Abstract
British security intelligence at the Combined Intelligence Centre Iraq and Persia (CICI) HQ in Baghdad’s beautiful Palace of the Moon was run for most of the Second World War by two strong personalities: E.K. ‘Chokra’ Wood, ex-Indian Corps of Guides, and H.K. Dawson-Shepherd, ex-Palestine Police. They were the editors and compilers of a vast corpus of intelligence summaries and reports on which most of this book is based. This chapter describes the work they and their security officers did, and how they interacted with the Iraqis, with other secret services (including their American ‘cousins’), and with enemy agents throughout the war.
Like most of the other Air Force intelligence officers, he had never piloted a plane in his life, but had been put into a khaki shirt and shorts, with the thin blue stripes of an officer on his shoulder tabs when war came, as the only available cloak to intelligence activity.
—Somerset de Chair
Somerset de Chair, The Golden Carpet (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1945), 45.
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Notes
- 1.
Known informally as the ‘Guides Cavalry,’ the regiment’s official title was the 10th Queen Victoria’s Own Frontier Force. In 1942, the Guides were transferred from Iraq to North Africa to defend and hold the Eighth Army’s exposed southern flank during preparations for the El Alamein battles, after which they returned to India via Iraq. In 1947, the regiment was allotted to the Pakistan Army, where it continues today as an armoured (tank) regiment: The Guides Cavalry (Frontier Force).
- 2.
At the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital (RNOH), Stanmore, Middlesex.
- 3.
Geoffrey Wheeler Collection, GB165-0298, Middle East Centre Archive, St Antony’s College (Oxford) [MECA]. Quoted in Adrian O’Sullivan, Espionage and Counterintelligence in Occupied Persia (Iran): The Success of the Allied Secret Services (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015) [ECOP], 17.
- 4.
In yet another ‘Baghdad Set’ social connection, according to Raymond Maunsell, head of SIME, Dawson-Shepherd’s father had worked in Egypt for the Aboukir Company under Maunsell’s father-in-law. Private papers of Raymond Maunsell, 4829, Documents Collection, Imperial War Museum [IWM ].
- 5.
Dr. Alexander Dawson-Shepherd, letter to the author, 8 May 2018.
- 6.
Cf. Georgina Sinclair, “‘Get into a Crack Force and Earn £20 a Month and All Found …”: The Influence of the Palestine Police upon Colonial Policing 1922–1948’, European Review of History 13, no. 1 (2006).
- 7.
Edward Patrick John Ryan was a tough Indian Army career soldier and intelligence officer, who had risen from the noncommissioned ranks of the Calcutta Light Horse. In 1949, after years with the local rank of colonel, but still holding only the substantive rank of lieutenant, he was finally promoted to substantive major and granted the honorary rank of full colonel in the Intelligence Corps. Supplement to the London Gazette, 5 August 1949, 3795. He was Mentioned in Despatches during the war and also decorated after the war with the OBE and the US Legion of Merit. London Gazette, 5 August 1943; Supplement to the London Gazette, 1 January 1946, 21; Supplement to the London Gazette, 16 November 1948, 6059. Ryan finally retired as a reserve officer from the Intelligence Corps in 1956. Supplement to the London Gazette, 13 April 1956, 2155. However, he appears to have entered civilian life immediately after the war, becoming the Cairo-based representative of the Society of British Aircraft Constructors in late 1945. The Straits Times, 18 December 1945.
- 8.
The official story of CICI’s establishment and evolution is to be found in History of Combined Intelligence Centre Iraq and Persia, June 1941–December 1944, AIR 29/2504, The National Archives, Kew, Surrey [TNA], which forms the archival scaffolding for the historical narrative in this chapter.
- 9.
H.M. Burton, ‘Wing Commander Robert Jope-Slade (Obituary)’, Asian Affairs: Journal of the Royal Central Asian Society 28, no. 3 (1941): 386–7.
