The Sword and the Shield

by Christopher Andrew

  32. French cryptanalysts were unable to exploit the intelligence on Enigma provided by Schmidt. The first steps in the breaking of Enigma were made by Polish military cryptanalysts with whom the Deuxième Bureau shared Schmidt’s cipher material. The results achieved by the Poles were passed on to the British on the eve of the Second World War, Garlinski, Intercept, chs. 2, 3; Andrew, Secret Service, pp. 628-32.

  33. vol. 7, ch. 9, para. 30. Neither Lemoine’s name nor his codename, JOSEPH, appears in Bystroletov’s 1995 SVR hagiography, which, however, confirms that “In the period between 1930 and 1936, whilst working with another agent, Bystroletov… established operational contact with a member of French military intelligence. He received from him Austrian cipher material and later Italian and Turkish cipher material and even secret documents from Hitler’s Germany.” (Samolis (ed.), Veterany Vneshnei Razvedki Rossii, p. 20.) It is clear from this censored account that Bystroletov’s fellow illegal Ignace Reiss (alias Ignace Poretsky), with whom he shared the running of JOSEPH, remains an unperson in SVR historiography because of his later defection; he is referred to only as “another agent.” There is no mention of JOSEPH in the account of Bystroletov’s career in West and Tsarev, The Crown Jewels.

  34. The file noted by Mitrokhin identifies OREL only as Lemoine’s boss in the Deuxième Bureau; the Center may not have known his real identity (vol. 7, ch. 9, para. 30). Reiss was known to Lemoine and Bertrand as “Walter Scott.” A Deuxième Bureau photograph, almost certainly taken without Reiss’s knowledge, shows him at a meeting with Lemoine and Bertrand at Rotterdam in 1935 (Paillole, Notre espion chez Hitler, illustration facing p. 161).

  35. vol. 7, ch. 9.

  36. Paillole, Notre espion chez Hitler, p. 132. Which side provided what is generally unclear. Mitrokhin’s notes, however, record that OREL (Bertrand) handed Reiss a new Italian cipher in November 1933.

  37. vol. 7, ch. 9, para. 18. The decision to award Bystroletov his inscribed rifle is recorded in KGB files as order no. 1042 of September 17, 1932.

  38. The date of Oldham’s resignation is given in his “Statement of Services” in the 1933 Foreign Office List.

  39. vol. 7, ch. 9.

  40. vol. 7, ch. 11, para. 56.

  41. vol. 7, ch. 9.

  42. Foreign Office List, 1934. Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB, p. 196.

  43. vol. 7, ch. 9.

  44. See below, chapter 3.

  45. vol. 7, ch. 9.

  46. Foreign Office List, 1934. Oake’s “Statement of Services” underlined his humble position. Whereas such statements for established staff gave full name, date of birth and a career summary, those for “temporary clerks” such as Oake gave only surname, initials and date of entry into the Foreign Office.

  47. vol. 7, ch. 9, para. 20.

  48. Foreign Office List, 1934.

  49. Cornelissen, De GPOe op de Overtoom, pp. 156-7.

  50. vol. 7, ch. 9, para. 22. King may or may not have believed Pieck’s story that the money he received for his documents came from a Dutch banker anxious for inside information on international relations; Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB, p. 197.

  51. West and Tsarev, The Crown Jewels, p. 94.

  52. vol. 7, ch. 14, item 1; k-4,200.

  53. Agabekov, OGPU, pp. 151-2, 204, 237-40.

  54. vol. 7, ch. 14, item 1; k-4,200. Akselrod had previously used an Austrian passport in the name of “Friedrich Keil” (Agabekov, OGPU, pp. 240-2) and may well have used the same false identity in Italy. Significantly, the SVR version of Akselrod’s early career omits all mention of his membership of Poale Zion. The KGB tradition that Soviet intelligence heroes were untainted by Zionism appears to be preserved by SVR historians. Primakov et al., Ocherki Istorii Rossiyskoi Vneshnei Razvedki, vol. 3, pp. 158-9.

