To my wife Lois

Prologue

For years I had wondered what the last day would be like. In January

1976 after two decades in the top echelons of the British Security Service,

MI5, it was time to rejoin the real world.

I emerged for the final time from Euston Road tube station. The

winter sun shone brightly as I made my way down Gower Street toward

Trafalgar Square. Fifty yards on I turned into the unmarked entrance

to an anonymous office block. Tucked between an art college and a

hospital stood the unlikely headquarters of British Counterespionage.

I showed my pass to the policeman standing discreetly in the reception

alcove and took one of the specially programmed lifts which

carry senior officers to the sixth-floor inner sanctum. I walked silently

down the corridor to my room next to the Director-General's suite.

The offices were quiet. Far below I could hear the rumble of tube

trains carrying commuters to the West End. I unlocked my door. In

front of me stood the essential tools of the intelligence officer's trade-- a desk, two telephones, one scrambled for outside calls, and to one

side a large green metal safe with an oversized combination lock on

the front. I hung up my coat and began mechanically to arrange my

affairs. Having seen too many retired officers at cocktail parties loitering

for scraps of news and gossip, I wanted to make a clean break. I was

determined to make a new life for myself breeding horses out in Australia.

I turned the dials on the lock and swung open the heavy safe door.

In front was a mass of Registry files stamped Top Secret, and behind

them a neat stack of small combination boxes. Files: over the years I

had drawn thousands. Now these were the last. Routine agent reports

circulated routinely to me, the latest reports of the Computer Working

Party, the latest analyses of Provisional IRA strength. Files always need

2 PETER WRIGHT

answers. I had none to give. The Russian Diplomat's file had been sent

to me by a younger officer. Did I recognize him? Not really. It was a

double-agent case which had been running off and on for years. Did I

have any ideas? Not really. When you join the Service each case looks

different. When you leave they all seem the same. I carefully initialed

off the files and arranged for my secretary to take them to the Registry.

After lunch I set to work on the combination boxes, pulling them

out from the back of the safe one by one. The first contained technical

details of microphones and radio receivers--remnants of my time in

the 1950s as MI5's first scientific officer. I arranged for the contents to

be sent over to the Technical Department. An hour later the head of

the Department came over to thank me. He was very much the modern

government scientist: neat, cautious, and constantly in search of money.

"They were just odd things I kept," I said. "I don't suppose you'll

have much use for them. It's all satellites now, isn't it?"

"Oh no," he replied. "I'll enjoy reading them." He looked a little

embarrassed. He and I had never really got on. We came from different

worlds. I was a glue, sticks, and rubber-band improviser from the war;

he was a defense contractor. We shook hands and I went back to sorting

out my safe.

The remaining boxes held papers gathered after I joined the Counterespionage

Department in 1964, when the search for spies in British

Intelligence was at its most intense. The handwritten notes and typed

aides-memoire were packed with the universal currency of spying-- lists of suspects and details of accusations, betrayals, and verdicts. Here,

in the endless paper chase which began so clearly but ended in mystery,

lay the threads of my career.

Eventually my secretary came in and handed me two blue books.

"Your diaries," she said, and together we shredded them into the burn

bag beside my desk until it was time for the final ritual.

I walked along to the Establishments Office. The duty officer handed

me a file containing a list of my current secret indoctrinations. I began

to sign off the small chits. Access to Signals Intelligence and Satellite

Intelligence went first. Then I worked through the mass of case indoctrinations

I held. The acquisition of secrets is such a personal thing;

the loss of them is painfully bureaucratic. Each stroke of the pen shut

the door a little farther. Within half an hour the secret world which

had sustained me for years was closed off forever.

Toward dark I took a taxi over to MI5's old headquarters at

Leconfield House in Mayfair. The organization was in the process of

SPYCATCHER 3

moving to new offices at the top of Curzon Street, but the staff bar,

the Pig and Eye Club, where my farewell party was due to be held,

still remained in Leconfield House.

I went into the old building. Here, in the teak-inlaid corridors and

corniced offices, Philby, Burgess, Maclean, and Blunt were hunted

down. And here too we had fought MI5's most secret war over suspicions

of an undiscovered mole at the heart of the Service. Our suspect

was the former Director-General of MI5, Sir Roger Hollis, but we had

never been able to prove it. Hollis's friends had bitterly resented the

accusation and for ten long years both sides had feuded like medieval

theologians, driven by instinct, passion, and prejudice.

One by one in the 1970s the protagonists had retired, until finally

the move to new offices signaled the end of the war. But walking the

corridors of Leconfield House I could still feel the physical sense of

treachery, of pursuit, and the scent of the kill.

My party was a quiet affair. People said nice things. The Director-General,

Sir Michael Hanley, made a pretty speech, and I received the .

customary cards with their handwritten farewell messages. Lord Clan-morris,

the great MI5 agent runner, wrote that my departure was "a

sad, sad, irreplaceable loss." He meant to the office. But the real loss

was mine.

That night I slept in the flat on the top floor of the Gower Street

offices, woken occasionally by the noise of trains arriving at Euston

Station. Early the next morning I dressed, picked up my briefcase,

empty for the first time, and walked down to the front door. I said

goodbye to the policeman and stepped outside onto the street. My

career was over. A sad, sad, irreplaceable loss.

1

It all began in 1949, on the kind of spring day that reminds you of

winter. The rain drummed against the tin roof of the prefabricated laboratory at Great Baddow in Essex, where I was working as a Navy

scientist attached to the Marconi Company. An oscilloscope throbbed

in front of me like a headache. Scattered across the trestle table was a

mass of scribbled calculations. It was not easy designing a radar system

able to pick out a submarine periscope from amid the endless rolling

wave clutter; I had been trying for years. The telephone rang. It was

my father, Maurice Wright, the Marconi Engineer in Chief.

"Freddie Brundrett wants to see us," he said.

That was nothing new. Brundrett had been Chief of the Royal

Naval Scientific Service and was now Chief Scientist of the Ministry of

Defense; he had been taking a personal interest of late in the progress

of the project. A decision was needed soon over whether to fund production

of a prototype system. It would be expensive. Postwar defense

research was an endless battle against financial attrition, and I prepared

myself for another ill-tempered skirmish.

I welcomed the chance of talking to Brundrett direct. He was an

old family friend; both my father and I had worked for him in Admiralty

Research during the war. Perhaps, I thought, there might be the chance

of a new job.

The following day we drove down to London in a steady drizzle

and parked the car close to Brundrett's office in Storey's Gate. Whitehall

looked gray and tired; the colonnades and statues seemed ill suited

to a rapidly changing world. Clement Attlee was still promising "teeth

and spectacles," but the winter had been hard and people grew restless

under rationing. The euphoria of victory in 1945 had long since given

way to sullen resentment.

SPYCATCHER 5

We introduced ourselves to the neat secretary in Brundrett's outer

office. The annex hummed in that subdued Whitehall way. We were

not the first to arrive. I greeted a few familiar faces: scientists from the

various Services' laboratories. It seemed a large turnout for a routine

meeting, I thought. Two men I had never met detached themselves

from the huddle.

"You must be the Wrights," said the shorter of the two abruptly.

He spoke with a clipped military accent. "My name is Colonel Malcolm

Cumming from the War Office, and this is my colleague Hugh Win-terborn."

Another stranger came over. "And this is John Henry, one

of our friends from the Foreign Office." Cumming employed the curious

code Whitehall uses to distinguish its secret servants. Whatever the

meeting was about, I thought, it was unlikely to concern antisubmarine

warfare; not with a contingent from MI5 and MI6 present. Brundrett

appeared at the door of his office and invited us in.

His office, like his reputation, was vast. Giant sash windows and

high ceilings completely dwarfed his desk. He showed us to the conference

table, which had been carefully lined with ink blotters and

decanters. Brundrett was a small, energetic man, one of that select

band, along with Lindemann, Tizard, and Cockcroft, responsible for

gearing Britain for the technical and scientific demands of fighting World

War II. As Assistant Director of Scientific Research for the Admiralty,

and later Deputy Director of the Royal Naval Scientific Service, he had

been largely responsible for recruiting scientists into government service

during the war. He was not especially gifted as a scientist, but he

understood the vital role scientists could play. His policy was to promote

youth wherever possible and because the Service chiefs trusted him he

was able to get the resources necessary to enable them to perform at

their best.

As a weary and diminished Britain girded herself to fight a new

war in the late 1940s--the Cold War--Brundrett was the obvious choice

to advise on how best to galvanize the scientific community once again.

He was appointed Deputy Scientific Adviser to the Minister of Defense

and succeeded Sir John Cockcroft as Scientific Adviser and Chairman

of the Defense Research Policy Committee in 1954.

"Gentlemen," began Brundrett when we were seated. "It is quite

clear to all of us, I think, that we are now in the midst of war and have

been since events in Berlin last year."

Brundrett made it clear that the Russian blockade of Berlin and

6 PETER WRIGHT

the Western airlift which followed had made a profound impact on

defense thinking.

"This war is going to be fought with spies, not soldiers, at least in

the short term," he went on, "and I have been discussing where we

stand with Sir Percy Sillitoe, the Director-General of the Security Service.

To be frank," he concluded, "the situation is not good."

Brundrett crisply described the problem. It had become virtually

impossible to run agents successfully behind the Iron Curtain, and there

was a serious lack of intelligence about the intentions of the Soviet

Union and her allies. Technical and scientific initiatives were needed

to fill the gap.

"I have discussed the matter in outline with some of you here,

Colonel Cumming from the Security Service and Peter Dixon representing

MI6, and I have formed this committee to assess the options

and initiate work at once. I have also suggested to Sir Percy that he

obtain the services of a young scientist to help on the research side. I

intend to submit the name of Peter Wright, whom some of you may

know. He is currently attached to the Services Electronics Research

Laboratory and he will go over on a part-time basis until we find out

how much work needs doing."

Brundrett looked across at me. "You'll do that for us, won't you,

Peter?"

Before I could reply he turned to my father. "We'll obviously need

help from Marconi, G.M., so I have co-opted you onto this committee

as well." (Father was always known in the Navy by the name that

Marconi was known by in the old days.)

It was typical Brundrett, issuing invitations as if they were orders

and bending the Whitehall machine thoroughly out of shape to get

his way.

For the rest of the afternoon we discussed ideas. The MI5 and MI6

contingents were conspicuously silent and I assumed it was the natural

reticence of the secret servant in the presence of outsiders. Each scientist

gave an extempore synopsis of any research in his laboratory

which might possibly have an intelligence application. Obviously a full-scale

technical review of intelligence services requirements would take

time, but it was clear that they urgently needed new techniques of

eavesdropping which did not require entry to premises. Soviet security

was so tight that the possibility of gaining entry, other than through

party walls or when an embassy was being rebuilt, was remote. By

teatime we had twenty suggestions of possible areas of fruitful research.

SPYCATCHER 7

Brundrett instructed me to draw up a paper assessing them, and the

meeting broke up.

As I was leaving, a man from the Post Office Technical Department,

John Taylor, who had talked at some length during the meeting

about post office work on listening devices, introduced himself. "We'll

be working together on this," he said, as we exchanged telephone

numbers. "I'll be in touch next week."

On the drive back to Great Baddow, Father and I discussed the

meeting excitedly. It had been so gloriously unpredictable, in the way

that Whitehall often was during the war and had so seldom been since.

I was thrilled at the opportunity to escape from antisubmarine work;

he because it continued the thread of secret intelligence which had run

through the family for four and a half decades.

2

My father joined the Marconi Company from university in 1912, and

began work as an engineer on all improved method of detecting radio

signals. Together with Captain H J-Round,

he succeeded in developing

a vacuum receiver which made the interception of long-range communications

possible for the first time.

Two days before World Wi.r I began, he was working with these

receivers in the old Marconi Laboratory at Hall Street, Chelmsford,

when he realized he was picking up German naval signals. He took the

first batch to the Marconi works? manager, Andrew Gray, who was a

personal friend of Captain Reggie Hall, the head of the Naval Intelligence

Department.

Hall was the dominant figure in British Intelligence during World

War I and was responsible for attacking German ciphers from the

famous Admiralty Room 40. H«e arranged for my father to travel up

to Liverpool Street Station on the footplate of a specially chartered

locomotive. After studying the material he insisted Marconi release my

father to build intercept and direction-finding stations for the Navy.

The central problem facing Naval Intelligence at the outbreak of

World War I was how to detect the German High Seas Fleet putting

to sea in time to enable the British Fleet, based at Scapa Flow, to

intercept them. Naval Intelligence knew that when the German Fleet

was quiescent she lay at the eastern end of the Kiel Canal. Hall believed

it might be possible to detect the German Commander-in-Chief's wireless

communications on board his flagship as they passed through the

Kiel Canal into the North Sea.

My father set to work to design sufficiently sensitive equipment

and eventually developed "aperiodic" direction-finding. This enabled

I

SPYCATCHER 9

the bearing of the wanted signal to be accurately identified among the

mass of other interfering signals. It took several years to become operational

but eventually became an important weapon in the war against

the U-boats. Even today all direction-finding equipment is "aperiodic."

In 1915, before the system was fully operational, my father suggested

to Hall that the best solution was to locate a direction finder in

Christiania (now Oslo). Norway at this time was neutral, but the British

Embassy could not be used for fear of alerting the Germans, so Hall

asked my father if he was prepared to go and run the station clandestinely

for MI6. Within days he was on his way to Norway, posing as a

commercial traveler trading in agricultural medicines. He set up in a

small hotel in a side street in Christiania and rented an attic room high

enough to rig direction-finding wireless without being conspicuous.

The MI6 station in the Embassy supplied him with communications

and spare parts, but it was dangerous work. His radio equipment was

bound to give him away eventually. He was not part of the diplomatic

staff and would be denied if discovered. At best he faced internment

for the rest of the war; at worst he risked the attentions of German

Intelligence.

The operation ran successfully for six months, giving the Navy

invaluable early warning of German Fleet intentions. Then one morning

he came down to breakfast at his usual table. He looked casually across

the street to see a new poster being pasted onto the wall opposite. It

was his photograph with an offer of a reward for information leading

to his arrest.

He had worked out his escape route with MI6 before the operation

began. He quickly finished his breakfast, returned to his room, carefully

packed his wireless equipment in its case and pushed it under the bed.

He gathered up his travel documents, passport, and Naval identity card,

leaving a substantial quantity of cash in the hope that it might encourage

the hotelier to forget about him.

Rather than taking the road toward the Swedish coast which the

Norwegian authorities would assume to be his most likely escape route,

he set off to the southwest. Ten miles down the coast he sat down on

a rock by the roadside. Sometime later, a British Naval lieutenant walked

up to him and asked him who he was. Father identified himself and he

was taken to a launch and ferried out to a waiting British destroyer.

Years later, when I was coming up for retirement, I tried to find

the details of this operation in the MI6 files. I arranged with Sir Maurice



10 PETER WRIGHT

Oldfield, the then Chief of MI6, to spend the day in their Registry

looking for the papers. But I could find nothing; the MI6 weeders had

routinely destroyed all the records years before.

I was born in 1916 at my grandmother's house in Chesterfield,

where my mother had gone to stay while my father was in Norway for

MI6. There was a Zeppelin raid on nearby Sheffield that night, and I

arrived very prematurely. There were no hospital beds available because

of the pressure of the war, but my mother kept me alive with an

improvised incubator of glass chemical jars and hot-water bottles.

After World War I my father rejoined the Marconi Company. He

i became a protege of Marconi himself and was made Head of Research.

We moved to a large house by the sea near Frinton. But this lasted

only a few months, when we moved to a house on the outskirts of I. Chelmsford. The house often resembled a disused wireless factory.

Radios in various states of disrepair and tin boxes filled with circuitry

were hidden in every corner. My father was an intense, emotional,

rather quick-tempered man--more of an artist than an engineer. As

early as I can remember he used to take me out into the garden or

onto the open fields above the Essex beaches to teach me the mysteries

of wireless. He spent hours explaining valves and crystals and showed

me how to delicately turn the dials of a set so that the random static

suddenly became a clear signal. He taught me how to make my own

experiments and I can still remember his pride when I demonstrated

my crude skills to visiting guests like Sir Arthur Eddington and J. J.

Thomson.

MI6 had close connections with the Marconi Company after World

War I, and my father retained his contact with them. Marconi had a

large marine division responsible for fitting and manning wireless in

ships. It provided perfect cover for MI6, who would arrange with my

father to have one of their officers placed as a wireless operator on a

ship visiting an area in which they had an interest.

Admiral Hall was a visitor to the house; he and my father would

disappear into the greenhouse together for hours at a time to discuss

in private some new development. My father also knew Captain Mansfield

Cumming, the first Chief of MI6. He admired Cumming greatly,

for both his courage and his technical ability. He knew Captain Vernon

Kell, the founder of MI5, much less well, but did not like him. As with

Oxford and Cambridge, people are usually disposed either to MI5 or

to MI6, and my father very definitely leaned in favor of MI6.

The Marconi Company during the 1920s was one of the most ex-

I

SPYCATCHER 11

citing places in the world for a scientist to work. Marconi, known to

everyone by his initials, "G.M.," was a superb picker of men, and had

the courage to invest in his visions. His greatest success was to create the first shortwave radio beam system, and he can justly claim to have

laid the foundations of modern communications. As with so many British

achievements, it was done against the opposition of the British

Government and the top scientists of the day.

Before World War I Britain decided that a long-wave radio system

should be built to replace the cable system as the principal means of

communication with the Empire. The decision was held in abeyance

during the war. But Marconi believed it was possible to project short

wavelength transmissions over vast distances using beams. The use of

shortwave beams promised a greater volume of traffic at much higher

speeds. Despite the advances in wireless made during the war, Marconi's

vision was derided as "amateur science" by a Royal Commission in 1922. One member even concluded that radio was "a finished art."

Marconi issued a challenge. He offered to build, free of charge,

any link across the world--provided the government would suspend

long-wave development until the beam system had passed its trials, and

provided they would adopt it if the trials were successful. The government

agreed and specified the toughest contract they could devise. They

asked for a link from Grimsby to Sydney, Australia, and demanded

that it operate 250 words a minute over a twelve-hour period during

the trials without using more than twenty kilowatts of power. Finally

they demanded that the circuit be operational within twelve months.

These were awesome specifications. Radio was still in its infancy

and little was known about generating power at stable frequencies. The

project would have been impossible without the commitment of the

Marconi technical team, consisting of my father, Captain H. J. Round,

and C. S. Franklin. Marconi had a special talent for finding brilliant

scientists who were largely self-taught. He found Franklin, for instance,

trimming arc lamps in an Ipswich factory for a few shillings a week.

Within a few years he rose to become the outstanding technical man

in the company.

The proposed Grimsby-to-Sydney link astonished the rest of the

radio communications industry. My father often described in later years

walking down Broadway with David Sarnoff, the then head of RCA,

when the project was at its height.

"Has Marconi gone mad?" asked Sarnoff. "This project will finish

him. It'll never work."

12 PETER WRIGHT

Father replied: "G.M. and Franklin think it will."

"Well, you can kick my ass all the way down Broadway if it does,"

said Sarnoff.

Three months later the circuit was operational, on contract time.

It worked twelve hours a day for seven days at 350 words a minute and

was, in my view, one of the great technical achievements of this century.

My father's only regret was that he never took the opportunity to kick

Sarnoffs ass all the way down Broadway!

My youth was spent living through this great excitement. I suffered

constantly through ill-health. I developed rickets and wore leg irons

i until practically into my teens. But there were compensations. Nearly

every day when my father was at home he collected me from school

and drove me to his laboratory. I would spend hours watching him and

his assistants as the great race from Grimsby to Sydney unfolded. It

taught me a lesson which stayed with me for life--that on the big issues

the experts are very rarely right.

The 1930s opened hopefully for the Wright family. We scarcely

noticed the growing worldwide financial crisis. I had joined Bishop's

Stortford College, a small but hardily independent school, where I

began to shine academically and finally threw off the ill-health which

had dogged me since birth. I returned home for the summer holidays

of 1931 having passed my school certificate with credits in all subjects.

The following term I was due to join the University Group, with every

expectation of a good scholarship to Oxford or Cambridge.

A week later my world disintegrated. One evening my father came

home and broke the news that he and Franklin had both been sacked.

It was days before he could even try to explain, and years before I

understood what had happened.

In the late 1920s Marconi had merged with the Cable Companies

in the belief that only by cooperation with them could wireless gain the

investment necessary to ensure its emergence as the principal method

of worldwide communications. But as the slump developed, wireless

posed more and more of a threat to the cable interests. They were

dominant in the new company and slashing cuts were made in wireless

research and the installations of new systems. Marconi, old and sick,

had retired to Italy, but not even an intervention from him could secure

a change of heart in the new management. Franklin, my father, and

many others were sacked. For the next decade long-distance wireless

communication stagnated and we as a family passed into years of great

hardship.

SPYCATCHER 13

Within a few months my father slipped into the abyss of alcoholism.

He could no longer afford to keep both his sons at school, and as I was

older and already had my school certificate I was the one to leave. The

trauma of those events brought back my ill-health and I was afflicted

with a chronic stammer which rendered me at times virtually speechless.

In the course of that short summer holiday I changed from a schoolboy

with a secure future to a man with no future at all.

The decision to remove me from school and its effect on my health

consumed my father with guilt. He drove himself to further drinking

excesses. My mother coped as best she could, but bereft of status and

income she gradually became isolated until the only visitors were the

nurses called to restrain my father after a dangerously prolonged bout

with the Scotch bottle.

Years later, when I began to search out for MI5 the well-born

Englishmen who had become addicted to Communism in the 1930s,

this period of my life came to fascinate me. They had enjoyed to the

full the privileged background and education denied to me, while my

family had suffered at the capricious hand of capitalism. I experienced

at first hand the effects of slump and depression, yet it was they who

turned to espionage. I became the hunter, and they the hunted.

In one sense the explanation was simple. It was 1932. I had no

qualifications. I was fifteen, I needed a job, and I had little time for

political philosophy. I advertised in the personal columns of The Times for any work. The first reply was from a woman named Margaret Leigh,

who ran a small farm called "Achnadarroch" at Plockton near Wester

Ross, Scotland. I became her farmhand. There was no pay, just board

and lodgings. But amid the rolling hills and endless skies of Scotland,

I gradually recovered from what had gone before, and in time discovered

the greatest love of my life--agriculture.

Margaret Leigh was an idealist. She wanted to run her farm as a

training ground for boys from London slums so that they could obtain

employment as farm managers. In the event, the idea never took off, and she decided instead to write a novel about life on Achnadarroch;

she wrote while I tended the farm. And at night, when I had finished

the chores, she made me read aloud what she had written until slowly

my stutter was mastered. The book was eventually published and became

a great success under the title Highland Homespun.

In spring 1935 we were evicted from Achnadarroch by a landlord

greedy for more rent than we could afford to pay. We moved to another,

cheaper farm in Cornwall and our life went on much as before. My



L

16 PETER WRIGHT

the magnetism of all the ships going to Dunkirk. The result was that

not a single ship was lost to mines.

In the turmoil of war, there was little choice but to give young

people their head. Soon after Dunkirk I and another young ARL scientist,

Ray Gossage, were given the job of degaussing the battleship Prince of Wales. She lay in dry dock in Rosyth and for her next voyage

was scheduled to carry Winston Churchill to the Atlantic Conference

with Roosevelt. She had been built in Belfast in a yard which had left

her magnetic field running around her rather than from end to end.

The original degaussing had been a failure and she was considered

highly unsafe in her present form.

Gossage and I worked out an improvised system of flashing out

the athwartships magnetization by winding a giant coil lengthwise around

the ship. We then energized this by connecting it up to a submarine

battery. The whole operation took days to arrange and involved the

whole crew of the ship. As we watched from the dry dock in Rosyth,

hundreds of men worked in unison to our commands, though we were

both barely in our mid-twenties.

Science in wartime is often a case of improvising with the materials

to hand, solving a problem as best you can at the time, rather than

planning ten or fifteen years ahead, when it may be too late. The war

shaped my later approach to technical intelligence. It taught me the

value of improvisation and showed me, too, just how effective operations

can be when the men of action listen to young men with a belief

in practical, inventive science. Sadly, by the end of the war this attitude

had all but disappeared; the dead hand of committees began to squeeze

the life out of England.

From 1942 onward I worked on the first anti-midget-submarine

detection systems. They were used successfully to protect the harbors

during the torch landings in North Africa and later in Northwest Europe.

This work got me involved in the operation to sink the prize

German battleship Tirpitz. She lay in Altenfjord and posed an ever-present

danger to British shipping. An operation to skin her, using

midget submarines, was planned. We knew that the Germans were

protecting Altenfjord with submarine detectors consisting of rows of

coils on the seabed which picked up the magnetic flux of a passing craft.

These were similar to those I had developed at ARL, so I was asked

to come up with ideas for degaussing our X-Craft midget submarines

to enable them to pass into the fjord undetected.

The technical problems of degaussing a submarine are far more

SPYCATCHER 17

complex than those of a ship, but eventually I found that an electromagnet

placed along the length of the submarine and energized with

the right amount of current would neutralize the loops of the submarine

detectors on the seabed. I also calculated that if the X-Craft went in

during a magnetic storm, this would increase the chances of nondetection

by a factor of between 10 and 100. I traveled up to the Magnetic

Observatory at Eskdalemuir and found that they had a good chance of

predicting a storm of sufficient size, so I put my findings up to the Navy.

In 1944 the degaussed British X-Craft went in under cover of a

magnetic storm. With great bravery, the crews managed to place charges

against Tirpitz and cripple her. Three VCs were won that day. But the

bravery would have counted for nothing without the technical backup

of ARL.

By the end of the war the course of my life had changed irrevocably.

Although agriculture remained my first love, I was clearly destined not

to return to it. I sat instead for the postwar Scientific Civil Service

competition chaired by C. P. Snow. It was designed to sort out the best

scientists among the hundreds recruited during the wartime expansion.

I passed out joint top with 290 marks out of 300. Butterworth congratulated

me warmly. All those nights sitting up with the textbooks

had finally paid off, though the credit was largely his.

My father returned to the Marconi Company as Engineer in Chief

in 1946, and I began work as a Principal Scientific Officer at the Services

Electronics Research Laboratory that same year. For the next four

years we worked closely alongside each other, the trials of the 1930s

an unspoken bond between us, until that telephone call from Sir Frederick

Brundrett in 1949 brought MI5 into my life.

3

i

A few days after that first meeting in Brundrett's office in 1949, I

received a telephone call from John Taylor inviting me down to London.

He suggested St. James's Park and we met on the bridge in front of

Buckingham Palace. It struck me as an odd way to conduct the business

of national security, strolling among the pelicans and the ducks, pausing

occasionally to ponder our reflections in the pool.

Taylor was a small man with a pencil mustache and a gray, sharpish

face. He had been one of Montgomery's communications officers during

the North African campaign, and although now a Post Office technician,

he retained his abrupt military bearing. He ran the technical research,

such as it was, for MI5 and MI6 from his laboratory inside the Special

Investigations Unit of the Post Office at Dollis Hill. Taylor made certain

I knew he was in charge. He told me bluntly that, apart from one brief

visit to MI5 headquarters at Leconfield House to meet Colonel Cum-ming,

I would have to deal through him as an intermediary. Taylor

discouraged discussion about "the office"; he merely explained that I

would be given the title of "external scientific adviser" and that I would

be unpaid for my duties. For several years we continued to meet in

St. James's Park about once a month to talk over the written reports

on technical matters which I filed to C. W. Wright, the secretary of

Brundrett's committee. (Wright later became Deputy Secretary at the

Ministry of Defense.)

Taylor and I divided up the technical work. The Post Office pressed

ahead with research into infrared detection. I began using the resources

of the Services Electronics Research Laboratory to develop new microphones

and look into ways of getting sound reflections from office

furniture. I was already familiar with the technical principles of resonance

from my antisubmarine work. When sound waves impact with a

SPYCATCHER 19

taut surface such as a window or a filing cabinet, thousands of harmonics

are created. The knack is to detect the point at which there is minimum

distortion so that the sound waves can be picked up as intelligible

speech.

One day in 19511 received a telephone call from Taylor. He sounded

distinctly agitated.

"We've been beaten to it," he said breathlessly. "Can we meet

this afternoon?"

I met him later that day on a park bench opposite the Foreign

Office. He described how the British Air Attache' in our Embassy in

Moscow had been listening to the WHF receiver in his office which he

used to monitor Russian military aircraft traffic. Suddenly he heard the

British Air Attache coming over his receiver loud and clear. Realizing

the Attache was being bugged in some way, he promptly reported the

matter. Taylor and I discussed what type of microphone might be involved

and he arranged for a Diplomatic Wireless Service engineer

named Don Bailey to investigate. I briefed Bailey before he left for

Moscow on how best to detect the device. For the first time I began

to realize just how bereft British Intelligence was of technical expertise.

They did not even possess the correct instruments, and I had to lend

Bailey my own. A thorough search was made of the Embassy but

nothing was ever found. The Russians had clearly been warned and

turned the device off.

From questioning Bailey on his return it was clear to me that this

was not a normal radio microphone, as there were strong radio signals

which were plain carriers present when the device was operating. I

speculated that the Russians, like us, were experimenting with some

kind of resonance device. Within six months I was proved right. Taylor

summoned me down to St. James's Park for another urgent meeting.

He told me that the U.S. State Department sweepers had been

routinely "sanitizing" the American Ambassador's office in Moscow in

preparation for a visit by the U.S. Secretary of State. They used a

standard tunable signal generator to generate what is known as the

"howl round effect," similar to the noise made when a radio station

talks to someone on the telephone while his home radio or television

is switched on. The "howl round" detected a small device lodged in

the Great Seal of the United States on the wall behind the Ambassador's

desk.

The howl frequency was 1800 MH, and the Americans had assumed

that the operating frequency for the device must be the same. But tests

20 PETER WRIGHT

showed that the device was unstable and insensitive when operating at

this frequency. In desperation the Americans turned to the British for

help in solving the riddle of how "the Thing," as it was called, worked.

Brundrett arranged for me to have a new, secure laboratory in a

field at Great Baddow, and the Thing was solemnly brought up by Taylor and two Americans. The device was wrapped in cotton wool

inside a small wooden box that looked as if it had once held chess

pieces. It was about eight inches long, with an aerial on top which fed

into a cavity. Inside the cavity was a metal mushroom with a flat top

which could be adjusted to give it a variable capacity. Behind the

mushroom was a thin gossamer diaphragm, to receive the speech, which

appeared to have been pierced. The Americans sheepishly explained

that one of their scientists had accidentally put his finger through it.

The crisis could not have come at a worse time for me. The

antisubmarine-detection system was approaching its crucial trials and

demanded long hours of attention. But every night and each weekend

I made my way across the fields at the back of the Marconi building

to my deserted Nissen hut. I worked flat out for ten weeks to solve the

mystery.

First I had to repair the diaphragm. The Thing bore the hallmarks

of a piece of equipment which the Russians had rushed into service,

presumably to ensure it was installed before the Secretary of State's

visit. They clearly had some kind of microscopic jig to install the diaphragm,

because each time I used tweezers the thin film tore. Eventually,

through trial and error, I managed to lay the diaphragm on first

and clamp it on afterward. It wasn't perfect, but it worked.

Next I measured the length of the aerial to try to gauge the way

it resonated. It did appear that 1800 MH was the correct frequency.

But when I set the device up and made noises at it with an audio-signal

generator, it was--just as the Americans had described--impossible

to tune effectively. But after four weekends I realized that we had all

been thinking about the Thing upside down. We had all assumed that

the metal plate needed to be opened right out to increase resonance,

when in fact the closer the plate was to the mushroom the greater the

sensitivity. I tightened the plate right up and tuned the radiating signal

down to 800 megacycles. The Thing began to emit a high-pitched tone.

I rang my father up in a state of great excitement.

"I've got the Thing working!"

"I know," he said, "and the howl is breaking my eardrums!"

I arranged to demonstrate the Thing to Taylor, and he traveled

SPYCATCHER 21

up with Colonel Cumming, Hugh Winterborn and the two American

sweepers. My father came along too, bringing another self-taught Marconi

scientist named R. J. Kemp, who was now their Head of Research.

I had installed the device against the far wall of the hut and rigged up

another monitor in an adjoining room so that the sounds of the audio

generator could be heard as if operationally.

I tuned the dials to 800 and began to explain the mystery. The

Americans looked aghast at the simplicity of it all. Cumming and Winterborn

were smug. This was just after the calamity of the Burgess and

Maclean affair. The defection to the Soviet Union of these two wellborn

Foreign Office diplomats in 1951 caused outrage in the USA, and

any small way in which British superiority could be demonstrated was,

I soon realized, of crucial importance to them. Kemp was very flattering,

rightly judging that it would only be a matter of time before Marconi

got a contract to develop one themselves.

"How soon can we use one?" asked Cumming.

Kemp and I explained that it would probably take at least a year

to produce equipment which would work reliably.

"I should think we can provide the premises, Malcolm," said Kemp

to Cumming, "and probably one man to work under Peter. That might

get you the prototype, but after that you'll have to get funding ..."

"Well, it's quite impossible for us to pay, as you know," replied

Cumming. "The Treasury will never agree to expand the secret vote."

Kemp raised his eyebrows. This was obviously an argument Cumming

had deployed many times before in order to get facilities for

nothing.

"But surely," I ventured, "if the government are serious about

developing things technically for MI5 and MI6, they will have to allocate

money on an open vote."

"They're most reluctant to do that," replied Cumming, shaking

his head. "As you know, we don't really exist."

He looked at me as if a sudden thought had occurred to him.

"Now, perhaps if you were to approach the Admiralty on our

behalf to ask for assistance on their open vote ..."

This was my initiation into jthe bizarre method of handling Intelligence

Services finance. It was a problem which was to plague me until

well into the 1960s. Instead of having resources adequate for their

technical requirements, the Intelligence Services were forced to spend

most of the postwar period begging from the increasingly reluctant

Armed Services. In my view, it was this more than any other factor

22 PETER WRIGHT

which contributed to the amateurism of British Intelligence in the immediate

postwar era.

But, as bidden, I set out to persuade the Admiralty to carry the

development costs of the new microphone. I made an urgent appointment

to see Brundrett's successor as Chief of the Naval Scientific Service,

Sir William Cook. I knew Cook quite well. He was a wiry, redhaired

man with piercing blue eyes and a penchant for grandiose schemes. He

was a brilliant organizer and positively bubbled with ideas. I had first

dealt with him after the war when he asked me to work under him on

a prototype Blue Streak project, which was eventually cancelled when

Sir Ben Lockspeiser, then Chief Scientist at the Ministry of Supply,

had a crisis of conscience. Ironically, Cook himself came to share a

suspicion about nuclear weapons, though more for practical and political

reasons than moral ones. He felt that Britain was being hasty in

the production of the A-Bomb, and feared that as modern rocketry

developed, the Navy would inevitably lose out. He realized too, I suspect,

that our obsession with the bomb was faintly ludicrous in the face

of growing American and Russian superiority. This, incidentally, was

a view which was quite widely held by scientists working at a lower

level in the Services in the 1950s.

I explained to Cook that the new microphone might have as yet

unforeseeable intelligence advantages, from which the Navy would obviously

benefit if they agreed to fund the project. He smiled at this

transparent justification but by the end of the meeting agreed to provide

six Navy scientists from his staff and to finance a purpose-built laboratory

at Marconi to house the work.

Within eighteen months we were ready to demonstrate the first

prototype, which was given the code name satyr. Kemp and I presented

ourselves at the front door of MI5 headquarters at Leconfield House.

Hugh Winterborn met us and took us up to a spartan office on the fifth

floor and introduced a tall, hunched man wearing a pin-striped suit and

a lopsided smile.

"My name is Roger Hollis," he said, standing up from behind his

desk and shaking my hand stiffly. "I am afraid the Director-General

cannot be with us today for this demonstration, so I am standing in as

his deputy."

Hollis did not encourage small talk. His empty desk betrayed a

man who believed in the swift dispatch of business. I showed him the

equipment without delay. It comprised a suitcase filled with radio equipment

for operating satyr, and two aerials disguised as ordinary um

SPYCATCHER 23

brellas which folded out to make a receiver and transmitter dish. We

set satyr up in an MI5 flat on South Audley Street with the umbrellas

in Hollis' office. The test worked perfectly. We heard everything from

test speech to the turn of the key in the door.

"Wonderful, Peter," Hollis kept on saying, as we listened to the

test. "It's black magic."

Cumming tittered in the background.

I realized then that MI5 officers, cocooned throughout the war in

their hermetic buildings, had rarely experienced the thrill of a technical

advance. After the test was over, Hollis stood behind his desk and

made a formal little speech about what a fine day this was for the

Service and how this was just what Brundrett had in mind when he

formed his working party. It was all rather condescending, as if the

servants had found the lost diamond tiara in the rose garden.

satyr did indeed prove to be a great success. The Americans promptly

ordered twelve sets and rather cheekily copied the drawings and made

twenty more. Throughout the 1950s, until it was superseded by new

equipment, satyr was used by the British, Americans, Canadians, and

Australians as one of the best methods of obtaining covert coverage.

But more important to me, the development of satyr established my

credentials as a scientist with MI5. From then on I was consulted on a

regular basis about an increasing number of their technical problems.

I still dealt exclusively with Cumming but I began to learn a little

about the structure of his Department--A Branch. He controlled four

sections: Al provided resources for MI5, ranging from microphones to

lockpicks. A2 was the technical department, which contained personnel

like Hugh Winterborn who used the resources of Al. A3 was police

liaison with the Special Branch, and A4 was the growing empire of

Watchers, responsible for tailing foreign diplomats and others around

the streets of London.

Cumming had one fundamental flaw when it came to technical

matters. He felt A Branch should run science, rather than the other

way around. Consequently the Service as a whole was denied long-overdue

modernization. As long as we were discussing specific technical

requirements, our relationship was fruitful. But sooner or later we

would move into an area in which I could not advise MI5 unless he or

Winterborn took me fully into his confidence. For instance, Winterborn

often asked if I had any ideas on telephone interception. I explained

that it was impossible to work on the problem unless I knew what

current techniques were employed.

24 PETER WRIGHT

"Well, of course, now we are coming onto an area which is highly

classified and I rather feel we should steer away from it," Cum-ming

would say, slapping the table nervously, much to Winterborn's irritation.

The same thing happened with the Watchers. The main problem

facing MI5 during the 1950s was how to detect and follow the increasingly

large number of Russians through the streets of London without

giving themselves away.

"Have you any ideas, Peter?" asked Cumming, as if I might have

a solution in my top pocket. I suggested that at the very least I would

need to see at first hand the scale of the watching operation. Cumming

said he would see what he could arrange, but I heard nothing more.

But, despite the difficulties, it was clear that MI5 found me useful.

By 19541 was spending two full days a week at Leconfield House. After

one lengthy session, Cumming invited me to lunch at his club. We

walked together across St. James's Park and made our way down Pall

Mall to the In and Out Club, Cummings swinging the umbrella he

habitually carried.

As we sat down at our table I realized that, even though I had

been dealing with Cumming for five years, this was the first time we

had ever socialized. He was a short man, not overly endowed with

intellectual skills but intensely loyal to MI5. Like the policemen in John

Buchan novels, he seemed as likely to be chasing the hero as the villain.

He had been a Rifles Brigade Officer and belonged to the long military

tradition inside MI5 which stretched back to the founder, Vernon Kell.

He was related to the first Chief of MI6, Captain Mansfield Cumming,

a fact which he made sure I knew almost as soon as I had met him.

He had also been responsible for recruiting the present Director-General

of MI5, Sir Dick Goldsmith White. They had taken a party of boys

on a camping holiday together in the 1930s. White was not happy as a

schoolteacher and Cumming persuaded him to apply to MI5. White

proved a brilliant, intuitive intelligence officer and soon far outstripped

his mentor, but the debt he owed Cumming served the latter well in

the 1950s.

Cumming was wealthy in his own right. He owned a large estate

in Sussex. In the country he played the squire, while in town he became

the spy. It appealed to the boy scout in him. In fact most of his career

had been spent doing MI5's books and other routine administration

and he had coexisted uneasily with the gifted university elite who were

drafted into Intelligence during the war. But Cumming did have one

SPYCATCHER 25

astonishing talent. He maintained a legendary number of contacts. These

were not just clubland cronies, of which he had many. He maintained

them in all kinds of bizarre places. If the office wanted a one-legged

washerwoman who spoke Chinese, Cumming could provide her. When

the A Branch directorship became vacant, Cumming was the obvious

man to fill it.

Cumming ordered quails' eggs and asked a little about my life

history. He listened in an uninterested way over lunch until finally he

ordered two brandies and turned to the purpose of his hospitality.

"I wanted to ask you, Peter, about how you felt things were going

in the Service, technically speaking?"

I had half anticipated his approach and decided it was time to

speak my mind.

"You won't get anywhere," I told him flatly, "until you appoint a

problem-solving scientist and bring him fully into the picture."

I paused while brandy was served.

"You've got to let him have access to case officers, and he has to

help plan and analyze operations as they happen."

Cumming cupped his glass and gently rolled its contents.

"Yes," he agreed, "we had rather come to that conclusion ourselves, but it's very difficult to find the right person. Jones* has been

making a play for the job, but if we let him in, he'll be wanting to run

the place next day."

I agreed.

For a while I had been indicating to Winterborn that I would be

interested in joining the Service full-time if a suitable vacancy arose.

"I suppose Hugh has told you that I am interested in joining?" I

asked.

"Well, that's just the problem, Peter," he replied. "We have a no-poaching

agreement with Whitehall. We simply can't recruit you from

there, even if you volunteer."

Cumming drained his glass with a flick of the wrist.

"Of course," he went on, "if you were to leave the Navy, things

might be different ..."

It was typical Cumming; he wanted me to make the first move. I

raised the problem of my Admiralty pension. I would lose all fourteen

*R. V. Jones worked closely with Churchill on scientific intelligence during the war. His

contributions were brilliant but he was widely distrusted in Whitehall for his independence.

Like so many others, he was never allowed to make the impact in peacetime that he had

made in war.

26 PETER WRIGHT

years of it if I left, and unlike Cumming I had no private income to

fall back on. Cumming tapped the side of his brandy glass gently and

assumed an expression of surprise that I should even raise the subject.

"I am sure you're well aware that this would be a tremendous

opportunity for you, Peter," he said.

He paused and returned to one of his favorite themes.

"We're not Civil Service, and you have to be prepared to trust us.

There is always the secret vote. I don't think we could make any written

undertakings, but I am sure when the time comes we will be able to

arrange something. We don't like to see our chaps suffer, you know."

After lunch we emerged from the rich leather and brandy of the

In and Out Club to the watery brightness of Piccadilly.

"Do let me know if you decide to leave the Admiralty, won't you,

Peter," said Cumming, "and I'll take some soundings among the Directors."

We shook hands and he strode off toward Leconfield House, his

umbrella tucked under his arm.

Cumming's approach was fortuitous. The antisubmarine project

was coming to an end. The Admiralty were anxious to move me to new

work in Portsmouth which I was not keen to do. The Marconi Company,

meanwhile, had a contract to develop the Blue Streak project in conjunction

with English Electric. Eric Eastwood, deputy head of the

Marconi laboratory, offered me the job of engineering the Blue Streak

guidance system. Within a month I had resigned from the Admiralty

and joined the Marconi Company as a Senior Principal Scientist.

I found missile research utterly demoralizing. Partly it was because

I was hoping I would soon be joining MI5. But I was not alone in

realizing that the missile system was unlikely ever to be built. It was a

folly, a monument to British self-delusion. In any case this kind of

science was ultimately negative. Why spend a life developing a weapon

you hope and pray will never be used?

I telephoned Cumming and told him I had left the Admiralty and

waited for his next move. Finally, after six months, I received another

invitation to lunch. Hospitality was noticeably less generous than the

last time and Cumming came straight to the point.

"I have discussed your proposal with the Board and we would like

to have you. But we will be in difficulties with Whitehall if we take you

on as a scientist. We have never had one before. It might complicate

matters. What we suggest is that you come and join us as an ordinary

officer, and we'll see what you make of it."

SPYCATCHER 27

I made it clear to Cumming that I was not very happy with his

proposal. The only difference, so far as I could see, was that he would

be paying me at the Principal Scientist (or Ordinary Officer) level,

rather than at my current Senior Scientist level--a difference of five

hundred pounds a year. There was also an issue of principle which my

father had raised when I discussed the matter with him.

"Don't go unless they appoint you as a scientist," he told me. "If

you compromise on that, you'll never be able to operate as a scientist.

You'll end up being a routine case officer before you know it."

Cumming was surprised by my refusal but made no further attempt

to persuade me. He soon left, claiming a pressing appointment at Le-confield

House.

A month later I was in my laboratory at Great Baddow when I

received a summons to Kemp's office. Cumming and Winter born were

sitting there, Winterborn grinning broadly.

"Well, Peter," said Kemp, "it looks as if I am finally losing you.

Malcolm wants to take you on as MI5's first scientist."

Winterborn later told me that Cumming had gone to see Kemp to

ask what he would have to pay to get me, to which Kemp, familiar

with the extraordinary lengths to which Cumming would go to save a

few pounds of government money, had replied: "The same rate I would

join for--a fair wage!"

"Of course, there will be a Board," Cumming told me, "but it's

just a formality."

I shook hands with everyone and went back to my lab to prepare

for a new life in the shadows.



4

Four days later I went to Leconfield House for my selection Board.

The frosted-glass partition in the alcove slid back and a pair of eyes

scrutinized me carefully. Although I was a familiar face, I still had no

pass. I waited patiently while the policeman telephoned Cumming's

office to arrange for my escort.

"In to see the DG today, then, sir?" he said as he pushed the lift

bell. The iron gates slid back with a heavy crash. It was an old-fashioned

lift, operated by a lever on a brass box. It clanked and wheezed up the

building. I counted the floors crawling past until we got to the fifth,

where the MI5 senior management had their offices.

A little way down the corridor we turned into a large rectangular

room which housed the DG's secretariat. It looked just like any other Whitehall office--secretaries who had seen better days, tweeds, and

clacking typewriters. Only the combination safes opposite the window

gave the place away. In the middle of the far wall of the room was the

door to the Director-General's office. The length of the outer office

was deliberately designed to foil any intruder. It gave the DG time to

operate the automatic lock on his door before anyone could burst

through. When the green light above his door flashed, a secretary accompanied

me across the vast expanse and showed me in.

The DG's office was bright and airy. Antique walnut furniture and

leather-backed chairs made it feel more like Bond Street than Whitehall.

Portraits of the three previous Director-Generals stared austerely

across the room from one wall. On the other side the full Board of

MI5 Directors sat behind the polished conference table. I recognized

Cumming and Hollis, but the rest were unknown to me.

The Director-General, Sir Dick Goldsmith White, invited me to

sit down. I had met him before on one of the many visits to Cumming's

SPYCATCHER 29

office, but I could not pretend to know him well. Ironically, he had

also been at Bishop's Stortford College, where he had held the record

for the mile, but it was well before my time. He was tall with lean,

healthy features and a sharp eye. There was something of David Niven

about him, the same perfect English manners, easy charm, and immaculate

dress sense. Indeed, compared with his Board, he was positively

raffish.

When we were seated he opened the interview on a formal note.

"I hear you wish to join us, Mr. Wright. Perhaps you could explain

your reasons."

I began by explaining some of the things I had already done for

the Service. I stressed, as I had done earlier to Cumming, that it was

impossible for me to do more unless I was brought inside, and fully

trusted.

"I think I speak for all my Directors," he replied, "when I assure

you that we would not contemplate bringing in a scientist without providing

him with the access necessary to do the job. You will be fully

indoctrinated."

Cumming nodded.

"However," White went on, "I think I should make it clear that

the Security Service is not like other Whitehall departments with which

you may be familiar. If you join us, you will never be eligible for

promotion."

He explained that entry to the Service was generally at an older

age than to the Civil Service, and followed a set career pattern involving

general officer training in a wide variety of MI5 branches. Few of these

ordinary officers made the next step to the limited number of Senior

Officer posts (later Assistant Director), and fewer still had any realistic

chance of aspiring to one of the six Directorships. By entering at the

Senior Officer's grade to do a highly specialized job, I effectively precluded

any chance of a Directorship. I told the Board frankly that,

since I was by nature a lone furrower rather than one of life's bosses,

this did not worry me at all.

We talked briefly about integration with Whitehall, which was

something I felt needed urgent attention in the technical field, and after

twenty minutes the questions began to dry up. Finally Dick White

summed up.

"My view, Mr Wright, is that I am not sure we need an animal

like you in the Security Service." He paused to deliver his punch line:

But if you are prepared to give it a try, so are we."

30 PETER WRIGHT

The stiffness melted away. The other Board members got up from

behind the table and we chatted for a few minutes. As I was leaving,

Dick White beckoned me over to his desk at the far end of the room.

"Peter, I am going to start you off in A2 with Hugh Winterborn,

and obviously Malcolm will be responsible for tasking, but I have told

him I anticipate that you will be spending most of your time on D

Branch matters--the Soviet problem."

He drummed his fingers lightly on his desk diary and gazed out of

the window in the direction of the Russian Embassy complex in Kensington.

"We're not winning that battle yet by any means." He snapped

the diary shut and wished me luck.

After lunch I made my way back along the fifth floor for the routine

interview with the Personnel Director, John Marriott. During the war

Marriott had served as Secretary to the Double Cross Committee, the

body responsible for MI5's outstanding wartime success--the recruitment

of dozens of double agents inside Nazi intelligence. After the war

he served with Security Intelligence Middle East (SIME) before returning

to Leconfield House. He was a trusted bureaucrat.

"Just wanted to have a chat--a few personal details, that sort of

thing," he said, giving me a distinctive Masonic handshake. I realized

then why my father, who was also a Mason, had obliquely raised joining

the brotherhood when I first discussed with him working for MI5

full-time.

"Need to make sure you're not a Communist, you understand."

He said it as if such a thing were impossible in MI5. In the weeks

before Cumming's final approach I was aware that a retired policeman

attached to the DG's secretariat had made a routine inquiry about me

at the Marconi Company. But apart from this interview I was not subject

to any other vetting. Indeed, although this was the period when MI5

were laying down strict vetting programs throughout Whitehall, it was

not until the mid-1960s that any systematic vetting was brought into

MI5 at all.

Marriott's desk was empty, and I assumed the interview was being

taped for inclusion in my Record of Service. Marriott took the session

seriously enough, but asked only a few questions.

"Expect you were pretty left-wing when you were young?"

"Mildly. I taught in the Workers' Educational Association in the

thirties."

"Fairly Communist, was it?"

SPYCATCHER 31

"Not in Cornwall," I replied.

"Voted Labor in 1945, did you?"

"I thought most people in the services did."

"Pretty middle-of-the-road now, though?"

I told him I abhorred Nazism and Communism. He seemed pleased

at the lengthy speech I made. We moved onto my personal life. He

danced around the subject until finally he asked:

"Ever been queer, by any chance?"

"Never in my life."

He studied me closely.

"Have you ever been approached by anyone to do clandestine

work?"

"Only by you."

He tried to laugh, but it was clearly a line he had heard a thousand

times before. He unlocked his desk drawer and gave me a form to fill

in with details of next of kin. I was vetted. No wonder it was so easy

for Philby, Burgess, Maclean, and Blunt.

Before formally joining A2 as the Scientific Officer, I underwent

two days' training together with a young officer joining MI5 from university.

The training program was the responsibility of a tough, no-nonsense

officer named John Cuckney. We got on well. Cuckney could

be downright rude, but I soon realized that he was just tired of knocking

into shape young MI5 recruits of generally poor caliber. He was altogether

different from the average MI5 officer. He refused to submit to

the monotony of the dark pinstripe, preferring bolder styles. Cuckney

was his own man and had broad horizons beyond the office. It was no

surprise to me when he left MI5 to pursue a successful career in business,

first with Victoria Investments, and later with the Crown Land Agents

and as Chairman of the Port of London Authority. Today, Sir John

Cuckney is Chairman of Westland Helicopters.

Cuckney began our training with a routine lecture on the legal

status of MI5.

"It hasn't got one," he told us bluntly. "The Security Service cannot

have the normal status of a Whitehall Department because its work

very often involves transgressing propriety or the law."

Cuckney described various situations, such as entering premises

without a warrant, or invading an individual's privacy, where the dilemma

might arise. He made it clear that MI5 operated on the basis

of the 11th Commandment--"Thou shalt not get caught"--and that

in the event of apprehension there was very little that the office could

32 PETER WRIGHT

do to protect its staff. He described the way liaison with the police was

handled. They were prepared to help MI5 if something went wrong,

particularly if the right person was approached. But there were very

definite tensions between the two organizations.

"Special Branch would like to be us, and we don't want to be them."

Cuckney handed us the current MI5 internal directory and explained

how the Service was organized. There were six Directorates:

A Branch handled resources; B Branch was the Personnel Department;

C Branch controlled protective security and vetting throughout all government

installations; D Branch was Counterespionage; E Branch ran

British Intelligence in the still lengthy list of colonies and was responsible

for the counterinsurgency campaigns in Malaya and Kenya; and

finally F Branch was the domestic surveillance empire, which principally

meant keeping tabs on the Communist Party of Great Britain, and

especially its links in the trade union movement.

Cuckney talked a little about the sister Service, MI6, or SIS (Secret

Intelligence Service), as it was more popularly known in Whitehall. He

gave us the standard MI6 directory and discussed the very few departments

there with which MI6 maintained regular liaison. In practice

this amounted to MI6's Counterintelligence Section, and a small Research

Section dealing with Communist Affairs, although this latter was

wound up not long after I joined MI5. Cuckney was studiously noncommittal

in his comments, and it was only later, when I began to

cultivate my own liaison with MI6's technical people, that I realized

the depth of antipathy between the two Services.

At the end of two days we were photographed and issued with our

MI5 passes. Then Cuckney introduced a retired Special Branch policeman

from C Branch, who gave us a lecture on document security.

We were told on no account to remove files from the office, to always

ensure our desk was cleared of all papers and our doors locked before

going out, even if only for ten minutes. I was also issued with my

combination safe number and told that a duplicate number was kept

in the Director-General's safe, so that the management could obtain

any file at any time of the day or night from an officer's safe. It was

all sensible stuff, but I could not help contrasting it with the inadequacy

of the vetting.

After the first week Cuckney showed me into an office which was

empty apart from a tape recorder on the desk. He took a series of large

tape reels from a cupboard.

SPYCATCHER 33

"Here," he said, "you might as well get it from the horse's mouth!"

The subject of the tape was printed on the spool. "A Short History

of the British Security Service," by Guy Liddell, Deputy Director-General

1946-1951. Liddell was a towering figure in the story of MI5.

He joined in 1927, from the Special Branch, where he almost single-handedly

ran a Soviet counterespionage program. He controlled MI5

counterespionage throughout the war with determination and elan, and

was the outstanding candidate for the Director-General's chair in 1946.

But Attlee appointed a policeman, Sir Percy Sillitoe, instead, almost

certainly as a snub to MI5, which he suspected of engineering the

Zinoviev letter in 1929. Liddell soldiered on under Sillitoe, barely able

to contain his bitterness, only to fall foul of the Burgess/Maclean scandal

in 1951. He had been friendly with Burgess for many years, and when

Burgess went, so too did whatever chances Liddell still had for the top

job. He retired soon after, heartbroken, to the Atomic Energy Commission.

I carefully threaded the tape and placed the headphones on. A

soft, cultivated voice began to describe part of the secret history of

Britain. MI5 was formed under Captain Vernon Kell in 1909, the War

Office finally realizing that the impending European conflict required

at least a modicum of counterintelligence. MI5 soon proved its usefulness

by rounding up almost all German spies operating in Britain

soon after the outbreak of war. Liddell spoke warmly of Kell, who he

felt had built a prestigious organization from inauspicious beginnings

through the force of his personality. MI5 budgets were strictly limited

in the years after World War I, and MI6 furiously lobbied to swallow

up its competitor. But Kell fought cannily to retain control of MI5 and

gradually extended its influence.

The zenith of its post-World War I prestige came with the successful

arcos raid in 1927. The Soviet Trade Delegation, based at their

offices at 49 Moorgate along with the All Russia Cooperative Society

Limited (arcos), was raided by police acting under the instructions of

MI5, and a vast quantity of espionage activity was uncovered. The arcos

raid justified the widespread belief inside MI5 that the newly established

Soviet State was the principal enemy, and that all possible resources

should be deployed to fight her. This view was further confirmed by a

succession of other spy cases in the 1930s, culminating in a major Soviet

attempt, in 1938, to penetrate the Woolwich Arsenal using a veteran

Communist engineer employed there, named Percy Glading. MI5's

34 PETER WRIGHT

brilliant agent runner Maxwell Knight succeeded in planting a female

agent who betrayed the plot.

By 1939 Kell had lost his touch. He was old. Liddell offered gen erous excuses for MI5's failure to prepare for World War II. When

Churchill became Prime Minister, determined to shake Whitehall until

it submitted, it was only a matter of time before Kell went. But although

Liddell lamented the loss of Kell, he heartily welcomed the incoming

Director-General, Sir David Petrie. Petrie oversaw the recruitment of

a vast influx of gifted intellectuals, and under his supervision (and

Liddell's, though this went unstated) the famed Double Cross System

emerged. Every German spy landing in Britain was either captured or

turned to feed disinformation back to the German High Command.

The operation was an outstanding success and was a major factor in

deceiving the Germans over the location of the D-Day landings. Liddell

had a simple verdict on MI5 during the war. He called it "the finest

t liaison of unlike minds in the history of intelligence."

)

But Liddell's account ended soon after the war. And in truth his

lecture made poor history. Case after case, incident after incident was

accurately recorded, but the theme of continuous MI5 success was

misleading. He knew full well the inadequacies of the postwar period,

the roots of which, in fact, lay in the 1930s. There was no mention of

Burgess and Maclean, or what they meant, and no mention either of

the vast program of modernization which both he and Dick White knew

in the late 1940s was long overdue.

In many ways Liddell was a tragic figure. Gifted, universally popular

in the Service, he could justly claim to have been a principal

architect of our wartime intelligence mastery. Yet he had been undone

by his unwise friendships. As I listened to the tape it was as if he were

talking to himself in a darkened room, searching history for the justification

of a thwarted career.

I also played a lecture by Dick White on the Russian Intelligence

Service. It had obviously been recorded at one of the seminars held

for incoming junior officers, because I could hear the audience laughing

at his jokes. Dick White's delivery was much more in the style of the

Oxbridge don. He had a wonderful light touch, peppering his talk with

puns, epigrams, and allusions to Russian literature. Dick White was

well qualified in Soviet affairs, having been Director of the old counterespionage

B Division before becoming Director-General.

He talked animatedly about the Russian obsession with secrecy,

and how the modern KGB had its roots in the Tsar's Secret Police. He

SPYCATCHER 35

was perceptive in his analysis of the historical importance of the KGB

to the Bolshevik Party. The Russian Intelligence Service was the guarantor

of Party control in a vast and often hostile country. He spoke,

too, about why the British and Russian Intelligence Services were inevitably

the main adversaries in the game of spies. Secrecy and intelligence

went far back in both their histories, and both services, he believed,

shared a caution and patience which reflected their national characters.

He contrasted this, much to the amusement of his audience, with the

zealous and often overhasty activities of "our American cousins."

But Dick White, for all the elegance of his delivery, was essentially

an orthodox man. He believed in the fashionable idea of "containing"

the Soviet Union, and that MI5 had a vital role to play in neutralizing

Soviet assets in the UK. He talked a good deal about what motivated

a Communist, and referred to documents found in the arcos raid which

showed the seriousness with which the Russian Intelligence Service

approached the overthrow of the British Government. He set great

store on the new vetting initiatives currently under way in Whitehall

as the best means of defeating Russian Intelligence Service penetration

of government.

He believed that MI5 was in the midst of great reforms, which in

a sense, under his guidance, it was. The clearest impression he gave

was of an intense pride in the Service. This emotion remained strong

with him throughout his career, even after he had left MI5 to join MI6.

He was above all a team player, and he believed very much in preserving

the morale of the organizations he ran. This made him a popular and

humane man to work for, even if he always remained a slightly distant,

ascetic figure.

Toward the end of my training I began to tour the building, often

escorted by Cuckney or Winterborn. The whole place was ludicrously

overcrowded, with officers crammed in four to a room. I had the luxury

of my own office--more like a broom cupboard--next to Hugh Winterborn

on the fifth floor. The space problem was a legacy of the longstanding

antipathy between MI5 and MI6. At the end of the war, plans

had been drawn up to create a joint Headquarters of Intelligence to

house both Services. A site for new premises was even acquired in the

Horseferry Road. But for years a working party of both Services bickered

about the precise division of office space, and MI5 muttered darkly

about being unable to trust MI6 because of Kim Philby. The situation

remained unresolved until the 1960s when MI6 were finally banished

across the Thames to their own building, Century House.



36 PETER WRIGHT

In a sense, the indecision over office space was indicative of the

lack of clear thinking in Whitehall about the relative roles of MI5 and

MI6. It was not until well into the 1970s that MI5 finally persuaded the

Treasury to fund a move to permanent, purpose-built headquarters at

Curzon House. Until then the constant overspill problem was dealt with

by a succession of short-term leases on buildings. Firstly there was Cork

Street, which in the 1950s housed the booming empire of C Branch.

Then in the 1960s Counterespionage operated from an office building

in Marlborough Street, and we all had to pick our way through the

peep shows, flower stalls, and rotting vegetables of Soho Market to get

to our Top Secret files. It may have been appropriate, but it was hardly

practical.

MI5 in the 1950s seemed to be covered with a thick film of dust

dating from the wartime years. The whole organization was rather like

Dickens' Miss Haversham. Wooed by the intellectual elite during the

war, she had been jilted by them in 1945. They had gone off to new pursuits in the outside world, leaving MI5 trapped in her darkened

rooms, alone with memories of what might have been, and only rarely

coming into contact with the rest of Whitehall.

The atmosphere reminded me of a minor public school. The Directors

were treated with that mixture of reverence and sycophancy

reserved by schoolboys for their schoolmasters, and section heads were

their prefects. But the DG and DDG were the only people addressed

as "Sir," and first names were normally used. Within the atmosphere

of MI5 flowered exotic and extravagant personalities, men and women

so drawn to the Great Game of intelligence that they rose above the

pettiness of it all, and made a career there endlessly fascinating.

On the face of it, life was a mixture of the quaint and the archaic.

Every year the Office virtually closed to attend the Lord's Test Match,

where MI5 had an unofficial patch in the Lord's Tavern. And every

morning senior officers, almost without exception, spent the first half

hour of the day on The Times crossword. The scrambled telephones,

which normally hummed with the most highly classified secrets in the

Western world, relayed a series of bizarre, coded questions from office

to office.

"My left rump is giving me trouble," meaning "I can't make head

or tail of seven down in the bottom left-hand corner," or "My right

breast is vacant," meaning "What the hell is twelve across in the middle?"

Courtney Young, who ran the Soviet Counterespionage Section (Dl)

in the 1950s, was the undisputed Security Service crossword king. He

SPYCATCHER 37

always claimed that it was too easy to do the crossword with a pencil.

He claimed to do it in his head instead. For a year I watched him do

this, until finally I could resist the temptation no longer. I challenged

him, whereupon he immediately wrote in each answer without hesitation.

Every night for a week I had to stand drinks for a gleeful

Courtney in the local pub.

The nerve center of MI5 was the Registry. It spread across the

whole ground floor of Leconfield House. The Registry had been moved

to Wormwood Scrubs Prison during World War II to ensure the files

would be safe if their London home were bombed. It was an unwise

move. Within the year the prison was bombed and many files were

destroyed or damaged by fire. Those that could be saved were stored

in moisture-resistant polythene bags. In the 1960s, when we began to

study the history of recruitments in the 1930s, I often examined prewar

files. It was a difficult process, prizing apart the charred pages with

tweezers and wooden spatulas.

After the disaster at Wormwood Scrubs MI5 put a lot of thought

into designing an effective Registry. Brigadier Harker, who, as Sir

David Petrie's wartime Deputy, was the ideal administrative foil, recruited

an expert in business systems, Harold Potter, to reorganize the

Registry. Potter was an excellent choice. He had a neat, methodical

mind and the will to impose order even in the chaos of wartime.

In 1955 Potter was approaching retirement, but he took great delight

in showing me around. The Registry was based in a central hall,

which housed the main file index and the files themselves. The rooms

leading off from the central concourse held the other specialist card

indexes. Duplicate copies of all files and indexes were routinely made

on microfilm, and stored in a specially protected MI5 warehouse in

Cheltenham to prevent the catastrophe of Wormwood Scrubs occurring

again. Potter's office, tucked in one corner of the Registry, was a paragon

of neatness.

"Make sure you return your files promptly, won't you, Peter? I

don't want to have to start chasing you like I do some of these buggers!"

He could have been a kindly, small-town librarian. Sadly for Potter,

I became one of the worst abusers of the Registry, routinely holding

scores of files at a time, though never, I suspect, as bad as Millicent

Bagot, the legendary old spinster in F Branch who kept tabs on the

International Communist Party for decades. I have always assumed

Millicent to have been the model for John le Carre's ubiquitous Connie.

She was slightly touched, but with an extraordinary memory for facts

38 PETER WRIGHT

and files. Potter and his successors in the Registry despaired of Millicent.

"I only hope we get the files back when she retires," he would

mutter to himself after a particularly heavy file request from F Branch.

The Registry always fascinated me. Just being there filled me with

anticipation, an irresistible feeling that inside the mass of dry paper

were warm trails waiting to be followed. Potter explained to me the

correct system for signing on and off a file to show that it had been

received and dealt with. He had designed the filing system so that each

file read chronologically, with papers and attachments on the right, and

the index and minutes placed on the left for quick access.

The whole system depended on accurate and disciplined classification.

When an officer wished to file something, it had to be approved

by one of Potter's staff. Very often file requests were rejected as being

too generalized. When an officer wished to draw a file he filled in a

request form. These trace requests were always recorded, and if a trace

was requested on an individual more than once, a file was automatically

opened on him. There were three basic categories in the Registry. The

first category was Personal Files, or PFs, which were buff-colored files

arranged in alphabetical order. There were about two million PFs when

I joined the Service in 1955. That figure remained fairly static and began

to rise dramatically only in the late 1960s and early 1970s with the onset

of student and industrial militancy. Then there were subject files, or

organizational files, such as for the Communist Party of Great Britain.

Subject files very often ran into several volumes and were elaborately

cross-referenced with the PFs. The final main category was the duck-egg-blue

List File. This generally comprised material gathered during

a particular case which could not easily be placed within either of the

two previous categories. There were also Y-Boxes. These were a means

of separating particularly sensitive files from general access. For instance,

all suspected spies were Y-Boxed, as were most defectors. An

officer could obtain the material from a Y-Box only by obtaining indoctrination

into its contents from the controlling officer or sometimes

from the Director-General himself.

"The integrity of the file is vital," Potter told me, and warned me

that under no circumstances could papers be removed from a file without

the written consent of a senior officer. The sanctity of files was

something which, quite rightly, was drummed into every officer from

the very beginning of his service.

Files were located by using the card indexes. Potter had devised

a system of mechanically searching these indexes. Each card was clas-

SPYCATCHER 39

sified with a series of punched holes to identify the category of files to

which it belonged. To search a category of files, for instance to find a

Russian intelligence officer using several aliases, an officer drew a master

card corresponding to that category. Long needles were placed through the holes in the master card to locate any other cards which

fitted the same constellation. These could then be searched by hand.

It was old-fashioned, but it worked, and it meant that MI5 resisted the

change to computerization long after it should have happened.

The concourse of the Registry was always busy with trolleys transporting

files from the Registry shelves to special lifts. The trolleys ran

on tracks so that files could be shifted at great speed up to the case

officers working on the floors above--F Branch on the first floor, E

Branch on the second, D on the third and fourth, and A Branch on

the fifth. The Registry employed enormous numbers of girls to maintain

efficient delivery of files within the building, as well as the massive task

of sorting, checking, and filing the incoming material. In Kell's day the

Registry Queens, as they were known, were recruited either from the

aristocracy or from the families of MI5 officers. Kell had a simple belief

that this was the best vetting of all. The debutantes were often very

pretty, as well as wealthy, which accounts for the large number of office

marriages, to the point where it became something of a joke that the

average career expectancy of a Registry Queen was nine months--the

time it took her to get pregnant.

By the early 1970s the staffing of the Registry had become a major

problem for MI5. There were more than three hundred girls employed

and with the surge of file collection at that time the pressure for more

recruits was never-ending. Openly advertising was considered impossible.

Yet it was becoming very difficult to recruit this number of girls,

let alone vet them properly. In at least one case, the Communist Party

managed to infiltrate a girl into the Registry, but she was soon discovered

and quietly sacked. This problem, rather than dissatisfaction with

the increasingly antiquated filing system itself, finally pushed MI5, belatedly,

into accepting a computerized Registry.

Underneath the Registry were the Dungeons. They were actually

a collection of storerooms and,workshops run by Leslie Jagger, who

worked under Hugh Winterborn in A2. Jagger was one of Cumming's

famed contacts. He was a huge, broad-shouldered former Sergeant

Major who had served with Cumming in the Rifles Brigade. Jagger

always wore a black undertaker's suit.

Jagger was the MI5 odd-job technical man, and must have felt

40 PETER WRIGHT

slightly apprehensive when I joined, but he never showed it and we

soon became good friends. Jagger had an extraordinary array of skills,

of which the most impressive was his lockpicking. Early on in training

I attended one of the regular classes he ran for M15 and M16 in his

lockpicking workshop. The cellar room was dominated by a vast array

of keys, literally thousands of them, numbered and hung in rows on

each wall. Jagger explained that as M15 acquired or made secret imprints

of keys of offices, hotels, or private houses, each one was carefully

indexed and numbered. Over the years they had developed access in

this way to premises all over Britain.

"You never know when you might need a key again," explained

Jagger as I stared in astonishment at his collection.

"The first rule if you are entering premises is only pick the lock

as the last resort," said Jagger, beginning his lecture. "It's virtually

impossible to pick a lock without scratching it-and that'll almost certainly

give the game away to the trained intelligence officer. He'll know

the premises have been entered. What you have to do is get hold of

the key-either by measuring the lock or taking an imprint of the key."

Jagger demonstrated how to attack various locks. Burmah locks,

used for diamond safes, were by far the most difficult. The pins move

horizontally through the lock and it is impossible to pick. The Chubb,

on the other hand, although billed as being unpickable, was fair game

for Jagger.

"This is the one you'll have to deal with most often."

He picked up a demonstration Yale mechanism mounted on a

board and explained that the Yale consisted of a series of pins sitting

in various positions inside the barrel of the lock. The bites in the Yale

key acted on the pins to push them up and allow the key to be turned

in the barrel. Jagger produced a small piece of wire with a hook on

one end. He inserted it into the keyhole and began to stroke the inside of the lock in a steady, rhythmical action.

"You just stroke the first pin until"-Jagger's wrist tensed and

suddenly relaxed-"it goes a notch, and then you know you've got one

up into line."

His big hands moved like a concert violinist's with a bow, tensing

as each pin pushed up in turn.

"You keep the pressure on until you've got all the pins up ..."

He turned the piece of wire and the Yale sprang open. "Then you're

inside ... Course, what you do inside is your business."

We all laughed.

SPYCATCHER 41

Leslie was always most mysterious about the source of his expert

knowledge on lockpicking, but for years I carried a piece of wire and

stroking tool that he made for me.

"Make sure you carry your police pass," he told me when he first

gave it to me, pointing out that I was, technically, breaking the law by

going about equipped for burglary.

"Couldn't be thought of as common or garden burglars, could we?"

He laughed heartily and strode back to the Dungeons.

A few days after the lockpicking class I went on my first operation.

"The Third Man business is brewing up again," said Hugh Winterborn.

"M16 are interrogating one of their officers-chap named Philby.

They want us to provide the microphone."

I had met Kim Philby briefly on my first visit to Leconfield House

in 1949. I was in Cumming's office discussing the work for Brundrett

when Philby popped his head around the door. He immediately apologized

for disturbing us.

"No, come in, Kim," said Cumming in his usual gushing way.

"There's someone you ought to meet."

Cumming explained that I had just been appointed the External

Scientific Adviser. Philby shook my hand warmly. He had a lined face,

but still looked youthful.

"Ah, yes," he said, "that's Brundrett's committee. The Americans

are very keen on that, I gather."

I took to Philby immediately. He had charm and style, and we

both shared the same affliction-a chronic stutter. He had just been

appointed M16 Head of Station in Washington, and was saying goodbye

to his friends in MI5 and getting various briefings from them before his

departure. Philby had developed close links with M15 during the war,

one of the few M16 officers to take the trouble. At the time the visit

seemed typical of Philby's industriousness. Only later did the real reason

become clear. Philby quizzed me on my thinking about science. I explained

that the Intelligence Services had to start treating the Russians

as a scientist would treat the subject-as a phenomenon to be studied

by means of experiments.

"The more you experiment, the more you learn, even if things go

wrong," I said.

SPYCATCHER 43

"But what about resources?" asked Philby.

I argued that the war had shown scientists could help solve intelligence

problems without necessarily needing a huge amount of new

apparatus. Some was needed, certainly, but more important was to use

the materials already available in modified ways.

"Take Operational Research," I said, referring to the first antisubmarine-research

program in the Navy during the war. "That made

a tremendous difference, but all we scientists did was to use the gear

the Navy had more efficiently."

Philby seemed skeptical, but said that he would bear my thoughts

in mind when he reviewed American thinking on the subject on his arrival in Washington.

"I'll look you up when I get back," he said. "See how you've got

on." He smiled graciously and was gone.

Two years later, Burgess and Maclean defected. It was a while

before Cumming mentioned the subject, but by 1954 I had gathered

enough snippets from him and Winterborn to realize that Philby was

considered the prime suspect for the Third Man who had tipped off

the two defectors. In 1955 he was sacked by a reluctant M16, even

though he admitted nothing. On September 23, 1955, three weeks after

I formally joined M15, the long-awaited White Paper on the Burgess and Maclean affair was finally released. The press savaged it. Philby's name was well known in Fleet Street by this time, and it was obviously

only a matter of time before it was debated publicly.

In October, M15 and M16 were informed that the question of the

Third Man was likely to be raised in the House of Commons when it

reconvened after the recess, and that the Foreign Secretary would have

to make a statement about Philby's situation. M16 was ordered to write

a review of the case, and called in Philby for another interrogation.

They, in turn, asked M15's A2 section to provide recording facilities

for the interrogation.

Winterborn and I took a taxi to the M16 safe house near Sloane

Square where Philby was due to meet his interrogators. The room MI6

had chosen was sparsely furnished-just a patterned sofa and chairs

surrounding a small table. Along one wall was an ancient sideboard

with a telephone on top.

As it was important to get as high a quality of recording as possible,

we decided to use a high-quality BBC microphone. Speech from a

telephone microphone is not very good unless it is high level. We lifted

a floorboard alongside the fireplace on the side on which Philby would

44 PETER WRIGHT

sit and inserted the microphone beneath it. We arranged an amplifier

to feed the microphone signal to a telephone pair with which the Post

Office had arranged to feed the signal back to Leconfield House.

The Transcription Center was hidden behind an unmarked door

at the other end of the corridor from the M15 staff canteen and only

selected officers were allowed access. Next to the door were a bell and

a metal grille. Hugh Winterborn identified himself and the automatic

lock clattered open. Directly opposite the entry door was a door giving

entrance to a large square room in which all the recording was done

by Post Office employees. When the material was recorded, the Post

Office could hand it over to the M15 transcribers, but it was illegal to

let M15 monitor the live Post Office lines (although on occasion they

were monitored, particularly by Winterborn or me, if there was something

causing difficulties or very important). The telephone intercepts

were recorded on dictaphone cylinders and the microphone circuits

were recorded on acetate gramophone disks. This room was M15's

Tower of Babel. The recordings were handed over to women who

transcribed them in small rooms running along a central corridor.

The Department was run by Evelyn Grist, a formidable woman

who had been with M15 almost from the beginning. She had a fanatic

devotion to Vernon Kell, and still talked darkly of the damage Churchill had done to the Service by sacking him in 1940. In her eyes, the path

of Intelligence had been downhill ever since.

Hugh Winterborn arranged for the link to be relayed into a closed

room at the far end. We sat down and waited for the interrogation to

start. In fact, to call it an interrogation would be a travesty. It was an

in-house M16 interview. Philby entered and was greeted in a friendly

way by three former colleagues who knew him well. They took him

gently over familiar ground. First his Communist past, then his M16 career and his friendship with Guy Burgess. Philby stuttered and stammered,

and protested his innocence. But listening to the disembodied

voices, the lies seemed so clear. Whenever Philby floundered, one or

another of his questioners guided him to an acceptable answer.

"Well, I suppose such and such could be an explanation."

Philby would gratefully agree and the interview would move on.

When the pattern became clear, Winterborn fetched Cumming, who

strode into the office with a face like thunder. He listened for a few

moments, slapping his thigh. "The buggers are going to clear him!" he

muttered. Cumming promptly sent a minute to Graham Mitchell, the

Head of M15 Counterespionage, giving an uncharacteristically blunt

SPYCATCHER 45

assessment of the M16 whitewash. But it did no good. Days later,

Macmillan got up in the House of Commons and cleared him. I realized

for the first time that I had joined the Looking-Glass world, where

simple but unpalatable truths were wished away. It was a pattern which was to be repeated time and time again over the next twenty years.

The Philby interview gave me my first experience of the M15 surveillance

empire. The seventh floor was, in fact, only one part of a

network of facilities. The most important outstation was the headquarters

of the Post Office Special Investigations Unit near St. Paul's.

MI5 had a suite of rooms on the first floor run by Major Denman, an

old-fashioned military buffer with a fine sense of humor. Denman handled

the physical interception of mail and installation of telephone taps

on the authority of Post Office warrants. He also housed and ran the

laboratory for M15 technical processes into ways of detecting and sending

secret writing. Each major sorting office and exchange in the country

had a Special Investigations Unit Room, under the control of Denman,

to place taps and intercept mail. Later we moved the laboratories up

to the Post Office Laboratory at Martlesham, Suffolk. Then, if a letter

which had been opened in St. Paul's needed further attention, it was

sent by motorcycle courier up to Suffolk.

Denman's main office was lined with trestle tables running the

length of the room. Each table carried mail addressed to different

destinations: London letters on one side, Europe on another, and behind

the Iron Curtain on a third. Around twenty Post Office technicians

worked at these tables opening pieces of mail. They wore rubber gloves

so as not to leave fingerprints, and each man had a strong lamp and a

steaming kettle beside him. The traditional slit-bamboo technique was

sometimes used. It was ancient, but still one of the most effective. The

split bamboo is inserted into the corner of the envelope, which is held

up against a strong light. By turning the bamboo inside the envelope,

the letter can be rolled up around the slit and gently pulled out.

Where a letter had an ordinary typed address it was sometimes

torn open and a new envelope typed in its place. But to the end of my

career we were never able to covertly open a letter which had been

sealed at each edge with sellotape. In those cases, M15 took a decision

as to whether to open the letter and destroy it, or send it on in an

obviously opened state. Pedal-operated microfilming cameras copied

the opened mail and prints were then routinely sent by the case officer

in charge of the interception to the Registry for filing.

Denman's proudest memento was a framed letter which hung on

46 PETER WRIGHT

the far wall. It was addressed to a prominent Communist Party member

whose mail was regularly intercepted. When the letter was opened the

Post Office technicians were amused to discover that it was addressed

to MI5 and contained a typewritten message, which read: "To MI5, if

you steam this open you are dirty buggers." Denman classified it as

"obscene post," which meant that legally he had no duty to send it on

to the cover address.

In fact, Denman was very particular about warrants. He was prepared

to install a tap or intercept an address without a warrant only

on the strict understanding that one was obtained as soon as possible.

MI5 were, however, allowed to request a form of letter check without

a warrant. We could record everything on an envelope, such as its

origin and destination and the date it was sent, as long as we did not

actually open it. Denman, like everyone in the Post Office who knew

of the activity, was terrified in case the Post Office role in telephone

and mail intercepts was discovered. They were not so worried about

overseas mail, because that could be held up for days at a time without

arousing suspicion. But they were always anxious to get domestic mail

on its way to the receiver as soon as possible.

Responsibility for warrants lay with the Deputy Director-General

of MI5. If an officer wanted a tap or an interception, he had to write

out a short case for the DDG, who then approached the Home Office

Deputy Secretary responsible for MI5. The Deputy Secretary would

advise as to whether the application presented any problem. Once a

month the Home Secretary vetted all applications. Like the Post Office,

the Home Office was always highly sensitive on the issue of interceptions,

and they were always strictly controlled.

As well as St. Paul's, there was also Dollis Hill, the rather ugly

Victorian building in North London where the Post Office had its research

headquarters in the 1950s. John Taylor ran his small experimental

laboratory for MI5 and MI6 in the basement behind a door

marked "Post Office Special Investigations Unit Research." The rooms

were dark and overcrowded, and thoroughly unsuitable for the work

that was being attempted inside.

When I joined MI5, Taylor's laboratory was overrun with work

for the Berlin Tunnel Operation. A joint MI6/CIA team had tunneled

under the Russian sector of Berlin in February 1955, and placed taps

on the central communications of the Soviet Military Command. The

actual electrical taps were done by Post Office personnel. Both the CIA

and MI6 were reeling under the sheer volume of material being gathered

SPYCATCHER 47

from the Tunnel. So much raw intelligence was flowing out from the

East that it was literally swamping the resources available to transcribe

and analyze it. MI6 had a special transcription center set up in Earl's

Court, but they were still transcribing material seven years later when

they discovered that George Blake had betrayed the Tunnel to the

Russians from the outset. There were technical problems too, which

Taylor was desperately trying to resolve, the principal one being the

ingress of moisture into the circuits.

Taylor's laboratory was also busy working on a new modification

to SF (Special Facilities), called cabman. It was designed to activate a

telephone without even entering the premises by radiating the telephone

with a powerful radio beam. It worked, but only over short

distances.

They were also in the early stages of developing a device called a

mop. A mop made a cable do two jobs at once--transmit captured sound

and receive power. It was in its early stages, but it promised to revolutionize

MI6 activity by removing the extra leads which were always

likely to betray a covert microphoning operation. I spent a lot of time

in my first years in MI5 ensuring the correct specifications for mop, and

it was eventually successfully manufactured at the MI6 factory at

Boreham Wood.

Soon after the Philby interview I began to look into ways of improving

and modernizing the seventh floor. The method of processing

a tap followed a set pattern. A case officer responsible for a tap or

microphone provided the Transcription Department with a written brief

detailing the sort of intelligence he thought might be obtained from the

interception. The transcription staff then scanned the conversation for

passages which corresponded to the brief. When I first joined, the taps

were normally transferred onto acetate, rather than tape. The acetates

were scanned by "dabbing" into the disc at various points to sample

the conversation. If anything of relevance was found, the transcribers

placed a chalk mark on the appropriate place and worked from the

chalk marks. It was an inefficient and time-consuming operation but

more efficient than standard tape-recording methods.

Most of these transcribers had been recruited in Kell's day from

the emigre communities who fled to Britain at the end of World War

I. They had turned the seventh floor into a tiny piece of Tsarist Russia.

Most of them were members of the old Russian aristocracy, White

Russians who talked with certainty of returning to the lands which had

been expropriated after the Revolution. To them the KGB was not the

48 PETER WRIGHT

KGB, it was the old Bolshevik Cheka. Most were fiercely religious,

and some even installed icons in their rooms. They were famed throughout

the office for their tempers. They considered themselves artists and

behaved like prima donnas. Hardened case officers seeking clarification

of a transcription approached the seventh floor with trepidation in case

their request caused offense. The difficult atmosphere was inevitable.

For years these women had listened, day after day, hour after hour,

to the indecipherable mutterings and labyrinthine conspiracies of Russian

diplomats. Spending a lifetime looking for fragments of intelligence

among the thousands of hours of worthless conversation (known in the

trade as "cabbages and kings") would be enough to turn any mind.

The first thing I did was to institute hearing tests on the women,

many of whom were becoming too old for the job. I encouraged those

with failing hearing to handle material with a high sound quality, such

as the telephone intercepts. I gave the corrupted microphone transcription

to younger officers, of whom undoubtedly the best was Anne Orr-Ewing,

who later joined me as a junior officer in the Counterespionage

Department. Microphone transcription is difficult because you usually

have only one microphone source for a multichannel conversation. I

decided to design a piece of equipment to ease this problem. I went

out to an electronics exhibition at Olympia and bought a tape machine

which provided two heads. The second head gave a constant number

of milliseconds (or more) delay on the sound as it went through, making

it much fuller-bodied. In effect it simulated stereo sound, and made

even the worst tapes much easier to understand. I installed the equipment

on the seventh floor, and it made me a friend for life in Mrs.

Grist.

It was my first small victory for science. But beneath the seventh

floor the great MI5 antique showroom slumbered on, undisturbed.

The Department which required most urgent attention, and yet

resisted modernization with the greatest determination, was A4. Since

the war the Watchers had been outnumbered and outmaneuvered by

the increasing numbers of Soviet and Soviet satellite diplomats on the

streets of London. My first priority was to make a full review of the

way the Watchers operated.

I made arrangements to visit one of the MI5 observation posts in

an MI5 house opposite one of the main gates of the Russian Embassy

in Kensington Park Gardens. The observation post was in an upstairs

bedroom. Two Watchers sat on either side of the window. A camera

SPYCATCHER 49

and telephoto lens on a tripod stood permanently trained down onto

the street below. Both men were in shirt-sleeves, binoculars hanging

around their necks. They looked tired. It was the end of their shift;

the ashtrays were full to overflowing, and the table standing between

them was scattered with coffee cups.

As each Russian diplomat came out of the gates of Kensington

Park Gardens one or the other of the men scrutinized him through

binoculars. As soon as he had been accurately identified, the observation

post radioed his name back to Watcher headquarters in the form

of an enciphered five-figure number. All the numbers of people leaving

Kensington Park Gardens were called out on the radio. Each car or

Watcher was tagged with certain numbers to follow. When one of his

numbers came up he would follow the person involved without replying

to the broadcast. The person being followed did not know if he was a

target or not. The radio crackled intermittently as one of the mobile

Watcher units parked in the streets nearby was ordered to pick up the

diplomat as he made his way out of sight of the observation post toward

the West End.

The Watchers who manned these static posts had done the job for

years. They developed extraordinary memories for faces, instantly recognizing

KGB officers who had been out of Britain for years. To assist

them in identification the post had three bound volumes containing the

photographs and identities of every single Russian intelligence officer

known to have visited the UK. Those currently resident in the Embassy

were flagged in plastic holders for easy reference. If an unknown face

was noted entering or leaving the premises, it was photographed and

handed over to MI5's Research Section, and the endless process of

identification would begin from scratch. It was numbing work, requiring

patience and dedication. But none was more vital. If the Registry is

MI5's central nervous system, the Watchers are its fingertips. They

must be constantly outstretched, feeling out the contours of the enemy's

formations.

The bound volumes of Russian intelligence officer identifications

were the product of decades of careful intelligence gathering from every possible source--visa photos, defectors, double agents, or whatever.

The faces stared mordantly from the pages. They were mostly KGB or

NKVD strong-arm men, interspersed with the occasional cultured,

European-looking resident or uniformed military attache. It soon struck

me that the observation posts were relying mostly on photographs avail

50 PETER WRIGHT

able from the Russians' diplomatic passports. These were always sent

to MI5 but were often of poor quality, or deliberately out of date, and

made identification difficult to determine.

I suggested that the Watchers expand their selection of action stills.

These are often much easier to recognize than mug shots. This was

graphically illustrated in the Klaus Fuchs case. When Fuchs had confessed

in 1949 to passing details about atomic weapons, he began to

cooperate. MI5 tried to obtain details of his co-conspirators and showed

him a passport photograph of Harry Greenglass, a fellow atom spy.

Fuchs genuinely failed to recognize him until he was provided with a

series of action stills.

For many years MI5 had realized that if Watchers operated from

Leconfield House they could be followed from the building and identified

by Russian countersurveillance teams. They were housed in an

unmarked four-story Georgian house in an elegant terrace in Regent's

Park. The central control room was dominated by a vast street map of

London on one wall which was used to monitor the progress of operations.

In the middle of the room was the radio console which maintained

communications with all observation posts and mobile Watcher

teams.

On one floor Jim Skardon, the Head of the Watchers, had his

office. Skardon was a dapper, pipe-smoking former policeman. He had

originally been a wartime MI5 interrogator, and in the immediate postwar

period had been the chief interrogator in a number of important

cases, particularly that of Klaus Fuchs. Skardon had a high opinion of

his own abilities, but he was an immensely popular man to work for.

There was something of the manner of a trade union shop steward

about him. He felt that the Watchers did arduous and difficult work,

and needed protection from exploitation by hungry case officers back

at Leconfield House. In a sense this was true. There were around a

hundred Watchers when I joined the Service, but the demand for their

services was unquenchable in every part of MI5's activity. But I soon

came to feel that Skardon was not facing up to the modern reality of

watching on the streets of London. It was quite clear that the Russians,

in particular, operated very extensive countersurveillance to prevent

their agents from being followed. Having watched the system for a few

weeks I doubted that the Watchers, using their current techniques, had

any realistic chance of following anyone without speedy detection.

When I first raised the question with Skardon of extensively remodeling

the Watchers, he dismissed it out of hand. MI5 sections were

SPYCATCHER 51

like fiefdoms, and Skardon took it as an affront to his competence and

authority. Eventually he agreed to allow Hugh Winterborn and me to

mount an operation to test the effectiveness of current Watcher techniques.

We split a team into two groups. The first group was given a

photograph of an MI5 officer who was unknown to them and told to

follow him. The second group was told the general area in which the

first group was operating. They were instructed to locate them and then

identify the person they were following. We did this exercise three

times, and each time the second group made the identification correctly.

We filmed the third experiment and showed it at Watcher headquarters

to the whole Department. It did at least remove any remaining doubts

that Watcher operations, as currently organized, were perilously vulnerable

to countersurveillance.

We suggested to Skardon that as a first step he should employ a

number of women. A great deal of watching involves sitting for hours

in pubs, cafes, and parks, waiting or monitoring meetings. A man and

a woman would be far less conspicuous than a single man or a pair of

men. Skardon opposed the plan strongly. He feared it might introduce

extramarital temptations which might adversely affect the morale of his

team.

"The wives won't like it," he said grimly.

Hugh Winterborn scoffed.

"So what if they kiss and cuddle. It's better for the cover!"

Skardon was not amused. The other reform we wanted implemented

was in the way Watchers were debriefed. It was never done

immediately they came in from a job. Sometimes it was overnight,

sometimes even at the end of the week. I pointed out to Skardon that

it had been proved again and again in wartime that debriefing had to

be done immediately to be accurate. If there is a delay the memory

stops recollecting what happened and begins to rationalize how it happened.

"My boys have done eight hours slogging the streets. They don't

want to come back and spend hours answering questions when they

can write up a report themselves," he stormed. In the end he did agree

to bring them back from each shift fifteen minutes early, but it was a

constant struggle.

The mobile Watchers presented different problems. I went out for

the day with them to get an idea of the work. MI5 cars were inconspicuous

models, but they were fitted with highly tuned engines in the

MI5 garages in Battersea. Every three months the cars were resprayed



I

52 PETER WRIGHT

to disguise their identities, and each car carried a selection of number

plates, which were changed at intervals during the week.

It was boyish fun chasing Russian diplomatic vehicles through the

streets of London, up and down one-way streets and through red traffic

lights, secure in the knowledge that each driver carried a Police Pass

to avoid tickets. The driver of my car told with great glee the story of

how he had been following a Russian car down the Mall toward Buckingham

Palace on a winter day. The Russian had slammed on his brakes

to go around the roundabout, and the cars had skidded into each other.

Both sides got out and exchanged particulars with poker faces. The

knack of mobile following is to pick the parallel streets wherever possible.

But in the end the success of the operation depends on the radio

control at headquarters. They have to predict the likely path of the

Russian car, so that reserve units can be called in to pick up the chase.

The first problem with mobile watching was quite simple. There

were three men in each car, and since so much of the time was spent

parked on street corners, or outside premises, the cars stood out like ]

sore thumbs. Once again, Winterborn and I made a field study. We

went to an area where we knew the Watchers were operating. Within

half an hour we had logged every car. One was particularly easy. The

number plates had recently been changed. But the driver had forgotten

to change them both over! I suggested to Skardon that he cut down

the number of men in the cars, but in true British Leyland style he

gave me a lecture on how it was essential to have three men.

"There's one to drive, one to read the map, and the third to operate

the radio," he said with conviction, seemingly unaware of the absurdity

of it all.

But there was one area which decidedly was not a joke, and which

gave me more worry than all the others put together. Communications

are any intelligence organization's weakest link. The Watchers relayed

hundreds of messages daily to and from the observation posts, the cars,

and headquarters. The first thing which made them vulnerable was that

they were never acknowledged. The Russians could easily identify

Watcher communications by simply searching the wavebands for unacknowledged

call signs. MI6 were just as bad abroad. For a long time

the best way of identifying MI6 staff in the Embassy was to check which

diplomats used outside lines which were not routed through the main

switchboard. Later, MI5 brought in a complicated system of enciphering

Watcher communications. I pointed out that this made no difference,

since their signals would now stand out even more against the Police,

SPYCATCHER 53

Fire and Ambulance Service communications, all of which were en clair

(uncoded). They did not seem to understand that the Russians were

gathering most of the intelligence from the traffic itself, rather than

from the contents of the messages. Traffic analysis would tell them

when and where a following operation was being conducted, and by

cross-checking that with their own records they would learn all they

needed to know.

