400 • OLDFIELD, SIR MAURICE
Singapore in 1950 as deputy to James Fulton, a future controller, Far
East. In 1953 Oldfield was back in London, but in 1956 he returned
to Singapore as station commander, in charge of several others in the
region. Between 1960 and 1964 Oldfield undertook his last overseas
posting, as SIS’s head of station in Washington, D.C., replacing John
Briance. During this crucial period of the Cold War, he handled the
rupeeintelligence fromOleg Penkovsky, which includedchicka-
dee,Penkovsky’s subjective reporting on political issues and per-
sonalities, andironbark, the missile manuals he copied, so allowing
Oldfield a ringside seat during the Cuban Missile Crisis of October
1962.
Some of Oldfield’s colleagues, particularlyNigel Clive, later ex-
pressed surprise that someone of his undoubted intellect could have
been ‘‘led up the garden path’’ by the Machiavellian interpretations
placed on the debriefs of successive KGBdefectors. His appoint-
ment as Chief in 1973 by Prime Minister Ted Heath was uncontrover-
sial as he had served as deputy to bothSir Dick WhiteandSir John
Rennieand, having been passed over once, was the obvious choice.
He was also a devout and regular churchgoer, worshipping at St. Mat-
thew’s, Westminster, where he played the organ, and claimed to read
St. Augustine’sConfessionsevery year.
Oldfield’s achievements as Chief were recognized by his award of
the KCMG in 1975, which he received at Buckingham Palace, ac-
companied by two of his sisters, on the same day that Charlie Chaplin
was invested, and a GCMG three years later, making him the first
and only Chief to have been granted the coveted honor.
After his retirement at the end of March 1978, Oldfield moved into
Brentwood House in Iffley and embarked on a research project, ini-
tially intended to be on medieval history at All Souls, Oxford, but
when he discovered the amount of scholarship that had been under-
taken on his chosen subject since he had left Manchester, he decided
to study another topic and embarked on a study of the diaries of the
first Chief, Mansfield Smith-Cumming. Unfortunately this idea also
had to be abandoned, partly because of the apparent disappearance
of all but two volumes of the first C’s diary, but mainly because, in
September 1979, he was asked by the new prime minister, Margaret
Thatcher, to take up the appointment ofintelligence and security
coordinator, Northern Ireland, where the many overlapping secur-