Historical Dictionary of British Intelligence

CURWEN, CHRISTOPHER• 127

in 1966 he was one of the founders of Forum World Features (FWF),

a press agency handling news stories with a discernible political

stance. In reality FWF was subsidized first by SIS and then by the

Central Intelligence Agency(CIA), and Crozier, an Australian by

birth, reported directly to a CIA case officer.

CUCKNEY, SIR JOHN.Educated at Shrewsbury and St. Andrew’s
University, John Cuckney served in the royal Northumberland Fusil-
iers and the King’s African Rifles during World War II and joined
MI5in 1945. Until the British withdrawal from the Suez Canal Zone,
Cuckney was thedefence security officerat Ismailia, Egypt. In 1957
he went into business and was appointed chairman of numerous large
companies, among them Brooke Bond, John Brown, Thomas Cook,
and Westland Helicopters. In 1992 he led an investigation into the
disappearance of the pension funds looted by Robert Maxwell and
received a life peerage in 1995.

CURRENT INTELLIGENCE GROUP (CIG).Since 1968 theAs-
sessment Staffof theJoint Intelligence Committeehas been orga-
nized into CIGs, composed on geographic or geopolitical lines and
composed of a small number of seconded analysts. Permanent CIGs
include the Latin American CIG and the Afghan CIG.

CURWEN, CHRISTOPHER.Chief of theSecret Intelligence Ser-
vice(SIS) from 1985 to 1988, Christopher Curwen was the son of a
vicar and was educated at Sherborne School. After joining the 4th
Queen’s Hussars in 1948 at the age of 19, he graduated from Sidney
Sussex College, Cambridge. In July 1952 he joined SIS, and two
years later, in August 1954, Curwen was posted to Thailand, where
he became fluent in Thai. In July 1956 he was moved to Vientiane,
Laos, where he married his first wife, Vera Noom Tai, a physiothera-
pist by whom he was to have a son and two daughters. In October
1958, Curwen returned toBroadway. In 1961 he returned to Bang-
kok, followed by two years in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. In 1965 he
was posted to London, and in May 1968 was appointed SIS’s liaison
officer in Washington, D.C., for three years, finally returning to Lon-
don in February 1971. In 1977, having divorced Noom and married
Helen Stirling, by whom he was to have a son and a daughter, he