The Secret History of MI6 - Keith Jeffery [361]
The final version of the Bland Report was printed, and circulated to a very limited number of people, in December 1944. The service ministries were not slow in responding. Indeed, the Chiefs of Staff had evidently already got wind of the proposal to wind up SOE and maintain only a small special operations section within SIS after the war. Towards the end of November, clearly hoping that this was not a fait accompli, they expressed reservations about it to the Prime Minister. Edward Beddington (the Army Deputy Director) and Lionel Payne (Air), whose opinions had been canvassed by Peter Loxley during the writing of the report, both broadly concurred in its conclusions and strongly supported the importance of having senior service representation at the existing Deputy Director level in SIS. The service Directors of Intelligence were less unanimously accommodating about the report, however. While the Director of Military Intelligence (DMI), John ‘Sinbad’ Sinclair, thought that ‘the question of senior Service representation to the SIS’ was ‘of utmost importance’, filling the post was a difficult exercise. The army, he maintained, would be most unlikely ‘to appoint a first-class officer . . . to an appointment which is so completely out of the normal run of Army work. Still less are they likely to do so if the appointment is in no way executive.’ One possibility was that the post be abolished and the responsibilities taken on by the DMI or his deputy. The Director of Naval Intelligence (DNI), Edmund Rushbrooke, was more blunt. The appointment of naval representatives had ‘been tried and failed dismally’. Officers selected ‘either had nothing to do, having no executive authority, or else were absorbed into the S.I.S. organisation and ceased to be Service representatives’. Rushbrooke argued that the service Directors of Intelligence could quite well ‘protect S.I.S. from unreasonable requests’, and he suggested that ‘C’ himself could appoint three senior SIS officers, who had been members of the fighting services, to administer the work of their respective arms.21
There was disagreement among the services about the future of SOE. While for the navy Rushbrooke strongly concurred ‘that S.I.S. should absorb S.O.E. after the war and that a separate S.O.E. should never be revived’, Sinclair, reflecting the army’s more particular interest in SOE’s expertise, wanted the matter put before another committee ‘to consider the control of all secret organisations’. Sinclair’s views generally about the future organisation of SIS are of particular interest, as in September 1945 he transferred into the Service as Vice Chief and succeeded Menzies as Chief in 1952. Again clearly at this stage reflecting the War Office view, Sinclair asserted that it was ‘completely unacceptable that cover for SIS representatives should be provided by appointment as Assistant Military Attache’, and he suggested that the Ministry of Defence (rather than the Foreign Office) should assume overall responsibility for the Service. Sinclair was agnostic about the future relationship between SIS and the Code and Cypher School. He conceded that ‘it may be desirable that both organizations should be under the same Chief ’, and allowed that this was ‘essential while the present “C” continues in office’. Sinclair also commented on the question of recruitment (which was to be a major concern of his after he joined SIS). ‘The Committee’, he wrote, had ‘not mentioned that the war expansion of SIS took place at a very late date. In consequence many desirable recruits were already employed by the Forces, SOE, MEW, etc.’ He therefore recommended that ‘one senior member of SIS’ should be specially responsible for this matter, and ‘maintain and revise annually lists of suitable recruits’.22
One aspect on which the service Directors agreed was the future importance of scientific and technical intelligence. Edmund Rushbrooke observed that weapons