>> i am indeed mark stout, the story of at the international spy museum. is a push to be your. i would like to say i've been here for 11 years. i'm afraid that's a mistake. i appreciate it. of coarse we at international spy museum, it was an obvious event for us when we heard that mi6 was going to be an authorized history. it was an obvious thing for us to get on board with. when the chance came up to work with politics and prose we jumped at it because like all people in washington, d.c., we are enormous fans of your work here. i would say we have the opportunity of the spy museum earlier today to record a podcast with professor keith jeffery your it's wonderful to be here in this venue. for those of you who are interested in the spy museum, there's literature i think on the book table. in fact, i would highlight the number to either we have coming up on the mumbai terrorist attacks. barber will introduce a real

guests, professor keith jeffery and sir john scarlett but i would just like to make it personal note here, an observation. professor jeffrey was part of the committee against them i had to defend my dissertation against earlier this year. i can tell you that he has some extremely tough probing questions, and that someone who truly believes that turnabout is fair play i expect you to ask equally tough in probing questions of him. that said i would note the passing so i expect your questions to be fair. but again i'd just like to get off the stage here and encourage you all to come to the spy museum, and over to the barber and let's get the business started. thank you very much. [applause] >> versus eating i wanted it is sir john scarlett, who was recently retired about a year

ago as the retired chief, they don't say director in britain. they say chief, of mi6. it was sir john who was the one who commissioned "the secret history of mi-6" backing 2005. i just heard that it was around the middle of 2009 that the book was then delivered. so this is about a four and a half year effort that we have here. okay. i want to welcome keith jeffery who has come to talk about his new book. professor jeffrey is a professor of british history at queen's university in belfast, and he was commissioned as i said by the british secret intelligence service.

the secret intelligence service is the proper name as i understand it is come in mi6, is what was a cover name that was adopted at the beginning of the second world war and it just kind of stuck. and i think james bond has done his part in getting into our american language. the book is a history of the first 40 years indian 1949 dashing -- ending in 1949. all the activities post-1949 are still too close back in our history that to allow those activities to be accessed by the public, would compromise agents,

compromise the lives of agents. so we're going to comment this evening, having evening of disguises and invisible ink and forgery, which were the stock in trade of mi6. and one of the members of mi6, he wasn't, i don't think he was strictly a member but he was a friend of many members, was even fleming. and ian fleming spent a lot of time as i said with these spies. one of the ones that was a very charismatic spy, his name was wilfred. he was called if he -- biffie. in the 1930s he was head of the paris station. he was known for chasing pretty

women and driving fast cars and for his tremendous charm and savoir-faire. wilfred would sit and talk, tell ian fleming a lot of adventures of his, his secret adventures. and at one point he told ian fleming it seemed the stories he'd been telling him showed up in the next movie of james bond. the james bond is certainly the one who has been spying, a known activity in this country. so who are two gentlemen your, a scholar and a spy. so, sir john. sir john or professor jeffrey,

who would like to start the conversation? >> do i need to speak into the microphone? >> yes. >> okay, right. well, it's a fantastic and wonderful privilege and pleasure to be in this name is bookstore, because everywhere i went they said what are you doing in the united states, and i was that i'm going to this bookstore you won't have heard of it called politics and prose and it was at politics and prose, everybody goes there. i discovered as they come in the door, it's a jimmy carter event. there's a silver lining to every lie. i got off on the diane ring book program because he was indisposed, and i was disposed. i wish him all the best for his next term and i hope you'll come to promote his book. but anyway, we would just chat a little bit about his work for a

bit, but we want to give you time to ask questions. we may anticipate some of the questions you want to ask, but we just have to see how it goes. but for about 10 our press 20 minutes, not too much longer, we might just talk around the subject of it. i wanted to actually ask sir john first, please, why on earth this organization, commissioned the work in the first place? >> serious question. it might not be as obvious as to many people in united states because perhaps as many of you will know, many people here will know the culture around intelligence work in the united kingdom has always been fundamentally different and it's always been very, very secretive. the service has made obsession really come a passion for secrecy, logical given it's a

