96
When Adrian Bishop, who had originally been transferred to Baghdad
from his Section D liaison role with the Haganah in Palestine to run pro-
paganda operations in Iraq, finally assumed overall command of propa-
ganda and sabotage/countersabotage operations after Hope-Gill had
been posted to the Belgian Congo in the autumn of 1941,^16 he found no
SOE organization to speak of and therefore had to create one from scratch.
Prior to Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union, Cairo had in fact deter-
mined early in 1941 that, apart from the oil installations, there was little
scope for enemy (then Soviet, not German) sabotage in Iraq; therefore, no
SOE countersabotage organization had been set up. During the first three
months of the year, a considerable amount of general planning work had
been undertaken by SOE in cooperation with the Iraq Petroleum Company
(IPC) to prepare for possible demolition of the oil installations in the face
of a potential Russian invasion.^17 However, after Hitler had invaded the
USSR and the military threat had become a German one, so-called preoc-
cupational responsibility for most of this oil-denial work had been removed
from SOE and passed to Tenth Army, likewise in cooperation with IPC.^18
At the same time, most other preoccupational (non-oil-related) sabotage/
countersabotage responsibilities that had hitherto been shouldered by
SOE were transferred to MI6, operating as the Inter-Services Liaison
Department (ISLD) and working in conjunction with Sir Kinahan
Cornwallis and the Foreign Office (FO). Yet, it was clear that in any ‘post-
occupational’ phase (i.e. after a German invasion and occupation), opera-
tional responsibility would of course revert to SOE, as a clandestine
resistance force. Meanwhile, Adrian Bishop, under cover as assistant orien-
tal secretary (formerly Hope-Gill’s position), ably assisted by his friend,
the eminent archaeologist Seton Lloyd (1902–1966) (D/QL) and J.
Frank ‘Jonesy’ Jones (D/H.105),^19 continued to run SOE black propa-
ganda operations. Together, these three established a widespread organi-
zation in Baghdad and Mosul while enjoying the enthusiastic support of
Cornwallis, who, unlike his predecessor, the generally inept Newton, read-
ily provided Bishop’s team with full diplomatic cover.
Freya Stark and Stewart Perowne had by now arrived from Cairo and
Aden respectively and had together set up a public information office
(PIO) in the embassy, which provided Bishop with just the kind of cam-
ouflage he and his SOE staff needed. The fact is that until the coalescence
of the trio of Stark, Perowne, and Bishop, there had been no coordinated
propaganda effort in Iraq, to counter effectively the Axis misinformation
campaign originating mainly from the German legation, the ex-Mufti, and