- 10.
Elphinston, educated at Repton, was also a water-colourist of considerable talent whose work had been hung at the Royal Academy. Somerset de Chair describes him as ‘a dry-looking little stick of a man who yet had a kindly heart.’ De Chair, Golden Carpet, 134; ‘In Memoriam: Colonel William G. Elphinston, MC’, Asian Affairs: Journal of the Royal Central Asian Society 40, no. 2 (1953): 174–6.
- 11.
CICI Intelligence Appreciation, 2 June 1941, WO 201/1257, TNA.
- 12.
Arthur Irons Sargon (born 1887), OBE, DSO, was transferred to the British Army (General List) in 1942 as a substantive 2nd lieutenant with the local rank of lieutenant colonel. Supplement to the London Gazette, 26 May 1919, 6466; London Gazette, 28 May 1926, 3453; Supplement to the London Gazette, 29 December 1942, 5633; ‘Memories of Iraq’ in Sylvia Arthur et al., eds., This Is the World That We Live In (Lulu.com, 2010), 185.
- 13.
See ‘From Womb to Tomb’, Cecil Gervase Hope-Gill Collection, GB165-0151, MECA. The previous tenant, assistant oriental secretary Hope-Gill, about to transfer to the Belgian Congo, commented: ‘… handed over our beautiful Palace of the Moon to CICI … the lucky dogs!’ Ibid.
- 14.
Geoffrey Household, Against the Wind (London: Michael Joseph, 1958), 181. Among the CICI officers whom Household encountered at the Moon Palace was Evelyn Waugh’s older brother, Alec Waugh. Cf. Nigel West, ‘Fiction, Faction, and Intelligence’ in L.V. Scott and P.D. Jackson, eds., Understanding Intelligence in the Twenty-first Century: Journeys in Shadows (London: Routledge, 2004), 129.
- 15.
Perowne to Beresford, 8 June 1942, Perowne 4/1, Stewart Henry Perowne Collection, GB165-0228, MECA. SOE was not represented on the committee of course, as its black propaganda operations were top secret.
- 16.
See Appendix E.
- 17.
Revised charter for the Combined Intelligence Centre Iraq, History of Combined Intelligence Centre Iraq and Persia, June 1941–December 1944, Appendix D, AIR 29/2504, TNA.
- 18.
Blood to Seel, 14 December 1948, CO 967/130, TNA; Rance to Seel, 13 January 1949, CO 967/130, TNA.
- 19.
Perowne to Guest, 15 May 1942, Perowne 4/1, Stewart Henry Perowne Collection, GB165-0228, MECA. The mention of the mechanization of the cavalry is clearly a not-so-veiled reference to Chokra Wood’s regiment, the Corps of Guides (Cavalry), which had recently been mechanized.
- 20.
Envisaging the covert space occupied by clandestine operations and operatives as an essentially social environment, the term ‘spyscape’ resonates with the Lefebvrean concept of social space. See Claire M. Hubbard-Hall and Adrian O’Sullivan, ‘Landscapes of Intelligence in the Third Reich: Visualizing Abwehr Operations and “Covert Space” during the Second World War’ [forthcoming in 2019].
- 21.
CICI was also the godchild of SIME, in the sense that it essentially replicated at a regional level SIME’s theatre-level clearing-house function. See Roger Arditti, ‘Security Intelligence in the Middle East (SIME): Joint Security Intelligence Operations in the Middle East, c. 1939–58’, Intelligence and National Security 31, no. 3 (2016): 369–70.
- 22.
For a simplified overview of the organization of CICI, minus Persia (Iran ), see Appendix D. Details of the 1944 CICI war establishment for Iraq and Persia are to be found in KV 4/223, TNA.
- 23.
For specific examples of administrative difficulties, see ECOP, 13–14.
- 24.
That is, nonmilitary.
- 25.
