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

by Chapman. Pincher

  Few of Blunt’s former colleagues among those I have met wanted to take revenge on him. I sincerely believe that, if a memorial service were eventually to be held for Kim Philby, there would be a fair turnout of those former colleagues still alive.

  It would seem that those who have spent years inside the shadowy world of deception and counter-deception come to appreciate the dangers of being ‘netted’ or compromised and, having escaped themselves, feel sympathy for those who were less fortunate.

  As I anticipated, I have been censured for naming dead men who cannot defend themselves, yet it would have been quite legitimate for me to have embarked on a biography of Sir Roger Hollis, for example. If, while pursuing the necessary researches, I had learned about what must have been the most traumatic years of his life, culminating in his interrogation as a suspected KGB agent, would I have been justified in suppressing it in the book because he was no longer around to defend himself? Many biographers have faced a similar problem and have resolved it by honestly telling all.

  As regards the others whose treachery has been proved, the damage they must have caused to their own countries and to their countries’ allies calls for public censure, whatever the hurt to their relatives.

  The damage that must have accrued to the United Kingdom through the Soviet penetration of the British security and intelligence services is all too obvious. Anything that weakens Britain’s defence capabilities also automatically damages NATO as a whole. In addition, the Soviet spies operating against Britain also inflicted specific damage on particular allies, the United States being unquestionably the most important in this respect.

  While the need-to-know principle was generally applied on both sides of the Atlantic – so much so that Robert Kennedy, when Attorney General, had great difficulty in inducing John McCone, then CIA chief, to show him certain CIA documents – the relationship concerning the mutual interchange of secret information on intelligence and counter-intelligence was so intimate that little was withheld for long. As a result, there can be no doubt that Philby, Maclean, Blunt and others betrayed many American secrets and prejudiced many American operations: Philby and Maclean were the most damaging known spies in that respect because of their close connections with US interests while working in Washington.

  Maclean did far more than supply the Russians with diplomatic and political information concerning secret Anglo–American exchanges on the North Atlantic Pact and other matters concerning the creation of NATO. He was at meetings concerned with secret nuclear affairs, such as the availability of uranium ores, and had a pass to the headquarters of the Atomic Energy Commission, providing the privilege of entry to various departments without need for an escort.

  In spite of Mrs Thatcher’s attempts to allay public disquiet in Britain following the disclosures in this book, most of the MI5 and secret service officers of my acquaintance, who were in the midst of affairs at the relevant time, remain convinced that there was a ‘mole’ at a high level in MI5. I find that this is also the firm view of former CIA officers who were serving at the height of the fears entertained by the Fluency Committee. As George Carver put it to me, ‘Many things not explicable become so if there was a spy at high level in MI5.’

  If Hollis was the culprit, his activities, spread over nearly thirty years, must have been extremely damaging both to Britain and the United States. There is one possible aspect that might have had enormous impact on the efficiency of the CIA and the FBI: as books like David Martin’s Wilderness of Mirrors have pointed out, James Angleton became convinced that the CIA had been penetrated by one or more Soviet ‘moles’ inserted by the KGB. This belief arose from statements by defectors who had proved their good faith, like Anatoli Golitsin, but also from definite instances of leakages of highly secret information to the other side, as evidenced by radio intercepts and other feedback sources. While some low-level ‘moles’ were detected and rooted out, those at a high level, if they ever existed, were never found. David Martin and others have suggested that the belief in the existence of such high-level ‘moles’ was the result of a KGB disinformation exercise designed to cause distrust and disruption in the CIA.

  There is no doubt that the ‘mole hunt’ led to the departure of totally innocent officers from the CIA, and this has been recognised by the rehabilitation of some of them through financial arrangements organised by Congress.