  55. Primakov et al., Ocherki Istorii Rossiyskoi Vneshnei Razvedki, vol. 3, ch. 13. The original text of the Foreign Office records of the talks with Hitler, Litvinov, Beck, Benes and Mussolini are published in Medlicott et al. (eds.), Documents on British Foreign Policy 1919-1939, 2nd series, vol. 12, pp. 703-46, 771-91, 803-10, 812-17; vol. 13, pp. 477-84; vol. 14, pp. 329-33. The version of the record of Simon’s and Eden’s talks with Hitler given to Stalin consisted of translated extracts rather than the full Foreign Office document. The same probably applies to the records given to Stalin of Eden’s talks with Litvinov, Beck, Benes and Mussolini, which are not yet accessible.

  56. Constantini may well not have been the only source for the document. The Foreign Office record of Simon’s and Eden’s talks with Hitler, also in March 1935, was provided by both King and Constantini.

  57. Eden’s meeting with Stalin took place in the Kremlin on March 30, 1935, following his talks with Litvinov during the previous two days. His telegram on the talks to the Foreign Office records that a copy was sent to the Rome embassy. Medlicott et al. (eds.), Documents on British Foreign Policy, 1919-1939, 2nd series, vol. 12, pp. 766-9.

  58. Medlicott et al. (eds.), Documents on British Foreign Policy, 1919-1939, 2nd series, vol. 12, p. 820.

  59. On Eden’s policy on the Soviet Union and collective security, see Carlton, Anthony Eden, p. 63.

  60. See below, chapter 3.

  61. The report by a committee headed by Sir John Maffey concluded that British interests in and around Ethiopia were not sufficient to justify opposition to Italian conquest. Mussolini’s decision to publish it in February 1936, at a time when the British government was considering oil sanctions against Italy, caused predictable embarrassment in the Foreign Office. Dilks, “Flashes of Intelligence,” pp. 107-8. Andrew, Secret Service, pp. 567-8. There is no mention of the Italian publication of the Maffey report in the two accounts of Constantini’s career based on authorized access to selected material from his file: West and Tsarev, The Crown Jewels, ch. 5; Primakov et al., Ocherki Istorii Rossiyskoi Vneshnei Razvedki, vol. 3, ch. 13.

  62. According to Mitrokhin’s notes on KGB files, Francesco Constantini lost his job at the British embassy in 1936 (vol. 7, ch. 14, item 1). The current SVR version of his career claims that Constantini was sacked in 1931. (West and Tsarev, The Crown Jewels, ch. 5; Primakov et al., Ocherki Istorii Rossiyskoi Vneshnei Razvedki, vol. 3, ch. 13.) In Mitrokhin’s notes Constantini’s codename appears as DUDLEN—probably an error of transcription for DUDLEY.

  63. Andrew, Secret Service, pp. 568-9.

  64. [Valentine Vivian], “Report on Measures to Enhance the Security of Documents, etc., in H. M. Embassy, Rome (February 20, 1937), PRO FO 850/2 Y775. This report, though not its authorship, was first revealed in Dilks, “Flashes of Intelligence,” pp. 107ff. On Vivian’s investigation in Rome and his authorship of this report, see Andrew, Secret Service, pp. 568-71, 771 n. 102.

  65. Andrew, Secret Service, pp. 571-2.

  66. Interview by Christopher Andrew with Lord Gladwyn (who, as Gladwyn Jebb, had served at the Rome embassy in the years up to the Ethiopian war), broadcast on Timewatch, BBC2 (July 10, 1984).

