Historical Dictionary of British Intelligence

YOUNG, GEORGE• 591

Unfortunately for Thornhill and Fleming—whose brotherIan

Flemingwas to inventJames Bond—not a single Italian volunteered

to joinyakand become a saboteur. Worse still, the SOE officer in

charge of the Italian desk in SOE’s psychological warfare division,

John de Salis, discovered that the paper was carrying articles that, if

not actually Communist inspired, could certainly be interpreted as

very anti-British. One offending item, entitledPerfidious Albion, had

already been rejected by the censor but was published anyway, lend-

ing weight to the prevalent view that, in its naı ̈vete ́, SOE had allowed

itself to be hijacked by socialists who used SOE’s facilities to dis-

seminate Communist propaganda. The row that followed led to the

dismissal of theCorriere’s editorial board, headed by Professor Um-

berto Calosso, and the arrest by the Egyptian police of Enzo Sereni,

one of theCorriere’s editors and a key SOE agent. Following an 11-

day hunger strike and Moshe Sharrett’s intervention, Sereni was re-

leased from jail and sent on a secret mission to Baghdad.

YOUNG, COURTNEY. MI5’s Far East expert during World War II,
Courtney Young was a formerReuter’s News Agencycorrespondent
in France who was fluent in Japanese and headed B1(f ). After the
war, he investigated Soviet espionage and interrogated theGRUde-
fectorAllan Foote. The result was a lengthy statement that subse-
quently was published as Foote’s autobiography,A Handbook for
Spies. In February 1949 Young was appointed MI5’s firstsecurity
liaison officerto theAustralian Security Intelligence Organisa-
tion, a post he held until March 1951. Following thedefectionsof
Guy BurgessandDonald Macleanin May 1951, Young, as the D1,
pressedAnthony Blunt, but he made no admissions. Young was then
transferred to Kuala Lumpur to advise the Malay Special Branch, but
died soon after his return to England.

YOUNG, GEORGE.George Kennedy Young was a big bear of a Scot
with a gruff manner that belied his intellectual prowess. After gradu-
ating from St. Andrew’s University, he studied at Giessen, Dijon, and
Yale and went to work as a reporter on theGlasgow Herald. In 1940
he received a commission in the King’s Own Scottish Borderers and
saw action in East Africa, where he was mentioned in dispatches.
Thereafter his proficiency in languages, which had won him a double