Where did Winthrop theory in relation to hiding things originate from?

The Winthrop Theory was developed in 1964 by a British Army officer Lt Winthrop who was tasked by his superiors to find out why it was not possible to find terrorist resources. He set about working out how to find them and to look at hides and why items were placed there. He worked out that terrorists used three types of hides, long term, transit and short term and used fixed reference points to mark them.