secret service. secret service which only knows secret things. everything is a secret and if it's not secret, they shouldn't be doing it. [laughter] >> that has always been the profound logic. it's not always followed by other secret service is either. [laughter] >> now, there are good practical reasons for that because of course generally the lifeblood of business, if people don't have confidence in your ability to keep your secrets secret, then they will not tell you any. it's certainly true of our profession. we guard that. it was not an obvious thing to do, to write and effectively authorize history of the service and allow an outsider over whom we have no control the into our service archives.

that -- so why did we do it? when he came to us in 2005, i had been chief of the service for a few months. but the issue as to whether we should be doing something like this had really been on the table pretty well from when i started up. the idea had been around for some while, we just hadn't taken precise for the security service were doing history, while on the way of getting it ready for 2009. our joint centenary year in 2009, 1909 makes it by some distance the oldest continuously active intelligence service in the world. now, in addition to the fact that we are secret and need to protect our secrets, and we have this very long history almost uniquely so for an intelligence service, we also had come need maybe is too strong a word, but quite a strong requirement to find a better way of explaining to the great british public what

it was that we did, what was the purpose that the intelligence service, what did he do, what did not do, what was its role in governance, what were its objectives, what were its efforts in general terms, and what was its character and its psychology. the reason i say that is in the united kingdom the intelligence service has been for many years the core part of government, and that is certainly not known -- less the case now and probably more the case and it has ever been. and in government now, of course, you need to be transparent to it is a genuine and appropriate form of accountability but it's very difficult to be transparent about what you do. it's your secret. and the result of this, of course, has been a great number of myths have risen up around our service. there have been several references already this evening

with reference to james bond or james bond of course many would say that we have benefited greatly from james bond. we happen to be one of the most excellent organizations in the world. so there's quite a lot of contradiction inherent in our history and in our existence. we have that myth, whether we like it or not it is there. we don't have to encourage it, it's there. actually my own view has always been, a personal do but shared by quite a few colleagues, that myth is that based unhelpful. and i certainly feel profoundly that it is not a good idea to base your professional activity and your professional reputation on a myth. and it leads to, well, for example, we have a license to kill? okay, fine.

slightly -- an awful lot of people believe. if you have a license to kill come you also have a license to torture. it's not surprising people think you get all sorts of things if they believe -- but we'll try to put that right. how do you do that without revealing secrets. you bring all these things together, use that to put facts about our past, but in the way in which people can see it's possibly relevant that they are on the kubrick how to do that by retaining conference question bring in an outsider, someone over whom you have no control, someone of authority in the field as a historian of the period concerned and someone with no into deep of independent judgment. you let him loose in the archives, with unrestricted access, absolutely vital that there's unrestricted access, and his brief is to write the full

story of the service within the period decided that it has to be a full story. you can't say we're going to not allow you to write about the piece over here for a big aspect of their, otherwise his credibility is undermined. that was the logic which led us to 1909-1949. that sets out for you and for a bit late tell you that now, everybody else here, what the policy decision was here. and, of course, the test has to be hasn't worked, has been successful? that's the test were undergoing out, and you will conclude one way or the other whether that has been successful or not. spirit just. i think the point about independence is absently vital to me. i'm a scholar. i have a reputation to defend. i don't want to write a packed

house history. if it comes across as some glossy corporate promotional document, then the whole exercise is wasted on whole series of levels but it's not good for my reputation, although i have a get out of jail free card at him. i could say it's a with we have until the whole truth i could say well, powers greater than me over here have restricted me from doing that. and no, i haven't had you played that card and they don't need to play that card. but there is a sense in which by being the person sufficiently trusted and chosen, and there was a selection process, i wasn't the only person. it was funny, the improvement process was a bit like a mixture of the old style and a new style. the old style with something like this, you would be at your oxbridge college and you get tapped on the shoulder by some

