The Defence of the Realm
Page 127
63 See below, pp. 808, 819.
64 Security Service Archives.
65 See above, pp. 61, 85.
66 Recollections of a former Security Service officer.
67 Recollections of a former Security Service officer.
68 Recollections of a former Security Service officer.
69 Recollections of a former Security Service officer.
70 Wright, Spycatcher, p. 70.
71 Security Service Archives.
72 Security Service Archives.
73 On the 1931 reorganization, see above, p. 129.
74 Security Service Archives.
75 Even Peter Wright, who regarded Bagot as ‘slightly touched’, acknowledged her ‘extraordinary memory for facts and files’; Wright, Spycatcher, pp. 37–8.
76 A former Security Service officer later recalled: ‘In E1, under Milicent Bagot, I studied the activities of some international Communist front organisations in the UK. I was less happy here because of the dominant and possessive personality of Milicent, who seemed more concerned with form and detail, rather than content, and could also be rather rude to her officers.’ Recollections of a former Security Service officer.
77 Recollections of a former Security Service officer.
78 The letter of appointment of the future DG John Jones appears to have been typical. He was told: ‘You may like to know that the employment in question is pensionable, subject to a probationary period of two years, but it involves an obligation to serve anywhere in the Commonwealth for tours of three or four years each, amounting in all to between a quarter and a third of your total service.’ Security Service Archives. In fact, Jones spent one year in Hong Kong, four and a half years in Singapore and three years at British Services Security Organization: a total of eight and a half years abroad out of thirty years’ service, the predicted quarter to a third of his career.
79 Recollections of a former Security Service officer.
80 On Weldsmith, see above, p. 888 n. 97.
81 Recollections of a former Security Service officer.
82 Recollections of a former Security Service officer.
83 Recollections of a former Security Service officer.
84 Security Service Archives.
85 Security Service Archives.
86 Security Service Archives.
87 Security Service Archives.
88 How large the minority was is disputed. Ms Rimington acknowledges: ‘Maybe it was not as bad as I remember. I was very low down in the hierarchy and from low down you often get a very partial view of what is going on.’ Rimington, Open Secret, pp. 101–2.
89 Personal memoir by his brother.
90 Recollections of former Security Service officers.
91 Recollections of a former Security Service officer.
92 Recollections of former Security Service officers.
93 Recollections of a former Security Service officer.
94 Recollections of a former Security Service officer.
95 Recollections of a former Security Service officer.
96 Recollections of a former Security Service officer.
97 See above, pp. 400–401.
98 Rimington, Open Secret, p. 96.
99 Though A4 came in theory under the control of the Senior Officer in charge of A1, in practice it remained largely autonomous.
100 Security Service Archives.
101 Security Service Archives. By the later Cold War the word ‘watcher’ was regarded as rather demeaning and had passed out of Service vocabulary.
102 Recollections of a former Security Service officer.
103 Security Service Archives.
104 Security Service Archives.
105 See below, pp. 387–8.
106 Security Service Archives. The unconvincing reason given for the refusal to promote Skardon was that he was not equipped to occupy the full range of posts to which Service officers might be appointed.
107 Recollections of a former Security Service officer. Security Service Archives. Wright, Spycatcher, p. 45.
108 Wright, Spycatcher, p. 44. Security Service Archives.
109 Security Service Archives.
110 Security Service Archives.
111 Guy Liddell diary, 23 Jan. 1950, Security Service Archives.
112 Security Service Archives.
113 Wright, Spycatcher, pp. 47–8.
114 Security Service Archives.
115 Recollections of a former Security Service officer. Security Service Archives. Wright, Spycatcher, pp. 39–41.
116 Security Service Archives.
117 Cram made this assessment in a detailed discussion with Christopher Andrew after the US publication of Spycatcher in 1987.
118 Wright, Spycatcher, p. 54.
119 Security Service Archives.
120 See below, pp. 766–7.
121 Security Service Archives.
122 Wright, Spycatcher, p. 169.
123 Though A5 advised on and supervised the production of operational equipment, the manufacturing work was undertaken by external suppliers.
124 Security Service Archives.
125 Security Service Archives.
126 Security Service Archives.
127 Recollections of a former Security Service officer.
128 Recollections of a former Security Service officer.
129 Rimington, Open Secret, pp. 102–3.
130 Recollections of a former Security Service officer.
131 Security Service Archives. The five-year restriction was removed in 1975 as a result of the Sex Discrimination Act.
132 Recollections of a former Security Service officer.
133 Recollections of a former Security Service officer.
134 ‘The Report of the Committee on the Civil Service’, Cmnd 3638 (1968).
