MENZIES’ MANY FAILURES

I want to compliment Allison Silver for her perceptive review of the book “C” by Anthony Cave Brown (Book Review, April 3).

Stewart Menzies was an inept and incompetent man who held the reins of power and used them not for the best interests of England but for his class of ruling incompetents. He did not approve of the United States, and his actions allowed the Russians to steal our nuclear secrets and much more technology. Considering what the Bletchley decoders found . . . he was never intelligent enough to know what was important and what was not.

In respect to Alan Turing . . . not only did he hate Turing but tried on several occasions to get him to do things by exposing his homosexuality.

Finally, Menzies’ other real failure was in the Special Operations Executive, a British amateur operation set up by Churchill. Menzies did everything he could to destroy this operation. In spite of Menzies, it made an important contribution to the war effort.

GEOFFREY POST

IRVINE