee of Latvian
Volunteer Organisation, Gustav Celmins, and Paul Reinhards, director of the
Labour Department, while the command of these 15,000-strong units was
 THE BALTIC STATES 271

assigned to Robert Osis. They were used to guard the deportations and
were responsible for herding Jews to killing sites in the Rumbula forest, and
securing the perimeter while the massacres were carried out.^
These Baltic units also supplied men SS units that carried out
to serve in
executions in other states, notably in Belorussia. An outline agreement was
reached with the SS for the formation of a legion commanded by Inspector
General Rudolfs Bangerskis and a chief of staff, first Col. Alexander Plensners
and later Arthur Silgailis. By order of SS chief Heinrich Himmler, during
August 1943 a police regiment was created under the command of Lt-Col.
Osis, who it into the Latvian Legion, whose volunteers
helped transform
were allowed wear the Latvian Tirecross' on their black collar patch. Osis
to
subsequently took command of the 33rd Regiment of the 15th Waffen-SS
Latvian Division, serving as its liaison officer with the Nazis. These fully
fledged SS brigades and divisions - the 15th, 19th Latvian and 20th Estonian
- with a total strength of over thirty thousand men, were tasked with ridding
the Baltic area of Soviet partisans. Among those who served in the SS were
Alfred Berzins, responsible for sending civilians to concentration camps and
recipient of the German Iron Cross; Dankers's personal assistant. Col. Arvids
Kripens, who 'ordered the murder of thousands of innocent civilians'; and
leader of the Thunder Cross Gustav Celmins, who served as a Nazi agent
inside nationalist circles throughout the war. Celmins was responsible for
the well-being of the Latvian units, creating a welfare organisation, the LPK,
and newsletter, Daugavas Vanagi (Hawks of the Daugava river).
Lithuania never succumbed to the Nazis to the same extent as Latvia and
Estonia, and while it provided recruits for Defence Battalions, there was
no Lithuanian SS Legion. Following invasion by the Soviets, underground
resistance cells of the Lithuanian Activist Front (LAF) were formed in October
1940, and contact was established with the erstwhile Lithuanian minister in
Berlin, Colonel Kazys Skirpa. With the launch of Barbarossa, the Germans
established the LAF as a provisional government. Soon after, indiscriminate
killing and massacre of Jews was undertaken by several bands of ad hoc
executioners. One leading LAF member was Anatas Grecevicius (Gecas),
who had been in the Lithuanian Air Force before the German invasion and
thereafter joined the 2nd Lithuanian Auxiliary Battalion. Fellow Auxiliary
member Juozas Aleksynas was in Belorussia with the 2nd Company during
October 1941, when the battalion moved south-eastward to Minsk to take
part in 'actions' against the Jews. 'It was clear that our purpose in the Minsk
area, although it had never been expressed as such, was the mass killing and
extermination of Jewish people.' Aleksynas added that Gecas was 'in charge
of all our operations during this time' and gave the order to shoot. Another
member of the 2nd Battalion and participant in the 'actions', Motiejus
Migonis, agreed that 'Gecas was the officer'. For his actions in Belorussia,
Gecas was awarded the German Iron Cross.*^
272 PAKT TMRHE: THE SOVIET EMPIRE

The end of 1941 saw the creation of the largest military political organisa-
tion of Lithuanian nationalists, the Lithuanian Freedom Army (LFA), with
its guerrilla units known asVanagai (Falcons). Originally an anti-German
group, with the tacit approval of the Nazis the LFA developed into an
explicitly anti-Soviet movement. Supreme Committee
In October 1943, the
for the Liberation of Lithuania (SCLL) was created out of seven different
political parties and resistance groups to provide direction and leadership in
the struggle for national independence. The SCLL issued its first statement
in the following February, the same month in which negotiations between
General Povilas Plechavicius and the German military command resulted in
the formation of a 'Home Army' of 'Local Detachments' to fight against the
Soviet Red Army. Plechavicius was a staunch nationalist and a legendary
figure in Lithuania, and his call for volunteers was immediately successful.
The Germans were astonished when sixteen thousand Lithuanians joined the
crusade. Twenty battalions of the Territorial Defence Force (TDF) were
formed, commanded by Lithuanian officers. The Germans, however, refused
to meet the old general's demands for a national army, and the bulk of the
recruits were contemptuously dispatched to Germany for guard duties.^
In Estonia and Latvia, where respectively 70,000 and 150,000 men were
in the German-sponsored units, there was limited resistance to the German
occupiers. In August 1943 an underground nationalist Latvian Central Coun-
cil (LCC) was created which predicted that 'the end of the war would leave

both Germany and the USSR weakened, allowing Latvia to regain its inde-
pendence with aid of the Western powers'. Affiliated to the LCC was the
'Kurelis' group which had been raised in March 1944 by the German OKW
Abwehr 11 as a camouflaged guerrilla organisation of Latvian nationalists to
fight behind Russian lines. Its figurehead was former Latvian Army general
Janis Kurelis, but was commanded by Captain Kristaps Upelnieks, an ardent
it

patriot but one with little military knowledge. The LCC had by this time
made contact with Swedish, British and American Intelligence. ^°
From the summer of 1944, following a succession of German defeats which
left many Baits believing that the war was lost, many Latvian Legion soldiers

deserted and, along with others who were unwilling to serve outside their
homeland, joined the Kurelis group. In turn, when the German Army
retreated, Kurelis members did not remain behind Russian lines but moved
to the forests north of Lake Usma, in Kurzeme, where the organisation
increased its strength from the additional deserters and defectors. In Novem-
ber, however, it lost the protection of the army when Hitler transferred
responsibility for activities behind the front line to the SS. The SS
subsequently moved against Kurelis, executing officers, including Capt. Upel-
nieks, and assigning the unit to the inspector-general of the Latvian Legion,
General Bangerskis. Late in the month Bangerskis managed to secure the
release of three hundred former Kurelis members from a concentration camp
 THE BALTIC STATES 273

in Prussia. With the reoccupation of the country by the Red Army, Kurelis
became an anti-Soviet resistance underground. A thousand armed men estab-
lished themselves in the Courland, a heavily forested area along the Baltic
coast, which became a militarised no-man's-land overrun with retreating
German soldiers and Latvian SS."
In Lithuania - the Germans having failed to raise a full SS unit - Plechavic-
ius resisted SS pressure to allow the use of the Defence Force outside the
country's borders. Eventually, after armed clashes broke out between units
on both sides, Plechavicius cut off negotiations with the SS and, in May 1944,
was arrested with the staff of the Home Army for disobeying German orders.
Before he was sent to the Salaspils concentration camp, near Riga, Plechavic-
ius ordered thousands of Lithuanians in German uniform to desert and
disappear into the forests with their weapons. Armed resistance began during
the summer as the armies of the Soviet Third Belorussian front began to
move across the border into Lithuania. Late in 1944, uptwo thousand
to
German-trained guerrilla warfare specialists and demolition experts were
dropped behind Soviet lines in Lithuania by the Germans, but to little effect. ^-
Throughout the war, nationalist elements in the Baltic states had managed
to maintain contact with the outside world, which enabled Harry Carr and
Sandy McKibben to develop their knowledge of the anti-Nazi and anti-Soviet
resistance. In early 1944, as the Red Army began to sweep across eastern and
northern Europe, Carr began to consider the rebuilding of an intelligence
network in the Baltic, with the intention of penetrating the Soviet Union.
McKibben was sent to organise the network from Stockholm, where he was
under constant pressure from representatives of the three countries to help
the nationalists in the anti-communist struggle. This was initially undertaken
in conjunction with Swedish Intelligence, with which Carr had developed a
close working relationship. By the summer of 1944 both the military SMT
(Svenska Militar Tjanst) and the civilian AS (Allman Sakerhetsenhet) were
sending agents into the Baltic states to gather intelligence in the first of more
than sixty operations.
The Estonian resistance, Misiunas and Taagepera write, 'was favoured by
the geographical proximity of Finland and Sweden'. Traces of organised
resistance formed around underground circles in Tallinn were able to main-
tain contact with representatives to Finland who were in contact with intelli-
gence agencies in Sweden and London. During 1944, these circles created an
underground organisation, the Republic National Committee, which
resembled the LCC. By mid-June, following increased Gestapo activity,
'foreign connections were beginning to have a significant role in the activity
of the Committee'. Regular contact was maintained by fast motor boat with
Stockholm, where August Rei, a leading Social Democrat, was active. The
committee managed to install a provisional government in September before
the German retreat and the arrival of the Soviets. When the Soviets broke
274 PART Tl lIU THE SOVIET EMPIRE

through Estonian defences, the provisional government decided to withdraw

to Sweden.'"*
hi Latvia,Dr Vladmars Ginters and Vladmars Salnai, the latter a former
depiit) foreign minister, had been important pre-war sources for MI6. During
1943 they fled to Sweden where, in 1944, determined to resist the Soviets,
Ginters re-established contact with MI 6 officers, informing them of the under-
ground with whom Salnai was in radio contact. German agents, however,
soon uncovered the existence of the Latvian National Council, and at the end
of the year arrested and deported most of its leaders. The Germans continued
to court the nationalists and established, on 20 February 1945, the Latvian
National Committee with Latvian Legion commander Bangerskis and the
chief of staff, Arthur Sigailis, attending the opening session at Potsdam. On
7 May, with Courland rapidly being occupied by the Soviets, the Latvian
National Council endorsed the setting up of a provisional government led
by Colonel Osis.^^^
With the help of Swedish Intelligence, MI6 was soon sending teams into
Latvia to report back, particularly via the Riga network, intelligence on the
Soviet-held territory. Regular contact was maintained with the Ginters
network, which included pro-Germans, known as the 'Wood Cats', and
members of the Arajs Kommando, who were protecting the escape corridor
to Sweden. The Swedes were to give sanctuary to Baits, former SS and police
officers who were wanted as collaborators and war criminals but were to be
used as long-term infiltration agents. As the war ended and the Soviets
consolidated their position in Latvia, forcing more of their agents to flee the
country to safety, MI6 lost contact with the two principal intelligence-
gathering networks.
In April 1944, the LithuanianSCLL committee sent an arms specialist to
Sweden to purchase weapons. He was, however, arrested by the Gestapo in
Tallinn, Estonia, and after being tortured, revealed the identities of the SCLL
committee members. A majority were subsequently arrested and confined in
prison in Bavaria. The committee's activities were severely restricted and, one
account suggests, 'soon faded after the return of the Soviets'. The Lithuanian
representative in Berlin was still able to send information on the homeland
to colleagues who had Sweden at the beginning of the conflict. These
fled to
included, in particular, the diplomat Dr Walter Zilinskas, who, in turn, was
able to keep Sandy McKibben abreast of the situation in Lithuania. Zilinskas
told McKibben about the SCLL which, despite the arrests, he claimed, had
the rudiments of a resistance organisation. He added that although some of
its members had collaborated with the Germans, they were all committed

anti-communists and nationalists. An operation was put in place to secure a

link with the SCLL to discover the situation on the ground, but because MI6
lacked the money it was financed by the American Office of Strategic Services
(OSS). The mission ended in failure, however, when the courier was arrested
 THE BALTIC STATES 275

and sent to a concentration camp. The link was to remain broken until late

1945, when renewed attempts where made to re-establish contact/'

The surviving members of the SCLL who had collaborated with the
Germans cut those links only when the end of the war was in sight. By
January 1945, Soviet armies had completely overrun Lithuania, though it was
some time before they could gain effective control of the country. Along with
the intelligentsia, who had been advised to leave, many Lithuanians fled.
Over half of those who had survived forced labour in Germany or service
in the Wehrmacht stayed in the West, while 50,000 more followed as refugees.
Another 150,000 emigrated to Poland, while Russian deportations and
executions in the 1944/5 period accounted for the loss of 200,000 Lithuanians.
What remained Home Army and other units became guerrillas, and
of the
by was estimated that there were 30,000 active resistance
the spring of 1945 it

fighters in what became known as the Forest Brotherhood. In addition, in

Kurzeme, where the most powerful group was called 'Silent Forest', there
were 14,000 armed Latvian soldiers in German uniform, wearing the Latvian
'Rising Sun' on their collar patch,
At the time the Red Army crossed the Estonian border, the 20th Waffen-SS
Division had been evacuated from the Baltic front to regroup in Silesia, in a
last-ditch defence of the Third Reich against the Russians in Czechoslovakia.
A battalion commander in the Division, Alphons Rebane, who won the highly
prized Knights Cross, managed to fight his way through to the West with a
thousand men. In April, they fled towards the British in Germany, and when
the war ended went into captivity in PoW camps with a few hundred
Estonians from a reserve battalion that had been stationed in Denmark. The
British then transferred the Estonians to DP camps. In late April, Latvian
Legion units under Colonel Janums had also made their move towards the
western allies. Eventually 4,500 men were assembled in forests near Schwerin

and surrendered to the approaching Americans. All Latvian military person-

nel in Denmark were sent to the PoW Camp at Heide in Germany, and later
transferred from there to Camp 2227 at Zedelgem in Belgium.
By the beginning of 1945, Carr reported to Kim Philby of the newly created
anti-communist Section IX that he and Rex Bosley were successfully gathering
intelligence on the Baltic states from the thousands of refugees who passed
through Sweden. He also reported that they had established a radio link with
the resistance in Latvia. Carr, who had received a CMG (Companion of
St Michael and St George) for his wartime work, returned to Broadway in

July and was promoted to controller of MI6's Northern area, which included
responsibilities for Scandinavia and the Soviet Union. Often operating outside
the normal chain of command, Carr worked directly through Menzies, who
'shared his view of the world'. In effect, Carr was able 'to develop his fiefdom
without any outside interference or external security surveillance'. With the
backing of the chiefs of staff, who were desperate for information on the
276 PAPvT THREE: THE SOVIET EMPIRE

Soviet forces which one day they might have to oppose, Menzies gave Carr
the go-ahead to re-estabUsh networks in the Baltic region and recruit agents
regardless of their wartime activities and collaboration with the Germans.
Sandy McKibben, who was attached to the Special Liaison Centre in Ryder
Street, near Piccadilly, was given responsibility for managing and supervising

the new operations and re-establishing contact with the Baits.

Using captured German intelligence files, Leslie Nicholson spent the first
few months following the end of hostilities in London studying the Baltic,
and drawing up dossiers on key individuals who might be of use to Section
IX. Many were Nazi collaborators and former members of the Baltic

Waffen-SS who had sought refuge in Sweden after the German collapse and
were fearful of Soviet retribution for their wartime activities. They were
pounced on by the Swedish intelligence agency, SMT, for recruitment in
intelligence-gathering and infiltration operations. MI6 liaison with SMT's
Ake Eek, who had been regarded as a Nazi sympathiser, was undertaken by
McKibben, who did not ask too many questions about the Baits' war record.
Other targets for the MI6 recruiters were found among the many thousands
of Baits who had ended up in the West at the end of hostilities and were
dispersed in the DP camps. MI 6 was helped in its task by the lenient attitude
the Foreign Office took towards collaborators and alleged war criminals from
the Baltic region.^°
In March 1945 the British government had made it clear that soldiers from
the Baltic states were not deemed to be Soviet citizens and, therefore, were
not subject to repatriation without their own consent.
was well received
This
by the estimated fifty thousand Baits in the British Zone of Germany, among
whom were around twenty thousand who had served in the German Army.
There were, in addition, a number who were considered war criminals by
the Sovietsand thus feared possible extradition proceedings. Their cases were
taken up by the Baltic representatives in London, such as August Tomas, head
of the Estonian legation, who cultivated Foreign Office officials, regularly
intervening on their behalf. Tomas and the other legates were to be closely
associated with the British-backed covert missions to Tree' their homeland.^^
A large number of the fifteen thousand Latvians in the West were
considered war criminals by the Soviets. A still-disciplined unit in their SS
uniforms with their own officers under the command of Colonel Robert
Osis, their Very SS -minded' stance inevitably led to disturbances with other
nationalities in the camps. In his camp, Osis, who had commanded a roving
execution squad in Latvia and Poland and had been a pre-war intelligence
source for MI6, met Feliks Rumniaks, who had deserted from the Latvian
SS Legion in January 1945. At the instigation of Osis, Rumniaks made his
way to Sweden, where he tried to make contact with MI6 through the exiled
LCC, which had a close relationship with the Service. Although some
accounts suggest that he was unsuccessful, Rumniaks later claimed that he
 THE BALTIC STATES 277

was rescued from incarceration in a Swedish DP camp and recruited in

Stockholm by veteran MI6 officer Harold Gibson. He was subsequently
trained in the use of codes and ciphers by Kim Philby, who had made a
special trip from London. In Germany, Osis resumed his ties with MI6 almost
immediately. He too would later claim that Philby had recruited him and
that MI6 had smoothed his path to Britain, where he became one of the chief
links in forging a Latvian intelligence network of agents composed almost
entirely of former Waffen-SS men.^^
In Lithuania, a few leaders of the SCLL survived the war, while the
linchpin of the underground. General Plechavicius, found himself in the
British Zone Germany. The organisation turned out to be in generally poor
in
shape. Initially had a good supply of arms and ammunition, retrieved from
it

retreating German soldiers and occasionally from Red Army frontal units,
while special care was taken to collect the arms of fallen NKVD men. There
was also a certain amount of clandestine arms dealing in the Baltic region.
As time went on, however, the shortage of munitions became acute. Even
so, this did not prevent the exiled leaders from telling their agents in the

homelands that their actions were the prelude to a general war between the
West and Stalin's Soviet Union. MI 6 officers, however, were much more
circumspect in their opinions. Intelligence officers in the West wanted the
Baits to deliver better and more precise intelligence on the state of communist
control in the Soviet Union and the likelihood of an assault on the West,
though they did not disabuse their charges of their inflated optimism.^^
Largely cut off from the outside world, the underground appears to have
veered from optimism to despair, only rarely touched with realism about its
desperate situation. They had faith that American President Roosevelt and
Britain's Prime Minister Churchill would hold true to the Atlantic Charter
which they had signed in August 1941, proclaiming the sovereign right of
people to seek territorial integrity. This became a benchmark for emigres
throughout Europe, though it was ignored by the Foreign Office. According
to one account: 'At no time did they delude themselves into believing that
they could drive the Soviets out of their nation. Their object was rather to
harass, to delay, to attract the attention of the West, and above all to remind
the people that they were victims of aggression, not partners in the "glorious
Soviet State".' It was true, nevertheless, that when news reached Lithuania
of the atomic bomb drops on Japan, 'there was a moment of intense hope'.
It was thought inconceivable West would abandon the Baltic states.
that the
Many Lithuanians was only temporary and that
'believed that the occupation
the Allies would invade'. Later it was thought that the conflict between the
wartime partners would implode into a new world war which the Soviet
Union would lose, leaving Lithuania independent.^"^
'Reality', however, 'methodically and pitilessly destroyed whatever hopes

remained.' In September 1944, Stalin had sent 'one of the most cruel and
278 TAUT THRFF: THE SOVIET EMPIRE

merciless executioners'. General Sergei Kruglov, deputy director of SMERSH

('Death to Spies'), which had a special responsibility for strengthening the
Sov iet hold over the 'liberated countries', to crush the resistance that had
successfully mounted a series of attacks on Soviet units, inflicting mounting
losses. Over eighty thousand troops were garrisoned in Lithuania, but the bulk
of the anti-guerrilla work was undertaken by the Soviet NKVD. Kruglov
created a special NKVD department for 'bandit' affairs, the OBO, which
handled intelligence-gathering and the creation of local militia units. Favourite
tactics included employing OBO-trained infiltrators among the resistance

groups, the use of agents provocateurs posing as German, British and American
intelligence officers, and the widespread use of pseudo and counter-gangs in
an effort to prove that the guerrillas were nothing more than terrorist bandits.
Jonas Luksa, who belonged to a mythical guerrilla unit known as Iron Wolf,
wrote that by July 1945 there were no armed Germans to be found in Lithuania.
This did not, however, prevent the NKVD from parachuting in a number of
agents disguised as German armed with German weapons.^^
soldiers
There followed a policy of scorched earth and terror, with the mass deport-
ation of those deemed to be opposed to the Soviet Union or sympathetic
towards the guerrillas. Many insurgents were killed, while the treatment of
those captured was brutal and extreme. They were usually tortured and, as
an example to others, a number were left naked 'tied to trees by wire, their
bodies skinned with limbs hacked off, eyes gouged and as a further marker
the Lithuanian emblem of the Knight's Cross cut into their breast'. The
amnesties for former guerrillas that began in the summer of 1945 became
increasingly successful. This left around twenty thousand committed to the

fight which they believed would be resolved by the Allies honouring

the pledges made in the Atlantic Charter. By the end of the year, however,
the regional organisations of the underground were 'severely crippled by
arrests of leaders and the ranks thinned as a result of the ruthlessness'. All
they were left with was the illusion that war was about to break out between
the Allies and the Soviet Union.^^
Little of this background was known when, in early July 1945, Sandy

McKibben returned to Stockholm to meet Walter Zilinskas, who was

unemployed following the closure of the Lithuanian embassy. McKibben
promised financial aid to Zilinskas through his MI6 contact. Passport Control
Officer George Berger. He was subsequently replaced by Maclachlan
Silverwood-Cope, who operated under commercial cover as Second Secretary
at the British embassy. During the war Silverwood-Cope had developed close
links with Finnish and Norwegian Intelligence. MI6 officers in Scandinavia
began recruiting agents for Baltic operations. Among one of the earliest was
the Lithuanian intellectualand passionate nationalist Stasys Zakevicius, who
had studied history at Oxford University. He had served as an adviser to the
German administration during the occupation and had managed to escape
 THE BALTIC STATES 279

from Lithuania with the Germans on one of the last trains to Denmark. Won
over by agents of McKibben, Zakevicius became the nucleus of the new
Lithuanian operation. Changing his name to Zymantas, he brought into the
service the diplomat Stasys Lozoritis and a well-known journalist who had
escaped to the West in early 1945, Jonas Deksnys. The latter quickly estab-
lished links with the anti-Soviet guerrillas in Lithuania, many of whom had
gone into the forests after serving the Germans in various capacities. During
the autumn, MI6 - with Swedish help - sent Jonas Deksnys back to Lithuania,
to assess the strength and test the claims of the SCLL.^^
Many Allied officials believed that the Latvian Legion, almost entirely
anti-Russian, would be handed over to the Soviets. In order to defend it

against Soviet repatriation missions, Bangerskis set up what was ostensibly

a self-help and welfare society in Germany. Gustav Clemins's LKP had
moved there in late April 1945 and was located at Liibeck, where it continued
relief work for Latvian refugees. Bangerskis was, however, denounced by

some of his fellow-countrymen and was arrested on 21 June 1945 by British

intelligence officers.
A secretive organisation, Daugavas Vanagi included many fascists who
had served with the German occupation forces. As part of its 'welfare work',
a leading collaborator, Dr Alfred Vladmanis, was permitted by the British to
organise in their zone in Germany, among the 'ex-Wehrmacht Baits'. In the
process, Daugavas Vanagi tightened its control of the German DP camps by
routing out so-called Soviet stooges. It also developed international links with
leading Latvian exiles such as Alfreds Berzins, secretary of its Latvian Central
Committee, Bolreslavs Maikovskis and Gustav Clemins - all leading lights
in the MI6-backed Intermarium emigre organisation.^^
The Latvians set up another front organisation, the 'Latvian Red Cross',
to lobby the British government against repatriation. They also had a powerful
advocate in London, Charles Zarine, the Minister of the Latvian Delegation
during the war, who had been authorised to exercise full authority over
Latvia's resources and representatives when contact with the home country
had been broken. He argued that although membership of the Latvian Legion
had been voluntary, the unit had been 'forcibly' taken into the Waffen-SS.
They were, therefore, not pro-Nazi but simply anti-Bolshevik. He also lobbied
for the Latvians to be separated from German PoWs and the 'special SS
cages', and, instead, to be put in their own DP camp. Zarine was treated
sympathetically within the Foreign Office, particularly by Thomas Brimelow
of the Northern Department who, before the war, had met Zarine while
serving in the British consulate in Riga. Brimelow's stint in the Moscow
embassy between 1942 and 1945 had left him wary of Soviet intentions.
On 31 August 1945, the Foreign Office ordered that members of non-
German SS formations and non-German nationals in German uniform would
not be placed in automatic arrest categories (unlike their German SS
280 PARTTHRFF: THE SOVIET EMPIRE

comrades). They were to be dispersed and released as ordinary non-German

nationals. Two weeks later, two hundred Baltic ex-Wehrmacht members were
gi\ en straightforward DP status, although the Foreign Office asserted that
this was At the end of September, following
'not to be taken as a precedent'.
Zarine's intervention at the Foreign Office, most of the former Latvian police
and Waffen-SS members were transferred to a collecting centre at Zedelghen,
in Belgium. There was, however, still the matter of the presence of a number
of war criminals in the camps. The Soviets had requested the extradition of
Colonel Arvids Kripens, the regimental commander of the Latvian Legion,
who was discovered to be at Zedelghen. British military authorities investi-
gated the charges and decided in November that the Soviets had a prima
facie case against him.Brimelow minuted that the evidence against him was
'pretty black'. But, on the day before a Soviet officer visited the camp to
complete the transfer, Kripens received advance warning and attempted
suicide by plunging a knife into his chest. Whether the attempt was serious
or staged, Kripens survived. On the following day, Zarine, who considered
Kripens to be 'an honest and good man', intervened on his behalf with the
Foreign Office. In the same month, the British quietly released the Legion's
commander, Bangerskis.^°
Thomas Brimelow consulted with Colonel Isham at the War Office for
clarification on the status of the Latvian formations and whether, in fact, they
were all SS who had seen action on Soviet territory. Isham had damning
evidence that Kripens had been a volunteer in the SS Legion, but it was not
well received by Brimelow, who had toughened his stance against the Soviets.
While officials recognised that there was a cast-iron case against Kripens,
they refused to countenance his transfer, as it would have set a precedent
for the many Baits then under suspicion. Although the International Military
Tribunal at Nuremberg had declared the entire Waffen-SS a 'criminal organis-
ation', Brimelow put forward a new defence to the effect that it was not

enough that someone had volunteered for an SS formation; the Soviets would
have to present a prima facie case that the individual had committed war
crimes. Given the high standard of evidence required to meet the criteria,
the Baits were, in effect, rendered immune from prosecution.^^
Kripens was not repatriated, but laundered through the Allied screening
system. After recovering from his suicide attempt, he was sent to another
DP camp, where he worked for the military authorities before being passed
on to a selection team for emigration to Australia. Forty years later, the
All-Party Parliamentary War Crimes Group which examined the case
concluded that the Foreign Office had 'operated a double standard' by
demanding from the Soviets 'a more exhaustive case than would have been
required for German SS officers'. The British authorities were 'apparently
ignorant of, or wilfully avoiding, information concerning the activity of
collaborationists in German-occupied Latvia'.
 THE BALTIC STATES 281

On 21 December, Brimelow ordered that the remaining nineteen thousand

non-German Wehrmacht Baits be discharged and dispersed. The German
Department of the Foreign Office added that 'the sooner they are disbanded
the better; there is no prospect of our ever being able to palm them off on to
anyone'. Latvian Legion fears that they might be repatriated thus evaporated.
When Col. Osis returned from one of his regular visits to the British HQ, he
was 'in a high state of excitement, and soon word spread through the camp
that all Latvians must "disappear" From unidentified sources, the soldiers
'.

acquired civilian clothes, papers and, by the New Year, 'the entire population
of the camp had melted away'. In January 1946, around 16,500 of the Baits
acquired DP status and the majority took refuge in camps where they were
not screened, despite the fact that many hundreds had SS blood markings
tattooed under their armpits. When the United Nations Refugee and Rehabili-
tation Agency (UNRRA) attempted to test their eligibility there was a storm
of protest and a flurry of lobbying by their supporters in Britain."*^
Meanwhile, MI6 began to plan for New Year operations into the Baltic.
During August, it had revived its ties with the LCC, led by Dr Vladmars
Ginters and Verners Tepfers. Ginters had been asked by his MI6 handlers
to help send an advance team into Latvia to reactivate contact with the
underground, which was still holding out in the forests. In October, MI6
recruited a team of Latvian agents from among the refugees, and in conjunc-
tion with Swedish Intelligence tried to smuggle them into Latvia. This first
infiltration operation had to be abandoned when the speedboat carrying

supplies and arms was overturned in a freak wind near the Courland coast.
At McKibben's request, Ginters and Tepfers were asked to look for suitable
candidates for future operations.^^
In the new approached these infiltrations into the Baltic
year, the British
at 'arms-length'. Menzies told the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) that it
was essential that Moscow 'should not become aware of the nature' of these
operations, and one such mission was even camouflaged as being under
United States sponsorship; MI6 supplied the Latvians with American
weapons and equipment with the labels of origin clearly visible. Often
handled through intermediaries, a number of the agents who landed in Latvia
were unaware that they were financed and controlled by British Intelligence.
Three such agents, who had not even been supplied with the most basic
identity papers, were quickly captured, with their radio intact, by the NKVD,
and were subjected to intense, brutal interrogation. The 'false flag' ploy, a
favourite of MI 6, failed, and the Soviets, using intelligence from their agents
in London, had proof that the British were back in the game, resuming their
pre-war activities.^^

During January 1946, McKibben and Stasys Zymantas, MI6's Lithuanian

expert, held the first of a series of meetings to discuss possible operations
in Lithuania. At the meeting in Hamburg with Zilinskas, it was agreed to
282 PART THREE: THE SOVIET EMPIRE

re-establish contact with the underground, which was still active, having
garnered offers of practical support from the embittered rural population
which opposed the Soviet decree to collectivise the farms. The Soviet response
during the following month was to deport thousands of families and conduct
mass arrests, with a series of reprisals designed to break the back of the
armed resistance. Fearing NKVD interrogation, the guerrillas took to extreme
methods to avoid arrest, preferring suicide to being taken alive. Further, in
order to protect their families and friends from reprisals, 'it seems, the guer-
rillas blew themselves up with grenades held close to their face, so that they

could not be recognised'.

Soviet security agencies also began to move against centres of resistance
abroad, which were being co-ordinated from the Allied zones in Germany
by the SCLL. The SCLL was 'almost wholly comprised of former Nazi-
collaborators, men such as Plechavicius who at the very least had worked
with the Germans as long as collaboration served their purposes'. When the
Soviet government presented evidence and identified individuals against
whom specific allegations could be made, the British response was to stone-
wall. In February 1946 the Soviets demanded Plechavicius's extradition as a
war criminal, but their evidence that he had presided over 'the recruitment
and deployment of paramilitary units which were involved in numerous
actions against Jews and Soviet partisans' was simply dismissed. The reason
the Foreign Office gave was that despite the Intelligence Bureau of the Control
Office being well aware that 'Plechavicius is in our Zone', and the fact that
the Russians were also 'aware of this', there were 'vital intelligence reasons
which preclude the possibility of our handing him over to the Russians'.
Instead, the authorities decided to keep him hidden.^^
In March, at a second conference in Liibeck, McKibben and Zymantas
considered reports brought back by Jonas Deksnys from Lithuania via Poland.
Deksnys was the long-time leader of the Lithuanian Freedom Fighters Associ-
ation, an underground organisation established in 1940 and active during
the German occupation, mainly composed of younger political activists of
national-liberal orientation. He had been, for a short time, imprisoned in a
German concentration camp. In a graphic account of the current situation in
Lithuania, Deksnys told MI6 that despite the Soviet terror tactics, the country-
sidewas a no-go area at night, under the control of the fearless Forest Brother-
hood with thousands of Soviet officials and sympathisers being killed by the
guerrillas. In addition, he claimed that the thirty thousand guerrillas
distrusted the SCLL because ithad collaborated with the Germans. Deksnys
also reported what was later to become highly significant, namely that his
companion during his stay in Lithuania had been arrested. None of the MI6
officers queried the circumstances.^^
Taking on board Deksnys' negative report on the SCLL, and in order to
help co-ordinate policy and strengthen MI 6 contacts with the resistance under
 THE BALTIC STATES 283

the direction of Zymantas, an Information and Liaison Centre was formed

in the British Zone in Germany. An attempt was made to reorganise the
resistance on the classic Home Army /government-in-exile pattern. Such
co-ordination had not been possible previously because the Council for the
Liberation of Lithuania had been broken up by arrests at the end of the war,
forcing leading political leaders and resistance centres to flee to the West. In
Lithunania, Deksnys had met with Dr Juozas-Albinas Markulis, who
persuaded him of the necessity of collaborating with a new organisation, the
United Democratic Resistance Organisation (UDRM), which was to form the
basis of MI6's co-ordinating body.^'^
Presented as 'an initiative of the emigres', the UDRM was created in June
1946 in an attempt to unite the various resistance groups that had functioned
during the German occupation. A group of refugee political personalities in
the West was invited to serve as a committee representing the guerrilla
movement in Lithuania,whose leading UDRM members included Deksnys,
Markulis and Juozas Luksa. The UDRM sought to achieve 'more adequate
and effective results in the struggle for the restoration of Lithuania's indepen-
dence and for the realisation of the great ideal of democracy'. More import-
antly, although the UDRM had its own armed wing of 'Freedom Fighters',
it was working to an MI 6 agenda that sought to eschew openly violent tactics

and seek other means of achieving the nationalist aim. It would appear that
MI6 was more interested in maintaining its intelligence-gathering capability
than backing any ideas of counter-revolution through guerrilla warfare. These
attempts to organise the intended committee caused dissension among the
emigres, who were unaware of the British input. Unsurprisingly, the liaison
established with the guerrillas proved to be unsatisfactory as the armed
freedom fighters refused to subordinate themselves to a purely political body.
Instead, a body subservient to the UDRM, the Supreme Staff of Armed
Partisans,was formed to direct the political programme.
Unity under national command was finally achieved at the end of 1946,
but it blossomed only for a brief period. During the summer, the UDRM
was able to cite six major battles fought against the Soviets, involving up to
one hundred of the Forest Brotherhood, who had sustained themselves with-
out any significant support or supplies from the West. Official Soviet news-
papers wrote of 'the strength of anti-government activity in Lithuania' where
'robber bands' were 'a prevalent feature of contemporary life . . . using
sabotage, diversions and murder'. The Soviet security troops hit back by
employing 'false flag' groups whose well-publicised atrocities were designed
to drive a wedge between the population and the guerrillas. In addition, the
successful use of the amnesty for guerrillas was acknowledged by the UDRM
as a worrying development.^^
Unbeknown to the underground and Ml 6, a decision had been taken by
the head of the Ministry of Internal Afffairs (MVD - it replaced the NKVD
284 PAllT THREE: THE SOVIET EMPIRE

in March 1946), General Kruglov, who held an honorary British knighthood

for his security services at the Allied conference at Potsdam, to sanction the
mounting of a classic double-cross operation based on the techniques of the
Trust', which had entrapped British Intelligence in the twenties. This was
placed under the control of Major Janis Lukasevics of the Latvian NKGB/
MGB's Second Chief Directorate, which was responsible for counter-
intelligence. In receipt of top-secret reports from their agents in London
concerning plans for further operations into the Baltic republics, Lukasevics
began using captured infiltrators to play back radio messages to MI6. In
March, August Bergmanis, a former radio operator for the wartime Kurelis
resistance group, was released as a PoW by the Soviets and 'turned'. Now
working for Lukasevics, Bergmanis tapped out the call sign of one of the
captured MI6 agents to a receiver in Stockholm, followed by messages that
all was well.^^

In early August, a well-equipped fishing boat arranged by a Swedish

pastor working for MI6 landed two more MI6-backed agents into Latvia.
Lukasevics decided 'not to touch them' but 'to continue finding out what
their specific tasks were'. His security police 'found out that their job was
not just spying but also to prepare the way for other spies, to set up a link
and new points of support and to establish contact with resistance groups'.
During November one of the agents made contact with Bergmanis, who was
continuing to send messages to Sweden. MI6 needed to know whether or
not Bergmanis, who had contacted them only after a long silence, was under
Soviet control. MGB patience paid off when the agent reported back that
Bergmanis was 'clean'. As a result of this brilliant deception operation, by
1947 many of the leading figures in the Latvian underground had been identi-
fied and captured. In one notable coup, twelve guerrilla leaders had been
persuaded to attend a meeting in Riga to discuss their plans and activities
with a 'British officer'. Falling for the ploy, they provided detailed biographies
of their comrades, enabling the local security police to round up the leading
guerrillas.
MI 6 remained up a network of agents, Feliks
undeterred. After setting
Rumnieks returned on MI6's behalf. His aim was to discover the
to Latvia
fate of the teams previously sent and to report back. He was unable to fulfil
the second part of the task, however, as he was arrested at the end of the
year. Interrogated by the MGB, he admitted that he had carried out various
tasks for British military intelligence and was working for MI6. Subsequently
tried for treason, Rumnieks was imprisoned for many years. Inexplicably,
Zarine and his supporters refused to acknowledge these setbacks and
continued to maintain a steady stream of recruits for the secret operations
into Latvia.
In London, the Society of Latvians in Great Britain acted as a domestic
pressure group advocating the immigration of Latvian DPs to Britain as part
 THE BALTIC STATES 285

of the Labour government's European Voluntary Workers (EVW) scheme to

import much-needed labour for agriculture, mining and industry. Under a
Cabinet directive. Ministry of Labour recruiters sent to Germany did not
allow enquiries into 'the political background of particular national groups'
to obstruct them in this task. Screening was minimised by 'relaxation of
existing checks' in order to avoid 'a bottleneck'. A number of Baits who did
arrive in Britain under the EVW scheme were found to have the characteristic
Waffen-SS tattoos under their armpits. When this became public, Zarine took
the matter up with a clearly embarrassed Foreign Office which, nevertheless,
dismissed the tattoos as 'perfectly innocuous'. According to Tom Bower, at
least one Lithuanian revealed that he had killed 'terrorists' while serving
under the Germans, but the interrogator concluded that he 'did not pose a
threat to security' and so was allowed to stay. Officials drew an unwarranted
distinction between members of the Waffen-SS, 'a military formation', and
the 'political German SS'. When the Soviets responded with accusations of
war crimes against key individuals, Zarine defended them as 'great national
patriots, men of quite modest means; anti-Bolshevik, of course, but certainly
not to be described as fascists'.

Zarine lobbied hard both outside and inside Parliament to prevent their
deportation, working closely with Conservative MP Alfred Bossom, President
of the Anglo-Baltic Friendship Society,and the Duchess of Atholl, chair of
the British League for European Freedom. With Catholic support, the duchess
roused public opinion against their forced repatriation, portraying them as
honourable anti-communists who were being persecuted by the Soviets. A
number had been brought into the country by the British League's sister
organisation, the Scottish League for European Freedom, which worked
closely with MI6 (see Chapter 21).

In February 1947, Zilinskas, Deksnys and Zymantas attended an MI6

conference at Osnabruck, near Hamburg, where discussions focused on the
covert funding and recognition of the Lithuanian UDRM. It had the support
of General Plechavicius, who continued to enjoy the protection of MI 6, which
was still receiving reports that the resistance network inside Lithuania was
intact and engaged in fighting the Soviets. MI6 and the UDRM leadership
were not, however, convinced that it was leading to success. A more 'realistic
line' was being pushed by Deksnys and, in London, by the chief of Lithuanian
diplomats abroad, Stasys Lozoraitis. A former envoy in Rome, from where
he retained close ties to the Vatican, the former foreign minister had been
given plenipotentiary powers to look after Lithuanian interests in the West."^^
At the end of May, 'two guests from abroad' - Daunoras and Loyys -
made contact in Lithuania with the guerrilla leader Juozas Luksa, providing
the 'first direct information we had received from the West'. Lozoraitis's
communique laid bare the cold reality of the situation:
286 PART niKEE: THE SOVIET EMPIRE

It is not certain that the tension arising out of the territorial and
political expansion of the Soviet Union must necessarily and
immediately lead to war. As long as the internal situation of
the Soviet Union remains unimproved, they have no interest to
attack America and England. As to the latter, at this moment
they are not prepared for war materially or morally, especially
for war on behalf of the freedom of states which found them-
selves in the Soviet sphere. From this it follows that in Lithuania
it is necessary to save resources, avoiding sacrifice in the armed
struggle, avoiding additional reasons for the Bolsheviks for
deportation and so on ... As far as the impact of the armed
struggle on the evolution of present-day international politics,
pertaining to the Lithuanian question, is concerned, I feel I

can confirm that the death of our best men will not accelerate
development of events and its political effect, influence on
propaganda for Lithuanian freedom, will be painfully dispro-
portionate to the sacrifices and national losses.^^

The guerrilla leaders chose to ignore these pessimistic western assess-

ments and, indeed, refused to believe them. They condemned us to death
at Yalta, Potsdam They continue to repeat the mistakes, not daring to
. . .

raise a voice of protest against the annihilation of our nation, not even wishing
to know that we are not yet disappointed with them, that we are continuing
the struggle with their "ally" not knowing defeat.' The guerrillas believed
West simply did not understand the communists. 'We learned that
that the
we had been abandoned to die alone We were loath to admit this painful
. . .

reality.' A strengthening of Soviet counter-insurgency tactics resulted in a

further thinning of ranks and 'a never-before experienced attitude of
despair'.
Dogged Lithuanian efforts to establish and maintain a unified command
had few parallels in the other two countries, where there was 'no evidence
of mimeographed guerrilla publications, of active contact attempts with the
West, of organised officer training, of city intelligence activity, or of concerted
campaigns against elections'. Soviet reports mention the destruction of an
Estonian National Committee and a nationwide Latvian Guerrilla Communi-
cations Staff have operated in Riga until 1947. The Forest
which appears to
Brotherhood continued to fight hard in most areas of the Estonian and Latvian
countryside, but its backbone had been broken, though several hundred
Soviets continued to be killed annually. The UDRM continued to organise
formal training courses during the summer of 1947 for specially selected
officers, while, following discussions with the visitors from the West, further
attempts were made to centralise the passive and movements. Adolfas
active
Ramanaukas was assigned the task of organising and dealing with foreign
 THE BALTIC STATES 287

contacts, and the go abroad. The Lithuanians had a

selection of people to
regular courier service across Poland and East Germany, and during 1947
couriers travelled west, but only to return with further depressing news on
the international situation.^*^
A national conference of guerrilla leaders opposed the strategy proposed
by the UDRM for a government-in-exile. According to MI6's intermediary,
Stasys Zymantas, the UDRM failed to reach an accommodation as the armed
guerrillaswere unwilling to assume the role of a Home Army 'without a
direct influence on the future self-government of the country'. They rejected
the UDRM policy, which favoured shifting the emphasis from armed to
passive resistance, and smeared such advocates as 'Bolshevik agents'. The
UDRM was beset by security fears that the movement had been infiltrated
by Soviet agents and, in December 1947, the Presidium dispatched Luksa
and Kazimieras Piplys to the West with a special mission. They eventually
reached London, where Luksa gave MI6 debriefers a graphic description of
the treachery of Dr Juozas Markulis, whom he insisted was a Soviet agent.
Luksa also pointed the finger of suspicion at Deksnys, which further split
the Lithuanians. McKibben was forced during the summer of 1948 to confront
Deksnys in Stockholm. Unaware, however, that Markulis was a communist,
and a serving MGB officer whose function was to penetrate the guerrilla
movement 'as part of a plan to divide the resistance into factions and cause
as much hostility between the two groups as possible', McKibben could
^°
discover no evidence for the charge of treachery.
In practice, the UDRM was both an MI6 and an MGB front group. The
interesting situation developed in which the agenda set by the NKGB
coincided with that of MI 6, which recognised that a liberation policy was
unlikely to succeed. It wanted to preserve its intelligence-gathering capability,
which would be threatened by the inevitable Soviet backlash against any fully
overt guerrilla campaign. The Soviet aim was not only to cause dissension but,
more subtly, to channel the Lithuanian resistance into a form that could be
more easily controlled. Their agents therefore pushed the idea of 'passive
resistance'. According to Thomas Remeikis, by the end of 1948 the UDRM
was barely functioning.^^
Luksa moved on to the United States, where he made 'a very thorough
report' for the CIA on the guerrilla action behind the Iron Curtain. He
received, however, more than expressions of interest' from the Ameri-
'little

cans, but the SCLL armed guerrillas continued to cling 'to their only hope
of liberation from the West to the very last'. To the men in the forest, the
Allied policy of containment 'sounded like a promise of liberation. Western
propaganda and Stalinist terror assured such misperception of reality.' In

expectation of a global conflict, the SCLL leaders set up an exclusively guer-

rilla-based resistance organisation.^^
Back in London, the head of the Latvian legation, Charles Zarine, proved
288 PAPvT THREE: THE SOVIET EMPIRE

to be a useful asset for MI 6, talent-spotting suitable agents among the

ex-collaborators. Zarine helped Sandy McKibben recruit Rudolph Silarajs, a
former officer in the Latvian Air Force, who was languishing in the Sebors
DP camp in Belgium. Through Silarajs, MI6 officers were introduced to
several other Latvian collaborators, including Vitold Berkis, who had worked
for the Nazi security police in Riga with responsibilities for political intelli-
gence, and Andrei Gladins, a former member of the murderous Arajs
Kommando. Both were transferred from Belgium to Britain for training.^^
The recruiting pool was enlarged during 1948 when a platoon of the
Lithuanian Police Battalions commanded by Anatas Gecas was brought to
Britain 'almost intact'. In 1944 Gecas had fled with his battalion south to
Italy, where he claimed he joined a Polish unit and fought against the

Germans, gaining a Polish Iron Cross. According to one report, Gecas became
'a major asset' of MI6 and, after settling in Scotland as a mining engineer,

provided intelligence that was useful in the creation of Baltic networks.

During a libel trial in 1992, High Court judge Lord Milligan said that he was
'entirely satisfied' that Gecas had taken part in the execution of thousands
of innocent civilians. Soviet attempts to extradite him for war crimes were
obstructed by Whitehall, apparently for fear of exposing his intelligence ties.^^

At the beginning of 1949, MI 6 took over full control of the Baltic infiltration
of agents from the Swedes and transferred the operation, code-named
JUNGLE, to Hamburg in the British Zone in Germany. MI6 also instigated
an expansion of the Special Liaison Centre, in Ryder Street, where the Baltic
section was divided into three, each with a full-time emigre officer responsible
for recruiting agents. Selected by McKibben and approved by Carr, along
with a veteran army officer. who worked among the recently
Colonel Sutkos,
imported 'Westward Ho!' workers (those recruited in the DP camps to work
in British mines and textile factories), Stasys Zymantas was responsible for the
Lithuanian agents; Rudolph Silarajs looked after the Latvians; while Alphons
Rebane, commander of the 20th SS Estonian Division, oversaw the
Estonians.
Rebane had been one of the former SS officers invited to Britain in 1947
as guest workers. A drinker and a gambler, he was plucked from a textile
mill in Bradford, West Yorkshire, by McKibben, who agreed to take on his
former SS Division General Inspector, Vaino Partel, as his adjutant. Partel
knew the whereabouts of other SS members for recruitment, and the two
then drew up lists of suitable candidates. There were plenty of recruits willing
to risk their lives in what they believed to be an honourable attempt to liberate
their homeland. 'Westward Ho!' was bringing thousands of Baltic Waffen-SS
men into the country, and by 1949 no fewer than 9,706 Latvians had arrived,
a large percentage of them ex-combatants, thus providing a pool of fit young
men with military training and experience. MI6 recruiters tracked down men
in the DP camps and EVW hostels and offered them employment on special
 THE BALTIC STATES 289

missions connected with the 'liberation' of their homelands. More than forty
Estonian volunteers, including Waffen-SS men such as Leo Audova and Mark
Padek, were recruited, assembled and prepared for special operations.^^
Working background were representatives of Dauvagis Vanagi -
in the
the association of Latvian ex-servicemen. In March 1949, Zarine informed the
Foreign Office that Colonel Vilis Janums was in London on business for
Dauvagis Vanagi. A former regimental commander of the Latvian Legion who
was a war crimes suspect, Janums was also involved with former members in
setting up the Latvian Restoration Committee. Zarine told officials that

Mr Janums is a man of understanding and realises the factors

that go to make up the present situation. He does not, therefore,
wish to be an embarrassment. He feels, however, in view of the
rather intimate knowledge he has of the ways and psychology
of the Russian army - both from his having served with the
Tsarist Army and fought against the Red Army - it might be
of interest and value for him to have a talk with someone from
military circles here if this could be arranged.

Janums was passed on to the War Office's MIS, where Lt-Col. Stoney listened
to his plea that his fellow-Latvians in Britain and the British Zone in Germany
be given military training 'before they get too rusty'. The on Janums are
files

restricted, but it is known that he specifically referred to the thousand

Latvians in the Mixed Service units - a paramilitary service set up by the
British Army of the Rhine to guard military installations. The Latvian Legion's
Arthur Sigailis was the chief liaison officer of these Baltic units, through
which he kept in touch with former legionnaires. Stoney said that it was
official policy not to train them in anything other than guard duties. There
were, however, strong parallels with the American Labour Service Units
which had acted as cover for recruitment and military training. The fact that
several hundred ex-combatant Baits were being employed in auxiliary army
units and receiving British Army pay suggested to the Soviets that these units
were designed for a future war.^^
In order to tighten security, the training of the emigres was transferred
from Stockholm to London. The agents lived at the 'School', a Victorian house
in Chelsea which was rented from a retired British officer stationed abroad.
Looked after by the Flowers family, agents were taught Morse code by George
Collier, while John Crofton explained the basics of tradecraft and the type of
intelligence the Service was seeking. Former SOE officers illustrated surveil-
lance methods, organising dead-letter drops and how to survive behind
enemy lines. Training in the use of small arms took place at an indoor range,
while outdoor training was undertaken at the former SOE wartime training
school at Fort Monkton, Gosport. The more rugged guerrilla-type training,
with special forces, took place on Dartmoor and in the Scottish Highlands.
290 PART THRFF: THE SOVIET EMPIRE

Those w ho successfully completed the course were issued with forged pass-
ports, identification cards anci work permits. Finally, in a gesture that high-
lighted the grim reality of their situation, the agents were issued with
'L-Tablets' - cyanide suicide pills.'''^

The first six Estonians who completed the MI6 training course were
presented to the ambassador, August Torma, at Estonia House in London.
The route back to their homeland would, however, be long and difficult. The
increased security measures and tightening of control by the Soviet political
police in the Baltic ensured that it was increasingly difficult to infiltrate agents
into Estonia. It was, therefore, decided that Latvia offered the best and safest
route.
From an early date, MI6 developed the idea of infiltrating agents into the
Baltic states by sea, the method being preferable to air-drops which were
considered too 'noisy' and more likely to attract the attention of the Soviets.
Landings from boats could be made silently and, hopefully, secretly. It took
nearly eight months of protracted negotiations between MI6, the Navy and
the Foreign Office before the operations could be launched. Most of the
problems centred around finance as 'the British budget was tight, and for
covert operations especially it was spread thin'. It seems that it took the
persuasive powers of Menzies to win over the Director of Naval Intelligence,
Rear- Admiral Sir Anthony Buzzard, and his deputy. Captain D. C. Ingram, to
MI6's scheme. Chosen to oversee the landings was a close friend of Menzies,
Commander Anthony Courtney, head of the Russian Section 16 of the Naval
Intelligence Division (NID), which had taken over MI6's wartime private
navy. Section 16 liaised with MI6's R3, whose chief until the mid-fifties was
Frank Slocum. At the end of 1948, Courtney was appointed Chief of Intelli-
gence to the flag officer at Hamburg. He had 'certain ideas involving the use
of fast surface craft in co-operation with MI 6, and felt sure that the Royal
Navy had a great deal to offer in this respect'.
In the spring of 1949, the Navy's 'most advanced eyes and ears on the
Baltic', David Wheler, shared responsibility for setting up the sea operations
with the man who took over from Courtney at Kiel, John Harvey-Jones (later
chair of ICI). Harvey-Jones joined the NID in the summer of 1946 as a Russian
interpreter, working under Courtney in Germany. He was then appointed to
London Controlling Station (LCS),
the secret deception organisation, the
Hamburg, where he debriefed refugees from
before being posted back to
East Germany and Poland, and studied the rapidly expanding Soviet
merchant fleet in the Baltic.

Courtney's work involved close liaison with the Lurssen brothers of Vege-
sack on the Wesser River, 'where I was struck by the potential capabilities
of stripped-down ex-Kriegsmarine E-boat hulls, powered by the incompar-
able twin Mercedes-Benz 518 diesel engines'. Harvey-Jones recalled that 'we
still possessed two of these superb craft' which were taken to Portsmouth
 THE BALTIC STATES 291

for refurbishment. 'We decided one of them down and increase her
to strip
power. With the combination of her low weight and enhanced power she
would be able to show her heels to any other surface ship then afloat.' In
addition, silent underwater exhausts were installed, enabling the craft to

approach the enemy's shore with the minimum To serve as captain,

of noise.
the British had the pick of former E-boat aces, but were on the lookout for
one with experience of operating in the Baltic. In May 1949, Courtney and
Harvey-Jones met in Minden with an unemployed former E-boat captain,
Hans Helmut Klose. Never a Nazi, Klose was a dedicated naval officer who
shared their common dislike of Bolsheviks and, more importantly, had, from
1944 until the end of the war, dropped German agents behind the Russian
lines for sabotage missions. Since Germany was still demilitarised, 'it was
essential that she operate under a British officer', and under Harvey-Jones's
responsibility a German crew, 'with a fierce detestation of the Russians', was
recruited from among Klose's wartime comrades.^^
The boat operated under cover of the Fishery Protection Service which
had been formed by the British military government. It was maintained by
the Royal Navy in Hamburg to protect the West German fishing fleet from
interference by Soviet naval vessels, and to recover and disarm the numerous
mines strewn throughout the Baltic Sea during the course of the war. On
training sessions, the crew 'came to know every inch of the Baltic coast and
every defence which the Russians maintained, in a particularly intimate way'.
The Baltic, Harvey-Jones recalled, 'was our oyster and we roamed it at will'.
During operations, Klose was to sailfrom Kiel under the white ensign for
the five hundred-mile journey to shelter at Bornholm on the Danish coast,
before hoisting the Swedish flag at Gotland, where he awaited the go-ahead
from Hamburg.^^
There were further delays while discussions were completed in London
and Washington with officials of the US Office of Policy Co-ordination (OPC),
which eventually agreed to fund the Baltic boat service as long as MI6
provided access to the serviceand shared the gathered intelligence. After
protracted negotiations between the head of M16 in Germany, John Bruce-
Lockhart, and General Gehlen, it was also agreed to combine with the Ameri-
cans on selected operations, and an arrangement was made whereby the
Gehlen Org. would train a number of agents who would be inserted into the
Baltic states via the British sea route. Gehlen also sent in teams by parachute
- the American's favoured method.
The first Operation Jungle group sent into the Baltic under cover of the
Fishery Protection Service was launched at the beginning of May. On board
was the Latvian double agent Vidvuds Sveics, who had been planted among
the British-backed emigres by the MGB's Major Lukasevics. After a perfect
landing at the Palanga beach, in Lithuania, the group made for the forest,
but Sveics had managed to separate himself and raise the local militia. In the
292 PART THRFE: THE SOVIET EMPIRE

shooting that followed, two members were killed. The mission had been
betrayed, but Deksnys and Kazimieras Piplys, the representative abroad of
the UDRM, escaped and made their way inland. In June, Piplys was able to
get a letter back to Zymantas, but was killed a few months later in a bunker
in southern Lithuania. A number of officials at Broadway headquarters began
to ha\'e suspicions about some of their agents, but they were not thought
serious enough to jeopardise further planned operations.^"^
In reality, by 1949 the first phase of the struggle had ended in Lithuania.
Whereas the period from 1944 to 1948 had been a time of relative strength
for the underground groups, there followed immediate decline, with the
guerrillas unable to inflict any significant losses on the Soviet forces. The
majority of farms were now collectivised, which initially gave a boost to the
underground but wrecked the supply system for the guerrillas. At the same
time, the Lithuanian Communist Party had strengthened its grip on the
country by tripling party membership. Good-quality recruits for the Forest
Brotherhood, who were willing to endure the appalling conditions that now
existed, were dwindling. Around twenty thousand guerrillas had been killed,
and while an almost equal number of communists had died too, the security
troops continued to bear down on the insurgents. One small pocket of
resisters did attempt to reorganise in a more conspiratorial style. Jonas
Zemaitis, who had trained in French military schools and was a former
member of the Lithuanian Freedom Army, was instrumental in putting
together in February 1949 an exclusively guerrilla-based central resistance
organisation, the Movement of Lithuania's Struggle for Freedom (MLSF), as
part of a breakaway from the UDRM. Clearly, open warfare was no longer
possible, and the guerrillas could no longer paralyse the functioning of local
Soviet administration. This ability had been largely lost by the end of 1946
in Latvia, where guerrilla activity was effectively crushed by 1949. The Soviet
policy of deportation and scorched earth was working, and the Forest Brother-
hood was forced into retreat. Estonian guerrillas continued to fight for a few
more years but at an insignificant level. In all three countries, the freedom
fighters were often reduced to actions that 'started to fit the "bandit" label
the occupation forces tried to pin on them'.^^
During 1949, efforts were made to weld the various resistance groups
into one resistance centre. The CIA took over control of the SCLL with the
aid of their new asset. Gen. Plechavicius, who had transferred his loyalty
from MI6. His new sponsors immediately eased his emigration to the United
States. In another attempt to resolve the convoluted differences that existed
between the nationalist groupings, a meeting took place in July 1949 in Baden-
Baden in West Germany, with delegates from the SCLL. In attendance were
Luksa and Deksnys, the latter as a member of the UDRM Council and official
delegate abroad of the nationalist underground. The delegates agreed that
the SCLL would be responsible for the liberation struggle abroad and would
 THE BALTIC STATES 293

eventually act as a government-in-exile. The liberation inside Lithuania was

to be conducted by its own resistance centre with close co-operation between
the two. As one observer wrote, 'it proved to be a controversial decision'
which was rejected by the UDRM. A decision backed by its British sponsors
and Soviet agents inside the organisation, who each feared losing control
over the resistance movement.^^
At the end of October 1949, accompanied by John Crofton, the second
Jungle team was flown to Hamburg, where they were met by Anthony Caven-
dish, a junior MI 6 officer. Cavendish was responsible for 'babysitting' the
team until the naval liaison officer. Commander Courtney, received word
from Klose that sailing conditions were favourable. Included in the team
were a former SS member, Vitolds Berkis, and Andrei Galdins, ex-Arajs
Kommando. No one probed into their backgrounds. Cavendish's philosophy
was that 'if somebody was needed to do a job and if he had committed war
crimes, I would use him to do the job, ones I felt essential'. The agents were
landed safely and taken to the home of Father Valdis Amols. Unfortunately
for the British and Latvians, the secret police had instigated a major MGB
deception operation, 'Lursen-S', of which Amols was part. This also involved
the creation of a phantom guerrilla group led by 'Garis', which the two
Latvians eventually joined in May of the following year. The Soviets then
engaged in a radio deception game, transmitting information back to Britain
which MI6 analysts found to be 'bland and imprecise'. Indeed it was, as
the MVD controllers were barred from using real low-grade intelligence
('chickenfeed') and, instead, had to make do with material collated from
newspaper articles. Even so, the little intelligence coming out of the Baltic
states from individuals and groups not known to be under the control of the
Soviets was regarded by MI6 analysts as 'poor'.^^
Recognising that it would need to develop its contacts with the western
agencies, the MLSF called upon the underground forces to improve the
quality of their intelligence-gathering. Information was processed by Zemaitis
and eventually passed on to Deksnys as the official delegate abroad. This
was an unfortunate choice. The discovery by Soviet troops of a second UDRM
training camp gave rise to further accusations of betrayal. Towards the end
of 1949 Luksa provided another account for the British and Americans of the
destabilising role of an alleged Soviet agent on the UDRM committee, Dr
Juozas Markulis.^^
By 1950 the revolt in the woods was over. The last battle in Latvia was
recorded in February, and the guerrillas in Estonia had been worn down to
isolated bands. While there were around five thousand guerrillas in
still

Lithuania, final mopping-up operations by the militia effectively killed their

resistance, and the countryside was now relatively safe. The radios had gone
quiet and the only groups left were those run by the MGB - but MI6 did not
read the signs. The most serious problem for MI6, about which it remained in
294 PART THREE: THE SOVIET EMPIRE

the dark, was that Deksnys - who had returned to Lithuania - had been
arrested by the Soviet secret police and had been 'forced to co-operate as a
price for survival'.^^
During the early summer of 1950, the head of M16's Northern Division,
Harry Carr, made his first trip to the United States, where he met with the
head of the Soviet section of the CIA's Office of Special Operations (OSO),
Harry Rositzke. It was not productive, but George Belie, chief of Soviet affairs
in Munich, was allowed to meet McKibben in London to 'exchange views at
desk level'. This was achieved, but McKibben continued to look down on
the American new boys. Fortunately, Belie had good reason to ignore MI6's
misplaced air of superiority. Juozas Luksa of the SCLL/MLSF had switched
allegiance from French Intelligence to the Americans and had told the CIA
of his belief that Deksnys had been 'turned'. In June, Belie informed McKibben
that the CIA believed that Deksnys was now working for the MGB. Even
though he knew that Deksnys had recently failed a security check, McKibben
felt that he had to allay American fears and brushed aside the news as the

normal result of factional exile politics between the British-sponsored UDRM

and the now American-backed SCLL.^'^
In October, the Americans conducted their first parachute drop into the
Baltic area, using agents trained at Gehlen's special intelligence school in
West Germany. An unmarked C-47 was flown by two Czech former RAF
pilots from a US Air Force base in Wiesbaden to Lithuania. Benediktas
Trumpys, Klemensas Sirvys and leader Luksa - who had written a highly
romanticised account of the underground's exploits during his stay with
American Intelligence - were successfully parachuted into the Baltic
countryside.^^
During November, 'in a desperate bid to stop the rot', Carr was forced
to undertake a second trip to Washington, where he was once again
confronted by accusations that the UDRM had been penetrated. Carr was
unmoved, and could only claim that 'our group is watertight'. The MI6 officer
who took the notes at the fraught meeting was the liaison officer with the
CIA, Kim Philby - he recalled the event in his autobiography. 'Both MI6
and the CIA had their Baltic puppets, whose rival ambitions were usually
quite irreconcilable. It was with some relish that I watched the struggling
factions repeatedly fight themselves to a standstill.' According to Philby, 'the

visit ended disastrously, with both Carr and his opposite numbers in the

CIA accusing each other, quite justifiably, of wholesale lying at the conference
table'. Carr closed the meeting by dismissing the security fears of his hosts
with the boast that 'the proof of our certainty is that we are stepping up our
activities'.^^

By April1951, MI6 was ready to send another team of four agents into
Latvia. One member of the team, Lodis Upans, yet another ex-Ajas
Kommando enUsted by MI6, had been sent to investigate the 'Maxis' network
 THE BALTIC STATES 295

- a situation for which the MGB

had meticulously prepared. Also in the
team was a newly trained radio who was, in fact, an MGB penetration
officer,

agent planted at the heart of the British operation by Lukasevics. Janis Erglis
had originally been recruited in a German DP camp by John Ransome, an
MI6 officer attached to the Technical Section' of the British Control
Commission. While the MGB allowed some of the British agents to reach
their destination, where they were met by fictitious guerrilla groups that
lived tightly controlled lives in the forests, others were captured and either
turned or killed.

A second American operation in April to enter Lithuania was deemed a

Team members were soon captured and, under threat of torture,
failure.

agreed to collaborate. One radio operator sent messages back to Munich

which proved to the satisfaction of the listening CIA officers that the sender
was under Soviet control. Julijonas Butenas, a journalist who had been active
in the anti-Nazi underground, managed to evade the MGB trap, but his
mission was short-lived. In the following month, surrounded and under siege
from Soviet security troops, Butenas committed suicide rather than be taken
alive. It was a pattern that was to be repeated.^^

That spring, six CIA officers led by Rositzke - who had arranged to be
posted to Munich for a tour of duty - arrived in London for a conference
with their MI6 counterparts to survey Anglo-American operations in the
all

Soviet Union and the satellite countries. The recent differences in Washington
were dismissed by Carr as 'a family row', while the Americans looked
forward to 'an open and frank exchange'. It was not to happen. The CIA
was convinced more than ever that what remained of the guerrilla force was
under Soviet control. The British failed to respond and the conference ended
on another note of frustration. 'The British just humoured us. We went round
in circles, rehashing the past.' The only concession was that Anthony Vaivada,
an American of Lithuanian parentage on Rositzke's staff, was given a full
briefing by McKibben on MI6's Lithuanian operations.^"^
In May, Philby had been recalled from Washington following the
disappearance of Donald Maclean and Guy Burgess. Suspecting him of being
a spy and responsible for tipping off the Foreign Office traitors, the CIA
demanded his expulsion. To Rositzke and his colleagues the cause of their
Soviet disasters became self-evident: 'We were betrayed by the Brits.' This
was only partly true. While Philby had certainly betrayed the overall outline
of the plans and, in some cases, considerable detail, Carr and McKibben had
ensured that he had never been privy to the full scale of the operations, since
they wanted to keep the Americans in the dark about what they were really
up to. It was also an unfortunate assessment since, in reality, the deception
being run in the Baltic by the NKGB - of which Philby probably had no
knowledge - was the true cause of the disaster. In the event, CIA security
concerns had little impact in the MI6's Northern Division, where Carr and
2% PART THRFE: THE SOVIET EMPIRE

McKibben continued to believe in Philby's innocence. By then there was too

much from the emigres and the officers involved for doubts to
self-interest

be raised or for the operations to be curtailed. Besides, Carr's obsessive secrecy

pre\'ented any objective appraisal. Tom Bower believes that Carr's qualities
were too limited to enable him to detect a clear deception. As he suggests,
Lukasevics's deception could only flourish because 'it developed best in the
very conditions which Carr believed prevented the danger'.^^
The struggle inside Lithuania continued to be encouraged by the principal
political organisation abroad - the Supreme Committee for the Liberation of
Lithuania (SCLL). It was co-operating with the CIA in the mission of Luksa,
who had been appointed by the commander of the Movement of Lithuania's
Struggle for Freedom (MLSF) as its intelligence chief and main liaison officer
with the West. In July 1951, the command of the southern region released a
leaflet, 'Freedom Is Coming from the West', which stated that 'the United

States has sufficently understood its mission to be the vanguard of the West
. . . The rush of political events of today is approaching the moment when
the independence of Lithuania will manifest itself again.' It claimed that the
US had promised material aid and called upon Lithuanians to 'join this holy
struggle against Bolshevism with weapon in hand'. It was true that the CIA's
final instruction to Luksa's group - at a meeting attended by Col. Antanas
Sova, the principal military functionary abroad organising the missions - did
identify with the 'liberation of all occupied countries' but, for all the rhetoric,
MI6 and the CIA were primarily concerned with gathering intelligence.^^
July's bulletin also attacked the passive tactics of the British-backed
UDRM Committee and its leader, Jonas Deksnys, who was described as a
'paid active intelligence agent of foreign states'. Luksa's return resulted in a
brief period of intensified guerrilla activity, boasted by promises of help from
the West. At the same time, the MVD's Gen. Kruglov returned to Lithuania
to take charge of the final liquidation of the resistance.
At the end of September 1951, a team of three was landed in Latvia by
Klose. Its leader, Bolislov Pitans, was an ex-Latvian Waffen-SS soldier who

had arrived in Britain in 1947 as part of the 'Westward Ho!' scheme. Working
as a baker, he was approached by MI6 in 1950 for special training for a
mission with two former Estonian SS members. They were to help contact
the Estonian underground with the aid of the Maxis group of guerrillas.
Again, it was a disastrous operation. The leader of the Maxis group, Arvits
Gailitis, who was picked up by Klose, turned out to be another Soviet
penetration agent. In London, Gailitis was debriefed by MI6's Rudolph Sila-

rajs, who, if he had any doubts, was unable to break his cover. Gailitis

eventually from the strain of maintaining the facade and was returned
fell ill

to Latvia suffering from a nervous breakdown.^^

Even though the chances of survival for the guerrillas were now slim, the
western intelligence agencies continued to send agents into the Baltic states.
 THE BALTIC STATES 297

They demanded more in-depth information on Soviet capabilities and inten-

tions. It soon became apparent to the guerrillas that the British and American

agents were intent on intelligence-gathering and not on supporting guerrilla

warfare. Estonian appeals for arms brought only a few crates of pistols and
machineguns from the Gehlen Org. Zigurd Krumins, who was landed on the
Estonian coast in the spring of 1952 as part of an OPC /Gehlen operation,
had been ordered not to fight alongside the guerrillas or to furnish them
with arms and assistance, except in the event of a future war between the
superpowers. Krumins lasted only eighteen months before he was captured
by Soviet security forces and sentenced in Riga to fifteen years in prison. The
life of a western agent sent into the Baltic region was for many sheer hell.^°

Although low on Secret Vote funds for the infiltration operations, MI6
was able to keep the gold flowing through its JUNK operation. Tony Divall,
who had served with the Royal Marines during the war, on being demobbed
in 1946 was recruited into the 'T-Force' at Bad Salzuflen, in Germany, hunting
down suspected war criminals. Officially recruited into MI6, he developed
a talent for running agents and was made responsible for Junk, supervising
an underground railway that ran agents and consignments of Swiss gold
watches into the satellite states in exchange for defectors and illegal roubles.
By the early fifties, using professional smugglers, jewellers and money laund-
erers, Divall was running five Junk networks, the money from which was

used by the Stockholm station to run agents into the Baltic states.
Lithuanian Zigmas Kudirka was recruited in the autumn of 1950 after
arriving in Britain from a DP camp. After twelve months training as a radio
officer and in short-range shooting in Chelsea, outdoor survival in Scotland,
night-time parachuting in Oxford and water navigation in Portsmouth
harbour, Kudirka helped land a number of agents in Latvia. In April 1952,
he returned with another nervous wreck, Lodis Upans. Operating on the
instructions given by Silarajs before his departure, Upans had handed over
all his codes to other agents. Unfortunately, these agents were working for

the Soviets. In the autumn Kudirka was sent into Lithuania with agent
'Edmundes'. For the next three years he hid in a farmhouse attic, only ventur-
ing out occasionally at night. Three years later, Kudirka moved to a town
where he used his MI6 money to live in a safe house. He pleaded to be
rescued from his futile existence. MI6 radioed back: 'Chin up. It's not so
bad.' He later discovered that Edmundes was an MGB plant. Arrested,
Kudirka soon confessed and was sentenced to fifteen years. Appealing on
the basis that he had been working, unbeknown to himself, under Soviet
control, he was released after two Kudirka remained bitter about his
years.
treatment by MI6: 'I and I suffered every day. They put
trusted the British
me into the web and completely abandoned me."^^
In October 1951, Juoas Luksa was killed in an encounter with Soviet state
security troops engaged in a search-and-destroy operation. 'Mopping up
2^8 PAPvl TI1KR-: THE SOVIET EMPIRE

operations followed and in 1952 the resistance was completely destroyed/

The tact was that 'without support from abroad a long guerrilla war against
the total-war strategy of the Soviets became militarily impossible, especially
under conditions of complete sovietization'. In late 1952, the American-born
Aldofus Ramanaukas, who took over the leadership of the MLSF from the
unwell Zemaitis, ordered the demobilisation of the guerrillas, thus formally
ending the armed struggle. During the same year, the British-backed UDRM
also folded. It has been estimated that the guerrilla war in the three states
resulted in 75,000 direct civilian casualties, the deaths of 30,000 guerrillas
and, perhaps, of up to 80,000 Russian soldiers.^^
The end armed struggle was extremely bad news for the western
of the
agencies, for while they had not been willing to countenance providing
material support to the guerrillas and had advised against terrorist action, the
underground groups had provided cover for intelligence-gathering agents.
Without their presence these agents had even less chance of survival.
By the summer of 1952, MI 6 had evidence that other Special Operations
against the Soviet Union had also failed. Much of this was open knowledge,
as the Soviets had ensured that reports of the capture of western agents
and the success of their deception campaigns had been spread across their
newspapers. The infiltration operations had also been heavily publicised
during debates United Nations. Further, the Americans were beginning
at the

to receive reports from their own agents - to which MI6 had some access -
that there were no guerrillas in the forests and that the revolt had ended.
The CIA became convinced that their training camps had been infiltrated by
Soviet agents. Partly through arrogance and misplaced faith in the effective-
ness of its security procedures, MI6 chose to ignore the signs. Senior officers
Carr, McKibben and were in
Silarajs still believed that the Baltic operations

good shape, though Maj. John Liudzius, whose parents had emigrated from
Lithuania to Britain many years previously and who spoke the language
fluently, dissented - T told them but they would not listen' - and for his sins
was shunted off to South Korea to replace George Blake.^^
Assistant Chief James Easton had become aware that Carr was operating
without official authority, and a discreet, secret review of these operations
took place inside MI 6, in which Carr was deeply involved. It did not,
however, lead to their curtailment, merely the sharing of the burden with
the CIA at a 'Joint Centre' in Frankfurt. Carr ensured that he retained direct
which he continued to believe, against all
control over the Baltic operations,
the evidence, were highly successful - the 'Crown Jewels' of the Service's
anti-Soviet operations.^^
During the autumn of 1952, another Klose mission dropped off agents in
the Baltic and picked up a senior member of the Latvian Maxis group who
was, almost inevitably, yet another MGB officer. Under intense questioning
and scrutiny, followed by three months of training at the Special Liaison
 THE BALTIC STATES 299

Centre, the double agent Janis Klimkans did not reveal any trace of treachery
and was openly accepted within MI6 by both Silarajs and McKibben. The
Soviets were now in a perfect position to exploit the situation - which they
did to the full, expertly using Klimkans as an agent provocateur.
Privy to details of the operations and the names of the future provisional
nationalist government of a liberated Latvia, Klimkans regularly reported his
intelligence back to his controllers via the Soviet Trade Mission in London,
which passed it on to Lukasevics and the MGB in the Baltic. Klimkans
returned to Latvia in the autumn of 1953 with weapons, supplies and a
million roubles which, in a neat twist, was used to finance the continuing and
remarkably successful Soviet deception operation. By this stage the guerrilla
campaign was at an end and any hope of organised resistance finished, but
MI6 continued with a desperate operation that had been compromised from
its very beginning. The result was that many lives were needlessly sacrificed

- all for a meagre trickle of intelligence which the analysts later concluded
was ' worthless'.
PART FOUR

THE BALKANS AND

RUSSIA
i
Initially, the Special (SOE) had openly backed
Operations Executive
'progressive' resistance movements. Senior SOE official Bickham Sweet-
Escott recalled that they were 'not necessarily the people who hoped that
when the war was won things would go back to being just what they were
. They were risking their lives for war aims of their own which differed
. .

in many important respects from ours. Rarely was this elementary truth
grasped by the Foreign Office.' Geoffrey Wilson was a lone voice in arguing
that SOE should continue to back national liberation movements and 'to spot
as early as possible those which are going to be the emergent social groups
. . . and to try to make them our friends. If they are friends of the Russians
too, so much the better.' By 1944, however, SOE was an anti-communist
organisation concerned with the spectre of postwar communism and held
the view that these groups were 'mainly created by Soviet propaganda'.^
It was
view buttressed by intercepts from the Government Code and
a
Cipher School (GC&CS) which had decrypted 'the instructions being sent
from the Kremlin to partisan groups under Communist control'. According
to MI6's Foreign Office adviser, Robert Cecil, they revealed 'Moscow's hidden
hand in planning for the post-war take-over of Eastern Europe'. The decrypts
were collated in a Section IX paper intended for the Prime Minister but which
Kim Philby managed to obstruct. Churchill, however, already believed that
Britain was 'approaching a showdown with the Russians about their Commu-
nist intrigues in Yugoslavia and Greece'.^
304 PART FOUR: THE BALKANS AND RUSSIA

In tact, Soviet advisers instructed local movements that 'they should be

flexible, and be ready to serve as junior partners in post-war coalition govern-
ments'. was a policy opposed by Tito. Historian Geoffrey Swain argues
It

that Tito had been committed to establishing a popular front "from below",
i.e. under communist control'. The co-ordinating body for communist parties,

the Comintern, was controlled by the Yugoslavs, who kept in radio contact
with resistance groups across Europe. It was Tito who urged communists in
the West and Balkans to follow the route of revolution, thus distorting western
perceptions of Stalin's foreign policy.^
Ralph Miliband and Marcel Liebman suggest that at the core of the Cold
War was 'the determination of the Western powers to contain revolutionary
and even reformist movements everywhere'. Closer than 'Cold War' to the
'real nature of the confrontation' is the notion of 'international civil war', and
the first test came in Greece.^
CHAPTER 17

GREECE AND THE

CREATION OF THE
PARA-STATE

In the mid-eighties an MI 6 deputy station officer was expelled from Athens for
his involvement with his CIA counterpart in the illegal burglary of the flat of an
alleged Middle East terrorist. The burglary followed complaints from the British
that the new socialist Greek government was soft on terrorism and was emascul-
ating the Greek Central Intelligence Service (KYP) - regarded on the Left as a
hotbed of political intrigue and subversion. Britain - accused by the Greek Prime
Minister, Andreas Papandreou, of 'providing staunch unquestioning support' of
the United States - had always had difficulty in reconciling itself to the idea of a
left-wing Greek government and had preferred, albeit reluctantly, to back the
authoritarian Right which controlled the Greek para-state.^
Since the Second World War the British had been the most formidable
opponent of the Greek Communist Party (KKE) and were determined that
postwar Greece would be non-communist 'in order to safeguard Britain's
vital lines of communication through the eastern Mediterranean to Suez and

the petroleum of the Middle East'. Regarded by the British as part of their
sphere of influence and almost as a colony, the country 'was to be democratic
in order to serve as a stable ally'. Ideally, this would be achieved by way
of a constitutional monarchy, even though the idea was opposed by every
substantial resistance organisation, all of which were founded as republican
movements whether on the Left or Right. There was still widespread bitter-
ness against King George II, who had supported the pre-war fascist Metaxas
regime by suspending the constitution.^
306 PART FC^UPv THE BALKANS AND RUSSIA

The largest liberation organisation resisting the German occupiers, the

National Liberation Front/National Popular Liberation Army (E AM /EL AS),
had been founded on the initiative of the KKE. The 'popular front' EAM
was composed of the KKE
and two small socialist parties, the Socialist Party
of Greece (SKE) and the Union of Popular Democracy (ELD). A large
proportion of the rank and file were not communist sympathisers but joined
the nationalist movement for patriotic reasons. It was also true that for the
majority of EAM supporters their resistance to the Germans was part of a
general liberation movement which sought Greek independence against any
imperialist threat, including British interference in Greek affairs. Naturally,
this philosophy found little who openly
favour with Winston Churchill,
voiced his loathing of the 'base and treacherous' EAM /EL AS. He could not,
however, ignore ELAS's military wing, which had nearly fifty thousand men
and women under arms. On the Right was the National Democratic Hellenic
League (EDES), headed by General Nicholas Plastiras, with an army of 4,000
guerrillas under the command of Colonel Napolean Zervas.
While it was the responsibility of the Special Operations Executive (SOE)
to direct the resistance, in addition to gathering intelligence, MI6 played a
significant role in promoting the royalist cause. Support came from the Cairo
office of the Inter-Services Liaison Department (ISLD), where a key officer
liaising with the Greek government-in-exile was David Balfour. A brilliant
linguist,he had already undertaken a mission into occupied Greece disguised
as an Orthodox priest. MI6 'effectively threw in its lot with the King's
supporters', who included a group of six high-ranking officers in Athens,
led by Col. Spiliotopoulos, and 'another shadowy royalist organisation' in
Salonika - the 'defenders of northern Greece' - headed by Col. Aryropoulos.^
Such support brought MI6 into conflict with SOE. During the spring of
1943, SOE mission head Brig. Eddie Myers had warned that there would be
a civil war if the King returned without a plebiscite, but Churchill and the
Foreign Office chose to ignore the advice and actually arranged for Myers's
removal. Similarly, MI6 officers such as Balfour and another ISLD operative,
Nigel Clive, who was attached to the SOE mission to EDES in Epirus under
Lt-Col. Tom Barnes, believed that SOE had made 'a mess of it in Greece'.
During the summer, intelligence officer and Oxford art historian Ellis
Waterhouse suggested to the Foreign Office that 'Greece is a brand
which can yet be plucked from the burning, and our post-war influence
in the Eastern Mediterranean may depend very much on our success in
doing so. But to do this we must pursue a somewhat reactionary policy.'
This meant backing EDES and its commander. Col. Zervas, who pledged 'to
support the return of the King, even against the will of the Greek people, if
it was necessary for the interests of Britain'. MI6 officer Maj. Frank MacAskie,

a former journalist and deception specialist from the Middle East 'A-Force',
assured American journalist Cyrus Sulzberger that the King would return.
 GREECE AND THE CREATION OF THE PARA-STATE 307

but until that time Archbishop Damaskinos would act as Regent of Greece.*
It was SOE mission in the moun-
a decision that appalled the chief of the
tains, Christopher 'Monty' Woodhouse, as near civil war broke out between
ELAS and EDES. He could, however, do little, as Zervas's guide, Tom Barnes,
who lacked 'the political sophistication required to operate in the mystifying
world of Greek was working to a different agenda. What Cairo
resistance',
headquarters did not know was that Zervas had 'made a secret bargain with
the Germans during November 1943'. Attached to the Barnes Mission, Nigel
Clive admitted that 'for Zervas, the first priority was E AM /ELAS. This
conditioned his contacts with the Germans.' When the larger ELAS forces
failed to score a quick victory over EDES, Col. Zervas made use of the
German occupation forces to turn his guerrilla
negotiated ceasefire with the
army - backed with newly arrived British arms - against ELAS. After intense
and bitter fighting, he succeeded in repulsing the latter's offensive and an
uneasy truce between ELAS and EDES was installed by Monty Woodhouse
in February 1944. After the war. Brig. Myers admitted that 'if the British
Mission had not gone to Greece, ELAS might well have overcome all oppo-
sition in the mountains. EDES might have been virtually obliterated.'^
The Foreign Office feared that if EDES was annihilated then nothing
would stand in the way of the Communist Party (KKE) imposing a Bolshevist
dictatorship on Greece. The policy, therefore, was to save the right-wing
forces of EDES and build it up as a counterweight to E AM /ELAS. In a few
cases, British intelligence officers helped EDES-linked Security Battalions, the
armed anti-communist police force operating under the joint orders of the
Germans and the quisling Greek government in Athens, with funding. During
the spring of 1944, Nigel Clive reported from EDES headquarters to Cairo
that Barnes was trying 'to create a Zervas legend'. He added that 'it was
plain to everyone in occupied Greece, and especially to both E AM /ELAS
and to EDES, that the Germans would soon be on their way home'. What
would happen after the occupation was already the subject of intense debate.^
In July, senior Foreign Office official Piers Dixon recorded in his diary
his success in converting Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden to the notion that
'at all costs Greece must not become Communist'. The intention was to root

out and destroy the communists: 'The plunge was taken to support [George]
Papandreou [head of the provisional government in Cairo] and extirpate
EAM.' A month later, Eden's personal emissary to the guerrillas, David
Wallace, reported to the British ambassador to the Greek government-in-exile.
Rex Leeper: 'We are committed to not wishing at any cost to see EAM
establish themselves. Now that we have taken this open political stand against
them, it must follow that militarily also we should be wise to attach
. . .

increased importance to Zervas and the opportunities his position offers for
development . Wallace admitted that Zervas was 'a British creation
.
.' we . . .

are responsible for his continued existence He has been a completely loyal
. . .
 .

308 PART FOUR: THE BALKANS AND RUSSIA

ally and will still do exactly what we tell him.' He concluded that 'unless
Allied troops arrive in the country to take over the main centres from the
Germans, or we reinforce Zervas to a point where he can take offensive action
to protect the population in territory at present controlled by ELAS, there
will be a most bloody slaughter ending in a Communist dictatorship . .

Athens was of course the key to the situation / Nigel Clive reported to
. .

MI6's Political Section that 'genuine collaboration [by EAM with a Greek
go\'ernment] never was and never can be within the furthest bounds of
possibility', and that an armed clash between EAM /ELAS and the Right
was 'inevitable'/
Churchill wanted to cut off supplies and contact with EAM /ELAS, and
thereby destroy the communists. Arriving in London for consultations. Col.
Woodhouse argued that such action would be a tactical mistake and would
simply strengthen the hold of the Greek Communist Party (KKE): 'Conse-
quently a wiser strategy would be for Papandreou to continue to parley with
the communists, no matter how futile the talks might be, in hope of preserving
the status quo until British troops could enter Greece the moment the
Germans departed. The presence of British armed forces would then provide
the Greeks with a measure of stability, permitting the moderates to disen-
tangle themselves from their alliance with the KKE.' Eden and a pessimistic
Churchill reluctantly accepted Woodhouse's deception plan after seeing a
Joint Planning Staff report which concluded that EAM might attempt a coup
within a fortnight of the arrival of British forces. Communist control would
be weak and it would probably collapse with the continued presence of the
British.^

The PM's mood was lightened by his private talks in Moscow with Stalin
on 9 October. During the meeting, Churchill scrawled out the percentages
formula which foresaw that in Romania the Russians would have 90 per cent
authority, the other Allies 10 per cent; in Bulgaria the Russians would have
75 per cent with the other 25 per cent going to the Allies; in Hungary and
Yugoslavia the split would be fifty-fifty. In exchange, Britain would retain a
90 per cent share in Greece and the Russians only 10 per cent. Churchill,
however, remained deeply suspicious of Soviet intentions and, it would seem,
of American motives. American Office of Strategic Services (OSS) officers
informed Washington that, to the disgust of Yugoslav militants who favoured
a more revolutionary approach, the Soviet mission under Col. Gregori Popov
had told EAM 'to agree to any demands of the National Government'. Civil
war was not inevitable but British intransigence probably helped to ensure
that it did take place.^
On 18 October 1944, the Germans finally left Athens, but it was not until

five days later that the first British troops entered the city, during which
time ELAS guerrillas took up positions. SOE and later MI6 officer Hugh
Seton-Watson noted that 'had the Communists wished to seize power in
 GREECE AND THE CREATION OF THE PARA-STATE 309

Athens at this time they could easily have done so. They chose otherwise.'

Nigel Clive decided that 'this opportunity . . . was not taken for a mixture
of reasons: the presence of Communists in Papandreou's government of
National Unity; divided opinion in the KKE leadership; uncertainty about
the size of the oncoming British forces; and a reluctance to engage in armed
confrontation with the police and Security Battalions'. He did not consider
the possibility that EAM was simply complying with Soviet instructions to
co-operate with the provisional government. The
was not if, but when,
issue
the clash would occur,' Clive went on. Tt was generally accepted that EAM/
ELAS would make a bid for power and that [the British commander] Scobie
would soon have a battle on his hands in which British troops would be
involved.' On 11 November, Churchill advised Eden: T fully expect a clash
with EAM and we must not shrink from it, provided the ground is well
chosen.' Three days later, British Ambassador Rex Leeper received an MI6
report which warned that the KKE had made tentative plans for a coup
d'etat if its demands were not met. Soon after, Scobie's political adviser,
Harold Caccia, appointed Clive as a liaison officer to the Greek government.
He told Clive that the plethora of reports that had reached him confirmed
the MI6 assessment.
One reason for the failure of EAM /ELAS to act was that the leadership
was correctly and deeply concerned about the actions of the Right, which
was waiting in the wings for its moment to strike. During November 1944,
Greece's pre-war fascist leadership was conspiring to regroup behind British
power. One former minister under Metaxas, Constantine Maniadakis,
predicted that the British would help Greece 'create a "Right" political life
with the King at the head'. Therefore 'we must all return as soon as possible
and organise ourselves, because the future belongs to us'. They were helped,
as the leader of the socialist SKE, Stratis, acknowledged, by EAM /ELAS
aggressiveness, which was proving counterproductive: 'The danger of a
Rightist coup becomes greater by the very excesses of EAM.'^^
The head of the Greek National Unity government, George Papandreou,
thought that the prospect of a leftist coup d'etat was remote but believed
that the essential prerequisite for government success was the demobilisation
of ELAS. This was to be accompanied by the parallel demobilisation of the
feared Mountain Brigades. Hugh Seton- Watson thought that 'it is only a mild
exaggeration to describe' the Rimini Brigade and the Sacred Squadron 'as a
private army of the Greek Right'. Rex Leeper, who was now acting as the
real power in the land, opposed Papandreou's manoeuvres and pressurised
the Prime Minister to abandon the scheme. At the same time the mobilisation
of the National Guard, the majority of whose commanders had participated
as collaborators in the hated Security Battalions, began. This naturally
disturbed the Left. Papandreou tried demobilisation again but this time he
used the negotiations to try to drive a wedge between the socalist moderates
310 TART FOUR: THE BALKANS AND RUSSIA

and the communists in EAM/ELAS. His intrigues, however, went awry,

alienating the moderate Left which chose, in the interests of unity, to side
with the communists.^"
The demobilisation issue and the fear of the return of the King polarised
sides and began pushing events to an inevitable climax. When, on 3
December, E AM supporters converged on the centre of Athens, outnumbered
police 'panicked' and opened fire, killing ten people and wounding over
sixty. The shooting in Syntagma Square was not the only violence. In the

morning, members of the Right's clandestine 'X' organisation under Col.

Grivas had attacked ELAS units, which, in turn, laid siege to police stations
during the afternoon. Even though EAM fury had been directed at the police
and not at the British, the excuse required for military intervention was
provided, and British troops subsequently intervened to protect X members.
From London, on the 5th, Churchill directed General Scobie 'to act as if
you were in a conquered city where a local rebellion was in progress We . . .

have to hold and dominate Athens'. Most accounts miss out the next sentence,
which read: 'It would be a great thing for you to succeed in this without
bloodshed if possible, but also with
bloodshed if necessary.' Foreign Office
official PiersDixon advised that there would be a 'lasting stain' if British
troops clashed with young Greeks who were the tools of 'Communist-trained
Commissars'. The Prime Minister, however, was 'in a bloodthirsty mood and
did not take kindly to suggestions that we should avoid bloodshed if possible
- though I couldn't agree more that force must be used if required'. In his
history of the Cold War, Victor Rothwell concludes that

on the whole, it was probably the British, especially following

a visit to Athens by [British minister Harold] Macmillan and
Field Marshal Alexander early in December, who took the
initiative in provoking the clashes between British troops and

ELAS which then broke out and which caused a furore against
the British government The use of force was certainly
. . .

favoured, and indeed insisted upon, by Churchill.

Ronald Scobie proved to be a poor commander, so control of ground oper-

ations against the guerrillas was handed to General 'Ginger' Hawkesworth,
whose plan was to drive ELAS out of Athens sector by sector. To each
British battalion was attached a company of the National Guard, which was
increasingly made up of X and former Security Battalions personnel. Their
task was to mop up, searching houses for hidden weapons and for any ELAS
fighters who had been infiltrated into the city. Aimed at flooding Athens
with battle-hardened troops, Hawkesworth's tactics proved to be too much
for ELAS, which soon lost the battle of Athens, thus suffering a major defeat.
There had been a miscalculation on the past of the KKE and EAM, which
badly underestimated the willingness of the British, to whom considerable
 GREECE AND THE CREATION OF THE PARA-STATE 311

goodwill was still displayed, to intervene militarily. During December, EAM

found it more important to use their main forces against EDES rather than
against the British. EDES had earlier made clear that it regarded EAM/
ELAS as the main enemy and the Germans as the lesser evil. As Heinz
Richter concludes, the December events proved to be 'on the one hand an
armed struggle between ELAS and the British, and on the other a civil war
between the Greek Right and the Greek Left'. The KKE also overestimated
the support it would receive from the Soviet Union. During the revolt, British
journalist Kenneth Mathews reported that the Soviet mission head. Col.
Popov, remained the Very image of non-intervention'.^^
During Christmas 1944, Churchill and Eden visited Athens to reinforce
Britain's foothold in Greece. Archbishop Damaskinos of Athens, who
impressed Churchill with his talk of the 'dark sinister hand behind EAM',
was appointed Regent until a plebiscite on the King's return could be held.
Churchill still saw the King as the guarantor of British interests. Having
sheltered MI6 officer Frank MacAskie during the occupation, Damaskinos
had been in touch with the Greek Prime Minister of the government-in-exile
on the possibility of forming an anti-communist counter-bloc to EAM /ELAS.
He quickly developed a working relationship with Ambassador Leeper in
Athens, where British officials expressed the hope that the 'percentages'
agreement with Stalin on non-intervention had given 'the majority' - i.e. the
anti-communists - enough time to arm themselves.
There can be little doubt that Churchill fought for the restoration of the King
without reserve. Robert Frazier believes that 'he never understood the amount
of opposition to the King within Greece, or the strength of the EAM. He was
confident that the sight of the Union Jack and a few armoured cars would enable
the Greek government Athens without incident.' His last-
to install itself in
minute decision King from returning with the troops was based
to restrain the
on 'the possible effect on public opinion of a restoration "on the point of British
bayonets", rather than on the possibility of civil war'.^^
While the fighting continued and the reinforced British forces gradually
gained the advantage - by mid-December seventy-five thousand troops were
stationed in Greece - EAM began negotiating a truce. On 5 January 1945,
EAM /ELAS commenced a withdrawal from Athens. On the 8th, Churchill
told the House of Commons that there had been a 'fairly well-organised plot
or plan by which ELAS should march down upon Athens and seize it by
armed force'. Two days later, a truce was agreed, and on the 12th, at the
seaside resort of Varkiza, a formal agreement was signed between EAM and
the Greek government. This called for a plebiscite to be followed by the
election of a constituent assembly, the demobilisation of the ELAS forces and
an amnesty for political crimes.
Even as this was being signed. Rex Leeper was writing that 'there can
be no understanding between the Greek Government and the hard core of
312 PART FOUR: THE BALKANS AND RUSSIA

irreconcilable communism that is the left of EAM. . . it is a struggle to the

death'. Leeper put the blame on the Soviet Union. The reality, historian
and specialist on Greece Professor John O. latrides has explained, was very
different: 'Greece's traditional political parties had essentially disappeared,
their popular base destroyed by the enforced paralysis of the Metaxas
dictatorship enemy occupation. What had survived was a
and the years of
whose legitimacy as a governing class was
coterie of familiar political figures
apparent only to themselves' and whose 'only common link was their fear
of the growing mass populist movement activated by EAM, which now
appeared to threaten to sweep all of them into the "dustbin of history'".
Academic Peter Weiler has suggested that the 'Cold War struggle' in Greece
was not created by the Soviet Union but began at a much earlier date as the
result of internal conflicts. 'Because of the effects of the Second World War,
communist and nationalist forces were now in a stronger position than they
had been earlier. It was this development, which often had little to do with
'^^
the Soviet Union, that Britain sought to stifle.

Elizabeth Barker, who had served in the Political Warfare Executive(PWE)

during the war, saw at firsthand Soviet control of Romania and Bulgaria.
Somewhat surprisingly, in her 1948 book Truce in the Balkans she wrote that

in many ways, Russian occupation was far less obtrusive and

all-pervading than British occupation ... In Greece, the British
occupation - or the invited presence of British troops - was
far more conspicuous and outwardly irritating . . . The British,

outwardly, appeared far more the conquering and dominating

race than the Russians . . . British intervention and control of
Greek affairs was also outwardly far more striking than Soviet
intervention in Romanian and Bulgarian affairs.

Though technically an independent country, Greece had become, in reality,

a form of British protectorate.From the beginning Leeper had a 'range of
powers and responsibilities more akin to those of a colonial governor than
a head of a normal diplomatic mission'. Leeper 's power was, however, exer-
cised behind the scenes. A number of the more enlightened British officials,
such as Macmillan, had wanted to use this power to penetrate Greek state
machinery in order to instigate the necessary reforms for a democratic system
of government. Their advice, however, was rejected by the deeply reactionary
Churchill, who instructed Leeper not to interfere in the details of internal
Greek politics. He was ordered to follow traditional British policy towards
Greece, which meant that 'Greece should be kept on the right line by British
influence on the King or at the moment on the Regent; whilst at the same
time close contact was maintained with the pro-British section of the Greek
oligarchy: should there be deviations, an intervention at the highest level
 GREECE AND THE CREATION OF THE PARA-STATE 313

would be sufficent to bring Greece back into line/ The result was that 'the
whole area of public administration was not even touched'. The British did
organise police and gendarmerie training missions, but they only arrived
when Greek security forces 'had already been almost completely re-built'.
The effect of Churchill's restrictions was to put a stop to any liberalising
initiatives. Observers came to regard the British embassy as 'the bulwark of

conservatism and reaction', which deliberately refused the opportunity to

exert pressure on the Greeks for the good.^^
Rex Leeper was partially reliant on the intelligence delivered to him by
the local MI6 head of station, Nigel Clive, who had access to MI6 officers
attached to 'British Troops Greece' and the British Military Mission. Their
primary task was to deliver regular reports on communist activities, focusing
on party organisation, recruitment, sources of funding; activities of leaders
and satellite organisations; infiltration of communists into non-communist
groups; relations with foreign communists; activities in the labour unions
and any anti-British activity. While MI6 officers and British Liaison Officers
often worked alongside the security forces, which were thoroughly controlled
by the Right, there is little evidence that they penetrated these organisations
for intelligence-gathering in the same manner as they did the communist
groups. MI6 remained resolutely anti-communist.
From the beginning, the British came under pressure from home and
international opinion which could see only an imperialist power siding with
the most reactionary elements in Greek politics. Particularly sensitive to such
criticism, Leeper, who had helped run the PWE during the war, created in
Athens an offshoot of the PWE, the Anglo-Greek Information Service (AIS),
whose chief was a Balkans specialist. Col. Kenneth Johnstone. Another lead-
ing AIS member, Geoffrey Chandler, had served with SOE and PWE in the
Middle East and Greece. In order to counter critical views, the AIS built up
a small coterie of well-briefed and sympathetic journalists. The most impor-
tant was the Times correspondent, Frank MacAskie, who was also on a 'special
assignment' for MI6 and acted as a confidant to other journalists.^'^
In view of Britain's role in organising the Varkiza conference, which had
negotiated an accommodation with EAM, it was, Nigel Clive recalled, 'natu-
ral for the British Embassy to think that the forces of moderation had won

a victory from which the Plastiras Government would be the first beneficiary'.
Plastiras, republican head of the new government, was well aware, however,
that public opinion had swung well to the right. His long experience in Greek
politics had 'taught him that the only way to hold power was to fill the key
positions in the Army and Police with his own trusted followers and to
instruct them that law and order (which might mean turning a blind eye to
right-wing excesses) should take priority over strict observance of the Varkiza
Agreement'. It became apparent, however, that Plastiras's virtues 'did not
include political subtlety and sophistication'.
314 PART FeU)R: THE BALKANS AND RUSSIA

In trying to remedy royalist predominance in the Greek Army, Plastiras

came up against the opposition of the 'non-political' British Military Mission,
which was reorganising the military. Hugh Seton-Watson realised that the
Mission's official non-interventionist stance, though 'theoretically admirable',
meant in practice that the Right was not restrained and retained its military
influence: 'a non-political Greek officer is a very rare species'. The opposition
Populists used the opportunity to defy the Varkiza Agreement and, as Clive
was well aware through his contacts, 'made no secret of excusing rampant
right-wing terrorism by the National Guard through much of the countryside
where . past membership of ELAS was judged to be a crime'. The British
. .

embassy knew of the right-wing penetration of the army and National Guard
by X and the conspiratorial Sacred Bond of Greek Officers (IDEA), a secret
organisation of monarchist and conservative officers which took shape during
the winter of 1944/5. Sadjy, even though Leeper saw the dangers of the
extremists' growing influence, all the embassy was prepared to do was 'to
make a forlorn request on the eve of the plebiscite for restraint'.
When the Foreign Office suggested to Leeper that one way to curb right-
wing extremists was to induce the Greek government to take more drastic
action against former collaborators, Churchill took strong exception to the
instruction and minuted officials that 'the Communists are the main foe'. He
added that there should be 'no question of increasing the severities against
the collaborationists in order to win Communist approval'. Even the
conservative and often reactionary Foreign Office found Churchill's stance
'astonishing', but there was little it could do to change it.^^

The British embassy and MI6 pursued a traditional Foreign Office policy
of trying to outflank the opposition within Greece by isolating the Left and
'building up a strong, moderate and progressive Centre, whose virtues might
not have an immediate appeal to an electorate shaken by war and civil war'.
Leeper believed that a republican Centre could be created and 'brushed aside
the comment that there was a gap - some thought it unbridgeable - between
what should and what could be done in the foreseeable future, when
memories were so vivid of December 1944'. A new party, the Union of
Popular Democracy /Socialist Party of Greece (ELD/SKE), splitting EAM,
was founded and welcomed by the British embassy as the beginnings of a
broad centre republican block. AIS, however, observed that it lacked funds
and direction. Whether it received covert funding from British Intelligence,
which is likely, is unknown. The party was, however, unsuccessful. Political
warfare officer Geoffrey Chandler acknowledged that it was 'a sad but ines-
capable truth that the Centre had no more than a small voice and this fell
largely on deaf ears'. Greek politics were highly idiosyncratic, largely corrupt
and self-serving: 'Politicians had political ambitions - their own accession to
'^^^
power - but not a single economic or social thought.
While it worked to create a viable Centre - a policy that would characterise
 GREECE AND THE CREATION OF THE PARA-STATE 315

all MI6's postwar operations throughout the Empire, Commonwealth and

Northern Ireland - the embassy tried to demonise E AM

/EL AS as a simple
tool of the Kremlin. A visit to Athens by the head of Section IX, Kim Philby,

led to an expansion of MI 6 and Military Intelligence intelligence-gathering

on the communists, and the reporting to London of 'anything which seems
to implicate either Russia, Bulgaria, or Yugoslavia in the present Greek revolt'.
The British ambassador reported to London in January 1945 that while intelli-
gence reports indicated that 'ELAS is receiving munitions, though not finan-
cial assistance from Bulgaria', he had 'absolutely nothing definite re Russia'.

Two months later, despite available American-derived intelligence to the

contrary, the British launched a psychological warfare campaign claiming
that the KKE's policies and funds 'stem from Russian sources, probably
through mediation of Bulgarian and Yugoslav "agents" '.^^
Right-wing Greek politicians needed little persuading of these 'facts'.
Seeing himself as the only person capable of saving the country. General
Plastiras assumed leadership which effectively allowed
of 'national reaction',
the Right to engage in excessive violence in the campaign against the Left.
At the same time, he vigorously fought any intervention by the British to
prevent the establishment of an exclusively right-wing and republican regime.
In the early spring, Leeper and Archbishop Damaskinos realised that Plasti-
ras's regime 'had become an unmitigated disaster' and would have to be

removed.
Despite his support of the Right, General Plastiras did not enjoy a recipro-
cal admiration. The former republican Populists now eagerly embraced the
royalist cause and were increasingly convinced that public opinion was
moving in their direction. On 4 April 1945, when a political scandal began
to break, they withdrew their support from Plastiras. On the following day,
an extreme-right royalist newspaper, Ellinikon Aima (Greek Blood), published
the text of a compromising letter that Plastiras had sent, in June 1941, to
Pierre Metaxas, the Greek ambassador to Vichy France, where he had lived
in exile. It indicated Plastiras's willingness to mediate through Nazi Germany
for an end to the war between Italy and Greece. In addition, an MI6 report
of 1 April 1944 on an attempted exfiltration of General Plastiras was
uncovered, which mentioned further German efforts to recruit the general,
though it appeared that he had rebuffed them. The newspaper disclosure
'shook the Greek political scene to its foundations and gave the pretext for
Plastiras's overthrow'. It was also seen as part of a major Populist offensive
on the part of loyalist right-wing leader Konstantinos Tsaldaris, for the earliest
possible date for a plebiscite on the return of the King.
There was speculation that a copy of the letter had originated with lonnis
Rallis, the former Premier of the last government of the occupation, who had

threatened if convicted of collaboration with the Axis powers to produce

evidence damaging to Plastiras. Rallis had been promoting the penetration
316 PART FOUR: THE BALKANS AND RUSSIA

of the police and gendarmerie by followers of the secret right-wing societies,

and Plastiras,it seems, had tried to stop them. Further details of Rallis's

threats to implicate Plastiras in collaboration were passed on by MI6 to the

embassy in Athens. During the occupation, Rallis had controlled the notorious
anti-communist Security Battalions which at the end of 1944 had been incor-
porated into the controversial Third (Mountain) Brigade for anti-communist
operations. While on trial, Rallis confirmed that he had been in contact with
British Intelligence and that these ties remained unbroken. It was also
revealed that other 'traitor' ministers had been in contact with British secret
organisations. Rumours persisted that the British had pressurised the court
to show clemency to Rallis and acquit others. SOE mission chief Monty
Woodhouse wearily observed that 'in the mood of the time Communism
seemed a worse crime than collaboration; and collaboration, unlike capital
punishment, admitted degrees'.
The American press, which was generally antagonistic to Britain's position
in Greece, viewed Plastiras as a victim of British intrigues in favour of the
royalists. Widespread rumours suggested that the British had leaked the letter

to the newspaper. Heinz Richter suggests that the 'British Secret Service
leaked the letter to Ellinikon Aima' and that Plastiras's fall 'was staged by
British Intelligence', though Leeper was unlikely to have been informed.
Interestingly, Rallis did tell the court that 'the British Intelligence Service'
had suggested that he take over as Prime Minister. It was true that SOE
mission member Nigel Clive had renewed contacts with a number of the
younger members of the royalist Populists, including Giorgos Drossos, who
was a leader writer on Ellinikon Aima. More intriguingly, a copy of the letter,
which had been held by the Foreign Office since 1941, was requested on 7
March 1945 by the Second Secretary in the Athens Embassy, Fred Warner.
The Southern Department cautioned Warner that there would be 'very grave
danger' in his using it in any way against Plastiras, since the British had been
involved in bringing the general to power. Warner replied that he simply
required it because he had received reports from the AIS that Rallis was
threatening to disclose its existence.
Although the Foreign Office regarded the affair as 'a troublesome
acknowledged that 'we did want to get rid of Plastiras
business', officials
anyway'. Indeed, his removal proved to be a watershed. 'His fall from power
dashed the hopes of the republican Right to lead the national reaction. Anti-
communism was now synonymous with the cause of the King.'^^
During the spring and early summer, as British troops dispersed through-
out Greece to collect the arms surrendered by ELAS, they were accompanied
by the National Guard, which garrisoned its battalions in every major town.
The 'rabid Royalist elements' within the Guard used the opportunity to
exploit marshal law, and within a matter of weeks imprisoned nearly sixteen
thousand left-wing sympathisers. Leeper told Damaskinos that 'the National
 GREECE AND THE CREATION OF THE PARA-STATE 317

Guard were engaging, in some places, in what could only be described as

terrorism'. Both claimed to be powerless to do anything about it, at least

until a new Gendarmerie was in place, to be organised by Sir Charles Wick-

ham's police mission, which had yet to arrive in Athens. Wickham had served
in the British Expeditionary Force against the Bolsheviks at the end of the
First World War. He acted against the IRA when divisional commander of
the Royal Irish Constabulary, and as Inspector-General of the RUC was
involved in the creation of the 'B' Specials.

The tense political situation had been expected to improve when the
Labour Party won the British general election in July 1945. The AIS reported
to London that the election had lifted the optimism of republicans and the
socialist Left, but this was to be short-lived. Following the policy of Churchill,
Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin proved to be no friend of the Left, and insisted
on elections being conducted as soon as possible, even though royalist terror
was rampant in the countryside. It 'threw the republicans into panic but
delighted the Populists'.^''
During July and August, Monty Woodhouse undertook an extended fact-

finding tour through the Peloponnese, following alarming reports that ELAS
was planning an armed uprising. In fact, in discussions with the British
Mission liaison officers he discovered that there was a systematic campaign
against the Left. Excluding all leftist evidence, Woodhouse found that 'what

remains bad enough', with the prisons continuing 'to fill up daily' and
is

with six thousand people being held of whom more than 90 per cent were
members of EAM. Given the Right's control of the state, Woodhouse noted
that 'an ex-guerrilla was as likely as not to be found in gaol, and an ex-member
of the Security Battalions as likely as not to be found in the uniformed
services'. In reports to Athens, he made the point that 'obviously, this makes
the prospects of the left-wing at the elections hopeless'. Only in towns where
British units were stationed, which were few, did the Left find any semblance
of security. On 24 August, The Times reported that signs of a serious deterio-
were apparent. Right-wing bands were involved in terror-
ration in security
ism, a fact that Woodhouse, a moderate conservative but still an anti-
communist, admitted - 'the blame lay primarily on right-wing forces'. Close
co-operation had been established between the National Guard, the royalists
and the right-wing bandit groups such as X as part of the 'parakatos' - the
clandestine para-state that was increasingly controlling events.
The British Missions did little to counteract the prevailing impression that
the clandestine forces enjoyed British backing in their persecution of the Left.
Woodhouse reported that 'the Right take our approval for granted'. As the
former chief of the Australian Relief Team in Greece, Colonel A. W. Sheppard,
discovered, even when there was clear evidence of abuse and hounding of
the Left, British officials failed to report accurately what was happening.
When he asked the British consul in Salonika, Edward Peck, why, he was
318 PART FOUR: THE BALKANS AND RUSSIA

told: There enough people making propaganda for the Left, why should
are
1.' A number London about right-wing
of British officials did complain to
atrocities but word never came back to curb the excesses. Sheppard under-
stood that there was collaboration between liaison officers and the Right, and
reported that in every British Mission there were members of 'a special
Foreign Office service', i.e. MI6, who took care that the 'right' decisions were
made. Service members 'pursued their own independent policy which was
not even controlled by the British Foreign Minister '.^^
The right-wing extremists were being backed by the secret organisation,
IDEA, which fought for the reintegration of the Security Battalions into the
army as 'good nationalists'. It infiltrated the new divisions, putting into high
positions its own men, who then weeded out liberal elements in the officer
corps. IDEA opposed the process of democratisation within the army, using
the pretext of the danger of communism. A part of the parakatos, IDEA had
supporters in the Greek general staff; these were fanatical anti-communists
who viewed the KKE as a 'fifth column' in league with its northern neigh-
bours whose policies were directed against the territorial integrity of Greece.
Leading members of IDEA included Staff Chief Vendiris, who controlled
general staff policy and had the support of the majority of senior army
officers, and the head of the Security Division, General Liosis. Leeper recog-

nised the problem but was seemingly unable, or unwilling, to do anything

about it. The consent of the British Military Mission, which functioned as a
consultative authority for the Greek War Ministry and general staff, was
required for major appointments, but its veto was not exercised. As a result,
the purge of the army, which was central to the Varkiza Agreement, was
never instigated and was effectively quashed by the head of the Military
Mission, General Rawlins.^^
Geoffrey Chandler was one of those in the AIS who saw the lack of
resolve being reflected in the negative press that was aimed at the British

embassy.

British policy in Greece was continually being attacked from

without and within for its positive actions . . . Such attacks were
misdirected. Our policy was more reprehensible for what it
failed to do rather than for what it did We were therefore
. . .

accused of wholesale interference but did not exercise it . . . We

trained the Gendarmerie, often to see such training prostituted
to the administration of injustice. British inaction was often
interpreted by the right-wing as approval of their acts, at least
as connivance. It inevitably helped the Right and increased the
antagonism of the Left. The irresponsible actions of a few British
individuals helped to give colour to the tale of British partiality.
The responsibility was ours, but malice aforethought was lack-
 GREECE AND THE CREATION OF THE PARA-STATE 319

ing. The pathetic attempt to divorce all advisory functions from

politics was carried to an extreme which nullified the possibility
of making that advice effective.^^

British officials were haunted, suggests John O. latrides, by 'the possibility,

perhaps the certainty, that the victory of the Communist-controlled Left in

Greece would create conditions so favourable to the Soviet Union that Stalin
would be induced to take an active interest in that Balkan country as well'.
When the Greek Regent visited London in September 1945, the British govern-
ment offered to cede, along with Cyprus, the Dodecanese Islands to Greece.
The negotiations foundered, however, when Foreign Office Under-Secretary
of State Hector McNeil received intelligence reports to the effect that 'if a
coup established a Communist government then the bases would be granted
to the Russians'. The political situation in Athens remained in flux and, in
October, Prime Minister Voulgaris was replaced by the liberal Themistocles
Sophoulis.^'^
In mid-November, McNeil, along with Southern Department head
William Hayter and the Labour MP Francis Noel-Baker, visited Athens to
discuss the situation with Leeper and Greek officials. It added to the impres-
sion that the government was little more than a British puppet regime. British
officials. Professor latrides believes,

felt compelled to take decisive action at critical moments to

maintain a semblance of balance while trying to preserve the
image of sovereignty in Greek hands. As a result, early post-
liberation Greek governments were little more than British
creations which needed London's endorsement and continuous
support to survive against domestic opponents, whether of the
militant Right, the Left, or a combination of both.^^

Interpreter for the McNeil delegation was MI6 and Greek specialist
officer
David Balfour, who noted in his report; 'For a few weeks or months the
advent of Sophoulis . . . may keep foreign criticism a little less acrimonious;
arrests may become less indiscriminate, and trials
deportations rarer
juster . The Sophoulis government considered that democratic conditions
.
.'

could only be created by the appointment of more reliable democrats to

commanding positions in the army and civil service. 'Here, like their prede-
cessors,' Hugh Seton-Watson observed, 'they were opposed by their British
advisers, who hoped to create a "non-political" army and administration.'
Indeed, there was stern opposition from the British Missions when Sophoulis
tried to instigate radical changes in the security apparatus. When Foreign
Minister Rendis complained directly to Beviji that the British Missions were
preventing the removal of right-wing extremists from the army and the Gend-
armerie, officials refused to acknowledge that there was a serious problem.
320 PART FOUR: THE BALKANS AND RUSSIA

and shrugged off the accusations as left-wing propaganda. Likewise, General

Rawlins regarded reports of the influence of X and IDEA as exaggerated
because many members had been republicans. The truth was, however, that
- fanatical in their hatred of communism - they had made their peace with
the King. Consequently, 'the conviction grew that the British policy makers
wanted the Populists in power in order to restore the King'.^^
When Sophoulis ordered the closing of X offices throughout the country,
the Right reacted, and on 21 January 1946 X took over in Kalamata and
engaged in widespread terrorism. By the spring, a War Office assessment by
intelligence offshoot MIS of the strength of the X organisation showed that
the Right had built up a respectable military potential. They may have also
been aware that this potential was based on the arms it indirectly received
from the British. Many of the police, who had obtained new arms from the
British Police Mission, passed on their older weapons to X. Col. Grivas worked
in close consultation with Konstantinos Venteres, who, according to the
American embassy, was leader of the 'inner cabaT of the general staff. Grivas
also co-operated with the Populists. Thus X linked all the branches of the
Right', and as the active arm of the parakatos was increasing its control over
large tracts of the country. Leeper did not believe that the violence, which
he thought was exaggerated by the Left, was serious enough to postpone
the elections. His adviser, David Balfour, knew, however, that Sophoulis's
'appeasement' venture had 'as good as failed already by the mere fact that
the majority of Ministers are Populists'.^^
On 18 April 1946, a new Prime Minister, Konstantinos Tsaldaris, was
sworn in with a totally right-wing, primarily Populist (royalist) government.
'It signalled that the Right had taken power for good,' Heinz Richter
concludes. 'So far excesses had been mainly the work of the parakatos, which
was outside the government's control. The new policy was aggressively anti-
communist and the parakatos became a part of the government's repressive
machinery.' Legislation reinstated the notorious pre-war Security Committees
and the Gendarmerie was purged of leftist elements, transforming it into a
weapon of the Right against the Left.^^
The leader of the extreme right of the Populist Party was Petros Mavro-
michalis. Minister of Defence and later Minister of the Interior (1947-8), who
was described by US Intelligence as a former Nazi collaborator. According
to British secret sources, he was 'actively involved in financing right-wing
bands and had managed to persuade Crown Prince Paul, the King's brother,
to contribute funds to the cause'. By the autumn, British Intelligence estimated
that the official security forces, in which IDEA played a central role, had
distributed fifteen thousand arms to the irregular rightist bands. Nigel Clive
reveals that the British embassy, which considered him a 'second Zervas,
only worse', knew Mavromichalis had a hand in the activities of royalist
that
terrorists in the Peloponnese. In June, the Defence Minister chose one of the
 GREECE AND THE CREATION OF THE PARA-STATE 321

founders of IDEA to draw up a roster of officers eligible for promotion to the

army's High Command. Without any sign of difficulty - British Intelligence
reported that a quarter of the Greek National Army (GNA) was considered
unreliable - the consent of the relevant British Missions was secured to purge
liberal elements within the GNA and Gendarmerie and appoint in their place
strongly politicised generals with ties to IDEA.^^
The British had a well-deserved reputation for having the best intelligence
on all groups in Greece, and most American diplomats and intelligence officers
in their early days in Greece deferred to their more seasoned British colleagues
and looked to them for leadership. By 1946, the Americans were more confident
of their own abilities and were beginning to pursue an independent line. The
Greek section of the OSS had been absorbed into the Central Intelligence Group
under cover of the Information Centre of the US embassy. They were super-
vised by the Greek-American 'special attache', Thomas Karamessines, who
maintained a 'working liaison with all Greek and British security offices'. In
commenting on an intelligence report prepared by Karamessines on the
takeover by the Right and their terrorist campaign against the communists,
American Ambassador MacVeigh telegraphed Washington that

under the guise of royalism, this program actually approximates

fascism at a time when, if anything has been proven by events,
it is that fascism has no place in the modern world. By their
policy of continually enlarging their definition of Communism
to include all who do not support the return of the King, the
extremists of the Mavromichalis type now conducting the
government's crusade against Communism are risking the
creation here, by confirming the alliance of large numbers of
democrats with the extreme left, of the same sort of ideological
civil war which has occurred in Spain.

MacVeigh's warnings went unheeded. The Right launched an aggressive

campaign against the which the British
Left with a series of large-scale arrests
consul in Thessaloniki, Edward would provoke an 'explosion'.
Peck, feared
Alleged communist sympathisers were deported to concentration camps on
isolated islands, where there was no shelter, a shortage of drinking water,
poor food and no sanitary arrangements. The power of the Right and the
failure to take measures to restore the economy led to a 'Third Round' of the
civil war, which began in the summer of 1946.'*"

According to communist sources, it seems that the left-wing guerrillas

operated independently of the KKE during the winter of 1945/6 and that it

was only in mid-February that the Party decided to organise them under a
central command. Even when the government's authority collapsed in north-
ern Greece, and a 'violent reaction' nearly heralded a full-scale war, the KKE,
according to British Intelligence reports of late June, was 'still unsure whether
322 PART FOUR: THE BALKANS AND RUSSIA

to commit itself to such a conflagration'. MI6 indicated to Hector McNeil in

London that the insurrection was essentially a tactic, and that the top KKE
leadership hoped that political negotiation would bring them into a Greek
cabinet. It was a forlorn hope.^'
The fact was that the chances of a negotiated solution were becoming
increasingly remote - even if the British had wanted to find one. MI6 officer
Nigel Clive blamed the rapidly deteriorating political situation and the para-
dox that 'despite this embarrassingly evident British presence, the Embassy
was not in control of Greek affairs'. AIS's Geoffrey Chandler did not see the
problem in quite the same way. He noted that 'the reality of Communist
banciitry had long been recognised and condemned, but not its counterpart'
(the term guerrilla had been dropped by the psychological warfare warriors
in favour of the more pejorative 'bandit'). British official representatives
remained, he believed, 'too gentlemanly, too unworldly perhaps, to recognise
the harsh, uncomfortable facts of discrimination and partiality which were
practised on the government side and into which the name of Britain was
inevitably dragged'. He rejected the official view that

British influence - even if brought to bear - would have been

too late The analysis had never been correct and policy had
. . .

therefore been lacking. It was clear that armed rebellion by KKE

would have been certain under any circumstances; that rebellion

should become civil war had never been necessary. By seeing
only the possibility of the one and failing to see the germs of
the other we had lost our chance of influencing events and
shared the responsibility for tragedy.^^

The Greek Civil War, Heinz Richter concludes,

was by no means the result of a conspiracy, either from the Left

or from the Right. The thesis that a democratic Greece became
the victim of sinister communist aggression devilishly premedi-
tated in Moscow is a survival of Cold War propaganda: Greece
in 1945/46 was far from being a democratic state and Moscow
was against civil war - Greece, after all, belonged to the British
sphere of interest and Stalin had written off his Greek comrades
as had been proven by his behaviour in December 1944. Simi-
larly, there was no masterly right-wing conspiracy against the

liberties of the people which was in its turn directed by the

sinister forces of capitalism from abroad, as the Greek commu-

nists have asserted. The central motives on this side of the fence
were revenge and anti-communism on the part of the Greek
Right and an intention to restore pre-war domination and to
contain communism on the part of the British.^^^
 GREECE AND THE CREATION OF THE PARA-STATE 323

American embassy attitudes, which had been disapproving of 'the regime

imposed by British bayonets', underwent a mysterious and dramatic change
during the early autumn of 1946. In a reversal of his previous strongly held
views, which had been backed by well-informed intelligence, MacVeigh came
out in support of the British embassy and cabled the State Department that
the KKE was secretly controlled by Moscow and that the Soviet government
must be 'assigned responsibility for continued strife'. According to Foreign
Office sources, MacVeigh became more understanding of the British position
following treatment of his ailing wife by British Army doctors who had
'practically saved her life'. MacVeigh considered Rex Leeper 'suspiciously

Jewish' but appears to have had a good relationship with his successor.
Sir Clifford Norton. Bevin had yet to receive any evidence of direct Soviet
involvement - an M
16 officer had claimed to have seen crates of Soviet arms
being shipped south from Bulgaria - but Norton advised the Foreign Office
that the Soviets were attempting to gain control of Greece, thereby outflanking
'Turkey's defences and the whole British position in the Middle East'. The
principal villain to the British, however, was Tito, who was known to be
nurturing dreams of territorial expansion into northern Greece.^^
The plebiscite on the return of the King on 1 September 1946 took place
in an atmosphere of considerable violence, intimidation and corruption,
though this was not enough to invalidate what turned out to be a decisive
vote, which gave the King 69 per cent of those cast. It also helped increase
the power of the former head of EDES and now the National Party, Napoleon
Zervas, who became de facto 'leader of the intransigent Right, with which',
Nigel Clive suggests, 'no one in the British Embassy had any sympathy'.
Thomas Karamessines subsequently reported on plans by the Greek general
staff 'to neutralise the KKE completely and effectively, even if it be necessary

to declare the party illegal'.'*^

In January 1947, Prime Minister Tsaldaris resigned but was appointed

Minister for Foreign Affairs in a coalition government that excluded the
liberals and the Left. Leeper cabled London that 'the Right is the only guaran-
tee of a pro-British foreign policy in Greece . . . But the real problem ... is

not only that their leaders are very second-rate . . . but also that they are
controlled by forces outside their party.' The British wanted to remove the
Minister of Public Order, General Zervas, principally because his anti-
communism The Americans disliked the Minister's 'dictatorial
'lacks finesse'.
and fascist and the backing he received from 'the British-
tendencies'
organised Greek Gendarmerie force, which still includes many officers and
men who did police duty for the Germans during the occupation The . .
.'

New Statesman noted in February that 'after one and a half year's work by
the British Military and Police Missions Greece remains the one country
. . .

in Europe, outside Spain, whose Army contains in positions in authority a

greater number of ex pro-Nazis and collaborators than those identified with
324 PART FOUR: THE BALKANS AND RUSSIA

the Resistance'. The Civil War continued but the chiefs of staff optimistically
reported that 'the back of the bandit opposition could be broken in a period
of between two and three months'.^^

Prompted by Bevin's initiative during the previous month to withdraw troops

from Greece owing to Britian's precarious economic condition. President
Truman's speech to a joint session of Congress on 12 March 1947 revealed
that the Greek government had asked for American assistance. Agreeing to
the request, the President thus introduced the 'Truman Doctrine' which
w^ould enable successive American policy-makers to intervene on behalf of
'free peoples resisting armed minorities'. The Americans had 'great advan-
tages' over their predecessors, recalled Monty Woodhouse. 'They came fresh
to the job, without the staleness and disillusionment which characterised the
British.' Yet the Greeks 'also found them harder to deal with than the British;
more inflexible, less adaptable . . . more inclined to impose American methods
regardless of national characteristics'.^^
In September, a meeting of British and American intelligence officials
agreed on 'the ineptness of Greek propaganda' and suggested a concerted
campaign 'to arouse the people within Greece' to 'break guerrilla morale'. A
co-ordinated political warfare programme was initiated which included the
construction of a US-backed radio station in Salonika to cover the Balkans.
Despite the chiefs of staff's assessment, the new round of the civil war did
not go well for the Greek government, and guerrilla tactics had the army
'tottering', with the 'Democratic Army' holding four-fifths of Greece. It was
in these circumstances that, in September, MI6's David Balfour prepared a
'possible compromise policy' to end the conflict. The proposal included grant-
ing a truce, an amnesty, dissolution of parliament, admission of KKE/EAM
into a new government, complete disarmament and disbandment of the
Democratic Army, acceptance by KKE/EAM of the King and of the British
and American Missions, revocation of oppressive measures and new elections
with proportional representation. Balfour left out 'an all-important factor: the

policy of Moscow', but acknowledged that 'by coming to an arrangement

with the leaders of the KKE, a Greek Government would in fact be making,
to some agreement with the larger forces supporting the KKE'.
extent, a tacit
Inevitably, the Foreign Office rejected Balfour's proposals, partly because it
regarded Soviet policy as 'the determining factor in the conflict'.
The determining factor in the government's response was increasingly
the attitude of the American embassy. US financial and military aid to the
Greek government had reached, by the end of 1947, 'sufficient proportions
to undermine what remained of British influence'. The American embassy in
London was instructed by the State Department in December that while it
desired the 'closest possible collaboration' with Britain over Greece, it would
be on the basis of the US's 'dominant role' which would include the ability
 GREECE AND THE CREATION OF THE PARA-STATE 325

to deliver advice to the Greek government 'independently of Britain'. The

chiefs of the respective military missions reached agreement on collaboration
which left the British in charge of organisation and training while the Ameri-
cans oversaw operations. In practice the two overlapped and there developed
a 'special relationship', as there was in the intelligence field, which minimised
potential 'rifts'. While there was a general agreement on sharing intelligence
and secret material, officials from both sides regarded the Greeks as 'infested
with communists', and so a security codeword, 'Henley', was used on papers
'not to be shown to the Greeks'. Much to the regret of the British, however,
the Americans continued to gain hegemony in Greek affairs, which caused
a degree of friction. At the end of the year, Bevin even contemplated sending
additional British troops to Greece - which indicated that finance was not
the overriding concern in British policy - with the aim of balancing the
influence of the Americans.^^
A CIA study of 9 February 1948 on the 'Possible Consequences of Commu-
nist Control in the Absence of US Counteraction' treated the issue of Soviet
influence in Greece as a known fact. The British Foreign Office, too, could
only see the Kremlin as the main backer of the rebellion. The Foreign Office's
Robin Hankey commented: 'I feel that the Russians are really our enemies

over Greece . Without active Soviet involvement and direction there would
. .

be no civil war.' The US State Department Office of Intelligence Research

report of 27 April followed the same line. 'It is reasonable to assume that all

action in support of [communist guerrilla leader] Markos takes place with

priorknowledge and approval of Moscow and with the participation of Soviet
co-ordinators on the spot.' Moreover, 'the immediate aim of Soviet policy
toward Greece is to prevent the stabilisation of the Greek economy by keeping
the country in a constant state of turmoil which it hopes will frustrate
. . .

the American aid programme and lead eventually to a situation in which the
Communists can take over in Greece'.
MI6 officers agreed with the assessment, even if the available intelligence
was revealing a slightly different story. Monty Woodhouse concluded in his
comprehensive study of the civil war that 'two things are certain, however;

that the rebellion could nothave continued without some foreign support;
and that the KKE was disappointed with its scale'. It was known that Yugo-
slavia, Bulgaria and Albania had helped the guerrillas, but US intelligence
reports in May showed that 'Markos was not getting as much support as he
desired from the Soviet satellites and that present indications were that
general Kremlin policy was not to push for a Communist victory'. In July,
British Intelligence - unaware of changing Comintern policy towards Greece
- reported that 'Bulgaria is increasingly unco-operative towards the andartes
[guerrillas]'. Other reports indicated that the satellites had withdrawn support

from Markos.^^
The Americans were increasingly impressed with the role of the National
326 PART FOUR: THE BALKANS AND RUSSIA

Defence Corps (Tagmata Ethnofylackha Amynhs-TEA) which had been estab-

community in response to the Prime Minis-
lished as a militia to protect the civil
ter's pledge to 'exterminate' the guerrillas.TEA was later described by US
counter-insurgency specialists as a model of 'counter-organisation' and control
of the population, and counter-guerrilla action. This was partly because it
featured a high degree of political indoctrination which was 'superimposed on
a political-policing role of intelligence, vigilance and repression'. The counter-
guerrilla campaign incorporated aspects of British colonial doctrine, including
the clearance of the population from particular areas to create a 'no-man's land'.
It was regarded as a near-ideal example of effective counter-revolutionary strat-
egy, whose development was a 'paramount requisite of the Cold War'.^^

Despite the new security measures and the fierce government response,
during the months of 1948 morale in Greece reached its lowest
last three

point, and both and American Military Intelligence concluded in Janu-

British
ary 1949 that the military position had deteriorated in the previous twelve
months. Yet within the space of months the situation had changed irrevo-
cably, and the Greek National Army (GNA) became increasingly strong. The
final sweeps by the GNA began in the Peloponnese in December, taking

advantage of the winter weather to root out the guerrillas, with the bulk
being captured or killed by February 1949. A prime reason for this success
was the reorganisation of the intelligence-gathering capability. Woodhouse
noted, 'both on the ground and in the air,American support was becoming
increasingly active, and the theoretical line between advice, intelligence and

combat was a narrow one'. The army was better disciplined, there was an
improved army intelligence service, and British and American officers were
no longer just involved in the supply of weapons and training but were also
planning and conducting operations.
To improve Greek intelligence work, Thomas Karamessines, head of the
US CIG Station, organised his Greek counterparts into KYP, the Greek
Central Intelligence Agency. It would develop into an integral part of the
shadow Service, engaging in widespread political surveillance against all
who might be associated with the Left. In order to do so, and to bypass regular
laws, it was funded directly by the CIA. In the spring of 1949, Karamessines
established the first CIA station, which grew into one of the biggest in Europe.
The most important element in battling the guerrillas proved to be the police,
whose special role was to zealously collect and file intelligence on left-wingers
in the cities and larger towns. Between early 1947 and mid-1948 the police
had 'largely destroyed the mass organisation of the KKE in the main cities',
and in Athens they had 'caught nearly all important cadres' by April 1949.
These results were achieved 'partly by skilful detective work, which earned
the admiration of the police mission, and partly by intensive surveillance
 GREECE AND THE CREATION OF THE PARA-STATE 327

and intimidation of the population'. By August the control of the villages by

the Gendarmerie was 'complete'.
The sudden collapse of the guerrilla-based Democratic Army was also
undoubtedly helped by the wish of the Cominform countries to seek an
accommodation with the Greeks at the expense of the Yugoslavs. Pressed
hard by the British and Americans, Tito finally fell into line in late June 1949.
The communists offered a negotiated settlement but Britain and the United
States had no intention of pursuing it. In October the war was finally aban-
doned by the KKE leaders, who acknowledged their military failure.
Since December 1944 almost 158,000 people had been killed, of whom
just over a half were guerrillas and their sympathisers, the rest being Greek
Army and Gendarmerie casualties, or civilians. On 31 October 1949, as the
British government finally began removing its troops from Greece, the
Foreign Office stated publicly that economic imperatives - the stated reason
for Bevin's invitation to the Americans and the impetus for the Truman
Doctrine - had never been a factor in the retention of these troops, since the
cost of maintaining them in Greece had always been very low."^^
Despite the success, the Right became increasingly frustrated at the delay
in silencing the communists. Voices called for a totalitarian solution, while
IDEA officers talked 'unreservedly about "traitors in the rear", about the
need to "clear up and impose a new regime'. They demanded
the situation"
supposed salvation of the endangered country'. As Monty
a 'Directory for the
Woodhouse wearily noted: 'It wasn't required but they got their wish twenty
'^^
years later with the generals.
CHAPTER 18

YUGOSLAVIA: THE
GOLDEN PRIEST,
STOLEN TREASURE
AND THE CRUSADERS
In early July 1997, the go-ahead was given for the implementation of the
NATO-sanctioned Operation TANGO, which involved the attempted
capture of two Serbs, indicted by the war crimes tribunal in The Hague of
'ethnic cleansing' during the war in Bosnia, five years previously. Simo
Drljaca, the police chief of Prijedor, had helped to set up Omarska and the
other notorious 'detention' camps of north-western Bosnia, where Muslims
were tortured and killed. A colleague, Dr Milan Kovacevic, a professional
anaesthetist and former mayor of Prijedor, was allegedly in day-to-day
management of the Omarska camp.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair gave a formal instruction to the Joint
Intelligence Committee (JIC) that Drljaca and Kovacevic should be arrested
and flown to The Hague for trial. In turn the JIC tasked the Chief of MI 6,
David Spedding, to take control of the operation. Spedding handed it over
to the 'General Support Branch', which handles 'dirty' operations and uses
the SAS's Counter-Revolutionary Warfare (CRW) wing as its executive arm.
One of the SAS's NATO special force functions is kidnapping. Members of
the undercover surveillance 14th Intelligence Company tracked the targets
in Bosnia until the SAS moved in for a 'fast-ball' operation - hitting the
targets when they least expected it.

A joint team of the CRW wing and SAS D Squadron were flown to

Bosnia with operational control in the hands of a British liaison team at the
Headquarters Multi-National Division (South). Satellite links were run direct
 YUGOSLAVIA: THE GOLDEN PRIEST, STOLEN TREASURE AND THE CRUSADERS 329

to theSAS's 'Kremlin' war room in London and MI6's command-and-control

room in the basement of its Vauxhall Bridge headquarters. Landed at their
target points by American Black Hawk helicopters, the SAS snatch squad
found their quarry. The operation was judged a huge success, even though
one target was killed in the attempt. When challenged, Drljaca pulled out a
pistol and shot one soldier in the leg before being gunned down in a hail of
bullets; in contrast, at Prijedor hospital,Dr Kovacevic surrendered peacefully.^
The tragedy that was Yugoslavia is illustrated by the fact that Kovacevic
had himself been born in a concentration camp. His mother was held during
the Second World War in Jasenovac, a camp established by the Croatian
fascist regime for the imprisonment, torture and killing of Serbs, Jews, gypsies

and dissidents. In 1997 MI6 was in the honourable position of bringing war
criminals to justice; in contrast, fifty years earlier it had recruited Serb, Croat
and Slovene war criminals, collaborators and quislings for its intelligence-
gathering operations in Tito's Yugoslavia.

When in 1941 the Germany and Italian armies entered the already fragmented
Yugoslavia, 'the fragile kingdom' fell apart in a defeat that was 'as much
political as military'. The main victors and beneficiaries when the Germans
and Italians divided the country into zones of influence were the fanatical
nationalist Slovenes and Croats, who seized the opportunity to impose their
extremist creed on the population at the expense of the hated Serbs.
A Croat Ustashi (roughly translated as 'to awaken') unit entered Zagreb
with the German Army on 10 April 1941 and proclaimed a free and indepen-
dent State of Croatia (NDH) (which included Bosnia). Led by Zagreb lawyer
Ante Pavelic, the Ustashi movement had been formed in the late 1920s as a
clandestine fascist group which, during the thirties, conducted a campaign
of international terrorism, organised by Pavelic's right-hand man, Adrija
Artukovic. In contact with British Intelligence since the assassination with
Dido Kvaternik of Yugoslav King Alexander in Marseilles in 1934, Artukovic
took refuge in England but was eventually handed over to the French for
the murder of their foreign minister. He never came to trial, however, owing
to the protection of the Italian government. Catholic and western-orientated,
Croatia having been ruled by the Austro-Hungarian Empire for centuries,
the Ustashi were provided with military and logistical support by Benito
Mussolini and the Hungarian dictatorial regent. Admiral Horthy.^
On 16 April, the Poglavnik (Fiihrer) Pavelic nominated himself Prime
Minister of the NDH. Bolstered by the support of sections of the Catholic
Church, in particular the Archbishop of Zagreb, Aloysus Stepinac, and Bishop
Ivan Saric of Sarajevo, the Pavelic Nazi-puppet government received the
backing of the Croat ultra-nationalists. It could, however, only rely on the
backing of a few thousand Ustashi faithful, and was dependent on Italy for
support and military aid. This did not prevent the Ustashi from brutally
330 TART FOUR; THE BALKANS AND RUSSIA

suppressing their opponents and exterminating in almost unsurpassed

cruelty thousands of Serbs, gypsies and Jews. The Ustashi aimed to kill
one-third of the Serbs on their territory, exile one-third, and convert one-third
from orthodoxy The chief of secret police. Dido Kvaternik,
to Catholicism.
turned his Ustashi on the Jews, while the Minister of the Interior, Adrija
killers

Artukovic, established a network of concentration camps where Tavelic's

followers slaughtered over a half-a-million people'. Italian journalist Curzio
Malaparte interviewed Pavelic: 'While he spoke, I gazed at the wicker basket

on the Poglavnik's desk. The lid was raised and the basket seemed to be
filled with shelled oysters "Are they Dalmatian oysters?" I asked the
. . .

Poglavnik. Pavelic removed the lid from the basket and he said smiling,
. . .

"It is a present from my loyal Ustashi. Forty pounds of human eyes."

An ecclesiastical adviser to Pavelic and fervent Croatian nationalist, Dr

Krunoslav Draganovic, was sent to Rome to help boost the status of Pavelic's
murderous regime. Although the Vatican was well informed about the atroci-
ties, these were put down to communist propaganda or the work of commu-

nists themselves. The Catholic Church was similarly fully supportive of the
nationalist and predominantly clerical-orientated Slovene People's Party
(SPP), whose leaders, such as Miha Krek, a former minister in the pro-British
Royal Yugoslav government, and the Bishop of the Slovene capital, Ljublijana,
Gregory Rozman, 'bitterly opposed both Western liberalism and Eastern
Communism'. They sought the creation of an 'independent' Slovene state
and in pursuit of their goal supported the Tripartite Pact with the Nazis and
Italians. When the Nazis did invade, however, and the true nature of their

brutality became evident, Krek and other disillusioned SPP leaders fled to
London. This did not prevent Krek from establishing himself 'as a viable tool
of the Germans' and backing his supporters in Slovenia, who were quickly
forced to seek an accommodation with the occupying forces.^
Determined to keep alive the nationalist impulse, and hoping that their
zone would be saved from the savagery that the Germans had inflicted on
the northern zones of the former Yugoslavia, SPP members collaborated with
the Italians in suppressing the rising tide of guerrilla warfare by joining the
Italian-controlled Voluntary Anti-Communist Militia, known as the 'Wliite
Guard'. They helped the Germans carry out clandestine activities against the
partisans,who were led by the communist Josip Broz, otherwise known as
With Krek now vice-premier of the exiled Yugoslav government in
'Tito'.

London, leadership of the SPP passed to the ultra-nationalist Bishop Rozman,

who put 'the Catholic Church's considerable moral authority behind the
White Guard, helping organise its command and intelligence structures'. A
secret anti-communist security police force in Ljublijana supplied the Italians
with intelligence for arrests.^
At the behest of the Germans, General Nedic of the Serbian Volunteer
Corps had formed the Serbian Government of National Salvation and
 YUGOSLAVIA: THE GOLDEN PRIEST, STOLEN TREASURE AND THE CRUSADERS 331

declared his support for the right of the Germans to control the semi-
independent state. A First World War Yugo-
hero, Kosta Pecanac, placed his
slav 'Chetniks' (literally a member of a Cheta -
armed band) at Nedic's
disposal. They were granted the status of 'legalised' Chetniks and formally
incorporated by the chef de cabinet General Miodrag Damjanovic into a quis-
ling force, the Serbian State Guard, 'recognised by the Germans and tolerated
for their undisguised hostility towards the growing menace of the Commu-
nist-led Partisans'. Also recognised was the militant anti-communist fighting
force, the Volunteer Corps, which had been established by the Serbian fascist
leader Dimitrije Ljotic, from members of his Zbor movement.^
The main threat to the Germans and Italians was initially General Dreza
Mihailovic, a Serbian nationalist whose followers were known, because of
their opposition to the Germans, as 'illegal' Chetniks. Working for 'a greater
Serbia', the strongly anti-communist and pro-monarchist Mihailovic wanted,
however, 'to prepare and husband resources for the moment when the enemy,
weakened and tottering, could be overwhelmed by a combined frontal assault
from the Allied regular armies and a well-timed sabotage and guerrilla
campaign in his rear'. He had the support of a pro-Serb clique within the
British Foreign Office and the controlling minister of the sabotage and resist-
ance Special Operations Executive (SOE), Lord Selbourne, a dyed-in-the-wool
conservative and fervent monarchist. The general's main backing came from
Cairo where SOE officer Guy Tamplin, of the Near East Arab Broadcasting
station, was 'stubborn in his support', as was the officer dealing with Yugo-
slav propaganda, Archibald Lyall, later to join MI 6. The promotion of
Mihailovic by Cairo conferred on him, the SOE officer in Istanbul dealing

with the Serbs, Hugh Seton- Watson, acknowledged, 'a political role' in which

he saw himself as 'the legal representative of the government inside Yugo-

slavia'. The general saw it as his duty to combat the Croats and the commu-
nists and 'if help could be obtained from the Italians against them, it should
not be rejected'; 'collaboration' being part of the accepted rule of warfare in
Yugoslavia. Although there was no direct collaboration with the Germans,
during 1943 fifteen thousand Chetniks fought in close co-ordination with
German and Croat pro-fascist anti-partisan units, while Mihailovic's
Italian,

commanders co-operated in local campaigns against the communists.^

These informal alliances were fundamentally undermined in September
1943 by the capitulation of Italian forces, which were forced to withdraw
from Yugoslavia. When the vacuum was filled by the Germans, who imposed
pro-Nazi regimes, MI6 and SOE saw it as an opportunity to try to peel away
some of the nationalist elements from their Nazi masters. At the end of 1943,
British Intelligence tried to engineer a split between the Ustashi and the
Nazis. SOE and MI6 Balkan specialist Hugh Seton-Watson was asked to
interview Dr Brancko Jelic, a Croatian nationalist and right-hand man to
Pavelic, who had been erroneously suspected of being party to the assassina-
332 PaVRT FOUPv: THE BALKANS AND RUSSIA

tion ofKing Alexander. In early October 1939, Dr Jelic had been detained at
Gibraltar on his way to Italy and had been interned for the duration of the
war. Quite what Jelic could do from his island prison, other than provide
names and contacts, is unclear. In the event, the Ustashi remained loyal to
their Nazis hosts.'^

In Nazi-occupied Slovenia, General Leon Rupnik was installed as Tredi-

ent' with the support of Ljotic's Zbor movement. Abandoning the Italians,
Bishop Rozman met in secret with Nazi officials and proposed the formation
of a new quisling force, the Domobrans (Home Guard), to replace the White
Guard. Swearing an oath of loyalty to Hitler, the Domobrans' 'Information
Department' gathered intelligence on anti-Nazi Slovenes, while its 'Black
Hand' helped organise 'cleansing' operations with the Gestapo. Knowledge
of Domobran 'war crimes' reached the British Foreign Office from its

delegation to the Vatican. The Vatican, too, was shocked by the excesses, but
not enough for it to curtail its support of the Slovene nationalists. As the
Slovene SPP supporters agonised overwho would win the war, they were
increasingly excluded from power and replaced in key positions in the Domo-
brans by the pro-German Zbor movement. The young Ljenko Urbanic, known
as 'little Goebbels' for his work in the Information Department, launched a
propaganda campaign against the 'clerical' faction inside the SPP. It had
organised a 'secret pro-British underground network' which by 1944 was
forwarding information to British Intelligence agents and Miha Krek in
London. A subsequent purge by the Germans led to a number of clericals
being arrested and sent to concentration camps.
Meanwhile, the British had encountered difficulties in deciding which of
the opposition movements within Yugoslavia to support as they contem-
plated opening up another front in the Balkans.

Reporting directly to Winston Churchill on the political front and General

Bevil Wilson, who had been working for UNRRA,
on the military side,
former Foreign Office diplomat and founder member
of the SAS, Fitzroy
Maclean, was given the task of discovering 'who was killing the most
Germans and suggest means by which we could help them kill more'. He
was told that 'politics must be a secondary consideration'. Unfortunately for
Maclean, politics was what it turned out to be all about.
Fearing that SOE would attempt to sabotage his mission, which was to
be air-dropped into Yugoslavia, Maclean went to extraordinary lengths to
maintain its security. Whether his paranoia was rational or not, his efforts
are testament to the intense and bitter 'secret army games' which existed
between SOE and MI6 and, more particularly, the various factions within
British Intelligence that operated in the Balkans. Maclean refused to accept

thefirst parachute offered by SOE, since 'one of the things SOE did to people

they wanted to get rid of was to put a blanket in their parachute'. Although
 YUGOSLAVIA: THE GOLDEN PRIEST. STOLEN TREASURE AND THE CRUSADERS 333

he did in the end use SOE transport and communications, worried that his
signals would be suppressed Maclean ensured that he had his own separate
direct channel to Stewart Menzies through MI6's cover organisation, the
Inter-Services Liaison Department. The intelligence officer for the mission,
who also worked for MI6, Major Gordon Alston, had played a similar role
for David Stirling in the Middle East with the first detachment of the SAS,
with whom Maclean had also served.
On 6 November 1943, Maclean finally delivered his report, which
concluded that Mihailovic's forces were failing to take on the Germans and
that the only significant opposition was coming from Tito's communist parti-
sans. His report had the 'effect of a blockbuster' and 'made it much more
difficult for the Foreign Office to carry on its kid-glove policy towards

Mihailovic'. It was 'praised' by the chiefs of staff and backed by Cavendish

Bentinck on the JIG, which had been influenced by Ultra intercepts showing
that the Wehrmacht was engaged in constant battles with the partisans as
distinct from the Ghetniks, thus corroborating Maclean's account. Hugh
Seton-Watson acknowledged that 'for three years the partisans had conduc-

ted, in complete physical isolation, a heroic struggle'. Many of Mihailovic's

'exploits' turned out to have been carried out by Tito's forces, which had
captured the equipment of several surrendered Italian divisions. Mihailovic
was then allowed to wither on the vine; left 'to rot and fall off the branch,
rather than be pushed'. After April 1944, when the British Military Mission
was withdrawn and military material was denied to Mihailovic, the supply
of arms, medical stores and equipment was transferred to Tito and proved
to down German divisions. A postwar assessment
be of great value in tying
by the US Department of the Army of the German 'order of battle' concluded
that the partisans had prevented 'well over one-half million German troops'
from being committed to other fronts.
Maclean's report caused outrage and continued to do so for a long time on
the Right, which constructed a conspiracy theory in which the unseen hands of
communists had manipulated the evidence that produced the change of policy.
Rightists such as the Gatholic writer and member of Maclean's mission, Evelyn
Waugh, exacerbated Anglo- Yugoslav relations by overt contacts with Croatia's
ultra-nationalist Ustashi supporters. According to Maclean's biographer, Frank
McLynn, Waugh provided the Foreign Office with violently anti-partisan
reports in which he appeared to have doctored the evidence. Waugh
subsequently leaked his slanted information to right-wing British Catholics,
bizarrely portraying Maclean - a hardline anti-communist - as a 'Red'.^'*
Despite the release of SOE records in July 1997, and the efforts of a
right-wing pro-Mihailovic faction to put the blame on the shoulders of an
openly communist SOE officer in Cairo, James Klugman, as McLynn and
specialistson the subject have shown, there were no grounds for the
conspiracy theory. There was no alternative to the support Tito received.
334 PART FOUR; THE BALKANS AND RUSSIA

w hich only accelerated 'a process which was inevitable'. There was no way
we could stem Tito,' former diplomat Sir Reginald Hibbert concludes,

and the only sensible thing to do was to ride with the punch.
It is move-
a perversion of history to suggest that the Partisan
ment was foisted on Yugoslavia, either by the Russians or by
us. If it was foisted on them by anyone, it was by the Germans.
One cannot sufficiently over-emphasise the destruction of Yugo-
slavia by the Germans and the terroristic edge the German
Army used to consolidate its power.

Historian Mark Wheeler believes that the conspiracy theory led to a fatalistic
belief that the Serbs

didn't make their own bed - the British did it for them! This
fits in with the tradition of 'perfidious Albion' in Eastern Europe
- the British have a uniquely competent and uniquely evil secret
service, et cetera. In the Balkans there is a constant motif that
one is not responsible for one's own fate, that malign foreign
influences, especially the British Secret Service, are manipulat-
ing them ... Of course, like all cliches, this one contains some
truth.^^

Maclean was, by the end of 1943, already formulating ideas about the postwar
world. 'Events will show the nature of Soviet intentions towards Yugoslavia;
much will also depend on Tito and whether he sees himself in his former role
ofComintern agent, or as the potential ruler of an independent state.' Maclean
thought that Tito might become independent of Moscow and be willing to
co-operate with the West. Indeed, Churchill had agreed to severing the link
with Mihailovic in the hope that Tito would be prepared to deal with Britain.
Initially this was justified; British officers of the Liaison Mission in Yugoslavia
observed that Tito was very much 'his own man' and that Yugoslavian national-
ism would assert itself after the war. Ironically, however, given the onslaught
from the Right, it turned out that Maclean and MI6 were to be very wide of
the mark in their assessment; Tito was Moscow's most zealous supporter. A
more realistic assessment was made by US Office of Strategic Services (OSS)
officer Frank Lindsay, who in his final report wrote that

the basic policy of the present government is the complete orien-

tation of Yugoslavia into the Russian sphere. This policy is being
implemented primarily by the Yugoslav communists and is not
being directed locally by Russian representatives the top . . .

Yugoslav leaders are so thoroughly indoctrinated with Soviet

policies and methods that there is little or no need for day-to-day
directives from Moscow.
 YUGOSLAVIA: THE GOLDEN PRIEST, STOLEN TREASURE AND THE CRUSADERS 335

This proved to be substantially correct.

By the summer of 1944 the partisans were at the threshold of Serbia, and it
was clear that, unless Hitler's promised secret weapons became a reality, the
Germans were facing defeat. With nowhere to go. General Nedic decided that
he had no choice but to seek an agreement with Mihailovic on collaboration
against the communists. The Serbian State Guard became an effective instru-
ment of Mihailovic, while members of Ljotic's Zbor movement began to look
upon him as 'a secret ally'. Nedic and General Damjanovic agreed to place all
armed formations of the Serbian Government of National Salvation under the
command of Mihailovic, who told them that T still have contact with the British
and Americans. I have every reason to believe that Anglo-American forces will
land on the Adriatic coast where we will assist them to maintain law and order.'
His only problem was that he lacked weapons, which Nedic solved by attach-
ing Chetnik officers to his staff in Belgrade, where the Germans agreed to
supply the request for fifty thousand rifles.
In October 1944, Tito installed himself in Belgrade. During the following
month, Pavelic reluctantly agreed to an approach to the Allies. His envoy
secretly left Zagreb for Italy to present the Supreme Allied Commander in
Caserta with a memorandum admitting that, while the HND had been a
child of the Axis, 'Croatia cannot exist without the support of Great Britain'.
Envisaging Croatia 'as part of an anti-communist bloc of western-orientated
Balkan states - Turkey, Greece and Albania - in opposition to Moscow-
imposed regimes in the region', he requested a military mission be sent to
Croatia, but the Ustashi representative received 'a cold reception'. Simul-
Miha Krek began lobbying western leaders. Accord-
taneously, Slovene leader
ing to Mark Aarons' study of American intelligence files, Krek tried to
convince MI6 that the Domobrans were 'a viable post-war political and mili-
tary alternative to the communist-led partisans'. When the Royal Yugoslav
government-in-exile ordered its followers to join Tito's forces, Krek stepped
up his efforts, formulating a plan to transfer the Domobrans to 'Allied control
for fighting against the Germans'. Support came from clerical leaders Bishop
Rozman and Anton Preseren, a member of the Slovene colony in Rome and
Assistant General of the Jesuits. InNovember, Pope Pius XII promised Krek
and Preseren help for the Catholic SPP, but their request that the Allies
occupy Slovene territory to avoid the 'tragic shredding of innocent blood'
came to nothing.
These requests were obviously naive, particularly so when, in March
1945, many Domobrans joined forces under the command of Serbian General
Damjanovic, who, acting on the advice of Zbor's Dimitrije Ljotic, unified the
Yugoslav pro-German quisling forces in Slovenia. In April 'a camarilla of
all-powerful Ustashi officers and scheming politicians', who had taken control
of what remained of the disintegrating State of Croatia, presented Pavelic
336 PART FOUR: THE BALKANS AND RUSSIA

with a memorandum recommending the formation of 'an anti-Communist

bloc based on some which
project for a federal reconstruction of Yugoslavia
would command sympathy of the Western Allies'. Desperation also forced
the
Mihailovic to seek an accommodation with Pavelic. In this unreal and night-
marish world, with nothing left to govern, a Slovene National Committee
planned to seize control of the state from General Rupnik, when the Germans
pulled out/^
In the spring of 1945, with the Red Army approaching 'independent'
Croatia, Pavelic realised that 'they who had sowed the storm must now
bow their heads before the whirlwind, save what could still be saved, go
underground again in their old conspiratorial haunts in Austria and Italy'.
He had faith that 'one day they would be needed again'. He sent emissaries
across the border to make contact with British Intelligence and the Catholic
Church. There then followed an exodus to Austria of Ustashi and senior
NDH quislings, including the Minister of the Interior, Adrija Artukovic, and
his co-conspirator. Dido Kvaternik. Pavelic had already entrusted one of his
closest acolytes. Father Krunsolav Dragnovic (who as vice-president of the
Ustashi Office for Colonisation had played a part in the extermination of
Jews and Serbs during the bloody anti-partisan campaign in the Kozara
mountains), with the transfer to Switzerland and Austria of truck-loads of
valuables, gold and currency. They were intended to finance new Croat
resistance in Yugoslavia against the communists. On 4 May 1945, the Poglav-
nik made his last public appearance in Zagreb. Later in the day, with an
Argentine passport in the name of 'Ramirez', Pavelic, along with Max Lubric,
controller of the concentration camps, the commander of the Black Legion,
Boban, and 'the group of desperadoes known as the Colonel's Camarilla',
also slipped across the border into Austria.^°
On 13 May 1945 Tito sent a message to his First Army: 'A group of Ustashi
and some Chetniks, a total of over 50,000 men, is reported by the Third Army
in the Konjice-Sotanj area. It includes Pavelic and a huge number of
. . .

criminals. They are attempting to cross at Dravograd and give themselves

up to the British.' Tito issued the order for their 'annihilation', but some
twelve thousand anti-communist Serbs, including many Chetniks in German
uniforms, reached Allied headquarters. Army Intelligence officer and later

Labour Cabinet minister Anthony Crosland, while recognising that many

were simple peasants, met a number who 'freely and in fact proudly admitted
that since 1942 they had been fighting only Tito. When one pointed out to
these people that we were bound to treat them as enemies they could not
see it at all. They are genuinely pro-British and seemed to think we shall
help them against Tito.'^^
Following in Pavelic's wake were a number of senior Ustashi who made
it to a safe base near Salzburg. Wanted for 'war crimes' by the Yugoslav

authorities, according to Mark Aarons and John Loftus, they included:

 YUGOSLAVIA: THE GOLDEN PRIEST. STOLEN TREASURE AND THE CRUSADERS 337

• Stejpan Hefer, regional governor-general of Baranja, where he was

responsible for the slaughter of Serbs and the deportation of Jews by
terror squads.
• Ljbo Milos, a senior official at the Jasenovac concentration camp, where

his speciality had been the 'ritual killing' of Jews, using a knife to cut
their throats and to slice open their stomachs.
• Dr Vjekoslav Vrancic, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs and under-
secretary in the Interior Ministry; wanted for administering the camps.
• Veliko Pecnikar, head of the Poglavnik's personal bodyguard and also
commander of the brutal Gendarmerie which worked in close collabor-
ation with the Gestapo.
• Bozidar Kavran, commander of Pavelic's headquarters and a trusted
aide.
• Srecko Rover, implicated in a plot to assassinate Yugoslavia's King
Peter. He held a senior position in Pavelic's personal bodyguard.
• Lovro Susie, Minister of Corporations, who worked closely with the
Nazis on the deportations for forced labour in Germany and later

served with the SS Division Prince Eugen.

• Father Josip Bujanovic, a Croat priest party to the massacre of Ortho-
dox peasants.^^

The British Army in Austria, under the command of Field Marshal Alexander,
initially disarmed the Ustashi and, in late May 1945, surrendered to Tito's
forces, quite legitimately, around 18,500 Chetniks, Ustashi, Slovenian White
Guards and Domobrans. In the near-civil war that followed in Yugoslavia,
a great many atrocities were committed. The killings were, a senior member of
Tito's Politburo admitted, 'sheer frenzy'. Right-wing supporters of Mihailovic
have always regarded the repatriations as an act of 'sinister duplicity'. Count
Tolstoy has pointed an accusing finger at SOE's Sixth Special Force and, in
particular, its commanding officer, Charles Villiers, one-time chair of British
Steel. Villiers claimed to have absolutely 'no connection with or knowledge
of the repatriation of Royalist Yugoslavs'. This was despite a statement by
his deputy. Major Edward Renton, that on behalf of the Fifth - whose General
Staff, Brigadier Toby Low, was his closest friend and best man - Villiers had

been involved in negotiating surrender terms with the 15th Cossack Cavalry
Corps. Even so, while Villiers's silence about this period was suspicious, and
it was true that unit members certainly saw the trains taking the repatriates,
the evidence does not support the conspiracy theory. On the ground, a
number of those who could have been returned were protected by SOE
personnel and intelligence officers working on their own initiative.

SOE's Sixth Special Force, initially headed by Peter Wilkinson and

operating outside normal military command and Foreign Office direction,
had been involved in dropping war material to the Carthinian Slovene parti-
338 PART FOUR: THE BALKANS AND RUSSIA

sans, but began to steer a more pronounced anti-communist tack in January

1945 in the face of changing international circumstances. assuming On
command May, Wilkinson's brother-in-law, Charles Villiers, had noted
in
communist attempts to take over in Austria, where resistance had been weak,
and the possibility of the Slovene partisans grabbing Carthinia. Villiers argued
that this could be countered by the unit's expertise in frontier matters. MI6
outfits were operating in the same area but little is known about their
^"^
activities.

The Sixth's Major Renton, Patrick Martin-Smith, Lt. Finlay Lockhead and
Alex Ramsay, who was the first person into Klagenfurt, were employed in
Carthinia and later formed the rump of a Special Operations section in Austria
which was taken over by MI6. One of their tasks was the recruitment of
agents to find out what was going on inside Tito's communist state. Lockhead
was soon running informants among those to be repatriated, who supplied
useful information on Yugoslav troop movements. At the same time, Villiers
had been 'flying in and out' of Tito's land' keeping the Fifth Corps informed
on 'who was who'. Anti-communism and assistance to British Intelligence
overrode all other considerations, with the result that while one section was
busy hunting down war criminals, another was seeking suitable targets for
recruitment in intelligence-gathering operations. In doing so, as Mark Aarons
discovered, the British, having repatriated the small fry, went 'to astonishing
lengths to protect the genuinely guilty '.^^
Crossing British lines, Pavelic hid with Artukovic in the Convent of
St Gilgin until picked up and released by British occupation forces, from
which time they were 'protected by the and requisi-
British in British-guarded
tioned quarters'. For security reasons, and because of the inevitable embar-
rassment knowledge of his presence would bring, for the next three months
Pavelic was hidden by British Intelligence at Klagenfurt in the British Occupa-
tion Zone. Pavelic brought with him more gold for safe-keeping in one of
the Austrian monasteries. Most was converted on the black market, but some
2,400 kilos was secreted in Berne. A substantial quantity was designated the
property of the Catholic Church in Austria, and was sent with a British
Intelligence officer, Lt-Col. Jonson, to Italy. According to a US Treasury
had looted gold worth
report, the Ustashi which
350 million Swiss francs of
150 million was seized on the Austro-Swiss border and impounded by the
British authorities.^^
The Domobrans found sanctuary in the Displaced Persons (DP) camps,
and then Trieste, which contained a large Slovene population, and finally the
Eboli DP camp in Italy. British Military Intelligence Field Security Service
units were soon combing the Austrian countryside and DP camps looking for
war criminals. General Leon Rupnik and eighteen other Slovene collaborators
were captured by Field Marshal Alexander's troops near Spittal, and their
extradition was requested, in June 1945, by the Yugoslav ambassador in
 YUGOSLAVIA: THE GOLDEN PRIEST, STOLEN TREASURE AND THE CRUSADERS 339

London. Other sections of British Intelligence were, however, conniving with

Krek and a British 'agent'. Reverend Achin, to recruit elements of the Domob-
rans for intelligence-gathering and under the spiritual leadership of
later,

Bishop Roznnan, for anti-Tito operations. Contacts were made with the Vati-
can where Anton Preseren led a powerful group of Slovenes, who received
'help from the English'.
Those Ustashi remaining undetected by Tito's secret informers and Allied
search teams dispersed, hiding themselves among the thousands of DPs in
the network of camps in Italy and Austria. With Pavelic hiding in Austria,
the task of developing the exiled Ustashi movement fell to his 'alter ego',
Krunoslav Draganovic, who was Secretary of the Croatian Confraternity of
San Girolamo, which was attached to the Vatican in Rome. Draganovic had
transferred an estimated 400 kilos of the safe-housed Ustashi gold to Rome
to finance new networks. The US Treasury report later suggested that 'the
balance of approximately 200 million Swiss francs was originally held in the
Vatican for safe-keeping. According to rumour, a considerable portion of this
latter has been sent to Spain and Argentina though the Vatican's "pipeline",
but it is quite possible this is merely a smokescreen to cover the fact that the
treasure remains in its have been
original repository.' Initially, this appears to
the case, and through control of the looted treasure, the 'golden priest' of San
Girolamo, Draganovic, held considerable sway over the activities of Pavelic's

followers. He remained, however, under threat from the Yugoslav War

Crimes Commission for his involvement in the forced conversion of Orthodox
Serbs to Catholicism.^^
During the summer of 1945, Draganovic undertook a tour of the DP
camps of northern Italy and the regions around Klagenfurt and Villsach on
the Austrian- Yugoslav border. There he established contact with the senior
Ustashi leaders and their chief representatives in the camps, where the Ustashi
were already developing political organisations. This led to the formation of a
run by Pavelic's son-in-law, Veliko Pecnikar.
fully fledged intelligence service
Through the assistance of other Croat priests, a regular courier service was
maintained between San Girolamo, where many of the leaders found sanctu-
ary, and the scattered Ustashi groups. Helped by the Ustashi treasure,
Draganovic created a 'ratline' using the monastery, which had territorial
immunity, as a safe asylum for the emigres most in danger of arrest by the
Allies. Other funds went to support Pavelic's Krizari (Crusaders), a guerrilla

force which, operating from bases in Austria, was intended to link up with
the underground resistance which had supposedly been left behind in
Croatia. The operation was commanded by Bozidar Kavran with assistance
from Lovro Susie, Draganovic's partner in hiding the loot in Austria, and
Father Josip Bujanovic. Pecnikar maintained contact between the Crusaders
and other clandestine neo-fascist organisations in Austria and Italy.^''
As head of the Croatian Clerical Party, Draganovic worked closely with
340 PART FOUR: THE BALKANS AND RUSSIA

its Slovene counterpart in support of efforts to create a Catholic-dominated

Pan-Danubian Confederation of Catholic nations in Central Europe. On 25
June 1945, Pavelic and his close Crusader collaborators made contact in the
American Zone in Austria with a papal mission, headed by Archbishop
Andreas Rohracher of Salzburg. They asked for the Pope's assistance in creat-
ing, as part of the Intermarium project, an independent Croatia as a bastion
against a Serbian-dominated Yugoslavia. In addition, Rohracher intervened
with 'sympathetic elements of the British forces ... to create a favourable
impression' in preparation for the Crusaders' offer 'to put themselves at the
disposal of the Anglo-American leadership'; an offer immediately accepted
by British Intelligence, which was helping reorganise the Ustashi for 'eventual
use against Tito'.^°

Not that any ofhad gone unnoticed by the Yugoslavs, who had
this

camps in Austria. By July, they knew that Pavelic

successfully infiltrated the
had been taken prisoner by British troops at Klagenfurt, even though the
Foreign Office was unaware of this fact, insisting that he must be in the
American or Russian zones in Austria. In mid- August, the Foreign Office
decided that on a narrow definition the anti-communist Croats, Slovenes and
Serbs, whose extradition and repatriation were demanded by Tito's regime
in Belgrade, were not 'war criminals in the proper sense'. It did admit,
however, that 'some of them are clearly collaborators of the blackest dye; but
the Yugoslav request also covers others who may well be properly considered
as political opponents of the present Yugoslav regime rather than as traitors

to the Yugoslav state'. It was decided, therefore, that Yugoslavia would hence-
forth be a 'special case' and Allied commanders would no longer be author-
ised to hand over alleged traitors and renegades.^^
Throughout the summer and autumn of 1945 there were continuous alle-
gations from the Yugoslav authorities to the effect that the British were
protecting former Nazi collaborators in Carthinia. The presence of known
Slovene collaborators and the holding of regular demonstrations by the
nationalists kept the issue alive. British Intelligence reported in November
that trouble was brewing along the Austrian border with Yugoslavia, where
the Carthinian Slovenes held strong separatist feelings. They were being
subjected to 'political and intense propaganda and pressure', seemingly from
both the nationalists and the communists. Peter Wilkinson, former regional
SOE head and now a political adviser in Vienna, wrote a report in April 1946
on 'the Slovene minority in Carthinia' in which he stated that the activities of
the Slovene nationalists were 'a source of continual nuisance'.^^
By this time, MI 6 was also mounting major and aggressive intelligence-
gathering operations using Ustashi assets in a tightly knit network of cells
from a 'spy centre' in the divided territory of Trieste. This had been estab-
lished by Draganovic with the help of Croat priests in the monasteries and
the logistical support of British Intelligence.^^
 YUGOSLAVIA: THE GOLDEN PRIEST, STOLEN TREASURE AND THE CRUSADERS 341

For a few weeks following the end of hostilities, there had been
official

which was populated by a mixture

a serious possibility that the port of Trieste,
of Italians and Slovenes, would be the setting for a first armed conflict
between East and West. The Yugoslavs had ethnic claims to the Istrian penin-
sula, and with a view to annexing the territory Tito had ordered the partisans
to enter Trieste before the British Eighth Army arrived from Italy. The parti-
sans won the neck-and-neck race, arriving on the morning of 1 May 1945,
while the Germans were still defending their positions. A massive show of
Allied force, and Stalin's refusal to intervene on Tito's behalf, prevented any
further bloodshed and forced the withdrawal of the partisan troops. The
subsequent Italian Peace Treaty established Trieste as a 'Free Territory', a
solution that pleased neither Belgrade nor Rome. The treaty proposed that
Trieste be governed by a representative of the United Nations Security Coun-
cil, but bickering over the appointment between the Italians and Yugoslavs

continued for several years. The territory was thus split into two zones,
leaving the city and the surrounding area (Zone A) under joint British and
American military control, and the larger south and west region (Zone B)
under Yugoslav military administration.^^
Within Zone A, which was riddled with communist agents, right-wing
organisations were encouraged, while the Allied Military Government
(AMG), which was commanded by General Terence Airey, who had worked
with SOE during the war and then as acting deputy Supreme Military
Commander Italy, sought 'the gradual liquidation of all Communist organisa-
tions'. British Military Intelligence officers established a special anti-
communist security office which co-ordinated its activities with American
colleagues and Italian 'Special Branch' police. Its main task was to control
Yugoslav subversive activities, but Trieste became a centre for 'Anti-
Bolshevist' activities with terrorists, helped by Italian fascists, smuggling
weapons into Yugoslavia. Trieste, according to one Military Intelligence offi-
cer, was the 'meeting point for the resistance forces inside Yugoslavia and

the forces who were financing, controlling and directing them in Italy '.^^
In November 1945, Tito announced that 'terrorist organisations had been
discovered which were led by priests and made up of Ustashi, who had
changed their names to Crusaders'. His government passed on reliable intelli-
gence that, with the collusion of the Vatican, Ustashi leaders were using a
ratline from Austria to Italy. The Foreign Office feigned ignorance, but it was
conclusively established that, in April 1946, disguised as a Catholic priest,
Pavelichad left Austria for Rome, where he found sanctuary at San Girolamo.
During the summer, Yugoslavia demanded the repatriation of Bishops Saric
and Rozman. The Foreign Office, however, favoured the suggestion that the
Holy See should 'arrange' Saric's escape either to Switzerland or Portugal,
even though this would be 'protecting a man whom we and the Vatican
know to be a war criminal of the worst type'. It was known Bishop Rozman
342 PART FOUR: THE BALKANS AND RUSSIA

had 'collaborated with the enemy' and was subject to 'automatic arrest', but
he was allowed to live in comparative luxury in the Bishop of Klagenfurt's
palace in the British Zone in Austria. There followed a 'long and ultimately
successful campaign' by influential British political and Church officials to
'save the quisling bishop of Ljubljana', even though Rozman was laundering
stolen gold on the Austrian black market and using the profits to finance
Crusader activities. In November, he slipped away from Klagenfurt, where
he had linked up with the Crusader command, and made for Salzburg in
'an American army staff car'. He made for the safety of Italy and the Vatican,
but 'before the final arrangements could be made' Rozman disappeared.^^
The main Crusader network, which was supplied with top-quality British
military equipment, was centred on Villach in Austria, where a Pavelic aide,
Bozidar Kavran, organised the incursions into Yugoslavia. Two-way radio
contact was maintained by a former concentration camp administrator, Dr
Vjekoslav Vrancic, with a courier service operated through the Catholic
Church. According to Mark Aarons, a senior figure was Srecko Rover, who
was arrested by the 62nd Field Security Service unit in the spring of 1946
and transferred to the Fermo DP camp. From Fermo, the centre of the postwar
Ustashi revival in Italy, Draganovic organised a major intelligence and terror-
ist network. The camp's administrative staff were all Croats who 'deliberately'

sabotaged and falsified the records of the DPs.^^

During early 1946, there was 'increased activity among emigres in organis-
ing and planning an anti-Tito uprising'. With Anglo-American assistance, a
violently anti-Tito Slovene National Democracy party was created in Trieste as
the nationalists worked to co-ordinate their activities. The former head of the
Croat Peasant Party, Dr Eugen Macek, attempted to negotiate an agreement
among all the anti-communist factions, especially the Crusaders. High-level
co-operation by the Ustashi was maintained with their Slovene counterparts
led by Franjo Lipovec, who had been recruited by MI6 in Trieste, where he was
'employed on a salary basis' by an Army Intelligence unit. The main Slovene
liaison to the Crusaders, until his assassination in 1946 by communist agents,
was Professor Ivan Protulipac, while Lipovec remained the contact man with
the Italian government and Military Intelligence officers. Italian Prime Minister
Alcide De Gaspari assured Lipovec that 'his government would unoffically do
everything within its means to strengthen the Tito opposition'.

Tito struck back on 13 March 1946, when the successor to the dreaded
Bureau of People's Protection (ONZA), the Administration of State Security
(UDBA), captured Chetnik General Mihailovic. He had been betrayed to
the UDBA by one commanders, Nikolai Kolabic, a former
of his 'devoted'
collaborator with the Serbian Nedic government and the Germans. The Yugo-
slavs tried Mihailovic on 25 March and executed him shortly after.
By mid-year there was a struggle between British and American Intelli-
gence for control of the Ustashi assets. The British went as far as to carry out
 YUGOSLAVIA: THE GOLDEN PRIEST, STOLEN TREASURE AND THE CRUSADERS 343

an anti-American campaign among the emigres, claiming that many

US-recruited anti-communists had been betrayed in Yugoslavia. Released
through the intervention of the Americans, senior Crusader figure Srecko
Rover was instructed by Veliko Pecnikar to contact an American intelligence
officer in Trieste, Col. Lewis Perry, who recruited him to organise a safe route
for infiltrating agents into Croatia. Rover was to assume an increasingly
leading role in the Ustashi network, recruiting exiles in the Allied zones in
Germany, Austria and Italy. Mark Aarons and John Loftus have suggested
that MI6 also used these assets 'to destabilise and, if possible, overthrow the
Tito administration'. Whether MI6 officers ever seriously considered this
option is unclear, though, in the interests of gathering intelligence at whatever
cost, they certainly did allow the exiles to run their own political and military
campaigns against Tito, their objective being the overthrow of the communist
regime. This is a subtle difference which, nevertheless, does not absolve MI6
from its indirect support of terrorist acts.^^
The British continued with sponsorship of the Crusaders, organising, in
August 1946, the dropping of 'a considerable number of pamphlets in Croat
territory by planes apparently from the British Zone of Austria'. Signed by
Pavelic, the pamphlets declared that 'ceaseless warfare would continue until
such time as either Tito or Pavelic was permanently eliminated'. It was
intended that the latter would be the victor in 'this death struggle'. Through-
out the winter of 1946, Rover was engaged in a new recruiting drive for
the preparation of major cross-border operations. This suffered a temporary
setback when Rover was arrested travelling through Austria. During Febru-
ary and March 1947 eight arms shipments were made to Franjo Lipovec and
the Slovenes in Trieste for forwarding to guerrilla units that operated mainly
in the Gorensko and Pohorje mountains, 'clothed in British and American
combat dresses'. Supplied with arms by the American Army and with training
at Udine, they had use of British camps in Austria 'to which they retire for

periodic rests'.*^

The British government had agreed to repatriate Ustashi and other quislings
for trial. From July to October 1946, British Military Intelligence launched a
series of operations, known as KEELHAUL, to arrest war criminals and
quislings among the exiles in the DP camps. Keelhaul resulted in the arrest
of nearly four thousand Yugoslavs, who were then to be screened and
delivered to Yugoslavia as part of Operation HIGHJUMP. When the Allies
realised the scale of the enterprise, and the lack of money at the War Office
for proper continuous screening in the camps, they desperately sought a
solution. In addition, there was deep suspicion on
the Yugoslav side, where
many and aides were obsessed with the Machiavel-
of Tito's closest advisers
lianism of the British Secret Service. In turn, Stalin repeatedly warned the
Yugoslavs about British Intelligence and 'English duplicity'.
344 PART FOUR: THE BALKANS AND RUSSIA

Anglo- Yugoslav relations were near breaking point over the vexed ques-
tion of repatriations. Tito, who was waging an increasingly strident propa-
ganda campaign against and the United States, correctly asserted that
Britain
Britain was by agreements and was colluding, in particular,
failing to abide
in the escape of Yugoslavia's most wanted man. Ante Pavelic. A pro-Croat
clique in the Foreign Office loathed Tito, but also realised that if the two to
three thousand hard-core Ustashi in the DP camps were not handed back
then they would launch cross-border raids into Yugoslavia, prompting retali-
ation from Tito in Trieste and other disputed areas. They also knew that time
was running out. The camps would soon be handed over to the Italians, who,
concerned with problems of 'banditry', would want the inmates sent back.^^
'The question was, what to do?' Junior Foreign Office minister Christopher
Mayhew recalled that

Some camps were the worst sort of war

of these people in the
criminal, others were merely anti-Communists who had taken
a wrong turn in the war. But we were pledged by all kinds of
treaties and United Nations resolutions to return anyone against
whom there was a war crimes charge or a prima facie one of
active and wilful collaboration with the enemy. We couldn't
send them all back as they'd be executed without trial, and
there had already been controversy about the Cossacks in 1945.
We needed someone to sort out the sheep from the goats.
In November, a former member of the American OSS, Professor Royse,
visited Yugoslavia and suggested the use of categories of white, grey and
black to sort out the problem of the screening of the Ustashi. A Balkan
specialist, Royse was highly regarded by the Foreign Office's Southern

Department. On 22 December, Royse saw junior minister Hector McNeil, and

gave a report that prompted the establishment of the War Office Screening
Mission (WOSM). It was Royse who suggested to McNeil Brigadier Fitzroy
Maclean as a candidate to lead the Mission. Mayhew concurred: 'Maclean,
who spoke the languages, knew the political background, and could sort
out a war criminal from a tough anti-Communist fighter, Croat, Ustase or
'^^
whatever.
Maclean's WOSM, later called the Special Refugee Screening Commission
but better known as the 'Maclean Mission', was to screen and sort out the
confused and ethnic affiliations of some twelve thousand Yugoslav
political
prisoners held mostly in Germany, and to look for war criminals. His remit,
however, conflicted with the hidden policies of some sections of the Foreign
Office and MI 6, which by 1947 were quite prepared to turn a blind eye and
even help the Vatican smuggle the Ustashi out of Europe by reclassifying
'blacks' (known war criminals) as 'greys' (Nazi collaborators). Maclean was
an obstacle to this manoeuvre, but found that he was often circumvented by
 YUGOSLAVIA: THE GOLDEN PRIEST. STOLEN TREASURE AND THE CRUSADERS 345

higher authority. As Maclean's biographer acknowledges, the western Allies

changed the rules at every turn during the screening process, while the most
wanted Ustashi had already made good their escape from the British-
.^^
controlled zones in Austria and Italy
The Yugoslavs were, in turn, incensed by the presence of 'anti-repatriation
agitators' in the DP camps. Even before Maclean started, the situation had
been inflamed when, in January 1947, a Yugoslav vice-consul visiting the
Eboli camp to identify the 'most wanted' was surrounded by a hostile crowd
of Chetniks and murdered. According to (Lord) Peter Carrington, who was
responsible for a camp in the Rhineland, the behaviour of the Chetniks and
Ustashi in the camps, which were set up and largely administered, often
without guards, as their own city states, was 'appalling'. 'Murder between the
factions was frequent. Atrocities against the local population if, as sometimes
happened, the inmates of the camps went on unauthorized sprees in the
countryside, were equally common.'^
The Yugoslav government had been particularly angered by the decision
of the British to supplement their Army of the Rhine with four hundred
troops of the Royal Yugoslav Army (RYA) in the form of a Civil Mixed
Watchman's Service. Their principal task was to act as a labour unit, but to
the Yugoslavs it was naturally seen as a recruiting pool and potential threat.
Yugoslav protests were met with British refusals to disband the Watchman's
Service. British Intelligence was also running in Germany a group of Serbs
loyal to the collaborator General Damjanovic. Most had served in the Serbian
quisling administration or in Chetnik formations fighting alongside the
Germans; others, such as Ljenko Urbancic, were former members of the quis-
ling Slovene Domobrans. Only a handful were handed over to the Yugoslavs,
despite being automatically placed on the 'black' list, while many were simply
allowed to 'escape' from custody before the proposed transfer of the camps
to Italian control.^^
The Maclean Mission's intelligence officer, David Haldane Porter, believed
that the British had encouraged and protected Damjanovic's supporters. They
had proclaimed themselves 'ready to take part in the Third World War under
the leadership of Great Britain and the United States of America against
Soviet Russia' and had been 'engaged in dissident and subversive activities
since the end of hostilities', apparently with the 'blessing of the Allied authori-
ties'. In Italy, where the Serbs had their own guards at the Eboli camp,

Damjanovic had organised his fanatical supporters into military formations

which Porter understood 'were formed not for disciplinary or administrative
reasons, but in order to establish a new army to continue the fight against
Communism in generaland the present Yugoslav Government in particular'.
Although, officially, they had been disarmed when they surrendered, the
group had access to a hidden cache of arms and even had their own wireless
transmitter which broadcast to Yugoslavia with the message 'we're coming
346 TART FOUR: THE BALKANS AND RUSSIA

to get you, you bastards'. When they did venture into Yugoslav territory,
security troopswere waiting for them. A number of Serbs in the uniform of
the RYA were trapped, arrested and later executed.*^
During February 1947, Maclean began working in Rome on the list of
wanted Croats, most of whom, including Ante Pavelic, were being protected
by the Vatican's 'DP Resettlement Chief, Krunoslav Draganovic, Secretary
of San Girolamo. The Yugoslavs had demanded Draganovic's extradition
because of his role in the 1942 summer offensive in the Kozara mountains
in western Bosnia. Maclean later recalled that many people in Rome knew
that Draganovic was working to transfer Croats via a ratline to Genoa and
then to South America; within the intelligence community, it was 'an open
secret'. Major Stephen Clissold of the Intelligence Branch of Maclean's

Mission, who as a young British liaison officer had served with Evelyn Waugh
in Croatia during the war, submitted a report on Draganovic to the War
Office. It revealed that the priest had handed out false identity documents
to some of the most notorious Ustashi war criminals who had travelled in
disguise to San Girolamo, where the production of ID cards was a thriving
industry. Thus, able to obtain Italian residence permits and other documents,
they were allowed to receive genuine exit papers from the International Red
Cross (whose Croatian representative was Draganovic) and entry visas from
the South American embassies with which Draganovic had numerous
contacts.^^
Draganovic's ratline was partially funded by Pavelic's gold, but he had
many paymasters and would take money from any source, playing one intelli-
gence agency off against another. Clissold believed that funds were provided
by the Vatican's charitable organisation, the Assistenza Pontifica. It was
accepted by Maclean's liaison at the Foreign Office, Mark Wallinger, that the
Vatican

has permitted the encouragement, both overt and covert, of the

Ustashi. This wholly undesirable organisation has not only been
collectively responsible for vile atrocities on an immense scale
during the war but has ever since its inception made use of
murder as anormal political weapon. There is surely all the
difference between shelter to, let us say, a dissident Slovene
priest, and giving positive aid to a creature like Pavelic.^^

A key figure in the Vatican - the 'scarlet pimpernel' - was the pro-fascist
Bishop Alois Hudal of the Pontificio Santa Maria dell'Anima, a Slovene by
birth and close to Archbishop Stepinac, the notorious prelate of Zagreb.
Hudal's prime role was the supply of travel documents, 'identity certificates'
to 'stateless and displaced persons'. The Collage Croatto on Pizza Colonna
in Rome, a seminary for Yugolsav priests who were adherents of Pavelic,
was a crucial sanctuary for wanted war criminals and collaborators. The main
 YUGOSLAVIA: THE GOLDEN PRIEST. STOLEN TREASURE AND THE CRUSADERS 347

go-between and organiser of whose success depended

this particular ratline,

on access to Red Cross documents, was again Dr Draganovic. One end of

the network was run by Dr Brancko Jelic, who was finally released from
British detention in December 1945 and given three months to leave the
country. The Foreign and Home Offices preferred to 'let sleeping dogs lie',
however, and over the following two years, with the aid of his brother, who
had escaped from the communists, Dr Jelic helped run the London end of
an escape line to the New World for wanted Ustashi. It is unlikely that
Jelic's activities could have been undertaken without the knowledge and

endorsement of MI 6.^^
While the Maclean Mission intelligence section had penetrated San Giro-
lamo and put the 'Balkan Grey eminence', Draganovic, under surveillance,
Clissold and Maclean discovered that at the same time he was being tipped
off by someone in British Intelligence, which was 'honeycombed with Ustashi
sympathisers who openly co-operated with him'. Maclean later recorded his
bitterness that Draganovic 'usually had advance warning of any operation
to arrest war criminals; in some cases he was even provided with lists of
those to be arrested'. Maclean pointed the finger at a British officer at the
Military and Intelligence HQ in Rome
for leaking to Draganovic 'details
of every search-and-arrest operation'. Aarons and Loftus claim he had close
relations with Colonel C. Findlay, Director of the Displaced Persons and
Repatriation section of the occupation force in Italy, and his assistant Major
Simcock. These contacts proved invaluable, for they were only too willing to
assist the priest's clandestine activities. Other officers readily accepted

Draganovic's pleas that his 'good patriots' were innocent victims of mistaken
identity; though there was plenty of evidence to the contrary. He also played
on the hardliners' fears that liberal officers were 'inevitably strengthening the
position of Tito's government in a country where 90 per cent of the liberty-
loving and Christian population is unanimously opposed to communism'.
In one case, three days after the Yugoslav government had requested his
extradition, Ljbo Milos, who had sought sanctuary at San Girolamo, mysteri-
ously escaped arrest following a tip-off to Draganovic from someone in British
Intelligence. Milos eventually went down the ratline to Argentina, where he
became a major figure in the Ustashi's international terrorist apparatus. In
March 1947, Major Clissold swooped on the port of Genoa after a reliable
tip-off that several wanted war criminals would be on the Buenos Aires-

bound SS Philippa. Clissold's men arrested sixteen prominent Ustashi, includ-

ing General Vladimir Kren, formerly head of Pavelic's air force. The arrests
were, however, undermined by the intervention of the Vatican and MI6
supporters in the House of Commons, who pleaded for the release of the
Ustashi politicians, including Kren, who was a leading member of Intermar-
ium. It was a pattern that would be repeated.
Maclean's Mission did manage to reduce the full list of suspects to between
348 PART FOUR: THE BALKANS AND RUSSIA

fi\ e hundred and a thousand suspected 'blacks', and in February and April
about forty to fifty 'quislings' were returned to Yugoslavia. Allied Military
Intelligence units then carried out a series of operations in the DP camps
under various code-names. In April, they launched Operation BACKHAND
at the Fermo camp, with those arrested being sent to the British-run Military

Prison and Detention Barracks in Rome. Professor Royse of the Inter-

Governmental Committee on Refugees (IGCR) noted that a 'military oper-
ation similar to that at Fermo' was necessary in order to remove about forty
Ustashi from Bagnoli before the IGCR could take over the camp; an essential
precondition for the return of the country to Italian rule. In May, Operation
CROSSLINK resulted in the arrest of a number of key Ustashi at Bagnoli.
These included Srecko Rover, who was sent to Rome where, to the dismay
of the Maclean Mission, he was unconditionally released and allowed to
continue his work with the Crusaders, as deputy to Bozidar Kavran, at the
Trofaiach terrorist base.^^
Another member of the Maclean Mission, Annette Street, recalled that
'my section certainly never caught anybody, and I doubt if many people
were brought to book'. In practice 'greys' were released unconditionally and
allowed to solicit international assistance, including emigration to other coun-
tries. The seldom arrested or consented to the handover of any Yugo-
British
slav who had assisted them, though the United States political adviser in
Rome believed that similar consideration was not shown to American agents.
'British interrogation of arrestees has centred more around American intelli-
gence plans and operations than around patriotism or otherwise of the indi-
vidual concerned.' Bitter feuding took place between the British and American
intelligence agencies over control of the Ustashi assets and operations, but it
did not last long. By the summer of 1947 they began to co-ordinate activities
as the Americans started to develop their own networks in eastern Europe.^^
During June, the British had second thoughts about the repatriations
because of reports of the harsh treatment received by those that had returned.
A secret policy was endorsed by the Allies, which meant that future screen-
ings would be undertaken by a Joint Review Committee. This proved to be
more sympathetic towards the refugees, with the result that many escaped
judgement and found sanctuary with 'the Good Father', Dr Draganovic,
before travelling down a ratline and taking permanent refuge in Argentina.
Argentine dictator Juan Peron was keen to build up the rabidly anti-
communist Croats into a praetorian guard and issued thirty-five thousand
entry visas.^^
The major runners of ratlines were fugitive war criminals and collabor-
atorsfrom the former pro-fascist Intermarium states which were now under
communist control. These escape lines were ultimately controlled - since they
had penetrated them so thoroughly - by the Allies, and it was known at the
time that British Intelligence, helped by the Vatican at 'the highest levels',
 YUGOSLAVIA: THE GOLDEN PRIEST, STOLEN TREASURE AND THE CRUSADERS 349

was the most active participant. The American ambassador in Belgrade, John
M. Cabot, who knew a great deal about the wartime activities of the Ustashi,
was 'disgusted' that the Allies appeared to be employing 'the same men we
so strongly criticised the Fascists for using'.'It is crystal clear', Cabot wrote

in June 1947, 'even on the basis of material available in this embassy's files
that we have flouted our own commitments and that by our attitude we are
protecting not only Quislings but also [those who] have been guilty of terrible
crimes committed in Yugoslavia.' He noted that 'we are apparently conniving
with the Vatican and Argentina to get guilty people to haven in the latter
country'. He might have been thinking of Nikola Rusinovic, a leading Ustashi
ideologue and quisling, who had wartime 'special responsibilities' for organ-
ising joint counter-insurgency operations with the Italians against Tito's parti-

sans. The Yugoslav War Crimes Liaison Detachment had requested his
extradition but it was officially turned down because US Military Intelligence
officials were using Rusinovic as a source of information.^^
In June 1947 a top-secret (FAN-757) cable had been communicated
through military channels to the British authorities in which the US State
Department agreed in writing to using the Vatican to smuggle collaborators
out of Italy to Argentina. In December, Foreign Office official Victor Perowne
wrote that 'His Majesty's Government have asked the Vatican to assist in
getting Greys [i.e. Nazi collaborators] to South America, although they are
certainly wanted by the Yugoslav Government'. American officials noted that
'some arrangement has been worked out with the Vatican'.
During June 1947, a US Counter-intelligence Corps (CIC) officer, William
Gowen, who instigated a high-level investigation, code-named Operation
CIRCLE, into the murky ties between the Vatican and the fugitive collabor-
ators, was given access to the San Girolamo files which contained the identi-
ties of twenty Croatian war criminals being sheltered by the Vatican. Gowen

subsequently informed a senior US intelligence officer in the Rome head-

quarters, James Angleton, about the material. Angleton shared the building
with members of MI6 who, unbeknown to Gowen, were working with Angle-
ton on the second floor 'to hide the Nazis from the CIC on the first floor'.

Gowen discovered that the man running the San Girolamo-based ratline, Dr
Draganovic, had 'high-level connections with British Intelligence' and that
his network was being funded by MI 6, which had taken it over from the
French. Further, the Americans had agreed to share the financial burden. He
submitted his report on 6 July, and on the following day the CIC obtained
permission to arrest the leaders of the Croatian ratline and to 'take Pavelic
into custodyon sight'. The MI6/Angleton team then 'rushed to control the
damage' caused by the Gowen report.
The Foreign Office did finally move against Pavelic, but bureaucratic
manoeuvres, largely influenced by the fact that British Intelligence had helped
to protect him, ensured that the process was painfully slow. Pavelic was able
350 TART FOUPv: THE BALKANS AND RUSSIA

to use his close relations with the Italian police, which had existed since the
ttiirties when they sponsored him in exile, to avoid the attentions of Yugoslav
agents. Although there was reliable and accurate intelligence on his where-
abouts and movements, the CIC received an official 'Hands off Pavelic' notice,
and the order to arrest him was quietly sabotaged by American agents acting
on behalf of British Intelligence. In September, Pavelic left Italy with a Red
Cross passport, arranged by Draganovic, in the name of a Hungarian, 'Pablo
Aranyos', for Argentina, where he was employed by Peron as a 'security
adviser '.^^
Among other Ustashi war criminals identified by the Maclean Mission as
being spirited away by Draganovic and his acolytes, according to Aarons,
were: Father Dragutin Caber, an officer in Pavelic's personal bodyguard who
presided over a massacre of Serbians; Dragutin Toth, Pavelic's Minister of
Finance; Lovro Susie, his Minister of National Economy; Vilko Precnikar, a
general in his bodyguard; and Vjekoslav Vrancic, responsible for Croatia's
concentration camps and secret police. During the last half of 1947 the ratline
was temporarily transferred to Trieste and the safety of a joint British/ Ameri-
can intelligence team. Subsequently, William Gowen was set up, smeared
and accused - wrongly as it turned out - of helping to smuggle into the
United States a Hungarian fascist collaborator, Ferenc Vajta.^^
As Pavelic's men were escaping justice in Europe, Tito's security police
moved against the head of the Roman Catholic Church in Croatia, Archbishop
Stepinac, who was accused of collaboration with the Ustashi. A supporter of
the NDH, though a critic of was the first senior
Ustashi excesses, Stepinac
Church dignitary to be imprisoned by an East European communist govern-
ment, and there was 'a feeling that he had been arrested less for his wartime
contacts with Pavelic than for his public denunciation of the anti-Church
campaign in Yugoslavia'. The result was were even more
that the British
reluctant to send people back to Yugoslavia, on the Joint Review
and the rules
Committee were tightened even further. This effectively meant that there
would be no more repatriations, and by November 1947 British forces had
abandoned any semblance of searching for wanted Yugoslavs. Soon after.
Bishop Saric 'escaped' Yugoslav justice by crossing the border into Switzer-
land, to be followed by Bishop Rozman to the American Zone in Austria and
eventually to the United States.^^
At the same time, Tito's government instigated a series of political trials
which 'revealed' the hand of British Intelligence behind every setback or
internal dispute. The accused were charged, 'not with opposition, which was
their real crime, but with passing state secrets, or slanderous information, to
foreigners. The evidence published at the trials suggested that they had done
no more than talk to their British or American friends in a manner critical
of the regime.' The Serbian leader of the People's Peasant Party, Dr Dragoljub
Jovanovic, who had criticised the government's policies on co-operatives and
 YUGOSLAVIA: THE GOLDEN PRIEST, STOLEN TREASURE AND THE CRUSADERS 351

over-reliance on the Soviet Union for foreign policy, was arrested, charged
and imprisoned for nine years for conspiring with British agents to organise
a Serbian and Croatian 'peasant block' against the government. One of the
alleged British agents was Hugh Seton- Watson, who was accused of giving
instructions to Jovanovic on behalf of 'the British Intelligence Service', an
accusation that Seton-Watson publicly denied.
The Maclean Mission eventually wound down its operation and was
relocated to the British Intelligence centre at Herford, in the British Zone of
Germany, where it dealt with DPs and oversaw the legal hearings into their
cases. The Mission's impressive card index of wanted war criminals, based
on information provided by the Yugoslavs and from their own interrogations,
was combined into voluminous files on collaborators' past and present activi-
ties. These were used to track those war criminals who had disappeared,

though, in fact, virtually no screening had been undertaken in Germany. In

reality, the Foreign Office put legal obstacles in the way of extradition. The

case against the Yugoslav traitors 'must be strong enough to justify the
presumption that they would, if tried in a British court by British standards
of justice, be both sentenced to death and executed'. This was not a problem
for the man tasked with examining the approaches made by the Soviets and
the satellite countries for the extradition of alleged war criminals. The Presi-
dent of the Extradition Tribunal, in Hamburg, was Archibald Lyall, an MI6
officer who was sympathetic to the Serbs.
Lyall was a slightly Bohemian character, with a taste for 'tarts and prosti-
tutes' and a definite air of mystery. 'There were, of course,' according to
friends, 'a great many Archies; one doubts whether any of even his closest
friends knew all of them.' He became a barrister but rarely practised. Pro-
nationalist, Lyall went to Spain in 1937, where he reported on the war trials
by the Spanish Nationalists and became a great friend of a Carlist, Peter
Kemp, who would also join him in MI6. At the outbreak of war, he was
employed by the War Office to write a phrase book for soldiers. During his
trip through the Balkans, Lyall had worked at the Dragutin Subotic School

of Slavic Studies, and had become friendly with a number of Serbs. In Febru-
ary 1940, he was appointed press attache in Belgrade, and then two years
later became head of the Yugoslav section of SOE in Cairo. The following

year, he transferred to the Psychological Warfare Bureau in Jerusalem, creat-

ing propaganda in support of Mihailovic. He subsequently moved to SOE
headquarters in Bari and served in Belgrade, the Middle East and Italy.^^
In November 1945 Lyall transferred to the Control Commission in Vienna,
where he served with the Legal Division of the British Element of the Allied
Commission in Austria dealing with war crimes. Although he actually had
little legal experience in court, he was appointed a judge in the military court
in Klagenfurt. According to his friend, Michael Sykes, Lyall regretted that a
number of DPs, 'whose only crime was anti-communism, went to their
352 PART FOUR: THE BALKANS AND RUSSIA

deaths. But it was not too late for Archie and his tribunal to save some of
them ... he derived much satisfaction in throwing out cases lacking strong
e\'idence.' In 1948, Lyall was posted to Trieste under a cover post as Deputy
Director of the Information Services for the British Element of the Allied
Military Government, and two years later was made Director of the Public
Information Office.^^

The fanatical followers of Damjanovic were among the last to be screened.

Approximately one thousand suspects were dealt with by the Maclean
Mission, and this figure was reduced to a select group of forty-four, including
Ljenko Urbancic, whom Yugoslav authorities regarded as 'one of the most
ardent propagators of collaboration with Germany in the armed struggle'.
By the spring of 1948, the forty-four cases had been cut to six and, even then,
four of these were reopened following the intervention of British Intelligence
because one claimed to have 'three volumes of captured communist docu-
ments, hidden in Germany and Italy, which we should not be able to get, if

we handed him over'. The 135 interrogated at Munster by Major Clissold

were reduced to only eighteen, but fourteen managed to 'escape' before the
repatriation date. According to an American report, in a similar episode
a group of Dimitrije Ljotic's Zbor movement was transported towards the
Yugoslav border but owing 'to careful British planning, all managed to effect
escape during the course of the journey and became widely dispersed
throughout the US Zone of Germany'.^^
In March, Bozidar Kavran's deputy at the Trofaiach Crusader base in
Austria, Srecko Rover, took charge of the incursion operations that were
designed to rouse anti-communist Croats to revolt against Tito's government.
During Kavran's absence. Rover was responsible for all aspects of the
missions, overseeing the secret radio channels to men already inside Yugo-
slavia and guiding new groups across the border. The Crusaders boasted of
having between 40,000 and 300,000 guerrillas in the Papuk mountains, but
this was almost certainly a gross overestimate. In June, as an active member

of the Ustashi Revolutionary Organisation and in order to seek recognition

for the Ustashi's political front, the Croatian State Committee, Aarons reveals
that Rover approached American CIC agents in Frankfurt to request training
and communications equipment for his recruits. By the summer, however,
when Rover launched the last disastrous Crusader incursion into Yugoslavia,
code-named GUARDIAN, there was no effective underground, and any
prospects of success had disappeared.^^
During 1948, Yugoslavia's efficient security police effectively destroyed
the Crusaders. The exile groups were thoroughly penetrated by its agents
provocateurs, and the Yugoslavs were well aware of their plans, including
their secret radio codes. In the radio deception game that followed, Ustashi
guerrillas were lured to prearranged meeting points, where they were either
killed or detained by Yugoslav security troops. Late in the year, there were
 YUGOSLAVIA: THE GOLDEN PRIEST, STOLEN TREASURE AND THE CRUSADERS 353

several trials of Slovene White Guards, Croatian Crusaders and Serbian Chet-
niks, which revealed that many of their leaders were notorious war criminals.
In August, over ninety members of the western-sponsored Crusader terrorist
group were brought to trial in Zagreb, including a number who had 'escaped'
from British custody.^^
The Foreign Office had already dismissed the encouragement of anti-Tito
groups and guerrilla incursions as 'undesirable', and MI 6 had withdrawn its
support, primarily for financial reasons. There was a recognition that Tito
controlled the secret police and army, 'so that any uprising or civil war in
Yugoslavia would either be crushed by the Yugoslav Communists or taken
advantage of by the USSR'. The crucial reason, however, was the announce-
ment of the Tito-Stalin split and the subsequent change of British policy
during the autumn of 1948 to one of 'masterly inactivity' over Yugoslavia.
As Permanent Under-Secretary, Lord
a result, the former Foreign Office
Vansittart, who was group that was close to MI6's
'babysitting' a Ustashi
anti-communist section R5, immediately dropped the London-based Yugo-
slav National Committee, which was responsible for promoting the Ustashi
cause.^^
Likewise, the American President and his National Security Council had
also decided against further support of guerrilla warfare in Yugoslavia, but
that did not stop a faction of the Office of Policy Co-ordination (OPC)/
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), which possibly did not believe the reality
of the Tito-Stalin split, from adopting, at the end of the year, 'the highly

dangerous policy of staging an anti-communist uprising to overthrow Tito

and install a Western-style government'. The OPC /CIA began to infiltrate
into Yugoslav right-wing exiles, mostly Serb Chetniks, who were 'conspicu-
ously clothed in American Air Force uniforms'. The operation was a disaster.
They were quickly picked up by the security police and imprisoned, but not
before they were paraded through Belgrade where they were recognised as
former Ustashi and Chetnik collaborators. When these secret operations were
uncovered the Foreign Office angrily dismissed them as 'idiotic American
behaviour' which played 'straight into the Soviet hand'.*''^

The Ustashi leadership recognised that the complete collapse of the

Crusader operations had ended this phase of their paramilitary campaign.
Their efforts were now geared towards helping their members migrate from
Europe South America and the white Commonwealth
to safe sanctuaries in
countries. They were helped by the decision in July 1948 of British Foreign
Secretary Ernest Bevin to stop all war crimes investigations and trials. On 26
Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Christopher Mayhew,
July, his
made a statement in the House of Commons which effectively blocked further
requests for repatriations and thereby closed a dishonourable episode. Most
of the Ustashi, such as Ljenko Urbancic and Vjekoslav Vrancic, were allowed
to escape into the protective custody of the Vatican. During their investi-
354 PART FOUR: THE BALKANS AND RUSSIA

gations, Fitzroy Maclean and his team found evidence implicating United
States Intelligence in many of the successful Ustashi escapes to South America.
Others, such as Branislav Ivanovic, were helped to seek new lives and pursue
their political objectives in the British Commonwealth, principally Canada
and Australia. A Commonwealth Investigation Service report said Ivanovic
was Very anti-communist' and that he had 'worked with the intelligence
services of England and America whilst domiciled in Austria'.
The man who had organised the last raids into Yugoslavia, Srecko Rover,
successfully applied for International Refugee Organisation (IRO) assistance,
and in September 1948 was accepted as eligible for resettlement. As Mark
Aarons notes, astonishingly he was given the post of Chief of Police for the
IRO, a position from which he was undoubtedly able to help his fellow-
Ustashi. When Rover emigrated to Australia, the British government denied
the documented claim that he had worked for their intelligence organisations.
Pavelic's right-hand man, Artukovic, eventually fled in 1949, via Ireland,
to the United States, where he lived in Los Angeles as a free man. Although
his true identity was discovered and deportation proceedings were instigated,
Artukovic managed to resist their implementation.^^

In Argentina, Pavelic founded, in 1956, a new Ustashi terrorist group, the

Croatian Liberation Movement (known by its Croat acronym, HOP). The
following year, he was wounded in an assassination attempt, believed to
have been masterminded by the Yugoslav secret police. He settled secretly
in Franco's Spain, where he died in Madrid in December 1959. The HOP
leadership then passed to Stejpan Hefer, a Croatian lawyer who had fled his
homeland to Austria in 1945. The Yugoslav government had requested his
extradition in August 1946, but the British authorities claimed not to know
of his whereabouts. Hefer surfaced a year later in Italy and travelled down
the ratline to Argentina, where he resided until his death in 1973.^^
Much to the consternation of western intelligence agencies, in September
1967 the architect of the ratline to South America, Krunoslav Draganovic,
suddenly disappeared behind the Iron Curtain, turning up unexpectedly in
Yugoslavia. HOP leaders believed that he had been set up by Yugoslav
security police as part of an elaborate entrapment operation. Draganovic
denied this, claiming that he had returned 'deliberately and freely'. This
strange episode remained unexplained at the time of his death in June 1982.^^
Despite their bloodstained background, the exploits of the Ustashi
continue to be praised by nationalist politicians. In April 1996 the President
of Independent Croatia, Franjo Tudjman, who was accused of trying to white-
wash Ante Pavelic should
the history of the Ustashi, said that the remains of
be returned to his homeland. Disturbingly, fascist slogans from the Pavelic
era were being used at medal ceremonies for police and militia. One official
said that 'there's a lot of rewriting of history going on here'.'^
CHAPTER 19

THE MUSKETEERS IN
ALBANIA

Proclaimed King Zog in 1927, Ahmed Bey Zog was a member of a powerful
family from the Mati region in central Albania. Three years previously, he
had seized power - some accounts suggest with British Military Intelligence
help - by overthrowing the Orthodox Bishop Fan Noli, who had tried to
carry out social reforms, including land redistribution, that alienated the
chieftains who controlled the regions. Ruling in a lavish style, which
contrasted sharply with the poverty of his subjects, Zog ran what Julian
Amery called a 'wonderfully liberal dictatorship', though others experienced
it as authoritarian indeed. When Italy invaded Albania in April 1939, the
King fled (along with a chest of gold bars looted from the national treasury)
to exile in France, but with the French defeat he was forced to move to
London - not, however, as a monarch driven by the Axis powers into exile
from an allied country, but as a private refugee. There was no Albanian
government-in-exile and no prospect of one. His influence on the Foreign
Office was reliant on the pressure applied by private citizens such as Mrs
Aubrey Herbert, whose husband had once been offered - as had a number
of western politicians - the Albanian Crown.
Nor was there any prospect of an internal revolt against the Italians. The
fact was that there was a lack of intelligence on Albania, and what little did

come through to MI6 tended to be unreliable - a common complaint and one

that was sustained during the Cold War. The trickle of intelligence was chan-
nelled through Cairo to Margaret 'Fanny' Hasluck, who collated the slivers of
356 PART FOUR: THE BALKANS AND RUSSIA

information - would appear - to no great effect. 'It was a commonly held

it

view among those who had lived and worked in King Zog's pre-war Albania
that Albania's political destiny was determined by the northern Greg highland-
ers rather than the southern Tosks. It followed that the key to any uprising
against the Italians in Albania in 1941 was thought to lie in the north, among the
Greg chieftains and tribes, stimulated from Yugoslavia.' According to Albanian
specialist Sir Reginald Hibbert, who served with the Special Operations Execu-
tive (SOE) in Albania during the war and was later a Foreign Office diplomat:
The calculation proved to be false on every count. '^

Elizabeth Barker, in 'British Policy in south-east Europe in the Second

World War', writes that 'the tiny, remote, mountainous country' on the north-
west edge of the Balkan peninsula with a population of little more than a
million 'seemed just the right place' for Britain's first experiment in encourag-
ing guerrilla warfare in the region. The scheme was run by MI6's Section D
and the irregular warfare specialists led by Colin Gubbins in MI(R). Section
D agents, such as Julian Amery in Belgrade, recruited exiles in Greece and
Turkey, including one of Zog's strongest supporters in the north. Abas Kupi,
who had forcibly resisted the invading Italians - 'for a few hours'. They then
positioned arms dumps on the Greek border. On 7 April 1941, a pre-war
adviser to Zog's gendarmerie and Section D officer, Dayrell Oakley-Hill, led
northern chieftains Gani Kryeziu and his brother into Albania from Kosovo,
on the Yugoslav border, with a hundred men. They had 'no
force of three
assurances of support or supply from anywhere' and the revolt quickly
collapsed. Albania proved to be 'less ready or suited for it than its neigh-
bours'. Reginald Hibbert later wrote that the problem was that the country
was 'so backward politically, the nationalism was not developed and the
peasants were not in a position to be used'.^
The only group that had a real chance of organising a cohesive resistance
was the Communist Party of Albania (CPA), which had been formed with
the help of two Yugoslav communist envoys in November 1941, electing as
secretary-general Enver Hoxha. Having been a student in Paris, Hoxha
arrived back from France in 1936 already a 'very skilful operator in the
mafia-like aspects of communist polities'. In 1942 the CPA formed the Move-
ment of National Liberation (LNC). A number of nationalists were involved,
the most notable being the landowner Abas Kupi, although his hope was to
rally people to the monarchist cause. The nationalists were unwilling to ditch
their hostility to the communists in the interest of a resistance front. Likewise,
it would seem that Hoxha was more concerned with ensuring the primacy

of the CPA in the Albanian resistance than to draw the widest possible range
of nationalist sentiment against the occupier.^
In July 1943, Mussolini's government fell, and the collapse brought about
a national revolt in Albania. In response, the Germans sent a crack parachute
division into the capital, Tirana. Following a crackdown, many Albanians
 THE MUSKETEERS IN ALBANIA 357

fled to themountains and into the arms of the LNC partisans. During the
autumn, those nationalist leaders who had stayed out of the LNC formed
an association of their own, the Balli Kombetar (National Front - BK). A
passive organisation, it wanted to avoid useless destruction and wait for the
day of national uprising when the Germans would be facing final defeat. Led
by a former diplomat, Midhat Frasheri, and Aba Ermneji, the nationalist BK
was anti-monarchist and anti-Italian but wished to keep for Albania the
provinces annexed by the Axis powers in 194L In November, Kupi was
expelled from the LNC and founded a third movement, Legalite, which
proclaimed its loyalty to King Zog.
The Germans played a clever hand in Albania. 'Unable to spare any more
troops, the Germans decided to pacify Albania by political conciliation.' They
allowed an elderly group of pre-war statesmen to erase the Italian institutions
and appealed 'to the type of Albanian nationalist and republican represented
in the Balli Kombetar'. To administer 'Greater Albania', the Germans set up
a Regency Council of three men who had not collaborated with the Italians
- the pre-war Prime Minister Mehdi Frasheri (brother of the Balli leader,
Midhat), who was appointed Senior Regent, Lef Nosi and Anton Harapi.
Among the chieftains and nationalists 'no single leader raised a voice in
protest against the Germans and the make-believe government in Tirana'."^
The Germans formed an Albanian army commanded by General Prenk
Previsi and a gendarmerie under the Minister of the Interior, Xhafer Deva,
a native of Kosovo, the region annexed from Yugoslavia. In Kosovo the
Germans established an association of local chieftains, the Prizren League,
with Deva as president. From among the Kosovo Albanians four armed
battalions were later expanded into a special SS division, named after Skand-
erbeg, Albania's fifteenth-century national hero. It was used in operations
against the LNC and Tito's Yugoslav partisans.^
The first SOE liaison officers into Albania were the professional soldiers
Lt-Col. David Smiley and Neil 'Billy' McLean. Entering from Greece, they
eventually found Enver Hoxha's headquarters and set up a liaison link with
the LNC. Strongly conservative and anti-communist in their views, their
sympathies were strictly with the nationalists. With another right-winger,
Julian Amery, son of Leo, Secretary of State for India and one of Winston
Churchill's closest friends, they made up the group known as 'the musketeers'
which supported the BK and the Abas Kupi Legalite movement. Other
colleagues included Alan Hare, an old Etonian and the younger son of Lord
Listowel, Tony Neel, John Hibberdine, Anthony Northrop and Peter Kemp,
who all appeared to dislike anyone in SOE who had 'progressive ideas'.
They held a minority though highly influential view within SOE.^
On 17 December 1943, SOE's Brig. E. M. 'Trotsky' Davies reported to
headquarters that the BK and the Zogists 'are co-operating with Germans,
who are exploiting them with arms in large quantities, setting them to guard
358 PART FOUR: THF BALKANS AND RUSSIA

main roads, police towns and lead patrols thus freeing the German troops'.
He added that while they had promised to fight the occupiers they had
consistently failed to do so. 'I consider the Allies' attitude should be made
public forthwith, showing quislings, traitors and non-resisters to Germans
will receive appropriate punitive treatment from the Allies in due course.'
Da\'ies recommended recognising the LNC as the sole resistance organisa-
tion. Even the musketeers were forced to concede that the nationalists 'collab-
orate with the Germans' and that 'we may be forced to collaborate exclusively
with the Partisans' as 'the only military force worth backing in the country'.
Three weeks later. Da vies survived an ambush by a pro-Nazi BK group. One
Albanian specialist speculated: 'Did someone on the Allied side want to get
rid of this proponent of LNC support?'^
In early 1944 the beginnings of a nationalist coalition were put together
with Mehdi Frasheri, Abas Kupi and others, as part of an attempt to crush
the communists. There 'was undoubtedly indirect collaboration through the
"nationalist" collaborators'. Kupi's organisation in Tirana intervened on his
behalf in the collaborationist politics of the capital. According to German
documents, Kupi made contact with German officials and told them that he
would not fight them, even in the event of an Allied landing. The German
emissary to Tirana confirmed that there had been direct collaboration with
the BK, extremists who even denounced the British mission of Billy McLean
for giving 'animportant moral and material contribution ... to Bolshevism'.
Smiley and Amery were regarded as 'agents of the Third International in
disguise'. SOE officer and actor Anthony Quayle, in a debriefing report of
30 April 1944, described the BK as 'an undisciplined agglomeration of indi-
viduals held together only by their hatred of Communism'.^
A July 1944 report by the American Office of Strategic Services (OSS) on
Albania - and Internal Conditions' - acknowledged that 'Xhafer
'Political

Deva, Rexhep Mitrovic and Midhat Frasheri are with the Germans Anti- . . .

semitic measures are being adopted now.' A seized SS document revealed

that Deva had been responsible for the deportation of 'Jews, Communists
and partisans' to extermination camr well as for punitive raids by the
-

SS Skanderbeg Division. The small m^ antain territory had few Jews, so

relatively few were captured and killed, though Christopher Simpson adds
'not for lack of trying by the Balli Kombetar organisation and the Albanian
SS', which was implicated in 'a series of anti-semitic purges that rounded
up about 800 people, the majority of whom were deported and murdered'.
The LNC held Deva responsible for 'the Tirana massacres' of 4 February
1944, and other excesses committed by the Gestapo 'in collaboration with the
Albanian gendarmerie'.
Anthony Quayle concluded that the right-wing nationalists, who were
regarded as 'near-quislings', are 'anxiously looking to the future . . .who will
save them now from the revenge of the partisans on the day the Germans
 THE MUSKETEERS IN ALBANIA 359

leave Albania?' The nationalist reluctance to fight was, writes Reginald

Hibbert, terms, unforgiveable, and as the war drew to a close
'in historical

itwas not forgiven, and they reaped a terrible requital'. The LNC partisan
movement had its main strength in the centre and south, and had been weak
in the mountains in the north. As the war went on, however, the partisans
grew in strength and they began to move northwards, threatening the nation-
alists."

