Spycatcher

by Peter Wright

  Some months later he was invited to dine alone with Guy Burgess at his flat in Chester Square. Both men drank heavily, and in the small hours Guy made a pitch at him, asking him to work for peace. It was dangerous work, he said, but worth it. There was much talk of the intellectual ferment of the times, the Nazi menace, and the need to take a much more Marxist line in academic studies. At the time Hampshire thought this was the prelude to an invitation to join a left-wing debating society, then the vogue among young Oxbridge intellectuals, but no specific proposition was made. "In retrospect," said Hampshire, "perhaps Burgess was trying to recruit me."

  When I got back to Britain I checked this story with Blunt. He remembered the Klugman dinner, which he confirmed was a looking-over operation, but said he knew nothing of Burgess' pitch. Neither could he resolve whether the dinner had occurred in 1935 or 1937. The dates were important; in 1935 Blunt and Burgess were still mere Party members, but by 1937 both were spies and thus any recruitment would have been for the Russians. I sent one of my staff to see Ben Nicholson. Luckily he kept complete diaries for each year of his professional life, and was able to establish beyond any doubt that the dinner had, in fact, taken place in 1937.

  I went to see Dick White and gave him the Hampshire papers to read. I was puzzled as to why Hampshire had never told MI5 about his dealings with Guy Burgess after Burgess defected in 1951. Dick confirmed that Hampshire had never mentioned this to him. I went to see Hampshire again when he returned to London. He seemed slightly embarrassed. He told me that Burgess' approach was so muddled that he could hardly be sure of its importance. As for Blunt, it never occurred to him to connect Blunt's presence at the dinner with Burgess' approach, and since Blunt was on such personal terms with people like Dick White and Guy Liddell throughout the war, he assumed he was entirely trustworthy. Anyway, he was not alone in wanting to close the chapter.

  Both Dick and Hollis were desperately embarrassed at the revelation that the man whom they had chosen to conduct the most secret review of Anglo-American intelligence sharing should himself have been the unwitting target of a Soviet recruitment approach. They knew that the arrangements for Hampshire's vetting would, at the very least, look seriously inadequate to American eyes, particularly at a time when they were already up in arms at what they saw as the "old school tie" approach to intelligence in Britain. They could hardly own up, and the Hampshire case was carefully buried forever.

  The unsuccessful recruitment of Hampshire was also interesting for the light it cast on James Klugman's role in Soviet Intelligence recruitment in the 1930s. He had clearly been instrumental in arranging the looking-over dinner in Paris. Cairncross had also told us that it was Klugman who had recruited him. Until then, MI5 had tended to assume Klugman was merely an overt Party activist, rather than a covert agent recruiter or talent spotter. It was obvious that Klugman could tell us much about the 1930s, if we could persuade or pressurize him to confess. I knew Klugman would never accept a direct approach from MI5, so we struck a deal with Cairncross; if he came back to Britain, confronted Klugman, and persuaded him to meet MI5 and tell all, we would allow him to come back to the country permanently.

  Cairncross accepted our offer with alacrity, and visited Klugman in London. Klugman was an old man, a hard veteran of the class war, busy writing a history of the Communist Party as a last testament to a lifetime's work. He laughed when Cairncross asked him to meet MI5, and shrugged him off when Cairncross threatened to expose him if he did not. The attempt failed miserably and Cairncross was forced back into exile. Shortly afterward, Klugman took his secrets to the grave.

  There were other loyal Party servants who refused our approaches. Bob Stewart and Edith Tudor Hart, both of whom were involved as couriers for the Ring of Five in 1939-40, were approached. Neither would talk. They were disciplined soldiers, and had spent too long in the game to be broken. The public rarely realizes the weakness of MI5's position with inquiries of this sort. We cannot compel people to talk to us. Almost everything we do, unless an arrest is imminent, depends on cooperation. For instance, Blunt told us that he knew of two other spies - one of whom he had discovered after the man made a recruitment approach to Leo Long, whom Blunt was already running. The situation was additionally complicated by the fact that Blunt was having an affair with the potential recruiter, although neither told the other about his designs on Long. Both of these men, who are still alive and living in Britain today, were working on the Phantom Program during the war, although they left afterward to pursue academic careers. Despite many efforts, neither would agree to meet me to discuss their involvement with Russian Intelligence. The only positive action was to warn a senior police chief, who was friendly with one of the spies, and their relationship ceased.

  - 17 -

  After I had been meeting Blunt for a year, an obvious pattern emerged. I was able to tease things out from him - mostly pillow talk he had gathered from Guy Burgess. He claimed a writer on THE TIMES had been approached. I traced him, and he confirmed that Burgess had tried to recruit him, but that he turned him down, fearful of the consequences of being caught. Another contact Blunt identified was Tom Wylie, a War Office clerk, long since dead. Wylie, said Blunt, used to let Burgess see anything which came into his hands. But although Blunt, under pressure, expanded his information, it always pointed at those who were either dead, long since retired, or else comfortably out of secret access and danger.

