Biological Espionage: The Hidden Dimension

Contents:

Introduction

Primary Sources

‘One Man in his Time’ – Reprise

The Development of Penicillin

Penicillin in the Soviet Union

Borodin’s First Mission

Borodin’s Second Mission

Bacteriological Warfare

The Communist Threat

Ominous Undercurrents

After the Defection

Florey and Chain Redux

A Real Defection?

*          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *

Introduction

In 1984 Christopher Andrew and David Dilks famously described intelligence history as the ‘missing dimension’ of historical inquiry. I borrow their phraseology to represent biological (mainly bacteriological) espionage as the missing dimension of Cold War rivalries. A vast amount of print has been dedicated to exploring the protection and purloining of secrets concerning atomic weaponry, but I can find very little on the subject of bacteriological warfare. The re-release of the Soviet scientist and defector N.M. Borodin’s memoir last summer prompted me to perform an intensive investigation into the topic.

I have to declare that I find much about the tale of N. M. Borodin’s defection very bogus. Readers will recall that I devoted a Special Bulletin (see https://coldspur.com/special-bulletin-the-conundrum-of-n-m-borodin ) to a brief analysis of the memoir – originally published in 1955, and this year re-issued unchanged – complemented by some references to the biologist that I found in Guy Liddell’s Diaries and in sundry other archives. I promised to return to the subject, and this report consists of the results of my studies into miscellaneous articles, CIA reports, and books on the history of penicillin and bacteriological warfare, integrated with other archival material, and the exploitation of a closer reading of One Man in His Time.

I suspect that I am only scratching the surface of what appears to be a complicated series of events. I hope that this report stimulates further discoveries.

Primary Sources

  1. One Man in His Time by N. M. Borodin (1955, re-issued 2024)
  2. The Mold in Dr. Florey’s Coat by Eric Lax (2005)
  3. Howard Florey: Penicillin and After by Trevor I. Williams (1984)
  4. Ernst Chain: Penicillin and Beyond by Ronald W. Clark (1985)
  5. A Higher Form of Killing by Robert Harris and Jeremy Paxman (2002)
  6. Britain and Biological Warfare by Brian Balmer (2001)
  7. A Suspicion of Spies by Tim Spicer (2024)
  8. Cold Drugs, Circulation, Production and Intelligence of Antibiotics in Post-WWII Years by Mauro Capocci (Journal of History of Medicine, 2014)
  9. Nikolai Mikhailovich Borodin: the little-known person involved in the USSR penicillin project by E. V. Sherstneva (Probl Sotsialnoi Gig Zdravookhranenniiai Istor Med. 2022 May)
  10. CIA Vault: www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP83-00415R001300030006-7.pdf
  11. CIA Vault:  www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP82-00457R002100040005-3.pdf
  12. Daniele Cozzoli,’Penicillin and the European response to post-war American hegemony: the case of Leo-penicillin’ in ‘History and Technology’, June 2014, at http:/ / dx.doi.org/ 10.1080/ 07341512.2014.902232
  13. The Spy Who Came in From the Mold by Anthony Rimmington (https://medium.com/@t.rimmington/the-spy-who-came-in-from-the-mold-n-borodin-the-first-russian-biological-defector-to-the-west-516d8dfa03b3)
  14. The Diaries of Guy Liddell (National Archives: KV 4/470 & 4/471)
  15. Personal File for Goronwy and Margaret Rees (National Archives: KV 2/4603-4608)
  16. Personal File for George and Ada Eltenton (National Archives: KV 2/2166)
  17. Biological Warfare Sub-Committee Minutes, 1947 & 1948 (National Archives: DEFE 10/261-262)
  18. Letters from Ernest Chain to the Soviet Trade Delegation, 1948, from the Wellcome Foundation (https://wellcomecollection.org/works/aqmau24k)
  19. ‘The case for a state-owned penicillin factory in this country’, 1948, from the Wellcome Foundation (https://wellcomecollection.org/works/ycu4j9hg )
  20. ‘The Industrial Production of Penicillin’, 1948, from the Wellcome Foundation (https://wellcomecollection.org/works/kvrua3z3 )
  21. Letter by Richard Davenport-Hines to the Times Literary Supplement (August 2, 2024)

‘One Man in his Time’ – Reprise

Borodin’s memoir is a very strange composition. The brief Foreword he wrote in 1955 appears unembellished and uncomplemented in the new edition, apart from a not very helpful Introduction by the BBC sage John Simpson. In the Foreword, Borodin asserted that he wrote the book in English, which he had spoken only since 1945 (when he was being trained for a mission to the United Kingdom), and continued: ‘. . . nevertheless I like to use this tongue for thinking, speaking and writing equally well with my native Russian’. That was a strange and bold claim to make, and the phrasing itself is a little clumsy: ‘with a proficiency equal to what I have in my native Russian’, perhaps? And it would be a rare individual who would gain that expertise in those few years, no matter how broadly exposed he or she was to the English language.

No mention of a translator, or even an editor, appears in any acknowledgment. Yet the text, to me, often shows the habits of a competent, but slightly careless, translator from the Russian. For instance, it reads (p 331): “One night his deputy, Natradze, myself and Katkovsky, earmarked for the function of chief of penicillin production, were discussing a project of the Ministry’s scientific council.” A more elegant writer would lay it out as follows: “One night, his deputy, Natradze, Katkovsky, earmarked. . . . . , and I . ..” (“Myself” is reflexive, and inappropriate as the subject of a sentence, and “I” should be the last nounal item.) Second-rate English writers (and even those who are frequently regarded as first-rate, such as Anthony Powell) frequently get this wrong, as they display obvious discomfort distinguishing between the proper use of ‘me’ ‘myself’, and ‘I’. A native Russian speaker would be much more sensitive to the inflections here: the Russian form of this construction is an unusual ‘we with Natradze and Katkovsky’.

Other errors caught my eye. ‘A verbal report’ (p 192), when ‘oral is meant: that is a very common mistake among English speakers. I would expect a Russian to be more careful. Borodin writes about ‘bottles of “Molotov’s Cocktail”’ (p 286), which again suggests that the phrase has been provided by a translator not familiar with this aspect of warfare. An enormous gaffe occurs on page 121: “Vyshelessky started to work with this terrible bacteria.” It should, of course, be the singular form, ‘bacterium’. No scientist worth his salt would allow such a clumsy malformation to appear on the page. [I was dismayed, however, to read, in Howard Florey: Penicillin and After, by Dr. Trevor Williams – who worked in Florey’s laboratory during the war – the following ugly sentence: “The bacteria he named Micrococcus lysodeikticus and the dissolving agent. . . . was called lysozyme.”] There are other such examples to be found, which leads me to believe that his manuscript was in fact written in Russian, and then handed over to an anonymous translator.

It is not clear to me why this deception (if, indeed, it is such) was carried out, but I also have reservations about the authenticity of his text. Overall, Borodin comes across as a hard apparatchik, a loyal servant of Stalin, who is complicit in the denunciations, violence and executions that occur through the tribulations of that era – the atrocities, the famines, the purges, the exiles, the liquidations. Occasionally, however, he protests, but is miraculously allowed to get away with it. It is not until the final pages that he yields completely and decides to defect. Yet whole aspects of his life are overlooked. We can learn from other sources that he had a wife and family in Moscow, but they are never mentioned, and his interactions with women are very coyly described. The facts of his life up to World War II can obviously not be verified, but then matters take an odd turn. Borodin gets very cavalier with his chronology, and very selective in his reporting.

I tried to date the many events, from World War II onwards, to which Borodin does not give precise information. He participated in the deportations of (primarily) Germans from Elenendorf to Central Asia – which can be verified as occurring in 1941. The next event he describes is his award of the Lenin Prize in Moscow, on a cold winter’s day, when he remarks that the Soviets have just freed Warsaw. (That places it in January 1945.) Yet he states that the award was given by the Chairman of the Presidium of Supreme Soviet, Shvernik. (Shvernik was Chairman from March 19, 1946 to March 15, 1953, however.) He is appointed factory director in Baku, where it is clear the war is still raging. He describes soldiers ‘going to the front’, and his friend Antonov being burned in a tank fighting against the Germans. There are further adventures in Baku, with episodes involving illicit black-market activities based on penicillin stolen from his factory, and then he is recalled to Moscow, where Mikoyan informs him he is to be sent to England.

Yet Borodin is not ready for the mission. He has started learning English, but is not proficient enough, and has to take more lessons. Furthermore, he reports a long delay in screening, and getting his passport approved. Nevertheless, he flies with Anita, a cipher clerk, via Finland and Sweden and arrives at Croydon Airport. (The date is not given, but in his official self-supplied biography to the authorities, he wrote that it was in September 1945.) He describes a New Year’s Party at the Soviet Embassy. (It must be January 1946.) He writes nothing about the circumstances of his invitation to stay in Oxford, but remarks that Gouzenko’s defection (September 1945) was a hot topic of conversation. He refers to a newspaper that had an article titled ‘Who invited Doctor Borodin?’ on its front page, but does not say which newspaper, or when. [I have not been able to track this down.] Nor does he indicate who might have concluded that he was on some possibly illicit information-gathering mission.

Borodin is recalled in December 1946, and soon gets into trouble for comparing Soviet techniques for manufacturing penicillin unfavourably with those in the West. His friend Parin is arrested, and later executed, for wanting to share information with the Americans (as opposed to merely stealing it from them.) Borodin receives a warning, and is urged to reinforce the claim that penicillin was a Soviet invention. Nevertheless (one can work out it is July 1947 now), he is entrusted with one more mission – to go to the USA in an effort to acquire American know-how and equipment. He travels there with two assistants, cannot gain export licenses, gets into some trouble again for not denouncing one of his assistants, and is then ordered to England to try there instead. He arrives in time for Christmas (1947).

By now, Borodin is starting to get fearful about the purges taking place in Moscow. He is anxious about the fate of his assistant Utkin, who has been recalled, and whom he failed to denounce. The Ministry of Medical Industry is abolished. At the beginning of August 1948, a session of the All Union Academy of Agricultural Science is held, at which a purge takes place. When he is asked in London to report on the performance of a nervous visiting technician, Gerchikov, who is not a party member, Borodin funks out. When he receives the recall himself, he decides to defect. Without apparently having contacted the British to verify that he will be accepted, he sends his letter to the Ambassador the very next day, leaving him with no clear exit strategy.

What I find extraordinary is the blatant, flamboyant, and unnecessary letter that Borodin claimed he wrote to Ambassador Zarubin on August 27, 1948, which he brazenly describes as ‘High Treason’. (The text appears on pages 350-352 of the book, and, in a very bizarre and provocative presentation, is the sole item in a National Archives file, FO 1093/552, that bears no outward mention of Borodin.)The criticism of the USSR, and implicitly, Stalin, was a reckless move that would immediately have brought in Sudoplatov’s ‘Special Tasks’ force to hunt Borodin down and kill him. Among defectors, only Vladimir Orlov was allowed to get away with such an insult, since he promised to stay silent about Stalin’s pilfering the Spanish gold if the vozhd left Orlov untouched in the USA. If Borodin really wanted to defect with a chance of survival, he would have slunk quietly away in the night, picked up a new identity, never shown his face again, and been protected by the British authorities. But that did not happen, and that is what perplexes me.

Moreover, how did this matter of penicillin manufacture become so controversial?

