part0027

M ANY OF THE JIC’s files are open. They are seemingly comprehensive and can seduce the unwary historian with a siren song of ‘top secret’ intelligence. Certainly a book such as this would have been impossible until relatively recently. New declassification benchmarks have resulted in a veritable archival feast for historians and political scientists.

The available records do, however, shape our understanding of the committee in certain ways. This book has predominantly drawn upon JIC memoranda. These present fascinating insights into intelligence thinking on myriad issues, as well as on intelligence successes and failures. From here, it is possible to consider the relationship between intelligence and policy throughout much of the twentieth century. However, the declassified files construct a particular narrative of the JIC’s role since 1936. Firstly, they offer a narrow account of a reactive body cumbersomely dealing with long-term issues. Historians are left unaware of current intelligence and the committee’s responses to crises. Secondly, the files create an impression of JIC passivity, neglecting both the committee’s active and global roles. Thirdly, by focusing on the JIC at the expense of other actors operating beneath the committee, the available files skew interpretations of the Joint Intelligence Organisation as a whole. Arguably Current Intelligence Groups, staffed by amazing subject and regional specialists, were a key part of this machine, but they are not well represented in the extant archive. Above all JIC papers give a misleading sense of interdepartmental unity and intelligence hermeticism. This is not the result of some strategic government conspiracy, but merely the by-product of classification policy and a fragmented record.

Intelligence studies are perennially dogged by a core epistemological frailty – government secrecy. At best, scholars are faced with a disjointed self-assembly kit that lacks instructions and has core pieces missing. At worst, scholars are given no pieces at all and intimidating blanket bans on declassification impede entire areas of research. In terms of the JIC, however, whole series of papers are now neatly lined up at the National Archives. Indeed, since the dark days of the Cold War, much-vaunted progress has been made regarding government openness, especially on intelligence assessment.

In July 1993 John Major’s Conservative administration announced the Waldegrave Initiative on Open Government. MI6 and GCHQ were formally ‘avowed’ the following year. This approach formed a notably stark contrast with Margaret Thatcher’s famed love of secrecy and her incessant desire to stifle debate through the wielding of the Official Secrets Act. 1 The Open Government programme oversaw the accelerated declassification of volumes of archival files to the Public Records Office, and the government proudly lauded it as nothing short of a revolution in official attitudes towards secrecy. However, the move has been criticised as a cynical, if skilful, attempt at information management by the keepers of history. 2 Intelligence scholars are all too familiar with the dreaded red stamp of exemption: ‘This document has been retained under subsection 3(4) of the Public Records Act, 1958.’ Moreover, certain files, notably those of MI6, remain permanently locked away. Covert action in particular remains a mostly missing dimension in British post-war history.

Ideas of open government and mutual trust supposedly expanded under the Labour governments of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. Arguing that ‘openness is fundamental to the political health of a modern state’, 3 Blair brought in the much-heralded Freedom of Information (FOI) Act in 2000. The Prime Minister, however, quickly regretted his decision. He later ranted colourfully (almost quaintly) at his own innocence: ‘You idiot. You naive, foolish, irresponsible nincompoop. There is no description of stupidity, no matter how vivid, that is adequate. I quake at the imbecility of it.’ 4 Historians can request JIC files under the Act. As with the Waldegrave initiative and the Public Records Act of 1958, however, sensitive intelligence files are exempt from FOI releases. The Freedom of Information Act therefore does little to circumvent the distortions assessed below.

The committee’s post-war assessments and minutes began to be released from 1994. The Secretary’s files, which contain more detail and flavour, were slower in appearing but began to drip into the public domain from 2000. Assessments and minutes dating from 1969 were added in 2002 and declassification is now moving towards a twenty-year rule. Taken together, the committee’s files appear comprehensive and they are indeed a wonderful resource. Various series span contemporary British history and offer the researcher intelligence history on a plate.

