The Secret History of MI6 - Keith Jeffery [355]
Bland concluded that the best prospects would come from ‘the creation of small businesses which would in fact be solely run in the interests of the S.I.S.’; the recruitment of established British businessmen who ran their own private concerns and would ‘have no-one to fear in the shape of a board of directors in London’; and ‘the obtaining of cover from semi-national and often non-profit making British institutions with offices in foreign countries’. These could include British railway companies or the British Overseas Airways Corporation. Another possibility was the British Council, though it was somewhat grumpily noted that the Council had ‘never been ready in the past to lend the smallest assistance to the S.I.S.’.
As for official cover, which hitherto had in some cases been highly problematic, the committee had ‘no hesitation in recommending that, in the absence of very strong reasons to the contrary’, the Foreign Office should accommodate SIS personnel, though not necessarily with diplomatic or consular rank. ‘The advantages of obscurity’, they noted, ‘may often outweigh those of official standing.’ No single title, moreover, should be reserved for SIS representatives, and ‘it would seem desirable to ring the changes and to use as well, according to circumstances, such titles as Assistant Naval, Military or Air Attaché or Assistant Commercial Secretary. We note’, continued the report dryly, ‘that consumer Departments are always eager to receive high-grade secret intelligence, but that they are apt to show much less enthusiasm when they are asked to lend S.I.S. representatives the cover of their name.’ Whatever cover was adopted, Bland was sure that the SIS representative should live up to it: ‘If he has business cover, he must genuinely do business. If he is the Assistant Commercial Secretary or is a member of a Consulate, he must perform a sufficient amount of commercial or consular work, not only to deceive the natives of the country but also to sustain his apparent rôle among his colleagues at the Mission.’ The committee also reiterated the practice that SIS representatives attached to British missions ‘should not work against the country in which they are stationed without the prior knowledge and consent of the Foreign Office’. In the past, they noted, this ‘used to be a firm rule’, but during the war there had ‘been a considerable relaxation of standards and in neutral countries the rule is probably now as much honoured in the breach as in the observance’.
One area where this rule could be modified was counter-espionage, which the committee thought in foreign countries ‘need seldom be in any way compromising’. SIS representatives in this field would ‘be openly known to the police and the deuxième bureau of the country concerned, and will in many cases be actively collaborating with them’. These representatives, moreover, could safely retain the title of Passport Control Officer which almost all SIS personnel abroad had used before the war. ‘This fact’, remarked the report, ‘became so widely known that little extra harm would have been done by affixing a brass plate “British Secret Service” to the door of their office.’ There was even some advantage to using the PCO designation since ‘if all C.’s counter-espionage representatives bear this title and none of his other representatives do, it should furthermore act as a red herring to draw away to the former, who do nothing compromising, the attention of foreign police authorities which should really be devoted to the latter. Indeed, it is arguable that the more that C.’s counter-espionage representatives are really thought to be gatherers of secret intelligence,