135 Recollections of a former Security Service officer.
136 Security Service Archives.
Chapter 1: Counter-Espionage and Soviet Penetration: Igor Gouzenko and Kim Philby
1 Andrew and Mitrokhin, Mitrokhin Archive, pp. 183–5.
2 See below, Section D, ch. 3.
3 The large literature on the Gouzenko case includes Bothwell and Granatstein (eds), Gouzenko Transcripts; Granatstein and Stafford, Spy Wars, ch. 3; Hyde, Atom Bomb Spies, chs 1, 2; Sawatsky, Gouzenko: The Untold Story; Brook-Shepherd, Storm Birds, ch. 21; Black and Rudner (eds), Gouzenko Affair. Christopher Andrew interviewed Mrs Gouzenko and her daughter (both of whom lived under assumed names) in Toronto in November 1991. The account of the Gouzenko case in this chapter draws on Andrew and Walton, ‘The Gouzenko Case and British Secret Intelligence’.
4 See below, pp. 349–50.
5 Security Service Archives.
6 Hyde, Atom Bomb Spies, p. 30.
7 The most recent assessment is Black and Rudner (eds), Gouzenko Affair.
8 ‘Miscellaneous notes taken from Grant’s safe, telegram from Moscow to Ottawa, 22 Aug. 1945’, TNA KV 2/1427, s. 105a.
9 Alan Nunn May had first come to the attention of the Security Service in February 1938 when, as a representative of the British Association of Scientific Workers to the World Boycott Conference in London, he was noticed attending a ‘Communist Party fraction meeting’ outside the main conference; TNA KV 2/2209. There is no further record of him in Service files until after Gouzenko’s revelations in 1945.
10 Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB, p. 326.
11 See above, p. 220.
12 Cecil, ‘The Cambridge Comintern’, p. 179.
13 Philby, My Silent War, p. 102.
14 Borovik, The Philby Files, p. 239.
15 The most reliable account of Volkov’s attempted defection is in Brook-Shepherd, Storm Birds, pp. 40–53, which corrects a number of inventions and inaccuracies in Philby’s version of events.
16 Andrew and Mitrokhin, Mitrokhin Archive, p. 182.
17 Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB, p. 379.
18 Guy Liddell diary, 5 Oct. 1945, Security Service Archives.
<
br /> 19 Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB, p. 379.
20 Andrew and Mitrokhin, Mitrokhin Archive, pp. 182–3.
21 Philby, My Silent War, p. 113.
22 West and Tsarev, The Crown Jewels, p. 238. Grant to the Director, telegram no. 244, 22 Aug. 1945, TNA KV 2/1427.
23 CXG telegram 273, 11 Sept. 1945, TNA KV 2/1420, s. 5a.
24 West and Tsarev, Crown Jewels, p. 238.
25 T. E. Bromley, ‘Corby Case’, 1 March 1946, TNA KV 2/1422, s. 86a.
26 ‘Ignacy Samuel Witczak’, TNA KV 2/1635.
27 Philby, My Silent War, pp. 103–4.
28 Political Affairs Department, Commonwealth Relations Office, to High Commissioner Ottawa, telegram, 4 May 1950; Sir Percy Sillitoe (DG MI5) to S. P. Osmond, Prime Minister’s Office, 5 May 1950, TNA PREM 8/1280.
29 Unsigned [Canadian] Memorandum, [25 March 1950], TNA PREM 8/1280. Among the evidence seen by Hollis was a notebook belonging to Israel Halperin (later tried and acquitted), seized in February 1946 by the RCMP, which contained a list of names and addresses, including that of Klaus Fuchs. As the Lord Chancellor, Viscount Jowitt, acknowledged after the trial of Fuchs in 1950, ‘Subsequent events here have, of course, attached a significance to that name which it did not then bear,’ Parl. Deb. (Lords), 5 April 1950, col. 817. Jowitt and other government ministers made no reference to the role of Hollis, or any other MI5 officer, in the Gouzenko case. A top-secret Commonwealth Relations Office telegram to the Ottawa High Commission of 4 May 1950 noted that Hollis’s ‘attention was not repeat not specifically drawn to the address book or to . . . names contained in it . . . Security Service have still no copy of the address book.’ TNA PREM 8/1280.