By the time the CONSENSUS 11 mission, which included McLean,

Smiley, Amery and the remnants of another mission, SLENDER (Alan Hare),
moved back into Albania in April 1944, the balance of forces had moved in
favour of the communists. The musketeers, however, already thinking in
terms of the postwar world, wanted increased support for the anti-communist
Kupi and the Zogist forces, north-east of Tirana. By the summer, however,
units of the BK were integrated into the German command, while Kupi's
Legalite movement was regarded by the British headquarters in Cairo as 'not
a military factor'. Although there was no support for the return of the King,
Kupi continued to indulge in his intrigues and the Germans allowed one of
his followers, the northern Greg chieftain Fiqri Dine, to organise a German-
sponsored government which soon collapsed.
The only nationalists in Albania to embrace wholeheartedly the idea of
building the future Albania by fighting the Germans were the Kryeziu
brothers, Gani, Said and Hasan. The Kryeziu movement, however, was
quickly crushed, thus eliminating the only effective non-communist resistance
to the Germans in the north. When it became clear that the German forces
would soon evacuate the country, in late August, Kupi joined General Prenk
Prevesi and Fiqri Dine to plan an attack on the Germans, but their forces,
typically, 'melted away'. In the last days of the campaign, a motley crew
of Zogists/BKs, Dine, Prevesi and sixty armed Albanian troops attached
themselves to the Consensus mission. It is not surprising, given the pedigree
of the Albanians to whom McLean /Smiley /Amery attached themselves, that
Hoxha and thecommunists were suspicious and, indeed, hostile to the
Consensus mission. The nationalist resistance had been a 'fiction'.
By the autumn of 1944, the German forces were pulling out and it was
clear that the communists had won the civil war. Amery, however, believed
that the game was still not lost: '1 was in Albania at that critical moment.
With a very small British or American intervention we could have saved
Albania for the West. This is what we did in Greece, after all. British forces
stamped down on the communist resistance, bringing up General Zervas and
the traditionalists.' In London, the War Office recognised that it was not
within Britain's power to prevent a communist government that would look
to Yugoslavia and Russia for support. 'We must therefore aim at strengthen-
ing our position with partisans now in order that after the war we may be
able to influence the partisan government.' The result was that Amery and
360 PART FOUR: THE BALKANS AND RUSSIA

Smiley were forced to abandon Kupi. He later made his own way out with
Ihsan Toptani, a rich Albanian trader. Recognising their contribution and
support in the Kosovo region, Enver Hoxha offered the Kryeziu brothers a
place in a provisional government but they refused. Said was eventually
evacuated by the British HQ Liaison Mission to Italy.^^

Viscount Bill Harcourt, who ran SOE operations out of Bari with Force
399 andwhen stationed in Tirana saw the new regime at first hand, thought
Hoxha an extremely disagreeable character: 'a fat, pudgy, self-indulgent
fellow with pink and white face. He speaks good French but has a nasty way
about him.' Harcourt found Hoxha surrounded by 'a mixture of Communists
and plain ordinary bandits'. He told American journalist Cyrus Sulzberger
that 'it was decided in the end to back Hoxha because his appeared to
outfit
be the best of a very bad lot'. It was not long, however, before the Right, just

as would with Yugoslavia and Tito, developed its conspiracy theory. Peter
it

Kemp put the musketeers' case forward in his book No Colour or Crest:
'Albania was a totally unnecessary sacrifice to Soviet imperialism. It was
British initiative, British arms and money that nurtured Albanian resistance
in 1943; just as it was British policy in 1944 that surrendered to a hostile
power our influence, our honour and our friends. '^^
Reginald Hibbert dismissed this as a red herring put forward by people
who had failed to understand what had happened: 'The heart of the matter
lies in [the] claim that it was British help which brought the partisan leaders

to power in Albania - "had British aid gone the other way Albania would
be a pro-western democracy today". And he [Smiley] implies that it was
commies, moles, liberals, lefties and softies in SOE and among his fellow
British liaison officers who were communists
guilty of turning Albanian
against the best efforts of himself and those of Billy McLean and Julian
Amery.' Hibbert puts forward the counter-argument, and a deeply ironical
one, that it was Smiley 'who armed and trained the 1st Partisan brigade in
1943, and it was this brigade which led the partisan invasion of the north in
1944, having survived the German efforts to destroy it in the winter. Smiley
described the arrival of this brigade in the north as his blackest day in 1944.'
The unpalatable truth was that the LNC had popular support and that 'a
revolutionary force was released in Albania in 1944 and that was the primary
force which swept Enver Hoxha to power'. The Soviet Union played only a
minor part. It was, as Hibbert acknowledged, 'not British help but Italian
and German violence and destructiveness which brought about the revolution
in Albania Hitler's disastrous achievement of bringing communism into
. . .

eastern and central Europe extended to Albania too.'^^

There is no doubt that the majority of those who gave their support to
the CPA
were soon disillusioned with the new society ushered in during
1945, There was widespread terror and ruthless persecution as Hoxha cleared
out the middle class. Catholics, non-communists, merchants and foreigners
 THE MUSKETEERS IN ALBANIA 361

- in fact anyone he thought oppose him - in a series of show

likely to

trials of 'major war have been used against

criminals'. Torture appears to
opponents. Britain, the United States and the USSR recognised the new
Albania in November 1945. The following month, bogus elections were held
on a single list dictated by the CPA, and the resultant assembly abolished
the monarchy and declared, in January 1946, a people's republic with a
Soviet-style constitution. Thereafter, 'Albanian relations with the West rapidly
deteriorated' as the Allies refused to repatriate a number of leading Albanian
nationalist politicians - 'war criminals' - who had fled to Allied-occupied
Italy or Greece and had been granted the status of 'political refugees'. Hoxha
also railed against the West for attempting to undermine and overthrow his
regime. Conspiracy trialswere used to accuse the western powers of 'sinister
intentions towards Albania'.
Behind the communist rhetoric, the twisted paranoia and the myth-
making which Hoxha used to batter his people into silent obedience, there

did lie elements of truth. Hoxha had reason to be vigilant. When at the end
of hostilities SOE officer Squadron-Leader Tony Neel, who had served in the
North among the Catholics, and his American counterpart left Albania they
are alleged to have said: 'We shall be back in another way.' During the last
months of the war, British and American intelligence units in Italy had indeed
begun 'to pay close attention to Albania, not so much for itself - though there
were many in Britain who hoped to see King Zog, who was living in exile
in London, restored to the throne - as for its strategic relationship to Yugo-
slavia and Greece'. Civil war was about to erupt in Athens, and Yugoslavia's
Tito was in the process of grabbing Kosovo with its five hundred thousand
ethnic Albanians.
Still commanded by Viscount Harcourt, end of the war SOE's Force
at the
399 continued to focus its activities Europe from its base on
in south-east
Bari. The wartime centre for Italian fascist propaganda directed at the Middle

East, Bari had become the Allied headquarters for propaganda warfare.
According to Robin Winks, 'BBC bulletins were rebroadcast through Radio
Bari and were aimed, for a time, most specifically at Albania'. In London,
intelligence files had been maintained 'on the Albanian underground move-
ment, as well as on the Society of Friends of Albania - a pro-Zog group -
and the more liberal Anglo- Albanian Association'. The OSS Research and
Analysis section had also begun updating its December 1943 'Who's Who of
Albanian Guerrillas', which identified up to fifty-five guerrilla groups and a
hundred different leaders. From early 1944, it was evident. Winks concludes,
'to anyone with even limited access to these files that something was intended

for Albania'.^''
Winks even suggests that in early 1945 'a few teams were parachuted into
Albania tomake contact with splinter groups; most simply disappeared,
though some made their way to Yugoslavia to report on the confused situ-
362 PART FOUR: THE BALKANS AND RUSSIA

ation'. That SOE was still operational is confirmed by the visit to Bari during
the summer of 1945 of MI6 Section IX head Kim Philby. While there, he was
'instrumental in getting a pet bugbear chosen for an airdrop into Yugoslavia;
but instead of breaking his neck he covered himself in glory'. Operations
may have continued until the summer of the following year, when SOE was
officially disbanded.^"
Albania had come under increasing Yugoslav influence but, British Intelli-

gence reported, was also receiving help from a

it large number of Soviet
'advisers'. In March 1946, the Foreign Office detected 'a close parallel between
the present penetration of all spheres of administration by the Russians and
the same process carried out by the Italians prior to 1939'. The only question
seemed to be whether 'Albania would remain a sub-dependency of the Soviet
Union or would succeed in raising itself to vassal status proper '.^^
In June, one of thirty-seven Albanians 'confessed' at his trial that the head
of the British Military Mission in liberated Tirana, Lt-Col. Alan Palmer, had
given him instructions before he left to keep in touch after the victory of the
communists with nationalist leaders Fiqri Dine and Muharren Bairaktar. He
added that a British liaison officer. Major Arnold, had even suggested the
assassination of Hoxha. Against this backdrop of anti-British propaganda
there had been talk of replacing the Mission with a legation, but it came to
nothing. Relations with Britain finally ended on 22 October 1946 when two
British destroyers, Saumarez and Volafge, struck mines in the three-mile-wide
Corfu channel, seriously damaging the ships and killing forty-three men. In
reprisal, Britain retained ten million pounds' worth of Albanian gold, lodged
in the Bank of England during the war (in April 1949 the International Court
of Justice at The Hague found against Albania and ordered compensation to
be paid to Britain). The French minister in Tirana, Guy Menant, was now the
main source of the few dismal scraps of information that reached the West.^^
It seems that by 1946 British Intelligence was actively engaged in unofficial

planning for operations in Albania, albeit on a small scale. Contacts had

already been made with Albanian emigre groups. One of MI6's White Russian
agents. General Turkul, was alleged to head an organisation in Belgrade that
supported the return of King Zog to the Albanian throne. According to the
informed sources of John Loftus, by this time the British and Americans were
planning for a possible guerrilla uprising in Albania to liberate the country
from communist domination. On the American side, operations were run by
the secret Department of the Army Detachment (DAD) out of Frankfurt, with
a British Intelligence team under cover of the British High Commissioner in
Germany, which had a liaison office with DAD in the I. G. Farben building.
DAD operations were overseen by the State-Navy-War Co-ordinating
Committee, whose Washington liaison officer to the covert unit was Frank
Wisner. A former OSS officer who had been involved in similar wartime
operations in Romania, Wisner was a high-powered lawyer who happened
 THE MUSKETEERS IN ALBANIA 363

group of wealthy Albanian refugees,

to represent the financial interests of a
members of the BK and movement, who were seeking redress
the royalist
for the loss of property confiscated by the communists. In 1947, Wisner was
appointed by Dean Acheson Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Occupied
Territories, an intelligence rather than a diplomatic post.^^

In September 1947 another staged spy trial took place in Tirana, during
which the accused maintained in court that the British and American missions
had encouraged them to start an armed uprising against the regime. Whether
this was true or not, former CIA officer and Soviet specialist Harry Rositzke

revealed that 'a few trained men', apparently royalists, 'were dropped into
Albania in 1947'. The main action did not start until 1949 as a joint British-
American effort. The planning, though, began in early 1948.^^
Before his departure to Istanbul in January 1947, Kim Philby had been
told that his first priority was the Soviet Union and 'not to concentrate too
much attention on the Balkans'. The reason, it would appear, was that
remnants of SOE were still active in the region. Rodney Dennys, who had
joined MI6 in 1937 and had received an OBE for his 'double-cross' work in
Section V, was operating under the cover of First Secretary of the British
Middle East Office in Cairo when a full-scale operation in Albania was first
mooted. He later told Nicholas Bethell that in his opinion: 'It was the dying
twitches of the SOE. For a moment, years after it had been disbanded, SOE
came back its own, with agents in the field, and in the Balkans, SOE's
into
favourite area.' It seems that members of the disbanded Long Range Desert
Group, which had seen more fighting in Albania than SOE, were first
approached for such a mission but were 'either indifferent or sceptical about
counter-revolution' .^^
VALUABLE, as the action against Hoxha's Albania became
Operation
known, was primarily an SOE or, more accurately, an MI(R) operation,
mirroring the unsuccessful 1941 venture, and featuring a number of Section
D hand was former SOE director Major-
veterans. Initially, the guiding
General Sir Colin Gubbins, whose 'unusually clear perception of communism'
only reinforced his opposition to it. In January 1948, he gave a lecture at the
Royal United Services Institute on the wartime successes of 'Special Oper-
ations'. MI6 Chief Sir Stewart Menzies was, apparently, 'far from enthusiastic'
about launching a major paramilitary operation (such operations tended to
carry 'a high noise level' and were difficult to conceal) but agreed 'as a way
of keeping happy the ex-SOE "stinks and bangs people" who still enjoyed
some influence in the clubland fringes of intelligence'.^^
The Special Operations Branch, which was directed by Harold Perkins
and made up of SOE personnel who still 'lurked inside MI6', had been set
up precisely for this situation, but it soon became apparent that it lacked the
resources to mount such a major operation. Realising that this might be the
case when the war ended, Gubbins had given Gerry Holdsworth a new
364 PART FOUR: THE BALKANS AND RUSSIA

assignment to build an association of SOE operatives. Gubbins's 'immediate

concern was to establish some method whereby people with particular quali-
fications could be swiftly contacted in the event of a new war or emergency'.
Holdsworth, who had been a member of Section D and had ended the war
running operations in Italy and the Balkans from Bari, helped found - in
1947 - the Special Forces Club in Knightsbridge. The club acted as a contact
point for formerSOE operatives and a recruiting pool for future operations.^^
Although officially retired, Gubbins retained a relationship with MI6 and,
in 1948, he and other 'friends' approached Julian Amery with the idea of
mounting an operation in Albania. Amery, who was at that stage trying
unsuccessfully to enter Parliament as a Conservative candidate, was chosen
by Gubbins and Menzies 'not because of his wartime record and connections'
- there were plenty of men who had fought in Albania, who had either
returned to civilian life or were serving as regular soldiers - but because he
was 'available, and he was committed'.
Albania was at the time going through a period of political upheaval,
little which appears to have been known to the West. Contrary to western
of
propaganda, relations between Tirana and Moscow hardly existed, and Stalin
seemed content to leave Albania to be looked after by Tito, who treated it
as a client state. From mid- 1947, Hoxha did develop contact with Stalin,
which gave him some hope of holding off Tito's embrace, but Koci Xoxe, the
number- two man in the CPA and Minister of the Interior, worked willingly
with the Yugoslavs. Albania's exclusion from the Cominform - the only
communist regime to be so treated - was interpreted by the British embassy
in Belgrade as a sign that Albania would soon be formally annexed by Tito.
Albanian communist leaders visiting Belgrade were described by British
officials as 'either persons of complete insignificance or else characters out
of a farce'. When Xoxe number
of Hoxha's supporters, it seemed
forced out a
that Albania's federation with Yugoslavia, and maybe with Bulgaria, was not
far off. Stalin's breach with Tito and Albania's backing of the Cominform in

June 1948, however, allowed Hoxha 'to turn the tables on Koci Xoxe just as
Xoxe was on the point of eliminating him'. The unexpected news of the
Yugoslav expulsion was received with great jubilation by Hoxha and his
associates, and Albania was thus able 'to emerge from under Yugoslavia's
wmg /
.
29

The rift with Belgrade, however, left Albania's economy in a very precari-
ous and the country physically isolated. It was left friendless in the
state
Balkans and there was no firm Soviet commitment to come to its defence
after Yugoslavia repudiated its alliance with the country. An increased sense
of paranoia was reflected in the publicity given to a series of spy and show
trials. There was, reported the French diplomat Menant, a 'general uneasi-
ness', and a purge of officials with any links with Yugoslavia was taking
place. The Sigurimi, the Albanian secret police, controlled every aspect of
 THE MUSKETEERS IN ALBANIA 365

daily life. During September, Menant reported that there were Yugoslav-
inspired insurrections and guerrilla activity among the Shala and Hoti tribes
in the north.^°
Tito undoubtedly wanted to overthrow Hoxha in 1948 so that he could
bring Albania into a Yugoslav federation. Hoxha knew
and suspected this

that Tito was in league with Albania's traditional 'enemy', Britain. During
that year, an Albanian 'confessed' that former SAS officer Fitzroy Maclean
had hired him to assassinate Hoxha. Maclean was regarded as a 'most wanted
war criminal' in Albania, on the grounds that he had masterminded Tito's
defection to the West in 1944 by 'turning' him. Reginald Hibbert believes
that 'since Fitzroy was Tito's ally, Hoxha would have deduced that Britain
was manipulating Tito in its own aim of destabilizing Albania. Hoxha put
two and two together. He knew that the British were after him and that Tito
was also, in a different way. What was more natural than that he should link
the two and then see Fitzroy Maclean as the eminence grise.' It is also possible,
Hibbert adds, that the Albanians confused Fitzroy with Billy McLean, 'so like
Fitzroy in so many ways', who had actually spent time in the country
.'^^

Julian Amery began 'expert lobbying' on behalf of MI 6, which ensured

that enough funds were available to strengthen his hand. On his return to
London from a visit to Greece, Amery had 'the germ of a plan'.

I hadn't realised how close the communists were to bringing

down the Greek government. Ihad made some study of guer-
rilla movements from 1939 to 1945 and it was clear to me that
the only way to defeat them is to strike at the safe harbours
that they often have on the other side of by hot
frontiers, either
pursuit, more normal, or by stirring up a guerrilla
which is

movement against the government providing the harbour.

He then began feeding senior Conservative figures and his SOE friends,
many of whom had transferred to MI 6, the idea that 'it was time for retaliation
against Stalin's aggressive activity in Europe'. An operation against the
specific 'harbour' of Albania 'would also frustrate [Stalin's] scheme for
controlling the Adriatic's entrance ... he was equipping Saseno Island [off
the coast of Albania] with submarines and rockets, based on the German V-2
models, capable of reaching the Italian mainland'. Despite this latter bizarre

claim, which was almost certainly disinformation, Amery's lobbying 'struck

a sympathetic chord with British ministers and officials'.^^

Albania was first mentioned at a meeting of the Cold War Sub-Committee

of the Russia Committee on 25 November 1948. The meeting was attended

by senior Foreign Office officials, Ivone Kirkpatrick, Roger Makins, Bevin's
private secretary Frank Roberts, JIC chair William Hayter, as well as Air
Force chief Lord Tedder. Chaired by the Assistant Under-Secretary of State
and expert on Soviet affairs Gladwyn Jebb, who during the war had super-
366 PART FOUR: THE BALKANS AND RUSSIA

vised SOE, the committee considered a paper, 'British Policy towards the
Soviet Orbit in Europe', by Robin Hankey, another assistant under-secretary.
He proposed that British policy should go on the offensive but stop short of
a 'hot war'. Kirkpatrick thought that, in the present state of finances and in
view of public opinion, it would be best to start offensive operations in a
small area, and suggested for consideration Albania. 'Would it not be possible
to start a civil war behind the Iron Curtain and by careful assistance to
produce a state of affairs in Albania similar to the state of affairs the Russians
had produced in Greece?' Hankey wondered whether 'it would not be poss-
ible to arrange that the operation should be undertaken by the forces of
resistance in Albania. We knew that there was opposition to the present
regime and it should be possible to make use of it.'

Other members pointed out the difficulties of working with underground

movements and that nothing should be done to jeopardise the potential for
other 'developments like the Tito-Cominform dispute'. The meeting set up
a sub-committee to consider Hankey's proposals in view of the dispute's
implications. At the end of the meeting. Lord Tedder said that he thought
'we should aim at winning the "cold war" (by which he meant the overthrow
of the Soviet regime) in five years' time'. The committee arrived at no specific
conclusion about Albania but did decide 'that our main aim should certainly
be to liberate the countries within the Soviet orbit by any means short of
war'. The would mirror SOE's wartime operations: 'promoting civil
tactics

discontent, internal confusion and possible strife'.

In considering an operation against Albania, the Russia Committee
decided on 16 December 'that there could be no question of taking action
without co-ordination with the United States government', though members
worried that 'there was a lack of co-ordination of [American] subversive
activities'. Retaliation was to be on a modest scale as the principal problem

was Britain's declining resources. Amery's friend and former colleague, Billy
McLean, who had just been recruited to the Albanian operation, was advised
^^'^

by a Foreign Office official that 'church mice do not start wars'.

Amery's intentions were publicly laid out on 22 January 1949 in Time and
Tide. He wrote that 'the position of the Albanian state is particularly precari-
ous. It is desperately short of food, a number of politicial outlaws are still in
the mountains, and news of recent purges suggests that the Albanian Commu-
nist Party is deeply divided between Stalinists and Titoists. In the face of a
popular revolt the regime would be hard put to defend itself.' Anton Logoreci,
a Catholic anti-communist Albanian of liberal views and leader of a small
group of exiles settled in Britain since the beginning of the war, disputed
Amery's analysis. The wartime head of the Albanian section of the BBC's
Overseas Service, Logoreci wrote to Time and Tide exposing what he termed
the 'naive and short-sighted' idea of destabilising the Hoxha regime. Reginald
Hibbert, who 'had lived in north Albania outside of the relatively narrow
 THE MUSKETEERS IN ALBANIA 367

Kupi circle', found it 'impossible to believe that circumstances could have

been created by 1949 favourable to a return by emigres and a popular upris-
ing'. He also considered 'the dirty-tricks departments of Western intelligence

agencies' to have had 'a very patchy record' with a tendency 'to distort the
home team's intelligence assessment and policy-making processes'. It was
'unwise to base the experiment in destabilisation on an assessment of Albania
made by the musketeers'.^^
Against the advice of his spokesman on the Russia Committee, Frank
Roberts, by mid-February Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin had decided that
the time was right to support a project 'to detach Albania from the orbit'.
On the 23rd, Roberts told the committee that his boss had agreed to the plan.
Prime Minister Clement Attlee had been informed about the operation and
had apparently given his verbal consent. Bevin 'confined knowledge of both
the decision and the execution to Attlee, [Chancellor of the Exchequer] Hugh
Dalton and a select few in Whitehall', primarily the Cabinet Secretary,
Norman Brook. Once given the official go-ahead by Bevin and Brook, Menzies
ensured that within MI6, in order to maintain the 'capacity for plausible
denial', the details were entrusted to a very small group of professionals
which required that a number of senior divisional heads were excluded.
The operation was overseen by a specially set-up committee, chaired by the
assistant chief. Air Commodore Jack Easton, with Harold Perkins as head of
operations, and a deputy Jessica Aldridge.^^
Within MI6, the philosophy of the wartime SOE-backed subversion
campaigns was gaining ground, even if until this point the exiles had only
been used for 'propaganda and intelligence operations'. Operation Valuable
was a 'rare exception'. The SO staff believed that 'well-trained agents could
organise a guerrilla-backed operation which would then be supplied by
airdrops'. In time, they would be joined by local groups, which would eventu-
ally lead to a full-scale civil war. 'The trouble that this would cause the
Russians would alone be sufficient justification for the operation. But what
if the anti-communist revolt in Albania sparked off others throughout the
Balkans? The whole basis of the Russian satellite empire could be shattered
by an uprising that had its birth in one small guerrilla operation. '^^
In his study of the Albanian operation, Nicholas Bethell argues that the
go-ahead given to offensive action was

a carefully considered act of policy based on the idea that Stalin

would be impressed by a Western decision to act against him mili-
tarily, even on a small scale and in an outpost of his empire. It

would make him think twice before launching further aggressive

enterprises. might also, incidentally, detach Albania from the
It

Soviet orbit, ending Enver Hoxha's harsh rule and allowing the
emergence of a kinder and less anti-Western government.
368 TART FOUR: THE BALKANS AND RUSSIA

The problem was that there was no indication of any real interest in mass
upheaval on the part of the Albanians. The head of the British Military
Mission in Greece, Monty Woodhouse, argued that Bevin was 'misled by
ii^accurate reports of the strength of potential resistance to Communism
within the country'. The mistaken assumption by MI6 was partly due,
Beatrice Heuser suggests, 'to the absence of first-hand information about the
country, as they had no British or American diplomatic mission there and
had to rely on the French and dubious second-hand reports'. In addition, in
dealing with Albania, Woodhouse recalled that Bevin was 'uncompromising,
having never forgiven the communist government for mining British
destroyers in the Corfu Strait in 1946'. He thus 'gave tacit sanction' to mount-
ing 'a disastrously unsuccessful attempt to infiltrate anti-communist agents
into Albania in the hope of undermining the Government' for which 'there
was little reason to expect it to succeed'.
'The British,' Richard Helms recalled, 'as usual, were short of funds, so
they invited the Americans to join the operation.' William Hayter was told
to square the American side and in March flew to Washington for a three-day
conference. His delegation included Gladwyn Jebb, Earl Jellicoe, ex-
commander Squadron troops in Athens
of Special Air Services /Special Boat
during the revolt, and the embassy's Balkan specialist and local MI6 represen-
tative Peter Dwyer. Sitting opposite were Robert Joyce of the State Depart-
ment's Policy and Planning Staff (PPS) and the Office of Policy Co-ordination
(OPC) chief, Frank Wisner. Both ambitious and devious, with ultra-right-
wing views, Wisner was, unlike his rival Allen Dulles, a strong anglophile
with a romantic sense of the British Empire. Albania was one item on the
agenda, which included other political and psychological warfare operations
in Italy and Yugoslavia. 'The immediate objective was the removal of a
communist ruler The longer term objective was the establishment of a
. . .

Western strategic presence on the Balkan flank. '^^

The British were apparently struck 'by the enthusiasm of the Americans
to catch up with MI6 and embark on covert operations, but were dismayed by
the profusion of discussion which exposed the absence of any co-ordination or
confident leadership in the American intelligence organisation'. Wisner, it
seemed, intended to take on the mantle of leadership. The June 1948 National
Security Council (NSC) directive gave the OPC carte blanche to fulfil its
objective to counter 'the vicious and covert activities of the USSR, its satellite
countries and communist groups'. The OPC was nominally controlled by the
State Department's PPS, which functioned as the operational arm of the NSC
and was the nucleus of America's Cold War effort. It initiated the OPC's
'political action' programmes, often thought up by Wisner, who would 'get

them cleared by Bob Joyce at State'. Later, there was intense rivalry with the
'professionals' of the CIA's espionage and counter-intelligence branch, the
Office of Special Operations (OSO), who regarded OPC operations as
 THE MUSKETEERS IN ALBANIA 369

'chaotic'. Though the head of the CIA might object to 'the recklessness of
the covert operations', he would be ordered by State to co-operate.'^°
According to one version of the Washington conference, Joyce had said
when Hayter oultined the MI6 plan to
little topple the communist regime in
Albania. 'He knew the Balkans scene' and what he saw'. Wisner,
'disliked
however, was impressed by MI6's plan, as outlined by Hayter, to overthrow
Hoxha. Whatever Joyce's personal feelings, he had initially endorsed the
views of the army colonels on the OPC's Paramilitary Staff who had pushed
the operation, even though there had been 'plenty of doubt about the
feasibility of the plan'. At a meeting of the White House-State Department-

Pentagon group established to oversee the operation. General John Magruder

argued with Joyce that 'Albania was unimportant; a military attempt to
overthrow Hoxha would only anger Yugoslavia and Greece alike. But Joyce
took the position that slicing off a Russian satellite would have a propaganda
impact justifying therisk.' In the end, largely because of the threat of

Russian submarines - a recent agreement between Tirana and Moscow

involved aid for Albania in return for a Russian right to build a naval base
at Valona - the military went along with the idea. As did Wisner, who

thought it was exactly the kind of covert action in which the OPC should
be engaged.
Albania had become an attractive target for the military planners. Harry
Rositzke, across in the CIA, recalled the thinking: 'The rebels in Greece were
on their last legs, Tito had isolated himself from Moscow, and the Russians
were working hard to stabilize the shaky Hoxha regime in Tirana. The tide
in the Balkans appeared to be running against Moscow. Albania looked soft,
and a breakthrough there might unsettle the other satellites.' Wisner assured
Joyce that the operation would be 'a clinical experiment to see whether large
roll-back operations would be feasible elsewhere'. While it took American
politicians a few more years to formally articulate the concept, Michael W.
Dravis writes that 'by 1949 the action men of the OPC were already seeking
counter-revolution, not merely containment'."^^
Wisner's judgement was initially endorsed by Frank Lindsay, his OPC

deputy in charge of amyriad of operations in eastern Europe whose personal

and professional success depended on dispatching agents into the Soviet
Union. Lindsay was, in the beginning, very 'gung-ho' about the Albanian
operation and expressed the view that 'Hayter and MI6 represented the finest
traditions of the Anglo-American world'. Lindsay had been OSS's senior staff
officer to Tito's headquarters in Yugoslavia and, after the war, chief political
adviser to General Sir Terence Airey in the disputed territory of Trieste. He
knew the Balkans: Communists were supplying their guerrillas in Greece
'The
out of their bases in Macedonia, Bulgaria and Albania. The requirement came
essentially out of State: we have to do something to relieve the pressure on
Greece by stirring up a little trouble in their own back yard.' A friend of
370 PART FOUR: THE BALKANS AND RUSSIA

Fitzroy Maclean, he had long grasped that Tito was the man for the West
to back'. By went to work on the Albania operation, plans
the time Lindsay
had already been made to run arms covertly to Yugoslavia, which appeared
to be threatened by a Russian invasion. Tito told us', Lindsay recalled, 'that

he wanted weapons badly, but not overtly, because this would give the Soviet
Union a pretext for attacking him. We sent him five shiploads of weapons.'
Lindsay, who shared his views with Maclean, would soon become wary of
raising the social democrat flag in Albania but, initially, was enthusiastic
about the idea.^^

In March 1949, Julian Amery laid out his ideas on 'Resistance' in The
Nineteenth Century and After. He suggested that MI6 might not be ready
for special operations: 'Our Defence authorities are seriously neglecting this
branch of warfare ... its chief cause is the failure to think of Resistance as a
distinct branch of warfare requiring the maintenance in peace as well as in
war of a separate Resistance Service.' He argued that it was time to reply 'to
Communist revolutions in China, Malaya and Greece by launching insurrec-
tions or sabotage campaigns in the Balkans or Turkestan The vital need . . .

is to build up a powerful Resistance network behind the Iron Curtain and

in threatened areas.' He added that without 'safe harbours' into which 'non-
combatants can withdraw beyond reach of reprisal', the Resistance would
'confine its immediate activities to the spreading of propaganda, the collation
of intelligence, and occasional acts of sabotage. It will also prepare for a
general rising to deal a knock-out blow , .
.' To follow through, Amery
continued, would require 'a strong cadre of professional resistance agents',
but 'successful Resistance cannot be improvised ... it takes time to train the
directing cadre of liasion officers and sabotage experts. It takes time to lay
the foundations of local Resistance organisations. It takes time for propaganda
to mould the spirit of Resistance in the required direction. It takes time to
build up the apparatus of communications and supply.' Was MI6 in a position
to meet Amery's requirements? Even without the benefit of hindsight, the
answer should have been no. Given the drawbacks, Kim Philby thought it

'surprising that the operation ever got off the ground'.^"*

On 1 April 1949, the US PPS, chaired by George Keenan, assessed the
Albanian situation 'in the light of stimulating Titoism as a disintegrating force
regarding Communist movements'. Although it considered overthrowing
Hoxha's pro-Moscow regime by a pro-Tito gang, 'it was agreed ... to assist
in the setting up of a new regime which would be anti-communist and
therefore pro- Western'. The US would make 'full use ... of the refugee
organisations representing the various free movements within the satellite
countries. Assistance and, wherever possible, support should be given to
elements within the captured countries which represent a weakness in the
political control within the Russian orbit.' Two weeks later, Frank Wisner
flew to London to inform MI6's Chief that the Americans had agreed to back
 THE MUSKETEERS IN ALBANIA 371

Operation Valuable - its American code-name as BG /FIEND

known under
(the first two communications cryptonyms).^^
letters refer to

The US decision to effectively pay for MI6's Albanian adventures was

greeted with relief inside Broadway. At Buck's Club, McLean and Amery
were given the green light by Wisner and in a series of meetings with senior
Foreign Office officials - Orme Sargent, Charles Bateman and Anthony
Rumbold - and with SIS officers - Harold Perkins and Jessica Aldridge, and
an old colleague from Albanian days, Alan Hare - they provided background
information and details of contacts. Over lunch, McLean and Wisner began
to draw up plans and decided that Malta would be an ideal forward oper-
ations base, while the Americans, who were supplying most of the finance
and logistical support, would use Whelus
Field in Libya as a rear base and
supply depot. Wisner remarked that 'whenever we want to subvert any
later

place, we find that the British own an island within easy reach'.
The operation's first American 'commander' was James McCargar, a
foreign service officer on loan to the OPC. From a wealthy family with
newspaper interests in London, McCargar had served during 1946/7 in
Bulgaria, noting communist links with the rebels in Greece. He recalled being
summoned to a conference in Washington where
I remarked on an intricate organisational chart on the wall. One
of my colleagues - I didn't even know that he was even inter-

ested in the operation - rose and then started his discourse by

pointing to the chart and saying: 'I have now worked all this

out, and, as you will see, you need 457 bodies for this operation.'
He then spoke for forty minutes, without once mentioning the
country with which we were concerned. I confined myself to
remarking that I didn't think we could find 457 'bodies' and I

would happily settle for six brains.

In London, McCargar observed the British approach to the same problem.

After sitting around a table in a desultory fashion for an hour

or two, one Englishman finally said, 'I say, why don't we get
oldHenry up here? He knows about this.' A day or two later
Henry showed up from down in Sussex, and the problem was
put to him, he finally agreed to take the task, although he said,
'This will wreak havoc with the garden, you know. Just getting
it into trim.'

Even if they appeared amateurish, McCargar recognised that 'The expertise

was 99 per cent British. They had so many people who had been there during
the war, most of them young and intelligent. We only had American citizens
of Albanian origin, none of them specialists in what we were trying to
achieve.' The British were initially reluctant to acknowledge McCargar's
372 PART FOUR: THE BALKANS AND RUSSIA

ingenuity at covert action. 'I believe I'll give this back/ Gladwyn Jebb had
intoned after studying a list of his recommendations. Jebb 'held it aloft
between two manicured fingertips', McCargar noted, 'like a dirty dog's ear'.^^
As Gubbins and Menzies had hoped, 'Amery went about his business,
culti\^ating opposition politicians, engaging in just the kind of activities -
totally serious in Anthony Verrier remarks, 'marked by a Balkan
purpose, yet',

touch of fantasy - for which his wartime experiences had fitted him all too
well.' During the spring, McLean and Amery took on the role of 'special
advisers', and with expenses provided by MI6 undertook a tour of the Medi-
terranean's exile centres. 'The secret services', Amery recalled, 'asked me to
set up the organisation for an Albanian counter-revolution.' The pair had
kept in touch with their former comrades and 'attention turned again to those
old lists of guerrilla contacts' which British and American Intelligence had
kept since the end of the war. A large number were now living in exile:
Midhat Frasheri was in Turkey; Abas Ermenji in Greece; the Kryeziu brothers.
Said and Gani, and Abas Kupi in Italy. They were to be told that Britain and
would sponsor their guerrilla bands, but at arm's length.'^^
the United States
As was norm with exile groups, the three main political movements
the
were at loggerheads. The royalists, notably King Zog and his military
commander. Abas Kupi, who led the Legalite Movement in Exile, were
opposed BK led by Frasheri, Ermenji and Hasan Dosti.
to the republican
In turn, both were sworn enemies of the national independents known as
Independenza, whose members were mainly pro-Italian Catholic collabor-
ators from the north-west of the country. While they were unified in their
fervent opposition to communism and outside interference from neighbours,
Greece and Yugoslavia, 'very little else' united them. This was not surprising
because, as the US embassy in Rome reported in December 1948, 'each was
originally established for the primary purpose of destroying the others '.^^
There had been, Billy McLean recalled, 'a great panic among our Albanian
friends' in late 1947 when Hoxha had put pressure on the Italian government
for the forcible return of 'collaborators' and 'war criminals'. A number were
arrested and imprisoned in Rome. During November, the former head of the
BK, Midhat Frasheri, requested of the American ambassador in Rome that
fifty of his followers be allowed to enter the United States to counter commu-
nist 'intrigues' in the Albanian exile community. On the list were Hasan
Dosti, Albania's Minister of Justice during the Italian occupation; Mustafa
Merlika-Kruja, Premier from 1941 to 1943; and Xhafer Deva, who had been
responsible for the deportation of Jews. While the US authorities considered
Frasheri's request, a number of BK supporters were interned outside Rome,
fearful that they might be sacrificed in the run-up to the April 1948 Italian
general election. Just after the election, McLean persuaded Foreign Office
official Orme Sargent to intervene with the new Italian Christian Democrat
government, which agreed to their release.
 THE MUSKETEERS IN ALBANIA 373

The US Department maintained a Political Biographic Section which

State
cross-filed all the reports on the emigre leaders. The section had access to a
1948 publication by the Albanian government which identified the major
fascist collaborators and war criminals; these included a number of people

on the list of fifty. After checking the biographical files, the State Department
replied that it did 'not believe it would be appropriate' to facilitate their
entry: 'It is apparent that the backgrounds of many of the Albanian
politicial

exiles in Italy are somewhat checkered and that the presence of these persons
in the United States in the circumstances envisioned might sooner or later
occasion embarrassment to this Government.' By late 1948, American intelli-

gence agencies were using these people in their resistance networks, and
sought ways around the restrictions.^^

The United States policy document NSC -50 pushed for 'relationships with
anti-Soviet resistance groups', but the State Department had demurred at the
thought of getting directly involved. The British, too, had 'already served
notice that they had no intentions of again backing into the government-in-
exile business'. The solution was the creation of 'private organisations' or
'fronts' with no official sanction which would provide 'plausible deniability'
in the event that operations created embarrassing fall-out. Frank Wisner's
OPC persuaded wealthy individuals to back the 'Free Europe Committee',
which was dedicated and intellectual leaders who fled
to assisting 'political
Communist tyranny in Eastern Europe', and collecting them together in one
body for psychological and political warfare. General Dwight Eisenhower
lent his name to the money-raising arm of the projected committee, the
Crusade for Freedom, whose president was the former high commissioner
in Germany, General Lucius Clay. Registered in the spring of 1949, Allen
Dulles's National Committee for Free Europe set up an Exile Political Oper-
ations division and resolved to openly support the 'lost abandoned people',
as one of the Albanians characterised their assembly.^^
'Collaborators' and 'war criminals' were brought into the United States
as part of the State Department's covert project known as BLOODSTONE,
which was initiated in June 1948 and ran through to 1950. According to James
McCargar, 'it was [Carmel] Offie who was doing the arranging'. Thrown out
of the foreign service for illegal currency dealing, when Offie returned to
Germany in January 1949 he became Wisner's right-hand man in the OPC,
responsible for all 'emigre liberation projects'. He set about recruiting emigres,
including Albanians, in the DP camps, and then directed their activities when
they entered the United States. Although lacking a passport, by April 1949
Hasan Dosti was in Washington urging officials to support an Albanian
National Committee in Exile. On 12 May, Robert Joyce took steps to obtain
a visa for Midhat Frasheri, suggesting to the State Department's Southern
European Division that the Albanian's request 'is considered in the national
interest' by 'our friends'.^^
374 PART FOUR: THE BALKANS AND RUSSIA

On 1 May Alan Hare - who 'had perhaps the most

1949, Perkins,
chequered and exhausting career of any British Liaison Officer in Albania' -
McLean and Amery went to Athens, where the two musketeers discussed
Valuable and the prospect of gaining the support of the Greek government
for the project with the British ambassador. Sir Clifford Norman. They also

talked with Pat Whinney, MI6's station head, who during the war had been
deputy to Frank Slocum in MI6's private navy in the Mediterranean, and
his deputies Eric McCloud and John Badderley, formerly of the Coldstream
Guards. Amery met former Prime Minister Themistocles Sophoulis and other
politicians, and argued that the main priority was to close Albania's southern
border to deny it access to the Greek rebels. He said that the British intended
to recruit BK insurgents in a campaign against Hoxha's regime, and were
seeking help on intelligence-gathering and the setting up of arms dumps and
bases near the border. It soon became apparent, however, that the Greeks
were more interested in their own territorial claims on northern Epirus than
in establishing an independent Albania. Amery 'tried to convince them that
their territorial claim was counter-productive. They were in mortal danger
from their own communist rebels and a policy of annexation just did not
make sense. A policy of retaliation did make sense.'
One of Greece's richest men and a leading arms dealer, Bodosis Athenisi-
ades, introduced Amery to the Greek National Army commander. Field
Marshal Alexander Papagos, who insisted that the frontiers with Albania and
Yugoslavia were closed to visitors. 'An unnamed, unknown pseudo-military
mission fossicking about in the north would . . . increase rather than diminish
the degree of Albanian and Yugoslav support for communist guerillas and
their "Greek Democratic Army".' In essence, this was the view of Albanian
exile Stavro Skendi, who wrote that Hoxha 'would exploit to the full any
large-scale incursion which came across the border'. While Amery could not
gain the direct approval of the Greek government, he needed its tacit support,
particularly as Corfu was needed as a radio and listening post. He knew that
his lobbying had been partially successful when Bodosis signalled Papagos's
consent by leaving six bottles of brandy in his hotel room. As long as the
operation did not originate on Greek territory, the government would turn
a blind eye.^'^

McLean and Amery outlined their ideas to BK military commander Abas

Ermenji. On 20 May, McLean and Ermenji were joined by Harold Perkins
and the three flew to Rome for meetings with the seventy-year-old leader of
the BK, Midhat Frasheri. While Frasheri was sympathetic, Ermenji raised
objections to the involvement of other groups in the project. Unable to change
his mind, MI6 moved him out of the way to Trieste, where he was minded by
Archie Lyall, who was operating under cover as head of the British Element of
the Allied Information Services. At the same time, operation planner Alan
Hare was replaced by John Hibberdine, who had served with the resistance
 THE MUSKETEERS IN ALBANIA 375

among the Catholic tribes of the North. On the 25th, McLean and Amery
returned to London where they discussed Brooman- White,
ideas with Dick
a wartime Section V officer dealing with the Mediterranean who had recently
returned from Turkey, and Tommy Last, who had served in the War Office
and the army during the war. They also conferred with Foreign Office officials
Anthony Rumbold and Charles Bateman, and Conservative politician Harold
Macmillan, at the Turf Club. Macmillan, who had worked with Carmel Of fie
at the end of the war, was a senior figure in the European Movement, which

included in its exile section an Albanian committee.

The leading Albanian exiles were gradually being assembled in Rome to
form a political committee behind which the differing factions could unite.
Amery and McLean had 'a belief in the Rob Roy virtues of tribal leaders' and

preferred Abas Kupi, 'a bewhiskered old rascal with a smashing reputation as
a mountain raider', whom Amery found in Istanbul. Unfortunately for the
British, Kupi's Legalite movement was viewed as 'unimportant' by the major-

ity of Albanian exiles, who also had difficulty fathoming his peculiar dialect.

The two musketeers were joined by a friend of the exiles, Auberon Herbert,
whose family had been active in pre-war Albania, and the three made a tour
of the refugee and DP camps in Italy looking for suitable recruits for guerrilla
training. The thirty or so they found lacked basic military training but they
were enthusiastic, fired up by nationalist propaganda. Kupi had declared to
his men in the camps: 'You are not alone! In Albania there are hundreds of
thousands of nationalists in the mountains; the government forces are
confined to the towns and cannot go into the countryside; the government
has had to proclaim a state of emergency from 10 at night until the morning;
some towns are already in nationalist hands!' A proposal was made to raise
'a parachute regiment from this flotsam', but it was never a real runner.^^

Amery was seemingly unperturbed by French Intelligence reports from

its embassy in Tirana that although 'the Albanian population as a whole was

largely hostile to the regime and increasingly anti-Russian, they are under
complete control and no dissident or resistance movements exist except
potentially'. He believed that 'clandestine operations directed at Hoxha
would lead to a major uprising' whose would 'depend on
success, however,
the million odd Albanians living in the Yugoslav Kosovo region'. After a
first phase of acquiring operational intelligence, the second phase would

consist of a main effort from Yugslavia. Kim Philby recalled that 'our experts
considered - quite wrongly, in my opinion - that Marshal Tito, after his break
with the would adopt a hands-off policy towards any changes
socialist bloc,
in Tirana'. Fitzroy Maclean was approached to act as the go-between with
Tito, but advised Bevin that Yugoslavia would not provide support and

opposed any such operation.

Beginning in 1949, a great wave of purges hit the eastern European
communist parties, the victims being mainly 'home' communists who 'had
376 PART FOUR: THE BALKANS AND RUSSIA

ne\'er been trained in the Moscow school of dialectic and were distrusted by
Stalin'. Technically the purge began in Albania with the condemnation and
execution of the Titoist' Minister of the Interior, Koci Xoxe, on 11 June. This
was followed by show trials in Budapest with fabricated evidence of a
planned Yugoslav coup. Similarly number of leading communists
in Sofia, a
were accused of organising a coup d'etat in association with the Yugoslavs.
Tor good measure a number were also accused of being British agents.' The
purges corresponded, Balkan specialist Hugh Seton-Watson concluded, 'to
the victory within the party leaderships of the "Muscovites" over the wartime
resistance leaders'. Service in the Republican army in Spain was viewed with
suspicion, as were 'non-Muscovites' who had been in wartime resistance
movements that had come into contact with British missions. The particular
target, however, was the Yugoslav Party, which was 'superior in quality than
other East European Communist Parties. It was something of an elite.' The
result of purging the Yugoslavs in Albania was 'cataclysmic', and though it
added to the 'basic instability' within the regime, it 'did not mean the collapse
of Hoxha'. Security was tightened once again. The internal security force was
strengthened to fifteen thousand carefully selected men, while every police
chief from now on had a Soviet adviser beside him. Stalin himself had insisted
on the new interior minister, Mehmet Shehu. There were estimated to be a
thousand Soviet officers overseeing the Albanian administration.^^
In June 1949, the second-in command of the Royal Horse Guards in
Germany, David Smiley, who had spent much of his wartime career in
Albania with the SOE, started secondment number two to MI6 after being
approached by the Service's representative in north-east Germany, Xan Field-
ing, an experienced former SOE officer in Cairo, Crete, France and South-East
Asia. Smiley's close friend and contact in 'the Firm' was Harold Perkins, who
at the end of the war had been responsible for SO in Poland, Czechoslovakia
and Hungary, and as head of the Special Operations Branch was currently
running a wide range of anti-Soviet subversive activities. Smiley received a
one-sided and partial briefing from 'Perks', who told him that

the situation in Albaniawas fluid, the Communists under Enver

Hoxha and Mehmet Shehu had gained control of most of the
country, thanks entirely to the arms sent to them by SOE and
not, as their history books now show, due to Russia - though
they received moral support from Tito in Yugoslavia. There
were, however, still pockets of resistance where members of

Kombetar and the followers of Abas Kupi's Legalite move-

Balli

ment had taken to the mountains and were fighting the Commu-
nists. If these groups could be contacted and helped with arms

and money, they might have a chance of thwarting the Commu-

nist take-over.
 THE MUSKETEERS IN ALBANIA 377

Told that Bevin 'was very keen on the idea'. Smiley realised that there was
also the question of Albanian support of the 'Russian-inspired' civil war in
Greece. He needed little persuading that 'it would clearly be in the interests
of the West if the Albanian conduit could be blocked', but was aware,
however, that it would be a difficult task. The few SOE people taken on by
MI6 after the war tended to be regarded by the Service's old guard 'as a lot
of bungling amateurs'.
Smiley was given command of the planning staff. His friend, Julian
Amery, was informed that he had been 'duly entrusted with training those
Albanian volunteers who were to be infiltrated by sea into the southern part
of the country. The OPC took on the training of another group to be dropped
in by parachute to the Centre and North. The prospects were good. The
Communist regime was hated and the Albanian people had a long tradition
of Resistance.' A number of Albanian refugees who were found in the DP
camps were moved to a special school in the British Zone in Germany to be
trained by Colonel Brian Franks of the SAS and MI6's War Planning Depart-
ment, where he had worked alongside Smiley and Perkins. The main body
of men, however, was to be trained in Malta. In the meantime. Smiley went
to discuss the operation with the local OPC representative in Athens and the
head of the British Military Mission. 'Safe-houses' were found in Greece and
enquiries were undertaken into the possibility of using Corfu as a forward
communications base for the operation.^°
Because Malta was within the Commonwealth, it came under the 'Attlee
Doctrine' and security was thus the responsibility of the Security Service,
MIS. Fortunately for the operation, the MIS representative and Security Liai-
son Officer on the island was a former colleague of Colin Gubbins. A staff
intelligence officer at Eastern Command at the beginning of the war, Maj.
Major had spent much of his career in the Military Intelligence Directorate,
where he had been aware of Gubbins's special interests. A descendant of
Oliver Cromwell, he had been Gubbins's successor at Coleshill, running the
stay-behind network in the event of a German invasion, when his friend took
over command of SOE. For the Albanian operation. Major had been briefed
to secure army and Colonial Office backing for a suitable out-of-the-way
headquarters which could house thirty-six men for two to three months. Fort
Benjimma had been built during the Napoleonic wars. Standing in wild
country on the far side of Medina and away from the more populous area
of Valletta, it could be approached only by a rough track. Close to secluded
bays where sea landings could be practised, it was an ideal choice. Major
ensured that cover was kept, and dealt with Customs over the equipment
that was sent in - such as machineguns, pistols and wireless sets.^^
The supply of equipment was the responsibility of operations quarter-
master Frank Quinn, a Far East specialist who had joined the Service in 1946
and was attached to Department Q of MI6, which was tasked with obtaining
378 TART FOUR: THE BALKANS AND RUSSIA

'clean'equipment - arms and explosives that were free of markings so as to

distance any potential disasters from British sponsorship. Quinn had been
transferred to Smiley for special duties at the beginning of 1949 as part of
Valuable. He supplied the small arms, grenades and explosives, and trained
the men in their use. He was involved in the 'endless discussions which took
place on communications'. The station chief in Vienna, George Young, was
asked to help, and 'a dreary search took place for [wireless] sets still in
working order after four years in store. Finally, sheer necessity produced an
expedient almost guaranteed to fail. Communication would be ground to air
[the most and unreliable method]. '^^
difficult

Quinn also had a role in finding a suitable boat with which to land the
guerrillas. Searching the south of England without success, he finally located
a boat powered by a twin diesel engine in Malta. Handing over £6,000 in
cash, Quinn then removed all the fittings, which might indicate its origin,
and renamed it the Marie Angela. Eventually, an elderly sailor aged nearly
seventy, Halliday Paterson, was found and flown by MI6 to Malta to captain
the Marie Angela. Unfortunately, he soon fell ill and was flown back to
London, where he died a month later. Paterson's death threatened the sched-
ule of Valuable but, fortunately, the head of station in Athens, Patrick Whin-
ney, who had operated a secret boat service during the war, had already
lined up an alternative crew and boat. The previous October, Whinney had
recruited two ex-navy officers, Sam Barclay and John Leatham, to run supplies
from Athens to Salonika to help government forces against the communist
rebels during the Greek Civil War. He had subsequently persuaded his
superiors to fund the fitting of a powerful Ruston-Hornby engine to their
boat, the Stormie Sea, which was specially adapted with dummy fuel tanks
hiding sophisticated radio equipment.^^
In Malta, the thirty Albanians - who were provided with cover as
members of the Pioneer Corps - were met by MI6's Rollo Young and Alastair
Grant, an army captain on secondment to the Service. The recruits were taken
to Fort Benjimma, where Smiley, under cover as the deputy chief of staff in
the Castille, Valletta garrison headquarters, was already in place with his
wife. A wartime cipher clerk in the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry (FANY) in
Nairobi, Moy Smiley was taken on temporarily to help with the ciphering
work. Smiley's radio operator from SOE days in Albania and in Thailand,
Bill 'Gunner' Collins, controlled the communications with London. Among
those helping train the Albanians was Robert 'Doc' Zaehner, who had served
with SOE in Persia. An
Oxford professor of eastern religions, Zaehner soon
shed his 'mad professor' image and within three months had become fluent
in Albanian and Greek.^"*
With the operation barely up and running, there were those who already
feared that 'failure was stalking the operation'. Frank Lindsay, aware that
Tito had no intention of helping, asked Michael Burke to accept a short-term
 THE MUSKETEERS IN ALBANIA 379

assignment. The former football star and 'danger-loving' OSS man had served
behind German and France during the war before finally work-
lines in Italy
ing from Grosvenor Square in London, organising the dispatch of agents into
Germany. Burke had been the model for Gary Cooper in the film Cloak and
Dagger. 'Divided between curiosity, loyalty and scepticism'. Burke agreed to
serve. In July, released by Warner Brothers, he used his cover in Rome as a
film executive with the fictional 'Imperial Films' to act as an intermediary
between the OPC and the Committee for a Free Albania, and to investigate
Italian and Greek locations for the operation, Lindsay asked him to bear in
mind that he wanted a detailed report when the operation was over. The
OPC also appointed John Papajani, an American of Albanian origin who had
worked with Wisner during the war, to the Fort on Malta as an interpreter.
Although 'charming', Papajani was regarded as 'unreliable' and 'not a good
choice for a sensitive task'. As part of their financial support, the OPC
arranged that MI6 would provide £10,000 worth of gold sovereigns packed
in wooden cases which were flown by the RAF to Malta.
In early June, OPC officer Robert Low London to be briefed
arrived in
on the details of the operation by Stewart Menzies. A US Army reserve
officer, knowledgeable about the Balkans, having worked with the OSS in

Cairo, Low had been an intelligence officer in western Europe during the
last year of the war, and then a Time-Life correspondent in Prague. He

recognised that 'the United States was for the moment still the junior partner'.
It was entirely up to the British 'cousins' to provide local knowledge and

political guidance; their men had 'served in SOE during the war and were
the world's experts in this kind of thing'. He found that those MI6 officers
who had served with SOE in Albania were 'bitter' at seeing their efforts
turned against them, in particular the Corfu incident, and despised the Hoxha
regime. They had, however, undertaken a lot of planning which Low thought
was 'feasible' and made sense.^^
On 24 June, with another American intelligence officer, Robert Minor,
Low flew to Rome with the British team to conclude their talks with the exiles
on an agreement and executive of an Albanian committee. The
for a president
only obstacle appeared to be the agreement of King Zog. According to
Anthony Verrier, McLean and Amery 'were pretty sure that Zog would not
do' as a figurehead. Amery, 'for all that he saw large issues in terms of right
and left, was well aware that the counter-revolution must have a leader who
gave lip service to social democracy'. Zog, who had moved to Egypt in 1946,
was thus approached only 'as a matter of form'. Agreement was reached on
7 July 1949 between the differing groups that Midhat Frasheri would be chair
of the executive of the Committee for Free Albania, which would put the
nationalist's case before the world. The King's nominee, Abas Kupi, was
appointed chair of the military junta, with Ermenji as deputy and the King's
own secretary, Gaqi Gogo, as secretary to the junta and the executive. McLean,
380 PART FOUR: THE BALKANS AND RUSSIA

Hare and Harold Perkins then flew to Cairo and joined up in Alexandria
with Amery and Low. Seven days later, they met the King, who refused to
accept the establishment of the Committee. He was only willing to support
their effort after a diplomatic speech from Amery, who said that a referendum
on His Majesty's return could take place after the operation had succeeded,
while the Committee would remain only a representative body. Low thought
Amery's speech masterly: 'I've never seen such diplomacy in my life. He was
like Talleyranci. He convinced Zog that he would be best advised "as a firm

believer in democracy" to give us his support.'^^

The local political situation had slightly changed in late summer when
the Greek ambassador in Washington put pressure on the American adminis-
tration to take action against Albania. The rebels were still active, and among
Greek leaders there was an increasing clamour in favour of seizing northern
Epirus. The secretary-general in the Greek Foreign Office, Panayotis Pipenelis,
who as a leader of the secret, conspiratorial IDEA group of right-wing nation-
alists was a major influence on the Foreign Minister, Tsaldaris, warned the

new US charge d'affaires in Athens, Robert Minor, that there might be 'minor
incidents' across the Albanian frontier. 'Hawkish' Foreign Office official
Anthony Rumbold had no problem with that, but the State Department
warned that it could do little about the incur sions.^^
In Athens, on 5 August, Greek Prime Minister Alexander Diomedes told
the British ambassador, Moore Crosthwaite, that 'he knew about the
proposals for the establishment of an Albanian committee'. Two days later,

London advised the Athens embassy of the Committee for Free Albania's
imminent formation in Paris, pointing out in all innocence that 'we have
watched its development with benevolent approval'. Privately, the State
Department realised that there might be problems ahead - which accounted
for its demand for the Committee to be kept at arm's length. The US embassy
in Athens noted that the 'British government's dislike of the Hoxha regime is
well-known and, consequently, eventual elimination of Hoxha, which would
arouse no regret in England, might result in the recently formed committee
being considered as de facto legal government of Albania'. The Foreign Office
cabled the Rome embassy on the 7th: 'We are not playing up the formation
of the committee in our publicity, as we do not want to lend any substance
to the belief in Yugoslavia and elsewhere that the western powers are behind
Dean Acheson gave similar advice to US missions, that the Albanian exile
it.'

committee came under the umbrella of the Committee for a Free Europe,
which was 'a private organisation'.^^
hope that when the Albanian exile insurgents were sent back to
In the
theirhomeland they would carve out a foothold in the country, Frank Wisner
sent to London his psychological warfare head, Joe Bryan, a well-born
Virginian known as 'the Duke of Richmond', who had covertly funded the
animated version of Orwell's Animal Farm) Bryan was to co-operate on draft-
 THE MUSKETEERS IN ALBANIA 381

ing an announcement of the formation of the Committee. On 26 August,

Midhat Frasheri, Abas Kupi and Said Kryeziu announced in Paris the forma-
tion of the Committee for Free Albania. Frasheri told the assembled press
that 'the present Albanian regime of Marshal Enver Hoxha is so weak that
it may collapse at any time'. Despite the request of the OPC, the French

intelligence service refused to take part in the launch of the Committee

because, according to a former SDECE officer, the Committee was considered
to be 'an unrepresentative fabrication'.
At the end of the month, the main emigre leaders made their way to other
European capitals to advertise their existence and their cause. In London,
they were put under the wing of Peter Kemp, another SOE veteran who
had been in Albania and had worked in Poland with Perkins. A confirmed
anti-communist, he had fought with the pro-Franco Carlists in the Spanish
Civil War, alongside his close friend, Archie Lyall. The Committee received
little publicity while in London and was ignored by official agencies, though

Hugh Carleton Greene, who was head of BBC broadcasting to eastern Europe,
did meet them, and gave them a daily slot for broadcasts to Albania. Whether
these were successful is debatable, as the number of radios in Albania was
extremely low, with batteries and electricity in short supply.
Joe Bryan did not enjoy his time in London. It seemed a waste of airplane
tickets and and space at the Ritz. 'We had a few small triumphs,' Bryan
recalled, 'but I never disabused myself of the feeling that we were a bunch
of amateurs.' Kupi was installed at the equally expensive Berkeley Hotel, the
manager of which was a former member of SOE; here, he was questioned
by MI6 minders. Expecting him to be at the forefront of the paramilitary
operation, they did not find his answers encouraging. 'Kupi did not', Nicholas
Bethell writes, 'intend going in with the first operations.' The roadshow then
moved on to the United States.
None of this had gone unnoticed in Albania. Enver Hoxha later wrote
that

We made official requests to the British and American govern-

ments for the extradition of war criminals, not only Albanians,
but also Italians and Germans, who had stained their hands
with blood in Albania and were now under their jurisdiction.
Contrary to the declarations and the joint commitments of the
allies during the war and the decisions which were taken later
on this question, they turned a deaf ear and did not hand them
over to us. On the contrary, they kept the chiefs in luxury hotels,
while they trained their 'fighting men' in Rome, Munich,
London, Athens and elsewhere.

Ignoring the inevitable rhetoric, his analysis of internal Albanian emigre

politics was probably accurate.
382 TART FOUR: THE BALKANS AND RUSSIA

Each of the heads of reaction in exile defended the interests of

the employer who fed him. Right from the start they began to
quarrel, abuse one another and come to blows. Nevertheless,
a certain unity was achieved in the so-called 'Free Albanian
Committee'. The quarrels, however, continued and the contra-
dictions became more acute. In exile, the 'crabs' were tearing
one another to pieces. Quarrels existed not only between the
chiefs, but also between the chiefs and the misled individuals,
who were caught up in the current of betrayal and who had
been promised 'paradise' by the 'fathers of the nation'.

Interestingly, that 'there were some who repented and wanted

Hoxha adds
.'^^
to return andfew did so
a . .

The exiles, however, had some reason to be optimistic. During the summer
of 1949, the Albanian press and radio began reporting border clashes and
other similar incidents. Run-ins were said to have taken place in August
along the Greek- Albanian frontier. At about the same time an Albanian
member of parliament was killed by an anti-communist guerrilla band
operating in northern Albania. There were provocations along the border
with Yugoslavia. News of skirmishes continued through to the autumn and,
during a tour of the northern provinces, Hoxha complained about the exist-
ence of the Committee of Free Albania, 'whose aim was to bring about the
overthrow of the communist regime'. A visa had been obtained by Robert
Joyce for Frasheri and his colleagues, and in early September, Frasheri flew
with Abas Kupi to New York. With Xhafer Deva and Hassan Dosti and
several others, they established the National Committee for Free Albania,
which was substantially funded by the OPC with money laundered through
various foundations. They were looked after by Robert Low and the OPC-
backed Committee for a Free Europe, with the State Department keeping its
distance. When Kupi returned to Europe, Frasheri stayed in New York to set
up a political office.^^
On5 September 1949, at the first meeting in Washington of the Council
of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), British Foreign Secretary
Bevin proposed to institute a counter-revolution in Albania. He was well
aware that Dean Acheson shared his views and that the American Joint Chiefs
of Staff 'had their eye on Valona, a natural harbour just north of the Greek
frontier, as a potential forward base for their fleet in the Mediterranean'. Bevin
and Acheson were also aware that this was little more than a rubber-stamping
exercise, a decision 'virtually imposed on minor allies who were ignorant of
the details and on a major ally who acquiesced to the principle'. Indeed,
arguments about ridding Albania of Enver Hoxha reflected decisions
'their

which had been taken several months earlier'. Suitably alarmed at intelligence
reports of the Soviet presence in Albania - 1,500 'advisers', 4,000 'technicians'
 THE MUSKETEERS IN ALBANIA 383

to train an army of 25,000, and plans to develop Valona as a submarine base

- NATO members agreed in principle 'to weaken the position of the present
Soviet-dominated regime in Albania and, in connection with a possible revolt
seek, as an immediate priority objective, to eliminate Soviet control'. Even
so, as this was an historic decision: 'A military
Anthony Verrier has noted,
alliancecommitted to the defence of Western Europe was about to approve
an operation on the flanks, not the central front. The operations would be
outside the NATO area.'^^

By the time of the NATO Council meeting 'several hundred people were
involved in planning and training for the operation'. The target date had
been set for the autumn of 1949, when a succession of moonless nights would
provide cover for dispatching teams. The decision was backed up by a CIA
assessment on 12 September, which, while it noted that 'a purely internal
Albanian uprising at this time is not indicated, and if undertaken, would
have little chance of success', concluded that the Hoxha regime was weak
and 'the possibility of foreign intervention . . . represents a serious threat to
the regime'. A Department briefing paper prepared for Bevin's visit
State
stated its preference for 'a Western-orientated regime such as is desired by
the Albanian National Committee', but noted that 'it could not be expected
that Albania would be governed democratically'. The paper recommended
'that the US act in co-ordination with the UK and France*. to weaken the . .

position of the present Soviet-dominated regime in Albania'.

US policy on the satellite states was laid out on the 14th in a report to
the NSC which invited the American government 'to reduce and eventually
to cause the elimination of dominant Soviet influence in the satellite states
of Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland and Romania The . . .

time is now ripe for us to place greater emphasis on the offensive.' On the
same day, the Albanian plan was discussed formally at a meeting in Washing-
ton between the British team of Bevin and Gladwyn Jebb and the Americans,
Acheson and his deputy assistant, Llewelyn Thompson. Britain's policy
towards Hoxha, said Bevin, was one of 'unrelenting hostility'. He asked
whether the Americans 'would basically agree that we try and bring down
the Hoxha government when the occasion arises' or incite it to become a
Titoist-type deviationist government. Acheson replied that a policy of elimin-
ating Hoxha made more sense than attempting to lure him down the Titoist
path.'^
Forall the co-operation there remained 'discord about operational objec-

tives and methods' which 'bred misunderstandings between Washington and

London'. Although Acheson had agreed to Bevin's proposal, he made known
his concern that 'the situation must be handled with the greatest care to avoid

* The French were sympathetic to the idea and had their own operations under their MINOS
exile programme.
384 PART FOUR: THE BALKANS AND RUSSIA

the Greeks precipitating a crisis or the USSR intervening'. He was worried

that the Greek National Army (GNA) might seize the opportunity presented
by \'ictory over the communist rebels and move into Albanian territory. If
Bevin displayed any reticence at the meeting it was over the question of a
successor to Hoxha. Bevin asked if he was 'thrown out', 'what government
would replace Hoxha?' He was sceptical of the National Committee for Free
Albania and told Acheson that what was needed was 'a person we could
handle'. He enquired, 'Are there any kings around that we could put in?' As
Richard Aldrich notes, 'Bevin knew full well that the available kings were
more amenable to British than to American influence.' A US official
responded that 'we had taken no decision with respect to a possible future
government' as 'the situation was still too fluid'. With the first team of guer-
rillas ready to go into Albania in three weeks' time it was an unsatisfactory

position."^
The Nezvs Chronicle headline on the 19th read 'The Albanian volcano is

about to explode'. Indeed, under cover of a moonless night, the first British

team of nine Albanians was transported by Motor Fishing Vessels (MFV)

manned by men of the Royal Navy to the Adriatic. There they were switched
to a Greek caique, the Stormie Sea. On 3 October, the nine 'pixies', each
supplied with a British Army watch with a lethal cyanide pill taped to it,
were dropped off by the Stormie Sea and rowed in rubber boats to the coast.
The selected landing place was 'Seaview', the cove on the Karabaun penin-
sula, south of Valona, from where Billy McLean and David Smiley had been
rescued in 1943. This former BK territory had recently been flown over, and
Smiley had used the aerial photographs obtained to acquaint the trainees in
Malta with the terrain. Smiley knew it as 'a rocky area of steep cliffs with
the odd inlet where a boat could beach, from where goat tracks led inland'.
Once ashore, they broke up into two groups. The men were mostly from
Albania's southern region with several speaking Greek, and Smiley recalled
that the idea was that 'they would then move inland to tribal areas where
they had friends and relatives, and would signal back on the state of the
country and the chances of further operations to help those already fighting'.
Operation Valuable was up and running.^^
On 8
October, five days after the first group went in, Kim Philby stepped
off the SS Caronia in New York. In late August, while head of station in
Istanbul, Philby had received the offer of a posting as liaison officer in Wash-
ington with the American intelligence community, an appointment he
immediately accepted. Returning to London in September, he was briefed on
the new post by Maurice Oldfield, deputy head of the anti-communist section,
R5. He also had a meeting with the man with overall responsibility for
intelligence relations with the FBI and the newly created CIA, Jack Easton,
who was also chair of the executive committee overseeing Valuable. Although
the many books on Philby, who had some knowledge of the Albanian oper-
 THE MUSKETEERS IN ALBANIA 385

ation - having made contact with Abas Kupi's Albanian Legalite Movement
in Exile in Turkey - make no mention of him being briefed on Valuable
during his short period at Broadway, it is inconceivable that Easton did not
bring him up to date on the operation, though without the files the level of
detail remains unknown. In London, during the month of September, it is
claimed that Philby met every week with his KGB handler, 'Max' - though
the Moscow files are said to show that he reported 'nothing substantial, no
important news'. Leaving with his family for America at the end of the month,
Philby officially joined the Washington embassy as First Secretary on the
10th, the same day as a second British team of eleven - five from the Korco
area and six from Gjirokaster - was landed in Albania on a beach north of
Valona.''
Once ensconced in Washington, Philby was appointed to the Anglo-
American 'Special Policy Committee' (SPC), which ran Valuable /Fiend on a
day-to-day basis, as joint commander with responsibility for co-ordinating
the operation's two American opposite number, James McCar-
sides with his
gar. Other members included Robert Joyce and George Jellicoe, a British
special forces specialist seconded to the Foreign Office, who gave 'political
guidance'. According to Jellicoe, Philby 'was the one who made all the oper-
ational decisions'. Philby arrived in Washington at a time when, McCargar
recalled, MI6 'was held in high regard by those who had had close association
with it'.

worldwide communications network was one of

In particular, the British
the invaluable assets that the BritishWar Cabinet had retained during the
wartime liquidation of overseas assets. McCargar remembered that on three
separate occasions, Philby, who had a great reputation among the American
intelligence officers as a 'young Turk', 'came into my office with urgent
reports which I had not yet received through our channels'. Philby character-
ised his fellow-members of the SPC as 'convivial', by which 'he seemed to
imply approachable and humorous, green, and more than cold-blooded
enough to keep their distance emotionally from all those poor doomed devils
scrambling over Albania's scrubby beaches'.
Members SPC were not completely happy with their remit because
of the
the Foreign Office and the State Department insisted on maintaining close
supervision of the project. Philby found that 'we could never act as free
agents. Headquarters never allowed me to forget SIS's commitment to Abas
Kupi, and behind headquarters, there loomed the Bevin formula for veto: "I
won't 'ave it."' There were also disputes over tradecraft, and despite the
OPC pouring money into the project, there were problems with essential
equipment which was often lacking in the field, in particular good radio
transmitters. Each guerrilla group in Albania had a bulky B2 radio set which
had been used by SOE during the war; it relied on pedal power for trans-
mission. Radio security was minimal as there was no time for Morse training
386 PART FOUR: THE BALKANS AND RUSSIA

and the operatives, transmitting over open channels, spoke using only a
rudimentary code for details. In Corfu, at the palace on the north-east of the
island, overlooking the Corfu channel, David Smiley waited at the radio base
run by Alan Hare for news from his charges. Nothing was heard until 12
October, when one of the agents from the first team radioed that things had
gone w rong. The communist security forces had been waiting for them, with
Albanian troops surrounding the whole coastal area. Three of their guerrillas
had been killed, one captured, and another had simply disappeared. The five
guerrillas of the second group did make it to the Kurvelesh region, where they
tried to set up resistance cells among the villagers, who remained suspicious -
especially as no arms were made available.^°
Smiley moved to the Greek mainland under cover as GI (OPs & I)* with
the British Military Mission. He stayed ten miles outside Athens in a safe
house, waiting for news of the Albanians' return. At the end of October, four
of the original nine men eventually made it back to Greece.The second team
found life in the mountains, where itwas already snowing, extremely tough.
They did, though, make it back to Greece, from where they were exfiltrated
- with some difficulty - from the clutches of the Greek authorities, who
would have been happy to see them perish. From Greece they were
quite
escorted back to Malta by Rollo Young, for debriefing. The operation had
been unsuccessful. Tour of the twenty men put ashore were lost and the
others had failed to inspire any genesis of an anti-government movement.
Several Albanian civilians had also been arrested and killed.' Nicholas Bethell
adds that MI6 and OPC officers knew the results were 'disappointing' but
thought that the first phase of the operation had not been disastrous.
The US State Department continued to support action against Albania.
On 21 October, the US Department
Joint Chiefs of Staff reported to the State
that the Soviet Union was still training Greek and build-
guerrillas in Albania
ing military works along the
coast, including a submarine base in Valona
Bay that could be used for guerrilla operations against Greek and Yugoslav
islands. Meanwhile, back in Albania, the countryside was rife with rumours
of political plots. Hoxha reported that western intelligence agencies were
recruiting Albanian 'war criminals' for operations against the country. Yugo-
slav agents were said to be operating in the North in collaboration with Greek
'monarcho-fascists' in the South. On 24 October, the interior minister, Mehmet
Shehu, spoke of 'internal reactionaries' planning to overthrow the people's
power through acts of sabotage, and assassinations. He called for an intensifi-

cation of the class struggle.^^

While this may have been precisely what the emigres had wanted to hear,
their political organisation was in turmoil and unable fully to exploit the
situation. In the early morning of 3 October, as the first guerrilla team was

* General Intelligence (Operations and Intelligence).

 THE MUSKETEERS IN ALBANIA 387

making its way ashore to Albania, Midhat Frasheri - 'the lynchpin of the
fragile agreement [Low] and his British colleagues had spent weeks negotiat-
ing in Rome' - was 'lying on his bed, supposedly dead of a heart attack'.
Frasheri's sudden mysterious death with its hint of foul play led James
McCargar to a personal crisis of conscience. By then the majority of the
Albanian- American community, including its leading spokespersons and the
respected Greek Orthodox prelate in America, Marko Lipa, were publicly in
opposition to the presence on the Committee for Free Albania of known
collaborators. The big problem, with Frasheri dead, McCargar recalled, was
'Who's going be the successor chairman of the Committee?' The problem
to
was solved by Carmel Offie, who came forward 'very forcefully with the
suggestion of Hassan Dosti'. McCargar was appalled, given Dosti's role
during the Italian occupation as a leading figure in their puppet government.
'I and several others screamed bloody murder on this. I said, you can't use

somebody with that background, it's a blot on everybody's escutcheon. '^^

Offie, however, overrode the objections and, in the words of Philby, who
watched the proceedings with bemused cynicism, 'railroaded a handful of
Albanian refugees in New York into forming a National Committee . . .

Hassan Dosti was a young lawyer who, according to the OPC, had an impec-
cable record as a democrat.' In support of Dosti and in order to bolster the
Committee, Offie brought to America another churchman. Bishop Fan Noli,
to challenge Lipa for control of the Greek Orthodox Church. He was followed
by 'a bevy of Hitler-era stooges' including Xhafer Deva, who used the SS Skand-
erbeg Division in a massacre of Albanian partisans. Despite 'voluminous files

of adverse information', a US intelligence officer who debriefed Deva reported

that he was a 'person of uncompromising personal honour', a 'pure patriot',

and an outstanding 'operational contact and source of information'. The

Committee went on to play an important role in recruiting Albanian refugees
for a series of raids into their homeland sponsored by the OPC. Michael Burke
was not impressed. He recognised that the Committee was 'more a rallying
He knew that one of the basic
point than a valid base for political revolution'.
principles for the success of guerrilla movements is that they adopt a compre-
hensive political programme with which to indoctrinate their people. The
Albanian counter-revolution, however, 'lacked such a message'.
In Belgrade, on 2 November 1949, Tito told the British ambassador that
'the Albanians were
all out to provoke frontier incidents and to do everything

in their power to provoke Yugoslavia into some action that could be

represented as aggression'. Tito was afraid that Moscow might engineer a
coup in Tirana and accuse the Yugoslavs of being behind it. Stalin would
then have the excuse he was looking for to order an attack on Yugoslavia.
Intelligence reports indicated that Tito's agents were, in fact, operating in
the north of Albania where there was, the British embassy reported, 'very
considerable unrest'.
388 PART FOUR: THE BALKANS AND RUSSIA

A week later, journalist Cyrus Sulzberger had lunch in London with Julian
Amery, who told him that 'English foreign policy is founded on two prin-
ciples: that God is an Englishman, and that the road to India must be kept
open. So far, God has provided Tito but England is doing very little about
capitalising on this.' Amery appeared to be somewhat out of the intelligence
loop. He was 'discouraged about the situation in the Balkans. He thinks
England and America have not only wasted far too much time doing nothing
about Albania, but that they may not do anything before spring. If such is
the case, he believes it will be too late. Yugoslavia will fall and Greece will
go too.' Amery was convinced, Sulzberger wrote in his diary, that

for a small sum in gold, Albania can be saved by promoting a

revolution. It would not take a great deal of time to make proper
arrangements with some of the northern tribes. He believed this
must be done now, before the Russians have completed their
submarine base and before the Russians sign their treaty of
miltiary alliance with Hoxha. Otherwise, it will be too late.

Sulzberger recorded that Amery 'has a rather high respect for the shrewdness
and political ability of King Zog'.^^
The intelligence available to the planners during November and December
was sparse. The CIA was unsure of the situation in the country and could
come to no firm conclusions about the stability of the regime or the existence
of any opposition. A 15 December report on the resistance made gloomy
reading, contrasting sharply with the OPC's optimistic belief - as recalled
by McCargar - that 'we had only to shake the trees and the ripe plums would
fair. It was true that the Telegraph reported on 30 January 1950 that there

had been a mutiny in the Albanian Army and a purge involving two hundred
officers - how they came by the information is not known - but the Sigurimi,
the local secret police, had been trained by their Soviet colleagues to deal
with such emergencies. Any internal resistance that did exist was as yet
unorganised and ineffective. The CIA concluded that

the settlement of differences among exiled Albanians to provide

leadership and co-ordination is a prerequisite for any effective
Albanian resistance against the Hoxha government. Not even
however, would assure the achievement of
this turn of affairs,

any successful resistance without material aid from an outside

power. This combination of factors necessary for the overthrow
of the Hoxha regime is, as yet, lacking.

In order to try to surmount the problems, 'political differences would ulti-

mately limit recruitment to strict quotas: 40 per cent from the Balli Kombetar,
40 per cent from the Legalite, the rest from other factions'.
At the same time as the Albanian operation was running, the British and
 THE MUSKETEERS IN ALBANIA 389

Americans were involved in a similar but unreported operation in Bulgaria.

Philby was party to the discussions that took place in Washington, the details
of which he passed on to Moscow. The
and Americans were, naturally,
British
particularly interested in the situation in the Balkans: 'telegrams were filled
with names like Subacic and Mikolaichik and those of anti-soviet leaders in
Romania, Hungary and Bulgaria'. There could be no question of using the
Stormie Sea for another Valuable mission as it was assumed, correctly, that it
had been compromised by the failure of the first two missions. The crew of
the Stormie Sea subsequently spent the winter of 1949/50 running 'mysterious
cargoes to agents in Bulgaria through the Black Sea'. They were eventually
paid off at the end of the following year and alternative arrangements were
made with a new crew and boat, a fast-moving converted German E-boat,
the Henrietta, on which the OPC had spent £80,000. It was captained by a
former RAF James Blackburn.^^
pilot,

During the winter of 1949/50 the British and American SO teams re-evalu-
ated Valuable /Fiend. In a specially secure room in the Pentagon, the SPC
held post-mortem meetings on the first two incursions. Years later, Philby
recalled that 'the information they brought back was almost wholly negative.
It was clear, at least, that they had nowhere found arms open to welcome
them.' The two missions had been disasters but the loss of 20 per cent
first

of the agents was judged by wartime standards to be acceptable. With more

training and better radio communications, it was argued, more ambitious
future landings could be successful. Properly created intelligence 'cells' would
eventually be expanded into 'centres of resistance'. Acting as agent for the
Soviets, Philby knew what had happened, but he also realised, as an experi-
enced intelligence was futile from the
officer, that 'the operation, of course,

beginning. Our infiltrators could only achieve something by penetrating the

towns under Communist control.' His private opinion was that the planners
had made a grave error in assessing the state of the country. The presence
of infiltrated exiles 'would have been useful only if the country was seething

with revolt. That, perhaps, was the unspoken assumption behind the whole
'^^
venture.
Philby's analysis was borne out by the reports of the returning missions.
Once on the ground, the 'pixies' discovered that their political leadership
and western handlers had grossly miscalculated the degree of counter-
revolutionary fervour among the largely demoralised population. The clan-
nish Albanians, although tough, independent and warlike, 'had a peasant's
faith in numbers, and the type of warfare the agents tried to teach them -
hit-and-run attacks on police posts, sabotage and terrorism - struck them as
unmanly'. In addition, because Britain and the United States were determined
tomaintain deniability, agents found it difficult to persuade the people they
met that they enjoyed the support of the West.^"
The Italian authorities in Rome, where the OPC's Michael Burke and
3^0 PART FOUR: THE BALKANS AND RUSSIA

MI6's John Hibberdine had taken over from an ill Peter Kemp in running
thatend of things, were not informed of the operation. It later emerged,
however, that Italian Intelligencewas well aware of the transfer of the 'pixies'
to the Stormie Sea off the coast. From the lighthouse at Otranto, officers
watched the entire transfer through telescopes. The information was then
passed on to James Angleton at the CIA in Washington, with whom certain
Italian intelligence officers had a particularly close relationship. As part of
the ongoing professional and bureaucratic battle between the OPC and the
CIA - the counter-intelligence people objected that the guerrilla activities
put their own agents at risk - 'with great glee', Angleton advised McCargar
that the Albanian operation was 'well and truly blown'.
'^^

When had been debriefed on Malta they hinted to Smiley

the Albanians
that 'they might have been expected'. It was recognised that there was a leak
somewhere. The senior officer in MI 5 counter-intelligence at the time, Dick
White, later told Nicholas Bethell that 'no doubt Philby betrayed the Albanian
operation, but overshadowing this is the fact that all emigre organisations
are hopelessly infiltrated from the outset'. Likewise, White's opposite number
in the CIA, James Angleton, also took it as an article of faith that Russian
Intelligence had penetrated all the emigre groups and 'attributed the apparent
leaks to the Albanians in Rome'. It was true that Albanian agents were particu-
larly active among the emigre community in Rome, and Christopher Andrew
is correct to assert that 'security both in the SIS training camp in Malta and

among rival groups of Albanian emigres was sometimes slapdash'.

In the opinion of a number of American Fiend intelligence officers, 'the
recruitment of Albanian emigres was too hurried and insecure, with the result
that word of the operation quickly spread throughout the emigre community
and as quickly reached Russian agents'. According to these officers, the
Russians, aiding the Albanians, were able to penetrate the operation with an
agent who corroborated Philby's general reports and provided more detailed
information on the time and place of agent landings. It was later learned that
one of the Albanians recruited by the guerrillas in the second landing had
been subsequently arrested, tortured and executed, but not before he had
given to the security forces full details of relevant codes and radio signals.
Using such information, in time, Albanian Intelligence developed its own
highly successful 'double-cross' operation.'^^
That the Albanian operation was an open secret was revealed on 27 March
1950 in a brief but specific report in the Nezv York Times by Cyrus Sulzberger.
Itsaid that two groups had been landed on the Albanian coast with orders
to take radios into the hinterland and build up communications with the
anti-Hoxha movement. James McCargar was furious, but Sulzberger
remained unrepentant: 'I can't think why they were so upset. There seemed
to be plenty of people in the Balkans who knew what was happening and
"^"^
obviously the Russians knew about it down to the last semi-colon.
 THE MUSKETEERS IN ALBANIA 391

In the spring of 1950, once the groups had been accounted for, Smiley's
job was over and he returned to his regiment in Germany, Very downcast
and completely mystified what had gone wrong'. Shortly after, he was
as to
replaced by Anthony Northrop, another SOE veteran who had been dropped
into Albania twice during the war. His cover post was as a major in the Royal
Ulster Rifles. James McCargar, disillusioned by the imposition of Hassan
Dosti to chair the Committee for Free Albania, bowed out of the operation
to a new OPC mission in Austria. He did not, however, make it to Vienna,
but instead returned to the Foreign Service. In his place, Wisner appointed
a tough intelligence officer, Gratian Yatsevich, as the new commander of
Operation Fiend to work alongside Kim Philby. A former OSS officer with
a specialised knowledge of the Balkans, though not Albania, Yatsevich had
spent three years in Bulgaria from 1946 as a US military attache.'^''

Although the smell of failure hung heavy in the air, by this time the
Albanian communists had withdrawn support for the Greek rebels, which
'gave some comfort to those who planned the operation and believed,
irrationally, in its feasibility'. In fact, 'it was hoped that all would be in train
for a national uprising'.The surprise outbreak of the Korean War put paid
to any idea of abandoning the project, and the military immediately ordered
a bigger and more active response. The OPC poured in more resources with
renewed vigour. The only problem was that the Americans, Greeks, Italians,
Yugoslavs and British were all running operations that overlapped, causing
confusion and making security increasingly difficult.^^
American operations became more ambitious than the British, involving
air drops into 'denied areas'. Because the area they had targeted was in the

centre of the country and away from the coast, the OPC decided to send
their small groups in by air, and parachute them into areas they knew best.
They used Polish veterans of the RAF run by Roman Rudkowski, an air force
colonel who had parachuted in with Peter Kemp to liaise with the Polish
Home Army in late 1944. This was to be a matter of operational dispute
between the OPC and their British counterparts. Rodney Dennys had taken
over from Kim Philby as head of station in Istanbul, where he had some
contact with Valuable, dealing with a number of Albanian refugees and exiles
involved in the operation. Married to Graham Greene's sister, he was a
veteran of Section V and the Middle East cover, the Inter-Services Liaison
Department, having joined the Service just before the outbreak of war. Like
other MI6 officers, Dennys thought that 'it was a mistake to use parachute
drops. An aircraft in a deserted area sticks out a mile. Small boats were
better.'^'

The OPC's Albanian were disguised by assigning them to special

recruits
'labour battalions' underAmerican army command in Germany, where they
would carry out public works in the country's ruined cities. It was Carmel
Offie who set up the labour battalions with the aid of Lawrence de Neufville,
392 PART FOUR: THE BALKANS AND RUSSIA

a CIA 'special adviser' to the American High Commissioner, housing

Company 400 in American Zone.
a large villa just outside Heidelberg in the
The Americans left the recruitment of the 250 Albanians to Kupi, Ermenji
and Kryeziu. Assembled during June 1950, with Major Caush Ali Bashom, a
Ballist, as senior officer, and Xhemal Laci, a monarchist, as his deputy, the

recruits were of low quality, with a number in poor health. In addition, exile
political in-fighting ensured that their training was continually interrupted.^^
The British operation continued when, in early June 1950, Doc Zaehner
flew six men to Athens for a third mission which this time would go into
Albania overland. Zaehner co-operated with Patrick Whinney, whose deputy
was now Frank Stallwood, a former schoolmaster who had served with the
Intelligence Corps in the Middle East before joining the Service in 1946.
Organising the British side in Athens was a former commander of the gendar-
merie under King Zog, Dayrell Oakley-Hill, an ex-Section D and SOE officer.
In 1946 he returned with the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Admin-
istration (UNRRA) to Tirana, where Hoxha accused him of stirring up the
emigres. In Athens, Oakley-Hill reported directly to London, while the OPC
side was run by Bill Brummell and Horace 'Hod' Fuller, who was responsible
for 'safe-houses'. The Athens end of the operation, however, eventually fell
apart because of a lack of co-ordination with the Greek intelligence service,
which resented what they saw as British interference in Greece's foreign
affairs.^^

Harold Perkins organised with Tracey Barnes, head of the OPC's newly
created Psychological and Paramilitary (PP) warfare staff, an anti-communist
propaganda drive. The first drop by plane of anti-Hoxha leaflets over the
Korce area took place in early August 1950. The initial load had to be dumped
at sea. The first successful release took place in mid-September, but Oakley-
Hill discovered that the American pilot had released the leaflets over the
wrong area. They caused some confusion in neighbouring countries. Yugoslav
officials knew that leaflets had been dropped in Albania and the Kosovo and

Metohia areas of Yugoslavia, seemingly by mistake, because they were in

Bulgarian and summoned the Bulgarians to take action against the communist
government. One senior Yugoslav official told Cyrus Sulzberger that they
suspected the Russians, but the journalist knew that 'they originated with
C. D. Jackson's "amateurish" Free Europe Committee'. Perkins also deployed
balloons for releasing leaflets using technology developed by MI6 scientists
which, in turn, was based on Japanese wartime experience. Barnes preferred
to fill the balloon baskets with such scarce items as flour, needles, razor
blades and other superior western toiletries, along with a note announcing
that they were a gift from the 'Albanian National Liberation Front'. A Radio
Free Albania temporarily went on the air, but there were few radio receivers

in the country.
The Albanian news media, meanwhile, carried reports of parachutists
 THE MUSKETEERS IN ALBANIA 393

dropping from aircraft flying in from Italy. In July, the Albanian government
sent a note of protest to the Italian government complaining that it was
permitting the parachuting of agents into Albanian territory. Major trials

were held in southern Albania of agents who had crossed the border from
Greece, while another was held in the North of Yugoslav agents.
During August Kim Philby travelled to London with OPC director Frank
Wisner and the State Department's Robert Joyce, to attend a special meeting
of the Russia Committee. Joyce and Wisner were acquainted with the commit-
tee's objective of promoting civil strife in the satellite countries with the aim

of weakening the Soviet Union's control. The two main items on the agenda
were, firstly, to reach a consensus between the British and American intelli-
gence communities on the likely date for the Soviet Union to launch an
attack on the West, and, secondly, to co-ordinate the OPC/MI6 operations
tooverthrow the pro-Soviet governments of Albania, Latvia and the Ukraine.
Joyce kept the record for the Americans while the British minutes were written
up by Philby.i^^

In September, Oakley-Hill's aborted overland mission was revived and

the first was put into Albania from Greece. The survivors trickled back
unit
to Malta in early November, but they were no more successful than earlier
incursions. During November, James Blackburn's boat landed two more
British-backed teams on the Albanian coast with instructions to contact Gani
Bey Kryeziu's men, who had apparently crossed into eastern Albania from
Yugoslavia. The British ambassador in Belgrade, Charles Peake, informed the
American charge d'affaires. Bob Ream, in advance that the missions were
going in, but never confirmed they had been dispatched. The two teams were
immediately captured by the security forces. Cyrus Sulzberger again picked
up information on this 'disastrous effort'. The few survivors who made it
out told their friends and colleagues in Malta that Hoxha's security men
had tightened their grip on the country and free movement was virtually
impossible. 'Morale', not unnaturally, 'declined alarmingly' and 'an aura of
doom began to surround the fort'.^*^^
During the autumn of 1950, news of Valuable /Fiend continued to leak.
The counsellor at the American embassy in Belgrade let slip to Sulzberger
that the 'CIA and the British are up to another plan to overthrow the regime
in Albania'. After a number of false starts and failures, nine OPC -sponsored
Albanian trainees from Company 400 were dropped into the country on 19
November. They were ill prepared for the operation, having been trained for
only three weeks, and even then the training was regarded as being inferior
to that offered by the British on Malta. Adem Gjura later said that he was
'sent into the field with no plan of action and no idea where he might find
friends. His men had been selected with little regard for physical or mental
aptitude they might have for such a daunting task. They were scrawny and
unfit, not the "commando" type. And their training was rudimentary.' Aston-
394 PART FOUR: THE BALKANS AND RUSSIA

ishingly, they received no parachute training. In the event, the Polish pilots
could not locate the arranged dropping point and the vital supplies ended
up in another town. In addition, several hundred security police had flooded
the area and were lying in wait for them. 'Very soon', Selim Deci recalled,
'we knew that our landing was known to the security forces.' Gjura
disco\'ered that many villagers already knew his name. Days earlier 'the
security police had let it be known that "Adem Gjura" was about to fall from
the skies and that they must all look for him'.^°^
Selim Deci was arrested the day after the landing. Gjura was luckier but
was only saved because he landed several miles from the landing zone. Along
with his colleagues, at the end of December he escaped to Yugoslavia without
achieving any of the objectives. Deci was tortured and sentenced to hard
labour, to be released forty years later. Furious at having missed Gjura, the
Albanian secret police extracted a terrible revenge, arresting and executing
more than forty members of his family.^°^
Back on Malta, the flaws in the planning were all too apparent toAnthony
Northrop. He had come to the conclusion that the operation was being
continued and bureaucratic reasons'. Senior officials in MI6
'for political

blamed the 'pixies' for the failures. The Service appeared to be using it as
'their showpiece of anti-Soviet retaliation' and, under pressure from the mili-

tary, instead of cutting back insisted on more and bigger operations. The
'hotheads' craved the success in the field that would help their careers, and
it appeared to Northrop that 'Broadway was experimenting with his young

Albanian men, using them not as allies but as sacrificial lambs'. There was
no longer the surgical skill that a few years earlier had made SOE the world's
experts in guerrilla warfare. Northrop thought that the only tactic that might
have succeeded was the assassination of Hoxha, but that had not been sanc-
tioned by Bevin and was vetoed by Perkins as being too 'noisy '.^°^
Although the main chronicler of Valuable, Nicholas Bethell, had originally
seen it as a well-thought-out operation, he appears to have altered his view
- perhaps as a result of interviewing the Albanians.

This was the secret service at its worst - patronising, inefficient,

irresponsible. I could understand their ruthlessness in a ruthless

conflict, but not when it was backed by such dismal lack of
professionalism and disregard for the lives of the Albanians
whom they were sending into the field, not to mention their
families, innocents who were also condemned to endure
Hoxha's revenge.

The Service, and Bethell, would later try to lay the blame for the failures on
Kim Philby, but this was only part of the story. It was true that he did much
to sabotage Albanian operations and had 'alerted the KGB to the seaborne
landings in October 1949, to cross-border infiltration in the summer of 1950,
 THE MUSKETEERS IN ALBANIA 395

and to the first CIA parachute drop in November 1950'. But he probably
only passed on the broad outlines, and even without his help, as Christopher
Andrew concludes, 'covert action in Albania was probably doomed'. Much
to the chagrin of western intelligence agencies, it was later discovered that
Albania had devised its own radio 'double-cross' system.
In January 1951, the Albanian Ministry of the Interior reported a large
and unsuccessful infiltration in the North. Forty-three guerrillas had entered
the country by boat and parachute and had been defeated by the police in a
gun battle lasting several days. Twenty-nine guerrillas had been killed and
fourteen captured. During the following month, another group of guerrillas
moved into Albania and was initially well received by the villagers it encoun-
tered. With several reports coming out of open organised resistance and
uprisings, there was optimism that this mission might well succeed.
In April, senior Yugoslav official Professor Milovan Djilas told Cyrus
Sulzberger in Belgrade that in Albania 'things are getting worse. It is a pitiful
little country, Hoxha has lost the support of all elements and merely keeps
in the saddle by brutal police methods.The police are loyal because they
have been established as a privileged class.' Although a committee of
Albanian exiles opposed to Hoxha's regime was set up in Yugoslavia during
1951, Djilas expressed fears about outside interference in Albania. Ironically,
Anglo-American actions were mistakenly viewed as Russian
in the country
attempts to stir up trouble as the prelude to an invasion of Yugoslavia.
Yugoslav spokesperson Vlado Dedijer revealed that a bomb thrown at the
Soviet embassy in Tirana had killed several Russian diplomats and military
staff. Dedijer thought it the action of 'a Soviet agent provocateur'. It was
unlikely, but this terrorist act sparked off an unprecedented reign of terror
and repression.
The initial success of the latest mission into Albania was short-lived as
the expected men, weapons and equipment failed to materialise. They were
eventually picked off one by one by the security forces and, in early May,
the survivors were forced to make their way to Yugoslavia, where they were
interned for a number of years. During the spring, Archie Lyall moved from
Trieste to Rome, where he replaced Peter Kemp and John Hibberdine on
Valuable. At the same time, a disillusioned Michael Burke left Fiend to organ-
ise equally disastrous agent drops into the Soviet Union. He was replaced
by Joseph American Army and a public relations
Leib, a former major in the
specialist. Before he left for Germany, Burke handed Franklin Lindsay his

final operational report in which he stressed that 'the political requirement

could only have been met by a major military operation'. Lindsay agreed,
though other senior figures in the CIA did not. Wisner apologised to Kim
Philby for the failures: 'We'll get it right next time.'^"^
Frank Wisner's OPC now operated within the remit of the CIA, but as
an independent section ultimately responsible to the new Director, Walter
3% PART FOUR: THE BALKANS AND RUSSIA

Bedell Smith. Although professionally friendly with Philby, in the light of a

series ofcompromised MI6/CIA operations Wisner had apparently already
developed doubts about the British liaison officer. He told Bob Joyce that
there was perhaps a traitor in their midst, most likely within the SPC. In an
unpublished memoir, Joyce revealed that 'Wisner had arrived at Philby as
the most likely culprit'. In late May 1951, following the disappearance of
the British diplomats Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean, the CIA's gun-
toting William Harvey put together a five-page memorandum which traced
Philby's career and contacts. Harvey asserted that the MI6 man was probably
a Soviet agent. His personal assistant, Hugh Montgomery, was certain that
his boss had developed his suspicions as a result of the Albanian failures.
Harvey handed his damning report, which is now in the CIA's collection
of super-secret case files known as the 'Black Files', to the Director, who
immediately sent a copy to Stewart Menzies with a warning cover letter

demanding that Philby be fired or the all-important intelligence link would

^^'^
be severed.
Among the MI6 officers who accepted the American evidence against
Philby was the Assistant Chief, James Easton, who chaired the Service's
internal committee on Valuable. Easton became 'an outcast for daring to
believe the worst about a trusted member of the Firm' and was cut out of
top-level discussions. In a private note to the director of the Joint Intelligence
Bureau (JIB), Maj.-Gen. Kenneth Strong, Bedell Smith,who had personally
briefed Philby, wrote: hope the bastard gets his. I know a couple of Albanian
'I

tribesmen who would like to have half-an-hour apiece with him.' Soon after.
Strong, who had served with Bedell Smith during the war as Eisenhower's
chief intelligence officer, was temporarily posted to Washington to act as MI6
liaison to the CIA. He soon became a familiar figure, and so impressed was
the CIA Director that he wanted to appoint Strong deputy in charge of the
agency's intelligence operations, but the NSC balked at appointing a
foreigner. In August, Strong was replaced by the official MI6 representative,
Machlachlan Silverwood-Cope, who stayed until the following January, when
the post was taken up by John Bruce-Lockhart; the latter being largely respon-
sible for healing the wounds with the American 'cousins'.
Despite the fact that Philby was now under strong suspicion as the 'Third
Man' and was regarded by a number of CIA officers as most definitely a
traitor, in mid-1951 it was decided to proceed with the Albanian operation.

Indeed, the OPC began putting in substantial sums. Prompted by Burke's

report and his own experience of touring the CIA stations in Europe, Franklin
Lindsay was having real doubts about rolling back the Iron Curtain. 'It was
peacetime, not wartime. The stuff that had worked against the Germans did
not work against the Russians, who seemed impervious.' Lindsay realised
that the OPC /MI6 operations were getting nowhere. He did not blame Philby
for the failure, however, believing that the Soviets would not have wasted
 THE MUSKETEERS IN ALBANIA 397

him on Albania. He thought that the operation went down because 'we
couldn't maintain security in the DP camps and because the communist
security apparatus damn strong'.
was so The situation became worse when
the OPC began to throw money around. There was a lot of careless gossip
among the emigres in Rome and Athens - and despite the worries of the
counter-intelligence people monitoring the radio transmissions from the
agents in Albania that the 'fist' - the individual style and pattern that distin-

guishes telegraph operators - was not quite right, Wisner sent in more
teams.^^^
The OPC decided to transfer their loyalties to the monarchists and began
to target the Zogist groups, though the switch to a pro-monarchist strategy
did much undermine the democratic claims of the operation. During the
to
summer, ostensibly to buy real estate. King Zog visited Washington, where
he discussed the situation with Gratian Yatsevich. Meanwhile, the training
continued, although relations between the Albanians and MI6/OPC deterio-
rated. With the sanction of Greece's military leader, Alexander Papagos, the
CIA established a new base in the Kalanissia island group a few miles north
of Corinth. As part of Britain's policy of 'handing on the torch' in the Balkans,
the CIA had taken over 'nearly all the British secret networks and instal-
lations'. Disguised as a radar station, the base accommodated teams of refu-

gees from Albania, Bulgaria and the Soviet Union. High-powered boats
dropped agents on the Albanian coast on secret missions, though the favoured
means for the Americans was dropping agents by air."^
At midnight on 23 July, with the Philby investigation still in progress, the
Americans parachuted twelve more young Albanians into the field in various
locations. Once again, disaster struck, with the security police waiting for
them. Four were burnt to death in a house, six were shot dead and two -
Kacem Shehu and Muhamet Zeqir Hoxha - were captured. Hoxha, no relation
to the dictator, had landed on Vergoi Plain: 'But instead of finding ourselves
in a safe place, we were immediately surrounded by Albanian security forces
aided by armed civilians. '^^^
On 10 October 1951, Shehu and Hoxha were put on trial in a Tirana
cinema along with others from previous operations and those alleged to
have invaded Albania under British, Greek, Italian and Yugoslav sponsor-
ship. Muhamet Hoxha, who had been tortured and kept in appalling
conditions, recalled that the trial was 'very boisterous, designed to show
the defeat of the Anglo-Americans and the triumph of the security forces'.
During the staged event, the defendants confessed to various crimes,
revealing essential facts that proved to be true and precise with regard to
names and dates. Interestingly, despite the best efforts of the Albanians to
publicise the trial, little if anything appeared in the western press. While the
trial continued, on 15 October the Americans dropped a further party of five
in the mountains of the Dibra region. The three who survived spent their
398 PART FOUR: THE BALKANS AND RUSSIA

entire timedodging Albanian patrols before crossing into Greece at the end
of the month.
Although most of those on trial were given prison sentences, few reap-
peared following the trial. A number were killed in captivity, while Muhamet
Hoxha spent decades in prison being starved and beaten. A few of those
captured revealed enough details of the training and operation to provide
the security police with sufficient intelligence to stage a deception operation.
The exile centres were easy prey for infiltration by communist agents, while
the terrorising of families back in Albania provided further information. There
followed bitter disillusionment, and the Albanians began to drift away from
the training areas. This was not surprising given that sixty agents were para-
chuted in during 1951 but not a single word came back. 'Seldom', Robin
Winks writes, 'had an intelligence operation proceeded so resolutely from
'^^^
one disaster to another.
In late October, a meeting in Rome with MI6's Harold Perkins and
Anthony Northrop and the OPC's Joe Leib considered the problems. The
meeting again ended in a dispute about the different methods of delivering
agents into the field, with the British regarding the parachuting in of men at

fivehundred feet The Americans were all too willing to put the
as suicidal.
blame on Philby for the failures but, as Robin Winks has pointed out,
'frequently the drops did not take place where they were meant to, so any
information relayed by someone inside the operation would have been
wrong. Further, as the disastrous drops required low flights, followed by a
supply drop well away from the men and almost square on a village, the
drops themselves rather visibly could have alerted the authorities.' It seems
that the drops were being detected 'simply because they were badly
performed'. Philby thought that 'the general lack of attention to detail by the
OPC, and a misplaced optimism about Albanian readiness for revolt, together
with a disregard for the Albanian agents who were being sent in as though
they were "just down from the trees", were at least as important in accounting
for the disaster as any treachery on his part'.^^^
Privately, the British considered the Americans to be 'innocents'. John
Bruce-Lockhart believed that Wisner's problem was that he 'failed to appreci-
ate the toughness of his adversary' and had not seen enough of the 'hard
end' of war. At the same time, Bruce-Lockhart realised that 'we were getting
nowhere. Unlike World War Two, we had no SIGINT [signals intelligence],
no PoWs to debrief, and no aerial reconnaissance.' The British gave up trying
to infiltrate agents: 'It was pointless. They were quickly killed or turned into
double agents.'"^
The British gradually realised the futility of Valuable and quietly began
to withdraw as the country's worsening economic position prevented it from
engaging in full-scale operations. Abas Ermenji, unwilling to see his BK
followers take 'another tumble through the meat grinder', asked them to stop
 THE MUSKETEERS IN ALBANIA 399

going on missions. On Benjimma continued briefly with a few

Malta, Fort
trainees and under Anthony Newman's command but was
a skeleton staff
finally dismantled by MI6's new Middle East director, George Young. Small

groups of Albanians were trained on Dartmoor by Anthony Northrop, but

his reservations and the lack of will from the incoming Conservative govern-
ment led to the British decision to end their part of the operation. They did
so, Philby recalled, 'without having made any noticeable dent on the regime

in Tirana'. What had started out as a British operation, then a 'joint' or,
until early 1952, a 'co-ordinated' effort, now became the sole preserve of the
Americans."^
Those guerrillas who had managed to escape through Greece were trans-
ported to Britain for a 'Welcome Home' party at Caxton Hall, in London.
MI6 bullied the Home them into the country under the
Office into allowing
pretext that they were 'good friends of ours from Greece'. The remaining
trainees were subsequently 'scattered throughout the world' with a fair

proportion finding their way to the Commonwealth, while a few found

employment through the Ministry of Labour in Britain with the Forestry
^^"^
Commission and an ordnance factory.
Bob Joyce had likewise concluded that the operation was not serving any
useful purpose, but Wisner shrugged off the criticism, knowing that he had
the support of CIA Deputy Director Allen Dulles. Gratian Yatsevich agreed
to carry the fight on with members of the Royal Guard led by the most
experienced guerrilla 'pixie', Hamit Matjani. A CIA favourite, Matjani, the
'Tiger', had made fifteen incursions into Albania by the land route, which

proved to be the most secure. His sixteenth mission, a parachute drop, was,
however, his last. Making the best of a bad situation, Yatsevich secured
Angleton's help in Rome to pick out the weaker elements of the Free Albania
Committee and replace them with members of the Catholic Independenza
group, a number of whom had worked with the Italians during the war. In
Washington, King Zog's military commander, Nuci Kota, a founder of the
Albanian National Committee and a leader of the Free Albania Committee,
led a new CIA-financed Albanian Committee of the Assembly of Captive
European Nations (AC EN). Wartime collaborator Hassan Dosti was especi-
ally active in the ACEN, whose pivotal Political Committee was controlled

for much of the fifties by the BK organisation.

In order to discover what was going wrong with the operations, on 28
April 1952 five royalists who had followed Zog into exile, including Zenal
Shehu, leader of the operation, and Nalil Sufa, together with a radio operator,
Tahir Prenci, were sent into Albania's Mati region. This seemingly successful
operation left two agents with previously recruited resistance groups who
kept in touch by radio with OPC officers in Greece. It soon became apparent
to the OPC chief in Greece, Al Ulmer, however, that 'we were dropping
them into a controlled situation'. Indeed, the police had lain in wait at a
400 TART FOUR: THE BALKANS AND RUSSIA

house owned by Shehu's cousin. They killed or arrested and tortured the
and then forced the radio operator to broadcast an all-clear signal
guerrillas
to an M16 base on Cyprus: There was a fail-safe drill which involved
transmitting the signal in a way that warned it was being sent under
duress . . . But the militia knew the drill.' Ulmer was all for stopping the
arms and things, for drops,
operation, particularly after 'repeated requests for
where they would shoot at the planes', but no one heeded his warnings.
Especially 'that guy in Rome Leib had no business in intelligence'. In
. . .

early August, weapons were parachuted in following another radio request.

At the same time, the Albanians who were controlling the whole situation
tantalisingly dangled in front of the OPC operators the prospect of sending
out three guerrillas - secret policemen from the Sigurimi - for clandestine
briefings.
While Wisner may have believed that Fiend was back on track. Franklin
Lindsay knew that it had failed and was allowed to set up a 'murder board'
to shut down unsuccessful operations. During 1952 about a third of the
eastern European operations were weeded out. Before he left the service for
the Ford Foundation, Lindsay drafted a paper for the State Department and
the NSC inwhich he concluded that 'in peacetime the Russians seemed to
penetrate them with ease' being 'much better at handling such threats than the
Germans'. In addition, the military 'did not appreciate the years of political
organisation that lay behind successful resistance movements'. Lindsay had
seen at first hand the 'horrifying loss of life, suffering which racks every level
of society, wholesale destruction, the murder of hostages, starvation' which
resistance entailed. Dulles would not be persuaded by Lindsay's paper. When
told that the air-drops were getting nowhere, he replied: 'At least we're
getting the experience we need for the next war.' After a brief lull the OPC,
now part of the CIA's Directorate of Plans, created new exile operations
which were even more reckless.
Meanwhile, the radio base in Cyprus was in receipt of further requests
for agents to be parachuted in for meetings with dissident elements. The CIA
agreed and, on May Day 1953, as part of an outlandish scheme to liberate
Albania with a force of OPC -backed emigres based in Italy, three more
Albanian guerrillas were dispatched. Reviewing the options for operations
against other Soviet satellites, senior CIA official Richard Bissell came across
the Paramilitary Staff project: 'It did not stop with agent drops or guerrilla
warfare in the mountains, but was to escalate steadily until it culminated in
a full-scale invasion of Albania with ships, aircraft, parachute drops, and
thousands of men.' Bissell thought the plan preposterous: 'How did those
OPC colonels think they could get away with a provocation of that magni-
tude?' - or conceal it. On 28 April, Cyrus Sulzberger had talked with Greece's
defence minister, Panayotis Canellopoulos. 'Astonishingly indiscreet', he
revealed details of the planned 'coup de main'. He said that 'American troops.
 THE MUSKETEERS IN ALBANIA 401

if necessary, will be used to ''maintain order" after a local coup. The Greeks
have agreed to keep out, the Yugoslavs have been more or less warned to
do so/'''

On New announced that men trained for the

Year's Eve, Radio Tirana
final part of the operation had been arrested by the Sigurimi and were await-

ing trial. The show trial in April 1954 revealed for the first time the extent
of the Albanian deception. The Sigurimi had rolled up the entire network.
For eighteen months, advised and assisted by Soviet specialists, they manipu-
lated the American operation by controlling the flow and content of messages
transmitted to Cyprus. 'We forced the captured agents to make radio contact
with their espionage centres in Italy and elsewhere, hence to play their game,'
Enver Hoxha later boasted. 'The bands of criminals who were dropped in
by parachute or infiltrated across the border at our request came like lambs
to the slaughter Our famous radio game brought about the ignominious
. . .

failure of the plans of the foreign enemy, not the merits of a certain Kim
Philby.' The trial revealed the operation in excruciating detail with a roster
of names and dates. On 12 April the court pronounced the death sentence
for the leading conspirators.^^^
The trial was followed by a reign of terror throughout the country in
which, it has been estimated, several thousand people out of a population of
less than two million were killed. Up to two hundred agents had already
been lost, while the number of Albanians killed simply for being related to
them may have been When asked about the loss of
as high as a thousand.
life, former OPC
James McCargar could only mouth: 'Too bad.' Abas
officer

Ermenji later lamented the futility of the exercise: 'Our "allies" wanted to
make use of Albania as a guinea-pig, without caring about the human losses,
'^^^
for an absurd enterprise that was condemned to failure.
There was nowhere for the operation to go, and it fell to the CIA South-
East Division chief, John H. Richardson, to liquidate Operation Fiend. A
wartime veteran of the Counter-intelligence Corps Vienna and
in Italy,
Trieste, who joined the post-war Central Intelligence Group and then the
CIA, 'Jocko' Richardson visited London, where he met with senior MI6
officials. He then flew to Rome and told a tearful station chief, Joseph Leib,
that Albanian activities would end immediately. During the summer of 1954,
Company 400 was disbanded, along with the training facilities at Heidelberg
and the CIA-controlled base on the Greek island. The final surviving
Albanians were resettled in Britain, the Commonwealth and the United
States.^'^

The British had cut their ties to the operation earlier than the Americans
but not early enough to avoid unnecessary bloodshed. Nicholas Bethell, who
was struck by the tragic story of the Albanian survivors, remains bitter about
those inMI6 who allowed it to continue beyond any sensible limit. 'They
should have seen how it was going wrong. They should have aborted it and
402 PART FOUR: THE BALKANS AND RUSSIA

saved the lives of those involved/ Bethell, however, retains a romantic regard
for the musketeers who
initiated the project. It is hard to see why. While
acknowledging that the operation had failed its objective of liberating
Albania, Lord (Julian) Amery continued to believe that it had achieved some
success in that 'it and the Albanians to call off
certainly forced the Soviets
the civil war no evidence for that assertion. More realistic
in Greece'. There is

is the caustic conclusion drawn by respected defence specialist John Keegan,

in his review of Bethell's book The Great Betrayal. Tt is a gruesome story,

made all the more so by the perception, apparently denied to the masterminds
of subversion, that the Albanian communists, like the Yugoslavs, were far
more adept at deciding the future of their country than a bunch of meddling
romantic meddlers with a public school education and a free supply of plastic
'^^^
explosive.
The musketeers clung to the belief, and continued to do so, that Philby
was responsible for the failure, but their bete noire, Sir Reginald Hibbert, is

surely right to claim that the Albanian operations 'could have been expected
to fail even if Philby had not betrayed them'.

The enterprise was based on the wrong appreciation of the

balance of forces in Albania. The condition of the people was
undoubtedly deplorable and Hoxha had enemies in his own
ranks. But the revolution had swept away everyone who
was capable of acting as a leader outside the control of the
ruling party. In this respect Albania was similar to the satel-
lite countries of Eastern Europe. was a forlorn hope to
It

suppose that exiled followers of the nationalists who had failed

in 1944 would, when trained by Smiley and infiltrated into
Albania, be able to raise a following against the iron rule of the
Communist Party of Albania after six years of draconian social
engineering. The scheme was thought up and implemented by
men who had failed to understand the revolutionary forces
which enabled Hoxha and the CPA to come to power in 1944.
All it achieved was to make Hoxha's long-standing propaganda
line about the hostility of the capitalist powers and their nefari-
ous intentions from wartime onwards appear more plausible,
and to give Hoxha another pretext for tightening 'revolutionary'
controls.

On and Americans were thus 'guilty of all the

a wider front, the British
sins of subversion and interference, disregard for national sovereignty and
war-mongering, of which they always accused their Cold War enemy, the
Soviet Union'. It was not until 14 December 1990, nearly forty years later,
that riots finally broke out in Tirana and other large cities. Statues of Hoxha
and Stalin were pulled down and the process of building democracy began.
 THE MUSKETEERS IN ALBANIA 403

Ironically, it was not the result of activities by and subverters but,

guerrillas
Bethell concludes, the influence of Italian television which had been beamed
into the country.
CHAPTER20

THE NTS AND

YOUNG RUSSIANS'

Not only was MI6 engaged after the Second World War in supporting the
various emigre separatist groups opposed to the Soviet Union, it also
provided aid and comfort to a number of other anti-communist organisations
that were similarly antagonistic to the Soviet regime but, unlike the national-
ists, wanted to keep the Russian empire intact. Divided by a variety of often

bewildering ideological and philosophical views, and riven by personal

animosity, these 'Greater Russia' groups rarely co-operated with each other,
preferring the tradition of factional in-fighting and the launching of tirades
against their emigre nationalist 'enemies' in the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of
Nations (ABN), Abramtchik Faction, Intermarium and the Promethean
League. The emigre Russians worked in the midst of a complex but small
network of senior security and intelligence officers in MIS and MI6 - most
of Russian origin and strongly anti-communist - their agents and a number
of crucial propaganda assets working with the exile community.
Anatole Baykolov, a White Russian, had arrived in Britain in 1917, and
for many years worked as a journalist in London, supplementing his income
as a translator and analyst of Soviet affairs. A 'mild liberal', Baykolov was
chair of the Russian emigre Social Democrats in Britain. In 1923, he joined
the Labour Party and acted as adviser to the General Council of the TUG on
Russian affairs. Six years later, Baykolov published In the Land of the Comnw-
nist Dictatorship - a book based on information on persecution collected from

recent defectors from the USSR. It attracted the attention of the Duchess of
 THE NTS AND 'YOUNG RUSSIANS' 405

Atholl, who had begun to take a keen interest in what was happening inside
the Soviet Union. She was to become a key friend to the emigres during the
war and in the immediate postwar years, when they were in desperate need
of sympathetic allies.^

Kitty Atholl had been created a Dame of the British Empire in 1918. Two
years later, her husband had been offered and had turned down the Crown
of Albania, after Lloyd George, 'who had the imaginative but quixotic idea
that the head of a Scottish clan might make an admirable leader of the
mountain tribes of Albania', had proffered it twice to Aubrey Herbert, MP.
In 1923, at the age of forty-nine, Kitty became the first Scottish woman
Member of Parliament and was, for the next sixteen years, an influential
figure on the Conservative Right.^
Baykolov proved to be 'a powerful influence' on Kitty, and she, in turn,
used her contacts to open doors, enabling him to act as a 'free-lance diplomatic
correspondent'. By the mid-thirties, with the duchess's help, he was a source
of information and an adviser on Soviet affairs to Winston Churchill and the
Permanent Under-Secretary at the Foreign Office, Sir Robert Vansittart, who
employed him as part of his private intelligence network. When Kitty turned
her attentions towards Germany, she too became a member of the Vansittart
network, and was in receipt of information from his chief informant, Malcolm
Christie. From this advantageous position Baykolov was able to obtain 'visas
and other favours involving the Foreign Office'.^
During the twenties and thirties, Baykolov obtained much of his infor-
mation from the traditional base of the Russian emigres, Paris, where he had
'a special friend in the British Embassy'. Although he would almost certainly

have known the MI6 head of station, Wilfred 'Biffy' Dunderdale, his contact
was probably Dick Ellis, who worked undercover as a journalist and acted
as a 'special friend' to the emigres. Baykolov also co-operated with Ellis's
key agent in Paris, Prince Anton Turkul of the White Russian Armed Services
Union (ROVS), which schemed to restore the Tsarist monarchy in Russia.
The source of much of Baykolov's information for Kitty Atholl was the
Russian emigre group, the NTS (Narodnyi Trudovoy Soyuz, meaning
National Labour Council, though usually mistranslated as 'National Alliance
of Solidarists'). Turkul and the head of ROVS in the Balkans, Claudius Voss,
had collaborated on the creation of the NTS, which was founded in Belgrade
in July 1930. A leading British intelligence agent, Voss ran ROVS' MI6-
friendly counter-intelligence service, the Inner Line, which sponsored the
NTS. Baykolov convinced the duchess that 'the Russian emigre organisations
were working overtime through bodies such as the NTS and others to under-
mine the Soviet regime and to form a provisional government when the
Soviets collapsed'.^
No detailed or reliable account of the history of the NTS exists. It originally
tookits membership from a younger 'New Generation' of exiles who had
406 PART FOUR: THE BALKANS AND RUSSIA

fled the Bolshevik wrath and had settled in Yugoslavia and Bulgaria. It
attracted those exiles who favoured the restoration of the geographical
borders of the Tsarist empire, including the ethnic minorities and Slavic
regions of the Balkans, Ukraine and Belorussia. Initially a left-of-centre group-
ing, NTS soon moved to the right, promoting an anti-Marxist philosophy of
national-labour solidarity, based on three components - 'idealism, nationalism
and activism'. It enjoyed the support of several European intelligence services,
in particular MI 6, and also attracted substantial funds from businessmen with
interests in pre-revolutionary Russia, including Sir Henry Deterding, chair of
Royal Dutch-Shell, and the armaments manufacturer Sir Basil Zaharoff.
Although largely propagandist, the NTS did send individual members under-
cover into Russia, though little is known about these missions.^
Another anti-Marxist Russian group was the Mladorossy ('Union of
Young Russia'), founded in Paris around 1930 by young, well-educated
emigres. A high proportion of its membership was made up of the sons
of former Tsarist officials, who believed that only a monarchical form of
government could fulfil Russia's historical legacy and lead the country back
to greatness. The Mladorossy regarded the 1917 revolution in an interesting
light, believing that it had been responsible for purging Russia of 'negative

elements', while Stalin's policies in the 1930s were supported as a revival of

nationalism which signalled the end of communism. Their slogan was 'The
Tsar and the Soviets!' With a strong following in France and Belgium, the
Mladorossy was led by Alexander Kazem-Bek, who, opposed to democracy,
was impressed with Italian fascism - appropriating its style, psychology and
anti-communism. His followers were also characterised by extreme anti-
Semitism.^
As a 'Caesarist' organisation that believed in strong leaders, the NTS, too,
was impressed by fascism, which was seen as 'a powerful force for the
restoration of a feeling of pride in one's country'. Moving its headquarters
to Paris in 1932 and then to Frankfurt, the NTS became an openly fascist
group, supportive of the Nazi Party. In 1933, Kazem-Bek travelled to Berlin
and signed a friendship pact with Bermondt-Avalov's Russian National
Socialist Movement (ROND), which had the support of the Gestapo, but
no long-term significant collaboration emerged from the meeting. The main
problem was that these groups were deeply religious and opposed the Nazis'
anti-clericalism. From 1934 onwards, the NTS found it 'increasingly
unhealthy to operate within the Third Reich', and after a series of Gestapo
raids it closed down its German branch in August 1938.^
It was around this time that Claudius Voss's MI6-sponsored Inner Line

uncovered evidence that the NTS was penetrated by Soviet Intelligence, the
NKVD. The head of the secret service section at NTS headquarters in
Belgrade was arrested by Yugoslav police as a communist spy, while, at the
same time, many NTS files disappeared. As a result, the Inner Line cut off
 THE NTS AND 'YOUNG RUSSIANS' 407

financial support to the Russians, though the shortfall was made up by the
Polish and Czechoslovakian intelligence services (Voss ran Slovak counter-
intelligence), which were traditionally close to MI6. Senior NTS figure Dr
Georgi Okolovich, a key MI6 agent who had run operations into Russia on
behalf of Harry Carr, also worked for the Polish Intelligence 2nd Bureau of
the general staff, whose representative. Captain Nexbritsky, made it possible
for the NTS to send around 150 people on special missions into the Soviet
Union to 'liberate the Homeland'. All were captured before they achieved
anything, which gave rise to concerns about security breaches. According to
one emigre account, the Polish Security Service discovered that Okolovich
had been working with the Soviets. He was arrested as a communist spy,
and after a trial was sentenced to death. He had 'powerful friends', however,
and was able to escape via Romania to NTS headquarters in Belgrade.^

That Anatole Baykolov was in receipt of information from the Paris-based

'Alexander Guchkov circle', a secret military-intelligence group of White
Russians tied to ROVS, gave rise to questions about his true loyalties. The
circle worked closely with German intelligence agencies, though other sources

suggest that it was heavily infiltrated by Soviet agents. A few emigres in

Paris claimed that Baykolov was working for Soviet intelligence - his work
for Prince Turkul added to the suspicions - but this had more to do with the
traditional emigre rivalries that plagued the movement, rather than any basis
in fact. Certainly, Baykolov had the approval of the Security Service, and he
remained in contact with senior MI5 counter-espionage officer and Soviet
specialist Guy Liddell, who had strong links with the White Russian
community. In turn, he was a major source of information for the Foreign
Office's Sir Robert Vansittart,'*
In the late thirties, Dick Ellis, who had his own links to German intelli-

gence agencies, had been employed in the surveillance of the German

embassy in London with another MI 6 officer and member of the private
Vansittart network. Captain Henry 'Bob' Kerby. Of Scottish parentage, 'a
huge man with cannon ball head and rubbery features usually creased
a bald,
with a smile for he had a lively sense of humour'. Captain Kerby was born
in 1914, in St Petersburg, where his father - an adviser on forestry to the
Tsar - was one of Britain's first MI6 agents. The family left Russia following
the Bolshevik revolution and Kerby subsequently joined the British Army
before being recruited in the mid- thirties into MI 6, where his knowledge of
Russian made him a natural for intelligence work. Baykolov had been one
of Kerby's informants and had been responsible for reporting to MIS that
Mrs Wallis Simpson, the mistress of the Prince of Wales, was a secret agent
^'^
of theGermans.
The operations against the German embassy would not have succeeded
without Kerby's close colleague in the Vansittart network, 'Klop' Ustinov,
408 PART FOUR: THE BALKANS AND RUSSIA

who used Baykolov as an informant. Father of the actor/ director Peter

also
Ustinov, Klopwas a Russo-German by birth. A short, dapper man who often
sported a monocle, according to his son 'he seemed to fancy himself as
something he was really not, a man of mystery, at least not in the way he
understood it'. He had a strongly held belief in life as 'a superficial existence'
and a personality which made him an ideal candidate for a spy. A journalist
by trade, Klop was press attache at the German embassy in London from
the mid-twenties until the mid-thirties, when he was required to prove he
was of 'pure Aryan descent'. Introduced to Vansittart by his private secretary.
Sir Clifford Norton, he was quickly employed as an informant. Klop was
also well acquainted with the Director-General of MI5, Sir Vernon Kell, and
kept in touch with a stream of German visitors to his home at Redcliffe
Gardens, who helped supply Vansittart with information on the Nazis. In
reward, Vansittart secretly helped Klop apply for British citizenship. The
'notice of intent' was published in a Welsh-language newspaper in the know-
ledge that German Intelligence would have few Welsh-language experts.
From that point on, Klop determined to appear British and deliberately
expunged his past."
With his strong connections to the Russian exile community, Ustinov was
recruited by MI5 as an 'agent runner' and was closely involved with Dick
White, Guy Liddell and Malcolm Gumming. His great success was in
obtaining high-grade intelligence from Baron Wolfgang zu Putlitz, a junior
secretary at the German embassy, who was also being run by his close friend
Henry Kerby. Later, when zu Putlitz was air attache at The Hague and
realised that Walter Schellenberg's SS Security Service was moving in on
him, Vansittart organised an operation whereby Klop 'travelled into Holland
and, at great personal risk, led zu Putlitz to safety'.^^
Kerby was appointed honorary
In 1939, just before the declaration of war,
attache in Riga, Latvia, where he worked alongside Leslie Nicholson. It was
not long, however, before Kerby and Nicholson were forced to flee to London
via Russia. Kerby was then made acting consul at Malmo until 1941, 'where
his Russian contacts, and most especially his contacts with the NKVD, were
to come in very useful'. Subsequently classed 'specially employed War Office',
Kerby worked with resistance movements behind enemy lines in Denmark,
where he was briefly jailed, Poland and Yugoslavia.

Although not officially number of NTS indi-

aligned with the Nazis, a large
viduals and groups co-operated with Wehrmacht combat units, Alfred Rosen-
berg's Ostministerium (OMi) and Kaminsky's Russian Nazi Party. They were
attracted by the call for 'an anti-communist revolution in the USSR, assassina-
tion of Soviet leaders, disenfranchisement of Jews, and confiscation of Jewish
property' and found a sympathetic controller in OMi's Georg Leibbrant,
though the Russian-born chief tended to favour the Baltic Germans and
 THE NTS AND 'YOUNG RUSSIANS' 409

Ukrainian separatists at the expense of the NTS. When war broke out, Vladimir
Poremsky and other leading members of the NTS Executive Council, such as
Dr Georgi Okolovich and Dr Alexander Truchnovich, rallied to the Nazi cause
with a secret agenda to make themselves the new rulers of a puppet state inside
the Nazi-occupied zones of the USSR. The small NTS, whose initials were
paraphrased Nosin Smet Tiranom ('we bring death to traitors'), had a dispro-
portionate influence, and this was exploited to achieve an effective monopoly
of leadership among the emigres seeking favour from the Nazis.
The Mladorossy avoided the 'solidarists' of the OMi, preferring to back
the Waffen-SS-sponsored Russian liberationists. Its leader in Europe during
the war was the Cossack Nicholas Dulger-Sheiken, who left Russia following
the defeat of the White armies. British-educated, Sheiken lived during the
thirties in Greece, where he joined the 'Young Russians'. His true loyalties

are difficult to disentangle, as he worked for German Intelligence while an

agent for Greek counter-intelligence. He was, however, in contact with MI6
officers, including the managing director of a shipping company, Roger Gale,

and a passport control official in the Athens embassy, Albert Crawford. He

also knew 'Father Dimitri', alias David Balfour, who was said to be a personal
friend of the Grand Duke Dimitri Pavlovitch. Before the war, Balfour had
been in Paris, working in Russian emigre circles. In 1940, Sheiken arranged
the escape of the Mladorossy leader, Kasem-Bek, from occupied France via
Lisbon to the United States.
Hitler's invasion of Russia in June 1941 split the emigres and some Mlado-
rossy members refused to back the Nazis, preferring the more honourable
option of fighting for the Russian national revolution in the French Army
and Resistance. Inevitably, NTS relations with the Nazis turned out to be
highly ambivalent.
by the Wehr-
In the aftermath of Barbarossa, in the eastern areas occupied
macht, the Nazis employed a host of NTS
members. Many worked for
Admiral Canaris's Abwehr and General Gehlen's Fremde Heere Ost (FHO
- Foreign Armies East), with the military favouring the NTS to the exclusion
of other emigre groups. Russian was the language used in all dealings with the
exiles, and the NTS exploited the situation by placing its cadres in strategic

positions. The NTS became an integral part of the Nazi propaganda, espion-
age and extermination apparatus in the East. Vladimir Poremsky was
appointed director of education at an OMi school, where he reported to
the Gestapo on emigre 'suspects'. As head of a political department of the
counter-intelligence known as 'Ingwar', Georgi Okolovich was responsible
for combating the partisan movement in Belorussia and in locating Jews who
had escaped the mass shootings. In January 1943 the staff of the Special
Service Division 'R' (Sonderstab R)was formed as a front-line military intelli-
gence unit comprised of former members of the Red Army who had surren-
dered to the Germans. Staffed largely by NTS members, its commander was
410 TART FOUR: THE BALKANS AND RUSSIA

the German general staff officer 'Colonel von Regenau', aka Boris Smyslov-
sky-Holmston, a former White Russian officer who had fought against the
Bolshex'iks during the civil war.^^
NTS influence was considerable in the various psychological warfare
campaigns among PoWs. The main theme of its propaganda was the 'libera-
tion' of the USSR from Stalin, communism and the Jews through a mutiny

by the Red Army. A Russian radio station was established to pump out NTS
propaganda which represented Adolf Hitler as the liberator of 'all the peoples
of Russia' whose purpose was the promotion of eternal friendship and alli-
ance between 'free and united Russia' and 'the great German nation'.

In December 1943, on behalf of MI6's Section V head, Kim Philby, Klop

Ustinov was posted to Portugal, where he remained for the rest of the war.
His brief was 'to establish German opposition circles which
contact with those
wanted working under the counter-intelligence resi-
to join the Allied side',
dent, Charles de Salis. According to his wife, he expected to be assassinated
at any time and was told that Schellenberg wanted to poison him: 'He always

expected a needle from a lethal syringe to pierce his skin and he stood with
his back to the wall, facing and watching everybody.' Klop was subsequently
to play an important role in disentangling the role of Prince Turkul in the
German-backed 'Max-Klatt' intelligence network which claimed to have a
spy ring inside the top levels of the Soviet military.^^
Operation MONASTERY had originally been conceived in July 1941 by
the Soviet Administration for Special Tasks and the Secret Political Depart-
ment of the NKVD in close co-operation with the GRU as a counter-
intelligence exercise. Its aim was to penetrate the Abwehr's exile agent
networks inside the Soviet Union by creating a pro-German, anti-Soviet
organisation known as 'Throne' which sought contacts with the German high
command. The chosen agent was Aleksandr Demyanov, whose father had
been chief of counter-intelligence for the White Army in the northern
Caucasus. Code-named 'Max' by the Abwehr, Demyanov made contact with
the Germans in December, but instead of backing Throne, they recruited him
as a full-time agent with the task of setting up a Moscow-based spy ring. In
early 1942, Max was parachuted back into the Soviet Union to set up his
network but, in a direct parallel with the British double-cross operation, the
Soviets created a phantom network with apparent sources of information
among 'elderly ex-Tsarist officers'. This phantom network became an impor-
tant channel of 'disinformation' which was passed on to another German
agent, Richard Kauder (Klatt), who, in turn, communicated directly with the
FHO intelligence head. General Gehlen.^^
Much of this was known to the British. In a highly secret interception
operation, Bletchley Park's Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS)
had monitored the steady stream of signals originating in Sofia which
 THE NTS AND YOUNG RUSSIANS' 411

revealed the military and strategic plans of the Red Army. It showed that
information was being sent by agent Klatt to Abwehr headquarters in Berlin.
The Russian source of this information was pinpointed to 'a secret transmitter
operating near Kuibyshey, on the Volga, where the NKVD Intelligence Centre
had been evacuated when the fall of Moscow seemed imminent'. British
knowledge of the operation was, in turn, known by the NKVD, which had
been kept well informed by one of its agents in London, MIS officer Anthony
Blunt, who handed over the GC&CS material to his Soviet control. As the
Klatt traffic continued, MIS 'reluctantly concluded that it must be part of
some gigantic double-cross system which the Russians were using deliber-
ately'. This was correct, but MIS went on to erroneously conclude that Klatt

'was a double agent used by the Russians to feed the Abwehr with chicken
feed'.^o

A number of authors have drawn similar conclusions and asserted that

Soviet agents within the emigre community in the West were responsible for
establishing the bona fides of Max and, indeed, took credit for finding such
an impressive source of information. According to one of the Soviet officers
at the centre of the deception, however, 'these leaders were never double
agents. They were simply exploiting a good opportunity to verify a name
for the Abwehr and thus justify their financial support by the Germans.'
Indeed, the Germans only used Max 'intensively when they were convinced
he was not involved in the pre-war intelligence operations of the Russian
emigres', which they knew had been thoroughly penetrated. The other key
agents in his Max-Klatt network were planted on him by the Germans and
not by the Russians.^^
At the end of 1944, Walter Schellenberg, now head of SD foreign intelli-
gence, instituted a formal inquiry into Klatt's activities. There were two views
within SD as to whether he was a genuine agent or a Soviet plant. It seems
that at the beginning of 194S, the Gestapo in Vienna had decided that he was
a Soviet agent, but this view changed in March when he managed to persuade
an Abwehr officer that he must escape from the city before the arrival of the
approaching Russians. An SD officer agreed to his request and he was
allowed to move westward with an officer who had been told to let him
escape on the way.^^

During the spring of 1943 the German Army, with the NTS playing an
important role, had experimented with the establishment of a Russian Libera-
tion Movement and Army (ROD), built around Red Army lieuten-
a dissident
ant-general, Andrei Vlasov, famous for his defence of Moscow
as commander
of the Soviet 20th Army. For ideological reasons. Hitler had no intention of
allowing a full-scale Russian army, and its nominal leader, Vlasov, was
retained merely as a propaganda weapon. The idea was revived by Himmler
in January 1944 and led to the emergence of several assorted units. According
412 PART FOUR: THE BALKANS AND RUSSIA

to Catherine Andreyev, however, ROD 'never in fact existed, it was a term

coined by those Germans agitating for a change in Nazi policy towards the
So\'iet Union, and they created a mythical army in order that those Soviet
citizens fighting in the ranks of the Wehrmacht should feel some kind of
unity and have some concrete aim for which to fight'. A unified military
formation 'remained a desire and not a reality'.^^

Although Vlasov refused to endorse the organisation, the NTS had a 'very
on the proposed liberation movement. Victor Bayda-
significant influence'
lakov, who had been head of the NTS since 1930, became part of the Vlasov
Dr Vladimir Porem-
ideological leadership, while other senior figures, such as
sky. General Trukhin and General Meandov, played a central role in the
Army Intelligence's political warfare project around Vlasov, serving as politi-
cal officers among the eastern European troops who defected to the Nazis.^^
Even though the NTS was treated preferentially, its leaders considered
themselves as 'Russian patriots' who believed in the sanctity and concept of
the Russian Empire. Increasingly, they became dissatisfied with their position
with regard to German ambitions in the East and especially concerning the
treatment of Russian PoWs. Their support began to take on an anti-German
line as they finally realised that the Nazis intended to subjugate the Russian
people into a state of semi-slavery. During 1944, with the Red Army moving
steadily westward, the NTS opened itself up to discussion of political matters
and adopted a new draft programme which paid heed to the new Soviet
realities. New Soviet members inserted a passage into the NTS manifesto to
the effect that all nationalities whose territories lay within the boundaries of
the Russian state were part of the nation: 'The only exception to this were
foreigners and Jews.' The taking up of anti-Semitism was a new trend.^^
In the end, Russian national interests led the NTS into conflict with the
Gestapo, which did not particularly trust Dr Poremsky and the other leaders
owing to their past employment by British Intelligence. Investigations by the
Intelligence Section of the German Special Service Division 'R' also revealed
that there was a small section of NTS members in Berlin who were in fact
working for the Soviets. With their powerful backers, the NTS members were
initially given the benefit of the doubt, but when, during the summer of 1944,
the NTS headquarters in Warsaw was discovered to be in communication
with the Soviets, the Gestapo began a round-up of senior NTS officials. More
than sixty were sent to concentration camps, where twenty-eight perished.
By the end of the year, a further two hundred had been arrested. This did
not stop the remaining NTS leaders from co-operating with the Germans in

organising stay-behind networks in the East but, as the Red Army passed
by, most were mopped up by NKVD troops.^^
On 14 November 1944, five hundred delegates assembled in Prague amid
scenes of great rejoicing, to launch the manifesto of Vlasov's Committee for
the Liberation of the Peoples of Russia (KONR), which called for the over-
 THE NTS AND 'YOUNG RUSSIANS' 413

throw of the Bolsheviks. The Prague manifesto, which was carried by radio
and was heard with enthusiasm by Russian PoWs in Allied camps in France,
accepted 'aid from Germany, always provided that such aid is consistent
with the honour and independence of our Homeland. This aid, at the moment,
provides the only practical possibility of armed struggle against the Stalinist
clique.' In January 1945, Vlasov was finally allowed to form two divisions
which were known as the Armed Forces of the Committee for the Liberation
of the Peoples of Russia (VS KONR). On 22 February, the former head of
Division 'R', General Smyslovsky-Holmston, was given permission by Vlasov
to create the 1st Russian National Liberation Army, which was only allowed
to exist because of the bureaucratic nature of the Nazi regime. It was all in
vain, however, as the war was soon over.^^

During March 1945, those NTS leaders still alive after internment in the
concentration camps were released by the Gestapo following pressure from
Vlasov. By what means or through whom it is no longer known, but Dr
Poremsky managed to contact his former British Intelligence sponsors before
the final defeat of Germany.^^

In July 1944, the War Cabinet had accepted the principle that if the Soviet
Union demanded the return of PoWs they would have to be handed over.
This all-embracing policy of compulsion was very much opposed by the
man responsible for SOE, Lord Selbourne, but there had been intense and
inevitable pressure from Soviet officials, who privately feared the motives of
the 'English interventionists'. 'Only too easily would they suspect Britain was
planning to harbour enemies of the Soviet Union to build up the nucleus of
collaborators with fascism, anti-Soviet fanatics, who would be armed with
British orAmerican weapons and launched against the Motherland.' Evidence
existed to back the views of both Selbourneand the Soviets.^^
Selbourne had information from the head of SOE's Russian section -
which had responsibility for persuading Soviet citizens in German ranks to
desert - suggesting that Russian PoWs were being repatriated against their
will. Major Len Manderstam had personally intervened to save forty members

of the Russian ROD captured in France, with the intention of training them
for operations behind German lines. A Latvian exile and fluent Russian-
speaker who had served in the Bolshevik Army, Manderstam had turned
violently anti-communist, eventually emigrating to South Africa before
volunteering in 1939 for military service in SOE. Soviet NKVD liaison officers
in Britain had objected to Manderstam's plan, particularly when they
discovered that the Russians in camps in Surrey and Yorkshire were being
courted by exiled White Russians. Georgi Knupffer, leader of the Mladorossy
in Britain, was accused of spreading Tsarist propaganda among the PoWs.
Born in St Petersburg, Knupffer regarded the 1917 revolution as a plot by
Jewish bankers. In exile, he became heavily involved in monarchist politics.
414 PART FOUR: THE BALKANS AND RUSSIA

founding an Integralist organisation in Britain. He was said by fellow - but

more moderate - anti-communist Geoffrey Stewart-Smith to be 'well known
in Britain for his anti-Semitic views' and for playing down evidence of Nazi
war crimes/^^^
To appease the Soviets, the Foreign Office tried to dismiss Manderstam,
suggesting that because he was 'a Russian-speaking Bait' he was incapable
of carrying out 'an objective interrogation'. The demand was successfully
rebuffed by Selbourne and Colin Gubbins of SOE, and Manderstam was able
to save his forty parachutists. (Where the Russians disappeared to is not
known, but one suspects into the arms of British Intelligence and the NTS.)
By the middle of 1945 most of the Russian PoWs had been returned to
the Soviet Union. The last major party of over three hundred, destined for
almost certain liquidation at the hands of the security police, was accom-
panied, kicking and screaming, to the Soviet Zone in Germany by MI6 officer
Captain David Crichton of the Russian Liaison Group. The handling of the
Russian PoWs set a pattern to which the British government stuck, in the
main, under the legal agreement signed at the inter- Allied conference held
at Yalta in February 1945. The agreement obliged the British authorities to
repatriate, by force if necessary, tens of thousands of 'Soviet citizens' - both
PoWs and civilians - though forced repatriation was a definition left open
to differing interpretations. The agreement stemmed from the concern of the
western allies to secure the speedy repatriation of their own nationals who
had been captured by the Germans and liberated by the advancing Red
Army.^^
In the early spring of 1945, a roving SOE unit operating in the Carpathian
Alps under the command of Patrick Martin-Smith received intelligence that
a large band of Cossacks, who realised that the war was lost, wished to join
the Allies. The day after VE day, reports came in of continuing fighting
between the Cossack Corps and Yugoslavs. A senior SOE officer. Major
Charles Villiers, who had a long association with Tito's partisans, was sent
to restore order and secure the surrender of the Cossacks. Hoping to find a
refuge in the West, the Cossacks, proud of their anti-Bolshevism and respon-
sible for many bloody massacres in the name of this cause, put their faith in
the Allied commander-in-chief in Italy, Field Marshal Alexander, who had
fought against the Bolsheviks with the Baltic landszvehr in Courland and
still 'bore proudly' a Russian Imperial Order. Their hopes were misplaced,
however, and on 1 June they were repatriated amid appalling scenes of chaos.
A number of Cossack officers shot themselves after killing their wives and
children.^^
A different fate awaited the White Russian Schutzkorps which, on 21 May
1945, was saved from extradition. The sole surviving unit of the old Russian
Imperial Army had, after the civil war, set up a skeleton military establish-
ment in Serbia to train a future anti-Bolshevik army. Led by an Imperial
 THE NTS AND 'YOUNG RUSSIANS' 415

officer. Colonel Anatol Rogozhin, the German-armed Schutzkorps was saved

by the intervention of Col. Walton Ling, Assistant Red Cross Commissioner
for Civilian Relief in northern Italy. During 1919, Ling had served as a senior
artillery liaison officer in the British Military Mission to the Wliite Armies in

South Russia. He 'saw their recent struggle against Tito's partisans as but a
continuation of the war against Bolshevism'. Found a safe haven in Austria,
at Klin St Veit, by August 1945 over half of Rogozhin's 3,500 troops had
simply disappeared. Their disappearance had not gone unnoticed and, at
Potsdam, Soviet officials handed the British a complaint that Rogozhin was
heading an anti-Soviet force around Klagenfurt.^"*

On 3 May 1945 General Smolensky-Holmston and his 1st National Russian

Army had crossed over the Swiss border and were eventually interned in
Liechtenstein for three years. Early in the month, Dr Poremsky
on tried,

Vlasov's behalf, to contact the British in Hamburg, hoping to persuade them

not to send back Vlasov troops captured by the western Allies. The mission
failed. One who managed to escape was Wilfred Strik-Strikfelt, a Russian-
speaking Bait and Vlasov's main liaison officer with the German Army. Born
and educated in pre-1917 Russia, of a German merchant family, he had fought
with the White Army Of strong 'pro-British sympathies',
against the Reds.
Strik-Strikfelthad worked with MI6 before the war. Vlasov's KONR
survivors were hunted by the Red Army units in Czechoslovakia and many
were quickly liquidated. Vlasov himself fell into Russian hands on 12 May
1945, west of Hanover. On 26 August 1946 Pravda announced that Vlasov
and nine of his officers had been condemned to death and hanged; rumour
had it by piano wire with a hook inserted at the base of the skull.^"^
Contingents of NTS stragglers and former members of Vlasov's army
found their way finally to an UNRRA camp at Moenchehof, near Kassel in
the western region of Germany. When the end came, several senior NTS
leaders who might have been tried as collaborators were freed by the Ameri-
cans. Only Dr Poremsky - 'a 200% Nazi' - was imprisoned as a war criminal,
but he was released in 1946 on 'health grounds' following the intervention
of MI6. Poremsky made no secret of his collaboration with the Germans but
claimed that it had been with the consent of the British. MI6 needed him to
renew his leadership of the organisation and relaunch its activities, which
began in November 1945 with republication of the paper Possev (The Seed).
NTS leaders made efforts to sell their intelligence networks to the Allies, and
with the support of the US military government set up a 'secret operations
committee' which established sections for espionage and subversion, internal
security and liaison with the western intelligence agencies. The problem was,
however, that NTS clandestine activities inside the USSR turned out to be
greatly exaggerated, mostly untrue and largely mythical. In addition, as with
the other emigres, the NTS was hampered by leadership splits over its
direction.^^
416 PART FOUR: THE BALKANS AND RUSSIA

While stationed in Rome immediately after the war, MI6 officer Kenneth
Benton dex^eloped a useful informant working for UNRRA. From a Tsarist
family that had escaped to England following the 1917 revolution, the inform-
ant knew a number Rome, including a young
of anti-communist exiles in
aristocrat who had worked government service and whom
in the Soviet
Benton hoped to recruit as a source. In turn, the young aristocrat was being
sought by the NKVD because he was a member of the NTS. When Benton
telegraphed the head of the Political Section in London with his good news,
he was astonished with David Footman's reply that 'we do not use Russian
emigre organisations'. Benton believed that Footman was echoing Kim Philby,
who had 'made no secret of his contempt for the wretched right-wing refugees
from Communism who were his potential recruits'. Philby said, 'never trust
a Tsarist emigre. They're all as twisty as eels.' While Footman's assessment
was undoubtedly correct, other sections within MI6 were already recruiting
among the Russian emigres.^^
Under MI6 Controller for Western Europe, Kenneth
the direction of
Cohen, newly liberated countries agents were recruited from the DP
in the
camps using MI6-sponsored 'charities' such as the Organisation for Assist-
ance to Foreign Displaced Persons in Germany. The NTS organised mass
escapes from the camps and protested - at times successfully with refugee
groups - against the forced repatriations of former Russian citizens. The
NTS initially had some success in the chaos of eastern Europe in gathering
information from Russian military and civilian personnel in the occupied
territories, and helped in a number of low-level defections. Senior MI 6 officers

stationed in Germany, including Harold Shergold and John Bruce-Lockhart,

were urged by headquarters to recruit Russians for the MI6-backed NTS
intelligence-gathering Operation SHRAPNEL, which 'cost a lot of money'
but in the end produced 'poor results'. The broker for NTS agents interested
in employment with MI6 and the other western agencies was Berlin propa-
gandist Yvegniy Romanov, chair of the NTS Executive Bureau. His closest
colleague, NTS chair Poremsky, also ran the Possev publishing house, in
Munich, where millions of leaflets were printed at British and American
expense for use in propaganda operations inside the USSR.^^
In early 1946, a founder member and a senior figure throughout the war,
Constantine Boldyrev, created elaborate plans under MI 6, French and United
States sponsorship for NTS-led bands of exiles to be established undercover,
away from prying Soviet eyes, as construction companies based in Morocco.
Meanwhile, a White Russian aristocrat emigre who had lived in Germany
formany years. Prince Boloselsky, toured the DP camps looking for Russian
PoWs and Vlasov veterans to work in Morocco with the promise of a 'prosper-
ous life'. An ex-Soviet serviceman and PoW who joined the German Army,
N. I. Yakuta, had been interned in a Munich DP camp at the end of hostilities.
He soon regretted his decision in 1946 to go to Casablanca. 'Without a cent
 THE NTS AND 'YOUNG RUSSIANS' 417

in my pocket, ignorant of the language and morally depressed, I was

compelled to sell my labour for almost a song in order to keep body and
soul together.' Yakuta spent five years in Morocco in back-breaking jobs. In
reality, 'these were military groups, companies of the Vlasov Army, most of
them soldiers together with their officers'. Boldyrev recalled that 'we kept
them together in order to provide special fighting units in a war with the
Soviets'. The intelligence agencies subsidised these Vlasov colonies, at the
same time preserving their military potential. Groups of them were
subsequently sent to the Allied zones in Germany to be trained at Bad
Homburg and Bad Wiessee for operations inside Russia. M16 ran the NTS
infiltration operations from Klagenfurt under cover of its local station, the

'Co-ordination Division' of the Austrian Control Commission.^^

Lord Vansittart had not been idle during the war years. He maintained close
personal contact with Sir Stewart Menzies and Desmond Morton, Churchill's
own intelligence adviser, who was haunted by the spectre of postwar commu-
nism. By August 1944, Vansittart had already voiced in public his anti-Soviet
views: 'His suspicion of Russian ambitions was traditional and deep-rooted;
his acceptance of the Soviet Union as a wartime ally was an act of expediency,
an extreme indication of his anti-Germanism.' Following the defeat of Nazi
Germany, Vansittart did not retire gracefully but instead embarked on his
own semi-official anti-communist crusade. An early Cold War advocate who
believed that Russia was 'possessed with the lust of world domination', he
used the House of Lords to rail against the Soviet Union and what was
happening in eastern Europe. 'Time and time again he inveighed against the
violation of basic human rights behind the Iron Curtain, and exposed for
'^^
public scrutiny the fate of political prisoners.
In the immediate post-hostilities phase, Vansittart acted as a 'babysitter'
to the various exile movements, primarily the Czechs and the Yugoslavs
but also the Russians, supporting and encouraging them in their political
aspirations. His own pre-war anti-German intelligence network, which
remained largely intact, helped him to pursue a private propaganda anti-
Soviet liberation policy. He also retained links with Kitty Atholl and with
leading MIS and MI6 figures. His conduit and informant, Anatole Baykolov,
ingratiated himself with various right-wing newspapers and magazines,
supplying them with information about the alleged ill-treatment of Russian
PoWs in Britain; information that most likely came via his friend, Dr Georgi
Knupffer, the Russian Mladorossy emigre, who had been promoting Tsarist
propaganda in the camps.
The Young Russians were reconstituted after the war in Munich as the
Russian Revolutionary Force (RRF), an emigre resistance movement appar-
ently running psychological warfare operations, mostly from a radio station
and with extensive leafletting, in the Balkans and the southern states of
418 PART FOUR: THE BALKANS AND RUSSIA

the Soviet Union. Knupffer was its political officer with responsibility for
fund-raising, though from where he drew his financial support is not known;
other emigres assumed that the source was the intelligence agencies.
Suspicions were aroused by Knupffer's habit of castigating the efforts of all

the other emigre groups. He was seen as a highly disruptive figure within
the Russian emigre community.
A number of right-wing commentators have suggested that Baykolov was
a So\'iet 'agent of influence' but, although he may have been, no real evidence
has been proffered. In fact, Baykolov continued to enjoy the support of MIS,
whose Soviet expert, Guy Liddell, assured Vansittart that he was 'very repu-
table'. Vansittart also built up his links with the emigres through association
with the British and the Scottish Leagues for European Freedom.^^
Behind the scenes, Vansittart was helped by Liddell, who had responsibili-
ties through Operation POST REPORT for MIS's security files on the
emigres, and by Kim Philby and Section IX, which was recruiting among the
exiles. A
key figure was Karl Marcus, who, working on behalf of Walter
Schellenberg, had been sent to France in November 1944 in order to establish
contact with Vansittart as part of an aborted peace negotiation. Marcus had
worked in Belorussia, controlling networks of Soviet collaborators, and
through working with Schellenberg knew the identities of key agents in
eastern Europe. After the war, he was appointed mayor in a small town in the
British Zone of Germany, able to provide new identity cards and assistance to
old SS comrades. Word soon spread that the British were recruiting anti-

communist experts.
As part of the post-hostilities assessments by MIS and MI6 counter-
intelligence of the German and Soviet intelligence services, another former
member of the Vansittart private intelligence network, Klop Ustinov, made
frequent trips to Germany in the uniform of a British colonel. Speaking perfect
German, he was 'obviously the ideal person to be entrusted with the interro-
gation of suspect Nazis' and was deeply involved in the denazification
process. Late in 1946 Klop was transferred to Geneva and Berne, where the
head of station was Nicholas Elliott, whose family he had known since
the beginning of the war. Elliott also knew Vansittart through his father, the
headmaster of Eton, and 'consulted him on numerous occasions'. The Elliotts
were 'devoted to Klop' and the pair spent a good deal of time attempting
to piece together a picture of the postwar Soviet intelligence networks in
Europe.
Towards the end of the war, British counter-intelligence teams had
discovered, in Brussels, a cache of German intelligence dossiers dealing with
a Soviet GRU espionage network, the Rote Kapelle (Red Chapel), which
revealed numerous links to an important Swiss branch. In March 1947, a
former British member of the Swiss end of the ring, Allan Foote, gave himself
up to the authorities in Berlin and was able to present his MIS debriefer.
 THE NTS AND 'YOUNG RUSSIANS' 419

Courtney Young, with a full picture of its activities, adding greatly to the
limited knowledge gathered from investigations of Soviet radio signals
carried out by the Swiss Bundespolizei. Analysis of these dossiers enabled
Elliottand Klop to draw up a detailed picture of GRU activities in Switzer-
land, which provided MI6 with a blueprint for communist activities during
the Cold War. Contrary to the recollection of one of the ring's leading figures
that the controllers of the Comintern had 'decided that Soviet Intelligence
would no longer use Communist militants' and that there would be 'a total
separation between the secret service and the Party', the Elliott /Ustinov
assessment concluded that the majority of the GRU's sources 'were lifelong
Communist activists'. As Nigel West has pointed out, the pair were given 'a

unique opportunity to study the methodology of a Soviet network, offering

'^^
several tangible clues to post-war espionage'.
As part of their study of the German MIS and MI6
intelligence services,
counter-intelligence staff put together a report on the 'Max-Klatt' spy
network which had supplied the Abwehr with intelligence on the Soviet
military and which had aroused the suspicions of the professionals for its
apparent successes. It was viewed as an 'extensive and infallible intelligence
service which delivered information with equal speed from Leningrad, Kuibi-
schev, Nororossik on the Western desert suspiciously free from the admin-
. . .

istrative hitches to which most spy systems are liable'.'*^

On 3 May 1945, Klatt was released from a Gestapo prison and

subsequently picked up in Austria by the United States Counter-intelligence
Corps (CIC) which, in turn, handed him over to the Office of Strategic Services
(OSS). Klatt and his colleagues hoped to reconstruct an agent network in
the Soviet Union which could be sold to western intelligence agencies. By
November, Allen Dulles's successor to the OSS, the Strategic Services Unit
(SSU), had concluded an agreement with Klatt, and he was put to work in
Salzburg against the communists. What they obtained for their money,
however, appears to have been little more than an expensive paper-mill,
which produced no intelligence of value. The Soviets also tried to reactivate
Max in Paris after the war, but the emigres were no longer interested and
the operation quickly collapsed.
A leading member of the Max-Klatt network was the 'notorious
professional spy' General Turkul, about whom some British intelligence and
security officers were sceptical. In reviewing his activities, MI5's Peter Wright
believed that Turkul had been a Soviet agent all along. Towards theend of
the war Turkul had assumed control of a Vlasov unit of Chetniks and pro-
fascists for use against Tito's partisans. He also established contacts with the
Allies,and by the end of hostilities had managed to find refuge in Austria,
where he set up a 'Russian National Central Committee'. Employed by the
SSU on the 'Crown Project', Turkul looked out for communist agents among
the 'defectors' and those refugees sent down the ratlines. During 1946, a
420 PART FOUR: THE BALKANS AND RUSSIA

joint British- American Special Counter-intelligence Unit (SCI /A) used him
to re-recruit a former anti-communist colleague and fellow-pre-war MI6
agent living in Germany, Claudius Voss.
MI6 and the SSU employed both Voss and Klatt's deputy, Ira Longin, in
building 'intelligence nets', though the SCI /A had strong suspicions that
Voss was a long-standing communist agent. Turkul's strident anti-Semitic
and anti-communist propaganda activities also attracted the attention of the
CIC, which began to investigate his past. It did not, however, have any
e\'idence to indicate that Turkul was anything other than 'an old-time anti-
Bolshevik constantly dreaming of leading again the fight against the Soviets
with any available means'. The CIC thought him to be a 'vain, not-too-clever
opportunist seeking always to be at the head of an organisation of power
and influence'. During the spring, the CIC foiled a Soviet attempt to kidnap
Klatt and, in expectation of a similar move against him, in July Turkul left

Salzburg for Germany, where he tried to embark for South America. This
was seen later as evidence, when he did not go east, that he was not a Soviet
agent and that he had 'allowed himself to be "used" by known or suspected
Soviet agents due to his own stupidity, blind vanity, or his own non-
evaluation of personalities around him'. In September 1946, he was arrested
by the CIC along with Klatt and Longin, who were all transported for interro-
gation to the 7707th European Command Intelligence Centre (Camp King)
at Oberursel in the US Zone in Germany.^^
Turkul was interrogated by a wartime MI 6 officer. Professor Gilbert Ryle,
and a CIC officer, Johnson. They produced a report which concluded that
there was 'no doubt' that the Max-Klatt network had acted as 'a trojan horse'
for Soviet intelligence. In parallel, Klatt was also interrogated by Arnold
Silver, later a senior CIA officer, who realised that Turkul's 'entire so-called
network for the Abwehr was a Soviet-controlled military deception operation
from beginning to end'. He further suggested that Turkul was 'a useless oaf
who had lent his name to the Klatt network as the man who allegedly
recruited sources in the USSR'. According to Silver, Turklil 'never recruited
even one source, although Klatt managed to convince the Abwehr that Turkul
was one of his principal agents'.
By early 1947, MI6 had concluded its investigation of Turkul and Longin,
but it had a continuing interest in determining whether the Max-Klatt
network had, indeed, been used for deception purposes. The officer given
the task was Klop Ustinov, who was sent to Camp King to question Klatt.
After intensive interrogation by Silver and Ustinov, Klatt was removed to a
cell where he attempted to hang himself. Cut down, Klatt subsequently

revealed that he had suspected as early as the end of 1941 that his network
was being used by the Soviets. He later discovered that one of his key agents
had indeed been a Soviet agent. Klatt was also able to confirm that Turkul
and Longin 'had been mere figureheads to help add an air of authenticity to
 THE NTS AND 'YOUNG RUSSIANS' 421

the network'. As Russian emigres, 'they could plausibly have acquaintances

in the USSR who could be developed into sources'. Neither, though, 'knew
that the entire operationwas Soviet-controlled'.^^
By mid-year Klatt, Longin and Turkul, the latter's credentials again
checked by MIS, had been released into the US Zone in Germany where they
were able to resume their anti-communist crusade. A member of the League
of Saint Andrew's Flag and the Russian Monarchist Organisation, Turkul
resumed leadership of the 'new' NTS, which was eventually taken up by the
Gehlen Organisation under the sponsorship of the Americans. Klop Ustinov
remained in Switzerland until early 1948, and then returned to a 'hush-hush'
^'^
job in intelligence in London.
From 1948 onwards Prince Turkul tried to merge the different Russian
anti-communist /Soviet groups into a workable coalition. The result was the
'Combat Union for the Liberation of the Peoples of Russia' with its own
military centre called SWOD. His tactics, however, were seen by other emigre
leaders and intelligence officials as divisive and disruptive. Emigre leaders
such as Turkul and others in the NTS were described at the time by western
intelligence officials as 'hotheads' and 'dreamers' but, since they were the
only group thought to have penetrated Russia, they were supported despite
the misgivings.^°
The principal NTS Council members were the president and spiritual
leader, Dr Poremsky; Georgi Okolovich, controller of secret operations, who
worked for the Gehlen Org.; Roman Redlich, Okolovich's deputy; Evgeny
Romanov, liaison officer with MI6 and the CIA; Michail Olskej, in charge of
the internal security service and operations against other emigre groups such
as the Ukrainian OUN-B; and an MI6 agent. Lev Rar, Director of the Foreign
Organisations Branch (UZU). Working for the Nazis, Rar had been given a
post in the secretariat of the Vlasov Committee. After the surrender of
Germany, he was held in the Fussen PoW camp and later moved to Britain,
where he worked for the BBC. He was regarded as an expert in running
various NTS 'fronts'.
Despite NTS propaganda which suggested that the organisation was
engaged in a successful penetration of the Soviet Union, the reality was very
different. In 1949, in what was an indirect criticism of the NTS methods,
the director of psychological warfare for the US Army, Lieutenant-General
Wedemeyer, admitted that 'the life of an agent in Russia today would not
be worth very much. We do have a few. That is something that has to be
generated very slowly, an intelligence organisation within Russia. We do not
get from Russia very good intelligence reports, but they are improving.' In
acknowledgement that any networks that existed were being mopped up by
the secret police, in January the NTS's governing Council adopted a resol-
ution calling for the complete reorganisation of the movement. A new strat-
egy, the so-called 'Molecular Theory', using a decentralised cell structure of
422 PART FOUR: THE BALKANS AND RUSSIA

agents inside the Soviet Union, was to be implemented with cells building
on other cells. While that may have been a rational response to failure, the
claim that thiswas necessary for the preparation of a revolution with direct
action inside the SovietUnion flew in the face of the facts. Separate MI6-
and CI A -sponsored NTS operations in the Soviet Union were spectacularly
unsuccessful.^"
In May SS leader Werner Ohletz, previously in charge of
1949, former
the section thathad taken over military intelligence from Admiral Canaris,
and with extensive experience of the Russian emigre organisations, warned
the US War Department that it was 'dangerous to co-operate with the NTS'.
He reported that German counter-intelligence had found that all the emigre
organisations 'were infiltrated by the NKVD with such effectiveness that it
was impossible to discover the connecting lines from top ranking people to
the common follower'. Gehlen's officers in the Organisation could never be
sure whether they were dealing with 'figments of their imagination of some
harum-scarum intelligence peddler, or with doctored material fed to them
by the Russians'. On the back of the Ohletz report, one source warned Gehlen
Americans is fake', while
that 'ninety per cent of all intelligence reaching the
one of his investigators concluded that 'people working directly for the Soviet
Union are recklessly given cover and support' in the NTS. A US Staff Intelli-
gence Report chose the NTS as an example of the danger of employing
emigre organisations as intelligence collection agencies. It concluded that the
NTS was thoroughly penetrated by Russian agents, open to Soviet deception
measures, unreliable and irresponsible. They did not want their own agencies
to fall into the trap of the Germans, who had failed to realise that the NTS
was working for the Soviets.^^
It was against this background of entirely negative reports that MI6's Kim
Philby, inWashington as liaison officer with the OPC/CIA, attempted to
reach some kind of agreement on co-operation with the Americans on the
emigres and, in particular, the NTS. Under-Secretary of State Robert Lovett
had recently ordered a 'careful study' of the Vlasov movement. During the
subsequent meetings, which Philby viewed with a degree of amusement,
there were 'many skirmishes', particularly over the reasons for a series of
unsuccessful drops of NTS agents into the Soviet Union. Although MI6 put
up a stubborn rearguard action in favour of the NTS with which they had
long been associated, 'the story was one of general American encroachment
. . . The dollar was just too strong. And for financial reasons MI6 was
compelled to transfer by a formal agreement responsibility for NTS oper-
ations to the CIA."'
MI6 and the CIA agreed to establish a 'Joint Centre' at Frankfurt to exploit
the assets of the NTS, who claimed that an active network was still operating
inside the Soviet Union. They agreed to co-operate on the infiltration oper-

ations known as SHRAPNEL, with the Americans taking on the responsibility

 THE NTS AND YOUNG RUSSIANS' 423

for funding. Philby was not displeased with the outcome, as one of his tasks
for his Soviet intelligence masters was to aggressively stir up factional
disputes between the Russians and other non-Russian emigre groups, while
at the same time betraying every agent to his NKVD handlers. Then a junior
officer, George Blake later recalled that though the CIA's 'methods of
operating were on the whole not to the liking of most SIS officers who, both
by tradition and necessity, practised a more subtle approach and favoured
more discreet ways of getting-hold of intelligence, the CIA, by sheer force
of numbers and money, was able to produce far more information than SIS,
with all its experience and know-how, could ever hope to lay hands on'.^^
By 1950, the espionage assignments were chosen by the CIA with logistical
support from the Gehlen Org. The British role appears to have been purely
one of training while partaking in psychological warfare and counter-
intelligence operations in exchange for the intelligence 'take' - which was
mediocre at the best of times. The CIA used the Institute for the Study of
the USSR as an annex to the NTS, where recruits could be housed. At least
ten NTS members at any one time were trained in Kaufbeuren and at an
advanced camp at Bad Wiesee while others were trained in the British Zone.
NTS operatives spent up to nine months on the British course at MI6's
Holland Park facility, where they were taught to operate radio transmitters,
use invisible ink and secret codes, and collect military intelligence. At Fort
Monckton and at secret camps in the countryside, where there were mock-ups
of Soviet border guard posts, operatives practised river crossings. MI6 'baby-
sitters' 'Foster' and 'Radford' looked after the NTS recruits, who had been
brought in from throughout Europe.^^
Morale within the training groups was not always good, especially when
they received reports that other NTS teams had been captured by the Soviets.
A Soviet propaganda booklet. Caught in the Act (1963), lists twenty-three
agents captured trying to penetrate the Soviet Union between 1951 and 1960.
One of these, N. I. Yakuta, had been recruited into a labour unit in Casablanca
and, hence, into the NTS by Georgi Okolovich. Trained by the CIA for a
mission into Russia, he was given a suicide pill by his trainers, who told him
that if captured he was to deny his connections with the Americans and 'say
that I was connected with the French Intelligence Service'. On occasions,
the Americans were blamed for poor planning, while Okolovich was held
responsible for operational 'bungling'. Eventually, Radford told his charges
changed situation it had been decided to wind up the training
that 'in the
programme and postpone the landings'. The problem, though not one
immediately apparent to the intelligence agencies, was that the NTS was
riddled with Soviet agents. Added to this, the NTS appeared to have no
actual agents in the field.
On 11 May 1951, Conservative MP John Baker- White, director of the
Economic League and an acknowledged expert in psychological warfare, who
424 PART FOUR: THE BALKANS AND RUSSIA

had worked with MI6, told the House of Commons that 'there are broadcasts
by various anti-Communist political groups. For example, from Madrid there
are broadcasts directed to Russia by the Russian Revolutionary Force (RRF)
. There is a steady infiltration under the Iron Curtain of anti-Soviet leaflets
. .

emanating from various emigre groups / A year later, the RRF was in the
. .

news for a 'cloak-and-dagger victory in Prague', where it had ingeniously

inserted black propaganda leaflets into the communist newspaper Rude Pravo
which brought down the wrath of the secret police upon the editor. RRF
leader Nicholas Sheiken denied that the movement was used for intelligence-
gathering or that it received support from western intelligence agencies,
primarily because the RRF, which favoured a 'Greater Russia', believed that
the CIA was pursuing a 'separatist' agenda among the emigre groups. It is
difficult to see how these psychological warfare operations were funded other

than through external agencies, particularly since Georgi BCnupffer was the
man responsible for fund-raising.^^
What was interesting about the RRF was
propaganda it
the consistent
put out attacking the NTS, which it claimed was thoroughly infiltrated by
the KGB. Within certain circles of the emigre press and aligned neo-fascist,
anti-communist networks there was a fierce attack on the NTS for being little
more than a Soviet 'front'. The CIA was attacked for not taking heed of its
warnings and for supporting an organisation that was regarded as social
democrat and even pro-Soviet. In addition, the western Allies were needlessly
sending Russian agents to their deaths by parachuting them into the Soviet
Union and the waiting arms of Stalin's secret police.^^
If the CIA refused to listen, MI6 officers handling the Russians did not.
They knew that the NTS was producing intelligence of little worth and by
the mid-fifties decided to end the liaison with what was turning out to be a
very expensive failure.
CHAPTER 21

THE BRITISH AND

SCOTTISH LEAGUES
FOR EUROPEAN
FREEDOM
The fading fingerprints of the British League for European Freedom (BLEF)
and its sister organisation, the Scottish League for European Freedom (SLEF),
are to be found all over the MI6-sponsored exile operations. Without their
overt and behind-the-scenes political support for the exiles, it is unlikely that
many of the secret operations would have been initiated, particularly since
their role appears to have involved bringing to Britain and, once here,
supporting and protecting a pool of solid anti-communists from which MI6
was able to recruit operatives. Their activities centred on three strong, inde-
pendent-minded individuals - two Scots, the Duchess of Atholl and John
Finlay Stewart, and an Englishwoman, Mrs Elma Dangerfield.
By 1930, Kitty Atholl was interviewing anti-communist refugees from the
Soviet Union who told of the oppression of the people, particularly with
regard to the northern timber camps where many well-to-do peasants (kulaks)
had been conscripted against their will. The following year she published
The Conscription of a People, with an acknowledgement to the White Russian
emigre journalist Anatole Baykolov, who appears to have supplied much of
its content. It was an interesting and accurate examination of the role of slave

labour in the Soviet Five Year Plan, with particular emphasis on the timber
export industry, a trade the duchess tried to curtail.'

During 1931, her 'great friend' and fellow-Unionist activist, John Stewart,
who referred to the duchess as 'Lady Kitty', also wrote a pamphlet on 'Russian
Timber'. Sixty-one-year-old Stewart had been a consulting forestry engineer.
426 PART FOUR: THE BALKANS AND RUSSIA

empkn ed by the Colonial Service in India and, in the late thirties, on contracts
in the Baltic states, where he had 'many intimate friends among Ministers
and diplomats'. The fact that at least half a dozen senior MI6 officers who
were later engaged in the anti-communist exile operations had backgrounds
in the timber business in the Baltic countries is probably more than a coinci-
dence. Stewart also worked in eastern Europe and undertook extensive travel
in Sox'iet Russia, where he had friends among the intelligence personnel at
the German embassies.^
Stewart dated his expressed interest in exile politics to the signing of the
Russo-German pact on 24 August 1939, which he recognised as 'a much
greater Russian danger to the world than a German one'. According to his
daughter, it was about this time that her father became 'very interested in
the plight of the Baits'. He had come into contact with British intelligence
officers, and although she did not know precisely when, Dr Stewart thought

it was probably in the course of his work in the Baltic.^

Back in Scotland, Kitty Atholl served as Honorary Secretary on the Scottish

'Invasion Committee' dealing with measures and planning to be undertaken
in the event of an invasion - a post that brought her into contact with various
obscure branches of the intelligence services with responsibilities in this area.
While in London, the duchess 'spent much of her time giving her energies and
more money than she could spare towards assisting refugees from Europe'. In
1944, she began 'to hear of atrocities and mass deportations taking place in
Eastern Europe: of the sufferings of the peoples of Poland and the Baltic
states at the hands of the Russians'. No doubt one source for this information
was John main input came from Mrs Elma Dangerfield,
Stewart, but the
editor of the Whitehall News, which chronicled the plight of refugees and the
fate of the peoples of eastern Europe as Stalin's army swept across Poland
and towards the West. Mrs Dangerfield was the key figure in the founding
of the BLEF, though it was Kitty Atholl whose standing gave it authority."^
Married to a naval officer who was killed in the war, Mrs Dangerfield
was a journalist by profession who initially worked for an offshoot of the
MI6-controlled MI9, helping at Beaconsfield with the construction of special
gadgets such as miniaturised compasses and maps printed on silk for escap-
ing British PoWs, and then for a time in the Admiralty. She hoped to do
more for the war effort, and Duff Cooper at the Ministry of Information
asked her to continue her writing, which led to a proposal for a series of
articles on the 'free women of Europe'. It entailed interviewing a large number

of exiles during which time she became increasingly interested in the plight
of the Poles. It was during visits to the School of Slavonic Studies that she met
Frederick A. Voight, the editor of The Nineteenth Century and After magazine. A
former Guardian foreign correspondent, who had worked for MI6 in the

Claude Dansey's Z-network, Voight had travelled exten-

thirties as part of

sively throughout eastern Europe, including to Ukraine, where he had seen

 THE BRITISH AND SCOTTISH LEAGUES FOR EUROPEAN FREEDOM 427

at first hand the devastation inflicted by Stalin. Between 1943 and the war's
end, under the pseudonym 'Quentin Valey' in the Daily Mail, Voight was the
champion Dreza Mihailovic. He then
of the Serbian collaborator General
became a propagandist in the cause of the Greek government, pushing stories
of communist atrocities, violations of women and so on. Thoroughly right-
wing, anti-communist and anti-Russian, Voight had friends among all the
exile movements in London, and through his introductions Mrs Dangerfield
came to know everyone of interest.^
The most important contact was Rowmund Pilsudski - cousin of the
famous Polish leader - who had escaped from Paris to Britain, where he
joined the Polish forces as a parachutist and worked for the Polish govern-
ment-in-exile's Ministry of Information. He introduced Mrs Dangerfield to
Polish exile circles, where she met SOE officer Joseph Retinger, and Victor
Cazelet, the British liaison officer to the Poles and their Ministry of Infor-
mation. Working within the Polish ministry was a Political Warfare Executive
(PWE) Polish section officer, Diana Giffard (Lady Airey of Abingdon). She
married the head of the 'private army' Intelligence School No. 9, which was
attached to the escape organisation MI9, and later Conservative Member of
Parliament, Airey Neave. After the M
war she joined 16 for a short period and
was involved in Polish affairs, and was active in conservative Polish circles.
As part of a Polish initiative, and with the support of the Czech and
Hungarian governments-in-exile, in 1942 Mrs Dangerfield and Voight formed
the Middle Zone Association. It discussed federation plans for a postwar
cordon sanitaire running through central Europe, designed to provide protec-
tion against Germany and the Soviet Union. With members such as writer
Rebecca West and the editor of the Douglas Woodruff, it was very
Tablet,

much the forerunner of the British League, and paralleled other Polish federa-
tion initiatives such as the Promethean League and Intermarium.
One of Mrs Dangerfield's first journalistic efforts in the exile field was an
account of the Katyn Forest massacre of Polish officers by Stalin's henchmen,
which had been discovered by the Germans in April 1943. The murder of the
Polish officers was attributed to the Germans but many knew the truth. Despite
the enthusiasm for the alliance with the Soviet Union, those actually dealing
with the Soviet government were less sanguine. Unofficial - but still publicly
unstated - doubts about Soviet intentions in eastern Europe were greatly
reinforced by the uncovering of the massacre. By January 1944, ten months after
the discovery of the mass graves at Katyn, even the left-wing paper Tribune had
become openly critical of the Soviet Union's policies. With no second front and
the war not yet won, the official view, however, remained supportive of the
alliance with the Soviet Union, and criticisms, however well documented, were
anathema. When Mrs Dangerfield published her own account of the massacre,
based on Polish sources, for The Nineteenth Century and After, it caused a furore
and made her, like Voight, persona non grata at the Foreign Office.
428 PART FOUR: THE BALKANS AND RUSSIA

An
offshoot of the Middle Zone Association was the Deportees Comniit-
tee,which Mrs Dangerfield created with Mary Melville, daughter of a former
Labour Solicitor General, to publicise the deportation of thousands of people
to Russia from territories occupied by the Red Army. It was supported again

by Rebecca West, and included Labour MP Ellen Wilkinson, Eleanor

Rathbone, who was one of the first women MPs and during the thirties a
stern critic of the appeasers in the British Establishment, and the socialist
writer George Orwell. It was also promoted by politicians Victor Raikes
and Ivor Bulmer-Thomas. Raikes was a Conservative MP who supported
numerous hard-right causes. A right-wing Labour MP, Bulmer-Thomas was
who also worked for the Political Warfare Executive
a fluent Italian speaker
(PWE), writing a book on psychological warfare in 1942. In the PWE Bulmer-
Thomas had responsibilities for feeding black propaganda into Mussolini's
final fortress.^

With Polish money, Mrs Dangerfield bought the Whitehall News, which
had an all-important newsprint allocation, for the Middle Zone Association.
A weekly, the News reported on the activities of the exiles and the Resistance
in Poland. In October 1944, the Poles asked Mrs Dangerfield to broadcast on
the BBC External Service on the Warsaw Uprising. Feeling that she was not
well known enough, Pilsudski introduced her to Kitty AthoU, who, with
Foreign Office support, agreed to broadcast a message of encouragement to the
Polish Resistance fighters in Warsaw shortly before their destruction by the
Germans. Moving to London, the duchess and Mrs Dangerfield, noticing the
establishment by the Lord Provost of Glasgow, Sir Patrick Dollan, earlier in
the war of a committee to support Polish aspirations, decided to create a similar
but national platform. A once fiery leader of the radical Independent Labour
Party (ILP) in Glasgow, Dollan had been impressed by the Polish exiles who
had moved to Scotland at the beginning of the war and, as with many other
ILPers, appears to have moved to the right as a dedicated anti-communist."
Mrs Dangerfield's BLEF was dedicated to giving assistance to 'all coun-
tries in which freedom was threatened', particularly so following the partition

agreement signed in Tehran and Yalta. Writer Mary Stock wrote in tribute
of the duchess that 'she was thus prepared to welcome the victims of Russian
tyranny, of German racialism and of fascist nationalism to the glowing hearth
of her indignation', earning for herself, according to the affiliations of her
critics, the alternative titles of 'Red Duchess' and 'Fascist Beast'. In November
1944, the BLEF mounted meeting with the support of four right-wing
its first

Tory MPs - Maurice Petherwick, the Hon. John Stourton, Major Guy Lloyd
and, again, Victor Raikes.^
Mrs Dangerfield has said that she was completely unaware that in the
same year the Scottish League for European Freedom (SLEF) was set up by
its chair, John Stewart, Kitty Atholl's close friend. Its first president was the

Earl of Mansfield (and later Lord Field Marshal Ironside), who appears to
 THE BRITISH AND SCOTTISH LEAGUES FOR EUROPEAN FREEDOM 429

have become friendly with Stewart through their mutual interest in forestry.
Mansfield was a 'diehard' Tory, active in the British Empire Union and
co-founder with Maurice Petherwick of the Imperial Policy Group (IPG),
both of which had specialised before the war in cultivating East European
anti-communists who happened to collaborate with the Nazis. As secretary
of the pro-appeasement and anti-Bolshevik IPG, Kenneth de Courcy had
campaigned to keep Britain out of any European war. The IPG collated good
intelligence on Europe which was accepted by the Foreign Office and by de
Courcy's friend and fellow White's habitue, Stewart Menzies. Mansfield was
also associated with the Tory pro-appeasement paper Truth, which at the
outbreak of war was openly anti-Semitic and anti-communist, maintaining
close links with a right-wing faction inside the Security Service. Out of Truth
developed another influential right-wing group, the Society for Individual
Freedom, in which Mansfield was a leading member.^
The Scottish League advisory council contained the usual range of the
worthy and the old, along with prominent members of the Borders landed
gentry and aristocracy; essentially a section of the Scottish establishment with
links to the Royal Family. These included a former editor of the Scotsman,
SirGeorge Waters; a Governor of South Australia, Sir Malcolm Harvey; Sir
David Moncrieff of that Ilk; and a chair of the Scottish National Party,
Professor Andrew Gibb. Probably the most important member was Guy
Lloyd, Unionist MP from 1940 to 1959, who worked with MI6 during the
war. An administrator for paint manufacturers J. and P. Coats, which supplied
a number of senior people for SOE, in 1940 Lloyd served with the Royal
Warwickshire Regiment in France. In the same year he won a by-election
and was active in Parliament on the backbenches in a self-appointed role as
watchdog over the socialist members of the wartime coalition. Lloyd voted
against the Yalta agreement and became a thorn in the side of the government
over the forcible repatriation of Russians to the Soviet Union.
One reason for the existence of two Leagues was that, although she was
generally regarded as being on the right of the Conservative Party, Kitty
Atholl'scampaigning against the government's non-intervention policy in
Spain had made her a number of enemies among Scottish Unionist MPs.
Two of these MPs were to become prominent in the SLEF and were particular
opponents of the duchess, partially explaining the split. These two were
Vice-President Capt. John McEwen, a former diplomat and Under-Secretary
of State for Scotland, and Lt-Col. Sir Thomas Moore, Unionist MP for Ayr
Burghs from 1925 to 1950, who had fought with the British Army in Russia
during the intervention and in Ireland against the IRA. Moore's extreme
politicshad caused him problems within his own party. He explained that
pre-war revulsion against communism and co-operation with Germany led
him to associate with the Anglo-German Fellowship and the anti-Semitic and
pro-fascist Link organisation."
430 PART FOUR: THE BALKANS AND RUSSIA

It was also the case, however, that anti-communist fervour was easily
capable of overcoming any personal emnity. Tom Burns, leading right-wing
Catholic publisher of the Tablet, chair of publishers Burns & Coates, and
director of Hollis and Carter, was one of the BLEF's supporters. Bums had
played a part in the 'Friends of Nationalist Spain', whose formation had
partly been the responsibility of Kenneth de Courcy. He was a friend of
right-wing publisher and British intelligence officer Douglas Jerrod, who,
with Secret Service help, had organised the plane that flew Franco out of
Tenerife to Tangier and Seville in July 1936. Pro-Franco, like most of his
Catholic colleagues, such as the 'highly conspiratorial' Douglas Woodruff
and SOE and MI6 officers Peter Kemp and Archie Lyall, during the war
Bums worked for MI6. He reported directly to Kim Philby as a press attache
for the Ministry of Information in Spain, where he organised Allied
propaganda.
The BLEF campaigned to draw attention to the fate of eastern Europe at
the hands of the Red Army. Genuinely concerned about the tragedy of Poland,
the organisation was soon transformed into an anti-communist grouping
which had the support of a number of Labour movement figures. They
included Ivor Bulmer-Thomas, whose membership is partly explained by his
strong advocacy of the Catholic wing of the Anglican Church. With the
election of a Labour government, he soon grew disillusioned with socialism
and opposed the policy of nationalisation. He dedicated his second book. The
Socialist Tragedy, to 'all Social Democrats in the hope that when confronted

with the choice between Socialism and democracy they will choose democ-
racy'. He defected to the Tories in 1950. The second Labour MP was George
Dallas, a former TUC General Council member who had chaired the party's
International Committee during the war and had been a close colleague of
the first minister responsible for SOE, Hugh Dalton. It was concern at Soviet
manoeuvres in eastern Europe which led Dallas into the BLEF.^^
The most important link to the Labour government, however, was Richard
Stokes, secret intriguer and 'fixer' for his friend. Cabinet minister Herbert
Morrison. Labour MP for Ipswich (1937-55), Stokes was a socialist of the
most idiosyncratic kind. A militant anti-communist in the thirties, he had
called, in 1940, for a negotiated peace with Germany and campaigned for
the release of Sir Oswald Mosley and other pro-fascist detainees, including
the anti-Semitic Capt. Ramsay. Stokes's anti-Zionist views were a strong
influence on Clement Attlee and Ernest Bevin, who both displayed signs of
anti-Semitism. Curiously, he also had friends among the many anti-socialist
groups such as the Institute of Directors, the Economic League and Aims for
Industry. Through the BLEF Stokes intervened on behalf of known collabor-
ators and alleged war criminals, a number of whom were subsequently
recruited by MI6. He was in direct contact with the MI6-sponsored exile
umbrella groups such as the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations (ABN), Intermar-
 THE BRITISH AND SCOTTISH LEAGUES FOR EUROPEAN FREEDOM 431

ium and the Promethean League. In effect. Stokes acted as a front man for
the policy that MI6 was secretly pursuing. It is almost certain that Stokes
was an MI6 asset. Immediately following the end of hostilities. Stokes, Mrs
Dangerfield and Kitty Atholl went to Paris where, with the support of Leon
Blum and up an organisation similar to the BLEF,
the socialists, they set
known as the League of the Rights of Man. Duff Cooper was the British
ambassador, and they were received sympathetically by Winston Churchill,
who was staying at the embassy.
There was a degree of support for Stokes on the Left but it did not last
long. One of the important threads in postwar Labour Party thinking was
the so-called Third Force' position - neither capitalist nor communist; neither
Moscow nor Washington - but it was to prove very difficult to sustain during
the developing Cold War. The problem was that those on the Left found it
very difficult to be in the same boat as right-wing politicians such as Stokes;
particularly so when it became clear that he was working in some very murky
areas. George Orwell, who had been involved in an earlier enterprise with
Mrs Dangerfield, expressed this dilemma very clearly when, in November
1945, he declined to speak for the BLEF, one of the first pressure groups to
warn of what the Soviet Union was actually doing in eastern Europe: T
cannot associate myself with an essentially Conservative body which claims
to defend democracy in Europe but has nothing to say about British imperial-
ism ... I belong to the left and must work inside it, much as I hate Russian
'^^
totalitarianism and its poisonous influence in this country.
The BLEF was devoted to 'bringing home to people the unhappy plight
of the many Displaced Persons (DPs) in Germany', and the Duchess of Atholl
lobbied the new Labour government to stop the forced repatriation of thou-
sands of eastern Europeans, sending a resolution to this effect to the first

meeting of the United Nations. Expressing similar concerns, on 7 June 1945

Stokes had asked in the Commons whether there were any agreements
concluded at Yaltaand Tehran which had not been disclosed to the public.
Churchill misled Stokes by replying that 'there were no secret agreements'.
During July and August 1945, the newspapers reported scenes of violence
surrounding the forced repatriation of Cossacks and Ukrainians at the Flens-
burg DP camp, with shootings, killings and kidnapping by NKVD officers.
The original source for these reports was Colonel Laurence Shadwell, the
officer commanding the 506th Military Government Relief Detachment of the
British Army of the Rhine, at Kiel, with responsibilities for the DP camps. A
committed Christian who was appalled at government policy, Shadwell had
privately communicated information to the Duchess of Atholl. In addition to
military reluctance, political pressures - largely forced by the League - were
building up to end the policy. Further, from 1945 onwards Stokes made
several interventions in Parliament and privately with Foreign Office officials
not only to end the threat of repatriation but also to secure the release of a
432 PART FOUR: THE BALKANS AND RUSSIA

number of Waffen-SS and Yugoslav collaborators placed in the DP camps.

This was backed by a sustained campaign to rouse public opinion through
the press, principally by the duchess in The Times and the Tablet}^
The BLEF was initially funded on a small scale by the Polish government-
in-exile through Pilsudski, but the Poles soon ran out of money. Available
ex'idence of intelligence funding is slim, though there was certainly American

interest. Mrs Dangerfield acknowledges that some of the people she was
involved with had 'different objectives and mysterious backgrounds' and
that they probably had intelligence ties. There is evidence that the League
was being manipulated or used by British Intelligence, but this was not
obvious to Mrs Dangerfield, even if she was suspicious of a number of indi-
viduals with whom she was in contact. The Edinburgh-based SLEF, however,
displayed all the hallmarks of an MI6 'front'. It was officially launched in
October 1945 under the auspices of the Central European Federal Club at
its London address in Thurloe Street. The Federal Clubs had also been the
sponsoring agency of the MI6-backed exile movement Intermarium. The latter
certainlyhad some Polish input, but if the SLEF received any similar help
itwas discreet. As Robert Bruce Lockhart noticed, a deep dislike of the
Poles had developed in Edinburgh, principally because of their perceived
'arrogance'.
John Stewart's daughter acknowledges that her father 'was involved in
It was entirely secret. All sorts of people
getting "refugees" out of the Baltic.
were involved including British Intelligence ... it was all very "hush hush".'
'Well-thought of by the exiles', according to his daughter, Stewart began his
work the day war ended. He was 'instrumental in bringing over a number
of Poles, then Baits, Croats and finally Ukrainians'. He worked closely with
a 'Ukrainian go-between who used to turn up with a different name each
time' - but how they got the refugees over remains 'a dark secret'. There
appeared to be no hint of American Intelligence involvement, but Stewart's
daughter was well aware that her father's limited financial resources were
insufficient tokeep the League going.
At the begining of 1946, the SLEF moved to an address in Grosvenor
Place, and on 24/25 June, with the assistance of Intermarium, held a major
Congress of Delegates of the Oppressed European Nations in Edinburgh's
Rainy Hall, titled 'Oppressed Europe Speaks'. The meeting, which attracted
delegates from across eastern Europe, was chaired by Dr Karel Locher, a
former official in the Czech Foreign Office and Honorary Secretary of the
Federal Clubs. Its president in London was the former Polish Foreign Secre-
tary,August Zaleski. A telegram supporting the initiative was received from
Rome from Intermarium's president, Miha Krek.^^
In the meantime, Kitty Atholl had retained her links to Lord Vansittart,
who used the House of Lords to rail against the Soviet Union and what
was happening in eastern Europe. Vansittart's anti-communist crusade was
 THE BRITISH AND SCOTTISH LEAGUES FOR EUROPEAN FREEDOM 433

helped by Anatole Baykolov, who supplied material on the ill-treatment of

Russian PoWs in Britain, information that originated with the Russian emigre
and head of the Mladorossy in Britain, Georgi Knupffer. Mrs Dangerfield
confirms that Knupffer was also a source of information to the BLEF. This
between
association with pro-Russian groups took place despite the antipathy
Baykolov's support for the National Labour Council (NTS) and Knupffer's
championing of the Mladorossy. The pro-Russian stance was, however,
completely unacceptable to Ukrainian supporters of the SLEF, who were
violently opposed to the advocacy of a 'Greater Russia'; another reason why
the two Leagues rarely co-operated.
The Foreign Office was also supplying Baykolov - who continued to enjoy
the support of MIS and its Soviet expert, Guy Liddell - with information on
the situation of refugees and PoWs in other countries. According to Cossack
exiles who managed to stay in the West - partially through the efforts and
support of the BLEF - the Duchess of Atholl and Mrs Dangerfield obtained
much of their information from Baykolov, though a great deal appears to
have come from the Polish government-in-exile's Ministry of Information.
Mrs Dangerfield was provided with voluminous evidence for her 1946 book
Beyond the Urals, which was one of the very first insider accounts of the Soviet
gulags.'^
It was Richard Stokes who, in 1947, pushed the Labour government into
letting into the country eastern Europe DPs as cheap labour. BLEF members
expressed 'joy' on hearing news of the decision. MI6 used the opportunity
to import under cover of the European Voluntary Workers (EVW) scheme,
The
often with the intervention of Stokes, good, reliable anti-Soviet 'assets'.
League helped the Society of Latvians, which acted as a domestic pressure
group advocating the immigration of Latvian DPs to Britain, and was heavily
involved in casework on behalf of the exiles. A number happened to be
collaborators, quislings and even war criminals, whom the Home Office
wanted either to repatriate or eject. Working closely with the Latvian
ambassador in exile, Charles Zarine, Stokes and the BLEF lobbied hard both
inside and outside Parliament to prevent the deportation of Baits who had
entered Britain illegally.^^

During May, Stokes pursued the matter of Ukrainian repatriations and

Operation EASTWIND in the House of Commons. Considerable indignation
had been aroused by sensational newspaper reports that made much play of
the numerous suicides that had taken place when the DPs were placed on
the trains for transport to the Soviet Union. In London, through the efforts
of the Duchess of Atholl and Mrs Dangerfield, the BLEF bombarded public
figures with protests, largely based on evidence supplied by Baykolov.
According to Denis Hills, who was overseeing the vetting of the exiles in the
major Italian camps, a great deal of what appeared in the press accounts
originated from 'a Uniat priest who had access to the camp', and was thus
434 PART FOUPv: THE BALKANS AND RUSSIA

largely the Ukrainians' own propaganda. On 21 May, Stokes rose in the

Commons to enquire into the truth of such reports, thus completing the
information 'loop'."'

Stokes was closely connected with a number of emigre groups and actively
and aggressively intervened on behalf of Slovene, Ustashi and Chetnik collab-
orators, quislings and war criminals held by the Allies. The Slovene former
deputy head of the Yugoslav government-in-exile and president of Intermar-
ium, Miha Krek, was a particular influence on Stokes. Regarded as 'a vigor-
ous, active and unyielding adversary of the communists'. Stokes regularly
took up cases with Cabinet ministers and Foreign Office officials. In June,
Krek began agitating against the policy of repatriation, a cause promoted by
Guy Lloyd, who asked for an investigation into the whole matter. During
August, Krek, who was applying considerable pressure on the Foreign Office,
persuaded Stokes to take up the case of the quisling Slovene, Bishop
Rozman.^"^
When Stokes tried to clarify, in the House of Commons, the nature of
the repatriation operations, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Foreign
Affairs, Christopher Mayhew, defended the Yalta agreement and repudiated
the reports of violence and attempted suicides. However, on 2 September
Mayhew wrote privately to Stokes: 'I think the whole incident and the policy
behind it is absolutely revolting.' Stokes continued to pursue the matter and,
on 4 December, led the attack in an adjournment debate concerning the fate
of anti-Tito Yugoslavs. Stokes, who had campaigned against the Nuremberg
war trials, dismissed the business of finding and trying war criminals.
The wider campaign spearheaded by Stokes, involving leading churchmen
and 'refugee defence' committees such as the BLEF and SLEF, had an influ-
ence on public opinion when, in July 1948, Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin
put a stop to war crime investigations and refused Soviet requests for the
return of quislings. On 26 July, Mayhew effectively closed the chapter on the
extradition of war criminals who had illegally entered Britain with a statement
in the House.^^
During August, Frances Blackett, daughter of the government scientist.

Professor Patrick Blackett, arrived unnanounced at the League's headquarters

at 61 Gloucester Place and volunteered to work for free as the BLEF Secretary.
According to Mrs Dangerfield, she and Kitty Atholl remained wary of Ms
League because they thought that she might
Blackett's activities within the
have been 'planted' on them as a 'Foreign Office spy'. The BLEF was at the
time involved in a particularly controversial campaign to allow the Polish
doctor Vladislav Dering to remain in the country.^^
Dr Dering, who had worked in the Auschwitz concentration camp, came
to Britain after the war and ended up in Scotland, where he took part in a
Christmas mess party with some Polish officers. According to one account,
a drunken Dering boasted that his suit 'belonged to a Dutch professor. He
 THE BRITISH AND SCOTTISH LEAGUES FOR EUROPEAN FREEDOM 435

went up the chimney. Do you see my pipe wallet? I got that from a prisoner.
It's made out of a prisoner's scrotum.'^^
Dr Dering's extradition had first been requested by the Polish government
two years previously, when he was accused of performing barbaric experi-
ments on the inmates of Auschwitz. It was a charge backed by the final list
of the Central War Crimes Registry in which he was listed as 'wanted for
torture' by 'UK'. Evidence, including statements from witnesses claiming that
he had, under a local Novocaine injection in the spine, surgically removed
the ovaries from young Jewish women from Salonika aged from sixteen to
eighteen, was dismissed as Jewish propaganda. Although the Home Office
believed there to be a prima facie case, officials noted that they had been
sent 'a mass of testimony in favour of Dering' and worried that 'there is little
doubt that his case will be championed by some Members of Parliament'.
Indeed, the BLEF roused its supporters and considerable weight was given
in the Home Office to statements of support made by a group of Polish
emigres, who turned out to be friends of the doctor in London. In a success
for the League, the case was then quietly dropped.

The BLEF, which represented the international side of anti-communism, had

ties to UK domestic anti-communist groups and contacts with similar organis-
ations on the Continent and in the United States. It was particularly close to
Common Cause, which was formed by a maverick leftist, Dr C. A. Smith, in
1948. Smith met Leon Trotsky in 1933 in France, was chair of the ILP from
1939 until 1941, then quit the party in 1944 to join the Common Wealth
Party as its research officer. Common Wealth had grown out of the '1941
Committee', which had been set up by the publisher of the Picture Post,
Edward Hulton, the writer J. B. Priestley and Richard Acland of the Forward
March committee. It seems to have had two aims: to undertake long-term
planning as part of a 'post-War New Deal' and to provide a platform for war
aims as a loyal opposition to the National Government.^^
Hulton, who was on the advisory board of the BLEF, had co-operated
with MI6's Section D in 1939 in helping to set up a bogus news agency,
Britanova, and two years later used the Post as a front for another intelligence
creation, the Arab News Agency, both of which MI6 resurrected after the
war. As the Cold War hotted up, Hulton, whose Russian wife exerted a
strong influence on him, moved sharply to the right and became fiercely
anti-Soviet. He had been deeply affected by what had happened in Poland
and used his personal column and his journal. World Review - edited by a
Polish exile - to promulgate his views. Memos rained down on the editor of
the Picture Post, accusing him of 'reiterating Soviet propaganda'. Although
the magazine had - on Hulton's instructions - supported the Labour Party
in 1945, it was not long before he attacked Labour, 'appalled that the conduct
of our foreign policy should be in the hands of Mr Ernest Bevin'. He regarded
436 PART FOUR: THE BALKANS AND RUSSIA

the Sox'iet government and the Communist Party as a 'relentless foe' which
was 'determined upon the complete destruction of all peoples who will not
obey their dictates one hundred per cent'. Hulton had also taken to acting
behind the scenes, setting up 'private dinners' at the Dorchester Hotel for
'top-ranking Tories' whom he had briefed by 'intelligence personnel'.^^
When a number ofCommon Wealth members left at the end of the war
to join the Labour Party, Smith became its War
chair and, as the Cold
developed, his anti-Stalinism became more pronounced. What was left of
Common Wealth failed to move with him, and along with three members of
the executive. Smith resisted and formed, at Easter 1948, Common Cause,
whose main aim was to oppose the activities of the Communist Party of
stated
Great Britain. Smith became a member of the BLEF, and the two organisations
would eventually share in Elizabeth Street, London, an office donated by the
wealthy sponsor of right-wing causes, the Duke of Westminster.^^
Common Cause had a complementary organisation in the United States,
Common Cause Inc., which engaged in similar work and also sought the
exposure of fellow-travellers and communists. The American group was
formed in January 1947 by a New York widow, Mrs Natalie Paine,
socialite

a friend of Clare Boothe Luce, wife of the owner of Time and one-time
ambassador to Italy. Also on the Common Cause Inc. board were Professor
of Law, Adolphe Berle Jnr, who was well known as 'a conduit for CIA
funds throughout this period'; Max Eastman; US ambassador to Poland and
champion of the emigres within the Republican Party, Arthur Bliss Lane;
senior editor at Reader's Digest, Eugene Lyons; State Department under-
secretary, Sumner Welles, who was, ironically, later 'exposed' by Senator
McCarthy as a 'raving homosexual'; and Hodding Carter. The organisation's
'unofficial adviser' was John Foster Dulles and its chair was Christopher
Emmet, who later turned up as head of the American Friends of the Captive
Nations, the domestic front group for the CIA-sponsored co-ordinating body
for exile groups, the Assembly of Captive European Nations (ACEN).^^
An MI6 'agent of influence' in the early stages of the war. Emmet had
been a key figure in the United States in helping turn the country from
isolationism to giving support to the British against Germany. He was 'the
classic example of those who ran the British Intelligence fronts before and
during World War II and who, having proven themselves faithful and
competent, went on to run the CIA/MI6 Cold War'. In January
fronts of the
1946, Emmet had written to a fellow-British agent that 'we got in some good
blows against one form of totalitarian aggression' and now hoped to do
'likewise against the other form of the same danger '.^^
Common Cause Inc. is known to have been linked to its British namesake
with joint meetings taking place in London. Like its British counterpart, it

developed ties tothe emigre groups and engaged in international trades

union activity. The American organisation had already made contact with
 THE BRITISH AND SCOTTISH LEAGUES FOR EUROPEAN FREEDOM 437

the 'Russian Solidarists', better known as the NTS, and Christopher Simpson
notes that it sponsored the NTS leader Constantine Boldyrev on a tour of
the United States in late 1948.''
Significantly, many of the self-same Common Cause Inc. personnel also
crop up on the board of the American National Committee for a Free Europe
(NCFE), which was backed by the covert Office of Policy Co-ordination
(OPC), and, later, the CIA-funded American Committee for Liberation from
Bolshevism. Indeed, it seems that Common Cause Inc. was the 'sister organis-
ation' of the NCFE, which offered thinly veiled 'private sector' cover for
militant exile operations.
These groups had grown out of the Free Europe Committee, formed in
Washington in 1948 by retired diplomat Joseph E. Grew at the request of
George F. Kennan, who was the official in the State Department responsible
for the OPC. It worked closely with the OPC, and then the CIA, to maintain
contact between exile groups in the West and their underground counterparts
in eastern Europe. Initial membership included Berle Jnr, Allen Dulles and
ex-Office of Strategic Services (OSS) personnel such as Frederic R. Dolbeare.
Itwas closely involved in the activities of exile groups interested in federation
and European unity. During this period, the Americans began to pour
millions into such groups. Head of the OPC and architect of the covert
funding policy Frank Wisner 'believed in the tremendous espionage potential
of its Eastern European emigre organisations, their value as propagandists
and agents of influence'. These networks are important because they help to
explain who was backing the BLEF and Common Cause with funds.'^
The BLEF had gradually run out of Polish funding and sought other
means of finance, with the principal target being the Americans. There is
evidence of US Intelligence interest though, once again, it appears that it was
at arm's length. Mrs Dangerfield recalled in 1997 that she had been in touch
in the immediate postwar period with a former senior OSS officer, who had
served in Switzerland working with the German anti-Hitler resistance and
whom she assumed was in the CIA. He apparently visited London on a
regular basis until he died suddenly. In the late forties, Mrs Dangerfield did
travel to the United States on a number of occasions and reported
to Lord
Vansittart in a series of letters that shehad been successful in obtaining funds
for an East European Institute which the League had set up, and for the
short-lived British Political Institute, which had been formed with Vansittart
to look after the interests of the exile groups, principally the Yugoslavs. Mrs
Dangerfield recalls that a particular target had been the Rockefeller family.
She also met with the Dulles brothers and others involved in the NCFE, and
with former OSS head Donovan and his supporters of the American
Bill

Committee for a United Europe (ACUE), which covertly funded the Euro-
pean Movement.'^
The BLEF was, itself, closely tied to the European Movement (EM), princi-
438 PART FOUR: THE BALKANS AND RUSSIA

palK' through the Nouvelles Equipes Internationales (NEI), which had been
created in Lucerne in March 1947 as a union of Christian Democrats. Backed
by Swiss financial interests, it shared a desire to promote Christian solidarity
and opposed the idea Promoting Christian values
of a 'neutral' Third Force.
in the light of 'national situationsand international problems', it supported
liberal free-market economics and had an 'unshakable determination to fight

Bolshevism'. Advocating 'a free Europe', the NEI set up an exiles section of
anti-communists from eastern Europe - Czechs, Hungarians, Lithuanians,
Poles, Romanians and Bulgarians. For the exiles it represented 'a hope and
a guarantee that their legitimate interests were being taken into consider-
ation'. The Christian Democratic Union of Central Europe organisation of

exiles from countries behind the Iron Curtain grouped together a number of
socialist but mainly Christian Democrat and Catholic parties. Considering

European unity as another means of opposing communism, their aim was

to fight against communism by means of propaganda, to inform the West of
the situation behind the Iron Curtain, and to carry on social welfare activities
among refugees.^^
The small British section of the NEI, in reality an offshoot of the BLEF,
was not active domestically. The chair of the section was the Duchess of
Atholl, who was also a member of the NEI executive committee. Others on
the committee included Mrs Dangerfield, Tracy Phillips, a member of the
Church of England's Foreign Relations Council, and Barbara Ward, deputy
As an affiliated organisation and the principal refugee
editor of the Economist.
'defence committee' working among the exile groups, the BLEF section of
the NEI worked closely with the emerging EM. Major supporters of the
BLEF and members of the influential EM cultural subcommittee were the
poet T. S. Eliot and Douglas Woodruff, editor of the Tablet. The presence of
such Catholics may why
staunch British Protestants opposed
be one reason
the British committee and regarded European unity as a 'papist plot' - the
'black shadow of a newly risen Holy Roman Empire'. While this is little more
than conspiracy theorising, it is true that American support for Luigi Gedda,
a prominent Vatican official who ran 'Catholic Action', a significant force in
the 1948 elections, increased when he began to deploy his organisation to
promote the idea of 'Western Union', explaining that the Pope had agreed
''^
that 'the Church should carry the banner for a federation of European states'.
East- West relations were to have a direct bearing on the project for Euro-
pean unification and, according to long-time pro-European federalist Count
Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi, the EM regarded its prime task as 'not the
securing of world peace but the defence of Europe against the imperialism
of the Soviet Union and the liberation of the oppressed nations of Eastern
Europe'. In consort with other moves such as Marshall Aid, the count saw
the EM as 'a part of the anti-Bolshevik system of alliance'.
^^"^

During 1947 introductory talks among the various groups promoting

 THE BRITISH AND SCOTTISH LEAGUES FOR EUROPEAN FREEDOM 439

European unity indicated the desirability of bringing within the orbit of the
EM the countries behind the Iron Curtain. As a result, emigre delegates
from eastern European countries under Soviet control attended The Hague
Conference in May 1948. Believing that the EM was an anti-communist organ-
isation with designs 'to bring about the establishment of a European army
rearming the Germans against the USSR', exile delegates agreed to attend a
small meeting in London. After talks with Conservative politician Harold
Macmillan and Polish fixer Joseph Retinger, the foundations were laid for a
Central and Eastern European Commission of the EM. This initially included
exiled personalities from Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland,
Romania and Yugoslavia, with representatives later joining from Estonia,
Lithuania, Latvia and Albania. It dealt with countries inside the Iron Curtain
and tended to be more moderate than the neo-fascists of the Anti-Bolshevik
Bloc of Nations (ABN), which espoused the aspirations of the nationalist
elements inside the borders of the old Russian Empire. The commission's
objective was to uphold 'the right of individual and political freedom for the
countries under Soviet domination in Eastern Europe and urge their inclusion
in a future united Europe'. It wasbecome 'a rallying-point for focusing
to
the political ideas of the exiles along lines on which general agreement was
possible' and placed a particular emphasis on supporting refugees, which is
obviously one reason why BLEF stalwarts worked so closely with it."^^
Supporting and co-ordinating the activities of the exile groupings, the
commission was chaired by Macmillan with Retinger as general secretary.
While Retinger would seem an obvious choice (he was after all a Pole linked
to the underground and a former wartime SOE recruit who was known to
be close to MI6), Macmillan's appointment was, at first sight, an odd one. It
is known, however, that since the last days of the war in Italy he had had a

working relationship with Carmel Offie. A postwar US political officer in

Germany, Offie was the senior OPC officer responsible for emigre affairs,
working closely with the Free Europe Committee. Under Operation BLOOD-
STONE, Offie had organised 'the care and feeding of emigres who were
illegally helped to emigrate to the United States'. The commission was housed

in the City offices of Macmillan's 'right-hand man', Edward Beddington-

Behrens, who was particularly friendly with a group of anti-communist Yugo-
slav emigres and was a member of the BLEF's advisory council. It was run
by an ex-SOE colleague, George Morton, who had also operated in Italy as
an associate of former SOE director Colin Gubbins, who, in turn, retained 'a
special interest' in the work of the commission.
"^^

The commission aimed to 'study the problems of Eastern Europe and to

sustain the cause of the European peoples enslaved under Soviet domination'.
As usual were endless discussions among 'the bandits',
in exile politics, there
as Macmillan referred to them, and although not the most ideologically mili-
tant, the exiles used the commission to advocate the liberation of their coun-
440 PART FOUR: THE BALKANS AND RUSSIA

tries from communist dictatorship. The basic declaration issued by the

commission in December 1949, while supporting the liberation of eastern

Europe, did not, however, refer to exactly how this was to be achieved.
Retinger specifically ruled out the idea 'of an Eastern European fighting
force formed from exiles for the defence of Europe', and did not appeal for
'volunteers to form a fifth column'. Instead, officials advocated propaganda
campaigns, particularly in relation to the plight of refugees. There were some
diplomatic successes and, owing to its efforts, in 1950 the Consultative
Assembly of the Council of Europe created a 'special committee' to watch
over the interests of countries not represented in the Council of Europe.
Chaired by Macmillan, it wasand only official body to defend the
the first

interests of the countries of centraland eastern Europe.

Another EM -affiliated group, the European Union of Federalists, had
under its wing the Centre International des Syndicalistes Libre en Exil, which
had been formed in Paris in October 1948. Better known as the International
Centre of Free Trade Unions in Exile (ICFTUE), it grouped together Eastern
European trade unionists from Bulgaria, Estonia, Hungary, Lithuania, Latvia,
Poland, Romania, Czechoslovakia, Ukraine and Yugoslavia who favoured
federalism as the only alternative to the dictatorship from which they hoped
to free their countries. The ICFTUE was run out of the offices of the Confeder-
ation Generale du Travail Ouvriere, which was initially supported and
partially funded by the American Federation of Labour and later by the
CIA. It was headed by Sacha Volman, a Romanian exile who worked with
underground anti-communist forces in eastern Europe. The Centre was a
recipient of CIA largesse, laundered through United States foundations. One
of its tasks was 'to assist refugees', and it co-operated with sympathetic
officials in the British Foreign Office, members of Parliament and groups
such as the BLEF.^'
Also working on the fringes of the EM commission
and affiliated to the

was the International Federation of Free Journalists of Centraland Eastern

Europe. Founded in Paris in 1948, at a congress attended by writers and
newspapermen from thirteen countries, it included representatives from the
Baltic and Balkan countries. The federation set up regional unions and oper-
ated its own press agency, the Free European Press Service, which specialised
in news from behind the Iron Curtain. A second congress of eastern and
central European journalists took place in London, a year later, and for a
similar one in Berlin, Malcolm Muggeridge, who was operating on behalf of
MI6, nominated as its chair the former senior SOE officer and leading EM
advocate, Douglas Dodds-Parker. 'From such small initiatives', Dodds-Parker
later wrote, 'were to spring the broadcasting of Radio Liberty and Radio Free
Europe to Russia and the occupied Eastern countries.' Given that these two
radio stations were funded by the OPC-sponsored NCFE, it is probable that
this was the source of the funding for the federation. The federation's Polish
 THE BRITISH AND SCOTTISH LEAGUES FOR EUROPEAN FREEDOM 441

chair, M. Wierzbianski, admitted that it worked in consultation with the

Americans.^
In July 1949, senior State Department official and supervisor of the OPC,
George Kennan, arrived in London for talks with the chair of the Joint Intelli-
gence Committee (JIC), William Hayter. Kennan told Hayter that while in
the short term he did not envisage the incorporation of eastern Europe into
a federation, in the long term he believed that European unity could only be
achieved, in 'Phase Two' of unification, once an overextended Soviet Union
had retreated behind her own borders. In May 1950, during the Tripartite
Foreign Ministers' Conference in London, the United States secured the agree-
ment of Britain and France in associating Eastern bloc exile groups with the
Council of Europe at Strasbourg.*^
The BLEF continued to be supported by Baykolov, Georgi Knupffer and
the Russian emigre groups. Drawing on these sources, in 1950 Mrs Dangerfield
convened a meeting to discuss 'the formation of an organisation to make known
what was believed to be the widespread opposition in Russia to the Soviet
regime'. The BLEF claimed to have helped thousands of Russian workers in
this country who had managed to evade repatriation from Germany at the end

of the war. The Duchess of Atholl wrote that they were 'making this opposition
known to compatriots who had fled from Russia in much earlier days', which
suggests the NTS and Mladorossy organisations. A British Free Movement
(BFM) was set up with Lord Inverchapel, who as Sir Archibald Clark Kerr had
been ambassador in Moscow during the war, as its first president. In order to
focus these concerns, during the summer of 1951 the BFM helped publish a
collection of statements made by Russians in Britain.*^
In contrast, by 1950 the SLEF was helping to bring in the most extreme
of the emigres and was being supported in its efforts by MI6. John Stewart
was honorary editor of the Foreign Affairs Information Service, and with the
SLEF published a steady stream of well-produced pamphlets, often printed
in Munich, home of the new generation of emigres. In 1950, at eighty years
of age, Stewart was still very active, penning many of the pamphlets which
illustrated the organisation's range of interests, including 'Communism in
Action', 'The Russian Danger', 'Will There be a Revolution in Russia?', 'The
Ukrainian Liberation Movement in Modern Times' and 'UP A: Story of the
Ukrainian Underground Army'.*^
One of Stewart's most trusted lieutenants in the late forties and early
and another prolific pamphleteer, was Major John Frederick Charles
fifties,

'Boney' Fuller, a well-known and highly respected military strategist. Anti-

Semitic and a dabbler in the occult - he had been a friend of Aleister Crowley
- Fuller had joined the British Union of Fascists (BUF) in 1934, in the belief
that fascism had 'come to stay'. Admitted to Oswald Mosley's inner circle.
Fuller visited both Mussolini and Hitler. He was also a founding member of
the pre-war Nordic League (known initially as the White Knights of Britain
442 TAKT 1-OUR; THE BALKANS AND RUSSIA

or the Hooded Men) which had been established by Nazi agents run by
Alfred Rosenberg. which were directed from Berlin, included
Its activities,

providing an insider's view of the British elite. Fuller had also written intelli-
gence reports on British organisations and individuals for Goebbels, the head
of the Nazi propaganda department, and Heinrich Himmler, chief of the SS.
It is said that Fuller would have been made minister of defence if Mosley

had come to power, and was regarded by the Nazis as a possible 'Quisling'.
Despite the fact that MI 5 had him under surveillance, when war came he
and his Polish wife were not among the more than seven hundred BUF
supporters detained under the 18b regulations. Even Mosley was puzzled by
this omission. One possible reason, which would explain a great deal, was

that Fuller was an MI6 agent and thus protected.^^

'Boney' Fuller's importance for the SLEF was that he had been active
among the Ukrainian nationalists before the war and among the Ukrainian
communities in both Britain and Germany after the war. In the mid-thirties,
around the same time as MI6 was recruiting the Banderites in the OUN, the
Ukrainian emigre community in London had been penetrated by German
Intelligence. This had been undertaken with the help of Fuller to ensure
Anglo-German 'understanding'. He thought that Hitler's greatest mistake
during the war had been to treat the Ukrainians as subhuman, Untermenschen,
thus ignoring the military potential of the nationalists. With the support of
his good friend Richard Stokes, at the end of the war Fuller had helped assist
one of the leading figures in the OUN-B, Jaroslav Stetsko, and maintained
contacts with the Ukrainian nationalists in the DP camps throughout the
forties. By 1950, Fuller was seventy-one, a wizened old man but still active,

calling for a moral as well as a physical and economic campaign against the
Bolsheviks and the Soviet Union.^^
The Foreign Office was unhappy with the SLEF's independent activities
and the regular rebukes it received from Stewart about the alleged ill-
treatment of the EVWs, especially the Ukrainians from the Polish regions
and the Belorussians. Officials were particularly annoyed when Stewart
announced his intention of holding under the auspices of the SLEF, on 12-
14 June 1950, an apparently innocuous anti-communist international confer-
ence of refugees in Edinburgh. Sponsored by MI6 and the Foreign Office
propaganda unit, the Information Research Department (IRD), the Congress
Independence Movements Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations of
of Delegates of
Europe and Asia was an important meeting for a number of eastern European
murderous thugs, Nazi collaborators and wanted war criminals who were
working with MI6 on exile operations against the Soviet Union - the most
important group being the Ukrainians.^°
As David Cesarani notes, 'the British authorities did little to curb the
activities of the formerly pro-Nazi OUN/B when it was using strong-arm
tactics to establish its hegemony over the Ukrainian refugees, DPs and
 THE BRITISH AND SCOTTISH LEAGUES FOR EUROPEAN FREEDOM 443

ex-servicemen in the British Zone in Germany'. Foreign Office files from 1950
and 1951 provide evidence of the SLEF and the ABN running joint 'front'
groups and exercises, agitating among the EVWs, fomenting strikes and
demonstrations in support of 'separatism' in the European DP camps, and
attempting to take over the Association of Ukrainians in Great Britain. Agita-
tion was particularly strong among the Ukrainian communities in Yorkshire,
which became hotbeds of anti-Soviet politics and the power base for the
ABN. Members of the Galician Division got together for annual celebrations
in their Waffen-SS uniforms. Sections of the Foreign Office were alarmed by
this rabidly right-wing, neo-fascist trend, and the fact that Ukrainian emigres
felt bold enough to hold public meetings and pass resolutions in support of
the ABN. One of its leading members stated that 'our organisation was never
a study group, and it will never be one. ABN is an organisation of fighters
in the first place. Into it should come people of courage, men dedicated to
the liberation of their countries, and ready for sacrifice. We have no time and
no room for orators. ABN is for action.
'^^

What spokesmen would never admit, however, was that the ABN had
its

been createdin 1943 under the control of the Nazi OMi and Alfred Rosenberg.
Many of the leaders of the ABN, such as Romanian Grigore Manoilescu,
Bulgarian Dimitr Waltscheff, Belorussian Radolslav Ostrovosky, and Slovak
Ferdinand Durcansky, had been closely associated either with the Nazi quis-
ling administrations or with the neo-fascist regimes of their respective states.
Because of their records, many had been unable to obtain an immigration or
visitor's visa to the United States or to other countries. They continued to
perpetrate the myth that the ABN had been founded after the war as an
independent body. It also remained secret that 'vast sums' were being paid
to the ABN by MI6 through a Vatican channel, to disguise its true source.
Later funding and help came from the West German government.
In attendance at Edinburgh was Stefan Bandera's deputy in the OUN-B,
Yaroslav Stetsko, which showed the true character of the conference. Stetsko
had accompanied Nazi formations to Lvov in 1941 and had been at the head
of the short-lived Ukrainian government. Wanted by the Soviets as a war
criminal, he was able to travel to and from Britain with ease. Gradually, he
ensured that the 'moderate and democratic member groups' quit the ABN,
which increasingly allied itself with the SLEF in 'refugee' work. Stetsko was
a well-known figure at the Foreign Office, and in June 1949 felt confident
enough to ask for a private meeting with Ernest Bevin. At the Edinburgh
conference, Stetsko consulted on liberation policy with Lord Vansittart, who
had his own back channels to the SLEF.^^
The Ukrainians and other participants at the Edinburgh conference were
supplied with passports and travel documents by MI 6, and put up in hotels
at the Service's expense. Others brought to the conference under the guise

of the ABN by MI6 included men such as Dr Stanislaw Stankievich, president

444 PART FOUR: THE BALKANS AND RUSSIA

of the Belorussian National Centre and of the Council of the Nations of

the ABN; council chair Alfred Berzins, leader of the Latvian Underground
Mo\'ement; and a delegation of the Romanian Iron Guard which supplied
its share of militants. The Croatian delegation was made up of Ustashi from

the Croatian Liberation Movement of Pavelic and Hefer, and the Bulgarian
chapter was represented by the Bulgarian National Front, a group of wartime
fascist legionaries. From further afield came Kajum Khan, president of the
National Turkestan Unity Committee.^^
During the public session, the conference called for 'the formation of a
common anti-Bolshevik front of all freedom-loving nations on both sides of
the Iron Curtain for the defence of freedom, religion and culture'. Delegates
sought closer co-operation between the western intelligence agencies and the
resistance movements among 'the oppressed nations'. They aimed at the
'destruction of Russian imperialism' by 'splitting up the USSR and re-estab-
lishing independent nation states'. The ABN military spokesman. General
Ferenc Farkas, who under the Hungarian neo-fascist Szalasi regime had
headed a special court sentencing opponents of the quisling Arrow Cross
government, declared that the subjugated nations were ready to fight and
called for 'the synchronisation of efforts and co-operation'. Stetsko added
that if war broke out the enslaved nations were in a position to 'set up an
army of more than ten million soldiers'.
There followed a big press conference which brought publicity in all the
major newspapers. A well-organised IRD publicity operation involving a
number ofnews agencies ensured that the publicity was well
its front
exploited and broadcast by radio stations to eastern Europe. This resulted in
a sustained counter-propaganda campaign by the Soviet Union which
attacked the conference and those in attendance. A number of other more
moderate exile groups were angered by the overtly militant and military
aspect of the meeting. The Poles, who were not represented, accused the
participants, primarily the Ukrainians, of ignoring 'harsh reality'. A Polish
exile press agency release to the Scotsman was bleak in its assessment. It

concluded that there was no opportunity 'to shake off that hated Bolshevik
yoke . . . Today any active resistance against Russia would be lunacy: it would
bring only bloody repression, massacres and mass deportations, without even
'^^
the slightest hope of achieving the aim so much desired.
MI6 political liaison ABN
was undertaken through Auberon
with the
Herbert and the Scottish Conservative MP, Neil McLean. Herbert had recently
taken up one of the SLEF's hobby-horses, writing to the Daily Telegraph about
the use of slave labour in the timber areas of Siberia. 'It would do the Ministry
of Supply no harm to know how Soviet timber is cut, and the British public
would, no doubt, benefit by a closer knowledge of the really modern methods
employed in exploiting the endless forests, and the 30 million foresters of
Siberia.'^^
 THE BRITISH AND SCOTTISH LEAGUES FOR EUROPEAN FREEDOM 445

McLean was irresistibly drawn to the semi-clandestine ABN organisation.

'Its very name was music to his ears', wrote his biographer, 'and its avowed

intentions coincided with his own ideals.' The methods it proposed - internal
subversion and covert encouragement of national aspirations in every ethnic
group within the Soviet Union and in every satellite state - were those that
McLean himself advocated. Herbert and McLean visited the ABN head-
quarters in Munich, which was a 'hive of activity and conspiracy', for talks
in early 195L With his command of languages, McLean was able to talk with
the heads of the North Caucasian Committee, the Turkestan National Unity
Committee, and representatives of Azerbaijan and Georgia. He also had time
to visit a small group of Kalmucks, part of the Cossack regiment that the
Allies had attempted to hand back to the Soviet Union at the end of hostilities
but who had managed to escape the fate of their compatriots. Herbert was
principally concerned with the Belorussians and the Ukrainians, and
subsequently made many trips to Canada to lecture to the tens of thousands
of Ukrainians who had settled there.
By the end of 1950, John Stewart was convinced that the Soviets were
intent on war and had issued a military handbook entitled 'Economic and
Military Strength and Weakness of Red Russia and Independence Movements
in the USSR', outlining the feasibility of overthrowing the eastern European
and Soviet regimes by supplying funds and arms to national liberation move-
ments, such as the Ukrainian UFA. Shortly after, Boney Fuller - in regular
contact with Stetsko - wrote a slim SLEF pamphlet, 'How to Defeat Russia',
which argued against mere containment and instead recommended a psycho-
logical offensive coupled with a strong military defensive posture. He argued
that the offensive should be undermining communist power within
aimed at
the Soviet Union and its satellites, it elsewhere. The mili-
while suppressing
tary posture should be based on a strong West Germany, the prospect of
German reunification, the use of German and Spanish troops, the creation of
a hundred divisions with forty stationed in Germany, and the deployment
of emigre nationalist forces. Ambitiously, in January of the new year, Stewart
forwarded these ideas to the Foreign Office and the Prime Minister.^^
The Foreign Office was well acquainted with Stewart and was increasingly
irritated by his activities. He was accused of exaggerating 'the strength of
the resistance movements behind the Iron Curtain', which, according to the
latest intelligence, 'are, though often still active, losing rather than gaining
strength'. Officials were, however, willing to recognise the worth of his argu-
ment that 'in the event of war, the resistance and separatist movements could
have value for us'.
John Peck, who had just returned from the The Hague to take up the post
of assistant responsible for the IRD, thought that Stewart had 'swallowed
the Ukrainian nationalist line whole. His violent anti-Russian, as distinct from
anti-Soviet, feelings are a poor guide to the formulation of a rational foreign
446 PART FOUR: THE BALKANS AND RUSSIA

policy and his obstinate insistence on the value of the near-apocryphal resist-
ance movements behind the Iron Curtain makes his practical recommenda-
tions not merely foolish but dangerous/ Peck regarded his solution to the
problems of dealing with the Soviet states 'as useful as "Mein Kampf " The
ABN was not held in much higher regard, but was acknowledged that the
it

British could 'not wash our hands of all national movements in case they
may be of future use to us'. Of Stewart, Peck concluded that 'it can only be
said that though his heart is in the right place it is perhaps excessively large'.
Neil McLean eventually became disillusioned with the ABN as 'most of
the other national committees seemed to be at loggerheads and unable to
agree on a concerted policy or a co-ordinated line of action'. He felt, however,
that his time had not been completely wasted as 'his mere presence amongst
them had encouraged them to believe that they were not forgotten by the
free world'. MI 6 was still involved, but gradually began to lessen its support.
After 1951, the ABN began to receive direct funding from the West German
government. The Foreign Office grew increasingly apprehensive about
having any relationship with the emigre groups and was content for the
Americans to take them on or for responsibility for their affairs to be managed
within a European context.^°
In May 1951 the White House endorsed State Department plans to acceler-
ate the association of the exile groups with the Council of Europe. Outlining
their proposals in a paper entitled 'The Concept of Europe', State Department
officials explained that their eastern propaganda efforts lacked 'the positive
qualities which are necessary The new strategy would be
to arouse nations'.
based on the theme of 'European Unity' which, was hoped, would encour-
it

age eastern Europeans to stiffen their resistance to communist domination

and 'retard the Sovietisation of their minds'. This would be coupled with an
increased emphasis on human rights, which President Truman believed to
be 'going in the right direction' and 'a good contribution toward the goal of
. subverting Iron Curtain countries'. Much to the annoyance of the Foreign
. .

Office, which wanted to curtail emigre affairs, evidence of the new strategy
was seen in the new year in London.^^
In late January 1952, the BLEF helped to organise a major conference for
eastern European exile groups at Church House, with more moderate
members than ABN. It was sponsored by the
those associated with the
Central and East European Commission of the EM which, in contrast to the
ABN, dealt only with those countries outside the borders of the Soviet Union.
In line with its general disregard of the EM, the commission was 'very
unpopular' with the Foreign Office, which showed hostility to the conference
- its 'most ambitious plan so far'. Organised by the UK National Council of
the EM, the conference cost £4,000, which came from undisclosed 'private
funds'.The fact that the observers from overseas included Warren Fugitt
from the ACUE and Roger Bull, W. Griffith and John Leich from the US
 THE BRITISH AND SCOTTISH LEAGUES FOR EUROPEAN FREEDOM 447

NCFE an indication that the true source of funding was the CIA. Indeed,
is

during the conference the Hungarian delegate, P. Auer, thanked the NCFE
for its efforts in supporting the exiles.^^

Fifty-one delegates and observers from the various eastern European exile
groups of the commission met over three days, the meetings chaired by
Conservative imperialist Leopold Amery. British delegates included BLEF
supporters, the ubiquitous Auberon Herbert and Neil McLean. The former
had been introduced to the BLEF by the Pole Pilsudski, but Mrs Dangerfield
remained suspicious of his motives. While he engaged in the social side, he
studiously refused to get involved in their politicial activities. The other
British delegate was Julian Amery, who noted the presence of 'so many old
friends, some of whom were comrades-in-arms in the last war'.^^
Other delegates included members of Common Cause, Bob Edwards of
the Chemical Workers Union and founder of the Socialist Movement for
United States of Europe, who had moved to the right and was prominent in
a number of anti-communist campaigns, and Christopher Hollis, right-wing
Conservative MP, who was close to Kenneth de Courcy of the conspiratorially
inclined Intelligence Digest and brother of MI5's Roger Hollis. Among the
more interesting delegates were those from the ICFTUE, such as the
Romanian Sacha Volman; the International Peasant Union represented by the
former Polish Prime Minister in exile, Stanislaw Mikolajczyk; a large number
of Poles from the underground movement, including Stefan Korbonski;
Charles Zarine of the Latvians; a young EM activist, Giscard D'Estaing, who,
in a recurring theme, expressed disquiet at the 'temporary aloofness' of Britain
with regard to European affairs; and Dr Ihsan Toptani representing the
National Committee for Free Albania. Toptani, a wealthy Albanian with
influential friends including Julian Amery and Neil McLean, had escaped
from Albania in October 1944. His committee was a creation of the American
OPC/CIA and came under the umbrella of the NCFE.''
Despite Foreign Office reservations, the conference proved to be 'a great
success'. The chair of the 'Special Committee', the right-wing Tory MP Major
Tufton Beamish, supported the setting up of a European Fund for Exiles,
which would assist student exiles to continue their studies, and the initiative
taken by the Secretariat of Exiled Intellectual Organisations for the creation
of an Institute of Central and Eastern European Studies, along the lines of
the NCFE-backed Research Centre for Central and Eastern Europe in New
York. The bringing together of so many leading exiles also provided a propa-
ganda coup which was spread throughout the Soviet bloc by NCFE-backed
radio stations, the BBC and the exile press outlets, including those working
with the IRD.
The Foreign Office was increasingly unwilling to back a liberation policy
for the Soviet satellites and was embarrassed that 'for weeks and weeks the
conference was denounced by the Russian radio and press, and by the puppet
448 PART FOUR: THE BALKANS AND RUSSIA

leaders of the countries behind the Iron Curtain'. Under the guidance of the
newK' was directed towards a more
elected Conservative government, policy
conciliatory tone in dealing with the Soviet Union. Special operations were
seen as hindering that approach, and encouraging the eastern European exiles
in their aspirations was discouraged. Belligerency was out; the exiles were
to be left to the United States, about whom the Foreign Office was also wary.
In September 1952, the chair of the commission. Major Beddington-Behrens,
whom the conference delegates clearly identifed as the leading advocate of
was replaced by a professional politician. Conservative MP Richard
their case,
Law, which, according to a Polish leader, Stefan Korbonski, marked the point
when the commission began to act 'negatively and ceased in practice to
function'.

