The Secret History of MI6 - Keith Jeffery [377]
Nevertheless, while the Service remained officially unacknowledged, the recruiters had to continue to dissemble as plausibly as they could. Different candidates were told different things, none of which was very convincing, for example that it was a department ‘in close touch with the other fighting services’, or that it was ‘a civil department which works abroad . . . under the general administration of the Foreign Office’, but which had come into being ‘as a result of the Ministry of Defence’. One successful candidate reported the problem of reconciling the selection procedure (which he naturally reported to his immediate family) with his eventual cover. The first letter he received had been from the ‘Government Communications Bureau’ (which cover name an SIS conference in February 1946 viewed as ‘blown and unsuitable under new peace time conditions’). The presence of armed forces officers on his interview board made it difficult to reconcile with the work being connected with the Foreign Office. ‘Only at the last stage (after signing on)’, he wrote, ‘is the candidate told the full truth,’ and what ‘lie (cover)’ he should tell for external consumption. ‘In the meantime a suspicious (and dangerously accurate) idea gets about.’ When his actual cover was eventually ‘trotted out’, the effect was embarrassing: ‘Why all the elaborate selection procedure for a [mere] Passport Examiner (my cover)?’ It was, he added, ‘difficult to fool an intelligent questioner’.
Conditions of service were also modernised. In came a grading structure, comparatively generous rates of pay (‘below the scale of average industrial remunerations and slightly above those of the Foreign Office’ – though equal rates of pay for men and women had to wait for some years yet), and an internal provident fund. In 1946 supplementary payments were introduced for language proficiency. Out went tax-free salaries determined by the Chief in the light of an individual’s private income and armed forces pension (if any), and not to be discussed with anyone else. The Bland Report had also recommended the establishment of a proper pensions scheme linked to salary and length of service, but this was more problematic. Since 1943 SIS employees who reached sixty could receive a pension, but this was paid on an ad hoc basis out of the Secret Vote. In 1946 the Treasury considered, briefly, introducing a superannuation fund on the civil service model (on the grounds that ‘we are, in effect, committing the Exchequer to a future pension liability of which Parliament has not been given any intimation’). The difficulties of managing such a scheme while maintaining secrecy were thought too great, however, and Sir Edward Bridges ruled in October 1946 that ‘we should go on as at present and take the risks there may be in finding these pensions as they arise from the current S.S. vote’.22
Bringing SIS into line with other parts of government and armed services was the introduction in 1946 of annual reports for officers, including such matters as ‘general conduct’ (‘Of temperate habit: Yes or No?’); professional and intellectual ability; language qualifications; and ‘Whether recommended for promotion’. The Service also began to think about the welfare of its