The Defence of the Realm
Page 133
80 Security Service Archives.
81 Security Service Archives.
82 Security Service Archives.
83 Recollections of a former Security Service officer.
84 Security Service Archives. The worst that emerged from the prolonged investigation of Hollis was some evidence that he had been less than frank about his life immediately before the Second World War.
85 Security Service Archives.
86 Security Service Archives. See above, pp. 280–82.
87 Security Service Archives.
88 Security Service Archives.
89 Security Service Archives.
90 Security Service Archives.
91 Security Service Archives.
92 Security Service Archives.
93 Wright, Spycatcher, p. 341.
94 Ibid., p. 243.
95 Rimington, Open Secret, p. 118.
96 Security Service Archives.
97 Security Service Archives.
98 Security Service Archives.
99 Elsa Bernaut was the widow of the Soviet illegal Ignace Poretsky (also known as Reiss), who had been assassinated after defecting in 1937. In a bizarre and bullying interview with Bernaut in 1970, Wright perversely suggested that, though she had ‘muddled up’ the dates, there was a reference in her memoirs to Ignace Reiss using Philby as a penetration agent. ‘This’, noted Wright with evident self-satisfaction, ‘was entirely the right tactic. She blew up and was angry with me.’ Security Services Archives.
100 Security Service Archives.
101 Security Service Archives.
Chapter 11: The Wilson Government 1964–1970:
Security, Subversion and ‘Wiggery-Pokery’
1 Benn, Out of the Wilderness, p. 37.
2 Ian Aitken, ‘Sinister backbench MP played key role in downfall’, Guardian, 11 March 2006.
3 Ziegler, Wilson, p. 178.
4 See below, p. 524.
5 See above, p. 930 n. 82.
6 Cunningham and Hollis agreed that ‘The proposal would also mean that the Director General would be deprived of the advice which he was able to get from the PUS Home Office, which had been so strongly advocated by Sir Norman Brook, for Colonel Wigg who would be located in No. 10 would have no staff who could give such advice.’ Security Service Archives.
7 Wilson considered Trend the best civil servant he had ever known. Castle, Castle Diaries, p. 115.
8 Security Service Archives.
9 Ziegler, Wilson, p. 178.
10 Security Service Archives.
11 Jenkins, Life at the Centre, p. 383.
12 Ziegler, Wilson, p. 178.
13 Castle, Castle Diaries, p. 172.
14 See below, pp. 532–3.
15 Christopher Andrew, interview with the Rev. Anne Kiggell, July 2006.
16 See below, p. 633.
17 After a kerb-crawling episode in 1976, Wigg (then seventy-six years old) was found not guilty by the magistrate of using insulting behaviour likely to cause a breach of the peace on the grounds that kerb- crawling at that period was not in itself an offence. The police officer who gave evidence against Wigg referred to a previous occasion on which he had found him kerb-crawling and given him a warning. The officer also said that Wigg was known to officers of the Vice Squad covering the Hilton Hotel. ‘Kerb-Crawling Lord Wigg Stopped Six Women, Says PC’, Daily Telegraph, 5 Nov. 1976. ‘Lord Wigg is cleared of insulting behaviour’, The Times, 4 Dec. 1976.
18 Security Service Archives.
19 Security Service Archives.
20 Benn, Out of the Wilderness, p. 328.
21 Jenkins, Life at the Centre, p. 175.
22 Benn, Out of the Wilderness, p. 328.
23 Andrew, Secret Service, p. 699.
24 Benn, Out of the Wilderness, p. 329.
25 See above, pp. 415–18.
26 Security Service Archives.
27 See above, pp. 412–14.
28 In the Bax case (see above, p. 415), however, Wilson told Hollis that ‘he thought it entirely right that we should have warned the Party that one of their employees was receiving money from Communist intelligence services.’ Security Service Archives.
29 When Gordon Walker made the proposal late in 1961, he was unaware that Clarke had attracted D2’s attention in 1959 as a result of his contacts with officials at the Czechoslovak embassy, one of whom was believed to be an StB officer. When interviewed by D2 in February 1962, however, Clarke ‘gave a full account of his contacts with SovBloc officials in London. He was cooperative and made a good impression.’ Security Service Archives.