The Duchess of Atholl notes in her thin autobiography that the decline
in the BLEF's 'purely political work' was attributable to the arrival of
Common Cause, whose articles of association stated its purpose as 'to expose
as a subversive conspiracy the Communist Party of Great Britain', and those
'who by their conduct or associations might reasonably be expected to be
engaging in activities detrimental to the welfare of the State'. Formally
launched in February 1952 (interestingly, just a month after the EM London
conference). Common Cause's first official joint chair was Lord Malcolm
Douglas-Hamilton, another associate of Kenneth de Courcy and part of Lord
Mansfield's circle. Douglas-Hamilton, whose parliamentary seat was taken
over by Neil McLean, was divorced in the same year and, in 1953, married
Mrs Natalie Paine, the person who had been responsible for forming the
American Common Cause Inc.^^

John Stewart attacked the London conference, and indirectly the BLEF,
as a failure because it did not recognise the imperialist ambitions of Russia.
He wanted to see 'the confinement of the aggressive, predatory Russians
within ethnic Russia, where no one will wish to interfere with them'. Citing
'private sources', Stewart warned the Ukrainian nationalist emigres that the
conference was part of an attempt to destroy or weaken the ABN and replace
it with ineffective public figures. Although the SLEF/ABN alliance was in
various paramilitary activities set up by the NCFE and the CIA, Stewart
denied that his organisation had received any outside funding, though he
said that he had been offered 'considerable sums' if he joined 'certain sectional

organisations' - i.e. pro-Russian, anti-separatist groupings. He continued to

stand by the and put his support behind Yaroslav Stetsko, whom he
ABN
knew from friends had considerable support from the influential Canadian
emigres.
By the early fifties, the profile of the SLEF was virtually non-existent but
Stewart, despite being in ill health, kept up a steady stream of books and
pamphlets, authored by leading exile figures. In 1953, the League's records
show that finances took a nosedive, at a time when MI6 was rapidly pulling
 THE BRITISH AND SCOTTISH LEAGUES FOR EUROPEAN FREEDOM 449

out of the exile game and was ceasing to fund many of the groups. The
following year saw the 'withdrawal of British leadership and initiative in
matters concerning Iron Curtain countries'. The Americans took the lead and
now had the field to themselves.*'^
John Stewart died in August 1958; a grand, celebratory obituary featured
on the front page of the ABN journal. The BLEF declined too, and would
eventually become a creature of the ABN, whose leader, Stetsko, lived in
quiet obscurity in Wimbledon. By the early fifties the Duchess of Atholl and
Mrs Elma Dangerfield had withdrawn from the BLEF, the latter taking on a
leading role in the EM. Without their input, by the sixties the BLEF had
become little more than a meaningless acronym. It had, however, drifted into
the hands of the extremists. Its treasurer was I. Rawluk of the Association of
Ukrainians in Great Britain, and it operated as the British representative of
the European Freedom Council - an ABN front. In the seventies, the BLEF
was represented on the ultra-right World Anti-Communist League (WACL).^^
PART FIVE

THE CHANGE
In his ground-breaking study of the 'secret Cold War', Trevor Barnes wrote
that MI6 'was running its own operation to encourage unity' in Europe. The
European Movement (EM) can be viewed from many different perspectives,
but the principal interest of MI6 would have been its use as an anti-communist
vehicle, binding together a number of disparate voices in western and, to a
Europe during the Cold War. This was part of an agenda
lesser extent, eastern
to shape the postwar world along essentially conservative, anti-communist
^
lines.

It is not clear whether that entailed any direct support for the EM, which
could only have been discreet given the opposition of the Labour government
and the Foreign Office, but the evidence suggests that one objective may
have been to blunt the edge of the federalists. Key individuals, such as Dr
Joseph Retinger and Duncan Sandys, who were in contact, as the latter's
correspondence shows, with Stewart Menzies, did receive covert assistance.
Through the close relationship with these 'agents of influence', who may or
may not have been helped with finance, MI6 was able to penetrate the major
pro-unity European organisations and identify allies. It certainly provided a
useful means of monitoring influential politicians and manoeuvres in Europe
at a critical juncture in the Cold War.^
As so often was the case, MI6 on the friendships
relied to a great extent
of the old-boy intelligence network that had developed during the war in
resistance circles, the principal contact point being the British sabotage and
454 PART FIVE: THE CHANGE

resistance organisation, the Special Operations Executive (SOE). The majority

of the leading figures in the European unity movement had at some stage
come within its orbit. A problem, though, remained the lack of funding
necessary to run a full-scale operation. There was initial success in raising
money from the City, but MI 6, despite being masters of this type of operation
in the United States during the war, never managed to put in place the
arm's-length foundations - though there are hints of one or two, including
film producer Sir Alexander Korda -
Americans were so successful
that the
at exploiting in Cold War operations. was not
long, however, before the
It

British their American 'cousins', in the shape

discovered to their dismay that
of the Office of Policy Co-ordination (OPC) and the Central Intelligence
Agency (CIA), outstripped them in terms of finance and number of oper-
ations.
American success owed a great deal to the lessons learned in the highly
successful British Intelligence campaign designed to change the United States'

isolationist stance towards an internationalist and interventionist policy at

the beginning of the war. The British Security Co-ordination (BSC) proved
to be very adept at recruiting agents of influence and creating front groups.
Senior Office of Strategic Services (OSS) officers took note and were at the
forefront of the American an alliance for European unity out
efforts to forge
of the informal transatlanticnetwork generated by former resistance workers.
One key figure who was involved with the front groups and worked as a
consultant for the State Department on a number of political warfare projects
was the founder of the OSS, William Donovan. 'Wild Bill' was regarded by
British Intelligence as 'our man'.^
MI6 had no alternative but to work in co-operation with the CIA to carry
on its work among the European anti-communist networks. It would be
wrong, however, to see the EM solely in the limited terms of European unity,
since it was to act as the font from which a number of different joint British/
American operations were to spring. This included working with eastern
European exiles, students, trade unionists and propaganda outlets. Once
again, these developed out of friendships from the wartime Anglo-American
alliance.

The postwar alliance proved to be a rocky affair when it came to the

continued sponsorship of the exile groups. Winston Churchill's return to

power led to a number of disputes over relations with the Soviet Union which
had a direct influence on support for the exiles. In the end, the CIA followed
MI6's lead and by 1956 such operations had been abandoned, with the intelli-
gence void being increasingly filled by technical means of intelligence-
gathering. The fifties were a time of great change in the intelligence world,
but it would take a decade of uncertainty before MI6 developed into a truly
modern service.
CHAPTER 22

THE EUROPEAN
MOVEMENT AND
'THE BATTLE FOR
PICASSO'S MIND'
In a lecture delivered in May 1994, Reader in Government at Oxford Univer-
sity Vernon Bogdanor made the point that the impulse to transcend national-
ism through European union was 'kindled in the ashes of the Resistance'. Its
federalist version, agreed the leading Italian Socialist Resistance spokesman
Altiero Spinelli, 'had its roots in that crucible of passions and dreams which
was the Resistance'.^
The first step had been taken in 1941 by Spinelli and Ernesto Rosi, when
they formed a nucleus of Italian federalists and from their island prison
issued the 'Ventotene Manifesto'. During the same year, talks took place
within the Polish government-in-exile between its head. General Sikorski, his
political adviser, Dr Retinger, and the British liaison officer, Victor Cazelet,

a pre-war member of Count Coudenhove-Kalergi's Pan-European Union

(PEU). Polish postwar planners hoped 'to establish in Europe some five
or six regional federal blocks more or less equal in economic and military
potentialities which, though strong enough to defend themselves against
attack, would be economically viable organisations whose foremost need
would be peace'. One would be based on Intermarium and another formed
out of the countries supporting the Promethean League.^
It was Retinger, 'a compulsive intriguer and behind-the-scenes political

wheeler-dealer', who suggested to Sikorski the worth of regular meetings

with the foreign ministers of the governments-in-exile, such as Paul van
Zeeland and Paul-Henri Spaak. At the end of 1941, they founded a Permanent
455 PART FIVE: THE CHANGE

Bureau of Continental Foreign Ministers which later helped pave the way
European Movement (EM).^
tor the
One man sympathetic was David Astor, who had
to Polish aspirations
created the Europe Study Group
examine the problems of Europe and the
to
prospects for creating a non-nationalist order in Germany. At the core of the
group were a number of emigre Germans destined to play a role in the EM,
such as the future leader writer on the Observer, Richard 'Rix' Lowenthal. Inter-
viewed for recruitment by MI6, Astor was turned down for a full-time post but
was subsequently used by MI6 officer Lionel Loewe to establish contact with
the German opposition. Employed as the press officer in Lord Mountbatten's
Combined Operations Headquarters in London, Astor continued with his
group, which drew on the ideas of the Cecil Rhodes-inspired Round Table
Group and its belief that 'the British Empire should federate'. Astor's mentor
was Philip Kerr (Lord Lothian), the 'most original thinker of the Round Table',
who was 'regarded by many Europeans as one of the spiritual fathers of
European federalism'. In the inter- war years, Lothian had supported the
British Federal Union, a small group with wide influence which had been
funded by Lord McGowan, chair of Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI).^
European unity was also a subject for discussion within the senior ranks
of SOE. SOE and parachuted
In 1943 the fifty-five-year-old Retinger joined
into Poland to make contact with the underground Home Army. Within SOE,
'Salamander' formed a number of important friendships in the intelligence
world, most notably with its Executive Director, Colin Gubbins, who shared
ideas of European unity with a mutual 'old friend' and SOE colleague. Major
Edward Beddington-Behrens. The latter had served with Gubbins on the
Somme, and his war experiences had shaped his interest in European unity,
as had his friendship with the leading federalist Jean Monnet, with whom
he had worked in the International Labour Office of the League of Nations
in Geneva. Hugely successful in the City, Beddington-Behrens had been
influential in thirties anti-appeasement circles, being instrumental in estab-
lishing the Army League. was the leading Tory imperialist Leopold
Its chair
Amery, and members included Duncan Sandys, later prominent in the Euro-
pean unity campaign. Moving in the highest circles of the intelligence 'old-boy
network', at the beginning of the Second World War, along with two 'old
city friends', members of White's Club and senior MI6 officers Colonel Rex
Benson and Kock de Gooreynd, he became one of the 'Twelve Apostles' -
British military intelligence liaison officers with the French Army. After
Dunkirk, Beddington-Behrens joined Gubbins in organising the stay-behind
Auxiliary Units, designed to harass the Germans in the event of an invasion.^
In the United States, Beddington-Behrens' pre-war friend and Pan-
European Union (PEU) organiser. Count Coudenhove-Kalergi, continued to

pursue the goal of European union. In February 1942 the count became
co-director of a research institute for a Post-War European Federation at the
 THE EUROPEAN MOVEMENT AND THE BATTLE FOR PICASSO'S MIND' 457

University of New York. A year later, it held a Pan-European Congress

attended by leaders of European governments-in-exile, including Paul van
Zeeland. The count believed that the keyPEU member in Britain was Leo
Amery, who, with the endorsement of Churchill, wanted to encourage Euro-
pean integration as a means of combating Russia and curbing Germany's
potential domination of Europe. Amery envisaged 'a freely co-operating
Commonwealth' as the model for future European unity.^
In Europe, SOE-backed resistance workers actively campaigned for their
post-hostilities vision of a federalist Europe. When Mussolini was overthrown
in July 1943, freed prisoners founded the European Federalist Movement
(EFM) in Milan, where one European unity was the
of the architects of
SOE -sponsored resistance leader Edgardo Sogno. Operating principally
through Switzerland, the EFM clandestinely co-ordinated the different
currents of federalism within European resistance via underground news-
papers such as the Dutch Het Parool and, in France, Combat. Henri Frenay,
who had helped form the Combat network in the South of France which
became the backbone of the 'Armee Secrete', and who later became a member
of General de Gaulle's National Committee in London, wrote in December
that 'the governments which are in favour of national restorations ought to
realise that the men of the European Resistance movement will be
. . .

tomorrow's builders of a new Europe'. Only SOE's Gubbins and the OSS's
Allen Dulles, with whom the Frenchman - busy organising a European unity
conference in Algiers - was in contact, appeared to take Frenay's point
seriously.^
Meanwhile, in the run-up to the invasion of Europe, David Astor, now
between SOE and the resistance in France, helped
transferred to a unit liaising
the underground in London spread the word to groups throughout Europe.
During the spring and summer of 1944, Ernesto Rossi and leaders of resistance
movements from Denmark, France, Italy, Norway, Holland, Poland, Czecho-
slovakia, Yugoslavia and Germany secretly met in Geneva to produce a 'Draft
Declaration of the European Resistances'. Released in October with the
support of the London Socialist Vanguard group, it declared that 'anarchy
can be solved only by the creation of Federal Union among the European
peoples'.^
In March Combat-backed Committee for European Federation
1945, a
called its first With the war still in progress, Italian resistance
conference.
members clandestinely made their way across the Alps to Paris. Those
attending included Albert Camus, Andre Philip, Emanuel Mounier, Spinelli
and Francois Bondy, all of whom were to play key roles in the European
Movement. Also present was a British delegate close to Astor's thinking,
George Orwell. Astor's Observer suggested that 'Britain must make sure that
Europe becomes united under British leadership. Only as a spokesman and
trustee of a United Europe can Britain pull her weight in the High Council of
458 PART FIVE: THE CHANGE

the Big Three . . . the choice for Europe lies between becoming either the Europe
of Germany or Russia, or of federating under the leadership of Britain/ In the
summer, as Allied troops entered Berlin, members of the German resistance
presented a memorandum on European federation to Dulles.^
Retired from SOE but unofficially attached to MI 6, at the end of hostilities
Gubbins was approached by Retinger for help with his European project.
Retinger was suspected by Polish colleagues of being 'in close touch not so
much with British politics as with certain of its discreet institutions' - a hint
at his MI 6 connections. The records reveal that Gubbins, working closely with

his business partner Beddington-Behrens, travelled across Europe developing

contacts.
Another senior SOE figure at these early postwar European assemblies
was Conservative politician Douglas Dodds-Parker, who noticed that 'a high
proportion' of those attending had a resistance background, 'but, as in
Masonic circles, they usually kept this comradeship to themselves'. He
informed Labour Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin of his 'special employment'
and suggested that there was 'considerable overseas support for Britain above
party polities'. Bevin's response was to back his under-secretary, Christopher
Mayhew, in setting up various 'joint activities'. According to Dodds-Parker,
having previously rescued elements of the Vlasov Army in the South of
France, he was invited to help rebuild the Free German Republic with PoWs
and DPs. This secret recruitment of 'the few' led to others being brought
into the German fold, such as Walter Hallstein and Eric Blumenfeld, who
co-operated in 'so many European/ Atlantic projects'."
The main influence on British supporters came from Retinger, whose
strongest backer, Astor, was now editor of the Observer. On 8 May 1946, as
secretary-general of Paul van Zeeland's Independent League for European
Co-operation (ILEC), Retinger gave a speech at the Royal Institute for Inter-
national Affairs in which he viewed European unity as a counter to the
'Communist threat' and Soviet expansionism. It proved to be highly influen-
tial and led members of the former Permanent Bureau of Continental Foreign

Ministers of the governments-in-exile to form the Benelux Customs Union.

Without Winston Churchill it is unlikely that the EM would have got off
the ground. In early 1946 Churchill embarked on a campaign to alert the
West to the dire threat that the Soviet Union posed to Europe. He conceived
European unity as a means of stemming the spread of communism, unity
being directed 'not only at the Communist threat from outside national fron-
tiers but also at the danger of subversion from the inside'. Churchill believed

that a United Europe movement was essential to the revival of western

Europe and, in a speech in the House of Commons in June, called for
permission to be granted for the former enemy states of Germany, Austria,
Hungary and Italy to take their place in the European system.
Churchill hoped to work through the PEU and use the 'immense amount
 THE EUROPEAN MOVEMENT AND 'THE BATTLE FOR PICASSO'S MIND' 459

of pro-British sentiment' in western Europe. His son-in-law and closest

colleague on the European project, Duncan Sandys, visited PEU organiser
Count Coudenhove-Kalergi with the news that Churchill was working on
plans for a pan-European initiative. The count's views, however, were
considered far too federalist and idealist, and Sandys informed him that the
British intended to sponsor an entirely new creation. Churchill did make use
of other PEU supporters, including the British ambassador in Paris, Duff
Cooper, who supplied him with political intelligence on the increasing stab-
ility in France: Tt looks as if the Communist virus is being decidedly
corrected.' He saw European unity in terms of a French and German partner-
ship as a balance to Soviet power.
Although hampered by being in opposition, Churchill sought a major
policy initiative, and his first move was to call in Tory members 'who have
had some responsibility for the political side in the recent war'. He told them
that 'if we are to win the future, we must set aside the past', adding that the
Germans 'with their many great qualities, must be brought back into the
community of free nations'.
At the University of Zurich, on 19 September 1946, Churchill appealed
for the creation of 'a kind of United States of Europe' from the 'Atlantic to
the Black Sea'. He claimed that its structure, 'if well and truly built, will be
such as to make the material strength of a single state less important. Small
nations will count as much as large ones and gain their honour by their
contribution to the common cause.' Hardly noticed was the specific exclusion
of Britain from this enterprise. 'In all this urgent work, France and Germany
must take the lead together. Great Britain, the British Commonwealth of
Nations, mighty America, and I trust Soviet Russia must be friends and
. . .

sponsors of the new Europe and must champion its right to live and shine.'
Churchill was not willing to give up the 'special relationship' with the United
States, seeing it 'as an alternative to (perhaps even a refuge from) European
federalism'.
Many inside the Conservative Party questioned the wisdom of setting up
a 'Western Bloc', while former resistance members were openly antagonistic.
The speech, however, had an electrifying effect on opinion in Europe. Leo
Amery declared that 'as for the Germans your speech may have been just in
time to save them from going Bolshevist'. Churchill tried to create an all-party
handling group, but it was frowned upon by Labour Prime Minister Clement
Attlee. Instead, he set up a broad-based non-political 'Steering Committee'
with Sandys, Bob Boothby and his friend Beddington-Behrens, and the ever-
present Retinger.^^
Formed in October 1946 as the result of a meeting between Beddington-
Behrens and Belgium Prime Minister Paul van Zeeland, an economist of
international standing, the European League for Economic Co-operation
(ELEC) became a cornerstone of the EM. Designed to consider the technical
460 PART FIVE: THE CHANGE

problems of European economic union, ELEC was organised as a closed

shop of the elite of economic liberalism. It was pro-British and anti-federalist.
The British Economic League for European Co-operation was presided over
by senior Conservative politicians - Sir Harold Butler (invited by Gubbins),
Boothby, Harold Macmillan, David Eccles, Amery's son Julian, Beddington-
Behrens; two Labour figures - Bob Edwards, chair of the Independent Labour
Party and secretary-general of the Chemical Workers' Union, and Harry
Hynd; and Lord Lay ton, a former PEU member and chair of the News Chron-
icle. Funds for ELEC were forthcoming from Astor and, on the initiative of

Gubbins, Beddington-Behrens, considered by Macmillan to be 'a special kind

of philanthropist'. Astor also paid Dr Retinger - appointed secretary-general
and ELEC liaison officer with other committees - an annual grant of £500.
When Edward Heath relaunched the European project in the early seventies
it was ELEC which was the chosen vehicle for secret subsidies.

In November, Churchill founded the United Europe Movement (UEM)

with Duncan Sandys as general secretary. The UEM's committee of co-opted
leading personalities, who regarded the idea of members as being 'danger-
ous', included Julian Amery, Boothby, Oliver Stanley, Lord Layton, the
publisher Victor Gollancz, and Commander Stephen King-Hall, who devoted
his National News-Letter to United Europe.
In an attempt to allay fears of a German revival, Sandys urged resistance
leaders to form a parallel French committee, the Conseil Fran^ais pour
I'Europe Unie (CFEU). With representatives from all the major parties except
the 'violently anti-European Communist Party', the CFEU was financed by
the Centre d'Action Internationale, a small committee of eminent French
bankers. Opposed to federalism and favouring the 'Unionist' approach, the
CFEU recognised British leadership. Unfortunately for the British, they
lacked the financial power to sustain the leading role for long.^°
Attempts to gain access to American funding had been made from the
beginning of the European unity campaign but, while there was sympathy
for the cause, the requests were initially rebuffed because of British intransi-
gence. In 1946, two OSS economists, Charles P. Kindleberger and Walt W.
Rostow, had persuaded Jean Monnet to launch the idea of a UN-backed
Economic Commission for Europe, but the British refused to support his
federalist vision. This was partly owing
Monnet's preference for operating
to
among socialists and the labour unions, which did not endear him to the
Conservatives. Preferring to work with elite groups and independent experts
rather than parliamentarians, in thewords of his biographer, Francois Duch-
ene,Monnet 'operated in the margin of the state in a system where the state
was everything'. It was a strategy that brought him little success in Britain
but found favour among the Europeans.
In the wake of the founding of ELEC and the UEM, at the invitation of
the US ambassador in London, Averell Harriman, Retinger travelled to the
 THE EUROPEAN MOVEMENT AND 'THE BATTLE FOR PICASSO'S MIND' 461

United States to meet members of the Council on Foreign Relations, especially

his 'old friend' Adolf Berle Jnr, who agreed to lead an American section.
While there was no official recognition, Retinger was encouraged by the
response, particularly from John Foster Dulles, who was 'among those in
America who helped us most'. He also met with former senior MI 6 officer
and leading banker Sir William Wiseman, an active behind-the-scenes figure
promoting Anglo-American intelligence co-operation. The positive response
to Retinger's visit had been made possible by the efforts of Coudenhove-
Kalergi, who, although regarded as irrelevant in Europe, had supporters in
America for his idea of a United States of Europe.^^
Attempts to unite in Europe around Churchill's appeal foundered as it
became clear that the majority of the resistance were pursuing a federalist
agenda in opposition to the British. It was also apparent that no amount of
goodwill left over from the war could bridge the political differences with
the Socialist Movement for the United States of Europe, which promoted the
'International Third Force of socialists and social democrats' - between the
'dictatorship of Wall Street' and the 'totalitarian state of Stalin'. In December,
the European Union of Federalists (EUF) was founded in Paris as the move-
ment of former resistance activists with radical proposals for European unity.
Chairs of the central committee were Holland's Professor H. Brugmans
(1946-8), France's Henri Frenay (1948-50) and Germany's Eugen Kogon
(1951-2). It had some support from the 'Keep Left' group in the Labour Party
but was opposed by Attlee and Bevin, who rejected federalism.
Although Bevin believed in European consolidation and the need for
defence against Soviet expansionism, he had set his face against a federal
Europe. 'Federalism was a bugbear to the British Government which seemed
to find it everywhere.' At a meeting with British pro-Europeans, Bevin told
them that he was hostile to the idea of an European Assembly because he
feared the communists might get a foot in it. The reality was that Bevin
was not willing to support any initiative that ceded sovereignty or was not
controlled by Britain. He was supported by Attlee, who told American jour-
nalist Cyrus Sulzberger that Britain was

not strictly a European power. We are a member of the

Commonwealth. We have to consider that and our responsibili-
ties to it more than Europe Furthermore, one must always
. . .

remember that the nations of Europe have long traditions of

individuality, and you cannot expect to scramble all these eggs
either successfully. We shall make reasonable progress, but not
as much as some optimists in the United States think should
be done.

Bevin's response was to promote traditional inter-governmental co-operation.

In March 1948 he created in Brussels the Western Union, a political association
462 PART FIVE: THE CHANGE

of Britain, France and the Benelux countries which aimed at organising collec-
tive defence.""
Churchill's vision differed little from Labour government. He
that of the
told a UEM meeting was not to be party to
at the Albert Hall that Britain
unity. 'United Europe will form one major regional entity. There is the United
States, with all its dependencies; there is the Soviet Union; there is the British
Empire and Commonwealth; and there is Europe. Here are the four main
pillars of the world temple of peace.' Churchill added that 'it is for us to lay

the foundation, to create the atmosphere and give the driving impulsion'.
Profoundly anti-federalist. Bob Boothby spoke in terms of 'a league of totally
independent sovereign states'.
In July 1947, Duncan Sandys called together representatives of the British
and French committees, the European Union of Federalists (Henri Brugmans),
the Catholic-sponsored Nouvelles Equipes Internationales (NEI, Robert
Bichet) and the ELEC (Paul van Zeeland) for a meeting in Paris with the
object of setting up an umbrella organisation to co-ordinate their actions.
Later in the year, the various groups merged into the Joint International
Committee of the Movement for European Unity (JICMEU), with Sandys as
chair and Retinger secretary-general.
In the United States, conscious of the 'tremendous growth of anti-
Communist feeling' in the country and that European unity was seen as a
means of resisting Russian aggression, Coudenhove-Kalergi threw his weight
behind an initiative delivered by John Foster Dulles. In April, backed by
OSS veterans Allen Dulles and Bill Donovan, he helped form the American
Committee for a Free and United Europe. It soon became apparent, however,
that only Churchill had the standing to launch the idea, though the count
did persuade the Americans to fund a number of European initiatives.^^
The UEM's Special Finance Committee, which was headed by ICI's Lord
McGowan and included fellow-industrialists and bankers such as Lord
Nuffield, Lord Balfour, Lord Camrose, Viscount Kemsley (Camrose's
brother), Robert Fleming, Sir Malcolm Stewart, Sir Andrew Duncan of the
Steel Federation, Sir Archibald Jamieson, George Gibson from the TUC, and
the support of Lloyds Bank, Marks & Spencer and Vickers, had managed to
raise £25,000 from private sources. British funding was not, however, enough
to fulfil Churchill's ambitions.^^
Covert US
funding of 'voluntary' organisations began with Marshall Aid.
Faced in the aftermath of the war with the economic collapse of Europe and
the growing threat of the Soviet Union to US economic interests, the American
Secretary of State, George Marshall, proposed in a speech at Harvard on 5
June 1947 the granting of economic aid through a joint recovery programme.
Drawing on the previous year's Council on Foreign Relations' War and Peace
Study Group report, 'Reconstruction in Western Europe', by lawyer Charles
M. Spofford and banker David Rockefeller, Marshall introduced his European
 THE EUROPEAN MOVEMENT AND THE BATTLE FOR PICASSO'S MIND' 463

Recovery Programme (ERP). He admitted that Churchill's call for a United

Europe had influenced his belief that European states could undertake their
own economic recovery with financial help from the United States. His state-
ment received the support of Astor's Observer, which launched its first
campaign for European integration around Marshall's plan. Liberal peer Lord
Lay ton headed an ELEC committee whose proposals underpinned the plan
for European economic regeneration.^^
A total of eighteen countries accepted Marshall Aid, and on 16 April
their representatives established the Organisation for European Economic
Co-operation (OEEC) to implement the recovery programme. In the same
month. Congress set up the Economic Co-operation Administration (EC A)
to administer the aid. This required recipients to make substantial repayments
for repatriation to the United States. Known as 'counter-part funds', the
repayments accumulated under the control of the ECA's American admin-
istrators in Europe. In fact, only a portion were forwarded to Washington;
the rest were siphoned off into illegal funds available for covert projects. The
most powerful administrator of these covert funds was the US Military High
Commissioner in Berlin, General Lucius D. Clay, who was approached by
Retinger for help with the European project.^^
As a result of JICMEU campaigning, in May 1948 Churchill convened in
The Hague the first Congress of Europe. It attracted 750 'top people', with
representatives from sixteen countries. Among those attending were Chur-
chill, who was appointed President of Honour, Leon Blum, Jean Monnet,

Paul Reynaud, Paul-Henri Spaak, Alcide de Gaspari, and a representative of

the Vatican. Working closely with Paul Rijkens of Unilever and van Zeeland,
later chair of the North Atlantic Council, Retinger was responsible for organis-

ing the Congress. P. A. Kerstens, an ELEC representative who had been

minister for economic affairs in the wartime Dutch government-in-exile, offi-
cially raised the '£20,000' used to finance the Congress. In fact, Retinger

had persuaded one of General Clay's key representatives, Shepard Stone, to

support the Congress with a grant of £40,000 from the ECA's 'counter-part
funds'. A former OSS officer. Stone had worked in psychological warfare
during the war.^^
At the final session of the Congress a communique was issued stating
simply: 'We Europe throughout whose area the free movement
desire a united
of persons, ideas and goods is restored.' Later in the year, the EM was
formalised as an unofficial but permanent body to promote the concept of a
united Europe. Chaired by Sandys, with a general secretariat and offices in
London and Paris, the EM set up a loose structure in which the constituent
organisations had considerable freedom. The British had insisted on informal
control and the executive committee had an over-representation of British
and French 'unionist' delegates which Sandys, using 'arbitrary methods', and
Retinger - the latter working hand in glove with Gubbins - used to counter
464 TART FIVE: THE CHANGE

the federalists. The Dutch, French and Belgians went along with Britain's
leading role, partly because they feared a German revival.^^
Britain was movements' and 'this wealth gave
'by far the richest of all the
it considerable strength' within the EM. The all-important JICMEU finance

subcommittee was headed by Beddington-Behrens. Over 80 per cent of the

EM's finances came from the British-led UEM and, to a smaller extent, the
French CFEU. The British quite brazenly used their financial monopoly to
keep the movement in line with their own interests. When the European
Union of Federalists (EUF), a small but badly funded group led by Spinelli
and Frenay, organised a meeting in Zurich of thirty Swiss bankers in an
attempt to raise funds, the British moved to ensure that any Swiss money
went to the EM and not to the EUF. Adroit manoeuvring by Sandys and
Beddington-Behrens, who met secretly with the bankers, led to the 'post-
ponement' of the decision. Sandys then fought to scupper Spinelli and
Frenay's concept of 'international federalism' which the unionists dismissed
as 'impractical'.^^
In July 1948, Retinger made a second trip to the United States, along with
Sandys, Spaak and Beddington-Behrens. The latter recorded that Retinger's
'friendships in high places were extraordinary' and was taken aback that he
was able 'to telephone direct to President Truman and General Marshall and
arrange immediate appointments'. The principal contact, however, was Allen
Dulles, who was persuaded to drop the 'utopian' Coudenhove-Kalergi and
agree to underwrite secretly the EM. In the same month, Frank Wisner made
a fact-finding trip to Europe where he visited General Clay, Averell Harriman,
Marshall Aid's chief representative, and Britain's Foreign Secretary. On his
return, Wisner took charge of the Office of Special Projects (soon changed to
the innocuously sounding Office of Policy Co-ordination - OPC), which
became Marshall Aid's 'political action' arm, with 'counter-part funds'
funnelled by EC A administrators to Wisner. Financial problems within the
EM were apparent after Beddington-Behrens resigned from the finance
subcommittee in December in order to devote more time to business. The
need for American funding had now become desperate."*^
An American Committee for a United Europe (ACUE) was officially
launched during a luncheon in honour of Winston Churchill on 29 March
1949, after Congress made European unity a central component of Marshall
Aid. Modelled on the British-inspired EM and greatly influenced by Sandys
and Retinger, the tightly controlled ACUE was an arm's-length intelligence
affair mixing private individuals with veteran intelligence operatives. The

chair and deputy were Donovan and Dulles, with a secretary, George S.
Franklin, Director of the Council of Foreign Relations. Those on the board
included CIA director-to-be Walter Bedell Smith; Arthur Goldberg, respon-
running the European covert operations of the labour union, the
sible for
Congress of Industrial Organisations (CIO); trade unionist David Dubinsky
 THE EUROPEAN MOVEMENT AND 'THE BATTLE FOR PICASSO'S MIND' 465

and hisdeputy Jay Lovestone; General Lucius Clay and Charles M. Spofford,
a director of the CIA. ACUE personnel viewed American federalism as an
ideal political model which could be deployed with benefit in Europe.
ACUE's creation was followed in April by twelve European countries
and the USA and Canada signing the North Atlantic Treaty, which guaran-
teed mutual defence in the event of Soviet aggression. The EM played an
important background role in the founding of NATO, with many of its

adherents taking up senior posts in the organisation. One of the aims of the
EM was to counter the rising tide of anti- Americanism in Europe, the
rearming of Germany and the creation of an informal forum for promoting
the cause of European unity. In May the EM gave birth to the Council of
Europe and the Consultative Assembly in Strasbourg, which included the
Brussels Treaty countries, and later Germany. The Council was, however, as
far as the British wished to go in the direction of European unity, and from
then on Sandys systematically opposed all attempts at developing the EM
programme.^^
The Conservative press was 'almost universally hostile' to the EM, which
was divided, 'with its federalists, constitutionalists and functionalists arguing
among themselves'. The political crisis was paralleled by a funding crisis
which, in July 1949, became acute. Churchill appealed once again to Lord
McGowan for funds, recognising that without the financial monopoly, the
British section would lack the political clout to counter the federalists. Chur-
chill wrote to Donovan that EM activities were 'severely restricted by lack

of funds'. Donovan was sympathetic and over the next five years ACUE
pumped nearly £3.5 million into the EM and related projects 'as part of the
US efforts to create a bulwark against communism'. The majority of ACUE
funds, five-sixths, came from 'State Department secret funds' - i.e. Wisner's
OPC. They were specifically distributed to those groups and individuals who
believed in a rapid approach to European integration. The man responsible
for the funding programme was an anglophile and former senior OSS officer,
Thomas W. Braden. He had worked for the US Military Government in
Germany before being appointed Executive Director of ACUE and, in 1950,
Dulles's assistant in the CIA.^^
Responsibility for dispersing the funds within Europe was given to Chur-
chill,though it was Sandys who co-operated with the ACUE in deciding
where its funds would go. ACUE administration was not, however, highly
regarded by EM officials, and the huge sums were largely unregulated. The
Treasurer's Reports of the EM show that between 1947 and 1953, the EM
spent £1,000,000, £580,000 of which was contributed by the Europeans, though
that may have included Marshall Aid 'counter-part funds'. Between 1949 and
1953, £440,000 came from ACUE, most of whose money, £380,000, was from
State Department secret funds. In August 1949, £25,000 was delivered to
Churchill, and in the following March another £5,000. Intriguingly, Sandys
466 PART FIVE: THE CHANGE

was able on his own authority to hand over AGUE money to a separate
unidentified 'British organisation'.^^
Sandys assured the Americans that only an inner circle would know of
the source of the funds. Thomas Braden later acknowledged that the leading
figures in the EM 'knew and approved of CIA funding', though they were
concerned lest details leaked. A former senior member of the EM did, in fact,
publish details of the funds received from the United States in Echer Tageblatt
(27 August 1949). He attacked the 'American intervention' because it proved
that the Movement had no 'idealism'. Fortunately for the EM executive, this
obscure article was ignored while similar accusations made by the Soviet

Union were brushed aside.^^

The EM financial subcommittee was subsequently dissolved and reconsti-
tuted with ICI's Paul Chambers as chair. Thus, at a time when American
money was coming on-stream, funding still remained firmly in British hands.
This remained so until November 1950, when Chambers was replaced by a
Belgian treasurer. Baron Rene Boel.^^
During 1950 the Movement began to splinter, with the federalist ambitions
of its radical members increasingly at odds with Sandys' conservative policy.
The Continentals were torn between support for the British and the 'negative
attitudes' of Sandys, who was looked upon with 'increasing suspicion'. Fear-
ing that the federalists had gone too far, he attempted to disband the Move-
ment. One ACUE official complained that 'the British fear, above all, to be
forced to give up any point of their national sovereignty, no matter how
slight'. At the end of March, Sandys was asked to resign as general secretary.
In June, the pro-European Harold Macmillan chided Churchill for not
giving a lead on European unity, and lacking a 'clear or well-defined plan'.
The European project was only active when Churchill indicated interest; as
soon as that waned then so did that of its supporters. American officials in
Europe remained horrified by the British tactics, which they believed were
sabotaging European integration and causing a breakdown of Marshall Aid.
After Braden consulted with Bedell Smith, the ACUE forced the replacement
in July of Sandys by Spaak. Simultaneously, the headquarters were moved
from Paris to Brussels. In August, a 'special committee' headed by Spaak
presented a new structure plan. Unfortunately, it gave the Executive Commit-
tee even more draconian powers, which observers thought displayed 'how
little respect' Spaak had at the time for the federalists.'*''

A large unspecified amount of the ACUE funding went to the British

United Europe Movement, which had made a number of substantial loans
to the EM. In August 1950, an agreement was reached in which British loans
were written off as donations. Disaster loomed, however, when at the end
of the year Congress refused to renew Marshall Aid. Fortunately, the 1951
Mutual Security Act stated Europe could be used
that financial assistance to
to 'further encourage the economic unification and political federation of
 THE EUROPEAN MOVEMENT AND THE BATTLE FOR PICASSO'S MIND' 467

Europe'. At the same time, Dulles discovered that the CIA's sponsorship of
organisations had become an 'operational junk heap' and decided to consoli-
date the operations into the International Organisations Division under
Thomas Braden. Thus 'with the support of Allen Dulles and Frank Wisner,
the CIA began its covert support of the non-Communist political left around
the world - trade unions, political parties, and international organisations of
students and journalists'. Braden's 'liberal' CIA faction recognised that in
Europe the best opponents of the socialists and communists were the social
democrats. During the year, the resources available to ACUE effectively
trebled. Receipts from the Mutual Security Agency financed during 1951/2
'federalist' affiliated groups to the tune of £10,000, while in 1952/3 the EM

Action Committee received £27,648. The greater part of ACUE funding,

particularly after 1953, went to the EM's youth campaigns which, between
1951 and 1959, amounted to £1,342,223.''
When the Conservatives returned to power in 1951, Macmillan concluded
that Churchill 'had now abandoned any effort to realise his European concep-
tion'. While American funding had helped the British to retain their predomi-

nant position in the EM, it was US influence which enabled the federalists
to gain the upper hand and pave the way for institutions that sidelined the
British. The turning point came in December 1951, when Spaak, realising that

Britain was never going to co-operate with the European project, resigned
from the Strasbourg Consultative Assembly. A year later, a reorganisation
of the EM's international executive allowed the federalists to gain control.
By that time, Churchill's eyes were firmly fixed on a new project - an inter-

national agreement with the Soviet Union.'^

The federalists of the EUF - dismissed by the British unionists as 'impracti-
cal' - became the great pioneers of European integration. Despite being a
small minority - mainly owing to lack of financial resources - they stuck to
their views and by the early fifties had made significant progress. The former
resistance workers of Europe saw their federalist ideas being taken seriously
by the political elites of the countries that would form the emerging European
Economic Community. Naturally, such success was viewed with dismay by
the British.''
Unfortunately, as Douglas Dodds-Parker recognised, 'a golden opportu-
nity was missed'. He believed that this had a good deal to do with the negative
attitude within the Foreign Office towards SOE, if not to the resistance, which
precluded more overt use being made of the goodwill towards Britain. The
real problem, however, was that British politicians of all hues were still

wedded to a superpower vision of the world which was no longer relevant

and beyond the means of Britain's underperforming economy.'^

According to former senior officer Montague Woodhouse, MI6 did not miss
the opportunity to use their experience of the EM project to co-operate and
468 PART FIVE: THE CHANGE

finance with the CIA 'a few unspectacular activities'. Some of these have
only been hinted at, while others, such as the funding of the magazine Encoun-
ter, have been revealed. Less well known is that all these operations began
as the preserve of MI 6, which only relinquished control when, at the end of
the forties, funding began to dry up, leaving it little alternative but to
co-operate - often with regret - with the Americans.^

THE EUROPEAN YOUTH CAMPAIGN

In 1947, the Soviet-funded international youth movement, the World Federa-
tion of Democratic Youth (WFDY), was racked by the divisions that went
with the Cold War. The WFDY soon began to splinter, leaving the right wing
and social democrats with no natural home. To fill the void, the British
National Council of Social Service, chaired by (Sir) George Haynes, agreed
to organise a preparatory committee, also chaired by Haynes, to launch a
complementary international youth body. European federalists aligned with
the EM had plans for a major youth campaign, but the financial means were
not at hand and the realisation of the project was, initially, 'indefinitely
postponed'. In a rare instance, however, substantial British government funds
were made available for a conference to be held in mid-1948. Three-quarters
of the £12,000 budget was covered by government departments including
£3,000 from a bogus Prime Minister's 'South African Aid to Britain Fund',
which appears to have been a cover for funds from the Secret Vote. Covert
funding was also received from the French government."*^
The success of the conference resulted in the creation of the World
Assembly of Youth (WAY), with headquarters in Paris. Dubbed 'the cold
war trojan horse', a British WAY national committee was elected with a
broad membership, including non-Moscow-aligned socialists. It was not long,
however, before it was dominated by career-minded potential politicians
whose views were 'almost entirely in tune with those of their Foreign Office
advisers'. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s the national committee remained
in the hands of the Right.^^
In 1952 way's president, Guthrie Moir, received 'a dire warning' that its

'very considerable grant aids' from the Foreign Office were at risk. Like
Haynes, Moir was an Establishment figure who was placed on many different
committees by the government. A PoW in Singapore during the war and then
Chief Officer of the St John's Ambulance Brigade (1947-50), Moir had a
successful career in religious and educational broadcasting. He was concerned
that the threatened cuts were coming at a time when there was a possibility
of building WAY into 'a really useful anti-communist influence'. It was in

touch with the Foreign Office's IRD and from its monthly
circulated material
bulletin of International Organisations, and was able do so without really
to
looking like an official propaganda operation. Officials from the Foreign,
 THE EUROPEAN MOVEMENT AND 'THE BATTLE FOR PICASSO'S MIND' 469

Colonial and Commonwealth Relations Offices were keen to use WAY,

particularly by providing hospitality to overseas students as a counterweight
to Communist Party special efforts to influence student visitors to Britain.^^
The Foreign Office did eventually rally support against the Treasury cuts
and a Triends of WAY' group was set up with prominent patrons, including
the former PM, Clement Attlee, and Prime Minister Anthony Eden. The
majority of funds, however, were received from the EM-backed European
Youth Campaign's (EYC) Action Committee, headed by Andre Philip and
responsible for 'special tasks'. Moir 'succeeded in obtaining the first batch of
dollar aid for WAY from the Foundation for Youth and Student Affairs' - a
CIA front organisation.^^
To the embarrassment of the western allies, in the summer of 1951 the
Soviet Union sponsored a gigantic youth rally in East Berlin, the cost of which
had run into millions. When the US high commissioner for Germany, John
McCloy, was supplied by MI 6 with a secretly taken film of the rally, he
instructed his staff to organise a counter-offensive. An aide, Shephard Stone,
was sent to see Joseph Retinger and other senior officials of the EM with a
request that it respond in kind with an anti-communist rally. Told that funds
would be made by ACUE, Retinger and Paul-Henri Spaak organ-
available
ised a 'special committee' to consider what form the campaign would take.
The committee initially agreed to hold a rally, but to the dismay of ACUE
leaders finally decided to conduct a continuous propaganda campaign to win
the young to the idea of European unity. Thus was born the the EYC.^^
The EM had complete control over its International Youth Campaign and
its political section which, in March 1952, formed the EYC, which grouped

together the non-communist youth organisations of western Europe. In

October, it organised an Assembly of Political Youths at The Hague, which
a year later became autonomous of the EM and reliant on bilateral agreements
for 'special projects'. Until the creation of the youth campaign, propaganda
had been virtually non-existent and, in effect, the EYC became the propa-
ganda organisation of the EM. There was, however, a conflict between 'politi-
cal' and 'educative' action, a division that grew sharper as time went on.

Between 1951 and 1959, the EYC was by far the most active section of the
EM, putting together a massive propaganda campaign of conferences and
exhibitions, cinema shows, radio broadcasts and a large array of publications.
In eight years £1.34 million of secret money was passed on to the EYC.
According to the ACUE representative in Europe, Allan Hovey Jnr, the
greater part of EYC came from State Department covert funds, which
finance
were forwarded to Hovey in Brussels. Those intended for the EYC were
passed through a covering body in Paris - the Centre d'Action Europeenne.''°
The promoted WAY and labour youth groups such as the Inter-
EM
national Union of Socialist Youth (lUSY) and the Labour League of Youth
(LLY), the youth secton of the Labour Party. These organisations received
470 PART FIVE: THE CHANGE

the bulk of the allocation of EYC money. In 1952, representatives of the

Labour League queried the source of the funding and alleged that some
money had come from US government sources. Dissatisfied with the
response, the League decided to disaffiliate from the EYC, in the process
producing a pamphlet explaining their reasons. Questions concerning EYC
and WAYfunding were also raised on the committee of the lUSY, which,
in 1967, set up a special commission to investigate the origin of the 'private
These included donations from the American Foundation for Youth
sources'.
and Students Abroad.
Between 1951 and 1959, the secretary of the EYC's British section was
Maurice Foley,later a Labour MP and minister. Although virtually every
penny the campaign spent came from the US government, Foley denied
any knowledge of CIA involvement. In 1975, the former head of the CIA's
International Organisations Division, Thomas Braden, confirmed that the
Agency had funded the EM and the EYC. When Braden heard Foley's denial,
he is Along with two other WAY
alleged to have replied, 'Bullshit.'
colleagues, Charles Longbottom and Barney Hayhoe, the latter chair of the
British National Committee during the late 1950s and early 1960s, Foley
subsequently became a trustee of another front organisation, the Ariel Foun-
dation.^2
The exposure CIA's financial aid to WAY led to the international
of the
Secretariat in Paris becoming increasingly discredited and a fall-off in the
organisation's affiliations. Eventually, WAY
collapsed and, in 1977, the British
National Committee - renamed the British Youth Council - disaffiliated.^^

STUDENT UNIONS
Parallel to the covertfunding of youth groups was the CIA's manipulation
of the student movement, which, as Jonathan Block and Patrick Fitzgerald
note, was 'pre-dated by similar British activity'. After the Second World War
student organisers were approached by senior officials of the National Union
of Students (NUS), who passed them on to a 'civil servant' acting on behalf
of MI6. In addition, the Foreign Office, through its overseas missions and
the British Council, compiled lists of those thought to be suitable candidates
for invites to international conferences. References were specifically made to
their anti-communist effectiveness. In July 1946 Foreign Office officials made

specific enquiries about the management of the NUS, in particular: 'whether

besides the Secretary and the Executive Committee there exists a governing
body, and whether any of this personnel might be induced to work for the
creation of a body of opinion within the delegation of the Union to balance
the extremists'.^^
The principal target of these moves was the creation in August, in Prague,
of the World Student Congress, attended by western and eastern European
 THE EUROPEAN MOVEMENT AND 'THE BATTLE FOR PICASSO'S MIND' 471

national student organisations. The communists were in the majority at the

Congress and a number of disputes arose as to the proper role of international
student organisations. The Congress did, however, end on an amicable note,
with a call for further co-operation and the building of a truly representative
international student organisation. This came into existence shortly after-
wards as the International Union of Students (lUS). Immediately after the
Congress, the Foreign Office's Russia Committee undertook a study of the
international student bodies and set in motion contact with the management
of the NUS. It also tasked MI6 with developing contacts within the inter-
national student bodies. Operating under a 'false flag', MI 6 officers stationed

in western Europe, particularly in Scandinavia, posed as officials of other

countries and began to recruit students as 'access agents' to penetrate commu-
nist countries and organisations.^^
Friendly relations between the national factions inside the lUS did not
last long and, in 1948, it splintered when it refused to condemn the communist
takeover in Czechoslovakia. It did so again following the Stalin-Tito split,

when Yugoslav students were expelled as 'Titoite agents'. 'Supposedly

financed by jumble sales in Prague and Moscow', the lUS was widely seen
in the West as a communist front organisation - 'the student section of the
Cominform' - and in order to counteract its influence, MI 6 and the CIA
backed the more moderate efforts of the British NUS, student bodies from
Scandinavia, and the American National Student Association (NSA). These
moves, which opened up earlier rifts and completely shattered any hope of
co-operation, resulted in the NSA breaking with the lUS in 1950 and forming
the rival International Student Conference (ISC) in Stockholm. Although it
was a founder member of the lUS, the NUS was won over to the ISC
largely because of the generous help from the NSA and the backing of the
anti-communist Labour Party grouping on the NUS, which included future
Labour Party MPs Roy Hattersley, Brian Walden, John Stonehouse and Alan
Lee Williams. By the early fifties, the new head of MI5's counter-subversion
F Branch, Alexander Kellar, former president of the Scottish Union of
Students, had begun organising the recruitment of British students. Most
were long-term 'sleepers' who displayed sympathy with communism but
acted as informers inside national and international organisations.-^
The ISC, with its headquarters at Leiden, Holland, was promoted as an
informal organisation without formal structure, with a brief to arrange meet-
ings and conferences and organise co-operation with other international
organisations such as WAY. The structure was necessary to attract the older
conservative national unions which were disillusioned by the communist-
controlled lUS. The initiative in creating the ISC had come from the Swedes,
who 'carried on a very tough battle against the Americans and others who
wanted to form an anti-communist organisation'. The Swedes 'gained a
victory' and ISC was set up specifically as a 'non' not 'anti' communist
472 PART FIVE: THE CHANGE

had the backing of MI6.

organisation; a fine distinction, indeed, but one that
Itwas not long, however, before the ISC drew up a 'Bases of Co-operation'
document governing admission to the Conference, which ensured that in
practice it would be impossible to admit eastern European national unions.
Following a major conference in Edinburgh in January 1952, a Co-ordina-
ting Secretariat of National Union of Students (COSEC) was created to imple-
ment Conference decisions. Without executive powers, its first general
secretary (1953-7) was John Thompson, who had just relinquished his presi-
dency of the NUS, while a key figure in promoting COSEC was his successor,
Frank Copplestone, President of the NUS from 1954 to 1956. Copplestone
was a conservative who joined with other moderates, including Fred Jarvis,
who went on to become general secretary of the National Union of Teachers,
'in persuading the NUS to disassociate itself from the communist-dominated

International Union of Students, and instead to affiliate with the International

Student Conference'.
Although the ISC was formally committed to discussing student problems
and education, and not 'polities', it was widely seen as 'a creature of the
Cold War', dedicated to fighting communism. The Times would later accuse
the CIA and MI6 of using 'students to pressure international student organis-
ations into taking cold war positions'. The president of the Irish students
suggested that the fact that these organisations had survived for so long
was proof that it 'served the interests of the CIA'. A Swedish minister of
communications who had been instrumental in founding the ISC admitted
that the revelations of CIA involvement were 'very depressing'. He accused
the Americans and British of showing a 'false flag' and having 'undertaken
secret activities of a type which we were fighting against'.
During the mid-fifties, MI6's London BIN station, operating under Peter
Lunn, began to recruit large numbers of NUS members, who travelled to
communist countries or who had access to communist groups, as informal
intelligence-gatherers. These student assets also had other uses. A secret
internal MI6 document dated 17 July 1956 illustrates the extent of British and
American intelligence planning and the problems of arm's-length control. It
also reveals the sophistication of some intelligence operations. According to
the document, the permanent COSEC staff in Holland consisted of three
officials - 'Of these two are run, one by us, the other by CIA. The British

official is not however conscious to SIS and would not, it is judged, react

favourably if made conscious; nor is he aware that COSEC 's source of funds
is in fact mainly CIA.' It goes on to reveal that Operation SCHOLAR was

run not from Holland but by an officer in the London BIN station, overtly
by telegram and letter. This had led to 'irregular and broken communication',
particularly as the official was often abroad, which meant that 'even in the
most favourable circumstances there is likely to be a big time-lag between
our telling COSEC we want it to act in a certain way and its so acting'.
 THE EUROPEAN MOVEMENT AND THE BATTLE FOR PICASSO'S MIND' 473

The author was further concerned that 'it is sometimes possible for impor-
tant COSEC emissaries to proceed on missions unbriefed'. Despite The frus-
trations', however, MI 6 regarded 'the limitations as acceptable'. It believed

it to be of paramount importance to maintain as far as possible

the illusion of COSEC 's complete independence. seems to us

It

that, if once we attempted to sharpen COSEC Cold War

as a
instrument, we might find it had ceased to have any point at
all. Certainly it would be difficult to retain the allegiance of

member organisations in the uncommitted countries of Asia

and Africa, if they suspected that COSEC was being 'run' by
the Americans and ourselves.

A further document from June 1960 reveals that MI6 had recruited ISC
students in the Commonwealth countries and was receiving the help of their
respective intelligence agencies in running the operation.^^
For about fifteen years the CIA was the principal source of funds, supply-
ing over 90 per cent of the ISC's finance. Most of the funding came via a
three-layer 'pass through' operation which involved a score of 'primary'
dummy foundations set up by the CIA. The official source of funds was the
US NSA, which, in turn, received its finance from the CIA through laundered
contributions from the Catherwood Foundation, the New York Fund for
Youth and Student Affairs (FYS A) and the San Jacinto Fund. The foundations
exercised considerable influence over the ISC because each project devised
in Leiden had to be submitted to US representatives for budget approval.
Between 1962 and 1964, the FYS A contributed $1,826,000 while the San Jacinto
Fund delivered nearly half a million dollars for the ISC's magazine. The
Student, and a further third of a million for international conferences.
When in 1967 the secret student funding scandal was uncovered in the
American magazine Ramparts, the New York Herald-Tribune referred to 'a
British counterpart of the dummy foundations' that channelled money to the
ISC, but provided no other details. Pamphlets put out by the Radical Student
Alliance noted rumours of parallel British Intelligence operations, even
naming names, but convincing proof was not established at the time.^°
The ISC expanded rapidly in the fifties and by 1962 had eighty worldwide
members. The majority of these national unions were in Asia, Africa and
South America, which caused some problems for the western European and
American members that had founded the organisation. Control of conferences
and COSEC, however, remained firmly in the hands of the western student
unions which tried to keep the lid on political discussion. This was a period
when MI6's Special Political Action section paid particular attention to cultiv-
ating its ties to national student unions in a bid to counter communist influ-
ences. Pressures, however, continued to build to give expression to the views
of Third World delegations. In 1964, in an attempt to curtail the leftward
474 PART FIVE: THE CHANGE

drift, ISC undertook a complete turnabout and, at the Christchurch

the
Conference inNew Zealand, adopted a charter with a liberal manifesto which
condemned 'Imperialism, Totalitarianism, Colonialism and Racism'. The ISC
was presented as an explicitly political counterforce to the Soviet-backed
lUS.^^
The manoeuvring within the ISC had been instigated by British represen-
tatives,some of whom went on to join MI6. Others became regular diplomats
in the Foreign Office, and when the pro-Europe enthusiast Edward Heath
was elected Prime Minister in 1970, a number were appointed to senior posts
within the European Economic Community (EEC). The deputy chief of MI6,
Maurice Oldfield, was also tasked by Heath with penetrating Europe, and a
number of agents were inserted into the EEC, where, in reference to MI6's
headquarters, they became known as the 'Century House boys'. ''^

Chair of the Christchurch Conference was a former NUS President

(1964-6), T. W. 'Bill' Savage, who in 1968 joined MI6. Savage served in
Dar-es-Salaam and in the early eighties in the Cabinet Office, before being
promoted to a senior post inside MI6.
The mover of the new Charter was Aneurin Rhys Hughes, another former
NUS President (1962-4). In 1966 Hughes joined the Foreign Office serving
as a diplomat in Singapore and Rome before, in 1973, joining the EEC's
General Secretariat in Brussels. He rose to become Head of Division for
Internal Co-ordination and continued for many years to work inside the
European Union.
Gwyn Morgan, who had been elected President of the NUS (1960-2) on
an anti-communist ticket, filled the ISC's top post as Secretary-General and
was in charge of finance. In this capacity 'he negotiated with the American
foundations which supplied the bulk of ISC funds and supervised the expen-
diture of the several million dollars devoted to world-wide propaganda and
organisation'. In 1964 Morgan departed to become head of the Labour Party's
International Department and was eventually elected General Secretary of
the party. An ardent pro-European, Morgan, too, pursued a career in the
EEC, becoming head of the Welsh Information Office in 1975 and, from 1983,
Representative of the Commission of the European Community on Turkey.
Morgan was also a trustee of the Ariel Foundation.
The leader of the British delegation to Christchurch was Geoffrey Martin.
Head of the NUS International Affairs section, he was elected President in
1966. Martin was deeply involved in the ISC and made great efforts to allay

local Student Union fears about the source of ISC funding. A minority report
on the ISC for the 1965 NUS Margate conference revealed that 90 per cent
of its funding came from US foundations. The reportwas attacked by ISC
adherents with references to 'the Communist conspiracy'. In 1968 Martin
became director of the charity for the homeless. Shelter. In 1974 he joined
the Diplomatic Staff Commonwealth Secretariat, and five years later was
 THE EUROPEAN MOVEMENT AND 'THE BATTLE FOR PICASSO'S MIND' 475

appointed head of the Office of the Commission of the European Community,

Northern Ireland. He was another trustee of Ariel.
Margaret 'Meta' Ramsay, President of the Scottish NUS (1959-61), became
in 1962 Associate Secretary of the ISC, at Leiden. From 1965 to 1967, Ramsay
was Secretary of the Fund for International Student Co-operation (FISC),
which was based in London to 'further co-operation among students of the
free world'. Under its organiser, Scottish manager of the European Movement
and future Labour MP George Foulkes, it held seminars for Third World
students visiting Britain and organised weekend seminars for NUS officials.
In 1967, the Radical Student Alliance issued a pamphlet, 'ISC, CIA and NUS',
which speculated that FISC was a CIA front. FISC officials vigorously denied
the claim and countered that it was financed by 'people and organisations
who have shown an interest in students'.
FISC shared an office with the Overseas Students Trust (OST), which
paid the NUS to employ a full-time overseas student officer. A trustee of
OST was Dennis Grennan, who was the first Labour Party member to be
elected NUS President in the fifties after years of right-wing rule. During his
tenure of office, Grennan helped consolidate the anti-communist forces
within the Union. Grennan was involved with WAY, and has been credited
with setting up the Ariel Foundation. He had a special interest in African
affairs during the sixties and seventies. An adviser on foreign affairs to

the Labour Foreign Secretary, James Callaghan, Grennan visited Angola to

report on the conditions of captured British mercenaries in prison, and
allegedly helped reorganise the Intelligence Service of Zambia's President
Kaunda.''
In 1969, Ramsay joined MI6, serving in Scandinavia - Stockholm and
Helsinki - the site of ISC's original support.

THE CONGRESS FOR CULTURAL FREEDOM AND

ENCOUNTER
One of the MI6/CIA co-operative operations that Monty Woodhouse
acknowledges was the Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF), which
subsequently resulted in the co-founding and funding of the periodical
Encounter 'as a vehicle for intellectual propaganda'. This was all part, Thomas
Braden later admitted, of an international 'battle for Picasso's mind'.^"^

After the communist takeover of Czechoslovakia in 1948, MI6 had

suggested to the Americans that 'it would be a good idea to provide a broader

intellectual haven for Western writers'. During March 1949, the Americans
began to consider their response to Soviet cultural initiatives, in particular a

peace conference that had been held that month in New York as part of the
Communist Information Bureau's (Cominform) campaign to shape western
opinion. Eight hundred prominent literary and artistic figures had been
476 TART FIVE: THE CHANGE

invited to repudiate 'US warmongering'. The first response came from a New
York professor and editor of the New Leader magazine for the anti-Soviet Left,
Sydney Hook, who had founded at the beginning of the war the Committee
for Cultural Freedom. His new group, Americans for Intellectual Freedom,
was supported by the OPC, whose head, Frank Wisner, was already looking
for ways to counter the next big Soviet-backed peace conference which was
to be held in late April, in Paris.^^

Wisner's aide Carmel Offie worked with trade unionist Irving Brown in
organising the International Day and War in
of Resistance to Dictatorship
Paris, covertly underwriting the expenses of Hook's groups and delegates
from Germany, Italy and the United States. The conference on 30 April
proved, however, to be something of a disappointment, and Wisner pushed
for a permanent committee of anti-communist intellectuals from Europe and
the United States to counter Soviet-backed front groups. The idea was taken
up by Hook and Melvin Lasky, a staff member of the New Leader and editor
of Der Monat. Lasky, who had worked with German 'resistance' movements
against the communists, had persuaded the US authorities in Berlin to
support Der Monat as a cultural magazine that would bring German
intellectuals to the free world. The first issue in October had featured a
number of British writers including Bertrand Russell, Philip Toynbee and
George Orwell. Offie also arranged covert funding for the proposal by Lasky
and former communists Franz Borkenau and Ruth Fischer for an international
conference of the non-communist Left in Berlin to be scheduled for the follow-
ing year.^^
In parallel, during the summer of 1949 officials of the British Foreign
Office working with the propaganda arm, IRD, and junior minister
secret
Christopher Mayhew, floated similar ideas. The minister wanted to 'rally the
forces of freedom and inspire a crusading spirit in all our peoples in defence
of the civilisation, liberties and values which Europe has given the world
and which are threatened by totalitarianism'. Officials sought a 'positive
campaign - a crusade - to put over to the public of Western Europe the merit
of Western democracy'. Northern Department head Christopher Warner
argued that the best spokesmen for 'putting life into the Western gospel'
would be people with 'big names and reputations among foreigners', since
they would be able to 'clothe the familiar ideals in inspiring language'.
Another official, R. L. Speight, suggested 'a body of leading figures working
together on their own and without evident Government sponsorship, but
with the Foreign Office in the background to give advice and guidance'.
Figures suggested included Arnold Toynbee, Alan Bullock, Bertrand Russell,
Harold Nicolson and Michael Oakeshott, but Mayhew wanted 'rather
younger and less orthodox' names such as Arthur Koestler and Barbara Ward.
Hector McNeil, the minister closest to MI 6, was 'very chary; poets make bad
committee men', while a meeting called to consider the proposal agreed
 THE EUROPEAN MOVEMENT AND 'THE BATTLE FOR PICASSO'S MIND' 477

that 'many were extremely woolly-minded about totalitarianism and true

democracy'. For the time being, the meeting decided not to make any
approaches.
MI 6 was also plans. In early June, an MI6 officer lunched with
making
and wartime colleague Malcolm Muggeridge, who
senior Telegraph journalist
was still working 'part-time' for the Service, and 'discussed at length a
particular assignment'. On the 21st, Muggeridge had his final discussion on
the 'MI 6 project' and agreed to take it on, even though he thought all the
Service's arrangements to be a 'combination of fantasy and incompetence'.
It appears that, like the Foreign Office scheme, this particular project was
dropped but revived once the Cold War became 'hot'.^^
The Americans continued with their plans for a cultural counteroffensive
and AGUE set up a cultural subcommittee run by two former OSS historians,
Frederick H. Burkhardt and William L. Langer. The man behind the scheme
was CIA officer Michael Josselson, the son of a former Estonian Jewish timber
merchant, who served after the war with the US Psychological Warfare
Division as an interrogator in Germany. During the autumn of 1949, he
persuaded Lasky to change the Berlin conference into a cultural event, in the
belief that it could better seize the initiative from the Soviets by reaffirming

'the fundamental ideals governing cultural (and political) action in the

Western world and the repudiation of all totalitarian challenges'.^'^
In June 1950, as the Korean War broke out, Europe's 'men of letters'

assembled in the Titania Palace theatre in the US Zone in Berlin before an

audience of four thousand to launch the GCF - a body whose purpose was
to 'defend freedom and democracy against the new tyranny sweeping the
old'. It to the 'cultural reconstruction' of a still weak and
was committed
devastated Europe through 'information, education, orientation, agitation',
and was sponsored by Der Monat and run by Lasky, who acted as secretary-
general. The costs were met by the OPC, using 50,000 dollars of Marshall
Aid 'counter-part' funds.^°
Invited to the Congress were many who were active in the EM such as Julian
Amery, Henri Frenay, Eugen Kogan, Hendryk Brugmans, Altiero Spinelli and
Fran(^ois Bondy They were, however, overshadowed by the two key polarising
.

figures - Arthur Koestler, then 'a pugnacious and energetic cold warrior', and
Ignazio Silone, 'a gentle socialist moralist'. Koestler, who, in the thirties, had
helped the Soviet operative Willi Munzenberg to manage front groups for
Moscow, had turned against the Communist Party during the time of the
Hitler-Stalin pact and had written the highly influential book about the
Moscow trials Darkness at Noon. Having worked for MI5 during the war,
Koestler was opposed by two wartime MI6 officers, A. J. 'Freddie' Ayer,
Professor of Philosophy at University College, London, and Hugh Trevor-
Roper, who were to play a self-acknowledged 'mischievous' role at the
Congress. Ayer had served with the British Security Co-ordination (BSC) in
 ^

478 PART FIVE: THE CHANGE

New York and then in Algiers, with Malcolm Muggeridge, and later with SOE
in France/
What irritated Ayer and Trevor-Roper was 'the hysterical atmosphere in
which the Congress was held, orchestrated as it was by revengeful
ex-Communists'. Acting as an 'obstructive element', they raised objections
to Koestler's role, attacking his 'dogmatism'. Supporting the idea of 'toler-

ance', they were repelled by the delirious applause that greeted speeches
calling for war against the Soviet Union. Ayer's and Trevor-Roper's warnings
were not heeded, and an informal steering committee was formed of the
hardline Koestler, Irving Brown, described by Reader's Digest as a 'one-man
OSS' who arranged for the American Federation of Labor to fund the interim
organisation, and Lasky. Josselson had 'kept track of everything that tran-
spired', and in the belief that Silone's subtler approach had won over
Koestler's frontal assault, ensured that Silone joined the committee. In Wash-
ington, the Congress was regarded by the Defence Department representative
to the OPC, James Magruder, as 'unconventional warfare at its best', being
'a subtle covert operation carried out on the highest intellectual level'. In

November, the OPC's Project Review Board approved the establishment of

a permanent executive committee, with covert CIA support. It was elected
in Berlin with a British representative, the poet Stephen Spender, and an
alternate, T. R. Fyvel.^^
Operating on the fringes of the Congress was Malcolm Muggeridge, Wash-
ington correspondent for the Telegraph. With another former MI6 and
officer

son of a Russian timber merchant, the philosopher Isaiah Berlin, Muggeridge

was a member of a small social circle that discussed with Frank Wisner ways
of combating the communists. Muggeridge 'accepted American leadership
for, as it were, the duration, as the only hope of containing the Soviet Gulag'.

The former MI6 officers had influence on the leading figures in the State
Department, George Keenan and Charles E. Bohlen, who brought a 'quiet
revolution' in the US to foreign policy. They came to understand that there
was 'confluence between the ideas of the non-Communist left intellectuals
and that combination of Ivy League, Anglophile, liberal, can-do gentlemen,
academics and idealists who constituted the new CIA'. One such elite
member was Thomas Braden, who ran the International Organisations
Division which was designed
combat the Soviet international front organis-
to
ations which, the CIA claimed, had a $250 million annual budget.'^
One of Braden's 'counter-organisations' was the Congress for Cultural
Freedom (CCF), which set up a secretariat in Paris, with Josselson as Execu-
tive Director. He was regarded as a 'controlled and orderly man' who had
his hands full 'attempting to organise a world-wide community of unruly
and temperamental intellectuals'. Secret OPC /CIA funding for the CCF came
via nearly forty different American trusts and charitable foundations -
'notional donors' as they were technically known by MI6 - with the principal
 THE EUROPEAN MOVEMENT AND 'THE BATTLE FOR PICASSO'S MIND' 479

conduit for covert funds being the Farfield Foundation. Its philanthropic
president, Cincinnati multimillionaire Julius Fleischman, was a director of
the Metropolitan Opera in New York and fellow of the Royal Society of the
Arts in London. Members of the foundation would lunch every month with
a guest from the Congress, usually Josselson or Muggeridge. Other secret
funds were channelled through Jay Lovestone, an ex-communist Russian
emigre,who had served in the OSS, organising labour resistance in Europe.
According to Braden, thebudget for the CFF and its magazine Encounter in
the year during which he had control was 800,000 to 900,000 dollars. The
heavy funding of the CCF originated in 1954 on the instigation of Allen
Dulles, who assigned the head of counter-intelligence, James Angleton, as
Lovestone's case officer. Angleton 'allowed his most loyal friends in British
Intelligence to read items that Lovestone had culled from the United King-
dom, where he had good contacts with the TUC and Labour Party'. He tried
to monitor the large sums of money that Lovestone controlled but was not
always successful and a considerable number of payments went unrecorded.^*
Alongside the CCF International Committee there was a British Society
for Cultural Freedom, chaired by wartime propagandist Harman Grisewood.
Muggeridge acted as its vice-chair; the secretary was Michael Goodwin, who
had worked for the BBC Overseas News Service, while the treasurer was
George Orwell's publisher, Frederick Warburg. When Griseman and Good-
win resigned, it was Muggeridge who reconstructed the secretariat, organis-
ing lectures and meetings on Cold War themes, and distributing Congress
magazines. Muggeridge, however, was not suited to administration and soon
became bored, with the result that the British Society never developed into
an important cultural force.
The British magazine most sympathetic to the liberal, Atlanticist and anti-
communist aims of the Congress was The Nineteenth Century and After, which
had the support of the Observer's David Astor. Between 1945 and 1952, the
assistant and later editor was Michael Goodwin, who went on to work with
the IRD-backed front publisher Ampersand. In January 1951, the Congress
agreed to subsidise the magazine, which changed its name to The Twentieth
Century. It was, however, not quite the magazine of political as well as literary
views that Josselson wanted. He felt that there was a need for a magazine -
to be edited in Paris in order to avoid 'Anglo-American provincialism' - that
would appeal to the Europeans. During 1952, this caused some dissension
in London, and Muggeridge, Stephen Spender, T. R. Fyvel, Michael Oakeshott
and Fred Warburg 'somewhat light-heartedly founded the Anglo-American
monthly magazine Encounter' 7^
The key players were Muggeridge, operating on behalf of MI6, and Fyvel,
who was working for the IRD. Strongly anti-communist, a writer and broad-
caster prominent in the Zionist movement, Fyvel had been a close friend and
colleague of Orwell. During the war, he worked with Richard Grossman in
480 PArvT FIVE: THE CHANGE

the Psychological Warfare Branch, which was attached to the headquarters

of General Eisenhower in North Africa and Italy. Returning to London, Fyvel
worked J. Warburg and later succeeded Orwell
as a reader for the publisher F.
as literary editor of the left-wing weekly Tribune. Employed by the BBC
External Services since 1949, Fyvel had been recruited into the IRD two years
later."''

Muggeridge and Fyvel insisted to Josselson that the magazine 'be edited
in London'.It was to be 'editorially independent, both literary and political

and while internationalist drawing heavily on the hinterland of British

writers'. There would be a continuing battle throughout the fifties over its
'independence' from the secretariat in Paris and whether it was 'British' or
'internationalist'. The two co-editors were Stephen Spender and the American

Irving Kristol, who in his bowler hat was seen as more English than the
English.''
Within the space of a month in the
thirties. Spender had joined and left

theCommunist Party. He was a former editor of the literary magazine Horizon

and, in the immediate aftermath of the war, had worked for the Control
Commission in Germany where he reported on the attitudes of writers and
intellectuals. In the late forties, he contributed to Richard Grossman's The
God that Failed, along with other European former communists who became
major figures in the Congress. Spender was also a leading member of the
international association of writers, PEN, which was itself subsidised by
the
The British Society won the argument but ceased to function once Encoun-
ter centred its operations in London. The magazine, which had no editorial
board, was published by Seeker and Warburg, which had published Orwell's
Animal Farm after a number of publishers had turned it down. In the summer
of 1949, Warburg published Nineteen Eighty-Four, with a press release which
claimed that 'if there is and the Labour Party breaks down
a failure of nerve
in its attempt to deal with the harsh problems with which it will be faced,
tougher types than the present Labour leaders will inevitably take o\ er,
drawn probably from the ranks of the Left, but not sharing the liberal aspir-
ations of those now in power'. He challenged the 'Communists and fellow-
travellers, well entrenched in the media', publishing books by ex-communists,
many of whom were associated with the CCF. The first issue of Encounter
appeared in October 1953 and was described by the Times Literary Supplement
as a journal of 'negative liberalism', characterised by a 'hatred and fear of
communism'.'^
was officially 'sponsored' by the Congress and Spender was
Encounter
told that would be funded by the Farfield Foundation, whose founder,
it

Julius Fleischman, he had met during a trip to the United States. One of
Muggeridge's last services had been to arrange for MI6 to pay the salary of
any British co-editor of Encounter, using his friend, former MIS officer Lord
 THE EUROPEAN MOVEMENT AND 'THE BATTLE FOR PICASSO'S MIND' 481

Rothschild, as a conduit. According to American sources, Rothschild, who

was certainly close to MI 6, acted as 'a sort of British front foundation'. Encoun-
ter was not the only magazine that Rothschild funded in this period.

Muggeridge left, disillusioned with the whole project. He thought that there
were too many 'dead fruit' involved. ^'^

The person who appears to have taken Muggeridge's place was Goronwy
Rees, a recent member of MI6's Political Section, who described Encounter
as an 'intellectual Marshall Plan'. Rees was a former communist supporter
and shared his views about the Soviet Union with Melvin Lasky, who had
changed his mind about communism in the late thirties with the Moscow
show trials. Lasky, however, could never fathom Rees, and found him 'very
secretive' and a 'shadowy' figure, especially after friends told him that he
had been 'planted' on the magazine by MI6. Rees, who got his job at Encounter
through Spender, later confided that the magazine had been founded as a

result of agrowing realisation that the alternative society offered by the Soviet
Union and its satellites was one 'the West cannot hesitate to characterise as
barbaric, both in the sense that they are hostile and alien, and in the sense
that they lack those minimum guarantees of individual freedom and security
in the absence of which no society can claim to be civilised'. A voice had to
be found but it was impossible, Rees discovered, without the generous assist-
ance of the CIA.^^
CIA funding of the CCF and Encounter had been alleged by the Soviets
from the beginning but was dismissed as communist disinformation. Then,
in 1963, an editorial in the Sunday Telegraph, presumably based on information
from Muggeridge, referred to a secret and regular subvention to Encounter
from the 'Foreign Office'. This was supplemented by reports of CIA subsidies.
Lasky consistently denied any knowledge of CIA financing, even though the
CIA's Thomas Braden said that 'the man in charge' was a 'witting agent'. In
the face of denials by Lasky and Spender, the Telegraph published an apology.
Foreign Office mandarin Nicholas Henderson reported the strange goings-on
to Anne Fleming, the society hostess and wife of the spy author: 'There's an
awful fuss going on about Encounter, it appears that Stephen Spender did
not know that it was financed by the CIA, very rum for everyone else did.'
That included Freddie Ayer, who had been aware from the beginning that
the source of the funds was the CIA. The denials did not shock him, even
though he thought it impossible not to have known: 'I still do not understand
how it could have deceived anyone who had anything to do with the
Congress.' Fellow-thirties writer Edward Upward regarded Spender as
'unscrupulous - he had a great talent for publicity ... he must have been
''^^
very simple. I told him years before, "It's just a Cold War paper".
Reports of secret funding did, however, damage Encounter's standing,
and Spender and Lasky were forced to look for alternative private 'angels'.
Negotiations with the head of Mirror Newspapers, Cecil King, were finally
482 PART FIVE: THE CHANGE

successful, and by July 1964 they were able to announce that Encounter's
financial and business affairs would be handled by the International
Publishing Corporation. Although it ceased to be sponsored by the CCF,
intelligence connections were not far away, as the British representatives on
the controlling trust included Sir William Hayter, a former chair of the Joint
Intelligence Committee, while King had his own links to the CIA and British
Intelligence.^^
Although regarded by MI 6 as an 'unspectacular' operation, in its first

period during the early fifties the CCF did help to build through 'the battle
for Picasso's mind' an Atlanticist intellectual community. By maintaining a
number of magazines that were already launched but financially shaky, and
by sponsoring new ones in England such as Encounter, China Quarterly,
Minerva and Censorship, the CCF succeeded in making good Irving Kristol's
expressed aim 'to create a certain kind of intellectual-cultural milieu, which
would in turn have far-reaching, but indirect, effects'. With a relatively small
effort MI 6 and the IRD were able to play a still largely unrecognised role in
shaping European and, more particularly, British social democratic politics.
It is only recently that politicians - mainly on the Right of the Labour Party,

and those that joined the SDP - whose political and cultural ideas were
influenced by the CCF and its offshoots have left the scene.^^
CHAPTER 23

ROLLING BACK
'ROLL- BACK'

The rhetoric of the Anglo-American liberation policy of 'roll-back' proved to

be a dangerous option in that it fed Stalin's obvious paranoia and, ultimately,
proved to be counterproductive. Stalin was perpetually concerned about the
machinations of British Intelligence, and there were many instances of him
personally warning the leaders of the satellites to be vigilant against MI6
activities.

At the end of the Second World War, Stalin was furious that after the expul-
sion of German forces from western Ukraine and the Baltic states, guerrilla bands
continued to fight the Soviet occupation. On several occasions, Stalin ordered his
security chief, Lavrenti Beria, 'to finish off the outlaws but the irritant continued
for five years'. Despite Moscow publicising the fact that they knew that the
'outlaws' had been supported by and American Intelligence incursions
British
into sovereign territory, the Soviet Union found itself isolated in the United
Nations and unable to obtain redress. The announcement of the Truman Doctrine
fuelled the general insecurity, while the offer of Marshall Aid to the satellite states
- acknowledged as vital to these countries' recovery - was seen as a capitalist
trap that would have left them, as is now known to have been the intention, under
virtual US economic control. These western manoeuvres led to a 'volatile Soviet
over-reaction to both British and American special operations which resulted
in considerable turmoil in Eastern Europe'. Knowledge of western efforts
would play a major part in Stalin's drive to purge numerous innocent eastern
European proteges on imaginary charges of subversion.^
484 PART FIVE: THE CHANGE

When Stalin launched his purges in 1948, the primary target was the
Titoists, principally those people who had not been trained in Moscow and,
therefore,might be disloyal. He feared the influence of the Yugoslavs, who
were training and returning to their country of origin a large number of
Spanish Civil War veterans from French internment camps. These insurgents
soon came under suspicion because they appeared to be under the tight
control of the Yugoslavs and loyal to Belgrade. Stalin also feared those
communists who had worked in the resistance groups during the war; they
had often been, quite legitimately, in contact with the British secret services,
which made them in Moscow's view potentially unreliable and agents of the
West.
Following the expulsion of Yugoslavia in November 1949, with the urging
of Stalin the Cominform launched the 'Vigilance' campaign throughout east-
ern Europe with calls for the security forces to be on their guard against
enemy agents. This took place against a background where 'all internal politi-
cal opposition had been liquidated and there was no sign of the spread of
Titoism'. Indeed, there was consternation in western diplomatic circles that
Titoism' had done nothing to weaken the hold of international communism.
Despite this lack of threat, hysteria soon gripped eastern Europe as elaborate
plots were uncovered and hundreds of alleged western agents were arrested,
convicted and finally shot. In a curious way, Richard Aldrich has argued,
'Britishand American efforts had perhaps scored an unintended success. In
this sense Stalin may have inflicted far more damage in Eastern Europe than

the CIA or the MI6 Special Operations Branch could have conceivably hoped
to do.'2
This unintentional turn of events later gave rise to a conspiracy theory,
seemingly deliberately 'surfaced' (intelligence jargon for planting stories) by
the British, that MI6 - and later the CIA - had run a deception operation
that exploited Stalin's paranoia by falsely linking a number of eastern Euro-
pean leaders and officials to the western intelligence services. The supposed
vehicle for this Machiavellian plot was Noel Field - a Quaker, communist
and former OSS colleague of Allen Dulles - who mysteriously disappeared
in Prague in 1949. In the early 1950s, while he languished in a Soviet prison.
Field became the Stalinist scapegoat in the purge trials of Rudolf Slansky and
other communist leaders. Despite his mistreatment. Field chose to remain in
Hungary upon his release in 1954, until his death fourteen years later. The
first reference to Field's arrest suggesting that it was actually part of a British
plot to split the communists was in R. Harris Smith's history of the OSS,
where he suggested that the plot formed the basis of John le Carre's The Sp)y
Who Came in from the Cold. Kim Philby later commented that he found the le
Carre plots more complicated than the real thing.^
Although the theory is expounded at great length in Stewart Steven's
mid-seventies Operation Splinter Factor, no reliable evidence has surfaced since
 ROLLING BACK 'ROLL-BACK' 485

to suggest that MI6 did construct such a conspiracy; while senior CIA officers
have dismissed the idea, acknowledging that the Agency was in no position
to undertake such a sophisticated operation. It may be that the plot idea can
be traced back to the defection on 21 December 1953 of the Polish deputy
director of the notorious Department 10 in the Ministry of Internal Affairs,
Josef Swialto, whose job included the gathering of derogatory information
on top government officials. Swialto had had access to the Field dossier,
which included the details of his interrogation. According to the theory,
Swialto had been recruited by MI 6, who passed the case on to the fledgling
CIA and while in exile gave details of the Field dossier to Frank Wisner.^
The truth was that the Field case became an opportunity for the Soviets
to launch a propaganda counter-offensive throughout eastern Europe by link-
ing the alleged American spy to communist officials and to emigres in the
West. In the background was a virulent anti-Semitic campaign that was tied
to an 'anti-cosmopolitan' attack on intellectuals, who were alleged to have
been part of a 'Zionist plot' to create subversion inside the Soviet Union.
Stalin traced the plot back to meetings in Washington and supposed secret
Israeli-American agreements made in 1947. Perhaps there was an element
of justification in Stalin's concern. During 1948, Zionists had indeed offered
the infant CIA use of their ready-made intelligence networks throughout
eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. The offer was apparently turned down
by US diplomats and politicians hostile to the creation of an Israeli state. The
anti-Semitic campaign took off in early 1949, when Beria and Georgi Malen-
kov persuaded Stalin to get rid of the revolutionary Zhadanov faction. In
1950, a number of the alleged plot's members were tortured and shot after the
secret 'Leningrad case', in which the accused 'confessed' to links to western
intelligence agencies.^
During the summer of 1951, Stalin became obsessed with identifying the
high-levelCzech figure who was referred to in supposed CIA documents as
'The Great Sweeper'. He began 'to drop hints to other Czech leaders that the
Sweeper was none other than the Jewish Secretary-General of the Czecho-
slovak Communist Party, Rudolf Slansky'. That autumn, the Czech press
embarked on a virulent campaign in which Tito, the CIA and MI6 featured
among the villains but in which Zionism was the most emphatic target.
Observers in the West tended to dismiss the allegation against Slansky as a
trumped-up charge that served a political purpose - even when, in November,
Czech emigres began to pick up rumours that Slansky was thinking of
defecting to the West. These rumours eventually reached the Soviets and, in
the early morning of 24 November 1951, Slansky was arrested, tortured and
later tried and executed for his part in a supposed Zionist plot linked to the

CIA. Slansky had indeed been approached by a Czechoslovak asset of the

CIA, who hoped to recruit him as a spy or a defector. Whether he had in
fact been recruited is not known, but the idea had certainly been taken
486 PART FIVE: THE CHANGE

seriously by the CIA and a case officer 'had procured a false set of documents
for Slansky to use in an escape from Czechoslovakia'.^
Paranoia about eastern Europeans was not the sole preserve of Stalin. The
British Home Office gave approval to the Security Service (MIS) for Operation
POST REPORT (OPR), which involved the security screening of 200,000
foreign workers who, in the opinion of Deputy Director Guy Liddell, might
in the event of a crisis constitute 'something of a Fifth Column'. OPR's
purpose was not war criminals but to seek evidence of whether the
to spot
DPs had been by Soviet Intelligence. Liddell was also anxious to
infiltrated
establish whether any of these anti-communists with knowledge of Soviet
affairs and the Russian language might be of use to MIS and MI6. On 25

May 19S1, the secretary of the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC), Patrick
Reilly, wrote to the Home Office recommending OPR on the basis that 'this

census of the alien population could form a useful record of possible sources
of intelligence on countries behind the Iron Curtain'.^
In June, a massive sweep of the DP groups, interviewing
MIS began
Baits, Ukrainians, Poles, Hungarians, Romanians, Russians, Yugoslavs and

Albanians. Security officers were principally interested in 'Communist activi-

ties including denunciations and circulation of Communist propaganda';

'Contacts with the USSR or satellite embassies'; 'Service in the Red Army';
'Service in the Vlasov army' and 'Contacts with Soviet inspired propaganda
agencies'. In September, MIS informed the Home Office that it regarded OPR
as 'a valuable piece of war planning. It was revealing persons in this country
with previous service in the Red Army and possible contacts behind the Iron
Curtain ... It was producing information about potential Russian linguists
. . . only a small number so far is revealed as having come in under a false

name.' What MIS did not say was that the OPR questionnaires could have
provided essential evidence in tracking down war criminals; the question-
naires were simply filed away.^

What may have been an acknowledgement that the policy of 'roll-back'

against the Soviet Union and the satellites was having a negative effect - as
evidenced by the purges and anti-Semitic campaigns - surfaced in early
19S1. Disillusionment within the Foreign Office about America's aggressive
operations was made plain to New York Times journalist Cyrus Sulzberger
when he dined at the Defence College with Sir Geoffrey Thompson, who
was 'very disturbed about the situation'. Thompson said that 'the United
States is pursuing a terrible that 'many British
and foolhardy policy' and
now more chance of the United States starting a war in 19S1
think there is

than of Russia doing it'. The British feared an 'irrevocable hysterical act'."^
Even arch-Cold Warrior Winston Churchill was uneasy that an American
strike against the USSR would result in a war in which Britain would be the
prime target, since the US Air Force presence in East Anglia placed the
 ROLLING BACK 'ROLL-BACK' 487

country in the front line of a nuclear attack. In April, President Truman gave
permission to the US Defense Department to store in Britain eighty-nine sets
of non-nuclear components together with their nuclear cores, although these
could not be 'mated' until a full-scale alert was announced. Up to this time,

the pairs had been stored and it was not, in fact, until two years
separately,
later that authority for the deployment of complete warheads was granted
by the President.^^
These fears about the consequences of high-risk policies had mainly been
expressed within the confines of the Foreign Office; the turning point in
Anglo-American relations and the change of heart on the policy of roll-back
came at the end of 1951 with the return to power of Churchill as Prime
Minister and Anthony Eden as Foreign Secretary. Despite the fear of war,
Churchill believed that the backing of a strong Atlantic alliance, along with
the American nuclear umbrella, would enable him to negotiate with Stalin
from a position of strength for an international settlement, 'for the purpose
of advancing the international standing of his nation and his own reputation'.
He now questioned 'whether or not a Cold War was necessary', an anxiety
that drew him into conflict with the American administration. The Americans
were primarily concerned with the implementation of European military
integration in the context of the European Defence Community (EDC), but
Churchill believed that the communist advance in Europe had been halted;
he was prepared to sacrifice the EDC and accept a permanent Soviet presence
in eastern and central Europe in exchange for East- West accommodations
in what he regarded as an increasingly dangerous world.
The American State Department's Psychological Strategy Board, which
dealt with planning covert operations, was well aware of Churchill's inten-
tions. It suggested that the return of the Conservatives had 'strengthened

the nostalgia for the time when Britain was the leading global power, and
hypersensitivity to playing the junior partner manifests itself in reflections

on American inexperience'. A major area of contention was America's desire

to wage economic war against the Soviet Union, a policy that most of the
European allies refused to endorse.
George Young had returned from Vienna to London to take over MI6's
well-run Economic Requirements section (R6). It carried out 'Ernest Bevin's
ruling that in Britain's shaky postwar situation economic information should
be given a high priority'. The section was largely dependent on the Board of
Trade and Bank of England for its intelligence-gathering tasks, which
included material on oil supplies, banking and international agreements and
commercial deals. Young found that 'it was indeed satisfying when a single
report could pay for the annual Secret Vote several times over'. R6's other
objective was to identify and deny to the Soviets key industrial commodities
which they were attempting to buy on the world market. The section worked
in close co-operation with the Joint Intelligence Bureau (JIB), which had
488 PART FIVE: THE CHANGE

interests in the economicMuch had been learned in this area from MI6's
field.

economics guru, 'Colonel' Hodson, who had been seconded during the
L. S.

autumn of 1948 to the military's BRIXMIS in Berlin, with responsibility for

finding out details of the economy in communist East Germany. He
discovered that steel-making was in a poor state and was being propped up
by the Russians. In addition, he instituted the 'Rail Watch', with agents
keeping an eye on rail and, particularly, military traffic. This proved to be
invaluable to MI6 and the military planners.
Right from the beginning, the idea of economic warfare was beset by
disagreement between internal ministries and, externally, with the United
States. The Americans wanted a wide embargo and, likewise, the Foreign

Office and Ministry of Defence wanted an embargo on anything that could

'build up Soviet war potential'. The economic ministries - regarding the
USSR as one of their most promising outlets for British goods and a source
of essential items such as grain and timber - wanted it confined to military
equipment. When faced with the choice between economic warfare and a
strategic embargo, American State Department officials opted for the former.
They then divided their own controls into List 1 A, containing items of primary
strategic significance as part of a strategic embargo, and List IB, items of
secondary importance reflecting concerns of economic warfare. In order to
secure European co-operation, the Americans used their economic muscle
and threats to cut off aid.^^
In November 1949 the Allies agreed to co-ordinate their export controls
and formed the highly secretive multilateral Co-ordinating Committee
(COCOM). There remained the problem of definition, and members agreed
only to restrict most of the items on List lA. The first meeting, in January
1950, officially adopted 167 items. America's major allies were reluctant to
engage in a broad denial strategy; they preferred a more modest strategic
embargo. The issue remained highly controversial, as Britain disliked being
dictated to by what it saw as the most conservative forces in the US. Even
the normally hardline Russia Committee wanted limits on East- West trade
'not to damage the Soviet economy but to slow up the growth of Soviet war
potential' because it recognised Britain's need for Soviet grain and timber.
The Europeans were able to resist US pressure and the record shows that
Britain resisted economic warfare 'to the point where it nearly jeopardised
the continued existence of COCOM '.^^

Although Korean War there were

in the aftermath of the outbreak of the
wanting an extension of export controls and
siren voices in the United States
stiffer sanctions against Europeans who broke them, the CIA recognised

that broad economic warfare was unlikely to be successful. In 1951 it

reported that the Soviet economy, when integrated with that of eastern
Europe, was relatively self-sufficient; therefore a trade block would ha\'e
limited effectiveness. It argued that the only viable alternativ^e was an
 ROLLING BACK 'ROLL-BACK' 489
I

embargo of essential items for military preparedeness, including some raw

materials.^^
There were also siren voices in the Foreign Office who supported Ameri-
can moves in this area, insisting that the USSR
remained overwhelmingly
superior in conventional arms in Europe and, therefore, any talk of a 'spheres
of interest' typesummit was premature. Typically, the Russia Committee
remained unmoved by the thought of any possible thawing in relations with
the Soviet Union, seeing 'no change in basic Soviet aims and strategy'. It was
against this background that in late 1951 the Permanent Under-Secretary's
Committee (PUSC), controlled by the chair of the Joint Intelligence Commit-
tee (JIC), Sir Patrick Reilly, undertook a review of Britain's long-term policy
for fighting the Cold War.^^
In January 1952, the British ambassador in Moscow, Sir Alvary Gascoigne,
warned of 'the danger of war at the present time' and of 'the Americans
getting too hot under the collar and taking action "off the cuff". Foreign
Office Permanent Under-Secretary Sir William Strang acknowledged that the
British were now anxious 'to avoid any action which might convince the
Soviet Government that an attack from the West was inevitable'. He stressed
the necessity of a policy to 'deflect the Americans from unwise and dangerous
courses'. Churchill was visiting the Americans with precisely that objective
in mind. In anticipation, a US interdepartmental steering committee warned
of differences that were likely to arise with the Conservative government,
which would probably be more optimistic in its interpretation of Soviet inten-
tions. The committee prophesied that 'the British will tend to question the

necessity or desirability of political warfare operations which might even

. . .

provoke the Kremlin to acts of aggression. The British believe that the immedi-
ate dangers of provocation over-balance the long-term deterrent results of
political warfare carried on within Moscow's own orbit.' Indeed, Churchill
warned his American hosts not to 'stir up something which we could not
back' with a policy of 'liberation' in eastern Europe.
Churchill had been due to meet the Director of the CIA, Walter Bedell
Smith, to discuss 'operations against the satellites', but this did not happen.
The Prime Minister was not prepared to support any new special operations
but was willing to see an intensification of propaganda operations, and raised
the topic of psychological warfare with the President. With an intensification
of propaganda 'the democracies would make an intense effort to bring home
to all the people behind the Iron Curtain the true facts of the world situation
- by broadcasting and by dropping and he believed 'the Kremlin
leaflets',

would fear Given that they were funding major

such a revelation of the truth'.

radio stations broadcasting to eastern Europe and were already involved in

extensive leaflet drops, the Americans were not impressed by Churchill's
attempted intervention. They were more impressed by the Information Officer
in the British embassy in Washington, Adam Watson, who had previously
4^0 PART FIVE: THE CHANGE

served in the Information Research Department (IRD). He had been

appointed liaison officer to the US Psychological Strategy Board which
co-ordinated CIA, State Department and Defense Department psychological
warfare activities. Watson proved to be an influential figure, but co-operation
with the Americans on matters of psychological warfare activities was appar-
ently hindered by the rivalry between MI6 and the IRD; the former regarded
the latter as 'amateurs'.

In January 1952, the PUSC completed its paper, 'The Liberation of the Satel-
lites'. Taking a general Foreign Office view that the country should concen-
trate on economic and political concerns in order to stem the tide of Britain's
decline, PUSC (51) 16 concluded that although Britain should take part in a
'controlled and phased counter-attack against the Soviet empire', operations
to liberate the satellites in eastern Europe must not be undertaken if they
risked promoting war. They were seen as 'impractical and involved . . .

unacceptable risks'. The Foreign Office continued to worry about US policy

towards eastern Europe, which brought closer the danger of war with 'one
of the sore spots being too sore, and the Americans getting too hot under
the collar and taking action "off the cuff"'.^°
The PUSC paper was made available to the Americans and discussed
with them. It was not taken well by the US State Department Policy Planning
Staff, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in the shape of General Omar N. Bradley,

were outraged by the paper and treated it with contempt, regarding the
British as promoting a policy of 'appeasement'.^^
In considering western pressure against 'sore spots', the PUSC had
decided that even operations against Albania, in which MI 6 had invested so
much effort, were a dangerous option. The committee concluded that
Soviet prestige is sufficiently involved to make it unlikely that
the Soviet Government would remain inactive in the face of any
determined attempt to detach Albania from the Orbit. If, for

instance, the West organised a major rebellion with outside

assistance to overthrow the Communist regime, it would
probably provoke the Soviet Government into reaction e.g.

the despatch of Soviet or satellite airborne troops, since there

would be good prospect of keeping the resultant fighting
localised.^^

In mid-February, Strang noted in a memorandum to Eden that the Americans

were planning new special operations, 'such as an Air Force wing to Libya
to drop leaflets over the Balkans'. He warned that 'it is only by co-ordinating
our activities with theirs that we can hope either to convince them that we
mean business or to restrain what we may consider over-zealous activities
on their part'. Eden agreed and wanted 'all proposals for action ... to be
 ROLLING BACK 'ROLL-BACK' 491

examined with very great care. We must not allow ourselves to be persuaded
into taking steps which might bring us nearer to war.'^^
The PUSC review was fleshed out some weeks later by another memor-
andum drawn up by the Russia Committee, dated 19 February. While the
'Future Policy Towards Soviet Union' still regarded the Soviet Union as
fundamentally hostile to the free world, having a 'fanatical and dynamic
revolutionary spirit' and a traditionally ambitious leader, it was in its way
more optimistic in tone than previous papers, with its notion of an 'uneasy
absence of war'. It noted the deeply ingrained fear of external attack held by
the Soviet leaders and their acceptance of retreat when faced with determined
opposition. The committee was, therefore, less concerned with overthrowing
the present regime than moving towards 'our ultimate objective of a genuine
settlement'. The principle for special operations was that the adoption of
more aggressive measures 'must not materially increase the risk of war' as
'ill-advised action could easily lead to the closer cementing of the Soviet bloc
and so have the exactly reverse effect to what we desire'. The memorandum
acknowledged, however, that 'the process of reaching a settlement is likely
to last decades'.
An Appendix B on 'Liberation of the Satellites' seemed
have learned
to
a number of lessons from MI6's failed operations in the Soviet orbit, and
displayed particular concern that such activities might provoke 'Soviet mili-
tary counter-actions'. It noted that 'it is axiomatic that resistance groups, even
if well-supplied with light arms and explosives, cannot obtain decisive results

against regular troops unless the latter are either neutralised by a greater
threat or already in a state of disintegration'. It went on: 'the creation of
resistance groups for mass and the provision of the necessary arms,
revolt
etc., demands time: but all experience shows that, once prepared, "resistance"

cannot stand still indefinitely or, indeed, for very long'. While it conceded
that covert activity would 'increase Soviet nervousness about their lines of
communication in war-time and so tend to discourage or delay plans for an
offensive' and that 'an organised resistance movement is a useful source of
agents and intelligence; and the knowledge that such a movement existed
would help to maintain morale within the satellite country concerned', it
recognised that 'it is doubtful whether any serious resistance movement could
be started or maintained without definite assurances of Western intervention
at the critical moment . . . such assurances could not be honestly given'.
There was concern that 'an unsuccessful uprising would almost certainly
destroy any intelligence network which the Western Powers might have built
up'. It would be dangerous 'even to plan or prepare for revolt unless and
until the necessary margin of superiority had been achieved'. The committee
concluded that 'operations designed to liberate the satellites are impracticable
and would involve unacceptable risks'. This did mean the end of all special
operations which the committee saw 'not as an end in themselves but as a
492 PART FIVE: THE CHANGE

function of a wide-scale psychological attack on the political structure of the

Soviet orbit'. There was support for psychological warfare directed 'against
known weaknesses and contradictions in the Soviet fabric' which might
eventually 'lead to fundamental changes in the nature of the Soviet system'.
These included 'specialist operations designed either to disrupt the machinery
of government or the economic structure of satellite States, or to poison
relationsbetween the satellite Governments and the Soviet Union'. Consider-
ation was given to the denial of strategic metals, though it was admitted that
the Soviet Union had stockpiles of the essential items 'to last a war of short
duration'.
Even when such operations were undertaken, an earlier draft had
concluded that 'it will be the safest, as well as the most effective, course for

the West to exercise pressure in gradual, successive, and unobtrusive forms.

The West should particularly avoid action likely to humiliate rather than
harm the Soviet Government; such action entails a risk of Soviet reaction out
of all proportion to the possible profit to the West.'
Foreign Office reluctance to back a liberation policy was first evidenced
by the spurning, in late January, of the setting up of a major conference for
eastern European exile groups by the British League for European Freedom
(BLEF). Organised at Church House in London with more moderate members
than those associated with the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations (ABN), it was
sponsored by the Central and East European Commission of the European
Movement (EM) which, in contrast to the ABN, only dealt with those coun-
tries outside the borders of the Soviet Union. The Foreign Office was deeply

embarrassed that 'for weeks and weeks the conference was denounced by
the Russian radio and press, and by the puppet leaders of the countries
behind the Iron Curtain'. With the Conservatives wanting a more open policy
with the Soviet Union, supporting the eastern European exiles in their aspir-
ations was to be discouraged. Belligerency was out; the exiles were to be left
to the Americans.^^
MI6 had already merged their exile groups into one organisation, the
Ukrainian-based ABN, and had
offloaded the cost of running the remnants
of the remaining exile groups - Intermarium, the Promethean League, the
International Flag of Liberty and several others - on to the Americans. Like-
wise, the CIA had set up the American Committee for Liberation from Bolsh-
evism, organised by a high-ranking State Department official, Rowland H.
Sargeant, in an effort to combine in a single united front organisation a joint
platform for representatives of all the Soviet refugee groups, Russian and
non-Russian, with the exception of pro-communists, fascists and monarchists,
who were regarded by the committee leaders as a an
liability, rather than
asset. Unfortunately for its attempt to bring together the disparate emigre

groups under one umbrella organisation, the Americans failed to recognise

the nationality problem. Former Promethean League president Roma Smal-
 ROLLING BACK 'ROLL-BACK' 493

Stocky attacked the CIA-backed committee because it insisted on the integrity

of the Soviet borders, which made it an anathema to the 'nationalist' groups.
The committee did contain some representatives from non-Russian national-
but, except for one weak and not very important group, was unable to
ists

entice the ABN into its fold.'^

The 'Paris Bloc' of Ukrainians had initially supported the idea of the
committee but co-operation with the 'Russian' organisation, as the nationalists
dubbed it, proved fruitless - and relations soon collapsed. The presence of
the pro-Russian SBONR, largely composed of former veterans of Gen. Vlasov
and members of the NTS, created fierce invective as the Ukrainians regarded
them - somewhat bizarrely - as an 'extreme left-wing group' and 'traitors'.
The ABN remained outside the committee, along with the Ukrainian National
Council, the Belorussian National Council, the Armenian Dasknak Party and
national committees from Georgia, Azerbaijan and North Caucasus.^^
These familiar factional in-fights were no doubt viewed with wry amuse-
ment and deep satisfaction in the Kremlin. Stalin had been 'much concerned
with the prospects of the formation' of the American Committee, chaired by
an old foe, Alexander Kerensky. It had been decided by the Security Mission
that 'this initiative of the American reactionaries should be decisively severed
and the leadership should be decapitated before its activities can develop'.
Special tasks officer Pavel Sudoplatov was put in charge of planning action
in London and Paris, but was unable to organise the necessary assets to
'liquidate' Kerensky when he attended the committee's opening meeting. In
the end, the plan proved unnecessary because the Soviets learned that Ukrain-
ian and Croat nationalist intransigence over Russian involvement had effec-
tively sabotaged the committee's formation. The failure to unite the different
factions was viewed as a turning point in Moscow, where 'concern with
emigre organisations was put where it belonged, in the past'. This was also
largely recognised in Washington, where British and US officials managed
to temporarily bridge their differences. CIA Director Bedell Smith agreed
that in the short term it made no sense to encourage 'a resistance campaign'
in eastern Europe.

After thirty-eight years in the secret world, Stewart Menzies announced his
retirement in a signal to all overseas stations on 30 June 1952. Such was his
reputation among some officials that, although past the normal retirement
age of sixty, he could have remained in place. He was, however, a tired man
and had a number of personal reasons for his decision. His wife, who had
suffered a long illness, had died inMarch 1951. This was followed by the
Philby debacle, which appears to have hit him hard. His assistant chief. Jack
Easton, claimed that 'Stewart slid out. He knew that a great scandal was
about and he did not want to be involved.' He did not, however, escape the
demons in retirement. According to his son-in-law. Captain Brian Bell,
494 PART FIVE: THE CHANGE

Menzies suffered from nightmares, apparently to do with Philby. There was

one recurrent theme in these nightmares, which were awful to hear. That
was that there was who was taken up in a helicopter over
a Russian defector
the English Channel and given the choice - talk about Philby or be chucked
out without a parachute. They chucked him out.' Menzies left for the country
and the pursuits of shooting and horse-racing. Soon after, his second secre-
tary. Miss Muriel Jones, with whom he had had a long-term affair, unsuccess-

fully attempted suicide from a drug overdose.^^

On 3 July the JIC met and chair Patrick Reilly spoke of Menzies's reign
being 'distinguished by an extraordinary devotion to duty'. In turn. Foreign
Secretary Anthony Eden, who had worked closely with 'C during the war,
thanked Menzies for his services. 'Since 1945 you have had little respite. You
have had to pursue the reconstruction of your Service, on a scale never
before contemplated in peace, amid the insistent demands of a new and
unprecedented world-wide conflict. You leave it full of promise for the
future.' Eden and Churchill may have felt, however, that the time was ripe
for a change at the top. Although Reilly recalled that in early 1951 Menzies
had recommended Major-General John Sinclair as Chief, with Jack Easton as
his deputy and successor when 'Sinbad' retired, the job was first offered
to a Churchill favourite. Sir Ian Jacob, Controller of the BBC's European
Services.^'^

Although his views appeared to fit in with the new administration's

foreign policy, Jacob refused the post of 'C. Whether he was a real candidate
or whether it was just a whim on the part of Churchill is not known but,
certainly, Menzies was pleased that Sinclair was appointed. Menzies's main
concern was to ensure that the military bias of the Service continued, as he
was opposed to civilians running intelligence and disliked the wartime influx
of university- trained staff, whom he never completely trusted. ^'^

The Director of Military Intelligence during the war and MI6 Vice-Chief
for five years during the crucial period of the Cold War, Sinclair was, while
'not overloaded with mental gifts (he never claimed them)', according to Kim
Philby, 'humane, energetic and so obviously upright that it was impossible
to withhold admiration ... it was distasteful to lie in my teeth to the honest
Sinclair.' George Blake, on meeting the new Chief, saw 'a tall, lean Scot with
the angular, austere features of a Presbyterian minister, blue eyes behind
horn-rimmed spectacles and a soft voice gave him a kindly demeanour'.
Unfortunately for MI6, the 'Robber Barons', the divisional heads who actually
ran the Service, had little regard for his abilities and bypassed him whenever
contentious operations were planned. It would not be an exaggeration to
state that at times the Service was 'out of control'. Sinclair's tenure would
later be characterised as the period of 'the Horrors'.

Significantly, it appears that Eden allowed the PUSC to wither. It would

be a few years before it was revived by Harold Macmillan and would displace
 ROLLING BACK 'ROLL-BACK' 495

the JIC in its role as a co-ordinating body for intelligence-gathering and

subversion. In the meantime, there appears to have been a vacuum where
there should have been overseeing control of the Service. During the period
1951-6, the PUSC usually met only once a month, and was then only
concerned with editing briefs from various departments dealing with the
Soviet Union. On taking the chair of the JIC in 1950, Patrick Reilly had
recognised that there were dangers of MI6 'running potentially controversial
operations without proper authority'. It took, however, another two years
for the implementation of his recommendation of reinstating a Foreign Office
adviser - a post he had occupied during the war and which had lain empty
since Robert Cecil had left it in 1946. The first postwar adviser to 'C was
(Sir) George Clutton, latterly head of the Foreign Office's African Department.
In the climate of the times, his three-year appointment, following a two-year
stint in Tokyohead of the UK's liaison mission to Japan, was not, perhaps,
as
a wise decision. Cluttonwas a homosexual, who later came under suspicion of
having been blackmailed by the Soviets while serving in Warsaw. A Positive
Vetting Section, which might have picked up potential problems like Clutton,
was put in place only in late 1951 following the Maclean/ Burgess debacle,
and then with only four overworked officers.^^
Churchill's private secretary, Anthony Montague Brown, had been
responsible in the Foreign Office for distributing secret reports to the various
departments and later acted as a liaison with the Americans on intelligence
affairs. He soon realised that the intelligence reaching the Prime Minister
was of poor quality and increasingly bland. When he told Churchill, the PM
exploded: 'Send for C and I'll sack the shit.' It turned out that it was not the
fault of MI6; the Foreign Office appeared to 'distrust WSC's discretion' and
did not want him to be 'overinformed and thus more prone to interfere'. But
interfering was Churchill's nature and, according to Eden's private secretary,
Evelyn Shuckburgh, he vetoed all of MI6's special operations proposals. In
practice, this appears to have applied to the anti-Soviet operations in eastern
Europe; he had little difficulty in giving the green light to operations in other
theatres.
In the run-up to the American presidential elections, the British had
become increasingly concerned with the shrill anti-communist rhetoric
coming out of the Eisenhower camp. On 26 August 1952, Foster Dulles
advised that America should 'try to split the satellites away from Moscow' . . .

and shortly after specified the use of propaganda broadcasts and supplies to
'freedom fighters'. The militancy contributed to a rising tide of anti-
Americanism even among Conservatives. Former SOE executive director
Colin Gubbins and Joseph Retinger of the European Movement (EM) believed
that the dispute was weakening the Atlantic alliance. Retinger recognised
that the US was 'disliked, feared and sneered at with an unanimity that was
remarkable'. 'This feeling threatened the solidarity of the Western world's
4% PART FIVE: THE CHANGE

defences against Communism', and both Retinger and Gubbins, with their
unofficial links to MI6, believed that this tendency had to be 'checked'.^
During 1952, Retinger suggested to Belgium's Paul van Zeeland and head
of Unilever, Paul Rykens, the idea of organising unofficial meetings of leading
personalities from NATO countries w^ith the purpose of 'promoting European
unity and an Atlantic alliance'. Rykens subsequently arranged for Retinger to
meet Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands, whose apparent apolitical standing
marked him out as an ideal figurehead. A meeting was held in September,
in Paris, during which an advisory committee was created. A leading member
was Denis Healey, head of the Labour Party's International Department. At
the same time, led by Gubbins and his former SOE colleague Peter Wilkinson,
who had recently headed the IRD and was First Secretary in Washington,
members of Chatham House convened with representatives of the US Council
on Foreign Relations for a five-day meeting, during which the two groups
set down their interpretations of the other.^^
While British ideas remained fluid, the Foreign Office had effectively
abandoned the policy of 'roll-back'. In September, the chair of the EM's
Central and Eastern European Commission, Gubbins's long-standing friend,
SOE colleague and leading advocate of the exiles. Major Edward Beddington-
Behrens, was replaced by a professional politician. Conservative MP Richard
Law. To Polish leader Stefan Korbonski, this marked the point when the
commission began to act 'negatively and ceased in practice to function'. The
slack was taken up by the CIA.^^
Although the western intelligence infiltrations into Ukraine had rarely
been successful, the American-backed Gehlen programme was stepped up
in the summer of 1952 with regular parachute drops. Sixteen American agents
were lost in at least five missions mounted during the following year. British
losses in this period are unknown, as are those of the separate CIA operations
of the Office of Special Operations (OSO). Despite the failures, 'as the flow of
"intelligence" radioed to West Germany increased, MI6 confidently assured
customers in Whitehall that it was running a reliable network'. Perhaps no
one was reading the Soviet press, where the failures were reported at length.^^
The Office of Policy Co-ordination's (OPC) Frank Lindsay certainly knew
the true state of affairs because in the autumn he finally delivered his highly
negative report on the paramilitary penetration missions to Allen Dulles.
Stalin's tight grip on the communist states - through control of the security
police, political organs and propaganda machinery - had made, Lindsay
concluded, 'virtually impossible the existence of organised clandestine resist-

ance capable within the foreseeable future of appreciably weakening the

power of the state'. Evidence that the Foreign Office had reached similar
conclusions was clear from a September brief for Eden commenting on an
Eisenhower presidential campaign speech on US liberation policy which was
'calculated to raise false hopes among the peoples concerned'. The official
 ROLLING BACK 'ROLL-BACK' 497

added as an afterthought the comment that 'we would not at the same time
wish to discourage them by the appearance of ready acquiescence in the
maintenance of dominated regimes'.
While the disagreements over roll-back policy and the fears of antagonis-
ing the Russian bear were at the core of the conflict with the Americans,
British perceptions of the country's own place in the world determined the
internal debate. In his study of the period, John W. Young notes the 'atmos-
phere of gloom' which surrounded the administration 'in which problems
appeared The gloom was not lifted by news on 2 November - in
insoluble'.
the midst of the presidential campaign - that the United States had secretly
detonated the first hydrogen bomb, raising fears of a first strike.
In December, Evelyn Shuckburgh wrote in his diary: 'the Americans are
not backing us anywhere. In fact, having destroyed the Dutch empire, the
United States are now engaged in undermining the French and British
empires as hard as they can.' Shuckburgh added that Eden 'could never
quite reconcile himself to its inevitable consequence growing American
. . .

dominance'. This, inevitably, had an effect on his relations with the new US
Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Foster Dulles, and the State
Department.^^
Any help in halting and closing the growing divide between the Euro-
peans and the Americans had to wait until the installation of the new Eisen-
hower regime. Prince Bemhard of the Netherlands, Retinger, Labour Party
leader Hugh Gaitskell and Denis Healey then travelled to the United States
to lobby for support and funds for a joint US /Europe forum designed to
dissipate the misunderstandings that existed between the two sides. In Wash-
ington, Bernhard visited an 'old friend'. General Bedell Smith, President
Eisenhower's wartime chief of staff and Director of the CIA. Smith was
sympathetic and turned the matter over to C. D. Jackson, president of the
Committee for a Free Europe and special assistant to the President on psycho-
logical warfare.
On 27 December 1952 faith in the exile operations was shattered when,
to the general disbelief of officers in MI6 and the OPC, Radio Warsaw began
broadcasting a series of programmes revealing that the pro-western Polish
resistance network, WiN
(Freedom and Independence), had been a puppet
of the UB security service (Urzad Bezpieczenstwa) since early 1948. Not only
did it become clear that MI 6 and the OPC were running 'false' networks,
operating under Soviet instructions as part of highly successful radio decep-
tions, it was also apparent that a large number of the emigre intelligence
sources were 'nothing but "paper mills" They often supplied no more than
'.

information culled from newspapers and the 'cocktail circuit' or from the
debriefings of other refugees or emigres. Large sums of money were spent
on subsidising these emigre sources but, more often than not, their reports
were 'worthless and unreliable and most frequently dedicated to selling a
498 PART FIVE: THE CHANGE

point of view' - a view that often led to a distorted picture of the situation
behind the Iron Curtain.'^^^

Taking on the new post of Director of Requirements, at the beginning of

1953 George Young tried to redirect MI6 efforts more effectively to priority
targets. One of the first problems was to scrutinise the elaborate and expensive
attempts to put agents into the Baltic states and Poland: operations 'regarded
as the special pride and joy of SIS'. Controller for Europe Kenneth Cohen
had raised the alarm about these operations but the warnings were ignored
because of 'enormous pressure' from the chiefs of staff who, desperate for
information, had provided so many facilities. The military were operating to
wartime criteria with unrealistic expectations but, with their strict military
backgrounds, Menzies and Sinclair had run the Service as an adjunct of the
chiefs and acquiesced to their wishes. The clandestine exile operations had
assumed a momentum of their own which proved difficult to stop.'^^
It is the nature of bureaucratic agencies such as the intelligence services
that, after a time, operations tend to run the officers rather than the other
way round. Kim Philby recognised the problem:

After long indecision, a given country's intelligence service

initiates some dubious operation. It takes the first step in the
hope that if that step turns out to be unsuccessful, things can
be turned back. Not on your life! After you take the first step,

you fall hostage to yourself. You now have to take the second
step, the third one and so on. The operation now takes on an
independent existence, outside the control of the Service. Money
that was allocated for it has already been partially spent, people
have been recruited and continue to be recruited, equipment is
being supplied. When someone suddenly realises - colleagues,
we're moving to an abyss! - it's too late; the time has slipped
away forever. His colleagues shrug their shoulders; so much
money has been spent, so many resources have been allocated,
so much effort has been put in. You can't turn back the clock
- it would mean a colossal scandal.

And so it proved inside MI 6. One of the officers running the Baits, Jolin
Liudzius, told his superiors that 'there was something wrong with the oper-
ations' but 'no one was willing to listen to me and they posted me to the Far
East'.^2

When Young, 'a brash, popular and outstanding intelHgence officer', who
was regarded 'as an intellectual because he read books', put the Baltic oper-
ation under close scrutiny, studied the radio traffic and the meagre results,

'it stuck out a mile from his own wartime experience in double-agent and
deception work that the whole affair was under Soviet control'. After much
dithering, Sinclair refused to accept the analysis, 'particularly as it would
 ROLLING BACK 'ROLL-BACK' 499

mean an embarrassing admission to the Foreign Office and the armed forces'.

Instead, he backed the Controller in charge, Harry Carr, who continued to

believe in the viability of the operations. All Young could do w^as to circulate
the reports as 'KGB deception material'; by that time the Soviets had already
'blown' most of the western intelligence operations in eastern Europe.'^^
After the Soviet Nineteenth Party Congress in October 1952, the first for

thirteen years and scene of his last speech, Stalin, by now 'old, and in all
ill

probability mentally deranged', unleashed the 'Vigilance' campaign which

threatened a bloodbath larger than any seen before. Alleged spies among the
highest echelons of the communist bloc were to be rooted out and executed
on a mass scale.Even members of the Council of Ministers were accused by
Stalin of being 'agents of British Intelligence'. These were ludicrous charges
but were taken seriously, even when senior Politburo member Anastas
Mikoyan and Foreign Secretary Molotov, whose wife was arrested and sent
to Siberia, were personally accused of treachery. Throughout the winter, plans
were made and the rumours flowed - while a smaller anti-Semitic terror
campaign reached into the heart of the Kremlin.*^
On 13 January 1953, Radio Moscow revealed the existence of the 'Doctors'
Plot'; bizarrely by 'killer doctors' belonging to a terrorist
alleged to be run
group in the pay of MI6 and the CIA. This Jewish group of well-known
doctors, a number of whom had been treating Stalin, was named as the 'Joint'
and described as 'a federation of many conspiratorial groups financed from
many sources, with world-wide ramifications, employing the weapons of
subversion, terrorism, and espionage'. Seventy-one-year-old Dr Vladimir
Vinogradov, one of the most respected figures in Russian medicine, was
charged with being the leader of the conspiracy. Kept in chains and tortured,
he was forced to confess that he had been a long-standing spy for British
Intelligence. 'In this way Stalin paid his last tribute to British Intelligence, for
which he had always shown a healthy respect. '^^
Chaired by Soviet specialist Frank Roberts, the Russia Committee
appeared 'quite confused' about what lay behind these developments. This
was understandable, as no one was safe from the basic insecurity, paranoia
and wrath of Stalin. The Ministry of State Security (KGB) was tasked with
organising the assassination of Tito. One attempt envisaged an agent spraying
a dose of lethal bacteria on the leader, another killing him with a specialised
silent weapon during a trip to London. MI6 forewarned Tito at least twice

of Soviet attempts on his life. The plans were dropped when Stalin died.*^
At 8.00 a.m. on 4 March 1953 Moscow Radio announced that, during the
night of 1-2 March, 'Comrade Stalin had suffered a cerebral haemorrhage
affecting vital areas of the brain, causing him to lose consciousness'. Following
his death, Stalin's successors appeared to show a willingness to negotiate on
differences with the West. The Russia Committee, however, in a special study
on 7 April, argued that any changes in Soviet foreign policy were purely
500 PART FIVE: THE CHANGE

tactical, short-term and designed to make the regime more popular - 'Friendly
Soviet moves were described as "lures", whilst unfriendly moves were said
to reveal the true Soviet intentions!' In contrast, Churchill welcomed the
change of climate. With Eden in ill health and incapacitated by the need for
a gall bladder operation, in April Churchill assumed control of the Foreign
Office and took the opportunity to launch a series of new policy initiatives
on eastern Europe. Though old, tired, lacking in energy and growing senile,
Churchill retained an enthusiasm for cloak-and-dagger operations. He was,
however, unwilling to back a liberation policy, and MI6's Soviet orbit oper-
ations began to wind down.*^
On 20 April 1953, with the support of the Cabinet and the Foreign Office,
Churchill called for high-level talks with thenew Soviet leadership. Five days
later, Pravda signalled Russian willingness for talks on Germany and German

rearmament. The new Politburo head was Georgi Malenkov, 'a man of no
popular appeal who climbed to the top on Stalin's coat-tails'. Beria remained
in charge of internal security a little longer before being arrested on 10 July,
charged with crimes against the London and Washington
state. Officials in

'rang each other up to ask "Who

Malenkov?"' MI6 had no high-grade
is

intelligence on the Soviet power structure and was not in a position to supply
an answer. The only man who could was Labour MP Harold Wilson, who,
through his links to East- West traders, had developed excellent 'unofficial'
channels to the Soviet leaders and actually knew Malenkov. In May 1953
Wilson made the first visit to Moscow by a senior western politician since
the beginning of the Cold War, when an embargo had been imposed following
the Berlin crisis. He stole the headlines with an interview with Molotov,
arranged by his old friend Mikoyan, who had also organised Wilson's visa
for the USSR. Even though Wilson cleared the trip with the Prime Minister
and was debriefed by Churchill and the Foreign Office on his return, his visit
caused fury on the Tory Right. Anticipating such a reaction, Churchill had
been using Julian Amery and Robert Boothby as a back channel to the Soviet
embassy, bypassing the Foreign Office and Eden."*^
George Young was concerned that MI6 'could never produce high-grade
intelligence on Russian intentions and policy-making'. A complete new
approach was required, and 'after a series of informal supper parties with
the brightest SIS officers, a systematic study was started of the top Soviet
power structure, its various personalities and cliques, and their associates in
the armed forces and KGB'. Young was amazed that this had not been carried
out in Whitehall, despite the fact that 'from both overt and covert sources
there was a mass which had never been properly assessed
of information
and collated'. This pioneering work was carried out by Professor Leonard
Schapiro, a Scot who had been brought up in St Petersburg and was bilingual,
and who held the chair of government with particular reference to Soviet
studies at the London School of Economics. With Foreign Office Soviet
 ROLLING BACK 'ROLL- BACK' 501

Specialist Malcolm Mackintosh, he enlisted the help of leading Soviet studies

experts from universities. According to Young, 'the results changed the whole
emphasis in tackling Russian targets, produced expert briefing for potential
sources and for the interrogation of desertersand defectors'. Young thought
that the success of the project was underlined by Mackintosh taking over the
Soviet desk in the Cabinet Office, a post he held until his retirement in 1987.^^^

Mackintosh thought Malenkov's strategy until his resignation as Premier

in February 1955 was 'based upon Stalin's' and that he 'acted in the spirit of

the decisions of Stalin's later years'. A year after Stalin's death, MI6's Hugh
Seton-Watson considered eastern Europe and acknowledged that changes
had occurred with the satellite leaders giving concessions to the peasants
which were 'necessitated by internal economic troubles'. He saw no new
foreign policy initiatives, though he admitted that it was 'premature to specu-
late on the meaning of these changes', but noted that 'the force which the

East European communists and their Soviet masters most fear is nationalism'.
Although he regarded the disruptive power of nationalism as strong, Seton-
Watson acknowledged that 'the struggle is of course veiled from foreign
eyes'.
In early 1953Desmond Bristow - recently chief of the Spanish station -
was invited by George Young to become head of MI6's new Strategic Trade
Section. As part of Operation SCRUM HALF, the section devised a system-
atic programme of intelligence-gathering in support of COCOM and the 'one

hundred items which the United States and Britain had decided must be
prevented from reaching the Warsaw Pact countries. Priority goods on the
list were copper in any shape or form, aluminium, diamonds and a host of

accessories not available behind the Iron Curtain, especially electrical goods
and embryonic electronic goods.' The aim was to slow down the Soviets'
war machine.
The Allies had established a shipping intervention programme using what
were known as 'receivers' by which strategic trade could be monitored. Each
country was consigned a particular number of receiving companies, to which
incoming goods on the strategic list could be dispatched. 'But, as Bristow
found, without constant vigilance this method was full of holes, and goods
continued to go behind the Iron Curtain.' With an assistant. Jack Sharp,
Bristow set up agents in jobs to monitor sea traffic and employed the commer-
cial staff in embassies abroad to supply information on shipping. He co-oper-

ated closely with Customs, Naval Intelligence and the CIA, while a liaison
officer, Peter Bowie, kept in touch with internationally operating companies.
In addition, GCHQ supplied the Section with intercepts of commercial
traffic.''

In May, Pravda reported the execution of four Ukrainians alleged to have

spied for the United States, while Moscow Radio announced that four NTS
502 PART FIVE: THE CHANGE

agents who, a month had parachuted into the Ukraine had been
earlier,

captured by the KGB and executed. When, in a further blow, four NTS
agents, who worked under various aliases and disguises in East Germany,
Poland and the Soviet Union, suddenly disappeared, a shudder ran through
the MI 6 station in the Olympia Stadium buildings in Berlin. It seemed that
they had been betrayed, and a subsequent security investigation during
September uncovered the mole's identity.
The head of the CIA's Soviet desk, Harry Rositzke, believed that the
traitor was a Soviet Army deserter who had defected to the West in November

1949 for the love of a German woman. Under a new German identity, with
his wife and children still in the Soviet Union, he had been tracked down by
Soviet agents and pressurised into becoming their informer. Highly
competent, he joined the NTS and gained rapid promotion within the organis-
ation, becoming an instructor at an NTS espionage school and a consultant
to US Army Intelligence. He then began passing on reports to his Soviet
handlers at the MGB base at Karlshorst in the Berlin suburbs. A more public
account identified him as Nikita Khorunzhi, a former member of theGerman
Communist Party who defected in the spring of 1951. Joining the NTS, it
was not long before he was appointed by the CIA as Soviet adviser to the
G-2 department of US Army Intelligence and full-time instructor at their
school at Bad Homburg.^^
The CIA paid 80 per cent of the finances and controlled the training of a
mixed group of Russians, Belorussians and Ukrainians at Holland Park. With
the help of German agents, MI 6 was responsible for training the NTS under
a German-speaking ex-army officer, 'Mr Radford'. From the Soviet press,
NTS trainees learned that the group of NTS agents headed by A. V. Lakhno
- a wartime collaborator with German Intelligence - had been captured in
the Soviet Union, along with 'pistols and a supply of cartridges, radio trans-
mitters, radio targets, ciphers and
beacons for directing airplanes to their
codes, cryptographic means, ampoules with poison sewn into their shirt
collars, equipment for forging Soviet documents and printing anti-Soviet

leaflets, and considerable amounts of Soviet money and gold'. The subsequent

collapse of morale could not be alleviated by the NTS leader and MI6 agent
Georgi Okolovich, who was also working with the Gehlen Organisation. He
blamed the CIA for failing to take his advice on where to parachute in the
Lakhno group. It was a period of intense factional in-fighting and, fearful
that security was lax, MI6 moved the group to new safe houses around
London.^^
The in-fighting was American Committee for
also evident within the
Liberation of the Peoples of Russia from Bolshevism, which was subject to
repeated attacks by the Ukrainian-controlled ABN for its inability to resolve
the 'nationalist' question. In Munich, a new US sponsored Co-ordinating
Centre for Anti-Bolshevik Struggle was set up but was opposed by some
 ROLLING BACK 'ROLL-BACK' 503

pro-Russians for pumping out propaganda. During the summer

'separatist'

of 1953 the committee split into two warring factions, both funded by the
CIA. The Belorussia National Committee (BNC) joined the International Anti-
Bolshevik Co-ordination Centre (MAKC), while the Belorussian Central
Council (BCR) opted for the rival Co-ordination Centre for Anti-Bolshevik
Action (KCAB) in which the pro-Russian NTS also participated. These rival
centres continued to attack each other, often 'more bitterly than they do the
Stalinists', while their activities became 'caricatures of European international
conferences'.^^

The first major test for Britain's new policy towards the Soviet Union and its

relationship with the United States came on 17 June 1953. A peaceful protest
march through East by several hundred construction workers turned
Berlin
into an uprising when tens of thousands of East Germans began rioting in
sixty cities, calling for free elections and the downfall of the regime. It is now
known from East German and Soviet archives that the uprising was more
widespread, prolonged and violent than had been recognised at the time by
the West. It is also apparent from the files of the East German Communist
Socialist Unity Party (SED) that American propaganda radio stations had a
significant influence on the build-up to the riots. Many workers taking part
had expected radio support for the strikes to be followed up by a western
invasion. It soon became apparent, however, that the United States, despite
the roll-back rhetoric, had not actually prepared any realistic plans to deal
with such situations. Washington had been caught unawares.
There was little or no protest from the British when nearly three hundred
Soviet tanks quelled the rebellion, and Churchill singularly failed to back up
subsequent American protests. In correspondence with the Foreign Office,
Churchill wrote that the Russians had 'acted with considerable restraint'. He
added: 'Is it suggested that the Soviets should have allowed the Eastern Zone
to fall into anarchy and riot?' Churchill was afraid that the uprising would
dash hopes for his four-power negotiations and 'was intent on getting back to
business as usual in Berlin'. He refused to endorse requests for a co-ordinated
pro-rioters propaganda campaign with the Americans, who seemed to British
officials to be out of control.^^
As a reaction to the uprising, the American Psychological Strategy Board
drew up an 'interim US Plan for Exploitation of Unrest in Satellite Europe'
which was adopted by the National Security Council (NSC) on 29 June. It was
designed to encourage 'resistance to communist oppression' by covert and
psychological means 'short of mass rebellion'. The main response was to be a
large-scale food programme for East Germany, designed to keep the Soviets on
the defensive. The British had initially resisted the idea because they thought
'the risks were far too great'. Food was, however, made available at distribution
centres in the western sectors of Berlin, which were still accessible to the East.
504 PART FIVE: THE CHANGE

The programme massive response and was viewed in Washington

elicited a

as highly successfuland an example of operations short of war that could be

undertaken to advance the liberation of eastern Europe.
Despite the fact that the Americans had not responded with force, the
East German crisis and the rhetoric pouring from Foster Dulles and his
supporters in the Republican Party created divisions within the western alli-

ance. In Cabinet on 3 July, the Secretary of State for the Commonwealth,

Lord Salisbury, who was acting in the absence of Eden as Foreign Secretary,
expressed concern about the

dangerous American tendency ... to interpret the situation

behind the Iron Curtain as already very shaky and therefore to
advocate new although unspecified measures to encourage and
even promote the early liberation of the satellite countries. It is
my American pressure for new initiatives of
intention to resist
this kind. The last thing we want to do is to bait the Russian
and satellite governments into taking measures against them
. We must of course keep the spirit of freedom alive in Eastern
. .

Europe, but we should also counsel prudence and restraint.

In line with Churchill's wishes - Churchill felt that a meeting 'might well

lead to an easement in world tension' - and with the support of the French,
Salisbury hoped to persuade Dulles to accept high-level talks with the
Russians.^^
At the 10 July meeting in Washington, Salisbury did manage to discourage
the American Secretary of State from initiating any new 'embarrassing initiat-
ives' and, to the surprise of the participants, Dulles was unexpectedly moder-
ate in his views on eastern Europe. On his return to London, Salisbury told
the Cabinet that there was 'complete harmony of view on the attitude to be
adopted toward the satellites' and that Dulles had been 'extremely helpful'.
It was, however, a delusion. While there was, indeed, a temporary lull. Presi-

dent Eisenhower and Dulles were awaiting the formation of new policy
initiatives due in the autumn. Discussions were taking place within the NSC
about massively reinforcing the propaganda campaign against the Soviet
bloc. Dulles was still determined to 'harry the Soviets wherever possible'.
On 27 July the Americans began distributing food parcels in West Berlin,
near the intersecting border, putting a strain on western allied unity, with
the British wanting to get things 'back to normal as fast as possible'. Some
officials in the Foreign Office, however, drew the conclusion that American

policy in practice was more moderate than Dulles's rhetoric. One official

wrote that 'this administration is decidedly less interventionist in practice

'.^°
than its predecessor, for all the bold talk about "liberation"
The British and Americans had 'an unpleasant surprise' when the Russians
conducted their first successful hydrogen bomb test on 12 August 1953.
 ROLLING BACK 'ROLL-BACK' 505

'Within a few days', Dr R. V. Jones recalled, 'our monitoring system (with the
Americans) established that it had a thermonuclear component'. According to
Jones, there was on the JIC, 'for in a strange way
a feeling of relief we felt

that the world might somehow be more secure'.

To a degree previously unknown, Winston Churchill had taken personal

control of the Foreign Office and the sanction of special operations. According
to Evelyn Shuckburgh, the Prime Minister 'had to be consulted about drafting
points in the reply to the Soviets' and 'about every individual "intelligence"
operation'. Churchill 'usually forbids' special operations for 'fear of upsetting
the Russians', something that did not go down well with the US State Depart-
ment and the CIA. The lack of support for the US strategy left the British,
as the Foreign Office official responsible for overseeing special operations,
Gladwyn Jebb, put September, 'in quite bad odour with the Americans
it in
on Cold War While agreeing that roll-back in eastern Europe was
matters'.
not immediately feasible, the American administration took little heed of
British opinion and, instead, endorsed the secret hardline 'Solarium Project'
for undermining Soviet control over the satellites.^^

Despite the consistent failures of the roll-back operations, the NSC still
did not preclude the detachment of minor satellites such as Albania. New
paramilitary plans under the direction of C. D. Jackson, Eisenhower's psycho-
logical warfare specialist, OPC head Frank Wisner and Foster Dulles were
not immediately implemented because of the forthcoming elections in West
Germany. Until they were held, all covert operations in Europe were post-
poned in order to avoid any possible embarrassment. The plans were recon-
sidered in November, but this time as an Anglo-American project. On the
11th, Jackson met with the First Secretary at the Washington embassy, Adam
Watson, to discuss 'country A'. Afterwards, Jackson reported that 'everything
is back on track and operations should be launched from Greece and Yugo-
slavia'. The Anglo-American plans evolved rapidly in the months that
followed, with a target date in the spring of 1954.^^
At a conference in Bermuda on 8 December with President Eisenhower,
Churchill hoped to persuade the Americans of his desire to hold talks with
the Moscow leaders. He made little progress, however, and left Bermuda
'bitterly disappointed'.The only positive outcome was the signing of a declar-
ation - with a passage inserted at DuUes's insistence - which stated that 'we
cannot accept as justified or permanent the present division of Europe. Our
hope is that in due course peaceful means will be found to enable the countries
of Eastern Europe again to play their parts as free nations in a free Europe.' A
number of the exiles recognised that these were mere platitudes and resigned
themselves to the fact that 'Britain had effectively withdrawn from political
action'.

On Christmas Eve 1953 it was announced that Lavrenti Beria - had been
506 PART FIVE: THE CHANGE

executed, accused of spying for a foreign nation, Britain - according to

Khrushchev, strangled by members of the Presidium. Those investigating
Beria - the same people who had supervised the earlier proceedings against
the alleged Zionist conspiracy - claimed that he had been part of a plot to
contact the British Intelligence Service. This ridiculous conclusion was drawn
after Beriaordered the end of the investigation of the Soviet ambassador to
Great Britain, Ivan Maisky, who was accused of spying for MI6. Beria's
intelligence ties were said to go back to 1919, during the Civil War, when he
had clandestine contacts with British Intelligence in the Baku. Since 1946,
Beria had been the target of a campaign by the Georgian Security Ministry
to compromise him through his Mingrelian comrades, including plans to
kidnap his wife's relatives in Paris as part of a Mingrelian secession
conspiracy involving links to the MI6-sponsored Promethean League. A few
days after Beria's death was announced, Kenneth de Courcy, who ran the
right-wing Intelligence Digest, happened to see his old friend Stewart Menzies
in White's Club: 'He frankly told me he had played a part in that event.'^^

On New Year's Eve 1953, Radio Tirana announced that the CIA's agents
trained for the final part of Operation FIEND against Albaniahad been
arrested by the Sigurimi and were awaiting trial. American and, on a much
smaller scale, British liberation policy was now in tatters. There was nothing
to back up the false assumption that the eastern Europeans were ready to
throw off the yoke of communist totalitarian oppression. MI6 and the CIA
had ignored the lesson that 'even a weak regime could not be overthrown
by covert paramilitary actions alone'. It also illustrated that, despite the intelli-
gence 'special relationship', MI6/CIA rivalry 'so often seems to have got in
the way of effective co-ordination'.^^
As began to die a slow death. When
a consequence, plans for 'country A'
Dulles, Bedell Smith and met on 8 March 1954, the British
C. D. Jackson
agreed with them that the operation would have to wait 'until Trieste [was]
settled'. The plan was revived by the CIA but it never got off the ground,

partly owing to other problems facing Eisenhower in eastern Europe but

primarily because the Albanian operation had been truly blown. Whether the
British seriously contemplated joining with the Americans in a new operation
against Albania is not known, but seems unlikely.
Around the same time, MI6 suspicions about the Baltic operations were
aroused by another unsuccessful intelligence-gathering operation. London
had signalled the 'Robets' group in Riga, Latvia, with a request for a sample
of water from the River Tobol, near the Urals, where it was believed a nuclear
reactor had been recently commissioned. A litre of water was obtained which
was then passed on to the 'Maxis' group, one of whose members managed
to bring it out when E-boat captain Hans Klose next landed MI6 agents on
the Baltic coast. The flask arrived at the end of March 1954, but analysis of
the water for traces of radioactivity revealed levels of such toxicity that it
 ROLLING BACK 'ROLL-BACK' 507

had to be dismissed as a plant. MI6's insistent questioning of their agents in

the Baltic left little doubt in the minds of the KGB officers who had
constructed the deception that the British knew that the networks were now
under their control.^^
In April, the show trial in a Tirana cinema of leading conspirators revealed
for the first time the extent of the Albanian deception. The Sigurimi had
rolled up American network and had controlled much of the flow
the entire
of information to the radio base in Cyprus. The executions were followed by
a reign of terror throughout the country in which thousands died for what
one exile condemned as 'an absurd enterprise'.
When French Senator de la Vallee Poussin was elected chair of the EM
Central and East European Commission, in April 1954, the secretariat was
moved from London to Brussels and finally to Paris, where the exiles noticed
a different political atmosphere. This was the equivalent', Polish leader Stefan
Korbonski later wrote, 'to the withdrawal of and initiative
British leadership
in matters concerning the Iron Curtain countries, and was done with all the
polite ceremony required on such occasions, in the form of the usual phrases
and a smoke-screen of thanks and compliments.' The Americans now took
over full control of eastern European operations, or what was left of them.^^
In early 1954, Communist Party leader Nikita Khrushchev began his bid
for power by claiming that Malenkov's softness on imperialism threatened
Soviet security. With his position weakened, by the end of the year Malenkov
had fallen from power and with him had gone any chance of detente. With
renewed confidence, the Soviets began to roll up the remaining exile
networks. Besides betraying parties of NTS agents parachuted into the Soviet
Union, Nikita Khorunzhi had also supplied the KGB with information vital

to the successful kidnapping in April of an NTS leader, Dr Alexander Trusah-

novich, and nine days later the failed assassination attempt on Georgi Okolov-
ich. Within a month, the Ukrainian operation had also finally fallen apart
when Soviet radio announced the execution of the Americans' top agent and
leading OUN-B figure, V. O. Okhrymovych, who was said to have revealed
the identities of other agents in Ukraine.^°
The Soviet Union publicised these cases at the United Nations, this time
with more success. The Western Allies replied with their own propaganda
initiative, with the full background to the Soviet campaign against the NTS

finally being revealed with the defection to the West of the assassin of Russian
emigres, Capt. Nikolai Khokhlov, whose story, pumped through MI6 and
IRD propaganda assets, received the full blare of publicity."'

Ithad become increasingly clear that the Europeans wanted a relaxation of

East-West trade because they were less reliant on US economic assistance.
By the end of 1953, the British sought a dramatic liberalisation of export
controls, with a 50 per cent reduction in the Control List. Though they had
508 PART FIVE: THE CHANGE

no wish to see 'any traffic in military equipment . . . capable of making

weapons', the JIC urged that trade controls should be aimed only at 'vulner-
able spots' in the Soviet economy/^
Desmond Bristow genuinely believed that MI6's Strategic Trade Section
was 'actively achieving results', but, by April 1954, the 'work had become
more or less routine, and the list of goods and companies we were watching
had been whittled down to ten or twenty. The main concern was in the
atomic field and in electronic components, mostly manufactured by America.'
There was little left to do and Bristow decided to retire, leaving strategic
trade in the hands of just one officer. In a victory for the British position, the
list was slashed and, thereafter, COCOM concentrated 'more narrowly on
items used mainly in military production, or items whose impact would be
felt in the Soviet defence, rather than civilian sector'. Bitter arguments
between the Europeans and Americans over strategic trade did not, however,
cease, and soured initiatives for many years.^^
In an effort to cement western co-operation in the midst of the Cold War,
the first formal Bilderberg conference was held in May in the small Dutch
town of Oosterbeekat, at the Hotel de Bilderberg, from which the meeting
took name. It was seen as an opportunity for shapers of opinion among
its

elite groups in Europe to speak with one voice to their counterparts in the

United States, who feared that differences over European integration and
eastern Europe would create misunderstandings.
Funding came courtesy of the Dutch government and the CIA, through
the efforts of Shepard Stone, who had served during the war in Psychological
Warfare and postwar in Berlin on the staff of the US Military Government.
Denis Healey was invited to the first meeting and acted as convenor for the
British component - Gubbins, Beddington-Behrens, Bob Boothby, Mont-
gomery Hyde (Unionist MP and former MI6 officer). Sir Paul Chambers of
ICI and Hugh Gaitskell, whose expenses were occasionally covered by the
Foreign Office. The presence of other Europeans such as Antoine Pinay, Guy
Mollet, Alcide de Gasperi and Paul van Zeeland showed a strong overlap
with membership of the EM. Healey found Bilderberg to be 'most valuable',
though 'the real value, as always, was in the personal contacts outside the
Conference halT.^^
It was thus used, participants insist, to prevent divergences emerging

by working through consensus rather than any formal procedure. This was
particularly true concerning European perceptions of 'McCarthyism'. During
the first conference 'sparks flew' between the two groups. According to the
'strictly confidential' record of the first meeting, a major concern was with

'long-term planning', with the main theme being the threat of, and vigilance
against, communist infiltration. The intention was to pass on the general
views of the discussions to opinion-makers without disclosing the source. It

would seem that, at the prompting of Bilderberg, a number of anti-communist

 ROLLING BACK 'ROLL-BACK' 509

think-tanks and propaganda agencies were set up and funded by western

intelligence services throughout Europe in the late fifties/^
If, as Churchill indicated, the British wanted to concentrate solely on
psychological warfare with regard to the Soviet satellites, they hardly seemed
to be in a position to undertake any major operations. When Harold
Macmillan was appointed Minister of Defence in 1954, he was convinced that
'the first essential' in the Cold War was good intelligence. He was, however,
dismayed at the lack of co-ordination, particularly since the battlefield had
moved increasingly out of Europe into those former areas of the British
Empire where the 'Attlee Doctrine' still held sway. George Young soon
discovered that the Commonwealth Relations and Colonial Offices disliked
receiving information that clashed with their preconceived notions about
Africa and Asia. One official explained that it was 'too embarrassing to negoti-
ate with anyone if I know that behind my back he is up to something quite
different'. There was little or no co-operation between MI6 and MIS, and

with the imperial security services. 'No one is wholly responsible,' Macmillan
complained. 'It's partly Defence, partly Colonial Office, partly Foreign Office.
There's no central anti-Communist organisation with any drive in it. "Cold

War" alarms me more than "Hot War". For we are not really winning it,
and the Russians have a central position . . . and a well directed effort with
strong representation (through the Communist Party in every country ).'^^
Macmillan was one of the few ministers who still had the energy to do
something about the situation and looked for 'some way of getting everyone
to co-operate and pull together - the Cabinet, the Foreign Office, the Service
chiefs, the information people'. Eden realised that 'it was no use asking the
PM to undertake any administrative reforms - he simply would not take
it in'. Churchill wanted 'not so much more officials everywhere collecting

information to prove how necessary they are but a much smaller number of
agents . . . who stay in the same places long enough to learn something about
the facts'. This was no doubt based on the experience of his private secretary,
Montague Brown, who had previously complained about the bland intelli-
gence assessments the Prime Minister received from the Foreign Office, and
was one of the key officials who 'always looked forward to the yellow
dispatch box in which Young put the cream of "C" 's output'.^^
There followed a running battle in Cabinet with confusion among minis-
ters about precisely what it was they were seeking. There was a major differ-
ence between intelligence-gathering, propaganda and special operations. By
this time, there should have been an improvement in the collation and assess-
ment Permanent Under-Secretary's Department
of intelligence because the
(PUSD), headed by Patrick and then Patrick Dean, had become a
Reilly
large and important section in the Foreign Office. It had taken over the
responsibilities of the former Services Liaison Department, which involved
'Co-ordination of Intelligence, Representation on the Joint Intelligence
510 PART FIVE: THE CHANGE

Committee and Joint Planning Staffs, Liaison with Ministry of Defence and
Chiefs of Staff Organisation'. In addition, it provided the secretariat of the
all-important PUSC, which, crucially, set the budgets of the security services.
When, during 1954, a programme of economies was being imposed upon the
British intelligence community, it was the PUSD that prepared an inter-
departmental report for consideration not only by the PUSC but also by the
chiefs of staff, a job previously undertaken by the JIC.^^
In the area of special operations, increased Foreign Office co-ordination
does not appear to have occurred. Here, there was much more haphazard
and semi-official management without clear lines of control and command.
In particular, Eden was quite happy to bypass the Foreign Office and deal
directly with senior MI6 officers and the chiefs of staff, while Churchill
wanted planned operations. There were co-ordinating bodies
to oversee all
in this period, but where they fit into the official structures is hard to ascertain.
The 'Jebb Committee', seemingly attached to the Russia Committee, was
apparently replaced by the Psychological Warfare Consultations Committee
or 'Dodds-Parker Committee'. Named after its chair, Douglas Dodds-Parker
- Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs between November 1953 and
October 1954 and again in 1956 during the Suez period - this committee
appears to have been the kind of co-ordinating body that Macmillan sought.
Among the members were the psychological warfare specialist Hugh Carleton
Greene - recently head of the Emergency Information Services in Malaya
and currently Assistant Controller of the BBC's Overseas Services - and the
former head of SOE, Sir Charles Hambro. According to Kim Philby, they
had responsibility for planning psychological warfare operations primarily
against Soviet-backed peace fronts and conferences, including domestic
organisations. MI6 was also engaged
in undermining delegations to Britain
from socialist countries and their representatives residing here. During the
summer of 1952, the Foreign Office's Northern Department had revised its
machinery for providing intelligence on visiting Soviet bloc delegations and
the use of such information by MI6's special section (known as BIN/
KOORD) and the IRD in briefing the press and media. The Dodds-Parker
Committee also sanctioned the exploitation of crew members on British
merchant ships and other vessels.^'^
In early 1954, following the success of various special operations in the
Middle East, MI 6 reorganised its former SOE elements under Montague
Woodhouse of the Special Operations Group and Political Action Branch into
the Special Political Action (SPA) section. Acting under the authority of Rl who
also became its chief, the SPA was officially engaged inwhat were known as
'political measures' which 'Higher Directive' C(102)56 noted was 'not an
words because it is very difficult to find a
especially successful combination of
proper name for these many faceted and broad tasks'. The SPA ran MI6 agents
'operationally' in tasks that included 'the organisation of upheavals, organisa-
 ROLLING BACK 'ROLL-BACK' 511

tion of clandestine radio stations, sabotage and espionage activities, publication

of newspapers and magazines, the disruption of international conferences or
control of them, influencing elections and many others'. The propaganda
'PROP' section of the SPA department was additionally responsible for 'not
only exercising political guidance over long-term planning of all propaganda
operations, but also for providing detailed guidance and control over the
conduct of covert propaganda, i.e. the sort of propaganda for whose conduct
Her Majesty's Government must not be accused'. PROP was also involved
in 'deception actions' and acted as liaison with the IRD.^*^
While special operations were being reorganised, there was an internal
crisis over the Baltic operations, and it was clear to MI6's young Turks that

something was amiss with Harry Carr's operations. Suspicions were based
not just on the bizarre episode with radioactive water but also on an analysis
of radio traffic. Louise Bedarfas, an American of Lithuanian origin from the
CIA's Baltic branch, who London in May, had concluded that all
arrived in
their actual agents were dead and that the remaining functioning radio in
the Baltic was under KGB control. Unfortunately, a number of older, senior
MI6 officers, whose reputations rested on the success or otherwise of the
eastern European operations, still believed in the soundness of their networks,
and so there was only a temporary crisis over agent status when Sandy
McKibben ignored an order to stop sending them into the Baltic. An officer
not involved in the operations, George Young, aka 'Scott', was brought in to
assess their viability but was hampered by having to rely on what the officers
controlling the operations told him. Carr assured Young that the British
experience was different from that of the CIA and that there was no need
down the networks. Young insisted, however, on a test of the Estonian
to close
network by way of a 'barium meal' - intelligence would be passed through
and traced to see if it was used by the KGB.^^
At the end of September, the KGB allowed a 'suitably ignorant but experi-
enced' officer, Margers Vitolin, to travel to London to try to answer MI6
queries concerning the mystery of the radioactive water. Met at Kiel by
Rudolph Silarajs, who ran the Latvian operations. Young and the resident
MI6 officer in Hamburg, Vitolin was debriefed in a villa requisitioned by
MI6 and then at a safe house in Sloane Street, Knightsbridge. Interrogated
for two weeks by Young and MI6 lawyer Helmus Milmo, Vitolin admitted
that he was a communist, confirming Young's suspicions. At the beginning
of November, following a request by MI 6, Alphons Rebane welcomed the
arrival in London of an Estonian guerrilla, Walter Luks. As a former SS
officer, Rebane had a high opinion of his ability to spot a communist, and

Young and Carr relied on his opinion. Unfortunately, on this occasion, this
ability deserted him and he ignored the advice of a colleague at the Estonian
embassy who recognised Luks as a communist who had joined the Red Army
in 194L''
512 PART FIVE: THE CHANGE

Once again, it seemed that MI6 had been misled, but Young now knew
for certain that the KGB was It became clear
manipulating the operations.
that all the Soviet orbit operations had been controlled to a lesser or greater
degree by the KGB and that the intelligence which MI 6 had proudly supplied
to its Whitehall customers had been either of such low level as to be worthless,
or the product of disinformation. To avoid an embarrassing blow to its credi-
bility, MI6 had concealed the fact from Whitehall. In order to make something

of the disaster, MI6 decided to turn the operations around and moimt their
own deception operations. As part of the process, control of Baltic operations
was wrested from the old regime and a number of officers were quietly
pushed aside. The first casualty of the clear-out was McKibben, who was
allowed to retire.^^

In late November 1954, MI6 decided to test the Estonian network. MI6's
Soviet 'expert', Harold Shergold, asked Tony Divall to run an important
Estonian agent, Boris Nelk, with Ryder Latham, who had spent three years
with the Control Commission in Germany and then in the Rome embassy
under commercial cover. In Helsinki, Divall and Latham met with Alphons
Rebane, later joining Shergold for a mission to drop Nelk off the coast near
Juminda. Unfortunately, a trap had been set, and 'no sooner had the agent
clambered into a dinghy for the final stage of his journey back into the Soviet
Union than two patrol vessels arrived on the scene and opened fire'. The
MI6 party just managed to escape into international waters. On his return
to London, Divall was told that Nelk was 'suspected of working as a double
agent for the KGB'.'^
The exile double-cross game was not only being practised by the KGB
and MI6. MI5's new counter-espionage D Division, under its head, Graham
Mitchell, also got in on the act. On the back of the successful wartime double-
cross operations against the Germans, MIS and MI6 began 'recruiting as
many double agents as possible, and operating extensive networks of agents
in the large Russian, Polish and Czechoslovakian emigre communities'.
Mitchell hoped that 'eventually one of those agents would be accepted into
the heart of the Russian illegal network'. MI5 officers also recruited many
emigre agents with the idea of recruiting others back in their homeland.
Using the intelligence gathered during Operation Post Report's investigation
into the loyalty of thousands of postwar emigres in Britain, the emigres
were easy to recruit and 'enabled MIS to compete directly with MI6 in the
production of Iron Curtain intelligence, much to their irritation'. The IRD
provided D Division with plausible intelligence 'chicken-feed' which could
be passed to the Soviets to convince the KGB of their agents' credibility.^"^
MI6 knew that their infiltration operations in the Caucasus had also been
thoroughly penetrated and undermined by Soviet-run deceptions, and
decided, again, to turn them around as double-cross operations. The Service
took considerable risks in sending back to Georgia as their own agent a
 ROLLING BACK 'ROLL-BACK' 513

disaffected Latvian patriot - in fact, a Russian agent whom they had 'turned'.
After an unsuccessful attempt to put him ashore from an eleven-man,
specially adapted boat on a beach not far from Sukhumi, which had been
reconnoitred a month before, the agent was landed in the neighbourhood of
Tuapse.
The boat was commanded by Mark Arnold-Forster, a lieutenant in the
Royal Navy who had been demobbed in 1946 to work with MI6. Using
the boat's sophisticated tracking technology, Arnold-Forster noticed intense
'indications of search activity' (ISA) such as increased Soviet radar trans-
missions and loitering of ships in the area. He later discovered that the
Latvian had 'deceived British Intelligence'. The agent had 'remained loyal to
Russia and apparently transmitted disinformation back to the British'. It soon
became apparent that the agent had 'informed the Soviet authorities in
advance of our mission. He told them where we would be landing and when.'
The KGB had intended to capture the boat and crew, but the MI6 team
managed to escape by using the full power of the boat's customised engines
to evade the closing net.^^

As end of 1954 a group of NTS

a result of this latest disaster, towards the
agents being trained in London were told that an operation to land another
group of agents on the Black Sea coast by submarine had been cancelled at
the last moment. The senior instructor, 'Mr Radford', explained to them
that 'in the changed situation it had been decided to wind up the training
programme and postpone the landings'.^^
As an inevitable result of factional in-fighting, by January 1955 two oppos-
ing groups had developed within the NTS. One was led by Baydalakov, who
was eventually expelled for 'betrayal of solidarity', and the other by Vladimir
Poremsky, who succeeded in retaining most of the official structure. By this
time, the NTS members were 'aware of a certain nervousness and suspicion
among the British'. For four years MI6 had run the NTS project, SHRAPNEL,
principally in the interests of gathering secret intelligence, and had in the
process come to the conclusion that the use of 'Black Operations, Defectors,
Internal cases within the USSR, Counter-Espionage dividends obtained by
using the NTS as a magnet with which to attract offensive Russian Intelli-

gence Service operations' had 'not proved worthwhile'. The NTS had not
produced any substantial sources, and knowledge gained in the previous
two years about the KGB operations against the exiles convinced MI6 that
NTS intelligence-gathering was too low-level to be worth sustaining. The
NTS people subsequently went to bizarre lengths to prove their worth.
Among those expelled was George Klimov, who was made chair of the
'Central Union of Post-War Russian Emigres' (ZOPE), financed by the Ameri-
cans. It went so far as to secretly blow up its own headquarters in order to
justify its claim that it posed a real threat to the KGB.^^
In the meantime, Margers Vitolin returned to Latvia to an in-depth
514 PART FIVE: THE CHANGE

debriefing. His interrogation at Moscow Centre aroused suspicion that the

KGB deception operation had been rumbled by MI6. Given also the absence
of new MI6/CIA agents being landed in the Baltic - details of which would
normally have been made known by a spy planted in the boat service - the
KGB came to the conclusion that the British were probably now playing the
game in reverse.
The run-down of the eastern European operations was paralleled by a
thaw in East- West relations. In late March 1955, just before Eden succeeded
Churchill as Prime Minister, the PUSC referred back to its earlier study on
the satellites and argued that, largely on the basis of the recent western
agreement to rearm West Germany, there was now an equilibrium with the
Soviets which meant that there was a place for genuine negotiations. The
Foreign Office argued that from this position of strength the West could win
concessions from the Soviets. The PUSC also considered a paper, 'Positive
Action designed to Compress and Disrupt the Soviet Bloc', that entertained
the possibility of 'squeezing Albania out of the Soviet Bloc' on the basis that
the Soviet Union might regard the country as 'expendable'. Albania was seen
as the only possible exception to British government strictures on supporting
resistance groups in liberating the satellites. The possibility of such disruptive
action was axed, as the prospect of some kind of deal with the Soviets was
taken seriously. Eden agreed that the time was ripe for an East- West summit,
which eventually took place in Geneva in July.^°
In April, George Young had received more ammunition for his opinion
of the Baltic operations when a returning Estonian agent revealed that the
'networks are completely penetrated by the KGB'. There remained, however,
hesitancy in believing that their efforts had been in vain, and the failures
were blamed on Sandy McKibben and one of the CIA's own agents, who
had previously been accused of being a KGB plant. But failure hung in the
air and, in turn, Harry Carr was quietly posted to Copenhagen, where he

awaited his retirement, while Rudolph Silarajs was dismissed and sought a
new life in Canada, where he died in the late seventies.
Other projects also came under close scrutiny, and when John Bruce-
Lockhart applied 'bromide tests', he found confirmation that the whole
Ukraine operation 'had been under the control of Soviet intelligence since
the first group had been captured after landing by parachute in 1950'. Simi-
larly, he came to the conclusion that NTS operations in the Soviet Union

'had come almost completely under Soviet control'. In late 1955, MI6 finally
decided 'to pull out, leaving the tiresome job of dealing with Russian emigres
to its American partner'. In transferring their assets, MI6 informed the Ameri-
cans that in their opinion NTS supporter Prince Turkul had not been 'doub-
ling as a Soviet Agent', despite the assumption in right-wing circles that this

had been the case.^^

The British were frustrated with the failure of the Ukrainian OUN-B and,
 ROLLING BACK 'ROLL-BACK' 515

considering the NTS an ineffective organisation, broke off relations with both
groups in 1956. A joint MI6/CIA two-day conference was held in London

on 28/29 February during which MI 6 outlined their reasons for withdrawing

their support from the NTS. MI6 officers

made it clear to the NTS leadership that its objective in pursuing

operations jointly with the NTS was to obtain secret intelligence
on the USSR. In return for secret intelligence or the prospect
thereof the British Service was ready to supply the NTS with
extensive facilities in the field of training, supply, despatch and
operational advice and support of all kinds.The Cold War
propaganda and disruptive activities of the NTS have only been
of minor interest to the British Service in so far as they could
be viewed as providing a favourable climate for the develop-
ment of secret intelligence operations and the provision of oper-
atives.

They had drawn up 'a balance sheet in which every factor in the British/
NTS partnership can be given its due weight. Their conclusion is that the
partnership has largely been unproductive from their point of view, i.e. that
the results obtained have been in no way commensurate with the time and
money invested.' MI 6 told CIA representatives that it would finally cut off
support on 1 April.^^^

Neither were things going well for the NTS's sternest critics, the Russian
Revolutionary Force (RRF), which opposed CIA-sponsored umbrella groups
such as the American Committee for Liberation. Ironically - given that the
RFF had repeatedly portrayed the NTS as a KGB front - in 1956 the 'Young
Russian' leader, Kazem-Beck, who had emigrated to the United States,
returned to the Soviet Union, thus reviving rumours that he had always had
links with the Soviet security services.
MI6 now felt that it was time to clear the decks without leaving any
embarrassing failures lying around. The Royal Navy withdrew its permission
for German ships to use British naval ensigns, thereby removing the boat
though MI6/CIA agent teams continued to be sent by boat
service's cover -
end of the year. The German government then absorbed
to the Baltic until the
the Gehlen Org. and ordered it to halt missions into Russia.
In June, Silarajs sent a final message, abandoning the eleven MI6 agents
still operating in the 'We can no longer help you. Will be sending you
Baltic:

no physical or material help. All safe houses are blown Destroy or keep
. . .

radios and codes. This is our last message until better times. We will listen
to you until 30 June. Thereafter, God help you.''^^
During July, the KGB mastermind behind the Soviet deception operations.
Major Janis Lukasevics, responded by sending an undercover officer, Janis
Klimkans, to Sweden to attempt to renew contact with MI 6. In September,
516 TART FIVE: THE CHANGE

he arrived in London where he was interrogated by Young. Exhausted, physi-

cally and mentally, from daily interrogation in 'the cooler', after four weeks
Klimkans made a full confession which 'destroyed the last trust of MI6 in
the emigres'. Rebane closed down the remaining Estonian radio station and
shortly afterwards left the Service to settle in Augsburg, Germany. The KGB
mopped up the remaining Baltic agents, who were then either executed or
sentenced to long terms of imprisonment. Klimkans was taken by MI6 hand-
lers to the Soviet embassy in Sweden with a message for Lukasevics: 'Tell

your masters that we're grateful for the lessons but we're not complete fools.
And finally tell them to treat our people as well as we've treated you.'^^
While the CIA took over responsibility for the NTS and other emigre
groups, involvement with the refugees and emigres was 'skeletonised', with
instructions from President Eisenhower that it be terminated. In Germany,
this responsibility was left to William Harvey, who bypassed the new station

chief in Frankfurt, Tracey Barnes. It seems, according to MI6 European Oper-

ations head John Bruce-Lockhart, that Barnes was not entirely trusted with
secrets. Most of the long-term emigre assets and handlers were deliberately
'scattered' to preclude 'blowbacks'.^^
As this was happening, the Hungarian Uprising, which the intelligence
agencies had not predicted, took place in October 1956. On the 19th popular
disturbances broke out in Poland. When a hundred thousand students took
to the streets in Budapest, they were joined by thousands of frustrated
workers, who launched a series of demonstrations calling for the withdrawal
and the establishment of
of Soviet troops, the release of political prisoners,
an independent communist regime. It looked as if the Soviet empire was
finally crumbling. Despite the propaganda line emanating from the IRD,
which in April had described the West's principal objective as 'to prise
Hungary away from the Soviet Union', the uprising failed to rouse the British
to action. While the old 'robber barons' might have wished to revive the
emigre groups and back the Hungarian freedom fighters, the new Chief, Dick
White, had no wish to see the Service held responsible for a bloodbath.^^
White ordered John Bruce-Lockhart to monitor the uprising. He left for
Budapest, where the local MI6 station had provided no intelligence on a
possible Soviet invasion. An estimated fifteen thousand young men took up
arms with small bands of fighters establishing pockets
to counter the Soviets,
of resistance and demobilising scores of Soviet tanks. Influential figures in
the western clandestine services wanted to intervene, but embarrassingly
they were in no position to do so. Daily Telegraph defence correspondent
Michael Smith's source has claimed that some of the weapons used by the
rebels were American and British, retrieved from arms caches buried by the
CIA and MI6 in the woods around Prague and Budapest for use by 'stay-
behind' parties in the event of war. MI6's Simon Preston recalled picking up
agents on the Hungarian border to take them across into the British Zone in
 ROLLING BACK 'ROLL-BACK' 517

Austria. 'We were taking them up into the mountains and giving them a sort
of crash course. Graz was our staging post. Then, after we had trained them
- explosives, weapons training - I used to take them back.'^^
This operation was very small-scale and had no material effect on the
inevitable outcome. The CIA reported to the National Security Council (NSC)
that there were no underground groups in Hungary capable of sustained
resistance. Despite the propaganda, there were no 'well-armed shock units'
as said to have been provided by the West, while few if any 'emigre fascists'
were caught. The reality was that President Eisenhower had no interest in
aggressive action and 'instructed the CIA to maintain caution and avoid
giving Moscow any reason to suppose that the United States had either
instigated or would support the Hungarian rebels'. The same policy was
followed by the British government, which had pulled out of the exile game.
An estimated three to four thousand Hungarians died during the uprising,
which Bruce-Lockhart noted meant that any idea of uprisings in eastern
Europe 'could now be wiped off the SIS and CIA agenda'.
By 1958, the CIA's emigre units had been disbanded, 'causing great dis-
illusionment and bitterness among the members'. The only British operations
taking place were MI5 double-cross ones. In 1959 D Division's Harry Whar-
ton, who was handling Polish affairs, recruited the leading friend of the
Ukrainian and Belorussian emigres and former MI6 asset Auberon Herbert.
MI5's double agent cases, however, turned out to be, according to Peter
Wright, 'a time consuming charade'. The new practitioners were 'second-rate',
without the requisite skills and, as Bruce-Lockhart had warned, British Intelli-

gence lacked information from signals code-breaking which had been so

essential during the war. More importantly, the networks were 'thoroughly
penetrated by the KGB, or their allied Eastern European services', and, in
the end, these operations 'served only to soak up our effort, and identify our
agent runners'.
In surveying the exile infiltrations with George Young, John Bruce-
Lockhart, the Northern Area Controller, Arthur Crouchley, and his successor,
it was 'important to remove
Paul Paulson, Dick White told his colleagues that
the Iron Curtain sentiment of sending someone over the wall for the sake of
it'. The Cold War concept was. Young concluded, outdated - 'one had an

uneasy feeling that this had become a game of shadows'. The requirement
was hard intelligence, which the Service had so far failed to deliver.
 ^

CHAPTER 24

THE TECHNICAL FIX

MI6's inability during the fifties to put working agents into Russia or recruit
sources in the Kremlin, Red Army or security services produced an intelli-

gence gap which, as Scandinavian historian Ralf Tammes noted, 'nourished

anxiety', contributing to 'exaggerated estimates of Soviet capabilities and
potential'. Recognising the failure of human intelligence-gathering, the
Americans, in particular, and, to a lesser extent, the British began 'to use
more technical means to gather intelligence in an aggressive manner, resulting
in significant innovations'.^
Tammes was thinking, in particular, about his own country, Norway,
which, despite reservations about Britain's military commitment to the region,
had long had a special relationship with MI6 - 'one which was totally centred
on the exchange of intelligence'. As progress was made in the early fifties
with highly secret defence preparations, Norwegian intelligence official Alf
Martens Meyer reveals that more thought was given by the Defence Intelli-

gence Staff (DIS) to 'stepping up their vigilance' and increasing the flow of
intelligence about the Soviet Union. The Norwegians realised that the British
and Americans hoped would provide them with useful information
that this
about Soviet capabilities in the North and 'played it for all its worth'.
During the war years there had been close signals intelligence links, which
continued after the end of hostilities when the British supplied technical
devices to Norwegian Intelligence. Particularly valuable was information
obtained on Soviet radar chains on the east coast of the Baltic and in northern
 THE TECHNICAL FIX 519

East Germany. Another important source of intelligence was the Norwegian

Royal Air Force, whose photo-reconnaissance missions identifying Soviet
MiG fighters based along its border were shared with the British. There was
also close co-operation on deep-penetration 'ferret' missions carried out by
Britain's RAF to gather intelligence on Russia's military capabilities in the
Arctic regions, the Barents Sea and further eastwards. Intelligence gathered
was compared by British analysts in the Photographic Interpretation Units
against captured German photographs of the same areas.^
President Truman had banned American spy flights over Soviet territory,
a decision that angered the Joint Chiefs of Staff. They subsequently sought
and obtained Churchill's personal approval for a resumption and a secret
unit was set up in June 1951. Nine RAF crews under Squadron-Leader John
Crampton were trained by the Americans to fly the latest reconnaissance
aircraft, the RB-45C Tornado, equipped with top-of-the-range radar. Flights

were made from a United States Air Force (USAF) base at Sculthorpe in
Norfolk. In March 1952 a flight to test Soviet reaction was successfully under-
taken down the central air corridor to Berlin.^
During 1952/3, American aircraft repainted with RAF insignia and using
British crews flew deep into Soviet airspace. The Anglo-American penetration
raids suffered a setback when, in March 1953, an RAF Lincoln bomber - offici-
ally on a training flight but carrying out both photographic and signals

reconnaissance - was shot down by MiG-15s, with the loss of seven crew, after
straying over East Germany. The incursions angered Moscow - there were, it
seems, no such flights by the Soviets over the United States - and raised super-
power tension as the Soviet Union was concerned that some of the flights might
have been nuclear bombing runs. Despite 'spurring the air force to greater
efforts'. President Eisenhower, who was 'a champion of aerial reconnaissance

for collecting otherwise unattainable intelligence', imposed a temporary ban

on military spy flights, but it was not long before the RAF was again asked
to undertake American-backed missions. This time they were carried out in
co-operation with Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ)
ground stations all over Europe. The unit navigator. Rex Sanders, recalled that
the targets were 'fairly scattered over the southern part of Russia. We were
zig-zagging from one to another, which might have added to our safety.'^
In 1952 western intelligence services learned from debriefed German
scientific returnees from Russia about a new Soviet missile testing site at

Kapustin Yar, near the Volga river. After being told that reconnaissance of
Kapustin Yar was out of range of its aircraft, USAF under General Lewis
asked the RAF's Director of Intelligence, A. V. M. Fressanges, if the British
could undertake the mission. In Operation ROBIN, a
late 1953, as part of

RAF twin-jet Canberra bomber with an extended range - capable of flying

higher than a MiG-15 - was 'dispatched on what was probably the first
trans-Soviet reconnaissance flight, and one that its crew would undoubtedly
520 PART FIVE: THE CHANGE

long remember'. It was carrying cameras that were so powerful that during
a test it was able to take clear shots of St Paul's Cathedral while flying off
the coast of Dover.
Taking off from Giebelstadt in West Germany, the Canberra followed the
Volga southwards, crossing over Kapustin Yar. Soviet fighters riddled it with
bullet holes but the pilot managed to get the plane to its recovery base in
Iran. According to the CIA's Deputy Director of Intelligence, Robert Amory,
the RAF managed to obtain 'some fair pictures' but at a cost. 'The whole of
Russia had been alerted to the thing, and it damned near created a major
international incident.'^
The immediate result, claims one account, was that the British told the
Americans 'to go it alone'. In fact, a flight of at least two American RB-45C
Tornados with British crews overflew Moscow on the night of 29 April 1954
as part of a 'deep penetration' mission. More importantly for MI6, the
Service's own plans for an unmanned high-flying photo-reconnaissance plane
were scrapped for fear of creating further incidents. 'Expert specifications,
plans and costing had been worked out but without Air Ministry backing,'
George Young recalled. 'Sinclair would not proceed with the scheme.''

In the aftermath of the outbreak of the Korean War, there was concern among
the intelligence agencies about Allied PoWs who made confessions of their
'crimes'. There was a fear that maybe the Russians and Chinese had
developed drugs that could turn a prisoner into a 'Manchurian Candidate'.
There followed a brief period of close co-operation with the Americans,
during which the CIA exchanged information with MI 6 on a number of
projects, including their ARTICHOKE programme, which looked at the effects
of drugs on defectors and would-be CIA representatives met
agents. In June,
with their MI6 counterparts in a series of discussions. MI6 remained sceptical
about the idea of a drug turning a man into an unwitting agent; one officer said
that there 'had been nothing new in the interrogation business since the days
of the Inquisition and that there was little hope of achieving valuable results
through research'. After some persuasion, MI6 finally agreed to the importance
of behavioural research, though the CIA remained unsure about their
officers
sincerity. The meeting reached a consensus that neither the western countries
nor the Soviets had made any 'revolutionary progress' in the field, and
described Soviet procedures as 'remarkably similar to the age-old methods'.
The representatives agreed to continue investigating behaviour-control
methods because of their importance to 'cold war operations'.^
Although co-operation with the CIA was short-lived, MI6's Technical
Services did later take part in joint projects with MI5 into psycho-chemical
research at the Chemical Defence Establishment at Porton Down, employing
human guinea-pigs with particular reference to the use of LSD and other
hallucinogens in interrogations.^
 THE TECHNICAL FIX 521

With the return of a Conservative government, in September 1952 Dr

R. V. Jones was asked to take over from Dr B. K. Blount as Director of
Scientific Intelligence in the Ministry of Defence (MoD). A distinguished
chemist, Blount had parachuted into Greece with SOE and had been head
of the Scientific Department of the Control Commission in Germany. He had
found the Scientific Intelligence arrangement unsatisfactory, as Dr Jones had
predicted, and the MoD decided to combine the Service's scientific sections
into one body. Dr Jones was also appointed scientific adviser to GCHQ with
a seat on the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC).^"
The directorate, based in the former Metropole Hotel in Northumberland
Street, was tasked with gathering intelligence on scientific developments

primarily as applied by the Soviet Union for potential warfare. Directing

the collection of intelligence through every available channel required close
collaboration with MI6, the services and research institutions. Dr Jones soon
discovered, however, that the arrangements were in a mess and, despite
Churchill's personal backing to put things right, was 'far from sanguine about
the prospects'. Inter-service rivalry was still strong, with a confusing number
of overlapping committees and organisations, while the staff seconded from
the armed services were not of great quality or experience. 'Vested interests'
had effectively 'crippled scientific intelligence', Jones reflected. He was able
to institute a monthly meeting at the MoD of a small, informal committee
that included MI6 Chief John Sinclair and Dick White, Director-General of
MIS. They discussed technical problems and how these might be solved. Dr
Jones also had some success in persuading the JIC to set up the Committee
for the Provision of Experimental Facilities for Intelligence with an MI6
member and an MIS Malcolm Cumming.^^
officer,

Before he resigned to become Deputy Secretary of the Department of

Scientific and Industrial Research, Dr Blount acknowledged that 'it is neces-
sary to remove the anomalous arrangements for atomic energy intelligence,
which are actively harmful to good Scientific Intelligence'. At the beginning
of 19S3, MI6's Director of Requirements, George Young, attempted to redirect
the Service's intelligence-gathering more effectively on priority targets. Young
concentrated on improving the quality of reporting and briefing of agents on
specific questions rather than sending general questionnaires to the field.

This required the continual education of MI6's 'customers' - 'not all of whom
were able to produce the clear-cut requirements of the economic ministries'.
Young's attempts to improve R9's scientific intelligence reporting were,
however, 'effectively blocked'. Suspecting that all was not well. Young
checked with one of his St Andrew's University friends, a leading physicist
at theAtomic Energy Authority, who confirmed that operations by MI6's
supposed scientific expert, Eric Welsh, were 'useless and even dangerous'.
On his return to Whitehall, Dr Jones had been promised that atomic energy
intelligence would become part of the directorate, but it was not to be, and
522 PART FIVE: THE CHANGE

the position appeared to be no better thanwhen he had resigned three years

previously. Unfortunately, neither Dr Jones nor Young were able to persuade
Sinclair to sack Welsh, who retained control over atomic intelligence.
Relations with the Americans did, however, improve, and during 1953 Jones
took part in the first substantial exchanges of atomic intelligence with the
CIA.^-
Partly because he could not arrive at a satisfactory solution to the
problem
of atomic intelligence,Dr Jones went back to Aberdeen University in June of
the following year, and it was only after Welsh's death from a heart attack
in November 1954 that MI6 was able to make progress with scientific intelli-
gence. The thought within the Service was that 'more than ten years had
been lost' due to Welsh's bungling. After Dr Jones's departure, the post of
Director of Scientific Intelligence was downgraded and placed under the
Director of the Joint Intelligence Bureau (JIB), so that 'once again scientific
intelligence had no independent voice at the top level'. MI6 did, however,
put more resources into the area, which became one of the Service's priorities
- a policy clearly indicated by the interest of the Permanent Under-Secretary's
Department (PUSD), which had taken on Foreign Office responsibility for
atomic energy affairs.

The British and Americans had 'an unpleasant surprise' when the Russians
conducted their first successful hydrogen bomb test on 12 August 1953.
'Within a few days', Dr Jones recalled, 'our monitoring system (with the
Americans) established that it had a thermonuclear component'. There was
also an insistent demand from the JIC for intelligence on the test and Soviet
missile capabilities.^^
As the Service moved out of the first stages of the Cold War, many senior
officers believed that the future of intelligence-gathering lay in the technical
field 'and that in time the human element would become less and less impor-
tant'. Technical operations, particularly the bugging of Soviet residencies, the
tapping of telephones and mail interception, became 'very much in' and the
Service invested 'vast' resources on these operations, often carried out in
conjunction with the CIA. There was a big demand for material from this
type of operation from the Cabinet Office, the Foreign Office and the chiefs
of staff. Eventually, the Cromwell Road-based Technical Operations Section,
which was responsible for obtaining this material, split its operations into
two sections. Buggings and telephone taps were undertaken by Y-Section,
whose deputy head was George Blake, while N-Section dealt with plundering
diplomatic bags.^^
Among were CONTRARY - the placing of microphones
the operations
in the office of the Polish Trade Mission and, in Brussels, the wiring of rooms
at the Astoria Hotel, which was used by diplomats and trade representatives

from communist countries; FANTASTIC - where operatives hid micro-

phones in the office of the Soviet commercial attache in Copenl^agen; the
 THE TECHNICAL FIX 523

tapping of the telephones of the Czechoslovak Export Agency in Cairo; the

wiring of the London residence of a second secretary of the Bulgarian
embassy; in Paris, obtaining secret information on the French atomic energy
programme and, in Sweden, information on the defence forces and uranium
deposits. Despite these efforts, according to Blake, the intelligence 'take' was
often poor because of the lack of high-quality microphones which resulted
in inaudible conversations.^^
The technical intelligence-gathering operation against the Soviets with the
most potential for success was the tapping into land-lines in Berlin in a
follow-up to the similar operation in Vienna. At the end of 1953, an East
German MI6 agent, a communications engineer whose children were helped
to travel to the West by Service personnel, located a telephone cable contain-
ing 350 lines between Berlin and Soviet military bases all over the Eastern
bloc. The line lay two hundred yards inside the Soviet Zone, underneath a
highway running from a Soviet airbase to the city. The MI6 station head in
Berlin happened to be the man who had masterminded the Vienna success,
Peter Lunn, and he saw the potential of the agent's information.^^
According to European Operations officer John Bruce-Lockhart, the CIA
was not 'brought in for the money and technical know-how, as is commonly
assumed, but because the [entry to the] site was in the American sector, and
the British needed the United States to build a radar station as cover'. Over
four days in mid-December, an MI6 team under the Director of Requirements,
George Young, which included Stephen McKenzie, Ian Milne and George
Blake, and others under Y-Section's Tom Crimson, including Capt. Montag-
non. Col. Balmain, Taylor and Urwick, met with a CIA delegation in London;
the delegation included Soviet section head Frank Rowlett. During the
'exploratory talks', they discussed processing and technical requirements for
Lunn's plan. Operation STOPWATCH (known as GOLD to the Americans),
which would require a six-hundred-foot tunnel to be dug into East German
territory at Alt Glienicke, near Berlin. The plan had been passed as feasible
by MI6 experts Col. Balmain and Taylor, who had gained considerable experi-
ence from the Vienna operation.
Another meeting was arranged for 1 February 1954 at which the CIA's
Rowlett and Lunn's opposite number in Berlin, Bill Harvey, agreed to the
plan and offered to supply the finance and the necessary cover facilities,
while the British would supply the technical equipment and the monitoring
staff. A joint MI6/CIA team in London would be responsible for assessment

and evaluation. Unfortunately, the operation was betrayed almost as soon as

it was agreed. Minutes of the meeting were taken for the American side by

Cleveland Cram, but the British entrusted the task to George Blake, who
immediately passed the information on to his KGB handler, Nikolai Rodin.
The KGB then asked him to draw a map of the plan, which he did on a piece
of A4-sized lined paper.
524 PART FIVE: THE CHANGE

Of particular importance to the British was technical co-operation in moni-

toring the Soviet Navy. Britain used its submarines to gather intelligence in
the Barents Sea, as did the Americans, who began to patrol the area, making
increasing use of electronic intelligence (ELINT). Principal targets for MI6
and the Naval Intelligence Division (NID) were the ports of the Soviet Union,
but officers and naval attaches had great difficulty visiting these areas. Even
when they did manage to do so, they were always under heavy escort. MI6's
naval section, R3, developed its own contacts with members of the merchant
navy and, in particular, with shipping companies that regularly had vessels
visiting ports of interest in the Soviet bloc. R3 also made contact with Alf
Martens Meyer and the Norwegian DIS.^°
In 1949 Meyer, a thirty-nine-year-old naval from Bergen, had been
officer
chosen by DIS head Wilhelm Evang to spearhead Norway's offensive espion-
age activities. He eventually built up a network based on the Norwegian
merchant fleet. Operation DELFINIUS, the results of which were of great
importance to the western intelligence agencies. During the Korean War, the
DIS played a key role in gathering intelligence from China with a network
of agents in Shanghai. In addition, Meyer built up a Turkish network with
headquarters in Istanbul. From the early fifties until the mid-sixties, Delfinius
was by MI6 and the CIA.^^
jointly financed
A similar operation existed in Britain, where the fishing fleets of Aberdeen
and Hull were used to spy on the Soviet North Atlantic Fleet in Arctic waters.
Operation HORNBEAM was run by a senior NID officer. Commander John
G. Brookes, from the basement of the dockside premises of a fishing company
in Hull; during the mid-sixties he reported to the head of the NID, Rear
Admiral Michael Kyrle Pope, who has confirmed that Hornbeam was the
brainchild of MI6. Brookes recruited trawlermen to take photographs during
fishing trips, the results of which were forwarded to a Joint Intelligence
Section with MI6. Mason Redfearn was recruited in March 1963: 'Brookes
gave me a Robot Star camera [developed by the Nazis, it was capable of
taking up to forty-eight photographs at the press of a button], a telescope, a

supply of film and a book of silhouettes of Soviet naval ships.' After a training

course in London, 'I knew exactly what to look for, radars, radio antennae,
guided missile systems, and in general anything unusual.' A major success
was photographing the first Soviet nuclear-powered cruiser. Four-man naval
listening teams, including a civilian from the GCHQ station at Scarborough,
were on trawlers, with equipment tuned in to Soviet signals. The
also placed
operations ran from 1950 until the mid-seventies.^^
Norway had one of the world's biggest merchant navy fleets, sailing to
all the great seaports of the Soviet Union, eastern Europe and China. Meyer

was in contact with the owners of the major shipping companies; Lars Usterud
Svendsen of Fred Olsen Ltd was in charge of the civil side. MI6 also helped the
Norwegians establish a separate shipping company, Egerfangst, to undertake
 THE TECHNICAL FIX 525

operations. Frank Slocum was the MI6 officer in charge of these operations
and, in 1954, was appointed to Oslo as head of station. His successor, Ted
Davies, was a former Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve (RNVR) officer who
had served with Pat Whinney and Christopher Phillpotts in Slocum's wartime
'private navy'. They could draw on the support of Sir Charles Hambro and
his merchant bank, Hambros, which had a substantial stake in the Norwegian
shipping empire, providing hundreds of millions of pounds of finance.
Hambros Bank had a long-standing financial interest in Norway and Scandi-
navia, and Sir Charles had been Controller of SOE's Scandinavian Section
with another influential Hambros director, Harry Sporborg, as its head.
Hambro had also chaired the Anglo-Norwegian Collaboration Committee
which co-ordinated resistance plans.^^
Officers from Norwegian Intelligence were put on merchant ships, where
they recruited Norwegian seamen as agents able to report from inside 'enemy'
ports. Meyer recalled that 'it could be information about harbour works, the
depth of the harbour and the like. Information which is not punishable to
collect, but which the Intelligence Service finds valuable.' The merchant ships

also operated as 'platforms' for official Norwegian agents and cameras fitted
as 'gifts' from 'special sources' for spying on the Soviet Union. The first
vessel, Eger, was ready for operations in 1956, mostly equipped with Ameri-
can electronics for monitoring signals radio and electromagnetic signals.
Trawlers and small fishing boats were assisted by professional agents and
fitted with advanced electronic equipment for spying on Soviet activities. At

first the ships were mainly deployed in adjacent northern waters, the Barents

and White Seas, but operations were later successfully extended to the Medi-
terranean and, at the beginning of the sixties, to the Far East. Operation
Delfinius also gave the DIS a range of bases in foreign ports, while agents
such as Meyer worked clandestinely as ship inspectors.^^
British use of submarines for gathering intelligence in the Barents Sea was
curtailed in 1956 for 'political reasons' following the Buster Crabb affair
(see Chapter 29). Stepping into the breach by using the merchant navy for
intelligence-gathering, Meyer was able to build up a stock of goodwill. In the
decade after the war, Norway regarded itself as a 'Great Power' in intelligence
terms. In exchange for its information, the country was given access by Britain
and the United States to material and advanced technology from which it
would normally be excluded. Meyer's biographer. Christian Christensen,
stresses that Norwegian Intelligence was 'by no means a subsidiary to the
British MI6 or the American CIA'.^^
Despite these efforts, intelligence-gathering on the Soviet Union and the
Soviet orbit was in a poor state. MI6 assets in East Germany were fading
fast, and the Service had none of any worth in the Soviet Union, while the

Americans were increasingly reliant on the unreliable Gehlen Organisation

for its intelligence. Fortunately, the Berlin tunnel, which had been a colossal
526 PART FIVE: THE CHANGE

operation costing the Americans $25 million,was finished in February 1955.

Three thousand tons of earth had been excavated by a secret team of diggers
and then hidden away in a semi-underground warehouse by the US Corps
of Engineers. The 1,476-foot tunnel was air-conditioned so as not to melt the
snow above, with plastic explosive attached to the tunnel at the point where
it crossed into the Soviet sector - to be detonated if the Russians discovered
it. Experts from the Post Office base at Dollis Hill then attached taps to 295
lines carrying Soviet communications. The tapping of the Soviet military lines
required 600 tape recorders to be operating continuously, fed by 800 reels of
tape per day.^^
During the summer and autumn, senior Ml 6 officers held a series of
conferences to discuss the penetration of the Soviet Union and the other
Russian orbit countries. George Young outlined a new strategy at a conference
in Berlin, where MI6's largest station ran many of the major operations into
the East. He told the other officers that it would be the task of MI6 to obtain
'political information' to gauge Soviet intentions and scientific intelligence to
assess Soviet progress in armaments. With its one hundred officers, Berlin

was split into four substations to meet these demands. One dealt with political
intelligenceand Soviet penetration, the second with the Soviet and East
German armed forces, another with the collection of scientific intelligence,
and the fourth with the planning and execution of technical operations of
various types.^^
During the night of 22 April 1956, a KGB party led by eavesdropping
Colonel Vadim Goncharov stumbled on Stopwatch /Gold and the
specialist
telephone tap of the military traffic. In the event, the Americans refrained
from setting off the explosives for fear of causing casualties. It is not
completely clear why the Soviets waited a year before 'blowing' the existence
of the tunnel by an open search, though, obviously, the protection of their
prime source, George Blake, was a major consideration. In fact, the KGB had
been searching for the tunnel using Blake's sketchy information but 'it took
us a great deal of effort to locate the exact position of the tunnel', according
to the KGB resident in Berlin, Yevgeny Petrovranov. The Russians conducted
their searches at night using heat-seeking equipment, which failed to give
the expected results because of the depth of the tunnel. 'It took us months
to locate it.'^^

During that year, it is unlikely that the Soviets could have controlled
all the information that passed over the communications link, substituting
'chicken-feed'. The CIA's Berlin operation base, David Murphy,
chief of the
argued that 'the take from the tunnel was so massive - hundreds of thousands
of conversations and thousands and thousands of feet daily of teletype traffic
- there was no way they could have turned this into a disinformation oper-
ation without alerting everyone up and down the line'. By the same token,
the three hundred analysts and translators in London were so overloaded
 THE TECHNICAL FIX 527

with low-level material that it took them until September 1958 to clear the
backlog. Given previous Soviet use of radio deception, it is unlikely that the
KGB did not take the opportunity to manipulate some of the traffic.^'^

The thousands of hours of Soviet military conversations were analysed

by Brigadier Eric Greer and Squadron-Leader Brinley Ryan. In Washington,
fifty CIA officers fluent in German and Russian worked on this 'incredible
source' in a prefab building known as the 'Hosiery Mill' because of the web
of electronic cables sneaking through the building. The traffic revealed a
great deal about the Soviet order of battle, gossip between officers, including
conversations between a top Soviet military commander and his mistress,
and some scientific intelligence. MI6 and the CIA also learned that the East
German railways were not in a fit state for the launch of an attack on the
West, which confirmed the lack of evidence in the traffic that the Soviets
were preparing for an assault. The conclusion of many intelligence officers,
however, was that little of worth had been revealed by the immense effort
put into the tunnel operation. Officials thought that it was 'a tremendous
operation', recalled an MI6 officer. 'But the truth of it is, they weren't good
operations. We all thought they were. Everybody did. The Foreign Office
said, "Very important, very important." And so on and so on. But the
Russians knew.'^°
If there were later major operations along the lines of the Vienna and
Berlin tunnels, they have remained remarkably well hidden. The reality was
that much burden was taken up by GCHQ, which was able
of the technical
to supply, worldwide network of listening stations shared with
through its

the American National Security Agency, a mountain of raw intelligence.

GCHQ decrypts, which proved to be increasingly cost-effective, would
become the backbone of MI6's own analysis and intelligence-gathering
efforts. Much to the annoyance of MI6's old guard, the advent of satellites

would further downgrade the contribution of human agents, regarded by

some officials as expensive and unreliable.
I
PART SIX

THE MIDDLE EAST

British Intelligence has had a long history of special operations in the Middle
East. The region was the playground for intelligence officers who, operating
outside of normal chains of command and control, often engaged in the kind
of robust methods that were denied to them in other operational theatres.
MI6's use of special operations and political action reached its high point, or
low point, during the fifties - the era known to practitioners as 'the Horrors'. It
culminated in the disaster of Suez, which Donald Cameron Watt, Professor
of International Relations at the London School of Economics, has described
as 'a monumental conspiratorial cock-up - like much else in the historical
record'.
Contrary to the line adopted in most histories of this period, it appears
that a hardline faction of the British foreign policy establishment continued
to pursue an interventionist agenda after Suez. That the 'cock-up' was
followed by more 'disruptive actions' should not surprise: MI6 officers in
the region were dreamers. T. E. Lawrence's lines from The Seven Pillars of

Wisdom are apt: 'All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night
in the dusty recesses of the minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity:
but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream
.'
with open eyes, to make it possible . .

Even when the Chief, Dick White, made plain his distaste for special
operations,MI6 was forced by a right-wing cabal - centred around the new
Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan - to engage in a small-scale war in Oman
532 PART SIX: THE MIDDLE EAST

and in an arm's-length operation in the Yemen. The use of the SAS as a

counter-insurgency and paramilitary force for essentially mercenary oper-
and the deployment of intelligence assets
ations, to avoid direct MI 6 involve-
ment and thus provide a semblance of plausible deniability, created a model
for British operations for the next thirty years.
CHAPTER 25

'UNBROKEN DREAMS'

With hostilities at an end in the Middle Deputy Commander

East, of the
Allied Air Forces in the Mediterranean John Slessor minuted that 'the intelli-

gence set-up in Cairo is a mess'. There were, he insisted, 'far too many
different agencies and organisations, all with direct access to the great, too
often crossing each others' wires and cutting each others' throats'. His own
solution was 'a drastic reorganisation at the top of all our Secret and Under-
ground Services, SIS, SOE, "A" Force, and PWE, all as inter-related branches
of one service under a single head who would be an associate member of
the Chiefs of Staff Committee'. Other military figures, too, called for the
creation of a specialist Middle East intelligence service under the chiefs'
control.^
MI6 regional headquarters attached to the theatre commands in the
Middle East were retained but were moved from military to diplomatic
accommodation. In turn, the local MI6 cover organisation, the Inter-Services
Liaison Department (ISLD), was abandoned for the Combined Research and
Planning Organisation (CRPO - pronounced 'Creepo'), with substations in
Beirut, Baghdad, Tehran, Amman, Basra, Port Said and Damascus. CRPO
was headed by John Teague, an Indian Army and intelligence veteran who
had served in Iraq and Palestine before taking charge of the ISLD in 1945.
The Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) acknowledged that Teague would be
'responsible directly to SIS in London', but in practice would be required to
fulfil 'local intelligence requirements'.^
534 PART SIX: THE MIDDLE EAST

CRPO was housed in the Sharia Tolumbat compound in Cairo where it

shared the facilities of the British Middle East Office (BMEO), which had
been up by Labour Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin to stimulate regional
set
stability and progress, and to secure Britain's long-range foreign policy inter-

ests in the Middle East. Some saw its object as 'the creation of a new informal
empire for Britain' in which MI6 would play a full part.^
At the first Council of Foreign Ministers in October 1945, Bevin rejected
Soviet demands for equality of treatment in the region. Foreign Office diplo-
mat SirMaurice Peterson told Stalin that the Middle East 'was our area . . .

we had done and were doing great work in it, and frankly, as regards . . .

the Arab countries, we knew a great deal about them while the Russians
knew nothing at all'. Fresh from his posting in Moscow, Frank Roberts was
sent around Middle East capitals 'to warn the new leaders of the potential
threat from Stalin's Russia'. Using chiefs of staff briefs, the JIC concluded
that the Soviet Union 'would exploit the twin vulnerabilities of Britain's oil
and communications'. In a future war in the Middle East, a concerted Soviet
air attack would threaten 'not only Turkey and Iraq but also Egypt'. In the

wake of the 1946 Azerbaijan crisis on the Iranian border with the Soviet
Union, JIC intelligence estimates became increasingly pessimistic, forecasting
Soviet expansion 'by every means short of war'. They identified an eastward
shift in Soviet emphasis away from Turkey towards Iran, and 'the domination

of Persia' by the securing of 'a port and base in the Persian Gulf '.^
The Government Communications Fleadquarters (GCHQ) was tasked
with monitoring Soviet activities in the region, and at the instigation of the
JIC Middle East, which was chaired by the head of the BMEO, GCHQ
personnel were redeployed to the Iranian border to work on Soviet communi-
cations. Despite this concernwith Soviet intentions, the JIC's list of priorities
for the region - 'Arab nationalism', the 'relations of Arab states with UK',
and the 'Zionist movement including its intelligence services' - indicate that
Soviet subversion was not regarded as a great problem. Indeed, over the next
three years officials could find little evidence, beyond propaganda, of Soviet
subversive activities in the region.^
The Foreign Office wanted to dismantle the remnants of Britain's own
subversive organisation in the region, the Special Operations Executive
(SOE). The only voices in favour of not disbanding SOE were local ambassa-
dors who wished to retain particular personnel or members of the related
clandestine Psychological Warfare Executive (PWE) to continue propaganda
work. In May 1946, the British embassy in Iran recommended that in order
to defeat the Soviet-backed Tudeh Party 'we should shortly pass over to a
general counter-offensive . . . and so on'. The
broadcasts, press, pamphlets
ambassador in Tehran, Roger Bullard, thought that 'only one of the present
Sir

SOE will be required - Dr Zaehner' (see Chapter 28).

In June, the Russia Committee recognised the need to resist the growth
 ^

'UNBROKEN DREAMS' 535

of communist influence in Persia. Initially, Bevin had viewed the idea

unfavourably, but as senior Foreign Office had predicted, he soon
officials

began waver as the JIC called for more positive action. By July the Foreign
to
Secretary was willing to go 'all out' on Iran. A former Indian Army officer
with a string of intelligence appointments. Colonel Geoffrey Wheeler, who
had been Director of the Publications Division in India during the war, was
dispatched to Tehran to organise a 'Propaganda Department'. In collaboration
with MI6's head of station, Harry Step toe, he was asked to 'enquire into certain
fields of Persian opinion'. On the back of Wheeler's activities, in October Bevin
agreed to the opening of a general political warfare campaign, and General

Pollock, director of the Middle East Information Department (MEID), left

London to co-ordinate the campaign with regional information officers. By
November, Wheeler had been able to persuade the Foreign Office Research
Department, the Colonial Office, the Central Office of Information and several
secret agencies to pool their information on communism and Soviet tactics for a
propaganda campaign; a forerunner of later Information Research Department
(IRD) operations. Dr Zaehner, meanwhile, was retained in Tehran as press
attache with the responsibility for 'bribing the Persian press'.
A number of ambassadors found such activities distasteful, partly, one
suspects, because it was so brazen. The Minister Resident in the Middle
East, Lord Killearn, sided with the Foreign Office in resisting the continued
presence of even single SOE officers. Expressing a preference for MI6, he
argued that SOE was not good at propaganda, and added: 'As regards their
other activities, in other words the payment of baksheesh, I'm not myself
convinced that we, the Embassy, couldn't do the job adequately well ... I

SOE playing a semi-lone hand as they have done during

have always disliked
this war As you know we already have our SS [Secret Service] arrange-
...

ments here which work well.' Killearn noted that SOE proposed to spend
'£10,000 a year on oral dissemination of pro-British views; £9,000 a year on
the paying of patronage to selected politiciansand government officials; and
a further sum of approximately £12,000 on payments in this
special secret
country at the request of His Majesty's representatives'. The Foreign Office
took a dim view of covert subventions, recognising that while 'it may produce
good results for a time', the end result would only 'increase the anti-British
tone, and consequent bribability of the newspapers concerned'. Despite
appeals to ideology and loyalty, cash remained the main means of recruiting
agents.^
While the remnants of SOE Cairo were closed down, other parts of its
Middle East empire managed to survive for some considerable time. The task
of winding up SOE operations and facilities was given to senior SOE organ-
iser and banker Bickham Sweet-Escott. During the VJ day celebrations, word

reached Sweet-Escott from SOE headquarters at Baker Street 'to report back
to London and thereafter to be posted to another job in the Middle East'.
536 PART SIX: THE MIDDLE EAST

With wartime responsibilities in Jerusalem for SOE's S02, which had control
of black operations, Sweet-Escott was the ideal person to deal with the post-
war reorganisation. Over the two years of this 'thankless task', while attached
to MI6 for 'pay and rations', he ensured that he left 'a skeleton in the cupboard
of every country of the Middle East'. Handed over to MI6, these SOE 'skel-
etons' included news agencies, such as the Arab News Agency (ANA), and
the radio station Sharq al-Adna. Sweet-Escott had been involved during the
war with SOE's radio and signals specialist Major Jerry Parker in locating
the transmitter in Jerusalem that carried the overt Arabic freedom station,
theNear East Broadcasting Station (NE ABS), which was also known as Sharq
al-Adna. Its postwar existence has been described by a former ANA journalist
as 'a very dirty operation'.^
NE ABS had been supported by the Foreign Office's Rex Leeper, an expert
in organising overt and more secret forms of propaganda. During the First
World War, Leeper belonged to the Intelligence Bureau of the Department
of Information. In 1933, he was appointed head of the Foreign Office News
Department, where he developed an interest in the use of democratic propa-
ganda, particularly radio, as an instrument of foreign policy. It was Leeper
who approved the use of a state subvention to the Reuters news agency and
had been at the forefront in expanding the use of state-owned news agencies.
Described by Sefton Delmer as 'tall and spare, with the thoughtful concen-
trated face of some old-time papal secretary', Leeper was also the main
influence on setting up the British Council, which had a major influence in
the Middle East.
Frances Donaldson's history of the British Council notes that 'many people
believe that in the war years British Council staff were used for Intelligence
work'. She concluded, however, that 'there is absolutely no evidence for this'.
Her comment followed a memorandum from 'one of the great names in the
history of the British Council', who admitted to headquarters that 'Military
Intelligence people are frequently trying to make use of our staff for purposes
of their own . . . Military Intelligence have tried to pass people into Turkey
with passports inscribed "British Council'". The reality was that MI6 had
burrowed deep into the organisation, which was an almost perfect cover.^
In December 1938, Charles 'Flux' Dundas was appointed as the first special
British Council representative for the whole of the Middle East, which he
controlled and serviced from Cairo. Dundas had 'an unusual degree of auth-
ority' and made sure that Council work was removed from the direct control

of the embassy. An anti-communist who despised 'the faintest of intellectual

pretensions', he appointedand trained his own staff, refusing to have any
from Greece and the Balkans on the basis that they were 'pansies' and 'soft'.
Donaldson claims that Dundas's health gave out at the end of 1942 and that
he was succeeded by Professor Thomas Boase, who had been employed by
GC&CS in Cairo. In fact, Dundas was appointed Oriental Secretary at Beirut,
 'UNBROKEN DREAMS' 537

attached to MI6's front office in the Middle East, ISLD. He remained in the
post until 1947, when he was made consul in Damascus, a position he retained
until 1951, when he returned to the British Council. Describing him as 'A
man of persuasive charm and considerable strength', Donaldson adds that
Dundas 'had not merely to work for smooth relationships during the war
but to prepare for a situation after the war when our influences could no
longer be maintained by military power'. This was helped by the fact that
British Council institutes were a meeting place for 'informal discussions and
social contacts between the effective people in these countries and British
officials and businessmen'.
Well financed by the PWE, NEABS' first director was Squadron-Leader
Alfred Marsack, a devout Muslim who had served in the Middle East before
the war and who had devoted the best part of his life to Arab affairs, and had
even converted to Islam. Interspersing popular music with conversational
pieces as well as news, NEABS rapidly achieved a reputation for 'slick and
effective programmes'. With a staff made up of Arabs, it became a
mostly
trusted station, capable of reaching a mass audience throughout the Middle
East. The propaganda was subtle, the scripts not censored, and criticism of the
British allowed. Indeed, the station employed the 'notorious (and quite charm-
ing) rabble rouser' and anti-British agitator Sheikh Muzaffar, who worked for
the station on the understanding that once the Germans were defeated he
would return to his anti-British activities. 'The fact that the Sheikh was broad-
casting from Sharq al-Adna was, to many thousands of Arabs, a guarantee of
the authentically Arab character of the station. It was surely inconceivable that
the British would ever have allowed him on the air.' Also employed was the
exiled Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, a supporter of pan-Arabism,
which made him much 'too hot a potato for the BBC to hold'.^^
Marsack left the station in 1945 to become the BBC Middle East representa-
tive in Cairo. He was replaced by Edward Hodgkin, who ran the station in
the last stages of the war. Hodgkin was to maintain that the news Sharq
al-Adna broadcast 'was never angled by any government department' and
that it was a clean operation. He left for a job with The Times and the post
was taken over in 1946 by the 'controversial' Frank Benton. In the light of
Bickham Sweet-Escott's report, the structure of NEABS was changed - with
MI6 retaining a secret interest. Working with MI6 in Iran was Norman
Darbyshire, one of SOE's remnants, who shared a house with another SOE
officer, the Oxford academic Robin Zaehner. In 1947, they travelled from

Tehran to Jerusalem to set up a free independent radio station to broadcast

to Iran, using the facilities of Sharq al-Adna. They managed to get it up and
running but had to move on when fighting broke out in the city.^^

Parallel to Bickham Sweet-Escott's mission, Stewart Menzies's wartime

personal assistant and stockbroker, David 'Archie' Boyle, who had
538 PART SIX: THE MIDDLE EAST

responsibilities in Section N for the plundering of diplomatic bags, also under-

took a leisurely tour of the Middle East. In December 1945, he had been
asked by the Foreign Office's Sir Alexander Cadogan to review and reorganise
communications in the area, most of which had been abandoned during the
war. Boyle's unintentionally amusing autobiography, which on first reading
appears to be little more than a compendium and name-
of travel experiences
dropping, provides abundant evidence of why he would have been so valu-
able an asset to his Chief. Although he admitted that he knew nothing about
finance, Boyle had held a good post in the City with stockbrokers Dawnay,
Day & Co. A colourful, eccentric Scotsman, who was close to the Royal
Family, Boyle travelled extensively and had a wide range of contacts, getting
to know anyone who was deemed of consequence. An indication of his
importance knowledge that he had accompanied President Roosevelt's
is the
special envoy and future head of the Office of Strategic Service (OSS), Col.
William Donovan, around Britain at the beginning of the war, and was
involved in peace feelers to Germany.^^
During the course of 1946, Boyle met with old British friends in the
embassies, governments and MI6 stations of the Middle East. He writes that
he brought messages to Egypt from 'English friends' to King Farouk's chef
de cabinet, Hassanein Pasha. MI6 policy had long been to recruit those advisers
who were close to the centres of power, and in Hassanein they had a priceless
intelligence asset. Boyle's old friend, however, died in a car accident soon
after his arrival: 'This was the first of many unfortunate events which from
then on seemed to dog our footsteps in our relations with Egypt, for Hassan-
ein was the one cool and experienced adviser to the young King Farouk.'
Even if Boyle was nostalgic for the reign of kings and was an imperialist at
heart, he sensed the

murmuring resurgence of Moslem renaissance which as in 1919

was again in 1946 commencing to affect the Middle-East coun-
tries as a whole. This time it was to be coupled with the race for

oil, and the jealousies this apparently unending, unworked-for

wealth would arouse until the whole life of those lucky enough
to possess it within their boundaries was changed. The world
was being reshaped under our eyes; the old friendships and
allegiances were soon to wither away in the rush for wealth.^"*

Unfortunately, set in old imperialist ways, the chiefs of staff failed to recognise
the changes generated by the race for oil, and pressurised the Foreign Secre-
tary to reorganise the BMEO to give it The military
political responsibilities.

demands were 'occasioned by the need for co-ordinated political intelligence

on the part Commanders-in-Chief in the Middle East'. This shifted the
of the
balance of the BMEO's functions 'away from development diplomacy and
towards regional political intelligence work'. By 1947, having won its battle
 'UNBROKEN DREAMS' 539

with the Prime Minister over the direction of policy in the region, the chiefs
still believed that the Middle East was 'the base from which British forces
can attack the Soviet flank. Its significance as a focal point of imperial
communications has been vindicated by the war and is still of great value
as a half-way house between the United Kingdom and the Far East. Oil from
the Persian Gulf area is rendered secure by control of the Suez Canal. The
Middle East also protects Africa from Soviet penetrations.' The only way this

policy could succeed was by means of old-fashioned garrisons, which Britain

could no longer afford. The military appeared to learn nothing from their
experience in Palestine.
Palestine was no longer safe for secret operations and, just before the end
of the Mandate, in the spring of 1948, Sharq al-Adna was hastily transferred
to Limassol. Within months of the station moving to Cyprus, the secret was
out. Left-wing Labour backbencher Richard Crossman had been concerned
about anti-Zionist propaganda broadcasts, which included a statement by
Azzam 'Pasha', who urged the Palestinians to leave their homes and make
way for 'our advancing Arab armies'. Given his depth of knowledge of
psychological warfare, Crossman probably guessed the true identity of the
station's sponsors and decided to refrain from asking direct questions.
In June, Conununist MP Philip Piratin asked Ernest Bevin 'whether he is
aware that the radio station in Cyprus run by the Foreign Office Information
Department has been encouraging the Arabs in their invasion of Palestine'.
A source has suggested that it was Crossman who had given him the lead,
though Piratin certainly received information from communist friends in
Cyprus. Bevin, who specifically referred to NEABS, told Piratin that the
broadcast was only 'speculating on possible Arab military activity' and that
'this station is not run by the Foreign Office Information Department nor
has the Government of Cyprus any responsibility for it'. Though technically
correct, this was an example of Foreign Office evasion. As the government
of a colonial possession, the Cyprus administration had been told to keep its

hands off the station. This may have been helped by the fact that the Director
of Broadcasting for the government of Cyprus was Rex Keating, who had
worked for NEABS during the war. When pressed about who did run it,

Bevin answered: 'It is operated by a body of people connected with the

Arabs.'^'
The 'body of people' was the Near East Association (NEA), which was
set up 'to promote the exchange of cultural and general information through-

out the Near East'. According to one inside critic of its activities, it dissemi-
nated 'anti-American material and did much to keep the Arab-Israel pot
boiling' by use of disinformation. The Cyprus Sundai/ Mail reported that it
was 'the first and only association registered under the Companies Limited
by Guarantee Law' in Cyprus. This 'front' company included on its board
the 'great and the good' - all members of the Athenaeum - including Sir
540 PART SIX: THE MIDDLE EAST

Kinahan Cornwallis, former head of the Arab Bureau (1916-20), ambassador

in Baghdad during the war and director of the Bank of the Middle East; a
First World War intelligence officer, high commissioner and commander-in-

chief for Palestine (1938-44), Sir Harold McMichael; and the former Director
of the British School of Archaeology, John Crowfoot. There was also journalist
Aidan Philip, who had worked in the thirties for the Anglo-Iranian Oil
Company and then MI6's Section D, before joining SOE in Baghdad. Station
manager Frank Benton appears to have had no real influence over its policies
and operations. The NEA was an 'arm's-length' operation financed by 'an
off-shoot of the Foreign Office' (MI 6) from an office in London, and staffed
by a man and a secretary who knew little about their true employers.
During the late forties, Sharq al-Adna acted as the 'Light Programme' to
the BBC's Arabic Home Service. Audience surveys showed that it enjoyed
'a very high rating indeed in the listening habits of the Middle East area'.

The BBC was never quite sure of the position of the NEA. The BBC Eastern
Service Director, Gordon Waterfield, noted that it was 'an expensive oper-
ation'. Sharq al-Adna had a studio in Beirut and another in Cairo (until 1951),

employing the best Egyptian entertainers and musicians. Its personnel were
predominantly Palestinian. This was reflected in the news policy, which was
'explicitly pro- Arab and anti-Zionist in a way that the BBC was not. It also

concentrated much more than the BBC on news from the Arab World, and
carried less world news.' Its news was supplied by another MI6 front, the
ANA, which was much used by Middle East journalists. Despite efforts to
disguise the 'slightly' propagandist angle which only became overt in times
of crisis, 'few people who listened to the station were in much doubt that
there was a British hand in its control, though no one, naturally, knew what
official body was responsible'.^^

Lawrie Valls-Russell had joined the NEABS station as a security officer:

'full of patriot zeal, eager to demonstrate the enlightenment of post-
imperialist Britain'. He was shocked to find that his job entailed 'political
mischief-making, supporting military dictatorships and feudal deadbeats,
and sniping at reform movements'. When he protested at MI6's Broadway

headquarters about the radical output which he felt was using propaganda 'to
discredit democratic parties that sought a middle way between disintegrating
traditionalism and Leftist extremism', Valls-Russell was told: 'But it's marvel-
lous cover!' When, later, 'a directive came from London ordering the station
to pander less, to Arab nationalists and to urge the Arabs to be realistic about
Israel', he wrote 'a commentary in accordance with the new line and - after

approval by the station's director, also an Englishman and an SIS appointee

- it was broadcast. But most of the station's Arab employees didn't know
who their real bosses were and the extremists among them protested and
demanded a head.' Valls-Russell was asked by Frank Benton to take personal
responsibility for protecting the cover of the station, but the 'Arab ultras were
 'UNBROKEN DREAMS' 541

convinced that he was a traitor to the cause they thought the radio station
was serving'. Valls-Russell left and was later employed by the Economist?^
Sharq al-Adna continued to be a highly successful, though controversial,
enterprise whose advertisements generated substantial profits. It was success-
ful enough to ensure that it sidestepped any political problems. Prime Minis-
ter Attlee is alleged to have remarked after one such problem, 'we'll leave it

alone. It's the only secret service that earns money.'^^

In April 1949, the Permanent Under-Secretary's Committee (PUSC) made a

new assessment of the Middle East. Besides recognising that the area was a
key centre of land and sea communications, it stressed the economic aspects,
in particular the oil-producing countries which were seen as vital to Britain's
f recovery. Egypt was viewed by the military as being strategically important
as an offensive airbase in the event of war with the Soviet Union. The JIC
did not believe that there was a direct military threat to the region but
was concerned about the effects of communist propaganda and subversion.
During the summer, the head of the PUSC, William Strang, toured the area,
reporting back to Bevin that the Arab states were weak, divided and faced
the challenge of Russian communism on their borders without the benefit of
strong leaders with which to face the threat (ironic given that Nasser would
soon achieve power in Egypt). In November, the chiefs of staff restated their

case that 'we must find a way of holding the Middle East at the beginning
of a war with our own resources and of developing offensive action against
Russia from that area. We believe this can be done. It must be done.'^^
Bevin claimed that Britain's influence in the Middle East was 'greater than
that of any foreign Power'. Technically that was correct, but as
F. S. Northedge

has noted, 'that influence hung by a thread; had not been strengthened by
it

the war'. The Foreign Secretary and other Labour ministers 'never doubted
that its old position in the Middle East would sooner or later be restored to
more or less what it had always been', but the country's virtual bankruptcy
at the end of the war had left massive debts in the region, including £400
million to Egypt. The only way that its goals could be achieved was through
the generous aid of the Americans, on whom Britain was to become increas-
ingly dependent. It was recognised by the JIC that Britain's position in the
Middle East could not be maintained without the help of the United States.^^
By October 1950, a British embassy official in Washington was liaising
with his State Department counterpart on covert propaganda operations in
the Middle East. Bevin also proposed that American officials be attached to
the British Middle East Office (BMEO). The BMEO head in Cairo, Sir John
Troutback, objected that their presence 'would hinder the political and
military work of the Office (the supply of intelligence and guidance to the
Middle East Commanders-in-Chief) and would compromise the activities
of the Secret Intelligence Service, which shared the Toulumbat compound'.
542 PART SIX: THE MIDDLE EAST

Troutback's outlook was, and remained, like that of many British officials,
distinctly anti- American. There was considerable distrust of American policy
concerning oil.""^

The domestic demand government into condoning

for oil led a 'socialist'
the worst forms of exploitation and imperialism. The interests of Arabs were
barely considered as it was 'not supposed that people of this kind' - invariably
referred to by British officials and MI6 officers as 'wogs' - 'could run their
own affairs'. Inevitably, 'the strongest political emotion which moved these
people was the desire to run their own affairs and to lever the foreigner from
their soil'. The problem was that the British refused to go. Often without the
military strength to settle disputes in their favour, throughout the fifties the
British relied on MI6 and the exercise of special operations to ensure not
only their guaranteed presence but also the right to return when they wished.
In the process, MI 6, tied inextricably to the financial interests of the City of
London, undermined every progressive movement that managed to rear its
head in the region. It is possible that Britain might have dealt better with the
nationalists 'had her pockets been full, but they were empty, and this was
painfully obvious'.
CHAPTER 26

PALESTINE

The very first example of Bevin's support for MI6 special operations came
with activity directed, surprisingly, not against the Soviet Union but against
Jewish emigration to Palestine. This was, however, underpinned by deliber-
ately exaggerating the communist threat in an attempt to secure American
support.
In the last year of the war, MI 6 officers in Istanbul, Col. Harold Gibson
and Maj. Arthur Whittal, had maintained professional ties with Mossad Le
Aliyah Beth (Institute B for Intelligence Special Services - forerunner of the
intelligence service Mossad), the Jewish agency that set up a network of
agents who co-ordinated illegal immigration, and the Joint - an overt relief
organisation. Helping with visas, Gibson and Whittal went to 'astonishing
lengths to assist many clandestine undertakings, and, when necessary, to
warn Jewish operatives of impending dangers'. The idea of a Jewish state,
however, upset Ernest Bevin's grand strategic vision for the Middle East, and
he soon reversed previous Labour policy by imposing a ceiling on Jewish
immigration to the country. It was not long before the problem of dealing
with 'illegal' immigration developed into a logistical nightmare, and the
Foreign Secretary was forced to turn to the intelligence and security services
for assistance to stem the tide of refugees seeking a homeland. For the first

by MI 6.^
time, Bevin directly sanctioned the use of special operations
Palestine was not a primary MI6 concern because under the 'Attlee
Doctrine' it was the responsibility of MIS - though because of recruitment
 -

544 PART SIX: THE MIDDLE EAST

problems a number of Defence Security officers stationed in Jerusalem

included MI 6 officers on cross-posting. Indeed, the chief Defence Security
Officer, Sir Gyles Isham, who reported to MIS's E2 (Overseas) Division in
London, joined MI6 in late 1946. MI6 did, in its foreign intelligence service
play an important part in countering the activities of Jewish intelligence
role,

agencies abroad. Despite the picture painted by fiction writers, in contrast to

its largely behind-the-scenes battle with the Soviets and their acolytes, MI6
was engaged in a real war of attrition with the Zionists, and it paid a heavy
price.
On 9 September 1946, a grenade thrown onto the balcony of his house
Area Security Officer and senior MI 6 officer in Tel Aviv, Maj.
killed the
Desmond Doran, while two colleagues managed to escape injury. According
to Nigel West, 'his death is thought to be the only "active service'' casualty
MI6 has suffered in the post-war era'.* Doran had served at the end of
the war in MI6's Middle East cover organisation, the Inter-Services Liaison
Department (ISLD), in Cairo, where he may have become known to Jewish
guerrilla fighters. Doran certainly had the reputation among the Stern Gang
as 'a skilled interrogator'. Seven weeks later in Rome, Irgun agents placed
two suitcase bombs against the front door of the British embassy, which
had become a symbol of opposition to Jewish emigration, causing extensive
damage. The MI6 officer in the embassy, Kenneth Benton, felt the blast but
escaped uninjured. The irony was that Benton had at the beginning of the war
received a commendation from the Jewish Agency in Riga for his assistance to
Jewish emigrants.^
The Jewish Agency's technically illegal military wing, the Haganah, many
of whose members had been trained during the war either by MI6 or the Special
Operations Executive (SOE), organised through its shadowy 'Brichah' escape
organisation a series of underground railroads or ratlines, via Austria, to ports
in Italy and Yugoslavia. In Austria, the British Army's Jewish Brigade (all of
whose men secretly belonged to the Haganah) co-ordinated the shipment of
Jews, under the noses of its British commanders, down the ratline into Italy,
where a network of Jewish DP camps was used to channel refugees through
Genoa for regular convoys to Palestine. 'To his surprise' Nazi-hunter Simon
Wiesenthal discovered that some of the routes used coincided with those run
by the Nazi self-help organisations. 'On occasions Jews and Nazis may even
have been lodged in the same inn, without knowing each other's presence.'^
Relations were cordial between the Haganah's intelligence service,
Mossad Institute B, and the political police in Yugoslavia, where no visas
were required. In the period from the end of the war to the summer of 1946,
more than 73,000 'illegals' were shipped in an assortment of barely seaworthy

* This would appear to be true and runs counter to the pubHc perception that intelligence
work is dangerous and violent.
 PALESTINE 545

craft and steamers to Palestine and its beaches, where they were secretly
landed. The British argued that the Jewish Agency had deliberately chartered
ancient ships so that if they made it to Palestine they would not be able to
put to sea again. The vessels were crammed with illegal immigrants who,
once intercepted by the Royal Navy blockade, were interned on Cyprus. In
retaliation, the Haganah sabotaged the ships used by the British to deport

Jews from Palestine.^

The intelligence available for monitoring the immigration was poor and
often of low quality, and the flow of human cargo continued unabated.
The signals intelligence-gathering agency, GCHQ, however, did have some
success in monitoring the telephone calls of the lower ranks who were less
security-conscious than the leaders of Mossad, with their grudging respect for
British Intelligence. Through its liaison with the American National Security
Agency (NSA), which had set up a secret code-breaking unit, codenamed
'Gold', in 1945 or 1946, it appears that GCHQ monitored the activities of

Jewish Joint agents in the United States and elsewhere who were involved
in financing the immigration and suppliers of arms.^
The British government's policy in Palestine of 'interception and deten-
immigrants was nullified by sheer weight of numbers. It was
tion' of illegal

a seriousproblem for the Attlee government, whose response may have been
conditioned by the Prime Minister's personal prejudice. It is still a matter of
conjecture whether Attlee and Bevin were anti-Semitic but it is true that
'even with memories of the Holocaust so fresh, there remained an unhealthy
awareness in Britain of who was a Jew and who was not'. Peter Hennessy
has noted that 'Attlee was no exception', while Gladwyn Jebb, one of the
Foreign Secretary's closest advisers, later admitted that Bevin 'had all kinds
of awful prejudices'. That his enemies made much of these is confirmed by
a former editor of the Jewish Chronicle, Joseph Finklestone, who remembers
Herbert Morrison telling him that Bevin's strange behaviour 'could be attrib-

uted to him being a secret, resentful Jew'. There were strong rumours in the
Cabinet that the illegitimate Bevin had been fathered by a Jew. The Foreign
Secretary is remembered in Israel as the man who 'bent his mighty will to
frustrating its birth'. In part this involved giving the go-ahead for co-ordina-
ting counter-measures with the armed services which included using MI6
for intelligence-gathering and propaganda operations against Mossad's
underground, and sabotage against the shipping.^
Help came from the interrogation of Jewish suspects and prisoners. An
officer who headed the Jewish Affairs Section of the Political Branch of the
Palestine Police and went on to a senior position in MI6, John Briance, empha-
sised that police interrogations involved 'patience and preparation'. The
Combined Services Detailed Interrogation Centre (CSDIC), which had been
established in 1940 for in-depth interrogation and was run by Maj. W. B.
Sedgwick, had only three other officers and was overworked. The GOC
546 PART SIX: THE MIDDLE EAST

Middle East on the Suez Canal, created a

intelligence headquarters at Fayid,
special section to combat illegal Jewish immigration by co-ordinating intelli-
gence-gathering and running special operations. It used techniques for
interrogation of Jewish suspects - 'snipcocks' in the words of one senior
officer - which could be rough and brutal. Maurice Oldfield, who went on
to become Chief of MI6, 'talked cheerfully about beating them and pushing
people's heads under buckets of water'.^
In Germany, British Intelligence was responsible for penetrating the
Jewish groups and apprehending the leaders of 'the far-flung underground
organisation'. It found the task particularly hard; the little intelligence gath-
ered in Germany and from agents in Austria and Italy along the Jewish ratline
and the transit stations was collated by a special operations room in the
War Office. In addition, anti-immigration stations were set up along the
Mediterranean at Genoa, Trieste and Athens to prevent refugees from reach-
ing the embarkation points and the ships sailing to Palestine. The head-
quarters was at Portovenere, at the tip of the bay of Spezia, from where most
of the Italian sailings took place. Operating against the British in Italy was
Yehuda Arazi, who had led a special Haganah sabotage squad during the
war which operated in conjunction with SOE in the Balkans. He led MI6 'a
song and dance for nearly two years' during which time he managed to plant
one of his agents on the staff at Portovenere.^
During the summer of 1947, former SOE officer Maj. Gordon Lett caused
alarm in London when he reported from Portovenere that Mossad Institute
B intended to utilise larger four-thousand-ton ships, in order to send tens of
thousands of immigrants to Palestine. Mustering all their resources, the
British managed and forcibly return its cargo of
to block the ship. Exodus,

4,500 persons to refugee camps in the British Zone in Germany. The move
proved to be a public relations disaster, reviving recent memories of the
Holocaust. In the United States, newspapers thundered that the British
government 'had either gone mad or turned viciously anti-semitic'. Naval
Intelligence officers reported that Mossad Institute B, buoyed by the publicity,
had taken a decision to try to send twenty thousand refugees in one go in
an attempt to flood the Cyprus camps, thus forcing the British to allow them
to travel on to Palestine. In pursuance of the new policy, Mossad Institute B
purchased two 4,500-ton Panamanian-flagged banana boats in the United
States from the United Fruit Company, the Pan York and Pan Crescent}^
These ships, it was realised, would make or break British policy, and the
government decided that more extreme direct action had to be sanctioned.
Menzies turned to Col. Harold Perkins in MI6's biggest station in Europe,
in Rome, where he collated information on the Jewish underground collected
from stations in Vienna, Paris, Milan and Trieste. Perkins had 'devised a
scheme to disrupt the flow of weapons and refugees: limpet mines were to
be attached to the refugee ships so as to prevent them reaching Palestine'.
 PALESTINE 547

Sabotage or any operation that involved the possibility of death needed the
approval of the Prime Minister and, according to his Assistant Chief, Jack
Easton, Menzies 'sought Attlee's approval for the destruction of Jewish refu-
gee ships sailing from Italy '.^^

This would appear to be the first use of the new Special Operations Branch,
though it was building on similar operations employing former SOE assets
which had already been launched from Palestine. An Arab-speaker and junior
member of the British Mandatory Government working in political intelli-
gence, Cathal O'Connor had been chosen during the run-up to the invasion
of Syria, in 1941, to train with SOE in sabotage techniques, including the
blowing up of ships. At the end of the war, this SOE team, now under the
control of MI6, was renamed the 'Kent Corps Specials' and 'switched to
doing all we could to prevent ships chartered by the Agency from coming
to Palestine'. According to O'Connor: 'It was very interesting but very
harrowing. We had to deal with the poor Jews from the holocaust while the
Palestinians were being hounded out of their homes and Jews
villages, as the
took them over.' He absolved Bevin, 'a brave and courageous man', from
responsibility for these illegal acts with the bizarre excuse that by authorising
the sabotage of the ships before they set sail from Europe, the Foreign Secre-
tary had saved thousands of Jewish lives that might have been lost in unsea-
worthy vessels.
The man chosen to oversee these sensitive operations in Italy was Count
Frederick Vanden Heuvel, a papal count and director of Eno's Fruit Salts,
and until recently the long-serving head of station in Berne. 'Fanny' replaced
Kenneth Benton. He had secret instructions to launch an anti-Haganah
campaign which would be implemented with the help of Perkins and his
assistants. Wing Commander Derek Verschoyle and Col. David Smiley. The
Anglo-Irish Verschoyle had been literary editor of the Spectator until 1940,
when he was succeeded briefly in that position by Graham Greene, who
was soon to join MI6. Verschoyle served with Bomber Command in the
Mediterranean Allied Forces until he transferred to MI6. Smiley, who had
served with SOE in Albania, had been seconded to MI6 at Perkins's request
from his regiment, the Blues, which was stationed in Germany.
Vanden Heuvel planned to infiltrate agents into the Haganah network
using the MI6 representatives in Milan, Lancelot de Garston, who had served
in Lugano and Locarno, and 'Teddy' de Haan, another former SOE officer
who had served in North Africa and Italy. Their remit was to discover which
Adriatic ports had been selected for the shipment of illegals. In addition, MI6
had suborned a Greek shipbroker from whom they obtained details of ships
bought - largely with funds from US supporters. 'Once identified, Perkins's
task was to procure the necessary equipment and then plant the explosives
on the side of the vessel well below the waterline.' With a small boat. Smiley
and Verschoyle posed as Adriatic cigarette smugglers and were responsible
548 PART SIX: THE MIDDLE EAST

for attaching the mines, which had timers 'to ensure that the ship was sunk
away from port in international waters' and to give them enough time to
leave Yugoslav or Italian territorial waters. On at least one occasion, it is

claimed that the timers malfunctioned: Those involved insisted afterwards

they did not risk refugees' lives, since there were only "caretakers" on the
ships in harbour/ Almost a dozen ships, including the Struma, were blown
up, while there have been persistent rumours that one unidentified ship
packed with illegals 'may have been blown up at sea, whether by accident
or design'/^
In the summer of 1947, the York arrived in Marseilles and the Crescent
docked in Venice. While Italian workmen were putting the finishing touches
to the ship, the Crescent was rocked by an explosion. An underwater plate
was blown out and water poured into the hold, causing the ship to list badly;
luckily the pumps saved the severely damaged vessel. Mossad's investigation
into the source of the explosion at first attributed it to an Arab
terrorist group
but later enquiries 'followed a which led Mossad leaders to the conviction
trail

that it had been a "British made" explosion'. They realised that 'the organisa-
tion to counter illegal immmigration was resorting to more direct preventative
measures' and increased security around their ships. British agents prevented
the sale of fuel to the ships but Mossad worked overtime to ensure that the
York and Crescent would be seaworthy and, in September, both ships left for
the Romanian port of Constanza, on the Black Sea.^^
Britain was angry that a number of private American organisations were
transporting Jewish immigrants to Palestine from the Balkans with the use
of US military vehicles with US Army insignia and operatives wearing
American uniforms. In October, the British protested, but the US adminis-
tration ignored the official note. Changing tack, the British decided to play
on American sensitivity to communist designs and announced a new wa\^e
of political warfare by labelling the illegal Jewish immigration railroad as a
'Red Plot'. The security services alleged that the thousands of illegal immi-
grants who were streaming into Palestine from countries under Soviet influ-
ence were being 'actively aided by the Soviet occupation authorities'. In order
to try to win over the Americans, the British ambassador in Washington, Sir
Oliver Wright, provided the State Department with 'convincing evidence'
that the 'Romanian Government, with the approval of the Soviet authorities,
was sending 10,000 hand-picked Communists to Palestine in the two Pan
ships'.

