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the acquisition and exchange of intelligence between OSS and CICI left
Steve Penrose in Cairo and his field agents in Iraq with little time to con-
template strategic matters, for there was a tactical war to be won. In the
Balkans a degree of dysfunction had emerged which led to significant ten-
sions between OSS-SO and SOE, but waging guerrilla warfare in Albania
and Yugoslavia was a very different remit to quietly gathering intelligence
as OSS-SI did in Iraq. In Baghdad, however, it was not just a question of
cultivating positive personal relationships like that between Art Dayton
and Chokra Wood; SIME’s clearly enunciated policy on Anglo-American
cooperation was considered of such paramount importance that minor
irritants simply had to be overlooked.^65 Such was the case with Tom Allen’s
alleged misbehaviour when on a short leave in Baghdad, which could have
derailed the ‘special relationship’ had cooler heads not prevailed. Waiting
for orders to redeploy to Kurdistan, Allen appears to have enjoyed himself
in the bars and clubs of the Iraqi capital somewhat immoderately, and to
have committed the cardinal error for an intelligence professional of draw-
ing undue attention to himself. Allen’s inappropriate behaviour—he was
after all undercover in Iraq as a religious missionary—did not escape the
notice of a couple of British officers, who reported him to Loy Henderson
at the US legation, telling him that Allen had been seen all over Baghdad,
drinking heavily, talking loudly, and making all sorts of predictions and
promises regarding American plans. Furthermore, Allen had apparently
been giving his Assyrian friends ideas of independence which were a men-
ace to the security of the country. Taking the British narrative at its face
value, Henderson informed Art Dayton testily that Allen was no longer
welcome in Iraq.
When the news reached Steve Penrose’s ears, his immediate impression
was that the improbable British story was a cunning fabrication (‘a good
deal of skulduggery on the part of the British’), but that there was suffi-
cient truth in it to give it a whiff of verisimilitude.^66 A couple of months
earlier, Archie Crawford had already formed a poor impression of Allen’s
‘talkativeness, high living, heavy spending, and conviviality,’ on the basis
of what he had heard from independent sources.^67 But Penrose’s solution
was restrained: in a single stroke he wisely avoided aggravating a tricky
situation with British security while preserving the status of as valuable an
asset as Tom Allen. He merely reprimanded Allen in a letter, remaining
sceptical as to whether he would ‘take real pains to avoid giving our cous-
ins any excuse for carping criticism.’ Penrose hoped that ‘the damn fool’
would realize his opportunities and not jeopardize them by careless
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