CLIVE, NIGEL • 99was in Egypt with the 2nd Armoured Division. Instead of being
transferred to the Libyan desert, Clive’s troop was deployed to
Greeceand arrived only shortly before the evacuation of April 1941.
Posted to Palestine, where he underwent an operation and a period of
recuperation, Clive was recruited into theSecret Intelligence Ser-
vice(SIS) by Frank Giffey, formerly the head of station in prewar
Riga and now the SIS man in Baghdad. For 18 months Clive was
billeted with Freya Stark, the noted Arabist and a wartime SIS agent,
and learned the rudiments of secret intelligence.
Clive was appalled by the interdepartmental jealousies that
plagued the British intelligence structure in Iraq, where five different
agencies were in fierce competition with one another. He recalled, ‘‘It
became a commonplace to say that if fifty percent of the day could be
devoted to trying to defeat Hitler, we were doing well and might win
the war.’’ In July 1943, disillusioned by the interagency rivalries,
Clive obtained a transfer to SIS’sYugoslav SectioninCairo, where
he prepared to join a military mission to aid Tito. At the last moment,
the operation was canceled and Clive was returned to Cairo, where
he was reassigned to SIS’s Greek Section, headed by Edward Dillon.
There he experienced further delays, but in December 1943 he was
finally parachuted into the Epirus region of Greece to join up with a
group of anti-Communist guerrillas operating underSpecial Opera-
tions Executive’s sponsorship.
Clive remained in the mountains of Greece operating with the par-
tisans until November 1944, when, following the German with-
drawal, he reported to Cairo only to be returned to Epirus on a second
mission later the same month. He arrived in Athens in time to witness
the opening rounds of the Greek Civil War. By the end of the year he
was back in London, recalled to SIS’s headquarters for consultations.
Having briefedDavid Footman, the head of SIS’s Political Section
on the deteriorating situation in Greece, Clive returned to Athens in
March 1945 to start what was to be a three-year attachment to the
British embassy.
In April 1948 Clive was transferred to Jerusalem and arrived in
time to watch the first Arab-Israeli war, but his cover was blown al-
most as soon as he had opened his office. In 1950 he was posted to
Iraq to run SIS’s Baghdad Station. Clive was back in London to take
over fromGeorge Youngas controller, Middle East, in time to su-