Ace of Spies

by Andrew Cook

  At the 5th Congress of the Communist International in June and July, Zinoviev had clearly spoken out in favour of making Britain a priority for Comintern agitation and propaganda. The letter therefore fitted into an already established picture. The identity of the forger has never been satisfactorily established, although Michael Kettle has claimed proof positive for his theory that it was none other than Sidney Reilly. Kettle asserts that the letter ‘was first deciphered as being in Reilly’s handwriting by the present author [Kettle]’.3 Kettle called on the services of John Conway to authenticate his Zinoviev theory, who declared that he was ‘satisfied that from the quality of the writing – that is pen control and spacing, the letter formations and sizes and other characteristics – that they were written by the same person’.4 Bearing in mind then Conway’s flawed verdict on earlier Kettle theories (see Appendix 2), one has to be highly sceptical of his conclusion in this case.

  It must also be borne in mind that the only piece of Reilly’s handwriting Conway had from Kettle for the purposes of comparison was in English, taken from Pepita Reilly’s Britian’s Master Spy book.5 As Conway himself concedes ‘the fact that the texts are in languages with different alphabets makes for some difficulty in comparison’. In spite of this he concludes that ‘the design and drawing of characters are the same’.6 In order to carry out a more reliable comparison, a handwriting analyst would require a sample from Reilly that was actually written in Russian in order that he could compare like with like. This Conway did not have. Since Conway’s analysis over thirty years ago, samples of Reilly’s Russian letter formation have come to light7 and add further weight to the view that Reilly was not the writer of the letter published in Kettle’s book.

  In view of Conway’s questionable record and his inability to make a like comparison, his verdict can only be regarded as unsafe. Without this, Kettle’s theory is supported by only the flimsiest of circumstantial threads, namely the diary of former MI5 officer Donald Im Thurn.8 Im Thurn had a peripheral connection with events surrounding the letter’s eventual publication in the Daily Mail, in that he allegedly sold a copy of it to Lord Younger, the then treasurer of the Conservative Party. On 8 October Im Thurn recorded in his diary that an individual he referred to as X had met him that day and given him a very brief verbal account of what would turn out to be the Zinoviev letter.9 Clearly intrigued, Im Thurn asked X to find out more. On 13 October X asked for more time to ‘dot the i’s a bit more’ and the following day alleged that Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald was endeavouring to prevent news of the letter getting out.10 With no more than the fact that Reilly had used a similar phrase in two letters of 25 and 30 March 1925 to former SIS colleague Ernest Boyce,11 Kettle immediately concluded that here was proof that Reilly and X were the same person. Reilly, however, was on the other side of the Channel on 13 October, and therefore could not have simultaneously been in London meeting Im Thurn.12

  Further doubt is cast on Kettle’s theory by newly declassified government papers on the Zinoviev episode. These point to Col. Stewart Menzies, then deputy chief of SIS, as the person responsible for leaking the letter to the Daily Mail. His allegiance, ‘lay firmly in the Conservative camp’,13 and he later admitted sending a copy of the letter to the paper’s editor.14 In April 1952, Menzies, who had risen from deputy chief to chief of SIS in 1939, wrote to the Foreign Office to say that there would be ‘no harm whatsoever’15 in destroying some of the papers concerning the Zinoviev episode. The Foreign Office later conceded that ‘perhaps some letters and papers have been destroyed in the past which ought to have been preserved under the Public Records Act’.16 It is highly unlikely that SIS knew the true origin of the letter or that Reilly had any connection whatsoever with the episode.

  Despite the fact that the Daily Mail published the letter only four days before the General Election, under the headline ‘Civil War Plot by Socialists’ Masters’, it is highly questionable as to whether this in itself lost Labour the election. All the indicators were pointing to a Labour defeat well before the Mail’s revelation. Although Labour seats fell from 191 to 151, the party’s vote actually rose by more than a million. The real losers of the 1924 election were the Liberal Party, whose seats fell from 159 to 40.

  ABBREVIATIONS USED IN

  NOTES AND BIBLIOGRAPHY

  BI United States Bureau of Investigation (now FBI)

  BT Board of Trade

  CAB Cabinet (UK)

  CCAC Churchill College Archives Centre

  FSB Federalnaya Sluzhba Bezopasnosti (Federal Security Service)

  FO Foreign Office

  GPU Gosudarstvennoye Politicheskoye Upravleniye (State Political Directorate)

  HO Home Office

  MID Military Intelligence Division (US)

  MI1c Military Intelligence 1c (see SIS)

  MI5 Military Intelligence 5 – the Security Service

  NID Naval Intelligence Department/Division (UK)

  OGPU Obyedinennoye Gosudarstvennoye Politicheskoye Upravleniye (Unified State Political Directorate)

  ONI Office of Naval Intelligence (US)

  PRO Public Record Office, Kew (now National Archives)

  SIS Secret Intelligence Service (MI1c, now MI6)

  WO War Office

  NOTES

  INTRODUCTION AND PREFACE

  1. Ian Fleming, The Man Behind James Bond, Andrew Lycett (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1995), pp.216–17.