30 Hyde, Atom Spies, p. 49.
31 Ibid., pp. 37–38.
32 P. C. Gordon Walker, untitled memo to Lord Chancellor, 31 March 1950, TNA PREM 8/1280.
33 Guy Liddell diary, 16 Feb. 1946, Security Service Archives.
34 Ibid., 20 Feb. 1946. Hyde, Atom Spies, pp. 55–6. May also declined to identify his recruiter. MI5 later concluded that this was probably Engelbert Broda, a refugee Austrian Communist physicist who worked at the Cambridge Cavendish Laboratory from 1941 to 1947 before returning to Austria. Material from KGB archives revealed in 2009 confirms this conclusion. Against MI5 advice, Broda was employed on the wartime TUBE ALLOYS project; KGB archives show that he became a valued Soviet atom spy. In 1953, after May’s release from prison, he married Broda’s ex-wife. Gibbs, ‘British and American Counter-Intelligence and the Atom Spies’, pp. 58, 117–18. Haynes, Klehr and Vassiliev, Spies, pp. 64–9.
35 Alan Nunn May’s Last Statement – Dictated to his step-granddaughter, Alice Evelegh, 23 Dec. 2002; cited by Gibbs, ‘British and American Counter-Intelligence and the Atom Spies’, p. 109.
36 Hyde, Atom Spies, pp. 44, 46, 55–60.
37 See below, p. 378.
38 Philby to R. Hollis, 19 Feb. 1946, TNA KV 2/1421, s. 64a.
39 Hollis to Philby, 19 Feb. 1946, TNA KV 2/1421, s. 65a.
40 Guy Liddell diary, 18 Sept. 1946, Security Service Archives. Though Philby took pride in deceiving Liddell, like his other intelligence colleagues, his memoirs suggest that he had a degree of affection for him and respect for ‘his subtle and reflective mind’. Philby, My Silent War, p. 74.
41 Guy Liddell diary, 20 March 1946, Security Service Archives.
42 As late as October 1981, a note on ELLI concluded, ‘The ELLI lead was extremely vague and has never been resolved.’ Security Service Archives.
43 Wright, Spycatcher, pp. 278–86, 290, 293, 381. Chapman Pincher, Their Trade is Treachery, pp. 39–41.
44 Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB, pp. 26–7. Kerr, ‘Roger Hollis and the Dangers of the Anglo-Soviet Treaty of 1942’.
45 Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB, pp. 310–12. On one significant point, Gouzenko also confused Blunt with his sub-agent ELLI, wrongly believing that ELLI had the access to the MI5 files on Russians in London enjoyed by Blunt. Like other significant KGB agents, Long’s codename also changed over time. At one point he was called RALPH: West and Tsarev, Crown Jewels, pp. 130, 133.
46 ‘A Digest of CORBY’s Information on the Organisation of the H.Q. of the Chief Directorate of Intelligence of the Red Army [GRU]’, p. 18, enclosed with Philby to J. H. Marriott (MI5), 2 Nov. 1945, TNA KV 2/1421, s. 43a.
47 Memorandum from J. C. Curry to DDG, 1 Oct. 1946, TNA KV 4/158.
48 See below, Section D, ch. 3.
Chapter 2: Zionist Extremists and Counter-Terrorism
1 The Security Service reported to the Colonial Office early in 1946: ‘In recent months, the Stern Group is reported to have increased its membership, and its active strength is now estimated by the C.I.D. as 500 . . . The strength of the Irgun is estimated between 1200 and 3500. The lower figure probably represents the number of trained fighters, while the higher figure would include auxiliaries and recruits.’ Security Service Archives.
2 Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, p. 197. I owe this reference to Dr Calder Walton.
3 On the Security Service’s post-war Divisions, see above, p. 327.
4 On the wartime role of SIME and its post-war transition to Security Service control, see the 2007 University of Cambridge PhD thesis by Adam Shelley, ‘Empire of Shadows: British Intelligence in the Middle East, 1939–1945’.
5 Recollections of former Security Service officers. Le Carré (David Cornwell) would have known Kellar during his career in the Security Service.
6 Maxine Magan, In the Service of Empire, p. 217. William Magan, Middle Eastern Approaches, p. 14.
7 William Magan, Middle Eastern Approaches, p. 91.
8 B3a (J. C. Robertson), Minute 19a, 29 March 1946, TNA KV 5/4.
9 DG (Petrie), Minute 24a, 30 March 1946, TNA KV 5/4. Walton, ‘British Intelligence and the Mandate of Palestine’, p. 439.
10 The Security Service reported that Begin, who had a £2,000 price on his head, was ‘responsible in the past for the liquidation of members of the police and the military whose activities have been judged especially worthy of Jewish resentment in Palestine’. ‘Threatened Jewish Activity in the United Kingdom, Palestine and Elsewhere’, Aug. 1946, TNA KV 3/41.
