The Defence of the Realm

by Christopher Andrew

  But there was one important and potentially highly controversial intelligence lead on the Profumo case from a Western double agent in Soviet intelligence (whose name remains classified) of which neither Denning nor the Security Service was aware. On 14 June 1963, nine days after Profumo’s resignation, the agent reported overhearing a Soviet intelligence officer say that ‘the Russians had in fact received a lot of useful information from Profumo from Christine Keeler, with whom Ivanov had established contact, and in whose apartment Ivanov had even been able to lay on eavesdropping operations at the appropriate times.’ Though the double agent did not realize it, the Soviet intelligence officer’s boast was based on deeply improbable speculation rather than reliable intelligence. Ivanov was a GRU officer and it is highly unlikely that detailed reports on his operations would have been sent to the KGB residency where the double agent was stationed. At the time, however, the boast was taken seriously and the agent’s report forwarded to the US Attorney General, Robert Kennedy, to pass on to his brother, the President, who was due to meet Macmillan in July.77

  The probability is, however, that Robert Kennedy, who sometimes disregarded Hoover’s advice, did not tell the President and that therefore Macmillan did not learn of the double agent’s claim. Hoover himself did not inform the Security Service for several years, probably because of his belief in 1963, in the wake of the series of spy scandals over the past year, that ‘the British leak like a sieve.’ The SLO in Washington, who was told of the double agent’s report in 1966, was rightly relieved that it had not been available in London when Denning was conducting his inquiry:

  I imagine that if it had reached us [in 1963], it would have been difficult to do other than to accept that it had emanated from a genuine source who had proved reliable in the past, even though our own material gave us no reason to believe that there had been security breaches as a result of Profumo’s infatuation with Keeler, and the latter’s involvement with Ivanov in 1962.78

  If the contents of the double agent’s report had been mentioned by Denning in 1963, the conspiracy theorists would have had a field day.

  After the sensational spy cases of the early 1960s, culminating in (for Macmillan) the almost unbearable embarrassment of Profumo, the usually well-balanced Prime Minister began to succumb to conspiracy theory. He summoned Dick White, in whom he continued to place far more confidence than he did in Hollis, and asked him if he was being set up by Soviet intelligence.79 White did not believe so, but to set the Prime Minister’s mind at rest, on 17 June a joint MI5–SIS working party was instructed ‘to look into the possibility that the Russian Intelligence Service had a hand in staging the Profumo affair in order to discredit Her Majesty’s government’. By the time that it reported in the negative, ill health had forced Macmillan to resign.80

  As a result of the spy scandals and the Profumo affair, protective security became a convenient political stick with which the Opposition could beat the government. The establishment of the standing Security Commission in January 1964, initially chaired by Mr (later Lord) Justice Winn, with a remit ‘to advise whether any change in security arrangements is desirable’, was intended to remove protective security from the arena of party politics. The disadvantage for C Branch was that it sometimes found its own lead role in protective security challenged by what it tended to regard as the well-intentioned, enthusiastic amateurs on the Security Commission.81

  A year after the Profumo affair, the Conservative government headed by Macmillan’s successor, Sir Alec Douglas-Home (who had given up his peerage), was threatened by the prospect of another sexual scandal – this time involving the promiscuously bisexual senior Conservative politician Lord Boothby, who had been MP for East Aberdeenshire for over thirty years before being given a life peerage in 1958. On 19 July 1964 the lead story in the Sunday Mirror, published under the banner headline ‘THE PICTURE WE DARE NOT PRINT’, referred to an incriminating photograph of a prominent politician in the Lords in the company of the leader of London’s biggest protection racket, and claimed that Scotland Yard was investigating a homosexual relationship between the two. Three days later, uninhibited by British libel laws, the German magazine Stern identified the two men concerned as Lord Boothby and the gay psychopath Ronnie Kray, who, together with his twin brother Reggie, ran north London’s leading criminal gang as well as moving in showbusiness and celebrity circles. Even before Stern named Boothby and Ronnie Kray, D4 noted that an ‘unpaid source of ours who is a semi-reformed homosexual’ had reported stories going round Fleet Street linking Boothby, the gay Labour MP Tom Driberg and the Kray twins. Director D minuted that ‘the content of the report appears to be of no security interest as Lord Boothby and Mr Driberg do not have access to classified information.’ A D Branch Fleet Street source, however, reported that the links between Boothby and the Krays ‘might blow up into another minor Profumo affair’.82 That was also the fear of some members of the Douglas-Home government, though – with an election less than three months away – they feared that the scandal might prove more than minor. On 22 July, the day Stern named Boothby and Ronnie Kray, the DG was summoned to see the Home Secretary, Henry Brooke, who told him that he and some of his colleagues felt that the scandal might develop along the lines of the Profumo affair. Hollis acknowledged that the Security Service had heard numerous rumours, some of them about Boothby’s homosexuality, but added that, since he had no access to official secrets, his private life was no concern of the Service.83

