When Reporters Cross the Line

by Stewart Purvis

  204 Eugene Lyons, Assignment in Utopia (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1937), p. 575

  205 Ibid.

  206 Ibid.

  207 Congressional report, p. 169

  208 Crowl, Angels in Stalin’s Paradise, p. 142

  209 Ibid.

  210 Bassow, The Moscow Correspondents, pp. 75–78; Engerman, Modernisation from the Other Shore: American Intellectuals and the Romance of Russian Development, Chapter 9

  211 Congressional report, p. 168

  212 Williams, Passed by the Censor, pp. 11–16

  213 Malcolm Muggeridge, Winter in Moscow, 1934 (Thirsk: House of Stratus, 2003), p. vii

  214 See: Taylor, Stalin’s Apologist, p. 160; a facsimile of the memorandum is available at: http://www.garethjones.org/Embassy-1.pdf. The Congressional Commission gave the full National Archives reference for the document: 193 V p. 2; 861.5017-Living Conditions/268; T1249; Records of the Department of State; NA.

  215 According to Lyons Duranty, when asked if he really meant ten million deaths, replied, ‘Hell I don’t … I’m being conservative!’ He allegedly continued, ‘But they’re only Russians.’ Lyons, Assignment in New York, p. 580; Congressional report, p. 172.

  216 Dalrymple, ‘The Soviet Famine of 1932–1934’, p. 278

  217 Congressional report, p. 170

  218 TNA FO 371/17253, N 7182/114/38, Strang minute, 26 September 1933, T A Shone note to King, Cabinet, Dominions, 2 October 1933

  219 Bassow, The Moscow Correspondents, p. 88. ‘Indeed, despite his flaws as a reporter, during the years he covered Moscow, Walter Duranty informed the world that from the ashes of the Czar’s empire a new power had risen that would have to be reckoned with and would henceforth play a paramount role in international affairs.’

  220 ‘Roosevelt Confers on Russian Policy, Consults Walter Duranty in Regard that Our Policy Should Change’, New York Times, 26 July 1932, p. 1

  221 Jacob Heilbrunn, ‘The New York Times and the Moscow Show Trials’, World Affairs, vol. 153, no. 3 (Winter 1991), pp. 87–101

  222 Sebag-Montefiore, Stalin, p. 34: ‘No man, no problem.’ See also: TNA FO 676/215

  223 Louis Fischer, Why Recognize Russia? (London: Jonathan Cape, 1931)

  224 See: ‘US “hushed up” Soviet Guilt over Katyn’, BBC News, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-19552745 and ‘Records Relating to the Katyn Forest Massacre at the National Archives’, National Archives, http://www.archives.gov/research/foreign-policy/katyn-massacre/ (both accessed 19 September 2012)

  225 Congressional report, pp. xxiii–xxiv

  226 Ibid. p. 151

  227 Ibid. p. 173

  228 Engerman, ‘Modernisation from the Other Shore: American Observers and the Costs of Soviet Economic Development’, p. 401

  229 Joe Alsop, ‘Columnist Makes Assessment of American Fourth Estate’ (31 December 1974), Sarasota Journal, 2 January 1975, p. 38, http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1798&dat=19750102&id=8QwfAAAAIBAJ&sjid=UI0EAAAAIBAJ&pg=3908,552897 (accessed 14 September 2012)

  230 Salisbury, Without Fear or Favor, p. 460

  231 See Ronald Grigor Suny, The Cambridge History of Russia, Vol. 3: The Twentieth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), pp. 39–40, in which he makes observations about the background of the historian Robert Conquest. See also David C. Engerman, ‘Social Science in the Cold War’, Isis, vol. 101, no. 2 (June 2010), pp. 393–400; David C. Engerman, Know Your Enemy: The Rise and Fall of America’s Soviet Experts (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012); David C. Engerman, ‘The Ironies of the Iron Curtain: The Cold War and the Rise of Russian Studies in the United States’, Cahiers du monde russe, vol. 45, no. 3/4 (July–December 2004), pp. 465–496

  232 See the 1984 made-for-TV film Harvest of Despair, which presented a harrowing and, in the view of many critics, one-sided account of the famine. It was produced by Yurij Luhovy and Slavko Nowytski, and directed by Slavko Nowytski. The decision to screen the film was debated on US Public Broadcasting Service television by Robert Conquest, Christopher Hitchens and Harrison Salisbury and, chaired by William F. Buckley Jr, the session was taped in New York on 4 September 1986.