But there are problems. Levels of weeding leave professional historians with a sense of unease. It is therefore important for those wanting to fully understand intelligence history to draw upon sources outside the preselected and processed material of the National Archives. 5 Certain insiders have privately stated that writing intelligence history is pointless without full access to all records, which, outside official histories, is impossible. There is some logic in this stance, for fragmented evidence can often lead to inaccurate assumptions. And yet it is imperative to try. Intelligence history is too important to be forgotten until all records are publicly available (if that ever happens). Historians must be wary of the methodological and epistemological frailties of lazy overreliance on the government’s declassification process. It is of course essential to cast one’s net as widely as possible and draw upon oral history and private papers to supplement the ‘history supermarket’. Occasional archival ‘accidents’ can illuminate these issues. The JIC paper on sigint targets reproduced in this volume was uncovered in 1987 in the India Office Records now held at the British Library but remains classified in the Cabinet Records at Kew.

That said, there is far more in the National Archives than meets the untrained eye. Regarding the JIC, overreliance on the committee’s papers creates a distorted narrative of its history and role. But awareness of parallel files and dusty hidden corners of the labyrinthine archival system offers a veritable gold mine. Historians can get by on the National Archives, so long as they look beyond the obvious series and supplement their work with interviews. For example, certain reports which remain classified in the JIC series can be found declassified elsewhere (including in America), whilst other files can challenge the narrative of the JIC releases.

Overreliance on the declassified JIC series creates a false narrative in a number of ways. Firstly, the JIC appears cumbersome and only able to deal with long-term issues. Secondly, the JIC appears purely passive. It has no operational dimension. Thirdly, it seems an isolated body with few links to other countries, notably the United States. Fourthly, it comes across as an admirable beacon of interdepartmental harmony and reports appear hermetic. They appeal to the tidy mind.

The JIC has long engaged in current intelligence. Lord Butler outlined the committee’s ‘main function’ as being to provide assessments on issues of both ‘immediate and long-term importance to national interests’. 6 It is therefore imperative that the JIC should not be perceived solely as some cumbersome long-term body unable to respond to crises and engage with short-term problems. As far back as the early 1950s, the committee was offering weekly intelligence reviews of various global developments. These usually involved Soviet activity and were tied heavily to the ongoing Cold War. They did, however, extend to other issues, such as tension in the Middle East and insurgent uprisings.

Current intelligence proliferated from the late 1960s. Backed by the newly created Assessments Staff, the JIC began to issue increasing numbers of short-term intelligence reports known as special assessments. These were disseminated alongside ‘notes’, which were of a slightly longer-term nature. Special assessments formed a crucial means of monitoring ongoing developments, from the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia to the deteriorating security situation in Ireland.

Reliance on the JIC series leaves historians somewhat blind to this role. Current intelligence generally remains classified, but was often hot stuff appreciated by successive Prime Ministers and senior members of the Cabinet. An instructive example is found in the committee’s weekly intelligence reviews. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, the JIC issued two current intelligence products every week. The first, known as the Grey Book, was distributed to a broad mass of officials in London and overseas. The second, known as the Red Book, was far more highly classified. It went to more senior consumers – including the Queen. There is a blanket ban on historians viewing any Red Book material. JIC minutes reveal its existence but offer no real hint at content. By contrast, the Grey Book was far less sensitive. It was disseminated to all and sundry manning British posts across the world. And yet declassification remains patchy at best. Whole years are missing and there is nothing from 1966 onwards.

Regrettably, the government has consistently held back special assessments and notes. Lack of access to the latter is strange: notes released under the Freedom of Information Act appear strikingly similar in topic and nature to the declassified longer-term appreciations. Special assessments, however, incorporated Red Book material from 1967. They covered matters of urgent importance, before being discontinued and replaced by ‘immediate assessments’ from 1974. 7 All special assessments remain classified.

