Their Trade Is Treachery: the Full Unexpurgated Truth About the Russian Penetration of the World's Secret Defences

by Chapman. Pincher

  • • •

  The ‘freelance’ investigators compiled a list of about forty instances, strongly suggesting that MI5 had been, and might still be, seriously penetrated. Much more impressive evidence was to accrue later. The list was shown to Hollis, by then director general of MI5, but he adamantly opposed any investigation of members of his staff, saying that the idea of setting up a special internal team to check on the leaks was ‘intolerable and would break morale’.

  One of the officers had the temerity to tell him that such a team would be welcomed by loyal members of the staff, with nothing to fear. Hollis, who had previously declined to introduce regular positive vetting of the MI5 staff, a routine that had become mandatory for other secret departments, ignored the remark. It could be argued that Hollis was motivated by loyalty to his service, but there are many who believe that his loyalty lay with another service.

  Suspicion of continuing Soviet penetration was strengthened in 1962 after Anatoli Golitsin, a senior KGB officer with a mass of documents and other information, defected to the CIA from the Soviet embassy in Helsinki. Among the many leads he provided (which will be discussed later), he revealed that the Soviet embassy in London had no ‘SK’ (for ‘Soviet Colony’) department. This is a group of KGB officers installed in almost every Russian embassy to ensure that there are no defectors from the ranks. Golitsin explained that the Russians had such an excellent source in MI5 that they could be confident of being warned of any likely defection in London. So, no SK officers were needed.

  He also reported that in the British department of the KGB in Moscow he had seen an index that had a section entitled ‘Material from the British security service’. It was recent material, secured long after Blunt or any spy previously suspected had left MI5.

  The detailed evidence of various spy cases, such as those of William Vassall and the Navy spy ring, provided further indication of day-to-day penetration of MI5 by Soviet intelligence. But it was not until a spectacular event in January 1963 that the suspicious officers were convinced that the spy they were seeking was still inside their organisation and as active as ever. This event was the defection of Kim Philby from Beirut to Russia in circumstances that have been rigorously concealed in spite of all that has been written about it.

  CHAPTER 2

  THE TRUTH ABOUT PHILBY

  SOON AFTER THE ‘runaway diplomats’, Donald Maclean and Guy Burgess, who had both served in Washington, defected to Russia in May 1951, senior officers in MI5 suspected that their Cambridge University friend, Kim Philby, was the Third Man who had provided the warning that Maclean was about to be interrogated on suspicion of being a Soviet spy. Their hunch was shared by the CIA, whose chief, General Bedell Smith, demanded Philby’s removal from Washington, where he had been the British secret service’s officer responsible for liaison with the CIA and, even more so, with the FBI.

  Philby’s colleagues in the secret service regarded the suspicion as quite unjustified and essentially an expression of MI5’s overall distrust of its sister service. They were dismayed when the director general of the secret service, Sir Stewart Menzies, seized on Philby’s tentative offer to resign and continued to believe in their friend’s innocence for another decade.

  In MI5, however, suspicion was strengthened when an opportunity to subject Philby to hostile interrogation arose in the autumn of 1951. Philby was told that a judicial inquiry into the Maclean– Burgess affair had been ordered and that he would be required to give evidence. The MI5 men, including Arthur Martin, an outstanding interrogator eventually named by Philby in his book My Silent War, could not wait to get at him.

  The main ‘judicial’ interrogation was carried out by Helenus Milmo, now a High Court judge, and the impression has been given that he made a hash of it, crudely blustering while Philby, ever the professional, remained relaxed, using his stammer to gain time to think. The tape recordings, which still exist, tell a different story. Milmo, who was a wartime MI5 officer, threw questions at which Philby spluttered, as well as stammered, while he so obviously tried to evade them.