  I knew that Blunt must know of others who were not retired, who still had access. These were the people he was protecting. But how could I identify them? I decided to draw up lists of all those who were mentioned by interviewees as having noted left-wing views before the war, or who interviewees felt would have been likely to have been the target for a recruitment approach from Guy Burgess.

  One name stood out beyond all the others: Alister Watson. Berlin mentioned him, the writer Arthur Marshall mentioned him, Tess Rothschild mentioned him. He was, they all said, a fervent Marxist at Cambridge in the 1930s, an Apostle, and a close friend of both Blunt and Burgess. Burgess, so far as they recalled, admired him intensely during the 1930s - a sure sign that he was likely to have been approached.

  I began to make inquiries into his background. I knew him quite well from the war. He worked currently as a scientist in the Admiralty Research Laboratory, and actually lived for two years with my brother in Bristol. I never cared for Watson at the time. He was tall and thin, with a pinched, goatlike face and a strange affected tiptoed walk. Watson considered himself one of the greatest theoretical physicists of his day, yet most of his colleagues thought his grasp of practical work distinctly ropey and that he had made serious mistakes in theoretical work. He was, I thought, a bit of a fraud.

  Watson was a failure. At Cambridge he was considered a brilliant student, destined for the highest academic honors, until his thesis was found to contain a massive fundamental error. He failed to gain a fellowship, and took a job in the Admiralty instead. After service in the Radar and Signals Establishment of the Navy, he became head of the Submarine Detection Research Section at ARL. It was one of the most secret and important jobs in the entire NATO defense establishment, but it was obscure work, particularly for one who had promised so much in his youth.

  At Cambridge, Watson was an ardent Marxist; indeed, many of those I interviewed described him as the "high priest" of Marxist theory among the Apostles. Marxism had a beautiful logic, an all-embracing answer to every question, which captivated him. He was drawn to DAS KAPITAL as others are drawn to the Bible and, like a preacher manque, he began to proselytize the creed among his friends, particularly when his hopes of an academic career began to fade. Blunt later admitted that Watson schooled him in Marxism.

  When I studied his file, his departure from Cambridge struck me as most peculiar - just at the time of Munich, when radical discontent with the Establishment was at its height. It bore all the hallmarks of Burgess' and Philby's move to the right at the same period. There was one other item of interest. V
ictor Rothschild wrote a letter to Dick White in 1951 suggesting that Watson should be investigated in view of his Communist affiliations in the 1930s. Inexplicably, Victor's suggestion had never been pursued, and since then Watson had been successfully vetted no less than three times, and made no mention of his political background.

  I decided to try Watson's name out on Blunt at our next meeting. I knew it would be a waste of time to approach the matter directly, so I prepared a list of all known members of the Apostles including Watson, and asked him to pick out those he had known, or felt I should take an interest in. He went down the list, but made no mention of Watson.

  "What about Alister?" I asked him finally.

  "No," said Blunt firmly, "he's not relevant."

  The time had come to confront Blunt. I told him he was lying again, that he knew as well as I did that Watson was a close friend and fellow Communist at Cambridge. Blunt's tic started again. Yes, it was true, he admitted. They were friends. They still saw each other regularly at Apostles dinners and the like, but he had not recruited him, and nor had Guy so far as he knew.

  Alister, he said, was a tragic figure, whose life had gone terribly wrong. He was a man who promised so much, yet had achieved so little, whereas his undergraduate friends, like Blunt himself and Turing, had achieved eminence, and in Turing's case immortality.

  "I learned my Marxist theory at Alister's feet," Blunt told me.

  "I suppose you know where he works?" I asked.

  "The Admiralty, isn't it?"

  "You said there were no more, Anthony. You said you were telling me the truth..."

  Blunt raked the fire vigorously.

  "I could never be Whittaker Chambers," he said after a while, referring to the famous American Communist who renounced his creed in the 1950s and named his former accomplices, including Alger Hiss, in a series of sensational appearances before Congressional committees.

  "It's so McCarthyite," he went on, "naming names, informing, witchhunts..."

  "But, Anthony, that's what you are - that's why we gave you immunity. It was your choice. It's no good putting the hood on, if you won't point the finger..."

  Blunt fell silent. Years had passed since 1937, but the weight never lifted.

  "I suppose you'll turn the works on him," he said finally.

  I wrote a lengthy report on Watson in early 1965, recommending an urgent investigation. I submitted it to Hollis and F.J. via the head of D Branch, Alec MacDonald, who had replaced Cumming when the latter retired, aware at last that he would never attain the Deputy's chair. MacDonald was a sensible former Indian policeman, with a taste for cordon bleu cooking and the other good things in life, and a dislike of excessive administration. He was good to be with, but could be infuriating to work for.

  Nothing happened for five months, and finally, when I attended my D3 annual review meeting with Hollis and F.J., I raised the subject. Why, I asked, had an investigation not been sanctioned? At first there was a lot of talk about priorities, and limits on resources. I reminded them that the whole rationale for D3 was that it should produce leads, which were then to be taken on by D1 (Investigations) if their strength warranted it. Here was a strong lead to a suspect currently enjoying prime access to NATO secrets. I said that if this was to be the procedure, they might just as well close down D3 entirely.

