188 • FLOUD, BERNARD
FLOUD, BERNARD.Identified as a covert Communist who had been
recruited into theCommunist Party of Great Britainat Wadham
College, Oxford, Bernard Floud was elected the Labour MP for
Acton in 1964. He was interrogated byMI5following the general
election because Prime MinisterHarold Wilsonwanted to appoint
him a minister, but he committed suicide in October 1967 by gassing
himself in his London home. MI5 suspected that Floud had been part
of theOxford Ring, a group of undetected spies organized at the
university before World War II. He had joined theIntelligence Corps
in 1939 and in 1942 had been transferred to the Ministry of Informa-
tion, so MI5 was also anxious not only to learn of his contacts, but
also the extent of the information compromised.
FLOWERS, TOMMY.Employed by the Post Office Engineering Re-
search Station atDollis Hill, Tommy Flowers was responsible for the
development ofcolossus, the world’s first programmable analog
computer, which was used atBletchley Parkto race through mil-
lions of permutations to find the key settings of the enemy’sEnigma
cipher machine.
FOLEY, FRANK.TheSecret Intelligence Service(SIS) head of sta-
tion in Berlin from 1919 to 1939, succeedingHenry Landau, Frank
Foley was educated on a scholarship at Stoneyhurst, trained for the
priesthood at St. Josephs, a Roman Catholic seminary in Poitiers, and
attended the Universite ́de France. He volunteered for the army in
1915 and was wounded in the defense of Ecoust in March 1918.
Evacuated to Cornwall to recover, Foley was transferred to theIntel-
ligence Corpsand sent to France underStewart Menzies. At the end
of the war he was recruited into SIS and posted to the Inter-Allied
Commission of Control in Cologne, and then appointedpassport
control officerin Berlin, attached to Lord Kilmarnock’s embassy.
During the 20 years Foley spent in Germany, he recruited many
agents, among themJohann De GraafandPaul Rosbaud. He also
became a life-saving source of visas forPalestinefor a growing
number of Jewish emigrants. At the end of August 1939 the SIS sta-
tion closed and Foley was withdrawn to Copenhagen, where he was
ordered toNorwayto take over the Oslo station from Commander
Newill. When the Nazis invaded in April, Foley was evacuated to