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Dayton had built a world-wide network of business contacts, including
some in Iraq, and had roamed extensively overseas for 20 years. In 1939,
for example, he travelled on business for 40,000 miles and visited 38
countries, touching every corner of the globe. Some of his observations at
the time were generalized but prescient: ‘In Africa the natives are afraid of
Italian bombers ... in the Far East the countries are fearful lest Japan gob-
bles them up ... in Europe all are afraid of war.’ On returning home after
11 months abroad, Dayton noted that South Africa was the most prosper-
ous land he had visited, and that ‘in darkest Africa’ the nationalist spirit
had invaded [sic] even the most illiterate natives, who could not realize
‘the good being done for them by the powers protecting them.’^10 Art
Dayton was in fact the ideal prototype of an OSS chief agent, meeting
most, if not all, of the field-operative criteria that Ian Fleming had enu-
merated for Donovan at the latter’s request in May 1941: ‘must have
trained powers of observation, analysis, and evaluation, absolute discre-
tion, sobriety, devotion to duty, ... wide experience, and be aged about
40 to 50.’^11
Art Dayton was not only responsible for coordinating the activities of
the other three OSS agents in Iraq, but he also handled external liaison,
regularly dealing with Loy Wesley Henderson (1892–1986) and other
State Department officials at the Baghdad legation. He also dealt with the
British ‘cousins’: liaising with Chokra Wood and Hanbury Dawson-
Shepherd of the Combined Intelligence Centre Iraq and Persia (CICI)
(codenamed BABYLON and referred to by Dayton as ‘our friends across
the river’), with Seton Lloyd of the Special Operations Executive (SOE)
(‘one of our close—and valuable—friends’),^12 and—though we know
nothing about what went on—with whoever had succeeded Brian Giffey
and Nigel Clive of the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS/MI6), known to
Dayton, of course, as ISLD. Relations between Dayton and Chokra Wood
were particularly good. Only two months after Dayton’s arrival in Baghdad
(in August 1943), Steve Penrose was in a position to note that useful
cooperation had been obtained ‘such as the offer of CICI in Baghdad to
open their files to the scrutiny of our chief there whenever such informa-
tion might be needed. ... Incidentally this British agency is highly
impressed with the efficiency of our men, who produced detailed intelli-
gence which they acknowledged was superior to their own.’^13 The men in
question, Dayton and Dr. Hans Hoff (1897–1969), an eminent Austrian
psychiatrist and university professor who had fled Nazi persecution in
1938, functioned in Baghdad as a highly effective OSS team, covering
OH SO SOCIAL