Liversidge's business activities brought him into contact both with people involved in the intelligence services and with people who held views sympathetic to fascism. Lord Verulam was associated with MI6. Cudbert Thornhill had been a military attaché in Petrograd from 1916 to 1918 and later worked in political intelligence in the Foreign Office during the Second World War. Norman Thwaites, who had worked in intelligence in New York City during the First World War and had recruited the spy Sidney Reilly, chaired meetings for the fascist January Club and was an associate of H. W. Luttman-Johnson. Compton Mackenzie had been an intelligence officer in the First World War and had become a prominent Scottish nationalist. William Stephenson was a Canadian spy. Van Lighten, a Dutchman, had tried to join MI5 and was viewed with suspicion by the intelligence services as possibly a German agent. Liversidge himself provided secrets to the War Office.