11 Clarke, By Blood and Fire.
12 Recollections of a former Security Service officer.
13 Hennessy, Never Again, pp. 238–41. Acheson, Present at the Creation, pp. 172–3.
14 Security Service Archives.
15 ‘Threatened Jewish Activity in the United Kingdom, Palestine and Elsewhere’, Aug. 1946, TNA KV 3/41. Walton, ‘British Intelligence and the Mandate of Palestine’.
16 B3A, ‘Present Trends in Zionism’, 2 Sept. 1946, TNA KV 3/67.
17 SIS to H.J. Seager, MI5, 13 Feb. 1947, TNA KV 2/2251, s. 38a. Walton, ‘British Intelligence and the Mandate of Palestine’, p. 447.
18 Begin, Revolt, pp. 103, 308–11.
19 ‘Palestine: Terrorist Outrages. Extension to the United Kingdom’, TNA CO 733/457/13.
20 Denniston, ‘Government Code and Cypher School between the Wars’, pp. 51–2. Cryptographic Reports issued by R Signals, No. 2 Wireless Company, Sarafand, Palestine, TNA HW 41/361–70.
21 Guy Liddell diary, 8 Oct. 1942, TNA KV 4/190, vol. 6.
22 Begin, Revolt, p. 148.
23 Security Service Archives.
24 Guy Liddell diary, 19 Nov. 1946, Security Service Archives.
25 ‘Extract from Report on interview with Kollek, forwarded by DSO Palestine, dated 18.8.45, reference DSO/P/13576’, TNA KV 5/34, s. 57c. I am grateful to Jonathan Chavkin of the Cambridge Intelligence Seminar for this reference.
26 T. A. Robertson, Minute 2a, 19 Sept. 1946, TNA KV 4/216. Walton, ‘British Intelligence and the Mandate of Palestine’, p. 450.
27 A. J. Kellar, (B1B), Minute 86, 30 April 1945, TNA KV 2/1435.
28 J. C. Robertson, (B3A), Minute 19a, 29 March 1946, TNA KV 5/4. Walton, ‘British Intelligence and the Mandate of Palestine’, pp. 448–50.
29 B3A, ‘Present Trends in Zionism’, 2
Sept. 1946, TNA KV 3/67, s. 113a; F. C. Derbyshire, ‘Report on Betar’, 26 July 1946, TNA KV 5/4, s. 57d.
30 Security Service Archives. The names of the agents, originally recorded in the minute, have been obliterated. The file itself exists only in microfilm; the original was destroyed.
31 B3A, ‘Present Trends in Zionism’, 2 Sept. 1946, TNA KV 3/67, s. 113a.
32 Security Service Archives.
33 Security Service Archives.
34 Guy Liddell diary, 14 June 1947, Security Service Archives.
35 Burt, Commander Burt of Scotland Yard, pp. 126–7. Walton, ‘British Intelligence and the Mandate of Palestine’, p. 440.
36 Security Service Archives.
37 Security Service Archives.
38 H. E. Watts (Chief Inspector of Explosives), ‘Outrages 1947–1948: letter bombs’, TNA EF 5/12. Walton, ‘British Intelligence and Threats to National Security, 1941–1951’, p. 137.
39 Security Service Archives. Five alleged members of the Stern Gang had been arrested in Paris on 22 May. In the room of one of them bomb-making equipment and plastic-explosive wrappings were discovered which matched those used in the Colonial Office bomb and material found in Knouth’s suitcase. Security Service Archives.
40 ‘Stern Gang Give Bomb Girl a Party’, Daily Express, 25 Aug. 1948. Knouth was released after serving eight months of her sentence.
41 Guy Liddell diary, 14 June 1947, Security Service Archives.
42 Security Service Archives.
43 Security Service Archives.
44 ‘Stern Gang Give Bomb Girl a Party’, Daily Express, 25 Aug. 1948.
45 ‘Director-General [Sillitoe]’s Lecture’, 16 March 1948, TNA KV 3/41, s. 7a. Walton, ‘British Intelligence and Threats to National Security, 1941–1951’, p. 168.
46 Security Service Archives.
47 Security Service Archives.
48 Security Service Archives.
49 Security Service Archives.
50 Security Service Archives.
51 Security Service Archives.
52 Security Service Archives.
53 Security Service Archives.
54 Security Service Archives.
55 Hennessy, Never Again, p. 239.
56 Brendon, Decline and Fall of the British Empire, p. 476.
57 Guy Liddell diary, 4 June 1947, Security Service Archives.
58 For other kidnappings, see TNA FO 371/52530.