by Peter Wright
In 1944 the degaussed British X-Craft went in under cover of a magnetic storm. With great bravery, the crews managed to place charges against TIRPITZ and cripple her. Three VCs were won that day. But the bravery would have counted for nothing without the technical backup of ARL.
By the end of the war the course of my life had changed irrevocably. Although agriculture remained my first love, I was clearly destined not to return to it. I sat instead for the postwar Scientific Civil Service competition chaired by C P Snow. It was designed to sort out the best scientists among the hundreds recruited during the wartime expansion. I passed out joint top with 290 marks out of 300. Butterworth congratulated me warmly. All those nights sitting up with the textbooks had finally paid off, though the credit was largely his.
My father returned to the Marconi Company as Engineer in Chief in 1946, and I began work as a Principal Scientific Officer at the Services Electronics Research Laboratory that same year. For the next four years we worked closely alongside each other, the trials of the 1930s an unspoken bond between us, until that telephone call from Sir Frederick Brundrett in 1949 brought MI5 into my life.
- 3 -
A few days after that first meeting in Brundrett's office in 1949, I received a telephone call from John Taylor inviting me down to London. He suggested St. James's Park and we met on the bridge in front of Buckingham Palace. It struck me as an odd way to conduct the business of national security, strolling among the pelicans and the ducks, pausing occasionally to ponder our reflections in the pool.
Taylor was a small man with a pencil mustache and a gray, sharpish face. He had been one of Montgomery's communications officers during the North African campaign, and although now a Post Office technician, he retained his abrupt military bearing. He ran the technical research, such as it was, for MI5 and MI6 from his laboratory inside the Special Investigations Unit of the Post Office at Dollis Hill. Taylor made certain I knew he was in charge. He told me bluntly that, apart from one brief visit to MI5 headquarters at Leconfield House to meet Colonel Cumming, I would have to deal through him as an intermediary. Taylor discouraged discussion about "the office"; he merely explained that I would be given the title of "external scientific adviser" and that I would be unpaid for my duties. For several years we continued to meet in St. James's Park about once a month to talk over the written reports on technical matters which I filed to C. W. Wright, the secretary of Brundrett's committee. (Wright later became Deputy Secretary at the Ministry of Defense.)
Taylor and I divided up the technical work. The Post Office pressed ahead with research into infrared detection. I began using the resources of the Services Electronics Research Laboratory to develop new microphones and look into ways of getting sound reflections from office furniture. I was already familiar with the technical principles of resonance from my antisubmarine work. When sound waves impact with a taut surface such as a window or a filing cabinet, thousands of harmonics are created. The knack is to detect the point at which there is minimum distortion so that the sound waves can be picked up as intelligible speech.
One day in 1951 I received a telephone call from Taylor. He sounded distinctly agitated.
"We've been beaten to it," he said breathlessly. "Can we meet this afternoon?"
I met him later that day on a park bench opposite the Foreign Office. He described how one of the diplomats in our Embassy in Moscow had been listening to the WHF receiver in his office which he used to monitor Russian military aircraft traffic. Suddenly he heard the British Air Attache coming over his receiver loud and clear. Realizing the. Attache was being bugged in some way, he promptly reported the matter. Taylor and I discussed what type of microphone might be involved and he arranged for a Diplomatic Wireless Service engineer named Don Bailey to investigate. I briefed Bailey before he left for Moscow on how best to detect the device. For the first time I began to realize just how bereft British Intelligence was of technical expertise. They did not even possess the correct instruments, and I had to lend Bailey my own. A thorough search was made of the Embassy but nothing was ever found. The Russians had clearly been warned and turned the device off.
From questioning Bailey on his return it was clear to me that this was not a normal radio microphone, as there were strong radio signals which were plain carriers present when the device was operating. I speculated that the Russians, like us, were experimenting with some kind of resonance device. Within six months I was proved right. Taylor summoned me down to St. James's Park for another urgent meeting.
He told me that the U. S. State Department sweepers had been routinely "sanitizing" the American Ambassador's office in Moscow in preparation for a visit by the U.S. Secretary of State. They used a standard tunable signal generator to generate what is known as the "howl round effect,'' similar to the noise made when a radio station talks to someone on the telephone while his home radio or television is switched on. The "howl round" detected a small device lodged in the Great Seal of the United States on the wall behind the Ambassador's desk.
The howl frequency was 1800 MH, and the Americans had assumed that the operating frequency for the device must be the same. But tests showed that the device was unstable and insensitive when operating at this frequency. In desperation the Americans turned to the British for help in solving the riddle of how "the Thing," as it was called, worked.
Brundrett arranged for me to have a new, secure laboratory in a field at Great Baddow, and the Thing was solemnly brought up by Taylor and two Americans. The device was wrapped in cotton wool inside a small wooden box that looked as if it had once held chess pieces. It was about eight inches long, with an aerial on top which fed into a cavity. Inside the cavity was a metal mushroom with a flat top which could be adjusted to give it a variable capacity. Behind the mushroom was a thin gossamer diaphragm, to receive the speech, which appeared to have been pierced. The Americans sheepishly explained that one of their scientists had accidentally put his finger through it.