I lobbied hard for a major effort to be mounted to try to find out

if the Russians were systematically monitoring Watcher communications.

Theoretically it was a feasible thing to do, because any receiver

will give off a certain radiation which can be detected at short distances.

I raised my plan through the correct channels with GCHQ, which had

the technical apparatus and manpower necessary for such an experiment.

I waited for months before I got what was described as a "considered"

answer. GCHQ's verdict was that it was not technically feasible

to conduct such experiments. It was another two years before GCHQ

and MI5 realized how wrong that judgment was.

In the meantime I remained a worried man. If Watcher communications

were vulnerable, and Watcher tradecraft as poor as we had

shown it to be, then MI5 had to assume that a substantial part of its

counterespionage effort had been useless over many years. At least

some operations in which Watchers had been used had to have been

detected by the Russians. But which, and how many?

1

LA,

6

In the trenches of the Cold War, A2 was MI5's front line, Hugh Win-terborn

and I its storm troopers. Hugh Winterborn was a fine comrade

in arms. He had served with the Army in China and Japan and in

Ceylon and Burma before joining MI5, and spoke Chinese and Japanese

fluently. Winterborn was a Field Marshal manque\ His operations were

always beautifully planned right down to the last detail, and although

often complex, were invariably executed with military precision. But

he was not a dry man. He approached each operation with the purpose

of gathering intelligence, but also to have fun. And we did have fun.

For five years we bugged and burgled our way across London at the

State's behest, while pompous bowler-hatted civil servants in Whitehall

pretended to look the other way.

Winterborn and I were a perfect match, both sharing a fervent

belief that modernization was badly needed at almost every level of the

Service, and especially in the technical field. I tended to concentrate

on ideas. He acted as the foil, winnowing out the sensible from the

impractical in my suggestions and planning how to make them operational

reality.

When I first teamed up with Winterborn he was bubbling over with news of the latest A2 job he had completed, called Operation

party piece. It had been a typical Winterborn operation--thoroughness

and outrageous good fortune linked harmoniously together. One of the

F4 agent runners learned, from a source inside the Communist Party

of Great Britain, that the entire Party secret membership files were

stored in the flat of a wealthy Party member in Mayfair. A2 were called

in to plan an operation to burgle the flat and copy the files.

The flat was put under intensive visual, telephone, and letter surveillance,

and in due course MI5 had a stroke of unexpected luck. The



[

SPYCATCHER 55

woman of the house rang her husband at work to say that she was going

out for an hour. She told him she would leave the key under the mat.

Within twenty minutes of the call's being monitored in Leconfield House,

we were around at the flat taking a plasticine imprint of the key.

The burglary was carefully arranged for a time when the occupants

were away for a weekend in the Lake District. Winterborn sent a team

of Watchers to monitor the occupants in case they decided to return

home early. Banks of pedal-operated microfilming machines were set

up in Leconfield House ready to copy the files. A team from A2 entered

the flat and picked the locks of the filing cabinets where the membership

files were kept. The contents of each drawer of each cabinet were

photographed with a Polaroid camera. Each file was carefully removed

and indexed in the flat so that it could be replaced in the identical spot.

Then they were removed in bundles and driven over to Leconfield

House for copying in sequential order. In all, 55,000 files were copied

that weekend, and the result was a priceless haul of information about

the Communist Party.

party piece gave MI5 total access to the Party organization. Every

file contained a statement, handwritten by the recruit, explaining why

he or she wished to join the Party, accompanied by full personal details,

including detailed descriptions of the circumstances of recruitment,

work done for the Party, and contacts in the Party organization. More

important than this, the party piece material also contained the files of

covert members of the CPGB, people who preferred, or whom the

Party preferred, to conceal their identities. Most of these covert members

were not of the same generation as the classical secret Communists

of the 1930s, many of whom had been later recruited for espionage.

These were people in the Labor Party, the trade union movement or

the Civil Service, or some other branch of government work, who had

gone underground largely as a result of the new vetting procedures

brought in by the Attlee Government.

In the years after World War II, largely as a result of our alliance

with the Soviet Union in the war, the CPGB retained a significant body

of support, most importantly in the trade union movement. They were

increasingly active in industrial disputes, much to the consternation of

Prime Minister Attlee in his later years. In the late 1940s, MI5 began

to devote resources in an effort to monitor and neutralize CPGB activity

in the trade union movement. By 1955, the time of party piece, the

CPGB was thoroughly penetrated at almost every level by technical

surveillance or informants. Obtaining the party piece material, the very

1

56 PETER WRIGHT

heart of the CPGB's administration, was the final proof of MI5's postwar

mastery. Ironically, within a year the Soviet Union invaded Hungary,

and the Party began its slow decline in popularity.

Once MI5 was in possession of the party piece material, the CPGB

was never again in a position to seriously threaten the safety of the

realm. From then on, MI5 was able to locate every single active Party

member, particularly the covert ones, and monitor their activities, preventing

them from obtaining access to classified material where the risk

arose. The party piece material was Y-Boxed, and remained of enormous

assistance right up until the early 1970s, especially when the

CPGB later began to protest that it had renounced secret membership

and was now merely an open party.

I first operated against the CPGB in the late 1950s, when Hugh

Winterborn and I installed yet another microphone into its King Street

headquarters. The CPGB knew that its building was under constant

technical surveillance, and regularly switched the location of important

meetings. An agent inside King Street told his F4 controller that Executive

Committee discussions had been moved to a small conference

room at the far end of the building. There were no windows in the

room and we knew from the agent that there was no telephone either,

so SF could not solve the problem of providing coverage. Later, in the

1960s, the reason for the lack of a telephone became clear. One of the

first things Anthony Blunt had betrayed to the Russians was the existence

of SF, immediately after it was first installed in King Street, and

they had alerted the Party and instructed them to remove all telephones

from sensitive areas. But the Party did not really believe it. They took

precautions only for very sensitive matters.

Winterborn and I drove down to King Street in my car and sat

outside studying the external walls, trying to decide the best way to

attack the target room. Low down on the left-hand side of the street-facing

wall was an old coal chute which had been out of use for many

years. It seemed to present the best possibility. We checked with the

agent where this chute went and were told that it led straight into the

conference room. I suggested to Winterborn that we make a false door

identical to the one already in the chute, clipping it over the top of the

old door with a radio microphone between the two feeding into the

keyhole.

Hugh immediately began to make the arrangements. First he designed

a new door which could lock against the chute with spring catches.

SPYCATCHER 57

The door obviously had to be painted the same color as the existing

one, which was a heavily weather-beaten brown. We contacted the

Building Research Station in Garston and sent them sample flecks of

the paint which Hugh removed with a screwdriver one night while

casually walking past. They identified the paint for us and acquired

some of a similar vintage. Using a blowtorch and a sink of water we

were able to simulate a weathering process. I handled the installation

of the radio microphone on our door. I used a small plastic audio tube

to run from the keyhole in the chute to the microphone, filling the rest

of the space with batteries so that the microphone could run without

being serviced for up to six months. The receiver was hidden in the

telephone footway box at the end of King Street which luckily was just

within range of the microphone, and telephone lines relayed the signal back to the seventh floor of Leconfield House.

The most risky part of the operation was fitting the false door on

the pavement of King Street. It had to be done in full view of the CPGB

building, and they were constantly alert to anything suspicious. Hugh

Winterborn devised a typically complex plan. He decided to make the

installation late on a Saturday night, as theater revelers thronged the

streets in Co vent Garden. He arranged for all available A2 and F4

officers and their wives to converge on King Street from different directions

at a set time. We were all choreographed carefully by Winterborn

to arrive in two groups pretending to be much the worse for

drink. We met on the pavement and exchanged greetings. Behind the

huddle Winterborn dropped down to his knees and began to hand drill

four small holes in the wall of the chute, ready to receive the spring

catches of our door, using his pocket handkerchief to catch the telltale

brick dust. Within a minute our noisy socializing began to wear a little thin, but Winterborn had nerves of steel. He patiently finished the

drilling, and slipped the false door out from under his coat and clipped

it into place.

The operation, known as tiepin, worked perfectly as planned and

for some months MI5 had full coverage of every important CPGB

meeting. But in the end the microphone was detected. A CPGB official

happened to settle on our frequency when tuning his radio and a "howl

round" alerted him to the presence of a device. The entire building

was turned upside down in the search for the bug. Fortunately Hugh

Winterborn was living in the flat on the top floor of Leconfield House

at the time while his wife was away visiting relatives in Norway. He



58 PETER WRIGHT

li

Lk.

was alerted as soon as the microphone was detected and went around

straightaway, undipped the false door, and brought it back to the office

like a trophy of war.

The most extensive microphoning operation Winterborn and I ever

undertook was in Lancaster House, the ornate building which hosted

the Colonial Conferences of the 1950s and 1960s. As soon as Macmillan

became Prime Minister the pace of change in Colonial Affairs became

more marked. MI5, which was responsible for security and intelligence-gathering

in all Crown Territory, including the Empire, came under

increasing pressure to provide intelligence assessments during negotiations

toward the various independence settlements. Lancaster House

was almost impossible to cover effectively in a piecemeal way. We could

never be sure which rooms were going to be used, and this seriously

impaired our intelligence-gathering. Winterborn and I proposed that

MI5 install a comprehensive microphone system throughout the building

which could be used whenever and wherever it was required. The 9

Colonial Office agreed enthusiastically to our request, and Lancaster

House was closed for "renovations" for a fortnight while an A2 team

moved in. Hugh and I had already studied the room plans with great

care and drawn up a circuit diagram specifying the locations of each

microphone. We supervised the installation, and throughout the rest

of the 1960s and the 1970s the system was used whenever high-level

diplomatic negotiations took place in London.

But bugging the CPGB headquarters and covering Third World

delegations were, in the end, interruptions of the main task, which was

to confront the Soviet Union and her allies. The first A2 operation I

undertook against the Russians was Operation choir. It actually began

some months before I joined MI5, when Hugh Winterborn mounted

an operation to bug the Russian Consulate on the Bayswater Road.

The opportunity arose when the building next door was refurbished in

preparation for new occupants. MI5 went in under cover as decorators

and Winterborn fitted a new device called the probe microphone, which

had been developed by John Taylor in the Dollis Hill Laboratory.

The probe microphone was a large, high-sensitivity microphone,

which was used to gain covert access through a party wall. The device

was lodged inside the wall about eighteen inches from the target side.

The eighteen inches between the probe microphone and the target room

were drilled out by hand at a quarter-inch diameter in steps of half an

inch. Half an inch from the target side the quarter-inch-diameter hole

ended and a small pinhole was drilled, again by hand, using a No. 60

SPYCATCHER 59

size bit, so that the intrusion into the target side was almost invisible

to the naked eye. The eighteen-inch bore hole was then lined with a

smooth perspex tube which was acoustically matched into the microphone.

The microphone fed out into the street and back along telephone

wires to Leconfield House, where amplifiers boosted the captured sound

into intelligible speech.

Six months after Winterborn installed the choir microphone it

suddenly went dead. MI5 had, at the time, an agent who worked as an

occasional decorator and odd-job man for the Russians. His name was

Nutkin, which earned him the inevitable nickname of "Squirrel." Nut-kin

told us that the target room had been repainted. Although it seemed

most likely that the pinhole had been covered with paint, we were still

puzzled. Before the installation was made, Winterborn had obtained

detailed measurements of the target wall from Nutkin. Using these he

had planned the microphone pinhole to emerge behind a plaster leaf

of the elaborate cornicework fourteen feet above the floor. It seemed

unlikely that anyone would paint so carefully as to actually seal the

hole. Still, Winterborn and I decided to drill it out again.

The new operation involved considerable planning. The renovation

work in the building next door to the Consulate had finished. It was

now a busy office with a constant stream of visitors, some of whom we

knew to be Russians checking on security. We had to work at night

and in total silence. We needed scaffolding to work fourteen feet up

as well as plaster and paint to repair any damage. Winterborn arranged

for a prefabricated scaffolding system and quick-drying decorating materials,

specially developed for MI5 by the Building Research Station,

to be delivered to the office in small packages so as not to alert the

ever-vigilant Consulate.

A week later Jagger and I took a taxi to the top of Bayswater

Road. It was winter and the streets were dark and crowded with returning

commuters. We walked briskly down toward the Consulate and

let ourselves into the building next door using one of Jagger's famous

keys. We unpacked our attache cases, which contained our tools and

a small radio receiver. The observation post opposite the Consulate

was under instructions to monitor the building for any signs of movement.

We monitored the broadcasts on our receiver without acknowledgment,

so that we could cease work if anyone came into the target

room.

Every microphone MI5 installs is recorded in the A Branch Index,

which logs technical specifications, a history of its operation, and, most



.IL

60 PETER WRIGHT

important of all, its precise location. While Jagger erected the scaffolding

in total silence, I studied the wall plan, which we had brought

with us from the A Branch Index, and made the triangular measurements.

We began scraping away the plaster. It was tense work. Each

piece of plaster had to be removed by hand before it fell to the floor,

and could then be placed in a bag for removal. After an hour we

unearthed the microphone, carefully sealed inside the wall in a layer

of plasticine. I disconnected the cables and slid out the perspex acoustic

tube which led into the target room.

The No. 60 drill bit had a special stop on it ensuring the bit turned

so slowly that a flake of piaster or paint could not be pushed out into

the target room. I inserted the drill bit and held the body steady while

Jagger delicately turned the handle. After two turns there was still

resistance. Whatever was blocking the hole, it was obviously not a thin

layer of paint. In the light of passing car headlights we exchanged

puzzled glances. The drill turned again. And again. Still resistance.

Then suddenly the bit ran free and almost immediately encountered

another obstacle. I gently pulled the drill back to our side of the wall

and Jagger packed the bit into a small box for examination in Leconfield

House. Listening down the hole with an acoustic tube, I could hear the

ticking of a clock in the target room, so without doubt the drill had

entered the target room as originally designed, behind the rear side of

a plaster leaf in the cornice.

We swiftly packed the microphone back into the wall, reconnected

the cables, and replastered the hole. We had three hours to kill, waiting

for the plaster to set before we could repaint the damage. We sat

smoking, our receiver crackling intermittently. Even at the dead of

night both sides were still dancing the Cold War waltz, as Watcher cars

chased Russian diplomats through the darkened streets of London. But

the Consulate remained silent.

The next day on the seventh floor Winterborn and I listened to

the choir microphone. It was muffled, but clearly working. The only

problem was that nobody was saying anything in the target room. All

I could hear was the steady clacking of a solitary typewriter. We went

down to the basement to examine the No. 60 drill bit under a microscope.

It was covered to a depth of three-eighths of an inch with plaster

dust. Whoever the Russian decorator was, he had been mighty conscientious.

"That's no bloody redecoration," said Winterborn, squinting down

SPYCATCHER 61

the microscope. "You can't trowel plaster three-eighths of an inch down

a pinhole. That's been done with a bloody syringe!"

A month or so later, "Squirrel" Nutkin was able to catch a sight

of the target room. It had been completely remodeled with a soundproofed

partition across the party wall. Behind the partition a single

secretary worked with a typewriter. The Russians obviously knew, as

we did, that party walls were vulnerable to attack. But, as far as we

could tell, they did not know about the probe microphone. And yet it

seemed probable that they had detected the pinhole and stopped it.

In July 1955 I tackled the Soviets once again, this time in Canada.

MI5 received a request for technical assistance in an operation the Royal

Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) were planning: to install microphones

in the Russian Embassy in Ottawa. The old three-story Embassy

building overlooking the Rideau River had recently burned down. The

RCMP planned to install eavesdropping equipment during the rebuilding

work, but needed access to the latest equipment, so they contacted

MI5.

I was met at the airport by Terry Guernsey, the head of the RCMP's

Counterespionage Department, B Branch. With him was his assistant,

a Welshman named James Bennett. Guernsey was a lanky Canadian

whose outwardly unflappable manner was constantly betrayed by the

nervous, explosive energy underneath. Guernsey was trained in Britain

by both MI5 and MI6 and returned to Canada in the early 1950s convinced

that the RCMP was unsuited, as a uniformed police force, to

the delicate work of counterespionage. Guernsey began to recruit civilian

intelligence officers and single-handedly built up B Branch into one of the most modern and aggressive counterespionage units in the

West. Many of the ideas which later played a major role in British and

American thinking, such as computerized logging of the movements of

Russian diplomats in the West, began as Guernsey initiatives. But he

constantly ran up against the oppressive restrictions of the Mountie

tradition, which believed that the uniformed RCMP officer was inherently

superior to his civilian counterpart. This was a struggle which ran

deeply, not just through Canadian Intelligence, but also in the FBI.

Guernsey believed that the British were correct in drawing a distinction

between criminal detective work' and the entirely different skills of

intelligence-gathering, and he fought many battles to ensure that B

Branch remained independent of the mainstream of the RCMP. But the effort virtually cost him his career. The Mountie senior officers

62 PETER WRIGHT

never forgave him, and he was eventually banished to the UK, where

he acted as RCMP liaison with MI5 and MI6, before ill-health finally

drove him into retirement.

But in 1956, when I made my first trip to Canada to help plan

Operation dew worm, Guernsey was still very much in charge. Over

dinner that first night he described where the operation stood. The

RCMP had successfully recruited the contractor who was rebuilding

the Russian Embassy, and had installed RCMP officers under cover as

workmen on the site. With the help of Igor Gouzenko, a Russian who

had worked inside the old Embassy as a cipher clerk until he defected

to the Canadians in 1945, Guernsey had been able to pinpoint the area

in the northeast corner of the building where the KGB and GRU (Soviet

Military Intelligence) secret sections, and the cipher rooms, were located.

After studying the plans I decided that a satyr operation, using a

cavity microphone activated from outside by microwaves, was not technically

feasible. The distance from the device to safe ground was too

great to be assured of success. It had to be a wired operation. Wired

operations have one major advantage. If they are skillfully installed,

they are almost impossible to detect. The best plan of attack was to

conceal the microphones inside the aluminum sash windows on the

target side of the building. Guernsey obtained a sample frame from the

contractor. They were friction windows with no sash weight, perfect

for concealing a device. There was an air path into the sash where the

two pieces locked together, ensuring a good sound quality. The metal

window frames would effectively dampen the electromagnetic field

emitted by the microphones, making them impervious to sweeper detection.

But the main problem was how to conceal the cables leading to

the microphones. The walls of the new Embassy building were planned

to be nearly two feet thick, with a fourteen-inch concrete block inner

leaf, a two-inch air gap in the middle, and then four-inch-thick stone

facing on the outside of the wall. I checked with MI6 for details of

Russian electronic sweeper operations. They told me that the Russians

never swept the outsides of their buildings, only the insides. The Russians

apparently considered it demeaning to be seen to be sweeping

their premises. I told Guernsey that the best plan was to lead the cables

up through the air gaps, where they would be virtually assured of non-detection

through fourteen inches of concrete, especially as MI5 had

SPYCATCHER 63

developed a new thin cable which gave off far less electromagnetic

emission.

Once the building work got under way we had to find a way of

concealing the cables from the Russian security teams who regularly

visited the site to check on the Canadian contractors. We buried large

coils beneath each of the eight-foot concrete footings, and cut them

into the bitumen coverings. Every night, as each course of masonry

was installed, RCMP workmen went onto the site and lifted a length

of cable from the coil into the air gap. There were eight cables. Each

was labeled at random from one to twenty to mislead the Russians in

the event they were ever discovered. It was a nice touch; the sort of

joke the Russians would appreciate after they had finished tearing down

the Embassy searching for the phantom cables.

The most difficult part of the whole operation was connecting the

wires to the microphones. The windows in the northeast section of the

building had been successfully fitted, supervised by an RCMP officer

to ensure the frames went into the right places. The cables had been

painstakingly raised inside the air gaps over months of construction

work. But connecting the two together was impossible to conceal. It

could be done only by an engineer working outside, four floors up on

the scaffolding. The job was given to one of Guernsey's technical men,

a young engineer who handled the operation brilliantly. He was a big

man, but he scaled the building in pitch dark in a temperature approaching

minus forty degrees centigrade, carrying his soldering tools

in a shoulder bag. Taking each of the eight microphones in turn, he

carefully joined the cables and ensured the connections were solid.

As soon as the connections were made, RCMP technicians began

to dig a twenty-yard tunnel from an RCMP safe house next door to

the Embassy, through to the coils buried under the footings. The coils

were led back ten feet underground to the safe house and the tunnel

backfilled with three feet of concrete. The eight cables connected to

head amplifiers concealed in the garage of the safe house, with power

fed to them over output leads from RCMP headquarters. When the

microphones were tested, each one worked perfectly.

But then, just as this almost flawless operation was nearing completion,

disaster struck. A workman was installing a fuel tank on the

outside wall near the northeast corner of the new Embassy, unaware

that just at that point all the cables from the windows above came

together to go underground to our safe house. As he drove in metal



64

PETER WRIGHT

hasps to support the ventilation pipe, he pushed one straight through

the bundle of cables buried inside, completely destroying the connections

to all the microphones.

There was no choice but to reenter the building. But this time the

operation was even more risky. The building was more or less complete,

and the Russians on the verge of occupation. There was little chance

of the Russians believing the undercover RCMP team were just innocent

workmen if they were discovered. It was another bitterly cold

night when they went back in. They managed to extract six of the eight

cables from behind the hasp, rejointed them, abandoning the other

two, and built them back into the wall with the hasp. Although two

microphones were lost, at least one remained operational in each of

the target rooms, so the major disaster was averted.

As soon as the Russians reoccupied their Embassy, we heard sounds

from some of our microphones. GRU officers discussed earnestly where

they should put their furniture. Then, forty-eight hours later, they

suddenly vacated their offices, the Ambassador left for Moscow, and

a team of Russian workmen moved in. It was soon clear from the

materials the Russians were taking into the Embassy that they were

constructing a new KGB and GRU sanctum elsewhere in the building,

probably supplied by an independent power generator.

Shortly after this, the microphones, which were being constantly

monitored back at RCMP headquarters, began to pick up the telltale

sounds of a sweeper team in operation. RCMP had tentatively identified

their arrival in the building some days before, but it wasn't until they

began work in the northeast corner, tapping at the walls for signs of

hollowness, and running metal detectors across the ceilings, that we

were sure. For twenty days they swept the rooms we had microphoned,

as if they knew they were bugged. But they never found either the

cables or the microphones. By Russian Embassy standards worldwide,

the new building was small, but despite what must have been cramped

conditions, the northeast corner remained virtually unused apart from

routine consular work, even after the departure of the sweepers. Eight

years later the microphone sweepers arrived in Ottawa. They went

straight to the rooms where the microphones were and within an hour

had found the microphone cables and thus the microphones. There

were forty-two rooms in the Embassy. The sweepers searched only in

the six rooms where the microphones were. They must have known

where to look!

Like Operation choir, something about dew worm troubled me.



L

SPYCATCHER 65

Partly, of course, it was disappointment. The operation had been an

outstanding technical success, but the months of patient preparations

had yielded no intelligence whatever. Of course, at the outset of the

operation the biggest gamble had been to assume, as Gouzenko had,

that the Russians would rebuild their secret section in the same place

as they had it in the old Embassy. But based on an analysis of the

power supply to the building, it was a reasonable gamble. The fact that

they had decided to resituate the secret section and screen it off was

not in itself unusual. Both the British and the Americans had begun

to realize, as almost certainly had the Russians, that the best way to

protect an Embassy secret section from microphone attack was to construct

it deep inside, preferably with its own power supply. But the

certainty with which the Russian sweepers attacked the northeast corner,

as if they were looking for something they knew to be there,

introduced the worm of doubt into my mind.

Within a year the same thing happened, again in Canada. The

Polish Government were given permission to open a consulate in Montreal.

They bought an old house and began renovations. In January

1957 I flew over to Montreal to assist the RCMP install a microphone.

The RCMP knew the identity of the UB (Polish Intelligence) officer

and the location of his room, but the building was being completely

gutted, so a wired operation was out of the question. Only a satyr

cavity microphone would do. The premises were being rewired using

steel conduits for the cables, and as with the dew worm window frames

I reckoned that the satyr devices would be virtually impossible to detect

if they were placed close to the conduits. Within a fortnight of installing

the system the Poles suddenly ordered the contractor to remove the

wall containing our satyr devices and replace it with another. The

RCMP did manage to retrieve one device, but the other was lost to

the Poles. Later the RCMP learned from a source inside the Polish

Embassy that they had been tipped off to the likely presence of microphones

by the Russians. They had been one step ahead of us again.

It was not just in Canada that things like this occurred. There was

also Operation mole in Australia. It began with a visit to London by

Sir Charles Spry, the head of Australia's overseas intelligence-gathering

organization, ASIO, in 1959. I received a telephone call saying that he

would like to see me. Spry had once been a good-looking man, with

hooded eyes and a full mustache, but responsibility and a liking for the

good things in life had left him florid in appearance. Spry was appointed

head of ASIO on its formation in 1949. He had previously been Director

66 PETER WRIGHT

of Military Intelligence, but along with a group of like-minded officials,

dubbed the "gnomes of Melbourne," he lobbied hard for the creation

of a proper security intelligence-gathering agency similar to MI5. Spry

ran the service with an iron fist for nineteen years, and became one of

the towering figures of postwar intelligence. Only toward the end of

his career, when he began to lose touch with his staff, did his grip on

the organization falter.

Spry liked visiting London. He had originally served in the Indian

Army on the Khyber Pass in the 1930s. The common background and

shared sense of what constituted an officer and a gentleman ensured

him many friends in the clubbable world of British Intelligence. But

Spry was far from being an old buffer. He came straight to the point

as soon as our meeting began. He told me he had recently been over

in Canada and Terry Guernsey had recommended he talk to me about

a microphone operation ASIO was planning against the Russians. He

explained that since the well-publicized defection of the Petrovs, a

husband and wife who worked together inside the cipher section of the

Russian Embassy in Canberra, the Russians had broken off diplomatic

relations and placed their Embassy under the control of the Swiss. But

recently they had been making overtures to return and ASIO wanted

to mount an operation against the Embassy before they occupied the

premises. After studying the plans, I advised Spry to mount a satyr

operation, and demonstrated the device to him. The best place to install

satyr was in the wooden sash window frames, and I sent my assistant

out to Australia to supervise the details. The device was successfully

installed, and as a further precaution, I instructed ASIO not to activate

the device for a year, in case the Russians monitored the building for

microwaves in the first months of reoccupation. As with dew worm,

Operation mole was a technical success, but not a single scrap of intelligence

was gleaned. Every sound in the KGB resident's room, every

shuffle of his papers, every scratch of his pen, was audible. But he

never said a word. Operation mole was another failure.

The demands on MI5's slender resources were, in the 1950s, impossible

to satisfy. Consequently, the pressure of work on individual

officers, particularly those in A2 who had of necessity become involved

in such a wide range of operations, was at times practically intolerable.

Operations merged one into another. Plans, maps, briefings, technical

reports crossed my desk in a paper whirl. It was often difficult at any

fixed point to be sure which operations had ended and which were still

deep in the midst of gestation. Intelligence-gathering, even at its best,

SPYCATCHER 67

is a thoroughly confused business. But there is always an empty space

in the mind of every professional intelligence officer worth his salt

reserved for scraps and fragments which for one reason or another raise

unanswered questions. Operations choir, dew worm, and mole were

all stashed away in that compartment, submerged under the welter of

current operations, but never quite forgotten, until years later they

suddenly assumed a new significance.

The profession of intelligence is a solitary one. There is camaraderie,

of course, but in the end you are alone with your secrets. You

live and work at a feverish pitch of excitement, dependent always on

the help of your colleagues. But you always move on, whether to a

new branch or department, or to a new operation. And when you move

on, you inherit new secrets which subtly divorce you from those you

have worked with before. Contacts, especially with the outside world,

are casual, since the largest part of yourself cannot be shared. For this

reason, intelligence services are great users of people. It is built into

the very nature of the profession, and everyone who joins knows it.

But early in my career I encountered a man whose experience at the

hands of British Intelligence suddenly stripped the veneer of national

importance away from the whole business. It arose out of the work I

had been doing for Brundrett's committee on resonance. I had spent

a lot of time researching ways in which innocuous objects, like ashtrays

or ornaments, could be modified to respond to sound waves when

radiated with microwaves of a certain frequency. If a system could be

perfected, it promised enormous advantages. The object itself would

carry no transmitter or receiver, so detection would be virtually impossible.

By 1956 we had successfully developed prototypes, and decided

to attempt an operation against the Russian Embassy in London.

One of MI5's agents at that time was the MP Henry Kirby, who

had frequent dealings with the Russian diplomatic community. The

plan was simple. MI5 would design an ornament modified to reflect

sound, and Kirby would give it as a gift to the Russian Ambassador.

The first thing that we needed to know was the kind of present the

Ambassador might be likely to accept and place prominently on his

desk or in his office. Malcolm Cumming suggested that I visit an old

MI5 agent runner named Klop Ustinov, the father of the actor Peter

Ustinov.

Klop Ustinov was German by descent, but he had strong connections

in the Russian diplomatic community and was a frequent visitor

to the Embassy. Ustinov had the unique distinction of having held

1

68 PETER WRIGHT

commissions in the Russian, German, and British Armies. He had

dabbled in intelligence throughout the interwar period. He spoke a vast

array of languages, and his German/Russian background made him a

useful source of information. When Hitler came to power, Ustinov

began to work strenuously against the Nazis. He approached Robert

Vansittart, a prominently anti-Nazi Foreign Office diplomat, offering

to work for British Intelligence. He claimed to be in contact with Baron

Wolfgang zu Putlitz, then a First Secretary at the German Embassy in

London, who he said was secretly working against the Nazis. Ustinov

was recruited by MI5, and began to obtain high-grade intelligence from

zu Putlitz about the true state of German rearmament. It was priceless

intelligence, possibly the most important human-source intelligence

Britain received in the prewar period. After meeting zu Putlitz, Ustinov

and he used to dine with Vansittart and Churchill, then in the wilderness,

to brief them on the intelligence they had gained. Zu Putlitz

became something of a second son to the urbane English diplomat.

Even after the outbreak of war Ustinov continued meeting zu Putlitz,

by now working in Holland as an Air Attache. Finally in 1940 zu Putlitz

learned that the Gestapo were closing in and he decided to defect. Once

more Ustinov traveled into Holland and, at great personal risk, led zu

Putlitz to safety.

I took a taxi over to Ustinov's flat in Kensington, expecting to

meet a hero of the secret world living in honorable retirement. In fact,

Ustinov and his wife were sitting in a dingy flat surrounded by piles of

ancient, leather-bound books. He was making ends meet by selling off

his fast-diminishing library.

Despite the hardship, Ustinov was thrilled by my visit. He remained

a player of the Great Game down to his fingertips. Two small

glasses and a bottle of vodka appeared, and he began to pore over the

plans I had brought with me from the office. He was a round old man

with a guttural, polyglot accent, and a sharp eye for the real interests

of the Soviet diplomats in Kensington Park Gardens.

"The real danger, my friend, is that they will sell the gift, rather

than display it, if it is too valuable," he intoned in a knowing voice.

"These are Bolsheviks--men of orthodox tastes. A silver effigy of Lenin,

or model of the Kremlin. These perhaps will be more sacred to them."

A bust of Lenin was unsuitable, I explained, because the smooth

contours of Vladimir Ilyich's skull were too rounded to be sure of

reflecting sound waves. But a model Kremlin offered possibilities. It

would be easy to conceal the right type of concave indentations in the

L_k.i

SPYCATCHER 69

complex architecture of the symbol of Mother Russia. Klop Ustinov

saw the whole operation as a piece of rich theater and offered to pay

a visit to the Ambassador to gather more direct evidence of his tastes.

As the vodka took hold we began to talk of old times. He was an

old man, but his memory was still fresh. Tears began to wet his cheeks

as he told me the story of what he and zu Putlitz had done for the

country. Finally his reserve broke.

"I do these things, Peter, and they leave me here. My wife and

I ... penniless."

"But what about your pension?" I asked.

"Pension? I have no pension," he flashed back bitterly. "When

you work for them you never think about the future, about old age.

You do it for love. And when it comes time to die, they abandon you."

I sat silent. It seemed scarcely credible to me that such a man could

be left in such circumstances, forced almost to beg. I wanted to ask

him why Churchill or Vansittart had forgotten him, but I felt it would

only wound him more. Ustinov drank and composed himself.

"But it was fun," he said finally. He poured more vodka with an

unsteady hand. There was silence for a moment, and then he spoke

again.

"My boy. He is an actor." He pointed to a picture of young Peter

on the mantelpiece. "Do you have children, Peter?" I told him I had

three, two girls and a young boy.

"Tell him not to join, then," he said quietly. "I would not want

my boy to join this game of ours. The gentlemen run the business, and

gentlemen have short memories ..."

Almost as soon as it arrived, his bitterness melted away. He asked

about the office, about Guy Liddell, Dick White, and Malcolm Cum-ming,

all of whom had been closely involved with him during the wartime

years. Finally, as late-afternoon darkness closed in on the room,

I left. We shook hands and he returned alone to the vodka and his

piles of books.

I was too drunk that night to do anything other than go home. But

the next morning I tackled Cumming on the subject. He looked embarrassed.

"But I'm sure we sorted his pension out years ago," he barked in

a voice louder than usual. "Good God, poor Klop. I'll see Dick straightaway."

Further questioning was pointless. Who precisely had been to blame

for forgetting Klop Ustinov was lost in the chase around the mulberry



L.

70 PETER WRIGHT

bush of responsibility, an occupation much favored by bureaucrats when

oversights are discovered. Ustinov did get his pension, although I never

saw him again after that meeting. Not long afterward he died. But at

least his widow had the benefit of it. The silver Kremlin operation soon

petered out, overruled by the Foreign Office. In truth my heart went

out of it that afternoon in Kensington. But I learned a lesson I never

forgot: that MI5 expects its officers to remain loyal unto the grave,

without necessarily offering loyalty in return.

But in the main, the 1950s were years of fun, and A Branch a place

of infectious laughter. As Hugh Winterborn always said: "MI5 is a

great life, if you can stand the excitement!" Like the time when we

were fitting listening devices in a safe house next door to the Hungarian

Embassy. I climbed onto the roof to install an aerial and was seen by

a neighbor, who reported seeing a burglar on the prowl. Within ten

minutes the police were knocking at the door, accompanied by the

neighbor, and pandemonium reigned. Here we were, surrounded by

the latest listening technology, receivers and cables spread across

the floor. Winterborn desperately lifted the floorboards and began to

shovel tens of thousands of pounds' worth of equipment underneath.

The knocking got louder. Then burly shoulders began to force the

front door. They were clearly convinced by the noise that a burglary

was in progress. Finally, everything was relatively shipshape, and

I opened the door sheepishly and explained that I was doing some

authorized late-night renovations for the owner. I gave the policeman

a number to ring to confirm the fact. It was the local Special Branch

number.

Even funnier was the time we did a similar job against the Polish

Embassy in Portland Street. The house next door was temporarily empty,

and A2 obtained access to install a series of microphones. Hugh Winterborn

and I led a team of twelve officers from A Branch. Silence was

imperative because we knew that the target premises were permanently

manned near the party wall. I made a tremendous fuss insisting that

everyone remove his shoes to avoid making noise on the bare floorboards.

We worked nonstop for four hours in the freezing cold. All

the floorboards on the first floor had been raised and I was patiently

threading the cables along the void between the joists. After a time

one of the leads became tangled on a split joist. Unable to clear the

obstruction by hand, I began to ease myself down until one foot was

resting on a masonry nail sticking out from one side of a joist. Just as

I was inching toward the tangled cable, the nail gave way, and I plunged

SPYCATCHER 71

through the ceiling below. A large section of ceiling crashed fourteen

feet to the floor below, reverberating around Portland Place like a

wartime bomb. The noise and dust subsided, leaving me wedged tightly

up to my waist in the hole in the ceiling. For a moment there was total

silence.

"Good thing we removed our shoes," quipped Winterborn dryly

as laughter began to echo around the empty building.

Luckily the neighbors must have been asleep, because no policemen

arrived. Leslie Jagger quickly repaired the lath work, replastering

and repainting the damage before morning with his quick-drying materials.

"Close shave, that one, Peter," he said as he applied the final lick

of paint. "If you'd come through the ornamental rose we'd have been

absolutely buggered!"

But accidents like these were rare occurrences. In the main, MI5

technical operations became, under Hugh and me, highly professional,

in sharp contrast to MI6 activities in the same field. MI6, in the mid-1950s,

never settled for a disaster if calamity could be found instead.

The best example I ever heard concerned one of their training operations.

They placed a junior officer in an MI6 flat, and detailed another

team of recruits to find and interrogate him. MI5 were always routinely

informed about these operations in case anything went wrong.

One afternoon A2 got a phone call from MI6 pleading for help.

The MI6 search party had apparently miscounted the floors of the

apartment block where their target was holed up. They picked the lock

of the flat one floor above, and proceeded to go to work on the man

inside. He, of course, protested his innocence, but believing this to be

part of the ruse, the search party consulted the MI6 textbook marked

"persuasion," and went to work as only enthusiastic amateurs can. By

the time they had finished, the man was stripped naked and singing

like a bird. He was, in reality, a jewel thief, who had recently pulled

off a diamond robbery. He produced the baubles still in his possession,

obviously believing that his captors were visitors from a vengeful underworld.

Hugh Winterborn split his sides laughing as the unfortunate MI6

officer begged for advice on what to do with the jewel thief, the diamonds,

and a wrecked flat. In the end the thief was given two hours

to make for the Continent and Leslie Jagger went over to the flat and

repaired the damage.

After I had been in A2 for two or three years, MI6 began to call

1

72 PETER WRIGHT

on me to help them plan their technical operations. I never much

enjoyed working with MI6. They invariably planned operations which,

frankly, stood little chance of technical success. They were always looking

for a successor to the Berlin Tunnel--something on the epic scale

which would have the Americans thirsting to share in the product. But

they never found it, and in the process failed to build a sensible bedrock

of smaller successes. There was, too, a senseless bravado about the way

they behaved which I felt often risked the security of the operations.

In Bonn, for instance, we were planning a dew woRM-style operation

on the Russian Embassy compound.

Local MI6 station officers wandered onto the site and even, on

one occasion, engaged the KGB security guards in casual conversation.

It made for good dining-out stories, but contributed little to the weekly

ministerial intelligence digests. The foolhardiness was invariably punctuated

by flights of absurd pomposity. In Bonn I made the perfectly

sensible suggestion that we should use German cable so that if the

operation were discovered MI6 could disown it and blame it on the

local intelligence service.

"Good Lord, Peter! We can't do that," gushed the MI6 station

chief with his nose in the air. "It wouldn't be ethical."

Ethics, so far as I could ascertain, were displayed by MI6 purely

for Whitehall or MI5 consumption. In fact MI6, under its chief, Sir

John Sinclair, had become a virtual liability. It still refused to face up

to the appalling consequences of Philby's being a Soviet spy. It was

operating in the modern world with 1930s attitudes and 1930s personnel

and equipment. It was little surprise to me when they stumbled, in

April 1956, into their greatest blunder of all, the Crabbe affair.

The Soviet leaders Khrushchev and Bulganin paid a visit to Britain

on the battleship Ordzhonikidze, docking at Portsmouth. The visit was

designed to improve Anglo-Soviet relations at a sensitive time. MI5

decided to operate against Khrushchev in his rooms at Claridge's Hotel.

Normally Claridge's has permanent Special Facilities installed on the

hotel telephone system, because so many visitors stay there who are of

interest to MI5. But we knew the Russians were sending a team of

sweepers in to check Khrushchev's suite before he arrived, so we decided

it was the right time to use for the first time the specially modified

SF which John Taylor had developed in the Dollis Hill Laboratory.

The new SF did not require a washer to be fitted, so it was virtually

undetectable. The telephone could be activated over short distances

using shortwave high-frequency megacycles. We set the SF activation

L

Ik,

SPYCATCHER 73

up in an office of the Grosvenor Estates near Claridge's. It worked

perfectly. Throughout Khrushchev's visit his room was permanently

covered. In fact, the intelligence gathered was worthless. Khrushchev

was far too canny a bird to discuss anything of value in a hotel room.

I remember sitting up on the seventh floor with a transcriber translating

loosely for me. We listened to Khrushchev for hours at a time, hoping

for pearls to drop. But there were no clues to the last days of Stalin,

or to the fate of the KGB henchman Beria. Instead, there were long

monologues from Khrushchev addressed to his valet on the subject of

his attire. He was an extraordinarily vain man. He stood in front of

the mirror preening himself for hours at a time, and fussing with his

hair parting. I recall thinking that in Eden, Khrushchev had found the

perfect match. Both were thoroughly unscrupulous men, whose only

interest lay in cutting a dash on the world stage.

But while MI5 were discreetly bugging Khrushchev, MI6 launched

a botched operation against the Ordzhonikidze. The operation was run

by the MI6 London Station, commanded by Nicholas Elliott, the son

of the former headmaster of Eton. MI6 wanted to measure the propeller

of the Russian battleship, because there was confusion in the

Admiralty as to why she was able to travel so much faster than had

originally been estimated by Naval Intelligence. Elliott arranged for a

frogman, the unfortunate Commander "Buster" Crabbe, to take on

the assignment.

In fact, this was not the first time MI6 had attempted this operation.

A year before, they tried to investigate the hull of the Ordzhonikidze while she was in port in the Soviet Union. They used one of the X-Craft

midget submarines which MI6 kept down in Stokes Bay. These

had dry compartments to enable a diver to get in and out and were

small enough to pass undetected into inshore waters. A Naval frogman

had attempted to enter the harbor, but security was too tight and the

mission was aborted.

The second attempt in Portsmouth ended in disaster. Crabbe was

overweight and overage. He disappeared, although a headless body

which was later washed up was tentatively identified as his. John Henry,

MI6 London Station's Technical Officer, had informed me that MI6

were planning the Crabbe operation, and I told Gumming. He was

doubtful about it from the start. It was a typical piece of MI6 adventurism,

ill-conceived and badly executed. But we all kept our fingers

crossed. Two days later a panic-stricken John Henry arrived in Cum-ming's

office telling us that Crabbe had disappeared.

74 PETER WRIGHT

"I told Nicholas not to use Buster; he was heading for a he I

attack as it was," he kept saying. '

We were highly skeptical of the heart attack theory, but there w

no time for speculation. The secret MI6 parlor game was at risk I

becoming embarrassingly public. Crabbe and his MI6 accomplice h h

signed into a local hotel under their own names.

"There'll be a fearful row if this comes out," snapped Cummin

"We'll all be for the pavilion!" 8'

Cumming buzzed through to Dick White's office and asked to see

him immediately. We all trooped upstairs. Dick was sitting at his desk

There was no hint of a welcoming smile. His charm had all but deserted

him, and the years of schoolmaster training came to the fore.

"The Russians have just asked the Admiralty about the frogman

and they've had to deny any knowledge. I'm afraid it looks to me rather

as if the lid will come off before too long," he said tersely.

"John, how on earth did you get yourself into this mess?" he asked

with sudden exasperation.

Henry was chastened, but explained that the Navy had been pressing

them for months for details of the Ordzhonikidze's propeller.

"You know what Eden is like," he said bitterly, "one minute he

says you can do something, the next minute not. We thought it was an

acceptable risk to take."

White looked unconvinced. He smoothed his temples. He shuffled

his papers. The clock ticked gently in the corner. Telltale signs of panic

oozed from every side of the room.

"We must do everything we can to help you, of course," he said,

finally breaking the painful silence. "I will go and see the PM this

evening, and see if I can head the thing off. In the meantime, Malcolm

will put A2 at your disposal."

A thankful John Henry retreated from the room. Cumming telephoned

the CID in Portsmouth and arranged for the hotel register to

be sanitized. Winter born and Henry rushed down to Portsmouth to

clear up any loose ends. But it was not enough to avert a scandal. That

night Khrushchev made a public complaint about the frogman, and a

humiliated Eden was forced to make a statement in the House of Commons.

The intelligence community in London is like a small village in the

Home Counties. Most people in the senior echelons know each other

at least well enough to drink with in their clubs. For some weeks after

the Crabbe affair, the village hummed in anticipation at the inevitable

SPYCATCHER 75

which everyone knew to be coming. As one of the few people

reckoning

a MI5 who knew about the Crabbe affair before it began, I kept

'^'head down on John Henry's advice.

"There's blood all over the floor," he confided to me shortly afd

"We've got Edward Bridges in here tearing the place apart." terWShortly after this, Cumming strode into my office one morning

looking genuinely upset.

"Dick's leaving," he muttered. "They want him to take over MI6."

The decision to appoint Dick White as Chief of MI6 was, I believe,

ne of the most important mistakes made in postwar British Intelligence

history. There were few signs of it in the mid-1950s, but MI5, undei

his control, was taking the first faltering steps along the path of modernization.

He knew the necessity for change, and yet had the reverence

for tradition which would have enabled him to accomplish his objective!

without disruption. He was, above all, a counterintelligence officer,

almost certainly the greatest of the twentieth century, perfectly trained

for the Director-General's chair. He knew the people, he knew the

problems, and he had a vision of the sort of effective counterespionage

organization he wanted to create. Instead, just as his work was beginning,

he was moved on a politician's whim to an organization he knew

little about, and which was profoundly hostile to his arrival. He was

never to be as successful there as he had been in MI5.

But the loss was not just MI5's. The principal problem in postwar

British Intelligence was the lack of clear thinking about the relative

role of the various Intelligence Services. In the post-imperial era Britain

required, above all, an efficient domestic Intelligence organization. MI6,

particularly after the emergence of GCHQ, was quite simply of less

importance. But moving Dick White to MI6 bolstered its position,

stunted the emergence of a rationalized Intelligence community, and

condemned the Service he left to ten years of neglect. Had he stayed,

MI5 would have emerged from the traumas of the 1960s and 1970s far

better equipped to tackle the challenges of the 1980s.

The departure was conducted with indecent haste. A collection

was swiftly arranged. The takings were enormous, and he was presented

with an Old English Silver set, at a party held in the MI5 canteen. It

wa« an emotional occasion. Those who knew Dick well, and at that

was not among them, claimed that he agonized over whether to

wo V across to MI6, perhaps realizing that he was leaving his life's

talk dUndone-Dick was "early crying when he made his speech. He

ed of the prewar days, and the bonds of friendship which he had

1

76 PETER WRIGHT

formed then. He thanked Cumming for encouraging him to join the

Office, and he talked with pride of the triumphs of the war years. He

wished us well and made his final bequest.

"I saw the Prime Minister this afternoon, and he assured me that

he had the well-being of our Service very much at heart. I am pleased

to announce that he has appointed my Deputy, Roger Hollis, as my

successor as proof of his faith in this organization. I am sure that you

will agree with me that the Service could not be in safer hands."

The tall, slightly stooping figure in the pinstripe suit came forward

to shake Dick White's hand. The era of elegance and modernization

had ended.

L



7

Roger Hollis was never a popular figure in the office. He was a dour,

uninspiring man with an off-putting authoritarian manner. I must confess

I never liked him. But even those who were well disposed doubted

his suitability for the top job. Hollis, like Cumming, had forged a close

friendship with Dick White in the prewar days. For all his brilliance,

Dick always had a tendency to surround himself v/ith less able men. I

often felt it was latent insecurity, perhaps wanting the contrast to throw

his talents into sharper relief. But while Hollis was brighter by a good

margin than Cumming, particularly in the bureaucratic arts, I doubt

whether even Dick saw him as a man of vision and intellect.

Hollis believed that MI5 should remain a small security support

organization, collecting files, maintaining efficient vetting and protective

security, without straying too far into areas like counterespionage,

where active measures needed to be taken to get results, and where

choices had to be confronted and mistakes could be made. I never

heard Hollis express views on the broad policies he wanted MI5 to

pursue, or ever consider adapting MI5 to meet the increasing tempo

of the intelligence war. He was not a man to think in that kind of way.

He had just one simple aim, which he doggedly pursued throughout

his career. He wanted to ingratiate the Service, and himself, with Whitehall.

And that meant ensuring there were no mistakes, even at the cost

of having no successes.

Hollis grew up in Somerset, where his father had been the Bishop

of Taunton. After public school (Clifton) and Oxford, he traveled extensively

in China before joining MI5 in the late 1930s. During the war

he specialized in Communist affairs, as Assistant Director of F Branch.

Under Sillitoe, Hollis was promoted to Director of C Branch, which

gave him responsibility for all forms of vetting and protective security,



L_k,

78 PETER WRIGHT

such as document classification and the installation of security systems

on all government buildings. Hollis' service in C Branch accounted for

the importance he accorded this work when he later became Director-General.

When Dick White succeeded Sillitoe as DG in 1953, he appointed

Hollis as his Deputy. On the face of it, it was a sensible appointment.

While Dick did the thinking and the planning, Hollis would provide

the solid administrative skills which Dick often lacked. Hollis, during

the time I knew him as Deputy, never struck me as an ambitious man.

He had already risen beyond his expectations, and seemed happy to

serve out the rest of his career as Dick White's hatchet man and confidant.

The only notable item of information commonly known about

this excessively secretive man was his long-standing affair with his secretary,

an ambitious girl who, when Dick White suddenly left for MI6,

moved into the Director-General's office with a good deal more enthusiasm

than Roger Hollis. Hollis, I suspect, always knew his limitations,

and, once appointed, sought to cover them by relying on the

rigid exercise of authority. The inevitable result was a quick sapping

of whatever goodwill people held for him in the early days of his command.

Hollis took over at a time of unprecedented collapse in relations

between the various British Intelligence Services. There had always

been tensions between MI5 and MI6, dating back to the earliest years.

But they had emerged from World War II as partners for the first time

in a coordinated intelligence bureaucracy, along with the newly formed

GCHQ, which was responsible for all forms of communications and

signals intelligence. (For an account of this, see Secret Service by Christopher

Andrew.) But within ten years this close and effective relationship

had almost entirely disintegrated. MI6 were deeply hostile to MI5

as a result of what they saw as unjustified attempts by MI5 to meddle

in the Philby affair. Moreover, the entire organization viewed Eden's

appointment of Dick White in place of Sinclair as a mortal insult.

The most serious lack of liaison was undoubtedly that between

MI5 and GCHQ. During the war MI5 worked extremely closely with

its own signals intelligence organization, the Radio Security Service

(RSS) on the Double Cross System. The RSS intercepted and broke

the ciphers used by the German Intelligence Service, the Abwehr,

enabling MI5 to arrest incoming German spies as they landed in Britain.

RSS was run by MI6 for MI5. B Branch then supervised the screening

of these agents. Those who were prepared to cooperate with the British

SPYCATCHER 79

were turned and began feeding false radio reports back to the Germans.

Those who refused were executed. But the success of any disinformation

operation depends on being able to monitor how far your enemy accepts

the disinformation you are feeding him. Through the RSS wireless

interceptions and the break into German Armed Forces ciphers, enigma,

the Twenty Committee running the Double Cross operation knew precisely

how much influence their deception ploys were having on German

military policy.

In the postwar period MI5, stripped of their wartime intellectual

elite, showed scant interest in maintaining the signals intelligence connection.

They had, in any case, lost formal control of RSS early on in

the war to MI6. But the most powerful impediment was GCHQ, who

jealously guarded their monopoly over all forms of signals and communications

intelligence. By the time I joined MI5 full-time in 1955,

liaison at the working level with GCHQ had dwindled to a meeting

once every six months between a single MI5 officer and a higher clerical

officer from GCHQ. In February 19561 attended one of these meetings

for the first time. The experience was shattering. Neither individual

seemed to appreciate that in the Cold War, as in World War II, GCHQ

had a vital role to play in assisting MI5 in its main task of counterespionage.

Nor did they seem to realize that, as MI5 technology advanced,

there might be ways in which MI5 could help GCHQ. I began with a

list of suggestions, one of which was checking whether the Russians

were listening to Watcher radios. But Bill Collins, the GCHQ representative,

seemed utterly thrown by this positive approach to committee

work.

"I shall have to take a bit of guidance on that one," he would say,

or "I really don't think we've got the time to spare for that sort of

thing."

I complained to Cumming, but he too seemed uninterested.

"It's their turf. Best leave it to them."

The MI5 officer in charge of liaison with GCHQ was Freddie Beith,

an energetic agent runner working for D Branch. His father was Welsh

and his mother Spanish, which gave him a fervent love of rugby and a

volatile Latin temperament. He-was a fluent German speaker and during

the war he had been involved in the Double Cross System, running

double agents in Portugal and Spain. Beith's liaison with GCHQ stemmed

from Operation halt, which he controlled, halt began in the early

1950s when GCHQ asked MI5 if they could help obtain intelligence

about diplomatic ciphers being used in London. Beith ran halt by

1

80 PETER WRIGHT

asking any agent D Branch recruited inside an embassy to try to obtain

access to the cipher room. GCHQ hoped that one of Beith's agents

might be able to steal some of the waste cipher tape, which they could

then use to attack the cipher.

Beith threw himself enthusiastically into the task, but it was virtually

impossible. Cipher rooms in most embassies, especially Soviet

Bloc ones, were by far the most restricted areas in the compounds, and

the chances of infiltrating an agent into them was remote. Nevertheless,

Beith did achieve one outstanding success in Operation halt, when he

recruited an agent who worked inside the Czech Embassy who had

access to the keys to the main cipher safe. Working to Leslie Jagger's

commands, the agent took a plasticine imprint of the key. It was a high-grade

Chubb, but by using high-quality plasticine and a micrometer to

measure the indentations with exceptional accuracy, Jagger was able

to make a copy which fitted the safe. The agent successfully opened

the safe and copied the incoming code pads before they were used to

encipher the Czech diplomatic cipher. For six months GCHQ read the

traffic. Then suddenly the codes were changed, and the agent, inexplicably,

was sacked.

Since then Beith had had no success. When I joined, I could see

that there were ways MI5 could help the halt program using technical

devices rather than agents. But Beith was, by his own admission, not

a technical man, and found it difficult to follow my arguments. But

since he was the only officer allowed to liaise with GCHQ, I had to

strike out on my own if my ideas were to get a decent hearing. In the

end I took Freddie out for a drink one night and asked him if he would

be offended if I made an appointment to go down to GCHQ headquarters

at Cheltenham and see things for myself.

"Not at all, old man," said Freddie cheerfully, "you go right ahead.

All this radio lark is a bit over my head. The human vices are more

my territory."

I made an appointment to see an old friend of mine from the Navy,

Freddie Butler, who worked on GCHQ senior management. I explained

to Butler that I felt the whole system of MI5/GCHQ liaison needed a complete rethink. Butler arranged for me to bypass Bill Collins,

and meet the top GCHQ cryptanalysts, Hugh Alexander and Hugh

Denham.

Alexander ran GCHQ's H Division, which handled cryptanalysts,

ably assisted by the quiet, studious Denham, who eventually succeeded

him in the 1960s. Alexander joined Bletchley Park, GCHQ's prewar

.III.

SPYCATCHER 81

forerunner, at the outbreak of the war and, along with Alan Turing

and Gordon Welchman, was primarily responsible for breaking the

Enigma codes. After the war Turing went to Manchester University to

design computers and tragically died by his own hand after being hounded

over his homosexuality. Welchman went to work on advanced computers

in the USA. Alexander, alone of the three, stayed to pursue

a peacetime career in GCHQ. He was a brilliant international chess

player, as well as codebreaker. Despite the intellectual demands of

both work and hobby, Alexander remained on the outside a calm,

reassuring tweed-clad figure. Yet I am sure that the mental contortions

in the end told on him. He spent all his life quietly in the country, he

never smoked or drank, and then suddenly died of cancer at a comparatively

early age.

I told Alexander and Denham that I had been indoctrinated into

Operation halt, and felt MI5 could contribute much more to GCHQ's

work. I explained that tremendous advances had been made in MI5

technology since the Brundrett Committee was formed in 1949, especially

in the field of new microphones. It might be possible, I suggested,

to obtain halt intelligence through technical means, rather than using

agents, a method which at the present moment seemed destined for

continual failure.

"I'm not sure I know myself precisely how we can help until I have

had a chance to experiment," I continued, "but I am sure that with

the new high-sensitivity microphones we have, it must be possible to

get something out of a cipher machine. They have to be reset every

morning by the cipher clerk. Suppose we could pick up the sound of

the new settings being made. Wouldn't that help?"

The two cryptanalysts were supportive as I made my somewhat

nervous presentation. They were clearly curious to see for themselves

the first example of an unknown species in the Intelligence menagerie-- an MI5 scientist.

"Any help is gratefully received in this department," said Alexander.

"After all, compared to your organization, we are the new boys.

We haven't even finished building yet."

He gestured to the window. In the distance a team of building

workers was installing another line of Nissen huts behind the main

GCHQ complex.

"Our problem is that our theories are running beyond our computer

capacity," he went on.

"So many ciphers today we could crack--we know how to crack



U. Ilk,.

82 PETER WRIGHT

them. We just don't have sufficiently powerful computers to do the

job. We'll get them soon, of course, but in the meantime, any help

may give us a shortcut."

I asked Alexander what the prime target was at the moment. He

looked a little uneasy at my direct question.

"Well, of course, we have many targets, they're constantly updated.

JIC demands, that sort of thing."

"Yes," I persisted, "but if you had to single one out as the most

important today, which would you choose?"

Alexander shifted in his seat and exchanged glances with Denham.

"I should say it was the Gyppies," said Alexander finally. "The

Foreign Office have been pushing us for months to get something on

the cipher. We've got little bits, but it's only now and again, and never

current stuff."

It was spring 1956. Tension between Britain and Egypt was fast

mounting, as Nasser began the moves which led to the Suez Crisis later

that year.

"What machine do they use?"

"It's a Hagelin," replied Denham, referring to a cipher machine

manufactured by the Swiss firm Crypto AG and much favored in the

1950s by Third World countries.

I arranged to borrow one of GCHQ's sample Hagelins, and took

it back up to London in the boot of my car. I set the machine up with

Leslie Jagger in an MI5 safe house in Regent's Park and began experiments

to see if my theory was practical. This Hagelin was a keyboard

machine, with tape containing the enciphered message leading out from

one side. The principle of the machine was simple. Seven rotating ¦

wheels, powered by switched currents, automatically substituted me-¦ chanically produced random figures for whatever was typed into the

machine. Every morning the cipher clerk operating a Hagelin inside an

embassy reset the wheels before beginning transmissions. If any of our

microphones could detect the sounds of these new settings being made,

I felt sure that GCHQ would be able to use them to determine what

is known as the "core position" of the machine, and from there be in

a position to attack the cipher. Alexander and Denham explained to

me that if we could get the settings of three, possibly four, wheels of

the machine, they would have broken the cipher.

I installed a series of high-sensitivity microphones at various distances

from the Hagelin, as well as a probe microphone in the wall

behind it. Each microphone was connected in turn to an oscilloscope,

SPYCATCHER 83

so that the sounds it recorded were translated into visual readings. Leslie

Jagger rigged up a film camera to record the oscilloscope screen. I

opened the lid of the Hagelin and carefully reset the wheels, making

a note of the old and new settings. The machine began to clatter as it

enciphered a stream of dummy traffic. I sent the results down to Den-ham

in Cheltenham for his comments.

As soon as we got the films developed, I could see that the oscilloscope

readings were firm enough to provide some clue to the Hagelin

machine settings. They also produced evidence of the setting of at least

three wheels out of seven. I decided to make further experiments with

satyr equipment, which gave a far less sensitive sound. We did detect

movements on the wheels, but it was highly corrupt. I sent the findings

down to Cheltenham by courier. The next day Denham telephoned on

the scrambled line.

"They're marvelous, Peter," he said. I could tell he was excited.

The distortion from the scramble made him sound positively lunatic.

"The acoustic microphones are best. We can get two, maybe even

three wheels out using those readings. The radio one isn't so good, but

I think, given time, we might be able to make something of it."

The line fractured under a haze of static.

"When can we go into action with it?" he shouted down the line.

"As soon as you've got the ministerial clearance," I replied.

The next day GCHQ sent Ray Frawley from the planning staff up

to London. Frawley was an astute, practical man, bridging the gap

between the intellectual brilliance of Alexander and Denham and the

administrative demands of a huge sprawling organization like GCHQ.

Frawley was a radical atheist who believed that one day mankind would

be coupled directly to computers. Dangerous irrationality would be

banished forever. It was rather a childlike ideal for a man to hold in

the grim years of the Cold War, but he and I became close colleagues

even though I remained at heart an irrationalist, believing in the sudden

burst of inspiration or intuition to solve a problem.

As soon as Winterborn, Frawley, and I sat down to plan the operation

against the Egyptians we realized that the best way was the

simplest way. I checked with the Post Office Investigations Unit and

obtained a complete list of all telephone installations in the Embassy.

There appeared to be one either inside or very close to the cipher

complex, so we decided to install Special Facilities on the telephone

and use the microphone to capture the sounds of the cipher machine.

The Post Office faulted the phone system and we waited for the Egyp-



b. kL

84 PETER WRIGHT

tians to call in the Post Office. I arranged to go in myself, disguised as

an engineer, with the man who would install the SF device on the

telephone receiver. I wanted the chance to look over the room in case

any waste cipher material was lying around.

The next morning I met the Post Office team over at St. Paul's

and we drove over to the Embassy in their van. The security was tight

at the Embassy door and we were escorted from room to room. The

cipher room was in an annex, the Hagelin clattering away inside. Three

cipher clerks were busy operating the telex machines and processing

the diplomatic cables. I looked carefully for any signs of spare tape

waste, but the section seemed well organized and tidy. One of the

clerks came out and engaged our escort in animated conversation. After

a while he went back in and turned the machines off. When he reappeared

he came over to me and gesticulated toward the telephone. He

could speak no English, but through sign language I understood that

he wanted me to move the telephone closer to his seat near the machine.

Scarcely able to believe our luck, I began to extend the cable, slowly

turning my back on him so that the engineer could slip the small washer

into the receiver to modify it for SF. I placed the telephone back on

top of his desk, not more than two feet from the Hagelin machine. The

clerk tapped it, and grinned at me broadly. I grinned back, but somehow

I felt we were not quite sharing the same joke.

I hurried back from the Egyptian Embassy to the seventh floor to

monitor the sounds from the receiver. It seemed at first to be an electronic

haze, but after some fine tuning the clatter of the Hagelin was

clearly audible. MI5 arranged a special link down to GCHQ, and every

morning, as the clerk reset the machine, GCHQ's H Division calculated

the new settings and read the cipher straight off, a process known as

"leading the machine." The new technique of breaking ciphers by detecting

intelligence about the machines through technical surveillance

became known by the code word engulf. It was a vital breakthrough.

The combined MI5/GCHQ operation enabled us to read the Egyptian

cipher in the London Embassy throughout the Suez Crisis. The Egyptians

used four different key ciphers worldwide, and by mounting operations

against their embassies abroad using the same engulf technique,

we were able to break into most of the other channels. The operation

against the Egyptian cipher was a tremendous success for MI5. It came

at a time when MI6 had conspicuously failed in their efforts to provide

intelligence. Virtually their entire network in Egypt was rounded up

and arrested on Nasser's instructions at an early stage in the crisis, and



SPYCATCHER 85

their only contribution was a bungled attempt to assassinate Nasser.

For Hollis, who had stepped into the Director-General's chair just

as the Suez Crisis reached boiling point, the triumph could not have

been better timed. It gave him a solid achievement in those crucial first

few months. In the light of later events, I always thought it ironic that

it was I who had given it to him.

The single most important intelligence which we derived from the

cipher break was a continuous account of Egyptian/Soviet discussions

in Moscow, details of which were relayed into the Egyptian Embassy

in London direct from the Egyptian Ambassador in Moscow. The information

from this channel convinced the Joint Intelligence Committee

(JIC) that the Soviet Union were indeed serious in their threat to

become involved in the Suez Crisis on the Egyptian side. One message

was particularly influential. It detailed a meeting between the Soviet

Foreign Minister and the Egyptian Ambassador in which the Russians

outlined their intentions to mobilize aircraft in preparation for a confrontation

with Britain. The panic provoked by this cable, which was

handed straight to the JIC, did as much as anything to prompt Eden

into withdrawal. Similarly, since all GCHQ product was shared with

its American counterpart, the National Security Agency (NSA), the

intelligence, I am sure, did play an important part in shaping American

pressure on Britain to end the crisis.

Soon after the SF was installed inside the Egyptian Embassy we

nearly lost the whole operation. The Russians, anxious to bestow client

status on Egypt as the Suez Crisis deepened, sent a team of Russian

sweepers to sanitize their London Embassy of any bugs or microphones.

It was the sort of friendly gesture the Russians loved to bestow, enabling

them to pick up useful intelligence for themselves at the same time.

Our static observation post overlooking the entrance of the Egyptian

Embassy detected the Russian sweepers as soon as they entered the

building. I was called up to the seventh floor to monitor their progress

in the cipher section. I listened helplessly as they entered the cipher

room. They started with the fuse box and then began electronically

sweeping the walls and ceilings with large instruments which looked

like metal detectors. The microphone thumped ominously as a Russian

hand picked up the telephone and began to unscrew the bottom. There

was a muffled pause, and then the sound of the telephone being reassembled.

Hugh Winterborn breathed a sigh of relief.

At the time we knew that the Russians had discovered the SF and

would remove it if they found it, but they didn't! If the Russians knew

86 PETER WRIGHT

about SF, which they did, and were so wary of it, for instance in the

Russian Embassy, why had they overlooked it in the Egyptian Embassy?

It would suit them not to alert us to the fact that they knew

about SF, so that we would continue to use it. They could, after all,

have sent intelligence via their own cipher circuit, Moscow-London,

and handed the messenger over to the Egyptians in London. This would

have been unbreakable. But I believe that there was another reason.

The Russians wanted us to read the signals of their resolve in the Suez

Crisis correctly. They did not want us to assume they were bluffing.

The best way of ensuring we took their posture seriously would be if

we obtained intelligence about it from an unimpeachable source, for

instance from a secret cable. It was my first insight into the complexities

of Soviet disinformation.

After the Suez Crisis had collapsed, I began to pester GCHQ again

with suggestions of future cooperation. But they seemed to want relations

to drift back to the languid state they were in before. And

GCHQ, while happy to take the results of engulf, were unwilling to

step up their help, in return, for MI5. In short, they did not mind MI5

working for them, so long as the arrangement was not reciprocal.

I felt that GCHQ had a major role to play in helping MI5 confront

the Soviet espionage networks in the UK by tackling Soviet spy communications.

The Russian Intelligence Service has always favored running

really sensitive operations "illegally," using agents who operate

entirely independently of the "legal" Embassy Intelligence Officers,

communicating with Moscow Center by using their own radio transmitters.

I felt sure that if we devoted effort to tracing and logging these

transmissions we might get a break which could lead us right into the

heart of the Soviet Intelligence apparatus. I wanted GCHQ to provide

MI5 with the service that we had received from RSS during the war,

of continuous monitoring of illegal radio broadcasts to and from the

UK. It seemed to me to be straightforward common sense. But GCHQ

were devoting a paltry one and a half radio positions to taking this

traffic. It was a pathetic effort, and no amount of persuasion could

make them devote more.

Shortly after the first engulf Operation against the Egyptian cipher

I went to Canada to plan Operation dew worm. Toward the end of the

trip Terry Guernsey, the head of RCMP Counterespionage, asked me

to study an RCMP case which had recently ended in mysterious circumstances.

During this review I ran across a detail which convinced

me beyond any doubt that GCHQ had to be forced to change their

SPYCATCHER 87

mind. Guernsey showed me into a private room. Sitting on the table

were three volumes of files marked keystone. The keystone case began

in 1952, when a Russian entered Canada under a false name, intent on

developing cover as an illegal agent for the KGB. In fact, his eventual

destination was the USA, but the KGB often send their illegals into

Canada first to establish for themselves a secure "legend," or false

identity, before going across the border. But soon after the illegal,

code-named Gideon by the RCMP, arrived in Canada he fell in love

with a woman. It was strictly against KGB rules, and it wasn't long

before Gideon developed doubts about his mission.

Eventually Gideon was ordered by Moscow Center to make plans

for his emigration to the USA. He managed to persuade them that it

was too risky, and the emigration plan was aborted. Instead he was

appointed the KGB illegal resident in Canada, responsible for running

other illegal agents throughout Canada. The new responsibilities were

arduous. Gideon, who was in any case a lazy man, had to spend long

hours receiving messages on his radio, and to make endless journeys

throughout Canada to collect intelligence. Gideon began to fall behind

on his schedule, and was bullied by his controllers. Finally he decided

to confess everything to his lover and together they decided to approach

the RCMP.

Terry Guernsey, with his instinctive feel for the importance of the

case, immediately decided to run Gideon on as a double agent, rather

than accept him as a defector. The decision seemed well justified when

Gideon was given control of an illegal agent working for the Russians

on the Canadian Avro Arrow Aircraft program. For a year the RCMP

monitored Gideon as if he were a laboratory specimen. The workings

of Soviet illegals were virtually unknown in the West. Guernsey carefully

logged the tradecraft the Russians used for Gideon, the way he

was instructed to gather intelligence, the dead letter drops he used;

most important of all, the RCMP monitored all his coded radio communications.

Everything went well until the summer of 1955, when suddenly

Gideon was recalled to Russia by his controller for extensive debriefing.

After initial hesitation, the double agent decided to make the journey.

He never returned. The RCMP waited for months and years for a sign

that Gideon had survived. But they heard nothing. After a while, transmissions

from Moscow to Canada began again on Gideon's cipher,

suggesting that a replacement agent had arrived, but months of fruitless

searching by the RCMP failed to uncover him. The case, which had

88 PETER WRIGHT

promised so much in its early stages, was finally closed down by a weary

Guernsey. He was convinced that something serious had gone wrong

in the case, but it was impossible to put a finger on what it was, still

less investigate it. Bennett, his assistant, was convinced that Gideon

had fallen under Russian control and that the case was being run on

to deceive the RCMP.

Reading the files it was clear to me the case bore all the hallmarks

of Russian interference from an early stage, but beyond that there was

little I could suggest. Then I came across a detail in the case which

struck a chord. Although Gideon was an illegal agent, the Russians

still required him to make very occasional meetings with a legal diplomat

from the Russian Embassy, almost certainly the Illegal Support Officer.

The probable reason for these meetings was that the KGB believed

Gideon to be such a difficult and unreliable agent that only face-to-face

meetings would ensure he was kept on the right track. During one

of these meetings, which were covered by the RCMP, a furious

row broke out between Gideon and his controller. Gideon had been

missing his broadcasts from Moscow and failing to respond. Gideon

claimed that he had been unable to receive the messages on his radio

set because the atmospheric conditions were too bad. His KGB controller

was totally unimpressed. He handed Gideon a detailed list

of the transmissions he had missed, complete with their times and

duration, and made it clear he knew Gideon was lying. Although the

Russian never specifically mentioned the fact, it was obvious to me that

he must have been monitoring the broadcasts sent to Gideon inside the

Embassy.

I read the report of this meeting again and again to ensure that I

had understood it correctly. As I turned the crisp pages of the file I

began to realize that if the KGB Illegal Support Officer in Canada

monitored transmissions from Moscow, it was at least possible that his

counterpart in the London Embassy would be doing the same thing. If

GCHQ could be persuaded to operate flat out against the Embassy we

might be able to identify the transmissions, even perhaps tentatively

identify the Illegal Support Officer by correlating his movements against

those of the transmissions. Once we had done that we would be in a

position to put him under total surveillance in an effort to catch him

meeting his agents.

As soon as I got back to London I raised the whole question with

GCHQ. They listened patiently as I pleaded for more effort. But I was

operating on my own. There was no great enthusiasm for the venture

SPYCATCHER 89

inside MI5 either, and although GCHQ did agree to provide a few more

positions to monitor broadcasts, it was nothing like enough. I suggested

GCHQ mount a major effort to locate receivers inside the Russian

Embassy, just as I had earlier done over the Watcher radios. But once

again my request was deemed impractical and the subject was soon lost

in the dense undergrowth of the intelligence bureaucracy.

The situation remained at stalemate until 1958, when a new case

emerged which totally changed the relationship between MI5 and GCHQ.

In the process it pitched Hollis into his first internal crisis and introduced

him to a subject which was to dog him throughout his career.

I was sitting in my office poring over the plans for a microphone

installation when I received a summons to Hollis' office. He was sitting

in the armchair at one end of the conference table, holding several

loose files. He looked gray and drawn. He motioned me to the chair

opposite.

"I would like you to help me with a problem," he said, handing

me a file. I read the contents swiftly. They were source reports from

an agent named Frantisek Tisler, who evidently worked as a cipher

clerk in the Czech Embassy in Washington. Tisler was being run by

the FBI, and they had handed on to MI5 items of his intelligence which

related to British security. Tisler claimed he had gone back to Czechoslovakia

in the summer of 1957 and met by chance an old friend,

Colonel Pribyl, who at the time was also on leave from his posting to

London as the Military Attache. They had got drunk and Pribyl told

Tisler that he was running an important spy in Britain, a man named

Linney, who was designing simulators for use in a guided-missile project

for the RAF. It had not taken long for MI5 to locate the spy. Attached

to the Tisler source report was a copy of Linney's Personal File entry

in the MI5 Registry. He was a senior engineer working in the Miles

Aircraft Development Laboratory at Shoreham in Sussex, where he

had total access to the operational and performance details of the

missiles.

"I don't see the problem, sir. Why don't we place him under

surveillance, and arrest him when he next makes a meet with Pribyl?"

"This is the problem," said Hollis grimly, handing me an additional

sheet of paper.

It was a letter to Hollis from J. Edgar Hoover, the Director of the

FBI, typed on Hoover's personal italicized typewriter. The letter outlined

another, much more serious allegation made by Tisler. He claimed

that Pribyl had also told him that he knew the Russians had a spy inside

I

90 PETER WRIGHT

MI5 in London. Pribyl had discovered this when he was debriefing an

important agent in a car traveling through the streets of London. He

became aware that he was being followed by a vehicle, which he presumed

to be an MI5 Watcher car, and took evasive action to throw the

car off. Anxious to ensure that the identity of his agent had not been

blown, he decided to contact his Russian opposite number, Colonel

Rogov, for help. Rogov told him that it would take a day or two to

check, but eventually he was able to reassure Pribyl that although a

Watcher car had followed him, it had given up the chase, as they

believed he was just giving a driving lesson to a colleague. Rogov also

told him that he should be aware of the fact that the MI5 Watcher

service had recently changed tactics, and instead of openly tailing diplomats

as soon as they left their embassies, they were picking them up

on the bridges across the Thames, where countersurveillance was more

difficult.

When I read the note, I knew immediately that what Pribyl had

learned was genuine. The change in Watcher operations had indeed

taken place, largely at my instigation as part of the attempted modernization

program. The RCMP had been experimenting with this idea

with some success. It was called Operation coverpoint. No wonder

Hoover insisted that his letter be delivered by hand via his deputy Al

Belmont, who refused to meet Hollis inside Leconfield House. The

letter was handed over at a secret meeting in an MI5 safe house, and

Belmont flew straight back to Washington incognito.

"You can see our problem, Peter," said Hollis. "If we make a

move against Linney we may blow Tisler, and the FBI are anxious to

retain him in place for as long as possible. And if we try to investigate

the case by other means, we'll be blown by the Russian source inside

the office. Whatever happens, we must get to the bottom of this penetration."

Hollis told me that for the past three months extensive investigations

had been made in the Watcher and Watcher support services

by Malcolm Cumming and Courtney Young, the head of Russian Counterespionage.

It was felt that the leak must emanate from there, but

nothing had been found. Finally, Hugh Winterborn had prevailed on

Cumming to persuade Hollis to indoctrinate me.

"Have you got any ideas, Peter?"

"Only to string up those buggers down at Cheltenham, sir!"

"I'm sorry. I don't think I follow ..."

I explained to Hollis that I had long held the theory that the

.Iliu..

1

SPYCATCHER 91

Russians might be obtaining intelligence through intercepting and analyzing

our Watcher communications.

"My father and I did something similar in 1940 on the Sussex

Downs. We tracked signals, and managed to plot the course of the

British Fleet as it went down the Channel. I'm sure that's how Rogov

got the information. It would be relatively easy for them to do it, sir.

Just cross-referencing direction-finding of our signals with the records

of where their own people go would tell them a lot. Basically, they

must always know when we're following them."

I told him that I had repeatedly pushed GCHQ to conduct thorough

tests to check if receivers were operating inside the Embassy which

correlated with our own communications.

"I'm afraid, sir, it was never high on their list of priorities."

Hollis groaned.

"But can you do it, Peter?"

"Yes, I think so. What we've got to do is try to trace emissions

from the receiver."

The principle was simple. Every radio set contains a local oscillator

to "beat down" the incoming signal into a fixed frequency which can

be much more easily filtered. The local oscillator always radiates sound

waves as it operates, and it is these emissions which reveal the presence

of a receiver.

"You realize, of course, that this is sigint, sir. Strictly speaking

we're not allowed to do that work. GCHQ will take my guts for garters

when they find out ..."

Hollis hunched forward thoughtfully, cupping his hands across his

face. There was a painful silence.

"They would need to be told about the Tisler allegation, of course,

if we brought them in," he said finally. It was the kind of Whitehall

demarcation dispute Hollis understood only too well.

"I could always have a go," I ventured. "If you can square my

back upstairs with Cheltenham when they find out, at least we'll know

one way or the other about Tisler's source within a few months. If we

go to GCHQ, it'll take a year or more to arrange."

Hollis began to collect the files together into a pile.

"I think that is the best course of action," said Hollis. "Keep me

informed, won't you."

He looked at me squarely.

"Of course, Peter, you realize what a terrible thing this would be

for the Service, don't you? If it's true, I mean. Quite apart from the



. HiLa

92 PETER WRIGHT

effect in Washington. A lot of good work will have been wasted."

"Including my own," I thought bitterly, angry at myself for not

pushing GCHQ harder over the Watcher radios.

As soon as I got back to my office I contacted Courtney Young

and asked him to send over any intelligence reports he had detailing

the types of electronic equipment the Russians had either bought in

London or imported into the UK since the war. Working through the

files of reports I was able to pull together a reasonably accurate picture

of the range and types of receiver the Russians were using inside the

Embassy. I calculated that the probable range of emissions from their

local oscillators was around two hundred yards. That ruled out operating

from our static observation posts. But A Branch had been busy

for some time developing a radio transparent mobile van with plastic

walls. I pressed Winterborn to finish the project as soon as possible.

Within a fortnight the van was rigged with an internal power supply

and two receivers, one to detect the emissions from the Russian local

oscillator and the other to confirm the relationship to the A4 frequency.

One spring day in March 1958, my assistant Tony Sale and I took

the van out for the first time. We obtained permission to drive it up

Kensington Park Gardens in front of the Embassy as if we were making

a delivery to a house nearby. Sale and I sat inside with fingers crossed,

earphones clamped over our heads, watching for the faintest flicker out

of the amplifier. We made two passes. Nothing happened. The static

hummed. We drove across to the Consulate on Bayswater Road and

made a pass along the front of the building. As we neared No. 5, the

Russian premises, we began to pick up the faint flutterings of a signal.

As I tuned the receiver we heard a whistle as it encountered the frequency

of the local oscillator. We slowed in front of the front door and

the signal gained rapidly in strength, tailing off as we made our way

up toward Marble Arch. There was certainly a receiver operating inside the Embassy. But was it tuned to the Watcher frequency?

For the next few days we made a series of passes at various different

times of the day and night to try to gain some idea of what times the

receiver inside the Embassy was in use, and whether there was a correlation

with Watcher radios. It looked as if it were going to be a long,

laborious, imperfect task. Then, by coincidence, as we were making a

pass in front of the Consulate, a Watcher car drove past the other way,

transmitting on the Watcher frequency back to Watcher headquarters.

Inside the van our receiver, which was tuned to the local oscillator

inside the Consulate, squawked loudly.

SPYCATCHER 93

"What the hell do you suppose that is?" I asked Tony Sale.

He looked up with a quizzical look on his face. Then the truth

suddenly dawned on us both. The Watcher car had just handed us the

proof we needed. By transmitting on the Watcher frequency so close

to the Consulate the Watcher car had overloaded the input circuit going

into the Embassy local oscillator. We had picked up the squawk of pain

as its frequency distorted under the overload. In other words, it was

proof that the receiver inside the Embassy was tuned to the Watcher

frequency.

The implications of this new discovery, code-named rafter, were

enormous. Not only could we prove beyond any doubt that the Russians

were listening to our Watcher frequencies; we could also use the same

technique to check the frequencies being listened to on any receiver

we could detect inside the Embassy. All we needed was to radiate at

the Embassy and listen for the local oscillator overload. The ideas I

had nursed since reading the keystone files were finally in a position

to be put into practice. Using rafter we could detect which broadcasts

from Moscow to illegal agents in the field were being monitored inside

the Embassy, rafter, potentially, offered us a shattering breakthrough

into the hitherto secret world of Soviet illegal communications.

But while rafter proved our Watcher communications were a major

source of intelligence for the Russians, there was still the question of

the missile spy, Linney. Obviously, the investigation of Linney had to

be done in such a way that our Watcher radios would not give away

the operation. I decided that since radio silence was unrealistic, the

best solution was to drastically change the frequencies of the vehicles

assigned to the operation. I went to see the Ministry of Defense and

asked to pirate one of their military frequencies, seventy megacycles

away from the current Watcher frequency, so that the Linney vehicle

transmissions would melt into the mass of other military traffic on

nearby wavebands. But first I had to install new crystals in the Watcher

radio sets so that they could operate on the new frequency. Every

communications radio contains a crystal which controls the frequency

at which it can receive or transmit. Rather than risk handling this

through MI5 channels, I paid ,a private visit to my old colleague

R. J. Kemp, the Marconi Chief of Research, and asked him if he would

produce the new crystals for me in the Great Baddow Laboratory. I

gave him a sample crystal so he could build one of the correct shape,

and stressed that the new frequency should be held only by him and

his immediate assistant. As an additional security precaution, we de

94 PETER WRIGHT

cided to mark the new crystals with an entirely different frequency from

the actual one used. Within three weeks Kemp had produced enough

crystals for a dozen transmitter and receiver units, and they were installed

by the MI5 engineers who normally handled Watcher radios, so

as not to raise suspicions.

The details of this operation, code-named lovebird, were severely

restricted inside MI5. Only Winterborn and I knew the correct frequency

and none of the new radios were used within range of the Soviet

Embassy. The Consulate receiver was continuously monitored using

rafter, so that we could record how the Russians behaved during the

operation against Linney. D Branch had already extensively analyzed

the movements of Linney and his controller, Pribyl. By comparing the

two, they discovered that their regular meet was on the South Downs

near Brighton. We arranged with Special Branch to arrest Linney and

Pribyl in the act of passing over secret material at their next rendezvous.

Linney was followed to the meeting place by Watchers equipped

with the new frequency. He waited for two hours and then went back

home. Pribyl, meanwhile, remained in London. Subsequently, Linney

was interrogated, and unexpectedly confessed. He was sentenced to

fourteen years imprisonment.

On the face of it, the case had been concluded successfully. But

one detail troubled Winterborn, me, and the D Branch officers in charge

of the case. Why had Pribyl missed his meeting? There were many

reasons which might explain his failure to show up. He had not missed

any other meets. But if he had learned of the planned arrest, it could

not have been from the Watcher radios. It could only have been as a

result of a tip-off from a human source.

I decided to conduct another experiment to resolve the question

of whether or not there was a two-legged source operating for the

Russians in conjunction with the intelligence they were obtaining from

our Watcher radios. I arranged to change all Watcher radio crystals

simultaneously while monitoring, by means of rafter, the Russian receiver,

to see precisely what they did. It was impossible to make a

change on this scale without recording the details inside Leconfield

House, but I was confident that none of the Watchers would learn of

the plan in advance.

We began rafter on the Russian receiver on a Monday morning,

and chased Russian diplomats normally on our usual frequency. On

the Tuesday and Wednesday we closed down all Watcher operations

SPYCATCHER 95

entirely while we switched the crystals. The Watcher force was told

that the frequency was being moved up two megacycles, when in fact

it was being moved down two instead. We opened up again on Thursday,

chasing diplomats normally on our new frequency. We watched

the rafter readings carefully for any signs that the Russians were searching

for our new frequency in the area where we had indicated to the Watchers

that it was being relocated. They did appear to check their equipment,

as if it was faulty, but remained on the old frequency until the

end of the week.

When we opened up again on Monday morning, everything had

changed. A Russian receiver was already listening on the new frequency,

but from inside the Embassy in Kensington Park Gardens,

rather than from the Consulate. We were faced with another riddle.

This new receiver had either searched for the new Watcher frequency

the previous week, undetected by us as we concentrated on the Consulate,

or the Russians had been tipped off to the new frequency during

the weekend. It is unlikely that we would have missed the Russians

lining up another receiver on the new frequency the previous week.

I discussed the whole investigation at length with Courtney Young,

the head of Russian Counterespionage, and we decided to try one more

experiment. If there was a human leak, we all assumed that it had to

be among the Watcher or peripheral support services. So we decided

to feed what is known in the business as a "barium meal," in other

words, offer a bait of sufficiently important intelligence that the two-legged

source, if he existed, would have to relay it back to the Russians.

Courtney Young had a double-agent case running. The agent,

code-named Morrow, was in contact with the Russian Naval Attache,

Lieutenant Commander Lulakov. We decided on a straightforward

plan. We briefed the Watchers about the Morrow case as if he were a

genuine spy. They were told that the following day Special Branch had

been instructed to arrest Morrow in the process of handing over secret

documents to Lulakov at a meeting in Hampstead. Full Watcher surveillance

of both Morrow and Lulakov was required. If there was a

traitor inside the Watcher service, we assumed he would alert the Russians,

who would either fail to turn up for the meeting or try to warn

Morrow in some way.

In fact, Lulakov turned up for the meeting right on schedule, got

into Morrow's car in a quiet street near Hampstead Heath, and swiftly

exchanged packages with him. Both men were promptly arrested. Lu

96 PETER WRIGHT

lakov established his diplomatic credentials and was released, and left

the country soon afterward. The charges against Morrow were quietly

dropped.

At first sight it seemed as if the Lulakov/Morrow affair proved

there was no human penetration. But as with every previous experiment,

there were worrying inconsistencies. Lulakov was known from

previous surveillance to be infinitely patient in his preparations for

meetings. On previous occasions he had taken hours to wend his way

around London, by taxi, by bus, in and out of tubes and shops, before

finally making his rendezvous with Morrow. On this occasion, he simply

left his office, hailed a taxi, and went straight to the meeting. The

handover even took place with the car's interior light on. To anyone

with a close knowledge of the Russian Intelligence Service, these were

inexplicable deviations from their normal tradecraft.

At the end of 1958 I composed a long report on the whole investigation

into the Tisler allegations and sent it to Hollis. I went through

the items Tisler had learned from his garrulous friend Colonel Pribyl

and gave Hollis my assessment of how the Russians might have learned

of them.

I was in no doubt from rafter, the technique of which I explained

in the report at some length, that the monitoring of our Watcher communications

was a major source of intelligence for the Russians about

MI5, and had been so for a number of years. It definitely explained

the Pribyl "driving test" story, and almost certainly accounted for the

Russian knowledge of Operation coverpoint, although our traffic analysts

doubted that the Russians would have been able to deduce that

we were following Russians from the Thames bridges so quickly from

monitoring our transmissions alone. But the failure of Pribyl to meet

Linney, the speed with which the Russians detected the new Watcher

radio frequency when we had it changed, and the Lulakov/Morrow

affair were all open to varying interpretations. The balance of probability

was that there was not a two-legged source in addition to the

intelligence derived from monitoring our Watcher communications, but

the possibility could not be ruled out.

A day or two after I submitted my report, Hollis summoned me

to his office. He was hunched over a file, scratching at it with a fountain

pen, when I entered the room. He did not look up. I stood there like

an errant schoolboy while he continued to write. The room had not

changed much since Dick White vacated it. There was an additional

portrait on the wall reserved for venerable Directors-General. A single

SPYCATCHER 97

photograph of Hollis' son stood on his desk alongside the three telephones

which connected him to the Cabinet Office, the Ministry of

Defense, and MI6. But other than that there was no stamp of personality.

"Thank you for your report, Peter," said Hollis without looking

up. He sounded a different man from when he had handed me the

Tisler file earlier in the year. The crisis was clearly over. He was back

in charge. He went on writing.

"I've written to Hoover outlining a broad explanation for Tisler's

material about the MI5 spy," he went on, "but I think it would be a

good idea if you went over and briefed their technical staff on the

background to the case, rafter, that sort of thing. Make it a useful

trip, won't you. Get around and make some friends."

He looked up and smiled suddenly.

"It's good to know we've been one step ahead of them this time.

Well done."

He went back to his file, signaling that our brief encounter had

ended. I turned to leave the room.

"Oh, and Peter . . ." he said as I reached the door, "stick to the

technical findings, won't you. I don't think we should give Hoover the

impression that anything is ... unresolved."

"Of course not, sir. I quite understand."

I did not know it then, but the first stone had been cast.

8

The Capitol building was a giant fresco of pink blossom, blue sky, and

white marble, capped by a shining gold dome. I always loved visiting

Washington, especially in the spring. London was so drab; MI5 so class-ridden

and penny-pinching. Like many of the younger, postwar recruits

to secret intelligence, I felt America was the great hope, the hub of

the Western intelligence wheel. I welcomed her ascendancy with open

arms.

Ironically, relations between British and American Intelligence in

the late 1950s were at their lowest postwar ebb. Collaboration between

MI6 and the CIA had virtually collapsed after the Suez Crisis, and they

found themselves increasingly in conflict, not just in the Middle East

but in the Far East and Africa as well. Many of the old guard in

MI6 found it hard to accept that their wartime control of the Anglo-American

intelligence relationship had long since given way to junior

status.

Relations between MI5 and the CIA were fraught for different

reasons. The CIA was a new organization, flexing its muscles on the

world stage for the first time. Its aim was to collect intelligence, and |

although it was not supposed to operate in London without notifying

MI5, both Hollis and Dick White believed the CIA flouted this un- * derstanding.

Behind all the difficulties lay the simmering distrust created by the

defections of Burgess and Maclean, and the public clearance of Kim

Philby. MI6 could never be seen in the same light again, particularly

as so many senior officers had been close friends of Philby, whereas

MI5's failure to apprehend any of the three made it seem, to American

eyes, almost criminally incompetent. Only GCHQ, which had a formal

charter of cooperation with its American counterpart, the National

SPYCATCHER 99

Security Agency (NSA), under the terms of the 1948 UKUSA agreement,

remained relatively immune to the turbulent currents which battered

the previously intimate wartime Anglo-American intelligence

relationship.

When Hollis became Director-General he tried manfully to improve

relations with the FBI. Hoover was famously anti-British, stemming

from the war, when British Security Coordination (BSC) was set

up in New York under Sir William Stephenson, the so-called Man

Called Intrepid. BSC operated against the Germans in the United States,

but Hoover vehemently opposed the idea of any organization, let alone

one which was foreign controlled, having rights to collect intelligence

on American soil. For years he refused to associate with Stephenson's

staff. The Burgess and Maclean affair reinforced Hoover's prejudices,

and for a while MI6 officers were not even allowed on FBI premises,

and MI5 were prohibited access to any FBI intelligence source reports.

In 1956 Hollis visited Hoover in an attempt to improve relations,

and persuade him to place MI5 on the distribution list again. Oddly,

enough, Hollis and Hoover got on rather well. They were both sensitive

to any encroachments on their respective empires, yet Hollis had an

essential weakness of character which enabled him to play the earnest

supplicant to Hoover's blustering bully. Hoover, like many self-made

Americans, had a strong streak of snobbery, and his gargantuan conceit

was stroked by the sight of an English upper-class spymaster with his

cap outstretched.

I became an important peace offering. Hollis claimed my appointment

as MI5's first scientist was proof of his intention to modernize the

Service and step up the fight against Soviet espionage. Following Hollis's

visit, Hoover invited me to visit FBI headquarters to see the range

of their technical equipment. I was very keen to make the trip, as I

believed from my first day inside MI5 that the key to long-term success

lay in restoring relations with the Americans, so that we could gain

access to their technical resources. But my views were not popular.

Delusions of Empire still ran strongly inside Leconfield House. Cum-ming,

for instance, although Head of MI5's technical branch, never

visited the United States, and saw no reason to do so.

My first impression of the FBI was the sheer scale of the technical

resources at their disposal, far beyond anything MI5 could ever imagine.

But for all their riches, I could not help feeling that they made poor

use of them. They relied almost entirely on commercially available

equipment, rather than developing their own. Their radios were stan-

100 PETER WRIGHT

dard Motorola equipment used in police cars and taxis, although they

had an impressive microwave network which connected the various FBI

stations across the USA. The one really interesting part of FBI technical

work was the use they made of fingerprints in espionage investigations.

There were no fingerprint records in the MI5 Registry, and I felt it was

one area where the FBI's quasi-police identity gave it an advantage.