Reliance on the declassified papers rather skews perceptions of the nature of the JIC’s reports. The JIC appears to be an overwhelmingly cumbersome body. The masses of declassified memoranda found in CAB 158 and CAB 186 are strategic assessments of longer-term issues, such as annual reviews of world communism. They are broad and sit at the foundation of the policymaking process, cumulatively building up consumers’ background information and shaping Whitehall understanding. As Michael Herman, a former JIC Secretary and veteran watcher of the committee, has acknowledged, this of course is a crucial role of intelligence in peacetime. Long-term JIC papers help create well-informed policies. 8

On the downside, however, such memoranda can be dense and dry, and often lacked current insight. Many of these papers took months to produce. To give just one example: an important report running to over eighty pages ascertaining the Soviet threat in the early Cold War was commissioned in January 1948. But it was not disseminated until July. 9 Although there were other papers produced in a shorter time, the declassified files do create a misleading impression that the wheels of Whitehall bureaucracy were turning very slowly indeed. The JIC files suggest that the committee was somewhat pedestrian and lacked sharp, incisive and acutely relevant policy insight.

Most importantly, in Rumsfeldian parlance, this particular missing dimension is a ‘known unknown’. Historians are aware that these intelligence products exist even if we cannot see them. The government has openly acknowledged that current intelligence has long formed part of the JIC’s role and has offered an overview of how the system evolved. But the sources themselves are kept tantalisingly out of reach. 10 In a recent overview of British strategic intelligence in the Cold War, Len Scott briefly mentions classified weekly output as a caveat to his broader discussion of the JIC. 11 Such awareness is important, but lack of full discussion impedes a holistic understanding of the committee’s role. Unfortunately, detailed analysis remains impossible owing to a lack of sources. Historians naturally rely on the declassified papers and tend to take the archival feed as an analogue of reality. As a result the role of the JIC becomes skewed.

The second distortion is perhaps more serious. It is an ‘unknown unknown’. As we have seen, the JIC series create the impression that the committee was cumbersome and mostly reactive: members lacked dynamism and were not remotely interested in operational details. This is of course fair to an extent. The JIC was (and remains) fundamentally an intelligence assessment body. It spent the majority of the Cold War watching the Soviets, counting nuclear weapons and determining intentions.

Yet there is another aspect to the committee, on which the declassified JIC series are silent. Senior members, especially the Chairman, enjoyed a more operational dynamic. Firstly, this involved overseeing intelligence operations of a ‘special nature’. JIC members were tasked with monitoring controversial or risky intelligence-gathering operations. This aspect of the committee’s role is far from adequately revealed in JIC papers. Detailed discussion between the JIC and the Prime Minister regarding air photography in the Berlin Corridor, for example, has to be found in Ministry of Defence files. 12

Secondly, the JIC Chairman was at the forefront of British covert action planning throughout the Cold War. He worked closely with MI6 to define the parameters, recommend action and design the new Whitehall bureaucracy for taking the covert Cold War to the Soviets. JIC Chairman Patrick Reilly was heavily involved in Whitehall’s committee overseeing covert action, known as the Official Committee on Communism (Overseas), in the early 1950s. Moreover, he personally headed a working party examining proposals for covert action behind the Iron Curtain and argued in favour of limited strikes against satellite economies. It was Reilly who liaised with the Americans on covert action at the strategic level. 13

Reilly’s input began a fascinating pattern linking the JIC Chairman to covert action. Indeed, by the 1960s his successors were chairing a shadowy successor to the Official Committee on Communism (Overseas), known as the Joint Action Committee (JAC). 14 And the overlaps between the JIC and covert action did not stop there. Senior JIC members also sat on the JAC whilst the JIC Secretary doubled up as its secretary. 15 The JIC connected with other secret operational actors too. For example, the JIC Chairman was instrumental in establishing another body tasked with instigating covert action in the Yemen during the civil war in the 1960s. 16

The JIC Chairman was vastly influential and yet this does not come across adequately in the archives. He sat at the heart of an intricate and secret Whitehall web, and was probably third only to the Cabinet Secretary and the chief of MI6 when it came to covert activity. This gaping lacuna has important implications, which are going unnoticed because scholars are unaware that the lacuna exists in the first place. The Chairman’s active role raises core questions: what is the relationship between intelligence and policy in the British system? Where does covert action sit in the intelligence–policy dichotomy? If historians are unaware that the JIC Chairman was engaged in such activity then these questions go unanswered. Moreover, certain leading scholars of intelligence machinery have erroneously suggested that the Cabinet Secretary chaired the JAC. 17 This is an easy mistake to make as there are practically no archival files on the subject. Herculean digging is required. The answers, however, are in the National Archives – just not in an obvious place.

