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into hostile territory. In January 1948 the problem of throwing tracking dogs off the scent was being addressed, and tests conducted with different substances, including osmic acid which had ‘the power to destroy the sense of smell for about a fortnight and if its effect is to thoroughly bewilder the dog for even one day we shall have achieved something’. The following year a detailed report was produced on air-supply operations, clearly drawing on wartime experience, and some ‘notes on dogs’ indicated how far research had gone on this topic. Aniseed had been suggested for putting off tracker dogs. ‘Everyone whom we thought knowledgeable on this subject’ had declared that ‘a dog could not resist aniseed’, but ‘when we tried it we found dogs “couldn’t care less” about aniseed or any other nice thing’ if they had ‘been trained to indicate man scent’. Someone had proposed that ‘bear fat or cheetah fat’ would awaken ‘atavistic memories’ in a dog ‘and he will run from these substances. We doubt it, and not without reason. During the last war a piece of bear fat was obtained and offered to a dog. It was eaten faster than a week’s meat ration.’ Another approach was to mask human scent and experiments were being planned with deodorants, though this was thought to be no more than ‘chancy’, since to neutralise human scent a heavy concentration of the substance would be required which did ‘not seem practicable under operational conditions’.

A ‘Development Progress Report’ for December 1949 further illustrates the range of work being done at the time and the extent to which SIS liaised with other government departments on technical matters. An investigation into the use of helicopters had been started with the RAF’s Transport Command Development Unit and a prototype compass for use in folding canvas boats had been ‘tried satisfactorily by Admiralty departments’. The War Dog School in Germany was working on the problem of evading tracking dogs, and a request for a ‘full investigation’ on ‘the use of hypnotism and/or drugs during briefing and interrogation’ had been placed with the RAF Medical Services Directorate, who were also being asked to study ‘the uses of plastic lenses as a method of simulating severe cataract of the eyes so as to avoid conscription for forced labour’. A remote ‘train count device’ was being given preliminary testing by the back-room specialists before SIS subjected it to field trials. Andrew King, the Controller Eastern Area (created in May 1947 to cover Germany, Austria and Switzerland), had ‘submitted a requirement for drugged cigarettes’ and it had been established that ‘cocaine was the only likely drug . . . which would produce the effect desired’. But it had ‘been impossible to obtain a sufficient quantity of cocaine in this country’ to manufacture enough cigarettes. An investigation on the ‘use of biological and chemical warfare agents by saboteurs’ had been referred to the Microbiological Research Centre at Porton Down, who had replied that biological warfare agents were ‘not sufficiently specific in their action to make possible their use by saboteurs’.

Meanwhile, the problem of destroying paper had been ‘satisfactorily solved’. The original aim of destroying a filing cabinet full of files proved to be so difficult that the technicians ‘asked for a review of the absolute minimum of documents that could be held, and finally got an agreement that code books and three top secret files would suffice’. This had a total weight of nine pounds of paper ‘when the hard covers of the code books were removed’. With this new target, progress was rapid and, ‘under laboratory conditions’, by interleaving the documents ‘with oxygen carrying material’, they succeeded in destroying the lot in less than two minutes. The next stage was ‘to mock up a safe to see if the paper could still be destroyed under rigid security conditions’. About forty spectators assembled for an outdoor trial which went spectacularly well, as one account testified: ‘For perhaps fifteen seconds after initiation there was no appreciable change other