◆ SpookStack

eyes f + ‘ F s] i ; ‘ beet ee ; : ‘ ses = — oe . od aoe | San u me é- ! ¥ 7 gf; & : a. ° 4 - toot. i eb die ~** foe — -~ vo | were Oo be = oe ge ee meee oa be Pye rei ot a wots i ee, eae fos ~ sabre i cee BG a See -* ; hon ped har ie Pa ace ane Se a Bae ew oe oe Se Roc: biraig ce Lf SR eso rs pe i a ‘ Ree ee Me ed Oe _ P t Date snes Bee ans A mei be mare yt ae nda : . # ae OMe wee ae G4 ag L 5 - . on BF, 1539 Former AC en Office * (Ma, Crossman > 0 to ee, one great difficulty, the defect of ts virtue. Is has a sense of exclusiveness about it, My right hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham, South hinted at this. I believe there is a sense in the Foreign Office that when a chap has become a member of the club, he can do no wrong. Everybody outside, of course, knows nothing about foreign policy. Even if “ The Times” correspondent has been a long time in a place where the ambassador has been working only one month, the ambassador apparently is capable of telling the expert teuth in his telegrams, but “The Times” can say nothing of value. I accuse the Foreign Office of the kind of exclusiveness shown by those who are defending a Privileged Position somewhat precariously... This is a peculiarity of the Foreign Office. As I have said, during the war I was a member of a secret auxiliary depariment for psychological warfare, attached to the Foreign Office. The Prime Minister knows, because he was in charge of our department, that we had to obey the security rules. It was a nuisance that we could not telephone over an ofdinary line the content of a secret docu- ment but, instead, had to use a “scramble.” It was a nuisance that we could not recruit certain people. 1 may have thought—indeed, 1 did think—that the security regulations which prevented me from recruiting those people were wrong. but I had to observe them. « - Tt was much more irritating when 1 found that although we had to keep the regulations, the Foreign Office next door did not have to bother about them. The Foreign Office was too high and mighty. It was infra dig. for the Foreign Office to abide by the common laws of security. The Prime Minister laughs, but he knows that this was @ fact——-+-4 = mua % __ The Prime Minister indicated dissent. Mr. Crossman: If the right hon. Gen- fleman shakes his head again I will say one of the unpleasant things which I did not mean to say. There was a difference in the security treatment of the auxiliary department and of the Foreign Office— between the types of people we could re- eruit and the types recruited by the Foreign Office. The Foreign Office was allowed certain moral types which were forbidden to us. That has now been admitted by the Secretary of State for Ncw + eee eee tye eres ee FS ae fete ae ite Pia ieee at! 7 NOVEMBER 1955 Offcials—Lsoppearance |}: Foreign Affairs when te zevealed th; those have been dismissed sip- 1952. ‘Yet they were there in 1945 a during the war, fe oot ae : I could go into detail about this 6; parity. There was a curious pervert iberalism which tolerated as eccenteici inside the Foreign Office conduct whi would have been condemned if anybor else had done the same thing outside 1 Foreign Office, The plain fact about th, Case is that the security officer ought no to have come into this question af al For even if these men had not been su pected of any relationship with Russi they were unfit to be members of th Foreign Office. Yet they were permitia to be members of the Foreiga Office. __ What did the Secretary of State fo Foreign Affairs say? That the Foreig: Office felt this as a personal wound. could not agree more. It was a personal wound requiring to be “covered up.” Is & sense, it was the tradition of the Foreign Office which had been jeo par- dised by Maclean and Burgess. had been allowed an eccentricity and it had turned out to be treason. course, the Foreign Office was extremely upset when what i had segarded as Donald Maclean's funny way of “talking Left- wing ” turned out to be treason, -_ As for the other fellow, I am amazed that the Foreign Office could consider accepting him as a member when they knew all about him. J am amazed that the Foreign Office considered a man of that type, a man who had been noted is his previous secret department as a “no good” as brilliant, irresponsible, utterly “gabby.” the very type who should not be allowed anywhere near a secret paper. Dee How did he get in? ~ + 4. Fu oc: it was mentioned that Hector McNed was the Minister, I appreciate the way in which the right hon. Gentleman made - this reference. But I want to add that - it is the job of senior civil servants to advise young Ministers. Was there any - advice given to Hector McNeil that an- ; other type of persona! private secretary might be better than Burgess? No, some- : thing much queerer occurred, The . Forcign Office accepted Burgess not for the “A” but for the “B™ class. His. mind was absolutely first-rate, he was a : brilliant fellow, wonderful at languages. : The deficiencies in Burgess were moral, Arte we to be told that “A™ class means core ome ae, . Pe . a Pale iene? shale io vee ‘ iid .