CORDEAUX, JACK• 109Admiralty, the Army, and theRoyal Air Force, was taken after nu-
merous complaints had been made regarding the dissemination of in-
telligence. In an almost unique display of unity, all three services
protested that SIS was consistently failing to deliver information to
the appropriate quarter in a timely fashion, and the creation of a spe-
cial tier of management on the distribution side was intended to rec-
tify the situation before theJoint Intelligence Committeetook more
drastic action. Cordeaux’s role was to enhance the links between SIS
and its naval clients by supervising the extraction of intelligence with
a naval significance from the production or operational branches of
SIS.
Once Cordeaux had completed his task he was given a particularly
sensitive assignment, and one that remains classified to this day. He
was selected to head SIS’s inquest into the fate of its networks in
Holland and to identify the structural failures that had allowed the
enemy to mount a hugely successful deception campaign that had led
to theAbwehrexercising almost complete control over the organiza-
tion ofSpecial Operations Executive(SOE). More than 40 Dutch
agents had perished in the notorious fiasco, and it fell to Cordeaux,
as controller, northern area, with responsibility for supervising oper-
ations across Holland,Denmark, and the rest of Scandinavia, to
chronicle the tragedy and apportion the blame. Neither the document
he wrote nor its conclusions have ever been declassified, or even its
existence divulged to the parliamentary inquiry held after the war in
the Netherlands.
Cordeaux retired from SIS in 1946 and subsequently contested two
elections in Derbyshire before being elected the Tory MP for Not-
tingham Central in 1955. He never achieved ministerial office during
his 11 years in the Commons, but he was a fierce defender of what
he perceived to be SIS’s interests. In December 1958 he launched a
scathing attack on the SOE survivors who had written their memoirs,
referring to them as ‘‘these amateur spies cashing in on their war ex-
periences by turning amateur authors.’’ Three years after he left the
Commons he wrote a novel,Safe Seat, in which he told the story of
‘‘Jack Reston,’’ the MP for Trentham East, who was defeated in the
1964 general election and, having been found a safer constituency,
lost that too in a by-election. Cordeaux died in January 1982, leaving
the distinct impression among his readers that it was virtually impos-