  Some of Angleton’s many friends and admirers in the British secret services believe that his possibly excessive suspicion is a reaction to his completely misplaced trust in Philby when the latter was liaison man in Washington, but the judgement of almost everybody else was equally at fault in that respect. This suspicion, looked on by others to have been too Machiavellian, appears to have been the prime cause of Angleton’s resignation following a move by William Colby, then Director of the CIA, to secure it. As a result, it has even been suggested that Golitsin was really a loyal KGB officer posing as a defector to promote the suspicions inside the CIA and so undermine it.

  My inquiries convince me that Golitsin provided so much information that proved to be correct and thereby did so much damage to the Soviet cause that he was a genuine defector. This is also the view of George Carver, who has read the documents concerning Golitsin’s record and has a reputation, both inside and outside the CIA, for perceptive and objective judgement. The Senate Intelligence Committee appears to agree. Its members take the view that Golitsin’s factual knowledge was excellent. It was his analysis of raw intelligence that was often faulty.

  He also suffered from the fault of all defectors that, as they begin to dredge deep in their memories, their recall is often in error, and they may even begin to convince themselves that old suspicions that they entertained or heard about were facts. At worst, they may be driven to invent things to convince their interrogators that they are still of value. This problem was excellently described to me by Sir Maurice Oldfield, a wine lover, when we were celebrating his retirement from the secret service over dinner: ‘The first pressings from a defector almost always have the most body. The third pressings are suspect.’

  Golitsin gave information concerning a ‘mole’ in the CIA’s Directorate for Plans who had sent certain reports, which he had seen and partly remembered. The defector also said that he knew that the ‘mole’ had contacted a KGB controller in London on a date that he also recalled. This led to the identification of a suspect against whom nothing could ever be proved but who was nevertheless required to leave the agency.

  While the suspected high-level ‘moles’ in the CIA may, in fact, have been mythical, the haemorrhage of secrets was very real. So could it be possible that the leakages of CIA information really originated in MI5, to which they had been passed on this interchange-of-information basis? I put this possibility to James Angleton in writing, but he declined to comment on it. George Carver thinks that some leakage of CIA information could have occurred this way but by no means all of it.

  I have established that Golitsin had little to contribute about the existence of any high-level ‘mole’ in MI5 when he was debriefed in London. He had no information to offer concerning Hollis. Though Fluency Committee files with Hollis’s name blanked out were shown to him, he could offer no guidance.

  While US interests have undoubtedly been damaged by British treachery and incompetence, some share of the blame lies on the American side. Fuchs, the atomic spy, did most of his spying in the United States using American nationals like Harry Gold as couriers. Maclean and Philby were both contacting their Soviet case officers regularly while in Washington, under the nose of the FBI. There have been some very bad all-American security breaches, which probably damaged British as well as NATO interests. The worst of these was perpetrated by Sgt. Robert Lee Johnson of the US Army, when he enabled the KGB to see documents that he had rifled from Armed Forces Courier Centre near Paris in the early ’60s. William Martin and Bernon Mitchell, the National Security Agency officers who defected to Russia in 1960, may have been as damaging
as Burgess and Maclean.

  I have already mentioned some more recent American instances of KGB penetration from which no western intelligence agency of consequence has been free. It is partly because of such home-grown cases that the US authorities have been so forgiving about British lapses, but there are other, more practical reasons. British intelligence and counter-intelligence still make their contributions, and the American authorities find them valuable.

  Denigrators of the British secret service delight in telling a true story that originated with the Rev. Halsey Colchester, a former secret service officer who felt the call of religion and left to take Holy Orders in 1972. While serving as a prison visitor, he talked with a thief who mentioned that he came from the Elephant and Castle, in south London. Colchester remarked that he, too, had worked there. ‘Were you in Century House?’ the convict asked, referring to the secret service Headquarters, which is located in that area. When Colchester admitted that he was, the thief said, ‘I thought I recognised you. I was often in and out of Century House – as a labourer, doing repair work or pretending to. All you need to get into Century House is to carry a ladder and a bag of tools. But it was a waste of time. There’s nothing in Century House worth nicking.’