  67. Andrew, Secret Service, p. 572.

  68. The exact nature of the Centre’s confused suspicions about Francesco Constantini at the height of the Great Terror in 1937 are unclear. Mitrokhin’s one-sentence summary of the suspicions recorded in DUNCAN’s file reads as follows: “He was in contact with the OVRA [Italian intelligence], was engaged in extortion, and the documents were probably supplied by the Special [intelligence] Services” (vol. 7, ch. 14, item 1. Cf. West and Tsarev, The Crown Jewels, ch. 5; Primakov et al., Ocherki Istorii Rossiyskoi Vneshnei Razvedki, vol. 3, ch. 13).

  69. “Mrs. Petrov’s Statement Concerning Her Past Intelligence Work” (May 15, 1954), CRS A6283/XR1/14, Petrov papers, Australian Archives, Canberra.

  70. As chairman of the Petrograd Cheka, Boky reported on October 15, 1918 that 800 individuals had been shot and 6,229 arrested. k-9,218.

  71. Petrovs, Empire of Fear, pp. 129-31.

  72. vol. 7, ch. 1, para. 13.

  73. An official Soviet collection of intelligence documents for the period 1938 to 1941 include
s a limited and far from comprehensive selection of (mainly German, Italian, Japanese and Turkish) intercepts; Stepashin et al. (eds.), Organy Gosudarstvennoi Bezopastnosti SSSR v Velikoi Otechestvennoi Voine: Sbornik Dokumentov, vols. 1 and 2.

  74. Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB, pp. 237-42.

  75. British interwar codebreakers were able to break all French diplomatic ciphers until 1935 (Andrew, Secret Service, p. 375). Given the classified French diplomatic cipher material supplied to Bystroletov by LAROCHE, it is barely conceivable that Boky’s unit was entirely defeated by French diplomatic traffic.

  76. Degras (ed.), Documents on Soviet Foreign Policy, vol. 3, p. 224. Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB, pp. 194-5. Though unusual, such public allusions to codebreaking were not unknown between the wars. In the 1920s, two British foreign secretaries and several other ministers had referred publicly to British success in breaking Soviet codes. Andrew, Secret Service, chs. 9, 10.

  77. Andrew, Secret Service, pp. 471, 573.

  78. Orlov, A Handbook of Intelligence and Guerrilla Warfare, p. 10. Costello and Tsarev, Deadly Illusions, p.

  90. Fursenko and Naftali, “Soviet Intelligence and the Cuban Missile Crisis,” p. 66.

  79. Primakov et al., Ocherki Istorii Rossiyskoi Vneshnei Razvedki, vol. 3, pp. 6, 161, 245.

  80. The Foreign Office record of the meeting, held on March 25-6, 1935, is printed in Medlicott et al. (eds.), Documents on British Foreign Policy 1919-1939, 2nd series, vol. 12, pp. 703-45. In the course of the meeting Hitler suggested an Anglo-German naval agreement with a 100:35 ratio in favor of the Royal Navy. This formed the basis of an agreement concluded in London on June 18, 1935.

  81. The abbreviated Russian translation of the Foreign Office record of the talks is published as an appendix to Primakov et al., Ocherki Istorii Rossiyskoi Vneshnei Razvedki, vol. 3, pp. 461-7. An editorial note (appendix, n. 111) asserts that, by his statement on Austria, Simon “opened the path to the Anschluss.”

  82. Primakov et al., Ocherki Istorii Rossiyskoi Vneshnei Razvedki, vol. 3, p. 6.

  83. Primakov et al., Ocherki Istorii Rossiyskoi Vneshnei Razvedki, vol. 3, p. 155.

  Chapter Four

  The Magnificent Five

  1. Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB, p. 214. Primakov et al., Ocherki Istorii Rossiyskoi Vneshnei Razvedki, vol. 3, p. 19.

  2. “Nationale für ordentliche Hörer der philosophischen Fakultät”: entries for Arnold Deutsch, 1923-7; “Rigorosenakt des Arnold Deutsch,” 1928, no. 9929, with cv by Deutsch; records of Deutsch’s 1928 PhD examination. Archives of University of Vienna.

