The Secret History of MI6 - Keith Jeffery [92]
Cumming, nevertheless, evidently found an ally in Crowe, who early in 1921 moved to clarify the close relationship of the Foreign Office with the Service. For some time reports from Cumming’s Bureau had been handled by the Political Intelligence Department (PID) of the Foreign Office, which had been established in March 1918. As part of a general departmental reorganisation (and in response to expenditure cuts), however, Crowe abolished it in late 1920. In January 1921, concerned that political information was being requested by (and supplied to) the War Office, liaison between the Secret Service and the Foreign Office was formalised on two levels. It was decided that, in countries where there were Service representatives, a senior member of each British diplomatic mission ‘should be appointed to confer regularly with the chief representative of the Secret Service’ in that country, who would supply him with ‘all political reports obtained by him and his agents’. At the London end, the Secret Service would no longer copy and distribute substantially raw intelligence reports, ‘approximately in the form in which they are received’, but daily summaries would be prepared, to which ‘reports of special interest should be attached’. These would be sent ‘only to the Foreign Office and Sir B. Thomson’. It was decided that the War Office and Admiralty (which would continue to receive specific technical information) would henceforward not be supplied directly with political reports. They ‘should be informed of as much as is necessary of the revised arrangements, and told that such political information as may concern them will in future be supplied from the Foreign Office’. As Cumming recorded in his diary, Sir Robert Nathan, who headed the Political Section V, was to be the Service’s ‘liaison officer with the Heads of Depts of the F.O. & to have access to them’. He would ‘summarise the reports and send in a daily [later altered to ‘periodic’] epitome’.
These decisions in January 1921, which clearly positioned the Secret Service closer to the Foreign Office than to any other government department, as a corollary distanced it from the service ministries. They reflected the new, peacetime situation, and an understanding that political intelligence was now especially at a premium. A February 1921 Foreign Office circular to diplomatic missions in Europe claimed that ‘to-day the old type of Secret Service’ had disappeared and ‘melodrama has given place to a more sober style of enquiry from which the diplomat need no longer, as he was very properly required to do before, withdraw the hem of his garment’. Intelligence was now ‘largely concerned with subterranean revolutionary movements and individuals’, and ‘instead of spying on the military defences of individual countries’, it devoted itself ‘principally to detecting tendencies subversive of the established order of things, irrespective of whether these are directed against the United Kingdom or are International in character’. Be that as it may, a parallel Secret Service circular in March 1921 to representatives abroad, which summarised the enhanced liaison arrangements with embassies and legations (and pointed out that the very existence of the ‘branch’ might ‘depend on your usefulness’ to the minister), also indicated that the collection of intelligence for the armed services remained a Service responsibility. ‘For the present,’ it instructed, ‘your reports on Naval and Military matters will be dealt with by you as heretofore.’
Finance and economy
Running parallel to the various reorganisation schemes was the constant pressure to reduce spending which Cumming’s Bureau shared with every British government department during the years following the First World War. Yet alongside the demands for economy were continuing high expectations of what the Secret Service Bureau might still do. Typical of this was a meeting at the Foreign Office on 28 December 1918 at which Lord Hardinge told Cumming he could continue