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By Root 2869 0

long spells in Balkan railway sidings. Their luggage, too, was stolen at Domodossola in northern Italy. In Sofia Brooks had diplomatic cover and the British minister, John Sterndale Bennett, insisted that he spent most of his time on Chancery work, leaving little enough opportunity for him to develop the SIS duties he had been sent out to perform. Sterndale Bennett, in fact, was so nervous about the possibility of his mission being compromised by SIS activity that he strictly limited what Brooks could do even covertly. While claiming to appreciate his difficulties, in July Head Office urged Brooks to ascertain if there were any British residents in Bulgaria who could be taken on as Unofficial Assistants. ‘In the circumstances,’ cabled London, ‘we would consider even an indifferent Briton far better than any Bulgarian, however able and well-placed.’ If there were no suitable Britons, perhaps he could investigate French or Swiss possibilities, who would not be ‘suitable for building up any very long-term projects’ but ‘might be valuable in tiding over your present difficulties’.

A review of Sofia’s production from June to October 1947 showed that Brooks had only nine main sources in Bulgaria, three of whom were British. There were two lawyers, an engineer and a Bulgarian Jew, ‘not heard of recently’. Another source had ‘faded into oblivion’. Over five months Brooks had supplied some fifty reports, of which London considered thirty-nine were good enough to circulate. But only four reports had been graded ‘A’ for quality, and two of these had come from the British Military Mission in the country. This was thin enough, and Brooks was becoming increasingly frustrated, but in October Sterndale Bennett ordered him to cease SIS activity altogether, claiming that during a recent visit to London Menzies had agreed to this. Although Brooks presumed that this ‘was a misunderstanding’, he had to comply all the same. In January 1948 he reported that he had studied all possible Unofficial Assistants or cut-outs among friendly nationals with the dispiriting result that only three individuals seemed remotely suitable: a Bulgarian (who could, however, be an agent provocateur) and two Americans who ‘were the most terrible social gossips which, to my mind, is the greater danger’.

Matters did not improve during 1948. In May Brooks returned to London to discuss the position in Sofia. Aubrey Halford from the Foreign Office confirmed Bevin’s wish that ‘every effort was to be made to penetrate the Iron Curtain’, and that ‘pressure would now be brought to bear’ on Sterndale Bennett to lift his ban on SIS activity. Although this had the desired effect, Brooks reported in July that in practice ‘all normal processes for collecting intelligence are barred’. The Bulgarians had begun to put great pressure on both the United States and British missions. A junior member of the American legation had been caught red-handed giving money to a Bulgarian for information, and a clerk of Bulgarian origin at the British legation evaded a similar fate after a car chase through the streets of Sofia and was later expelled by the Bulgarians, accused of spying. Brooks reported that there were no Britons available to be Unofficial Assistants and he had also drawn a blank regarding ‘friendly foreigners’. He painted a ‘dismal picture’ of the increasingly stringent surveillance imposed by the Bulgarian authorities. At the present time he thought the activities of his station could ‘never hope to get beyond the following: the reporting of overt information; reporting of rumour and gossip, and items from personal observation’. Falling back on his wartime SOE experience, he could also prepare special operations plans, ‘selecting landing grounds and dropping zones’, and scouting locations for caches of wireless sets and other stores. Finally, he also thought he might be able to assist other stations ‘by posting letters inside iron curtain and delivering supplies to agents by means of dead letter boxes’.

Even this was optimistic. Paul Mason, who succeeded Sterndale Bennett as