The Development of Penicillin

Alexander Fleming

Every schoolchild knows that Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin, and many are aware that he, Howard Florey and Ernst Chain (who collaborated in the project of purifying, stabilizing and testing it, and developing manufacturing processes for it) were awarded the Nobel Prize for physiology and medicine in 1945. But few have probably learned of the feuds, conflicts, and arguments that bedevilled the relationships between the trio. These were to do with professional rivalries, contrasts in temperament, behaviour and methodology, suspicions of secret dealings, and failures to give credit. Furthermore, as the project of scaling up production advanced, some deep philosophical divisions emerged as to whether the availability of penicillin should be universalized, and about the role of commercial interests in reaching that goal.

Alexander Fleming had discovered penicillin in 1928 when working at St. Mary’s Medical School in London. He had noticed that some colonies of staphylococci had degenerated after being contaminated by some spores of mould. Yet he did not conceive of the potential of this finding, that it might contribute to the manipulation of a powerful antibiotic agent, and he thus continued his research into lysozyme, an enzyme that had almost no efficacy against deadly microbes. He wrote up the experience, and spoke about it, but he was not a great writer or communicator, and the opportunity to pursue the phenomenon further was ignored for several years.

Howard Florey
Ernst Chain

It was not until 1935 that serious study of the phenomenon began. In that year Howard Florey, then Professor of Pathology at the Dunn School of Medicine at Oxford University, was introduced to Ernst Chain, a biochemist who was working under Sir Frederick Hopkins at Cambridge University. Both men were immigrants: Florey was a second-generation Australian, and Chain a German Jew, with a Russian father, who had escaped from Hitler’s Germany in 1933. They differed in temperament: Florey was down-to-earth, overall very patient and a good man-manager, but prone to brusque behaviour on occasions. Chain was highly-strung, insisted on Prussian-style disciplines, was protective and jealous, and felt much more alienated in the country where he had landed than did Florey, who had been able to make a much more deliberate choice of destination. Chain accepted Florey’s invitation to join him in Oxford. At first, they co-operated well: Florey recognized that he needed the talents of a chemical biologist to complement his work. Moreover, Chain brought an excellent laboratory technician with him, Norman Heatley, whose imaginative design of equipment to refine the process of assaying penicillin has in my estimation been undervalued in the story of success in proving that penicillin was both safe and effective.

Yet Florey and Chain soon fell out. While they made steady progress in refining the amount of penicillin that could be used to fight infection, while ensuring that it did not have deleterious effects on other tissue, their philosophies on making it a compound for broad distribution clashed. Heatley began working for Florey: Chain was jealous. Chain urged Florey to approach an American firm for mass production: Florey was not yet confident that predictable yields could be harvested from the mould, and its therapeutic value had not been proven. In June 1941, Florey and Heatley left for the USA on an exploratory mission: Chain did not learn about it until the last minute, and he was justifiably upset. Chain, working from his German background, believed strongly that penicillin should be patented. The Medical Research Council (supervising the whole operation) looked askance at commercialization, and financial rewards for pure researchers. Florey agreed with that policy. When Florey returned to Oxford in October 1941, he found the laboratory in somewhat of a shambles under Chain’s management.

The development of penicillin in mass amounts was a missed opportunity by the British. In an important paper written in 1948 ‘The case for a state-owned penicillin factory in this country’, almost certainly written by Florey, but appearing in the Chain archive *, the author complains about the lack of entrepreneurialism among British pharmaceutical companies, with the result that the Americans forged ahead. He also criticizes the Ministry of Supply for continuing to pursue the surface culture method of production when the Americans had shown that deep culture fermentation was far superior. Their methods had also accelerated the deployment of penicillin taken orally rather than through injection. The author concluded by recommending that the government counter the US dominance by funding a native penicillin factory for an outlay of £120,000.

Penicillin Structure

The essence of the story is that the Nobel Prize was awarded to Alexander, Florey and Chain in October 1945, but by then, Florey and Chain were not on speaking terms, with Chain expressing strong grievances that his contribution had not been properly recognized. Both of them, however, resented the exaggerated claims that Fleming made about his achievements, belatedly seeking more of the limelight – and gaining it in the Press. These tensions and rivalries would play out fully in the complex political world of the Cold War. By 1945, however, penicillin had played an enormous role in saving lives in the battlefields of World War II (ironically against syphilis as much as gas-gangrene), and American companies had invested heavily in manufacturing techniques and plant to produce vast quantities of the drug. Why an antibiotic that surely was of benefit to the whole of mankind suddenly became a technological secret that required confidentiality is an accident of deteriorating political relationships between the USA and the USSR.

[* It seems that this unsigned paper has been attributed to Chain, since his biographer Ronald W. Clark describes his push for a state-owned factory, and Daniele Cozzoli comes to the same conclusion in directly citing the words as Chain’s. The author of the piece refers to himself as ‘the author’ but also mentions Florey and Chain in the third person. The style, context, and tenor of the piece, however, all point to Florey’s authorship, an assertion that would appear to be reinforced by the fact that the author refers to his recent work with Mrs. Philpot in converting aqueous solutions of penicillin to a dry state. Flora Philpot worked alongside Florey, and co-authored papers with him. Moreover, with his mind clearly focused on his Italian and Russian projects at this time, it is highly unlikely that Chain would have been concerned about the British government’s constructing its own penicillin factory.]

Penicillin in the Soviet Union

In fact, tensions between the UK and the USA over the production of penicillin had already arisen, with claims that the Americans had hi-jacked the whole area from the Britons. Conflicts between commercial opportunism, the seeking of patents, and possible anti-trust collusion in the United States were apparent. In 1943, the United States imposed a ban on any material relating to the chemistry of penicillin, a prohibition that remained in force until the end of 1945. All this occurred at a time when the USA was an ally of the USSR, and there were many politicians on both sides of the Atlantic who throughout this turmoil advanced greater collaboration with the Communists. At the Teheran Conference at the end of November 1943, Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin agreed to a joint American-British mission to Moscow by two scientists from each country, so that they could discuss a number of medical advances, primarily penicillin, with their counterparts. Florey according left for Moscow with his assistant Dr. Gordon Sanders (who had worked in the Middle East in deploying penicillin) on December 23. They took with them phials of the agent, and several reports, but did not arrive in Moscow until a month later.

The story of penicillin in the Soviet Union is predictably murky, what with the Politburo’s control of information, and its need to control the dissemination of facts, and to emphasize the virtues of communist methodology in science. The history consists of a bewildering account of overlapping institutes and organizations, all entrusted with the Party’s indelible correctness of mission, but all tripping over each other as responsibilities are shuffled. Borodin’s memoir provides some possibly reliable insights, and more recent research has rescued him from the obloquy of being a treasonous non-person for several decades, and has thrown some more realistic light on the political struggles and rivalries of the 1940s and 1950s. The Soviets had enjoyed some access to the breakthroughs of Florey and Chain in the early 1940s. Before further publication of successes was banned in 1943 (under the necessary policy of trying to prevent Hitler’s scientists from learning about the discoveries), copies of The Lancet would have been distributed to neutral countries such as Switzerland and Sweden, and both the Nazis and the Soviets would have been able to pick up valuable information. My correspondent Edward M. provided me with the valuable information that the spy George Eltenton, ostensibly with a mission to acquire nuclear secrets from Oppenheimer, had in 1943 been approached by his handler Peter Ivanov to try to gather information about penicillin.

Zinaida Yermolyeva

The case of Zinaida Yermolyeva is characteristically ambiguous. As Head of the Department of Microbial (or Bacterial) Chemistry in Moscow, she was awarded the Stalin Prize in 1943, and two Orders of Lenin, for her pioneering work in penicillin production. Yet some doubts have been recorded concerning her integrity. Borodin met her shortly before his first visit to England, described her as ‘ambitious’, and noted that, while her first husband had been arrested twice, and her second had died in prison having been arrested as a ‘wrecker’, Yermolyeva herself remained untouched. Borodin learned from the secretary of the Party in the institute (a pretty girl named Ksana) that Yermolyeva had won Stalin’s prize for the discovery of ‘Soviet’ penicillin, but when her department sent sample ampoules of the compound to the Central Committee, they actually contained American penicillin, since it was of a purer strain. Yermolyeva had also made herself famous (and maybe notorious) by writing a paper in which she described how she had swallowed a solution containing the bacterium vibrio cholerae, and how she had survived owing to the ingestion of penicillin crustosum.

Florey was not impressed with Yermolyeva when he met her in 1944, stating that he believed she owed the success in her career more to her charm than her scientific ability. He did not think much of her production facilities, and did not trust her accounts of success with penicillin crustosum – thus perhaps echoing the substitution story. He was more impressed by what Dr. Gause had developed at the Institute of Tropical Medicine, including the production of gramicidin, although it turned out to be too toxic for systemic use, but useful for local infections. Florey concluded that the Soviets knew virtually nothing about penicillin, but he exchanged his vials of penicillin with them for some ampules of gramicidin.

The CIA has published information on the Soviet penicillin project, but it is largely reliant on what they learned from Borodin itself. Borodin told them that Yermolyeva’s strain of penicillin was probably not crustosum, but notatum. He confirmed that the batch submitted to the Academy of Medical Sciences probably had American penicillin substituted. (The Soviets, rather perversely, seemed to think that penicillin had been an American discovery, whereas the Americans had contributed mostly to production breakthroughs.) Between 1943 and 1945 Yermolyeva struggled to scale up any serious production capability. She could provide penicillin only in a soluble form, as freeze-drying capabilities for creating powder were not available. Borodin told Smirnov, the People’s Commissar from the Meat and Dairy Industry, that the process for creating the antibiotic was flawed, but his advice was ignored. For a couple of years, the potential for co-operation between the Soviet Union and the USA/GB remained solid. Florey even recommended a mission by the Soviets to visit production capabilities in the UK, but his suggestions came to nothing. In the summer of 1945, however, Mikoyan, the Minister responsible for the penicillin project, realizing that the project was in danger, became fearful about failure in this critical endeavour, and summoned Borodin to Moscow. Equipment would have to be purchased from the Allies.

Borodin’s First Mission

Considering that he was in the UK for fifteen months (September 1945 to December 1946), Borodin was very reticent about what he was up to. In his memoir, he mentions Oxford, encounters with English Communists, parties at the Embassy, even a disturbing article in the newspapers about his dubious activities, but that is it. I relied upon Trevor Williams to provide some initial depth. He wrote that Borodin came to work in Florey’s department, and that he, Florey, and Philpott ‘published an account of an antibiotic, tardin, produced by Penicillium tardum’, but that ‘it proved to have no clinical value’.

That was not all that Borodin achieved, however. E. V. Shertseva’s 2022 profile states that ‘he systematically and continuously transmitted materials on penicillin and other antibiotics to the Motherland – using various methods’. She goes on to write that, through the Trade Mission in the UK and Professor Sarkisov, he built good relationships with Florey and Chain. Borodin acquired ‘secret’ materials on penicillin, which he sent through diplomatic mail to USSR. This strongly suggests that Borodin was betraying his hosts by committing espionage. Indeed, after the Nobel Prize was announced (in October 1945, shortly after Borodin’s arrival), Florey and Chain, no doubt flushed with their success became more welcoming, but still allowed only perusal of some material. Shertseva reports that Borodin photographed such documents overnight, and wanted his name concealed from any article that was published. He sent an important letter to Mikoyan, dated April 23, 1946, with appendices: Mikoyan kept the information to himself, treating the knowledge as power. Borodin also managed to secrete to Moscow two new strains of penicillin, notatum and streptomycin.