30 Security Service Archives.
31 Security Service Archives.
32 See below, pp. 637–8.
33 Ziegler, Wilson, p. 169.
34 Security Service Archives.
35 Security Service Archives. See below, pp. 711–12.
36 Ziegler, Wilson, pp. 250–51.
37 Recollections of a former Security Service officer.
38 Security Service Archives.
39 Recollections of a former Security Service officer.
40 Recollections of a former Security Service officer.
41 Security Service Archives.
42 Security Service Archives.
43 Ziegler, Wilson, p. 251.
44 Security Service Archives.
45 Security Service Archives.
46 The initial membership consisted of Ramelson, Jack Coward, Jack Dash, Gordon Norris and Harry Watson (President of the Lightermen’s Union). All were Communists. Security Service Archives.
47 Security Service Archives.
48 Security Service Archives.
49 Security Service Archives.
50 Security Service Archives.
51 Security Service Archives.
52 Jenkins made no mention of the seamen’s strike in his memoirs, A Life at the Centre.
53 See above, p. 410.
54 Security Service Archives.
55 Security Service Archives.
56 Recollections of a former Security Service officer.
57 Parl. Deb. (Commons), 28 June 1966, cols 1613–14.
58 Castle, Castle Diaries, pp. 135–6.
59 Crossman, Diaries of a Cabinet Minister, vol. 1, p. 534. Castle, Castle Diaries, p. 136.
60 Ziegler, Wilson, p. 252.
61 Chapman Pincher, ‘Labour Made Loyalty Probe’, Daily Express, 15 Feb. 1967.
62 Pincher, Inside Story, p. 228.
63 Security Service Archives.
64 Williams, Inside Number Ten, pp. 184, 185, 195–6.
65 Pincher, Inside Story, p. 233.
66 Palmer, ‘History of the D-Notice Committee’, pp. 244–5.
67 Wilkinson, Secrecy and the Media, section 7.
68 Pincher, Inside Story, pp. 22, 232.
69 Security Service Archives.
70 ‘Obituary: Roy Jenkins’, BBC News, 5 Jan. 2003. There is no evidence that Jenkins was abusing his position by trying to find out if his affair with Radziwill had been revealed by phone tapping.
71 Castle, Castle Diaries, p. 268.
72 Security Service Archives.
73 Security Service Archives.
74 Thorpe to ‘Bruno’, gay US lover, 23 April 1961. This letter was among the documents disclosed by the prosecution to the defence at Thorpe’s trial in 1979; Freeman and Penrose, Rinkagate, p. 355. Security Service Archives.
75 ‘After reference to the DG through the relevant sections a formal NRA [‘Nothing Recorded Against’ Thorpe] was sent to the Foreign Office about the subject; but at the DG’s request the Director also told Street (FO Security Department) orally [about evidence of homosexuality].’ Security Service Archives.
76 Security Service Archives.
77 Security Service Archives.
78 Security Service Archives.
79 Marcia Williams later mistakenly claimed that MI5 had concealed its knowledge of Thorpe’s homosexuality: ‘MI5 knew about Thorpe but did not tell Harold because
they wanted to destabilise us.’ Freeman and Penrose, Rinkagate, pp. 121–2.
80 Morgan, Callaghan, p. 610.
81 No evidence has been found that either ‘ploy’ went ahead. Security Service Archives.
82 Security Service Archives.
83 Security Service Archives.
84 Security Service Archives.
85 Security Service Archives.
86 Security Service Archives. At FJ’s request, Simkins asked Sr Philip Allen ‘what points weighed most with the Prime Minister and Home Secretary when they decided not to authorise a H.O.W. on Jack Jones at this juncture’. Allen regretted that he was unable to provide ‘any more detail’. Security Service Archives.
87 Security Service Archives.
88 See above, p. 500.
89 Report of the Security Commission, June 1965 (Cmnd 2722).
90 Security Service Archives.
91 Security Service Archives.
92 Security Service Archives.
93 Security Service Archives.
94 Security Service Archives.
95 Report of the Security Commission, November 1968 (Cmnd 3856).
96 Security Service Archives. At his first meeting with Heath in July 1970, FJ informed him that ‘I had persuaded Sir William Armstrong to establish a body under Lord Helsby’s chairmanship to examine the scope of protective security.’ Security Service Archives.
