The late Sir Fitzroy Maclean, sometimes (though mistakenly) taken as the model for Ian Fleming's James Bond, is one of Scotland's authentic war heroes. Last week's release of more papers from the Public Record Office relating to his wartime mission to Tito and the partisans in Yugoslavia follows hard on the heels of a trio of television programmes, fronted by the novelist Sebastian Faulks, on the role of the Special Operations Executive (SOE) in the Second World War. The SOE, founded with the intention of ''setting Europe ablaze'', was supposed to stretch Nazi occupation of the Continent to breaking point by specialising in sabotage missions, commando raids, and collaboration with national resistance groups, and, as such, Maclean's mission to Tito and the partisans ought to have been the jewel in its crown. But the main sabotage committed by the SOE's Cairo branch, overseeing the Balkans,

was on Maclean's mission. Here was a dramatic illustration of the old saying that in wartime the only real fun is fighting your own people. Even the recently released papers, containing Maclean's cables to the Foreign Office, do not reveal the full story in all its black comedy.

Aged 32 when Churchill chose him as his ''kilted Pimpernel'', Fitzroy Maclean had made probably the most lightning ascent up the military ladder in modern British history. A ''fast track'' Foreign Office entrant after Eton and Cambridge, Maclean was already a veteran of the diplomatic service in Paris and Moscow when the war broke out. Aching to get into action as a soldier, he faced the dilemma that Foreign Office rules forbade him to resign to see active service. Having discovered the loophole that only membership of Parliament allowed a Foreign Office mandarin to resign, Maclean got himself adopted as Conservative candidate at Lancaster and then won a by-election there in 1941. Once elected, he took the extraordinary step of enlisting as a private in the Cameron Highlanders. After basic training, his obvious officer potential was spotted. He served as a commando with the newly created

SAS, and his exploits in North Africa and the Middle East saw him rise with meteoric speed through the hierarchy: he was briefly lieutenant, captain, major, and colonel before Churchill made him his ''Balkan brigadier''.

The salient point about Maclean's appointment by Churchill as his personal envoy to Tito in July 1943 was that he was to be the Prime Minister's eyes and ears in Yugoslavia at both a military and political level; for administrative, logistical, and supply reasons he was at the same time, somewhat illogically, to come under the aegis of the SOE. The guerrilla-like resistance of the SOE and its supremo, Lord Selborne, to the Maclean appointment is one of the most extraordinary tales in the annals of the ''secret armies'' of World War Two. SOE London at first pretended there were no flights to the Middle East because of bad weather. Having endured this excuse for a week, Maclean became suspicious and contacted his friends at the Foreign Office, only to learn that there was no bad weather. After booking himself on an RAF flight to Cairo, he announced the fait accompli to his official liaison

officer at SOE headquarters in Baker Street. The upshot was an immediate interview with Lord Selborne, who tried to make him over as an SOE loyalist with a none-too-subtle offer of a DSO.

Having rejected this offer, Maclean was disconcerted to learn from Churchill that General Henry Maitland Wilson (nicknamed ''Jumbo'' for his girth), commander-in-chief, Persia and Iraq, had cabled Downing Street, objecting to Maclean's appointment in the strongest terms.

Maclean was surprised and disconcerted, for he had worked closely with Wilson on secret operations in Persia in 1942-43 and considered him a friend and ally. Churchill reassured Maclean that he intended to reprimand Wilson and fired off an angry cable to him to mind his own business.

Accordingly, Maclean's first port of call when he landed in Cairo was Wilson's headquarters. The general's assistants told Maclean that Wilson was piqued with Churchill for having given him a dressing down in response to an alleged cable, which in fact Jumbo had never sent. Wilson then told him that he suspected the SOE, who in Cairo were a byword for dirty tricks. Maclean next proceeded to SOE headquarters. Although Lord Glenconner was officially head of SOE, Cairo, he disliked living in Egypt and left most of the day-to-day running of the organisation to Brigadier Mervyn Keble, his

No 2. Keble was a cholerical, globe-shaped, workaholic and empire-builder, admired by a handful of assistants - such as Major Enoch Powell - but detested by the majority of those he came in contact with. Utterly ruthless, heedless of the lives of his agents and an expert in double-cross, Keble liked to storm around the SOE headquarters in Rustum Buildings from dawn till dusk, dressed in shorts and a vest.

