Staff
The first head of IRD was Ralph Murray, later a diplomat. John Rennie, who subsequently served as head of MI6, was head of the department between 1953 and 1958. The last head of the IRD was Ray Whitney, later a Conservative member of parliament and junior minister. IRD was staffed with many emigres, from Iron Curtain countries. IRD officials were ordered not to tell even other FO staff where they worked. IRD flourished in the 1950s. The staff of the Soviet section alone rose from 20 to more than 60. Embassies had resident IRD men under cover who planted material on local journalists - and opinion formers. Other staffers included Robert Conquest and his assistant Celia Kirwan, who was given Orwell's list.
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Famous quotes containing the word staff:
“We achieve “active” mastery over illness and death by delegating all responsibility for their management to physicians, and by exiling the sick and the dying to hospitals. But hospitals serve the convenience of staff not patients: we cannot be properly ill in a hospital, nor die in one decently; we can do so only among those who love and value us. The result is the institutionalized dehumanization of the ill, characteristic of our age.”
—Thomas Szasz (b. 1920)
“When the reviews are bad I tell my staff that they can join me as I cry all the way to the bank.”
—Wladziu Valentino Liberace (1919–1987)
“Each one threw down his staff, and they became snakes; but Aaron’s staff swallowed up theirs.”
—Bible: Hebrew, Exodus 7:12.