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The Defence of the Realm

Page 135

by Christopher Andrew


  39 Security Service Archives.

  40 Security Service Archives.

  41 See above, pp. 548, 587.

  42 Security Service Archives.

  43 Security Service Archives.

  44 See above, p. 547.

  45 Security Service Archives.

  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 Heath, Course of my Life, p. 505.

  55 Security Service Archives.

  56 Security Service Archives.

  57 See above, p. 530.

  58 Security Service Archives.

  59 Recollections of a recently retired Security Service officer.

  60 Morgan, People’s Peace, p. 351.

  Chapter 3: Counter-Terrorism and Protective Security in the Early 1970s

  1 Security Service Archives.

  2 See below, pp. 606–7, 654–5. Until the 1970s peacetime ‘protective security’ had been mainly concerned with ‘the protection of classified information’. Security Service Archives. Thereafter its scope was extended to cover protection against terrorist attack.

  3 See below, p. 619.

  4 See above, pp. 353–61.

  5 Follain, Jackal, pp. 20–1.

  6 Security Service Archives.

  7 Security Service Archives.

  8 Security Service Archives.

  9 Security Service Archives.

  10 Boyce, Irish Question and British Politics, p. 106.

  11 Taylor, Provos, p. 32.

  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 Rimington, Open Secret, p. 105.

  19 The 1967 JIC working group on intelligence priorities made no mention of Irish affairs. ‘Confidential Annexe to Item 1 of JIC (67) 27th meeting (held on 29th June 1967)’, TNA CAB 159/47; I owe this reference to Professor Eunan O’Halpin.

  20 JIC (A) (69) 27 (Final) (16 June 1969), TNA CAB 186/3.

  21 Crossman, Diaries of a Cabinet Minister, vol. 3, p. 636. Bew and Gillespie, Northern Ireland, p. 19.

  22 O’Halpin, Defending Ireland, p. 307.

  23 Andrew and Mitrokhin, Mitrokhin Archive II, pp. 246–50.

  24 On Lyalin, see above, pp. 567–74.

  25 Security Service Archives.

  26 The Security Service does not appear to have discovered details of the appeal by Goulding and Costello to Andropov or of the arms deliveries to the Official IRA until Vasili Mitrokhin defected in 1992, bringing with him intelligence on them from KGB files. Andrew and Mitrokhin, Mitrokhin Archive, pp. 492–3, 501–3.

  27 After a dispute with Goulding in 1974, Costello was expelled from the Official IRA and founded a new Trotskyist movement, the Irish Republican Socialist Party (IRSP). He was murdered by the Officials in 1977.

  28 Security Service Archives.

  29 Unpublished memoir of a former Security Service officer.

  30 Security Service Archives.

  31 Security Service Archives.

  32 There is no record of any communication between FJ and Heath on the hijacks in the Security Service Archives. On Heath’s low opinion of FJ, see Heath, Course of my Life, p. 474.

  33 Interview with Lord Wilson of Dinton, Jan. 2007.

  34 Security Service Archives.

  35 Security Service Archives.

  36 Security Service Archives.

  37 Evening Standard, 15 Dec. 1971.

  38 Security Service Archives. The Service played only a peripheral part in the investigation, which it left mainly to the police.

  39 Security Service Archives.

  40 de la Billière, Looking for Trouble, pp. 280–81.

  41 Christie, Christie File, p. 227.

  42 Security Service Archives. The hitherto unknown Angry Brigade had previously claimed responsibility for shots fired at the Spanish embassy on 3 December 1970 and for an explosive device left at the Department of Employment on 9 December. Both attacks, however, caused so little damage that they attracted almost no media attention.

  43 Security Service Archives.

  44 Security Service Archives.

  45 Christie, Christie File, p. 239. Christie acknowledged his ‘sympathy with what the Angry Brigade did’ (p. 335), but denied any involvement with it and in 1972 was found not guilty of conspiring to cause explosions at the trial of the ‘Stoke Newington Eight’.

  46 Security Service Archives.

  47 Security Service Archives.

  48 Security Service Archives.

  49 Christie, Christie File, p. 248.

  50 Security Service Archives.

  51 Security Service Archives.

  52 Security Service Archives.

  53 Security Service Archives.

  54 F1B believed that, rather than investigating terrorist attacks after they had occurred, ‘The role of the Security Service should surely be to foresee future anarchist acts of violence. To this end we need to foster as much as possible our liaison with security authorities all over the world.’ Security Service Archives.