Dick Millen was the FBI officer who ran their technical research.

Millen was a lawyer rather than a scientist by training, which limited

his effectiveness, but he put on a splendid show. I was taken down to

the firing range in the basement of FBI headquarters, and given a lesson

in pistol-firing techniques. Millen proudly informed me that even "the

old man himself," Hoover, regularly practiced his prowess. I was taken

down to the FBI training depot on the Maryland coast, where an old

American Indian taught FBI agents advanced gunslinging. He demonstrated

his skills, shooting targets in mirrors, and firing over his

shoulder at a Ping-Pong ball perched on the top of a water fountain.

It was rugged, all-American stuff, and the FBI's roots in the lawlessness

of 1930s America were never far from the surface. But I somehow

doubted that it had much to do with modern counterespionage.

I did not relish the prospect of briefing the FBI on the Tisler affair.

There was more than a hint, in the way Hoover had handled the case,

that he hoped we would fail to resolve the suspicions about a spy inside

MI5, so that he could use it as a pretext for recommending to the

President that the intelligence exchange with Britain be terminated. I

hoped that the previous visits Hollis and I had made would do something

to smooth my path.

I was accompanied by Harry Stone, the MI5 liaison officer in Washington.

Harry was as genial a soul as you could ever meet. He had once

been an Irish international rugby player, and shared with Hollis a love

of the golf course and an almost professional handicap. Everyone liked

Harry, primarily because he saw his job as basically a social one, but

he was unsuited in temperament and intellect for the modern age of

satellite and computer intelligence which was dawning in Washington

in the late 1950s.

Harry hated meeting Hoover, and took a simple approach when

a confrontation could not be avoided.

"Take a tip from me, Peter, old chap, let him do the talking, don't

interrupt for God's sakes, and remember to say 'Thank you very much,

Mr. Hoover' when he's finished . . . I've booked us a nice table for

lunch. We'll need it."

SPYCATCHER 101

We swept through the archway at the front of the magnificent,

triumphalist FBI mausoleum. We were met by Al Belmont, the head

of FBI domestic intelligence, and his deputy, Bill Sullivan, who handled

the Communist desk. (Sullivan was found dead in the mid-1970s while

shooting duck in New England. He is thought to have been murdered.)

Belmont was a tough, old-fashioned "G-Man," as FBI men were once

known, who had been with the Bureau from its earliest times. Sullivan

was the brains to Belmont's brawn (but Belmont was no fool); both

believed in the virtues of the stiletto rather than the Magnum. Belmont

had many enemies, but I always got along with him. Like me, he had

suffered a difficult childhood. His father was shot in a street brawl, and

his mother worked day and night to save enough to put him through

law school. Hard work and unswerving loyalty to "the old man" brought

him to the top of the FBI.

But for all the outward toughness, and the seniority of their positions,

both men were cowed by Hoover. Such unswerving loyalty was,

I felt, positively unnatural. Of course, they admired Hoover for his

achievements in the early years, when he turned a corrupt and incompetent

organization into an efficient and feared crime-fighting force.

But everyone knew Hoover suffered from God disease, and it seemed

odd to me that they never acknowledged the fact, even privately.

I discussed the Tisler affair and the technical implications of rafter

with both men for most of the day, until it was time to meet Hoover.

We trooped down a maze of corridors, past an endless procession of

Identikit young FBI officers, well scrubbed, very fit, well suited, closely

cropped, and vacant-looking. The FBI offices always reminded me of

sanitary clinics. Antiseptic white tiles shone everywhere. Workmen

were always busy, constantly repainting, cleaning, and polishing. The

obsession with hygiene reeked of an unclean mind.

Hoover's room was the last of four interconnecting offices. Belmont

knocked, and entered the room. Hoover stood behind his desk,

dressed in a piercing blue suit. He was taller and slimmer than he

appeared in photographs, with wrinkled flesh which hung off his face

in small drapes. He greeted me with a firm and joyless handshake.

Belmont began to describe the reason for my visit, but Hoover cut

him off sharply.

"I've read the report, Al. I want to hear Mr. Wright tell me

about it."

Hoover fixed me with coal-black eyes, and I began to outline the

discovery of rafter. Almost at once, he interrupted me.

102 PETER WRIGHT

"I gather your Service is now satisfied about the intelligence provided

by our Czech source . . . ?"

I began to answer, but he swept me aside.

"Your security organizations enjoy many facilities here in Washington,

Mr. Wright."

There was more than a hint of a threat in his voice.

"I have to advise the President of the United States when those

facilities raise questions about our national security. I have to take a

close personal interest in a case like this, particularly in view of the

recent problems the United Kingdom has suffered in this area. I need

to know I am on firm ground. Do I make myself clear?"

"Of course, sir, I understand perfectly ..."

Harry Stone busily studied his shoelaces. Al Belmont and Bill

Sullivan sat to one side of Hoover's desk, half hidden in shadow. I was

on my own.

"I think you will find in my report ..."

"My staff have digested your report, Mr. Wright. I am interested

in the lessons you have learned."

Before I could answer, Hoover launched into a passionate diatribe

about Western inadequacy in the face of the Communist onslaught. I

agreed with many of the sentiments; it was just the manner of the telling

that was objectionable. Inevitably the subject of Burgess and Maclean

came up, Hoover sounding each syllable of their names with almost

prurient venom.

"Now in the Bureau here, Mr. Wright, that sort of thing could not

happen. My officers are thoroughly screened. There are lessons to be

learned. Do I make myself clear?"

I nodded.

"Of course, Mr. Hoover," chimed Harry Stone.

Hoover fixed me with a sudden stare.

"Total vigilance, Mr. Wright. Total vigilance. The lights always

burn here in Bureau headquarters."

He stood up abruptly, signaling the end of the meeting.

The day after my ordeal with Hoover, I lunched with James An-gleton,

the CIA Chief of Counterintelligence. We had met once before

on my first trip to Washington in 1957, and I was struck then by his

intensity. He had a razor-sharp mind and a determination to win the

Cold War, not just to enjoy the fighting of it. Every nuance and complexity

of his profession fascinated him, and he had a prodigious ap-

SPYCATCHER 103

petite for intrigue. I liked him, and he gave enough hints to encourage

me into thinking we could do business together.

Angleton's star was fast rising in Washington in the late 1950s,

particularly after he obtained the secret text of Khrushchev's denunciation

of Stalin from his contacts in Israel. He was one of the original

wartime OSS recruits, and was trained in the arts of counterespionage

by Kim Philby at the old MI6 office in Ryder Street. The young Yale

intellectual struck up an instant friendship with his pipe-smoking English

tutor, and the relationship deepened when Philby was posted to

Washington as Station Chief in 1949. Ironically it was Philby who first

detected the obsession with conspiracy in the fledgling CIA Chief of

Counterintelligence. Angleton quickly acquired a reputation among

British Intelligence officers for his frequent attempts to manipulate to

his own advantage the mutual hostility of MI5 and MI6.

I taxied over to Georgetown. I could see why so many Washington

government officials lived there, with its elegant red brick houses, tree-lined

streets, bookshops, and cafes. When I arrived at Harvey's, Angleton

was already sitting at his table, a gaunt and consumptive figure,

dressed in a gray suit, clutching a large Jack Daniel's in one hand and

a cigarette in the other.

"How was Hoover?" he asked, as I joined him, with a voice like

gravel being tossed onto a path.

"You're very well informed today, Jim," I responded.

His cadaverous features creased back into a smile, in stark contrast

to his funereal clothing. I knew he was fishing. The CIA knew nothing

about Tisler, or his allegation, and we had agreed to brief the FBI on

rafter on the understanding that knowledge of it was strictly controlled.

"Just routine, you know, making friends with the Bureau. It's the

vogue in London at the moment."

"It's a waste of time," he said. "You've been trying to get in with

him since as far back as I can remember. He always tells us he can't

stand the Brits."

I bristled slightly, although I knew that was his intention.

"Well, I can't say the Agency has been much friendlier."

"You've used up a lot of credit in Washington in the last ten years,"

said Angleton, pouring himself another drink.

"People like Hoover," he went on, "they look at Burgess and

Maclean, and they look at the state of MI5, and they say 'What is the

point?' "

104 PETER WRIGHT

He called the waiter over, and we ordered.

"You're off the mark, Jim," I said finally. "Things are changing.

Ten years ago they would never have appointed me as a scientist. But

I'm there now, and new people are coming in all the time."

"I went to an English public school," he said with heavy sarcasm.

"I know the score with you guys."

"It's no good complaining about Burgess and Maclean all the time.

That's all in the past. The world's a smaller place. We've got to start

working together again."

I surprised myself with my sudden passion. Angleton remained

motionless, wreathed in a halo of swirling tobacco smoke.

"You won't get any help from Hoover," he grunted, but made no

offers of his own.

It was a long lunch. Angleton gave little away, but pumped me

with questions with every drink. What about Philby? I told him straight

that I thought he was a spy. Suez was still a raw nerve, even in 1959,

but Angleton wanted to know every detail. He even asked me if I could

get the MI5 file on Armand Hammer, the head of Occidental Petroleum,

who inevitably came to the attention of Western intelligence in

view of his extensive business links in the Soviet Union. But I thought

this was just a shade indelicate.

"We're friends, Jim, but not quite that close, yet!"

Around five I saw Angleton back to his car. It was a smart Mercedes.

For all the gauntness of his persona, I soon learned, he cultivated

expensive tastes with his share of the family National Cash Register

Company fortune. Much to Angleton's annoyance, he discovered he

had locked his keys inside, but I produced Leslie Jagger's lockpicking

wire from my pocket and within half a minute had the door open.

"Not bad, Peter, not bad!" said Angleton, smiling broadly. He

knew I had savored the moment.

"By the way," I said, "I am serious. If you won't help me in

Washington, I'll find someone else who will."

"I'll see what I can do," he muttered, slipping behind the steering

wheel. Without a sideways glance, he was gone.

In fact, despite the skepticism in Washington, important changes

were taking place on the technical side of British Intelligence in the

late 1950s. MI5 devoted a major effort to expanding its new techniques,

RAFTER and ENGULF.

As a first step we placed the Soviet Embassy under continuous

rafter surveillance. Hollis persuaded a reluctant Treasury to purchase,



I

SPYCATCHER 105

over and above the MI5 secret allocation, a house for MI5 in the middle

of the cluster of Soviet diplomatic buildings. We installed rafter receivers

in the loft and relayed the signals we detected inside the Embassy

along cables laid inside a specially constructed tunnel which MI5 dug

between the new house and one which we already used for visual surveillance

in the next street. We installed a former wartime MI5 officer,

Cyril Mills, the famous circus owner, in the house as a tenant. Mills

operated his circus business from the house for many years, and every

time we needed to deliver staff or equipment to the house, or remove

debris from the tunnel, we used a garishly painted Mills Circus van. It

was perfect cover, and the Russians never suspected a thing.

We were careful to use straight receivers for the rafter operations,

each operating on a single megacycle frequency, so there were no local

oscillators on our side, in case the Russians had themselves developed

a form of rafter. The secret of the Mills house remained intact through

the 1960s, until one night the alarm systems detected two Soviet diplomats

climbing onto the roof. They broke a skylight, but before they

could enter the roof space, the housekeeper frightened them off. Cyril

Mills made a formal protest to the Soviet Embassy, but we assumed

that the Russians had somehow or other detected our presence in the

house.

Once the house was ready, I was able to put into operation the

kind of experiment I had envisaged while reading the keystone files in

Canada. The Embassy was systematically searched for signs that receivers

inside were monitoring signals beamed out from Moscow to

agents in Britain. These were high-frequency (HF) signals, whereas the

Watcher radio transmissions were VHF. The Russians used large radio

frequency amplifiers with the HF receivers, which made rafter much

more difficult. But GCHQ developed more sophisticated equipment,

and within six months we had successfully monitored four signals from

Moscow which were being routinely monitored by the Soviets inside

the Embassy.

The first signal we found was code-named gruff. We picked it up

one Tuesday night at ten-thirty. The Morse signal came in loud and

clear, and our receivers immediately detected the whine of a local

oscillator as the Russians tuned to the same frequency. GCHQ analyzed

gruff; it came from the Moscow area and followed a twice-weekly

schedule. The cryptanalysts were quite certain the Morse contained

genuine traffic. The Radiations Operations Committee decided to make

a major effort to track the gruff signal down.

106 PETER WRIGHT

I approached Courtney Young, then the Dl (head of Russian

Counterespionage) and asked him if he had any intelligence which might

help us locate an illegal we believed to be currently operating in the

UK and receiving radio transmissions from Moscow. He was astonished

by my approach. He explained that D Branch had recently run a double-agent

case which had convinced him that an illegal was operating in

the London area. The double agent was a young male nurse who had

once been in the CPGB. Some years later, he was approached and

asked to work clandestinely for the Russians. The nurse was reluctant

at first, but eventually his contact convinced him that he was not being

asked to spy. All he had to do was post some letters and store the

occasional suitcase. After a while the nurse became frightened and

approached the police, and the case was routinely referred to MI5 by

Special Branch.

Courtney Young doubled the agent back against the Russians, and

for a short while they appeared to continue to accept him as genuine.

The nurse lived in the Midlands, but he was asked to lease a flat in the

Clapham area of South London in his own name. Then his controller

instructed him to activate and service a number of dead letter boxes

on Clapham Common, near the new flat. Courtney Young was sure

that he was being trained up by the Russians as an illegal support

agent--someone who assists the actual illegal agent by preparing his

communications and accommodation before he moves into the area.

But suddenly, all contact with the agent was cut, and he was given no

further instructions. Either the entire operation had aborted or the

illegal was already securely established in the area through other means.

It was a long shot, but it had to be at least a possibility that Courtney

Young's illegal was the same person who was receiving the gruff signal

from Moscow. The Radiations Operations Committee searched the

Clapham area intensively for any further clues. We drove our radiotransparent

rafter van over to Clapham, and made a base in the walled

forecourt of the old air raid shelter which ran under the south side of

Clapham Common. We took power from inside the shelter, and rigged

up an aerial which I estimated would give us a range of about half a

mile.

I sat with Tony Sale in the cold, poorly ventilated van, watching, ¦:

waiting, listening. The gruff broadcast was due at 10 a.m. , so we tuned i

our first receiver to gruff, and searched the nearby frequencies with

our other receiver to see if we could detect any oscillator. In the second

week, we got a "hit," a strange, owl-like hoot, modulated with the

SPYCATCHER 107

Morse from Moscow. Someone was listening to the gruff broadcast

within half a mile of us. Tony Sale looked across at me, momentarily,

the scent of prey in his nostrils. The tape recorders began to roll with

a subdued click. We switched to battery power supply, and drove slowly

down Clapham High Street toward the tube station, weaving our way

through the traffic. The pubs were full. Daffodils were just appearing

in the neat front gardens of the suburban houses along our route, those

inside oblivious of the chase passing in front of their doors.

Tony Sale was monitoring the local oscillator signal, using its strength

as a guide to its location. We knew gruff stayed up in the air for twenty

minutes. We had seventeen left. As we reached the tube station the

signal became fainter, so we doubled back toward Wandsworth, but

again the signal dropped away. We went south, toward Balham, but

this time the signal disappeared before we even left the Common.

There were six minutes to go. Barely a word had been spoken

inside the van. We only had one direction left, gruff had to be sitting

up to the north, somewhere in the crowded maze of Battersea back

streets. Our special van lumbered into Latchmere Road. Frustration

welled up inside me. I wanted to career around the corners, shout out

for help through a loud hailer, set up roadblocks. All we could do was

stare at the flickering dials, willing them to move up, and not down.

But by the time we crossed Wandsworth Road the signal was already

trailing away, and shortly after that, Moscow signed off. gruff was

gone. Tony Sale thumped the side of the van. I tore my headphones

off, feeling drained and angry. How many more months might we sit

in Clapham before we got as close again?

I lit my thirteenth cigarette of the day and tried to make sense of

the previous twenty minutes. We had traveled in every direction. But

the fact that the local oscillator signal got weaker each time we moved,

proved beyond any doubt that we had genuinely detected another receiver

besides our own. But it was located neither to the north nor

south, not to east or west. Slowly the awful truth dawned on me. gruff

must have been right on top of us, listening within yards of the air raid

shelter. We drove back to our base, and searched the area. Behind a

high wall at the back of us was a large wasteland car park, gruff must

have been parked there in a car, or perhaps a van like ours.

Back at Leconfield House I printed out the tape recordings of the

local oscillator on a sonargram. The sound waves modulated with a

small mains ripple. But the wave form was not at mains frequency. It

was similar to that produced by battery power packs used in cars and



^- ¦!:

108 PETER WRIGHT

vans to produce alternating current. The coincidence was almost too painful to contemplate.

For the next six months the Radiations Operations Committee

flooded Clapham with every spare man at our disposal. We listened in

hundreds of locations. Officers scrutinized every street, searching for

signs of a telltale aerial. Discreet inquiries were made of radio equipment

suppliers. But all to no avail. And every Tuesday and Thursday

night the gruff signal came through the ether from Moscow, mocking

us as we searched.

As well as mobile rafter, we began, through ROC, to arrange

airborne rafter. An RAF transport plane equipped with receivers similar

to those in the van made regular sweeps across London. We thought

that with the extra height we would be able to get a general idea of

where receivers were operating in London. Then, having located a

signal to a specific area, we could flood it with mobile rafter vans.

We spent our first flight over the Soviet Embassy to check our

equipment was working, and picked up their receivers immediately.

We got a series of radio hits in the Finsbury Park area, and we flooded

the locality, as we had in Clapham. But, like gruff, the agent remained

undetected, comfortably camouflaged in the dense undergrowth of London's

suburbs.

The rafter plane flights were a kind of agony. I spent night after

night up in the indigo sky, listening to the signals coming in from

Moscow, insulated from the deafening sound of the plane's propellers

by headphones. Down below, somewhere amid the endless blinking

lights of London, a spy was up in an attic, or out in a car, listening

too. I knew it. I could hear him. But I had no way of knowing where

he was, who he was, whether he worked alone or as part of a ring,

and, most important of all, what Moscow was telling him. I was caught

between knowledge and the unknown, in that special purgatory inhabited

by counterespionage officers.

But although the rafter side did not immediately bear fruit, the

engulf side, using technical means to break ciphers, soon proved enormously

successful. Things really took off with a meeting in Cheltenham

chaired by the GCHQ Assistant Director of Research, Josh Cooper,

in 1957. Cooper realized the need for close coordination between all

three Services if the new breakthrough was going to lead to further

cipher-breaking success. He brought together for the first time the

various interested parties--Hugh Alexander and Hugh Denham from

GCHQ's H Division (Cryptanalysis); John Storer, the head of GCHQ's

SPYCATCHER 109

Scientific section responsible for Counter Clan in M Division; and Ray

Frawley, me, and my opposite number in MI6, Pat O'Hanlon.

Apart from the Russians, the Egyptians still remained GCHQ's

first priority. They used Hagelin machines in all their embassies, split

into four groups, each group containing different cipher wheel settings.

Providing we could get a break into any one machine, every machine

in that group would be vulnerable. If we could obtain samples of any

one machine, every machine in that group would be vulnerable. MI6

and GCHQ drew up a list of the Egyptian embassies worldwide, along

with details of which machine group they belonged to. The committee

then evaluated which embassy in each group presented the best possibility

for a successful engulf operation, and I briefed the MI6 teams

on how to plan the operations. Within a year we had broken into every

Egyptian cipher group.

Although engulf made all classes of Hagelin machines vulnerable,

these tended to be the preserve of Third World countries. Cooper

hoped, by calling his meeting, to find ways of applying the engulf

principles to more advanced cipher machines, which GCHQ lacked the

computer power to attack. My approach was simple; we had to put

operations into practice even if, on paper, they looked unlikely to yield

results.

"We've got to approach the problem scientifically," I said. "We

don't know how far we can push these new breakthroughs, so we have

to experiment. Even if things go wrong, we'll still learn things we didn't

know before."

I had the germ of an idea. Any cipher machine, no matter how

sophisticated, has to encipher the clear text of the message into a stream

of random letters. In the 1950s, most advanced ciphers were produced

by typing the clear text into a teleprinter, which connected into a separate

cipher machine, and the enciphered text clattered out on the

other side. The security of the whole system depended on thorough

screening. If the cipher machine was not electromagnetically screened

from the input machine carrying the clear text, echoes of the uncoded

message might be carried along the output cables along with the enciphered

message. With the right kind of amplifiers it was theoretically

possible to separate the "ghosting" text out and read it off.

Of course, we had no way of knowing which countries screened

their cipher rooms thoroughly, and which did not, and any operation

along the lines I suggested would take up to two years to reach fruition.

There was little point expending vast effort trying to break the Russian

110 PETER WRIGHT

cipher, when we knew it was almost certain to be well protected. It

was a question of picking targets which were important, and against

which we stood some chance of success.

The French cipher stood out from all the rest as the most suitable

target for further engulf experiments. Both MI6 and GCHQ were

under pressure from the Foreign Office to provide intelligence about

French intentions with regard to the pending British application to the

European Economic Community. Moreover, GCHQ had studied the

French system in London. They used two ciphers--a low-grade one

which sent traffic along a telex line to the Quai d'Orsay, and a high-grade

cipher for Ambassadorial communications which was generated

independently of the cipher machine for additional security. Hugh Alexander's

view was that the high-grade cipher was unbreakable, but that

the low-grade one might be vulnerable to the type of attack I had

outlined. Cooper gave his approval, and Operation stockade began.

The first task in this joint MI5/GCHQ operation was to make a

detailed technical reconnaissance of the layout of the French Embassy

and, in particular, locate the area of the cipher room. I arranged to

have the rating drawings sent over from the local council, and contacted

the Post Office Research Unit. John Taylor had retired by this time,

and had been replaced by H. T. Mitchell. Mitchell was paralyzed down

one side as a result of a stroke, but although his speech was poor, his

mind remained crystal clear. Mitchell gave me full diagrams of all telex

and telephone cables going into and out of the Embassy, and by comparing

these with the rating drawings we were able to establish the

likely location of the cipher room.

We asked the Post Office to fault the telephones, and went in to

make a visual inspection of the cipher room area. Unlike the Egyptians,

the French security staff watched our every move, but we got the information

we required. There was no telephone in the cipher room. It

was tucked away down a corridor. The cipher and telex machines were

in adjoining rooms, separated only by a plasterboard partition.

Using the Post Office charts, we traced the output cables back to

the street, and into the footway box at the end of Albert Gate entrance

to Hyde Park. I arranged with Mitchell to place a reasonably broad

band radio frequency tap on the cable inside the footway box, and the

captured signal was relayed into a special operations room we had taken

in the Hyde Park Hotel. The hotel telephone system was faulted to

give us cover while the cables were laid up through the hotel to the

fourth-floor room we had commandeered. Special blocking condensers

SPYCATCHER 111

were placed on the circuit to ensure it was one-directional, and nothing

could leak back into the Embassy to give away the operation. GCHQ

routinely intercept radio and telex traffic coming in and out of every

London embassy, from their premises in Palmer Street. We arranged

for a line containing the French Embassy traffic to be fed from Palmer

Street to our operations room in the Hyde Park Hotel. Using that line

as a guide, we could check whether the signal we were getting on our

radio frequency tap was the correct one.

The first morning we found the low-grade cipher and matched it

with the Palmer Street traffic. The tap was connected to our own teleprinter,

and the intercepted French cipher began to clatter out in front

of us. It was clear straightaway that more than one signal was traveling

down the cable we were tapping. It was just a matter of sitting down

with a pencil and marking off the en clair text from the coded message,

and the cipher could be read straight off.

I began to pick out a translation, and found traces of another signal,

on the teleprinter. I checked on the sonargram to make sure I was not

mistaken, and called over the GCHQ technicians.

The steady peaks and troughs of the signal blipped across the screen

silently. The line from the low-grade cipher was strong, and its ghost

was easily identifiable. But at each pinnacle there was a murmur as

another signal crossed.

"Good God," the GCHQ man murmured, "that's the high-grade

cipher as well! We must be picking it up through the partition wall."

I hastily contacted Palmer Street and got them to relay the high-grade

cipher down the line so that we could compare the signals. The

GCHQ technicians reset the amplifiers so that the traffic was sufficiently

strong to print out, and using the Palmer Street feed as a guide, I

marked off the en clair text. Within ten minutes I had a rough translation

of a cable from the French Ambassador in London to President De

Gaulle's private office.

For nearly three years, between 1960 and 1963, MI5 and GCHQ

read the French high-grade cipher coming in and out of the French

Embassy in London. Every move made by the French during our abortive

attempt to enter the Common Market was monitored. The intelligence

was avidly devoured by the Foreign Office, and verbatim copies

of De Gaulle's cables were regularly passed to the Foreign Secretary

in his red box.

In fact, stockade was a graphic illustration of the limitations of

intelligence. De Gaulle was determined to thwart our application, and

1

112 PETER WRIGHT

no amount of high-grade intelligence could change that fact. We did

pass on to the Americans details of French deliberation over their

independent nuclear "Force de Frappe." It helped encourage American

suspicions about De Gaulle, but the advantage we gained as a result

was slight.

Nevertheless, stockade was considered a major triumph inside the

Foreign Office. I was sent for by the Permanent Secretary, who congratulated

me on the ingenuity of the operation.

"Priceless material," he said, beaming, "simply priceless," leaving

me in no doubt that "reading the Frog's traffic" was a worthy successor

to Agincourt, the burning of Calais, and other ancient blows against

the perfidious French.

IL

9

Throughout the late 1950s and early 1960s, British Intelligence built on

the success of the engulf (Egyptian) and stockade (French) operations.

GCHQ produced a mammoth list of all their targets, divided into

domestic and overseas priorities. MI5 gathered intelligence about each

domestic embassy, including information about the location of the cipher

room, and details of all input and output cables, as well as an assessment

of the feasibility of engulf or stockade operations against that particular

target. MI6 did the same thing overseas. They made detailed technical

reconnaissance of GCHQ's targets, although without the invaluable

assistance of the Post Office they were forced to rely much more on

traditional agent running.

After stockade, plans were laid to attack most European ciphers,

starting with the Germans. But after much effort, we aborted the operation,

because their machines were too well screened. But we successfully

placed a probe microphone behind the cipher machine in the

Greek Embassy in London. This was a particularly valuable target,

since the Greeks were giving considerable support to Colonel Grivas,

the Cypriot guerrilla leader, during the Cyprus Emergency. We operated

in the same way against the Indonesian Embassy at the time of

the Indonesian/Malaysian confrontation, and read the cipher continuously

through the conflict.

For MI6, undoubtedly the sweetest ROC operation was against

the Russian cruiser Ordzhonikidzp. Despite the "Buster" Crabbe fiasco

in Portsmouth, MI6 remained determined to hunt the ship down. In

1959 she was due to dock in Stockholm, and MI6 learned that the

Swedish Signals Intelligence Service were planning to operate against

her. The local MI6 Station Chief suggested to the Swedes that Britain

114 PETER WRIGHT

might be prepared to offer advanced technical assistance. Although

nominally neutral, the Swedish sigint organization retained informal

secret liaison with GCHQ, and they gratefully accepted the offer.

I went to Stockholm to plan an engulf operation against the Ordzhonikidze

cipher machine in 1959. I scuttled along the dockyard in

the dead of night, disguised as a Swedish engineer, accompanied by

two burly local sigint technicians. We also had two GCHQ people with

us. We ducked into a warehouse opposite the Ordzhonikidze, and made

our way upstairs to the operations room, where the engulf equipment

had been delivered. We were cooped up in that small room for five

days. It was high summer, and the temperature outside was in the

nineties. The warehouse had a corrugated-tin roof, and inside we sweltered,

finding solace in the crates of extra-strong lager stacked in the

refrigerator. Although we detected some cipher noises, we were never

able to break the cipher, but MI6 and GCHQ judged the whole operation

a success.

"Just like the Mounties," beamed Pat O'Hanlon, the MI6 representative

at the next ROC meeting. "We always get our man!"

The scale of rafter and engulf operations dramatically escalated,

as the results of the technical reconnaissances flowed in, and operations

based on them proliferated. The Radiations Operations Committee

(ROC), comprising the technical staffs of MI5, MI6, and GCHQ, was

formed in 1960 to coordinate the workload. ROC met once a fortnight,

either in Cheltenham or at Leconfield House. I was the first Chairman,

although Ray Frawley, a crisp, self-disciplined GCHQ staff officer, took

upon himself the task of controlling the flow of business, and he came,

before long, to dominate ROC. He was an administrative genius, with

none of the hidebound instincts of some of his peers in Cheltenham.

He controlled the paperwork, provided the technical resources and the

GCHQ operators to man each operation, as well as organizing getting

the all-important ministerial clearances.

ROC was one of the most important committees in postwar British

Intelligence. For ten years, until the new generation of computers came

in at the end of the 1960s, ROC was crucial to much of the success of

GCHQ's cryptanalytical effort. But of even greater importance was the

way it began to break down the barriers which had previously separated

MI5, MI6, and GCHQ at working level. As in the war, British Intelligence

once again began to function as a coordinated unit, and as a

result was much more successful.

On the research side, too, there were some important improve

SPYCATCHER 115

nients in the late 1950s. When I joined MI5, the principal forum for

scientific research was the Colemore Committee. Once a year MI6

invited a dozen top scientists from outside the secret world into a safe

conference room in Carlton House Terrace. In return for a lavish lunch,

[vll6 expected these eminent persons to act as private scientific consultants

to the Secret Services, providing guidance, ideas, and contacts.

As soon as I attended my first Colemore Committee, I could see it was

a waste of time. The morning discussion was desultory and unstructured

and after a few pints, gins, and lashings of the best claret, few members

of the Committee were in a fit state to turn their attention to complex

scientific matters. After the day's labors, Peter Dixon took us all out

on the town for more feeding and watering. I will always treasure the

look on Dick White's face as, toward midnight, we ended up in a less

than salubrious club in Soho, featuring what might politely be described

as "an exotic cabaret." He smiled wanly at the red-faced gents around

the table, but I could see that, like me, he felt it was not the answer

to the deep-seated scientific problems facing MI5.

The Colemore Committee had some use as a sounding board, but

I realized from the start that MI5 needed a comprehensive in-house

research program, properly staffed and properly funded. It seemed to

me absurd that the Treasury should expend vast sums on weapons

research at the stroke of a pen, and yet balk at the petty sums required

by the Secret Services for modernization.

Shortly after I joined MI5 in 1955, I approached Sir Frederick

Brundrett again, and asked him for help in obtaining the necessary

resources. He was sympathetic, and suggested that my application would

stand a better chance if I first made a thorough study of the current

state of KGB scientific and technical advances and wrote a paper outlining

the areas in which MI5 and MI6 were deficient.

I approached my opposite number in MI6, the H Tech 1, but it

was soon obvious that they had very little intelligence on the subject.

I decided to make a thorough study of the debriefings of all the German

scientists who, at the end of the war, had been forcibly taken back to

the Soviet Union and made to work for a number of years in Soviet

government laboratories as the price of freedom. These scientists were

known as the Dragon Returnees, and their debriefings had provided

much useful intelligence about the state of Soviet rocket, jet engine,

and nuclear research, since this was the area which the Russians had

been most anxious to develop.

I went over to the Defense Scientific Intelligence Unit (DSI), and



116 PETER WRIGHT

asked General Strong if I could study the papers. I was shown into a

room in Northumberland Avenue which contained all the Dragon material,

stacked up in dozens and dozens of dusty volumes. Incredibly,

neither MI5 nor MI6 had bothered to process any of this material for

its own use.

It took months for me to sort through the Dragon papers, but it

was soon obvious that considerable numbefs of the Dragon scientists

had been detailed to work on technical intelligence research in laboratories

on the outskirts of Moscow controlled by the KGB. I drew up

a list of specific Dragon scientists I wanted to interview again. The

original debriefings were mostly conducted by ordinary British or American

military staff, who did not have scientific training or knowledge of

the intelligence-collection field, and I was sure that I could obtain more

information from them.

I traveled to Germany in 1957, and was met by MI5's senior German

representative, Peter Domeisen, who had arranged facilities for

the interviews at British Military Intelligence Headquarters in Hanover

and Miinchen Gladbach. Most intelligence officers loved Germany in

the 1950s. It was the front line, and the action was free and easy. But

Domeisen was depressed by the growing tension in Berlin, and was

convinced that it would not be long before the Russians made another

attempt to swallow up the Western sector.

The interviews were difficult and depressing. Many of the scientists

were desperate to ingratiate themselves with Britain and America. I

stuck very closely to technical questioning, since the opinions they

voiced were so obviously shaped to what they felt I wanted to hear.

They had undeniably suffered during their incarceration in Moscow,

and many of their friends had died. But it was impossible not to remember

on whose side they had been working during the war.

One of the first scientists I interviewed was the man who had

developed "the Thing," which Americans found in 1950 inside the

Great Seal behind the American Ambassador's desk in their Moscow

Embassy. It was gratifying to hear him confirm that the device worked

exactly as I had predicted that Sunday afternoon in my Marconi Nissen

hut. But as I questioned him, I felt again the dismay which ran through

MI5 in 1950, when we realized the KGB were already deploying something

which was barely at the research stage in Britain.

I submitted my paper on the Dragon scientists to MI6 in early 1958

for their approval. Brundrett advised me strongly to do this, because

the application for resources would carry far greater weight if it came

¦

I

L

SPYCATCHER 117

from both Services. When it was countersigned, it was placed before

the Defense Research Policy Committee (DRPC), of which Brundrett

was Chairman. The paper caused widespread consternation in the DRPC.

Never before had KGB advances over the West been so clearly documented.

I could prove that the KGB had obtained areas of major

technical superiority through the efforts of the Dragon scientists, especially

in the field of electronics and surveillance devices, including

the use of infrared systems, which had put them in a commanding

position since the late 1940s.

Largely through Brundrett's foresight, technical research was already

under way through his own ad hoc committee, of which I had

been a member since 1949. But we needed to formalize and expand

this program of research with more staff and resources. I submitted a

further joint MI5/MI6 paper, which came to be known as the Technics

Document (which is what the KGB called it!), describing what progress

needed to be made, and placing much greater emphasis on advanced

electronics. As a result of the Dragon paper and the Technics Document,

technical research for the intelligence services as a whole, but

particularly for MI5, was given a much higher priority within Defense

Research Policy. Unfortunately, the DRPC still vetoed the idea of

specific resource allocations for the intelligence services, hoping to fill

the gap by fitting our requirements into existing Defense Research

programs. I still had to go cap in hand, but at least the climate was

changing.

In 1958, as the Technics Document was being considered, Hollis

introduced me to a man who did more than most to secure the modernization

of MI5, Victor Rothschild. Rothschild worked inside MI5

during the war (he won the George Medal for opening bombs), and

maintained close friendships with many of the senior officers, but especially

with Dick White. At the time I met him, Rothschild was Head

of Research for the Shell Oil Corporation, controlling more than thirty

laboratories worldwide. Hollis told him of my appointment as an MI5

scientist, and Rothschild expressed an interest in meeting me. He invited

me to supper at his elegant London flat in St. James's Place.

I doubt I have ever met a man who impressed me as much as Victor

Rothschild. He is a brilliant scientist, a Fellow of the Royal Society,

with expertise in botany and zoology, and a fascination for the structure

of spermatozoa. But he has been much, much more than a scientist.

His contacts, in politics, in intelligence, in banking, in the Civil Service,

and abroad are legendary. There are few threads in the seamless robe

118 PETER WRIGHT

of the British Establishment which have not passed at some time or

other through the eye of the Rothschild needle.

Rothschild was fascinated by my plans for the scientific modernization

of MI5, and offered me many suggestions of his own. I soon

realized that he possessed an enormous appetite for the gossip and

intrigue of the secret world, and we were soon swapping stories about

some of the more bizarre colleagues he remembered from the war. We

talked until late into the night, and I came away feeling for the first

time that, with his backing, great achievements were possible.

Rothschild offered to put some of his Shell laboratories at MI5's

disposal, and began work on a variety of technical developments, including

a special grease which would protect equipment if it was buried

underground for long periods. The grease was developed, and both

MI5 and MI6 used it extensively. Rothschild also suggested that I approach

Sir William Cook, then the Deputy Head of the Atomic Weapons

Research Establishment (AWRE), for resources. I knew Cook well,

but Rothschild was a close friend, and his well-timed lobbying made my visit much easier.

Cook listened attentively as I outlined my requirements. The essence

of my approach to counterespionage was to develop technical

ways of attacking Soviet spy communications. Communications are the

only vulnerable point in an agent's cover, because he has to send and

receive messages to and from his controller. I explained to Cook that

rafter already provided us with the most valuable weapon of all--an

entree into Russian radio communications--but that we urgently needed

new techniques to attack their physical methods of communications as

well, such as secret writing, microdots, and dead letter drops. Progress

on these would vastly improve our chances of counterespionage success.

"Let's solve some of these right away," said Cook, picking up his

telephone. He spoke to one of his senior scientists, Dr. Frank Morgan.

"Frank, I'm sending down someone to work with you on a new

project. He'll explain when he arrives. You'll enjoy it--he's a man after

your own heart."

With typical Cook generosity, he provided a team of two principal

scientific officers, as well as junior staff and resources for the sole use

of MI5. In all I had thirty people at AWRE, and for two years AWRE

carried the entire cost, after which time the Defense Research Policy

Committee agreed to continue the funding. Frank Morgan was the most

valuable gift of all. He attacked the problems with zest and flair, and

$

SPYCATCHER 119

within those two years MI5 obtained results far beyond anything dreamed of in the USA.

The techniques of secret writing are the same the world over. First

the spy writes his cover letter. Then he writes the secret message on

top, using a special sheet of carbon paper treated with a colorless

chemical. Tiny particles of the chemical are transferred to the letter,

which can then be developed by the recipient. Most developing agents

make the chemical traces grow, so that the message becomes legible,

and unless the correct agent is known, the message remains undetectable.

But Morgan created a universal developing agent, using radioactivity,

which transformed the possibilities of detection.

Microdots are another method of surreptitious communication between

an agent in the field and his controller. Photographs are reduced

down to microscopic size, so that they are practically invisible to the

naked eye. Microdots are generally concealed under stamps, on top of

punctuation marks in typewritten letters, or under the lips of envelopes.

Morgan produced a process for detecting microdots using neutron activation.

A third method of spy communication, and one of the most common,

is the dead letter drop. An agent leaves a package, for instance

of exposed film, in an arranged place, and his controller collects it at

a later stage, so that the two are never seen to meet. The KGB frequently

gave their agents hollow containers which were specially treated,

so that they could tell if the container had been surreptitiously opened.

Morgan developed a soft X-ray technique which enabled us to inspect

the interiors of suspect containers without tampering with them or

fogging the unexposed film inside.

The last of Morgan's four programs was the development of a

number of special X-ray methods for use against advanced combination

safes. These were proving more than a match, even for Leslie Jagger,

but the use of Morgan's X-ray device enabled the combination to be

read off from outside, and gave MI5 potential access to every safe in

Britain.

Despite the improvements on the technical and research side, MI5's

counterespionage record remained lamentable in the 1950s. After Dick

White became Director-General in 1953, he recognized the great deficiencies

in this area. Most of the talented wartime Double Cross case

officers had either left, retired, or moved, like Dick White, into senior management positions. Their replacements tended to be second-rate

1

120 PETER WRIGHT

former colonial policemen with little or no experience of counterespionage,

who found it hard to make the adjustment from the wartime

superiority over the German Abwehr to the new war against a more

skilled and more numerous Russian Intelligence Service. He formed a

new counterespionage department, D Branch, and appointed me largely

to provide them with scientific and technical advice. But improvements

were slow to come. For some long time the D Branch staff resented

my access to their secrets. They wallowed in their own technical ignorance.

I remember one case officer saying, as I explained some technicality

in terms of the Ohm's law:

"That's all right, Peter, old chap, I don't need to know about Ohm's

law. I read Greats."

"Good God," I exploded, "every schoolboy learns about Ohm's

law!"

The head of D Branch, Graham Mitchell, was a clever man, but

he was weak. His policy was to cravenly copy the wartime Double Cross

techniques, recruiting as many double agents as possible, and operating

extensive networks of agents in the large Russian, Polish, and Czechoslovakian

emigre communities. Every time MI5 were notified of or

discovered a Russian approach to a student, businessman, or scientist,

the recipient was encouraged to accept the approach, so that MI5 could

monitor the case. He was convinced that eventually one of these double

agents would be accepted by the Russians and taken into the heart of

the illegal network.

The double-agent cases were a time-consuming charade. A favorite

KGB trick was to give the double agent a parcel of money or hollow

object (which at that stage we could inspect), and ask him to place it

in a dead letter drop. D Branch was consumed every time this happened.

Teams of Watchers were sent to stake out the drop for days on

end, believing that the illegal would himself come to clear it. Often no

one came to collect the packages at all or, if it was money, the KGB

officer who originally handed it to the double agent would himself clear

the drop. When I raised doubts about the double-agent policy, I was

told solemnly that these were KGB training procedures, used to check

if the agent was trustworthy. Patience would yield results.

The truth was that the Russians used double-agent cases to play

with MI5, identify our case officers, disperse our effort, and decoy us

from their real operations. The standard of MI5 tradecraft was appalling.

KGB monitoring of our Watcher radios certainly gave away

our presence on a large number of the double-agent cases. But the D

SPYCATCHER 121

Branch case officers were just as bad, rarely employing anything other

than the most rudimentary countersurveillance before meeting their

agents. An entire department in the Foreign Office provided MI5 with

"chicken feed," secret material given to double agents to pass on to

the Russians as proof of their bona fides. The chicken feed consisted

of wholly unbelievable faked secret documents about weapons we did

not have, and policies we had no intention of pursuing. I raised the

whole question of the chicken feed with D Branch, and pointed out

that the material was bound to be spotted as suspect, and that only

real secrets would convince the Russians. That, I was told, was quite

out of the question.

The other main area of D Branch activity was in the emigre communities.

The agent-running sections of D Branch ran extensive networks,

and used agents in London to recruit others inside their host

countries. This was a particularly attractive option for MI5. Emigres

were easy to recruit, and enabled MI5 to compete directly with MI6 in

the production of Iron Curtain intelligence, much to their irritation.

But in reality, by the early 1950s, these emigre rings were utterly penetrated

by the KGB, or their allied Eastern European services, and as

with the double-agent cases, served only to soak up our effort, and

identify our agent runners.

MI5 were living in the past, copying the techniques of Double

Cross, in an intelligence world which had changed enormously since

the war. They lacked not only case officers with the requisite skills but,

much more important, the codebreaking advantages MI5 had enjoyed

over the Germans.

Throughout the 1950s, MI5 avoided confronting the most obvious

counterespionage problem facing Britain at that time--the results of

the 1930s Soviet infiltrations of the British Establishment. The extent

of the recruitment of "Stalin's Englishmen" became apparent with the

convictions of Alan Nunn May and Klaus Fuchs for nuclear espionage

in the late 1940s, closely followed by the defection of Burgess and

Maclean in 1951. It was obvious to anyone with access to the papers

that the Russian Intelligence Services had capitalized on the widespread

intellectual disillusionment among well-born British intellectuals of the

1930s, and succeeded in recruiting important agents, some of whom,

at least, remained loyal to the Soviet cause after the war.

The defections of Burgess and Maclean traumatized MI5. Philby

and Blunt also fell under suspicion, but faced with their adamant denials,

the cases ran quickly into sand. The only remaining way forward

122 PETER WRIGHT

was to launch a major, intensive program of research and investigation

among the network of people who had been friendly with the two

diplomats at Oxford and Cambridge. Such a policy entailed enormous

difficulties. Most of those friendly with Burgess and Maclean were now

rising to positions of considerable eminence, not just in the Intelligence

Services but in the Civil Service as well. There was potential political

embarrassment if such inquiries leaked at a time when all concerned

were doing everything to suppress any information about the defections.

Moreover, there was always the ghastly possibility that vigorous investigations

might provoke further departures to Moscow, with incalculable

consequences. No one was prepared to grasp the nettle and from

1954 onward all work virtually ceased, MI5 apparently believing that

the new vetting procedures then being implemented were enough to

protect the national security. It was like locking the chicken house door

with the fox inside.

One man stood out against this policy of neglect. He was Arthur

Martin, a former Army signals officer who joined MI5 soon after the

war. Martin quickly proved himself a brilliant and intuitive case officer,

handling in quick succession the Fuchs and Maclean investigations, ably

assisted by Evelyn McBarnet, a young woman research officer, whose

contribution to these cases has never been adequately acknowledged.

Martin had one huge advantage in his approach to counterespionage

work: he never attended a public school. Once it was known that a

serious leakage of secrets had occurred at the British Embassy in Washington,

the conventional view was to search for the culprit among the

clerks, cleaners, and secretaries. But Martin realized at an early stage

that the culprit was a senior diplomat. He doggedly pursued the investigation,

and was only foiled when Maclean defected.

After the defections, Martin pressed the management of MI5 to

sanction urgent inquiries into the whole complex network of Communist

infiltrations of Cambridge in the 1930s. But his requests for permission

to interview the numerous members of the Philby, Burgess, and Maclean

social circles were mostly refused. For two years he struggled

against this woeful policy, until finally he went to see the Director-General,

Dick White, and told him that he intended to resign and take

a job with the new Australian Security Intelligence Organization, ASIO.

White, who had a high regard for Martin's abilities, persuaded him

to go to Malaya instead, as MI5's Security Liaison Officer, until the

climate in D Branch was better. It was, at the time, a vital job, and

Martin played a leading role in the successful counterinsurgency cam

SPYCATCHER 123

paign in Malaya, but the consequences for counterespionage were disastrous.

For most of the decade MI5's most talented, if temperamental,

officer was missing.

When Hollis became Director-General in 1956, a new head of D

Branch, Martin Furnival Jones, was appointed. Furnival Jones was a

lawyer by training, who joined MI5 during the war. On the surface he

seemed an orthodox, taciturn man, lacking flair and vigor. But Furnival

Jones was easy to underestimate. He had an officer's gift for

leadership, and a logical, ordered mind which was surprisingly open to

new ideas. But most of all, he possessed a streak of determination, if

not ruthlessness, which made him a superb head of counterespionage.

He realized that the main problem facing MI5 was the sheer scale

of Soviet Bloc intelligence activity in Britain. Dl, for instance, had

the task of monitoring and working against around 300 Russian intelligence

officers. Its total staff was eleven, of whom four were secretaries.

We were swamped, never knowing whether we were chasing spies or

shadows.

One of his first decisions was to bring Arthur Martin back from

the wilderness to Leconfield House, first as D2, in charge of Czech and

Polish affairs, and then, in 1959, as Dl, responsible for Soviet Counterespionage.

Furnival Jones had great admiration for Arthur Martin's

skills, and the strength of character to get the best out of him, despite

his sometimes truculent manner. Arthur Martin moved quickly to restore

Dl's emphasis on active counterespionage investigation, and he

instinctively grasped the importance of new techniques like rafter,

having worked in signals intelligence during the war. For the first time,

I found someone with seniority who listened sympathetically and acted

on my ideas for change. We quickly became close friends. We formed

a Resources Index in A Branch, recording anyone and anything which

could be of use to MI5. Forms were sent around the office, asking for

entries, and over a period of months we built up an index so that a case

officer who required, for instance, a nurse, or a plumber, or access to a

particular company's files, or a lock-up garage, could consult the index,

rather than having to spend time obtaining the resource from scratch.

We made radical changes in the order-of-battle approach, bringing

in Movements Analysis, an idea which Terry Guernsey, the RCMP

head of counterespionage, first began. This involved logging all known

movements of Soviet Embassy personnel to build up an overall picture

of their activities. Through this, it was possible to gain important intelligence

about the identities of likely KGB officers.

124 PETER WRIGHT

But the most radical changes were made in the Operations section

which was dominated by a brilliant agent runner and investigator, Michael

McCaul. Martin and McCaul put the section on a war footing

Even though our forces were so much smaller than the Russians', we

went on the offensive, changing our tactics, and aiming to disrupt the

KGB, who were accustomed to the utter predictability of our approach.

Some of the schemes were madcap, like the operation to pickpocket

all known KGB officers on the streets of London, in the hope that

scraps of intelligence might be gleaned. It didn't work, but it made the

Russians feel they were under attack for the first time in years. Other

changes were much more significant. The Soviet emigre networks, undoubtedly

the most penetrated of all, were rolled up. The double-agent

cases were run much more aggressively. Case officers accompanied

double agents to meetings with their KGB controller, and warned the

KGB man that if he was caught recruiting British nationals again, he

would be reported to the Foreign Office and expelled. McCaul and his

men began to make brazen attempts to recruit KGB men. We never

succeeded, but the change of tactic was enough, we hoped, to sow the

seeds of doubt in Kensington Park Gardens.

McCaul implemented these new tactics brilliantly. On one occasion,

a technician who worked in a Royal Ordnance Factory, making

a new Bofors shell, told MI5 that he had been approached by a KGB

officer and asked to provide a sample of the new shell. McCaul arranged

for a dummy shell to be made up and filled with sand so that it felt as

if it were full of explosive. As soon as the double agent handed over

the shell in a South London park, McCaul pounced from the bushes.

He told the Russian that he was in serious trouble, and flagrantly in

possession of a piece of Top Secret British military equipment. He

would certainly be declared persona non grata. KGB officers feared

expulsion. For one thing they lost the perks of overseas service, but

more important, it represented a failure, and any failure automatically

made them suspect in the eyes of their own counterintelligence officers.

The KGB man began to shake uncontrollably, as McCaul conjured up

visions of a burly London policeman carting the hapless Russian off to

some secret dungeon for a spot of torture.

"Don't shake the shell, for Christ's sake," he shouted, "you'll

trigger the fuse!"

The Russian dropped the shell to the ground and sprinted out of

the park as if pursued by the furies. The next day he was on the plane

home.

SPYCATCHER 125

In fact, the Foreign Office was notoriously reluctant to give support.

Numerous times we sent forward recommendations to expel Russians

we caught recruiting or running agents, but the Foreign Office

Northern Department, responsible for Anglo-Soviet relations, more

often than not vetoed our case. Occasionally I attended these Northern

Department meetings to give technical briefings on what the particular

Russian diplomat had been doing. They always followed a set pattern.

The MI6 contingent would object to expulsion, fearing a reprisal in

Moscow. Then the Foreign Office would weigh in with a sermon about

the importance of not disrupting pending arms control negotiations, or

jeopardizing an imminent trade deal. Courtney Young turned to me

on one occasion as we emerged from the ornate committee room and

muttered:

"I've never seen such a hotbed of cold feet!"

The lack of Foreign Office support meant we had to rely on less

orthodox methods of warning off the Soviets. Around this time we

received a spate of reports from Watchers detailing approaches to them

by Russians. One Watcher described how a KGB officer came up to

him in a pub and handed him an envelope containing a large quantity

of money, and tried to talk him into providing information about his

MI5 work.

Michael McCaul decided that direct action was needed. He telephoned

the Chief KGB Resident in his office in the Soviet Embassy,

and asked for an appointment, using his cover name Macauley, which

was well known to the Russians. He strode into the Embassy as bold

as brass, and warned the Russians against any further approaches to

the Watchers, making dire threats of diplomatic interventions which,

in reality, were unlikely ever to have been sanctioned. McCaul was

highly amused by his trip into the lion's den. The Resident made him

lavishly welcome and they took afternoon tea together under a giant

aspidistra. The Russian doubted that any of his staff could be so indelicate

as to engage in espionage on foreign soil, but agreed to look

into the matter in case one of the staff had, perhaps, been a little

overzealous.

"Perhaps the British Security authorities have made a mistake,"

he suggested. "The business has become so crowded these days. So

many countries, so many embassies, so many diplomats. Sometimes it

is difficult to be sure who is working for whom ..."

There were no more approaches to the Watchers.

In the summer of 1959, just as things began to improve in D Branch,

126 PETER WRIGHT

the Tisler case came alive again, clouding our minds with doubt and

confusion. It began when the young male nurse, whose recruitment led

to the chase for the gruff signal in Clapham, was suddenly reactivated

His Russian controller handed him a suitcase, and asked him to store

it at home. Inside the suitcase was an old World War II radio set, which

made us immediately suspect the whole thing was another game designed

to lure us out of London. But we had no definite proof that the

Russians knew we had turned the nurse, so we decided to follow it up.

Dl placed continuous Watcher coverage on the nurse's house in the

Midlands, and all Watcher activity closed down in London. I arranged

for Watcher headquarters to continue to transmit notification of Russians

and Czechoslovakians leaving Kensington Park Gardens, so they

would think we were still following them.

Thirty-six hours after the Watchers left London, the Russian receiver

monitoring their communications closed down. As soon as Tony

Sale told me, I was highly suspicious, remembering the inconclusiveness

of the previous tests after the Tisler affair. Six weeks later we returned

to London convinced the suitcase was bogus, and I mounted a special

rafter operation to check when the Russians reactivated their receiver.

No Russians were followed on the first Monday morning, and we

opened up at 2:30 in the afternoon on a Czech diplomat. Within half

an hourthe Russian receiver was reactivated on the Watcher frequency.

I took the rafter printouts to Furnival Jones and Hollis. Here, for the

first time, was a firm indication that a human source existed inside MI5.

Hollis and Furnival Jones were visibly shocked by the information. The

recent Russian approaches to Watchers, which we thought had been

terminated following McCaul's visit to the Embassy, confirmed Hollis

in his view that, if a leak existed, it must be in the Watcher service.

More barium-meal tests were done to try to locate the source, but

nothing was found. As 1959 drew to a close there was a growing feeling

among the few officers who knew about Tisler's allegation that the issue

ought to be resolved once and for all, even if it meant more extensive

investigations. In December I was called in by Hollis, who told me that

he intended closing down the Watcher inquiries.

"I am sure our original Tisler conclusions were correct," he told

me, "and I think we should let the matter lie."

He was courteous, but firm. I thought the time had come to bring

the worries into the open.

"I do think, sir, we would be advised to widen our inquiries. The

leak may be higher up in the Service."

SPYCATCHER 127

Hollis made no obvious reaction.

"It's a very delicate issue, Peter," he replied smoothly. "It would

have a terrible effect on morale in the Service."

"Not necessarily, sir. I think you would find that most officers

would welcome something being done. After all, if we have a penetration,

particularly one at a relatively high level, most people have

been wasting their time."

"It's simply not practical," he replied, his tone hardening.

I pointed out that there was already an investigations section of

Dl, which could quite easily accommodate the work. Hollis finally

bridled.

"I am not prepared to debate the issue," he snapped, "and I simply

cannot accept any course of action which would lead to the establishment

of a privileged Gestapo in the office."

He scrawled "No further action" on the file and initialed it off,

signaling our meeting was over. The cancer was left to grow.

10

"Sniper says the Russians have got two very important spies in Britain:

one in British Intelligence, the other somewhere in the Navy."

It was April 1959, and a CIA officer, Harry Roman, was briefing

a group of MI5 and MI6 officers, in the fourth-floor conference room

of MI6's Broadway headquarters, about a high-grade defector. Sniper

was an anonymous source who earlier in the year began sending letters

to the CIA, written in German, detailing information about Polish and

Soviet intelligence operations.

"He's almost certainly in the UB [the Polish Intelligence Service],"

said Roman. "His German's odd, and the Polish stuff is Grade 1 from

the inside."

Sniper (who was given the MI5 code name lavinia) christened his

spies Lambda 1 and Lambda 2. There was little to go on with Lambda

2, beyond the fact that he served in Warsaw in 1952 and was blackmailed

into espionage after the UB discovered his activities in the black market.

Lambda 1, however, looked more hopeful. Sniper gave enough details

in one of his letters to enable us to identify three MI6 documents he

had seen.

¦ The first was the "Watch List" for Poland, detailing Polish nationals

the Warsaw MI6 station considered possible or desirable targets

for recruitment approaches. The second document was the Polish section

of the MI6 "R6," an annual report circulated to MI6 stations,

summarizing, country by country and region by region, the straight

intelligence received by MI6. The third document was a part of the

"RB," the annual MI6 report circulated to stations abroad, detailing

the latest MI6 scientific and technical research and operations.

Berlin and Warsaw were the most probable MI6 stations where

the leak of this vital intelligence had taken place, and we drew up a

IL

SPYCATCHER 129

list of the ten people at these stations who had access to all three

documents. The records of all ten were investigated, and all were exonerated,

including one named George Blake, a rising young MI6 officer

who had played a key role in the Berlin Tunnel. Blake, MI5 and

MI6 concluded, could not possibly be a spy. The best explanation for

the leak, in the absence of any credible human candidate, was a burglary

of an MI6 station safe in Brussels, which had taken place two years

before. Unfortunately, there was no accurate record of the contents of

the safe before the burglary. There was evidence that one, and possibly

two, of the documents seen by Sniper had been in the safe, but no

certainty that all three had been there. In spring 1960, when all ten

MI6 officers had been cleared, MI5 and MI6 officially told the Americans

that the burglary was the source of Sniper's Lambda 1.

In March 1960, Sniper suddenly sent further information about

Lambda 2. His name was something like Huiton, and Sniper thought

he had been taken over and run illegally by the Russians when he

returned to London to work in Naval Intelligence. Only one man fitted

Sniper's description: Harry Houghton, who was working in the Underwater

Weapons Establishment at Portland, Dorset, and had served

in Warsaw in 1952 before joining Naval Intelligence. When Houghton

was checked in the MI5 Registry, D Branch found, to their consternation,

that he was already listed. Some years before, Houghton's wife

had approached the security officer at Portland and told him that her

husband had deserted her for a girl who worked at the base. She had

claimed that Houghton was meeting with foreigners, went regularly to

London to meet a foreigner whom she could not identify, and had large

amounts of money stored in a tin in the garden shed.

The security officer forwarded the report to the Admiralty Security

Division, advising that it was probably a malicious accusation by a

deserted wife. The Admiralty passed it on to MI5's C Branch, where

it landed on the desk of a young officer named Duncum Wagh. He

looked up Houghton in the Registry, found no entry, and concluded

that the original security officer's assessment had been right. He decided

to dismiss the allegation. He minuted the file to his C Branch section

head, who sent a suitable reply'to Portland, and the matter was put to

rest.

Hollis and Furnival Jones (who was head of C Branch at the appropriate

time) were desperately embarrassed by the revelation that

Houghton was the likely spy. But there was little time for recrimination,

as the case swiftly gathered momentum. The investigation was handled



_

130 PETER WRIGHT

by the Polish section, D2, and they soon discovered that Houghton

visited London once a month with his girlfriend, Ethel Gee. The Watchers

were detailed to cover Houghton's July visit, and they saw him meet

a man in the Waterloo Road, hand over a carrier bag, and receive an

envelope in return. All attention immediately focused on the man

Houghton had met. He was followed back to his car, a white Stude-baker,

and visually identified by the Watchers as a Polish intelligence

officer stationed in London. But checks on the car registration number

showed it to belong to a Canadian named Gordon Arnold Lonsdale,

who ran a business leasing jukebox machines. The Watchers were sent

around to the Polish Embassy to recheck on the Polish officer, and

returned sheepishly, saying they had made a mistake.

Lonsdale was put under intensive surveillance. He had an office

in Wardour Street, and a flat in the White House, near Regent's Park.

Both were bugged, and visual observation posts established nearby. To

all intents and purposes, he lived the life of a London playboy, traveling

abroad frequently and pursuing a succession of glamorous girls attracted

by his easy money and good looks.

Houghton and Gee next visited London at the beginning of August,

and again met Lonsdale, this time in a cafe near the Old Vic theater.

The Watchers monitored them closely, even slipping into a table next

to them. Lonsdale told Houghton and Gee that there would be no

meeting in September, as he was visiting the USA on business, but that

he was confident he would return in time to meet them on the first

Sunday in October. If he did not appear, someone else they knew would

come in his place.

On August 27 Lonsdale was followed from his flat on the sixth

floor of the White House to the Midland Bank in Great Portland Street,

where he deposited a suitcase and a brown paper parcel. Shortly after,

he disappeared. The DG approached the Chairman of the Midland

Bank, and obtained permission to open Lonsdale's safety deposit box.

On the evening of Monday, September 5, the suitcase and package

were removed from the bank and taken over to the MI5 laboratory at

St. Paul's. The contents were spread out on a trestle table and carefully

examined by Hugh Winterborn and me. After years of trying, we had

stumbled across the real thing--the complete toolbag of the professional

spy. There were a Minox and a Praktina, specialist miniature

cameras for document copying. The Minox contained an exposed film,

which we developed and recopied before replacing in the camera. The

photographs seemed innocuous enough: snaps of Lonsdale and a smil-

SPYCATCHER 131

ing woman taken in a city which, after considerable analysis, we concluded

was probably Prague. There was also a book on how to learn

typewriting, which I knew at once must be connected with secret writing.

By shining a narrow beam of horizontal light along the edges of

each page, I picked out the minute indentations, where Lonsdale had

used the pages as a carbon for his invisible secret messages. The typewriting

book was sent down to Dr. Frank Morgan at AWRE, and

became invaluable in boosting his research program into new methods

of detecting secret writing.

The most interesting object was a Ronson cigarette lighter set in

a wooden bowl. We X-rayed the lighter using Morgan's method, which

showed the base to be hollow, containing several small items. They

were removed with a rubber suction cup and tweezers, and were found

to be two sets of miniature one-time code pads, one of which was clearly

in current use. There was also a list of map references on a folded piece

of paper, based on the London map book used by our Watchers.

Ever since rafter began, I had studied everything I could find

about Soviet clandestine radio communications, and as soon as I saw

Lonsdale's cipher pads, I could identify them as Soviet issue. This was

no Polish intelligence officer--this was a full-blown KGB operation.

With Lonsdale in radio communication with Moscow, we knew that if

we could copy his pads and trace his signals, we would be able to decrypt

them as they came in. Unfortunately, there were in Lonsdale's suitcase

no signal plans giving a schedule of when and at what frequency to

listen to his broadcasts among the thousands of messages which were

pouring out every week from Moscow, rafter gave us the vital breakthrough.

We decided to set up in the flat next door to Lonsdale in the

White House, and by using active rafter, we would be able to tell

when and at what frequency he was listening to his receiver.

Copying the code pads without arousing Lonsdale's suspicions was

much more difficult. Without access to each sheet of the pads we would

be unable to decipher his traffic. I knew from the Radiations Operations

Committee that the Swiss intelligence service had recently found an

abandoned KGB one-time pad, so I arranged for MI6 to ask the Swiss

if they would be prepared to allow us to borrow it. They agreed, and

I drove out to London Airport to meet the RAF plane which flew it

over specially for us. The Swiss pad was very similar to Lonsdale's;

each edge was covered with a thin film of glue to hold the pages together.

We took it apart, and analyzed the glue. It was non-Western, but the

Post Office technicians were confident they could make some up.

132 PETER WRIGHT

We went into the bank again on the evening of Saturday, September

17, removed the suitcase, and took it to St. Paul's. The pads were

delicately taken apart and each page individually photographed. Then

the originals were placed in a specially made jig, which held them tightly

together so we could recoat the edges with our newly made-up glue

solution. In the early hours of Sunday morning, we took the suitcase

back to the bank, and waited for Lonsdale to return.

A few days later, I received a call from Tony Sale. He sounded

distinctly agitated.

"There's something you ought to see. Some of the lionsbeard

recording ..."

lionsbeard was the code name given to the continuous rafter

operation on the Russian Embassy. I took a taxi to Kensington Park

Gardens, and ducked into our safe house on the next street. Tony Sale

met me in the hall, and handed over a sheet of the lionsbeard needle

printout.

"Any idea what that is?" he asked, pointing to two sudden bursts

of receiver activity inside the Embassy in September.

"What dates are these?"

"Seems to be September 6, which was a Tuesday, and the other

one is last Sunday--that's the 18th," he replied.

"Good God," I gasped, "they're the dates of the bank operations!"

Watchers had been used lightly during both operations to remove

Lonsdale's suitcase from the bank. With a mixture of panic and despair,

I took the printouts back to Leconfield House, and tabulated the exact

times the Russian receiver was operating against A4's records of Watcher

operations. The lionsbeard readings matched the A4 records perfectly.

The Russians must have guessed we were onto Lonsdale.

I called for all the lionsbeard records, going back two and a half

years, and laboriously checked through them all to see if there were

other examples where the Russians had used their receivers in the

middle of a Saturday or a Monday night. There was not a single occasion,

other than these two, where the Russians listened between the

hours of midnight to 5 a.m.

I took the material to Furnival Jones, and we went straight up to

Hollis' office. He took the news calmly, and agreed the evidence of a

leak looked strong. He instructed Furnival Jones to begin another urgent

investigation into the Watcher service, and in view of the fact that

Lonsdale was almost certainly a KGB illegal, transferred control of the

1

SPYCATCHER 133

case from D2 (Czechs and Poles) to Arthur Martin in Dl (Soviet

Counterespionage).

On the face of it, Lonsdale's departure abroad provided the best

test as to whether our suspicions were well founded. We all agreed that

if he stayed away, it would prove he knew we were onto him. If he

came back, it would indicate we were in the clear. Lonsdale had told

Houghton he would try to get back for their meeting on October 1.

Tension began to rise inside Leconfield House, as Furnival Jones' Watcher

investigations once more drew a blank. Houghton traveled to London,

but no one turned up to meet him. Even Furnival Jones seemed visibly

shaken as the days ticked by without any sign of Lonsdale. Then, on

October 17, our observation post opposite Lonsdale's office in Wardour

Street identified him entering the building. The doubt and suspicion,

which had been growing in intensity, melted away as we threw our

energies into the hunt.

Lonsdale soon picked up his old life, running his jukebox business,

meeting Houghton, and dating a great variety of attractive girls. He

was not due to repossess his flat in the White House until early November,

but where he was staying was a mystery. Every night he left

his offices in Wardour Street and headed westward. Arthur and I laid

down strict controls on the Watcher operations after Lonsdale's return.

We were determined there would be no more mistakes. Overt watching

was prohibited, and strict radio silence was imposed on all operations.

Jim Skardon exploded at this apparent intrusion into his empire. He

was not indoctrinated for rafter, and could not understand why radios

were prohibited. He complained to Furnival Jones but was told firmly

that there were good reasons for the new policy.

Arthur and I realized it would be impossible to follow a trained

and experienced intelligence officer like Lonsdale for any distance without

alerting him to the fact, so we devised a new semistatic technique.

Every night a team of Watchers picked him up and followed for a short

distance, before peeling off. The next day Lonsdale was picked up by

a new set of Watchers where the previous team had given up the chase,

and followed another short distance, and so on, at successively increasing

distances from his Wardour Street office. The whole operation took

two weeks, and we even employed wives and volunteers from the office

to supplement the Watcher staff so we never used the same faces twice.

Eventually we tracked Lonsdale to 45 Cranleigh Gardens, Ruislip, in

West London. Lonsdale was evidently staying with the occupants of

134 PETER WRIGHT

the small house, Peter and Helen Kroger, a New Zealand couple who

ran a small bookshop specializing in Americana antique books. We set

up a static observation post in the house opposite, and waited, confident

that none of the occupants knew of our presence.

In mid-November Lonsdale moved back into his flat in the White

House, collecting his suitcase from the Midland Bank shortly beforehand.

We immediately arranged for a GCHQ technician, Arthur Spencer,

to move into the fiat next door to begin our rafter operations.

For the next three months Spencer scarcely set foot outside the tiny

flat. We installed a noncontact tap on the mains supply feeding Lons-dale's

receiver which was connected to a silent buzzer. The buzzer was

worn as an earpiece by Spencer, so that even if Lonsdale used his radio

set during the night, the buzzer would alert him. Whenever the buzzer

sounded, Spencer tuned the rafter receivers, found the frequency

Lonsdale was listening to, and alerted GCHQ Palmer Street. Palmer

Street then relayed the signal down to GCHQ in Cheltenham. There,

using our copy of Lonsdale's one-time pad, a GCHQ cryptanalyst named

Bill Collins decrypted the message, and relayed it back up to London

to Arthur and me in Leconfield House via an enciphered telex link.

The first time Lonsdale received a message, Bill Collins was unable

to decipher it. There was no indicator group in the traffic. An indicator

group is a group en clair, in other words a group from the onetime

pad with no coded additive. The recipient uses this to position the

message on the pad at the right place, so it can be deciphered. (After

Lonsdale was arrested we discovered that the indicator group was in

fact enciphered, using his real date of birth.)

Arthur and I began to wonder if, perhaps, Lonsdale realized his

pads were compromised, and was using a new set brought back with

him from abroad. The only thing we could do was burgle his flat and

check inside the lighter again, to see if the pads had been used. Win-terborn

and I went in on a day when Lonsdale went to Suffolk for his

jukebox business. It was a small flat, rather depressingly spartan, with

barely space for more than a bed. We opened the lighter; the pads were

still there, and new pages had been torn away, so they were obviously

still in use. When I looked carefully I realized that Lonsdale had used

more lines than were needed to encipher the message he had received

from Moscow. When the message was stepped down the pad by the

number of excess lines, the message read satisfactorily.

For the next two months we successfully monitored Lonsdale's biweekly

messages from Moscow. Most of them concerned "the Shah,"

1



^

SPYCATCHER 135

the KGB cryptonym for Houghton. Lonsdale was given specific instructions

on how to handle him, which questions to ask, and what documents

he should attempt to procure from Portland. But other messages

were personal, containing family news about his wife and his children

back in Russia. They wanted him home after five years' undercover

service.

On Monday, January 2, Hollis chaired a full review of the case.

Arthur argued strongly that we should allow the case to run on. He

felt instinctively that Lonsdale was too valuable an illegal to be running

simply the one spy, Houghton. We still knew very little about the

Krogers, and their house at 45 Cranleigh Gardens, beyond the fact that

shortly after Lonsdale went to stay, high-grade Chubbs and window

locks were fitted to the house, including the access to the roof. For all

we knew, Lonsdale might be only one part of a much larger network.

Furnival Jones and I supported Arthur, and Hollis agreed to approach

the Admiralty (whose secrets Houghton was betraying) to ask permission

to leave Houghton unmolested for a further three months. The

Admiralty agreed, and Arthur decided to minimize any further risk by

running the case on without any form of physical surveillance, relying

simply on our interception of Lonsdale's radio traffic to lead us to

further spies.

Two days later our plan was rudely shattered. A sealed message

was delivered to Hollis by Cleeve Cram, the CIA officer assigned to

the American Embassy in London for liaison with MI5. The message

warned MI5 that Sniper had informed the CIA that he intended defecting

to the United States on the following day, January 5. Once

again, we convened in Hollis' office. There was really only one course

of action: Houghton, Lonsdale, and presumably also the Krogers would

all be blown by the defection. We had to arrest them before they were

withdrawn. Fortunately, Houghton was due for his January meeting

with Lonsdale on the Saturday, January 7, and we also knew that

Lonsdale was due to receive his radio message early that morning, so

we would know if Moscow sent him a warning.

Arranging the arrests was a prodigious feat of logistics, and for the

next three days I barely slept. Charles Elwell, Houghton's case officer,

was sent to Portland, ready to search Houghton's premises as soon as

he was given word the arrests were successfully accomplished. Bill

Collins came up from Cheltenham and based himself in Palmer Street,

ready to decrypt Lonsdale's message the instant it came through. The

Special Branch were put on standby outside Lonsdale's flat, ready to

136 PETER WRIGHT

make an immediate arrest if the Moscow message sent him scurrying

for cover.

On the Friday night Arthur and I gathered in the third-floor operations

room in Leconfield House, ready for the all-night vigil. It was

a small office, painted a ghastly Civil Service brown. It could have been

a prison cell. A metal-framed bed ran along one wall. A small table

stood in the middle. Cables trailed across the floor in thick, tangled

bunches. Telephones linked us to Special Branch headquarters, to GCHQ,

and to the DG, and a small speaker relayed to us every sound inside

Lonsdale's flat in the White House.

Arthur sat hunched over the table, chain-smoking. Hugh Winter-born

was tense and excited, and said very little. Furnival Jones was

there too, with his shoes off, reclining on the bed in his braces. Although

he was the Director of D Branch, he felt a strong loyalty to the troops,

and was determined to see it through with us. He even went to the pub

in Shepherd's Market and brought us back sandwiches. We drank Scotch

through the small hours, as the ashtrays filled up.

We listened as Lonsdale returned late from a carefree evening on

the town. He was with a girl. I discreetly muted the volume as the

sound of their passionate lovemaking filtered through to us. When it

was all quiet in the flat, I asked Arthur how long he thought Lonsdale

would serve in prison.

"Fifteen at least," he replied.

Hugh Winterborn looked troubled. He was a religious man, and

found no joy in the thought of a man's life ruined. I poured myself

another drink.

"I can't help thinking of his wife and kids . . ."I said lamely. They

knew what I meant. They had seen the intercepts of Lonsdale's messages,

as I had: the talk of home, and family hardships, and birthdays,

and children who missed their father. Lonsdale, for all his professionalism,

was a very human spy. Like many men away on business, he

was homesick, and sought solace in the company of other women.

"It's not as if he's a traitor . . . not like Houghton. He's just doing

his job like us."

"That's enough!" Furnival Jones flashed angrily from the bed. "He

went into this with his eyes wide open. He could have come as a

diplomat. He knew what the risks were. He deserves everything he

gets!"

I stayed silent. But the thought was there inside us all. We had

seen almost too much of Lonsdale over the past two months.

SPYCATCHER 137

Toward morning Lonsdale woke the girl up, and persuaded her to

leave. He said he had urgent business to attend to, which in a way was

true. When she left we heard him pull out his radio set, and prepare

his pads to receive the message from Moscow. The radio crackled for

a few minutes, and Lonsdale's pencil scratched out the decrypt. We

could tell there was no warning from the way he sauntered into the

bathroom, singing jauntily to himself in Russian. A few minutes later

the green telephone rang, and Bill Collins gave us the text of the

message over a scrambled line. It was a routine report: more talk of

the family, more news from home. There was no warning or alarm.

Special Branch were told to prepare to make the arrest as Lonsdale

received his package from Houghton that afternoon. At five the Special

Branch line rang.

"Last Act is finished!" said a voice. Last Act was Lonsdale's code

name. His prison performance was about to begin.

Hugh Winterborn went straight over to the White House to search

Lonsdale's flat, while Arthur and I waited for news of the Krogers'

arrest. At seven, tired but elated, we drove out to Ruislip in my car.

By the time we reached Cranleigh Gardens, the place was in chaos.

Police were everywhere, searching the house almost at random. I tried

to take control, but it was useless. Arthur vainly protested as a detective

took out a plastic bag containing chemicals.

"Sorry, sir, I am afraid it's evidence," said the policeman. "It's a

criminal matter now, and if you boys want to see it, you'll have to go

through the channels ..."

The police operation was led by Detective Superintendent George

Smith of the Special Branch, a man renowned inside MI5 for his powers

of self-promotion. Before the arrests, we stressed to Smith that we

needed a forty-eight-hour blackout on any news about the arrests, so

that we could monitor the next radio broadcast coming in from Moscow.

But within hours word spread around Fleet Street that a major espionage

ring had been smashed, and Smith began briefing selected reporters

on the role he claimed to have played in the operation. The

Moscow broadcast carried no traffic.

Despite the hamfisted search instituted by the police, it was obvious

the house was packed full of espionage equipment. Two sets of different

cipher pads were hidden in a cigarette lighter similar to the one used

by Lonsdale. There were signal plans for three separate types of transmissions

from Moscow, secret-writing material, and facilities to make

microdots using chromic acid and Sellotape. Mrs. Kroger had even

138 PETER WRIGHT

tried to destroy the contents of her handbag, containing details of

meetings with spies, by flushing them down the toilet, but a vigilant

woman PC stopped her. The most interesting find of all was a signal

plan for special high-speed transmissions from Moscow. Hidden in a

cookery jar we found a bottle of magnetic iron oxide used to print out

the Morse from the high-speed message onto a tape, so that it could

be read without being transferred onto a sophisticated tape recorder

and slowed down. It was a new technique, and explained why we had

failed to detect any transmissions to the Kroger house in the months

before the arrests.

Toward the end of the evening the police began to vacate, leaving

us to search among the debris, under the watchful eyes of a couple of

young constables. We searched the house for nine days. On the last

day we located the transmitter. It was hidden in a cavity under the

kitchen floor, along with cameras and other radio equipment. Everything

was carefully concealed in moisture-resistant sealed packages, and

the whole system had obviously been designed to be stored for a considerable

length of time.

On the following Wednesday, Hollis called everyone together in

his office, and congratulated them on the triumph. The new D Branch

team under Martin Furnival Jones and Arthur Martin had faced its

stiffest test, and completely outplayed the Russians for the first time

since Maxwell Knight smashed the Woolwich Arsenal Ring in 1938.

The key to the Lonsdale success, as with the engulf and stockade

achievements, lay in the new techniques which I had worked to develop

with GCHQ and AWRE. rafter and the X-raying and copying of the

code pads enabled MI5 to run the case from a position of strength. I

was intensely proud of the capture of the ring; for the first time I had

played a major role in a counterespionage case, and shown the MI5

management what was possible. As a result, it was acknowledged that

the workload passing through the Radiations Operations Committee

was simply too great, and it was separated into two distinct units. Clan

handled all clandestine operations against cipher targets here and abroad,

while Counterclan controlled all the counterespionage side of ROC,

SUCh as RAFTER.

Hollis asked me to produce a detailed report, showing the role

played in the Lonsdale case by the new techniques, with a view to

encouraging similar approaches to counterespionage in the future. I

began by paying a visit to the Old Bailey, where Lonsdale, the Krogers,

Houghton, and Gee were on trial. The latter pair looked pasty-faced,

SPYCATCHER 139

flicking glances around the wood-paneled courtroom from the dock.

Lonsdale and the Krogers appeared completely unmoved by the

proceedings. The Krogers occasionally whispered to each other, or

passed notes; Lonsdale said nothing until the end, when he gave a short

speech claiming the Krogers knew nothing of his activities. The Krogers

were soon identified by the Americans as Morris and Lona Cohen,

wanted by the FBI in connection with the Rosenberg nuclear espionage

case. This was more than a little embarrassing for me; months before

the arrests I saw Al Belmont of the FBI in Washington and briefed

him on the progress of the case. He wondered then if the Krogers might

turn out to be the Cohens. But I had not taken his offhand suggestion

seriously, and failed to make a check. Lonsdale's identity proved much

more of a mystery, and it was a year before we positively identified

him as Konan Trofimovich Molodi, the son of a well-known Soviet

scientist, and an experienced KGB officer who assumed the identity of

Gordon Lonsdale, a long-deceased Finnish Canadian, in 1955.

I began my analysis of the Lonsdale case by asking GCHQ to

provide me with files on any known Soviet espionage case, like the

Lonsdale case, which had involved clandestine radio broadcasts. They

produced leaflets, around a hundred in all, listing first the details of

the agent under consideration--when he started and finished, what his

targets were, which service he worked for, and so forth; they then

produced a detailed summary of the agent's signal plans, and finally

lists of the traffic that he received from the Soviet Union, including the

numbers of messages, their group counts, details of the cipher systems

used, and dates when they were changed.

I organized this mass of material into KGB and GRU categories,

and secondly into types of agent--singletons, sleepers, illegal spies

actively running one or more sources, illegal residents running a group

of other illegals, and so forth. I found, to my astonishment, that changes

in the radio traffic mirrored the different types of agent. For instance,

by looking at the operational radio procedures, such as the types of

call signs used, it was possible to tell whether the spy was of KGB or

GRU origin. Similarly, by analyzing the group counts and the lengths

of the messages, it was possible to tell what type of spy was receiving

the traffic. For instance, the singleton sleeper received very little traffic,

the GRU singleton not much more, while the KGB singleton received

a quite considerable volume. The KGB illegal resident, the most important

spy of all, always took the greatest amount of traffic--generally

between five hundred and a thousand groups a month.

140 PETER WRIGHT

I soon began to realize that the Lonsdale case was utterly different

from any other single case among the hundreds I had studied. No other

case had so many different forms of communications, some duplicated

and some even triplicated. Yet there was apparently only one spy-I

Houghton--serviced by the whole Lonsdale/Kroger apparatus. He was

an important spy, it was true, with access to vital details about British

and American submarine-detection systems. But why involve the Krogers?

Why not just use Lonsdale?

Even at face value, it seemed unlikely that other spies would not

have been involved in the ring. The Krogers were located in Ruislip,

close to American Air Force installations, while Lonsdale, we discovered,

had earlier studied at the School of Oriental Studies, on a course

commonly used by British military officers and MI6 trainees.

Lonsdale was certainly the illegal resident in Britain, and I carefully

tabulated the communications he received from Moscow after he returned

to Britain in October. He averaged 300-350 groups per month.

Yet in each of the other illegal cases I studied, the resident received

500-1000 groups a month, and generally closer to the higher figure.

Where was Lonsdale's missing traffic? Lonsdale had a three-character

call sign which included a figure 1 if the broadcast carried traffic, and

omitted the figure l if it was a dummy stream. I asked GCHQ whether

they could find any messages similar in length to those we knew Lonsdale

received after October, for the period preceding his departure in

August. After considerable search GCHQ found what is called a "continuity,

' which went back six years, to roughly the time when Lonsdale

entered Britain.

The average group count of this continuity was in the correct range

of 500-1000 groups per month, and it ceased suddenly in August 1960,

at the same time Lonsdale returned to Moscow. Of course, without the

pads, we could not read any of the messages, but if, as seemed likely,

this was Lonsdale's original traffic, the question remained: why did it

suddenly diminish when he came back?

J turned my attention to the Krogers' communications. These were

the most baffling of all. Most of them were for their use, yet they

appeared not to be running any spies at all--merely acting as support

tor Lonsdale. But some of the communications were clearly being stored

by the Krogers for Lonsdale. The pads, for instance, hidden like Lonsdale

s in a cigarette lighter, were almost certainly his. I calculated up the group counts on the pads. The total was equivalent to the groups

missing from Lonsdale's traffic after his return in October. The Rus-

SPYCATCHER 141

sians, it seemed, had split Lonsdale's traffic when he came back, leaving

the Shah (Houghton) on the channel we could read, and placing his

other communications, perhaps containing his other spies, onto a secure

channel with the Krogers, and using their high-speed transmitter, which

we could not detect, to send any messages he needed.

This apparent alteration in radio procedures suggested that Lons-dale

knew, in some way or other, that the messages he was receiving

from Moscow in the White House, using the pads in the cigarette lighter,

were compromised. But why, if he feared that, not just use new pads?

And why, if the Russians feared he was compromised, was he sent back

at all?

I began to analyze the sequence of events over the weekend of the

arrests. I had arranged a continuous coverage of the Russian Embassy

diplomatic transmitters from the Friday before the arrests until midday

Monday. The last Embassy transmission took place at 11 a.m. on the

Saturday morning, well before the arrests, and the next was not until

9 a.m. on the Monday morning. So, although a major espionage ring

had been smashed, the Russians apparently made no contact at all with

Moscow. This beggared belief, unless, of course, the Russians already

knew we were about to lift them.

I checked what we knew about the movements of known Soviet intelligence officers in London over that weekend. On the Sunday night,

when news of the arrests first broke on the television bulletins, an illegal

KGB resident, Korovin, and Karpekov, the KGB legal deputy resident,

had dinner together. Our probe microphones picked up every part of

their conversation. We heard them listen to the news. They made no

comment, and no move to contact the Embassy.

I then looked at the beginnings of the case, and made a shattering

discovery which convinced me that the case must have been blown to

the Russians. In its early stages, the case was handled by D2 when it

was suspected that Lonsdale was Polish. Checking the records, I discovered

that D2 were not indoctrinated into rafter. They had no knowledge

of the fact that the Russians were listening to our Watcher radios,

and therefore, prior to the case's being handed over to Arthur, they

used Watchers on each of the seventeen occasions they followed Lonsdale

in July and August.

Ever since the beginning of lionsbeard, all Watcher communications

were recorded by MI5 and retained, so I organized a test. I

gave Evelyn McBarnet, who worked with Arthur as a research officer,

the tape of the Watcher communications during the day that D2 fol-

142 PETER WRIGHT

lowed lonsdale to the bank for the first time. I also gave her a London

street map book, similar to that used by the Watchers, and asked her

to mark out the route she thought the Watchers were following, based

solely on listening to their radio communications. Evelyn McBarnet

was not experienced in traffic analysis, and had no previous access to

the case, but within three and a half hours, she reconstructed the movements

flawlessly. If she could do it, the Russians, who had been analyzing

our Watcher communications for years, were certainly capable

of it too. They must have known from the beginning that we were onto

Lonsdale.

By the time I was writing my report, Sniper was safely in a CIA

safe house near Washington, where he identified himself as an officer

in the Polish Intelligence Service named Michael Goleniewski. One

fragment of his story seemed devastating in the context of the thread

of ambiguity which ran through the Lonsdale case. He told the CIA

that in the last week of July a senior officer in the UB told him the

Russians knew there was a "pig" (a spy) in the organization. Goleniewski

said that initially he was deputed to assist in the search for the

spy, but eventually, by Christmas, realized that he himself was falling

under suspicion, so he defected.

"The last week in July." I read the CIA account of Sniper's debriefing:

it stared out at me from the page. It seemed so innocuous a

phrase. I checked back. Lonsdale was first seen by MI5 meeting Houghton

on July 2. He was positively identified on the 11th. We began

following him on the 17th. Allow a week for the news to filter through

to the Russians. A day to get across to the UB. That takes you to the

last week in July!

The Lonsdale report was the most painful document I have ever

written. My triumph turned to ashes before my eyes. I remember going

off sailing in the Blackwater estuary, near my home in Essex, the

weekend before submitting it in May 1961. The clouds scudded across

the flat landscape, the wind filling my lungs and cleansing my mind of

stress and turmoil. But no matter how I turned the boat, no matter

how I adjusted the rigging, I came down to the same conclusion. The

Russians knew we were onto Lonsdale from the beginning; they had

withdrawn him, and then sent him back. But why?

There was only one explanation which covered all the inconsistencies

of the case: a leak. If the Russians possessed a source inside

MI5, he would alert them to the existence of Sniper, which would

explain why pressure mounted on Goleniewski from the last week in

I

SPYCATCHER 143

July, although of course, like us, the Russians could only guess at

Sniper's real identity. That would explain why the Russians knew about

our bank operations. Once they realized Lonsdale was blown, the

Russians recalled him to Moscow, but once I alerted the management

to the lionsbeard information, and Furnival Jones began his inquiries,

the source would contact the Russians in a panic. The Russians were

then faced with a simple choice. Lonsdale, or the MI5 source? The only

way of forestalling the hunt inside MI5 was to send Lonsdale back,

hoping that he could extract some last intelligence from Houghton

before we rounded the ring up. But before sending him back the Russians

took the precaution of switching his other spies to alternative

secure communications via the Krogers. If this was the case, the Russians

had severely misjudged the sophistication of the new D Branch

team they were facing. Despite their advantages, we managed to outplay

them and capture the Krogers, a significant additional part of the

Soviet team. As for the source, it could only be one of a dozen people

at the top of MI5. This was no Watcher, or peripheral source. The

Russians would never sacrifice anyone as valuable as Lonsdale for a

low-level source. The evidence of continuous interference throughout

the Lonsdale case pointed much higher up--to the very summit of the

organization.

I submitted my report to Furnival Jones in May 1961. He passed

my report on to the Deputy Director-General, Graham Mitchell, with

a short accompanying minute which read: "It should be borne in mind

when reading this analysis, that the Lonsdale case was a personal triumph

for Peter Wright."

For months I heard nothing. I sat in on dozens of meetings with

Mitchell and Hollis on other matters, and often hung back, expecting

that they would call me in to discuss what, at the very least, was a

disturbing hypothesis. But there was nothing. No minute, no letter, no

threats, no casual conversation. It was as if my report did not exist.

Then, in October, I was finally called into Hollis' office late one afternoon.

He was sitting at his desk, with Mitchell to one side.

"Graham will handle this discussion, Peter," said Hollis in a distant

manner. He fingered my report with evident distaste. I turned to face

Mitchell. He was sweating slightly, and avoided looking me in the eye.

"I have read your Lonsdale analysis," he began, "and I am bound

to say that a lot of it passes over my head. In my experience espionage

has always been a simple business ..."

I bridled at this.

144 PETER WRIGHT

"I will gladly explain any of the anomalies I have detailed in the

report, sir, if that will help. It is often difficult to put technical matters

into lay language."

Mitchell went on as if I had made no interruption.

"The simple fact is, we have arrested and convicted three professional

Russian illegals--these are the first Russian nationals to be brought

before the courts here for generations. We arrest two immensely dangerous

spies inside the country's most secret underwater research establishment.

By any measure that is success. What on earth is the

advantage to the Russians of allowing us to do that?"

I began to plod through the sections of my report, pointing up the

ambiguities, and trying hard not to draw any conclusions. But Mitchell

attacked every point. How did I know? How could I be sure? The bank

could have been a coincidence. The Russians might not have known

we were following Lonsdale, even if they did listen to our Watcher

radios.

"They're not ten feet tall, you know, Peter!"

I went through the change in radio operations. But Mitchell brushed

it aside, saying he was not a statistician.

"You say there were more spies, you speculate that the Russians

deliberately sent Lonsdale back. But you've got no proof, Peter, that

it went-like that."

"But you've got no proof, sir, that it went as you think it did. We

are both hypothesizing."

"Ah yes," cut in Hollis, "but we have them in prison."

"But for how long, sir? We have faced this problem persistently

since Tisler, and every time we leave it, it reemerges ..."

"The Deputy and I have discussed this whole matter very carefully,

and I think you know my feelings on that point."

"So, am I to understand there will be no further investigations?"

"That is correct, and I would be grateful if you could keep this

matter entirely confidential. The Service has been tremendously boosted,

as you have been too, Peter, by this case, and I should not like to see

progress set back by more damaging speculation."

Hollis smiled at me oddly, and began to sharpen a pencil. I stood

up abruptly, and left the room.

11

Despite the secret doubts expressed inside MI5 about the provenance

of the Lonsdale case, it was hailed as an outstanding triumph in American

intelligence circles. Never before had an illegal network been monitored

while it ran, and there was great interest in Washington in the

work of the Radiations Operations Committee, which had coordinated

the new range of techniques.

The U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) had already learned

about ROC's work from GCHQ, and was envious of the close relationships

being forged between GCHQ and her sister clandestine services,

MI5 and MI6. However bad the problems had been in Britain,

they were infinitely worse in Washington. Hoover vehemently opposed

the establishment of the CIA after the war, and maintained open hostility

to it throughout the 1950s. The CIA, its senior ranks mostly

comprising Ivy League graduates, treated the G-men with arrogant

disdain. The only policy which united the two organizations was their

shared determination to thwart the NSA wherever possible. They both

claimed NSA was an insecure organization, an accusation given substance

in 1959, when two NSA cryptanalysts defected to the Soviet

Union, betraying vital secrets.

Louis Tordella was the deputy head of NSA, and effectively ran

the organization for nearly twenty years. (The head of NSA is a rotating

Armed Services appointment.) He knew full well that the real reason

for FBI and CIA hostility was resentment at NSA's control of sigint.

He knew also that both organizations were busy challenging his monopoly.

The CIA had begun its own ultra-secret sigint operation,

staff d, and the FBI were also active in the same field. In May 1960,

just as the Lonsdale case was getting under way, Al Belmont visited

London, and I took him down to Cheltenham to demonstrate the en

i

146 PETER WRIGHT

gulf operation against the Egyptian cipher, and the stockade operation

against the French cipher, which was in its early stages. Belmont was

much impressed, and immediately sent over Dick Millen, who spent a

fortnight with me learning the technical details of stockade. Shortly

after, the FBI conducted a similar successful operation against the French

Embassy cipher machine in Washington.

Tordella wanted desperately to develop a Radiations Operations

Committee of his own with NSA in control, and in October 1961 he

invited Hugh Alexander, Hugh Denham, Ray Frawley, and me to

Washington, along with Christopher Phillpotts, the MI6 Station Chief,

for a special conference to discuss the British cipher breakthroughs.

He also invited the CIA and FBI in the hope that by listening to our

descriptions of the work of ROC, they would appreciate the benefits

of closer cooperation.

I realized from the start that this conference was a priceless opportunity

for Britain's Secret Services to redeem themselves in the eyes

of the entire American intelligence establishment. The CIA was, by

1961, the dominant intelligence voice in Washington, and although

powerful figures there viewed the Anglo-American intelligence alliance

as a sentimental luxury in an increasingly unsentimental Cold War, I

was confident that if we could demonstrate to them at working level

the technical advances made since 1956, we would convince them we

were worth cultivating.

Hugh Alexander knew, as I did, that we were taking a gamble.

There were no guarantees that the Americans would tell us anything

in return at the conference; indeed, it was likely they would not. There

were obvious security considerations, too. But the potential gains were

enormous. At the very least, we could remove the shadow cast over

Anglo-American intelligence relations since the Philby/Burgess/

Maclean affair. More important than that, Hugh Alexander had plans

for developing the cipher-breaking side of ROC, and I for developing

the counterespionage side, which would be possible only with the resources

and backing of the Americans. As with the development of the

atomic bomb in World War II, we needed to persuade the Americans

to fund our ideas into reality. In the long run we would gain the benefits,

as the intelligence would flow back to us through the GCHQ/NSA

exchange agreement.

