Ruskies

Abstract

Of vital importance for Joe Spencer’s ‘ratcatchers’ was liaison work with other British and Allied agencies in the region, namely 10th Army HQ (PAIFORCE); the British legation; the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), operating locally as the Inter-Services Liaison Department (ISLD); the Special Operations Executive (SOE); US Persian Gulf (Service) Command (PGSC/PGC), including the field-security forces of the US Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC); and, last but by no means least, the security forces of the Soviet Union (NKVD). In order to ensure tight occupational security, Spencer realized from when he first arrived in Tehran at the beginning of 1942 that the maintenance of effective liaison between the occupying powers was crucial, and that internal security could only be effective if the competent authorities in both zones regularly discussed problems of mutual interest and concern. As Sir Reader Bullard noted in 1945, notwithstanding American ‘inexperience’ and Russian ‘ill will’, Persia was the one country where British, American, and Soviet civil and military authorities met on a broad land front, and the necessary contacts at the various technical levels proceeded reasonably smoothly and efficiently, in spite of difficulties in the political sphere.²

Russian attempts to penetrate us do not surprise or alarm us in the least. … We have always operated for the most part in the open, and this is probably what puzzles them most of all. (Alan Roger [ADSO Persia])¹