The Secret History of MI6 - Keith Jeffery [250]
Foley concluded his report with praise for Gibson, who was ‘practically indispensable’ in Istanbul and who, ‘in most discouraging circumstances’, had ‘worked with great ability and energy’. On the whole he thought Gibson was well served by his staff, and, although improvements were undoubtedly desirable, it was now ‘very difficult to find right men’. Reflecting on the problems of current recruitment, and perhaps, too, acknowledging Service personnel weaknesses exposed by the challenge of war, Foley observed that ‘an intelligent layman who had come much into contact with SIS’ had remarked that ‘we are too ready to be satisfied with “good second-raters”’. In Turkey, Foley thought that only Gibson, his brother Archie’s assistant from Bucharest and one other officer could be exempted from this criticism. ‘Satisfied with “good second-raters”’ was strong stuff indeed, and Foley’s worries illustrate not only an important degree of critical Service self-reflection, but also the sometimes painful progress of the organisation towards full professionalism. Coming, moreover, as it did from a longstanding Service colleague, it was clearly something which Menzies had to take seriously. Evidently Foley had been concerned about the issue for some time, as he urged the Chief to give consideration to the long-term suggestion he had discussed with him shortly before his departure to create a ‘directorate for dealing with personnel and technical matters on a plane commensurate with [the] importance of SIS’.
Gibson, another Service veteran, could write with similar frankness to Menzies, as he did in September 1942 when he reported that Hugessen was trying to bring SIS under strict embassy control. While the ambassador refused to concede that any Service officers could have diplomatic status, he was otherwise prepared to support them on the understanding that SIS was allowed to operate in Turkey only with his consent, and as his ‘guests’, an attitude which clearly irked Gibson. ‘I consider we are here to do a job of work,’ he signalled London, ‘not as members of a house party.’ He ‘deplored the tendency, which seemed pretty general among the British Diplomatic Service, to treat members of the “C” Organisation as poor and rather disreputable relations’. He observed that ‘the war we were fighting was not a kid glove affair and we should take a leaf out of our enemy’s book and cease drawing the line between pure diplomacy and the rougher stuff without which the fight could not continue’. Another of Hugessen’s irritating criticisms was that some members of SIS were not of the right social standing, and he had cited the case of one member who had been given diplomatic status in 1939 and who was subsequently discovered to have been a ‘cabaret keeper’ (‘shades of Curzon!!’ commented Gibson). Hugessen further described SIS as a ‘cancer it was desirable to remove from the diplomatic body’. One SIS colleague found this attitude ‘nauseating’, and felt it disclosed ‘a venomous die-hard’ Diplomatic Service attitude towards SIS under the ‘veneer of professional suavity’. For the Istanbul head of station the main issue was ‘the status and utility of our Service . . . vis-à-vis the Diplomatic service’. Gibson thought Hugessen’s antediluvian attitudes implied that he was more concerned to defend the privileges of diplomats ‘than in helping us to pursue a ruthless war’, and he pressed Menzies to assert the Service’s legitimate role ‘on the highest level’, otherwise ‘the chiefs of our diplomatic service are not likely to change their pusillanimous and peace-time mentality’.8
Another facet of wartime SIS, demonstrating how everyone mucked in, is illustrated by a ‘most secret and confidential - not for publication’ medal citation of 1943 for a woman who had been ‘engaged on the clerical side of intelligence work in a Balkan country on the outbreak of war’. This secretary began to take on ‘direct intelligence work . . . In an atmosphere of accumulated strain as the Nazis