The conference was held in specially swept rooms inside NSA

headquarters at Fort Meade, Maryland--a vast glasshouse surrounded

by electric wire fences, and topped with the tangled arthritic stems of

F

SPYCATCHER 147

hundreds of aerials and receiver dishes, linking it to the hundreds of

NSA listening posts dotted around the world. Louis Tordella and his

top cryptanalyst, Art Levinson, attended for NSA. The FBI sent Dick

Millen and Lish Whitman; the CIA was represented by Jim Angleton

and a bull-like man named Bill Harvey, who had recently returned to

Washington to run Staff D, after running the Berlin Tunnel operation.

Harvey was already a living legend in the CIA for his hard drinking

and his cowboy manners. He began his career handling Soviet counterespionage

for the FBI, until Hoover sacked him for drunkenness. He

promptly took his invaluable FBI knowledge and put it to work for the

fledgling CIA, becoming along with Angleton one of the most influential

American operators in the secret war against the KGB. Through most

of the 1950s he served in Berlin, running agents, digging tunnels, and

taking the battle to the Soviets wherever possible. For him, the Cold

War was as real as if it had been hand-to-hand combat. But for all his

crude aggression, Harvey was smart, with a nose for a spy. It was he

who first fingered Philby in the USA after the defection of Burgess and

Maclean. Harvey had amazing recall for the details of defections and

cases decades before, and it was he, before anyone else, who put together

the contradictory strands of the MI6 man's career. While others

paused for doubt, Harvey pursued Philby with implacable vengeance,

and the incident left him with a streak of vindictive anti-British sentiment.

The five-day conference began inauspiciously. Tordella was anxious

for a free exchange of ideas, and discussed one or two laboratory

experiments NSA was conducting into possible ways of breaking embassy

ciphers in Washington, remarking pointedly that in view of the

FBI charter, they were unable to go beyond the experimental stage.

The CIA and FBI boys were uneasily silent, neither wanting to discuss

technical developments in front of the other, or the NSA, or in the

CIA's case, in front of us. Angleton took copious notes, while Harvey

slumped in his chair with ill-concealed hostility, occasionally snoring

loudly, particularly after lunch.

"The Company [the CIA] is here in a listening capacity only," he

snapped on the first morning. "We do not discuss our secrets in open

session!"

Things began to improve when I read a long paper describing the

success of engulf against the Egyptians, and the advances we had made

since then on the radio illumination of cipher noises and what could

be achieved aurally, using our new range of microphones. I went on

L

148 PETER WRIGHT

to give the details of stockade, and at last discussion began to flow

Even Harvey shifted in his seat and began to listen.

On the third day Richard Helms, then CIA Director of Plans, took

the chair for a discussion about ways in which these new techniques

could be applied to Russian ciphers. I argued strongly that we had to

predict the next generation of cipher machines the Russians would

develop, and begin work immediately trying to crack them. The nonscientists

present were skeptical, but I pointed out that we had done

just this during the war at the Admiralty Research Laboratory, when

we predicted the new generation of German torpedoes and mines, and

were able to counter them as soon as they came into operation. By the

end of the discussion, NSA and GCHQ had committed themselves to

begin work against the new Russian "Albatross"-class cipher machine.

Hugh Alexander was much more interested in the implications for

cryptanalysis of the new generation of computers being developed in

America. He was obsessed by the Ergonomic Theory, which held that

the production of truly random numbers, even electronically as in a

cipher machine, was a mathematical impossibility. Alexander believed

that if sufficiently powerful computers could be developed, no code,

no matter how well enciphered, would be safe, and for the next decade

a vast -joint research program began to investigate the whole area.

(According to a 1986 report in the Guardian newspaper, advances in

Ergonomic Theory since 1980 have revolutionized cryptanalysis in the

way Alexander predicted.)

As expected, the CIA told us next to nothing about the state of

their technical intelligence. They gave the impression that we were not

to be trusted with their secrets, but we suspected there were probably

other reasons for their reticence. Harvey's Staff D was almost certainly

a department designed to bypass the terms of the UKUSA agreement,

which specified the total exchange of sigint intelligence between NSA

and GCHQ. If the Americans wanted to mount a cipher attack and

did not wish to share the product with us, or if they wanted to operate

against the UK, or a Commonwealth country, as we were sure they

were doing, Staff D was the obvious place from which to do it.

Nevertheless, the conference was a milestone in Anglo-American

intelligence relations. For the first time in a decade, all six intelligence

services sat down and discussed at length how they could cooperate on

a wide variety of problems. Major joint research programs were launched,

particularly in the computer field, and we had taken a first step in

breaking down the walls of mistrust.

r

SPYCATCHER 149

Before I left London, Arthur Martin had arranged for me to brief

the CIA on the technical side of the Lonsdale case and, in particular,

the development of rafter. There was some embarrassment about this

in Leconfield House because, although we had informed the FBI about

rafter from the beginning, the CIA knew nothing. Hollis agreed that

they should be indoctrinated fully as soon as the Lonsdale case was

concluded, particularly since it had been their information from Sniper

which led us to Lonsdale in the first place. The briefing was scheduled

after the end of Tordella's conference, and it was held in one of the

huge Nissen huts the CIA occupied temporarily next to the reflecting

pool in the center of Washington while their Langley headquarters were

under construction. I was taken through into a large conference room

by Jim Angleton, and shown to a podium in front of at least two hundred

CIA officers.

"Are you sure all these people are sigint indoctrinated?" I hissed

at Angleton.

"Just tell the story, Peter, and let us handle the security," he

replied. "There's a lot of people want to hear this!"

I stood up nervously and, fighting my stutter by speaking slowly

and deliberately, began to describe the beginnings of the Lonsdale case.

After an hour I turned to the blackboard to explain the complicated

technical details of active rafter.

"Of course, from our point of view, rafter represents a major

new counterespionage weapon. We are now in the position to establish

without question when Soviet agents in the field are receiving clandestine

broadcasts from Moscow, and moreover we can use it to detect

the frequency of their transmissions ..."

rafter was not well received. At first it was just a rustle; then I

noticed a couple of people talking to each other in the front row with

more than usual animation. I knew something was wrong when I caught

sight of Harvey sitting at one side of the stage. He was leaning over in

front of Angleton, gesticulating angrily in my direction.

"Are there any questions?" I asked, unsure of what was upsetting

my audience.

"Yes!" yelled someone at the back. "When the hell did you say

you developed this rafter?"

"Spring 1958."

"And what the hell date is it today . . . ?"

I stuttered, momentarily lost for words.

"I'll tell you," he shouted again, "it's 1961!"

150 PETER WRIGHT

"Hell of a way to run an alliance," yelled someone else.

I sat down sharply. People began to leave. There were no more

questions.

Angleton and Harvey came up afterward. There was no disguising

Harvey's rage.

"Look, Peter," said Jim, trying hard to be urbane, "this whole

subject needs a lot more discussion, and I really don't feel it's appropriate

to continue it in such a large forum. Bill and I would like you

to have dinner with us tonight. We'll arrange somewhere secure, where

we can talk."

He hustled me away before Harvey could speak.

Joe Burk, Angleton's technical man, collected me from my hotel

that evening. He had little to say, and it looked to me as if those were

his orders. We crossed the George Washington Bridge, passed Arlington

cemetery, and drove out into the Virginia countryside.

"The new headquarters," said Burk, pointing to the right.

There was nothing but trees and gathering darkness.

After an hour's drive, we arrived at a detached timber-framed

house set well back from the road. At the back was a large veranda

with a table and chairs, completely enclosed with fly netting. It was a

warm, humid, late-summer evening. The scent of pine and the sound

of crickets floated down from the foothills of the Appalachians. Angleton

came out on the veranda and greeted me coolly.

"Sorry about this afternoon," he said, but offered no explanation.

We sat down at the table and were joined by the head of the CIA's

West European Division. He was polite but nothing more. After a few

minutes another car drew up at the front of the house with a squeal of

brakes. Doors slammed, and I heard the sound of Bill Harvey's voice

inside the house asking where we were. He threw back the flimsy metal

mosquito door, and emerged onto the veranda clutching a bottle of

Jack Daniel's. He had obviously been drinking.

"Now you limey bastard," he roared, smashing the bottle down

on the table, "let's have the truth about this case!"

I knew immediately it was a setup. Normally Harry Stone would

accompany me to any serious discussion of MI5 business, but he was

in the hospital recovering from a heart attack.

"This is most unfair, Jim, I thought this was a dinner party," I

said, turning to Angleton.

"It is, Peter," he said, pouring me a massive Scotch in a cut-glass

tumbler.

I

SPYCATCHER 151

"I'm not going to be browbeaten," I replied flatly.

"No, no," said Angleton quietly, "we just want to hear it again . . .

from the beginning. There's a lot of things we've got to get straight."

I went over the Lonsdale story a second time, and by the time I

finished Harvey could contain himself no longer.

"You untrustworthy motherfuckers!" he spat at me. "You come

over here and ask for us to pay for your research, and all the time

you've got a thing like rafter up your sleeve ..."

"I don't see the problem . . ."

"You don't see shit!"

Harvey spun open the second bottle of Jack Daniel's.

"The problem, Peter, is our operations," said Angleton. "A hell

of a lot of our agents use HF radio receivers, and if the Soviets have

got rafter, a lot of them must be blown ..."

"Have the Soviets got it?" asked Angleton.

"Not at first, but I'm sure they have now," I said, quoting a recent

case where an MI6 Polish source inside the UB described a joint Polish-Soviet

espionage investigation. Toward the end, when they were closing

in on the suspect agent, the KGB brought a van up to the apartment

building where the spy lived. The UB, according to the MI6 source,

were never allowed to see inside the van, but he knew enough to guess

that it had something to do with radio detection.

"Jesus Christ," hissed Harvey, "that's our whole Polish setup

lost . . . I"

"But we sent those source reports to your Polish section," I said.

"Whoever the agent was, he wasn't one of ours, so we assumed it must

have been one of yours. It should at least have warned you that radio

communications to Poland were vulnerable."

"We'll check it in the morning," said the head of the West European

Division, looking flushed.

"Who else knows about rafter?" asked Harvey.

I told him we briefed the FBI and the Canadian RCMP fully as

our development progressed.

"The Canadians!" exploded Harvey, thumping the table in anger.

"You might as well tell the fuckin' Papuans as the Canadians!"

"I'm afraid we don't see it like that. The Canadians are trusted

members of the Commonwealth."

"Well, you should tell them to get another cipher machine," he

said, as Angleton, fearful that Harvey in his rage would spill out the

secrets of Staff D, kicked him hard under the table.

152 PETER WRIGHT

The argument raged on and on; the intimidation was obviously

carefully planned. They wanted to make me feel guilty, to say something

indiscreet I might regret later, to tell them more than I should. We

gave you Sniper, they said, and look what you do in return. We agree

to plow millions of dollars into research for you, and how do you repay

us? Harvey cursed and raged about every weakness, every mistake,

every piece of carelessness that the Americans had overlooked since

the war: Philby, Burgess, Maclean, the lack of leadership, the amateurism,

the retreat from Empire, the encroachment of socialism. An-gleton

lectured me darkly on the need to respect American superiority

in the alliance if we wanted access to their sources.

"Just remember," roared Harvey, "you're a fuckin' beggar in this

town!"

I rolled with the punches. Yes, we had a poor record on counterespionage,

but Arthur was back now, and Lonsdale was just the beginning.

No, we had no obligation to tell you about rafter from the

beginning. It was our secret to do with as we judged fit.

"I've come over here and just given you my life's work--engulf,

stockade, rafter--everything. You sat opposite me for five days at

NSA and told me nothing. Where's the exchange in that? The truth is,

you're just pissed off because we stole a march on you . . . I"

Harvey was all puffed out and purple like a turkeycock, sweat

pouring off his temples, his jacket open to reveal a polished shoulder

holster and pistol, his gross belly heaving with drink. It was now four

o'clock in the morning. I had had enough for one night, and left. I told

Angleton that the program for the next day was off. I took a poor view

of what had happened. It was up to them to make the peace.

The next day Angleton called on me at my hotel, unannounced.

He was charming, and full of apologies. He blamed the previous night's

scene on Harvey.

"He drinks too much, and thinks you have to give a guy a hard

time to get the truth. He believes you now. He sees you as a threat,

that's all."

He invited me out for dinner. At first I was wary, but he said he

understood my point of view, and hoped I understood his, and talked

enthusiastically about his plans to help with resources. The tension soon

disappeared. He offered to take me to see Louis Tordella to persuade

him to help with the counterespionage side of ROC, and the following

day sent a car to take me down to Fort Meade. Technically, I was not

SPYCATCHER 153

supposed to visit NSA without being accompanied by someone from

GCHQ, so I was taken into the side entrance, and whisked up to

Tordella's office on the top floor. We had lunch there, and I outlined

the Lonsdale case for the third time.

At the end Tordella asked how he could help, and I explained that

the main weakness was that despite the breakthrough offered by my

classification of illegal broadcasts from Moscow, GCHQ had insufficient

coverage of the traffic. There had been substantial improvements since

Lonsdale, but we still had only between twelve and fifteen radio positions

intercepting these signals, which meant we were really only

sampling them. We needed at least 90 percent of the take to make real

progress on the classifications. Tordella was much taken with the possibilities,

and agreed to guarantee a worldwide take of 100 percent for

at least two years. He was as good as his word, and soon the intelligence

was flooding back to GCHQ, where it was processed by the section

supporting the Counterclan Committee. A young GCHQ cryptanalyst

named Peter Marychurch (now the Director of GCHQ) transformed

my laborious handwritten classifications by processing the thousands of

broadcasts on computer and applying "cluster analysis" to isolate similarities

in the traffic, which made the classifications infinitely more

precise. Within a few years this work had become one of the most

important tools in Western counterespionage.

On the drive back to Washington I was elated. Not only had my

visit to Washington secured American backing for the engulf side of

ROC's work, but I had their commitment to run the counterespionage

side as well. I had almost forgotten the run-in with Harvey until Angle

ton brought the subject up again.

"Harvey wants to see you again."

I expressed astonishment.

"No, no--he wants to ask your advice. He's got a problem in

Cuba, and I told him you might be able to help."

"But what about the other night?" I asked.

"Oh, don't worry about that. He just wanted to know whether

you could be trusted. You passed the test."

Angleton was typically elliptical, and refused to explain further,

saying that he had arranged lunch with Harvey in two days' time, and

I would find out more then.

The year 1961 was the height of the CIA's obsession with Cuba.

The Bay of Pigs invasion had recently failed, and Angleton and I reg

154 PETER WRIGHT

ularly discussed the subject, since I had been heavily involved in MI5'S counterinsurgency campaign against the Greek Cypriot guerrilla leader

Colonel Grivas, in the 1950s. When I visited Washington in 1959, Ri^'

ard Helms and Richard Bissel, in charge of operations in Southeast

Asia, asked me to lecture on my experiences to a group of senior officers

concerned with counterinsurgency. Even then it was obvious the CIA

had plans in Cuba, where Fidel Castro was busy establishing a Communist

state. Bissell subsequently took over the running of the Bay of

Pigs operation, but when it failed it was common knowledge in Washington

that his days were numbered, as the Kennedys purged all those

responsible for the Cuban fiasco.

When I arrived at the restaurant two days later, Harvey stood up

to greet me and gave me a firm handshake. He looked well scrubbed

and less bloated than usual, and made no reference to the events of

two nights before. He was a hard man, who gave and expected no

quarter. He told me that he was studying the Cuban problem, and

wanted to hear from me about the Cyprus campaign.

"I missed your briefing in 1959," he said, without a trace of irony.

I first became involved in Cyprus shortly after I joined MI5, when

the Director of E Branch (Colonial Affairs), Bill Magan, sent me some

papers on the escalating conflict. The Greek Cypriot Archbishop Ma-karios

was leading a vigorous campaign for full independence, supported

by the Greek Government, the AKEL Communist Party, and

EOKA, the guerrilla army led by Colonel Grivas. Britain, anxious to

retain Cyprus as a military base, was resisting, and by 1956 a full-scale

military emergency was in force, with 40,000 British troops pinned down

by a few hundred Grivas guerrillas.

British policy in Cyprus was an utter disaster. The Colonial Office

was trying to pursue political negotiations in a deteriorating security

situation, relying on the Army to keep order. Grivas needed to be

located, isolated, and neutralized before political negotiations stood a

chance, but although the Army launched massive searches, they failed

to find him. I was convinced, studying the papers, that MI5 could do

far better than the Army, and I told Magan I was confident that, given

time, we could locate Grivas accurately by tracing his communications

in the same way I planned our attacks against the Russians.

Magan immediately took me to see Sir Gerald Templar, who led

the successful counterinsurgency campaign in Malaya, and was a great

advocate of the use of intelligence to solve colonial problems. Templar

was enthusiastic about my plan and agreed to lobby the Colonial Office

SPYCATCHER 155

on MI5's behalf. But the Colonial Office remained adamant; they wanted

to pursue their own security policy, and had no wish to involve MI5.

There was no great enthusiasm, either, inside MI5 for becoming embroiled

in what was fast becoming an insoluble situation. Hollis, in

particular, was opposed to becoming involved in Colonial Affairs without

a clear invitation from the Ministry. His attitude was that MI5 was

a domestic organization, and while he would provide a Defense Liaison

Officer to advise the Army, that was all.

In 1958, Grivas stepped up his guerrilla campaign in an effort to

thwart the determined efforts to achieve a political solution being made

by the new Governor, Sir Hugh Foot. The Army launched another

massive search for Grivas, this time in the Paphos mountains, but once

again he slipped through the net. Foot continued to press for a political

solution, but agreed to call in MI5 as the situation was rapidly deteriorating.

From the start we were in a race: could we find Grivas before

the Colonial Office stitched up a ramshackle deal?

Magan was convinced that sufficient intelligence about Grivas'

location must exist in the files of the local Special Branch, and that it

had just not been interpreted correctly. The problem was how to get

at it. EOKA had thoroughly penetrated the local Special Branch, and

studying the files would be a dangerous business once an MI5 man's

identity became known. One of our officers had already been shot in

the high street of Nicosia.

Magan was a remarkable man who had spent a great deal of time

on the North-West Frontier and in Persia, where he lived by himself

with the natives in tents, speaking their languages and cooking his meals

on cow dung fires. He knew at first hand the dangers of terrorism, and

rather than delegate the dangerous mission to a junior officer, he insisted

that he go himself, supported by the local Cyprus liaison officer,

Colonel Philip Kirby Green, a tall soldierly officer of boundless courage

and rectitude who was also a distinguished painter in his spare time. I

was to follow shortly afterward to plan and execute the technical side

of the operation, which was given the code name sunshine.

It would be too crude to say that sunshine was an assassination

operation. But it amounted to the same thing. The plan was simple:

to locate Grivas, and bring up a massive concentration of soldiers. We

knew he would never surrender, and like two of his trusted lieutenants

who had recently been cornered by the Army, he would die in the

shootout.

I arrived in Nicosia on January 17,1959, and went to Special Branch

156

PETER WRIGHT

headquarters to study Magan's analysis of the files. Grivas' campaign

was clearly well organized. There were numerous examples of well-coordinated

terrorist strikes and civil disturbances across the whole

island. He had therefore to be in regular communication with his field

officers. It was unlikely that EOKA would use either the telephone or

the postal system for these, even though they had both been thoroughly

penetrated. Communications rested on a system of couriers, and from

studying the files it was obvious these were mainly women, traveling

on the public transport system. We plotted each sighting and interception,

and the overall pattern showed Limassol to be the hub of the

EOKA communications network. There were also clusters of sightings

in the Yerasa and Polodhia villages, several miles from Limassol. The

best hypothesis was that Grivas maintained headquarters in each of

these villages.

I he first step was to place a secure telephone tap on Makarios'

palace. We were certain that Makarios, and probably EOKA at certain

times, used the line secure in the knowledge that their post office spies

would automatically alert them to the presence of a tap.

We decided to place a concealed tap on one of the overhead cables

leading into the palace, using a radio transmitter which took power

from the telephone circuit to radiate the signal out to our waiting receiver

a mile or two away. John Wyke, MI6's best technical operator,

and the man who actually placed the taps inside the Berlin Tunnel,

with the Vopos' feet just inches above his head, came out to help me.

The whole operation was fraught with danger. Wyke had to climb a telephone pole in total darkness, in full view of the road, which was

constantly patrolled by Makarios' armed bodyguards and EOKA guerrillas.

He bored a hole in the top of the pole to conceal the electronics,

and made a concealed connection to the telephone cable. Down at the

bottom I selected his tools and relayed them up to him. Every five

minutes we froze as a patrol came past, expecting at any moment to

hear rifle fire. Two hours later, our nerves frayed, the tap was successfully

installed, and gave us the essential base coverage of Makarios.

But the real purpose of sunshine was to find Grivas. I was sure

he must be using radio receivers to monitor British Army communications,

and was aware every time an effort was mounted to search for

him. I decided on a two-pronged attack. Firstly we would search intensively

for the aerial which he used with his receiver. Then, simultaneously,

I planned to plant a radio receiver on him containing a radio

beacon, which would lead us right to him. We knew Grivas obtained

SPYCATCHER 157

a great deal of his military supplies from the Egyptians, who were selling

off British equipment they had confiscated after the Suez war at knockdown

prices. MI6 recruited a Greek Cypriot arms dealer, who purchased

a consignment of receivers in Egypt which I modified to include a beacon, and we set about trying to feed it into Grivas' headquarters.

The first part of Operation sunshine went well. K.G., as Kirby

Green was universally known in the Service, Magan, and I made a

series of dawn reconnoiters of the Limassol area looking for the aerial.

It was dangerous work, meandering down dusty side streets and across

the sunbaked market squares, pretending to be casual visitors. Old men

under wicker shades looked at us as we passed. Small boys eyed us

suspiciously and disappeared down alleys. I felt the sweat dripping down

my back, and the uncanny sensation of an unseen rifle permanently

trained on me from somewhere behind the terra-cotta roofs and ancient

flint walls.

In Yerasa I noticed a spike on the peak of the pyramid-shaped

roof of a church. It appeared, at first sight, to be a lightning conductor,

mounted on an insulator going through the roof. There was also a

metallic strip going down into the ground, but when I scrutinized the

conductor carefully through field glasses, I could see that the strip was

disconnected from the spike. It was obviously modified to act as an

aerial. Rather foolishly, we tried to get closer, and, from nowhere, an

angry crowd of local children emerged and began to stone us. We beat

a hasty retreat, and made our way over to Polodhia, where there was

a similar setup. I was sure then that we had been right to pinpoint the

two villages as the center of Grivas' operations.

I began to work feverishly on the radio beacons. We estimated

that sunshine would take six months to complete, but just as we moved

into top gear, in late February 1959, the Colonial Office hurriedly settled

the Cyprus problem at a Constitutional Conference at Lancaster House.

The carpet was roughly pulled from under our feet, and the entire

sunshine plan aborted overnight. Magan was furious, particularly when

Grivas emerged from the precise area we had foreseen and was flown

to Greece, ready to continue to exert a baleful influence on the island.

Magan felt the settlement was at best temporary, and that few of the

outstanding problems had been resolved. In his view, Colonial Office

short-term expediency would lead to long-term misery. He has been

proved right.

Shortly before we left Cyprus, Magan and I had a strained encounter

with the Governor, Sir Hugh Foot. He was pleased that at last

158 PETER WRIGHT

he was extricated, and made it clear that he had always seen sunshine

as a last resort solution, to be implemented only in the event of the

failure of diplomacy. He seemed incapable of understanding that intelligence,

to be effective, has to be built into diplomacy from the start

Looking back, I am certain that, had we been allowed to implement

Operation sunshine when we first lobbied for it, in 1956, we could

have neutralized Grivas at the outset. The Colonial Office, rather than

EOKA, would then have been able to dictate the terms of the peace,

and the history of that tragic but beautiful island might have taken a

different course over the past thirty years.

The entire Cyprus episode left a lasting impression on British colonial

policy. Britain decolonized most successfully when we defeated

the military insurgency first, using intelligence rather than force of arms,

before negotiating a political solution based on the political leadership

of the defeated insurgency movement, and with British force of arms

to maintain the installed government. This is basically what happened

in Malaya and Kenya, and both these countries have survived intact.

The fundamental problem was how to remove the colonial power

while ensuring that the local military forces did not fill the vacuum.

How, in other words, can you create a stable local political class? The

Colonial Office were well versed in complicated, academic, democratic

models:--a constitution here, a parliament there--very few of which

stood the remotest chance of success. After the Cyprus experience I

wrote a paper and submitted it to Hollis, giving my views. I said that

we ought to adopt the Bolshevik model, since it was the only one to

have worked successfully. Lenin understood better than anyone how

to gain control of a country and, just as important, how to keep it.

Lenin believed that the political class had to control the men with the

guns, and the intelligence service, and by these means could ensure

that neither the Army nor another political class could challenge for

power.

Feliks Dzerzhinsky, the founder of the modern Russian Intelligence

Service, specifically set up the CHEKA (forerunner of the KGB)

with these aims in mind. He established three main directorates--the

First Chief Directorate to work against those people abroad who might

conspire against the government; the Second Chief Directorate to work

against those inside the Soviet Union who might conspire; and the Third

Chief Directorate, which penetrated the armed forces, to ensure that

no military coup could be plotted.

My paper was greeted with horror by Hollis and the rest of the



¦1

SPYCATCHER 159

MI5 Directors. They told me it was "cynical," and it was never even

passed to the Colonial Office, but looking back over the past quarter

of a century, it is only where a version of Lenin's principles has been

applied in newly created countries that a military dictatorship has been

avoided.

These ideas were also hotly contested by the CIA when I lectured

to them in 1959. Helms told me flatly I was advocating Communism

for the Third World. He felt that we had a decisive intelligence advantage

which they lacked. We were the resident colonial power, whereas

in the insurgencies which they faced in the Far East and Cuba, they

were not, and therefore they felt the only policy they could pursue was

a military solution. It was this thinking which ultimately led the USA

into the Vietnam War.

More immediately, it led them into the Bay of Pigs, and when,

two years later, Harvey listened to my Cyprus experiences, he was

struck by the parallel between the two problems: both small islands

with a guerrilla force led by a charismatic leader. He was particularly

struck by my view that without Grivas, EOKA would have collapsed.

"What would the Brits do in Cuba?" he asked.

I was a shade anxious about being drawn into the Cuban business.

Hollis and I had discussed it before I came to Washington, and he made

no secret of his view that the CIA were blundering in the Caribbean.

It was a subject, he felt, to steer clear of if at all possible. I was worried

that if I made suggestions to Angle ton and Harvey, I would soon find

them being quoted around Washington by the CIA as the considered

British view of things. It would not take long for word of that to filter

back to Leconfield House, so I made it clear to them that I was talking

off the record.

I said that we would try to develop whatever assets we had down

there--alternative political leaders, that kind of thing.

"We've done all that," said Harvey impatiently, "but they're all

in Florida. Since the Bay of Pigs, we've lost virtually everything we had

inside ..."

Harvey began to fish to see if I knew whether we had anything in

the area, in view of the British colonial presence in the Caribbean.

"I doubt it," I told him, "the word in London is steer clear of

Cuba. Six might have something, but you'd have to check with them."

"How would you handle Castro?" asked Angleton.

"We'd isolate him, turn the people against him . . ."

"Would you hit him?" interrupted Harvey.

¦R 160 PETER WRIGHT

I paused to fold my napkin. Waiters glided silently from table to

table. I realized now why Harvey needed to know I could be trusted

"We'd certainly have that capability," I replied, "but I doubt we

would use it nowadays."

"Why not?"

"We're not in^-it anymore, Bill. We got out a couple of years ago

after Suez."

At the beginning of the Suez Crisis, MI6 developed a plan, through

the London Station, to assassinate Nasser using nerve gas. Eden initially

gave his approval to the operation, but later rescinded it when he got

agreement from the French and Israelis to engage in joint military

action. When this course failed, and he was forced to withdraw, Eden

reactivated the assassination option a second time. By this time virtually

all MI6 assets in Egypt had been rounded up by Nasser, and a new

operation, using renegade Egyptian officers, was drawn up, but it failed

lamentably, principally because the cache of weapons which had been

hidden on the outskirts of Cairo was found to be defective.

"Were you involved?" Harvey asked.

"Only peripherally," I answered truthfully, "on the technical side."

I explained that I was consulted about the plan by John Henry and

Peter Dixon, the two MI6 Technical Services officers from the London

Station"responsible for drawing it up. Dixon, Henry, and I all attended

joint MI5/MI6 meetings to discuss technical research for the intelligence

services at Porton Down, the government's chemical and biological

Weapons Research Establishment. The whole area of chemical research

was an active field in the 1950s. I was cooperating with MI6 in a joint

program to investigate how far the hallucinatory drug lysergic acid

diethylamide (LSD) could be used in interrogations, and extensive trials

took place at Porton. I even volunteered as guinea pig on one occasion.

Both MI5 and MI6 also wanted to know a lot more about the advanced

poisons then being developed at Porton, though for different reasons.

I wanted the antidotes, in case the Russians used a poison on a defector

in Britain, while MI6 wanted to use the poisons for operations abroad.

Henry and Dixon both discussed with me the use of poisons against

Nasser, and asked my advice. Nerve gas obviously presented the best

possibility, since it was easily administered. They told me that the

London Station had an agent in Egypt with limited access to one of

Nasser's headquarters. Their plan was to place canisters of nerve gas

inside the ventilation system, but I pointed out that this would require

large quantities of the gas, and would result in massive loss of life among

SPYCATCHER 161

Nasser's staff. It was the usual MI6 operation--hopelessly unrealistic-- and it did not remotely surprise me when Henry told me later that

Eden had backed away from the operation. The chances of its remaining

undeniable were even slimmer than they had been with Buster Crabbe.

Harvey and Angleton questioned me closely about every part of

the Suez Operation.

"We're developing a new capability in the Company to handle

these kinds of problems," explained Harvey, "and we're in the market

for the requisite expertise."

Whenever Harvey became serious, his voice dropped to a low

monotone, and his vocabulary lapsed into the kind of strangled bureaucratic

syntax beloved of Washington officials. He explained ponderously

that they needed deniable personnel, and improved technical

facilities--in Harvey jargon, "delivery mechanisms." They were especially

interested in the SAS. Harvey knew that the SAS operated up

on the Soviet border in the 1950s tracking Russian rocket signals with

mobile receivers before the satellites took over, and that they were

under orders not to be caught, even if this meant fighting their way out

of trouble.

"They don't freelance, Bill," I told him. "You could try to pick

them up retired, but you'd have to see Six about that."

Harvey looked irritated, as if I were being deliberately unhelpful.

"Have you thought of approaching Stephenson?" I asked. "A lot

of the old-timers say he ran this kind of thing in New York during the

war. Used some Italian, apparently, when there was no other way of

sorting a German shipping spy. Probably the Mafia, for all I know ..."

Angleton scribbled in his notebook, and looked up impassively.

"The French!" I said brightly. "Have you tried them? It's more

their type of thing, you know, Algiers, and so on."

Another scribble in the notebook.

"What about technically--did you have any special equipment?"

asked Harvey.

I told him that after the gas canisters plan fell through, MI6 looked

at some new weapons. On one occasion I went down to Porton to see

a demonstration of a cigarette packet which had been modified by the

Explosives Research and Development Establishment to fire a dart

tipped with poison. We solemnly put on white coats and were taken

out to one of the animal compounds behind Porton by Dr. Ladell, the

scientist there who handled all MI5 and MI6 work. A sheep on a lead

was led into the center of the ring. One flank had been shaved to reveal

162 PETER WRIGHT

the coarse pink skin. Ladell's assistant pulled out the cigarette packet

and stepped forward. The sheep started, and was restrained by the

lead, and I thought perhaps the device had misfired. But then the

sheep's knees began to buckle, and it started rolling its eyes and frothing

at the mouth. Slowly the animal sank to the ground, life draining away

as the white-coated professionals discussed the advantages of the modern

new toxin around the corpse. It was the only time in my life when

my two passions, for animals and for intelligence, collided, and I knew

at that instant that the first was by far the greater love. I knew also,

then, that assassination was no policy for peacetime.

Beyond that, there was little help I could offer Harvey and An-gleton,

and I began to feel I had told them more than enough. The

sight of Angleton's notebook was beginning to unnerve me. They seemed

so determined, so convinced that this was the way to handle Castro,

and slightly put out that I could not help them more.

"Speak to John Henry, or Dixon--they'll probably know more

than me," I said when we were out on the street making our farewells.

I was due to fly back to Britain the next day.

"You're not holding out on us over this, are you?" asked Harvey

suddenly. The shape of his pistol was visible again under his jacket. I

could tell he was thinking about rafter.

I hailed a taxi.

"I've told you, Bill. We're out of that game. We're the junior

partner in the alliance, remember? It's your responsibility now."

Harvey was not the kind of man to laugh at a joke. Come to that,

neither was Angleton.

12

1961. Outside in the streets of London, people were still saying they

had "never had it so good," while in Washington a new young President

was busy creating a mythical Camelot of culture and excellence. But

in the subterranean world of secret intelligence, the shape of the tur bulent decade was already becoming clear. Throughout the 1950s

American and British services pursued the Cold War with clarity of

purpose and single-minded dedication. It was not a subtle war, and

there were precious few complications. But in the early 1960s a rash

of defectors began to arrive in the West from the heart of the Russian

intelligence machine, each carrying tales of the penetration of Western

security. Their stories were often contradictory and confusing, and their

effect was to begin the slow paralysis of British and American intelli gence as doubt and suspicion seeped through the system.

The first defector arrived in December 1961. I was in my office a

few weeks after returning from my trip to Washington when Arthur strolled in, cigarette in one hand, clutching a copy of The Times in the

other. He passed the paper to me neatly folded across the spine.

"Sounds interesting . . ." he said, pointing to a small paragraph

which referred to a Soviet Major, named Klimov, who had presented

himself to the American Embassy in Helsinki with his wife and child

and asked for asylum.

It was not long before we heard on the grapevine that Klimov was,

in fact, a KGB Major, and that he was singing like a bird. In March

1962, a frisson of excitement went around the D Branch offices. Arthur

smoked more energetically than usual, his baby face flushed with en thusiasm as he strode up and down the corridors. I knew Klimov's

information had finally arrived.

"It's the defector, isn't it?" I asked him one day.

164 PETER WRIGHT

He ushered me into his office, closed the door, and told me a little

of the story. "Klimov," he said, was in reality Anatoli Golitsin, a high-ranking

KGB officer who had worked inside the First Chief Directorate,

responsible for operations against the UK and the USA, and the Information

Department in Moscow, before taking a posting in Helsinki.

In fact, Golitsin had been on a previous CIA watch list during an earlier

overseas tour, but he was not recognized under the cover of his new

identity until he presented himself in Helsinki.

After the initial debriefing, the CIA sent to MI5 a list of ten "serials,"

each one itemizing an allegation Golitsin had made about a

penetration of British Security. Arthur initially held the complete list.

Patrick Stewart, the acting head of D3 (Research), conducted a preliminary

analysis of the serials, and drew up a list of suspects to fit each

one. Then individual serials were apportioned to different officers in

the Dl (Investigations) section for detailed investigation, and I was

asked to provide technical advice as the investigations required.

Three of the first ten serials immediately struck a chord. Golitsin

said that he knew of a famous "Ring of Five" spies, recruited in Britain

in the 1930s. They all knew each other, he said, and all knew the others

were spies. But Golitsin could identify none of them, other than the

fact that one had the code name Stanley, and was connected with recent

KGB operations in the Middle East. The lead perfectly fitted Kim

Philby, who was currently working in Beirut for the Observer newspaper.

He said that two of the other five were obviously Burgess and

Maclean. We thought that a fourth might be Sir Anthony Blunt, the

Surveyor of the Queen's Pictures, and a former wartime MI5 officer

who fell under suspicion after the Burgess and Maclean defections in

1951. But the identity of the fifth was a complete mystery. As a result

of Golitsin's three serials concerning the Ring of Five, the Philby and

Blunt cases were exhumed, and a reassessment ordered.

The two most current and precise leads in those first ten serials

were numbers 3 and 8, which referred to Naval spies, indicating, as

with Hough ton, the importance the Russians attached to obtaining

details of the British and NATO submarine and antisubmarine capability.

Serial 3 was a recruitment allegedly made in the British Naval

Attache's office in the Embassy in Moscow, under the personal supervision

of General Gribanov, Head of the Second Chief Directorate,

responsible for internal intelligence operations in the Soviet Union. A

Russian employee of the British Embassy named Mikhailski had been

involved in the operation, and the spy provided handwritten notes of

SPYCATCHER 165

the secret documents which passed across his desk. Then, in 1956, said

Golitsin, the spy returned to London to work in the Naval Intelligence

Department, and his KGB control passed to the Foreign Operations

Department.

The second Naval spy, Serial 8, was a more senior figure, according

to Golitsin. Golitsin claimed to have seen numbered copies of three

NATO documents, two of which were classified Top Secret. He had

seen them by accident while working on the NATO desk of the KGB

Information Department, which prepared policy papers for the Politburo

on NATO matters. Golitsin was in the middle of preparing a

report on NATO naval strategy, when three documents came in from

London. Normally all material reaching Golitsin was bowdlerized, in

other words rewritten to disguise its source, but because of the urgency

of his report, he was provided with the original document copies. The

CIA tested Golitsin on his story. The three documents in question,

detailing plans to expand the Clyde Polaris submarine base, and the

reorganization of NATO naval dispositions in the Mediterranean, were

shown to him, mixed up with a sheaf of other NATO documents. He

immediately identified the correct three, and even explained that the

Clyde document he saw had four sets of numbers and figures for its

circulation list, whereas the copy we showed him had six sets. When

the original circulation list was checked, it was found that such a copy

had indeed existed but we were unable to find it. Patrick Stewart analyzed

the circulation of the three documents, and a senior Naval Commander,

now retired, appeared as the only credible candidate. The case

was handed over to DI (Investigations).

Within months of Golitsin's arrival, three further sources in the

heart of the Soviet intelligence machine suddenly, and apparently independently,

offered their services to the West. The first two, a KGB

officer and a GRU officer, both working under cover in the Soviet

delegation to the UN, approached the FBI and offered to act as agents

in place. They were given the code names Fedora and Top Hat. The

third walk-in occurred in Geneva in June 1962. A senior KGB officer,

Yuri Nossenko, contacted the CIA and offered his services.

Nossenko soon gave a priceless lead in the hunt for the British

Naval spies. He claimed that the Gribanov recruitment had been obtained

through homosexual blackmail, and that the agent had provided

the KGB with "all NATO" secrets from a "Lord of the Navy." The

combination of NATO and the Gribanov recruitment led MI5 to combine

the two serials 3 and 8. There was one obvious suspect, a clerk in

166 PETER WRIGHT

Lord Carrington's office, John Vassall. Vassall had originally been placed

at the top of Patrick Stewart's preliminary list of four Serial 3 suspects

but when the case was handed over to the investigating officer, Ronnie

Symonds, Symonds had contested Stewart's assessment. He felt that

Vassall's Catholicism and apparent high moral character made him a

less serious suspect. He was placed at the bottom of the list instead.

After attention focused on him strongly following Nossenko's lead, it

was soon established that Vassall was a practicing homosexual, who

was living way beyond his means in a luxury flat in Dolphin Square.

MI5 faced the classic counterespionage problem. Unlike any other crime,

espionage leaves no trace, and proof is virtually impossible unless a spy

either confesses or is caught in the act. I was asked if there was any

technical way we could prove Vassall was removing documents from

the Admiralty. I had been experimenting for some time with Frank

Morgan on a scheme to mark classified documents using minute quantities

of radioactive material. The idea was to place a Geiger counter

at the entrance of the building where the suspected spy was operating

so that we could detect if any marked documents were being removed.

We tried this with Vassall, but it was not a success. There were too

many exits in the Admiralty for us to be sure we were covering the one

which Vassall used, and the Geiger counter readings were often distorted

by luminous wristwatches and the like. Eventually the scheme

was scrapped when fears about the risks of exposing people to radiation

were raised by the management.

I looked around for another way. It was obvious from the CIA

tests that Golitsin had a near-photographic memory, so I decided to

make another test, to see if he could remember any details about the

type of photographic copy of the NATO documents he had seen. Through

this it might be possible to deduce whether he was handing over originals

for them to copy and return to him. I made twenty-five photographs

of the first page of the Clyde Base NATO document, each one corresponding

to a method we knew the Russians had in the past recommended

to their agents, or which the Russians themselves used inside

the Embassy, and sent them over to Golitsin via the CIA. As soon as

Golitsin saw the photographs he picked out the one which had been

taken with a Praktina, illuminated at each side by two anglepoise lamps.

Armed with this knowledge, we arranged to burgle Vassall's flat when

he was safely at work. Hidden in a drawer at the bottom of a bureau

we found a Praktina document-copying camera, and a Minox as well.

That evening he was arrested, permission for a search warrant having

f

SPYCATCHER 167

been obtained, and his apartment was stripped bare. In the base of a

corner table a secret drawer was found which contained a number of

exposed 35mm cassettes, which were developed to reveal 176 classified

documents. Vassall swiftly confessed to having been homosexually compromised

in Moscow in 1955, and was convicted and sentenced to

eighteen years in prison.

As the intelligence from the throng of new defectors was being

pieced together in London and Washington, I faced a personal crisis

of my own. The Lonsdale case reawakened the whole issue of technical

resources for MI5 and MI6. Although the AWRE program which I and

Frank Morgan designed in 1958 had been an outstanding success, little

else had changed. The attempt to satisfy Intelligence Service needs

within the context of the overall defense budget had failed, especially

in the advanced electronics field. We were moving rapidly into a new

era of satellite and computer intelligence, and when the Radiations

Operations Committee was split into Clan and Counterclan, it was

obvious that the scale and range of their operations would require a

far more intensive degree of technical and scientific research and development

than had hitherto been possible. Everyone realized at last

that the old ad hoc system which I had struggled to change since 1958

would have to be comprehensively reformed. Both MI5 and MI6 needed

their own establishments, their own budgets, and their own staffs. Shortly

after the Lonsdale case I approached Sir William Cook again with the

approval of both Services, and asked him to make a thorough review

of our requirements. We spent several days together visiting the various

defense establishments which were currently servicing us, and he wrote

a detailed report, one of the most important in postwar British Intelligence

history.

The essence of Cook's report was that the Hanslope Communications

Center, the wartime headquarters of the Radio Security Service,

and since then the MI6 communications center for its overseas agent

networks, should be radically expanded to become a research establishment

servicing both MI5 and MI6, with special emphasis on the

kinds of advanced electronics necessary in both the Clan and the Counterclan

committees. Cook recommended that the new staff for Hanslope

should be drawn from the Royal Naval Scientific Service. This was, to

me, the most important reform of all. Since joining MI5 I had lobbied

to remove the artificial barrier which separated the technical divisions

of the Intelligence Services from the rest of the scientific Civil Service.

This barrier was wholly damaging; it deprived the Intelligence Services

168 PETER WRIGHT

of the best and the brightest young scientists, and on a personal level

meant that I had to forfeit nearly twenty years of pension allocation

earned in the Admiralty, in order to accept MI5's offer to work for

them. I pressed Cook continually on this point during the time he was

writing his report, and he recognized that my arguments were correct

As a result of his report fifty scientists were transferred to Hanslope

with their pensions intact, and with the option of transferring back if

they so wished at a future date. Since I was the first scientist, I was not

covered by these new arrangements, although I was not at the time

unduly worried. I believed that when the time came the Service would

as they promised, make some recompense. Unfortunately, my trust was

sadly misplaced.

There was one further Cook recommendation. He wanted MI5

and MI6 to set up a joint headquarters staff in separate accommodation,

controlled by a Chief Scientist, to plan and oversee the new research

and development program for both services. It was a bold new move,

and I confess I wanted the job more than anything in the world. I felt,

in truth, that I had earned it. Most of the technical modernization which

had occurred since 1955 was largely at my instigation, and I had spent

long years fighting for budgets and resources for both Services. But it

was not to be. Victor Rothschild lobbied vigorously on my behalf, but

Dick White told him that the animosity inside MI6 stimulated by his

own transfer from MI5 was still too great to hope to persuade his senior

technical staff to serve under any appointee from MI5. In the end the

situation was resolved at a meeting of the Colemore Committee. When

Cook's conclusions were discussed, Hector Willis, the head of the Royal

Naval Scientific Service, volunteered there and then to fill the post of

Chief of the new Directorate of Science, resigning from the RNSS to

do it, and Hollis and White, aware of the bureaucratic influence Willis

would bring with him, gratefully accepted. I became the joint deputy

head of the Directorate, along with Johnny Hawkes, my opposite number

in MI6, who ran Hanslope for MI6, and developed the MI6 Rockex

cipher machine.

Willis and I knew each other well. He was a pleasant North countryman,

small, almost mousy, with white hair and black eyebrows. He

always dressed smartly, with pepper-and-salt suits and stiff collars. I

had worked under him during the war on a leader cable scheme and

antisubmarine warfare. He was a good mathematician, far better than

I, with first-rate technical ingenuity. But although we were both essentially

engineers, Willis and I had diametrically opposed views about the

SPYCATCHER 169

way the new Directorate should be run. I saw the scientist/engineer's

role in intelligence as being a source of ideas and experiments which

might or might not yield results. Whatever success I had achieved since

1955 was obtained through experimentation and improvisation. I wanted

the Directorate to be a powerhouse, embracing and expanding the kinds

of breakthroughs which had given us the Radiations Operations Committee.

Willis wanted to integrate scientific intelligence into the Ministry

of Defense. He wanted the Directorate to be a passive organization: a

branch of the vast inert defense-contracting industry, producing resources

for its end users on request. I tried to explain to Willis that

intelligence, unlike defense contracting, is not peacetime work. It is a

constant war, and you face a constantly shifting target. It is no good

planning decades ahead, as the Navy do when they bring a ship into

service, because by the time you get two or three years down the track,

you might find your project leaked to the Russians. I cited the Berlin

Tunnel--tens of millions of dollars poured into a single grandiose project,

and later we learned it was blown to the Russians from the beginning

by the Secretary of the Planning Committee, George Blake. I

agreed that we had to develop a stock of simple devices such as microphones

and amplifiers, which worked and which had a fair shelf life,

but I opposed the development of sophisticated devices which more

often than not were designed by committees, and which would probably

be redundant by the time they came to fruition, either because the

Russians learned about them or because the war had moved onto different

territory.

Willis never understood what I was driving at. I felt he lacked

imagination, and he certainly did not share my restless passion for the

possibilities of scientific intelligence. He wanted me to settle down,

forget the kind of life I had lived thus far, put on a white coat and

supervise the rolling contracts. I was forced to leave Leconfield House

and move into the Directorate's headquarters offices at Buckingham

Gate. The latter part of 1962, coming so soon after the excitements

and achievements of 1961, was undoubtedly the most unhappy period

in my professional life. For seven years I had enjoyed a rare freedom

to roam around MI5 involving myself in all sorts of areas, always active,

always working on current operations. It was like swapping the trenches

for a spell in the Home Guard. As soon as I arrived in the new offices,

I knew there was no future there for me. Cut off from Leconfield House

I would soon perish in the airless, claustrophobic atmosphere. I decided

to leave, either to another post in MI5 if the management agreed, or

170 PETER WRIGHT

to GCHQ, where I had been making some soundings, if they did not.

Arthur was terribly considerate at this time. He knew that I was

chafing over at Buckingham Gate, and he used every excuse he could

to involve me in the ongoing work with Golitsin. During spring 1962

he paid a long visit to Washington and conducted a massive debriefing

of the KGB Major. He returned with a further 153 serials which merited

further investigation. Some of the serials were relatively innocuous, like

his allegation that a then popular musical star had been recruited by

the Russians because of his access to London high society. Others were

true but we were able to satisfactorily account for them, like the baronet whom Golitsin claimed had been the target for homosexual blackmail,

after the KGB photographed him in action in the back of a taxi. The

baronet was interviewed, admitted the incident, and satisfied us that

he had refused to bend to the KGB ploy. But the vast majority of

Golitsin's material was tantalizingly imprecise. It often appeared true

as far as it went, but then faded into ambiguity, and part of the problem

was Golitsin's clear propensity for feeding his information out in dribs

and drabs. He saw it as his livelihood, and consequently those who had

to deal with him never knew, when they were pursuing a particularly

fruitful-looking lead, whether the defector had more to tell them.

I was asked to help with one of the strangest Golitsin serials which

ran into the dust at this time, the Sokolov Grant affair. In many ways

it was typical of the difficulties we faced in dealing with his debriefing

material. Golitsin said that a Russian agent had been introduced into

Suffolk next to an airfield which had batteries of the latest guided

missiles. He was sure the agent was a sleeper, probably for sabotage

in the event of an international crisis. We contacted the RAF and pinpointed

Stretteshall, near Bury St. Edmonds, as the most likely airfield.

We then checked the electoral roll in the area around Stretteshall

to see if we could find anything interesting. After a few days we came

across a Russian name, Sokolov Grant. We cross-checked with the

Registry and found that he had a file. He was a Russian refugee who

had arrived in Britain five years before, married an English girl, and

taken up farming on rented land near the airfield.

The case was handed over to Charles Elwell for investigation.

Letter and telephone checks were installed and inquiries made with the

local police, which drew a blank. I was asked to make a search of his

house, when Sokolov Grant and his wife went up north for a holiday,

to see if there was any technical evidence which might incriminate him.

I drove up to Bury St. Edmonds with John Storer, a short, gray-haired,

SPYCATCHER 171

smiling man from GCHQ's M Division who worked on Counterclan,

arranging the rafter plane flights, and analyzing the rafter signals.

Sokolov Grant lived in a pretty Queen Anne red-brick farmhouse which

was in a state of some disrepair. From the back garden you could see

the end of the runway stretching across the swaying fields of barley.

The scene seemed so perfect, so idyllic, it was hard to be suspicious.

But that was the thing which always struck me about espionage: it was

always played out in such ordinary humdrum English scenes.

John Storer went off to search the farm buildings for signs of

clandestine radio systems, while I slipped the catch and went inside the

house. The house was unbelievably untidy. All along the corridors and

passageways piles of junk lined the walls. Books were stacked up in

mounds in the downstairs rooms. At first I thought perhaps they were

moving house, until I noticed the thick layer of dust on top of everything.

In the backroom study stood two desks side by side. The one

on the left was a huge roll-top desk crammed so full that it could not

be closed. The one on the right was a small bureau. I opened the flap,

and it was completely empty. I slid the drawers out. They were empty

too, with not a trace of dust. The whole thing had obviously been

emptied recently. I sat for a moment in a polished Windsor chair staring

at the two desks, trying to make sense of one so full and the other so

empty. Had the contents of one been transferred into the other? Or

had one been emptied, and if so why? Was it suspicious, or was it just

what it seemed--an empty desk in a junk-infested house?

I made a start on the papers in the other desk, but they were mostly

farm business. John Storer found nothing outside, and we left. To search

the place properly would have taken twenty men a week. In the end

Charles Elwell went up to see Sokolov Grant and asked a few questions

in the village. He came back satisfied that he was in the clear. He was

popular locally, and his wife was the daughter of the local squire. We

assumed Golitsin had seen Sokolov Grant's name on a KGB watch list,

marked down as someone they contemplated approaching but never in

fact did.

Shortly afterward Sokolov Grant and his wife left the area. Our

inquiries had probably leaked in the village, and he presumably wanted

to make a new start. But for all its apparent meaninglessness the Sokolov

Grant story has always had symbolic importance to me: an ordinary

man suddenly falling under suspicion, and just as abruptly cleared

again, his life utterly changed because of something a man he has never

met says in a darkened room on the other side of the world. The quiet

172 PETER WRIGHT

rural world of Suffolk colliding with the secret world of betrayal, where

there is no such thing as coincidence, and where suspicion can be fueled

at the sight of an empty desk.

The most tightly held of all Golitsin's serials were those which

suggested a penetration of MI5. I first learned of them from Arthur

shortly after he returned from Washington. Golitsin said that he had

seen the special safe in KGB headquarters where documents from British

Intelligence were stored. He had seen the index to the documents

stored in the safe, and he was positive that very recent material from

MI5 was in there. He also claimed the KGB had acquired a document

from British Intelligence which they called the "Technics" Document:

a thick document listing technical equipment for British Intelligence.

He was unable to study it closely, as he was only called in to see if he

could translate a small passage from it. But it was obviously an important

document, as there was great urgency in obtaining the translation.

He said that security arrangements were different in the London

Embassy. There was no special security officer (known as the "SK"

officer [Soviet Kolony]). Golitsin assumed none was needed because

the penetration of MI5 was so complete. Then there was the Crabbe

Affair. He said the KGB got advance warning of Crabbe's mission

against the cruiser Ordzhonikidze.

In August 1962, as MI5 were busy digesting the mass of Golitsin

material, we had a major breakthrough with the three original Philby

serials. Victor Rothschild met Flora Solomon, a Russian emigre Zionist,

at a party at the Weizmans' house in Israel. She told him that she was

very indignant about articles Philby had written in the Observer which

were anti-Israel. She then confided that she knew Philby to have been

a secret agent since the 1930s. With great difficulty, Victor managed

to persuade her to meet Arthur Martin in London, to tell him her story.

I was asked to microphone Victor's flat, where the interview was to

take place. I decided to install temporary SF, which made Victor

nervous.

"I don't trust you buggers to take the SF off!" he told me, and

made me promise to personally supervise the installation and its removal.

Victor was always convinced that MI5 were clandestinely tapping

him to find out details of his intimate connections with the Israelis,

and his furtiveness caused much good-humored hilarity in the office.

But I gave Victor my word and met the Post Office technicians in the

afternoon before the interview, carefully checking as they modified the

SPYCATCHER 173

telephone receiver. Later, when the interview was finished, I solemnly

watched while they removed the washer again.

I monitored the interview back at Leconfield House on the seventh

floor. Flora Solomon was a strange, rather untrustworthy woman, who

never told the truth about her relations with people like Philby in the

1930s, although she clearly had a grudge against him. With much persuasion,

she told Arthur a version of the truth. She said she had known

Philby very well before the war. She had been fond of him, and when

he was working in Spain as a journalist with The Times he had taken

her out for lunch on one of his trips back to London. During the meal

he told her he was doing a very dangerous job for peace--he wanted

help. Would she help him in the task? He was working for the Comintern

and the Russians. It would be a great thing if she would join the

cause. She refused to join the cause, but told him that he could always

come to her if he was desperate.

Arthur held back from quizzing her. This was her story, and it

mattered little to us whether she had, in reality, as we suspected, taken

more than the passive role she described during the 1930s. Every now

and then she became agitated.

"I will never give public evidence," she said in her grating voice.

"There is too much risk. You see what has happened to Tomas since

I spoke to Victor," she said, referring to the fact that one of Philby's

friends, Tomas Harris, the art dealer, had recently died in a mysterious

car accident in Spain.

"It will leak, I know it will leak," she would screech, "and then

what will my family do?"

But although she professed fear of the Russians, she seemed to

have ambivalent feelings toward Philby himself. She said she still cared

for him, and then later rambled on about the terrible way he treated

his women. Although she never admitted it, I guessed from listening

to her that she and Philby must have been lovers in the 1930s. Years

later she was having her revenge for the rejection she felt when he

moved into a new pair of sheets.

Armed with Golitsin's and Solomon's information, both Dick White for MI6 and Roger Hollis agreed that Philby should be interrogated

again out in Beirut. From August 1962 until the end of the year, Evelyn

McBarnet drew up a voluminous brief in preparation for the confrontation.

But at the last minute there was a change of plan. Arthur was

originally scheduled to go to Beirut. He had pursued the Philby case

174 PETER WRIGHT

from its beginning in 1951, and knew more about it than anyone. But

he was told that Nicholas Elliott, a close friend of Philby's, who had

just returned from Beirut where he had been Station Chief, would go

instead. Elliott was now convinced of Philby's guilt, and it was felt he

could better play on Philby's sense of decency. The few of us inside

MI5 privy to this decision were appalled. It was not simply a matter of

chauvinism, though, not unnaturally, that played a part. We in MI5

had never doubted Philby's guilt from the beginning, and now at last

we had the evidence we needed to corner him. Philby's friends in MI6,

Elliott chief among them, had continually protested his innocence.

Now, when the proof was inescapable, they wanted to keep it in-house.

The choice of Elliott rankled strongly as well. He was the son of the

former headmaster of Eton and had a languid upper-class manner. But

the decision was made, and in January 1963 Elliott flew out to Beirut,

armed with a formal offer of immunity.

He returned a week later in triumph. Philby had confessed. He

had admitted spying since 1934. He was thinking of coming back to

Britain. He had even written out a confession. At last the long mystery

was solved.

Many people in the secret world aged the night they heard Philby

had confessed. I was nearly forty-five. It is one thing to suspect the

truth; it is another to hear it from a man's lips. Suddenly there was

very little fun in the game anymore; a Rubicon had been crossed. It

was not the same as catching Lonsdale; that was cops and robbers. To

find that a man like Philby, a man you might like, or drink with, or

admire, had betrayed everything; to think of the agents and operations

wasted: youth and innocence passed away, and the dark ages began.

A few days later Arthur stopped me in the corridor. He seemed

strangely calm, for such a tense, almost hyperactive man. It was almost

as if he had seen a bad road accident.

"Kim's gone," he said quietly.

"Good God, how . . . ?"

Arthur smiled weakly. "It's just like 1951, when the boys went . . ."

Philby's defection had a traumatic effect on morale inside the senior

echelons of MI5. Until then, theories about the penetration of MI5 had

been nursed secretly; afterward they became openly expressed fears.

It seemed so obvious that Philby, like Maclean before him in 1951, had

been tipped off by someone else, a fifth man, still inside. And of course,

the possibility of a fifth man chimed completely with Golitsin's evidence

about a Ring of Five. Burgess, Maclean, Philby, almost certainly Blunt,

SPYCATCHER 175

and a fifth. Someone who survived 1951, who stayed on undetected,

who even now was watching the crisis unfold.

Hugh Winterborn and I often talked about the subject. He was

convinced that we were penetrated at a high level.

"I just can't believe we are as apparently incompetent as we appear

to be," he used to say.

Operation choir, where we found the Russians had blocked up

the pinhole for our probe microphone, had a major effect on his thinking,

and even eight years later he used to talk animatedly about it.

There were other incidents, too, which made him suspicious. We installed

SF on the Chinese Embassy telephones, and almost immediately

the Russians went around and took it out. Then there was the Falber

Affair. After the party piece operation, MI5 went on the hunt for the CPGB files which listed the secret payments made to the Party by the

Soviets. We suspected that perhaps they might be held in the flat of

Reuben Falber, who had recently been made cashier of the Russian

funds. Falber is a prominent CPGB member, so when he advertised

for a tenant to live in the flat on the ground floor of his house, we

installed an agent there. Almost immediately, as we were planning to

burgle the flat above, the agent was evicted by Falber, who gave no

reason for the eviction.

But as a wave of anxiety passed through Leconfield House, I was

still marooned inside the Directorate of Science. I decided to make my

own freelance inquiries. Over a period of months I slowly drew out

files from the Registry. First I took out the files for the microphoning

operations I had been involved with in the mid-1950s--Operation choir

in London, dew worm and pig root in Canada, all of which went

inexplicably wrong, and mole in Australia. I examined the cases carefully.

Each had failed, and although complicated hypotheses to explain

each failure could be adduced, the possibility that each had been blown

by a spy inside MI5 was also a serious one. Then there were the cases

which preoccupied Winterborn. Again, alternative explanations could

be found. Maybe we had been clumsy. Maybe Falber just guessed the

identity of our agent, but I find it very difficult to believe. A leak was

just as possible. Next I pulled out the files on each of the double-agent

cases I had been involved with during the 1950s. There were more than

twenty in all. Each one was worthless. Of course, our tradecraft and

Watcher radios were mainly to blame, but the Tisler affair had left a

nagging doubt in the back of my mind. The Lulakov-Morrow test did

not exclude the possibility of a human source beyond the monitoring

176 PETER WRIGHT

of our Watcher radios. Then there was Lonsdale, and lastly Philby

Again the same pattern. Not one single operation had succeeded as

planned, and all had some degree of evidence of Russian interference

There is a point in any mystery when the shape of the answer

becomes suddenly clear. Over those unhappy months in Buckingham

Gate, in the winter of 1962-63 as I pored through the files, back-checking

and cross-checking the complex details of nearly eight years

of frantic work, it all became suddenly very obvious. What until then

had been a hypothesis, became an article of faith. There was a spy; the

only question was who? More weeks were spent laboriously checking

the dates when files were signed off and on, when access began and

when it ended. And always it came down to the same five names: Hollis,

Mitchell, Cumming, Winterborn at a stretch, and I myself. I knew it

wasn't me; Hugh Winterborn never really fitted, and I knew it could

not be him; Cumming I dismissed from the start. He would never have

had the subtlety to carry it off. Which left Hollis and Mitchell. Was it

Hollis, the aloof, pedestrian autocrat with whom I enjoyed a civil but

distant relationship? Or Mitchell, his deputy, a man I knew less well?

There was a secretiveness about him, a kind of slyness which made him

avoid eye contact. He was a clever man, clever enough to spy. I knew

my choice would be based on prejudice, but in my mind I plumped for

Mitchell:

Early in 1963 I realized that one of the two men knew what I was

doing. When I began my private investigations, I used to place the files

in my safe on top of minute pencil marks, so that I could tell if they

were being moved. One morning I came in, and they had been moved.

Only two men had access to my safe: the Director-General and the

Deputy, who retained copies of all combinations. The shadows were

gathering; treachery stalked the corridors.

After Philby's defection Arthur became curiously distant. I could

see he was preoccupied, but he deftly turned aside all attempts by me

to find out what he was doing. I spent several evenings with him at his

flat near Euston Station, and although we discussed Golitsin in general

terms, he refused to be drawn out on what further inquiries he was

making. Convinced that I might be sacked at any moment, or at least

removed from access in some way, I began to make excuses to visit

Arthur's office after hours, bringing with me files which I had used in

my freelance examination of thirty-eight cases.

"Do you think that's significant?" I would ask, drawing his attention

to a small ambiguity in the handling of a double-agent case, or an

SPYCATCHER 177

unexplained termination of a microphoning case. Arthur invariably

gazed silently at whatever it was I showed him, thanked me, and said

nothing more. Finally one night Arthur said to me, "You know who

it is, don't you, Peter?"

I said, "Well, it's either Roger or Graham."

He said that he was carrying out an investigation of Mitchell. He

told me that he thought there had been a leak which had led to Philby's

defection. He too had come to the conclusion that it was either Roger

or Graham but he did not know which, so after Philby defected he had

gone to Dick White and put the whole problem to him. Dick was his

mentor, the man who gave him his head in the late 1940s, and Arthur

never forgot the debt he owed. Dick asked him to come back and see

him the next day when he had had time to think about it. This Arthur

did. Dick had been very sensible. He was sure Roger could not be a

spy, but he felt it was possible of Mitchell. He advised Arthur to tell

Hollis of his fears, and as a result Hollis instructed Arthur to begin an

investigation of the Deputy Director-General. He had been doing this

for a short time until he and I exchanged ideas.

"How long have you been worried about this?" he asked.

"Since Tisler . . ."

Arthur opened his desk drawer and pulled out a small bottle of

Scotch. He poured us both a small measure in his coffee cups.

"Have you told Roger?"

I told him that I had raised the issue twice before, once after Tisler,

and once after Lonsdale. Both times I had been stifled. He seemed

surprised.

"I suppose you've guessed what I'm doing . . . ?"

"It's Mitchell, isn't it?"

"Somebody told Kim when to run," he said, hardly answering my

question, "I'm sure of it. Only someone in Graham's place could have

known enough to do it . . ."

He told me that after Philby defected he went to see Dick White

to tell him about his suspicion that either Hollis or Mitchell was a spy.

It was a natural thing for Arthur to do.

Arthur told me to see Hollis myself.

"Tell him we've talked, and that I suggested you see him. It's the

only way."

I rang up to Hollis' office, and to my surprise got an almost immediate

appointment. I took the lift to the fifth floor and waited for

the green light to flash above his door. I was shown in by his secretary.

178 PETER WRIGHT

Hollis was sitting upright at his desk under the bay window, working

on a single file, a line of pencils on one side, each one carefully sharp,

ened to a precise point. I advanced until I was standing a few feet from

the other side of the desk. He did not look up. I waited for almost a

minute in silence while Hollis' predecessors gazed balefully out at me

from the wall. Still I waited. Still his pen scratched at the file.

"How can I help you, Peter?" he asked at length.

At first I stuttered badly. The last hour had been a strain.

"I've been talking with Arthur Martin, sir."

"Oh?" There was no trace of surprise in his voice.

"I have let my hair down about my worries ..."

"I see . . ."

Still he worked on.

"I have done another analysis, sir, and he said I should come and

show it to you."

"Take it over to the table, will you . . ."

I retreated back across the room, and sat at the huge polished

conference table. Hollis joined me, and began to read in silence. Occasionally

he queried a point in my analysis. But I could sense that

today he was no opposition. It was almost as if he were expecting me.

"Did you know he's retiring in six months?" he asked when he

had finished reading.

"Mitchell?" I asked, in genuine confusion. As far as I knew, he

had at least a couple of years to go.

"He asked for it a while ago," said Hollis. "I can't change it now.

I'll give you that long to prove it. You can join Martin, and I'll square

it with Willis."

He handed me the file back.

"I don't have to tell you that I don't like it. You know that already.

Not one word of this investigation is to leak out, understood?"

"Yes, sir!"

"You'll need to know Mitchell's background," he said, as he returned

to his desk and pencils. "I'll arrange for Arthur to have his

Record of Service."

"Thank you, sir."

He was already writing again as I went out.

i ¦I

13

As soon as I joined the Mitchell case, I was indoctrinated into the

greatest counterintelligence secret in the Western world--the venona

codebreak. To understand what venona was, and its true significance,

you have to understand a little of the complex world of cryptography.

In the 1930s, modern intelligence services like the Russian and the

British adopted the one-time code pad system of communications. It

is the safest form of encipherment known, since only sender and receiver

have copies of the pad. As long as every sheet is used only once and

destroyed, the code is unbreakable. To send a message using a onetime

pad, the addresser translates each word of the message into a four-figure

group of numbers, using a codebook. So if the first word of the

message is "defense," this might become 3765. The figure 3765 is then

added to the first group on the one-time pad, say 1196, using the

Fibonacci system, which makes 4851. It is, in effect, a double encipherment.

(The Fibonacci system is also known as Chinese arithmetic,

where numbers greater than 9 are not carried forward. All cipher systems

work on the Fibonacci system, because carrying numbers forward

creates nonrandom distribution.)

The venona codebreak became possible because during the early

years of the war the Russians ran short of cipher material. Such was

the pressure on their communications system that they made duplicate

sets of their one-time pads and issued them to different embassies in

the West. In fact, the chances of,compromising their communications

were slim. The number of messages being transmitted worldwide was vast, and the Russians operated on five channels--one for Ambassadorial

communications, one for the GRU, another for the Naval GRU,

a fourth for the KGB, and lastly a channel for trade traffic connected

with the vast program of military equipment passing from West to East

180 PETER WRIGHT

during the war, which on its own comprised about 80 percent of total

Russian messages. A set of pads might be issued to the KGB in Washington

for their communications with Moscow, and its duplicate might

be the trade traffic channel between Mexico and Moscow.

Shortly after the end of the war a brilliant American cryptanalyst

named Meredith Gardner, from the U.S. Armed Forces Security Agency

(the forerunner of the NSA), began work on the charred remains of a

Russian codebook found on a battlefield in Finland. Although it was

incomplete, the codebook did have the groups for some of the most

common instructions in radio messages--those for "Spell" and "End-spell."

These are common because any codebook has only a finite

vocabulary, and where an addresser lacks the relevant group in the

codebook--always the case, for instance, with names--he has to spell

the word out letter by letter, prefixing with the word "Spell," and ending

with the word "Endspell" to alert his addressee.

Using these common groups Gardner checked back on previous

Russian radio traffic, and realized that there were duplications across

some channels, indicating that the same one-time pads had been used.

Slowly he "matched" the traffic which had been enciphered using the

same pads, and began to try to break it. At first no one would believe

him when he claimed to have broken into the Russian ciphers, and he

was taken seriously only when he got a major breakthrough in the

Washington-to-Moscow Ambassadorial channel. He decrypted the English

phrase "Defense does not win wars!" which was a "Spell/Endspell"

sequence. Gardner recognized it as a book on defense strategy published

in the USA just before the date the message was sent. At this

point, the Armed Forces Security Agency shared the secret with the

British, who at that time were the world leaders in cryptanalysis, and

together they began a joint effort to break the traffic, which lasted forty

years.

Operation bride (as it was first known) but later drug and venona,

as it was known in Britain, made painfully slow progress. Finding matches

among the mass of traffic available took time enough. But even then

there was no certainty the messages on each side of the match could

be broken. The codebook was incomplete, so the codebreakers used

"collateral" intelligence. If, for instance, they found a match between

the Washington-to-Moscow KGB channel and the New York-to-Moscow

trade channel, it was possible to attack the trade channel by using

"collateral," information gathered from shipping manifests, cargo records,

departure and arrival times, tide tables, and so forth, for the date

SPYCATCHER 181

of the message. This information enabled the codebreakers to make

estimates of what might be in the trade traffic. Once breaks were made

in one side of a match, it provided more groups for the codebook, and

helped make inroads on the other side.

The British and Americans developed a key device for expanding

the venona breaks. It was called a "window index." Every time a word

or phrase was broken out, it was indexed to everywhere else it appeared

in the matched traffic. The British began to index these decrypts in a

more advanced way. They placed two unsolved groups on each side of

the decrypted word or phrase and after a period of time these window

indexes led to repetitions, where different words which had been broken

out were followed by the same unsolved group. The repetition often

gave enough collateral to begin a successful attack on the group, thus

widening the window indexes. Another technique was "dragging." Where

a "Spell/Endspell" sequence or name came up, and the cryptanalysts

did not know what the missing letters of the spelled sequence were,

the groups were dragged, using a computer, across the rest of the

channels, and out would come a list of all the repeats. Then the cryptanalysts

would set to work on the reverse side of the repeat matches,

and hope to attack the "Spell/Endspell" sequence that way.

It was an imperfect art, often moving forward only a word or two

a month, and then suddenly spilling forward, like the time the Americans

found the complete text of a recorded speech in the Washington

Ambassadorial channel. Often terrible new difficulties were encountered:

one-time pads were used in unorthodox ways, up and down, or

folded, which made the process of finding matches infinitely more problematic.

There were difficulties, too, with the codebooks. Sometimes

they changed, and whereas the Ambassadorial, GRU, and trade channels

used a straightforward alphabetically listed codebook, rather like

a dictionary, so that the codebreakers could guess from the group where

in the codebook it appeared, the KGB used a special multivolume

random codebook which made decrypting matched KGB channels a

mindbending task. The effort involved in venona was enormous. For

years both GCHQ and NSA and MI5 employed teams of researchers

scouring the world searching for "collateral"; but despite the effort less

than 1 percent of the 200,000 messages we held were ever broken into,

and many of those were broken only to the extent of a few words.

But the effect of the venona material on British and American

intelligence was immense, not just in terms of the counterintelligence

received, but in terms of the effect it had on shaping attitudes in the

182 PETER WRIGHT

secret world. By the late 1940s enough progress was made in the New

York/Moscow and Washington/Moscow KGB channels to reveal the

extent of massive Russian espionage activity in the USA throughout

and immediately after the war. More than 1200 cryptonyms littered the

traffic, which, because they were frequently part of "Spell/Endspell"

sequences, were often the easiest things to isolate in the traffic, even

if they could not be broken. Of those 1200, more than 800 were assessed

as recruited Soviet agents. It is probable that the majority of these were

the low-level contacts which are the staple currency of all intelligence

networks. But some were of major importance. Fourteen agents appeared

to be operating in or close to the OSS (the wartime forerunner

of the CIA), five agents had access, to one degree or another, to the

White House, including one who, according to the traffic, traveled in

Ambassador Averill Harriman's private airplane back from Moscow to

the USA. Most damaging of all, the Russians had a chain of agents

inside the American atomic weapons development program, and another

with access to almost every document of importance which passed

between the British and U.S. governments in 1945, including private

telegrams sent by Churchill to Presidents Roosevelt and Truman.

Using leads in the decrypted traffic, some of these cases were

solved. Maclean was identified as one of the sources of the Churchill

telegrams, and many others besides; Klaus Fuchs and the Rosenbergs

were unmasked as some of the nuclear spies; while comparison of

geographical clues in the decrypts with the movements of Alger Hiss,

a senior U.S. State Department official, over a lengthy period made

him the best suspect as the agent on Harriman's plane. But despite

frenzied counterintelligence and cryptanalytical effort, most of the cryptonyms

remain today unidentified.

In Britain the situation was equally grim, but with one major difference.

Whereas the Americans had all the Soviet radio traffic passing

to and from the USA during and after the war, in Britain Churchill

ordered all anti-Soviet intelligence work to cease during the wartime

alliance, and GCHQ did not begin taking the traffic again until the very

end of the war. Consequently there was far less traffic, and only one

break was made into it, for the week September 15 to September 22,

1945, in the Moscow-to-London KGB channel.

There was a series of messages sent to a KGB officer in the London

Embassy, Boris Krotov, who specialized in running high-grade agents.

The messages came at a time of some crisis for the Russian intelligence

services in the West. A young GRU cipher clerk in the Russian Embassy



L

SPYCATCHER 183

in Canada, Igor Gouzenko, had just defected, taking a mass of material

incriminating spies in Canada and the USA, and in Britain a nuclear

spy, Alan Nunn May. Most of the messages to Krotov from Moscow

Center concerned instructions on how to handle the various agents

under his care. Eight cryptonyms were mentioned in all, three of which

were referred to as the "valuable argentura [spy ring] of Stanley, Hicks,

and Johnson," two who were routinely referred to together as David

and Rosa, and three others. By the end of the week's traffic all contact

with the eight spies had been put on ice, and reduced to meetings,

except in special circumstances, of once a month.

When I was indoctrinated into venona, I remember my first sight

of the GCHQ copies of the Moscow-to-London KGB channel. Every

time GCHQ broke a few more words in a message, they circulated to

the very few users drop copies of the new decrypt. The copies were

stamped top secret umbra venona, and listed the addresser and addressee,

the date and time of the message, the channel and direction

(for instance, KGB Moscow/London), and the message priority (whether

it was routine or urgent). Underneath would be something like this:

TEXT OF MESSAGE

YOUR COMMUNICATION OF 74689 AND 02985 47199 67789 88005 62971 CONCERNING

SPELL HICKS ENDSPELL 55557 81045 10835 68971 71129

EXTREME CAUTION AT PRESENT TIME 56690 12748 92640 00471 SPELL

STANLEY ENDSPELL 37106 72885 MONTHLY UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE.

SIGNATURE OF MESSAGE

(This is not a verbatim decrypt; merely a very close approximation

to the kind of challenge we were faced with.)

venona was the most terrible secret of all; it was incomplete. It

was obvious from the decrypts that each of the eight cryptonyms was

an important spy, both from the care the Russians were taking to protect

them all in September 1945, and because we knew that Krotov specialized

in that type of agent. But there was precious little evidence

from the traffic which could help us identify them. GCHQ circulated

only translations which they had verified, and included the verbatim

unsolved groups where they occurred, but they often attached to the

copy a separate page of notes giving possible translations of the odd

group, which had not yet been verified. Often a message would be

repeated several times, as more groups were got out, and it was re-circulated.

184 PETER WRIGHT

Stanley, we were sure, must be Philby. Golitsin had heard the code

name Stanley, and associated it with KGB operations in the Middle

East, but there was no proof of this in the traffic. Hicks, therefore, was

almost certainly Burgess because of the reference to the argentura, and

because of a veiled reference to Hicks' temperament. Johnson was

probably Blunt, although again there was no proof of it in the traffic.

But the identity of the five other spies remained a mystery. Maclean

was obviously not one of these, since he was in Washington in September

1945. The consequences for the Mitchell investigation were obvious.

Any one of the five unidentified cryptonyms could be the spy inside

MI5. I remember wondering, as I read the tantalizing decrypts, how

on earth anyone at the top of MI5 had slept at night in the dozen years

since they were first decrypted.

Perhaps the most extraordinary thing in the whole venona story

was the fact that it was closed down on both sides of the Atlantic in

1954. After the initial surge of activity in the late 1940s and early 1950s,

and the rash of prosecutions which followed, cryptanalytical progress

slowed to a virtual halt. Hand matching had reached the limitations of

the human brain, and computers were not then powerful enough to

take the program much further. There was another reason too; in 1948

the Russians began to alter their code procedures worldwide, removing

all duplicated pads. The last casualty of this was the Australian venona

operation, which had been making so much progress that the British

and Americans were virtually reading the Russian ciphers continuously

as the messages were produced. The Australians were never told at the

time but were brought into it some years later, although when the extent

of Soviet espionage penetration, especially of the Department of External

Affairs, became apparent, they were provided with the intelligence

in bowdlerized form, and it led to the establishment of ASIO

(Australian Security Intelligence Organization) with MI5's help.

The reason for the change in Soviet codes became apparent in the

early 1950s. The secret of the break had been leaked to the Russians

by a young Armed Services Security Agency clerk, William Weisband.

In fact, Weisband did not know the extent of the Russian mistake and

it was only when Philby was indoctrinated in 1949 that they knew the breadth of their disaster, although other people, such as Roger Hollis,

were indoctrinated in 1948, when the match suddenly ceased in Australia

after he returned from organizing the setting up of ASIO. Although

the duplicate one-time pads were withdrawn, the Russians could

do nothing to prevent the continuing work on the traffic they had

SPYCATCHER 185

already sent up until 1948. But thanks to Philby's posting to Washington

in 1949, they were able to monitor the precise progress that was being

made. Once the Russians knew the extent of the venona leak, and the

technical difficulties of finding more matches multiplied, it was only a

matter of time before priorities moved on. In 1954 most of the work

was closed down.

Years later, I arranged for Meredith Gardner to visit Britain to

help us on the British venona. He was a quiet, scholarly man, entirely

unaware of the awe in which he was held by other cryptanalysts. He

used to tell me how he worked on the matches in his office, and of how

a young pipe-smoking Englishman named Philby used to regularly visit

him and peer over his shoulder and admire the progress he was making.

Gardner was rather a sad figure by the late 1960s. He felt very keenly

that the cryptanalytical break he had made possible was a thing of

mathematical beauty, and he was depressed at the use to which it had

been put.

"I never wanted it to get anyone into trouble," he used to say. He

was appalled at the fact that his discovery had led, almost inevitably,

to the electric chair, and felt (as I did) that the Rosenbergs, while

guilty, ought to have been given clemency. In Gardner's mind, venona

was almost an art form, and he did not want it sullied by crude

McCarthyism. But the codebreak had a fundamental effect on Cold

War attitudes among those few indoctrinated officers inside the British

and American intelligence services. It became the wellspring for the

new emphasis on counterespionage investigation which increasingly

permeated Western intelligence in the decades after the first break was

made. More directly, it showed the worldwide scale of the Soviet espionage

attack, at a time when the Western political leadership was

apparently pursuing a policy of alliance and extending the hand of

friendship. In the British traffic, for instance, most of the KGB channel

during that September week was taken up with messages from Moscow

detailing arrangements for the return of Allied prisoners to the Soviet

authorities, groups like the Cossacks and others who had fought against

the Soviet Union. Many of the messages were just long lists of names

and instructions that they should be apprehended as soon as possible.

By the time I read the messages 'they were all long since dead, but at

the time many intelligence officers must have been struck by the sense

that peace had not come in 1945; a German concentration camp had

merely been exchanged for a Soviet Gulag.

In 1959, a new discovery was made which resuscitated venona

186 PETER WRIGHT

again. GCHQ discovered that the Swedish Signals Intelligence Service

had taken and stored a considerable amount of new wartime traffic,

including some GRU radio messages sent to and from London during

the early years of the war. GCHQ persuaded the Swedes to relinquish

their neutrality, and pass the material over for analysis. The discovery

of the Swedish hasp material was one of the main reasons for Arthur's

return to Dl. He was one of the few officers inside MI5 with direct

experience of venona, having worked intimately with it during the

Fuchs and Maclean investigations.

There were high hopes that hasp would transform venona by providing

more intelligence about unknown cryptonyms and, just as important,

by providing more groups for the codebook, which would, in

turn, lead to further breaks in venona material already held. Moreover,

since powerful new computers were becoming available, it made sense

to reopen the whole program (I was never convinced that the effort

should have been dropped in the 1950s), and the pace gradually increased,

with vigorous encouragement by Arthur, through the early

1960s.

In fact, there were no great immediate discoveries in the hasp

material which related to Britain. Most of the material consisted of

routine reports from GRU officers of bomb damage in various parts of

Britain, and estimates of British military capability. There were dozens

of cryptonyms, some of whom were interesting, but long since dead.

J.B.S. Haldane, for instance, who was working in the Admiralty's submarine

experimental station at Haslar, researching into deep diving

techniques, was supplying details of the programs to the CPGB, who

were passing it on to the GRU in London. Another spy identified in

the traffic was the Honorable Owen Montagu, the son of Lord Swaythling

(not to be confused with Euan Montagu, who organized the celebrated

"Man Who Never Was" deception operation during the war).

He was a freelance journalist, and from the traffic it was clear that he

was used by the Russians to collect political intelligence in the Labor

Party, and to a lesser degree the CPGB.

The extraordinary thing about the GRU traffic was the comparison

with the KGB traffic of four years later. The GRU officers in 1940 and

1941 were clearly of low caliber, demoralized and running around like

headless chickens in the wake of Stalin's purges of the 1930s. By 1945

they had given way to a new breed of professional Russian intelligence

officers like Krotov. The entire agent-running procedure was clearly

highly skilled, and pragmatic. Great care was being taken to protect

f

iL

Harold "Kim" Philby, photographed in 1955. He had been a high-level British

diplomat and a senior intelligence officer before defecting to Russia in 1963. (Courtesy The Melbourne Age)

Peter Wright, the author, photographed in retirement with his wife, Lois.

(Judy Tynan)

SPYCATCHER 187

agents for their long-term use. Where there seemed poor discipline in

the GRU procedures, by 1945 the traffic showed that control was exerted

from Moscow Center, and comparison between KGB and Ambassadorial

channels demonstrated quite clearly the importance the

KGB had inside the Russian State. This, in a sense, was the most

enduring legacy of the venona break--the glimpse it gave us of the

vast KGB machine, with networks all across the West, ready for the

Cold War as the West prepared for peace.

When I finished studying the venona material in the special secure

office where it was stored on the fifth floor, I moved into an office with

Evelyn McBarnet, Arthur's research officer, who was already busy on the

case. The Mitchell investigation came at an awkward time for D Branch.

Hollis had moved Furnival Jones from his post to become head of

C Branch, in preparation for his appointment as Deputy Director-General

on Mitchell's retirement. F.J.'s replacement was Malcolm

Cumming. It was not a popular appointment among the bright young

men of D Branch, who were laboring to build on the achievements of

the Lonsdale case. Arthur himself had hopes that he might have been

offered the job. He certainly deserved it, in terms of achievement, but

he had never been popular among the Directors for the stand he took

in the early 1950s. He was seen as truculent, temperamental, too unwilling

to tolerate fools gladly, which unfortunately was a prerequisite

for advancement in the Service. When the Mitchell investigation was

sanctioned, Hollis decided not to indoctrinate Cumming, who theoretically

was a potential suspect. Oversight of the case was given to

F.J., who supervised things from C Branch headquarters in Cork Street.

Evelyn McBarnet was a strange woman, with a large birthmark

running down one side of her face. Like a hothouse plant, she lived all

her life in the enclosed space of the office, and had no perceptible

existence outside.

"Are you a Freemason?" she asked me almost as soon as I joined

her in her office.

"No," I replied, "and I don't approve of it."

"I didn't think you looked like one, but you'd better join if you

want to be a success in this place," she told me darkly.

Evelyn had always believed'there was a penetration of MI5. She

had spent years working in counterespionage as a research officer, far

longer than Arthur or I. She was a walking compendium of office life

and a shrewd, if somewhat morbid, judge of character.

"I always knew there would have to be an investigation," she told

188 PETER WRIGHT

me, but she had a disturbing conviction that the course of the investigation

was preordained. The worst, she was sure, was yet to come.

"Arthur will never last, if he pushes this issue," she told me, "and

neither will you, if you associate yourself with him."

"What on earth do you mean, Evelyn?" I asked, in genuine surprise.

She opened her safe and pulled out a small exercise book with a

black cover.

"Read this," she told me.

I opened the book. It was neatly written in a woman's hand. I

flicked through the pages quickly. It listed details of cases from the

1940s and 1950s, some of which I knew about vaguely, and others I

did not, which the author had collated from the MI5 Registry. Each

one contained an explicit allegation about a penetration of MI5 or MI6.

"Whose is this?" I asked, aghast.

"Anne Last's, a friend of mine. She used to work with me," said

Evelyn. "She did it after Burgess and Maclean went, then she left to

have a family, you know. She married Charles Elwell. Before she left

she gave me the book, and told me that I would understand."

"Does Arthur know . . . ?"

"Of course."

"But have you shown it to anyone else?"

"And get chopped too . . . ?"

I carried on reading. Maxwell Knight's name figured frequently in

the first few pages. During the war he was convinced there was a spy

inside MIS, and had minuted to that effect, although no action was

taken. There were literally dozens and dozens of allegations. Many of

them were fanciful--offhand comments drawn from agent reports; but

others were more concrete, like the testimony of Igor Gouzenko, the

young Russian cipher clerk who defected to the Canadians in 1945, and

whose defection triggered such alarm in the single week of British

venona KGB traffic. According to Anne Last, Gouzenko claimed in

his debriefing that there was a spy code-named Elli inside MI5. He had

learned about Elli while serving in Moscow in 1942, from a friend of

his, Luibimov, who handled radio messages dealing with Elli. Elli had

something Russian in his background, had access to certain files, was

serviced using Duboks, or dead letter boxes, and his information was

often taken straight to Stalin. Gouzenko's allegation had been filed

along with all the rest of his material, but then, inexplicably, left to

gather dust.

SPYCATCHER 189

"People didn't believe him," said Evelyn, "they said he got it

wrong. There couldn't be a spy inside MI5 ..."

On the last page was what appeared to be a kind of "last will and

testament." "If MI5 is penetrated," it said, "I think it is most likely to

be Roger Hollis or Graham Mitchell."

"How the hell can we investigate these?" I gasped. "We'll have

to turn the whole place upside down to do it properly."

"That's what they said in 1951," said Evelyn bitterly.

Anne Last's book was only the first of many secrets Evelyn shared

with me over the first weeks we worked together. Gradually she filled

in much of the forgotten history of MI5, the kinds of stories you never

heard on the A2 tapes: stories of doubts and suspicions, unexplained

actions, and curious coincidences. I soon learned that I was by no means

the first person to come to suspect the office had been deeply penetrated.

The fears were as old as the office furniture.

That evening I joined the commuters thronging down Curzon Street

toward Park Lane, my head humming with what I had learned from

Evelyn. Here was a consistent unbroken pattern of allegations, each

suggesting there was a spy in the office, stretching from 1942 to the

present day. For too long they had gone uninvestigated, unchallenged.

This time the chase would be long and hard and unrelenting. I paused

to look back at Leconfield House.

"This time," I thought, "this time there will be no tip-offs, no

defections. This one will not slip away ..."

1.

14

For all my high hopes, the Mitchell investigation was a wretched affair.

It began with a row, it ended with a row, and little went right in between.

It was clear to me that to stand any chance at all of clinching the case

one way or the other before Mitchell retired, we would have to turn

on the taps, and use every technical resource at our disposal. Hollis

vehemently opposed any request for home telephone taps and the full

watching facilities, saying that he was not prepared to indoctrinate any

further MI5 officers into the case, and certainly had no intention of

approaching the Home Secretary for permission to bug or burgle his

own deputy's house.

Arthur reacted badly to the setbacks. His temper by now was on

a short fuse, and he erupted at a meeting in Hollis' office when his

precise, quiet request for facilities was refused point-blank by the

Director-General. Arthur said it was intolerable to be restricted when

such a grave issue was at stake, and threatened to approach the Prime

Minister himself to alert him to the situation. Hollis always reacted

smoothly to any threats, and merely said he noted Arthur's comment,

but that his decision stood.

"Under no circumstances will I authorize an extension of this investigation!"

Arthur stalked out of the room, obviously fully intending to carry

out his threat.

That evening Furnival Jones and I went to my club, the Oxford

and Cambridge, to try to find a way of averting catastrophe. Relations

had been swiftly deteriorating between Hollis and Arthur ever since

Cumming had been appointed to the Directorship of D Branch, and

with the Mitchell case poised so perilously, any hint of the turmoil

inside the organization would be disastrous.



L

SPYCATCHER 191

Furnival Jones was in a dreadful position. He knew as well as I

that he would be Hollis' deputy himself within a few months, yet I

could tell that he felt Hollis was indeed being obstructive.

"It'll mean the end of the Service, if Arthur does something stupid,"

said Furnival Jones gloomily into his glass.

I asked him if he could not approach Dick White privately to see

if some pressure could be exerted on Hollis to relent. Furnival Jones

looked at me almost in anguish. He could see that he was slowly being

ground between competing loyalties--to Hollis, and to those who were

conducting a very difficult and emotionally fraught inquiry. It was close

to one in the morning before we came to any firm decision. Furnival

Jones promised that he would make an appointment to see Dick White,

if I undertook to restrain Arthur from any rash course of action. I

telephoned Arthur from my club; it was late, but I knew he would be

up, brooding over a Scotch bottle. I said I had to see him that night,

and took a taxi around to his flat.

Arthur was in a truculent mood.

"I suppose you've come to tell me you've decided to throw your

hand in too!" he said acidly.

For the second time that evening I settled down to a long drinking

session, trying to talk Arthur around. He looked desperately strained.

He had been seriously overworking since before the Lonsdale case,

and was putting on weight drastically. His flesh was gray, and he was

losing his youthfulness. He railed against the obstructions that were

being put in his way. I could see that the specter of 1951 haunted him,

when he had allowed himself to be shunted out to Malaya.

"I should have fought then, but I agreed with them at the time.

It seemed best to leave it. But not this time," he said.

In the end he saw the sense of F.J.'s approach. An open breach

with Hollis would get us nowhere, and there was at least hope that

Dick would talk him around to agreeing to some of our requests for

more facilities.

The following day I got a call from F.J. He said he had spoken to

Dick, and we were all to assemble at his flat in Queen Anne's Gate on

the following Sunday afternoon.,

"He wants to see a presentation of the case, then he'll decide what

to do."

Dick White's flat backed onto MI6 headquarters in Broadway, and

I arrived there promptly at the appointed time. Dick answered the

door; he was dressed casually, with an open shirt and cravat. He showed

192 PETER WRIGHT

us into his study, an elegant book-lined room, decorated in seventeenth-century

style. Paintings from the National Gallery collection lined the

walls, and an ornamental mirror stood gleaming above the fireplace.

"Shall we have some tea?" he asked, anxious to break the tension

which was apparent on everyone's face.

"Now," he said, looking at Arthur, "I think you had better make

your case ..."

Arthur explained that I had brought my charts tabulating access

to the thirty-eight cases, and suggested that it might be better if, in the

first instance, I made the presentation. For a moment there was confusion.

The charts were too large to spread on the delicate tea table,

but Dick saw the problem.

"No, no," he said, "that's quite all right--spread them on the

floor."

Within two minutes we were sprawling across the carpet, and the

elegant Sunday-afternoon reserve was lost as we began to go through

the litany of fears once more. I explained that I had submitted two previous

papers, one on Tisler, the other on Lonsdale, but that these had

both been rejected. Dick looked at me sharply, but made no comment.

"The whole point is that we can't look at this problem piecemeal,"

I told him, "and the basis of these charts is to try to take an overall

view, to see if there is any evidence of Russian interference in the

cases ..."

"Sounds like a bad case of induction to me, but go on," said Dick

skeptically.

I went through the cases one by one, and explained how it always

came down to the same five names.

"Did you at any stage discuss this with Arthur, before you drew

this together?" he asked, looking me squarely in the eye.

"How could I? I was over in the Directorate most of the time."

Dick turned to Arthur.

"You mean to tell me that you both came to this conclusion?"

He obviously found it hard to believe.

Arthur took over and explained the problem with facilities. Dick

asked F.J., who so far had remained silent, for his opinion. He paused,

and then committed himself irrevocably.

"Roger has refused to extend the investigation. Personally, I think

it's a mistake. When you put together the lack of following with the

lack of technical aids, there really is little chance of finding an answer

to this case."

J

SPYCATCHER 193

Dick was impressed with F.J.'s sensible appraisal.

"There are two factors here," he said after thinking for a while.

"We have to do this investigation, and we have to be seen to do this

investigation, and that's almost just as important."

He told us that some changes would certainly have to be made.

He thought the investigation should be coordinated from an unofficial

house, rather than a government building, and offered us the use of

an MI6 safe house in Pavilion Road, near Sloane Square.

"I'll think overnight about what I am going to say to Roger, and

you will hear from him."

