194 • FOREIGN OFFICE ADVISER
and recommended the prosecution of several former members of the
FRU.FOREIGN OFFICE ADVISER.The (traditionally unavowed) post of
Foreign Office adviser to theSecret Intelligence Servicedeveloped
from the appointments during World War II ofRobert Ceciland later
Sir Patrick Reillyto assist the Chief and liaise closely with the per-
manent undersecretary’s department. The purpose was to give the
Foreign Office advance notice of risky operations and a consultation
channel to prevent misunderstandings. Among those holding the post
have been George Clutton (1952–55), Michael Williams (1955–56),
Geoffrey MacDermott(1956 –58),Leonard Hooper(1958–60),
Sir Peter Wilkinson(1960–62), Nicholas Henderson (1962–63),
and Christopher Ewart–Biggs (1966 –70).
FORTER, ALEXIS.Of White Russian extraction and a former Royal
Air Force officer, Alexis Forter was a legendarySecret Intelligence
Service(SIS) officer who had made his reputation as a case officer
in the Middle East. In 1982 he was the SIS station commander in
Paris, where he ran some imaginative operations intended to deny the
Argentines Exocet missile reloads during theFalklandsconflict.
FOURCADE, MARIE-MADELEINE.After the French collapse in
1940, Marie-Madeleine Fourcade moved from Paris, where she had
been a secretary for a group of magazines, to a small town near the
foothills of the Pyrenees to be with her former boss, Georges Lou-
staunau-Lacau, who had been wounded. Loustaunau-Lacau, who had
an impressive record from World War I, was a determined anti-Fas-
cist and anti-Communist and, adopting the nom de guerre Navarre,
he began organizing an intelligence network in Vichy territory under
cover of an ex-serviceman’s group. His link with London depended
on a Canadian diplomat based in Vichy, but his refusal to work for
General Charles de Gaulle’s exiled intelligence apparatus brought
him to theSecret Intelligence Service(SIS). In March 1941 he re-
ceived a radio and an operator from London and began operations
with a measure of protection from the Vichy Deuxie`me Bureau.
However, he was arrested in May 1941 while planning a scheme for
an insurrection in North Africa, leaving Fourcade to take over the
network.