Great Spies of the 20th Century

by Patrick Pesnot

  The heat was definitely starting to intensify under the feet of the Cambridge spies. By

  1948 British counterintelligence-espionage units were convinced that moles were present.

  It was revealed that highly-classified information had been leaked from the Foreign Office.

  Yet surprising as it may seem, it was three years before any action was taken. Was this

  once more the action of a deus ex machina?

  In spring 1951, an American cryptographer finally made a breakthrough and managed to decipher the Venona telegrams.7 The name of a mole was revealed; Homer, and the details of his diplomatic activities helped to identify who it was. It was a pseudonym for Donald Maclean, the head of the American section at the Foreign Office, who had achieved his position despite the numerous scandals that had marred his career. Like the other Cambridge moles and spies, Maclean took to heavy drinking as a result of the stress he was subjected to. One of the first to be informed of Maclean's identification was Kim Philby. After nearly being appointed as head of MI6, he now had the very important role of being responsible for liaising intelligence between the British and the CIA. Maclean was not arrested immediately as the Americans wanted at all costs to preserve the knowledge that they had decoded the Venona messages, so that they could unmask other moles. In particular, they were looking for what were called the ‘atomic spies'; those who had given the A-bomb to the Soviets. Philby warned Maclean, via his friend Burgess, that he needed to prepare to flee to the USSR.

  He was accompanied by Burgess, who was also feeling threatened. However, and this is the key element in this story, Blunt performed a great favour for his two friends. After their departure, it was he who checked that they had not left anything incriminating behind and their perfectly organised flight could not fail to cause a scandal in Britain. The secret services were put on the spot and in response to their humiliation, tried to take their revenge by unmasking moles at any price. Anthony Blunt was naturally among the first suspects due to the special relationship he had with Burgess. His past as a crypto-communist was criticised, even though no one had cared about that when he was working for the secret services.

  Blunt was questioned many times throughout the 1950s and early 1960s. Apparently, he never cracked, especially as the investigators were forced to tread carefully with him. Blunt was now an art historian whose reputation was growing not just in Britain, but all over the world. He had even just received a knighthood for services to the Crown.

  However, it is true that the noose was tightening. Philby, who had been denounced by J. Edgar Hoover, the Head of the FBI, was about to be unmasked. He was publically cleared by Prime Minister Harold MacMillan and eventually disappeared to the USSR in 1963. Blunt's worst enemy was the Welsh writer and journalist, Goronwy Rees, who posed a permanent threat. An intimate friend of Burgess, Rees had long been jealous of Blunt and after Burgess had drunkenly confided in him, he now knew that Blunt had worked for the Soviets. Rees had already published an article on the subject in 1956, which although it didn't name Blunt directly, made it clear enough of whom he was speaking.

  It was not until 1964 that Blunt was finally unmasked. Counterintelligence teams interrogated an American called Michael Straight, who denounced Blunt after revealing that he had been recruited by him while studying at Cambridge. Yet the gentleman spy refused to confess and as a result was offered a very curious deal: if he talked and told them all he knew, he would be offered full judicial immunity. Blunt accepted and revealed the truth about his past activities and club of Cambridge spies. The same deal was offered to the ‘fifth man', John Cairncross, who also accepted and would end his days living peacefully in the south of France.

  But what of Blunt's deal? He had had no contact with the Soviets for nearly fifteen years. What role would his confession serve if he had severed all ties with the world of intelligence? In this instance, everything was hushed up.

  The explanation that immediately comes to mind is that the secret services, already stung by a series of scandals, wanted to avoid being stigmatised again. Another explanation is that they wanted to preserve the identity of other spies who were still operating. Yet Blunt, who they now knew had been a Soviet spy, continued to live as before and even regularly visited the queen. Had she been told that the man in charge of the Royal Collection was a former Soviet spy? It would appear that nothing had changed. She continued to place her confidence in her advisor, who after all was a pre-eminent art historian. It is not even clear if the prime minister was kept in the loop.

  Unfortunately, the wheel turned again for Blunt fifteen years later. In 1979 Goronwy Rees was suffering from incurable cancer and suddenly decided to reveal all about Blunt. He told his story to a journalist who wrote an investigative book about the Cambridge spies. Blunt was publically denounced. Even though the author had used a pseudonym for his name, the picture was clear and there was nothing to prevent the scandal. Margaret Thatcher had just come to power as prime minister and as well as facing many social and economic difficulties, the Blunt case was to prove opportune and the Iron Lady wasted no time. After the newspapers had accused Blunt, Prime Minister Thatcher revealed his role as a spy. This political stunt lasted a while and came just at the right time for the press.

  Blunt, protected by his judicial immunity, would spend the rest of his life in the greatest secrecy and in quiet dignity. Prime Minister Thatcher protected the Queen by saying that if Blunt had continued to perform his duties for Elizabeth II, it was so that the Soviets would not find out that one of their spies had been unmasked.