  3. vol. 7, chs. 9, 10.

  4. Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB, pp. 214-15.

  5. Sharaf, Fury on Earth.

  6. Wilhelm Reich, Sexualerregung und Sexualbefriedigung, the first publication in the series Schriften der Sozialistischen Gesellschaft für Sexualberatung und Sexualforschung in Wien, carries the note “Copyright 1929 by Münster-Verlag (Dr. Arnold Deutsch), Wien II.” When he later wrote a classified memoir for NKVD files, Deutsch seems to have considered it imprudent to mention his previous close association with the sex-pol movement and Reich, who by then was engaged in a somewhat bizarre program of research on human sexual behavior. There is no mention of Reich either in Mitrokhin’s notes on the Deutsch file or in the two works by authors given some access to it by the SVR: Costello and Tsarev, Deadly Illusions, and West and Tsarev, The Crown Jewels. The 1997 SVR official history also makes no mention of Deutsch’s involvement with Reich or the sex-pol movement in its hagiographic chapter on him; Primakov et al., Ocherki Istorii Rossiyskoi Vneshnei Razvedki, vol. 3, ch. 1.

  7. Viennese police reports on Deutsch of March 25 and April 27, 1934, ref. Z1.38.Z.g.p./34, Dokumentationsarchiv des Österreichischen Widerstandes, Vienna.

  8. vol. 7, ch. 9, para. 10; ch. 10, para. 1. The illegal resident under whom Deutsch served in France was Fyodor Yakovlevich Karin, codenamed JACK.

  9. Deutsch’s address and profession as “university lecturer” are given on the birth certificate of his daughter, Ninette Elizabeth, born on May 21, 1936. Further information from residents of Lawn Road Flats.

  10. vol. 7, ch. 9, para. 10. London University Archives contain no record of Deutsch as either research student or lecturer, probably because he was involved only on a part-time basis.

  11. Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB, pp. 214-15. vol. 7, ch. 9.

  12. vol. 7, ch. 10, para. 24.

  13. vol. 7, ch. 10, para. 1. The files noted by Mitrokhin make clear that Deutsch was the first to devise this recruitment strategy.

  14. A similar stroke of chance explains why Cambridge produced more British codebreakers than Oxford in both world wars. The Director of Naval Education in 1914, Sir Alfred Ewing, was a former professor of engineering at Cambridge. He recruited three Fellows of his former college, King’s, who themselves became recruiters a quarter of a century later. In the Second World War, one third of the King’s fellowship served in the wartime SIGINT agency at Bletchley Park—a far higher proportion than those recruited from any other Oxbridge college.

  15. vol. 7, ch. 10, para. 2. Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB, pp. 209-13. Costello and Tsarev, Deadly Illusions, pp. 125-30.

  16. Page, Leitch and Knightley, Philby, ch. 5; Knightley, Philby, ch. 3.

  17. vol. 7, ch. 9, para. 11; ch. 10, para. 2. Costello and Tsarev, Deadly Illusions, fail to identify EDITH as an agent recruited by Deutsch.

  18. vol. 7, ch. 9, para. 11. Cf. Costello and Tsarev, Deadly Illusions, pp. 133-7.

  19. Costello and Tsarev, Deadly Illusions, p. 136.

  20. vol. 7, ch. 10.

  21. The text of the report on Deutsch’s first meeting with Philby, sent to the Center by the London illegal resident, Ignati Reif, is published in Borovik, The Philby Files, pp. 38-40. Cf. Costello and Tsarev, Deadly Illusions, p. 137.

  22. Borovik, The Philby Files, p. 29.

  23. The exception was Philby, whose lack of attention to his studies earned him a third in part I of the Historical Tripos, followed by an upper second in part II Economics. Burgess gained a first in part I History but was ill during part II and awarded an aegrotat (the unclassed honors awarded to those unable to sit their examinations for medical reasons).

  24. Cairncross, When Polygamy was Made a Sin.

  25. Cairncross quotes Greene’s letter to him in a postscript to his book La Fontaine Fables and Other Poems.

  26. vol. 7, ch. 9 confirms the names of the illegal residents identified (with photographs) in Costello and Tsarev, Deadly Illusions.

  27. Costello and Tsarev, Deadly Illusions, p. 132 and passim.

  28. This claim appears in Orlov’s file; vol. 5, ch. 7. In reality, Orlov did not meet Philby until Deutsch introduced him in Paris in 1937, a few months before Orlov’s defection; West and Tsarev, The Crown Jewels, p. 110.

  29. Costello and Tsarev, Deadly Illusions, ch. 15. Though containing valuable material from KGB archives on the recruitment of British agents in the 1930s, this SVR-sponsored volume not merely inflates Orlov’s importance but is also misleading in some other respects. It omits James Klugmann (agent MER) from the list of early Cambridge recruits, and even implies that he was not recruited because of his open Party membership. It also wrongly identifies the agent who provided the first intelligence on the plan to build an atomic bomb in 1941 as Maclean rather than Cairncross. (Since Cairncross, alone of the Five, was still alive at the time of publication in 1993, the intention may have been to limit the material on him to aspects of his career already admitted by him. The SVR now acknowledges that the atomic intelligence supplied by the London residency in 1941 came from Cairncross, not Maclean.) Among other examples of misleading mystification is the claim that agent ABO was a Cambridge contemporary of the “Magnificent Five,” who had never been identified as a Soviet spy. In reality, ABO was Peter Smollett, who graduated from Vienna, not Cambridge, University; his career as a Soviet agent had already been discussed in Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB, pp. 334-9.

  30. This is acknowledged
, though somewhat lost sight of, in Costello and Tsarev, Deadly Illusions. In a number of respects the detailed evidence advanced by this volume is at odds with its overstatement of Orlov’s importance by comparison with Deutsch. The 1997 SVR official history upgrades Deutsch’s role to that of “the man who started the ‘Cambridge Five’”; Primakov et al., Ocherki Istorii Rossiyskoi Vneshnei Razvedki, vol. 3, ch. 1. Cf. West and Tsarev, The Crown Jewels, pp. 103ff.

  31. West and Tsarev (The Crown Jewels, pp. 103ff) give greater emphasis to Deutsch’s role by companion with Orlov’s than Costello and Tsarev, Dangerous Illusions. Their analysis, however, does not take account of the published material on Deutsch derived from the Vienna University Archives, the Dokumentationsarchiv des Österreichischen Widerstandes, the work of Wilhelm Reich published by Deutsch and the information obtained by Oleg Gordievsky during his career in the KGB (see Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB, ch. 5).

  There is a considerable overlap between the KGB documents on Deutsch noted by Mitrokhin and those cited in West and Tsarev, The Crown Jewels. Each set of documents, however, contains material missing from the other. West and Tsarev do not, for example, appear to have seen Deutsch’s important memorandum on the recruitment of student Communists. However, Mitrokhin did not note the interesting documents on Deutsch following his recall to Moscow late in 1937 which are cited by West and Tsarev.

  32. vol. 7, ch. 10, para. 8.

  33. Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB, pp. 223-6.

  34. Costello and Tsarev, Deadly Illusions, pp. 186-8.

  35. Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB, pp. 206-8.

  36. Costello and Tsarev, Deadly Illusions, p. 224.

  37. Costello and Tsarev, Deadly Illusions, p. 225.

  38. Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB, pp. 216-19.

  39. In this, as in other instances in this chapter, Mitrokhin’s notes confirm the codename given by Costello and Tsarev, Deadly Illusions.

  40. vol. 7, ch. 10.

  41. Boyle, The Climate of Treason, p. 114.