  Milmo’s insuperable problem was that MI5 had no real evidence, only supposition, and Philby knew that so long as he continued to deny everything, however unconvincingly, he was safe. Philby continued this stonewalling when questioned by Jim Skardon, the MI5 interrogator who had broken Klaus Fuchs, the atomic spy. But, though Philby has been almost admired for his bland evasions, his performance was poor compared with that of the fragile-looking Anthony Blunt, who far more persuasively withstood eleven interrogations, starting in 1951.

  Philby was also assisted by friends, such as the late Sir Richard ‘Otto’ Clarke, a Cambridge contemporary who became a Whitehall mandarin. Clarke knew that Philby had been a communist, but when consulted in 1951, he told MI5 that he was sure Philby was ‘a calm, dependable Social Democrat’.

  Nevertheless, most of the MI5 officers with access to the results of what has become known as Philby’s ‘secret trial’ were satisfied that he was not only the Third Man but a long-term Soviet agent. The view at that time of the inscrutable Roger Hollis seems to be unknown. He must have been questioned about Philby because the two were opposite numbers for several years. Hollis headed the MI5 department responsible for overseeing Soviet and communist operations in Britain and the colonies, while Philby was involved with secret service operations against Russia outside Britain.

  As Philby recalled in his book, ‘We both served on the Joint Intelligence Sub-Committee and never failed to work out an agreed approach to present to the less well-informed representatives of the service departments and the Foreign Office.’ Apart from such professional meetings, it is unlikely that Hollis and Philby saw much of each other during the war. While Philby was based in St Albans and then in London, Hollis was at Blenheim Palace, in Woodstock near Oxford.

  Philby, who, it will be remembered, was in the secret service, not MI5, also suggested in his book that he had access to the MI5 archives at Blenheim – the registry where the secret files were kept. I have been assured that this was unlikely and that, even if he had been allowed to see certain MI5 files, he would certainly not have been permitted to borrow them. Philby’s suggestion could therefore be construed as a KGB insertion to protect Hollis, who, in 1968 when My Silent War appeared, was still alive and had not yet been interrogated. The Soviet defector, Gouzenko, had stated that the spy in MI5 called ‘Elli’ had been able to take out certain files from the registry. In 1968, Hollis was officially suspected of having been the culprit, but Philby’s claim offered an alternative explanation likely to be seized on by anyone anxious to clear Hollis.

  There was a further link between Hollis and Philby that has only recently come to light. Hollis had a brother called Mark who worked in Philby’s section, R5, dealing with overseas counter-espionage operations against the Soviet bloc. I have been assured by officers who knew Mark Hollis that no suspicion was ever attached to him. Perhaps it was because of his secret service work that Mark was never mentioned publicly when portraits of Sir Roger appeared after publication of this book. It was generally believed that Sir Roger had only two brothers, one a Member of Parliament, the other a bishop.

  The MI5 men lived in hopes that evidence against Philby would reach them one day, and the case remained open, if static. The secret service was reluctant to take any action, but it was eventually required to institute positive vetting – independent checking on the background and activities of new entrants – and this was made retrospective to cover existing officers and other staff. In the process, which did not begin until 1954, several officers were required to leave for such offences as having failed to declare previous connections with communism or for consorting with people they knew to be active communists. In 1955, a parliamentary question, posed by one of those MPs who seize on any subject likely to get their names into the newspapers, forced the Foreign Secretary of the day, Harold Macmillan, speaking on behalf of the secret service, to say that there was no evidence that Philby ha
d been disloyal. I have investigated the background to this statement. It was based by the law officers on the results of a ‘comfortable’ interview with Philby carried out by old colleagues from the secret service who were convinced that he was not a spy and wanted him cleared not only in the service’s interest but also for his own sake. The tape recordings show that he parried questions until acceptable answers were put into his mouth.

  MI5 also submitted a much more cautiously worded statement in which the word ‘evidence’ clearly meant ‘evidence which could be brought into a British court of law’. I have discussed this issue recently with Mr Macmillan, who is unrepentant about his speech, which effectively cleared Philby so that he could threaten libel proceedings against any newspaper that might have suggested that he had been the Third Man. Mr Macmillan was told by the law officers that Philby was almost certainly guilty, but he was unprepared, in the interests of individual liberty, to use the privilege of Parliament even to suggest an unproven situation regarding Philby, as MI5 wanted. He was not prepared to say in Parliament what he knew he would not dare to say outside.