mysterious but well-dressed man who would say well, dear boy, i might have something interesting for you, come have dinner with me at my club. and you would do that. i was asked what i'd be interested, and in the possibility of having privileged access to the archives of mi6 to write some historical work in relation to the upcoming centenary. of course, i suggest. this is the holy grail of british archives. this is a screwed shut so tight nobody sees it all. they don't release any of these documents, the national archives. they are exempt from legislation. they are exempt from freedom of information. so it is a kind of as i say, holy grail. but the opportunity to be let loose in this as indeed i was, the opportunity to be a child in a candy store. or even better, barbara will be

alarmed at this, being left free to select any book she wanted at a bookstore. and run out the door with them. which is not to be encouraged, i'm sure. [laughter] so there are these conflicting attractions i've taken up on a high mountain will always be yours. there are temptations. there are temptations to this. so those temptations themselves have to be tempered by professionalism and the ethics that a professional, career in history might have given me. know, in the end you don't have to trust me about this. you look at the book and you make up your own mind because that's all i could do. that's what i want is, i want my peers, my historian piers, that some of them think because i was

chosen i am precisely the worst person to do the job. you know, that disqualifies me completely, but that's just the way it is. i was never going to give up a lifetime once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to write the only, the first but the only history of this organization. nobody else gets that job. you know, it's hard to resist. and, of course, there's no pressure there because nobody else gets to do it. this thing stands and falls on the quality of the professionalism that i can bring it. but one level dashing i'm has to win, 30 years experience of doing this. that's what i do. surviving the history in one sense is not difficult. i mean, the subject matter is interesting and sensational in some areas but that's what i do. that's my profession. the interesting and difficult part was perhaps negotiating it out of the building. that's what the risks coming in

and whether might be risks for the service as well as for me. i don't know if you want to look at the edginess, the problems that there might be about material which you couldn't release. >> yes. we might talk about risk in that way. more than i realized at the beginning, i, we, secret service, were taking a risk by allowing this project to proceed as wanted to proceed is pretty unthinkable it was going to stop, once we are committed we are going to have to go through to the end. can you hear me all right? we would have to go through to the end. but, of course, the reality was that neither i nor anybody in the service, although we had some of our own in house historians, none of us could really know for certain what was in this archives. especially over 40 years. and there clearly was a risk that it is the would be

individuals stories or issues which would be there, which, when revealed in public, would be shocking, not just embarrassing. there's a lot of embarrassing stories in the book as you'll see when you read it. binding, shocking, something that we would be ashamed. given a period of history which was being covered, terrible things that happen in that period, although of course were always clear that our country was on the right side of the argument. it didn't matter. that risk was there. the other risk, probably more likely one, was at the end of the day it just wouldn't be of a particular good story. data with enough excitement, there would be enough achievement, there will be more failures and successes and the service was cut out not looking to brilliant. and there was, has been a perception out there for many

years since the great history of british intelligence since the second world war written in the late 1970s. but the big thing about british intelligence and the second world war, there were failures. but it does signal achievement ever, the code-breaking in the second world war, and that is overshadowed the human intelligence work of s.i.s. and that's -- so that was a risk but that will be somehow concerned, and i was not as conscious of those risks as perhaps i should have been. because somehow knowing my service as i did, i had sort of a profound faith, just a basic faith that when the story was told properly in its entirety by a professional, it would come out right. and i believe it has actually, it has come out better than i would have expected in my

rational moment. now, the risk from my point of view, the more tactical level, the more technical tactical level the risk would be, but we just wouldn't be able to say what would allow a historian to include something which he really felt fundamentally that he had to include. that are bound to be tensions. of course, historians sense of duty, including the identity of agents. certainly the identities of as many significant officers as possibly he can, and techniques weekend. and naturally the secret service will be to protect that what he feels they have to. and there have been tensions around that. and i might ask him how he feels about those tensions and given his awareness of the risk he was

taking on when he started this, whether he feels now at the end that it has come out satisfactory from that point of view. >> well, i mean, my job as a historian is to reveal secrets, is to tell the open story of openness as possible, as transparently as possible with a scholarly apparatus, the whole sort of range of all these things. the services instinct is to keep secrets. so there's inevitably going to be tensions there. from a very early stage i discovered that the difficulty -- not the difficulty but prohibition for example, on naming agent. if you're working, if you're spying for the british intelligence against germany, a german in 1933 or 34 or 35, the compact that is given to you by the services is that your secret is safe with us were ever.

