Denis Capel-Dunn - Career

Career

The son of a consular clerk in Leipzig, Capel-Dunn became a barrister, and then rose rapidly during the Second World War to the rank of Lt. Colonel in the Intelligence Corps.

Powell served under him whilst on attachment to the Cabinet Office for nine weeks in 1943. When Powell, an acting major, asked to be retained in his post for a further fortnight in order that his rank might become substantive, Capel-Dunn dismissed the request on the grounds that "My nerves wouldn't stand it".

Noel Annan recorded Capel-Dunn's role in the JIC, noting that "as the youngest of the JIC members, and a civilian, it took Cavendish-Bentinck time and patience to galvanise his colleagues, and only when Churchill spoke could he at last set up a secretariat under an elusive, secretive barrister, Denis Capel-Dunn, and impose some sort of discipline upon them.". Capel-Dunn was to remain secretary of the JIC until the end of hostilities, after which he presided over a post-war review of intelligence published for classified circulation under his name in 1945.

Capel-Dunn's report proved formative to the post-war shape of the UK's intelligence community. Amongst its most significant features were proposals for a 'Central Intelligence Bureau' that would take on joint service tasks such as cartographic intelligence and the maintenance of geographical 'country books' that had previously been handled on a joint service basis under the authority of the JIC and economic and industrial intelligence on foreign countries handled by the wartime Ministry of Economic Warfare. In the event, the 'Central Intelligence Bureau' took shape as the Joint Intelligence Bureau (JIB), one of the forerunner departments of today's Defence Intelligence Staff. Another key feature of the 'Capel-Dunn' report was a proposal for the continuation and regularisation of wartime joint-service photographic intelligence arrangements that had operated as the Allied Central Interpretation Unit. Those proposals were eventually implemented in the form of the Joint Air Reconnaissance Intelligence Centre. The report also covered the continuation of the interdepartmental Signals Intelligence Committee that coordinated communications intercepts by the three armed services and the Radio Security Service with cryptanalysis and other signals intelligence analytical work conducted by Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ).

An accomplished Whitehall in-fighter, Capel-Dunn over-reached himself when he attempted to take control of the Security Service (MI5). Appearing unannounced at their headquarters on 24 October 1944, he claimed to be acting on behalf of the JIC in an investigation into all sources of intelligence and their distribution. When asked by the Director-General for his credentials he was unable to produce them. Threatened with an enquiry of the Minister, Capel-Dunn withdrew and no more was heard of the investigation. However he achieved a revenge of sorts when, at war's end, he published (for classified circulation only) an assessment of intelligence operations.

Capel-Dunn died in an air crash in 1945 returning with other officials from the San Francisco Conference that established the United Nations. As the royal biographer Kenneth Rose has pointed out, had he not sacked Powell the novelist would probably have shared his fate. "As it was, the subordinate survived to make his boss immortal". His early death cut off a career that seemed set for a ministerial position in politics or as a Whitehall Mandarin. Powell attributes to Widmerpool a Life Peerage and chancellorship of a redbrick university.