  55 Security Service Archives.

  56 See above, p. 476.

  57 Recollections of a former Security Service officer.

  58 Security Service Archives.

  59 Hoffman, Inside Terrorism, pp. 74–5.

  60 de la Billière, Looking for Trouble, pp. 281–2.

  61 Security Service Archives.

  62 Security Service Archives.

  63 The investigation of the letter bombs was carried out mainly by the MPSB, assisted by the Forensic Explosives Laboratory of the Royal Arsenal’. EM2 Branch, R.A.R.D.E., Security Service Archives. The report notes (p. 3) that ‘Many similar devices have been examined by this laboratory commencing with the murder of Dr Ami Shachori at the Israeli Embassy in London on 19th September 1972.’

  64 Recollections of a former Security Service officer.

  65 Security Service Archives.

  66 Security Service Archives.

  67 Security Service Archives.

  68 Security Service Archives. COBR was used for all kinds of emergencies, not simply those involving terrorists.

  69 Security Service Archives.

  70 Security Service Archives.

  71 Security Service Archives.

  72 Security Service Archives.

  73 Security Service Archives.

  74 Security Service Archives.

  75 Security Service Archives.

  76 Security Service Archives.

  77 Security Service Archives.

  78 Security Service Archives.

  79 Security Service Archives.

  80 Security Service Archives.

  81 Security Service Archives.

  82 Security Service Archives.

  83 Security Service Archives.

  84 Dobson and Payne, War without End, p. 174. Follain, Jackal, pp. 39–41.

  85 Security Service Archives.

  86 Laqueur, Age of Terrorism, p. 299. I owe this quotation to Eoin Jennings of the Cambridge Intelligence Seminar.

  87 Andrew, Secret Service, ch. 8.

  88 Recollections of a former Security Service officer.

  89 Security Service Archives.

  90 Security Service Archives.

  91 Security Service Archives.

  92 Moloney, Secret History of the IRA, p. 103.

  93 Heath, Course of my Life, pp. 427–8.

  94 Bew and Gillespie, Northern Ireland, pp. 36–7.

  95 Recollections of a former Security Service officer.

  96 Unpublished memoir of former Security Service officer.

&nb
sp; 97 In April 1971 the DG informed the Home Secretary that ‘there is a possible threat of sabotage to Concorde from the IRA and . . . with the agreement of the Ministry of Aviation Supply and BAC we have recently reviewed security measures at the aerodrome from which the prototype flies.’ Security Service Archives. This appears to be the first example of Security Service involvement in protective security against Republican terrorism on the mainland drawn to government attention after the beginning of the Troubles.

  98 Security Service Archives.

  99 Security Service Archives.

  100 An EKP is defined as ‘any installation, the products or services of which are of such importance that total loss or severe damage would critically impair Defence or Security, or the Functioning of Government, or the Economy’. Security Service Archives. The concept of the EKP, though not the term, went back at least to the Second World War, when the Service was responsible for advising on the security of munitions and aircraft factories, arsenals, dockyards, railways and public utilities.

  101 Security Service Archives.

  102 Security Service Archives.

  103 Bew and Gillespie, Northern Ireland, pp. 44–6.

  104 Security Service Archives.

  105 Security Service Archives. Recollections of former Security Service officers.

  106 Recollections of a former Security Service officer.

  107 Recollections of a former Security Service officer. Security Service Archives.

  108 Recollections of former Security Service officers.

  109 Recollections of former Security Service officers.

  110 Security Service Archives.

  111 Security Service Archives.

  112 Anderson, Cahill, p. 270.

  113 Security Service Archives. Cahill’s authorized biography confirms his involvement in the shipment; Anderson, Cahill, pp. 13–14, ch. 11.

  114 Security Service Archives.

  115 Security Service Archives.

  116 Security Service Archives.

  117 Security Service Archives. Claims that the Claudia realized it was being watched and had begun throwing arms overboard appear to be unfounded.