  In fact, there is plenty in Century House that the KGB would like to steal, for agents on the ground are still important. Satellites can reveal little about the long-term political and military intentions of an adversary. An agent or a defector-in-place can. More important, the United Kingdom provides territorial facilities for intercept installations for the National Security Agency, which runs in close harness with Britain’s counterpart, Government Communications Headquarters. There are also, of course, nuclear and air-base facilities considered essential for the quick reinforcement of the American forces based in Europe.

  Britain benefits most, perhaps, through the regular receipt of US reconnaissance satellite photographs and other information, having no such capability of her own. Except for occasions immediately after a security lapse when feelings on either side may run high, my experience over many years indicates that both the British and American defence authorities find the joint interchange to be crucial to the western alliance and are loath to do anything to disrupt it. A potent sign of its value is the continuing effort made by the Soviet Union to drive any kind of wedge between Britain and America, their current efforts being concentrated on encouraging the disruptive activities of militant politicians of Britain’s far left, who are making the expulsion of American installations a plank in their political platform.

  Farther north, the reaction in Canada to this book was intense because of the close relations between the Canadian and British security and intelligence authorities, and because of specific instances of apparent treachery involving Canada.

  Attention focused itself on aspects of the Canadian spy trials and other events consequent on the defection of the Soviet cypher clerk Igor Gouzenko from the Russian embassy in Ottawa in 1945. Gouzenko is still alive, still in hiding and, after thirty-six years, still afraid of being assassinated by the KGB.

  Some newspapers were at particular pains to confirm or deny that Gouzenko had been interviewed by Hollis on behalf of MI5 as I assert. It was quickly proved that Hollis had been sent to Ottawa, and, as I have described, Gouzenko is convinced that Hollis questioned him and submitted a false report to London. Nevertheless, Sir William Stephenson, ‘The Man called Intrepid’, whom I have mentioned in connection with the Ellis case, denied that Hollis had ever actually interrogated Gouzenko. Sir William had been intimately involved in preventing Gouzenko from falling into the hands of the Russians, who were searching for him, but his memory is no longer reliable. He is eighty-five and has suffered two serious strokes.

  The controversy has been complicated by the discovery that a number of crucial documents dealing with the Gouzenko defection are missing from the Canadian archives. In addition the Canadian government has pursued a hush-up policy on the subject. The confidential papers of the report of the royal commission set up to investigate the espionage ring disclosed by Gouzenko were due for publication in 1977 under the usual thirty years’ classification rule but the Trudeau government decided to keep them secret for a further ten years. There have also been questions in the Canadian Parliament suggesting political collusion between the British and Canadian governments over information relating to the Hollis affair.

  The official Canadian reticence may be partly due to diplomatic pressure from the British government and its security services because full disclosure would damage the reputations of certain people who are still alive. There is certainly such reluctance on the part of the Canadian authorities on the grounds that official disclosure could damage Canadian reputations. For this reason it seems unlikely that a counter-espionage operation called ‘Operation Featherbed’ mounted between 1958 and 1972 will ever be officially reported as it is believed to name many prominent agents of Soviet influence.

  For differing reasons various individuals in both Britain and Canada have gone out of their way to throw doubt on the Hollis connection with the Gouzenko revelations by attacking my information, which had not been made public before, that Gouzenko warned Hollis about a Soviet spy inside MI5 with the GRU codename ‘Elli’. Much has been made of the fact that one of the members of the Canadian spy ring, an Englishwoman called Kathleen Willsher, also had the codename ‘Elli’ or ‘Ellie’. It has been argued that the Russians would never have given the same cryptonym to two spies. Yet this has often been Soviet practice when the spies belong to different rings and can easily be differentiated in radio traffic by some prefix or number. The source book on the spy Richard Sorge by Sir William Deakin and G. R. Storry describes how the Red Army’s spy ring in China in the ’30s contained two agents each codenamed ‘Alex’, these being referred to in the index of the book as ‘Shanghai Alex’ and plain ‘Alex’. The British atomic spy Nunn May, who was in the Canadian spy ring, was given the cryptonym ‘Alek’. At the same time, in the Lucy Ring in Switzerland, the Russians had a spy called ‘Alex’.

