222
such routine field work as road reports, strategic terrain analyses, and
intelligence on the Kurds, which was sensitive work because of increasing
Soviet political interest in the northern provinces of Iraq and Persia, and
the desire to avoid any possible conflict with other Allied services oper-
ating there.
As latecomers, tapping the deep roots of British intelligence was impor-
tant if Dayton and Hoff were to establish themselves quickly, so their
relationship with Wood and Dawson-Shepherd was of vital importance. It
must therefore have been gratifying to Steve Penrose to be able to write,
only a few months after their arrival in Baghdad: ‘I am very much pleased
by the work those two are doing. They have even beaten CICI to the draw
on several occasions with prior information. It is largely a matter of sources,
the excellence of which is almost entirely due to [Hoff], at least in the first
instance. [Dayton] has done a magnificent job in building up his own con-
nections ... More than this he has so impressed CICI that Colonel Wood
depends upon him for help and gives him a copy of the more or less daily
progress report which CICI turns out. ... Colonel Wood has said that he
will give information to [Dayton] but not to any other Americans: army,
navy, or otherwise.’^14 There is perhaps no more natural or potentially ben-
eficial a symbiotic relationship among allies than that between an active-
espionage organization (like OSS-SI) and a security and counterintelligence
organization (like CICI). However, without adequate safeguards and
deep trust, the reciprocal sharing of highly classified information and even
human sources is normally too perilous a course for even close allies to
contemplate. Chokra Wood must have come to trust the Americans partly
because of the commendably correct manner in which Art Dayton han-
dled the materials to which Wood granted him access. For example, in
referring to the limited-circulation CICI weekly summaries, Dayton
wrote: ‘I may always read them personally (or anything else in any of their
files) but I, of course, have a natural moral obligation to them under our
mutual trust, and will not appropriate material without their knowledge
and consent.’^15 Consequently, Wood’s generosity indeed went so far as to
include the gifting of human assets. For example, though Wood was seri-
ously contemplating the use of Raoul Haddad and his Syrian wife as CICI
counterintelligence agents, he allowed Art Dayton to clear the British and
Iraqi CID charges hanging over the couple and to put them to use as OSS
espionage subagents ‘to excellent advantage.’^16
What had probably won Chokra Wood over—a man not easy to
impress—was the invaluable help that Art Dayton had lent him with the