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By Root 2683 0

Counter-intelligence was the responsibility of Security Intelligence Middle East (SIME) which had an analogous role within Middle East Command to that of MI5 at home, primarily responsible for protecting British secrets from the enemy. An SIS representative was attached to SIME and, on the whole, excellent relations were maintained between the two organisations, producing highly satisfactory results in the field of counter-intelligence in general and of double agents and deception in particular. SIS and SIME combined with Dudley Clarke’s A Force (responsible for theatre deception operations) in a Special Section formed on 30 March 1942, principally to co-ordinate double-agent operations. Having much the same function as the XX Committee in London, in order to go one better it was locally known as the XXX Committee. The main source of counter-intelligence information, as elsewhere in the war, was GC&CS, whose material (code-named ‘ISOS’ - ‘Intelligence Service Oliver Strachey’, after a senior member of the Bletchley Park staff) was received and distributed by the local SIS signals organisation under Major Rodney Dennys, appointed Section V representative in Cairo in November 1941. In contrast to the high-level skirmishings which sometimes broke out in London between Valentine Vivian of SIS and Sir David Petrie of MI5, Dennys recalled that relations between SIS, SIME and A Force were ‘close and cordial, because the officers concerned liked and respected each other. Outside regular office meetings, we usually met for a drink or a meal at least once a week, where ideas could be floated or kinks ironed out.’ The ‘“severe formalism” of inter-departmental relations in London’, he wrote, ‘found no echo in Cairo’.12

Up to the summer of 1942 the record of SIS in the Eastern Mediterranean and North Africa was decidedly patchy, as it was for British and Commonwealth forces generally. But the elements for success were gradually falling into place. Those SIS representatives who survived in post, having had to cope with almost continuous retreat in the opening war years, became battle-hardened and, with hard-won experience, were gradually able to take stock and begin to establish productive agent networks in enemy-occupied territory. The extraordinary breakthroughs in signals intelligence, moreover, transformed the intelligence situation in a whole range of areas, especially that of counter-intelligence and deception. Furthermore, the entry into the war of the Soviet Union in June, and of the USA in December 1941, massively boosted the Allied cause. All this contributed to the successful battle of El Alamein in October 1942 which finally turned the tide in the theatre, and laid the basis for the expulsion of Axis forces from North Africa by the early summer of 1943.

Syria, Iraq and Iran

The liaisons with French intelligence colleagues in the Middle East which John Shelley made when he toured the region in early 1940 promised much. Some records from June 1940 indicate the sort of operation which was contemplated. On 4 June Shelley reported from Cairo that the senior French intelligence officer Gustave Bertrand had told him that the chauffeur of the Italian ambassador to Iran, who regularly carried Italian and German mail between Tehran and Baghdad, was in French pay ‘and will deliver mails at agreed place if a mock bandit ?attack made on car. He adds that Italian soldiers accompanying car would have to be over powered. Asks whether we can arrange.’ Shelley added a warning from Petrie that in any such operation ‘there must be no risk of bungling which would compromise British Government’. Shelley doubted ‘if we yet have adequate organisation’, and added his own opinion that ‘drugging Italian soldier and changing bag much simpler operation with far fewer complications. Better still if we could open, photograph and re-seal [bag] and thus be able to repeat operation.’ In London Bowlby rejected ‘any attempt at banditry’, as it would be bound to invite retaliation and would inevitably be blamed on the British government. Shelley’s suggestion,