SINCLAIR, SIR JOHN• 495he had been confronted by the vice chief and the assistant chief, Air
CommodoreJames Easton, and again had protested that the allega-
tions against him were false. Referring to them as ‘‘bludgeon and ra-
pier,’’ Philby had plenty of respect for Easton, who ran the ‘‘R’’ or
requirements sectionsof headquarters until his retirement in 1958,
while Sinclair handled the ‘‘P’’ orproduction sections, which meant
the worldwide network of stations overseas. Then, as now, the ‘‘R’’
side was the more demanding, involving close liaison through the 10
R sections with SIS’s exacting clients, whereas the management of
the stations was relatively untroubled, each station being largely au-
tonomous and reporting through the appropriate regional controllers.
Instead of accommodating SIS’s risk-takers, Sinclair brought what
Maurice Oldfieldwould later describe as ‘‘high moral standards and
integrity of purpose’’ to SIS’s operations. These Sinclair directed,
living in 21 Queen Anne’s Gate during the week and spending the
weekends at his country home in Sussex, which he had bought after
having lived at Fernden Cottage, Haslemere, during the immediate
postwar years. He had a reputation for being somewhat austere and
frugal, preferring to lunch on soup and cheese and occasionally going
to his club, the Army & Navy in St. James’s Square.
Sinclair’s short tenure as chief was marked byboot, an operation
to protect Britain’s large investment in the recently nationalized
Anglo-Iranian Oil Company and install an administration in Tehran
that would be more pliant, thereby incidentally deterring any other
challenges to British interests vulnerable elsewhere. Two catastro-
phes befell SIS under Sinclair within a few days of each other in
April 1956: the exposure of theBerlin tunnel, which was, in intelli-
gence terms, the more significant, and the loss of an SIS diver, Com-
manderLionel Crabb.
Infuriated by the Crabb debacle, Prime MinisterAnthony Eden
admitted to the House of Commons on 9 May that ‘‘what was done
was done without the authority or the knowledge of Her Majesty’s
Ministers.’’ He added, ‘‘Appropriate disciplinary steps are being
taken.’’ Eden asked theCabinet secretary, Sir Edward Bridges, ‘‘to
prepare a short report’’; this took Bridges just four days to draw up
and was presented to a Cabinet subcommittee consisting of the prime
minister, Lord Cilcennin from the Admiralty, Defence Secretary
Walter Monckton, and Selwyn Lloyd. Having read Bridges’s conclu-