Such material would not necessarily be in the JIC files anyway. Strictly speaking, covert action was not JIC activity. It is therefore important not to overemphasise the dealings of JIC members outside the committee. But there is an important point here. This activity was planned by JIC members wearing different hats – Suez is a classic example of this. One of the reasons this material was kept outside the JIC was simply to keep it more secret. Much JIC material is not particularly sensitive and the committee had a surprisingly broad distribution list. Bodies such as the JAC therefore allowed the same people to engage in a highly sensitive activity without other government departments (and future historians) ever finding out.

The JIC files downplay the committee’s global connections. They do this in three ways: firstly, there is no sense of foreign representation on the JIC; secondly, there is little detail on British liaison with former colonies post-independence; and thirdly, very few papers covering the JIC’s regional outposts remain. That the CIA enjoyed regular representation on the JIC is a poorly kept secret. Historians are well aware, for example, that the CIA had an officer on the committee during the Suez Crisis. Indeed, Chester Cooper, the CIA man in question, has written a lively account of his time in London. 18 Strikingly, however, any indication of this has been erased from the archival records. The JIC minutes do not even acknowledge the presence of a CIA officer, let alone offer his name.

Cooper’s role was important. Neglecting it skews understanding of Anglo-American relations in the strained days of the mid-1950s. Cooper continued his role on the JIC even when the regular diplomatic connections between London and Washington were broken. According to former JIC Chairman Percy Cradock, at one point Cooper was the sole channel of communication between the two capitals. 19 Similarly, Cooper’s role was again important during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Canada, New Zealand and Australia enjoyed similar status. The allies were present at one end of the JIC table for general discussion and for certain assessments, but were waved away during others. 20 This, however, cannot be proved using archival evidence at all – such input (especially regarding the US) has been mostly wiped from the official record. The JIC’s liaison role and the important input of intelligence in diplomacy are therefore neglected by historians relying on JIC papers. This is the sort of area where historians need to deploy their interview skills.

JIC files have likewise been excised of references to connections with the intelligence apparatus of other countries. The JIC was tasked ‘to keep under review the organisation and working of intelligence and defence security at home and overseas […] and to advise what changes are deemed necessary’. 21

It quickly vanishes, however, once the colony is approaching independence. There is very little on the role of the JIC post-independence. The Federation of South Arabia forms an instructive example. A great deal of material is available regarding JIC planning for withdrawal in 1967 but many of the relevant files regarding post-independence requirements remain classified. The released documents merely hint at some sort of offshore intelligence naval task force, the intelligence functions of the British embassy in the new South Yemen, and the need for intelligence liaison officers. 23 Perhaps more intriguingly, the countersubversion files suggest ‘arrangements for “stay-behind” facilities in colonial territories which were approaching full independence’. 24 No further detail is given. The JIC’s global role remains unknown.

During and after the Second World War, the JIC had a number of regional outposts. These included JIC (Far East), JIC (Germany), JIC (Washington) and JIC (Middle East). A number of smaller joint intelligence groups were also established, including one in the Gulf. Like the JIC in London, these often included representation from the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand – again, this is not apparent from the files. 25 Although these groups answered to the local theatre commander or head of mission in the first instance, 26 they formed an important network around the London JIC. On top of this, local intelligence committees existed in colonial territories whilst foreign-run JICs were also associated with the JIC in London.

Once more, however, reliance on the archives creates a skewed view. Overseas JIC files are held in CAB 191, but the series is notably fragmented. Many of the papers have simply been destroyed. JIC minutes do discuss issues relating to the regional JICs, including matters of structure and function, but very few regional reports have survived in the National Archives. Historians are therefore left broadly unaware of how JIC (Far East) reports, for example, fed into Whitehall intelligence assessments of south-east Asia. Yet again, the declassified JIC files create a distorted narrative of the committee’s role and work: this time as an insular Whitehall actor, as opposed to a global actor with tentacles reaching all four corners of the world.