Shertseva had access to some of the letters that Borodin wrote from Oxford. In a bold foray, he explicitly criticized his Soviet bosses, telling them of their inferior approach and organization towards producing penicillin. In April 1946, he informed them that they did not understand the essential chemical heterogeneity of the substance. The Soviet form was very labile, and thus soon perishable. Meat-peptone broth (on which Borodin had apprenticed himself) was no longer used as a culture for preparing the antibiotic in the United Kingdom. He outlined a seven-point plan for getting the Soviet project on track, which included the acquisition of technology from the USA. When the Minister of Medical Industries, Tretyakov, received the news, he accepted it, but did not dare tell Stalin, as it was unwise to suggest to the leader that Soviet science was again lagging in a vital sphere. The Ministry had been founded only in the autumn of 1946, and in December of that year the USSR Council of Ministers decreed that all penicillin production was to be placed under Tretyakov.

The fact that Borodin was given such extended hospitality throughout 1946 is a bit surprising, since both the USA and the UK were tightening up on the confidentiality of information on such strategic programmes. The Gouzenko defection had occurred just before Borodin’s arrived, and the blatant and overt attempts of Soviet spies to gain access to atomic secrets alarmed many politicians. In November 1945, the procedures for producing penicillin were labeled as state secrets. Yet many scientists were still strongly sympathetic to the Soviets, and may have concealed their sharing of information from the authorities. In the USA, as late as January 1946, as Williams reports, a group of eminent scientists launched a fund to provide the Soviet Union with materials and know-how to construct a plant capable of producing 80 billion units of penicillin a month, matching the output of a typical large American factory. It even had the notorious useful idiot Joseph Davies on the committee. By September, however, the project was fast collapsing because of the political climate.

When Borodin returned to Moscow in December 1946, he found a very tense situation. He describes how the ideology of Soviet supremacy in science was rampant: hence describing the discovery of penicillin as being a British achievement was heretical. Nevertheless, Borodin’s multiple bulletins from the United Kingdom had found favour with Stalin. In April 1947 the Council of Ministers approved Tretyakov’s proposal to create an All-Union Scientific Research Institute of Penicillin and Other Antibiotics, and, despite some questions about his loyalty, Borodin was appointed its head. Meanwhile, his ex-colleague, Parin, had been arrested, and then executed, on the charge of being an Anglo-American spy. The Ministry was in perpetual crisis, and in great danger of not meeting its production targets. Dismissals, demotions and purges were rife. Borodin was not afraid to speak his mind to Mikoyan about the dysfunctional approach to the project. With this fraught background, he was sent to the USA on a second mission, to acquire plant, and learn more about production techniques.

Borodin’s Second Mission

When he left, in late summer 1947, for the USA, Borodin was accompanied by two colleagues, named Utkin and Zeifman. The need for a triad derived from the requirement to keep surveillance on possible untrustworthy elements. Two characters might plot silently, or exchange counter-revolutionary ideas. If a third person was there, and heard about such whispers from the first person, while the second person had not reported them, the second was as guilty as the first. And, indeed, Borodin got into exactly that trouble, when Utkin’s anti-Soviet behaviour was criticized by the dedicated Stalinist Zeifman, who then threatened Borodin for not informing on Utkin. Borodin managed to deceive Klimov, the head of the Communist Party in Amtorg, the trade organization, about what went on in the denunciations.

The USA mission fizzled out just as this conflict heated up. The team initially received a warm welcome in New York, and then visited many universities, colleges, and industrial firms. But all the negotiations had to be made through Moscow, with approval coming from the capital. Moreover, the atmosphere had changed. New legislation made the selling of plant to the Soviet Union almost impossible, with penicillin another strategic technology just behind atomic power and weaponry. The companies they encountered (primarily Merck) all declined any opportunity to do business: no export licenses were granted. In December 1947, Borodin was ordered to stop all negotiations and to go to the UK instead.

Borodin came to Britain, as representative of Technopromemport, and as one of a triad again, the watchful Zeifman still keeping an eye on him, alongside a man called Chernyarski. He found a more responsive chord with one of his old allies from his first mission, Ernst Chain. Chain had the advantage of being able to speak Russian (from his father), and displayed some enthusiasm for a joint venture with the Soviets. Borodin conducted long discussions with Chain on the purification, crystallization and assay of penicillin, and by July had prepared memoranda on the production in the Soviet Union of a project to build a very large plant for the production of penicillin and streptomycin. As Williams writes: “The longer-term intention was that, for a substantial consideration, Chain should visit Russia from time to time to advise on the building of the plant and thereafter act as a consultant on an annual basis.”

The Soviet Trade Delegation in Highgate

The details of this agreement are quite extraordinary. It involved a premium of £35,000 (an enormous sum for those days) to be paid on signing, with an annual fee of £3,000 to follow during the course of the project. A draft of Chain’s initial proposal, in manuscript, written in early 1948, lies in the Chain Archive at the Wellcome Institute, as well as typed letters to the Soviet Trade Delegation in Highgate. Chain is careful to inform Borodin that ‘I am not aware of any regulations in this country which could be an impediment or the signing of this agreement’. The implication would be that the agreement was completed on July 20, since Chain follows up with a request for expenses on August 17, referring to the agreement of the previous month. The following day, aware that Borodin and Zeifman are due to return to Moscow very shortly, he provides a full inventory of all the information on manufacturing methods that he has compiled. Whether any money changed hands is uncertain. Neither is it clear how the nature of this agreement might have rebounded adversely on Borodin, although Chain’s correspondence in September suggests that he is unaware of the defection.

This was quite a dramatic turn of events, and one wonders how much the authorities knew of the arrangement. An undated report from Chain’s archive suggests that the scientist was quite open about his recommendations for helping the Soviets to construct a modern factory. Trevor Williams suggests that there were no objections, but how much did the JIC and MI5 know about the project? The legality might have been true in respect of any lack of conflict with his obligations at Oxford, as he was about to depart from England, with leave of absence, to take up an appointment in Rome at the Instituto Superiore di Sanitá. At this stage, the Communists in Italy exercised a lot of power, and were in regular contact with Moscow. Yet what sounds like an underhand deal to have Chain handsomely remunerated by the Soviets for undertaking activities that surely would not have gained government approval is quite shocking. When the Americans later heard about it, they took a strong view, and Chain’s trafficking with eastern bloc cost him his US visa.

The turmoil in Moscow intensified. As I recorded above in my description of his memoir, Borodin apparently began to feel intensely worried. He felt responsible that his colleague Utkin had been recalled, and probably executed. A purge in the Academy of Agricultural Science took place in August. A visit by a suspect functionary, Gerchikov, to London required Borodin to listen to his presentation at a meeting, and report whether he was ‘on message’. And when Borodin was ordered to sail on the next boat, he feared for his life, decided to defect, and wrote those two extraordinary letters. At least, that is his version of events.

Guy Liddell’s Diaries, on the other hand, suggest that British Intelligence had been well aware of what Borodin was up to for some time. In a startling observation on February 4, 1948, after a Joint Intelligence Committee meeting on Bacteriological Warfare (the first time that this subject had been recorded in Liddell’s Diaries, I believe), Liddell writes that Borodin has been reported as buying up penicillin equipment. It is obvious that a close watch is being maintained on him. Moreover, William Hayter, chairman of the JIC, asked about the possibility of Borodin’s becoming a defector. What the motivation behind this was is not clear. Presumably, the Committee considered that Borodin possessed valuable information about the Soviet Union’s progress in penicillin production and bacteriological warfare. While it is clear now that they were several steps behind in many ways, that may well have been a story that Borodin had started to spin for them as he considered his next steps, and contemplated and compared a future life in England with an ominous recall to Moscow.

But how did the penicillin business become transformed into an issue of bacteriological warfare?

Bacteriological Warfare

It is difficult to determine the links between penicillin production and bacteriological warfare from a study of the relevant literature and archival material. The biographies of Florey avoid any inspection of his post-war role in research into offensive weaponry. The accounts of the committees that discussed the need and prospects of such capabilities refer only obliquely to the contributions of Florey. Indeed, the whole history of bacteriological warfare activity in the UK is couched in very cautious terms, and the details are scattered across multiple archival sources.

What is significant is the fact that Florey, from the time soon after his arrival in the United Kingdom when he worked at London Hospital, developed a strong professional relationship and personal friendship with Paul Fildes, who was the prime activator of bacteriological warfare research during and after the war. Fildes had come to prominence when Sir Michael Hankey had recommended to the Committee of Imperial Defence (CID) in 1936 that ‘an expert official body’ be set up to consider the offensive and defensive aspects of bacteriological warfare. Ironically, Edward Mellanby, the Secretary of the Medical Research Council (MRC), who had been such a significant influence in getting Florey appointed to the chair at Oxford in 1935, refused to have anything to do with any project that invoked medical research for destructive processes. This stance opened the door to Fildes, who became a leading member of what was initially called the Microbiological Warfare Committee, later the Bacteriological Warfare Committee (BWC).

Porton Down in WWII

When Hitler warned of ‘secret weapons’ in 1939, the Committee for Imperial Defence feared that he might be referring to biological (i.e. bacterial or viral) armaments, and the very secret laboratory at Porton Down, Wiltshire, was set up in 1940 under Paul Fildes. Fildes was considered the country’s expert in bacterial physiology, focusing on bacterial nutrition, but he was also an energetic champion of the need for offensive research, since the deployment of bacteriological ‘bombs’ of some kind might be the only effective method of retaliation against an attack. He interpreted what were admittedly very loose guidelines given to him by the Committee, and selected anthrax as the most suitable pathogen to deploy, even visiting the United States to review progress, and to prod George Merck, the head of the War Research Service, into more vigorous research.

Paul Fildes

Yet Fildes soon encountered opposition from a truly startling figure – Victor, Lord Rothschild, another member of the BWC, who represented MI5 on the Committee. In 1943, Rothschild voiced his strong concerns about Fildes’ surpassing his remit, and not taking into consideration the security hazards of storing anthrax ‘bricks’, which might be exposed to enemy bombing attacks. Rothschild even described Fildes’ attitude as ‘ghoulish’. In response, Fildes regarded Rothschild as ‘uninformed’, interfering with his plans. Rothschild continued by elevating his protests to the War Cabinet. Matters looked as if they might meet an impasse, but, just as the BWC was fortified by representatives from the armed forces, the disintegration of the German war effort was noted, and the plans were shelved. Yet Rothschild’s awareness of what was going on has enormous implications when the activities of his sidekicks and affiliates such as Burgess, Blunt and Rees are examined later.

As the war concluded, attention turned to the new threat of the Soviet Union, reflecting an interest that went back some years. The Committee of Imperial Defence was chaired by Lord Hankey, but the members of the committee were not aware that Hankey’s secretary in 1941 was one of the Cambridge spies, John Cairncross. In 1941 alone Cairncross delivered 3,449 documents to his masters. On May 31, May 1941 (i.e. before Barbarossa), a large package of vital documents was sent to Moscow from London in the diplomatic bag. Among the articles was a report, from the commission of the BOSS (Hankey’s cryptonym), on the means and methods of bacteriological warfare. If the NKVD’s interest had not already been sparked, it certainly would have been energized now.

Fildes declared that he did not want to be involved in biological warfare anymore, and he left Porton Down in August 1945 to work at the Lister Institute again, with his retirement due in two years’ time. Yet he maintained a close interest in the subject: in November 1945 he dismissed the notion that the country could defend itself against bacteriological attack merely through a program of research and vaccination, and his views were reinforced by Brigadier Wansborough-Jones, Scientific Adviser to the Army Council, who judged bacteriological research to be only in its infancy. By the summer of the next year, the Chiefs of Staff had elevated bacteriological armaments to the same level of priority as atomic weaponry. It was decided to build a new germ warfare base next to the chemical warfare station at Porton Down. In July 1946, the Biological Research Advisory Board (BRAB) was established.

