influence the international media. To protect the reputation of Reuters, which may have been damaged if the funding from the British government became known, the BBC paid Reuters "enhanced subscriptions" for access to its news service and was in turn compensated by the British government for the extra expense. The BBC paid Reuters £350,000 over four years. Controversies The ethical objection raised by IRD's critics was that the public did not know the source of the information and could therefore not make allowances for the possible bias. It differed thus from straightforward propaganda from the British point of view. This was countered by saying that the information was given to those who were already sympathetic to democracy and the West, and who had arrived at these positions independently. Unattributed use by authors Some writers who worked for the IRD have since been found to have used IRD material and presented it to the academic community as though it were their own work. Robert Conquest's book The Great Terror: Stalin's Purge of the Thirties "drew heavily from IRD files", and multiple volumes of Soviet history which Conquest edited had also contained IRD material presented as though it were his own independent research. David Barzilay, a historian, writer, and former Scotland Yard officer was also found to have included "large sections" of material created by the IRD, presenting it as though it were his own research. Orwell's List The IRD became the subject of heavy controversy in the UK after it was revealed that George Orwell had given the department a list of 38 people he suspected of being secret Communists or "fellow travellers". The existence of Orwell's List, also known as Foreign Office File "FO/111/189", was made public in 1996. However, the exact names included on the list were not made public until 2003. The list came into possession of the IRD in 1949, after being collected by IRD agent Celia Kirwan. Kirwan was a close friend of Orwell, she was also Arthur Koestler's sister-in-law and the secretary for fellow IRD agent Robert Conquest. Guy Burgess was based in the next office to her own. The list itself was divided into three columns headed "Name" "Job" and "Remarks", and referred to those listed as "FTs" meaning Fellow Travelers, and labeled people he believed of being suspected of being secret Marxists as "cryptos". Some of the names listed by Orwell included filmmaker