  Often the truth is more complicated. Looking through the Soviet archives that had been briefly opened under the presidency of Boris Yeltsin, we discover that Arnold Deutsch recruited at least seventeen agents at Cambridge and elsewhere, but many are missing. Everything therefore seems to say that many of these spies have not yet been identified. This can lead to the hypothesis that by revealing the spectacular treachery of the ‘Cambridge Five', does this not raise a smokescreen in order to protect these traitors? Hence the role of the Blunt case. There was enough here to write a real soap-opera - a big boon for the tabloid newspapers. All the ingredients were there: the social class of the main character, who represented the typical class snob with his intellectualism and his proximity to the royal family, not to mention his homosexuality. In the meantime, looking for the other moles was dispensed with - another reason to assume that a higher authority was acting on their behalf and was thus manipulating public opinion and intelligence services.

  George Steiner8

  A quick review of the narrative is sufficient to show that it is full of gaps, unanswered questions and improbabilities, to the point of being virtually useless. Suppose that there was some form of disorder in recruitment in 1940. Nevertheless, how is it possible that at the time of the Nazi-Soviet Pact, MI5 neglected all that Blunt had exposed about his feelings in the columns of the ‘Spectator’ and in his 1937 trial? Who buried the dossier handed to MI5 in 1939 by Walter Krivitsky, a Soviet general on the run, in which Blunt was not identified? This inevitably infers that some form of protection was being given in very high places.That’s a double life placed under a magic spell from the start. How was it possible to allow Blunt, who had shared an apartment with Burgess, to slip between the cracks during the fracas of l95l?The confession of 1964 and the promise of immunity is just not plausible.

  [Later, Steiner concludes]

  Once again it leads one to think that there was a guardian or guardian angel hovering over him in high places. An Oxford philosopher, a man of experience and flawless insight, a member of that blessed circle that is the beautiful world of the British bureaucrat, told me quite frankly that the Blunt story, as it has been told to the public, is in many ways an invention. It was designed and disclosed precisely to lay a smokescreen behind which other prominent characters in the drama could scatter and reach safety.

  Chapter 2

  Alger Hiss: Nixon’s bete noire

&nb
sp; This was the American version of the ‘Dreyfuss Affair'. So much so that even today, people in the USA are torn between those who support Hiss and those against him.

  Alger Hiss, a WASP,9 was a brilliant American government official and the perfect representative of the patrician society of America's East Coast. In 1948 he was accused of being a Soviet spy, an accusation that initially seemed not only unlikely, but quite frankly ridiculous. But this was the Cold War and a period in which anti-communist feelings ran very high, aided of course by McCarthyism. What is more, the man who would lead the charge against Hiss was a newly elected young senator, with long teeth. The senator knew that the case presented the chance of a lifetime and offered an unexpected opportunity to be at the forefront of politics. The senator's name was Richard Nixon, and we all know what he would later go on to become.

  Nixon later acknowledged that he had no doubt that the Alger Hiss case would help to shape his destiny. In his memoires he wrote that:

  The Hiss case proved beyond a shadow of a doubt the existence of communist subversion directed by the Soviets, at the highest echelons of the US government. Yet many of those who defended Hiss simply refused to believe the overwhelming evidence of his guilt. Some turned their anger and spite against me, as if I was somehow responsible for what Hiss had done. My role in the matter certainly started me on the path to the vice-presidency, but it also transformed from a young, relatively popular government official, who enjoyed a limited but good press, into a one of the most controversial figures in Washington, who was bitterly opposed by liberal journalists as well as the most respected and influential thinkers of the time.

  Despite this challenge, the young Senator Nixon became Eisenhower’s vice-president only four years after the start of the Hiss case. He undoubtedly benefited from this episode of the Cold War, which was acted out in America like a serial thriller. Still, even sixty years later, Alger Hiss’ guilt still remains uncertain.

  In order to properly understand the subject, it needs to be placed in historical context. In a famous speech made in 1946, Winston Churchill spoke for the first time about the ‘iron curtain' that Stalin had built in Europe and that the gap between the former allies was continuing to widen. The so-called ‘witch hunts' began in the USA, the significance and severity of which must not be exaggerated. There was no excuse for this form of stalking and McCarthyism, but these were troubled times. In eastern Europe, Stalin was leading a far more terrifying witch hunt, where people were either deported or even executed. However, many people at the time just closed their eyes and pretended not to see. The American's witch hunt for communists seemed to obscure the crimes of Stalin. After all, a single mistake committed in a democracy, compared to what was taking place in the USSR, was a lot more showy than a series of crimes committed in a dictatorship. Such is the law.