JIC files give the false impression that the committee writes the reports. It does not. Members merely review assessments which have been drafted by specialists seconded from different government departments within the central intelligence machinery system. The JIC makes last-minute alterations before approving reports and issuing them under the JIC banner.

The declassified series concentrate almost exclusively on the committee: its minutes and final memoranda. Historians are presented with an overly linear progression from conception, through drafting, to dissemination. In the released files, JIC assessments begin with the terms of reference (neatly outlined) and the final report follows behind. The corresponding minutes reveal some light discussion about presentation and emphasis. The process appears smooth and amiable – unnaturally so. It appears excessively hermetic and the committee is presented in a unified manner.

In reality the process is messier. The central intelligence machinery takes raw intelligence, comments from the intelligence agencies, contribution from the intelligence analysts and input from the relevant policymaking departments, and places it into the bigger picture by assessing what it all actually means. 27 Committee members have the final say, and one former Chairman has described the JIC as ‘the final arbiter of intelligence’. 28

A central reason underpinning this impression is the lack of sources from the sub-JIC level. Papers of the Joint Intelligence Staff and the Assessments Staff, the bodies who actually draft the assessments, are not present in the archives. There is some material in the JIC secretariat files, but declassification of this is patchy and barely scratches the surface of the central intelligence machinery as a whole. Similarly, historians rely on the smallest of hints in the JIC memoranda themselves – papers are tagged ‘revised’ or ‘final’, for example.

The result is a distorted impression of the JIC. Historians are presented only with the neat, calm and occasionally banal apex of the central intelligence machinery. What is missing is the chaos beneath. Strategic interdepartmental intelligence does not start and finish with the JIC report and it is simplistic to talk of intelligence as a single unit. Instead, myriad processes take place beneath the final product which shape the intelligence assessment in underexplored ways. One might extend this criticism to British record preservation policy generally in the foreign, defence and security fields. Its excessive focus on elites means that we have failed to capture the locations where much of the debate took place. For example, just occasionally, minutes of the Joint Planning Staff – the engine room of British strategic thinking – surface in a forgotten file, but no central record has been preserved.

JIC assessments are the product of their environment. Those involved in writing and scrutinising the reports are under the command of their various ministries, not the JIC (although the creation of the Assessments Staff in 1968 was designed to address this). Understanding the competing pressures within the central intelligence machinery is therefore essential to understanding British interdepartmental intelligence assessments. Indeed, JIC conclusions are the product of competing agendas, diverging threat perceptions and jealous departmental turf wars. By tasking and framing issues in a certain way, a dominant department within the drafting process can dangerously alter an intelligence conclusion. Likewise, intelligence assessment is impeded if a particular department is sidelined. It is therefore important to shine a light on the corridors and back rooms of Whitehall to reveal the processes underpinning JIC assessments. Reliance on the JIC files alone renders this impossible. By looking beneath the JIC, it is possible to explore the competing conceptions behind a swathe of important issues since the Second World War.

Different departments have conceptualised security differently. In the immediate post-war period the military, for example, continuously pushed traditional defence issues upon the JIC. By contrast, the Foreign Office was keen to challenge narrow understandings of security and examine political issues. Meanwhile, the Colonial Office understood the Cold War threat in a very different way from both the military and the Foreign Office. Turf wars between the Colonial Office and the joint intelligence machinery were common throughout the 1950s. But there is no sense of this in the available JIC papers. To get a real sense of the animosity, the historian must dig through various Colonial Office files instead.

The same is true regarding the rise of terrorism in the 1970s. The core debates are not in the JIC files, they are in the equivalent Foreign and Commonwealth Office papers. Once again, JIC files offer only the final papers and historians are left ignorant of the sources, debates and bargaining which underpinned the ultimate conclusions. The processes of intelligence go unnoticed. By examining the papers of the FCO’s Maritime and Transport Department, for example, the historian can start to assess how the JIC reached the conclusions it did and why intelligence grossly overestimated the threat from maritime hijacking in 1970. 29 Importantly, the government weeders are less strenuous in such seemingly mundane departmental files. There are no strict rules underpinning declassification, and a good deal of subjectivity guides the process. Accordingly a paper from MI5, MI6 or the FCO’s secretive Permanent Under-Secretary’s Department occasionally appears in full in the most random of places.

