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single piece of Russian Order of Battle information it had received’. But there were also some reservations on the American side. When Ellis went to the USA the same month for talks with General John Magruder, head of the Strategic Services Unit, he learned that some people in Washington objected to ‘having any direct contact with Allied Intelligence Services, on the grounds that they might be tempted to influence U.S. policy by making available information in such a form as to produce that effect’. On the whole, however, these concerns had been overcome, ‘the advantages on technical and practical grounds outweighing the alleged objections raised by the more suspicious and politically-minded members of the committees’. Ellis found, nevertheless, that ‘as a reaction against the rather loose and publicity-minded tendencies of O.S.S., there is an extremely cautious, official atmosphere about S.S.U.’; he put this down to the new staff being ‘New England types who are notoriously not addicted to display or loquacity’. The following month the American Admiral William D. Leahy, President Truman’s personal representative on the National Intelligence Authority (NIA) which had been formed to co-ordinate all federal foreign intelligence activities, came to England and confirmed a keen willingness to continue close Anglo-American intelligence relations. At a meeting with the Director-General of MI5, Sir Percy Sillitoe, Leahy ‘thanked M.I.5 and all British Intelligence Services for their close and, to the United States, very profitable co-operation during the war’, and said that he ‘planned to demand at the next meeting of the NIA that the United States do everything possible to have this cooperation continued’.

From its formation in 1947 the Central Intelligence Agency began to develop increasingly close relations with SIS, a process reinforced by wider liaisons within the Western Alliance, which in turn were influenced by the emerging Cold War with the Soviet Union and its allies. In April 1948, Jack Easton, the Assistant Chief of SIS, visited Washington for three days of discussions with CIA colleagues, covering a wide range of topics, including the handling of defectors, potential deception operations, signals intelligence, special operations and propaganda. Easton explained to the Americans, for example, that the Foreign Office intended to set up a committee to handle propaganda somewhat on the lines of the wartime Political Warfare Executive, and he revealed that SIS had been considering how far ‘black propaganda’ operations could be taken in peacetime without their getting into ‘physical action’. As regards special operations, Easton reported that SIS had taken over ‘a small part of the old SOE’ and was now ‘an integrated organisation for intelligence and special operations’. He urged that SIS and the CIA should keep in touch over special operations in order not to duplicate efforts or cross lines.

At the end of his visit Easton secured CIA agreement to a joint CIA- SIS conference which was held in London six months later, attended by a high-powered team from the CIA, including the Director, Rear Admiral Roscoe Hillenkoetter. Reflecting the very real apprehensions about the likelihood of serious conflict with the Soviet Union, and demonstrating that liaison was not just a theoretical matter, this became known as the London Conference on War Planning, though in fact the topics covered went well beyond those simply connected with open hostilities. Shortly before the conference started Easton gave an oral briefing to SIS staff about the development of SIS’s thinking on co-operation with the Americans, stressing that in a future war the Americans would be ‘in the war from the outset and would be the predominant Allied country’. A shared assumption of the closest possible co-operation underpinned the discussions and much of the conference business was devoted to detailed practical matters, such as joint arrangements for handling tactical intelligence at theatre headquarters level, stay-behind projects, special operations planning,