  2. The Life of Ian Fleming, Creator of James Bond, John Pearson (Jonathan Cape, 1966), p.189.

  3. Leonard Mosley, a foreign correspondent and contemporary of Fleming’s, who later became a successful espionage writer himself, recalled their conversation in a review of the book Master Spy, Edward Van Der Rhoer (Charles Scribner’s, New York, 1981).

  4. Ibid. (p.112).

  5. The Secret War of Charles Fraser-Smith, Charles Fraser-Smith with Gerald McKnight and Sandy Lesberg (Michael Joseph, 1981), p.127ff.

  6. Ian Fleming, The Man Behind James Bond, Andrew Lycett, pp.118 and 132.

  7. The Diaries of Sir Robert Bruce Lockhart, volume 1: 1915–1938, Kenneth Young (ed.) (Macmillan, 1973), pp.153–54, 165.

  8. Ian Fleming, The Man Behind James Bond, Andrew Lycett, p.223.

  ONE–A SUDDEN DEATH

  1. Highways and Byways of Sussex, E.V. Lucas (Macmillan & Company, 1904).

  2. A biography of Hugh Thomas from records of the General Synod of the Church of England is held by the Anglesey County Records Office (WM/659); also Alumni Records (Magdalene College Archives, Cambridge, pp.152–53); Bangor Diocesan Records (B/ P/1055).

  3. The Ozone Preparations Company had its origins in Rosenblum & Co. Consultant Chemists, which was established in 1896 at 9 Bury Court, London EC. In 1897 the trading name was changed to Ozone and moved to Imperial Chambers, 3 Cursitor Street, Holborn.

  4. The first meeting between Sigmund Rosenblum and Margaret Thomas was described by Margaret in a transcript she left with Capt. William Isaac of the War Office on 11 November 1931. Isaac produced a brief summary which contained some typographical errors. The original manuscript stated that this first meeting occurred in ‘the summer of 1897’. Isaac returned the original manuscript to Margaret and sent the summary to Col. Valentine Vivian, head of SIS Section V – Counter Intelligence (Sidney Reilly’s SIS File CX 2616, henceforth referred to as The Reilly Papers CX 2616).

  5. Ace of Spies, Robin Bruce Lockhart (Hodder and Stoughton, 1967), p.29.

  6. Ace of Spies, Robin Bruce Lockhart (p.29); and Master Spy, Edward Van Der Rhoer, p.5.

  7. Under passport regulations in force at the time (Foreign Office Regulations Respecting Passports, issued 15 July 1895), passports issued for travel on the continent were ‘not limited in point of time, but available for any time, or for any number of journeys on the continent’. However, British subjects wishing to visit Russia would have needed to apply for a passport for travel to Russia and, furthermore, to seek a visa from the Russian Consulate. Although the Thomases already had valid pa
ssports for the continent, there is no record of them applying for passports to Russia in the Foreign Office (FO) 611/18 Passport Names Index.

  8. The Foreign Office issued passports for the Continent and Egypt to Hugh Thomas on 30 December 1897 and to Margaret on 9 January 1898, FO 611/18 Passport Names Index.

  9. Family Division of the High Court of Justice, Principal Probate Registry, 3 May 1898, No. 1456.

  10. The sixty-two-year-old Alfred Lewis had been manager of the hotel since 1887. Ironically, he was to die of cardiac failure at the hotel three years later.

  11. Entry 433, Register of Burials in the Parish of Llansadwrn; Anglesey County Records Office WPE/32/6. It is also noteworthy that the funeral took place one day before the death was officially registered on 17 March 1898.

  12. Sussex Express, 19 March 1898, p.5.

  13. Entry 316, 1898 Register of Deaths in the Registration District of Lewes in the Sub-district of Newhaven in the County of Sussex.

  14. In the first edition of Ace of Spies by Robin Bruce Lockhart, published in 1967, a typed copy of Hugh Thomas’s registration of death is reproduced. Issued by Somerset House on 19 September 1938, this copy certificate was almost certainly applied for by George Hill, who was researching a bi ography of Sidney Reilly during this period. According to this copy, the death was certified by ‘S.W. Andrew MRCS’. By examining the original handwritten entry, however, it is clear that the typist has made a transcription error. The correct name is T.W. Andrew.

