26 • AUSTRIA
bonded toGCHQ. An indication of the depth of the relationship is
that the ASIS representative London attends the weeklyJoint Intelli-
gence Committeemeetings as an ex officio member.AUSTRIA.The wartime operations ofSpecial Operations Executive
(SOE) in Austria, a country designated X/AUS, headed by Miss E. R.
Graham-Stamper, were limited toclowder,duncery,green-
leaves,hamsper, andhistorianin the period 1943–45. SOE did
have contact with the Free Austrian Movement and the Austrian Cen-
tre, but only at a political level.
AUTOMATION.In September 1940, following a Luftwaffe raid on
Wormwood Scrubs that severely damaged much ofMI5’sRegistry,
thedirector-general of the Security Service’s Secretariat consulted
a management expert, Reg Horrocks, to advise on the automation of
MI5’s vast collection of files and card indices. Hitherto an index
search had to be undertaken manually, using an ingenious but labor-
intensive system of punched holes and knitting needles. Horrocks
was responsible for the introduction of a Hollerith punch-card sorter,
and in the 1970s a major computerization program was undertaken.
AUTONOMOUS. Special Operations Executive(SOE) code name
for Gardyne de Chastelain’s mission toRomaniain November 1943,
which ended prematurely when he bailed out over Italy. De Chaste-
lain’s Liberator took off from Tocra, near Benghazi, Libya, but failed
to find the dropping zone; it then got lost over Albania, suffered a
signals failure, and eventually ran out of fuel over the Adriatic. A
secondautonomouswith Ivor Porter and de Chastelain, briefed by
Charles Maydwell, was launched in December, but that too failed
when contact could not be made with the reception committee. Fi-
nally, at the end of December de Chastelain, Porter, and a Romanian
agent, Silviu Metianu, dropped into Romania, only to be arrested by
the local gendarmerie before they could link up withranji. Within
days, they were under theAbwehr’s control in Bucharest.
The Germans made the maximum propaganda value of the team’s
capture. Mischievous press reports began to circulate thatautono-
moushad been authorized to negotiate a separate peace with Marshal
Ion Antonescu’s pro-Axis regime, thereby infuriating the Kremlin.