Swathes of JIC material are now available, but overreliance on them can create a distorted impression. An important question, therefore, is whether the government has deliberately constructed a skewed narrative of the JIC. Have the weeders attempted to rewrite history through careful information management? The simple answer is no.

Any misleading accounts of the JIC are simply a by-product of broader issues. For example, one assumes that current intelligence is strictly classified because of the reliance on sensitive signals and human intelligence. Unlike the strategic longer-term JIC papers, it is much more difficult to camouflage the sources of this intelligence. This is an area in which twenty-first-century JIC papers differ from their predecessors. The longer-term JIC assessments issued during the Cold War made very little reference to the intelligence on which they drew. This is a stark contrast with the heavily annotated papers produced today. Like earlier current intelligence assessments, this development has significant implications for the future release of JIC material.

Moreover, the authorities have clearly acknowledged the JIC’s long-standing involvement in current intelligence. That this particular missing dimension is a ‘known unknown’ renders government conspiracy highly unlikely. Similarly, the operational dimension has been classified because it is more sensitive than intelligence assessments. Any reduction of JIC members to a caricature of bean-counting passivity is a side effect. Whether or not the government should be suppressing such covert activity in the first place is another debate.

Intelligence liaison is a particularly sensitive subject, as is anything that impacts upon British relations with independent countries. It is unclear whether it is the Americans or the British who are behind the excising of the likes of Chester Cooper from JIC records. Regarding the regional JICs, it appears that the bulk of this material was destroyed during decolonisation and Britain’s withdrawal from east of Suez. Again, there is no evidence of a government conspiracy to rewrite history. The final area is more confusing. It is unclear why sub-JIC documentation is not in the archives. Such material is far too important to warrant destruction, for it offers invaluable insight into the Whitehall mind in all its complexity. It reveals how threats were constructed and understood. Any government conspiracy again seems unlikely, for a lot of this material is decentralised and available in the parallel files of the JIC’s constituent departments. Similarly, certain papers which are redacted in the JIC series lie buried elsewhere as a glistening prize for the intrepid historian. Scholars just need to know where to look – which is easier said than done. It can be assumed, however, that the government is aware that there is more to the JIC than the declassified material suggests. It has, after all, commissioned an official history using secret sources.