MI6 had swallowed the conspiracy theory that the Kremlin was behind the
problems facing Britain's disintegrating empire. The station head in Vienna,
George Young, later wrote that among the 'disciples and proxies' picked up
and dropped as they suited the needs of the Soviets were 'Jewish terrorists'.
While it is now known that the Soviets did, indeed, take the opportunity to
insert a few agents among the refugees destined for Palestine, there was no
 PALESTINE 549

evidence of '10,000 Communists' or of Soviet backing for the terrorists. While

Mossad Institute B may have dealt with the communists of Yugoslavia,
Czechoslovakia and Romania, it was a pragmatic, businesslike relationship
that had everything to do with securing the release of refugees and the
purchase of arms, and nothing to do with ideology. Within a year, Stalin
launched a purge of Eastern bloc Jews, whom he considered to be agents of
the American and British intelligence services.^^
The British government was unable to persuade the Romanians to end
support for the shipment, but Royal Navy vessels did blockade their passage.
On 1 January 1948, the York and Crescent were taken to Cyprus, where they
discharged fifteen thousand passengers. At Famagusta, crack units of the 6th
Airborne Division searched the ships from top to bottom: 'But, owing to an
unfortunate mishap, the Foreign Office released the results of this thorough
search two days before the ships had reached port and before the search had
actually started.' Two days earlier, the New York Times had carried 'official

reports' that the two Pan ships were full of potential communist 'fifth colum-
nists' associated with the terrorist Stern Gang. A further report claimed that
the British had discovered 'hundreds of abandoned Romanian Communist
Party membership cards on the two ships'. The Palestine Arab Higher
Command backed the British charge, claiming that 'Zionism was the secret
ally of communism'.
There were, as known, no further MI 6 sabotage operations against
far as is

Jewish ships. One them as 'the blackest

retired officer involved described
page in MI6's post-war history'. They appear to have been quickly curtailed
when the Haganah threatened retaliation. Bevin's announcement of formal
withdrawal from Palestine on 14 May 1948 was a declaration that the British
'would no longer fight to the finish' and was seen as a retreat from empire
'without glory'. It was also a sign to the leader of the terrorist group Irgun,
Menachem Begin, that British Intelligence was 'neither omniscient nor
infallible'.^'

Following independence, seems that there was no official liaison

it

between Mossad and MI6, and both MI6's Nigel Clive and his deputy had
their cover 'blown' almost as soon as they opened their office in Jerusalem,
and had to be evacuated. In their stead, David Balfour, who had taught at
Athens University until the German invasion and had spent part of the
war as an agent disguised as Father Dimitri, a Greek Orthodox monk, was
appointed head of station under Oriental Secretary cover at the embassy in
Tel Aviv. There he remained under constant and hostile surveillance until
his transfer to Smyrna in 1951.^*^
It was not until four years later, with the arrival of a major threat to
Israel's existence in the shape of the Egyptian leader. President Gamal Nasser,
who was equally hated by Britain's Prime Minister, Anthony Eden, that MI6
was able to establish effective liaison with Mossad.
CHAPTER 27

CYPRUS

In July 1952, Archbishop Makarios, leader of the Greek Orthodox Church in

Cyprus, secretly met in Athens Col. George Grivas, who during the war had
organised the Greek right-wing resistance movement known as 'X', with the
aim of achieving Enosis - political union with Greece. Three months later,
Grivas made a brief visit to Cyprus in preparation for a guerrilla warfare
campaign against the had been boosted when
British occupiers. This stance
the Colonial Minister, Henry Hopkinson, confirmed that Cyprus 'could never
expect to be fully independent'.^
Indeed, in response to financial problems and difficulties within the Arab
countries, later in the year, as part of the redeployment of UK military forces,
Cyprus was chosen by the chiefs of staff to be Britain's forward base for land
and air forces in the Middle East. The chiefs assigned to Cyprus, which was
outside the area covered by the North Atlantic Treaty, the role of standard-
bearer of Britain's prestige and standing in the Middle East, and made it the
seat of the joint headquarters of the British forces and the planned Middle East
Defence Organisation (ME DO). Despite these moves, Hopkinson commented:
T do not see any reason to expect any difficulties in Cyprus as a result of this
statement.'
The standard justification for the British presence on the island was given
to the founder of the Times of Cyprus, Charles Foley, by the writer Lawrence
Durrell, author of the novel Bitter Lemons, which covered his appointment as
Director of Public Relations for the Government of Cyprus. Durrell said:
 CYPRUS 551

No nation was more devoted to the principle of self-

determination than our own but in Cyprus it was simply 'not

on'. The long chain of British withdrawals . . . must end; the
hands of an unstable
island could not be allowed to pass into the
Greek Government. That might undermine the Eastern bastion
of NATO. There was also the Turkish-speaking minority to
consider, eighteen per cent of the population, who were against
any change. We had a duty to them; besides, Turkey played a
vital part in NATO . . }

MI6's John Bruce-Lockhart later wrote that 'quick accurate intelligence influ-
enced decisions at governmental level' in Cyprus, and that any British success
against the rebellion or 'small war' that followed was largely 'supplied by
two-legged spies', though it took a long time to set up an effective intelligence-
gathering machine. According to Nigel West, the key during 1953-7 lay 'in

the brilliant work done behind the scenes in Athens' by the head of station,
Christopher Phillpotts, and his CIA colleague, Al Ulmer. Phillpotts used
'characteristic initiative' in organising a number of 'highly productive oper-
ations', while Ulmer and his staff 'bought influence by adding senior members
of the Greek administration to the payroll'. MI6 technical sources of infor-
mation from the Government Communication Headquarters (GCHQ) radar
and tracking devices more than compensated for the loss of so many indi-
vidual agents to the CIA, which could afford to pay more. Phillpotts's control
of the technical sources helped ensure that the Royal Navy maintained an
effective blockade to prevent the guerrillas on Cyprus from receiving supplies
by sea.He was a good choice for this type of operation, having served in
the Royal Navy since 1932 and during the war with 9th Motor Torpedo Boat
Flotilla before joining MI6 and working with its 'private' navy.^

Off the coast of Kholorakas in January 1955, with the help of information
from a secret MI6 source, HMS Comet intercepted a caique, Ayios Georgios,
laden with ten thousand sticks of dynamite. One of those detained in connec-
tion with the seizure was a Grivas co-conspirator and Athens-based lawyer,
Socrates Loizides, who provided the security services with a document 'testi-
fying to the existence of a well-armed and organised secret revolutionary
organisation which was plotting the overthrow of the Cyprus government'.
The organisation was said to be led by 'Dighenis', which security officials
believed did not refer to a specific person but was a name adopted collectively
by the underground committee. Rather than Cyprus adminis-
alerting the
tration to potential danger, the discovery of this plot 'seems to have induced
premature complacency, and a belief that revolt had been nipped in the
bud - when in fact it had not yet begun'. During the spring, the National
Organisation of Cypriot Combatants (EOKA) launched a series of bombings
across the island. It was not until November 1955 that the local MI5-controlled
552 PART SIX: THE K4IDDLE EAST

Special Branch discovered that the mysterious 'Leader' of EOKA was Col.
Grivas.^
Confidential appraisals during the autumn by the Cyprus Intelligence
Committee showed on EOKA was poor. The committee
that intelligence
ki^ew nothing of Grivas's communications with Cyprus, Makarios and the
nationalist leaders, or with Greece. It did, however, acknowledge that
EOKA's terrorist propaganda campaign was principally designed to influ-
ence world opinion, and that the use of violence was central to the search
for publicity: Grivas's tactic was to force the authorities into overreaction. The
committee rejected any notion that EOKA was part of a legitimate resistance
movement that sought Enosis. Field Marshal Sir John Harding and his hard-
line security and military advisers viewed EOKA in terms of a conspiracy
rather than an expression of popular discontent.^
American opinion and reaction in the United Nations were of paramount
importance to Britain and the Colonial Office. Some of the best propagandists
were sent to Cyprus to organise a counter-campaign. Director-General of
Information was Leslie Glass, who had been head of psychological warfare
in the Far East during the war and then of the Information Division of the
BMEO before being seconded to the staff of the Governor in 1955. Handling
the public relations side was Derek Lyne, a former journalist who had been
in the wartime Intelligence Corps in the Middle East and Africa. In London,
PR was handled by Derek Chudleigh, a man with a background identical to
that of Lyne, having previously worked with the Near East Broadcasting
Station (NEABS).
As Charles Foley discovered, no effort was spared by information officers
in attempting to win over the foreign press with 'titillating stories'. Operation
TEA-PARTY was an authentic black propaganda operation run by the Infor-
mation Research Department (IRD). A handout given to journalists declared
that schoolgirls had been 'required to prostitute themselves with fellow-
members of EOKA'. A later pamphlet 'described the sexual relations of such
girls with members of the killer groups alleging that one of them had her
. . .

first lover at the age of twelve'. The IRD became 'a thorn in the flesh' of the

Colonial Office, for its insistence on presenting the Cyprus problem in terms
of communism. 'Secret intelligence reports' were dangled before American
correspondents, who were told that 'captured documents' - which they never
actually saw - confirmed that EOKA was in league with the communists.
This was a totally distorted view; the Cypriot Communist Party (AKEL) link

to EOKA was tenuous at best. EOKA was, in fact, anti-communist and

became engaged in a feud with AKEL, which eventually denounced the use
of terrorism.^
known as Operation
There followed a tough counter-insurgency campaign
PEPPERPOT, which had some success during the spring of 1956 when Grivas
was forced underground in the Troodos Mountains. During the operation,
 CYPRUS 553

by way of an informer who was paid handsomely. Special Branch came

into possession of Grivas's secret diary. A compulsive diarist, Grivas had
incriminated in his guerrilla campaign not only Archbishop Makarios but
also the archbishop's deputy, 'Bishop Anthimos, and Marshal Papagos, the
former Greek Premier, as well as several other senior figures in Cyprus and
Greece'. The diaries gave a full account of Grivas's secret landing in Cyprus
and his meetings with Makarios. They revealed that 'the Archbishop had
controlled EOKA's finances and supplies, and even named the date on which
the revoltwould begin. They chronicled the campaign from its beginnings
to the army searches a few months before, when Grivas had been chased
from the mountains. They gave away hiding places, codes and lists of EOKA
weapons.'^
Based on this information, the British government decided in March to
deport Makarios to the Seychelles Islands in the Indian Ocean. At about this
time, Grivas had offered to stop all terrorist activity and order a ceasefire to
allow progress with negotiations. 'Instead of seizing on this opportunity to
bring Makarios back to Cyprus and to pin him down to further talks about
a settlement in an atmosphere no longer permeated with terrorism', junior
foreign affairs ministerAnthony Nutting recalled that Eden 'hailed the Grivas
offer as an indication that EOKA were cracking under the strain imposed
by British security measures, and responded accordingly. EOKA was offered
the alternative of laying down their arms and being deported or facing exter-
mination at the hands of the British forces. This offer was, of course, rejected.'
When Britain launched the Suez invasion, Grivas took the opportunity to
initiate a new campaign with renewed and bitter factional violence.
guerrilla
When parachutists who had occupied Port Said returned to Cyprus, a number
of the more embittered gave their weapons to EOKA, which also made an
effort to persuade French soldiers to assist their campaign.^
The Cyprus Emergency was formally declared in November 1956, and
over the next few months 'EOKA was to show that, far from being on the
run, it could excel in violence anything that had been done since the rebellion
began'. The Foreign Office adviser to MI6, Geoffrey McDermott, had no great
regard for the man responsible for the security forces, Maj.-Gen. Kendrew.
'A brave man but not a modern-minded commander', Kendrew 'deployed
thirty thousand troops without first procuring adequate intelligence on where
they should winkle out the insurgents. They presented a beautifully broad
and vulnerable backside for the terrorists to pepper.' Information was vital,
but despite the large rewards offered the results were meagre, primarily
because EOKA was 'ruthless'; 'already fifty informers had been shot'. The
security forces simply did not know where to look for the insurgents. Increas-
ingly, intelligence was extracted from interrogations, which degenerated into
torture, with prisoners thrashed with a metal chain. Even the Daih/ Express,
which published every piece of disinformation the information and IRD
554 PART SIX: THE MIDDLE EAST

officers offered it to counter the international protests, noted in passing that

'every known method had been The security
tried except electric shock'.
situation improved during the first weeks of 1957 when more than sixty
hard-core members of EOKA, which was a small movement, were captured.
That did not, however, bring a halt to the violence, which became increasingly
fierce.'^

On 9 October 1957 it was announced that Harding had asked to be relieved

of his position as Governor. His place was taken in December by Sir Hugh
Foot, a self-proclaimed liberal. Although he was intensively disliked by the
hardliners in the security force, in MI5 and MI6, particularly because he
'avoided the hackneyed and purposeless abuse of "terrorists'", the new
Governor handled public relations with 'aplomb'. He made his own changes
in the information machine, replacing Glass with a wartime special operations
officer, Peter Storrs, who had held various senior information posts in Europe

and Washington. The Times of Cyprus named Foot 'The Man of the Year - a
Challenge to the Cynics'. ^°
By 1958 the level of violence in Cyprus had reached a peak. The British
response was to reorganise the security apparatus with John Prendergast
being brought in from Kenya, where he had been Director of Intelligence
and Security, to take over a co-ordinating role in the new post of Chief of
Intelligence.At the same time, with the support of Prime Minister Macmillan,
the Colonial Minister Julian Amery persuaded George Young and John Bruce-
Lockhart that MI6 should join in the fight against EOKA. After a period in
Paris, late in 1958, Stephen Hastings was posted as First Secretary at the

Political Office of the Middle East Forces, Cyprus, where he discovered an

island 'locked in the bitter and, in the end, disastrous struggle with EOKA'.
The movement, Hastings found, 'still simmered audibly, the long
terrorist
habit of murder and violence bubbling just below the surface while the ancient
antipathy between Greek and Turk had increased to the point of com-
bustion'."
Hastings was responsible for foreign intelligence, a role that brought some
frustration, caused in particular 'by the childish rivalry between our various
security services'. He was disheartened to discover that 'in the midst of this
cauldron good British intelligence was critically needed and woefully lacking.
Because of the Emergency, the Special Branch had been reinforced by MI5,
MI6 and, of course. Army Intelligence. An intelligence committee met weekly,
and not even the amiable chairmanship of the Deputy Governor, Sir George
Sinclair, could disguise the suspicion and mistrust that pervaded it. It was
left to Prendergast to "rapidly establish effective control over this diverse
and notoriously jealous combination of forces". '^^
Hugh Foot had been made Governor with the aim of conducting a negoti-
ated settlement and, with that in mind, Makarios had been released from
detention in the Seychelles and allowed to return to Athens in readiness for
 CYPRUS 555

diplomatic moves. MIS - principally the Director of E Branch (Colonial

Affairs), Bill Magan, a veteran of the North- West Frontier and Persia - and
MI6 believed that if political negotiations were to stand a chance then 'Grivas
needed to be located, isolated and neutralised'. Unfortunately, although the
army 'launched massive searches, they failed to find him'. As the situation
deteriorated. Foot agreed to call in the security services to track him down.^^
Magan consulted the Service's technical officer, Peter Wright, who
believed that with the help of the Defence Liaison officer. Col. Philip Kirby-
Green, Grivas could be located by tracing his communications. A former
Special Branch officer and member of Security Intelligence Middle East
(SIME) during the war, 'KG' was also a painter who happened to exhibit
his paintings in his overseas postings, including Cyprus. Wright, who arrived
in Cyprus in January 1959, later commented that 'it would be too crude to
say that SUNSHINE was an assassination operation . . . but it amounted to
the same thing'. He was joined by John Wyke, MI6's best technical operator,
to help place the taps on Makarios's telephones. The operation had two
objectives: firstly to locate the radio receivers, which they were sure Grivas
must use, and then to plant on EOKA a radio receiver containing a radio
beacon. This was put inside a consignment of receivers that was purchased
in Egypt from a Greek Cypriot arms dealer, who had been recruited by MI 6.^"^
'Things started to happen,' Hastings recalled. Grivas had eluded the
British for years, moving among his hideouts in the Troodos Mountains. 'Now
because of the machinations of his ally Makarios he moved into Nicosia.' It
had been estimated that it would take six months to complete Sunshine. 'Our
security forces had learned much during the years of EOKA terrorism.' Very
soon Prendergast 'had him nailed. His safe house was under constant surveil-
lance.' Hastings was convinced that 'if he had been done away with or at

least arrested and tried much subsequent trouble might have been avoided'.
In particular, the 'subsequent negotiations for the island's future would have
been a deal easier'. However, before Sunshine could be fully executed it was
scrapped because, against all the odds, the politicians began to make progress.
Geoffrey McDermott arrived in Cyprus shortly before Christmas 1958, as the
Foreign Office representative at Episkopi, where he found the atmosphere
'electric'. Foot had exercised his prerogative of mercy in favour of two EOKA

terrorists convicted of murder. 'This led to an early end of terrorism, as the

'^^
terrorists were on the run anyway.
This unexpected turn of events appalled those involved in Sunshine. Hast-
ings was not keen on Hugh Foot, and found him to be miscast as a colonial
governor: '[His] act was excellent. But his true reactions seemed to me
conditioned more by the radical left-wing thinking of his family than ever
they were by a dispassionate assessment of his country's interests. To rise
effectively to the top in what was the colonial service one surely had to
believe, at least to some extent, in the mission which gave rise to it, not
556 PART SIX: THE MIDDLE EAST

simply in the need to dismantle it/ While admitting that Foot's 'talent as
conciliator was certainly invaluable at this juncture', Hastings believed that
it was only with the arrival of fellow-imperialist Julian Amery that 'the
business of the island's disposal began to reflect British interest'/^
Christopher Phillpotts had been brought in for quiet, undercover diplo-
macy, conveying to the Greeks a straightforward message that 'if they pressed
for Enosis, would mean war with Turkey and the possible breakdown of
it

NATO'. It was only when the advisers to the Greek Prime Minister, Constan-
tine Karamanlis, were shown convincing evidence of Turkish determination
and military superiority that a solution appeared possible. Secret negotiations
began between Greek and Turkish foreign ministers in late 1958 and
continued into February of the following year at a Lancaster House consti-
tutional conference. At the same time, Macmillan made Amery responsible
for conducting talks with Makarios's chief aide, Glafkos Clerides.^^
Hastings thought Amery had the measure
Greek Cypriot leader,
of the
who in 'true Byzantine tradition . . . was
no one, not even
ruthless, trusted
his closest collaborators and manipulated his opponents with a beatific
charm'. The minister's constant informant and adviser was John Prendergast,
whose 'effective penetration of Makarios' inner conclave was masterly'. As
part of Operation Sunshine, Hastings had been running an agent from inside
Makarios's immediate entourage. MI6 'knew practically everything he said
and advisors, yet never throughout the interminable negotiation
to his aides
we learn with any certainty what Makarios' next
for the sovereign bases did
move would be'. Peter Wright was also involved in bugging and wiretapping
the delegation.
When Makarios threatened violence unless his conditions were met,
Amery told him that British troops would be withdrawn and then the Turks
would 'cut Greek throats'. Makarios backed down. When Makarios tried to
gamble on the British losing patience and withdrew from the talks, Amery
kept his nerve, despite Foot wanting to send a telegram to London 'making
his view clear that Julian should give in and grant Makarios' current
conditions'. Then, when the two had been
sides thought that an agreement
reached, Makarios intervened at the signing ceremony in London, and with-
held his signature. Overnight, however, he changed his mind. The reason for
the reversal was the blackmail material MI6 had accumulated during Oper-
ation Sunshine on the archbishop's 'rather unusual homosexual proclivities'.^^
On 10 February 1959 the Greek and Turkish premiers met in Zurich and
announced an agreement on Cyprus. The island gained independence with
a guaranteed role for the Turkish minority in the political framework, but
no Enosis. The Greek Makarios was elected President in December 1959 and
Dr Fazil Kutchuk, the Turkish Cypriot leader, was appointed Vice-President.
The agreement achieved a temporary end to the bloodshed. Much to the
relief of the chiefs of staff, in his successful negotiation of an independence
 CYPRUS 557

agreement, 'by a combination of patience, determination and above all good

intelligence, Amery achieved a military base at Episkopi'. This certainly
pleased Hastings: The sovereign base at Episkopi played a vitally important
part not only in the defence of the British interest but also that of the West
/^'^
ever since
Despite Amery's skill, the 'hurried agreement' did not go down well with

the 'hawks'. MI5's Magan had 'a strained meeting' with Foot. He was 'furious,
particularly when Grivas emerged from the precise area we had foreseen
and was flown to Greece, ready to continue to exert a baleful influence on
the island'. Hastings, too, blamed Foot for granting an amnesty to EOKA
supporters and allowing murderous character' to be 'flown to a hero's
'this

welcome in Athens'. For all his ability in gathering intelligence that proved
vital to the success of the negotiations, Hastings was removed from his post

by the Commonwealth Relations Office which invoked the 'Attlee Doctrine',

on the basis that 'gentlemen do not spy on one another'. An MIS officer was
substituted to work with the Cyprus government, which meant providing
'tittle-tattle of very little use to the British representatives in the performance
of his diplomatic duties'.
Britain's interest in Cyprus had been officially defined as being purely
strategic - treating the island as a solid base from which to defend its interests
in the Middle East. In reality, as the 1958 Cabinet minutes reveal, privately
it was admitted that the island was not strategically vital. The British,

however, were not willing to lose face and for reasons of 'prestige' would
not quit. During the rebellion, forty thousand British troops were held down
by a few hundred Grivas guerrillas. Nearly four hundred deaths on all sides
was a heavy price to pay for 'prestige'.
CHAPTER 28

IRAN: 'UNEQUAL
DREAMS'

In July 1949, representatives of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC) and

the government signed a prepared document known as the
Iranian*
'Supplementary Oil Agreement' which affirmed and augmented the oil
concession of 1933. British Foreign Office officials hoped that this agreement
would legitimise the oil industry in the minds of the Iranian people and
provide the revenues necessary for the economic and social development of
the country. Without the revenues, members of the Eastern Department of
the Foreign Office felt, the country would slide into communist revolution.
No agreement was likely to be ratified, however, while the political climate
in Iran remained unstable. The attempted assassination of the Shah the
previous February had ushered in an era in which 'the cult of bullets and
knives had entered Iranian politics with a vengeance'. What followed was a
period of economic depression and ideological ferment of which the British
despaired, and which the Iranian government proved incapable of breaking.
The vicious circle offered little hope of social progress.
Popular discontent fed calls by supporters of the leading nationalist poli-
tician, Dr Mohammed Mossadeq, for the nationalisation of the AIOC, but

* I refer to Iran throughout, though the British were still calling the country Persia.
 IRAN: 'UNEQUAL DREAMS' 559

this potentialimmediate solution to Iran's problems had less to do with the

economy than with the emotional pull of nationalism. At another time, and
in another country, Mossadeq might well have found favour with the British;
they had in the past and would in the future 'do business with' many other
popular nationalists. Indeed, Mossadeq - regarded as honest and genuinely
concerned for social issues - had been promoted as a bulwark against commu-
nism, but his theatrical behaviour - incomprehensible oratory and hysterical
outbursts - did not endear him either to the oil company or to Foreign Office
officials. In contrast, American journalist Kenneth Love found him to be
Vigorous, mentally alert, charming, witty, a very intelligent man'.^
As the nationalisation campaign and, specifically, anti-British feeling
grew, without strong leadership the chances of the Iranian Parliament, the
Supplementary Oil Agreement became remote. Hitherto,
Majlis, ratifying the
the Shah had appointed weak prime ministers who posed little threat to his
exercise of power. It was somewhat surprising, then, that he promoted
General Hadj Ali Razmara to the post in June 1950. A career soldier, small
but physically powerful, Razmara had the reputation of being unscrupulous
and cruel. He was also immensely ambitious. British hopes rose with his
appointment in the belief that he offered a genuine possibility of political
stability under which the nationalisation crisis might be allowed to subside.

The British ambassador in Tehran, Sir Francis Shephard, believed in the

general 'on the old yet rarely helpful precept that soldiers carry out orders'.
The MI6 head of station, Ian Milne, who ran numerous agents in the Majlis,
was not so sure."
Razmara had originally received the backing of the American embassy in
Tehran, but the State Department in Washington became progressively less
enthusiastic about his actions, and he gradually turned his attentions to the
British, with whom he developed warm relations. Razmara, though, was no
British stooge. He was well aware that any suspicion of British meddling
and influence could spell political suicide. A paradoxical situation soon
developed, however, in the guise of the A IOC advancing money to the
Iranian government to help solve its economic troubles. 'But the Government,
afraid to be called a paid tool of the British, insisted that the payments be
kept secret. Mossadeq continued to denounce the company for withholding
money and no one was allowed to say publicly that it was not doing so.'~^
The AIOC's position was hindered by the knowledge that the Americans
had negotiated a deal with Saudi Arabia - the so-called '50-50 agreement' -
which overnight transformed oil politics in the Middle East. The company
learned of the deal during the autumn of 1950 and, accordingly, tried to
make amendments to their Supplementary Oil Agreement in order to satisfy
Iranian demands. In 1950 alone, AIOC made a £170 million profit, a sizable
chunk of which went to the British government in taxes, but the Iranian
government received only 10 to 12 per cent of the net proceeds. The AIOC's
560 PART SIX: THE MIDDLE EAST

offer was too little, too late. Razmara, as Milne expected, had 'little choice
but to withdraw the bill to sanction the oil agreement'.
On 19 February 1951, Mossadeq presented to a special Majlis oil committee
a formal resolution for the nationalisation of the Iranian oil industry. Razmara
responded by attempting to set up a new oil committee, with a tightly drawn
membership, which would consider the nationalisation question. On 3 March,
Razmara ordered a paper to be read in the Majlis which explained the techni-
cal, financial and legal implications involved in such a move. Tehran Radio

broadcast the full text, which was then reprinted in the daily newspapers.
This effectively served to cool the public's demand for nationalisation; the
problem remained, though, that 'the technical arguments and the style of the
declaration although written in Persian led to a belief that it had been
prepared by the AIOC Conscious of this, Mossadeq used the opportunity
to press the case for nationalisation.^
Unfortunately for the British, who had begun to believe that opinion was
moving way, on 7 March Razmara was assassinated. According to a
their
former Special Operations Executive (SOE) and MI6 officer resident in
Tehran, Norman Darbyshire, Razmara 'had in his pocket at the time, the first

50-50 agreement and he was waiting to choose his moment to present it.

That would have changed our whole dealings in the Middle East.' Eight days
later, the Majlis passed a bill with just one article which nationalised the

AIOC. Shortly after, Mossadeq became Prime Minister, and the Shah finally
approved the bill on 2 May. Mossadeq now became the idol of those large
sections of the Iranian populace that admired his resolute determination to
rid the country of what was regarded as corrupting foreign influence.
With both parties unwilling to compromise, a clash between Mossadeq
and the British was inevitable. Mossadeq enthused his supporters with
dreams of an Iran free of foreign influence, but he soon became a prisoner
of the crowd - the primary factor in Iranian politics - and each success only
brought forth new demands. In turn, the AIOC operated as if it were still
in the nineteenth century, regarding Iranians as 'merely wogs'. For the British
government, with economic collapse at home always a possibility, the oil

revenues from taxes on the AIOC were desperately sought, and it was unwill-
ing to see them given away to the Iranians. From now on, intrigue and 'the
assassin's gun were to be used more often than the ballot box'. Mossadeq's
dream would not be allowed to live; instead, 'dangerous men' would inter-

vene to settle the country's future.^

The origins of the August 1953 coup can be partially traced back to an
anonymous article thatappeared in The Times on 22 March 1951. It called
attention to the inner conflict of Iranian society which had come to a head
in the oil controversy.
According to the article, 'For many years Persian society had been in a
 IRAN: 'UNEQUAL DREAMS' 561

state of disequilibrium.' Iranian instability could partly be attributed to great

power rivalry, but more fundamentally the disequilibrium originated with 'the
stupidity, greed and lack of judgement of the ruling classes of Persia'. Nepotism
was rife. The government was parasitic. The huge civil service was underpaid
and corrupt. The uneven distribution of wealth was concentrated in the hands
of the landowning class: merchants, the upper section of the bureaucracy, and
high ranks of the army. Those who wished to reform Iranian society 'were faced
with a choice between revolutionary catastrophe or a Royal enlightened
despotism'. The article explained that the tension between the rich and the
corrupt and other segments of the Iranian population had been sublimated into
the drive against external domination. The AIOC had become the scapegoat.
The Times article received wide circulation within the Foreign Office as an 'excel-
lent' analysis of the 'internal' issues behind the oil demands.^
The anonymous author was Professor Ann Katherine Swynford Lambton.
Reader in Persian at the School of Oriental and African Studies, she had spent
long periods of time in Iran and knew 'the language [Farsi] and mentality
of its people better than anyone else in the country'. During the war she had
been press attache at the British embassy - often a cover post for MI6 - 'in
the dual capacity of intelligence and public relations in Tehran and Isfahan'.^
When the Iranians nationalised the oil industry and took physical control
of the oil installations, expelling AIOC officials, the clash between the British
and Americans over their differing policies towards the Middle East came
to the fore. In 1951, 'after ten years of Anglo-American partnership, the wind
that was blowing from Washington was felt as chilling. Disappointment, even
surprise, could still be aroused in London when even the "special relation-
ship" came under strain.'^
In May, Foreign Secretary Herbert Morrison, Defence Secretary Emmanuel
Shinwell and the Foreign Office's Russia Committee concluded that inter-
vention by British troops to protect the installations and the massive new
refinery at Abadan was a realistic option, and that this would not increase
the risk of war with the Soviet Union. A small planning team was
subsequently sent to Fayid to join an already impressive array of committees,
including Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) members, to co-ordinate the
proposed action. Operating under cover as consul at Meshed, Norman
Darbyshire suborned the commander-in-chief of the Iranian forces at Khor-
ramshahr and told him that he did not want to see any bloodshed. Surpris-
ingly, the commander agreed to offer 'no more than token resistance' and
stand back. At the same time, HMS Urius stationed off Abadan was busy
reading Iranian Army signals traffic which was then cracked by the Govern-
ment Communications Headquarters (GCHQ).'^
As it turned out, the British had badly miscalculated. From 10 May
onwards, repeated diplomatic communications made painfully clear the
opposition of the United States to any British use of force. The chill wind
562 PART SIX: THE MIDDLE EAST

continued, and culminated in a personal message on 31May from President

Truman Prime Minister urging him to negotiate with the Iranian
to the
government. When Attlee informed Truman of the military contingency plan,
under American pressure the Cabinet was forced to back down and shelve
Operation BUCCANEER.^°
MI6 were angry at the lack of resolve by the Labour government
officers
and its up to the Americans. For George Young it was a time
failure to stand
'of the tragic decline of Bevin and Cripps and the shrinkage of Attlee into a

sphinx without a riddle'. He found it a depressing experience 'to work among

lost men who can only say: "We can't have this", "Proceed with caution"

(at which point all civil servants put the file in their pending tray), or just

plain "No".' Young thought that the Abadan crisis 'presented the classic
instance of what can happen when men do not know their own minds. There
were a number of possible solutions, some conciliatory and some "tough",
which might have worked; but in the last crucial days there was nobody at
the helm. This could be justified as realism or empiricism.'"
In June, in the light of the American rebuff. Professor Lambton met with
Eric Berthoud, an assistant under-secretary who supervised economic affairs
in the Foreign Office who had previously spent eight years with the A IOC,
to discuss the crisis in Iran. According to his minute of the meeting: 'Miss
Lambton was of the decided opinion that it was not possible to do business
with Mossadeq. She thought it important not to make concessions to him
except to the extent necessary to maintain order in Southern Iran' - where
were situated. Miss Lambton believed that it would be possible
the oilfields
to undermine Mossadeq's position by 'covert means'. One way in which this
could be undertaken, she suggested, would be to give heart to the substantial
body of Iranians who feared the risk of being denounced as traitors but
whose idea of Iranian national interest coincided with the British conception.
She thought that it might be possible through a 'PR officer' at the British
embassy in Tehran to graduallychange the public mood and thus give an
opportunity to intelligent Iranians who were well disposed to the British to
speak out against Mossadeq. According to Berthoud's minute, 'Miss Lambton
feels that without a campaign on the above lines it is not possible to create
'^^
the sort of climate in Tehran which is necessary to change the regime.
The Foreign Office accepted the strategy as outlined by Professor
Lambton: Mossadeq was to be opposed; compromise was out. She also made
one specific proposal that was of significance. According to Berthoud, she
suggested that Robin Zaehner, lecturer in Persian (later Professor of Eastern
Religions) at Oxford, would be 'the ideal man' to conduct the undercover
pro-British campaign. Zaehner had worked in Tehran during 1943-7 as assis-
tant press attache, alongside Lambton and the press counsellor, MI6's Lt-Col.
Geoffrey Wheeler. Berthoud added that 'Dr Z, was apparently extremely
successful in covert propaganda in 1944 at the time that there was a serious
 IRAN: 'UNEQUAL DREAMS' 563

threat that the Russians would take over Azerbaijan. He knows almost every-
one who matters in Tehran and is a man The line then was,
of great subtlety.
of course, to mobilise public opinion from the Bazaar upwards, about the
dangers of Russian penetration.'^^
With his 'pebble glasses, squeaky voice and "mad professor" eccen-
tricities', Zaehner, a scholar and a linguist, was an unlikely intelligence operat-
ive. He had been involved in the Albanian operation of 1949-51 as an
interpreter, and summer took on the post of acting counsellor in
in early
Tehran, reporting not to MI6 but to Foreign Secretary Morrison.
'Doc' Zaehner was already busy at work 'cultivating afresh' the excellent
contacts he had acquired while in Tehran during the war. These included Ernest
Perron, the most important influence on the Shah. Unlike most of his school
friendships, the Shah's relationship with Perron continued into adult life. The

Shah had his friend come to Iran, where Perron remained his confidant up to
the day he returned to Switzerland to die in 1961. As his personal secretary.
Perron visited the Shah each morning for a discussion. The Shah's wife.
Empress Soraya, considered that, although he posed as a 'poet and philos-
opher', he was as 'slippery as an eel' and played a 'sinister role in the Shah's
court'. MI6 officer Norman Darby shire, who knew the Shah on a social basis -
both were then young men - was also in touch with Perron, 'that terrible man'.^^
Perron was open about his homosexual proclivities, including his continu-
ing relationship with the commercial attache at the Swiss embassy in Tehran.
A freemason belonging to the high-level Pahlavi lodge, which included minis-
ters, officials and military figures. Perron was also close to a number of the

high-ranking families in Iran about whom he used to gather information

which he then passed on to Zaehner. According to General Hossein Fardust,
the Shah's closest personal friend, who had also been a classmate in Switzer-
land, Perron was privy to secrets about the Shah, including his affair with a
woman called Divsaller which appearshave been monitored by MI6.^^
to
Another of Zaehner's contacts was (Sir) Shapour Reporter, a young Zoro-
astrian Parsee from Bombay who held dual Iranian and British citizenship.
A school-friend of the Shah, from 1948 Reporter served as counsellor to
Seyyed Ali Zaheer, India's ambassador to Iran. Although useful as a
first

source. Reporter did not, as has been suggested, play a role in any operations.
Undoubtedly the most important contacts and the 'keystone' of MI6 plans
were the Rashidian brothers - Seyfollah, the eldest, Qodratollah, a cinema-
owner, banker and merchant, and the 'political' Asadollah, who was a close
friend of the Shah and acted as go-between. One of Asadollah's allies was
the Mayor of Tehran, Fatouah Foroud.^'
The Rashidians, who had been brought up by their father to believe that
the British were 'very good', had helped Zaehner during the war with Majlis
support for Britain. Anglophiles, they were regular visitors to London, where
they had commercial concessions with British firms operating in Iran. They sent
564 PART SIX: THE MIDDLE EAST

their children to English private schools and kept a family suite at the Grosv-
enor Hotel, managed at the time by a former SOE officer. Strongly anti-
communist, they invested their own money in buying votes in the Majlis, a
standard practice in Iranian politics. They sum
also received the considerable
of £10,000 a month from the Norman Darbyshire, who had lived in the
British.

same house as Zaehner during 1943-7, when he also acted as paymaster, 'used
to carry biscuit tins with damn great notes', which he handed over to Zaehner.
According to Darbyshire, the Rashidians received 'well over £1.5 million'.^^
The Rashidians, with an increasing number of anti-Mossadeq allies among
the bazaar merchants, were widely known to be British agents and attracted
more supporters, who were supplied with British funds. 'The money was going
via the Rashidian brothers to people to keep them sweet and see what they
could do.' They backed former Prime Minister Sayyed Zia Ad-Din, whom the
British had persuaded the Shah to allow to return from exile in 1943 and who,
with covert and financial encouragement from Zaehner, had formed a new
party, the National Will. With the support of the ulema, merchants, landlords
and major tribes, it became the focus of right-wing politicians and opposition
to the Tudeh Party, which had been founded the year before by a small group
of socialists and an active branch of professional communists. Clandestine
agents of the National Will had proved useful in destroying the regional head-
quarters of the Tudeh in several southern cities. Sayyed's supporters were a
key conservative influence in the Majlis and the Rashidians encouraged them
at the behest of Zaehner, during 1951-3, to oppose oil nationalisation. Sayyed
also proved useful in that he was able to see the Shah two or three times a
week to discuss contemporary political events.
Zaehner reported to the Foreign Office's Eastern Department. It was here,
under its head Geoffrey Furlong, that much of the anti-Mossadeq policy was
formulated. During the summer of 1951, the department organised propa-
ganda efforts by the BBC, which 'doubled and trebled' its Iranian trans-
missions. The propaganda attempted 'to whitewash Britain's record' in Iran
by 'plugging the work of the British scholars in the Persian language, and
particularly of Professor E. G. Browne of Cambridge'.^^
The AIOC had its own intelligence network run by its Central Information
Bureau (CIB), which had been opened in Tehran following the severe shock
of the general strike in the oil-producing areas in July 1946. Using the British
embassy's daily news bulletin, which was circulated in Farsi to the whole of
the Iranian press, as well as certain British-backed newspapers, the CIB
poured out a stream of propaganda material. Thiswas not seen to be very
effective but, later, the CIB's brief was extended to more covert activities
such as intelligence-gathering, bribing and political intrigue. The
officials

company often acted as 'a law unto itself, and it would appear that the
British embassy had little control or knowledge of its activities. The bribery
included paying a portion of the royalties due to the government directly to
 IRAN: 'UNEQUAL DREAMS' 565

the leaders of the tribes, the most important being the Baktitiar,
which domi-
nated the area of the country where most of the were situated. One
oilfields

leading British agent was Timour Bakhtiar, a relative of Empress Soraya, and
son of a leading figure of the Bakhtiari tribes. When Mossadeq nationalised
the A IOC, the recipients of company largesse had to go without, which went
very much against the grain of Iranian politics. So 'when emissaries of the
company began to hint that a way of removing Mossadeq and [the virulently
anti-British religious leader] Ayatollah Kashani and all their works might be
found, they were ready to listen'. These emissaries included a well-known
orientalist and director of the CIB, Dr Lawrence Lockard, and Richard
Seddon, the AIOC's executive in Tehran.^^
On 1 July 1951, Mossadeq's security police searched Seddon's house and
impounded his files. The Iranian government subsequently alleged that the
files, some of which were distributed to the press and publicly displayed at

a United Nations meeting, proved that the AIOC had engaged in illegal
activities, including the corruption of members of the Majlis. It was claimed

that Seddon had kept 'a list, scrupulously up-to-date, of gifts made by AIOC
to a number of deputies, ministers and other politicians'. More interestingly,
not only was the CIB supporting pro-British representatives, it was also
'aiding the Tudeh press to render their opposition more effective'. Also
covertly supported was the Peace Club, 'a Tudeh front organisation which
was largely led by members of the conservative establishment'. While this
may seem bizarre, there was a certain logic to it. The Tudeh opposed Mossa-
deq's oil nationalisation policy on the basis that it was 'an American
conspiracy' intended to replace the British presence with US companies. To
the Soviet-backed Tudeh, 'this vv^as a far greater sin than complicity with
Britain'. Whether or not MI6 knew about this covert support of the commu-
nists and whether its officers were actually involved is not known.^^
The State Prosecutor issued an indictment charging Seddon with 'illegal
activities', including the destruction of documents wanted by the government.

In a curious episode, Seddon's resident's permit was at first revoked and

then, for some reason, returned.^''
The Zaehner mission also kept in touch with Professor Lambton. Eric
Berthoud reported that 'our unofficial efforts to undermine Dr Mossadeq
are making good progress', though in reality Zaehner had run into some
unexpected problems, one such being American covert support for Mossadeq
and the Ayatollah Kashani. Professor Lambton noted that 'Kashani has
received large sums of money from somewhere. There is no evidence that it
comes from the Russians. It is not impossible that there is an American source,
not of course State Department, but perhaps the US brand of SOE who may
have for some time been supporting Dr Mossadeq and Mr Kashani as their
answer to communism. '^^
* * *
566 PART SIX: THE MIDDLE EAST

The American Central Intelligence Group (CIG) had set up a station in Tehran
in 1947 to take on covert operations previously carried out by the military
attaches. During the next year, a large covert action programme known as
(BE)DAMN had been initiated, designed to weaken Tudeh influence in Iran.
Damn appears to have become a 'rogue elephant' CIA operation without
official clearance. A propaganda and political action programme run through

a network headed by two Iranians code-named 'Nerren' and 'Ciley', it cost

the agency one million dollars annually and relied on the extensive use of
disinformation. Mossadeq was portrayed as corrupt and, in one instance, as
a Jew. Religious leaders were encouraged with funding to adopt a more
fundamentalist line and break with Mossadeq, while mobs and agents provoca-
teurs were financed to disrupt Tudeh rallies.^^

The American plan for Iran effectively began in 1948 when Overseas
Consultants, an association of US oil men represented by Allen Dulles,
devised 'a comprehensive development programme', which intended to bring
Iran into the modern world through 'the formation of a government
petroleum company to develop the oil resources in areas outside the Anglo-
Iranian Oil Company concession'. For assistance. Overseas Consultants
turned to the newly created Office of Policy Co-ordination (OPC), whose
leading agent, Kermit Roosevelt, was 'called upon to make things right in
Iran'.^''

The grandson Theodore Roosevelt, Kermit

of the 'rough rider' President,
was dubbed 'the Quiet American' by He had directed OSS
Kim Philby.
intelligence in the Arab world during the war and was left by Frank Wisner
and Dulles to run things in his own way. During 1948, Roosevelt travelled
throughout the Middle East, stopping off to renew his acquaintance with the
Shah, from whom he learned of Russian efforts 'to create, by spreading
chaos and violence, a power vacuum which only the Soviet Union could fill'.
Although pro-British, Kermit was critical of Britain's oil dealings with Iran.*^'
Roosevelt thought that there were two different types of relationship
between the West and the Middle East. The first was 'imperialist' in which
the West, particularly Britain and Russia, 'sought political domination and
economic exploitation'. The British had been party to 'some shoddy cynical
intrigues' and had 'used their position to support the most corrupt . . .

groups'. The politicians whom the British controlled were 'a sorry, shaky lot,
hardly worth owning'. The other relationship was based 'on common ii^ter-

ests' and involved 'business undertakings in which the motivation is reason-

able profit for both parties'. Roosevelt believed that 'the United States, alone
among the major powers, has entered the Middle East only in this second
relationship'.He concluded that the British had been 'doing all in their power
to knife theirAmerican opposite numbers and make Anglo-American collab-
oration in the area a strictly one-way proposition'.^^
Having received a briefing on the Overseas Consultants project from the
 IRAN: 'UNEQUAL DREAMS' 567

head of the Iranian National Bank, Roosevelt concluded that for the country to
withstand the communist challenge would require 'drastic social reforms'.
it

Interestingly, he 'could see no group in Iran which combined the incentive, the
strength, the programme and the persistence to make a successful revolution -
without foreign support'. He commented that 'Soviet observers may well
have reached the same conclusion'. In opposing the communists, Roosevelt
was willing to co-operate with the British and make use of their expertise on
Iran but 'without having to accept it on blind faith'. He had already made
contact with the leaders of the Qashqai tribe, the brothers Mohammed and
Malik Khan, who placed 'their hopes on America'.^'*
Like most American officials, Roosevelt believed that 'anti-British and
nationalist feeling is basic to Iran', and were understand-
that these feelings
able. Naturally, the British disagreed. Embassy
George Middleton
official

minuted that 'the American view is that Persian nationalism is a potent and
spontaneous force which will be an overriding force on its own account
regardless of the wishes and actions of any future government. Our view is
that Iranian nationalism certainly exists but that its effectiveness as a political
force is largely a matter of manipulation.' Nationalism, the British argued,
would inevitably lead tocommunism. The Americans believed, wrongly in
the British view, that Mossadeq was a bulwark against communism. In
contrast, MI6 regarded him as a weak character who would eventually be
pushed out by the highly trained Tudeh Party. They argued that the necessity
was 'to get rid of Mossadeq to solve the problem'.
While they could be persuaded about the communist threat, the Ameri-
cans did not believe that the solution was quite so simple. According to
academic Sallie Pisani, they recognised that the situation in Iran was deterior-
ating, but were concerned that their modernisation plans were not being
implemented because of 'the crisis between the Shah and Mossadeq'. In
American eyes, this crisis was 'aided and abetted by British truculence' and
was responsible for delivering 'a knock-out punch to the modernisation
scheme'. The Americans judged that the British were 'clearly slipping from
ally to albatross status in the Middle East', and 'not only would Mossadeq
have to go but so would the British'.
Mossadeq received encouragement from the efforts of the American oil
companies which, the British noted, 'seemed to be circling like vultures over
Iran'. They were right to be concerned because the Americans, for all their

anti-imperialist rhetoric, were far more practical and cynical than their British
counterparts. Overseas Consultants' Max Thornberg advised the Iranian
government to 'hold out for greatly increased royalties, although he informed
the AIOC that he was exerting a moderating influence'. The US stance on
imperialism, which had become fully developed during the war, masked a
simple strategy to replace Britain as the leading economic force in the Middle
East. Their bribes were bigger and their grasp of political realities sharper.^^
568 PART SIX: THE MIDDLE EAST

Successful oilman and Assistant Secretary of State for the Near East
George McGhee stated quite boldly: 'If it were not for the Cold War there is
no reason why we shouldn't let the British and the Iranians fight it out' - no
doubt with a view to opening up the area for American oil companies to
step in. But the Americans could not quite leave them to fight it out because
they learned, with some disquiet, that the British 'Stokes Mission' to Iran
during July 1951 was suggesting that the AIOC could go beyond the sacred
50-50 Saudi arrangement?^
Lord Privy Seal Richard Stokes was a wealthy businessman - a millionaire
- whose family firm had extensive connections in the Middle East. He had
his own eclectic brand of socialism that, 'in effect, amounted to a personal
creed', and had ties to British Intelligence. In Tehran, Stokes was accompanied
by MI6's Col. Geoffrey Wheeler, then counsellor at the embassy, who left
when Woodhouse's mission took over. Stokes thought that since Iranian
crude was so cheap to produce, the company could breach the 50-50 arrange-
ment without fear for its profits. Stoke's mission broke off relations with
Mossadeq in August 1951 at a time when an agreement seemed close. Mossa-
deq's intransigence, based on Thornberg's advice and on the hope of Ameri-
can support (the Americans made it known that they had earlier turned down
the British request for direct action), sank any possibility of a deal. In any
case, the Foreign Office slapped Stokes down. The negotiations that had taken
place during the summer turned out to have been a sham. There was to be
no agreement with Mossadeq: he was to be removed.

As the new MI6 head of station, the Hon. Christopher Montague Woodhouse,
recognised: 'It was an anomaly that the idea of organising the downfall of
Mossadeq was first formulated by the Foreign Office itself rather than
entrusted to its so-called "friends".' MI6 had plans for its own separate
mission.^^
Woodhouse was another recruit from SOE into the Service's War Planning
Directorate and Special Operations Branch. He had worked extensively in
Greece during and immediately after the war, and was regarded as 'the
shining but rare example of someone who had a sophisticated under-
standing of the political requirements of his mission'. Woodhouse had
been involved in setting up stay-behind missions in the Middle East, but had
also been thinking long and hard about Iran. 'Since the communists' efforts
had so far been directed at expansion in Europe and the Far East, it was not
hard to guess that the next probe would be in the Middle East where they
had scarcely yet scratched the periphery. The weakest spot seemed to be
Iran.'"'

In 1951, George Kennedy Young was unexpectedly promoted by the Chief

to take charge of the Middle East desk. 'Menzies had seen that the era of
British ascendancy, with its garrisons at key points and police and security
 IRAN: 'UNEQUAL DREAMS' 569

agencies largely run by British or British-trained officers, was over/ Young

had a foretaste of the change when the car in which he was being driven
from Cairo airport to the Canal Zone by fellow MI6 officer Lt-Col. Brian
Montgomery was stoned by mobs. On his travels in the area. Young found
that 'a general complacency characterised much of the intelligence effort'.^^
Young was an obvious choice because of his renowned abilities as an
intelligence officer, but his personal views on the Middle East mind, particu-
larly that of the Arab, left much to be desired. He was certainly no liberal
and, under the influence of his Dutch wife, his views were to become more
and more extreme, indeed racist, though he denied that term. He discovered
'patterns of minds so different that I would have to abandon completely the
verbal descriptions we use automatically in European discourse'. He believed
that the Arabs suffered from that 'perpetual neurosis which makes words
. . .

like "truth", "falsehood", "sincerity" and "treachery" such inadequate

descriptions when our ambassadors report on their dealings with Middle-

Eastern rulers'. He wrote that men in the Arab lands had not evolved 'from
a tool-making animal' into one conveying meaning 'by conceptualised
systems of symbols', and thought that no matter 'whatever wealth or material
welfare they may acquire, either by their own acute intelligence or by the
fruits of Western development and commerce, a point will always come when

the discrepancy between their dreams and the reality becomes too great to
bear, and there will be a desperate effort to find relief in a new focus of hate'.
Young later told his officers that the Arab's chief characteristic 'is a simple
joy in destruction which has to be experienced to be believed There is no. . .

gladder sound to the Arab ear than the crunch of glass, and his favourite
spectacle is that of human suffering . While the European has been building,
. .

the Arab has looted and torn down.'^^

The immediate problem facing the new Middle East Director and his staff
officer, John Stephen Longrigg, was Mossadeq. Young sent to Tehran Monty

Woodhouse, who 'spent a few weeks in other parts of the Middle East, Egypt,
Cyprus, Lebanon and Turkey - to acclimatise myself afresh'. Woodhouse
arrived in mid- August at the British embassy in Tehran, a gigantic compound
covering sixteen city blocks of landscaped gardens which was separated from
the Russian embassy by one street.

My own assets when 1 took up a nominal post in our embassy

were considerable, but demoralised by the setbacks of the past
year. Three or four young men in the embassy specialised in
intelligence on Iran and the Communists. Another cultivated
leading Iranians who were hostile to Mossadeq. Another
conducted a useful liaison, approved by the Shah, with the Chief
of the Security Police, who was well informed about the Tudeh
Party.^'^
570 PART SIX: THE MIDDLE EAST

The who became known as 'Monty's Army', included: the aforemen-

assets,

tioned Norman Darbyshire, the Third Secretary who was a fluent Farsi
speaker; John Briance, who had come to MI6 from the Colonial Police in
Palestine, where he had been a senior officer, and had been posted to Tehran
the year before; Christopher Woods, formerly in SOE; Alexis Fforter, a former
RAF officer of White Russian extraction, who was appointed Third Secretary
in Tehran in 1951 and opened a substation at Basra; possibly the market
officer. Major R. Jackson, MBE, who was later denounced by Mossadeq as

an MI6 officer, though the Foreign Office issued a denial. There were also
two Foreign Office diplomats who proved useful - the assistant secretary,
John Fearnley, who spoke Farsi, and Sam Falle, a junior official in the embassy,
whose job was to keep in touch with the younger political elements in Iran.
And 'the most striking figure of all', Dr Robin Zaehner.'^^
At the beginning of October 1951, AOIC staff left Iran. On the 26th, the
Labour government fell and Churchill became Prime Minister once again.
For MI6 officers such as Young, it meant that 'the pall of negation was lifted'.
He added that it was, however, 'only momentarily' raised.^^
Churchill berated his predecessors, 'who had scuttled and run from
Abadan when a splutter of musketry would have ended the matter'.
Returning to London, Col. Wheeler explained that 'combined Anglo-
American action could, of course, have removed Mossadeq at any time during
the past six months Given a united Anglo-American front, a change of
. . .

government could almost certainly be effected without difficulty or disturb-

ance.' Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden agreed. He observed that 'without
United States' encouragement he doubted whether Mossadeq would have
survived so long'. Eden did not agree with the Americans that Mossadeq
was a nationalist they could work with or the belief that the only alternative
was 'communism, and to save Persia from communism they are ready to
sacrifice the interests of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company and those of Her

Majesty's Government'. Eden 'thought that if Mossadeq fell his place might
well be taken by a more reasonable government with which it would be
possible to conclude a satisfactory agreement'.
The new Foreign Secretary supported the 'unofficial efforts' to undermine
Mossadeq, which Foreign Offlce official Berthoud reported were 'making
good progress'. In November, Professor Lambton wrote to Berthoud: 'If only
we keep steady Dr Mossadeq will fall. There may be a period of chaos, but
ultimately a government with which we can deal will come back.' Eden took
note of Miss Lambton's assessment: 'I agree with Miss Lambton. She has
a remarkable first-hand knowledge of Persians and their mentality.' Eden
sanctioned these unoffical efforts without consulting the relevant permanent
under-secretaries in the Foreign Office, such as Sir William Strang. He did,

though, have the support of officials such as Donald Logan, who had
(Sir)

served in the British embassy in Tehran during 1947-51, and was now head
 IRAN: 'UNEQUAL DREAMS' 571

of the Oil Department. 'Our policy was to get rid of Mossadeq as soon as
possible. We didn't think he would do any good to Iran. The two years he

was there were too long for our thinking. He did nothing for Iran."^"^

Zaehner's brief continued to be to secure the overthrow of Mossadeq by

legal or quasi-legal means. Money was to be provided by MI6, but Ambassa-
dor Shephard was not to be informed. Coups d'etat were not yet on the
agenda, but Eden was becoming a sick man and it would take Churchill to
respond with a 'whiff of grapeshot'.
The Foreign Office, however, had become embarrassed by the activities
of the Zaehner mission and wanted to terminate it. Eden overruled them,
but the Rashidians were now run as an MI6 operation. The Rashidians were
the British net that was most controlled by MI6. They were true agents in
the sense that they worked for the British government and what made
. . .

them distinctive and very important for their type of operation was that
everyone in Iran knew this, and therefore when someone wanted to run for
Parliament and wanted British help everyone knew where to go.'^^
. . .

Taking his instructions from Darbyshire, Sam Falle continued to keep in

touch with the brothers for the Foreign Office. T started seeing the Rashidians
in March 1952 and this was the policy of our government and embassy in
order to have a contingency plan in case the negotiations didn't succeed.'
Zaehner informed headquarters that the Rashidians had been important in
fomenting the tension between Mossadeq and the religious supporters of the
National Front such as Hossein Makki and Ayatollah Kashani. Darbyshire
was kept informed in general terms on the political situation not only by
the Rashidians but by dozens of other agents. Woodhouse had recruited an
important new agent, 'Omar', who was the director-general of a government
department and was convinced that Mossadeq was ruining the country. Omar
attended the Council of Ministers and reported intimate details of the Iranian
administration and Mossadeq's rulings. He was a member of the professional
classes that Woodhouse met socially, others being 'bankers, doctors,
engineers, lawyers and journalists, almost all of them critical of Mossadeq
but hesitant about going too far in friendliness with the British'. In Wood-
house's view, Omar's 'objective and evidently accurate reports' confirmed
that the longer Mossadeq was in office the more probable 'that Iran would
pass under Soviet control'.
MI6 not only ran agents for intelligence-gathering but also for 'black'
operations. The Lankarani brothers were agents inside the Tudeh Party and
were involved in pseudo-gang-style operations - 'organising attacks on
mosques and public figures in the name of the Tudeh'. MI6 planned the
opening of a propaganda radio station in Cyprus as an offshoot of the NE ABS
to target broadcasts to Iran. According to an officer working with NEABS,
American pressure forced MI6 to abort the operation.^^
Luck came Britain's way in July 1952 when Mossadeq overreached
572 PART SIX: THE MIDDLE EAST

himself. He sought to appoint himself War Minister but the Shah refused to
endorse the move and so, in a calculated ploy, Mossadeq resigned. MI6
apparently played little part in the manoeuvrings that followed, but others
did.
Amery, an important backbench Conservative MP and former MI6
Julian
operative, recalled: The question was whether we could overturn the Mossa-
deq government. I had a long association with Iran because of my father.
Iranians who were opposed to Mossadeq kept getting in touch with me. One
of these was their greatest elder statesman, Qavam Saltaneh.' Qavam came
from one of the old aristocratic families which, as the Shah well knew,
'despised him and his father as upstarts'. Amery met with Qavam in March
in Paris. 'He got in touch with me several times and said that he was prepared
to do something about it if only the British Government would give their
blessing. He came and talked about it at my house in Eaton Square. But even
'^^
Churchill's Government [was] a bit slow at first.
The British were happy when the Shah appointed Qavam Prime Minister.
The charge d'affaires in Tehran, George Middleton, thought Qavam 'a very
wily politician and an operator far more likely than anyone else to manipulate
the various parties in the Majlis. He was a professional and I won't say
devious but an elastic politician: the man to get a majority together.' The
attitude of the Soviets to the change of events was interesting. Contrary to
reports that suggested the closeness of the communists to Mossadeq, they
had, in fact, 'remained cool, bordering on the hostile, right from the start'
towards Mossadeq, and so the Tudeh's reaction to the Qavam premiership
was somewhat 'predictable'. The 'American agent Mossadeq had been
replaced by the British agent Qavam. The latter was preferable, especially as
he had a tradition of good relations with the Russians The Tudeh press
. . .

therefore responded to Qavam's premiership by attacking Mossadeq.' The

party had been outlawed since 1949, but by early 1952 it was estimated to
have thirteen thousand hard-core, well-disciplined members and, perhaps,
another forty thousand supporters. While their policies had some parallels
with those of Mossadeq's National Front, there were also irreconcilable differ-
ences which led to clashes. This was recognised in some quarters in the
Foreign Office which saw communism as a threat in the Middle East only
because 'it could feed off nationalism'. Earlier in the year, the Eastern Depart-
ment had concluded that communism had 'only limited success in exploiting
nationalist sentiment'. The priority was 'to tackle nationalism head on'.^^

Unfortunately for Eden, who placed a lot of trust in Amery, Qavam was
in office for only a few days. Mass rioting in Tehran forced Qavam to send
and while a number of the officers refused to fire on the crowd,
in the troops,
twenty-nine people were killed, with hundreds injured. Darby shire thought
that 'Amery failed miserably. We had misunderstood the Mossadeq support
and so had the Shah.' Middleton viewed the result with despair, sensing that
 IRAN: 'UNEQUAL DREAMS' 573

henceforth it might be impossible to stop 'the drift towards communism' and

that 'the consent of the mob is now the decisive factor' in Iranian politics.'*^

Mossadeq returned to power with increased support and a claimed

mandate for greater powers. Talk, for the British, was no longer of replacing
Mossadeq constitutionally. The Permanent Under-Secretary at the Foreign
Office called for a 'behind the scenes' effort to remove Mossadeq. Middleton
concluded in a cable to the Cabinet: 'Mossadeq's megalomania is now verging
on mental instability ... it looks as though the only thing to stop Persia
falling into communist hands is a coup d'etat.' According to MI6 Middle
East Director George Young, 'HMG came hesitatingly and reluctantly to the
conclusion that Mossadeq's removal would have to be engineered from the
outside.' Drawn up by Woodhouse, the initial plan involved caching arms
and explosives for use by the plotters, but permission to bring these in was
turned down, first by the Foreign Secretary, and then by the Prime Minister.
Young and Woodhouse decided, nevertheless, to go ahead, following which
Young offered his resignation. He was talked out of this by the new 'C, John
Sinclair, who increasingly left the planning entirely in the hands of his Middle

East Director. According to Darbyshire, Sinclair 'knew about as much of the

Middle East as a ten-year-old. In any case, he preferred cricket. '^°
The course was now set, and MI6 was busy making preparations. In the
summer, headquarters ordered Woodhouse to arm those tribal leaders in
northern Iran who could be relied on to oppose a possible Soviet invasion.
He was in touch with the leaders, 'who would do their best, but they lacked
weapons'. He sought help from the air attache, Beverley Barnard, who had
a small plane at his disposal. They flew to Habbaniyah in Iraq, the chief RAF
base in the Middle East. 'I collected the arms and eventually landed at Tehran
after losing our way over the Zagros mountains. They were mostly rifles and
Sten guns. We drove north in a truck, avoiding check-points by using
by-roads. Getting stopped was the sort of thing one never thinks about. We
buried the weapons - I think my underlings dug the holes.' They had also
brought in some small arms and gold sovereigns. The sovereigns were
exchanged for Iranian riyals, which were handed over at a secret rendezvous
in the Tehran suburbs to one of the Rashidian brothers to help finance the
plans for the overthrow of Mossadeq. The Rashidians were financing a promi-
nent group of pro-British politicians including Sayyid Zia, whom they wanted
to install asPrime Minister, and Jamal Emami, who headed the pro-British
faction in the Majlis. 'And for all we know,' Woodhouse recalled in 1997,
'those buried weapons are still hidden somewhere in northern Iran. It was
all predicated on the assumption that war would break out with the Soviet

Union.'^^
Despite their disappointment, and at times anger, at the lack of US support
for their policies in the Middle East, even in opposition Churchill and Eden
had backed the idea of an Anglo-American approach to oust Mossadeq.
574 PAPvT SIX: THE MIDDLE EAST

According to Monty Woodhouse, the appointment of another friend of Kermit

Roosevelt as the new US ambassador to Iran changed the atmosphere in the
US embassy to one of sympathy with the British position. Loy Henderson
'knew the Russians well and distrusted them profoundly'. Indeed, for
Henderson, 'all roads led from Moscow and back'. As a senior State Depart-

ment official, he had been trying to raise the consciousness of the Truman
administration to the Soviet threat to the Middle East. Like the British,
Henderson saw 'the threat as international Communism searching to create
situations which weakened the ability of countries to resist communist pres-
sure and penetration from without'. Henderson's view made some leeway
in the State Department, where colleague Charles Bohlen observed that 'if
Persia went Communist, Iraq and probably the rest of the Middle East would
also .We ought therefore to concentrate on saving Persia from communism
. .

at all costs.'^^
One embassy Tehran had already anticipated the change and
official in

was working The head of the mission and the princi-

closely with the British.
pal Area Director of the CIA, Roger Goiran, was a second-generation Ameri-
can of French descent, who was 'both bilingual and quick to grasp a European
viewpoint'. According to colleagues, Goiran was a person of great charm and
cultivated wit who was an old hand at the intelligence game, having been a
major in the Counter-intelligence Corps (CIC) during the war, concentrating
on counter-espionage. He moved from Istanbul to Tehran, where his deputy
was John Waller, a vice-consul in Iran since 1946.^^
Among the agents that Goiran controlled were two brothers, code-named
the 'Boscoes'. They had approached an American professor in
originally
Tehran whom they believed was working for the CIA. He wasn't, but as an
old OSS colleague he had supplied Goiran with the odd titbit of gossip from
the campus. Kermit Roosevelt on one of his many trips to Iran met the
brothers at a safe house in Tehran in 1950. Businesslike and impressive, the
eldest was a lawyer with interests in Germany, while his brother, in his late
twenties, was a journalist. What Roosevelt found surprising was that they
had had some kind of clandestine training, but he never discovered from
whom. The brothers subsequently travelled to Washington, where they were
interviewed and eventually cleared by Allen Dulles and the head of the
Agency, Walter Bedell Smith. Roosevelt then used them as agents provocateurs.
When Averell Harriman and his interpreter. Col. Vernon Walters - mystery
man and later Deputy Director of the CIA - visited Tehran as part of the
A IOC /Iranian negotiations, anti- American demonstrations took place,
during which many people were injured or killed. The rioting had been
provoked by the Boscoe brothers using their strong links with the bazaar.
The British were now looking for someone to replace Mossadeq as Prime
Minister. Middleton suggested the man he had been secretly grooming for
the task. Gen. Faziollah Zahedi. 'I went to see him at his country estate for
 IRAN: 'UNEQUAL DREAMS' 575

some shooting having swopped cars three times. He seemed tough, he

. . .

wanted though to be sure that the Shah was with him and also, the Americans.
But he was very ill-disposed towards Mossadeq who was leading the country
to hell on a wheelbarrow and he obviously liked the idea of power and
. . .

all its trappings.

When Zahedi consented to Middleton's proposal, the British talked quite
openly to him about the possibility of a line of credit of ten to twenty million
pounds for the Treasury on taking power. At first was some-
glance Zahedi
thing of an odd choice. He had been arrested by the British military authorities
in December 1942 in Isfahan for pro- Axis activities. He was held prisoner in
Palestine for the rest of the war. Although 'half swash-buckler and half-Don
Juan', Zahedi was then anti-British; he was also passionately anti-communist.
'He was, in fact, just the man one would choose to set up a coup - he was
ruthless and manipulative and had twice been chief of police in Tehran.' He
was also totally loyal to the Shah, having served under the Shah's father in
the Cossack Brigade. Almost as important for the success of the proposed
coup was his son, Ardeshir, who would act as liaison between his father
and the British and American intelligence services. He had strong American
connections, having gone to college in Salt Lake City and returned to Iran
to work under the head of the US Technical Assistance programme ('Point
Four' as it was known), which was promoted by the US Information Service
(USIS). The US embassy personnel had 'complete faith in him. He is brave
and absolutely loyal, not only to his father but to the Shah as well. He will
be an invaluable, completely reliable contact with the General. '^^
Despite British propaganda, the Mossadeq government was generally
democratic, moderate, and seemed likely to succeed in establishing a middle-
class hold over the state. It was officially viewed by the Truman adminis-
tration as popular, nationalist and anti-communist. Mossadeq believed that
fear of a communist takeover in Iran would lead the Americans to support
his government despite British pressure. This conviction was reinforced during
1952 when a number of American oilmen appeared on the scene, offering to
take the place of the AIOC. 'To this end, he or some of his supporters would
occasionally invoke the communist threat.' It turned out to be, however,
'clearly a counter-productive tactic' - the implications of which Mossadeq
'did not at that time fully appreciate'. The British embassy continued to
spread reports that the United States would be backing Britain to the hilt and
that there existed no possibility of breaking the Anglo-American alliance.
The British realised that at some appropriate moment they would have
to let the Americans into their plans. Indeed, as early as May a British special-
ist on Iran had guardedly spoken with American officials in Washington

about the possibility of a coup and possible candidates for Prime Minister,
including Qavam and Sayyid Zia. In August, Sam Falle wrote that in propos-
ing the overthrow of Mossadeq to the Americans 'we could say that, although
576 PART SIX: THF MIDDLE EAST

we naturally wish to reach an oil settlement eventually, we appreciate that

the first and most important objective is to prevent Persia going communist'.
On the 6th, Falle met with Zahedi and reported that 'he is increasing his
acti\'ity and has the courage to put himself up as a candidate for the premier-
ship in these dangerous times ... understand that he has contacts, probably
I

indirect, with the Americans and I suggested to him that there would be no
harm in making his claims further known to the Americans.' Falle concluded
that Zahedi 'does seem some alternative to Mossadeq'.^^
to offer
On his return to government, Mossadeq had little difficulty in increasing
his powers, principally by appointing himself Minister of Defence and retiring
a number of officers. Practically, he had taken away the Shah's authority as
commander-in-chief of the Iranian armed forces, restricting him to signing
military orders. Mohammed Reza's friend. Gen. Fardust, noted that Mossa-
deq's policies 'did not concur with the Shah's way of thinking or his
psychology. Mossadeq had succeeded to prove himself in the international
political arena as the number one force to be reckoned with in Iran.' Personally
and politically insecure, the Shah was angry at this blatant usurping of his
role.''

A group of disgruntled military men who supported the Shah, meeting

in the officers' club in Tehran, decided to form a secret 'Committee to Save
the Fatherland'. The committee's charter declared that it was the patriotic
duty of the monarchy and the armed forces; combat
officers to 'fight for the
extremism, and save the country from social dissolution'. Its leading figure
was Zahedi, though it included many other prominent military figures: Gen.
Moqadam, a member of a wealthy Azerbaijani family and head of the gendar-
merie following Mossadeq's return to power; Gen. Arfa, leader of the pro-
British clique in the army and the arch-conservative former Chief of the
General Staff; Gen. Hejai, a close friend of Arfa since their days in the Cossack
Brigade; and Gen. Hedayat, the aristocratic staff officer who had worked
closely with the Shah since the end of the war. They were soon in contact
with MI6, principally by way of the Rashidians. Zahedi was also able to
bring on board the religious leaders, Makki, Baqai and Kashani.^^
Britain's open strategy towards Iran was to support a series of legal
manoeuvres and to attempt to undermine Mossadeq's base of support by
imposing economic sanctions. The chiefs of staff had earlier forecast that
depriving the Iranian government of oil revenues, its main source of income,
'might bankrupt Persia thus possibly leading to revolution'. By the end of
July this had evolved into a full economic blockade. British efforts were
helped by the recruitment of a number of directors of Iran's National Bank.^'^^
On several occasions either the Governor of the bank, Dr Mohammed
Nassirir, or the bank's representative in New York, former Governor Abal
Hassan Ebtehaj, gave detailed reports of the government's fiscal predicament
to MI6 officers abroad. On his way to the International Monetary Fund in
 IRAN: 'UNEQUAL DREAMS' 577

Washington, the Governor stopped off in London, where he supplied British

officials with data on the state of the country's gold and other reserves, the
amount of currency bills printed and how much longer
against these reserves,
the government could meet its payroll obligations now that it had no income
from the AIOC. In short, through these agents the Foreign Office had accurate
knowledge of the economic power base of the Mossadeq government.''^
The plotters were evidently building towards a coup d'etat, but Mossadeq
was not unaware of British intrigue. His security police learned of Zahedi's
plans and, on 13 October, issued warrants for his arrest and that of three
businessmen for plotting with a 'foreign embassy' against the government.
The Rashidians were arrested but Seyfollah managed to escape by jumping
over the back wall of his house. He stayed at large right up to the coup. The
others had to spend a few months in prison. Gen. Zahedi also escaped and
took sanctuary in the Majlis before disappearing underground.^^
Earlier in the month, Woodhouse had learned from Omar that Mossadeq
planned to cut off diplomatic relations with Britain. This was announced on
the 17th, just four days after the arrests. The next few days were an extremely
busy time MI6 officers.
for the 'With the help of the few remaining British
nationals,' Woodhouse recalled, 'I was able to ensure that all our useful
contacts were preserved. I arrived in London in the last week of October,
while the rest of the Embassy staff set out to drive in convoy through Iraq
and Syria to Beirut.'^^
About ten days after leaving Tehran, Falle and Darbyshire flew from
Baghdad to Beirut with the outline of a plan for implementation. They had
a joint, unofficial meeting with the Americans - inviting their co-operation
- but after much discussion they were turned down. Their plan involved the
seizure of key points in the city by units loyal to the Shah, and a takeover
of the main radio station - in essence, classic coup tactics.
The MI6 team met up in Beirut and then crossed to Cyprus, where they
set up a new office to keep in touch with their agents in Tehran. Woodhouse
recalled that the CIA head of station, Roger Goiran, proved to be 'an invalu-
able ally to me when Mossadeq was throwing us out because I was able to
hand on to him the contacts I had'. Cyprus had been chosen by the Churchill
government to become the stronghold of the British presence in the Middle
East as part of the redeployment of UK military forces in response to financial
pressures and difficulties in Arab countries. Radio communications were run
under cover of the military headquarters, while the MI6 officers were secon-
ded to the British Middle East Office (BMEO) on Cyprus. One of the MI6
officers transferred to the BMEO for the coup planning was Arthur 'Dick'
Franks, a former SOE officer who had joined MI6 in 1949 and went on to
become a Chief of the Service. An MI6 station under cover of the BMEO
was a collection of huts in a small forest at Athalassa, in an area 'generally
known as the "stud farm". Unlike most stud farms, however, it appears to
578 PART SIX: THE MIDDLE EAST

ha\ e had radio masts, underground installations, and a very heavy security
guard/"-*
Darbyshire took over the running of the Iranian station-in-exile from
Monty Woodhouse and would control the MI6 part of the coup. Although
communications from Cyprus were found to be difficult because of the moun-
tains, Darbyshire discovered that 'none of our important contacts failed to
keep in touch'. The Rashidians, presumably Seyfollah, were provided with
radio equipment before MI 6 left Tehran. Unable to pay the brothers direct,
MI6 deposited money into secret bank accounts in Zurich and New York.
Soon after, leading Iranians - including deputies in the Majlis - began to slip
across the border,where they were quick to get in touch with the British.^^
Woodhouse, who had returned to London, briefed Eden on the situation
at a meeting with George Young and Robin Zaehner. The latter had left
Tehran shortly after the Qavam failure. To Woodhouse's surprise, Zaehner
gave a very defeatist account of the Rashidian brothers' capabilities. Unfortu-
nately for Woodhouse, Zaehner 'had no stomach for the more sinister side
of intelligence operations' and had become disillusioned during his time
in Tehran. To those who wished to learn about Iranian politics, Zaehner
recommended Alice through the Looking Glass. He may have been influenced
by 'his habit of smoking opium with members of the embassy staff, while
his heavy drinking probably resulted from the security fears that surrounded
his intelligence career. In late 1945, a KGB officer, Konstantin Volkov, had
attempted to defect in Istanbul, where he provided the embassy with clues
to the identities of Soviet agents alleged to be working inside the British
security services. Zaehner was one of those who came under suspicion, but
when confronted with the evidence and further accusations from the former
communist, Goronwy Rees, he vigorously denied the allegations.^^

Though the Foreign Office believed that the project was now dead, Eden,
Woodhouse realised, had 'left one loophole open'. The Foreign Secretary had
remarked in passing that an operation such as was contemplated 'would
have no chance of success without American support'. Woodhouse had long
understood this and knew that any coup attempt would require a joint Anglo-
American effort. He also understood that American support would be more
forthcoming if they saw the problem as one of containing communism rather
than confronting nationalism and restoring the position of the AIOC. With
that in mind, in November Woodhouse travelled with Sam Falle to Washing-
ton with an MI6 plan code-named Operation BOOT.^^
Woodhouse had consulted Iranian experts in London before preparing
the plan. He had seen Ann Lambton, though not Zaehner, who had been
withdrawn and had returned to academic life at Oxford. Similar to the scheme
outlined to the Americans in Beirut, this plan had two resources. Firstly, the
urban organisation run by the Rashidian brothers, which consisted of senior
officers in the army and police, deputies and senators, merchants, newspaper
 IRAN: 'UNEQUAL DREAMS' 579

editors,and elder statesmen, as well as mob leaders. Secondly, tribal leaders

in the South, who were to make a show of force and, if the Tudeh resisted,
occupy towns such as Isfahan and Abadan. Both would be activated simul-
taneously - probably in April or September 1953. British pay-offs had already
secured the co-operation of the former group. These forces', explained Wood-
house, 'were to seize control of Tehran, preferably with the support of the
Shah but if necessary without it, and Mossadeq and his ministers.'
to arrest
On 2 December, Woodhouse and met members of the State Depart-
Falle
ment. Falle recalled that 'we went to persuade the Americans that we weren't
going to get anywhere with Mossadeq and his remaining in power was very
dangerous to both our interests, also to tell them a little bit about the means we
had at our disposal for changing the government'. According to Woodhouse's
account, they found the State Department initially unsympathetic and
received a 'chilling reception'. Falle felt, though, that 'after we had been
talking for some time, they accepted that Mossadeq, remaining in power,
would eventually lead to a communist take-over '.^^
The reaction at the CIA, after some initial hesitancy, turned out to be
more positive. There was still some fallout and suspicions arising out of the
Philby debacle. According to the resident MI 6 officer in Washington, John
Bruce-Lockhart, the CIA was initially 'reluctant' to conspire with the British
in Iran. After some diplomatic massaging, officials came to realise that Iran
was According to Woodhouse, the CIA turned out to be
'a strategic prize'.

'very interested'. Wisner proved to be a 'powerful ally', while Dulles was

'receptive' and went so far as to enlist the help of a young academic expert
on Iran to examine the situation with the British. Woodhouse found the expert
to be 'shrewd and practical, and he greatly helped in convincing the CIA
that between us we could carry out an effective operation'.
Professor Richard Frye of Harvard University was 'a man with a profound
grasp of Iran's history, culture and language', according to Richard Cottam,
who had been introduced by Frye to Iran. Cottam was in Tehran during
1951/2, undertaking research at Tehran University under a Fulbright scholar-
ship, and subsequently advised the State Department on policy towards Iran
and worked with the CIA. While in Tehran, Cottam had been introduced to
Princeton professor and consultant to the CIA Theodore Cuyler Young, an
academic member of the OSS whose knowledge of Iran was 'unsurpassed'.
Cottam compared the situation in Iran to the French Revolution, interesting
in itself as CIA officers involved in planning on Iran reportedly used The
Anatomy of a Revolution by Harvard historian Crane Brinton as a blueprint.
Brinton had served in the Research Branch of the OSS during the war.^"
Recalling the meeting, Cottam realised that MI6 were professional opera-
tors: 'It was my feeling then that the British understood the extent of paranoia
in the United States concerning communism. Those were the days of Senator
Joseph McCarthy's Un-American Activities Committee, and the British
580 PART SIX: THE MIDDLE EAST

consummately played on that fear in order to help persuade us to involve

was perfectly true, as Woodhouse willingly admit-
ourselves in the coup.' This
ted. 'When we knew what the prejudices were, we played all the more on
these prejudices.''^
Woodhouse decided 'to emphasise the Communist threat to Iran rather
than the need to recover control of the oil industry. I argued that even if a
settlement of the oil was
dispute could be negotiated with Mossadeq, which
doubtful [Woodhouse put much of the blame for the failure on the AIOC,
which he regarded as 'stupid, boring, pigheaded and tiresome'], he was still
incapable of resisting a coup by the Tudeh Party if it were backed by Soviet
support. Therefore he must be removed.' It was claimed that Moscow had a
new strategy towards Mossadeq: he would be 'supported by the Tudeh in
his bid to eliminate British influence from Iran so that pro-communist officers
could, at the first opportunity, stage a coup d'etat and, in turn, get rid of the
old man'. The Tudeh had apparently and
successfully infiltrated the military
'with its and its assets
control of the oilfields through Tudeh-led trade unions
within the army, Moscow could, when the time came, seize power in Tehran'.
This was a timely piece of disinformation from the British which was believed,
despite a State Department assessment in January 1953 that 'an open Tudeh
move for power would probably unite independents and non-communists
. . .

of all political leanings and would result ... in energetic efforts to destroy
the Tudeh by force'.
At the same time, while on his way home from Tehran, the head of the
CIA's Middle East Department, Kermit Roosevelt, was invited to meet with
representatives of MI6, including John Sinclair, who put to him the proposal
that they jointly topple Mossadeq. There followed a series of meetings with
Woodhouse, Darbyshire and the Foreign Office's adviser to 'C, George Clut-
ton. While others joined later discussions, it was essentially these four who
oversaw Boot. Roosevelt discovered that MI6 'already had sketched out a
plan of battle and, while they recognised that we might have a political
problem, they could see no other reason for delay'. The American had been
thinking along similar lines, but said that nothing could be done until a
Republican President was in office. The Cold War warriors were about to
take command in Washington.^^
US support for Boot illustrated between the Truman and
the difference
Eisenhower administrations Cold War consensus. Whereas Truman
in the
had often tried to foster non-communist nationalist governments, feeling that
some degree of social change was inevitable and that it could be channelled
to America's advantage - to which roster Mossadeq could be added - the
new administration tended to see reform movements as disruptive and likely
to fall prey to the was also true
communists. It that members of the Eisen-
hower administration were much more explicit in their espousal of the big
business interests that lay behind the anti-communist rhetoric. In particular,
 IRAN: 'UNEQUAL DREAMS' 581

the new Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, liked to mix big business with
international politics, while his brother, Allen, as Director of Plans in the
CIA, made sure that intelligence operations supported commercial interests.
The Dulles brothers were partners in the law firm of Sullivan and Crom-
well, the legal counsel for the AIOC. Allen Dulles had also been, for years,
a director of J. Henry Schroeder - part of the huge partnership put together
to organise the Industrial Bank of Persia, the financing agent for the AIOC.
One of Dulles's fellow-directors in Schroeder 's was Frank C. Tiaks, who was
also a director of the AIOC.^^
With the blessing of Foster Dulles, the president of Chase Manhattan
bank, John McCloy, toured the Middle East, encouraging oil companies, with
the aid of the bank's cheap loans, to drill new wells. As a result, the oil
companies became the effective instrument of US policy in the region, and
while the State Department dealt with the problem of Israel, the oil companies
- in league with American Intelligence - dealt with the Arabs and Iran. The
architect of this policy was a former oil geologist, Herbert Hoover Jnr, Foster
Dulles's special adviser on oil policy, who, like Dulles, saw big business
and anti-communism as connected. Hoover knew Iran, having been
commissioned by the Iranian government at the end of the war to advise on
the extension of oil concessions, and was a close friend of Kermit Roosevelt.
Strongly anti-British, Hoover tended to see British plots behind any moves
in the Middle East. As chair of the Operations Co-ordination Board (OCB),
an arm of the National Security Council (NSC), Hoover had responsibility
for monitoring the implementation of NSC policies and, most importantly,
for approval of covert action funds. The high-powered board also included
the CIA's Allen Dulles, Director of Foreign Operations, Harold Strassen,
Executive Secretary of the Permanent Staff, Elmer Steads, and Nelson Rocke-
feller - of innumerable oil connections - representing the President.^''
The Eisenhower administration became more aggressive in its anti-
communism, and US ambassador Loy Henderson was in a position to evoke
the new policy. The British were pleased that he quickly established himself
as the 'point man' for policy on Iran. Intriguingly, Henderson had the ear of
Mossadeq, and several sensitive documents were translated by the ambassa-
dor on the Prime Minister's behalf.

In February 1953 the British plans for Boot were called to a halt by the deputy
under-secretary in the Foreign Office, Piers Dixon, who 'wished above all to
avoid the compromise of Britain's good name by underhand action of uncer-
tain effectiveness and doubtful morality'. He wanted the British and Ameri-
cans to sit tight and allow the Mossadeq regime to fall of its own accord. His
decision on 21 February was not countered by the Foreign Secretary, who
had had second thoughts and wanted the Rashidians' operation closed.
Apparently, Eden went as far as having MI6 radio communications in Cyprus
582 TART SIX: THE MIDDLE EAST

monitored to make sure that the order to terminatewas carried out. Fortu-
nately for MI6, the radio on that day failed, and by the next day Eden had
changed his mind and agreed to the re-establishment of contact with the
brothers.
The operation was resurrected by the Boot team in Washington, where
on the 18th, at a meeting of the NSC, Foster Dulles had remarked that
Mossadeq 'could not afford to reach any agreement with the British lest it
cost him his political life'. Two Anglo-American meetings at CIA head-
quarters and the State Department were for 'operating elements' and included
Allen Dulles for the CIA and, on the British side, John Sinclair and George
Clutton. Sinclair gave a detailed account of the British plan and proposed
that Kermit Roosevelt be the field commander of the operation. Both sides
accepted General Zahedi as the successor to Mossadeq.^^
In mid-February, Zahedi had been reported as promising that if he came
to power he would establish a 'Free South in Iran', where the Bakhtiari would
be given autonomy. A group of Bakhtiari tribesmen and members of the
Retired Officers' Association attacked an army column in Khuzestan province
causing many casualties. Mossadeq immediately retaliated by arresting
Zahedi and his co-conspirators. In the confusion that followed, the Shah
panicked and announced that he was taking a vacation abroad. On the 27th,
rioting broke out and a large crowd of pro-Zahedi supporters attacked Mossa-
deq's residence, calling for his blood. The leader of the mob was the most
notorious of the 'knife drawer chiefs', Shaaban Jaafari, nicknamed 'Brainless'.
It was obvious that the mob had been purchased by AyatoUah Kashani -

and Mossadeq believed, correctly, that the attack had been undertaken in
collaboration with British agents. In the event, Mossadeq managed to flee
and, after further rioting, army units were eventually able to restore order.
Politics had moved back onto the street.^^
By 1953 the alliance that supported Mossadeq was crumbling, with clashes
between the various factions increasingly common. When Mossadeq took it
upon himself to claim emergency powers, militant clerics opposed him. They
had expected a share of power but were to be disappointed, and became
increasingly incensed by the westernising legislation put forward by Mossa-
deq's leftist allies. The break came when Mossadeq's finance minister advo-
cated opening new bakeries, thus threatening the traditional guilds of the
bazaar from where the clerics drew their support. Mossadeq came through
the political crisis remarkably well, tightening his grip with new powers and
scoring an easy victory over his main rivals, Makki, Baqai and Kashani. The
most important of these clerics was Kashani, who had long espoused a hatred
of the British and had on numerous occasions claimed to have barely escaped
the 'executioners of the British Intelligence Service'. Kashani's activities were
generally regarded as being 'out of control' and the Americans had made
the suggestion to MI6 that the Rashidians be used 'to discredit' him. This
 IRAN: 'UNEQUAL DREAMS' 583

proved, however, to be unnecessary as Kashani was primarily concerned

with personal power and supported anyone who aided his ambitions/*^
Mossadeq's appeal remained particularly strong, though there was clearly
a feeling of unease that despite the apparent recovery in the economy and
the lowering of unemployment, the country could still not succeed without
the oil revenues. The irony, of course, was that Mossadeq was showing every
sign of turning the country into just the kind of liberal democracy that the
western plotters were pledged to uphold.
On 18 March MI 6 received a message from Wisner to the effect that the
CIA was ready to discuss in detail tactics for the overthrow of Mossadeq.
The go-ahead was confirmed in mid-April by a further message from Wash-
ington on the authority of Bedell Smith. It seems that American and British oil
interests similarly reached an agreement and that 'in exchange for American
support in overthrowing the Mossadeq government, the British grudgingly
permitted US companies a 40 per cent interest in Iranian oil'. Final confir-
mation from the US State Department arrived on 27 April with the news that
Zahedi would be an acceptable joint candidate. Zahedi had been suggested to
the CIA station chief by a veteran politician and part-time psychiatrist,
Ebrahim Kajehnuri, in the belief that only an alliance with the Americans
would end British domination of Iran. Eden vacillated, but with strong Ameri-
can support the Foreign Office, in the shape of its liaison officer with MI 6,
George Clutton, decided that the Rashidian brothers should go ahead. The
coup was up and running.^^
During the spring, Eden's health problems became 'acute' and he was
hospitalised for a gall bladder operation. A second operation on 29 April was
not a success. A third operation for a complete cure was impossible because
a bile duct damaged in the first operation could not be repaired. Eden was
able to return to active politics only after months of recuperation. The reins
of foreign policy were taken up by Churchill, who 'enjoyed dramatic oper-
ations and had no high regard for timid diplomats'. The Prime Minister,
however, was already 'fed up with Dulles's obsession with Communism in
Persia and elsewhere' while he ignored Britain's real interests. His aide, John
Colville, wrote that 'we have been out of Abadan for 18 months now; Mossa-
deq had done all he could to ruin his country; but there were no signs that
Persia was nearer Communism now, in spite of our refusal to give away
everything, than she was 18 months ago'. The Foreign Office assessment was
that there was 'little Soviet activity in the Middle East recently'.^'
That was not the view within CIA headquarters, where a 'Special Iran
Task Force' was created, headed by Roosevelt with assistance from the
academic Donald Wilbur, and political action specialist Miles Copeland.
An intelligence veteran and Iranian specialist in the OSS, Wilbur had
been with Col. Norman Schwarzkopf a founder member of the wartime
Persian American Relations Society, whose meetings were held in the office
584 PART SIX: THE Ml DDI E EAST

of the director of the National Bank, A. Ebtahaj. After teaching at the Asia
Wilbur returned to intelligence work in 1947 with the Central Intelli-
Institute,

gence Group (CIG) and then as a consultant in the Near East Division of the
OPC, engaged in planning psychological warfare and political action. Posted
to Tehran, he served there until July 1952, employed by the CIA in anti-
communist operations - primarily against Soviet front groups. In Tehran,
Copeland talked to Roger Goiran and his deputy, John Waller, but found
that the most helpful source for coup planning was Catherine, the 'Cat Lady',
who was employed in a small unit in the embassy known as 'the CIA within
the CIA'. She had numerous contacts among the American contractors of
Iranian ancestry who had come to work in Tehran, and among the 'Zirkaneh
Giants', the weight-lifters who could be hired to direct and control the mobs.^^
In the months that followed, Roosevelt travelled to Iran on several
occasions to prepare for the coup. He met frequently with Zahedi and
provided financial assistance. In Beirut, there were planning meetings with
Goiran. It soon became clear, however, that Goiran was not suited to political
action and he returned to Washington, where he was appointed chief of the
CIA's Near East Divisions which, as part of the Directorate of Plans, had
responsibilities for covert action in the Middle East. His Near East deputy
was Archie Roosevelt, Kermit's cousin.^^
In the middle levels of the CIA and State Department many officials were
less than enthusiastic about the project. Even Goiran became opposed to the

idea as he viewed it as 'putting US support behind Anglo-French colonialism'.

At least two Iranian analysts, who would have expected to have been
consulted, were deliberately excluded from discussions. When eventually
told of the plans, 'they predicted imminent failure'. Events during the spring,
however, made the task force more optimistic. Mossadeq began talks with
the Soviet Union as part of his policy of 'negative equilibrium'. The move
not only antagonised the clerics and enabled the pro-British to regroup, it
also backfired by giving the impression that the Prime Minister was moving
towards the communists. In response, Mossadeq made a broadcast on 6 April
1953, accusing the royal court of supporting plots against his life, which was
mostly true.^^

Once the American and British plans had been agreed in principle, the
Committee to Save the Fatherland and the Patriotic League, aided by funds
from the Rashidians and Roosevelt, won over officers in senior positions
within the armed forces. These included the commander of the Imperial
Guard, Col. Nasiri; chief of the air force Gen. Gilnashah; commander of
the armoured division in Kermansha Gen. Timour Bakhtiar; chief of the
gendarmerie Col. Ardmbadi; head of the secret police Capt. M'utazeo;
commander of the motorised division in Rasht Maj. 'Q'; and, most important,
the tank commanders in the Tehran garrison - Cols. Ghulam Reza Oveissi
and Muhammed Kajteh-Nouri.^^
 IRAN: 'UNEQUAL DREAMS' 585

Having extended the secret network, royal officers then supplied weapons
to the rebellious tribes, especially the Sahsavens, Bakhtiaris, Afshars and
Turkomans. Through the Rashidians, they established contact with conserva-
tive clerics such as Ayatollahs Boroujerdi and Behbehani, who feared that
Mossadeq's leftist advances were endangering national security'; and dissi-
dent mullahs from the National Front, Kashani and Makki, who claimed
that the ministries were full of 'Kremlin-controlled atheists', and Baqai, who
compared Mossadeq to Hitler. There was also contact with Shaaban, the
'Brainless'.^^

During April, a new plan was set in motion to force Mossadeq's resig-
nation. It had been decided to cause chaos and insecurity by kidnapping key

officials and politicians. The first signs of resistance came towards the end

of the month in a typically sinister form - 'some of Mossadeq's more powerful

supporters were quickly spirited away, their throats slit, their bodies burned
in the Elburz mountains'. On 20 April, the tough and loyal chief of police. Gen.
Afshartus, disappeared after telling Mossadeq of a mysterious rendezvous he
was about to attend. A former instructor at the Military Academy with a
reputation for brutality, the general had been appointed by the Prime Minister
four days earlier with instructions to purge the force of foreign elements
sympathetic to the US and the British. When his body was discovered a few
days later in an ice storage cave, it was 'obvious that slow retaliation had
been taken for his former cruelties'. Those directly involved included Baqai
and his close personal friend Hussain Khatibi, from whose house Afshartus
had been kidnapped on 19 April. Royalist army officers, operating for the
Rashidian brothers, had been responsible for the kidnapping.^^
Although Monty Woodhouse later suggested that the murder may have
been 'due to personal motives', according to Norman Darbyshire the kidnap-
ping was part of Boot. Its purpose was to boost the morale of the opposition
and show Mossadeq's supporters that they could not have it all their own
way. 'He was kidnapped and held in a cave. Feelings ran high and Afshartus
was unwise enough to make derogatory remarks about the Shah. He was
under guard by a young army officer and the young officer pulled out a gun
and shot. That man was never part of the programme at all but that's how
it happened.' Another version has it that when Khatibi fell under suspicion

the conspirators had Afshartus murdered in order to destroy the key witness
against them.^^
According to the investigations and resultant confessions that were
published during the year. Brig. Muzayyeni was in charge of the murder
mission and Maj. Baluch-Qarai executed the order. Investigators soon impli-
cated Baqai, Gen. Zahedi and his associates, including a number of retired
generals, and a son of AyatoUah Kashani. In signed confessions, four officers
accused of the plot admitted to the kidnap and the decision to kill Afshartus.
Despite Darbyshire's claim that the kidnapping had got out of hand and that
 6

586 PART SIX: THE MIDDLE EAST

murder had not been a part of the plan, it is hard to see how Mossadeq's
supporters could have received the right message - that they could not have
all their own way - without Afshartus being murdered. American journalist

Kenneth Love, who was in Tehran and worked closely with the CIA, claimed
that Afshartus was strangled. According to one account, when Mossadeq
appointed a new police chief, 'his candidate bragged on his first day that he
had a list of British spies on the force. By the next morning the man had
been gunned down.'^"^
During mid-May, CIA academic Donald Wilbur had a series of exhaustive
meetings with MI 6 officers in Nicosia before flying on to Beirut where he
showed a plan he had developed - known as AJAX - to Roosevelt. On 15
June the pair flew on to London for meetings with MI6 officers. Eden is
supposed to have read the final draft of Ajax Very carefully making notations
in the margin in his own handwriting'. Also involved was Patrick Dean, who
had been appointed chair of the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) in April.
Although responsible for intelligence and security matters in the Foreign
Office, Dean played down his secret leading role, though he 'once delighted
a Washington luncheon audience' with his opening remarks: "Mr Chairman, '

gentlemen" - and with a nod at Allen Dulles - "fellow conspirators" '.^°

Serving in London at the time was Ray Clines, a CIA staff officer from
the Office of National Estimates, who exchanged US intelligence estimates
for JIC assessments. Up to eighteen CIA analysts were busy in London
comparing economic, scientific and general strategic intelligence. Cline found
that

the wartime partnership was still paying off handsomely. The

British, recognising the importance of keeping the United States
actively engaged in an effort to contain Soviet disruptive thrusts,
were extraordinarily open and co-operative with Americans in
intelligence matters. They provided not only most of their high-
est-level joint intelligence estimates but also provided the station
chief in London with most of their clandestine intelligence MI
reports.^^

Donald Wilbur was willing to claim sole credit for the Ajax plan even though
most observers have suggested that it was a 'rewrite of the much more
detailed plan left by SIS Chief Sinclair and George Young'. The plan aimed
to create 'a situation and an atmosphere in Tehran that forced the people to
choose between an established institution, the monarchy, and the unknown
future offered by Mossadeq. If such a choice had to be made, it would be
for the monarchy.' The plan also envisaged pressure being applied to the
Shah to secure the issuing of an imperial decree to dismiss Mossadeq, and
another naming Gen. Zahedi as Prime Minister."^
On 25 June 1953, with CIA officers opposed to the plan excluded, the
 IRAN: 'UNEQUAL DREAMS' 587

Americans finally gave the go-ahead for Operation Ajax at a meeting chaired
by Secretary of State Foster Dulles. Attending were his brother Allen; CIA
Director Bedell Smith, who 'was personally inclined to favour clandestine
operations'; his deputy, H. Freeman 'Doc' Mathews, 'a dark figure'; Robert
Bourne, Director of the State Department's Planning Staff, later Deputy Direc-
tor of the CIA; Secretary of Defense Charles Wilson; Henry 'Hank' Byroade,
Assistant Secretary of State in charge of the Near East; and US ambassador
in Tehran Loy Henderson, who proved to be the key person at the meeting.

His argument that the Iranian Prime Minister was 'now completely in the
hands of his advisers' weighed heavily in the administration's decision to
support Mossadeq's overthrow. The twenty-two-page paper was passed with
little comment following Foster Dulles's approval. Henderson was told that

since Roosevelt had 'few details to give him', the specifics 'would have to be
worked out on the spot'.'^^
At the end of July, Woodhouse was given new responsibilities by Sinclair,
but before he left for a tour of the Far East he wrote a review of a book on
Iran for The Twentieth Century. He later noted that anyone who read 'between
the lines would have seen that it was written in the knowledge of an impend-
ing revolution'. Woodhouse thought that Russia had 'good reason to think
Persia ripe to mark the next step in its imperial expansion'. In terms of social
and political conditions, Persia offers 'a close approximation to a "revolution-
ary situation", coupled with the benefit of one of the half dozen most
efficiently organised Communist Parties in the world outside the Soviet
Orbit'. He concluded that 'from the narrowest view-point of national interest,
Persia is a legacy which we cannot afford to neglect. If we do, there is little

doubt who will claim it.''^'*

In Cabinet, Lord Salisbury, who had temporarily taken on foreign affairs

in Eden's absence, warned ministers that it would be 'disastrous' to give
Washington the impression that 'we are only concerned with our oil to the
exclusion of any consideration of the necessity of keeping Persia in the anti-
Communist camp', in which case 'we may lose all control over American
actions'. By July, Churchill had decided that the time had come for firm
"^"^

action and finally 'gave the authority for Operation Boot to proceed'.

Using the pseudonym 'James F. Lochridge', Kermit Roosevelt crossed the

border into Iran from Iraq on 19 July 1953. Ordered to keep his presence a
secret, he stayed with a CIA officer in a safe house in the mountains. There
remained, as Woodhouse
recognised, 'the problem of persuading the nervous
Shah which would consist simply of signing two decrees
to play his role

(firmans), one dismissing Mossadeq and the other appointing Zahedi in his
place'. The problem for the conspirators was that the Shah was weak and
totally unsure of what to do or whom to trust. Without his support, however,
the operation could not succeed.
588 PART SIX: THF \41DDLE EAST

The CIA station was augmented for Ajax. Goiran, the former station chief
who opposed the coup, had been replaced by former journalist Joe Goodwin,
who had covered the Azerbaijan crisis during 1946/47 for a press syndicate
and knew many prominent Iranians. Other CIA officers involved in the coup,
in planning and action, included Howard E. 'Rocky' Stone, a 'legend in the
CIA's clandestine services', and George Carroll, a six-foot-four-inch, two-
hundred-pound paramilitary specialist, who had arrived from Korea. He was
described by a colleague as 'too unrestrained' but useful when 'they really
don't give a damn'. He was the principal contact with the military in Tehran.
Ted Hotchkiss, too, had been in Korea before being recruited in 1952 as a
CIA operative.''"

Back in Washington, Wilbur oversaw the preparation of propaganda

material directed against Mossadeq. Richard Cottam wrote articles alleging
communist support for Mossadeq, while right-wing writer James Burnham
was also employed by Roosevelt to write propaganda. During the summer,
the Damn propaganda campaign was engaged in an 'all-out effort', an
'orchestrated programme of destabilisation', which became clear when six
new newspapers suddenly appeared in Tehran. The material compiled in
Washington was rushed to Tehran, where it was stored for distribution at
the appropriate moment. It was then passed on to the Rashidian brothers,
who had contacts in four-fifths of the Iranian press. 'Any article I would
write', Cottam recalled, 'would appear almost instantly in the next day's
'^^
Iranian press.
In order to protect them the Shah had sent members of his family, includ-
ing his twin sister Ashraf, into exile in Switzerland.He blamed the need for
this on Mossadeq, who had accused Ashraf of siphoning off five million
riyals from the Agriculture Bank. It was recognised by western intelligence
agencies that Ashraf was the only person to whom the Shah would listen.
Roosevelt told Zahedi that the five million riyals was 'no problem'. Ashraf
could, he said, once there 'sell off some property to pay off her debts'. She
was telephoned by Asadollah Rashidian, who told her that the British and
Americans were concerned about the current situation in Iran and that they
had devised a plan to solve the problem and benefit the Shah. She agreed to
listen to two representatives, Lt-Col. Stephen Meade, a regular army officer

on loan to the CIA who acted on behalf of Foster Dulles, and Norman
Darbyshire, speaking for Winston Churchill.'^'^
Princess Ashraf was persuaded to go back to Tehran to convince her
brother that the plans put before him by Asadollah had the support of both
London and Washington. According to Darbyshire, when he produced a
great wad of notes 'her eyes lit up'. Meade and Darbyshire told her, 'here is
your first-class ticket and you are booked for the day after tomorrow'. Using
her married name, Madame Chafik, she arrived secretly in Tehran on 25 July
and met with the Shah with the aim of 'encouraging him to act'. The meeting,
 IRAN: 'UNEQUAL DREAMS' 589

however, was 'stormy', and people outside recalled hearing the two rowing.
Woodhouse reports that 'they were not alone, so that it was doubtful whether
she succeeded in conveying any kind of message to him'. Five days later,

she left for Geneva, feeling that she had managed to bring her brother
around.^°°
On 1 August, Col. H. Norman Schwarzkopf, former US adviser to the
gendarmerie, openly flew into Tehran, 'stayed for two days, and was gone
again'. A week later, the New York Times reported that he had visited Iran
'to see a few friends', one of whom turned out to be the Shah, the other Gen.

Zahedi - in hiding from Mossadeq's possible revenge and assassination.

Schwarzkopf managed to see the Shah, who again refused to commit himself.
Col. Schwarzkopf suggested the need for Roosevelt to see the Shah personally,
and a meeting was arranged by the Rashidians. The Shah finally agreed to
support the plan only 'after official US and British involvement had been
confirmed through a special radio broadcast'. President Eisenhower had
given the final go-ahead for Ajax on 8 August after Mossadeq opened trade
talks with the Soviet Union. It had been arranged that the routine BBC
Persian-language news broadcast would not begin with the usual 'It is now
midnight in London' but instead 'It is now exactly midnight'. The President
departed from his prepared speech to add that the situation in Iran was 'very
ominous', that the Soviet drive 'must be blocked' and 'that's what we are
trying to do'. On hearing the broadcasts, the Shah and his wife left for their
hunting lodge on the Caspian Sea, where he signed two blank decrees to be
filled in at the right time: one was for Mossadeq's dismissal and the other

for Zahedi's appointment to the post of Prime Minister.

Darbyshire had wanted to direct the final stages of the operation on the
spot, and had planned to fly into Tehran in an American plane. Once in
place, he knew that it would not be a problem organising the operation. His
request, however, was turned down by the Foreign Office and the politicians,
who thought 'it would have been embarrassing if anything had gone wrong'.
Because he spoke Farsi, Darbyshire was given the job of co-ordinating the
operations - from Cyprus. 'In the intelligence world you play your cards
pretty close to the chest,' the MI6 officer later recalled. 'We handled the
money, we didn't let the CIA touch it and even if you have an ally, you
. . .

always go to any lengths to protect your own sources of information. We,

on instruction, were more forthcoming than the CIA was with us. But on
the other hand knowing the thing well, we could read between the lines and
could see who the CIA were using.'
On 13 August, the original day set for the operation, rumours of an
impending coup rose to their highest pitch. These were echoed the following
day in a newspaper article which stated that 'the suspicious activities in
Tehran of foreign agents during the past two weeks together with their
internal counter-parts show that a secret organisation is hopelessly working
5^X^ PART SIX: THE MIDDLE EAST

against Dr Mossadeq's government, and the Americans and British imperial-

ists ha\'e not yet lost faith in the use of their last card'. As the date of the
operation passed, American ambassador Loy Henderson, who had
not been
gi\ en by the CIA but was told 'only that something was to be
full details

done', grew restless and flew to Beirut for a break.

A new date of 15 August was set, the day on which the Foreign Minister,
Fatemi, and Chief of Staff, Riyahi, were to be kidnapped in the hope of
forestalling civil and military resistance. Fatemi was taken and threatened
On the same
with execution, but the conspirators failed to grab Gen. Riyahi.
day, Mossadeq was warned impending move against him by two young
of an
officers of the Royal Guard. A retired civil servant from the Ministry of
Finance, Mohammad Hussain Ashtiyani, whose relatives were close to the
royal court, also telephoned him with details of the plan. Forewarned, the
military moved tanks to surround Mossadeq's home. At 10 a.m. on the follow-
ing morning, when the commander of the Imperial Guard in Tehran, Col.
Nemotollah Nassiri, arrived with the royal decree to arrest the Prime Minister,
Mossadeq was ready for him. It was Nassiri who was arrested by Gen.
Riyahi.i°^

Shortly after, the head of the US Military Mission to the Iranian Army,
Brig. -Gen. Robert McClure, informed President Eisenhower's adviser on
psychological warfare, C. D. Jackson, that the

first Government smacked very

abortive start for a change of
much and dagger. The delivery of his Majesty's decree
of cloak
backed up by armed troops was open to serious question. It
was unrealistic to expect major commanders to accept the state-
ment of comparatively junior officers that the Shah had issued a
decree for delivery in this manner. The unsupported statements
were supposed to have been convincing enough to cause a
revolt in the Army. You know of course what happened. The
following day I talked with the Acting Minister of Defence and
the Chief of Staff, both of whom cited the manner of delivery,
and stated it was so unusual as to cause them to doubt the
existence of an authentic decree. They cited how easy it would
be for a forgery to have been used.

The government had been decisive in its actions and the public received the
news of the unsuccessful coup with anger, followed by jubilation - especially
^^^"^
when a large public meeting was addressed by the released Fatemi.
Ernest Perron told the Shah about Col. Nassiri's arrest and advised him
to leave the country. The Shah was not a man for a crisis or making difficult
decisions: 'his natural instinct was to leave, allowing events to unfold without
him'. With the Empress, the Shah fled in a single-engined plane to the resort
of Ramssar, from where they were flown on to Baghdad by Lt. Mohammad
 IRAN: 'UNEQUAL DREAMS' 591

Khatami (later married to the Shah's sister and appointed head of the air
force). The British embassy in Baghdad cabled the Foreign Office that the Shah
was wobbling. He wanted advice from both the British and the Americans on
whether 'he should oppose Mossadeq openly or not, and what he should
do'. A private British plane was chartered in Baghdad and the couple were
flown to Rome, where they kept in touch with MI6 and CIA representatives.
Perron hid in the house of his Swiss friend for the duration of the coup.^°^
The hunt was now on for those connected to Nassiri, and a massive search
was made for Zahedi, with a reward of a hundred thousand riyals offered
for his arrest, Shapour Dowlatshahi had been charged with hiding Roosevelt
and other CIA agents in Tehran, and Zahedi had been transferred to the
basement of another CIA man (Fred Zimmerman), who had been out of
action with hepatitis.
According to Donald Wilbur, at this point 'key figures in the military
phases of the plan got cold feet and stayed home instead of carrying out the
instructions they had sworn to execute'. The 'brains' behind one grouping,
Maj.-Gen. Hassin Akhavi, feigned illness and confined himself to bed in the
army's hospital in Tehran. He was 'worried for the failure of the coup and
this was a good alibi to avoid suspicion' (he was later awarded a ministerial

post by the Shah).^«'

In Washington, Wisner and Dulles assumed that the plot had failed, while
Wilbur attended meetings where 'decisions were taken to call off the oper-
ations'. CIA headquarters was in 'depression and despair'. Under-Secretary

of State and former CIA Director Walter Bedell Smith decided to transmit a
cable to Roosevelt telling him to flee Tehran 'at the earliest moment'. The
cable was to be transmitted to the CIA station in Tehran via MI6's communi-
cations link on Cyprus. When MI6's Middle East Director, George Young,
saw the cable, however, he declined to pass it on immediately, thus allowing
the conspirators enough time to regain the initiative. When the cable finally
did reach Tehran, Roosevelt chose to ignore it, as he considered that the tide
had turned. Roosevelt later admitted that 'had the message arrived earlier -
when, in fact, [Bedell Smith] sent it - I should have had a real problem'.
Fearing that the coup had been unsuccessful, on 16 August Henderson
flew from Switzerland to Beirut, and then on to Tehran, where he contacted
Roosevelt to enquire what was happening. Roosevelt remained optimistic,
telling Henderson, 'We've run into some complications.' However, he added,
'I think we have things under control. Two or three days should see things

developing our way.' Henderson subsequently saw Mossadeq for 'frank,

hot exchanges', cabling Dulles that the Prime Minister suspected that the
Americans had conspired with the British in the bid to oust him. Mossadeq
had been adamant that 'the national movement was determined to remain
in power in Iran and that it would continue to hold on to the last man, even
^^^'^
though all its members would be run over by British and American tanks'.
592 PART SIX: THE MIDDLE EAST

The next move was to bring out the psychological warfare assets. Tn a
lurid effort to totally discredit the Left', Ayatollah Bihbihani, who received
money from the Americans, sent out letters bearing the insignia of the Tudeh
Party, and containing 'grisly threats' written in red ink 'to hang all the mullahs
from the lampposts of various Iranian cities'. On the 16th, CIA officers made
copies of the decrees signed by the Shah and had their two principal agents,
Nerren and Cilley, and two American journalists, Kenneth Love of the New
York Times and Don Schwind of Associated Press, distribute them throughout
Tehran. 'Our propaganda material flooded Tehran,' Wilbur recalled. 'Clan-
destine papers appeared, raids were mounted on Tudeh Party offices and
presses.' According to one participant, Nerren and Cilley had wanted to
end their involvement but 'were persuaded to remain by Roosevelt, who
threatened to have them killed'. "°
The political officer attached to the US embassy, Goodwin, served as a
communications channel for Love and Schwind. On the 17th, Goodwin took
the two reporters to meet Gen. Zahedi's son, Ardeshir (who later became the
Shah's ambassador to the US) at the home of the CIA officer Howard Stone,
who later recalled 'his young wife sitting in a rocking chair, hiding a pistol
under her knitting as she guarded the life of Ardeshir'. He told Love and
Schwind that his father had been legally appointed Prime Minister and that
Mossadeq's action was illegal. After the decrees were distributed, CIA assets
tried to generate support for Zahedi within the armed forces.
When things had gone wrong on 'Black Sunday', Darbyshire had heard
the bad news from Roosevelt and the Rashidians via the radio link. MI6 had
then decided 'to bring the boys out onto the streets'. John Sinclair had left
the details of the operation to George Young, who 'had the wit to realise that
the mobs who had cheered for Mossadeq could be induced to shout for his
Monarch'. MI6 ensured that Seyfollah and Asadollah Rashidian helped coach
Roosevelt through the coup. In radio contact with Darbyshire, who was
controlling their actions, they were to play a crucial role in calling onto the
streets themobs from south Tehran, along with military officers. One hundred
thousand dollars was put at the disposal of four plotters: the two Rashidian
brothers, Mrs Malekeh Etezadi, who supervised some of the southern Tehran
houses of ill repute, and Ayatollah Qanatabadi.^^^
Demonstrations continued on the 17th, and the mobs came out onto the
streets. Mossadeq's response was to ask the party leaders to keep their people

off the streets and to declare a ban on demonstrations. A key aspect of the
plot was to portray the mobs as supporters of the Tudeh Party in order to
provide a suitable pretext for the coup and the resumption of control by the
Shah. Darbyshire was of the opinion that the Rashidians 'saved the day' by
providing people to infiltrate the demonstrations. This had been a contin-
gency plan - MI6 had told them not to rely on Mossadeq folding. Nerren
and Cilley hired a fake Tudeh crowd, comprising an unusual mixture of
 IRAN: 'UNEQUAL DREAMS' 593

pan-Iranians and Tudeh members, paid for with fifty thousand dollars given
to them by a CIA officer. Richard Cottam observed that agents working on
behalf of the British 'saw the opportunity and sent the people we had under
our control into the streets to act as if they were Tudeh. They were more
than just provocateurs, they were shock troops, who acted as if they were
Tudeh people throwing rocks at mosques and priests.' 'The purpose', Brian
Lapping explains, 'was to frighten the majority of Iranians into believing that
a victory for Mossadeq would be a victory for the Tudeh, the Soviet Union
and irreligion.'"^
Despite Mossadeq's an end to demonstrations, they continued,
call for

the Prime Minister's problems mounting with the refusal of the prefect of
police. Brig. Mudabbir, and the martial law administrator. Col. Ashrafi, to
act on the 19th. Oddly, Mossadeq proceeded to appoint Gen. Daftary, an ally
of Zahedi, to deal with the riots. Daftary promptly committed the security
forces to the rebels."^
In order to trigger the uprising against Mossadeq, the CIA used the
Rashidians to contact Ayatollah Kashani. A Rashidian ally, Ahmad Aramesh,
was by two CIA officers, one of them George Carroll, and provided
visited
with ten thousand dollars to pass on to the mullah, which he did on the 19th.
Kashani then played a minor role in mobilising an anti-Mossadeq crowd of
Somak fascists and pan-Iranists to march from the bazaar into the modern
quarter of central Tehran, where they swept along soldiers and officers. The
larger part was played by other mullahs, especially Ayatollah Muhammad
Bihbihani, who was the key person in inviting onto the streets the bands of
'knife drawers' who, buttressed with the 'Bihbihani dollars', carried out
Carroll's dirty work.^^^^
Other agents organised similar 'loyalist' crowds. One
myths of the
of the
coup was that the demonstrators, carrying pictures of the Shah, were led by
Shaaban Jaafari, the 'Brainless'. Jaafari was, in fact, in prison at the time, and
was released only after Mossadeq had fallen. The 'tough guys' or 'ignorant
ones' who took part in the march of the poor on Tehran were led by one
Tayyeb Hsaj-Reza'i, who was hanged a decade later for his support of Ayatol-
lah Khomeini."^
Loy Henderson later wrote that he thought Mossadeq had been ousted
by an essentially popularmovement which had been 'disgusted at the bad
taste exhibitedby the anti-Shah elements supporting Mossadeq'. Given our
knowledge of who actually made up these 'Tudeh' mobs, this was disin-
genuous to say the least. When the mobs began pulling down statues of the
Shah, it proved to be a psychological turning point. It 'snowballed', as it was
intended to. When the Tudeh realised that the crowd was fake, the party
pulled its own people off, leaving Carroll's bands with the streets largely to
themselves. By this time, around three hundred civilians had died, trampled
underfoot when the mob rioted.^
594 PART SIX: THE MIDDLE EAST

During this time, Ardeshir travelled to Kermanshah to elicit the support

of the local commander, whom he knew. Co-conspirator Farzaniega went to
Isfahan to seek the support of the military commander - though he failed in
the task. An important strategy of the rebels was to seize the radio station.
Stone recalled 'buttoning the uniform of Gen. Faziollah Zahedi on the day
the General was
announce over Radio Tehran that the Shah had designated
to
him the new prime
minister'. Zahedi was 'too nervous to dress himself. The
general had emerged from hiding and had been transported by tank to the
radio station, where leading government opponents such as Sayyed Mir-
Ashrafi and Sayyed Pirasteh broadcast statements indicating that the govern-
ment had already fallen. This was untrue. Zahedi gave a press conference at
which he declared himself Prime Minister, and to support his claim distrib-
uted copies of the Shah's decree of appointment. The tide had turned.
By late afternoon, Mossadeq's residence had been surrounded by rebel
troops. Gen. Riyahi was subsequently arrested, while his deputy. Gen. Kiyani,
had been met on the outskirts of the city by Gen. Daftary's men, and disarmed.
Mossadeq was persuaded to leave his residence, which fell at 8 p.m. to the
rebels, who proceeded to loot and ransack the house. Early next morning,
Mossadeq was picked up and put under arrest at the Army Officers' Club.
When the Shah flew back into Tehran on 22 August in triumph, Henderson
visited the palace and found him a 'changed man' - more confident and
optimistic. The Shah offered Roosevelt a toast: 'I owe my throne to God, my
people, my army, to you and, of course, to that undercover assistant of yours
whom I shall not name.' It was implied that the undercover assistant was
Miles Copeland. Uncharacteristically, Copeland wrote that the reference was
undeserved and that the success was entirely due to Roosevelt. Copeland's
role had, indeed, been a small one. On his way back to Washington, Roosevelt
stopped off in London and gave a full account to Churchill. At the White
House, the President pinned the National Security Medal on Kermit. Eisen-
hower wrote of Roosevelt that 'he worked intelligently, courageously and
tirelessly. I listened to his detailed report and it seemed more like a dime
novel than a historical fact.'^^^

The cost remains a matter of debate. Around

hundred thousand dollars
a
paid for the mob in the final days, and the nine hundred thousand dollars
that remained unspent from the originally appointed funds were handed
over to the Zahedi regime. According to a British account, the coup cost
seven hundred thousand pounds, though a more recent estimate with access
to the participants and CIA accounts has put it at as much as ten to twenty
million dollars. Whether Mossadeq would have survived without the coup
also remains in dispute.
One view holds that the regimewould probably have endured without
the intervention of the CIA and MI6, since the economy was heading towards
recovery. Amir Taheri also argues that the reasons for outside intervention
 IRAN: 'UNEQUAL DREAMS' 595

did not hold water. There is no evidence that Moscow and its local agents
in Iran were in any position to attempt a direct take-over of the country at
that time . more importantly, the religious leaders could have ordered the
. .

massacre of Tudeh activists and leaders by declaring jihad (holy war) on

communism.' Richard Cottam, however, believes that 'Mossadeq could not

have been overthrown if significant elements of the population had not lost
faith in his leadership'. Woodhouse held a similar view: There may be
reasons for not being dogmatic in claiming that the revolution of August
1953 was planned and executed by our Anglo-American team. Still, I think
it was. We may have done no more than mobilise forces which were already

there, but that was precisely what needed to be done, and it was enough.'^^^
And to whom do the laurels go for the enterprise? Taheri concludes that
the CIA was 'a junior partner in what was a British plot against Mossadeq'.
This concurs with the MI6 view as expressed by Christopher Andrew: 'Roose-
velt really did little more than show up in Iran with CIA funds to encourage
agents the British had organised and then released to American control.' The
failure of the Americans to acknowledge MI6's greater role continued to
rankle for many years, as did the fact that the CIA took part only 'after

Washington had decided that a policy of working with Britain to restore the
Shah's powers and against Britain to increase America's stake in Middle East
oil was, indeed, a sound combination of diplomacy and commerce'.

After the coup a victory party at the CIA station was attended by the
new Prime Minister and his son. They approached Howard Stone and asked:
'We are in We are in
. . . What do we do now?' The first step was to settle
. . .

the oil dispute, and the CIA ensured that the major project of the Damn
propaganda operation, which continued into 1954, was the renegotiation of
the oil agreement. Herbert Hoover Jnr was the first official into Tehran after
the coup, with the responsibility - while the British waited on the sidelines
- for drawing up and negotiating the new consortium agreement which let
in the US oil companies. As the Shah crisply pointed out to him: 'Any favour
the CIA had done him would be adequately paid for in oil.'^^^
The Dulles law firm, Sullivan and Cromwell, helped negotiate the rediv-
ision of Iran's reserves, to the advantage of the American companies. The
four parent companies (Jersey, Socony, Texas and Socal) involved in the
Iranian consortium deal (along with Gulf) had also cut the Armco-Saudi 50-
50 agreement. In the new consortium, AIOC, which changed its name to
British Petroleum, held a 40 per cent share and received £34,500,000 in
compensation plus 10 per cent a barrel on all exports until a sum of £510
million was reached. The scheme had been devised by Sir William Fraser and
'it was largely by his efforts that it was brought to a successful conclusion'. To

further compensate their old client, Sullivan and Cromwell 'helped it on to

the North Slope of Alaska, arranged a takeover of Standard Oil of Ohio, and
protected it from anti-trust legislation in American courts'. Fraser, who was
596 PART SIX: THE MIDDLE EAST

also chair of the Iraq Petroleum Company and the Kuwait Oil Company, did
very well by the deal. Despite the investment at Abadan and the plotting of
MI6 and the British government, the Iran oilfields were no longer required
by British Petroleum, as vast new, more productive fields were opening up
^""^
in Iraq and Kuwait.
When Monty Woodhouse visited Washington, Allen Dulles congratulated
him on the coup with the comment that 'that was a nice little egg you laid
when you were here last time!' There was a feeling that there might be a
new era of Anglo-American co-operation over the Middle East. In September,
Allen's brother, US Secretary of State Foster Dulles, telegraphed acting
Foreign Secretary Lord Salisbury, describing the new opportunity 'to change
to our advantage the course of events in the Middle East ... I think if we
can in co-ordination move quickly and effectively in Iran we could close the
most dangerous gap in the line from Europe to South Asia.'^^^
There were, however, already fissures developing in Tehran. While admir-
ing the work of 'Wisner's boys', the head of the US Military Mission, Robert
McClure, told CD. Jackson that 'it is about time for the non-military to get out
of the military picture and leave that to me'. It never happened. In September,
the CIA's Col. Stephen Meade was made responsible for training Iran's intelli-
gence and security services, as part of a clampdown on any communist threat,
which included a purge of the army. In November, George Carroll, 'a buddy'
of Gen. Farhat Dadsetat, Zahedi's first worked on
military governor of Tehran,
'the very efficient smothering' of 'a potentially dangerous dissident movement
emanating from the bazaar area and the Tudeh'. The CIA was well ensconced
by the time diplomatic relations were restored with Britain in December and
MI6 was allowed to reopen a station with Dickie Franks in charge.
MI6 judged that the Shah was 'uncertain of the extent of outside influence
and intrigue among his subjects, and faced by strong tribal chiefs, by generals
of uncertain loyalty, and by cross-streams of popular and religious resent-
ment'. The Shah, MI6 concluded, 'was now willing to rule'. In early 1954,
with a recently elected and compliant Majlis, the Shah began to crack down
hard on demonstrators. By the time of the anniversary of the coup, the crack-
down had spread to security units and the military, with a series of
'sensational arrests' during which alleged Tudeh spies and Kremlin-
controlled agents were uncovered. Many lost their lives when, in October,
the death penalty was imposed on those convicted of agitating for the over-
throw of the government.
Meade remained until 1955, when he was replaced by a permanent five-
man CIA team to train the new National Intelligence and Security Organisa-
tion (SAVAK), which became feared for its ruthlessness and use of torture.
Ted Hotchkiss's work in helping to set up SAVAK left him disillusioned
with the CIA: 'I fought the fascists and Nazis my lesson was that we
. . .

were becoming just like them.'^^^

 IRAN: 'UNEQUAL DREAMS' 597

Donald Wilbur had initially welcomed the change in the Shah and his
increasing assertiveness. He now recognised that the new air of self-
confidence 'in time developed into a type of megalomania. He gradually
found frank criticism from Persians close to him no longer acceptable,
although he might listen to foreigners whom he felt were honest/ One such
foreigner was George Young, who had his first private audience with the
Shah during 1955. The Shah told a friend that in times of crisis Young 'is a
man who can take decisions and throw caution to the winds. Young is a man
who believes that friendship cuts two ways and that Britain should stand by
'^^^
her friends even at the risk of offending others.
While the successful coup had paved the way for the stability that the
West had wanted, it had brought unforeseen consequences. Once the
Shah was secure, the plan drawn up by Overseas Consultants was imple-
mented largely through the work of Roosevelt and American aid, which
over the next two and a half years reached three hundred million dollars.
Roosevelt travelled to Tehran five or six times a year. His line to the Shah
was through the Rashidians, whose commercial interests in America were
looked after by his public relations firm. He went through the com-
mander of the Imperial Guard, Gen. Muhsin Hashimi-Nijhad, to the monarch
himself. Back in Washington, Roosevelt had personal connections that led
directly to the White House. The thinking of Roosevelt and his colleagues
was that 'if you give a "backward" country a top flight modernisation plan,
the money to fund it, an adequate and stable chief of state, and internal
political stability, that country will evolve toward democracy'. Although the
plan had been the product of 'optimistic idealism', it proved to be, as Sallie
Pisani notes, 'an immense failure'. The bitter irony, she continues, was that
Roosevelt, 'despite his extensive research, ignored political and religious
movements in Iran's history'. Roosevelt believed that 'the mullah, the official
clerical class in Iran, would fade away as modernisation took place'. However,

by its actions the United States 'guaranteed the unremitting future opposition
of the nationalist extremism of the religious right while at the same time
effectively undercutting the strength and credibility of the liberal, nationalist
centre'.^^"

The problem was that while Mossadeq may have been 'an incompetent
and muddled prime minister', who 'knew how to demolish but not how to
construct', he had represented a number of legitimate interests that were
essential to the country's viability. While he did not divide the Iranian people
as a whole, the urban Left 'was to remain permanently divided over his record
and the reasons for his fall'. That division, argues Amir Taheri, 'benefited the
reactionary religious forces, who saw Mossadeq and the Shah as two sides
of the same coin'. The coup went for immediate results and ignored the
long-term implications. 'Seen in that light Operation Ajax was a disaster; it
created a slur nothing could whitewash.' In 1979, the long-term failure of
598 PART SIX: THE MIDDLE EAST

Boot/Ajax came back to haunt the West when the Shah was swept from
power and replaced by a medieval theocracy under Ayatollah Khomeini.^^^
Roosevelt later felt sorry for Mossadeq and arranged for him to receive
a pension he had served three years of his sentence. The former Prime
after
Minister died, aged eighty-four, in March 1967.

According to Tom Bower's sources, George Young and other senior MI6
officers drew four lessons from the apparent success of Boot/Ajax. Firstly,
'despite Philby, the CIA and respected the British for joint oper-
still trusted
ations'. While there was some and respect, this is, in reality, a distortion
trust
of Young's more hard-headed view. Anthony Verrier's assessment is closer
to the mark when he writes that 'SIS as a whole was never to be the same
in American eyes'. Even at the best of times, 'suspicions and misconceptions
were never far below the surface in Anglo-American relations', asserts Nigel
Ashton in his study of Anglo-American relations in the Middle East. It was
'only the even greater fear of the advance of Communism in the region which
held it in check'. The relationship had a 'specialness in both conflict and
co-operation'. Telling is Monty Woodhouse's remark that 'so far as I know.
Operation Boot was the first such operation successfully carried out with the
Americans, and probably the last by the British. It was also the only one they
'^^^
ever carried out together.
Secondly, 'senior CIA officers appeared more sympathetic to British
foreign policy than the State Department'. This is undoubtedly true but needs
qualification. Contrary to Bower's view that Allen Dulles was an 'Anglophile',
he was, in fact, an anglophobe and had been since his schooldays when he
wrote an essay in support of the Boers. As a young man, Dulles had travelled
to India, where he taught English. His opinion of the British Empire was
formed by his time there, and he came to distrust the British. Like his brother,
he believed that an independent British imperial policy was 'impossible
where this conflicted with American political and commercial interests'. He
did not, however, 'have to like the people he had to work with, and this was
^^^^
his view of Britain'.
Young was well aware of the American view of the British, and while
Bower's third and fourth points are undoubtedly true - Young's belief that
MI6's clandestine operations in peacetime were of proven benefit, and that
MI6 could promote British interests in the Middle East - the 'robber barons'
around Young were nevertheless prepared to carry out their agenda, if neces-
sary without the support of and often in opposition to the Americans. The
one concrete result was that, flush with the success of the operation in Iran,

MI6 created in 1954 the Special Political Action (SPA) section with a specific
remit for undertaking similar 'disruptive' operations.
Bower finally concludes that 'Eden and Young were obsessed by MI6's
desire to reverse Britain's deteriorating status in the world, and in particular
 IRAN: 'UNEQUAL DREAMS' 599

in Egypt'. Up to a point; despite the myths, Egypt was of secondary concern.

What they wanted to protect was Britain's role in Iraq and, latterly, Kuwait,
where British-controlled oilfields lay in abundance.
CHAPTEI129

SUEZ: ASSASSINS
AND THUGGERY

Despite success in Iran, the Foreign Office and the government's handling of
Middle East affairs was, according to MI6's George Young, a 'tale of blunder
and disaster'. 'We seemed to be blissfully unaware of the extent to which
the Arabs had come to resent the physical presence of British troops, and
how far the rulers and politicians, who were our close associates, had
become discredited in the eyes of the younger generation.' Young considered
that 'the hard truth is that in the majority of cases, a course of action was
forced on us as a consequence of failure to make positive decisions at an
earlier stage, for a stubborn refusal to face reality can hardly be called a
decision'. He later despaired of the 'complete paralysis of will which seemed
to settle on us. How did the British Government get into this fix in the first
place? Why didn't it sort out its Middle East policy long before Suez? Why
didn't the British make up their own minds instead of waiting for the
Americans?'^
Young did not seem to think that MI 6 had been at fault, despite the fact
that had been putting more of its resources into the Middle East than it
it

devoted to the Soviet bloc. Even so, the Service's intelligence-gathering on

Egypt, in particular, was regarded as poor.
The MI6 element of the British Middle East Office (BMEO) in Egypt
operated under the cover name of the 'Co-ordination Division', and was
headed by H. John Collins and his deputy, a former Special Operations
Executive (SOE) officer, Teddy de Haan. It moved to Cyprus during 1954,
 SUEZ: ASSASSINS AND THUGGERY 601

where remained under the control of Collins until its functions were trans-
it

ferred to the Political Office with the Middle East Forces (POMEF), which
was sited within the British Military Hospital compound at Episkopi on
Cyprus. Collins liked to drink and live life to the full, a lifestyle underwritten
by his French wife, the daughter of successful businessman, Antonin Besse,
who had his head office in the City of London. Besse was responsible for
funding the spooks' college, St Antony's, at Oxford.^

The MI6 Egypt was headed by Geoffrey Hinton, a friend of

station in
Kim Philby who had end of the war from the Ministry of
transferred at the
Information to work in MI6's Section V. His deputy was a former SAS officer
who worked with Young in Austria, G. M. F. Alston. The local station was
regarded as 'incompetent'. Its political intelligence was inadequate, while
operational intelligence supplied to the services was often inaccurate or out
of date. The station was also complacent, relying on the fact that the ruling

Wafd Party seemed secure and the Prime Minister, Hilali Pasha, honestly
co-operative. When Julian Amery informed Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden
that a British instructor of the Egyptian General Staff had informed him that
a group of officers was ready to seize power, MI6 assured him that 'the
Army was loyal to the King'. The local station's knowledge of what the CIA
was up to in Egypt was just as lacking.^
US Dean Acheson had 'borrowed' Kermit Roosevelt
Secretary of State
from the CIA to to study the Arab world. The
head a special committee
committee favoured the establishment of regimes that would carry out social
and political reform which in turn would complement American economic
aid. The National Security Council's (NSC) aim was to 'support or develop

those leadership groups in the areas which offered the greatest prospect of
establishing political stability orientated toward the free world'. The chosen
vehicle for these ideas was Egypt, where clandestine channels were estab-
lished between the local CIA station under James Eichelberger and a group
of young Free Officers in the military.
On 22 July 1952, with three thousand troops and two hundred officers.
General Mohammed Neguib seized power in Cairo. Not long after. King
Farouk left for exile in Naples on the royal yacht, accompanied by most of the
country's gold reserves. MI6 had been caught unawares and had no intelligence
on the coup, and what it had on the ruling junta was mostly ill informed.
The young army officers running the country were led by Neguib, but it
became increasingly obvious that the real power lay with the small group of
largely anti-British Free Officers, led by the ultra-nationalist Gamal Nasser,
who had inspired the revolution. Nasser had in his youth demonstrated
against the British and had gone to prison for his efforts. 'The young officers',
John de Courcy Hamilton in the Cairo embassy noted in March 1953, 'think
we are on the decline as a Great Power; they have a real hatred politically
of us in their hearts. No amount of concession or evacuation on our part will
602 PART SIX: THE MIDDLE EAST

evoke the Whoever Egypt may want in the future

slightest gratitude in return.
as an ally, it The US State Department concurred, declaring
will not be us.'

that Britain was engaged in the same mistaken Middle East policy as it had
pursued in Iran. Nor did it help that there were clear indications that Britain
had been working towards the goal of an Traq-Jordan' axis, which meant
that the chances of the Egyptians becoming 'our friends are slight'.^
During December 1953 Eden considered a coup and, perhaps, even more
drastic action against the Neguib government, but was dissuaded from taking
this route by Ambassador Ralph Stevenson, a former chair of the Joint Intelli-

gence Staff. There is no alternative for Egypt: assassination of Neguib would

lead to one of Neguib's lieutenants, presumably Nasser [assuming power].'
The CIA was the main influence upon the new Egyptian leaders and was
particularly interested in Nasser. Initial contact with him was made through
Mohammed Heikal, a journalist with the newspaper Akkhbar el-Yom, owned
by a CIA agent, Mustafa Amin. Late in February 1954, Neguib was
manoeuvred into resigning and was, indeed, replaced by Nasser, Roosevelt's
protege. Nasser was seen by the CIA as a strong leader, capable of taking
unpopular decisions, and the CIA team of Roosevelt and Miles Copeland
worked to shore up his hold in the interests of creating a viable Middle East
regime which might come to an accommodation with Israel.^
In March 1954 Nasser asked Roosevelt to contact the British with the aim
of concluding a quick and decisive settlement. The agreement, concluded in
October, envisaged British troops pulling out in stages, a policy to be
completed by June 1956. Embassy reports indicated that British attitudes
within the Foreign Office had changed, and there was hope that the new
revolutionary government would become a potential ally of the West. The
Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) was increasingly unconvinced of the
requirement for troops and a military base in Egypt. Part of the agreement
was that until the base was relinquished, it would be under civilian control.
The local MI6 station did not agree with these assessments, particularly
those coming from the embassy. The station was run on independent lines
- both in its intelligence-gathering and operations - by an ally of Young's,
Freddie Stockwell, officially the consul in Alexandria - and later a leading
figure in the right-wing Tory Monday Club, and his deputy, Ian Critchett.
The vice-consul at Alexandria, Ralph Stockbridge, a former member of the
wartime MI6 cover post, the Inter-Services Liaison Department (ISLD), in
Cairo, was succeeded by the 'ace agent-runner' fresh from Tehran, Alexis
Fforter, who was replaced in turn by David Crichton and, in his first posting
abroad, Craig Smellie. The station rejected the suggestion that Nasser
represented a new voice in Arab politics, likely to have an enduring appeal
in the region. He was not seen as an aberration nor an intransigent figure,
as was Mossadeq in Iran. Instead, it was reported that Nasser was unlikely
to last long. Eden preferred to hear the Secret Service's wish fulfilments, and
 SUEZ: ASSASSINS AND THUGGERY 603

SO MI6 in 'Cairo continued to send back reports which only Eden wanted to
read'.^
Additional pressure was put on the Foreign Secretary by the backbench
'Suez Group', formed in 1953 to unite opposition to any proposed changes
in the relationship with Egypt. Composed of 'a hotchpotch collection of
embittered ex-Ministers and young, newly elected back-benchers anxious to
cut a figure in Parliament by attacking the Government for selling out British
imperial interests', was chaired by an ex-minister. Captain Charles Water-
it

house, and included Ralph Assheton, Julian Amery, Fitzroy Maclean, Enoch
Powell, Viscount Hinchinbrooke and Lord Hankey, father of the modern
central intelligence machinery and a director of the Suez Canal Company. It
was encouraged behind the scenes by senior ministers and helped by MI6.
The words 'wogs' and 'wog-bashing', Tong beloved by sound Tories and
particularly those of a military bent, were much heard', recalled Foreign Office
official Geoffrey McDermott, who had responsibilities on the intelligence side,
'in the corridors when President Nasser and his fellow Egyptians were being
discussed'. As McDermott noted, half a dozen of the top MI6 officers went
in for 'extreme right-wing polities'. There was, Amery admitted, 'a great deal
of resentment about American policies' and the group held that Britain 'could
only remain a world power through its presence on the Suez Canal, which

was held to be vital to world and Empire shipping communications'. Group

members were informed that Eden did not want a compromise, and Churchill
privately encouraged them.^
Indeed, almost as soon as the Naguib-Nasser group seized power, MI6
had begun to conspire to bring it down. John Farmer, who was stationed
in Rome, was introduced by a Cairo-based Yugoslav agent to two leading
Egyptians. Prince Abdu Monheim was the son of the Khedive of Egypt and
a former rector of the al-Azhar University, while Ahmed Mortada al-Maraghi
was a leading theologian and former interior minister. Backing them was an
anti-Nasser group of senior army figures intent on promoting al-Maraghi as
Prime Minister in a post-Nasser government.^
At the end of 1954 Eden took two new policy initiatives on the Middle
East. The first, in deepest secrecy, was a typically British solution to security,
as the Foreign Secretary 'coaxed and cajoled' several Middle East govern-
ments - Iran was eventually amongst them - into a treaty of mutual defence
known as the Baghdad Pact of Britain's allies in the region. The pact was
concerned with the direct threat believed to be posed by the Red Army across
the Soviet southern border. It was designed with political considerations,
'since a state could equally well be subverted from within by the establish-
ment of a regime inimical to Western interests'. Britain was enthusiastic about
the pact as part of the process of creating an Iraq-Jordan axis, though it

would soon come to promote solely the interests of Iraq. The British had
clearly hoped to involve Egypt, but the Foreign Secretary's visit to Cairo in
604 PART SIX: THE MIDDLE EAST

February 1955 was not a success, especially given the manner in which Eden
- with his patrician ways - talked down to Nasser.
When was established under British leadership on 4 April 1955,
the pact
the day before Eden became Prime Minister, America - and Egypt - were
conspicuously absent. Iraq and Turkey signed, and Britain entered several
weeks later, while Pakistan and Iran joined in September and October respect-
ively. Formally a defence alliance for deterring Soviet aggression through
joint military planning and exercises, and pledges of non-intervention, the
pact also included a special committee dealing with counter-subversion. Its

main function appears to have been the dissemination and co-ordination of

intelligence on Soviet activities in the region, and the planning of stay-behind
networks and guerrilla warfare in the unlikely event of a Soviet invasion.
Eden's second policy initiative was, in practical terms, as Keith Kyle notes,
'the enemy of the other'. Left to smoulder, Eden thought that the Palestine/
Israel problem would allow the Soviets, 'the Bear', to slip into the Middle East.
Following discussions with Nasser, the Foreign Office proposed a permanent
solution. The few officials besides US Secretary of State Foster Dulles and
Eden who knew about the initiative referred to the project as 'Alpha'. As
officials considered solutions, the Egyptian General Staff Intelligence Branch
set up Gaza Strip, the 'fedayen', to
a special operations organisation in the
carry out sabotage and terrorism inside Israel.^
Incensed at Baghdad's decision to join the pro-western alliance, Nasser
began to foment unrest in Iraq, and took steps to isolate its government in
the Arab world. The British and Americans sought co-operation on Syria, in
particular with regard to the August 1955 presidential elections in which they
hoped to back a candidate who would unite the right-wing elements, notably
the Nationalist and People's Party. They wanted to prevent the election of a
pro-French, anti-British and anti-Iraqi Minister for Foreign Affairs, Khalid
el-Azm, who opposed the British-backed Baghdad Pact. Dissident elements
on the Right tried to interest the British in an Iraqi-backed coup d'etat, but
at that stage officials refused to endorse it. All that was achieved was the
election of a weak alternative to el-Azm, President Shukri el-Quwwatli. Better
from a British viewpoint was the result of the September elections in Iraq
which brought to power the anglophile Nuri Said, who was fanatical in his
anti-communism and about the threat from the Soviet Union. Britain was,
therefore, hopeful that some kind of accommodation could be reached on
the Anglo-Iraqi defence agreement which was due to expire in 1957.^°
Eden believed that the Baghdad Pact would bring stability to the area,
but as Geoffrey McDermott noted: 'On the contrary it nettled Nasser into his
first arms deal with the Communists, specifically Czechoslovakia.' The deal
broke the international embargo designed to avoid upsetting the balance of
power in the region. Egypt was still largely dependent on the British and
French for its arms supplies, but Nasser regarded these as infuriatingly slim
 SUEZ: ASSASSINS AND THUGGERY 605

as they were supplied in small instalments. In May 1955, following advice

from Tito,Nasser had secretly been contacted by the Soviets with an offer
to supply arms. A month later, the British refused to increase the small
quantity of arms that it sold to Egypt, in particular ammunition for Centurion
tanks. It was a decision that Field Marshal Sir Richard Hall described as
driving Nasser 'straight into the arms of Moscow'. Indeed, Nasser told the
State Department that a mission was to depart immediately for Moscow. On
26 July secret deliveries of arms began to leave Prague for Cairo.
London was informed of the conclusion of the arms deal on 21 September.
The shock effect in the Foreign Office, as the incoming reports made clear
that Nasser had passed the point of no-return, produced a series of high-level
official memoranda.' On the evening of 26 September, the new British
ambassador, Humphrey Trevelyan, saw Nasser, who told him that a deal
had been concluded with Israel's old supplier, Czechoslovakia. Unbeknown
to the British, during the period of the arms deal the Egyptian President was
being briefed by Miles Copeland and Kermit Roosevelt, and it was they who
later advised Nasser to say that the arms were coming from the Czechs and
not the Soviet Union. Nasser stressed to Trevelyan that after being dominated
by the British for seventy years, Egypt was not about to let the Russians
do the same. As Steven Frieberger suggests, 'Why would Arab nationalists,
fighting so hard to end Western colonial domination, exchange it for domi-
nation by the Soviets?' Unfortunately, the British were unwilling to take at
face value what Nasser was telling them, even though the Soviet Union was
never a real threat to British interests in the Middle East; particularly since 'the
devotion of the Arab world to a fervent Islamic faith pointed to a vehement
anti-communist stance'.
On arms deal was released by the Foreign
the 27th, notification of the
Office's news department. The Government Communications Headquarters
(GCHQ) was already busy monitoring the diplomatic traffic between Prague
and Cairo for evidence of the massive deal. In what appears to have been an
example of MI6 briefing, the Economist described the unloading of '133 huge
cases of Czech arms' only ten days after the announcement of the arms deal.
The Soviets were to supply arms worth over $400 million, with 80 MiG-15
fighters, 45 Ilyushin-28 bombers and 150 tanks, which would take a year to
come into active service. Most of the details on the shipments were obtained
by MI6 from its agent in the commercial section of the Egyptian embassy in
Prague. Aged nearly sixty, and something of a playboy spy, Mohamud Hamdi
was run by a woman officer in the MI6 station in Vienna. He was eventually
betrayed by an agent named 'Light'. Using a prostitute who had been
employed previously by the intelligence service for a similar undertaking,
the Czechs launched a 'honeytrap' operation against the Egyptian diplomat.
Successfully ensnared, Hamdi was pulled out of Prague by the Vienna station
- run by Maurice Firth and Geoffrey MacBride, and then Nicholas Elliott and
bOb TART SIX: THE MIDDLE EAST

Cyril Rolo - before the Czechs were able to effect the denouement."
Views within the Foreign Office were beginning to harden. Former head
of the JICHarold Caccia minuted that if Nasser became committed to the
arms deal then 'we may have to get rid of Nasser'. Through September, the
options - including trying 'to frighten Nasser, then to bribe him, and, if

neither works, get rid of him' - were discussed by officials, who wanted to
'stop the rot, since once the Russian technicians are in Egypt, there is no
knowing how far the damage may extend'. Eventually, the Foreign Office
settled on a more long-term solution, because it could see 'no outstanding
military figure or group' on the horizon who could 'consolidate the loyalty
of the armed forces'. The former Prime Minister, Ali Maher, who had been
dismissed by the junta and had made contact with the British, was considered
but was thought to be too old. The Foreign Office was still willing to return
to the negotiating table over the military base but pressure from the increas-
ingly vocal SuezGroup and MI 6 assessments, which suggested that the
Egyptian government would soon collapse, ensured that the negotiations
were undermined. On 2 October 1955 there were calls for 'no further attempts
to compromise with the Egyptians'.
Meanwhile, the Foreign Office continued to worry about other events in
the Middle East, in particular Syria, which it regarded as 'the nearest thing
in the Middle East to a Soviet satellite'. Syria was viewed as strategically
important because the Iraqi Petroleum Company's pipelines ran through the
country on their way to Mediterranean terminals. The British and Americans
wanted to ensure a pro-Iraqi regime in Damascus through the use of overt
and covert measures. The Permanent Under-Secretary, Ivone Kirkpatrick,
minuted on 31 October 1955 that these measures should be limited for the
time being to encouraging their 'friends' inside and outside Iraq, though 'in
the event that Syria falls under Soviet domination or seems likely to do so,
we should encourage the liquidation of the country and its incorporation
into Iraq'. At the first meeting of the Baghdad Pact, Iraqi leader Nuri es-Sa'id
raised fears about a 'major Soviet offensive in the Middle East, assisted by
Saudi money and Egyptian propaganda'. Officials talked of backing Iraqi
proposals to purchase Syrian newspapers, develop effective radio propa-
ganda and promote Syrian politicians, officials and students. Potential action
appears to have included the use of the Foreign Office's Information Research
Department (IRD).''
MI 6 continued to ensure that its pessimistic reportson Soviet penetration
of the Middle East went directly to a receptive Prime Minister. Towards the
end November, Eden received the first of a stream of intelligence reports,
of
known as 'Lucky Break', from a 'highly reliable source' reputedly positioned
within Nasser's immediate entourage. MI6 assessed that Nasser was 'far
more under Soviet influence than had been supposed and that, in return for
Soviet support for his ambitions, he was prepared to allow the Russians to
 SUEZ: ASSASSINS AND THUGGERY 607

play any role in the area that they chose'. Senior Foreign Office official Evelyn
Shuckburgh was initially sceptical of the reports and did not 'quite believe'
that Nasser was thinking of 'consciously handing over his country to Commu-
nism. I think he thinks himself supremely clever and is playing East off
against West to the last moment. '^^
Despite Foreign Office scepticism, Shuckburgh realised that the West had
to regain the initiative in case Egypt was permanently lost to the Soviets.
Shuckburgh had been the Alpha plan, which envisaged the
architect of the
trading of concessions by Israel, in the form of territory and compensation,

to the Palestinian refugees in exchange for recognition from the neighbouring

Arab states and guarantees of security from the western powers. During
October and November, the CIA attempted to broker a deal, known as Oper-
ation CHAMELEON, in which Israel would for the first time have been
given official arms and aid from the US in return for accepting a lasting
peace with Egypt. Allen Dulles, Kermit Roosevelt and James Angleton heard
from a CIA officer who had visited Nasser that the Egyptian leader was
'willing to negotiate in principle'. The officer, however, 'expressed his doubts
and does not believe in Israel's sincere desire for peace'. During December,
the British pushed the Alpha plan hard but diplomats suffered a setback
when Jordan failed to join the Baghdad Pact. The real problem that doomed
Alpha was that Nasser would only contemplate a solution that involved the
cession of a 'corridor' of desert to Jordan, which Israel would not cede.
Unbeknown to the CIA, Israel was itself contemplating asking the Soviets
for arms if they did not receive satisfaction from the US.^^
The Lucky Break reports had an immediate impact within Number Ten.
On 26 November, Eden passed the intelligence material on to Washington
with the comment to President Eisenhower that if the Americans did not
accede to Egyptian demands for finance for the Aswan Dam project, 'I fear
the Russians are certain to get the contract.' The material did make an impres-
sion on the Eisenhower administration, which suggested that it would be
better 'to find an alternative to Nasser ... If he really was lost to the West, the
Dam should be a present for a successor.' Even Shuckburgh acknowledged on
28 November that if Nasser was indeed a communist puppet, then 'the right
course would be to overthrow him rather than to offer him an immense and
burdensome bribe'. He went on, 'it looks very much as if the only possible
ways of disrupting the present course of the Egyptian regime are: (i) the
death of Nasser; (ii) a free hand to the Israelis'. On 14 December the British
and Americans finally made an offer to finance the Aswan Dam under World
Bank supervision.^^
By January 1956 the Middle East was viewed as being in an explosive
state. Eden 'attributed this mainly to Moscow's increasing determination to

intrude in Middle East affairs', but Geoffrey McDermott, who saw the British
and American intelligence reports, thought the Prime Minister's analysis
608 PART SIX: THE MIDDLE EAST

'inaccurate and inadequate'. Soviet policy towards the region was character-
ised, McDermott conckided, by extreme caution, and any problems in Jordan
and Iraq centred on the family quarrels between their Hashemite rulers which
retlected 'the legacies of British imperialism, a struggle for power between
the legatees and their radical nationalist rivals'. Such views were treated with
contempt inside MI6.^'^
MI6 was relieved when, in the new year, with Eden firmly in the saddle, a
new Cabinet brought Selwyn Lloyd to the post of Foreign Secretary, replacing
Harold Macmillan, who went to the Treasury. Although a first-class staff
officer during the war and a man known for straightforward honesty, Lloyd
had not been regarded as a backbencher of achievement and, as he admitted,
he had no experience of foreign affairs nor of foreign countries. 'He owed
everything to Eden.' While the Foreign Office was not impressed by his
pedestrian manner, MI6 held him in high regard - perhaps on the basis that
the Foreign Office did not. George Young thought that it was not until Lloyd
toured the Middle East and 'tried to bring some ordering principles into the
haphazard and unco-ordinated actions and attitudes, that something like a
sense of direction appeared'. One of his first actions was to ask the Israelis
'if they could invade Egypt and reach the canal within five days and return
to her borders after the invasion'. The answer Lloyd received was apparently
positive. As Operation Chameleon faded, the French moved in to supply
arms The French were increasingly opposed to Nasser, principally
to Israel.
because of Egypt's support for the nationalists in North Africa.
Young still felt that 'the greater part of 1956 was spent in an endeavour,
futile as it turned out, to persuade the Americans to collaborate with us on

some form of agreed policy'. The British and American governments both
believed that something had to be done about Nasser, but misinterpretations,
opposing policies and clashing personalities undermined any attempts at
effective action. The US Secretary of State was clear on the need for inter-
national action but would not sanction the use of force, even though the
British came to believe that he had. Foster Dulles's style clashed with that of
his British counterpart, while Eden came to regard President Eisenhower as
'a stupid man' and 'internationally inept'. There was little chance of the

Americans joining in a general strategy on the Middle East while Britain

refused to compromise on Buraimi.^^
Since the 1930s there had been a dispute over the ownership of the Buraimi
oasis, which lay between Saudi Arabia, which wanted it as a bridge to the
sea, and the Trucial Sheikhdoms of Abu Dhabi, Muscat and Oman, which,
with the support of Britain, wanted the area to consolidate the position of
the states. A truce had collapsed in August 1952, and following arbitration
by an international tribunal had been abandoned when intelligence suggested
that US oil giant ARAMCO and CIA representatives were collaborating
with the Saudis to subvert the area. British advisers subsequently led Trucial
 SUEZ: ASSASSINS AND THUGGERY 609

troops in occupying the oasis; thie effect was to drive Nasser and the Saudis
closer together, with the Egyptians supplying arms, financed by ARAMCO.^^
Foreign Secretary Macmillan suggested to Dulles that if Britain retreated
from the Buraimi, then the Trucial states might turn to the Russians. On 16
January 1956, Eden warned Eisenhower that 'it is increasingly clear that the
Saudis, the Russians, the Egyptians and the Syrians are working together . . .

if we don't want to see the whole Middle East fall into Communist hands,

we must back our friends in Jordan and in Iraq. If the Saudis have their
way, there will be nothing left for anybody but the Bear.' Coincidentally,
an assassination plot against Iraq's Prime Minister was uncovered which
implicated the Egyptian military attache. The British subsequently tried to
develop Iraq- Jordan links. Rather conveniently, MI6 furnished reports which
indicated that Israel might take 'provocative action on or about 1st March'
against Jordan. Fearing such an attack, Jordan requested British assistance,
to which the Cabinet gave guarded support on 28 February.^^

Around the turn of the new George Young issued a circular in which
year,
he presented his views on the role of the spy in the modern world.

The nuclear stalemate is matched by a moral stalemate. It is the

spy who has been called upon to remedy the situation created
by deficiencies of ministers, diplomats, generals and priests.
Men's minds are shaped, of course, by their environment and
we spies, although we have our professional mystique, do
perhaps live closer to the realities and hard facts of international
relations than other practitioners of government. We are rela-
tively free of the problems of status, precedence, departmental
attitudes and evasions which create
of personal responsibility,
the official cast of mind. We
do not have to develop, like the
Parliamentarians conditioned by a lifetime, the ability to
produce the ready phrase, the smart reply and the flashing
smile. And so it is not surprising these days that the spy finds
himself the main guardian of intellectual integrity.^'*

It was an intellectual integrity, to shun questions of

however, that appeared
morality. In a 1985 television interview on the BBC's Heart of the Matter about
the morality of assassinations, and on a Radio Four series on the 'Profession of
Intelligence', Young denied that Nasser's murder was ordered or considered
justified. He did, however, admit that he had few qualms about ordering the

death of someone in peacetime if he felt it was in the national interest; though

he would not be drawn on whether or not he had, in fact, done so. Young
acknowledged that the internal overthrow of Nasser was considered and,
with an effective opposition, 'it was easy to see that Nasser might have been
killed'. Shunning morality. Young preferred to hide behind the notion of
610 PART SIX: THE MIDDLE EAST

He was never going to acknowledge the existence of

intellectual integrity.
an operation of a type that Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd admitted, during
the debate on the 'avowal' of the Secret Intelligence Service, was 'illegal',
despite supposed protection under the royal prerogative.
As early as February 1956, MI6 had been considering a plan to assassinate
President Nasser. In the Arab edition of his book Cutting the Lion's Tail,
Egyptian journalist and one of Nasser's closest associates Mohammed Heikel
published the text of a telegram from a CIA officer in London, James Eichel-
berger, to Allen Dulles in Washington. This contained details of a meeting
towards the end of February, during which MI6 raised with Eichelberger the
idea of killing Nasser. George Young spoke with a frankness that horrified
the American. 'He talked openly of assassinating Nasser, instead of using a
polite euphemism like liquidating. He said his people had been in contact
with suitable elements in Egypt and in the rest of the Arab world, and . . .

with the French, who were thinking along the same lines.' Indeed, the French
intelligence service, SDECE, already had a special operations action branch
in Egypt, code-named RAP 700, supervised by Captain Paul Leger. As early
as 1954 a paid 'hit man' from the action branch had organised an attempt
on Nasser with an agent, Jean-Marie Pellay, who just missed his target.^^
The CIA liaison officer in London, Chester Cooper, was also aware that
Young was 'determined to remove and even murder Nasser' and that he was
'supported by some CIA officers'. Eichelberger, though, was apparently so
alarmed by what he was hearing that he leaked much of it back to Nasser.
For Nasser, this was an early confirmation of his suspicion that the Americans
were playing their own game in Egypt and the rest of the region.^^
The modern conception of the world of the secret intelligence services
and assassinations derives partly from the fictionalised activities of James
Bond. The licensed- to-kill operative is the model for the secret service agent
of the public's imagination. While this is fantasy, the former Naval Intelli-
gence and one-time MI6 asset Ian Fleming based the plots and details for
his 007 books on incidents in his own life and information he picked up
during his career in the secret world. However fantastic the story, there is

always an element of truth in Bond.

In Casino Royale, Bond earns his double-O designation - his licence to kill
- by shooting a Japanese cipher expert at the Rockefeller Center in New York.
In June 1941, Fleming had visited the United States to see how an offshoot
of MI6, the British Security Co-ordination (BSC), operated in the Americas.
Fleming was shown around the intelligence complex by the 'Quiet Canadian',
Sir William Stephenson, head of the BSC. Below Stephenson's spacious office
was the Japanese consular office, occupied by a cipher expert who was trans-
mitting coded messages back to Tokyo. He was not assassinated, but Fleming
did witness the burglary of the office and out of this adventure grew the
idea that would find its way into Casino Royale?'^
 SUEZ: ASSASSINS AND THUGGERY 611

may be that Fleming was let into the secret that Stephenson was running
It

an assassination squad. Just before the CIA's William Harvey, who had been
presented to President Kennedy as the Agency's own 'James Bond', began
recruiting members of the Mafia to help organise assassination plots against
Fidel Castro, Harvey queried MI5's technical officer, Peter Wright, on ideas.
'Have you thought of approaching Stephenson?' Wright enquired. 'A lot of

the old-timers say he ran this kind of thing in New York during the war.
Used some Italian, apparently, when there was no other way of sorting a
German spy. Probably the Mafia.' It turns out that Wright was correct. Before

he died in 1990, former BSC officer H. Montgomery Hyde revealed on Chan-

nel Four's After Dark programme that the BSC had assassinated a German
seaman who was operating as a spy in New York. This was an extremely
dangerous act because the United States was neutral and there
at the time,

were many isolationists and anti-British politicians who would gleefully have
jumped on this indiscretion, had it been made public.^^
The BSC case illustrates a philosophy that is central to such operations
and was a particular hallmark of MI6 planning - plausible deniability. The
use of third parties lessens the threat of any operation unravelling to reveal
the hand of the sponsoring organisation. Obviously, in times of war,
constraints on such operations are not so tight and are more easily justified.
Chapman Pincher acknowledges that during the war MI6 had 'no qualms
about handing over a captive to a third party intent on killing him. Mikal
Trinsky, who had betrayed escaping Polish Jews to the Nazis, was kidnapped
by MI6 and handed over to Jewish partisans.' According to a former MI6
'^'^
officer: 'Trinsky 's head was eventually used as a football.

The other covert service, the Special Operations Executive (SOE), had an
assassination capability that to some extent did correspond with a James
Bond world. According to historian M. R. D. Foot, 'SOE was the only body
competent enough to fake an accident'. SOE operational head Colin Gubbins
appears to 'have seen no particular objection to SOE being implicated in a
political assassination', the sort of operation that, at the time, Eden stigmatised
as 'war crimes business'. When SOE proposed assassinating an important
German Middle East, Gubbins told the minister controlling
figure in the
SOE that there was 'really no need for him to know about such things'.
Czech agents trained by SOE were part of Operation ANTHROPOID,
which resulted in the lingering death, in May 1942, of the ruthless head of
the Sicherheitsdienst (SD), Reinhard Heydrich. What was interesting about
this particular assassination was the claim of the head of the highly secret
biological warfareteam at Porton Down, Paul Fildes, that he 'had a hand' in
the operation - most probably through coating the hand anti-tank grenades
used in the ambush with botulin toxins which entered Heydrich's wounds.
In the run-up to the invasion of Europe, Gubbins had proposed 'Ratweek',
a grand scheme to assassinate SD officers in France, but was 'opposed by
612 PART SIX: THE MIDDLE EAST

"C" on the grounds that it would lead to reprisals throughout France'.

According to Kenneth Younger, a minister of state for foreign affairs under
Ernest Bevin in the late forties and a senior MIS officer during the war, serious
thought was given to the assassination of the Mufti of Jerusalem, the Indian
nationalist leader, Chandra Bose, and an unnamed Balkan monarch. These
thoughts never proceeded beyond the planning stage because it was concluded
that 'nothing would be gained by making martyrs of such people'.^^
SOE's assassination capability was, apparently, officially closed down at
the end of hostilities, but since elements of SOE were later subsumed within
MI6 into the Special Operations Branch it is clearly possible that the relevant
expertise did not go to waste. Assassination as a policy was openly discussed
in the postwar years. Sponsored murder gangs operated among the exiles in
the DP camps in Germany and Austria. Many of these operatives, known as
'mechanics', were sponsored by the Allied intelligence services but their
activities were always arm's-length operations. By 1950, the idea of assassina-

tion as a serious policy had been shelved, though within MI6 - which was
involved in a number of 'comic-book' operations - the concept was not dead.
It was in the Middle East that MI6 seriously considered using it as an option.

As we have already seen, in April 1953 the chief of the Iranian National Police,
General Afshartus, was murdered by a group of army officers operating on
behalf of MI6.^'

The dismissal on 1 March of the British commander of the Arab Legion in

Jordan, John Glubb 'Pasha', by the young King Hussein, tipped British Prime
Minister Anthony Eden into 'a form of obsessive madness'. The dismissal,
which won back for the King 'much of the popularity which Nasser had so
dangerously acquired in Jordan', was regarded as being perfectly understand-
able by Foreign Office officials - Hussein wanted the army commanded by
a Jordanian - but Eden irrationally blamed this insult against Britain on
Nasser. He raged that Glubb had been dismissed 'suddenly, like a pilfering

servant'. His reaction was He declared a personal war on Nasser,

'violent'.

whom he regarded as a new Hitler who must be removed. Foreign Office

officials around Eden were referring to 'appeasement' and it seems that it

was Ivone Kirkpatrick who was responsible for Eden's references to Nasser
as a Hitler or Mussolini. On 12 March, Eden told Shuckburgh 'it is either
him or us, don't forget that'.^^

The Prime Minister was at this stage suffering from 'what the layman
would call brain fever'. Part of Chester Cooper's job for the CIA while liaising
with the British in London was to keep himself informed about the state of

Eden's health. 'By then he was quite ill, a nervous person anyway, he was
taking some drug which was affecting his nervous system.' Surgery
sort of
on his bile ducthad not been completely successful and poison was seeping
into his bloodstream and eating away at his whole system. He was taking
 SUEZ: ASSASSINS AND THUGGERY 613

increasing doses of benzedrine to disguise the condition. The Prime Minister

was accompanied everywhere by 'a great and at times required
chest of pills
injections'. He was highly emotional and often worked in an atmosphere of
frenzied hysteria. His private secretary, Frederick Bishop, admitted that Eden
was subject to fits of temper which led to 'throwing things across the room'.
Eden 'compensated for his personal ailments and political frustrations by
dreaming of his enemy's destruction'.^^
On the Monday following the parliamentary debate on Glubb's removal.
Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Anthony Nutting was hosting a dinner
forHarold Stassen, an American colleague on the United Nations (UN)
Disarmament Commission. Earlier in the day. Nutting had sent the Prime
Minister a memorandum on the Middle East proposing that the UN take on
some of the responsibility for keeping the peace between Israel and her
Arab neighbours, and making suggestions for neutralising Nasser's attacks
on British interests as a means of softening Eden's declaration of war. Eden
was not impressed. In the middle of the dinner, the Prime Minister used an
open line to telephone Nutting. 'What's all this poppycock you've sent me?
. . . What's all this nonsense about isolating Nasser or "neutralising" him, as
you callwant him destroyed, can't you understand? I want him
it? I

murdered, and if you and the Foreign Office don't agree, then you'd better

come to the Cabinet and explain why.'^^

A shocked Nutting tried to reason with the Prime Minister and suggested
that it would be wise to look firstly for an alternative figurehead 'who would
not be still more hostile to us. At the moment there did not appear to be any
alternative, hostile or friendly.' Eden would not be deflected. 'But I don't
want an alternative,' he shouted at Nutting. 'And I don't give a damn if
there's anarchy and chaos in Egypt.' Nutting felt 'as if I had had a nightmare,
only the nightmare was real'. A few days after his telephone call to Nutting,
Eden said much the same to Sir Ivone Kirkpatrick, Permanent Under-
Secretary at the Foreign Office. 'I don't think we have a department for that
sort of thing. Prime Minister,' Kirkpatrick replied. 'But if we do, it certainly
is not under my control.
'''^

Writer and former intelligence officer Gordon Brook-Shepherd claimed

that the assassination of Nasser'would have been a tall order professionally
"wet jobs" had been abandoned by our intelligence
in 1956, for those so-called
services soon after the end of the war'. He went on to suggest that even if
Eden, in the manner of King Henry in referring to Thomas a Becket, had in
exasperation exclaimed 'Who will rid me of this turbulent priest?', 'Eden's
knights would have said "No"'. This is a defence that apologists for MI6
have attempted to put on record. Anthony Verrier has written that 'thuggery
was on the agenda. But the Prime Ministerial order was disobeyed. SIS was
not living in a James Bond world ... an elaborate assassination plan was
made, carefully arranged to fail.' Is this credible?^^
614 PAPvT SIX: THE MIDDLE EAST

Eden appears to have bypassed his Foreign Office officials and his new
Foreign Secretary, Selwyn Lloyd - although it has been said that Lloyd
ordered the removal of a from his office concerning Nasser's murder -
file

and gone direct to MI6 through Patrick Dean, who 'had long worked in
intelligence' and was chair of the JIC. Dean shared the Prime Minister's
assessment of Nasser that he 'had to be removed from the scene, and by any
method which came to hand'. It would appear that Eden and Dean, in turn,
did not seek the approval of the Chief of MI 6, 'Sinbad' Sinclair, who was
seen as a weak by senior officers. Instead, decisions on priorities in
figure
the Middle and on Egypt in particular, and those concerning any assas-
East,
sination attempts, were left to George Young, a man on a high after the
success of the 1953 coup against Mossadeq in Iran.^^
While MI6 did not have a specific department to deal with assassinations
it did have access to the necessary expertise through its 'Q' Ops section of

the Technical Services Division, and to qualified personnel in the Special

Political Action (SPA) section. It could also call upon the SAS, whose NATO
remit included undertaking special operations and assassinations. As to the
idea that the attempts were deliberately meant to fail, this is unlikely given
the range and number of operations undertaken.

In 'a most secret note', Eden wrote to Eisenhower on 15 March 1956 with
'absolutely reliable information' that Nasser aimed to establish a 'United
Arab States' by means of 'unseating' the Iraqi Prime Minister and frustrating
the Baghdad Pact by 'the overthrow of the Hashemite families in Iraq and
Jordan' and 'the monarchy in Libya, and the establishment of purely Arab
republics in Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco'. Nasser intended to encourage
Saudi Arabia in these moves while at the same time working to remove its
monarchy. This vast conspiracy was to be achieved by dispatching intelli-
gence agents in the guise of educational missions to all the Arab states. This
was followed six days later by further information from MI6's Lucky Break
to the effect that Nasser had 'already decided to engage in hostilities with
Israel and has even decided that June would be the best time', when British
troops would be out of the Canal Zone.^^
Based on this intelligence, which in retrospect appears highly dubious,
on 21 March the Cabinet agreed to a proposal from the Foreign Secretary
that Britain 'should seek to establish in Syria a Government more friendly
to the West'. Three days later in Washington, an ad hoc committee of State
Department and CIA officials including Allen Dulles, James Angleton and
Kermit Roosevelt considered whether Nasser would rally Arab support
behind him for war with Israel, and what the consequences would be in
terms of oil and the prospects for communism. The committee agreed a set
of proposals which was put to the Foreign Office. Following a meeting at the
White House on the 28th, a joint Anglo-American accord known as OMEGA
 SUEZ: ASSASSINS AND THUGGERY 615

was agreed, the primary purpose of which was to make Nasser aware that
'he would not enjoy most favoured nation status with the United States while
he co-operated with the Soviet Union. There was to be no overriding priority
to Alpha and the main burden of peace-keeping the area would be given
over to the United Nations.' Keith Kyle correctly inferred that 'covert action
against Nasser was discussed'. A series of 'more drastic actions' against
Nasser, which Professor Donald Cameron Watt characterised as 'an Anglo-
American plot to "destabilise" Nasser's regime', included the 'study of Syrian
assets' for a possible coup if Damascus continued to follow Nasser in what
was known as Operation STRAGGLE.
On 31 March, MI6's George head of the SPA section,
Young and the
Nigel Clive, met with Major Wilbur C. Eveland, who had been seconded
from the US Department of Defense to the CIA, and the CIA station chief
in Cairo, James Eichelberger, for a series of meetings in London. The MI6
pair argued for an all-out operation against Nasser. The Service now regarded
him as in the pay of the Soviet Union and prepared to follow Soviet instruc-
tions on policy in the Middle East. This involved the 'total destruction of
Israel, the domination of all the Arab governments and the elimination of

Western influence in the Arab area; material extension of Egyptian influence

in North Africa, particularly Libya Egypt must therefore be regarded as
. . .

an out and out Soviet instrument.' Young bellowed that it was now time that
the Americans came off the fence and stated decisively whether they regarded
the Lucky Break reports, which MI6 had been forwarding to Washington
over the previous months, as true or 'phoney'. If they were not prepared to
accept MI6's appraisal of Nasser then the CIA's 'intelligence coverage in
Egypt must be regarded as poor'. Indeed, recent CIA reports were dismissed
as 'rubbish'. Eveland understood that 'Iraq was the central point of British
support and stability'. MI6 arguments were 'directed at proving Syria was
the key to the area and the fate of Jordan and the Lebanon were dependent
upon events in Syria'.
On 1 April, as Eveland drafted his cable to Allen Dulles, Young actually
stood over him to ensure that he reported his comments correctly. 'Britain
is now prepared to fight its last battle. No matter what the cost we will win.'

MI6 was not prepared to hand over details of the covert operations it planned
to instigate, but Young mapped out the outline. Young and Clive proposed
a three-point programme with the first phase being 'a complete change in
the government of would not be annexed by Iraq but 'a firm
Syria'. Syria

pro-Iraqi government' would emerge in an 'extension of Hashemite influ-

ence'. Secondly, MI6 was interested, with Iraqi help, in exploiting splits in
the Saudi royal family to hasten the fall of King Saud. The Americans believed
that the British had discussed joint plans with Iraq, Turkey and possibly
Israel.
616 PART SIX: THE MIDDLE EAST

Our best guess would be that the British Government is

considering use of some or all of the following schemes: use of
Iraqi funds to support pro-Iraqi political parties and counter
Saudi-Egyptian press campaign; active support to split ASRP
[the socialist Ba'ath party] through Michel Aflag and Jallal

Sayed; tribal disturbances in Jazerah; border disturbances with

Turkey and Israel requiring Iraqi assistance to restore Syrian
stability; use of PPS [the fascist-orientated Parti Populaire
Syrien] for infiltration from the Lebanon.

While Eveland ridiculed the plans and discounted the ability of the Iraqis to
carry them through, Kermit Roosevelt continued to talk to the British about
them.
Eveland reported that the British expected that Nasser would react viol-
ently once he became aware of these initiatives and that their response would
be proportionate, ranging from sanctions intended to isolate him to 'the use
of force to tumble the Egyptian Government'. The CIA text hints that MI6
expected the Israelis to undertake 'special operations' against Egypt's newly
acquired Soviet planes, tanks and ammunition, as well as an 'outright attack'
on Gaza; these were contemplated as 'extreme possibilities'. The Israelis were
also mentioned in connection with Syria, though Young stipulated that only
tentative discussions had taken place. This was misleading, as Israeli Premier
David Ben-Gurion had already made an indirect proposal to Eden for a joint
military operation against Nasser, thus initiating the all-important collusion.
During the spring, leading Suez Group supporter Julian Amery, who was
experienced at the kind of behind-the-scenes role that suited Eden and MI6,
found himself suddenly welcome at the Foreign Office. He had already been
in contact with the Israeli Defence Minister, Shimon Peres, and had visited
the French Foreign Minister, Christian Pineau, in Paris.^^
David Ben-Gurion had been attempting, since 1951, to establish full
relations with MI6, but he had been brushed off by John Sinclair, 'whose
prejudices born during the brutalities of the Palestine era were unassailable'.
Although Young gave every impression of being racist and anti-Semitic, he
was willing to work alongside Jews because he believed that they were 'first
and foremost Europeans'. He argued that 'the treasure which the European
Jews bring to Israel and which alone will ensure her survival against Arab
hostility, is that quality of priceless value - the European structure of mind'.

According to Anthony Verrier, the Israeli intelligence service, Mossad, 'owed

much to SIS', and informal liaison was 'soon established' after its foundation.
From 1948 onwards the MI6 station in Tel Aviv, usually manned by 'one of
the few women officers, ensured a two-way flow of intelligence during years
when overt relations between the governments varied from cool to frigid'.

Young admired Mossad's ability in action and the fact that Israel had 'slipped
 6

SUEZ: ASSASSINS AND THUGGERY 617

into the role at British forces - that of armed watcher

one time played by the
ready to strike - the best guarantee of Egyptian, Syrian and Jordanian
conduct'.
The informal links with the Israelis proved particularly useful when
Mossad tipped off Young that they had detected Very high-flying planes
taking off from Turkish airfields and disappearing into the blue'. Mossad
watchers had spotted the CIA's 'Detachment B' of U-2s from the US airbase
at Incirlik. In April 1956, as part of a new 'Detachment A', the CIA delivered
two U-2s to RAF Lakenheath, under cover of the 1st Weather Reconnaissance
Squadron (Provisional). Rumours quickly spread and stories appeared in the
local newspaper about the hush-hush aircraft which was officially described
as a new high-altitude weather research aeroplane undergoing tests. These
jet-engined gliders, which had a wingspan of 80 feet, a speed of 500 miles per
hour, a range of 2,600 miles and a ceiling of 70,000 feet, would revolutionise
intelligence-gathering. Their high-resolution cameras could distinguish two
men standing ten feet apart on the ground. Under AQUATONE the CIA
promised 'all the intelligence-gathering resulting from the operation would
be shared with the British authorities'.^^

After a few practice flights disguised as weather tests over eastern Europe,
Eden abruptly withdrew permission for the black spy planes to operate from
British soil. Selwyn Lloyd had warned him that while 'the intelligence product
would be extremely valuable', Soviet radar was able to detect the U-2s and
there should be no embarrassments with a visit from Soviet leaders Marshal
Bulganin and Nikita Khrushchev pending."^"^

MI6 plans were almost permanently derailed by what was a relatively minor
incident, but one than illustrated the Service's ability to evade proper scrutiny.
Eden set great store by a mid-April goodwill visit to Britain of Soviet
leaders for the improvement of East-West relations. They had chosen to
arriveby the cruiser Ordzhonikidze - a warship of particular interest to MI
and the Naval Intelligence sections that shadowed Soviet vessels and special-
ised in the field of electronic countermeasures.
During October 1955, Naval Intelligence had made full use of a visit by
examine the new technology
the Ordzhonikidze' s sister ship, Sverdlov, to
believed to have been incorporated in this new class of warship. As the
Sverdlov passed Dover, radar equipment set up in a secret nuclear bunker built
into the white cliffs recorded the cruiser's 'radar image', while a submerged
submarine took sound, pressure and echo recordings and, above, RAF planes
took hundreds of photographs. The most intensive investigation, however,
was undertaken by Commander Lionel 'Buster' Crabb, OBE, CM.
An and alcoholic professional diver, during the war
eccentric, bisexual
Crabb had pioneered methods for clearing limpet mines from merchant
vessels and had won the George Medal for underwater bomb disposal and
618 TART SIX: THE MIDDLE EAST

salvage work. His last job for the Navy before leaving in 1948 was searching
ships in Haifa harbour for limpet mines placed by Jewish terrorists.He was
then employed by the Director of the MoD's Boom Defence and Marine
Salvage on the development of underwater cameras, and as a technical
adviser to the Admiralty Research Establishment. His last appointment was
at the headquarters of the Admiralty's Underwater Counter-Measures and
Weapons Research Establishment in Portsmouth. Throughout this period,
the outstandingly accomplished diver maintained informal contacts with the
security services.^^
Crabb had been recruited to the operation by MI6's Ted Davies, a former
RNVR officer who had served in Frank Slocum's wartime private navy.

Davies, who headed Section R3, MI6's naval liaison unit, worked out of
the London station in Vauxhall Bridge Road run by Nicholas Elliott, and
co-operated closely with the Director of Naval Intelligence, Rear- Admiral Sir
John Crabb had been asked to examine the hull of the Sverdlov for
Inglis.

whether the ship housed sonar equipment and was fitted

'blisters' to see

with a device code-named 'Agouti', which reduced the effect of 'cavitation',

the noise made by the ship's propellers which increases the chance of long-
range detection by sonar. He was also required to measure the pitch of the
propellers.^^
Before the Ordzhonikidze arrived, Eden had forbidden any operations that
might prove politically embarrassing. Macmillan recorded in his diary that
the

PM was asked by the Admiralty about such an undertaking a

good few weeks before the visit. Next, he wrote a clear and
precise minute, expressly forbidding anything of the kind. After
that,you would have thought everything would have been all
right.Not at all. The Secret Service (without proper liaison)
and in touch with minor Admiralty officers, arranged this with
Crabb (a retired officer, who has specialised in 'frogman' work).
The Admiralty agreed - the PM's order had either been over-
ridden, evaded, or merely not passed down the line.

The Sverdlov appears have been a dry run, and Davies forwarded to Nich-
to
olas Elliott a similar plan for the visit of the Ordzhonikidzewhich was to
dock in Portsmouth on 18 April. Elliott referred Davies's scheme to Michael
Williams, the Foreign Office adviser, on 7 April, which happened to be the
day on which his father died. With his mind on this personal tragedy,
Williams had given the plan, which appears to have been buried bottom at the

of other proposals, only a cursory glance on to the

and had not referred it

Permanent Under-Secretary or the chair of the JIC. It was therefore assumed

by Elliott and John Inglis that the operation had been cleared."^'
More cock-ups followed when, after checking into a Portsmouth hotel
 SUEZ: ASSASSINS AND THUGGERY 619

with Crabb, Davies suffered a heart attack on the 18th. Davies, however,
decided to carry on. The next day, Crabb undertook a successful dive in the
harbour but failed to return from the second. Nicholas Elliott recalled that

Crabb 'did one run under the ship and came back because he needed more
weight. He did not come back from his second run ... He might have gone
too deep.' He suggested that he died 'from respiratory trouble, being a heavy
smoker and not in the best of health, or conceivably because some fault had
developed in his equipment'. Observers later suggested that Crabb, who was
long past his best, should not have been asked to undertake the operation,
though Elliott insisted that Crabb, 'an unhappy man' whose private life 'had
gone to pieces', 'begged to be allowed to do the job for patriotic as well as
personal reasons'.*^
There the matter might have rested. However, as Macmillan records:

He is either killed by the Russians, or drowned by misadventure

-we don't know for certain. Then the Russians complain. The
Admiral at Portsmouth (knowing nothing about it) denies the
charge. Then the Commander's relations ask questions. The
Press begin. The Admiralty issues a denial (the most idiotic

thing possible, since otherwise we could have refused to know

anything about it, as is always the rule with Secret Service
work). Then the fat is in the fire. What makes it worse is that
. . . nothing was said by officials to Ministers until the Press
story broke . . .

Macmillan advised Eden to 'say nothing'.

Macmillan viewed the episode as a 'boy-scout' blunder. Elliott thought that
the 'incompetence lay on the shoulders of the politicians, notably Eden, for the
way the matter was handled. A storm in a teacup was blown up by ineptitude
into a major diplomatic incident which reflected unjustifiable discredit on MI6.'
He thought that Eden 'could simply have kept his head down and refused to
comment "in the national interest". Instead, he flew into a tantrum because he
had not been consulted and a series of misleading statements were put out
which simply had the effect of stimulating public speculation.'
To a barrage of questions in the House of Commons on 4 May, the PM
hid behind the Official Secrets Act and simply replied that 'appropriate disci-
plinary measures' were being taken. Eden then asked the Cabinet Secretary,
Norman Brook, to investigate the matter. After taking an account from
Sinclair, who had been on leave. Brook commissioned the head of the Treas-

ury, Edward Bridges, to carry out a fuller enquiry, the results of which he
reported to the Prime Minister on 18 May. It was not a probing investigation.
Elliott escaped all criticism, while Davies was retired on health grounds and,

with compensation, emigrated to the United States. Bridges did, however,

suggest that the time was ripe for major changes inside MI6.^'^
620 PART SIX: THE MIDDLE EAST

Crabb's body was recovered on 10 June 1957 by fishermen on a sandbank

in themouth of Chichester harbour. He was identified by the wetsuit, though
there was little left of his body and his head was missing, which gave rise
to numerous and often crazy conspiracy theories. MI 6 continued to carry out
operations against the Ordzhonikidze. In 1959, the MI6 station chief in Sweden
arranged liaison for a Radiation Operations Committee (ROC) operation
between GCHQ and the Swedish Signals Intelligence Service. MI5's Peter
Wright, with four technicians from the two SIGINT
organisations, attempted
to monitor the ship's cipher machines. They were unable to break the codes
but the MI6 representative at ROC, Pat O'Hanlon, deemed the operation a
success. 'Just like the Mounties,' he told Wright, 'we always get our man.'
Not The Ordzhonikidze was later sold to Indonesia, and when it was
quite.
looked over was found to have had no technical innovations.^^
Foreign Secretary Selwyn Lloyd had been largely unperturbed by the
Crabb fiasco, for which he blamed MI6. He was, however, concerned that
Eden might use it as an excuse to continue to veto the U-2 spy flights,
which had been given 'the most careful thought and preparation in order to
eliminate all possible risks'. The Air Ministry added that despite the veto,
the CIA 'have passed to us a great deal of useful intelligence'. The U-2s were
eventually moved to Wiesbaden, in West Germany. Lloyd told Eden: 'Should
the active operations in Germany ever become the subject of an inquiry, the
British Government could plausibly deny all knowledge of them.'^^

After a senior Treasury representative, Frederick Milner, had visited Cairo,

British ambassador Trevelyan reported to the Foreign Office that 'high
officials in the Treasury particularly seem to have been free with their
proposals on what to do with Nasser, which included the most extreme
solutions'. These views were not made known to the Americans, who were,
however, still taken aback by the British proposals they did hear to do away
with Nasser. Eichelberger reported that 'if our British cousins had their way,
that would be just the plan'. The Foreign Office, too, was concerned, and
moved to negate MI6's threat to the diplomatic initiatives of Omega. On 3
May, Lloyd met with Foster Dulles at the NATO foreign ministers' conference
in Paris, where they reviewed Omega and agreed upon a co-ordinated
programme. They also discussed STRAGGLE, the operation to intervene in
the elections or sponsor a pro- Western coup in Syria, which they agreed was
'already practically under Communist control'. The CIA assessed their Syrian
contacts while the Foreign Office pondered what action to take. By the spring
of 1956, the choices for the British and Americans came down to the long-term
isolation of Nasser or MI6's demand for quick decisive action. Eden chose
the latter strategy, even though the intelligence from MI 6 could produce no
evidence of effective, local opposition to Nasser.^^
Eden had given MI6 'carte blanche, despite the possible impact of the
 SUEZ: ASSASSINS AND THUGGERY 621

intelligence service's plans upon the Foreign Office's more cautious

approach'. It seems that the Foreign Secretary did not exercise any controlling
interest over MI6, while Kirkpatrick, who was 'sympathetic to its activities
did not interfere with its functions'.

The Foreign Office's principal contact with MI6 was through the JIC chair,
Patrick Dean, who also had responsibility for the Permanent Under-
Secretary's Department (PUSD), which as an adjunct to MI6 had long-term
planning functions and acted as liaison with the Ministry of Defence (MoD)
and the chiefs of staff. Deputy Under-Secretary Geoffrey McDermott headed
the PUSD, while Dean's deputy, Michael Williams, served as the adviser to
MI6 Chief Sir John Sinclair. 'C left the planning and execution of MI6's
campaign against Nasser to the Controller Middle East, George Young, who
was to operate from Cyprus, and his assistants on the Middle East desk in
London, Cyril Rolo, with whom he had worked in Austria, and Nigel Clive,
who had worked in Iraq until 1953. Despite the official chain of command,
McDermott recognised that MI6 officers in the field 'would be saints rather
than human beings if, in the occasional burst of inspiration or exasperation
with officials, they did not employ a little private enterprise'.
In opening its campaign, MI6 'dripped' information into the British press.
On 5 May, the Daily Telegraph published a front-page article by its diplomatic
correspondent headed 'Czech arms for Syria reported (deliveries said to have
begun The article concerned alleged daily shipments of Soviet arms
already)'.
to Syria and an arms pact with the Czechs. US intelligence officer Wilbur
Eveland knew that it was untrue as he had visited Syria's ports without seeing
any sign of Russian activity. Eveland remembered that he had been told that
'the Telegraph'sman in Beirut was almost certainly a deep-cover agent of the
British SIS'.He believed that this all fitted in with the attitude he encountered
in meetings with MI6 officers: 'According to British intelligence, of course, Syria
was headed irreversibly toward becoming a Soviet satellite. '^^
On 15 May, Eden forwarded to Eisenhower 'the cream of the cake' of
MI6's Lucky Break material. Treated by MI6 as 'authentic', the intelligence
'portrayed the Egyptians plotting the overthrow of every single Arab
monarchy by means of intelligence agents disguised as educators with the
ultimate aim of forming a United Arab States'.
Three days later, the Treasury Permanent Secretary, Edward Bridges,
delivered his report on the Crabb affair in which he recommended changes
to MI6. Eden responded by agreeing that Sinclair should take early retirement
- he was fifty-nine years old on the 29th - and the transfer of Foreign Office
adviser Michael Williams to Bonn. According to Service tradition, Sinclair's
natural successor was a naval man, his deputy. Jack Easton, but, as Nigel
West suggests, he was considered at the age of forty-eight too young. Instead,
Bridges pushed for an outsider, the Director-General of MI 5, Dick White,
who turned out to be only eighteen months older.^^
622 PART SIX: THE MIDDLE EAST

White had read history

at Oxford and had studied abroad in the United
Returning to England, he was recruited into the Security Service in 1936
States.
while working as an assistant teacher. He soon developed into one of the
Service's outstanding officers, beginning at the start of the war as assistant
director of the Counter-Espionage Branch. He became Director of B Branch in
1949. When an outsider, Sir Percy Sillitoe, retired in 1953, forty-seven-year-old
White took over as Director-General, leapfrogging his former boss in counter-
espionage, Guy Liddell, who had been damaged by his relationship with Guy
Burgess. Thus began a period of modernisation and reorganisation within the
Security Service, replacing the previous elitist amateurism with a new
professionalism. Unfortunately, the process was not complete when White was
approached to take over MI 6, and he was initially reluctant to leave. The new
Chief was regarded as honest and straightforward, and his task upon arrival at
Broadway was 'to prevent the "Friends" from embarrassing the Prime Minister
again and to restructure the organisation so as to minimise the damage caused
by Philby'. White had been convinced of Philby's duplicity, whereas most
officers in MI 6 thought that Philby had been badly done by.
During June, the resignation of the government left Syria in political
turmoil. The British ambassador in Damascus, John Gardener, was alarmed
that the head of the new government. Nationalist Party politician Sabri el-Asali,
under pressure from Ba'ath and left-wing army officers led by Col. Mustafa
Hamdun and the head of security, Capt. Abdel Hamid Sarraj, wanted to create
an Egyptian-Syrian union. Gardener intended to stifle it and stiffen the pro-
Iraqi elements by providing funds to officers of the anti-left Arab Liberation
Party, so that they could co-operate with the politicians Michel Ilyan and Jallal
ul Sayid, an MI6 agent working in the Ba'ath Party. Support was also sought
from tribes on the Syrian-Iraqi border and from the Muslim Brotherhood,
which had been founded before the war by the writer, traveller and member of
MI6's pre-war Section D Freya Stark.^^ Former President Hashim Atassi
returned from Rome to build a right-wing coalition, but when a left-wing back-
lash was unleashed against Ilyan and the conspirators, he was forced to flee the
country to the Lebanon. Subsequently, the Iraqi Chief of the General Staff, Gen.
Ghazi el-Daghestani, met in Geneva with Col. Adib Shishakli, the former Syrian
dictator who had been removed from power in February 1954. Shishakli also
met MI6 agents in Beirut, where the local station was run by Donald Prater,
and with the Parti Populaire Syrien (PPS) and military figures, who were pre-
paring 'hit squads' to assassinate left-wing officers. Allen Dulles was wary of
British plans for direct action, but allowed work to begin on the planning for a
coup.^'^

By the summer, GCHQ was forwarding a considerable volume of tran-

scribed signals traffic relating to the Middle East to the Foreign Secretary.
Former GCHQ personnel who had served in the Middle East were recalled to
reactivate old stations. It proved convenient that the states in the region often
 SUEZ: ASSASSINS AND THUGGERY 623

relied on old coding technology, refurbished Enigma machines from the war,
which proved easy for the cipher-breakers. Egypt's embassy in London was
using a Swiss Hagelin cipher machine whose codes could be broken because
the American National Security Agency (NSA) had a back-door arrangement
with the chair of the company. It also helped that the American agent for the
Hagelin happened to be Inspector General of the CIA during 1952/3. GCHQ
had mastered this particular machine during the war, when the Italians relied
upon it, and it remained particularly vulnerable. MI5's technical officer, Peter
Wright, was able, with the help of GCHQ's planning staff member Ray Fraw-
ley, to set up ultra-sensitive microphones in the London embassy, in an oper-

ation known as ENGULF. The microphones picked up enough of the sounds

of the cipher wheels being set for them to be transferred by special line to Hugh
Denham at GCHQ's H Division. GCHQ was thus able to read signals traffic
throughout the Suez crisis. MI6 also mounted operations against Egyptian
embassies abroad, and GCHQ was able to break into most of their channels.
Some from the Egyptian embassy in
of the transcripts, particularly telegrams
Moscow, were shown to State Department officials, in exchange for intelligence
from the electronic surveillance of Egypt by specially adapted aircraft.^^

In mid-July the western offer of a loan for the Aswan High Dam was with-
drawn. As a response, Nasser had already considered the possibility of
nationalising the Suez Canal Company and, as part of the planning, sent out
Military Intelligence Free Officers to Malta and Cyprus under cover of the
Egyptian consulates to assess the likelihood of a British military attack. Nasser
calculated that 'the longer the lack of response went on the less likely was a
military invasion'.
On 26 July in Alexandria, in a calm speech, but one that was described
by London as hysterical, Nasser made his nationalisation announcement,
which from a strictly legal point of view was no more 'than a decision to
buy out the shareholders'. That night in Downing Street, Eden's bitterness
at the decision was not concealed from his guests. King Faisal of Iraq and

his veteran Prime Minister, Nuri es-Said. The Iraqi PM's advice was 'You
have only one course of action open and that is to hit, hit hard and hit now.
Otherwise it will be too late.' Once his guests had left, Eden summoned a
council of war, which continued until 4 a.m. An emotional Prime Minister
told his colleagues that Nasser could not be allowed, in Eden's phrase, 'to
have his hand on our windpipe'. The 'muslim Mussolini' must be 'destroyed'.
Eden added: '1 want him removed and I don't give a damn if there's anarchy
and chaos in Egypt.' (Eden had by now considerably increased the dosage of
the drugs he was taking and had, in turn, to increase the dosage of benzedrine
necessary to counteract the drugs.
Eden immediately established the 'Egypt Committee' to supervise a
response that, if necessary, would involve 'going it alone' without the
624 PART SIX: THh" MIDDLE EAST

Americans and other allies. Chaired by the Cabinet Secretary, Norman Brook,

itwas composed of a select group of ministers and civil servants. Officially,

the committee hoped that a combination of a swift diplomatic response and
a decisive show of military strength might be enough to bring down Nasser.
A select group of military officers drafted operations to meet the demands of
the committee. Information on the military operation, code-named Operation
MUSKETEER, was put on a specially restricted circulation list designated
Terrapin, with many civil servants and officials who would normally have
been made aware of what was being undertaken by Her Majesty's Govern-
ment deliberately excluded. The Americans, usually the closest of allies, were
also excluded from access to documents invariably marked 'UK Eyes Only'.
Similar restrictions on American access were worked out by Patrick Dean with
his French counterparts, despite British Intelligence's traditional reluctance in
sharing sensitive information with Paris.
It was agreed that the more formidable the response, the better the chance
that Nasser could be overthrown or even murdered by his own countrymen
if his nerve broke. The committee, however, was working to 'an agenda
within an agenda' which involved officially undisclosed covert action. On 3
July 1956, Eden and the chiefs of staff reached a consensus that 'we can no
longer rely solely on the threat of military force to attain political stability,
and we must therefore devote much more of our non-military resources to
this end'. This had also been agreed to by the 'Dodds-Parker Committee'
which worked closely with MI 6. A former senior figure in SOE, Conservative
MP Douglas Dodds-Parker, who was the Joint Parliamentary Under-Secretary
of State for Foreign Affairs and regarded as an expert on the Middle East,
was asked for 'suggestions for action against Egypt and Nasser personally'.
Created in June, the Dodds-Parker Advisory Committee, which considered
non-military measures and was responsible for much of the co-ordination in
this area, included his old SOE boss. Sir Charles Hambro, and a propaganda
specialist, the Controller of the BBC's Overseas Services, Hugh Greene, whose

brother-in-law, Rodney Dennys, was the MI6 station head in Paris.^^

The committee, tasked with countering Egyptian propaganda in the
Middle East, proposed a large increase in capital expenditure on transmitters
in Aden, Libya and Cyprus. During the spring of 1956, at the request of Eden,
the IRD had stepped up its propaganda efforts in the Middle East with a
special emphasis given to radio broadcasting and attempts to counteract the
influence of Radio Cairo. The IRD's head, John Remiie, and his deputy,
Norman Reddaway, had arranged for more 'black' propaganda, while senior
IRD official Sydney Hebblethwaite asked Regional Information Officers to
report on efforts to 'penetrate local broadcast stations', with a view to reduc-
ing criticisms of Britain's role in the region. Even the BBC was asked to
be 'more aggressive' in its broadcasting to the area. The IRD also planted
'disinformation' about Nasser with newspapers, the BBC, the London Press
 SUEZ: ASSASSINS AND THUGGERY 625

Service and with Arab world through the Arab News Agency
outlets in the
(ANA). In addition, forged pamphlets were produced bearing the imprint
of the 'government of Egypt Information Department' which suggested that
Cairo intended to control the whole Middle East oil trade. Another project
was the 'exposure' of the existence of Egyptian concentration camps run by
ex-Nazis. Stories began to appear in the press in late August.^^
One of the black radio stations set up in Aden, masquerading as the 'Voice
of Free Egypt', began broadcasting on 28 July. It announced itself with the
opening bars of Beethoven's 5th Symphony, with its echo of the Morse code
signal 'V, which had been used by the British during the war - a touch
redolent of Ivone Kirkpatrick. An Iraqi announcer made vituperative attacks
on Nasser, called for his assassination, and gave out a series of cryptic
messages to alleged agents inside Egypt. It also attacked Israel and Zionism,
even describing Pasha Glubb, the recently dismissed commander of the Arab
Legion in Jordan, as a 'dangerous Zionist'. Its over- the- top manner, which
suited its listeners, initially suggested that it might be an Israeli operation,
or run by Nasser's enemies, but when the Egyptians publicised the idea that
it was a French-backed station, operating from 'a secret place in France', the

IRD mischievously corroborated the story .^^

Dodds-Parker went to see Ivone Kirkpatrick to lay down guidelines for
the committee and its specific target - 'Egypt in general or Nasser in person?'
The only published account of the proceedings by Dodds-Parker is ambigu-
ous, but there is a hint that the issue of assassination was being broached.
Kirkpatrick said that Nasser was a 'Mussolini'. He suggested aiming at Nasser
alone, pointing out that Mossadeq had been removed without anyone being
hurt. Based on his experience in SOE, Dodds-Parker had come to the
conclusion that Eden's plans would not work, principally because 'in the
conditions of total war which had continued for the past twenty-five years,
the Geneva Convention was outmoded, inadequate to counteract methods
of subversion, political assassination and sabotage. No actions were barred
by a man like Nasser who was inimical, far beyond any justification of normal
anti-imperialism, to all British and free world interests and attempts to evolve
reasonable progress.' The implication of these thoughts was that fire had to
be fought with fire. He added that 'two of my three colleagues in the
Commons did not accept capital punishment in Britain and were unlikely to
agree to action which might run any risk of physical injury to Nasser'. Kirk-
patrick responded: 'Yet they are prepared to risk an assault which could
injure, even kill women and children, not to mention our own troops?'^^
On the morning following his arrival at Broadway, MI6's new Chief, Dick
White, was warned by Jack Easton that he had 'had to stop a lot of operations
in the Middle East. Too many are suspiciously unsafe.' According to Tom
Bower, White ignored Easton and 'excluded him from further discussion of
the Middle East operations' and, instead, chose to be briefed by George
626 PART SIX: TUF MIDDLE EAST

Young, who informed him that he and the SPA branch had been personally
chosen by the Prime Minister to 'bump Nasser off. Nigel West claims that
one of the first issues facing White on his appointment was a directive from
Eden who, in the face of the Crabb affair, 'imposed a permanent ban on all
politically risky covert operations without a written ministerial sanction'. Is

this credible? MI6 was aboutembark on some of the riskiest special oper-
to
ations of its existence. Did, for instance, Eden issue a written order for
Nasser's assassination? More likely is that Eden issued verbal instructions,
which, given the circumstances of his appointment. White was in no position
to ignore. It seems that White's conscience was troubled by what he heard
from Young, and the realisation that he had inherited a service full of 'patriotic
officers. Establishment cowboys' who were 'steeped in self-deluding mystery,

convinced that SIS operations could influence the course of history'. Only a
few days in the post, and regarded with some distrust within the Service,
White did not question MI6's participation in the assassination plot against
Nasser. While he theoretically retained overall control of Middle East affairs,
all operational activity by the SPA section was left in the hands of Young.^^

Even within Broadway, a number of senior MI6 personnel were kept in

the dark about what was going on and were excluded from the circulation
list of telegrams. According to Nigel Clive, it was Young who arranged

collusion with Mossad, with the consent of the Israeli government but
bypassing the British ambassador, who was not sympathetic towards the
Israelis, and even some of his own officers inside Broadway. Nicholas Elliott

was sent to Tel Aviv as the secret liaison officer and to establish a secure
communications link. Eden used MI6's radio link and ciphers to contact the
Israeli Prime Minister, David Ben-Gurion, and Israeli military intelligence.

Similar secure and ultra-secret links were used to bypass the Foreign Office
for communicating with the French.
Although the Queen did see all the 'special bulletins', only a few senior
Cabinet ministers and Foreign Office officials were let into the inner ring of
secrecy. On 27 July, Geoffrey McDermott was called back to the Foreign Office
to become head of the Permanent Under-Secretary's Department (PUSD), in
effect Dean's deputy in all matters including chairing the Deputy Directors'

JIG. He was part of a three-man team with Dean and Kirkpatrick in receipt
of 'clear and unusual' orders from Eden, involved in intelligence and military
contingency planning for Egypt. The first plan was called HAMILCAR and
was based on a landing at Alexandria which McDermott saw as clear proof
that the real intention was to topple Nasser.
The CIA became aware that MI6 had 'crawled into a shell' and that its
officers were unwilling to share information with their American counter-
parts. McDermott recalled that 'while we continued in the JIG to collaborate
with our US friends we had to take great care that no whiff of our planning
activities reached them'. Although he had all the hard intelligence at his
 SUEZ: ASSASSINS AND THUGGERY 627

disposal and was aware that matters were coming to a head between Israel
and Egypt, that the French were supplying Israel with large quantities of
arms and that the British were in very close touch with them, McDermott
did not know all that was happening behind the scenes, though people felt
that 'some funny business was going on'. In fact, McDermott discovered that
he was being bypassed, and only Dean and Kirkpatrick were privy to the full
intelligence planning. Dean would 'occasionally disappear in a mysterious
manner' and, although McDermott worked closely with him, he did not
discover where he was going.^^^
According to McDermott, Foreign Office officials were 'suspicious of intel-
ligence', doubtful whether 'it was either reliable or gentlemanly'. There was
'disdain' for MI6, whose 'credibility was low' because 'the often ridiculous

secrecy given to material produced a certain cynicism'. Similarly, ministers

'treated it lightly', though during the Suez affair they treated intelligence
with more respect than they accorded the sober reports from the diplomats.
During August, Eden's view was buttressed by MI6 reports which indicated
that Nasser was facing serious internal problems. The Prime Minister had
decided it was too late to negotiate.^^
An angry Eden told Conservative MP Robert Boothby that 'we must crush
this man at all costs'. Shortly after, Boothby bumped into Kirkpatrick at the

Foreign Office and told him: 'I believe our Prime Minister is mad.' Kirkpatrick
replied, 'I could have told you that weeks ago.' According to one Cabinet
colleague, Eden was now 'intoxicated with drugs'. While Macmillan may not
have been imbibing drugs, he too appeared to be living in a fantasy world,
dreaming of the overthrow of Nasser and taking control of the canal as the
precursor of a wide-ranging conference on the region which would redraw
the boundaries of the various countries and provide a 'final solution' to the
Israel problem. At a meeting of the Egypt Committee on 2 August, Macmillan
pushed the idea Egypt as part of the British military
of the Israelis invading
operation. Macmillan, Lord Salisbury and other 'hawks' wanted to create a
'provocation' which would 'exasperate Nasser to such an extent that he does
something to give us an excuse for marching in'.^^
MI6's main task was to 'support any armed forces intervention with
internal action against Nasser'. Young recognised
that this would be more
easily achieved if, Americans co-operated. During the summer
as in Iran, the
of 1956, Young travelled three times to Washington 'in a vain attempt to
persuade the Dulles brothers that Nasser was not a good progressive demo-
crat but Khrushchev's door opener to the Middle East'. He thought that the
American plans for providing financial support for pro-western figures and
creating a friendly grouping in the region were 'too cautious'. In early August,
CIA liaison officer Chester Cooper had a meeting with Young at Geoffrey
McDermott's Mayfair flat, at which the MI6 director had a go at the Ameri-
cans for knocking down 'every proposal for bashing the Gyppos'. He warned
628 PART SIX: THE MIDDLE EAST

Cooper that 'your friends at home had better come up with something
constructive pretty soon'. At another meeting. Young told Eveland that Britain
and Iraq would proceed with plans for a coup in Syria. The CIA did come
round to MI6's view and insisted that Operation Straggle, the plan for a
coup, would be implemented. Michel Ilyan asked Eveland and the officer
supervising operations against Syria, Archie Roosevelt, for a 'half-million and
at least thirty days' to install a new regime. The target date was set for the

end of August.^^
Under the general mandate given by Eden, MI6 began to construct a
'shadow government' for Egypt without consulting the Foreign Office, despite
reports from Military Intelligence and the ambassador in Cairo that there was
no alternative waiting to emerge once Nasser had been overthrown. Since the
spring, contacts had been opened up with figures from the old Wafd Party and
with the entourage of Gen. Neguib, who had been displaced by Nasser. Besides
their own contacts, MI6 also relied on members of the Suez Group.
'As the old wartime basements in Whitehall were opened up for the
task-force planners'. Young wearily recalled that

they all flocked in - the Lawrences of Groppi - either too puffy

of face and corpulent of body to play wistful roles The
. . .

phoney brigadiers who had once run phoney outfits in Cairo

were there too, trying to find excuses for upping their rank to
major-general. Julian Amery came round with news of plots
and conspiracies and Colonel Neil McLean hurried from the
Commons to ask to be sent on a delicate, difficult, or dangerous
mission: he was offered one and to his credit carried it out
admirably.

Young added 'McLean prowls about the wilder shores in search of wars
that
and uprisings occasionally emerging in Kurdistan, Muscat, or Eritrea with
tommy gun under his arm and looking puzzled rather than wistful'. Recently
elected to Parliament, McLean had used his maiden speech to put forward an
imperialist defence of British policy in the Middle East. He was subsequently
invited by the Royal Institute of International Affairs at Chatham House to
become a member of a study group examining British interests in the area.
He spent the summer on 'a fact-finding tour of Syria and Iraq', which
confirmed his belief that 'Nasser was planning, with Russian help, to bring
the whole of the Middle East under Egyptian domination'.
McLean and the Secretary of the Suez Group, Julian Amery, who appeared
to be better connected than either the Foreign Office or MI6 with Egyptian
personages who might make up an alternative government to Nasser, 'had
been busy behind the scenes. They were in touch with a clandestine Egyptian
opposition composed of monarchists and other anti-Nasserites.' McLean and
Amery were involved 'in the sort of conspiratorial activity which they both
 SUEZ: ASSASSINS AND THUGGERY 629

enjoyed and at which they excelled'. At their own expense, and under their
own responsibility, from 27 August, in the company of two MI6 officers,
they 'held several meetings in the South of France with some highly placed
Egyptians they had known during and just after the war; representatives of
the Wafd, colleagues of the former premier Nahas Pasha'. They also went so
far as to make contact in Geneva, where the MI6 head of station was Norman
Darby shire, 'with members of the Muslim Brotherhood, informing only MI 6
of this demarche which they kept secret from the rest of the Suez Group'.
Amery forwarded various names to Lloyd.
It was said that Gen. Mohammed Neguib would emerge from house

arrest to take the presidency and that dissident officers were conferring with
civilians about the assassination of Nasser and his ministers, and the instal-
lation of a government headed by Saleh ed-Din, the Egyptian Foreign Minister
from 1950 to 1952. The name of the former PM Ali Mahwer was also bandied
about with the claim that he had the names of Cabinet members who were
ready to form a government 'in his pocket'. Another conspiratorial group
within the Egyptian Army originated with Lt-Col. Hassan Siyyam, command-
ing officer of an artillery regiment, who had apparently recruited two other
officers, who proceeded to form a group of retired and serving army officers,

'The Partisans of Right'. Although there is no evidence of MI 6 involvement,

the modus operandi is similar to that preceding the Iran coup and, as Keith
Kyle notes, its programme of improved relations with Britain and the cancel-
lation of trade agreements with the Soviet bloc is suggestive of British
plotting.^^

Almost Amery's most favoured candidate was the most

inevitably,
presentable of the former royal family. Prince Abdul Monheim, the son of
Khedive Abbas Hilmi II, who had been deposed by the British in 1914. The
Prime Minister under the new King would be Ahmed Mortada al-Maraghi,
the former Minister of the Interior, who had left Egypt in June and eventually
settled in Beirut. The conspirators told Amery that they would not move
until Britain and France were advancing on Cairo. They stressed that the
allies should not make any attempt to occupy Cairo.

The most important recruit to the plot was a senior Egyptian intelligence
officer, Squadron-Leader Isameddine Mahmoud Khalil, Deputy Chief of Air

Force Intelligence, who was approached while on a trip to Rome by a young

member of the Egyptian royal family, Mehmed Hussein Khairi, grandson of
the Sultan who ruled Egypt from 1914 to 1917. A few weeks later, in Beirut,
Khalil was introduced to John Farmer, a representative of the SPA section
who was working independently of the local station, by Hussein Khayri, a
relative of the royal family. A former army officer, Khayri had served as

Deputy Head of Military Intelligence until a few months after the July 1952
revolution; he was transferred to the military reserves and left Egypt.^^
At a second meeting in Beirut, Farmer made a deal with his Egyptian
630 PART SIX: THE MIDDLE EAST

counterpart. Kl-ialil would be given valuable intelligence about Israel, which

he would collect from abroad, thereby justifying frequent travel, in return
for which he would establish a secret organisation of army officers in Egypt.
Khalil stipulated that he should be the sole channel between the British and
the conspirators, and that he should have substantial sums for expenses. As
the Deputy Chief of Mossad, Yaacov Caroz, would later comment: 'Harming
Israel's security by handing over secret information about her did not appar-
'^^
ently trouble the conscience of the British.
Farmer took Ahmed al-Maraghi to see the British Foreign Secretary,
Selwyn Lloyd, who assured him that Farmer had full powers to act on behalf
of the Britishgovernment and that the government would give the al-Maraghi
group its full political and financial support. In an extensive briefing from
Young, White was given details of SIS's plans concerning Nasser. White did
not openly voice his opposition to the discussions at that stage. He accepted
the credibility of the plot, including the recruitment of Khalil to organise a
group of officers to mount the coup against Nasser. At a meeting with the
Deputy Under-Secretary at the Foreign Office, Patrick Reilly, White confided,
'We've got a group of dissident military officers who will go against Nasser.'
He further explained that the MI 6 plan was for that group to murder the
Egyptian leader. When Reilly voiced his suspicions about their reliability.
White appeared unperturbed.^*^
Nevertheless, in the short term the idea of a coup and of using Khalil's
assets appears to have been dropped or pursued through other channels. The
Foreign Office, in particular, was not supportive of these plans, believing
there was no credible evidence that an alternative was in sight. The population
was viewed as being 'largely apathetic', with Nasser exercising a strong grip
over them and the military. MI6 did not believe, however, that it was abso-
lutely necessary to have an alternative in place. The Service was confident
that once Nasser was overthrown suitable candidates would emerge.
There was little the Foreign Office could do to control events, since MI6
was working via back channels to Eden. Evidence that something odd was
going on came at the end of August, when Dean was 'sensationally promoted'
to Deputy Under-Secretary and became 'unprecedentedly' the number two
in the Foreign Office, directlyunder Kirkpatrick. 'A good few noses were
put out of joint,' McDermott. Following the Crabb debacle, the post
recalled
of Foreign Office adviser to the new Chief had been left vacant, as Ivone
Kirkpatrick had allowed Michael Williams to go on extended leave during
August before taking up the new post of minister in October. White, therefore,
found himself without an adviser, while his deputy. Jack Easton, was
'preoccupied with his anti-Soviet activities', which meant that, because of a
set of extraordinarilyunusual circumstances, MI6 was 'virtually rudderless'
and in the hands of 'a single shadowy, but influential, Whitehall figure',
Patrick Dean. Patrick Reilly nominally took over Williams's role but 'he was
 SUEZ: ASSASSINS AND THUGGERY 631

not part of the secret cabal around Eden and knew nothing of the collusion
which was taking place'. Geoffrey McDermott took over in October as the
adviser, with Robin Hooper assuming his previous post in running the PUSD.
It was the wrong time to leave such an important supervisory role vacant.^^

In late August, MI6 suffered a setback when the Egyptian secret police,
the Mukhabarat, raided the offices of its front, the ANA. On the 27th the
Egyptians announced at a press conference that a British espionage ring had
been rolled up and a former teacher who had spent twenty-five years in
Egypt, James Swinburn, the business manager of the ANA, had been arrested
and had promptly confessed to being in charge of the ring. Also arrested
were Charles Pittuck, a local employee of Marconi, who was Swinburn's
stand-in when the ANA man went abroad, and James Zarb, the thirty-seven-
year-old Maltese owner of a porcelain factory.
While the anti-western output of ANA confused some British observers
who knew the identity of the real owners of the news agency, it was regarded
by MI6 headquarters as 'marvellous cover'. The Egyptians, however, were
fully aware of the activities of AN A and that its head, Tom Little, a correspon-
dent for the Economist and The Times, was 'a senior MI6 agent'. The propa-
ganda minister. Col. Abd-el-Qadar, remarked to Telegraph journalist Eric
Downton: 'We know perfectly well what Mr Little is up to.' Egyptian cabinet
ministers considered arresting Little as a spy but were persuaded that he
would be more useful as a free agent. It seems that the Free Officers fed
Little, who believed that he had established a good relationship with Nasser,

with disinformation in the knowledge that it would find its way back to
MI6.''
Swinburn and Zarb were subjected to lengthy interrogations in Cairo's
Barage prison. Long-time Service policy was that arrested agents were
expected to hold out for a day or so to allow emergency measures to ensure
the survival of other agents. After that was presumed that they would talk.
it

The Egyptians claimed had passed on to London details of

that the ring
military dispositions, secret political developments, and purchase missions to
communist countries. Documents retrieved from Swinburn's home included
reports on 'the location of Egyptian army units, the arrival of new Soviet-built
tank transporters, details of a new radar station outside Cairo, the delivery
of anti-tank equipment to the paramilitary national guard
'.^"^

Other Britons accused and tried in absentia included the local representa-
tive of the Assurance Company, John Stanley, Alexander
Prudential
Reynolds, George Sweet, and George Rose. Reynolds, who had returned to
Britain, was later sentenced to ten years' imprisonment, while John McGla-
shan was acquitted at the trial. The Mukhabarat never discovered
subsequent
the chain of command network and the agent to whom Swinburn
of the
reported, whom Tom Bower suggests was a British businessman handled as
an 'unofficial agent' by the head of station, Freddie Stockwell.^^
632 PART SIX: THE MIDDLE EAST

Ele\'en Egyptians were accused of espionage, including a headmaster,

Sw'inburn's principal agent, Sayed Amin Mahmoud, who was later executed,
and his naval officer son, Capt. Ahmed Amin Mahmoud, who for a period
had been naval attache to former President Gen. Neguib. There were reports
that Neguib had been compromised and that references to him were deleted
from the trial. Swinburn had been in possession of naval papers including
an assessment of naval defences around Alexandria and the movements of
a tank-landing ship, Akka, which was to be used as a block-ship in the canal,
while another ship, the Sudan, 'was said to have been filled with explosives
in order to block the entrance to Alexandria's harbour'. Most of Mahmoud's
intelligence from his ten notional subagents turned out to be 'fictitious', 'webs
of falsehood and imagination' constructed from newspapers. Another of
Swinburn's agents, Yousseff Megali Hanna, described how 'a team of twelve
East German rocket scientists had recently been recruited to aid an Egyptian
missile programme' and revealed that the Syrians had asked for help in the
building of aircraft repair facilities outside Damascus.^*'
A number working under the journalistic cover of the ANA
of agents
were reported as having written reports on communist activities for MI6.
The most important source of this material had been recruited by MI6 during
the war and subsequently used in operations against Soviet bloc embassies.
A royalist and militantly anti-communist Yugoslav, Col. Milovan Gregorovic,
the nephew of a wartime prime minister-in-exile, Slobodan Yovanovitch, was
singled out for forwarding reports that portrayed Egypt as 'heading towards
Communism' and thus 'inciting' Britain against the country. During June,
Gregorovic was said to have reported that, on Russian advice, the Arabs had
proposed forming a united front that would not only oppose the Baghdad
Pact but would draw up plans to nationalise Middle Eastern oil. The effect
of these reports, it was alleged, 'was to drive the British mad to the extent
of interfering militarily against Egypt'. Oddly, Gregorovic was acquitted and
allowed to leave the country.^^
Two British diplomats involved in intelligence-gathering were expelled:
J. G. Glove, head of the visa section, and J. B. Flux, a First Secretary in the
commercial section who had worked in Cairo since 1919 and had been in
contact with 'student elements of a religious inclination' with the idea of
'encouraging fundamentalist riots that could provide an excuse for military
intervention to protect European lives'. On 29 August, the English-language
newspaper Egyptian Gazette revealed more details of the espionage ring: 'Very
important instructions were to be delivered to the British network in Cairo,
that a special plane was due to fly from Cyprus and that meetings had already
been held with some well-known Egyptian personalities But what is more
. . .

important is that Swinburn confessed that they were planning a coup d'etat
on the lines of the Zahedi coup in Iran.'^^
The CIA station liaison officer with MI6 in London, Dan Debardeleben,
 SUEZ: ASSASSINS AND THUGGERY 633

had warned Major Eveland that in the wake of the Crabb affair 'we should
be even more aware of the possibility that SIS might try to salvage its repu-
tation by coming up with some coup'. On 30 August, CIA director Allen
Dulles reported to his brother at the State Department on his talks with MI6
officers, who were persisting in their plans to overthrow Nasser. In turn,

Foster Dulles told the CIA's Deputy Director of Operations, Frank Wisner,
that MI6 'were more determined than ever to proceed along a certain line'.
Wisner, who was generally a 'hawk', replied that the CIA knew that MI6
and the French were 'still pulling the throttle open, undoubtedly connecting
it with other matters'.^^

With no MI 6 had to use outside agents for its

assets left in the country,
Mossman, a well-known correspondent for the
assassination plans. James
BBC's Panorama programme who had worked for MI6 during the war, was
posted to Egypt as the Daily Telegraph correspondent in 1956. In Cairo he
was approached by an MI6 officer in the local embassy, with a request to
help the Service. Although Mossman said he had finished with intelligence
work, the officer appealed to his patriotism, telling him that 'you must do this
we are just about to go to war with Egypt'. Agreeing to co-operate,
because
Mossman was asked to drop off a package from the boot of his Morris Minor
at the twelve-mile post outside Cairo. Given a telephone number on which
to confirm safe delivery, Mossman discovered that he had contacted the
wrong man. 'The package had contained £20,000 in English banknotes which
was intended as a bribe to Nasser's doctor to poison Nasser. '^°
The poison was organised by the head of the Service's 'Q' Ops Depart-
ment, Major Frank Quinn, OBE, MC. On one occasion Quinn was asked to
inject lethal poison into some popular Egyptian Kropje chocolates. A dozen

boxes were obtained from Cairo and Quinn began, but 'the difficulty was in
opening the base of the chocolate to insert the poison since the markings on
the base became damaged, necessitating re-marking. One had to find the
exact temperature of heat in the plate otherwise the process was ruined.'
After trial and error, in which six boxes were destroyed, Quinn found the
correct formula. He then worried, however, about the ethics. 'The recipient
could hand one of these to innocents in his immediate vicinity. I voiced my
apprehensions to the operational Section head, but was assured that there
would be no danger of this in the planned precise arrangements for donation
and subsequent removal of the evidence.' The chocolates were handed over,
though it appears they never reached their intended destination.'^^

One plan was drawn up by John Henry and Peter Dixon, technical service
officers at MI6's London station. They discussed the details with MIS boffin
Peter Wright, who told them that 'nerve gas obviously presented the best
possibility, since it was Henry and Dixon told Wright
easily administered'.
that they 'had an agent in Egypt with limited access to one of Nasser's
634 PART SIX: THE MIDDLE EAST

headquarters'. Their plan was 'to place canisters of nerve gas inside the
ventilation system, but I pointed out that this would require large quantities
of the gas, and would result in massive loss of Wright dismissed it as
life'.