The following day F.J. informed us that Hollis had given permission

for a team of MI6 Watchers to be used on the case, although they

would still not be allowed to trail Mitchell beyond the London railway

station, in case their presence was noticed. We were allowed to indoctrinate

Winterborn, and were given carte blanche to install a closed-circuit

television system behind a two-way mirror in Mitchell's office.

That afternoon we moved the burgeoning files across London to a tatty

unfurnished upstairs flat in a small mews house in Pavilion Road, which

for the rest of the case became our headquarters.

In the early stages of the investigation, we made a complete reexamination

of the circumstances of Philby's defection. It yielded one

vital discovery; I asked the CIA to check their computer records of the

movement of all known Russian intelligence officers around the world,

and we discovered that Yuri Modin, a KGB officer we strongly suspected

had been Philby's controller during the 1940s, and of having

arranged the Burgess/Maclean defections, had visited the Middle East

in September 1962, just after Flora Solomon's meeting with Arthur in

London. A further check showed Modin made a previous visit in May

of the same year, shortly after the three Golitsin serials relating to the

Ring of Five arrived at Leconfield House. Finally the CIA established

that Modin had made no other trips abroad since the early 1950s.

Eleanor Philby, Kim's wife, was interviewed at this time, and told us

that Philby had cut short a family holiday in Jordan in September, and

from then onward until his disappearance exhibited increasing signs of

alcoholism and stress. It was obvious to us that Modin had gone to

Beirut to alert Philby to the reopening of his case. Once the KGB knew

of Golitsin's departure, it was an obvious precaution, but the odd thing

was the fact that Philby seemed apparently unmoved until after Modin's

second visit in September, which coincided exactly with the time when

the case against him became unassailable.

194 PETER WRIGHT

We turned to the tapes of Philby's so-called "confession," which

Nicholas Elliott brought back with him from Beirut. For many weeks

it was impossible to listen to the tapes, because the sound quality was

so poor. In typical MI6 style, they had used a single low-grade microphone

in a room with the windows wide open. The traffic noise was

deafening! Using the binaural tape enhancer which I had developed

and the services of Evelyn McBarnet and a young transcriber named

Anne Orr-Ewing, who had the best hearing of all the transcribers, we

managed to obtain a transcript which was about 80 percent accurate.

Arthur and I listened to the tape one afternoon, following it carefully

on the page. There was no doubt in anyone's mind, listening to the

tape, that Philby arrived at the safe house well prepared for Elliott's

confrontation. Elliott told him there was new evidence, that he was now convinced of his guilt, and Philby, who had denied everything time

and again for a decade, swiftly admitted spying since 1934. He never

once asked what the new evidence was.

Arthur found it distressing to listen to the tape; he kept screwing

up his eyes, and pounded his knees with his fists in frustration as Philby

reeled off a string of ludicrous claims: Blunt was in the clear, but Tim

Milne, an apparently close friend of Philby's, who had loyally defended

him for years, was not. The whole confession, including Philby's signed

statement, looked carefully prepared to blend fact and fiction in a way

which would mislead us. I thought back to my first meeting with Philby,

the boyish charm, the stutter, how I sympathized with him; and the

second time I heard that voice, in 1955, as he ducked and weaved

around his MI6 interrogators, finessing a victory from a steadily losing

hand. And now there was Elliott, trying his manful best to corner a

man for whom deception had been a second skin for thirty years. It

was no contest. By the end they sounded like two rather tipsy radio

announcers, their warm, classical public-school accents discussing the

greatest treachery of the twentieth century.

"It's all been terribly badly handled," moaned Arthur in despair

as the tape flicked through the heads. "We should have sent a team

out there, and grilled him while we had the chance ..."

I agreed with him. Roger and Dick had not taken into account

that Philby might defect.

On the face of it, the coincidental Modin journeys, the fact that

Philby seemed to be expecting Elliott, and his artful confession all

pointed in one direction: the Russians still had access to a source inside

British Intelligence who was monitoring the progress of the Philby case.



L

SPYCATCHER 195

Only a handful of officers had such access, chief among them being

Hollis and Mitchell.

I decided to pay a visit to GCHQ to see if there was anything

further that could be done with the venona program to assist the Mitchell

case. The venona work was done inside a large wooden hut, number

H72, which formed a spur off one of the main avenues in the central

GCHQ complex. The work was supervised by a young cryptanalyst

named Geoffrey Sudbury, who sat in a small office at the front of the

hut. Behind him dozens of linguists sat under harsh lamps, toiling for

matches, and hoping to tease out the translations from a thousand

anonymous groups of numbers.

Sudbury's office was a joyous menagerie of cryptanalytical bric-abrac.

Huge piles of bound venona window indexes piled up in one

corner, and tray upon tray of decrypts stood on his desk, ready for his

approval before they were circulated up to MI5 and MI6. Sudbury and

I had a long talk about how the whole program could be pushed forward.

The principal problem was that venona, up until then, had been hand

matched, and computers were used only for specific pieces of work,

such as dragging for a cryptonym. Most of the effort had gone into

attacking the KGB and GRU channels directly; the trade traffic channels

had been used wherever they formed the back of a match, but

otherwise the bulk of it had been left unprocessed. A comprehensive

computer-matching program was needed, using the new computers which

were becoming available by the early 1960s, in the hope that more

matches might be found.

It was a vast undertaking. There were over 150,000 trade traffic

messages, and very few were even in "punched" form, suitable for

processing through a computer. This alone was a huge task. Each individual

group had to be punched up twice by data processors, in order

to "verify" that the processed traffic was free from errors. Then the

first five groups of each message were computer matched against the

whole of the rest of the traffic, involving something like 10 billion

calculations for each message.

When I discussed the project with Willis at the Directorate of

Science, he was skeptical about/the whole thing, so I went to see Sir

William Cook at the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment again,

with Frank Morgan. I knew that AWRE had the biggest computer

facility in the country, bigger at that time than even GCHQ. I explained

what I wanted to do. We needed at least three months on his computer

to find the matches; once that was done, we could farm them out to

196 PETER WRIGHT

NSA and GCHQ for the cryptanalytical work of trying to break the

matches out. Cook, as always, was marvelous. I told him of Willis'

skepticism, which he brushed aside.

"This is one of the most important contributions AWRE can make,"

he said, lifting the telephone. He spoke immediately to the AWRE

head of Data Processing.

"There's a vital job I want you to start straightaway. I'm sending

a chap down with the details. You don't need to know where he works.

Please do as he says ..."

In two months we had punched up and verified every message,

and for the next three months the AWRE computers worked on the

venona for six hours a night.

At first it looked as if the AWRE computerization program might

transform the British venona. Early on we got a new match for a

message just after the existing week's traffic in mid-September, which

we had already broken. The message, when it was partially decrypted,

concerned Stanley again. He was to carry no documents which might

incriminate him to his next meeting with Krotov. Then, in the midst

of a haze of unbroken groups, there was a fleeting reference to a crisis

in KGB affairs in Mexico. Krotov was told to refer to Stanley for details,

since hi? "section" dealt with Mexican matters.

At the time of this message Philby was the head of the Iberian

section of MI6, which controlled a large swath of Hispanic countries,

including Mexico. It was a bitter moment. The categoric proof that

Stanley was Philby had come just a matter of months after he defected.

Had we broken it out a few years earlier, we could have arrested Philby

on one of his regular trips back to London to visit the Observer. This

merely intensified fears about the integrity of MI5, since it made the

decision in 1954 to close down the venona program look deeply suspect.

When we checked, we found that the officer who ordered the closedown

was the then head of Counterespionage, Graham Mitchell.

Sadly, the Philby fragment was the only real assistance the computerization

program gave the British venona effort. Matches were

made in Mexican KGB traffic and elsewhere in South America which

were of enormous interest to the CIA and the RCMP, since Mexico

was a principal area where the KGB introduced illegals into North

America. But the matches made in British venona were almost all trade traffic to trade traffic, rather than trade traffic to the KGB or GRU,

which was what we needed. The cryptanalytical effort in Hut H72 went



1

SPYCATCHER 197

on even more intensely than before, but there was to be no new shortcut.

There was little in Mitchell's Record of Service to help us either.

Born in 1905, educated at Oxford, he then worked as a journalist and

later as a statistician in Conservative Central Office. This did surprise

me, as I recalled that when arguing with Mitchell about the Lonsdale

case, he had claimed that he could not understand my argument since

he was "no statistician." He joined MI5 as a result of contact made

through the Tory Party, and worked on the anti-Fascist side during the

war, latterly with some involvement, too, in the CPGB. Thereafter his

progress was swift: he became head of F Branch (Domestic Subversion)

in the late 1940s, and Dick White's first head of Counterespionage in

1953, before Hollis appointed him his deputy in 1956. There were only

two really striking things about Mitchell's career. One was the way it

was intimately bound up with Hollis'. They had been contemporaries

at Oxford, joined MI5 at around the same time, and followed each

other up the ladder in complementary positions. The second was the

fact that Mitchell seemed to be an underachiever. He was a clever man,

picked by Dick White to transform D Branch. He signally failed to do

so in the three years he held the job, and indeed, when the decision

to close venona down was taken into account, it seemed almost as if

he had willfully failed.

The intensive surveillance of Mitchell in the office revealed very

little. I treated his ink blotter with secret-writing material, and every

night it was developed, so that we could check on everything he wrote.

But there was nothing beyond the papers he worked on normally. The

closed-circuit television was monitored continuously by the MI6 Watchers.

It was an unpleasant task; every morning Mitchell came in and

picked his teeth with a toothpick in front of the two-way mirror, and

repeated the meticulous process again before lunch, after lunch, and

then again before he went home. By the end of the case, I began to

feel that the only parts of Mitchell that we knew at all well were the

backs of his tonsils!

I arranged to feed him barium meals. I circulated to him the bound

volumes of my analysis of clandestine Soviet radio communications,

with all their classifications and group count schedules, which I had

recently updated for GCHQ. If Mitchell was a spy, it was the sort of

priceless intelligence he could not afford to ignore. I watched on the

Monitor as Mitchell looked at the report in a desultory sort of way.

198 PETER WRIGHT

Later James Robertson, an old adversary of mine who had run Soviet

Counterespionage for a period in the 1950s, came into his office, and

they began talking about me. Robertson never forgave me for the

changes I made in D Branch when he was there. He thought I was a

jumped-up newcomer, who should have learned to respect my elders

and betters before presuming to offer advice. He and Mitchell discussed

my radio analysis. Neither man understood its purpose.

"That bloody man Wright," said Robertson tartly, "he thinks he

knows it all. Wants his wings clipped!"

Mitchell nodded sagely, and I could not help smiling at the irony

of it all.

But the lighter moments were few and far between in what was a

grim vigil, watching and waiting for a man to betray himself on the

other side of a mirror. Only once did I think we had him. One Friday

afternoon he began drawing on a scrap of paper. He concentrated

intensely for perhaps twenty minutes, referring to notes on a piece of

paper he took from his wallet, and then suddenly tore the piece of

paper up and put it in his waste bin. Every night, since the beginning

of the case, Hollis arranged for me to search his office, and Hollis'

secretary was instructed to retain his burn bag, containing his classified

waste, so that it could be checked as well. That evening I retrieved the

scraps of paper from the bin, and reconstructed them. It was a map of

Chobham Common, near where Mitchell lived, with dots and arrows

going in various directions. In the middle of the map were the letters

"RV" and the siting of two cars, one at either end of the path across

the common which passed the rendezvous site.

For days Pavilion Road was deserted, as the entire focus of the

case shifted to the isolated spot on the common indicated by Mitchell's

map. But Mitchell never went close to the spot, nor did anyone else.

When I first began searching Mitchell's office, Hollis was highly

nervous.

"There are some highly sensitive documents inside, Peter, and I

want your word that they will remain undisclosed."

Hollis was worried in particular about personnel reports, and other

embarrassing, rather than secret, papers which have by necessity to

pass across the Deputy Director-General's desk. He need not have

worried. There was nothing remotely interesting that I saw in Mitchell's

office, which only confirmed me in my view that being DDG under a

man as autocratic as Hollis must have been one of the very worst jobs

in the world.

X

SPYCATCHER 199

Every night for some months Hollis and I met after hours. At first

he expressed distaste at having to pry into a close colleague's affairs,

but I never felt the sentiment was genuine. When I told him about the

frequency with which Mitchell picked his teeth on the closed-circuit

television, he laughed like a drain.

"Poor bugger should go to a decent dentist!" he laughed.

I, for my part, felt determined, even ruthless. I had waited for

years for the chance to grapple with the penetration problem, and I

felt few scruples.

It was in those evenings that I first came to know Hollis as a man.

Although I had worked for him for close on eight years, we had rarely

talked outside the strict confines of official business. We had moments

of tension, but by and large our relationship was correct. Only once

did we have a major confrontation, when I was in A2 with Hugh Win-terborn

in the late 1950s. An Argentine delegation came over to negotiate

a meat contract with the British Government. Hollis passed

down a request from the Board of Trade for any intelligence, and

instructed us to arrange for microphone coverage of the Argentines.

Winterborn and I were outraged. It was a clear breach of the Findlater-Stewart

memorandum, which defined MI5's purposes as strictly those

connected with national security. The rest of the A2 staff felt exactly

as we did, and Hollis' instruction was refused. For a few hours we all

anticipated mass dismissals, but then Hollis withdrew his instruction,

and it was never discussed again. The only strike in MI5's history ended

in total victory for the strikers!

Occasionally, during the searches of Mitchell's office, Hollis talked

about his early years. He told me about his travels in China during the

1930s, where he worked for British American Tobacco.

"Dreadful business out there. Any damn fool could see what the

Japanese were doing in Manchuria. It was perfectly obvious we'd lose

China if we didn't act," he used to say.

As with many older MI5 officers, the roots of his dislike of the

Americans lay prewar. He said the Americans could have helped out

in the Far East, but refused to because they were gripped with isolationism.

The French in the Far,East were, he said, effete, and would

rather have seen the whole place go down than help us. That left only

the Russians.

"They watched and waited," he told me, "and they got it in the

end after the war, when Mao came."

He rarely mentioned his family life, although many people in the

200 PETER WRIGHT

office knew he was having a long-standing affair. Just occasionally he

talked about his son Adrian, who was a gifted chess player, which

evidently was a source of great pride for him. (Adrian used to go to

Russia to play chess.)

On one occasion we were talking about the case when I ventured

an opinion that, whatever the result, it demonstrated a weakness in

our protective security. Hollis became huffy.

"What do you mean?" he asked.

I told him that procedures for vetting MI5 recruits were clearly

less strict than those the Service laid down throughout other Whitehall

departments.

"Look at me," I told him, "I still haven't had a vet since I joined

in 1955."

The next day the forms were sent down for me, and the issue was

never discussed again, although shortly after this the vetting procedure

changed, and candidates had in future to provide more referees, one

of which could be nominated by the Service.

The most memorable thing about those evenings with Hollis was

his extraordinary supply of the filthiest jokes I had ever heard. It was

almost as if they were a defensive mechanism, an excuse for talking,

or else a way of easing the burden when he stepped down from the

Olympian heights of power to mix with the troops. I asked him once

where he had amassed such a fund of stories.

"China," he told me. "Everyone drank and told jokes. It was the

only way to pass the time."

Early on I decided to search a small desk in the corner of Mitchell's

office, and I asked Hollis for the key.

"It was Guy Liddell's desk," he said. "He left it when I took over

from him. It's been there for years ..."

I asked him for his consent to pick the locks of two of the drawers

which were locked. He agreed and I brought the lockpicking tools the

next day, and we inspected the insides of the two drawers. They were

both empty, but one caught my attention. In the dust were four small

marks, as if an object had been very recently dragged out of the drawer.

I called Hollis over, and showed him the marks. He seemed as nonplussed

as I, especially when I inspected the lock mechanism and found

scratch marks, as if the drawer had recently been opened.

Hollis went back to his office through the interconnecting door

which ran between Mitchell's office and his own. I finished the search

alone.

I

SPYCATCHER 201

"Only Hollis and I knew I was going to open that drawer," I

thought to myself, "and something has definitely been moved. Could

even be a tape recorder. Why not Mitchell? Because he didn't know.

Only Hollis knew. Guy Liddell's desk. Hollis took over the Deputy's

office from him. No key? A man like Liddell doesn't leave the desk,

and take the key. Only Hollis knew. Only Hollis ..."

I looked up. Through the door Hollis was staring at me. He said

nothing. He just stared, and then bent over his file again.

Throughout the summer months of 1963, as Mitchell's retirement

neared, the investigation continued at full pitch. But the whole thing

was hopelessly compromised. It had all been too hasty, and too ill-planned.

Battling the deadline, and lacking the support of Hollis, it

was inevitable that the security of the operation began to crumble at

the seams. Mitchell realized that something was wrong. For a start, he

noticed that the circulation of papers through his in-tray became erratic,

as Hollis sought to restrict his access. Then he began to take evasive

action against the Watchers, doubling back on himself, and practicing

standard countersurveillance. There was little doubt that he knew he

was being followed. Through the television monitor, Mitchell exhibited

all the signs of a man under terrible stress, as if he were sunk in a

massive depression. He was a tall, thin man at the best of times, but

he looked positively cadaverous toward the end, with dark, sunken

eyes. When people were in the room with him he made an effort to

appear normal, but as soon as he was alone, he looked tortured.

"Why are they doing this to me?" he moaned one day, gazing at

Hollis' office door.

In the final month the whole affair became almost a farce. There

was no chance of finding anything under those circumstances, so Arthur

and I pressed Hollis to sanction an interrogation to resolve the case

one way or the other. Hollis refused to commit himself, but a few days

later he arrived unannounced at the small house in Pavilion Road.

"I have been to see the PM," he said stiffly to the half dozen of

us who were in the room, "and I am afraid an interrogation is quite

out of the question."

Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Arthur brewing for another

outburst.

"Another defection at this stage would be calamitous," he said.

He thanked us all briskly for our efforts and disappeared down to his

waiting car. It was typical Hollis mismanagement of personnel. Here

were experienced officers, working at a pitch of desperation, and he

202 PETER WRIGHT

could barely spare us two minutes. The dirty work was done. Best leave

it to the dirty workers!

It was, as well, a naive approach. The MI6 Watchers, led by a hot-headed and overimpressionable young officer named Stephen de

Mowbray, were appalled by Hollis' decision, and immediately took it

to be a crude attempt at in-house suppression, the very thing MI5

accused MI6 of with the Philby affair. Moreover, no closedown could

remove the fact that the Mitchell case had been done. A full report on

the investigation had been written by Ronnie Symonds, a senior Dl

officer assigned to handle the paperwork in the case. Symonds' report

outlined the history of allegations of penetration of MI5 and concluded

that there was a strong likelihood that a spy existed at a high level

inside the Service. It raised the obvious question of whether the Americans

should be alerted.

Symonds' report was sent to Hollis and Dick White, and after

private consultations between the two chiefs, we were summoned for

another Sunday-afternoon council-of-war, this time at Hollis' house in

Camden Square. The contrast between Dick White and Roger Hollis

was never clearer than in their homes. Hollis' was a tatty, bookless

townhouse, and he appeared at the door wearing his dark pinstripe

weekday suit. He showed us into the dingy breakfast room, and launched

straight into business. He wanted to hear our views. He gathered there

was some concern about the Americans. Consultation never came naturally

to Hollis, and there was more than a trace of irritation in his

voice now that it had been forced on him.

Arthur acerbically said that we had to find a way of telling them

now, in case it became necessary to tell them later, when the effect, if

the case against Mitchell was ever proved, would be much more traumatic.

Hollis was utterly opposed. He said it would destroy the alliance,

especially after Philby.

"For all we know," I reminded Hollis, "the Americans might have

sources or information which might help resolve the case. But we'll

never get it unless we ask."

For the next hour Hollis debated the issue with the two of us,

tempers fraying on all sides. The others in the room--Ronnie Symonds,

Arthur's desk officer for the Mitchell case, Hugh Winterborn, and

F.J.--tried desperately to keep the temperature down. Symonds said

he wanted to keep his options open. Perhaps Mitchell should be interrogated,

but then again, it was always possible to regard the issue

as closed. As for America, he said he did not know the scene out there



1

SPYCATCHER 203

well enough to have a view. Winterborn was solid and sensible, supporting

Arthur's view that the bigger disaster would be to say nothing

now, only to find the case proved later. F.J. finally burst out in exasperation.

"We're not a bloody public school, you know. There's no obligation

for us all to 'own up' to the Americans. We run our Service as

we think fit, and I wish some of you would remember that!"

But even F.J. acknowledged that there was a problem which had

to be resolved. He said that on balance he felt it would be quite prudent

to keep the Americans informed, the question was how to do it. Hollis

could see he was outnumbered, and suddenly announced that he would

visit Washington himself.

"Wouldn't it be better done at working level?" asked F.J., but

Hollis' jaw was set firm, and although Arthur tried to move him, it was

clearly a waste of time.

"I have heard the arguments. My decision is made," he snapped,

glowering at Arthur across the table.

Hollis left for the United States almost immediately, where he

briefed John McCone, the new Director of the CIA following the removal

of Allan Dulles after the Bay of Pigs, and Hoover. Shortly

afterward Arthur followed on to brief the Bureau and the Agency at

working level. He got a rough reception. The Americans simply failed

to understand how a case could be left in such an inconclusive state.

Here, allegedly, was one of the most dangerous spies of the twentieth

century, recently retired from one of the prime counterespionage posts

in the West, and yet he had not even been interrogated. The whole

affair smacked, to them, of the kind of incompetence demonstrated by

MI5 in 1951, and in a sense they were absolutely right.

Hollis returned, determined to resolve the case. He ordered a new

review to be written by Ronnie Symonds, and Symonds was specifically

instructed not to communicate or cooperate with either Arthur or me

in the research and drafting of the new report.

When the Mitchell case was handed over to Symonds, I returned

to the Directorate of Science, where I was informed that Willis had

made a change in procedures. He felt the Directorate need no longer

involve itself in GCHQ's affairs, and wanted me to relinquish all contacts

with the organization. I was incensed. I knew that unless MI5

hunted and chivvied for facilities and cooperation from GCHQ, things

would soon slip back to the desperate state that existed before 1955.

Few officers inside MI5 had any real idea of what could be done for

204 PETER WRIGHT

them by GCHQ, and, equally, few GCHQ people bothered to think

what they could do for each other, a job which I felt was vital for the

Directorate to continue. But Willis could not be shifted. He wanted

me to leave Counterclan, and join the bureaucrats. It was the final

straw. I went to see Hollis, and told him that I could no longer continue

to work in the Directorate. I told him I wanted to join D Branch if

possible, or else return to A Branch. The Mitchell case gave me a taste

of research, and I knew that the position as head of D3 was still vacant.

To my surprise, Hollis offered me a transfer to D3 immediately. There

was just a small caveat. He wanted me to return to the Directorate to

finish one final special project for Willis, before taking up my new post

in January 1964.

Willis' special project turned out to be one of the most important,

and controversial, pieces of work I ever did for MI5. He wanted me

to conduct a comprehensive review, to my knowledge the only one that

was ever done inside British Intelligence, of every scrap of intelligence

provided by yet another defector to appear in the West in the early

1960s--Oleg Penkovsky.

Penkovsky was, at the time, the jewel in MI6's crown. He was a

senior GRU officer who spied in place for MI6 and the CIA during

1961 and 1962, providing massive quantities of intelligence about Soviet

military capabilities and intentions. It was hailed on both sides of the

Atlantic as the most successful penetration of Soviet Intelligence since

World War II. Penkovsky alerted the West to the presence of Soviet

missiles in Cuba, and his information about the Soviet nuclear arsenal

shaped the American approach to the subsequent Cuban missile crisis.

He also provided the evidence for the identification of the Russian

missiles in Cuba. But in late 1962 Penkovsky and a British businessman,

Greville Wynne, who was his cutout to MI6, were both arrested by the

KGB, and put on trial. Wynne was given a long prison term (although

he was eventually exchanged for Gordon Lonsdale and the Krogers)

and Penkovsky, apparently, was shot.

I had been involved in the Penkovsky case during the time it was

running. Penkovsky visited London on a number of occasions, as a

member of a Soviet trade delegation, and had a series of clandestine

debriefings with MI6 and CIA officers in the Mount Royal Hotel. At

the time Hugh Winterborn was absent for a prolonged period through

ill-health, and I was Acting A2, and was asked by MI6 to provide the

technical coverage for the London Penkovsky operations. I arranged

for continuous Watcher coverage of him and for the sophisticated mi-

SPYCATCHER 205

crophoning system needed to capture every drop of intelligence that

spilled out of him during the tense all-night sessions with his controllers.

The Penkovsky case ran counter to everything which was alleged

about the penetration of MI5. Arthur and I often discussed this during

the Mitchell case. If there was a high-level penetration, then Penkovsky

had to be a plant, because news of him was known to the handful of

senior suspects, including Mitchell, from a relatively early stage. When

I was arranging the Mount Royal operation, Hollis asked me for the

name of the agent MI6 were meeting, and I gave it to him. Cumming

also asked, but since he was not on the MI6 indoctrination list, I refused

to give it to him. This provoked a furious row, and Cumming accused

me of becoming too big for my boots. He seemed to resent the fact

that I did not consider myself in his debt for the role he played in hiring

me into the Service.

Penkovsky seemed to fit into the most far-reaching of the allegations

made by Golitsin. Golitsin said that in December 1958 Khrushchev

transferred the head of the KGB, General Serov, to run the GRU. His

replacement in the KGB was Alexander Shelepin. Shelepin was a much

more subtle, flexible man than Serov, who was an old-style Beria henchman,

a "nuts and bolts" man. The problem set to Shelepin was that

Khrushchev and the Politburo had come to the conclusion that an all-out

war with the West was not on. Khrushchev wanted to know how

Russia could win without doing this. Shelepin took six months to survey

the problem. He then called a large conference in Moscow of all the

senior KGB officers the world over and discussed ways in which KGB

methods could be modernized. Shelepin, according to Golitsin, boasted

that the KGB had so many sources at its disposal in the West that he

favored returning to the methods of the OGPU and the "Trust" as a

means of masking the real nature of Soviet strategic intentions.

As a result of the Shelepin conference, Department D of the First

Chief Directorate of the KGB (responsible for all overseas operations)

was formed, a new department charged with planning deception or

disinformation exercises on a strategic scale. Department D was put

under the control of 1.1. Agayants, an old, much respected KGB officer.

In 1959, Golitsin said, he approached a friend who worked in this new

Department to see if he could get a job there. The friend confided in

him that Department D was planning a major disinformation operation

using the GRU, but that it could not be implemented for some time

because the GRU was penetrated by the CIA and this must be eliminated

first. This penetration was almost certainly Colonel Popov, a

206 PETER WRIGHT

high-ranking GRU official who spied in place for the CIA before being

captured, tortured, and shot in 1959.

In fact, Golitsin never went back, as by then he was planning his

defection, so he never learned any more details about the planned

disinformation plan, other than the fact that it was basically a technical

exercise, and involved all resources available to the First Chief Directorate.

When Golitsin reached the West he began to speculate that the

Sino-Soviet split was the Department D plan, and that it was a ploy

designed to mislead the West. Some of Golitsin's admirers, like Arthur,

believed (and continue to believe) this analysis, but although I was,

during this early period, one of Golitsin's fervent supporters in the

Anglo-American intelligence community, it has always seemed to me

that the Penkovsky operation is a far better fit for the type of task

Department D was set up for, than the inherently unlikely Sino-Soviet

hypothesis.

Strategic deception has become an unfashionable concept in Western

intelligence circles, largely because of the extremes to which some

of its adherents, myself included in the early days, pushed it. But there

is no doubt that it has a long and potent history. The "Trust" operations

of the GPU and OGPU in the early years of the Bolshevik regime are

a powerful reminder to any KGB recruit of the role these operations

can play. At a time when the Bolshevik regime was threatened by

several million White Russian emigres in the 1920s, Feliks Dzerzhinsky,

the legendary founder of the modern Russian Intelligence Services,

masterminded the creation of a fake organization inside Russia dedicated

to the overthrow of the Bolshevik regime. The Trust attracted

the support of White Russian emigre groups abroad, and the Intelligence

Services of the West, particularly MI6. In fact, the Trust was

totally controlled by the OGPU, and they were able to neutralize most

emigre and hostile intelligence activity, even kidnapping and disposing

of the two top White leaders, Generals Kutepov and Miller, and the

Trust persuaded the British not to attack the Soviet Government because

it would be done by internal forces.

Strategic deception has also played a major part in the history of

Western intelligence, most notably in the Double Cross operations of

the war, which enabled the Allies to mislead the Germans about our

intentions at D-Day.

Looking at the intelligence balance in 1963, there was no doubt

that the Soviets had the necessary conditions to begin a major disinformation

exercise. They had large-scale and high-level penetrations in

SPYCATCHER 207

the West, especially in Britain and the USA, and had possessed them

almost continuously since the war. Hiss, Maclean, the nuclear spies,

Philby, Burgess, Blake, and the many others gave them a very intimate

knowledge of the very organizations which needed to be deceived.

Secondly, and often overlooked, the Soviets had continuous penetrations

of the Western Signals Intelligence organizations since the war,

from Philby and Maclean until 1951, but closer to the early 1960s through

the defection of the NSA operatives Martin and Mitchell in 1960, and

the suicide in 1963 of Jack Dunlap, a chauffeur at NSA who betrayed

details of dozens of the most sensitive discussions by senior NSA officials

in his car.

As I read the files, a number of reasons made me believe that

Penkovsky had to be the deception operation of which Golitsin had

learned in 1959. The first thing that struck me about Penkovsky was

the sheer coincidence of his arrival. If ever an organization needed a

triumph it was MI6 in the early 1960s. It was rocked by the twin blows

of Philby and George Blake, its morale desperately low after the Crabbe

affair, and the disastrous Suez operations, and Dick White was trying

to rebuild it. He removed the post of Deputy Director, sacked a number

of senior officers most closely associated with the Sinclair regime, and

tried to introduce some line management. He was never entirely successful.

Dick was not a particularly gifted administrator. His achievements

in MI5 stemmed from intimate knowledge of the office and its

personnel, and a deep knowledge of counterespionage, rather than a

flair for running organizations.

Deprived of these, his first years in MI6 were, almost inevitably,

marked by expediency rather than clear strategy. This was never so

well illustrated as with his decision to retain Philby as an agent runner

in the Middle East, even though he believed him to be a spy. I asked

him about this later, and he said that he simply felt that to sack Philby

would create more problems inside MI6 than it might solve. Looking

at MI6 in the early 1960s, I was reminded of Lenin's famous remark

to Feliks Dzerzhinsky.

"The West are wishful thinkers, we will give them what they want

to think."

MI6 needed a success, and they needed to believe in a success. In

Penkovsky they got it.

There were three specific areas of the Penkovsky case which made

me highly suspicious. The first was the manner of his recruitment.

Toward the end of 1960, Penkovsky visited the American Embassy in

208 PETER WRIGHT

Moscow in connection with his ostensible job, which was to arrange

exchange visits with the West on scientific and technical matters. Once

inside the Embassy he offered to provide intelligence to the Americans

and was interviewed by the CIA in their secure compound. He told

them that he was, in fact, a senior GRU officer, working for the GKNIIR

the joint organization between the KGB and the GRU on scientific

and technical intelligence. The Americans decided Penkovsky was a

provocation, and refused his offer. By the time I read the files, the

Americans had discovered through another defector, Nossenko, that

the rooms used for the interview with Penkovsky had been clandestinely

microphoned by the KGB. It was obvious that even if Penkovsky had

been genuine, the Russians must have learned of his offer to spy for

the Americans.

Early in 1961 Penkovsky made another attempt. He approached

a Canadian businessman named Van Vleet in his apartment in Moscow.

Van Vleet interviewed Penkovsky in his bathroom, with the water taps

running to shield their conversation from eavesdropping. There was no

proof that Van Vleet's apartment was bugged, but both he and Penkovsky

assumed it to be so, because of his connections with the RCMP.

Later, at Penkovsky's trial, evidence against him was produced in the

form of tape recordings of conversations between Penkovsky and Wynne

which had also taken place in bathrooms with water taps running. It

was clear that the Russians had technical means of defeating this type

of countercoverage.

Penkovsky's third approach, to Wynne, was successful, and as a

result he was run jointly by MI6 and the CIA. But the second suspect

area in the Penkovsky case was the type of intelligence which he provided.

It was split into two types: arnika, which was straight intelligence,

and rupee, which was counterintelligence.

The rupee material consisted mostly of identifications of GRU

officers around the world, nearly all of which were accurate and most

of which were already known to us. But beyond that there were no

leads at all which identified any Soviet illegals in the West, or to past

or present penetrations of Western security. It made no sense to me;

here was a man in some ways fulfilling a function analogous to my own,

who had spent years at the summit of the GRU, and in regular contact

with the KGB, and yet he had apparently picked up not one trace of

intelligence about Soviet intelligence assets in the West. I compared

Penkovsky's counterintelligence with that of the last major GRU source,

Colonel Popov, who spied for the CIA inside the GRU during the

SPYCATCHER 209

1950s. Popov provided identifications of nearly forty illegals operating

in the West, before he was captured and shot.

arnika was different; Penkovsky handed over literally thousands

of documents dealing with the most sensitive Soviet military systems.

But there were two oddities. Firstly, he sometimes handed over original

documents. It seemed to me beyond belief that a spy would risk passing

over actual originals, or that the Russians would not miss them from

the files. Secondly, Penkovsky's most important documents, which enabled

the Americans to identify the Russian missiles in Cuba, were

shown to him by his uncle, a senior GRU commander of missile forces.

Penkovsky claimed that he copied the document while his uncle was

out of the room. Once again, this seemed to me to smack more of

James Bond than of real life.

The third area which made me suspect Penkovsky was the manner

in which he was run. The tradecraft was appallingly reckless for such

a sensitive source. The problem was that his intelligence was so valuable,

and at the time of the Cuban missile crisis so current, that he was

literally bled for everything that could be got, with little attempt made

to protect him or preserve him as a long-term asset. I counted the

distribution list for Penkovsky's intelligence. Seventeen hundred people

in Britain alone had access to Penkovsky's material during the time he

was running in place. MI6, MI5, GCHQ, the various branches of Military

Intelligence, the JIC, the Service chiefs and their staffs, the Foreign

Office, various scientific research establishments--they all had their

own lists of people indoctrinated for various parts of Penkovsky's material,

although few people saw the whole range. Of course, like all

source reports, there was no hint as to how the intelligence had been

acquired, but by any standards it was an astonishingly large distribution,

and raised the question of whether it would have been detected by the

ever-vigilant Russian Intelligence Services, who at that point in 1963

had demonstrated a consistent ability to penetrate British security at

high levels.

Arrangements in Moscow were even more extraordinary. MI6 arranged

for Penkovsky to hand over exposed films to Mrs. Chisholm,

the wife of a local MI6 officer, Rpry Chisholm, in a Moscow park. This

procedure was followed more than a dozen times, long after both Penkovsky

and Mrs. Chisholm had detected KGB surveillance of their

movements. By the time I read the Penkovsky files, we also knew from

George Blake's prison debriefings that Chisholm's identity as an MI6

officer was well known to the Russians. I was certain of one thing: even

210 PETER WRIGHT

MI5, with our slender resources, and the restrictions placed on us by

custom and the law, could not have failed to detect the Penkovskv

operation, had the Russians run it in London the same way MI6 ran it

in Moscow.

When I circulated my Penkovsky paper it was greeted with howls

of outrage. The operation was marked with great courage and daring

and seemed, on the face of it, such a triumph, that people simply became

overemotional when criticisms were voiced. Harry Shergold, Penkov-sky's

case officer, practically went for me at a meeting in MI6 one day.

"What the hell do you know about running agents?" he snarled.

"You come in here and insult a brave man's memory, and expect us

to believe this?"

The question remains, of course, why should the Russians have

sent Penkovsky as a disinformation agent, if such he was? The answer,

I think, lies in the politics of Cuba, and the politics of arms control.

The Russians had two major strategic ambitions in the early 1960s-- to preserve Castro in Cuba, at a time when the Americans were doing

all in their power to remove him, by either coup or assassination, and

to enhance and develop the Soviet intercontinental ballistic missile

(ICBM) capability without arousing suspicions in the West. This was

the era of the "missile gap." The fear that Russia was moving ahead

in the production of nuclear weapons was a major plank in John Kennedy's

1960 presidential election campaign, and he committed his

administration to closing the gap. The Soviets were desperate to convince

the West that the missile gap was an illusion, and that, if anything,

the Soviets lagged behind the West.

Part of the reason for the fears about Soviet missile capability was

the fact that, intelligence-wise, the West was blind at this time, because

the U2 surveillance flights were cancelled after Gary Powers was shot

down in May 1960, and photoreconnaissance over the Soviet Union

did not become available again until the launch of the first satellite

toward the end of 1962. During that time the only intelligence available

to the West was the interception of telemetry signals and radio communications

from the rocket-testing ranges in Soviet Asia, and, of course,

Penkovsky.

The essence of Penkovsky's information was that the Soviet rocket

program was nowhere near as well advanced as the West had thus far

suspected, and that they had no ICBM capability, only intermediate-range

ballistic missiles, IRBMs. Armed with that knowledge, Kennedy

was able to call the Soviet bluff when the Americans detected IRBM

SPYCATCHER 211

facilities under construction in Cuba. The fact that the Russians were

seen to be installing what, according to Penkovsky, were their state-ofthe-art

rockets in Cuba tended to confirm to the Americans the

validity of Penkovsky's message that the Russians had no ICBM capability.

Khrushchev was forced to withdraw, but achieved his major

aim--an eventual acceptance from the USA that Cuba would remain

unscathed.

Penkovsky's message was later confirmed by the two defectors from

the Soviet delegation to the UN who contacted the FBI in the early

1960s, Top Hat and Fedora, the latter of which, like Penkovsky, was

allegedly a scientific and technical officer. Both agents, but especially

Fedora, gave intelligence which supported Penkovsky's message that

Soviet rocketry was markedly inferior to the West's. Fedora gave immensely

detailed intelligence about weaknesses in Soviet rocket accelerometers.

The confidence which Penkovsky's intelligence, and that of Fedora

and Top Hat, gave to the Americans was a crucial factor in creating

the climate which gave rise to the SALT I arms control negotiations,

and the era of detente, and that, I believe, was his purpose. He helped

to lull suspicions in the West for more than a decade, and misled us as

to the true state of Soviet missile development.

In the mid-1970s the climate began to change, and doubts began

to emerge. Satellite photoreconnaissance was dramatically improved,

and when the accuracy of Soviet ICBMs was analyzed using sophisticated

measurements of the impact craters, the missiles were found to

be much more accurate than had been detected by telemetry and radio

intercepts. The only explanation was that a bias had been introduced

into Russian signals, with the intention of misleading American detection

systems.

While Penkovsky retained his status as MI6's finest postwar

achievement, Fedora and Top Hat, for reasons which are too lengthy

to detail here, were officially recognized by all sections of the U.S.

intelligence community as provocations. Fedora's information about

the accelerometers was found to be wrong, and there was even some

evidence that the Russians had introduced a fake third gyro on their

missiles to make them appear less accurate than they in fact were.

Findings like these cast doubt on the validity of previous arms

control agreements, and fears about the ability of the USA to accurately

assess Soviet missile capabilities in the end sounded the death knell for

the SALT talks in the late 1970s. There was a growing realization in

210 PETER WRIGHT

MI5, with our slender resources, and the restrictions placed on us by

custom and the law, could not have failed to detect the Penkovskv

operation, had the Russians run it in London the same way MI6 ran it

in Moscow.

When I circulated my Penkovsky paper it was greeted with howls

of outrage. The operation was marked with great courage and daring

and seemed, on the face of it, such a triumph, that people simply became

overemotional when criticisms were voiced. Harry Shergold, Penkov-sky's

case officer, practically went for me at a meeting in MI6 one day.

"What the hell do you know about running agents?" he snarled.

"You come in here and insult a brave man's memory, and expect us

to believe this?"

The question remains, of course, why should the Russians have

sent Penkovsky as a disinformation agent, if such he was? The answer,

I think, lies in the politics of Cuba, and the politics of arms control.

The Russians had two major strategic ambitions in the early 1960s-- to preserve Castro in Cuba, at a time when the Americans were doing

all in their power to remove him, by either coup or assassination, and

to enhance and develop the Soviet intercontinental ballistic missile

(ICBM) capability without arousing suspicions in the West. This was

the era of the "missile gap." The fear that Russia was moving ahead

in the production of nuclear weapons was a major plank in John Kennedy's

1960 presidential election campaign, and he committed his

administration to closing the gap. The Soviets were desperate to convince

the West that the missile gap was an illusion, and that, if anything,

the Soviets lagged behind the West.

Part of the reason for the fears about Soviet missile capability was

the fact that, intelligence-wise, the West was blind at this time, because

the U2 surveillance flights were cancelled after Gary Powers was shot

down in May 1960, and photoreconnaissance over the Soviet Union

did not become available again until the launch of the first satellite

toward the end of 1962. During that time the only intelligence available

to the West was the interception of telemetry signals and radio communications

from the rocket-testing ranges in Soviet Asia, and, of course,

Penkovsky.

The essence of Penkovsky's information was that the Soviet rocket

program was nowhere near as well advanced as the West had thus far

suspected, and that they had no ICBM capability, only intermediate-range

ballistic missiles, IRBMs. Armed with that knowledge, Kennedy

was able to call the Soviet bluff when the Americans detected IRBM

SPYCAltnER ^

facilities under construction in Cuba. The fact that the Russians were

seen to be installing what, according to Penkovsky, were their state-ofthe-art

rockets in Cuba tended to confirm to the Americans the

validity of Penkovsky's message that the Russians had no ICBM capability.

Khrushchev was forced to withdraw, but achieved his major

aim--an eventual acceptance from the USA that Cuba would remain

unscathed.

Penkovsky's message was later confirmed by the two defectors from

the Soviet delegation to the UN who contacted the FBI in the early

1960s, Top Hat and Fedora, the latter of which, like Penkovsky, was

allegedly a scientific and technical officer. Both agents, but especially

Fedora, gave intelligence which supported Penkovsky's message that

Soviet rocketry was markedly inferior to the West's. Fedora gave immensely

detailed intelligence about weaknesses in Soviet rocket accelerometers.

The confidence which Penkovsky's intelligence, and that of Fedora

and Top Hat, gave to the Americans was a crucial factor in creating

the climate which gave rise to the SALT I arms control negotiations,

and the era of detente, and that, I believe, was his purpose. He helped

to lull suspicions in the West for more than a decade, and misled us as

to the true state of Soviet missile development.

In the mid-1970s the climate began to change, and doubts began

to emerge. Satellite photoreconnaissance was dramatically improved,

and when the accuracy of Soviet ICBMs was analyzed using sophisticated

measurements of the impact craters, the missiles were found to

be much more accurate than had been detected by telemetry and radio

intercepts. The only explanation was that a bias had been introduced

into Russian signals, with the intention of misleading American detection

systems.

While Penkovsky retained his status as MI6's finest postwar

achievement, Fedora and Top Hat, for reasons which are too lengthy

to detail here, were officially recognized by all sections of the U.S.

intelligence community as provocations. Fedora's information about

the accelerometers was found to be wrong, and there was even some

evidence that the Russians had introduced a fake third gyro on their

missiles to make them appear less/accurate than they in fact were.

Findings like these cast doubt on the validity of previous arms

control agreements, and fears about the ability of the USA to accurately

assess Soviet missile capabilities in the end sounded the death knell for

the SALT talks in the late 1970s. There was a growing realization in

I

212 PETER WRIGHT

the U.S. defense community that on-site inspections were vital in any

future negotiations, a concession which the Soviets have resolutely refused

to concede. Today a consensus is beginning to emerge among

Western defense strategists that the West was indeed overconfident in

its assessment of Soviet missile strength in the 1960s, and that the Soviet

used the era of detente as the cover for a massive military expansion

The idea that Penkovsky played some role in that is not now as farfetched

as it once sounded.

When I first wrote my Penkovsky analysis Maurice Oldfield (later

chief of MI6 in the 1970s), who played a key role in the Penkovsky

case as Chief of Station in Washington, told me:

"You've got a long road to hoe with this one, Peter, there's a lot

of It's and Gongs riding high on the back of Penkovsky," he said,

referring to the honors heaped on those involved in the Penkovsky operation.

Perhaps not such a long road today.

15

By the beginning of 1964 both Arthur and I were convinced that Hollis,

rather than Mitchell, was the most likely suspect for the spy we were

certain had been active inside MI5 at a high level. Only this hypothesis

could explain the incongruities in the Mitchell investigation. Hollis'

long-standing refusal to entertain any possibility of a penetration of

the Service, his unwillingness to authorize technical facilities during

the Mitchell case, his refusal to sanction the interrogation, or brief the

Americans until his hand was forced, all seemed to us to point in one

direction.

Then suddenly, as we waited for Symonds' second report on Mitchell,

an old case fell into our laps. Sir Anthony Blunt, Surveyor of the

Queen's Pictures, international art historian, and former wartime senior

officer for MI5, confessed in April 1964 to having spied for Russia

throughout the war. It brewed up in late 1963, when MI5 were informed

by the FBI that an American citizen, Michael Whitney Straight, had

told them that Blunt had recruited him for the Soviets while they were

both at Cambridge University in the 1930s. Arthur Martin flew over to

interview Straight, who confirmed the story, and agreed to testify in a

British court if necessary.

The question of how to handle the Blunt case was considered at

a series of meetings in Hollis' office. The management saw it as a dreadful embarrassment. In the everlasting game of inter-Secret Service

rivalry, the fact that MI6 had harbored proven traitors, but thus far

MI5 had not, was of enormous importance to the Service's prestige in

Whitehall. Hollis, in particular, craved the respect of mandarins in the

Cabinet and Home Office, and feared the effect the Blunt case would

have on MI5's status. Beyond this, there was a terror of scandal. Hollis and many of his senior staff were acutely aware of the damage any

214 PETER WRIGHT

public revelation of Blunt's activities might do to themselves, to MI5

| | and to the incumbent Conservative Government. Harold Macmillan

had finally resigned after a succession of security scandals, culminating

in the Profumo affair. Hollis made little secret of his hostility to the

Labor Party, then riding high in public opinion, and realized only too

well that a scandal on the scale that would be provoked by Blunt's

prosecution would surely bring the tottering Government down.

Arthur and I had simple motivations. We wanted to get our hands

on Blunt as soon as possible, to see if he could shed any light on the

question of further penetration of MI5. A trial involving Straight would

in any case be unlikely to succeed, and would delay, if not jeopardize

entirely, our chances of ever gaining his cooperation. The decision to

offer Blunt immunity was possibly the only decision of note concerning

the penetration of MI5 where all parties agreed, and after the matter

had been cleared with the Attorney-General, Blunt was confronted by

Arthur Martin and almost immediately admitted his role as Soviet talent

spotter and spy.

A few days after Blunt confessed, I was buzzed by Hollis' secretary

early one evening and told to come to the DG's office at once. Hollis

and F.J. were sitting on either side of his desk, looking solemn; Victor

Rothschild was standing at the window staring out across Green Park.

"Hello, Victor," I said, a little surprised that he had not warned

me of his visit to the building.

"Thank you for coming, Peter," he replied in a brittle voice, turning

to face me. He looked distraught.

"I have just told Victor about Anthony," said Hollis, interrupting

quickly.

Little wonder Victor looked devastated. Blunt and he had been

close friends for nearly thirty years, first at Cambridge, and then during

the war, when both men served inside MI5. After the war their careers

took them on different paths. They were both men of extraordinary

gifts in an increasingly gray world, and their relationship remained

close. Like Blunt, Victor also fell under suspicion after the Burgess/

Maclean defections. He had been friendly with Burgess as an undergraduate,

and had originally owned the lease on a house off Welbeck

Street, No. 5 Bentinck Street, where Blunt and Burgess both lived

during the war. But while the suspicions against Victor swiftly melted,

those against Blunt remained, particularly after Courtney Young interviewed

him in the mid-1950s.

Victor's main concern, as soon as he was told the truth, was how

SPYCATCHER 215

to break the news to his wife, Tess. He knew as well as I did that news

of Blunt's treachery would, if anything, have a more traumatic effect

on her than on him. I had got to know Tess Rothschild well since first

nieeting Victor in 1958. She was a woman of great charm and femininity,

and was closer to Blunt in many ways than Victor had ever been. She

understood the vulnerable side of his character, and shared with him

a love for art. In the 1930s she moved in that same circle of gifted left-wing

intellectuals who studied in Cambridge, partied in London, and

holidayed at Cap Ferrat, as the world tottered into World War II.

When war broke out, Tess Mayer, as she then was, joined MI5,

where she served with great bravery and distinction alongside her future

husband. During this period, she too had rooms in No. 5 Bentinck

Street along with Blunt and Burgess. Tess' other roommate was Pat

Rawdon-Smith, later Lady Llewellen-Davies. Tess was well aware of

MI5's doubts about Blunt after the Burgess/Maclean defections, but

she defended him to the hilt. Both she and her husband, Victor, knew

how it felt to be innocent, yet fall under suspicion through having been

friendly with Guy Burgess. To her, Blunt was a vulnerable and wonderfully

gifted man, cruelly exposed to the everlasting burden of suspicion

by providence and the betrayals of Guy Burgess.

"Anthony used to come back tight to Bentinck Street, sometimes

so tight that I had to help him into bed," she used to say. "I would

have known if he was a spy ..."

Victor realized that we would need to interview Tess now that

Blunt had confessed, but he dreaded telling her the truth.

"That is why I asked you up to Roger's office," he said quietly.

"I think it would be better if the news came from you."

I knew that he needed to get away from Leconfield House, and

gather his thoughts alone.

"Of course," I said, as gently as I could, suggesting that I bring

Evelyn McBarnet as well, since Tess knew her.

A few days later Evelyn and I took a taxi over to St. James's Place.

We were shown up to Victor's study, a light, scholarly room overlooking

Green Park, and stamped with his extraordinary character--paintings,

scientific diagrams, musical instruments, books ancient and modern,

and on the wall a huge self-designed slide rule. There was also a piano,

on which Victor played jazz with great skill and elan. Victor was ill-- at-ease, and I could tell that Tess sensed something was wrong. After

a few minutes, Victor said I had some news for her, then slipped out

of the room.

216 PETER WRIGHT

"Is there anything wrong, Peter?" she asked nervously.

"It's Anthony," I told her, "he has confessed at last."

"What to? You are not saying he was a spy?"

"Yes, I am, Tess."

For a second she raised her hand to her mouth as if in pain; then

she let it slip gently onto her lap. I told her the story as best I could-of

how he had admitted being recruited in 1937, a year or two after

Philby, Burgess, and Maclean, and how he had given a long and detailed

account of his espionage activities throughout the war. Tess did not

cry; she just went terribly pale, and sat hunched up and frozen, her eyes staring at me as she listened. Like Victor, she was a person for

whom loyalty in friendship was of surpassing importance; to have it

betrayed shook her, as it had him, to the core.

"All those years," she whispered, "and I never suspected a thing."

I began to understand for the first time the intensity of feelings

which had been forged in the crucible of those strange, long-ago years

in Cambridge in the 1930s.

The Blunt confession had a drastic effect on Arthur's behavior.

After years of toil, here finally was proof that he had been right all

along. From the beginning he suspected Blunt, even though many people

in the office, like Dick White, who had been close friends with

Blunt during the war, initially doubted that it was possible. Arthur

became even more driven, even more difficult to handle. He had the

look of a man who could smell red meat, a ravenous, voracious manner

as he collected his ancient scalp.

The confession dramatically sharpened attitudes toward penetration.

The unthinkable, that there could be a spy inside MI5, became

suddenly much more real. Arthur was convinced that if only we could

keep the momentum up, the new D Branch team could get to the heart

of the 1930s conspiracy. He felt that while things were running our

way, and defectors and confessions were coming thick and fast, he

might still resolve the greatest riddle of all--the identity of the mole

inside MI5 today. But as Arthur pressed for speed and urgency and

action, he was faced by the new D Branch Director, Cumming, who

favored a slow and cautious approach.

The relationship between the two men deteriorated in an alarming

way during the early part of 1964. Arthur had little respect for Cumming:

he felt his approach was out of date. Arthur had been largely

responsible for rebuilding Soviet Counterespionage since 1959, and

I

SPYCATCHER 217

because of his reputation, his influence spread way beyond Dl. He was

an ambitious man, and understandably so, but he lacked tact. He felt

he should have been D Branch Director rather than Cumming, and

made little secret of the fact that he expected the job very shortly. To

him, Cumming was mishandling the whole penetration issue. Cumming

deeply resented Arthur's attitude, which was rarely hidden, as well as

the intrusions on his authority. He was bitter, also, about the way he

had been kept out of the Mitchell inquiry, and suspected that Arthur

harbored secret suspicions about Hollis. A showdown was clearly only

a matter of time in coming.

Shortly after Blunt confessed, it occurred. In May 1964 I visited

Washington to try to persuade the CIA to help our fledgling Movements

Analysis program. Hal Doyne Ditmass, who ran the Movements Analysis,

and I wanted the CIA to provide computer effort to process the

mass of material which the program was producing (7 million movements

a year) and my request to the CIA had Hollis' approval. Angleton

was totally supportive, and Helms agreed to send over not just one or

two technicians, but a twenty-man team and a guarantee of all the

computer time in the CIA that the program required. As soon as I got

back, with the CIA computer team due to arrive the following week,

Arthur told me that Hal Doyne Ditmass was being transferred. I exploded.

"How the hell can we do any planning if vital staff are transferred

just as soon as they familiarize themselves with an area?" I raged. "Hal

and I have spent four years developing this work, and just when it

really starts to produce results, he gets a transfer!"

Arthur was just as upset as I. He had handpicked many of the

staff in Dl, and resented any attempt to move them, especially at this

time of maximum activity in the Soviet counterespionage field. Arthur

stormed into Cumming's office, believing he should have opposed the

move. The row filtered down the corridor, as months of pent-up resentment

poured out. Cumming accused Arthur of riding roughshod

over the Branch, and exceeding his authority. Arthur, for his part,

made little secret of his belief that the Branch was being badly handled.

Inevitably, the argument focused on the recent Mitchell case. Cumming

accused Arthur of being obsessed'with what was, in his opinion, a dead

case, and, moreover, one which had done enormous damage to the

morale of the Service. Arthur responded by indicating that, so far as

he was concerned, the case still had a very long way to go. Cumming

m

218 PETER WRIGHT

reported the row to Hollis, who promptly requested a full written report

on the matter. The following day Cumming sent Arthur a draft copy

of the report he intended submitting to Hollis.

Arthur was appalled by what he read. Cumming's report made no

mention of the implications for the CIA visit of Doyne Ditmass' removal

from the Movements Analysis program. It was an explicit attack on

Arthur, culminating in the suggestion that Arthur harbored suspicions

about the identity of the spy inside MI5 which he was not willing to

share with his Director.

Arthur was by now at breaking point with Cumming.

"Not bloody true!" he scrawled in the margin, and continued to

deface every line of Cumming's report, before sending it back from

whence it came. Cumming, sensing his chance for a decisive victory,

promptly sent the copy as it stood to Hollis, who summarily suspended

Arthur for a fortnight for indiscipline.

I was in a hopeless position: I had twenty CIA technicians arriving

at Leconfield House any day, expecting to enter important negotiations

with Hal Doyne Ditmass, me, and Arthur Martin, and as things stood,

there would only be me on the MI5 side of the table. I went to see

Hollis privately and explained, with as little rancor as I could, the nature

of the problem. I reminded Hollis that the approach to the CIA had

been done in his name, and he agreed to reinstate Doyne Ditmass for

another year.

"But what about Arthur?" I asked, hoping that Hollis might change

his mind on that too.

"I am not prepared to discuss the matter," he retorted.

"But what about Blunt?" I pleaded. "We can't just leave him out

in the cold when we've just broken him ..."

"It's about time Arthur learned that he's not the DG yet," said

Hollis grimly. "When he's sitting in this chair, he can make the decisions.

Until then, I do!"

When Arthur returned, we began the debriefing in earnest, systematically

identifying his every controller and recruitment, and checking

every item of intelligence that he handed over to the Russians.

Arthur met Blunt regularly and questioned him on the basis of detailed

research briefs which D3 and Evelyn drew up. Each session was taped,

and the transcripts processed by D3 to check for inaccuracies and points

which needed further questioning.

Blunt swiftly named as fellow spies Leo Long, a former officer in

British Military Intelligence, and John Cairncross, who had served in

F

SPYCATCHER 219

the Treasury in 1940, before joining the Government Code and Cipher

School (GC&CS) at Bletchley with access to enigma sigint material,

and, in 1944, MI6. Long, informed by Arthur that a prosecution was

most unlikely provided he cooperated with MI5, swiftly confessed, as

did Cairncross, who was seen by Arthur in Rome.

But after his initial leads, Blunt ran out of things to say. He sat

and listened to Arthur's questions, helped where he could, but there

was nothing like the wealth of detail we expected. Arthur and I decided

to confront him together. The plan was to introduce me as the

officer analyzing Blunt's confession. I would then play nasty to Arthur's

nice, and tell Blunt I had serious doubts about the veracity of

his confession. It was an old interrogation trick, but it had worked before.

There was one further twist. We set the meeting up in Maurice

Oldfield's flat in Chandos Court, Caxton Street, Westminster, which

had a concealed taping system. Usually when Blunt and Arthur met,

Arthur recorded the conversation openly on a hand tape recorder.

We decided that we would turn off the visible tape recorder when I'

went for Blunt, to give him additional security. Hollis was extremely reluctant

about the plan. From the beginning he instructed that no pressure

was to be applied to Blunt, in case he should defect. But we

managed to persuade him that on this one occasion the risk was worth taking.

We met Blunt several nights later. He was tall and extremely thin,

wearing a tweed suit with a large bow tie. He looked distinguished, if

slightly effeminate. He was friendly but guarded, especially toward

Arthur. I could tell there was a tension between them; neither man

could forget that they had sat down together ten years before, and

Blunt had lied through his teeth. They talked in a businesslike fashion

for half an hour, mainly about documents which Blunt removed from

the Registry. Every now and then Blunt snatched a look across at me.

I could tell he knew what was coming. Finally, Arthur brought me into

the conversation.

"Peter has been doing the analysis, Anthony. I think he has something

to say . . ."

I switched off the tape recorder and paused for effect.

"It's quite clear to me, reading the transcripts, that you have not

been telling us the full truth ..."

Blunt flinched as if I had struck him. He was sitting in an easy

chair with his pencil-thin legs crossed. His outstretched leg kicked involuntarily.

220 PETER WRIGHT

"I have told you everything which you have asked," he replied

looking me straight in the eye.

"That's nonsense, and you know it is, too. You say you only know

about Long and Cairncross, those were the only ones. I don't believe

you!"

He purpled, and a tic began to flicker on his right cheek. He poured

himself another gin, playing for time.

"We've been very fair with you," I went on. "We've been polite

and we've kept our side of the bargain like gentlemen. But you have

not kept yours ..."

He listened intently as I made my play. Where was he not telling the truth? he wanted to know. I pointed out areas where we felt he

was holding back. I knew he was trying to gauge whether I had fresh

evidence or information which could put him on the spot, or whether

we were just working from gut feelings. After a few minutes' discomfort,

he began to resume his poise. The tic began to settle down. He knew

we had nothing to throw at him.

"I've already told you, Peter," he muttered, "there was nobody

else!"

I switched tack, and began to press his conscience.

"Have you ever thought about the people who died?"

Blunt feigned ignorance.

"There were no deaths," he said smoothly, "I never had access to

that type of thing ..."

"What about Gibby's spy?" I flashed, referring to an agent run

inside the Kremlin by an MI6 officer named Harold Gibson. "Gibby's

spy" provided MI6 with Politburo documents before the war, until he

was betrayed by Blunt and subsequently executed.

"He was a spy," said Blunt harshly, momentarily dropping his

guard to reveal the KGB professional. "He knew the game; he knew

the risks."

Blunt knew he had been caught in a lie, and the tic started up

again with a vengeance. We wrestled for an hour, but the longer it went

on, the more he realized the strength of his position. The session broke

up with ill-concealed temper.

"The truth is, given the choice, you wouldn't betray anyone you

thought was vulnerable, would you?" I asked, as Blunt prepared to

leave.

"That's true," he said, standing to his full height, "but I've already

told you. There are no more names ..."

F

SPYCATCHER 221

He said it with such intensity that I felt he almost believed it

himself.

There had been an incident which was perturbing. The tape recorder

which we overtly had in the room decided to scramble up its

tape. I knelt on the floor and proceeded to straighten the tape out and

get it going again. While I was doing this, Blunt said to Arthur, "Isn't

it fascinating to watch a technical expert do his stuff?"

Now, Blunt had not been told by either Arthur or me that I was

a scientist. I had been introduced as the man processing what he, Blunt,

had told us. I looked Blunt straight in the eye and he blushed purple.

Somebody had told him who I really was.

"You take him on," snapped Arthur when Blunt had left. "He's

played out ..."

Arthur was keen to strip the bones of his other carcasses, Long

and Cairncross.

Long was in the Apostles Society at Cambridge, a self-regarding

elite club of intellectuals, many of whom were left-wing and homosexual.

When war broke out he joined Military Intelligence, where he was

posted to MI14, responsible for assessing Oberkommando Wehrmacht

sigint and hence military strength. Throughout the war he met clandestinely

with Blunt and handed over any intelligence he could lay his

hands on. After the war he moved to the British Control Commission

in Germany, where he eventually rose to become deputy head of Military

Intelligence before leaving in 1952 to pursue a career in commerce.

He left Intelligence because he was getting married and did not wish

to have to tell his wife that he had been a spy.

I met Long several times with Arthur, and disliked him intensely.

Unlike the other members of the Ring, he lacked class, and I often

wondered how on earth he was accepted into the Apostles. He was an

officious, fussy man with a face like a motor mechanic's, and seemed

still to regard himself as a superior Army officer, despite his treachery.

Far from being helpful in his debriefing, his attitude, when challenged

on a point, was invariably to say that we would just have to take his

word for it. He went through his story with us briskly. No, he knew of

no other spies, and claimed that he gave up all espionage activities in

1945. This failed to tally with what Blunt had told us. He said that in

1946 he went to Germany to persuade Long to apply for a post inside

MI5. Long agreed, and Blunt, then a trusted and well-respected recent

departure from the Service, wrote a recommendation for him. Luckily

for MI5, Guy Liddell had a marked prejudice against uniformed military

1

222 PETER WRIGHT

officers, and blackballed him at the Board, even though Dick White

supported him, much to his later embarrassment. But despite this attempt

to join MI5, and Long's continuing secret work in Germany, he

denied all further contact with the Russians, which was clearly rubbish

Cairncross was a different character entirely. He was a clever

rather frail-looking Scotsman with a shock of red hair and a broad

accent. He came from a humble working-class background but, possessed

of a brilliant intellect, he made his way to Cambridge in the

1930s, becoming an open Communist before dropping out on the instructions

of the Russians and applying to join the Foreign Office.

Cairncross was one of Arthur's original suspects in 1951, after

papers containing Treasury information were found in Burgess' fiat after

the defection. Evelyn McBarnet recognized the handwriting as that of

John Cairncross. He was placed under continuous surveillance, but

although he went to a rendezvous with his controller, the Russian never

turned up. When Arthur confronted Cairncross in 1952 he denied being

a spy, claiming that he had supplied information to Burgess as a friend,

without realizing that he was a spy. Shortly afterward, Cairncross left

Britain and did not return until 1967.

After Cairncross confessed, Arthur and I traveled to Paris to meet

him again for a further debriefing in a neutral venue. He had already

told Arthur the details of his recruitment by the veteran Communist

James Klugman, and the intelligence from GCHQ and MI6 which he

had passed to the Russians, and we were anxious to find out if he had

any other information which might lead to further spies. Cairncross

was an engaging man. Where Long floated with the tide, Communist

when it was fashionable, and anxious to save his neck thereafter, Cairncross

remained a committed Communist. They were his beliefs, and

with characteristic Scottish tenacity, he clung to them. Unlike Long,

too, Cairncross tried his best to help. He was anxious to come home,

and thought that cooperation was the best way to earn his ticket.

Cairncross said he had no firm evidence against anyone, but was

able to identify two senior civil servants who had been fellow Communists

with him at Cambridge. One was subsequently required to resign,

while the other was denied access to defense-related secrets. We were

particularly interested in what Cairncross could tell us about GCHQ,

which thus far had apparently escaped the attentions of the Russian

intelligence services in a way which made us distinctly suspicious,

especially given the far greater numbers of people employed there.

Cairncross told us about four men from GCHQ who he thought

F

SPYCATCHER 223

might repay further investigation. One of these worked with him in the

Air Section of GCHQ, and had talked about the desirability of enabling

British sigint material to reach the Soviet Union. Cairncross, although

amused by the irony of the man's approach, was in no position to judge

his seriousness, so he kept quiet about his own role. The second man,

according to Cairncross, had been sacked after returning to Oxford and

telling his former tutor full details of his work inside GCHQ. The tutor,

appalled by the indiscretion, reported him to GCHQ, and he was sacked.

A third man named by Cairncross, like the first, had long since left

GCHQ for an academic career, so effort was concentrated on the fourth,

a senior GCHQ official in the technical section. After a full investigation

he was completely cleared.

GCHQ became highly agitated by the D Branch inquiries resulting

from Cairncross' information, as did C Branch; both protected their

respective empires jealously, and resented what they saw as interference,

particularly when I made some caustic comments about how they

could improve their vetting.

As my D3 section pursued these leads, I wrestled with the problem

of how to handle Blunt, now that he was my responsibility. Before I

began meeting Blunt I had to attend a briefing by Michael Adeane,

the Queen's Private Secretary. We met at his office in the Palace. He

was punctilious and correct, and assured me that the Palace was willing

to cooperate in any inquiries the Service thought fit. He spoke in the

detached manner of someone who wishes not to know very much more

about the matter.

"The Queen," he said, "has been fully informed about Sir Anthony,

and is quite content for him to be dealt with in any way which

gets at the truth."

There was only one caveat.

"From time to time," said Adeane, "you may find Blunt referring

to an assignment he undertook on behalf of the Palace--a visit to

Germany at the end of the war. Please do not pursue this matter. Strictly

speaking, it is not relevant to considerations of national security."

Adeane carefully ushered me to the door. I could not help reflecting

on the difference between his dedicate touch and the hysterical way

MI5 had handled Blunt, terrified that he might defect, or that somehow

the scandal might leak. Although I spent hundreds of hours with Blunt,

I never did learn the secret of his mission to Germany. But then, the

Palace had had several centuries to learn the difficult art of scandal

burying. MI5 have only been in the business since 1909!

224 PETER WRIGHT

When I took over Blunt I stopped all meetings with him while T

considered a new policy. Confrontation was clearly never going to work

firstly because Hollis was vehemently opposed to anything which might

provoke a defection, or a public statement from Blunt, and secondly

because Blunt himself knew that our hand was essentially a weak one

that we were still groping in the dark and interrogating him from a

position of ignorance rather than strength. I decided that we had to

adopt a subtle approach, in an attempt to play on his character. I could

tell that Blunt wanted to be thought helpful, even where it was clear

that he was not. Moreover, he disliked intensely being caught in a lie.

We had to extract the intelligence from him by a slow process of cumulative

pressure, advancing on small fronts, rather than on any large

one. To do that we needed a far more profound knowledge of the 1930s

than MI5 at the time possessed.

I decided, too, that we had to move the interviews onto his patch.

He always came to Maurice Oldfield's flat in a confrontational mood,

defensive, on edge, sharpened up, and aware that he was being recorded.

I felt moving to his place would lessen the tension, and enable

us to develop something of a relationship.

Every month or so for the next six years Blunt and I met in his

study at the Courtauld Institute. Blunt's study was a large room decorated

in magnificent baroque style, with gold-leaf cornicework painted

by his students at the Courtauld. On every wall hung exquisite paintings,

including a Poussin above the fireplace, bought in Paris in the 1930s

with 80 pounds lent to him by Victor Rothschild. (He was supposed to

have left this painting to Victor's oldest daughter, Emma, but he failed

to do this. The picture was valued at 500,000 pounds for his estate and

went to the nation.) It was the perfect setting to discuss treachery. For

every meeting we sat in the same place: around the fireplace, underneath

the Poussin. Sometimes we took tea, with finely cut sandwiches;

more often we drank, he gin and I Scotch; always we talked, about the

1930s, about the KGB, about espionage and friendship, love and betrayal.

They remain for me among the most vivid encounters of my

life.

Blunt was one of the most elegant, charming, and cultivated men

I have met. He could speak five languages, and the range and depth

of his knowledge was profoundly impressive. It was not limited solely

to the arts; in fact, as he was proud of telling me, his first degree at

Cambridge was in mathematics, and he retained a lifelong fascination

with the philosophy of science.

SPYCATCHER 225

The most striking thing about Blunt was the contradiction between

his evident strength of character and his curious vulnerability. It was

this contradiction which caused people of both sexes to fall in love with

him. He was obviously homosexual, but in fact, as I learned from him,

he had had at least two love affairs with women, who remained close

to him throughout his life. Blunt was capable of slipping from art historian

and scholar one minute, to intelligence bureaucrat the next, to

spy, to waspish homosexual, to languid establishmentarian. But the

roles took their toll on him as a man. I realized soon after we began

meeting that Blunt, far from being liberated by the immunity offer,

continued to carry a heavy burden. It was not a burden of guilt, for he

felt none. He felt pain for deceiving Tess Rothschild, and other close

friends like Dick White and Guy Liddell (he was in tears at Guy's

funeral), but it was the pain of what had to be done, rather than the

pain of what might have been avoided. His burden was the weight of

obligation placed on him by those friends, accomplices, and lovers

whose secrets he knew, and which he felt himself bound to keep.

As soon as we began our meetings at the Courtauld I could see

Blunt relax. He remained canny, however, and since he knew all about

SF, I soon noticed that the telephone was placed discreetly at the far

end of the hall. On the first afternoon we met there I noticed it as he

went out to fetch some tea.

"Bring the tea cozy to put on the telephone," I shouted.

He laughed.

"Oh no, Peter, you'll never be able to hear us down there with

that thing."

At first I took notes in a small notebook, but it became difficult

to take everything down, so I had to plan a way of obtaining clandestine

coverage of the meetings. Eventually the premises next to the Courtauld

were modernized, and I arranged for a probe microphone to be inserted

through the wall into Blunt's study. It was a ticklish job. The measurements

needed to be perfect to ensure that the probe emerged at

the right spot on Blunt's side of the fireplace close to where we sat.

A2 arranged for an artist friend of Blunt's to telephone him at a prearranged

time when I was visiting him, and while he was out in the hall

talking, I produced my tape measure and made all the necessary measurements

for the microphone, which was successfully installed and

working beautifully until the end. For all I know, it is probably still

there now.

For our first sessions I relaxed things. I tried not to press him too

226 PETER WRIGHT

hard, content simply to run through the old memories. He talked of

how he had joined the Soviet cause, recruited by the then youthful

brilliant Guy Burgess. Guy was still a painful subject for Blunt; he had

just died in Moscow, alone, his once virile body broken by years of

abuse.

"You probably find this impossible to believe," he told me as he

poured the tea, "but anyone who knew Guy well, really well, will tell

you that he was a great patriot."

"Oh, I can believe that," I said. "He only wanted Britain to be

Communist! Did you hear from him, before he died?"

Blunt sipped his tea nervously, the cup and saucer shaking slightly

in his hand. Then he went to his desk and fetched me a letter.

"This was the last one," he said. "You didn't miss it; it was hand

delivered . . ."He left the room.

It was a pathetic letter, rambling and full of flaccid sentimental

observations. Burgess talked of Moscow life, and tried to make it sound

as if it was still as good as ever. Now and again he referred to the old

days, and the Reform Club, and people they both knew. At the end

he talked of his feelings for Blunt, and the love they shared thirty years

before. He knew he was dying, but was whistling to the end. Blunt

came bac.k into the room after I finished reading the letter. He was

upset, more I suspect because he knew I could see that Burgess still

meant something to him. I had won a crucial first victory. He had lifted

the veil for the first time, and allowed me a glimpse into the secret

world which bound the Ring of Five together.

Blunt joined the Russian Intelligence Service in the heyday of the

period now known in Western counterintelligence circles as "the time

of the great illegals." After the arcos raid in London in 1928, where

MI5 smashed a large part of the Russian espionage apparatus in a police

raid, the Russians concluded that their legal residences, the embassies,

consulates, and the like, were unsafe as centers for agent running. From

then onward their agents were controlled by the "great illegals," men

like Theodore Maly, Deutsch, "Otto," Richard Sorge, Alexander Rado,

"Sonia," Leopold Trepper, the Piecks, the Poretskys, and Krivitsky.

They were often not Russians at all, although they held Russian citizenship.

They were Trotskyist Communists who believed in international

Communism and the Comintern. They worked undercover, often

at great personal risk, and traveled throughout the world in search of

potential recruits. They were the best recruiters and controllers the

SPYCATCHER 227

Russian Intelligence Service ever had. They all knew each other, and

between them they recruited and built high-grade spy rings like the

"Ring of Five" in Britain, Sorge's rings in China and Japan, the Rote

Drei in Switzerland, and the Rote Kapelle in German-occupied Europe

--the finest espionage rings history has ever known, and which

contributed enormously to Russian survival and success in World

War II.

Unlike Philby and Burgess, Blunt never met "Theo," their first

controller, a former Hungarian priest named Theodore Maly. Maly

understood the idealism of people like Philby and Burgess, and their

desire for political action. He became a captivating tutor in international

politics, and his students worshipped him. In 1936-37 Maly was replaced

by "Otto," and it was he who orchestrated Blunt's recruitment

by Burgess. Like Theo, "Otto" was a middle-class East European,

probably Czech, who was able to make the Soviet cause appealing not

simply for political reasons but because he shared with his young recruits

the same cultured European background. Blunt admitted to me on

many occasions that he doubted he would ever have joined had the

approach come from a Russian.

For some reason, we were never able to identify "Otto." Philby,

Blunt, and Cairncross all claimed they never knew his real name, although

Philby in his confession told Nicholas Elliott that while in Washington

he recognized "Otto" from a photograph in the FBI files as a

Comintern agent named Arnold Deutsch. But when we checked we

found that no picture of Deutsch existed in FBI files during Philby's

time in Washington. Moreover, Deutsch had fair curly hair. I used to

bring Blunt volume after volume of the MI5 Russian intelligence officer

files in the hope that he might recognize him. Blunt treated the books

as if they were catalogues from the National Gallery. He would study

them carefully through his half-moon spectacles, pausing to admire a

particularly striking face, or an elegantly captured figure on a street

corner. But we never identified "Otto" or discovered the reason why

the Ring were so desperate to conceal his identity so many years later.

In 1938 Stalin purged all his great illegals. They were Trotskyists

and non-Russians and he was convinced they were plotting against him,

along with elements in the Red Army. One by one they were recalled

to Moscow and murdered. Most went willingly, fully aware of the fate

that awaited them, perhaps hoping that they could persuade the demented

tyrant of the great services they had rendered him in the West.

ZZ» HETER WRIGHT

Some, like Krivitsky, decided to defect, although even he was almost

certainly eventually murdered by a Russian assassin in Washington in

1941.

For over a year after "Otto's" departure, the Ring remained in

limbo, out of touch and apparently abandoned. Then Guy Burgess and

Kim Philby reestablished contact with the Russians through Philby's

first wife, Litzi Friedman, a long-time European Comintern agent. According

to Blunt, the Ring was run through a complex chain of couriers:

from Litzi Friedman messages passed to her close friend and fellow

Comintern agent, Edith Tudor Hart, and thence to Bob Stewart, the

CPGB official responsible for liaison with the Russian Embassy, and

thence on to Moscow. Until Blunt confessed we were entirely unaware

of this chain, and it had enormous implications. Each member of the

chain almost certainly knew the identities of the Ring, claimed Blunt,

and it had always puzzled him that the Ring was not detected at this

point by MI5. We had always assumed the Ring had been kept entirely

separate from the CPGB apparatus, which was thoroughly penetrated

in the 1930s by agents run by Maxwell Knight. But now it appeared

that we had missed the greatest CPGB secret of all. In 1938 MI5 were

basking in the success of the Woolwich Arsenal case, where evidence

from Maxwell Knight's best agent, Joan Gray (Miss X), secured the

conviction of senior CPGB officials for espionage in the Woolwich

Arsenal Munitions Factory. Had we run the case on longer, we might

well have captured the most damaging spies in British history before

they began.

At the end of 1940, the Russians finally reestablished contact with

the Ring, and from this period onward they were directed into the

intelligence world. Their controller during this period was "Henry," a

Russian intelligence officer named Anatoli Gromov, or Gorski, who

was working under diplomatic cover. Gromov ran all the spies in the

Ring, almost certainly the eight whose cryptonyms appear in the venona

traffic, until he left for Washington in 1944 to run Donald Maclean,

who was posted to the British Embassy. Those who were left in London

were taken over by Boris Krotov, the KGB officer whose venona messages

revealed the existence of the eight spies. Blunt said he had a great

respect for the professionalism of his KGB controllers, but they never

really stimulated him in the way that "Otto" had. Gromov and Krotov

were technocrats of the modern Russian intelligence machine, whereas

to Blunt, the talented European controllers of the 1930s were artists.

"Was that why you left MI5?" I asked.

SPYCATCHER 229

"Oh, that partly," he said. "I was tempted to stay. But they didn't

need me. Kim would serve them well. He was rising to the top, I knew

that. And I needed my art. After all, if they had wanted me, they could so easily have blackmailed me to stay."

The onset of the Cold War and the spread of McCarthyism reinforced

Blunt's conviction that he had made the right choice in the 1930s,

and he continued to be totally loyal to those who remained in the game.

In 1951 he opted to stay and brazen it out, rather than defect with

Burgess and Maclean. He was pressured to defect at this time by Modin

("Peter"). He told me a life of exile in Moscow would have been

intolerable for him. He had visited Russia in the 1930s. It was a fine

and admirable tragic country, but the place which appealed to him most

was the Hermitage, Leningrad's magnificent gallery.

After 1951 Blunt was left alone with Philby. He was much less

close to him than to Burgess. Philby was a strong, dominant personality,

yet he needed Blunt desperately. Blunt still had the ear of his former

friends in MI5, and was able to glean scraps for Philby of how the case

against him was developing. They used to meet to discuss their chances

of survival. Philby seemed bereft without his career in MI6, and had

little understanding of the importance of art and scholarship to Blunt,

even while the net closed on them both.

"Kim and I had different outlooks on life," Blunt told me. "He

only ever had one ambition in life--to be a spy. I had other things in

mine . . ."

Blunt admired Philby, but there was a part of him that was frightened

by his utter conviction, his ruthlessly one-dimensional view of life.

Blunt needed love and art and, in the end, the comfort of life in the

Establishment. Philby, on the other hand, lived his life from bed to

bed; he had an Arabian attitude to women, needing only the thrill of

espionage to sustain him. Isaiah Berlin once said to me, "Anthony's

trouble is that he wants to hunt with society's hounds and run with the

Communist hares!"

"Kim never wavered," he said. "He always remained loyal, right

to the end."

By late 1964 I was submerged by the weight of material emanating

from the Long, Cairncross, and Blunt confessions, as well as the enormous

task of collating and systematically reexamining all the material

which had reached MI5 since 1960 from the various defectors. It was

at this point that Symonds' second report on the Mitchell case finally

reached me.

230 PETER WRIGHT

One morning, about a fortnight before the October 1964 general

election, Hollis' secretary handed me a thick file, and told me to report

to the DG's office that afternoon to discuss it. There was precious little

time to read the report, let alone study it. Symonds had followed Hollis'

instructions zealously, and during the eight months it took him to prepare

the document, he never discussed its contents with either Arthur

or me. But its thrust was clear enough. Symonds reassessed the Mitchell

case in the light of the Blunt confession, which, of course, we had not

possessed at the time of the first report. According to Symonds, the

case against Mitchell was not strong. Symonds was not prepared to rule

out the possibility of a more recent penetration, but he felt the likelihood

was considerably diminished.

Arthur also received Symonds' report that morning; he knew he

was being outflanked, and that the decision to circulate the report at

such a late stage was a deliberate device to prevent any counterattack.

He told me that he intended at the meeting to take the line that he

could not comment until he was given adequate time to study it. For

the first part of the meeting he was a silent, smoldering presence at

one side of the conference table.

Hollis opened briskly.

"I don't propose to waste too much time," he began. "I have read

this paper, which strikes me as most convincing. I would like your views

before reaching a decision. As you know, gentlemen, an election is due

very soon, and I feel it is much better for the Service if we can resolve

this case now, so that I do not have to brief any incoming Prime Minister."

Everyone knew what he meant. He did not want to brief Harold

Wilson, the Labor leader, who looked increasingly likely to beat the

Tories at the forthcoming contest. Hollis' attitude was quite simple:

Blunt, Long, and Cairncross tied up some useful loose ends, the Mitchell

case fell, and everything was neatly resolved. He wanted to close

the case and minute the file that the question of penetration had been

dismissed.

Hollis asked for opinions around the table. There was surprisingly

little comment at first. The Mitchell inquiry had been so badly botched

on all sides that few of us felt it a strong wicket to defend, particularly

since Arthur and I both now had strong suspicions that Hollis was the

culprit. I said simply that if Symonds' first report was the case for the

prosecution, then this latest was the case for the defense, and that

without an interrogation I could not accept a verdict of "not guilty,"

SPYCATCHER 231

and wanted my views recorded in the minutes. Hollis made a small

note on the pad in front of him, and turned to Cumming. Cumming

delivered a lecture on the lack of discipline exhibited during the Mitchell

investigation. It was clear to all of us that the decision to exclude him

from the indoctrination had shattered his self-esteem. F.J. said only

that the best that could be said for the Mitchell case was that it was

nonproven.

"And you, Arthur . . . ?" asked Hollis.

Arthur looked up from the report.

"Well," he said, "there is a third possibility. Someone could be

running Mitchell as their stalking horse."

There was silence around the table. He and Hollis stared at each

other for a brief moment. Everyone in the room knew exactly what

Arthur meant.

"I should like that remark clarified," said Cumming from the other

end of the table. Symonds flicked anxiously through his report, as if

he were looking to see if somehow Arthur's hypothesis had crept into

it undetected.

Hollis merely picked up where he left off, ignoring Arthur's comment

as if he had not heard it.

"Well, we have to make a decision," he said, "and therefore I

propose to close this case down, and minute the file to that effect ..."

His pen paused above the file. Arthur could contain himself no

longer.

"Intellectually, you simply cannot do this," he burst out in his most

precise manner. "You're neglecting virtually all the Golitsin allegations

about penetration. There's the question of the leak about the Crabbe

operation. There's the Technics Document--we don't even know yet

which document Golitsin is referring to. Whatever the status of the

Mitchell case, it cannot be right to ignore them."

Hollis tried to deflect the attack, but Arthur pressed forward. He

knew Hollis had overreached himself. Symonds admitted he knew too

little about the Golitsin material to present an authoritative opinion.

F.J. was inclined to agree that further work on Golitsin would be prudent.

Hollis could feel the meeting ebb away from him. He threw down

his pen in exasperation and instructed Patrick Stewart to conduct a

final review of all Golitsin serials outstanding. In the meantime, he

ordered, the Mitchell case was closed.

After the meeting I approached F.J. It was intolerable, I said, for

the DG to assign a research task to an officer without consulting me,

232 PETER WRIGHT

the head of Research, when I was already wrestling with the mass of

material pouring in from Blunt, Long, and Cairncross, as well as from

defectors in Washington.

"Things are difficult enough as it is," I said, "but if we start splitting

the work up, there will be chaos!"

F.J. could see the problem. The system was approaching overload,

and he agreed with me that more coordination was needed, not less. I

suggested that we try to establish some kind of inter-Service working

party to research the entire range of material concerning the penetrations

of British Intelligence reaching us from confessions or defectors.

F.J. said he would see what he could do.

Shortly afterward he called me into his office and said that he had

discussed the whole matter with Dick White, who agreed that such a

committee should be established. Dick prevailed upon Hollis, who finally

gave his reluctant agreement. The committee would be formed

jointly from D Branch staff of MI5, and the Counterintelligence Division

of MI6. It would report to the Director, D Branch, and the head

of MI6 Counterintelligence, and I was to be its working chairman. The

committee was given a code name: fluency.

Hollis used the row over the Symonds report as the pretext for

clipping Arthur's wings. He divided the now burgeoning Dl empire

into two-sections:

Dl, to handle order of battle and operations; and a

new Dl (Investigations) Section, to handle the investigations side of

counterespionage. Arthur was left in charge of the truncated Dl, and

Ronnie Symonds was promoted alongside him as an assistant director

in charge of Dl (Investigations).

It was a cruel blow to Arthur, for whom investigations had been

his lifeblood since the late 1940s and into which most of his effort had

gone since his return in 1959. He had been upset not to be asked to

chair the Fluency Committee, although he understood that this was

essentially a D3 research task. But to be supplanted in his own department

by Symonds, his former junior, who for a long time had

viewed Arthur as his mentor, was a bitter pill to swallow. Arthur felt

betrayed by the Symonds report. He could not understand how Symonds

could write two reports within such a short space of time which

seemed to contradict each other. He believed that MI5 had made a

desperate mistake.

Arthur became reckless, as if the self-destructive impulse which

always ran deep in him suddenly took over. He was convinced that he

was being victimized for his energetic pursuit of penetration. To make

SPYCATCHER 233

matters worse, Hollis specified that although the two sections were to

be run independently of each other, Arthur was to have some kind of

oversight of both areas, in deference to his vast experience and knowledge.

It was an absurd arrangement, and bound to lead to catastrophe.

The two men rowed continually. Arthur believed that oversight meant

control while Symonds wanted to go his own way. Finally things boiled

over when Arthur abruptly ordered Symonds to bring his case officers

to a conference, and Symonds refused. Arthur told him he was making

it impossible for him to do his coordinating job; Symonds retorted that

Arthur was interfering, and placed a written complaint before Cum-ming.

Cumming took the complaint to Hollis and recommended Arthur's

immediate dismissal, to which Hollis enthusiastically agreed.

The matter was discussed at the next Directors' meeting. Arthur

had no allies there; too many Directors felt threatened by his forceful,

sometimes intemperate style. The only friend he had among the Directors,

Bill Magan, who staunchly defended Arthur to the end, was

conveniently absent when the decision was taken.

I remember Arthur came to my office the day it happened, steely

quiet.

"They've sacked me," he said simply. "Roger's given me two days

to clear my desk." In fact, he was taken on straightaway by MI6, at

Dick White's insistence and over Hollis' protests. But although this

transfer saved Arthur's pension, his career was cut off in its prime.

I could scarcely believe it. Here was the finest counterespionage

officer in the world, a man at that time with a genuine international

reputation for his skill and experience, sacked for the pettiest piece of

bureaucratic bickering. This was the man who since 1959 had built Dl

from an utterly ineffectual section into a modern, aggressive, and effective

counterespionage unit. It was still grossly undermanned, it was

true, but that was no fault of Arthur's.

Arthur's great flaw was naivete. He never understood the extent

to which he had made enemies over the years. His mistake was to

assume that advancement would come commensurately with achievement.

He was an ambitious man, as he had every right to be. But his

was not the ambition of petty infighting. He wanted to slay the dragons

and fight the beasts outside, and could never understand why so few

of his superiors supported him in his simple approach. He was temperamental,

he was obsessive, and he was often possessed by peculiar

ideas, but the failure of MI5 to harness his temperament and exploit

his great gifts is one of the lasting indictments of the organization.

234 PETER WRIGHT

"It's a plus as far as I'm concerned," he said the night he was

sacked, "to get out of this."

But I knew he did not mean it.

I tried to cheer Arthur up, but he was convinced Hollis had engineered

the whole thing to protect himself, and there was little I could

do. The stain of dismissal was a bitter price to pay after the achievements

of the previous twenty years. He knew that his career had been broken

and that, as in 1951, all he had worked for would be destroyed. I never

saw a sadder man than Arthur the night he left the office. He shook

my hand, and I thanked him for all he had done for me. He took one

look around the office. "Good luck," he said and stepped out for the

last time.

I

±

16

By the time Arthur left I was in the midst of a major reconstruction

of the D3 Research section. When I took it over it had no clear sense

of purpose in the way I wanted it to have. I was convinced that it had

a central role to play if MI5 were finally to get to the bottom of the

1930s conspiracy. An intelligence service, particularly a counterespionage

service, depends on its memory and its sense of history; without

them it is lost. But in 1964 MI5 was quite simply overloaded with the

mass of contradictory information flowing in from defectors and confessing

spies. Loose ends are in the nature of the profession of intelligence,

but we were overwhelmed by the weight of unresolved allegations

and unproven suspicions about the 1930s which were lying in the Registry.

We needed to go back to the period, and in effect positively vet

every single acquaintance of Philby, Burgess, Maclean, Blunt, Long,

and Cairncross.

It is difficult today to realize how little was actually known, even

as late as 1964, about the milieu in which the spies moved, despite the

defections in 1951. The tendency had been to regard the spies as "rotten

apples," aberrations, rather than as part of a wider-ranging conspiracy

born of the special circumstances of the 1930s. The growing gulf in the

office between those who believed the Service was penetrated and those

who were sure it was not was echoed by a similar division between

those who felt the extent of Soviet penetration in the 1930s had been

limited, and those who felt its scope had been very wide indeed, and

viewed the eight cryptonyms in Venona as the best proof of their case.

Throughout the late 1950s tension between the two sides grew, as Hollis

resisted any attempts by those like Arthur and me to grapple with the

problem.

The reasons for the failure to confront the conspiracy adequately

236 PETER WRIGHT

are complex. On a simple level, little progress was made with the two

best suspects, Philby and Blunt, and this made it difficult to justify

deploying an immense investigative effort. There was, too, the fear of

the Establishment. By the time the defections occurred, most of those

associated with Burgess and Maclean were already significant figures

in public life. It is one thing to ask embarrassing questions of a young

undergraduate, quite another to do the same to a lengthy list of rising

civil servants on the fast track to Permanent Under Secretary chairs.

At heart it was a failure of will. Politicians and successive managements

in MI5 were terrified that intensive inquiries might trigger

further defections or uncover unsavory Establishment scandal, and that

was considered an unacceptable risk during the 1950s. Moreover, in

order to conduct a no-holds-barred investigation MI5 inevitably would

have to show something of its hand. This ancient dilemma faces all

counterespionage services; in order to investigate, you have to risk

approaching and interviewing people, and thus the risks of leakage or

publicity increase exponentially the more intensive the inquiries you

make. This dilemma was particularly acute when facing the problem

of investigating Soviet recruitment at Oxford and Cambridge in the

1930s. Most of those we wanted to interview were still part of a closely

knit group of Oxbridge intellectuals, with no necessary allegiance to

MI5, or to the continuing secrecy of our operations. News of our activities,

it was feared, would spread like wildfire, and faced with that

risk, successive managements in MI5 were never willing to grasp the

nettle. We opted for secret inquiries, where overt ones would have

been far more productive.

Philby's defection and the confessions of Blunt, Long, and Cairn-cross

swept away many of these reservations, although the fear of Establishment

scandal remained just as acute as ever. Hollis agreed to

the drastic expansion of D3, and it was given a simple, yet massive

task--to return to the 1930s, and search the files for clues which might

lead us to spies still active today, to vet a generation, to clear up as

many loose ends as possible, and to provide the Service with an accurate

history for the first time. The guiding principle of my D3 section was

a remark Guy Liddell made to me on one of his frequent visits back

to the office after he retired.

"I bet 50 percent of the spies you catch over the next ten years

have files or leads in the Registry which you could have followed up ..."

I was sure he was right. I thought back to Houghton, and his wife's

report on him, to Blake, and to Sniper's early lead to Blake, to Philby

1

SPYCATCHER 237

and to Blunt, where evidence existed but was never pursued relentlessly

enough. Perhaps most amazing of all, I read the Klaus Fuchs file, and

discovered that after he was caught MI5 found his name, his Communist

background, and even his Party membership number, all contained in

Gestapo records which MI5 confiscated at the end of the war. Somehow

the information failed to reach the officers responsible for his vetting.

But also in 1945-48 an officer, Michael Sorpell, had researched Fuchs

and recorded on the file that Fuchs must be a spy.

There were several obvious places to look in the inert mass of

papers lying in the Registry. First there were the Gestapo records. The

Gestapo was an extremely efficient counterespionage service, and operated

extensively against European Communist parties and the Soviet

intelligence services. They had a trove of information about them,

developed at a time when our knowledge of Europe was virtually nonexistent

because of the conditions of war. They had invaluable intelligence

on the most important of all European Soviet rings--the Rote

Kapelle, or Red Orchestra. This was a series of loosely linked self-sustaining

illegal rings controlled by the GRU in German-occupied

Europe. The Rote Kapelle was run with great bravery and skill, relaying

by radio vital intelligence to Moscow about German military movements.

The most important of all the Gestapo records for the British were

the Robinson papers. Henry Robinson was a leading member of the

Rote Kapelle in Paris, and one of the Comintern's most trusted agents.

