The Secret History of MI6 - Keith Jeffery [387]
After the affair eventually became public early in 1946 - the Canadians set up a Royal Commission to inquire into the matter, while in England Nunn May was arrested and confessed - Harold Caccia of the Foreign Office, and chairman of the Joint Intelligence Sub-Committee, asked Menzies what, following the revelations of Soviet espionage in Canada, was ‘the possibility of repercussions should Russia endeavour to produce a case against S.I.S., with a view to distracting attention’. Menzies told him that there was ‘no danger whatsoever at present of any charges being made against S.I.S. for activities within the U.S.S.R.’, or Soviet satellite countries, for the simple reason that ‘no widespread British organisation has yet been set up’. He had, ‘of course, individual agents who might conceivably be arrested’, but he regarded those risks ‘as somewhat remote in view of the precautions [unspecified] which have been taken’. He added that he would ‘be failing’ in his duty if he ‘did not encourage the rapid building up of organisations within the satellite countries and where opportunities presented themselves for using these to obtain information from within Russia’. But he added an ‘old French saying - “On peut pas faire le S.R. [Service de renseignements] avec le curé”’. He hoped, moreover, ‘that within a year I shall have a far wider network than exists at present’ and assured Caccia that ‘particular caution’ would be ‘exercised during the next few months’.10
Both in private and in public, the Corby case certainly focused minds on the active Soviet challenge to the Western world. But it also highlighted the real difficulties politicians and officials in Europe and America faced in responding to this evident threat. A vigorous public reaction carried risks of poisoning diplomatic relationships and making ‘peaceful coexistence’ between East and West (if that was the overall aim) even more difficult than it was already. In fact, what Corby did was to confirm for many the role which covert agencies might play in underpinning British and Western interests in the developing Cold War. But the problem, as ever, remained one of not getting found out, and the Foreign Office, in particular, were anxious to keep SIS operations under close scrutiny. Replying to Menzies on 12 March 1946, Caccia noted that while Sir Orme Sargent was glad to know that satellite projects were being examined, he was ‘most anxious that you should not start anything new in these areas without our knowing’, and asked Menzies for ‘some explicit reassurance’ on this matter, ‘owing to the political risks involved’.11
Special operations was another possible approach. Following the absorption of SOE, not only did the postwar Service have an enhanced operational expertise, but the Chiefs of Staff Committee in February 1946 had explicitly given SIS ‘the task of collating, examining and assessing information bearing on future clandestine operations, and the selection of potential objectives for attack by clandestine methods’. In March, just as the Foreign Office was sending a circular telegram informing its representatives that ‘the Secret Service will not undertake any activity other than obtaining intelligence without specific prior approval’, Menzies was forming a planning staff in SIS to prepare outline plans for special operations in foreign countries. Although Foreign Office approval was required for any such operations, during the later 1940s the Service came under intermittent pressure from the armed services to develop this side of things, as illustrated by Field Marshal Montgomery’s brief campaign in 1946 for the Chiefs of Staff to take over SIS. Another