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nonmilitary) intelligence throughout the Middle East suddenly became a
hot topic, and there was a definite push towards establishing a central
intelligence clearing-house of some kind (‘a central directional impulse’).
At the same time, the question of overlapping competencies naturally
arose: always a catalyst for lively debate.^50
Predictably, Chokra Wood was furious, and lost no time in firing off a
robust response to the Minister of State in Cairo in which he clearly staked
out his claim to the moral high ground. ‘It is difficult for me,’ Wood
wrote, ‘to give views which may not be considered biased when CICI,
which I have been head of for the past two years, is held up as a model for
possible establishments in other areas.’ As regards competencies, only
CICI and ISLD handled nonoperational intelligence—not SOE (which
dealt with covert propaganda), not GSI, not RAF Intelligence—and there
was very little overlap. In fact, what overlap there was between CICI and
ISLD was a good thing because it was ‘useful for confirmation.’^51 Wood
was dead against coordinating such intelligence on principle, and espe-
cially against trying to coordinate it by placing civil intelligence under the
military-intelligence authorities. According to Wood, the concept of coor-
dination was nonsense, for a nonoperational-intelligence organization like
CICI had to be static, whereas an operational-intelligence organization
like Tenth Army had to be mobile. The civilian population stayed put,
while the army moved on. Besides, it was laid down in CICI’s charter that
CICI was responsible for counterintelligence (i.e. counterespionage and
countersabotage), not the army. Counterintelligence was the most diffi-
cult of all intelligence activities—very complicated and accompanied by a
high risk of compromising important sources—involving close coopera-
tion with ISLD (MI6) and with SIME (MI5). Given such circumstances,
Wood argued that, if there were to be any reorganization at all, then the
army should be placed under CICI rather than the other way around.^52 It
was a well-aimed blast across the bows of anyone in Cairo or Beirut
intriguing against Chokra Wood. It appears to have had a salutary effect,
for by early September the Middle East Defence Committee (MEDC) had
decided not to appoint a coordinator of nonoperational intelligence.^53 All
that was asked of Wood was that he surrender CICI’s responsibility for
economic and financial intelligence to the Middle East representative of
the Ministry of Economic Warfare (MEW). But even that concession was
only partially acceptable to Wood, who shot back: ‘The gathering of such
[economic and financial] information presents no great difficulties, as
most of it comes to the ALO in the course of his day’s work. [However],
THE MOON PALACE