  Boothby publicly denied that he had any close or homosexual relations with Ronnie Kray and issued a writ for libel against the Mirror. On 7 August the Mirror made a public apology and paid £40,000 damages as well as Boothby’s costs. Thereafter the media were scared off pursuing the story. In reality, Boothby’s relations with the Krays, who five years later were sentenced to life imprisonment for murder (with minimum terms of thirty years), were much closer than he admitted.84 Had those relations been made public at the time, the resulting scandal would have been even more deeply embarrassing for Harold Macmillan than the Profumo affair. What Hollis and Brooke almost certainly knew but did not mention, when they met on 22 July, was that the bisexual Boothby was the long-term lover of Lady Dorothy Macmillan.

  10

  FLUENCY: Paranoid Tendencies

  The most traumatic episodes in the Cold War history of the Security Service – the prolonged investigations as suspected Russian agents first of a DDG, Graham Mitchell, then of a DG, Sir Roger Hollis – had their improbable immediate origins in Kim Philby’s heavy drinking. After Philby’s interrogation, partial confession and defection in January 1963, his third wife Eleanor revealed that he had become very nervous during the previous summer and had begun drinking even more heavily than usual. The obvious explanation for his anxiety was an entirely rational fear that the recent KGB defector to the CIA, Anatoli Golitsyn (codenamed KAGO), might be able to identify him as a Soviet agent.1 Conspiracy theory, however, triumphed over common sense in explaining Philby’s anxiety. It was perversely claimed that he must have been warned by someone in the Security Service that he was once again under suspicion and likely to be questioned. Plans for Philby’s interrogation were known to five members of the Service, of whom only Hollis and Mitchell had long enough service and good enough access to classified information to fit the profile of a long-term penetration agent.2 The Service’s fear of penetration was strengthened by the continuing failure to resolve the case of the Magnificent Five and to identify ELLI, as well as by the discovery in 1961 that the SIS officer George Blake was a Soviet spy.3

  Security Service conspiracy theorists were further encouraged by Golitsyn, whose passionately paranoid tendencies made him an increasing liability to the US and British intelligence communities, which had originally welcomed him with open arms. The Service’s leading conspiracy theorist at the time of his defection, Arthur Martin (D1), head since January 1960 of the Soviet counter-espionage section, later acknowledged that it was Golitsyn who had ‘crystallised’ h
is long-standing suspicion that there was a major Soviet mole within the Service. Yet, as Martin also acknowledged, Golitsyn could offer only ‘circumstantial evidence’ with ‘no precise information’ to back up his theories.4 Ironically, Martin’s own career offered tempting material for the conspiracy theorist. He had originally been recommended to the Security Service in 1946 by Kim Philby, who had met him when he was working for the wartime Radio Security Service.5 Whatever Philby’s motives, they cannot have been to advance MI5’s interests. Martin was a skilful and persistent counter-espionage investigator who was awarded the CBE in 1963, but he lacked the capacity for balanced judgement and a grasp of the broader context. Director B, John Marriott, had written of him in 1955: ‘In spite of his undeniable critical and analytical gifts and powers of lucid expression on paper, I must confess that I am not convinced that he is not a rather small minded man, and I doubt he will much increase in stature as he grows older.’6

