126 • CROSSBOW
CROSSBOW.Code name of the Whitehall committee created in 1943
byWinston Churchillto collate all intelligence relating to Adolf
Hitler’s secret weapons, from sources that includedultra, PoW in-
terrogations, agent reports, and photographic imagery. Chaired by
Churchill’s son-in-law, Duncan Sandys, the committee gave an accu-
rate assessment of the construction and capabilities of the V-1 ‘‘doo-
dlebug’’ and the V-2 ballistic missile. One member of the committee,
ColonelKenneth Post, was later considered byMI5to be a good
candidate for aGRUspy in London codenamedreservist.
CROZIER, BRIAN.As he left theEconomistin February 1964, Brian
Crozier, formerly ofReuter’s News Agencyand theNews Chroni-
cle, recalls that ‘‘within days’’ he had been ‘‘approached by two se-
cret services, and within weeks by a third. I already had three BBC
contracts, with the French, Spanish and Latin American services, and
a one-year contract withThe Sunday Times.’’ The offer from theSe-
cret Intelligence Service(SIS) came through Frank Rendle, ‘‘who
wanted me to know that he hoped I would continue to provide occa-
sional material that I might pick up in the course of my work and my
travels. He even hinted that his ‘firm’ might on occasion contribute
traveling expenses.’’
Crozier took up Rendle’s offer and was later to make the transition
from agent and source to contract officer, with an office in SIS’s
dreary new headquarters in a South London tower block,Century
House. His reputation as an author specializing on neocolonialism
gave him immediate and enviable entre ́e across the globe, and when
he was commissioned to write General Francisco Franco’s biogra-
phy,Maurice Oldfieldmischievously suggested after lunch at the
Atheneum that he might take advantage of his visits to the Spanish
Foreign Ministry to place a listening device under the desk of a sen-
ior official. ‘‘I declined without hesitation,’’ Crozier recalled in his
autobiographyFree Agent, ‘‘partly because I thought I would be ex-
tremely vulnerable to detection, but also because I did not think the
potential gains were of sufficient interest to justify the risk. The only
matter of interest to Century House seemed to be the Spanish attitude
to Gibraltar, on which my own views were neither pro-British nor
pro-Spanish.’’
Overtly, Crozier maintained the role of a freelance journalist, and