Historical Dictionary of British Intelligence

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436 • RADIO SECURITY SERVICE


A former amateur racing-car driver who had been involved in a
fatal accident on the Brooklands circuit that claimed the life of his
codriver and mechanic, Rabagliati liaised closely with the Dutch
government-in-exile in London during the war and later retired to the
south of France.

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RANSOM, CHARLES.During Charles Ransom’s long career in the
Secret Intelligence Service(SIS), he was only once assigned an
overseas post, when he served as the head of station in Rome from
1958 to 1961. His move to Italy followed the suicide of his predeces-
sor there, Harold Gibson. Educated at Harrow County Grammar
School and University College, London, where he was a scholar,
Ransom started a career in teaching in 1936 but in 1940 joined the
York and Lancashire regiment, with whom he served in England and
in Italy. In 1946, with the rank of major, he joined SIS, remaining
for 20 years.
Ransom was SIS’s expert on the Cominform and spent much of
his career in thecounterintelligencebranch designated R-5, study-
ing international communism and persuading his colleagues that it
posed a serious threat to the West. In the end, he was proved correct.
Upon his retirement in 1966, aged 55, he returned to academic life,
first at St. Antony’s College, Oxford, and then at Sussex University.
In 1972 he publishedEast–West Relations in a New Europeand soon
afterwards joined ProfessorSir Harry Hinsley’s team to write the
official history ofBritish Intelligence in the Second World War.He
died in July 1986, two years before the second part of the third vol-
ume was published. In this short book, written for the Centre for
Contemporary European Studies at Sussex University in 1974, Ran-
som turned his considerable analytical skills to assessing the Soviet
Union’s likely reaction to the newly enlarged European Economic
Community. The fact that Ransom had been studying this topic as an
intelligence officer remained undisclosed.


RASTVOROV, YURI.At the end of 1953 theSecret Intelligence
Service(SIS) station commander in Japan, Maclachlan Silverwood-

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