this is a nonnegotiable kind of compaq, essential trust. what runs do this, there's a very important theme that runs through the book, and the making of the book, is trust. is that governmengovernment stressed that intelligence organizations to be straight and to speak, you know, as it were truth under power. and they trust their intelligence organizations not to go off the rails. the intelligence organization -- the public and why the public should trust is not unconditionally because -- that essential drugs of the case officer in the agent is a cooler relationship, and i don't doubt from the very early stage that i know circumstances would the service for the first time name and agent. and it's like, i got asked this one day by a journalist what would you do this, and i said

what do you mean revealing their sources. it's that kind of relationship i was going to take secrets of the confessional but there's another area in the catholic church. there's a man right there who might have different views on the confessional. so that's probably not a very good analogy. and i don't want to trespass on other peoples -- anyway, we move on. i write the official history. i'm not going to write down. but if you had spies for britain against germany in 1934-35, 9045 or 46 you might be very pleased to tell your story and many people did. particularly in wartime they write their memoirs. so agents who told their own stories and revealed the relationship with mi6, then i could name them. that was fine. it is another category of people who did say they spy for mi6 who

didn't, and -- so it's not just enough to say i spied for british intelligence. i had to find some corroborating proof of this in the close archives. so that was a quite important restriction. a second level is the question of officers. there is a distinction to be made in officers and agents, and it isn't always understood. james bond is, in fact, an officer. an officer is on the central staff, the establishment of the organization. an officer is usually, though not bashing usually a british national and will employ someone else who strictly excusing, a foreign national to do the spying for him or her. as it happens to be. and i wanted, i try to persuade the service to have one of those movie headline things on that

building inside london which was in the buildings and it was a james bond is an officer, not an agent. that's all it would say. just to get this message over, but there were a number of practical difficulties from doing it. the building isn't the right shape or something, i don't know. but historically the agency has never named officers. in fact until the publication of this book, the only officers named, associate with the agency for the chiefs. and can be on the only people officially acknowledged associate with the agency with the chiefs and me and my full-time research assistant from the queen's university, belfast, but it all the hardware. i'm sorry he is not here. but budgets are tight these days. but i'm bringing him back a souvenir from the spy museum so that will be all right.

he would like that. [laughter] but for the first time that i could name officers. many of these names are out there. wilfred dunderdale is one of these alleged models for james bond, but the service until this moment in this book, itself officially acknowledged people as members, as officers of the service. so that's a real advance. that's a point where there's a change in one situation situation to another situation. it didn't mean i was able to name officers because there's a real problem about this because people who work today for the service do not say what they do. it's very unlike the cia. i can remember going to the conference 15 years ago and a man reduces a business card from his pocket and said cia. this was astonishing. there's a much different kind of culture which john illustrated some of this, and spoke of

earlier. so that this stuff in that sense, and important stuff revealed certainly for the first time. i don't know, i mean, we want to talk a little bit before we open it to questions, but just about individual operations or individual spies picking that you would like to draw the reader's attention to? >> yes, i would. there are two or three particular operations that i would like to mention here. one, that i appreciate and fascinates me in particular them because i'm a professional intelligence officer, a case officer, that's what i spent all my career doing, and there are some very fine individual operations described in this story, but none finer than that of tr 16. that was the code name given to this agent standing for tensely who is ahead of the station of the first will work and the are