And it is here that the link becomes clearer. The capability of creating and stabilizing antibiotics, and taking them into mass production, closely matched that of the process of building a mass store of pathogens for military purposes. What was more, the capabilities of the enemy (now seen clearly as the Soviet Union) in the sphere of penicillin production could probably provide a useful pointer to how advanced it was in the bacteriological warfare race. Fragmented snippets of minutes of meetings indicate that ‘meagre’ intelligence reports indicated that the Soviet Union was not well advanced in penicillin production. Borodin’s name is never mentioned in these accounts, but it is clear that the intelligence derived from him in 1947 and 1948, as the earlier section confirms. After all, why would the Soviets be so anxious to make such a blatant attempt to acquire techniques and technology if they were well advanced along the project?

The Communist Threat

It is difficult to weave a fluent account of the events of 1948 from the fragmented items available. The final months of 1947 had seen general concerns about Soviet intentions deepen. Colonel Grigory Tokaev [STORK] had defected in November, and he had given severe warnings about Stalin’s warlike plans. This led to the Joint Intelligence Committee’s calling for tighter registration of all Soviet citizens working in various guises in the country, but especially those visiting factories. The first suspicions about Klaus Fuchs, the atom spy, had surfaced at this time. The government was undertaking a purge of communists holding positions in strategic government departments. Early in 1948, Prime Minster Attlee, on MI5’s advice, had decided not to appoint the prominent scientist Patrick Blackett to head the Atomic Research Committee, as his political opinions were too far to the left.

Guy Liddell, the deputy director-general of MI5, made some incisive comments about such matters, and especially on bacteriological warfare (BW), in his Diaries for 1948. On February 4, a lengthy discussion on BW took place at a meeting of the Joint Intelligence Committee, where the difficulties in establishing solid information about Soviet capabilities were aired. Liddell suggested that contacting those factories that were producing such material for Britain’s own purposes might lead to identification of those foreigners who were seeking equipment and know-how vital to the production effort. It is here that Borodin’s name first comes up, as Liddell is obviously aware that Borodin ‘is ostensibly purchasing penicillin plant’.

A few weeks later, at an internal MI5 gathering, a group of officers discussed the case of ‘X’ [a name redacted], who was stated to be at the centre of BW planning, but was known to be a Marxist of long standing. The entry adds that ‘up till 1943 he was a member of the C.P.’. Thus, in the event of war, his loyalties might be doubtful, and the opinion of C Section of MI5 was that an approach should be made to the Ministry of Supply to have him removed elsewhere. Who was ‘X’? I considered J. D. Bernal, Dorothy Hodgkin, and J. B. S. Haldane, all famous biologists of some kind, and all admitted friends of communism. I quickly eliminated Hodgkin, as the text indicates that the person was male, and I considered of the other two Haldane the more likely candidate.

On February 26, Liddell actually attended a meeting of the BW Committee, and I believe it is useful to cite the complete paragraph from his Diary entry for that day:

Johnstone and I attended a meeting of the BW Committee, to discuss the penicillin problem. Sir Paul Fildes, who I believe is the last word in B.W., said that, if the Russians tried to cultivate B.W. Agents with a penicillin plant, those concerned would probably die of a foul disease, since any plant of the kind would be much too leaky, but when challenged by Professor Wilkins, he agreed that the technical “know-how” of the penicillin plant might give the Russians valuable clues. This, however, was a matter to be explored with the firm of Glaxo, who are apparently the principle suppliers of the best penicillin. It was agreed that Wilkins and Sir Paul Fildes would see Glaxo tomorrow and report immediately on their views. Meanwhile it was felt that we should clear up our position vis a vis America, who had sold us their manufacturing rights. If it was their policy to refuse penicillin plant and technical “know-how”, we should have to keep in step.

Apart from the fact that the British might be judged as to have already transgressed against their agreement with the Americans, the re-entry of Fildes into the business is significant. By this time Fildes was working under Florey, who had of course been the mentor of the dubious Borodin during his first mission. Brian Balmer’s book points to some of the dynamics of the arrangement. In November 1947, Fildes had written to the Biological Research Advisory Board (BRAB), claiming that advances in research on the physiology of pathogenic bacteria and viruses would come from the schools of bacterial chemistry, at Oxford and Cambridge, thus pointing to his own institution. Yet Florey soon afterwards hinted at struggles. Described as ‘a senior BRAB member’, he reported on January 18, 1948, that ‘the pilot experimental fermenter was experiencing setbacks’, and that valuable staff might be lost if the new laboratories were to suffer similar delays.

The fact that various groups might be working at cross-purposes is shown by Liddell’s Diary entry for May 19. He had sent John Marriott to see Howard Florey, who had indicated to him that ‘there would be no harm in allowing the Russians to purchase penicillin plant in this country’. Liddell pointed out that this opinion was irreconcilable with what ‘the eminent Professor Fildes’ had expressed, although a more subtle interpretation might be adduced. Florey may have been encouraging the sharing of penicillin techniques with the Soviets on humanitarian grounds. Fildes, on the other hand, had ventured the opinion that, if the Russians tried to deploy penicillin-manufacturing plant and techniques to the creation of BW agents, the project would blow up in their faces – literally. In any event, Florey displays a level of ignorance concerning the control that the Americans claimed to exert over the systems they had developed.

The Seduction of Comrade Borodin

I wrote earlier how Liddell’s Diaries reveal that MI5 in early 1948 was keeping close tabs on Borodin and his activities, and how the British authorities were considering encouraging him to defect. A critical part of the entry for February 4 is another worth citing in full:

On the other hand, we have a very considerable interest in a man like BORODIN. If BORODIN is in fact purchasing chemical plant consciously for B.W. purposes, he may also be seeing information about our own efforts, and for all we know he may have got in touch with somebody important. If we could satisfy ourselves about his intentions and knowledge, we might consider him as a potential defector, and take steps accordingly. Quite apart from the espionage or defector aspect of the case, it seems to me that we are the only department which can exploit the field to the full extent. J.I.B. can talk to the firms, but it may be necessary for us to apply all our resources where BORODIN goes and whom he visits. Hayter [the Chairman of the JIC] asked about BORODIN’s potentialities as a defector. I said that we were looking into his case but were far from being able to say that he was a likely bet. Apart from the many difficulties in making an approach in a case of this sort, it was first of all essential to know whether he had near relatives in Russia.

That seems to me to be a very complacent and uninspired piece of analysis from Liddell. He implicitly admits that he knows nothing about Borodin’s first mission to the UK, where he had for several months been purloining secret material, and passing it on to the Soviet Embassy. Even now, MI5 appears uncertain of Borodin’s whereabouts: would representatives of Soviet trade missions not have to report their movements, especially if they were visiting factories manufacturing strategic material? Thus encouraging him to defect seems a very defensive measure, as if committing him to stay in the United Kingdom would somehow prevent the leakage of strategically valuable information, when the damage had already been done. And, if they thought that he might have useful information to give them, they should instead have tried to pick his brains there and then, and held open the hope that he might return to the UK with fresh updates at some time in the future – in other words, turning Borodin into an ‘agent in place’ rather than a defector.

A cryptic follow-up occurred on February 18, where Liddell conspired with Kenneth Strong and Lamb of the J.S.T.I.C. (Joint Staff Technical Intelligence Committee?) to exploit the Borodin case as a superior method of gaining intelligence, allied with overt sources and signals intelligence. Liddell wrote that the three agreed that using SIS (MI6) and its assumed spy network, except in a limited sphere, was a waste of money. This entry suggests that the investigation of Borodin had moved quickly over the past couple of weeks.

George Thomson

At a critical meeting of the Bacteriological Warfare Sub-Committee (reporting to the Chiefs of Staff) on February 26, 1948, some contradictions in policy, as well as some unresolved differences in opinion, were evident. Sir George Thomson, representing the Imperial College, showed remarkable naivety in his assessment of Soviet ambitions and progress in both atomic weaponry and BW. He recommended sharing intelligence with Soviet scientists, since ‘such discussions might serve a useful purpose by informing the world at large of the true potentialities of BW’. Wansbrough-Jones and Fildes disagreed with him, but thought that, while British industrialists could be trusted not to give away secrets, any international fora should be avoided. The Committee showed confusion over the value of penicillin plant, believing (despite what Fildes said elsewhere) that it could be useful for creating pathogens, but nevertheless deemed it advisable to sell such capabilities to the Russians anyway, on humanitarian and commercial grounds.

Wansbrough-Jones

Despite all this, the Committee, showing its familiarity with the impending expansive contract between Glaxo and the Soviet Delegation, wanted the JIC to check with the Americans that they approved the venture, and requested that the Ministry of Supply investigate how the export of plant might be prevented, given that an export license was not required. It was familiar with Borodin’s past movements in the UK and in the USA (where the Soviet Union had already spent $500,000), and it also showed awareness that Borodin was currently trying to acquire a deep culture plant from Bennett and Shears. There was, however, ‘no indication he has any interest in Penicillin than in its curative or prophylactic properties’. Nor was there presumably any doubt about the integrity of the ‘British industrialists’ controlling the project. The Committee was evidently at sea, and it needed a stronger Chairman on the tiller.

In any event, some more successful overtures were apparently made over the next few months. As the Soviet sources indicate, Borodin was working primarily with Florey’s adversary Ernst Chain at this time, and he was formulating ambitious plans for building plant in the Soviet Union. Chain was apparently encouraging such projects quite openly, to the degree that he filed copies of his letters to the Soviet Trade Delegation. On July 2, however, Borodin had turned up at the premises of his earlier mentor, Florey, in Oxford. Florey had contacted Dick White in MI5 to let him know that Borodin was seeking his assistance. John Marriott was despatched to Oxford to speak to Florey, and he returned the same day to give Liddell a positive report. Yet the way in which Borodin’s intentions were articulated is very confusing – partly, perhaps, because of sloppy recording.

Despite his belief that ‘he thinks he will be liquidated if he goes back to Russia’, Borodin was reported to be ‘not in the least apprehensive’. He had apparently thought out everything carefully, and part of the plan seemed to be that he would return to Russia. There is no conditional verb: “He does not think that his return to Russia will [i.e. not ‘would’] have any effect on his family either one way or the other, but is certain that he himself will be liquidated.” That is hardly the mood of someone who declares himself unapprehensive, unless it reflected a death wish to save his family, who would surely suffer if he decided not to return. Borodin also expressed how he wanted to clean house in England, so that there could be no accusation of misappropriation of funds. Was he perhaps concerned about the financial agreement with Chain, and how it might cast suspicions on his role and interest? The report closes: “He has a great deal to tell us and is willing to co-operate to the full.”

Something must have caused his plans to change, as his memoir suggested. Liddell has nothing more to say about Borodin, although his Diaries have an extraordinary vacant patch between July 30 and September 23 – a period for which he simply states that he had been ‘away’.

Ominous Undercurrents

Meanwhile, a possibly shady exploit was carrying on. MI5 had been making some clumsy moves in investigating the suppliers of penicillin-manufacturing material, as Liddell’s diary entry for February 19 attests. The offender was William Skardon, who took time off his interrogation duties to visit the premises of Bennett and Shears, one of the firms involved in the manufacture of penicillin, and to ask questions about industrial mobilisation in Russia. When the proprietors wondered what his game was, he discovered that he had not brought any identification with him. Liddell was introduced to the embarrassing problem, and he was asked to sort it out.