'the usual MI6 operation - hopelessly unrealistic - and it did not remotely
surprise me when Henry told me later that Eden had backed away from the
operation'. This account was confirmed by later Chief Maurice Oldfield, who
shortly before his death in 1981 told friends about the scheme. Eden person-
ally disliked the idea of poison gas. During the Second World War, he had

been against what he termed the 'war crimes business', but by 1956 he seems
to have had no qualms about other bizarre methods of assassination which
MI6 dreamed up.'^^
The Ministry of Defence's Explosives Research and Development Estab-
lishment had designed a modified cigarette packet which fired a poisoned
dart. This was tested on a sheep at Porton Down by Dr Ladell, who personally
dealt with MIS and MI6's specialist requests. When the dart was fired at the
sheep its 'knees began to buckle, and it started rolling its eyes and frothing
at the mouth. Slowly the animal sank to the ground, life draining away.'
Even Peter Wright was sickened by the spectacle. It would appear that since
1953 there had been 'close co-operation' between the British and the Ameri-
cans at the Fort Detrick Special Operations Division on producing poisons
such as shellfish toxin. Porton Down scientists were particularly adept at
'^^
refining poisons already discovered.
The French and Israelis, too, organised a number of assassination plots.
The head of the SDECE and former socialist resister Pierre Boursicot, who
supervised the various meetings that worked out the plan for the Suez
expedition. Musketeer, was an important go-between with the British and
Israeli secret services. SDECE had a special operations Action Branch in

Egypt which scheduled one attempt for 1 September, the original date for
Musketeer. A French commando team was to cross to the west bank of
the Nile from the French embassy, in rubber boats, and destroy Nasser's
Revolutionary Command Council building at the northern tip of Gezira
Island. When the date was changed,was aborted.*^^
the plan
An Israeli assassination attempt employed a Greek waiter from one of
the famous catering companies, who was to slip a poisoned pill into Nasser's
coffee. It probably would have succeeded 'but his hand shook so much when
it came to the point that he gave up and confessed'. CIA operative Miles

Copeland claimed to have knowledge of the MI6 assassination plans. He

joked with Nasser: 'Turn your head, Gamal, and let me see if I can put this

poison in your coffee.' Nasser, pointing to the nearby bodyguards, said that
it would not work."^^

On 7 September the military plan was changed to Musketeer Revise after it

was decided that any assault on Alexandria would result in substantial
 SUEZ: ASSASSINS AND THUGGERY 635

civilian losses. Military action would now centre on occupying the Suez Canal
Zone, a decision that pleased the French, who had been concerned about
fighting an urban guerrilla war. General Keightley insisted that the opening
phase of the new operation would require a period of undermining of Egyp-
tian resistance by way of psychological warfare measures. It was envisaged
that in phase one of the operation. Allied bombing would destroy the Egyp-
tian air forceon the ground. Phase two would see an offensive upon key
militaryand economic targets in tandem with propaganda designed to turn
the population against Nasser. In the third phase, British and French troops
would land at Port Said to take control of the Canal Zone. MI6 and the
advocates of psychological warfare convinced the military planners in
the small team of mainly air force personnel that developed Revise that the
operation was feasible. The psychological warfare campaign was to be
devised by the Information Co-ordination Executive, which took on the
wartime role of the Political Warfare Executive (PWE).
Cairo Radio would need to be eliminated and replaced on the same wave-
length by MI6's Sharq al-Adna, the NEABS on Cyprus. Keightley 'endeav-
oured to get a reallyhigh grade man to head psychological warfare from
among who had experience of the 1939-45 war' but for a variety of
those
reasons the only man he could get was 'a serving Brigadier with imagination,
initiative and orginality'. Brig. Bernard Fergusson may have had those quali-

ties, but he had no real experience of psychological warfare.^^

In order to stiffen their resolve against negotiations, MI6 had been drip-
feeding material to the 'hawks', suggesting that various Middle East govern-
ments were threatened by 'Egyptian and Soviet inspired subversion'. Officials
in the IRD believed that a different propaganda line was required. Leonard
Figg suggested that 'examples of Soviet-Israeli relationship are played up,
but for the sake of Anglo-Israeli relations this line has to be done unattribut-
ably'. Sharq al-Adna's propaganda output angered the Israelis, who
denounced it more aggressive than the combined radio services of
as being
Egypt, Jordan and Syria. 'And so it goes on day by day, preaching hate and
war against the Jew and trying to tar Nasser with the Zionist brush,'
complained Jon Kimiche, of the Jewish Observer and Middle Eastern Review.
The Voice of Zion broadcast that 'the British owned NEABS on Cyprus today
continued its incitement of the Arab countries against Israel, calling on them
to unite and launch an attack on Israel This agitation was started soon
. . .

after the Egyptian seizure of the Suez Canal and continued ever since.' Official
relations between Britain and Israel fell to a new low.^^
MI6 also pushed out a continuous stream of anti-Nasser propaganda
through the 'black' SCANT radio station, which promoted a 'national free-
dom group'. It was supplied with 'useful information about the consequences
for the United Arab Republic economy of Nasser's actions' by the IRD's Dick
Langardge.^^
636 PART SIX: THE MIDDLE EAST

On 20 September 1956, Eden and Foster Dulles discussed setting up 'a

secret working party in London' to consider means of weakening Nasser's
regime. The CIA had already begun planning such a move. UN Secretary-
General Dag Hammarskjold wanted the UN to arbitrate Arab-Israeli issues,
and on the 26th the Security Council met to try to settle the Egyptian problem.
Following discussions between French Prime Minister Christian Pineau and
the Egyptian Foreign Minister, Mahmoud Fawzi, Hammarskjold produced a
list of six principles worked out with Selywn Lloyd which were unanimously

passed by the Council on 14 October. The agreement on free and open passage
through the canal and arbitration between the operating company and the
Egyptian government appeared to offer a solution. MI6, however, advised
Eden that Fawzi could not be trusted to stick by the principles since he was
'too close a friend of Hammarskjold'.'^^
In the meantime, MI6 continued to make way with their plans for Straggle,
though they did not put the CIA fully in the picture. Their own candidate
for the coup, the former dictator Adib Shishakli, who had been forced from
the Lebanon because of his drinking, was not highly regarded by the Ameri-
cans, who believed he lacked popular support. By October, the military
attache in Beirut, Lt-Col. A. G. Graham, was discussing with the Iraqi Deputy
Chief of Staff, General Daghestani, details of the new PPS paramilit-
plan. 'A
ary force would seize Homs, and Salha Shishakli, the former dictator's
brother, would lead his men against Hama. Other PPS troops would occupy
key positions in Damascus and assassinate left-wing officers. Tribes, such as
the Druze in the south and the Alawites in the west, supplied with Iraqi
arms, would simultaneously rebel.' Politicians involved in the plot included
'Adnan Atassi, a former Ambassador to France; his cousin Fayid Atassi, a
former minister of foreign affairs; former minister of justice Mounir Ajlani;
and former minister of Hassan Atrash, a Druze leader '.^°"
state
In early October, as part of an official trip to Washington, JIC chair Patrick
Dean discussed Operation OMEGA with State and CIA officials, including
the Roosevelts. In 'utmost secrecy', the British and Americans attempted to
put together 'a means of bringing Nasser down'. On 2 October President

Eisenhower told Foster Dulles that the canal issue was not the one on which
to undermine Nasser. Dulles mentioned the MI 6 plans for his overthrow,
but Eisenhower repeated that 'we should have nothing to do with any project
for a covert operation against Nasser personally'. As George Young feared,
the Americans would not join. A CIA note attached to the official State

Department secret history of Suez concluded that estrangement between the

two allies 'was becoming dangerously acute'. Despite the profound differ-
ences over Egypt, the CIA still remained in close touch with MI6 and Iraqi
plans for Syria. Officials agreed that Operation Straggle could be implemented
at the end of October, with the CIA passing $165,000 to its chief contact,
Michel Ilyan, to carry out the coup.^°^
 SUEZ: ASSASSINS AND THUGGERY 637

On 5 October, Lloyd and Pineau continued to put pressure on the Ameri-

cans and, at a meeting with the US Secretary of State, informed him that 'the
Egyptians were planning a coup in Libya; they had arms ready there for use
and there was a plot to kill the King. King Saud was also threatened. In Iraq,
Nuri was now in control but there was dissatisfaction amongst some of the
younger officers and this was likely to grow if we continued to do nothing.
Jordan was already penetrated and Syria was virtually under Egyptian
control.' Three days later, Kermit Roosevelt dropped in on some British
friends at the United Nations, where he picked up hints that things were
moving towards a climax and that a military operation was in the offing.
Back at CIA headquarters he predicted that at the end of the month Britain
would dispatch an expeditionary force to reclaim the Suez Canal. No one
appears to have taken the prediction seriously. In London, Allen Dulles and
Richard Helms had dinner with Dick White and George Young about joint
operations in the Middle East and, in particular, the imminent coup in Syria.
Nothing was resolved, and the two senior MI6 men did not let the Americans
into the secret military planning on Egypt, other than Young's comment that
^"^^
'something would happen'.
A Middle East specialist in the Foreign Office, Geoffrey Arthur, proposed
on the 10th a long-term 'Machiavellian scheme' for an Iraqi-Syrian union,
to be co-ordinated with the Americans and Iraqis. This was to be achieved
by means of 'propaganda and bribery within Syria', 'the rapid build up of
Iraqi forces', and 'overt and covert measures to counter Saudi influence in
Syria'. British and Iraqi planning continued with Col. Muhammad Safa taking

over leadership of the military committee, which was working with the
prominent Nationalist Party politician in Syria, Michel Ilyan. The PPS and
military conspirators had developed a plan for a co-ordinated rising against
the Syrian government in which a paramilitary force would seize key cities
and strategic posts in Damascus. Supplied with arms from Iraq, tribes would
rebel in the south and west. Col. Umar Kabbani, who was to lead the new
government, was said to be an MI6 asset.
Meanwhile, the capture in mid-month by units of the French Navy of the
Sudanese yacht Athos, which was carrying a large consignment of Egyptian
arms, off the coast of Algeria, provoked French anger. On the 14th, French
acting Prime Minister Albert Grazier and the Chief of the Air Staff, General
Challe, flew secretly to RAF Northolt for a meeting with Eden at Chequers,
where a combined move against Egypt was suggested.
In the second week of October, the Foreign Office's Harold Beeley and
MI6 officers met with State Department officials and Kermit Roosevelt to
discuss Straggle and to set a date for its execution at the end of the month.
The deadline for the operation was postponed several times. On the 18th,
Eveland learned that the date of the coup had been changed from 25 to 29
October because the conspirators around MI6's agent, Kabbani, were not in
 6

638 PART SIX: THE MIDDLE EAST

place. Eveland came to suspect that MI6 'used the Iraqis to set this up, leaving
the United States and Ilyan as the scapegoats in the event the coup failed'.
As Andrew Gorst and Scott Lucas note, 'the co-incidence of the new coup
date with the Israeli invasion of Egypt fatally undermined the attempt to
overthrow the Syrian government After learning of the invasion, Ilyan
. . .

requested an indefinite postponement of the operation.

In the midst of all this planning, George Young had chosen to go on
holiday. He was suddenly recalled in early October to be told that the
Service's plans for Egypt were in turmoil. Young's strategy had assumed that
there would be 'a rapid descent on the Canal by a small crack British force
while the main Egyptian forces in Sinai were otherwise engaged'. He was,
however, appalled to discover from the Chief of the Imperial General Staff,
Gerald Tempter, the real nature of the military plan. 'Surely this is a deception
scheme,' Young protested. 'I'm afraid not,' answered Templer. 'It's all been
taken out of my hands.' Young did his best to improvise.
The military plan depended to a large extent on the intelligence fed to
the planners by MI6 and Military Intelligence. Although Tom Bower states
that MI6 was 'unable to advise the [chiefs of staff] about the state of Egypt's
armed forces', and indicates that it 'widely overestimated Egypt's ability to
resist the landings', a number of officers suggest otherwise, claiming that the
Service's intelligence was ignored and that the military preferred its own
estimates given to the JIG. Military Intelligence appears to have grossly over-
inflated its estimate of Egyptian armed strength on the ground, while MI
officers claim that its estimates, which correctly foresaw little sustained oppo-
were ignored. George Young, who remained bitter at the lack of will
sition,

and indecision over Suez, complained that 'every planner covered himself
with wide margins for timing and supply, and generously overestimated
enemy capabilities (information to the contrary being ignored) '.^°^
Under cover as a brigadier, Paul Paulson was dispatched to the Combined
Middle East Force HQ at Episkopi on Cyprus to mastermind the landing of
MI6's team, which would go in with the first wave of troops on the beaches.
One unit would install the puppet government in Cairo once Nasser was
toppled. Another unit was number of
responsible for sabotaging a small
installations.As during wartime, MI6 also formed a uniformed special coun-
ter-intelligence unit whose job was to report on any Egyptain stay-behind
networks operating behind Allied lines and to interrogate 'vigorously' any
prisoners. Led by a Defence Security officer formerly attached to the Intelli-
gence HQ at Ismailia, Gerald Savage, it was also expected to report on any
Soviet diplomatic activity in the area and to seek out any intelligence-related
documents and ciphers - for which purpose an experienced safe-cracker had
been recruited.
As the MI6 representative, George Young also attended, along with the
Prime Minister, a meeting of the chiefs of staff's committee, where Nasser's
 SUEZ: ASSASSINS AND THUGGERY 639

'contrived death' was hypothetically discussed. Eden had a 'toothy grin'

when Young laughingly said that 'thuggery is not on the agenda'. Dick White
claimed that he expressly told the Prime Minister that he would not sanction
MI6's further involvement in Nasser's assassination. He 'made it clear that
[MI 6] was a hostile service, but not a collection of hit men'. Officers of the
time smile at the denial. Everyone, it appears, was knowingly playing the
deniability game.^^^
By then MI6 no longer had any assets in Cairo and it was decided that
a three-man hit-team would be sent by the SPA group from London as 'a
Special Service to assassinate Nasser'. They apparently did enter Egypt but
got 'cold feet and left'. At the same time, the Egyptian security service had
been tipped off about the presence in Cairo of a German mercenary who had
been hired by MI6 for a 'wet job'. He disappeared before the security net
was closed and was believed to have been smuggled out of the country under
diplomatic cover. There was also a British plan to use SAS troops in the
run-up to the invasion to kill or capture Nasser. Senior SAS officers gave an
assurance that 'any evidence of their involvement would be removed so
smartly as to be deniable'. The French tried frogmen, but did not know
enough about the degree of protection around the President for the plot to
succeed. In November there was a second French attempt ordered by the
Action Branch based on Cyprus. This failed because the French networks,
too, had been wiped out by arrests. "°
In what appears to have been some kind of bizarre and still mysterious
deception operation, the 'highest ranking Arab employee' in the British
embassy in Beirut 'offered to sell Jordan a bundle of British Embassy docu-
ments which proved the existence of plans to invade Suez, clear instructions
to the embassy of what was to be done the moment hostilities commenced
and an indication of when and how they would begin'. The employee asked
$100,000 for the documents, and King Hussein is alleged to have paid out a
first instalment of $25,000 from 'special funds'. The documents were then

passed on to Nasser, who had them examined by his own intelligence chiefs
but 'decided they were fakes, aimed at frightening Egypt into making
concessions in the face of British and French threats'. Nasser insisted that the
documents were 'too good to be true'. The employee was thrown into solitary
confinement in a Jordanian prison and subjected to intense interrogation.^"
After his quick release following the Suez invasion, which appeared to
confirm the authenticity of the documents, the British-employed Arab
returned to Beirut, where the newspaper Al Youm ran a story about the odd
goings-on at the embassy, where Lebanese employees had been fired and a
huge reward had been posted for the return of the documents. The strange
thing was that the man who had handed them over was never fired or
investigated. He did not retire from the British embassy staff until the late
sixties, and then with a pension. According to Tom Bower, the focus of the
640 PART SIX: THE MIDDLE EAST

Beirut embassy's information-gathering from the local bars, newspaper offices

and journalists was the Oriental Counsellor, the Lebanese Maroun Arab.^^^
As within Whitehall, there was a divide inside MI6 headquarters at Broad-
way between those who thought the invasion was 'a lunatic idea' and were
dismayed by the possible repercussions in the Middle East and those who
supported Eden and thought that this was Britain's defining moment and
could be fudged. The latter were in command, and sections of MI6 were now
'out of control'; the era of the 'horrors' was still in progress. Operations were
carefully concealed from Whitehall and were being run at the Middle East
area office in Cyprus, away from London's strictures.
As the planning for the Suez intervention reached a peak, intelligence
officials had to turn their attention to events in eastern Europe. When a

hundred thousand students took to the streets in Budapest, they were joined
by thousands of frustrated workers, who launched a series of demonstrations
calling for the withdrawal of Soviet troops, the release of political prisoners
and the establishment of an independent communist regime. Dick White
ordered John Bruce-Lockhart to Hungary to monitor the uprising.

SDECE's Pierre Boursicot arranged a secret meeting on 22 October at a

private house near Sevres, where Lloyd and Dean met Israeli Minister of
Defence Shimon Peres, David Ben-Gurion and Chief of Staff General Moshe
Day an. From 7 p.m. to midnight they negotiated with the French Prime
Minister, Christian Pineau, and Foreign Minister Guy Mollet. The result was
a French-Israeli alliance,whereby France sold jets to the Israelis and technical
information on nuclear research and development, while Mossad supplied
intelligence on nationalist movements in North Africa. That night, the Ameri-
can NSA noticed an enormous increase in the volume of signals traffic
between Paris and Tel Aviv, providing 'indications intelligence' that some-
thing important was taking place. It would appear that the NSA was unable to
break the British, French and Israeli codes, though in the House of Commons a
few weeks after the fiasco, in one of the few public references to GCHQ,
Labour MP George Wigg, who was generally well informed, stated that the
United States had indeed 'cracked' the codes. Whether or not it had, the
'special relationship' between the NSA and GCHQ continued almost uninter-
rupted during the Suez period. As the final touches were being put into place
on the invasion plan, the director of GCHQ, Eric Jones, met with senior NSA
officials in Washington in what was described as 'a profitable' exchange.

The State Department and the CIA believed that the 'something' was a
planned Israeli attack on Jordan. This was partly because, since mid-month,
Israeli Intelligence had been pumping out what turned out to be disinfor-

mation which suggested that the Iraqi Army was about to enter Jordan. This
seemed inevitable when, following the success of the anti-western parties in
the election in Jordan on 21 October, the government formerly joined the
 SUEZ: ASSASSINS AND THUGGERY 641

Egyptian-Syrian military alliance on the 24th. On that day, the CIA's Frank
Wisner dined in London with Patrick Dean and MI6's John Bruce-Lockhart,
with a view to a 'good gossip'. Unexpectedly, Dean was called away and
did not return. Wisner thought that he had been snubbed and left London
the following, afternoon feeling, according to Bruce-Lockhart, 'angry, frus-
trated and insulted'. Dean had been called to brief Eden on his recent meetings
in Parisand the joint plan of action that had been agreed. Israel would launch
an attack on Egypt and try to reach the canal within twenty-four hours. Britain
and France would then issue an ultimatum that Egypt accept temporary
occupation of the canal's key points, to be followed by a full-scale Anglo-
French invasion within twelve hours if no reply was received. Dean had put
his signature to the protocol typewritten in French which all participants
agreed to keep secret in perpetuity. Eden subsequently burned Dean's carbon
copy, though the French, to Eden's regret, kept their copy of the 'collusion'
intact.'^'

Douglas Dodds-Parker, who knew that liaison officers were on Cyprus

with Israeli badges, was let into the secret about the collusion and thought
hard about his position but decided that, since the country was 'at war', he
would continue 'on the convention that actions carried out through certain
secret means are "unacknowledgeable" '. In the end, the Dodds Committee
appears to have achieved little because it was deliberately excluded from vital

intelligence. Charles Hambro thought that Dodds-Parker had intentionally

deceived him, but the secretary to the committee, Geoffrey McDermott, who
in turn had been kept in the dark, later admitted that he had been instructed
to provide 'as little information as possible'. Dick White learned about the
collusion from the Cabinet Secretary, Norman Brook, after taking a secret
oath not to reveal its White was seemingly sickened by the deceit
existence.
- especially of the Americans, on whom British Intelligence, White knew,
relied. However, he went along with it, having little choice in the matter,

having been suggested for the post of Chief only a few weeks before at the
express behest of Brook. He must also have felt vulnerable, given that George
Young obviously knew but had not informed his Chief. Even more amazing
was that General Keightley was not informed of the collusion, and knew
only from MI6 intelligence that an imminent Israeli attack was expected
that would provide the excuse for the Anglo-French invasion. Naturally, he
expressed surprise and indignation when he discovered that Israeli officers
were operating under French auspices."^
In London, CIA officer Al Ulmer recalled that Bruce-Lockhart strained
'to let us know, if obliquely' what was about to happen. 'I'm going to have

to get in my uniform,' he told Ulmer. 'We can't let Suez go, you realise it's
the lifeline of our Empire.' On the 28th, Patrick Dean spent the afternoon
with the CIA liaison officer, Chester Cooper. Like the senior MI6 officers
who had given nods and winks. Dean hinted that they were in for trouble.
642 TART SIX: THF MIDDLE EAST

In Washington CIA's Watch Committee considered the

later in the day, the

NSA intercepts and 'highly from U-2 photographs of

sensitive information'
the build-up of military forces on Cyprus, the sailing of British and French
ships through the Mediterranean and the arrival of French fighters in Israel,
w hich was mobilising its forces. The committee predicted that an 'attack v^ill
be launched against Egypt in the very near future'. It was fairly sure that the
French were colluding with the Israeli military, but despite 'the deliberate
British purpose of keeping us completely in the dark' it did not want to
believe that the British were involved in the conspiracy. Indeed, even six
weeks later the CIA was still able to report that 'the evidence is not persuasive
that the British did in fact connive directly with Israel, but is conclusive that
the French did'.'^'
On 29 October Israel launched Operation KADESH, attacking and swiftly
rolling up the Egyptian forces in the Gaza Strip, with minimal losses. The
invasion, however, led to the collapse of the CIA-sponsored coup in Syria
which had been rescheduled for the same day. As W. Scott Lucas discovered,
'some American officials even suspected that Michel Ilyan, the chief CIA
contact, postponed the coup from 25 to 29 October at the instigation of the
British and the Iraqis, who would use the disorder created by the Israeli
invasion of Egypt to control the coup and foster Iraqi-Syrian union'. An
American official admitted that 'we didn't know any of it, and we suspected
that the British had betrayed us'.^^^
On the 30th, Foster Dulles called his brother at the CIA regarding Straggle.
The CIA was still of the view that 'if the assets can be held together for a
few days more without taking action we would much prefer it The British
. . .

are pressing us to go ahead.' Allen said that he 'was suspicious of our cousins
[the British] and if they want a thing, they [the CIA] should look at it hard.
Not before Nov. 1.' However, on the same day, while the CIA-backed
conspiracy remained undetected, the Syrian Deuxieme Bureau uncovered the
Anglo-Iraqi plot when they 'intercepted two Druze leaders with hundreds
of rifles and machine-guns, allegedly given to them by Iraq'. They then
arrested a number of the conspirators, including leaders of the PPS, and
forced others, including Ilyan, to flee to the Lebanon. He subsequently made
his way to Britain.
U-2 cameras were over the Sinai as Israeli forces pressed their attack on
on 30 October. Even though they were still seventy miles away
the Mitla Pass
from the Suez Canal, after two days the French and British issued their
ultimatum as planned. As expected, Nasser declined the invitation, and at
dusk on 31 October British and French bombers blasted nine Egyptian
airfields and attacked communications facilities, including Radio Cairo's
transmitters. In the days before the invasion, Chester Cooper had found
himself unaccountably excluded from meetings of the JIC, and as the bomb-
ing began he and the CIA liaison officer in London, Bronson Tweedy, were
 SUEZ: ASSASSINS AND THUGGERY 643

ordered to break off relations with MI 6 on Middle East matters, leaving the
British to 'boil in their own oil'."*^

As the first bombs were dropped, Bernard Fergusson received an urgent

cable from the Foreign Office. Did he realise that his station 'was at present
broadcasting a short and frequently repeated message to the effect that the
staff were heart and soul in sympathy with their fellow Arabs and that
they dissociated themselves with what had been broadcast the night before'?
Fergusson had arrived on Cyprus on 22 October to take up responsibilities
for psychological warfare, which seemed to be in a sorry state. The main
target was the softening up of the Egyptian armed forces and their will to
resist, with encouragement of any elements in Egypt that might be willing
to assist the British. Officials recognised that since the beginning of the Suez
dispute NEABS had ceased to be an effective propaganda weapon because
the Arab staff critical line on Nasser. As an 'Arab' station
refused to accept a
it was 'prevented from outright support of Britain'.
NEABS's director, Ralph Posten, had begun to receive 'guidance tele-
grams via SIS making it sufficiently clear that his broadcasts "were to be . . .

shaded from grey through to black'". Posten knew that two MI6 officers
were on his staff but claimed to be unaware of the station's use for 'psycho-
logical warfare'. He was 'infuriated' by some of the black propaganda he
was expected to endorse. In the last week of October he went on the air 'to
tell his audience that they would shortly be hearing lies and might experience

bombing. They were not to believe the lies and must endure the bombs.
These acts were not those of Englishmen who knew Arabia and cared for
'^^^
the Arab people.
At an emergency meeting of ministers on the 29th, presided over by Eden,
the Governor of Cyprus was ordered to requisition the station. In anticipation,
MI6's Paul Paulson seized formal control, with the result that the production
team was broken up. A number resigned, including Posten. There were 'four
reported sabotage attempts' while 'the remaining Arab staff conspired to put
out a repeated announcement that they were not responsible for the content'.
As a result, 'three known ringleaders were served with restriction orders
under the Cyprus Defence Regulation confining them to their homes'.
Feelings were so tense that a Royal Corps of Signals major, escorted by a
small party of infantrymen, was sent to remind the staff which side they
were on. The authorities at one time 'would have served Posten with the
same order if they had been legally able to do so'. Posten, who was said to
be given to 'emotional outbursts', was eventually flown back to London on
'medical grounds'. The Director of the Middle East Centre for Arab Studies
(MECAS) was then asked 'to render assistance in getting over the message
in Arabic'.'"
Cairo Radio was eventually put out of action on 1 November. NEABS
was closed and reappeared as the 'Voice of Britain'. The head of the IRD,
644 PART SIX: THE MIDDLE EAST

Jack Rennie, was responsible with assistance from a former head, Ralph
Murray, who acted as psychological warfare adviser to Keightley, for putting
the Voice of Britain on air within twenty-four hours, while the department's
Sidney Hebblethwaite was appointed the day-to-day director. Dodds-Parker
regarded it as a 'major achievement' but few others were convinced about
the output. A former member of SOE, the regional MI6 officer, who was 'not
easily moved by examples of political, or any other, human folly - saw
with dismayed clarity that their Prime Minister expected them to launch a
campaign against Nasser which could well have been conceived by Dr Goeb-
bels'. Another problem was that the only Arabs who could be cajoled into

broadcasting anti-Nasser sentiments were 'a miscellaneous bunch of Palestini-

ans whose accents were such that Egyptians unhappily mistook them for
J/
ews .

Fergusson admitted that 'our sequence of set-backs was farcical'. What

was worse was that Fergusson discovered that there was 'no overt opposition
and no indications of any covert opposition of any strength' to which to
broadcast. Britain was losing the psychological war and without 'a potential
opposition leader' would fail. In the House of Lords, Lord Glyn, who had
worked for MI6 and SOE in the thirties and during the war, later described
the broadcasts as 'amateur attempts at propaganda which were absolutely
laughable and brought this country into contempt . . . that action did irrepar-
able damage and it from
will take a long time to get over them'. Broadcasts
end of the following year because its hardline
the Voice of Britain ceased at the
stance did not withstand public scrutiny. Eventually, the entertainment music
^^"^
output was increased.
The 2nd was a signal for Nasser's opponents to proffer initiatives. Col.
Hassan Siyyam, the principal military conspirator among 'The Partisans of
Right', met with the ex-minister Abdul Fattah Hassan to discuss what they
could do, with each urging the other to make the first move. Meanwhile,
Mortada al-Masraghi and Hussein Khairi crossed over from Beirut to Cyprus.
A former member of the Revolutionary Command Council is alleged to have
asked Nasser to resign to the British ambassador just before the British bomb-
ing began. George Young claimed that Nasser lost his nerve and that when
the Egyptians with whom MI6 were in contact telephoned the President and
told him that he had better resign before the Anglo-French forces reached
Cairo, he panicked and announced his resignation. Young adds that 'the
American and Soviet ambassadors then rushed round to persuade him to
withdraw it'. Reassured that his position was not really threatened, Nasser
withdrew the resignation.
Hassan Siyyam apparently asked his civilian co-conspirators to demand
a meeting with Nasser, but they would not act until the military had deposed
the President. An MI6 officer later recalled that 'the assistance of some young
Egyptian officers, who were strongly opposed to Nasser, had been secured
 SUEZ: ASSASSINS AND THUGGERY 645

and how special weapons had been buried at a convenient spot near Cairo.
They were never used because certain circumstances essential to the operation
did not materialise/ Peter Wright adds that it was 'principally because the
cache weapons which were hidden on the outskirts of Cairo' - James Swin-
burn had been the MI 6 representative responsible for the stay-behind units
- were 'found to be defective'. Applauded by the crowds who responded
enthusiastically to his call not to surrender, Nasser ordered that plans for
guerrilla warfare preparations be put on alert, and an order be given for the
assassination of any politicians willing to serve in a collaborationist
government.
Appalled by the break in the special relationship, Dick White sought
urgently to repair the damage with the Americans, and through Chester
Cooper was able to obtain reconnaissance photographs of Egypt. A U-2 spy
plane happened to make two passes over the Cairo West airbase - one before
and one immediately after the invasion. Eisenhower viewed the photographs
and was struck by the scene of destruction - 'the most dramatic intelligence
ever placed before him'. When the RAF bombed Egypt, a U-2 from the base
in Adana, Turkey was flying over the area. The CIA passed the photographs
on to their friends in MI6 and the RAF, who cabled back: 'Warm thanks for
the pix: quickest bomb damage assessment we've ever had.'^^^
The State Department's Robert Amory best expressed the ambivalence of
the Americans to the British action. On 3 November, he told Chester Cooper
over the telephone: 'Tell your friends to comply with the goddam ceasefire
or go ahead with the goddam invasion. Either way we'll back them up if
they do it fast. What we can't stand is their goddam hesitation, waltzing
while Hungary is burning.' Cooper immediately informed the JIC of the
instruction, adding: 'I'm not speaking without instructions.' The first British
and French paratroopers landed near Port Said in the early morning of 5
November. A hundred thousand men then began to disembark around Alex-
andria. The invasion force easily quelled the Egyptian forces facing it, but
there were heavy civilian casualties. Nearly a thousand Egyptians were killed
and the same number wounded in what was officially a policing action.
On the 5th, MI 6 began to have 'considerable anxiety' about the Soviet
Union's potential response to events in the Middle East. The head of station
in Moscow, Daphne Park, and the military attache, were 'sent off on a long
trip to particular areas of Russia, as near as we could get, in order to see
whether we could see anything unusual'. MI6 reported that the 'Soviet mili-
tary attache in Beirut is reported to have told a Joint Arab Command that
Russia has decided to help Egypt and was examining the most efficient and
least dangerous way of doing this'. Syrian Radio reported that the Russians
were on the way. 'Unconfirmed and probably exaggerated' intelligence
briefings added that 'jet aircraft have been overflying Turkish territory. These
aircraft are assumed to be Russian reinforcements for Syria and Egypt.' These
646 TART SIX: THE MIDDLE EAST

reports turned out to be deliberate CIA disinformation, designed to restrain

Britain and frighten its NATO partners. Nerves were jangled when a report
came in that a British reconnaissance plane had been downed over Syria at
a height that could only mean the use of Soviet missiles. This, too, proved
to be false.^''

MI6's Chief made an urgent request to the CIA on 5 November for an

intelligence assessment of Soviet capabilities, and information as to whether
or not the Soviet threat was realistic or a bluff. Allen Dulles subsequently
ordered a by a U-2 over Syria and Israel to see if there were any signs
flight

Tor the British, the Soviet threat at least restored a modicum

of Soviet aircraft.
of Anglo-American co-operation between the intelligence services.' The only
special relationship, as Eden later acknowledged, was this thin strand
between MI6 and the CIA. Chester Cooper reported to headquarters that he
would not discuss the Soviet threat with the JIC unless the American embargo
on intelligence to Britain was lifted. Last-minute instructions from Washing-
ton satisfied Cooper's demand and, on the 6th, Washington forwarded to the
JIC an assessment that the Soviet threat was a bluff.^^'^
When Anglo-French success seemed imminent, after less than a day, the
forces were compelled to stop their advance and give way to a UN peace-
keeping contingent. On the 6th, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Harold
Macmillan, who had been one of the sternest hawks, had received a telephone
callfrom Foster Dulles, applying pressure for a ceasefire. The closure of the
canal, which Nasser had blocked with forty-seven ships, had a dramatic effect
on the British economy. The country would rapidly run out of oil from the
Middle East and would be forced to buy from alternative sources. This would
have severe consequences on the reserves, which had fallen by 15 per cent.
Deliberately conspiring to remove the British from Suez, the United States
refused to countenance a temporary loan, forcing the Chancellor to intervene
heavily on the world financial markets. With sterling collapsing, Macmillan
told Eden that they could not go on.
The British propaganda agencies continued to make 'the maximum use
of stories of Russian penetration in the Middle East'. On the 9th, it was
reported that 'a large party of Russians had been caught trying to cross the
frontier into the Sudan' and that Russian officers had been 'captured by the
Israelis in Sinai'. Both reports turned out to be untrue, but this did not stop
efforts to place in the press reports from Egypt that 'British intelligence
estimates over the lasttwo to three months that the flow of Russian arms
into the Middle East were not only confirmed but exceeded'. These latest
revelations were portrayed as a Soviet plot to dominate the West's oil and
were spread around the Tory-dominated press in order to justify the use of
force against Nasser.^^^
Dulles was still suggesting on the 9th that Straggle 'might be carried
forward, but when British and French troops are out of Egypt'. A week later
 SUEZ: ASSASSINS AND THUGGERY 647

the possibility of joint covert operations in Syria was discussed at the White
House, where Eisenhower allowed Allen Dulles to talk over the operation
with a British official who was arriving 'incognito' - probably Selwyn Lloyd.
'The Iraqis and perhaps the Turks would be involved and the partition of
Jordan seemed probable/ according to a note of the meeting. The lack of
Anglo-American co-operation in the immediate aftermath of Suez, however,
precluded such ideas.
When fears of Russian intervention were raised by the French, the CIA
assessment that the Soviets would not act was confirmed by intelligence
obtained by GCHQ. A new cipher-breaking technique known as Engulf was
in use against the Egyptian embassy in London, which was in receipt of
relays from the embassy in Moscow. Selwyn Lloyd later wrote to GCHQ
director Eric Jones, congratulating him on the signals intelligence effort which
apparently proved its worth following the seizure of the canal. In the new
year, Jones was rewarded with a knighthood which had been 'won by a lot
of hard work by very many people within the circle and on the fringes of it,

and has been partly won by friendly co-operation from people such as
customers' - MI6 and Military Intelligence. The Engulf material was used to
expose Egyptian claims that the Russians were offering military support and
that the Soviets were 'prepared to go all the way, risking a Third World War'.
On the 7th, the British embassy in Syria dismissed the alarmist reports, cabling
London that 'no fresh Soviet material or volunteers have yet arrived in either
^^^^
Syria or Egypt'.
On the 9th the Cabinet received the news that 'Russian Black Sea Fleet
activities are back to normal, and the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs
have confirmed that the Russians have not sought their permission for the
passage of Russian ships through the Bosphorus'. Five days later, the JIC
concluded that 'although the Soviet Union will probably seek to win Arab
sympathies by propaganda, economic assistance, strong diplomatic support,
offers of arms, and possible volunteers, they themselves will not wish to
become involved in fighting outside the UN framework'. British photo-
reconnaissance showed that there was no Soviet build-up, which was
confirmed by a U-2 flight on the 15th and the latest GCHQ decrypts.
^^"^

There was anger and despair when word of the ceasefire reached MI6's
headquarters. Nicholas Elliott, who had been sent to Tel Aviv on a secret
mission, felt 'shame'. He had, like others in the Service, an 'abysmal opinion
of Eden', because 'having attacked you should have the guts, no matter what
the United States attitude was, to go ahead with it. In a way it made it worse
that my Israeli friends were the soul of tact.' George Young agreed and told
White that 'we should have gone on and taken Nasser's scalp'. 'It all ended
in shambles', however. Young recalled. 'I became an old man overnight.' He
thought, 'the expedition meant the end of British power and influence in the
region'; he saw the political significance as being 'the last self-conscious fling
648 PART SIX: THE MIDDLE EAST

of the old British style.Its failure may even have been mainly due to this

style having become over self-conscious: the play and not the reality was the
thing.'^-^^^

Eisenhower was deeply wounded by the deception practised by its closest

ally.Diplomatic relationships within the western alliance were 'mired in a
fundamental deception', with the result that for a time the President would
ha\'e nothing to do with Eden and there was no communication between the
two. Frank Wisner took it personally and felt betrayed by his old friends,
and angry that the CIA had not foreseen the invasion. Officially, the Ameri-
cans claimed that they had not been caught by surprise by an intelligence
failure. The reality was that while they had had plenty of informants on the

events leading up to the invasion, they had totally failed to foresee the final
move.^^^
Like other senior MI6 officers, George Young was bitter about the United
States' lack of support: 'When the moment came
was not prepared to lift
it

a finger. When its own Allies acted in pursuance of what they believed to
be their national interests, the United States Government took the lead in
preventing them ... In practice the Americans went their own way.' Suez
produced a highly charged atmosphere of anti- Americanism which took a
great deal of effort and time to dissipate. In November, the former chair of
the JIG, Harold Gaccia, wrote to Patrick Reilly that the Foreign Office should
regard the 'special relationship' as purely a 'business relationship'. Regarding
it as 'phoney' and an outdated example of 'old-boyism', Gaccia thought that

it was at an end. Around the 20th, Eden complained to his Foreign Secretary

that it was only on the level of the intelligence services that the Americans
co-operated. Even this was put in jeopardy, though to what extent remains
a matter of dispute. In one of his last acts as the Permanent Under-Secretary,
Ivone Kirkpatrick is alleged to have broken off relations with the United
States and forbidden MI6 to have any contact with their GIA counterparts.
According to Geoffrey McDermott, it was the US government which 'with-
held co-operation at any level until we had purged our guilt'.^^'
The GIA station chief, Ghester Gooper, however, has said that Anglo-
American intelligence contacts were 'never completely severed' and were
'quickly resumed'. Kermit Roosevelt was sent to London to re-establish an
official relationship, but Kirkpatrick ordered that no one from the Service

was to see him. Instead, White tried to use unofficial channels, and one of
those asked by MI6 to repair relations was Labour MP Denis Healey: 'I was
the only person my friend could think of who might
be prepared to see
Roosevelt and make his journey worthwhile!' While he regarded the Ameri-
can as 'a good choice' who was 'exceptionally well regarded in Whitehall',
Healey wondered 'whether my talk with Roosevelt really met his needs'.
More successful was Tracey Barnes, who moved London in December as
to
the GIA's 'special representative'. Barnes was adept at making friends with
 SUEZ: ASSASSINS AND THUGGERY 649

Tory peers and Labour MPs, and formed a particularly warm friendship with
Maurice Oldfield, the rising star within the Service. Barnes, who was regarded
as 'a tough operator with the brief that he should keep a closer watch on us
in future', was, however, 'struck by the deep cynicism and world weariness
of the British, shorn ofEmpire and humiliated by Suez'. A senior MI6 officer,
'^^^
Leslie Mitchell, told him: 'All this is a lot of shit. We're just playing games.
One of those games was Prime Minister Eden's order to MI6 on or about
23 November to proceed with renewed assassination attempts. It was Eden's
last act before he Jamaica to recuperate at the home of James Bond's
left for

The MI6 station chief in Beirut, Donald Prater, packed

creator, Ian Fleming.
up immediately and left for London: 'Thuggery was on the agenda.' Eden
gave his backing for a plan that involved the use of pro-British Egyptian
army officers to be controlled by a 'Colonel Yarrow', using special arms that
had been buried at a convenient spot near Cairo.
In 1975, the Senate Church Committee investigating CIA abuses looked
into rumours that Nasser had also been targeted for assassination by the
Agency. Allen Dulles had allegedly made a threat against Nasser: 'You tell
that colonel of yours thatif he pushes too hard we'll break him in half.' An

CIA's Directorate of Plans, the Agency's clandestine branch,

official in the

told Brian Freemantle that 'Eden was paranoid about Nasser. At the briefing
it was made clear that the assassination request was a direct, personal one

from Eden to Eisenhower.' After Suez the CIA had better assets in Cairo
than MI 6, which makes the proposition possible, though the committee could
find no hard evidence to back the claim. The notorious disinformer Miles
Copeland did claim, however, that he had been selected to give the Egyptian
President a pack of Kent cigarettes, Nasser's favourite brand, inpregnated by
Dr Sidney Gottlieb, thehead of the Technical Services Division, with a deadly
^^'^
botulism, guaranteed to kill within one or two hours.

Eden returned to London and Parliament on 17 December and approved

the suggestion of Cabinet Secretary Edward Bridges that Dean, 'in his
personal capacity, undertake an inquiry into the question of balance between
military intelligence on the one hand, and civilian intelligence and political
risks on the other'. His recovery was only temporary, however. As George
Young recognised 'the desire to play a perpetual juvenile lead seemed to
take him further and further away from the orbit of reality, so that in the
end the act had to be taken off. Harold Macmillan and Rab Butler had
intrigued with the US ambassador, Winthrop Aldrich, 'to give assurances
that Eden would not remain Prime Minister'. Indeed, the White House
conspired to ensure that Macmillan was the next PM as part of a plan to
prevent the emergence of a Labour government as a consequence of the crisis.
Before he resigned in January 1957, Eden put down his thoughts - his 'last
will and testament' - in the aftermath of the Suez debacle. The lesson of
Suez, he wrote, was that 'if we are to play an independent part in the world . . .
650 PART SIX: THE MIDDLE EAST

we must ensure our financial and economic independence'. This, he believed,

could be achieved only by excelling in 'technical knowledge' and by cutting
drastically the defence budget. There was an urgent need for Britain to work
closely with Europe, though he warned that the European Community might
not welcome a British approach.
These ideas appear to have had some input from MI 6, in particular from
George Young, who undertook a similar service for Eden's successor, Harold
Macmillan. Young thought that the answers to questions historians would
ask would not be found in the documents - questions such as 'Why didn't
they go into EDC and Common
Market in the beginning?' The desire for
some form Europe was 'patent'. Young was a federalist with
of integration in
a belief in European unity in economic, political and foreign affairs. 'Equally
clear was Western European emotional rejection of the United States as a
dependable ally and a growing belief that the British could be increasingly
written off as Europeans. To the Continental States, we appeared to have
abandoned any semblance of an independent thinking over policy and rightly
or wrongly were regarded as tagging along behind the United States.' By the
end of the fifties, as MI6 deputy chief. Young recognised that there was 'a
definite current of vigour in Europe'. Unfortunately, as far as Young was
concerned, the government had 'misinterpreted the currents and we had
trapped ourselves in a minor eddy'. He despaired that the country had
deserted European allies and allowed the French and Germans to take the
lead in Europe and had failed to grasp the significance of the emotional shift
^'^^
that had taken place on the Continent.
'The sad thing'. Young recalled, 'is that in the late fifties and early sixties
Britain's power and influence vis-a-vis Western Europe were still sufficient
to enable us to choose independent and constructive lines of policy had we
wanted.' With particular reference to intelligence matters at the time, he felt
that 'it was essential that Britain should maintain an adequate independent
intelligence effort given United States policies in the Middle East'. This was
despite his acknowledgement that the Americans with 'their vastly superior
resources' were beginning to dominate intelligence-gathering, particularly in
the technical field where GCHQ had been reduced 'to an ancillary branch
of the National Security Agency'. Young's views were also made in the face
of a change of US policy. On 5 January 1957, Eisenhower announced his new
Middle East doctrine, which stated that 'international communism is the
greatest danger to the Middle East' and that the US now intended to confront
it.^^^

Young was simply reflecting the wave swept

of anti- American feeling that
through Britain. 'We are rapidly reaching the point', US ambassador
Winthrop Aldrich cabled Foster Dulles, 'where we are thought of by the
British public as enemies of Britain working against them with the Russians
and the Arabs.' When the influential Bilderberg group met in February 1957
 SUEZ: ASSASSINS AND THUGGERY 651

at St Simon, to discuss the agenda simply called the 'Middle East', 'sparks

flew'. Intended to heal the transatlantic rift in the wake of the recent debacle,
which was threatening the West's position in the Middle East, the British
and French 'almost came to blows over Suez' with the American participants.
The rift was not completely healed, though Dick White and his assistant,
John Briance, tried to mend fences in the intelligence field with a trip to
Washington. Their talks with Allen Dulles, the new liaison officer in London,
Cleveland Cram, and the chief of operations, Richard Helms, largely centred
on the Middle East, where the Americans wanted the British to keep their
bases as an assistance to future Anglo-American partnership.^*^
CHAPTER 30

THE MACMILLAN
DOCTRINE

One of the enduring myths of Suez is that, with recognition of the immense
failure, BritishpoUcy on the Middle East changed, and that with the resig-
nation of the Prime Minister, Anthony Eden, MI6 was swiftly brought under
control by its Chief, Dick White, and the Foreign Office. The reality was that
Harold Macmillan was just as obsessed with the idea of getting rid of Nasser
as Eden had been. Indeed, it appeared that 'a. tenet which transcended the
Suez debacle' was that Nasser remained 'Britain's principal enemy'. Certainly,
there appears to have been no attempt to stop the reactivation of MI6's
'Restoration Plot' to overthrow Nasser.^
In February 1957, much to his surprise and after a break of four months
from contact with the Service, MI6's key conspirator in Cairo, head of Egyp-
tian Air Force intelligence, Mahmoud Khalil, was called to a meeting in Rome
with a relative of King Farouk, Husayn Khayri, and his British contact, John
Farmer. Khayri revealed the involvement in the plotting of Mortada el-Maraji
Pasha, who had served as Minister of the Interior until the coup in 1952.
Working within royalist circles, Khayri subsequently travelled to Munich for
further meetings with another MI6
officer, David Crichton.^

At the same time, assassination planning meetings were taking place in

Athens, where Farmer met with two MI6 officers from the Special Political
Action (SPA) section. Meanwhile, the Pentagon's liaison officer with the CIA
in the Middle East, Wilbur Eveland, attended a meeting in Beirut with a
number of area intelligence officers. 'George Young's man', Frank Stallwood,
 ^ ^ 6

THE MACMILLAN DOCTRINE 653

who had worked on the Albanian operation. Valuable, and had served as
head of station in Beirut in 1952/3, 'reeled into the room, as drunk as a
lord. Apologizing for neither his lateness nor his condition, he took over the
meeting. Teams had been fielded to assassinate Nasser, he informed us, and
then rambled on about the bloody Egyptians, who'd planned to turn the
Middle East over to the commies. His voice trailing off, he finally sank into
his chairand passed out.' Eveland departed in disgust, leaving the MI
officers to plot among themselves.^
Mahmoud Khalil returned to Egypt, where a courier contact was main-
tained with MI6 via his brother-in-law, Farid Sharif Shaker, who regularly
travelled to Beirut between May and November
was from Khalil that
1957. It

John Farmer established the means by which Nasser was to be killed in what
was known as Operation UNFASTEN. The Egyptian leader had a very heavy
beard, which he shaved frequently. Farmer's plan was to give him a new
Remington Rand which had been filled with plastic explosive and which
would be detonated when Nasser switched on the razor. On his death, the
al-Maraghi group would seize power and establish a new government. The
CIA was made privy to the operation when, on instructions from head-
quarters. Farmer briefed Kermit Roosevelt, the chief of the Near Eastern
Division, who was visiting London. According to Farmer, Roosevelt was
rather dismissive - a stance that characterised post-Suez relations in the
Middle East between and the United States.^
Britain
In contrast to Eden, the new Prime Minister 'now laid much greater
emphasis on the need to enlist American support to achieve British aims'.
Despite Macmillan's development of a close working relationship with Foster
Dulles, the reality was that the Americans continued to refuse to join British
schemes for subversion in Egypt against Nasser. At an April 1957 meeting
the Americans declined to back a proposal for the two countries to plan 'a
programme of support for an alternative government' or agree 'upon the
psychological moment and the means for making the existence of such a
programme appropriately known in Egypt'.
MI6's Middle East Director, George Young, wearily recalled that 'there
was at the time little opportunity for reflection . . . but on looking round in
the spring of 1957 one could sense that a new stage had been reached and
passed and that fresh perspectives in history had opened up'. In particular.
Young realised that the Hungarian Uprising and its suppression by the
Russians had 'finally killed the appeal of international communism as a
dynamic and dangerous subversive force'.

Young subsequently carried out a fresh assessment of MI6's role in the

Middle East which failed to bury the game of shadows; not surprising given
the views he held. Young believed that the Arab world 'had lost its basic
balance and would be increasingly one of violence and anarchy'. This opinion
was part of his hypothesis that 'ever-heightening consciousness - the one
654 PAPvT SIX: THE MIDDLE EAST

Still acti\'e element in human evolution -

would lead to ever greater ethnic
assertion and divergence, and not to convergence. Modern technology would
only hasten this development. An Arab with a Kalashnikov and a Mercedes
will be even more aggressive than one with a ball musket and a camel.' In
his lectures in intelligence courses. Young 'would remind the students that
Arab verbs decline in moods and not in tenses, commenting: "When the
British Council premises go up in flames the odour of roasting pansy is
incense in the nostrils of Allah." ' Young's extreme views partly explain why
he was willing to co-operate so closely with Mossad and why MI6 intelligence
on the Middle East could be so poor. CIA officer Archie Roosevelt found
that the Israelis viewed Arabs as 'alien, threatening, hateful and inferior . . .

a people with whom they have nothing in common. Hence their intelligence
''^
failure.

Young saw MI6's primary role as countering the major Soviet effort to
establish sympathetic regimes and subvert pro- western rulers. This meant
close co-operation with Israeli Intelligence, and aiding the Shah of Iran to
build up the notorious SAVAK, while making use of MI6 Arabic-speaking
officers to alert Gulf rulers to the dangers of Soviet activities. In the fifties,

the Shah turned MI6 rather than the CIA to reorganise SAVAK. 'It was
to
then', according to Norman Darbyshire, who had overseen the British end
of Operation Ajax, 'that the special relationship began and developed.' MI6
was in personal touch with the leading SAVAK officials and its recommenda-
tions led to the appointment of regional commanders, who helped to imple-
ment British policy. Young had a personal friendship with the Shah, although
'however tactfully could not persuade him to keep SAVAK 's intelli-
I tried, I

gence role separate from that of a domestic police force - a factor, as it turned
out, in the estrangement of the Monarch from his people'. The CIA team
training SAVAK remained in Iran until 1961, when it was replaced by a
Mossad team. Under the direction of General Hussein Fardust, who helped
train the 'Special Bureau' with MI6, SAVAK developed its own training
programme. It would seem that it was Mossad which was responsible for
training the SAVAK officers in techniques of torture and the interrogation
of political prisoners.^
The ground for the British had been prepared by Shapour Reporter, who
held a high rank as an MI6 agent. Reporterwas always present when the
Shah had his annual meeting with the MI 6 Chief, held during the winter
sports season in Switzerland. According to Fardust, at the large unofficial
banquets that the Shah gave during the fifties and sixties, the only foreigner

invited was the resident The Shah asked Young that MI6 station
MI6 officer.

heads in Tehran, such as Teddy de Haan, Alexis Fforter and Norman

Darbyshire, report to him regularly. Anthony Cavendish claims that 'the more
competent of the M16 representatives in Tehran soon had more influence with
the Shah than the British Ambassadors, which proved an irritant to most
 THE MACMILLAN DOCTRINE 655

ambassadors!' Young recalled that the Shah made sure that 'the generals
were played off against each other and thrown out. The tribes were quietened,
the foreign oil interests totally without political influence . . . the whole Iranian
people were advancing in terms of material welfare/ Young added that 'so
far he remains on top'.'^

Events in the Middle East during the spring and summer of 1957 appeared
to endorse MI6's analysis of the region. On 17 March, the left-wing Syrian
government approved, an approval based 'primarily on anti-western polities',
a contract with a Czechoslovakian firm to build an oil refinery. This led to a
clash with the conservatives and moves within the army against the head of
Syrian Intelligence, Colonel Abd al-Hamid Sarraj. One potential cabal of army
officers was the 'Damascene Group', led by Colonel Umar Kabbani. The
behind-the-scenes struggle failed primarily because of, as Allen Dulles noted,
'the lack of a sufficient provocation for a decisive showdown'. In April,
left-wing army backed by Syria and Egypt attempted a coup against
officers
King Hussein's unpopular regime in Jordan. Or at least, that was what the
newspapers reported. In the event, Hussein's security advisers working with
CIA officers used the opportunity to purge the army of pro-Nasser elements,
while right-wing factions were encouraged inside the Syrian Army. On 7 May,
the Dulles brothers agreed to resurrect Straggle /Wakeful as Operation
WAPPEN. On thesame day. New York Times journalist Cyrus Sulzberger
learned from MI6 CIA was indeed scheming to depose 'the
sources that the
pro-Communist neutralists' with the aim of achieving 'a political change in
Syria'. The CIA was working with MI6 in Beirut, co-ordinating a covert work-

ing group 'composed of representatives of SIS plus Iraqi, Jordanian, and Leban-
ese intelligence services'. On 8 June, the Syrian government announced that it
had uncovered an espionage ring backed by MI6, with the intent of over-
throwing the regime. If this was true, no details were forthcoming.^"
In early June, Nuri es-Said resigned as Iraqi Prime Minister, and two
months later a crisis developed in Syria. On 1 July, the government announced
the existence of an American plot, apparently part of the Beirut-directed
Wappen operation. At the same time, it seems that the CIA station chief in
Damascus had organised his own version of Wakeful. Political action special-
ist Howard 'Rocky' Stone, who had worked with Kermit Roosevelt in Iran

and had recently been involved in operations in Sudan, was brought in to

plan a coup with dissidents inside the Syrian Army. Former President Adib
Shishkali, who had been considered unacceptable as an ally during the Strag-
gle planning, arrived in Beirut, where he assured Roosevelt that he was ready
to assume power with the Populist Party placed in control of Parliament.
The problem was that this was 'a particularly clumsy plot' and was penetrated
by 'Syrian intelligence'. Syrian officers who had been recruited, 'simply
walked into the office of Colonel Sarraj, named the CIA officers, and turned
in the money they had been given'. On 12 August, Sarraj reacted swiftly.
 ^

656 TART SIX: THE MIDDLE EAST

rolling lip thenetwork and expelling Stone and his two accomplices, vice-
consul Francis Jetton and the military attache, Lt-Col. Robert Molloy. Despite
their being caught red-handed, western newspapers dismissed the reports of
a CIA-sponsored coup as Soviet propaganda.^
On 20 August, the British ambassador in Baghdad, Michael Wright, cabled
that recent events in Syria marked 'the consolidation of real power in the
hands of left-wing elements in the Army'. He warned that it was 'extremely
improbable' that any forces in Syria could reverse the trend towards deeper
involvement with the Soviet Union. It seemed to the British that the Soviet
Union, acting in conjunction with Nasser, was fomenting an anti-western
coup in Damascus with the object of establishing a Soviet satellite state that
would straddle oil supply routes, handling upwards of 25 million tons of
Iraqi oil and a further 12 million tons from Saudi Arabia. When the United
States expressed concern at the Syrian situation, Macmillan saw an opportu-
nity 'to consider broader plans to alter the situation in the region'. Capitalising
on Foster Dulles's fears, he instigated a secret correspondence with the aim
of exploring the possibility of MI 6 subverting the Syrian regime. What
followed was the setting up of the 'Syria Working Group' (SWG) with
responsibilities for the exchange of intelligence, military and diplomatic infor-
mation. It also discussed covert operations against Syria.
Macmillan's drive Anglo-American co-operation was
for increased
strengthened by the launch of the Soviet Sputnik satellite on 4 October, which
caused a crisis of self-confidence in the West. Four days later, at a meeting
of the Cabinet, Foreign Secretary Selwyn Lloyd reported that the Syrians
were gaining an advantage because they had Russian help. He believed that
in the light of Sputnik it was now more important than ever to strengthen
Britain's special relationship with the United States. On the same day, at the
request of the chiefs of staff, the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) was asked
to look into the implications of the Russian launch. On the 9th, the JIC
produced a top-secret one-and-a-half-page report which said that besides the
scientific achievement, the Sputnik launch was proof that Russian military
potentialwas outstripping Western expectations.^^
Macmillan saw this as an opportunity to renegotiate Britain's position
with the US on nuclear matters, but was badly shaken by news that reached
him on the 9th. A fire destroyed Windscale's Pile No. 1 reactor, contaminating
milk across a two-hundred-mile radius. Macmillan decided to censor reports
of the disaster in the interests of keeping at bay any obstacle to the revision
of the McMahon Act, which precluded the US from sharing its nuclear tech-
nology with its Nor did the event prevent Macmillan, in the wake
closest ally.
Working Group, from writing on the following day
of the success of the Syria
to Eisenhower in 'what seems to have been a bid to capitalize on the new
American sense of vulnerability in order to promote still further the Anglo-
American relationship'. This was to be achieved, Macmillan hoped, by
 THE MACMILLAN DOCTRINE 657

'pooling our efforts' in the field of nuclear weapons research and 'counter-
propaganda of all kinds', particularly in the Middle East against Nasser's
nationalism. On 13 October, Egyptian troops landed to take up positions in
northern Syria alongside units of the Syrian Army. Nasser thus emerged
as 'the unrivalled champion of Arab rights'. To the Americans, Nasser's
intervention forestalled the possibility of a communist-backed coup, and the
crisis petered out. The British, however, saw Nasser and his communist allies

gaining control of the Middle East. They were already concerned that the new
Iraqi Prime Minister had refused to align his forces against Arab nationalism.^^
In Cabinet on 21 October, Macmillan sought the repeal of the McMahon
Act to facilitate the sharing of nuclear weapons technology and to 'endeavour
to establish, unobtrusively and without provoking the suspicion of existing
international organisations, a basis on which joint Anglo-American machinery
might be created for the implementation of an agreed policy towards the
political, militaryand economic issues which confronted both governments,
particularly in the Middle East'. The details were concluded two days later
at the British Embassy in Washington at a meeting on 'Closer US-UK

Relations and World Co-operation' attended by Foster Dulles, Selywn Lloyd,

Macmillan and the British ambassador, Harold Caccia. At the subsequent
Cabinet meeting of 28 October, Lloyd reported that 'largely as a result of the
personal friendship between the Prime Minister and President Eisenhower,
we had now succeeded in regaining the special relationship with the United
States we had previously enjoyed'. The US ambassador in London, Jock
Whitney, cabled Eisenhower to reassure him that the British attitude was
'best summed up by the statement, Suez taught them they have no future
except in close association with us and they believe Sputniks have taught us
we have no future except in close association with the free world, especially
in the West, and have thus provided the opportunity to make close association
a reality'.
Following Macmillan's successful visit to became
Washington, the SWG
the model for other working groups. Without referring to any allies, and in
Macmillan's case to members of his own Cabinet, nine ultra-secret working
groups were set up, mainly in Washington, dealing with a wide range of
issues 'to concert policy for countering Soviet encroachment'. Three commit-
tees dealt with nuclear matters, three directly with Syria, and eventually with
theMiddle East as a whole, Algeria and Hong Kong, and three covered Cold
War countermeasures - one studying psychological warfare, another covering
strategic controls on trade with the Soviet Union, and one studying economic
warfare measures. On the British side Harold Caccia, a former chair of the
JIC, was responsible for overall co-ordination of the committees.
The Cabinet was told only that the Americans had agreed to amend the
McMahon Act, which would lead to a pooling of resources in the field of
nuclear weapons research and development. Ministers were made aware of
658 PART SIX: THE MIDDLE EAST

new institutionalarrangements with committees for weapons and nuclear

matters but were given no details. They were told that in exchange, Britain
would not press for any change in the representation of China at the United
Nations without the consent of the Americans, who had agreed to regard
Hong Kong as a joint defence problem. The exclusion of the Cabinet became
a normal pattern following dissatisfaction with the input from the ministries.
With the strong support of Cabinet Secretary Norman Brook, the Prime Minis-
ter set up his own working group under Patrick Dean, to consider Britain's

future policies. In an echo of the way Eden ran affairs during Suez, Macmillan
turned to trusted officials rather than ministers for advice and backing on
policy, particularly in the Middle East. The 'hawks' were back in control.^^
The long-standing portrayal of Macmillan as showing a distaste for intelli-
gence and covert operations appears to be a misrepresentation. He ensured
that the JIC chair, Patrick Dean, shared his ambitions for the Persian Gulf
and on a continuing East of Suez role, and, in particular, in recognising that
the real prize 'in respect of British strategy in the Middle East' was Iraq.
Nigel Ashton suggests that Macmillan envisaged 'the possibility at this stage
of some broader Middle Eastern war, in which the US, as the result of the
combined planning for operations against Syria, might be drawn into backing
Iraq alongside Britain against Egypt and Syria'. In early December 1957, the
SWG discussed operational plans for 'possible US-UK military intervention
in the event of an imminent or actual coup d'etat in the Lebanon and /or
Jordan'. Due to the ultra-secret classification given the committee, MI6 and
CIA representatives were excluded; nor did vital logistics information appear
to have played any part in its deliberations. The American Joint Chiefs of
Staff Committee was alarmed by the plans for 'a military campaign with
political overtones comparable in many respects to the United Kingdom-
France-Israeli debacle of 1956'.^^
The hawks were still pursuing Nasser, and in October the courier with
the Egyptian plotters in MI6's Unfasten assassination operation, Farid Sharif
Shaker, met with Mortada el-Maraji, who told him that the new government
would be made up of himself as Prime Minister, Husayn Khayri as Minister
ofWar and Mahmoud Khalil as Minister of the Interior. John Farmer arranged
the delivery of tranches of money to the value of £166,000 to finance a coup
and restore the monarchy. He also gave the shaver MI6 technicians had
packed with explosive to Khalil for delivery to Nasser. Farmer claimed to

feel that there was 'an illusory element in Unfasten' in that the 'full power of
the Service was not engaged in it'. Anthony Verrier records that the 'elaborate
assassination plot' was 'carefully arranged to fail'. These are rather odd state-
ments given that the shaver was actually delivered, though not handed on
to Nasser. It is more likely that these views were post hoc accretions, particu-
larly given what happened next.^'^
On 23 December 1957, Nasser proclaimed the existence of the 'Restoration
 THE MACMILLAN DOCTRINE 659

Plot' at a rally celebrating the first anniversary of the Anglo-French with-

drawal from Suez. Khalil, it turned out, was never really working with the
British and had followed the orders of his Egyptian superiors throughout.
Nasser announced that MI 6 had plotted his assassination, that it had financed
the undertaking to the tune of £166,000, that the money had been paid to
Khalil, who had been loyal to Nasser all along, and that the money had been
handed over to the mayor of Port Said to help the relief of those Egyptians
whose property had been damaged by the British naval bombardment of
the city during the invasion. Immediately after the announcement. Farmer
returned to England. In April 1958, a military tribunal sentenced - in their
absence - el-Maraji and Khayri to life imprisonment.^^

A sign of the new co-operation between the British and the Americans was
the revival of the U-2 programme.
was believed that President Eisenhower was reluctant to allow spy
It

flights over the USSR. In fact, Eisenhower, who had pushed for aerial

reconnaissance during the war, continued to allow flights organised by the

Defense Department but was wary of the CIA-backed programme, except
where it was tasked for specific targets - at which point he became an enthusi-

astic supporter. During 1957, the CIA U-2 programme was in limbo; the
Soviets regarded the programme as provocative, claiming that 'reactionary
circles' in the United States were responsible for aggravating relations with
the West.
The man in charge of the CIA programme, Richard Bissell, initially wanted
to bypass White House control. 'I therefore conceived the scheme of involving
the Royal Air Force in the operation on a completely equal basis in the hope
that we could contrive an arrangement whereby either the British or US
government could approve an overflight independent of the other. It would
be a system that didn't require two signatures to initiate an overflight.' Bissell
had meetings in London with Dick White and M. L. McDonald, the assistant to
the Chief of Air Staff Command for British Intelligence. White enthusiastically
lobbied for the scheme in Whitehall.
In May 1958, an RAF wing commander joined the U-2 project head-
quarters to act as a liaison officer, while in July the RAF selected five of
its programme. Squadron Leaders Robert Robinson and
best pilots for the
Christopher Walker, Flight Lieutenants Michael Bradley, David Dowling and
John MacArthur, who officially resigned their commissions, although they
remained on British payrolls. Working under cover of the Meteorological
Office in London and paid through a secret MI6 bank account, they were
sent to the United States, where they trained on the U-2; Walker was killed
in a crash during training. Robert Robinson later commented that 'in 1958
this was the most secret operation in the world and the British involvement

was most secret of all'.^^

660 PAPvT SIX: THE MIDDLE EAST

U-2 team was sent to supplement the CIA's

In January 1959, the British
'Detachment squadron based at Incirlik, near Adana, Turkey. Because of
B'

strained relations with the Turks, the Turkish government was not informed
that RAF officers were living at the base. Robert Robinson was commander
until May 1960. Allen Dulles and Richard Bissell had worked out the details
of the joint mission agreement, allowing flights over the USSR upon approval
of either the President or the Prime Minister. In practice, 'permission to
overfly proved almost as difficult to obtain from Whitehall as from Washing-
ton'. In the end, Macmillan approved flights for British pilots to fly U-2
missions over the USSR on only two occasions (although there are hints from
pilots of two others). Robinson was the first Briton to fly a U-2 high over the
Soviet Union, principally over two rocket-testing sites. Most of the missions
were 'bread and butter' flights over the Middle East, though there were also
some peripheral SIGINT missions along the Soviet border.^^
As a convenience to the RAF, the mile-long film taken by the U-2 was
processed in New York and then returned to the British. Bissell recalled that
the 'intent was for these missions to be conducted as if they were operations
initiated by the RAF with approvals within the British government and
results going to UK intelligence'. Dick White had been happy to agree to the
scheme in the knowledge that MI6 would 'receive invaluable intelligence at
neither cost nor risk'. He proved to be very clever at exploiting the Service's
hold on CIA intelligence and its distribution within Whitehall.^*
To the disappointment of the RAF pilots, who were being paid at three
to four times thenormal pay scale because of CIA paranoia that they might
be bribed into revealing the secret, the programme lasted just over a year.
Within minutes of the news of the shooting down of American pilot Gary
Powers in 1960, and the revelation that he had been captured alive, the RAF
unit was closed down. Robinson flew to London to see George Ward, the
Air Minister, who 'told me he was prepared to lie to Parliament if he could
get away with it'. In the end, 'he chose to be evasive rather than tell straight
lies'.''

Twenty years after Suez, MI 6 officer Hamilton McMillan was overheard in

conversation with a senior officer talking about the period of 'the horrors'.
The senior officer said that MI6 had been cleaned up by Prime Minister
Harold Macmillan because 'half of them were trying to assassinate Nasser'.
In a second review of the Crabb affair, and in light of the Suez debacle, a secret
report by Cabinet Secretary, Edward Bridges, imposed further restrictions on
MI6 operations.'^
was decided that the Prime Minister had to be informed in advance of
It

any risky undertakings formally approved by the Foreign Office adviser. This
was reinforced by a significant reform in the intelligence machinery, with
the Cabinet Secretary wresting control of the JIC from the Foreign Office and
 THE AAACMILLAN DOCTRINE 661

placing it under the control of the Cabinet Office and the Cabinet Secretary,

'who allowed an Assessment Staff to develop so that the JIC could take the
initiative and prepare papers of interest'. The Foreign Office, in particular,

had been concerned by the cavalier way the Service was allowed to set its
own agenda in the Middle East. The Foreign Office might have hoped to
have strengthened its own control over the Service, but this centralisation of
intelligence formally tied the Service to the interests of foreign policy, as
developed by Cabinet Office and ministerial committees. Used to the byways
of Whitehall, Dick White appears to have been happy with the arrangement,
in that ministers were expected to provide political direction, albeit through
the Cabinet Office. He soon developed a close working relationship with the
Foreign Office, which resurrected its supervisory role and direction in foreign
The JIC now controlled all the requirements of intelligence consumers,
affairs.

and MI 6 Requirement Section officers were officially tasked with interpreting

JIC requirements as 'disinterested evaluators'. This relationship, however,
inevitably downgraded MI6's traditional ties to the armed services.^^
White opposed the robust operations of the Special Political Action (SPA)
section and tried to clean up the Service, issuing a number of edicts that
banned the more unstable special operations, in particular assassinations.
Training for special operations was also curtailed. White further concentrated
on internal reforms and set about the recruitment of a genuine postwar
generation. The 'old-boy network' still played a part but the Service's new
Recruitment Section, under the head of the Directorate of Personnel and
Administration, began to recruit, direct from university, young orientalists -
while a small number of the more experienced officers were sent to study
Arabic at the Middle East Centre for Arab Studies (MECAS) with a view to
taking up some of the senior posts in the region. White also replaced the
area and regional Controller system with four regional Directors of
Production (DPs 1-4) covering Europe, the Middle East, the Far East and
the Americas, and Research, including Y Section, with regional responsibili-
ties related to functions, basing his approach partly on his experience of the

Malayan Emergency where MI6 and MIS had worked together reasonably
well. The 'longstop' controlling station on Cyprus was dismantled, Singapore
was downgraded to a field station, and the regional JICs were abolished as
Britain began to withdraw from former regions of the Empire.^^
Again betraying his background. White put increased emphasis on counter-
intelligence and counter-espionage, with the head of R5 made a junior Director.
The Head of Counter-intelligence (HCI) was made for the first time a member
of MI6's Board of Directors, attending the weekly meeting. Experience had
shown that officers could not be expected both to recruit and run agents, so it
was decided to create three 'Targetting Sections' for eastern Europe, the Soviet
Union and China which would focus on 'third country' targets, such as
students, diplomats and nationals abroad. Developing working relationships
662 PART SIX: THE MIDDLE EAST

with the relevant directorates, the T Sections built up files on potential targets
and liaised with MIS's D Section and national security services.
This modernising process was long overdue, but an indication that White
did not have complete control in the Service came in March 1958 when Jack
Easton finally realised that he was not going to become Chief and reluctantly
took early retirement. In a surprise decision, his replacement as Vice-Chief
was George Young, admittedly one of the most senior officers but also the
most The decision appears to have reflected White's insecurity,
controversial.
since Young had been chosen to appease the hardliners within the Service.
Curiously, White was attracted to Young for his diplomatic skills within
Whitehall, though the Scot had a poor opinion of most civil servants and
held the majority of politicians in contempt. The reality was that those barons
left in place tended to ignore White and his changes, and despite a close

relationship with Macmillan, the Prime Minister often overruled the Chief's
objections to 'disruptive actions'.^^
There was still anger over Suez, and the Prime Minister was determined
on revenge. He preferred to surround himself with relatives and the remnants
of the Suez Group, such as Duncan Sandys, Churchill's son-in-law, the Secre-
tary of State for the Commonwealth and later Defence, and Julian Amery,
Macmillan's son-in-law and Aviation Minister. Despite the changes and the
criticisms, Patrick Dean was allowed to stay on as chair of the JIC until 1960.
Amery in particular saw a chance to renew the battle and remove Nasser
and his influence from the Middle East. His ally was George Young. At this
stage. White did not have enough influence within the Service, in Whitehall
or with the Prime Minister to resist the demand for an interventionist agenda
of political action. In truth. Young came to believe that Macmillan became
'little more than a posturing clown, selling out what had remained of British

freedom of action to the Americans', but he had a good deal of respect for
Amery. It helped that Young's friend, John Bruce-Lockhart, was appointed
Director of Production Middle East with a new Middle East liaison officer
replacing the former Controller, ensuring that few changes took place in
operational activity in the region.^^

Muscat and Oman was an oil-rich sheikhdom, largely controlled by Shell,

with a Sultan who accepted from the British an 'annual subsidy' of £371,000
and twenty-three British officers for the army. It was one of the oil interests
that the British government regarded as 'essential' and in an attempt to
further them sponsored the search for oil in the Oman interior. British forces
occupied the area, driving out the forces of the Imam's rebel brother, Talib
bin Ali, who went into exile in Saudi Arabia, which was hoping to acquire
concessions in the area. The Saudis, who had broken off diplomatic relations
with Britain, withdrew from the Buraimi region bordering Oman in 1957:
'defeated in action, their resentment against Britain smouldered '.'^^
 THE MACMILLAN DOCTRINE 663

An unusual alliance of King Saud of Saudi Arabia, the US oil company

ARAMCO and Nasser backed the Omani Liberation Army in its revolt
against the Sultan. In July 1957, the interior rose against its occupation and
Talib bin All's forces routed the Oman Regiment of the Sultan, providing the
British with further evidence of Nasser's ability to incite trouble in the region.
Macmillan believed that the Americans were involved in backing Talib and
were supporting the Saudis. American intelligence reports to the US Secretary
of State, however, indicated that there was 'no evidence of official support
of the present uprising, and arms smuggling into Oman may have been done
by Talib and his group rather than by the Saudis directly '.^^
Macmillan was also aware that the Americans were concerned about
Britain's willingness to intervene in support of the Sultan, particularly so
when, after claims that only air support would be given, the British committed
ground forces. On 23 July 1957, Foreign Secretary Selwyn Lloyd told the
House of Commons that there was 'no question of large scale operations by
British troops on the ground'. Indeed, he announced that he regarded such
an operation as futile. Macmillan was to spend a considerable amount of
time reassuring Eisenhower that any military operation in the Oman was
justified by the common interest of defeating communism and Nasser.^^
In January 1958, the Under-Secretary for War, Julian Amery, visited
Muscat, with heavy backing from MI 6, to advise on and discuss a fresh
assault on the rebels holed up in the mountains, and lay down the foundations
for an exchange of letters with the Sultan. The problem in combating the
rebels was laid out in a secret February report from the chiefs of staff, who
lamented that 'the difficulty has been to reconcile a sensible military plan
with the need to avoid publicity'. Shelling and psychological warfare were
not working. A British counter-attack including RAF air assaults had reduced
the rebel force to six hundred men, but they continued to occupy the 'Green
Mountain', where they repeatedly beat off British assaults and RAF bombing
missions. In need of a new initiative, Amery turned to an old colleague and
fellow 'musketeer', David Smiley, who was on leave from Stockholm.^"^
Macmillan told the Defence Chiefs that they could proceed with 'discreet
military preparations' for a major assault on the rebel mountain stronghold of
Jebel Akhdar, in an operation known as DERMOT. A Whitehall working party
consulted Smiley and Amery and put to the Prime Minister a possible solution:
if British troop landings would 'raise an international storm' and upset the US,

why not secretly send in the SAS instead as a 'special operation'? The aim was
'to kill the rebel leaders' after getting intelligence on their location. The Foreign

Office was anxious about the risk of exposure for the SAS, 'the success of whose
operations depends on secrecy'. But 'there was a reasonable chance it would
not attract publicity ... it would not be necessary, at least initially, to inform
the US of our plans'. The cover story would be that the hundred strong SAS
squadron was training the Sultan's army.^^
664 PART SIX: THE MIDDLE EAST

Throughout the whole of 1958 the insurgents were kept supplied with
weapons by Saudi Arabia, most of which originated in the United States.
British requests to Washington for restrictions on the use of military hardware
were met with statements that the US could not tell the Saudis how to dispose
of their weapons. 'No other answer could have been expected, for, as was
later to emerge, the rebels were at this time in regular wireless communication

with both the Saudis and the Central Intelligence Agency. '^^
The British insisted that Sultan Sa'id create an intelligence unit within his
military in return for support in suppressing the rebellion. In July, Major
Malcolm Dennison returned to Oman from an MI6 training course in London.
A 'quiet young man of gentle but persuasive charm and tireless persistence
who spoke fluent Arabic', Maj. Dennison had served during the war with
the RAF's 3 Group, supplying resistance movements in Europe with stores
and munitions. Posted to the Middle East, he spent 1947/8 at MECAS in the
Lebanon. Thereafter he held RAF intelligence appointments in Egypt and
Aden before joining, in 1953, the Bahrein Petroleum Company. Disenchanted
with the oil industry, Dennison then joined the Muscat and Oman Field Force
as a political intelligence officer, rising to become a key member of the Sultan's
Armed Forces Intelligence.^^
During the year, the loosely organised military groups were consolidated
into the Sultan's Armed Forces (SAP). This was made possible by military
assistance and a subsidy granted by the British government, arranged by an
exchange of letters in August between the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs
and the Sultan. Col. Smiley was seconded as commander of the SAF, with Col.
Colin Maxwell, a contract officer with considerable experience of counter-
insurgency in the Palestine police, as his deputy. In exchange, the British
extended their RAF rights on al-Masira Island, where a subsidiary of the British
Commonwealth Shipping Company, the mysterious Airwork Services,
subcontracted work from the Ministry of Defence and the Air Ministry to help
organise an air force. Airwork was used during the fifties to transport troops
to trouble spots air crew and pilots. Already, by
such as Malaya and to train
had begun to comment on the strangeness of Airwork's
1949, 'press reports
anonymous charter flights and use of different names and uniforms'.
During the last week of October, Lt-Col. Tony Deane-Drummond, an
SAS veteran commanding 22 SAS in Malaya, arrived in Oman to assess the

situation and to see if conditions were suitable for the SAS. The British
government then took the decisive decision to withdraw an SAS squadron
from Malaya and fly it to Oman. In November, eighty officers and men from
D Squadron arrived under the command of Maj. John Watts. The following
month, Macmillan and the Defence Committee authorised a second SAS
squadron: 'There was a reasonable chance its move to Oman would be
unnoticed.' On 12 January 1959, Maj. John Cooper and further men from 22
SAS in Malaya arrived in Oman.^'^
 THE MACMILLAN DOCTRINE 665

MI6 operated in the area through its liaison with Oman's first European-
style military intelligence G2 Int. co-ordinator and in close co-operation with
the internal security service, which was staffed with contract or seconded
British officers from Military Intelligence, the SAS and MI 6. These officers

often resumed careers in their respective parent services without loss of

seniority or benefits after their period of 'secondment'. Liaison was main-
MI6 head of station in Bahrein, firstly John Christie and then
tained with the
Norman Darby shire. MI6 was also closely involved with the British military
contingent in organising the defence strategy.^°
After a period of further bloodshed and stalemate, with the assistance of
MI6 the revolt was eventually defeated end of 1959 with the SAS
at the

squadron taking the previously impregnable Akhdar or Green Mountain,

where the rebels had hitherto withstood every assault. 'It was', Tony Geraghty
considers, 'a risky, lucky operation and one that was to have prolonged effects
on British defence policy generally. The tide of independence movements in
the Third World was already beginning to run counter to the traditional,
'^^
imperial idea of big overseas garrisons of British forces.

The new regional centre for MI6 operations was Beirut, which Said K. Abur-
ish, a former Radio Free Europe representative, recalled that

as a commercial centre and a home for the Middle East's political

exiles,became a natural base for spies and newsmen to monitor
other Arab countries, oil agreements, the Arab-Israeli conflict
and the manoeuvres of the superpowers. Its very make-up facili-
tated the gathering and transmission of information of all kinds.
For spies it was Switzerland, Tangiers and Casablanca all rolled
into one: a sophisticated, extremely pleasant, neutral country
complete with seedy fleshpots full of whores, pimps, smugglers,
drug dealers and mercenary assassins.^^

The British embassy hosted more intelligence officers (eight) than diplomats.
The chief of station, Paul Paulson, was not an Arabist but he did speak French,
a considerable advantage in the Lebanon, especially as he moved among the
top echelons of Beirut society. Frank Steele worked mainly through the local
security service. The head of the Lebanese security and intelligence service was
Farid Chehab, who often met in the St George bar with Maurice Oldfield, who
tasked him with recruiting agents. Chehab's officers were supplied with money
for information which was used for recruitment. Once targeted, sources were
recruited via intermediary 'cut-outs', usually local agents, or via 'unofficial
assistants, resident British middlemen'. Denis Rowley worked the expensive
restaurants and nightclubs, which cost a great deal of money. MI6's Security
Directorate, however, discovered that his sources often turned out to be
expensive failures, providing useless intelligence.''^
666 TAPvT SIX: THE MIDDLE EAST

Considerable sums were spent by MI6 supporting pro-western and anti-

Nasser politicians in the Lebanon, such as Camille Chamoun, leader of the
Maronite Chrishans. To the leading essayist on Middle East affairs, Robert
Fisk, Chamoun was Tess a Francophile than an Anglophile' - France had
created the Lebanon in 1920 - 'and his contempt for Nasser bore a strange
similarity to the equally irrational hatred expressed for the Egyptian leader
by Anthony Eden at the time of Suez'. Chamoun was leader of his own
National Liberal Party, which included a number of conservative Shia and
Sunni political leaders. Fisk recalled that he 'treated the democracy about
which he boasted to foreign journalists with near contempt when it stood
in the way of his domestic ambitions'. In the 1957 parliamentary elections,
Chamoun's supporters put out propaganda to the effect that the opposition
were in reality Nasser's candidates. In the weeks before the elections, Cham-
oun received suitcases of cash from Harry Hale, who had served with the
British Middle East Office (BMEO) in Cairo and Cyprus before being trans-
ferred to Beirut between 1955 and 1957. Political constituencies were gerry-
mandered to ensure that the most prominent Sunni leader, Saeb Salam, and
the Druze leader, Kamal Jumblatt, were defeated. More cash was given to
returning officers to rig the ballot and ensure the election of a pro-western
government under President Chamoun, who regarded the Nasser message
of Arab unity as a dangerous obsession. The violent street demonstrations
that followed were in protest at these transparent electoral violations.^
In February 1958, Nasser's United Arab Republic (UAR) of Syria and
Egypt was proclaimed as a nationalist opposition to the Hashemite regimes
in Jordan and Iraq. It was seen as evidence that Egypt had outflanked Iraq
in the struggle for Syria, and helped consolidate the ascendancy of Nasser
over the Arab world. The rise of Nasser's pan-Arabism excited the Muslims
of Lebanon, especially the Sunnis, and indirectly led in the spring to a crisis
as tension grew between the Christian and Muslim sects. It was seen as
a reawakening of the old dispute between pro-Arab nationalism and the
pro-western elements. In the following months, Lebanon increasingly became
fragmented into autonomous provinces of pro-government and opposition
communal leaders.
Iraq and Jordan formed the rival Arab Federation to Nasser's UAR, which
proved too much for nationalist and anti-western Arab circles. The failure in
the previous year of Operation Straggle had cost Britain most of what little
influence it had retained in the region, but it had to face yet further losses.
With the exposure of the CIA coup attempt, Syria moved to the left, and the
position of the Iraqimonarchy became increasingly untenable. More money
and weapons were channelled by Paulson's officers through intermediaries
to various Syrian groups ambitious to overthrow successive governments in
Damascus. The Syrian conspirators, used by MI6 as sources of information
rather than candidates for a post-coup government, were often arrested,
 THE MACMILLAN DOCTRINE 667

tortured and executed. Most which those

of these arm's-length operations, in
arrested had no direct contact with MI6 and therefore could not be
officers

traced to the British government, were unsuccessful. The officers involved,

however, were protected from investigation of these failures because head
office, despite the reforms, had little idea of what was going on.^^

Concerned at the continuing instability in the region, planning by the

British and American chiefs of staff for joint military intervention in Jordan
and Lebanon had begun in the winter of the previous year. In the spring of
1958, joint planning was resumed, particularly on an Anglo-American mili-
tary operation in Lebanon known as BLUEBAT, though the British enthusi-
asm for such projects to shore up their waning influence worried the
Americans. Events during the summer initially eased such worries.
The coup d'etat in Iraq in the early morning of 14 July 1958, which swept
away the Hashemite royal family and replaced it with a cadre of officers led
by Brig. Abdel Karim Qassem, was a shock to the British. The embassy was
looted and burned. Prime Minister Nuri es-Said, King Faisal and numerous
supporters were murdered. The crowd, according to the British Council
representative in Baghdad, Norman Daniel, 'angered by British imperialism
and ardent for Nasser's pan- Arab nationalism rather than enthusiastic about
any of the individuals or institutions in Iraq', had caught and killed es-Said
as he fled dressed in women's clothing. After burial he was disinterred,
'dragged through the streets, strung up, torn to pieces, and finally burnt'.
The truth was that, despite his immense popularity, Nasser and his agents
appear to have played no role in the coup. The Oriental Counsellor, Sam
Falle, had seen 'unemployment, widespread poverty and actual hunger'

throughout the country. Despite the oil wealth, economic progress was too
slow and the feudal tribal leaders retained their influence. An acute observer
was a member of the Iraq Development Board and former director of the
Iraqi Petroleum Company, Michael lonides, a wartime MI6 counter-
espionage officer who had run deception operations in Syria and Lebanon.
He had concluded after Suez that 'the gap between Nuri and his people has
been growing fast and when he goes, it will not be just Nuri going out of
power; it will be the end, or the near end of a phase when British influence,
formerly dominant but steadily declining, clung on the last solid pro-British
rock, Nuri Pasha, while the tide of affairs went on, beyond his control and
beyond British control'. For too long, the British had supported 'client' states
in which the people were alienated from decision-making.^^'
MI6's regional Director had in a general way expected the Iraq revolution,
but the chief of station in Baghdad, Alexis Fforter, had failed to predict when
it would take place or who would be involved in the overthrow of Britain's

closest ally in the Middle East. His men on the ground had no idea of the
identity of the conspirators and that the coup would be led by an obscure
brigadier. They had failed to gather any intelligence on the Iraqi Free Officers
668 PART SIX: THE MIDDLE EAST

movement which paralleled that in Egypt. MI 6 had 'committed a classic

intelligence blunder by recruiting agents among its allies and not its oppon-
ents'.General Daghestani, for instance, was arrested during the coup 'not
because he was an MI6 agent, which he was, but because he was a leading
figure in the government'.
In contrast, MI 6 knew in advance of a supposed plot against Jordan's King
Hussein, intended to take place on the morning of 17 July 1958. Macmillan
deliberately misled the House of Commons about the circumstances leading
up to the King's request for the intervention of British forces. He claimed
this had been based on intelligence that the Jordanians had supplied to the
British government and which was corroborated by 'various sources'. In
truth, MI6 had informed the King that a Lt-Col. Mahmud Rusan, supported
by Syria, was behind a coup plot. The intelligence indicated that 'UAR agents
had penetrated not only the West Bank refugee camps but also a considerable
portion of East Jordan', and that they had 'responsive groups within the
security forces including the Army who in all probability would not "fire on
their brothers" once mob action began'. On the 16th, the embassy gave
Hussein an MI6 intelligence digest which was confirmed by a 'reliable source'
in Israel. According to Foreign Office adviser Geoffrey McDermott, MI6 had
produced 'plenty of intelligence pointing towards this violence and indeed
towards the assassination of King Hussein. Unfortunately, we had no precise
information on dates.' As Nigel John Ashton suggests, this whole affair was
'suspicions'.^^
A British parachute brigade landed at Amman airport on 20 July in
response to Hussein's request for support. In the same month. President
Chamoun invoked the Eisenhower Doctrine, despite State Department and
CIA reports that the 'Communist Party has not sought to subvert or overturn
the Lebanese government' and that 'none of the opposition parties or religious
groups have seriously entertained offers of communist collaboration'. Soon
Marines were driving noisily into the centre of Beirut, which in fact 'alarmed
rather than reassured' Chamoun, who within days revoked the invitation.
Thought had been given to sending British land and air forces to the Lebanon
from bases in Cyprus, but Dulles decided that they needed to 'cool down
the British on their enthusiasm for immediate action', principally because the
UK wanted to push the Americans into 'clearing up the whole mid-East
situation' by extending military operations far beyond Lebanon.^'^
The British and American troops finally departed three months later, after
spending their time in Beirut sitting around the airport. Geoffrey McDermott
thought that the British and Americans were able 'to forestall a clean sweep
of the board by Nasser thanks to our immediate intervention in Lebanon and
Jordan'. The reality was that Nasser, because such a move would invite an
instant Israeli reprisal, had no interest in overthrowing Hussein and occupy-
ing the West Bank. The newspapers instead insisted on the existence of a
 THE MACMILLAN DOCTRINE 669

sinister Nasser-led conspiracy to dethrone Hussein. The subsequent move

against anti-Hussein, pro-Nasser Jordanians was organised by Brig. Gen. Radi
Abdallah, the King's aide-de-camp and Minister of the Interior, who 'typified
the third-world intelligence officer, even in the use of dark glasses'. Tall,
charming and charismatic, with 'a weakness for women and money', Abdal-
lah had been trained by MI6 and was in contact with Maurice Oldfield.^^
In the end, the American intervention in Lebanon proved to be counterpro-
ductive and had the effect of removing from power those who had called
the United States to their aid. According to Kim Philby, who was working
from Beirut as a correspondent for the Economist and the Observer as well as
operating as an unofficial MI6 agent, the Service organised 'through its agents
in the SPA group several armed groups for acts of terror against unwanted
activists in Lebanon'. Under its chief of station, Paul Paulson, and his
deputy, Reginald Temple, MI6 established 'direct contact with the ultra-
rightist party leaders and prepared the overthrow government
of the lawful
of Lebanon and helped strengthen the military'. Philby added that from
Beirut the SPA group directed 'a psychological warfare campaign using anti-
government brochures in Iraq, and undermining activities in Egypt and
Syria'.^^

The Eisenhower administration had limited American involvement in

Jordan to providing air cover and transport. Privately, Dulles admitted that

he 'had not wanted the British to go in' and the 'special relationship' proved
to be a 'fragile thing'. Within Whitehall, George Young found that 'frank
discussion of American factors was forbidden', producing 'drift, indifference
and cynicism'. Young believed that

Britain's power and influence vis-a-vis Western Europe and the

Middle East were still sufficient to enable us to choose indepen-
dent and constructive lines of policy had we wanted. Vis-a-vis
the United States and Russia they were minimal: There could
thus be nothing "special" about our relations with the Ameri-
cans and we could no more be a mediator between them and
the Soviet Bloc than could Liechtenstein.^^

At a Cabinet meeting on 22 July 1958 it was decided that military intervention

was not a long-term solution to problems in the Middle East and that Britain
would have to come to terms with Arab nationalism. Macmillan, however,
remained 'obsessed with the idea of getting Nasser and ensured that
rid of
Dean shared and on a continuing East of
his ambitions in the Persian Gulf
Suez role'. The Prime Minister preferred the company of those 'whose views,
however unrelated to what Britain could do, and could not do, provided him
with the romantic gloss on events which his essentially cautious Scottish
soul required'. When Julian Amery warned of Nasserite and communist
subversion in Arabia, 'these were the words which Macmillan heeded, not
670 PART SIX: THE MIDDLE EAST

because of what was said, but because of who said them'. Amery said what
others felt. MI6 was still required to gather intelligence on Egypt and stay
in contact with Nasser's domestic opponents. Brook's recommendations to
the Defence and Overseas Policy Committee, which had some of the same
functions as the American National Security Council (NSC) with regard to
intelligence, were ignored by Macmillan, but the Prime Minister agreed that
the main requirement, as argued by the Cabinet Secretary, was 'to get the
oil out of each of these territories for as long as the inhabitants remain fairly
primitive'.
by the Working Group on US /UK Co-operation
In October 1959, a paper
on the 'Future of Anglo-American Relations' noted that there were 'potential
differences' between the two countries over the Middle East. The United
States was 'overwhelmingly absorbed in the Communist threat' and regarded
'everything else as of subordinate importance', while for the British two other
problems loomed large - 'radical nationalism and the security of our oil
supplies which is threatened both by Communist penetration and by radical
nationalism'. It concluded that these differences were 'reflected in our attitude
towards Nasser and towards the new Iraq as it was to the old'.^^
With Prime Minister Nuri es-Said's disappearance, the Baghdad Pact (later
turned into the Central Treaty Organisation), the bastion of British military
and political influence in the Middle East, disintegrated. Although the British
might have been expected, like the Americans, to be hostile to the new regime,
the government gradually altered its attitude. The fact was that economic
priorities overrode all other considerations with the need to protect oil
supplies. If the new Iraqi leader. Brigadier Kassem, was friendly towards the
British then he would not pose a threat to British interests, particularly in
Kuwait and the Gulf The government advised British Petroleum to
States.
restore relations with the Iraqis. Macmillan cabled Lloyd that there was 'quite
a chance from the character of the men and some of their first statements
that they may turn out to be more Iraqi nationalist than Nasserite'.^^
By 1960, the assertion of British rights in the Persian Gulf had been given
a higher priority in London than their defence against a real or supposed
threat from Kassem's pro-Soviet Iraq. The Middle East Director, John Bruce-
Lockhart, not an Arabist but well respected by the Americans, which was an
advantage, was ordered to penetrate the Nasserite movement, which was
alleged to be threatening British interests in the region. During the summer
of 1960, a conference of the leading heads of station in the Middle East, Alex
Fforter from Tehran, Paul Paulson from Beirut, Norman Darbyshire from
Bahrein, John Christie from Kuwait and Ryder Latham from Turkey, met at
Fort Gosport to discuss how to achieve the objective. This included working
closely with Mossad and SAVAK. Against the wishes of the Foreign Office,
which disliked these kinds of contacts, Nicholas Elliott had helped broker a
deal with the director of Mossad, Isser Harel, for the exchange of intelligence
 THE MACMILLAN DOCTRINE 671

on the Middle East. The CIA's back channel James Angleton,

to the Israelis,
was livid when he heard of the deal, but Dick White persisted with the
relationship, agreeing to the posting of a liaison officer to Tel Aviv.^^
The MI6 Chief did not attend the conference, which reflected the extent
to which Middle East operations were still controlled by the hawks. Since
they had the full backing of Macmillan, White had no choice but to go along
with their decisions. In the new year, the chiefs of staff decided that Britain
'must be increasingly prepared to intervene'. Basing their views on the
successful SAS intervention in Oman, the 'major military role over the next
decade', the chiefs suggested, was strategic mobility - the 'fire brigade'
approach to power projection.^^

The first test came in Kuwait, where Britain feared Iraq might intervene.
BritishPetroleum executives had urged MI6's Controller Middle East to
defend their interests, not least from their American rivals, in Kuwait - 'a
magic name' and 'one of our last really big economic interests abroad', which
produced 40 per cent of Britain's imported crude oil, while the Emir invested
£300 million in British banks in London. In late 1958, John Christie, the MI6
officer in Bahrein and one of the few Arabists in the Service, was dispatched

to Kuwait to open an MI 6 station with the task of convincing the Emir of

Kuwait, Abdullah, and the two-hundred-odd members of the ruling family,
the Al-Sabahs, that their nation's security and their personal wealth depended
upon MI6 creating a counter-intelligence service out of the more or less
useless special branch to infiltrate Kuwaiti society, penetrating opposition to
the regime, especially potential agents in the inefficient Kuwaiti Army.^^
The royal family was informed of MI6's presence and day-to-day liaison
was undertaken with one of the officials, 'a minister with a deserved repu-
tation for negotiating flair'. Many Arab leaders preferred to deal through
MI6 officers rather than the traditional Foreign Office diplomats: 'The "back
channel" permitted conversations to be discreet and honest, and MI6 could
destabilise mutual enemies.' With no overseas diplomats nor any intelligence
agency, Kuwait depended on the British for its intelligence, and apart from
the British intelligence reports, which he trusted as the 'best information he
could get', the Kuwaiti Emir received no reports from any other sources.
For unofficial assistants, Christie relied on staff seconded to the Kuwait Oil
Company from British Petroleum. In November 1960, military strategists at
the Middle East Command (MFC) Aden produced a 'reinforced theatre plan'
for the defence of Kuwait, known as 'Vantage' and later revised as 'Bellringer'.
It utilised part of the considerable resources of the British-owned Kuwait Oil

Company for military use by British forces in the protectorate. Typically, the
Kuwaiti government was kept unaware of the existence of Vantage. With the
territory having little defence against external attack, MI6 organised the visit
of Commander Derek Horsford and his staff from 24 Infantry Brigade in
672 PART SIX: THE MIDDLE EAST

Kenya, who arrived under cover of a party of 'civil engineers' to help organise
the defences.'^'^
Defence correspondent Anthony Verrier believed that the British
promoted the idea of Kuwaiti independence solely in order 'to reveal the
dangers which it brought'. By doing so, independence in the Gulf became
associated with insecurity. Dick White and Christie, through 'quiet and infor-
mal' conversations, were given the task of persuading the Emir that Kuwaiti
independence without British protection, faced with the threat from Iraq,
the continued influence of Nasser and the increased role of Russia, was a
prescription for disaster. MI6 'persuaded, or coerced' Abdullah into signing
an agreement that British troops could be 'invited' to defend Kuwait 'in
circumstances vague enough to justify intervention'. In an informal 'imder-
standing' with the commander-in-chief of the Kuwaiti Army, Sheikh Abdul-
lah al-Mubarak, it was agreed that the Kuwaitis would provide logistical
support for a British task force. Some Foreign Office officials regarded contin-

gency planning for a military operation by British forces as 'no longer politi-
cally or militarily practical'. They, however, were overruled because of
opinion in the City of London, which argued that 'Britain should, at all costs,

take no chances with the oil supply represented by Kuwait', whose oil and
investments were worth at least £100 million per annum to the British
economy.^^
In reality, the threat to Kuwait from Iraq was remote, as MI6 well knew.
David Lee, the Air Office Commanding Middle East in 1961, later wrote in
an official account of 'the Flight from the Middle East' that the British govern-
ment 'did not contemplate aggression by Iraq very seriously'. Similarly, the
threat from the Soviets was largely non-existent, while relations between
Baghdad and the KGB had collapsed. Malcolm Mackintosh, the leading auth-
ority on the Soviets and the liaison between the Cabinet Office and MI 6,
circulated within restricted circles in Whitehall an appreciation of the situ-
ation in the Middle East, which noted: 'For reasons of prestige, or fear, the
Soviet Government felt obliged to intervene as each Middle East crisis

occurred, but her part was always that of an alarmed, puzzled, or even
exasperated protector, who would have preferred a period of political stability
in which long-term plans could gradually mature. '^^
Things came to a head when rumours surfaced that Kuwait wanted to
join the Commonwealth with the aim of replacing the 1899 protectorate treaty
with independent status. On 30 April 1961, Iraqi leader General Kassem
attacked 'the plot of British imperialists to draw Kuwait into the Common-
wealth'. The Cabinet recommended recognising Kuwait's independence but,
in a move designed 'to provoke the Iraqis to stir up trouble', the news was
announced only when Iraq's Foreign Minister, who was known to have a
moderating influence on Kassem, was abroad. On 19 June, Kuwait declared
itself a sovereign nation and six days later, to the surprise of embassy staff.
 THE MACMILLAN DOCTRINE 673

the 'unbalanced' and 'hallucinating' Kassem 'verbally' annexed it as Iraq's

thirteenth province.
MI6 and Military Intelligence accounts of the situation differ. The head
of station in Iraq, Henry Coombe-Tennant, relying on a network of senior
police and Kassem
military figures recruited during the war, 'predicted that
was minded to invade Kuwait'. This was confirmed by the MoD in London,
which reported troop movements towards the border. Baghdad and Kuwait
stations, however, reported that no specific threat could be identified. In the
event, the MI6 officer took on the traditional role of 'watching trains'. On
the 27th the military attache in Baghdad signalled that an Iraqi armoured
brigade 'intended' to move to Basra.^^
Macmillan and the 'hawks' were buoyed by the success in Oman and
wanted to intervene. The United States was too absorbed with the Berlin
crisis in June to be much concerned about Kuwait. The Cabinet was split

over a new military adventure, some fearing a 'Second Suez', while others
wondered whether Britain could afford such an action. In the event, the
Cabinet left the decisions to Macmillan and an 'inner cabinet' of Foreign
Secretary Lord Home and Defence Secretary Harold Watkinson. The PM's
foreign policy adviser, Phillip de Zulueta, argued that 'if we let Kuwait go
without a fight the other oil Sheikhdoms (which are getting richer) will not
rely on us any longer '.^"^

Less than twenty-four hours after the Iraqi leader had announced his
claim on Kuwait, Kuwaiti police began clamping down on an alleged Iraqi
'fifth column'. On the same day, London received its first reports from the
British ambassador in Baghdad, Humphrey Trevelyan, and Col. J. Bowden,

the military attache, indicating that Kassem intended to move tanks south
for an attack on Kuwait. John Christie passed on the intelligence with a threat
assessment to the Emir, even though MI6 never received any information to
indicate that tanks had in fact been moved south. Significantly, RAF photo-
reconnaissance planes based in Bahrein were not used to gather intelligence
on the Iraq-Kuwait border, though they were to carry out missions on a
daily basis from 1 July. On the night of 28/29 June, Bowden stated that the
Iraqis intended 'a crash action'. The next day, alarmed by the rumours and
the lack of warning. Lord Home asked the Emir to make a formal request
for British assistance. In fact, Kassem had ordered the reduction of military
activities to a minimum as he was 'determined not to initiate a military action
in support of the claim over Kuwait and this order would help to prevent any
misinterpretation of Iraqi intentions'. Not a single tank was moved south.
The crucial decision was made on the afternoon of 29 June at the Cabinet
Overseas and Defence Committee based on intelligence from Baghdad which
'at the moment seemed valid' (my italics). Further intelligence was received on
the following afternoon 'which indicated that the movement of tanks from
Baghdad to Basra had probably begun, and that certain naval preparations
674 PAPvT SIX: THE MIDDLE EAST

were The US embassy in Iraq reported that it had 'no direct evidence
in hand'.

that h'aqi armour had been moved south from the Baghdad area'. One account
claims that hitelligence had lost track of a squadron of Iraqi tanks and that
Traqi forces currently present in the Basra area would be sufficient to invade
Kuwait in the absence of any British strength on the ground'. The Foreign
Office issued instructions to the British Political Agency in the Gulf and the
MI6 station in Kuwait to work to secure a formal request for British military
assistance and an invitation for British forces to defend Kuwait. The Political
Agent, John Richmond, an Arabist and idealist, reacted unfavourably to the
request that he 'encourage' the Emir to a correct decision. He thought that
the British intelligence reports were 'too shallow and unclear' and took no
account of the fact that 'the Iraqis might verbally threaten Kuwait but they
will not invade'. John Christie believed that 'in politics, what matters is
interests' and said Richmond's 'personal views were irrelevant Our job
. . .

was simply to carry out the Foreign Office's instructions.' Richmond was
'rebuked' and told to 'keep quiet' by the Foreign Office, while the rest of the
agency staff and MI6 thought that military action would 'enhance Britain's
position in the region'.
The lack of an immediate response from the Emir led Lord Home to dispatch
another telegram on the 30th requesting assent to 'counter-measures'. Attached
were alarmist reports of Iraqi intentions, designed to frighten the Emir into
action. The military adviser to the Kuwaiti government. Col. John Pierce, later
asserted that 'the Ruler was prodded into accepting the proffered British aid'
and that the intelligence reports were the 'decisive factor' in the crisis. Christie
denied the accusation, claiming that MI6 'never dressed up evidence, and never
produced false evidence'. He claimed that it was 'strong advice' from London
which 'tipped him over' into agreeing to military intervention. As Anthony
'^^
Verrier noted: 'It had been a damn'd close run thing.
On 1 July Commander Horsford was on the spot and the 24 Infantry
Brigade Strategic Reserve was in the air - secret night airlifts over Turkey
had been agreed only at the last minute - even before Emir Abdullah had
signed the piece of paper asking for British protection. In the morning the
Kuwait Supreme Council claimed that an Iraqi invasion was an 'unquestion-
able fact' and that some units of the Iraqi Army were 'concentrated on the
border ... in preparation'. In one highly successful operation MI 6 leaked,
then used, a planted story to justify the landing of the Reserve. An MI6
officer operating under cover as an oil executive leaked the story that Iraq's
army was heading for Kuwait with 'the names of the units involved and
their strength' to a correspondent for a leading daily newspaper who was
also closely connected to the Service. The result was a scoop for the correspon-
dent and a lead story that 'helped generate the atmosphere and the pretext
necessary for the British to land'. In fact, there was no military danger to
Kuwait and the British government knew it.^^
 THE MACMILLAN DOCTRINE 675

Shortly after the landing of troops, Richmond was recalled and sent 'on
leave'.John Christie regarded him as 'not sufficiently a strong character to
ensure that British views and interests were sufficiently represented'. On 2
July the Observer reported that the Foreign Ministry in Baghdad had given
assurances that the Iraqi claim to sovereigntywould not be pressed by armed
force. The British, however, had chosen to ignore these assurances as it was
felt unwise to take chances on the unpredictability of Kassem. Planted stories

in the British press throughout August suggested that the Iraqi invasion had
not taken place because local commanders had refused to obey Kassem's
orders. The claims, however, were unfounded. In his memoirs. Ambassador
Trevelyan stated that 'when the British forces appeared in Kuwait, General
Kassem quickly went into reverse, withdrew his tanks from Basra, hid them
some way inland and denied that he had ever moved them'. This was also
totally untrue. Iraqi Army units had moved out of Baghdad, but 'they headed
north to fight Kurdish rebels, not south to invade Kuwait'. Kassem launched
the attack on the Kurds in September, after accusing them of being sponsored
by British agents.^'^
British troops did not leave Kuwait until October 1961, by which time
they were thoroughly weary from the intense heat. The occupation had been
something of a 'shambles' and had shown that British forces lacked the
equipment and resources to sustain such an operation. The same criticisms
were levelled thirty years later during 'Desert Storm'.
When the Americans woke up to what was happening in Kuwait, it
prompted a protest to Dick White from Carlton Swift, the CIA's deputy
liaison officer in London, who told 'C that 'what you're doing is not in
America's interests. The State Department is unhappy with the Foreign Office.
Will you let us see the raw intelligence on which you're basing the policy?'
White provided the intelligence but it seems that the Kennedy administration
was not impressed and, indeed, rejected 'London's overtures for discussions
on joint planning of the region's defence', as Britain's strategy came increas-
ingly to concentrate on the defence of her interests in the Gulf.^^
Equally unimpressed by the Kuwaiti operation was the Cabinet Secretary.
Expressing the view of what Anthony Verrier has termed the 'permanent
government', Norman Brook wrote to the Prime Minister on 4 September
that 'we are fighting a losing battle propping up these reactionary regimes.
Our policy takes no account of the rising tide of nationalism in these countries.
We are bound to find ourselves in the end on the losing side. We cannot win
the propaganda battle against nationalism and it is idle to spend money in
trying to shout down Radio Cairo.'He added: 'The forces of liberalism will
eventually come to the top and when they do, we shall certainly be unable
to keep the Ruler in his place by military means.'
Later in the year, in what seemed evidence of a more realistic policy

towards Nasser, diplomatic relations were re-established with Egypt and the
676 PART SIX: THE MIDDLE EAST

MI 6 stationwas reopened. 'What is less well known/ comments Professor

Donald Cameron Watt, is that the British agents arrested by Nasser were
released 'as part of a deal in which Egypt returned to the London capital
markets'. Unfortunately, such realism did not last long. The apparent success
of the gamble in Kuwait 'bred a new set of illusions about British power and
influence in Arabia which were not dispelled until Aden became the scene
for full-scale urban guerrilla war'; causing, in November 1967, as Brook had
warned, 'an ignominious evacuation'.^^
As part of the increasingly influential pro-Atlanticist faction that made
up the permanent government of senior civil servants, Dick White agreed
with the Cabinet Secretary's analysis. George Young and his acolytes,
however, continued to rail against Britain's 'infection by a moralising bug'.
Young cited Mossad as an exemplary service and urged 'a return to ruthless-
ness and a cessation of cowardice and surrender masquerading as morality'.
The Chief had had to reject a proposal during the Kuwait operation to kidnap
a known terrorist responsible for bomb outrages, and had been shocked at
Young's approval, contrary to his orders, of a 'wet job' in Iran. Admitting
that promoting Young had been his biggest mistake. White persuaded his
vice-chief to retire, though, as we have seen, realising that he would not
become Chief, Young already 'wanted out'.^^

'Just as I experienced how MI6 officers had been hopelessly

the pre-war
out of their depth in the post-war world,' Young recalled, 'I saw my own
experience becoming less relevant as younger men faced new problems and
'^^
new techniques.
CHAPTER 31

THE MUSKETEERS
IN YEMEN

Following the disastrous invasion of Suez, British foreign and defence policy
in the Middle East was revised and found expression in the 1957 Defence
White Paper, which laid emphasis on bases east of Suez. In that year,
Macmillan transformed the insignificant base in Aden - the site of a massive
British Petroleum refinery which dealt with the oil production from Kuwait
- into the region's bastion of military power, with the Royal Navy and RAF
commanding the approach to the Red Sea and the Suez Canal. The British
intervention in Kuwait helped reinforce the strategy.
Parallel to this decision, in order to secure Aden's future, Macmillan organ-
ised the six tribal chiefs of the Western Protectorate bordering the colony - others
joined two years later - into the Federation of South Arabia. Two factors under-
mined its chances of success. Tt was', Fred Halliday notes, 'an overtly British
fabrication', financially dependent for its existence on Britain, with a million
pounds paid out in bribes. The weakness was the 'nationalist movement' which
'ultimately destroyed it'. The establishment of the Middle East Command (MFC)
headquarters in Aden in 1960 helped fuel the fires of revolution.'

The 1962 Defence White Paper, 'The Next Five Years', stated that Britain
would continue to back the local sultans in South Yemen and the Gulf, and
that the Aden base would be the permanent headquarters of this strategy.
With the United Kingdom itself and Singapore in the Far East, Aden was to
be one of the three key points in Britain's global military deployment.
* * >f
678 PAPxT SIX: THE MIDDLE EAST

On 26 September 1962 the Aden Assembly voted through the deal uniting
Aden to the hinterland in the Federation. What no one in Aden knew was
that in North Yemen on the very same night a line of tanks was rumbling
depose the Imam. Had they arrived a day earlier,
into the capital Sana'a to
the vote would not have taken place.
The medieval kingdom of North Yemen lay in the south-west of the
Arabian peninsula, with Saudi Arabia to the north and British-occupied Aden
and the colony of South Yemen to the south and east. Relations in North
Yemen between the warring tribes and the centre were never secure, while
the Imam controlled the country, where over 80 per cent of the population
were peasants, through bribery, an arbitrary and coercive tax system, and a
policy of 'divide and rule'.^
In 1958, the Imam joined the north to the United Arab Republic (UAR)
on a federal basis, but disillusion followed, and when Syria seceded from
the UAR in September 1961, the Imam broke with Egypt. His son,
Muhammed Al-Badr - 'an amiable idealist' - was able, however, to introduce
a limited number of reforms when the Imam left for Rome for a health cure.
On his return, subject to fits and reliant on morphine, the Imam
of insanity
never regained control. Opposition came from nationalist elements in the
army which, with the help of Egyptian Intelligence, made strenuous efforts
to assassinate the Imam. CIA officials 'still smile happily at the memory of
the intercepted telephone call between the palace and a cleaning woman
recruited to place a bomb under the Imam's bed, and her Egyptian case
officer. She had some difficulty in reading the instructions, and the panic-

stricken officer was attempting to talk her through the exercise.'^

The plot failed, and the Imam passed away peacefully on 19 September
1962. Al-Badr took over but his reign lasted only one week. He lacked the
ability to move decisively and, through his friendship towards Egypt and
progressive ideas, was thought unsuitable for succession by the traditionalist
leaders of the Shi'ite Zaydi sect. 'He was considered unsound in canon law,
had a slight limp which rendered him physically imperfect, and his personal
conduct, particularly his drinking, did not meet the required standard of
piety.'^

On Imam's palace,
the evening of 26 September tanks surrounded the
headed by Col. Abdullah al-Sallal, whom al-Badr had released from prison
and appointed the new chief of army staff. Al-Sallal became first President
of the Yemen Arab Republic (YAR). The Nasserite group that executed the
coup came from a cabal of eighty left-wing army officers within the four-
hundred-strong officers' corps, who had been 'formed by Arab nationalism'.
Although carried out by an obscure grouping, the coup seems to have been
popular. Inspired by promises of Soviet aid in establishing Yemen as a
people's republic, al-Sallal was confident of support from Aden and the
Federation of South Arabia.^
 THE MUSKETEERS IN YEMEN 679

Overnight, Britain's secure base in Aden was put in peril. The CIA
assessed that the Egyptians would land twelve thousand troops and that
there would be government within seven to ten days. Egyptian troops
a stable
did indeed pour into Sana'a, the Yemeni capital, and with Cairo Radio urging

nationalism and revolution in Aden, began to call for vengeance against the
South Arabian tribal chiefs, who immediately sought British protection. The
Foreign Office wanted intelligence on the area, but MI6, whose PI 7 section
dealt with Aden, had none, being totally reliant on inadequate Colonial Office
reports. The Service's officer in Aden, Terence O'Bryan Tear, was not well
informed about the situation, having been surprised by the coup, and knew
little about Egyptian activities. Intelligence-gathering in the area had been

the responsibility of MIS and the Aden Intelligence Centre, which was badly
served by the local Special Branch.^
The first westerners into Yemen were a group of journalists, including
the Telegraph's Eric Downton. He recalled that an MI6 agent in Aden, using
the familiar cover of press liaison official, 'tried to scare us off by saying our
lives would be in danger'. The journalists managed to obtain an interview
with President al-Sallal - who told them that al-Badr was dead - and 'to the
astonishment of the British authorities' arrived back in Aden in a Soviet
aircraft flown by a Russian pilot. The reports of the Imam's death turned out

to be premature. In fact, he had escaped his ruined palace dressed as a woman

and had made for the mountains, where he began organising a royalist coun-
ter-force. In the royalists' favour was the impregnability of the mountains

and the ease with which passes could be dominated, but their troops were
untrained and badly equipped. Shortly after the coup. King Hussein of Jordan
visited London, where he met with Air Minister Julian Amery. He urged:
'Don't let your government recognise the Republicans. Nasser just wants to
grab Saudi Arabia's oil but the Royalists are tough.' Hussein and Amery
agreed that MI6 asset and serving Conservative MP Neil 'Billy' McLean
should tour the area to deliver informed reports to the Prime Minister.^
A decision had to be made about whether to recognise the new republic,
but 'many of us in the Government,' Amery recalled, 'had doubts whether
this was good advice'. McLean, who came to be known by his constituents

as 'our MP for Yemen', also had the gravest doubts. There were reports, but
they were not well confirmed, of resistance in the Yemen.' McLean decided
to go to the region himself to make an assessment. He 'did not have to dig
too deeply into his pocket if at all because he flew by RAF plane from
Northolt to Jordan where he saw an "old friend". King Hussein'.^
By 5 October, a royalist radio station was already operating from Saudi
territory. Three days later The Times reported that three Egyptian warships
were discharging tanks and troops were guarding airfields. On the same day
came reports of arms reaching the royalist tribesmen through the Minister
of the Interior, Sharif Saleh Ibn Hussein of Beihan, one of the small emirates
680 PART SIX: THE MIDDLE EAST

belonging Federation of South Arabia. 'Clever, adventurous and loyal',

to the

the Sharif had been an impoverished tribal leader dependent upon British
subsidies, but in late 1962 he became the sudden recipient of considerable
supplies of money and arms - Saudi funds, channelled through the Aden
branch of the National and Grindlays bank. It also became apparent that 'he
was a front man for a British Intelligence operation'.^
MI6's former Vice-Chief, George Young, who was now a banker with
Kleinwort Benson, was approached by Mossad to find an Englishman accept-
able to the Saudis to run a guerrilla war against the republicans and their
Egyptian backers. 'I can find you a Scotsman,' replied Young. He then intro-

duced McLean to Brigadier Dan Hiram, the Israeli defence attache, who
promised to supply weapons, funds and instructors who could pass them-
selves off as Arabs; a strategy that the Saudis eagerly grasped. They had few
pilots of their own and the whole air force was grounded in late 1962 when
a number of fliers defected to Egypt.
On McLean saw King Saud, who told him that Nasser's
23 October,
intervention in Yemen was part of a broader plot, in league with the Russians,
to undermine the security of the Arabian peninsula. He wanted Britain's

support, secretly if necessary. When Kennedy

the British agent in Aden,
Trevaskis, who had known McLean in Eritrea early in the war, visited London
for discussions, he found that

memories of Suez seemed everywhere and there was a

to lurk
pervasive anxiety lest we should judge the situation wrongly
and end up in splendid isolation at the side of a discredited
reactionary regime against progressive Arab socialism. There
was little disposition in official circles to regard revolutionary
regimes as automatically representing the wave of the future,
though in the early days of the Yemeni revolution it was argu-
able that the Republican regime had come to stay and would
have to be recognised in the long run.

Trevaskis brought with him proposals for urgent reform so that the Arabs
could work towards an independent South Arabian government. He warned
that 'subversion, sabotage and terrorism were just around the comer', but
his proposals 'disappeared quietly into the distant mists of Whitehall'.
McLean arrived in Aden, where following the proclamation of the Yemen
Republic riots broke out. He met with the Governor and Commander-in-
Chief, Sir Charles Johnston, and his aide-de-camp, Flt-Lt Antony Boyle, who
wanted Aden 'to protect its back'. McLean told them was 'sceptical
that he
about the current newspaper reports, which tended to discount Royalist oppo-
sition . . . and was anxious to learn the facts'. With the permission of Sharif
Hussein, McLean crossed the border into Yemen 'to see the situation for
himself. He discovered that the whole of the east of Yemen was held by the
 THE MUSKETEERS IN YEMEN 681

tribes, with heavy fighting in the west led by relatives of al-Badr. The main
problem was the Egyptian aircraft, which were strafing the poorly equipped
tribesmen.
On 23 October, the British Cabinet decided in principle to recognise the
republic. At the beginning of November, McLean again talked with King
Saud and cabled Foreign Secretary Alec Douglas-Home (formerly Lord
Home), who was under strong US pressure to recognise the new regime,
urging him to delay the decision. In an effort to put further pressure on the
British government, McLean arranged for a group of journalists to be flown
to Amman to meet with King Hussein, and then on to Riyadh to see Crown
Prince Faisal. Included in the small group taken by Jeep into the Yemen
mountains of north-west Yemen were Eric Downton and Kim Philby, on his
last assignment for the Economist and the Observer. Downton later suggested

that 'it would be fascinating to be able to compare the reports Philby wrote
on his Yemen excursion for MI6 (which was backing the royalists) and the
KGB (which was backing the republicans)'.^^
Relations between Saudi Arabia and Egypt were broken off altogether on
6 November and 'Saudi guns and gold began to flow over the border to
the Yemeni Royalists'. On the same day. Prince Abdurrahman, the Imam's
youngest uncle and roving ambassador, arrived in London, warning that
'Cairo and Moscow are plotting the future of my country' and 'of the very
serious consequences for the entire Arabian peninsula should they succeed
in their schemes'. A week later in the Commons McLean reported that Nasser
'believes that the Yemen could give him an excellent base from which to
extend the Arab socialist revolution into Saudi Arabia, perhaps through a

military coup d'etat there, and then perhaps later into Jordan and the Persian
Gulf. Also he would be in a position to turn the heat on us in Aden.'^^
The lobbying had an effect. Macmillan recorded in his diary (14 Novem-
ber) that he urged President Kennedy to delay recognition. Kennedy, with
'his usual charming frankness', replied: 'I don't even know where it is.' He

felt, however, that Saudi Arabia was endangered by its involvement and that

recognition could be traded for a withdrawal of Egyptian troops. At the end

of the month, the director of the CIA's Middle East Division, James Critch-
field, was in London en route to Beirut for a regional conference on Soviet

activities in the region. He told Dick White: 'The Russians are waging war

across Arabia. We've got to stop them. Their influence is everywhere and
it's spreading down to the Gulf.' White was pleased that the Americans

were now against Nasser but was wary of being pressured, particularly by
McLean's para-diplomacy, into taking action, as he believed that the Service
should not get dragged into the conflict.'^
On 4 December, after visiting King Hussein and Prince Faisal - the Saudi
Minister of Defence and real power behind the throne - McLean again crossed
into the Yemen. He met with the Imam and the director of the royalist armed
682 PART SIX: THE MIDDLE EAST

forces. Prince Mohammed Hussein, who informed him of the desperate need
for arms, ammunition and anti-aircraft guns. Back in Aden, he sent a telegram
to Amery, reporting that 'at least half the country was in Royalist hands and
that it would be a ciisaster if the Government recognised the Republic'. McLean

concluded that the royalists could defeat the fifteen thousand Egyptian troops.
In London, he reported to the Foreign Secretary, 'advocating immediate British
aid'. McLean then began to canvass the Cabinet for support.
In a blow on 19 December the US formally recognised the
to Britain,
republican regime. The CIA had attempted to persuade Faisal to offer Nasser
a deal, whereby Russian aid would be replaced by Saudi money. Faisal,
however, refused, regarding Nasser as the 'devil incarnate' and his revolu-
tionary creed as 'a sinister carrier of Marxist plague'. Officially, the Americans
viewed the Gulf as a British concern, but Aden and South Arabia were
'another matter'. Commenting in 1966 in the light of his experiences as
commander of the United Nations observer force in Yemen, Maj.-Gen. Carl
von Horn observed that

beneath this apparently logical decision by the Americans to

recognise the Republican regime lay a baser policy aimed at
embarrassing the British in southern Arabia, linked with a desire
to further theirown oil interests in the Arabian peninsula . . .

under a cloak of a benefactor and supporter of national aspir-

ations in the Middle East, there was a desire to cut the throat
of British influence in the Persian Gulf.^^

Also on the 19th, Macmillan was visited by McLean with his report.
Armed with Saudi intelligence which suggested that the royalist tribes
were effectively harassing the Egyptians, Amery persuaded the Prime Minis-
ter that the Americans had exaggerated the threat of Egyptian tanks against
the tribesmen. He argued that Nasser's subversion could be halted. The tribes
needed 'our help' and they 'will win the war'. According to Tom Bower,
Macmillan became increasingly sceptical about MI6's intelligence-gathering
capabilities and its reliance on the Americans. 'Intercepts from GCHQ of
messages between Egyptian commanders in the field vindicated Amery's
stance', though the only source on the spot, Christopher Gandy in Ta'izz,
dismissed the threat of the royalists. He thought that thehawks such as
Amery were 'moved by nostalgia for lost causes'. Supported by his officials.
Alec Douglas-Home was initially against backing the royalists and rejected
the Saudi report, arguing that the tribes could only organise minor skirmishes.
On 28 December, he suggested recognising the republicans so as not to antag-
onise the Egyptians, with whom relations had recently been normalised, and
in order to stop Nasser's attack on Aden. When Douglas-Home stated that
'the Royalists have no hope', Amery and his friends in MI6 saw it as another
example of his appeasement.^^
 THE MUSKETEERS IN YEMEN 683

On 7 January 1963, three days before the crucial Cabinet meeting on

recognition of the new was assessed
regime, McLean's 'intelligence report'
by the Cabinet Overseas and Defence Committee, attended by the Prime
Minister, the Foreign Secretary, Minister of Defence Peter Thorneycroft,
Amery, Duncan Sandys and Hugh Fraser. The committee decided to advise
the Cabinet not to recognise the new regime, arguing that Britain could not
allow Egypt to have its way in the Yemen, as it could not lose control of the
Gulf to the Americans. In order to avoid a split with the US, Britain could
not give direct support to the royalists and any operation would have to be
at arm's length. The Cabinet's endorsement of the decision was 'not liked by
the American Government'. Kennedy cabled Macmillan that Nasser 'could
not afford to pull out' of Yemen, and to allow the war to continue 'will
increase violence and endanger Saudi Arabia'. Nor was it welcomed by White,
who had banked on the support of the Foreign Secretary, but Amery and
several senior MI6 officers regarded White as weak and in no position to
decline a Cabinet decision.
During January fighting broke out between the Saudis and the Egyptians,
whose planes bombed Saudi border posts and dropped arms to resistance
groups operating against Saudi Arabia. As veteran opponents of British inter-
ests, the Saudis had broken off diplomatic relations with Britain following

Suez, but thanks to McLean's rapport with King Saud, relations were restored
following the threats from Nasser.MI6 did not have a station in the capital,
Riyadh, but were on intimate terms with several advisers to the
its officers
royal family and 'attempted to persuade them of the logic of Macmillan's
counter-revolution in the Gulf. Egyptian intelligence officers were said to
be recruiting Yemeni tribesmen and providing money and rifles. The
ambassador reported that the Saudis intended to support a royalist counter-
offensive against Nasser.^°
'The American thesis is that the one way of getting Nasser out of the
Yemen is to give him Governor-General
his victory,' Sir Charles Johnson, the
ofAden, complained when he cabled Macmillan on 8 February. This was no
longer seen as an option by the Cabinet, particularly after the outbreak of
agitation by pro-republican campaigners following Aden's decision to join
the Federation. The British were forced to bring in colonial specialists to quell
the disorder. The appointment of a Special Branch Malaya specialist and the
current Deputy Inspector-General of the Colonial Police, Nigel Morris, was
followed by a new high commissioner, Richard Turnbull, who had led the
anti-guerrilla campaign in Kenya. On the 23rd, British positions in the Federa-
tion were attacked by Yemeni tribesmen. At the same time, five thousand
Egyptian troops began the 'Ramadan Offensive' into the royalist-held moun-
tains. Two days later. Cabinet members railed that 'American policy is a

menace .The State Department wishes to save Nasser from the conse-
. .

quences of his adventures. '^^

684 PART SIX: THE MIDDLE EAST

Duncan Sandys and JulianAmery urged retaliation. Various intelligence

personnel, including senior MI6 figure Nicholas Elliott, began 'dropping
hints' to people such as the founder of the SAS, David Stirling, that 'some-
thing needed to be done'. Washington, however, complained that British
policy endangered the stability of Saudi Arabia, but Macmillan was not to
He 'allowed his cronies to plan an Arabian counter-revolution'
be deflected.
and appointed Amery his minister for Aden, with a remit to covertly organise
British support for the royalists. Working from his office at the Ministry of
Aviation, Amery urged a reluctant White to undertake operations in the
region. The Chief argued that the Service's priority was to supply intelligence,
not to indulge in 'dubious special actions'.^^
McLean went out to Yemen for the third time on 1 March 1963 and heard
that the Jordanians and Saudis were under pressure from the Americans to
discontinue support of the royalists. Once in the Yemen he found that morale
among the guerrillas was high, even though Prince al-Hussan's situation was
poor, with his lines of communication and supply cut. A royalist delegation
visited Israel and shortly afterwards 'unmarked Israeli planes made about
fifteen flights from Djibouti to drop arms over royalist areas'. In mid- April,

McLean flew to Aden, from where he cabled the Foreign Secretary, stressing
the need for immediate support. The Saudis quickly stepped in with a small
supply of arms and ammunition, releasing stocks obtained in the form of aid
from the United States. Several million pounds' worth of light weapons,
including fifty thousand Lee Enfield rifles, were secretly flown out from an
RAF station in Wiltshire. In order to mask their true origin, they were landed
in Jordan for onward transportation via Beihan. By the end of the month,
the royalists had regained some of the lost territory.
A meeting was held at the end of the month at White's, with McLean,
David Stirling and Amery. Also present were Col. Brian Franks, the
driving force behind the reformation of the postwar SAS Regiment who
worked closely with MI6, and Alec Douglas-Home. The 'unofficial minister
of foreign affairs', McLean, said that 'with a little bit of help, the tribes now
fighting under the Imam could easily hold off the Egyptians'. Stirling thought
that it was clear that Amery, McLean and Douglas-Home (the latter had
made an about-turn in his views) had already decided that what was required
was an unofficial operation. The Foreign Secretary had been told that 'it
M
would take 16 six months to put agents into the Yemen and even then they
might not have the required talent for the operation'. Informed that there
could be no official SAS involvement, Stirling and Franks were there to
recommend someone who could organise a mercenary operation. They
approached Col. Jim Johnson, a commodity broker at Lloyd's with the firm
Thomas Nelson, who had recently retired from command of the 21 SAS (TA).
Stirling also brought in Lt-Col. John Woodhouse, commander of 22 SAS.^"^
McLean, Johnson and Stirling were introduced by Amery to the royalist
 THE MUSKETEERS IN YEMEN 685

Foreign Minister, Ahmed al-Shami, who wrote out a cheque for £5,000 made
out to the Hyde Park Hotel, whose managing director was Brian Franks.
Cash for the operation was kept in one of the hotel's safe-deposit boxes.
Franks invited Johnson to undertake an operation to destroy the Egyptian
MiG aircraft which were strafing the poorly armed tribesmen. The royalist
Minister of the Interior, Abdel Kerim el-Wazir, said that the priority was to
destroy the MiGs on the ground at Sana'a airport.^^
The SAS men operated through Stirling's Television International Enter-
prises (TIE) company, which set up a cover organisation. Rally Films, and
sometimes under cover of a locust control unit. Johnson worked from the
basement of Stirling's office in Sloane Street (next to an MI6 safe house), with
a secretary, Fiona Fraser, daughter of Lord Lovat. The Saudi Prince Sultan
financed the project with gold bullion. There was an absurd scenario in which
the organisation was almost penniless, while thousands of pounds of gold
were stacked up in the office.
On 12 April 1963, Stirling flew out to Aden as the guest of an old friend.
Sir Charles Johnson, another member of the White's mafia. He discussed the
situation with the deputy high commissioner, Kennedy Trevaskis, and told
Tony Boyle that he intended to send support to the royalist forces. Son of
Marshal of the RAF Sir Dermot Boyle, Tony was in Aden on a ground tour
in the middle of his RAF career. He agreed to co-operate by helping Stirling's
people as they passed through Aden.^^
During May, McLean recruited David Smiley, fresh from command of
the Sultan ofOman's armed forces which had suppressed the revolt during
the Green Mountain campaign. Simultaneously, Stirling brought in Johnny
Cooper, who had been under a private contract in Oman as second-in-
command of the Muscat Regiment during the assault against the Saudi-
backed rebels on Jebel Akhdar. Cooper had been Stirling's driver during
commando operations behind German lines in the desert war, and after the
war commanded A Squadron SAS in Malaya. Cooper met with Stirling,
Phillip Horniblow, medical officer to 21 SAS Regiment (TA), and Tony Boyle
in Bahrein.^^
and Cooper moved on to Paris for a meeting with
In early June, Stirling
a French friend, Pierre de Bourbon-Parma, in order to make contact with
former French members of the SAS and officials of the Deuxieme Bureau.
They were seeking Arabic-speaking recruits, principally mercenaries who
had served in Algeria (unfortunately it was later discovered that the Algerian
dialect was not fully understood in Yemen). Two brutal mercenary
commanders who had served in the international forces in Katanga and the
Congo (Amery and McLean had been active in the right-wing Katanga Lobby,
supporting British interests in uranium in the area) were recruited to run
separate operations. Col. Roger Falques was an enigmatic ex-legionnaire, who
had survived a Vietminh prison camp, while Bob Denard had served in
686 PART SIX; THE MIDDLE EAST

Indochina and Algeria. Falques set up an office in Paris to recruit mercenaries,

who were to be under Denard's command. At another meeting with Falques,
McLean, Johnson and Cooper hammered out the details of an in-depth
reconnaissance mission. The French were willing to take an active part in the
Yemen operation, since they opposed American policies in the Gulf. They
helped route aid through their African enclave in Djibouti.^^
Cooper's brief was to lead a party of four French and four British soldiers
into the mountains of North Yemen to establish contact with the royalist
army with aim of destroying the Egyptian aircraft at Sana'a. Back
the
in London, Cooper contacted John Woodhouse, commanding officer of 22
SAS, who arranged for three volunteers - Sergeant Geordie Dorman,
a mortar expert. Corporal Chigley, a medical orderly, and Trooper Richard-
son, a firearms expert - to be granted a month's leave to join the expedition.
Although this was an unofficial operation, when Cooper was about to leave
for the Yemen, the Commonwealth Secretary, Duncan Sandys, telephoned
Stirling to stop it. Under pressure following rumours surrounding the
Duchess of Argyll's divorce and the Profumo affair, Sandys was worried
lest the operation prove embarrassing to the Conservative government.

Stirling ignored him and Cooper left for Libya, where he met up with the
French contingent before flying on to Aden. In fact, Sandys' intervention
appears to have been a public relations exercise designed to hide government
support.^^
The office of the adjutant of 21 SAS Volunteers (TA) in London, Capt.
Richard Pirie, was used as a 'clearing ground' for the British mercenaries.
According were paid £250 per month through the
to Pirie, the mercenaries
Foreign Office and Ministry of Defence (which, naturally, denied
it). In Aden,

Tony Boyle evolved a system for passing mercenaries through Customs, while
Sharif Hussein organised a network of safe houses in Beihan from which
operations into the Yemen could be launched. As the traffic increased, SAS
personnel such as John Woodhouse were seconded to the staff of the Federal
Regular Army with others, including Peter de la Billiere, employed in under-
cover roles. A junior intelligence officer, de la Billiere attended the daily
intelligence meeting chaired by the senior Political Officer, George Hender-
son, along with Ralph Daly, Robin Young, Bill Heber-Percy, James Nash and
Michael Crouch.'^
It was around this time, June 1963, that serious opposition first appeared
in Aden with the formation of the National Liberation Front (NLF), a loose
alliance of pro-republican tribal leaders and nationalists who organised in
the northern capital of Sana'a. De la Billiere felt that the British had done
little to create a unified state and that, in consequence, the Arabs 'never
developed any particular loyalty on the NLF was lacking,
to us'. Intelligence
and 'the only effective way we had on our side was by
of keeping the rulers
bribing them with arms, ammunition and money'. MI6 had one permanent
 THE MUSKETEERS IN YEMEN 687

officer in the Governor's office, with others drafted in as required. A colonial

administrator who acted as liaison with MI 6 recalled that he gave them 'a

general idea of what results I wanted', which could include getting 'someone
killed'. Mainlv, the operations consisted of 'discrediting people, we would
find out those people who were in the pay of Xasser, receiving money from
organisations in Egvpt, and the rulers might kick them out of the country'.
Those deported were sent over the border to the YAR.'^^
On 14 June, using journalistic co\'er arranged by an MI6 asset, the foreign

editor of the Daihj Telegraph, S. R. Top' Pawley, Smiley tle\v out with McLean
to Jeddah where Amery introduced him to Prince Faisal and the Minister of
Defence, Prince Sultan. Smiley's task was to tour royalist areas and write a
report on the military situation, with an assessment of how the Saudis could
help. After spending three months there. Smiley called for a training and
supply operation, and the use of European mercenaries. He summarised the
royalists' main failings as being, firstly, their tactics, which were 'a waste of
men and effort' - instead of concentrating on the towns they should be
attacking vulnerable lines of communication; secondly, 'the lack of co-ordina-
tion',which would be solved by the use of wireless; thirdly, the inadequate
supply system. With a bount\^ of £5,000 on his head, Johnny Cooper, who
had tried to blow up Egyptian aircraft but had been restrained bv Yemenis
who feared reprisals, had completed his own reconnaissance. It determined
that the republicans could not win as long as the royalists continued to fight.
Smiley presented his recommendations to Faisal and Sultan, who both agreed
to cover the costs of the project. The Israelis, as well as the Iranians, also
showed a willingness to help.-'"
Details soon reached Dick WTiite, who was receiving intelligence that
'everyone is free-booting', including 'the ADC to the governor-general in
Aden'. One ex-MI6 man recalled that the proposed Yemen operation was
the focus of fierce debate: many senior officers wanted the government to
call a halt to it, but thev lost the argument. 'In those days, there were just
too many people in SIS who were a law unto themselves.' White was reluctant
to help, but the Prime Minister instructed the Service to aid the royalists,
while the Director Middle East, Paul Paulson, was told to assist Amery. An
MI6 task-force was headed by the Assistant Political Adviser to the Middle
East Command in Aden (the MI6 cover post), Hubert O'Bryan Tear, an
experienced intelligence officer but with no knowledge of the Arabs. He was
aided in London by Desmond Harney and Dennis Womersley, a recent head
of station in Baghdad. PI 7 co-ordinated the supply of weapons and persomiel
to the royalists, while MI 6
were sent to the Aviation Ministry. John
reports
da Silva, formerly head of station in Bahrein and responsible for the Serv ice's
involvement in the Oman operation, organised MI6's commitment. He
supported Amery as 'a legitimate interest'. To strengthen liaison with the
Saudis, John Christie, fresh from his success in Kuwait, opened a new station
688 PART SIX: THE MIDDLE EAST

in Jeddah, where he developed a back channel to the monarch and Kamal

Adhan, the Saudi chief of intelligence/^^
In July, the Egyptians launched a general offensive on all fronts with the
aim of destroying the royalists as an effective fighting force. Cooper's team
undertook basic training and engaged in a firefight which indicated that
the Egyptians were running the campaign. Returning home. Cooper briefed
Stirling and Johnson, and various members of MI6. They concluded that
Nasser's objective was to destabilise Saudi Arabia to the north, with an eye
on the oilfields. McLean, too, returned to London at the beginning of August
and delivered a report to the government, urging an increase in the flow of
Saudi arms, more British supplies to be parachuted in by unattributable
aircraft, and the dispatch of western mercenaries, particularly experts in the
use of mortars, artillery and explosives. In Aden, Amery met covertly with
the new high commissioner, Trevaskis, to discuss plans for the secret war.
Not long after, Tony Boyle resigned from the RAF and promptly joined Jim
Johnson's operation in London.^^
The Egyptian-backed republican offensive failed, despite the use of gas.
Smiley had learned that the Egyptians had used gas on 8 June 1963 against
the village of Al Kawma. On his return to London, McLean delivered a
report on the deployment of gas. During his first tour Smiley had discovered
fragments of a bomb casing which were sent to the Chemical Warfare Centre
at Porton Down. Fragments were also passed on to the Israelis, who were

keen to discover what type of gas was being deployed. Smiley appeared on
television and published articles on the gas bombs, which some dismissed
as royalist propaganda. There were allegations that the bombs contained
phosgene that had been left in the country by British troops during the Second
World War. Some 1,400 royalist troops were said to have been killed and a
further 90 seriously wounded. Johnny Cooper made a special trip to Kent to
collect up-to-date radio equipment from KW
Electronics and a cine camera
in order to provide proof of the Egyptian bombing of villages with napalm
and poison gas.^^
Within Whitehall there was conflict over the gas bomb reports. Colonial
Office officials believed the evidence and called for retaliation, but the Foreign
Office disputed it. Saudi Arabia tried to persuade the UN to mount an investi-
gation, but no action took Smiley regarded this as 'sinister'. 'No one,
place.
it seemed - certainly not the United States - wanted to know about chemical
warfare.' Three years later, nine aircraftarmed with gas bombed the royalist
village of Kitaf, and it was claimed that 'several hundred people' had been
killed. Villagers responded by mutilating Egyptian soldiers who fell into their

hands. It was Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson who on 31 January 1967
'felt sufficiently confident of the claims to inform the House of Commons

that gas had been used'. In truth. Smiley found the released Porton Down
report 'disappointing'. 'Traces of tear gas' had been found but the bombs
 THE MUSKETEERS IN YEMEN 689

were 'unlikely to have contained a poison gas'. The Israelis had apparently
found 'traces of mustard gas', but once Porton Down reported that the bombs
only contained tear gas, the matter was allowed to die a natural death.^^
White was concerned by a visit from CIA officer Jim Critchfield, who
argued that the West could not afford to lose Yemen and, therefore, that the
CIA should fight Nasser regardless of his President's policies. He added
that NSA intercepts had shown that Russian pilots were flying Tu-16s with
Egyptian insignia from Cairo to Yemen. Critchfield suggested bypassing the
Foreign Office and the State Department in order to develop closer liaison
between MI6 and the CIA. According to Tom Bower, White wanted to spurn
the offer but he was under pressure fom Macmillan. It was difficult to resist
closer relations after James Fees, a CIA officer posted under cover of a
humanitarian aid agency to Ta'izz, provided MI6 with a copy of the republi-
can army's field dispositions. White's change of heart was evident by early
November when the CIA's Deputy Chief for Plans, Richard Helms, visited
London and was asked for assistance in supporting the royalists and in
softening State Department opposition to British policy. Shortly after, a CIA
National Estimate identified the existence of a Soviet threat in the region.^^
MI6 lobbying seemed to have little effect. On 21 November President
Kennedy telephoned Alec Douglas-Home and asked for his personal assur-
ance that British mercenaries would be withdrawn. The Foreign Secretary
denied that Britain was involved but promised to make enquiries. The follow-
ing day Kennedy was assassinated. Smiley recalled that the tribesmen heard
the news of Kennedy's death on the radio and reacted with cheers, as they
regarded him as the architect of American support for Nasser. 'But if they
imagined his death would change that policy they were in for a
disappointment.'^^
The resignation of Macmillan in October had temporarily put all plans
on hold as the new Foreign Secretary, Rab Butler, was opposed to covert
support for the royalists. Interestingly, itwas MI 6 intelligence which saved
the situation. Ministers were told that the position in Yemen and the security
situation in Aden had deteriorated, with terrorism beginning to take a hold.
On 10 December, a grenade was thrown at Kennedy Trevaskis while he
waited to board a flight to London. He was saved by the actions of Political
Officer George Henderson, who threw himself in front of the high
commissioner, taking the full blast of the explosion. Henderson died ten days
later. In an about-turn that remains unexplained. White now called for an
aggressive policy against Nasser and, in what has been described as 'a brilliant

performance', won over the new Prime Minister to supporting a clandestine

mercenary operation. Under pressure from Sandys and Thorneycroft,
Douglas-Home was asked to arbitrate in the dispute with the Foreign Secre-
tary. The go-ahead for full support for the royalists was sanctioned in summer
of 1964.^^
690 PART SIX: TllF MIDDLE EAST

During second term in Yemen, Cooper was engaged in intelligence-

his
gathering and built up 'a complete intelligence picture of the Egyptian order
of battle',which he passed on to an appreciative John da Silva. At MI6's
request. Cooper captured up-to-date Russian equipment including an
advanced radio which had not previously been seen in the West. His team
also trained the army and set up a medical team with supplies from the
Yemen Relief Fund, which had been instituted by would-be 'Scarlet Pimper-
nels' Mark Lennox-Boyd, son of a Tory minister, and Lady Birdwood, who

operated out of Aden with the help of Tony Boyle. Cooper recalled Lady
Birdwood, who was chair of the anti-communist Foreign Affairs Circle with
Rowly Winn, 'doling out medical supplies like a latter-day Florence Night-
ingale'.^^

The first hints that the British government was helping the royalist cause
came in January 1964. Labour MP Richard Marsh asked the Prime Minister
about allegations that twenty thousand British Lee Enfield rifles had reached
the Yemen from Saudi Arabia. Douglas-Home denied the claims but a Jersey-
based arms consultant. Major Robert Turp, a director of Intor (International
Ordnance), who had worked with MI6 when military attache in Paris after
the war, informed The Times that 'we received an order from Sheikh Ibrahim
Zahid, the accredited agent of the Saudi Arabian Government. This was
subcontracted to a Belgian company which applied for an export licence to
supply the weapons. An export licence was granted against a certificate from
the Saudi Arabian Government, certifying that the weapons were for the use
of their forces and would not be re-exported.' This was correct up to a point,
but Turp's conclusion was misleading. 'The rifles were not destined for the
Yemen, and to the best of our knowledge they are still in use by the Saudi
"^^
Arabian forces.
Cooper and his men prepared for their first clandestine night
In February,
air-drop of supplies, codenamed MANGO, with the discreet backing of MI6
and the CIA. Arms and ammunition were parachuted into drop zones
manned by Cooper's team, who guided the planes in by radio. Meanwhile,
French organisers convinced contacts in Bulgaria 'that arms should be sent
to the Red Sea area, ostensibly for an African nationalist group fighting
French colonialism'. The first successful drop included German Schmeisser
submachine-guns whose source had been 'brilliantly concealed' with every
seal number scored out, while the parachutes were of Italian origin. The
supplies helped the royalist forces take on a more aggressive role. On the
other side, the republicans were aided by the Egyptians and to a lesser extent
by the Soviet Union and China.
Using his extensive interests in Africa, Stirling recruited Jack Mulloch of
the Rhodesian Air Services to fly arms into Yemen. Another colleague, Eric
Bennett,worked with the Jordanian Air Force. Stirling, using his contacts
through his TIE company, also negotiated with the Iranians, whose air force
 THE MUSKETEERS IN YEMEN 691

worked closely with the Saudis on the project. It helped that the Shah of Iran
had visited MI6 headquarters in May 1962. Six years later, the story of the
covert assistance was leaked to the Sunday Times, forcing Stirling to seek an
injunction. Through a senior journalist friend he placed a series of articles in
the Telegraph which scooped the Sunday Times and kept the existence of MI6
support secret.^^

In an interesting illustration of how the 'musketeers' had access to the

highest levels, in early 1964 David Smiley talked with Alec Douglas-Home
and found a 'much greater interest in the war, particularly among Govern-
ment circles'. There were also indications that President Johnson might aban-
don the stance of the previous administration. In Saudi, Smiley was asked
by Ahmed el Shami and the Minister of Defence, Prince Sultan, to take
command of the mercenaries. This was agreed by Jim Johnson. MI6 gathered
the latest intelligence from Johnny Cooper, who travelled to Aden where he
was debriefed by Ralph Daly and Bill Heber-Percy and had discussions with
John da Silva. At the beginning of March, Smiley flew to Yemen, where he
advised the guerrillas to 'concentrate on the Egyptian supply lines' and 'forget
about frontal assaults on Republican-held towns'.'*^
Initially the campaign went well, and by early 1964 the royalists had

regained nearly all the territory lost to the republicans in the Ramadan offen-
sive. It was a major blow to the Egyptians, who had
lost around fifteen

thousand men since the coup in 1962. Nasser increased the number of Egyp-
tian soldiers to thirty thousand in order that lines of communication and
airfields remained protected, and, in April, travelled to Yemen in preparation
for a new offensive. Smiley's advice, however, was 'ignored by the Royalists
which did not enhance their chances of a military victory'. There was, Tony
Geraghty concludes, 'never much hope that the Royalists would produce
anything more than a military and political stalemate'.
Forty-eight ex-servicemen were now employed as mercenaries, including
a dozen former SAS men, under the command of Smiley, who liaised directly
with the Saudis, while Mike Gooley took command on the ground in the
Yemen. It was an operation that 'could never have been carried out without
official support'. Indeed, it was striking for the 'degree of official connivance
and co-operation it managed to acquire'. MI6 officers John da Silva, John
Christie and the head of station in Bahrein, Jeff Douglas, provided intelligence
and logistical support, while the Government Communications Headquarters
(GCHQ) pinpointed the location of republican units.
Intelligence operatives helped with 'radio monitoring problems' and
co-ordinated the crossing of tribesmen over the border from the Federation
into Yemen, where they tracked Egyptian army officers. In what turned out
to be a dirty war, MI6 officers 'manipulated' the tribesmen and helped 'direct
the planting of bombs' at Egyptian military outposts along the frontier, while
garrison towns were 'shot up' and political figures 'murdered'.'^^
692 PART SIX: THE MIDDLE EAST

When two SAS patrols from 'A' Detachment made a recce across the
Aden Protectorate's border into North Yemen during late April 1964, they
were ambushed, resulting in the deaths of Capt. Robin Edwards and Sapper
Nick Warburton. A patrol later discovered that 'the Arabs, in their frustration,
had taken a grisly revenge on the bodies of our dead comrades'. According
to a US diplomat in Ta'izz, their heads had been impaled on stakes hammered
into the ground in the main square. The republican government denied the
report, denouncing it as a British lie, but another army patrol apparently
collected the two headless corpses. Questions were asked in the Commons,
including one that demanded to know what 'A' Squadron was doing in Aden
since, officially, it was supposed to be on exercises on Salisbury Plain.*^
According to the CIA officer James Fees, White took 'a lively interest in
the war. After all, we were spending lots of money', particularly on the British
side, where astronomical sums were being wasted. A number of senior MI6
officers opposed the project because, according to Anthony Verrier's sources,
'it degenerated into a matter of bribes to the wrong people - £30 million, to
be exact, laundered through the Colonial Development and Welfare Acts,
ostensibly paid into the South Arabian Federal Treasury, then handed out to
tribal rulers on both sides of the border'. Corruption was endemic among
the royalist tribes.^^
The Times reported that 'stories circulate of tribesmen pledging themselves
and selling them to Republicans; and soldiers
to the Royalists, receiving rifles
have been heard joking that they are "royalist" by day and "republican" by
night'. In 1962, in the Khawlan area. Sheikh Naji bin Ali al-Gadr had had
only 120 men at his disposal. He subsequently accepted arms and money
from the British agent, the Sharif of Beihan, through whom the British and
Saudis channelled supplies. Al-Gadr, however, was also willing to accept
arms and money from the Egyptians and from any foreign source willing to
support him. By 1964, the sheikh was rich enough to send his family to
London for private medical treatment. The chief of the Bakil federation had
over twelve thousand men under his command, twice the number of the
Yemen regular army.^^
The Yemen operation was more or less blown away on 1 May 1964, when
the Cairo newspaper Al-Ahram published five letters - including some dated
December of the previous year from Tony Boyle to Cooper. The letters, which
had never reached Cooper, talked of his 'experience in demolition and small
arms and the dropping of weapons by parachute and other operational
matters'. Copies had reached the Sunday Times' newly established 'Insight'
team but nearly did not see the light of day. Initial problems surfaced when
it was discovered was being run through TIE, in
that the Stirling operation
which the newspaper's owner. Lord Thomson, had interests. In the event the
editor, Denis Hamilton, backed his journalists.^^

On 5 July, the Sunday Times reproduced all five letters. The British govern-
 THE MUSKETEERS IN YEMEN 693

ment denied all knowledge of Cooper's mission. The Americans were might-
ily displeased when Richard Marsh raised in the Commons the matter of the
Prime Minister's 'expressed policy of British non-interference in the Yemen'.
He also queried the role of Boyle. Douglas-Home replied that 'no one gave
any such authorisation. Both the present High Commissioner and his prede-
cessor have assured my Right Hon. Friend that they were not aware that the
person in question was involved in any way.' Marsh dismissed the idea that
Stirling, Cooper and Boyle 'could, in an area as dangerous as this, engage in

activities on this scale without anyone noticing'. The PM replied that 'I must

take their word for it - and I do'. His reply was 'widely disbelieved, especially
as Boyle later appeared in the Imam's camp as a military adviser .'^^
. .

Although a series of successful parachute drops, carried out by unmarked

aircraft operating from 'somewhere in Africa', had raised morale, when
McLean returned during the summer of 1964 he found the royalists were 'once
more in a precarious position owing to an acute shortage of ammunition'. On
6 September, Stirling, Boyle and royalist Foreign Minister Ahmed al-Shami
met in Aden, where they were joined by an MI6 officer who, against the
instincts of White, told them that the Service was willing to back robust
methods. They drew up plans for establishing a 'regular supply of arms and
ammunition to the Royalist forces' which would be undertaken either by
parachute or overland from Saudi Arabia and Beihan, or via the Yemen coast.
It was hoped that Egyptian communication and supply lines could be cut,

while the royalists would be helped with 'skilled advice and practical
assistance'.^^

Jim Johnson and his team subsequently moved their headquarters from
Aden Saudi Arabia, where Johnson said to the Saudi head of intelligence
to
that 'we can win - what do you want to do - go ahead or withdraw?' It
soon became apparent, however, that the Saudis feared reprisals from the
Egyptians, who had already made dummy air runs across Jeddah. The Egyp-
tian ambassador had warned the government not to go any further in backing
the war. was rumoured that, as a means of finding a way out of the
It

situation, the Saudis had offered Nasser a million dollars to withdraw from
Yemen. In November 1964, King Saud was deposed in a peaceful coup by
the ruling Saudi family, who appointed Prince Faisal in his place. The Ameri-
cans then brokered an agreement whereby Faisal promised not to supply
arms and Nasser would withdraw his troops as soon as
to the royalists,
possible and stop bombing the villages in Yemen.^^
MI6, too, had been preparing the ground for political negotiations. During
January 1965, while on yet another trip to Yemen, McLean, who had recently
lost his parliamentary seat, learned that 'at Erkwit, on the Red Sea coast of

the Sudan, under Faisal's auspices, a Yemeni Royalist delegation, headed by

Ahmed al-Shamy, and a similarly representative group of Republicans, had
met in secret and agreed to a ceasefire, which would come into effect on 8
694 PART SIX: THE MIDDLE EAST

No\ ember 1964'. Secret RAF bombing in retaliation for Egyptian attacks on
camel trains carrying weapons to French and British mercenaries had helped
force the first of many Egyptian retreats and their appearance at the negotiat-
ing table. Officially, the Saudis kept to their word and did not send any more
supplies to the guerrillas, but, despite this, hostilities soon resumed.
A routine intercept on Middle East embassies in London revealed that
British plans for the region had been leaked. Staff Sergeant Percy Allen of
the WarOffice Land/Air Directorate was arrested on 16 March 1965 in the
act of handing over a bundle of classified documents to the Iraqi military
attache. Allen had had access to western intelligence assessments of the Egyp-
tian armed forces, and some documents had already been sold to the Cairo
newspaper Al-Ahram, which revealed that the British government had not
ruled out direct military intervention in the Middle East. The documents
outlined a strategy for the reinforcement of the Central Treaty Organisation
(successor to the Baghdad Pact) and the regimes of King Idris in Libya and
King Hussein in Jordan. Contingency plans had been made for intervention
'in co-operation with the United States ... in the event of internal disturbances
or intervention in the Lebanon and Sudan'. Central to the plans was the role
of the military base in Aden, itself far from stable as civil war continued in
the North.^'
In order to ease his relations with the Saudi government, Stirling worked
closely with Kemel Adham, the chief of the Saudi intelligence service and
brother-in-law of Faisal, who was regarded as the King's eminence grise. Stir-

ling also co-operated with the well-connected Jersey arms dealer Geoffrey
Edwards, who was trying to clinch a multimillion-pound arms deal. His
contacts helped Stirling gain a Saudi contract to run a radio station in Aden,
which employed Tony Boyle.^^
When the Saudi government decided to build up its air force, the Foreign
Office believed that the planes would be supplied by the United States, which
regarded the country as its preserve. The election of a Labour government
in October 1964 changed that perception, and Edwards was party to the
successful conclusion of a British arms deal worth £186 million. This included
a £26 million contract to British and Commonwealth Shipping's Airwork
Services to provide personnel for the training of Saudi pilots and ground
crew. 'Equally important Airwork also recruited former RAF pilots as
. . .

mercenaries to fly operational missions against Egyptian and Republican

targets along the Yemeni border', from a secret base at Khamis Mishyat.^^
According to David Smiley, by 1965 the musketeers were chartering
aircraft with 'discreet pilots', and had obtained the agreement of Israel to use
its territory for mounting operations. Dick White and the CIA's Richard

Helms had also helped broker an agreement between the Saudis and the
head of Mossad, Meir Amit, while Stirling arranged for Israel, which had an
intelligence as well as a religious interest in Yemen, to take the place of Saudi
 THE MUSKETEERS IN YEMEN 695

Arabia in organising the supply of arms. A large Jewish community had

existed in Yemen and during the 1948-50 period around
since biblical times,
fifty thousand Jews had been airlifted to Israel in an operation known as

'Magic Carpet'. The CIA helped the Israelis infiltrate back into Yemen some
of these Jews to train the guerrillas in the use of modern weapons. 'The
trainers, naturally, took care to disguise their true nationality.'^^
An between Israel and Iran had existed since
intelligence relationship
1960/61, when team of Mossad officers replaced the CIA team training
a
SAVAK personnel. It remained in Iran with CIA and MI6 encouragement
until 1965, when Mossad and SAVAK 'began to run joint covert operations
against radical Arab states and organisations'. In the mid-1960s, Israel
provided Iran with western and captured Soviet-made arms, which were
repackaged so as to disguise their true country of origin for use by the royalist
forces.^^

When asked about the Israeli connection, Stirling would say only that 'it
would have been very sensitive had it been known that any Arab country
had received assistance from Israel'. Indeed, King Faisal was 'a committed
anti-Semite' and, therefore, the CIA and MI6 relied on other 'practical-
minded members of the Saudi royal family' to develop a covert alliance
between Israel, Saudi Arabia, Iran and Jordan. Although the CIA's main
channel to Mossad, James Angleton, disliked these covert ties, he was pres-
sured into creating greater liaison with Agency heads of station in the Arab
countries.^°
These secret alliances had been working well but nearly fell apart during
the autumn of 1965. It seems that a leak of sensitive proposals made to Jordan
created a rift with Israel, resulting in the loss of long-established contacts.
The affair centred around a 'young buccaneer', Dominic Elwes, McLean's
son-in-law, who had passed on to Stirling from an RAF officer, John Curtis,
military secrets concerning bombing raids to be carried out in Yemen. Curtis
was subsequently court-martialled. The facts of the case remain somewhat
obscure.
By mid-1965, Egyptian strength was estimated at around fifty-two thou-
sand, but it soon became clear that Nasser's troops were not making any

headway into the royalist mountain strongholds. Indeed, the year proved to
be a turning point as the royalist forces gained control of 50 per cent of the
territory. Egyptian commanders found the mountainous conditions intoler-
able, fortified bases. During
with their garrison troops forced to retreat to their
around Sana'a with the aim of forcing
July, Stirling organised guerrilla action
the Egyptians to abandon their airfields. It soon became apparent to Nasser
that the war was draining Egypt's resources - foreign exchange reserves were
depleted. More specifically, he realised that 'my Vietnam' was unlikely to
result in the overthrow of the Saudi regime. Swallowing his pride, Nasser
decided to fly to Jeddah to meet with Faisal in an attempt to reach a peaceful
6% PART SIX: THE MIDDLE EAST

settlement. A was declared on 24 August with an undertaking that

ceasefire
Egyptian troops would be withdrawn within ten months.^^
At a lecture on 20 October 1965 to the Royal United Services Institute,
McLean pondered 'whether Nasser will keep his word and leave the Yemen,
or whether he will use the time he has gained to try to find another way out of
his predicament'. The British-backed mercenaries had reverted to providing
medical aid and maintaining communications, but when, in March 1966,
Smiley returned to the Yemen, he discovered that the Egyptians had already
breached the ceasefire and had resumed bombing. The Jeddah agreement
had broken down because of the unacceptable demands of the royalists,
though 'the true cause was the inability of the various Yemeni factions to
reconcile their differences in the interests of sharing power'. In response.
King Faisal toured the Middle East countries to try to establish an Islamic
Pact. Just to make sure that his intention was clear, 'he escalated the Royalist

campaign, forcing Egypt to send more troops which Faisal could then point
to as agents of communist aggression'. Nasser reinforced his troops to nearly
sixty thousand men.^^
In the face of escalating violence, in February 1966 the British government
announced in a Defence White Paper that they were to abandon Aden as a
base, and South Arabia would become independent in 1968. Now in oppo-
sition. Conservative politician Duncan Sandys led the ultras, who were

outraged by the decision, as were MI6 officers such as John da Silva who
feared the creation of a 'vacuum' in the region. Dick White, however, was
happy At a conference of regional Directors
to get out of a 'worthless fight'.
in March, Tim Milne, responsible for the Middle East, reported on the continu-
ing use of 'disruptive actions' such as bribes, covert funding, buggings and
telephone taps, and the use of 'pencil bombs' in dirty- tricks operations. In
the Gulf states, MI6 was helping to train local security services to detect
threats to their regimes, and arranging where required their 'neutralisation'

by 'surrogates'. Milne's survey of operations confirmed that the strategic

policies revealed in the leaks from the Sgt Allen official secrets case of the
previous year were still in place.
In the meantime, Britain had to station in Aden seventeen thousand
soldiers, who were war gripped the town.
a sitting target as urban guerrilla
Nasser's intelligence officers had drawn up a well-thought-out plan for the
terrorists in which the first essential was the destruction of the local Special
Branch. This was 'so successful that five officers were murdered in six months;
others were frightened by threats to kill all who collaborated with the British
and were not too zealous in their duty'. Intelligence-gathering became depen-
dent on the Joint Interrogation Centre in the military complex at Fort Morbut,
where torture was used to extract confessions from 'suspects'. Torture is an
unreliable source of information and the result was a lack of intelligence on
the guerrillas and their political organisations.^^
 THE MUSKETEERS IN YEMEN 697

Following a series of setbacks, Nasser had become disillusioned by the

war, and his support for the NLF in Aden waned. In a power struggle
between the Nasserites and a new group of more radical elements, part of
the nationalist leadership split off early in the year to form the militant Front
for the Liberation of South Yemen (FLOSY). On 20 June 1966, the British
agreed that they would maintain and naval backing for South Yemen for
air

months after
at least six independence. By this time, however, the revolution-
ary wave had taken a hold in the hinterland, with guerrillas attacking not
only the British but also the sultans. Also on the 20th, the NLF and FLOSY
guerrillas launched an offensive in the Radfan mountains which led to a
collapse of support for the sultans, 'who were discredited for their subservi-
ence to the British'. By September, British troops had been driven back into
Aden.''
The fighting had reached a stalemate, but the British were still running
an extensive mercenary operation in Yemen with those recruited said to
be paid '£10,000 per annum' by 'a mysterious centre in London' called the

'Organisation', run by and Maj. Brooke. Cooper had left in early 1966
Stirling
and Stirling had been joined by Col. John Woodhouse, who had retired from
long and active service with the SAS to become a part-time adviser to the
British government on counter-coup measures in parts of the Commonwealth.
He was also a partner in Stirling's Watchguard International mercenary oper-
ation, which was formally incorporated in the Channel Islands. In June,
another of Stirling's former colleagues in the SAS in the Western Desert,
explorer Wilfred Thesiger, ran into Billy McLean, whom he had known since
the early stages of the Second World War in Abyssinia. He was invited to
join the royalist forces and visit the commander-in-chief in the North, Prince
Hasanbin Hasan, a cousin of al-Badr, at his headquarters at Qarra. A close
friend of Frank Steele, who was currently serving as MI6 head of station in
Amman, Thesiger was employed until November in intelligence-gathering
and propaganda work.'^
In June 1967, Egypt suffered an overwhelming defeat at the hands of the
Israelis in the Six Day War. It had been anticipated by MI6 which had access

to GCHQ intercepts from Cyprus. With the war in Yemen not going well,
and with his country increasingly dependent on subsidies from Saudi Arabia,
Nasser decided to abandon the republicans and pull out his troops, whose
morale had been badly shaken. MI6 regarded their supply and mercenary
operation a 'success', but the CIA's James Fees thought this was illusory.
Egyptian soldiers had, in fact, avoided the British. Their real fear was the
Yemenis of whom they were 'terrified'. The royalists decapitated some of the
victims and had a habit of 'sending back captured troops with their lips cut
off in a ghastly grin'.'^
In November, Thesiger travelled to the headquarters near Sana'a of Prince
al Hussain, commander-in-chief of the southern front, where he found
G'^S PART S 1 X: TH F M DDLE
1 EAST

McLean and Mark Lennox-Boyd embroiled in a siege of the city. Their

position soon came under attack by MiG fighters and a shell burst near by
causing a splinter to nick Thesiger's head. 'A little later I heard McLean say
in an irritated voice, "Damn it, look what you've done, Wilfred." Blood

from my head had soaked the box of cigars he had brought with him for
safe-keeping.' After two days, they managed to shoot down a MiG; Thesiger
found the pilot 'an unidentifiable mess, but his map and various notes were
in Russian. The Egyptians had gone but the Russians had arrived.' NSA
radio intercepts had picked up something similar earlier. Soviet bombers
with Egyptian markings had allegedly 'one Egyptian on board to talk on the
radio, but discipline wasn't that good and in moments of stress they would
start chattering in Russian'. Contrary to the accepted western view of long-

term Russian involvement in Yemen, the republican leaders discovered that

the Egyptians had been blocking direct communication with Moscow and
had prevented the supply of Russian arms. When Nasser eventually pulled
out in November and the republicans were under siege at Sana'a, the Russians
'mounted a vital airlift'.^^
In the same month, British troops pulled out of South Yemen and vacated
Aden. After a period of in-fighting and political manoeuvrings, the NLF
came out on top and created the People's Democratic Republic of Yemen. In
January 1968 it was announced that Britain would withdraw all forces east
of Suez by the end of 197L The decision caused a great deal of concern in
the Foreign Office, which was alarmed by 'the security situation'.
Despite the Egyptian withdrawal, the civil war in Yemen continued. In
1969 two Watchguard mercenaries, former SAS personnel 'Knocker' Parsons
and were killed while leading a band of royalist guerrillas
'Falcon' Wilson,
in the North. When they were positively identified by the republican govern-
ment as British soldiers, the British government, still officially opposed to
any intervention, came under pressure at the United Nations to explain their
presence. According to SAS volunteer Peter Stiff, 'the British lied their way
out of it They insisted the men were soldiers who had been killed in
. . .

action within a normal operational area in the Aden protectorate. The North
Yemen people, they said, had flown their bodies to a sensitive area just to
stir up a row.'^°
In March, the Saudis finally cut off supplies to the royalists. Imam al-Badr
was already and had become a mere figurehead. A year later. King
tired
Faisal arranged a meeting between the Republic's Prime Minister and senior
royalist leaders - excluding the royal family, who were doomed to permanent
exile. Al-Badr fled to England, where he lived in quiet obscurity on the south

coast until his death in August 1996. In 1970 a treaty was signed ending
with the republican forces victorious; the royalists never captured
hostilities,

Sana'a. The outcome was a coalition government with the country reborn as
the Yemen Arab Republic, North Yemen. Saudi Arabia recognised the
 THE MUSKETEERS IN YEMEN 699

who had supported the covert war

Republic in July, and Britain and France,
during which two hundred thousand people - 4 per cent of
for eight years,
the Yemeni population - had died, swiftly followed suit/^
PART SEVEN

MODERN TIMES
4
CHAPTER 32

THE SECRET
INTELLIGENCE
SERVICE

For MI6, the early sixties proved to be the best and the worst of times as its

'special' relationship with the CIA went through highs and lows. There were
the occasional outstanding intelligence-gathering successes which drew the
admiration of the Americans, who were awash with money and technical
advances, but these were largely overshadowed by security lapses which fed
the almost continual molehunts that ripped into the heart of the Service,
colouring relations with the Americans and undermining operations.
A complete breach of trust was probably avoided only as a result of the
high-quality intelligence that the Service was able to supply from the few
sources it developed behind the Iron Curtain; though, in truth, M16 had
had no hand in the recruitment of these sources as they were 'walk-ins',
volunteering their services.
From late 1958, MI6 had been running three agents - the principal one
code-named Noddy - inside the Polish security intelligence service, the Urzad
Bezpieczenstwa (UB), controlled by the former chief of station in Berlin,
Robert Dawson, 'a solid fatherly figure with the air of a countryman' who
was responsible for eastern Europe as head of the Directorate of Production
4, and run through the Warsaw embassy where John Quine and a future

chief of the Service, Colin Figures, were stationed. The UB officers proved
to be MI6's first major sources in the Soviet orbit of the postwar period.^
KGB meant that the intelligence
Close liaison between the Poles and the
handed over included unprecedented information about the Russian service.
704 PART SEVEN: MODERN TIMES

and and political personalities in Moscow. There was

profiles of military
also information on operations against French and American citizens and
diplomats living in Warsaw. Realising the value of the intelligence, Dick
White made sure that it was quickly passed on to a grateful CIA, which
assessed it as 'the best we've ever had'. According to Soviet sources, which
were probably based on revelations from George Blake, who was then in the
Russian section of DP4, the Americans undertook to finance some of MI6's
operations; in particular, they offered $20 million for espionage in Poland.
The paradox was that the operation's success exposed the extent to which
MI6 was reliant on the Americans for support.^
Around the same time, a lieutenant-colonel of Polish State Security, Michal
Goleniewski, code-named Sniper, who had volunteered information to the
CIA, finally defected on 4 January 1961. He subsequently identified two spies
in Britain - Lambda 1 and 2. The Security Service (MIS) quickly discovered
that the second was Harry Houghton, an employee at the Underwater Estab-
lishment at Portland. To find the first, MI6's head of counter-intelligence,
Terence Lecky, and his deputy, Geoffrey Hinton, launched a molehunt.
Progress proved slow, and it took the Service's best Soviet specialist, Harold
Shergold, to identify the spy inside MI6 as George Blake, a middle-ranking
officer who had been posted to the Middle East Centre for Arab Studies

(MECAS), where he was studying Arabic.^

Given that for many officers memories of Kim Philby and the 'Third Man'
episode had not dimmed, the prospect of another major spy inside its closest
ally's intelligence service caused consternation throughout the CIA. This was

somewhat lightened by the visit to Washington of Harold Shergold on 25

January 1961. He told the CIA officer running SR-9, responsible for operations
inside the Soviet Union, Joe Bulik, that during the previous December MI6
had been contacted via a British businessman, Greville Wynne, by a serving
GRU officer. Col. Oleg Penkovsky. Wynne, who had been introduced to
East- West trade by the Conservative politician and former intelligence officer
Airey Neave, had been asked by Dickie Franks, head of the Directorate of
Production Research which was responsible for running the 'frequent travel-
lers' programme, to make contact with the State Committee for the Co-ordina-
tion of Scientific Research Work, which acted as a cover for KGB and GRU
agents spying on western technology. In turn, Bulik informed Shergold that
Penkovsky had in fact made contact with two American students five months
earlier. When Bulik showed Shergold the information Penkovsky had initially
handed over, MI6 offered to help run the GRU officer, code-named Hero,
as a joint operation. Despite understandable fears about MI6's security, at a
follow-up meeting in early February in London the CIA agreed to the
proposal, mainly because the Agency had no agents or officers in Moscow
to run such an operation.^
Blake returned on 6 April to MI6's headquarters at Broadway Buildings,
 THE SECRET INTELLIGENCE SERVICE 705

where he was interrogated by Shergold, Lecky and a former policeman,

Ben Johnson. They listened in 'amazed silence' when, following a series of
unproductive interrogations, Blake eventually burst out: 'Nobody tortured
me! No, nobody blackmailed me! I myself approached the Soviets and offered
my services to them of my own accord!' Given that he was an ideological
traitor, Blake's explanation brought out the Service's worst prejudices.
Nicholas Elliott considered that there were three types of treachery - 'political

conviction (or misplaced idealism), venality and blackmail'. Blake, in Elliott's

opinion, however, fell into another category - 'victims of a form of inferiority
complex'. Blake 'wanted to prove to himself that an insignificant individual
of mixed origins could become a person of consequence in world affairs'.
Blake's father was Jewish.^
Blake had blown hundreds of western agents, including the entire MI6
OB, and had provided the KGB with details of a number of highly secret
technical operations being run in conjunction with the CIA. Realising how
potentially embarrassing a trial could be, initially Dick White did not want
to see a prosecution of Blake. However, the need to consider the US reaction
was paramount, and the MI 6 Chief reluctantly agreed to a prosecution. It
turned out to be a political trial, conducted in camera, in which the sentence
was cooked up between Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, the Attorney-
General, Sir Reginald Manningham-Buller, and the Lord Chief Justice, Lord
Parker. Even White expressed 'shock' at the sentence of forty-two years which
Parker imposed at the Old Bailey in early May 196L Some Americans were
initially sympathetic to White's plight and were willing to support his plea

that the necessary security changes had been made within the Service. The
CIA's counter-intelligence chief, James Angleton, however, was already
suggesting to the horror of MI6 officers that the two services should pool
their counter-espionage capabilities in London.^
After Blake's arrest the Americans feared for the security of the Penkovsky
operation but were reassured by Shergold's 'professionalism'. Arriving in
London on 20 April as head of a Soviet purchasing delegation, the GRU man
was secretly debriefed for the first time by two CIA officers fluent in Russian,
Bulik and George Kisvalter, and MI6 officers Shergold and Michael Stokes. The
team noted that the most salient factor that lay behind Penkovsky 's decision to
help the West was 'his lifelong legend that his father had died of typhus in
1919'. In reality, he had been killed 'while fighting with the White Army against

the Reds as a first lieutenant in the city of Rostov. The significance of the fact
lies in a KGB accusation that Subject had deliberately concealed the true

circumstances and this accusation was a matter of record on his GRU file.' His
desire 'for recognition, acceptance, and honor from the West were a constant
theme that emerged in the debriefing sessions . His enormous ego and his
. .

desire to be the best spy in history left the team limp with fatigue at the end of
each of their sessions.' They then had to process the 'take'.^
706 PART SEVEN: MODERN TIMES

From 20 April to 6May 1961, there were seventeen meetings with the
intelligence officers which lasted a total of fifty-two hours. These were
followed on a second visit between 18 July and 7 August by another thirteen
meetings which produced 1,200 pages of transcript. Penkovsky would also
eventually supply 111 exposed rolls of film and 10,000 pages of intelligence
reports which M16 designated ARNIKA. The material, including seventy-
eight pages of secret documents Penkovsky had brought with him, primarily
on missiles, about which little was known in the West, broke new ground.
He was also able to identify around four to five hundred GRU officers and
another two to three hundred KGB officers, and report on personalities. From
this latter information, and the addition of a Kremlin telephone directory, an

MI6 Sovietologist was able to produce the first chain-of-command organisa-

tional chart for the Soviet hierarchy, thus lifting the veil of secrecy that
surrounded western views of the Kremlin.^
Penkovsky's information was of an extraordinarily high quality which
White was determined to exploit to the full through the Joint Intelligence
Committee (JIG) system, with the explicit aim of elevating the Service's repu-
tation within Whitehall. The Cabinet Office, increasingly the heart of the
intelligence community, was, however, unaware of the true provenance of
the source and was initially less than impressed with the substance of the
reports. In fact, many officials simply dismissed the intelligence White was

touting on the basis that MI6 was incapable of producing reliable, high-grade
reports. Tom Bower quotes a senior Cabinet Office official who went on to
become Cabinet Secretary, John Hunt, as saying that a significant minority
Sir

judged MI6's intelligence to be 'rubbish, given credibility because it was

believed by the intelligence services themselves'. The Ministry of Defence
specialists who assessed Penkovsky's material were of a different mind, and
MI6 cabled Washington that his bona fides had been established 'beyond
any reasonable doubt'. The liaison officer who passed on the good news was
Maurice Oldfield. He recognised that Penkovsky 'had been the answer to a
prayer. What he provided seemed like a miracle, too. That is why for so long
he was mistrusted on both sides of the Atlantic. It seemed incredible that he
could take such risks - not merely photographing Top Secret documents, but
actually giving us the original documents in some instances.' Oldfield also
passed on details of new arrangements made by MI6 for contact in Moscow
with Penkovsky. Anne, the wife of an officer, Roderick 'Ruari' Chisholm, and
formerly Shergold's secretary, was to pick up the batch of documents that
Penkovsky would leave in a Moscow park.*^
Perhaps the most surprising advocate of Penkovsky Washington, givenin

the later controversies, was view that all Soviet

the arch-disciple of the
defectors were double agents, James Angleton. On 30 June, Angleton agreed
that 'this was undoubtedly the most important case we had for years'. He
added that he felt it was 'terribly important that the President, who was now
 THE SECRET INTELLIGENCE SERVICE 707

faced with crucial problems regarding Berlin, should have the benefit of the
full story'. On Kennedy was provided with a full briefing
13 July, President
on the joint operation by the Director of the CIA, Allen Dulles. On the same
day, in an effort to stop the flood of refugees to the West which rose to
150,000 in the first six months of 1961, the East Germans, backed by Russian
troops, erected the Berlin Wall. Geoffrey McDermott, a Foreign Office official

who had had responsibilities for the intelligence services, recognised that
'permission was only given by Khrushchev at the last minute' and conse-
quently thought that 'our intelligence was not to blame for not reporting the
decision. But it is extraordinary that with our massive combined resources -
and not least our numerous German agents - no reports had reached us of
the movement and stockpiling of hundreds of tons of material required for
the Wall.' The allies some considerable disarray over Berlin.^^
were in
One major piece of information from Penkovsky which surprised the
British and Americans was his statement that 'early warning was the prime
Soviet intelligence objective'. With the Berlin crisis, the possibility of early
warning of Soviet moves in turn became a prime issue with MI 6 and the
CIA. When Penkovsky visited Paris the rudiments of a signalling system
known as DISTANT were worked out for use on occasions when he had
top-priority information to pass on. Discord arose between the two services
on the details of Distant, but the matter was resolved in London at a meeting
on 31 October attended by White, Allen Dulles and his successor, John
McCone, London station chief Frank Wisner and his deputy Carleton B. Swift,
chair of the JIC Sir Hugh Stephenson and MI6 officers - Charles Ransom,
who had recently returned from being head of station in Rome, John Taylor
and Norman Darbyshire. White explained that MI6 was basically a collector
of intelligence whose task was to turn over such material to the JIC assessors
who would evaluate the material before forwarding it to ministers and the

Cabinet. The Americans said would have no alternative but to pass

that they
such intelligence direct to the President. It was a curious exchange, given the
often-quoted line that MI 6 Chiefs had right of direct access to the Prime
Minister."
On 22 December, Anatoli Golitsin, a KGB officer serving in the First Chief
Directorate employed in operations against Britain and America, defected in
Helsinki to the CIA. Over the following weeks he revealed to debriefers the
identities of a series of KGB agents employed by western intelligence agen-
cies. During the spring of 1962, MIS's chief spycatcher, Arthur Martin, and

the head of R5 - MI6's counter-intelligence section - Terence Lecky, were

allowed to met Golitsin. Although he provided no new information on the
subject, his brief and vague talk of the 'Ring of Five' led to the launch of
molehunts that included refocusing on the evidence on Kim Philby. White
apparently became an early and enthusiastic supporter of Angleton and his
investigations.
708 PART SEVEN: MODERN TIMES

Despite the depth and range of the Penkovsky intelligence, the quality of
which had never been surpassed, in January 1962 disagreements surfaced
ON'er tradecraft problems with the joint HERO operation during a meeting

in London between Shergold and the chief of operations for the CIA's Soviet

Division, Quentin Johnson. The American felt that it would be prudent and
in the interests of security for Penkovsky to curtail his activities for six months
or a year, to ease the pressure on the master spy. Shergold argued that it
would be a psychological blow to Penkovsky's pride. When Johnson reported
back, his boss Bulik thought that the British were less concerned about
protecting Penkovsky than keeping the flow of intelligence going, and were
putting him at risk. The Americans, in fact, were kept in the dark about
Greville Wynne's alcohol problems and his inability to keep his mouth shut.
Shergold did inform them that he intended to replace the Chisholms with
another couple, Gervase Cowell and his wife Pamela, in order to service the
'dead-letter drops'.
When Macmillan visited President Kennedy in Washington in May 1962,
he was briefed by White on the Penkovsky material. The Prime Minister
noticed that the US administration had changed its attitude to the Soviet
Union; in particular, Kennedy now recognised that the 'missile gap' which
had been a major issue during the presidential election was, in fact, working
in America's favour, and not as previously expressed in favour of the Soviets.
Penkovsky demolished the myth which Khrushchev had propagated that the
Soviets had more intercontinental ballistic missiles than the US and that these
were capable of precision attacks. Penkovsky said that the Soviet ICBMs
'couldn't hit a bull in the backside with a balalaika'. It was a rare example
of one man's spying having a direct effect on policy. Inevitably, for one so
rash, during August it seems that the West's star spy came under suspicion
- though the KGB investigation would prove to be poorly managed. In the
following month, Pamela Cowell arrived in Moscow to act as the new contact
for Penkovsky.
Soon after the Cuban on 19 October, using photo-
Missile Crisis began,
graphs that had been taken by a U-2 spy plane and compared with material
provided by Penkovsky, the CIA prepared a detailed memorandum on the
Soviet SS-4 missile which had been identified as being on Cuba. The next
day, the KGB entered Penkovsky 's apartment and discovered his Minox
camera. Two days later he was arrested outside GRU headquarters. The CIA
considered, as did the KGB, that the pressure on Penkovsky to produce had
led to his arrest. It was not until 2 November that MI6 and the CIA became
aware that their prize agent had been arrested.
The impression given by Macmillan's official biographer, Alistair Horne,
is that Britain played a significant role in the Cuban crisis, with the elder
statesman prudently counselling the young President. In truth, it was all

deception. Kennedy's close confidant, McGeorge Bundy, was correct when

 THE SECRET INTELLIGENCE SERVICE 709

he stated that Macmillan's advice was 'not very important'. Horne was also
a friend of Maurice Oldfield, who during this period confided in his former
colleague, Anthony Cavendish. According to Cavendish, Oldfield gave
personal briefings to President Kennedy, while his biographer, 'Richard
Deacon', states that 'he not only obtained personal access to the President to
stress the value of Penkovsky's evidence, but ensured that Kennedy had an
independent scientific opinion and interpretation from the British side'.

Deacon claims that Oldfield's intervention was 'absolutely vital'. Is this cred-
ible? There are no accounts from CIA officers or Kennedy administration
officials noting such unprecedented access and the historical record suggests
that this period was the nadir of the 'special relationship'. The Americans
put on the appearance of consulting the British, but only feigned interest
when views coincided.
An important lesson was to come out of the Cuba crisis for British Intelli-

gence, a lesson that illustrated its increasingly second-rank status. During

mid-October, the Cabinet Secretary, Burke Trend, head of the Joint Intelli-

gence Bureau (JIB) Maj.-Gen. Kenneth Strong, and MI6 liaison officer
Sir

Maurice Oldfield were in Washington for a Defense Department intelligence

conference hosted by the CIA's Deputy Director, Ray Cline. Unable to fill
them in on details of the unfolding crisis, Cline

misled them all week into thinking my obvious preoccupation

with business was about Berlin not Cuba . . . My exercise in
deception was totally successful because these British friends
took several occasions during the week to argue with me that
the Russians would never put missiles in Cuba because of the
risk to their interests in Europe. When I refused to dismiss this
as an outside possibility (knowing full well they were there!).
Ken Strong in particular chided me for making the American
error of overrating the importance of Cuba because it was so
close.

On the morning of 22 October the US ambassador, David Bruce, and the

CIA chief of station in London, went to Downing Street to show the Prime
Minister the latest U-2 surveillance photographs of Cuba, which contained
sufficient detail to identify Soviet missile carriers. Macmillan was suitably
impressed: 'Now the Americans will realise what we in England have lived
'^^
through for this past many years.
Coupled with Penkovsky's purloined Soviet missile manuals, the photo-
graphs enabled the CI A 'to follow the progress of Soviet missile emplacement
in Cuba by the hour'. In addition, Penkovsky's documents complemented
new photographs from the Discoverer satellite programme run jointly by the
CIA and the US Air Force which, after a series of failures, had begun to
produce pictures by August 1960. For the first time it 'provided detailed
710 PART SEVEN: MODERN TIMES

pictures confirming the offensive capability of the Soviet missile launching

site at Plesetsk, south of Archangel near the Barents Sea'. Though the early
satellite photographs lacked the definition of those taken by the U-2s, aerial
reconnaissance, increasingly in use for signals interception as well as for
photographs, would quickly develop into 'the most important form of intelli-

gence gathering'.
Without access to its own spy planes and satellites, as Geoffrey McDermott
admitted, MI6's importance was 'declining now that so much crucial intelli-
gence is obtained either by satellites hundreds of miles up in the air or by
electronic devices concealed in the fly-button'. As the intelligence historian
Christopher Andrew notes, 'the primacy of the spy satellite gave the two
superpowers, as the only satellite-owners, an unassailable intelligence lead
over all other states for more than two decades. In the process it inevitably
confirmed the relegation of the United Kingdom to the status of junior partner
in the intelligence alliance with the United States.' According to Ray Cline,
'It was only because of our tradition of close collaboration with British Intelli-
gence in cryptanalysis, espionage and general exchange of finished intelli-

gence that we felt we should share with the British in the U-2 and satellite

By the 1960s, Britain's secret intelligence-gathering had come to

processes.'
depend substantially on the co-operation of the US 'cousins' - which goes
some way to explaining the comment made in the mid-seventies by the
right-wing journalist with intelligence sources. Chapman Pincher, that
'dependence is so great and co-operation so close that I am convinced that
the security and intelligence chiefs would go to any lengths to protect the
linkup, and they would be right to do so'.^^
An August 1963 evaluation of Penkovsky concluded that it was 'the most
productive classic clandestine operation ever conducted by the CIA or MI6
against the Soviet target'. Dick White was able to pass on to his assembled
staff the thanks of the CIA for MI6 help on the joint operation. It went some
way to lifting the gloom that had existed inside the Service since Nicholas
Elliott had flown to Beirut on 11 January 1963 to try to extract a confession
from his friend Kim Philby. CIA
had been appalled that MI6 had
officers
allowed Philby to escape and defect to the USSR. One result was that MI6's
unrestricted access to CIA officers was 'sharply curtailed'. The Director of
Plans, Richard Helms, ordered that 'there was no carte blanche'. Meetings
with Oldfield needed prior approval, 'the content to be reported in writing
afterwards'. To compensate for the professional snub and lack of access to
Langley, Oldfield regularly met socially with the head of counter-espionage,
James Angleton. With his unlimited access to Helms and CIA Director John
McCone, Angleton's 'unique position in western intelligence and continuing
anglophilia' attracted particular respect from a cabal of senior British security
and intelligence officers. George Young thought the American was 'a gullible
soul who saw himself as a Machiavelli'. The problem was that he 'had been
 6

THE SECRET INTELLIGENCE SERVICE 711

completely under Philby's influence and sought to whitewash himself by

finding KGB agents in every British department and agency'. Despite Young's
observation that he 'tactfully coped with this', it seems that Oldfield became
^'^
MI6's 'most ardent convert to Angleton's theories'.

In South-East Asia therewere formal MI6-CIA liaison meetings, but as senior

CIA Joseph B. Smith discovered, there were two schools
officer in the region

of thought on their effectiveness. 'One was that it was a rare and beautiful
thing to be nurtured with every care, because the British were the most
sagacious spies in the business, with a long and remarkable tradition of
success. The other was that it was a waste of time, the British officers were
a bunch of supercilious snobs toward whom we should show an equivalent
disdain.' A colleague warned him that the MI6 'guys are really nuts about
security and won't even tell each other what they're doing, much less us'.
CIA officers such as the head of the Psychological and Paramilitary Warfare
Staff, Desmond FitzGerald, looked upon the 'Colonel Blimps of the Colonial
Office' as 'clumsy racists', MI6 officers were
but recognised that the better
'sophisticated about native cultures'. They could, though, show 'a willingness
to be uncompromising - brutal if necessary - when it came down to combat-
ing terrorists and native insurrectionists'. Drawing on the British experience
in Malaya and Burma, the Americans learned that the key to counter-
insurgency was 'penetration and control' with the aim of 'getting inside the
local insurgencies with their agents and then subverting them'. From MI
they also learned such devious 'disruptive' tactics as 'false flag' recruitment
and the creation of fake communist groups and fronts.
During the early fifties, MI6's view on South-East Asia had been essen-
tially conspiratorial - there was a 'communist threat which was a co-ordinated

one and required a co-ordinated response'. The Soviets were believed to be

'increasing their efforts' throughout the region with the Sino-Soviet alliance
being the key. The large Chinese communist presence was seen as a potential
'fifth column'. MI6 worked out of the Phoenix Park compound in Singapore
Commissioner for South-East Asia. The
as part of the staff of the Office of
leading figure was Maurice Oldfield, who served two terms in the region. His
work was closely integrated with that of the chair of the region's sub-branch of
the JIC, Denis Greenhill, whose wife, Angela McCulloch, had worked for the
intelligence services in the Middle East during the war, and the Commissioner
General, Sir Robert Scott, a pre-war intelligence officer and wartime propa-
gandist, who was highly regarded by his Foreign Office colleagues. Oldfield
and Scott were largely responsible for changing Foreign Office and govern-
ment perceptions of the communist threat in the region.^'
Friend and former MI6 colleague Anthony Cavendish thought Oldfield's
main achievement had been to keep in perspective 'the fluid and turbulent
situation in SE Asia after the French withdrawal and stressing that personal
712 PART SEVEN: MODERN TIMES

ambitions and tribal loyalties lay behind the upsets, coups and intrigues and
not the hand of either Moscow or Peking'. MI6 officers were 'quicker than
the Americans to realise that therewas nothing sinister about Cambodian
desires merely to be Cambodians and that this was something which might
stand in the way of Russian or Chinese plans'. Reading Oldfield's assess-
ments, George Young had become increasingly aware that communism had
'ceased to be the most likely bidder for local nationalist emotion and may
even be regarded with more hostility than "imperalism" '.^^

Although he was essentially a desk man, Oldfield's 'forte was assessing

and collating information supplied by others', and 'encouraging field officers
to get on with the job'. A key field officer was Michael Wrigley, who had
known Oldfield since serving with him in the wartime SIME organisation
in Cairo, where he 'learned the arts of intelligence from his life-long friend'. As
an accomplished SIS station chief in Bangkok, Wrigley 'gained international
recognition for his expertise in understanding and defeating Communist
subversion'. Although he had a good relationship with his CIA counterparts,
he was often frustrated by Foreign Office officials who 'didn't want to believe
the intelligence I produced'. Much of that intelligence came from a network of
penetration agents and former officers who had been placed in key positions.^^
A local vice-consul in Saigon in the early fifties, Donald Lancaster had
exchanged snippets of information with Reuters journalist Brian Crozier.
With a distinguished wartime record in Motor Torpedo Boats, 'Butch'
Lancaster was one of the Service's well-known homosexuals who once tried
unsuccessfully to recruit the journalist Neal Ascherson. When Ascherson felt
Lancaster's hand on his thigh, 'I got up and decided not to become a spy . .
.'

An authority on Indo-China affairs, Lancaster officially resigned from MI6

in the mid-fifties and, in 1961, published The Emancipation of French Indo-China.
The following year, he was appointed as secretary to Cambodia's Prince
Norodom Sihanouk.^^
A highly decorated naval pilot, Myles 'Woozle' Osborn, who served as a
district officer during the Malayan Emergency, where he gained valuable
experience in combating communist infiltration, was employed in 1963 under
the Colombo promoting development in Asia, and as a 'hill
Plan, tribes

adviser' in Laos. He also reported to MI6 and gave 'valuable service' to the

Laotian government.^^
During the mid-fifties the CIA monitored the movements of freelance
journalist Alex Josey, who travelled throughout the Far East attending left-

wing meetings. He was constantly seen in the company of Singapore's Lee

Kuan Yew, leader of the People's Action Party (PAP), who was known to
associate with communists. Fellow CIA officer Al Ulmer told Joseph B. Smith
that he recognised Josey. 'We were in the composite OSS-SOE unit in Cairo
during the war.' A psychological warfare specialist, in 1950 Josey had been
seconded to the post of Staff Officer (Emergency Information) in Malaya,
 THE SECRET INTELLIGENCE SERVICE 713

helping to establish the Joint Information and Propaganda Committee. Ulmer

told Smith: 'I don't think you have to worry too much about Mr Lee anymore.
MI6 has a damned good case officer working
on him. Josey's always been
great at the vagabond leftist act.' Josey went on to become Lee's adviser and
press spokesperson, and wrote two highly flattering biographies of him.^^
A man of action, after he had 'pinpointed the leader of a terrorist link
between Malaysia and Thailand', Michael Wrigley had proposed to London
that he 'offer an assassin £10,000 and a British passport to dispose of the
troublesome intermediary'. Head office rejected the proposal, much to Wrig-
ley's disgust: 'They had no balls.' He had little time for the Foreign Office,
which initially ignored his impressive intelligence-gathering efforts demon-
strating that 'the unrest spreading across South East Asia, leading eventually
to the inferno in Vietnam, was not directed from Moscow or Peking but
inspired by nationalism'. Not to be beaten, he went on to produce evidence
that 'contradicted the official doctrine in London and Washington that the
Communist guerrillas infiltrating from Thailand and Vietnam
into Malaysia
were Chinese'. In fact, Wrigley 'proved that many of them were Thais, a
critical distinction in an era when the Domino theory, beloved of Washington

strategists, suggested that the whole region would fall under centralised

Communist control'.

It is generally assumed were undertaken solely by

that such assessments
the Foreign Office, but in the early sixties MI6 had its own analysts who had
influence on both sides of the Atlantic. The 'brilliant eccentric' Frank Rendle,
who took part in the debriefing of Oleg Penkovsky, was at the centre of 'a
major clash of opinion between MI6 and the CIA over the Sino-Soviet split'.
The dispute horrified officials and was to colour policy on South-East Asia.
At issue 'was the correct interpretation of events in China. Was the split
real or was it a deception to confuse Western intelligence services?' With
Kremlinologist David Peck, Rendle was MI6's leading intelligence analyst
on communism, rivalling James Angleton for the title 'mad Genius'. He had
'a phenomenal capacity for correlating obscure names, dates and circum-

stances to draw inferences which invariably made sense'. Under the name
'David A. Charles', in 1961 he made his views known in the CIA-sponsored
China Quarterly. In discussing 'The Dismissal of Marshal P'eng Teh-huai', he
argued that a rift had developed at the heart of the Sino-Soviet relationship
following Peng's criticism of Mao's theories of peasant warfare. Peng had
wanted a modern, professional army and nuclear status, which required
continuing close friendship with the Soviets. Rendle regarded Peng's
dismissal in September 1959, for leading an 'anti-party' group within the
Politburo and 'intriguing' with Soviet leader Khrushchev, as evidence of a
major 'power-struggle' which 'precipitated the actual phase of the Sino-Soviet
dispute'.^^
A similar 'intensive search into the Sino-Soviet relationship' was
714 PART SEVEN: MODERN TIMES

undertaken within the CIA. As head of the Office of Current Intelligence in

the late fifties, Ray Cline had designated a 'few analysts with detailed famili-
arity with Soviet political leaders, doctrines, and daily policy pronouncements
to work alongside others who were equally knowledgeable about Mao's
China'. Against furious internal opposition, Cline's 'special staff compiled
data that enabled the CIA 'to lead the way in charting the strategic conflict
between the Soviet and Chinese and doctrine that was
styles of dictatorship
basic to the definitive split in I960'.The capture in Tibet during the spring
of 1961 of a batch of 1,600 Chinese documents enabled CIA analysts to
confirm that the split was for real and the serious divisions between China
and the Soviet Union could be exploited.
Unfortunately, operating under the influence of the deranged Soviet
defector, Anatoli Golitsin, James Angleton was able to convince the Agency's
management that the Sino-Soviet split was 'simply a clever ruse to tempt the
United States into commitments and aid to China, which would then be used
to weaken and exploit the United States'. The result was that the findings of
the China specialists were undermined and delayed both inside and outside
the CIA. According to Nigel Clive, who headed the MI6 department that
dealt with questions arising from Rendle's analysis, Angleton's suspicions
were taken on board by Maurice Oldfield, who refused to accept the reality
of the Sino-Soviet split. Another Angleton devotee was Leonard Schapiro,
a Russian-speaking academic 'with an encyclopedic memory and a superb
command of Soviet and communist history', who acted as an adviser to Dick
White. A friend of the Chief since the war, having served in MI5 and later
in the Intelligence Division of the Control Commission in Germany, Schapiro
enjoyed unusual influence over White, who seems to have taken seriously
his conspiratorial viewpoint. Schapiro agreed that 'the antagonism between
Peking and Moscow was deliberate disinformation to destabilise the West's
war against Communism'. Rendle's analysis was similarly sidelined.
It took another couple of years before Clive's department was allowed to
state officially that the split was genuine and announce the decision, in an
oblique way, to the world. Working for the Economist Intelligence Unit, Brian
Crozier, who was now regarded by MI6 as a 'long-insider', was allowed
access to the Service's analytic staff and, as a consultant to the Information
Research Department (IRD) to secret briefing papers. After comments from
various specialists inside MI6 and the IRD, a report was produced which
Crozier published in 1966 as an MI6-sponsored 'Background Book', The
Struggle for the Third World.
Although Prime Minister Macmillan had been one of the first to put faith
in the domino theory of communist expansion throughout South-East Asia,
by the early sixties he had taken on board the MI6 analysis that had been
developed by Wrigley and Oldfield. He now believed that, though the
Chinese 'would take advantage of troubles in any adjacent area, they would
 THE SECRET INTELLIGENCE SERVICE 715

not themselves embark on a policy of adventure'. Macmillan was highly

critical of Washington, where it was believed that Chinese 'expansionist poli-
cies were responsible for all the troubles' in the region. 'It was this fundamen-
tal mistake', he subsequently recorded, 'which later led America into so many
troubles . .
.'
From the beginning, Macmillan had been against American
entanglement in South Vietnam, and by 1963 was shocked to discover that
the number of US military 'advisers' had risen to fifteen thousand. The British
Prime Minister remained 'gloomy' about the chances of the South defending
against the North and privately warned President Kennedy against
itself

getting bogged down in Indochina.

'If dragged into that costly and bloody intervention',
Britain did not get
George Young believed was 'in no small part due to the effect of Oldfield's
it

balanced assessments, worked out with Sir Robert Scott'. Young made sure
that Oldfield's reports on South-East Asia were 'the regular lead-in items in
the weekly summary sent in the famous yellow box to the Prime Minister'.
Young knew that Oldfield's views on Vietnam were highly respected by CIA
and by some State Department officials in Washington,
officers in the region
where Denis Greenhill, who had come to know several senior CIA officers
when chair of the JIC (Far East) in Singapore, was also stationed. In 1959,
Greenhill had been appointed the Foreign Office liaison officer to MI 6, and
during his Washington tour worked closely with Oldfield and senior CIA
officers. An important visitor to the British embassy was Robert Scott, who

was now Permanent Secretary in the MoD. Given the respect accorded to
this intelligence trio. Young thought it 'one of the tragedies of history that
their views were overruled in Washington', where academic 'hawks' acquired
'a complete ascendancy over the naive Kennedy '.^^
This is, in fact, misleading. It was certainly the case that occasionally -
and with good reason - the Kennedy administration took a contrary view to
CIA assessments on South-East Asia. On Laos, for instance, the CIA
concluded that the communists' long-term political objective was absolute
control of the government and country. Kennedy's policy goal, however,
'was to secure a free and independent Laos via a neutralist arrangement that
included communist participation in the government'. The CIA did, however,
influence the President in his belief that the only way forward in South
Vietnam was a limited commitment of American special forces and small-
scale covert action programmes. We also now know from recently released
classified documents that during 1963 Kennedy had begun the process of
withdrawing from Vietnam. The dramatic escalation of the US commitment
to the region was instigated immediately after Kennedy's death by President
Johnson. It was with Johnson that the hawks gained ascendancy.'''^
The Conservative government privately opposed the United States'
increasing military involvement in Vietnam. The public support and token
military backing Britain was willing to provide were in return for US backing
716 PART SEVEN: MODERN TIMES

of British interests in Malaya. Conservative Foreign Secretary Rab Butler told

the Cabinet that it was a straightforward quid pro quo for 'the support of
the US government in seeking to maintain our position in South-East Asia'.
British support was on the basis that American policy was defensive. In late
May, Butler told the US Assistant Secretary of State, McGeorge Bundy, that
'an incursion into North Vietnamese territory would . . . create difficulties for
us'. Indeed, he regarded the failure of the Americans to suspend such plans
as 'sinister', fearing that any escalation would 'probably provoke the Soviet
Union and China into action'.
Throughout 1964 Labour leader Harold Wilson and shadow Chancellor
James Callaghan were in negotiation with American bankers for US help
with the expected balance of payments problem - forecast at £800 million.
A secret understanding was reached with the New York Federal Reserve
Bank to the effect that if the new Labour government did not devalue, in
return the Americans would promise massive support for sterling, but
expected in exchange support for US diplomatic and strategic objectives. In
private, George Brown revealed that the deal involved 'trading financial
support for the pound against military support on SE Asia'.^^
After his first visit to Washington as Prime Minister, in early December
1964, Wilson told his Cabinet colleagues that President Johnson had shown
deep concern over Britain's economic position and 'virtually promised us all
aid short of war'. Wilson said that Johnson wanted public support on Viet-
nam. The stakes were high and, unbeknown to Wilson, the CIA's Richard
Helms had sent Bundy a summary of smears against the British Prime Minis-
ter based on material collected from the Agency's agents in London. Trying

to avoid 'a liability' in the region, Wilson resisted US demands for a limited
British military presence. He told a surprised President that Britain had 54,000
troops in the region, a number of which were employed to thwart Indonesian
encroachments in Borneo. The non-aligned nationalist Indonesian govern-
ment of Sukarno was, in a policy of military 'confrontation', claiming parts
of Malaya, a British ally that had recently become independent. The Ameri-
cans were unable to secure an overt military commitment. Cabinet minister
Richard Crossman noted in his diaries that they wanted 'not so much the
presence of British soldiers as the presence of the British flag' as a fig-leaf of

international cover for US intervention in the region.^^

Using his secret-world sources, in January 1965 Brian Crozier published
the pro-MI6 view of the Vietnam War in his book South-East Asia in Turmoil,
which demonstrated that the war in South Vietnam was totally controlled
by Hanoi and the North Vietnamese Army. He added that 'for all Peking's
calls for revolutionary action in South East Asia, there is remarkably little

evidence of direct Chinese Communist involvement in the so-called "libera-

tion" movements in the area'. Crozier then went on to list the instances
where MI6 had discovered that the Chinese were 'quite content to let other
 THE SECRET INTELLIGENCE SERVICE 717

Communists - such as the Vietnamese, Burmese, or Sarawak Chinese - pull

chestnuts out of the fire for them'. He suggested that 'the Chinese have
probably been expending at least as much energy lately countering Soviet

influences as they have in fighting Western "imperialism"'. He pointed out

that the Americans had 'failed to grasp a disconcerting and indeed disturbing
fact: same man can sometimes be both a Communist and a national-
that the
ist'. He attacked the Americans for relying on local despotic 'strong men'

whose only credential was being anti-communist.^^

On the ground, MI6 officers got on well with their CIA counterparts,
particularly the chiefs of station in Saigon, John Richardson and Peer de Silva,
who shared the essentials of the MI6 analysis. In Washington, the CIA's
Richard Helms staunchly opposed President Johnson's support of the domino
theory, regardingit as just a phase. He argued that the US could withdraw

from Vietnam without losing the whole of South-East Asia or risking much
in the Cold War. His views were not welcomed in the Oval Office, and in
March 1965 the US began its non-retaliatory bombing of North Vietnam -
Rolling Thunder - and landed its first combat troops in the South.
Labour's Defence Secretary, Denis Healey, who claims he did not receive
any MI6 intelligence or assessments on avoiding commitments in Vietnam,
recalled the American pressure on Britain to aid their war effort. 'The United
States, after trying for thirty years to get Britain out of Asia . . . was now
trying desperately to keep us in; during the Vietnam war it did not want to
be the only country killing coloured people on their own soil.'^^

In July, while Cabinet Secretary Burke Trend was in Washington to discuss

sterling, the US National Security Council (NSC) reported that 'anything
which could be regarded as even a partial British withdrawal from overseas
responsibilities is bound
to lead to an agonizing reappraisal here ... of Anglo-
American Vietnam was 'the paramount problem'. NSC adviser
relations'.

McGeorge Bundy minuted that the British have 'to get it into their heads
that it makes no sense for us to rescue the pound in a situation in which
there is no British flag in Vietnam, and a threatened British thin-out east . . .

of Suez'. Bundy told the President that 'what I would like to say to Trend
... is that a British brigade in Vietnam would be worth a billion dollars at

the moment of truth for Sterling'. Wilson knew, however, that the Americans
had no desire to see sterling devalued as it would have a knock-on effect on
the dollar. The war in Vietnam was beginning to cost the US billions. Wilson
did agree, however, to Johnson's demand that MI 6 provide help to the CIA
in South-East Asia. As Tom Bower notes, it was made clear to the Foreign
Office and to White, in particular, that 'nothing could be permitted to irritate
that relationship'. One result was that James Angleton was let off the leash
and allowed to spread his poisonous conspiracy views among MI6's counter-
espionage specialists in London."^^^
The molehunts that followed produced an atmosphere of fear and
718 PART SEVEN: MODERN TIMES

paranoia inside MI6 headquarters which took years to dispel. Knowledge

of their existence was confined in Whitehall to the Cabinet Secretary, who
'sympathised with White's ambition to save the beleaguered service'. By the
time Oldfield returned to London and turned against Angleton, telling White
that the American was a 'disaster', the molehunts were in full swing with a
momentum that proved impossible to halt.^^
In South-East Asia MI 6 was working hand in glove with the CIA to
'liquidate' Indonesia's President Sukarno. In co-operation with their
colleagues from the Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS), MI6's
Special Political Action group launched up to six different disruptive actions,
including the use of forgeries designed to sow dissension within the ranks
of the powerful Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) and the recruitment of
'moderate' elements within the army.^^
On 30 September 1965 a group of left-wing army officers loyal to President
Sukarno assassinated several generals who were thought to be planning a
coup. The subsequent political chaos provided an opportunity for another
military faction led by General Suharto, who was to install himself as Presi-
dent, to move The British ambassador in Jakarta, Sir Andrew
against the PKI.
Gilchrist, a former SOE officer and chair of the Far East JIC, telegraphed to
the Foreign Office on 5 October his belief that 'a little shooting in Indonesia
would be an essential preliminary to change'. The Foreign Office decided to
tacitly back Suharto's generals, preferring 'an Army to a Communist regime'.

MI6 and the IRD were instructed to 'blacken the PKI in the eyes of the army
and the people', using such propaganda themes as 'Chinese interference in
particular arms shipments; PKI subverting Indonesia as agents of foreign
communists The CIA covert operation supplied the generals with arms,
. .
.'

disguised as shipments of 'medicines'. In late October, the generals swiftly

moved against the PKI and within a few months a hundred thousand
supporters had been tortured and executed. The targets had been taken from
lists drawn up by CIA officers in the Jakarta embassy, which was co-operating
closely with the resident MI6 officers.^^

MI6 covert help to the Americans over Vietnam took various forms,
including the forwarding of intelligence reports from its station heads in
Hanoi, such as Daphne Park. Headed by Sir Robert Thompson, British coun-
ter-insurgency experts with experience in Malaya and close to MI 6 were
seconded Saigon as part of a British Advisory Mission. MI6 had earlier
to
assisted theMalayan government of Tengku Abdul Rahman to 'secretly trans-
fer to South Vietnam the bulk of the arms and war material that had been

used against the defeated Malayan Communist Party'. Richard Noone, an

anthropologist and special action expert, led an MI6 team of Malays and
tribesmen from Borneo on a tour of duty among the ethnically similar
Montagnards in South Vietnam.^^
The Malaya experience, however, proved to be of little value to the Ameri-
 THE SECRET INTELLIGENCE SERVICE 719

cans, who never really mastered counter-insurgency campaigning in Vietnam.

Malaya had required substantial numbers of troops and a large intelligence
and security investment. Even then, it had been a close-run thing, with favour-
able economic and political factors largely saving British efforts. Conveniently
rising rubber prices had paid for the tremendously expensive hearts-and-
minds campaign. Peer de Silva later admitted that the CIA was too impatient
and never developed the kind of jungle experience essential for success."^^
'More sensitive operations' were 'refuted by sleight of hand'. Some
defence 'experts' have denied that the SAS operated in Vietnam but a photo-
graph in the regiment's normally discreet magazine. Mars and Minerva, in
June 1969 showed Sergeant Dick Meadows receiving the US Silver Star for
his service in Vietnam. A number of US Special Forces personnel were trained
by the SAS in Borneo in the techniques of jungle warfare, while, in turn,
SAS men found their way to a training school in Saigon where they instructed
South Vietnamese troops, who also trained in Malaya. Individual SAS
soldiers, such as Captain Robin Letts, who had been awarded the Military
Cross for an operation in Borneo, were transferred via the British military
attache in Saigon, Col. John Waddy, to Australian and New Zealand SAS
units, as an auxiliary force for the US expedition.^^
In the late sixties, after a spell training the Kenyan police, SAS veteran
Peter Stiff was a member of an SAS team dispatched to Thailand to train
Thai special forces with the co-operation of the US Green Berets. The training,
however, was a cover for a more covert role which included hitting the Ho
Chi Minh trail from the west through Laos.

We were given sectors across the border in Laos to work in,

and patrols of three or four of us would cross the border, seek
out the locals and gather intelligence. We would not be identifi-
ably British or American and we would wear nondescript mili-
tary clothing, without insignia and neither would we wear
. . .

dog tags for identification. Our major task was reconnaissance.

Stiff was in Thailand for eleven months, 'but politically as far as Britain was
concerned, it is certain that few knew I was there and those who did, turned
a blind eye'. As he admits, his was not the only SAS presence in that theatre
of operations. There were 'quite a few unofficial ones'.
Secret air flights also took place from Hong Kong - the centre of Britain's
contribution to the Vietnam War - with clandestine deliveries of British arms,
particularly napalm and five-hundred-pound bombs. In the end, the most
significant British contribution came from the GCHQ monitoring station at
Little Sai Wan in Hong Kong (UKC 201 in the then international Sigint
network). Working overtime to provide the US with intelligence, its intercepts
of North Vietnamese military traffic were used by the American military
command to target bombing strikes over the North. Together with NSA
720 PART SEVEN: MODERN TIMES

stations in Thailand and the Philippines, UKC 201 also monitored diplomatic
traffic and North Vietnamese surface-to-air missile sites, enabling early warn-
ings to be relayed to bomber crews in mid-flight. British help was explained
away by referring to it as an Australian operation.'^^

The molehunts, which had been one of the by-products of the dispute over
South-East Asia, had effectively crippled operations inside the Soviet Union
through fear of penetration. Operations and intelligence-gathering had more
success outside the Soviet orbit.
Following Suez, George Young had made the first unofficial investigation
of Soviet penetration of Africa by sending Frank Steele to survey the scene.
Steele received a distinctly frosty reception from colonial administrators and
little happened. While he liked White personally and respected his judgement

in security matters. Young, who 'foresaw the New Commonwealth countries

as the main trouble makers of the next decade', felt that the Chief was too
deferential to Whitehall over operations in Africa. MI6's Chief did not attempt
to challenge the Attlee Doctrine until the Middle East Director, John Bruce-
Lockhart, undertook a second survey in late 1959. During his trip, on 3

February 1960, as Nelson Mandela with 155 other members of the African
National Congress (ANC) went on trial for treason. Prime Minister Macmillan
told the all-white South African parliament in Cape Town that

the most striking of all the impressions I have formed since I

left London is of this African national consciousness. In different

places it happening everywhere.
takes different forms, but it is

The wind of change is blowing through this continent The . . .

great issue in this second part of the twentieth century is

whether the uncommitted people of Asia and Africa will swing
to the East or the West.

Bruce-Lockhart's report to White in the spring of 1960 warned that with

deepening poverty, growing corruption and nascent nationalism, the conti-
nent looked ripe for exploitation by Soviet cadres. Basing his approach on
his experience of the Malayan Emergency, where SIS and MI5 had worked
reasonably well together. White began to focus on Africa. In Nigeria, both
agencies, with MI6 officers moving
from Sudan, had already played a role
in
in the 'rigging' of the 1959 federal elections which led to independence.'*^
The JIC had not expressed much interest in Africa, and the tasks entrusted
to MI6 included the normal acquisition of intelligence and liaison. Most MI6
efforts in Africa were stymied by inter-agency demarcation disputes and
internal Whitehall political battles. MI6 was unable to open stations where
the Service felt they were needed. It did, however, occasionally conduct
robust - or what the Service called 'disruptive' - operations. Including Africa
as part of his remit, Bruce-Lockhart concentrated his efforts on Northern
 THE SECRET INTELLIGENCE SERVICE 721

Rhodesia and the former Belgian Congo, which had valuable uranium
deposits.
George Young believed that the first test for opposing Soviet support for
national revolutionary movements 'resulted initially in misjudgements and
poor execution'. The chaos in the Congo immediately after independence
had provided the test of revolution by proxy - 'an Egyptian detachment,
ostensibly part of the United Nations' peace-keeping force; a squadron of
Soviet transport planes with crews in civilian clothes; the assurance of Pandit
Nehru that his officials would block any counter-action by the West while
Dag Hammarskjold looked the other way'. In the Congo, Daphne Park, who
had trained wartime OSS officers, co-operated with her opposite number in
the CIA in trying to overthrow Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba, who was
believed to be aligning the country with the Soviet Union against the West.
On 14 September 1960 Lumumba was deposed by Joseph Mobutu with the
help of the CIA and MI6. Lumumba was to die in mysterious circumstances
following unsuccessful CIA plans, to which Park was privy, to assassinate
him. According to Young: 'The murder of Lumumba, the collapse of the
Antoine Gizenga regime in Stanleyville, President Abboud's denial of Khar-
toum Airport for the passage of supplies, and some deft behind-the-scenes
initiatives by CIA officers, put paid to the Russian ploy.'^°

This conspiracy view of Soviet penetration of Africa was shared by

Young's right-wing 'friends', who took an extreme and racist view of Africa
and Africans. The official line, however, was that 'Communism (amongst
African political movements) has made no great impact' and that the idea
of 'pan-Africanism' could be discounted. In practice, MI6 concentrated on
counter-intelligence, including the penetration of actual or potentially
subversive organisations. As Anthony Verrier notes, because this was often
conducted with 'skill and imagination', the aims of nationalist politicians
were 'known with some precision'. Whitehall was well aware of the fact that
'men of this calibre and potential leadership would only respond to overtures
on behalf of their movements, not for their own benefit'. Verrier adds that
'these prospective politicians and one-party "successor state" leaders in place
(even if sometimes in gaol) were not going to blow the whistle on their
paymasters (for their parties, be it stressed, not for themselves) by telling
their followers "patience, time and Her Majesty's Government are on our
side'". Many of these leaders had been close to the London-based Africa
Bureau, which supplied the British government with background intelligence
on the nationalist movements. As evidence of its usefulness the Bureau was
not put under surveillance by Special Branch and MI5.
Verrier refers to the 'virtual recruitment' of Tom Mboya, leader of the
moderate Kenyan African National Union; Tanganyika African National
Union's Julius Nyerere, regarded by MI6 as 'an outstanding African leader',
who won the 1960 election; Nyasaland's Hastings Banda, whose Malawi
722 PAPvT SEVEN: MODERN TIMES

Congress Party swept the board in the 1964 elections; Northern Rhodesia's
Kenneth Kaunda and Southern Rhodesia's Joshua Nkomo. These 'agents of
influence' were provided by MI6 with covert funds, 'establishing a pattern
which has changed little over the years'. The leader of the National Union
for the Total Independence of Angola (UNIT A), Jonas Savimbi, who was a
close contact of Mboya's, is also said to have been recruited. In 1963, Savimbi
had been made chair of a group of liberation movement representatives of
the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), advising on the formation of a
committee that would co-ordinate fund-raising to support nationalist move-
ments. Among his committee colleagues were Kaunda and Nkomo. Savimbi
became particularly linked to the multinational company Lonhro, whose
management included senior MI6 officers such as Nicholas Elliott and Paul
Paulson, who happened to succeed Bruce-Lockhart on the Africa desk.^^
Another MI6 catch was ANC leader Nelson Mandela. Whether Mandela
was recruited in London before he was imprisoned in South Africa is not
clear, but it is understood that on a recent trip to London he made a secret

visit to MI6's training section to thank the Service for its help in foiling two

assassination attempts directed against him soon after he became President.

