280 • JONES, MARTIN FURNIVAL
In July 1988 Jones made a contribution to the debate on public
accountability, prompted by thePeter Wrightaffair, and argued for
a system of supervision for the security and intelligence services.Several of my acquaintances were members of the secret agencies during
and immediately after the World War II. I doubt whether there is anything
which they could say of their then experiences which would now prejudice
security.... An agency whose servants are obliged for ever to keep every-
thing secret will never develop an objective view of the world. It will see
everything around it through a miasma of suspicion and therefore proffer
unwarranted observations and conclusions. That is one of the more impor-
tant lessons of Mr. Peter Wright’s book.Jones’s own publications are primarily on industrial and economic
topics, butThe Pendulum of Politics, published in 1946, gave his
views at that time, having spent the previous five years in SIS.JONES, MARTIN FURNIVAL. See FURNIVAL JONES, SIR
MARTIN.
JONES, R. V.Whereas most of the academics drafted into theSecret
Intelligence Service(SIS) during the war were to concentrate on ex-
ploiting flaws in the enemy’s cryptographic system, R. V. Jones was
recruited with the specific purpose of advising the organization on
developments in the scientific field. Of particular concern was Ger-
many’s progress in radar, proximity fuses, and aircraft guidance de-
vices.
One of Jones’s first tasks was to study an apparent windfall from
Norway, an anonymous gift of technical data that purported to de-
scribe the enemy’s latest work on fuses, acoustic torpedoes, aircraft
navigation aids, and bomber production. While SIS was initially in-
clined to dismiss the document, which became known as the Oslo
Report, as a crude exercise in disinformation, Jones undertook some
practical experiments and concluded the information was largely au-
thentic.
Jones’s achievement in recognizing the Oslo Report for what it
was, a genuine attempt to alert the Allies to recent German scientific
advances, enhanced his status in an organization that traditionally
was suspicious of anyone manifesting technical skills. Indeed, until
Jones joined SIS, the service possessed only one officer with a uni-