The Secret History of MI6 - Keith Jeffery [114]
Of all the SIS stations in the Baltic, Riga was the most productive. It was opened in February 1921 when Rafael Farina came out from London to be head of station with cover as British Passport Control Officer. Farina, whose mother was British and father Italian, had been born in Switzerland in 1877. Educated at Cheltenham College, he trained at Camborne School of Mines and then worked as a mining engineer in Siberia. Excluded from military service because of a damaged left foot, he worked in the Ministry of Munitions during the First World War and had been in charge of the Russian Section of MI5 before joining SIS. With an assistant (who had been working in Warsaw and Helsinki and was ‘fully acquainted with Intelligence work’) and two secretaries, apart from his Passport Control duties Farina ‘was also to be responsible for the collection of special intelligence concerning Latvia and Lithuania’, and would be ‘the sole representative of the S.I.S. for these two countries, directly under the orders of the Head Office in London and nobody else’.
On his appointment Farina was extensively briefed by the Production Section, a development which marked the increasing professionalisation of the Service and clearly reflected Desmond Morton’s desire to ensure greater order and rigour in its procedures. There were instructions on the ‘numbering of agents’ and the correct form for submitting reports. For the latter, Farina was to ‘allot numbers to every source from which you obtain information, whether that source is a paid, unpaid agent or even an unconscious source which you constantly tap’. Farina was to be ‘FR/1’, his assistant ‘FR/2’, and other sources given subsequent numbers in the FR series. He was to provide Head Office with ‘full particulars’ of any agent or source he made use of ‘in order that we may card them up for reference in PROD’. This should include ‘the name of the individual, his [sic] nationality, social position, abbreviated past history, probably [sic] qualifications for employment, what lines he may be likely to be best on, and why, etc’. Any particulars ‘likely to lead to the identification of the individual in case your letter got into the wrong hand should be put into code’. It was important that Farina supplied his list of sources ‘at the very earliest opportunity’ so that when an FR report came into Head Office ‘we shall at once understand who the author or authors are’. There were also ‘brief hints on the form of reports’ which confirmed that every report and letter to Head Office should be identified ‘with lettered prefix and a serial number’. Three copies of all reports, ‘except political reports’, of which ‘2 will be ample’, were to be submitted. ‘As a rule’, agents’ reports should not be sent in unedited; ‘Read the agent’s report yourself and if it is faultless send it on, but usually it is infinitely better to re-write it in the light of your own greater knowledge.’ Farina was also advised to ‘try to collate news as much as possible’ and not send in the same bag ‘more than one report dealing with the same subject’.16
While the initial instructions given to Farina were quite detailed, there is no evidence that he was given much, if any, preliminary training. After going directly to Riga, however, he was instructed once he had settled in to go to Tallinn and ‘spend 10 days or a fortnight there with BP/1 [Ernest Boyce], seeing how he does Intelligence work, and picking up as much information as