The definition of ‘nonoperational intelligence’ adopted by MEDC was
‘political and economic intelligence and security intelligence in respect of
the civil population of the Middle East and the Allied forces located in the
Middle East including counterespionage and countersabotage.’ Lascelles
to CGS PAIFORCE, 7 July 1943, WO 201/1404, TNA. The agencies
seen to be responsible for nonoperational intelligence were identified as
CICI, ISLD, SOE, GSI, and RAF Intelligence. Fuller to Kenny, 23 July
1943, WO 201/1404, TNA.
Wood to Minister of State, 16 July 1943, WO 201/1404, TNA.
Ibid.
MEDC to COS, 4 September 1943, WO 201/1404, TNA.
Wood to Kenny, CICI/H/87, n.d., WO 201/1404, TNA.
H.I. Allen, DDMI Security at the WO and a member of the Joint
Intelligence Subcommittee.
Intelligence derived from openly available sources. The information
acquired by the PAs and ALOs would nowadays be categorized as ASI (all-
source intelligence); in other words, all kinds of information derived from
both overt and covert sources. Cf. Martin Thomas, Empires of Intelligence:
Security Services and Colonial Disorder after 1914 (Berkeley, CA: University
of California Press, 2008), 2.
In reserving the function of gathering T&P intelligence for his own advis-
ers, Cornwallis was presumably influenced by the theory of the primacy of
local intelligence over strategic intelligence advocated by his (and his friend
Gertrude Bell’s) mentor Sir Percy Cox (1864–1937) in the context of
Mesopotamia and Mandate Iraq. See A.L. Macfie, ‘British Intelligence and
the Causes of Unrest in Mesopotamia, 1919–21’, Middle Eastern Studies
35, no. 1 (January 1999): 165–77.
See Ashley Jackson, Persian Gulf Command: A History of the Second World
War in Iran and Iraq (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2018),
102–3.
Clayton to Stark, 2 January 1942, Container 11.1 (Sir Iltyd Clayton),
Series II Correspondence, 1893–1985, Harry Ransom Center, The
University of Texas, Austin, TX [HRC].
For the finer details about the minorities, see generally ‘CJ’ Edmonds’
many letters to Sir Kinahan Cornwallis at Iraq Political Situation, 1939–
1941, File 3, Box 2, Cecil John Edmonds Collection, GB165-0095,
MECA.
For more about Sheikh Mahmud, see Chap. 9 ; also Adrian O’Sullivan,
‘German Covert Initiatives and British Intelligence in Persia (Iran), 1939–
1945’, DLitt et Phil diss. (UNISA, 2013), 142–3. For a contemporary
OSS appreciation, see Art Dayton and Hans Hoff ’s OSS Report G 5076,