for rotterdam. 16 because he was number 16. this is a german naval engineer who offered his services, a volunteer many of the best sources are. in the early 19 fourteenths in rotterdam. he agrees with them and in real german navy that have been sacked because in some way he had consulted a relative of the kaiser. so he had a motivation. and he was taken off. it's the dream of foreign intelligence services to have an individual source, one individual source who is at the very heart of your most important target. that is the best thing you can do. that is worth any number of sources of whatever situation you want to have them, too, but that critical character can make

so much difference. on the 31st of may, 1916, a battle took place. when the german high seas came within a whisker of being destroyed by these more powerful british grand fleet of the royal navy, they slipped away, got back to port in a neatly put the story out that day, they've missed their chance, and, of course, was expected to destroy the royal navy expected to just dominate the see. and not only that, but escaped without too much damage where it had inflicted severe damage on the grand fleet.

and saw a pretty comprehensively the ships come back from the battle. on the twenty-seventh of june, there is a report of an account which showed correctly this suffered much more damage than he admitted in public. you can see on the copy of the report now someone has written in writing, across the top 100%. that is what close to a purist

intelligence was. someone like me working all my life for -- that is what is about. i also draw your attention to two other stories this slightly different in character. one refers to the work against the rockets which were targeted from july of 1934 against london, the only major western city that has actually been the subject of attack. this work on a secret weapons that began in 1942, in late 1942, the first reports came in from agents in germany. they were not british nationals.

there were agents working for other countries like scandinavia. that was the first indication we had the something was up. that was added to in 1943. in april of 1943, a volunteer came to the embassy in switzerland and left a detailed report from the main center of these weapons. the station didn't initially take it seriously. it came for a forced laborer working at the sight. was all domestic. and his message said this is fantastic stuff, get whatever you possibly can. in august 1943, on the basis of

that reporting, the r a f launched a raid, forced much of the works to be transferred elsewhere and delayed the work by two or three months at least. there were subsequent raids had a very large number of intelligence reports from various groups in france and belgium. many of them lost their lives and the overall effort enabled constant attacks. those delays were critical. if one had been launched before d-day, or a month afterwards, it would be on our war planning and the timing of the invasion.

>> we can talk forever about this because it is full extraordinary stories. what we want to do is give you an opportunity to ask your questions. >> the british were very active in the first world war and in the postwar period in the soviet union. the soviet union devised an intelligence operation known as the trust. what insights could you give us about that? was there every 4 smoky more damage assessment done of that? >> the trust was an operation that enemies of the soviet union

to persuade them they were dealing with opposition groups in the soviet union. in a classic kind of sting operation and it did for old sydney riley who was a very able man, a man of many personas and disguises who is hired originally, the first chief of the service who says this guy is a complete scallywags. he has been everywhere and then everything but i think we can't use him or he can be useful to us. site lead different emphasis is important. he is very useful. he provides a lot of information on the soviet union from south russia in the first instance and got some of the reports that are in the book. quotations from these examples and later from moscow and st.

petersburg itself. but from the earliest moment, this is one of the interesting things about the ace of spies is from the earliest moments that his political commitment, combining spying against the soviet union or with spying against the soviet union for the british because he wanted to bring on the bolshevik regime. that gradually populated all activities to such an extent that he was blinded to the necessity of intelligence gathering, the bigger picture and began mixing politics and intelligence which in his case had fatal consequences. the trust lured him through. this is one of the unfortunates. there was a man in the baltics, slightly detached at this stage when he comes back.

he says ok, probably safe for you to go in to this particular moment and he never came back. the trust is an example of a successful soviet operation against penetration by m i 6 which it did not succeed at that moment. >> and under s i s orders was final? >> he was not acting on central as i s orders. in this final period as a spy -- >> he was flying so low. >> in the years between the end of the first world war and between the beginning and middle of the second world war, the mi

helped the united states developed and the can to have a early development. what underscored that development? part understand the german court the logical machine, the enigma, other than the enigma and the relationship they were sharing with the americans, would enable the british to organize the americans from basically being scattered naval and military intelligence to a centralized intelligence system? >> the angle intelligence relationship is crucial underpinning to -- if there is a special relationship in the second world war with in that relationship is an intelligence relationship and what happens it is the head of the station in north america is a canadian

