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which it must be remembered now include secret operations as well as secret intelligence.’ Menzies’s approaching sixtieth birthday (in January 1950) ‘would perhaps provide an appropriate moment for making the change’. Reflecting on possible candidates, Hayter felt it important to stress ‘that this must not be a case of “jobs for the boys”. The appointment’, he wrote, ‘is too important for that. In our present military weakness we are more than ever dependent on efficient intelligence, and this is undoubtedly the most important post in the whole intelligence organisation.’ But where was the best man to be found? While Hayter expected that the armed services ‘may be expected to produce a long list’ of candidates, he did not consider that any current member of SIS was ‘suitable for appointment as its Head’. In particular, he did not think General Sinclair (the Vice Chief) should be appointed. Although he had ‘done excellent work in re-organising the administration of the Service’, he thought him ‘rigid and unimaginative, and I think a Secret Service run by him would be wonderfully organised and never find anything out’. Sinclair, indeed, was the only internal candidate. Hayter reported that Menzies himself recognised that apart from him ‘there is no one now in the service whose name should be considered’.

Only two individuals struck Hayter as really strong candidates. Cavendish-Bentinck he thought ‘outstanding’. He ‘probably knows more about the organisation than anyone not actually a member of it’; he had ‘won the confidence of the Chiefs of Staff’; and he had ‘exactly the right type of mind for the appointment’. But however well qualified he was, appointing Cavendish-Bentinck to a senior official position, let alone one as sensitive as Chief of SIS, could be problematic. In 1947, when he had been ambassador-elect to Brazil, he had been involved in a widely publicised divorce, during which he had ‘given frank evidence’ admitting ‘adultery with a series of mistresses, with three of whom he had lived for various periods, and, in addition, at least three extra-marital adventures of an isolated character’, following which he had resigned from the Diplomatic Service. Evidently alluding to this, Hayter reflected that it might be ‘considered that matters irrelevant to his real qualifications will make him unacceptable’. Hayter’s other possible nominee was ‘Mr. White of the Security Service’, the ‘outstanding member of M.I.5 in every way’. For reasons which Hayter did ‘not fully understand’, it appeared ‘far from certain’ that Dick White would ‘eventually become Head of that organisation’. He had ‘all the qualities required for Head of the Secret Service, and his appointment might do something to put a stop to the endless bickering between the two organisations’.26 Hayter was not quite right about White’s future, though he was prescient all the same: in 1953 White became Director-General of MI5, and in 1956 was appointed Chief of SIS (which he remained until 1968), becoming the only person to have held both positions.

Although Caccia endorsed Hayter’s recommendation of Cavendish-Bentinck - ‘For this kind of job there is usually only one obvious candidate and in this case we are quite clear that Mr. Bentinck is that person’ - when the Permanent Under-Secretary, Sir William Strang, raised the matter with the Foreign Secretary, Bevin ‘asked that he should not be pressed to consider Mr. Cavendish-Bentinck’. He was also quite opposed to recruiting anyone from the armed services to head SIS, an opinion which ‘applied equally to M.I.5’. Despite this, when Hayter formally drew up a list of possible candidates for Strang, he included White, a senior naval officer, three diplomats and a couple of outsiders, including Peter Fleming (the writer Ian Fleming’s elder brother), who had served in SOE. Once again, Hayter asserted that there was ‘no suitable candidate in the organisation, though “C” himself believes that General Sinclair, his present deputy, is qualified to succeed him. I do not agree with him.’ Having discussed the matter with the