MI6 was particularly successful in placing its people as advisers to African
leaders. As Lusaka in the mid-sixties. Daphne Park helped
chief of station in
finance Kaunda's successful election campaign and became his 'right-hand
[wo]man'. In 1965, Denis Grennan, a trustee of the Ariel Foundation, which
was long believed to be an intelligence 'front' organisation designed to help
future African leaders, was seconded to the staff of President Kaunda alleg-

edly to help create an intelligence service. and wheeler-dealer

White settler

Bruce McKenzie had been an MI6 agent since at least 1963 and after indepen-
dence became the 'most important white man in Kenya', retaining an active
role in military and security affairs.^^^

Around the world the Americans wanted ever more robust operations but, as
head of counter-intelligence, Oldfield argued against aggressive recruitment
strategies. In a formal paper, he stated that 'encouraging active recruitment
would expose SIS officers in foreign countries to expulsion and would mean
that SIS was more vulnerable to a rigorous value-for-money analysis. It might
be hard to prove that SIS provided better intelligence than GCHQ.' Indeed,
itwas increasingly recognised that technical means of intelligence-gathering
were both superior to agents on the ground and cost-efficient. Senior MI6
colleague Nigel Clive remarked of GCHQ that 'it's a veritable industry'.
He added with relish: 'That's the stuff that really gives you an intellectual
'^^
erection.
The fact was that western intelligence agencies were singularly unsuccess-
ful at recruiting KGB officers. The only successes were among those who

had decided on their own initiative to spy or defect. Tom Bower records
 THE SECRET INTELLIGENCE SERVICE 723

that the only compensation was the development of new technical methods,
including the monitoring from embassies abroad of KGB radio which
traffic

provided new openings. Overriding all MI6 operations in this period was
the need to avoid further embarrassing scandals and the fear of interference
by Whitehall. Morale slumped among officers with a lack of confidence being
shown in senior ranks.
The reaction in Whitehall to the Blake and Philby espisodes was, naturally,
one of extreme dissatisfaction with MI6 and with White, who had been put
in place to clean up the Service. The reality was that few officials and even
fewer ministers and politicians knew how senior or how significant Philby's
position had been. Such typical ignorance had allowed the Service to escape
any effective scrutiny. In other countries the disasters might have led to
abolition. At the top, there was a general cynicism and weariness which
stifled any major reforms. The situation was best summed up by Macmillan's
private secretary, John Wyndham (later Lord Egremont), who opined a few
years later that it would be 'much better if the Russians saw the Cabinet
minutes twice a week. Prevent all that dangerous guesswork. '^^
The first sign of Whitehall displeasure was the decision in 1964 to move
MI6 from Broadway Buildings to a new office block. Century House, on
Westminster Bridge Road. As it was now denied access to the traditional
haunts of the clubs, and sidelined from the centres of power, this was an
indication that MI 6 was expected to operate like any other department.
Increasingly MI6 was being brought under the control of the Foreign Office
with its traditional ties to the armed services being downgraded. In the
same year, the services were amalgamated under the MoD, with the service
intelligence directorates combined with the JIB as the Defence Intelligence
Staff (DIS). Cost-cutting at the MoD resulted in cutbacks for the DIS and the
loss of its officers seconded to MI6. Internally, the Service Requirements
Sections were separated from the rest of the Requirement machinery as MoD
Advisers for the Army, Air and Navy. The other R sections were reorganised
along geographical lines and more closely integrated with the Production
side, where DPI covered western Europe and the Soviet bloc; DP2 the Middle
East and Africa; DPS the Far East; and DP4 the Americas, including Latin
America, and also the UK station.^^
As a response to the Philby and Blake scandals. White oversaw the creation
of a Directorate of Counter-intelligence and Security (DC IS). This absorbed
the Inspectorate of Security, the Positive Vetting Section, out of which
developed the Security Branches for Vetting and Personnel (SVB and SVP),
and R5, whose responsibilities for monitoring foreign communist parties were
taken up by the Controllerates. The Security branches worked closely with
MI5's C Division, which was responsible for Protective Security. The DCIS
was subdivided into Counter-intelligence (CI) sections covering areas such
as eastern Europe, China and the USSR. These were eventually amalgamated
724 PAPvT SEVEN: MODERN TIMES

into three Targeting and Counter-intelligence Sections (TCI) under the DCIS,
w hose head was Maurice Oldfield. Against his better judgement, but aware
that he had to go along with Angleton as part of the deal for US support of
sterling and British aid to the Americans in Vietnam, White also agreed
to the setting up of the joint MI6/MI5 Fluency Committee to investigate
penetration of the services/''^

This was not The Cabinet Office, in the shape of Burke Trend,
the end.
had decided had come for further change. Backed up by John
that the time
Briance, who had recently returned from South-East Asia, and Oldfield, who
became Assistant Chief in November 1965, White took the hint and began
to put in place the foundations of the modern Secret Intelligence Service
(SIS). In January 1966, he initiated a comprehensive organisational redesign
which returned to the first postwar model. The Director of Production was
reinstated, along with Requirements, Counter-intelligence and Security,
Operational Support for specialist and technical skills. Personnel and Admin-
istration, and new Training
later a Labour govern-
section. In addition, the
ment instituted 'a new era of strict which resulted in staff
financial control',
reductions on both the Production and Requirements side, and the 'first of
a series of station amalgamations which served to eliminate certain stations
judged to be relatively unproductive'. MI6 had had a string of officers
throughout the Caribbean who had supplied good intelligence but had been
superseded by the CIA. The process left MI6 with just one station in South
America, Buenos Aires, leaving the Service to rely on American intelligence
to fill the gap. Seven Controllers covered Europe, Soviet Bloc, Western Hemi-
sphere, Far East, Middle East, UK, and a new department for Africa. With
the collapse of the Attlee Doctrine, the Service took over responsibility for
some of the former colonies that had been the preserve of MI5's E Branch,
which had by convention posted Security Liaison Officers. The leaner profile
was to test the Service's ability to mount operations abroad.^^
The cost-cutting led to a proposal by the Soviet Bloc Controller, Harold
Shergold, for joint MI6/MI5 sections. MI6 and MI 5 scientific staff were
already working under a joint head with a new research and development
section. MI 6 officers began working with MI5's counter-espionage K Branch
on joint targeting and operations against Soviet, eastern European and, later,
Chinese targets in the UK. The UK Controller also set up a joint section.^^"^
Not all these changes were welcomed, and for a time there was a 'terrible
atmosphere'. Naturally, there still existed the old-boy network inside the
Service which regarded White's approach as 'too gentlemanly' and continu-
ing to 'inhibit the tougher form of security which was desirable'. In March
1966, White organised a conference at Gosport to consider the changes and
to assess where the Service was going. New recruitment procedures and
employment conditions were put in place and, in an attempt to clear out the
dead wood, the retirement age was dropped to fifty-five. Geoffrey McDermott
 THE SECRET INTELLIGENCE SERVICE 725

noticed that the dozen top members of the Service, and several who have
'all

recently retired - some of them into the Diplomatic Service - were personal
friends of Philby And, curiously, half-a-dozen others have gone in for
. . .

extreme right-wing politics/ Viewed by CIA officers as another example of

British incompetence, the escape of George Blake from Wormwood Scrubs
on 22 October 1966 once more put a strain on Anglo-American relations. ^°
The Service's inability to obtain high-grade intelligence on Ian Smith's
rebellious regime in Rhodesia also put a strain on relations with the poli-
ticians. MI6 intelligence reports failed to predict Smith's Unilateral Declar-
ation of Independence (UDI).^^
Earlier in January, at an emergency summit in Lagos, Nigeria, an exasper-
ated Harold Wilson had encountered fierce criticism from African and
Commonwealth leaders of the government's failure to take military action
after UDI. Wilson countered that 'it was all very well to speak of military
intervention and of gunboat diplomacy, but this was not the 19th century
and Rhodesia was a land-locked state'. Britain argued that logistical problems,
Zambia's vulnerability and the kith-and-kin factor prevented a military
solution. Extensive contingency planning by the MoD on the practicalities of
intervention convinced many in the Ministry that such an operation, despite
the success of the limited support sent to East Africa in early 1964, was
beyond Britain's capabilities. In truth, there was no intention of mounting a
military operation. MI6 planners sympathised too closely with the Rhodesian
whites and provided only negative intelligence. Defence Secretary Denis
Healey later admitted that the Chief of the Defence Staff had threatened
'resignation or military action if we ever considered doing anything there'.
Wilson later said that he had been misled over his statement that oil

sanctions would bring down the regime in 'weeks rather than months'. The
head of Rhodesia's Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO), Ken Flowers,
who MI 6, thought that the British Prime Minister had been
offered advice to
'deliberately misadvised'. He knew that MI6 had the 'right answers', but the
intelligence had been lost in the assessment system. In fact, it is now apparent
that the Foreign Office and the JIC put no pressure on Dick White to mount
extensive intelligence-gathering operations. Whether this was deliberate or
the result of the general poor opinion of the Service is not clear.^^

In either case, the reforms to MI6 proceeded. Perhaps the key figure in
the changes was Denis Greenhill, who returned in 1966 from Washington to
London as Deputy Under-Secretary in charge of defence and intelligence at
the Foreign Office. It was Greenhill who was responsible for the decision on
the successor to White, who was due to retire in 1968. Oldfield had assumed
that the post would be his but White, as had Greenhill, had lost confidence
in his deputy. Whilst in Washington, Greenhill had cautioned Oldfield
about the presence of young male lodgers in his apartment, though he did
not directly question his sexuality. CIA officers thought Oldfield to be
726 PART SEVEN: MODERN TIMES

homosexual but said nothing, assuming that he had passed his positive
vetting when, in fact, he had lied during the process.^^
The other internal candidate was molehunter Christopher Phillpotts who,
w hile he had supporters among the young turks, was gravely distrusted by
some senior figures. With no strong recommendation from White, Greenhill
told Foreign Secretary George Brown that there was no suitable internal
candidate. Brown offered the job to Greenhill, who turned it down, and after
a search for an outsider the post finally went to John Rennie, an assistant
under-secretary at the Foreign Office responsible for defence matters and for
chairing a number of Cabinet committees.^^
Rennie was a true Establishment figure - Oxford - with
Balliol College,
a distinguished career in the Diplomatic Service. His appointment was
greeted with suspicion by MI6 officers, who pointed out his lack of intelli-
gence experience. This was true, but what Rennie did have was experience
of the covert world - having been head of the IRD for five years in the
mid-fifties, when use of IRD propaganda tactics was at its height in the
Middle and Far East. Nigel Clive, who in an unusual appointment was made
head of the IRD in 1968, thought that Oldfield 'had every reason to feel
aggrieved' when he was passed over in favour of Rennie. Clive states that
Rennie was appointed

to his surprise, and no less to the surprise of the senior echelons

of SIS. The case could have been made that for an outsider,
his past service should have provided him with some parallel
understanding of what to expect in the new role. But in fact he
found it difficult to adjust to his changed responsibilities and,
from first to last, he was always overshadowed by his deputy
and ultimate successor (Sir) Maurice Oldfield. At no period did
he feel at home in SIS.''

In a long tradition of Foreign Office appointments, Greenhill had been

promoted to chair the JIC, butfound the situation less than satisfactory.
Tnitially the committee dealt primarily with intelligence gathered by covert
means and forecasts on were based on this.'
a very restricted distribution
Greenhill discussed the problem with Trend, and 'eventually an assessment
staff was established in the Cabinet Office'. The Joint Intelligence Organisa-

tion's (JIO) responsibility was 'to make forecasts and assessments on foreign
affairs using all the information, covert and overt, at the Government's

disposal' for consideration by the JIC and circulation to ministers and

officials. This tended to tighten the Foreign Office grip on intelligence assess-

ment since 'it was inevitable that the biggest input came from the Foreign
Office'. The first head was another Foreign Office official, John Thompson,

who had been with Greenhill in Washington. After initial hesitation, the
Treasury co-operated thanks to Frank Figgures - 'an unusual Treasury
 THE SECRET INTELLIGENCE SERVICE 727

official'. England had a considerable intelligence staff of its own

The Bank of
and was ready to use Thompson's information but was 'unwilling to pool
its own'. The JIO also had a co-ordinating role in respect of the work of the

security and intelligence agencies.^^

Consideration of the assessment problem by Greenhill and Trend also
led, on 1 April 1968, to the appointment of White to the new post of Intelli-

gence and Security Co-ordinator. Located in the Cabinet Office, the ISC was
intended to co-ordinate all information and deliver an authoritative intelli-

gence assessment unclouded by departmental prejudices. It soon developed

its own and was designed to improve MI6's status in Whitehall and
staff

among ministers by better targeting and intelligence-gathering, and through

increased budgets and better conditions for the Service.^^
The honeymoon did not last long. David Owen recalled that before leaving
the MoD on the evening of 21 August 1968, he read highly classified reports
on Czechoslovakia which stated that 'there would be no invasion. I was then
woken up to be told that the Russians were invading.' Who was to blame?
Christopher Andrew's source claims that SIS concluded 'from intelligence
on the movement of Soviet armed forces that the Russians intended to invade'.
The JIC and White had forwarded authoritative assessments to the Cabinet
Office to the effect that the Soviets would not invade, sharing the Foreign
Office belief that there would be no invasion 'because of the international
repercussions for the USSR'. It was evident that the arrangements for assess-
ment had failed, a scenario that Denis Healey had predicted. Healey believed
that 'inevitably, once part of the Foreign Office has taken a view on an issue,
it tries to interpret intelligence so as to confirm that view and tends to discount

intelligence which disagrees with it'. Policy-making and assessment need to

be kept separate. Greenhill later admitted that the assessment problem was
never completely solved and that input from outside the Foreign Office/
MoD circle, such as that of academics, was not integrated into the process.
As Penkovsky operation, MI 6 had introduced elaborate
a result of the
plans for early warning of military action by the Warsaw Pact; the problem
was that the Service had no human sources to set them in motion. Despite
the vast array of intelligence sources, principally from satellite technology,
and improved eavesdropping on military movements, MI6 had been unable
to recruit high-level sources behind the Iron Curtain. The sorry state of MI6's
intelligence-gathering was kept quiet within the Cabinet Office, but the results
were widely known throughout Whitehall, where its product was not highly
rated. A similar fate awaited White in his co-ordinating role, with his auth-
ority gradually being diminished. A greater reliance began to be placed within
Whitehall on the intelligence gathered by GCHQ - subsidised to a large extent
by the Americans as the only significant part of the 'special relationship' -
which proved to be abundant, often reliable and to provide value for money.
Indeed, much of the Service's own intelligence would eventually be found
728 TART SEVEN: MODERN TIMES

to bo based on GCHQ intercepts. More weight was given by officials and

ministers to the output from Cheltenham, with the result that MI6 became
de\alued.
When Labour government won an increased majority in the 1966
the
general election, Harold Wilson began backing out of the deal with the Ameri-
cans over sterling and Vietnam, and set in motion Britain's disengagement
from South-East Asia. It seems that Healey had intended from the beginning
to pull out east of Suez and from the Far Eastern bases. Intense pressure was
applied by the Americans, but Wilson resisted and agreed to the devaluation
of sterling.
When Wilson undertook another visit to the United States in February
1968, the State Department minuted that Britain had 'never cut a less impress-
ive figure in Washington's eyes'. Its retreat from east of Suez signalled that
Britain had conceded 'its ability to remain a world power'. In the face of
these trenchant and widely held criticisms, a report by the US Bureau of
Intelligence and Research, which analysed the future of the 'special relation-
ship', was able to conclude that despite a good deal of 'sentimentality, rhetoric
and cant', there remained certain important features of the alliance between
Britain and the United States which were 'quite special'. That Britain was a
favoured partner of the United States was almost entirely due to co-operation
in the fields of nuclear weapons and intelligence. Britain's 'far-flung depen-
dencies and Commonwealth affiliates' - its 'residual empire' - continued to
give the US access to an 'unrivalled network of facilities that served US
. . .

foreign policy interests' and 'provided valuable - in some cases indispensable

- contributions to US security arrangements'.
The report went on to note that

in the intelligence field, the US and UK give each other a greater

volume and wider variety of information than either does to
any of its allies. The arrangements provide for exchange of
information gathered both from overt and covert sources; for
the swapping of estimates; and for the preparation of joint esti-
mates. There is a division of labor in certain geographic and
functional fields, and on some areas and subjects, each nation
is dependent for its intelligence mainly on the other ... In the

intelligence field, the UK gets more than it gives, but what it

gives is not insubstantial.

Although the report noted that the special relationship had been declared
dead every few months, it concluded that it was still very much 'alive'. This
permanent relationship, which was run by a select band of unelected officials,
remained secret, underground and almost entirely unknown to politicians.'^
CHAPTER 33

THE LAST OF THE

COLONIAL WARS

By the late sixties, the Special Air Service (SAS) had become the overt/
covert special operations arm of MI 6 and the Foreign Office, taking over the
paramilitary role of the Special Operations Branch of the old War Planning
Directorate which, in turn, had temporarily filled the gap left by the
disbandment of the Special Operations Executive (SOE).
There were senior officers within the SAS who were seriously concerned
about the lack of military action and of a theatre where they could rehearse
'training operations'. Fortuitously, the regiment's interest was aroused when
MI6 sources reported that 'an Iraqi-trained guerrilla training team had started
work among the primitive tribesmen of the sensitive Musandam Peninsula'
in Muscat and Oman. As a result of the intelligence, an SAS squadron was
landed on the peninsula, while six hundred miles away at the other end of
Oman, a second guerrilla force was beginning to cause serious trouble. This
was the beginning of the SAS's involvement 'in one of Britain's least publi-
cised victories of the post-war period'.'
The rebellion started in the mid-sixties largely as an indigenous one
against the reactionary rule of Sultan Said bin Taimur. Serious guerrilla
warfare broke out in the southern province of Dhofar and the rebellion
became a classic revolutionary struggle, supported from South Yemen by the
USSR and China. The British, with a long-standing defence commitment to
Oman, 'intervened to protect the flow of oil through the Straits of Hormuz,
by ensuring that a friendly government remained in power'. British money
730 PART SEVFN: MODERN TIMES

made up half of Said's income, which was used to preserve his rule. In 1964
oil had been discovered in Oman and by 1967 the Shell-owned Petroleum
Development (Oman) (PDO) oil company was producing commercial quanti-
ties. Most of the royalties from the PDO were put away in a Swiss bank with

little being spent on the country, where conditions for the Omani people

were generally appalling.

Despite the oil wealth, there remained a lack of economic progress, a
near-total absence of schools - considered by Said as 'centres of communism'
- neglect of public health - resulting in rampant dysentery, tuberculosis,
malaria and syphilis - and a corrupt civil regime, which fuelled sympathy
among ordinary Omanis for the rebels. A feudal justice system existed within
which opponents were imprisoned in barbaric conditions, subjected to star-
vation and repeated beatings, while British advisers stood by. The Sultan's
advisers included his secretary of defence. Tat' Waterfield, Maj. Dennison,
chief of intelligence, and his chief adviser, Maj. F. C. L. Chauncy. The Sultan's
regime of 'tyranny and sadism' could never have survived 'without the active
and consistent backing of the British government'. Fearing another Vietnam,
the United States encouraged Britain in its role of principal supporter.^
The counter-insurgency campaign did not go well, however, and by 1969
the Popular Front for the Liberation of the Occupied Arab Gulf (PFLO-AG),
which had evolved from the Dhofar Liberation Front, controlled all of Dhofar
except for the small coastal enclave of Salalah, where the British had a military
and RAF base. Within Dhofar, the PFLO-AG introduced healthcare and
education facilities. The guerrillas were confident enough to shell the RAF
base and Said bin Taimur's palace. Oman was the transition area between
Dhofar and the Gulf, and by March 1970 the military situation had become
desperate and of major concern to the British government. On 12 June, allies
of the guerrillas in Dhofar, the National Democratic Front for the Liberation
of Omanand the Arab Gulf (NDFLO-AG), attacked the Green Mountain
area, thus extending the war into the interior, 'threatening the oil-fields, the
Sultanate of Oman and ultimately, the whole of the Gulf. Although intelli-
gence on these guerrilla fronts was scanty, the British realised that they faced
a well-organised threat. Initial attempts to persuade the Sultan to change his
policies to meet the new situation were a failure. This forced Britain into
'some rather unorthodox covert actions'. The first of these was the removal
of the Sultan 'in a virtually bloodless and highly popular coup that placed
his progressive. Western-educated son on the throne'.^
The British prepared the ground with a press rumour in early 1970 that
Said was willing to resign. A Foreign Office official, in referring to what had
happened a few years before in Abu Dhabi, was quoted as saying that 'we
need an Omani Zaid to Said's Shakhbut'. The Omani figure turned out to be
the Sultan's son, Qaboos, who, following his return to Oman in 1966 after
education in England and military service in Germany, was put under virtual
 THE LAST OF THE COLONIAL WARS 731

house Although the Sultan distrusted the intelligence

arrest in the palace.
service and often blocked the efforts of its officers, the director of intelligence,
Maj. Dennison, was able to forge a link with the experienced exiles who fled
abroad to escape Sultan Said's oppressions. Although Dennison apparently
played no part in the coup, his 'presence at the heart of the country's intelli-

gence network helped to ease the transition'. He saw Qaboos and suggested
that following a coup, the Sultan's strongest challenger abroad, Said's brother,
Tariq bin Taimur, be made Prime Minister. With the endorsement of Qaboos,
in May Dennison travelled secretly to Dubai, where he obtained the
co-operation of Tariq, who was in contact with other dissident groups and
had called for the Sultan's removal.^
Qaboos's visitors were carefully screened to exclude those who might
influence him, but contact was covertly maintained with a number of officials
and with selected Sultan's Armed Force (SAF) intelligence officers. A pivotal
figure in the coup was Capt. Timothy Landon, who had trained with Qaboos
at Sandhurst, A former lieutenant in the 10th Royal Hussars, Landon had
been seconded to Oman in 1965 as a reconnaissance officer. Subsequently
trained in London by MI6 in intelligence work, he returned two years later
to Oman, where he represented Foreign Office interests and was 'deeply
involved with British Intelligence'. By July 1969, Landon had taken over
responsibility for intelligence in Dhofar and used the post to secretly meet
with Qaboos in a private house near the palace. At the same time, he had
meetings with the son of the Wali (Governor) of Salalah, Bareik bin Hamud
who disliked the old Sultan, and the secretary to the Sultan, Hamad
al-Chafiri,
bin Hamud Al Bu Said, a close friend from Sandhurst."^
With the backing Landon-Qaboos-Bareik axis looked
of Whitehall, the
for further sympathisers within the country using the managing director of
the PDO oil company, F. Hughes, as a means of communication. Hughes
had the confidence of the Sultan and was regarded as 'the most powerful
man in the country after the Sultan' and viewed as someone of 'considerable
force of character and ability'. He was an ideal secret go-between. Using his
own plane, Hughes frequently visited the Sultan in his palace at Salalah and
was employed to pass on messages from Said to the Minister of the Interior,
Ahmed bin Ibrahim, and to the Governor of Muscat, Shihab bin Faysal."
The date for the coup was continually postponed. Prime Minister Harold
Wilson had sanctioned it but was probably reluctant to give the go-ahead
during an election period. The PDO and its northern oil installations had
been unaffected by the guerrilla activity, but the situation changed when
members of the SAF were attacked on 12 June by guerrillas at the military
camp near Izki, close to the PDO pipeline collection point.
Following the attack at Izki, Shell representatives urged the British govern-
ment to take action. Whitehall's sympathetic attitude led to the co-operation of
the consul general in Muscat and noted Arabist, David Crawford, the political
732 PAPxT SEVEN: MODERN TIMES

resident in the Persian Gulf at Bahrain, Geoffrey Arthur, who between 1963 and
1966 had been the Foreign Office adviser toMI 6, and Brig. John Graham, the
S AF commander in Muscat. In January, a former S AF commander, the hawkish
Col. Hugh Oldman, had replaced one of the Sultan's old advisers, Pat
Waterfield, as secretary of defence, thus removing an obstacle to the coup plan-
ning.Oldman, who acted as liaison and a channel of communication between
Said and the SAF, was responsible for a small engineering unit which
controlled the security of the Salalah palace. His assistance was, therefore,
necessary for the success of any coup, and he was to play a highly important
role in its planning and execution. Graham and Oldman were party to meetings
with Qaboos which also included Landon and Bareik. Brig. Graham and
Oldman also met with the British envoy. Sir William Luce.^
On 20 June 1970, the Labour government fell at the general election. The
Conservatives took power and at the end of June gave the green light for the
Sultan's removal. Galvanised by the attack on Izki, Qaboos and his supporters
moved into action on 23 July.
During the afternoon, while Said rested in his apartments, a detachment
of the SAF was told to surround the palace in the belief that this was a
training exercise. A group of ten Omani soldiers, including some SAS men,
was led by Bareik and Landon through the cordon and approached the palace.
One of the guards at the gate had been bribed and had arranged for the other
guards to be absent. Said, however, was prepared and the conspirators were
met by a fusillade fired by the Sultan and loyal guards within the palace.
Bareik was wounded and taken away for treatment by an SAF officer. Landon
immediately radioed for air support and a British-crewed aircraft from the
Sultan's Air Force dropped tear-gas bombs, providing cover for the attack.
The second charge was successful and, after being wounded twice. Said
surrendered to Landon.^
Said agreed to leave the palace only with the commander of his body-
guard. Col. Turnhill, who had prearranged to be sightseeing during the actual
coup on the coast with Hugh Oldman and Brig. Graham. When news of the
coup came, they quickly returned, and Said was flown to Bahrain and then
on to London and exile. The Sultan took up residence in a private suite at
the Dorchester Hotel, where he died on 19 October 1972. Geoffrey Arthur
similarly claimed to have been far away in hospital when the coup occurred,
though others disputed this and cited his central role in the coup planning.^
Qaboos became Sultan, and one of the first to send him a telegram of
congratulations on this 'historical event' was the chair of the Shell Trading
Company, whose subsidiary was the PDO. The British-officered security
forces deliberately suppressed news of the coup d'etat, ostensibly for internal
security reasons. Officially, the coup had been an internal affair about which
Whitehall supposedly learned only a few days after the event. It was not
until the 27th - four days after it occurred - that it was reported in the British
 THE LAST OF THE COLONIAL WARS 733

newspapers. In the manner of much of the disinformation that followed

coverage of events in Oman, the coup was presented as a nationalist uprising,
modelled on the early-fifties Nasser coup. Britain recognised the new regime
on 29 July with Whitehall expressing 'amazement' at suggestions in the Guar-
dian that the British forces there might have had anything to do with the
coup. No questions were asked in the House of Commons, and as late as
December the British government steadfastly maintained the fiction that the
SAS was in Dhofar for training purposes only.^°
The new Sultan 'knew personally very few Omanis and not one who
could be a trusted friend'. Around him were British advisers and officers,
'alternately fawning and patronising'. He was well aware that he 'owed his
position to them, and that he could make no positive policy decision without
their support, and, indeed, without their strength to ensure its implementa-
tion'. The Sultan's uncle, Tariq, took up the post of PM, though his power
was diminished by a damaging power struggle when he aroused the enmity
of several individuals in the local British establishment."
One of the first changes was the renaming of the country from Muscat
and Oman to Oman. Jettisoning a number of the older advisers, who were
packed off to retirement, the palace office, which handled all external affairs,
quickly established relations with other Gulf states and all of the Arab states,
except Iraq: a particularly close relationship was formed with Iran. The palace
office also oversaw the operations of a special four-man SAS unit, trained

by the regiment's counter-revolutionary warfare wing, which was entrusted

with the Sultan's security. The British immediately began to expand their
military presence, making use of seconded personnel and privately recruited
mercenaries. Airwork Services was primarily used to build up the Omani
Air Force through training and technical support, while also serving as the
contracting agency for those military personnel not lent under normal
secondment arrangements. As part of Operation STORM, an SAS team was
seconded under the thin cover of a 'British Army Training Team' to operate
in the 'Dhofar Campaign'. Finally, under Maj. Dennison, British officers,
including a number of former MI6 officers, staffed and ran the Omani Intelli-
gence Service (OIS), which was shaped by the coup and created following
the transition. The OIS was thoroughly British and operated in English with
recruitment undertaken solely through British officers. Remaining as part of
the army until early 1973, the OIS built up a successful intelligence system
with a network of District Intelligence Officers at every military post.
In early August, the British press was full of stories of 'Chinese officers'
being involved in directing the guerrillas. This myth was a product of the
British Army Information Teams, which played a significant role in military
psychological warfare and deception operations and contributed, with the
Foreign Office's Information Research Department (IRD), to the larger politi-
cal warfare and information programme 'to which the BBC also lent unofficial
734 PART SEVEN: MODERN TIMES

assistance'. In December the guerrillas in Dhofar merged with the

NDFLO-AG in a common front, the Popular Front for the Liberation of
Oman and the Arab Gulf (PFLO-AG).^'
In June of the following year the palace office made contact with the CIA
in London, through Ghassan Shakir, a Libyan with close connections with
the US, who, along with another businessman, Yahya Umar, had established
business interests in the Sultanate. Soon after, the CIA began to route counter-
insurgency aid through Saudi Arabia. In October, the British launched Oper-
ation JAGUAR, a campaign against guerrillas in the eastern section, which
produced poor results. In the spring of 1972 a new offensive. Operation
SIMBA, began, with the aim of throttling PFLO-AG supply lines from South
Yemen. It was not successful and was abandoned in May, leaving the SAF
on the defensive.
Up to sixty SAS troops on four- to five-month tours of duty were trans-
ferred to Oman to work alongside the Sultan's armed forces, and between
them the SAS and SAF gradually brought the insurrection under control.
The intelligence set-up was revamped and a new director of intelligence was
appointed in 1972. The no-nonsense former deputy, Ray Nightingale, a former
Rhodesian staff officer who had been attached to the SAS, had allegedly been
previously responsible for helping to organise the notorious Ugandan State
Research Bureau. In December 1972 the OIS played a crucial role in Operation
JASON, thwarting an alleged plot against the newly formed government. In
1974, the OIS was transformed into the Oman Research Department (ORD),
with a major increase in personnel, though all key roles continued to be held
by seconded British intelligence officers. By 1975 the last groups of rebels
had surrendered or decamped to Yemen. With the end of the rebellion, the
ORD concentrated on government corruption, economic intelligence assess-
ments and the monitoring of religious activism. In 1979, a former senior MI6
officer who had recently retired, Reginald Temple, was appointed head of
the ORD. A former stockbroker and parachute regiment officer. Temple had
joined the Service in 1951 and served in Singapore during the fifties and then
in Beirut, Algiers and Paris. He was succeeded by John Ault, a Far East
specialist who had run the Service's training school at Fort Monkton. These
appointments were a clear indication that the ORD served as MI6's Middle
East office and that Oman was of some importance as Britain's last imperial
outpost in the region.
British involvement in the Dhofar campaign, while significant in political
and military terms, was 'for public consumption in Britain - distinctly low
profile. News media coverage was not prevented, but neither was it encour-

aged.' It was not until 1976 that the British public was told that the SAS had
aided the Sultan. The public did not know, however, that the campaign had
degenerated into corruption as scores of SAS troops had lined their pockets
with hundreds of thousands of pounds by illegally pocketing the wages
 THE LAST OF THE COLONIAL WARS 735

of non-existent agents they claimed to have recruited. The fraud had been
uncovered by Maj. Mike Kealy, but the Colonel Commandant of the SAS,
Viscount Head, ensured that it was all kept in-house.^^

What became known as the 'Hilton Assignment' was one of MI6's last
attempts at a major special operation designed to overthrow a regime
opposed to British interests. The details of this episode are hard to disen-
tangle, principally because the first and only major account was almost totally
based on an explanation by a former MI6 officer with, it appears, the deliber-
ate aim of muddying the waters. In a jumble of dates and anonymous charac-
ters, MI6's undoubted involvement is obscured as the emphasis is placed
directly on a private exile operation.
September 1969, a twenty-eight-year-old army lieutenant, Muammar
On 1
al-Gaddafi, led a group of young Free Unionist Officers in a successful, blood-
less coup against King Idris of Libya, who was on holiday in Turkey. Gaddafi

put his signals training with the British Army to good use, seizing control
of communications. He had taken over a sparsely populated country - half
the size of India - with what appeared to be almost limitless oil reserves.
Naturally, Britain - which had sustained King Idris - was appalled by the
coup.
In February 1970, a counter-coupwas launched from Chad by a member
of the royal family, Abdullah bin Abid - the 'Black Prince' - and a group of
active emigres. It was embarrassingly unsuccessful and the conspirators were
soon rounded up by Gaddafi's security service, the General Investigation
Division (GID). Not long after, the British began to plot their own operation.
On 18 May an unidentified 'retired high-ranking British official' who
had previously served in Libya attended a meeting at 21 Sloane Street, the
headquarters of David Stirling's small film distribution company. Television
International Enterprises, and contact point for Watchguard International,
which offered a 'sophisticated counter-coup capability'. Also present with
Stirling at the discussionon the political situation in the Middle East was a
former MI6 Denys Rowley, alias 'James Kent', who was not on the
officer,

Watchguard payroll but operated independently, from an office next door

(this also appears to have been used as an MI6 'safe house'). Rowley had

left the army in the early fifties to join MI 6, serving mainly in the Middle

East as a 'political action' specialist, before resigning after the thousands of

pounds spent on one of his networks were found to have been a complete
waste of money.
The trio discussed Libya, with the official stressing the point that some-
thing needed to be done. All British and American bases had been closed
down, while British Petroleum oilfields had been nationalised without
compensation. Gaddafi also made an ally of the Prime Minister of Malta,
Dom Mintoff, then in dispute with Britain. During the discussions, and at
736 PAPvT SEVEN: K40DERN TIMES

further meetings at their respective clubs, Rowley and the official talked
about the prospects of mounting an insurrection against Gaddafi. They then
set about combing the ranks of Libyan exiles 'for someone rich, prominent and

moti\'ated enough to lead the movement. A short-list of six was prepared.' In

exile was a powerful and influential group of Libyans, immediately ready to
set up a government under the former king to replace the Gaddafi regime,
once he was deposed. The key figure was Umar al-Shahli, an adviser to Idris,
who had amassed a fortune of around $25 million. Al-Shahli and his brothers
soon established a secret war fund in Switzerland.
According to the key Watchguard figure - senior SAS man Maj. the
Honourable George Campbell-Johnson, known as 'The Pack Rat' - who took
the place of Stirling while the latter recovered from a road accident, the
planned uprising to bring down Gaddafi had originally been a joint MI6/
CIA affair which, without warning, had been cancelled by the Americans.
They had concluded that 'although Gaddafi was anti-West, he was also anti-
Soviet, which meant there could be someone a lot worse running Libya'.
The British disagreed, Campbell-Johnson continued, 'but the Yanks were
adamant. After that we decided to go it alone with French assistance.' The
British agreed at a 'high level' that it was in the country's interest for the
coup to go ahead, and a 'senior British official' gave the word to Stirling to
proceed.
At the end was agreed between Stirling and Rowley to set up
of July, it

an office separate from Watchguard to plan the operation. A team of two

former SAS men was employed to help with recruitment. 'Taffy B', an
ex-warrant officer, had served with the SAS in Aden and the Far East, and
had worked for Watchguard in Kenya. His SAS colleague, Sgt-Maj. 'Woody',
was, Taffy discovered, a full-time operative for MI 6, working with the Firm
in 'a quartermaster cum odd job capacity'. Stirling was told by 'someone
very senior indeed' in MI6, probably Oldfield, and the Parliamentary Under-
Secretary for Foreign Affairs, Anthony Royle, a former Territorial Army SAS
officer, that British nationals were not to be used as the trail would inevitably

lead back to the British government. The situation was further complicated
by the massive BAC air defence deal that had been struck with King Idris.
The new Libyan government wanted the return of nearly £32 million and
threatened to pull Libyan money out of the City of London unless it was
repaid. Even so, Stirling 'got the impression that there would be great satisfac-
tion if the operation was successful even though the use of British personnel
was out of the question'. He thought that 'such an operation would have been
remarkably easy; mostly a matter of logistics. I gave a hand in introductions to
the French circle, but took a back seat from then on, though I was kept in
the picture. The whole thing took much longer to put together than it ought
to have done.'^^
Just as in the Yemen, in another arm's-length operation, the Watchguard
 THE LAST OF THE COLONIAL WARS 737

recruiters went to Paris to enlist French mercenaries. Intensive training began

in August, and in the following month Taffy and Woody travelled in the
guise of businessmen to Tripoli to undertake reconnaissance. The objective
was Tripoli prison,dubbed 'the Hilton', where the 150 incarcerated political
prisoners, mostly former army officers, were, quite naturally, all anti-Gaddafi.
They were to be freed with the Franco-Belgian team of twenty to thirty
mercenaries, making their escape by sea. It had been decided to mount the
operation to topple Gaddafi when the Libyan leader was in residence at the
palace in Tripoli. It was unresolved whether or not the mercenaries 'should
actually fire the shot that killed him'. The idea was to capture the radio
station with one of King Idris's aides announcing that Gaddafi had been
overthrown and the King had returned.
Woody was then sent to Belgium to purchase weapons with 'fake end-user
certificates provided by MI6'. The main consignment of weapons and plastic

explosive, however, was to be purchased from Omnipol, the Czechoslovakian

arms company which was willing to supply anyone with access to foreign
currency. The MI6 contact for this venture was Harry Briggs (Frank Higgins),
'an entrepreneur on the fringes of the arms business' who had been 'looking
after this affair'. Previously involved in the sale of aircraft to Biafra, Briggs
was contacted in August to handle the arms from the Czechs, and had formed
a company with two eastern Europeans, George Strakaty (Gregor Jirasek)
and his partner, Mirko Melich (Stefan Vlcek).^^
The 'Hilton Assignment' team was due to meet in Bari ready for action
in November, but the operation fell through when the Yugoslav authorities
impounded the entire consignment of arms and explosives. On the 8th,
Rowley met with Umar al-Shahli to relaunch the operation and, in December,
the former MI6 officer travelled to Vienna to see the other MI 6 contacts in
thearms business to obtain new supplies of hardware. The equipment was
communist in origin, with two hundred machine-guns of Czech manufacture
and a large quantity of plastic explosive which was required to breach the
prison walls. Playing a discreet role was another former MI6 employee,
Anthony Divall, who continued as an MI6 agent in the arms business. His
MI6 handler was Donald Gurrey, a long-serving officer with postings in
Berlin, Paris, Warsaw, Singapore and San Domingo. Elaborate preparations
had been made for the procurement, with an end-user certificate made out to
a dealer in Chad and arrangements for transport by sea to Doula in Cameroon.
Twenty-five French mercenaries had been hired in Toulon and a German-built
coastal patrol boat. Conquistador XIII, had been purchased to land an assault
team near Tripoli.
According to Campbell-Johnson: 'The Americans found out what we were
up to and learned we had an assault party ready to go in from Italy. They
issued an ultimatum, saying that if we didn't get out of Italy in twenty-four
hours, they would tell both the Italian and Libyan authorities. There is a
738 PART SEVEN: MODERN TIMES

great deal of bad feeling in Whitehall about the Americans at the moment.'
The operation was reorganised for the following February, but on 29
December MI6 pulled the plug and warned off Taffy. Stirling's colleague Jim
Johnson was 'approached by MI6 who knew that David was launching the
operation. They knew it was going to be done by French mercenaries and
they knew the name of the boat. They were horrified by the lack of security
and the general talk going the rounds.' Stirling was telling all and sundry at
White's about the progress of the operation. Despite claims that he had left
the project some months previously, all interested agencies considered him
to be still party to the planning. MI 6 asked Johnson to go to France, where
he met mercenary leader Roger Falques, who warned him that 'everyone
knew about the Libyan job; that it was going to be a complete fiasco and
that the French did not want to be associated with it'. MI6's request was 'to
lay off. Johnson's Mossad contact also advised him that security was lax.^^
To Stirling's chagrin, it seems that MI6 'blew the operation' to the Italians
and requested containing action. In March 1971, as an assault craft was about
to leave Trieste, the Italian authorities impounded Conquistador before the
weapons could be collected. According to one account, two boats had already
sailed but were wrecked off the coast of Algeria in a storm. Stirling was
apparently engaged in 'prolonged negotiations before the men involved were
set free'. Not long after, he withdrew from the business of freelance
soldiering.
Most media attention at this time was focused on the escalating conflict
in Ireland.

With the army and MIS failing to make any headway, in 1971 Prime Minister
Edward Heath decided that SIS should start to operate in Northern Ireland.
Government policy on the conflict was formulated by the secret Cabinet
Committee GEN 42, whose Co-ordinator of Intelligence was Dick White.
From the outset, thought was given to exploiting the growing division of the
IRA and Sinn Fein into militant and conciliatory camps, with Whitehall
officials believing that 'a political solution required, indeed largely depended

on, political intelligence in both broad and technical senses'. John Rennie was
regarded as being unsuited to carrying out the task, and the Chief left it to
his deputy. Maurice Oldfield, however, 'presented a reasoned case to his
Prime Minister that SIS should not operate in Northern Ireland, part of a
United Kingdom which was the preserve of MIS. He said with some point
that SIS did not operate in England, Scotland or Wales. A bad precedent
would be established if it began to operate in Northern Ireland.' Heath was
unimpressed by this argument and ordered a reluctant Oldfield to establish
a station in the province. Oldfield and his men soon came to realise that
Northern Ireland was 'a place apart'.
By the spring, SIS was on the ground, working covertly and overtly within
 THE LAST OF THE COLONIAL WARS 739

the UK Representative structure. The UK Representative was Howard Smith,

a Foreign Office diplomat and former ambassador to Moscow, who invited
a senior MI6 officer, Frank Steele, to be his deputy. A very large pipe-smoking
Arabist, a veteran of Suez and the Sudan, who had recently been in Nairobi,
Steele knew little about Northern Ireland, but Smith considered that he could
bring a fresh approach to the post. According to Steele, he was precluded
from running agents 'but was expected to use his experience of conflict
situations in the Middle East and Africa'. Anthony Verrier, whose main source
was also Steele, claims that this included 'covert counter-intelligence oper-
ations' which, it was argued, were required to fulfil the need to find a political
solution. Steele later said that he concentrated on establishing contacts with
the two communities, though he had not been sent to Belfast by Heath
specifically to communicate with the IRA.^^
As regards the intelligence and security situation, Steele found the place
'a shambles'. 'There was very little co-ordination of whatever intelligence

was being produced by the RUC, the Army and MI5.' With ministerial
support, the army had been carrying out numerous intelligence and covert
operations based on their counter-insurgency experience in other parts of the
Empire, but with little imagination and negligible success. Using outdated
and fairly inaccurate intelligence, on 9 August the army rounded up IRA
suspects for internment but, according to Steele, this operation proved to be
'a disaster' which led to increased violence, the escape of many of the IRA's

leading members, and a major boost to the movement's recruitment efforts.

It is debatable whether or not much usable intelligence was provided by

those interrogated afterwards by methods barely short of torture. Heath put

a stop to the torture. It seems that White 'misled' the other members of
GEN 42 by failing to provide them with details of the special interrogation
techniques employed, which included the use of 'white noise' and sleep
deprivation. This crude operation had the distinction of uniting the nationalist
population and indirectly creating a new, younger, more militant leadership.
By the beginning of 1972 SIS had made little headway and had produced
little worthwhile intelligence. The government, however, was under increas-

ing pressure - apparently from politicians in Northern Ireland - 'to talk to

the Provisionals'. Steele thought that 'since it was not proving possible to
defeat the Provisional IRA militarily, they would at some point have to be
talked to'. A previous posting of his had been in Kenya, and he recalled that
'the Mau Mau's operational techniques and their obscene rituals made the
IRA look like a Sunday-school choir'. Steele thought that if the British were
willing to talk to someone like Jomo Kenyatta, with 'leading members of the
royal family willingly shaking his hand, to people like me it seemed just
pragmatic to talk to the IRA'. The army and members of MIS remained
hostile to this view, preferring the military option of defeating the terrorists
before negotiation.^^
740 PART SEVEN: MODERN TIMES

By the summer of 1971 SIS had concluded that the Provisionals were not
in a position to wage an war and that this should be
effective guerrilla
exposed. Steele quoted Chairman Mao - 'the fish had to be taken out of the
water'. Contact was made with Catholic individuals and groups and with
the nationalist Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP). After a series of
clandestine meetings, on 22 June a ceasefire was negotiated to be followed
by a meeting with the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, William
Whitelaw, on 7 July 1972, at the home of junior minister Paul Channon. The
meeting was attended by Steele, who realised that it was premature. 'The
difference between what HMG
wanted - peace - and the unrealistic demands
of the IRA was too great to be bridged.' The IRA, in the shape of Sean
MacStiofain, wanted a British withdrawal within three years. Steele
concluded that neither community 'had suffered enough to want peace, to
^'^
make peace an absolute imperative'.
These initial contacts did, however, give rise to the Sunningdale Agree-
ment of 1 December 1973, which provided a sensible basis for a settlement
in the province but which was to fall at the hands of the loyalist extremists
responsible for the Ulster Workers' Strike of May 1974. Unfortunately,
Whitelaw's officials never gave the same consideration to the loyalists as they
did to the republicans. MI6 was never ordered to penetrate their ranks. As
Anthony Verrier relates: 'The possibility of converting such men to moderate
ways never arose because their place in the scheme of things was never
considered. Their organisations and unions, their para-military forces and
cabals remained immune from penetration, yet another irony when one
considers the zeal with which MIS and the Special Branch elsewhere in the
United Kingdom seek intelligence of allegedly subversive activities.' The
reality was that Whitelaw's officials brought to Northern Ireland's issues
much of the old imperial outlook. 'The Provisionals were enemies with whom
one could were beyond the pale.'
fight or negotiate. Belfast's Protestants
Steele lamented: 'We entered into something I don't think anyone expected:
twenty-five wasted years of killing, maiming and destruction. We may have
got fed-up but, contrary to IRA expectations, we have not gone away.'^°
One of those specially released from internment in Long Kesh and invited
to the talks with Whitelaw was Gerry Adams, commander of the Provisionals'
Ballymurphy battalion and architect, with Martin McGuinness, the young
Provisional commander in Derry, of the strategy of the Armalite and the
ballot box. Steele found Adams to be 'a very personable, intelligent, articulate
and self-disciplined man' who was 'dangerously effective'. He realised that
he had a 'terrific future ahead of him'.
It took another twenty years for MI6 to regain the intiative in exploring

the political option. An African specialist, Michael Oatley, who had taken
part in the ceasefire arrangements in 1975 and later headed the Service's
counter-terrorism desk, met secretly in 1992 with McGuinness to revive the
 THE LAST OF THE COLONIAL WARS 741

peace process. Although, when the retiring Oatley passed on the mantle to
an MI5 officer, he had the support of the MIS Co-ordinator of Intelligence
in Northern Ireland, John Deverell, the process faced near-collapse following
the death of Deverell in a helicopter crash. MIS Director-General Stella
Rimington was a hardliner who briefed Prime Minister John Major that
McGuinness and Adams were IRA members and could not be trusted.
Privately, senior MI6 officers accused their MIS counterparts of being 'a

bunch of idiots' whose efforts had sabotaged the process.^^

MI6's reluctance to operate in Northern Ireland was partially due to the
ministerial constraint on the type of operations it could organise inside a
province of the UK. No such constraint, however, appears to have been
involved in its operations in the South - a foreign country. Frank Steele left

Northern Ireland in 1973 to be Director Middle East. He was replaced by

Craig Smellie, recently desk officer for operations in Nigeria. For contacts in
the South, Smellie employed a Military Intelligence officer, Maj. Fred Holroyd,
who was reminded of Robert Morley when he met the MI6 officer - 'dressed
in tweeds with a yellow waistcoat, with a monocle hanging over his lapel,
his manner was charming, expansive'.
Although Oldfield was disown them, MI6 had been undertaking
later to

operations against the Official IRA

in the South and had been busy recruiting
agents and subagents. The Littlejohn brothers had been recruited to garner
not only intelligence about the Officials but also to act as agents provocateurs
by carrying out bank robberies in their name. The idea had been to provoke
the Irish government into taking tough action against the IRA. In October
1972, the brothers were arrested and tried in camera in Dublin for a series of
bank robberies (Smellie had also asked Holroyd, without success, to take part
in bank robberies). Embarrassingly for MI 6, Kenneth Littlejohn subsequently
escaped from prison and talked to the media about his intelligence
connections.
The explosion of two bombs in Dublin on 1 December 1972 aided the
passage of an anti-terrorism bill. Although the explosions were initially attrib-

uted to the IRA, the Irish Gardai Special Branch presented fragmentary
evidence that the bombers had been loyalists aided by British Intelligence in
planting the devices. On 19 December, the Irish rounded up an MI6 intelli-

gence network. This included John Wyman, who had recruited an agent
within the Gardai, and Andrew Johnstone, First Secretary at the Dublin
embassy. Johnstone had seen service in Aden, Syria and, more recently,
Cambodia.^^
The exposure of its operations in the South was a factor in the decision
in 1973 to replace MI6 with MIS in overall charge of the intelligence effort
in Northern Ireland. In the handover, MI6 instructed its agents not to divulge
their activities to members The local station was kept in place, but
of MIS.
by the end of the decade there were few MI6 officers in the province. It
742 PART SEVEN: MODERN TIMES

would take a ciecade for the intelligence effort to bear fruit through increased
use of new technical surveillance equipment, greater penetration of terrorist
organisations and better targeting of terrorist operations. MI6 were probably
glad to be out of it.

Already close John Rennie left the Service after his

to retirement, in 1973 Sir
identity was exposed in the German magazine Stern, following the widely
publicised jailing of his son, Charles, and his daugher-in-law on drugs
charges. Rennie was replaced by the natural successor, Maurice Oldfield.
'Moulders', as he was known to his small circle of friends, was the first of
the postwar intake to make it to the top. According to Nigel Clive, 'under
his leadership, SIS benefited from the good relations he cultivated with both
Conservative and Labour ministers at home and from its improved standing
with friendly intelligence services with which he kept in personal touch'.
Following the Littlejohn fiasco and a few other well-publicised cases,
the new Chief conducted an inquiry into the employment of subagents and
'cut-outs'. Finding that recruitment and control were lax, with subagents
used indiscriminately and without any proper risk assessment, Oldfield
curtailed many operations, largely to ensure that no further embarrassments
would hinder relations with the Foreign Office. Under his stewardship, MI6
closed down the Special Political Action (SPA) section and discarded the
paramilitary mission. During his time in Washington, Oldfield had had
numerous opportunities to observe the CIA's paramilitary efforts and had
not been impressed by such activity. As Chief of MI6, he 'insisted that if an
intelligence service was to be respected, it should never confuse the collection
of information with sabotage and assassination'. 'Disruptive actions' were
continued, but more at arm's length under the umbrella of a 'General Support
Branch' which liaised closely with the SAS. A Defence Intelligence Staff (DIS)
officer as part of the with the MoD stationed at Century
Defence Liaison Staff
House arranged the employment and deployment of members of the SAS
and Special Boat Squadron (SBS) as 'contract labourers'.^^
The new Chief 's desire for the Service to base its reputation on its ability
to gather high-quality intelligence was given a major boost in 1974 when the
head of station in Copenhagen recruited Col. Oleg Gordievsky, a PR (political

intelligence) officer in the KGB's First Chief Directorate. Gordievsky, who

was able to forward information for a period of eleven years, turned out to
be MI6's most important catch after Oleg Penkovsky. Importantly for the

British intelligence community, the Russian was able to provide the different
agencies with a clean of health with his confirmation that the KGB had
bill

been unable anyone of any worth within Britain's secret state.

to recruit
Gordievsky's information was not always well received as it did not fit
in with the well-ingrained prejudices of the Service. He was 'often puzzled
by SIS's preoccupation with the KGB's modest operational successes' and
 THE LAST OF THE COLONIAL WARS 743

was concerned that so nnuch time was wasted by his MI6 handlers 'asking
questions about agents and penetrations and so on. They didn't ask me
elementary questions about assumed that it was because they knew
politics. I

about these issues, but they didn't.' MI6 had always exaggerated the role of
the KGB, and Gordievsky's briefings that 'the Party was the boss. The KGB
was the servant, particularly in foreign affairs' were often rejected. His
reports, however, were welcomed by Foreign Office officials and the assess-
ment staff, who had long believed that MI 6 was 'obsessed with fighting the
opposing intelligence service rather than putting more effort into finding out
more about the wider world'. The problem was that so much was invested
in 'Sovbloc' operations which were regarded by the elite Intelligence Branch
officers as 'the route to the top'.
Oldfield had not served in any of the Soviet bloc stations but as a counter-
espionage he was not about to upset the balance of the Service's
specialist
intelligence-gathering targeting. He did, however, have his own agenda, and
was determined to streamline the Service. The Requirements Directorate,
which was the first point of contact with the Joint Intelligence Committee
(JIG), was reorganised along geographical lines, while staff reductions were
instigated in the Economic /Industrial and Scientific sections. Surprisingly,
the JIG was demanding less general economic intelligence, which suited
the Service as few officers had the necessary expertise. At the same time,
counter-terrorism became increasingly important and a new joint section with
MIS was created as part of the UK Controller's growing empire.^^
David Owen, Labour Foreign Secretary from 1976 to 1979, regarded
Oldfield as 'a remarkable man' who was 'modest, quiet, unassuming, with
a great sense of humour'. When Owen ordered a review of operations and
cases referred to him by SIS over a six-month period, he found,

I must were scrupulous and that they had

confess, that they
referred the right ones to me and
they had been very good in
sorting out what was technical detail and what was something
which involved political content and required the authorisation
of the democratic political leadership ... I didn't get the feeling
that I was dealing with bunch of people at all.
a reactionary
Dealing with things like South Africa and race, I found them
very broad-minded and not by any means the sort of archetypal
right-wing figure.^^

Although Owen thought Oldfield 'an absolute model democrat', the reality
was that the SIS Ghief had allowed former senior figures and close friends
such as George Young to embroil the Service in domestic affairs. While
Oldfield assured Prime Minister James Gallaghan that the Service 'had not
been involved in any nefarious activities', he had privately been using MI6
agents as conduits for damaging anti-Labour stories and insider gossip about
744 PART SEVEN: MODERN TIMES

the ri\'al Security Service to right-wing journalists. On the back of the alleged
MI5 and MI6-backed Harold Wilson, a discreet Cabinet Office
plots against
inquiry was motion during the late summmer of 1976 in an attempt
set in
to institute greater control and to change the general ethos of the Service
through a reform of the recruitment procedures. Once again, thought was
gi\'en to combining MIS and MI6 into one service, with a Director overlording
The proposals, however, were successfully
a centralised intelligence group.
opposed and the promotion of another insider, the 'hawk' Arthur Temple
Franks, as the new 'C in late 1978 was 'recognised as a major defeat for the
Whitehall establishment'. Franks did, however, undertake some reforms so
that staff meetings became genuine board meetings. He also merged
Production and Requirements into a combined Directorate of Requirements
and Production, whose head doubled as Deputy Chief. The changes did not,
however, prevent one major intelligence failure.^^

Iran remained for the British an important symbol in the Middle East,
and the Foreign Office was careful to veto all political actions that might
hinder the flow of oil and disrupt economic relations with one of Britain's
major markets for its arms industry. The former chair of the JIC and Perma-
nent Under-Secretary at the Foreign Office, Denis Greenhill, visited Iran in
the early seventies and had what he regarded as a 'useful and encouraging'
audience with the Shah. He soon realised, however, that there had been 'an
appalling failure of Western Intelligence No signs of impending revolution
. . .

were being identified which would soon sweep away the Shah and change
'^°
the whole character of the country.
Like the majority of Iranians, the Shah believed that Britain was behind
most of the country's problems, and in an attempt to placate the paranoid
autocratic ruler, in the late sixties, the Foreign Office decided to downgrade
the MI6 station. The Service was left to rely on SAVAK, Iran's security
service, for intelligence, with only a minimal presence within the British
embassy in Tehran. The last ambassador before the Shah's fall. Sir Anthony
Parsons, would not even permit the limited MI6 presence to use the embassy
for spying. In a repeat of the mistake that the Service had committed in Iraq
in the late fifties, MI6 recruited among its friends but failed to penetrate or
monitor the opposition. It was saw the Shah regularly
true that Oldfield
when Anthony Cavendish reveals
Chief, often meeting in Zurich. His friend
that 'Maurice promised the Shah that while he was Chief, SIS would not
conduct any internal espionage against Iran or have any direct contact with
the Armed Forces' officers or negotiate with the Mullahs', Oldfield later
regretted the decision, which he said had been made against his better

judgement.^^
The only sources were people such as former MI6 officer Desmond
Harney, who had been the desk officer for the Yemen operation in the early
sixties and was now 'an unusually well-informed banker and businessman
 THE LAST OF THE COLONIAL WARS 745

living in Tehran'. Harney's diary for September 1978 records his view that
'the Iranian establishment can sort out things for themselves . . . and. . . will
only dispense with the Shah if they have no alternative'. While he recognised
the weakness of the Shah's position and the ending of his modernisation
programme, and the formidable nature of Ayatollah Khomeini and his
religious class, Harney still allowed himself to hope that 'the good men of
the centre would somehow get their act together, or that the half-way house
of [Shapour] Bakhtiar might succeed'. By December, he realised that 'the
greatest weakness is the defection and flight of the very middle class the
Shah built up'. Harney now recognised that he had been 'wrong' and that
the chances of stopping a revolution had disappeared.^^
The irony was that it had been MI6's actions in undermining the national-
ist Prime Minister Mossadeq and its role in the 1953 coup - in which Dickie

Franks had played a minor part - which had helped to destroy the centre
ground in Iranian politics. The Service's reliance in the fifties on special and
political operations during the period of the 'horrors' had produced short-
term gains but had long-term negative consequences. All too often in the
Middle East, MI6 found itself propping up undemocratic, reactionary and
authoritarian regimes while finding it increasingly difficult to gather intelli-

gence, particularly in Iran and Iraq. In an indirect way, it turned out that the
Service's problems were largely of its own making.
CHAPTER 34

THE SLOW DEATH OF

THE COLD WAR

The aftermath of the surprise invasion by Argentina of the Falkland Islands

on 2 April 1982 naturally focused attention on the role of the intelligence
services. The successive Treasury reviews of the intelligence community had
led to a reduction in MI6's global role. There had been two stations in Latin
America - one dealing with Portuguese-speaking territories and another with
Spanish-speaking ones - but, during the late seventies, they had been consoli-
dated into one station based in Buenos Aires. In 1982 Argentina was regarded
as a 'priority for intelligence collection but in a low category', with not many
resources available to the local station for the recruitment of agents. As a
result much of its reporting consisted of little more than what was in the
local press.
As station commander, the experienced Mark Heathcote was 'massively
overworked'. The heir to a baronetcy, Heathcote had been recruited in 1970
from the P&O shipping line. Posted to Argentina in 1980, he had previously
served in Northern Ireland and Greece. He had a number of high-level sources
in Buenos Aires but none was privy to the innermost thinking of the ruling
junta. Indeed, intelligence from these sources 'consistently encouraged under-
estimation of the Argentine ambitions in the immediate crisis'. In the end,
however, MI6 could have done little to rectify the intelligence deficit. The
plans to invade the Falkland Islands were made by a secret cell with the
majority of politicians, diplomats and even military chiefs unaware of them
until the last moment. The December Falkland Islands Review by Lord Franks
 THE SLOW DEATH OF THE COLD WAR 747

rebuked MI 6 with the patrician criticism that 'changes in the Argentine

position were, we
believe, more evident on the diplomatic front and in the
associated press campaign than in the intelligence reports'.
'A classic Establishment job', in the words of columnist Hugo Young, the
Review was completed by Franks with the objective of 'ensuring that Mrs
Thatcher's reputation should not be damaged'. But despite the 'bucket of white-
wash' that former Labour Prime Minister James Callaghan suggested Franks
had chucked at it, the Review did contain significant criticisms of the central

intelligence machinery of assessment and requirements which it described as

'too passive in operation to respond quickly and critically to a rapidly changing
situation which demanded urgent attention'. In the intelligence world it was
difficult to overturn received wisdom which had been established over time,
namely that Argentina would not invade untilhad exhausted all diplomatic
it

options. It is in the nature of these things that warning indicators tend to be

ambiguous. One reform instigated was that the Joint Intelligence Committee
QIC) was removed from the remit of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office
and placed under the control of the Cabinet Office.^
MI6 Chief Colin McColl later admitted that 'after the Falklands War,
when we were quite clearly seen to be too thin - not just there but in other
areas as well - we increased our numbers'. South America was immediately
given three stations and the number of officers sent abroad and deployed on
specific operations was also dramatically increased. In a confidential internal
memorandum, a director of the Government Communications Headquarters
(GCHQ), Sir John Adye, noted that the Treasury had 'pointed out that spend-
ing on intelligence since 1979 had grown faster in real terms than most other
areas in public service'. Mrs Thatcher supported the intelligence community
more strongly than had any other postwar prime minister, and when the
Permanent Secretaries' Intelligence Services (PSIS) committee argued for an
increase in budgets she 'passed it on the nod'. During her time in office,
spending on the intelligence community more than doubled.^
If the impression given was that the Service was expanding its operations

throughout the world, the reality was that the Soviet Union was still the
focus of its activities. The guiding principle was best summed up by Mrs
Thatcher's foreign policy adviser and the new chair of the JIC in early 1985,
Percy Cradock, who believed the Cold War 'would go on forever' and who
subscribed to the view that Moscow was still intent on 'world domination'."*
As BBC journalist and author Mark Urban suggested, intelligence was
one of Cradock's driving passions. A China specialist who had served with
the JIC during 1971-5 as chief of assessments, Cradock did not suffer fools
gladly and used his undoubted intelligence to 'intimidate' analysts. An
eminence grise with a classic patrician manner, he did not allow movement
in the political atmosphere to alter his view that nothing had changed in the
Soviet Union with the election of Mikhail Gorbachev. At their most extreme,
748 PART SEVEN: MODERN TIMES

his views embraced the theory that the so-called Gorbachev reforms were a
deliberate deception, a view shared by Harry Burke, the deeply sceptical
chair of the most influential of the JIC offshoots, the Current Intelligence
Group (GIG) on the Soviet Bloc. Despite the relatively small size of MI6 (as
compared to the GIA) and the British intelligence community in general;
Cradock was able to use his powerful domestic position to make an impres-
sion on the Americans with his conservative estimates and, in turn, managed
to exert indirectly a degree of political influence on President Reagan. Despite
the public-relations initiatives conceived to portray MI6 as a thoroughly
modern service that had shed its conservative image, the general impression
of American diplomats who dealt with the Soviets was that, with MI6, 'you
can never be to the right of them'.^
Gradock relied on the twenty-five Assessment Staff from a variety of
government departments who fed the JIG empire with material. These were
GIGs for the Middle East, Far East, Western Europe, Northern Ireland, South
and Gentral America, Sub-Saharan Africa, and the Soviet Bloc, which
remained the most important, with functional Groups covering Terrorism,
Proliferation, and an Economic Section. Attended by representatives of the
intelligence services, each GIG was chaired by a Deputy Ghief of Assessments.
The Weekly Survey of Intelligence, known as the Red Book, consisted of
sanitised assessments that protected MI 6 methods and agents. While some
ministers avidly read the Red Book, most found its bland style off-putting and
the contents disappointing. Responsible for 'ensuring that the Gommittee's
warning and monitoring role is discharged effectively', Gradock's assess-
ments presented one point of view which did not allow for dissenting
opinions. These assessments were based on 'facts', Gradock claimed, but
British Intelligence had little information on the inner workings of the
Kremlin. There was no access to Soviet diplomatic traffic. While GGHQ had
managed to break some high-level military communications, that particular
stream dried up in the early eighties following the arrest of KGB agent
Geoffrey Prime at Cheltenham. There were no successes with major targets
such as Soviet missile development and strategic placement.^
The assessment system relied to a great extent on the Americans. Mark
Urban concludes that 'more than anything else, British intelligence is a system
for repackaging information gathered by the USA. Most intelligence relates
to foreign or defence policy, most of that intelligence is sigint [signals intelli-
gence], and the vast majority of sigint processed at Gheltenham had been
obtained from the USA.' Urban estimates that between 80 and 90 per cent
of material flowing to the JIG is derived from the NSA-GGHQ axis. A similar
situation applies to much of MI6's own information, which relies to a great
extent on signals intelligence-gathering. This explains why so much effort is

devoted to trying to impress the Americans, though, as Urban notes, they are
increasingly uninterested. Similarly, ministers who bothered to read smudged
 THE SLOW DEATH OF THE COLD WAR 749

reports on fax-like paper from MI6's Weekly Summary of Intelligence, the

CX Book, were rarely impressed. David Mellor, minister of state at the Foreign
Office, describedthem as 'humdrum'.^
With around 2,400 staff in 1985, MI6 divided its officers into a General
Service and an Intelligence Branch. Those serving in the Soviet Bloc section
of the Intelligence Branch regarded themselves as the elite, even though, with
the exception of Oleg Gordievsky, the Service had failed to recruit high-
quality agents. Gordievsky was a star prize, but being the KGB 'rezident' in

London was not Moscow. Even so, 'with

as productive as being in place in
Gordievsky it meant that MI 6', according to David Boorman, Chief of the
Defence Intelligence Staff (DIS), 'was able to exploit everything that he meant
in terms of exerting sensible leverage with the CIA'. Foreign Secretary Geof-
frey Howe found Gordievsky's material 'an important part in shaping our
own strategy'.^
In November 1981, as part of Operation RYAN (Nuclear Missile Attack),
a joint KGB-GRU initiative, amid Kremlin fears that President Reagan and
the West were preparing a surprise nuclear attack, the KGB issued a telegram
NATO countries with a requirement that they look out
to all its stations in
for any signs of preparation for a first-strike nuclear attack. Based in London,
Gordievsky kept MI6 informed on Ryan and supplied many documents to
his controller. On 17 May 1985, however, the Soviet First Secretary was
summoned back to Moscow. The telegram was viewed as suspicious, but
Gordievsky's MI6 controller did not believe that he had been betrayed by a
mole inside the Service. In fact, the KGB had a senior agent in the CIA,
Aldrich Ames, who, as Chief of Soviet Operations, was providing the Soviets
with the names of the West's star agents. Ames is regarded as the prime
source, though he has denied being responsible for Gordievsky's betrayal.^
Ames later stated that by the early 1980s
I was really beginning to change how I perceived the Agency
and intelligence.We were getting really good - mean first-class
1

- political information about the Soviets. We also had our spy

satellites sending us back intelligence. What the data kept telling
us was that we were disproportionately stronger than the Soviet
Union and the Warsaw Pact, that Soviet forces couldn't compete
with us. The bottom line was that, with only the minor excep-
tions, we were consistently superior militarily. It didn't matter
whether we were talking about our bombers, our nuclear
warheads, our megatonnage, our missiles, we were light years
ahead of them. The Soviets' only military advantage was more
men. We consistently drew a picture of a Soviet Union that
never would decide to fight a war against us. And yet, decade
after decade, the political leadership in both parties ignored that
750 PART SEVEN: MODERN TIMES

intelligence. They were committed to running around scream-

ing.The Russians are coming! The Russians are coming!'. I

knew that much of what I was doing was for nothing and I

began to realise it was just part of a silly game.

Ames concluded that the illusion was sustained because it was the easiest
way for the Agency to justify its existence to the public and politicians.
Writing under the nom de plume 'Alan Judd', novelist and former MI6
officer Alan Petty, in reviewing Peter Barley's book on Ames, Confessions of
a Spy, dismissed the American traitor as a social inadequate. 'He was an
incompetent and slipshod spy and would have been caught long before had
the CIA not been equally slipshod in its approach to personnel security. It

had all and procedures but did not apply them, which meant
the right rules
that Ames walked unheeded from his office with carrier bags of documents,
avoided serious questioning of his new-found wealth and was never properly
called to account for his drunkenness.' The Ames affair left deep wounds
with its echoes of Philby. The Commons oversight committee on Intelligence
and Security later found that 'it is unacceptable that two years after a major
betrayal, the Americans have still not provided the UK agencies with a
detailed read-out of the damage Ames did to UK assets and agents'. The
report went on to express concern that some information from other sources
was probably 'tainted' and that MI6 had not started considering the matter
until November 1995. 'Judd' balanced his criticisms of MI6's American
'Cousins' with an acknowledgement that during the eighties the CIA had
indeed penetrated the Soviet system high and low.^
In July 1985, Mrs Thatcher ordered MI6 to arrange Gordievsky's 'exfiltra-
tion' from Moscow. On the 19th he left his wife and children and secretly

took a train towards the Finnish border, where he was met by MI6 operatives.
In the boot of a car, the Russian traitor was smuggled into Finland, then
flown via Norway to London. Gordievsky was debriefed over a number of
weeks at Fort Monkton by MI6's leading 'Sovbloc' analyst, Gordon Barrass.
Using information gathered from Gordievsky, during September the Service
distributed among British and American policy-makers a fifty-page briefing,
'Soviet Perceptions of Nuclear Warfare'. A copy was read by President
Reagan, who immediately responded by toning down his 'Evil Empire' rhet-
oric, thereby helping to lessen Soviet paranoia and fears of a Western first

strike.^"

Eight months later, Gordievsky was proudly paraded at an MI6 confer-

ence on developments in the Soviet Union held at Century House and
attended by senior Foreign Office from the other security
officials and officers

and intelligence services. Gordievsky was indifferent towards the political

shift that appeared to be taking place inside the Soviet Union, and suggested

that President Gorbachev could not be expected to deliver radical change.

 THE SLOW DEATH OF THE COLD WAR 751

At a similar event at the Fort, Gordievsky met the chiefs of staff and helped
sellMI6's interpretation, which shared Cradock's vision of what was happen-
ing inside the Kremlin. It was an important example of where the Service
was more than a mere collector of intelligence, as it is often portrayed. Here
it performed a major analytical role. Nevertheless, this was a time when
intelligence had to take second place to political interpretation and personal
intuition. Charles Powell, who, as Mrs Thatcher's private secretary, was
influential on foreign affairs, later remarked: T don't think intelligence as such
played a big role in our view of Gorbachev.' While Mrs Thatcher subscribed to
the evil empire interpretation of Soviet affairs, she also famously believed
that the Soviet President was someone with whom she could do business.
Mark Urban White Paper,
rightly points out that while the 1989 Defence
in considering the Gorbachev reforms, took account of 'fundamental and
irreversible' change in the Soviet Union, the intelligence chiefs continued to
protect their own territory. The MI 6 mindset prevented it from viewing
events in eastern Europe and the Soviet Union objectively, and the Service
was caught unawares when, on 10 November 1989, East German border
guards began dismantling the Berlin Wall, the symbolic end of the Soviet
empire.
What became apparent even to narrow-minded officials was that western
intelligence had grossly overestimated the size of the Soviet economy and
its defence expenditure. MI6 recognised that the military took the biggest
slice of the country's research and development budget but, according to an
MI6 officer, 'we had no idea just how wide gap was between the military
the
and civilian sectors'. In May 1988, Michael Herman, a former head of GCHQ's

J Division, which was responsible who was attached to

for the Soviet bloc,
the JIG in the mid-seventies, told the US Army War College: 'It will be
surprising if more overestimates than under-
history does not point to
estimates ... it is more satisfying, safer professionally, and easier to live with
oneself and one's colleagues as a hawk than a wimp.' He added that 'Western
intelligence has claimed a special responsibility to lead thinking rather than
to follow it. It can hardly duck responsibility if its worst-case conclusions have
been propagated and used.' This was particularly so since the overestimate of
Soviet military spending had a direct effect on the levels of British defence
What was worse for MI6's reputation was that journalists reporting
budgets.
from Moscow had accurately predicted that Gorbachev was on a collision
course with his military.

Throughout the eighties became increasingly evident that the British contri-
it

bution to the 'special relationship' was meagre. As a world-class organisation

capable of delivering up-to-date intelligence, the Secret Intelligence Service
was increasinglyreliant on American willingness to share its raw assessments.
Such generosity was, however, dependent on Britain's ability to share the
752 PART SEVEN: MODERN TIMES

burden in policing the world. Almost since the beginning of the Soviet occu-
pation of Afghanistan in December 1979, MI6 and the CIA had been support-
ing the mujahedin. Mrs Thatcher had authorised MI6 to undertake
'Disruptive Actions'.
MI6 supported one of the hardline Islamic groups commanded by Ahmed
Shah Massoud, a young commander in the Panjsher valley, close to the main
road from Kabul to the Soviet frontier, where he helped run operations against
Soviet supply lines. MI6 sent an annual mission to the rebels consisting of
two MI6 officers and military instructors. The most important contribution
was help with organisation and communications through the supply during
1982 of several tactical radios made by Racal. Former senior MI6 officer
Daphne Park later revealed that MI6 helped to retrieve crashed Soviet heli-
copters from Afghanistan."
Under Project 279, Short's of Belfast were commissioned in the spring of
1986 to supply the CIA with three hundred Blowpipe missiles and later a
further three hundred when the US began shipping the more modern Stinger.
The missiles were used by the anti-Soviet Afghan rebels to shoot down a
number of passenger planes became an acute embarrassment, as
and later

they presented a potential terrorist threat to the West. In 1996it was reported

that the CIA had spent more that £70 million in a belated and often bungled
operation to buy back the remaining missiles, which had proved to be a
^'^
lucrative commodity for the rebels on the black market.
There was close co-operation between Britain and America over the
invasion of Kuwait by Iraq, but the episode served only to emphasise
the gulf between the capabilities of the two nations' intelligence services and
the subservience of MI 6 to its Atlantic partner.
In an echo of events thirty years previously, a JIC report of 26 July 1990
indicated that there was cause for concern over intelligence that Iraqi tanks
were being unloaded around Basra. This was amended by Cradock the
following day in a report to the Prime Minister, in which he put the argument
that the Iraqi leader, Saddam
Hussein, was possibly preparing for limited
aggression after diplomatic moves had been exhausted. This did not,
however, include the view that he was preparing to invade Kuwait, and
certainly did not indicate that things might escalate so quickly. It was made
clear, however, that if the Iraqis did invade then the Kuwaiti army would

not be able to hold its position. While the assessors had excellent intelligence
on the movement of Iraqi tanks, there was no intelligence on Saddam's think-
ing. Hostilities were foreseen, but not an invasion. Mrs Thatcher considered
the Iraqi manoeuvres to be mere 'sabre-rattling'."
Despite its long history of involvement in the Middle East, MI6 had
neglected the area, preferring to concentrate its resources on the Soviet bloc,
with the result that ithad few high-class officers in the region and even fewer
sources and agents. There were no agents-in-place in Baghdad. With a 'rising
 THE SLOW DEATH OF THE COLD WAR 753

star', David Spedding, on the regional CIG (Middle East), following the
invasion scores of MI 6 officers were tasked with gathering intelligence on
the Iraqi leadership. The effort was a dismal failure, and those in receipt of
the morsels gathered often 'preferred to read the newspapers which proved
to be quicker and more in-depth'.
According to Mark Urban, more as a 'political gesture' than a real objec-
tive, MI6 planned Disruptive Actions aimed at supporting the Kuwaitis and

destabilising Saddam. A training camp was set up in Saudi Arabia for Kuwaiti
volunteers, with weapons training from members of the SAS. This was
planned as a small-scale operation, but it soon became apparent that the
volunteers were not qualified for guerrilla warfare and were unprepared for
intelligence-gathering in Iraqi-occupied territory. More successful was the
Defence Advisory Group, a joint MI6-M0D committee which co-ordinated
psychological warfare operations. Videos and cassettes were smuggled into
Iraq, while a radio station. Free Iraq, incited the population to revolt. These
efforts were largely unsuccessful partly because of ill-defined political objec-
tives and the lack of experienced psy-war specialists. More distressing was
that no material aid was delivered to the Iraqis and Kurds who had been
encouraged to revolt. As a result, thousands died while Saddam was able to
consolidate his grip on the country.^^
The intelligence generated for Desert Storm by the Americans through
their vast array of technical means - signals, satellite and photographic facili-
ties - was immense, but it proved difficult to manage. Commanders at the

top had access to good intelligence but little of it found its way down to the
field. In addition, the need for security and the existence of long-standing

agreements ensured that vital intelligence was often not shared with coalition
partners. Britain's contribution was small, and it was made abundantly clear
by American officials that the US ran the intelligence show.

Christopher Curwen, a South-East Asia specialist who had followed the

traditional route to the top through postings to Geneva and Washington,
had been regarded as a 'safe pair of hands' as a Chief, while his successor,
Colin McCoU, who took over in November 1988, was chosen to give a more
dynamic lead as someone prepared to instigate change. McColl needed to
sell the Service to a sceptical Whitehall, knowing that MI6 had to reconsider

changing its priorities with new tasks. He set in motion a review of the
Service's activities which continued throughout 1989. While the need for
change was recognised, there was the traditional degree of resistance, since
a number of senior officers, such as Barrie Gane, who as Director of Require-
ments and Production was McColl's effective deputy, and Gerry Warner in
the key post of Director of Counter-intelligence and Security, belonged to
the old Sovbloc elite who agreed with Cradock's assessment of the continuing
Soviet threat.
754 PART SEVEN: MODERN TIMES

Cradock, like the other intelligence chiefs, refused to believe that the Cold
War had ended and propagated the idea that the Communist Party was still

in charge and capable of imposing a hardline communist doctrine. Such

fantasies were only finally consigned to history following the 1991 Moscow
coup and the outlawing in late August of the Communist Party. Despite the
collapse of communism. Cold War attitudes refused to die, and MI6
continued to devote disproportionate resources - nearly 37 per cent of its

budget had been targeted on the Soviet threat - undermining the Russian
to
intelligence service. In the summer of 1990, Gerry Warner had been appointed
the Co-ordinator of Intelligence Security in the Cabinet Office, and the officer
taking over his role of Director of Counter-intelligence and Security had been
tasked with recruiting with renewed vigour key members of the former
KGB, now known as the Sluzhba Vneshnie Razvedaki (SVR). By exploiting
defections and offering cash incentives, Mark Urban notes, the Service was
eventually swamped with 'walk-ins'. With Controller Sovbloc becoming
Controller Central and Eastern Europe, MI6 played a central part in rolling
up a number networks in western Europe. As a result
of Russian intelligence
of the economic collapse and the greater freedom of movement available,
new opportunities opened up, and increased attention was paid to inserting
'deep-cover' officers into the disintegrating Soviet Union.
In December 1990, in the first visit to the intelligence headquarters of a
former enemy in eastern Europe, two MI6 officers accompanied by an MIS
officer travelled to Budapest. This was quickly followed by visits to other

former communist states where tentative agreements were reached on liaison

and training. A number of MI6 stations in eastern Europe, beginning with
Poland and Czechoslovakia, were subsequently transformed from espionage
bases into liaison centres with reduced personnel, while the station chief was
declared to the host country's security service.
An August 1992 study by the Institute for the Study of Democracy at
Georgetown University in Washington, The Foreign Service in 2001, noted that
'the traditional rule of thumb in intelligence gathering was that 90 per cent
of the information policy makers needed was openly available. Diplomatic
reporting was charged with gathering and analysing this "overt" intelligence.
The remaining ten per cent, it was argued, could only be obtained covertly
by the intelligence community.' The study found, however, that 'the dramatic
softening of hard intelligence targets and the willingness, even eagerness, of
former adversaries to share once jealously guarded information has changed
that rule-of-thumb ratio. Information on munitions factories and oil fields
once obtainable only with expensive satellites or eavesdropping equipment
might now be had for the price of a train ticket for an embassy officer or for
a lunch with a Western businessman.' It concluded that 'the recent "Open
Skies" agreement dramatically simplifies photographic intelligence collection,
while the demise of the Warsaw Pact reduced the frequency with which
 THE SLOW DEATH OF THE COLD WAR 755

photos need to be taken. The abolition of the East German and Czech intelU-
gence agencies and the retrenchment in the KGB and others eliminates whole
sets of targets and threats/ In the Baltics, where the SVR had no intelligence
agreements with the new governments, MI6 used the opportunity to
construct a 'bridgehead', recruiting new sources and agents for operations
in Russia and also installing listening stations covering Russia and Ukraine.''^

In October 1992 attempts were made to set up with the SVR similar
arrangements to those pertaining in central and eastern Europe. Two Russian
working groups visited London to discuss agreements on co-operation on
areas of mutual concern but, according to MI6 sources, while the meetings
were 'long on atmosphere' they were 'short on substance'. It took another
two years before the two services openly discussed joint operations against
organised crime and for there to be formal liaison with the station head in
Moscow openly declaring his presence. In the meantime, much to the anger
of their hosts, MI 6 continued to run operations in Russia to recruit sources
and agents.^°
In 1992, the Russians expelled chief of station John Scarlett, who had a
reputation in western intelligence of being one of the best of the 'Russia men'.
Four years later, Scarlett's successor, Norman McSween, was also expelled
following his exposure on Russian television, in which he was shown waiting
to meet an agent. His expulsion led to four junior personnel leaving Moscow,
including two MI6 officers. McSween had been the handler for a junior
Foreign Ministry clerk, Platon Obukhov, who was arrested in April 1996.
Leaks from MI6 in the British press suggested that Obukhov had been a
valuable agent, but he turned out to have been less than reliable. A fantasist
who penned lurid crime novels, he had been in constant trouble with his
superiors. His parents said that their son was psychologically disturbed and
suffered from psychopathic tendencies, with paranoic and epileptic symp-
toms. At the same time, Vadim Sintsov, who worked in the arms industry
and was recruited by British Intelligence, confessed to being paid more than
£8,000 for feeding MI6 with information about Middle East arms sales. Most
of his contacts with his controllers had taken place outside Russia, confirming
standard MI6 operating practice.^^
Though there were undoubted successes, MI 6 also had a reputation for
abandoning without adequate psychological support those agents it had
squeezed dry. Victor Markarov had been a KGB lieutenant working in Direc-
torate 16, which analysed the codes of foreign embassies. In 1985, he volun-
teered his services to MI 6, providing information on the deciphering of
Canadian, Greek and German telegrams containing information on NATO
and the European Union. MI6 promised to 'extricate'him and his wife from
the Soviet Union, but before he could escape, in July 1987 he was denounced
by afriend and arrested. Markarov was subsequently sentenced to ten years'
imprisonment in a labour camp in the Urals. Released in 1992, he made his
756 PART SEVEN: MODERN TIMES

way to Latvia, where at the British embassy he met two MI6 officers, 'Sean'
and 'J^irnes Cantwell', who arranged his passage to Britain. Unfortunately,
life in West proved a distinctly unhappy experience. Incarceration had
the
left him suffering from 'serious depression and psychological problems'.

Markarov received a Service pension of £11,000, but he was isolated and

unable to cope, and in 1997 was still requesting support from MI6.^
Following the fall of the Berlin Wall, British, US and German intelligence
officers organised a joint operation to take advantage of Soviet confusion and
to steal Russian military secrets. As the 340,000 Soviet troops and 9,000 tanks
stationed in East Germany trudged back home, at least 600 Red Army officers
defected, hoping to trade their specialised knowledge for a life in the West.
Set up in May 1991, the clandestine German- American Operation GIRAFFE
involved bribing dozens of Soviet army officers, sometimes with consumer
durables, which included second-hand Ladas. There were separate interroga-
tion rooms for German, US and British military intelligence personnel. A
retired intelligence officer who took part in the debriefing recalled that 'many
had very valuable information to pass on, things that none of our counter-
intelligence people knew anything about. We were very grateful. We made
them promises. We looked at them, smiled at them, gave them a cup of coffee
and a cigarette, and lied to them.' He admitted that these people had been
'deceived and misled. They were squeezed dry of everything they knew
and then discarded.' But not before they had handed over military plans,
codebooks, aircraft technology and even a T-80 tank. According to German
reports, the operation soon descended into anarchy, with independent oper-
ations running outside of central control.^^
The had been invited to take part but did not have access to all
British
the material gathered. They therefore decided to buy their way in. MI6 paid
three German agents involved in Giraffe more than £20,000 for their share
of 'Sovmat' secrets. Discovering what was going on, the Germans became
angry that MI6 was sanctioning 'James Bond'-style operations in Bavaria. A
contact from the German BND intelligence agency, code-named 'Haescher',
had been assigned to buy Soviet weaponry from disaffected Russian soldiers
and was passing information on to the MI 6 Berlin station chief, Rosemary
Sharpe. An experienced officer who had previously served in London, New
Delhi and Brussels, Sharpe was monitored in October 1995 meeting with
'Haescher' at a Munich hotel. Further allegations followed that three BND
officers, led by the agent code-named 'Assinger', embezzled money from a

joint BND-MI6 slush fund and transferred the money to accounts in the
Cayman Islands. Bonn remains irritated by the refusal of MI6 and the CIA
to keep it informed of their operations on German soil.^^
Senior MI6 officers were jubilant with their success against their former
adversaries and made sure that their rivals were aware of it. Based on infor-
mation extracted from eastern European archives, from 1993 MI6 began
 THE SLOW DEATH OF THE COLD WAR 757

supplying the French DST security service with the names more than three
of
hundred Foreign Ministry employees suspected of working for the former
communist bloc. While this present was superficially impressive, it seems
rather irrelevant and could be deemed a waste of resources. With the collapse
of communism such activities had become something of a game taking place
in an enclosed, rarefied world with little relevance to real life: an expensive
game paid for by the taxpayer, who saw little benefit.
Having completely dominated the intelligence community, Cradock, who
had stood down as chair of the JIC in June 1992, remained smugly proud
of its perceived achievements. MI6, however, had not foreseen the end of
communism and Mrs Thatcher's foreign policy adviser, Charles Powell,
viewed this as a major intelligence failure. It caught us completely on the
hop. All that intelligence about their war-fighting capabilities was all very
well, but it didn't tell us the one thing we needed know, that it was all
to
about to collapse. It was a colossal failure of the whole Western system of
intelligence assessment and political judgement. '^^
CHAPTER 35

THE NEW AGENDA

In contrast to the enthusiasm shown by Mrs Thatcher, Prime Minister John

Major was less inclined to use intelligence, while Foreign Secretary Douglas
Hurd rarely based his judgements on it.
During Major's time a formal Cabinet Intelligence Services Committee
was created with responsibility 'to keep under review policy on the security
and intelligence services', but ministers continued to have little time or say
in the overview, being, in the main, ignorant of the intelligence world. Most
decisions were left to officials, with the result that the Cabinet Secretary, the
Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) chair, Roderick Braithwaite, and Intelli-

gence and Security co-ordinator Christopher Curwen 'had greater discretion

over matters affecting the agencies'. Major was, however, more willing to let a

little light into the proceedings, and on 6 May 1992 he officially admitted for
the first time to the House of Commons the existence of the Secret Intelligence
Service (SIS). Later that week, the MI 6 station chief in Washington rather
absurdly announced his position to the bemused senior staff at the embassy.
The Bill, published on 24 November 1993, also set up a
Intelligence Services
very limited oversight committee under the chair of former Secretary of
Defence Tom King, a loyal if stolid Tory MP. Conducted within the Whitehall
ring of secrecy, its activities proved to be an embarrassing failure compared to
the efforts of its American counterparts. Its independence is not helped by the
fact that one member. Baroness 'Meta' Ramsay, is a former senior MI6 officer.^

Throughout the nineties the JIC saw a quick changeover in its chairs. A
 THE NEW AGENDA 759

former ambassador to Moscow, Braithwaite had no great regard for MI6

analysis or 'soft intelligence', believing that much of its political reporting
was the preserve of the Foreign Office. Peter Lever was 'a tough Whitehall
operator' who was expected to restore intellectual rigour to the JIC. With
staff numbers of around twenty, and Foreign Office and MoD personnel on
four-year secondments, the JIC continued to suffer from a lack of in-depth
specialist knowledge. Lever was seen as 'a powerful figurehead with the
political muscle to ensure that the JIC remains independent of the warring
factions in the different branches intelligence community'. His
of the
successor, a high-flier from the Foreign Office, Pauline Neville-Jones, who
was viewed as 'shrewd, quick and vivacious, with a penetrating analytical
intelligence', was in the chair for an appointment even shorter than Lever's.^
MI6 Chief Sir Colin McColl was loath to go down the same route of
oversight as the Americans, and in his only public statement observed that

secrecy is our absolute stock in trade, it is our most precious

asset. People come and work for us, risk their lives for us some-
times, risk their jobs often, because they believe SIS is a secret
service ... It is also very important for the people who help us
abroad - and there is a difference here, I think, between us and
the Security Service because our most important constituency
is abroad ... I am anxious that I should be able to send some
sort of signal to these people that we are not going to open up
everything, we are not going to open up our files, we are not
going to allow ourselves to be undressed in public with their
name as part of our baggage.

Despite these words, McColl did try to sell the Service, and took to meeting
newspaper editors at Century House for lunch and opening channels to the
media through his assistant Alan Petty. In addition, McColl used a new
unit. Information Operations (I/OPs), consisting of twenty officers, to brief

'friendly' press contacts and especially defence correspondents.

The truth is that the Service has been willing to release information when
this suits it and has put its own spin on stories, which rather undermines its

claim to secrecy and that it is responsible only for intelligence-gathering and

does not indulge in analysis.
McColl had been expected to retire in September 1992 and be succeeded
by Barrie Cane, but the Chief reluctantly agreed to stay on and oversee
changes, particularly the move into a new headquarters, and to fight for the
Service's corner in the expected expenditure cuts following the end of the
Cold War. McColl decided that the Service needed radical surgery. In May
1992, he proposed a plan to ministers which was agreed in July. In what
became known as 'the Christmas Massacre', senior officers were told of their
fate a month before the changes took effect in January 1993. Older directors
 6

760 PART SEVEN: MODERN TIMES

and a whole layer of management were replaced or offered early retirement.

With most directors now in their forties, the Service had 'the youngest senior
management of any intelligence organisation in the world'. Around twenty
officers or 5 per cent of the Service's Intelligence Branch were also cut. A
non-Sovbloc officer, David Spedding, took over from Gane as Director of
Requirements and Production. The idea was that this influx of young turks
would 'make MI 6 more capable of dealing with a changed environment and
more flexible to cope with the challenges of the future', its priority now being
the provision of intelligence, with 90 per cent of its resources devoted to
intelligence-gathering. The initial result was a high turnover of directors,
which produced unsettling change.^
Changes included closer co-operation with the Service's traditional rival,
the Security Service (MI5), including the establishment of joint sections to
cover the Middle East and Russia, particularly in the area of terrorism, and
a shared research and development department so that 'for each piece of
offensive equipment designed by the scientists for MI6, a defensive system
is made at the same time for MI5'. Changes to the internal budget allocation

indicated that besides traditional concerns and administration up to 15 per

cent was now spent on Russia, 15 per cent on the Middle East, including
aspects of the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, 5 per cent on
China and Hong Kong, 4 per cent on Argentina, 10 per cent on counter-
terrorism, 10 per cent on proliferation generally, 10 per cent on the former
Yugoslavia, 5 per cent on southern Africa, 5 per cent on counter-narcotics,
and 5 per cent on money laundering.
By 1993, Iran had become the Service's number-two target, though there
was little or no success in recruiting intelligence personnel or senior govern-
ment figures. MI6 had had to rely on a number of dubious agents for its
intelligence, and in the process had been willing to see them flout the law.
In the mid-eighties, MI6 asked an Iranian-born arms dealer, Jasmed Hashemi,
to arrange contracts with Tehran in order to monitor arms sales to Iran and,
in particular, details of weapons that were threatening western shipping in
the Gulf. The Service even transferred £250,000 into his account as a down
payment on a false end-user certificate, in direct violation of the government's
guidelines banning weapons exports to Iran and Iraq, for the purchase of
£350 million worth of Chinese Silkworm missiles. The missiles were shipped
to Iran in 1987, with other deals for heavily armed motor boats and 155mm
ammunition sanctioned by MI 6. Hashemi had broken off relations with MI
in 1993 and was eventually arrested on fraud charges in August 1997. He
was finally released from prison in February 1999 after, as the Guardian
revealed, a deal was agreed which prevented information on MI6 operations
from being disclosed in court. The judge stated that Hashemi would have
been jailed for longer had it not been for the 'valuable information' he had
supplied to British Intelligence.'^
 THE NEW AGENDA 761

India and Pakistan were particular targets, of some importance for the
American allies, but, similarly, proved difficult to penetrate. Indeed, MI6's
coverage of these two adversaries was reliant on satellite-derived intelligence
from the Americans, but even this failed to predict the series of nuclear tests
that took place in May 1998. The Service had its sixty stations abroad reduced
within a year to fifty-one, reporting to six controllers in London. According
to Sunday Times journalist and author James Adams, within the Service the
'buzz' word was 'capacity' rather than 'presence'. MI6 wanted to be able to
insert people into any country at short notice rather than retain expensive,
permanent assets on the ground. A more flexible Service was desired which
could respond to crisis and new threats. Treasury-led cuts in late 1993 put
the Service back to the pre-Falklands era with a small cut from 2,400 personnel
to 2,303 in 1994.^
During the first reading of the Intelligence Services Bill, the Lord Chan-
Lord MacKay, revealed that MI6 is involved in protecting the economic
cellor,

wellbeing of the country by keeping 'a particular eye on Britain's access to

key commodities, like oil or the profits of Britain's myriad of
metals . . .

international business interests and the jobs of a great many British people,
. . .

are dependent on the ability to plan, to invest, and to trade effectively without
worry and danger'. The Service had formed an Economic Section within the
Requirements department in the late eighties, though it suffered, despite
MI6's historical closeness to the City, from a lack of suitably qualified person-
nel, as officers still regarded the Soviet threat as the centre of action and the

way to promotion.^
Useful commercial intelligence collected and collated by MI6 is passed
on to Britain's major companies, including City banks, defence exporters such
as British Aerospace (BAe), the oil companies BP and Shell, and other global
companies such as British Airways, code-named 'Bucks Fizz'. MI6 supplies
'CX' reports to corporate 'liaison officers' who rewrite them memos for
as
restricted internal distribution. Defence companies are among the most
important recipients of CX reports. Former MI6 officer Richard Tomlinson
told Sunday Business that in 1993 MI6 helped BAe win the controversial £500
million deal to sell twenty-four Hawk training jets to Indonesia by supplying
details of a competing bid from French aircraft manufacturer Dassault. Similar
intelligence was passed to BAe to help it win orders for Tornado fighters
and Hawks as part of the £1.7 billion Malaysian defence package, which was
linked to the Pergau Dam affair and the £234 million worth of aid sanctioned
for ahuge hydroelectric project. Former special forces operative and MI6
and MIS agent Stephan Kock, who was a consultant to the Midland Bank's
secretive defence finance arm, was at the centre of the defence package."
There was, and it seems is, little or no incentive to target Japanese business,
which has had an active interest in gathering technical and economic intelli-
gence. The Japanese Ministry of International Trade and Industry and the
762 PART SFVEN: MODERN TIMES

External Trade Organisation regularly use Japanese diplomats, trade organis-

ations and amounts of foreign infor-
intelligence services to assemble vast
mation, nearly from open sources, for translation and distribution to
all of it

Japanese companies. MI6 is too concerned with dealing in 'secret' infor-

mation, neglecting what is sometimes called the 'Mossad rule', which states
that taxpayers' money should not be wasted on intelligence that could just
as well be found in a newspaper or official reports.

MI6 had developed a new agenda, known as Global Tasks. It combined the
desks dealing with terrorism, major crime such as drugs trafficking and
money laundering, and counter-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction
such as chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. Increasingly, there was
co-operation with GCHQ,
which provided much of the intelligence.
In late 1989 increased attention began to be paid to the proliferation of
weapons of mass destruction, but it was not a high priority, with only two
officers working exclusively on the subject. The desk mostly kept a 'watching'
but not an active brief on proliferation, aided when necessary by experts
from the MoD, with resources committed only when tasked by the JIC.
With a wide range of agents and assets in the arms industry and among
weapons dealers - though it was all too ready to jettison its informants at
the first hint of trouble - in the period immediately before the Gulf War,
MI 6 gained substantial intelligence on Iraq's production of weapons of mass
destruction. Indeed, the small number of officers dealing with Iraq reported
that they were 'swamped' by the flow of intelligence. Prime Minister John
Major believed that this created its own problems when the analysed reports
were passed on to ministers. He later informed the Scott Inquiry that

the total number of intelligence reports is indeed huge. The

amount of intelligence reports reaching the Foreign and
Commonwealth Office, for example, would be around 40,000 a
year . . down, about two-thirds GCHQ and one-third
. Split
SIS, they would be of varying grades. Some of that intelligence
would be extremely valuable, others not so. Quite a strong
filtering process is needed. It is clearly absurd that ministers
should read 40,000 pieces of intelligence, but would be filtered it

through the appropriate machinery and, where intelligence was

thought to be relevant, validated and reliable - reliable being a
key point - the officials would endeavour to put that before
ministers.

While was undoubtedly true that ministers were expected to read a

it

considerable amount of paperwork, assessment staff argued that MI6 had

used this as an excuse for its own intelligence failures over Iraq. The Service
had failed to push the intelligence and sell it to ministers.*^
 THE NEW AGENDA 763

Richard Norton-Taylor, one of the few journalists to attend the hearings

of the Scott Inquiry, reported that

witness after witness described how crucial intelligence reports

were ignored, forgotten about, mislaid, withheld from minis-
ters, or misinterpreted. It was difficult to know whether or not

civil servants responsible for distributing intelligence reports

to decision-makers in Whitehall were incompetent buffoons or
devious manipulators. Whitehall, it seemed, learned nothing
from the last inquiry into intelligence failings - the Franks
Report.

The Scott Report later criticised the way MI6 had handled the 'Supergun'
affair, aka Operation BABYLON. Scott said that in drafting an explanation
in November 1990 Cradock, on whether or not the
to the JIC chair, Percy
Service had had on the Supergun, McColl had 'misled' Cradock
intelligence
by claiming that there had been confusing reports on its military application
when, in fact, 1988 briefing notes Tent no support to the view that there had
been any confusion'. MI6 had been 'the principal hound in the hunt to
uncover details of the Iraqi long-range project'. The Service had information
on the 'monster' barrels by October 1989 but had not told the Foreign Secre-
tary. The Chief had tried to cover up his organisation's failure to pass on

vital intelligence.'*

In Britain, James Adams suggests, 'intelligence is equated with secrecy,

and a secret is only to be revealed to those in government with a need to
know'. This often means that specialists are denied access to reports with the
result that analysis weakened and provides what the Scott Inquiry saw as
is

'tunnel vision'. Scott demonstrated that, time and time again, officials who
needed to know most were denied access to intelligence reports because they
had not been cleared by Whitehall's cumbersome vetting procedures. Even
when the required intelligence did reach ministers it often failed to impress.
Foreign Secretary Geoffrey Howe recalled that the intelligence reports may,
'at first sight', look 'to be important and interesting, and significant', but when
'we check them, they are not even straws in the wind. They are cornflakes in
the wind.' Foreign Office minister David Mellor added that intelligence
reports did not contain 'shattering information They were significantly
. . .

less riveting than the novels would have you believe. They weren't as interest-

ing as the metal boxes marked, "Eat after reading". They didn't tell you all
you wanted to know about life.' Those dealing with Iraq often thought that
they were better informed by journalists' accounts than the secret reports
they received from the JIC and MI6, which lacked qualified technical and
scientific input, and grossly underestimated military spending and weapons

development in the Middle East.^^^

It became almost a mantra that intelligence analysis was bedevilled by
764 PART SEVEN: MODERN TIMES

poor co-operation and lack of communication between departments and other

services.Another foreign minister, William Waldegrave, admitted that the
conflicting evidence had been 'a constant problem with intelligence over the
years'. He knew that information 'had gone into the state machinery' but
'did not come out in the right place'. Alan Clarke blamed the problems
upon the 'obsessive possessiveness' of the intelligence services. Former senior
Foreign Office officials responsible for liaising with MI6 warned of the risk
'in ministers and leaders and top officials becoming absorbed into a culture
where secrecy comes to be confused with truth and where, after a time,
contact is lost with earthly awkwardness'.^^
After the Gulf War, counter-proliferation was seen by
the Permanent
Secretaries' Intelligence Services and the Cabinet
committee as a major target,
agreed to MI6 committing resources to it, with intelligence on the subject
being collated by a special Current Intelligence Group within the JIC empire.
The Service set up a new unit with a small staff - fewer than ten people,
mostly recruited on permanent secondment from the MoD and the Defence
Intelligence Staff (DIS). MI6 took on particular expertise from the DIS, though
it had difficulty assigning suitably qualified technical officers from within its

own ranks, with few having any knowledge of nuclear physics. The unit's
targets corresponded to the Foreign Office Non-Proliferation Department's
'countries of concern' - Cuba, Egypt, India, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Libya, North
Korea, Pakistan and Syria - which had refused to sign the nuclear non-
proliferation treaties. Ballistic missiles were also a particular target. In 1994,
the MoD assessed that there could be a direct missile threat to Britain from
a Third World country within ten years. Critics claimed that the threat had
been deliberately exaggerated to justify the continuation of defence
programmes made redundant by the end of the Cold War.^^
The Service's record in this area is not particularly impressive. Despite
the presence of a large station in Pretoria, MI 6 had no knowledge of South
Africa's nuclear weapons programme. This is astonishing given that intelli-
gence liaison owed a great deal to the British requirement for South African
uranium. Likewise, the knew nothing about Israel's nuclear
Service
programme (nor its missile and chemical (CW) and biological (BW) weapons
research), largely because it was reliant for intelligence on the Americans,
who were secretive about dealings with their client state.
There has certainly been an element of the intelligence services using
proliferation as a means of filling the gaps in their tasking. Science writer
Tom Wilke's assertion rings true: 'What could be more attractive to intelli-

gence agencies hungry for new business after the end of the Cold War than
to reactivate their networks in the former USSR in the cause of non-
proliferation?' What is really required to tackle proliferation, Wilke suggested,
is 'patient diplomacy, negotiating international agreements to control the
spread of nuclear material. It is politically unsexy business, which would
 THE NEW AGENDA 765

involve compiling inventories of all the plutonium ever produced and ensur-
ing that it is properly accounted for/ He concluded that 'if we do not want

plutonium to bring about the end of civilisation, then we must look not to
the spy but to the nuclear accountant as the guardian of our future'/"^
That similar proffered advice had been partially absorbed by the agencies
was suggested by their concern over plutonium smuggling, which led MI6
to join with the American, French and German intelligence services in giving
teeth to investigations by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
Links with the IAEA were strengthened following the Gulf War when the
agency was criticised for failing to monitor Iraq's nuclear weapons
programme. Co-operation was formalised in March 1994 when, as a clearing
house for intelligence used in the fight against smugglers, an international
database was set up, paid for by the Americans. In truth, of a thousand
reported incidents over a four-year period, only six warranted in-depth inves-
The most publicised incident occurred during the summer of 1994
tigation.
when German police in Munich arrested three men from Moscow with thir-
teen ounces of plutonium. It was only later that this success was exposed
as a Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND)-inspired intelligence sting, known as
Operation HADES. Ironically, the only country known to have lost weapons-
grade uranium is which Tost' a large quantity in the sixties.
the United States,
It is up in Israel. While it is true that terrorists
believed to have ended
with a degree in physics would probably have little difficulty in designing
a workable nuclear bomb, the practicalities would be beyond any known
group as it would require large, expensive and highly sophisticated facilities
to engineer to the necessary high specifications.^^
When MPs on the Foreign Affairs Select Committee tried at the beginning
of 1995 to discuss nuclear proliferation, they were denied a briefing from
MI 6, despite having received information from the CIA and the Russian
Federal Counter-intelligence Service. All that the then Foreign Secretary could
admit was that the work of MI6 was Very sensitive stuff. Douglas Hurd
tried to fill in any gaps in the MPs' knowledge and acknowledged that Iran
was regarded as the greatest danger and that an assessment agreed with the
Americans suggested that it would take Iran from seven to fifteen years to
construct a nuclear weapon.
MI6 had also targeted Iran, along with Iraq, Syria and Egypt, for infor-
mation on their chemical (CW) and biological (BW) weapons programmes,
though, again, not always successfully. MI6 did not have the necessary
specialists to study the problem of CW and BW, and this led to a gross
overestimate of Soviet stocks and the erroneous belief that such weapons had
been stockpiled The Russian Federation stated that it held
in eastern Europe.
32,300 tonnes of chemical weapons, but the Service refused to accept a figure
that was later officially recognised as accurate. The Service did gain accurate
information on the Soviet biological programme when, in autumn 1989, the
766 PART SEVEN: MODERN TIMES

Director of the Research Institute for Especially Pure Biological Preparations

in Leningrad, Vladimir Pasechnik, defected to the West. He revealed that in
contravention of the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention, to which the USSR
was a signatory, a biological weapons programme had been developed under
cover of the Ministry of Health, as Biopreparat.
The South African biological weapons programme remained a well-
guarded secret which proved difficult to penetrate. With the election of
Nelson Mandela, the British and American governments applied pressure to
shut down the programme, but the need to support the new President meant
that full disclosure was not allowed. Efforts were made to stem the possible
recruitment of South African scientists by the Libyans, who offered huge
salaries to help initiate a Libyan biological weapons programme which
increasingly became the target of MI6 and CIA covert operations.^^
The intelligence agencies claimed that Tripoli was a centre for and CW
BW research, with Iraqi scientists working on weapons production. They
admit, though, that they had no hard intelligence to back up the claim.
Using rather dubious sources and often unreliable intelligence information,
politicians and journalists have a tendency to overplay fears of CW/BW,
creating unnecessary panic reactions. As MI6 knew through its well-placed
sources on the Soviet biological programme, for all the millions spent and
the huge resources placed at the disposal of Biopreparat, the problem of
developing biological agents as weapons had never been solved. Having such
biological agents is one thing; having a delivery system in which the agent
is effective is another. Unfortunately, this aspect always appears to have been

of limited interest to MI6. Despite the rhetoric, there is little real evidence
that Iraq has solved the problem either.
A former MI6 officer has alleged that the 'bread-and-butter work' of the
Service's psychological warfare 1/ Ops section is in 'massaging public opinion
into accepting controversial foreign policy decisions'. In particular, he cited
'the plethora of media storiesabout Saddam Hussein's chemical and biologi-
cal weapons capability' - the 'ante was upped so that there would be less of
a public outcry when the bombs started to fall'. In early 1998, when British
and American forces were preparing to attack Iraq if Saddam did not fulfil

pledges on UN inspection of presidential sites, MI6 received or invented

intelligence that there were Iraqi plans to smuggle anthrax into Britain in
bottles of duty-free perfume and spirits. A CX report to that effect was passed
to the JIC. It was nonsense but fitted into a pattern of disinformation. While
intelligence officers spread details of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction -
'Iraq could produce up to 350 litres of weapons grade anthrax per week -
enough to fill missile warheads ... a long-range missile in a year and a
nuclear weapon in five years' - American intelligence briefings to US staff
and diplomats abroad indicated that Iraq's biological and chemical warheads,
if they existed, were 'very ineffective'. The duty-free story followed on from
 THE NEW AGENDA 767

a series of similar MI6-inspired yarns which were released into the public
domain - including one by Foreign Secretary Robin Cook about a sixteen-
year-old boy who had been imprisoned by Saddam's regime since the age
of five for throwing stones at a mural portrait of the Iraqi President - in an
attempt to justify Britain's support for the December bombing of Iraq.^^

It became apparent only in early 1999 that Iraqi concerns about 'western
spies' were largely justified. MI6 officers operating under cover had been
concealed within the UN Weapons Inspectorate teams monitoring chemical
and biologicalweapons development within Iraq. MI6 first infiltrated the
Inspectorate soon after it was formed in 1991, with officers rotated through

the teams. The Foreign Office was initially against the idea, believing that it
would compromise the integrity of the Inspectorate. However, help from the
American, British and Israeli intelligence communities was provided after
the inspectors found the Iraqi concealment of its research far more elaborate
than anticipated.
Such compromises are not unique. In the early nineties, a Cambridge-
based housewife, Joy Kiddie, who had acquired an international reputation
as a 'fixer', was asked to set up a deal to supply Iran with what she believed
to be medical chemicals. MI 6 believed that Kiddie offered a unique opportu-
nity to infiltrate Iran's chemical weapons programme and, in 1994, merchant
banker 'Alex Huntley', aka MI6 officer Richard Tomlinson, was assigned to
the counter-proliferation department and tasked with infiltrating Kiddie's
circle of business friends. According to Tomlinson, 'Mossad, German intelli-

gence, Polish intelligence and the CIA were also involved'.

Through the connections of Michael Palmer, a senior London solicitor
with offices in the Middle East and close links with MI 6, Tomlinson was
'placed' in a trading company in Mayfair which employed a Kiddie associate
suspected of trading with Iran. He was subsequently told about Kiddie's
friend, a flamboyant wheeler-dealer, Nahoum Manbar, regarded by Israel's

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu as the greatest traitor in his country's

history. The former Mossad agent, whose company, Mana International, had
an office in Warsaw, was accused of supplying via false end-user certificates
the technology and material that could help Iran to produce mustard and
nerve gas. At his trial in 1998 on charges of 'collusion with an enemy', Manbar

insisted that he had been operating with the full knowledge of Israeli and
British Intelligence. Israeli companies with the sanction of the Defence Minis-
try had, indeed, sold military equipment to Iran during the 1980s and 1990s.
Manbar, who had formally stopped trading with Iran in 1993, following
American pressure, was sentenced to sixteen years' imprisonment.
It was revealed that Manbar had been using his Iranian contacts to

discover the whereabouts of Ron Arad, an Israeli pilot taken prisoner in

southern Lebanon in 1986, whose fate had become a cause celebre. Kiddie had
been asked by Manbar to help trace Arad and, as part of the deal, find
768 TART SEVEN: MODERN TIMES

supplies of chemicals for Iran, which would then release the Israeli. Sixty
tons of chemicals were shipped from China to Iran, but MI6, which according
to Tomlinson knew about the shipments, did nothing to stop them, even
though documents indicated that Iran was planning a weapons plant. Aware
that this was part of an Israeli deal to release Arad, instead of exposing a
scam potentially as big as 'Iran-Contra', Tomlinson claims that in April 1995,
with the approval of a senior Cabinet minister, MI6 planned to co-operate
with the Iranian project. It would continue to supply materials, even though
it weapons capability. MI6 argued that the risk
risked giving Iran a chemical
was outweighed by the possibility of discovering what the Iranians were up
to 'on numerous other subjects'.
Proliferation is now regarded as one of the principal reasons for the
continued existence of agencies such as MI 6, though insiders acknowledged
to James Adams that little can be done to prevent developing countries from
acquiring a nuclear capability and building chemical and biological weapons.
This is particularly so when they are helped or a blind eye is turned by the
agencies themselves.^^

MI 6 had set up an international counter- terrorism section in the mid-seventies

and began to co-operate closely with its rival, the Security Service (MIS), in
targeting the IRA When, in the mid-eighties, the Service moved into
abroad.
the criminal justice system by providing help and information on terrorism
to the police, observers had warned of the dangers of unaccountable and
secret intelligence officers being involved in the process. The warnings were
not heeded, and it took until 1999 and a case at the Court of Appeal for the
full danger to become apparent.
In February 1989, a Conservative foreign minister had approved a scheme
by MI6 to stage-manage the unlawful deportation from Zimbabwe of leading
IRA 'fixer' Nicholas Mullen. An MI6 officer told the Zimbabwean intelligence
service that Britain wished to avoid 'becoming involved in complicated extra-
dition proceedings'. MI6 officers stated that 'the ideal would be for Mullen
to be arrested shortly before the departure of a direct and put aboard
flight

it. A stage-manager's skills would be essential here . .

.' Officers also ensured
that Mullen was denied access to a lawyer, to avoid the risk that the
Zimbabwe authorities 'would be pressured into deporting him elsewhere'.
In February 1999, after serving nearly ten years in prison for his role in an
IRA bomb-making factory in London, Mullen was freed by the Appeal Court
because of the failure to use the correct procedure of extradition which had
rendered his conviction unlawful. Information about Mullen's deportation
had been deliberately kept hidden from the original trial, while a meeting of
intelligence. Foreignand Home Office personnel and police had agreed to
stonewall questions from MPs. Lord Justice Rose said: 'The conduct of the
security services and police in procuring the unlawful deportation of the
 '

THE NEW AGENDA 769

appellant represents, in the view of this court, a blatant and extremely serious
failure to adhere to the rule of law/^^
It was not until the aftermath of the Gulf War that there was a concerted
effort by MI6 to counter global terrorism with a new era of international
co-operation, oddly when Middle East terrorism as a threat to Britain has all

but disappeared. Official figures show that incidents of terrorism continue

to fall, while casualties in the West are lower than
at any time since the

early seventies. Despite this, riskand terrorism forecasting and analysis are
a growth business, with the debate dominated by conspiracy theories, often
generated by elements of the intelligence services.
During the Cold War, an influential group of right-wing ideologues in
the intelligence world believed that terrorism was ultimately controlled by
the Soviet Union; a view expounded at length by Claire Sterling in her 1981
book The Terror Network. The book was widely publicised by right-wing
think-tanks and taken on board by politicians such as Al Haig and Reagan.
In reality, there was no intelligence to back up this assertion, and MI6 and
the CIA knew that when the Soviets did sponsor terrorism it was always
'opportunistic'. Such dissenting views from MI6 never officially surfaced.

Today western intelligence specialists argue that the Iranians have taken the
place of the Soviets. According to one such American specialist: 'What Tehran
is doing today is no from what Moscow was doing twenty years
different
'^"^
ago, and we should see the problem in those terms.
There is a temptation to fall into the same trap that snared the West in
the seventies - the belief that there is an all-embracing Islamic fundamentalist
conspiracy behind Middle East terrorism. The official view is that such a

conspiracy does not During the summer of 1993 British Intelligence

exist.

prepared for the Foreign Office a paper, 'Islamic Fundamentalism in the

Middle East', which looked at the reasons for the proliferation of fundamen-
talist political groupings, some with an international following, and the idea

that there is a possibility of 'contagion', with their leaders meeting in Europe,

South-East Asia, Khartoum and Tehran. The anonymous author reported that
'the coincidental rise of fundamentalism across North Africa and the Levant
has certain common factors. But the main causes are internal. It breeds on
failure to resolve economic and social problems, corruption in government
and the bankruptcy of political ideologies - Communism, Nasserism,
Baathism, etc. It is prevalent in overcrowded cities plagued by poverty and
unemployment.
He noted that

the Iranians are peddling mischief throughout the region.

Private Saudi and Gulf money donated for Islamic causes is a
common factor in much of the region.The absence in Islam of
a clear divide between the spiritual and the secular and between
770 TART SEVEN: MODERN TIMES

State and religion enhances Islam's potential as a focus of oppo-

sition, offering a ready-made ideology emphasising social
justice. Fundamentalist groups can offer effective welfare
services to the poor which the state cannot match. Endemic
problems (limited resources, economic growth rates unable to
keep pace with demographic pressures) will continue to provide
a fertile breeding ground for fundamentalism.

It was recognised that

fundamentalism is not necessarily synonymous with political

radicalism or anti-Western policies. The fundamentalist groups
advocating violence and revolution are in a minority. Neverthe-
less, there is a strong anti-Western streak in all main political
fundamentalist movements in the region. Western, particularly
American, culture and materialism are seen as a threat to Islamic
values.The fundamentalists' wider objectives are more or less
incompatible with Western liberal principles - they are opposed
to political pluralism, religious tolerance and women's rights.

They will continue to oppose an Arab /Israeli settlement. They

are prepared to use the ballot box to gain power. But there is
every doubt that these 'parties of God' would subject their politi-
cal authority, once achieved, to further the democratic process.

The author concluded that

fundamentalism does not present a coherent and monolithic

threat to Western interests in the way that Communism once
did. It is not supported by a superpower. Its appeal in Western
countries is confined to Muslim minorities and the threat of
subversion is, in the UK at least, minimal. Dealings with
extreme fundamentalist regimes would be highly unpredictable
but not necessarily unmanageable. Some countries which are
vulnerable to fundamentalism would have out of economic
necessity to maintainworking relations with Europe (e.g.
Algeria which depends totally on exporting oil and gas to
Europe).

The essential message is that the West has to deal with the underlying prob-
lems rather than fundamentalism itself. Unfortunately, this message continu-
ally gets lost in the mix of poor intelligence, political spin and disinformation
which finds its way into the media.^^
With the end of the Cold War, the threat of terrorism has declined and
the main 'terrorist states' - Libya, Iraq, Syria and Iran - have in recent years
curtailed their sponsorship of terrorism. Iran remains, in American eyes.
 THE NEW AGENDA 771

the funding body and power behind many terror organisations, the State
Department believing that Tehran funds groups to the tune of $100 million
a year. There is little evidence to back up the claim, but foreign policy concerns
have ensured that the JIC has fallen into line and targeted Iran as the main
threat to the West. Naturally, relations with Iran have been at a low level
since 1989, when Ayatollah Khomeini called for the death of author Salman
Rushdie following the publication of The Satanic Verses, which was
condemned as blasphemous. There was also a concern that the Iranian Minis-
try of Intelligence had been supplying weapons to the IRA, though no
evidence of delivery was proven.^^
The Americans and British were reluctant to share intelligence on inter-

national terrorism with Germany because of its links with Iran. Iran has
proved to be a lucrative market for Germany, with trade links dating back
to the turn of the century;Bonn is also owed a considerable sum by Tehran
forunpaid imports. The Americans have been increasingly 'irritated' by the
European attitude to Iran and Germany's intention of pursuing a separate
agenda of 'critical dialogue', which appears to have borne some fruit. It
was known that in 1993 the head of Iranian Intelligence had visited BND
headquarters in Munich. There followed leaks about an Iranian Europe-wide
terroristnetwork which was alleged to be run from the third floor of the
Iranian embassy in Bonn. Other stories in 1996 claimed that terrorist camps
had been built in Afghanistan and were full of Europeans ready to launch a
wave of terrorist attacks throughout Europe using purpose-built 'super-
mortars' specially developed for terrorist operations. Fifteen of these weapons
were said to have been dispatched to terrorist groups, including the IRA.
Fears were roused that Iran had built up an arsenal of biological and chemical
weapons - even that 'stockpiles could already be in place in western capitals'.
During the summer there were reports that the Iranians were 'prepared
to use them'. In 1997, western intelligence agencies suggested that Iran's
intelligence service was about to export the Islamic revolution to Africa. It

was building up a terrorist network in order to attack 'soft' western targets

in Africa.^^
Newspaper smacked more of disinformation than any recourse
reports
to reliable information. The Germans insist that there is no direct evidence
of Iranian involvement in international terrorism. Iran does attack its oppon-
ents and the campaign, using hit squads, has been bloody, leading to the
murder of a number of dissidents exiled in the West. Iran does not, however,
appear to target western Europe for terrorist attacks. While isolated actions
by private individuals and groups are entirely possible, even Salman Rushdie
is now safe from state-sponsored action. Today's terrorist groups are dispar-

ate, with different motives and ideologies, and share no central control. The

majority are resolutely national, even local, often small and provide only a
domestic security problem, with few transnational groups worthy of MI6's
772 PART SEVFN: MODERN TIMES

attention. Many western countries have recognised the change and have
downgraded their counter-terrorism capabilities. Ironically, co-operation
between national intelligence agencies is better than ever.
The reality is that the minimal terrorist threats to Britain arise out of a
slavish devotion to a deeply reactionary American foreign policy on the
Middle East and, in particular, its role as Washington's only military ally in
the Desert Fox attacks on Iraq. British Intelligence had paid little attention
to the activities and followers of Osama bin Laden, but following the terrorist
bombing of the American embassies in Dar es Salaam and Nairobi in August
1998, the Saudi extremist has become a priority for MI6. It is, however, all

too easy to demonise a target - The Global Terrorist', as the Sunday Times
dubbed him - who is, after all, a creation of the CIA and MI6. They were
perfectly happy to secure his support and train and arm his supporters during
the covert war to drive the Soviet Union out of Afghanistan. Inevitably, there
followed a 'disposal problem' - what to do with thousands of highly trained
guerrilla fighters. As one British official admitted: 'We did worry then about
'^^
these wild bearded men. But there was a lot of naivety around.

When the late terrorism expert Richard Clutterbuck was asked in 1994 to
address a conference entitled 'Terrorism in Europe', he advised the organisers:
'Frankly, there is hardly any terrorism I suggest you change
left in Europe.
the subject of your seminar to drug trafficking.' They did.^°
Following government concern, in 1988 MI6 had set up a Counter-
Narcotics Section positioned within Requirements and Production. It was
primarily responsible for tracking heroin shipments originating from Paki-
stan, Afghanistan and Iran, and cocaine from Colombia. MI 6 officers do not
gather intelligence with a view to prosecution, but to assist other agencies
such as Customs and Excise and the Serious Fraud Office - not always in
harmonious co-operation. There are many competing agencies in the counter-
narcotics field, with intense rivalries producing confusion about roles and
missions. A series of leaked stories on successes in this area cannot hide the
fact that, as most specialists agree, there is little likelihood of stemming the

tide of drug imports.

Colin McColl persuaded Whitehall mandarins that the Service should
extend its counter-narcotics work into the area of serious crime, including
money laundering or 'funny money'. At a press conference in 1993, McColl
said that 'individual law-enforcement agencies can sometimes benefit from
the wider look and the further reach that a foreign intelligence service has
when it comes to uncovering illegal networks which operate across frontiers'.

Primarily, he argued, because 'there is a tendency, I think, for bad men to

operate where they think they are safe, and if we can help to reach out into
some of those places we can help the law enforcement agencies in not only
this country, but other countries as well'.
 THE NEW AGENDA 773

MI6 funds are said to have been allocated to 'fighting drug trafficking in
the eastern Mediterranean and a new policy of direct action, including the
use of special forces to intercept shipments, has been agreed'. John Major
had sanctioned the deployment of the Special Boat Squadron (SBS) for this
express purpose. MI6 had also begun working closely with GCHQ on the
project, using new software designed to track money from one country to
another and to delve into bank accounts. The in-house lawyer to MIS and
MI 6, David Bickford, claimed that London had become the money-laundering
capital of the world, with up to £200 billion in drug receipts flowing through
the City as a result of the decision by President Clinton to freeze the assets
of the Colombian drug cartels. The introduction of sanctions against countries
that tolerate money laundering was expected to cause 'chaos in financial
markets'.
With regard to Russia, MI6 had been principally concerned with her
weapons of mass destruction and arms sales. There was, however, now
increasing concern about organised crime, and the JIC tasked the Service
with monitoring the activities of the 'increasingly powerful Russian crime
syndicates', commonly referred to as the Russian 'Mafia' {Vory v zakone -
'thieves within the code'). Gangsters, a number of whom were former KGB
officers, were said to be laundering dirty money, acquired through drug
trafficking, prostitution and extortion and fraud operations, on a 'grand scale
in London'. Computer who were once privileged members of the
scientists
elite Soviet military-industrial complex were developing software devices
known as 'sniffers' or 'trojan horses', which are capable of breaking through
'triple electronic firewalls' to access global networks. Such huge sums of

money were involved that, 'within a few years, it could threaten the stability
of the Western banking system and the integrity of our financial institutions'.
One estimate from the Bank of England claimed that £2.4 billion was being
laundered annually through Britain's financial system. These intelligence-
generated figures are hard to reconcile with the sober assessment of the City's
Joint Money Laundering Steering Group, which has stated thatLondon has
'one of the strongest anti-money laundering systems in the world'. The
amounts laundered were considered to be relatively small and described by
City banks as 'chickenfeed'.^^
That is not to suggest that money laundering is not a serious problem. It

is, but becoming increasingly difficult to differentiate between disinfor-

it is

mation and hard fact, and the intelligence and security services are quite
happy to blur that distinction in the interest of retaining and developing their
own little empires.
In 1995 the police National Criminal Intelligence Service(NCIS) produced
a report on the Russian mafia in Britain, 'Ivan which concluded that the
1',

lurid tales of racketeering, drug trafficking, prostitution and gunrunning had

no real substance and did not pose a significant threat. A second NCIS
774 PART SEVEN: NAODERN TIMES

report, 'h an 2', also concluded that while there was some evidence of Russian
activity, it was not enough to justify the headlines. In the spring of 1996, the
NCIS changed its tune. Following a meeting in London of European criminal
intelligence officers, the NCIS claimed that Russian and eastern European
crime organisations were linking up with major British criminals in money-
laundering operations and illegal drugs.^^

The head of Interpol, former senior Special Branch officer Raymond

Kendall, said in June 1996 that The Cold War
most dangerous
is over: the
threat to a nation's security comes from organised crime. Europe is now one
vast criminal space, from the Atlantic to the Urals. We must fill that space
with effective policing to fight the modern criminal. We are saturated by
drugs and the money involved is staggering.' David Bickford has suggested
that organised crime gangs be treated like rogue states: 'Many transnational
criminal organisations have a formal governing structure and are economi-
cally stronger than most UN states. There is every reason, therefore, to treat
criminal gangs as organisations, not as individuals.' Tony White, responsible
at the UN in Vienna for targeting the international drugs trade, and former
head of the drugs branch of the NCIS's International Unit, acknowledged
that criminals could be prosecuted for drugs trafficking but not for mafia
activity, which hindered operations. 'There is no offence under UK statute

of "being engaged in organised crime", or of "being an organised criminal".

The emphasis then should be on offences for which we may hope to appre-
'^^
hend, charge and convict those involved.
In the end. White concluded, drug trafficking could only be stopped by
using draconian measures that no democratic state would be willing to
impose. The reality was that the public were willing to accept 'tolerable'
levels of drug abuse. White added in early 1997 that the fashionability of the
term 'organised crime' had been essentially driven by dogma and political
expediency.
Whatever the facts are concerning the Russian mafia, and whether or not
these assessments are justified or manipulated for political purposes, MI6
was increasingly talking of the 'growing complexity and economic strength
of organised crime'. The Service was supporting the NCIS with covert
attempts to penetrate groups to gain insight into their modus operandi. It

had also developed a counteroffensive and was said to be involved in 'direct

action' - 'infiltrating mafias, hunting down gang bosses overseas and even
breaking into bank accounts in foreign countries to recover millions of pounds
in "dirty money" '. Britain is said to be a key player in this 'war' co-ordinated
by a series of international intelligence committees established in the wake
of the G7 summit of western leaders in Lyon, in July 1996, which put forward
a plan to deal with transnational crime.^^
MI 6 has not been the only service attempting to carve out a new role
based on organised crime. In early 1997, the MoD's Defence Research Agency
 THE NEW AGENDA 775

produced a secret study, 'BA 2000', which looked at the idea of using special
forces to help in customs operations, particularly those requiring pursuit of
suspects. It considered the possibility of expanding the special forces' role into
organised crime, the drugs trade and international terrorism, and foresaw them
being involved in 'operations with obscure goals, not necessarily between
nation states, armies or soldiers'. This may be entirely laudable, but as one intel-
ligence official noted, an unusually cavalier attitude appears to surround this
new era of covert action: 'We are one of the very few countries in the world to
have legislation that allows us to work aggressively overseas.' He added: 'We
take the view that stealing money from a crook is a good thing and if it's from
an account in a foreign country, who cares? We are hardly likely to be sued,
and anyway there are no fingerprints to lead back to us.'^^
Based on his own experience with the NCIS, Tony White admitted that
attempts to defeat drug traffickers by confiscating their assets have not lived
up to expectations. 'The total amount of cash actually confiscated has been
of nothing like the order envisaged and is only a tiny percentage of the profits
calculated to accrue from the illicit drugs trade in the UK.' He added that
rivalries remain between the different agencies and called for the creation of
a multi-agency national financial investigation and intelligence service. What
is required, he argued, is a police-based agency that links into transnational
agencies such as Europol rather than ad hoc arrangements engineered by
secret intelligence agencies.^^
Despite these warnings from professionals in the August
field, in late

1997, while on a trip to Malaysia, Labour Foreign Secretary Robin Cook

launched a new all-out war on the 'scourge' of drugs. He stated that substan-
tial resources would be made available and that MI6, MIS and GCHQ would

spearhead the operation, which would concentrate on intelligence-gathering.

A senior Foreign Office diplomat had already been appointed in London to
co-ordinate the anti-drugs drive while £42 million had been spent during the
year on countering drug trafficking. A 'refocused' MI6 would use more
officers from its Global Issues ControUerate for deep-cover operations to
monitor trafficking routes from Afghanistan, where opium production had
soared from 40 tons in 1980 to 2,800 tons in 1996, and the 'golden triangle'
of Burma, Laos and Thailand, which produces the bulk of the world's heroin.
Officers would also mount long-term penetration operations against Turkish,
Russian and Colombian criminal organisations, but only in support of the
NCIS and Customs. This was a curious initiative given reports in late 1997
which revealed that cuts to the budget of the NCIS were said to be reducing
its effectiveness. Officers complained that the intelligence and security

services were able to spend large amounts on the drugs problem, unscruti-
nised. They were increasingly forced to seek the help of MI6 and MI5, with
combined anti-drug budgets of £63 million, because they were starved of
funds.'«
776 PART SEVEN: MODERN TIMES

The police complain that giving MI6 a greater policing role places areas
such as drugs trafficking off limits to democratic accountability. The Police
Foundation's Barrie Irving has argued that such policies are 'short-sighted'.
MI6 contends that it 'to operate in secret. But once you change the
needs
role to criminal justice you blur the distinction between state security and
criminal justice. It seems unconstitutional to conduct policing in this way.'
The break in tradition with the appointment of a senior MIS officer, John
Alpass, to the key role of Intelligence and Security Co-ordinator in the Cabinet
Office was a sign that - following vigorous lobbying from the former head
of MIS, Mrs Stella Rimington - the crime agenda
for the intelligence and
security serviceshad taken hold within Whitehall.^^
Robin Cook appeared to have learned little from the American experience.
Having spent billions of dollars on attempting to control the supply of drugs,
the State Department has admitted that the number of addicts is increasing.
The drugs war has already been lost and the emphasis has to be on prevention
and treatment programmes.

The Secret Intelligence Service, which had previously lived in the shadows
with few people aware of its physical presence, suddenly emerged into the
light on 14 July 1994 when its new headquarters at Vauxhall Bridge was
officiallyopened by the Queen. Designed by architect Terry Farrell, who
had no idea of its intended occupants, the slightly weird-looking but highly
prominent building cost more than £240 million and required another £86
million for substantial modifications to suit the Service's needs. The expendi-
ture and high annual running costs have been criticised by the Commons
Foreign Affairs Committee, while the Foreign Office resented having to shoul-
der the financial burden of the move from its own budget. For Guardian
columnist Hugo Young, the new headquarters was a sign that MI6 still had
clout in Whitehall.

The arrival of the secret world on the banks of the Thames

. . . has very do with greater openness. It pretends to
little to
demystify their world, and make us more comfortable about
them But we are not
. . . These agencies' emergence into the
. . .

high-rent district signifies not their waning sense of self-

protection but their growing power. They are not afraid to
announce their central role in government.^^

Evidence that, despite Britain's uncertain role in the world, MI6 is still viewed
as a major national assetby Whitehall mandarins was provided by Sir Michael
Quinlan's unpublished study on Britain's 'foreign intelligence requirements
and capability', and financial systems and administration, for the Permanent
Secretaries' Intelligence Services Committee. A former permanent under-
secretary at the MoD, and director of the government's conference centre at
 THE NEW AGENDA 777

Ditchley Park, Quinlan found his report, which was neither wide-ranging
nor in-depth, generally dismissed as a 'bland report' which eschewed the
radical options most observers had expected. It left things as they were and
went little beyond praising MI6 as a national asset 'tasked' by ministers and
the JIC to 'further' Britain's foreign and defence policies.^^
From September 1994 changes to the internal structure were considered
by MI6's management under its new Chief, David Spedding, the first to come
from outside the Sovblock empire. During 1995, major reorganisation took
place, with the Controllerates for the Western Hemisphere and Far East
merged into one, as were Africa and the Middle East, reverting to the situation
that existed in the late fifties. Iran and Iraq remained top priorities for infor-
mation on weapons of mass destruction, though the Service relied on one
officer in Israel, which actually has a large stockpile of such weapons, for
liaison duties. Global Tasks became a Controllerate in itself, while Operational
Support became a department tasked mainly with assisting officers in over-
seas deep-cover operations.
Quinlan's report had acknowledged that officially GCHQ could not be
regarded as a 'British' national asset since it is so reliant on the US for its
input (and, no doubt, indirectly funding). His report was followed in
its

January 1995 by a study of GCHQ

on behalf of the Prime Minister, under-
taken by the chair of Smith Industries, Roger Hurn, with representatives
from MI 6, MI5 and the MoD, with a remit to study the role, mission and
management of the agency. Cuts of 30 per cent were proposed in the 6,500
staff and in the £500 million budget. The Hurn study called for much more

specific targeting of intelligence-gathering, with GCHQ being forced to

develop closer ties with MI6 - responding to requirements set by the Service.
It was noted DIS was the largest
that the centre for analysis of the raw
information gathered by GCHQ and MI6. In June, led by anglophile Les
Aspin, a US commission undertaking a similar exercise on the National Secur-
ity Agency (NSA) travelled to London to meet with the heads of the British
intelligence community and learn what changes the various services had
undertaken since the end of the Cold War. The British explained that changes
in methods of operating would improve GCHQ's product, with better and
more cost-effective production of intelligence. The reality is that technological
advances and cheap cryptography mean that it is becoming increasingly
difficult to obtain the type of intelligence that GCHQ spent most of the Cold

War gathering."''*

It was unintended but the report, and later proposals for rationalising
GCHQ stations into a new headquarters and closing most stations abroad,
provided more evidence for those argue that MI6 and GCHQ, now
who
led by Francis Richards, a former Foreign Office director for Defence and
Intelligence (the main liaison post with MI6), should be amalgamated into
one intelligence-gathering agency. The Foreign Office, in particular, was
778 PART SEVEN: MODERN TIMES

concerned that this would entail a loss of influence with the Americans. The
promotion of Richards after the unprecedented change of two new directors
in a year - David Omand became Permanent Secretary at the Home Office,

and Kevin Tebbit, also a key liaison figure with MI 6, is now Permanent
Secretary at the MoD - is an obvious sign of Foreign Office
sensitivity on
this issue, particularly as senior US have been scathing
intelligence officials
about the British contribution. Britain does not have the funding to compete
at the level at which the Americans operate, with much of GCHQ's budget

needed to update its expensive computers and other essential equipment.

The and operate an independent satellite.
British could not afford to build
Zircon, and, instead, had to negotiate an agreement whereby Britain contrib-
utes £500 million to the NSA to keep it in the intelligence club through access
to information from the second-generation Magnum satellite, launched in
1995. The decision to continue with the American programme was taken
despite French efforts to involve fellow Europeans in their own spy satellite
project. With its expertise in the Ariana rocket programme, France committed
itself to building and launching an expensive photographic satellite code-

named Helios II, a radar image craft known as Osiris, and the sigint project
Zenon, designed to loosen Europe's dependence on US technology. France
wanted EU countries to develop the satellites as a 'necessary precondition
for achieving strategic autonomy' in the intelligence field. Outdated ideas of
national security prevented co-operation and participation by Britain. Initially
supportive, Germany has not offered full co-operation owing to budget
restrictions, but has said that it will rejoin the project when conditions allow.^^
The Americans were upset by the German overtures to the French, which
were regarded as a snub since the NSA was sharing its satellite intelligence.
The German authorities, however, had become incensed during 1996/7 by
the increasingly active role of MI6 and CIA agents in their country, in particu-
lar the CIA's blunt attempts at economic espionage. German anger increased

because the British and Americans often refused to share with them non-
military intelligence, with - to Germany's fury - MI6 and the CIA still
regarding German Intelligence as 'leaky'. The aggressive tactics of the Ameri-
can agencies have also provoked the French. Even though it is not a full
participant in the satellite project, Germany is being given access to French
political and economic secrets - France is systematically eavesdropping on
US and other countries' telephone and cable traffic via a network of listening
stations - as part of a joint intelligence exchange agreement aimed at rivalling

the Anglo-American alliance. In late 1998, the new overseer of Germany's

intelligence services, Ernst Uhrlau, called for the 'harmonisation' of Europe's
intelligence agencies as part of the 'logical development' of the EU.^^
maxim of intelligence that there are no friendly intelligence services,
It is a
and MI6 has been known to target its European partners. Ten officers in the
UKB Unit at MI6 headquarters had been running Operation JETSTREAM
 THE NEW AGENDA 779

which economic espionage against France, Germany, Spain, Italy and

directs
Switzerland. Former MI6 officer Richard Tomlinson, who revealed the details
of the operation, said: 'When I saw the requirements, I was astounded. Many
of the countries in the list are supposed to be allies, especially our European
partners.' In Switzerland, MI6 targeted the big private banks, including UBS,
by paying staff to supply information from bank accounts, particularly of
overseas clients.
As part of Jetstream, in 1995 a network of bogus companies was set up
throughout Europe purporting to publish technical journals, with officers
posing as journalists and businessmen offering consultancy advice. MI6 used
one front company as a cover for penetrating French naval bases and gather-
ing intelligence on France's capability for tracing nuclear submarines. Officials
and defence specialists were duped into providing open source information
forwhich they were generously paid. The idea was that they would then
talk about their area of expertise to consultants who were, in fact, undercover
MI6 officers. The Service's interest in Europe has not been all one-way,
though. One EU official in Brussels admitted that researchers spent many
hours tracking down information on the US defence budget from behind an
'iron curtain' of secrecy. At the same time, it had access to other information
from its 'friends', a traditional euphemism for MI6.^^
According to Tomlinson, another Jetstream operation involved the recruit-
ment in 1986 of a British spy, code-named Orcada, in Germany's central bank,
the Bundesbank. The agent's handler during 1993-6 was Andrew Mitchell,
who operated under commercial cover at the British embassy in Bonn. In a
letter posted on the Internet, Tomlinson wrote that Orcada 'is a German
national . . . His motive is entirely financial and he is paid very substantially.
Indeed, he is among the best paid and most important of any of MI6's agents.
He provided regular and detailed information on the German position during
the Maastricht Treaty negotiations.' He also handed over inside information
on Germany's proposed interest-rate movements. MI6 passes on such sensi-
tive intelligence to several clearingand merchant banks, including the
Midland, alleged by Tomlinson to be complete MI6 bank', the Royal Bank
'a

of Scotland and Kleinwort Benson. Tomlinson adds that 'the primary intelli-
gence requirement against Germany ... is economic intelligence', and such
spying is 'accorded the same level of secrecy and need-to-know indoctrination
as highly sensitive Russian casework'. MI6 officers were 'aware that this work
would be deemed illegal under European law and has not been authorised
by parliament'. Following Tomlinson's disclosures, the German authorities
launched an official investigation.'^^

Generally, for domestic political reasons, British politicians have been unable
or unwilling to conduct inquiries into the funding and relevance of MI6 on
the basis of a realistic assessment of Britain's position in the world and as
780 PART SEVEN: MODERN TIMES

part of the EU. Questions concerning these major foreign policy issues and
the status of an intelligence service in what is a medium-ranking state are
carefully avoided. British policy circles are still obsessed with the country - as
Douglas Hurd put it - 'punching above itswhich requires extensive
weight',
intelligence-gathering capabilities. They have never shaken off the all-too-
accurate jibe of former US Secretary of State Dean Acheson that Britain had
lost an empire but had not found a new role. Whether or not a New Labour

government which pursues an overtly conservative foreign policy is capable

of undertaking such a task is debatable; though present evidence suggests it
can not. Such a reformulation would require the downgrading and, perhaps,
jettisoning of the 'special relationship' and the recognition that the EU means
more than a mere economic alliance. Politicians have usually circumvented
such issues by holding limited internal enquiries which rarely raise
fundamental questions. The Treasury review remains the only politically
acceptable substitute for a proper enquiry into the functioning of MI6. In
1996, Treasury-initiated cuts led to a reduction in MI6's staffing levels to
about 2,150.
Those expecting the Commons Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC)
to provide any vision of the future were quickly disillusioned by its first

report in 1996, which was received as a 'profound disappointment'. As James

Adams noted:'If the American oversight committee had produced such an

anodyne document, they would have been ridiculed. Instead, the silence has
been deafening.' Responsible for examining 'the expenditure and adminis-
tration and policy', the ISC, which meets within Whitehall's 'ring of secrecy',
in Room 130 in the Cabinet Office, is regarded as 'toothless'. It is not allowed
to investigate pre-nineties operations or scandals because, in the words of
the then Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd, 'the past is a different country'.
As ISC is a 'cosmetic exercise' ultimately
a senior minister recognised, the
controlled by Cabinet Office officials. By the time of its heavily censored
second report, the committee recognised the limitations. Labour member
Yvette Cooper asked: 'How can we have proper oversight if the people you
are overseeing are the very people who are determining the information
that you Given this inability to independently check the information,
get?'
chairperson Tom King admitted that 'the result is that we cannot then put
our hands on our hearts and tell the public that all is well. because
. . . . .

we are not in a position to know'. Members called for greater powers in

order to properly exercise their oversight role. Inevitably, the government
vetoed the request to set up a fully fledged Commons select committee.
Interestingly, despite the changes, MI6's new agenda contains strong
elements of the old. In March 1996, former senior MI6 officer Baroness Park,
a member of the Thatcher Foundation and a former BBC governor who was
involved in the suppression of a programme on Zircon, revealed in the House
of Lords during a debate on security and intelligence that Russia was still a
 THE NEW AGENDA 781

priority. MI6 and GCHQ have their eyes on the southern states of the former
Soviet Union, which are rich in oil and natural gas resources. She told peers
that 'Russia is building a new generation of nuclear submarines to replace
obsolete vessels. It launched its first last year. It is building new strategic
missiles and new fighter aircraft . . . Russia has repeatedly lied in the past
few years about her continuing research into biological warfare and she has
still not disposed of her 40,000 tonnes of chemical weapons.' Clearly well
briefed. Park then went on to reveal the figures on increased defence spending
and burgeoning arms 'We need surely to know what is
exports. She said:
happening, not only in Russia but in the client states, which include Libya
and Iraq.' She warned of Russia's foreign policy, whose main plank is 'to
neutralise NATO'. She questioned whether or not this amounted to 'a stable,
safe world where we can afford not to have strong and effective intelligence
services, if only through early warning of the undisclosed intentions our
enemies [my emphasis] to buy us time to reconstitute our defences should
that prove necessary'. She reminded the House that MI6 had to be active
because 'the IRA has always had an international dimension (Semtex from
Czechoslovakia, arms from Libya and, curiously enough, arms from Estonia)
and the IRA is still with us'.

Diplomatic sources dismissed the Estonian connection as fiction. David

McDuff, an affiliate of the School of Slavonic and East European Studies and
an expert in Estonian and Russian affairs, said: 'This is crude Boy's Own
stuff. But some of the media have been swallowing it.' The last few years
have seen an unprecedented number of private briefings by MI6 officers, the
purpose being to justify their new agenda. The press reports read like thrillers,
and while some of them have no doubt been true, even liberal newspapers
such as the Observer have willingly published a number of these quite obvi-
ously planted stories.^^

Although MI6 now presents a modern 'Cool Britannia' image to the poli-
ticians and public, the long tradition of special operations has not been
completely curtailed. In 1996, MI6 co-operated with the CIA's station chief
in London, Thomas Twetten, in a botched operation in northern Iraq.
Attempts by members of the opposition Iraqi National Accord (INA) to
overthrow President Saddam Hussein resulted in the deaths of three hundred
Iraqis. The conspirators had been responsible for a bombing campaign against

civilian targets in Baghdad which had killed a hundred people. A meeting

in January 1996 of CI A and MI6 officers and intelligence officers from Jordan
and Saudi Arabia agreed to back the IN A as the vehicle to overthrow Saddam.
The CIA and MI6 invested millions of dollars in the London-based INA -
whose Dr lyad Mohamed Alawi, once a member of the ruling Ba'ath
leader,
Party, had London in 1971 - which ran the operation from lavish
fled to
offices in Amman. The conspirators were supplied with weapons and explo-
sives, and were provided with a powerful radio transmitter taken from
782 PART SEVEN: MODERN TIMES

Croatia. Unfortunately for MI6, the INA was riddled with informers and
double agents.
During late June and July there were a spate of arrests of senior army
officers, including a number from the elite Special Republican Guard which
protects the Iraqi leader, who were said to be party to a plot to start a mutiny.
It is not known how deeply implicated MI6 officers were, but a number of
CIA officers were deemed to be 'out of control'. Organising the opposition
from Kurdistan, they planned without authorisation the assassination of
Saddam. Their plans were discovered only because the NSA intercepted
Iranian intelligence communications which detailed the plotting. The failure
proved to be a turning point. On 31 August, Saddam sent his tanks back into
Kurdistan, crushing the opposition and destroying the headquarters of the
Iraqi National Congress. One intelligence source described it as the worst
disaster the CIA had suffered in its history.
Despite this disaster, the appetite of the West for backing hopeless causes
continues. InNovember 1998, following another stand-off between the Ameri-
cans and Saddam Hussein over weapons inspections, attempts were being
made by the CIA and MI 6 to construct an Iraqi opposition out of a number
of disparate and bitterly divided exile groups. One gains the impression that
intelligence specialistswere not entirely happy at being pushed into action
by politicians when were no clear goals and plans for a post-coup Iraq.
there
Special operations veterans, however, were eagerly gearing up for another
go at toppling the Iraqi leader.
CHAPTER 36

ON HER MAJESTY'S
SECRET SERVICE

Agent D/813317 Richard Tomlinson joined MI6 in 1991. Born in New

Zealand, he read aeronautical engineering at Cambridge and was a Kennedy
memorial scholar at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Fluent in
French, German and Spanish, Tomlinson was approached at university where
he gained a first. A lecturer had asked him if he wanted to do 'something
stimulating' in the foreign service. Despite modern recruiting methods, the
trusted old-boy network is still a favoured option at Oxbridge, and a number
of other key universities, such as Durham and Exeter, still have a contact
group of lecturers on the lookout for 'firsts' as suitable recruits.
Historian Andrew Roberts has written about his own experience of being
approached in 1987 to join the 'FCO Co-ordinating Staff, as MI6 is known:
the 'chat with a Cambridge contact', tea at the John Nash-designed Carlton
House which overlooks St James's Park, 'a discreet lunch a fortnight later
and then a delightfully absurd mini-exam, in which one of the questions was
"Put the following in order of social precedence: earl, duke, viscount, baron,
marquis" At Century House, Roberts recognised 'several of the young Miss
'.

Moneypennys from the secretarial schools' parties at university'. The ques-

tions continued in a farcical vein: 'If I had been a communist, a fascist or a
homosexual Where do Britain's best long-term interests lie? Washington,
. . .

Brussels or Moscow?' During the medical examination, he was told that 'with
Oxford it's the drugs thing, with Cambridge it's the boys'. Attitudes have
changed, and by 1997 MI6 was prepared to post a 'gay couple' - 'counsellor'
784 PART SEVEN: MODERN TIMES

and chief of station Christopher Hurran and Venezuelan lover

his long-time
- to the British embassy in Czechoslovakia. A
few years earlier, the Service
had recruited a member of CND. Finally, Roberts went through the process
of positive vetting (known since 1990 as EPV). It is generally conducted by
a semi-retired officer with a false name, who interviews referees and other
contacts, and undertakes checks on credit- worthiness.
Suitable candidates are put through the fast-stream Civil Service Selection
Board. Roberts, however, decided not to join, and Tomlinson did so only after
spending a number of years travelling and working in the City, during which
time he had also signed up for the S AS territorial regiment. Over the last decade
the Service has recruited a number of personnel from the special forces, though
their gung-ho philosophy seems at odds with the image that MI 6 has projected
of the modern spy. Tomlinson eventually joined MI6 for old-fashioned 'patri-
otic reasons' and sat the standard Foreign Office entry examination before being

accepted on to the intelligence service training course.

New recruits are introduced to the traditional 'tradecraft' of the world of
spying and gain a broad range of knowledge from recruiting and running
agents to developing agents of influence and organising and servicing 'dead
letter' drops. Because of the smaller numbers, MI 6 officers indulge in less

specialisation than their American counterparts, though the techniques are

essentially little different from those used at the beginning of the century.
The infamous Dreyfus affair began when a cleaning woman, Marie Bastian,
working in the German embassy but employed by the French secret service,
handed over to her French controller the contents of the wastepaper baskets
she emptied. MI6 recruiters still look out for 'the life-and-soul-of-the-party
types who could persuade the Turkish ambassador's secretary to go through
her boss's wastepaper basket'. These days, however, the spy is armed with
a hand-held digital scanner which can hold the filched material in its memory
and can also be used in emergencies to transmit the stolen secrets by burst
transmissions via a satellite.

Such gadgets are developed for the Directorate of Special Support -

responsible for providing technical assistance to operations - staffed by MoD
locksmiths, video and audio technicians and scientists in sections devoted
to chemicals and electronics, forensic services, electronic support measures,
electronic surveillance and explosive systems. While the gadgets continue
to provide the modern spy with a James Bond-like image - for instance,
identification transmitters that can be hidden in an agent's shoes to enable
the monitoring by satellite of their precise location - the reality is that most
of the work is mundane and office-bound. Trainees still receive small-arms
training at Fort Monkton, but much of the training is taken up with learning
to use the computer system and writing reports in the house style. As part
of the Service's obsession with security, a great deal of time is spent on being
indoctrinated in cipher and communications work.
 ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE 785

Trainee officers are instructed in how to encrypt messages for transmission

and how to use the manual B***t cipher which is regarded as particularly
secure. Used at stations abroad to transmit details of operations, potential
sources and defectors, B*** is sent either via the diplomatic bag or by special
SIS courier. Diplomatic bags are not totally secure as the success of the
Service's own N-Sectiontestified. It employed up to thirty people in Palmer

Street rifling the opened bags which were then expertly resealed. The work
petered out in the mid-sixties as other means of communication took over.
Officers learn about 'off-line' systems for the encryption of messages such
as N***** - used prior to transmission by cipher machines - and 'on-line'
systems for the protection of telegrams during transmission, code-named
H*** and J'*^*******. They are indoctrinated into the use of certain cryptonyms
for forwarding telegrams to particular organisations and offices such as SIS
headquarters, which is designated A****. They also learn about code words
with which sensitive messages are headlined, indicating to whom they may
be shown. UK EYES ALPHA warns that the contents are not to be shown
to any foreigners and are intended only for the home intelligence and security
services, armed forces and Whitehall recipients. UK EYES B includes the
above categories, the Northern Ireland Office, LIST X firms engaged in the
manufacture of sensitive equipment, and certain US, Australian, New
Zealand and Canadian intelligence personnel liaising with the Joint Intelli-
gence Committee (JIC) in London. Additional code words mark specific
exclusions and inclusions. E****** material cannot be shown to the Americans,
while L***** deprives local intelligence officials and agencies of its content.
Material for named individual officers, sometimes at specified times, is
headed D**** or D****, while particularly sensitive material about a fellow
officer or operation is known as D'^*'^***.

The protection of files and their secure handling is a top priority, with
officers taught to keep a classified record of their use and location. Photo-
copiers have the ability to mark and check the origin of non-authorised copies
of classified material. Following the development by MoD scientists of a
means of reading a computer disk without a computer, all disks are protected
in transit. All correspondence by letter is secured by specially developed

red security tape which leaves detectable signs if tampered with, though
near-undetectable photographic and laser techniques exist to read the inside
of mail and to open envelopes. Each officer has his own safe with dual-
combination locking, while the filing cabinets with false tumbler locks, as an
added precaution, are protected from penetration by X-rays. Since no lock is
secure from picking, they collapse internally if anything more than the slight-
est force is used. In the event of drilling, a glass plate inside the door shatters,
releasing a spring-loaded bolt to prevent opening. Frequent random checks

t Some code words in this chapter have had to be disguised on legal advice.
786 PART SEVEN: MODERN TIMES

take place on thenumber settings to see if the safe has been opened illegally.
These bureaucratic procedures and attention to minute security rules are
not merely technical; failure to carry out security precautions can lead to
points deduction in the security breach points system. If an officer racks up
160 points over three years (breach of Top Secret counts as 80 points), this
may lead to security clearance being withdrawn and instant dismissal.
New officers will initially be based at the exotic Vauxhall Bridge head-
quarters, about which many Service personnel are sensitive, almost embar-
rassed. Access to 'Ceausescu Towers', as some officers have dubbed it, is
gained by use of a swipe card and PIN number. The interior comprises a
hive of bare, unmarked The only visible signs of
air-conditioned corridors.
occupancy are the acronyms on the doors, with nothing on the walls except
floor plans and exit signs. As with major stations abroad, such as Moscow
and Beijing, Vauxhall Cross is classified as a Category A post, with a high
potential physical threat from terrorism (HPT) and sophisticated hostile intel-
ligence services (HIS). Operatives from the Technical Security Department
(TSD) based at Hanslope Park, Milton Keynes, and from MI6's own technical
department ensure that the building is protected from high-tech attack
(HTA). There is triple glazing installed on all windows as a safeguard against
laser and radio frequency (RF) flooding techniques, and the mainframe
computer, cipher and communications areas are housed in secure, modular-
shielded rooms. A secure command-and-control room runs major operations
such as those in Bosnia, where 'war criminals' were tracked and arrested by
SAS personnel.
Off the corridors are open-plan offices which give the impression of infor-
mality, though security overrides such considerations. A new officer will find
that since 1996 more women than men have been recruited to the Service,
but males remain predominant, particularly in senior positions. As in many
modern offices, officers will be seen working at computers, processing infor-
mation, collating files, planning operations, liaising with foreign intelligence
agencies and networks, and, most importantly, supporting the three to five
hundred though only half that number will be stationed
officers in the field,
abroad at any one time. MI 6
has been at the forefront of updating its infor-
mation technology and, in 1995, installed at a cost of £200 million an ambitious
desktop network known as the Automatic Telegram Handling System
(ATHS/OATS), which provides access to all reports and databases. Staff are

officially not allowed to discuss their work with colleagues, not even when
they relax in the staff bar with its spectacular views over the River Thames,
though, as Richard Tomlinson discovered, gossip is in fact rife.
All officers will spend time in the field attached to embassies, though they
willhave little choice as to the location. Turning down a post will jeopardise
future promotions and can lead to dismissal. Stations abroad are classed from
the high-risk Category A, such as Yugoslavia and Algeria, to the lesser B,
 ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE 787

such as Washington and New York, C, the European countries, and D, often
the Commonwealth, where there is little or no threat. New officers might
find themselves among the additional personnel sent to Malaysia, Thailand
and South Korea, following the Service's boost to its presence in South-East
Asia, or involved in operations into China following the transfer of Hong
Kong and winding up of its espionage operations in the former colony.
the
In a large station such as Washington, operating under Tight' diplomatic
cover will be a head of station (often a Counsellor), a deputy and two or
three officers (First and Second Secretaries). There will also be back-up staff
consisting of three or four secretaries, a registry clerk to handle files and
documents, and communications and cipher officers. Easily identified by the
trained eye in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office 'Diplomatic List' - the
number of Counsellor and First Secretary posts is limited and there tend to
be too many for the positions available - an MI6 officer's presence will be
known to the host intelligence and security agency. In some cases, a senior
officer will make his presence known to draw attention away from his

colleagues.
Before postings and missions abroad, officers receive a briefing from the
Information Operations (I/OPs) unit, which provides them with a list of
sympathetic journalists who can be trusted to give them help and information.
These contacts have become increasingly important in trouble spots such as
the Balkans.
I/OPs also has a more covert role in planning psychological operations
along the lines of the old Special Political Action (SPA) section and the
Information Research Department (IRD). I/OPs may also, according to a
former MI 6 officer, 'attempt to influence events in another country or organis-
One example is MI6's determined
ation in a direction favourable to Britain'.
American press about Boutros Ghali, whom they
effort to 'plant stories in the
regarded as dangerously Francophile, in the run up to the 1992 elections for
UN secretary-general'. Foreign operations of this sort do not require minis-
terial sanction.^

I/OPs also expends considerable energy behind the scenes in 'surfacing'

damaging stories designed to discredit critics of the Service. They will use
off-the-record briefings of sympathetic journalists; the planting of rumours
and disinformation, which through 'double-sourcing' are confirmed by a
proactive agent; and the overt recruitment of journalist agents. Journalists
paid to provide information or to 'keep their eyes open' are known as an
'asset' or an 'assistant' or just 'on side'. According to Richard Tomlinson,
paid agents included in the nineties one and perhaps two national newspaper
editors. An editor is would
unlikely to be directly recruited as the Service
require the permission of the Foreign Secretary and would not like to be put
in the position of being refused. Such high-fliers are more likely to have been
recruited early in their careers. In this case, the journalist was apparently
788 PART SEVEN: MODERN TIMES

recruited at least three years beforebecoming an editor and remained an

Tomlinson has said that the editor was paid a retainer
asset until at least 1998.
of £100,000, with access to the money via an offshore bank in an accessible
tax haven. The editor was given a false passport to gain entry to the bank,
which he regularly visited.^
In trying to identify the editor 'agent', mediaon Dominic
interest centred
Lawson, son of the former Tory Chancellor of the Exchequer, who became
editor of the Spectator in 1990 and had been editor of the Sunday Telegraph
since 1995. Lawson denied that he had ever been 'an agent, either paid or
unpaid, of MI6 or of any other government agency'. On the other hand, the
youngest brother of Lawson's second wife, Rosa Monckton, had joined MI6
in 1987. In 1996, Anthony Monckton was appointed First Secretary (Political)
in the Croatian capital Zagreb.
Quite separately, one of Rosa's closest friends and a godparent to the
Lawsons' daughter, the late Princess of Wales had clearly been under some
kind of surveillance, as evidenced by the 1,050-page dossier held by the US
National Security Agency (NSA) in its archive, detailing private telephone
conversations between Diana and American friends intercepted at MI6's
request. While all stories linking MI6 to the Princess's death in the car accident
in France have been complete nonsense, it has been alleged that working
closely with I /Ops in an attempt away from the security
to deflect enquiries
services had been a chief of staff to 'C, Richard Spearman, temporarily posted
to the Paris embassy with his assistant, Nicholas Langman.^
Operational officers can be casually spotted by the roller-ball pens

in their top pocket (it was discovered by accident that they have the ability
to create invisible ink), the Psion organiser and the specially adapted 'Walk-
man' they carry to record conversations for up to ten minutes on the middle
band of an ordinary commercial music cassette tape. They also use laptop
computers for writing reports. If that seems like a recipe for disaster, the
secret hard disk contains a protected back-up.
The is usually sited in a part of the embassy regularly swept by tech-
station
bugs and other electronic attack. It is entered using special door
nical staff for
codes with an inner strongroom-type door for greater security. Following all
the procedures learned during training, officers handling material up to the
'Secret' level work on secure overseas Unix terminals (S****) and use a messag-
ing system known as ARRAMIS. Conversations by secure telephone masked
by white noise are undertaken via a special SIS version of the BRAHMS
system. A special chip developed by GCHQ apparently makes it impossible
even for the US NSA to decipher such conversations. Secure Speech System
(H'^***'^**) handset units are used by SIS officers within a telephone speech

enclosure. The most important room is electronically shielded and lined with
up to a foot of lead for secure cipher and communications transmissions. From
the comms room, an officer can send and receive secure faxes up to SECRET
 ON HER MAIESTY'S SECRET SERVICE 789

level via the C****** fax system and S***** encrypted communications with the
Ministry of Defence (MoD), Cabinet Office, MIS (codename SNUFFBOX),
GCHQ and 22 SAS. An encrypted electronic messaging system working
through fibre optics, known as the UK Intelligence Messaging Network, was
installed in early 1997 and enables MI6 to flash intelligence scoops to special
terminals in the MoD, the Foreign Office and the Department of Trade and
Industry. Manned twenty-four hours a day, 365 days a year, and secured
behind a heavy thick door, the cipher machines have secure 'integral protec-
tion', known as TEMPEST. MI6 officers abroad also work alongside GCHQ
personnel, monitoring foreign missions and organisations.
Officers in the field may include not only those officially classed as diplo-

mats but also others operating under 'deep' cover. Increasingly MI6 officers
abroad act as 'illegals'. It is known that Service officers are sometimes
employed during the day in conventional jobs such as accountancy, and
provided with false identities. British banks - the Royal Bank of Scotland is
particularly helpful,and to a lesser extent the Midland - help supply credit
cards to officers working under cover. At the end of each month, officers
have to pay off their aliases' credit cards. Banks also help transmit money
overseas for covert operations. During the Cold War, banks in the Channel
Islands and other offshore locations acted as a conduit for secret funding.^
Recruiting or running agents and gathering intelligence are the prime
objectives of these deep-cover operatives, and their real work, some claim,
starts at six in the evening when the conventional diplomats begin their
round of Such social events can be very useful for gathering
cocktail parties.
intelligence and spreading disinformation. Baroness Park recalled that one
of MI6's more successful ploys was 'to set people very discreetly against one
another. They destroy each other. You don't destroy them.' Officers would
offer the odd hint that it was 'a pity that so-and-so is so indiscreet. Not much
more.' Officers will also deal with paid 'support agents' - those who supply
MI6 with facilities including safe houses and bank accounts, as well as intelli-

gence. There are also 'long insiders' - agents of influence with access to MI6
assessments and sanitised intelligence. The Service's deep-cover agents have
burst transmitters with the ability to transmit a flash signal to MI6 via a
satellite when they are in danger.^
Officers abroad may also be asked to aid more sophisticated operations
designed to build up the Service's psychological profiles of political leaders.
A special department within MI6 has tried in the past to procure the urine
and excrement A specially modified condom was used to
of foreign leaders.
catch the urine of Romanian leader Nicolae Ceausescu, while the 'product'
of Presidents Fidel Castro and Leonid Brezhnev was 'analysed' by medical
specialists for signs of their true health.
Tomlinson's duties included recruiting agents to inform on foreign poli-
ticians. His most important task was to infiltrate in 1992 a Middle Eastern
790 PART SEVEN: MODERN TIMES

weapons procurement programme network - the BMP3 - with the object of

locating and disabling a chemical weapons facility. Authorised by an
unnamed senior Cabinet minister, the sabotage plan - one account suggests
the planting of a bomb - aimed to intercept a shipment of machinery and
interfere with its extractor fan equipment, despite warnings of the possible
risk to the lives of dozens of civilian workers at the plant. In November 1992,
using the name 'Andrew Huntley' and the pretext of assisting at a conference
run by the Financial Times, Tomlinson went under cover to Moscow. His very
sensitive mission was to obtain Russian military secrets on ballistic missiles
and effect the defection of a Russian colonel who specialised in this area.
Although, strangely, he was not given the usual 'immersion' language train-
ing in Serbo-Croat, Tomlinson soon found himself in the former Yugoslavia,
whose break-up had taken the Service by surprise.^
When the country fractured in January 1991 into Croatia, Bosnia and
Serbia, EU recognition of independent Croatia proved to be a critical and
disastrous policy, eventually paving the way for Serb aggression which the
Foreign Office interpreted as civil war. MI 6 had been running a few federal
sources in the old Yugoslavia, but they provided little worthwhile intelli-

gence. The Service lacked appropriate linguists and had to start more or less
from The JIC established a Current Intelligence Group (CIG) on the
scratch.
Balkans, and within eighteen months MI6's Controllerate dealing with the
area had recruited a number of sources at a high level from among the ethnic
military and political protagonists.
During 1993, as a 'targeting officer' within the Balkans Controllerate,
whose job was to identify potential informants, Tomlinson spent a harrowing
and dangerous six months travelling as a journalist to Belgrade, Skopje,
Zagreb and Ljubljana, in the process recruiting a Serb journalist - journalists
of every nationality were a particular MI6 target in the Balkans, as they
proved to be more productive than most other sources - and a leader of the
Albanian opposition in Macedonia. In 1993, UN blue-helmeted troops started
patrolling the borders of theFormer Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.
According to sources, MI6 used
air-drops in an operation to set up arms
dumps on the border of Macedonia as part of a stay-behind network.'
Another operation included running as an agent a Tory MP, who gave
information about foreign donations to the Conservative Party. Parliamentary
Private Secretary to the Northern Ireland minister, Harold Elleston was an
old Etonian who studied Russian at Exeter University and subsequently
became a trade consultant specialising in the former eastern bloc countries,
during which time he was recruited by MI6. He worked for them in eastern
Europe, the former Soviet Union and during the conflict in former Yugoslavia.
After visiting former Yugoslavia in 1992, Elleston, who was employed by a
lobbying firm with Conservative candidate John Kennedy (aka Gvozdenovic),
notified his MI6 handlers that donations were reaching the Conservative
 ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE 791

Party from Serbia. Despite Harold Wilson's ruling in the sixties that the
intelligence services would not use MPs as agents, the Service received special
sanction from Prime Minister John Major to continue Elleston's secret role.
Sir Colin McColl warned Major that the party was possibly accepting tainted
money via Kennedy, a key figure in arranging payments from the Serb
regime.^
MI6 was itself seen as being pro-Serb in its reporting. In 1994, two articles

arguing against western policy in the Balkans conflict appeared in the Spec-
tator (the right-wing magazine unknowingly served as 'cover' for three MI6
officers working in Bosnia, Belgrade and Moldova), written under a Sarajevo
dateline by a 'Kenneth Roberts', who had apparently worked for more than
a year with the United Nations in Bosnia as an 'adviser'. Written by MI6
officer Keith Robert Craig, who was attached to the MoD's Balkan Secretariat,
the on 5 February rehearsed arguments for a UN withdrawal from the
first

area, pointing out that all sides committed atrocities. The second, on 5 March,
complained baselessly about 'warped' and inaccurate reports by, in particular,
the BBC's Kate Adie of an atrocity against the Bosnian Serbs. Guardian corre-
spondent Ed Vulliamy recalled being invited to a briefing by MI6 which was
'peddling an ill-disguised agenda: the Foreign Office's determination that
there be no intervention against Serbia's genocidal pogrom'. Without the
slightest evidence, the carnage that took place in Sarajevo's marketplace was
described as the work of the Muslim-led government, which was alleged to
be 'massacring its own people to win sympathy and ultimately help from
outside'. As Vulliamy knew, were 'dumb with disbelief.
Sarajevo's defenders
Despite UN Protection Force reports which found that it was Serb mortars
which were killing Muslims, the MI6 scheme 'worked - beautifully', as the
allegations found their way into the world's press. Vulliamy noted that 'it
was quickly relished by the only man who stood to gain from this - the
Serbian leader Radovan Karadzic'.'^
Perhaps it was only an intelligence /Foreign Office faction which was
pro-Serb. From March 1992 until September 1993, Tomlinson worked in the
East European Controllerate under the staff designation UKA/7. He has
claimed that in the summer of 1992 he discovered an internal document
that detailed plans to assassinate President Slobodan Milosevic. During a
conversation, an ambitious and serious colleague who was responsible for
developing and targeting operations in the Balkans (P4/OPS), Nick Fishwick,
had pulled out a file and handed it to Tomlinson to read. 'It was approxi-
mately two pages long, and had a yellow card attached to it which signified
that it was an accountable document rather than a draft proposal.' It was
entitled 'The need to assassinate President Milosevic of Serbia' and was
distributed to senior MI6 officers, including the head of Balkan operations
(P4), Maurice Kenwrick-Piercy, the Controller of East European Operations

(C/CEE), Richard Fletcher, and later Andrew Fulton, the Security Officer
792 TART SEVEN: MODERN TIMES

responsible for eastern European operations (SBOl/T), John Ridd, the private
secretary to the Chief (H/SECT), Alan Petty ('Alan Judd'), and the Service's
SAS liaison officer (MOD A /SO), Maj. Glynne Evans. According to Tomlin-
son, Fishvvick justified assassinating Milosevic on the grounds that there was
evidence that the 'Butcher of Belgrade' was supplying weapons to Karadzic,
who was wanted for war crimes, including genocide. US and French intelli-
gence agencies were alleged to be already contemplating assassinating
Karadzic.
There were three possible scenarios put forward by MI6. Firstly, to train

a Serbian paramilitary opposition group to carry out the assassination. This,

Fishwick argued, had the advantage of deniability but the disadvantage that
control of the operation would be low and the chances of success unpredict-
able. Secondly, to use the small INCREMENT cell of SAS/SBS personnel,
which is and trained to carry out operations exclusively
especially selected
for MI6/MI5, to send in a team that would assassinate the President with a
bomb or by a sniper ambush. Fishwick said that this would be the most
reliable option, but would be undeniable if the operation went wrong.
Thirdly, to kill Milosevic in a road crash which would be staged during one
of his visits to the international conferences on former Yugoslavia in Geneva.
Fishwick suggested that a stun device could be used to dazzle the driver of
Milosevic's car as it passed through one of Geneva's motorway tunnels. ^'^

A year later, Tomlinson acted as a counsellor to the commander of the

British forces in Bosnia and worked at manipulating the sources in the entour-
age of Karadzic. One participant to these operations suggests that these
sources 'produced a very detailed intelligence picture which included not
just the military plans and capabilities of the different factions but also early
warning of There appears to have been little evidence
political intentions'.
of this intelligence coup in the Foreign Office decisions that followed, and
its value is contradicted by another source which, while admitting that several
significant agents were recruited, concludes that they did not 'produce
substantial intelligence of quality '.^^
The intelligence deficit was worsened by the United States' unwillingness
to provide its Atlantic partner with all its intelligence on the Serbs. General
Sir Michael Rose, a former head of the SAS and commander-in-chief of the
UN Protection Force, realised that during 1994 all his communications were
being electronically intercepted and his headquarters in Sarajevo was
'bugged' by the Americans because Washington, which wanted to use Nato
air strikes to bomb the Serbs to the negotiating table, thought the British
were too supportive of the Bosnian Serbs. The Americans also monitored the
communications of SAS scouts deep in Bosnian territory and discovered that
they were deliberately failing to identify Serb artillery positions. This lack of
trust caused friction and led to a backstage confrontation between the secret
services, and reminded some observers that the special relationship existed
 ON HER MAIESTY'S SECRET SERVICE 793

only on the basis that the US saw Britain as a chance to extend its reach into
Europe.
The plans for Milosevic were not the only assassination plot in which MI6
became entangled. Renegade MIS officer David Shayler, who was released by
a French court in November 1998 on 'political grounds' following his deten-
tion in prison as part of extradition proceedings to England, first heard of a
plot to kill the Libyan leader. Colonel Gaddafi, in November 1995.
Shayler had been posted to MI5's counter-terrorist G9A section with
responsibilities for issues relating to Lockerbie and Libya. A higher executive
officer, earning £28,000 per year, Shayler headed up the Libyan desk for over
two years and was held in high esteem, undertaking presentations to senior
civil servants on all matters relating to Libya. For this work he received a

performance-related bonus. An MI6 officer, referred to as PT16B, with whom

Shayler had developed a close working relationship, informed him during a
liaison meeting on Libya that the Service was running an important Arab
agent. A former Libyan government official code-named 'Tunworth', the
agent was a go-between with Libyan opposition groups, including a little-

known band of extremists called Al Jamaa Al Islamiya Al Muqatila (Islamic

Fighting Force). Tunworth had apparently approached MI6 in late 1995,
outlining plans to overthrow Gaddafi by the Islamic Fighting Force, and later
met with an MI6 officer in a Mediterranean country where he asked for
funding. Shayler was told that more than £100,000 had been handed over in
three or four instalments beginning in December. PT16B and his colleagues
wrote a three- to four-page CX report for Whitehall circulation to other
agencies, which stated that MI6 was merely in receipt of intelligence from
agent Tunworth on the militants' coup plotting and the group's efforts to
obtain weapons and Jeeps. It seems that no mention was made of any MI6
involvement in an assassination attempt.
Shayler later heard that there had been a bomb attack on Gaddafi's motor-
cade near a town called Sirte, but the device was detonated under the wrong
car. In fact, it seems that the dissidents launched an attack with Kalashnikovs

and rocket grenades on the wrong car. In a communique to Arab newspapers

on 6 March 1996, the Islamic Fighting Force stated that its men had tried to
attack Gaddafi as he attended the Libyan General People's Congress. The
attempt went wrong when Gaddafi did not show up in person, and the
terrorists were forced to cancel the attack. 'But as our heroes were withdraw-
ing they collided with the security forces and in the ensuing battle there were
casualties on both sides.' Three fighters were killed but the leader of the hit
team, Abd al-Muhaymeen, a veteran of the Afghan resistance who was poss-
ibly trained by MI6 or the CIA, 'escaped unhurt'. Following a crackdown
by Gaddafi's secret police, his family home in the town of Ejdabiya was burnt
down. The back of the Fighting Force was broken and its leaders retreated
to Afghanistan.^"^
794 PART SEVEN: MODERN TIMES

When Shayler subsequently met PT16B, the MI 6 officer mentioned the

attack with 'a kind of note of triumph, saying, yes, we'd done it'. Shayler's
reaction was 'one of total shock. This was not what I thought I was doing in
the intelligence service.' He told BBC's Panorama programme: 'I was abso-
lutely astounded Suddenly we were talking about tens of thousands of
. . .

pounds of taxpayers'money being used to attempt to assassinate a foreign

head of state.' He concluded that 'no matter who is funding this, it's still

international terrorism. The Brits might say we're the good guys, but it's a
very difficult road to go down.'
Government officials dismissed Shayler's claims as 'completely and utterly
nutty'. A Foreign Office spokesperson said that it was 'inconceivable that in
a non-wartime situation the Government would authorise the SIS to bump
off a foreign leader. In theory, SIS can carry out assassinations but only at
the express request of the Foreign Secretary.' The 1994 Intelligence Services
Act refers to MI6 being able to perform 'other tasks' and protects officers from
prosecution for criminal acts outside Britain. Indeed, a clause was especially
inserted into the 1998 Criminal Justice - which outlaws organisations
Bill

in Britain conspiring to commit offences abroad - giving all Crown agents

immunity from prosecution under the legislation, including possibly the
assassination of foreign leaders. It was clear to Shayler, however, and
confirmed by BBC sources, that MI6 had not sought ministerial clearance
for backing the attempt on Gaddafi. MI6, Shayler believed, was 'operating
out of control and illegally'.
Whatever the truth is surrounding Shayler's accusations, the public and
politicians will not discover the full facts. Unlike in the United States, where
similar, but less detailed, revelations led to a major Senate enquiry into alleged
assassination plotting in the mid-seventies, there will be no House of
Commons investigation. As Tomlinson explains, 'there is a deep-rooted belief
that, should a policy or operation go wrong, nobody will be held ultimately
responsible. The Service will always be able to hide behind the catch-all veil
of secrecy provided by the Official Secrets Act or, if the heat really builds
up, a Public Interest Immunity Certificate.'^^

Given his operational experience, as a Grade 5 officer Tomlinson might have

expected steady promotion through the ranks and a long career in the secret
service, perhaps ending as head of a Controllerate. Senior officers, who are
easily spotted in the honours lists with their OBEs, retire at fifty-five. Their
attachment to the Service does not end there, however. A number are found
appointments as non-executive directors with companies or subsidiaries that
have dealt with MI6, or employed as security or corporate liaison officers.
'It is part of their retirement package,' Tomlinson has revealed. 'They are

effectively MI6 liaison officers, just like MI6 liaison officers in Whitehall
departments.'^^
 ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE 795

Since MI6 helped establish Diversified Corporate Services in Rome, New

York and London in the late sixties, there has been an increasing trend for
setting up consultancies, with the tacit approval or encouragement of the
Service. Among the consultants to Ciex, which has 'cornered a lucrative
market' in providing a restricted 'confidential service' in 'strategic advice and
intelligence' for 'a small group of very substantial customers', are Hamilton
McMillan, who retired from the Service's counter-terrorist section in 1996, and
former head of the Middle East department Michael Oatley, who previously
worked for another intelligence-linked consultancy, Kroll Associates. Set up
in 1995 by the late Sir Fitzroy Maclean, with a board that includes a former
Royal Dutch Shell managing director and a former BP deputy chair, the
Hakluyt Foundation provides leading British businesses with information
that clients 'will not receive by the usual government, media and commercial
routes'. Hakluyt's managing director, Christopher James, was until 1998 in
charge of MI6's liaison with commerce, while a fellow-director, Mike
Reynolds, was regarded as one of the Service's brightest stars.
Tomlinson's career in the secret world turned out to be short-lived. Fie
returned home from the Balkans exhausted and traumatised by the atrocities
he had witnessed, but, fearing that the Service's personnel managers might
regard this as a sign of weakness, he did not tell them of his emotional state.*
At one point he had been depressed following the death of his girlfriend.
Since he had no one to whom to unburden himself - as is standard practice,
his parents were unaware of his secret life - his personal problems mounted.
Despite the claims of improved personnel management within the Service,
Tomlinson received little or no support. It seems that the Service has not put
in place any counselling provision as a result of Tomlinson's (and others')
experience, but, instead, has decided that officers be vetted by clinical
psychologists in order to 'identify actual or potential personality disorders',
Harold Macmillan once
particularly those being appointed to sensitive posts.
said that anyone who spent more than ten years in the secret service must
be either weird or mad.^'^
Tomlinson's personnel manager claimed that he was not a team player,
lacked judgement and was not committed to the Service because he was
prone to going on 'frolics of his own'. In early 1995, Tomlinson turned up
for work and discovered that his swipe card would not gain him entry to
MI6 headquarters. Security guards informed him that it had been cancelled.
His security clearance had been stopped after he complained to his superiors
that a number of MI6's operations and tactics were unethical. Tomlinson was
also privy to much sensitive information, as gossip was prevalent inside

* Recalcitrant officers and agents under suspicion are sometimes interrogated at the 'cooler'
facilities in Chelsea and in a special soundproofed 'rubber' room situated beneath a hotel in
west London.
7% PART SEVEN: MODERN TIMES

headquarters. For instance, he was aware that a British businessman had

threatened to go public with allegations that intelligence officers had
destroyed his company. MI6 was said to have mounted a covert operation,
including telephone tapping, against the businessman to ensure that he did
not contact the press. Tomlinson was formally dismissed from the Service in
August 1995. He did not believe that MI 6 was properly accountable to the
law. This lack of accountability at the top 'cascades downwards to even the
lowest levels' and provides 'a fertile breeding ground for corruption'.
One MI6 officer paid for his divorce by pocketing the expenses of a
fictitious agent whose fake intelligence had been taken from the pages of
the Economist. Another senior officer sold false passports to Middle Eastern
businessmen and possibly drug traffickers, and diverted taxpayers' money
intended for defectors and informants - up to £400,000 - into his offshore
bank account. 'Agent J' was allowed to retire on a full pension with no police
investigation or prosecution because 'he knew where the bodies were buried'.
The scandal was uncovered by the US authorities, who were investigating
drugs in the Caribbean and came across an offshore bank account opened
with a British passport issued in a false name. Senior MI6 officers are allowed
to open new bank accounts and transfer cash.^^
Tomlinson blamed his dismissal on a personality clash with a personnel
manager. Other officers, including his immediate superior, protested that the
personnel officer's accusations were unsubstantiated. Tomlinson was allowed
to appeal to the intelligence services' tribunal, set up in 1994 and chaired by
Lord Justice Brown, but, following the rejection of his appeal, he dismissed
it as a 'star chamber'. 'I was denied the basic natural justice. I had no legal

representation or access to papers which were said to give reasons for my

dismissal. I could not cross-examine key witnesses.'* When he then told the
head of the Personnel Department that he would pursue his claim for unfair
dismissal at an industrial tribunal, he was informed: 'There's no point in
doing that because nobody can tell the Chief what to do.'^^
MI6 refused to co-operate with the tribunal, which led to Tomlinson's
decision to write a book about his experiences. Investigated by Special Branch
officers, Tomlinson was subsequently jailed for twelve months on 18

December 1997 under the Official Secrets Act in order 'to deter others from
pursuing the course you chose to pursue'. He spent six months in Belmarsh
prison, courtesy of Her Majesty, and was released in April 1998.^^
Publicity concerning Tomlinson's case led to considerable anxiety in
Whitehall and is said to have caused turmoil inside MI6. The Service feared

* In February 1999 Foreign Secretary Robin Cook accepted that MI6 staff should 'as much as
possible, enjoy the same rights as other employees'. A special investigator with access to all
intelligence files would be appointed to look into allegations of malpractice. Home Secretary
Jack Straw, however, said that the Official Secrets Act would not be amended to allow
'whistleblowing' because the security services were now 'accountable'.
 ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE 797

that the pubHcity would expose poor management and lead to calls for
changes and reform. It became the task of the Director of Security and Public

Affairs, and effectively C's number tw^o, John Gerson, to 'deal' with Tomlin-
son. A Far East specialist with close ties with the Americans, Gerson, who is

an associate member of the Centre for the Study of Socialist Legal Systems
at London University, is the model of the well-versed and evasive civil serv^ant
as portrayed in Yes, Minister. His hobby is the classic spy's pastime of bird-
watching. Rewarded with a CMG in the 1999 New Year's Honours, Gerson
has been ably assisted by the main contact with the press, Iain Mathewson,
a former official in the DHSS and Customs and Excise, who joined MI6 in
1980.

The Cold War was easy for the intelligence agencies, to the extent that they
had clear, identifiable targets. It also provided a curtain behind which they
could hide their failures. Without an all-embracing enemy to counter, the
Secret Intelligence Service has developed a bits-and-pieces target list, known
as the 'Mother Load' agenda, which lacks coherence. This is sometimes
explained as being due to the fact that the world has become more unstable.
This is nonsense. There is no danger
world conflagration such as there
of a
was during Berlin in 1961, Cuba
Middle East in 1967 and 1973,
in 1962, the
or at other crisis points when nuclear bombers took to the air. Threats from
so-called rogue states such as Iran and Iraq are altogether of a different
magnitude. Even then, it is apparent that many of the 'scares' - suitcase
nuclear bombs, missiles with nuclear and biological warheads, nuclear terror-
ists, etc. - are either grossly exaggerated or simply manufactured by the
intelligence services.
It is true that there are significant trouble spots in the world and Britain
rightly has to take measures to monitor them, but what this so-called insta-

bility has exposed is the inability of agencies designed for the Cold War to
tackle the problems of today. In the United States, where a much more open,
democratic debate has taken place, the CIA's director from 1977 to 1981,
Stansfield Turner, has suggested that the solution is to build a new intelligence
servdce from scratch. Others talk of open-source intelligence agencies that
would exploit the explosion of information and do away with the mystique
that surrounds secret sources.
The most trenchant criticism of the changes that MI6 has undertaken since
the end of the Cold War has come from insiders. David Bickford, former
lawyer to the security services, argued in November 1997 that the British
community - MI6, MIS, whose Director-General, Stephen Lander,
intelligence
is not regarded as an inspired choice, and GCHQ - 'is not doing its job
properly'. He said that the cost was completely unjustified as there was
'triplication of management, triplication of bureaucracy and triplication of
turf battles'. SIS appears to be top heavy with management, with resources
798 PART SEVEN: MODERN TIMES

being shifted away from operations to administration, such as employing

lawyers to deal with the new crime agenda, as well as public relations officers,
accountants, etc. There would appear, then, to be room for cuts.
Officials claim that MI6 currently costs about £140 million. This is hardly
a credible figure for an organisation employing two thousand staff. Indeed,
sources who were privy to the figures as presented to the Permanent Secre-
Committee on the Intelligence Services in the mid-eighties were then
taries'

quoting £150 million. What few people are aware of is that the budget only
covers MI6's operations: everything else is excluded. It does not take a specialist
to appreciate that a realistic budget would be considerably higher if all the
running costs of maintenance, pensions, travel, overseas stations, computers,
equipment, communications, and the full building costs of the new head-
quarters (the National Audit Office report on the £90 million overspend is to
remain secret) are taken into account. The Treasury insists that costs which were
previously hidden away in the budgets of other departments, such as the MoD,
are now included in the Secret Vote figure for MI6. This cannot be true. Staff
costs are met by the Foreign Office, while the MoD pays for Fort Monkton and
the Hercules transport plane and Puma helicopter that are kept on permanent
stand-by for the Service's use. It is unlikely that ministers are aware of the
network of 'front' companies that MI 6 set up in the early nineties, nor of the
numerous bank accounts, such as the one at the Drummonds branch of the
Royal Bank of Scotland, which the Service operates.
It can now be revealed that the real budget figure - intelligence sources

with access to the budget call it MI6's biggest secret - is at least double the
official figure. One source with access to the internal accounts puts it as high
as five times this figure. Ministers and MPs are being misled. So is the
Commons The American experience is that
Intelligence Security Committee.
it is budgetary control which provides the only means of real leverage and
represents a move towards genuine oversight.
have argued successfully that a detailed audit of MI6
Intelligence chiefs
expenditure would 'prejudice their operational security'. The result is,
Tomlinson argues, 'a management and budgetary structure which would
provide a theme park for management consultancies'. It is not surprising to
learn that MI6 officers have 'little idea how to manage a budget, and even
less incentive to manage it well'. Tomlinson discovered many cases of profli-
gate waste. It was common at the end of the financial year for departments
to feverishly spend the remaining budget on planning expensive operations
- which, in had little chance of success - in order to prevent cuts to
reality,

the following year's allocation.^^

Bickford had his own agenda, believing that British Intelligence was turn-
ing 'a blind eye to the fact that economic crime - organised racketeering in
narcotics,kidnap extortion, product contamination and fraud - now poses
the greatest threat to the security of the international community'. During
 ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE 799

1995 the intelligence agencies had apparently tried to persuade the Major
government to allowthem to develop closer links with large companies so
as to provide them with 'protective business intelligence'. The initiative failed
because, Bickford claimed, the different agencies bickered betw^een them-
selves on how and run the new scheme. Tomlinson agrees that
to finance
there is between the two agencies over who should ha\'e
'often bitter fighting
primacy over a particular target or operation'. Although arbitrary ground
rules are sometimes brokered between warring departments, communication
between MI6 and MIS remains 'desperately poor'. There is 'remarkably little
cross-fertilisation of ideas or operational co-ordination'.-''
Besides economic crime, the main threat to Britain, Bickford believed, was
'super-terrorism', involving weapons of mass destruction, and because of the
'common international nature of these threats', the case for having three
different agencies 'falls at the first hurdle'. These threats and the many others
that the intelligence services ha\^e warned us about often do not stand up to
close scrutiny - indeed, the modern intelligence ser\4ce's prime purpose
appears to be to generate fears - but Bickford's argument that a merger
betw^een the three ser\dces would save 'tens of millions of pounds' and
provide the necessary 'focused direction, integration and analysis of electronic
and human intelligence' deser\^es to be taken seriously. Tomlinson argues
that such a streamlined organisation should be accountable to a parliamentary
committee so that 'intelligence targets, priorities and budgets are all

controlled through the normal democratic process'.

A new Treasury-led interdepartmental committee inquiry was instigated
in 1998 to put the security and intelligence services under what was said to
be an unprecedented 'root-and-branch' scrutiny, the aim being to expose the
intelligence agencies to zero-based budgeting, a Treasury discipline that asks
the agency concerned to explain from first principles the value of everything
it does. As Independent political correspondent Donald Macintyre suggested,
'Ministers will have to be tough; when an effort was made from within the
Treasury to do the same thing in the 1980s, it foundered when the security
services, almost certainlv with Margaret Thatcher's backing, put the shutters

Although the official budget for MI6, MIS and GCHQ is claimed to be
£713 million, rising to £776 million in 1999/2000 (not including a Treasury
supply estimate for the capital budget of £144 million) and up to £1 billion
for all agencies. Sir Gerald Warner, who as former deputy head of MI6 and
Intelligence and Security Co-ordinator at the Cabinet Office (1991-6) should
be in a position to know, put a figure of £2.S billion on the entire cost of
Britain's intelligence community. The reality is that the intelligence budget
has increased in a period when defence spending has gone down from S per
cent to around 3.S per cent of GDP. Defence intelligence, the international
arms trade and nuclear proliferation absorb about 3S per cent; intelligence
800 PART SEVEN: MODERN TIMES

on foreign states and their internal politics about 10 per cent; intelligence
operations, including supplying diplomats and ministers in negotiations with
secrets and economic espionage, about 20 per cent; counter-terrorism another
20 per cent; with counter-intelligence, counter-espionage, drugs and inter-
national crime the rest.

An inquiry conducted by the Cabinet Office in 1998, with wide terms of

reference, including ensuring that the agencies' objectives are properly
'focused' on providing relevant intelligence to other Whitehall departments,
asked them to justify their activities as well as their usefulness. It was
acknowledged that the scrutiny team would probably recommend some
'down-sizing' of MI6, which had 'run out of things to do', though no clues
were forthcoming from the politicians. The intelligence chiefs have them-
selves complained that New Labour has had no policy on the intelligence
services, and it is true that all efforts to elicit a pre-election policy statement
from the future Prime Minister, Foreign Secretary and Home Secretary met
with failure. MI6 Chief Sir David Spedding, however, had no need to worry.
Foreign Secretary Robin Cook, the former left-winger who in opposition
regularly criticised the intelligence and security services for their threat to
civil liberties, lack of accountability and waste of taxpayers' money, had, one

intelligence source told Richard Norton-Taylor, 'further to travel than his

predecessors' in coming to terms with his responsibilities for the Secret Intelli-

gence Service. It did not take long. Labour politicians who, in the main, have
had little contact with the intelligence world, or much interest in its activities,
have been and continue to be easily seduced by the magic of secrecy and
privileged access to special sources. MI6 senior staffers knew what to do,
having for so long, as Tomlinson warned, 'carefully and successfully culti-
vated an air of mystique and importance to their work'. Knowing that the
reality is very different, SIS continues to devote considerable time and
resources to lobbying for its position in Whitehall.
Cook made the short trip across the Thames to the Service's palatial Vaux-
hall Cross headquarters, where Spedding and his successor, Richard Dearlove,
avoiding discussion of MI6's real budget, briefed him on their latest 'successes':
a 'crucial role' in revealing Saddam Hussein's continuing chemical, biological
and nuclear weapons programme; uncovering Iranian attempts to procure
British technology; and tracking drug smugglers and countering money laun-
dering in the City of London. And then, in April 1998, dressed in the traditional
white tie and tails for the Mansion House Easter dinner for diplomats and City
businessmen. Cook went out of his way - indeed, further than any previous
Labour Foreign Secretary - to praise SIS, noting that they 'cannot speak for
themselves' because 'the nature of what they do means that we cannot shout
about their achievements if we want them to remain effective. But let me say I
have been struck by the range and quality of the work.' It seems that some
things in the British state never change.
 NOTES
KEY
BAOR British Army of the Rhine L Listener
DOl Board of Trade NA National Archives
CAB Cabinet NS New Statesman
CCA Churchill College Archives, NSC National Security Council
Cambridge NUS National Union of Students
CoS Chiefs of Staff NYT New York Times
CUP Cambridge University Press O Observer
DM Daily Mail PE Private Eye
DNB Dictionary of National Biography PRO Public Records Office
DT Daily Telegraph RUSI Royal United Services Institute
E Economist S Spectator
ES Evening Standard SB Sunday Business
FCO Foreign and Commonwealth Office SE Sunday Express
FO Foreign Office SLEF Scottish League for European
FRUS Foreign Relations of the United Freedom
States ST Sunday Times
FT Financial Times STel Sunday Telegraph
G Guardian sus Scottish Union of Students
HoC House of Commons T The Times
HoL House of Lords THJ The History Journal
I Independent TLS Times Literary Supplement
INS Intelligence and National Security TO Time Out
loS Independent on Sunday WO War Office
JCH Journal of Contemporary History WP Washington Post

Place of publication is London unless otherwise stated.

Christopher Andrew, Secret

PART ONE: FROM HOT TO 4. Service: The

COLD WAR Making of the British

Heinemann, 1985.
Intelligence Community,

1. Anthony Cave Brown, The Secret Servant: 5. Desmond Bristow, A Game of Moles: The
The Life of Sir Stewart Menzies, Churchill's Deceptions of an MI6 Officer, Little, Brown,
Spymaster, Michael Joseph, 1988, and Treason p. 183; Brown, Secret Servant, p. 229.
in the Blood, Michael Joseph, 1996, p. 228. 6. Cecil; Kim Philby, My Silent War, Grove
2 & 3. Robert Cecil, 'C's War, Intelligence Press (pbk), US, 1968, p. 124.
and National Security, INS, Vol. 1, No. 2, 7. Philby, p. 124; Robert Blake review of The
May 1986. Secret Servant in the London Review; Hugh
802 NOTES

Trevor- Roper, The PJiilln/ Affair: Espionage, 46, Airlife,Shrewsbury, 1993, pp. 60 & 198;
Treason, and the Secret Services, Kimber, 1968. Hinsley &
Simkins, pp. 187-8; Tom Bower,
8. M.R.D. Foot and J.M. Langley, MJ9, The Perfect English Spy: Sir Dick White and the
Bodley Head, 1979, p. 176; Patrick Seale and Secret War 1935-90, Heinemann, 1995, p. 66,
Maureen McConville, Philby: The Long Road quoting Pearson Holmes diary, Beinecke
to Moscou\ Hamish Hamilton, 1973, p. 174; Library, Yale University; Michael Smith, New
Cecil. Cloak, Old Dagger: How Britain's Spies Came in
9. Philby, p. 124; Blake review. from the Cold, Gollancz, 1996; PRO HS 4/144,
10. Brown, Secret Servant, p. 607; Douglas 327, 334.
Botting and Ian Sayer, America's Secret Army, 12. Robert Cecil, Five of Six at War: Section V
Fontana (pbk), 1989, p. 159. ofMie, INS, Vol. 9, No. 2, April 1994.
13. A.W. Simpson, In the Highest Degree
Odious: Detention without Trial in Wartime
CHAPTER ONE: THE
SECOND WORLD WAR Britain, Oxford University Press (OUP) (pbk),
1994, pp. 187 & 270-1; Phillip Knightley, The
1 & 2. Timothy J. Naftall, 'De Gaulle's Pique Second Oldest Profession: The Spy as Bureaucrat,
and the Allied Counter-Espionage Triangle Patriot, Fantasist and Whore, Deutsch, 1986,
in World War IP, in Hayden B. Peake and p. 207.
Samuel Halpern (eds). In the Name of 14. Cecil; Richard J. Aldrich (ed.), British

Intelligence: Essays in Honour of Walter L. Intelligence, Strategy and the Cold War, 1945-
Pforzheimer, NIBC Press, US, 1994. 51, Routledge, 1992, p. 17.
3 & 4. Cowgill died in 1991. Cecil; Genrikh 15. At Guy Liddell's (MI5) instigation.
Borovik (Phillip Knightley, The Philby
ed.). Section V created personality cards which
Files: The Secret Life of the Master Spy - KGB were collated through a centralised SHAEF
Archives Revealed, Little, Brown, 1994, pp. 193 unit.The Evaluation and Dissemination
6 230-1; Philby, p. 52. Section of Section G-2 (Counter Intelligence
5. John Costello, Mask of Treachery, Collins, Sub-Division) dealt mainly with Nazi
1988, p. 414; Nigel West, MIS: British Security paramilitary and party organisations.
Service Operations 1909-1945, Triad Panther Headed by MI5's Maj. E. Martin
(pbk), 1983, p. 356. Furnival-Jones, it was charged with the
6. Cadogan Diaries, 13.8.43,
Borovik, p. 231; distribution of the CPI cards through
ACAD 1/111, CCA. 'doctrinated' SCI units which provided
7 & 8. The MI5 brief was delivered to the British ESS and US CIC detachments with
London FBI representative who reported to information gleaned from 'special sources' -
Washington: as cited in Brown, Secret i.e. ISOS decrypts. The SCI units also advised

Servant, pp. 473-4; F.H. Hinsley & C.A.G. on the interrogation of Italian and German
Simkins, British Intelligence in the Second intelligence officials and the recovery of
World War, Vol. 4, 'Security and secret documents. Bob de Graaff, 'What
Counter-Intelligence', HMSO, 1990, pp. 56 & Happened to the Central Personality Index?',
288. INS, Vol. 7, No. 3, July 1992.
9. Anthony Verrier, Through the Looking Glass: 16. Smith, Ultra-Magic, pp. 135, 144, 155, 175
British Foreign Policy in an Age of Illusions, & 197-8; M. Smith, pp. 179 & 300.
Cape, 1983, p. 37; David Stafford, Britain and 17. The JIC was created in July 1939 as an
European Resistance, 1940-45: A Survey of the armed services chiefs of staff sub-committee
Special Operations Executive, Macmillan, 1980, chaired by a Foreign Office official (Victor
p. 208;Martin Gilbert, Winston Churchill, Cavendish-Bentinck), with instructions to
1941-1945, Vol. 3, 'The Road to Victory', 'improve the efficient working of the
Heinemann, 1986, p. 729, citing PM's intelligence organisation of the country as a
Personal Telegram, T 730/4, 6.4.44, 'Personal whole' through the central analysis of
and Most Secret', No. 324 to Algiers; intelligence produced from various sources,
Churchill Papers, 20/161, CCA; Winston including MI6. The JIC advised the chiefs
Churchill, The Second World War, Vol. 5, while the Foreign Office retained its

'Closing the Ring', Cassell, 1952, p. 542. monopoly on political intelligence, MI6
10. Hinsley & Simkins, p. 288; Costello, p. 431. representative Philby found his MI5
11. Bradley F. Smith, The Ultra-Magic Deals: counterparts 'reasonable', but the army men
And the Most Secret Special Relationship 1940- were 'absolutely crazy' and seething with
 NOTES 803

'wild passions'. Noel Annan, Changitig PhD thesis. University of Kansas; Charles
Enemies: The Defeat and Regeneration of Delzell, Mussolini's Enemies: The Italian
Germany, HarperCollins, 1995, pp. 61-2. Anti-Fascist Resistance, Princeton, US, 1961.
18. The Soviets supplied 'a large volume' of 27. Cecil, 'C"s War; Borovik, p. 235; Bower,
low-level German code material to the p. 66.
British 'Y' (interception) representative in with liaison between MI6
28. Dissatisfaction
Moscow, Edward Crankshaw. By November and the Foreign Office led to the
1942 the British Military Mission in Moscow appointment of a Foreign Office official,
believed that a new era in East-West Patrick Reilly, as personal assistant to the
co-operation had begun. It was not to last as MI6 Chief. In September 1943, Reilly was
the Soviet military command rejected a succeeded by Robert Cecil, who was able to
closer Anglo-Soviet cryptanalytic see the manoeuvring at close quarters. Cecil,
relationship. Cecil, Five of Six; Borovik, 'C"s War, T, 21.10.68.
pp. 235 & 245. 29. Philby, p. 129.
19. The British had a special security 30. William Stevenson, Intrepid's Last Case,
classification - 'Nonesuch' or 'Guard' - 'to Sphere (pbk), 1984, p. 123. Jane Sissmore was
indicate information which was not to be married to Wing Commander John Archer,
revealed to the Americans'. Smith, who was MI5's wartime liaison officer with
Ultra-Magic, pp. 60, 155, 175 & 197-9. the RAF.
Head of Military Intelligence liaison. Col. 31. Bower, pp. 202-3.
Firebrace, a veteran of the 1919 'White' Tom Bower, The Red Web: MI6 and
32. the
campaign with 'strong Czarist connections', KGB Master Coup, Aurum Press, 1989,
drew up a report on 'our military pp. 38-40; David Cesarani, Justice Delayed,
intelligence relations with the USSR'. In Heinemann, 1992, p. 140.
February, a JIC sub-committee accepted
Firebrace's negative conclusion that Soviet
non-cooperation was the result of a
CHAPTER TWO:
'deliberate political policy' to grab
REORGANISATION:
everything possible from the western powers
SPECIAL OPERATIONS
and to give nothing in return. 1, 2 & 4. Bristow, pp. 170-1 & 176.
20. Anthony Gorst, 'We must cut our coat Trevor-Roper, pp. 29 & 39-42.
according to our cloth: The making of British 3. Michael Herman, The Role of Military

defence policy, 1945-8', in Aldrich; 'British Intelligence since 1945, paper delivered at the
Military Planning for Postwar Defence, Twentieth-Century British Politics and
1943-45', in Anne Deighton (ed.), Britian and Administration Seminar, Institute of
the First Cold War, Macmillan, 1990. Historical Research, London University,
21. PRO FO N5 598/183/38. 24.5.89.
22. Victor Rothwell, Britain and the Cold War 5. Aldrich, p. 15.
1941-1947, 1983, p. 115. Richard J. Aldrich & 6, 7, 9, 11 & 12. The exception was the
John Zametica, 'The and decline of a
rise minister in charge. Lord Selbourne, who
strategic concept: the Middle East, 1945-51', 'exceeded Gubbins in his abhorrence of
in Aldrich; A. Bryant, Triumph in the West, communism in all its forms'. Staunchly
1943-46, Collins, 1959, p. 242; Bradley F. monarchist, Selbourne displayed a dislike of
Smith, Sharing Secrets with Stalin: How the the leftist EAM/ELAS guerrillas in Greece
Allies Traded Intelligence 1941-45, University that was 'only sHghtly less than his antipathy
of Kansas, 1996, p. 240. for Marshal Tito's partisans'. Peter Wilkinson
23. Julian Lewis, Changing Direction: British and Joan Bright Astley, Gubbins and SOE,
Military Planning for Post-War Strategic Leo Cooper, 1993, pp. 25, 133-7, 144 & 217-
Defence, 1942-1947, Sherwood Press, 1988, 25.

pp. 35-53; Smith, Ultra-Magic, pp. 155, 175 & 8. Ibid., p. 197; Churchill to Ismay, 10.2.44,
197-8. PRO D41/4, CAB 120/827; Aldrich, p. 42.
24. Rothwell, pp. 118-23. 10. M. Smith, p. 110.
25 & 26. David W. Ellwood, Italy 1943-1945, 13. Philby's schoolboy friend, Ian 'Tim'
Leicester University Press, 1985, pp. 29, 46 & Milne, was appointed head of Section V and
89; Gregory Dale Black, The United States and shortly after, seeing no future in M16, Felix
Italy, 1943-46; The Drift towards Containment, Cowgill submitted his resignation and
804 NOTES

became a lowly Sendee Liaison Officer in The Crown Jewels: The British Secrets at the
occupied Germany. Cecil, 'C"s War. Heart of the KGB Archives, HarperCollins,
14. Brown, Treason, p. 334. 1998, p. 325.
15. Verrier, pp. 62-3; Borovik, p. 237. 29. As a result of the UN Monetary and
16. The MI6 memorandum can be found in Einancial Conference at Bretton Woods in
the Donovan papers, quoted in Thomas Earl July 1944, SAEEHAVEN aimed to deprive
Mahl, '48 Land': The United States, British Germany of its assets, including gold stolen
Intel! igenee and World War II, PhD thesis, from occupied countries and Jews. A
Kent State University, 1994. Safehaven department within the Ministry of
17-19. Wilkinson /Astley, pp. 228-32; M. Economic Warfare (MEW) gathered
Smith, p. 110; PRO HS 4/51, 52, 127 & 291. intelligence and pooled it with the
20. Lovat's family ties included his brother, Americans, while MI6 units followed up
Hugh Eraser, a member of the MI6-linked leads. A Reparation Conference held in Paris,
hitelligence School No. 9 and cousin to the in late 1945, dealt with gold transferred to
Stirlings of the SAS. Also acquaintances Switzerland. Gold recovered from Germany,
made during special forces training at unless clearly identifiable, was put into a
Inverailort: Mike Calvert taught demolition; pool to be distributed by the Tripartite Gold
Maj. John Munn instructed in map reading; Commission, established in 1946.
'Billy'McLean and Eitzroy Maclean, who Britain's delegate was Desmond Morton,
after the war married Lovat's sister, a former MI6 officer who in the thirties
Veronica. Out of Inverailort developed the directed the Industrial Intelligence Centre
SOE Special Training Schools, commanded (IIC), which gathered industrial and
by Munn, from where emerged a select arms-related intelligence on Nazi Germany.
group of right-wing SOE personnel, who It was serviced by MI6's Commercial Section.
went on to serve postwar in MI6. They A close friend of Menzies, Morton was
included David Smiley, Peter Kemp and subsequently seconded to the MEW
Archie Lyall, who, like Kemp, had served in (Intelligence Centre) and became Churchill's
Spain on the nationalist side. Lyall designed trusted personal assistant dealing with
a coat of arms for SOE. 'Surrounded by an intelligence. ('Nazi Gold: Information from
unexploded bomb; a cloak and rubber the British Archives', History Notes, No. 11,
dagger, casually left in a bar sinister. The Sept. 1996, Historians, Library and Records
arms are supported by two double agents. Department, ECO. MI6 also set up a special
The motto nihil quod tetigit non (made a balls unit to recover stolen art treasures located in
of it).' Lord Lovat, March Past: A Memoir, Germany. Heading it was the Rev. David
Weidenfeld, 1978, pp. 9, 159-64, 179 & 359. Caskie (OBE), a PoW in France who joined
21. Aldrich, pp. 196-8; Wilkinson /Astley, MI6 in late 1944, leaving a year later. Staying

pp. 233-4; Patrick Howarth, Intelligence Chief in Erance, he died in 1983.)

Extraordinary: The Life of the Ninth Duke of In 1947 250 million Swiss francs were
Portland, Bodley Head, 1986, p. 203. paid out of the German gold deposits in
22. Howarth, pp. 194-5; Brown, Secret Switzerland and placed with the Federal
Servant, p. 964, and Treason, p. 344; Viscount Reserve Bank in New York. The German and
Alanbrooke, Notes on My Life, Vol. XIV, Austrian haul was transferred to the Fed and
Liddell Hart Centre, King's College, London, the Bank by
of England, to be administered
cited in Smith /Deighton, pp. 35 & 50. the TripartiteGold Commission. Millions
23. Reports on Operation UNTHINKABLE - from this looted gold were loaned to the US
DT, 1.10.98; letter, Julian Lewis, G, 2.10.98. Treasury's Exchange Stabilisation Fund 'to
24. M. Smith, p. 61; Bradley E. Smith, serve as a bankers' tool to dampen the
'Anglo-Soviet Intelligence and the Cold War', effects of currency speculation'. It has been
in Aldrich, and Sharing Secrets, p. 245. alleged that this fund became 'a secret source
25. PRO AIR 20/2610, 26.6.45; MI3 minute, of financing for US clandestine operations'
WO 208/1862, 29.6.45. with, in late 1947, nearly $10 million
26. Aldrich, p. 198; Howarth, p. 199. laundered through front organisations and
27. Brown, Secret Servant, p. 684; Bower, Spy, secret accounts to finance covert operations.
p. 50; Borovik, p. 257; Verrier, p. 62. This 'black currency' was used to thwart the
28. Howarth, pp. 199-200; Brown, Secret ambitions of the Communist Party in Italy's
Servant, p. 578; Nigel West and Oleg Tsarev, general election, being channelled through
 NOTES 805

the Vatican to the ChristianDemocrat Party. 48. While recognising the wartime successes,
The CIA has issued though this
a denial, Menzies's Foreign Office adviser, Robert
particular operation was carried out by other Cecil, thought the postwar years were 'not
agencies. William R. Corson, The Armies of his best'. Bristow, pp. 171 & 183-4; Sir K.
Ignorance: The Rise of the American Intelligence Strong, Men of Intelligence, Cassell, 1970,
Empire, Dial Press, US, 1977, pp. 299-300; p. Ill; Young, Subversion, p. 113; Cecil, 'C"s
Christopher Simpson, Blozvback: America's War.
Recruitment of Nazis and Its Effects on the Cold
War, Weidenfeld, 1988, pp. 98-9 & 309; 'US
and Allied Efforts to Recover and Restore
CHAPTERTHREE:
Gold and Other Assets Stolen or Hidden by
CONTAINMENT
Germany During World War IF, 1. Piers Dixon, Double Diplomacy: The Life of Sir
co-ordinated by Stuart E. Eizenstat, Pierson Dixon, Don and Diplomat, 1968, p. 166.
Department of State, May 1997, p. 98. 2. Gorst.
30. Wilkinson /Astley, pp. 233-4. 3. Cecil, 'C"s War.
31. Borovik, pp. 241-2. 4 & 5. John Saville, The Politics of Continuity:

32 & 33. Lovat, pp. 9 & 359; Cecil, 'C"s War; British Foreign Policy and the Labour
M.R.D. Foot, SOE: The Special Operations Government, 1945-46, Verso, 1993, pp. 25 &
Executive, 1940-1946, BBC, 1984, p. 245, and 31; Prof. Northedge, cited in Ritchie
SOE in France: An Account of the Work of the Ovendale (ed.). The Foreign Policy of the
Special Operations Executive, 1940-44, HMSO, British Labour Governments, 1945-51, Leicester
1966, p. 443; Richard Aldrich, 'Unquiet in University Press, 1984, p. 11.
Death: The post-war survival of the "Special 6. Harold Laski told friends that Labour
Operations Executive", 1945-51', in A. Gorst would 'turn the Foreign Office upside
& W.S. Lucas (eds). Politics and the Limits of down'. Initially, Hugh Dalton, a critic of the
Policy, Pinter, 1991, pp. 193-5 & 198. Foreign Office, was to be appointed Foreign
34. Seale/McConville, p. 184; Philby, Secretary. Saville, p. 86; Frank Roberts,

pp. 129-30; Nigel West, The Friends: Britain's 'Ernest Bevin as Foreign Secretary', in
Post-War Secret Intelligence Operations, Ovendale; Kenneth Young (ed.). The
Weidenfeld, 1988, pp. 12-13. Diaries of Sir Robert Bruce Lockhart, Vol. 2,
35 & 37. Annan, p. 230; Borovik, pp. 239, 243 1939-1965, Macmillan, 1980, p. 475; Lord
& 247. Avon, A Prime Minister Remembers, Cassell,
36. Philip H.J. Davies, The British Secret 1965, pp. 550-1.
Services, Intelligence Organisations Series, 7. Despite its great qualities. Prof. Bullock's
ABC-Clio, Oxford, 1996, p. xxii. book {Ernest Bevin: Foreign Secretary 1945-
38. Philby, p. 132. 1951, OUP (pbk), 1985) is deeply flawed. It is

39. West, Friends, p. 10; Smith, Ultra-Magic, hardly possible today to write about a
p. 181. Foreign Secretary, particularly one at the
40. Seale/McConville, p. 184, Bower, Spy, height of the Cold War, without mentioning
p. 220. the intelligence services, but Bullock
41. G.K. Young, Subversion and the British effortlessly achieves this feat. Raymond
Riposte, Osian, Glasgow, 1984, p. 113. Smith, 'Ernest Bevin, British Officials and
42. 44 & 46. Wilkinson /Astley, pp. 236-7; British Soviet Policy, 1945-47', in Deighton,
Aldrich, pp. 198-9; letter, Montague pp. 312-13; Saville, pp. 104-5.
Woodhouse, 15.9.94; Davies. 8.Douglas Dodds-Parker, Political Eunuch,
43. Aldrich, p. 199; Verrier, pp. 51-77; Springwood, 1986, p. 43; Denis Healey, The
Davies; PRO CoS (46) 11.4.46. CAB 79/47. Time of My Life, Michael Joseph, 1989,
45. Woodhouse; David Smiley, Albanian pp. 103-4; J. Harvey (ed.). The War Diaries of
Assignment, Chatto, 1984, pp. 162-8; Verrier, Oliver Harvey, 1978, pp. 62-3; Rothwell,
p. 63. p. 252; Melvyn P. Leffler, A Preponderance of
47. Wilkinson /Astley, p. 239; Aldrich, Power: National Security, The Truman
'Unquiet in Death', p. 194, quoting PRO CoS Administration, and the Cold War, Stanford
(45) 254th mtg (2), 18.10.45; CAB 79/40, University Press, US, 1992, p. 135; Lockhart
discussing JIC (45) 263 (Final), 'Manpower Diaries, p. 576.
requirements for future intelligence 9. Smith in Deighton, p. 39; Bullock, p. 117;
organisations', 13.10.45. PRO FO No. 1092, 20.3.46; Peter Hennessy,
806 NOTES

Never A^ain: British 1945-1951, Vintage (pbk), Century, Macmillan, 1984; Michael Herman,
1993, p.^262. Intelligence Power in Peace and War, CUP,
10. R. Butler & M.E. Pelly (eds). Documents 1996, p. 292.
on British Policy Overseas, Series 1, Vol. 1, 21. Merrick; Aldrich, pp. 19 & 43.
HMSO, 1984, pp. 573-4; Bullock, p. 117. 22. Saville, p. 16.
11. Bullock, p. 234;Rothwell, pp. 255-9; PRO 23. W. Scott Lucas and C.J. Morris, 'A very
FO 800/475, ME/46/22. 12.1.46. British crusade: the Information Research
12 & 13. Vladislav Zubok and Constantine Department and the beginning of the Cold
Pleshakov, Inside the Kremlin's Cold War: From War', in Aldrich.
StaUn to Khrushchev, Harvard University Deighton, p. 43; PRO FO 371/
24. Smith, in
Press, US, 1996, pp. 28-38 & 45. 56887 N14732/5169/38; 371/56887 N15843/
14. Roberts had seen The Long Telegram' 5169/38, 15.11.46; 371/66370 N8114/271/38,
written by his counterpart in the American 28.7.47; Young, Subversion, p. 11.
embassy, George Kennan, whose views 25. PRO FO 371/56887 N14732/5169/38.
became equally influential in shaping US 26. Saville, pp. 138 & 140; Robert Frazier,
policy against the Soviet Union. PRO JIC Anglo-American Relations with Greece: The
(46)38(0), final review 14.6.46, DO 35/1604; Coming of the Cold War, 1942-47, Macmillan,
Smith in Deighton, p. 37; Rothwell, p. 248; 1991, p. 120.
Aldrich, p. 18. 27. Smith, in Deighton, p. 47; Bevan to
15. Frank Roberts, Dealing with Dictators: The Attlee, PRO P.M./47/8, ME/47/4; FO 800/
Destruction and Revival of Europe 1930-70, 476, 9.1.47; Aldrich/ Zametica, p. 252.
Weidenfeld, 1991, pp. 80-1; PRO FO 371/ 28. H.W. Brand, Inside the Cold War: Loy
56763 N4065/97/38, 14.3.46, & 371/56763 Henderson and the Rise of the American Empire
N4156/97/38, 17.3.46. 1918-61, OUP, 1991, p. 155. Wine merchants
16. PRO FO 371/56832 N5572/605/38G, H. Sichel and Sons had been used by Claude
18.3.46; 371/56763 N4157/97/38, 18.3.46; Dansey as part of his 1930s Z-network.
371/56885 N5170/5169/38; Ray Merrick, 29. Mahl.
'The Russia Committee of the British Foreign 30 & 31. Frazier, pp. 147 & 159; Saville,
Office and the Cold War, 1946-47', JCH, citing Francis Williams on Bevin, p. 45.
Vol. 20, 1985. 32. R. Hyam, 'Africa and the Labour
17. Foreign Office officials heed to
paid little Government 1945-51', Journal of Imperial and
Churchill's observation that theWest Commonwealth History, Vol. XVI, 1988.
provided the 'outside enemy' which 33. John Kent and John W. Young, 'The
'communist power' needed to keep itself "Third Force" and NATO', in Beatrice
stable. Deputy Soviet Foreign Minister Heuser and Robert O'Neill (eds), Securing
Vyshinsky argued that the extent of the Peace in Europe, 1945-62: Thoughts for the
Soviet propaganda campaign against Britain Post-Cold War Era, Macmillan, 1992; Correlli
was exaggerated. The Soviets were genuinely Barnett, The Lost Victory: British Dreams,
concerned about 'the incomplete repatriation British Realities, 1945-1950, Macmillan, 1995.
of war and the 'White Russian and
prisoners' 34. Bevin told Colonial Secretary Arthur
reactionary elements' in Germany, Austria Creech Jones that 'you develop Africa by
and Italy - the source 'of a lot of trouble and putting Africans in lorries and letting them
irritation', made worse by MI6 subjecting drive into the bush', Hennessy, p. 216.
them to 'anti-Soviet propaganda'. Warner 35. Saville, p. 152.
blithely dismissed Vyshinsky's performance 36. PRO DO (47) 44, 22.5.47; CAB 21/1800.
as 'special pleading'. PRO FO 371/56832 37. Aldrich, p. 18.
N6344/605/38, 2.4.46; Saville, p. 51; Healey,
p. 101; Rothwell, p. 254.
18. PRO FO 371/56885 N6092/5169/38,
CHAPTER FOUR:
7.5.46, & 930/488, 22.5.46; Smith in Deighton,
'UNCERTAIN ALLIES'
pp. 41-2. I. British Security Co-Ordination (BSC): 'An
19. Cecil, 'C"s War. Account of Secret Activities in the Western
20. Robert Cecil, 'The Cambridge Comintern', Hemisphere, 1940-45', known as 'the Bible'
in Christopher Andrew and David Dilks by its former agents, cited in Mahl; Davies,
(eds). The Missing Dimension: Governments and p. xxiii.
Intelligence Communities in the Twentieth 2. David Ignatius, 'Britain's War in America:
 NOTES 807

How Churchill's Agents Secretly 16.David Bruce made another trip to Europe
Manipulated the US Before Pearl Harbor', requirement for combating
to assess the
WP, 17.9.89. communist subversion. Douglass later
3, 4 & 7. Susan Ann Bower, Creating the became the CIA Assistant Director of the
'Special Relationship': British Propaganda in the Special Services. Lankford, pp. 184-5;
United States during the Second World War, Ranelagh, pp. 102, 106, 748, 754 & 767;
PhD thesis, Cornell University, 1991; Clive Smith, Ultra-Magic, p. 225.
Pouting, 1940: Myth and Reality, Hamish 17. Jackson took up a seat on the National
Hamilton, 1990, pp. 197, 214-15, 223 «& 235. Security Council. In 1948, Secretary of
5 & 8. Nelson D. Lankford, The Last American Defense Forrestal asked Jackson to
The Biography of David K.E. Bruce,
Aristocrat: participate with Dulles inan investigation of
1898-1977, Little, Brown, 1996, pp. 130 & the CIA on
behalf of the NSC. Jackson
186; John Ranelagh, The Agency: The Rise and became Deputy Director at the CIA under
a
Decline of the CIA, Sceptre (pbk), 1988, p. 68. Bedell Smith and was responsible for
6. Obit, of Henry Hyde, DT, 16.5.97. internal reorganisation. Mahl and Andrew,
9. Arthur B. Darling, The Central Intelligeyice SIGINT.
Agency: An
Instrument of Government to 1950, 18.The chief of the CIG Soviet division was
Pennsylvania State University Press, 1990, Harry Rositzke, a former OSS desk officer in
p. 26; PRO FO 371/44557 AN 2560/22/45; London and a specialist on Soviet affairs,
Ranelagh, p. 235. whose primary source was an old MI6
10. Alex Danchev, Very Special Relationship, Section IX compendium describing the
Brasseys, 1986, p. 221. Russian Intelligence Service.
11. Leohnis was later Director-General of 19. Peter Parker, For Starters: The Business of
GCHQ (1960-4). Life, Cape, 1989, pp. 36-7; Bower, Red Web,
12. Right up to the end of the war Ultra pp. 85-6; Borovik, p. 247.
material made its way to Moscow as a 'Most 20. Richard J. Aldrich, 'The Value of Residual
Reliable Occasional source', though by April Empire: Anglo-American Co-operation in
the Sovietshad been told for certain that the Asia after 1945', in Aldrich /Hopkins, p. 237.
origin was from 'interception'. Smith, 21. GCHQ moved Cheltenham in 1952.
to
Ultra-Magic, pp. 199-203 & 223; R.V. Jones, This was pushed through by Wing
Reflections on Intelligence, Mandarin (pbk), Commander Claude Daubeny, wartime head
1990, p. 15; M. Smith, p. 24. of signals intelligence on the Air Staff and
13. W.H. Jackson, Co-ordination of Intelligence for all the services in the immediate postwar
Functions and the Organisation of Secret period. He wanted to combine his visits with
Intelligence in the British Intelligence System his interest in horse-racing. Smith,
(Top Secret), OSS, July 1945; Ludwell Lee Ultra-Magic, p. 181; Alan Stripp, Codebreaker
Montague, General Walter Bedell Smith as in the Far East, Frank Cass, 1989.
Director of Central Intelligence, Oct. 1950- 22. Smith, Ultra-Magic, pp. 220 & 226;
Feb. 1953, Pennsylvania State University Stephen Dorril and Robin Ramsay, Smear!:
Press, US, 1996, pp. 11, 57 & 159; Darling, Wilson and the Secret State, Fourth Estate,
pp. 18-19, 59-60 & 120. 1991, pp. 7-8; David Leigh, Wilson Plot: The
14. Michael F. Hopkins, 'The Washington Intelligence Services and the Discrediting of a
Embassy: The Role of an Institution in Prime Minister 1945-76, Heinemann, 1988,
Anglo-American Relations, 1945-55', in pp. 47-51; Hugh Thomas, Armed Truce: The
Richard J. Aldrich and Michael F. Hopkins Beginnings of the Cold War 1945-46, Sceptre
(eds). Intelligence, Defence and Diplomacy: (pbk), 1988, p. 298; Historians, LRD of the
British Policy in the Post-War World, Frank FCO, 'IRD: Origins and Establishment of the
Cass, 1994, p. 88; John Bright-Holmes (ed.). Foreign Office Information Research
Like It Was: The Diaries of Malcolm Department, 1946-48', History Notes, No. 9,

Muggeridge, Collins, 1981, p. 227. Aug. 1995.

