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behaviour which would make him persona non grata just at a time when
he could be of greatest service.^68 To Allen he wrote: ‘Our brethren have it
in for you and wish to sink your ship. You will have to lean over backwards
in pursuing a close, rigid rectitude which cannot possibly provide grounds
for such charges as have been made. ... You are skating on such thin ice
that you cannot afford to make the least kind of a further slip.’^69 Ultimately,
Allen denied all of it, and it was Wood and Dawson-Shepherd who rallied
to his defence. Chokra Wood assured Allen that no adverse report about
him had ever been received by CICI. Consequently, Allen became con-
vinced that the entire fiction had originated from diplomats at the US
legation, writing to Art Dayton: ‘It is not our cousins who are out to sink
my ship, and it is not my ship alone that is under fire. It is the legation that
has such aims and ambitions ... our whole convoy is under serious attack.’^70
Describing Loy Henderson as ‘our friendly enemy,’ Allen felt that the
underlying problem was Henderson’s intense jealousy of OSS, and the fact
that he was reading every single communication sent by OSS via diplo-
matic bag. That is where the matter ended. The unfortunate incident
serves to corroborate other accounts of the dysfunctional, competitive
relationship between State and OSS caused by lack of trust over the execu-
tion of foreign policy, not unlike that between the FO and SOE, and to
affirm the fundamental solidarity that existed at least at the operational
level in Baghdad between the British and American intelligence services.
As with most intelligence operatives, it is difficult to trace the postwar
careers of the OSS officers who served in Iraq and Persia. There is little trace
of Art Dayton, who ended the war as a lieutenant colonel and returned to the
life of a business executive in southern California. In the 1950s he was men-
tioned briefly in the press as director of overseas operations for Clayton
Industries of El Monte, California, and one of three prominent American
businessmen to compose the 1959 US Trade Mission to France. Whether this
was some kind of cover for other activities remains moot.^71 Hans Hoff ’s dis-
tinguished postwar career has already been reported. Of ‘Robert Craig’ we
know nothing of course, not even his true identity. Having been decorated
with the Bronze Star Medal (BSM) in 1945 for his war service, Steve Penrose
resigned from OSS in April 1947 and returned to Beirut, becoming AUB
president in 1948 until his death in 1954. His BSM citation read in part that
he had performed ‘extremely valuable services ... in the face of many difficult
problems.’ He had provided ‘a voluminous flow of valuable accurate intelli-
gence. Through his initiative, energy, perseverance, tact, and courage, he was
in a great measure responsible for the intelligence received, disseminated, and
forwarded from Middle Eastern countries.’ Tom Allen returned to the western