  F.J. was very sensible. Hollis was surly and defensive. The mistake had occurred at D Branch level. Somehow or other, in the confusion of the handover from Cumming to MacDonald, the case had not been given the priority it needed. Hollis instructed there and then that the case be activated.

  Patrick Stewart, then D1 (Investigations), took it on. He was a great friend as well as a brilliant officer, with an uncomplicated, clear mind. He was a man of great personal courage. During the war he was severely crippled, but despite his wheelchair he continued working at MI5 until ill-health finally drove him into early retirement. Watson was immediately placed under full surveillance, and we soon discovered that his wife and daughter were both current Communists, and from the tenor of his conversations, so was Watson himself, although he had declared none of this during his vettings.

  The investigation, however, was limited. Watson was due to visit the USA to be indoctrinated into the latest American antisubmarine-detection techniques, and the Admiralty insisted that the case be clarified before his departure. We decided to interrogate him. Every day for six weeks Watson reported to the Ministry of Defense, where he was questioned by MI5's top interrogator, and today the Deputy Director-General of the Service, Cecil Shipp.

  Watson began by acting like an affronted senior civil servant. What right had we to question him? he wanted to know. But this soon disappeared as Shipp probed his story.

  Did he know Guy Burgess?

  Of course.

  Did he ever visit Guy Burgess' flat?

  On occasions, yes.

  Whom did he meet there?

  Guy, Anthony...

  Anyone else?

  Yes, a foreigner. He couldn't remember his name...

  Could he describe him?

  At first he couldn't. Then he could. He was Central European.

  He had dark hair, slicked down, he thought. It sounded very like "Otto," the controller of the Ring of Five in the late 1930s.

  "Does the name 'Otto' mean anything to you?" asked Shipp.

  "Yes - that was the man's name. That's right, Otto..." answered Watson, a shade too enthusiastically.

  For a while Shipp pursued other areas of questioning, but then he returned to Otto. Had Watson ever met him again? At first Watson couldn't remember. Then he thought perhaps he had met him, but he could recollect no details. Then he remembered that they used to meet in parks, and under lampposts on street corners, and on tube trains.

  "Did he give you anything?"

  "No, I'm quite sure of that..."

  "Did you give him anything?"

  "No, I don't think so..."

  "Tell me, Mr. Watson, why did you meet him like that? Why not at your flat, or at a restaurant?"

  No answer.

  A long, long pause.

  "I was interested in these people," he said lamely. "I wanted to find out more about Russia..."

  "You were interested in these people..." reiterated Shipp with crushing sarcasm.

  The next day Shipp showed Watson thirty photographs spread out in a neat fan on the table in front of him. They contained portraits of some of the most important KGB officers since 1945, who had been in Britain.

  "Do you recognize any of these people?" he was asked.

  Watson stared at the photographs, fingering one or two hesitantly. He muttered to himself as he sorted them, resorted them, stacked them in piles, and unstacked them again, every word captured on the hidden microphones. We were certain, from his answers about Otto, that Watson feared or suspected that we had direct evidence against him, perhaps a surveillance photograph of him meeting a KGB officer, or a confession which implicated him. At night he went home, and we could hear him mumbling there via the SF we had installed on his telephone.

  "They've got something," he kept whispering. "They've got something, but I don't know what it is..."

  After several hours, Watson picked out three photographs. The first was Yuri Modin, Philby's controller; the second was Sergei Kondrashev, George Blake's controller; and the third was Nikolai Karpekov, Vassall's controller. Watson admitted meeting all three regularly, sometimes close to the Admiralty Research Laboratory at Teddington during his lunch hour, but he denied passing any secrets. Golitsin said that he knew that Karpekov had two Naval spies, one of whom was a Naval scientist. Also that Kondrashev had had two spies, one of whom was Blake, the other a Naval spy.

  Shipp tore into him. Did he really expect us to believe that he just happened to meet four top KGB controllers, by chance, for no reason? Did he think we were stupid? Naive? It was all secret, wasn't it? They were clandestine meetings? He was a spy, wasn't he? It all fitted, didn't it - friendship with Burgess, Ma
rxism in the 1930s, concealed Communism and entry into secret work, meeting Russians? It was time to confess.

  Day after day Shipp pursued him. Let's take it from the beginning again, he would say, and Watson would tell the same incredible story. The mark of a good interrogator is his memory, and Shipp had one like an elephant. Every variation, every omission in Watson's narrative was stored and thrown back at him hours, and sometimes days, later. But Watson stuck doggedly to his story. He had never passed anything over. His lips quivered, he was red and sweaty, but like a punch-drunk boxer he refused to take the count.

  After six weeks of daily interrogation Watson was visibly wilting. He came into sessions drugged with tranquilizers, rambling incoherently, barely aware of the questions that we asked. In desperation almost, Cecil Shipp began to skirt the issue of immunity. At the time we had not obtained the Attorney-General's permission, so he phrased his questions hypothetically.