Henry Yorke

What is astonishing is the communication channel by which Liddell learned about the incident. In all innocence, Liddell records that the news came to him from Anthony Blunt, who himself received it from Guy Burgess, who had been in contact with Goronwy Rees. Rees had some sort of justification, because he was working for his friend Henry Yorke at Bennett and Shears, which worked out of Shoe Lane in London, and specialized in manufacturing brewing and distillation equipment. This might seem an unusual appointment for a Fellow of All Souls, but maybe he simply managed the books, as he had skills in this area, and managed the estates of his illustrious college. In A Chapter of Accidents, Rees describes his less than arduous duties sitting alongside Henry Yorke, a writer he admired, as he led the family firm. In Looking for Nobody, however, Rees’s daughter, Jenny, presents the firm as Pontifex. Pontifex had apparently acquired Bennett and Shears back in 1908: Jenny states that her father worked in George Street, Marylebone in the mornings and walked to the MI6 building at 54, Broadway for his afternoon stint. In any case, when Liddell talked to Rees, the latter thought it had all been a misunderstanding, but he confirmed that the Russians were buying penicillin plant. Whether Rees had been inserted at Bennett and Shears by MI6 is a possibility that has to be raised.

Anthony Blunt, however, had retired from MI5 in 1945. True, Liddell often used him as a ‘consultant’, but what was Blunt doing getting involved with penicillin-manufacturing, and what was Guy Burgess’s role in all this? Apart from hinting that Burgess and Rees were co-operating in some way, which contradicts the way that Rees tried to distance himself from Burgess in the years to come, the events suggest a very conspiratorial network, in which Victor Rothschild, probably in his role as an outspoken member of the BRAB, was probably colluding with the three cronies listed above. Perhaps, with Rees reporting to MI6, it was a canny way of getting a message to Liddell without ruffling feathers at 54, Broadway. Yet for Liddell to be ignorant about Rees’s position at Bennett and Shears, and for him to send in a poorly-prepared snoop to check out what was going on, seems utterly amateurish. Moreover, he would not have been pleased that MI6 was meddling on his turf.

Liddell had a further meeting with Blunt and Rees on March 11, where they discussed penicillin. Why Blunt had to be at the lunch is unexplained, but Liddell took time to explain to Rees that British Intelligence was concerned about the possibility that the Soviets could use penicillin plant to create BW agents. He rather undermined his own advice by stating next that expert judgment (i.e. Fildes) indicated that the project ‘would come to a sticky finish’. How Rees was supposed to process this advice is not clear, and the issue of US manufacturing bans was not overtly mentioned. But the details of the conversations were surely transmitted to the Soviets by Blunt. Liddell must have cast out of his mind the fact that Blunt had been caught red-handed passing over military secrets to the Russians in 1944.

In addition, the actions and motivations of Rees cast further doubts on the story he compiled for himself. If he was indeed upright and loyal in his position at Bennett and Shears, he showed lamentable judgment in confiding in the known subversives Burgess and Blunt about the investigations of Skardon, and the deeds and acquisitions carried out by Borodin. On the other hand, the chain of Rees-Burgess-Blunt-Liddell anticipates the same eerie set of communications that occurred in the summer of 1951, when Burgess and Maclean absconded. Rees’s MI5 Personal File proves that some officers in the service considered that Rees had unlawfully helped the Soviets gain penicillin equipment from the USA, in contravention of the ban, and others have suspected Rees of having been involved in nefarious activities well after his declared change of heart in 1939. These events would tend to reinforce the argument that he was still working closely with Burgess at this time. My analysis is necessarily sketchy. The episodes cry out for the release of more useful archival material – which must surely exist.

Of course the implications are dire. While MI5 was starting to understand the extent of Soviet penetration of the secrets of atomic weaponry, it did not appear to have any idea that a more blatant exercise was being carried out in the field of bacteriological warfare. That was doubly dangerous, since secrets would be passed on about the progress being made in technical research, thus fostering an ability to kick-start the Soviet program. Yet the exposure was more complex. The intelligence would also have included the fact that Chiefs of Staff were not simply considering defensive mechanisms, but also harbouring plans for attacking the Soviet Union with pathogenic substances, which would indubitably have increased Stalin’s fears about aggressive Western intentions. One cannot avoid the suspicion that Rothschild may have been passing on to Burgess some highly confidential material derived from his role on the BRAB.

After the Defection

Richard Davenport-Hines

So Borodin dramatically – melodramatically – defected in August 1948. Information about his movements thereafter are very sketchy. Richard Davenport-Hines, the noted historian of the early twentieth-century British intelligentsia, made a bizarre contribution by writing a letter to the Times Literary Supplement after that magazine published a review of One Man in His Time in July of this year. It is a strange, anecdotal account without sources or references, under that quaint literary tradition by which ‘experts’ are allowed to make apparently authoritative statements in the Letters pages, without any fact-checkers interfering, and where the only critics may appear among the magazine’s correspondents. I reproduce the main content of his letter:

The Security Service gave Borodin the codename of Julep after his defection. He was secreted in a safe house called Barrow Elm between Quenington and Hatherop in Gloucestershire. Before Borodin could be established in a new identity in Canada, the former literary editor Goronwy Rees, who was then dividing his working hours between a department in the Secret Intelligence Service run by his friend David Footman and a manufacturing business run by his Friend Henry Yorke, learnt from his official work of the Russian’s defection. He improperly divulged the incident to Yorke, who is best known as the novelist Henry Green. Yorke’s business was involved in a project to supply a penicillin plant to India: he was dissatisfied by its temperamental technical adviser, the Nobel laureate Ernst Chain. Accordingly, in March 1949, Rees approached Guy Liddell, deputy director general of the Security Service, and proposed that Yorke might be allowed to consult or recruit Julep. Footman backed Rees’s proposal in a separate talk with Liddell. This curious initiative seems to have been quashed by the Security Service’s refusal to jeopardize Borodin’s new identity in Canada before he had taken it.

‘Barrow Elm’

There is enough apparent insider information in this story to give it a gloss of conviction. But where does it come from? [If you perform a Google search on ‘Julep Defector’, the search returns just the TLS letter – a true hapax legomenon.] Moreover, Davenport-Hines displays a bewildering ignorance of the barrage of facts that preceded these events, and he suggests a story that defies all reason. Overall, what use would a defector be if he had immediately to be secreted away to Canada? If Borodin had been nosing around at Bennett and Shears looking for knowledge and techniques, why would Yorke think that he might be a valuable resource to replace the testy but expert Chain? If he needed assistance, and his project was legal, why did he not contact Howard Florey or Paul Fildes, who would presumably have been able to point him in the right direction in a far more security-conscious way? Was it really India or Italy (see below) that was the target for the plant? And why would Footman and Liddell even think twice about the wisdom of hiring Borodin for such a venture? And, if someone as high as Liddell approved the scheme, who was it in MI5 that quashed the initiative? I cannot see Percy Sillitoe interjecting himself sagaciously into the debate.

I suspect that Davenport-Hines may have been given a dodgy dossier at some stage. Moreover, the account of Borodin’s hiding away in leafy Gloucestershire does not hold water. In another diary entry, dated August 9, 1949, Liddell offers his readers the following gem:

There has been a successful conference on Russian affairs at Oxford. We put up a strong team, who apparently acquitted themselves extremely well, which stood out in strong contrast to others present. E. H. Carr, late of the ‘Times’, and also Borodin, gave talks. Outstanding on our side on Far Eastern matters was MacDonald. Guy Burgess was there from the Foreign Office, but was not nearly so good.

In A Chapter of Accidents, Goronwy Rees describes this event as a weekend summer school run by the Foreign Office, where Burgess ‘was chosen to lecture Britain’s representatives, who included members of both MI5 and MI6, on Red China’. So much for protecting Borodin’s new identity, and hiding him away from prying eyes. He is paraded at a conference where he has apparently been openly identified, in a forum bound to provoke questions, and one of his fellow-speakers is Guy Burgess, who has been acquainted with the saga from the Bennett and Shears days. It is difficult to imagine how Borodin could have lasted long after this episode. As a reminder of the Soviets’ need for revenge against traitors at this time, I quote from Tim Spicer’s recent biography of ‘Biffy’ Dunderdale, A Suspicion of Spies, where he describes what happened to the defector Tokaev the previous year, when he and his wife were placed in a safe house protected by MI5 and the Metropolitan Police:

Soon after their arrival, a suspected assassin was detected outside the house which prompted a rapid evacuation to Frittiscombe, a very remote farmhouse at Chillington near Kingsbridge in Devon, then owned by Fred Winterbotham, who had, by this time, retired.

‘A Suspicion of Spies’

An eerie coda to this episode occurred later in 1948, when Tsarev, another defector who had been recommended by Tokaev, fled from his safe house in Kensington in search of the Soviet Embassy. Spicer writes: “SIS concluded that CAPULET’s change of heart had been prompted by his fear of retribution against his 20-year-old son, Vasili, who was living in Moscow.”

Florey and Chain Redux

The feud between Florey and Chain did not die. On September 30, 1948, Guy Liddell recorded a visit made to him by Florey, accompanied by one Lang Browne. They had come to discuss the case of Dr. Chain, which formulation suggests that a controversy over the Nobel laureate was already alive. The entry reads:

Dr. CHAIN, who had somewhat improperly entered into a contract with the Trade Delegation (Soviet) to sell them information on penicillin, has gone on a years [sic] holiday to Italy. Florey would like to edge him out, but if necessary would like, at some future date, to inform the appropriate authority at Oxford that we could confirm the Professor’s information about the disreputable conduct of Dr. CHAIN. I said that I could see no objection.

It was left that Florey would make fresh contact with MI5 if the necessity arose. The main conclusion from this entry, however, is the fact that MI5 knew about the Chain-Borodin agreement, and disapproved of it, although the ‘somewhat improperly’ is a weak qualification (litotes? irony? or simply inadequate knowledge?). It would seem that the Security Service did not know the extent of what Chain had promised to deliver, but that it was perhaps generally supportive of an exercise designed to lead the Soviets up the garden path.

The impression given here is that Florey is unaware of his rival’s true mission in Italy, and expects him to return to the UK soon, at which time he wants him expelled from the Dunn School of Pathology. Eric Lax reports that Chain had been requested by the British Council in 1947 to give several lectures on penicillin in Rome. His visit was such a success that it prompted the Instituto Superiore di Sanitá to invite him to organize and direct a research centre for chemical microbiology and a penicillin plant. He left Oxford in the summer of 1948 without resigning his post – or informing Florey of his departure. Instead he wrote an awkward letter of apology when he arrived in Rome (Florey had been in London the day he left town!), and regretted their severe falling-out.

Chain, however, had multiple irons in the fire. Mauro Capocci’s article informs us that he had been helping many governments at this time, include the Czechs. In the spring of 1948 (Capocci writes) Chain had been approached by Soviet representatives (i.e. Borodin, Zeifman and Cherniavskii) to set up a fermentation facility, and agreement was signed on July 20. Soon afterwards, namely just before Borodin’s defection, Chain compiled a 100-page report for the Russians: he said that their surface culture method of producing penicillin was antiquated. The British government had by then stopped the Soviets from receiving training from Distillers and Glaxo. Italy was a convenient cover for Chain’s work, as the Communists were still strong in northern Italy at that time, a red takeover having been averted only in April 1948. For some years Chain exercised significant influence behind the Iron Curtain, and he acted as the World Health Organization chairman in the early 1950s.

What is astonishing is the indulgence shown to Chain, the lack of enforcement of bans on selling equipment to the Soviets, and the neglect of close surveillance of Borodin. It suggests that MI5 and the JIC were indeed taken in by his potential as a defector, and that allowing him to deliver some success to his masters in Moscow was part of the plan for maintaining his reputation, and perhaps developing him as a useful agent in place. In that respect, however, the handling of Borodin could well point to a disinformation exercise. Knowing that penicillin-manufacturing techniques could not be safely adapted for creating mass bacteriological agents, the authorities might have allowed Borodin to learn all he could, and pass it on to his masters, in a show of humanitarian generosity. The US ban on selling related equipment could have been an enormous bluff to suggest to the Soviets that the technology was indeed highly strategic and valuable for offensive purposes in BW. Whether Chain was in on the scheme is uncertain, but Florey’s comments would tend to confirm that he was aware of what was going on. The bitterest irony, however, was the fact that Anthony Blunt had learned from Liddell the nature of the scheme, and had surely passed the intelligence on to the Kremlin, which might have given the Soviets a pretext for keeping Borodin on a leash in the United Kingdom.

