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Foreign Office control. At the time it is evident that SOE themselves did not necessarily accept this as a final decision, and they certainly envisaged a long-term postwar presence in former enemy-occupied countries (a role which they proposed to the Chiefs of Staff Committee in May 1945).13 But a different view was taken elsewhere. In April 1944 Bill Cavendish-Bentinck wrote that he could not ‘believe that anybody in their senses and outside S.O.E. seriously contemplates that organisation continuing after the war separate from the S.I.S. and not firmly under F.O. control’. In June, when Rex Leeper, British ambassador to the Greek government, raised with Peter Loxley the question of SOE having any potential postwar role in the Balkans (to which Leeper was vehemently opposed), Loxley told him about the Bland committee and added that it was considering ‘a variety of matters of mutual interest to the Foreign Office and my friends [SIS] in the postwar world’. ‘Between ourselves,’ he told Leeper, ‘we shall almost certainly recommend that, if and when any organisation for covert action is required, it should be made part of my friends’ organisation and should on no account be a separate body.’ Implying that this effectively was a Foreign Office stitch-up, Loxley asked Leeper to ‘keep all the foregoing to yourself, especially the part about the Bland Committee, as S.O.E. are not in on this at all’.14

Bland did not by any means dismiss the entire idea of special operations, merely noting the unlikelihood of there being much call for them after the war. In notably cautious and conditional terms the committee thought, however, that it would be a ‘mistake to abandon the principle that in almost any foreign country occasions may arise when it may be useful for His Majesty’s Government to resort to bribery, &c., for the furtherance of their foreign policy (this in contrast to the strict S.I.S. practice of only paying money for the collection of intelligence)’. The committee thought that SIS should establish a small department to preserve and develop expertise in this field (including ‘deception’) and prepare specifically for ‘secret action in time of war’. The Foreign Office view was that the Middle East was the only region where such action was likely to be necessary in the foreseeable future. Various British agencies had for years paid ‘subsidies’ to regional leaders, but the committee also thought that an independent organisation might be necessary to run ‘news agencies, broadcasting stations, &c., which, while appearing to be Arab controlled, are in fact vehicles for the dissemination of the British point of view’. Bland considered a further variety of special operations, including ‘the employment of private individuals to work on political parties, specialised groups, &c., in foreign countries with whom they might have some influence’. It was suggested that there might be elements – such as ‘opposition parties, minority groups, press, labour, business or ecclesiastical organisations’ – with which ‘Englishmen of standing in different walks of life’ might be able to form closer and better contacts than could British diplomats. While this kind of activity – ‘the exercise of persuasion and influence by private persons’ – might not necessarily be particularly compromising to the British government, the committee delicately noted that it might not ‘seem desirable that there should be too obvious a connection between the Foreign Office and private individuals’. Although not expressing ‘a view on the merits of the proposal’, the committee thought that it would ‘in practice prove desirable to entrust the task to C.’.

Consideration of special operations naturally brought the committee to the technical aspects of secret work. It was accepted that the large wireless communications section which had grown up during the war would be very substantially reduced. Menzies told the committee that he thought it ‘most unlikely that in peace-time’ it would be necessary to provide agents with their own wireless sets. Assuming that the Foreign Office