5
However, our story begins years before the wartime mushrooming of
secret military or quasimilitary competencies and formations. Years before
almost everyone seemed to be clearly labelled: in some kind of uniform
and claiming some kind of official position or priority. Years before there
was SO1 and SO2, SOE and PWE, M(R) and G(R), MEC and PAIC, and
ISLD.^17 Years before Adolf Hitler pored over his large-scale maps and real-
ized that the Middle East was where vast reserves of oil could become his,
provided he could first annihilate the Soviet Union and conquer the
Caucasus. Our story begins in a more subdued, ordered era when all still
seemed superficially right with the world. Britain still had colonies, aero-
dromes, and bunkering stations in almost every region; where not, it at
least had sufficient political power and influence not to warrant any. In
such circumstances and in accordance with centuries-old convention,
Britain’s MI6 had no need of any overt identity: its officers went silently
about their business of protecting the Empire from threat, unrecognized
at home and hopefully undetected abroad. Meanwhile, MI5 worked
equally tacitly, protecting the nation from the potentially subversive
extremes of communism and fascism. And during the interwar years the
two services grew and prospered, recruiting the best-connected and
brightest of voyeurs—socialites and academics, business people and pro-
fessionals, officials of all kinds—to be their eyes and their ears. Specifically
for the acquisition of foreign intelligence in such far-flung regions as the
Arab world, Kurdistan, Persia, and Afghanistan, British and Indian intel-
ligence needed to recruit observant people of an unusual kind—adventur-
ous people uniquely equipped with linguistic and technical skills, and
covered by plausible reasons for their journeys to distant cities or remote,
even unexplored areas. The most suitable cover activities for such intelli-
gence work were the diplomatic and consular services, oil exploration and
geological surveys, archaeological excavations, anthropological and eth-
nological studies, journalism and photography, education and cultural
affairs, and religious or medical missions. Though their official status often
remains unclear to this day, as well as the precise identity of their parent
agencies, and even though some of them undoubtedly engaged in nothing
less than active espionage, these talented, nomadic operatives are best
described collectively not as spies or agents, but by the kinder, gentler
term: ‘scouts.’^18
In its widest military sense, scouting simply means reconnaissance:
acquiring information—usually termed intelligence, but not necessarily
secret—about enemy strengths and weaknesses. Sir Robert Baden-Powell,
PROLOGUE: OF SPIES, SCOUTS, AND COVER