A Real Defection?

In conclusion, what does my analysis indicate about the reality of Borodin’s defection? Recall the following (apparent) facts:

* Borodin was sought out as a possible defector more out of propaganda value than for the reward of his knowledge, since he had already disclosed all he knew to the Americans.

* Borodin wrote an unnecessarily flamboyant and destructive letter to the Soviet Embassy, which would immediately have jeopardized his chances of surviving in exile.

* His letter was compiled the day after he made his decision to defect, when he had no guaranteed refuge in Britain.

* Borodin’s appearance in Oxford in 1949 would have broken all the rules about keeping defectors in seclusion.

* Borodin’s defection occurred at exactly the same time that Chain was armed to undertake penicillin development work in Italy and behind the Iron Curtain.

* Despite the alarms expressed by MI5 and Borodin himself about possible harm to his family, Borodin went ahead with the defection.

* Nothing reliable about Borodin has surfaced anywhere since, and his memoir published in 1955 was shrouded in mystery, and lacked any context.

* Soviet archives represent him as an ‘unperson’, recognizing him only in the 2000s, but relegating him to an insignificant role, and undermining Soviet excellence.

I thus consider three scenarios: 1) A legitimate defection; 2) A modified defection that went wrong; and 3) A fake defection engineered by the Soviets.

  1. If we take Borodin’s account at face value, the scientist, shocked by the new atmosphere at the Embassy, and fearful of being executed if he returned to Moscow, applied to the British for asylum, and was accepted, leaving his family members to their fate. He was never heard of again (apart from the possible appearance in Oxford) until he published his memoirs, in English, in 1955, and revealed the brazen declaration of his defiant letter of August 27 to Ambassador Zarubin. He was regarded as a pariah by Moscow: nothing reliable about his life and whereabouts after 1948 can be ascertained.

This scenario contains so many contradictions and paradoxes that it is hard to take seriously. MI5 and the JIC had been considering trying to persuade Borodin’s to defect for months, but they had expressed concern about his family. In early July (i.e. several weeks before his alleged decision), Borodin had contacted Professor Florey, and discussed defection, and his possible return to the Soviet Union. He was thus not a sudden asylum-seeker, but he had practically no value as a defector, since he had passed on all he knew, and his main role as a functionary was to gather information. One might expect an account of one of Sudoplatov’s squads attempts to assassinate Borodin – an inevitable outcome if the facts are true – but no record of such has appeared. Borodin’s presence in Oxford would surely have energized the hunt.

2. If MI5 and the JIC had become excited about the prospect of enticing Borodin to defect, they might have originally seen it as a propaganda coup. On reflection, however, they may have asked themselves how they would exploit him once he defected, as he would have been of little utility. At that stage, they might have considered trying to use him as an ‘agent in place’, having him return to the Soviet Union, and then provide them with constant updates on the state of the Russians’ work on bacteriological warfare (rather in the manner that Oleg Penkovsky was used.) Such a strategy would have overcome their humanitarian concerns about Borodin’s family, and the conversations in early July hint at such an arrangement, even though Borodin fears for his life.

While this scenario reflects in principle a more practical strategy for exploiting Borodin, there is no solid evidence for its existence. Liddell’s Diaries never explicitly indicate such a tactic. And it would encounter some severe obstacles. Once Borodin returned to the Soviet Union (and his declarations concerning his probable execution express a grim reality, since Stalin still regarded citizens who had spent too much time abroad as dangerous influences, and there was a deadly purge still going on), it was highly unlikely that he would be allowed to return to the United Kingdom, and attempting to contact him to have intelligence passed over would have been futile and fatal. If Borodin had indeed been tempted to consider such a course of action, he either talked MI5 out of it, or MI5 itself must have undergone a quick re-think.

3. Could the whole defection have been a set-up by the Soviets? If Borodin received an overture from the British, he probably reported it to his party bosses. They had their man in place, who had delivered the goods by stealing secrets, and now was conspiring with Chain to construct a detailed program for them to follow. If Borodin stayed in the United Kingdom, he could keep in touch with progress made in bacteriological warfare (and they knew that Britain’s intentions were serious, from what they learned from Burgess and Blunt). Thus the MVD might have encouraged Borodin to negotiate, and stall, while he was executing his assignment with Chain at Oxford. If his utility ran out, or his access to fresh intelligence were prevented, there would come a time when he could be safely exfiltrated, and re-united with his family. If Borodin did indeed escape later, that would explain the complete silence thrown over the affair by the embarrassed British authorities, as the propaganda exercise would have been thrown back in their faces. Yet Borodin, as someone who was on the blacklist for maligning Soviet science, might have experienced the cellars of the Lubyanka soon after his return to the homeland. Mikoyan may well have suspected (learning from his spies in the UK) that Borodin was about to make a serious defection, and he might even have wondered whether the scientist had made a secret deal on the side to benefit from the large payments to be made to Chain. Thus Borodin may have taken fright, and decided that he needed to break away completely.

This seems to me the likeliest explanation. I have not seen any evidence that the Soviets boasted about such a coup, suggesting that Borodin may have double-crossed them. But what about the inflammatory letter to the Ambassador? I suspect it was never issued, as it would have been far too clumsy a ruse for MI5 to be taken in, and the Security Service would have even more dramatically pulled their horns in, and made Borodin utterly useless to the adversary. I believe it far more likely that the letter was compiled to accompany Borodin’s memoir, at a time when he may no longer have been in this world. I expressed my doubts earlier about Borodin’s ability to write such a memoir in English at that time. He probably wrote it in Russian, and left it with MI5, who had it translated. When the book was published (after Stalin’s death), an MI5 officer probably wrote the letters and had them inserted as a last fling, with a pinch of authenticity, to publish what many Soviet functionaries truly thought about the Communist regime. After all, the standalone letters appear as the totality of the file FO 1093/552. Why would that be? Only the ruse now looks hopelessly naive.

If I imagined I might find some sort of closure in this research activity, I was severely disillusioned. Yet I believe I have uncovered enough facts to set the hares running. A large number of questions remains to be investigated, and I hope that this report finds the right persons to help answer them.

(Recent Commonplace entries can be see here.)

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‘To Catch A Spy’? Actually, no . . .

‘To Catch A Spy’

For casual browsers, here is the short version of the book review, in the form of a clerihew:

Margaret Thatcher

Vigorously hounded ‘Spycatcher’.

For Wright’s attorney the clincher

Was her indulgence to Pincher.

For those of you who are fully paid-up subscribers to coldspur, and want to read the full version, start here:

Contents:

Introduction

Parallel Narratives

The MI5 Report  

Jonathan Aitken

The Plot

The ‘Spycatcher’ Trial

The Epilogue

Miscellaneous

Conclusions

Appendices 1-9

**********************************************************************

Introduction

Someone (I do not recall who or where) recently pointed out that the one thing that Peter Wright, the author of Spycatcher, failed to do was to catch any spies. It seems that Tim Tate did not get the email, since he has titled his new book on the ‘Spycatcher’ affair To Catch A Spy. Since Wright was keen to boast that he was ‘the only senior officer in MI5 to have spent twenty years in counter-espionage’, either he was not a very capable sleuth, or else his energies were for some reason thwarted. It is the latter tale that Wright vigorously promoted, and it is the story that Tate has chosen to endorse. As an account of the catalogue of woe that Margaret Thatcher and her administration brought down on itself in trying to suppress Wright’s memoir, To Catch A Spy is, for the most part, excellent: on the other hand, as an investigation into the realities of Wright’s claims that MI5, and the UK government in general, were riddled with Soviet spies, it does not grab the nettle, makes some spectacularly wrong assertions, and is disappointingly bland and incurious. It fails to unravel the complexities of the establishment plots to control the narrative, and is far too accepting of what Wright and his accomplices claimed about the extent of Soviet penetration.

I approach volumes on intelligence like this one with three primary questions: What is the track-record of the author, and what credentials does he [or she] have? What fresh sources does he bring to the table that may cause a revised history of the events to be justified? What methodology does he apply in sifting the evidence, and dealing with the multiple obfuscations and dissimulations that inevitably bedevil the records and testimonies?

Tim Tate

I had encountered Tate in two previous books: Hitler’s Secret Army, and Agent SNIPER (published in Britain as The Spy Left Out in the Cold), his biography of the Polish defector Michal Goleniewski. He describes himself as a documentary film-maker and investigative journalist. I gained much from both books, although I believe Tate exaggerated the Nazi threat in the first book, and Goleniewski, who rapidly entered the predictable world of fantasy when his intelligence ran out, hardly had enough substance to warrant a full book about him. Rating: B.

On sources, Tate has performed a phenomenal job in rooting out arcane material – especially in British Government archives, where critical information was released to select historians, but weeded from the files before they were released to the public – with many still withheld. He has also scoured the records of the ‘Spycatcher’ trial in New South Wales to deliver valuable new material from the transcripts and affidavits. He has secured several personal communications with prominent members of the controversy, from Nigel West through Jonathan Aitken and others, to Peter Wright’s offspring (although such confidences should not be automatically trusted). Rating: A-.

Sadly, Tate has not applied the methodology of a professional historian to his material. (The qualifications for adoption as a Fellow of the Historical Society must be low.) He is far too trusting of what Wright said in his book, and in his affidavits, when careful checks and third-party testimony lead one quickly to the conclusion that he was a consummate liar. His exaggerated respect for Wright is shown by the fact that a majority of the chapters in his book are introduced with a statement from him. All too often I looked up a reference in Tate’s Endnotes to find it simply cited a page from Spycatcher, and Tate shows no discrimination in deciding when Wright should be believed, and when he should not. That weakness extends to his coverage of other witnesses. Tate also quotes, far too often, Christopher Andrew and his unverifiable references to ‘Security Service Archives’ in Defending the Realm, and he never attempts to engage the authorized ‘historian’. He accepts all such information as gospel – except when it tends to contradict his main thesis. The unwillingness to challenge Wright’s lies is in contrast to his justified contempt for the prevarications and perjury of Sir Robert Armstrong. This failing undermines a dominant theme in his book – that dozens of Soviet spies remained unchallenged and unprosecuted in Britain’s offices of state. I was tempted to redeem Tate’s grade slightly in recognition of the industrious work he has performed in comparing declassified files with published texts, but found the process of unravelling his cross-references so laborious that I stayed with my more negative appraisal. Rating: C+.

To illustrate some of my points, I present some extracts from Tate’s Introduction, with commentary. It is not a good beginning.

P 1 “Peter Wright, a senior Security Service officer for more than twenty years, had been at the centre of many of the most damaging intelligence scandals of the 1950s and 1960s. He had been MI5’s chief counter-espionage officer, leading its efforts to catch Kim Philby, to uncover Soviet penetration of Britain’s twin intelligence agencies, MI5 and MI6, and to root out the long tentacles of Moscow’s infamous ‘Ring of Five’ spies, embedded in the heart of the British Establishment.”

