A plea to Mr Michael Stewart
Sir: Your correspondents Grenville Jones and George Knapp (Letters, 27 September) have performed a most useful service in pointing to a deplorable deficiency in the manner in which our ministers inform themselves before making decisions which put in peril the lives and happi- ness of millions.
All the literature which has been produced in recent years by retired or reformed spies and spy-catchers has pointed to the fact that con- siderable sums of public money are voted each year in order that up-to-date and accurate in- formation might be collected on what is hap- pening overseas. It must, therefore, be assumed that British Intelligence has been active in re- porting developments in Nigeria over the past several years and that they have 'debriefed' many of those reliable British subjects with long-service records in East Nigeria/Biafra. In- deed, the large number of British officers who have served With the Nigerian armed forces (including the British General who was Coc Nigerian army until quite recently), must have afforded our Intelligence units a unique oppor- tunity of assessing the military potential of
Nigeria. In addition, the reports of Mr James Parker, our Deputy High Commissioner in Enugu until October 1967, must surely have been available through our High Commissioner in Lagos, constituting as they would reliable assessments of what was taking place in Biafra.
What, then, went wrong? Did our Intelligence fail to appreciate the obviously true political and military situation, namely that the people of the old Eastern Region were firmly behind Ojukwu when Biafra declared its independence, and that any military campaign, be it conven- tional or guerrilla, would be inconclusive and yet cost tens of thousands of lives? Or did they subscribe to the view that Biafra's secession was a rebellion centred on Ojukwu and a 'rebel clique' which would collapse once attacked? In the former case the senior civil servants in the Commonwealth Relations Office must be guilty of grave dereliction of duty for having ignored Intelligence reports—if the latter view was expressed our Intelligence services require little less than a complete overhaul.
Geoffrey Birch School of Oriental and African Studies, Univer- sity of London, London WC1
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