named bill stevenson who is a very troublesome character for the historian because he did wonderful and important fang's but he spent his later years tarnishing his reputation to such an extent that it undermines it. an extraordinary kind of greek tragedy and regret to say. very difficult. and quite difficult to detect what he actually did from what he tried to get people to say he did. nevertheless, here is this close human intelligence dimension, he is friends with bill donovan, irish-american sort of thing. and he encouraged donovan in trying to create an american equivalent and british special operations organization in that

sort of way. there are problems about that as well the week and discuss on another indication or later if you like. donovan is a friend, immediately we get this human dimension to bring in an important component of modern warfare which the united states -- institutional rivalry sort of fastidious, we don't need to know about the rest of the world because we are suspicion and to ourselves. this contributes to the absence of a foreign intelligence capacity. nevertheless when the challenge emerges in the second world war the united states got off very quickly. >> when an incautious less of about claiming too big a role in

the creation of american special services. certainly there was something american side. the british thought of themselves as superior and threatening to gobble up american capabilities because they had such a head start. they got on with it because of massive capability of their own which was well beyond any capability. >> i have a question that goes back to the oldest institution which is timeless. when you read the history of places like center or squirrely nature of some people working, occurs to me the case officers need to be strange in their own way. you have well motivated people

who betray their countries in motives like revenge or transaction where -- from the black budget and people who you blackmailed into a. of wonder if you could talk about one level of management and how you deal with the fact the case officers might eventually get jaded or feel sad then they are persuading these people to risk their lives to betray their own country. >> ought to ask -- >> a little our record. >> speak to the eccentricities. >> eccentricities of case officers of which i am one of. >> a strange personality that i want to persuade people to wrap all on their fellow countrymen. >> i don't find that strange at all. [laughter] i have never done so.

in my purse question -- profession of persuading people to try it whenever it is, i have very rarely come across someone i believe to be dishonorable in some way. very rarely. i have never been in a situation where i persuaded somebody to do something against their will or used inappropriate forms of pressure. that was something which was regarded as dishonorable and an acceptable and not right from the beginning. one of those things the culture of the surface, the best agents don't work for these. they work for you because they believe in what they're doing. one or two cases i had the good fortune to work with quite exceptional people of exceptionally high integrity. they sort of felt they were

serving a higher and more noble cause because there was something broaden with the people running their country. it is quite possible in fact normal to stick to the straight and narrow in that way. >> i made you sound worse than i thought you were. case officers who were just unusual -- i'd never thought i would go into this job when i set out to study at oxford. >> in my day that was clearly true because we didn't even know you were able to have the ambition to join. now it is a different matter but my colleagues in the service, normal people in the way you are describing, they're very able

people and intelligent people. essentially team players. >> i would like to escape probing question. talking about 1919 to 1949, what is it you are least proud of? what do you wish had not happened? the second question is patriotism being the last refuge of a skilled row, dr. johnson said that, i heard peopthat, i n the service they to not hesitate to lie to wife or loved ones if it compromises the service of the country.

to what extent would you subscribe to that view? >> there's a lot in the book of which i am not proud. individual instances there are many of which i am not proud. shelby stands out on his own situation. that story cannot -- it stops in 1949 and makes people think of that because we didn't want to tell the story. that is a conspiracy theory i am afraid. quite untrue for the reasons indicated. that is quite enough to make it

clear in hindsight with a catastrophic situation was. this man at the center, that is sad. the other one is the situation in 1939 from rotterdam station has performed heroically in the first world war with a disastrous start to the second world war lured into a trap. who convinced them they were plotting to overthrow hitler so something was built up for a cap on the dutch/german border and kidnapped from the cafe and put in a concentration camp and being interrogated and did away quite models for our