15. Eric Jones was Director-General of GCHQ 23. Jeffrey T. Richelson and Desmond Ball,
(1952-60). Smith, Ultra-Magic, p. 220; M. The Ties that Bind: Intelligence Co-operation
Smith, p. 27; PRO CAB 81/92 & 81/93; between the UKUSA Countries - the United
Harry S. Truman Library, Independence, Kingdom, the United States of America, Canada,
Missouri, Naval Aide files. Box 10, File 1; Australia and Nczv Zealand (2nd ed., pbk),
Andrew, SIGINT. Unwin Hyman, 1990, p. 5.
808 NOTES

24. CIA, The Possibility of Britain's 15.Rothwell, pp. 391-2; Robert M. Blum,
Abandonment of Overseas Military 'Surprised by Tito: The Anatomy of an
Commitments', ORE 93-94, 23.12.49; Intelligence Failure', in Diplomatic History,
Ranelagh, p. 235. Vol. XII, No. 1, winter 1988.
25. Darling, p. 128; Bristow, p. 202. 16 & 17. Geoffrey Swain, 'The Cominform:
26. Peter Grose, Gentleman Spy: The Life of Tito's International?', THJ, Vol. 35, No. 3,
Allen Dulles, Deutsch, 1993, p. 317; Young, 1992; Mackintosh, p. 21.
Subversion, pp. 137-8. 18. PRO FO 371/66369 N7458/271/38; 371/
66370 N7458/271/38, 25.6.47.
Dixon PRO CAB
CHAPTER FIVE THE 19. diary, 2.7.47; 128/10,

WORLD-VIEW 8.7.47.
20. Michael McGwire, The Genesis of Soviet
1 & 2. Anthony Glees, Secrets of the Service: Threat Perception, Brookings Institute,
British Intelligence and Communist Subversion Washington (where he was an analyst in the
1939-51, Cape, 1987, pp. 163 & 264; West/ late eighties), 1987, pp. 33-4.
Tsarev, pp. 310-12; Nigel West (ed.). The 21. Douglas Porch, The French Secret Services:
Faber Book of Espionage, Faber, 1993, p. 233; From the Dreyfus Affair to the Gulf War, Farrar,
West, Friends, pp. 10-11; Brown, Secret Straus & Giroux, NY, 1995, p. 284.
Servant, p. 474; Bright-Holmes, p. 350. 22. Frazier, p. 160; Beatrice Heuser, Western
3. R.N. Carew Hunt, The Theory and Practice Containment Policies in the Cold War: The
of Marxism, Geoffrey Bles, 1950, and Marxism: Yugoslav Case 1948-53, 1990, pp. 25-7;
Past and Present, Geoffrey Bles, 1954. Caroline Kennedy-Pipe, Stalin's Cold War:
4. Jenny Rees, Looking for Mr Nobody: The Soviet Strategies in Europe, 1943 to 1956,
Secret Life of Goronwy Rees, Weidenfeld, 1994. Manchester University Press, 1995, pp. 95 &
5. In 1951, Hugh Seton- Watson was 152-3.
appointed Professor of Russian History at 23. Mackintosh, p. 20; Lobster, No. 19, May
the spooks' favourite academic institution, 1990.
the School of Slavonic and East European 24. Interview with Michael Herman reprinted
Studies. Hugh Seton-Watson, The East in Lobster No. 30, February 1996. Herman
European Revolution, Methuen, 1950, p. x; was a senior figure at GCHQ and was
Bickham Sweet-Escott, Baker Street Irregular, seconded to the JIC in the early seventies.
Methuen, 1965, pp. 191 & 203; West, Friends, Christopher Mayhew, Time to Explain,

pp. 11 & 23. Hutchinson, 1987, pp. 107-8.

6. Engaged in the sixties by the Foreign Office 25. Lobster No. 30; Aldrich, pp. 16-17; Alex
on research, J.M. Mackintosh published Craig, The Joint Intelligence Committee and the
Strategy and Tactics of Soviet Foreign Policy Outbreak of the Cold War, MPhil thesis,
(OUP, 1962) and took over the influential Cambridge University, 1997.
Soviet desk in the Cabinet Office, which he 26. Lobster Nos 19 & 30; Zubok/Pleshakov,
held until his retirement in 1987. Malcolm pp. 26-8; Heuser, pp. 19-23, 29 & 49-52.
Mackintosh on his time in Bulgaria in T.L. 27-29. Blum; Adam B. Ulam, Titoism and the
Hammond (ed.). The Anatomy of Communist Cominform, CUP, 1952, p. 106.
Takeovers, New Haven, US, 1975, pp. 239-40; 30. PhilipNoel-Baker, as Bevin's Minister of
'The final testimony of George Kennedy State before McNeil, was presumably
Young', in Lobster, No. 19, May 1990. responsible for liaison with MI6. A pacifist
7-11. Young, Subversion, p. 10; Mackintosh, Labour MP, he appointed to his private

pp. 3-19; Seton-Watson, pp. 171 & 381. office 'a number of brilliant and attractive
12. Trevor Barnes, 'The Secret Cold War: The intellectuals' who had been in Victor
CIA and American Foreign Policy in Europe, Rothschild's circle. They included Stuart
1946-1956', Part THJ, 24.2.81; Rhodri
1, Hampshire, Tessa Mayor, who later married
Jeffreys-Jones, The CIA and American Rothschild, and Pat Llewelyn-Davies. C.L.
Democracy, Yale University Press (pbk), 1989, Sulzberger, A Long Roiv of Candles: Memories
p. 47. and Diaries, 1934-54, Macmillan, 1969, p. 412;
13 & 14. Young, Subversion, pp. 10 & 97; Young, Subversion, p. 11.
George K. Young, Masters of Indecision: An 31 & 33. Heuser, pp. 35, 41-52 & 71; Healey,
Inquiry into the Political Process, Methuen, p. 107; Rothwell, p. 393.
1962, p. 26. 32. In London, the head of the Far Eastern
 NOTES 809

Department, Robin Scott, saw 'the possibility 9 & 10. The English translation of Protocol M
of China developing in the way Yugoslavia is in Otto Heilbrunn, The Soviet Secret
did'. This was to be of some significance in Services, Allen & Unwin, Simon
1956.
that Scott was later to have a profound Ollivant, Protocol 'M', in David A. Charters
influence on policy and MI6 activities in that and Maurice A.J. Tugwell (eds). Deception
region. He had been, in turn, influenced by Operations: Studies in the East-West Context,
another official in the department, Guy Brassey's, 1990; PRO FO 371/70477 (C163/1/
Burgess, who briefly overlapped with a 18).

young George Blake, who was undertaking 11. PRO FO 371/7168/N765/38G, 15.1.48;
an orientation course before assuming his Lockhart Diaries, p. 648.
first MI6 posting abroad as vice-consul in 14 & 15. Lucas/Morris; LRD; Mayhew,
Seoul, South Korea. Officials noticed that pp. 111-12; PRO FO 371/71632A N13368/1/
Burgess drew 'a fine distinction between 38G, 27.12.48.
Soviet Leninism and the agrarian populism 16. PRO FO 1110/11, Warner to Gascoigne,
which he detected emerging in Red China'. Nov. 1948.
He attacked the American view that the 17. Ollivant.
USSR and China 'constituted a Marxist- 18. Lucas/Morris, LRD; PRO CAB 130/37,
Leninist monolith'. GEN 231/2, 4.5.48; 371/70478 C2182/1/18,
34.R.N. Carew-Hunt, 'Willi Munzenberg', in 23.2.48; Lockhart Diaries, pp. 686 & 632-3.
David Footman (ed.). International 19. M. Smith, p. 139.
Communism, St Antony's Papers IX, Oxford: 20. LRD.
Chatto & Windus, 1960; Gunther Nollau, 21 & 24. Gary D. Rawnsley, Radio Diplomacy
International Communism and World and Propaganda: The BBC and VOA in

Revolution, Hollis & Carter, 1961; Sanche de International Politics, 1956-64, Macmillan,
Gramont, The Secret War: The Story of 1996, pp. 23, 166 & 186; Hugh Greene, The
International Espionage since 1945, Deutsch, Third Floor Front, Bodley Head, 1969, p. 32.
1962, p. 30. 22. Lockhart Diaries, pp. 648 & 686.
23. PRO FO 371/77389 N6550/1053/63,
CHAPTER SIX: 24.6.49.
PRO CAB 130/37, GEN231, 3rd meeting,
PROPAGANDA 25.
19.12.49; Lynn Smith; Jonathan Bloch and
1 & 2. 'IRD: Origins and Establishment of Patrick Fitzgerald, British Intelligence and
the Foreign Office Information Research Covert Action, Africa, Middle East and Europe
Department, 1946-48.' ^ since 1945, Junction, 1983, p. 90.
3. Aldrich, p. 15; Lockhart Diaries, pp. 480, 26. Verrier, p. 155; Young, Subversion, p. 12;
490 & 492; Robert Bruce Lockhart, 'PoHtical LRD (FCO).
Warfare', RUSI lecture, 25.1.50.
Lucas/Morris; Lockhart Diaries,
4.

p. 648.
CHAPTER SEVEN:
5. Lynn Smith, 'Covert British propaganda:
ROLL-BACK
The Information Research Department: 1947- 1 & 2. Beatrice Heuser, 'Stalin as Hitler's
77', in Millennium: Journal of International Successor', in Heuser/O'Neill; Beatrice
Studies, Vol. 9, No. 1; Ray Merrick, 'The Heuser, 'Covert Action within British and
Russia Committee of the British Foreign American Concepts of Containment, 1948-
Office and the Cold War, 1946-47', in JCH, 51', in Aldrich.
Vol. 20, 1985, pp. 453-68; Hugh Wilford, 3. Young, Subversion, p. 11; Aldrich, pp. 15 &
'The Information Research Department: 18; Tom Bower, Blind Eye to Murder, Deutsch,
Britain's secret Cold War weapon revealed', 1982, p. 410.
inReview of International Studies, Vol. 24, 4, 5 & 6. Montgomery Diary, BLM/ 1/186/1,
No. 3, 1998; Paul Lashmar and James Oliver, June-Sept. 1948, Section D, 'The Cold War',
Britain's Secret Propaganda War, 1948-1977, Imperial War Museum; Aldrich, pp. 13 &
Sutton, Stroud, 1998. 21-2.
6-8, 12 & 13. Lucas/Morris; Lynn Smith; 7. Aldrich review of Heuser in INS.
Historians, LRD of the FCO; PRO CAB 129/ 8.Young, Subversion, p. 11.
23 (CP(48)8); Mayhew, pp. 108-9; M. Smith, 9.Young, Masters, p. 9; Aldrich, p. 209;
p. 139. Bower, Red Web, p. 85; Heuser, p. 56.
810 NOTES

10. Frazier, p. 160; Lobster, No. 19; Bower, Germany, possibly because of collaboration
Spy, p. 186; Young, Subversion, p. 10; with the Nazis by European banks. An
Mackintosh, p. 30. influential banker with Robert Benson
11. Aldrich, pp. 22-3; PRO FO 371/77623 (partner Rex Benson was an MI6 officer and
N171/1052/38G, 17.12.48. Menzies's cousin). Turner served with the
12 & Heuser, pp. 49, 51, 56-7 & 66, and
13. Ministry of Economic Warfare. Leaving the
'Covert Action'; Russia Committee meetings, Commission in 1947, he was appointed
3 & 17.2.49, PRO FO
371/77617 N3355/1051/ deputy chair of Rio Tinto Zinc and a director
38G, 7.3.49; 371/77616 N3356/1051/38G, of Kleinwort Benson. Tom Bower, The
22.3.49; 371/77617 N3413/1051/38G, 4.4.49. Paperclip Conspiracy: The Battle for the Spoils
14. M. Smith, p. 114; PRO CAB 81/94. and Secrets of Nazi Germany, Paladin (pbk),
15. Interview with Kim Philby, Kodumma, 1988, pp. 92-3; PRO FO 942/81. G, 24.5.96;
Estonia, 13.10.71; Bower, Spy, p. 145; Tony Ian Sayer and Douglas Botting, Nazi Gold:
Benn, Tlie End of an Era: Diaries 1980-90, The Story of the World's Greatest Robbery - and
Arrow (pbk), 1994, p. 62. its Aftermath, Grafton (pbk), 1985, pp. 149-50.

16-18. Heuser, pp. 45, 51, 66-7, 89, 109 & 2. Robin Dennison, Publishing theMemoirs of
123; PRO FO 371/77622 N11007/1051/38, Intelligence People, INS, Vol. 7, No. 2, April
28.7.49. 1992; Ladislas Farago, Aftermath: Martin
19 & 20. Aldrich, 'Unquiet in Death', p. 195; Bormann and the Fourth Reich, Hodder, 1974,
E, 27.11.82. pp. 204-9; Kurt Tauber, Beyond Eagle and
21 & 22. Young, Subversion, pp. 12-13; Swastika: German Nationalism Since 1945,
Seton-Watson, pp. 387-8; Lobster, No. 19; Vol. 11, Wesleyan University Press, US, 1967,
Mackintosh, p. 55. pp. 113 & 1108.
23. Heuser, p. 25, and 'Hitler's Successor'. 6. Wilkinson /Astley, p. 234; Richard Aldrich
24. Hennessy, pp. 407 & 413. (ed.), British Intelligence, Strategy and the Cold
25. PRO DEFE 6/14, JP(50)90 (Final), 'The War, 1945-51, 1992, pp. 200 & 212; Anthony
Spread of Russian Communism', 11.7.50. Kemp, The Secret Hunters, O'Mara, 1986,
26. Hennessy, pp. 407 & 413; Grose, p. 315; p. 81; ST, 28.12.97.
Young, Subversion, p. 138. 7 & 8. West, The Friends, pp. 20-2.
9. The Direction des Services de
Renseignements et des Services de Securite
Militaire (DSM), whose head, Paul Pailloe,
PART TWO: THE FRONT was well regarded by Menzies. A DSM
LINE representative was posted to the Joint X-2/
Section V war room, but he resigned in
CHAPTER EIGHT: November 1944. Douglas Botting and Ian
GERMANY AND THE 3x5s
Sayer, America's Secret Army, 1989, p. 205; M.
1 & 3-5. Ronald C. Newton, The 'Nazi Smith, New Cloak, Old Dagger, p. 179; PRO
Menace' in Argentina, 1931-47, Stanford CAB 81/124.
University Press, 1992, pp. xiv, xvii, 225, 279, 10. Graaf; PRO WO 219(5276).
310, 349-55, 422, 433 & 468-9; PRO FO 371/ 11. John Loftus, The Belarus Secret, Penguin
44708, 3.1.44, & 371/46766, 20.4.45; Annual (pbk), 1983, p. 167; Christopher Simpson,
Report, 1944-45, Special Intelligence Service, Blozvback, 1988, p. 72; Naftali.
FBI, 37, FBI Archives, 64-4104-684X. Cols. 12. Bower, Sp^y, pp. 71-2, and Blind Eye,
Brian Mountain (later chair of Eagle Star) pp. 219-26; Mary Ellen Reese, General
and Kenneth Keith (Rolls-Royce) had wanted Reinhard Gehlen: The CIA Connection, George
MI6 units, especially in Switzerland, to seize Mason University Press, US, 1990, p. 215.
German assets, including gold: 'The scent is The 2nd SAS Regiment War Crimes
now hot and it will belong to the person Investigation Team was led by intelligence
who gets his hands on it first.' The efforts of officers Maj. Eric Barkworth and Capt. Yuri
Michael Waring, intelligence officer and
Brig. Galitzine, who seconded to the Department
SHAEF liaison officer tracing Reichsbank of the Judge Advocate-General. A
gold, soon foundered. Despite MI6 retrieval naturalised Russian prince, Galitzine had
of documents, the Mountain /Keith proposal been a member of an Allied Combat
was blocked by (Sir) Mark Turner, Propaganda Team in southern France with
Under-Secretary at the Control Office for SHAEF's Psychological Warfare Department
 NOTES 811

and a T-Force unit searching for captured Mark Aarons and John Loftus, Ratlines: How
Nazi documents. SOE veteran Vera Atkins the Vatican's Nazi Networks Betrayed Western
was searching for F-Section survivors and Intelligence to the Soviets, Heinemann, 1991,
attached at Bad Oeynhausen to the SAS p. 232; Mark Aarons, Sanctuary': Nazi
investigation team w^hich was still operating Fugitives in Australia, Heinemann, Sydney,
as late as 1948. Thirteen bilingual ex-SOE 1989, pp. 124-5.
officers were sent to Germany as part of the 28. Perry Biddiscombe, 'Operation Selection
War Crimes Group but had no investigative Board: The Growth and Suppression of the
experience. Anthony Kemp, The SAS Savage Neo-Nazi "Deutsche Revolution" 1945-47',
Wars of Peace, Signet (pbk), 1995, pp. 3-5, INS, Vol. 11, No. 1, January 1996.
and Secret Hunters, pp. 36, 51 & 74. 29-30 & 32-33. Tom Bower, Klaus Barbie:
13. Brown, Secret Servant, p. 652. Butcher of Lyons, Corgi (pbk), 1985, pp. 147-8
14. Reese, pp. 8-9. & 290, and Paperclip, pp. 155 & 290. Loftus,
15. Simpson, p. 67; John Loftus, General pp. 173, 186 & 232-3; Linklater et al,

Accounting Office Report GAO/GGD-85-86 pp. 173-7 & 180-6; Botting/Sayer, Secret
entitled 'Nazis and Axis Collaborators Were Army, p. 329.
Used to Further US Anti-Communist 31. Part of Deutsche Revolution's strategy
Objectives in Europe - Some Immigrated to was its activities with the
to co-ordinate
the United States', oversight hearing before British. At the end of 1946, Kurt Ellersiek

the House Sub-Committee on Immigration, was contacted, via a CIC-sponsored German

Refugees and International Law, 17.10.85, agent, by a British officer who 'expressed
p. 90. secret sympathies with the National Socialist
16. Farago, p. 168; Magnus Linklater, Isabel cause'. The officer offered to arrange a
Hilton and Neal Ascherson, Klaus Barbie: The meeting with a 'British Foreign Office
Fourth Reich and the Neo-fascist Connection, expert', who favoured proposals to form a
Coronet (pbk), 1985, pp. 174-5. conservative youth movement to work with
17. Tauber, Vol. 1, pp. 112-13 & 239-40, & groups abroad. In mid-January 1947,
Vol. 2, pp. 983 & 1054. Ellersiek exchanged information with the
18. Linklater, pp. 169; E.H. Cookridge: 'expert'.At the same time, the private
Gehlen: Spy of the Century, Corgi (pbk), 1972, International Committee for the Study of
pp. 179-80; PRO CAB 81/124; M. Smith, European Questions published a damning
p. 179. report on the failure of denazification in
19. Simpson, pp. 57 & 67; Knightley, Second Germany. Headed by Lord Vansittart, former
Oldest Profession, p. 236. Cabinet minister Lord Brabazon, Professor
20. Cookridge, pp. 191-2; Reese, p. 9. D.W. Brogan, and leading French and
21. Reese, pp. 42-3 & 47-9; G.K. Young, Belgian statesmen, the committee had access
Subversion and the British Riposte, 1983, p. 132. to an agent infiltrated into European
22. Borovik, pp. 245-6. Philby letter to It claimed that a new
collaborationist circles.
Mosley (7.4.77) in Leonard Mosley, Dulles: A neo-Nazi underground had developed across
Biography of Eleanor, Allen and John Foster Germany which had access to funds hidden
Dulles and their Family Network, Dial Press, in Switzerland. Swiss bankers denieci the
NY, 1978, pp. 493-6; Cookridge, p. 192. allegation, but it now appears more plausible
23. Botting/Sayer, Secret Army, pp. 278 & following recent revelations on Nazi gold.
328. 34. Intelligence Division 'Summary' No. 21,
24. Grose, pp. 314-15. 15.7.47, Special Annex: 'Right Wing
25. Reese, pp. 106-8, 118-23 & 211. Movements Curtailed by Operation Selection
26. Ibid., p. 15; BBC2, Timewatch, 'Chanel', Board', State Department Decimal File 1945-
29.1.95; Simpson, p. 93; Loftus, p. 186; 49, 740.00119 Control (Germany), RG 59, NA;
Brown, Secret Servant, p. 567. Interrogation of NYT, 24.2.47; Botting/Sayer, Secret Army,
Walter Schellenberg in National Archives, p. 299; Linklater et al, p. 183; Simpson, p. 187.
Washington, DC, Modern Records Branch, 35 & 36. Linklater et al., p. 187; Bower,
Captured Enemy Documents Section in Paperclip, p. 158; Simpson, pp. 46-51 & 302;
Record Group 165 (Records of the War Cookridge, pp. 243 & 295.
Department General and Special Staffs), July 37. Loftus, p. 186; Linklater et al., pp. 190-1;
1945. Erhard Debringhaus, Klaus Barbie, US, 1984,
27. Linklater et al, p. 186; Loftus, p. 232; p. 130.
812 NOTES

38. Linklater et nl, pp. 193-5 & 209; consigned to the flames by Milano, Lyons
statement of Earl S. Browning Jr (Col. USA, and Del Greco. Col. James Milano and
retired), 'My Involvement with Klaus Barbie', Patrick Brogan, Soldiers, Spies and the Rat
15.6.88, published as Appendix in Botting/ Line: America's Undeclared War against the
Sayer, Secret Army. Soviets, Brassey's, 1995, pp. 46, 61, 117-20,
39. Graaf & Naftali; Aarons, p. 121; Bower, 144 &
220-1; Aarons /Loftus, p. 242;
Bliyid Eye (rev. ed., 1995), p. 134. Simpson, p. 186; Linklater et al. pp. 248-50.
40. Simpson, p. 77.
41. Naftali; Roger Faligot and Pascal Krop, La
The French Secret Services 1944-1984,
CHAPTER NINE: AUSTRIA:
Piscine:
Blackwell, Oxford, 1990, pp. 33-4.
THE SHOOTING GALLERY
42. Ibid., p. 299; Cesarani, p. 91; Graaf; Hella I- 3. Robert H. Keyerslingk, Austria in World
Pick, Simon Wiesenthal: A Life in Search of War II: An Anglo-American Dilemma,
Justice, Weidenfeld, 1996, p. 133. McGill-Queen's University Press, Canada,
43. George Blake, No Other Choice: An 1988, pp. 163 & 183; Gordon Shepherd, The
Autobiography, Cape, 1990, pp. 100-2. Austrian Odyssey, Macmillan, 1957, pp. 158-9
44. PRO FO 371/70501, 10.7.48; Appendix B, & 169; Young, Subversion, p. 96.
Report from HQ Intelligence Division BAOR, 4. Robert Edwin Herzstein, Waldheim: The
371/70648, 371/70504, 29.7.48; Sheila Kerr, Missing Years, Grafton, 1988, pp. 168 & 284;
'Secret Hotline to Moscow: Donald Maclean Michael Palumbo, The Waldheim Files: Myth
and the Berlin Crisis of 1948', in Anne and Reality, Faber (pbk), 1988, pp. 27 & 100;
Deighton (ed.), Britain and the First Cold War, Shepherd, pp. 269-70; Hersh, p. 140.
Macmillan, 1990, p. 72; Young, Subversion, 5 & 6. Suzanne Fesq, The Duchess of
p. 97, and Masters of Indecision, 1992, p. 26; St Albans, W.H. Allen, 1975, pp. 182-3 &
Bower, Spy, p. 210. 192-7.
45. Aarons, p. 77. 7-9. Marsha Williams, White among the Reds,
46. The Suspects Lists are still not available Shepheard-Walwyn, 1988, pp. 48, 156 & 209-
for scrutiny though a copy of a March 1947 10. A journalist and author, Pryce-Jones

CROWCASS list is held by the MoD. Loftus; became editor of the Times Literary
William R. Corson, Armies of Ignorance, 1977. Supplement in 1948. From 1961 he worked for
47-50. A ratline is 'the rope ladder reaching the Ford Foundation in New York.
to the top of the mast, the last place of safety 10. Lobster, No. 19, May 1990; Bower, Spy,
when the ship is going down'. Aarons/ p. 186.
Loftus, p. 240; Loftus, pp. 174 & 187; Aarons, II- 13. Aldrich, British Intelligence, pp. 199 &
pp. 77-8; Botting /Sayer, Secret Army, p. 329. 212; Hugh Thomas, Armed Truce, 1988,
51. David Alvarez, 'Vatican Intelligence p. 565; M. Smith, p. Ill; PRO FO 371/46604;
Capabilities in the Second World War', INS, WO 193/637a.
Vol. No. 3, July 1986; Owen Chadwick,
6, 14. David Howarth, Pursued by a Bear: A
Britainand the Vatican During the Second Biography, Collins, 1986, pp. 162-4 & 166;
World War, CUP, 1986, pp. 55, 127, 297-300 Nicholas Bethell, The Great Betrayal: The
& 313; Sam Derry, The Rome Escape Line, the Untold Story of Kim Philby's Biggest Coup,
Story of the British Organisation in Rome for Hodder, 1984, p. 140.
Assisting Escaped Prisoners-of-War 1943-44, 15. Lobster, No. 19; Bower, Spy, p. 186; T
Harrap, 1960, pp. 43 & 238; M.R.D. Foot & obit., 21.2.95. Martin-Smith later served in
J.M. Langley, MI9, 1970, pp. 165-70 & 305; Warsaw, Istanbul, Kinshasa and Tel Aviv.
Aarons /Loftus, pp. 18-19. Hugh He recounted his wartime experiences in
Montgomery's brother Peter was an 'Friuli 44' (Italy, 1991). After leaving Austria,
intelligence officer and gay partner of MI5 Gardiner worked in Frankfurt and then for
officer Anthony Blunt. two frustrating years in Seoul. In 1958, he
52-53. Farago, pp. 169-71; Tauber, Vol. 1, was posted to the British consulate-general
pp. 122-3 & 240, & Vol. 2, pp. 1054 & 1109; in West Berlin. West, Friends, p. 23; G,
Loftus; Pick, pp. 126-7. 23.2.81.
54. Linklater et al, pp. 235-6. 16. Lobster, No. 19; Ewan Butler, Amateur
55-58. George Neagoy, who was responsible Agent, Harrap, 1963, p. 102; Nicholas Elliott,
for shipping Barbie out of Bolivia, joined the Never Judge a Man by His Umbrella, Michael
CIA in 1951. The records of the ratline were Russell, Norwich, 1992, pp. 160-1; Young,
 NOTES 813

Masters, p. 26. Returning to Zurich as CIA's James Angleton, his deputy, Geoffrey
vice-consul in 1950, Edge Leslie later served MacBride, from the Control Commission in
undercover as a visa officer in Vienna in the Germany, and third secretary Hamilton
mid-fifties. 'Ham' White. Regarded as 'too
17 & 18. Palumbo, pp. 30-1 & 102; unconventional for his own good', Whyte
Herzstein, pp. 169 & 173. lived 'dangerously', believing that 'calculated
19 & 20. I, 2.11.89 & 14.3.94; Jack Saltman, indiscretion is the indispensable secret of
Kurt Waldheim: A Case to Answer?, Channel success in the information field'. Rejoining
Four/Robson, 1988, pp. 18-21 & 129; the Foreign Office, he had a successful career
Herzstein, pp. 282-3. in the Information Services (obits: I, 23 &
21-23. MoD
review of results of 27.7.90). Nicholas Elliott took over the station
investigation and involvement of Lieutenant in late 1957 with Cyril Rolo as deputy and
Waldheim, HMSO, October 1989; I, 2.11.94. Donald Prater as head of the visa section.
The British refused access to the report Elliott relied on his friend Edge Leslie, who

which was found in the CIA archives. T, had returned to the City as Second Secretary,
24.5.88; Herzstein, pp. 156 & 189-93; for advice on the Austrians, as he found 'it
Palumbo, pp. 52 & 99. difficult, most especially during negotiations

24. Palumbo, pp. 108 & 134; Aarons/Loftus, or discussions with the Viennese, to get
p. 266. down to practicalities. There were delays
25 & 26. Lobster, No. 19. everywhere and the bureaucratic machinery
27. Robert Knight, British Policy toward as a whole was frustrating at all levels.'
Occupied Austria, 1945-50, PhD thesis, Alston was listed in 1958 as 'Civil Assistant
London University, 1986; Herzstein, p. 193; at the War Office', i.e. MI5. Virginia Cowles,
WP, 30.10.86; Palumbo, pp. 52, 83 & 103-7. The Phantom Major: The Story of David Stirling
28. Shepherd, pp. 269-70. and the SAS Regiment, Fontana (pbk), 1960,
29. WP, 30.10.86; Searchlight, No. 140, pp. 114-15 & 309; Anthony Cavendish, Inside
February 1987. Intelligence, Palau Publishing (priv. pub.),
30. Christopher Simpson, The Splendid Blonde 1987, pp. 64-71; West, Faber Book of
Beast: Money, Law and Genocide in the Espionage, pp. 547-8; G, 23.2.81; Elliott,
Twentieth Century, Grove Press, NY, 1993, Umbrella, p. 161.
pp. 256 & 274-7. 39. Blake, p. 13.
31. T, 31.3.88; I, 2.11.89.
32. Blake, p. 7; Nicholas With My
Elliott,
CHAPTERTEN: ROCKETS,
Little Eye:

Russell,
Observations on the Way, Michael
Norwich, 1993, p. 41.
BOMBS AND DECEPTION
33 & 34. Blake, p. 9; Bower, Spy, p. 180; Peter I & 2. R.V. Jones, Reflections on Intelligence,
Wright, Spycatcher, Heinemann, Australia, 1990, p. 17; Alec Danchev, Very Special
1987, p. 156; statement by Peter Stanswood, Relationship, 1986, pp. 99-108; Danchev in
RMP, given to John MacLaren, 23.6.88; David Aldrich, p. 235; Arnold Kramish, The Griffin,
C. Martin, Wilderness of Mirrors, Ballantine Macmillan, 1986, p. 251.
(pbk), NY, 1981, p. 75. 3-8. Kramish, pp. 91-2, 103 & 182; West,
35 & 36. Bower, Spy, p. 178; Blake, p. 14; T, Friends, p. 23; R.V. Jones, Most Secret War:
24.11.95. British Scientific Intelligence 1939-1945,
37. The official CIA history of the project Coronet (pbk), 1979, pp. 269, 394, 595, 603,
contained within 'Berlin Tunnel' was 621-5 & 648; Thomas Powers, Heisenberg's
declassified in 1977. The claim that Nelson War: The Secret History of the German Bomb,
failed to inform the British of a major Cape, 1993, pp. 283, 364, 524 & 543.
technical advance which enabled messages to 9. Richard Aldrich and Michael Coleman,

be monitored not only in their encoded form 'The Cold War, JIC and British Signals
but as a 'clear' text is untrue. Bower, Spy, Intelligence, 1948', INS, Vol. 4, No. 3, July
p. 180; Blake, p. 6; Martin, pp. 74-6; Grose, 1989.

pp. 396-7; M. Smith, p. 116. 10. PRO AIR 2/12027, 16.6.45.

38. Vienna was a choice posting during the II & The British Intelligence Objectives
12.
fifties. Experienced staff stationed there Sub-Committee replaced CIOS in the British
included Maurice Firth (1955-6), who Zone in Germany when SHAEF was
headed R6 and was a close friend of the disbanded, but it 'was little more than a
814 NOTES

token gesture'. Chronically underfunded, it 1963; the Dutchman van den Heuvel died in
remained controlled by the War Office and April 1963, aged seventy-eight. It seems that
JIC with the result that its industrial reports as he lay dying in August 1963, Hambro
were bizarrely classed as official secrets. The ordered his secretary to burn all his secret
CIOS representative on the American Field papers.
Information Agency (Technical) (FIAT) was Sir Charles Hambro was joint head with
Brig.Raymonci Maunsell, former MI5 officer the former chiefs of the BSC, Sir William
and head of Security Intelligence Middle East Stephenson, and the OSS, 'Bill' Donovan, of

(SIME) before moving in 1944 to the World Commerce Corp (WCC). Set up in
counter-intelligence duties at SHAEF. 1946, the Panama-based WCC was intended
Maunsell put obstacles in the way of British as a 'bridge over the breakdown in foreign
industrialists who wanted to studyGerman exchange and to provide the tools,
technology. Even though the head of the machinery, and "know how" to develop
Federation of British Industries was Sir untapped resources in different parts of the
George Nelson, a former MI6 member of the world', particularly re-equipping German
Z-Network and director of SOE, obstacles industrial plant. A director claimed that 'if

remained, and industrialists failed to take therewere several WCCs, there would be no
seriously German advances in so many fields. need for a Marshall Plan'. There was also an
After Germany, Maunsell directed Unilever's intelligence role. Stephenson's BSC deputy,
Information Division (1948-63). Bower, John Pepper, succeeded him as Chair, while
Paperclip, pp. 76, 86-8 & 214-17; Cesarani, on the board were OSS officers Richard Sicre
p. 149; Simpson, Blowback, pp. 25-6. and William Horrigan. Sister corporations
13-15. James McGovem, Crossbow and included the Transamerica Corp. under
Overcast, William Morrow (pbk), US, 1964, James F. Cavagnaro and the
pp. 13, 100-1 & 152-4. British-American-Canadian Corp., chaired by
16. PRO FO 1032/565. Hambro with former MI6 officer Sir Rex
17. Kramish, p. 166; West, Friends, p. 23; Benson and former US Secretary of State
Leslie Groves, Now It Can Be Told: The Story Edward Stettinus. Under its vice-president,
of the Manhattan Project, Da Capo, NY, 1983, who was linked to
Satiris 'Sonny' Fasboulis,

pp. 170-1. anumber of Mafia-related scandals.

18. Powers, pp. 416-17; David Holloway, Commerce International (China) sponsored
Stalin and the Bomb: The Soviet Union and military assistance to Taiwan.
Atomic Energy 1939-1945, Yale University 28. Glees.
Press, 1994, pp. 108-11 & 174. 29 & 30. Bower, Paperclip, pp. 151, 179 & 192;
19 & Powers, pp. 419-20, 428 & 435;
20. Holloway, pp. 110-11.
Jones, War, pp. 600-1; Glees; Kramish, 31. The illusory rockets may indicate the
p. 168; Bower, Paperclip, pp. 148-9. For the beginnings of UFO stories. In the late forties,

transcripts see Operation Epsilon: The Farm US Project MOGUL used high-altitude
House Transcripts, University of California balloons to monitor possible fall-out from
Press, 1993. Soviet atomic explosions. Debris from one
21-26. H. Kay Jones, Butterworth: History of a crashed balloon was said to be the basis for
Publishing House, Butterworth, 1980, pp. 84, the infamous 'Roswell incident' in July 1947,
119-22 & 130-2; Tom Bower, Maxwell: The which led to allegations of a cover-up.
Outsider, Aurum, 1988, pp. 41-2; ST, 5.10.69; Interestingly, the US Air Force admitted that
Izvestiya, 22.12.68; Betty Maxwell, A Mind of it had made up stories as part of deception
My Own: My Life with Robert Maxwell, Pan operations to hide the fact that their secret
(pbk), 1995, pp. 319 & 343; Joe Haines, spy planes had been spotted. T, 29.7.95; I,

Maxwell, Futura (pbk), 1988, pp. 134-8; 4.8.97;Bower, Paperclip, pp. 113 & 194; PRO
Kramish, p. 250; Peter Thompson and BoT 211/60 (DCOS 46) 27, 11.9.46.
Anthony Delano, Maxwell: A Portrait of 32. M. Smith, p. Ill; PRO CAB 81/93,
Power, Bantam, 1988. 81/134, FO 1032/1271A & 1032/1231B.
27. Kay Jones, p. 133; information from 33. After the war
Committee on
the
Desmond Bristow; Tom Bower, Maxzuell: The Chemical Warfare focused on nerve agents
Final Verdict, HarperCollins, 1996, pp. 170-4. as future weapons. There was no mass
Until the mid-fifties, Rosebaud and Maxwell production, but 71,000 captured German
remained close. Rosebaud died in January bombs containing the agent Tabun were
 NOTES 815

brought to Britain for experimentation and 50. Denis and Mountains: A

Hills, Tyrants

used as weapons. In 1951 approval was Reckless Life, John Murray, 1992, pp. 146-7;
given for the production of 10,000 devices Wright, pp. 115-16.
and the Nancekuke facility at Portreath 51. McGovern, pp. 101-2.
opened for pilot production of nerve agents, 52 & 53. Peter A. Hofmann, 'Making
though stocks for offensive use were National Estimates During the "Missile
destroyed by 1957. British 'Declaration of Gap" INS, Vol. 1, No. 3, Sept.
', 1986, citing
Past Activities Relating to Its Former CIA document, 'A Summary of Soviet
Offensive Chemical Weapons Programme' Guided Missile Intelligence', US/UK GM4-
for the Organisation for the Prohibition of 52. 20.7.53 (DDRS (75)5-1).
Chemical Weapons (OPCW), May 1997; 54. Aldrich /Coleman.
Linda Hunt, Secret Agenda: The United States 55. JIC (48) 9 (0), 'Russian Interests,
Government, Nazi Scientists and Project Intentions and Capabilities', 23.7.48, L/WS/
Paperclip, 1945-1990, St Martin's Press, NY, 1/1173, India Office Library and Records;
1991, pp. 13, 163 & 177; Robert Harris and Holloway, pp. 104-5. Fuchs's self-same notes
Jeremy Paxman, A
Higher Former of Killing: which he handed over to his Soviet
The Secret Story of Gas and Germ Warfare, controller were also presented to his
Triad/Paladin (pbk), 1983, pp. 139-44. colleagues in his adopted country, Britain, to
34-36. Glees; Hunt, pp. 35 & 127; Bower, provide vital early assistance to the British
Paperclip, pp. 341-2. atomic bomb programme.
37 & 38. McGovern, pp. 187-9 & 201; West, 56. Jiri Kasparek, 'Soviet Russia and
Friends, p. 24. Czechoslovakia's Uranium', The Russian
39.Hunt, pp. 28-9. Review, No. 2, 1952; Linklater et al, p. Ill;
40 & 41. Bower, Spy, pp. 210-11; West, Aarons, Holloway, p.
p. 145; 111.
Friends, p. 25. 57. Pavel Sudoplotov, Special Tasks, 1994,
42. Lawrence Freedman, US Intelligence and pp. 198-9.
the Soviet Strategic Threat, Macmillan (pbk, 58. Arthur B. Darling, The Central Intelligence
2nd ed.), 1988, p. 68. Agency, 1990, pp. 161-5.
43. G.A. Tokaty-Tokaev, Stalin Means War, 59 & 60. Dwyer retired to Ottawa, where he
Harvill, 1951, p. 149; Bower, Paperclip, became head of reporting of the secret
pp. 149 & 171-2; Nicholas Daniloff, The Canadian Communications Branch, which as
Kremlin and the Cosmos, Knopf, NY, 1972, an undercover arm of the National Research
p. 50. Council was responsible for signals
44. Heinz Conradis, Design for Flight: The intelligence, in particular monitoring Soviet
Kurt Tank Story, Macdonald, 1960; Hunt, signals. In 1952 he was made Chair of the
pp. 14, 149, 156 & 178. Security Panel Sub-Committee of the Privy
45. Bower, Paperclip, pp. 269-71; G.A. Council, which looked at security cases in
Tokaty-Tokaev, Comrade X, 1956, p. 357. the civil service. He retired in 1958. John
46. West, Friends, p. 25; Wesley K. Wark, Sawatsky, Men in the Shadows: The RCMP
'Coming in from the Cold: British Security Service, Totem (pbk), Toronto, 1983,
Propaganda and the Red Army Defectors, pp. 120-1; David Stafford, Camp X, Mead,
1945-1952', The International History Review, Dodd, NY, 1987, pp. 261-2; Wilfred Basil
IX, 1, Feb. 1987. Mann, Was There a Fifth Man?: Quintessential
47. 'IRD: Origins and Establishment of the Recollections, Pergamon Press, 1982, pp. 60-3.
Foreign Office's Information Research 61. Baines emigrated to Canada, where he
Department, 1946-48', p. 10; PRO FO 371/ took up an administrative post with the NRC
71713; IRD Digest #5, 4.9.48. at Chalk Farm. Mann, pp. 63-4; Brown,
48. W. Scott Lucas and C.J. Morris, 'A very Treason, p. 399.
British crusade: the Information Research 62 & 63. Mann, p. 67; Aldrich/Coleman;
Department and the beginning of the Cold Brian Cathcart, Test of Greatness: Britain's
War', in Aldrich; PRO FO 371/77609 N135/ Struggle for the Atom Bomb, John Murray,
1024/38 & N553/1024/38; SE, 2, 9 & 16.1.49. 1994, pp. 98-9 & 109; Paul Lashmar, Spy
Daniloff, pp. 52 & 228, has an interview with Flights of the Cold War, Sutton, Stroud, 1996,
Tokaty-Tokaev. p. 38.
49.Wark; PRO WO
216/731; BAOR, 8.5.51; 64. H. Montgomery Hyde, The Atom Spies,
Bower, Spy, p. 211. Sphere (pbk), 1982, pp. 143-4; Mann, p. 68.
 .

816 NOTES

From the end of the war until the largely been discredited. Soviet security
Soviets exploded their first atomic bomb, agencies, basing their techniques on the
British RAF reconnaissance pilots 'had been success of the twenties 'Trust' and using
flying missions along the borders of all the exile groups, did develop masterly localised
Eastern bloc countries, systematically deceptions operations in the Baltic, the
violating their airspace with a fast-dash foray Ukraine and Poland against western
whenever they thought they could get away'. intelligence agencies. Collectively, however,
During 1947-8 the RAF's 192 Squadron flew 'they can be viewed as survival exercises -
a series of experimental SIGINT missions operations to pre-empt possible threats to the
over the Middle East, the Baltic and East young Bolshevik state'. That remained the
Germany. In September 1948 Lancaster and case after the war and there is little evidence
Lincohis flew from Hibbaniya, in Iraq, along that they engaged in LCS-type strategic
the Soviet border. Anthony Verrier claims operations. David A. Charters and Maurice
that while stationed in Turkey, 'Philby A.J. Tugwell, Deception Operations, 1990, p. 16.
served his Russian masters with his usual 72. Richard Aldrich (ed.). Espionage, Security
obtrusive skill', with the RAF losing 'at least and Intelligence in Britain 1945-1970,
one aircraft on the Turkish- Russian border Manchester University Press, 1998, p. 226.
in consequence'. 73 & 78. John Harvey-Jones, Getting It

65. Holloway, p. 265. Together, Mandarin (pbk), 1992, pp. 146, 149
66. Thomas Earl Mahl, '48 Land', PhD thesis, & 155-6; Richard J. Aldrich, 'Recent Western
Kent State University, Aug. 1994. Studies of Soviet Intelligence', INS, Vol. 11,
67. Bower, Spy, p. 105. Aldrich/Zametica, No. 3, July 1996; Anthony Courtney, Sailor in

pp. 362-3. a Russian Frame, Johnson, 1968, p. 52;

68 &
69. During the sixties, Dr Robert Press Charters /Tugwell, p. 268.
was appointed Assistant Chief Scientific 74. PRO Minutes of 'Inter-Service Meeting on
Adviser to the MoD on nuclear matters. the Future of VISTRE', 79/Mob/9914
Mann, pp. 70, 74, 87. (SWVI), 24.8.51, AIR 20/11420; PREM 11/
70. Lobster, No. 19. 257, Churchill to Minister of Defence, M457/
71. Anthony Cave Brown, Bodyguard of Lies, 52, 26.8.52, and reply, 2.9.52.
Star (pbk), 1977, pp. 46-7, 344 & 804-7; CoS 75. Chapman Pincher, Inside Story: A
(45)564(0), 220th Mtg (6) & 233rd Mtg (7); Documentary of the Pursuit of Power, NEL
Julian Lewis, Changing Directions, 1988, (pbk), 1979, p. 288; Brown, Treason, pp. 434-
pp. 238-9. 5; Wild obit., DT, 14.6.95; Denis Wheatley,
Brown writes that 'the spirit and The Deception Planner: My Secret War,
methodology of the LCS would live on . . Hutchinson, 1980, p. 220; Brown, Bodyguard,
and return to haunt the western Allies. The pp. 49, 116 & 806; David Mure, Practise to
British had been extremely careful to reveal Deceive, Kimber, 1977, pp. 27 & 251; B.
to the Russians only as much of the Toohey and B. Pinwill, Oyster: The Story of
deception machinery as was necessary.' In the Australian Intelligence Service, Heinemann,
July 1944, the LCS representative in Moscow Sydney, 1989, p. 44.
told John Bevan that the Russians 'distrusted 76-77. Charters /Tugwell, p. 273; Wheatley,
and hated the whole thing We know . . .
pp. 227-8; Wright, pp. 120-1.
from their treatment of [D-Day deception] 79. See Cathcart.

that they have no special organisation 80. Peter Hennessy, Never Again, 1993,
comparable with yours.' He added that 'their pp. 268-9; Anthony Verrier, The Road to

machinery for the execution of global Zimbabzve 1890-1980, Cape, 1986, p. 8.

deceptions was slow and cumbersome' and 81. Peter Malone, The British Nuclear
was unlikely 'to divert brain-power to this Deterrent, Croom Helm, 1984, pp. 4-12;
specialised form of warfare' (Overlord file of Holloway, pp. 153 & 322.
the US Military Mission to Moscow, Bolton 82. I, 12.9.94; loS, 11.3.90; G, 5.8.95; 'Moscow
to Bevan, 19.7.44, MMR, NR). Brown claims, Criterion: The Secret History of British
however, that the Russians 'soon established Nuclear Weapons', BBC2, 6.8.95.

a massive deception organisation of their 83. John Baylis, Professor of International

own'. Defector Anatoli Golitsyn did make Politics at the University of Wales, in
such claims in the early sixties with regard Contemporary Record, Aug. 1994.
to the Sino-Soviet split, but his testimony has 84. 1, 14.2.95.
 NOTES 817

p. 156; Coudenhove-Kalergi, p. 214; West,

Friends, p. 13; Robert H. Keyerslingk, Austria
PART THREE THE SOVIET in World War II, 1988, p. 63; Richard J.
EMPIRE Aldrich, 'European Integration: An American
Intelligence Connection', in A. Deighton
CHAPTER ELEVEN: (ed.). Elites and European Integration, 1945-63,
INTERMARIUM Macmillan, 1996.
MI6's operations in Austria were
1. Count Coudenhove-Kalergi, An Idea
plagued by security fears. During 1940 the
Conquers the World, Hutchinson, 1953, p. 214;
resistance groups were exposed by an agent
Gordon Shepherd, The Austrian Odyssey,
working for the Nazi SD. Those who escaped
1957, pp. 110-12.
to London and Canada were funded by MI6
2.Zygmunt Nagorski, 'Liberation
to rebuild a pro-Habsburg, anti-communist
Movements in Exile', Journal of Central
Free Austria Movement. Its London leader,
European Affairs, July 1950; Brown, Secret
the last foreign minister of the
Servant, p. 143; Aarons/Loftus, pp. 51 & 156;
Austro-Hungarian monarchy, Ferdinand
Simpson, p. 181.
Czerin, joined with Hungarian exiles and the
3. Alan Palmer, The Lands Between: A History
Romanian ambassador, V. V. Tilea, and
of East-Central Europe since the Congress of
foreign minister in exile and MI6 agent
Vienna, Weidenfeld, 1970, p. 207; Simpson,
Grigore Gafencu, in promoting federalism
p. 181; Aarons, p. 74; Aarons/Loftus, p. 63.
through the Fabian Society-backed Danubian
4. A small group of right-wing Catholic
Club.
Austrians began in March 1938 to organise
7. PRO FO 371/24392, C 10407; Foreign
resistance groups. The Legitimist students'
Office Research and Press Service report,
association was recognised by Archduke
'The Policy of the Catholic Church in the
Otto 'as the authorized underground
Danube Valley', 21.10.42, 371/33434;
monarchist movement in Austria', while the
Chadwick, p. 303; Michael M. Boll, Cold War
Austrian Freedom Movement joined forces
in the Balkans: American Foreign Policy and the
with a monarchist group led by Viennese
Emergency of Communist Bulgaria, 1943-1947,
lawyer Dr Jakob Kastelic and sought a
University of Kentucky, 1984, p. 14.
Pan-Danubian federation. These 'cells' soon
8. Peter Grose {Gentleman Spy, p. 157)
made contact with MI6. Brown, Secret
dismisses Hohenlohe's reports of these
Servant, p. 189; Shepherd, pp. 155-6.
meetings, claiming that he embroidered his
5. Coudenhove-Kalergi, pp. 116 & 214-19;
account. Burton Hersh {The Old Boys, 1992,
Hugh Seton-Watson, The East European
pp. 78 & 103-4), however, suggests that
Revolution, 1952, p. 150; Feliks Gross & M.
much of the controversy is because 'SS
Kamil Diziewanowski, 'Plans by Exiles from
summations of the exchanges appear to have
East European Countries', in Walter Lipgens
passed through Russian hands on their way
(ed.). Documents on the History of European
which the
to the archives, after USSR News
Integration, Vol. 2: 'Plans for European Union
Services waited until 1948 and the upheavals
in Great Britain and in Exile 1939-1945',
of the Cold War to put them out as
Walter de Gruyter, 1986.
despatches'. He adds that 'their thrust is
6. Kenneth Cohen joined MI6 in 1935 from
borne out' by related intelligence files.
the navy, in which he claimed to have been
the only Jew. He was chief of staff to Claude
9. Hersh, pp. 110-15; PRO WO
218 25,5; 43
CAB 66/37; War Cabinet (43) 16.6.43 CAB
Dansey, whose Z-network was independent
65/34; Aarons/Loftus, pp. 57 & 181.
of, though parallel to, the MI6 sections.
10. Anthony Eden's private secretary, Oliver
Brown, Secret Servant, pp. 19, 189-95 & 801.
Harvey, noted in his diary (26.4.44)
Brown interviewed Cohen, April 1983.
Churchill's hankering for fallen kings: 'I am
Information from author Michael Baigent,
only afraid the P.M. may rush to their rescue
letter 7.5.94, who interviewed Cohen, 6.8.82,
. Habsburg, Hohenzollern or Glucksburg'.
. .

and holds OSS file, 6.4.42; William J.

Also hankering was SOE controller Lord
Donovan papers, US Army War College, Fort
Selboume, who embraced continental
Carlisle, Penn.: telegram to 'Q' from the
royalists and saw himself as 'fighting a
British Security Co-ordination, New York,
rearguard action for Empire'. Keyerslingk,
26.3.42; PRO FO 371/25031, R3851; Shepherd,
pp. 96-100, 137 & 230-4. Rothwell, p. 96;
818 NOTES

David Weigall, 'British ideas of European Hidfo (Bridgehead) exposed 'the Jewish
unity and regional confederation in the conspiracy'. Palmer, pp. 285-6. See Chapter
context of Anglo-Soviet relations, 1941-45', 11, 'Hungary', in Denis Eisenberg, The
inM.L. Smith and Peter M.R. Stirk (eds). Re-emergence of Fascism, McGibbon & Kee,
Making the Neiu Europe: European Unity and 1967.
the Second Worhl War, Pinter, 1990. 21. Gabor Peter was allegedly the lover in
Chatham House operated as 'a Vienna in the 1930s of Philby's wife-to-be
semi-independent, confidential information Litzi Friedman. Paul V. Gorka, Budapest
anti intelligence gathering office for the Betrayed: A Prisoner's Story of the Betrayal of
Foreign Office'. At the beginning of the war, the Hungarian Resistance Movement to the

Philip Toyi^bee established at Balliol College, Russians, Oak-Tree Books, 1986, p. 17;
Oxford, the Foreign Research and Press Palmer, p. 304.
Service (FRPS). In charge of its South-Eastern The military plot leader was Gen. Lajos
Europe section was Prof. Robert Veress, and among civilian conspirators were
Seton-Watson, who had served during the members of the Smallholder's Party who
First World War with Toynbee in the were accused of espionage against Red Army
IntelligenceBureau of the Department of installations. Veress was condemned to
Information. A powerful voice during the death, reprieved and deported to Siberia. He
First War in favour of breaking up the was not freed until the 1956 uprising. Stanley
Austro-Hungarian Empire, by the thirties M. Max, The United States, Great Britain and
Seton-Watson was a supporter of economic the Sovietisation of Hungary, 1945-1948, East
and political union. A separate unit for the European Monographs, Boulder, NY:
'Danubian Countries' headed by Columbia University Press, 1985, p. 95.
Seton-Watson 's assistant, the Romanian-born 22. Simpson, p. 182; Hersh, p. 233; Gorka,
Prof. D. Mitrany, influenced postwar p. 4.
planning, with members appointed to the 23. It was not until a 1950 request for his
FO's own Research Department. extradition that Vajta was finally thrown out
11. According to Vojtech Mastny ('Europe in of the United States. The Vatican arranged
US-USSR Relations: A Topical Legacy', his employment at a small Catholic college
Problems of Communism, XXXVII, Jan. 1988), in Colombia.
Moscow policy was 'to hinder anything that 24-27. Geoffrey Elliott, / Spy: The Secret Life

might enable the smaller states to pool their of a British Agent, St Ermin's Press /Little,
resources and gain strength'. Their Brown, 1998; Stefan Korbonski, Warsazu in
'permanent weakness and fragmentation Exile, Allen & Unwin, pp. 28, 158, 194-7 &

were a prerequisite for Soviet security'. 232-4; Aarons/Loftus, pp. 60-5.

Soviet intentions in eastern Europe, however, 28-31. Gorka, pp. iv, xii, 4, 42-8, 63, 77, 95,
did little to alter British aspirations - as laid 107 & 119-121.
out in an October 1944 Post-War 32 & 33. Ibid., p. 136; E.H. Cookridge, Spy
Reconstruction Committee policy paper. Trade, Frewin, 1976, pp. 32-3, and Gehlen,
12-13 &
18-19. Aarons/Loftus, pp. 37-8 & p. 364.
53-6; Nagorski. 34-36. Palmer, p. 248; Scott Anderson and
14-16. Hersh, CIC reports on
p. 182; Jon Lee Anderson, Inside the League: The
Intermarium from CIC sub-detachments in Shocking Expose of How Terrorists, Nazis and
Salzburg and Rome, 23.6.46, 21.8.46 & Latin American Death Squads Have Infiltrated

11.4.50. R.G. 47 (Suitland), the World Anti-Communist League, Dodd,

Adjutant-General's Office, 1917 forward; Mead, NY, 1986, pp. 14-20; Hersh, p. 209.
Aarons, Aarons/Loftus, pp. 52-9
p. 74; & 37. Aarons/Loftus, p. 232; Anderson, p. 34.
62-4; Simpson, pp. 180-3. 38. 'John Whitwell' (aka Leslie Nicholson),
17. John Saville, The Politics of Continuity, British Agent, Kimber, 1966, p. 220; Hersh,
1993, p. 53. pp. 203 & 209.
20. In London, Arrow Cross members 39. Simpson, pp. 96-7; Palmer, p. 300;
wanted for war crimes poured out a stream Eduard Mark, 'The OSS in Romania, 1944-
of violently anti-Semitic and Holocaust 45: An Intelligence Operation of the Early
revisionist literature. Josef Sueli published Cold War', INS, Vol. 9, Nos. 2, April 1994;
The True War Criminals,which claimed that Rothwell, p. 379.
accounts of the gas chambers were faked. 40. Denis Deletant, 'The Securitate and the
 NOTES 819

Police State inRumania: 1948-64', INS, Union and Russian Communist Imperialism,
Vol. 8,No. 4, Oct. 1993. Bruce Publishing, US, 1952, p. 209; Pavlo
41. Durcansky was editor of the nationalist Shandruk, Arms of Valor, Robert Speller, NY,
Nastup around which gravitated 'Young 1959, pp. xviii & xx; J.H. Watson report
Generation' Hlinka Guardists, who were made of tour of the Ukraine, June & July
placed by Durcansky (Minister of Home and 1939, reprinted in Lubomyr Y. Luciuk &
Foreign Affairs) in key state and party posts. Bohdan S. Kordan, Anglo-American
Palmer, p. 235; Seton-Watson, pp. 146-7; Perspectives on the Ukrainian Question 1938-
Aarons, pp. 65-6; Yeshayahu Jelinek, 1951: A Documentary Record, Limestone, NY,
'Storm-troopers in Slovakia: the Rodobrana 1987, pp. 51-60.
and the Hlinka Guard', JCH, Vol. 16, No. 3, 5. E.S. Charlton, Political Intelligence
1971. Department, 5.3.40, memorandum on
42. 44 & 45. Aarons /Loftus, pp. 218-22. Polish-Ukrainian Problem, in Luciuk/
43. Stefan Ilok with Lester Tanzer, Kordan, pp. 75-77; PRO FO 371/24473;
Brotherhood of Silence: The Story of an Smal-Stocky, Captive Nations, p. 202.
Anti-Communist Underground, Robert B. Luce, 6. Rosenberg's views on the Caucasus had

US, 1963, pp. ix-x & 235. been influenced by Alexander Nikuradze, a
46. Josef Frolik, The Frolik Defection: The Georgian physicist. An avid populariser of
Memoirs of an Intelligence Agent, Corgi (pbk), the geopolitics of Dr Albrecht Haushofer and
1976, p. 86; Josef Josten, Oh, My Country, his theories of 'large spaces', he
Latimer House, 1949. masterminded Rosenberg's scheme for
47 & 48. Frolik, pp. 66-9, 70 & 76. Bower, German lordship in a Caucasus
Spy, p. 257; Arnold M. Silver, 'Questions, confederation, in which Georgia would play
Questions, Questions: Memories of the leading role in an anti-Russian cordon
Oberursel', INS, Vol. 8, No. 2, April 1993. sanitaire. Nikuradze's dreams relied on the

'Light' lived in semi-retirement in Folkestone support of the Paris-based Promethean

until his death in 1962. League. Dallin, pp. 89 & 228; Allen, p. 385;
Aarons, p. 73.
David Lampe, The Last Ditch, Cassell, 1968,
CHAPTERTWELVE: THE 7.

Wilkinson/Astley, pp. 34-5 & 36;

PROMETHEAN LEAGUE p. 63;
information from John Hope; John
1. Dr Roma Smal-Stocky, 'The Struggle of the Armstrong, Ukrainian Nationalism (2nd ed.),
Subjugated Nations in the Soviet Union for Ukrainian Academic Press, US, 1966, p. 31.
Freedom: Sketch of the History of the 8 & 9. Frank McLynn, Fitzroy Maclean, John
Promethean Movement', Ukrainian Quarterly, Murray, 1992, pp. 19-20, 52, 63, 136 & 181.
No. Ill, autumn 1947, and The Captive The Independent article on this project
Nations: Nationalism of the Non-Russian (26.2.90) was based on a document (File
Nations in the Soviet Union, Bookman, NY, Number N 5736/G) which had originally
1950, p. 159; W.E.D. Allen, The Ukraine: A been released in 1970 but was withdrawn
History, CUP, 1940, p. 342; Alexander Dallin, and reclassed as unavailable until 2015.
German Rule in Russia 1941-45: A Study in 10. J. Drexel Biddle, Jr, report to State
Occupation Policies (2nd ed.), Macmillan, Department, 15.12.38, US National Archives
1981, p. 228; Alain Desrohes, Le ProbVeme M1286, Reel 3.
Ukrainian et Simon Petlura, Nouvelles 11. In the post-WWl period, when British
Editions Latines, Paris, 1962. forces occupied the strategically important
2. St J. Paprocki, 'Political Organisation of oil port of Baku, twenty-six Soviet
the Ukrainian Exiles after the Second World commissars were executed on what Stalin
War', Eastern Quarterly, Vol. V, June 1952. erroneously believed were British orders.
Paprocki was a member of the Promethean Teague-Jones, alias Ronald Sinclair, was the
League in London after the Second World intelligence officer suspected by Stalin of
War. Allen, p. 342. ordering the execution. He went on to serve
3. Smal-Stocky, 'The Struggle', and Captive in the United States during WW2 under Ellis
Nations, p. 159; Brown, Secret Servant, p. 143; as consul general in New York. In October
Loftus, p. 54; Armstrong, p. 31. 1920, Stalin inspected Baku in Georgia,
4.Smal-Stocky, Captive Nations, pp. 61 & 106, which was seen as the base for British
and The Nationality Problem of the Soviet operations, and launched a murderous
820 NOTES

campaign; a model for later excesses. Stalin an officer in MI5's Bl (B) Division, played a
remained perpetually concerned about 1VII6 key role in the wartime deception operation,
machinations and often warned communist MINCEMEAT. Raymond Challinor, The
leaders to be vigilant. Ellis later wrote about Struggle for Hearts and Minds: Essays on the
his experiences in The Transcaspian Episode, Second World War, Bewick, 1995, p. 29;
Hutchinson, 1963. Reginald Teague-Jones, McLynn, p. 63; Sir John Slessor, The Central
Tlie Spi/ Who Disappeared: Diary of a Secret Blue, Cassell, 1956, p. 270; Paul Leverkuehn,
Mission to Central Asia in 1918, Gollancz German Military Intelligence, Weidenfeld,
(pbk), 1991. 1954, pp. 5-8; Bradley F. Smith, Sharing
12-14. Chapman Pincher, Tlieir Trade Is Secrets with Stalin, 1996, pp. 18-20.
Treachery, Sidgwick & Jackson, 1981, 26-7, 29 & 30. Dallin, pp. 11-12, 88, 117-18,

pp. 195-202: The Ellis Case', Chapter 45; Too 135, 235-6, 258-9, 272-3, 541, 559 & 610-11.
Secret, Too Soon, 1984, pp. 52 & 452, and Smal-Stocky, Captive Nations, pp. 11 & 162,
Traitors, 1987, pp. 86, 160-3 & 317-21; and 'The Struggle'; Armstrong, p. 32.
John Costello, Mask of Treachery, 1988 28. Hitler railed against the exilegroups on
p. 143; Aarons/Loftus, pp. 153 & 227. See racial grounds - attacking Rosenberg's
Hugo Dewar, Assassins at Large, 1951, romantic attachment to his 'political

pp. 1-12. underworld shop' - deriding them for their

15. Andrew, Secret Service, pp. 412 & 422. failure to make a revolution. 'The emigres
16. Brown, Secret Servant, p. 144; Aarons/ have accomplished nothing at all.' There was
Loftus, pp. 157-8. also the fear that they had been penetrated
17. Ronald C. Cooke & Roy
Conyers Nesbit, by Soviet Intelligence; the charge was correct
German
Target: Hitler's Oil: Allied Attacks on but at the end of 1941, in the 'peculiar
Oil Supplies 1939-1945, Kimber, 1985, pp. 23- twilight of illegality' which existed, the
31; Douglas Dodds-Parker, Setting Europe Abwehr sponsored various military
Ablaze: Some Accounts of Ungentlemanly formations such as the Georgian Tamara
Warfare, Springwood, 1983, pp. 38-9; Nikolai Legion and the Cossack Corps, who later
Tolstoy, Stalin's Secret War, Cape, 1981, transferred their allegiance to the SS - 'not
pp. 166-7; William Stevenson, Intrepid's Last because of ideological proclivities but to
Case, 1984, p. 261. obtain more and better arms'. Armstrong,
18. Dodds-Parker, p. 39; Fitzroy Maclean, pp. 300-1.
Eastern Approaches, Cape, 1951, p. 350; 31. Richard Landwehr, Fighting for Freedom:
Richard Deacon, 'C: A Biography of Sir The Ukrainian Volunteer Division of the
Maurice Oldfield, Macdonald, 1985, p. 53; Waffen-SS, Bibliophile Legion Books, US,
Brown, Secret Servant, p. 143. From the old 1984, pp. 19-29 & 45; Lt-Gen. Wladyslaw
school of Russian generals, Wrangel later Anders, Hitler's Defeat in Russia, Natraj

created the Russian Armed Service Union Publishers, India, 1975, pp. 173-204.
with headquarters in Yugoslavia. Landwehr, pp. 57-85 &
32. Dallin, p. 599;
19-22. McLynn, p. 63; Tolstoy, Stalin's Secret 132-40; Basil Dmytryshyn, 'Nazis and the SS
War, pp. 157, 160-4, 171 & 183; Paprocki; Volunteer Division Galicia', American Slavic
Smal-Stocky, 'The Struggle'; Armstrong, and East European Review, Feb. 1956.
pp. 33 & 55; Dodds-Parker, pp. 37 & 49; 33. With the consent of the Polish
Stevenson, p. 262; Luciuk/Kordan, pp. 40-1; underground, a Promethean-led Caucasian
West, Secret War, p. 221. Committee under Dr George Nakashidz was
23. Paprocki; Smal-Stocky, The Struggle'. created in occupied Poland. Mark Aarons
24. Stevenson (p. 265) suggests that the RAF and John Loftus, The Secret War against the
plan to bomb Baku was given to the Soviets Jews,Heinemann, 1995, p. 137; Smal-Stocky,
by the national organiser of the Communist 'The Struggle'.
Party, Douglas Springhall, who was 34. On Fritz Arlt see Jurgen Thorwald, The
sentenced to seven years' imprisonment Illusion: Soviet Soldiers in Hitler's Armies,
under the OSA in July 1943 for obtaining Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, NY, 1975,
information from an Air Ministry clerk. pp. 188-91 & 312-13.
25. MI6's monitoring of oil supplies to 35. Dallin, pp. 558-9, 611, 625, 646 & 654-6;
Germany was run by the only senior woman Nikolai Tolstoy, Victims of Yalta, Hutchinson,
officer, Miranda Gwyer, a former secretary to 1988, pp. 355-7; Shandruk, pp. 204-5;
Admiral Sinclair. Her brother, John Gwyer, Cesarani, pp. 10 & 23; Aarons/Loftus,
 NOTES 821

Simpson, p. 170;
Ratlines, pp. 180-1; 66605, 26.2.47; Shandruk, p. 299; Aarons/
Armstrong, pp. 171 & 180-6. Loftus, Ratlines, p. 204.
36-40. Shandruk, pp. 197-206, 227-36, 260-3 54 & 55. Nicholas P. Vakar, Belorussia: The
& 279-81; Aarons/Loftus, Ratlines, p. 186; Making of a Nation, Harvard University Press,
Walter Dushnyck, 'Archbishop Buchko - US, 1956, p. 279; Shandruk, p. 204; Nagorski;
Arch-Shepherd of Ukrainian Refugees', Bower, Spy, pp. 205-6.
Ukrainian Quarterly, spring 1975; information 56-58. Philby, 1969, pp. 143-50; Elliott,
from John Hope. pp. 118-25 & 135; West, MI6, Panther (pbk),
41. Disappearing from viewis Dr Arlt. He 1985, pp. 21 & 214, and Friends, p. 151;
was well by the British Army and,
treated Borovik, p. 255.
given our knowledge of what happened to 59-63. Designed to gather long-term strategic
his colleagues, would be unsurprising to
it intelligence on the USSR, the Wansee
discover that he too was recruited by MI6. Institute provided ethnic and Jewish surveys,
Shandruk, p. 289. A St Vladimir's Trident and had 'one of the best Russian-language
metal cap badge was manufactured in libraries' on the political, scientific, economic

Prague towards the end of the war, replacing and military aspects of the USSR. During
the SS death's-head and other German 1943-4, the institute furnished intelligence
emblems. Landwehr, p. 218; Tolstoy, Yalta, for the German Army to recruit exile

p. 320; Aarons/Loftus, Ratlines, pp. 186 & movements. Shortly after, Poppe transferred
192. to the SS-headed East Asia Institute - part of
42-3 & 49. Denis Hills, pp. 110-14 & 129-30; OMi - where he wrote reports on Mongolia.
Cesarani, pp. 5 & 113; BBC2 Newsnight, Nicholas Poppe, Reminiscences, Western
11.12.89; S, 23.12.89; PRO FO 371/66605; Washington University Centre for East Asian
report on Ukrainians in SEP camp No. 374, Studies, US, 1983, pp. 154, 164, 170-5, 186-7
21.2.47. & 190-6; Cesarani, pp. 150-4; Simpson,
44 & 45. Dushnyck; Cesarani, p. 103; pp. 48, 118-19 & 194; John Loftus, The
Shandruk, pp. 291-3. Belarus Secret, 1983, pp. 168-9.
46. Hills, pp. 126-7; Tolstoy, Yalta, pp. 454- 64. Hersh, p. 251; Roger Hutchinson, Crimes
6, 461 & 468. of War: The Antanas Gecas Affair, Mainstream,
47. Scott-Hopkins stayed in Military Edinburgh, p. 55.
Intelligence until 1950 and remained an 65. According to an M16 officer, Philby and
M16 agent until 1973, during
'intermittent' his officers also 'trailed their coats ... in the
which time he became friendly with senior hope would bite. The
that the Russians
officers such as Oldfield and Stephen de object: to obtainsome knowledge of the
Mowbray. Tolstoy, Yalta, pp. 469 & 610; Russians' capabilities and intentions and to
Leigh, p. 116. obtain foreknowledge if the Russians issued
48. McLynn, p. 290. war orders' (Brown, Treason, p. 383). Yuri
50. In order to appease his Maclean critics, Modin with Jean-Charles Deniau and
employed known anti-Soviets who were not Agnieszka Ziarek, My Five Cambridge Friends,
unhappy at the turn of events. Ex-SOE Headline, 1995; Borovik, p. 251; Philby,
officer Michael Lees admitted that he gave p. 147. Machray was transferred to the
'the benefit of every doubt' to the Foreign Office's security department.
Ukrainians. Cesarani, pp. 87-8 & 128-9; 66. John Hope information & CIC files;

minutes of meeting of Allied Commission for Robert Cecil, 'The Cambridge Comintern', in
Austria, 3.3.47: PRO, FO 371/66710; ACA, Christopher Andrew and David Dilks, The
Vienna to Control Office, London, 9.3.47; Missing Dimension, 1984; Aarons, p. 79;
371/66709; Aarons/Loftus, Ratlines, p. 196; Smal-Stocky, Nationality, p. 211.
McLynn, p. 285. 67 & 68. See Firuz Kazemzadeh, The Struggle
51. Cesarani, pp. 106, 121 & 130-1; Bower, for Transcaucasia (1917-1921), Philosophical
Blind Eye (rev. ed.), p. 411. more on Jordania,
Library, Oxford, 1968, for
52. Cesarani, p. 159; Hansard HoC, War who is Promethean that Philby
the only
Crimes Bill, Vol. 169, Cols 950-1, 19.3.90; names, perhaps because he and his Soviet
Anthony Glees, 'War Crimes: The Security handlers knew that Jordania's niece, Nina
and Intelligence Dimensions', INS, Vol. 7, Gegichkori, was the wife of Beria, a
No. 3, July 1992; PRO ALG 254/1/78. Mingrelian from western Georgia. The
53. PRO Maclean to FO, 26.2.47, FO 371/ Paris-based Georgian emigres were
822 NOTES

penetrated by the NKVD, through one of its University. Brown, Secret Servant, p. 143. In
officers and Beria's secretary, Vardo 1937 a small White Russian Nazi Party was
Maximalishvili. When in 1951 Beria fell from founded with subsidies from Berlin.
favour, Stalin fabricated the 'Mingrelian 3. Zacharka later claimed that he rejected

Affair', which linked Beria to a Promethean German offcers of co-operation with the
conspiracy to secede Georgia from the Soviet BNR. Vakar's conclusion that 'a myth is
Union as an ally of Turkey. A number of being built up by the supporters of the BNR'
Mingrelians were arrested and 'special tasks' is closer to the truth. Vakar, pp. 165, 177 &
carried out sabotage operations in Turkey 263; A. Rossi, The Russo-German Alliance:
and Paris, including kidnapping relatives of August 1939-fune 1941, Chapman & Hall,
Beria's wife. Smal-Stocky, 'The Struggle'; 1950, pp. 26-71 & 119-24; Dallin, pp. 213-16
Philby, pp. 150 & 153-8; Borovik, pp. 251-2; & 222-4.
Knightley, Masterspy, pp. 146-7; Cecil in 4.Vakar, pp. 266 & 271; Loftus, p. 31;
Andrew/Dilks; Sudoplatov, pp. 103 & 320-3. Anderson, pp. 43-4; The Einsatzgruppen
69.Gordon Brook-Shepherd, The Storm Birds, Reports, Holocaust Library, NY, 1989,
Weidenfeld, 1988,p. 51. Rodney Dennys pp. 177-82; Gerald Reitlinger, The Final
became head of station in 1951 (Harold Solution, Vallentine-Mitchell, 1953, pp. 220-7;
Perkins in 1953), with Halsey Colchester Hersh, p. 276.
Second Secretary and Alan Banks 5. Soviet spies took the opportunity to
vice-consul, Istanbul. infiltrate the German administration, posing
70 & Courtney, pp.
71. 19, 48, 51 & 53; as collaborationists with instructions to turn
Borovik, pp. 252-3. the local population against the occupiers
72. Turkey also became a centre for guerrilla through a series of brutal reprisals. Vakar,
warfare programmes against eastern Europe pp. 185-6, 190-3, 202 & 263; Aarons, pp. 69-
run by the US, which had bases there 70; Dallin, pp. 221-2.
controlled by the Office of Policy 6. The number of 'delegates' to the
Co-ordination station chief. Loftus, p. 184; 'Belorussian Congress in Minsk', on 27 June
Bower, Blind Eye, p. 79, and Spy, p. 207. 1944, was, according to Niko Makashidze (The
73. MI6 attempted to establish a workable Truth about ABN, ABN Press and Information
'Ukrainian Council'; given the wide Bureau, Munich, 1960, p. 54) 1,039, 'from all
divergence in political views, it was bound parts of the country, representing all classes of
to fail. At the end of the war, most of the the people'. It was not 'a German invention,
Ukrainian 'social democrats' made their way but a direct product of the struggle of the
to London, where they formed the Ukrainian Belorussian people for the liberation of their
Socialist Party.They were heavily involved country from occupants and mainly from the
in the republic's postwar successor, the Russians and the Poles'. But not, of course,
Ukrainian National Council in Exile, under from the Nazis. Vakar, pp. 202-5; Loftus,
the 'presidency' of Andrew Livitsky, a Nazi pp. 48, 167, 200 & 218; Dallin, pp. 224 & 620-1.
collaborator. Associated with the Socialist 7. Ostrowsky edited a fascist magazine,

International, theywere a highly secretive Ranitsa. Chief of the Smolensk region Dimitri
group - their source of funding, which Kasmowich commanded one of Skorzeny's
appeared to be substanial, remains unknown, special intelligence units, while his cousin
though the Soviets claimed that they were led a Black Cat unit.
MI6-sponsored. Information from Peter E. 8. The 29th and 30th Waffen Grenadier
Newell & John Hope, and CIC documents; Division der SS (russicheNr 1 & Nr 2), from
Sudoplatov, p. 252. which the Belarus Legion emerged, included
74 & 75. Shandruk, pp. xxii-xxiii, 205-6 & both Belorussians and Ukrainians. Members
299. Simpson, p. 170; Nagorski. of the Legion had committed atrocities in
Poland, especially during the Warsaw
Uprising. Vakar, p. 278; Loftus, pp. 45-56,
CHAPTER THIRTEEN: 81, 97-105, 200 & 218; Anderson, pp. 43-4;
BELORUSSIA John Keegan, Wajfen-SS: The Asphalt Soldiers,

1 & Loftus, pp. 20-1, 54, 202 & 207;

2. Pan/Ballantine (pbk), 1979, pp. 139 & 158.
Vakar, p. 252. Vakar had access to primary 9. Loftus, pp. 54-5; Botting/Sayer, Secret

and classified documents from the influential Army, p. 341; Faligot/Krop, pp. 73-5.
Russian Research Centre at Harvard 10. 'Die Behandlung des Russichen Problems
 NOTES 823

Wahrend der Zeit des National in Berlin and learned that Konovalets 'had
Sozialistischen Regimes in Deutschland', Top twice met with [Goering], who offered to
Secret, ACSI - Document File,
Sensitive train several of his followers in the Nazi
Suitland, Maryland. The document was Party school in Leipzig'. An 'illegal' Soviet
handed to American intelligence agencies agent, Pavel Sudoplatov positioned himself
which protected the author, providing him close to the Ukrainian leader and learned
with a university teaching post. Loftus, that by 1936 2,000 men were being trained in

pp. 67-8 & 203; Dallin, pp. 553 & 658; Galicia as part of an international terrorist
Simpson, p. 295. network which was funded by the Abwehr.
11. Anderson, p. 44; Loftus, pp. 57, 97 & 3. Col. Melnyk was allied to Mussolini who,

165-7. in 1938, posted a '100 per cent strong

12. The Belorussian Central Representation anti-German fascist' as consul to Lvov.
(BCR) was also referred to as the Belorussian Shtykalo, pp. 489-90; Murdered by Moscow,
Council and, still later, the Belorussian p. 35; Sudoplatov, pp. 26-9; Armstrong,
Liberation Front, by the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc pp. 23 & 36; Paprocki; Allen, p. 341; Luciuk/
of Nations. ABN Correspondence, Vol. XLI, Kordan, pp. 76 & 82-3.
May-June 1991. 5. Bower, Red Web, pp. 54, 121 & 133;

13-20. Vakar, pp. 22, 203, 220-2 & 278-80; Cookridge/Gehlen, p. 307; Simpson, p. 161;
Loftus, pp. 57-8, 68-71, 82-6, 109-18, 152, Armstrong, pp. 25, 33 & 42; Dallin, pp. 115-
166 &206; Anderson, p. 44; Botting/Sayer, 16; Yaroslav Bilinsky, The Second Soviet
Secret Army, p. 341; Philby, pp. 180-8. Republic: The Ukraine after World War II,

21. Smal-Stocky, 'Secret Struggle', and Rutgers University Press, US, 1964, p. 5.
Nationality, p. 336; ABN Correspondence; Bilinsky was appointed an Associate of the
Loftus, p. 166. Russian Research Centre at Harvard
22. G, 10.9.96. University (1956-8) which collected material
for the book. Palmer, pp. 235 & 241.
Voloshyn was by the communists
CHAPTER FOURTEEN: THE 1946.
killed in

ANTI-BOLSHEVIK BLOC 6 & Dallin, pp. 115-18; Simpson, pp. 161-

OF NATIONS 3;
8.

Village Voice, 11.2.86.

1,2 & 4. Armstrong, pp. 19-23 & 37-8; V. 7. Chaykovsky, p. 44; Armstrong, p. 55;
Cherednychenko, Anatomy of Treason, Paprocki; Sudoplatov, pp. 23-4; Cookridge,
Politvidav Ukraini, Kiev, 1984, pp. 12-19 & Gehlen, p. 307.
30-40; Tomas Rezac and Valentin Tsurkan, 9. The Banderites jettisoned their
anted, Progress, Moscow, 1988, pp. 36-9 & anti-clericalism to join cause with theGreek
76-85; Orest Subtelny, Ukraine: A History, Catholic (Uniate) Church - 'anti-Muscovite
University of Toronto Press, Canada, 1989, but linked to the Vatican, pro-German but
pp. 441-3; Dmytro Shtykalo, Russian not trusted by the Germans'. Its head,
Oppression Reports and Documents,
in Ukraine: Andrew Sheptytsky, a Polish count and
Ukraine Publishers, 1962, pp. 227-8; Danylo former high-ranking officer of the Austrian
Chaykovsky, 'Stepan Bandera, His Life and Army, aimed to convert the East through the
Struggle', in Murdered by Moscow: Uniate Church. Myroslav Yurkevich, Ukraine
Petlura-Konovalets-Bandera, Ukrainian During World War II, p. 71; Allen, p. 390;
Publishers, 1962, pp. 41-4; Sudoplatov, Armstrong, p. 63; Simpson, p. 161;
pp. 12-16; Allen, pp. 340-1; Simpson, p. 161; Committee for German Unity, The Truth
Dallin, p. 114; Paprocki. On early history see about Oberldnder, East Berlin, 1960, p. 89;
Alexander J. Motyl, The Turn to the Right: The Leverkuehn, pp. 164-5; Dallin, p. 485;
and developments of Ukrainian
ideological origins Bilinsky, p. 96; Armstrong, pp. 74-5;
nationalism, 1919-1929, East European Sudoplatov, p. 251; Aarons/ Loftus, Ratlines,
Monograph series. No. 65, Columbia p. 247; Rezac/Tsurkan, pp. 15-33-
University Press, NY, 1980. 10. Dr Philip Friedman ('Ukrainian Jewish
By 1934 the Soviet Unified State Political Relations during the Nazi Occupation', YIVO
Directorate (OGPU) had penetrated the Annual of Jewish Social Science, NY YIVO
OUN. Konovalets's deputy, Vassili Lebed, Institute for Jewish Research, Vol. XII 1958-
and his delegate in Finland were Soviet 9) has documented the participation of
agents. Lebed met with German Intelligence Ukrainians in the pogroms. 'The pro-Nazi
824 NOTES

elements consciously exploited the "Jewish created the Ukrainian Insurgent Army
problem" in order to attract the largest (UPA), it was Borovets who
June 1940 in
possible number and
of adherents formed 'small insurgent detachments'. His
fellow-travellers.' OUN-B
adopted a Polesskaya Sich or UPA began operations
virulently anti-Semitic, pro-Nazi programme against the Soviets in 1942. Adopting the
at the Second Congress in Cracow. An name 'Taras Bulba', he agreed to head an
OUN-B letter sent to the German Secret 'auxiliaryWehrmacht company' known as
Service declared: 'Long live greater the Ukrainian Liberation Army. Two
independent Ukraine without Jews . . . Jews hundred volunteers joined, taking an 'oath of
to the gallows.' Bandera's second-in- loyalty to the Fiihrer'. Peter J. Boshyk (ed.),
command approved German methods
of 'the Ukraine in World War II: History and Its

of exterminating the Jews' and it was only in Aftermath, Canadian Institute of Ukrainian
late 1943 that the Banderites dropped the Studies, 1986, pp. 64-5; Sodol, pp. 19-20;
anti-Jewish line. Raul Hilburg, The Oleh R. Martoyvch, 'Ukrainian Liberation
Destruction of European Jewry, Quadrangle Movement in Modern Times', Today's World,
Books, NY, 1961, pp. 205 & 329-30; loS, No. 5, Edinburgh: Scottish League for
5.5.91. See also The Einsatzgruppen Reports; European Freedom (SLEF), 1952, p. 102;
B.F. Sabrin, Alliance for Murder: The Nazi- Cherednychenko, pp. 89-91 & 182-3;
Ukrainian Nationalist Partnership in Genocide, Simpson, p. 162; Bilinsky, p. 342; Buch;
Sarpedon, NY, 1991; Aarons, p. 54; Aarons, p. 5; Anderson, p. 24; Armstrong,
Armstrong, p. 77; Cesarani, p. 26; Simpson, pp. 98-9 & 153; Yuriy Tys-Krokhmaliuk,
p. 164; Dallin, p. 119. UPA Warfare in Ukraine, Society of Veterans
11.The proclamation is published in Roman of Ukrainian Insurgent Army of the United
Rakhmanny, In Defense of the Ukrainian Cause, Statesand Canada, NY, 1972, pp. 257-8,
Christopher, US, 1979, p. 42. Simpson, 282-3 & 360; Taras Hunczk, 'Between Two
pp. 161-2; Dallin, p. 119; Nicholas D. Leviathans: Ukraine during the Second
Czubatjy, 'The Ukrainian Underground', World War', in Bohdan Krawchenko (ed.),
Ukrainian Quarterly, 11, winter 1946; Ukrainian Past, Ukrainian Present, St Martin's
Hermann Raschhoffer, Political Assassination: Press, NY, 1993.
The Legal Background of the Oberldnder and 18 & 19. Azerbaijan sent six delegates, the
Stashinsky Cases, Fritz Schlichtenmayer, Baskhirs one. White Ruthenians two, Armenia
Tubingen, 1964, p. 10. four, Georgia six, Kabardinia one, Ukraine
12. Chaykovsky, p. 255; Leverkuehn, p. 166. five, the Turkestanians six (Uzbeks five, the
13 & 14. Armstrong, pp. 83 & 98; Simpson, Kazaks one), the Ossetins two, the Tartars
pp. 16-22 & 165; Paprocki; Wolodymyr four, the Cherkes one, and the Chuvashes one.
Kosyk, I'Allemagne National-Socialiste et Martovych, pp. 103-8 & 118-21; Buch,
r Ukraine, Publications de I'Est Europeen, Hunczak & Czubatyj; Rakhmanny, pp. 19 &
Paris, 1986, pp. 112, 290 & 426-8; Dallin, 44; Bilinsky, pp. 123-4; Simpson, p. 162;

p. 121; Aarons/Loftus, Ratlines, p. 247; Aarons/Loftus, Ratlines, p. 186; Dallin, pp. 622
Sabrin, pp. 4-5. & 623; Luciuk/Kordan, p. 175; Armstrong,
15. In October, Melnyk established a pp. 157-61 & 179; Chaykovsky, p. 502; Peter
Ukrainian National Council in Kiev headed Potichnyj and Yevhen Shendera (eds). Political

by Prof. M. Velychivsky. Armstrong, p. 83; Thought of the Underground, 1943-1951,

Simpson, pp. 161-2 & 165; Yurkevich, Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, 1986,
pp. 72-3; Chaykovsky, pp. 500-1; Petro pp. 373-5.
R. Sodol, UPA: They Fought Hitler and 20. The Melnyk faction, running SS auxiliary
Committee for the World
Stalin, police units, denounced Canaris' Banderites
Convention and Reunion of Soldiers in the to the Gestapo as traitors. It was also
Ukrainian Insurgent Army, NY, 1987, p. 105; apparent that the OUN-B had been
Paprocki. infiltrated by Soviet agents, adding to the
16. Luciuk/Kordan, pp. 8 & 153; A.J. confusion. Czubatyj; Cookridge, Gehlen,
Halpern, British Security Co-ordination, to G. p. 308; Aarons/Loftus, Ratlines, p. 176.
de T. Glazebrook, Canadian Department of 21. Cherednychencko, pp. 127-8; Rezac/
External Affairs, enclosing an OSS report on Tsurkan, p. 156-7.
Ukrainians in North America, 16.8.44. 22.Czubatyj; Armstrong, pp. 291-2;
17. Despite OUN-B propaganda that it Simpson, p. 163; Cookridge, Gehlen, p. 189;
 NOTES 825

Martovych, p. 155; Bilinsky, pp. 125 & 130-1; WiN and OUN/UPA groups massacring
Loftus, p. 107. each other's villages, with the result that the
23. Maintaining links with the Hlinka Guard, Poles came to hate the Banderites. Brig.-Gen.
UFA propaganda raids reached Slovakia Ignacy Blum, 'The Share of the Polish Army
during the summers of 1945 and 1946. in the Struggle for the Stabilisation of
Aarons, p. 73; Bilinsky, p. 116; Bower, Red People's Government: Actions against the
Web, p. 121; Cookridge, Gehlen, p. 307. UFA Bands', Review of Military History,
24. War on Ukrainian
Office report Warsaw, Vol. IV, No. 1, Jan./Mar. 1959, and
Nationalist Movement and Resistance in Col. of the General Staff Jan Gerhard,
Ukraine, 13.12.45; minutes by T. Brimelow 'Further Details on Actions against the Bands
and B. Miller, PRO FO 371/47957. of the UFA and WiN in the Southeastern
25. Aarons, pp. 80-1; Aarons/ Loftus, Area of Poland', Vol. IV, No. 4, Oct./
Ratlines, p. 247;Simpson, p. 166; Botting/ Dec. 1959; Bilinsky, pp. 114-18; Simpson,
Sayer, Secret Army, pp. 351-2; p. 171.
Cherednychenko, pp. 166-7; The Restoration 33. Armstrong, pp. 294-5; Buch; Frados,
of the Ukrainian State in World War II, p. 53; Botting /Sayer, Secret Army, p. 349.
Ukrainian Central Information Service, 34. NYT, 13.5.47; Bilinsky, pp. 112-13 & 133-
Toronto, n/d. 4.

26. Dallin, p. 659; Loftus, p. 106; John Frados, 35. Buch; Simpson, pp. 166-8; Aarons/
Presidents' Secret Wars:CIA and Pentagon Loftus, Ratlines, p. 248.
Covert Operations from World War II through 36. John Hope and CIC documents;
Iranscam, NY, 1995, p. 53; Botting /Sayer, Sudoplatov, p. 252.
Secret Army, p. 355; The Shelepin Files: 37. It is known that the OUN took the
Documents and Reports, Ukrainian opportunity to inflate the figures by letting
Information Service, London, 1975, p. 54. DPs cross the border and return to the West
27. ABN literature claimed direct descent as 'guerrillas'. When UFA Company 95
from the 1943 committee of subjugated reached Germany, it claimed the armed
nations and ignored the fact that it was strength in Ukraine to be from 50,000 to
organised by Rosenberg's OMi. On the 200,000 - clearly a gross overestimate. James
alliance with Nazi Germany, the ABN stated: K. Anderson, 'Unknown Soldiers of an
'The fact that some of us fought on the Unknown Army', Army magazine. May 1968.
German side against Russia can be justified 38. Bilinsky, pp. 15 & 420; Hersh, pp. 248-9.
from the national political and moral point 39. FRO FO 371/77586; memorandum by
of view.' Nakashidze, Russ Bellant, Old N.W.A. Jones, March 1949.
Nazis, the New Right and the Reagan 40 & 42. Armstrong, p. 316; Simpson, p. 168;
Administration: The Role of Domestic Fascist Aarons /Loftus, Ratlines, pp. 248 & 256;
Networks in the Republican Party and the Effect Paprocki.
on US Cold War Politics (2nd ed.). Political 41. Aarons, pp. 75-6; Luciuk/Kordan,
Research Associates, US, 1989, p. 77; pp. 226-7; John F. Stewart, 'The Struggle of
Paprocki; Rakhmanny, p. 19. Ukraine for Freedom', SLEF, No. 7, 1950.
28. Bilinsky, p. 345; Bower, Spy, p. 205; 43. Botting /Sayer, Secret Army, pp. 352 &
Loftus, pp. 106-8; Buch. 355; Simpson, p. 168; Loftus, Nazis and Axis
29. Anderson, p. 294. Collaborators, p. 90.
30 &
31. Maris Cakars and Barton Osborn, 44-6. David Matas and Susan Charendoff,
'Operation Ohio', WIN magazine, 18.9.75. Justice Delayed: Nazi War Criminals in Canada,
Maris Cakars personally informed Peter E. Summerhill Press, Toronto, 1987, pp. 24-7,
Newell (letter, 6.9.88) that, following the 45 & 57: based on the report of the
WiN report, he received documentation from Commission of Inquiry on War Criminals
the Soviets much in line with his own before the Honourable Justice Jules
findings. Cherednychenko, pp. 151-3. Deschenes, 1985-6. Besides the public
32. There was low-level co-operation hearings it also includes the report prepared
between the OUN/UPA and anti-communist by Alti Rodal, The Nazi War Criminals in
Polish groups such as WiN and the extremist Canada: The Historical and from
Political Setting
NSZ in attacks on Polish communist and Harold Troper and
the 1940s to the Present.
Soviet centres but it ceased after the summer Morton Weinfeld, Old Wounds: Jews,
of 1946. Ethnic 'cleansing' continued with Ukrainians and the Hunt for Nazi War
826 NOTES

Criminals in Canada, University of Carolina

Press, 1990, pp. 66-8, 184 & 194. CHAPTER FIFTEEN:
47 & 48. PRO FO
371/87433 & 371/77586; POLAND
Matas/Charendorff, pp. 38, 57-9 & 84-5;
Anderson.
1. Wilkinson /Astley, pp. 128 & 136; Lampe,
p. 63.
49. Bower, S/n/, pp. 125 & 181; Cavendish,
2. Gordon Welchman, 'From Polish Bomba to
p. 52; Cookridge, Gehlen, p. 308;
British Bombe: The Birth of Ultra', INS,
Cherednychenko, pp. 176-8. Harry Rositzke,
Vol. 1, No. 1, Jan. 1986. Maj.-Gen. M.Z.
Tlie CIA's Secret Operations: Espionage,
Rygot Slowikowski, In the Secret Service: The
Counterespionage and Covert Action, Westview
Light of the Torch, Windrush, 1988; John
Press, 1988, p. 23.
Herman, 'Agency Africa', JCH, Oct. 1987;
50. In September, the State section for emigre
Brooks Richards, Secret Flotillas: The
affairs proposed the 'rapid expansion' of an
clandestine sea lines to France and French North
'illegallyorganised military movement', the
Africa 1940-44, HMSO, 1996, pp. 22-3.
Ukrainian National Guard, 'which will form
a large reserve potential in case of an armed
3 & West, Secret War, pp. 29-30, 312 &
4.

329; Wilkinson /Astley, pp. 81 & 128; PRO

conflict between the United States and the
FO 371/26722 C/188; minute, 1.1.41.
Soviet Union'. Hersh, pp. 249 & 275-6;
Simpson, Luciuk/Kordan,
5 & 6. John Coutouvdis and Jaime Reynolds,
p. 173; p. 209;
Poland 1939-47, Leicester University Press,
Rositzke, pp. 18-19.
1986, pp. 87-9 & 109. There has been much
51. Sudoplatov, pp. 254-6; Cookridge,
speculation on Sikorski's death though there
Gehlen, p. 308; Yuriy Tys-Krokhmaliuk, UPA
is little evidence that he was assassinated.
Warfare in Ukraine: Strategy and Tactics and
There had been a number of threats against
Organisational Problems of Ukrainian Resistance
his from disgruntled Polish emigres, but
life
in World War II, Society of Veterans of
The
these were not taken seriously.
Ukrainian Insurgent Army, NY, 1972, p. 311.
pronouncements exasperated British Foreign
52 & 55. Simpson, pp. 149 & 172-3; Bower,
Office officials. One was reported in 1940 to
Spij, pp. 120 & 133; Prados, p. 57.
have suggested of another leading Pole that
Armstrong, pp. 317-20; Richard
53. Paprocki;
'we shall never have any peace until we
Deacon with Nigel West, SPY!, BBC, 1980,
have him bumped off. PRO FO 371/24474
p. 150.
C/8090; David Irving, The Death of General
54 &
57. Sudoplatov, pp. 24-5 & 257;
Sikorski, 1967; A. Polonsky (ed.). The Great
Botting/Sayer, Secret Army, p. 350; Rezac/
Powers and the Polish Question 1941-45, 1976.
Tsurkan, Prados, p. 57; Alexander
p. 170;
7-14. Wilkinson /Astley, pp. 129, 179, 206 &
Buchsbajew, Toward a Theory of Guerrilla
226-7; David Stafford, Britain and European
Warfare: A Case Study of the Ukrainian
Resistance 1940-45, 1983, pp. 183-5; Thomas,
Nationalists, 1944-48, PhD thesis, Ann Arbor
pp. 350 & 360; Coutouvdis /Reynolds,
University, 1984; Cherednychenko, pp. 176-
pp. 108, 149, 189 & 219; M. Smith, p. 110;
83.
Bethell, p. 154; West, Secret War, p. 311; PRO
56. Rositzke, p. 23.
Chiefs of Staff report, Jan. 1945 CoS (44)84(0)
58. Oberlander was later forced to resign as
in CAB 80/78; HS4/51, 52, 127 & 292;
minister and later became associated with
FO 371/47709 NI 002/265/G55 & N3354/
the ABN and the European Freedom
265/G55.
Council, an ABN/OUN 'front' group. Truth
15. The publication aimed to assert the Polish
about Oberlander, p. 175; Der Spiegel, 21.4.54.
voice in Baltic affairs and counter German
59-61. Bower, Red Web, p. 165, and Spy,
claims to the 'historically Polish' Free City of
pp. 133 & 206; Cookridge, Gehlen, pp. 299-
Danzig. Also interesting was the Baltic Times,
301; Hersh, p. 494; Bilinsky, pp. 115-16;
whose editor was Arnold Smith, a Rhodes
Loftus, pp. 113-14.
scholar and later Canadian diplomat. Tliis
62. NYT, 27.5.53 & 21.5.54; Bilinsky, p. 132.
was (obit. G, 26.2.94) an 'improbable'
63. Prados, p. 58.
appointment 'which may well have been the
64 & 66. Buchsbajew; Rositzke, pp. 37, 44 &
cover for an intelligence assignment'. When
169.
Russian troops took over the Baltic states.
65. Simpson, p. 173; Buchsbajew; Aarons,
Smith made his way through the Soviet
p. 54.
Union to Cairo, where the British embassy
67. Bilinsky, p. 11; G, 16.8.93.
 NOTES 827

gave him an attache's job. He was soon Poland. The thousands who emigrated or
involved in local propaganda work with fled to the West after 1945 brought with
Freya Stark, working for MI6's Section D. them information about conditions in the
The Baltic Review was published from 1953 country and the state of the anti-communist
under the direction of the CIA-sponsored underground. PRO CoS (46)239(0), 15.10.46,
Free Europe Committee. Hills, p. 58. quoted in Lewis, p. 288; Bower, Red Web,
Howarth later joined the Home Civil Service p. 54.
1948-53 as a town and country planner 24-25 & 27. Coutouvdis /Reynolds, p. 277;
(telephone conversations, 20 & 31.3.94). Seton- Watson, pp. 174-7; Thomas, p. 347;
Howarth, pp. 200-5 & 213; Vardys, p. 287; Howarth, pp. 212 & 219, and telephone
Michael Winch, Republic for a Day: An conversation, 31.3.94.
Eye-Witness Account of the Carpatho-Ukraine 26. John Peet, The Long Engagement: Memories
Incident, Hale, 1939. of a Cold War Legend, Fourth Estate, 1989,
16 & 18. PRO HS 4/45, 139, 140, 204 & 327; p. 176.
M. Smith, pp. 112 & 291-2. Information on 28-30. Lukas, pp. 92-4; Korbonski, pp. xi &
'Sullivan' was given to Steven by a former 265-75; Dodds-Parker, Political Eunuch, p. 49;
CIA officer. 'Sullivan' worked in the Middle NYT, 4.11.47; memo by Andrews, 17.11.47, in
East in the fifties and apparently died of a FRUS IV, 1947, pp. 460-4; Howarth, p. 221,
heart attack in Beirut in 1967. Steven, pp. 35- and telephone conversation, 31.3.94.

7, 56 & 234; Smiley, p. 162; West, Friends, 31 & 32. Mikolajczyk was supported by the
p. 60. assistant editor of Time and Tide, which
17. Bower, Spy, p. 209. published a long justification of his policy,
19. Howarth, p. 211; PRO FO 371/47707 and Polish specialist, Freda Bruce Lockhart
NI 486/211/55, 24.10.45. ('The Polish Pantomime' and 'Meeting with
20, 21 & 22. Coutouvdis/ Reynolds, pp. 20, Mikolajczyk', Nineteenth Century and After,
219-20, 353 & 368; Stefan Korbonski, Warsaw CXLII, Feb. 1946 & CXLIII, Jan. 1947), who
in Exile, 1966, p. 232; Richard C. Lukas, Bitter had visited him in Warsaw during the
Legacy: Polish-American Relations in the Wake summer of 1946. By 1949 the Mid-European
of World War II, University of Kentucky, US, Studies Centre was being funded by the
1982, p. 31; Howarth telephone conversation, OPC-backed Free Europe Committee.
31.3.94. Interview with Mr Hawrot of the Polish
A pious Catholic, Herbert enrolled at the Ex-Servicemen's Association; Coutouvdis/
beginning of the war in a Polish unit at the Reynolds, pp. 216-20 & 295-301; Lukas,
special forces training centre at Inverailort. pp. 92 & 133; Howarth, p. 221;
Lord Lovat knew him as 'a charming 33. A character in Trevor Barnes's roman a
romantic' and remembered 'his tempestuous clef A Midsummer Killing, recalls that 'it was
Poles departed cheering, to die with doomed Poland was divided
to failure.
conspicuous gallantry in the liberation of against itself to begin with: the communists
Europe. They looked upon the loveable, and the WiN anti-communists hated each
flat-footed and wholly unmilitary Auberon other. And after the horrors and destruction
as their father.' After the war, he lived at of the war, people were tired out. They had
Portofina, Liguria - built by his grandfather, had enough of fighting, no matter against
the fourth Earl of Caernarvon - where he whom. And of course, the Soviet security
was visited by various intelligence-connected policewere so efficient.' Trevor Barnes, A
friends, including Isaiah Berlin, Stuart Midsummer Killing, NEL (pbk), 1989,
Hampshire, Patrick Leigh-Fermor and pp. 125-6; Coutouvdis /Reynolds, p. 301;
Malcolm Muggeridge. Herbert made 'many PRO FO 371 66092/N/2923; Phillip
trips up and down the Iron Curtain', Knightley, Philby: KGB Masterspy, 1988,
working on behalf of the Polish, Ukrainian p. 163.
and Belorussian exiles. When he died in 1974 34. Thomas Powers, The Man Who Kept the
he was, his obituary recorded, 'much missed Helms and the CIA,
Secrets: Richard
... in the somewhat eclectic circles he Washington Square Press (pbk), US, 1981,
frequented'. p. 49; John Herman, 'Afterword', in
23. Hundreds of thousands of Poles had Slowikowski, p. 251.
elected to remain in the West after 1945 35 & 36. Zygmunt Wozniczka, Zrzeszenie
rather than return to communist-controlled 'Wolnosc i Niezawislosc', 1945-1952, Novum
828 NOTES

Semex, Warsaw, 1992, p. 119; Stanislaw Kulz, London programme, 27.6.88; 6, 28.6.88;
W Potrzaskii Dziejowym: WiN na Szlaku AK, Searchlight, No. 142, Apr. 1987, and No. 148,
Veritas, 1978; Powers, p. 49; Hersh, p. 279; Oct. 1987; Arthur Silgailis, Latvian Legion, R.
Rositzke, pp. 169-71. James Bender, 1986, pp. 15, 20, 48-9 & 198-
37, 38 & 40. Bower, Spn/, p. 164; Hersh, 9. was wounded in December.
Osis
p. 279; Edward Jay Epstein, Deception: The 7 & 8. According to Aba Gefen, who in
Invisible War between the KGB and the CIA, Lithuania had kept a diary of the war years,
W.H. Allen, 1989, pp. 34-9. the massacres 'began on 22 June 1941 when
39. Knightley, Masterspxj, p. 163; Powers, the Germans bombed Kaunas. In a radio
pp. 48-50. broadcast the commander of LAP announced
41. Rositzke, p. 170; Bower, Spy, p. 158; that Jews were shooting at the German
Steven, p. 35; Barnes, p. 127. troops and warned that for every German
42. Buchardt; Knightley, Masterspy, p. 163; soldier shot, 100 Jews would be put to death.
Rositzke, p. 171; Epstein, p. 39. That triggered off a wave of violence against
43. Cookridge, Gehlen, pp. 245-6. the Jewish population.' Cesarani, pp. 93,
44. Ranelagh, pp. 227-8; Hersh, 138-9 & 145; Anderson, pp. 35-6; Aarons,
pp. 280-1. p. 195;Simpson, p. 184; Bower, Blind Eye
45. Epstein, p. 42. pp. 254 & 478; Misiunas/
(rev. ed.),
Taagepera, pp. 44-7, 56-61 & 66;
Hutchinson, pp. 73, 151 & 169-70.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN: THE 9-11. V. Stanley Vardys (ed.), Lithuania under
BALTIC STATES the Soviets: Portrait of a Nation, 1940-65,
1-3. Cesarani, p. 138; Bower, Red Web, pp. 3, Frederick A. Praeger, 1965, p. 61; 'The
20-3, 29-30 & 40-1; Kramish, p. 190. On the Partisan Movement in Post-War Lithuania',
MI6 station in Riga, see Peggie Benton, Baltic Slavic Review, XXII, No. 3, Sept. 1963;
Countdown, Centaur, 1984. Peggie was the Thomas Remeikis, Opposition to Soviet Rule in

wife of Frank Benton, who served under Lithuania 1945-1980, Institute of Lithuanian
cover as the vice-consul. She helped out in Studies Press, US, 1980, pp. 61 & 180;
the Passport Control Office. C. Leonard Sigailis, pp. 134 & 233; Cesarani, p. 141.
Lundin, 'Nazification of Baltic German 12-16. Bower, Red Web, pp. 30-1, 40-7 & 59;
Minorities', Journal of Central European Affairs, Misiunas /Taagepera, pp. 66-9; Vardys,
Vol. 7, No. 1, April 1947; L, 31.8.89. pp. 82-3.
4. Cesarani, pp. 138-9; Leverkuehn, pp. 167- 17. Juozas Daumantas, Fighters for Freedom:
71; Romuald Misiunas and Rein Taagepera,
J. Lithuanian Partisans versus theUSSR, 1944-
The Baltic States: Years of Dependence 1940- 1947, Maryland, NY, 1975, p. 68. First-hand
1990 Hurst, 1993, p. 57; Armstrong,
(rev. ed.). account of the guerrilla activities during 1944-
p. 597; Efraim Zumoff, Occupation: 7 written by Daumantas (aka Juozas Luksa)
Nazi-Hunter, the continuing search for the during his time in the West. The author's true
perpetrators of the Holocaust, Ktav, 1994, p. 28. identity was revealed by the Soviets in a series
5. Cesarani, p. 17; Aarons, pp. 98-9; I, of articles in the summer of 1959 and
8.8.95. published in book form in 1960 - M. Chienas,
6. One was Harry Svikeris, in charge
officer K. Smigelskis and E. Uldukis, Vanagi is
of the 1stand 2nd Companies, which were Anapus. Prados, p. 37; Remeikis, p. 60.
alleged to have burnt down the villages of 18-21. Bower, Red Web, pp. 38-40, 50-3 &
Sanniki and Malinova, shooting all 300 79; Whitwell, p. 75; Cesarani, pp. 140-4;
inhabitants in the process. In 1948 he moved Aarons /Loftus, Ratlines, p. 261; G, 28.6.68.
to Britain from the British Zone in Germany 22 & 23. K.V. Tauras, Guerrilla Warfare on the
as part of the labour recruitment programme. Amber Voyages Press, NY, 1962, p. 37,
Coast,
In 1949 Victor Arajs was released from also based on the experiences of Luksa, was
internment by the British. Twenty-six years almost certainly sponsored by the CIA.
later, a West German court imprisoned Arajs Powers, pp. 3, 93 & 315; Prados, pp. 37-9.
for life for his crimes, which involved his 24 & 25. Vardys, pp. 103-5; Daumantas,
units 'shooting upwards of 500 people a pp. 79-80; Misiunas/Taagepera, p. 91;
day'. After the war, Reinhards became a Thomas Remeikis, 'The Armed Struggle
prominent member of the Latvian against the Sovietisation of Lithuania after
community in London. Aarons, p. 195; ITV 1944', Lituanus, VIII/ 1-2, 1962.
 NOTES 829

26. Cesarani, p. 140; Bower, Red Web, pp. 54- (obit. G, 3.2.97). Bower, Red Web, pp. 101-2;
9 & 78. West, Friends, p. 80.
27 & 30. Sigailis, pp. 225 & 234; Aarons, 62 & 63. Prados, pp. 41-2; Harvey-Jones,
pp. 195-6; Bower, Red Web, p. 71, and Blind p. 180; Cookridge, p. 312; Cesarani, p. 141;
Eye (rev. ed.), p. 254. Bower, Red Web, p. 122.
28-29, 31-32 & 34. Cesarani, pp. 47, 60 64. The Soviets published full versions of
& 142-6; Aarons, pp. 195-9; Simpson, these missions in Vilnius (1960-8). J. Jakaitis,

p. 184; Anderson, pp. 35-6; Misiunas/ Isdavystes Keliu (Vilnius, 1976) is a Soviet
Taagepera, p. 17; Bower, Red Web, pp. 59 expose of western subversion and also
& 64. includes an account of training of
33. PRO FO 371/57519, 371/47053 & 371/ Lithuanian, Estonian, Latvian, Ukrainian and
47053; Tolstoy, p. 422. Polish operatives in West Germany, France
35. M. Smith, p. 110; PRO CAB 81/9 & 81/ and Britain in the period 1949-52. The series
92; Bower, Red Web, pp. 60-1. Faktai Kaltina {Facts Accuse, Vilnius, 1962-70)
36 38. Bower, Red Web, pp. 72-3 & 81;
& ran to ten volumes with testimony of
Vardys, pp. 90-6. witnesses and transcripts of interrogations of
37. Cesarani, pp. 57 & 141; Intelligence guerrillas. In referring to Soviet booklets
Bureau to Political Division, Liibeck, 28.2.46; published on the guerrilla war, in particular
PRO FO 1049/414. M. Chienas, K. Smigelkis and E. Uldukis,
39. Bower, Red Web, p. 82; Remeikis, p. 214; 'Hawks from the Other Side' (Vilnius, 1960),
Stasys Zymantas, Twenty Years of Thomas Remeikis admitted that 'it is

Resistance', Lituanus, Vol. 1/2, 1960. reasonable to believe that the Soviet versions
Zymantas had been assistant law professor are correct as far as facts, dates, names and
at Vilnius University, Secretary of the Liberal places are concerned' {Lituanus, Nos 1-2,
International and London Committee of Free 1962, and Remeikis, pp. 192-5).
Representatives of the Central and Eastern 65-70. Deskny's 'confessions' were published
European Countries, and vice-chair of the in Vilnius (1960-2), detailing the guerrillas'
European Committee of the Lithuanian relationship with the West. Prados, pp. 38-9;
Resistance Alliance. Misiunas /Taagapera, p. 93; Vardys, pp. 85,
40-44. Remeikis, p. 54; Vardys, pp. 96 & 107 & 268; Remeikis, pp. 46, 56 & 189-94;
100-2; Prados, p. 38; Bower, Red Web, Bower, Red Web, pp. 11 & 114-18; Cesarani,
pp. 60-2, 72-3, 95-7 & 172; M. Smith, p. 114; p. 144.
Cesarani, pp. 142-3; G, 28.6.88. 71 & 72. Chair of the Council of Nations was
45. PRO FO 371/65754, Zarine to Hankey, Alfreds Berzins, who with Bolreslavs
21.1.47; Cesarani, pp. 54 & 98; T, 25.5.46; The Maikovskis ended up on the payroll of a
Tablet, 15.6.46; Bower, Blind Eye (rev. ed.), number of CIA-backed organisations. In
pp. 256 & 262. 1950, Gustav Celmins entered America to
46-52. Remeikis, pp. 46-56; Vardys, p. 106; work with US Intelligence before eventually
Daumantas, pp. 132 & 239; Misiunis/ fleeing to Mexico after a newspaper exposed
Taagapera, pp. 89-90; Prados, pp. 39-40; his anti-Semitic past. Bower, Red Web,
Bower, Red Web, p. 95. pp. 121-5; Aarons, p. 195; Simpson, p. 184;
53 & 55-59. Bower, Red Web, pp. 98, 110-12, Remeikis, pp. 47 & 195.
129 & 147; Cesarani, pp. 143-7. 73-79. Harvey-Jones took charge of the naval
54. DE, Zumoff, p. 306.
3.2.94; operations at Hamburg. Courtney returned
60 & 61. Courtney, pp. 54-5; Harvey-Jones, to the UK where he was offered
that spring,

pp. 149, 161, 173-4 & 179-80. Joshua a position by C's deputy, but decided to
Steward was a member of Field Service return to the NID and early retirement in
Security and the Intelligence Corps during 1953.
the war and postwar in Germany, where his That western intelligence encouraged
German and Russian skills proved useful to resistance beyond the pure necessities of
MI6 during interrogation sessions. He information-gathering is implied by Luksa's
worked alongside John Harvey-Jones in first report to the guerrillas. One emigre
gathering intelligence on Soviet plans, wrote: 'sending such missions could easily
order-of-battle and servicing agents. He be interpreted by the guerrillas as a signal of
returned with Harvey-Jones to England, Western support for their cause and the
where he became something of a polymath imminence of liberation'. The CIA was
830 NOTES

engaged in 'positive intervention' and Luksa 'From Broadway House to Bletchley

Ferris,
was tasked 'to carry out covert actions Park:The Diaries of Captain Malcolm
designed to weaken Soviet control over its Kennedy, 1943-46', INS, Vol. 4, No. 3, July
own population and the peoples of Eastern 1989; Cecil; Borovik, p. 245; Brook-Shepherd,
Europe; to weaken pro-Soviet regimes and p. 52; Brown, Secret Servant, pp. 616-17.
Communist parties throughout Europe'. 3. Vojtech Mastny, 'Europe in US-USSR
Courtney, p. 55; Bower, Red Web, pp. 127-43; Relations: A Topical Legacy', Problems of
Remeikis, pp. 48-52; Vardys, pp. 10 & 107-8. Communism, XXXVII, Jan. 1988; Geoffrey
80. Klose went on to become Admiral Swain, 'The Cominform: Tito's
Commanding the German Fleet. No. 3, 1992.
International?', THJ, Vol. 35,
Harvey-Jones, p. 180; Bower, Red Web, 4. Ralph Miliband and Marcel Liebman,
pp. 145 & 152-3. 'Reflections on Anti-Communism', in Ralph
81. In 1960, when CIA U-2 pilot Francis Gary Miliband, John Saville and Marcel Liebman
powers went down in the Soviet Union, he (eds). Socialist Register, 1984.
was sent to a prison in Valdimir where he
shared a cell for seventeen months with
Krumins. As Prados suggests,
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN:
credulity too far'. Krumins 'may have been
this 'stretches
GREECE AND THE
working for Soviet security in 1960, and
CREATION OF THE PARA-
perhaps was all along'. See Gary Powers
STATE
with Curt Gentry, Operation Overflight, Holt, 1. Stephen Dorril, The Silent Conspiracy,
Rinehart, US, 1970, pp. 206-78; Prados, p. 42. Heinemann, 1993, p. 294.
82. West, Secret War, pp. 157-8. 2. G.M. Alexander, The Prelude to the Truman
83 & magazine, 22.9.92; Bower, Red
85-86. / Doctrine: British Policy in Greece 1944-1947,
Web, pp. 153-5 & 166-8; L, 31.8.89. Clarendon, Oxford, 1982, pp. 8-9.
84. Zemaitis was caught by the Soviet 3. Clive joined MI6 in 1941 and spent

security forces in the spring of 1953 and eighteen months lodging in Baghdad with
executed in 1954. A transcript of his Freya Stark, before joining ISLD. Nigel Clive,
interrogationwas published in Facts Accuse, A Greek Experience 1943-1948, Michael
pp. 203-30. In 1956, Ramanaukas was Russell, Norwich, 1985, pp. 19, 28-9 & 129;
apprehended and executed by the Soviets. West, Secret War, p. 320.
Remeikis, pp. 47, 190 & 241-52; Prados, 4. Rothwell, p. 202; Sulzberger, p. 220; Mary
p. 43. Henderson, Xenia - A Memoir: Greece 1919-
1949, Weidenfeld, 1988, pp. 99-100;
Rothwell, p. 200; Thanasis Hajis, 'EAM-
ELAS: Resistance or National Liberation', in
PART FOUR: THE BALKANS
AND RUSSIA Marion
Civil
Sarafis (ed.), Greece from Resistance to
War, Spokesman, Nottingham, 1980.
1. B. Sweet-Escott, 'SOE in the Balkans', in 5. CM. Woodhouse, Something Ventured,
P. Auty and R. Clogg (eds), British Policy Granada, 1983, p. 73; Heinze Richter, 'Lanz,
towards Wartime Resistance in Yugoslavia and Zervas and the British Liaison Officers',
Greece, 1975, pp. 15-16; PRO FO N499/499/ South Slav Journal, Vol. 12, Nos. 43/4, 1989;
38. Clive, p. 77; Sarafis, p. 113.
2. By late 1944, counter-espionage head Felix 6.Heinze Richter, British Intervention in
Cowgill was recruiting into Sections V& IX Greece: From Varkiza to Civil War February
experienced Bletchley officers to monitor 1945 to August 1946, Merlin, 1986, pp. 170-1;
Soviet international traffic. Malcolm Kennedy Clive, pp. 85-6; Nigel Clive, 'British Policy
was a Japanese specialist seconded in 1918 to Alternatives 1945-46', in Lars Baerenzen,
units of the Imperial Japanese Army. In 1920, John O. latrides and Ole L. Smith (eds),

he returned to London and the East Asian Studies in the History of the Greek Civil War
Section of Military Intelligence and was 1945-1949, Museum Tusculanum,
Tokyo representative of Reuter's (1925-34), Copenhagen, 1987.
and during the war served in GC&CS's 7. Heinze Richter, 'The Battle for Athens and
Japanese Section. Because of the bureaucratic the Role of the British', in Sarafis; Rothwell,
manoeuvres over the headship of Section IX, p. 219; Lars Baerentzen (ed.), J.M. Stevens,
he did not join MI6 until October 1945. John CM. Woodhouse and D.J. Wallace, British
 NOTES 831

Reports on Greece 1943-44, Museum Anglo-Greek Tragedy, Macmillan, 1959, p. 4.

Tusculanum, Copenhagen, 1982, pp. 119-59; AIS was disbanded at the end of 1945.
Clive, p. 113; Lawrence S. Wittner, American 20. Clive, Reflections, A Greek Experience,
Intervention in Greece, 1943-1949, Columbia p. 153, and 'British Policy'; Richter, British
University Press, NY, 1982, pp. 8-9. Intervention, pp. 30 & 45; Weiler, pp. 137 &
8. Alexander, pp. 38-9. 334.
9. An outline of the percentages deal had 21. Seton-Watson, p. 322; Clive, 'British
already been leaked in the summer to NYT Policy'.
journalistCyrus Sulzberger by the American 22. Churchill to Orme Sargeant, M. 383/5,
ambassador in Cairo, Lincoln MacVeigh, 22.4.45, R7423 FO 371/48267.
who was a strong opponent of British 23 & 25. Alexander, pp. 98-9 & 110;
imperialism. Relations with OSS were Chandler, pp. 106-7.
generally bad; M16 regarded its role in 24. John O. latrides, 'Perceptions of Soviet
Greece as particularly 'mischievous', alleging Involvement in the Greek Civil War 1945-
that its officers were behind a whispering 1947', in Baerenzen et al.
campaign against the Greek government-in- 26. Alexander, pp. 106-7; Richter, British
exile. Woodhouse complained that OSS Intervention, pp. 97-9 & 140-2; PRO FO
neutrality over the resistance cloaked 'a 6174/745/19, 1.4.44; Woodhouse, Apple,
benevolent bias in favour of EAM'. CM. p. 241.
Woodhouse, Apple W.B. O'Neill,
of Discord, 27. Richter, British Intervention, pp. 99, 107 &
Moran, Churchill from
1985, p. 218; Charles 114; Clive, Reflections, p. 170; PRO R4563 FO
the Diary of Lord Moran, p. 185; Robert 371/482259, 7 & 14.3.45.
Frazier, Anglo-American Relations with Greece: 28-30. Richter, British Intervention, pp. 107 &
The Coming of the Cold War, 1942-47, 151; Alexander, pp. 108 & 125; report of Col.
Macmillan, 1991, p. 59; Sulzberger, pp. 238- CM. Woodhouse, 'Situation in the
9; Wittner, p. 15. Peloponnese', 11.8.45, to British Embassy
10 &
12. Seton-Watson, pp. 139 & 318; Clive, Athens, FO 14973/4/19; Woodhouse,
pp. 144, 147 & 149-50; Nigel Clive, Something Ventured, pp. 160 & 256-7. David
Reflections on British Policy in Greece: 1945- H. Close, 'The Reconstruction of a Right-
1947 (unpub.); Alexander, pp. 66 & 71-3; Wing State', in Close (ed.).

PRO R 17961 FO 371/43695; 371/43704, 31 & The left-wing League which

32.
15.11.44. reported on Greece included dramatist and
11. Maniadakis became a minister in the Labour MP Ben Levy, who had served with
1950s. On 14 November, MI6's ISLD received the British Security Co-ordination, and the
information from the leader of the socialist author Compton Mackenzie, former M16
SKE, Stratis, who believed that the officer and director of the Aegean
communists aspired to democracy and saw Intelligence Service at the end of the First
their militant actions as purely defensive to World War. Richter, British Intervention,
prevent a coup d'etat by the Right. Wittner, pp. 86, 155-7 & 324-5; A.W. Sheppard,
p. 326; PRO WO 204/8862, 14.11.44. Britain in Greece, League for Democracy in
13. PRO Churchill to Leeper, R 199933 Greece, 1947, p. 11.
FO 371/43736, 5.12.44; Rothwell, pp. 219-20. 33. Chandler, pp. 160-1.
14.Ole H. Smith, "The First Round" - Civil
'
34 & 35. John O. latrides, 'Britain, the United
War During the Occupation', in David H. States and Greece, 1945-9', in Close (ed.);
Close (ed.). The Greek Civil War, 1943-1950: Sulzberger, pp. 290-1.
Studies of Polarization, Routledge, 1993; 36. Seton-Watson, p. 323; Richter, British
Richter, British Intervention, p. 9. Intervention, pp. 379 & 537-8; Henderson,
15. Alexander, p. 86; Clive, p. 165; Rothwell, p. 130.

p. 221; Richter, British Intervention, p. xi. 37 & 38. Richter, British Intervention, pp. 378
16. Frazier, p. 73. & 521; Close, 'The Reconstruction of the
17. John O. latrides, Greece in the Cold War, Right-Wing State', in Close (ed.); Wittner,
pp. 25-6; Peter Weiler, British Labour and the p. 114.
Cold War, Stanford University Press, 1988, 39. Alexander, pp. 209 & 275-7; Clive,
pp. 11-12; PRO FO 371/48247/R 936. Reflections, p. 177; Wittner, pp. 114 & 224-5.
18. Richter, British Intervention, pp. 119-20. 40. latrides in Baerenzen et al., State
19. Geoffrey Chandler, The Divided Land: An Department R 868.00/8-1046. Karamessines
832 NOTES

was head of CIG in Athens (1947-8) and Tito's Rise to Power, Cresset, 1949, pp. 9, 56-7
CIA station chief (1951-3). Wittner, p. 142. & 204.
41. Alexander, pp. 170 & 206-7; Chandler, 8. Clissold, p. 57; Seton-Watson, pp. 126-30;
p. 187; Edgar O'Ballance, The Greek Civil War McLynn, p. 125.
1944- 1949, Faber, 1966, p. 121; Richter, 9. A.W. Brian Simpson, In the Highest Degree
British Intervention, pp. 509 & 511; Odious: Detention without Trial in Wartime
Woodhouse, Something Ventured, p. 160. Britain, Clarendon (pbk), Oxford, 1994,
42. Chandler returned to Greece in 1949 for pp. 84-5; information from John Hope.
the Economist and the Royal Institute of 10. Nora Beloff, Tito's Flawed Legacy:
International Affairs, and subsequently for Yugoslavia and the West 1939-84, Gollancz,
the BBC foreign news service and the 1989, p. 118; PRO FO 371/44263, R1411/8/
Financial Times. Clive, Reflections, p. 178; 92; 371/48825, R2044/6/92; Aarons, pp. 7 &
Chandler, pp. 188-9. 12.
43. Richter, British Intervention, p. 536. 11-13. McLynn, pp. 120, 125, 136-7 & 160;
44 & 45. FRUS 1946, VII, pp. 226-7; Wittner, 'German Anti-Guerrilla Operations in the
pp. 148 & 319; PRO FO 371/58953/R16822; Balkans (1941-1944)', Department of the
Thomas, Armed Truce, p. 887; Clive, Army Pamphlet 20-243, Washington, Aug.
Reflections, p. 177. 1954.
46. Wittner, pp. 129 & 149; Kati Marton, The 14-16. McLynn, pp. 183, 243-4, 259 & 274-5.
Polk Conspiracy: Murder and Cover-up in the On release of SOE records see
Sykes, p. 278.
Case of the US Correspondent George Polk, I, 28.6.97.
Farrar, Strauss, US, 1990, pp. 119 & 169; NS, 17-20. Clissold, pp. 22-3, 204-5 & 220-6;
I. 2.47; Frazier, p. 117. Aarons, pp. 18-20.
47 & 48. Wittner, pp. 104, 160-1 & 231; 21. Beloff, pp. 117-20.
PRO FO 71/72238 R 757/31/19; 371/72238 22.Anderson, pp. 27 & 38; Aarons, p. 219;
R 757/31/19. Aarons /Loftus, Ratlines, pp. 70, 93, 101-2 &
49-51. Wittner, pp. 239-40, 255 & 267. 124-5.
Robert Frazier, The Bevin-Marshall Dispute, 23. Six to seven thousand White Guards
& SDR', OIR Report 4664, 24.4.48, quoted in were shot, though around thousand
five
latrides, 'Perceptions of Soviet Involvement', escaped the massacre. A was George
witness
in Baerenzen et al; CIA, National Archives, Waddams, who had served with the
ORE PRO FO 800/468/GRE/48/2,
69; 9.2.48; partisans in Slovenia and became consul at
II. 2.48, Alexander to Bevin; FO 371/72243. Ljubljana at the end of the war: 'The most
52. McLintock, pp. 14-17. unpleasant feature of life in Yugoslavia
53. Wittner, p. 242; David H. Close and today is the existence of the all-powerful
Thanos Veremis, 'The Military Struggle, OZNA [Bureau of People's Protection], the
1945- 9', in Close (ed.). political police. This body is responsible for
54. Wittner, p. 150. Close, 'Reconstruction', in the murder of thousands of Yugoslavs, for
Close (ed.). the maltreatment in concentration camps of
55. HoC Hansard, cols 38-40, 31.10.49. thousands more and for the permanent
56. Woodhouse, Apple, p. 267. terror in which the vast bulk of the
population lives.' Waddam published details
in an anonymous information sheet, 'Today
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: in Yugoslavia' (14.5.46). Thomas M. Barker,
YUGOSLAVIA: THE and Secret Agents: The
GOLDEN PRIEST, STOLEN Social Revolutionaries

TREASURE AND THE Carinthian Slovene Partisans and Britain's

Sfjecial Operations Executive, East European
CRUSADERS Monographs, Columbia University, NY, 1990,
1. G, 11.7.97; ST & STel, 13.7.97. pp. 228-32; Beloff, pp. 125 &c 133; Nikolai
2. Palmer, p. 254; Aarons, p. 58. Tolstoy, The Minister and the Massacres,
3. Aarons /Loftus, Ratlines, 1991, p. 71. Century Hutchinson, 1986, pp. 205, 393-4;
4. David Martin, The Web of Disinformation: Brig. Anthony Cowgill, Christopher Booker,
Churchill's Yugoslav Blunder, Harcourt Brace, Lord Thomas Brimelow and Brig. Teddy
US, 1990, p. 45. Tyron- Wilson, 'Interim Report on an Enquiry
5-7. Aarons, pp. 4-5 & 60-3; Stephen into the Repatriation of Surrendered Enemy
Clissold, Whirlwind: An Account of Marshal Personnel to the Soviet Union and
 NOTES 833

Yugoslavia from Austria in May 1945 and Barker, Tnice in the Balkans, Percival
the -Alleged "Klagenfurt Conspiracy-" Royal Marshall, 1948, p. 221; Aarons /Loftiis,
United Service Institute for Defence Studies, Ratlines, pp. 124 & 133-5.
1988. This privately funded volume based on 36 & 37. McLynn, p. 287; PRO FO 371/
PRO files, some supplied by the MoD, clears 673380, \'ivian Stieet to FO, 5.6.47; Aarons,
MacmiUan of culpability. pp. 27-9, 221 & 243; Aarons /Loftus, Ratlines,
24. Barker, pp. 39 & 209. pp. 123, 127 & 129-32.
25. Tolstoy, pp. 395-7; Aarons, p. 34. 38. Hersh, p. 183; E. Barker, p. 237.

26. -An interesting roman-a-clef is by LawTence 39 & 40. Thomas, pp. 722 & 910; Aarons,
Durrell (Wliite Eagles over Serbu, Faber, 1957), pp. 214 & 221-2; Aarons /Loftus, Ratlines,
who serv ed in the Belgrade embassy as press pp. 119, 126-8 & 135-5.
attache and was clearly cognisant of certain 41 &
42. McL\-nn, pp. 278-80; Lane.
intelligence matters. It concerns the 43. Hills, pp. 129-30.
disappearance of the gold reserv es belonging 44. Carrington, pp. 64-5; McL\Tin, p. 291.
to the National Bank of Yugosla\'ia. '^\Tiat if 45 & 46. Lane; Aarons, pp. 39-40.
the WTiite Eagles had located the treasures, 47. PRO FO 371/67380, 26.7.47; Maclean to
what would they be Likely to do The . . . Wallinger, 17.10.47, 371/67398; McLynn,
Royalists would be rich enough to found their p. 287; Aarons Loftus, Ratlines, pp. 99, 107 &
o\NTi movement on something stronger than 113-16.
faith. One could buy arms and agents .Ail . . . 48. McL\-nn, pp. 288-9; Linklater et al,
sorts of diplomatic repercussions might be p. 243; Wallinger to Perowne, 12.47 FO 371/
expected if the Royalist mo\'ement abroad 67402; Aarons /Loftus, Ratlines, p. 77.
were suddenly to come into large funds. 49. Linklater et al., pp. 237-9; Bower, Perfect
Policv might have to be altered to meet this English Spy, pp. 215-22; Simpson, pp. 84-5.
new contingencv (pp. 134-5). Anderson,
'
50- 54. McLyrm, pp. 287-90; PRO Maclean to
pp. 38-9; Aarons /Loftus, Ratlines, pp. 77, 84 6c Wallinger, FO 371/67398, 17.10.47; Aarons/
98; G, 23.7.97. Loftus, Ratlines, pp. 82, 90, 102 & 109-11;
27-30. Slovene Gen. Leon Rupnik was Aarons, pp. 215-17 & 244-6.
35,
eventually returned to Yugoslavia in January- 55. Herzstein, p. 287; Simpson, p. 210;

1946, tried and executed in September. Cabot to Secretary- of State, 12.6.47,

Aarons /'Loftus, Ratlines, pp. 58, 79, 96-8 & 740.001 16EW/6-1147, Box 3623, RG 59, XA,
123-9; Aarons, pp. 20, 51, 126-7 & 214; Washington.
McLynn inteniew with Maclean, 26.11.90. 56-59. Aarons, pp. 246 & 281; Aarons/
Linklater et al, p. 242. Loftijs, Ratlines, pp. 80-3.
31. Simpson, p. 209. 60 & 61. Palmer, p. 312; Seton-Watson,
32. Consolidated Intelligence Report pp. 223 & 291; T, 25.10.47.
PRO FO 371/46651 C7747, 24.10.45; 371/ 62. Aarons, p. 43.
55114 C4187, 11.4.46. 63 & 64. In the early thirties LyaU toured
33. Aarons /Loftiis, Ratlines, pp. 78 & 122. south-east Europe and then Russia and
34. Agreement on Trieste -vvas not reached wrote up the encounters as gentie satires of
until 1954 when the .Anglo- American Zone ardent communist syTnpathisers - Vie Balkan
was handed back to the Italians while the Road (1930) and Russian Roundabout (1933). A
Southern Zone %vas incorporated into language expert, his '25 languages of Europe'
Yugoslav Slo\ enia. Ann Jocelyn Lane, was a great success with tourists. Patricia
Coming to Terms iinth Tito: The Policy of the Clarke and David Footman (eds). In
British Foreign Office towards Yugoslavia 1945- Memoriam Archie 1904-1964: A Symposium on
49, PhD thesis, London School of Economics, Archibald Lyall by His Friends (priv. print),
37."
June 1988; Roberto G. Rabel, Beticeen East and 1966, p.
West: Trieste, the United States and the Cold 65-67, 70 & 71. Aarons, pp. 32-45, 76, 134 &
War, 1941-1954, Centie for International 223-5. Aarons /LoftiJS, Ratlines, pp. 101, 120,
Stijdies, Duke University- Press, US, 1988, 128 & 138-9; PRO FO 371/72563 E,

p. 107; Beloff, p. 122. Pahner, p. 294. memorandum 10.9.48.

35. Advisers to the AMG included Prof. 68 & 69. Heuser, pp. 45-7.
Srecko Barraga, of the wartime WTiite Guard, 72. .Anderson, pp. 38-9 & 296.
sentenced by the Ljubljana People's Court in 73. Aarons/ Loftus, Ratlines, pp. 143-4.
his absence as a war criminal. Elizabeth 74. I, 24.4.96; G, 16.5.97.
834 NOTES

and Women of the Special Operations Executive,

CHAPTER NINETEEN: THE Routledge, 1980, p. 193.
MUSKETEERS IN ALBANIA 28. BBCl, The Cost of Treachery, 30.11.84;
Morris Riley, Philby: The Hidden Years,
1 & 7. Bothell, Betrayal, pp. 12-16.
United Writers, Cornwall, 1990, p. 56;
2-4 & 8. Reginald Hibbert, Albania's
Verrier, p. 68.
National Liberation Struggle: The Bitter
29. Hibbert, pp. 221 & 234-5; Rothwell,
Vie tori/, Pinter, 1991, pp. 15, 31, 46, 64, 77 &
p. 359.
130-1; review article by Barry Baldwin, INS,
30. PRO FO 371/72117.
1992.
31. McLynn, pp. 301-2.
5 & 6. Seton-Watson, p. 142; Hibbert, pp. 64
32-34. Bethell, Betrayal, pp. 33-5, 37 & 38-9;
6 145.
Verrier, p. 68; West, Friends, ch. 5: 'Kim
9, 11 & 12. Hibbert, pp. 101, 107, 139, 150 &
Philby and VALUABLE'; PRO FO 371/
179; Bernard J. Fischer, Abaz Kupi and British
71687.
Intelligence in Albania, 1943-4, nd.
35. Logoreci obit.: I, 29.9.90; Hibbert review
10. OSS R&A report L38836, 'Albania:
of Bethell and Smiley books. International
Political and Internal Conditions', 10.7.44
Affairs, Vol. 61, No. 2, Spring 1985.
(secret), RG 226, NA; Simpson, Blowback,
36. PRO FO 371/77623; Heuser, p. 77;
pp. 123 & 317; NYT, 20.6.82.
Bethell, Betrayal, p. 83; Bower, Red Web, 1989,
13. Hibbert, pp. 58 & 204-5; Seton-Watson,
p. 105; Verrier, pp. 67-8.
p. 145; David Smiley, Albanian Assignment,
37.Bruce Page, David Leitch and Phillip
Sphere (pbk), 1985, p. 149.
Knightley, Philby: The Spy Who Betrayed a
14. Bethell, pp. 22-5; PRO WO 204/9535, Generation, Penguin, 1969, p. 212; letter from
2.10.44.
Woodhouse, 15.9.94.
15. later became chair of
Viscount Harcourt
38. Bethell, Betrayal, p. 5; Woodhouse, Apple,
Morgan and served on the
Grenfell
pp. 234-5; Heuser, p. 80.
International Bank for Reconstruction and
39-41. Powers, pp. 40, 42 & 53-4; Verrier,
Development, and the International
pp. 57 & 74; Bower, Red Web, p. 104.
Monetary Fund. He was also a fellow of
42. Rositzke, p. 172; Dravis.
St Antony's College, Oxford. Kemp, p. 231.
43. Bower, Red Web, p. 105; Hersh, p. 273;
16. Hibbert, p. 239; Sulzberger, p. 421.
Franklin Lindsay, Beacons in the Night: With
17. 19 & 22. Robin Winks, Cloak and Gown:
the OSS and Tito's Partisans in Wartime
Scholars in America's Secret Wars, Collins
Yugoslavia, Stanford University Press, US,
Harvill, 1987, pp. 394-5; RG 226, Entry 115,
1994, p. 334; Bethell, Betrayal, p. 119; Verrier,
Box 35, London and Folder 3,
Field Files
p. 74.
Mazzarine Report from London, 'Who's Who
44. Julian Amery, 'Of Resistance', The
of Albanian Guerrillas'; Seton-Watson,
Nineteenth Century and After, Vol. CXLV,
p. 226.
No. 865, Mar. 1949; Philby, p. 169.
18 & 20. Jon Halliday (ed.). The Artful
45. Heuser, p. 78.
Albanian: The Memoirs of Enver Hoxha, Chatto
46. Bower, Red Web, p. 105; Bethell, Betrayal,
(pbk), 1986, p. 81; Winks, pp. 393-5; Philby,
p. 42; Philby, p. 168.
p. 116.
47. 'Christopher Felix' (James McCargar), A
21. Rothwell, p. 359.
Short Course in the Secret War, 1963 & (rev.
23 & 24. Rositzke, p. 172; Richard Deacon, A
ed.), Lanham, NY, 1992, pp. 55-6. Bethell,
History of the Russian Secret Service, NEL
Betrayal, p. 41; Hersh, p. 264.
(pbk), 1975, p. 279; Aarons/Loftus, Ratlines,
48-50. Bethell, Betrayal, pp. 42 & 49-50;
pp. 230-1; Loftus, pp. 174 & 190; Anton
Winks, p. 395; SD 875.00/12-948; Simpson,
Logoreci, The Albanians: Europe's Forgotten
Blowback, p. 123.
Survivors, Gollancz, 1977, p. 85.
51. Top Secret State Department Decimal File
25. Philby, p. 142. Bethell, Spies and Other
for Albania, declassified Diplomatic Branch
Secrets, p. 299; Verrier, p. 68.
of the National Archives, 1948-9; Loftus,
26. Verrier, p. 67; Maj.-Gen. Sir Colin
p. 89; NYT, 20.6.82.
Gubbins, 'Resistance Movements in the War',
52. Hersh, pp. 256-7 & 270.
Royal United Services Institute Journal, Vol. 93,
53. Offiehad worked for the Political
Jan. 1948; Seale/McConville, p. 202.
Adviser to the American High Commissioner
27. Verrier, p. 62; Patrick Howarth: The Men
for Germany, as the State Department's link
 NOTES 835

to the secret agency DAD, a number of South Asia and Africa, Col. VI, 1977, p. 417;
whose personnel joined the OPC leadership. State Department 875.00/8-2649.
Simpson, Blowback, pp. 99-101 &
124; Hersh, 77. Smiley, Albanian Assignment, p. 163, and
NYT, 20.6.82; Robert Joyce to
p. 270; Irregular Soldier, p. 191.
Walworth Barbour, 12.5.49, 875.00/5-1249, 78. Borovik, p. 262; Deacon, 'C, p. 279.
RG, NA; Prados, p. 48. 79. Brown, Treason, pp. 426-7; Bethell,
54. Bethell, Betrayal, pp. 51-3; Stavro Skendi, Betrayal, pp. 96-7; Hersh, p. 264.
'Albania within the Slav Orbit: Advent to 80 & 81. Philby, p. 169; Dravis; Bethell,
Power of the Communist Party', Political Betrayal, pp. 82-90.
Science Quarterly, LXIII, June 1948. 82. Bethell, Betrayal, pp. 120-1; Bland; Joint
55. Hibbert, p. 230; Bethell, Betrayal, pp. 53 & Chiefs of Staff, 1654/4, 21.10.49.
57. In 1951 Lyall moved to Rome and then Hersh, p. 270.
83. Bethell, Betrayal, p. 108;

Spain. Simpson, Blowback, p. 124;

84. Philby, p. 168;
56. Hersh, p. 265; Skendi; Bill Bland, 'The Tipton Report issued by the Comptroller
1950 "Invasion" of Albania', The Albanian General of the United States, General
Society, Ilford, 1984; Roger Faligot, Les Accounting Office, 28.6.85.
Services Speciaux de Sa Majeste, Temps 85. PRO FO 371/78223 & 371/78211.
Actuels, Paris, 1982, p. 164, partly derived 86. Sulzberger, p. 418.
from 'Proces des espions parachutes en 87. Central hitelligence Agency, ORE 71-49,
Albanie (compte rendu stenographique des 'Current Situation in Albania', 15.12.49,
debats des proces de Tirana), 29 mai-6 juin Truman Papers, President's Secretary File:

1950', Sociales, Paris, 1950; Verrier, p. 73. Intelligence File, Box 256, 'ORE Reports 1949
57. Verrier, p. 71; Philby, p. 167. (60-74)'; Bethell, Betrayal, pp. 117-18;
58. Seton- Watson, pp. 312-14; Palmer, p. 132; Prados, p. 50.
Bethell, Betrayal, p. 117. 88. Borovik, pp. 272-3; Bethell, Betrayal,
59. Smiley, Albanian Assignment, pp. 158-9, pp. 140-3.
and Irregular Soldier, Michael Russell, 89. Philby, pp. 169-70; Heuser, p. 79.

Norwich, 1994, p. 188. 90. Page et al, p. 212.

60. Julian Amery, review article, 'Albanian 91. Bethell, Betrayal, pp. 75-6 & 96; Hersh,
Assignment', RUSI Journal, Mar. 1985; Riley, p. 273.
p. 59. 92. Smiley, Albanian Assignment, p. 163;
61. Major was inKenya during the Mau Mau Bethell, Spies, p. 299; Winks, p. 398; Andrew,
period for MI5 where he was responsible for Secret Service, p. 493.
'secret intelligence'. Phillip Knightley, 'The 93-95. Powers, p. 54; Bethell, Betrayal, pp. 90,
Man Who was Q', ST magazine, 4.11.73. 100-1 & 151; Smiley, Albanian Assignment,
62-67. ST magazine, 4.1.73; Verrier, pp. 69 & p. 163.
76-7; Bethell, Betrayal, pp. 1, 41, 55-9, 62-5 96. One report suggests sabotage attempts on
& 71. the Kucova oilfields and the Rubik copper
68. Wittner, p. 279; Verrier, p. 72; FRUS 1949, mines, but it is unclear whether they did
Vol. VI, p. 386. take place and who was responsible. Almost
69. PRO FO 371/78443 & 371/78213; Bland. certainly a fantasy is the claim by Leonard
70. Hersh, p. 272; Bethell, Betrayal, p. 101. Mosley {Dulles, 1978) that in April 1950 'an
71. Halliday, p. 81. army hundred Albanian emigres was
of five
72 & 75. Logoreci, p. 106; Heuser, p. 78; recruited, armed and trained in Greece, and
Faligot, pp. 75-8. sent across into Albania The emigres and
. . .

73. Verrier, pp. 60 & 66-7. their CIA and SIS advisers had been assured
74. CIA memo 218, 'Strength and Weakness that they would achieve complete surprise,
of the Hoxha Regime in Albania', 12.9.49. and little or no resistance would be
Truman's Papers: President's Secretary File; encountered. It was a wrong assessment . . .

Intelligence File, Box 249, folder: Central Not only did the invaders meet troops
Intelligence memos 1949. armed with machine guns, mortars, and
76. 13-15.9.49, PSF General File (A-Ato) 112, artillery, but they were ambushed at exactly

Harry S. Truman Memorial Library, those points where they had been assured
Missouri; Aldrich, pp. 206-7; memorandum they would have a free passage. Two
of a conversation between Acheson, Bevin hundred men were slaughtered; 120 were
and officials, 14.9.48, FRUS, The Near East, captured and subseequently executed; only
836 NOTES

180 men struggled back to Greece . . . There 113-16. Bethell, Betrayal, pp. 180-5; Winks,
was com-incing evidence that the Soviet pp. 390-400; I, 6.9.94.
government had flown in its own troops into 117. E. Thomas, pp. 11 & 66-7.
Albania just before the Anglo-American 118. Bethell, Betrayal, pp. 182-3; Philby,
invasion began, and had positioned them p. 162.
along the exact routes the mvaders followed 119. Page et al, p. 215.
- routes which only the planners at the top 120. Prados, p. 50.
knew about until sealed orders were broken 121. Hersh, pp. 32 & 273; Simpson, Blowback,
at H-Hour.' Page et al, p. 212; Verrier, pp. 68 pp. 124 & 269; Page et al, p. 215.
& 76-7. 122. During 1953, E. Howard Hunt was
97. Bethell, Spies, p. 300. working in the CIA's South-East Europe
98. EUCOM Annual Narrative Report, Labor Division looking for turncoats who might
Services Division, 1950, European Command have betrayed the Albanian operation. Hunt
Labor Services Division Classified Decimal suspected a bodyguard employed by King
File, 1950-51 (secret), p. 22, RG 338, NA, Zog and asked Tracey Barnes for advice on
Suitland, Md. Loftus, p. 184; Bethell, Betrayal, how to 'dispose' of He saw Col. Boris
him.
p. 129; Hersh, p. 270; Simpson, Blowback, Pash, a White Russian who had run the
p. 145; Thomas, p. 368. Army Intelligence Alsos mission and who
99. Halliday, p. 356; Bethell, Betrayal, was in charge of Programme Branch-7 which
p. 143. had been set up to handle 'wet affairs' -
100. Bethell, Betrayal, pp. 140-3; Sulzberger, kidnappings and assassinations. Pash served
pp. 544-5; Thomas, p. 84; E. Howard Hunt, as the army's representative on Bloodstone,
Undercover: Memories of an American Secret whose activities included 'assassination'.
Agent, 1975, p. 93; Hersh, p. 27. OPC superiors acknowledged that the 'one
101. Brown, Treason, p. 419. and only remedy' for communist double
102-6. Sulzberger, pp. 435 & 517; Bethell, agents was assassination, though in Germany
pp. 145-8, 156-7 & 164-6; Bethell,
Betraxjal, their deaths were never directly traced back
Spies, pp. 299-300; I, 6.9.94; Andrew, p. 493. to the OPC. US Senate Select Committee to
107. Page et al, p. 214; NYT, 31.3 & 9.4.51. Study Government Operations with Respect
108. The Soviets apparently sent a small to Intelligence Activities. 'Supplementary
number of fighter planes to Albania in the Detailed Staff Reports on Foreign and
hope that they could shoot down foreign Military Intelligence', Book IV, 94th
aircraftmaking the drops (NYT, 9.4.51). Congress, 2nd Session, Report No. 94-755.
Djilas added that Stalin had told him in 1947 US Government Printing Office, 1976,
that Albania was 'the weak point' in the pp. 128-33; Hunt testimony. Church
communist structure. 'Moscow never signed Committee, JFK Records, NA, Box 25, Folder
an alliance with Albania for two reasons: (1) 5; Corson, pp. 362-5; Simpson, Blowback,

because it wished to keep its hands free for pp. 153-5; E. Thomas, p. 85; Powers, pp. 54-
the possibility of trading Albania off to the 5; Rositzke, p. 37.
West in exchange something else; (2)
for 123. British security officers were still trying
because it wanted to be free to provoke an to discover the source of the story Sulzberger
insurrection there as an excuse to invade (pp. 730-1) had written about Albania in
Yugoslavia.' Sulzberger, pp. 542-5. 1950. 'Occasionally, somebody still drops an
109. Verrier, p. 77. idle question at a cocktail party on that line.'
110. Evan Thomas (The Very Best Men: Four E. Thomas, p. 88; Powers, p. 57.

Who Dared: The Early Years of the CIA, Simon 124. Enver Hoxha, The Anglo-American Threat
& Schuster, 1995, pp. 68-70) claims that 'in to Albania; Memories of the National Liberation
hisbasement of his house on Nebraska War, 8 Nentori, Tirana, 1982, p. 426; Bethell,
Avenue in Northwest Washington was Betrayal, pp. 191-2.
encoding equipment that Philby used to 125. Bethell, Betrayal, pp. 193-4; Winks, p. 40.
transmit America's secrets back to the BBCl, The Cost of Treachery, 30.10.84.
Kremlin'. This appears to be untrue. Hersh, 126. Prados, p. 245.

p. 321; Brown, Treason, p. 422. 127. Bethell, Spies, p. 302; ST, 4.11.84.
111. Bower, Red Web, p. 137; Mosley, p. 285. 128. Hibbert review of Bethell and Smiley
Ranelagh, p. 157; West, Friends, p. 119. books. International Affairs, Vol. 61, No. 2,

112. E. Thomas, pp. 71-2. spring 1985. Hibbert, p. 235.

 NOTES 837

129. History returned as farce with the and Treason, p. 84. Kerby spoke to Deacon
election of Sali Berisha as President of shortly before his death in 1971. NS, 28.11.86.
Albania. The musketeers, having an
still 11. Christopher Warwick, The Universal
influence on British policy on Albania, Ustinov, Sidgwick, 1990, pp. 21 & 51; Peter
hitched their ideological bandwagon to Ustinov, Dear Me, Heinemann, 1977, pp. 31-
Berisha's star, believing that he was the man 3, 60 & 77.

able to cleanse the country of its communist 12. This was Klop's second brush with
past. Sir Reginald Hibbert, however, Schellenberg. He had met with MI6's Maj.
regarded him as vicious a dictator as Hoxha. Richard Stevens just before his ill-fated trip

His corrupt regime was eventually to Holland and his capture by the SD at
overthrown by a general election in July 1997 Venlo, near theGerman border. After the
which saw the victory of the Socialist Party. war, Stevens was employed by Lord
The return of King Zog's son, Prince Leka, Weidenfeld in London as advertising
did not see a restoration of the monarchy, as manager of Contact magazine, which
the pro-monarchy referendum vote was only employed a number of emigres. He was also
35 per cent. ST, 23.3.97; loS, 11.5.97; G, 9.7.97; responsible for the translation of a number of
Heuser, p. 79. German books dealing with intelligence
matters. George Weidenfeld, Remembering My
Good Friends, HarperCollins, 1994, p. 152;
CHAPTER TWENTY: THE
NTS AND THE 'YOUNG Pincher, Treachery, pp. 246-7; Wright,
pp. 67-9; Costello, Mask, p. 309.
RUSSIANS' 13. ST, 31.2.7; Pincher, Treachery, p. 246.
1. Richard Deacon, The Greatest Treason, Whitwell. Kerby persuaded Nicholson to
Century, 1988, p. 82, and British Connection, write the book and contributed an
Hamish Hamilton, 1979, pp. 104-8; Costello, introduction. Deacon, British Connection,
Mask, pp. 311 & 665. pp. 197 & 204, and Russian, p. 341;
2 & 3. S. J. Hetherington, Katharine Atholl, NS, 28.11.86.
1874-1960; Against the Tide, Aberdeen 14. For a history of the NTS see US
University Press, 1989, pp. 89 & 159-60. Department of State, External Research
4. Cookridge, p. 297; Deacon, Treason, p. 83. Paper, Series3, No. 76, 'NTS: The Russian

John J. Stephan, The Russian Fascists: Tragedy SolidaristMovement', Washington, 1951. For
and Farce in Exile, 1925-1945, Hamish a Soviet view which is propagandist but in
Hamilton, 1978, pp. 29-30; Aarons/Loftus, its essentials correct, see Konstantin
Ratlines, pp. 153-4. Cherezov, NTS: A
Spy Ring Unmasked, Soviet
5. Cookridge, pp. 165-9;
p. 297; Faligot, Committee with
for Cultural Relations
Catherine Andreyev, Vlasov and the Russian Russians Abroad, Moscow, 1963. Simpson,
Liberation Movement: Soviet reality and emigre Blowback, p. 220; Cookridge, p. 296; Bower,
theories, Cambridge University Press, 1987, Spy, p. 205; Aarons/Loftus, Ratlines, pp. 186
p. 185. & 227; Stephan, pp. 29-30, 184 & 375;
6 &Stephan, pp. 29-30; Nicholas Hayes,
7. Andreyev, pp. 187-8.
'Kazem-Bek and the Young Russians' 15. Hayes. On Sheiken see Peter Blythe, The
revolution', Slavic Review, June 1980; Man Who Was Uncle: The Biography of a
Andreyev, p. 182. Master Spy, Arthur Barker, 1975.
8. P.J. Huxley-Blythe, Betrayal: The Story of 16 & 17. Cookridge, p. 297; Vakar, pp. 187-8;
Russian Anti-Communism, The Friends of Simpson, Blowback, p. 221; Cherezov, p. 43.
National Russia, 1957, pp. 16-17. 18. Nadia Benois Ustinov, Klop and the
9. When the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union Ustinov Family, Sidgwick, 1973, p. 215;
Turkel's name as a representative of the pro- Borovik, pp. 227-8; Aarons/Loftus, Ratlines,
Hitler Russian National Union was put pp. 154-9.
forward as a member of a National 19-21. Sudoplatov, pp. 152-7; Aarons/
Government to be formed on liberated Loftus, Ratlines, pp. 168-9; Pincher, Treachery,
Russian soil. Stephan, p. 261; Deacon, British pp. 125-8.
Connection, pp. 106-7; Costello, Mask, pp. 311 22.Leverkuehn, pp. 173-4.
& 665; Aarons/Loftus, Ratlines, pp. 210-11 & 23-5 & 28. Andreyev, pp. 2, 170 & 190-1;
213; Pincher, Treachery, p. 193. Gordon Young, The House of Secrets, Duell,
10. Deacon, British Connection, pp. 108 & 111, Sloan & Pearce, NY, 1959, pp. 14-15 & 110
838 NOTES

(an obviously CIA-sponsored book). Young Soviets, in London, during the war, which
was ex-Reuters and after the war opened a may explain Kerby's postwar knowledge of
bureau in Stockholm for the study of Soviet his activities. On Baykolov see Tolstoy,
affairs on behalf of the Daily Mail. Victims, pp. 467 & 567; Deacon, British
26 & 27. Dallin, pp. 526 & 645-7; Hagen, Connection, p. 204, and Treason, p. 82;
p. 164; Cherezov, p. 48; Cookridge, p. 297; Costello, Mask, pp. 597 & 665. Knupffer was
Simpson, Blowback, pp. 170 & 223; Tolstoy, a source of information to the BLEF.
Stalin, pp. 355-7; Cesarani, pp. 10 & 23; Interview with Mrs Elma Dangerfield, 6.3.96;
Aarons/Loftus, Ratlines, pp. 180-1. ST, 13.2.77.
29-33. Bethell, Betra\/al, pp. 25-33; Cesarani, 41. Brown, pp. 651-4; Aarons/Loftus,
pp. 158-9; Tolstoy, Stalin, pp. 69-70, 143, Ratlines, pp. 214 & 232-3.
185-97, 265, 286-7, 321-4 & 595; 42. Ustinov, pp. 217 & 219; Warwick, p. 53;
PRO FO 934/5(42), 92; Geoffrey Stewart- Elliott, pp. 89 & 148-9.
Smith, unpublished manuscript on the World 43.West, Illegals, pp. 74-7.
Anti-Communist League, p. 59; Wiener 44-45. Aarons/Loftus, Ratlines, pp. 187 &
Library
'
Bulletin, winter 1965-6 & autumn 224-30; Sudoplatov, p. 170.
1966. 46. Pincher, Treachery, p. 126. 'Camp King',
34. NormanRose, Vansittart: Study of a formerly knownDulag Luft (Transit
as
Diplomat, Heinemann, 1978, pp. 278-82.He Camp Air), had been used by the Germans
eventuallymoved to Argentina where his for the successful interrogation of RAF and
'Suvorov Union' was subsidised by General USAF officers.
Peron. Andreyev, p. 79; Dallin, p. 509; 47-50. In reference to the 'Ryle-Johnson
Wilfred Strik-Strikfelt, Against Stalin and Report' on 'The Turkul Organisation' - in
Hitler, trans. David Footman (former MI6 fact, the Klatt network - on different
officer), 1970. occasions Aarons and Loftus refer to 'Ryle',
35 & 37. Young, p. 110;Cherezov, p. 39; 'Professor Ryle' and 'Gilbert Riles' (sic),

Cookridge, p. 297; Simpson, Blowback, suggesting that he worked for American

pp. 224-5; Hagen, pp. 164-5; Blake, p. 23; Intelligence, though it is clear that this is, in
Bower, Spy, pp. 203 & 205. fact. Prof. Gilbert Ryle of MI6 (Arnold M.
36. Kenneth Benton, The ISOS Years', JCH, Silver, 'Questions, Questions, Questions:
Vol. 3, No. 3, Jul. 1995; Seale/McConville, Memories of Oberursel', INS, Vol. 8, No. 2,

p. 187. Apr. 1993). The claim by Aarons/Loftus,

38. Cookridge, p. 304; Simpson, Blowback, (Ratlines, pp. 150, 220-1, 230-1, 244 & 256)
p. 224; Caught in the Act, Moscow, pp. 65-6; that Turkul was 'arguably the greatest
M. Smith, p. 114. professional spy of the twentieth century'
39. Rose, pp. 278-82. has no basis in fact. Turkul died in 1959.

40. During the war, Knupffer's friend, Capt. Klop retained his London post until 1957.
Henry Kerby, had been with his MI5 Mystery surrounds much of his life. His wife
counterpart, Guy Liddell, an MI6 liaison wrote that 'he served the cause of freedom
officer to the Russian Intelligence Service with devotion and courage'. Klop died in
representative in London, Captain 1962, one day before his seventieth birthday.
Soldatenkov. Few details have emerged 51. Hagen, pp. 167-8; Cherezov, p. 46.
about Kerby's postwar MI6 role, though his 52. De Gramont, p. 184.
previous intelligence experience suggests that 53. Aarons/Loftus, Ratlines, pp. 257-8; Heinz
it almost certainly had something to do with Hohne and Hermann Zolling, Network: The
the exile operations. A radical reactionary Truth about General Gehlen and His Spy Ring,
and free trade Liberal, Kerby became a Seeker 1972, p. 147.
Conservative MP in 1954 (until 1971) - it has 54. The best treatment of the NTS is in a
been said by his friends as a reward from State Department paper by the external
MI6. Part of the imperial Right, his 'right- research staff, Office of Intelligence Research
wing clowning' was, one observer believed, Series 3, No. 76, 10.12.51. Philby, pp. 165-6;
a front for a 'deeply serious and patriotic Hersh, p. 275.
intelligent man in his political operations'. 55. Blake, p. 23; Bower, Spy, pp. 133 & 165.

NS, 28.11.86. Anthony Cave Brown (Treason, 56 & 57. Cherezov, pp. 8-19.
pp. 266-7) suggests that Philby may also 58 & 59. Interview with Peter Huxley-Blythe,
have been engaged in liaison with the 7.5.97.
 NOTES 839

18. Dr Janet Stewart interview.

CHAPTER TWENTY'ONE: 19. SLEF pamphlets and documents are to be
THE BRITISH AND found in the Scottish National Library in
SCOTTISH LEAGUES FOR Edinburgh. Delegates at the June meeting
EUROPEAN FREEDOM included Leopol Podhvagy (Austria); General
Lev Prchala (Czech lands) - leader of the
1. Hetherington, p. 151, also telephone
London group of Czech exiles which
conversation with the author; The Duchess of
strongly opposed President Eduard Benes's
Atholl, The Conscription of a People, Philip
policy of appeasement towards the Soviet
Allan, 1931, pp. 74-6.
Union during and after the war; Professor
2. Stewart details based on interview and
Oras (Estonia); Reverend Robert Slokenbers
conversations (22.6.94) with his daughter, Dr
(Latvia); Julius Kukasiewicz (Poland); Peter
Janet Stewart, and research by Alan Lawrie.
Pridavok (Slovak National Council) -
Also see John F. Stewart, Tortured but
'Czechoslovakia is not a nation. It is, or
Unconquerable Ukraine', SLEF, Apr. 1953.
rather it was, a profession'; Voldymyr
3. John Stewart letter to the ABN, 12.2.54.
Solowij (Ukraine); Miss Savafin (Lithuania);
4-6. Atholl, p. 243; interview with Mrs
and Lt Triclav (officer in the underground
Dangerfield, 6.3.96; Mary Melville obit.
army in Yugoslavia).
DT, 16.2.96. Eleanor Rathbone died in 1946.
7 & 8. Atholl, pp. 243-4; Dangerfield
20. 21 & 23. Dangerfield interview; Tolstoy,
Victims, pp. 467 & 567; Deacon, British
interview; Lockhart Diaries, Vol. 2, p. 240.
Connection, p. 204, and Treason, p. 82;
9. R.B. Cockett, Twilight of Truth: Chamberlain,
Costello, Mask, pp. 597 & 665.
Appeasement and the Manipulation of the Press,
22 & 25. Cesarani, pp. 54 & 173; Nicholas
Weidenfeld, 1989, and 'Communication: Ball,
Bethell, The Last Secret, Futura (pbk), 1978,
Chamberlain and Truth', THJ, 33, 1, 1990.
p. 264.
Other members of Mansfield's circle were
24. Aarons, p. 29; Aarons/Loftus, Ratlines,
Lord Malcolm Douglas-Hamilton (whose
pp. 130-1.
seat was taken over by Billy McLean) and Sir
26 &
31. Atholl, pp. 50 & 252; Dangerfield
Victor Raikes. Covert Action, No. 25, 1986.
interview.
10. Lloyd obit. T. 24.9.87.
11. Deacon, Treason, p. 83 and British
27 & 28. Hutchinson, pp. 45-9; Searchlight,
No. 142, Apr. 1987.
Connection, p. 106; Hetherington, p. 192.
29. Lobster, No. 19; letter from J.C. Banks,
12. Hollis was Christopher Mollis, brother of
editor of the Common Wealth Journal; C.A.
senior MI5 officer, Roger. Jerrold was the
Smith obit. The Liberation, No. 25, summer
chair of publishers Eyre & Spottiswoode
1985.
where another MI6 man, writer Graham
30. Tom Hopkinson, Of This Our Times: A
Greene, worked. Obits DT & I, 9.12.95; Tom
Journalist's Story, 1905-50, Hutchinson, 1982,
Burns, The Use of Memory: Publishing and
pp. 191 & 261; 'Britanova: Richard Fletcher',
Further Pursuits, Sheed & Ward, 1993,
Tribune, 2 & 9.9.83; Robin Maugham, Escape
pp. 58-61.
from the Shadows, Hodder, 1972, p. 171.
13.Stephen Dorril and Robin Ramsay, 'In a
32.Alden Hatch, Clare Booth Luce,
Common Cause: The Anti-Communist
Heinemann, 1956, p. 187; Simpson, Blowback,
Crusade in Britain 1945-60', Lobster, No. 19;
p. 222.
Bulmer-Thomas obits T & I, 7.10.93.
33. Emmet had been chair in 1940 of the
14. Information from John Hope; Lobster,
Committee to Aid Britain by Reciprocal
No. 19; Dangerfield interview.
Trade, and with two other British agents had
15. George Orwell, Collected Works, Vol. 4,
helped form 'France Forever', an MI6 front
p. 49.
designed to promote the French exile leader,
16. Tolstoy, Stalin, p. 431; T, 25.5.46 and The
Charles de Gaulle. He also played a major
Tablet, 15.6.46.
role in another influential MI6 front. Fight
17. I am indebted to Alan Lawrie for
for Freedom. Tom Mahl, '48 Land', PhD
research in this area. Zygmunt Nagorski Jr,
thesis, Kent State University, 1994, p. 198.
'Liberation Movements in Exile', Journal of
34. Lobster, No. 19.
Central European Affairs, Jul. 1950;
35. Larry Collins, The Free Europe Committee:
Dangerfield interview; Lockhart Diaries,
American Weapon of the Cold War, PhD thesis,
p. 240.
Carlton University, 1975; Simpson, Blowback,
 '

840 NOTES

pp. 8 & Wilson D. Miscamble, George F.

222; retained or destroyed include PRO PR/916,
Kennan ami Making of American Foreign
the N1073/1-2, N1073/70 & C6300/9/18, 1949.
Policy, 1947-1950, US, 1992, pp. 203-5. Loftus, p. 204; Cesarani, pp. 131 & 156-7; Dr
36. Dangerfield interview; information from C.J. Untaru, ABN London, 1968,
official,

John Hope based on the Vansittart archives. quoted in Anderson, pp. 30-5; letter, John
37 & 38. ACUE commissioned American Hope, 27.4.86.
academics to undertake research projects on 53. The participants at the 1950 ABN
the problems of federalism. In 1952 the conference were taken on a bus trip to the
project was managed by leading European home of Lady Culme-Symour. Mark Culme-
historian and propaganda expert Carl Seymour was a good friend of Guy Burgess.
Fried rich, who was deeply committed to 54 & 55. The Scotsman, 13/14.6.50; Aarons,
federalism. He was also a consultant to the p. 75.
Free Europe Committee on the Soviet Zone 56. Leigh, p. 196.
in Germany. Two historians who had served 57 & 60. Fielding, pp. 85-8; CIC documents,
in the OSS, Frederick H. Buckhardt and John Hope. Later in 1951, McLean renewed
William L. Langer, headed a new ACUE his contact with the Turkestanis. Aarons,
cultural section which funded EM projects. pp. 75-6.
Richard J. Aldrich, 'OSS, CIA and European 58. J. E.G. Fuller, How to Defeat Russia, Eyre &
Unity: The American Committee on United Spottiswoode, 1951.
Europe, 1948-60', International History 59. PRO FO 371/94964.
Review, Vol. 18, No. 4, Nov. 1995. 61. FRUS, 1950, III, p. 1081.
39. Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi, From War 62-64. The Central and Eastern Commission
to Peace, Jonathan Cape, 1959, p. 134; F.X. of the European Movement, Full Report of
Rebattet, 'The European Movement', 1945-53: the Central and Eastern European
A Study in National and International Non- Conference, European Movement, London,
Governmental Organisations Working for Jan. 1952. Beddington-Behrens, p. 185;
European Unity, PhD Antony's
thesis, St Bethell, Betrayal, p. 118; Dangerfield
College, Oxford, 1962, pp. 123-7 & 177. interview.
40. Korbonski, p. 47; Edward Beddington- 65. Beddington-Behrens, p. 187; Korbonski,
Behrens, Look Back - Look Forward, p. 50.
Macmillan, 1963, p. 183. 66 & 67. Lobster, No. 19; T, 25.2.52; Hatch,
41 & 42. Offie Harold
mentioned in p. 187.
Macmillan, War Diaries: Politics and War in 68. Geoffrey Stewart-Smith, privately
the Mediterranean, Jan. 1943-May 1945, published dossier on the World Anti-
Macmillan, pp. 517 & 753; Aarons/Loftus, Communist League, p. 49. Mrs Dangerfield
Ratlines, p. 269; Simpson, Blowback, p. 121; remains active in the European Movement
Beddington-Behrens, pp. 183-4. and is an executive director of the European-
43. Rabattet, p. 46; NYT, 3.9.64. Thanks to Atlantic Journal
Scott Van Wynsberghe for drawing my
attention to this article. See article seeking
ICFTUE by
information on the
Newell in Lobster, No.
Peter E.
28, Dec. 1994,
PART FIVE: THE CHANGE
correspondence, 14.10.95, and CIA Labour 1. Trevor Barnes, 'The Secret Cold War: The
Front: 'The International Confederation of CIA and American Foreign Policy in Europe
Free Trade Unions in Exile'. 1946-56', Part THJ, Vol. 25, No. 3, 1982.
II,

44. Nagorski; Dodds-Parker, p. 46. 2. Richard Aldrich for information on

45. Aldrich, quoting PRO FO 371/76383. Sandys/Menzies.
46. Atholl, pp. 251-2. 3.British Security Co-ordination (BSC): 'An
47-49. Anthony John Trythall, 'Boney' Fuller: Account of Secret Activities in the Western
The Intellectual General 1878-1966, Cassell, Hemisphere, 1940-45', cited in Thomas Earl
1977, pp. 181-3, 216-17 & 253; Searchlight, Mahl, '48 Land', PhD thesis, Kent State
Nos 171 & 172; additional information and University, Aug. 1994.
John Hope; Fuller appointment
letter, 25.5.87,

diaries. King's College,London.

50-52. IRD files on the conference are closed.
Foreign Office files on the SLEF/ABN either
 NOTES 841

G.C. Webber, The Ideology of the British Right

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO: 1918-1939, Croom Helm, pp. 123-5 & 142;
THE EUROPEAN Wilkinson/ Astley, p. 71.
MOVEMENT AND 'THE 6. Amery, p. 16; Count Coudenhove-Kalergi,
BATTLE FOR PICASSO'S An Idea Conquers the World, Hutchinson, 1953,
MIND' p. 116; Arnold J. Zurcher, The Struggle to

Unite Europe 1940-1958, York New

1. 'European Union
T, 1.8.94; Altiero Spinelli,
University Press, 1958. With Coudenhove-
in the Resistance', Government and Opposition,
Kalergi, Zucher set up a seminar group on
Vol. 11, No. 3, Apr.-Jul. 1967; Walter
European federalism at New York
Lipgrens, 'European Federation in the
University. During the war. Countess
Political Thought of Resistance Movements
Coudenhove-Kalergi stayed at the home of
during World War IT, Central European
the emigres' friend, Auberon Herbert.
History, Vol. 1, 1968.
7. Frenay, who, while he eventually accepted
2. Dr J.H. Retinger, The European Continent,
de Gaulle as leader, was 'evidence of the
William Hodge & Chiver, 1946.
persistence of loyalty to Petain amongst
3. Chair of the FU was R.W.G. Mackay, the
army officers who were in the Resistance'.
key MP in Labour backbench European
Obit, of Frenay's Resistance colleague Gen.
union planning. His successor was Miss F.L.
Maurice Chevance-Bertin, 1, 8.7.96; Michel,
Josephy, Liberal Party and Liberal
p. 353.
International member. Healey, pp. 195-6;
8. Charles F. Delzell, 'The European
Robert Eringer, The Global Manipulators: The
Federalist Movement in Italy: First Phase,
Bilderberg Group, The Trilateral Commission -
1918-1947', The Journal of Modern History,
Covert Power Groups of the ]Nest, Pentacle
Sept. 1960; Lipgrens, A History, p. 58.
Books, Bristol, 1980, p. 16.
9. Crockett, pp. 108-12; Delzell; Lipgrens, A
4.Richard Crockett, David Astor and the
History, p. 243.
Observer, Deutsch, 1991, pp. 17 & 60-4;
10. Korbonski, p. 20; Wilkinson /Astley,
Walter Lipgrens and Wilfried Loth (eds).
p. 239.
Documents on the History of European
11. Dodds-Parker, Political Eunuch, p. 42, and
Integration, Vol. 3: 'The Struggle for
Set Europe Ablaze, pp. 214-17.
European Union by Political Parties and
12. Peter Thompson, 'Bilderberg and the
Pressure Groups in Western European
West', in Holly Sklar (ed.), Trilateralism: The
Countries 1945-1950', Walter de Gruyter,
Trilateral Commission and Elite Planning for
1988, and Lipgrens, A History of European
World Management, South End Press, US,
Integration, Vol. 1, 1945-1947: 'The Formation
1980, p. 160.
of the European Unity Movement',
13. F.X. Rebattet, The 'European Movement',
Clarendon, Oxford, 1982.
p. 459. His father, G. Rebattet, was former
5. Beddington-Behrens was the City's
highest-paid stockbroker with Ocean Trust.
EM deputy and Secretary-General, 1948-55.
Unfortunately many of the archives of the
Col. Peter 'Gerry' Koch de Gooreynd was
various organisations for European unity
personal assistant to Menzies during the war.
were destroyed in the fifties. Hansard, HoC,
He was a senior figure in stockbrokers
7 & 5.6.46.
Panmure Gordon, of which his father had
14. Letters from Churchill to Viscount Cecil
been Gerry was the younger brother of
chair.
of Chelwood, 9 & 20.6.46; Cecil to Churchill,
the father of Peregrine Worsthorne, one-time
19.6.46, in Gilbert, pp. 241-3; Coudenhove-
editor of the Sunday Telegraph. 'An
Kalergi, p. 267.
enormously popular social figure with a
15. Dodds-Parker, Politics, pp. 45-6, and
house on the Ditchley estate and a famous
Europe, p. 214.
mistress, [Countess] Laura Dudley, to whom
16. Randolph S. Churchill (ed.), W.S.
he left his money, a case of coals to
Churchill, The Sinews of Peace, Post-War
Newcastle.' Koch de Gooreynd served at
Speeches, pp. 198-202; Robert Rhodes James,
Paris, 1947-50. Peregrine Worsthorne, Tricks
Bob Boothby: A Portrait, Headline (pbk), 1992,
ofMemory: An Autobiography, Weidenfeld,
p. 337; Richard J. Aldrich, 'OSS, CIA and
Rex Benson was
1993, p. 82. Lt-Col. Sir
European Unity: The American Committee
military attache, Washington, 1941-4.
on United Europe, 1948-60', International
Beddington-Behrens, pp. 16, 40, 116 & 124;
History Review, Vol. 18, No. 4, Nov. 1995, and
842 NOTES

'European Integration: An American Monnet: First Statesman of Independence,

Intelligence Connection', in Anne Deighton Norton, NY, 1994.
(ed.). Building Postwar Europe: National 26. Gilbert, pp.337 & 400; Laurence Shoup
Decision-Makers ami European Institutions, and William Minter, Imperial Brain Trust,
1948-63, Macmillan, 1995. Monthly Review Trust, 1977, p. 117.
17. T, 20.9.46; letter, Amery to Churchill, 27 & 28. Richard Fletcher, 'Who Were They
20.9.46, in Gilbert, pp. 279-81. Travelling With?', in The CIA and the Labour
18. Lord Layton set up the British Trust Movement, Spokesman, Nottingham, 1977,
before the war to help Czechs flee their pp. 58 & 69, and 'How CIA Money Took the
country after the GermanBy the
invasion. Teeth out of British Socialism', in Philip
late forties had evolved in the minds of
it Agee and Louis Wolf (eds). Dirty Work: The
eastern European secret police into a front CIA in Western Europe, Zed (pbk), 1981.
for M16. Stevens, pp. 89 & 154. Boothby had 29 & 30. Rebattet, pp. 25, 49, 60 & 183.
strong links with the Czechs, giving them 31. Coudenhove-Kalergi created the
'outstanding' support in the period. James, European Parliamentary Union (FPU) of
p. 184; John Pomain, Joseph Retinger: Memoirs federalist parliamentarians throughout

of an Eminence Grise, University of Sussex Europe. British MPs left in February 1949
Press, 1972, pp. 208-9. Pomain was personal because of the overt federalism. Prone to
assistant to Retingerfrom 1948 until the 'autocratic tendencies', Coudenhove-Kalergi
death of the Polish eminence grise in 1960. was a bad organiser who quarrelled with
Korbonski, p. 49; Beddington-Behrens, p. 178. Sandys about the over-representation of
Labour MP McDermot had worked in
Niall hostile British 'unionists' in key positions in
counter-intelligence and MI5 during the war, the EM. At the end of 1949, the EM created
and belonged to the 'New Britain Group' its own International Parliamentary Group.

w^hich flourished in the 1930s with ideas of T, 29.9.48; Rebattet, p. 162; Sallie Pisani, The
European federalism, inspired by the CIA and the Marshall Flan, Edinburgh
'integral' Serb philosopher Dimitrije University Press, 1991, pp. 67-71;
Mitrinovic. Leigh, p. 137; Lipgrens, A History, Beddington-Behrens, p. 194.
p. 162. 32. Dorril/ Ramsay, 'In a Common Cause',
19 & James, p. 337; Gilbert, pp. 283
20. & Lobster, No. 19.

290-1; Rebattet, pp. 25-30. 33. In 1950, Astor and 'his mentor of Eton
21.John Bruce-Lockhart (former Deputy days' - and another MI6
Robert Birley
asset,
Chief of MI6), 'Sir William Wiseman Bart - - helped found that 'lasting institution to
Agent of Influence', RUSI Journal, summer post-war Anglo-German friendship, the
1989; Pomain, p. 212. Konigswater Conference, which provided a
22. Rebattet, p. 371; Sulzberger, forum for British MPs, businessmen and
pp. 418-19. journalists to meet their German
23. When, in June, Victor GoUancz counterparts and discuss subjects of mutual
considered resigning from the UEM, Boothby interest'. Dodds-Parker invited Karl Carstens

invoked the conspiracy theory: 'It is quite and Heinrich von Brentano to the first
clear that the Russians are operating a gathering - 'The result of such friendships
Master Plan designed to give them complete made possible through Konigswater can
control over Central Europe (including never be exaggerated.' Crockett, p. 67;
Austria and Czechoslovakia, and, it is hoped, Dodds-Parker, Folitics, p. 46, and Europe,
Italy) by the end of the year. The way will p. 215; Rebattet, pp. 371 & 479.
then be ready for a debouchement from the 34 & 35. If successful, the funds were used in
Elbe line next year which will bring them to the 1950 Tory general election campaign and
the Channel and the Bay of Biscay
.
. . . This is not in the EM. James, p. 347; STel, 3.10.93;
not the moment for opponents of Smith, OSS, p. 368; Aldrich, 'European
appeasement to separate.' Meeting at Albert Unity'.
Hall, 21 April 1947. Robert Boothby, What Do 36. ST, 25.5.75.
You Think about Western Union?, Conservative 37 & 43. Dodds-Parker, Europe, p. 215.
Political Centre, 1949, p. 7; Gilbert, pp. 399- 38 & 40. In May 1949 the Labour Party's
400; Lipgrens /Loth, p. 695. International Department came close to
24. Coudenhove-Kalergi, p. 276. proscribing the EM. AGUE supported
25. Gilbert, p. 406; Franqois Duchene, Jean dissenters in the Labour Party including
 NOTES 843

R.W. Mackay, MP, delegate to Strasbourg, believe, however, that there is any doubt that
who sought with Spaak a compromise route they are genuine, primarily because the
to federalism known as the 'Mackay Plan'. codes and acronyms are those used for these
During 1950 he was dependent on ACUE operations. Appendix 2, ISC Supervision
funds. Aldrich, 'European Unity'; STel, Committee, 16.10.67; Bower, Spy, p. 214.
3.10.93. 60. Report of the Executive Sub-Committee,

39. Though a pro-European, Macmillan was Investigating possible Central Intelligence

not in any way a federalist. Though Agency subversion of the Intemational
recognising that Britain could not isolate Student Conference, Oct. 1967, NUS archives,
from Europe, he had written (11.10.49):
itself MSS 280; Fletcher, p. 65. E, 25.2.68; Triesman,
'The Empire must always have first pp. 143-4 & 153; NY Herald Tribune, 15.8.67;
preference for us: Europe must come second The Leveller, Feb. 1976.
in a specially favoured position.' James, 61 & 62. Triesman, pp. 147-50; Fletcher,
p. 346; Alistair Home, Macmillan 1894-1956, p. 64.
Vol. 1, Macmillan, 1988, pp. 321 & 323. 63. Trustees of FISC were Sir Berkeley
41. Home, pp. 348-51; Fletcher, p. 69. Everard Foley Gage, former ambassador to
42. Rebattet, pp. 60-1. Siam and Peru, Gerald Woods, Midlands
44. CM. Woodhouse, Something Ventured, banker, and John Butterworth, Vice-
1982, p. 135. Chancellor of Warwick University, The
45-48. Bloch/Fitzgerald, pp. 101-3; Aldrich, Leveller; PE, 31.3.67; Faligot, p. 193.
'European Unity'; Joel Kotek, Students and the 64. Woodhouse, p. 135; Bloch/Fitzgerald,
Cold mr, Macmillan, 1996. p. 68; TO, 7.3.75; 'The Rise and Fall of the
49 & TO, 23.5.75; Fletcher, p. 71.
50. CIA, Part One', ]Norld in Action, Granada,
51. 'NATO, Washington and Labour's Right- ITV, 1975.
Wing', in CIA Infiltration of the Labour 65 & 66. Michael Wamer, 'Origins of the
Movement, Militant, 1982. Congress for Cultural Freedom', Studies in
52. ST, 25.5.75. Intelligence; Brian Crozier, Free Agent,
53 & 54. Bloch/Fitzgerald, pp. 101 & 106; HarperCollins, 1996, p. 64. See Pierre
Aldrich, British Intelligence, p. 2. Gremion, Intelligence de VAnticommunisme: Le
55. Bower, Spy, p. 213. Congres pour la liberte de la culture a Paris
56. Ibid, p. 145;David Triesman, 'The CIA (1950-1975), Fayard, Paris, 1996; Peter
and Student Polities', in Alexander Cockburn Coleman, The Liberal Conspiracy: The Congress
and Robin Blackburn (eds). Student Power: for Cultural Freedom and the Struggle for the
Problems, Diagnosis, Action, Penguin (pbk), Mind of Postwar Europe, Collier Macmillan,
1969, p. 148; SUS report. Dep. 224/2/1; The 1989, p. 19.
Leveller, pilot issue, Feb. 1976. 67. PRO FO 953/479 P5486, Christopher
57. Report of the Investigation Commission Warner, minute, 8.6.49; FO 953/482 P5758,
Conceming Recent Charges against the minute, 11.6.49, Mayhew to McNeil, 27.6.49;
Intemational Student Conference, NS, 27.2.81; Peter Weiler, British Labour and
Supervision Committee of the ISC, 16.10.67, the Cold War, 1988, pp. 210-11.
p. A34; Triesman, p. 148; SUS reports, book Brief Lives
68. In a profile in his
Dep 224/2/1; Frank Copplestone, 'A Study (Hamish Hamilton, 1982), Alan Watkins
of Intemational Student Relations 1945- reports that Muggeridge continued to work
1957', in NUS archives, Warwick University, part time for MI6. Not unnaturally, some of
Modern Records Centre; Copplestone obit. Muggeridge's friends in this period were
T, 21.5.96, and notice of memorial service, former colleagues in Section V, MI6 officers
10.9.96, which most of the names mentioned such as Richard Comyns-Carr and Graham
in this section, including M16 intelligence Greene. His regular contact with the Service
officers, attended. was Dick Brooman-White, 'an acute, gentle
58. T, 15.2.68; SUS reports, Dep 224/2/1. soul' and former MI5 officer who transferred
59. The MI6 documents were mysteriously to Section V during the war. He served as an
sent by anonymous Austrian students to the attache in Turkey during 1946-7 and was
NUS and ISC investigating committees in elected to Parliament as a Conservative MP
1967. They were never taken seriously partly in 1951, ending his political career as a junior
because of the possibility of forgery but also minister for Scotland. They lunched on a
because of sheer embarrassment. 1 do not regular basis and Muggeridge picked up
844 NOTES

political briefings - 'nothing in the reports I

saw from behind the iron curtain countries CHAPTER TWENTY'TH REE:
which I could not have got from the ROLLING BACK 'ROLL-
newspapers' - and the latest gossip on the BACK'
Service. 'I asked him how things were in the
1. Dmitri Volkogonov, Stalin: Triumph and
way of intelligence, and he said, in his
Tragedy, Weidenfeld, 1991, p. 531; Aldrich,
characteristically dry way, that very good
'Unquiet in Death', p. 195.
intelligence was coming from places where it
2. John Yurechko, From Containment to
was easy to get and none at all from places
Counter Offensive: Soviet Vulnerabilities and
where it was difficult to get.' Brooman- White
American Policy Planning, 1946-1953, PhD
also debriefed Muggeridge on his travels
thesis. University of Berkeley, 1980; Mastny,
abroad. While he was more than willing to
pp. 27-9; Aldrich, 'Unquiet', p. 207.
help the Service, giving lectures to their
3. R. Harris Smith, OSS: The Secret History of
intelligence courses at Oxford, Muggeridge
America's First Central Intelligence Agency,
lambasted its inadequacies: 'I was amused to
University of California Press, 1972, p. 238.
learn [26.8.48.] that the worst dead-beats
4. Steven, p. 39. Unfortunately, Steven's
were still firmly entrenched.' Bright-Holmes,
original notes were 'lost' during a house
pp. 286, 295, 339-43 & 350-4.
move and he no longer recalls the names
69. Warner.
and details of his MI6 and CIA sources.
70, 73 & Coleman, pp. 34, 46, 61 & 145.
77.
5. Grose, p. 303.
71 & 28-31 & 34-5; Bower, Spy,
72. Ibid, pp.
6. Robert Conquest, Stalin: Breaker of Nations,
p. 46; A.J. Ayer, More of My Life, OUP (pbk),
Weidenfeld, 1991, p. 251; David Com, Blond
1985, pp. 63 & 138; Warner.
Ghost: Ted Shackley and the CIA's Crusades,
74. Coleman, pp. 16, 41 & 49; interview with
Simon & Schuster, 1994, p. 42. Steven
Braden, World in Action; Ranelagh, p. 250;
(pp. 193-6) refers to the Slansky episode as
Tom Mangold, Angleton, Simon & Schuster,
being part of the Splinter Factor deception
1991, pp. 293 & 384.
operation; however. Corn, who spoke to a
75, 76 & 79. T.R. Fyvel, And There My Trouble
CIA officer involved, says that it was a real
Began: Uncollected Writings 1945-1985,
operation.
Weidenfeld, 1986, pp. xi-xii, 83-94 & 99.
7 & 8. Anthony Glees, 'War Crimes: The
78. Hugh David, Stephen Spender: A Portrait
Security and Intelligence Dimension', INS,
with Background, Heinemann, 1992, pp. 143 & summer
Vol. 7, No. 3, Jul. 1992. In the of
188; WP, 15.5.67.
1988 Glees was appointed adviser to the War
80. Coleman, p. 146; David, pp. 258-9;
Crimes Inquiry under Sir Thomas
Bright-Holmes, p. 460.
Hetherington. He wrote a 30,000-word
81. Jenny Rees, Looking for MR NOBODY: The
report, designated 'secret', using MI6 and
Secret Life of Goronwy Rees, Weidenfeld, 1994.
MI5 material. A sanitised version appeared
82. STel, 27.10.63; Trevor Barnes, 'Democratic
as Chapters 3 and 4 of the War Crimes
Deception: American Covert Operations in
Inquiry Report (HMSO, Cmn. 744, 1989).
Post- War Europe', in Charters /Tugwell;
Glees had been asked to produce the report
Mark Amory (ed.). The Letters of Anne
by the Home Office based on his knowledge
Fleming, Collins Harvill, 1985, pp. 384-5;
of contemporary German history and his
Ayer, pp. 63-4; I, 20.7.95.
book The Secrets of the Service: British
83 & 84. Coleman, pp. 73 & 186. In
Intelligence and Communist Subversion, 1919-
September 1966, King visited CIA Director
51, Cape, 1987. Cesarani, p. 132; O, 5.5.91.
Richard Helms in Washington. The Cecil King
9. Sulzberger, p. 523.
Diary 1965-1970, Cape, 1972, pp. 86-7 & 92-
10. History of the Strategic Arms Competition,
3. The CIA denied a request under the
1945- 72, Pentagon, 1993.
Freedom of Information Act for documents
11. M. Steven Fish, 'After Stalin's Death: Tlie
relating to King.
Anglo-American Debate over a New Cold
War', Diplomatic History, No. 10, fall 1986.

12. Peter Boyle, 'The "Special Relationship"

with Washington', in John W. Young (ed.),

The Foreign Policy of Churchill's Peacetime

 NOTES 845

Administration 1951-55, Leicester University Policy Feedback', Ukrainian Quarterly, spring

Press, 1988. 1953.
13. Lobster, No. 19; M. Smith, p. 251; Tony 27. Sudoplatov, pp. 330-1; PRO FO 371/
Geraghty, Beyond the Frontline: The Untold 100825/9 & 371/97591/1.
Exploits of Britain's Most Daring Cold War Spy 28 & 29. Brown, Secret Servant, pp. 703 &
Mission, HarperCollins, 1996, pp. 23-4. 720, and Howarth, p.
Treason, pp. 448-9; 169.
14. Michael Mastanduno, 'Trade as a 30. General Sir Charles Richardson, From
strategic weapon: American and alliance Churchill's Secret Circle to the BBC: The
export control policy in the early post-war Biography of Lieutenant General Sir Ian Jacob,
period'. International Organisation 42, 1, Brassey's, 1991.
winter 1988. Frank M. Cain, 'Exporting the 31. Blake, p. 157.
Cold War: British Responses to theUSA's 32. A. Faughnan, The Politics of Influence:
Establishment of COCOM, 1947-51', JCH, Churchill, Eden and Soviet Communism,
Vol. 29, 1994. 1951-7, PhD thesis, Cambridge University,
15. Vibeke Sorensen, 'Economic Recovery 1993; Aldrich, British Intelligence, p. 23;
versus Containment: The Anglo-American West, Friends, p. 83.
Controversy over East- West Trade, 1947-51', 33. Anthony Montague Browne, Long Sunset:
Cooperation and Conflict, XXIV, 1989; Memoirs of Winston Churchill's Last Private
PRO FO 371/94845/38, 18.9.50. Secretary, Cassell, 1995, pp. 133-4.
16.CIA, 'Vulnerability of the Soviet bloc to 34. Wilkinson/Astley, p. 240; Peter
Economic Warfare', National Intelligence Thompson, 'Bilderberg and the West', in
Estimate No. 22, 19.2.51, FRUS, Vol. 1, 1951. Sklar, p. 163.
17. PRO FO 371/125006/5. 35. Alan Hatch, H.R.H. Prince Bernhard of the
18. Heuser, John W. Young, Winston
p. 141; Netherlands, Harrap, 1962, pp. 212-13.
Churchill's Last Campaign: Britain and the Cold 36. Korbonski, p. 50.
War, 1951-5, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1996, 37. Cookridge, p. 301; Bower, Spy, p. 206.

p. 37. 38. Grose, p. 356; Heuser, p. 142.

19. Young, pp. 70 & 85. 39. Young (ed.), pp. 12-13.
20. John W. Young, 'The British Foreign 40. Lyman Kirkpatrick, The Real CIA,
Office and Cold War Fighting in the Early Macmillan, NY, 1968, p. 153.
1950s: PUSC (51)16 and the "Sore Spots" 41 & 43. Lobster, No. 19; Bower, Spy, pp. 170
Memorandum', Discussion Papers in Politics, & 208.
No. P95/2, University of Leicester, Apr. 42. Borovik, p. 172; I magazine, 22.9.92.
1995; PRO FO 371/10085, 31.1.52. 44. Payne, pp. 679-80.
21. Reference and information from Richard 45. Ibid, p. 688; Rapaport, The Doctor's Plot:

J. Aldrich. Stalin's Last Crime,Fourth Estate, 1991,

22. 'Soviet Reactions to Western Pressure on pp. 74-5; Sudoplatov, pp. 298-301;
"Sore Spots" ', 5.2.52. H. Montgomery Hyde, Stalin: The History of a
23. PRO FO 371/100825, 19.2.52. The paper Dictator, Hart-Davis, 1971; Walter Laqueur,
was challenged by staff in the Moscow Stalin: The Glasnost Revelations, Unwin
embassy who argued that the West should Hyman, 1990.
avoid negotiations and, instead, instigate 46 & 47. PRO FO 371/125030/6-9, 4.2.53;
'disruptive actions'and pursue a damaging Sudoplatov, pp. 336-9; J.W. Young, p. 148.
'arms race' with the USSR. The call for 48. J.W. Young, p. 237; Payne, p. 710; G.
tougher measures rather than retreat was Young, p. Ill; Dorril/ Ramsay, Smear!, p. 18;
propagated in a pamphlet, 'Britain and the Harold Wilson, Memoirs: The Making of a
Cold War', by the Oxford Radical Prime Minister 1916-64, Weidenfeld,
Association, which stimulated the right-wing pp. 143-4.
Economist (26 April) to talk of 'Containment 49. Lobster, No. 19.

Plus'. 50. Mackintosh, p. 87; Hugh Seton-Watson,

24. Beddington-Behrens, p. 187. Europe since Stalin', Problems
'Eastern of
25. Aarons/Loftus, Ratlines, p. 223. Communism, Mar./Apr. 1954.
A. Tchilingarian, 'The American Committee 51 & 52. Bristol, pp. 234-47.
and the Struggle against Bolshevism', 53. Harry Rositzke, The KGB: The Eyes of
Armenian Review, Vol. 8, No. 1-29, Mar. 1955. Russia, Sidgwick (pbk), p. 134; Hagen,
26. Kurt Glaser, 'Psychological Warfare's pp. 151-62.
846 NOTES

54.Konstantin Cherezov, NTS: A Spy Ring Bull (11/18/25.9.54) that he was suspicious
Uunmskcd, Soviet Committee for Cultural of Khokhlov.
Relations with Russians Abroad, 1963, p. 17; 72. Young, Subversion, p. 249; G, 2.1.94;
Caught ill the Act, Moscow, pp. 53-4. Mastanduno; CAB 21/3220.
55. Vakar, p. 280; William Henry 73. Bristow, pp. 245-7.
Chamberlain, 'Emigre Anti-Soviet Enterprises 74. Healey, pp. 195-6.
and Splits', Russian Review, Apr. 1954; 75. Eringer.
Huxley-Blythe, 1958. 76. Harold Macmillan, Tides of Fortune 1945-
56-58. Christian F. Ostermann, 'The United 1955, Macmillan, p. 572; Lobster, No. 19.
States, the East German Uprising of 1953, 77. Anthony Adamthwaite, 'The Foreign
and the Limits of Rollback', Cold War Office and Policy-Making', in Young (ed.),
International History Project, Woodrow pp. 22-4; Lobster, No. 19.
Wilson Centre for Scholars, Working Paper 78. Aldrich, British Intelligence, p. 23.
No. 11, Dec. 1994. Powers, pp. 55-6; 79 & 80. Interview with Philby in Kodumma,
PRO FO 371/103842 CS1016/124, 19.6.53. Estonia, 13.10.71; Philby was out of the
PRO CAB 129/61/0(53)187, 3.7.53,
59. Service by the time these cormnittees were
CAB 129/61/0(53)194, 7.7.53, Policy towards created. Perhaps he had been given details
the Soviet Union and Germany, by his friends still in MI6. The most likely
memorandum; Anthony Seldon, Churchill's explanation is that he was dealing in the
Indian Summer, Hodder, 1981, pp. 396-409. KGB with documents filched by George
60. PRO CAB 128/26/0044(53)4, 21.7.53; Blake. PRO FO 371/100894, 17.9.52; The
Fish; Boyle in Young (ed.). Current Digest of the Soviet Press, Vol. XX,
61. R.V. Jones, Reflections, pp. 23-4. No. 17, 1968.
62. NSC 174/608, which called for an 81-83. Bower, Red Web, pp. 173-5 & 180-2,
intensified reliance on covert action. Gilbert, and Spy, p. 205.
p. 880;Shuckburgh diary, 27.8.53; 84. Nigel West, The Secret War for the
Ostermann; FRUS, 1952-3; VIII, 85, 1.10.53. Falklands, 1997, p. 160.
63. NSC 174 on 'United States Policy toward 85. Wright, pp. 119-21.
the Soviet Satellites in Eastern Europe'; 86. Amold-Forster went on to become a
Heuser, p. 79; CD. Jackson Papers, 1934-67, journalistworking on the Observer and the
Box 56, cited in J.D. Marchio, Rhetoric and Guardian. His account appeared in only the
Reality: The Eisenhower Administration and firstedition of the Guardian and was quickly
Unrest in Eastern Europe, 1953-59, PhD thesis, removed. Stockbroker and Assistant Director
American University, 1991; Jim Marchio, of Naval Intelligence Commander
'Resistance Potential and Rollback: US Christopher Arnold-Forster retired from MI6
Intelligence and the Eisenhower after serving in the war as its Chief Staff
Administration's Policies towards Eastern Officer. G, 4.2.80; Prados, p. 43.
Europe 1953-56', INS, Vol. 10, No. 2, 87 & 88. Cherezov, pp. 18-19 & 54.
Apr. 1995. 89, 91 & 95. Bower, Red Web, pp. 183-5 &
64 & Korbonski, pp. 50-1.
69. 190; Prados, p. 43.
65. Sudoplatov, pp. 325-31 & 373-4; Hyde, 90. J.W. Young, 'Foreign Office'.

p. 62, memorandum written

quoting from a 92. E.H. Cookridge, George Blake: Double
in 1967 by De Courcy, who was in Agent, Hodder (pbk), 1970, p. 145; Blake,
Wormwood Scrubs for fraud, which was p. 23; Aarons/Loftus, Ratlines, p. 261.

smuggled out when he was released from 93. The withdrawal by the British
of support
prison. Now deposited in the Hoover did not prevent the KGB
from pursuing
Institution of War, Revolution and Peace Ukrainian nationalist leaders. Lev Rebet was
archives, Stanford University, California. assassinated in 1957. The following October,
66. Rositzke, KGB, p. 173; Heuser, p. 79. Bandera was killed outside his Munich
67 & Bower, Red Web, pp. 50-1 & 170-6.
68. apartment building with a dose of cyanide
70. Khorunzhi was finally released in 1959 fired from an ingeniously constructed gun.
after five years in prison. Fish. Stetsko managed to avoid Soviet assassins
71. Ronald Seth, The Executioners: The Story of and lived in quiet obscurity in Wimbledon.
SMERSH, Grosset & Dunlap (pbk), NY, 1967. Cherezov, p. 61.
NTS leader Georgi Okolovich told journalist 94. Huxley-Blythe, pp. 219-20; Nicholas

David Tutaev in a series of articles in John Hayes, 'Kazem-bek and the Young Russians'
 NOTES 847

Revolution', Slavic Review, Vol. 39, No. 2, the rival Security Service, MIS' (I, 16.5.87).
1980. Waugh was close to the Hollis family -
96. Rebane received an SS pension until his Roger's brother, Christopher, was his
death in 1966 from alcoholism. Stasys godfather, and the two lunched together (S,
Zymantas emigrated to Los Angeles, where 22.10.88). Marcus Hollis was also an MI6
he worked as a grave-digger. Between 1953 officer. Leigh, pp. 113-14 & 196; Wright,
and 1958 he wrote about the partisan pp. 119-21.
campaign in Santarve (Alliance), a London- 102. Bower, Spy, p. 207.
based journal published by the Alliance of
Lithuanian Resistance. He died in 1973,
by his role in the Baltic
CHAPTER TWENTY- FOUR:
disillusioned
operations. Lukasevics was promoted to
THE TECHNICAL FIX
general, and worked in Moscow Centre 1-3. Ralf Tammes, The United States and the
during the sixties. In 1972 he was posted, Cold War in the High North, Dartmouth Press,

under the name Yakov Konstantinovich Aldershot, 1991, pp. 51-2 & 76-9.
Bukashev, to London as First Secretary at the 4 & 6. DT, 7.2.94; BBC2, Timewatch, 'Spies in
Soviet embassy. According to Soviet defector the Sky', 9.2.94; Lashmar, pp. 76-82; Robert
Oleg Gordievsky, during his six years in S. Hopkins 'An Expanded Understanding
III,

London Lukasevics was singularly of Eisenhower, American Policy and

unsuccessful in building an intelligence Overflights', INS, Vol. 11, No. 2, Apr. 1996.
network; at the same time MI6 seemed 5. Grose, p. 402.
unaware that the Service's bete noire was 7. William E. Burrows, Deep Black: The Secrets
operating under their noses. Bower, Red Web, of Space Espionage, Bantam, 1988, pp. 66-7;
pp. 187-90; Vardys, p. 288. No. 19.
Lobster,
97 &
98. A number of authors have referred 8 &John Marks, The Search for the
9.

to the CIA emigre armies as being part of 'Manchurian Candidate': The CIA and Mind
the REDSOX operation. This is mistaken, as Control, Allen Lane, 1979, p. 30; P. Wright,
the title refers to another unrelated Spycatcher, p. 160, and Secret Agenda,
operation. According to John Mapother, a pp. 166-7; Harris /Paxman, p. 205.
CIA case officer in the Vienna station, the 10. Jones, War, pp. 658-9.
CIA had no such assets. Hersh, p. 410; E. 11. Jones, Reflections, pp. 7-10 & 21; Bower,
Thomas, pp. 130 & 375; Grose, p. 437; Spy, p. 149.
Verrier, p. 157. 12. Lobster, No. 19; Jones, War, p. 659, and
99. I, 22.10.96; DT, 21.10.96. Reflections, p. 18.
100. Bower, Spy, p. 198; Daniel F. Calhoun, 13 & 14. Jones, Reflections, pp. 23-8 & 661;
Hungary and Suez, 1956: An Exploration of Lobster, No. 19.

Who Makes History, University Press of 15. Blake, p. 13.

America, US, 1991, pp. 320-1. 16. 'Operation "Gold" and Others' -
101. Herbert, who had worked in intelligence interview with George Blake by V. Lyadov &
Middle East during the war, had
in the a V. Rozin, Izvestia, 15/17.2.70; Cookridge,
number of relatives who were also Blake, pp. 14-15 & 107-8; H. Montgomery
intelligence practitioners. His uncle, writer Hyde, George Blake: Superspy, Futura (pbk),
Alec, had worked for MI6. His other uncle, 1988, pp. 43 & 176.
Evelyn Waugh, had knowledge of the 17. E. Thomas, p. 128; Hersh, p. 378.
intelligence world, and his family moved in 18. E. Thomas, p. 371; Blake, pp. 20-2.
intelligence circles which included Tom Blake's account is also featured in Pravda
Driberg, a regular informant for MI5, and (International) 2, No. 11/12, 1988, and
Roger Fulford, an ex-colleague of another Moscozv Magazine, Oct. /Nov. 1991. Blake's
relative, Roger Hollis. Nephew Auberon map was finally released by the KGB in
Waugh's first job on the editorial staff of the Feb. 1997. STel, 23.2.97.
Daily Telegraph was rather like an internal 19. See Appendix 9, 'Operation Gold', and 8,

posting for MI6. Waugh: 'perhaps I should 'Was Worth It?', in David E. Murphy,
It

explain that I tried to join the Foreign Service Sergei A. Kondrashev and George Bailey,
soon after coming down from Oxford in 1960 Battleground Berlin: CIA vs KGB in the Cold
and was firmly rebuffed, despite a War, Yale University Press, 1997.
recommendation from Sir Roger Hollis, of 20. West, Friends, p. 80.
848 NOTES

21. Tammes, pp. 12, 118 & 121. Richard J. Aldrich, 'The Fate of Alexander
22. G, 27.9.88 & 21.4.95; Operation Hornbeam, Rado: Soviet Intelligence, British Security and
Edit V, Yorkshire Television, 20.4.95; Close the end of Red Orchestra', INS, Vol. 6, No. 1,
Up North, BBC2, 11.1.96; O, 25.1.98; DT, Jan. 1991.
18.7.98. 6. Ray Merrick, 'The Russia Committee of
23 & 25. Christian Christensen, Vdr the British Foreign Office and the Cold War,
Hemnielige Bereciskap, Historien om MM, J.M. 1946-7', JCH, Vol. 20, 1985; Raymond Smith,
Cappelens Forlag, Oslo, 1988, pp. 143 & 148; 'British Soviet Policy', in A. Deighton, Britain
West, Friethis, p. 80. In the late seventies, and the First Cold War, 1990; PRO FO 930/488
Hambros was accused of being party to a tax P449/ 1/907, 26.5.46; 371 56885 N7816/5169/
avoidance scandal by the top shipping lines 38, 11.6.46; 371/56784 N7199/140/38G,
through the formation of shell companies in 29.7.46; W. Scott Lucas & C.J. Morris, 'A very
tax havens.NS, 17.8.79 & 21.9.79; British crusade', in Aldrich.
Cruickshank, pp. 1-3. 7. Aldrich, pp. 201 & 213, and 'The Fate';
24. Tammes, Christensen, pp. 143 &
p. 121; PRO E4569/1630/65, FO 371/45272.
148. See Alf R. Jacobsen, Moldvarpene (Moles), 8. Employed pre-war by the British Overseas
Oslo, 1985. Bank, Sweet-Escott worked for MI6's Section
26. Hersh, p. 366; CIA, The Berlin Tunnel D before joining SOE as assistant to its head.
Operation', CS Historical Paper No. 1, Sir Charles Hambro. He was posted to Cairo,
25.8.67. with responsibilities for propaganda (S02),
27. Blake, pp. 167-9. meeting a number of 'charming and
28. STel, 23.2.97. intelligent people' such as Charles de Salis
29. By the late fifties the group of emigres (who became Deputy Governor of Rome
originally employed in Regent's Park to when the city was taken), Christopher Sykes
process Ml6's Berlin Tunnel material was and Ewan Butler. In late 1944, he took charge
transferred to GCHQ's control, working from of the Bulgarian, Hungarian and Romanian
a building in the City of London as the sections of Force 133 at Bariand then moved
London Processing Group, transcribing to 136 in South-East Asia. At the end of the
Russian-language intercepts. M. Smith, war, Parker helped establish communications
p. 187. in Germany and later worked for the Control
30. Grose, pp.398-9; Thomas, pp. 128-9; Commission. Obit. DT, 27.8.92.
David Martin, Wilderness of Mirrors, In 1941, SOE's infant propaganda
Ballantine (pbk), NY, 1981, pp. 74-90; broadcasting to the Balkans was upgraded
M. Smith, p. 117; Corn, p. 54. using a seven-and-a-half-kilowatt transmitter
built by RCA and ordered by Iran's Reza
Shah, who had been recently deposed.
Richard Fletcher, 'How the Secret Service
PART SIX: THE MIDDLE shaped the news', G, 18.12.81; Sweet-Escott,
EAST
pp. 77, 87-94 & 264; Ewan Butler, Amateur
Agent, Harrap, 1963, pp. 54-5.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE: 9 &
10. Boase was a fellow and tutor of
'UNBROKEN DREAMS' Hertford College, Oxford, and the Courtauld
1 & 2. Richard J. Aldrich, Intelligence, pp. 25- Institute of Art. Frances Donaldson, The
6 & 197; West, Friends, pp. 17 & 101. British Council: The First Fifty Years, Cape,
3.Wesley K. Wark, 'Development diplomacy: 1984, pp. 51, 91-102 & 110. A thinly veiled
SirJohn Troutback and the British Middle reference is made to Dundas by deception
East Office, 1947-50', in John Zametica (ed.), specialist David Mure in his roman a clef The
British Officials and British Foreign Policy Last Temptation (Buchan & Enright, 1984),
1945-50, Leicester University Press, 1990; which depicts wartime events in the Middle
Frank K. Roberts, 'Ernest Bevin as Foreign East. Mure refers to 'Fergie' attending parties
Secretary', in R. Ovendale, The Foreign Policy with Guy Burgess and the 'whipmaster',
of the British Labour Governments, 1945-51, Lord 'Bill' Astor, a Naval Intelligence officer
1984. in the region. Before retiring in 1966, Dundas
4 & 5. Richard J. Aldrich & John Zametica, worked for the British Council in Hong
'The rise and decline of a strategic concept; Kong, India, Germany and Australia.
the Middle East, 1945-51', in Aldrich; 11. Working for the Palestine Broadcasting
 NOTES 849

Service was Ewan Butler, in charge of black 20 & 21. Ray Alan, The Beirut Pipeline,
propaganda with responsibilities for the Collins, 1980, pp. 1 & 234-5; Laurie Valls-
Balkans and central Europe. A former Times Russell, writing as 'Ray Alan', in the Neiu
chief correspondent in Berlin, Butler worked Leader, 1.6.81.
on the station in Jerusalem with writer 22. Ritchie Ovendale, 'William Strang and
Christopher Sykes and operations officer the Permanent Under-Secretary's
Guy Tamplin, who had worked pre-war with Committee', in Zametica, pp. 217-19.
Sweet-Escott with Baltic banks controlled by 23 & 25. F.S. Northedge, 'Britain and the
the British Overseas Bank. A friend of Middle East', in Ovendale.
Douglas Dodds-Parker, Tamplin ran the SOE 24. Wark.
Balkan country sections in Cairo, and was
known NEABS being 'stubborn in
to staff for

his support of Mihailovic in Yugoslavia'.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX:
NEABS propaganda led to confusion as each
PALESTINE
targeted country had 'a right-wing 1. Tad Szulc, The Secret Alliance: The
(sometimes monarchist) group and an Extraordinary Story of the Rescue of the Jews
extreme left-wing group'. In addition there since World War II, Macmillan, 1991, pp. 48-
was little control over the eastern European 50.
emigre staff. The Greek, Serbo-Croat and 2. David A. Charters, 'British Intelligence in
Romanian output was controlled by the Palestine Campaign, 1945-47', INS,
Archibald Lyall, later an MI6 officer. The Vol. 6, No. 1, Jan. 1991.
Free Voice of Greece, which contrived to be 3. West, Friends, p. 120.
located in the Soviet Union, attacked the 4. Hella Pick, Simon Wiesenthal: A Life in
Greek govemment-in-exile. Its politics were Search of Justice, Weidenfeld, 1996, pp. 126-7.
regarded as 'beneath contempt', as
officially 5. Richard Deacon, The Israeli Secret Service,

iturged its listeners to ignore the pro- Hamish Hamilton, 1977, p. 29.
monarchist 'For King and Country' station. 6. Jon and David Kimche, The Secret Roads:
Occasional staged 'Gestapo' raids on the The 'Illegal' Migration of a People 1938-1948,

station would add to its authenticity. In 1943, Seeker, 1954, p. 161; Andrew and Leslie
the station was forced to surrender control to Cockburn, Dangerous Liaisons, HarperCollins,
the PWE. Butler, pp. 10-17, 32 & 53-67; 1991, p. 36; Aarons/Loftus, Secret War,
Dodds-Parker, p. 49; West, Secret War, pp. 192-3.
pp. 204 & 221; Sweet-Escott, p. 79; M. 7. Hennessy, p. 239; Bullock, ch. 3; Kimche,
Senton, British Propaganda and Political p. 97; G, 30.9.94.
Warfare, 1940-44, PhD thesis, Cambridge 8.Charters; O, 26.4.87; Yaacov Eliav (trans.
University, 1979; Peter Partner, Arab Voices: Mordecai Schreiber), Wanted, Shengold
The BBC Arabic Service 1938-1988, BBC, 1988, Publishers, NY, 1984, pp. 85-94.
pp. 29 Sz 53. 9-11 & 15. Kimche, pp. 98, 107-8, 160-1,
12 &
19. Partner, pp. 54 & 91-2. 176-7 & 194-6; Brian Lapping, End of Empire,
13 &
14. David Boyle, With Ardours Manifold, Granada, 1985, p. 13; Szulc, pp. 48-50 & 185.
Hutchinson, 1959, pp. 299-304. The existence 12. Letter from Cathal O'Connor to the O,
of Section N remains something of a state 26.6.88, and telephone conversation, 30.4.96.
secret, with Robert Cecil being refused 13. Ibid; West, Friends, pp. 33-4. On
permission to mention its existence in his Verschoyle, see Anthony Mockler, Graham
contribution on wartime MI6 to The Oxford Greene: Three Lives, Hunter Mackay, 1993.
Companion to the Second World War (ed. I.C.B. 14. West, Friends, pp. 33-4; O, 12.6.88; G,
Dear, OUP, 1995). M. Smith, p. 288. 30.9.94.
15. Wark. 16 &
18. Aarons/Loftus, Secret War, pp. 149
16. Bickham Sweet-Escott returned to the & 198-9; Kimche, pp. 203 & 210-11; Szulc,
City and produced several economic and pp. 46 & 186; Robert John and Sami Hadawi,
financial surveys of Greece and the Balkans. The Palestine Diary, 1945-48, Vol. 2, New
17. HoC, 'Radio Station: Cyprus', Propaganda, World Press, NY, 1971, pp. 53 & 309.
Cols 409-10, 16.6.48; information from 17. G.K. Young, Subversion and the British
Morris Riley. Riposte, 1983, p. 12.
18. Riley, pp. 85-7; Sunday Mail (Cyprus), 19. O, 12.6.88; James Morris, Farewell the
23.4.50. Trumpets: An Imperial Retreat, Penguin (pbk).
850 NOTES

1979, pp. 511-12; Menachem Begin, The 4. Hassan Arfa, Under Five Shahs, John
Revolt, W.H. Allen, 1979, p. 97. Murray, 1964, p. 393.
20. West, Friends, p. 39. 5. Ramesh Sanghvi Anyamehr, The Shah of
Iran, Transorient, 1968, p. 154.
W. Roger
CHAPTER TWENTY'S EVEN: 6.

Middle East,
Louis, The British Empire in the
OUP, 1984, pp. 648-9.
CYPRUS 7.Sepehr Zabih, The Mossadegh Era, Lake
1. West, Friends, pp. 69-70. View Press, US, 1982, p. 139.
2. Charles Foley, Legacy of Strife: Cyprus from 8-10. James Cable, Intervention at Abadan:
Penguin, 1964, p. 17;
Rebellion to Civil War, Plan Buccaneer, Macmillan, 1990, pp. 7, 23, 45
Lawrence Durrell, Bitter Lemons, Faber, 1959. & 102; Woodhouse, 1982, p. 111.
3. John Bruce- Lockhart, 'Intelligence: A 11. G. Young, p. 15.
British View', RUSI, 1987, p. 41; West, 12 & 13. PRO FO
371/91548 EP 1531/674 &
Friends, p. 77. 371/91550 EP 15331/713.
4-7. Susan L. Carruthers, Winning Hearts and 14. Bethell, p. 71.
Minds: British Governments, the Media and 15. Margaret Laing, The Shah, Sidgwick, 1977,
Colonial Counter-Insurgency 1944-1960, p. 110.
Leicester University Press, 1995, pp. 196-8 & 16. General Fardust, The Rise and Fall of the
209-11; West, Friends, p. 70; Foley, pp. 43, 72 Pahlavi Dynasty, Iranian Institute for Research
& 103. and Political Studies, Tehran, 1990.
8. Anthony Nutting, No End of a Lesson: The from Kermit Roosevelt, 28.11.84,
17. Letters
Story of Suez, Constable, 1967, p. 56; A.J. and Woodhouse, 3.9.85; O, 26.5.85; M. Zonis,
Barker, Suez: The Seven Days War, Faber, The Political Elite of Iran, Princeton University
1964, p. 55; Hugh Thomas, Suez, 1966, p. 168. Press, 1971, p. 73.
9 & 10. Nutting, p. 56; Geoffrey McDermott, 18. Lapping, p. 215.
The Eden Legacy, Leslie Frewin, 1969, p. 131; 19. O, 26.5.85; Nikki R. Keddie, Roots of
Foley, p. 59. Revolution, Yale University Press, 1981,
11, 12, 15, 16 & 21. In 1957, Phillpotts was p. 118.
rewarded with a CMC and posted to Paris. 20 & 21. L.P. Elwell-Sutton, Persian Oil: A
His place in Athens was taken by Alan Hare, Study in Power Politics, Greenwood Press, US,
who retired in 1961 and joined the Financial 1979, pp. 150 & 241-2; Mohamed Heikal, The
Times, eventually becoming its chair. Stephen Return of the Ayatollah, Deutsch, 1981, p. 62.
Hastings, The Drums of Memory: An Zabih, p. 140.
Autobiography, Leo Cooper, 1994, pp. 185-6 & 22. Gerard de Villiers, The Imperial Shah,
192. Hastings obit, of Sir John Prendergast I, Weidenfeld, 1976, p. 164; Homa Katouzian,
30.9.93; McDermott, pp. 174-6. Mussaddiq and the Struggle for Power in Iran,
13 & Wright, pp. 145-57.
14. LB. Tauris, 1990, p. 11.
17-20. West, Friends, pp. 75-7; I, 30.9.93; 23. Allan W. Ford, The Anglo-Iranian Oil
Hastings, pp. 186-7; Bower, Spy, p. 231. Dispute of 1951-52, University of California,
22. Cabinet records release, O, 1.1.89. US, 1954, pp. 95-7.
24. Louis, p. 685.
Mark Gasiorowski, 'The 1953 Coup
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT: 25. J.

d'Etat in Iran', International Journal of Middle

IRAN: 'UNEQUAL DREAMS' East Studies, 19, 1987, and US Foreign Policy
1. Interview with Kenneth Love by Joseph and the Shah: Building a Client State in Iran,
Pennington, Aug. 1980. Cornell University Press, US, 1991, pp. 54 &
2. The Milne brothers were
Verrier, p. 105. 69-70.
both in MI6 and friends of Kim Philby. The 26. Pisani, pp. 122-3.
elder, Ian, was born in 1912 and was Second 27-29. Kermit Roosevelt, Arabs, Oil and
Secretary in Tehran 1948-51, and between Llistory:The Story of the Middle East, Gollancz,
periods in London served in Berne and 1949, pp. 5-7, 26, 101-3, 203-11 258. &
Tokyo. He left in 1968 to become a House of 30. T.E. Tisdale, The US and Iran, 1951-3: The
Commons clerk. His brother was one of Cold War Interaction of American Security
those present at the wedding of Philby in Policy, Alliance Politics and Popular
1958 and would serve in Beirut. Nationalism, PhD thesis. University of

3. Lapping, p. 207. Arizona, 1989; H.W. Brand, Inside the Cold

 NOTES 851

War: Loy Henderson and the Rise of the Longrigg joined MI6 in 1948 and served in
American Empire 1918-61, 1991, p. 243. Paris, Baghdad, Berlin, Dakar, Johannesburg,
31. A September 1943 US State Department Washington, Bahrain and Hong Kong. He
memorandum made plain that the Iranian retired in 1982 as Counsellor FCO (head of a
oilfields 'were taking on great importance in division) and became an administrator of the
the eyes of the US government'. American Common Law Institute of Intellectual
support for Mossadeq began in 1946 when Property. Woodhouse, pp. 107-11.
US ambassador George V. Allen contacted 40. Roosevelt: 'Montague' is Woodhouse and
the nationalist groups thatcombined to form Darbyshire 'Gordon Somerset'. Darby shire
the National Front Party. Allen saw in returned to Tehran as station chief (1963-7)
Mossadeq's NF leadership and nationalist and would also serve in Beirut, Cairo and
aims the possible nucleus of resistance to Bahrain. Briance be a would rise to

Soviet infiltration. Pisani, p. 123. counsellor in Washington and Singapore

32. Woodhouse, p. 110; Ronald W. Ferrier, before retiring as a divisional head in 1970.
'The Anglo-American oil dispute: a Bom in 1923, Woods served in Cairo, Milan,
triangular relationship', in James A. Bill and Warsaw and Rome, ending as a divisional
W.M. Roger Louis (eds), Musaddiq, Iranian head, and was re-employed in retirement
Nationalism, and Oil, I.B. Tauris, 1988, p. 173. with responsibility in the Foreign Office for
33. Dean Acheson papers, Princeton the SOE archive. According to Lord
seminars, 15/16.5.54, p. 1691; Elwell-Sutton, Greenhill, a consolidated account on the
p. 249. Mussadeq affair is held by the Foreign

34. Study of events in this area was carried Office, though Woodhouse has said that he
out by the Central Asian Research Centre, did not contribute to it. Darbyshire did,
which had been set up in 1953 in co- however, write up a full account for M16's
operation with St Antony's College, Oxford. files. Roger Louis ('The dilemmas of British

Ithad been incorporated in the same way as imperialism', in Bill/Louis, p. 249) notes that
theM16 news agencies by solicitor Victor 'until this time [1953] British intelligence
Cannon Brookes, who had worked with SOE operations, if impinging on foreign policy,
during the war. Its director was intelligence were discussed and candidly within the
fully
officer and propaganda specialist Lt-Col. During
secret counsels of the Foreign Office.
Geoffrey Wheeler, who had served in India the Mussadiq period the records were
and Iraq during the war and had recently suppressed now it had a deeper
. . .

returned from Iran, where he had been subterranean stream that is much more
posted as press secretary during the difficult to fish for historical detail.' T, 7.4.77;
campaign against Mossadeq. During the Woodhouse, pp. 112 & 135; G, 28.7.80;
fifties. Wheeler was employed in 'a civil Lapping, p. 214.
service post in London'. His fellow director 42 & 43. Lapping, pp. 212-14 & 264;
was Prof. Ann Lambton, who had also PRO FO 371/91464; 371/91608; 371/91609
served as a press attache in Iran during the EP 1531/2095; 371/91609.
war and had played an important role in the 44. Richard Cottam in transcript of End of
run-up Wheeler wrote
to the Iran coup. Empire series, Channel 4, 1985.
various IRD-sponsored 'Background Books' - 45. Woodhouse, pp. 113-14.
Racial Problems in Soviet Muslim Asia (1962), 46. Gasiorowski, p. 70; Riley, p. 78.
The Modern History of Soviet Central Asia 47-50. Lapping, pp. 214-15; Amir Taheri,
(1964) and The Peoples of Soviet Central Asia Nest of Spies: America's Journey to Disaster in
(Bodley Head, 1966). Louis, p. 678; Iran, Hutchinson, 1988, p. 29; Katouzian,
PRO FO 371/91575, memo by Peter p. 125; PRO FO 371/98254, May 1952; 371/
Ramsbotham, 30.7.51; CAB 123/20 56(51), 98239, 22.1.52; FO 371/98638, 12.9.52; Lobster,
30.7.51. No. 19.

35 & 36. Woodhouse, pp. 105 & 111; 51. 15.3.97; Woodhouse, p. 115; Barnard
1,

Stafford, p. 210; Cabinet papers: G, 2.1.84 would subsequently work in the late sixties
and T, 4.1.84. for MI6 in the Sudan, helping to set up a
37. Lobster,No. 19. front airline. Southern Air Motive.
38 & Young, Masters of Indecision, pp.
41. 15, 52. Brand, p. 192; Louis in Bill /Louis, p. 243.