97 Once in Moscow, Blake and Bourke rapidly fell out. Blake writes in his memoirs that ‘Arrangements were made for [Bourke] to return to Ireland.’ He does not mention, and may not have known, that on the instructions of Sakharovsky, the head of KGB foreign intelligence, Bourke was given before his departure a drug designed to cause brain damage and thus limit his potential usefulness if he fell into the hands of British intelligence. Bourke’s premature death in his early forties probably owed as much to KGB drugs as to his own heavy drinking. Blake, No Other Choice, chs 11, 12. Andrew and Mitrokhin, Mitrokhin Archive, p. 522.
98 Crossman, Diaries of a Cabinet Minister, vol. 2, p. 87.
99 Jenkins, Life at the Centre, pp. 197–8, 201.
100 Security Service Archives.
101 Security Service Archives.
102 Security Service Archives.
103 Security Service Archives.
104 Security Service Archives.
105 ‘Hammond’ told Floud at the beginning of the interview that he ‘expected a colleague to drop in’. Security Service Archives.
106 Security Service Archives.
107 Security Service Archives.
108 Wright commented in his account of the interview with Floud on 17 March 1967, ‘We know that Phoebe Pool has told Blunt that she used to act as a courier between Jenifer and the Floud brothers when Jenifer was in the Home Office.’ (Bernard Floud’s brother, Peter, had also been a Communist at Oxford.) Security Service Archives.
109 Security Service Archives.
110 Security Service Archives.
111 Wright’s memoirs contain a garbled account of the questioning of Floud which concludes with the claim that Floud committed suicide the day after the questioning ended (in fact there was a six-month gap), shortly followed by Phoebe Pool (who in reality committed suicide four years later). Wright, Spycatcher, pp. 264–6.
112 ‘Very depressed MP killed himself’, Evening Standard, 13 Oct. 1967.
113 Andrew, Secret Service, p. 643.
114 Material from KGB archives published in the spring of 2009 appears to resolve the question of a hitherto unidentified Soviet agent, codenamed SCOTT, active at Oxford University before the Second World War. According to this material, SCOTT was Arthur Wynn, who graduated from Trinity College, Cambridge in 1932 with first-class honours in natural sciences and later became a postgraduate at Oxford. Wynn was an active talent-spotter as well as a committed Communist. His case officer, Teodor Maly, reported in 1937 that he had provided twenty-five names. Wynn was later criticized, however, for suggesting too many names of known Communists. It remains unclear whether any of those talent-spotted became significant Soviet agents. (Haynes, Klehr and Vassiliev, ‘Spy Mystery Solved’. ‘Civil Servant Arthur Wynn revealed as recruiter of Oxford spies’, The Times, 13 May 2009.) A later MI5 investigation, which included intermittent interviews with Wynn beginning in 1951, concluded that ‘he appears to have acted in some capacity for the RIS until at least 1944’, but discovered little about his role. At interview Wynn seemed determined not to give ‘one bloody inch’ about his past activities. By the time he passed the Purge Procedure in 1948 and embarked on a distinguished career in the civil service, however, MI5 concluded that he had ceased to represent a significant security risk. (Security Service Archives.)
115 Frolik, Frolik Defection, pp. 58, 96–7.
116 Security Service Archives.
117 See below, p. 707.
118 Frolik, Frolik Defection, pp. 58, 96–7.
119 See above, p. 413.
120 Frolik, Frolik Defection, pp. 58, 96–7. A Security Service investigation confirmed that ‘The records of the House of Commons, though scanty, show that Owen had been in possession of a Secret brief on the British Army of the Rhine,’ which he was believed to have passed to the StB. ‘William James Owen’ [prepared for Home Secretary], Security Service Archives.
