180 • FEDERATED PRESS OF AMERICA
gence Service(SIS) in anticipation of his ownSpecial Intelligence
Service, which he established across Latin America in 1942. Simul-
taneously he posted Arthur Thurston as a ‘‘legal attache ́’’ at the U.S.
Embassy in London in November 1942, followed by John Cimper-
man, to liaise with MI5 and SIS. The reciprocal arrangement has con-
tinued ever since.FEDERATED PRESS OF AMERICA (FPA).Supposedly an inde-
pendent news agency located at 50 Outer Temple, London, the FPA
was a front for Soviet espionage managed byWilliam Ewerand
Rosa Edwards. It was created in 1919 and continued until it was
raided byMI5in April 1929. It also ran a branch in Paris and a bu-
reau in New York, headed by Karl Ha ̈ssler. The FPA employed Wal-
ter Holmes, aCommunist Party of Great Britain(CPGB) member
and theDaily Herald’s Moscow correspondent. The agency was sub-
sidized by covert payments from theComintern, channeled through
Chesham House, the office of theSoviet Trade Delegation, and by
support from Eva Reckitt, a wealthy CPGB sympathizer.
FELL, BARBARA.A British civil servant with 23 years’ experience
working for the Central Office of Information, Barbara Fell, OBE,
was denounced as a spy byAnatoli Golitsyn. She was interviewed
by anMI5interrogator and admitted that for a period of 17 months,
starting in spring 1959, she had had an affair with the press attache ́
of the Yugoslav embassy, Smiljan Pecjak, and had passed him copies
of confidential Foreign Office briefings. In December 1962 she
pleased guilty to offenses under theOfficial Secrets Actand was
sentenced to two years’ imprisonment.
FERGUSSON, SIR BERNARD.The last director of combined opera-
tions during World War II, General Sir Bernard Fergusson was posted
to thePalestinePolice in October 1946 as assistant inspector-general
in charge of the Police Mobile Force, which was soon disbanded on
the recommendation of Sir Charles Wickham. Instead Fergusson ap-
pointed two of his former Sandhurst pupils, Roy Farran and Alister
MacGregor, to run ‘‘special squads’’ against theIrgun. The opera-
tion was considered successful until Farran was charged with the
murder of an Irgun suspect and fled to Syria; upon his return to Pales-