COOPER, DUFF• 107within MI5 under the code nametable, while transcripts of conver-
sations in another CPGB property in Great Newport Street was code-
namedkaspar.COMPOSITE SIGNALS ORGANISATION (CSO).The CSO is the
branch ofGCHQresponsible for the management of the organiza-
tion’s network of interception and collection stations in the United
Kingdom and overseas.
CONTROLLERATES.The postwar reorganization of theSecret In-
telligence Service(SIS) divided the world into six geographical con-
trollerates responsible for the supervision and management of the
individual stations overseas. Headed by a controller, each controller-
ate is responsible for the production of intelligence in response to
tasks set by SIS’srequirements sections.
COOPER, DUFF.Having been secretary of state for war between
1935 and 1937, then first lord of the Admiralty, in 1940 minister of
information, and chairman of the Security Executive inWinston
Churchill’s War Cabinet, Alfred Duff Cooper, MP, had held many
of the senior positions of state in the land when he was appointed the
British ambassador in Paris. He and his wife, the legendary Lady
Diana Cooper, were a huge diplomatic success at the embassy, but
his choice of subject for his first and only novel was to prove excep-
tionally controversial.
When word reached Whitehall that Duff Cooper intended to write
about the wartime operation codenamedmincemeat, ‘‘strong pres-
sure was put upon him not to do so’’ according to his son. ‘‘Just what
form this pressure took I have not been able to establish, but it seems
likely that the prime minister—Mr. Attlee—was personally in-
volved.’’ According to Charles Cholmondeley, theMI5officer who
had dreamed upmincemeat, Cooper was threatened with criminal
prosecution and had retorted that he would identify his source as
Churchill, who he alleged had embroidered the story somewhat for
his audience at a dinner party! The book,Operation Heartbreak,was
published in November 1950, and the controversy did not prevent
him from being elevated to the House of Lords with a viscountcy in
- Cooper died in 1954 without disclosing that his story had been