DSO Persia would be commanded for most of the war by E.L. ‘Joe’ Spencer (1902–1976), an SOE officer (D/H.70) and former AIOC employee, who was personally recruited for the Tehran job by the head of SIME, Raymond Maunsell, and who had a successful postwar career with MI5. For Spencer, see my two books on Persia and my article: ‘Joe Spencer’s Ratcatchers: British Security Intelligence in Occupied Persia’, Asian Affairs: Journal of the Royal Society for Asian Affairs 48, no. 2: 296–312.
- 26.
Details of the four operational divisions of CICI are to be found in History of Combined Intelligence Centre Iraq and Persia, June 1941–December 1944, AIR 29/2504, TNA.
- 27.
CICI Weekly Intelligence Summary and Précis of Information No. 19, 21 June 1941, AIR 29/2504, TNA.
- 28.
I(b) Monthly Summary: July 1941, CICI Iraq c/o Air HQ Iraq, 1 August 1941, AIR 29/2510, TNA.
- 29.
Examples of national MOFA codes are ABYS (Abyssinian), HUN (Hungarian), IRQ (Iraqi), PAL (Palestinian), RUS (Russian), and SYR (Syrian).
- 30.
I(b) Summary, CICI Iraq, 1–15 September 1941, AIR 29/2510, TNA; I(b) Summary No. 17, CICI Iraq, 15 December 1941, AIR 29/2510, TNA. It is not known for certain if there was any intervention, perhaps by MI6, to prevent Hall from reaching Germany, and to redirect him to Ethiopia, but something of the sort must have occurred. For more about the Halls of Ethiopia, see Toby Berger Holtz, ‘The Hall Family and Ethiopia: A Century of Involvement’, ed. Svein Ege et al., Proceedings of the 16th International Conference of Ethiopian Studies (Trondheim: Norwegian University of Science and Technology, 2009), 109–17; Richard Pankhurst, ‘A History of Early Twentieth Century Ethiopia: Mussolini and Ethiopia’, Link Ethiopia, https://www.linkethiopia.org/article/8-mussolini-and-ethiopia/.
- 31.
For the FSS, see Chap. 7 and Adrian O’Sullivan, Nazi Secret Warfare in Occupied Persia (Iran): The Failure of the German Intelligence Services, 1939–45 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014) [NSW], 24–5; O’Sullivan, ‘Joe Spencer’s Ratcatchers’: 297–8; A.F. Judge, ‘The Field Security Sections of the Intelligence Corps, 1939 to 1960’, unpublished MS, Military Intelligence Museum and Archives, Chicksands, Bedfordshire.
- 32.
- 33.
Judge, ‘Field Security Sections’, 1.
- 34.
Very late in the war, the Germans are known to have planned at least two operations against Abadan and Persian Gulf shipping: REISERNTE and KINO, both of which failed. For details, see Chap. 9 and NSW, 208–11.
- 35.
See Appendix E. It is clear from the distribution of political and security personnel that priority was given by CICI to the Kurdish and Persian Gulf regions.
- 36.
Changes actually began even earlier than this, after the sudden death of the Anglophile US resident minister Paul Knabenshue (1883–1942) and his replacement by Loy Henderson, whose attitude towards British influence was less compliant. See Christopher D. O’Sullivan, FDR and the End of Empire: The Origins of American Power in the Middle East (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 37. For an interesting, sympathetic view of Knabenshue’s term of office in Baghdad, see James A. Thorpe, ‘The United States and the 1940–1941 Anglo-Iraqi Crisis: American Policy in Transition’, Middle East Journal 25, no. 1 (Winter 1971): 79–89.
- 37.
The theme of America’s postwar commercial interests as a significant factor in wartime Anglo-American intelligence relations is mentioned again in Chap. 10.
- 38.
For the organization of general staff intelligence, see ‘Notes on the British General Staff, Arms and Services’, Tactical and Technical Trends, no. 11 (5 November 1942). Tactical and Technical Trends was published by the US Military Intelligence Service from June 1942 to June 1945.
- 39.
I(b) Summary No. 19, CICI Iraq, 1–15 January 1942, AIR 29/2510, TNA. Other pro-Nazis with MOFA numbers considered dangerous were the director of culture and training, Fadhil Jamali (MOFA IRQ/10), and Mudhaffar az-Zahawi (MOFA IRQ/82), the owner of a petrol filling station at Khanaqin (Persia ) and close associate of Rashid Ali (with a German wife).
- 40.
Ibid.; I(b) Summary No. 21, CICI Iraq, 1–15 February 1942, AIR 29/2510, TNA.
- 41.
Sami Shawkat, Hadhihi Ahdafuna: Majmu’ah muḥaḍarat wa-maqalat wa-Aḥadith qawmiyah (Baghdad: Majallah al-Muṭallim al-Jadid, 1939), cited by Klaus-Michael Mallmann and Martin Cüppers, Halbmond und Hakenkreuz: Das Dritte Reich, die Araber und Palästina (Darmstadt: WBG, 2006), 47, as Dies sind unsere Ziele [These are our aims].
- 42.
I(b) Summary No. 19, CICI Iraq, 1–15 January 1942, AIR 29/2510, TNA; I(b) Summary No. 21, CICI Iraq, 1–15 February 1942, AIR 29/2510, TNA.
- 43.
Security Intelligence Summary No. 50, Defence Security Office, CICI Iraq, 23 January 1943, AIR 29/2511, TNA.
- 44.
There were two principal German foreign-intelligence services: (1) the Abwehr (full title: Amt Ausland/Abwehr) commanded by Admiral Wilhelm Canaris of the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (Army High Command [OKW]); and (2) the SS-Auslandsnachrichtendienst (SS Foreign Intelligence Service—often inaccurately termed the Sicherheitsdienst [SS Security Service] or SD, of which it was really only a constituent part [SD-Ausland]). Unlike most intelligence historians, I refer to this SS service throughout the book, pedantically but correctly, not as the SD, but as RSHA VI (Branch VI of the Reich Security Administration), its true title. RSHA VI was commanded first by the deeply flawed Heinz Jost and then by the ambitious but sickly Walter Schellenberg. Neither man displayed any interest in Iraq, unlike Canaris who certainly did. For more about the organization of German intelligence, see NSW, 37–42; David Kahn, Hitler’s Spies: German Military Intelligence in World War II (New York: Da Capo Press, 1978), 238–50.
- 45.
Operation MAMMUT (see Chap. 9).
- 46.
Security Intelligence Summary No. 57, Defence Security Office, CICI Iraq, 29 July 1943, AIR 29/2511, TNA.
- 47.
Ibid.
- 48.
It has already been noted that the Anglo-Iraqi Security Board (AISB ) was indeed established in November 1943.
- 49.
Ibid.
- 50.
The definition of ‘nonoperational intelligence’ adopted by MEDC was ‘political and economic intelligence and security intelligence in respect of the civil population of the Middle East and the Allied forces located in the Middle East including counterespionage and countersabotage.’ Lascelles to CGS PAIFORCE, 7 July 1943, WO 201/1404, TNA. The agencies seen to be responsible for nonoperational intelligence were identified as CICI, ISLD, SOE, GSI, and RAF Intelligence. Fuller to Kenny, 23 July 1943, WO 201/1404, TNA.
- 51.
Wood to Minister of State, 16 July 1943, WO 201/1404, TNA.
- 52.
Ibid.
- 53.
MEDC to COS, 4 September 1943, WO 201/1404, TNA.
- 54.
Wood to Kenny, CICI/H/87, n.d., WO 201/1404, TNA.
- 55.
H.I. Allen, DDMI Security at the WO and a member of the Joint Intelligence Subcommittee.
- 56.
