The Black Door: Spies, Secret Intelligence and British Prime Ministers. Richard Aldrich
on a big scale.’ But, he continued, ‘we could not, of course, foretell where that Force would be sent’. Senior officials began to realise that even when good intelligence was collected, it was not being assimilated. The JIC needed to be strengthened further. Discussing the matter with Horace Wilson and cabinet secretary Maurice Hankey, Chamberlain agreed that the JIC should be instructed to maintain ‘a running and connected story based upon such Intelligence material as seems to point to the need for action’.72 Norway had sounded a warning that even Chamberlain could not ignore, but although he had now begun to think about substantive intelligence reform, the invasion of France in May 1940 swept his government away.73
Neville Chamberlain did not have as much room for manoeuvre as his detractors suggest.74 He faced enormous challenges, but his elementary error of ‘mirror-imaging’ his enemies as civilised leaders naturally averse to war made them much worse. So often, premiers disregard intelligence, preferring to believe that the enemy shares their values and thinks like them. Chamberlain was also an intelligence bungler. Not only was he a reluctant consumer of intelligence that did not concur with his world view, he was also a poor manager, and the central machinery did not develop much during his time in Downing Street. His incompetent efforts to use a private secret service to open diplomacy with Rome and Berlin radiated weakness and contributed to an emerging Axis triple threat. At the same time, he marginalised the most experienced intelligence professionals and went shopping for ‘intelligence’ that would confirm his preconceived ideas, fixing on single-source reports from Berlin.
Chamberlain was not the only bungler. In the higher echelons of government, few understood intelligence or had any idea how it might organise collectively to meet the challenge of fast-moving Blitzkrieg warfare. Halifax, a deeply intelligent and capable man, was bemused by the contradictory stream of material coming out of Germany, on scraps of paper pinned beneath the collars of secret agents. His senior official, Cadogan, was uncomfortable with the secret world and gladly delegated such matters to Gladwyn Jebb, his private secretary. Jebb recalled how his boss seemed to have ‘the impression that the reports of the SIS which are circulated in the office are obtained by “hired assassins” who are sent out from this country to spy out the land’. The fact that such a naïve view was entertained at the highest level is revealing.75
Hitler was inherently unpredictable. German historians who have immersed themselves in the archives for their entire careers still disagree about whether he was at the outset merely a German nationalist like Bismarck, or whether he always had diabolical plans for world domination. In any case, Hitler loved springing surprises, not least upon his own long-suffering generals. Britain’s codebreakers, so celebrated in the context of the Second World War, simply could not read Hitler’s intentions. Had they been able to decipher even a sliver of top-level German communications in 1939, Chamberlain could not have sustained his arrogant commitment to a personal appeasement policy. But ironically, the weakness of the codebreakers in 1939 became their future strength. Thereafter, a vast influx of young civilians, irreverent students and unorthodox thinkers forced change, powering the intelligence revolution that became Bletchley Park.76 With Winston Churchill at the helm, the relationship between intelligence and Downing Street could finally undertake the long-awaited revolution.
4
Once I was convinced about the principles of this queer and deadly game, I gave all the necessary orders that very day.
Winston Churchill1
Winston Churchill was obsessed with intelligence. He arrived in Downing Street in May 1940 with unparalleled experience of the secret world. For almost half a century, he had seen intelligence in action in both peace and war. Churchill was there at the very creation of MI5 and MI6 in 1909. Most importantly, he understood the importance of intelligence – and especially sigint – in wartime operations, as he had been First Lord of the Admiralty from 1911 to 1915, and then secretary of state for war and air in the last year of the First World War. He then became involved in the minutiae of the post-war reorganisation of British intelligence. Later, he immersed himself in the subterranean connections between domestic surveillance, Irish terrorism and communist subversion. Despite this remarkable wealth of government experience in the realm of national security, he remained an outsider. Regarded as a renegade, he had changed political parties twice, and did not hesitate to challenge conventional wisdom. He transferred these impulsive tendencies to the world of intelligence, accelerating the British secret service community as never before.
Churchill believed passionately in the transformative power of intelligence, and knew it could play a central role in government policy. An incurable romantic, he loved the craft of espionage and all the paraphernalia of secrecy, and was an enthusiastic advocate of undercover activity for its own sake. More than this, he also believed in conspiracy, covert action and special operations – what we might call the power of the hidden hand. Churchill has been celebrated as one of the great champions of British intelligence, but his impulsiveness and unpredictability often caused exasperation on the part of his intelligence chiefs. The British intelligence community undoubtedly expanded, innovated and became more connected to policy during the Second World War as a result of his boundless enthusiasm, but it also had to protect itself from his meddling and his impulsive desire to control its detail.
Most importantly, Churchill’s wartime government served as a school for future prime ministers. Just as he had learned the craft of intelligence in several previous administrations, so his own wartime ministers, including Clement Attlee, Anthony Eden and Harold Macmillan, all future denizens of Downing Street, saw intelligence at first hand. Senior figures in their governments such as Ernest Bevin, Hugh Dalton and Duncan Sandys had also been members of Churchill’s wartime government. Unlike previous prime ministers, Churchill taught his pupils that intelligence was of the utmost importance. His entourage were able to see for themselves the transformative power of secret activity at the top.
Churchill was ahead of his time in his conception of Downing Street. He anticipated a more presidential style of government, gathering around himself a cluster of special advisers and personal staff able to respond instantly to his sometimes whimsical enquiries. Desmond Morton served as his intelligence adviser and linked Number 10 with MI5, MI6 and GC&CS – as well as the volatile world of special operations. Although this style would later be adopted by Harold Wilson, Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair, it did not always prove popular with Churchill’s ministers. As foreign secretary, Anthony Eden found Morton’s interventions with Charles de Gaulle and the French resistance especially vexatious, noting in November 1942, ‘I wish Morton at the bottom of the Sea.’2
Paradoxically, Churchill’s weakest suit was secrecy, which he applied stringently to everyone except himself. In 1923 he had ‘blown’ the secrets of signals intelligence during the First World War in his account of that conflict, and after the Second World War publishers offered him eye-watering sums to write about that global conflict in which he had played such an important part. Once again he was determined to tell all, including the story of secret service, and initially he fought the efforts of the Cabinet Office to enforce secrecy. Sir Stewart Menzies, the chief of MI6, had to be despatched to bring him to heel. After the war, Morton was debating at length with a friend what constituted the ‘essence of Winston’s life and spirit’. Morton thought ‘freelance newspaper correspondent-adventurer’ was the best possible description. Churchill loved secret service, but he also loved to tell stories. He was not a man naturally inclined to keep secrets for very long.3
He was also abrasive. From the moment he entered Downing Street he wanted to see raw intelligence, not just summaries and appreciations. Most of all he wanted to see all the intercepts provided by the