1 .	David Vincent, The Culture of Secrecy: Britain, 1832–1998 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999), p. 262.
2 .	For an early reflection on these issues see, Richard J. Aldrich, ‘Did Waldegrave Work? The Impact of Open Government upon British History’, Twentieth Century British History 9/1 (1998), pp. 111–26.
3 .	Your Right to Know: The Government’s Proposals for a Freedom of Information Act , Cm 3818 (The Stationery Office, 1997), available at http://www.archive.official-documents.co.uk/document/caboff/foi/foi.htm (last accessed 13 November 2013).
4 .	Tony Blair quoted in Martin Rosenbaum, ‘Why Tony Blair thinks he was an idiot’, BBC News website, 1 September 2010, http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/opensecrets/2010/09/why_tony_blair_thinks_he_was_a.html (last accessed 13 November 2013).
5 .	Aldrich, ‘Did Waldegrave Work?’, p. 124; Richard J. Aldrich, ‘“Grow Your Own”: Cold War Intelligence and History Supermarkets’, Intelligence and National Security 17/1 (2002) p. 148. See also Richard J. Aldrich, ‘Policing the Past: Official History, Secrecy and British Intelligence since 1945’, English Historical Review 119/483 (2004), pp. 922–53.
6 .	Lord Butler of Brockwell, Review of Intelligence on Weapons of Mass Destruction: Report , HC 898 (London: The Stationery Office, 2004), p. 13.
7 .	‘Cabinet Office: Central Intelligence Machinery: Joint Intelligence Committee: Assessments and Notes’, CAB 189, The National Archives, http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/catalogue/displaycataloguedetails.asp?CATLN=3&CATID=60582&SearchInit= 4&SearchType=6&CATREF=CAB+189 (last accessed 13 November 2013).
8 .	Michael Herman, Intelligence Power in Peace and War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 152.
9 .	‘Soviet Interests, Intentions and Capabilities’, 23 July 1948, JIC(48)9, TNA: CAB 158/3.
10 .	‘Intelligence and Security Services: Joint Intelligence Committee Records’, The National Archives, http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/records/research-guides/intelligence-records.htm#16184 (last accessed 13 November 2013).
11 .	Len Scott, ‘British Strategic Intelligence and the Cold War’, in Loch K. Johnson (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of National Security Intelligence (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), p. 145.
12 .	See for example, Record of a meeting held at Admiralty House on 15 September 1960, TNA: DEFE 13/15.
13 .	AC(O) minutes, 1 March 1950, TNA: CAB 134/4; Robert Joyce, ‘Final Meeting in London with British Foreign Office and SIS Representatives’, 20 December 1951, Executive Secretariat, Psychological Strategy Board Working File, 1951–53, Box 6, RG59. We are indebted to Thomas Maguire for this file.
14 .	Rory Cormac, ‘Coordinating Covert Action: The Case of the Yemen Civil War and the South Arabian Insurgency’, Journal of Strategic Studies , Vol. 36, No. 5, 2012, pp. 692–717.
15 .	Ibid.
16 .	The body was known as the South Arabian Action Group. For more details see Cormac, ‘Coordinating Covert Action’.
17 .	Clive Jones, Britain and the Yemen Civil War, 1962–1965: Ministers, Mercenaries and Mandarins – Foreign Policy and the Limits of Covert Action (Brighton: Sussex Academic Press, 2004), p. 111; Philip Davies, Intelligence and Government in Britain and the United States: A Comparative Perspective, Vol. 2: Evolution of the UK Intelligence community (Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger, 2012), p. 193.
18 .	Chester L. Cooper, The Lion’s Last Roar: Suez, 1956 (New York: Harper and Row, 1978), p. 70.
19 .	Percy Cradock, Know Your Enemy: How the Joint Intelligence Committee Saw the World (London: John Murray, 2002), pp. 128, 279.
20 .	Private information.
21 .	‘Charter for the Joint Intelligence Committee’, 26 August 1955, JIC(55)57, TNA: CAB 158/21.
22 .	Rory Cormac, Confronting the Colonies: British Intelligence and Counterinsurgency (London: Hurst, 2013), pp. 217–19.
23 .	JIC minutes, 13 July 1967, JIC(67) 29th Meeting, TNA: CAB 159/47; ‘Operations in South Arabia after Independence’, draft Foreign Office/Ministry of Defence paper, 10 July 1967, TNA: DEFE 24/570; ‘Liaison Staff’ (Appendix 2 to Annex A to CINCFE33/67), 27 September 1967, TNA: DEFE 24/571.
24 .	Committee on Counter-Subversion in the Colonial Territories minutes, 16 March 1956, GEN. 520/1st Meeting, TNA: CAB 130/114.
25 .	‘Overseas Joint Intelligence Groups: Fragmentary Records’, CAB 191, The National Archives, http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/SearchUI/details/redirect/?CATLN=3&CATID=60711&CATREF=CAB+191 (last accessed 13 November 2013).
26 .	Davies, Intelligence and Government in Britain and the United States , p. 16.
27 .	‘Transcript of Sir John Scarlett Hearing’, Oral Evidence to the Iraq Inquiry, 8 December 2009, p. 18, http://www.iraqinquiry.org.uk/media/40665/20091208pmscarlett-final.pdf (last accessed 13 November 2013).
28 .	Cradock, Know Your Enemy , p. 261.
29 .	See for example TNA: FCO 76/18, which is a Maritime and Transport Department file discussing the terrorist threat to British shipping in 1970.