The crisis could not have come at a worse time for me. The antisubmarine-detection system was approaching its crucial trials and demanded long hours of attention. But every night and each weekend I made my way across the fields at the back of the Marconi building to my deserted Nissen hut. I worked flat out for ten weeks to solve the mystery.
First I had to repair the diaphragm. The Thing bore the hallmarks of a piece of equipment which the Russians had rushed into service, presumably to ensure it was installed before the Secretary of State's visit. They clearly had some kind of microscopic jig to install the diaphragm, because each time I used tweezers the thin film tore. Eventually, through trial and error, I managed to lay the diaphragm on first and clamp it on afterward. It wasn't perfect, but it worked.
Next I measured the length of the aerial to try to gauge the way it resonated. It did appear that 1800 MH was the correct frequency. But when I set the device up and made noises at it with an audio-signal generator, it was just as the Americans had described - impossible to tune effectively. But after four weekends I realized that we had all been thinking about the Thing upside down. We had all assumed that the metal plate needed to be opened right out to increase resonance, when in fact the closer the plate was to the mushroom the greater the sensitivity. I tightened the plate right up and tuned the radiating signal down to 800 megacycles. The Thing began to emit a high-pitched tone. I rang my father up in a state of great excitement.
"I've got the Thing working!"
"I know," he said, "and the howl is breaking my eardrums!"
I arranged to demonstrate the Thing to Taylor, and he traveled up with Colonel Cumming, Hugh Winterborn and the two American sweepers. My father came along too, bringing another self-taught Marconi scientist named R J Kemp, who was now their Head of Research. I had installed the device against the far wall of the hut and rigged up another monitor in an adjoining room so that the sounds of the audio generator could be heard as if operationally.
I tuned the dials to 800 and began to explain the my
stery. The Americans looked aghast at the simplicity of it all. Cumming and Winterborn were smug. This was just after the calamity of the Burgess and Maclean affair. The defection to the Soviet Union of these two well born Foreign Office diplomats in 1951 caused outrage in the USA, and any small way in which British superiority could be demonstrated was, I soon realized, of crucial importance to them. Kemp was very flattering, rightly judging that it would only be a matter of time before Marconi got a contract to develop one themselves.
"How soon can we use one?'" asked Cumming.
Kemp and I explained that it would probably take at least a year to produce equipment which would work reliably.
"I should think we can provide the premises, Malcolm," said Kemp to Cumming, "and probably one man to work under Peter. That might get you the prototype, but after that you'll have to get funding."
"Well, it's quite impossible for us to pay, as you know," replied Cumming. "The Treasury will never agree to expand the secret vote."
Kemp raised his eyebrows. This was obviously an argument Cumming had deployed many times before in order to get facilities for nothing.
"But surely," I ventured, "if the government are serious about developing things technically for MI5 and MI6 they will have to allocate money on an open vote."
"They're most reluctant to do that," replied Gumming, shaking his head. "As you know, we don't really exist."
He looked at me as if a sudden thought had occurred to him.
"Now, perhaps if you were to approach the Admiralty on our behalf to ask for assistance on their open vote..."
This was my initiation into the bizarre method of handling Intelligence Services finance. It was a problem which was to plague me until well into the 1960s. Instead of having resources adequate for their technical requirements, the Intelligence Services were forced to spend most of the postwar period begging from the increasingly reluctant Armed Services. In my view, it was this more than any other factor which contributed to the amateurism of British Intelligence in the immediate postwar era.
But, as bidden, I set out to persuade the Admiralty to carry the development costs of the new microphone. I made an urgent appointment to see Brundrett's successor as Chief of the Naval Scientific Service, Sir William Cook. I knew Cook quite well. He was a wiry, redhaired man with piercing blue eyes and a penchant for grandiose schemes. He was a brilliant organizer and positively bubbled with ideas. I had first dealt with him after the war when he asked me to work under him on a prototype Blue Streak project, which was eventually cancelled when Sir Ben Lockspeiser, then Chief Scientist at the Ministry of Supply, had a crisis of conscience. Ironically, Cook himself came to share a suspicion about nuclear weapons, though more for practical and political reasons than moral ones. He felt that Britain was being hasty in the production of the A-Bomb, and feared that as modern rocketry developed, the Navy would inevitably lose out. He realized too, I suspect, that our obsession with the bomb was faintly ludicrous in the face of growing American and Russian superiority. This, incidentally, was a view which was quite widely held by scientists working at a lower level in the Services in the 1950s.
I explained to Cook that the new microphone might have as yet unforeseeable intelligence advantages, from which the Navy would obviously benefit if they agreed to fund the project. He smiled at this transparent justification but by the end of the meeting agreed to provide six Navy scientists from his staff and to finance a purpose-built laboratory at Marconi to house the work.