  15. Dr Thomas Andrew was born in Perthshire in 1837 and qualified in medicine in Edinburgh in 1861. He and his wife Margaret lived at Balkerach Villa, Doune, where he died on 21 January 1905. His obituary referred to the fact that he had never ventured outside of Scotland.

  16. Louisa Lewis lived at the London & Paris Hotel. Her recollections of the weekend of 12/13 March 1898 may possibly have a significant role to play later in our story.

  17. Letters dated 17 and 25 May 2001 from Diana Oxford of Kingsford Stacey Blackwell, Lincoln’s Inn, London, to the author.

  18. Why Rosenblum chose the name ‘T.W. Andrew’ is not entirely clear. It should, however, be noted that the names and identities he assumed over a period of years were almost always derived from people he had known or met. When living at 50 Albert Mansions, his immediate neigbour at no. 49 was named Andrews (Electoral Register 1896/97, Parliamentary, Country and Parochial Electors in Kennington, Vauxhall Ward, Polling District No. 5).

  19. Entry 88, 1869 Register of Births in the Registration District of Clerkenwell in the Sub-district of Goswell Street in the County of Middlesex.

  20. Foreign Office Passport Names Index, A. Luke, issued 13 December 1894, FO 611/17.

  21. See note 4.

  TWO – THE MAN FROM NOWHERE

  1. Ace of Spies, Robin Bruce Lockhart, p.22.

  2. Master Spy, Edward Van Der Rhoer, p.4.

  3. Deadly Illusions, John Costello & Oleg Tsarev (Century, 1993), p.22.

  4. Sidney Reilly – The True Story, Michael Kettle (Corgi, 1983), p.12.

  5. Secret Service, Christopher Andrew (William Heinemann, 1985), p.83.

  6. A History of the British Secret Service, Richard Deacon (Frederick Muller, 1969), p.139.

  7. For examples of these claims see foreword of Britain’s Master Spy – The Adventures of Sidney Reilly. This is the US version of the book published by Harper Brothers, New York, in 1932. The earlier British version, The Adventures of Sidney Reilly, published by Elkin, Mathews & Marrot, had been withdrawn from sale the previous year due to legal proceedings initiated by Margaret Reilly; Portraits of Unusual People, Vladimir Krymov (Paris, 1971), p.70; Ace of Spies. Robin Bruce Lockhart, p.22; and letter/enclosure from Capt. William Isaac of the War Office to SIS, dated 17 November 1931 (Reilly Papers CX 2616).

  8. Ibid.

  9. Clonmel (US Immigration records referred to in note 15); Dublin (US Bureau of Investigation/ONI Memorandum of 23 August 1918), p.2, and Sonderfahndungsliste GB File, p.78, R-38 (Central Office for National Security – RHSA, Department IV (Gestapo) E4).

  10. A History of the British Secret Service, Richard Deacon, p.140. A slightly different version of the quotation is given by Robin Bruce Lockhart: ‘I came to Britain to work for the British. I had to have a British passport and needed a British place of birth and, you see, from Odessa it’s a long, long way to Tipperary!’, Ace of Spies, p.104. The source for this story is almost certainly Robert Bruce Lockhart who was Commercial Secretary at the Legation at the time of Reilly’s visit. According to the Diaries of Robert Bruce Lockhart (p.55), his journal for 1921 is missing. However, Edward Spears’ diary would suggest that the lunch took place on Sunday 17 July 1921 (Churchill College Archives Centre, Cambridge MSS SPRS 2/4).

  11. Britain’s Master Spy – The Adventures of Sidney Reilly (foreword, pp.ix and 7).

  12. The manuscript of The Adventures of Sidney Reilly was serialised by the Evening Standard before it appeared in book form. Reference to Reilly’s year of birth appears in the second instalment on 11 May 1931, p.26.

  13. Britain’s Master Spy – The Adventures of Sidney Reilly, foreword p.ix.

  14. Memoirs of a British Agent, Robert Bruce Lockhart (Putnam, 1932), p.322.

  15. When, as Sigmund Rosenblum, he married Margaret Thomas on 22 August 1898 (Entry 186, 1898 Register of Marriages in the District of Holborn in the County of London) he indicated his year of birth as 1873, as he did when he entered the United States in January 1915 (US Immigration, Port of San Francisco, Volume 7978, p.26, 13 January 1915), again in July 1915 (US Immigration, Port of New York, Volume 5587, p.103, 6 July 1915), and when he married on 16 February 1915 (State of New York, Certificate and Record of Marriage (No. 4199) between Sidney G. Reilly and Nadine Zalessky, Borough of Manhattan Bureau of Records).