In 1943 he was captured by the Gestapo and executed. Although he

refused to talk before dying, papers were found under the floorboards

of his house which revealed some of the Ring's activities. The handwritten

notes listed forty or fifty names and addresses in Britain, indicating

that Robinson had also been responsible for liaising with a

Rote Kapelle ring in Britain. After the war Evelyn McBarnet did a lot

of work on the Robinson papers, but the names were all aliases, and

many of the addresses were either post-boxes or else had been destroyed

in the war. Another MI5 officer, Michael Hanley, did a huge research

task in the 1950s, identifying and listing every known agent of the Rote

Kapelle. There were more than five thousand names in all. But since

then the trail had gone dead. Perhaps, I thought, there might be clues

among all this material which might take us somewhere.

Another place to look was among the records of defector debriefings.

Work was already in progress with the recent defectors like

Golitsin and Goleniewski, but there were still many loose ends in the

238 PETER WRIGHT

intelligence provided by prewar and wartime defectors. Walter Krivit-sky,

the senior NKVD officer who defected in 1937, told MI5, fOr instance, that there was a well-born spy who had been educated at Eton

and Oxford, and joined the Foreign Office. For years everyone assumed

this to be Donald Maclean, even though Maclean was educated at

Gresham Holt's and Cambridge. He just did not fit, but rather than

confront the problem, the allegation had been left to collect dust in the

files.

Then there was Konstantin Volkov, a senior NKVD officer who

approached the British Consulate in Istanbul and offered to reveal the

names of Soviet spies in Britain in return for money. He gave an Embassy

official a list of the departments where the spies allegedly worked.

Unfortunately for Volkov, his list landed on Kim Philby's desk at MI6

headquarters. Philby was then head of MI6 Soviet Counterintelligence,

and against the wishes of Director C he persuaded him to let him go

to Turkey, ostensibly to arrange for Volkov's defection. He then delayed

his arrival by two days. The would-be defector was never seen

again, although the Turks thought that both Volkov and his wife had

been flown out strapped to stretchers. One of Volkov's spies was thought

to be Philby himself, but there were several others who had just never

been cleared up--like the spy Volkov claimed was working for MI6 in

Persia.

Lastly there was the venona material--by far the most reliable

intelligence of all on past penetration of Western security. After Arthur

left I took over the venona program, and commissioned yet another

full-scale review of the material to see if new leads could be gathered.

This was to lead to the first D3-generated case, ironically a French

rather than a British one. The hasp GRU material, dating from 1940

and 1941, contained a lot of information about Soviet penetration of

the various emigre and nationalist movements who made their headquarters

in London during the first years of the war. The Russians, for

instance, had a prime source in the heart of the Free Czechoslovakian

Intelligence Service, which ran its own networks in German-occupied

Eastern Europe via couriers. The Soviet source had the cryptonym

Baron, and was probably the Czech politician Sedlecek, who later played

a prominent role in the Lucy Ring in Switzerland.

The most serious penetration, so far as MI5 were concerned, was

in the Free French Government led by Charles de Gaulle. De Gaulle

faced persistent plots in London masterminded by his two Communist

deputies, Andre Labarthe, a former Chef du Cabinet who was respon-



L

SPYCATCHER 239

sible for civilian affairs, and Admiral Mueselier, who controlled military

affairs. MI5 kept a close eye on these plots during the war at Churchill's

instigation, and Churchill ordered the arrest of both Labarthe and

Mueselier when de Gaulle had gone to Dakar to free that territory for

the Free French; but in 1964 we broke a decrypt which showed conclusively

that Labarthe had been working as a Soviet spy during this

period, moreover at a time when the Molotov-von Ribbentrop pact

was still in existence.

The U.S. venona also contained material about Soviet penetration

of the Free French. The CIA had done no work on it, either because

they thought it was too old or because they had no one with sufficient

grasp of French history. When I studied it, I found that another senior

French politician, Pierre Cot, the Air Minister in Daladier's prewar

cabinet, was also an active Russian spy.

This discovery came at a time of great tension between the French

and British intelligence services. Anti-French feeling ran strongly inside

British Intelligence. Many officers of both services had served in the

war and remembered the supine French surrender. Courtney Young

always claimed that he formed lifelong views on the French when traveling

back from Dunkirk on a boat. Even Blunt, for all his reverence

for French art and style, was vituperative on the subject of French

cowardice.

Relations were not helped by the arrival of Anatoli Golitsin. Some

of his best intelligence concerned Soviet penetration of SDECE, the

French equivalent to MI6. Golitsin said there was a ring of highly placed

SDECE agents known as the Sapphire Ring. Shortly after Golitsin

defected, the deputy head of SDECE threw himself out of a window.

Angleton persuaded the head of the CIA to get President Kennedy to

write to de Gaulle warning him about Golitsin's allegations, but de

Gaulle felt the Americans and the British were manipulating Golitsin

to cast aspersions on French integrity. This remained the official French

view even after Golitsin gave the information which led to the arrest

and conviction of Georges Paques, a senior French Government official,

in 1965.

To complicate matters still further, the DST (the French counterespionage

service) and MI5 were collaborating on a case involving a

double agent, Air Bubble. Air Bubble was an industrial chemist named

Dr. Jean Paul Soupert. Soupert was an agent runner for East German

Intelligence and the KGB, but the Belgian Securite d'Etat doubled him.

He revealed that two of his agents were employees of the Kodak Com

ZW PETER WRIGHT

pany in Britain who were passing him details of sensitive commercial

processes. The Belgians informed MI5, who began an intensive investigation

of both Kodak employees, Alfred Roberts and Godfrey Conway.

Soupert also told the Belgians about an East German illegal named

Herbert Steinbrecher, who was running agents inside the French Concorde

assembly plants, and this information wa,s passed on to the DST

to investigate in collaboration with MI6.

Unfortunately both cases ended in catastrophe. Although Con way

and Roberts were caught, they were acquitted. Far worse for Anglo-French

relations, the inquiries into Steinbrecher revealed that MI6 had

recruited a French police chief, whose police district ran up to the

German border. He was a "blanche" agent, that is to say MI6 had

deliberately concealed him from their hosts, the French, and were using

him to spy on both French and German nationals. The French, for

their part, were forced to admit that Steinbrecher's agents had acquired

for the Russians every detail of the Anglo-French Concorde's advanced

electronic systems. The result, inevitably, was a spectacular row.

I approached Angleton and Louis Tordella of NSA, and got their

agreement to provide the DST with the venona intelligence which

proved Cot and Labarthe to be Russian spies. They were old, but still

politically active, and it seemed to me a sensible precaution. I traveled

to Paris in early 1965 to DST headquarters, where I was met by Marcel Chalet, the deputy head of the service. Chalet was a small, dapper

Frenchman who joined the DST after the war, having served with great

courage in the Resistance under Jean Moulin, narrowly escaping arrest

by the Gestapo on the day Moulin himself was lifted. Like all French

Resistance veterans, Chalet wore his pink ribbon with conspicuous

pride. He was a militant anti-Communist, and yet he admired Moulin,

a dedicated Communist, more than any other man in his life. Several

times he and I discussed the Resistance, but even in the 1960s he could

not discuss his former commander without tears coming to his eyes.

I explained to Marcel that we had obtained new information which

indicated the true roles of Cot and Labarthe, and showed him the

relevant venona decrypts. He was astonished by the material, and

immediately pledged a full investigation.

"You don't think they are too old, then . . . ?" I asked.

Marcel fixed me with a withering glance.

"Until you see a French politician turning green in his coffin, you

cannot say he is too old!"

Unfortunately Labarthe died of a heart attack as Marcel interro-

I

SPYCATCHER 241

gated him, and Cot was left to die in peace, but the exchange of information

did much to ease tension between the DST and MI5, and

made Marcel and me friends for the rest of our careers.

The night before I left Paris he took me out to dinner. The restaurant

was discreet, but the food was excellent. Marcel was an attentive

host, providing bottles of the best claret, and regaling me with a string

of waspish anecdotes about the perils of Gallic intelligence work. We

discussed venona, and he was fascinated to learn about the scale of

our success.

"They had some success with us recently," he told me, and described

how in Washington they had discovered a fuse in the French

Embassy cipher room modified to act as a transmitter.

"It was non-Western specification, and the range was perfect for

the Russian Military Attache's house across the road," he said, noisily

tucking into his plate of oysters in typical French style. My ears pricked

up. The stockade operation against the French Embassy ciphers in

London and Washington had recently ended precipitately, when teams

of French technicians went into both embassies with sheets of metal

and copper tubes, and began screening the cipher rooms. Obviously

the Russians, too, had realized that radiations could be picked up from

poorly screened machines. Still, I thought, at least the French had not

discovered our operation.

Chalet obviously found the whole affair amusing, and even offered

to send the fuse over to Leconfield House, so that we could examine

it. Still smiling, he casually dropped a question below the belt.

"And you, my dear Peter, have you had any luck with radiations

. . .?"

I choked momentarily on my claret.

"Not much," I replied.

Marcel filled my glass, patently disbelieving my every word. Like

true professionals, we turned to other things, and never discussed the

matter again.

But for all the enjoyment of the French interlude, research into

the Ring of Five was the most pressing task facing D3. I asked Hollis

for the 8D branch interrogators to be placed inside D3, so that I could

use them for an extensive program of interviews with every known

acquaintance of Philby, Burgess, Maclean, Blunt, Long, and Cairn-cross.

Hollis agreed, but instructed that I myself had to conduct any

interview deemed sensitive, which normally meant it was with a lord,

a knight, a politician, a top civil servant, or a spy suspect.

242 PETER WRIGHT

In all, I saw more than a hundred people. Labor politicians like

Christopher Mayhew and Dennis Healey, then Secretary of State for

Defense, who refused even to meet me, were unwilling to discuss their

memories of the Communist Party in the 1930s. But others, like historian

Isaiah Berlin and writer Arthur Marshall, were wonderfully helpful,

and met me regularly to discuss their contemporaries at Oxford

and Cambridge. Berlin insisted we meet at the Reform Club. He thought

it appropriate to discuss Guy Burgess at the scene of his greatest triumphs

He had a keen eye for Burgess' social circle, particularly those whose

views appeared to have changed over the years. He also gave me sound

advice on how to proceed with my inquiries.

"Don't go to see Bowra," he told me, referring to Maurice Bowra,

the distinguished Professor of Literature at Oxford University. Bowra

was a homosexual as well as a close friend of Guy Burgess, and was

close to the top of my list of those who I thought could help me.

"Why not?" I asked.

"Because he'll have it all around every high table in Oxford if you

do," he said.

I took Berlin's advice and gave Bowra a wide berth.

Marshall, or "Artie" as he was known to everyone, knew practically

everyone in Cambridge in the 1930s, particularly the secret network

of homosexuals at King's and Trinity. Artie had a prodigious

memory for gossip, intrigue, and scandal, and, most important of all,

he knew who was sleeping with whom in the Burgess and Blunt circles.

Blunt, too, loved to discuss the scandalous side of Cambridge life

in the 1930s. He relished gossip, and never tired of telling me of the

time he blackballed Sir Edward Playfair, in later life Permanent Secretary

at the Ministry of Defense, for the Apostles Society. Blunt thought

Playfair crushingly dull, and, having met the man, I could not disagree

with his judgment. His funniest story concerned Guy Burgess and

Churchill's niece Clarissa Churchill. Apparently Burgess was tasked by

his Soviet controllers to wed Clarissa Churchill, to ensure him perfect

cover for his espionage activities. Burgess was appalled by the task.

For one thing, he was an inveterate homosexual; for another, Clarissa

Churchill was scarcely better-looking than her uncle; and lastly, it was

known that James Pope-Hennessy, later to become a distinguished

writer, had become infatuated with her.

But Burgess was nothing if not game. Within a month he was

pursuing Clarissa Churchill, causing upset and outrage in equal measure.

James Pope-Hennessy was desperately upset by Burgess' atten-

SPYCATCHER 243

tions to her. One evening he arrived at Burgess' flat with a revolver,

threatening to shoot them both before attempting to commit suicide.

Blunt loved the story, and it was made all the better, in his eyes and

mine, by the fact that, shortly afterward, Clarissa Churchill married

Anthony Eden and later became Lady Avon.

I soon realized that the Ring of Five stood at the center of a series

of other concentric rings, each pledged to silence, each anxious to

protect its secrets from outsiders. There was the secret ring of homosexuals,

where loyalty to their kind overrode all other obligations; there

was the secret world of the Apostles, where ties to fellow Apostles

remained strong throughout life; and then there was the ring of those

friends of Blunt and Burgess who were not themselves spies, but who

knew or guessed what was going on. They shared the secret, and worked

to protect them for many years. Each ring supported the others, and

made the task of identifying the inner core that much more difficult.

It was hard not to dislike many of those I interviewed. Funnily

enough, I did not mind the spies so much; they had made their choice,

and followed it to the best of their abilities. But those on the periphery

were different. When I saw them they were clothed in the respectability

of later life. But their arrogance and their cultured voices masked guilt

and fear. It was I who was wrong to raise the issue, not they; it ought

to be left alone, they would tell me. I was being McCarthyite. Things

were different then. Of course, spying was wrong, but there were reasons.

They were a Lotus Generation, following political fashions as if

they were a clothes catalogue, still pledged in the 1960s to vows of

silence they made thirty years before. They in turn disliked me. I had

seen into the secret heart of the present Establishment at a time when

they had been young and careless. I knew their scandals and their

intrigues. I knew too much, and they knew it.

One of the first D3 tasks was to reexamine a lead which had lain

uninvestigated in the files since Burgess and Maclean's defection in

1951. It was given by Goronwy Rees, a friend of both Burgess and

Blunt. He first met them at Oxford in the 1930s, and during the war,

while serving in Military Intelligence, was a regular visitor to Bentinck

Street. Shortly after the defections he approached Dick White, then

the head of Counterespionage, and told him that he knew Burgess to

have been a longtime Soviet agent. Burgess, he claimed, had tried to

recruit him before the war, but Rees, disillusioned after the Molotov-von

Ribbentrop pact, refused to continue any clandestine relationship.

Rees also claimed that Blunt, Guy Liddell, a former MI6 officer named

244 PETER WRIGHT

Robin Zaehner, and Stuart Hampshire, a brilliant RSS officer, were

all fellow accomplices. But whereas Blunt was undoubtedly a Soviet

spy, the accusations against the other three individuals were later proved

groundless.

Dick White disliked Rees intensely, and thought he was making

malicious accusations in order to court attention, if not publicity. The

four men were all close friends, and it was for this reason that he found

it hard to share Arthur Martin's suspicions about Blunt. Dick's view

of Rees seemed confirmed when, in 1956, Rees wrote an anonymous

series of articles for a popular newspaper. Orgies and espionage made

as good copy in the 1950s as they do today, and the Rees articles,

detailing some of the salacious activities of Burgess and those close to

him, caused a sensation.

But when Blunt confessed, the color of Rees' 1951 testimony changed.

I thought it at least prudent to reexamine it, if only to satisfy myself

that Rees had not been lying when he claimed to have given up all

thoughts of the Soviet cause before the war. At first he was reluctant

to talk to me, and his wife accused me of Gestapo-style tactics in trying

to resurrect the past after so many years. They had both suffered grievously

for the newspaper articles. Rees' authorship became known, and

he was sacked from academic life. Since 1956 they had eked out a

miserable existence, shunned by the Establishment. Eventually Rees

agreed to see me, and went through his story again. He had no proof

that any of those he named were fellow conspirators. But all, he said,

had been close friends of Burgess in that crucial prewar period.

The accusation against Guy Liddell was palpably absurd. Everyone

who knew him, or of him, inside MI5 was convinced that Liddell was

completely loyal. He had left his diaries, known as "Wallflower," when

he left MI5. Reading those, nobody could believe that he was a spy.

But the accusation against Robin Zaehner, who had served for MI6 in

the Middle East, cross-checked with Volkov's spy in the Middle East.

I studied Zaehner's Personal File. He was responsible for MI6

counterintelligence in Persia during the war. It was difficult and dangerous

work. The railway lines into Russia, carrying vital military supplies,

were key targets for German sabotage. Zaehner was perfectly

equipped for the job, speaking the local dialects fluently, and much of

his time was spent undercover, operating in the murky and cutthroat

world of countersabotage. By the end of the war his task was even

more fraught. The Russians themselves were trying to gain control of

the railway, and Zaehner had to work behind Russian lines, constantly

r

SPYCATCHER 245

at risk of betrayal and murder by pro-German or pro-Russian Arabs.

On the face of it, the very fact that Zaehner survived gave a touch of

credibility to Rees' allegation.

After the war Zaehner left intelligence work, and became Professor

of Ancient Persian at Oxford University. I made an appointment to

see him at All Souls. The cords which bind Oxford and British Intelligence

together are strong, and it was the first of many trips I was to

make to that city during the next five years.

Zaehner was a small, wiry-looking man, clothed in the distracted

charm of erudition. He poured me a drink and chatted easily about old

colleagues in the secret world. I wondered, as he chatted, how I could

broach the subject of my visit in a tactful way. I decided there was

none.

"I'm sorry, Robin," I began, "a problem has come up. We're

following up some old allegations. I'm afraid there's one that points at

you . . ."

At first he rallied. Pointed at him? he protested. Of course, I must

be mistaken. Had I checked his record? Which allegation?

I told him about Volkov, and the spy in Persia.

He crumpled. I knew then, from his reaction, that Rees had been

terribly, vindictively mistaken.

"I spent six years in the desert," he said limply. "I stayed behind

two years after Yalta, when everyone else went home. I got no honors,

but I thought at least I had earned a degree of trust."

Zaehner spoke quite without rancor; just a kind of sadness. After

all that he had done, all that he had risked, to be accused of this, years

later, wounded him to the quick. He dabbed tears from his eyes. I felt

a heel, like a policeman who breaks bad news to parents in the night.

When Zaehner composed himself he was a paragon of professionalism.

Of course, he understood why I had to come see him. He went

through his career at MI6 and searched his memory for a clue as to the

identity of Volkov's spy. We talked for hours as the shadow of the

spires of All Souls faded across the lawns.

"I cannot think of an Englishman who could be this spy," he said,

tapping his foot on the floor as if,to trigger his memory. "There weren't

many of us, and I'd vouch for every one."

He thought it was likely to be an agent, rather than an officer.

Agents were often shared between MI6 and the KGB in the latter

stages of the war, and the possibility of a plant was obvious. One name

fitted perfectly, a man called Rudi Hamburger. After MI6 recruited

1

A

246 PETER WRIGHT

him, he was arrested by the Russians, then turned loose, before being

reemployed by MI6 again. The dates tallied perfectly with the time

Volkov had access to files in Moscow, and it seemed obvious that

Hamburger had simply been turned in prison, and tasked to find out

_ whatever he could about his British employers. (Rudi Hamburger was

I the first husband of "Sonia," who later was an illegal in Switzerland

and England.)

Zaehner and I parted friends, but I felt bitter at the ease with

which the accusation had been made, and anger at those who had left

such an accusation lying in the files for so many years before clearing

it up. Driving back to London I began to wonder about the cost of

clearing up "loose ends." Was it fair, I thought, to drag these things

up? Perhaps, after all, it was better to leave them in the files undisturbed

and unresolved.

That Christmas Zaehner sent me a friendly Christmas card, and

not too many years later he died. I sent a wreath, anxious to make

amends; but I could never forget the look on his face when I asked

him if he was a spy. In that moment the civilized cradle of Oxford

disintegrated around him; he was back behind the lines again, surrounded

by enemies, alone and double-crossed.

The last name Rees gave me was that of Sir Stuart Hampshire.

Hampshire was a brilliant wartime codebreaker and analyst for the

Radio Security Service, one of the dite team who broke the ISOS

Abwehr codes, and laid the foundations for the Double Cross System.

After the war he pursued a career in the Foreign Office, before leaving

for a distinguished academic career as a philosopher at Oxford and

Princeton. Rees had no evidence whatsoever for the charge he made

in 1951; it was based solely on the fact that Hampshire had been extremely

close to Burgess during the 1930s. I knew from my own interviews

that Hampshire was considered by contemporaries to have been

strongly left wing, although non-Communist, and I was amazed to find

that no one had even bothered to interview him on what he knew about

Guy Burgess.

However, there was an extraordinary complication with the Hampshire

case. Although long since retired from the secret world, he had

been invited by the Cabinet Secretary, Burke Trend, to conduct a major

review of the future of GCHQ. Concern about the escalating cost of

sigint had been growing ever since NSA moved into the satellite age.

The Americans were pressing GCHQ to share the costs of spy satellites.

The incoming Labor Government was already faced with annual bills

I SPYCATCHER 247

in excess of 100 million pounds, and the Prime Minister, Harold Wilson,

instructed Trend to conduct a review to see if such costs were justified.

Trend consulted Dick White, who suggested Hampshire for the review

in the light of his previous RSS work. When I looked at Hampshire's

file I was amazed to find that despite Rees' allegation, Hampshire had

not been vetted. Dick White, who had known Hampshire for years,

simply wrote Hollis a letter for the file, and that was it.

Hampshire's inquiry lasted the best part of a year, during which

time he had full access to GCHQ, as well as a six-week visit to NSA.

There were a number of fundamental issues raised in Hampshire's

report. The first was whether, in light of the growing costs, Britain

could afford to maintain its share of the UKUSA agreement, which

guaranteed us so much exchanged information from the Americans.

The second, more immediate issue was whether Britain should opt in

with the Americans on a new generation of spy satellites; and the third

area was how far GCHQ should support the Counterclan activities.

The answers in short were Yes, No, and Yes. We could not possibly

afford to lose the UKUSA exchange, but on the other hand, we could

remain in without necessarily funding every technical development pound

for dollar. As for Counterclan, Hampshire endorsed it strongly. The

I only major change he requested was a termination of airborne rafter

on the grounds that it was not cost effective. I opposed this at the time,

but with hindsight it was a sensible economy, and the RAF were, in

any case, beginning to resent the demands we were making on them.

Hampshire and I spent a good deal of time discussing MI5's relationship

with GCHQ. I pressed strongly for him to recommend the creation of

a new Radio Security Service, an organization independent of GCHQ,

which would be controlled by MI5, and responsible solely for the detection

of domestic spy radios. I thought Hampshire, given his background,

would welcome such an idea, and I told him that it was the

only way that we would ensure the facilities that we needed. Hampshire

disagreed, not, I think, with the principle, but more with the practicalities.

He concluded, probably rightly, that such an initiative would

be fought tooth and nail by both GCHQ and MI6, and would, therefore,

be very unlikely to succeed.

Interviewing Hampshire about the Rees allegation was obviously

out of the question until his review was complete, but in 19671 obtained

permission, and traveled to Princeton University in the USA, where

Hampshire was the Visiting Professor. I knew Princeton well. I had

often visited there in my days as a scientist. Rudi Kompfner, the man

1

1

248 PETER WRIGHT

who invented the traveling wave tube (the radio valve used in most

microwave links), gave me the best description of its bizarre architecture.

He called it "pseudo-Gothic-Cotswold."

I talked to Hampshire for some time about his memories of Guv

Burgess. He told me that he now thought in retrospect that perhaps

he himself had been the target of a recruitment approach by Burgess

though he had not realized it at the time. He described how in 1935

he and Anthony Blunt had traveled to Paris together, and one evening

they had dinner with James Klugman and the artist Ben Nicholson.

After dinner Klugman took the lead in a lengthy session in which

Hampshire was quizzed as to his political beliefs.

Some months later he was invited to dine alone with Guy Burgess

at his flat in Chester Square. Both men drank heavily, and in the small

hours Guy made a pitch at him, asking him to work for peace. It was

dangerous work, he said, but worth it. There was much talk of the

intellectual ferment of the times, the Nazi menace, and the need to

take a much more Marxist line in academic studies. At the time Hampshire

thought this was the prelude to an invitation to join a left-wing

debating society, then the vogue among young Oxbridge intellectuals,

but no specific proposition was made. "In retrospect," said Hampshire,

"perhaps Burgess was trying to recruit me."

When I got back to Britain I checked this story with Blunt. He

remembered the Klugman dinner, which he confirmed was a looking-over

operation, but said he knew nothing of Burgess' pitch. Neither

could he resolve whether the dinner had occurred in 1935 or 1937. The

dates were important; in 1935 Blunt and Burgess were still mere Party

members, but by 1937 both were spies and thus any recruitment would

have been for the Russians. I sent one of my staff to see Ben Nicholson.

Luckily he kept complete diaries for each year of his professional life,

and was able to establish beyond any doubt that the dinner had, in

fact, taken place in 1937.

I went to see Dick White and gave him the Hampshire papers to

read. I was puzzled as to why Hampshire had never told MI5 about

his dealings with Guy Burgess after Burgess defected in 1951. Dick

confirmed that Hampshire had never mentioned this to him. I went to

see Hampshire again when he returned to London. He seemed slightly

embarrassed. He told me that Burgess' approach was so muddled that

he could hardly be sure of its importance. As for Blunt, it never occurred

to him to connect Blunt's presence at the dinner with Burgess' approach,

and since Blunt was on such personal terms with people like Dick

F

SPYCATCHER 249

White and Guy Liddell throughout the war, he assumed he was entirely

trustworthy. Anyway, he was not alone in wanting to close the chapter.

Both Dick and Hollis were desperately embarrassed at the revelation

that the man whom they had chosen to conduct the most secret

review of Anglo-American intelligence sharing should himself have

been the unwitting target of a Soviet recruitment approach. They knew

that the arrangements for Hampshire's vetting would, at the very least,

look seriously inadequate to American eyes, particularly at a time when

they were already up in arms at what they saw as the "old school tie"

approach to intelligence in Britain. They could hardly own up, and the

Hampshire case was carefully buried forever.

The unsuccessful recruitment of Hampshire was also interesting

for the light it cast on James Klugman's role in Soviet Intelligence

recruitment in the 1930s. He had clearly been instrumental in arranging

the looking-over dinner in Paris. Cairncross had also told us that it was

Klugman who had recruited him. Until then, MI5 had tended to assume

Klugman was merely an overt Party activist, rather than a covert agent

recruiter or talent spotter. It was obvious that Klugman could tell us

much about the 1930s, if we could persuade or pressurize him to confess.

I knew Klugman would never accept a direct approach from MI5, so

we struck a deal with Cairncross; if he came back to Britain, confronted

Klugman, and persuaded him to meet MI5 and tell all, we would allow

him to come back to the country permanently.

Cairncross accepted our offer with alacrity, and visited Klugman

in London. Klugman was an old man, a hard veteran of the class war,

busy writing a history of the Communist Party as a last testament to a

lifetime's work. He laughed when Cairncross asked him to meet MI5,

and shrugged him off when Cairncross threatened to expose him if he

did not. The attempt failed miserably and Caimcross was forced back

into exile. Shortly afterward, Klugman took his secrets to the grave.

There were other loyal Party servants who refused our approaches.

Bob Stewart and Edith Tudor Hart, both of whom were involved as

couriers for the Ring of Five in 1939-40, were approached. Neither

would talk. They were disciplined soldiers, and had spent too long in

the game to be broken. The public rarely realizes the weakness of MI5's

position with inquiries of this sort. We cannot compel people to talk

to us. Almost everything we do, unless an arrest is imminent, depends

on cooperation. For instance, Blunt told us that he knew of two other

spies--one of whom he had discovered after the man made a recruitment

approach to Leo Long, whom Blunt was already running. The

250 PETER WRIGHT

i!

situation was additionally complicated by the fact that Blunt was having

an affair with the potential recruiter, although neither told the other

about his designs on Long. Both of these men, who are still alive and

living in Britain today, were working on the Phantom Program during

the war, although they left afterward to pursue academic careers. De spite many efforts, neither would agree to meet me to discuss their

|'! involvement with Russian Intelligence. The only positive action was to

warn a senior police chief, who was friendly with one of the spies, and

their relationship ceased.

r

I

17

After I had been meeting Blunt for a year, an obvious pattern emerged.

I was able to tease things out from him--mostly pillow talk he had

gathered from Guy Burgess. He claimed a writer on The Times had been approached. I traced him, and he confirmed that Burgess had

tried to recruit him, but that he turned him down, fearful of the consequences

of being caught. Another contact Blunt identified was Tom

Wylie, a War Office clerk, long since dead. Wylie, said Blunt, used to

let Burgess see anything which came into his hands. But although Blunt,

under pressure, expanded his information, it always pointed at those

who were either dead, long since retired, or else comfortably out of

secret access and danger.

I knew that Blunt must know of others who were not retired, who

still had access. These were the people he was protecting. But how

could I identify them? I decided to draw up lists of all those who were

mentioned by interviewees as having noted left-wing views before the

war, or who interviewees felt would have been likely to have been the

target for a recruitment approach from Guy Burgess.

One name stood out beyond all the others: Alister Watson. Berlin

mentioned him, the writer Arthur Marshall mentioned him, Tess

Rothschild mentioned him. He was, they all said, a fervent Marxist at

Cambridge in the 1930s, an Apostle, and a close friend of both Blunt

and Burgess. Burgess, so far as they recalled, admired him intensely

during the 1930s--a sure sign that he was likely to have been approached.

I began to make inquiries into his background. I knew him quite

well from the war. He worked currently as a scientist in the Admiralty

Research Laboratory, and actually lived for two years with my brother

in Bristol. I never cared for Watson at the time. He was tall and thin,

* i-i

c ix nrivi\jtXll

with a pinched, goatlike face and a strange affected tiptoed walk. Watson

considered himself one of the greatest theoretical physicists of his

day, yet most of his colleagues thought his grasp of practical work

distinctly ropey and that he had made serious mistakes in theoretical

work. He was, I thought, a bit of a fraud.

Watson was a failure. At Cambridge he was considered a brilliant

student, destined for the highest academic honors, until his thesis was

found to contain a massive fundamental error. He failed to gain a

fellowship, and took a job in the Admiralty instead. After service in

the Radar and Signals Establishment of the Navy, he became head of

the Submarine Detection Research Section at ARL. It was one of the

most secret and important jobs in the entire NATO defense establishment,

but it was obscure work, particularly for one who had promised

so much in his youth.

At Cambridge, Watson was an ardent Marxist; indeed, many of

those I interviewed described him as the "high priest" of Marxist theory

among the Apostles. Marxism had a beautiful logic, an all-embracing

answer to every question, which captivated him. He was drawn to Das

Kapital as others are drawn to the Bible and, like a preacher manque,

he began to proselytize the creed among his friends, particularly when

his hopes of an academic career began to fade. Blunt later admitted

that Watson schooled him in Marxism.

When I studied his file, his departure from Cambridge struck me

as most peculiar--just at the time of Munich, when radical discontent

with the Establishment was at its height. It bore all the hallmarks of

Burgess' and Philby's move to the right at the same period. There was

one other item of interest. Victor Rothschild wrote a letter to Dick

White in 1951 suggesting that Watson should be investigated in view

of his Communist affiliations in the 1930s. Inexplicably, Victor's suggestion

had never been pursued, and since then Watson had been

successfully vetted no less than three times, and made no mention of

his political background.

I decided to try Watson's name out on Blunt at our next meeting.

I knew it would be a waste of time to approach the matter directly, so

I prepared a list of all known members of the Apostles including Watson,

and asked him to pick out those he had known, or felt I should

take an interest in. He went down the list, but made no mention of

Watson.

"What about Alister?" I asked him finally.

"No," said Blunt firmly, "he's not relevant."

SPYCATCHER 253

The time had come to confront Blunt. I told him he was lying

again, that he knew as well as I did that Watson was a close friend and

fellow Communist at Cambridge. Blunt's tic started again. Yes, it was

true, he admitted. They were friends. They still saw each other regularly

at Apostles dinners and the like, but he had not recruited him, and nor

had Guy so far as he knew.

Alister, he said, was a tragic figure, whose life had gone terribly

wrong. He was a man who promised so much, yet had achieved so

little, whereas his undergraduate friends, like Blunt himself and Turing,

had achieved eminence, and in Turing's case immortality.

"I learned my Marxist theory at Alister's feet," Blunt told me.

"I suppose you know where he works?" I asked.

"The Admiralty, isn't it?"

"You said there were no more, Anthony. You said you were telling

me the truth ..."

Blunt raked the fire vigorously.

"I could never be Whittaker Chambers," he said after a while,

referring to the famous American Communist who renounced his creed

in the 1950s and named his former accomplices, including Alger Hiss,

in a series of sensational appearances before Congressional committees.

"It's so McCarthyite," he went on, "naming names, informing,

witchhunts ..."

"But, Anthony, that's what you are--that's why we gave you immunity.

It was your choice. It's no good putting the hood on, if you

won't point the finger ..."

Blunt fell silent. Years had passed since 1937, but the weight never

lifted.

"I suppose you'll turn the works on him," he said finally.

I wrote a lengthy report on Watson in early 1965, recommending

an urgent investigation. I submitted it to Hollis and F.J. via the head

of D Branch, Alec MacDonald, who had replaced Cumming when the

latter retired, aware at last that he would never attain the Deputy's

chair. MacDonald was a sensible former Indian policeman, with a taste

for cordon bleu cooking and the other good things in life, and a dislike

of excessive administration. He ,was good to be with, but could be

infuriating to work for.

Nothing happened for five months, and finally, when I attended

my D3 annual review meeting with Hollis and F.J., I raised the subject.

Why, I asked, had an investigation not been sanctioned? At first there

was a lot of talk about priorities, and limits on resources. I reminded

254 PETER WRIGHT

them that the whole rationale for D3 was that it should produce leads,

which were then to be taken on by Dl (Investigations) if their strength

warranted it. Here was a strong lead to a suspect currently enjoying

prime access to NATO secrets. I said that if this was to be the procedure

they might just as well close down D3 entirely.

F.J. was very sensible. Hollis was surly and defensive. The mistake

had occurred at D Branch level. Somehow or other, in the confusion

of the handover from Cumming to MacDonald, the case had not been

given the priority it needed. Hollis instructed there and then that the

case be activated.

Patrick Stewart, then Dl (Investigations), took it on. He was a

great friend as well as a brilliant officer, with an uncomplicated, clear

mind. He was a man of great personal courage. During the war he was

severely crippled, but despite his wheelchair he continued working at

MI5 until ill-health finally drove him into early retirement. Watson was

immediately placed under full surveillance, and we soon discovered

that his wife and daughter were both current Communists, and from

the tenor of his conversations, so was Watson himself, although he had

declared none of this during his vettings.

The investigation, however, was limited. Watson was due to visit

the USA to be indoctrinated into the latest American antisubmarine-detection

techniques, and the Admiralty insisted that the case be clarified

before his departure. We decided to interrogate him. Every day

for six weeks Watson reported to the Ministry of Defense, where he

was questioned by MI5's top interrogator, and today the Deputy

Director-General of the Service, Cecil Shipp.

Watson began by acting like an affronted senior civil servant. What

right had we to question him? he wanted to know. But this soon disappeared

as Shipp probed his story.

Did he know Guy Burgess?

Of course.

Did he ever visit Guy Burgess' flat?

On occasions, yes.

Whom did he meet there?

Guy, Anthony ...

Anyone else?

Yes, a foreigner. He couldn't remember his name . . .

Could he describe him?

At first he couldn't. Then he could. He was Central European.

SPYCATCHER 255

He had dark hair, slicked down, he thought. It sounded very like

"Otto," the controller of the Ring of Five in the late 1930s.

"Does the name 'Otto' mean anything to you?" asked Shipp.

"Yes--that was the man's name. That's right, Otto . . ."answered

Watson, a shade too enthusiastically.

For a while Shipp pursued other areas of questioning, but then he

returned to Otto. Had Watson ever met him again? At first Watson

couldn't remember. Then he thought perhaps he had met him, but he

could recollect no details. Then he remembered that they used to meet

in parks, and under lampposts on street corners, and on tube trains.

"Did he give you anything?"

"No, I'm quite sure of that ..."

"Did you give him anything?"

"No, I don't think so . . ."

"Tell me, Mr. Watson, why did you meet him like that? Why not

at your flat, or at a restaurant?"

No answer.

A long, long pause.

"I was interested in these people," he said lamely. "I wanted to

find out more about Russia . . ."

"You were interested in these people ..." reiterated Shipp with

crushing sarcasm.

The next day Shipp showed Watson thirty photographs spread out

in a neat fan on the table in front of him. They contained portraits of

some of the most important KGB officers since 1945, who had been in

Britain.

"Do you recognize any of these people?" he was asked.

Watson stared at the photographs, fingering one or two hesitantly.

He muttered to himself as he sorted them, resorted them, stacked them

in piles, and unstacked them again, every word captured on the hidden

microphones. We were certain, from his answers about Otto, that Watson

feared or suspected that we had direct evidence against him, perhaps

a surveillance photograph of him meeting a KGB officer, or a confession

which implicated him. At night he went home, and we could hear him

mumbling there via the SF we had installed on his telephone.

"They've got something," he kept whispering. "They've got something,

but I don't know what it is . . ."

After several hours, Watson picked out three photographs. The

first was Yuri Modin, Philby's controller; the second was Sergei Kon-

256 PETER WRIGHT

drashev, George Blake's controller; and the third was Nikolai Karpekov,

Vassall's controller. Watson admitted meeting all three regularly

sometimes close to the Admiralty Research Laboratory at Teddingtori

during his lunch hour, but he denied passing any secrets. Golitsin said

that he knew that Karpekov had two Naval spies, one of whom was a

Naval scientist. Also that Kondrashev had had two spies, one of whom

was Blake, the other a Naval spy.

Shipp tore into him. Did he really expect us to believe that he just

happened to meet four top KGB controllers, by chance, for no reason?

Did he think we were stupid? Naive? It was all secret, wasn't it? They

were clandestine meetings? He was a spy, wasn't he? It all fitted, didn't

it--friendship with Burgess, Marxism in the 1930s, concealed Communism

and entry into secret work, meeting Russians? It was time to

confess.

Day after day Shipp pursued him. Let's take it from the beginning

again, he would say, and Watson would tell the same incredible story.

The mark of a good interrogator is his memory, and Shipp had one

like an elephant. Every variation, every omission in Watson's narrative

was stored and thrown back at him hours, and sometimes days, later.

But Watson stuck doggedly to his story. He had never passed anything

over. His-lips quivered, he was red and sweaty, but like a punch-drunk

boxer he refused to take the count.

After six weeks of daily interrogation Watson was visibly wilting.

He came into sessions drugged with tranquilizers, rambling incoherently,

barely aware of the questions that we asked. In desperation

almost, Cecil Shipp began to skirt the issue of immunity. At the time

we had not obtained the Attorney-General's permission, so he phrased

his questions hypothetically.

"Would it change your story," Watson was asked, "if we were to

offer you immunity?"

But Watson was too far gone. He seemed unable even to understand

the offer that was made to him, and the interrogation was suspended.

No one who listened to the interrogation or studied the transcripts

was in any doubt that Watson had been a spy, probably since 1938.

Given his access to antisubmarine-detection research, he was, in my

view, probably the most damaging of all the Cambridge spies. One

detail, in particular, clinched the case. Watson told a long story about

Kondrashev. He had met him, but did not care for him. He described

Kondrashev in great detail. He was too bourgeois, claimed Watson.

r

SPYCATCHER 257

He wore flannel trousers and a blue blazer, and walked a poodle. They

had a row and they stopped meeting.

This clicked exactly with one of Golitsin's early serials. He said

Kondrashev was sent to Britain to run two very important spies--one

in the Navy and one in MI6. The MI6 spy was definitely George Blake,

and we always assumed the Naval spy to be Blake too, since he served

in the Navy before joining MI6. Golitsin had one more fragment. He

said Kondrashev fell out with the Naval spy. The spy objected to his

bourgeois habits, and refused to meet him. Golitsin recalled that as a

result Korovin, the former London KGB resident, was forced to return

to London to replace Kondrashev as the Naval spy's controller. It was

obviously Watson.

At MI5's insistence, Watson was removed from secret access overnight,

and transferred to the Oceanographic Institute, where he worked

on until retirement. In the absence of a confession, we relied for our

legal justification on Watson's failure to declare his Communist background,

and those of his wife and daughter, on his vetting forms. He

made no protest.

After Watson's interrogation I decided to have one more try at

breaking him. I arranged for him to meet Blunt at a neutral venue--

Brown's Hotel in London. There were two reasons for this; firstly, I

was not at all sure that Watson understood the meaning of our immunity

offer, and I wanted Blunt to explain it. Secondly, I wanted to resolve,

if possible, the question of whether or not Watson was a member of

the Ring of Five. Golitsin said the members of the Ring all knew each

other, and all knew they were all spies. As far as Blunt was concerned,

he claimed it was only ever a Ring of Four--himself, Burgess, Philby,

and Maclean, with other recruits like Cairncross and Long existing

independently of the central Ring members. Watson seemed by far the

best starter for the fifth.

Blunt was very reluctant at first to go along with the plan.

"Alister has suffered enough," he pleaded, when I first raised it.

I had arranged meetings between Blunt and previous conspirators

on a number of occasions. The sessions with Long and Straight were

mild encounters; Blunt even tojd Straight that exposing him was the

best thing he ever did. But when I suggested he contact Baron zu Putlitz,

Klop Ustinov's wartime spy, who had returned to East Germany, he

became distinctly agitated. Zu Putlitz and Blunt were lovers during the

war, after Klop Ustinov brought zu Putlitz out of Holland and back to

London. In 1945 Blunt accompanied zu Putlitz back to East Germany,

i

258 PETER WRIGHT

and they had remained in touch ever since. Zu Putlitz had also been

working for the Russians before and after the war, in order to smooth

his return East, and I was interested to see if he could be turned our

way again. I asked Blunt to write him a letter asking him if he would

be prepared to meet me in Helsinki or Berlin.

"That's not fair, Peter, that's dirty. He's done enough for this

country."

But Blunt knew he could not refuse. He wrote the letter, although

much to his relief zu Putlitz turned my offer down.

Watson was like zu Putlitz. There was something about acknowledging

the relationship which caused Blunt deep unease, in a way that

did not occur with Long or Straight or others. It was a deep-seated

desire to protect them, to deny us any knowledge of their activities,

and also a desire to hide his confession. He dreaded being seen by

them, I think, as an informer.

I picked Blunt up from the Courtauld one evening and we drove

over to Brown's Hotel, where Patrick Stewart had booked a room for

us all. He and Watson were waiting. Blunt was desperately anxious.

"I hope you've got something to drink," he said when we arrived

at the hotel.

He and Watson greeted each other nervously, afraid to show any

warmth in front of either Patrick or me. Watson was frail, like a man

just out of hospital, but eventually we coaxed him into telling the story

of his dealings with the Russians again. It was a pathetic story in the

interrogation room, but it looked even more ridiculous in front of Blunt.

They both talked about Cambridge most of the time, and Otto,

and the move to the left in the 1930s. It struck me as an odd way for

the idealism and activism of the 1930s to end: in a small hotel suite,

with a bottle of Scotch and a bottle of gin. They wanted to change the

world, but ended up changing only themselves.

"I'm through with it now, Alister," said Blunt. "I've confessed,"

he kept saying, "and I'm still here. You've got nothing to worry about."

But Watson scarcely listened to Blunt's entreaties. They were talking

at cross-purposes. Watson was overpoweringly jealous of Blunt and

clearly always had been for thirty years. It came to the surface in a

drunken attack on his friend. Treachery, for him, seemed almost the

secondary issue. He was much more interested in talking, now that his

life had failed, about where it went wrong.

"You've been such a success, Anthony, and yet it was I who was

f

SPYCATCHER 259

the great hope at Cambridge. Cambridge was my whole life," he said,

practically in tears, "but I had to go into secret work, and now it has

ruined my life . . ."

Blunt left the table, upset and embarrassed. He walked over to

the drinks cabinet on the other side of the room. He had drunk almost

a complete bottle of gin, but still needed more. I walked over to him.

"Well . . . ?" I asked.

Blunt stood, his shoulders sagging with strain.

"I suppose you're right," he said, his eyes gleaming with emotion.

"I suppose he must be one of us, but I never recruited him, and Guy

never told me he had."

There was no gin left, so Blunt poured himself a tumbler full of

sherry and added soda water. He gulped it down.

"Sometimes," he said, "I think it would have been easier to go to

prison."

Victor and Tess Rothschild were a constant help during the D3

inquiries into the 1930s. Both knew so much about the personalities

and the hidden relationships of the period, and were often able to

prevail upon otherwise reluctant inhabitants of the Ring of Five's menagerie

to meet me. Victor was also able to make a number of vital

introductions for me. For instance, one of the questions which fascinated

me after the Watson case was the degree to which other scientists

besides Watson had been targets for recruitment. Burgess, Blunt, Philby,

and Maclean were all classically educated, but I wondered whether

rings had been recruited at, for instance, the world-famous Cambridge

University Cavendish Laboratory.

My suspicions fell on the renowned Soviet scientist Peter Kapitza,

father of the Russian atomic bomb. Kapitza came to Cambridge in the

1920s, financed by the British Royal Society, where he built the Mond

Law temperature laboratory attached to the Cavendish. Kapitza remained

close to the Soviet Government, and on several occasions was

observed receiving Russian intelligence officers in his rooms. In the

1930s the Soviet Government, alarmed by growing international tension,

insisted Kapitza return to work in Russia, and he was allowed to

take all his machinery back with him. But both before and after the

war he remained in touch with British scientists, often receiving those

who visited Russia in his well-appointed dacha outside Moscow. For

years it was rumored inside MI5 that Kapitza had talent-spotted potential

recruits inside the Cavendish. But no one had ever really traced

260 PETER WRIGHT

through the story. No one knew who, or how many, or whether Kapitza

was ever successful. It was just another loose end, left in the files,

seeping doubt and suspicion.

The one man who was in a position to know more about Kapitza,

who he was friendly with, who his contacts were during his time at

Cambridge, was Lord Adrian, who knew Kapitza when he was in Britain,

and in the 1960s was Chancellor of the University of Cambridge

and President of the Royal Society. Victor promptly arranged a dinner

party at which I was able to meet Adrian, and from there guide him

gently onto the subject of the Russian scientist.

Adrian was entirely cooperative, and could well understand the

suspicions we had about Kapitza, even though he admired his achievements

tremendously. He began to reel off names of those who had

been especially close to Kapitza. More names for my black books. More

names to be checked in the Registry. More names to be traced, interviewed, assessed, cleared, and in one or two cases, removed

from access. All to be sure, finally, that no one had slipped through

the net.

The most important help Victor gave was persuading Flora Solomon

to meet MI5 again. I knew from her session with Arthur that she

knew far more than she was saying. She had obviously been in the thick

of things in the mid-1930s, part inspiration, part fellow accomplice, and

part courier for the fledgling Ring of Five along with her friends Litzi

Philby and Edith Tudor Hart. After her meeting with Arthur she refused

to meet MI5 again. She had a typically Russian paranoia about

conspiracy and treachery. She was convinced we would double-cross

her, and put her in prison, or that she would be assassinated by the

Russians, as she believed had happened to Tomas Harris. I asked Victor

if he could intercede on my behalf, and eventually, in mid-1965, she

agreed to see me.

"Does the name Dennis Proctor mean anything to you?" she growled.

It did indeed. Dennis Proctor was then the Permanent Secretary

at the Ministry of Fuel and Power, having joined the Civil Service in

the 1930s, when he had served as Stanley Baldwin's private secretary.

In my travels around Cambridge and Oxford nearly a dozen people

had picked out Proctor as a notable left-winger, although not a Communist,

during his undergraduate days. He had the classic Cambridge

Comintern recruit's profile--he was a close friend of Burgess, Blunt,

Philby, and Watson and a member of the Apostles.

There was one other odd thing about Proctor which had puzzled

SPYCATCHER 261

me. Shortly before the 1951 defections he suddenly left the Civil Service

for no apparent reason to take a job with a shipping company in Copenhagen.

In 1953, just as suddenly, he reappeared in London and

resumed his Civil Service career.

I asked Flora why she mentioned Proctor.

"Kim used to bring people to see me," she said. "He valued my

opinion. I would never join, but I used to tell him what I thought of

his recruits."

"And what did you tell him about Proctor . . . ?"

"Kim brought him around for dinner one night. I didn't like him.

I told Kim he was no good. He had no backbone. 'How will he stand

up to stress?' I asked him."

Proctor was another name which Blunt had clearly deliberately

avoided giving to me. I went to Hollis and requested permission to

interview Proctor, but he refused. It would cause too much fuss in

Whitehall, he said, and there were enough problems there as it was. I

would have to wait until he retired. After all, said Hollis, it's only a

few months.

Proctor retired to a delightful rustic French farmhouse in the rolling

countryside outside Avignon with his second wife and children, and in

February 1966 I traveled to France to visit him.

Proctor was a distinguished-looking man, with a hook nose, receding

hairline, and just a touch of the cleric about him. He greeted

me with the easy charm and familiarity which upper-class Englishmen

use to set their visitors at a distance. I explained that MI5 were looking

back into the 1930s.

"We're just tying up loose ends, you know, that sort of thing ..."

Proctor talked about the period in crisp civil servant's shorthand.

He rarely mentioned himself at first. Like the model civil servant, he

was the modest observer of other people's lives and decisions. But

beneath his reserve, I could detect an enthusiasm, as if he were recalling

a better world.

"And how did you feel about things then yourself?" I asked.

"You mean what were my politics?" he countered, smiling at my

euphemism. "Well, you presumably know I have been left-wing all my

life?"

"Really?"

"Oh yes," he went on, "but never Communist. I wanted to go into

Government service too much to join the Party, and besides I didn't

have the courage of people like Guy Burgess, who did it openly."

262 PETER WRIGHT

I asked him if Guy had ever approached him to work for peace

or for the Comintern, or anything like that.

He shook his head.

"No, I don't think so ... No, I don't remember anything like that

at all."

"But Guy knew what your political views were?"

"Why, yes. We were very close. Guy, myself, Anthony. The Apostles,

you know ..."

"Don't you think it's odd he never tried to recruit you?"

He paused for thought.

"I suppose it is, now you come to mention it. In fact, I'm really

rather insulted he didn't . . ."

He laughed. I laughed too, and he suggested we take a walk before

dinner. It was still just winter, but the earth was thawing, as if spring

lay just beneath the surface. We talked about other things--about

England, and the Civil Service, and the way things had changed.

"Most of us, you know, have spent our lives escaping from the

thirties," he told me, as we looked back down the valley toward his

house.

"We were all so exquisitely happy then. It was our world. But we

lost it in 1939, and we've been looking to escape ever since."

He pointed to the farmhouse, shrouded in late-afternoon mist.

"That's my escape . . ."he said.

That evening we had a splendid dinner, and afterward retired to

his study with the port. Proctor was drunk, and I could see he was

finding my visit a strain. He knew that sooner or later I would return

to Burgess.

For a while he seemed to doze off over his port, and woke up

perspiring heavily. He began to dab his forehead nervously with his

handkerchief.

"Why do you think it was Guy never bothered to approach you?"

I asked as I filled his glass again.

Proctor gulped his down, and poured himself another.

"I admired Guy very much," he said, after a pause. "People forget,

you know, just how gifted Guy was. They don't remember how he was

before the war. The looks, the vitality, the intellect. They just think

of him afterward."

I said nothing, waiting for him to fill the silence.

He began again, talking more urgently.

"You see, I had no secrets from him. Whenever I had a problem,

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SPYCATCHER 263

no matter how secret, I

used to discuss it with him, and his advice was

always sound. I think the real truth of the matter is that Guy had no

need to recruit me. He could get to know anything he wanted. All he

had to do was ask."

"What about 1951?" I asked, anxious to press him while he was

talking.

"No, no, no," he clucked, "you've got that all wrong. I left in 1950

for personal reasons, nothing to do with this--to do with Varda, my

first wife. She committed suicide, you know, in 1951."

"Did you see Guy before he went?"

"No--but my wife did, about six weeks before. She and her father

were very close to him. I was in Copenhagen at the time."

"And she killed herself afterward?"

"Not long after, yes ..."

He sat up and looked at me, suddenly sober.

"I'd rather not talk about it, if you don't mind. But there's no

connection, I promise you."

He slumped back again in the chair, disheveled like a defrocked

priest.

"They were both terrible, shocking events," he said quietly. "A

year or two later, when I recovered, Edward Bridges invited me back

into the Civil Service, and I came back to England." (Edward Bridges

was then Permanent Secretary at the Treasury and Head of the Home

Civil Service.)

I never did discover why Proctor's first wife, Varda, committed

suicide, or what she and Guy Burgess discussed. The truth about Proctor

was difficult to judge. I was inclined to believe his claim that he was

never formally recruited, while disbelieving his assertion that Burgess

had nothing to do with his departure to Denmark in 1950. But whatever

the case, I am absolutely sure that during the time he was Baldwin's

private secretary, and probably right up until 1950, he shared with Guy

every secret which crossed his desk.

The next time I saw Blunt I told him about my discussion with

Proctor.

"You didn't tell us about him, Anthony," I said, reproachful rather

than angry. It always upset Blunt more if he felt the deceit was a matter

between friends.

"You kept quiet again--to protect him."

He got up and went to the window, and gazed through it as if he

could see back into the past.

i

264 PETER WRIGHT

"What about Dennis?" I asked again.

"All I can say is he must have been the best source Guy ever had.

But I didn't know what role he was playing," he said finally. "AH I

knew was that he was still in Government ..."

"But you could have guessed ..." I sighed with irritation.

Blunt pulled the curtains, as if faintly disappointed with the noise

and dust and fashions of the square outside.

"Unless you lived through it, Peter, you cannot understand . . ."

"Oh, I lived through it, Anthony," I said, suddenly angry. "I know

more about the thirties probably than you will ever know. I remember

my father driving himself mad with drink, because he couldn't get a

job. I remember losing my education, my world, everything. I know

all about the thirties ..."

One of the most interesting things to emerge in the D3 researches

was the existence of the Oxford Ring. In the past, Soviet recruitment

was associated mainly with Cambridge University, but once Blunt opened

up, it was obvious that Burgess and James Klugman had targeted Oxford

in the same way. The first hard source on the Oxford Ring came

from a colleague of Blunt's at the Courtauld Institute, Phoebe Pool.

Blunt admitted that she had been his courier during the 1930s, and I

was anxious to interview her. She and Blunt were close; they had even

written a book together on Picasso.

Blunt told me she was a neurotic, and already in the process of a

nervous breakdown. He said that she would clam up, or worse, if I

spoke to her directly, so he organized a cutout for me--another senior

figure at the Courtauld, Anita Brookner, to whom I could relay questions

for Pool. A degree of deception was inevitable. Pool was told

that new inquiries were being made into the 1930s, and Anthony wanted

to know if there was anybody else he should warn.

Phoebe Pool told Anita Brookner that she used to run messages

for Otto to two brothers, Peter and Bernard Floud. Peter, the former

Director of the Victoria and Albert Museum, was dead, but his brother

Bernard was a senior Labor MP. Pool also said a young woman,

Jennifer Fisher Williams, was involved, and urged Brookner to ensure

that "Andy Cohen," the senior diplomat Sir Andrew Cohen, was warned

too, as he also was at risk. All these names were well known to me.

All except Andrew Cohen (Cohen was an Apostle and Cambridge

student) were connected with the Clarendon, a left-wing dining and

discussion club in Oxford during the 1930s, but this was the first

\

SPYCATCHER 265

hard evidence that the club had been a center for Soviet espionage

recruitment.

Ironically, Jennifer Fisher Williams was married to a former wartime

MI5 officer, Herbert Hart, by the time her name emerged, so I

visited her husband at Oxford, where he was pursuing a distinguished

academic career as Professor of Jurisprudence, and asked him if he

would approach his wife on my behalf. He rang her up there and then,

assured her there was no threat to her position, and she agreed to

meet me.

Jennifer Hart was a fussy, middle-class woman, too old, I thought,

for the fashionably short skirt and white net stockings she was wearing.

She told her story quite straightforwardly, but had a condescending,

disapproving manner, as if she equated my interest in the left-wing

politics of the 1930s with looking up ladies' skirts. To her, it was rather

vulgar and ungentlemanly.

She said she was an open Party member in the 1930s, and was

approached by a Russian, who from her description was definitely

Otto. Otto instructed her to go underground, and she used to meet

him clandestinely at Kew Gardens. She told us that she was merely

part of the Party underground, and that she gave up meeting Otto

when she joined the Home Office in 1938, where she worked in a highly

sensitive department which processed applications for telephone intercepts.

She told us, too, that she had never passed on any secret

information.

She had two other contacts, she said. One was Bernard Floud,

who recruited her, and the other man who controlled her for a short

time she identified from a photograph as Arthur Wynn, a close friend

of Edith Tudor Hart and her husband, who was active in trade union

circles before joining the Civil Service.

There was no doubt in my mind, listening to Jennifer Hart, that

this was a separate Ring based exclusively at Oxford University, but

investigating it proved enormously difficult. Almost at once, Sir Andrew

Cohen (who was at Cambridge and became a diplomat) died from a

heart attack, so he was crossed off the list. Peter Floud was already

dead, but his brother looked mpre hopeful when the Prime Minister,

Harold Wilson, named him to a junior ministerial post in the Labor

Government. MI5 were asked to provide him with security clearance.

We objected and requested permission to interrogate Floud about Jennifer

Hart's allegation. Wilson had, at the time, a standing ban on any

266 PETER WRIGHT

inquiries relating to MPs, but when he read the MI5 brief, he eavP clearance for the interview.

Floud's attitude, when I began the interview, was extraordinary

He treated the matter as of little importance, and when I pressed him

on Jennifer Hart's story he refused to either confirm or deny that he

had recruited her.

"How can I deny it, if I can't remember anything about it?" he

said repeatedly.

I was tough with him. I knew that his wife, an agoraphobic depressive,

had recently committed suicide, but Floud was eager to conclude

the interview, presumably lured by the scent of office. I explained

to him in unmistakable terms that, since it was my responsibility to

advise on his security clearance, I could not possibly clear him until he

gave a satisfactory explanation for the Hart story. Still he fell back

lamely on his lack of memory. The session ended inconclusively, and

I asked for him to attend a further interview the following day. I did

not make any progress with him, he maintaining that he had no recollection

of recruiting Jennifer.

The next morning I got a message that Floud had committed suicide,

apparently with a gas poker and a blanket. Not long after, Blunt

telephoned me with more bad news.

"Phoebe's dead," he said.

"Good God, how?" I gasped.

"She threw herself under a tube ..."

Three deaths, two of which were suicides, in such a small group

of people, at a time when we were actively investigating them, seemed

far more than bad luck. MI5 was terrified that it would be linked publicly

with the deaths, and all further work was suspended. Newspapers were

already vigorously pursuing the story of Philby's role as the Third Man,

and had discovered for the first time the seniority of his position in

MI6. Rumors of Blunt's involvement were also beginning to surface in

Fleet Street. The entire scandalous tapestry was in danger of unraveling.

That still left the problem of Arthur Wynn, who, by coincidence, was

also due for promotion to the Deputy Secretary's job at the Board of

Trade, which also required security clearance.

"What shall we do?" asked F.J. nervously.

"We should tell him we'll give him his clearance, if he tells the

truth about the Ring. Otherwise no clearance ..."

"But that's blackmail," he said, doing his best to sound shocked.

r

SPYCATCHER 267

I saw nothing unfair about my offer, but then, as I told F.J., I was

never destined to be a diplomat or a politician.

"All these suicides," he said, "they'll ruin our image. We're just

not that sort of Service."

The Oxford Ring completed my inquiries into the 1930s conspiracy.

By the end of the 1960s the task was virtually complete, those involved

nearing or well past retirement. We had identified every member of

the Ring of Five and a number of others and their controllers. We

knew how the Ring worked at various times, we knew what their communications

were, whom they depended on, and where they went for

help. We had also identified one major undiscovered spy, Watson, and

another crucial source for the Russians during the period 1935-51,

Proctor, as well as an important new Ring at Oxford. Altogether we

had identified, dead or alive, nearly forty probable spies. Beyond that

we had scrutinized carefully the records of dozens of people in every

sphere of British public life. Most were given a clean bill of health, but

some were found to be secret Communists or associates, and were

removed from access or quietly encouraged to retire.

Of course, there were still loose ends. Klugman took his secrets

with him, Otto was never identified, and the British end of the Rote

Kapelle we never found. But we knew the most important thing of

all--we knew how far the conspiracy extended. We knew our history,

and we had no need to be afraid again. The vetting of a generation

had been painful, certainly, more painful probably than it need have

been had the inquiries been conducted at the right time, when the trails

were still fresh. But we had exorcised the past, and we could at last

return to the present again, not forgetting that there might be descendants

from the people of the 1930s.

1

18

One other unresolved question remained throughout the 1960s, perhaps

the most important of all--whether or not there was an undiscovered

mole inside MI5. The fluency Working Party's research into the history

of penetration of British Intelligence continued in parallel with the D3

inquiries. Hollis took little interest in fluency, principally because it

was not due to report until after his scheduled retirement in December

1965. He still considered the penetration issue closed after the meeting

to discuss the second Symonds report in October 1964, and he ordered

that none of those officers involved in the Mitchell case should discuss

it even among themselves. It was a hopeless request. For one thing,

Hollis' visit to the USA and Canada in 1963, to brief the CIA, FBI,

and RCMP that Mitchell might possibly have been a spy, caused predictable

fury and alarm. Shortly after Hollis' visit, I traveled to Canada

myself. The dew worm microphones, which had lain undisturbed in

the walls of the Soviet Embassy since 1956, were suddenly dug out by

a team of Russian sweepers. No preliminary searches were made; the

Russians knew exactly where the microphones were, and we heard them

take them out before the lines went dead.

The RCMP wondered if Mitchell had perhaps compromised the

operation. Jim Bennett, who by now was head of Counterespionage in

the RCMP, began to sound me out. It was impossible to deflect his

interest, and I gave him a brief resume of the evidence which pointed

toward a high-level penetration. In fact, I had my own theory. I was

sure the presence of the dew worm microphones was blown to the

Russians in 1956, hence their refusal to use the rooms for anything

other than occasional consular business. But they clearly learned the

exact locations of the system only in 1964. This coincided exactly with

the Mitchell investigation, which considered in great detail the possi-

SPY CATCHER 269

bility that fluency might have been betrayed by Mitchell in 1956. Both

Mitchell and Hollis also received the detailed file in 1956, including the

details about the way the dew worm system worked. The operation

was undoubtedly blown then. Whether it was Mitchell or Hollis who

had done it, the Russians could not afford to take the microphones out

unless the sweepers found them without being told exactly where they

were. Despite over twenty days of searching, they failed to do so, even

though they knew the exact area that had been bugged.

F.J. blasted me when he heard that I had talked about the penetration

issue in Canada, but I told him that it was impossible to avoid

discussion after Hollis' abortive visit. To ignore the problem only made

it worse in the eyes of our allies.

In Washington interest was just as acute. I remember a house party

at Michael McCaul's, the man who in 1964 became the SLO in Washington

in succession to Harry Stone. Angle ton and I detached ourselves,

and he quizzed me hard on the state of affairs inside MI5.

"What the hell's got into you guys," he kept saying, "Hollis comes

out there with some cock-and-bull story about Mitchell. He doesn't

seem to know the first thing about the case. There's been no interrogation,

and now he says there's nothing in it! ..."

I tried to talk him through the case. Mitchell, I told him, was in

the clear, we thought, but I stated that as far as Arthur and I were

concerned, Hollis was our next suspect. I asked him if he had any

information which might help us break open the case. He said he would

see what he could do. It was a difficult time for the CIA. Kennedy had

just been assassinated and the Warren Commission of inquiry was sitting,

and Angleton had pressing problems of his own.

In 1965, British security seemed once again catastrophically bad

to American eyes. In just four years a succession of spy scandals and

disasters had engulfed both MI5 and MI6. First Houghton was unmasked,

having betrayed vital parts of NATO's underwater-detection

systems. Although the Houghton case was a triumph for MI5's new

counterespionage capability, it caused outrage in the U.S. Navy, which

had long fostered hostility to its British counterpart. The enmity surfaced

at a National Security Council meeting, soon after the Houghton

trial, at which the U.S. Navy had sought a complete break in the British-American

intelligence and secrets exchange. Jim Angleton and Al Belmont

from the FBI nipped the Navy ploy in the bud.

"The only difference between us and them," said Belmont dryly,

"is they catch spies, and we don't."

270 PETER WRIGHT

But nothing Belmont said could possibly mitigate the string of

disasters which followed. Blake was tried and convicted in 1961, casting

doubt on virtually every European CIA operation including the Berlin

Tunnel. Vassall was caught the next year, 1962; once again, valuable

NATO Naval secrets had gone East because of a British spy. In January

1963 Philby defected, with the British authorities apparently mute and

impotent. There were the security implications of the Profumo affair

in the same year, with its suggestions, taken seriously at the time in

the FBI, that the Russians were obtaining nuclear secrets from Profumo

via Christine Keeler. Blunt, Long, and Cairncross confessed in 1964,

while other cases simply collapsed humiliatingly in court. The Kodak

case in 1964 was one, but far worse in American eyes was the Martelli

case in early 1965.

The Martelli case had started in 1963 with an allegation by Fedora

that the KGB had a foreign ideological source inside an English nuclear

research establishment. He had been operational only in the last one

to two years. While this meant that the defector, Golitsin, did not know

about him, it severely limited the field of likely candidates. After a few

false steps, the investigation closed in on Giuseppe Martelli, who had

come to the Culham Laboratory in the autumn of 1962 from Euratom.

But Martelli was not cleared for secret atomic material. Despite this,

the investigation went ahead. It was possible that, like Houghton in

the Lonsdale case, when he was at Portland, Martelli got his secrets

from a girlfriend who did have access. When it was found that Martelli had a girlfriend who had access to secrets it became certainly possible

that Martelli also had access to secrets that he should not have had.

Further investigation did not produce any evidence that Martelli

was able to acquire secrets. A search of his office at Culham produced

rendezvous information from a locked drawer in his desk. At this time

Martelli was away in Europe on holiday. When he returned he was

picked up at Southend airport. He was questioned by Special Branch

and identified Karpekov as a Russian he knew. He also had a map in

his possession which indicated rendezvous arrangements. As a result

his house at Abingdon was searched and a concealment device was

found which contained miniature one-time pads a la Lonsdale. Part of

a page of one pad had apparently been used. A diary was found which

had the details of a grid for transforming letters, and therefore words,

into numbers for the one-time pad to be used to encipher a message.

A long meeting was held by Hollis, with Mitchell present, to decide

what to do. The crucial factor was that no evidence had been found

SPYCATCHER 271

that Martelli had access to secrets or was passing them to a foreign

power. The Official Secrets Act (OSA) did have a clause which made

it a crime to prepare to commit espionage. But it would be very difficult

to prove that Martelli was doing this. There was no proof that he had

been in clandestine communication with a foreign power. GCHQ could

attest that the cipher pads were similar to those used by spies to communicate

with their Russian masters but, unlike in the Lonsdale case,

they could not prove that Martelli had done so. It is not often realized

that it was the GCHQ testimony in the Lonsdale case that ensured the

defendants were convicted. Without this evidence Lonsdale and his

associates would have got off either scot-free or with a minor sentence.

I, as the MI5 sigint expert, pointed out to the management at the

meeting that the evidence MI5 had was not sufficient to prove even the

intention to communicate secrets to a foreign power. The Legal Branch

of MI5 were keen to try to get Martelli on "the act preparatory" clause

of the OSA to establish it as a valid reason to prosecute under the

OSA. To the astonishment of the professional counterespionage officers

present, Hollis and Mitchell pressed for the prosecution of Martelli to

go ahead. The result was that the Attorney-General did go ahead and

MI5 suffered the damage.

Even today I find it very difficult to understand why the Martelli

case went ahead, unless one remembers the date of the trial--July 2,

1963. This was at the height of the Mitchell case. It is obvious that at

this juncture it would have suited the Russians and Hollis for the CE

side of MI5 to be knocked down.

The other case to be considered here is that of Frank Bossard.

Early in 1965 Top Hat, the FBI-GRU agent, produced photocopies of

documents from the Ministry of Supply of the highest security grading

in the guided weapons field, involving high-level secrets of the USA.

It was relatively easy to narrow the field of suspects to a few people.

The suspects were put under all kinds of surveillance. It was discovered

that Bossard, one of the suspects, occasionally during his lunch hour

would collect a suitcase from the Left Luggage Office at Waterloo

Station. He would go to a hotel in Bloomsbury and book himself into

a room under a false name. He would stay there alone for about half

an hour. On leaving he would take the suitcase back to the Left Luggage

Office and return to work. MI5 in due course removed the case from

Waterloo. In it were found document-copying cameras, cassettes of

film, and two gramophone records on which there were about eight

Russian songs. The details of the Russian songs were copied. The entire

272 PETER WRIGHT

contents of the case were photographed and restored to the case, which

was then returned to Waterloo. I rang up GCHQ and gave them the

details of the records. It took GCHQ less than an hour to identify five

of the tunes as having been transmitted by a Russian transmitter, found

to be in the Moscow area by direction-finding. This transmitter was

known to be a GRU Russian Intelligence Service transmitter.

We decided to arrest Bossard next time he took his case from

Waterloo and went to a hotel with it. This took place on March 15,

1965. He was caught in the act of photographing Top Secret documents.

When confronted with the fact that MI5 knew all about the tunes on

the records, he admitted that he had been supplying photographs of

secret documents to the Russians for money through dead letter boxes,

i.e. secret caches. He received his money the same way. After his initial

recruitment, he had met a Russian only once in nearly five years. He

said that the individual tunes broadcast indicated which dead letter box

to fill, or not to fill any. MI5 had all they wanted for a Section One

prosecution. On May 10, 1965, Bossard was sentenced to twenty-one

years in jail.

Since we now know that Top Hat, the source of the information,

was a plant, why did the Russians decide to throw away Bossard? To

understand the case, it is necessary to go into various aspects. First,

the Russians had succeeded in damaging MI5 through Fedora and the

Martelli case in 1963. This had resulted in increased suspicion, particularly

in MI5, that Fedora was a plant. In 1964 Top Hat had given MI5

a story about technical eavesdropping coverage of the British Prime

Minister's office, which, unless the Russians had a much more sophisticated

system than we knew of in the West, was very unlikely. All

efforts to find such a system in use had failed. This had led the British

to consider that the story was phony, and both MI5 and the FBI had begun to question Top Hat's bona fides.

Top Hat's production of photographs of British documents of the

highest classifications not only made it very difficult to believe that he

was a plant (people ask the question: Would the Russians throw away

such a source?); it would also result in the Americans once again becoming

very suspicious of British security and in an outcry in the USA

to cut Britain off from their secrets. Now if one had to choose a spy

to risk, Bossard was ideal. He had practically no physical contact with

Russians. His Moscow radio control was via innocent tunes. If it had

not been for GCHQ's detailed traffic analysis, we would have been

±

SPYCATCHER 273

unaware of the significance of the records and we would not have been

able to prove communication between the Russian Intelligence Service

and Bossard. He would have been prosecuted only on the illegal copying

of classified documents, a technical crime with relatively small penalties.

Once again the professional and technical skill of GCHQ and MI5 had

caught the Russians out. This success had two major effects. It enabled

the American Intelligence Services to protect British interests in the

American Government and it increased and did not diminish the doubts

about Top Hat.

But the fundamental question has to be asked: Why did the Russians

consider that they had to boost the bona fides of Top Hat? He

had been operational since the end of 1962 and without a source at

high level in either MI5, the FBI, or the CIA, there would have been

nothing to alert the Russians that he was a suspect. At the end of 1964,

MI5 had become very suspicious. Only Sullivan, the head of Domestic

Intelligence in the FBI, had any fears of Top Hat's bona fides and he,

Sullivan, was certainly not a Russian spy. In the CIA only Angleton

and one or two close associates were suspicious. But the few people in

MI5 who knew about Top Hat did not believe he was genuine. Hollis

knew that these people had grave doubts about Top Hat.

There were other strains, too, on the alliance. There was deep-seated

hostility in the American intelligence community to the accession

to power of Harold Wilson and the Labor Government in 1964. Partly

this was due to anti-Labor bias, partly to the Labor Government's

commitment to abandon Polaris--a pledge they soon reneged on.

Hanging over everything from late 1963 onward, when Hollis made

his trip to Washington, was the Mitchell case, and the fear that MI5

itself was deeply and currently penetrated at or near the summit, with

the Secret Service apparently incapable of wrestling with the problem.

The sacking of Arthur Martin only compounded American suspicions.

They knew he was committed to hunting down Stalin's Englishmen

wherever they were hiding, and to American eyes it seemed as if a

public-school cabal had seen him off.

In mid-1965 matters came to a head. President Johnson commissioned

a review of British security from the President's Foreign Intelligence

Advisory Board (PFIAB), a committee of retired intelligence

notables, bankers, industrialists, and politicians, formed to advise the

President on improvements in national security. Two men were given

the task of conducting this Top Secret review--Gordon Gray, a former

274 PETER WRIGHT

Secretary of Defense under President Eisenhower, and Governor of

North Carolina, and the Secretary of the PFIAB, Gerald Coyne, a former senior FBI officer who ran PFIAB for fifteen years.

Gray and Coyne came to London secretly in the summer of 1955

and began reviewing the Anglo-American intelligence relationship, and

in particular the effectiveness of MI5. The work was delicate in the

extreme. No one in British Intelligence was to be told that the review

was even taking place. In any other country the review would be known

by a cruder name--espionage. Most of Gray and Coyne's material was

supplied by Cleveland Cram, the CIA officer in charge of liaison in

London with MI5. Cram was a brilliant and levelheaded CIA officer

who had served in London for many years, and knew the weaknesses

of MI5 only too well. Cram brought Gray and Coyne into Leconfield

House and MI6 headquarters on a number of occasions, introducing

them merely as colleagues. At this time CIA officers of Cram's stature

had open access to all British Intelligence establishments, and the subterfuge

was easy to perform on us.

I first heard about the Gray and Coyne review when I visited

Washington in 1965. Angleton briefed me on the contents of the finished

report. I was thunderstruck. Gray and Coyne had produced a devastating

critique of MI5. They cited the inadequate size of British Counterespionage,

and said that many individually talented officers were

betrayed by poor organization and lack of resources. The report was

especially critical of the quality of leadership inside MI5, particularly

that provided by Hollis and Cumming, then the head of Counterespionage.

Gray and Coyne concluded that Hollis had evidently lost

the confidence of his senior officers (which was true) as well as that of

his peers in Whitehall, which was also true.

Angleton was thrilled by the report, and told me that it would

form the basis of a new relationship between British and American

counterintelligence. He told me that the CIA intended making a direct

approach to Harold Wilson, along with the American Ambassador in

London, David Bruce, to brief him on the findings.

"Everything'll change now," he said, "we're going to have a beefed-up

CIA London station, and half those officers are going to work

directly inside MI5. We'll have access to everything, and help you where

we can."

Once I had heard about the Gray-Coyne report, I was in an invidious

position. Angleton had briefed me in confidence, but I was

SPYCATCHER 275

duty-bound to report the existence of such a document, and the planned

approach to Wilson. Angleton's ambitions were obvious: he wanted

the CIA to swallow MI5 up whole, and use it as an Agency outstation.

I returned to London and told Hollis and F.J. everything I knew. It

was one of the few occasions when Hollis showed any visible sign of

shock. He ordered a check of records, and within a few hours got

confirmation that Gray and Coyne had indeed visited virtually every

British Intelligence establishment without ever declaring their true

purpose.

Later that afternoon I saw both men sweep out to a waiting car at

the front of Leconfield House.

"Thank you for your help, Peter," said F.J. grimly. "Never can

trust the bloody Americans to play it by the rules!" I thought this was

a touch sanctimonious, but I judged it better to keep clear of the flak

which was rapidly building. F.J. and Hollis were off to see the Foreign

Secretary to protest at this blatant abuse of the UKUSA agreement,

and there was no telling where the row might end.

Poor Cleve Cram was hauled over the coals. He opposed the approach

to Wilson, yet Helms and Angleton insisted he begin sounding

out George Wigg, Wilson's security adviser. But Hollis was in no mood

for excuses. He had been humiliated in front of the entire intelligence

establishment in London and Washington, and Cram was threatened

with expulsion if there were any further transgressions. I saw Cram a

few days later skulking around the fifth floor of Leconfield House. He

looked a little sheepish.

"You nearly got me PNG'd," he said, smiling ruefully. He knew

the CIA had been trying it on, and had been caught fair and square.

The Gray-Coyne report was a terrible indictment of Hollis' tenure as

Director-General of MI5, and he knew it. But the Americans, typically,

had handled the affair with all the finesse of a bull in a china shop. The

essence of their plan was well-meant--to provide the resources and

manpower which MI5 lacked. Of course they had other motives. They

wanted MI5 as a supplicant client, rather than as a well-disposed but

independent ally.

Improvements did flow from the report. For the first time MI5

management conceded the need to drastically expand D Branch, and

the old colonial appendages, like E Branch, withered on the vine.

Henceforth D Branch had first call on all resources. It was inevitable

that new management would be sought for the revamped D Branch.

276 PETER WRIGHT

Alec MacDonald, a former colonial policeman, was brought in, and

Malcolm Cumming, realizing that he would never become Deputy DG

opted for early retirement.

The other important initiative which flowed from the report was

the recognition which followed that a mechanism was needed to secure

closer cooperation between Western counterintelligence services. GCHQ

and NSA had a formal exchange under the terms of the UKUSA agreement.

MI6 and the CIA regularly exchanged foreign intelligence assessments

via the Joint Intelligence Committee in London and the

National Security Council in Washington. But counterintelligence was

still basically ad hoc. Angleton and I had often discussed the value of

creating a forum for the regular free exchange of counterintelligence.

So much counterintelligence, particularly when it flowed from defectors,

ranged across national borders, and access to each country's files

was essential if the best progress was to be made. But Angleton was

an autocratic man; he wanted to use the Gray-Coyne report to force a

one-way flow. But finally he became converted to the virtues of a

genuinely mutual forum and, at his urging, a conference of senior counterintelligence

officers from the USA, Britain, Australia, Canada, and

New Zealand was organized to take place roughly every eighteen months.

The conferences were called CAZAB, and the first was held in Melbourne,

"Australia, in November 1967.

The Gray-Coyne report was not the only epitaph to Hollis' career.

As he approached retirement, the shape of the fluency conclusions

became clear. The Working Party consisted of Terence Lecky and

Geoffrey Hinton from MI6 Counterintelligence, as well as Arthur Martin

when he was transferred over in mid-1965. The MI5 contingent was

Patrick Stewart, Anne Orr-Ewing, and Evelyn McBarnet from D3, with

me in the chair. The papers were circulated direct to the Director D,

Alec MacDonald, and the head of Counterintelligence, Christopher

Phillpotts. We met every Thursday in my office or a fifth-floor conference

room at Leconfield House.

The mood was tense to begin with, each member aware of the

awesome significance of the task at hand--to review in detail every

single allegation which had ever been made about the penetration of

British Intelligence. The first decision fluency made was to change the

approach to penetration which Arthur and I had adopted in the Mitchell

case. In 1963, when we presented the case for penetration to Dick

White, we relied heavily on analysis of the oddities and discrepancies



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SPYCATCHER 277

in technical and double-agent cases, known in the jargon as "manifestations."

fluency decided to dispense with all manifestations. They

were felt to be an overlay of specific allegations of penetration which

had been made by defectors. These were the primary evidence, and

we concentrated solely on them.

The first task was to collate the allegations. This was relatively

straightforward, as much of the work had already been done during

the Mitchell inquiry, and continued at my instigation as part of D3's

overall program of research.

After six months' work we had compiled a large file, which contained

the full list of allegations--over two hundred in all, some dating

back to World War I. The allegations were then apportioned to various

officers around the table. Those that came from Polish sources, like

Goleniewski, were given to Terence Lecky. Evelyn McBarnet handled

the old MI5 allegations, Patrick Stewart took the Golitsin material, and

I looked at Krivitsky, Volkov, and venona.

Once the allegations were gathered we set about assessing them.

We examined each allegation carefully, and made a decision about its

validity--that is to say, whether we believed it to be true. In some

cases, for instance, a defector might have said a spy existed in MI5 or

MI6, but we were able to satisfy ourselves that they were mistaken.

Where we satisfied ourselves that an allegation was true, it was termed,

in counterintelligence jargon, "a true bill." Then we checked whether

each allegation had ever been attributed to a known spy, such as Philby,

Burgess, or Blunt, and if it had, the attribution was reexamined to see

if it was still valid in view of any intelligence which might subsequently

have come to light.

Assessing allegations depended on the quality of our records, and

we faced a major problem with MI6 archives. They were in a mess.

Each of the Geographical Divisions and the Counterintelligence Department

kept their own records. MI6 were producers of intelligence,

not collaters of it, and little thought had been given to an effective

system of record-keeping. Indeed, this was a principal reason why

so many allegations were simply left unresolved, and one of the byproducts

of the fluency inquiries-was a general recognition of the need

to improve the MI6 Registry. In 1967 Arthur finally left Counterintelligence

to take over the MI6 Registry, where he made one last

major contribution to British Intelligence by totally overhauling the

system.

278 PETER WRIGHT

After thorough review, each of the two hundred allegations was

placed in one of six categories:

a. the allegation was a true bill, and was definitely attributable to

a known spy;

b. the allegation was a true bill, and was almost certainly attrib utable to a known spy;

c. the allegation was a true bill, but it was not possible to attribute

it to a known spy;

d. it was not possible to ascertain whether the allegation was or

was not a true bill, because there was insufficient information;

e. the allegation was doubted;

f. the allegation was not a true bill, i.e. rubbish.

As Hollis approached retirement, fluency began to uncover an

entirely new picture of the history of the penetration of British Intelligence.

Many allegations which previously had been attributed to known

spies like Philby or Blunt were found on detailed inspection to have

been wrongly attributed. Twenty-eight of the two hundred allegations

we examined were in the all-important C category--they were true

bills, but they pointed to as yet undiscovered spies.

Of those twenty-eight, there were ten really important allegations,

all of which related to MI5:

1. Volkov's "Acting Head," dated September 1945;

2. Gouzenko's "Elli," also dated September 1945;

3. Skripkin's betrayal, dated 1946 (information came from Rast-vorov

in 1954);

4. Goleniewski's "middling grade agent," dating from the mid-1950s;

5. Golitsin's information about the Skripkin investigation, also dated 1946;

6. Golitsin's information about the special safe in KGB headquarters

to house material from British Intelligence;

7. Golitsin's information about the index to files in KGB headquarters

containing material from British Intelligence;

8. Golitsin's information about the "Technics" Document;

9. Golitsin's information about the special arrangements for protecting

the Soviet colony in London; and

10. Golitsin's information about the betrayal of Crabbe's diving

mission.

Each of the Golitsin allegations dates from 1962-63.

The really startling thing about this list was the way it followed a

SPYCATCHER 279

clear chronological pattern from 1942 to 1963. The Golitsin material,

although more recent, was not specific enough to point in the direction

of any one officer, beyond the fact that it had clearly to be a high-level

penetration to account for the allegations. But the first three serials,

even though dated, transformed the fluency work, and pointed in

Hollis' direction for the first time.

19

Konstantin Volkov's list was the first serial which we investigated. This

was already the subject of intensive D3 inquiries to trace the second

of the two Foreign Office spies mentioned in the list. I decided to have

the entire document retranslated by Geoffrey Sudbury, the GCHQ

officer who ran the venona program. Sudbury was a fluent Russian

speaker, but most important of all, from the venona program he was

familiar with the kind of Russian Intelligence Service jargon in use at

the time Volkov attempted to defect, whereas the British Embassy

official in Turkey who made the original translation was not.

One entry in Volkov's list puzzled me in particular. In the original

I translation it referred to his knowledge of files and documents con

cerning

very important Soviet agents in important establishments in

London. "Judging by their cryptonyms, there are seven such agents,

five in British Intelligence and two in the Foreign Office. I know, for

instance, that one of these agents is fulfilling the duties of head of a

department of British Counterintelligence."

When the case against Philby was first compiled in 1951, MI5

assumed that the last spy referred to by Volkov was Philby, who in

1945 was indeed fulfilling the duties of head of a department of MI6-- Counterintelligence, responsible for Soviet counterintelligence. But I

knew enough Russian from venona myself to see that there were two

words in the Russian which did not appear in the original translation-- the word otdel, which means "section," which was closely followed by

the word upravalenie, meaning "directorate" or "senior division." In

any case, there was no irresistible reason why this particular entry by

Volkov had to be Philby. There were five spies in British Intelligence

in all, and any of those could just as easily have been Philby.

A few days after I gave Sudbury the Volkov list he rang me up



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SPYCATCHER 281

excitedly, almost forgetting for a moment to switch over to his

scrambler.

"The translation's wrong," he said, "it's all NKVD idiom. The

man who wrote it was obviously quite senior. He's written it very

carefully, with pride in his professional skill and knowledge. The real

translation should read: 'I know, for instance, that one of these agents is fulfilling the duties of head of a section of the British Counterintelligence

Directorate.'

"Actually, I rather think this man's position is temporary. He's

'fulfilling the duties,' rather than in the job itself, which suggests to me

he's the acting head, or something very like it . . ."

"I'm sorry," I replied cautiously.

"But don't you see," shrieked Geoffrey through the electronic

haze, "the British Counterintelligence Directorate is MI5, it's not MI6!"

The meaning was crystal clear. If Sudbury was right, this was not

Philby, and it could not be Blunt either, since he was never acting head

of anything. Only one man had been acting head of a section of the

British Counterintelligence Directorate in 1944-45. His name was Roger

Hollis.

The second allegation was Igor Gouzenko's MI5 spy "Elli," which

I had first seen in Anne Last's notebook during the Mitchell investigation,

fluency reexamined the case of Elli in great detail. The extraordinary

thing about Gouzenko's Elli was the fact that it came in

September 1945 in exactly the same period that Volkov made his "Acting

Head" allegation, and also on the same date that we made the

crucial break into the venona traffic.

The essence of Gouzenko's story was simple. He said he knew

there was a spy in "five of MI." He had learned this from a friend,

Luibimov, who had worked alongside him in the main GRU cipher

room in Moscow in 1942. Elli's communications were handled through

dead letter boxes, one of which was a crack in a tombstone. There was

something Russian about Elli, said Gouzenko, either in his background,

or because he had visited Russia, or could speak the language. Elli was

an important spy because he could remove from MI5 the files which

dealt with Russians in London.

Luibimov showed him parts df the telegrams from the spy, whose

code name was Elli. Gouzenko said that when Elli's telegrams came

in, there was always a woman present in the cipher room who read the

decrypts first and, if necessary, took them straight to Stalin. I invited

Ismail Akhmedov, a senior GRU officer who defected to the West at



ta

282 PETER WRIGHT

the end of the war, to Britain, and asked him who this woman could

be. He said her name was Vera, and she controlled all GRU illegals

in the West and worked directly under him, although security procedures

were such that she never disclosed the identities of her agents to

him. Alexander Foote, who worked for the GRU as an illegal in Switzerland

during the war before defecting in the late 1940s, also described

Vera (in his book Handbook for Spies) as the woman who was in charge

of him when he visited Moscow for training in 1945.

The first problem with Gouzenko's story was that over the years

since he had first told it in 1945, he varied the details. "Five of MI"

became MI5. The distinction was vital. Theoretically, "five of MI"

could be taken as referring to Section V of MI. And, of course, in 1942

Philby was working in Section V of MI6. The other problem with

Gouzenko was that by the mid-1960s he was an irretrievable alcoholic.

His memory was at best unreliable for events which occurred more than

twenty years before. I sent a request to the Canadian RCMP for permission

to interview Gouzenko once more, but we were told that Gouzenko

had been causing problems for the Canadian authorities through

his alcoholism and badgering for money. They feared that further contact

with him would exacerbate the problems, and that there was a high

risk Gouzenko might seek to publicize the purpose of our interview

with him.

I asked the RCMP if they had the original notes of the debriefing

of Gouzenko, since they were the best evidence for what precisely he

had said about Elli in the first days after defecting. The RCMP officer

who had looked after Gouzenko was long since dead and his notes had

not been filed but almost certainly destroyed.

The evidence in British Intelligence files only complicated the validity

of Gouzenko's story still further. When Gouzenko defected, an

MI6 officer, Peter Dwyer, traveled up to Canada from Washington to

attend his debriefing. Dwyer sent back daily telegrams to MI6 headquarters

in London outlining Gouzenko's information. Dwyer's cables

were handled by the head of Soviet Counterintelligence in MI6, Kim

Philby. Philby, in the following week, was to have to face the pressing

problem of Volkov's almost simultaneous approach to the British in

Turkey. By good luck he asked that his opposite number in MI5, Roger

Hollis, should go to Canada to see Gouzenko instead of him. Was this

coincidence, we wondered, or an arrangement made in the knowledge

that Hollis was a fellow spy and could be trusted to muddy the waters

in the Gouzenko case? We have it from venona, however, that the



-

-

-

-

-

-

284 PETER WRIGHT

September 12 details of what Gouzenko was saying to his debriefers in

Canada was flowing from Peter Dwyer back to Kim Philby in MI6

headquarters in London. Yet it is not until a week later that the KGB

became suddenly worried.

The answer lay in the MI6 files for the relevant period. On September

18-19 a telegram reached Philby's desk which first detailed

Gouzenko's description of the spy code-named Elli. This was the first

time Philby would have been aware of any reference to the spy in "five

of MI." The actual copy of the telegram, when we examined it in the

1960s, was folded into four, with grimy edges, as if it had been placed

in an inside pocket, and was initialed off HARP (Philby's initials) two

days after he received it. Clearly he had removed the telegram during

those two days and shown it to his Russian controller in London. No

other telegram in the file dealing with Gouzenko had been treated in

this manner. This was obviously the telegram which had caused such

worry at the tail-end of the week's venona.

I asked GCHQ to conduct a search of all KGB traffic flowing from

London to Moscow. We could read none of this traffic. The only matches

in the venona we had were coming the other way, from Moscow into

the KGB in London. Sudbury told me that the only noticeable thing

GCHQ could detect in the traffic was a message sent on September

19-20, Which they could tell was a message of the highest priority

because it overrode all others on the same channel. The significance

was obvious--it was sent the day after Philby had received the MI6

telegram containing Gouzenko's description of the spy Elli in "five of

MI." Indeed, when GCHQ conducted a group-count analysis of the

message, they were able to conclude that it corresponded to the same

length as a verbatim copy of the MI6 telegram from Canada which

Philby removed from the files.

Once we realized London had sent a high-priority message to Moscow,

we searched for the reply. There was only one high-priority message

in the line going the other way, from Moscow to London. So far

we had never been able to read this particular message properly. It was

dated at the very end of the week's traffic, but because it was flashed

high priority, it was received in London somewhat earlier than other

messages which we read. In late 1965 Sudbury and I made a determined

attack on this message, using as collateral the guess that it was a reply

to a message containing the information in Philby's telegram. Eventually

we succeeded in breaking it out. It read: "Consent has been

obtained from the Chiefs to consult with the neighbors about Stan-

A

SPYCATCHER 285

ley's material about their affairs in Canada. Stanley's data is correct."

I remember sitting in Sudbury's office puzzling over this translation.

It made no sense. I wondered at first if we had made a mistake, but

Sudbury checked the translation against the other side of the venona,

and the trade traffic read off perfectly. There was no mistake. Philby,

by the time this message was sent, had been a top-class KGB agent

and head of Counterespionage in MI6 for the best part of ten years,

yet it appeared as if they doubted his intelligence. Why did it need

checking? What was it about Stanley's data which had thrown the KGB

into such confusion?

Only one explanation could account for all these oddities. The

KGB must have been ignorant of the spy in "five of MI" controlled by

the GRU. Thus, when Philby relayed to them news of this spy, and

the threat to him by Gouzenko, the KGB had to obtain permission

from the "Chiefs," the Politburo, to consult with the "neighbors," the

GRU, to ask if they did indeed have such an asset in London. Having

received assurance from the GRU that they did have such a spy, the

KGB realized that the heat was likely to come on in London, so they

sent back the message confirming Stanley's data, and followed it up

with urgent orders to increase security.

But who was Elli, and where did he work? He was obviously not

Blunt or Philby, since we knew that they were never controlled at any

time by the GRU. I asked every Russian defector in the West what

the phrase "five of MI" signified. All assured me it meant MI5, not

Section V of MI6 or anything else. Whoever Elli was, he must have

had access to files on Russians, which placed him indisputably in

F Branch, where this material was handled. The senior officer in

F Branch was Roger Hollis, the very same suspect defined by Volkov's

"Acting Head" allegation.

fluency spent years trying to unravel the riddle that lay in the

three connected threads of Volkov's "Acting Head"; Gouzenko's "Elli";

and the venona with its eight cryptonyms, each of which came together

in that one week in September 1945. Was it Mitchell or Hollis? Both

or neither? The resemblances between these strands was uncanny. The

"Acting Head" and Elli both pointed to the same two men, but the

first allegation was KGB and the'second GRU. The venona had eight

spies; Volkov's list talked of seven in London, two in the Foreign Office,

and five in British Intelligence. Maclean had been in Washington for

a year, so he could not be one of the Foreign Office spies. Burgess

probably was one of these. He was working in the Foreign Office Press

286 PETER WRIGHT

Department at the relevant time. The best bet for the other seemed to

be Krivitsky's "Eton and Oxford" Foreign Office spy, whom Philby

used to decoy MI5 away from Maclean as the net closed on him in 1951

But what of the five spies in British Intelligence? One was Philby

another was Blunt, and a third Cairncross. Long might theoretically

have been a fourth Volkov spy, but he was not in London at this time

and he could not possibly be one of the eight venona cryptonyms, since

he was in Germany in September 1945. That still left one Volkov spy,

the "Acting Head," unaccounted for, as well as four venona cryptonyms,

of which presumably the "Acting Head" was one, and Volkov's

second Foreign Office spy another. As for Elli, there was no trace of

him anywhere.