Intelligence derived from openly available sources. The information acquired by the PAs and ALOs would nowadays be categorized as ASI (all-source intelligence); in other words, all kinds of information derived from both overt and covert sources. Cf. Martin Thomas, Empires of Intelligence: Security Services and Colonial Disorder after 1914 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2008), 2.
- 57.
In reserving the function of gathering T&P intelligence for his own advisers, Cornwallis was presumably influenced by the theory of the primacy of local intelligence over strategic intelligence advocated by his (and his friend Gertrude Bell’s) mentor Sir Percy Cox (1864–1937) in the context of Mesopotamia and Mandate Iraq. See A.L. Macfie, ‘British Intelligence and the Causes of Unrest in Mesopotamia, 1919–21’, Middle Eastern Studies 35, no. 1 (January 1999): 165–77.
- 58.
See Ashley Jackson, Persian Gulf Command: A History of the Second World War in Iran and Iraq (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2018), 102–3.
- 59.
Clayton to Stark, 2 January 1942, Container 11.1 (Sir Iltyd Clayton), Series II Correspondence, 1893–1985, Harry Ransom Center, The University of Texas, Austin, TX [HRC].
- 60.
For the finer details about the minorities, see generally ‘CJ’ Edmonds’ many letters to Sir Kinahan Cornwallis at Iraq Political Situation, 1939–1941, File 3, Box 2, Cecil John Edmonds Collection, GB165-0095, MECA.
- 61.
For more about Sheikh Mahmud, see Chap. 9; also Adrian O’Sullivan, ‘German Covert Initiatives and British Intelligence in Persia (Iran), 1939–1945’, DLitt et Phil diss. (UNISA, 2013), 142–3. For a contemporary OSS appreciation, see Art Dayton and Hans Hoff’s OSS Report G 5076, 30 August 1944, CIA Research Tool (CREST) document, National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, MD [NARA].
- 62.
The Kurds in May 1941, 27 July 1941, Iraq Political Situation, 1939–1941, File 3, Box 2, Cecil John Edmonds Collection, GB165-0095, MECA. For his expert opinions about the Kurds, see ‘CJ’ Edmonds’ letters to Sir Kinahan Cornwallis (note 60). For anyone wishing to explore the history of British policy and the Kurdish question, I recommend Awat Asadi, Der Kurdistan-Irak-Konflikt: Der Weg zur Autonomie seit dem Ersten Weltkrieg (Berlin: Schlier, 2007), 136–48; Wadie Jwaideh, The Kurdish National Movement: Its Origins and Development (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2006), passim; Daniel Silverfarb, Britain’s Informal Empire in the Middle East: A Case Study of Iraq, 1929–1941 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 1–19, 21–29, 31–55, 73–80, 94–109; Stephanie K. Wichhart, ‘A “New Deal” for the Kurds: Britain’s Kurdish Policy in Iraq, 1941–45’, The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 39, no. 5 (December 2011): 815–31; and Fieldhouse’s introduction to Wallace Lyons’ memoir in D.K. Fieldhouse, ed., Kurds, Arabs and Britons: The Memoir of Wallace Lyon in Iraq, 1918–44 (London: I.B. Tauris, 2002), 33–48, as well as the memoir itself in Kurds, 59–218 (Fieldhouse was Lyon’s son-in-law).
- 63.
Edmonds to Cornwallis, 12 July 1941, Iraq Political Situation, 1939–1941, File 3, Box 2, Cecil John Edmonds Collection, GB165-0095, MECA.
- 64.
Dawson-Shepherd to All Representatives Iraq, 23 February 1945, AIR 29/2513, TNA.
- 65.
An Appreciation of the Security Situation in Iraq in the Near Future and in the Post-war Period, 14 July 1945, KV 4/223, TNA.
- 66.
Ibid.
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O’Sullivan, A. (2019). The Moon Palace. In: The Baghdad Set. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-15183-6_6
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