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while CICI is not responsible for supplying statistics, prices, financial
regulations, and other technical special information, and will not collect
such information, CICI will watch and report on the general economic
and financial situation to form a proper appreciation for security pur-
poses.’^54 It seems that Wood’s response was well received and did the trick,
for a while at least, pending the arrival of a well-respected staff officer from
London to investigate matters at first hand.^55
Tribal and political (T&P) intelligence was the other aspect of
nonoperational- intelligence work that came within CICI’s sphere.
However, fortunately for Wood perhaps, that entire area of local reporting
had been removed from CICI’s remit by the terms of the revised charter
granted to the centre during the summer of 1941. Thanks almost entirely
to Sir Kinahan Cornwallis’s desire to keep the acquisition and evaluation
of T&P intelligence firmly under embassy (i.e. FO) control, CICI’s role
was restricted to the collation and distribution of T&P intelligence. Its
acquisition was the responsibility of Cornwallis’s cohort of political advis-
ers (PAs, APAs, and DAPAs) stationed throughout Iraq, not the ALOs
posted by Wood to key intelligence chokepoints around the country. The
ALOs’ role was solely to gather provincial security intelligence and coun-
terintelligence, together with anything that might be of military interest
to Tenth Army. Any T&P intelligence that came their way, as it frequently
did because much of it was so-called OSINT (open-source intelligence),^56
was to be passed to Cornwallis for processing before being merged with
his PAs’ intelligence and filtered back to CICI for final editing, printing,
and distribution in periodic summaries and appreciations.^57
The T&P Section at CICI was headed by C.S. Hill, who developed and
maintained a comprehensive filing system in which all events were recorded
in detail. On this basis, Hill edited and released for wide circulation a regu-
lar weekly publication summarizing events of importance and general
interest classified no higher than ‘confidential.’ Consequently, much had
to be omitted. However, the disadvantages of such restriction were offset
by the free use of occasional special papers with much more limited distri-
bution and of letters which allowed freedom of discussion and criticism,
particularly with regard to political affairs and policy. A brief weekly sum-
mary, based on FO signals, covering world affairs of political and military
interest was also prepared for limited circulation to senior officers of
GHQ Baghdad.
All the main centres of Iraq were covered by ALOs, who combined
T&P reporting with security duties. These officers, usually with the rank