The Secret History of MI6 - Keith Jeffery [398]
This was the classic sceptical diplomat’s dismissal of the role of secret intelligence. Cavendish-Bentinck could not have disagreed more. ‘We have suffered during this war from bans on carrying out S.I.S. work in certain countries,’ he began. This included Italy in the early 1930s. As for France, ‘during the two years prior to the outbreak of war, we were lamentably badly informed’. (‘Yes, indeed,’ minuted Cadogan by this statement.) ‘We should have known . . . that the French Army was not going to be our bulwark,’ continued Cavendish-Bentinck. He argued that ‘in a couple of years time, if not sooner’, the French might become ‘extremely nationalistic and xenophobe, with the result that those who are really in the know will not be chattering to foreigners as freely as has been done in the past’. Since he believed that ‘first class sources in foreign countries cannot be created at short notice’, but required ‘careful and prolonged cultivation’, Cavendish-Bentinck thought that Menzies should ‘think out very carefully a plan of S.I.S. operations in France’ and submit it to the JIC, who could ‘then consider whether the ban on secret service operations in France can be raised’.17
Peter Loxley thought similarly and reminded colleagues that as part of the Bland Report the Foreign Office had given Menzies a list of post-war tasks, including, for France, ‘in general any French groups whose sympathies incline them towards Germany’; ‘hidden Russian activities’ in France; and ‘any French groups or parties of totalitarian tendencies’. ‘We cannot have it both ways,’ he added; ‘if we want “C” to provide us with first class information from France, we must allow him to operate more or less freely there. If, on the other hand, Mr. Speaight’s view is approved, then we must in fairness cancel our existing directive to “C”.’ Although he wanted to modify the prewar ban on operations in France, Loxley nevertheless conceded ‘that in the interests of our relations with the French authorities we must walk carefully’ and that Cadogan should see SIS’s general plans before they were put into operation. Cadogan agreed and wrote to Menzies along these lines.
A few days later Loxley discussed the matter with the British ambassador in Paris, Duff Cooper, who assumed that SIS would have a representative working in France with the Deuxième Bureau. Should, however, SIS wish to conduct any secret operations in France without the knowledge of the French authorities, Duff Cooper thought that he had better not know anything about it, to which Cadogan minuted in the margin ‘Yes’. In February 1945, nevertheless, when Menzies sent A. J. ‘Freddie’ Ayer, the Oxford philosopher who had been working for SOE in New York and France, to Paris, Duff Cooper was informed about it. Ayer’s job, for which he had embassy cover, was not to run operations but, in a ‘purely preparatory and exploratory role’, to establish contacts who could be exploited by SIS in the future. Reflecting on the arrangement after Ayer had returned to London in October 1945, Duff Cooper wrote to Cadogan to say he was not sure if he wanted to ‘repeat the experiment’. He was ‘averse to having as a member of my staff, working in the embassy, someone of whose activities I know nothing and over whose movements I have no control’. Rehearsing all-too-familiar ambassadorial attitudes of a sort which had strained relations in the past, he also wanted to ‘draw a very rigid line’ between ‘the activities of the diplomatic service and those of the secret service’. ‘A