  Those in the West lived in fear of the ubiquitous communist spy. Even making allowances for the paranoia of those who specialised in anti-communist activities, it must be acknowledged that the Soviets took advantage of the common struggle against Nazism to infiltrate communist agents in western countries. Even better than spies and in cases that were more dangerous or insidious, they placed men in influential positions whose sole purpose in any circumstance was to advocate in favour of the USSR and its satellite countries. As a result, we have to pay very close attention to what was happening in the USA. In the early post-war years the news was troubling: after a number of defections by eastern agents, it would appear that the highest echelons of the US administration had been penetrated by communists. It was in this climate of widespread suspicion that the Hiss affair unfolded.

  To borrow a contemporary phrase, Alger Hiss was a real ‘golden boy'. Life had always smiled on him: he came from a good family, received an excellent education at the best east coast schools and certainly had what would be called a ‘presence'. He was the embodiment of a young man who always gave the impression that he had just left the tennis club.

  Hiss began his legal profession at one of the largest law firms in Boston, but very quickly decided that he wanted pursue a career at the highest levels of government administration. He was a member of the legal team at the Department of Agriculture and also worked on a special senate committee responsible for the armament industry before working for the Justice Department. Sewing up his career, he held many high-ranking positions, including working as the executive secretary at the conference that was to give birth to the United Nations.

  Politically, Hiss was the darling of the Roosevelt administration and shared the progressive ideas of the American president. In the years of the ‘New Deal', it was about being liberal. But for the Republicans and conservatives in general, that meant being too far to the left. Whatever the case, Hiss was close to Roosevelt, and even went as his advisor to the famous Yalta Conference, alongside Stalin and Churchill. A conference where westerners and Soviets would decide the dividing up of the world.

  After the war, Hiss became president of the prestigious Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Even after the death of Roosevelt and under his replacement President Truman (another Democrat), Hiss remained an influential figure and one of the pillars of the liberal camp and counted many high-ranking officials as his friends. This is what made the scandal even greater when it was made public. Hiss' main accuser was a man called Whittaker Chambers. A former communist, Chambers claims that his accusations dated back to 1939, when he had warned one of Roosevelt's aides that Hiss was a communist spy; information that was immediately passed on to the White House. At the time however, the president treated the news with contempt and, not without reason, refused to order an investigation.

  This can easily be explained as for years, the man who created the ‘New Deal' had been a target for conservatives. Each of his reforms were regarded as being communist-inspired in some way and the Un-American Activities Committee continually harassed those who sided with the president. The general consensus in vogue in the United States was that the difference between Stalin's communism and Roosevelt's New Deal was practically nothing, and equivalent only to the width of a human hair.10 Roosevelt's lack of response when informed of the suspicions surrounding his assistant is therefore understandable.Yet according to Chambers, other, more important names were also on the note that he sent to the White House. Was this just a way of making sure that the note was actually submitted to President Roosevelt?

  During the war, other bits of information were submitted to the FBI and always at Chambers' instigation. At the time, the FBI was directed by the infamous J. Edgar Hoover, a man who was well-known for not being particularly favourable to communists. Nevertheless, it would appear that the FBI did not take the accusations seriously.

  In 1945, a KGB agent stationed in Canada, Igor Gouzenko, defected to the United States and provided information about Soviet spies stationed in London and Washington. Two months later, a woman called Elizabeth Bentley, who had been working for the Soviets, was turned by an FBI agent. What she had to say was very important, declaring that she had been recruited to the heart of a network that included many employees of the US government, some of whom were very well-placed. She gave up dozens of names, including several in Truman's senior administration. However, Alger Hiss was nowhere on her list, although it did include the name of one of his close friends, Harry Dexter White, the former assistant to the Secretary of State, who quickly died from a heart attack after the revelation was made.

  At first, the FBI was ordered to carry out their investigations quietly, in order to avoid any scandal. However, when Elizabeth Bentley was called before a grand jury and then before the Un-American Activities Committee, the case created much more noise. Her revelations were sensational, although some journalists who were close to the Democrats tried to ridicule the woman whom the press called ‘the red queen of espionage'.

  However, worse was yet to come for the Liberals as the members of the commission, chaired by a Republican senator, were about to pull another ace from their sl
eeve: Chambers. He confirmed Bentley's revelations and added to them, so much so that by the end of 1948, the case had taken on a national importance and forced President Truman to confront the voters.

  William Manchester11

  To understand the enormity of the phenomenon that began during the summer of 1948, imagine a large household where the children are pretending to be chased by the bogeyman. You try to reassure them by constantly repeating to them that such a thing does not exist. You search the house from top to bottom and nothing, yet the children still persist in their story and you stop listening to them. But one evening, when the whole family is gathered in the living room, one of the children notices that the cupboard door is ajar. He gets up and opens it and suddenly, out comes a real bogeyman, 3 metres high with a mouthful of teeth.

  But who is this Chamber, who acted as the trigger to this investigation? Outwardly he