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common training and how to deal ‘with the French in peace and war’. It was hoped that this potentially fraught matter of relations with the French (if the experience of the Second World War was anything to go by) would be covered by the proposed formation of a Western Union Clandestine Committee, through which wider Allied liaison could be handled, under the auspices of the Western European Union collective self-defence treaty signed by the United Kingdom, France and the Benelux countries in March 1948. All in all, however, Anglo-American agreement at this conference formed the basis for long-term SIS-CIA liaison, including the work of organising what later became the Allied Clandestine Committee of NATO, which dealt with the co-ordination of stay-behind matters, secret intelligence collection and special operations in the event of a future war in Europe.

Although the conclusions of the London conference embodied a very high level of agreement between the CIA and SIS, back in Washington there were concerns that too close a relationship with the British might jeopardise American autonomy in the event of a serious international crisis. In October 1948 Peter Dwyer, an SIS officer who handled liaison with both the CIA and the FBI in Washington, reported one CIA officer conceding that while they (the Americans) had ‘relied heavily on us during the war’, they now felt that the CIA ‘must stand on its own two feet or get out of the business’. Dwyer considered that once the CIA had ‘demonstrated to their own satisfaction that they can plan and achieve on their own what they have set out to do, they will be ready for a much closer coordination with us. In other words,’ he continued, ‘the local boy is determined to make good on his own.’ ‘Exactly what I have repeatedly said,’ noted Menzies in the margin of Dwyer’s report.

There were few such concerns on the British side, where there was a general recognition of the importance of the closest possible Anglo-American co-operation. When in March 1949 Hillenkoetter asked Menzies to send someone to Washington specifically to discuss special operations, both Menzies’s Principal Staff Officer, and William Hayter, of the Services’ Liaison Department at the Foreign Office, went over. Their ‘line of thought’ for the discussions sketched out two possible fields of Cold War action: ‘the defensive one of protecting the rest of the world from Communist domination, and the offensive one of successively detaching those countries which have already been subjugated’. In an agenda suggested by Menzies, the two SIS representatives included ‘Elimination of competitive action in Peace, especially where Stay-Behind plans are concerned’, citing Norway and Belgium as examples where there had been line-crossing, as well as Greece and Turkey, and Albania, where Operation Valuable was already being planned. In Washington Menzies’s staff officer found ‘the tenor of the negotiations’ had been ‘extremely cordial’ and they had ‘broadly reached agreement on most of the main heads’, although there were ‘still differences over timing’. At the same time as the SIS visit, Maurice Oldfield of SIS’s R.5 section was over meeting the CIA and the FBI (and later the Canadian services) for wide-ranging discussions on matters of common counter-intelligence interest. Again the atmosphere was friendly and co-operative, and Oldfield ‘found a gratifying fund of goodwill for our Service’.

The British visits to Washington in May 1949 did much to cement relations between SIS and the CIA. ‘From our standpoint,’ wrote Hillenkoetter to Menzies on 20 June, ‘the series of discussions with Messers. Hayter, [Menzies’s Principal Staff Officer] and Oldfield was eminently satisfactory.’ A wide measure of agreement was reached and it confirmed the CIA director’s view ‘of the necessity for a close working relationship between our services, particularly with regard to our relatively new responsibilities on the operations side’. Menzies replied in kind on 4 July: ‘I deeply appreciated your letter . . . mainly because your reactions so fully endorse