Within eighteen months we were ready to demonstrate the first prototype, which was given the code name SATYR. Kemp and I presented ourselves at the front door of MI5 headquarters at Leconfield House. Hugh Winterborn met us and took us up to a spartan office on the fifth floor and introduced a tall, hunched man wearing a pin striped suit and a lopsided smile.
"My name is Roger Hollis," he said, standing up from behind his desk and shaking my hand stiffly. "I am afraid the Director-General cannot be with us today for this demonstration, so I am standing in as his deputy."
Hollis did not encourage small talk. His empty desk betrayed a man who believed in the swift dispatch of business. I showed him the equipment without delay. It comprised a suitcase filled with radio equipment for operating SATYR, and two aerials disguised as ordinary umbrellas which folded out to make a receiver and transmitter dish. We set SATYR up in an MI5 flat on South Audley Street with the umbrellas in Hollis' office. The test worked perfectly. We heard everything from test speech to the turn of the key in the door.
"Wonderful, Peter," Hollis kept on saying, as we listened to the test. "It's black magic."
Cumming tittered in the background.
I realized then that MI5 officers, cocooned throughout the war in their hermetic buildings, had rarely experienced the thrill of a technical advance. After the test was over, Hollis stood behind his desk and made a formal little speech about what a fine day this was for the Service and how this was just what Brundrett had in mind when he formed his working party. It was all rather condescending, as if the servants had found the lost diamond tiara in the rose garden.
SATYR did indeed prove to be a great success. The Americans promptly ordered twelve sets and rather cheekily copied the drawings and made twenty more. Throughout the 1950s, until it was superseded by new equipment, SATYR was used by the British, Americans, Canadians, and Australians as one of the best methods of obtaining covert coverage. But more important to me, the development of SATYR established my credentials as a scientist with MI5. From then on I was consulted on a regular basis about an increasing number of their technical problems.
I still dealt exclusively with Cumming but I began to learn a little about the structure of his Department - A Branch. He controlled four sections. A1 provided resources for MI5, ranging from microphones to lockpicks. A2 was the technical department, which contained personnel like Hugh Winterborn who used the resources of A1. A3 was police liaison with the Special Branch and A4 was the growing empire of Watchers, responsible for tailing foreign diplomats and others around the streets of London.
Cumming had one fundamental flaw when it came to technical matters. He felt A Branch should run science, rather than the other way around. Consequently the Service as a whole was denied long-overdue modernization. As long as we were discussing specific technical requirements, our relationship was fruitful. But sooner or later we would move into an area in which I could not advise MI5 unless he or Winterborn took me fully into his confidence. For instance, Winterborn often asked if I had any ideas on telephone interception. I explained that it was impossible to work on the problem unless I knew what current techniques were employed.
"Well, of course, now we are coming onto an area which is highly classified and I rather feel we should steer away from it," Cumming would say, slapping the table nervously, much to Winterborn's irritation.
The same thing happened with the Watchers. The main problem facing MI5 during the 1950s was how to detect and follow the increasingly large number of Russians through the streets of London without giving themselves away.
"Have you any ideas, Peter?" asked Cumming, as if I might have a solution in my top pocket. I suggested that at the very least I would need to see at first hand the scale of the watching operation. Cumming said he would see what he could arrange, but I heard nothing more.
But, despite the difficulties, it was clear that MI5 found me useful. By 1954 I was spending two full days a week at Leconfield House. After one lengthy session, Cumming invited me to lunch at his club. We walked together across St. James's Park and made our way down Pall Mall to the In and Out Club, Cummings swinging the umbrella he habitually carried.
As we sat down at our table I realized that, even though I had been dealing with Cumming for five years, this was the first time we had ever socialized. He was a short man, not overly endowed with intellectual skills but intensely loyal to MI5. Like the policemen in John Buchan novels, he seemed as likely to be chasing the hero as the villain. He had been a Rifl
e Brigade Officer and belonged to the long military tradition inside MI5 which stretched back to the founder, Vernon Kell. He was related to the first Chief of MI6, Captain Mansfield Cumming, a fact which he made sure I knew almost as soon as I had met him. He had also been responsible for recruiting the present Director-General of MI5, Sir Dick Goldsmith White. They had taken a party of boys on a camping holiday together in the 1930s. White was not happy as a schoolteacher and Cumming persuaded him to apply to MI5. White proved a brilliant, intuitive intelligence officer and soon far outstripped his mentor, but the debt he owed Cumming served the latter well in the 1950s.
Cumming was wealthy in his own right. He owned a large estate in Sussex. In the country he played the squire, while in town he became the spy. It appealed to the boy scout in him. In fact most of his career had been spent doing MI5's books and other routine administration and he had coexisted uneasily with the gifted university elite who were drafted into Intelligence during the war. But Cumming did have one astonishing talent. He maintained a legendary number of contacts. These were not just clubland cronies, of which he had many. He maintained them in all kinds of bizarre places. If the office wanted a one-legged washerwoman who spoke Chinese, Cumming could provide her. When the A Branch directorship became vacant, Cumming was the obvious man to fill it.