  Consideration had also been given to the possibility that Philby might have defected if any suggestion was made that he might be guilty, for under the law the police would have had no power to stop him from flying anywhere he liked. So long as he remained in the country, MI5 could at least continue with its inquiries.

  The director general of MI5, then Sir Dick White, wrote to his counterpart in the secret service, Sir John ‘Sinbad’ Sinclair, warning him that, despite the parliamentary whitewash, the evidence against Philby still stood and that he should never be employed again in any position offering access to secret information.

  The secret service responded by reemploying Philby as an agent to secure information about Near East affairs from a base in Beirut. As cover, they induced The Observer and The Economist to use him as a foreign correspondent. Despite this, MI5’s warning was heeded, especially after White was transferred to become director general of the secret service in 1956. Philby was never given official access to secret information, though he may have wheedled some out of visiting colleagues who still believed in his integrity.

  Little was done on the Philby case inside MI5 because, after the whitewash, no resources were made available. This irritated those officers who ‘knew’ that Philby was a spy because of secret information that had reached them in 1949 following the brilliant deciphering of wartime coded radio signals between Moscow and London by American cryptographers. This showed that in 1945 there had been three highly valued agents in London with the cryptonyms (code-names) ‘Stanley’, ‘Hicks’ and ‘Johnson’. After the defection of Maclean and Burgess in 1951, it had become certain that ‘Hicks’ was Burgess. ‘Johnson’ was almost certainly Blunt – one of the reasons that he was repeatedly interrogated – while MI5 felt confident that ‘Stanley’ was Philby.

  This lead was suddenly strengthened in 1962 when the CIA sent over information it had secured from the debriefing of the KGB defector Anatoli Golitsin. The defector had described what the KGB Centre in Moscow called ‘The Ring of Five’ – five spies all recruited at English universities before the war and, contrary to usual practice, known to each other as Soviet agents.

  Golitsin had named Maclean and Burgess as two of them and said that the third, known as ‘Stanley’, had warned the other two in time for them to defect. He had been unable to name Philby in that connection but gave other clues to his identity. He had also told of a major KGB operation against certain ‘reactionary’ Arab nations in the late ’50s that had been based in Beirut. A former secret service man, called Philby, had been deeply involved in it.

  This regenerated interest in the case, but nothing could be done until a couple of months later, in July 1962, when the first real breakthrough came from a totally unexpected source, which, for reasons that will become apparent, has been concealed.

  Mrs Flora Solomon, a Jewish woman who formerly lived in Russia, where she had been a close friend of Kerensky, head of the provisional government of 1917, but was normally resident in London, was attending a cocktail party in Israel. She happened to say that she was extremely angry at the way Philby was slanting his articles in The Observer against the Israelis and in favour of the Arabs. He was supporting Nasser and Nasserite nationalists in South Yemen and elsewhere in the Arab world. ‘As usual, Kim is doing what his Russian controller tells him,’ she said. ‘I know that he’s always worked for the Russians.’

  When this was overheard by another visitor from England, Mrs Solomon was asked if she would make a statement to the security authorities in London. Reluctantly, she agreed, though she realised that her evidence would imply that she had known that Philby was a Soviet spy for many years and had failed to report it.

  Mrs Solomon, who is still alive at eighty-six, is well known in London as the founder of the famous welfare department of the Marks and Spencer chain store. Philby’s second wife, Aileen Furse, was personal assistant to Mrs Solomon, who probably introduced them and was a witness at their marriage, six years – and three children – later.