  A shrewder judge than Martin noted after questioning Golitsyn in April 1962, four months after his defection to the CIA, that his ‘knowledge ranges over a wide field but nowhere has it any great depth’.7 Even Peter Wright, who transferred to D3 in 1964 and was to succeed Martin as the Service’s leading conspiracy theorist, later acknowledged that ‘the vast majority of Golitsyn’s material was tantalisingly imprecise. It often appeared true as far as it went, but then faded into ambiguity . . .’8 Golitsyn, however, sought with messianic zeal to try to persuade both the American and British intelligence communities that they were falling victim to a vast KGB deception from which only he could save them. His malign influence on MI5 was increased by his decision in December 1962, after one of his periodic disputes with the CIA, to move to Britain. On the recommendation of Graham Mitchell and a senior SIS officer, Golitsyn and his family were accepted for resettlement and arrangements made to obtain a licence for his revolver and organize quarantine for his Alsatian dog. SLO Washington was one of a number of Service officers who thought Golitsyn overrated, dismissing him as a ‘psychopath believing he is a gift from heaven to the Western World’. Following a leak in Washington and press publicity about his presence in Britain, Golitsyn decided in July 1963 to return to the United States. His months in Britain, however, coincided with Martin’s successful pressure for the investigation and surveillance of Mitchell and the beginning of his active collaboration with Peter Wright. Golitsyn remained in contact with Martin and other Security Service officers following his return to the United States, writing to Martin with characteristic immodesty after Kennedy’s assassination in November, ‘Both CIA and FBI are doomed without my help.’9

  Martin unreasonably regarded Hollis’s lack of sympathy for his conspiracy theories of Soviet penetration not merely as ‘complacency towards the threat of Russian espionage’ but as further grounds for suspecting him of involvement in it. His other chief suspect, Mitchell, Martin claimed, ‘had had the reputation of being a Marxist during the war’ – an assertion which, he later acknowledged, rested only on (inaccurate) hearsay evidence. Because of his suspicions about both the DG and DDG, Martin – by his own admission – ‘deliberately ignored the proper channels’ and took his conspiracy theories to the former DG, Sir Dick White, then Chief of SIS. If Martin’s account is to be believed, White’s response marks one of the lowest points in his long and distinguished intelligence career. According to Martin, White pronounced as plausible his baseless belief that the KGB had been tipped off about Philby’s impending interrogation by a senior source in MI5, and said he would like to reflect on how to proceed. Next day he rang Martin to say he should report his suspicions about Mitchell (though not about Hollis) directly to Hollis.10

  The presence in Britain of the KGB defector to the CIA Anatoli Golitsyn attracts unwelcome media attention (cartoon by John Jensen in the Sunday Telegraph, 14 July 1963 ). Shortly afterwards, Golitsyn decided to return to the United States.

  At 6 p.m. on 7 March 1963 Martin called on Hollis by appointment in his office at Leconfield House. The DG sent his secretary home and spent the next half-hour listening as Martin outlined his conspiracy theories about Soviet penetration of the Service and Mitchell’s possible treachery, but failed to mention his suspicions about Hollis himself. According to Martin:

  Throughout the telling the D.G. interrupted hardly at all. He sat hunched up at his desk, his face drained of colour and with a strange half-smile playing on his lips. I had framed my explanation so that it led to the conclusion that Graham Mitchell was, in my mind, the most likely suspect. I had ended by saying that while the suspicion remained unresolved I did not see how I could take responsibility for KAGO’s [Golitsyn’s] safety in the U.K.

  I had expected that my theory would at least be challenged but it received no comment other than that I had been right to voice it and that he would think it over. With that he invited me to have dinner at his club [the Travellers] . . . As we settled down into [his] car I said something like: ‘I must say I admire your phlegm, sir!’ This seemed to galvanise him and his response has remained one of my most vivid memories of that evening. It was as though this somewhat lame conversational gambit had caught him out. Metaphorically he squared his shoulders, his withdrawn, pensive expression changed to one of challenge and he said: ‘You must not think I do not take your theory seriously; I take it very seriously indeed.’