95 & 106; Bower, Spy, p. 192. 53.Wilbur Crane Eveland, Ropes of Sand,
39. Son of the famous Stephen Longrigg, Norton, NY, 1980, p. 118; Julius Mader,
852 NOTES

Wlw's Who ill the CIA, East Berlin, 1968, which turned out to be the special tax
p. 201. arrangements. Eveland, pp. 90-1 & 141-2;
54. Transcript of End of Empire. Mosley, p. 339; Roosevelt, Countercoup, p. 48.
55. Laing, p. 132; Roosevelt, p. 13. 76. PRO FO 371/104613; 371/104257, 22.5.53;
56. Makhreddin Amizi, 'The Political Career 371/104528, 15.6.53.
of Muhammad Musaddiq', in Bill/ Louis, 77. Bill/Louis, p. 9; Roosevelt, Countercoup,
p. 57. p. 123.
57. Gasiorowski; PRO FO 248/1531. 78. Gasiorowski, pp. 72-3; Rubin, p. 280;
58. Fardust. transcript of End of Empire.
59. 'The Secret Events of the Uprising', Ittalia 79. Hiro, p. 53; Villiers, p. 151; Woodhouse,
'at, Tehran, 4.9.53; Ervand Abrahamian, Iran p. 121.
between Two Revolutions, Princeton 80. Taheri, p. 34; James A. Bill, 'The politics
University, US, p. 278. of intervention', in Bill /Louis, p. 275.
60. PRO FO 371/91460. 81. David Carlton, Anthony Eden: A
61. Zabih, pp. 141-2. Ebtehaj, who was Biography, Allen Lane, 1981, pp. 327-8.
known as Iran's leading economist and first 82. Donald N. Wilbur, Adventures in the
of the technocrats, was later arrested in 1961 Middle East: Excursions and Incursions,
along with one of the Rashidian brothers Darwin, US, 1986, pp. 115, 149-50 & 185.
followingmore intrigue, this time against the Miles Gopeland, The Game Player: Confessions
Shah. He was released following British of the CIA's Original Political Operative,
pressure (obit. I, 10.3.99). Aurum Press, 1989, pp. 187-90.
62 & 65. Dilip Hiro, Iran under the Ayatollahs, 83. Gasiorowski, p. 74; Eveland, p. 118;
Routledge, 1985, pp. 34 & 62; Elwell-Sutton, Mader, p. 201.
p. 310. 84. James A. Bill, The Eagle and the Lion: The
63 & 67. Woodhouse, pp. 116-17. Tragedy of American/Iranian Relations, Yale
64. I, 15.3.97; Page et al, pp. 284-5. University Press, US, 1988, p. 87;
66. Louis in Bill /Louis, p. 236; Nigel West, Gasiorowski, p. 72.
Molehunt: The Full Story of the Soviet Spy in 85. I. Davrupania, 'The 1953 Coup', Ittalia 'at,

MIS, Weidenfeld, 1987, p. 31, and Friends, 19.8.79.

p. 148. 86. Ittalia 'at, 29.7.53.

68. Transcript of End of Empire. 87. Laing, p. 128; Bloch/ Fitzgerald, p. Ill;
69. E. Thomas, p. 108; Woodhouse, pp. 118- Mosley, p. 327; Cottam, p. 282; Katuzian,
19. pp. 183-4.
70.Smith, OSS, p. 193; Richard W. Cottam, 88. The role of MI6 in the Afshartus murder
'Nationalism is a phenomenon of mass is described in the Iran Times, 31.5.85;
politics in the era of the nation state'. During Pennington interview with Love.
1956-8, Cottam was CIA political officer in 89. Taheri, p. 34; Bill in Bill/Louis, p. 275;
the US embassy in Tehran. Prados, p. 96.
71 & 72. Lapping, p. 218; I, 15.3.97; Taheri, 90. Wilbur, p. 188; Roosevelt, Countercoup,
p. 29; Blum, p. 70. p. 135; David Wise and Thomas B. Ross, The
73. Kermit Roosevelt, Countercoup: The Espionage Establishment, Bantam (pbk), US,
Struggle for Control of Iran, McGraw-Hill, US, 1967, p. 81; G, 28.7.80.
1979, p. 107. Sir George Glutton was a 91. Dr Ray S. Cline, The CIA under Reagan,
homosexual whose posting to Warsaw as Bush and Casey, Acropolis, US, 1981,
ambassador made him a vulnerable target pp. 146-7.
for blackmail. He later came under suspicion 92. Wilbur, pp. 9 «&: 189; Prados, p. 95.
though MI5 investigations did not get very 93. Roosevelt, Countercoup, p. 4; Bill/Louis,
far as Glutton died not long after the p. 190; Brands, p. 280; Prados, p. 95.
investigations had begun. West, Friends, 94-96. Twentieth Century, Aug. 1953;
p. 149. Woodhouse, pp. 125-6; G, 2.1.84.

74. Senate investigations in the seventies into 97. Different Drummer, BBC2, 5.8.91.
ties between the CIA and Schroeders were 98. Presumably the same procedure held for

quickly terminated (Tully, CIA, p. 81). IRD material. Wilbur, pp. 188-9;
75. John McCloy, President of Chase Gasiorowski; transcript of End of Empire.
Manhattan, negotiated the most important 99 & 100. Nicknamed 'the Whistler', Meade
aspect of the Saudi 50-50 oil agreement had previously worked for the Office of
 NOTES 853

Special Operations' Near East Division on a 121. Taheri, p. 40; Cottam, p. 229.
number of missions, including the ousting of 122. Taheri, p. 36; Verrier, p. 108; Andrew,
Syria's President Shukri Quwatli in 1948. Secret Service, p. 494.
Villiers, pp. 178-9; Princess Soraya, My 123. BEDAMN's principal agents Nerren and
Autobiography, Arthur Barker, 1963, p. 134; Ciley emigrated to the US. Wall Street Journal,
Miles Copeland, The Real Spy World, Sphere 6.11.79; Gasiorowski, p. 128; Mosley, p. 327.
(pbk), 1980, pp. 126 & 242-3; O, 26.5.85. 124. Obit. T, 2.4.70; Grose, pp. 501-2.
101. Laing, p. 131; Gasiorowski. 125. I, 15.3.97; G, 2.1.84.
102 & 103. Niru-yi Sevvum, Tehran, 14.8.53; 126. McClure.
Katouzian, p. 189. 127. Zahedi's security forces 'discovered' a
104.McClure to Jackson, 14.9.53, Robert large Tudeh network of '458 officers' who
McClure folder, Eisenhower Library. reported to an intelligence officer in the
105 &
106. Taheri, pp. 34 & 279; Laing, Soviet embassy. They were uncovered
pp. 133-4; Fred Halliday, Arabia without following a routine traffic accident involving
Sultans, Penguin, 1974, p. 70; Villiers, p. 188. a Tudeh courier, who was
carrying coded
107 & 108. Wilbur, p. 189; Fardust; E. documents listing the names of all the
Thomas, p. 109, quoting 'Clandestine network members. An Iranian intelligence
Services History 208: Overthrow of Premier unit was able to decode these documents
Mossadeq of Iran, Nov 1952- Aug 1953' without the aid of CIA code-breakers. It
(CIA). A consolidated account of the coup. seems an unlikely explanation. Brands,
The Battle for Iran, was written by Donald p. 292; Gasiorowski, pp. 89-92.
Wilbur. The main section, part three, dealing 128. Peter Avery, Modern Iran, Ernest Benn,
with the coup, is blacked out in the version 1967, p. 447.
available under the Freedom of Information 129. Wilbur, p. 190; Anthony Cavendish,
Act. Roosevelt, Countercoup, p. 120. Inside Intelligence, 1990, p. 130.
109. Brands, pp. 283-7. 130. Roosevelt left official government
110. Gasiorowski, p. 77; Wilbur, p. 189; service in 1958 to become vice-president
Shahrough Akhavi, 'The role of the clergy', responsible for government relations at Gulf
in Bill/Louis, p. 113. Oil, but retained his ties to the CIA. The
111.Kenneth Love, 'The American Role in Rashidian business deals involving military
the Pahlevi Restoration on 19 August 1953', sales later came under the scrutiny of US
presented to Prof. T.C. Young, spring 1960. Senate hearings during 1976. Brands, p. 292;
He claimed that he, unwittingly, helped the Pisani, p. 125; Bill/Louis, pp. 95 & 473.
CIA during the coup (NYT, 26.9.80). The 131. Taheri, pp. 40-1; Mosley, p. 327.
document shows that he knew a great deal 132. Verrier, p. 99; Woodhouse, p. 122; Nigel
about CIA activities in Iran which he failed John Ashton, Eisenhower, Macmillan and the
to report, the result, he said, of 'misguided Problem of Nasser: Anglo-American Relations
patriotism'. Counterspy, Vol. 4, No. 4, Sept./ and Arab Nationalism, 1955-59, Macmillan,
Oct. 1980. 1996, p. 25.
112. Verrier, p. 108; Taheri, p. 36. 133 & 134. Bower, Spy, pp. 184 & 188;
113. William Blum, The CIA: A Forgotten Verrier, p. 100; Ranelagh, p. 236.
History, Zed Press, 1986, p. 72; Lapping,
Gasiorowski,
p. 268; p. 78.
CHAPTER TWENTY'N IN E:
114. Katouzian, p. 191.
Shahrough Akhavi, and
SUEZ: ASSASSINS AND
115.
in Contemporary Iran,
Religion
University of New
Politics
THUGGERY
York, NY, 1980, p. 69. 1. Young, Masters, pp. 16-17 & 29.
116. Gasiorowski, p. 79; Taheri, p. 35. 2. Elliott, p. 54.

117. Brands, p. 287; Gasiorowski; Katouzian, 3. Verrier, p. 124; W. Scott Lucas, Divided We
p. 193. Stand: Britain, the US and the Suez Crisis,
118. Wilbur, p. 189. Hodder, 1991, p. 15.
Copeland, Game Player,
119. Brands, p. 288; 4. PRO FO 371/102764; Keith Kyle, Suez,
pp. 190-1; Stephen Ambrose, Eisenhower: The Weidenfeld, 1991, pp. 48-9; Ashton, p. 61.
President 1952-69, Allen & Unwin, 1984, 5. Lucas, p. 31.
p. 129. 6. Verrier, pp. 124 & 125.
120. Prados, p. 97. 7. Kyle, pp. 42-3. Julian Amery, 'The Suez
854 NOTES

Group', in Troen and Shesh (eds). The Suez- Eden was 'murdered'. DT, 24.5.85; End of
Sinai Crisis in 1956: Retrospective and Empire, Channel 4, Jun. 1985.
Reappraisal, Frank Cass, 1988; McDermott, 36. Nutting, pp. 33-5; DT, 24 & 25.5.85;
pp. 146-7 & 213; The Suez Crisis, BBCl, Bower, Spy, p. 185; M. Smith, p. 121.
22.10.96; Nutting, p. 22. 37 & 38. DT, 4.6.85; Verrier, pp. 143 & 159;
8. Brown, Secret Servant, p. 472. Bower, Spy, p. 195.
9. Kyle, p. 56. 39-41. Lucas, pp. 12, 109 & 116-17; Kyle,
10. Anthony Gorst and W. Scott Lucas, The pp. 99-103; Gorst/Lucas in Aldrich; CIA
Other Collusion: Operation Straggle and London station to Director CIA, Cable
Anglo-American Intervention in Syria, 1955- LOND 7064, 1.4.56 (quoted by Lucas);
56', INS, Jul. 1989; Ashton, p. 37. Thomas, p. 28.
11. McDermott, p. 123; Roy Fullick and 42. Bower, Spy, p. 139; Young, Master, pp. 29
Geoffrey Powell, Suez: The Double War, & 127; Verrier, p. 97.
Hamish Hamilton, 1979, p. 6. 43. Lobster, No. 19.
12. Kyle, pp. 74-5; Steven Z. Freiberger, The 44. DT, 3.9.95;William E. Burrows, Deep
Rise of American Power in the Middle East, Black: The Secrets of Space Espionage, Random
1953-57, 1992, p. 126. House, 1988, p. 79.
13. Joseph Frolick, The Frolick Defection, Corgi 45. Tom Waldron and James Gleeson, The
(pbk), 1976, pp. 72-5; West, Friends, p. 102; Frogmen: The Story of the War-time Underwater
E, 3.11.55. Operators, Pan (pbk), 1950; Marshall Pugh,
14. Lucas, pp. 59 & 62-5; Freiberger, p. 69. Commander Crabb, Macmillan, 1956.
15. Kyle, p. 78; PRO FO 371/115469 V1023/ 46. Chapman Pincher, 'Buster Crabb's Last
19G. Dive', UNSOLVED, No. 24, 1984.
16. Kyle, p. 84; Eveland, pp. 169-72; Evelyn 47 & 49. West, Friends, pp. 82-5.
Shuckburgh, Descent to Suez, Weidenfeld, 48. Elliott, pp. 24-6.
1986, p. 305. 50. Wright, pp. 113-14.
17. Ashton, Cockburn, p. 125.
p. 59; 51. G, 7.3.98.
18. William Clark unpublished diary, 52 & 53. PRO FO 371/118861; Lucas, pp. 102,
29.11.55, quoted in Kyle, p. 84; PRO FO 371/ 118 & 126-7; Verrier, p. 130.
113738 & 371/113739. 54. Geoffrey McDermott, The New Diplomacy
19. McDermott, p. 123; Verrier, p. 128. and Its Apparatus, Plume, 1973, pp. 141-2.
20 & 21. Young, Masters, p. 29; Lucas, p. 158; 55. Riley, p. 97; Eveland, p. 177.
Kyle, p. 78; The Suez Crisis, BBCl, 22.10.96. 56. FRUS XV, Doc. 197, Eden to Eisenhower,
22 & 23. Lucas pp. 70-1, 79-80 & 91; 15.5.56.
PRO FO 371/12180 V1077/1G. 57. West, Friends, pp. 85-6 & 116.
24. Blake, p. 168. 58 & 59. Lucas, pp. 130-1.
25. G, 2.5.87; Heikal, pp. 117-18; Faligot/ 60. Nigel West, GCHQ: The Secret Wireless
Krop, pp. 114-17. War 1900-86, Weidenfeld, 1986, p. 230; James
26. Bower, Spy, p. 192. Bamford, The Puzzle Palace, Sidgwick, 1983,
27. John Pearson, The Life of Ian Fleming, p. 324; Wright, pp. 82-4, and The Spycatcher's
Cape, 1966, p. 134. Encyclopedia of Espionage, Heinemann,
28. Wright, p. 161. Australia, 1991, pp. 77-8; Lucas, p. 193.
29 & 32. Pincher, Trade Is Treachery, pp. 203- 61. Kyle, p. 132.

6, and Inside Story, p. 90. 62. Bower, Spy, p. 185; Lucas, p. 142.
30. Dalton Papers, 1941 file; Foot, Resistance, 63 & 64. Lucas, pp. 132-3 & 143; Tony Sha\v,
p. 224; Wilkinson /Astley, pp. 107-8; Amery, Eden, Suez and the Mass Media: Propaganda
Approach March, pp. 240-1; Harris /Paxman, and persuasion during the Suez crisis, I.B.

pp. 88-94; Brown, Secret Servant, p. 558. Tauris, 1996, pp. 59, 119, 129 & 217.
31. Prof. Donald Cameron Watt, DT, 29.7.97. 65. Rawnsley; PRO FO 953/169 PB 1045/
33. Lapping, McDermott, p. 128; DT,
p. 261; 99A, 21.8.56; 371/125610 JE1681/12, 29.12.56;
4.6.85; Kyle, p. 96; Shuckburgh diary, 12.3.56. 0, 27.10.96.
34. Thomas, pp. 42-4; The Suez Crisis, BBCl, 66. Dodds-Parker, pp. 102-3 & 115.
22.10.96; Kyle, p. 69; Verrier, p. 127. 67 & 68. Bower, Spy, pp. 185-6, 191 & 196;
35. Nutting, pp. 34-5. In his book on Suez, West, Friends, p. 86; Kyle, p. 346.
Nutting used the word 'removal' but he 69. Peter Hennessy, 'What the Queen Kiiew',
confirmed in 1985 that the word used by 1, 21.12.94; McDermott, Eden, p. 133.
 NOTES 855

70 & 71. Grose, p. 434; McDermott, Eden, 91. Statement made in 1973 in author's

pp. 35, 137 & 144-5; Kyle, p. 191. possession.

72. DT, 27.5.85; Verrier, p. 147; Macmillan, 92. Wright, Spycatcher, pp. 160-1; DT, 29.5.85;
Riding the Storm, p. 112; Lucas, pp. 158 & T, 16.3.85.
174. 93. Verrier, p. 159; Wright, Spycatcher,
73. Lobster, No. 19; Chester Cooper, The Lion's pp. 161-2; Harris /Paxman, pp. 213-14 &
Last Roar, 1978, p. 128; Bower, Spy, p. 193; 260.
Lucas, p. 140. 94. Faligot/Krop, pp. 114-17.
74. O, 27.10.96. 95. Pincher, Inside Story, p. 90, and Trade Is

75. George K. Young, Who Is My Liege?: A Treachery, 205-6: The Suez Crisis, BBCl,
Study of Loyalty and Betrayal in Our Times, 22.10.96; Lucas, p. 193.
Gentry Books, 1972, pp. 79-81; Xan Fielding, 96-8. Kyle, pp. 238 & 292; Lucas, p. 214;
One Man in His Time: The Life of Lieutenant- PRO FO 953/1633 P1041/33 & 953/166
Colonel N.L.D. ('Billy') McLean, DSO, P104/75, 10.9.56; Gary D. Rawnsley, 'Overt
Macmillan, 1990, pp. 104-5. and Covert: The Voice of Britain and Black
76. Fielding, pp. 104-5; Kyle, pp. 148-9 & Radio Broadcasting in the Suez Crisis, 1956',
211. INS, Vol. 11, No. 3, Jul. 1996.
77. Lucas, pp. 193-5; Kyle, pp. 149-50. 99 & 100. Lucas, pp. 217-18; Thomas,
78 & 79. BBC Summary of World Broadcasts, pp. 106-7; PRO FO
371/128220 VY1015/File.
Part IV, No. 435, 24.12.57; Yaacov Caroz 101. Copeland, Game Player, pp. 165-6 &
(formerly Mossad deputy chief). The Arab 200-5; Kyle, pp. 103 & 275-8; Eveland,
Secret Services, Corgi (pbk), 1978, pp. 20-2. p. 229; Lucas, p. 218.
80. Brown, p. 473; Bower, Spy, pp. 191-2. 102. Lucas, p. 219; Grose, p. 433; Bower, Spy,
81. Lucas, p. 194. pp. 196-7.
82. McDermott, Eden, p. 137; West, Friends, 103 &
105. PRO FO 371/115954 VY10393/7G;
pp. 107 & 116. Gorst/Lucas.
83. Riley, p. 89; Eric Downton, Wars without 104. Baker, Suez, p. 67.
End, Stoddart, Toronto, 1987, pp. 229 & 341. 106. Lobster, No. 19.
84. Swinburn and Zarb were released under 107. Bower, Spy, pp. 197-8; Young, Masters,
amnesty in 1959. Heikal, p. 154; West, p. 46.
Friends, p. 103. 108. West, Friends, p. Ill; Verrier, p. 152;
85.The Second Secretary at the embassy in Bower, Spy, p. 198.
Baghdad was also a John McGlashan. Capt. 109. Verrier, p. 147; M. Smith, p. 121; Bower,
Mohammed Hefex of the Mukhabarat Spy, p. 196.
claimed in court that 'the British Embassy's 110. Heikal, pp. 169 & 231; G, 2.5.87; Faligot/
intelligence officer, Oliver St John' had been Krop, pp. 114-17.
MI6's mastermind behind the ANA network. 112. Said K. Aburish, Beirut Spy: The
Swinburn had been 'running it ... in St George Hotel Bar, Bloomsbury, 1990,
permanent contact with St John', who had pp. 155-8.
been a colonial civil servant before joining 111. Bower, Spy, p. 233.
MI6 in 1948 and had become First Secretary 113. Grose, p. 435; Freiberger, p. 185.
in Cairo in 1953, when the Mukhabarat 114. Lucas, pp. 241 & 253-4; E. Thomas,
claimed it had first learned of the network's p. 143.
existence. West, Friends, pp. 113-14; Keesings 115. Dodds-Parker, Political Eunuch, pp. 102
Contemporary Archive, Col. 15679, 1957; O, & 106-7; McDermott, Eden, p. 146; Bower,
12.5.57; Nigel West, Seven Spies Who Changed Spy, pp. 194-5; Lucas, pp. 252 & 272.
the World, Mandarin (pbk), 1992, p. 206; 116. Cooper, p. 159; Kyle, pp. 344-5 & 411;
Riley, p. 94; Bower, Spy, p. 189. Hersh, p. 395.
86-88. Kyle, pp. 218-19; West, Friends, 117. Lucas, p. 277; Ashton, p. 83.
pp. 103-4 & 114. Sayed Amin Mahmoud was 118. Eisenhower Library, John F. Dulles
sentenced to death; his naval son (and Paper, Box 5; Lucas, p. 277.
Youseff Hanna) received twenty-five years. 119. Kyle, p. 386; Bower, Spy, p. 199.
89. Andrew Weir, Jonathan Bloch and Patrick 120. Fullick/Powell, p. 118; Bernard
Fitzgerald, 'Sun sets over the other Empire', Furgusson, Trumpet in the Hall, 1930-1958,
The Middle East, Oct. 1981; Lucas, p. 181. Collins, 1971, p. 262.
90. Robin Day, The Grand Inquisitor, 1989. 121. Verrier, pp. 150-4.
856 NOTES

122. Kyle, p. 416. The Arab Secret Services, Corgi (pbk), 1978,
123. Grose, p. 435; Freiberger, p. 185. pp. 22-3; DT obit., 4.2.97.
124. PRO FO 953/171/PlOll/l, 31/12/56; 3. Eveland, p. 247; Stallwood, OBE, died in

Verrier, p. 124; Ful lick /Powell, p. 59. 1978. In 1957 the French tried again with the
125. Furgusson, p. 264; Kyle, pp. 239-40; Action Branch landing two agents with a
HoL, Vol. 201, Col. 571, 6.2.57; Rawnsley. bomb by boat. It was soon realised that they
126. Kyle, pp. 417-19; Lobster, No. 19. were being followed and the attempt was
127. Lucas, p. 273; Pincher, Inside Story, p. 90; abandoned. Faligot/Krop, pp. 114-17.
Wright, Spycatcher, p. 160. 4. Brown, Treason, p. 474.

128. Bower, Spy, p. 199; Grose, p. 439; 5. Ashton, pp. 73 & 100-1.
Mosley, p. 417; Chris Pocock, Dragon Lady: 6. Young, Masters, pp. 21-2; Bower, Spy,
The History of the U-2 Spyplane, Airlife, 1989, p. 207.
p. 34. 7 & 8. Lobster, No. 19; Archie Roosevelt, For
129. I, 21.12.94; What Has Become of Us, Lust of Knowing, Little, Brown, 1988, p. 448;
Channel 4, Dec. 1994. Gasiorowski, pp. 91 116-24. & built a GCHQ
130. Cooper, p. 197; Bower, Spy, pp. 199-200. monitoring station near Meshed, close to the
131. Kyle, p. 496. Soviet border. SAS personnel were later
132. Shaw, pp. 83 & 87. entrusted with its protection while other
133. Wright, Spycatcher, pp. 82-6; Kyle, personnel 'on loan' to the Iranian military
pp. 455-60 & 486; PRO FO 371/121789. helped train the special forces. Bloch/
134. I, 21.12.94; Lucas, p. 305. Fitzgerald, p. 113.
No. 19; Bower, Spy,
135. Elliott, p. 84; Lobster, 9. Fardust; Cavendish, p. 143; Young, Liege?,
p. 200;Young, Liege?, p. 79. p. 9.
136. Thomas, p. 443; CIA, DCI-2, Vol. 5, 10. Douglas Little, 'Cold War and Covert
pp. 1-38 contains material on the role of Action: The United States and Syria, 1945-
American Intelligence in the Suez crisis, 1958', Middle East Journal, Vol. 44, No. 1,
made available May 1994 to Evan Thomas. winter 1990; Sulzberger, pp. 410-12; David
137 & 138. Ibid, pp. 172-3; Young, Masters, W. Lesch, Syria and the United States:
pp. 17 & 21; Lucas, p. 312; Healey, p. 173; Eisenhower's Cold War in theMiddle East,
McDermott, Eden, p. 159. Westview Press, 1992, pp. 109-10 & 125;
139. E. Thomas, p. 209; Brian Freemantle, NS, 6.7.57.
CIA, Futura (pbk), 1984, pp. 11-12; Miles 11. Little; Prados, pp. 129-30; Lesch, pp. 138
Copeland, The Game of Nations, Simon & & 165.
Schuster, 1969, p. 202. 12-18. Ashton, pp. 122-37 & 151-3;
140. O, 27.10.96; Lucas, p. 103; Young, Robinson, pp. 233-7, 246 & 257.
Masters, p. 39; PRO PREM 11/1138; loS, 19. Caroz, p. 24; Brown, Secret Servant,
21.11.93. p. 474.
141. Young, Masters, pp. 17-22, 34, 47 & 149. 20. Bloch/Fitzgerald, p. 126; Brown, Treason,
142. Young, Liege?, p. 81; Lobster, No. 19. p. 475.
143. Jeffrey Robinson, The End of the American 21. Richard M. Bissell, Jr (with Jonathan E.
Century: Hidden Agendas of the Cold War, Lewis and Frances T. Pudlo), Reflections of a
Hutchinson, 1992, p. 113; Alden Hatch, Cold Warrior: From Yalta to the Bay of Pigs,
H. R.H. Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands, Yale University Press, 1996, p. 116; Bower,
1962, p. 222; Robert Eringer, The Global Spy, pp. 224-5.
Manipulators: Covert Power Groups of the West, 22. loS, 26.1.97; Paul Lashmar, ch. 14, 'The
1980. U-2 - The British Story'; Nick Cook, 'How
the CIA and RAF Teamed Up to Spy on the
Soviet Union', Jane's Defence Weekly, 7.8.93.
CHAPTERTHIRTY: THE Robinson, pp. 298-9; Pocock,
MACMILLAN DOCTRINE 23.
24. Bissell, p. 117.
p. 45.

I. Nigel John Ashton, Eisenhower, Macmillan 25.DT, 3.5.90.

and the Problem of Nasser: Anglo-American 26.David Leigh, High Time: The Life of

and Arab Nationalism, 1955-59,

Relations Howard Marks, 1986, p. 96.
Macmillan, 1996, pp. 73 & 100-1. 27. Nigel West, Falklands, p. 26.
2. Verrier, p. 159; Pincher, Inside Story, p. 90; 28. Robin Maugham, who was attached to
Bloch/Fitzgerald, pp. 125-6; Yaacov Caroz, the Middle East Intelligence Centre during
 NOTES 857

the war, 'lobbied high and low in order to 51. Kim Philby in Kodumma, Estonia, 13.10.71.
get the authorities to approve the setting up 52. Young, Liege?, p. 81.
of a centre for teaching Arabic for British 53-55. Verrier, pp. 167, 181 & 186; Ashton,
personnel'. With the help of Albert Hourani pp. 108-9 & 223-30; Mustafa M. Alani,
- a long-term MI6 agent - approval was 'Operation Vantage: British Military
given in mid- 1943 for the setting up of Intervention in Kuwait 1961', LA AM, 1990,
MECAS. Bower, Spy, p. 219; Verrier, p. 174; p. 91.
Blake, p. 189. 56 & 57. Bower, Spy, p. 236; Verrier, p. 181;
29 & 30. Lobster, No. 19. Geraghty, SAS, p. 150.
31. Verrier, p. 170. 58, 59 & 63. Alani, pp. 88-9, 97, 138, 210 &
32. Halliday, pp. 282-3; Ashton, pp. 123 & 281. John Christie is referred to in Alani as
249. an unidentified 'senior diplomat'. However,
33. Macmillan Eisenhower, 19.7.57, FRUS,
to his name is slipped into the notes on p. 267.
1955-57, Vol. XIII, pp. 226-7; Macmillan, Identity confirmed by Alani, telephone
Riding the Storm, pp. 270-7. conversation, July 1997. Verrier, pp. 172-3 &
34 & 35. David Smiley (with Peter Kemp), 180-6; Bower, Spy, pp. 230 & 235-6.
Arabian Assignment, Leo Cooper, 1979; O, pp. 181 & 186; Ashton, pp. 223-
60. Verrier,
1.2.89. 9; Alani, p. 91.
36. J.B. Kelly, Arabia, the Gulf and the West, 61. David Lee, 'The Flight from the Middle
Weidenfeld, 1980, p. 117. East', HMSO, 1981, p. 173; Malcolm
37. Smiley, p. 23; obit, of Brig. Dennison T, Mackintosh, Strategy and Tactics of Soviet
17.9.96. Foreign Policy, 1962, p. 232.
38. Bloch/ Fitzgerald, pp. 51 & 135. 62. Cabinet papers revealed in I, 2.1.92;
39. J.E. Peterson, Oman in the 20th Century, Verrier, p. 189.
Croom Helm, 1978; Col. David de C. Smiley, 64. Cabinet papers G, 2.1.92; Alani, pp. 44-5;
'Muscat and Oman', RUSI Journal, Feb. 1960. Harold Macmillan, Pointing the Way,
40. Dale F. Eickelman and M.G. Dennison, Macmillan, 1972, p. 354.
'Arabizing the Omani Intelligence Services: 65-67. Alani, pp. 101-9, 179-84, 208 & 228-
Clash of Cultures?', International Journal of 9;Ashton, pp. 225-6; DT, 28.6.61.
Intelligence and Counterintelligence, Vol. 7, 68-70. Alani, pp. 98, 104-6, 159, 173-4, 185
No. 1. & 223-4; Aburish, pp. 47-8.
41. Bower, Spy, p. 235; Smiley; Tony 71-73. Bower, Spy, pp. 235-9, quoting
Geraghty, Who Dares Wins: The Story of PREM 11/3430; O, 27.10.96; Verrier, p. 171.
the SAS 1950-1982, Fontana (pbk), 1981, 74. Lobster, No. 19.

p. 149.
42 & 43. Auburish, pp. 7 & 192; Bower, Spy,
CHAPTERTHIRTY-ONE:
p. 234.
Robert Fisk, Pity Lebanon
THE MUSKETEERS IN
44.
War, OUP,
the Nation:

1991, pp. 70-1; Erika G. Alin, The

at
YEMEN
United States and the 1958 Lebanon Crisis: 1 & 5. Halliday, pp. 102 & 174.
American Intervention in the Middle East, 2. Fred Halliday, 'Counter-Revolution in the
University Press of America, 1993, pp. 55-9. Yemen', New Left Review, No. 63, Sept. /Oct.
45.Bower, Spy, pp. 234-5. 1970.
46. Robert A. Fernea and W. Roger Louis 3. Cockburn, p. 127.
(eds). The Iraqi Revolution of 1958: The Old 4. DT obit. 22.8.96.
Classes Revisited, I.B. Tauris, 1991, pp. xv, 6. Alan Hoe, David Stirling: The Authorised
xvii, 55-7 & 61; Michael lonides. Divide and Biography of the Founder of the SAS, Little,

Lose: The Arab Revolt of 1955-1958, 1966, Brown, 1992, p. 358.

pp. 188-9. 7.Around McLean had formed what his

47. Ashton, p. 165; Verrier, pp. 184-5; The biographer, Xan Fielding, also a former SOE
Middle East, Oct. 1981; Alin, p. 46. and MI6 officer, has called 'an alternative
48. Ashton, pp. 174-5; McDermott, Eden, shadow cabinet' of right-wing and pro-
p. 170. imperialist politicians - an incestuous
49. Verrier, pp. 175-6. mixture of former intelligence and special
50. McDermott, Eden, pp. 170-1; Aburish, forces personnel who conducted their
pp. 89-90. planning in the drawing room of Amery's
858 NOTES

flat and their favourite watering hole. Aug. 1967; de la Billiere, p. 193; Hoe, p. 361.
White's Club. They included Macmillan's 31. De la Billiere, p. 192; Bloch/ Fitzgerald,
son, Maurice, Secretary to the Treasury and p. 132.
ex-Intelligence School No. 9. Maurice's sister 32. A British military mission began training
married Amery; he married Catherine the crack White Army, drawn from pro-
Ormsby-Gore, whose brother. Lord Harlech, Saudi tribes and used for internal repression,
was the ambassador in Washington. Hugh which was deployed along the North Yemen
Fraser, ex-I.S. No. 9, was Secretary of State border. Hoe, pp. 361-2; Smiley, Arabian
for Air. Another ex-SOE colleague in the Assignment, p. 150.
circle was Rowly Winn (Baron St Oswald), 33-35. NS, 28.7.78; Bower, Spy, pp. 248-52;
junior minister, vice-chair of the Central and Cooper, pp. 166-7; Fielding, p. 145.
Eastern European Commission of the 36. David Smiley, 'Chemical Clouds Over
European Movement, and chair of the Yemen', S, 8.9.90; Harris /Paxman, pp. 257 &
Foreign Affairs Circle. In addition, there 263; PRO FO 371/168809, 16.10.63.
were the Hares and the Lennox-Boyds. 37 & 39. Bower, Spy, pp. 250-2; de la

Bower, Spy, pp. 244-5; Downton, Billiere, p. 209.

pp. 249-53. 38. Smiley, Arabian Assignment, p. 161.

8. Julian Amery remarks at the lecture, 'The 40. Cooper, pp. 171-3: de la Billiere left in
War Yemen', given at RUSI by Col.
in the January 1964.
Neil McLean, 20.10.65; Morris Riley, 41. T, 25.1.64.
'Smiley's People: The SAS Men Return', 42. Cooper, pp. 171-8; DT, 4.2.70.
Anarchy magazine. No. 37, winter 1983/4. 43. Riley, 'Smiley's People'; Geraghty, SAS,
9. Halliday, 'Counter-Revolution'; Robin p. 115; Hoe, p. 367; 'Second "Lawrence"
Bidwell, The Two Yemens, Longman/ Foiled Nasser's Army in Yemen', DT, 4, 5 &
Westview Press, 1983, p. 198. 6.2.70.
10. Lobster, No. 19. 44 & 45. Smiley, Arabian Assignment, p. 166;
11. Fielding, p. 131; Kennedy Trevaskis, Cooper, p. 178; Geraghty, SAS, pp. 114-15.
Shades of Amber, Hutchinson, 1968, 46. Hoe, p. 368; TO, 28.7.78; Bower, Spy,
pp. 186-9. p. 254.
12. Halliday, Arabia, p. 18; Riley, p. 108; You in November, Galago,
47. Peter Stiff, See
Trevaskis, p. 187. South Africa, 1985, pp. 37-8.
13. E, 27.10.62; Fielding, pp. 132-4; Downton, 48. Bower, Spy, p. 254; Verrier, p. 255.

pp. 331-3. 49. Halliday, Arabia, pp. 116-17; T, 1.2.66.

14. Fielding, pp. 133-5. 50. NS, 28.7.78; obit, of Sir Denis Hamilton
15. Bidwell, p. 210; Bower, Spy, p. 229. by Insight writer Bruce Page, I, 14.4.88.

16. Fielding, pp. 136-9; RUSI, 20.10.65. 51. HoC, Vol. 699, 20-31.7.64, p. 267; Col.
17. Cockburn, p. 128; Kelly, pp. 255 & 261. Edgar O'Balance, The War in the Yemen,
18 & 19. Bower, Spy, pp. 244-7; Riley; Faber, 1971, p. 127.
PRO PREM 11/4356 & CAB 129/112, 10.1.63. 52. Fielding, p. 147; DT, 4.2.70.
20. Halliday, Arabia, p. 67; Bower, Spy, 53. Neil McLean, 'The War in the Yemen',
p. 243; Verrier, p. 177. Journal of the Royal Central Asian Society,
21. PREM 11/4356, 8.2.63 & 11/4357, 25.2.63. Vol. 51, Part 2, 1964, pp. 102-11; Riley,
22. Riley. 'Smiley's People'.
23. Halliday, Arabia, p. 140; Hoe, p. 367; 54. Fielding, p. 148.
Fielding, pp. 141-4; Bower, Spy, p. 253. 55. Nigel West, A Matter of Trust: MI5 1945-
24-28. All three had been party to plans for 72, Coronet (pbk), 1983, pp. 167-8; Bloch/
SAS and SOE operations in Chungking at the Fitzgerald, p. 126.
end of the war. Hoe, pp. 356-60; General Sir 56. Hoe, p. 367.
Peter de la Billiere, Looking for Trouble: An 57. Bloch /Fitzgerald, p. 130; Halliday, Arabia,
Autobiography - from the SAS to the Gulf, pp. 60-1.
HarperCollins, 1994, pp. 202-3; TO, 21.7.78. 58. Geraghty, SAS, pp. 115-16; Cockburn,
29. Johnny Cooper with Peter Kemp, One of p. 129.
the Originals: The Story of a Founder Member of 59. Gasiorowski, pp. 124-5; Bower, Spy,
the SAS, Pan (pbk), 1991, pp. 157-9; pp. 348-9.
DT, 4.2.70. 60. Riley, 'Smiley's People'; Cockburn,

30. Geraghty, SAS, p. 116, quoting the People, pp. 130 & 133.
 NOTES 859

61. Dorril/ Ramsay, p. 366. 12 & 14. Jerrold/Deriabin, pp. 294-5, 334 &
62. Hoe, pp. 365 & 372. 347.
63. Smiley, Arabian Assignment, p. 203; 13. Bower, Spy, p. 280.
Halliday, Arabia, p. 70. 15. Richard Lamb, The Macmillan Years 1957-
64. Bower, Spy, pp. 348-9. 63: The Emerging Truth, John Murray (pbk),
65. Bidwell, p. 159. Bidwell served in Field 1995, p. 356, quoting Bundy Oral History
Security in Egypt and Germany and then interview in JFK Library; Alastair Horne,
(1955-9) as a Political Officer in the Western Macmillan 1957-86, Macmillan, 1989,
Aden Protectorate. Later Secretary /Librarian pp. 382-3; Cavendish, pp. 117-18; telephone
of the Middle East Centre, Cambridge conversation with Cavendish, 7.1.98; Deacon,
University. Halliday, Arabia, pp. 203-7. 'C, p. 134.
66. Halliday, Arabia, p. 175; Bloch/ Fitzgerald, 16.Deacon, 'C, p. 135; Michael R. Beschloss,
p. 133. Kennedy v. Khrushchev: The Crisis Years 1960-
67. Le Monde, 16.5.67; Michael Asher, 63, Faber, 1991, p. 477.
Thesiger: A Biography, Viking, 1994, pp. 474- 17. Powers, p. 101; Burrows, pp. 100-7.
5; Wilfred Thesiger, Desert, Marsh and 18.Andrew, Secret Service, p. 497;
Mountain: The World of the Nomad, Collins, McDermott, Eden, p. 213; The Profession of
1979, p. 270. Intelligence, Part 4, Radio 4, 23.8.81; Pincher,
68. Bower, Spy, pp. 254 & 349; Lobster, Inside Story, p. 38.
No. 19. 19. Jerrold/Deriabin, p. 352; Andrew, Secret
69. Thesiger, p. 274; Cockburn, p. 128; Service, p. 497; Joseph B. Smith, Portrait of a
Halliday, Arabia, p. 143. Cold Warrior, Ballantine (pbk), US, 1981,
70. Stiff, p. 57. pp. 148-9; Bower, Spy, pp. 311 & 317-18;
71. Fielding, p. 155. Cavendish, p. 8.
20. Smith, pp. 139 & 157; E. Thomas, p. 156.
21. PRO FO 371/100839 & 100847; Greenhill,

PART SEVEN: MODERN pp. 84, 88-9.

22. Cavendish, Young, Masters, pp. 30 &
TIMES 71.
p. 7;

23. Obit, of Michael Wrigley, DT,

CHAPTER THIRTY'TWO: 24 & 25. Crozier, p. 20;
17.1.95.
O, 26.4.87; obits of
THE SECRET Lancaster and Lt Cmndr Myles Osborn, DT,
INTELLIGENCE SERVICE 23.1.92 & 22.5.97.
I. Blake, p. 182. 26. Smith, p. 199;Susan L. Carruthers,
2 & 3. Bower, Spy, pp. 258-9. Winning Hearts and Minds: British
4. Jerrold L. Schecter and Peter S. Deriabin, Governments, the Media and Colonial Counter-
The Spy Who Saved the World: How a Soviet Insurgency 1944-1960, 1995, pp. 93 & 102-3.
Colonel Changed the Course of the Cold War, 27. Obit, of Wrigley, DT, 17.1.95.
Scribner, NY, 1992, pp. 35-6; Bower, Spy, 28. Crozier, pp. 20, 44 & 46; David A.
p. 273; Blake, p. 184; David Wise, Molehunt: Charles, 'The Dismissal of Marshal P'eng
The Secret Search for Traitors that Shattered the Teh-huai', China Quarterly, No. 8, 1961.
CIA, Random House, NY, 1992, p. 55. 29. Ray Cline, The CIA under Reagan, Bush
5. Blake, pp. 194-205; Elliott, p. 13. and Casey, Acropolis Books, US, 1981, p. 173;
6. Bower, Spy, pp. 266-71. E. Thomas, pp. 277-8.
7 & 8. Jerrold/Deriabin, pp. 44-6, 59, 93, 30. Ranelagh, 1992, p. 802; TLS, 5.4.85;
264-5 & 351-4; Wise, p. 117. Bower, Spy, p. 314.
9. Bower, Spy, pp. 277-8; Jerrold/Deriabin, 31. Crozier, pp. 55-6 & 59.

p. 193; Deacon, 'C, p. 131. 32. Horne, pp. 291 & 417-18.
10. Jerrold/Deriabin, p. 204; McDermott, 33. Cavendish, p. 7.
Eden, pp. 179-80. 34. Peter S. Lisowski, 'Intelligence Estimates
II. Jerrold/Deriabin, pp. 196, 262 & 286-7. and US Policy Toward Laos, 1960-63', INS,
In Paris, MI6 officer Roger King was used as Vol. 6, No. 2, Apr. 1991.
contact. King had served in Bucharest in the 35-37. Cabinet papers release, ST, 1.1.95 &
late forties and then Paris, retiring in 1972 as G, 2.1.95; Dorril /Ramsay, pp. 56, 80-3 & 110.
an international security consultant and 38. Brian Crozier, South-East Asia in Turmoil,
adviser on security at airports (DM, 25.5.78). Penguin (pbk), 1965, p. 91.
860 -NOTES

39. Healey telephone call, 31.3.94. Karl 60 & 61. Bower, Spy, pp. 344-7; McDermott,
Peiragostini, Britain, Aden and South Arabia: Eden, p. 213.
Abandoning Empire, Macmillan, 1991, p. 13. 62. Release of Cabinet documents, G. 17.4.97;
40. Peiragostini, p. 135; Bower, Spy, p. 340. Peiragostini, pp. 162 & 170.
41. Bower, Spy, pp. 329 & 355. 63. Dorril/ Ramsay, p. 98.
42. Brian Toohey and William Pinwill, 64. 65 & 68. Bower, Spy, pp. 317 & 358-61.
Oyster: The Story of the Australian Secret 66. DNB 1981-5.
Intelligence Service, 1989, pp. 96-7; 67 & 69. Greenhill, p. 127; David Owen, Time
Christopher Andrew, 'The Growth of the to Declare, Penguin, 1992, p. 132; Andrew,
Australian Intelligence Community and the Secret Service, p. 498; Bower, Spy, p. 363; File
Anglo-American Connection', INS, Vol. 4, on Four, BBC Radio 4, 11.8.82.
No. 2, Apr. 1989. 70 & 71. Richard J. Aldrich, '
"The Value of
43. The Ecologist, Vol. 26, No. 5, Sept. /Oct. Residual Empire": Anglo-American
1996; O, 28.7.96; Mark Curtis, The Ambiguities Intelligence Co-operation in Asia after 1945',
of Power; British Foreign Policy since 1945, Zed in Richard J. Aldrich and Michael F. Hopkins
Books (pbk), 1996. (eds). Intelligence, Defence and Diplomacy:
44. Toohey /Pinwill, pp. 89-90; Barry British Policy in the Post-War World, 1994,
Petersen (with John Cribbin), Tiger Men: An pp. 226-8.
Australian Soldier's Secret War in Vietnam,
Macmillan, Melbourne, 1988, pp. 167-8.
45. Peer de Silva, Sub Rosa: The CIA and the
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE:
Uses of Intelligence, NYT Books, US, 1978,
THE LAST OF THE
p. 225; Richard Stubbs, Hearts and Minds in
COLONIAL WARS
Guerrilla Warfare: The Malayan Emergency I. David Charters, 'The Role of Intelligence
1948-1960, OUP, 1989. Services in the Direction of Covert
46. Terence Strong, Whisper Who Dares, Paramilitary Operations', in Alfred C.
Coronet (pbk), 1982; Peter Dickens, SAS: The Maurer, Mario D. Tunstall and James M.
Jungle Frontier, Arms & Armour, 1983; Roger Keagle (eds). Intelligence: Policy and Process,
Faligot, The Kitson Experiment, Zed (pbk), Westview Press, US, 1985; Geraghty, SAS,
1983, references to the SAS and Vietnam. pp. 150-1; information to Morris Riley from
47. Stiff, p. 54; Adrian Weale, Secret Warfare: Brig. Akehurst, summer 1985, and Capt. Sir
from the Great Game
Special Operations Forces Ranulph Twisleton-Wykeham-Fiennes, 1976.
to theSAS, Hodder, 1995, pp. 199-200. 2 & 3. Charters; Halliday, Arabia, p. 287.
48. Stephen Merret, 'British help to US in 4. T, 17.9.96; Ranulph Fiennes, Where Soldiers
Vietnam', Red Camden, Apr. /May 1969; Fear to Tread, 1979, p. 240, refers to 'Tom
Lobster, No. 4, 1984. Greening' instead of Landon. New Africa,
49 & 50. Verrier, pp. & 174; Bower, Spy,
114 Oct. 1979.

pp. 220-3; Lobster, Nos 19 & 27; Young, 5 & 6. John Townsend, Oman: The Making of
Subversion, p. 102; Stephen R. Weissman, a Modern State, Croom Helm, 1977, pp. 74-5.
American Foreign Policy in the Congo 1960- Townsend was (1972-5) economic adviser to
1964, Cornell University Press, US, 1974. the Oman government. DT, 24.4.70;
51 & 52. Anthony Verrier, The Road to E, 18.7.70. Information on MD from Shell
Zimbabwe 1890-1980, Cape, 1986, pp. 85-7, House, London, to Riley. J.E. Peterson, Oman
112-13 & 335; Covert Action, No. 4, Apr./ in the 20th Century, Croom Helm, 1978,

May 1979; Fred Bridgland, Jonas Savimbi: A pp. 201-2; TO, 5.10.75.
Key Coronet (pbk), 1988, pp. 70-1.
to Africa, 7. Bloch/Fitzgerald, p. 137; Morris Riley,
53. Bower, Spy, pp. 346-7; Bloch/ Fitzgerald, 'The Secret 1970 British Intelligence Coup in

pp. 151-5. Oman' (unpub.), 1997.

54. Bower, Spy, pp. 336-7; Crozier, Free 8. Halliday, Arabia, p. 288.
Agent, p. 56; Lord Egremont, Women and 9. G, 27 & 28.7.70; FT, 12.12.70.
Children First, Macmillan, 1968. 10. Peterson, p. 78.
55-57 & 59. Philip H.J. Davies, II. Two interesting books on the later period
'Organizational Politics and the Development in Oman are by Maj.-Gen. Ken Perkins, who
of Britain's Intelligence Producer/ Consumer was seconded to Oman to command the SAF
Interface', INS, 1997. in 1975. A Fortunate Soldier (Brassey's, 1988)
58. West, Friends, p. 167. was censored by the MoD. Khalida (Quartet,
 NOTES 861

1993) is a fictionalised account of the 36. Deacon, 'C, p. 170; David A. Charters,
censored bits, including MI6 involvement in 'SirMaurice Oldfield and British Intelligence;
the war against the guerrillas - sending Some Lessons for Canada', Conflict Quarterly,
planes across the border into South Yemen to Vol. 2, No. 3, winter 1982; Davies.
bomb artillery without the consent of 37. Mark Urban, UK Eyes Alpha: The Inside
Whitehall - and secret arms sales to Iran. Story of British Intelligence, Faber (pbk), 1997,
T, 3.8.70; O News Service, 12.8.70; Maurice pp. 13-17.
Tugwell, Revolutionary Propaganda and Possible 38. The Profession of Intelligence, Part Five,
Countermeasures, PhD
Department of
thesis. BBC Radio 4, 30.8.81.

War Studies, University of London, 1979. 39. See 'Whitehall Games', Dorril/Ramsay;
12. Patrick Seale and Maureen McConville, Davies.
The Hilton Assignment, Temple Smith, 1973; 40. Greenhill, p. 181.
Halliday, Arabia, p. 297. 41. Cavendish, p. 131.
13. Finkelstein. 42. Desmond Harney, The Priest and the King,
Penelope Tremayne, an
14. Hastings's friend, LB. Tauris, 1997.
Observer correspondent living in Lawrence
house Cyprus in the fifties,was
Durrell's in
RUSI Journal
CHAPTER THIRTY' FOUR:
a freelance journalist for the
THE SLOW DEATH OF THE
and Brassey's Annual in the mid-seventies
and wrote a series of articles on the Oman
COLD WAR
campaign. David Lynn Price, Conflict Studies 1. Lawrence Freedman and Virginia Gamba-
No. 53, 'Oman Insurgency and Stonehouse, Signals of War: The Falklands
Development', Institute for the Study of Conflict of 1982, Faber, 1990, pp. 85-6;
Conflict, 1975.Former Army Intelligence Lawrence Freedman, 'Intelligence Operations
officerand IRD officer with Forum World in the Falklands', INS, Vol.1, No. 3,

Features, Price was later an analyst on Sept. 1986;David E. King, 'Intelligence

Middle East Affairs and editor of Arab Oil. Failures and the Falklands War: A
Barry Davies, The Complete Encyclopedia of the Reassessment', INS, Vol. 2, No. 2, Apr. 1987;

SAS, Virgin, 1998; O, 25.10.98. Alex Danchev, Oliver Franks: Founding Father,
15 & 16. Seale admitted (telephone Clarendon, Oxford, 1993.
conversation, 2.12.97) that a former MI6 2. G, 23.11.94; press conference to launch the
officer, Denis Rowley, whom he had known Intelligence Services Bill, Nov. 1993; Urban,
and early sixties in Beirut,
in the late fifties pp. 10-11.
had been the source. Rowley went on to set 3-7. Urban, pp. 4-7, 24, 31, 41, 73 & 288.
up a tourist postcard company in Portugal 8-12. Ibid, pp. 14, 30-1 & 140; Peter Early,
during the period of the coup. West, Confessions of a Spy: The Real Story of Aldrich
Falklands, 1996, p. 253. Ames, Hodder, 1997, pp. 180-5; DT, 15.2.97;
17-24. Stiff, pp. 67, 73 & 81; Seale/ James Adams, The New Spies: Exploring the
McConville, pp. 65 & 122; Hoe, pp. 410-12; Frontiers of Espionage, Pimlico (pbk), 1995,
West, Falklands, pp. 162-3 & 253; Geraghty, pp. 34-5 & 40.
SAS, pp. 124-5. 13 & 14. Urban, pp. 35-7; BBC 1, Panorama,
25 & 27. Martin Dillon, 25 Years of Terror: The 22.11.93; STel, 3.11.96.
IRA's War against the British, Bantam (pbk), 15-18. Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd later

1996, pp. 137 & 140; Verrier, Looking Glass, suggested that information from MI6 in a
pp. 300-3. Third World country enabled the thwarting
26 &
28-31. Peter Taylor, Provos: The IRA and of an Iraqi-backed terrorist attack on a
Sinn Fein, Bloomsbury, 1997, pp. 128-9, Coalition ambassador in Europe. Though, as
137-9 & 146-7; Verrier, Looking Glass, Mark Urban points out, countries that did
pp. 302-9 & 318. not undertake high-profile measures against
32. Obit. G, 5.1.98; Fred Holroyd (with Nick Arabs did not experience any outbreaks of
Burbridge), War ivithout Honour, Medium, terrorism either. Urban, pp. 136, 147-50, 157,
Hull, 1989, p. 40. 163-8, 179 & 223.
33. Murray, pp. 75-91; Bloch/ Fitzgerald, 19 & 20. Ibid, p. 135; Adams, pp. xvii & 79-
pp. 218-20; Dillon, p. 161. 84.
34. Dillon, pp. 180-1. 21 & 22. S, 19.10.96; O, 30.3.97 & 1.9.96; DT,
35. DNB 1981-5. 17.8.96; ST, 4.8.96; STel, 12.5.96.
862 NOTES

23. Focus, Jan. 1996; Der Spiegel, Nov. 1997; The Drugs World War, Parts 1-3', loS,
STel, 30.11.97; O, 12.1.97. 24.1.98, 1 & 7.2.98.
24. G, 31.1.96. 41. Foreign Affairs Committee, 'Expenditure
25. Urban, p. 198. Plans of the Foreign and Commonwealth
Office and the Overseas Development
HMSO,
CHAPTER THIRTY'FIVE: Administration', Jul. 1994; G,

THE NEW AGENDA 21.12.94.

42 & 43. G, 16.7.94; Adams, pp. xi-xii.
1-3, 5 & 6. Adams, pp. 42, 89, 99-100, 106 & 44. Urban, pp. 63 & 65; I, 4.12.96; T, 27.1.97.
138-9; Urban, pp. 183, 211, 235 & 259; Peter 45. G, 26.3.97; T, quoting Le Point, 17.6.98;
Gill,'Reasserting Control: Recent Changes in ST, 22.11.98.
the Oversight of the UK Intelligence 46. ST, 16.6.96, 20 & 27.9.98; I, 18.3.93.
Community', INS, Vol. 11, No. 2, Apr. 1996; 47. SB, 10.11.98.
T, 23.9.96. 48. ST, 14.4.96; G, 15.12.94 & 3.11.98;
4. G, 6.2.99. DT, 2.11.98.
7. SB, 10.11.98. 49. I, 14.5.96.
8-10. Richard Norton-Taylor, Truth Is a 50. O, 2.11.97.
Difficult Concept: Inside the Scott Inquiry,
Fourth Estate (pbk), 1995, pp. 99-107;
Richard Norton-Taylor, Mark Lloyd and
CHAPTERTHIRTY-SIX: ON
Stephen Cook, Knee Deep in Dishonour: The
HER MAJESTY'S SECRET
Scott Report and Its Aftermath, Gollancz (pbk),
SERVICE
p. 105; Urban, pp. 121 & 127-8; Adams, 1. Punch, No. 71, 2.1.99.
p. 139. 2 & 3. SB, 20.12.98 & 24.1.99. Family friend
11. Norton-Taylor. and former Conservative defence
12. Adams, pp. 268-9; I, 31.8.94. procurement minister, Jonathan Aitken, who
13. Urban, p. 119. was an MI6 agent, providing insights into
14. I, 19.8.94. the Saudi royal family and their defence
15. O, 18.9.94; loS, 21.4.96. spending plans.
16. G, 19.1.95. 4. SB, 11.10.98.
17 & 18. Urban, pp. 129-32; Adams, p. xiv; 5. O, 21.11.93; BBCl Panorama, 22.12.93.
G, 8.1.98. 6 & 7. ST, 22.9.96, 21.12.97 & 2.8.98.
19. ST, 29.3.98; G, 25.3.98; ES, 4.4.98; I, 7.3.98. 8. O, 22.12.96.
20. SB, 10.1.99; I, 25.1.99. 9 & 10. G, 25.3.98 & 7.10.98; ST, 30.8.98;
21 & 22. G, 22.1.99; Jerusalem Post, 12.9.97; I, 2.9.98.

South News, 22.8.97; ST, 31.1.99. II. Adams, p. 101; Urban, pp. 215-16;
23, 25 & 26. Adams, pp. 158-9, 189-90, 237 ST, 22.9.96, 21.12.97 & 2.8.98.

& 294. 12. G, 20.12.94; T, 10.11.98.

24. G, T & I, 5.2.99. 13 & 14. G, 10.8.98; ST & O, 9.8.98.

27. STel, 1.5.94. 15 & 16. G, 8.8.98.

28. G, 24.8.96; STel, 21.4.96 & 9.3.97; O, 17 & 18. SB, 11.10.98; T, 15.11.98.

19.1.97; ST, 11.8.96. 19. G, 19.12.97; ST, 17.11.96 & 9.1.97;

29 & 30. G, 6.2.95 & 13.5.95. O, 25.10.98.

31. ST, 17.11.96. 20 & 21. G, 21.9.96, 20.5 & 8.8.98; O, 16.8.98;
32. Urban, p. 225; T, 10.1.98; ST, 19.11.95; O, Punch, 2.1.99.
15.15.96; I, 14.11.98. 22. Foreign Secretary Robin Cook has
33. O, 26.3.95; G, 22.5.96. indicated that in future the tribunal route
34. STel, 2.6.96; ST, 17.11.96; I, 24.3.97. might be allowed. DT, 3.11.98; G, 15.8.98.
35 & 36. ST, 17.11.96 & 9.2.97. 23. ST, 31.3.97.
37. I, 24.3.97. 24-26. G, 27.11.97 & 8.8.98.

38 & 39. O, 2.11.97. 27. I, 29.8.97.

40. Phillip Knightley, 'What Went Wrong:
INDEX
'A' Force 533 Aims for Industry 430

Abbas Hilmi II, Khedive 629 Air Ministry 25-6, 620, 664
Abboud, President 721 Airey, Sir Terence 341, 369
Abd-el-Qadar 631 Airwork Services 664, 694, 733
Abdallah, Radi 669 AJAX Operation 586, 587, 589, 597-8, 654
Abdullah, Emir of Kuwait 671, 672, 674 Ajlani, Mounir 636
Abdurrahman, Prince 681 Akers, Sir Wallace 140
Abid, Abdullah bin 735 Akhavi, Hassin 591
Abramtchik, Mokolai 215-20 Alanbrooke, Viscount 14, 32
Abramtchik Faction 215, 219, 220, 221, 404 Alawi, Dr lyad 781
Aburish, Said K. 665 Alawite tribe 636
Abwehr 12, 100, 104, 166, 171, 187, 190, 191, Albanian: army 357, 388; gendarmerie 357,
195, 196, 223-7, 270, 409, 410, 411, 419, 358; Intelligence 390; Ministry of the
420 Interior 395; secret police 394

Acheson, Dean 363, 380, 382, 383-4, 601, 780 Albanian National Committee in Exile 373

Achin, Reverend 339 Albanian National Liberation Front 392

Aciolek, Col. 263 Aldermaston 159
Ackerman, Eric 53 Aldrich, Winthrop 649, 650
Acland, Richard 435 Aldridge, Jessica 367, 371
Actio Catholica 176 'Alec' (MI6) 121

Action Petlura 226 Alexander, A.V. 82

Adams, Gerry 740, 741 Alexander, Capt. 206
Aden Assembly 678 Alexander Guchkov circle 407
Aden Intelligence Centre 679 Alexander, Harold (later Earl Alexander of
Adhan, Kamal 688, 694 Tunis) 310, 337, 338, 414
Adie, Kate 791 Alexander I, King of Yugoslavia 329, 331-2
Administration of State Security (UDBA) All-Party Parliamentary War Crimes Group
342 280
Admiralty 26, 618, 619 Allason, Rupert (Nigel West) 205
Adye, Sir John 747 Allen, Percy 694, 696
Aflag, Michel 616 Allied Control Commission (ACC) 174, 351;
Africa Bureau 721 Information Services Branch (ISB) 120
African National Congress (ANC) 720 Allied Denazification Bureau 124
Afshartus, Gen. 585, 586, 612 Allied Information Services 120, 374
Agency Africa 250 Allied Military Government (AMG) 341, 352
864 INDEX

Allied Military Intelligence units 348 Anglo-Norwegian Collaboration Committee

AUman Sakerhetsenhet (AS) 273 525
A LOS 138 Anglo-Norwegian Intelligence Committee
Alpa-Adrica movement 126 134
Alpass, John 776 Anglo-Norwegian Intelligence Service
Alpha plan 604, 607, 615 134
Alston, Gordon M.F. 131, 161, 333 Annan, Noel 12
American Committee for Liberation of the Anthimos, Bishop 553
Peoples of Russia from Bolshevism 437, ANTHROPOID Operation 611
492, 493, 502, 515 Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations (ABN) 163,
American Committee for a United Europe 183, 213, 222, 229, 233, 237, 238-9, 244,
(ACUE) 437, 446, 462, 464-7, 469, 477 404, 430, 439, 442, 443, 445, 446, 448, 449,
American Federation of Labour 440, 492, 493, 502
478 Anti-Bolshevik Front 229, 233
American Foundation for Youth and Anti-Bolshevik Guard (Hungary) 178
Students Abroad 470 Anti-Bolshevik League for the Liberation of
American Friends of the Captive Nations Nations (ALONS) 213
436 Antonescu, Ion 168-9, 178, 179, 180
Americans for Intellectual Freedom 476 ANYFACE Operation 233
Amery, Leopold 166, 357, 447, 456, 457, 459, APPLEPIE Operation 208, 209
682 Appleton, Sir Edward 140
Amery, Lord (Julian) 355-60, 364, 365, 366, AQUATONE 617
370, 371, 372, 374, 375, 377, 379, 380, 388, Arab Liberation Party 622
402, 447, 460, 477, 500, 554, 556-7, 572, Arab News Agency (ANA) 76, 435, 536, 540,

601, 603, 616, 628-9, 662, 663, 669-70, 679, 624-5, 631, 632
683, 684-5, 687 Arad, Ron 767, 768
Ames, Aldrich 749-50 Arajs Kommando 270, 274, 288
Amit, Meir 694 ARAMCO (Arabian-American Oil
Amols, Father Valdis 293 Company) 608, 609, 663
Amory, Robin 520 Aramesh, Ahmad 593
Ampersand 76, 479 Arazi, Yehuda 546
Anders, Wladyslaw 206, 214, 217, 258, 259, Arc-en-Ciel 182
264 Archangel Expeditionary Force 19
Anderson, Sir John 135-6, 140 Archer, Jane 16, 190
Andrew, Christopher 595, 727 Ardmbadi, Col. 584
Andrews, George 260 Arfa, Gen. 576
Angleton, James 264, 266, 349, 390, 399, 479, Argyll, Duchess of 686
607, 614, 671, 695, 705, 706-7, 710-11, 713, Ariana rocket 778
714, 717, 724 Ariel Foundation 470, 474, 475, 722
Anglican Church 430 Arlt, Fritz 198, 199, 200
Anglo-American Combined Allocations Armee Secrete 457
Board 144, 151 Armenian Dasknak Party 493
Anglo-Baltic Friendship Society 285 Armia Krajow (AK) (Home Army) 230, 249,
Anglo-Estonian Friendship Society 269 252, 253, 254, 256, 257, 258, 262, 391, 456
Anglo-German Fellowship 429 Army Chemical Corps 143
Anglo-Greek Information Service (AIS) 313, Army Group E 124, 125, 126
314, 316, 317 Army League 456
Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC) 558-62, Army Special Branch 53
564-8, 570, 575, 577, 578, 580, 595; Central ARNIKA intelligence reports 706

Information Bureau (CIB) 564 Arnold, Maj. 362

 INDEX 865

Arnold-Forster, Christopher 29 Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS)

Arnold-Forster, Mark 85-6, 513 718
Arrow Cross 171, 174, 178, 223, 444 Austrian Communist Party 84
Arthur, Geoffrey 637, 732 Austrian Control Commission 123, 417
ARTICHOKE programme 520 Automatic Telegram Handling System
Artukovic, Adrija 329, 330, 336, 338, 354 (ATHS/OATS) 786
Aryropoulos, Col. 306 Auxiliary Units 456
el-Asali, Sabri 622 AVO 174, 175, 176
Ascherson, Neal 712 Ayer, A.J. 59, 477-8, 481
Ashraf, Princess 588-9 Azerbaijan crisis (1946) 534
Ashtiyani, Mohammad 590 el-Azm, Khalid 604
Aspin, Les 777 Azzam 'Pasha' 539
Asrafi, Col. 593

ASRP (social Ba'ath party) 616 'B' Specials 317

Assembly of Captive Nations (ACEN) 173, Ba'ath Party 622
436; Albanian Committee 399; Political BABYLON Operation 763
Committee 399 BACKFIRE 145
Assembly of Political Youths 469 BACKHAND Operation 348
Assheton, Ralph 603 Badderley, John 374
'Assinger' (agent) 756 al-Badr, Muhammed 678, 697, 698
Assistenza Pontifica 346 Baghdad Pact 603-4, 606, 607, 614, 632, 670,
Associated Press 236 694
Association of Ukrainians in Great Britain Bagration, Prince Irakly 198
443, 449 Baines, Gordon 153
Astor, David 456, 457, 458, 463, 479 Bairaktar, Muharren 362
Aswan Dam 607, 623 Bajomi, Bela 176, 177
Adnan 636
Atassi, Baker-White, John 423-4
Atassi, Fayid 636 Bakhtiar, Shapour 745
Athenisiades, Bodosis 374 Bakhtiar, Timour 565, 584
Atholl, Duke of 405 Bakhtiari tribes 565, 582, 585
Atholl, Kitty, Duchess of 285, 404-5, 417, Baku 188-9, 194, 199, 506

425, 426, 428, 429, 431-4, 441, 448, 449 Balfour, David, Lord 306, 319, 320, 324, 409,
Atlantic Charter (1941) 277, 278 462, 549
Atomic Energy Authority (AEA) 156 Balli Kombetar (BK; National Front) 357-8,
Atrash, Hassan 636 359, 363, 372, 374, 376, 384, 388, 398, 399
Attlee, Clement 43, 73, 86, 160, 459; Albania Balmain, Col. 129, 523
367; Britain's atomic bomb 158-9; Baltic Institute 255

federalism 461; insists on moving out of Baltic Waffen-SS 16, 276

Greece 46; Iran 562; Jewish refugees 547; Baluch-Qarai, Maj. 585
opposes Bevin's power politics 37-8; Banda, Hastings 721-2
possible anti-Semitism 430, 545; SOE 21, Bandera, Natalia 232, 233
28; WAY 469; wishes to build up the UN Bandera, Stefan 106, 198, 222, 224-8, 230-36,
38 238, 239, 244, 245, 246, 443; Banderites
Attlee, Hereward 210 106, 225, 226, 227, 236-9, 242, 244, 248,
Attlee Doctrine 31, 377, 509, 543, 557, 720, 442
724 Bandung Conference 88
Audova, Leo 289 Bangerskis, Rudolfs 271, 272, 274, 279, 280
Auer, P. 447 Banja Luka 125
Augsburg, Emil 109 Bank of England 362, 487, 727, 773
Ault, John 734 Banks, Alan 255
866 INDEX

Baqai (religious leader) 576, 582, 585 Belorussian American Association 220
BARBAROSSA Operation 195, 216, 226, Belorussian Central Council (BCC) 217, 219,
271, 409 503
Barbie, Klaus 107-10, 114-15, 117 Belorussian Central Representation (BCR)
Barclay, Sam 378 219, 220, 221
Bareik bin Hamud al-Chafiri 731, 732 Belorussian Democratic Republic 221
Barker, Elizabeth 312, 356 Belorussian Liberation Movement 220, 221
Barnard, Beverley 573 Belorussian National Centre 219
Barnes, Tom 307 Belorussian National Council 493
Barnes, Tracey 392, 516, 648-9 Belorussian National Liberation Committee
Barnes, Trevor 63, 453 221
Barrass, Gordon 750 Ben-Gurion, David 616, 626, 640
Bartlett, Vernon 78 Benelux Customs Union 458
Bash, James 686 Benes, Edvard 61, 139
Bashom, Caush Ali 392 Benn, Tony 85
Bastian, Marie 784 Bennett, Eric 690
'Bastions Paper' 81 Benson, Rex 456
Bateman, Charles 371, 375 Benton, Frank 537, 540
Baun, Hermann 101 Benton, Kenneth 416, 544, 547
Bayda, Maj. 237 Berger, George 278
Baydalakov, Victor 412, 513 Bergmanis, August 284
Baykolov, Anatole 404, 405, 407, 417, 418, Beria, Lavrenti 483, 485, 500, 505-6
425, 433, 441 Berkis, Vitold 288, 293
Bayliss, John 160 Berle, Adolphe, Jnr 436, 437, 461
BBC 43-4, 183, 361, 421, 447, 589, 609, 624, Berlin: blockade 84; Radio 251; tunnel
733-4, 780, 794; Arabic Home Service 540; 525-6; Wall 707, 751
broadcasting to eastern Europe 381; Berlin, Isaiah 59, 478

European Services 41; External Services Berman, George 111

78, 79, 428, 480; Home Service 41; and Bermondt-Avalov 406
Iran 564; and the IRD 78, 79; Overseas Bermuda conference (1953) 505
News Service 479; Radio Four 609 Bernhard, Prince, of the Netherlands 496,
Beamish, Tufton 447 497
Beauclerk, Charles, Duke of St Albans 120 Berry, George 121, 131

Beck-Broichsitter, Helmut 103 Berthoud, Eric 562-3, 565, 570

Becker, Hans 118 Berzins, Alfred 271, 279, 444
Bedarfas, Louise 511 Besse, Antonin 601
Beddington-Behrens, Edward 439, 448, 456, Bevan, John 156
458, 459, 460, 464, 496, 508 Bevin, Ernest 65, 76, 82, 121, 147, 260, 385,
Bedell Smith, Walter 89, 264, 395-6, 464, 435, 458, 534, 541; Albania 367, 368, 377,
466, 489, 493, 497, 506, 574, 583, 587, 591 382, 383, 384, 394; announces withdrawal
Beeley, Harold 637 from Palestine 549; anti-communist 36,

Begin, Menachem 549 73-4, 78; attacked at UN 72-3; Britain's

Behbehani, Ayatollah 585 atomic bomb 158-9; compares Stalin to
Beihan, Sharif of 692 Hitler 37; a Cyprus radio station 539;

Belarus Legion 217, 219, 220 economic information 487; federalism 461;
Belie, George 246, 294 Greece 317, 319, 323, 324, 327; immediate
Bell, Brian 493-4 objectives (1949) 85; Iran 535, 562; the IRD
Bell, Walter 51, 53 71, 77; Jewish refugees 547; MI6
Bellringer plan 671 conditions of service 27, 30; possible anti-
Belorussia National Committee (BNC) 503 Semitism 430, 545; power politics 38; the
 INDEX 867

PWE 71-2; the Russia Committee 42-3; Bohr, Niels 152

'signs SOE's death warrant' 28; SO 42, 87; Boldyrev, Constantine 416, 417, 437
Stetsko 443; stops war crimes Boloselsky, Prince 416
investigations and trials 353, 434; the Bolsover, George 39, 60-61
'Third Force' 46; the Tito-Stalin split 68; Bondy, Francois 457, 477
vision for the Middle East 543; Western Bono, Hank 116
Union 461-2 Boorman, David 749
BG/ FIEND see VALUABLE Operation BOOT Operation 578, 580, 581, 585, 587,
Bichet, Robert 462 597-8
Bickford, David 773, 774, 797, 798, 799 Boothby, Robert 459, 460, 462, 500, 508, 627
Big Four conference (1947) 127 Boresztoczky, Miklos 176
Bihbihani, AyatoUah 592, 593 Borkenau, Franz 476
Bilderburg group 650-51; conference (1954) Bormann, Martin 96, 102

508-9 Boroujerdi, Ayatollah 585

Biological Weapons Convention (1972) 766 Borovets 230
Biopreparat 766 'Boscoes' brothers 574
Birdwood, Lady 690 Bose, Chandra 612
Bishop, Frederick 613 Bosley, Rex 269, 275
Bissell, Richard 400, 659, 660 Bossom, Alfred 285
'Black Cat' guerrilla forces 217 Bourbon-Palma, Pierre de 685
Black Legion 336 Bourne, Robert 587
'Black Sunday' 592 Boursicot, Peter 634, 640
Blackburn, James 389, 393 Boutros Ghali, Boutros 787
Blackett, Frances 434 Bowden, J. 673
Blackett, Patrick 135, 434 Bower, Susan Ann 50
Blair, Tony 328 Bowie, Peter 501
Blake, George xv, 112, 131-2, 298, 423, 494, Boxshall, Edward 212
522, 523, 526, 704-5, 723, 725 Boyle, Antony 680, 685, 686, 690, 692, 693,
Blake, (Lord) Robert 5 694
Bland, Neville 27 Boyle, Charles 116, 117
Bletchley Park see Government Code and Boyle, David 'Archie' 537-8
Cipher School Boyle, SirDermot 685
BLOODSTONE Operation 210, 373, 439 Braden, Thomas W. 465, 466, 467, 470, 475,
Blount, B.K. 521 478, 479, 481
BLUEBAT Operation 667 Bradley, Michael 659
Blues regiment (Royal Horse Guards) 256 Bradley, Omar N. 490
Blum, Ignacy 235 Braithwaite, Roderick 758, 759
Blum, Leon 431, 463 Braun, Werner von 145, 149
Blum, Robert M. 64, 99 Brezhnev, Leonid 789
Blumenfeld, Eric 458 Briance, John 545, 570, 651, 724
Anthony 245, 411
Blunt, Brichah escape organisation 544
BMP3 weapons procurement programme Bridges, Sir Edward 31, 619, 621, 649, 660
network 790 Briggs, Harry (Frank Higgins) 737
BND 765, 771 Brimelow, Thomas 208, 279, 280, 281
Board of Trade (BoT) 141, 142, 487 Brimmell, Jack 75
Boase, Thomas 536 Brinton, Crane 579
Boban (of the Black Legion) 336 Bristow, Desmond 4, 18, 57, 142, 501, 508
Boel, Baron Rene 466 Britanova 435
Bogdanor, Vernon 455 British Aerospace 761
Bohlen, Charles E. 478, 574 British Airways 761
868 INDEX

British Army: in Austria 337; Gaddafi and Brooman-White, Dick 375

735; Information Teams 733; Jewish Brown, Anthony Cave 191
Brigade 544 Brown, George 716, 726
British Army of the Rhine (BAOR) 98, 102, Brown, Irving 476, 478
289, 345; 506th Military Government Brown, Lord Justice 796
Relief Detachment 431 Browne, E.G. 564
British Central Scientific Office (BCSO) 152 Bruce, David 50, 54, 709
British Commonwealth Scientific Office 152 Bruce-Lockhart, John 112, 121, 291, 396, 398,
British Commonwealth Shipping Company 416, 514, 516, 517, 523, 551, 554, 579, 640,
664, 694 641, 662, 670, 720-21, 722
British Control Commission (BCC) 98, 99, Brugmans, Henrdryk 461, 462, 477
142, 242, 351, 480, 512; Intelligence Brummell, Bill 392
Division 99, 714; 'Technical Section' 295 Brunderschaft 103, 115
British Council 471, 536, 537 BRUSA 11, 12

British Empire Union 429 Brussels Treaty 81

British Federal Union 456 Bryan, Joe 380-81
British Free Movement (BFM) 441 BUCCANEER Operation 562
British HQ Liaison Mission (Italy) 360 Buchardt, Friedrich 216, 218
British League for European Freedom Buchko, Bishop Ivan 171, 202, 232, 238
(BLEF) 261, 285, 418, 425, 426, 428-41, Bujanovic, Josip 337, 339
446-9, 492 Bukharin, Nikolai 187
British Middle East Office (BMEO) 534, 538, Bulgarian National Front 444
541, 577, 600, 661, 666; 'Co-ordination Bulik, Joe 704, 705, 708
Division' 600 Bull, Roger 446
British Military Mission 313, 314, 318, 323, Bullard, Sir Roger 534
333, 377, 386 Bullock, Alan 476
British National Committee 470 Bulmer-Thomas, Ivor 428, 430
British National Council of Social Service Bundesbank 779
468 Bundy, McGeorge 708-9, 716
British Petroleum (BP) 595, 596, 670, 671, Bureau of People's Protection (ONZA) 342
677, 735, 761 Burgess, Guy 68, 75, 77, 212, 244-5, 295, 396,
British Police Mission 320, 323 495, 622
British Political Institute 437 Burke, Harry 748
British Security Co-ordination (BSC) 49-50, Burke, Michael 378-9, 387, 389-90, 395,
51, 53, 55, 96, 154, 454, 477, 610, 611 396
British Society for Cultural Freedom 479 Burkhardt, Frederick 477
British Troops Greece 313 Bumham, James 588
British Union of Fascists (BUF) 441 Bums, Tom 430
British Youth Council 470 Busemann 146
British Zone of Occupation (Germany) 98 Butenas, Julijonas 295
BRIXMIS 488 Butler, Sir Harold 460
BROADWAY Operation 262, 263, 275, 292, Butler, R.A. 649, 689, 716

371, 385, 394, 540, 622, 625, 626 Butterworth Scientific Publications 140, 141
Brody, Battle of (1944) 241 Buzzard, Sir Anthony 290
Brook, Sir Norman 156, 367, 619, 624, 641, Byroade, Henry 587
658, 670, 675 Byron, Lord 24
Brook, Robin 21, 146
Brook-Shepherd, Gordon 119, 128, 613 Caber, Dragutin 350
Brooke, Maj. 697 Cabinet: Intelligence Services Committee
Brookes, John G. 524 758; Office 501, 522, 661, 672, 706, 727,
 INDEX 869

744, 747, 754, 776, 780, 789, 800; Overseas Central European Federal Study Clubs 166,
and Defence Committee 673, 683 167, 170, 239, 432; London 432
Cabot, John M. 349 Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) 27, 51-2,

Caccia, Harold 32, 84, 130, 131, 309, 606, 55, 57, 62, 76, 89, 96, 105, 145, 152, 153,

648, 657 163, 173, 175, 184, 235, 239, 243, 245, 246,
Cadogan, Sir Alexander 9, 10, 31-2, 538 247, 266, 305, 385, 448, 454, 496, 501, 503,
Callaghan, James 475, 716, 743, 747 505, 508, 511, 514, 527, 551, 598, 640, 664,
Camp 030 100 749, 750, 767, 769; ACEN 436; Albania
Camp King, near Oberusal 100, 104, 183, 383, 388, 390, 393, 395, 397, 399; American
210, 420 Committee for Liberation from
Camp Ritchie, Maryland 138 Bolshevism 492, 493; AQU ATONE 617;
Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) assessments on South-East Asia 715;
784 attempt to overthrow Saddam 781-2;
Campbell-Johnson, Hon. George ('The Pack 'Black Files' 396; CCF 481; Church House
Rat') 736, 737-8 conference 446-7; conspiracy theory
Camrose, Lord 462 484- 5; 'Detachment A' squadron 617;
Camus, Albert 457 'Detachment B' squadron 617, 660;
Canadian Atomic Energy Project: National Directorate of Plans 400, 649; Discoverer
Research Council (NRC) 153 709; economic warfare 488-9; Egypt 601,
Canaris, Wilhelm 187, 191, 224, 227, 409, 422 602, 607, 616, 628, 636, 645, 646, 648; and
Canellopoulos, Panayotis 400 the Foundation for Youth and Student
'Cantwell, James' (MI6) 756 Affairs 469; Germany 778; Greece 325,
Capel-Dunn, Denis 27 326; Hungary 516, 517; ICFTUE 440;
Carew-Hunt, Robert 12, 16, 99 International Organisations Division 467,
Caritas Internationalis 116 478; Iran 566, 579, 582, 583, 586-96, 598;
Caroz, Yaacov 630 ISC 473; joint conference with MI6 (1952)
Carpathian Sic Guard 224 150; London conference (1951) 295;
Carr, Harry 224, 225, 231, 242-6, 258, 262, Lumumba 721; manipulation of the
268-9, 273, 275-6, 288, 294, 295-6, 298, student movement 471; the mujahedin
407, 499, 511, 514 752; Near East Divisions 584; NTS 422,
Carrington, (Lord) Peter 345 423, 424, 516; and nuclear proliferation
Carroll, George 588, 593, 596 765; Office of Special Operations (OSO)
Carter, Hodding 436 243-4, 245, 294, 368-9, 496; Oldfield and
Casey, William 97 742; OPC 395, 400; PEN 480; relations
Castro, Fidel 611, 789 with MI6 89, 131, 155, 396, 422, 454,
Catherine, the 'Cat Lady' 584 467-8, 475, 506, 515, 520, 522, 523, 524,
Catherwood Foundation 473 626, 646, 648, 703, 711, 736, 752; Saudi
Catholic Action 438 Arabia 734; SCLL 292, 296; Slansky
Catholic Church 126, 172, 330, 336, 338, 342; 485- 6; student bodies 471, 472; supports
see also Vatican the non-Communist political left 467;

Catholic Resistance Movement 176 suspects Philby 295; Syria 655; training
Cavendish, Anthony 131, 293, 654-5, 709, 298, 502; U-2 aircraft 617, 659; Watch
711-12, 744 Committee 642; WAY 469, 470; Yemen
Cavendish-Bentinck, Victor 12, 23, 26, 27, 42, 695; Yugoslavia 353; Zionists 485
84, 136, 254-60, 333 Central Intelligence Group (CIG) 54, 55, 62,
Cazelet, Victor 166, 250, 251, 427, 455 105, 152, 321, 566, 753; Liaison Group 54
Ceausescu, Nicolae 789 Central Office of Information 535
Cecil, Robert 13, 15, 16, 21-2, 28, 36, 42, 303, Central Personality Index (CPI) 100, 102,
495 107, 111
Central European Committee 169 Central Registry (CR), Germany 113
870 INDEX

Central Registry of War Crimes and ELAS 306; 'percentage' agreement with
Security Suspects (CROWCASS) 102, 103, Stalin (1944) 14-15, 39; PEU 458, 459;
107, 111, 112, 113, 128, 240, 435 Poland 251; purge of Communists in
Central Treaty Organisation 670, 694 secret establishments 10; removal from
Central Union of Post-War Russian Emigres Downing Street 28, 36; return to power
(ZOPE) 513 454, 570; suspicious of Russia 303, 308;
Centre d'Action Europeenne 469 tries to prevent Menzies' appointment as
Centre International des Syndicalistes Libre 'C 4; UEM 460, 462; UNTHINKABLE
en Exil 440 25; wants an international agreement with
The Centre' (Poland) 257 Soviet Union 467; Yugoslavia 334
Centres d'Action Internationale 460 Ciex 795
Chadwick, Sir James 134, 152 'Cilley' (an Iranian) 566, 592-3
Challe, Gen. 637 CIRCLE Operation 349
Chambers, Sir Paul 466, 508 Civil Mixed Watchman's Service 345
CHAMELEON Operation 607, 608 Civil Security Liaison Officers 100
Chamoun, Camille 666, 668 Civil Service Selection Board 784
Chandler, Geoffrey 313, 314, 318-19, 322 Clarke, Alan 764
Channon, Paul 740 Clarke, Dudley 157
Chauncy, Maj. F.C.L. 730 Clay, Lucius D. 210, 220, 237, 373, 463, 464,
Chehab, Farid 665 465
Chemical Defence Establishment, Porton Clemins, Gustav 270, 271, 279
Down 520, 611, 688-9 Clerides, Glafkos 556
Cheshire, Cyril 269 CLIMBER Operation 211
Chetniks 125, 331, 333, 335, 336, 337, 345, Cline, Ray 586, 709, 710, 714
353, 419, 434 Clinton, Bill 773
Chigley, Corp. 686 Clissold, Stephen 346, 347, 352
Chisholm, Anne 706, 708 Clive, Nigel 306-9, 313, 314, 316, 320, 322,
Chisholm, Roderick 'Ruari' 706, 708 323, 549, 615, 621, 626, 714, 722, 726, 742
Christchurch Conference 474 Cloak and Dagger (film) 379
Christian Democratic Union of Central Clowder Mission (Austria) 23
Europe 438 Clutterbuck, Richard 772
Christian Democrats (Italy) 372 Glutton, Sir George 495, 580, 582, 583
Christie, John 665, 670-75, 687-8, 691 Codreanu, Cornlieu 178-9
Malcolm 405
Christie, Cohen, Kenneth 30, 167, 416, 498
Chudleigh, Derek 552 Collage Croatto, Rome 346
'Chuprynka Plan' 239 Collier, George 289
Church House conference (1952) 446-8, 492 Collins, Bill 378

Church of England 438 Collins, H. John 600, 601

Churchill, Sir Winston 5, 42, 51, 167, 332, Collins, Michael 20, 223

357, 461, 464, 486-7, 489, 504, 510, 514, Colonel's Camarilla 336
521, 577, 583; Atlantic Charter signed 277; Colonial Development and Welfare Acts 692
Baykolov advises 405; Central European Colonial Office 31, 377, 469, 509, 535, 552,
Committee 169; the Congress of Europe 679, 688; Information Policy Committee 76
463; DFP 158; East German rebellion 503; Colville, John 64, 583

Egypt 603; EM 458; European integration Combat Corps (Kutepov) 268

457; fears a civil war in Italy 21; a Combat network (France) 457
federated Europe 165-6; flights over Combat Union for the Liberation of the

Soviet territory 519; the Foreign Office Peoples of Russia 421

495, 500, 505; Greece 308-14, 317; Iran Combined Chiefs of Staff (Washington) 56
570, 571, 573, 587, 594; loathes EAM/ Combined Development Trust 138
 INDEX 871

Combined Intelligence Priorities [later Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF) 475,
Objectives] Sub-Committee (CIOS) 136, 477-82; international Committee 479
137 Congress of Delegates of Independence
Combined Operations Headquarters 456 Movements Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of
Combined Raw Materials Board 138 Nations of Europe and Asia (1950) 442,
Combined Research and Planning 443-4
Organisation (CRPO) 533, 534 Congress of Delegates of the Oppressed
Combined Services Detailed Interrogation European Nations (1946) 432
Centre (CSDIC) 545 Congress of Europe 463
Cominform (Communist Information Congress of Industrial Organisations (CIO)
Bureau) 64, 66-70, 72, 73, 74, 327, 364, 464
366, 471, 475, 484 Conquest, Robert 75, 78

Comintern 7, 13, 68, 69, 304, 325, 419 Conseil Francais pour I'Europe Unie
Commission for Criminal Organisations (CFEU) 460, 464
100 CONSENSUS 11 mission 359
Committee for a Free Europe 373, 380, 382, Conserv^ative Party: foreign donations
392 790-91; general election (1970) 732
Committee for Cultural Freedom 476 Continental Union 175
Committee for European Federation 457 CONTRARY Operation 522
Committee for Free Albania 379-82, 387, Control List 507
391, 399 Controller Production Research (CP2) 30
Corrm\ittee for the Liberation of the Peoples Cook, Robin xv, 767, 775, 776, 796n, 800
of Russia (KONR) 198, 214, 412-13, 415, Coombe-Tennant, Henrys 673
421; Armed Forces (VS KONR) 413, 458, Cooper, Sir Alfred Duff, 1st Viscount
486 Norwich 9, 10, 426, 431, 459
Conunittee for the Liberation of the Ukraine Cooper, Chester 610, 612, 628, 641, 642-3,
from Bolshevism 244 645, 646
Committee for the Pro\'ision of Cooper, Garv^ 379
Experimental Facilities for Intelligence 521 Cooper, Maj. John 664, 685, 686, 688, 690-93
Committee to Save the Fatherland 584 Cooper, Yvette 780
Common Cause 435, 436, 437, 448 Co-ordinating Centre for Anti-Bolshevik
Common Cause Inc. 436-7, 448 Struggle 502-3
Common Market 650 Co-ordinating Committee (COCOM) 488,
Common Wealth Party 435, 436 501, 508
Commonwealth Investigation Serv ice 354 Co-ordinating Secretariat of National Union
Commonwealth Relations Office 239, 469, of Students (COSEC) 472, 473
509, 557 Co-ordination Centre for Anti-Bolshevik
Communist Party of: Albania (CPA) 356, Action (KCAB) 503
360, 361, 366, 402; Cyprus (AKEL) 552; Copeland, Miles 583, 594, 602, 605, 634, 649
Germany 103; Great Britain (CPGB) 8, 61, Copplestone, Frank 472
436, 448, 469; Greece (KKE) 305-11, 315, Cordeaux, John 29
318, 321-5, 327; Indonesia (PKI) 718; Comwallis, Sir Kinahan 539-40
Lithuania 292; Malaya 718; Soviet Union Cossacks 344, 414, 431, 433
754; Yugoslavia 376 Cottam, Richard 579, 588, 593, 595
Company 400 392, 393, 401 Cotton, F. Sidney 192
Confederation of Central European Nations Coudenhove-Kalergi, Count Richard 165,
169 166, 167, 186, 438, 455, 456-7, 459, 461,
Confederation Generate du Tra\ ail Ouvriere 462, 464
440 Council of Europe 441, 446, 465;
CONFLICT Operation 129, 130 Consultative Assembly 440
872 INDEX

Council of Foreign Ministers 73, 534, 571 Crusaders (Krizari) 339-43, 348, 352, 353
Council on Foreign Relations 461, 496; War Cuban Missile Crisis 708
and Peace Study Group 462 Gumming, Malcolm 408, 521
Council for the Liberation of Lithuania 283 Gumming, Mansfield 4
Counter-intelligence (CI) G-2 War Room 99, Cuneo, Ernest 49, 50, 55, 154-5
111 Current Intelligence Group (GIG) 748, 764,
Court of Appeal 768 790
Courtney, Commander Anthony 212, 290, Curry, Jack 11, 15

291, 293 Curtis, John 695

Cowell, Gervase 708 Curwen, Christopher 753, 758
Cowell, Pamela 708 Customs and Excise 501, 772, 775
Cowgill, Felix 7, 10, 11, 15-16 CX Book (Weekly Summary of Intelligence)
CPA see Communist Party of Albania 749; reports 761, 766, 793
CPGB see Communist Party of Great Britain Cyprus Defence Regulation 643
Crabb, Lionel 'Buster' 525, 617-20, 621, 626, Cyprus Emergency 553, 554
630, 633, 660, 661 Cyprus Intelligence Committee 552
Cradock, Percy 747-8, 751, 752, 754, 757, 763 Czech government-in-exile 427
Craig, Keith Robert 791 Czech Intelligence Office (CIO) 183, 184,
Cram, Cleveland 523, 651 235, 407
Cramp ton, John 519 Czechoslovak Export Agency 523
Crawford, Albert 409
Crawford, David 731-2 D-Day 241
Crichton, David 414, 602, 652 da Silva, John 687, 690, 691, 696
Criminal Justice Bill (1998) 794 Dadsetat, Farhat 696
Cripps, Stafford 562 Daftary, Gen. 593, 594
Critchett, Ian 602 Daghestani, Gen. 636, 668
Critchfield, James 681, 689 Dallas, George 430
Croatian Clerical Party 339 Dalton, Hugh 367, 430
Croatian Confraternity of San Girolamo 169, Daly, Ralph 686, 691
339 Damascene Group 655
Croatian Liberation Movement (HOP) 354, Damaskinos, Archbishop 307, 311, 312, 315,
444 319
Croatian Red Cross 169 Damjanovic, Miodrag 331, 335, 345, 352
Croatian State Committee 352 (BE)DAMN programme 566, 588, 595
Crockett, Norman 114 Dangerfield, Mrs Elma 425-8, 431-4, 437,
Crofton, John 289, 293 438, 447, 449
Crook ('Kruk'), Maj. 107, 108 Daniel, Norman 667
Crosland, Anthony 336 Dankers, Oskars 270, 271
CROSSLINE Operation 348 Dansey, Claude 124, 131, 168, 174, 426
Grossman, Richard 479, 480, 539, 716 Darbyshire, Norman 537, 560, 561, 563, 564,
Crosthwaite, Moore 380 570-73, 577, 578, 580, 585-6, 588, 589, 592,
Crouch, Michael 686 629, 654, 665, 670, 707
Crouchley, Arthur 517 Darwin, Charles 140
Crow, Sir Alwyn 145 Dassault 761
Crowfoot, John 540 Dattner, Stephen 232
Crowley, Aleister 441 Daugavas Vanagi 279, 289
'Crown project' 419 Daunoras (Baltic agent) 285
Crozier, Brian 712, 714, 716-17 Davidson, Gen. F.H.N. 14
Cruickshank, Gerald 142 Davies, Brig. E.M. 357-8
Crusade for Freedom 373 Davies, Ted 525, 618
 INDEX 873

Da\-is, Walpole 263, 265 Derr\-, Sam 115

Dawson, Robert 703 Desert Fox Operation 772
de Coiirc\-, Kenneth 250, 429, 430, 447, 448, Desert Storm Operation 675, 753
506 Deterding, Sir Henr\- 406
de Garston, Lancelot 547 Deutsche Arbeitsfront 175
de GauUe, Charles 170, 173, 457 Deutsche Revolution 107-10
de Goore\Tid, Kock 456 Deva, Xhafer 357, 358, 372, 382, 387
de Haan, Teddy 547, 600, 654 De\"erell, John 741
de la Billiere, Peter 686-7 Dhofar Liberation Front 730
de la Vallee Poussin, Senator 507 Diana, Princess of Wales 788
de Salis, Charles 410 Dickson, Dickie 158
de Silva, Peer 717, 719 Dimitri Pa\ lovitch, Grand Chike 409
de Zulueta, Philip 673 Dimitrov, Georgi 175
Dean, Maurice 85 ed-Din, Saleh 629
Dean, Patrick 509, 586, 621, 624, 626, 627, Dine, Fiqri 359, 362
630, 636, 640, 641, 658, 662, 669 Diomedes, Alexander 380
Deane-Drummond, Tony 664 Directorate of Counter-intelligence and
Debardeleben, Dan 632-3 Securit>- (DCIS) 723-4
Debringhaus, Erhard 110 Directorate of Forward Plans (DFP) 157, 158
Deci, Selim 394 Disco\ erer satellite programme 709
Dedijer, \Tado 395 Displaced Persons Act (1948) 240
'Defectors Committee' 145-6 DISTANT signalling system 707
Defence and CK'erseas Policy- Committee 670 Divall, Tony 297, 512, 737
Defence Advisor)^ Group 753 Diversified Corporate Serv ices 795
Defence Intelligence Staff (DIS) 518, 524, Divsaller (Shah's mistress) 563
723, 742, 764, 777 Dixon, Peter 633-4
Defence Research Agency 774-5 Dixon, Piers 307, 310, 581
Defence Scientific Intelligence Unit 149 Djilas, Milovan 395
Defence White Papers: 1957 677; 1966 696 Doctors' Plot 499
Deksnys, Jonas 279, 282, 283, 285, 287, 292, Dodds-Parker, Douglas 20, 33, 37, 188, 260,

293, 296 440, 458, 467, 510, 624, 625, 641, 644
Del Greco, Dominic 117 Dodds-Parker Committee see Psychological
Delegation of Armed Forces (Delegatura Sil \Varfare Consultations Committee
Zbrojnych (DSZ)) 256, 257 Doenitz, Adm. 25
DELFIXIUS Operation 524, 525 Dolbeare, Frederic 437
Delmer, Sefton 96, 97, 536 Dollan, Sir Patrick 428
Democratic Army (Greece) 324, 327 Domobrans (Fiome Guard) 332, 335, 337,
Demyanov, Aleksandr ('Max') 385, 410, 411 338, 339, 345: Black Hand 332;
Denard, Bob 685-6, 686 Information Department 332
Denham, Hugh 623 Donnelly, J.G. 52
Denne, Alurid 29 Donovan, William 51, 52, 53, 167, 437, 454,

Dennison, Malcolm 664, 730, 731 462, 464, 465, 538

Denn> s, Rodney 363, 391, 624 Doran, Desmond 544
Department of Army Detachment (DADi Dorman, Geordie 686
109, 114, 210, 362 Dosti, Hassan 372, 373, 382, 387, 391, 399
Department of Trade and Industn,' 789 Douglas, Jeff 691
Department to Combat Bandits (USSR) 235 Douglas-Hamilton, Lord Malcolm 448
Deportees Committee 428 Douglas-Home, Alec (Lord Home) 681, 682,
Dering, Dr \ladislav 434-5 684, 689, 691, 693
DERMOT Operation 663 Douglass, Kingman 53, 54, 55
874 INDEX

Dowlatshahi, Shapour 591 Eden, Anthony 14, 21, 28, 36, 37, 53, 469,
Dowling, David 659 487, 490-91, 494, 496, 497, 500, 504, 510,
Downes, Donald 45 514, 549, 553, 612-13, 618, 624, 631, 646,
Downton, Eric 679, 681 658; Egypt 602, 603-4, 606, 607-8, 612,
Draganovic, Father Krunoslav 116, 169, 171, 613, 614, 616, 620-21, 623, 626, 627, 628,
330, 336, 339-40, 342, 346-50, 354 634, 636, 637, 639, 640, 649, 666;
Dragon Returnees 148-9 Eisenhower 608, 609, 648; Greece 307, 308,
Dragutin Subotic School of Slavic Studies 311; Iran 570, 571, 573, 578, 581-2, 583,
351 586, 587, 598-9; resignation 652; U-2s 617
Drew, John 157 'Edmundes' (agent) 297
Drljaca, Simo 328, 329 Edward VII, King 3
Drossos, Giorgos 316 Edwards, Bob 447, 460
Druze tribe 636, 642, 666 Edwards, Geoffrey 694
DST security service 757 Edwards, Robin 692
Dubinsky, David 464 Eek, Ake 276
Duclos, Jacques 66 Egerfangst 524-5
Dulger-Sheiken, Nicholas 409 Egerton, Sir Alfred 140
Dulles, Allen 54, 89, 105, 119, 124, 129, 168, Egypt Committee 623-4, 627
169, 198, 245, 264, 368, 373, 399, 400, 419, Egyptian Army 629, 657; General Staff 601,

437, 457, 458, 462, 464, 467, 479, 484, 496, 604
504-6, 566, 574, 579, 581, 583, 586, 587, Eichelberger, James 601, 610, 615, 620
591, 595, 596, 598, 607, 614, 615, 622, 627, Eichmann, Adolf 109
633, 637, 642, 646, 647, 649, 651, 655, 660, 8th Army 23, 122, 125, 341

668, 669, 707 Einsatzgruppen: B 216, 226; C 226

Dulles, John Foster 169, 436, 437, 461, 462, Eisenhower, Dwight D. 89, 102, 157, 258,
495, 497, 504, 505, 581, 582, 587, 588, 596, 267, 373, 396, 480, 495, 496, 497, 504, 505,

604, 608, 620, 627, 633, 636, 642, 646, 655, 516, 519, 580, 581, 589, 590, 594, 607, 609,
657 621, 636, 645, 647, 648, 657, 659, 663, 669;
Duncan, Sir Andrew 462 Doctrine 668
Dundas, Charles 536-7 electronic intelligence (FLINT) 524
Dunderdale, Wilfred 130, 147, 166, 186, 188, Eleksynas, Juozas 271
189, 211, 249, 250, 405 Elizabeth II, Queen 626, 776

Durcansky, Ferdinand 171, 181-2, 183, 443 Ellersiek, Kurt 107

Durrell, Lawrence 550-51 Elleston, Harold 790-91
Dwyer, Peter 153, 154, 368 Elliot, Roger 110-11
Dyan, Moshe 640 Elliot, T.S. 438
Elliott, Geoffrey 176
Earley, Peter 750 Elliott, Kavan 175-6
Eastman, Max 436 Elliott, Nicholas 190, 418, 419, 605, 618, 619,
Easton, James 26, 130, 146, 298, 367, 384, 626, 647, 670-71, 684, 705, 710, 722

385, 396, 493, 494, 547, 621, 625, 630, 662 Ellis, Charles 50, 51, 54, 135, 166, 167, 189,
EASTWIND Operation 203, 433 190-91, 405, 407
Ebjehaj, Abal Hassan 576-7 Elwes, Dominic 695
Ebtahaj, A. 584 EM see European Movement
Eccles, David 460 Emami, Jamal 573
Economic Co-operation Administration Emmet, Christopher 436
(ECA) 463 Enemy Personnel Exploitation Section 137,
Economic Commission for Europe 143
(proposed) 460 Enemy Publications Committee 139
Economic League 430 ENGULF Operation 623, 647
 INDEX 875

Enigma machine code 250, 622 Falle, Sam 570, 571, 575-9, 667
Enosis 550, 552, 556 Falques, Roger 685, 686, 738
EPSILON Operation 139 FANTASTIC Operation 522
Erglis, Janis 295 Farago, Ladislas 95-6, 102
Ermneji, Abas 357, 372, 374, 392, 398-9, 401 Fardust, Hossein 563, 576, 654
Estonian National Committee 286 Farfield Foundation 479, 480
Etezadi, Mrs Malekeh 592 Farkas, Ferenc 178, 444
Eugen, Prince 337 Farm Hall, near Cambridge 139
Europe Study Group 456 Farmer, John 603, 629-30, 652, 653
European Defence Community (EDC) 487, 650 Farouk, King of Egypt 538, 601, 652
European Economic Community (EEC) 467, Farrell, Terry 776
474 Farzaniega (Iranian conspirator) 594
European Federalist Movement (EFM) 457 FAST BOWLER 74
European Freedom Council 222, 449 Fatemi (Iranian Foreign Minister) 590
European Fund for Exiles (proposed) 447 Fawzi, Mahmoud 636
European League for Economic Co- Faysal, Shihab Bin 731
operation (ELEC) 459-60, 462, 463 Fearnley, John 570
European Movement (EM) 168, 375, 437-40, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) 97,
449, 453, 454; Action Committee 467; aims 154, 384

465; British strength within 464; Central Fees, James 689, 692, 697
and Eastern European Commission Feis, Herbert 15
439-40, 446, 492, 507; Churchill and 458, Fergusson, Bernard 635, 643, 644
465; and the Council of Europe 465; and Ferjencik, Gen. 182
ELEC 459; EYC 469; funding 464, 465-7, 'Ferret' flights 53
470; key members 457; NATO 465; origins Fesq, Suzanne 120
455-6; role 463; UK National Council 446 Fforter, Alexis 570, 602, 654, 667-8, 670

European Recovery Programme (ERP) 53, Field, Noel 484, 485

65, 462-3 Field Information Agency (Technical)
European Union (EU) 755, 780, 790 (FIAT) groups 137
European Union of Federalists (EUF) 440, Field Security 100, 102, 107
461, 462, 464, 467 Fielding, Xan 376
European Voluntary Workers (EVW) FIEND Operation see VALUABLE
programme 285, 288, 433, 442, 443 Operation
European Youth Campaign (EYC) 469, 470 5th Corps 200, 338
Europol 775 15th Cossack Cavalry Corps 337
Evalovsky, John 263 15th Waffen-SS Latvian Division 271
Evang, Wilhelm 524 50-50 agreement 559, 568, 595
Evans, D.E. 209 Figel, Leopold 124
Evans, Glynne 792 Figg, Leonard 635
Eveland, Wilbur C. 615, 616, 621, 628, 633, Figgures, Frank 726-7
637, 638, 652, 653 Fildes, Paul 611
Explosives Research and Development Findlay, C. 347
Establishment 634 Finklestone, Joseph 545
External Trade Organisation 762 Finnish Intelligence 278
Extradition Tribunal, Hamburg 351 Firebrace, Col. 13
First Aid Nursing Yeomanry (FANY) 378
Fain, Nandi 177 First Belorussian Convention (1918) 219
Faisal, King of Iraq 623, 667, 695, 696, 698 First Ukrainian Division 198-202, 204, 241;
Faisal, Prince, of Saudi Arabia 681, 682, 687, 14th Galician Grenadier Division 241
693 1st Partisan Brigade 360
876 INDEX

1st Russian National Liberation Army 413, Proliferation Department 764; Northern
415 Department 242, 279, 510; NUS 471;
1st Weather Reconnaissance Squadron Plechavicius 282; Poland 252, 254, 428;
(Provisional) 617 Positive Vetting Section 495; propaganda
Firth, Maurice 605 unit 442; Research Department 535; Russia
Fischer, Ruth 476 Committee (Committee on Policy
Fishery Protection Service 291 Towards Russia) 40-43, 71, 73, 74, 78,
Fishwick, Nick 791, 792 82-6, 172, 365-7, 393, 471, 491-2,
Fisk, Robert 125, 129, 666 499-500, 510, 534-5, 561; the SAS 663;
FitzGerald, Desmond 711 Security Department xvi; and Selwyn
Fleischmann, Julius 479, 480 Lloyd 608; Serbia 791; Service Liaison
Fleming, Sir Alexander 140 Department 67; SLEF 442, 443; the SOE
Fleming, Anne 481 303, 467, 534, 535; Southern Department
Fleming, Ian 137, 176, 610-11, 649 67-8, 316, 344; and Stewart 445; and
Fleming, Robert 462 Stokes 434; Suharto 718; UN Weapons
Fletcher, Richard 791 Inspectorate 767; US State Department
Flowers, Ken 725 675; Voight and Mrs Dangerfield persona
Flowers family 289 non grata 427; Waffen-SS tattoos issue 285;
Flux, J.B. 632 WAY 468-9; Yugoslavia 331-3, 340, 344,
Foley, Charles 550, 552 347, 349, 351, 353, 790; and Zarine 279,
Foley, Maurice 470 280
Foot, Sir Hugh 554, 555-6 Foreign Organisations Branch (UZU) 421
Foot, M.R.D. 28 Foreign Relations Council 438
Foote, Allan 418-19 Forest Brotherhood 270, 275, 283, 286, 292
Footman, David 29, 59, 416 Foroud, Fatouah 563
Force 399 360 Forrestal, James 53, 242
Foreign Affairs Information Service 441 Forsyth, Frederick 102
Foreign Affairs Select Committee (House of Fort Detrick Special Operations Division 634
Commons) 765, 776 Forward March committee 435
Foreign and Commonwealth Office 239, 277, 'Foster' (MI6) 423
290, 306, 405, 474, 488-90, 504, 509, 514, Foulkes, George 475
522, 527, 549, 661, 672, 698, 768, 784, 789, Foundation for Youth and Student Affairs

792; abandons 'roll-back' 496; advocates 469

armed preparedness against Soviet 14th Intelligence Company 328
pressure 258; Albania 355, 362, 371, 380, Francis Ckryvana Library 218
385; All-Party Parliamentary War Crimes Franco Bahamonde, Francisco 430
Group 280; anti-drugs drive 775; Baykolov Frank, Charles 134, 139
433; Church House conference 447-8; Franke-Gricksch, Alfred 103
Churchill 495, 500, 505; Cold War 34; the Franklin, George S. 464
deal with Harel 670-71; 'Diplomatic List' Franks, Arthur 577, 596, 704, 744, 745
787; Eastern Department 558, 564, 572; Franks, Brian 33, 377, 684, 685
and Eden 510; EDES 307; Egypt 606, 620, Franks, Lord 36, 88, 746, 747
630, 643; EM 446, 453; emigre affairs 446; Eraser, Fiona 685

forced repatriation 431; gas bomb reports Eraser, Hugh 683

688; German Department 281; Greece 314, Eraser, Sir William 595-6
316, 324, 325, 327; Information Erasheri, Mehdi 357, 358

Department 539; IPG 429; Iran 558, 561, Frasheri, Midhat 357, 358, 372-4, 379, 381,

568, 570, 571, 578, 583; JIG 660, 747, 759; 382, 387
limits circulation of PHP texts 14; and Erastachy, Dr 182
M16 723, 776, 777-8, 798; Non- Erawley, Ray 623
 INDEX 877

Frazier, Robert 45, 66 Gane, Barrie 753, 759, 760

Fred Olsen Ltd 524 Gano, Col. 255
Free Czech Information news agency 183 Gardai Special Branch 741
Free European Press Service 440 Gardener, John 622
Free Iraq radio station 753 Gardiner, Charles 123
Free Unionist Officers 735 'Garis' (MGB agent) 293
Freedom and Independence (WiN) 257, Gascoigne, Sir Alvary 489
260-66, 497; Home Organisation 263-6; Gaspari, Alcide de 62, 173, 342, 463, 508
London WiN Centre 263, 264, 265 Gatehouse, Maj. 193, 194, 248
Freedom First 75-6 Gattiker, David 138
Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) xv Gecas, Anatas 271, 288
Freitag, Fritz 197-8 Gedda, Luigi 438
Fremde Heere Ost (FHO; Foreign Armies Gehlen, Reinhard 101, 103-6, 109, 246, 291,
East) 101, 103, 104, 409 294, 409, 410, 424, 496; Organisation 104,
Frenay, Henri 457, 461, 464 105-6, 246, 291, 297, 421, 422, 423, 502,
French Army 409, 456 515, 525
French General Staff 194 GEN 42 (secret Cabinet Committee) 738, 739
French Intelligence 170, 250, 294, 375, 381 General Intelligence (Operations and
French National Committee 10 Intelligence) (GI (OPs & I)) 386
French Navy 637 General Investigation Division (GID) 735
French Resistance 408 General Staff (Research) (G.S.(R)) (later

Fressanges, A.V.M. 519 Military Intelligence (R) (M.I. (R)) 20

Friends of Nationalist Spain 430 'General Support Branch' (MI6) 742
Frontline Reconnaissance Detachments 101 George II, King of Greece 305, 306, 310, 311,
Frye, Richard 579 312, 316, 320, 321, 323, 324
Fuchs, Klaus 151, 153, 154, 155 George V, King 3
Fugitt, Warren 446 Georgian Security Ministry 506
Fuller, F.C. 441, 442, 445 Gerar-Fubto, Col. Ill
Fuller, Horace 'Hod' 392 Gerhard, Jan 236, 265
Fulton, Andrew 791-2 German Army 228, 272, 329, 334, 411
Fulton, James 30, 146 German Intelligence Service (GIS) 99, 103,
Fund for International Student Co-operation 104, 228, 229, 407, 408, 409, 419, 502, 778
(FISC) 475 German Special Service Division 'R' 409, 412
Fund for Youth and Student Affairs (FYSA) Gerson, John 797, 800
473 Gestapo 11, 100, 118, 195, 199, 226, 228, 234,

Furlong, Geoffrey 564 254, 273, 274, 332, 337, 358, 406, 409, 411,
Furnival-Jones, Martin 111 412, 413, 419
Fyvel, T.R. 478, 479-80 Gheorghi-Dej, Gheorghe 180, 181
Gibb, Andrew 429
G2 Int. co-ordinator 665 Gibson, Archie 175, 180, 207, 269
G7 summit (1996) 774 Gibson, George 462
al-Gaddafi, Muammar 735, 736, 737, 793 Gibson, Harold 199, 242, 269, 277, 543
al-Gadr, Sheikh Naji bin Ali 692 Giffard, Diana (Lady Airey of Abingdon)
Gafencu, Grigore 180 427
Gailitis, Arvits 296 Gilchrist, Sir Andrew 718
Gaitskell, Hugh 497, 508 Gilnashah, Gen. 584
Galdins, Andrei 293 Ginters, Vladmars 274, 281
Gale, Roger 409 GIRAFFE Operation 756
Gamelin, Gen. 194 Giscard D'Estaing, Valery 337
Gandy, Christopher 682 Gizenga, Antoine 721
878 INDEX

Gjura, Adem 393, 394 Graham, Brig. John 732

Gladins, Andrei 288 Grant, Alastair 378
'Gladio' 32, 99; Glaive 182n Grazier, Albert 637
Glass, Leslie 552, 554 'Great Raid' 237
Glove, J.G. 632 'Great Sweeper' 485
Glubb, John 612, 625 Greek: Central Intelligence Service (KYP)
Glyn, Lord 644 305, 326; Gendarmerie 318-23, 326, 327;
Godfrey, John 34, 137 government-in-exile 306; National Army
Goebbels, Joseph 442 (GNA) 321, 326, 327, 384; National Guard
Gogo, Gaqi 379 309, 310, 314, 316, 317; National Party 323;
Goiran, Roger 574, 577, 584 National Unity 309; Security Committees
Gold code-breaking unit 545 320;War Ministry 318
GOLD Operation see STOPWATCH Greene, Graham 120, 391, 547
Operation Greene, Hugh Carlton 78, 79, 381, 510, 624
Goldberg, Arthur 464 Greene, Tom 166, 211
Goleniewski, Michal ('Sniper') 704 Greenhill, Denis 711, 715, 725, 726, 727,
Golitsin, Anatoli 707, 714 744
Gollancz, Victor 460 Greer, Eric 527
Gollin, Edward 135 Gregorovic, Milovan 632
Golling, Otto 147 Gregory, Sir Richard 140
Goncharov, Vadim 526 Grennan, Dennis 475, 722
Gonda, Col. 127-8 Grew, Joseph E. 437
Goodwin, Joe 588, 592 Griffith, W. 446
Goodwin, Michael 479 Crimson, Tom 130, 523

Gooley, Mike 691 Grisewood, Harman 75, 479

Gorbachev, Mikhail 747, 748, 750, 751 Grivas, George 310, 320, 550, 551, 552, 553,
Gordievsky, Oleg 742-3, 749, 750, 751 555, 557
Gordon-Smith, Col. 121 Grives, Gen. 138
Gorka, Paul 176, 177, 178 Grocholoski, Count Ksawery 259-60
Goschen, Anthony 131 Grotewohl (East German communist leader)
Gottberg, Kurt von 216, 217 61, 63
Gottlieb, Sidney 649 Grottrup, Helmut 149
Gottwald, Klement 61 Groves, 'Butch' 117
Gouzenko, Igor 29, 152 GRU see Soviet Military Intelligence

Government Code and Cipher School Gruber, Karl 119, 124, 127, 128
(GC&CS), Bletchley Park 5, 35, 96, 139, GUARDIAN Operation 352
303; Abwehr ciphers 12; funding 27; reads Gubbins, Sir Colin 31, 32, 33, 71, 98, 187,
the cipher of the Luftwaffe 12; and the 192, 193, 254, 261, 268, 363-4, 377, 414,

Red Army 410-11; Soviet signals initiative 439, 457, 495, 496, 508; accused by the
16; success in signals cryptanalysis British intelligence community 251-2; the
249-50; transfers to Eastcote 56 AK 253; Albania 356, 372; anti-

Government Communications Headquarters communism 19, 20; and assassination

(GCHQ) 56, 57, 501, 519, 521, 524, 527, plans 611-12; Beddington-Behrens 456,
534, 545, 551, 561, 605, 620, 622, 623, 640, 458, 460; Cavendish-Bentinck 23; the

647, 650, 682, 719, 722, 727, 728, 748, 762, fusion of the SIS and the SOE 27, 28;

773, 775, 777, 781, 788, 789, 797, 799; H Mikolajczyk 251; places forty missions in
Division 623; J Division 751 Italy 21; the Polish Mission in Paris 249;
Gowen, William 349, 350 the Promethean League 187, 194; Retinger

'G(R) 16' Mission 195 works with 463; Sikorski 250;

Graham, Lt-Col. A.G. 636 VALUABLE 363

 INDEX 879

Gulf War 762, 764, 765, 769 Hassan, Abdul Fattah 644
Gurrey, Donald 737 Hassanein Pasha 538
Hastings, Edward 29
'H-bomb' test (1957) 159-60 Hastings, Stephen 554, 555-6, 557
Habsburg, Archduke Otto von 165, 167, 173 Hattersley, Roy 471
Haddon, Col. 142 Hawkesworth, Gen. 310
HADES Operation 765 Hayhoe, Barney 470
'Haescher' (of BND) 756 Haynes, (Sir) George 468
Haganah 544, 546, 547, 549 Hayter, Sir William 77, 84, 319, 365, 368,
Hagelin cipher machine 623 369, 441, 482
Hague Conference (1948) 439 Hazell, Ronald 250, 260-61
Hague war crimes tribunal 328 Head, Viscount 735
Hahn (agent) 77 Healey, Denis 37, 68-9, 75, 496, 497, 508,
Haig, Al 769 648, 717, 725, 727, 728
Haines, Joe 141 Heath, Sir Edward 460, 474, 738, 739
Hakluyt Foundation 795 Heathcote, Mark 746
Hale, Harry 666 Hebblethwaite, Sydney 624, 644
Hall Sir Richard 605 Heber-Percy, Bill 686, 691
Hallstein, Walter 458 Hedayat, Gen. 576
Haloun, Gustav 208-9 Hefer, Stejpan 337, 354, 444
Hambro, Sir Charles 138-42, 510, 525, 624, Heikel, Mohammed 602, 610
641 Hejai, Gen. 576
Hambros Bank 525 Helios II photographic satellite 778
Hamdi, Mohamud 605 Helms, Richard 105, 368, 637, 651, 689, 694,
Hamdun, Mustafa 622 710, 716, 717
HAMILCAR plan 626 Henderson, George 686, 689
Hamilton, Denis 692 Henderson, Loy 45, 574, 581, 587, 590, 591,
Hamilton, John de Courcy 601-2 593
Hammarskjold, Dag 636, 721 Henderson, Nicholas 481
Hampshire, Stuart 106 'Henley' (security code word) 325
Hamud Al Bu Said, Hamad bin 731 Henry, John 633-4
Hankey, Lord 255, 603 Herbert, Auberon 200, 257, 375, 405, 444,
Hankey, Robin 83, 98, 122, 255, 325, 366 445, 447, 517
Hanna, Yousseff Megali 632 Mr and Mrs Aubrey 355
Herbert,
Harapi, Anton 357 Herman, Michael 751
Harcourt, Viscount Bill 360, 361 HERO Operation 704, 708
Harding, Sir John 552, 554 Heydrich, Reinhard 611
Hare, Alan 357, 359, 371, 374, 380, 386 Hibberdine, John 357, 374-5, 390, 395
Harel, Isser 670-71 Hibbert, Sir Reginald 334, 356, 359, 360, 365,
Harney, Desmond 687, 744-5 366-7, 402
Harriman, Averell 460, 464, 574 HIGHJUMP Operation 343
Harrison, G.W. 106 HIGHLAND FLING Operation 203
Harvey, Sir Malcolm 429 Hilali Pasha 601
Harvey, Oliver 40 Hillenkoetter, Roscoe 57
Harvey, William 396, 516, 523, 611 Hills, Denis 149, 201, 202, 203, 255, 433
Harvey-Jones, John 157-8, 290-91 Hilton Assigment 735-8
Hasan, Prince Hasanbin 697 Himmler, Heinrich 197, 227, 230, 271, 411,
Hashemi, Jasmed 760 442
Hashimi-Nijhad, Muhsin 597 Hinchinbrooke, Viscount 603
Hasluck, Margaret 355-6 Hinsley, Harry 12, 52, 54
880 INDEX

Hinton, Geoffrey 601, 704 Hudal, Bishop Alois 115, 346

Hiram, Dan 680 Hudson, Col. 'Bill' 253
Hirsch, Walter 143 Hughes, Aneurin Rhys 474
HIS (hostile intelligence services) 786 Hughes, F. 731
Hitler, Adolf 37, 40, 179, 191, 194-7, 227, Edward 435-6
Hulton,
270, 272, 332, 335, 360, 409, 410, 411, 441, HUMINT (human intelligence gathering)
442 135
Hlinka, Monsignor Andrej 181 Hungarian Freedom Fighters (HFF) 177
Hlinka Guard 171 Hungarian government-in-exile 427
HND 335 Hungarian Uprising (1956) 177, 516, 640,
Hodgkin, Edward 537 645, 653
Hodson, L.S. 488 Hurd, Douglas 610, 758, 765, 780
Hoffman, Emil 107, 108 Hurn, Roger 777
Hofmann, Peter 149 Hurran, Christopher 783-4
Hohenlohe, Prince Max 168 al Hussain, Prince 697
Holdsworth, Gerry 33, 363-4 Hussein, King of Jordan 612, 639, 655, 668,
Holford, Sir George 3 669, 679, 681, 694
Hollis, Christopher 447 Hussein, Prince Mohammed 682, 684
Hollis, Leslie 7 Hussein, Saddam 752, 753, 766, 767, 781,
Hollis, Roger 9, 447 782, 800
Holocaust 546, 547 Hussein, Sharif 680, 686
Holroyd, Fred 741 al-Husseini, Haj Amin 537
Home Executive Committee 225 Huston, Lawrence 51
Home Office 347, 399, 433, 435, 486, 768 Hutton, Robert 140
Hooded Men 442 Hyde, H. Montgomery 190, 508, 611
Hook, Sydney 476 Hyde, Henry 51, 54

Hooper, Robin 631 Hyman, Ronald 46

Hoover, Herbert, Jnr 581, 595 Hynd, Harry 460
Hopkinson, Henry 550
Hoppe, Ernst 97 Ibn Hussein, Sharif Saleh 679-80
Horn, Carl von 682 Ibrahim, Ahmed Bin 731
HORNBEAM Operation 524 IDEA see Sacred Bond of Greek Officers
Horniblow, Phillip 685 Idris, King of Libya 694, 735, 736, 737
Horsford, Derek 671-2 IG Farben 143, 144, 246, 362
Horthy de Nagybanya, Miklos 173, 329 Ignatieff, N. 13
Horvath, Imre 178 'Ilok, Stefan' 182
Hotchkiss, Ted 588, 596 Ilyan, Michel 622, 628, 636, 637, 638, 642
Houghton, Harry 704 Imperial Defence College (IDC) 72, 77, 82-3
Hovey, Allan, Jnr 469 'Imperial Films' (fictional) 379
Howarth, David 123, 257 Imperial Policy Group (IPG) 250, 429
Howarth, Patrick 255, 261 Independent Labour Party (ILP) 428, 435
Howe, Geoffrey 749, 763 Independent League for European Co-
Hoxha, Enver 356, 357, 359-62, 364-7, 369, operation (ILEC) 458
370, 372, 374, 376, 379-84, 386, 388, 392-5, Independenza 372, 399
401, 402 Indian Communist Party Congress (1948) 87
Hoxha, Muhamet Zeqir 397, 398 Industrial Bank of Persia 581
Hrynioch, Father John (Ivan) 199, 200, 226, Information Co-ordination Executive 635
227, 228, 230, 232, 234, 235, 238 Information Research Department (IRD) 71,
Hsaj-Reza'i, Tayyeb 593 72, 75, 78, 79-80, 82, 147-8, 183, 442, 444,

Hubt, Sir John 706 445, 447, 468, 476, 479, 480, 482, 490, 507,
 INDEX 881

510, 511, 516, 535, 552, 553-4, 606, 624, International Student Conference (ISC)
625, 635, 714, 726, 733, 787 471-5
Inglis, Sir John 618 International Student Congress 43
Ingram, Capt. D.C. 290 International Union of Socialist Youth
Ingwar 409 (lUSY) 469, 470
Inner Line 189, 406-7 International Union of Students (lUS) 471
Institute for the Study of Democracy 754 Inverailort Irregular Training centre 24
Institute for the Study of the USSR 423 Inverchapel, Lord (Sir Archibald Clark Kerr)
Institute of Central and Eastern European 25, 45, 53, 441

Studies (proposed) 447 lonides, Michael 667

Institute of Directors 430 Iraii, Col. Richard 224, 225-6, 234
INTEGRAL Operation 223, 242 Iran, Empress of 590
Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) Iran, Mohammed Pahlavi, Shah of 558, 559,
(House of Commons) 780, 798 560, 563, 564, 566, 567, 569, 572, 575, 576,
Intelligence and Security Co-ordinator (ISC) 577, 579, 582, 585, 587-98, 654, 691, 744,
727 745
Intelligence Services Act (1994) 758, 761, Iranian Ministry of Intelligence 771
794 Iranian National Bank 567
Inter-Governmental Committee on Refugees Iraqi Army 674
(IGCR) 348 Iraqi National Accord (IN A) 781-2
Inter-Service Committee on Propaganda Iraqi National Congress 782
Dissemination 77 Iraqi Petroleum Company 606
Inter-Services Liaison Department (ISLD) Irgun 549
306, 333, 533, 544 Irish Republican Army (IRA) 20, 223, 317,

Intermarium 17, 113, 126, 163, 166, 167, 429, 738-41, 768, 771, 781
170-76, 181, 183, 237, 238, 239, 279, 404, Iron Guard (Romania) 178, 179, 180, 223, 444
430-31, 432, 434, 492 Iron Wolf (mythical guerrilla unit) 278
Internal Security Corps (KBW) 254 Ironside, Field Marshal 19, 268, 428
International Anti-Bolshevik Co-ordination Irving, Barrie 776
Centre (MAKC) 503 Ishaki, Ayaz 196
International Atomic Energy Agency Isham, Col. 280
(IAEA) 765 Isham, Sir Gyles 544
International Centre of Free Trade Unions in Islamic Fighting Force 793
Exile (ICFTUE) 440, 447 ISOS (Intelligence Section, Oliver Strachey)
International Committee for the DP and reports 7
Political Emigres 234 Italian Army 231
International Court of Justice, The Hague Italian Intelligence 226, 390
362 Italian Peace Treaty (1945) 341
International Day of Resistance to Italian police 350; 'Special Branch' 341

Dictatorship and War (1949) 476 Ivanovic, Branislav 354

International Federation of Free Journalists
of Central and Eastern Europe 440-41 J. and P. Coats 429
International Flag of Liberty 492 J. Henry Schroeder 581
International Monetary Fund 576 J. Walter Thompson 96
International Peasant Union 175, 447 Jackson, CD. 392, 497, 505, 506, 590
International Press Bureau 239 Jackson, R. 570
International Publishing Corporation 482 Jackson, William H. 53, 55, 89
International Red Cross 346, 347, 350 Jacob, Sir Ian 43, 78, 79, 84, 494
International Refugee Organisation (IRO) JAGUAR Operation 734
354 James, Christopher 795
882 INDEX

Jamieson, Sir Archibald 462 40; the Russian 'Mafia' 773; Scientific

Janke, Ernst 107 section 743; the Sputnik launch 656; trade
Janums, Vilis 270, 275, 289 controls 508; Yugoslavia 328
Japanese Ministry of International Trade Joint Intelligence Organisation (JIO) 726,
and Industry 761-2 727
Jarvis, Fred 472 Joint International Committee of the
Jasenovac concentration camp 125 Movement for European Unity (JICMEU)
JASON Operation 734 462, 463, 464
Jebb, Gladwyn 13, 42, 73, 83, 85, 138, 146, Joint Interrogation Centre, Fort Morbut 696
148, 365-6, 368, 372, 383, 505, 545 Joint Money Laundering Steering Group 773
Jebb Committee 85, 510 Joint Planning Staff (JPS) 25, 31, 32, 35,
Jeddah agreement 696 88-9, 156, 308, 510
Jeffes, Maurice 28 Joint Review Committee 348, 350
Jelic, Brancko 331-2, 347 Joint Scientific and Technical Intelligence
Jellicoe, Earl 368, 385 Committee (JSTIC) 135, 136
Jerrod, Douglas 430 Jones, Eric 54, 640, 647
JETSTREAM Operation 778-9 Jones, Muriel 494
Jetton, Francis 656 Jones, R.V. 53, 133-6, 139, 143, 505, 521-2
Jewish Agency 544, 545 Jonson, Lt-Col. 338
JIO see Joint Intelligence Organisation Jordania, Noe 211
Johnson, Ben 705 Josey, Alex 712-13
Johnson (CIC officer) 420 Josselson, Michael 477-80
Johnson, Jim 684-5, 688, 691, 693, 738 Josten, Josef 183
Johnson, Lyndon B. 715, 716, 717 Jovanovic, Dragoljub 350-51
Johnson, Quentin 708 Joyce, Robert 368, 369, 373, 382, 385, 393,
Johnston, Sir Charles 680, 683, 685, 686 396, 399
Johnstone, Andrew 741 Jumblatt, Kamal 666
Johnstone, Kenneth 313 JUNGLE Operation 288, 293
Joint 543, 545 JUNK Operation 297
Joint Chiefs of Staff 490, 519
Joint Concealment Centre 157 Kabbani, Umar 637, 655

Joint Documents Center, Hochst 104 KADESH Operation 642

Joint Information and Propaganda Kajehnuri, Ebrahim 583
Committee 713 Kajteh-Nouri, Muhammed 584
Joint Intelligence Bureau (JIB) 26, 54, 55, 72, Kalmucks 445
148, 149, 396, 487-8, 522, 723 Kamazuk, Ilarion 244
Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) 25, 35, 39, Kameradenwerk 103
65, 67, 81, 82, 86, 103, 133, 135, 136, 142, Kaminsky (Russian Nazi) 408
155, 205, 252, 254, 281, 494, 505, 509-10, Karadzic, Radovan 791, 792
521, 522, 533, 541, 626, 638, 642, 646, 661, Karamanlis, Constantine 556
706, 720, 748, 758-9, 762, 764, 766, 777, Karamessines, Thomas 321, 323, 326
785; CIG on the Balkans 790; control of Kashani, Ayatollah 565, 571, 576, 582, 583,
660-61, 747; Economic /Industrial section 585, 593

743; Egypt 602; forecasts Soviet expansion Kashuba, Ivan 234

534; the Foreign Office 660, 747, 759; Iran Kasmowich, Dimitri 216, 218, 221, 222

535, 561, 771; Lord Hankey and 255; Kassem, Brig. 670, 672-3, 675

'Priority 1' targets 150; PUSC 494-5; Katyn Massacre 251, 427

'Relations with the Russians' 25; report Kaunda, Kenneth 475, 722
(July 1948) 150-51; Requirements Kavran, Bozidar 337, 339, 342, 348, 352
Directorate 743; the Russian Committee Kazem-Bek, Alexander 406, 409, 515
 INDEX 883

Kealy, Mike 735 King, Tom 758, 780

Keating, Rex 539 King-Hall, Stephen 460
Kedia, Mikhail 196 Kirby-Green, Philip 555
KEELHAUL Operation 202, 343 Kirkpatrick, Ivone 27, 41, 72, 73, 74, 82, 365,
Keenan, George 370, 478 366, 606, 612, 613, 625, 626, 627, 630, 648
Keightley, Gen. 635, 641, 644 Kisvalter, George 705
Keitel 227 Kiyani, Gen. 594
Kell, Sir Vernon 408 Klagenfurt, Bishop of 342
Kellar, Alexander 471 Klatt (Kauder), Richard 410, 411, 419, 420,
Kemp, Peter 253, 351, 357, 360, 381, 390, 395, 421
430 Kleinwort Benson 779
Kemsley, Viscount 462 Klimkans, Janis 299, 515-16
Kendall, Raymond 774 Klimov, George 513
Kendrew, Maj.-Gen. 553 Klose, Hans Helmut 291, 293, 296, 298, 506
Kennan, George 437, 441 Klugman, James 333
Kennedy, John (aka Gvozdenovic) 790, 791 Knightley, Philip 11
Kennedy, John F. 675, 689, 707, 709, 715 Knupffer, Georgi 413-14, 417, 418, 424, 433,
Kent Corps Specials 547 441
Kenwrick-Piercy, Maurice 791 Knuth, Maria 266
Kenyan African National Union 721 Kock, Stephan 761
Kenyatta,Jomo 739 Koestler, Arthur 476, 477, 478
Kerby, Henry 407, 408 Kogon, Eugen 461, 477
Kerensky, Alexander 493 Kolabic, Nikolai 342
Kerno, Ivan 129 Kolberg Ring 265-6
Kerr, Sir Archibald Clark see Inverchapel, Kolchak, Adm. 19
Lord Kolendic, Anton 127
Kerr, Philip (Lord Lothian) 456 Konovalets, Eugene 223, 224
Kerstens, P.A. 463 Korbonski, Stefan 260, 261, 447, 448, 496, 507
Keynes, J.M. 47 Korean War 88, 89, 263, 391, 477, 488, 520,

KGB see Soviet Ministry of State Security 524

Khairi, Mehmed Hussein 629, 644, 652, 658, Korfes, Gen. 226
659 Kosakivsky, Mykyta 226
Khalil, Isameddine Mahmoud 629, 630, 652, Kostajnica 125
653, 658, 659 Kota, Nuci 399
Khan, Kajum 444 Kovacevic, Milan 328, 329
Khan, Maik Mohammed 567
al Kowalski, Gregor 265-6
Khatami, Lt. Mohammad 590-91 Kreisky, Bruno 123
Khatibi, Hussain 585 Krek, Miha 171, 330, 332, 335, 339, 432, 434
Khokhlov, Nikolai 507 Kren, Vladimir 347
Khomeini, Ayatollah 593, 598, 745, 771 Kripens, Arvids 271, 280
Khorunzhi, Nikita 502, 507 Kristol, Irving 480, 482
Khrushchev, Nikita 506, 507, 627, 707, 708, Krivitsky, Walter 190
713 Kroll Associates 795
Kiddie, Joy 767-8 Kruglov, Sergei 277-8, 284, 296
Kielgast (informant) 77 Kruk, Bohdan 229, 230
Killearn, Lord 535 Kruk, W. 245
Kimiche, Jon 635 Krumins, Zigurd 297
Kindleberger, Charles P. 460 Kryeziu, Gani 356, 359, 360, 372, 392, 393
King, Andrew 131 Kryeziu, Hasan 359, 360
King, Cecil 69, 84, 481, 482 Kryeziu, Said 359, 360, 372, 381
884 INDEX

Kube, Wilhelm 216 Latvian Central Council (LCC) 272, 276, 281
Kudirka, Zigmas 297 Latvian Guerrilla Communications Staff 286
Kuhn, Prof Richard 144 Latvian Legion 271, 272, 275, 279, 289
Kulikowski, Col. 263 Latvian Ministry of Interior: Committee of
Kupi, Abas 356-60, 367, 372, 375, 376, 379, Latvian Volunteer Organisation 270
381, 382, 385, 392 Latvian National Committee 274
Kurelis, Janis 272 Latvian National Council 274
Kurelis resistance group 272-3, 284 'Latvian Red Cross' 279
Kushel, Franz 216, 217, 218, 220 Latvian Restoration Committee 289
Kutchuk, Fazil 556 Latvian SS Legion 276
Kutepov, Alexander 189, 268 Law, Richard 448, 496
Kuwait Oil Company 671 Lawrence, T.E. 531
Kuwait Supreme Council 674 Lawson, Dominic 788
Kuwaiti Army 671 Layton, Lord 460, 463
Kvatemik, Dido 329, 330, 336 le Carre, John 484
Kwiesinski, Wincenty 262 League of Nations 224; International Labour
Office 456
Labour League of Youth (LLY) 469, 470 League of Saint Andrew's Flag 421
Labour Party 436, 471, 475, 480, 543, 724, League of the Rights of Man 431
743; Baykolov and 404; CCF 482; defeats Leatham, John 378
Churchill's 'caretaker' government 28, 35; Lebed, Mikolai 200, 224-8, 230, 232, 234-9
EM 453; general elections 317, 728, 732; Lecky, Terence 704, 705, 707
Hulton attacks 435; Iran 562; Keep Left Lee, David 672
group 461; lack of knowledge of security Lee Kuan Yew 712
and intelligence services 80; 'third force' Leeper, Rex 307, 309, 311-20, 323, 536
position 431 Legalite movement 357, 359, 372, 375, 376,
Labour Service Units (US) 289 385, 388
Laci, Xhemal 392 Leger, Paul 610
Ladell, Dr 634 Leib, Joseph 395, 398, 400, 401
Laden, Osama bin 772 Leibbrant, Georg 195, 216, 408
Lakhno, A.V. 502 Leich, John 446
Lambton, Ann 560-61, 562, 565, 570, 578 Leithammel, Col. 270
Lamda 1, 2 (spies) 704 Lend-Lease 50
Lancaster, Donald 712 Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich 58, 88
Land of Fire operation 96 'Leningrad case' 485
Lander, David 797 Lenkovsky, Stefan 235
Landon, Timothy 731, 732 Lennox-Boyd, Mark 690, 698
Lane, Arthur Bliss 436 Leohnis, Clive 52
Langardge, Dick 635 Lethbridge, J.S. 99, 144

Langer, William L. 477 Lett, Gordon 546

Langman, Nicholas 788 Letts, Robin 719
Lankarani brothers 571 Lever, Peter 759
Lapitski, Maikalaj 219 Leverkuehn, Paul 194
Lapping, Brian 593 Lewis, Gen. 519
LARWOOD Operation 127, 128 Liberation of Oman and the Arab Gulf
Laski, Harold 36 (PFLO-AG) 734
Lasky, Melvin 476, 477, 478, 481-2 Liberation of South Yemen (FLOSY) 697
Last, Tommy 375 Liddell, Guy 266, 407, 408, 418, 433, 486, 622

Latamer Ltd 96 Liddell Hart, Sir Basil 38

Latham, Ryder 512, 670 Lieszkovsky, Vladimir 177
 INDEX 885

Life Guards 3 Longrigg, John Stephen 569

'Light' (agent) 605 Lonrho 722
Lindsay, Frank 264, 334, 369-70, 378-9, 395, LORD Operation 130
396-7, 400, 496 Lovat, Lord 24, 28
Ling, Walton 415 Lovat Scouts 24
Link organisation 429 Love, Kenneth 586, 592
Liosis, Gen. 318 Lovegrove, Peter 116
Lipa, Marko 387 Lovestone, Jay 465, 479
Lipovec, Franjo 342, 343 Lovett, Robert 422
LIST X firms 785 Low, Robert 379, 380, 382, 387
Listowel, Lord 357 Low, Toby 200, 337
Lithuanian Activist Front (LAF) 271 Lowenthal, Richard 'Rix' 456
Lithuanian Freedom Army (LFA) 272 Loyys 285
Lithuanian Freedom Fighters Association Lozoraitis, Stasys 285-6
282 LPK (Latvian welfare organisation) 271, 279
Lithuanian Home Army 273, 275 Lubric, Max 336
Lithuanian Police Battalions 288 Luce, Clare Boothe 436
Little, Tom 631 Luce, Sir William 732
Littlejohn brothers 741, 742 Luftwaffe 12, 100, 126, 127
Litvinov, Maxim 38, 39 Lukasevics, Janis 284, 291, 295, 296, 299, 515,
Liudzius, John 298, 498 516
Livitsky, Andrew 238 Lukashenko, President 222
Liwycky, Mykola 244 Luks, Walter 511
Ljotic, Dimitrije 331, 332, 335, 352 Luksa, Jonas 278
Lloyd, Guy 428, 429, 434 Luksa, Juozas 283, 285, 287, 292, 294, 296, 297
Lloyd, John Selwyn 608, 614, 617, 620, 629, Lumumba, Patrice 721

630, 636, 637, 640, 647, 656, 657, 663 Lunn, Peter 129-30, 472, 523
Lloyd George, David 405 Lursen-S deception operation 293
Lloyds Bank 462 Lurssen brothers 290
Locher, Karel 170, 432 Lyall, Archibald 175, 331, 351-2, 374, 381,
Lockard, Lawrence 565 395, 430
Lockerbie disaster 793 Lykowski, Michael 246
Lockhart, Robert Bruce 25, 71-2, 75, 77, 78, Lyne, Derek 552
432 Lynskey Tribunal 76
Lockhead, Finlay 338 Lyons, Paul 116
Loewe, Lionel 456
Logan, Donald 570-71 M13 26, 320
Logoreci, Anton 366 Maastricht Treaty 779
Lohr, Gen. 124, 125, 127 MacArthur, John 659
Loizides, Socrates 551 MacAskie, Frank 306-7, 311, 313
London Controlling Section (LCS) 156, 157, MacBride, Geoffrey 605
290 McCaffery, John 124
London Press Service 76, 624 McCargar, James 371-2, 373, 385, 387, 388,
London School of Slavonic Studies 39 390, 391, 401
London Socialist Vanguard group 457 McCarthy, Senator Joseph 436, 579
Long, Gen. 28 McCIoud, Eric 374
Long, Leo 114 McCloy, John 106, 469, 581
Long Range Desert Group 363 McClure, Robert 590, 596
Longbottom, Charles 470 McColl, Colin 747, 753, 759, 763, 772, 791
Longin, Ira 420, 421 McCone, John 707, 710
886 INDEX

McCoy, Tom 76 MAGIC CARPET Operation 695

McCulloch, Angela 711 Magruder, John 369, 478
McDermott, Geoffrey 553, 555, 603, 604, Maher, Ali 606, 629
607-8, 621, 626-7, 631, 641, 648, 668, 707, Mahl, Thomas 45
710, 724-5 Mahmoud, Ahmed Amin 632
McDonald, M.L. 659 Mahmoud, Sayed Amin 632
McDuff, David 781 Maikovskis, Bolreslavs 279
Macek, Eugen 342 Maisky, Ivan 38, 39, 506
McEwen, John 429 Majlis (Iranian Parliament) 559, 560, 563,
McGlashan, John 631 564, 565, 572, 573, 577, 578, 596
McGowan, Lord 456, 462, 465 Major, John 741, 758, 762, 773, 791
McGreery, Gen. 98 Major, Major 377
McGuinness, Martin 740, 741 Makarios, Archbishop 550, 552, 553, 554-5
McGwire, Michael 65 Makarushka, Dr 200
Machray, Cyril 207, 210 Makins, Sir Roger 155, 365
Mack, Sir Henry 203 Makki, Hossein 571, 576, 582
MacKay, Lord 761 Malaparte, Curzio 330
McKenzie, Bruce 722 Malawi Congress Party 721-2
MacKenzie, Stephen Moir 142, 523 Malayan Emergency 661, 712, 720
McKibben, Alexander 269, 273, 274, 276, 278, Malenkov, Georgi 66, 485, 500, 501, 507
281, 282, 287, 288, 294, 295, 296, 298, 299, Malleson, W. 189
511, 512, 514 Mana International 767
Mackintosh, Malcolm 60, 61-2, 66, 84, 501, Manbar, Nahoum 767
672 Mandela, Nelson 720, 766
Maclean, Donald 13, 14, 159, 295, 396, 495 Manderstam, Len 413, 414
Maclean, Sir Fitzroy 85, 86, 131, 188, 192, MANGO Operation 690
204, 332-3, 334, 344-5, 346, 347, 354, 365, 'Manhattan Engineer District' 135, 152
370, 375, 603, 795 Manhattan Project 151, 154

McLean, Neil 357-60, 365, 366, 371, 372, 374, Maniadakis, Constantine 309
375, 379-80, 384, 444-8, 628-9, 680-88, Mann, Wilfred 152-5
693, 695-8 Manningham-Buller, Sir Reginald 705
Maclean Mission (War Office Screening Manoilescu, Grigore 443
Mission) 344-8, 350, 351, 352 Mansfield, Earl of 428-9
McMahon Atomic Energy Act 133, 152-5, Mao Tse-tung 713, 740
656, 657 al-Maraghi, Ahmed Mortada 603, 629, 630,
McMichael, Sir Harold 540 644, 652, 658, 659
McMillan, Hamilton 660, 795 Marcus, Karl 101, 106, 108, 418
Macmillan, Harold 20, 159, 160, 310, 312, Markarov, Victor 755-6
375, 439, 440, 460, 466, 467, 494, 509, 510, Markos (communist guerrilla leader) 325

531, 554, 556, 608, 609, 618, 619, 627, 646, Marks, Leo 32
649, 652, 653, 656-8, 660, 662, 663, 668-71, Marks & Spencer 462
673, 677, 682, 684, 689, 705, 709, 714-15, Markulis, Juozas-Albinas 283, 287, 293
720, 795 Marsack, Alfred 537
McNeil, Hector 68, 75, 76-7, 205, 319, 322, Marsh, Richard 690, 693
344, 476 Marshall, George 462-3, 464
MacStiofain, Sean 740 Marshall Aid 47, 56, 62, 64, 65, 73, 74, 81,

McSween, Norman 755 438, 462-6, 477, 483

MacVeigh (American Ambassador) 321, 323 Martin, Arthur 707
Mafia 611 Martin, Geoffrey 474-5
Magan, Bill 555, 557 Martin-Smith, Patrick 123, 338, 414
 INDEX 887

Masaryk, Thomas 186 4-5; personal assistant to Cummings 4;

Massey, Lewis 255 personality 4; the Promethean League 186;

Massoud, Ahmed Shah 752 retires 493-4; succeeds Sinclair as 'C 4;

MATCHBOX Operation 143, 144 upset by the Philby affair 493-4;

Mathews, H. Freeman 587 VALUABLE 363; Welsh 134
Mathews, Kenneth 311 Mercury News Service 176
Mathewson, Iain 797 Merk, Kurt 109-10
Matjani, Hamit 399 Merlika-Kruja, Mustafa 372
Matwijejko, Mynon 234, 244, 245 Metaxas, Pierre 315
Mau Man 739 Metaxas, Yanni 305, 309, 312
MavromichaHs, Petros 320-21, 321 Meyer, Alf Martens 518, 524, 525
Max-Klatt intelUgence network 410, 411, 419, MGB see Soviet Ministry of State Security
420 MHBK (Hungary) 178
'Maxis' network 294, 296, 298, 506 MI3 289
Maxwell, Betty 141 MI5 99, 404, 407, 421, 551, 557, 704, 740, 743,

Maxwell, Colin 664 775, 789, 792, 797, 799; C Division 723; co-
Maxwell, Robert 141 operation with US counterpart 104; D
May, Alan Nunn 151 Division 512, 517; E2 (Overseas) Division
Mayer, Stefan 255 544; E Branch (Colonial Affairs) 555, 724;

Mayhew, Christopher 66-7, 71-4, 76-80, F Branch 471; Fuller under surveillance
148, 344, 353, 434, 458, 476 442; G9A section (counter-terrorism) 793;
Mazepa (Ukrainian social democrat) 238 hunt for moles xv; Ireland 738, 739, 741,
Mboya, Tom 721, 722 768; K Branch 724; Klatt 411; Malta 377;
ME 42 98 membership of the JIC 67; Palestine 543;
Meade, Stephen 588, 596 POST REPORT 486; Registry records 10;

Meadows, Dick 719 relations with MI 6 509, 520, 760, 799;

Meandov, Gen. 412 security files on emigres 418; supports
Melich, Mirko 737 Baykolov 433; and Wilson 744
Mellor, David 749, 763 MI6 (Secret Intelligence Service (SIS)): the
Melnyk, Andrei 198, 224, 225, 228, 229, 230, ABN 443, 444; anti-communist, pro-
232, 234 German exile groups 17; assassination

Melville, Mary 428 610-11, 612, 614, 793-4; the attempt to

Menant, Guy 362, 364, 365 overthrow Saddam 781-2; attitude to SOE
Mende, Gerhard von 196, 198, 199, 217, 219 personnel 377; in Austria 166; Baltic
Menzies, Sir Stewart 18, 30, 33, 34, 42, 49, resistance organisations 17; in the Baltics
67, 77, 83, 85, 135, 138, 154, 189, 203, 265, 755; becomes devalued 728; BIN/
290, 417, 498, 537, 568-9; the 'Abramtchik KOORD 85, 510; blackmail material on
Faction' 215; accord with the CIG-Joint Makarios 556; and Blake 705; Board of
Intelligence Board 55; agreement with Directors 661; budget 798, 799; and the
Douglass 54; Albania 364, 367, 372, 379; Cabinet Office 672; changes 723-4, 776,
Austria 166; aware of currents of 777; Christmas Massacre 759-60; co-
Whitehall politics 5; background 3; Beria operation with US counterpart 104;
506; Carr 275, 276; Courtney 212; the concentrates its efforts on 'Red Russia' 4;

damning report on Philby 396; the conditions of service 27, 30; conflict with
'Defectors Committee' 145-6; Enigma 250; SOE 306; conspiracy theory 484-5, 548;
Fitzroy Maclean 333; Habsburg 167; the criticism of 797-8; cuts (1993) 761; CX
IPG 429; Jewish refugees 546, 547; Book (Weekly Summary of Intelligence)
Maclean 188; MI6 reorganisation 28; 749; Dutch Section (P8) 112; Egypt
Military Intelligence in World War I 3-4; 600-603, 605, 606, 608, 610, 616, 620-21,
OSS breaks accord with 51; overworked 626, 627, 628, 630, 633-6, 638, 645, 649,
888 INDEX

MI6 - cont. 568, 612, 729; Special Political Action

670, 676; EM 453; exile group funding (SPA) 42, 473, 510-11, 598, 614, 625-6,
448-9; expansion of the Special Liaison 639, 652, 669, 718, 742, 787; Special
Centre 288; F Branch 43; the Falklands Support Directorate 784; Strategic Trade
746-7; the Foreign Office 723; founded as Section 501, 506; and student bodies 471,
the foreign section (Mile) of the Secret 472; supports NTS 406; Technical
Service Bureau 4; funding 27; gadgets 784; Operations Section 522; Technical Section
and GCHQ 773, 777-8; General Service 32, 520; Technical Services Division 614;
749; 'General Support Branch' 328; in training 22-3, 289-90, 502; transcription
Germany 93-4, 101, 778; Global Issues service 130; UKB Unit 778-9; uses Nazi
Controllerate 775; Global Tasks 762, 777; intelligence officers 94; Vietnam 718; War
the Gulf states 696; headquarters (from Planning 28, 32-3, 377, 568; wartime
1994) 776, 786, 800; the Hilton Assigment intelligence-gathering on Germany 5; the
735-8; Information Operations (I/Ops) 'Westward Ho!' workers 288-9; and
766, 787, 788; Intelligence Branch 749, 760; Wilson 744; Y-Section 522, 661
Inter-Services Liaison Department 250; MI9 34, 100, 103, 104, 115; Intelligence
Intermarium 170; Iran 568, 571, 578, School No.9 427
580-83, 586, 592, 596, 760; the IRD 490; MHO 143
Ireland 738-42; joint conference with the MI14 103, 104

CIA (1952) 150; liaison with Mossad 549; Michael, King of Romania 179
London BIN station 472; Lucky Break Mid-European Studies Centre 261
reports 607, 614, 621; Maltese training Middle East Centre for Arab Studies
camp 390; membership of the JIC 67; and (MECAS) 643, 661, 704
Military Intelligence 110; 'Mother Load' Middle East Command (MEC) 671, 677
agenda 797; the mujahedin 752; N-Section Middle East Defence Organisation (MEDO)
522, 538, 785; Northern Division 242, 258, 550
262, 275, 295; nuclear weapons and BW/ Middle East Forces, Cyprus 554
CW 764-8; officers 783-9, 794; Middle East Information Department
Operational Support 777; P5 section 249, (MEID) 535
250; PI 7 section 679, 687; Political Section Middle Zone Association 427, 428
(Rl) 58-9, 308, 416; post-war policy Middleton, George 567, 572-3, 574-5
314-15; Production Section 744; 'Q' Ops Midland Bank 761, 779, 789
Department 377-8, 633; R3 290, 524, 618; Migonis, Motiejus 271
R5 353, 707; R6 (Economic Requirements Mihahlache, Ion 180
section) 487; R9 135; recruitment 113; Mihailovic, Dreza 60, 125, 331, 333-7, 342,
relations with the CIA 89, 131, 155, 396, 351, 427

422, 454, 467-8, 475, 506, 515, 520, 522, Mikalovics, Zsigmond 176
523, 524, 626, 646, 648, 703, 711, 736, 752; Mikolajczyk, Stanislaw 251, 252, 254, 257,
relations with MI5 509, 520, 760, 799; 259, 260, 261, 389, 447
reorganisation 26, 27, 28-31; Mikoyan, Anastas 63, 499
Requirements (R5) 30, 43, 55, 79, 661, 744; Milano, James 116, 117
Requirements and Production 744, 761, Military Intelligence 3, 98, 104, 105, 108, 110,

772; rivalry with SOE 19, 20; role 4, 19, 113, 136, 187, 249, 284, 315, 326, 341, 343,

761, 764; sabotage against Jewish ships 355, 377, 536, 628, 638, 665; Field Security
546-9; Section D 68, 187, 356, 363, 435; Service units 338
Section IX see Section IX; security 785-6, Military Intelligence Free Officers 601, 623
788-9; Security Directorate 665; and Military Intelligence (Research (MI(R)) 175,
Selwyn Lloyd 608; Seniors' Club 18; 187, 192, 363; Special Operations and
Sinclair replaces Menzies 494; SOE fuses Political Action Branch 192
with 27, 28, 32; Special Operations Branch Military Mission to Warsaw 261
 INDEX 889

Milligan, Lord 288 Moorhouse, Archibald 117

Mills, A.K. 143 Moqadam, Gen. 576
Milmo, Helmus 511 Morgan, Eric 110

Milne, Ian 523, 559 Morgan, Gwyn 474

Milne, Tim 142, 696 Morgenthau, Henry 97
Milner, Frederick 620 Morris, Anthony 250, 262
Milos, Ljbo 337, 347 Morris, Harry 176
Milosevic, Slobodan 791, 792, 793 Morris, Nigel 683
Mindszenty, Cardinal 176 Morrison, Herbert 430, 545, 561, 563
Ministry of Defence 488, 509, 510, 521, 634, Morton, Desmond 10, 417
664, 706, 753, 759, 762, 764, 784, 785, 789, Morton, George 439
798; Defence Liaison Staff 742 Moslem Mountaineers 196
Ministry of Economic Warfare 250 Mosley, Sir Oswald 430, 441, 442
Ministry of Labour 285 Mossad 543, 545, 546, 548, 549, 616, 617, 626,
Ministry of Supply 444; Atomic Energy 654, 670, 676, 680, 695, 738, 762, 767
Directorate 133, 152, 153 Mossadeq, Mohammed 558-9, 560, 562,
Minor, Robert 379, 380 564-77, 579-95, 597, 598, 602, 614, 625, 745
MINOS exile programme 383n Mossman, James 633
Mintoff, Dom 735 Mounier, Emanuel 457
Mir-Ashrafi, Sayyed 594 Mountain Brigades 309
Mitchell, Andrew 779 Mountbatten, Louis, 1st Earl Mountbatten of
Mitchell, Graham 512 Burma 456
Mitchell, Leslie 649 Movement of Lithuania's Struggle for
Mitrovic,Rexhep 358 Freedom (MLSF) 292, 293, 296, 298
Mixed Service units 289 Movement of National Liberation (LNC)
Mladorossy ('Union of Young Russia') 406, 356-60
409, 413, 417, 433, 441 al-Mubarak, Sheikh Abdullah 672
Mobutu, Joseph 721 Mudabbir, Brig. 593

Modin, Yuri 242, 245 Muggeridge, Malcolm 11, 51, 57, 59, 440,

Moir, Guthrie 468, 469 477-81

Molden, Fritz 118, 119, 124 al-Muhaymeen, Abd 793
'Molecular Theory' (NTS) 421-2 Mukhabarat 631
Mollet, Guy 508, 640 Mullen, Nicholas 768-9
Molloy, Robert 656 Mulloch, Jack 690
Molotov, Vyacheslav 63, 72, 168, 499 Multhopp, Hans 147
MONASTERY Operation 410 Munn, John 29
Monckton, Anthony 788 Munzenberg, Willi 69, 477
Monckton, Rosa 788 Muravitz, F. 139
Moncrieff of that Ilk, David 429 Murphy, David 526
Monheim, Prince Abdul 603, 629 Murray, Ralph 75, 76, 644
Monnet, Jean 456, 460, 463 Murray Hill Project 138
Montagnon, Capt. 523 Muscat Regiment 685
Montague Brown, Anthony 495, 509 MUSKETEER Operation 624, 634
Montecassino (1944) 258 MUSKETEER REVISE Operation 634-5
Montgomery, Bernard 25, 59, 82, 98 Muslim Brotherhood 622, 629
Montgomery, Brian 569 Muslin, George 263, 265
Montgomery, Hugh 115, 396 Mussolini, Benito 329, 356, 428, 441, 457
Montini, Giovanni (later Pope John Paul I) Musson, John 32
115-16 M'utazeo, Capt. 584
Moore, Sir Thomas 429 Mutual Security Act (1951) 466-7
890 INDEX

Mutual Security Agency 467 National Organisation of Cypriot

Muzaffar, Sheikh 537 Combatants (EOKA) 551-5, 557
Muzayyeni, Brig. 585 National Peasant Party (Romania) 180
MVD see Soviet Ministry of Internal Affairs National Popular Liberation Army (ELAS)
Myers, Brig. Eddie 306, 307 306-11, 314-17
Myz-Mysin (counter-espionage expert) 171 National Security Agency (NSA) 56, 57, 527,
545, 623, 640, 642, 650, 698, 719-20, 748,
'Nachtigair (Abwehr programme) 226, 227, 777, 778, 782, 788
228, 232, 246 National Student Association (NSA) 471,
Nagy, Ferenc 174, 175 473
Nahas Pasha 629 National Ukrainian Council 244
Nakashidze, Dr George 206, 214 National Union of Students (NUS) 43, 471,
Narodyi Trudovoy Soyuz (NTS) 147, 190, 472, 474, 475
405-17, 421-4, 433, 437, 441, 493, 502, 503, National Union for the Total Independence
507, 513-16 of Angola (UNITA) 722
Nash, James 686 National Will 564
Nasser, Gamal Abdul 541, 549, 601-10, Nationalist and People's Party (Egypt) 604
612-16, 620, 621, 623-8, 630, 633-6, Naval Intelligence Directorate 34
638-9, 642, 644-7, 649, 653, 656-9, 663, Naval Intelligence Division (NID) 135, 501,
666-70, 675, 676, 681, 682, 683, 688, 691, 524, 617; Russian Section 16 290
693, 695-8, 733 Naval Intelligence Forward Intelligence Unit
Nassiri, Nemotollah 584, 590, 591 112
Nassirir, Mohammed 576 Nazi Party 93, 187, 225, 406
National and Grindlays Bank 680 Nazi-Soviet Non- Aggression Pact (1939) 187,
National Audit Office 798 188, 191, 269
National Bank (Iran) 576 Near East Association (NEA) 539, 540
National Committee for a Free Europe Near East Broadcasting Station (NEABS)
(NCFE) 173, 373, 437, 440, 447, 448; Exile 536, 537, 539, 552, 571, 635, 643
Political Operations division 373 Neave, Airey 100, 427, 704
National Committee for Free Albania 382, Nedic, Gen. 330-31, 335, 342
383, 384, 387, 447 Neel, Tony 357, 361
National Criminal Intelligence Service Neguib, Mohammed 601, 602, 603, 628, 629,
(NCIS) 773-4 632
National Defence Corps (TEA) 326 Nehru, Jawaharlal 88
National Democratic Front for the Nehru, Pandit 721
Liberation of Oman and the Arab Gulf Nelk, Boris 512
(NDFLO-AG) 730, 734 Nelson, Carl 131
National Democratic Hellenic League 'Nerren' (Iranian) 566, 592-3
(EDES) 306, 307, 311, 323 Netanyahu, Binyamin 767
National Front (Iran) 571, 572 Neufville, Lawrence de 391-2
National Intelligence and Security Neville-Jones, Pauline 759
Organisation (SAVAK) 596, 654, 670, 695, New Labour 780, 800
744 New York Federal Reserve 716
National Intelligence Authority 54 Newell, Mr (MI6) 130
National Liberation Front (EAM) 306-15, Newman, Anthony 399
317, 324 Newton, Ronald 95, 96

National Liberation Front (NLF) (Aden) 686, Nexbritsky, Capt. 407

697 Nicholas, Grand Duke 192
National Military Union (Narodowy Nicholson, Brig. John 33
Zwiazek Wojskowy (NZW)) 257 Nicholson, Leslie 180, 269, 270, 276, 408
 INDEX 891

Nicolson, Harold 476 ODESSA 95, 102, 115

Nie (Niepodleglosc (Independence)) 253, 254 Office of the Co-ordinator of Information

Niepokolczycki, Franciszek 262 (COI) 51
Nightingale,Ray 734 Office of Special Projects (later Office of
1941 Committee 435 Policy Co-ordination) 464
NKGB (Latvia) 284, 287, 295 Office of Strategic Services (OSS) (US) 5, 20,

Nkomo, Joshua 722 51, 55, 97, 99, 100, 125, 135, 180, 232, 274,

Nkuradze, Prince 196 308, 321, 358, 419, 437, 454; Research and
Noel-Baker, Francis 319 Analysis section 361, 579; X-2 111
Noli, Bishop Fan 355, 387 Official Secrets Act 619, 794, 796
Nollau, Dr Gunther 69-70 Offie, Carmel 210, 237, 373, 375, 387, 391,
Noone, Richard 718 439, 476
Nordhausen 138 OGPU see United State Political Directorate

Nordic League 441-2 O'Hanlon, Pat 620

Norman, Sir Clifford 374 OHIO Operation 234, 235
Norman, Frederick 139 Werner 422
Ohletz,
North Atlantic Treaty 45, 465, 550 Okhrymovych, V.O. 247, 507
North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) Okolovich, Georgi 407, 409, 421, 423, 502
128, 184, 328, 382, 383, 465, 496, 551, 556, Oldfield, Maurice 384, 474, 546, 634, 649,
614, 620, 646, 749, 755, 781, 792 665, 706, 709-12, 715, 718, 722, 724, 725-6,
North Caucasian Committee 445 738, 741-4
North Yemen, Ahmed, Imam of 678, 681 Oldman, Hugh 732
Northern Information Department (NID) Olskej, Michail 421
74-5, 83, 84 Oman Regiment of the Sultan 663
Northern Ireland Office 785 Oman Research Department (ORD) 734
Northrop, Anthony 357, 391, 394, 398, 399 Omand, David 778
Norton, Sir Clifford 323, 408 Omani Air Force 733
Norwegian Intelligence 278, 518, 525 Omani Intelligence Service (OIS) 733, 734
Norwegian Royal Air Force 517 Omani Liberation Army 663
Nosi, Lef 357 'Omar' (agent) 571, 577
Nouvelles Equipes Internationales (NEI) OMEGA 614-15, 620, 636
438, 462 Omnipol 737
Nuffield, Lord 462 Open Skies agreement 754
Nuremberg war trials 434 Operations Co-ordination Board (OCB) 581
Nuremberg International Military Tribunal Oras, Ants 269-70
280 Orcada (British spy) 779
Nuri es-Sa'id 604, 606, 623, 637, 655, 667, 670 Organisation for Assistance to Foreign
NURSERY 108 Displaced Persons in Germany 416
Nutting, Anthony 553, 613 Organisation for European Economic Co-
Nyerere, Julius 721 operation (OEEC) 463
Organisation in Rome for Assisting Allied

Oakeshott, Michael 476, 479 Escaped Prisoners-of-War 115

Oakley-Hill, Dayrell 356, 392, 393 'Organisation' (mercenary) 697
Oatley, Michael 740-41, 795 Organisation of African Unity (OAU) 722
Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (OKW) Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists
104; Abwehr 11 272 223-6, 230, 231, 232, 235, 236, 243, 247,
Oberlander, Theodor 226, 227, 246 248, 421, 442; OUN-B[andera] (later

Obukhov, Platon 755 OUN-r) 106, 113, 198, 222, 225-39, 242,
O'Connor, Cathal 547 245, 246, 247, 442-3, 514; OUN-M[elnyk]
O'Connor, Tim 53 (later OUN-s) 225, 227, 228, 233n, 234, 236
892 INDEX

Organisation Suddeutschland 107, 118 Paterson, Halliday 378

Orwell George 428, 431, 457, 476, 479, 480 Patrascanu, Lucretiu 181
Osbom, Myles 712 Patriotic League 584
Osborne, Sir Percy 168, 169 Patton, George Smith, Jr 182, 217
Osenberg List 138 Pauco, Josef 206
Osiris radar image craft 778 Paul, Crown Prince 320
Osis, Robert 270, 271, 274, 276-7 Paulson, Paul 517, 638, 643, 665, 666, 669,
Ostministerium (OMi; Ministry for the 670, 687, 722
Occupied Eastern Territories)) 187, 196, Pavelic, Ante 125, 329, 330, 331, 335, 336,
199, 216, 217, 225, 229, 408, 409, 443; 338-44, 346, 349-50, 354, 444
Institute 108 Pawley, 'Pop' 687
Ostrowsky, Radislaw 214-22, 443 Peake, Charles 67, 69, 393
OSVAKIN Operation 147 Pecanac, Kosta 331
Oveissi, Ghulam Reza 584 Peck, David 713
OVERCAST Operation 137 Peck, Edward 317-18, 321
Overseas Consultants 566, 567, 597 Peck, John 445-6
Overseas Students Trust (OST) 475 Pecnikar, Veliko 337, 339, 343
Owen, David (later Lord) 80, 727, 743 Peenemunde 137, 145, 149
Peet, John 259
Padek, Mark 289 Peierls, Rudolf 153
Paillole, Paul 7 Peiracki, Gen. 224
Paine, Natalie 436, 448 Pelczynski, Gen. Tad 206
Palestine Arab Higher Command 549 Pellay, Jean-Marie 610
Palestine Police Political Branch 545 PEN (writers' association) 480

Paliy, A. 202, 205 P'eng Teh-huai 713

Palmer, Alan 362 Peniakoff, Pamela 130
Palmer, Michael 767 Penkovsky, Oleg 704-8, 710, 713, 727, 742
Pan-European Committee 166, 167 Penney, R. Rosslyn 131
Pan-European Congress (1943) 457 People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs
Pan-European Union (PEU) 165, 166, 186, (NKVD) 180, 187, 196, 217, 218, 234, 245,
455-9 248, 254, 270, 277, 281, 282; arrest of
Panchuk, Gordon 202, 240 former SOE agents in Poland 256; emigre
Papagos, Alexander 374, 397, 553 associations 422; forced repatriation 431;
Papajani, John 379 Intelligence Centre 411; Kerby 408;
Papandreou, Andreas 305, 308, 309-10 Manderstam murder squads 253; the
413;
Papee, Casimir 171 MVD succeeds 259, 283-4; and the Nazi
PAPERCLIP Operation 144 Party training school 225; NTS 406, 412,
Paprocki, Stanislaw 206 416; OBO 278; the OGPU 269; Philby 7-8,
Park, Daphne, Baroness 645, 718, 721, 722, 423; prime objective 8; regarded as a
752, 780-81, 789 potential 'enemy organisation' 10; Secret

Parker, Maj. Jerry 536 Political Department 410

Parker, Peter 55 PEPPERPOT Operation 552
Parsons, Sir Anthony 744 Peredzh, Col. 207
Parsons, 'Knocker' 698 Shimon 616, 640
Peres,
Partel, Vaino 288 Pergamon Press 141, 142
Parti Populaire Syrien (PPS) 616, 622, 636, Pergau Dam affair 761

637, 642 Perkins, Harold 23, 32, 146, 199-200,

The Partisans of the Right 629 250, 252-3, 255, 256, 261, 363, 367, 371,
Pasechnik, Vladimir 766 374, 376, 377, 380, 381, 392, 394, 398,
Paterson, Eveline (Lady Cotter) 45 546, 547
 INDEX 893

Permanent Bureau of Continental Foreign tasks 423; in touch with Burgess 212,
Ministers 455-6, 458 244-5; trains Osis 277; on Tsarist emigres
Permanent Secretaries' Intelligence Services 416; under strong suspicion as the 'Third
(PSIS) 747, 776, 798 Man' 396; Washington post 384, 385, 422;
Permanent Under Secretary's Committee the WiN operation 264, 266; Wisner
(PUSC) 84, 86, 489, 490, 491, 494-5, 510, suspects 396
514, 541 Philip, Aidan 540
Permanent Under-Secretary's Department Philip, Andre 457, 469
(PUSD) 509, 510, 522, 621, 626, 631 Phillips, Tracy 438
Peron, Juan 348, 350 Phillpotts, Christopher 190, 525, 551, 556,

Perowne, Victor 349 726

Perrin, Michael 134, 135, 139, 154, 155 Photographic Development Unit 192
Perron, Ernest 563, 590, 591 Photographic Interpretation Units 519
Perry, Lewis 343 Pickering, F. 208
Persian American Relations Society 583-4 Pickles, Mike 250, 254
Pestrak, Andre 226 Pieck, Wilhelm 63
Peter, Gabor 174 Pierce, John 674
Peter II, King of Yugoslavia 337 Pilsudski, Rowmund 427, 428, 432, 447
Peterson, Sir Maurice 65, 534 Pinay, Antoine 508
Petherwick, Maurice 428, 429 Pincher, Chapman 190, 611, 710
Petkov, Nikola 181 Pineau, Christian 616, 636
Petlura, Ataman Simon 185 Pioneer Corps 378
Petrenko, Roman 234 Pipenelis, Panayotis 380
Petroleum Development (Oman) (PDO) 730, Piplys, Kazimieras 287, 292
731, 732 Pirasteh, Sayyed 594
Petrov,Waldemar von 189, 190 Piratin, Philip 539

Petrovranov, Yevgeny 526 Pirie, Richard 686

Petty, Alan 750, 759, 792 Pisani, Sallie 567

Phantoms 72, 75 Pitans, Bolislov 296

Philby, Kim xv, 6, 15, 28, 58, 153, 183, 207, Pittuck, Charles 631

213, 242, 244, 246, 296, 303, 430, 498, 510, Pius XII, Pope 115, 169, 335
566, 579, 598, 601, 622, 681, 704, 707, 710, Plastiras, Nicholas 306, 313-16
711, 723, 725, 750; the Abramtchik Faction Plechavicius, Povilas 272, 273, 277, 282, 285,
221; agent for the NKVD 7-8, 22; Albania 292
370, 375, 384-5, 389, 394-8; the Baltic Plensners, Alexander 271
states 275; in Bari 362; betrays operations Plessner, Dr 149
in Turkey and the Middle East 211; and Polaris missile 159
the Cold War 21, 22; controls R5 30, 55; Police Foundation 776
defects 211; and Easton 26; and Gehlen Polish Army 186, 206, 214, 258, 262

104, 105; Greece 315; heads Section IX 16, Polish Cipher Bureau 250
42, 178, 418; heads Section V 11, 30, 410; Polish Communist Party (PPR) 254, 256, 259
in Istanbul (1947) 363, 384, 391; on the Polish Corps 258
Jebb Committee 85; and le Carre 484; Polish Ex-Servicemen's Association 261
Lebanon 669; meetings with the US State Polish General Staff 249, 265; Second
Department 239; on Menzies 5; Menzies (Deuxieme) Bureau 250, 255
upset by 493-4; on the M 16 Polish government-in-exile, London 170,
Reorganisation Committee 29; MI6/CIA 206, 213, 217, 219, 230, 251, 252, 255, 261,
meeting (November 1950) 294; recalled 432, 455; Ministry of Information 427, 433
from Washington 295; replaces Machray Polish Intelligence 130, 249-50, 255, 407, 767
in Istanbul 210; the Russia Committee 393; Polish Military Liaison 218
894 INDEX

Polish Military Mission 218 Press, Robert 155

Polish Ministry of the Interior 257 Preston, Simon 516-17
Polish Mission in Paris 249 Previsi, Prenk 357, 359
Polish Peasant Party (PSL) 251, 254, 256, Priestley, J.B. 435

257, 259-62 Prime, Geoffrey 748

Polish Political Council 262 Prior, Mr (Austrian Jew) 130
Polish Second Army Corps 170 Prizren League 357
Polish security police 259, 260, 261 Prochazka, Col. 183
Polish Security Service 407 Profumo, John 686
Polish Trade Mission 522 Progressive Youth of Asia Conference (1948)
Polish VI Bureau 250, 252 87
Political Office with the Middle East Forces Project 279 (Afghanistan) 752
(POMEF) 601 Promethean League 17, 113, 163, 185-7,
Political Warfare Executive (PWE) 71, 72, 192-9, 206, 207, 211, 213, 215, 217, 219,
76, 79, 84, 119, 157, 312, 313, 427, 428, 533, 220, 222, 223, 237, 404, 431, 455, 492, 506
635 Protocol M 74, 76, 77
Pollock, Gen. 535 Protulipac, Ivan 342
Poncet, Francois 116 Prouty, Fletcher 235
Ponikewski, Maj. 206 Provisional Austrian National Committee
Ponting, Clive 50, 51 118
Pope, Michael Kyrle 524 Pryce-Jones, Alan 120-21
Popieszalski, Anton (aka Tony Currie) 253 Psychological Warfare Branch (PWB) 120,
Popov, Gregori 308, 311 480, 534
Poppe, Nikolai N. 208-9 Psychological Warfare Bureau, Jerusalem
'Popski, Colonel' 130 351
Popular Front for the Liberation of the Psychological Warfare Consultations
Occupied Arab Gulf (PFLO-AG) 730 Committee (Dodds-Parker Committee)
Populist Party (Greece) 315, 317, 320 510, 624, 641
Populist Party (Syria) 655 PT16B (MI6 officer) 793, 794
Popvic, Radovan 151 Public Information Office 352
Poremsky, Vladimir 409, 412, 413, 415, 416, Public Records Office (PRO) xv
421, 513 'Purple Primers' 12
Porter, David Haldane 345 Putlitz, Baron Wolfgang zu 408
Possev publishing house 416
Post Office Technical Department 'Q' devices 32

experimental station, Dollis Hill 129, 526 Qaboos, Sultan 730-34

POST REPORT Operation 418, 486, 512 Qashqai tribe 567
Post-Hostilities Planning Sub-Committee Qassem, Abdel Karim 667
(PHP) 13, 14 Qavam Saltaneh 572, 575, 578
Posten, Ralph 643 Quadripartite Censorship Committee 117
Potocek, Dr 183 Quayle, Anthony 358-9
Poutschine, Marsha 120, 121 Quennell, Hugh 140, 141

Powell, Charles 751, 757 Quine, John 703

Powell, Enoch 603 Quinlan, Sir Michael 776-7
Powers, Gary 660 Quinn, Frank 377-8, 633
Prater, Donald 131, 622, 649 el-Quwwatli, Shukri 604
Precnikar, Vilko 350
Prenci, Tahir 399 Racal 752
Prendergast, John 554, 555, 556 'Radford' (MI6 officer) 423, 502, 513
Preseren, Monsignor Anton 171, 335, 339 Radiation Operations Committee (ROC) 620
 INDEX 895

Radical Student Alliance 473, 475 Rennie, Charles 742

Radio: Atlantic 97; Cairo 624, 635, 642, 643, Rennie, Sir John 624, 643-4, 726, 738, 742
675, 679; Free Albania 392-3; Free Europe Renton, Edward 122, 337, 338

96, 173, 440; Liberation 173, 244; Liberty Reporter, (Sir) Shapour 563, 654

440; Luxemburg 183; Moscow 246, 499, Reppe, Walter 143

501-2; Tehran 560, 594; Tirana 401, 506; Republic National Committee (Baltic) 273
Warsaw 262, 266, 497 Republican army (Spain) 376
Rahman, Tengku Abdul 718 Republican Party (US) 436
Raikes, Victor 428 Research Centre for Central and Eastern
Rallis, lonnis 315-16 Europe 447
Rally Films 685 Retinger, Dr Jozef 250, 427, 439, 440, 453,
Ramadan Offensive Operation 683 455, 456, 458-64, 469, 495-6, 497
Ramanaukas, Adolfas 286-7, 298 Retired Officers' Association (Iran) 582
Ramsay, Alex 338, 430 Reuters news agency 536
Ramsay, Baroness Margaret 475, 758 Revolutionary Command Council (Egypt)
Ransom, Charles 707 634
Ransome, John 295 Reynaud, Paul 463
RAP 700 (special operations action branch) Reynolds, Alexander 631
610 Reynolds, Mike 795
Rar, Lev 421 Rhodes, Cecil 456
Rashidian brothers (Assadolah, Qodratollah Ribbentrop, Joachim von 190, 227
and Seyfollah) 563-4, 571, 573, 577, 578, Ribic, Mitja 126

581-5, 588, 589, 592, 597 Richards, Francis 777, 778

Rathbone, Eleanor 428 Richardson, John 401, 717
RATTAN 53 Richardson, Trooper 686
Rawlins, Gen. 318, 320 Richmond, John 674, 675
Rawluk, L 449 Ridd, John 792
Razmara, Gen. Hadj Ali 559, 560 Riga, Treaty of (1921) 215
Reagan, Ronald 163, 748, 750, 769 Rijkens, Paul 463
Ream, Bob 393 Rimington, Stella 741, 776
Rebane, Alphons 275, 288, 511, 512, 516 Rimini Brigade 309
Red Army 13, 15, 26, 28, 119, 121, 126, 127, 'Ring of Five' 13, 707
148, 168, 169, 171, 198, 199, 211, 217, Riyahi, Gen. 590, 594
229-32, 235, 241, 252, 253, 254, 263, 269, Roberts, Andrew 783, 784
272, 273, 275, 277, 336, 409-12, 414, 415, Roberts, Douglas 192, 269
428, 430, 486, 518, 603, 756 Roberts, Frank 14, 36-7, 39-40, 60, 365, 367,
'Red Lilac' 108 499, 534
Reddaway, Norman 75, 78, 624 'Roberts, Kenneth' 791
Redfearn, Mason 524 Robertson, T.A. 'Tar' 99, 111
Redfern, G.H. 204 Robets group (Baltic) 506
Redlich, Roman 421 ROBIN Operation 519
Rees, Goronwy 59, 481, 578 Robinson, Robert 659, 660
Rei, August 273 Rockefeller family 437; David 462; Nelson
Reilly, Sir Patrick 59, 486, 489, 494, 495, 509, 581
630-31 Rocket Propulsion Research Establishment,
Reinhards, Paul 270 Westcott 145
Rejewski, Marian 250 Rodin, Nikolai 523
Rendis (Greek Foreign Minister) 319 Rogozhin, Anatol 414-15
Rendle, Frank 713, 714 Rohracher, Archbishop Andreas 172, 340
Renner, Karl 119 'Roland' (Abwehr programme) 226, 228
896 INDEX

'roll-back' 486, 496, 497, 505 Russell, Col. 97

Rolo, Cyril 123, 606, 621 Russia Committee see under Foreign Office
Romanian Communist Party 549 Russian Federal Counter-intelligence Service
Romanov, Yvegniy 416, 421 765
Rome Association of Officers 115 Russian Federation of ex-Combatants 189
Roosevelt, Archie 584, 628, 654 Russian Imperial Army 414
Roosevelt, Franklin D. 14, 277, 538 Russian Intelligence Service 11, 264, 390, 513
Roosevelt, Kermit 566, 574, 580-84, 586, 587, Movement and Army
Russian Liberation
589, 591, 592, 594, 597, 598, 602, 605, 607, (ROD; Vlasov Army) 411-12, 413, 416,
614, 616, 637, 648, 653, 655 417, 419, 422
Rose, George 631 Russian 'Mafia' 773
Rose, Lord Justice 768-9 Russian Monarchist Organisation 421
Rose, Sir Michael 792 Russian National Central Committee 419
Rosebaud, Paul 140, 141, 142 Russian National Socialist Movement
Rosenberg, Alfred 108, 216, 442, 443 (ROND) 406
Rosi, Ernesto 455, 457 Russian Nazi Party 408
Rositzke, Harry 243, 248, 294, 295, 363, 369, Russian Revolution (1917) 406, 413
502 Russian Revolutionary Force (RRF) 417, 424,
Rostow, Walt W. 460 515
Rote Kapelle (Red Chapel) 418 Russo-Finnish War 225
Rothschild, Lord 480-81 Russo-German pact (1939) 426, 477
Round Table Group 456 RUSTY Operation 235
Rover, Srecko 337, 342, 343, 348, 352, 354 Rutter, Maj. 200
Row^lett, Frank 523 Ruzhadze (betrayed by Philby) 211
Rowley, Denys ('James Kent') 665, 735 Ryan, Allan 109
Royal Air Force (RAF) 391, 519, 520, 617, Ryan, Brinley 527
645, 659, 663, 664, 673, 677, 694 RYAN (Nuclear Missile Attack) Operation
Royal Bank of Scotland 779, 789, 798 749
Royal Canadian Mounted Police 145 Rykens, Paul 496
Royal Family 429, 538 Ryle, Gilbert 420
Royal Institute of International Affairs Rzepecki, Jan 256, 257, 260
(RIIA) 41, 169, 261, 628
Royal Marines 297 Saarsen, Villen 269
Royal Navy 290, 291, 384, 515, 545, 549, 551, Sacred Bond of Greek Officers (IDEA) 314,
677 318, 320, 321, 327, 380
Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) 739 Sacred Squadron 309
Royal Yugoslav Army (RYA) 345, 346 Safa, Col. Muhammad 637
Royle, Anthony 736 SAFEHAVEN Operation 27
Royse, Prof. 344, 348 Sahsaven tribe 585
Rozman, Bishop Gregory 330, 332, 335, 339, Said bin Taimur, Sultan 664, 729, 730, 731,
341-2, 350, 434 732
Rudel, Hans 103, 115 St Laurent, Louis 241

Rudkowski, Roman 253, 391 Salam, Saeb 666

Rumbold, Anthony 371, 375, 380 Salisbury, Sir Edward 140
Rumnieks, Feliks 276-7, 284 Salisbury, Lord 504, 587, 596, 627
Rupnik, Leon 332, 336, 338 al-Sallal, Col. Abdullah 678, 679
Rusan, Mahmud 668 Salnai, Vladmars 274
Rushdie, Salman 771 San Jacinto Fund 473
Rusinovic, Nikola 349 Sanders, Rex 519
Russell, Bertrand 476 Sanders, Ted 176, 178
 INDEX 897

Sandys, Duncan 137, 453, 456, 459, 460, German invasion of the Soviet Union
462-6, 662, 683, 684, 686, 689 (June 1941) 270; successes of British
Sanger, Eugen 146 Intelligence 5

Sapieha, Pawlem 263 Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) see MI6

Sargeant, Rowland H. 492 Secret Service Bureau 4
Sargent, Sir Orme 14, 20, 23, 24, 25, 35, 36, Secret Vote 79, 297, 487, 798

38, 43-4, 68, 73, 169, 371, 372 Secretariat of Exiled Intellectual

Saric, Bishop Ivan 329, 341, 350 Organisations 447

Sarraj, Abdel Hamid 622, 655-6 Section V (counter-espionage) 147, 232, 363;
Saud, King of Saudi Arabia 615, 637, 680, 'the brightest feather in C's cap' 6;

681, 683, 693 expansion 7; German primer 99; Philby

Saudi royal family 615 heads 11, 30, 410; SCI units controlled by
Savage, Gerald 638 5; and Section IX 11; X-2 liaises with 11
Savage, T.W. 'Bill' 474 Section IX 61, 106, 276, 303; 'charter' 21;
Savimbi, Jonas 722 creation of 16; expansion 16; Philby heads
Sayid, Jallal ul 616, 622 16, 42, 178, 275; the pre-eminent
Sayyed Zia Ad-Din 564, 573, 575 department of MI6 22; R5 replaces 30;
'Scandinavian-Black Sea Unit' 239 recruits among exiles 418; role 11; and
SCANT radio station 635 Section V 11

Scarlett, John 755 Securitate (Romania) 181

Schaetzel, Tadeusz 206 Security Battalions (Greece) 307, 309, 310,
Schapiro, Leonard 59, 500-501, 714 316, 317, 318
Scheibe, Col. 104 Security Executive 9, 10
Schellenberg, Walter 101, 106, 108, 168, 208, Security Intelligence Middle East (SIME)
410, 411, 418 555, 712
SCHOLAR Operation 472 Security Service see MI5
School of Slavonic Studies, University of Seddon, Maj. 256
London 426 Seddon, Richard 565
Schutzmannschaft police units 270-71 Sedgwick, W.B. 545
Schutzmannschaft-bataillon (Guard Selboume, Lord 21, 23-4, 98, 250, 251, 254,
Battalion) No. 201 228 331, 413, 414
Schwarzkopf, Norman 583, 589 SELECTION BOARD Operation 109, 110
Schwind, Don 592 Senate Church Committee 649
Scientific Advisory Board 140 Separated Enemy Personnel (SEP) 201
Scientific Intelligence Section 135 Serbian Government of National Salvation
Scobie, Ronald 309, 310 330, 335
Scopes, L. 240-41 Serbian State Guard 331, 335
Scott, Sir Robert 711, 715 Serious Fraud Office 772
Scott Inquiry 762, 763 Serov, Ivan 146
Scott Report 763 Service de Comentation Exterieure et de
Scott-Hopkins, James 203 Contre-Espionage (SDECE) 218, 610, 634
Scottish Communist Party 10 Services Liaison Department 84, 509
Scottish 'Invasion Committee' 426 Seton-Watson, Hugh 60, 62, 64, 87, 308-9,
Scottish League for European Freedom 314, 319, 331, 333, 351, 376, 501
(SLEF) 170, 285, 418, 425, 428, 429, 432, Sevriuk, Alexander 195
433, 434, 441-5, 448 Seydahmet, Cafar 196
SCRUM HALF Operation 501 Shaban Jaa Pari 582, 585, 593
'Sean' (MI6 officer) 756 Shadwell, Laurence 431
Seeker and Warburg 480 al-Shahli, Umar 736, 737
Second World War: declaration of war 269; Shaker, Farid Sharif 653, 658
898 INDEX

Shakir, Ghassan 734 Simpson, Mrs Wallis (later Duchess of

al-Shami, Ahmed 685, 691, 693 Windsor) 407
Shandruk, Pavlo 186, 187, 195, 198, 199, 200, Sims, Mitzi 45
202, 205, 206, 213, 214 Sinclair, Sir George 554
Sharp, Jack 501 Sinclair, Hugh 4, 191, 224
Sharpe, Rosemary 756 Sinclair, Sir John 26, 31, 33, 494, 498-9, 520,
Sharq al-Adna 536, 537, 539, 540, 541, 635 521, 522, 573, 580, 582, 586, 592, 614, 616,
Shayler, David 793, 794 619, 621
Sheehan, Olive 8 Sinn Fein 738
Shehu, Kacem 397 Sintsov, Vadim 755
Shehu, Mehmet 376, 386 Sirvys, Klemensas 294
Shehu, Zenal 399, 400 Six, Frank 216
Sheiken, Nicholas 424 Six Day War 697
Shell 730, 731, 732, 761, 795 6th Airborne Division 549
Shephard, Sir Francis 559, 571 62nd Field Security Service unit 342
Sheppard, A.W. 317-18 Siyyam, Hassan 629, 644
Sheptytsky, Metropolitan Andreas 227 Skanderbeg (Albanian national hero) 357
Shergold, Harold 99, 416, 512, 704, 706, 724 Skendi, Stavro 374
Shinwell, Emmanuel 561 Skirpa, Kazys 271
Shishakli, Adib 636, 655 Skoropadski 204
Shoosmith, Maj.-Gen. 209 Skorzeny, Otto 217
Short's of Belfast 752 Slansky, Rudolf 484, 485-6
SHRAPNEL Operation 416, 422-3, 513 SLENDER Operation 359
Shuckburgh, Evelyn 68, 97, 495, 497, 505, Slessor, Sir John 72, 77, 82, 83, 85, 136, 195,

607 533
Shukhevych, Roman ('Taras Chuprynka') Slocum, Frank 290, 374, 525
226, 229, 230, 231, 237, 238, 243 Slovak Hlinka Guard 231
Sichel, Herbert 45 Slovak Liberation Movement 182
Sicherheitsdienst (SD) 12, 100, 101, 106, 168, Slovak National Council 181
208, 411 Slovak National Front 181
Sienko, Stefan 263, 265 Slovak People's Party 181
Sigailis, Arthur 274, 289 Slovene National Committee 336
signals intelligence (SIGINT) 11, 12, 52, 54, Slovene National Democracy Party 342
56, 135, 150, 398, 620, 660, 719, 748, 778 Slovene People's Party (SPP) 330, 332, 335
Sigurimi 364-5, 388, 400, 401, 506, 507 Slowikowski, Rygor 250, 262
Sihanouk, Norodom 712 Sluzhba Bezpeky (SB) 226, 228, 234, 235,
Sikorski, Wladyslaw 166-7, 250, 251, 265, 236, 244
455 Sluzhba Vneshnie Razvedaki (SVR) 754, 755
Silarajas, Rudolph 288, 296-9, 511, 514, 515 Smal-Stocky, Dr Roma 185, 186, 187, 195,

Silent Forest 275 199, 200, 202, 206, 214, 222, 492-3
Silgailis, Arthur 271 Smallholder's Party (Hungary) 174
Sillem brothers 269 Smellie, Craig 602, 741
Sillitoe, Sir Percy 622 SMERSH 278
Silone, Ignazio 477, 478 Smiley, David 33, 256, 357-60, 376, 377, 378,
Silver, Arnold 420 384, 386, 391, 402, 547-8, 663, 664, 685,
Silverwood-Cope, Maclachlan 278, 396 687, 688, 691, 694
Sima, Horia 179 Smiley, Moy 378
SIMBA Operation 734 Smith, Bradley F. 12, 26
Simcock, Maj. 203, 347 Smith, C.A. 435, 436
Simpson, Adrian 192 Smith, Howard 739
 INDEX 899

Smith, Ian 725 Spanish Civil War 484

Smith, Joseph B. 711 Spanish Nationalists 351
Smith, Michael 77-8, 516 Spearman, Richard 788
Smith, Raymond 43 Special Air Service (SAS) 98, 131, 532, 614,
Smyslovsky-Holmston, Boris 410, 413, 415 663, 664, 665, 729, 778, 789; 'A'
Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) Detachment 692; Americans monitor 792;
740 corruption 734-5; Counter-Revolutionary
Social Democratic Party (SDP) 77, 482 Warfare (CRW) 328; D Squadron 328; and
Social Democrats (Germany) 112 'General Support Branch' 742; 'Kremlin'
Social Democrats (Russian emigres) 404 war room 329; in Oman 734; STORM 733;
Socialist Movement for United States of TIE 685; training of Kuwaitis 753; in

Europe 447, 461 Vietnam 719

Socialist Party of Greece (SKE) 309, 314 Special Boat Squadron (SBS) 742, 773, 792
Socialist Unity Party (SED) (East Germany) Special Branch 551-2, 553, 554, 696, 740, 796
503 Special Counter-intelligence (SCI) 5-6, 15,
Society for Individual Freedom 429 99, 320
Society of Friends of Albania 361 Special Forces Club, London 33, 364
Society of Latvians in Great Britain 284-5, Special Liaison Centre 147, 276, 288, 298-9
433 Special Operations (SO) 19, 83; Albania 363,
Sogno, Edgardo 457 367, 376; Americans move into 56-7; in

Solarium Project 505 Austria 338; Bevin and 42, 87; in Germany
Solly-Flood, Peter 253 93
Sophoulis, Themistocles 319, 320, 374 Special Operations Executive (SOE) 71, 72,
Soraya, Empress 563, 565 83, 84, 120, 127, 175, 195, 250, 251, 263,

South Arabian Federal Treasury 692 363, 366, 385, 533, 537; Albania 357, 362,
Sova, Antanas 296 376, 379; assassination capability 611-12;
Soviet Administration for Special Tasks 410 in Austria 122; backs 'progressive'

Soviet air defence command 244 resistance movements 303; in the Balkans
Soviet Army 16-17, 229, 231, 243, 253, 257, 63; disbanded (1946) 362; EU/P 250;
426 Evaluation Committee 24; experts in
Soviet Five Year Plan 425 guerrilla warfare 394; and the Foreign
Soviet Information Bureau 251 Office 303, 467, 534, 535; and the French
Soviet Intelligence 151, 221, 235, 406, 407, Resistance 457; fuses with the SIS 27, 28,
418, 419 32; German X Section 98; and Greek
Soviet Military Intelligence (GRU) 190, 418, resistance 306; Harcourt and 360;
419, 704, 705, 706, 749 Hungarian section 8; influence 33; Iran
Soviet Ministry of Health 766 565; NKVD arrests former agents in
Soviet Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD) Poland 256; and Poland 252, 253, 254;
235, 236, 243, 259, 283-4; Department 10 radio networks in Poland 255; relationship
485 with MI6 19, 20, 306, 453-4; Retinger
Soviet Ministry of State Security (KGB, joins 456; role 19; Russian section 413;

MGB) 67, 87, 117, 147, 151, 180, 183, 184, Scandinavian Section 525; Sixth Special
211, 212, 244, 265, 269, 284, 287, 293, 295, Force 337; and Special Operations Branch
299, 394-5, 502, 507, 511-14, 517, 523, 526, 363, 547; training school 289; Yugoslavia
527, 672, 681, 703, 705, 706, 722-3, 742, 331, 332, 333
743, 749, 754, 755; Directorate 16 755 Special Policy Committee (SPC) 385, 389,
Soviet Nineteenth Party Congress (1952) 499 396
Soviet North Atlantic Fleet 524 Special Refugee Screening (SRS)
Soviet Trade Mission, London 299 Commission 204
Spaak, Paul-Henri 455, 463, 464, 466, 467, 469 Special Republican Guard (Iraq) 782
900 INDEX

Spedding, Sir David 328, 752-3, 760, 777, Stassen, Harold 613
800 State Committee for the Co-ordination of
Speight, R.L. 476 Scientific Research Work 704
Spender, Stephen 478-82 State-Navy-War Co-ordinating Committee
Spetznaz 160 362
SpiHotopoulos, Col. 306 Staver, Robert 145
Spinelli, Altiero 455, 457, 464, 477 Stay Behind (SB) networks 28
Die Spinne (Spider) 95 Steads, Elmer 581
Spofford, Charles M. 462, 465 Steele, Frank 665, 697, 720, 739, 740, 741
SPONR 493 Stephenson, Sir Hugh 707
Sporborg, Harry 31, 32, 122, 525 Stephenson, Sir William 45, 50, 155, 610, 611
Spraggett, Col. 97 Stepinac, Aloysus, Archbishop of Zagreb
Springer, Ferdinand 141 329, 346, 350
Springer Verlag 141 Steptoe, Harry 11, 535
Springhall, Douglas 8, 9 Sterling, Claire 769

Sputnik launch 656 Stern, Dr 149

SS (Nazi) 93, 95, 98, 100, 101, 102, 106-10, Stern Gang 544, 549
138, 168, 179, 187, 196, 197, 201, 216, 217, Stetsko, Jaroslav 224-8, 230, 232, 234, 235,

218, 227-30, 232, 234, 240, 270-74, 276, 238, 442, 443, 444, 448, 449
279-80, 285, 288, 418 Steven, Stewart 255, 256, 265, 484
SS Security Service 106, 408 Stevenson, Ralph 602
SS Skanderbeg division 357, 358, 387 Stewart, John 425-6, 428, 429, 432, 441, 442,
Stakhiv, Volodymyr 227, 232 445-6, 448, 449
Stalin, Joseph 55, 58, 60-61, 66, 69, 79, 81, Stewart, Sir Malcolm 462
84, 89, 164, 179, 180, 189, 194, 211, 231, Stewart, Sir Findlater 26, 31
270, 304, 461, 534; and Albania 364, 402; Stewart-Smith, Geoffrey 414
and British Intelligence 483; compared to Stiff, Peter 698, 719
Hitler 37; death 499; dissolution of the Stirling, David 131, 333, 684-5, 688, 690-91,
Comintern 13; and 'The Great Sweeper' 693, 694, 695, 697, 735, 736, 738
485; and Greece 319, 322; and Kerensky Stockbridge, Ralph 602
493; and Kruglov 277-8; and Malenkov Stockwell, Freddie 602, 631
501; and Mladorossy 406; and the NTS Stokes, Michael 705
410; 'percentage' agreement w^ith Stokes, Richard 202, 203, 205, 430, 431-2,
Churchill (1944) 14-15, 39; and the Polish 433, 434, 442, 568; Mission to Iran (1951)
resistance 252; purges 484, 549; restrains 568
revolutionaries 39; scheme for controlling Stone, Howard 588, 592, 594, 595, 655, 656
the Adriatic's entrance 365; secret police Stone, Shephard 463, 469, 508
424; and Tito 63, 64, 67, 68, 78, 85, 88, 128, Stonehouse, John 471
341, 353, 364, 471; and the Ukraine 426-7; Stoney, Lt-Col. 289
the Vigilance campaign 484, 499; warns of STOPWATCH Operation 523, 526
'English duplicity' 343; western powers STORM Operation 733
fear confrontation 254; and Yugoslavia Storrs, Peter 554
387 Stourton, Hon. John 428
Stallwood, Frank 392, 652-3 Strachey, Oliver 99
Standard Oil of Ohio 595 STRAGGLE Operation 615, 620, 628, 636,
Stankievich, Stanislaw 216, 217, 218, 220, 637, 646, 655, 666
222, 443-4 Strakaty, George 737
Stanley, John 631 Strang, Sir William 59, 85, 489, 490, 541, 570
Stanley, Oliver 460 Strasbourg Consultative Assembly 467
Stark, Freya 622 Strassen, Harold 581
 INDEX 901

Strategic Services Unit (SSU) 419 Swedish Intelligence 274, 281, 620
Stratis (leader of SKE) 309 Sweet-Escott, Bickham 60, 303, 535-6, 537
Straw, Jack 796n Swialto, Josef 485
Street, Annette 348 Swierczewski, Karol 236
Strik-Strikfelt, Wilfred 415 Swift, Carlton 675, 707

Stripp, Alan 56 Swinbum, James 631, 632, 645

Strong, Sir Kenneth 34, 72, 89, 396, 709 Swiss Bundespolizei 419
Subacic 389 Swiss Liaison Office 118
Sudoplatov, Pavel 152, 224, 244, 245, 493 SWOD 421
Suez Canal 38, 603, 635, 637, 638, 642, 646, Sykes, Michael 351-2
677 Syria Working Group (SWG) 656, 657, 658
Suez Canal Company 623 Syrian Army 655, 656, 657
Suez Group 603, 606, 628, 629, 662 Syrian Deuxieme Bureau 642
Suez invasion 531, 553 Syrian Radio 645
Sufa, Nalil 399 Szalasi, Ferncz 174, 178, 444

'Sugar Force' 137

SUGAR Operation 130 T-Force 137, 297
Suharto, Thojib 718 'Taffy B' (ex-SAS) 736, 737, 738
Sukarno, Achmed 716, 718 Talib bin Ali 663
Sulakov, Roman 207 Tamplin, Capt. Guy 193, 194, 248, 331
'Sullivan, Michael' 256 Tanganyika African National Union 721
Sullivan and Cromwell 595 TANGO Operation 328
Sultan, Prince 687, 691 Tank, Kurt 146-7
Sultan's Armed Forces (SAF) 664, 731, 732, Tariq (Qaboos' uncle) 733
734 Tariq bin Taimur 731
Sulzberger, Cyrus 68, 306, 360, 388, 390, 392, Tartars 196
400-401, 486, 655 Tasoev, J.D. 146
SUNFLOWER Operation 230 Taylor, John 148, 707
Sunningdale Agreement (1973) 740 Taylor, Peter 129
SUNSHINE Operation 555, 556 TEA-PARTY Operation 552
'Supergun' affair 763 Teague, John 30, 533
Supplementary Oil Agreement (1949) 558, Tear, Hubert O'Bryan 242, 679, 687
559 Tebbit, Kevin 778
Supreme Committee for the Liberation of Technical Intelligence Section 135
Lithuania (SCLL) 272, 274, 275, 277, 279, Technical Security Department (TSD) 786
282, 287, 292-3, 294, 296 Tedder, Lord 82, 83, 84, 365, 366
Supreme Headquarters Allied Europe Forces Television International Enterprises (TIE)
(SHAEF) 99, 137, 157, 183, 258 685, 735
Supreme Political Commission to Combat Temple, Reginald 669, 734
Banditry 254 Templer, Sir Gerald 23, 98, 638
Supreme Staff of Armed Partisans (Baltic) Tepfers, Verners 281
283 Terrapin 624
Supreme Ukrainian Liberation Council 205 Territorial Defence Force (TDF) 272, 273
Sushko, Col. Roman 224 Terry, Antony 105, 176
Susie, Lovro 337, 339, 350 Thatcher Foundation 780
Sutkos, Col. 288 Thatcher, Margaret, Baroness 747, 750, 751,
Sveics, Vidvuds 291 752, 757, 758, 799
Svendsen, Lars 524 Thesiger, Wilfred 697-8
Svenska Militar Tjanst (SMT) 273, 276 30th Waffen-SS Grenadier Division 217
Swain, Geoffrey 64 Third Army (US) 182, 217
902 INDEX

Third Force' 46, 72, 73, 76, 173, 247, 431, Transport and General Workers' Union
438, 461 37
The Third Man (film) 120 Travellers Club 4
Third (Mountain) Brigade 316 Travis, Sir Edward 52, 54

30 Assault Unit 137 Treasury 27, 244, 469, 575, 620, 726-7, 746,
Thompson, Sir Geoffrey 486 747, 761, 780, 798, 799
Thompson, John 472, 726, 727 Trend, Burke 709, 724, 727
Thompson, Llewel)^^ 383 Trevaskis, Kennedy 680, 685, 688, 689
Thompson, Sir Robert 718 Trevelyan, Humphrey 605, 620, 673, 675
Thomson, Lord 692 Trevor-Roper, Hugh (Lord Dacre) 5, 18, 19,

Thornberg, Max 567, 568 477, 478

Thorneycroft, Peter 683, 689 Trinsky, Mikal 611
Thornton, F. 13 Tripartite Foreign Ministers' Conference
Thorpe, Elizabeth 45 (1950) 441
310th Field Security Service 232 Tripartite Pact 330
Throne (Soviet deception) 410 Trotsky, Leon 67, 435
Thunder Cross (Latvia) 223, 270, 271 Troutback, Sir John 541-2
Tiaks, Frank C. 581 Truchnovich, Alexander 409
Tildy, President 174 Trukhin, General 412
Tiso, Jozef 181 Truman, Harry S. 154, 324, 446, 464, 487,
Tito, Marshal 60, 69, 81, 84, 86, 124, 126, 199, 519, 562, 574, 575, 580
304, 330, 336, 340, 347, 349, 352, 360, 369, Truman Doctrine 41, 45, 65, 66, 81, 324, 327,
388, 414; and Albania 364, 375, 376, 387; 483
assassination plans 499; captures Italian Trumpys, Benediktas 294
equipment 333; and Cominform 366; Trusahnovich, Alexander 507
control of the secret police and army 353; Truscott, Lucian 264-5
the Crusaders 341; defection to the West 'Trust' (Monarchist Association of Central

(1944) 365; and Greece 323, 327; installs Russia) 264, 269, 284
himself in Belgrade 335; and Kosovo 361; Tsaldaris, Konstantinos 315, 320, 323, 380
Moscow's most zealous supporter 334; Tube Alloys 133, 134, 136, 152, 154, 160
and Nasser 605; political trials 350-51; Tudeh Party 534, 564-7, 569, 571, 572, 579,
propaganda against Britain and US 344; 580, 592, 593, 596
Slovene National Democracy party Tudjman, Franjo 354
opposes 342; and Stalin 63, 64, 67, 68, 78, 'Tunworth' (Libyan agent) 793
85, 88, 128, 341, 353, 364, 471; weapons Turkestan National Unity Committee 445
370 Turkul, Prince Anton Vasilevich 189, 198,
Titoism 85 362, 405, 407, 410, 419-20, 421, 514
Tizard, Henry 153 Turnbull, Richard 683
TOBACCO Operation 218 Turner, Stansfield 797
Tokaty-Tokaev, Grigori 146-50 Turnhill, Col. 732
Tolstoy, Count Nikolai 193, 337 Turp, Robert 690
Tomas, August 276 Turrou, Leon G. 103
Tomlinson, Richard 761, 767, 768, 779, 783, '12 Force' 98
784, 786-92, 794-800 21 Army Group 98, 100, 104

Toptani, Ihsan 360, 447 Tweedy, Bronson 642-3

TORCH Operation 116, 250 Twelve Apostles 456
Torma, August 290 20th Waffen-SS Division 275
Toth, Dragutin 350 21 Army Group 23
Toynbee, Philip 476 24 Infantry Brigade 671-2
Trades Union Congress (TUC) 75, 430 Twetten, Thomas 781
 INDEX 903

UBS (private bank) 779 United Nations Atomic Energy Commission

Ugandan State Research Bureau 734 Scientific and Technical Committee 153
Uhrlau, Ernst 778 United Nations Refugee and Rehabilitation
UK EYES ALPHA/B 785 Agency (UNRRA) 208, 218, 281, 392, 415,
UK Intelligence Messaging Network 789 416
UK-USA Security Agreement 56 United Nations War Crimes Commission
Ukraine National Assembly 227 (UNWCC) 102, 107, 111, 127, 128
Ukrainian Co-ordinating Committee 233, United Press 121
237, 238 United State Political Directorate (OGPU)
Ukrainian Committee 187 269
Ukrainian Division ('Galizien') 197, 198, Unity Party (East Germany) 112
443 University of New York (research institute

Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) 199, 229, for a Post- War European Federation) 457
230, 231, 235-9, 242-5, 247, 257 UNTHINKABLE Operation 25
Ukrainian Liberation Committee 205 Upans, Lodis 294-5, 297
Ukrainian National Committee 226 Upelnieks, Kristaps 272
Ukrainian National Council 238, 239, 493 'Uranium Club' 139
Ukrainian Relief Committee 202 Urbancic, Ljenko 332, 345, 352, 353
Ukrainian Supreme Liberation Council Uren, Ormond 8
(UHVR) 199, 230, 236-9, 247; Foreign Urwick 523
Representation (ZP UHVR) 230, 232, 238 Urzad Bezpiecznstwa (UB or Bezpieka) 265,
Ukrainian Training Unit (SS) 226 266, 497, 703
Ulbricht, Walter 63, 113 US 430th Counter-intelligence Corps 68
Ulm, Rudolph 143 US Air Force 235, 294, 353, 486-7, 519, 709
Ulmer, Al 57, 399, 551, 641, 712, 713 US Army Intelligence 237, 502
Ulster Workers' Strike (1974) 740 US Bureau of Intelligence and Research
'Ultra' intelligence 97, 333; Menzies and 5; 728
the SCI units 5 US Corps of Engineers 526
Umar, Yahya 734 US Counter-intelligence Corps (CIC) 100,
Un-American Activities Committee 579 105, 109, 110, 117, 119, 171, 210, 220, 221,
Underwater Establishment, Portland 704 233, 234, 235, 349, 350, 352, 419, 420, 574;
UNFASTEN Operation 653, 658 430th Detachment 116-17, 119
Uniate Church 237 US Defense Department 487, 659
Unilateral Declaration of Independence US Department of the Army 333
(UDI) 725 US Green Berets 719
Union Miniere 138 US Information Service (USIS) 575
Union of Popular Democracy (ELD) 306, US Military Intelligence 326, 349
314 US National Security Council (NSC) 243,
United Baltic Corporation 261 353, 368, 396, 400, 503, 504, 505, 517, 581,
United Democratic Resistance Organisation 582, 601, 670, 717
(UDRM) 283, 285, 286, 287, 292, 293, 294, US Office of Policy Co-ordination (OPC)
296, 298 210, 220, 221, 239, 242, 243, 245, 246,
United Europe Movement (UEM) 460, 464, 263-6, 291, 297, 353, 447, 454, 497; AGUE
466; Special Finance Committee 462 465; Albania 373, 377, 379, 381, 382, 387,
United Fruit Company 546 390-93, 396-9; Iran 566; the NCFE 437;
United Nations (UN) 38, 72, 128, 181, 243, operates within the remit of the CIA 395,
247, 298, 431, 483, 507, 552, 565, 615, 637, 400; origins 464; OSO 368-9; Project
698, 721, 774, 790; Protection Force 791; Review Board 478; Psychological and
Security Council 341, 636; Weapons Paramilitary (PP) Warfare Staff 369, 392,
Inspectorate 767 400; responsible to Bedell Smith 395-6
904 INDEX

US State Department 239, 324-5, 349, 400, Venteres, Konstantinos 320

454, 465, 488, 505, 541, 574, 640, 728; Ventotene Manifesto 455
Albania 380, 382, 383, 385, 386, 389; the Verschoyle, Derek 547-8
drugs war 776; Egypt 602, 637, 683; exile Vichy 250
groups 446; and the Foreign Office 675; Vickers 462
Iran 559, 579, 580, 582, 583; Israel 581; Vietnam War 716, 717, 718, 719
Jewish refugees 548; Office of Intelligence Vigilance campaign 484, 499
Research 324; Policy and Planning Staff Villiers, Charles 337, 338, 414
(PPS) 242, 368, 370, 490; Political Vinogradov, Vladimir 499
Biographic Section 373; Psychological VISTULA Operation 236, 237
Strategy Board 487, 490, 503; Southern Visual Inter-Service Training and Research
European Division 373 Establishment 157
US Technical Assistance programme ('Point Vitolin, Margers 511, 513-14
Four') 575 Vituska, Gen. 220
US Treasury 338, 339 Vivian, Valentine 7, 9, 11, 15, 21
US War Department 422 Vladmanis, Dr Alfred 279
US-UK agreement on the exchange of Vlasov, Andrei 198, 214, 230, 411, 412, 413,
nuclear information (1958) 159 415, 493
Ustashi 125, 126, 169, 171, 172, 223, 329-33, Voice of Britain 643, 644
335-50, 352, 353, 354, 434, 444; Office for 'Voice of Free Egypt' 625
Colonisation 336 Voice of Zion 635
Ustinov, 'Klop' 407-8, 410, 418-21 Voight, Frederick 426-7
Ustinov, Peter 408 Volkov, Konstantin 578
Volman, Sacha 440, 447
V-2 rockets 137-8, 144, 145, 149 Voloshyn, Monsignor Augustine 224, 225
V-men 106 Volunteer Corps (Yugoslavia) 331
Vaivada, Anthony 295 Voss, Claudius 189-90, 405, 406, 407, 420
Vajta, Ference 171-2, 173, 175, 350 Voulgaris (Greek Prime Minister) 319
Vakar, Nicholas 220 Vrancic, Dr Vjekoslav 337, 342, 350, 353
Valls-Russell, Lawrie 540-41 Vretsonia (Abwehr agent) 232
VALUABLE Operation (BG/ FIEND) 363, Vulliamy, Ed 791
367, 371, 374, 378, 384, 385, 389, 390, 391,
393-6, 398, 400, 401, 506, 653 Waddy, John 719
Van Zeeland, Paul 455, 457, 458, 459, 462, Wafd Party 601, 628, 629
463, 496, 508 Waffen-SS 240, 277, 279, 280, 285, 288, 289,
Vanagai (Falcons) 272 409, 432, 443
Vanden Heuvel, Count Frederick 140, 142, Waffen-SS Galicia Division 240, 248
168, 547 Wainman, Alexander 203
Vandenberg, Arthur 45, 55; Resolution 45 WAKEFUL Operation see STRAGGLE
Vansittart, Lord 101, 106, 353, 405, 407, 408, Operation
417, 418, 432-3, 437, 443 Waldegrave, William 764
Vantage plan (later Bellringer) 671 Walden, Brian 471
Varzia Agreement (1945) 311, 313, 314, 318 Waldheim, Kurt 124-9
Vatican 102, 109, 115, 116, 126, 167, 168, 169, Walker, Christopher 659
171, 172, 173, 175, 176, 202, 203, 219, 230, Wallace, David 307-8
237, 238, 239, 285, 443, 463; and Waller, John 574, 584
Yugoslavia 330, 332, 339, 341, 342, 346-9, Walli units 101
353; see also Catholic Church Wallinger, Mark 346
Vendiris, Staff Chief 318 Walters, Vernon 574
Venner, John 31 Waltscheff, Dimitr 443
 INDEX 905

Wannsee Institute 109, 208 West, Rebecca 427, 428

WAPPEN Operation 655 Western Union 75, 461-2
War Cabinet 385, 413 Westminster, Duke of 436

War Crimes Investigation Unit 98 WESTWARD HO! Operation 204, 288,

War Office 26, 343, 351; Albania 359; 296
General Staff (Research) (GS(R)) 187; Weygrand, Maxime 192
Greece 320; investigation into the 'Control Wheatley, Dennis 158, 160
of special units and organisations' 32; Wheeler, Charles 112
Jewish groups 546; Military Intelligence Wheeler, Geoffrey 535, 562, 568, 570
Directorate 20; report on the Ukraine 232; Wheler, David 290
Yugoslavia 346 Whinney, Pat 374, 378, 392, 525
War Office Screening Mission (WOSM) see White, Dick 16, 49, 99, 100, 154, 390, 408,
Maclean Mission 516, 517, 521, 531, 621-2, 625-6, 630, 637,
Warburg, Frederick 479, 480 639-41, 645, 651, 652, 659, 661, 662, 671,
Warburgs 166 672, 675, 681, 684, 687, 692-4, 696, 704,
Warburton, Nick 692 705, 707, 710, 718, 723, 724, 727, 738, 739
Ward, Barbara 476 White, Tony 774, 775
Ward, George 660 White Guard (Voluntary Anti-Communist
Warner, Christopher 38-43, 65, 69, 73, 74, Militia) 330, 332, 337, 353
75, 77, 83, 209, 476 White Knights of Britain 441
Warner, Fred 316 White Russian Armed Services Union
Warner, Sir Gerald 97, 753, 754, 799 (ROVS) 189, 190, 405, 407
Warner Brothers 379 White Russian Schutzkorps 414-15
Warsaw Pact 501, 727, 749, 754 White Russians 19, 106, 130, 187, 189, 190,

Warsaw uprising 24, 249, 251-2, 253, 260, 191, 215, 220, 268, 407, 413
428 White Ruthenian Veterans League 217
Washington conference (1949) 368, 369 Whitelaw, William 740
Wasilewski, Tadeusz 255 Whitlock, John 140, 141
Watchguard International 697, 735, 736-7 Whittal, Arthur 207, 543
Waterfield, Gordon 540 Whittal, Michael 213
Waterfield, Tat' 730, 732 Wicht, Adolf 104
Waterhouse, Charles 603 Wickham, Sir Charles 317
Waterhouse, Ellis 306 Wierzbianski, M. 441
Waters, Sir George 429 Wiesenthal, Simon 112, 116, 544
Watkinson, Harold 673 Wigg, George 640
Watson, Adam 39, 186, 489-90, 505 Wilbur, Donald 583, 584, 586, 591, 597
Watson, Sam 63 Wild, Noel 157
Watt, Donald Cameron 531, 615, 676 Wilkinson, Ellen 428
Watts, John 664 Wilkinson, Peter 249, 250, 253, 337, 338, 340,
Waugh, Evelyn 333, 346 496
Wavell, Gen. Sir Archibald, 1st Earl 156, 192 Williams, Sir Alan 120n
el-Wazir, AbdelKerim 685 Williams, Alan Lee 471
Wedemeyer, Lt.-Gen. 421 Williams, Bill 98
Wehrmacht 104, 112, 118, 125, 127, 145, 187, Williams, Michael 618, 621, 630
208, 216, 226, 227, 228, 240, 241, 275, 333, Wilson, Bevil 332
408, 409, 412; Wa Pruf 9 143 Wilson, Charles 587
Welles, Sumner 436 Wilson, 'Falcon' 698
Welsh, Eric 134, 135, 138-41, 152, 153, 154, Wilson, Geoffrey 13, 167, 303
156, 521, 522 Wilson, Harold 500, 688, 716, 717, 725, 728,
'Werewolf resistance detachments 107 731, 744, 791
906 INDEX

Wilson, Hon. John 210 'Y' intercepts 26

WiN see Freedom and Independence Y Section 130, 131
Winch, Michael 255 Yakuta, N.I. 416-17, 423
Wingate, Ronald 156 Yalta agreement (1945) 201, 414, 429, 434
Winks, Robin 361-2, 398 Yaskevycz, Maj. 201, 204
Winn, Rowley 690 Yatsevich, Gratian 391, 397, 399
Winterton, Gen. 120 Yemen Relief Fund 690
Wiseman, Sir William 461 Yes, Minister (television programme) 797
Wisner, Frank 210, 221, 239, 243, 246, 263, Young, Courtney 419
264, 362-3, 368-71, 373, 379, 380, 391, 393, Young, George 34, 43, 57, 60, 61, 63, 66, 67,
395-9, 437, 464, 467, 478, 485, 505, 566, 68, 83, 84, 87, 89, 112, 113, 121, 122, 123,

583, 591, 633, 641, 648, 707 126, 129, 142, 156, 176, 203, 378, 399, 487,
Wolodymyr (OUN-B) 227 498-501, 509, 511, 512, 514, 516, 517,
Womersley, Dennis 687 520-23, 526, 548, 554, 562, 568-9, 570, 573,
Wood Cats 274 586, 591, 592, 597-602, 608, 609-10,
Woodhouse, Christopher 33, 307, 308, 316, 614-17, 621, 625-8, 630, 636-9, 641, 644,
317, 324-7, 368, 467-8, 475, 510, 568, 569, 647-50, 653-4, 655, 662, 669, 676, 680,
571, 573, 574, 577-80, 585, 587 710-11, 712, 715, 720, 721, 743
Woodhouse, John 684, 686, 697 Young, Robin 686
Woodruff, Douglas 427, 430, 438 Young, Rollo 378, 386
Woods, Christopher 570 Young Russians see Mladorossy
'Woody' (ex-SAS) 736, 737 Young, T.C. 579
Working Group on US /UK Co-operation Younger, Kenneth 88, 612
670 Yovanovitch, Slobodan 632
World Anti-Communist League (WACL) Yugoslav Gendarmerie 337
222, 449 Yugoslav govemment-in-exile 335, 434
World Assembly of Youth (WAY) 468-71, Yugoslav National Committee 151, 353

475 Yugoslav War Crimes: Commission 339;

World Bank 607 Liaison Detachment 349
World Federation of Democratic Youth
(WFDY) 468 Z-Network 124, 131, 168, 174, 426

World Federation of Trade Unions 43 Zacharka, V. 216, 217

World Jewish Congress 96, 97 Zaehner, Robert 378, 392, 534, 535, 537,
World Student Congress (Prague, 1946) 562-3, 564, 565, 570, 571, 578
471-2 Zaharoff, Sir Basil 406
Wrangel, Peter 192 Zahedi, Ardeshir 575, 592, 594
Wreciona, Yevhen 231 Zahedi, Faziollah 574-5, 576, 577, 582, 583,
Wright, Michael 656 585, 586, 587, 588, 589, 591, 592, 593, 594,
Wright, Sir Oliver 548 632
Wright, Peter 149, 158, 190, 419, 517, 555, Zaheer, Seyyed Ali 563
556, 611, 620, 623, 633, 634, 645 Zahid, Sheikh Ibrahim 690
Wrigley, Michael 712, 713 Zakevicius, Stasys 278-9
Wyke, John 130, 555 Zaleski, August 167, 170, 432

Wyman, John 741 Zambia Intelligence Ser\ace 475

Wyndham, John (later Lord Egremont) 723 Zarb, James 631

Wynne, Greville 704, 708 Zarine, Charles 279, 280, 284, 285, 287-8,
289, 433, 447
X organisation 310, 314, 317, 320, 550 Zaydi sect 678

X-2 (OSS) 11 Zbor movement 331, 332, 335, 352

Xoxe, Koci 364, 376 Zbytek, Charles 183
 INDEX 907

Zemaitis, Jonas 292, 298 Zionists 485, 506, 534, 540, 544
Zenon sigint project 778 Zircon 778, 780
Zen-as, Napoleon 306, 307-8, 320, 323, 359 Zirkaneh Giants 584
Zhadanov, Andrei 66, 67 Zog, King 355, 356, 357, 359, 361, 362, 372,
Zhadanov faction 485 379, 380, 388, 392, 397, 399; Zogists 357-8,
Zilenski, Alexander 189, 190 359, 397
Zilinskas, Walter 274, 278, 281, 285 Zymantas, Stasys 281, 282, 283, 285, 287,
Zimbabwean intelligence service 768 288, 292
Zimmerman, Fred 591
HISTORY/MILITARY

AN INTELLIGENCE AGENCY EXPOSE SO EXPLOSIVE THAT

THE BRITISH GOVERNMENT TRIED TO STOP ITS PUBLICATION

the first time ever, MI6, Britain's legendary player at the chessboard of inter-
For national intelligence-gathering, is revealed in fascinating detail. Fifteen years of

painstaking and meticulous research on the notoriously elusive organization comes

together in a vivid and shocking portrait that differs radically from the sleek and flawless
fictionalized portraits of Her Majesty's Secret Service. This no-holds-barred expose of the
agency's operations and methods describes in riveting detail its impact on the history and
politics of the last half century. Stephen Dorril's daring and prodigious research has
unearthed startling information, including:

• The recruitment of assets and agents of influence around the world

• MI6's relationships with national leaders, including Nelson Mandela
• A secret deal between London and Washington to keep British troops out of Vietnam

• Details about failed plots to assassinate Nasser, Milosevic, and Gaddifi

• Why MI6 was unable to provide advance warning of the Iranian Revolution or
Argentina's plan to invade the Falklands
• MI6's operations to bring Nazi collaborators and war criminals to Britain after the war

MI6 lifts the veil surrounding the closely guarded espionage efforts that have shaped and

continue to affect our world for better. . . and for worse.

is a corking read, which I urge you to buy while you can."

—Nick Cohen, The Observer (London)

Stephen DoRRIL is the founding editor of the respected journal Lobster an6 a lecturer

at the University of Huddersfield in the U.K. He has written a number of books on the

role of security and intelligence services and lives in the north of England.

Illlll
A TOUGHS & New
T 0 N E B O 0 K
^1^1 Published by Simon Schuster York

Cover design by Marc J. Cohen

Cover photograph by Ed Pritchard/Getty Images

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