  16. When he married Pepita Haddon Chambers on 23 May 1923 (Entry 29, 1923 Register of Marriages in the District of St Martin, in the County of London) he indicated his year of birth as 1874, as he did when he entered the United States in 1924 (US Immigration, Port of New York, Volume 7978, p.26, 15 May 1924, and US Immigration, Port of New York, Volume 8155, p.5, 21 October 1924).

  17. History of the British Secret Service, Richard Deacon, p.140, and Sidney Reilly – The True Story, Michael Kettle, p.13.

  18. The only member of his family that he endeavoured to keep in touch with was his first cousin Felicia Rosenblum who lived in Warsaw. According to an ‘Explanatory note’ appended to Reilly’s OGPU File No. 249856, written on 10 November 1925 by V.A. Styrne (now part of Trust File 302330, Vol. 37, Central Archives of the Federal Security Service, Moscow), ‘He was extremely bothered by being a Jew and made every attempt to conceal his origin’.

  19. Although marketed as being written by Sidney Reilly and his wife, the book Britain’s Master Spy – The Adventures of Sidney Reilly is not an autobiography. It was ghostwritten by journalist Stuart Atherley six years after Reilly’s death on the instructions of Pepita Reilly.

  20. Reports commissioned by the author dated 11 August 2000 and 12 October 2000 by Stepan Zhelyaskov, Vital Records Specialist at the State Archives of Odessa Region.

  21. Report commissioned by the author dated 11 August 2000 by Gerda Rattay of Vienna City Archive (ref MA 8-A-1285/2000).

  22. Reports commissioned by the author dated 4 September 2000 by Dr Juliane Mikoletzky of the Technical University of Vienna Archives and 3 September 2000 by Thomas Maisel of the University of Vienna Archives.

  23. According to War Office records (The Army List), at the Public Record Office, only one Maj. Fothergill is to be found during the time period in question. Maj. Charles Fothergill was commissioned in 1855, retired in 1881 and went into business. He was never involved in any South American expeditions nor had he any intelligence connections. It is not beyond the bounds of possibility, however, that Charles Fothergill was known to Sidney Reilly, who was acquainted with his son Basil Fothergill.

  24. It is likely that Abram was born before the 1821 Russian decree w
hich required Jews in the Kingdom of Poland to take surnames. Furthermore, it was not until 1826 that separate civil registers were begun for recording births, deaths and marriages for each religious community (Roman Catholic, Jewish, Protestant and Russian Orthodox). It is not therefore possible to verify Abram’s specific date of birth.

  25. Gentile names are shown in brackets following the first mention of a Hebrew name. All future references use the goyish or gentile name used by that individual (goy is Hebrew for gentile).

  26. Marriage Records 1840, town of Szczuczyn, province of Bialystok, Lomza Gubernia, Fond 264, Bialystok Archive, Poland, Jankiel Leyba Rosenblum and Hana Bramson.

  27. There is no ‘H’ in the Cyrillic alphabet, and the Hebrew name Hersh therefore appears as Gersh when written in Russian.

  28. University of Leeds Russian Archive, MS 1080/859, Family Tree of the Rosenblum, Neufeldt and Wolff families; MS 1080/322, letter from Vera Bramson to Sophia Wolff, 24 April 1928; Letter from Esfir Bramson to the author, 3 March 2003

  29. Service File of Mikhail Abramovich Rosenblum; Fond 316, Inventory 64, Case 448, Russian State Military Historical Archives, Moscow.

  30. Mikhail Rosenblum married Sophie Zonshein on 24 September 1889; Fond 39, Inventory 5, Case 46, p.106, State Archives of Odessa Region. Their son Boris was born in Odessa on 6 July 1890; Fond 39, Inventory 5, File 52, p.185, State Archives of Odessa Region.

  31. A variety of versions of Rosenblum family photographs (p.26) have surfaced over the past four decades, including the one of a teenage Reilly (p.29). They were taken seperately on various occasions during the 1880s, and not taken contemporaneously in 1890 as implied by Michael Kettle (Sidney Reilly – The True Story, p.72).

  32. To date no trace of a record of birth for Rosenblum has ever been found in any of the locations put forward as his place of birth within the former Russian Empire: Bedzin, Poland; Bielsk, Poland; Odessa, Ukraine; Kherson, Ukraine; St Petersburg, Russia. Ukrainian records in particular are incomplete due to the ravages of the Second World War.