  233 http://www.projectcensored.org/about

  234 ‘CIA Operating Drone Base in Saudi Arabia, US Media Reveal’, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-21350437; Alex Spillius, Diplomatic Correspondent, ‘Saudi DroneBlackoutRaisesDoubtsaboutUSMediaIndependence’, DailyTelegraph, 6February 2013, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/9853693/Saudi-drone-blackout-raises-doubts-about-US-media-independence.html

  235 ‘Rescued from Tehran: We Were There’, Argo, Warner Home Video, March 2013, UK edition

  236 ‘Ukrainian Famine Was “Genocide”’, BBC News, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/6193266.stm

  237 Russian grain exports during the years of the famine were as follows: 1931, 5.06 million metric tons; 1932, 1.73 million metric tons; and in 1933, 1.68 million metric tons. Source: Commission on the Ukraine Famine, Report to (US) Congress, 22 April 1988, p. 167.

  238 KGB files say Blunt claimed Hewit as his lover; others claim Hewit as Burgess’s longterm lover whom he ‘lent’ to his friends and those he wanted to do favours for.

  239 Goronwy Rees, A Chapter of Accidents (London: Chatto & Windus, 1972), p. 122

  240 His name does not appear on the list of members in the 1935/36 annual report. Philby’s does, as well as the Marquess of Lothian and Thomas Cook and Company. See TNA KV5/3

  241 Noel Annan, Our Age: The Generation That Made Post-war Britain (London: Fontana, 1991), pp. 160–161

  242 Robert Cecil, A Divided Life: A Biography of Donald Maclean (London: Bodley Head, 1988), p. 132

  243 BBC Written Archives Centre, L1/68/1

  244 Ibid.

  245 During his last undergraduate year Burgess helped to organise a strike among Trinity College waiters, who up to that time had been employed on a casual basis and only during term times.

  246 Tom Driberg and Baron Bradwell, Guy Burgess, a Portrait with Background (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1956), p. 33; Barrie Penrose and Simon Freeman, Conspiracy of Silence: The Secret Life of Anthony Blunt (London: Grafton, 1986), p. 207

  247 Dr P. Lousel to Sir Richard Maconachie, Director Talks, 14 March 1938, BBC Written Archives, Guy Burgess, Left Staff File L1/ 6/18

  248 Internal memorandum about the Munich crisis, BBC WAC file C41. The memorandum says Neville Chamberlain’s No. 10 adviser, Sir Horace Wilson, asked the corporation to ‘pay particular attention to opinions expressed in talks such as Harold Nicolson’s “The Past Week”’. During September, the memorandum records ‘consultation between the BBC and Whitehall became extremely close and news bulletins as a whole inevitably fell into line with government policy at this critical juncture’.

  249 BBC WAC R1 Contributors file 3A, 5 September 1938

  250 Driberg and Bradwell, Guy Burgess, pp. 44–46.

  251 Guy Burgess to DT (Director, Talks), part of conversation with Mr Churchill, 4 October 1938, BBC Written Archives Centre, L1/68/1

  252 ‘A memo from Burgess about Winston Churchill’, BBC, http://www.bbc.co.uk/archive/burgess/7705.shtml

  253 ‘Cambridge Five Spy Ring, Part 33 of 42’, FBI Records, http://vault.fbi.gov/Cambridge%20Five%20Spy%20Ring/Cambridge%20Five%20Spy%20Ring%20 Part%2033%20of%2042/view

  254 Some believe that Sir Joseph Ball, who ran the Conservative Party’s research department during the 1930s, had some hand in this. Until Isaiah Berlin revealed that Burgess had worked for the department for a period no obvious connection had been established.