  118 Anderson, Cahill, p. 272 (quoting Cahill).

  119 Security Service Archives.

  120 See below, pp. 737–8.

  121 Recollections of a former Security Service officer.

  122 Taylor, Provos, pp. 164–5.

  123 Security Service Archives.

  124 Recollections of a former Security Service officer.

  125 In evidence to the Bloody Sunday Inquiry in June 2004 (Week 118, ADO 199.0001), Duddy said that he knew Ruairí Ó Brádaigh.

  126 Brian Rowan, ‘Derry man breaks silence in “McGuinness plea”’, Belfast Telegraph, 21 June 2007.

  127 Security Service Archives.

  128 Security Service Archives.

  129 Security Service Archives.

  130 Security Service Archives.

  131 Recollections of a former Security Service officer.

  132 Security Service Archives.

  133 See below, pp. 637–8.

  134 Security Service Archives. The fact that the DCI’s meeting with Wilson is not recorded in Security Service Archives is further evidence of the clandestine nature of the DCI’s visit to Chequers.

  Chapter 4: The ‘Wilson Plot’

  1 Ziegler, Wilson, p. 184.

  2 Security Service Archives.

  3 Security Service Archives.

  4 See above, pp. 567–74.

  5 Security Service Archives.

  6 Security Service Archives.

  7 Security Service Archives.

  8 Security Service Archives.

  9 Security Service Archives.

  10 Security Service Archives.

  11 Security Service Archives.

  12 Ziegler, Wilson, p. 366.

  13 Donoughue, Downing Street Diary, pp. 608–9. Donoughue believed that ‘a number of H[arold] W[ilson]’s “personal list” were much closer to Marcia.’

  14 Security Service Archives.

  15 Security Service Archives.

  16 According to the Evening Standard in 1961: ‘In the cut-throat worlds of commerce and politics [Rudy Sternberg] is regarded as one of the most controversial business men in Britain.’ A decade later a Security Service source described him as ‘utterly unscrupulous and not to be trusted in any business capacity’. Security Service Archives.

  17 Dictionary of National Biography 1971 -1980, p. 808.

  18 Security Service Archives.

  19 Security Service Archives.

  20 Security Service Archives.

  21 Security Service Archives.

  22 Donoughue noted in his diary on 6 November 1974 after a discussion with Armstrong about the New Year’s Honours List: ‘H[arold] W[ilson] even put in Rudi Sternberg, who is connected with a Swiss bank which went broke with an account of HW’s, but Robert Armstrong made him take it out.’ Donoughue, Downing Street Diary, p. 238.

  23 Ziegler, Wilson, p. 494.

  24 Donoughue, Downing Street Diary, pp. 608–9, 710.

  25 Haines, Glimmers of Twilight, p. 161.

  26 Donoughue, Downing Street Diary, p. 172.

  27 Ibid., pp. 66, 86, 114, 132, 172, 194, 343, 347, 385, 391.

  28 Security Service Archives.

  29 Security Service Archives.

  30 Security Service Archives.

  31 Security Service Archives.

  32 Security Service Archives.

  33 Donoughue noted on 26 April 1974 that Kissin was worried because ‘His peerage has been delayed.’ Donoughue, Downing Street Diary, p. 108.

  34 Security Service Archives.

  35 However, the brothel later complained that Kissin had not yet come round with the champagne. Security Service Archives.

  36 Security Service Archives.

  37 Security Service Archives.

  38 Donoughue, Downing Street Diary, pp. 66, 86, 114, 132, 172, 194, 343, 347, 385, 391.

  39 Pimlott, Wilson, p. 719.

  40 Security Service Archives. See above, pp. 415–18.

  41 Security Service Archives.

  42 Security Service Archives.

  43 Haines, Donoughue, Downing Street Diary, p. 128. Wilson clearly did not believe Wigg’s claim that the Labour MP Harold Davies was behind the press attacks on Marcia Williams; Donoughue, Downing Street Diary, p. 122.

  44 Donoughue, Downing Street Diary, p. 87.

  45 See above, pp. 531–2.

  46 Security Service Archives.

  47 Security Service Archives.

  48 Security Service Archives.

  49 Security Service Archives.

  50 Donoughue, Downing Street Diary, p. 207. Donoughue added acerbically, ‘In the Labour Party that is quite an achievement.’