121 Security Service Archives.
122 Security Service Archives.
123 Security Service Archives.
124 Security Service Archives.
SECTION E: THE LATER COLD WAR
Introduction: The Security Service and its Staff in the Later Cold War
1 Home Office Archives.
2 See below, p. 587.
3 As well as winning over Maudling, J. H. Waddell also had the support of the cabinet secretary, Sir Burke Trend, and Heath’s principal private secretary, Robert Armstrong. Remarkably, Sir Dick White told Allen that he too was in favour of appointing the Home Office candidate rather than an internal candidate as the next DG – although, Allen noted, ‘for obvious reasons he would prefer that Furnival Jones did not know this.’ Home Office Archives.
4 Home Office Archives.
5 Home Office Archives.
6 Heath was not, however, worried about ‘the Americans clamming up if we have confidence in the man we appoint’. Home Office Archives.
7 Home Office Archives. Peter Wright’s later claim that, at his instigation, Victor Rothschild had intervened with Heath to secure Hanley’s appointment (Spycatcher, pp. 348–55) has been shown by Rothschild’s biographer to be highly implausible; Rose, Elusive Rothschild, pp. 243–5.
8 Security Service Archives.
9 Unattributable interview with eyewitness cited by Baston, Reggie, pp. 404–5.
10 Rimington, Open Secret, p. 116.
11 Recollections of Sir Michael Hanley.
12 Security Service Archives.
13 Security Service Archives.
14 Security Service Archives.
15 Security Service Archives.
16 Security Service Archives.
17 Security Service Archives.
18 Recollections of a Security Service officer.
19 A4 was responsible for training its own surveillance officers as well as providing training for police forces and overseas agencies. Training courses for new A4 recruits began on a regular basis in 1966 when the first training officer was appointed. By 1976 there was a ten-week induction course.
20 Recollections of a former Security Service officer.
21 Security Service Archives.
22 Recollections of a former Security Service officer.
23 Recollections of a former Security Service officer. I have discovered no corroboration for this claim.
24 Recollections of a former Security Service officer.
25 Recollections of a former Security Service officer.
26 Recollections of a former Security Service officer. Though the remark itself may be apocryphal, it probably reflected the feelings of some of the non-graduates.
28 Security Service Archives.
29 Security Service Archives.
30 Rimington, Open Secret, p. 124.
31 Ibid., p. 149.
32 Recollections of a former Security Service officer.
33 A female recruit who worked in the Service during the 1970s wrote nostalgically in 2004: ‘I can only thank the Office for some interesting and funny times.’ Recollections of a former Security Service officer.
34 Walden, Lucky George, p. 148. See below, pp. 571–2.
35 Security Service Archives.
36 Recollections of a former Security Service officer.
37 Rimington, Open Secret, p. 201.
38 Recollections of Sir Michael Hanley.
39 Security Service Archives.
40 Security Service Archives. (A note on the file records that no copy was kept of Hanley’s letter to Jenkins on his departure from the Home Office.)
41 Security Service Archives.
42 Christopher Andrew, interview with Sir David Goodall, 22 July 2005.
43 Recollections of Sir Michael Hanley.
44 Recollections of a former Security Service officer.
45 See below, p. 634.
46 Recollections of Sir Michael Hanley.
47 Morgan, Callaghan, pp. 611–12. Security Service Archives.
48 Security Service Archives. Home Office Archives. Callaghan later claimed that it was his idea that Smith should inform Gromyko: ‘My personal relations with Andrei Gromyko, the Soviet foreign minister at the time, were quite good and therefore I proposed to Howard Smith that before he left Moscow he should see Gromyko to tell him that he was to become the new head of MI5.’ Interview with Callaghan on 9 May 1996, cited by Richard Norton- Taylor, ‘Out of the fog of paranoia’, Guardian, 10 May 1996.
49 Home Office Archives.
50 Christopher Andrew, interview with retired Home Office official, August 2008.
51 Home Office Archives. Sir Patrick Walker later confirmed Hanley’s complaint that, as head of the FCO Northern Department, Smith had turned down Security Service requests to refuse visas for Soviet Bloc intelligence officers operating under diplomatic cover: ‘He did not want to offend anybody – he was a disaster.’ Recollections of Sir Patrick Walker.
52 Home Office Archives.