  255 Its designation was ‘Section IX or D (allegedly for ‘Destruction’)’, Keith Jeffery, MI6: The History of the Secret Intelligence Service 1909–1949 (London: Bloomsbury, 2010), p. 320. An internal history written in 1945 said Grand adopted the designation ‘D’ for himself (see W. J. M. Mackenzie, The Secret History of SOE (London: St Ermin’s, 2000), p. 4; Mark Seaman, Special Operations Executive (London: Routledge, 2006), p. 1
0).

  256 Mackenzie, The Secret History of SOE, p. 13

  257 Burgess was not entirely inactive, however, as he had played his own discreet part during the Munich crisis by passing secret messages between the French and British governments via his Homintern contacts: Christopher Andrew and Oleg Gordievsky, KGB: The Inside Story of its Foreign Operations from Lenin to Gorbachev (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1990), p. 236; Driberg and Bradwell, Guy Burgess, pp. 40–41.

  258 Jeffery, MI6, p. 386

  259 The saga is revealed in the following: Driberg and Bradwell, Guy Burgess, p. 59; Verne Newton, The Butcher’s Embrace (London: Macdonald, 1991), pp. 19–20; Harold Nicolson, Diaries and Letters, 1939–1945, Volume 2 (London: Fontana Books, 1970), entry for 17 June 1940 (and unpublished diary, June 1940 at Balliol College archives); Yuri Modin, My Five Cambridge Friends (London: Headline, 1994), p. 83; TNA FO 371/24847/N6063G, Telegram 1488, ‘Burgess to “D” through “C”, 24 July 1940’; TNA FO 371/24847/N6063G, Telegram 1683, FO to Lord Lothian (British Ambassador, Washington), 27 July 1940; Michael Ignatieff, Isaiah Berlin: A Life (London: Vintage, 2011), Kindle locations 1874–1916; Isaiah Berlin (Henry Hardy, ed.), Flourishing: Letters 1928–1946 (London: Random House, 2012), Kindle locations 9371–9509). Miriam Rothschild then lived in Washington.

  260 Harold Nicolson, unpublished diary, 19 August 1940

  261 Lord Gladwyn, The Memoirs of Lord Gladwyn (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1972), p. 101

  262 TNA HS 8/334

  263 BBC Written Archives Centre, Caversham (WAC), L1/68/1, W R Baker, for General Establishment Officer to S D Charles, Ministry of Information 15 January 1941

  264 BBC WAC L1/68/1

  265 Christopher Andrew, The Defence of the Realm: The Authorized History of MI5 (London: Allen Lane, 2010), p. 270. Burgess ran an agent for MI5 – see: Nigel West (ed.), The Guy Liddell Diaries, Volume 1: 1939–1942 (London: Taylor and Francis, 2007), p. 174; and Volume 2: 1942–1945

  266 Andrew, The Defence of the Realm, p. 270

  267 Four of the Cambridge Five (Blunt, Burgess, Cairncross and Philby) fell under suspicion of being planted British double agents by NKVD officer Elena Modrzchinskaya: their information was considered to be too good, voluminous and consistent, arousing suspicions in Moscow that it was a plant. See Genrikh Borovik, The Philby Files (London: Little, Brown, 1994), Chapters 20 and 21; Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin, The Mitrokhin Archive (London: Allen Lane, 2000), pp. 112, 156–60, 207–208; Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB, pp. 334–7; Nigel West and Oleg Tsarev, Crown Jewels: The British Secrets at the Heart of the KGB Archives (London: HarperCollins, 1998), pp. 159–162; Nigel West and Oleg Tsarev (eds), Triplex: Secrets from the Cambridge Spies (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009), pp. 317–334

