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By Root 2898 0

leader Abdul Hamid Said, and the alleged formation of ‘a new terrorist organisation’, provided from ‘a highly reliable agent’ in Lausanne ‘who has been in a position to obtain this information at first hand’. SIS’s informant, moreover, confirmed the prevailing assumption that most nationalist groups working against British imperial interests (wherever in the world they might be) were supported by Moscow gold. The funds for the new terrorist organisation, he reported, ‘will be provided by the Soviet authorities, through the medium of the Soviet representative in Rome’. Both human and signals intelligence were extremely valuable for informing British negotiating tactics at the Lausanne conference between November 1922 and July 1923, which finally secured a lasting peace settlement with Turkey. So much so that the senior British negotiator, Sir Horace Rumbold, observed that ‘the information we obtained at the psychological moments from secret sources was invaluable to us, and put us in the position of a man who is playing Bridge and knows the cards in his adversary’s hand’.20

Although between the wars (as Vivian observed to Vernon Kell in October 1937) the Swiss security authorities were prepared to share information with SIS ‘regarding Communism or other international subversive movements of mutual interest’, Switzerland’s traditional policy of neutrality meant that the Service had to be especially careful where other intelligence work was concerned. With former allies from the Great War, such as France and Belgium, the situation was slightly different. The experience of working closely together in organisations like the Bureau Central Interallié left a useful legacy of co-operation and personal contacts. One example of this was the Bureau Liaison Armée Occupée (BLAO, which in 1930, ‘as a precautionary measure’, changed its name to BOX), an Anglo-French-Belgian organisation established in December 1921 principally on Stewart Menzies’s initiative and based in Paris. Formed to share information on Communist subversion, its work was later extended to German military intelligence. By the early 1930s it was focusing almost entirely on Germany and had ‘about ten agents’, of which four were ‘first class, and all very cheap’. SIS found it tremendously useful being ‘allowed to run an organisation in Paris’ which underpinned close secret service relations with the French. In May 1931, when the Belgians, fearing that their neutrality might be compromised by it, threatened to close BOX down, SIS reckoned that the organisation provided valuable Russian, Turkish, Balkan and Hungarian information; that it replied ‘to any military questions on Italy’; that there was exchange of intelligence on Germany (‘the French maintain about six times our staff’); and that information was ‘occasionally obtained regarding French matters which would certainly not be given to our M.A. [military attaché]’.

Another useful supply of information came from officer ‘KL/2’, whose role illustrates the importance of personal contacts and the establishment of trust between case-officer and agent - an absolutely key issue when handling agents. He had served with military liaison in France during the war. In 1919 he was sent by Basil Thomson to liaise ‘semi-officially’ with the French police, but unknown to them was also working for Cumming and reporting ‘on internal conditions in France, socialist and labour troubles etc.’. In the mid-1920s a problem arose when Scotland Yard wanted to post KL/2 back to London. Maurice Jeffes, SIS head of station in Paris since October 1922, explained to Sinclair that this would, he feared, ‘frighten these people [KL/2’s agents] badly’. They were all ‘police officials of good standing, who have been persuaded by KL/2, after some years of acquaintance dating back to the war, to take money in exchange for information useful to S.I.S.’. It was ‘very doubtful if they would now be willing to place their careers unreservedly in fresh hands’. In the event they did not need to, as KL/2 stayed on for several years, though it is not clear whether