  When Mrs Solomon was interviewed by the MI5 head of Soviet counter-espionage, she described how Philby, an old friend, had taken her out to lunch before the Second World War while on brief leave from his job on The Times as a reporter on the fighting in Spain. Philby had told her that he was doing ‘a very dangerous job for peace, working for the Comintern’, while using his reporting job as cover. He needed help, and he asked her to join the ‘cause’. While Mrs Solomon said that she had refused to help him, she conceded that she had told him that he could always come to her for help if ever he was desperate and that she would keep his secret. Again with great reluctance, she agreed to give evidence against Philby if that became necessary.

  Under pressure, Hollis, by then director general of MI5, had to concede that there was now hard evidence with which to confront Philby and hopefully force a confession. Sir Dick White agreed that the prime purpose should be to secure information about the Ring of Five and their activities rather than to wreak revenge on Philby. After the 42-year prison sentence imposed on the secret service spy George Blake after he had confessed, it was obvious that Philby would not volunteer to return to London. Beirut was outside British jurisdiction, and the possibility of kidnapping him was never seriously considered. So it was decided to try to interrogate him there.

  The Attorney General, the late Sir John Hobson, was approached and, since Philby had been denied access to British secrets for eleven years, it was agreed that he could be offered immunity from prosecution, provided that he admitted to having been a spy, would provide checkable proof of his cooperation with the British security authorities during further interrogations in Beirut and would then agree to return to London for long debriefing in detail. Because it was known that Philby had sent many British agents to their deaths behind the Iron Curtain, it was considered essential that the offer of immunity should always be kept secret, in view of the domestic political consequences, particularly in Parliament.

  The MI5 officer most suitable for the task of making this offer was Arthur Martin, who had been present during the Milmo interrogations of Philby in 1951 and, as a Soviet counter-espionage specialist, knew all the details of the case. Martin was therefore selected, but after Hollis had been to see White at secret service headquarters, he was told that a secret service man would be going instead. This was Nicholas Elliott, a former close friend of Philby who had previously believed in his innocence but had become convinced of his guilt. Elliott had volunteered to confront Philby, and White had supported him, Hollis explained.

  The secret service was anxious to keep the Philby affair away from MI5 and within its own confines as far as it possibly could. Hollis, who had put up no resistance on MI5’s behalf, explained to his men that Elliott, an old colleague who was very angry at having been betrayed, might induce Philby to confess by playing on his sense of decency. This produced guffaws from Hollis’s officers, w
ho knew of Philby’s sense of decency. This was typified by his behaviour when called to the telephone from a cocktail party in Beirut in December 1957. Aileen, the wife he had abandoned, had been seriously ill in Britain, and Philby returned to the throng with a wide smile and the announcement ‘You must all drink to my great news. Aileen’s dead!’

  It was decided that Elliott should stage his interrogation in January 1963. He himself took every precaution to keep his mission secret, and only seven others were supposed to know about it. Nevertheless, there is no doubt that Philby was forewarned of it. Inquiries showed that, of those who knew of the plan to confront Philby, only two were under suspicion in connection with previous disasters. They were Hollis and Mitchell.

  A check made by MI5 later showed that a very special KGB officer had visited Beirut in May 1962, shortly after the news that Golitsin had strengthened the suspicion against Philby. His name was Yuri Modin, and during his service in London before 1951 he had run the Ring of Five. His visit to Beirut was his first time outside the Soviet Union for eight years, and there is little doubt that he saw Philby and told him about Golitsin’s statement, which he could only have heard about from a British or a CIA source. Neither Philby nor Modin needed to worry much at that stage because both knew that the defector’s evidence was thin and inadmissible in a British court even if Golitsin was willing to appear as a witness, which was most unlikely. But the evidence given by Flora Solomon was a different matter, and it could hardly be a coincidence that, soon after the British security authorities had received it and decided to act on it, Modin returned to Beirut, presumably alerted via a British source, for the CIA had not been told about it.

  His mission was almost certainly to warn Philby of the new and more potent danger and to discuss plans for dealing with it. This could not possibly have been left to the local KGB chief in Beirut, who would then have been able to surmise that there had been a leak to Moscow from London. This could have prejudiced the London source, and the Centre would go to any lengths to protect that.