  268 Harold Nicolson unpublished diary, 6 May 1943

  269 Hailsham quotation taken from Dame Stella Rimington, Adventures in the BBC Archive, A Former Head of MI5 Investigates the Cambridge Spies, Radio 4 (first broadcast 8 November 2008), 56 minutes, http://www.bbc.co.uk/archive/cambridgespies/7816.shtml

  270 HL Deb 21 March 1989 vol. 505 cc. 581–648

  271 George Orwell, entry for 2 June 1942, The Orwell Diaries (London: Penguin, 2010), Kindle locations 8033–8068

  272 BBC Written Archives, March 28 1944, BBC WAC L1/68/1: Left Staff, Burgess, Guy

  273 David Graham in Rebels: Guy Burgess – A Portrait Of An Unlikely Spy, Radio 4 (first broadcast 5 October 1984), 27 minutes, http://www.bbc.co.uk/archive/cambridgespies/7811.shtml

  274 Peter Smollett was recruited and run as a sub-agent by Kim Philby, and shared with Anthony Blunt and Guy Burgess. This broke Moscow’s cardinal rule that one agent should not know the identity of any other agent.

  275 Miranda Carter, Anthony Blunt: His Lives (London: Macmillan, 2001), p. 457; Peter Wright with Paul Greengrass, Spycatcher (Melbourne: Heinemann Australia, 1987), pp. 242–243

  276 TNA INF 1/147, Smolka [Smollett] to Mrs Atkins, 2 August 1942

  277 Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB, p. 268; see also Andrew and Mitrokhin, The Mitrokhin Archive, pp. 158–9; Ian McLaine, Ministry of Morale (London: Allen & Unwin, 1979), pp. 202–3; Christopher Andrew, ‘Moscow’s Literary Agents’, The Times, 9 December 1994; Timothy Garton Ash, ‘Orwell’s List: Love, Death and Treachery’, The Guardian, 21 June 2003.

  278 BBC WAC, L1/68/1

  279 BBC WAC, L1/68/1

  280 West and Tsarev, Crown Jewels, pp. 149–150, 162

  281 See Jenny Rees, Looking for Mr Nobody: The Secret Life of Goronwy Rees (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1997) and Guy Liddell diary for 1951 (TNA KV4/473)

  282 Harold Nicolson, unpublished diary, 5 January 1944

  283 Michael Luke, David Tennant and the Gargoyle Years (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1991), p. 177

  284 An Old Etonian friend of Burgess and a wartime MI5 officer.

  285 Harold Acton, More Memoirs of an Aesthete (London: Faber & Faber, 2008), p. 87

  286 See, for instance, TNA FO 366/1392, Ridsdale to Minister (Richard Law) 1 March 1944

  287 TNA FO 954/23A, Ridsdale minute, 7 May 1943, Folio 196

  288 Ibid., folio 200, Ridsdale to Harvey (Eden’s principal private secretary), 21 May 1943

  289 Ibid., folio 227

  290 Ibid., folio 228

  291 Harold Nicolson unpublished diary entries for 26 January 1944 and 2 February 1944

  292 Various emails from Mary Pring (FCO) to Jeff Hulbert, March and April 2013. The document, which has yet to reach the National Archives, is described as ‘Extract[s] from Three minutes headed “G F De M Burgess” (all undated)’, Box 12, File 7.

  293 TNA FO 800/272, Pierson Dixon to Sir Orme Sargent, handwritten note dated 4 June 1946

  294 Churchill gave personal responsibility for MI5 to Eden in December 1943: Andrew, The Defence of the Realm, p. 309.

  295 BBC WAC L1/68/1

  296 Nicolson, Diaries and Letters, 1939–1945, Volume 2, entry for 26 February 1945

  297 Driberg and Bradwell, Guy Burgess, Appendix

  298 Record of a telephone conversation between the BBC and the Foreign Office, BBC, http://www.bbc.co.uk/archive/burgess/7723.shtml

  299 BBC WAC L1/68/1, Barnes note for staff file, 11 July 1944

  300 Stefan Berger and Norman LaPorte, ‘John Peet (1915–1988): An Englishman in the GDR’, History, vol. 89, no. 293 (January 2004), p. 49