information. he thought he could end the war on his own account. he is backed up by some foolish politicians too. on the second point patriotism is the last refuge of a school girl, there are a lot of people here w about this. that is a great saying by johnson but it is what drives the intelligence service and service to your country and drive people around the period of this book to testify to the fact that it is the same way it

drives people to thursday. >> but country above service to those you love. >> if any soldier is going to fight for his country and put his life at risk that is what they're doing. if you put -- it makes it sound awful. it happens all the time but a judgment as to be made where fundamentally your duty takes you. i don't get the feeling from my colleagues in the office who worked extremely hard, there are great people, and if you ask them they probably say their families come first but in behavior there are many cases where it doesn't look like that

but that is true in lots of organizations which are high-powered and successful where you have a high-powered and successful people working for them. i don't think it is fundamentally different. a bunch of crazy characters who are obsessed with their jobs. >> we are running out of time. two more questions and then we have to step down. >> you told a story that took place at the end of world war i. british intelligence knew that the treaty of fur so i was not going to do it and send an operative into germany to by the time world war ii the place was the second winner, major-general responsible for the battle of the bulge to get the germans to use up their resources. >> i wish it were true but it

isn't. -and no evidence of that. one of the things that the british didn't do certainly in the period i am looking at as opposed to the kinds of things the soviets did is they didn't work at putting in long term penetration agents. the best agents come for the mi were volunteers. those tend to be not sort of a graduate in turn to some german bureaucratic position or anything else like that. in 1919 german was not seeing the potential enemy. perez a separate issue about not taking seriously sufficiently soon the german challenge and paying too much attention or too

exclusive attention to the soviet challenge. it is not part of the modest supper and a -- modus operandi as it was in the first few years. so be it concentration and the best that ground, worked greatly to their benefit. they worked in an entirely different ways. i have no knowledge of this happened. it is not the way it works anyway. >> last question. >> i have a question about the holocaust because i am assuming that am i 6 had information about concentration camps and

vigorous internal debate about the relative merits and disadvantagess of trying to do something to stop the wholesale slaughter of people so i wanted to hear from both of you about the internal debate and the decisions that were made. >> that is an extremely interesting question and it is something i looked up from the beginning because again it is astonishing. hindsight is a wonderful thing. the end of my period, december of 1949 i couldn't write about -- i had to use hindsight. how could people not have known? we know the full horror of the experience and when you go back to the contemporary documents it is unnervingly absent.

is it because they didn't care? is it because they didn't know? is it because they didn't want to know? is it because they couldn't believe it could be possible? is it because they may be new and it wasn't relevant to winning the war? a whole series of difficult kind of conclusions to be drawn from this, all of which end up with the same result. unbelievable numbers of people being killed on an industrial scale. question you asked me is the question i was asked by the son of a senior member of the service, my uncle kennethcohen whose son said to me do you think my dad knew about this?

if he was equally mystified by the possibility that he might have known and done nothing or how he felt about it. i would give him the same answer i give you. on one level i don't know but it is quite clear from the documents that it wasn't something the service was asked to investigate by its customer departments. there was information coming through but terrible things were happening. there was persecution. the true nature and scale of the catastrophe was not apparent and even the hint of it were not believed. i am sorry. that is the answer. >> i would get an explanation to this.

it the focus was small on targets and objectives. you can gather from what we already said, support for the invasion of europe, persistent groups in western europe, shipping, norway, in europe, it wasn't looking in that direction which would explain why it is not there in the documentation. coming its way anyway. it was focused -- the whole country was -- on winning the war and putting a stop to nazi germany which of course it did. that was the best way but it was too late for millions of people, putting a stop to the holocaust. the question always asked the other day by a russian friend of

mine who was very unhappy because there was no reference to stalin in case book. the detailed reference to the terrible thing that happened in the soviet union when millions of people died as a result of what the regime did. the answer is the service wasn't working on that. is it just didn't have the resources to do everything. one of the problems my service always had and i have often had personally is people expected us for me to know everything about everything. that is the result of the myth. it can't always be true. [applause]

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