  ‘Alex’, ‘Alek’ and ‘Elli’ are conveniently short names to transmit by radio, and the Russians at the Centre in Moscow would not be likely to confuse a man known as ‘Elli’ working inside MI5 in Britain with a woman called ‘Elli’ sitting in the registry in the High Commission in Ottawa.

  Gouzenko did not mention the name ‘Elli’ when he wrote his memoirs. The Canadian authorities would not have allowed him to do so, any more than they would have let him name Hollis, for in those days the identities of members of the security and intelligence services were held secret.

  However, when interviewed in Canada recently by the Toronto Globe and Mail, Gouzenko recalled that the MI5 spy had indeed also been called ‘Elli’. As I have recorded, he gave the same assurance to me.

  I have little doubt that Canada continues to be of special interest to the KGB because, as the former Soviet spy Alexander Foote has described it, Canada is ‘the Clapham Junction of espionage – a way into the United States or a way out into Europe’. The Russians have found it all too easy to secure false Canadian passports for their spies. Rudolph Abel, who had so many other names, entered the United States via Canada on a Canadian passport, though he was a Soviet citizen of British birth. Lonsdale, the alias of Konon Molody, assumed the identity of a dead Canadian of that name.

  On the other side of the world, publication of my findings caused an immediate media and political sensation in Australia and New Zealand because of the connections of Hollis and Ellis with the security and intelligence services of those countries.

  Communist activity in Australia became increasingly threatening in the years immediately after the Second World War, with communist-controlled unions inflicting great and deliberate damage to the economy. Australia had been singled out by the Stalin regime for political penetration, and the KGB was enjoying increasing success. The Prime Minister of the day, Ben Chifley, therefore set up the Australian Security Intelligence Orga
nisation (ASIO) to counter the communist drive, which was so obviously being assisted by money and professional expertise from Moscow. Britain’s interest was intensified because of post-war decisions to transfer a great deal of military research on missiles, aircraft and nuclear weapons to Australia, which had the space for such work to be carried out remote from towns and, therefore, in greater secrecy. It was a grandiose concept, which was to come to little beyond vast, wasteful expenditure, but in the early ’50s great hopes were placed in it.

  Sir Percy Sillitoe, the director general of MI5, was sent out to Australia to convince Chifley that ASIO should be set up along the same lines as MI5. To assist in this endeavour, to which Chifley agreed, MI5 officers were dispatched from London, and among them was Roger Hollis. Understandably, much was made of Hollis’s part when news of the deep suspicions concerning him reached the Australian newspapers. Hollis had not only given advice but had hand-picked some of the key officers for the Australian service. There was reasonable concern as to whether some of these had been selected because they were KGB agents.

  There was a further reason why the setting up of an effective counter-intelligence service in Australia was essential to Britain’s interests. The American ‘Bride’ traffic had turned up the names of Soviet agents working in Australian government services. These agents were clearly being controlled from the Soviet embassy in Canberra, which was securing secret information from the Department of External Affairs and other sources. Following this discovery, the United States was opposed to sharing certain sensitive secrets with Britain in case some of them might be passed to Australia because of the joint British– Australian defence ventures. By helping Australia to establish ASIO on a sound basis, the British government hoped to convince the Americans that the Australians were more secure.

  If Hollis had been a Soviet ‘mole’, then the establishment of ASIO was also in the KGB’s interest because any improved flow of American secrets to Britain meant that some of it would filter through to him and to any ‘moles’ he might have insinuated into ASIO.