The sight of the immaculately uniformed young brigadier seemed to drive Keble to apoplexy. He raged at Maclean, ordered him to break off all contact with Jumbo Wilson, and told him he would never see Yugoslavia. After a stormy meeting, Maclean returned angrily to Wilson. As he sat in the outer office, he began to scribble furiously a draft cable, telling Churchill he could not work with ''these apes''. He was interrupted by Wilson, who asked him to step into the inner sanctum to meet the Director of Political Warfare in the Middle East, Colonel P C Vellacott. From Vellacott, Maclean learned that he was the target of a SOE whispering campaign. Vellacott was supposed to noise it about in all the elite British watering holes in Cairo, principally Shepherd's Hotel and the Mohamet Ali Club, that Maclean was a hopeless drunk, an active homosexual, and a coward who had jeopardised SAS operations

in North Africa.

After ordering Vellacott to scotch any such rumours, Wilson promised Maclean he would utterly destroy SOE, Cairo. To their alarm, Glenconner and Keble found they were fighting the wrong battle in the wrong place and time with the wrong man. Finally aware of the danger in which his organisation stood, Glenconner invited Maclean to the Mahomet Ali Club and, over dinner, tried to persuade him not to make his complaint against Keble official. Maclean would have none of it and sent off his damning report. It is this memorandum which has now been released and which at the time spelt the end for Glenconner and Keble. Churchill was incandescent with rage when he read it. By October 1943 SOE, Cairo had been gelded. A reluctant Selborne sacked Glenconner, Keble was shunted into a backwater position with the regular army, and SOE, Cairo, lost its independent role and came firmly under Jumbo Wilson's

command.

Some have doubted Fitzroy Maclean's story of his turbulent relations with the SOE, but it receives confirmation from a number of unimpeachable sources. It seems that SOE, Cairo, really was a madhouse where the lunatics were running the asylum. One of the SOE's chroniclers, Bickham Sweet-Escott, remarked in his book, Baker Street Irregulars: ''Nobody who did not experience it can possibly imagine the atmosphere of jealousy, suspicion, and intrigue which embittered the relations between secret and semi-secret departments in Cairo.'' Another witness, Christopher Sykes, spoke of telephone-tapping, poison-pen letters, libellous verses, anonymous telephone calls, and even the suspicion of murder which his colleagues were happy to lay at Keble's door. In October 1943 Keble's deputy, Guy Tamplin, was found slumped over his desk, dead from a heart attack. Since it was known that Kebel had been experimenting

with a new poison for use in field operations, a string of anonymous phone calls from staff at Rustum Buildings resulted, congratulating Keble on the perfect crime.

Even given this collective SOE psychosis, we are entitled to ask what possessed the organisation to act in such a self-destructive way over the Maclean mission. It seems at least five issues were salient. The SOE thought Maclean's primary loyalty was to their bitter enemy, the Foreign Office; they considered that, as a known anti-communist he was an inappropriate choice of envoy to liaise with Tito, and they wanted a purely military mission in Yugoslavia headed by a ''real'' brigadier. Most of all, there was the personality clash between Maclean and Keble, who apparently detested the Scot on sight. He also felt that he had been sold down the river. In January 1943 he had urged on Churchill when in Cairo the importance of a mission to the partisans, but had imagined that any such operation would be strictly under his control.

Even the demise of Glenconner and Keble did not assuage Maclean's suspicions of the SOE. Hearing from other Balkan agents that the SOE was in the habit of suppressing any reports from the field they did not like, Maclean arranged with Sir Stewart Menzie, aka ''C'', head of the secret service (SIS), that all his signals from Yugoslavia to Cairo would be automatically copied to MI6 in London, thus preventing further sabotage. Maclean was a superb player of the ''secret army'' game, but remained wary of the SOE, even in its purely administrative role as support, supply, and logistical back-up for the mission to Tito. When the SOE distributed parachutes to the Maclean mission just before the plane took off from Tunisia for the drop zone over Yugoslavia, Maclean asked for several spare parachutes. ''I can assure you,'' he told me, ''that I did not take the first parachute that was offered to me.

Because one of the things the SOE did to people it wanted to get rid of was to put a blanket in their parachute.''

Oh, what a lovely war!