Wright had not been a senior MI5 officer for twenty years. He had been recruited in 1955 as a scientific officer, and had been appointed head of research in D Branch in January 1964. By then, Guy Burgess was dead, Donald Maclean had been in Moscow for thirteen years, John Cairncross had been encouraged to resign in 1951 after owning up to espionage and had formally confessed in December 1963 after being named by Anthony Blunt, Kim Philby had absconded from Beirut in 1963, and Blunt had confessed to being a Soviet agent not in April 1964 but in late 1963 (as my original articles strongly hypothesized, at https://coldspur.com/the-hoax-of-the-blunt-confession-part-1/ and https://coldspur.com/the-hoax-of-the-blunt-confession-part-2/ , and which I reinforced last month, at https://coldspur.com/an-anxious-summer-for-rees-blunt/ ). Wright was never head of counter-espionage, although he did chair the combined MI5-MI6 FLUENCY Committee to investigate Soviet penetration, and before his retirement he was a special adviser to Michael Hanley, the Director General from 1972 to 1978. That the ‘Ring of Five’ had tentacles, and that the level of commitment to the Soviet cause dedicated by the persons supposedly representing them was high, is not questioned by Tate. He is intuitively sceptical of anything MI5 directors-general say, and (for instance) criticizes Antony Duff for carrying out a stringent internal inquiry in 1987 without reaching out to contact Wright himself!

P 2 “It [the government] had also allowed retired Director General Sir Percy Sillitoe and its in-house traitor Anthony Blunt to write their own memoirs . . . .”

Unlike Sillitoe’s book (which boasted a foreword by Clement Attlee), Blunt’s memoir was never published. In light of other indiscreet revelations provided by unnamed MI5 officers, coupling Sillitoe and Blunt is a bizarre choice. In PREM 19/1952, John Masterman’s The Double Cross System in the War of 1939-45 is listed alongside Sillitoe’s memoir as the only other book by an ex-MI5 officer that received authorization by the government – although that statement misrepresents what was in fact a very awkward process.

P 2 “Wright’s allegations of Soviet penetration of MI5, and of MI5’s habitual law-breaking, were simultaneously admitted as true for the purposes of the Australian trial but pronounced false in the House of Commons.”

That statement constitutes a dubious representation of the truth. Tate echoes it on page 245, where he writes of the government’s ‘admission that – for the purposes of the trial –  every word in Spycatcher was true’, and again on page 290, where he claims that Thatcher’s denials to the House of Commons about the Wilson plot were contradicted by the fact that the government had accepted during the Spycatcher trial that ‘all Wright’s allegations were true’. I cannot locate any passage in Tate’s book that supports this thesis: the whole point of the Government’s defence was that Wright’s claims could not be dissected at all because they were all confidential. I believe that these assertions may be a lazy paraphrasing of what Charles Moore wrote in Volume 3 of his biography of Margaret Thatcher, on page 239. The relevant text runs as follows: “It [the British government] agreed, for the purposes of the court case alone, to admit the truth of Wright’s allegations and information, disputing only the author’s right to publish them. This was a legal technicality, but of course it was not understood as such.”

This is an uncharacteristically sloppy passage by Moore, and his heavily annotated book provides no sources for these claims. With whom did the government ‘agree’? What was the implication of ‘for purposes of the court case alone’? How public was that statement? What are the implications of the words ‘legal technicality’? Who were the agents and figures who did not ‘understand it as such’? Moore predictably did not start to answer such questions, but, in my opinion, Tate should have taken it upon himself to analyze them further before promoting the underlying assertion as gospel.

P 4 “The Security Service was determined to cover up the truth about Soviet moles in its ranks, to conceal its habitual domestic law breaking and to prevent any democratic supervision of its actions. . . . . .  At its behest, the Prime Minister and the Cabinet Secretary conspired to defuse the ticking time bomb of the investigation into Sir Roger Hollis by leaking top-secret information.”

While Tate appears, rather alarmingly, to have pre-judged that the existence of moles within MI5 was an inarguable fact, he provides no evidence of MI5’s determination to cover up such a ‘truth’ in the critical period under review. As he records, when Margaret Thatcher became Prime Minister in 1979, the Security Service presented to her a detailed report that outlined the investigations into possible ‘moles’ in the service, and particularly that into Roger Hollis. Yet the Director General of MI5 at the time (1978-1981), Sir Howard Smith, does not even appear in the Index of To Catch A Spy, and it is moreover unlikely that Armstrong and Thatcher would have been persuaded to engage in such conspiracies by the arguments of such a weak character. The claim that it was MI5’s ‘behest’ that convinced Thatcher and Sir Robert Armstrong to initiate the leakage operation thus lacks any supportive evidence, and runs counter to the narrative as presented in Tate’s text. [In Volume 3 of his biography of Thatcher, Charles Moore attributes Smith’s supportive role in responding to Pincher to a conversation he had with Lord Armstrong, as he became, and the claim is thus not seriously verifiable. Moreover, in Volume 1, Moore had reported that the Director General had advised Thatcher not to make any announcement when the Blunt rumour first surfaced in ‘late’ 1979. Since Moore recorded the D-G as being Michael Hanley, who had retired the previous year, this unsourced item must therefore be treated as another vague observation. The whole section covering the Blunt revelation is very loose.] After Their Trade is Treachery began serialization in the Daily Mail, the newspaper reported that Thatcher had ordered Smith to provide an explanation, but that may have been a supposition inserted by Pincher.

Howard Smith

P 4 “He, with official approval and the backing of Lord Victor Rothschild, himself a former spy, used this material to publish a book about the case in 1981. And Pincher’s secret co-author as the British government knew – was Peter Wright.”

Lord Rothschild – who strongly protested when his name appeared in the form given by Tate, by the way – was never a ‘spy’ for British intelligence (though he had been an ‘agent of influence’ for the Soviets). [Tate, mimicking the unfortunate example of Tom Bower, who titled his biography of Dick White The Perfect English Spy, regularly classifies counter-espionage officers as ‘spies’, a practice that may have started with Isaiah Berlin’s career advice to Philip de Mowbray.] Tate also fails to draw clear lines in the conspiracies to exploit Wright’s findings via the media of Chapman Pincher. In his main text, he judges it a ‘coincidence’ that Armstrong and Thatcher were plotting to use Pincher at the same time that Rothschild and Wright were doing exactly the same thing. He fails to explain why the backing of Rothschild was significant if ‘official approval’ had already been registered.

As a parenthesis, I point out that I have added several Appendices to this report, the first and second consisting of a comprehensive guide to the National Archives files used by Tate – which would have been a useful component of his supportive material – and a summary of the information exceptionally provided to Charles Moore. The others constitute a record of the incumbents in critical positions during the period of these events (broadly 1945-1990). I compiled these partly for my own edification, as it is useful to be able to verify personalities when a record refers simply to the ‘Prime Minister’ or the ‘Director General’ of the time, but also to show the general lack of continuity among most political appointees or electees. MI5 and MI6 reported to the Home Office and the Foreign Office, respectively, so I include the Ministers responsible, many of whom must have been overwhelmed by the intelligence shenanigans they encountered, but did not remain long enough in office to have any influence. Amid all this was the relative permanence of the Cabinet Secretaries, solidly ensconced in the engine-room of the ship of state, with only four such civil servants holding the office between 1947 and 1987, thus confirming the importance of their interest and actions as the investigations into Soviet infiltration evolved. Robert Armstrong uniquely served only one Prime Minister – Margaret Thatcher.

Parallel Narratives

One of the most extraordinary aspects of Tate’s story is the manner in which his narrative and that of Christopher Andrew run on parallel but contradictory lines. Tate shows much ingenuity in expanding on Pincher’s account, explaining how in early 1980 the MP Jonathan Aitken approached Thatcher and Armstrong to warn them about the level of Soviet penetration in the intelligence services, augmenting what a report given by MI5 to Thatcher soon after her assuming office in May 1979 had declared about the FLUENCY investigation. That initiative led to a plot by Thatcher and her Cabinet Secretary to try to deliver the unsavoury news about Hollis through a supposedly friendly journalist, Chapman Pincher. As I pointed out above, Tate never mentions the current MI5 Director General, Howard Smith. Andrew, on the other hand, says nothing about Their Trade is Treachery until describing the occasion on which Thatcher was forced to make her statement in the House of Commons. He writes nothing about the MI5 report that educated her to the threats back in 1979. According to him, the ruse to employ Pincher was cooked up solely by Rothschild and Wright (although Andrew does confirm that Wright had been leaking information to Pincher for some years). On the other hand, Andrew has several things to say about the ineffectual Howard Smith, who had been brought by James Callaghan from the Embassy in Moscow to lead MI5 in 1978, but thereafter stayed in the background, was a weak leader, and did not concern himself with operational affairs.

It is perennially difficult to assess how reliable Andrew’s judgments are. We do not know (for instance) the extent of his access to MI5’s files. (He describes it as ‘virtually unrestricted’, but how does he know?) We do not know how many he himself inspected, or whether those cited were perhaps summarized or sanitized by his research team of ex-MI5 officers. We do not know whether relevant files from other government departments were placed before him: certainly he cites resources such as the FCO and the PREM categories, but his narrative would suggest that some vital files escaped his notice. The status of the files his team did inspect – whether still unclassified, or since released – is unknowable. It is a very sorry state of affairs that I – and other historians – have lamented.

‘Their Trade is Treachery’

Andrew’s oversight in this particular domain is all the more remarkable since Pincher first referred to Aitken’s letter to Thatcher, dated January 31, 1980, in Their Trade Is Treachery (hereafter referred to as TTIT; 1981) and published its full text as an Appendix in his 1988 book A Web of Deception. Pincher, rather disingenuously, claimed that he had gained most of his material for TTIT from Aitken, who had, in turn, been indoctrinated by James Angleton of the CIA, and then further educated by Arthur Martin (at that time retired from the intelligence scene). Pincher then claimed that Thatcher and Armstrong had brushed off Aitken’s warning, assuredly after receiving guidance from MI5 to ignore it (though Pincher provided no evidence of such), and that Armstrong did not become alive to the imminent revelations about Hollis until he received an early copy of TTIT in January 1981. His thesis (as I explained in coldspur two months ago, at https://coldspur.com/the-still-elusive-victor-rothschild/ ) was to judge that the government had stumbled into allowing TTIT to be published out of a misguided concern for secrecy rather than from any devious plotting.

Tate’s coup has been to exploit archival material declassified in 2023 to blow a hole in both these stories, thus resolving the conflicts that puzzled me last month – why Thatcher and Armstrong would behave so passively over Pincher’s subversive book, and why Rothschild would risk so much in dealing with, and encouraging, Wright. Reproducing information from PREM 15/591, Tate shows that Thatcher and Armstrong considered, in June 1980, that allowing the leaked story to be communicated by a ‘sympathetic’ journalist, namely Pincher, would defuse the volatile Hollis situation and allow them to control the risks embodied by Wright. These revelations hold enormous significance for the encounters between Rothschild and Wright, and the ‘introduction’ of Pincher, in late summer 1980. But first, I want to step back and consider the implications of the 1979 MI5 report, and the incongruous entry of that popinjay and perjurer* Jonathan Aitken into the narrative.

[* Aitken was convicted of perjury in 1999, and served prison time for it.]

The MI5 Report

The May 1979 report, which consists of eight pages, in PREM 19/120, offers a broad summary of the (unidentified) FLUENCY Committee investigations. It is anonymous, but was probably compiled by the Deputy Director General, John Jones, who had been working for MI5 since 1955. It explains the disclosures by one defector (Gouzenko) and one would-be defector (Volkov) that had encouraged the inquisition, and Tate’s text briefly outlines the trail that led to Roger Hollis’s being considered the prime suspect. Yet it also provided an important qualification: “No information was discovered to confirm the supposition of espionage . . .”, which suggested that all the claims of ‘failures’ of counter-Soviet operations rested on shaky ground. My contention has always been that the first responsibility of MI5 and MI6 should have been to try to determine why such projects had misfired, and whether such failures could reasonably be attributed to leakage, rather than blundering around looking for scapegoats. For instance, in ‘Peter Wright’s Agents and Double-Agents’ (see https://coldspur.com/peter-wrights-agents-double-agents/ of May 2022), I debunked the notion of MI5’s having a hope of running ‘double-agents’ against the Soviets in London, and I expanded on this theme earlier this year in ‘Some Problems with Westy’ (see https://coldspur.com/some-problems-with-westy/ ).

