The Secret History of MI6 - Keith Jeffery [359]
Peter Loxley sent a draft copy of the report to Menzies, who said that he was ‘in general agreement with the main recommendations’. It was clear (and no doubt comforting to Menzies) that the committee counted ‘on the organisation of an S.I.S. of far greater efficiency in the Peace era than it was possible to create before the War’. Finance was obviously fundamental, and, allowing for as much spending as possible being provided on Open Votes, Menzies hazarded that ‘an effective Foreign S.I.S. should be maintained for under 1 million per annum’. He disagreed with the proposal to appoint ‘senior service advisers’, who, he reckoned, would lack ‘sufficient practical experience of S.I.S. work to enable them to accept extensive executive responsibility’. Liaison with the service ministries was much better secured by the Service Circulating officers – ‘in constant liaison with the individual sections of the Service Department concerned’ - assisted by able junior active service officers, seconded to SIS for two or, preferably, three years. Menzies noted the long-term nature of counter-espionage and asserted that funds should be provided for it. He agreed that ‘the C.E. budget must be reduced very materially below its wartime level’, but warned against doing this too drastically. With an apt allusion, he observed that ‘a counter-espionage service cannot be built up between a Munich and a declaration of war’.
Menzies agreed that there should be a separate inquiry into MI5. The present position was ‘not satisfactory’ and steps should be taken to eliminate ‘the present duplication of records and of research even though complete amalgamation of effort may prove to be neither practicable nor desirable’. Menzies, indeed, was fiercely anxious to maintain SIS’s monopoly of foreign intelligence-gathering and he strongly deprecated as ‘highly detrimental’ any proposal ‘which permitted M.I.5 to run a foreign Intelligence Service in any country parallel to, or in competition with, S.I.S.’. As for SIS’s relationship with GC&CS, Menzies said he was not yet in a position to offer firm advice, as this would have to await the conclusion of ‘a far reaching investigation’ which he had ordered about the future of signals intelligence work.15
One part of the report which particularly exercised Menzies was the specific injunction that SIS’s counter-espionage section ‘should not direct its energy to investigating the activities of political organisations, e.g. Communists, Anarchists, &c.’. This, he argued, ran ‘directly counter’ to what he had ‘thought to be the Foreign Office wishes in this matter’. He noted that the ‘Foreign Office desiderata in regard to Europe’ (provided in an appendix to the report) included as the first priority to watch for any revived ‘attempts by Germany to spread her influence in other countries’, and second ‘to observe Russian activities . . . and the activities of national parties or groups in different countries who look to Moscow for leadership or support’. Menzies added that in October 1943 SIS had been ‘expressly encouraged to build up an organisation’ to deal with ‘this type of work’ (hence the creation of Section IX). ‘In general,’ Loxley himself had written, ‘we can count on the N.K.V.D. and other Soviet organisations pursuing covert aims and activities in contradiction to the overt policy of the Soviet Government, but with the latter’s blessing.’ These activities, he added with a nice touch of ironic understatement, ‘are not likely to be for our benefit’. It was ‘only common prudence to learn as much as is possible about these aims and activities’, and it should be possible to do so without running