  301 Donald Read, The Power of News: The History of Reuters, 2nd edn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), p. 441

  302 East German TV newsreel, ‘Der Augenzeuge’, copy held by Thomson Reuters archivist, seen by authors.

  303 Berger and LaPorte, ‘John Peet’. Peet delivered his statement in German; this extract is taken from the translation used by Berger and LaPorte. A slightly different translation appears in John Peet, The Long Engagement: Memoirs of a Cold War Legend (London: Fourth Estate, 1989), p. 185

  304 Peet, The Long Engagement, p. 50

  305 Kathleen McLaughlin, ‘British Reporter Quits the West’, New York Times, 12 June 1950

  306 Yuri Korolkov, ‘John Peet Crosses Over to Peace Camp’, Pravda,13 June 1950, p. 6

  307 Peet, The Long Engagement, p. 185

  308 Ibid., p. 1

  309 McLaughlin, ‘British Reporter Quits the West’

  310 Author’s interview with former Reuter correspondent Sandy Gall

  311 Michael Nelson, Castro and Stockmaster: A Life in Reuters (Leicester: Matador, 2011), p. 108

  312 Peet, The Long Engagement, p. 1

  313 Ibid.

  314 Ibid., p. 186

  315 Documents in Thomson Reuters archive, seen by author

  316 Peet, The Long Engagement, p. 186

  317 Nelson, Castro and Stockmaster, p. 109

  318 Ibid., p. 5

  319 Letter from Hubert Peet to Reuters in Thomson Reuters archive

  320 Peet, The Long Engagement, pp. 8–9

  321 Ibid., p. 11

  322 Ibid., p. 12

  323 Ibid.

&n
bsp; 324 Ibid., p. 6

  325 John Peet audio interview with Imperial War Museum

  326 Peet, The Long Engagement, p. 17

  327 Ibid., p. 19

  328 Ibid., p. 22

  329 Ibid., p. 26

  330 John Peet audio interview with Imperial War Museum

  331 Ibid.

  332 Ibid.

  333 Peet, The Long Engagement, p. 100

  334 Ibid., p. 141

  335 Read, The Power of News, p. 441

  336 Peet, The Long Engagement, p. 175

  337 Ibid., p. 180

  338 Ibid., p. 181

  339 Ibid. In Berger and LaPorte’s translation Keightley is misspelt as Keepley.

  340 McLaughlin, ‘British Reporter Quits the West’

  341 See publisher’s note at start of Peet, The Long Engagement

  342 Peet, The Long Engagement, p. 227

  343 Ibid., p. 2

  344 Ibid., p. 5

  345 Ibid., p. 186

  346 Documents in Thomson Reuters archive

  347 Elizabeth Paterson, Postcards from Abroad: Memories of P. E. N. (London: Sinclair Stevenson, 2001), p. 98

  348 Read, The Power of News, p. 443

  349 Derek Jameson, Touched by Angels (London: Ebury, 1988), p. 116

  350 Interview with Derek Jameson

  351 Read, The Power of News, p. 440

  352 Interview with Derek Jameson

  353 Read, The Power of News, p. 441

  354 Interview with Derek Jameson

  355 Read, The Power of News, p. 440

  356 Ibid. p. 441

  357 Peet, The Long Engagement, p. 189

  358 Ibid., photographs

  359 Berger and LaPorte, quoting Berliner Zeitung, ‘John Peet’, p. 56

  360 Ibid.

  361 Peet, The Long Engagement, photographs

  362 Berger and LaPorte, ‘John Peet’, p. 56

  363 Ibid.

  364 Ibid.

  365 McLaughlin, ‘British Reporter Quits the West’

  366 Berger and LaPorte, ‘John Peet’, p. 58

  367 Peet, The Long Engagement, p. 238

  368 Ibid., p. 239

  369 Nelson, Castro and Stockmaster, p. 109

  370 Interview with Sandy Gall, 2011