The Secret History of MI6 - Keith Jeffery [275]
SIS’s relations with British diplomats in South America were generally quite good. Early in 1942, reflecting on his three and a half years running the main regional station, Reginald Miller noted that, despite his feeling that ambassadors were ‘inclined to be jealous of their privileges’, he had never ‘had any difficulty’ with them, partly, he thought, ‘because I have adopted a co-operative attitude’. Whenever he was in Buenos Aires the ambassador did ‘not hesitate to discuss with me and often asks my views on any matter of interest’. In Montevideo, moreover, he found that the new ambassador ‘looks upon me almost as his unofficial counsellor’, a state of affairs which had ‘definite advantages for our organisation’. This could have disadvantages, as in Lima, where the SIS representative complained to Miller in May 1940 that the embassy staff had ‘a tendency to look upon him as a local private detective’. But Miller recognised the importance of keeping professional diplomats sweet and in May 1945 reported that Evelyn Shuckburgh, who had been chargé d’affaires in Buenos Aires for over a year, would shortly be in London en route to a new posting in Prague. He was ‘still a young man’ (in his mid-thirties), but ‘an extremely able one, and will I think go a long way in his profession’. As he was ‘most friendlily disposed towards our Organization and even has no little respect for its efficiency’, Miller thought it would be ‘a happy idea for him to have the pleasure of a talk with somebody at H.Q.’. This suggestion may not have been entirely disinterested as when ‘P.12’ did see him in July Shuckburgh ‘expressed great appreciation for the work of 75000’. But Miller’s prediction was sound, as Shuckburgh (later Sir Evelyn) continued on a distinguished Foreign Office career, serving as the Foreign Secretary’s principal private secretary in the early 1950s and later as ambassador to Italy.
British diplomats in the region were not averse to doing a bit of espionage on their own account, as Henry Higman discovered when he arrived in Chile in July 1941. So far as the entire British mission in Santiago was concerned, ‘secret intelligence’, he reported, was regarded as ‘just everybody’s business’. The existing head agent (theoretically being run by Miller in Montevideo) was not very good, with the result that the naval attaché had effectively become the SIS representative, and had developed a network of agents of his own. Higman rightly felt that combining covert work of this sort with conventional attaché duties was extremely risky, but was faced with the ‘very real’ difficulty that his colleague was ‘now so mixed up with and enthusiastic about “C” [secret service work] that he may feel sore if he feels that he is not being kept fully conversant with future developments’. The first secretary, furthermore, was operating an extensive intelligence-gathering operation which Higman was ‘supposed [to] take over as a going concern’. This included ‘running, and contacting quite openly – or at least with the most rudimentary precautions for security – a number of very doubtful foreign agents’, and, worst of all, an elaborate telephone-tapping operation actually located in the British embassy itself. Higman was told that tapping the phone of a German-owned bank had produced ‘most valuable’ economic intelligence, but he was extremely concerned about the extent to which the position and security of the embassy had already been compromised.
Higman set to work sorting out the SIS operation in Chile, laying off some of the unsatisfactory agents he had inherited, who included a ‘French morphine addict’ claiming close contact