The Secret History of MI6 - Keith Jeffery [295]
On 23 August Menzies raised the role of SIS with Alexander. The ‘original intention’ was that it ‘might be useful for providing tactical information by sending Agents through the line’, but this had not happened and Menzies’s opinion now was ‘that proper S.I.S. function is the provision of Intelligence on a long term basis provided by agents working on the enemy’s lines of communications’. Alexander agreed. ‘Up to present in Sicily’, he cabled on 29 August, ‘S.I.S. unit has not been able to provide any reports of tactical importance and in my opinion it is not likely that they will be able to do so in future except in the case of prolonged static conditions.’ He recommended, therefore, that SIS units be ‘retained under centralised control for work of strategical interest’.
After Allied forces had landed on the Italian mainland at Reggio and Salerno, and Marshal Badoglio’s government (which had ousted Mussolini in July) capitulated on 8 September 1943, hopes were high that the Germans might withdraw, at least to the north of the country. But the German commander, Field Marshal Kesselring, resolved to resist, and the Italian campaign became a costly slogging match as the Allied armies inched their way up the peninsula from late 1943 and through the following year. During this campaign SIS, in addition to developing its own organisation in Italy, ran a second set-up in conjunction with the Italian secret service, SIM (Servizio Informazione Militare), now working for the Allied cause. One early, and perhaps disturbing, result of this was the news from SIM officers in October that their cryptographic section had previously broken the ‘diplomatic cyphers’ of United States military attachés, the ‘Russian confidential cypher’, and those of Turkey, Yugoslavia, Greece, Portugal, Egypt, Brazil and Belgium. The results had been ‘passed to Germans and Hungarians’ who could ‘now presumably decypher all above cyphers’.
In October 1943 Bruce Lockhart was posted to take charge of No. 1 Intelligence Unit, by this time based at Bari on the southern Adriatic coast of Italy. He found the unit in bad shape. Agent recruitment, training and security were all very lax, and he reported (in a letter which Bowlby described as ‘helpful and honest . . . a rare combination in this racket!’) that it was ‘common gossip among the rougher element in the town that I.S.L.D. is the easiest way of making soft money (what A.C.F. [the African Coastal Flotilla which provided sea operations support] refer to as “our repatriation scheme”)’. Bruce Lockhart rapidly began to sort out the unit and build it up into a very efficient operation, assisted by ‘five or six SIS pre-war secretaries . . . who were absolutely first-class’. He was notably good at managing the personnel under his command, and keenly aware that sustained hard work had to be balanced with moments of recreation, as illustrated by one response to a request for equipment. ‘Hope to have a rugger ball for you shortly,’ signalled London, ‘and some tennis balls. Please remember these are not easily come by. We do our best.’17
Under Bruce Lockhart’s command Bari became the base for SIS operations, first into German-occupied northern Italy, and then also into the Balkans and Central Europe. From late 1943 various schemes were mooted for the penetration of ‘southern Germany’, effectively,