The third fluency allegation was the Skripkin case. This was given

to us by Yuri Rastvorov, a second secretary at the Russian Embassy

in Tokyo, who was in fact a Lieutenant-Colonel in the KGB. British

Naval Intelligence made contact with Rastvorov in autumn 1953, and

began negotiations for his defection. Rastvorov eventually agreed to

come, provided only that he was taken straight to a British colony, such

as Australia(I), rather than back to Britain. He said his reluctance to

come back to Britain was because he knew that British Intelligence was

penetrated, although he did not elaborate further.

The Naval Intelligence Department (NID) arranged to fly the KGB

man by RAF Transport Command plane from Tokyo to Singapore,

where they intended to hand him over to the joint MI5-MI6 establishment

SIFE (Security Intelligence Far East). Rastvorov was not told of

these plans, but unfortunately, as the aircraft taxied to the end of the

runway, a snowstorm hit Tokyo and the plane was unable to take off.

While waiting for the storm to abate, the chatter of the crew revealed

to Rastvorov that the plane was going to Singapore rather than Australia.

He panicked and fled the aircraft, went immediately to the American

Embassy, and defected to them instead.

Sometime later the CIA reported that Rastvorov had given further

details of his reasons for believing British Intelligence was penetrated.

He said that a friend of his, a Lieutenant Skripkin, had approached

the British in the Far East in 1946, and offered to defect. Skripkin

made arrangements to return to Moscow, fetch his wife, and then defect

on his next visit out of the country. However, back in Moscow, Skripkin

was somehow detected by the KGB. He was approached by two KGB

officers who pretended to be MI6 officers. He gave himself away, was

tried and shot.

¦ SPYCATCHER 287

When we looked Skripkin up in the Registry we found that he did

indeed have a file. It contained copies of two reports from British Naval

Intelligence in the Far East dealing with plans for Skripkin's defection,

one dated May 1946, and the other July 1946. They had been stapled

together and sent from SIFE for MI5's information, arriving in London

during the first half of August. The file was dealt with by Roger Hollis,

the Assistant Director of F Branch, and a junior officer. Hollis instructed

the junior officer to make a file and place it in the Registry,

where it lay until Rastvorov told his story in 1954. When the file was

retrieved it was automatically attributed to Philby by MI5.

When fluency reexamined the case several new facts came to light.

Firstly, when Golitsin defected in 1961, he asked us what we knew

about the Skripkin case. He said that he had worked on the case in

1946, when he was a junior officer in the Counterintelligence Branch

of the First Chief Directorate. He remembered that the report came

to him from London, and definitely not from the Far East, at the end

of 1946, when the snow was on the ground in Moscow. Without prompting, Golitsin told the story of how the two KGB men tricked Skripkin

by posing as MI6 officers. Golitsin was also asked to describe the two

documents he had seen. Golitsin was astonishingly accurate. The first,

he said, was an account of Skripkin's sounding out, and an assessment

of his worth. The second was a resume of his future plans, including

an address in Moscow where he could be contacted. Golitsin also said

he was certain the papers had been stapled together at the time the

» agent had photographed them.

The second new fact fluency had was that Philby, when questioned

by Nicholas Elliott in Beirut, was asked if he had betrayed Skripkin.

Philby vehemently denied having done so, not having known about the

case even when given more details of it. This was most odd, because

we assumed it would be in Philby's interest to claim credit for the case.

Perhaps Philby was telling the truth on this occasion.

I arranged for a complete search of the entire distribution of both

Skripkin reports, to see if it could shed any further light on the case.

¦ The results were extremely revealing. The May report went to Naval

Intelligence (Hong Kong), SIFE at Singapore, and the Naval Intelligence

Department in London. They placed the report in a Naval docket

and circulated it within NID, and passed a copy routinely to the Naval

Section of R Division at MI6. They, in turn, passed it to Section V,

who filed it. Extensive searches in the MI6 records showed that Philby

was never on the distribution list.

288 PETER WRIGHT

The July document followed the same distribution trail, except at

SIFE in Singapore. It was at this point that they decided to staple

together both reports, and send them routinely to MI5, where they

arrived on August 8. This was the first occasion MI5 knew anything

about the affair, and it was also the only place where both reports were

stapled together, a fact which chimed perfectly with Golitsin's recollection.

Whoever betrayed Skripkin must have been inside MI5, not

MI6. That ruled out Philby, and Blunt had already left MI5 the previous

year. Once again the finger pointed toward Roger Hollis, the F Branch

Assistant Director who handled the Skripkin file.

Once the shape of the fluency allegations became clear I began

the most dangerous task I ever undertook. Without authorization I

began to make my own "freelance" inquiries into Hollis' background.

I had to be cautious, since I knew that the slightest leak back would

inevitably lead to the sack. I traveled down to Oxford, and visited the

Bodleian Library. There I discovered in the university records that

Hollis, although he went up to Oxford in the 1920s, never took a degree.

He left inexplicably after five terms. It seemed an odd thing for so

conventional a man to do. I visited Hollis' old college, Worcester, and

searched the records there to find out who had lived on the same

staircase. In his fourth term Hollis moved to digs in Wellington Square,

and I checked through the Oxford Calendars, which list the addresses

of every student resident at Oxford, to find those students with whom

he shared a house. I even tried the records of the University Golfing

Society in the hope that somewhere there would be a clue to the enigma

of Hollis' personality.

Working without Hollis' record of service, I was forced to work

blind. I knew from talking to Hollis that he had visited China, so I ran

a trace through the Passport Office for the dates of his arrivals and

departures from Britain. I made discreet inquiries at the Standard Chartered

Bank, where Hollis worked before leaving for China, but apart

from an old forwarding address at a bank in Peking, they had no records.

I wanted to find some evidence of a secret life, a careless friend,

a sign of overt political activity. Every man is defined by his friends,

and I began to draw up a picture of those to whom Hollis was close in

those vital years in the late 1920s and 1930s. Two men in particular

were of interest at Oxford--Claud Cockburn and Maurice Richardson.

Both were left-wing: in Cockburn's case, when I ran a check on his file

I noticed that Hollis had retained the file throughout the war, and never

declared his friendship on the file as the Service customs demand. Did

SPYCATCHER 289

he, I wondered, have a reason to hide his relationship with Cockburn,

a man with extensive Comintern contacts?

Out in China there was a similar pattern. China was a hotbed of

political activity in the 1930s, and was an active recruiting ground for

the Comintern. Hugh Winterborn told me that an old retired colonel

he had known in Japan knew Hollis while in China, having shared a

flat with him for a year, and he made an appointment for me to visit

him. Tony Stables was a brusque, old-fashioned military officer, and

he remembered Hollis well. He said he never knew his political opinions,

but always assumed they were left-wing because he mixed with

people like Agnes Smedley, a left-wing journalist and Comintern talent

spotter, as well as another man called Arthur Ewert, whom Stables

described as an international socialist.

The other person who was visited (by Arthur Martin) was Jane

Sissmore. Jane Sissmore was responsible for bringing Hollis into MI5

before the war. She eventually transferred from MI5 to MI6, married

an MI6 officer, and became Jane Archer. She was a formidable, intellectual

woman who ran the old MI6 Communist Affairs research

section. I often used to see her on D3 inquiries. She was always helpful,

and told me the inquiries should have been embarked on years before.

One afternoon I broached the subject of Mitchell and Hollis, who had

both worked closely with her during the war. Jane was a wily old bird,

and knew exactly why I was tapping her.

"Could either be a spy, would you say?" I asked her.

"They were both untrustworthy," she told me, "but if I had to

choose the more likely candidate I would pick Roger."

In November 1965 Hollis buzzed down to me and asked me to

come up to his office. It was unlike him to be so informal. I had never

before visited his office without being summoned by his secretary. He

greeted me warmly by the door.

"Come over and sit down," he said, smiling broadly.

He brushed imaginary dust off the sofa, and sat opposite me in

the easy chair. That, too, was odd. Hollis usually sat in a straight-backed

chair. Hollis was anxious to put the meeting on an informal

footing. He made rather clumsy, small talk about his imminent retirement.

"Difficult time," he said, "the pension's not much, and every bit

counts ..."

"What are your plans?"

"Oh, down to the country I think. I have a little place down there.



290 PETER WRIGHT

Get right away from it all. A bit of golf, a few walks . . . that kind of

thing."

He laughed in a gurgling sort of way.

"Funny to think my picture will be up there in a few weeks' time,"

he said, looking up at the portraits which stared down at him. They

were all such different-looking men: Kell's stiff military bearing; Petrie's

detached pose; Sillitoe, the hunch-shouldered policeman; and Dick,

with his easy charm and soft charisma.

Hollis turned to face me, hunching forward, with his hands on his

knees. He was smiling again, like a Cheshire cat.

"Peter, there was just one thing I wanted to ask you before I go.

I wanted to know why you think I'm a spy."

I had to think very fast. If I told him a lie and he knew I had, I

was out that day. So I told him the truth.

Hollis made it sound so natural. Ever since he and I discussed

Tisler nearly ten years before, we had been building for this confrontation.

But now that it was out in the open, lying on the table between

us like an inanimate object, words seemed so inadequate in the face

of all the secretly nursed suspicions which had gone before.

"It's all based on the old allegations, sir," I told him, "and the

way things have been going wrong. You know my views on postwar

failure. It's just a process of elimination. First it was Mitchell, and now

it's you."

"Oh yes--but surely you've been looking at new things . . . ?"

"Yes, the old allegations, sir."

For an hour I went through the Volkov list, the retranslation,

Gouzenko's Elli, the Skripkin report.

"Well, Peter," he said, laughing gently, "you have got the manacles

on me, haven't you . . . ?"

I began to interrupt. He held his hands face up to quiet me.

"All I can say is that I am not a spy."

"But is there anything definite, sir, anything I can put before the

fluency meeting, anything at all ... ?"

"I can probably dig out the notes of the Gouzenko interrogation

. . ." He sounded unsure. "I don't really recollect Skripkin, to be

honest. And Volkov ..."

He drummed the edge of his seat with his sharpened pencil, and

clicked his teeth.

"I don't think you've got Volkov right. Why should Kim go all the

way out to Turkey? He'd check first."

I

J

SPYCATCHER 291

He sighed, as if it was all too long ago.

"It's useful, is it, the fluency thing . . . ?" he asked suddenly.

"I think so, yes, sir. I think it's long overdue."

"Yes, I rather thought you would think that . . . MacDonald isn't

so sure--well, I suppose you know that."

"He receives the reports, sir. I suppose he reads them."

"Oh, yes, I'm sure we all read them," replied Hollis. "They make

fascinating reading. All that history. Always good to blow a few cobwebs

off the pipes."

He smiled his Cheshire cat smile again.

"Well, thank you for your frankness, Peter," he said, rising from

his seat. "I must be getting on. Good to have this chat, though . . ."

He strode stiffly back to his work. Like two actors we exited to

different wings, our roles complete.

I never saw Roger Hollis again. Within a few days the new Director-General,

Martin Furnival Jones, was installed in the office. His first

decision was to remove the photographs from the wall and place them

in his ante-office.

"Don't need an audience for the job," he muttered darkly when

I asked why.

F.J. was a man of few words, and he grew into the job. He was a

determined man who believed he faced one major problem--the scale

of the Soviet assault, in terms of numbers of Russian intelligence officers in London, relative to his own pitiful forces. His tenure as Director-General

was marked by his campaign to expand MI5 and reduce Soviet

diplomatic personnel. He had some success with the first, and eventually

triumphed with the second.

F.J.'s top priority was Russian counterespionage, and once he took

over, the whole approach to the problem changed. Whereas before I

had to be persistent to get anything approved, with F.J. I could buzz

him, go right up to see him, and get a decision there and then. He

supported the D3 inquiries unreservedly, and sanctioned all the important

interviews without question. He never shrank from making

value judgments in cases like Watson and Proctor. If the evidence

convinced him, he would act on it. F.J. was a man of few complexities.

He was a typical English gentleman on the surface, with a streak of

toughness a mile wide just underneath. It made him few friends in

Whitehall, but it was what the Service needed.

Sadly for me, he appointed Anthony Simkins as his deputy. Simkins

was probably the one man in MI5 whom I actively disliked, and the



I

292 PETER WRIGHT

feeling was reciprocated in full measure. I knew I would have trouble

as soon as he was appointed. Simkins was a lawyer. He and I had

already had a major argument some years before, when he was Director-General

of C Branch, where he had had some modest success. I was

asked to chair an interdepartmental working party consisting of MI5

MI6, the Foreign Office, and GCHQ to review technical security at the

British Embassy in Moscow, following a fire in the radio room responsible

for intercepting local Russian communications. It was clear from

the investigation that not only had the Russians started the fire deliberately,

but that they had had access to the radio room for some time.

The Russians had been reading the radio receiver settings each night,

thus they knew what we were intercepting. The Russians who cleaned

the Embassy simply unscrewed the bolts (which were well oiled) on the

security door lock and walked straight in.

During the course of the inquiry I was also able to solve one other

riddle from Volkov's list. Volkov claimed that the Russians could read

the Foreign Office ciphers in Moscow. Maclean certainly betrayed every

code he had access to in the Foreign Office, but Foreign Office records

showed that the Moscow Embassy used one-time pads during and just

after the war, so Maclean could not have been responsible.

Remembering my work with "the Thing" in 1951, I was sure the

Russians had been using a concealed microphone system, and we eventually

found two microphones buried in the plaster above the cipher

room. During the war, two clerks routinely handled the Embassy onetime

pad communications, one reading over the clear text message for

the other to encipher. The Russians simply recorded the clear text

straight through their microphones. By the very good work of the

Building Research Laboratory we were able to establish that the probable

date of the concrete embedding of the microphone was about 1942,

when the Embassy was in Kuibyshev.

The Working Party Report found an extraordinary and persistent

level of appalling security inside the Embassy, and every member of

the committee endorsed a highly critical conclusion, which demanded

the installation of an MI5 officer to work full-time in the Embassy on

security. I circulated the trenchant report to F.J., who was then Deputy

Director-General, and asked for his approval before I sent it to the

Foreign Office. F.J. suggested I show it to Simkins as a courtesy, since

he was Director C, responsible for Protective Security, and technically

the Working Party covered his area. I sent Simkins a copy, and was

surprised, a few hours later, to receive an angry summons to his office.

SPYCATCHER 293

"You can't possibly send anything like this to the Foreign Office,"

he said, as if I were suggesting sending inquisition implements as a gift

to the Pope.

"Why ever not?" I asked. "It's about time the bastards received

a blasting. The whole place is a shambles!"

"Well, I'm sorry. It's the Foreign Office. It's a most important

department of state, and you simply have no business sending them

reports like this. I don't propose to approve it!"

To my amazement, he defaced the report with a blue pencil. I took

the report to F.J. and showed him what Simkins had done. F.J. grunted,

and told me to type it up and send it unchanged.

"Bloody Foreign Office," he growled, "I've had the bloody lot of

them ..."

The report was sent and a young MI5 officer, Tony Motion, was

sent out to Moscow, but from then on I knew Simkins was an enemy

for life.

Shortly after F.J. took over as Director-General the fluency Working

Party submitted its first report to him and to Dick White, as chief of

MI6. The report was in two sections. The first half listed each of the

twenty-eight allegations which we were sure were true bills and investigatable

but which could not be attributed to any known spy. The

second half of the report contained the allegations written up as a

narrative, starting with Gouzenko's Elli in 1942, and ending with Golitsin's

information in 1962, to show the more or less continuous nature

of the penetration. This report was submitted to both chiefs. But it was

six months before the report was discussed again. Then we were told

to resubmit our findings, listing only those allegations which we felt

could be investigated, and giving the candidate who, in our judgment,

best fitted the allegation.

The fluency Working Party decided that Gouzenko's Elli and

Volkov's "Acting Head" should both be investigated, and that because

of their closeness in time, they should be considered together. The

candidate was typed neatly at the bottom of the page. Stripped of title,

stripped of rank, it was just a name: Roger Hollis.

The third allegation we included in our report was Goleniewski's

"middling-grade agent," and it was potentially as damaging as the first

two pointing toward Hollis. The "middling-grade agent" story began

in November 1963. Goleniewski, Sniper as he was previously known,

finally agreed to meet MI5 to clarify some of the details of the allegations

he had made in anonymous letters from Poland. Previously Goleniewski

294 PETER WRIGHT

was unwilling to meet anyone directly from MI5 because of our failure

to catch Lambda 1, George Blake. But with Blake in jail, Goleniewski

was seen by the head of the Polish section, who was himself half Polish

by descent.

By the time MI5 saw Goleniewski, the CIA suspected he was going

clinically insane. He began to have delusions that he was descended

from the Tsar, but despite that, his recall of intelligence remained

remarkably accurate. One morning during the course of his interviews,

Goleniewski announced that he had a story to tell which he had never

told before. He said that he had not mentioned it before because the

British had made such a mess of detecting Blake, but he knew there

was a middling-grade agent inside MI5.

Goleniewski said he knew about the middling-grade agent because

he, a friend, and his former superior, had a serious discussion in the

1950s about whether to defect to the West. Deciding between Britain

and the USA was difficult. All three agreed that Britain was the better

place to live because of the large Polish emigre community, but MI6

was obviously impossible to approach because of Lambda 1. Goleniewski

suggested to the other two that they try to contact MI5 through

the emigre community in London, which he knew was monitored extensively

by D Branch. Goleniewski's chief said that this plan was

equally dangerous, since he knew the Russians also had a spy inside

MI5.

This spy had been recruited by the Third Chief Directorate of the

KGB, responsible for the armed services. The Third Chief Directorate

had been allowed to keep the agent because he was so important to

them, and he was not transferred to the First Chief Directorate, which

was the usual practice. The agent had served in the British Army, and

held rank as a British officer when he was recruited. Goleniewski thought

the recruitment had taken place in Eastern Europe, and named the

Russian KGB colonel who had carried it out. The spy had provided

the Russians with valuable Polish counterintelligence, probably because

he worked in the Polish section of MI5.

There was one other detail. In the mid-1950s the British successfully

exfiltrated the Polish premier, Hanke, to the West. This had resulted

in an inquiry in Warsaw, which General Serov, then head of the

KGB, conducted himself. For some reason the KGB had failed to gain

advance warning of the exfiltration, and Goleniewski learned that this

was because the middling-grade agent was "on ice," either because he

was under suspicion or because he was abroad and out of contact, or

I

SPYCATCHER 295

perhaps simply because his nerve was shaky. The spy was apparently

on ice for two to three years before resuming work in the Polish section

in the late 1950s. Later, when Goleniewski was in Moscow in 1959 he

asked a friend in the Third Chief Directorate who was responsible for

recruiting the agent, and if the operation was still active. His friend

expressed surprise that he even knew of the affair, and advised him to

remain quiet.

"This is a very dark affair," he said, "and I advise you to forget

all about it."

Goleniewski's allegation was extraordinarily detailed, but because

of the overload in Counterintelligence from late 1963 onward, and

because of the doubts about Goleniewski's credibility, the allegation

was not investigated properly until fluency began sitting. We divided

the allegation up into its seven separate indicators, and allotted marks

to every candidate who fulfilled each of the criteria. Eight people in

I MI5 partially fitted Goleniewski's middling-grade agent, but one fitted

I every single part of it exactly. His name was Michael Hanley, the

P Director of C Branch, and a man strongly tipped to become F.J.'s

successor.

Solely because he was the proverbial "perfect fit," fluency unanimously

recommended that Hanley be investigated in connection with

Goleniewski's allegation, and he was given the code name Harriet.

Another six months went by before the second fluency report was

finally discussed. Another meeting was called after hours in F.J.'s conference

room, attended by me, Anne Orr-Ewing, Patrick Stewart, Evelyn

McBarnet, Anthony Simkins, and F.J. It was to be an entirely

internal MI5 discussion as each of the three outstanding fluency cases

was an MI5 rather than an MI6 matter.

It was the sort of meeting which began quietly. F.J. had a bottle

¦ of Scotch on the table. The lights cast dramatic shadows across the

room. F.J. was striding up and down, his pipe clenched ferociously

I between his teeth.

He spun around.

296 PETER WRIGHT

"Where's this going to end, Peter--you've sent me a paper which

says that my predecessor and most likely my successor are both spies

Have you thought it through? Have you stopped to think of the damage

that will be done if we act on these recommendations? It will take a

decade to recover from this, even if there's nothing at the end of it."

"I stand by what we have written, F.J., and what's more, so does

every other member of the fluency Working Party, and I can assure

you if there were other candidates, you would have had them."

Simkins was sitting at the other end of the table. I could feel him

chafing at the bit. He wanted to tear into me, but this was F.J.'s interrogation,

and he wanted no distractions.

"You've wanted this on the record for years--you and Arthur,

haven't you? Have you any idea what this kind of thing did to Roger?"

"I talked with him about it shortly before he left," I told F.J. "He

was quite calm about it."

FJ. was taken aback as I described my last confrontation with

Hollis.

"He must have been a tough man," he said grimly.

Finally, Simkins saw his chance.

"It's simply outrageous," he spat in a shrill voice, his public-school

vowels stretching to breaking point, "everyone knows you and Martin

had it in for Roger. You go around criticizing the Foreign Office, this

person, that person, and then you let fly with accusations, spreading

rumors, spreading poison. It's so undisciplined. If there is a criticism

of Roger, it's that he let you go too far."

"All I want is the truth, Anthony," I said, trying with difficulty to

maintain civility.

"Truth! You don't know the meaning of it. You need a bit of

respect! It's scandalous! The man has scarcely set foot outside the office

and you blackguard his name and reputation, a man with thirty years'

service in the office, who did more for the place than you will ever do."

Luckily, Patrick Stewart rallied back on my behalf.

"It's all very well, Anthony, to sound off, but you've only just

come into this."

He gripped the sides of his wheelchair, his knuckles turning white.

"Some of us have been struggling with this problem for years. It's

not easy. It's not pleasant, but we all felt that it had to be done, and

the least we expect when we have completed a report as difficult as this

is a little rational debate."

But Simkins was determined to press on.

I

SPYCATCHER 297

"What about America--you spread the poison out there too. When

I was out there all they wanted to discuss was bloody penetration. It's

intolerable. We'll be made the laughingstock of the world."

"And you don't think we are when Philby goes or Blunt confesses

..." I shot back.

F.J. chewed his pipe energetically, occasionally pausing to light it

with a match, almost as if he were not listening to the row ebbing and

flowing. Then after half an hour he suddenly interrupted.

"Right, here's my decision. I am sure you will agree Peter, that

I we have to solve the middling-grade agent as the top priority. He's still

in here if he exists."

I nodded.

I "Well, I want Hanley looked at." He slapped the page with the

back of his hand. "He's such a perfect fit, and the Americans know all

about the allegation. But I want the others who score highly looked at

¦ as well ... I want it run down to the ends of the earth, and then we'll

¦ tell the Americans. As for the other"--he was glaring at me now--"I

- won't change my view, it's grotesque ..."

I F.J. dismissed the meeting, and everyone trooped out, leaving him

alone with the cares of office on his shoulders. He was the Pope, trying

to reconcile a divided Church.

J

20

Hanley was a huge, florid man, with an outwardly bullying manner,

which concealed a shy man underneath. Ever since his promotion as

Director C in 1960, he was seen as a potential Director-General. He

was the right age, mid-forties, with a supple civil servant's mind, which

endeared him to Whitehall, and a brusque military exterior which made

him popular with the board at MI5. By the time the Harriet investigation

emerged he was the crown prince--certain to succeed F.J. when

he retired in the early 1970s.

It is always distressing to pursue an investigation into a colleague.

With Hollis and Mitchell it was different. They were distant figures,

close to retirement by the time the suspicions against them hardened.

But Hanley and I knew each other well. We were contemporaries, and

although by no stretch of the imagination friends, we had served together

amicably on committees for over ten years. His career lay in

front of him, and his future was in my hands.

Patrick Stewart, the Dl (Investigations), and I handled the investigation

jointly. The first task was to provide a complete picture of

Hanley's life. We started backtracking through his family background,

his entry into the Service, and his subsequent career. Dozens of people

who knew him were interviewed, all under the guise of a routine positive

vet.

The most difficult aspect of all in the Harriet affair was that the

investigation soon revealed that Hanley had had a most distressing

childhood following the breakup of his parents' marriage. He was left

with deep-seated feelings of inferiority, which, according to his record

of service, required psychiatric treatment in the 1950s, when he was a

young MI5 officer, a fact which Hanley made known to the office at

the time.

I

SPYCATCHER 299

That Hanley had visited a psychiatrist was not in itself unusual.

Many senior officers in MI5 had counseling of one form or another

during their careers to assist them in carrying the burdens of secrecy.

But inevitably our investigation had to probe Hanley's old wounds, in

case they revealed a motive for espionage. F.J., Patrick Stewart, and

I discussed the problem, and F.J. wrote a personal letter to Hanley's

psychiatrist asking him to lift the oath of confidentiality. I visited the

psychiatrist in Harley Street. He knew Hanley's occupation, and showed

no hesitation in pronouncing Hanley a determined, robust character

who had learned to live with his early disabilities. I asked him if he

could ever conceive of him as a spy.

"Absolutely not!" he replied with total conviction.

| Neither was there any hint of espionage in Hanley's early life. At

Oxford before the war he was the model of the sensible, mildly left-wing

student. When war came he stayed at Oxford for a year to get

his degree and then joined a searchlight regiment in Home Defense as

a subaltern, and remained there until 1945. It was important work, but

I not remotely adequate for someone of Hanley's considerable intellectual

gifts. But everyone who knew him at this time remarked on his nagging sense of inferiority, and the consequent lack of ambition.

The first point in his life which aroused our interest was his decision,

in 1945, to enroll for a crash course in the Russian language at the Joint

Services Language School at Cambridge, which both our own operations

and Golitsin had told us was a recruiting ground for the KGB

(but there was not the slightest evidence from our sources that Hanley

had been involved with them). The Russian language course was the

first time Hanley came into contact with Russians, and from then on

his career seemed an uncanny fit for Goleniewski's allegations. After

service in Budapest, where he served on the Joint Allied Intelligence Committee with the KGB officer named by Goleniewski as having made

the recruitment of the middling-grade agent, Hanley returned to London.

He became the War Office liaison officer with the Soviet military

attache, and dealt mainly with returnee problems. During this time he

began to have dealings with MI5, and when he was demobilized in the

300 PETER WRIGHT

and then returned to E Branch (Colonial Affairs) before becoming

head of D2, and in 1960 a member of the Board as Director C. It was

a career with ever-increasing momentum, yet his background presented

a possible espionage profile. Here was a man from a troubled childhood,

with deep-seated feelings of insecurity, who comes into continuous

contact with Russians at a delicate time of his life, when he is beginning

for the first time to emerge from his shell. Perhaps, like Blake, he had

a chip on his shoulder, and the Russians had played skillfully on his

concealed feelings of resentment until they fanned into treachery.

The problem was that neither Patrick nor I believed it, despite the

fact that on paper the surface fit with Goleniewski's allegation was so

precise. It was the exact reverse of the case with Hollis, where we were

both instinctively convinced of the case against him, even though on

paper the connections looked far weaker.

As far as Hanley was concerned, too much weighed against the

"chip on the shoulder" theory. From the start of his career in MI5,

Hanley had been marked out as a flyer. He was valued by both his

peers and his superiors, despite his often hectoring manner. He had

married into the office, and enjoyed a close and devoted relationship

with his wife. And lastly there was the evidence of the psychiatrist.

Espionage is a crime almost devoid of evidence, which is why

intuition, for better or worse, always has a large part to play in its

successful detection. All a counterespionage officer usually has when

he confronts his suspect is a background, a trail, a set of coincidences

which are open to a variety of interpretations but which, as Dick White

used to say, lead to the epiphany--that moment when all the facts add

up to only one conclusion. But with Hanley, the trail led one way, and

intuition another. The only possible way to resolve the case was through

interrogation, and when we submitted the papers to F.J. he agreed.

Mention interrogations, and most people imagine grueling sessions

under blazing lamps: men in shirt-sleeves wearing down a sleep-deprived

suspect with aggressive questioning until finally he collapses

sobbing on the floor, admitting the truth. The reality is much more

prosaic. MI5 interrogations are orderly affairs, usually conducted between

9:30 a.m. and 5 p.m. with a break for lunch.

So why do so many spies confess? The secret is to achieve superiority

over the man sitting across the table. This was the secret of

Skardon's success as an interrogator. Although we mocked him years

later for his willingness to clear suspects we subsequently learned to

have been spies, he was genuinely feared by Blunt and other members

SPYCATCHER 301

of the Ring of Five. But his superiority in the interrogation room was

not based on intellect or physique. Mainly, of course, it was the devastating

briefs provided for him by Arthur Martin and Evelyn McBarnet

which convinced men like Fuchs that Skardon knew them better than

they knew themselves. It was not only the briefs that helped Skardon

but also the skill of the eavesdroppers. In the Fuchs case, Skardon was

convinced that he was innocent until they pointed out where Fuchs had

lied. This information enabled Skardon to break him. But Skardon

himself played an important role too. He epitomized, in his manner,

the world of sensible English middle-class values--tea in the afternoon

and lace curtains--so much so that it was impossible for those he interrogated

to ever see him as the embodiment of capitalist iniquity,

and thus they were thrown off balance from the very start.

But none of this stood a chance against Hanley if he was a spy.

He was an insider. He knew all the tricks too well. Like Philby, he

would see the punches coming. The only way to proceed with a professional

is to put him through an extremely thorough vet. A complete

curriculum vitae of the suspect's life and career is drawn up, and he is

taken through it in interrogation. If there are any deviations, omissions,

or inaccuracies, these are then probed. If the suspect is guilty the pressure

can often lead to further inaccuracies, until his secret life begins

to unravel.

The MI5 technique is an imperfect sytem. But like trial by jury,

it is the best yet devised. It has the virtue of enabling a man, if he has

nothing to hide, and has the resilience to bear the strain, to clear

himself. But its disadvantage is that hidden blemishes on an innocent

man's record can often come to the surface during intensive investigation

and render continued service impossible. It is a little like medieval

justice: sometimes innocence can be proved only at the cost of

a career.

F.J. elected to conduct Hanley's interrogation himself. He knew

it would be a difficult encounter and that in the end Hanley's fate would

rest in his own hands, and he felt it unfair to entrust the task to any

other officer. But he ensured that Patrick and I monitored the entire

interrogation from the Dl operations room in Leconfield House.

Hanley was summoned into F.J.'s office one morning, and informed

that an allegation had been made, and that he was required to

submit himself immediately for interrogation. The interrogation took

place in the Director-General's office, with an overt microphone on

the table. It was recorded in the room where Patrick and I were mon-

302 PETER WRIGHT

itoring the interrogation. Throughout the first day F.J. took Hanley

through his life. Hanley was scrupulously honest, sometimes painfully

so. He ducked no questions, hid no details of his life or his inner feelings

On the second day he was given the details of Goleniewski's allegation.

He was not shaken in any way. He agreed that he was a perfect fit

but calmly stated that he was not a spy, had never been, and had never

at any stage been approached by a Russian or anyone else, although

at least once a week in Budapest he had met the Russian officer who

was alleged to have made the approach.

Hanley's interrogation proved that while secret service is a profession

of deceit and intrigue, many of its practitioners are men of exceptional

character. Here was a proud man, who cherished his achievements,

and those that he felt might be his to come. One morning he is invited

to undergo a trial by ordeal and is stripped apart, year by year, until

his soul is bare. All the while he knows that faceless colleagues have

dogged his every step, listening at home, listening at the office, listening

now. The strain must have been more than most men could bear. No

one listening could doubt for one moment that this was an honest man.

Hanley was tough, and he showed the system could work. He walked

through the fire and emerged unscathed.

That night F.J., Patrick Stewart, and I went to my club, the Oxford

and Cambridge, to discuss the interrogation. F.J. settled down into a

corner with a large Scotch. His eyes were pinched, as they always were

when he was stressed.

"Are you satisfied?" he asked dully.

"He's in the clear," I agreed.

Patrick nodded silently.

"You'll inform fluency, of course . . . ?" said F.J.

At that moment Hanley himself walked in unexpectedly. He and

I shared the same club, and occasionally ran into each other, but I

never expected he would come there so soon after his ordeal. We were

in a quiet corner, and he walked past without noticing us, dragging his

feet slightly, as if in shock. His normally florid face was white as a

sheet.

After the Harriet investigation was closed down, F.J. asked me

to visit the CIA and inform them that MI5 considered Hanley cleared

of the Goleniewski allegations. It was a job of enormous sensitivity.

The CIA were already up in arms over the Mitchell and Hollis cases,

and were themselves well aware of Goleniewski's allegations, and the

fact that Hanley was a near-perfect fit. It was essential for the pres

I

SPYCATCHER 303

ervation of the alliance that they be left in no doubt about the veracity

of our conclusion.

F.J. did not get on with Americans particularly well, and preferred

to leave dealings to Michael McCaul and me. Partly it was antipathy

toward Angleton, and partly it was residual upper-middle-class anti-Americanism.

Dick White had something of the same prejudice. Neither

was a wealthy man, while Helms and Angleton rarely hid the fact

that they were paid handsomely for similar duties.

Both men had reason to distrust the Americans deep down. F.J.

never forgave Helms and Angleton for the Gray and Coyne affair,

while Dick had clashed repeatedly with the American military hierarchy

when he controlled Counterintelligence in Europe at the end of the

war, and was never forgiven. In 1953, when Sillitoe retired, the Americans

stupidly tried to block his appointment as Director-General.

There was, in the end, a fundamental difference in approach. Both

F.J. and Dick saw themselves as servants of the Crown, and their

services as part of the orderly, timeless configuration of Whitehall. They

were insiders, whereas Helms, Angleton, and Hoover were all outsiders.

There was a streak of ruthlessness and lawlessness about the

American intelligence community which disturbed many in the senior

echelons of British Intelligence. They feared a future calamity, and

wanted to keep their distance, so inevitably the weight of liaison often

fell on the shoulders of officers like me.

I traveled to Washington in 1968 to brief Angleton on the results

of the Harriet case. We had a businesslike meeting. I outlined the course of the investigation, and told him we were unanimously of the

view that Hanley was in the clear. Angleton then took me to see Dick

Helms and explained to him what my mission was. Helms said that he

did not wish to hear anything more; if I said that Hanley was in the

clear, he unconditionally accepted my word. But the clearance of Hanley

solved very little.

After we left Helms, Angleton said that he wanted to discuss with

me the question of Goleniewski's being a plant. The Harriet fit was so

perfect that it did not need a suspicious man to believe the KGB had

deliberately planted the allegation to discredit him. Angleton and Helms

already suspected that Goleniewski had fallen back under Russian control

shortly before he defected. Repeated analysis of the intelligence

he provided showed a distinct change in its character from Polish to

Russian matters, as if the Russians were deliberately feeding out barium

meals of their own intelligence in order to isolate the leak. This analy-



i

304 PETER WRIGHT

sis was shared by MI5, and was the main reason why Goleniewski's

middling-grade agent story was ignored for such a long time. The clearing

of Harriet raised a major question mark over the validity of the

middling-grade agent, and the validity of Goleniewski's information

particularly after he defected. The middling-grade agent story did not

appear until November 1963. Goleniewski defected in January 1961.

Now for the KGB to concoct the story in the detail they did, they would

need access to Hanley's record of service. With his position, the only

person who could acquire this would be Roger Hollis.

But if Goleniewski had been turned, or was the unwitting vehicle

for disinformation, what were the implications for the other assets MI6

and the CIA held in Poland, which since the war had been the West's

most consistently fruitful sphere of Eastern Bloc operations. I did some

preliminary work on this subject during the Harriet investigation. I

found, to my horror, that for a long period all agents run by MI6 were

met at a fiat rented by a secretary in the Warsaw MI6 station. Over

ninety meetings had taken place there. I speculated that perhaps the

reason why the UB and the KGB apparently failed to detect this astonishing

series of meetings was that they were planting false agents

on us. MI6 hackles were raised again, as they had been over the Pen-kovsky

affair.

The belief that defectors were being sent to deceive Western counterintelligence

during the sudden flood of arrivals in the early 1960s obsessed

all of us. Golitsin's central contention was that the KGB had

embarked on a systematic disinformation campaign, and that false defectors

would be sent to the West to discredit him. Almost immediately

Yuri Nossenko arrived on the CIA's doorstep, appearing to deflect

many of the leads Golitsin gave about Soviet penetration of American

and British Intelligence.

Nossenko threw the CIA into turmoil. He told them he had seen

the file belonging to Lee Harvey Oswald, the alleged assassin of President

Kennedy. He claimed the KGB had no involvement in the assassination,

and had made no contact with Oswald in Russia, despite

the fact that he had worked on a Top Secret U2 surveillance base shortly

before defecting. To many officers in the CIA, Nossenko's story was

too pat, especially when it was found that he had lied about his rank

and status in the KGB. But why had he been sent? The CIA set about

trying to break Nossenko using methods of imprisonment and physical

pressure which would never have been tolerated in MI5. But even by

1967 they were no nearer to solving the riddle.



SPYCATCHER 305

Suspicions were also growing about the FBI sources Top Hat and

Fedora, who were passing information while still in place, but refusing

to disclose their provenance. They provided bona fides for Nossenko,

as if to assure the Americans that he was genuine, even to the extent

of supporting Nossenko's claim to a false rank. But if Top Hat and

Fedora were phony, what of the leads they gave to penetrations of

British security?

Fedora had given the tip which led to Martelli, albeit that it resulted

in the disastrous prosecution and his acquittal. Top Hat passed copies

of documents detailing American weapons guidance systems to the

Americans which, he claimed, the Soviets were obtaining from a source

in Britain. After investigation we were able to catch Frank Bossard,

an officer in the Missile Guidance Branch of the Aviation Ministry. He

was arrested in 1965, and sent to prison for twenty-one years. If Fedora

and Top Hat were plants, then the Russians were prepared to sacrifice

huge assets in order to build up their bona fides. It must be taken into

account that had it not been for the skill of GCHQ we probably would

not have obtained the evidence which proved that Bossard was working

for the GRU.

We were in the place Angleton called "the wilderness of mirrors,"

where defectors are false, lies are truth, truth lies, and the reflections

leave you dazzled and confused. The idea of false defectors is a hard

one to accept, unless you read the history books and learn how MI5

did it with the Double Cross System throughout the war. It is now an

unfashionable theory. But there are very few intelligence officers who

lived through those years of the 1960s who do not believe that during

that period we were the victim of some kind of Soviet ploy involving

defectors. Some may dispute whether it was successful, or debate the

limits of its scale, but few would doubt that such a game was being

played. Furthermore, it could be played only if the Russians had good

feedback from MI5 of intelligence about the game.

Twenty years later the truth of those years is still impossible to tie

down. Goleniewski, Penkovsky, Nossenko, Fedora, and Top Hat--all

had signs of interference in one way or another. I do not mean that

each was a conscious false defector, although Fedora and Top Hat

certainly were, as even the FBI were forced to conclude in the 1970s,

long after I retired. But I do think they were being used at various

times--Penkovsky to influence our perception of Soviet missile technology;

Nossenko to influence the American attitude to the Kennedy

assassination. Goleniewski, Fedora, and Top Hat, I believe, were part

306 PETER WRIGHT

of a systematic attempt to rupture the all-important Anglo-American

intelligence alliance, and also to support the deception about the performance

of the Soviet ICBMs until the mid-1970s.

Consider the timing of key pieces of intelligence from these three

defectors. Goleniewski gave his information about the middling-grade

agent in late 1963, nearly three years after his defection. This was at

the time of Hollis' visit to Washington to brief the FBI and CIA on

the results of the Mitchell investigation. Nothing could be better designed

to precipitate the final breach in relations between British and

American intelligence than another apparently undetected spy in MI5.

Luckily, Angleton's doubts about Goleniewski ensured that the story

did not have the drastic impact it might otherwise have had, and in fact

only served to strengthen Anglo-American suspicions of both Goleniewski

and Hollis.

Almost immediately Fedora made contact with the Americans, and

gave the lead which led us to Martelli. Discovery of another nuclear

spy was guaranteed to create the maximum possible strain between

London and Washington, though the KGB could never have dreamed

that MI5 would botch the prosecution as badly as they did.

Months later, as if part of a coordinated campaign, Top Hat led

us to Bossard. Once again, American weapons technology was involved,

which automatically meant that the American armed forces

would take an active role in protesting at British security weaknesses.

When we made the damage assessment for Bossard, we concluded that

virtually the entire advanced American guidance systems had been

betrayed. Patrick Stewart sent an advance copy to Angleton with a

one-word memorandum attached. It read simply: "Help!"

Luckily for Britain, Angleton was able to protect us from the

onslaught. But it was a close-run thing, and few realize today that the

exchange came nearer to breakdown in the early years of the 1960s

than at any time since the war.

The night before I returned to London, Angleton and I went to

dinner at a small Chinese restaurant in Alexandria, where his son ate

regularly. It was one of Angleton's favorite haunts when he felt the

need to talk. We could be assured of privacy, he told me, because the

Chinese kept the Russians out.

Angleton was at the zenith of his power, although the strain was

beginning to tell on him. For years he had been waging a covert bureaucratic

war with the Soviet Division of the CIA, to ensure the independence

and expansion of his counterintelligence empire. He had

I

SPYCATCHER 307

been successful beyond all expectations, and achieved virtual veto influence

over all operations and personnel within the Agency. He controlled

the Israeli account, and made the CIA station in Tel Aviv

redundant. He ensured that all important communications with British

Intelligence went through him personally, bypassing the London station.

He even succeeded in establishing his own counterintelligence

cipher independent of CIA communications, which he claimed were

insecure, although we all believed that the real reason was empire-building.

The CAZAB conferences were his outstanding achievement. The

best, the brightest, and the most senior officers in Western intelligence

came together once every eighteen months to discuss his agenda--the

Soviet threat, the role of counterintelligence--and to conduct doom-laden

future scenarios. In Angleton's mind, not unreasonably, the

CAZABs were the first decisive step in creating a unified Western

intelligence command capable of challenging the Soviet Bloc.

The CAZAB conferences suited Angleton's temperament perfectly,

and he always seemed at his most relaxed in their super-secure,

electronically swept environment, grappling with the endless ambiguities

of the wilderness of mirrors. I fully supported these meetings,

which were very important.

Gambling was always a major feature of CAZAB conferences.

Each daily session would usually end with a poker school, a game at

which Angleton excelled, although I was sometimes able to "take him

to the cleaners." Horse racing was also an occasional diversion. I remember

at the New York CAZAB in the late 1960s-early 1970s, Angleton

became the bookmaker for CAZAB for the Washington

International horse race, featuring horses from all over the world, which

was scheduled for the first afternoon. Before the meeting I asked Angleton

to put $100 on the nose of the British horse. Lester Piggott was

riding him and had ridden the winner the previous year. The British

horse was unfancied, but the MI5 and MI6 contingent, anxious to be

seen to fly the flag in even the most secret chambers, soon wagered

around $500 between them.

That afternoon, as Angleton delivered a long paper on long-range

Soviet disinformation techniques, most minds, on the British side at

least, were down at the racetrack. After an hour Angleton's secretary

walked in and nervously handed him a slip of paper. She handed him

two chits; the first said, "How much do you want for your house, Jim?"

and the second said, "The British horse won!"

I

308 PETER WRIGHT

"Jesus Christ!" cursed Angleton. "I forgot to lay the bets off, and

that goddamn British horse has come in at 11 to 1!"

That night, as we flew back to Washington in a small CIA propeller

plane, Angleton crawled around the belly of the fuselage, paying off

his debts from a huge wad of $100 bills.

"The sacrifices I make for the West ..." he said, as he paid me

my whack.

But the humor could not mask the fact that he was making enemies

throughout the CIA--in the Soviet Division, among other directors

jealous of his power, and among those officers whose promotion prospects

he had adversely affected. He was safe while Helms was Director,

but the war in Vietnam was rapidly altering the face of the Agency,

and the gathering political fashion for detente was beginning to undermine

the foundations of Cold War suspicion upon which his empire

was built.

One Cold War veteran, Bill Harvey, had already gone, driven into

retirement by alcoholism. Angleton, too, was drinking far more than

was good for him, and had begun to look not merely pallid but genuinely

ravaged. His mood changed too. He became increasingly introspective,

and the dry humor became less and less visible. He seemed pent-up

and aggressive, trusting fewer and fewer people, who were turning more

and more against him.

Drinking, smoking, and fishing were Angleton's main releases.

Barry Russell Jones told me in amazement of accompanying him on a

fishing trip to a stretch of river he owned in Idaho, and finding that

Angleton had buried bottles of Jack Daniel's under the water at hundred-yard

intervals, so that he could never be caught short. Back in Washington

he found relief in growing exotic orchids (he was a world expert),

crafting leatherwork, gold-beating, or making fishing lures for his friends

and admirers.

Angleton and I talked until 4 a.m. We examined every possible

scenario of the defections. Who was true, and who was false? Who

defected, and who was sent? The lines were embedded like poetry in

a child's mind. We were both on the rack. So much depended on making

the right assumptions about the defectors--for him, the assassination

of his President; for me, the next move in the hunt for the mole.

Eventually we walked back through Alexandria toward the 44th Street

bridge. Angleton had parked his car down behind the Okinawa Memorial,

near the National Cemetery. Angleton was highly patriotic in

that unique American way which expresses itself in reverence for the

I

SPYCATCHER 309

flag, and symbols of national heritage, like the Okinawa Memorial,

fascinated him. He paused to look across at it. The cars swished past

behind us on the freeway.

"This is Kim's work," he muttered. It was one of the few times I

ever heard him mention his old friend Philby.

If there was a plot to deceive the West using defectors in the early

1960s, we were easy prey to it. Throughout those years there was a

conscious policy in both London and Washington to do everything

possible to attract defectors. They were seen as the secret weapon which

could disrupt the smooth machine in Dzherzhinsky Square. In part this

policy grew up through feelings of guilt. Early defectors like Gouzenko

and Von Petrov had been poorly rewarded for their services, and felt

bitter at the treatment they had received. They were paid a fee, and

then pushed back out into the cold, and expected to make lives for

themselves as best they could. Most failed. There was guilt, too, at the

inadequate security arrangements which led to the deaths of Volkov

and Krivitsky, and we feared that unless a conscious effort was made

to show the benefits of defection, word would get back East and inhibit

further approaches.

By the time Golitsin came over, the policy had hardened. Any

means to secure defections were authorized, starting with immense

payments, but including other methods also. I remember one particular

operation which began in the mid-1960s involving a senior KGB officer

named Sergei Grigovin (a pseudonym) which illustrates the lengths we

were prepared to go to. Grigovin was already known to us, because he

had served in Denmark, and the Danish intelligence service had alerted

us routinely to his identity. They also provided us with a few snippets

of intelligence about him--one in particular was that he had a reputation

for enjoying the company of women. The source report was

circulated through to D4, the agent-running section of D Branch, and

they were instructed to keep an eye out for Grigovin's indiscretions,

since he had left his wife in Moscow.

Any Russian, and especially a KGB officer, who is caught liaising

with women in the West by the KGB security division, the "SK," is in

serious trouble, and the case had distinct possibilities. A year later a

D4 agent runner received the first tip. An agent of his, a senior executive

at the Daily Mirror newspaper, was in the habit of occasionally meeting

Grigovin at dinner parties. A woman friend of his told him that Grigovin

was having an affair with a friend to whom she had introduced the

Russian. D4 raised the matter at the weekly meeting with Dl (Oper-

310 PETER WRIGHT

ations) and it was agreed that a much closer eye would be kept on the

situation. The agent runner was told to encourage his agent gently to

keep an eye on the evolving romance.

Eventually Grigovin finished with the girl, and when he next met

the woman who had introduced them, he asked if she knew any other

friends. The Dl realized immediately this was our chance. If we could

introduce our own girl to Grigovin we would be in a perfect position

to begin an entrapment operation. The plan was put up to F.J., who

gave his consent, although the operation was kept secret from the

Foreign Office, on the grounds that they would very likely veto it. D4

were instructed to produce a woman suitable for the job. They had a

number of high-class call-girls they used for entrapments, and eventually

one was successfully introduced to Grigovin at a party. He took the

bait perfectly, and was soon engaged in an affair with her.

Events began to move toward their climax. He was placed under

intensive surveillance, and we analyzed the various possibilities. It was

obvious from the surveillance that Grigovin was purely interested in

the girl for sex, and there was thought to be little chance of playing on

his heartstrings. It had to be straightforward entrapment.

The plans for a defection are complex, and require weeks of careful

planning. First a room was hired, and a two-way mirror and camera

equipment installed. Then safe houses, and transport arrangements

were made to safeguard Grigovin should he decide to defect. He had

a family in Moscow, and checks were made on them in case he bargained

for them to be exfiltrated as well.

Finally the day came. The Dl took charge of the operation himself.

Grigovin and the girl arrived, and we ensured we had a good ten minutes

of film of them in bed before the Dl and two burly MI5 officers opened

the door with one of Leslie Jagger's keys.

"One of ours, I'm afraid ..." said the Dl, as the girl was hustled

out of the door.

Grigovin looked momentarily stunned. The Dl pointed to the

mirror. For a moment the KGB man looked straight into the camera.

Then he understood.

"I am a diplomat," said the Russian. "I demand to speak to the

Embassy ... I have my pass!"

He tried to reach across toward his trousers. One of our boys stood

on them.

"Hardly diplomatic behavior," said the Dl. He bent down and

threw the naked Russian his underpants. Then he got down to business.

SPYCATCHER 311

"Let's face it, you're finished, Grigovin. They'll send you back if

they find out ..."

He let the thought sink in.

"You look as if you're more suited to the West. We know, we've

checked. Four years in America, three years in Denmark. Now London.

You don't want to go back anyway, do you? Why don't you come over?

We'll look after you. There's a good pension. You'll be safe."

The Russian brushed the offer aside with a wave of his hand, and

again demanded to speak to his Embassy.

For two hours the Dl tried to reason with him. Think of the future,

he told him. He would be stripped of his privileges and sent back to

Moscow in disgrace, to serve his career out in some dreary Siberian

outpost. No more foreign exchange, no more overseas perks.

"I am a diplomat," Grigovin kept saying. "I demand to speak to

my Embassy."

He was like a World War II captured airman, reciting only his

name, rank, and serial number. He was a crack soldier, and eventually

we realized there was to be no defection. His clothes were returned

and we dumped him back on the pavement near Kensington Park

Gardens. Months of planning, years of patient waiting were wasted.

The next morning an anonymous brown package was delivered to

the Embassy, addressed to the Ambassador personally. It contained

photographs of Grigovin in bed. That evening Special Branch sighted

the KGB man being escorted onto an Aeroflot plane. We did send a

report to the MI6 station in Moscow advising them to keep an eye out

for him in case he had second thoughts and managed to make contact.

But we never heard from Grigovin again.

Defections are always tinged with tragedy, but none was as sad as

the case involving a young man called Nadiensky--the defector who

changed his mind. He worked for the shipping section of the Trade

Delegation, and we identified him early on as a KGB officer. He was

a quiet man, and his only claim to fame was that his wife was related

to a senior Soviet official in the Politburo. He first came to our attention

when the Watchers saw him meet a girl in a London park.

Initially all effort went into the girl. The Watchers tracked her

home, and she was identified as a secretary in a minor government

agency with no access to classified material. Michael McCaul went to

see the girl, and asked why she was meeting a Soviet official. She

convinced him that Nadiensky had no interest in her for espionage

purposes. They were in love, and she had no idea that he was involved



t

312 PETER WRIGHT

with the KGB. She said he was not at all how she imagined Russians.

He was a romantic and rather frightened man, who talked constantly

of making a new life for himself in the West.

Once again Dl (Operations) and D4 met to consider the best course

of action. We decided to ask the girl to continue the affair normally,

while we planned an approach to Nadiensky. It was obvious that the

operation could not be sustained over the long term. The girl was

already under great stress, and it seeme'd likely that she would soon

betray herself. But the prize was a considerable one. Although Nadiensky

himself was a low-level officer, almost certainly co-opted for

the duration of his posting in London, he had enormous propaganda

value. This was the time of Stalin's daughter Svetlana's defection, and

we knew the embarrassment it would cause the Russians to have a

relative of one of their senior politicians seek asylum in the West.

On the following Sunday Nadiensky was due to visit Harwich on

official business. He was accompanying some Soviet sailors to their

ship, which was due to sail that night, and he applied routinely for

permission from the Foreign Office to leave the 80-kilometer restriction

which is imposed on all Eastern Bloc diplomats. McCaul sat in his car

outside Harwich docks with a team of Watchers and waited for Nadiensky

to emerge. As he walked past, McCaul called him by name.

He hesitated momentarily.

"We know about the girl . . ." hissed McCaul, "we know you want

to stay. Get in the car quickly, and we can talk!"

Nadiensky looked up and down the street and then, seizing his

moment, ducked into the back of the car. McCaul drove straight to my

house in Essex. We gave him tea, and tried not to talk too much. We

had the bird, but it was important not to panic him.

"I hear you want to join us . . . ?" I began, when Nadiensky had

adjusted to his surroundings.

He nodded, at first nervously, and then decisively.

"We believe you've been co-opted?" I queried.

He gulped his tea.

"The KGB, you mean?" he asked in good English.

"We assumed you were," I went on.

"You have no choice," he flashed suddenly with some bitterness,

"if they want you to work for them, they simply order you. You have

no choice."

I ran through the arrangements we could make. There would be

safety and protection, a pension, and later perhaps a job. There would

SPYCATCHER 313

be a short meeting with the girl, but then he would have to work hard

for some months.

"For British Security ... I know," he said. He half smiled. He

knew the game, co-opted or not.

That evening we drove Nadiensky to a safe house near Wimbledon,

and armed guards were posted inside with him. Twelve hours later the

Foreign Office received a request from the Soviet Embassy asking if

they had any information concerning the whereabouts of a certain junior

diplomat who had disappeared while returning from a routine visit to

Harwich.

The Foreign Office Northern Department had already been alerted

to the defection of Nadiensky by the Deputy Director-General, then

F.J. The Foreign Office treated the matter as they treated all matters

which were likely to upset the Russians, as something to be avoided at

all costs. They immediately sent an official down to the safe house to

interview Nadiensky. He was asked if he was applying voluntarily, and

whether he wanted to speak to anyone at the Soviet Embassy. He

confirmed his decision was voluntary, and told him he had no wish to

speak to any Russians. The Foreign Office broke the news to the Soviet

Embassy.

Immediately Nadiensky's wife was seen leaving for Moscow. The

following day the Soviet Embassy demanded that the Foreign Office

arrange for Nadiensky's wife to be able to speak to him on the telephone

from the Soviet Union. At first Nadiensky did not wish to speak to

her, and we were very unhappy at this blatant attempt to pressure

a man already under great strain. But the Foreign Office insisted on

protocol.

The call was only the first of many which the Russians insisted on

over the next four days. Mostly it was Nadiensky's wife, but other

relations took their turn in tearfully pleading with him to reconsider

his decision.

"Think of us," they told him, "think of the ruin and scandal that

will befall us."

Nadiensky began to wilt visibly. Over in Whitehall the Foreign

Office and MI5 practically came to blows. Why did the Foreign Office

allow these calls, we wanted to know, when the Russians never allowed

access to our people, like Greville Wynne, when they were arrested in

Moscow. But the Foreign Office, with little regard for our priorities,

and none for Nadiensky's interests, sat on the niceties of the diplomatic

trade.

314 PETER WRIGHT

"We cannot deny the family humanitarian access," they said.

On the fourth day Nadiensky told us he had decided to go back.

It was causing too much trouble for his family. McCaul tried to point

out the dangers, but it was futile. He was like a patient on the operating

table, hovering between life and death, and now we could feel him

gently slipping away.

"Are you sure you want to go back?" I asked Nadiensky when I

last saw him, shortly before he went back.

"What I want no longer matters," he said without emotion. "I

have done my duty by my family."

Fatalism was Nadiensky's only refuge. He was one of the many

faceless victims of the Cold War, his life ground down between the two

great secret armies which face each other West and East.

But if it was our own fault that we had stumbled into the maze of

intelligence provided by defectors, we desperately needed a way out.

Angleton opted for blind faith in Golitsin to lead him to safety. In one

way it made sense to turn to the architect of the maze to help us find

a way out. But although I began as a fervent admirer of Golitsin and

all his theories, by the end of the 1960s I was beginning to have my

doubts.

The problem was Golitsin's obsession with his "methodology." He

claimed that if he was given access to the files of Western intelligence

services it would trigger associations in his memory which could lead

him to spies. The theory was that since so much of the intelligence he

saw in Dzherzhinsky Square was bowdlerized, in other words, source-disguised

to protect the identity of the agent supplying the KGB, if he

read the files he might be able to seize on points of familiarity with the

material he had seen in the KGB Registry.

There were two ways of playing Golitsin. One was to accept his

methodology, and allow him to dictate the entire thrust of counterintelligence

policy. The other was to continue the frustrating task of

trying to prize out from him the nuggets of fact, such as the sorts of

information contained in the reports he had seen, the approximate

location of an agent, and so forth, which could then be investigated by

orthodox counterintelligence methods.

Where Western counterespionage services succeeded in obtaining

from him these kinds of factual leads, Golitsin was of enormous help-This

was how we finally put the finger on Vassall, and how Marcel

Chalet was able to identify Georges Paques. It was the same with

SPYCATCHER 315

Golitsin's political intelligence. Where he stuck to what he saw and

what he heard, he was impressive and believable. There is no question,

for instance, that he attended Shelepin's famous conference at which

Directorate D, responsible for Disinformation Operations, was established.

But where Golitsin extrapolated from what he knew to develop

broad theories, such as his forty-year grand disinformation program,

or where he attempted to fit events which occurred after his defection

into his theories, as he did with the Sino-Soviet split, he was disastrous.

Most of the Golitsin acolytes in MI5, of which I was one, soon

broke with Golitsin's wilder theories and strict adherence to his methodology.

Only Arthur, and more junior officers like Stephen de Mowbray,

who was responsible for Golitsin during a spell of duty as an MI6

liaison officer in Washington in the early 1960s, remained loyal.

But in Washington the situation was very different. Angleton swallowed

the "methodology" hook, line, and sinker and allowed Golitsin

to range freely across the CIA's files, picking traitors apparently at

random, and often unable to justify his decisions on anything other

than the flimsiest of grounds. The results were disastrous, and led to

the worst excesses of counterintelligence misjudgment. A string of senior

CIA officers, most notably Dave Murphy, the head of the Soviet

Division, unfairly fell under suspicion, their careers ruined. In the end,

the situation became so bad, with so many different officers under

suspicion as a result of Golitsin's leads, that the CIA decided the only

way of purging the doubt was to disband the Soviet Division, and start

again with a completely new complement of officers. It was obviously

a way out of the maze, but it could never justify the damage to the

morale in the Agency as a whole.

Although MI5 avoided the excesses of the CIA, Golitsin was still

badly handled. He was allowed to think himself too important. All

defectors should be treated at arm's length, and made to earn their

keep, and as little feedback as possible should ever be given to them,

so that they are never able to assess their own significance in relation

to the rest of the Intelligence Service's activities. Right from his first

visit to Britain in 1963, we opened up to Golitsin, and I was responsible

for that as much as anyone. When the Mitchell case got under way

Arthur and I shared everything with him, with Hollis' and F.J.'s agreement.

He even chose the code name for the case, speters, after a famous

old Chekhist intelligence officer. He knew from the start that we were

hunting a high-level spy, and inevitably that must have colored the

316 PETER WRIGHT

intelligence he gave us. In the tense and almost hysterical months of

1963, as the scent of treachery lingered in every corridor, it is easy to

see how our fears fed on his theories.

But there is no question that he knew of many penetrations in the

West. The record in Britain, Norway, and France proves it. But in our

haste we were never able to get an uncorrupted version of all his leads,

and this, I am sure, is still costing the West dear.

The tide finally turned against Golitsin in 1967. He was invited to

address the first CAZAB conference in Melbourne, Australia. His appearance

was eagerly awaited by all those present, since so much of

the previous five years had flowed from him. Golitsin was cocky as

ever, and soon launched into a lengthy oration on the failures of Western

intelligence services to interpret his material correctly.

"I know of more spies," he boomed, "why are you not willing to

cooperate with me?"

He laid special emphasis on Britain, and the many penetrations

which, he claimed, were as yet undiscovered, and which only he could

locate. F.J. was smiling the smile he reserved for particularly tiresome

people. He always hated his linen to be washed in public. Finally his

patience snapped.

"What is it you want?" he asked.

"The files . . . access to your files," replied Golitsin.

"All right, you can have them--anything you want. We'll see if

you've got anything to give us."

Golitsin came over in spring 1968. I initially pressed him to come

over straightaway, but it was winter in London, and he told me darkly

that he had already seen too much snow in his life. He was set up in

a safe house near Brighton, and Michael McCaul and his wife lived

with him to keep house and provide him with company. Every week I

came down from Leconfield House with a briefcase of files for him to

study.

When I first gave him material I warned him that he could not

take notes. Both F.J. and I were worried that part of the motivation

behind his "methodology" was so that he could amass as much intelligence

from each Western service as possible for some unknown future

purpose.

"But of course," he replied huffily, "I am a professional, Peter, I

understand these things."

For four months Golitsin roamed across the most secret files in

MI5, and every month Michael McCaul went to Glyn Mills Bank and

SPYCATCHER 317

drew out 10,000 pounds in cash, placed it in a small suitcase, and

brought it down for Golitsin.

But for all the money, there was little that Golitsin had to give.

F.J. had called his bluff. There were some useful things, of course. He

studied the venona, and was able to fill in a few groups using his

knowledge of KGB procedure. He spent a long time studying the files

of the Joint Services Language School in Cambridge, looking through

the curriculum vitaes of candidates to see if any caught his attention.

We even conducted voice tests with some of those he was particularly

interested in, to see if Golitsin could detect, from the idioms they used,

whether or not they were picking up Russian words from KGB controllers.

It was artful, but it never paid off, and in the end we decided

that the only safe thing to do was to close the school down.

But in the crucial area--whether or not he could shed any light

on the penetration problem--he was a complete loss. He filled in some

more details in the Skripkin allegation and he did have one totally

bizarre theory. He spent weeks studying the venona traffic to see if he

could help us identify the unknown cryptonyms. There were two in

particular which interested him--David and Rosa--who from the message

already broken were obviously working together, probably as man

and wife, or perhaps brother and sister. Golitsin asked for the files of

all MI5 officers who had served during the time the venona traffic was

taken. One day he announced he had an answer.

"Your spies are here. My methodology has uncovered them," he

intoned darkly, pointing his finger like the witch-finder at two files on

the table in front of him. I knew the files well. They belonged to Victor

and Tess Rothschild.

"Don't be totally absurd, Anatole," I said. "Victor is one of the

best friends this Service has ever had . . . how on earth did you jump

at that conclusion?"

"They are Jewish. David and Rosa are Jewish names . . ."

It sounded like KGB anti-Semitism to me, and I could not help

thinking that if this had been the CIA and I had been Angle ton, Victor

and Tess would almost certainly have been listed as spies on Golitsin's

groundless interpretation.

The principal problem with Golitsin's methodology was that he

interpreted the files as if he were still in the KGB. He looked for

operations which went wrong, or mistakes which were attributable to

a single officer.

"Where is that man now?" he would ask.

318 PETER WRIGHT

"Same job," I would reply.

Golitsin would say nothing for a few days, and then announce that

he was sure the man was a traitor.

"But why, Anatole?"

"Because in KGB, failure is a serious offense. You would not be

trusted, and that makes a man unhappy, and maybe then he thinks of

turning."

He never understood the culture of the West, and because he

himself was driven to defect because his career was damaged after his

abortive visit to Stalin, he assumed that anyone in the West would act

in the same way.

"But that's not how it is in' the West," I used to tell him. "We

don't act like that over here--it only happens in the FBI."

Golitsin would look blank. He was a man almost devoid of humor.

"Look, Anatole, we've been studying this for twenty years, and

we don't know who the spies are, and your guessing isn't helping us at

all."

He looked at me and down at the file, as if to make me guilty for

doubting him.

"What do you know, Peter," he would growl, "you were not there

in Dzherzhinsky Square, as I was."

But for all his vanity and greed, he was a genuine man, with that

sudden sadness that all Russians have. I remember showing him the

Volkov file one afternoon. As he read the story of the attempted defector

whose file ended up on Kim Philby's desk, he began to weep.

"How could you be so careless, Peter?" he asked in anguish, only

too well aware that but for the grace of God Golitsin would have

suffered the same fate.

McCaul and I looked sheepish. There was no excuse we could give.

By the end of his stay my sessions with Golitsin had degenerated

into tedious diatribes about disinformation, and recycled information

which already existed in our Registry. He was a shadow of the man

who captivated the best minds in Western counterintelligence with his

photographic memory and his unerring eye for detail. Before he left

he handed us a massive typescript which he had labored to produce

himself, typing one-fingered on an old Olivetti portable. He told me it

was the definitive study on disinformation theory. I handed it in to the

Registry. The time when I waited on his every word had long gone. I

did not even bother to read it.

I saw Golitsin once more in New York the following winter. We

SPYCATCHER 319

had lunch at an Italian restaurant near Central Park. It was a sad,

furtive occasion. Golitsin still talked of his plans for an institute for the

study of disinformation, and new leads he had discovered. But he knew

he was finished. The Czechoslovakian invasion the previous summer

had brought a flood of new defectors to the West--men like Frolik and

August, whose information was less ambitious but easier to digest. He

knew he was yesterday's newspapers, and I think he could tell I was

humoring him.

He had recently suffered tragedy. His daughter, upon whom he

doted, had fallen prey to the ultimate Western depravity--drug addiction --and had committed suicide. It was a terrible blow, and Golitsin

blamed himself.

After lunch we walked across Central Park together in brilliant

winter sunshine. He wanted me to visit his farm in upstate New York,

but I told him I had to get back to London. There was little left to say.

"Are you thinking of going home?" I asked him, as we came to

the parting.

"Oh no," he replied, after an unusual pause, "they would never

forgive me."

Golitsin rarely talked about Russia, but it was clearly on his mind.

"Are you homesick?"

"Sometimes ..."

We made our farewells, and his feet made a crunching sound as

he walked away across the snow. Like all defectors, Golitsin was feeling

the cold.

21

With Golitsin unable to advance the penetration issue any further, MI5

were trapped in the middle of a maze. The search for the high-level

spy, for which fluency considered Sir Roger Hollis the best suspect,

had been suspended since 1966, so that all attention could focus on the

hunt for the middling-grade agent. With Hanley's clearance there was

no obvious road forward. Did we abandon the search for the middling-grade

agent, and assume Goleniewski's story was planted, or did we

continue to search for other candidates, of whom there were a number

who were almost as good a fit as Hanley had been? If we assumed that

Goleniewski's middling-grade agent story was planted, did we assume

it was a lure to draw our attention away from another middling-grade

agent, or from the high-level spy? Did both exist, or neither? To do

nothing was clearly impossible, and thus, like actors in a Greek tragedy,

we had no real choice but to continue widening our investigations,

spreading the poison ever further through the corridors.

The next best suspect was Gregory Stevens (a pseudonym), an

extrovert and gifted officer with a puckish sense of humor. Stevens was

about a 60 percent fit for the Goleniewski allegation. He had an even

stronger Polish background than Hanley. He was half Polish by birth,

and had risen to Hanley's old job as head of the Polish Section of MI5,

where his knowledge of the language, culture, and history of his mother's

country made him highly successful. Ironically, or perhaps sinisterly,

Stevens was the officer who interviewed Goleniewski in 1963,

and first heard the story of the middling-grade agent. Was this, like

Hollis' visit to see Gouzenko, just another coincidence?

Like Hanley, too, Stevens had been in military uniform and there

was also a connection with the KGB officer who Goleniewski alleged

had made the recruitment. Both men attended the Yalta Conference

SPYCATCHER 321

in 1945, Stevens as a military translator assigned to assist Stalin with

his translations into English, until Stalin complained that he Spoke

Russian with a Polish accent.

Like Hanley, Stevens had also undergone psychiatric treatment,

and once again I paid a discreet visit to Harley Street. But whereas

Hanley had informed his doctor of the nature of his profession, Stevens

had never hinted at his involvement in national security.

"I wouldn't have thought he was stable enough to be in that line

of work," said the doctor.

"Do you find him trustworthy?" I asked casually.

"He's very clever," replied the doctor, "but I think his cleverness

can sometimes lead him astray."

"How do you mean?"

"There's a touch of the Walter Mitty about him. I don't think you

could always rely on what he said."

The more I looked at the case, the more I came to doubt whether

Stevens should ever have been recruited in the first place. It seemed a

hard thing to say. He was a good officer, and an asset to the Service,

but in the end, if vetting meant anything, this man ought never to have

been allowed in. The psychiatric problems were only a small part of it.

The real worry was his Polish background. According to his record of

service, he visited Poland regularly with office permission for private

holidays to see his relations. His uncle, to whom he was particularly

close, was an active member of the Polish Communist Party, and they

occasionally met in London. For an organization that was routinely

rejecting any applicant with even the faintest trace of the British Communist

Party in his family background, the Stevens case presented an

obvious problem. And the fact that he had been linked to the middling-grade

agent investigation made the situation even more untenable, since

in order to clear himself, he had to emerge clean from an exhaustive

vet. With half his family living behind the Iron Curtain, an adequate

vet was impossible.

The investigation was conducted as far as it could possibly go, and

then Stevens was summoned for an interrogation, which I conducted

with Jim Patrick, a one-eyed Gurkha officer who worked as an interrogator

for D3.

Stevens had obviously been half expecting the call ever since he

had first heard Goleniewski talk about a middling-grade agent with

Polish connections. He was alternately truculent and defensive. He

stared me nervously in the eye, as if to convince me he was telling the

322 PETER WRIGHT

truth. He agreed that he was a good fit for the allegation, and accepted

that someone of his background was an odd recruitment for an organization

like MI5.

"I always wondered when everyone would wake up to the Polish

side of me," he said. "I suppose I'll fail the vet now, won't I?"

"I don't know," I replied, "but if it's any consolation, it won't be

me that'll decide. It'll be F.J."

He obviously felt that whichever way the interrogation went, he

could not possibly win. Unlike Hanley, he could not really hope to

walk through the fire unscathed.

We had been going three days when he walked coolly into the

room one morning and sat down at the table opposite me.

"It's time for me to tell you something," he said. "I've decided to

confess ..."

I flashed a glance over to Jim, who immediately began taking notes.

It was only an additional precaution, since all the sessions were taped.

"Yes," he went on, "I've been wanting to tell someone about it

for years. You're right . . . I'm the spy you're looking for."

He seemed to crumple up in front of us, his shoulders heaving, as

if he were weeping. But it only lasted a moment or two, before he held

his head Up, and looked straight at me.

"Do you really mean this, Greg?" I asked.

"You have a witness, don't you?"

"You realize you'll have to give a statement to the Branch?"

He nodded. I leaned over to Jim and told him to inform the

Director-General's security man, Tom Roberts, and arrange for Special

Branch to come immediately. Stevens and I sat opposite each other,

the files and questions in front of me suddenly redundant.

"It's all true, Peter," he said again, in a clear voice.

I told him that he had best not say anything until Tom Roberts

arrived. Jim Patrick came back in. For a few seconds more we sat in

silence, and then I noticed Stevens' shoulders going again. For a moment

I thought he was weeping, perhaps even about to have a breakdown.

It often happens.

"Damn," I thought to myself, "I should have had the office doctor

stand by."

Then suddenly he began to roar with laughter.

"You really believed me, didn't you?" he cried.

For a second I felt the hot flush of embarrassment.

"I'm not sure I understand . . . ?"

SPYCATCHER 323

"You wanted a spy, didn't you," he said, reddening suddenly, now

that the joke was over. "I thought I'd give you one. I was going to get

chopped anyway. I know that!"

"I don't think we should discuss the matter here," I replied. "Tom

Roberts will be here in a minute, you can explain it all to F.J."

For all I knew, it was a real confession, which he was trying to

retract, although I felt I knew Stevens well enough to believe that he

was only horsing about. But it was a stupid thing to do. Any chance

he had of surviving the investigation had almost certainly gone.

F.J. was appalled when he heard what had happened. He was a

lawyer, and had a venerable respect for the niceties of MI5's processes.

"What do you think?" he asked me when I got back to his office.

"Was the confession bogus, or do you think he retracted it?"

"You know my views," I replied. "I am sure he is in the clear

because I think the middling-grade agent was a phony allegation from

the start. I just think he had a brainstorm ..."

F.J. grunted. Tales of false defectors were never very welcome to

a man of his solidity.

"You don't suppose he made the whole thing up--Goleniewski's

story, I mean?" he asked.

I told him we had checked the tapes before the interrogation.

"I even got Stevens to verify the translation. Oh, Goleniewski said

it all right."

"Don't see how we can keep him," he muttered, chewing his pipe.

"Man's obviously unstable. Polish thing grotesque as well. Sort of thing

that gets into newspapers."

He waved me out.

Within an hour Gregory Stevens' career was terminated. He spent

ten minutes with F.J., and Tom Roberts escorted him to the pavement

outside Leconfield House. He didn't even have a chance to clear his

desk.

A few days later Arthur came to see me. He and I had seen little

of each other since his departure to MI6. He had aged and seemed less

driven than he was before, though the past still held him. He wanted

to know about Stevens. They were friends in D Branch in the old

days, and Arthur, much the older man, had an almost paternal regard

for him.

"Did you have to do it?" he asked.

I told him about the middling-grade agent, and the retracted

confession, and the confusion and doubt which plagued us all.

324 PETER WRIGHT

"What else could we do?" I asked. "How can we tell Whitehall

to do their vetting, and then turn a blind eye ourselves?"

Arthur knew we had been right, but the cost was becoming progressively

higher.

"It's poisoning us all," he said quietly.

Gregory Stevens' departure caused great bitterness in the office.

He was a popular officer, and inevitably I was blamed. No one, apart

from a handful of senior officers, knew the context which had led up

to his investigation--the long history of suspected high-level penetration

of MI5, the Blunt confessions, the terrible secret of the fluency

conclusions which implicated Sir Roger Hollis, and the hunt for the

middling-grade agent.

Word began to spread through the office that D3 was conducting

vetting purges in the office, and that officers like Gregory Stevens were

being victimized. There was talk of the Gestapo. Younger officers began

to avoid me in the canteen. Casual conversation with many of my

colleagues became a rarity. Those of us involved in the penetration

issue were set apart, feared and distrusted in equal measure.

|l It was the same in MI6. After years of neglect, a new head of

Counterintelligence, Christopher Phillpotts, was appointed in the mid-1960s,

around the time fluency got off the ground. Phillpotts looked

to all intents and purposes like a figure from the ancien regime of British

Intelligence. He was a charismatic war hero with a penchant for pink

¦ gins and cravats and bow ties. But he was a strict disciplinarian, who

¦ believed that in the wake of Philby's defection, the Augean stables

needed cleaning. A thorough review of security procedures and per sonnel was the precondition for a return to self-respect for a Service

which, despite Dick White's best efforts, had still to recover from the

wounds of Philby, Suez, and Commander Crabbe. Those who could

not satisfactorily account for their backgrounds would have to go. Na tional security demanded that, at long last, the benefit of the doubt be

given to the state.

Phillpotts supported fluency without reservation, and initiated his

own program of vetting inside Century House. At least eight senior

officers were forced to resign in the wake of Phillpotts' new regime.

One officer, for instance, was forced to go when it was discovered that

he had a long affair with Litzi Friedman without ever declaring it to

the office. Friedman was Philby's first wife, and almost certainly the

person who recruited him to the Soviet cause. Another senior officer

to suffer had been a member of the Communist Party in the 1930s.

SPYCATCHER 325

Several officers who had been through the Joint Services Language

School were also unable to account for discrepancies in their backgrounds,

and chose to leave. Even Nicholas Elliott, for so long Philby's

supporter, until finally traveling to Beirut to obtain his confession, was

investigated, in case Philby had managed to extract intelligence from

him. But after lengthy interrogation Elliott just convinced his interrogator,

Arthur Martin, that he was in the clear.

None of this was a matter of treachery. But for so long the normal

rules of vetting had been waived in the club world of intelligence that

when the reckoning came it was abrupt and painful. Much of the blame

for the purges inside MI6 was attributed to MI5, and to people like

Patrick Stewart and me in particular. Many felt that MI5 were taking

advantage of Philby's defection to even up a few old scores.

I had been unpopular inside certain sections of MI6 since my review

of the Penkovsky case. But it was the Ellis case which really earned

me the undying enmity of the MI6 old guard, an enmity which I wore

as a mark of achievement.

The Ellis case caused friction between MI5 and MI6 for almost as

long as the Philby case. It began in the aftermath of the Burgess and

Maclean defections, when MI5 began to reanalyze the intelligence provided

by the defector Walter Krivitsky. One of Krivitsky's serials concerned

a White Russian emigre based in Paris named Vladimir Von

Petrov, who, Krivitsky alleged, had been an important agent for the

Fourth Department, the GRU, during the prewar period, with good

sources in Britain as well as Germany, where he was operating as a

double agent for the Germans and the Russians.

MI5 were interested to find out who those sources might be, so

they studied Von Petrov's file and found a series of debriefing reports

of Abwehr officers taken at the end of the war. The Abwehr officers

confirmed that Von Petrov was being run by them as their agent, although,

of course, they did not know that he was also working for the

Russians. Several mentioned that Von Petrov had a source in British

Intelligence who could obtain our order of battle, as well as details of

vital operations, such as the tap on the secret telephone link between

Hitler and his Ambassador in London, von Ribbentrop. One Abwehr

officer even remembered the name of Von Petrov's source--it was a

Captain Ellis, who was an Australian, a brilliant linguist, and who had

a Russian wife.

Charles "Dickie" Ellis was then a senior MI6 officer, recently

promoted from MI6 controller for Far Eastern Affairs to be in charge

326 PETER WRIGHT

of all operations in North and South America. He joined MI6 in the

1920s, and was based in Paris, where he was responsible for recruiting

agents in the White Russian emigre community. During this period he

recruited an agent with access to Von Petrov.

The prewar Russian emigre community was a cesspool of uncertain

loyalties, and when MI5 raised the query against Ellis, MI6 rejected

any possibility that he could be a spy. They maintained that it was much

more likely that Von Petrov was working for Ellis, than the other way

around, and was lying to protect himself. In any case, Ellis had opted

for early retirement, and was planning to return to Australia. Dick

White, newly appointed to MI5, and not wanting to aggravate still

further the tensions already strained to breaking point by the gathering

suspicions against Philby, agreed to shelve the case, where it lay festering

in the Registry until I took over as D3.

When Phillpotts took over as head of Counterintelligence, I approached

him as chairman of fluency and asked him if he was prepared

to sanction a joint MI5-MI6 investigation into Ellis to finally resolve

the case. He went to Dick White, who gave his agreement, and I began

working with a young MI6 counterintelligence officer named Bunny

Pancheff.

The real difficulty in the Ellis case was trying to determine whether

he was working for the Germans or the Russians, or both. Early on

we got confirmation of the Abwehr officer's story, when we traced the

records of the prewar operation to tap the Hi tier-von Ribbentrop link.

The officer in charge of processing the product was Ellis. The question

was whether he was providing the information to Von Petrov in the

knowledge that he was a Russian spy, or whether he assumed he was

working only for the Germans.

The first thing which convinced me Ellis was always a Russian spy

was the discovery of the distribution of the Abwehr officer's report in

which he claimed Von Petrov's British source was a Captain Ellis. The

report was sent routinely to Kim Philby, in the Counterintelligence

Department. He had scrawled in the margin: "Who is this man Ellis?

NFA," meaning "No further action," before burying the report in the

files. At the time Ellis' office was just a few doors down the corridor,

but it seemed to me to be a most suspicious oversight by the normally

eagle-eyed Philby.

That was only the first of a number of interesting connections

between Philby's career and Ellis'. Within a year of Philby's falling

under suspicion Ellis took early retirement, pleading ill-health. He trav-

SPYCATCHER 327

eled to Australia, and took up a job as a consultant to ASIS, the

Australian overseas intelligence-gathering organization. While there he

was briefed by the Australians on the impending defection of Vladimir

Petrov, a Beria henchman who opted to stay in the West rather than

take his chances in Moscow. Almost immediately Ellis returned to

Britain and contacted Kim Philby, despite being specifically warned

against doing so by Maurice Oldfield. No one knows what they discussed,

but from that date onward Petrov fell under suspicion in Australia,

and when he noticed his safe had been tampered with in the

Soviet Embassy, he defected earlier than anticipated, eluding by hours

two burly KGB officers who had been sent out from Moscow to bring

him back. The reasons for Ellis' hasty flight from Australia have never

been clear, but I have always assumed that he thought the Petrov who

was about to defect was the same Von Petrov with whom he had been

involved in the 1920s, and who must have known the secret of his

treachery.

We looked at his wartime record. He spent most of the war in the

USA working as deputy to Sir William Stephenson, the Man Called

Intrepid, at British Security Coordination. Some of the American

venona showed clearly that the Soviets were operating a number of

agents inside BSC, but although we tried exhaustive analysis to link

Ellis with each of the cryptonyms, we could never be certain.

I began to search further back for more definite clues connecting

Ellis to the Soviets in the prewar period. At the time I was studying

the prewar period as part of the D3 researches, and was rereading

Elizabeth Poretsky's autobiography, Our Own People, about her life

as the wife of Ludwik Poretsky (also known as Ignace Reiss), one of

the "great illegals" who worked along with Krivitsky as a Fourth Department

agent runner for the Soviet GRU. He was murdered after he

refused to return to Moscow and defected. I first read the book in its

English translation, but this time I studied the original French text,

titled Les Notres. I seized on an extraordinary statement which had not

appeared in the English edition. Elizabeth Poretsky said that in the

late 1920s Ludwik had an agent high up in British Intelligence.

In 1966 I traveled to Paris to see Mrs. Poretsky, a shrew who

guarded her husband's memory jealously and remained suspicious of

all agents of Western imperialism. I talked around the subject for a

while, and then reminded her of the passage in the book. Surely, I

ventured, she had got her dates wrong, and presumably this agent was

Philby? She became quite indignant, squawking at me for my ignorance.



1

328 PETER WRIGHT

"This was not Philby," she jabbered. "Ludwik ran this agent in

Amsterdam in 1928 and 1929. Philby was just a schoolboy then."

"Do you think you could recognize the man?" I asked, trying hard

to conceal my excitement.

She began to hedge. She told me she was still loyal to Les Ndtres. She could never inform.

"Oh no," I told her, "it's nothing like that--we just need it for

our records."

I produced a spread of twenty photographs from my briefcase.

Some were dummy photographs, others were of known colleagues of

her husband, and one was of Ellis, dating from the mid-1920s. She

picked out all those she ought to have known, and Ellis as well.

"I do not know this man's name," she told me, "but I am sure he

is familiar."

From Paris I traveled by bus to Amsterdam to see a woman named

Mrs. Pieck, the widow of a Dutchman, Henri Pieck, who worked as a

Soviet illegal and recruited several spies in Britain during the prewar

period, including John Herbert King, a cipher clerk in the Foreign

Office. Elizabeth Poretsky had suggested I visit Mrs. Pieck in case she

could throw any light on the photograph she had picked out. Mrs. Pieck

was a woman from the same mold, and had clearly been warned of my

imminent arrival. She too picked out Ellis' photograph, but refused to

say why.

There was only one other lead. Elizabeth Poretsky told in her book

how Richard Sorge, the great Soviet illegal who eventually built up one

of the most important spy networks in history in China and Japan during

World War II, had traveled to Britain during the late 1920s. His mission

had been highly dangerous, but she told me she knew no more details,

and tried too obviously to dissuade me from visiting Sorge's widow,

Christiane, who was living in a seminary near New York. I cabled

Stephen de Mowbray, then based in Washington as an MI6 liaison

officer, and asked him to visit her.

Christiane Sorge placed the final piece in the jigsaw, but left the

picture still infuriatingly unfocused. She did indeed remember Sorge's

mission, and said it was to see a very important agent, although she

knew nothing of his identity. She recalled just one fragment--a meeting

on a street corner in London. She and Rickie had gone together to

meet this agent, but he had told her to stand well back and cover him

in case there was trouble. Could she recognize the man? Stephen asked

her. She had seen him, but not well. He showed her the photographs.

I

SPYCATCHER 329

"This man looks familiar," she said, "but I could not be certain,

after over forty years."

It was Ellis' photograph.

Eventually Ellis was interrogated. He was old, and claimed to be

in ill-health, so Bunny Pancheff and I were instructed to take the sessions

extremely gently. Ellis denied everything for several days. He

blustered and blamed the whole thing on jealous colleagues. But as we

produced the evidence, the Abwehr officer's report, and the indoctrination

list for the telephone tap, he began to wilt.

After lunch on the Friday he returned to the interrogation room

in the basement of the old War Office, known as Room 055, with a

typed sheet of paper. It was a confession of sorts. He claimed that he

had got into trouble during the early years in MI6. He was sent out into

the field with no training and no money, and began providing chicken

feed, odd scraps of information about MI6 plans, to his agent Zilenski

(his brother-in-law), who was in touch with Von Petrov, in order to

obtain more intelligence in return. It was a dangerous game, and soon

he was being blackmailed. He claimed that his wife was ill, and he

needed money, so he agreed to supply Zilenski with more information.

Ellis' confession was carefully shaded at the edges to hide precisely

what intelligence he had given, and where it had gone, so, under interrogation,

we asked him to clarify it. He admitted passing over detailed

order-of-battle plans for British Intelligence, as well as betraying

the Hitler-von Ribbentrop telephone link, even though he knew this

material was being passed by Von Petrov to the Germans. (Part of the

Abwehr information came from Stevens and Best, who were captured

by a trick on the Dutch-German border by the Gestapo. We were able

to talk to them after the war, and they said that at their interrogation

they were amazed how much the Abwehr knew about the organization

of MI6. We asked Ellis when he last had contact with the Russian

emigres. He admitted that it was in December 1939, after the outbreak

of war.

Ellis was a venal, sly man. He sat there, stripped of his rank, white-faced

and puffy. But never once did I hear an apology. I could understand

how a man might choose the Soviets through ideological conviction.

But to sell colleagues out to the Germans for a few pounds in

time of war? I told him that had he been caught in 1939-40 he would

have been hanged.

Ellis clearly thought the interrogation was over. But it had just

begun. We wanted to know about his involvement with the Soviets, we

330 PETER WRIGHT

said. For a moment he wavered in front of us, then he fought back.

"Never!" he shouted, "never with the Communists . . ."

The next day we took him through the odd chain of events--his

trip to Australia, and his rapid return to Britain, and the coincidence

of Petrov's defection. But he denied everything, even when he was

caught out in repeated lying about his actions until he retired. Not even

an authorized offer of immunity could make him change his mind. But

I have little doubt of Ellis' involvement with the Russians.

Bunny Pancheff and I wrote the case up, and concluded that in

our opinion Ellis had certainly committed espionage for the Germans,

including during the war, and that we believed him also to have been

a long-term agent of the Russian Intelligence Service until his removal

from secret access. The report was endorsed without reservation by

Christopher Phillpotts, and submitted to Dick White and his deputy,

Maurice Oldfield.

Oldfield was a shy and good man, with a wonderful grasp of the

principles of counterintelligence. But he was a poor judge of character.

At first he doubted the veracity of Ellis' confession, until eventually

Bunny Pancheff played the crucial exchanges to him. But even though

we had uncovered a traitor of major proportions, I sometimes felt as

if it were I who was being blamed. Oldfield despised the climate of fear

engendered by Phillpotts' vetting purges, and campaigned hard to change

Dick's mind. The fact that Ellis had confessed seemed to weigh hardly

at all on his thinking. As far as he was concerned, it was all a long time

ago, and best forgotten.

As the climate against investigations turned in the late 1960s, I

wanted desperately to have some of the fluency conclusions circulated

more widely inside both Services. I felt sure that this was the only way

we could restore some general consent for a continuation of the work.

At the moment, people knew nothing of the cases, and to them our

activities seemed like blind McCarthyism. D3 had become such a massive

section, embracing fluency and the D3 researches into the 1930s.

Inevitably, other senior officers resented its priority call on resources

and personnel, and since they had no way of judging the importance

of the work we were conducting, their resentments grew. I was accused

of being suspicious of everybody. F.J. would defend me if the attacks

were public. On one occasion he turned around and said to my attacker,

"It is Peter's job to be suspicious." Like Angleton, I could sense my

enemies multiplying. It was a curious sensation. After years of being

the hunter, I suddenly felt myself hunted.



I

SPYCATCHER 331

Matters came to a head in 1969 at the annual conference attended

by senior MI5 officers at the Sunningdale Civil Service College in Berkshire.

A number of officers launched bitter attacks on me, and others

involved in Dl (Investigations), as well as on the work we were doing.

What had D3 ever achieved? they asked. They talked of the bonds of

trust between fellow officers ruptured by the climate of suspicion. Innocent

men suffering, they said.

"Which innocent men?" I said. "That's a lie. Who? You name

them!"

My hands were tied. I could not talk in specifics or generalities,

and was forced to defend myself by stressing that every move we made

in relation to a case was endorsed by F.J. personally. But without my

explaining to them the long history of the search for penetration, they

could not possibly understand.

Afterward I appealed to F.J. to publish a paper on the fluency

assessments. I outlined the sort of thing we could circulate to the top

seventy officers: a resume of the continuous allegations of penetration

since the war, including the attributions to the known spies wherever

possible, and indicating the large number of still unexplained allegations.

F.J. refused even to consider it.

"If I do this, Peter," he said, "it will break the heart of the Service.

We would never recover."

"But these people don't even know Blunt was a spy. How can they

possibly sympathize and support our work, if they aren't told something?"

"In my view," he said, "it would be better if no one knew, ever!"

"But how can we go on?" I asked him. "We've got young people

coming into the Service every year. They listen to the tapes, they read

the office histories, and they learn nothing about this, and it's the most

important subject there is. How can you expect them to live a lie? You

might as well not have done any of this work, unless you face up to it,

and show people we have by explaining to them how it all happened,

and say to people, 'Look, there are these gaps, and that's why we've

got to carry on.' "

F.J. would have none of it. There were moments, not many it is

true, but this was one, when he was immutable.

"What about me?" I asked finally. "How do I go on in the office,

facing this level of hostility?"

He suddenly became steely.

"That is a price you have to pay for sitting in judgment on people."

332 PETER WRIGHT

In 1968, following his clearance, Michael Hanley was appointed

head of Counterespionage. Ever since the traumatic events of the previous

year Hanley and I had barely spoken. He had never said anything,

but I could tell he blamed me for the decision to investigate him. When

he took over he lost no time in trying to clip my wings. At first it was

public slap-downs.

"Oh, Peter," he would say mockingly, "that's just another one of

your mad theories."

But then his assault became more serious. He began to remove

staff and resources from D3 wherever possible. At first I fought my

corner, and went to F.J. to get them reinstated, but after a while I

began to wonder whether it was worth the fight. The D3 research task

was nearing completion. Only the high-level penetration issue remained

unsolved, and that had been shelved for more than three years, with

little sign that it would ever be revived. The constant strain of the work

was taking its toll on my health. My thoughts turned toward retirement

and to my first love--farming.

I decided that at least I should confront Hanley personally before

giving up. I went to see him and asked him point-blank why he was

trying to drive me out of the Service. He claimed there was no persecution.

It was just that D3 had got too big, and there were increasing

complaints that some of its less glamorous, but no less important tasks,

like security assessments for ministers and the like, were being neglected.

"Well, give me an officer to look after the paperwork, then," I

countered.

But Hanley refused.

"I know I'm a poor administrator," I admitted, "but are you sure

the real reason for this isn't because you bear a grudge against this type

of work?"

Hanley became red-faced. He knew what I was driving at, but

denied his own experience was coloring his judgment.

"I suppose you know it was me?" I said. "Have you ever seen the

file?"

The ice was broken. I went back to my office and pulled out the

file on the Harriet investigation. I showed Hanley everything--the way

the search for the middling-grade agent arose from the fluency report,

the shelving of the hunt for the high-level spy, the D3 inquiries, the

Watson and Proctor cases, the investigations, the visit to his psychiatrist.

"I never realized," he said, as he studied the files.

SPYCATCHER 333

"We're the people who were asked to do the dirty work," I told

him bitterly, "and now when we've done most of the work, they

want to brush it under the carpet and forget us, and forget the things

we did."

Indoctrination into the burden of terrible secrets which so few have

shouldered had a profound effect on Hanley. He realized that he had

no experience of any of this, and his only knowledge of D Branch was

from his time on the Polish desk in the 1950s. In order to make a success

of D Branch he had to have guidance. One day he called me into his

office and explained his problem. He was quite straightforward, and I

respected him for it. He still wanted to break down D3. Its mammoth

task was almost finished, he told me, and in any case, he wanted me

to become his personal consultant on the whole reorganization of

I D Branch which he was planning. I was to have sight of every paper,

and access to all cases in the Branch with the brief to guide him with

my intimate knowledge of the previous fifteen years. Unlike any other

officer, I had never moved from D Branch. As Dick White promised

at my interview, I received no promotion, but then I was not forced

to play musical chairs, switching from department to department every

second year. D Branch had been my life. I knew every case and file.

It was a fair offer, and I accepted immediately.

But that still left the problem of penetration.

"Who is going to continue that work? We can't let the thing slip

again, otherwise another backlog of unresolved cases will build up," I

said.

I had been convinced for more than a year that we needed some

formal mechanism for looking at the whole question of internal pen etration. The problem of the 1960s was that there was no department

in the Service where allegations of penetration could be investigated.

Everything was ad hoc. fluency had no formal status, it was just a

working party. The work did not sit easily inside Dl (Investigations),

because their correct job was to investigate penetrations that occurred

outside the Service. It was precisely this lack of a mechanism which

contributed to the accusations of "the Gestapo" in the office. We were

seen to be people pursuing investigations outside the normal channels,

and in an organization as conscious of hierarchy as MI5, that was a

considerable problem. With a proper section devoted to the work, the

Service would be able to see that the management had given its full

¦ backing. It would, in other words, have legitimacy.

" There was one other factor in my mind. I knew that if the issue

[

334 PETER WRIGHT

of high-level penetration was ever to be solved, it could be done only

by giving fresh minds access to the problem. Over the past ten years

the subject had become intimately bound up with personalities--principally

mine and Arthur's. We were seen as men with grudges, or as

men with obsessions, unable to conceive of any interpretation other

than Hollis' being guilty. I lobbied Hanley and F.J. furiously, trying to

persuade them to set up such a section, and staff it with people who

had no connection with either Arthur or me, or with the terrible events

of the previous ten years.

Hanley was doubtful, but F.J. seized on the idea immediately, and

persuaded Hanley to incorporate it into his plans. By late 1968 the

reorganization was complete. D Branch became K Branch, which was

split into two separate units: KX, which handled all investigative work,

and had its own director on the Board; and KY, which was responsible

for order of battle and operations, also with its own director. KX

incorporated Dl (Investigations) and much of the old D3, and comprised

three sections: Kl and K2, which were Soviet and satellite investigating

sections; K3, which was now a research section cut out of

D3, a section servicing the investigation sections; and a new unit, K7,

charged with sole responsibility for investigating allegations of penetration

of the Intelligence Services. KY comprised K4, order of battle;

K5, which was agent running and operations; and K6, which assumed

responsibility for all security assessments and compiling the specialist

records, ministerial briefings, special indexes, and record collection

which previously had been under my control in D3.

Duncum Wagh was the first officer appointed to head K7. He was

a good choice--a sensible, levelheaded officer who was always thorough

in his reasoning and, once his mind was made up, doubly impressive

in justifying his proposed course of action. His career had suffered

unduly from his mistake in clearing Houghton after his wife's complaint

ten years previously. But solid hard work, some of it on my Moscow

Embassy Working Party, had earned him a major chance, and K7 was

certainly that. He was supported by a forceful ex-marine officer named

John Day. I strongly advised that nobody involved in the penetration

issue to date should work in K7.

I had one meeting with Duncum Wagh, and handed over to him

everything in my safe which related to fluency--all the records from

my own freelance inquiries into Hollis' background, my analyzes of the

Lonsdale case, some work on the middling-grade agent. It was only

SPYCATCHER 335

when he took them that I realized what a burden those small green

combination boxes had been all those years.

"Here," I said, "it's your problem now, thank God!"

I had very little to do with K7 in the early days. Neither Duncum

Wagh nor John Day wanted me around, for fear it would prejudice

their own freedom of maneuver and credibility, and I understood that.

I did introduce John Day to Blunt, and talked again through the whole

question of why he had been allowed to leave MI5 by the Russians in 1945. Blunt always thought it was odd.

"I think if they had pressured me, I probably would have stayed

on, at least for a bit. I loved the work, and adored Guy Liddell and

Dick White, and I expect I could still have pursued my art ... but they

never asked me."

Blunt could shed no light on whether there was already a replacement

for him in the office, although he knew that was what concerned

us. We showed him the venona message with the eight cryptonyms.

But they meant nothing to him. The only fragment he had was a lunch

he attended with Guy Burgess and Graham Mitchell at the Reform

Club. It was clearly another looking-over session, but as to whether

Guy had actually made an approach, Blunt claimed he knew nothing.

A little later I was told that John Day had interrogated Mitchell at long

last, and they were quite satisfied he was in the clear. As I always

suspected, it came down to Hollis.

For a long time I heard nothing. Then one day John Day came to

see me. He brought with him the first K7 report on high-level penetration.

It concluded categorically that Hollis was the best candidate,

and recommended his immediate investigation and interrogation.

"I always thought you saw reds under the beds," said John Day

after I had read the report, "but I wanted to tell you that I think you

were right all along."

This time there was no escape--not for myself, for F.J., or for the

man in the black suit playing golf in quiet retirement in the Somerset

village of Calcott.

¦ SPYCATCHER 337

rogation, in case, like Blake, he panicked and made a move to contact

his Russian controllers, if he had any. But F.J. would have none of it.

He gave no reasons, but we could tell by his face that he was immovable.

Even Hanley protested about this, pointing out to F.J. that he had not

been spared the full works. But F.J. felt he had been backed into a

corner in sanctioning the interrogation, and this was a final indignity

he was not prepared to impose on his predecessor.

John Day was told to conduct the interview. Anne Orr-Ewing and

I were to listen in to provide analysis as the interrogation proceeded.

I F.J. knew he was too committed on the subject to be a fair choice, and

he realized that, after so many years' delay, he had to be seen to be

allowing the troops their chance.

¦ A door opened in South Audley Street. Hollis was shown in.

¦ "Where do you want me?" he asked, his familiar voice still strong

after all the years.

John Day began to explain the procedure of the interview.

"Yes, I'm familiar with the procedure . . . but I need pencil and

a paper, if you please."

I tried to imagine the scene in the room in South Audley Street.

I could see Hollis in there, sitting upright. I rather thought he would

miss his desk. Of course the pencils would be essential. And he would

I be wearing his Cheshire cat smile. Would he feel humiliated? I won

dered.

Or frightened? I somehow doubted it. Emotion was never something

I associated with him. I remembered something he always used

to say to me.

"Peter, you're too emotional on the subject."

I was doing my best to control my excitement.

John Day began by going through routine details of Hollis' career

and early life. Hollis knew the procedure, and began running ahead of

the brief.

"We'll take it a little slower, if you don't mind," said John Day.

Hollis showed faint irritation.

"This is a little laborious, if you don't mind me saying so. You

must have this information on my R/S."

But John Day was not to be intimidated.

"I think we had best follow procedure in this instance, if you don't

mind."

Hollis told a simple story. He said he left home because he realized

he was not religious. But Oxford, he claimed, was no escape. It, too,

reminded him of his religious upbringing.

I

338 PETER WRIGHT

"I wanted to get away, do something with my life in the outside

world. The only ambition I had was to play golf, and I realized early

on at Oxford that I could never make a career out of it. So I decided

to travel."

The Far East had always attracted him. Originally he thought he

might travel with some friends--Maurice Richardson was one. But the

plan fell through. In retrospect, said Hollis, he was glad. They had far

too little in common to make good traveling companions.

China fascinated him. Of course, he met the odd left-wing person

out there, but then that was normal. Everyone knew Agnes Smedley

was left-wing. It was the same at Oxford. He had been friendly with

Maurice Richardson and Claud Cockburn, both of whom were best

described as pink.

He said his health was a constant problem. TB afflicted him

throughout this period, and in the end it forced his return to Europe.

He traveled back via Moscow.

"I wanted to see what it was like. Awful place. Dirty, depressing.

Nobody smiled. Intellectuals were making a tremendous fuss about the

place. But I hated it."

"Did you meet anybody there?" asked John Day.

"On buses and trains. That sort of thing. But otherwise no. You

don't meet Russians" like you do people in other countries, like China,

for instance."

At lunch, Anne Orr-Ewing, John Day, F.J., and I met back at

Leconfield House. Hollis' performance had been calm and flawless.

"He'll clear himself, if he goes on like this," said Anne Orr-Ewing.

After lunch we went on to his return to Britain. Suddenly the crisp

focus disintegrated. The delivery was still resolute, but all the detail

disappeared. He could not remember where he had lived, whom he

had met, what plans he had, and yet we had all the answers in the

brief. We knew what he had been doing. For instance, he had lived

virtually next door to an old MI6 officer named Archie Lyall, who had

been a close friend of Guy Burgess. But although they must have seen

each other numerous times, Hollis had no recollection of him at all.

For an hour or more Hollis stumbled, until he reached the point in his

career where he joined MI5 before the war. Suddenly, and as abruptly

as it had disappeared, precision returned.

That night the interrogating team met again at the Oxford and

Cambridge Club to debate the day's session.

SPYCATCHER 339

"What about this blank year?" I asked.

F.J. placed his pipe on the table wearily.

"You've got that all wrong," he said.

He told us that Hollis was in a mess when he came back from

China--his health was shot, he had no career, no prospects. It did not

seem to occur to him that this would have made Hollis much more

vulnerable to recruitment. He was drifting, and it was a period in his

life he had long wanted to forget. Little wonder, said F.J., that he can't

remember where he lived.

"Well, it's a pretty odd state of mind to start applying for a job in

MI5 or MI6 for that matter," I remarked. I meant it seriously, but it

sounded sarcastic. F.J. bridled.

"For God's sake Peter!" Then he cut himself short. There was still

another session to go.

The following day Hollis sat down again.

"Are we ready?" Hollis asked patronizingly. John Day waited in

silence. It was a nice touch, and reminded Hollis that, for once, he was

not in charge.

Day began on a different tack.

"I want to ask you again about Claud Cockburn's file ..."

This had come up the previous morning. Hollis volunteered his

friendship with Cockburn at Oxford, and was asked why he had never

declared the fact on Cockburn's file, as any MI5 officer was supposed

to do if he handled the file of an acquaintance. Hollis brushed the

question aside. He said there was no general requirement at that time

to record personal friendships on files.

It was a lie, only a small one, true, but a lie nonetheless. The brief

contained a full annex proving that it was indeed current practice in

MI5 prewar to record friendships, and that Hollis would have known

of the regulation.

Day began to challenge Hollis on his answer the previous day. Why

had he lied? Hollis was never a stammerer, or a flusterer. There was

a slight pause, and then he acknowledged his mistake. Yes, he admitted,

there was another reason. He knew that Cockburn was of interest to

the Service as a prominent left-winger and Comintern agent, and since

he was a recent arrival, and wanted very much to pursue a career inside

MI5, he chose to ignore the regulation in case his friendship with Cockburn

were seen as a black mark against him.

"I am sure I wasn't the first or the last officer to break that particular

rule."

340 PETER WRIGHT

"What about other friends," pressed Day. "What about Philby?

Were you friendly with him?"

"Not really. He was too much of a drinker. We had good professional

relations, but nothing more."

"And Blunt?"

"More so, particularly during the war. I thought he was very gifted.

But I saw him less after he left the Service. Now and again we would

meet at the Travelers. Small talk--that sort of thing. He loved to

gossip."

Gouzenko, Volkov, and Skripkin he dispatched swiftly. Gouzenko

was unreliable. He still doubted that Elli really existed. As for his trip

to Canada, there was nothing sinister in Philby's sending the file on

to him.

"I was the acknowledged Soviet expert at the time. It would be

natural for Philby to refer it to me, particularly because it was a Commonwealth

matter."

"And Volkov?"

"I see no reason to disbelieve Philby. He thought Volkov's spy

was himself . . . Why should he go all that way to protect someone

else?"

Only once did a trace of the old Director-General break through,

when John Day began to ask him about events in the early 1960s. He

was asked about the sacking of Arthur Martin. A harsh tone crept into

his voice.

"He was being thoroughly undisciplined. I never knew what he

was doing. Take Blunt. We agreed on a formal immunity offer relating

to events before 1945. Martin goes in to see him, and offers him carte

blanche immunity. The Attorney-General was incensed, and so was I.

There was no controlling him. He and Wright were busy setting up a

privileged Gestapo, and something had to be done to break it up. I

don't regret it for one moment. I think it was absolutely justified in the

circumstances and, if anything, should have happened much earlier."

I John Day asked him why he had not allowed Mitchell to be in-

i terrogated

in 1963.

"It's in the files. The Prime Minister would not sanction it."

"Did you actually ask him for permission?"

"Of course I did," replied Hollis testily.

"But he has no recollection of the meeting," countered Day.

"That's absurd! The situation was critical. The Profumo business

was at its height. The whole question of the exchange with the Amer-

1



I

SPYCATCHER 341

icans had to be considered. Another scandal would have brought the

Government down. That's why consultation was vital."

It was all shadow-boxing. Day moved and jabbed, but he could

never really land a blow. Somehow he never got close enough to street-fight,

to grapple and gouge him, and make him confess. Time had

slipped away. It was all old, too old, to ever find the truth.

By the end of the afternoon only the routine questions for the

record were left.

"Have you at any stage communicated official information to any

unauthorized person?"

"No," replied Hollis firmly.

"Have you ever been approached by anyone clandestinely to pass

information?"

"Never."

The chairs scraped as Hollis got up. He said goodbye, and meant

it. He traveled back to Somerset, back to his golf, and his cottage. He

left the interrogation room as unknown as when he entered--an enigma,

an apparently sober man, with a streak of filthy humor. The autocrat

with crippling insecurity.

F.J. met us again at the Oxford and Cambridge Club that night.

There was an air of resignation around the table. We knew that we

had not brought the case home. But equally we felt adamant that there

was enough doubt to keep the case alive. F.J. was silent. He felt the

interrogation vindicated his faith in Hollis.

"I hope we can move on to other things," he said.

Once again the case was closed. But nothing, and certainly not

Hollis' interrogation, could paper over the deep chasm which divided

those who believed penetration had occurred, and those, like F.J., who

had finally come to doubt it. I could not help remembering all the

wasted years, the years when it could have been investigated, the years

of neglect and drift, the years when files gathered dust, when reports

went unanswered, the years when fear of the unknown prevented us

from ever knowing the truth. Only a chance breakthrough, a defector

or a cipher break, could help us solve the case now. A desperate sense

of failure gripped me--failure and, frustration and a desire to get away

and forget. Looking back, my retirement began that night as I traveled

home on the train to Essex. What came after was mostly going through

the motions.

Hollis' interrogation signaled the end of one decade, and ushered

in the new. The 1970s were to be the years of reckoning, when the

342 PETER WRIGHT

secret armies of the West were finally and painfully exposed to the

searing searchlight of publicity. For thirty years West and East had

fought a nocturnal battle, hidden and protected by custom and necessity.

But within four years the secrets would come pouring out.

Ironically, the 1970s opened well for MI5. We finally got a defector

we believed in. His name was Oleg Lyalin. He was recruited by two

of the best officers in MI5, a bluff Yorkshireman named Harry Wharton,

and a former SIS undercover officer of conspicuous courage, Tony

Brookes, who with his wife had operated in France and survived. The

operation was managed by the head of KY, a calm, dependable officer

by the name of Christopher Herbert. Lyalin was having an affair with

a girl, and when Wharton and Brookes made contact with him he said

he wanted to defect. They managed to persuade him to stay in place,

and for six months he provided MI5 with a detailed run-down of the

KGB order of battle in London. He was only a relatively low-level

KGB officer connected to the Sabotage Department, but any breach

in the KGB's armory is invaluable.

As soon as the Lyalin case began we realized that this was the best

possible test as to whether high-level penetration of MI5 still existed.

If Lyalin survived we were in the clear. From 1966 until at least 1976

we had no evidence of Russian interference with our operations. We

had five spy cases, and the Lyalin case and the expulsion of the 105

Russian diplomats, both of which had been in existence for at least six

months. Yet up to the end of 1965, every case for twenty years or more

was tainted by Russian "sticky fingers." We should note that Hollis

retired at the end of 1965. The secret was known to only ten people,

and to no one outside the office apart from Dennis Greenhill, Permanent

Secretary at the Foreign Office. Greenhill was a good friend

of MI5, and I enjoyed especially warm relations with him. He too had

been to Bishop's Stortford College, along with Dick White and me. I

first dealt with him over the French stockade operation, but we began

to have much more to do with each other when I took over D3, and

routinely provided security briefings for his senior diplomats.

Lyalin soon began to exhibit the strain of leading a double life.

Brookes and Wharton arranged safe houses where he could meet his

girlfriend for love sessions. The arrangements for these visits were

laborious, and each time one or the other had to sit outside the room

monitoring events inside for telltale signs of stress or betrayal. Lyalin

began to drink too heavily, and when he was posted back to Moscow

SPYCATCHER 343

we decided to bring his ordeal to an end. Lyalin himself was quite game

to return to Russia and continue to spy in place, but we had already

concluded that he would never survive. Lyalin was attached to the Trade

Delegation but had no diplomatic immunity, so we decided that we

would simply arrest him as he walked through customs at Heathrow

Airport, and force his hand.

Almost immediately our plans fell apart. I was living in London

during the week, and one night in February 1970, at 3 a.m., I received

a telephone call from the Duty Officer.

"Get in quick," he said, "we need access to your safe."

I dressed and took a taxi to the office, to find Tony Brookes waiting

for me.

"We need the antidote kit," he told me. "Lyalin's blown. He was

arrested for drunken driving a few hours ago, and he's in the clink at

Marlborough Street!"

I unlocked my safe and produced a small roll like a toolkit which

Dr. Ladell of Porton Down had given me ten years previously toward

the end of my time as Scientific Officer. It contained antidotes to all

the known poisons used by the KGB. Whenever a defector came out

we had the case near him twenty-four hours a day, but otherwise it

remained in my safe. No one else cared to hold it so close.

I quickly described to Brookes the basic symptoms of nerve gas

or toxic poisoning, and told him how to administer the antidote. He

rushed off to the prison to guard Lyalin, while I hoisted the deputy

head of Special Branch out of bed, and got him to alert Marlborough

Street to the identity of the drunk in their basement cell. Meanwhile

the MI5 Legal Department applied to the Home Secretary and the

Attorney-General for formal immunity for Lyalin from his drunken

charge, explaining that there was serious risk of assassination if he was

brought before an open court.

The successful defection of Lyalin presented MI5 with a unique

opportunity. Ever since F.J. became Director-General he had nursed

the dream of decisively changing the balance of forces ranged against

him. He knew that the central problem facing MI5 was the massive

superiority in the numbers of Soviet intelligence officers in London.

Throughout the 1960s he had struggled to get the Treasury to agree to

an expansion of MI5's counterespionage capability, but they were always

reluctant. He had been able to achieve a certain amount by redirecting

resources internally in favor of D Branch, but we were still



I

344 PETER WRIGHT

outnumbered by a factor of more than three to one. With Edward

Heath in power, F.J. put the case for a major reduction of intelligence

officers to him, citing the order-of-battle figures for intelligence officers.

This was before Lyalin came on the scene. Heath's reaction was "throw

the lot out." The Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) protested,

but we were not keen to do this either since we wanted a number here

to retaliate with if the Russians were vindictive. However, the whole

arrangement was agreed between us and FCO by March 1971. We

delayed action until the autumn because Lyalin had come on the scene

and we did not want to disturb things until he either defected or had

gone home.

In his debriefing, Lyalin identified dozens of KGB officers active

under diplomatic cover. Most of these identifications were already known

to us through the Movements Analysis program, which I had helped

establish in the early 1960s with Arthur Martin and Hal Doyne Ditmass.

Calculating KGB strength has always been a contentious business,

and yet it lies at the heart of a rational assessment of the threat posed

by hostile intelligence. When I ran D3 I made a series of analyses of

Soviet strength in 1945, based on the venona material. Although we

broke only a small fraction of the traffic, GCHQ were able to statistically

assess the total number of spies active in Britain at between 150 and

300. (The statistical analysis was conducted using methodology devised

by one of the top cryptographers, I. J. Good.) By the 1960s, through

rough analysis of the venona, and through comparing intelligence provided

by defectors, as well as Blunt and Cairncross, with our own

passport records, we were confident that there were between forty-five

and fifty Russian intelligence officers in London in 1945, of whom about

twenty-five were agent runners. Dividing this into the number of spies

demonstrated in the venona gave a median figure of around eight to

nine spies per agent runner, which dovetailed neatly with the one week

of venona traffic which demonstrated that Krotov was running eight

spies.

Now the real question is how far those figures can be extrapolated

into modern times. By the late 1960s the Movements Analysis program

was indicating between 450 and 550 Russian intelligence officers active

in Britain. But what percentage of those were agent runners? Even if

we assumed that the number of agent runners had remained static over

a twenty-year period, at around twenty-five, and that the rest were

there to provide cover, countersurveillance, internal security, and analy-



I

SPYCATCHER 345

sis, this still left us facing a huge problem. It meant that there were

upward of 200 spies currently active in Britain. If we took the figure

of agent runners to have expanded commensurately with the rise in

total numbers of intelligence officers, the situation was even more

alarming--more than a thousand spies! Of course, the vast majority of

those spies would be low-level contacts among the Communist Party

and various trade unions, but if even 1 percent were penetrations of

the level of Houghton or Vassall, the implications were disastrous.

Whenever I placed these analyses forward to the Home Office for

inclusion in the routine threat assessments, there was strife. John Allen,

a former lawyer, and fast rising in K Branch, repeatedly disputed my

analysis.

"You can't say that, there can't be that many IOs in London, the

Home Office will never believe it!"

But Lyalin's defection removed all the objections. He confirmed

the Movements Analysis figure of around 450 intelligence officers based

in London, and maintained that a large percentage were active agent

runners. He proved beyond any shadow of doubt that the Movements

Analysis program was quite correct and my statistical arguments valid.

It was also apparent that not all the increase was in low-level spies.

With greater determination than I ever saw him pursue anything, F.J.

put to the Foreign Office the case for mass expulsions of a large number

of the Russian diplomats. In the end, Ted Heath and the Foreign

Secretary, Alec Douglas-Home, agreed, after a discreet approach by

Home to the Soviet Foreign Minister, Alexei Kosygin, suggesting the

Russians remove some of their intelligence officers without publicity

was brushed aside imperiously.

The expulsions were seen as a brilliant coup throughout the Western

intelligence world, and we received telegrams of congratulation

from the heads of every Service. It was F.J.'s greatest triumph, made

sweeter because the fact that the plan had clearly not leaked to the

Russians proved that, whatever the truth of the past, high-level penetration

of MI5 was definitely at an end.

Angleton supported the expulsions unreservedly, and confessed

that he had long wanted to engineer something similar in Washington.

But Henry Kissinger was a firm opponent. Angleton told me that Kissinger

had exploded when he learned of the British expulsions. He was

desperately pursuing detente with the USSR, and minuted the CIA

angrily, telling them that had he known of the proposal he would have

I

346 PETER WRIGHT

used every power at his command to get it quashed. Luckily, the CIA

were able to state truthfully that they had known nothing of the plan.

But Angleton was deeply suspicious of Lyalin. After the defection

Angleton paid a secret visit to London. He looked worse than ever,

consumed by the dark, foreboding role he was committed to playing.

He viewed himself as a kind of Cassandra preaching doom and decline

for the West. He thought Lyalin was a plant, and told us all so at a

meeting in Marlborough Street.

"Oh come on, Jim," I said, "Lyalin's just not that big. He's a KGB

thug, what possible disinformation interest could they have in him?"

Angleton felt betrayed. We had not told him about Lyalin while

we were running him in place, and he told us stiffly that the whole

purpose of UKUSA was the full exchange of intelligence. Patience with

Angleton was rapidly wearing thin in London in 1970. Maurice Oldfield

had an ill-concealed hostility to all his ideas and theories, and even

inside MI5 he had begun to make enemies.

We learned later just how far he was prepared to go to discredit

Lyalin. As Lyalin was debriefed, we routinely sent over our intelligence

digests containing his material to the FBI for circulation through to the

CIA, and on to the National Security Council and up to the President.

Some months later, J. Edgar Hoover took a vacation in Florida,

and took the opportunity to call on President Nixon at his holiday home

on Key Biscayne.

"How do you like the British reports from their source Lyalin, Mr.

President?"

"What reports?" replied Nixon. He had never received them.

When Hoover checked back with Kissinger, he had not received

them either. Kissinger got on to the CIA and instituted a full search.

They were finally found in Angleton's safe. He had concluded Lyalin

was a provocation, and simply refused to circulate the documents. Tom

Karamasines, the CIA Director of Plans, issued a stern rebuke, and it

was the beginning of Angleton's slide from power.

The roots of his demise lay much earlier in the GolitsinNossenko

feud. For Angleton it became an article of faith that Nossenko was a

plant, since that ensured Golitsin primacy among all the defectors who

arrived in the early 1960s. I remember in 1967, after the first CAZAB

conference, telling Angleton that I was traveling back to Britain via

the USA. My daughter was living in Boston, and I thought I would

combine some business with a purely personal visit. As soon as I told

Angleton I was visiting Washington he became quite aggressive. He

SPYCATCHER 347

told me I had no right to visit Washington unless he was in town. At

the time I thought his worry was to do with the Israelis. The Middle

Eastern situation was brewing up, and Angleton always jealously protected

his relations with the Israeli secret service, Mossad. He knew of

my close friendship with Victor Rothschild, and often tried to break it

off. On one occasion he even wrote to F.J. to try to curtail it as an

interference in the CIA-Mossad liaison, but F.J. treated the letter with

the contempt it deserved.

But Angleton's distress had nothing to do with Israel. I learned

the truth. Just before the CAZAB conference an internal CIA inquiry

led by a security officer named Bruce Solie had concluded that Nossenko

was almost certainly a genuine defector, although it could offer no

explanation for the curious contradictions in his story. Angleton had

never told the British this fact, despite its implications for Nossenko's

and Golitsin's information. He was obviously frightened that if I visited

Washington I might get to hear of Solie's report through another

channel.

Incidents like these began to undermine Angleton's credibility. The

Nossenko and Lyalin incidents did much to shake the faith of even

those who knew him best and defended him longest. We began to doubt

whether, after all, the secret sources to which Angleton claimed he had

access actually existed. Perhaps it was, after all, just a three-card trick.

In 1970 Angleton suffered the greatest blow of all. He lost his

administrative officer and effective number two, Jim Hunt. Hunt was

a hard man, who treated Angleton's obsessions with balanced skepticism.

He had his feet on the ground, and he made things happen.

Angleton, like myself, was a hopeless administrator, and Hunt ensured

that papers were circulated, requests replied to, and the day-to-day

routine, upon which an efficient intelligence service relies, was maintained.

Without him, Angleton became a ship without anchor, drifting

slowly toward the abyss.

Lyalin's defection and the expulsion of the 105 Russian diplomats

were not the only signs of a new dawn which seemed to be breaking

for British Intelligence in the 1970s. Following his election as Prime

Minister in 1970, Edward Heath appointed Victor Rothschild as head

of the Central Policy Review Staff (CPRS)--the Think Tank. Never

was a man more perfectly suited to a job. Victor had the right qualities

of inspiration and radicalism to provide the kind of challenging policy

unit Heath wanted. The call came at just the right time for Victor. I

could tell that he was becoming slightly bored toward the end of the

348 PETER WRIGHT

1960s. He had no regard for Harold Wilson, and there was no role for

him in public life. He maintained his links with British Intelligence,

utilizing his friendship with the Shah of Iran, and running agents personally

for Dick White in the Middle East, particularly Mr. Reporter,

who played such a decisive role in MI6 operations in the 1950s. It was

exciting, but he hankered after a real challenge, and the Think Tank

was exactly what he needed.

As head of the Think Tank, Victor Rothschild took a close interest

in security, and Heath encouraged him to do so, much to the irritation

of the Home Office, and in particular the powerful Permanent Secretary

of the time, Philip Allen (now Lord Allen of Abbeydale, and a member

of the Security Commission). Victor became, in effect, the Lord Wigg

of Heath's Government. Once inside the Cabinet Office Victor teamed

up with Dick White, the newly installed Cabinet Intelligence Coordinator

following his retirement from MI6. Together they combined to

give British Intelligence its highest ever postwar profile.

Victor's finest achievement for MI5 was securing F.J.'s succession.

F.J. was never a popular figure in Whitehall. He was too much his own

man, and too secret even for that bastion of secrecy. Normally the

outgoing Director-General has the right to choose his successor, but as

F.J. approached retirement in 1972, the Home Office, and especially

Philip Allen, decided it was time to exert authority. Allen was convinced

that an outsider should be appointed. He had become suspicious of

MI5 and feared they had become a dangerous repository of scandal.

He knew only sketchy details of the full extent of the traumas of the

mole hunts, but he knew about Blunt and Long, and he knew enough

to be worried. He was alarmed by what seemed to him to be the cavalier

use of immunities, and the undoubtedly poor caliber of MI5 management.

He wanted a safe pair of hands at the helm of the organization-- someone who could tell him what was going on, someone he could

trust.

Simkins finally retired, to my great relief, about a year before F.J.'s

scheduled retirement, and was replaced by Michael Hanley. As far as

Allen was concerned, Hanley was neither experienced enough nor independent

enough to be entrusted with the top job. Allen's preferred

candidate was Sir James Waddell, a deputy secretary at the Home

Office, who was responsible for Police and Security Affairs, and handled

all day-to-day liaison between MI5 and the Home Office. Waddell was

a dependable mandarin who had somehow missed out on a permanent

SPYCATCHER 349

secretary's job. Allen, to whom he had given loyal service, wanted to

install him as Director-General of the Security Service.

Waddell's prospective appointment was viewed with considerable

concern inside MI5. He was a finicky man who insisted on the last dot

and comma on intercept warrant applications. He lacked the experience

as an intelligence officer to gain the respect of its senior officers. Many

of us felt his candidacy was pure Whitehall expediency, which would

set the Service back a decade, in the same way that Rennie's appointment

as C just a few years before had caused a massive slump in morale

in MI6.

Of course, there was another consideration as well. There were

many secrets which MI5 had kept from their political and Civil Service

masters, and the last thing anyone in MI5 wanted at that stage was the

explosive story of the mole hunts to receive an airing around Whitehall.

The first I heard of the problem of succession was when F.J. mentioned

it in late 1971. He told me he was determined to stop Waddell

-taking

over the Service, and said he had already approached Dick White

I to ask for assistance. But the situation looked gloomy. A committee

of top permanent secretaries chaired by the Cabinet Secretary and

attached to the Senior Appointments Selection Committee had already

recommended Waddell, and although F.J. had put forward Hanley's

name he had received no votes at all. He was too new, too inexperienced,

and the mandarins knew too little about him.

"Is there anything you can do with your powerful friend?" asked

F.J., referring in his customary manner to Victor.

At the time I used to see Victor informally once a week--sometimes

in his room at the Cabinet Office, more often at his home. On

my next visit I raised the question of the succession. It had all the right

elements to fire Victor's imagination--a heady brew of intrigue and

secrecy.

He told me he had already been alerted to the situation by Dick

White, who had told him that he supported Hanley for the job. Dick

had initially given some thought to supporting Maurice Oldfield for the

job. Sir John Rennie, anxious to remove the man who effectively ran

MI6, even though he himself was the titular head, had put Oldfield's

name forward, but Oldfield had made it plain he preferred to sit it out

and wait for another chance as Director C if Rennie retired. (Rennie

did retire prematurely after the disclosure that his son had been convicted

of a drugs charge, and Oldfield succeeded him.)



350 PETER WRIGHT

"Do the Service want Hanley?" asked Victor. He often used me

as a sounding board for Service as opposed to management opinion.

"Certainly," I replied.

"Do you have anything against him?"

I told him the story of the Harriet affair. Although Victor already

knew of my suspicions about penetration, and I had discussed both

Hollis and Mitchell with him, the fact that Hanley had once been a

suspect was new to him.

I told him I was quite convinced he was in the clear, and so were

the Americans. I told him the Service were dead set against Waddell,

and that there would undoubtedly be serious trouble if he were appointed.

"We need all the help we can get, Victor!"

"Ted won't like it," he told me, for the moment assuming the gravitas of a senior civil servant. Then he cast the somehow inappropriate

mantle aside, and fell into his more natural conspiratorial

manner.

"Let's see what we can do," he muttered, and asked me to arrange

for him to meet Hanley as soon as possible.

By this time Hanley and I had established a reasonable working

relationship. Harriet was always a block to any warmth, but he dealt

with me in a straightforward manner, and I tried to be as much help

as I could, guiding him around the previous twenty years of counterintelligence

rather like an accomplished chauffeur, pointing out the

sights to admire, and the potholes to avoid. I knew he would bridle

when I told him of my meeting with F.J. and Victor. There was just a

trace of socialism about Hanley, which showed itself in utterances about

achieving the job on his merits, not through the old boy network. But

in the end ambition was the better master, and he agreed to go with

me one evening to Victor's elegant flat in St. James's Place. I had one

drink and made a tactical withdrawal to my club to allow them to talk

freely. The next day Victor rang me up.

"He's a very good choice," he said. "We must meet tonight and

make our plans."

That night, over a particularly fine claret, we drew up our campaign.

Dick White had obviously failed to impress his choice either on

his mandarin colleagues or on Ted Heath. Dick was always diffident

when it came to staff matters, and had not been able to summon up

the gumption to bang the table. Of course, that was never his style.

Undoubtedly his one failure in his career was his inability to make good

I

SPYCATCHER 351

appointments. Too often he was betrayed by sentiment or orthodoxy.

He overpromoted Hollis and Cumming in MI5, and he failed to order

the decisive purge necessary in the Philby-infected MI6 until much too

late. It was the same with Hanley. He knew what was best for the

Service, but he seemed unable to grasp the nettle and act.

To be fair, he never enjoyed good relations with Edward Heath.

Their styles were so dissimilar. Dick worshipped Harold Macmillan,

and the grand old man had a very high regard for his chief of Intelligence.

Similarly, he got on well with Harold Wilson. They shared a

suppleness of mind, and Wilson appreciated Dick's reassuring and comforting

manner on vexed issues such as Rhodesia. But Heath was a

thrusting, hectoring man, quite alien to anything Dick had encountered

before, and he found himself increasingly unable to stamp his personality

on the Prime Minister.

Victor and I went through all the options, even at one point considering

whether we could run Victor himself as an alternative candidate.

I knew he had secretly hankered after the job for years, but

although his appointment would have been a brilliant and popular one,

he knew he was too old, and in any case, the Think Tank was the real

challenge for a man of his intellectual horizons.

We discussed casting around for support in the scientific community,

and we decided that Victor would approach people like Sir William

Cook to gain their support for Hanley. Victor also told me he would

contrive a safe meeting with Heath.

"It's no good bringing it up formally at No. 10," he told me. "As

soon as Robert Armstrong sees it, or hears of it, word will get back to

the bloody Permanent Under Secretaries!"

Robert Armstrong, Heath's Principal Private Secretary (today

Cabinet Secretary and head of the Home Civil Service), was a key

figure in the power struggle, since no one else had closer or more

continuous access to Heath. Any hint of special pleading by Victor

would certainly be reported by him to the Permanent Secretaries' Committee.

Victor decided that the best plan was to get to Heath in an

unguarded moment when Armstrong was not there. The best opportunity

was the next Think Tank/weekend conference, scheduled for

Chequers in a few weeks' time.

"I'll take Ted out for a walk in the garden, where Robert can't

hear, and I'll bend his ear ..."

As it happened, I was beginning to see a good deal of Robert

Armstrong myself. I had recently been reviewing the American venona,



I

352 PETER WRIGHT

and one unidentified cryptonym in particular had begun to interest me.

It appeared in the traffic as "Agent Number 19." Agent 19 was clearly

a very important Soviet asset, who passed over details of a succession

of significant wartime discussions between Churchill and Roosevelt during

the Trident Talks in June 1943.

The Americans had assumed the identity of Agent 19 was Eduard

Benes", the former Czechoslovakian President, whose reward for a lifetime's

work as a Soviet stooge was to be toppled from power ignominiously

in 1948. Benes attended the Trident Talks, and was well known

as a conduit of intelligence to the Russians. However, when I looked

at the text of the messages themselves, I became distinctly skeptical

about this explanation. The conversations Agent 19 was reporting were

clearly informal discussions between Churchill and Roosevelt about

plans for the Second Front, and in particular naval and shipping dispositions.

It struck me as improbable that Benes would have been

permitted into these discussions, especially since Czechoslovakia had

no ships at all, being a landlocked country.

I began to wonder if Agent 19 were perhaps someone closer to

home. The first task was to locate any available British records of the

meetings between Roosevelt and Churchill at the Trident Talks to see

if I could find a record of the particular meeting referred to by Agent

19 and, if possible, a list of who attended it.

The search for the phantom Trident discussion was quite the most

bizarre experience of my career. Victor arranged for me to meet Robert

Armstrong. He was keen to help. He was a fast-rising mandarin, already

tipped as a future Cabinet Secretary, and since he would need the

support of the intelligence community to obtain the job, he was anxious

to build up friendly relations. He threw himself boyishly into the task

of searching No. 10 Downing Street for any available records. But after

several weeks we drew a blank.

Armstrong suggested I call on Lord Ismay, Churchill's former Chief

of Staff, and Sir John Colville, his former Private Secretary, but although

both men remembered the Trident Talks, they had not been

present at these particular discussions. I tried Mary Churchill, but she

had no records either. Lastly, Armstrong arranged for me to see Martin

Gilbert, Churchill's historian. For each day Churchill was Prime Minister,

one of his private secretaries kept a record of his engagements

and Gilbert had all the volumes. Perhaps here there would be a record.

I gave Gilbert the relevant date, and he searched through the indexed

diaries.

SPYCATCHER 353

"Good God," he said, "the diary for that date is blank!"

The search for Agent 19 had run into the sand, and it remains

unsolved to this day.

The row over the succession to F.J. fell at the height of my search

for Agent 19, so I suggested to Victor that I, rather than he, sound out

Robert Armstrong. It was important to maintain Victor's position of

neutrality, but no one could blame me for partisanship in the matter

of the succession. On my next visit to No. 10 I made a light reference

to the fears inside MI5. He smiled.

"The cards are stacked against you," he said. "I don't think it's

worth pushing on this one."

I told him that if the wise men were intent on Waddell, they were

making a mistake.

"We aren't being civil servants," I told him, "and Waddell will be out of his depth in the job . . . he'll play it too much by the rules."

Armstrong betrayed little himself, beyond telling me what I

already knew, that the Permanent Secretaries were firmly behind

Waddell.

"They just want to reward him, and they can't find him a top job

in any of the other ministries!" I said bitterly.

Armstrong laughed.

"Oh no, Peter, we're not that conspiratorial!"

A few weeks later I saw Victor again. He had managed to have

his talk with Heath in the sunshine at Chequers, and he told him of

the strong resistance inside MI5 to the appointment of an outsider.

Heath was sympathetic, but explained that he would have to have a

very good reason to reject unanimous Civil Service advice. But eventually

Victor managed to persuade him to interview both candidates

personally.

It was a major breakthrough. We were all certain that Hanley

would impress Heath with the force of his personality, whereas Wad-dell's

diffidence would be sure to tell against him. When Hanley got

the news his demeanor changed. He could see events were moving in

his direction. Rather pompously he came into my office and told me

that he was to see the Prime Minister the following day.

"And I don't need a briefing, thank you very much."

I thought the announcement would come quickly, but the days

passed and we heard nothing. Throughout the Whitehall village, antennae

were out to catch signs of a result. On every visit I made to the

Home Office I checked on the latest state of play. But there was no

354 PETER WRIGHT

news, apart from the insistent refrain: "Philip Allen will not have Han-ley

at any price."

At the weekend my wife and I traveled to Dolgellau in Wales, to

buy cows at an auction for the farm we had recently purchased in

Cornwall for our retirement. Ever since Hollis' interrogation, and my

departure from D3, I had begun planning a return to agriculture, and

a less painful future away from the whispering corridors and paper

mountains of MI5. Whitehall was the last thing on my mind as the

auctioneer rattled on in an impenetrable Welsh dialect. Steers and

heifers were slapped in and out of the small crowded ring, their owners

croaking and whistling to keep their animals alert.

Suddenly across the loudspeaker I heard a voice.

"Can Mr. Wright from London please come to the office for a

telephone call ..."

I struggled to make my way through the crowded terrace, past a

hundred tightly pressed Welsh farmers each craning for a view of the

ring. Eventually I reached the tiny office and picked up the telephone.

It was Victor.

"Do you know what the buggers have done now?" he roared.

"What are you talking about, Victor?"

"They've, switched horses. They want to appoint some chap called

Graham Harrison. Does the name mean anything to you?"

"They will never accept him," I yelled back. "The man was a

friend of Burgess and Maclean."

I suddenly remembered where I was. But I had no need to worry.

The auctioneer's clerk continued to work on his figures, oblivious to

my conversation. I told Victor I would call on him as soon as I got

back to London.

Francis Graham Harrison was also a deputy secretary at the Home

Office. Although there was no suggestion that he was a spy, he was a

close friend of Guy Burgess, and had moved in the Oxford set which

included Jennifer Hart and Arthur Wynn. To appoint a man with those

connections would have been, to borrow F.J.'s phrase, grotesque, and

I told Victor that the Service would never wear it.

Early the following week Victor rang again.

"An announcement will be made tomorrow," he said. "I think

you will be pleased ..."

"How did you swing it?"

"I took Dick by the ear and took him in to see Ted. We both told



I

SPYCATCHER 355

him there would be a mutiny unless he appointed Hanley. He soon got

the point!"

The next day F.J. summoned in a couple of the senior officers to

tell us that Hanley had finally been appointed.

"It's been a difficult campaign," he told me gravely, "but I have

finally won through."

"I am very pleased to hear that, sir," I replied with a straight face.

Shortly before F.J. retired he and I had a short meeting to discuss

the looming situation in Northern Ireland. It was clearly going to be

the major problem facing his successor. He feared that it would threaten

all that he had done since 1965 to build up MI5's counterespionage

capability. He had lobbied the Treasury to provide more resources, but

they had refused. They wanted F.J. to shift resources away from counterespionage

and into counterterrorism. As far as they were concerned,

the expulsion of the 105 diplomats had eradicated the KGB threat for

a generation. But F.J. believed that complacency was precisely the way

to fritter away the advantage he had achieved.

F.J. looked tired, as if he longed to put the burdens aside. He was

a man of few words but I could tell he wanted to talk. He was glad to

be going, he said. The pleasure of the work had all but disappeared.

He was worried, too, about money. Although he cultivated the air of

a gentleman, he was not a wealthy man. He had an attractive house in

Hampstead, but he had a young daughter still to educate, and he talked

bitterly of having to sell himself in the marketplace as a security consultant,

when he should be retiring to his beloved bird-watching. (In

fact, he became a consultant to Imperial Chemical Industries [ICI].)

"Well, how do you think I've done?" he asked me as he cleaned

his pipe, sucking and scraping at it almost nervously.

"What, you want to know, honestly?" I asked.

He nodded.

"You got on top of the Russian problem, but I don't think you

ever made contact with the ordinary officer."

He looked surprisingly wounded. "You should have told me," he

said.

"I'm sorry. I didn't feel it was my place."

I always liked F.J. and I think most of the senior officers did too.

He was never a wag, but he saw the absurdity of life and his profession.

I will always treasure traveling to Australia with him for the first CAZAB

conference in 1967. As we approached the passport barrier a party of

356 PETER WRIGHT

ASIO officials was waiting to meet us on the other side. F.J. handed

in his passport.

"What's this?" drawled the passport officer, pointing to the entry

in F.J.'s passport under "Occupation."

F.J. had entered "Gentleman."

"That is my occupation," uttered F.J. in his most patrician manner,

"I have no other. I am a gentleman. Don't you have them here?"

The Australian drew himself up to his full height, but luckily I had

managed to attract the attention of the ASIO party, who hurriedly

explained the situation and whisked us both through to the other side.

F.J. beamed for the rest of the day, as if he had won a great team

match single-handed.

F.J. ran the office as a democracy of the elect. If you were a trusted

senior officer, his door was always open, his manner always familiar.

But he remained a remote figure to the younger generation of officers,

and he was consequently blind to many of the resentments which were

building up below.

Few in Whitehall mourned his passing. At the height of the row

over his succession, he offered to stay on another year to give Hanley

extra time to play himself in as deputy. But the Home Office would

have none of it. He told the truth and politicians and civil servants

hated him for it. He also kept the secrets, and that made him an object

of fear and suspicion.

Within a year Dick White had also left, and British Intelligence

had lost its two most important executives. Their contribution is hard

to overvalue. They were a perfect match. Dick was the subtle interpreter

of intelligence, smoothing feelings in Whitehall and Downing Street;

F.J. was the tough man, sounding warnings and bringing bad news.

I broke with them on only one issue in twenty years--high-level

penetration. I think history will judge that they were never prepared

to force the issue through. Consequently they allowed decisions to go

unmade and the issue to fester so that it caused more damage than it

ever need have done. But in other ways their contribution was massive.

They became a link between the Old and the New World, and together

they made British Intelligence respected throughout the world.

23

Hanley seemed ill at ease when he first moved into the Director-General's

office. He knew he was a controversial appointment, and this

made him move with a greater degree of caution than ought otherwise

to have been the case. He wanted to please and reassure his political

and Whitehall masters, and he made compromises a more secure man

might not have.

Hanley was a bright man, intellectually superior to F.J. But he

lacked F.J.'s strength of character. I didn't have faith in him, as I had

in F.J., and my separation from the office began once F.J. left. The

Service began to change, and those last four years were an extended

farewell.

At first the changes were slight--silly things, like the fact that

Hanley, unlike F.J., never offered lifts in his chauffeured car. But then

they were more pronounced. We moved offices from Leconfield House,

first to Marlborough Street and then to the drab premises on Gower

Street. I suggested to Hanley that we go for a greenfield site, perhaps

in Cheltenham, but he was insistent that we had to stay in London. He

began to promote his own men. They were young and keen, but they

were civil servants: men of safety rather than men of arms. I began to

realize that a generation was passing. For all our differences, those of

us involved in the great mole hunts, on whichever side, were fast disappearing.

The age of heroes was being replaced by the age of mediocrity.

Hanley summoned me in soon after taking over to talk about my

position.

"I have faith in you, Peter, and as long as I am in this job, there

will be work for you here," he told me, referring to the rising resentment

which had plagued my last year in D3.

358 PETER WRIGHT

He told me he thought I should leave my job as K Branch consultant,

and come and work for him personally.

"I want you as my personal consultant on counterespionage," he

told me. "You'll have an office next to mine, and you'll see every paper

as before. But I want you to look at some fresh problems for me. I

don't want you wrapped up in the current K Branch cases--I want you

to be looking ahead."

We drew up a new agenda, some of it to my liking, other parts

not. He wanted me to continue to control the venona program, and

agreed that we should finally initiate a comprehensive worldwide search

for any remaining traffic.

He wanted me to look at Northern Ireland.

"I need one of your bright ideas, Peter," he told me, "see what

you can do . . ."

He wanted me to sit on the Computer Working Party, which was

planning the transition of the MI5 Registry into the computer age, a

leap into the future due to take place in the mid-1970s. D3 had given

me a special insight into the use of the Registry to trace leads, and he

wanted me to apply these techniques to computerization.

At first I thought Ireland might give me a new lease of life. I made

a couple of trips. It reminded me a lot of Cyprus. A fierce, insoluble

conflict made worse by a vacillating British policy. At the time I

first went, the Government were telling the world that the situation

was getting better. I spent a fortnight reviewing the records of all explosions

over a twelve-month period. I drew a graph and proved

conclusively that the weight of explosives being detonated was a

steeply ascending curve. So much for an improved security situation!

But, as in Cyprus, the Army and the politicians simply refused to face

reality.

The only major recommendation I made was that we should devise

a system of tapping the telephone lines of the Irish Republic. Lines

across the border were well covered, but vital Provisional IRA communications

flowed back and forth from the west coast of the Republic

to Dublin. I devised a scheme for intercepting the microwaves from

the attic of the British Embassy in Dublin using a device no larger than

a packing case, but although MI5 endorsed the plan, the Foreign Office

vetoed it. This was in the period leading up to what became the Sun-ningdale

Agreement, and the Foreign Office were terrified that news

of the plan might leak. I pointed out to them that the basic lesson from

Cyprus had been the inherent instability of political solutions negotiated

SPYCATCHER 359

without a decisive security advantage, but they would not listen. It was

no surprise to me when Sunningdale collapsed.

I lost heart once the Dublin scheme fell through. It seemed to me

a measure of how far the bureaucrats had taken control. Twenty years

before, we would have tackled it without any worries at all. I did suggest

examining the possibilities of planting booby-trapped detonators on the

Provisionals. It would have been a feasible operation in conjunction

with MI6, along the same lines as the Cyprus plan to plant fake receivers

on Grivas. But even the MI5 management took fright, and refused to

investigate the plan any further.

"That's murder," I was told.

"Innocent people are being killed and maimed every day," I said.

"Which policy do you think the British people would like us to pursue?"

The Irish situation was only one part of a decisive shift inside MI5

toward domestic concerns. The growth of student militancy in the 1960s

gave way to industrial militancy in the early 1970s. The miners' strike

of 1972, and a succession of stoppages in the motorcar industry, had a

profound effect on the thinking of the Heath Government. Intelligence

on domestic subversion became the overriding priority.

This is the most sensitive area a Director-General of MI5 can get

into, and it requires a strong man to maintain his own independence

and that of the Service. Hanley, through the circumstances of his appointment,

was ill-equipped to deal with this pressure. Whereas F.G.

was always a champion of MI5's independence, Hanley resolved to do

what his masters wanted, and he set about providing them with as professional

and extensive a source of domestic intelligence as was possible.

Traditionally, K Branch was MI5's prestige department and F Branch

its poor relation, shunned by the brightest officers, and run shambolically

by an amiable tippler. But Hanley began to pour resources and

men into F Branch and away from K Branch. A whole string of brilliant

counterespionage officers, including Michael McCaul, was lost forever.

The most significant pointer to this change occurred after I retired,

when Sir John Jones was appointed Director-General in 1981. He was

the rising star of F Branch in Hanley's new reorganization, and when

he secured the top job he was the first Director-General since Hollis

to have achieved it without any personal counterespionage experience.

He was an F Branch man through and through, and his appointment

perfectly illustrated the decisive shift in MI5's center of gravity.

Early on in his tenure as Director-General, Hanley called a meeting

of senior staff in A Branch and F Branch to discuss the changing shape

360 PETER WRIGHT

of MI5's priorities. The meeting began with a presentation from Hanley

on the climate of subversion in the country, and the growth of what he

termed the "far and wide left." The Prime Minister and the Home

Office, he said, had left him in no doubt that they wanted a major

increase in effort on this target. He then handed over to a young and

ambitious F Branch officer, David Ransome, who outlined the activities

and structure of a host of left-wing splinter groups, like the Workers'

Revolutionary Party (WRP) and the Socialist Workers' Party (SWP).

Hanley loved seminars, and the meeting went on for most of the

day. The F Branch people wanted a relaxation in the restrictions gov erning the use of telephone taps and letter intercepts, and a much closer

¦ relationship with the Post Office. The enemy was diffuse, and its com

munications

so widespread, that this was the only way they could get

to grips with the problem. John Jones was a forceful advocate. F Branch

needed all the technical resources currently at the disposal of K Branch,

he claimed. Agent running was no longer viable as the principal means

of coverage. For a start, he could not infiltrate his officers into these

left-wing groups since many of them lived promiscuous lives, and there

were some sacrifices even an MI5 officer would not make for his counU try.

If, on the other hand, he recruited agents, there was obviously a

much higher risk of publicity and scandal. The only answer was to use

massive technical resources. I could see from Hanley's face that he

agreed.

I, on the other hand, pushed the value of agents.

"Use agents if you want to keep an eye on these groups," I told

Hanley later in private, "you'll be storing up problems for the future

if you commit all our technical resources against them. The Post Office

can't in the end be trusted as much as our own people. It's bound to

go wrong."

It was the same with the Computer Working Party. I soon realized

that the main interest F Branch had in the Computer Working Party

was to establish widespread computer links, principally with the National

Insurance computer in Newcastle. In the past, of course, we had

always been able to get material from the National Insurance records

if we really wanted it. We had a couple of undercover officers posted

up there who could be contacted for our files. But establishing a direct

computer link was something completely different.

I was not alone among the old guard, anti-Soviet officers in being

disturbed by these new developments. We could see all that we had

worked to achieve frittered away chasing these minor left-wing group

SPYCATCHER 361

ings. But more than that, the move into the computer generation signaled

the relegation of the role of the individual officer. From now on

we were to be data processors, scanning tens of thousands of names at

the press of a button.

"The fun has gone" was a sentiment I heard more and more in

those last few years.

Hanley himself was unable to grasp the difficulties he was getting

himself into. It was easy to believe that we had the public's consent

when we broke into a Soviet diplomat's house. But the wholesale surveillance

of a large proportion of the population raised more than a

question mark. "Big Brother" loomed.

Veterans of D Branch viewed groups like the WRP, SWP, and

Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) as largely irrelevant pieces

of the jigsaw. Certainly an eye should be kept on them, but we were

quite satisfied they were not the major objects of KGB attack. These

were the Intelligence Services, the Civil Service, and increasingly in

the 1960s, the trade unions and the Labor Party.

Since the 1960s a wealth of material about the penetration of the

latter two bodies had been flowing into MI5's files, principally from

two Czechoslovakian defectors named Frolik and August. They named

a series of Labor Party politicians and trade union leaders as Eastern

Bloc agents. Some were certainly well founded, like the case of the MP

Will Owen, who admitted being paid thousands of pounds over a ten-year

period to provide information to Czechoslovakian intelligence officers,

and yet, when he was prosecuted in 1970, was acquitted because

it was held that he had not had access to classified information, and

because the Czech defector could not produce documentary evidence

of what he had said at the trial.

Tom Driberg was another MP named by the Czech defectors. I

went to see Driberg myself, and he finally admitted that he was providing

material to a Czech controller for money. For a while we ran

Driberg on, but apart from picking up a mass of salacious detail about

Labor Party peccadilloes, he had nothing of interest for us.

His only lasting story concerned the time he lent a Cabinet Minister

his flat so that the Minister co^ld try and conduct an affair in strict

privacy. Driberg was determined to find the identity of the woman who

was the recipient of the Minister's favors, and one evening after the

Minister had vacated, he searched the flat and found a letter addressed

to a prominent female member of the Labor Party. Driberg claimed to

be horrified by his discovery and raised it with the Minister concerned,



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362 PETER WRIGHT

suggesting that he ought to be more careful in case word of his activities

ever became public! Since Driberg was certainly providing the same

stories to his Czech friends, his concern for Labor Party confidentiality

seemed hollow, to say the least.

John Stonehouse was another MP who the Czech defectors claimed

was working for them, but after he was interviewed in the presence of

Harold Wilson, and denied all the charges, the MI5 objections against

him were withdrawn.

This was the context which shaped the fraught relations between

MI5 and the Prime Minister for much of this period. Much has been

written about Harold Wilson and MI5, some of it wildly inaccurate.

But as far as I am concerned, the story started with the premature death

of Hugh Gaitskell in 1963. Gaitskell was Wilson's predecessor as Leader

of the Labor Party. I knew him personally and admired him greatly. I

had met him and his family at the Blackwater Sailing Club, and I recall

about a month before he died he told me that he was going to Russia.

After he died his doctor got in touch with MI5 and asked to see

somebody from the Service. Arthur Martin, as the head of Russian

Counterespionage, went to see him. The doctor explained that he was

disturbed by the manner of Gaitskell's death. He said that Gaitskell had

died of a disease called lupus disseminata, which attacks the body's

organs. He said that it was rare in temperate climates and that there

was no evidence that Gaitskell had been anywhere recently where he

could have contracted the disease.

Arthur Martin suggested that I should go to Porton Down, the

chemical and microbiological laboratory for the Ministry of Defense.

I went to see the chief doctor in the chemical warfare laboratory, Dr.

Ladell, and asked his advice. He said that nobody knew how one

contracted lupus. There was some suspicion that it might be a form of

fungus and he did not have the foggiest idea how one would infect

somebody with the disease. I came back and made my report in these

terms.

The next development was that Golitsin told us quite independently

that during the last few years of his service he had had some

contacts with Department 13, which was known as the Department of

Wet Affairs in the KGB. This department was responsible for organizing

assassinations. He said that just before he left he knew that the

KGB were planning a high-level political assassination in Europe in

order to get their man into the top place. He did not know which

country it was planned in but he pointed out that the chief of Depart

SPYCATCHER 363

ment 13 was a man called General Rodin, who had been in Britain for

many years and had just returned on promotion to take up the job, so

he would have had good knowledge of the political scene in England.

We did not know where to go next because Ladell had said that

it wasn't known how the disease was contracted. I consulted Jim Angle

ton about the problem. He said that he would get a search made of

Russian scientific papers to see whether there was any hint of what the

Russians knew about this disease. A month or two later he sent us a

paper about lupus which he had had translated from a Russian scientific

journal. The paper was several years old and Angleton reported that

there were no other papers in the Russian literature that they could

find. This paper described the use of a special chemical which the

Russians had found would induce lupus in experimental rats. However,

it was unlikely that this particular chemical could have been used to

murder Gaitskell because the quantities required to produce lupus were

considerable and had to be given repeatedly. I took the paper to Ladell

and, while surprised by this area of Soviet expertise, he confirmed that

it was unlikely that Gaitskell could have been poisoned by the coffee

and biscuits. But he pointed out that the paper was seven years old

and if the Russians had continued to work on it they might have found

a much better form of the chemical which would require much smaller

doses and perhaps work as a one-shot drug. He told me there was no

way of proving it without doing a lot of scientific work and Porton was

unable to do the necessary work as it was already overloaded.

I said I would take the matter home and discuss it with my management. Once again I wrote an account of what Ladell had said and

confirmed its accuracy with him personally. Back in MI5 we discussed

the problem at length in the office and it was agreed that nothing could be done unless we had further evidence of the Russians' using such a

drug to assassinate people. Over the next few years I watched out for

any evidence and asked Ladell also to watch out for it. Needless to say

we had no further example of anybody who was in a vulnerable position

dying of lupus. However, if there was a high-level leak in MI5 to the

Russians, they would have been informed of our suspicions and I am

sure they would have ensured th^t no other case came our way.

Harold Wilson meanwhile had become Prime Minister. It was inevitable

that Wilson would come to the attention of MI5. Before he

became Prime Minister he worked for an East-West trading organization

and paid many visits to Russia. MI5, well aware that the KGB

will stop at nothing to entrap or frame visitors, were concerned that he



k

364 PETER WRIGHT

should be well aware of the risk of being compromised by the Russians.

When Wilson succeeded Gaitskell as Leader of the Labor Party, there

was a further source of friction between himself and MI5. He began

to surround himself with other East European emigre businessmen,

some of whom had themselves been the subject of MI5's inquiries.

After Harold Wilson became Prime Minister in 1964, Angleton

made a special trip to England to see F.J., who was then director of

counterespionage. Angleton came to offer us some very secret information

from a source he would not name. This source alleged, according

to Angleton, that Wilson was a Soviet agent. He said he would give us

more detailed evidence and information if we could guarantee to keep

the information inside MI5 and out of political circles. The accusation

was totally incredible, but given the fact that Angleton was head of the

CIA's Counterintelligence Division, we had no choice but to take it

seriously. Not surprisingly the management of MI5 were deeply disturbed

by the manner in which Angleton passed this information over.

After consideration, they refused to accept Angleton's restrictions on

the use to which we could put the information, and as a result we were

not told anything more. However, Angleton's approach was recorded

in the files under the code name Oatsheaf.

After Hollis retired and Furnival Jones became Director-General,

I went to F.J. and said I was paying a visit to the USA and asked

whether I should tackle Angleton on the Oatsheaf information, with a

view to getting more details. He said that I could, but again insisted

that we could not give Angleton any guarantee about any information

which he gave us. I tackled Angleton in Washington. He put up a

vintage performance. There were dark mutterings about "clandestine

meetings" with the Russians. But when he was pushed for details, there

were none, and I knew from bitter experience that Angleton was more

than capable of manufacturing evidence when none existed.

But if the Oatsheaf affair was nothing more than a diversion, by

the end of the 1960s information was coming to MI5's attention which

suggested that there almost certainly was Soviet penetration of the

Labor Party. First the Czechoslovakian defectors, Frolik and August,

arrived in the West and named a series of Labor MPs and trade unionists

as successful recruits. Then we received the most damaging information

of all from Oleg Lyalin. While Lyalin was still in place, he told MI5

about a friend of his called Vaygaukas. Vaygaukas was a KGB officer

working under cover in the Soviet Trade Delegation in London. Lyalin

told us that Vaygaukas had claimed to him to be in contact with a man

SPYCATCHER 365

called Joseph Kagan, a Lithuanian emigre who was a close friend of

Harold Wilson's. Kagan had helped finance Wilson's private office, and

had even lent him an aircraft during elections, and Wilson had been

much photographed wearing Kagan's raincoats, which he manufactured

in a factory near Leeds.

Inevitably MI5 were extremely anxious to discover whether or not

Kagan had any relationship with Vaygaukas. We placed him under

intensive surveillance and attempted to recruit agents inside his factory.

Then, following the expulsion of the 105 Soviet diplomats in 1971, we

finally got the opportunity to discuss the matter with both men. Harold

Wilson, by then out of office, approached Sir Arthur Young, head of

the City of London police and a consultant to one of Kagan's companies.

Wilson asked to be put in touch with MI5 because he wished to discuss

Kagan. Furnival Jones thought this approach bizarre, but agreed to

send Harry Wharton, who was then handling Lyalin. Wharton briefed

Wilson on Lyalin's information about Kagan's alleged dealings with

Vaygaukas. Wilson told him bluntly that he knew nothing about it and

had never discussed confidential matters with Kagan at any time. Kagan

himself later admitted meeting Vaygaukas for chess games, but strenuously

denied that any espionage was involved.

Wilson interpreted MI5's interest as a crude attempt to smear the

Labor Party and him. But once the Conservative Government came

into power they began to take a great interest in the material as well.

Victor often used to complain to me about the quality of the intelligence

reports No. 10 received from F Branch.

"They pull their punches all the time," he would say, "can't you

give us something better?"

In 1972 he told me that Heath had been appalled at a recent Cabinet

meeting, which was addressed by Jack Jones and Hugh Scanlon, the

two powerful trade union bosses of the early 1970s.

"Ted thought they talked like Communists," he said. "I asked

F Branch if they had anything, but of course they've got nothing substantial."

He knew from gossip that the recent Czech defectors were providing

material about trade union and Labor Party subversion, and

began pumping me for the details. I told him to minute me formally

with a request and I would see what I could do. Later that day I got

Victor's minute.

"The Prime Minister is anxious to see . . ." he began, in typical

Victor style.



I

366 PETER WRIGHT

I sent Victor's note to F.J. for guidance. He returned it to me with

a handwritten message in the margin: "Tell him what he wants to

know!"

I drew the files, and began patiently to compose a lengthy brief

on the intelligence provided by Frolik and August. I drew no conclusions,

but neither did I leave anything out.

The whole of Whitehall came thundering down on my head. I was

summoned by Sir John Hunt, the Cabinet Secretary, who asked what

on earth I thought I was doing passing material about an opposition

party into the government party's hands at such a delicate time.

I defended myself as vigorously as I could. It was not a question

of politics. The head of the Central Policy Review Staff had requested

a briefing, and I had given it to him and it had been approved by DGSS.

It was not my fault if the material was unpalatable or embarrassing.

"If we refused to circulate intelligence because it was embarrassing,

there would be little purpose in our sending anything at all!"

Both F.J. and Victor supported me loyally throughout. Victor

relished the row and composed a series of elegant memorandums which

winged their way through Whitehall defending the Security Service's

right to provide intelligence requested of it by No. 10 Downing Street.

Philip Allen was outraged by this flagrant flouting of Home Office

prerogative, and refused to speak to me for years. To Victor he sent

a terse note which he showed me gleefully. "Keep off the grass," thundered

Allen ominously.

One afternoon, at the height of the row, I was in Victor's room

in the Cabinet Office when Ted Heath put his head around the door.

"Prime Minister," said Victor, "I think you should meet Peter

Wright, he is one of the stranger phenomena in Whitehall ..."

Heath looked humorlessly over in my direction, and asked me

where I worked.

"The Security Service, sir," I replied.

He grunted.

"Peter is responsible for the briefing on subversion which is currently

causing the problem," said Victor cheerfully.

Heath immediately fixed me with a steely glare.

"You should not be indulging in politics," he glowered, "there are

mechanisms for this sort of material."

He turned on his heel and stalked out.

"Christ, Victor," I said.

SPYCATCHER 367

"Don't worry," replied Victor, "Ted's always like that. I'll talk to

him later."

The following day Victor rang up. He told me Heath had devoured

the briefing that night.

"Is this true, Victor?" he asked in amazement, and when told it

was, redoubled his crusade to remain in power.

But not all the requests for information were legitimate. One evening

Victor invited me around for drinks at St. James's Place.

"There's a businessman I think you should meet," he told me.

"He is a wealthy industrialist."

I had been discussing retirement with Victor at the time. In 1972

I finally learned that the promise MI5 had made to me in 1955 about

my pension was not to be honored. In order to join the Service I had

been forced to give up fifteen years of pension rights with the Admiralty.

At the time Cumming had talked smoothly of ex-gratia payments, and

ways the Service could iron out these problems. But in the new, gray

MI5 a gentleman's agreement was a thing of the past. According to the

rules, I had no case for a pension, even though every scientist who

joined the Intelligence Services after me (some fifty in number) was

able to transfer his pension, largely through my pressure to rectify the

inequity.

It was a bitter blow, and did much to sour my last few years in the

Service. Inevitably I thought about the possibility of security work. It

did not greatly appeal to me, but it seemed a stable way of propping

up my savagely depleted pension. At first Victor and I discussed my

joining N. M. Rothschild, but Hanley was unhappy about the proposal,

so when Victor heard that this businessman was looking for someone

to do security work, he suggested a meeting.

I took an instant dislike to the man. It was clear to me that he was

on the make. Over drinks he talked loosely about needing advice and

guidance from someone "in the know" without quite spelling out what

he meant, or how much he was prepared to pay for it. Eventually he

suggested I lunch with him and some colleagues at a London hotel to

discuss his proposition in more detail.

His colleagues were a ramshackle bunch. They were retired people

from various branches of intelligence and security organizations whose

best years were well behind them. There were others, too, mainly

businessmen who seemed thrilled to be in the same room as spies, and

did not seem to care how out of date they were.



I

368 PETER WRIGHT

This time my would-be employer came straight to the point.

"We represent a group of people who are worried about the future

of the country," he intoned.

He had something of the look of Angleton on a bad night about

him. He said they were interested in working to prevent the return of

a Labor government to power.

"It could spell the end of all the freedoms we know and cherish,"

he said.

The others nodded.

"And how do you suppose I can help?" I asked.

"Information," he replied, "we want information, and I am assured

you have it."

"What precisely are you after?" I inquired.

"Anything on Wilson would be helpful. There are many people

who would pay handsomely for material of that sort."

"But I am a serving member of the Security Service ..." I began.

He waved his hand imperiously.

"Retire early. We can arrange something ..."

I played along for the rest of the evening, but gave nothing away.

The following day I went to see Hanley and told him what had happened.

I suggested that I continue to monitor the group's activities as

an agent, but Hanley thought discretion was a better policy.

"Leave it alone, Peter," he said, "it's a dirty game, and you're

well out of it."

Hanley knew little about the material which had been gathered on

Wilson and the Labor Party during the 1960s, so I encouraged him to

study it. Elections were in the offing, and it could become relevant

again, I told him.

"It's like fluency," he said when he had read the files, "there's

lots of smoke, but not a lot of fire."

Nevertheless, he agreed that it was prudent to reexamine the material.

Angleton, in particular, was beginning to badger us constantly about Wilson, and I told Hanley it would be politic to be seen to be

doing something.

As events moved to their political climax in early 1974, with the

election of the minority Labor Government, MI5 was sitting on information

which, if leaked, would undoubtedly have caused a political

scandal of incalculable consequences. The news that the Prime Minister

himself was being investigated would at the least have led to his resignation.

The point was not lost on some MI5 officers.

SPYCATCHER 369

One afternoon I was in my office when two colleagues came in.

They were with three or four other officers. I closed the file I was

working on and asked them how I could help.

"We understand you've reopened the Wilson case," said the

senior one.

"You know I can't talk about that," I told him.

I felt a bit lame, but then I did not much enjoy being cornered in

my own office.

"Wilson's a bloody menace," said one of the younger officers, "and

it's about time the public knew the truth."

It was not the first time I had heard that particular sentiment.

Feelings had run high inside MI5 during 1968. There had been an effort

to try to stir up trouble for Wilson then, largely because the Daily

Mirror tycoon, Cecil King, who was a longtime agent of ours, made it

clear that he would publish anything MI5 might care to leak in his

direction. It was all part of Cecil King's "coup," which he was convinced

would bring down the Labor Government and replace it with a coalition

led by Lord Mountbatten.

I told F.J. in 1968 that feelings were running high, but he responded

in a low-key manner.

"You can tell anyone who has ideas about leaking classified material

that there will be nothing I can do to save them!"

He knew the message would get back.

But the approach in 1974 was altogether more serious. The plan

was simple. In the run-up to the election which, given the level of

instability in Parliament, must be due within a matter of months, MI5

would arrange for selective details of the intelligence about leading

Labor Party figures, but especially Wilson, to be leaked to sympathetic

pressmen. Using our contacts in the press and among union officials,

word of the material contained in MI5 files and the fact that Wilson

was considered a security risk would be passed around.

Soundings in the office had already been taken, and up to thirty

officers had given their approval to the scheme. Facsimile copies of

some files were to be made and distributed to overseas newspapers,

and the matter was to be raised in Parliament for maximum effect. It

was a carbon copy of the Zinoviev letter, which had done so much to

destroy the first Ramsay MacDonald Government in 1928.

"We'll have him out," said one of them, "this time we'll have

him out."

"But why do you need me?" I asked.

370 PETER WRIGHT

"Well, you don't like Wilson any more than we do ... besides,

you've got access to the latest files--the Gaitskell business, and all the

rest of it."

"But they're kept in the DCs safe!"

"Yes, but you could copy them."

"I need some time to think," I pleaded. "I've got a lot to think

about before I take a step like this. You'll have to give me a couple of

days."

At first I was tempted. The devil makes work for idle hands, and

I was playing out my time before retirement. A mad scheme like this

was bound to tempt me. I felt an irresistible urge to lash out. The

country seemed on the brink of catastrophe. Why not give it a little

push? In any case, I carried the burden of so many secrets that lightening

the load a little could only make things easier for me.

It was Victor who talked me out of it.

"I don't like Wilson any more than you do," he told me, "but

you'll end up getting chopped if you go in for this."

He was right. I had little more than a year to go. Why destroy

everything in a moment of madness?

A few days later I told the leader of the group that I would not

get the files.

"I'd like to help you," I told him, "but I can't risk it. I've only

got half a pension as it is. I can't afford to lose it all."

Some of the operational people became quite aggressive. They

kept saying it was the last chance to fix Wilson.

"Once you've retired," they said, "we'll never get the files!"

But my mind was made up, and even their taunts of cowardice

could not shake me.

Throughout the rest of 1974 and early 19751 kept out of the country

as much as possible, chasing venona traffic throughout the world. Although

the full Wilson story never emerged, it was obvious to me that

the boys had been actively pushing their plan as much as they could.

No wonder Wilson was later to claim that he was the victim of a plot!

In the summer of 1975 I dined with Maurice Oldfield at Locketts.

We regularly met for dinner. He was a lonely man, and liked nothing

better than a good gossip at the end of the day. He finally made it to

the top of MI6 after two abortive attempts, and I was happy for him.

Maurice was a good man, but inclined to meddle. That night I could tell something was on his mind.

SPYCATCHER 371

He turned the conversation to Wilson. How high had feelings been

running in there? he asked. He kept hearing all sorts of rumors.

I was noncommittal.

"Most of us don't like him. They think he's wrecking the country."

Maurice was clearly preoccupied with the subject, because he returned

to it again and again.

"You're not telling me the truth," he said finally.

"I'm not with you, Maurice . . ."

"I was called in by the Prime Minister yesterday," he said, his tone

suddenly changing. "He was talking about a plot. Apparently he's heard

that your boys have been going around town stirring things up about

him and Marcia Falkender, and Communists at No. 10."

He trailed away as if it were all too distasteful for him.

"It's serious, Peter," he began again, "I need to know everything.

Look what's happening in Washington with Watergate. The same thing

will happen here unless we're very careful."

I ordered another brandy and decided to tell him everything I

knew. When I had finished describing the plans of the previous summer

he asked me if Hanley knew.

"No," I replied, "I thought it best just to forget the whole thing."

"I want you to go back to the office tomorrow and tell him everything."

Maurice tottered up to bed.

"Don't worry," he called back over his shoulder.

"I won't," I said, "I've only got a few months to go!"

When I saw Hanley the next morning, he went white as a sheet.

He might have suspected that feelings against Wilson ran high in the

office, but now he was learning that half of his staff were up to their

necks in a plot to get rid of the Prime Minister. It was at times like

that I was glad I never climbed the executive ladder.

Ironically, his first reaction was anger with Maurice.

"Bloody Maurice!" he raged. "Poking his nose into our business!"

When he had calmed down he asked me for the names.

I gave them. Having come so far, I could not very well refuse. As

I reeled them off, I knew suddenly what Blunt had felt like. It was

never easy to put on the mask and point the finger.

"Look after them, won't you?" I asked Hanley.

"There will have to be an inquiry, of course," he replied.

I left before the Wilson story ended, and Hanley and I never

372 PETER WRIGHT

discussed it again. I heard that a member of the Security Commission

was called in to make a private inquiry for the Cabinet Office, and it

has since been reported that Hanley made a number of changes, mainly

in the field of recruitment, with a view to introducing new blood into

MI5. This presumably explains the cryptic letter I received from Michael

Hanley shortly after I retired to Australia.

"You'll be pleased to note," he wrote, "that the firm has passed

its recent examinations, and is doing rather well!"

Shortly afterward Wilson resigned. As we always used to say in

the office: "Politicians may come and go, but the Security Service goes

on forever."

The shambles surrounding Harold Wilson blew up just as the Hollis

affair flickered briefly back into life in 1974. The case had remained

buried since his interrogation in 1969. Originally I was hopeful that

Hanley might revive things when he took over, but I could soon see

that he took the view that sleeping dogs should lie. He had a deep

desire to put the traumas of the past behind him, and was anxious to

separate me as far as possible from current investigations and K Branch

cases.

"I've got an open mind," he used to tell me whenever I raised the

question.

Fear of scandal became the most important consideration affecting

everyone with responsibility for the turmoil of the 1960s, now that there

was a growing certainty that whatever the problem had been, it was at

an end. I discussed with Victor whether there were any ways of reopening

the case.

"Now is not the time," he would say. "We should bide our time,

and I will look for a way of raising the matter with Ted. But not now.

We'll just end up jeopardizing Hanley's job. The whole thing is too

potent. We must let some time go by."

Fear of scandal reached fever pitch when, in 1975, Blunt was thought

to be suffering from cancer, and likely to die. Victor approached me

again, and asked me whether I thought it likely that Blunt would leave

a last will and testament to be published on his death, blowing the lid

off the whole affair. I had often asked Blunt about this, and he had

always denied making any preparations, but there was a streak of vindictiveness

in him which I never quite trusted.

Victor knew better than any outsider just what damage Blunt could

do. Both he and Heath were obsessed with the damage the Profumo

scandal had done to the last Conservative Government, and were ter

SPYCATCHER 373

rifled that Blunt could bring them down in the same way. It was not

just the problem of the immunity; there was the horrendous possibility

that he might name fellow conspirators, both living and dead, as well

as the chance that he might choose to leave a more intimate record of

the halcyon days of the 1930s. More than a handful of reputations stood

to suffer if their sexual peccadilloes from that time were circulated on

Fleet Street, not least the former Prime Minister, Anthony Eden.

Victor eventually pressed me to provide him with a full brief on

the damage Blunt could do if he chose to tell all. When I was in D3 I

had written a variety of papers for the Home Office on the Ring of

Five, but they were mostly unsatisfactory. The MI5 Legal Department

insisted on removing names like Proctor and Watson on the grounds

that we had no proof.

"That's not the point," I argued. "We should be providing the

Home Office with intelligence. That's our job. If we filter out things

we believe to be true just because we can't prove them, we're failing

in our duty."

Victor agreed with my approach totally, and stressed that my briefing

had to be as full as possible. I drew together the full history of the

Ring of Five, and painstakingly showed how all the connections were

made. Forty names were on the list in all. A few weeks later I saw

Robert Armstrong about Agent 19. He thanked me for the document.

"Splendid piece of work," he beamed, "real intelligence. Not like

the civil servant drafts we normally get from the Security Service."

Around this time word got back that Arthur and Stephen de Mowbray

were themselves lobbying for the case against Hollis to be reopened.

Arthur had retired, and Stephen de Mowbray's career was in

steep decline. He had made himself deeply unpopular inside MI6 during

the late 1960s by his unswerving support for Golitsin and all his theories.

His mentor was Christopher Phillpotts, under whom he had served in

Washington. Phillpotts brought him back to serve in Counterintelligence,

but after Phillpotts retired in 1970, de Mowbray was left exposed.

Dick White was determined to get rid of him if at all possible,

but Maurice Oldfield suggested that a spell in Malta was the best

compromise.

When de Mowbray returned in 1972 to find that the Hollis case

was shelved, he began to agitate for action. Both Oldfield and Hanley

were terrified in case de Mowbray took it into his head to take his fears

about Soviet penetration to an MP. Arthur, too, was developing contacts

in Parliament. After retirement he went off to work there as a

374 PETER WRIGHT

clerk as a way of making up his pension. There were worries in case

he decided to brief one of his newfound friends on the traumas of the

past twenty years.

Hollis was not de Mowbray's only concern. He also believed that

the whole system for appointing heads of the Secret Services was nepotic

and potentially disastrous. He had a point, in that once a spy insinuated

himself to the summit of an organization, he was in a perfect position

to appoint fellow traitors to follow him.

Oldfield raised the question of de Mowbray at one of our quiet

dinners.

"Can't you rein him in?" he asked. He made it clear that Hanley

would view it favorably as well. Oldfield, too, had personal reasons for

wishing to keep the Hollis affair buried. He had been passed over for

the top job in MI6 when Dick White returned but was desperately

hoping that he would yet get his chance as C.

I told him that I doubted whether in the end I could have much

influence over him or Arthur.

"Yes, but they don't know what you know; they don't know how

delicate things are. Any hint of scandal now could deal us all a grievous

blow."

Poor Maurice was so transparent, you could read ambition in him

like a book. Before the evening was out he began to talk about the

future.

"Of course," he said, "if Rennie left, and I got the chance, I

wouldn't want to stay long ..."

His voice trailed away. I knew he wanted me to pass the message

along.

A few weeks later I lunched with Stephen and tried to persuade

him that now was not the time to push.

"There are things going on," I said, "I know it looks as if it's

stalled. But there are many ways of skinning a cat. We just need to

give it time."

He was not convinced. He thought I was in Hanley's pocket, and

made no secret of it.

In fact, I was still hopeful that the venona search authorized by

Hanley might yet yield vital clues to the case. Perhaps some more traffic

would be found hidden away in a dusty cupboard which would give us

the matches to unlock the missing cryptonyms.

There had recently been a small breakthrough in the existing traffic

which had given cause for hope. Geoffrey Sudbury was working on

SPYCATCHER 375

part of the hasp material which had never been broken out. Advanced

computer analysis revealed that this particular traffic was not genuine

venona. It did not appear to have been enciphered using a onetime

pad, and from the nonrandom distribution of the groups, Sudbury

hazarded a guess that it had been enciphered using some kind of directory.

We began the search in the British Library, and eventually found

a book of trade statistics from the 1930s which fitted. Overnight a huge

chunk of hasp traffic was broken. The GRU traffic was similar to much

that we had already broken. But there was one series of messages which

was invaluable. The messages were sent from the GRU resident Simon

Kremer to Moscow Center, and described his meetings with the GRU

spy runner Sonia, alias Ruth Kuzchinski.

The Sonia connection had been dismissed throughout the 1960s as

too tenuous to be relied upon. MI5 tended to believe the story that

she came to Britain to escape Nazism and the war, and that she did

not become active for Russian Intelligence until Klaus Fuchs volunteered

his services in 1944. In particular GCHQ denied vehemently

that Sonia could ever have been broadcasting her only radio messages

from her home near Oxford during the period between 1941 and 1943.

But Kremer's messages utterly destroyed the established beliefs.

They showed that Sonia had indeed been sent to the Oxford area by

Russian Intelligence, and that during 1941 she was already running a

string of agents. The traffic even contained the details of the payments

she was making to these agents, as well as the times and durations of

her own radio broadcasts. I thought bitterly of the way this new information

might have influenced Hollis' interrogation had we had the

material in 1969.

Once this was known I felt more sure than ever that Elli did exist,

and that he was run by Sonia from-Oxford, and that the secret of his

identity lay in her transmission, which inexplicably had been lost all

those years before. The only hope was to travel the world and search

for any sign that her traffic had been taken elsewhere.

Over the four years from 1972 to 19761 traveled 370,000 kilometers

searching for new venona and Sonja's transmissions. In France, SDECE

told me they had no material, even though Marcel told me he was sure

they had taken it. Presumably one of the sapphire agents had long since

destroyed it. In Germany they professed total ignorance. It was the

same in Italy. Spain refused to entertain the request until we handed

back Gibraltar. I spent months toiling around telegraph offices in Can

376 PETER WRIGHT

ada searching for traces of the telex links out there. But there was

nothing. In Washington, extensive searches also drew a blank. It was

heart-breaking to know that what I wanted had once existed, had once

been filed and stored, but somehow had slipped through our fingers.

In 1974 Hanley and I began making preparations for the next

CAZAB conference, which was due to take place in London in May.

I told him he would likely face pressure from the Americans and the

Canadians for some kind of statement about the Hollis case. We had

successfully stalled any comment since the interrogation, but Angleton

for one was determined to have something on the record.

"What shall I say?" asked Hanley.

I told him to play things low-key.

"Tell them the facts. There was a series of old allegations, and a

number of candidates were possible starters. Hollis was one, and probably

the best, but in the end, although we interrogated him, we were

not able to form a firm conclusion."

The 1974 CAZAB conference was a far cry from the high-spirited

gatherings of the 1960s. Too many faces around the table had disappeared.

Spry had gone; Jim Bennett from the RCMP had gone, himself

a suspect in a paralyzing mole hunt inside the RCMP with which I was

peripherally involved (I believe that, despite Bennett's peculiar behavior

under interrogation, he was not a spy); Helms had gone; and Angleton

was clearly living on borrowed time. In Washington the Watergate

scandal was at its height, and already the cupboard full of CIA skeletons

was inching open.

Hanley made his short statement about the Hollis case. It was

greeted silently. Most people had suffered the same traumas themselves,

and knew just what pain and damage a case like that would

have done. Hanley ended diplomatically by inviting the services represented

to make whatever damage assessments they felt necessary in

the light of his statement. It was a classic Whitehall ploy. Lay out the

difficult ground, but always let the other man draw the decisive conclusion!

I saw Angleton only once more after the CAZAB conference--

in Washington at the end of the year. He knew he was being forced

out. A new Director, William Colby, was determined to unseat him.

¦ Angleton and Colby had quarreled about the conduct of counterintel

ligence

in Southeast Asia for several years. When Colby became Director

the opportunity to get rid of Angleton came when The New York

^' \ published a story naming Angleton as the mastermind behind a

SPYCATCHER 377

massive domestic mail surveillance program. Within a few days Angle-ton

and all his senior men had resigned.

When I saw Angleton he was raging.

"Two hundred years of counterintelligence thrown away," he cursed,

when he realized that the whole of his senior staff was departing. It

was obvious that The New York Times story was only the first shot in

the war. Within six months the CIA was submerged in a welter of

Senate hearings, exposes, and mire. The year when the reckoning began

was 1974. In Canada and Australia inquiries began into the past iniquities,

alleged or real, of their intelligence services. We were the

modern pariahs--hated, distrusted, hunted.

Oldfield and Hanley were terrified by the pace of events abroad,

fearful above all that some of the revelations would spill over onto their

own services. They realized, too, that the newly elected Labor Government

might just be prepared to encourage such developments. It

was in this context that Stephen de Mowbray finally decided that he

had to act. In mid-1974 he approached a friend of his, Philip de Zuluetta,

a former private secretary to Alec Douglas-Home when he was

Prime Minister, and outlined his fears about the penetration of MI5,

and the method of appointing service chiefs. Zuluetta suggested he

approach Sir John Hunt, the new Cabinet Secretary. After telling Maurice

that he could restrain himself no longer, de Mowbray made his

appointment with No. 10 Downing Street.

"What's that bloody de Mowbray doing now?" roared Hanley one

morning.

It was the first I heard of the news.

"Bloody Maurice interfering again. How can he let one of his

officers prance around to Downing Street and wash all our linen without

asking me ... it's intolerable!"

I told Hanley that I felt it was inevitable. In the end de Mowbray

was always determined to make an approach over the heads of MI5

and MI6, and we ought to be thankful it was to No. 10 Downing Street,

rather than through a parliamentary question.

The outcome was a review--a classic maneuver. At the time they

always seem so hopeful; it is only afterward you realize they are designed

to achieve the answer desired by those who set the inquiry up.

This one was to be conducted by Lord Trend, the former Cabinet

Secretary. He was to have all the papers, and as much time as he needed,

to decide which of the two faiths was believable.

Trend first appeared in Leconfield House in late 1974. He was

378 PETERWRIGHT

given an office, a safe, and a secretary, and left alone on the fifth floor.

After a few weeks he telephoned me and asked me to come to his

room.

He appeared a typical Oxford don, an aesthetic-looking man with

a wide forehead and fairish gray hair.

"I don't want to talk about the case," he began, "I simply want

to get a picture of how it was all done. Then I am going to go off and

study and see people, and I will see you again at the end."

All ten volumes of the fluency Working Party were stacked neatly

on the desk in front of him, and for the rest of the morning we went

through them.

"How did it all begin?" he wanted to know.

It was a question I had often asked myself as I sat in the evening

poring over those same files. How did it all begin? Did it start in 1945,

when Blunt left? Or did it start when Volkov and Gouzenko made their

approaches? Perhaps it was much earlier, when a frail man with TB

stepped off the boat from China and tried to get a job in British Intelligence.

Or later, much later, when Tisler told us about the spy in

MI5, or when Golitsin talked of spies, hundreds of them, thousands of

them, everywhere. Or was the Mitchell case the first decisive moment,

the first time we looked, and could not find the spy in our midst? How

do you define the moment when a fear becomes a tangible presence?

It is just there. It was always there, from the beginning to the end.

The fluency files looked curiously distant. They bulged with unseen

hours of work. Minutes from every secret department were carefully

recorded, tracing the distribution of this document and that

document. Each allegation was carefully broken down; each suspect

allotted a code name. At the end of the last file was the famous minute

signed in my own hand, giving the names of those who needed urgent

investigation.

On more than one occasion Trend asked about the delays in dealing

with cases.

"It's very difficult," I explained, "to be told that the man you've

worked with for years, who gave you your job, or whom you gave his

job, is a spy. That was what Dick White and F.J. found so difficult to

come to terms with . . . and that's why we adopted code names from

the beginning, to depersonalize everything."

"Quite so . . ." said Trend. you do understand that all the fluency decisions were unani-

SPYCATCHER 379

mous. This was not just me on my own. There were six of us, and we

all thought exactly the same."

"Ah yes," murmured Trend, pausing over an apparently innocuous exchange of documents in the file.

Trend seemed especially interested in the middling-grade agent.

He asked me to explain how we had broken the allegation down, and

the system we had used to allot marks to each of the thirty-four candidates.

I spent several hours explaining the venona. He was fascinated by

that infernal incomplete jigsaw which promised so much and revealed

so little.

I described how we arrived at our identifications. Stanley, Hicks,

and Johnson were almost certainly Philby, Burgess, and Blunt, though

there was still room for doubt. Stanley was Philby because of the reference

to Mexican affairs being the responsibility of his Department.

Hicks was Burgess because in one message Moscow Center instructs

Krotov to limit Hicks' reports to hard facts, and omit the theories.

"That's Guy to a tee," I said with a laugh, surprised by the intimacy

with which I referred to a man I had met only on paper.

"And Johnson?" asked Trend.

"That is where the doubt is ... There is a reference here"--I

handed him a sheet of the venona with paper message ribbons embossed

on it--"and you can see that Johnson is traveling abroad. That tallies

with Blunt's movements. He went to Italy at the end of the week this

message was received. But it is slightly odd that Krotov appears not to

know of Johnson's plans. I asked Blunt about this, and he was positive

that he told Krotov about his impending trip at least six weeks before."

"Could it have been anyone else?"

"The only officer who made a sudden trip abroad at the end of

this week was Drat . . . I'm sorry, I mean Hollis, when he went to

Canada to see Gouzenko."

"And . . . ?"

"I doubt it," I said quietly, "I somehow doubt it. I think Johnson

was Blunt, and he was leading us astray on the six weeks business.

Johnson is just too closely tied to Hicks and Stanley to be anyone else

but Blunt. Anyway, there are three other cryptonyms still unidentified.

Any of those could be Hollis."

I was impressed by Trend. He had a quick mind, and a very thorough

one too. There was no skating across points. I came away from

380 PETER WRIGHT

our first meeting feeling I had been grilled in a rather quiet, patient

way. But what worried me was that he had a civil servant's training,

not an intelligence officer's background. Would he be able to make the

kinds of judgments required to make sense of a mass of contradictory

intelligence material? He had no frame of reference, no way of judging

the strength of the case against Hollis as against the strength of the

case against other spies, like Philby, or Blunt, or Blake. Only years of

experience in the secret world could give a man that kind of intuition.

Trend had a high reputation inside MI5. Most people preferred

him to Norman Brooke, the previous Cabinet Secretary, who was renowned

for getting bees in his bonnet. Norman Brooke and I shared

the same club, and after he retired I occasionally used to talk to him.

He was careful never to criticize his successor, but always gave the

impression things were being handled much more badly now than in

his day. Trend was a far more relaxed figure, and he fought the Treasury

doughtily on behalf of the Secret Services throughout the 1960s.

Trend continued to work away in Leconfield House for another

year. Occasionally we would meet in the corridor. He never said much,

and it was late 1975 before I was called in to see him again. By that

time we had finally left Leconfield House and moved to the dismal

Gower Street offices.

He wanted to talk about the allegations. He thought they were all

very old, when you stripped them down to the bone.

"Of course, but what is impressive is the coincidences of the dates

of the allegations. They all come from exactly the same time. It's quite

uncanny."

Golitsin, Trend said, did not seem to lead anywhere--"not helpful"

was the expression he used. I agreed that for the purposes of the

case for high-level penetration Golitsin had given us nothing we could

investigate. He was, at best, I conceded, an indicator that penetration

had occurred.

Trend also discarded the middling-grade agent story.

"Very difficult case that," he agreed, "impossible not to look at,

but I think right to discard today."

"Now Volkov," he began again, after turning to a relevant file and

adjusting his spectacles.

Wasn't I being finicky in altering the thrust of the allegation after

having the document retranslated? he asked.

"I don't see why," I replied. "There are really only two ways to

proceed in cases like these. One way is to make guesses about what an

SPYCATCHER 381

allegation means, and where it leads, and how seriously to take it. The

other way is to adopt a scholastic approach, and analyze everything

very carefully and precisely and build scientifically on that bedrock."

"And then there's Elli," said Trend. "I see you checked the story

with Akhmedov. But you've got no follow-up, have you? There's no

Elli in the traffic."

"But I didn't expect that there would be," I replied. "Elli is an

illegal, and if that's the case, his communications would be illegal, not

through the Embassy. If we found Sonia's traffic I am sure we would

find Elli. But we can't."

"And you still think Elli was Hollis?"

"Most certainly."

"And nothing since has caused you to doubt that?"

"No, if anything my conviction has become stronger."

Trend sighed patiently.

"But there's no ideological background . . ."he began.

"There's China."

"Ah, yes," he murmured, "China ..." His voice trailed away.

Trend was professional to the end. I never could detect just what

his feelings were. He certainly gave me the impression that he thought

the case for penetration was strong, but apart from a fleeting reference

to the fact that he doubted we had the right candidate in Hollis, he

gave nothing away.

Neither did I ever learn from Hanley what Trend's conclusions

were. The subject was never discussed, and I assume that Trend's report

was completed after I left the Service in January 1976. It was only in

1981 that Mrs. Thatcher filled in that final gap. Lord Trend, she told

the House of Commons, had concluded that Hollis was not an agent

of the Russian Intelligence Service. He had faith in a man's innocence,

as I had faith in his treachery; as another man might have faith in God,

or Mammon. One man's view, as I now realize, is in the end worthless.

Only facts will ever clear up the eternal mystery.

As I approached my final months in the office I felt a wave of

tiredness. I did not know whether to stay in England and fight, or cut

my losses and run. My health was bad, my pension derisory. But I had

my memories.

One afternoon toward Christmas I drove up to Cambridge with

Victor to his country house for the last time. Conversation was difficult.

So much needed to be said. So much was inside me, bottled up and

waiting to spill out.