  51 Security Service Archives. At the CPGB’s bugged HQ, Ramelson had been overheard saying ‘that he was convinced Hayward was a genuine militant left-winger who recognised the role of the Communist Party inside the Trade Union Movement and who, basically, was for unity with the CPGB, although conscious of the problems involved in pursuing this aim.’ Security Service Archives.

  52 See above, p. 516.

  53 Security Service Archives.

  54 Security Service Archives.

  55 Donoughue, Downing Street Diary, p. 224.

  56 Ziegler, Wilson, pp. 477–8.

  57 Recollections of Sir Michael Hanley.

  58 Donoughue, Downing Street Diary, pp. 11, 13. Cf. Ziegler, Wilson, p. 473.

  59 Ziegler, Wilson, p. 475.

  60 Andrew, For the President’s Eyes Only, ch. 10.

  61 Donoughue, Downing Street Diary, p. 669. On another occasion Wilson claimed on what Donoughue described as ‘no evidence’ that the former Labour MP Maurice Foley was ‘paid by the CIA’; ibid., p. 640.

  62 Thorpe and his former friend John Holmes were found not guilty of involvement in the assassination at their trial in 1979.

  63 Freeman and Penrose, Rinkagate,
chs 12, 13.

  64 Ibid., p. 377.

  65 See above, p. 633.

  66 Donoughue, Downing Street Diary, p. 677.

  67 Winter’s own accounts of his activities are unreliable. Freeman and Penrose describe him as ‘an unscrupulous man who would do and say anything for money’, ‘a fool as well as a crook’. Freeman and Penrose, Rinkagate, pp. 178–84, 203–4.

  68 Security Service Archives.

  69 Hooper passed on Wilson’s comments to the Security Service. Security Service Archives.

  70 Freeman and Penrose, Rinkagate, p. 182.

  71 JIC (A) (72) (Sec) 179 (preserved within TNA CAB 187/19). Donoughue noted on 10 March 1976: ‘H[arold] W[ilson] saw Hooper – a senior intelligence man who has been looking into the South African connection.’ Donoughue, Downing Street Diary, p. 689.

  72 Donoughue, Downing Street Diary, p. 678.

  73 Ibid., p. 688.

  74 Ziegler, Wilson, p. 479. The Intelligence Co-ordinator seems to have been unimpressed by Wilson’s evidence of South African involvement. Security Service Archives.

  75 Ziegler, Wilson, pp. 486–7.

  76 Ibid., pp. 477–8.

  77 Morgan, Callaghan, p. 610.

  78 Donoughue, Downing Street Diary, p. 670.

  79 Ibid., pp. 656–7.

  80 Ziegler, Wilson, p. 500.

  81 Ibid., pp. 477–8.

  82 Wilson’s words were quoted in the Observer on 28 August 1977.

  83 Security Service Archives. The DG privately acknowledged that the submission on which Wilson’s briefing was based was ‘inadequate’.

  84 Ziegler, Wilson, p. 490.

  85 Ibid., p. 494.

  86 Penrose and Courtiour, Pencourt File, p. 13. Freeman and Penrose, Rinkagate, pp. 242–5. On another occasion Wilson startled a Northern Ireland official by inviting him to ‘ring the number of a callbox in the Mile End Road at a certain time when a certain person would be waiting to give him information he might need to hear’. Hennessy, Prime Minister, p. 572.

  87 Freeman and Penrose, Rinkagate, pp. 274–5.

  88 Ibid., pp. 273–81.

  89 Security Service Archives.

  90 Security Service Archives.

  91 Security Service Archives.

  92 Morgan, Callaghan, pp. 610–11.

  93 Security Service Archives.

  94 Security Service Archives. Wallace also alleged that there had been a deliberate campaign to discredit Wilson; Ziegler, Wilson, p. 477. The pro-Wallace case is put in Foot, Who Framed Colin Wallace?

  95 Holroyd makes his allegations in Holroyd and Burbridge, War without Honour.

  96 Security Service Archives. Hain suspected South African intelligence of plotting against him: ‘If so, were they working with a section of MI5 as part of a much wider project to destabilize Harold Wilson’s Labour Government and restructure British politics?’ Hain, Putney Plot?, pp. 137–54.

 

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