  It seems much more likely that, since the allegation had been made by the head of the Security Service’s Soviet counter-espionage section, Hollis concluded that it would have to be properly investigated but groaned inwardly at the thought of pursuing such an implausible and potentially embarrassing line of inquiry. To Martin’s annoyance, Hollis kept well away from the subject during their dinner conversation at the Travellers Club. Though Martin was ‘itching to debate’, they were reduced to ‘painful small-talk’.

  He clearly wanted to get rid of me as quickly as possible and, for my part, I had no wish to prolong the embarrassment. We agreed that neither of us wanted coffee.

  Only after we had left the club and were standing in Pall Mall did he mention again the subject of our interview. He said that he would get in touch with me again about the middle of the following week and that, in the meantime, I was to tell no one of our conversation. He got into his car and drove away.11

  Five days later Martin was summoned to a meeting at Hollis’s home, also attended by Director D, Martin Furnival Jones (FJ). Martin was authorized to begin ‘discreet enquiries’ into Mitchell’s background, which he was to report only to FJ. At the beginning of May, having obtained evidence of what he claimed was ‘suspicious behaviour’ by Mitchell, Martin was given a case officer to work under him.12 FJ was initially persuaded by Martin’s evidence. A D Branch officer recalls that he and several colleagues were told by FJ in the summer of 1963 that Mitchell had been a Soviet agent. When pressed, FJ declined to give details. His authority lent credence to a statement which, the officer recalls, they would not have believed if it had come from anybody else.13

  In mid-May 1963 Arthur Martin compared notes for the first time with Peter Wright, then in the Science Directorate, who had wrongly deduced from apparent oddities in a number of counter-espionage cases that there must be a high-level penetration of the Service and that Mitchell was the most likely culprit.14 Coached by Golitsyn, Peter Wright rapidly emerged as the Service’s witchfinder general, becoming as great a liability as Golitsyn and an even greater menace than Martin. In his memoirs, Spycatcher, Wright, while not abandoning his conspiracy theories, later came close to admitting that he and Golitsyn had been consumed by folie à deux: ‘In the tense and almost hysterical months of 1963, as the scent of treachery lingered in every corridor, it is easy to see how our fears fed on his theories.’15

  From 10 May until 14 June that year a number of searches were made of Mitchell’s office and a specially recruited surveillance team16 kept him under observation for part of his journey home each evening.17 Though initially unwilling to seek an HOW on the DDG,18 Hollis changed his
mind. After meeting the Home Office PUS, Sir Charles Cunningham, at Cunningham’s flat on 5 June, he appears to have obtained an HOW for telechecks on both Mitchell’s home and office. Hollis and the Home Secretary, Henry Brooke (who was briefed on 24 June),19 had three meetings with the Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan – on 28 June and 19 and 27 July – to discuss the unprecedented investigation of the DDG.20 Macmillan, who already had a low opinion of Hollis, seems understandably to have been appalled.21 The only other minister briefed on the investigation was the Foreign Secretary, Lord Home, on 1 July.22

  Until his retirement on 6 September 1963, Mitchell (codenamed PETERS at the suggestion of Golitsyn, whose own codename it had once been)23 was kept under both visual and audio surveillance in his office. A small hole was bored through his office wall to enable him to be continuously observed while at his desk by CCTV.24 Hollis also approved ‘barium meal’ operations against him, during which bogus intelligence was fed to him which, had he been a Soviet spy, he might have been expected to pass on to Moscow.25 Mitchell’s habit of muttering to himself when he was alone in his office added to the suspicions of Martin and Wright – though his mutterings proved difficult for the transcribers to decipher. On 30 August, for example, when he was fed a ‘barium meal’ story of a projected operation against two GRU officers, the transcriber produced two alternative versions of Mitchell’s muttered response:

  (i) Well I must tell ?Yu-Yuri that they are. I am sure – (slight laugh) – he’ll laugh if the Russians (??have booked).

  (ii) Well I am most terribly curious if they are. I am sure – (slight laugh) – he’ll laugh if the Russians (??have booked).

  The transcriber felt unable to guarantee the accuracy of either version, but preferred the first. Some of the case against Mitchell was constructed of even feebler material. For example: