Spycatcher

by Peter Wright

  Hugh Winterborn split his sides laughing as the unfortunate MI6 officer begged for advice on what to do with the jewel thief, the diamonds, and a wrecked flat. In the end the thief was given two hours to make for the Continent and Leslie Jagger went over to the flat and repaired the damage.

  After I had been in A2 for two or three years, MI6 began to call on me to help them plan their technical operations. I never much enjoyed working with MI6. They invariably planned operations which, frankly, stood little chance of technical success. They were always looking for a successor to the Berlin Tunnel - something on the epic scale which would have the Americans thirsting to share in the product. But they never found it, and in the process failed to build a sensible bedrock of smaller successes. There was, too, a senseless bravado about the way they behaved which I felt often risked the security of the operations. In Bonn, for instance, we were planning a DEW WORM-style operation on the Russian Embassy compound.

  Local MI6 station officers wandered onto the site and even, on one occasion, engaged the KGB security guards in casual conversation. It made for good dining-out stories, but contributed little to the weekly ministerial intelligence digests. The foolhardiness was invariably punctuated by flights of absurd pomposity. In Bonn I made the perfectly sensible suggestion that we should use German cable so that if the operation were discovered MI6 could disown it and blame it on the local intelligence service.

  "Good Lord, Peter! We can't do that," gushed the MI6 station chief with his nose in the air. "It wouldn't be ethical."

  Ethics, so far as I could ascertain, were displayed by MI6 purely for Whitehall or MI5 consumption. In fact MI6, under its chief, Sir John Sinclair, had become a virtual liability. It still refused to face up to the appalling consequences of Philby's being a Soviet spy. It was operating in the modern world with 1930s attitudes and 1930s personnel and equipment. It was little surprise to me when they stumbled, in April 1956, into their greatest blunder of all, the Crabbe affair.

  The Soviet leaders Khrushchev and Bulganin paid a visit to Britain on the battleship ORDZHONIKIDZE, docking at Portsmouth. The visit was designed to improve Anglo-Soviet relations at a sensitive time. MI5 decided to operate against Khrushchev in his rooms at Claridge's Hotel. Normally Claridge's has permanent Special Facilities installed on the hotel telephone system, because so many visitors stay there who are of interest to MI5. But we knew the Russians were sending a team of sweepers in to check Khrushchev's suite before he arrived, so we decided it was the right time to use for the first time the specially modified SF which John Taylor had developed in the Dollis Hill Laboratory. The new SF did not require a washer to be fitted, so it was virtually undetectable. The telephone could be activated over short distances using shortwave high-frequency megacycles. We set the SF activation up in an office of the Grosvenor Estates near Claridge's. It worked perfectly. Throughout Khrushchev's visit his room was permanently covered. In fact, the intelligence gathered was worthless. Khrushchev was far too canny a bird to discuss anything of value in a hotel room. I remember sitting up on the seventh floor with a transcriber translating loosely for me. We listened to Khrushchev for hours at a time, hoping for pearls to drop. But there were no clues to the last days of Stalin, or to the fate of the KGB henchman Beria. Instead, there were long monologues from Khrushchev addressed to his valet on the subject of his attire. He was an extraordinarily vain man. He stood in front of the mirror preening himself for hours at a time, and fussing with his hair parting. I recall thinking that in Eden, Khrushchev had found the perfect match. Both were thoroughly unscrupulous men, whose only interest lay in cutting a dash on the world stage.

  But while MI5 were discreetly bugging Khrushchev, MI6 launched a botched operation against the ORDZHONIKIDZE. The operation was run by the MI6 London Station, commanded by Nicholas Elliott, the son of the former headmaster of Eton. MI6 wanted to measure the propeller of the Russian battleship, because there was confusion in the Admiralty as to why she was able to travel so much faster than had originally been estimated by Naval Intelligence. Elliott arranged for a frogman, the unfortunate Commander "Buster" Crabbe, to take on the assignment.

  In fact, this was not the first time MI6 had attempted this operation. A year before, they tried to investigate the hull of the ORDZHONIKIDZE while she was in port in the Soviet Union. They used one of the X-Craft midget submarines which MI6 kept down in Stokes Bay. These had dry compartments to enable a diver to get in and out and were small enough to pass undetected into inshore waters. A Naval frogman had attempted to enter the harbor, but security was too tight and the mission was aborted.

  The second attempt in Portsmouth ended in disaster. Crabbe was overweight and overage. He disappeared, although a headless body which was later washed up was tentatively identified as his. John Henry, MI6 London Station's Technical Officer, had informed me that MI6 were planning the Crabbe operation, and I told Cumming. He was doubtful about it from the start. It was a typical piece of MI6 adventurism, ill-conceived and badly executed. But we all kept our fingers crossed. Two days later a panic-stricken John Henry arrived in Cumming's office telling us that Crabbe had disappeared.

  "I told Nicholas not to use Buster; he was heading for a heart attack as it was," he kept saying.

  We were highly skeptical of the heart attack theory, but there was no time for speculation. The secret MI6 parlor game was at risk of becoming embarrassingly public. Crabbe and his MI6 accomplice had signed into a local hotel under their own names.

  "There'll be a fearful row if this comes out," snapped Cumming. "We'll all be for the pavilion!"

  Cumming buzzed through to Dick White's office and asked to see him immediately. We all trooped upstairs, Dick was sitting at his desk. There was no hint of a welcoming smile. His charm had all but deserted him, and the years of schoolmaster training came to the fore.

  "The Russians have just asked the Admiralty about the frogman, and they've had to deny any knowledge. I'm afraid it looks to me rather as if the lid will come off before too long," he said tersely.

  "John, how on earth did you get yourself into this mess?" he asked with sudden exasperation.

  Henry was chastened, but explained that the Navy had been pressing them for months for details of the ORDZHONIKIDZE'S propeller.

  "You know what Eden is like," he said bitterly, "one minute he says you can do something, the next minute not. We thought it was an acceptable risk to take."

  White looked unconvinced. He smoothed his temples. He shuffled his papers. The clock ticked gently in the corner. Telltale signs of panic oozed from every side of the room.

  "We must do everything we can to help you, of course," he said, finally breaking the painful silence. "I will go and see the PM this evening, and see if I can head the thing off. In the meantime, Malcolm will put A2 at your disposal."

  A thankful John Henry retreated from the room. Cumming telephoned the CID in Portsmouth and arranged for the hotel register to be sanitized. Winterborn and Henry rushed down to Portsmouth to clear up any loose ends. But it was not enough to avert a scandal. That night Khrushchev made a public complaint about the frogman, and a humiliated Eden was forced to make a statement in the House of Commons.

  The intelligence community in London is like a small village in the Home Counties. Most people in the senior echelons know each other at least well enough to drink with in their clubs. For some weeks after the Crabbe affair, the village hummed in anticipation at the inevitable reckoning which everyone knew to be coming. As one of the few people inside MI5 who knew about the Crabbe affair before it began, I kept my head down on John Henry's advice.

  "There's blood all over the floor,'' he confided to me shortly afterward. "We've got Edward Bridges in here tearing the place apart."

  Shortly after this, Cumming strode into my office one morning looking genuinely upset.

  "Dick's leaving," he muttered. "They want him to take over MI6."

  The decision to appoint Dick White as Chief of MI6 was, I believe, one
of the most important mistakes made in postwar British Intelligence history. There were few signs of it in the mid-1950s, but MI5, under his control, was taking the first faltering steps along the path of modernization. He knew the necessity for change, and yet had the reverence for tradition which would have enabled him to accomplish his objectives without disruption. He was, above all, a counterintelligence officer, almost certainly the greatest of the twentieth century, perfectly trained for the Director-General's chair. He knew the people, he knew the problems, and he had a vision of the sort of effective counterespionage organization he wanted to create. Instead, just as his work was beginning, he was moved on a politician's whim to an organization he knew little about, and which was profoundly hostile to his arrival. He was never to be as successful there as he had been in MI5.

  But the loss was not just MI5's. The principal problem in postwar British Intelligence was the lack of clear thinking about the relative role of the various Intelligence Services. In the post-imperial era Britain required, above all, an efficient domestic Intelligence organization. MI6, particularly after the emergence of GCHQ, was quite simply of less importance. But moving Dick White to MI6 bolstered its position, stunted the emergence of a rationalized Intelligence community, and condemned the Service he left to ten years of neglect. Had he stayed, MI5 would have emerged from the traumas of the 1960s and 1970s far better equipped to tackle the challenges of the 1980s.

  The departure was conducted with indecent haste. A collection was swiftly arranged. The takings were enormous, and he was presented with an Old English Silver set at a party held in the MI5 canteen. It was an emotional occasion. Those who knew Dick well, and at that time I was not among them, claimed that he agonized over whether to move across to MI6, perhaps realizing that he was leaving his life's work undone. Dick was nearly crying when he made his speech. He talked of the prewar days, and the bonds of friendship which he had formed then. He thanked Cumming for encouraging him to join the Office, and he talked with pride of the triumphs of the war years. He wished us well and made his final bequest.

  "I saw the Prime Minister this afternoon, and he assured me that he had the well-being of our Service very much at heart. I am pleased to announce that he has appointed my Deputy, Roger Hollis, as my successor as proof of his faith in this organization. I am sure that you will agree with me that the Service could not be in safer hands."

  The tall, slightly stooping figure in the pinstripe suit came forward to shake Dick White's hand. The era of elegance and modernization had ended.

  - 7 -

  Roger Hollis was never a popular figure in the office. He was a dour, uninspiring man with an off-putting authoritarian manner. I must confess I never liked him. But even those who were well disposed doubted his suitability for the top job. Hollis, like Cumming, had forged a close friendship with Dick White in the prewar days. For all his brilliance, Dick always had a tendency to surround himself with less able men. I often felt it was latent insecurity, perhaps wanting the contrast to throw his talents into sharper relief. But while Hollis was brighter by a good margin than Cumming, particularly in the bureaucratic arts, I doubt whether even Dick saw him as a man of vision and intellect.

  Hollis believed that MI5 should remain a small security support organization, collecting files, maintaining efficient vetting and protective security, without straying too far into areas like counterespionage, where active measures needed to be taken to get results, and where choices had to be confronted and mistakes could be made. I never heard Hollis express views on the broad policies he wanted MI5 to pursue, or ever consider adapting MI5 to meet the increasing tempo of the intelligence war. He was not a man to think in that kind of way. He had just one simple aim, which he doggedly pursued throughout his career. He wanted to ingratiate the Service, and himself, with Whitehall. And that meant ensuring there were no mistakes, even at the cost of having no successes.

  Hollis grew up in Somerset, where his father had been the Bishop of Taunton. After public school (Clifton) and Oxford, he traveled extensively in China before joining MI5 in the late 1930s. During the war he specialized in Communist affairs, as Assistant Director of F Branch. Under Sillitoe, Hollis was promoted to Director of C Branch, which gave him responsibility for all forms of vetting and protective security, such as document classification and the installation of security systems on all government buildings. Hollis' service in C Branch accounted for the importance he accorded this work when he later became Director-General.

  When Dick White succeeded Sillitoe as DG in 1953, he appointed Hollis as his Deputy. On the face of it, it was a sensible appointment. While Dick did the thinking and the planning, Hollis would provide the solid administrative skills which Dick often lacked. Hollis, during the time I knew him as Deputy, never struck me as an ambitious man. He had already risen beyond his expectations, and seemed happy to serve out the rest of his career as Dick White's hatchet man and confidant. The only notable item of information commonly known about this excessively secretive man was his long-standing affair with his secretary, an ambitious girl who, when Dick White suddenly left for MI6, moved into the Director-General's office with a good deal more enthusiasm than Roger Hollis. Hollis, I suspect, always knew his limitations, and, once appointed, sought to cover them by relying on the rigid exercise of authority. The inevitable result was a quick sapping of whatever goodwill people held for him in the early days of his command.

  Hollis took over at a time of unprecedented collapse in relations between the various British Intelligence Services. There had always been tensions between MI5 and MI6, dating back to the earliest years. But they had emerged from World War II as partners for the first time in a coordinated intelligence bureaucracy, along with the newly formed GCHQ, which was responsible for all forms of communications and signals intelligence. (For an account of this, see SECRET SERVICE by Christopher Andrew. ) But within ten years this close and effective relationship had almost entirely disintegrated. MI6 were deeply hostile to MI5 as a result of what they saw as unjustified attempts by MI5 to meddle in the Philby affair. Moreover, the entire organization viewed Eden's appointment of Dick White in place of Sinclair as a mortal insult.

  The most serious lack of liaison was undoubtedly that between MI5 and GCHQ. During the war MI5 worked extremely closely with its own signals intelligence organization, the Radio Security Service (RSS) on the Double Cross System. The RSS intercepted and broke the ciphers used by the German Intelligence Service, the Abwehr, enabling MI5 to arrest incoming German spies as they landed in Britain. RSS was run by MI6 for MI5. B Branch then supervised the screening of these agents. Those who were prepared to cooperate with the British were turned and began feeding false radio reports back to the Germans. Those who refused were executed. But the success of any disinformation operation depends on being able to monitor how far your enemy accepts the disinformation you are feeding him Through the RSS wireless interceptions and the break into German Armed Forces ciphers, ENIGMA, the Twenty Committee running the Double Cross operation knew precisely how much influence their deception ploys were having on German military policy.

  In the postwar period MI5, stripped of their wartime intellectual elite, showed scant interest in maintaining the signals intelligence connection. They had, in any case, lost formal control of RSS early on in the war to MI6. But the most powerful impediment was GCHQ, who jealously guarded their monopoly over all forms of signals and communications intelligence. By the time I joined MI5 full-time in 1955, liaison at the working level with GCHQ had dwindled to a meeting once every six months between a single MI5 officer and a higher clerical officer from GCHQ. In February 1956 I attended one of these meetings for the first time. The experience was shattering. Neither individual seemed to appreciate that in the Cold War, as in World War II, GCHQ had a vital role to play in assisting MI5 in its main task of counterespionage. Nor did they seem to realize that, as MI5 technology advanced, there might be ways in which MI5 could help GCHQ. I began with a list of suggestions,
one of which was checking whether the Russians were listening to Watcher radios. But Bill Collins, the GCHQ representative, seemed utterly thrown by this positive approach to committee work.

  "I shall have to take a bit of guidance on that one," he would say, or "I really don't think we've got the time to spare for that sort of thing."

  I complained to Cumming, but he too seemed uninterested.

  "It's their turf. Best leave it to them."

  The MI5 officer in charge of liaison with GCHQ was Freddie Beith, an energetic agent runner working for D Branch. His father was Welsh and his mother Spanish, which gave him a fervent love of rugby and a volatile Latin temperament. He was a fluent German speaker and during the war he had been involved in the Double Cross System, running double agents in Portugal and Spain. Berth's liaison with GCHQ stemmed from Operation HALT, which he controlled. HALT began in the early 1950s when GCHQ asked MI5 if they could help obtain intelligence about diplomatic ciphers being used in London. Beith ran HALT by asking any agent D Branch recruited inside an embassy to try to obtain access to the cipher room. GCHQ hoped that one of Beith's agents might be able to steal some of the waste cipher tape, which they could then use to attack the cipher.