CHURCHILL, PETER• 95sellorto the Intelligence Services in 2002, and in 2004 served as a
member of Lord Butler’s review of the intelligence available to the
British government before the 2004 Gulf War.CHINA MISSION.In the absence of anySecret Intelligence Service
activity in China during World War II, the role of intelligence gather-
ing fell toSpecial Operations Executive(SOE), which was estab-
lished by Findlay Andrew at the British embassy in Chunking and at
Hunming in 1943. SOE did not run any subversive operations in
China, apart fromnonchalantandoblivionin Hong Kong. In-
stead it collaborated with Chinese agencies, the International Intelli-
gence Service and the Resources Investigation Institution. SOE’s
greatest coup in the region wasremorse, which financed much of
the organization’s wartime activities.
CHINOOK CRASH.The accidental crash of a Chinook helicopter on
the Mull of Kintyre on 2 June 1994, which resulted in the deaths of
10 Royal Ulster ConstabularySpecial Branch detectives and six
MI5officers, is the single greatest loss of life in MI5’s history.
CHISHOLM, RIARI.TheSecret Intelligence Service(SIS) station
commander in Moscow, Riari Chisholm was responsible for main-
taining contact withOleg Penkovsky. His wife Janet acted as a cou-
rier, meeting Penkovsky covertly in Moscow as she took her three
children for afternoon walks in the Arbat. Chisholm was expelled
from the Soviet Union in November 1962, but it was later established
that he had been compromised byGeorge Blake, with whom he had
served at the SIS station in Berlin. Chisholm later served in Pretoria.
The author ofLadysmith,he contracted viral malaria while returning
to London and died.
CHOIR. MI5code name for a probe microphone used to eavesdrop on
conversations held in the Soviet Consulate in London during the
Cold War.
CHURCHILL, PETER.The organizer ofSpecial Operations Execu-
tivenetworks in southern France in World War II, Peter Churchill
was arrested byHugo Bleicherand survived the war as a prisoner.