The Secret History of MI6 - Keith Jeffery [274]
After Pearl Harbor there was an intensification of intelligence interest in the Argentine and Chile. It was thought they would ‘offer better opportunities’ than other South American countries since they were the only ones that maintained diplomatic relations with Axis Powers. In February 1942 the Air Ministry supplied a questionnaire on the Japanese aircraft industry; the War Office wanted any travellers coming from Japan to be quizzed about troop sightings (‘Did you observe at ports or there [sic] vicinity troops in tropical kit, also tanks?’); SIS’s Economic Section wanted general information about Japanese industry and the supply of strategic commodities, as well as any ‘expedients adopted by enemy concerns to elude our and American economic control’; while the counter-espionage Section V wanted ‘detailed information’ regarding ‘Japanese, German and Italian espionage organisations, and on their use of neutral diplomatic communications, particularly Spanish bags’. Undoubtedly reflecting SIS’s own activities, Section V insisted that ‘the influence of axis organisations on local police forces must be constantly watched’ and also raised the possibility of ‘the use of bribery in high places’.
In March 1942, arguing that ‘Argentine is assuming increased importance, not so much for fear of axis internal coups but because she is almost only remaining country where enemy agents can operate with comparative freedom’, Miller asked for an additional £885 a month to investigate Japanese activities there. When questions were raised in London about the cost, Taylor defended Miller by noting that ‘Japanese activities’ could ‘include all sorts of things’, such as ‘establishing naval bases for raiders’, and that, in any case, ‘75000 is an experienced representative and I think time has shown that we may trust him to spend money wisely.’ A year later Miller re-emphasised the importance of work in the Argentine, ‘the one remaining free territory for enemy activities in this hemisphere’. The enemy, moreover, were ‘well entrenched, spend lavishly, and have many years start on us’. He also warned about conceding influence in the region to the Americans, and was ‘more convinced than ever that so far as this country [the United Kingdom] is concerned, grouping of the whole of this Continent, regardless of race or prejudice, as a 48-land [USA] sphere of influence in which we are only secondarily interested’ was ‘to build up a policy on a false thesis. We have had’, he continued, ‘and we still have influence in this country’ which ‘we cannot transfer to our 48-land Allies even if we could’.
Another of Miller’s tasks was making clandestine acquisitions for the British Purchasing Commission in New York. Among the highest-priority Ministry of Supply requirements were metric machine-tool parts, essential, for example, for the manufacture of Bofors anti-aircraft guns. These could be obtained only from ‘machine and tool makers’ in Switzerland, who needed German transit permits before the goods could be exported. SIS in Montevideo, therefore, was endeavouring to secure them ‘through Argentine “cloak” firms’. Miller also obtained other items, such as watches and diamonds, more straightforwardly from smugglers. When in April 1942 he asked for additional staff to help make these acquisitions, London queried whether SIS should be doing this at all. Conceding that the work was ‘of great importance to the war effort’, Valentine Vivian argued that it still ‘didn’t alter the fact that it is well outside our charter’. ‘Is it sound’, he asked, ‘from the S.I.S. viewpoint