The Secret History of MI6 - Keith Jeffery [397]
Another aborted operation in 1948-9 also involved a pilot, in this case a Serb who had flown for the RAF during the war. A committed anti-Communist, he had gone to Greece in 1945 and in September 1948 was working as a labourer north of the Greek capital. The head of station in Athens spotted him as a possible agent, and after both London and the SIS station in Belgrade reported ‘no trace’ against his name, he approached him and ascertained that he was ‘willing to go as resident agent to obtain information from areas north and east of Belgrade’, as well as in the Niš area further south. Subject to ‘thorough training’, Athens thought he would make ‘a potentially useful head-agent’ for Yugoslavia. The man was taken on, and London and Athens began to think about whether he should be infiltrated by sea, or overland from either Greece or Trieste. He underwent an intensive training course (including radio communications) through the winter and spring of 1948-9. All was going well when the agent ‘developed very sudden and serious tuberculosis’ and was hospitalised in August 1949; the operation was cancelled. A third operation, code-named ‘Contemplate’, which involved close liaison with the Greek air force and the acquisition of photographic intelligence across the frontier with Albania, Yugoslavia and Bulgaria by using a specially equipped Spitfire aircraft, had temporarily to be abandoned when a Greek minister vetoed the project.
But there were successes, too. Reviewing work in the spring of 1949, albeit not long before the rebel surrender, Athens reported extensive coverage of the Communist movement through a network code-named ‘Damocles’, which included intelligence provided by some very highly placed agents. There was also a Macedonian hashish smuggler who toured southern Yugoslavia collecting military and economic intelligence (mostly troop dispositions and railway information) which London assessed as ‘of a fair quality’. He went across the frontier about once every three weeks and was paid £10 for each report he delivered to a local head agent who in turn was paid £10 a month as a retainer. London thought that ‘for the risks being run and for the results achieved, expenditure is remarkably low’, and, since the Macedonian was the only contact regularly reporting from the area, gave their approval for Athens to continue paying the two men. In the north-east of Greece, the Athens station had also managed to assemble ‘an undoubtedly brave and determined team’ of anti-Communists who crossed into Bulgaria in March and April 1949 and reported back on troop deployments and Bulgarian support for Greek Communist rebels. By the close of the year, however, with the end of the Greek civil war, SIS acknowledged ‘that our customers do not seem to be particularly interested in south Bulgaria any longer’. Thus the ‘efforts and risks’ of penetrating the region might be ‘hardly worth while’ in the future.
France and Spain
In October 1944, when Menzies told Cadogan that the battle for France was ‘over’ and that he wanted the Foreign Office to lift the ban on the penetration of France which had been imposed before the outbreak of war, he initiated an illuminating discussion about the appropriateness (or otherwise) of spying against friendly states and allies. Richard Speaight in the Foreign Office wanted to continue ‘indefinitely’ the ban on SIS working in France except in co-operation with the French authorities. He pointed out that it was government policy to cultivate the closest possible relations with France and ‘we regard Anglo-French solidarity as one of the chief bulwarks of our future security