Yet Tate disposes of this report in a very perfunctory manner. First of all, his introduction is inaccurate. On page 115, he states that Thatcher would not have been able to rely on Sir John Hunt for guidance, since she had replaced him with Sir Robert Armstrong in October. Hunt, however, had been supplying the Prime Minister with analysis, draft written responses should the crisis erupt, and supplementaries to possible parliamentary questions, from her accession on May 4 right up until October 10, five days before Armstrong officially took over. (Tate lists only Volume 3 of Moore’s biography of Margaret Thatcher in his ‘Selected Bibliography’.) In this communication, he showed how alive he was to the situation by pointing out that Blunt might a) initiate libel proceedings, b) make a public confession, or c) commit suicide. Armstrong’s first recorded memorandum is dated November 8th, after Climate of Treason had been published.

John Hunt

Furthermore, Tate misrepresents the essence of the MI5 report. He dedicates only a single paragraph to it, and summarizes it as referring to ‘the facts which had pointed at Hollis as the most likely traitor in its ranks’. Yet the report expressed no such opinion. It stated that there had been no evidence of penetration for twenty years. Over a hundred leads had been investigated (presumably including those that Wright identified), but they had been cut down to only five by 1973, and to a single case in 1976 –  which was still being looked into. Tate’s immediate judgment is that MI5 ‘was determined to keep its political masters in the dark about the extent of the problem’ (p 110), but he offers no evidence for that conclusion, and appears not to consider that, since MI5 had opened up the project, the Security Service might have expected to receive further questions from their bosses about the process and the eliminations. Yet that apparently did not happen. Simply because MI5 was evasive and dilatory concerning the activities of some spies, it did not automatically mean that it was concealing information about a clutch of others.

In addition, nothing incriminating had been found against Graham Mitchell or Roger Hollis, and the judgment was that Volkov’s identification was much more likely to have been Philby rather than Hollis (even though the report characteristically misrepresented Hollis’s role during World War II). One of the most ridiculous suggestions is that, when Blunt resigned from MI5 in 1945, Moscow might have wanted a spy within the service to carry on the work, and thus they ‘activated’ either Mitchell or Hollis, or both – as if they had been waiting quietly in the wings for that day. Meanwhile, as Blunt admitted, he carried on supplying information to the Russians through the 1951 events (exploiting his excellent relationship with Liddell and White), and beyond – and was probably involved in the tip-off to Philby in 1963.

What is more astonishing is that in MI5’s report the original trigger for the investigation into possible infiltration was ascribed to an interview by MI5 of Philby’s wife Eleanor after the defection. She stated that her husband had become very nervous, and started drinking heavily (again) in 1962, and the Security Service assumed that one of the only five senior officers who knew about the renewal of the investigation into Philby must have leaked that information to him. That led to Mitchell and Hollis, but, later in the report, the author pointed out that Philby might well have become very anxious because of the news that the defector Golitsyn was starting to talk, and might be able to finger him – which indeed was the case. If Eleanor Philby’s claim truly was the prima facie cause for the whole inquiry, it rested on very shaky ground. Tate ignores that observation, preferring to trust the version that Wright offered.

Tate largely ignores the tenor and details of the MI5 report. I hoped, nevertheless, that he would apply some rigorous analyses of the failures claimed by Wright. Yet, in his critical Chapter 7, title ‘DRAT’ (the code-name for the investigation into Hollis), where he covers the allegations, he first refers to the August 1975 report submitted by Sir John Hunt, the Cabinet Secretary, to Prime Minister Harold Wilson, which mentioned in vague terms the possibility of espionage leads beyond proven spies, but then for his next seven sources relies almost exclusively on Wright’s testimony, from the Granada television program, from Spycatcher, and from his affidavit in Sydney. These are notoriously unreliable, as several commentators have pointed out. Tate later admits that Wright was accused by other MI5 officers of inventing evidence where none existed, but he largely ignores the consequences of such claims.

There have never been any documents released from the FLUENCY Committee, or the DRAT investigation, so Tate cites Christopher Andrew for two important anecdotes. In Defending the Realm, on page 511, Andrew wrote that Hollis and White, the respective chiefs of MI5 in 1965, had accepted the conclusions of the FLUENCY Committee that Soviet penetration of both services had endured, and that they authorized further investigations. The circumstances of these judgments are maddeningly elusive, as, again, Andrew is exploiting an unverifiable source. White’s reasoning, and the possibility that his protégé was influenced by him, must be one of the most important aspects of the whole case. And on page 517, Andrew describes a June 1970 report written by John Day titled ‘The Case Against DRAT’. (By then, both Hollis and White had retired, although White was active as Intelligence Co-ordinator for the Cabinet office until 1972.) Andrew was probably the only outsider who had read the report. In his Endnote, however, Tate writes: “The only account of its contents . . . . unsurprisingly denounces it as ‘threadbare’ and ‘shocking’.” Why would Tate characterize Andrew’s analysis in such a deprecatory manner? Does he think that Andrew was prejudiced? Why does he not trust Andrew’s assessment of the significance of its contents? Why did he not attempt to have a conversation with Andrew about it, as he did with other participants?

I should record that Andrew took a dim view of Wright and his fellow ‘conspiracy-theorists’. He wrote of Day’s paper: “It remains a shocking document – a classic example of a paper written to support a conclusion already arrived at which excludes important evidence to the contrary and turns on its head evidence which does not fit the preconceived conclusion”, and Andrew gives examples of Hollis’s positive track-record, and how misguided the characterization of Hollis’s roles was as presented in the report. Now, one could not expect Tate to argue on the merits of Day’s report, since he had not read it, but it seems to me utterly cavalier and irresponsible of him not to record Andrew’s judgment, and instead to imply that Andrew was party to a cover-up. I encourage readers to re-inspect these pages 517-521: Andrew also cites at length a 1988 report issued by K10R/1 that catalogues Wright’s dishonesty and fabrications, and points to the lack of intellectual rigour on the part of many of the investigators. Sadly, it is another of those anonymous items footnoted solely as ‘Security Service Archives’. Yet Tate should have at least recognized its existence.

‘The Spy Who Came In From The Circus’

Andrew has recently added further testimony to support one of his claims – that Wright had created false evidence to incriminate Hollis. In his 2024 biography of the MI5 officer Cyril Mills, The Spy Who Came in from the Circus, he reinforces his argument by quoting Mills’s disparaging view of how Wright, in Spycatcher, completely misrepresented Mills’s contributions in surveilling the Soviet Embassy. When Wright’s book was published, Mills – who had up until then been a stickler about confidentiality, and honouring his commitments – told his family that the real traitor was not Hollis, but Wright himself. The distortions by Wright that Mills documented for his bosses were later confirmed through an internal MI5 inquiry.

Tate makes no mention of another distinguished critic of Peter Wright – Hugh Trevor-Roper. In a withering review of Spycatcher in the Spectator of October 10, 1987 (republished in The Secret World of 2014), Trevor Roper lambasted Wright’s ‘advocacy coloured by personal prejudice’, noted some further errors to those that had already been listed, and characterized his approach as ‘somewhat paranoid’. Trevor-Roper was also the first to refer to the complaints made by Cyril Mills, as echoed by Andrew. He vented at the hypocrisy displayed by Wright, who claimed that he was on his crusade for the public good when he had already admitted that MI5 was ‘mole-free’ by the time the book was published.

That intellectual flabbiness was evident at the top is, nevertheless, undeniable. Andrew cites another unverifiable archival item in which Furnival-Jones (the Director-General between 1965 and 1972), ‘despite his own scepticism about “The Case against DRAT”’, informed the Permanent Under-Secretary at the Home Office (Sir Philip Allen) and the Cabinet Secretary (Sir Burke Trend) of the investigation of Hollis, but for some reason failed to tell either the Home Secretary (Reginald Maudling) or the Prime Minister (Edward Heath), who had replaced Wilson after the June 1970 election. One might have expected a disciplined leader of MI5 to have carried out his own rigorous assaying of his subordinates’ extravagant claims before sharing with his political masters the facts of the internal divisions, but Tate characterizes Furnival-Jones as amiable and unenterprising.

Thus Tate allows Wright’s presentation of the ‘twenty-eight solid cases’ to hold sway. I shall not here analyze in depth such episodes, but merely record some of the obvious errors made in Wright’s presentation of the interrogation of Hollis in 1970, as recorded by Tate, since I have written about these beforehand. The first is Volkov’s claim about ‘the acting head of a section of the British counter-intelligence directorate’. Tate echoes the assertion that that must point to Hollis, the ‘acting head’ of F Branch during WWII. Yet B Branch was responsible for counter-intelligence; the mission of F Branch was controlling subversion, and Hollis was its permanent head after June 1941. Philby in MI6 was the obvious candidate. The second is a complete misrepresentation of Gouzenko, and the ‘ELLI’ accusations. The third is the outlandish suggestion that both Hollis and Mitchell owned the combination of length of service and access to information that would have allowed them to tip off Philby before his defection. To this, Tate notes without comment Wright’s claim that the evidence against Hollis was ‘far greater than any of the other people’. It is quite absurd. If Tate sincerely believed that the MI5 report was a stitch-up, and that Wright’s case was strong, he should at least have examined the evidence more carefully, and not have misrepresented the conclusions of the report.

Jonathan Aitken

Jonathan Aitken

Aitken’s insertion of himself into the controversy is quite extraordinary. Aitken had become a Conservative Member of Parliament in 1974. He was a colourful showman of solid ‘pedigree’, with a varied and stimulating background career. He had been introduced to James Angleton at the Army and Navy Club in December 1979, whereafter events took an alarming shape. Angleton expressed his suspicions about the security of Britain’s intelligence services, introduced him to Arthur Martin (now employed as a clerk in the House of Commons), and Aitken was excited enough about what he was told by Martin and his wife (who had been Guy Liddell’s secretary) to join the bandwagon.

On January 31, 1980, Aitken thus wrote a long letter to Margaret Thatcher, attempting to bypass normal Civil Service channels, outlining his concerns, and recommending action. (Tate refers to it as an exhibit of the Supreme Court of News South Wales: as I mentioned earlier, the full text appears as Appendix A in Pincher’s A Web of Deception, and it has recently been published in PREM 19/951.) It comprises an astonishingly arrogant set of largely unsubstantiated claims, laying out a supposed case against Hollis, and asserting that ‘Hollis and Mitchell between them recruited other unidentified Soviet Agents into the Security Service’, and that it followed from that the Security Services [sic] ‘may still be severely penetrated today’. In summary, he recommended a full independent inquiry, an interrogation of Mitchell (Hollis was dead), statements to be made to the House of Commons, and a reform of the Security Service with a view to amalgamating MI5 and MI6. He signed off by expressing his hope to the Iron Lady that his suggestions would be ‘helpful’.

An even more melodramatic dimension to this outburst is the background. When Aitken met Angleton, he was apparently on his honeymoon, having just wedded Lolicia Azucki. Yet he had for some time before been dating Thatcher’s daughter, Carol, and had jilted her just after the election in May 1979, an event that apparently provoked almost as much grief to the Prime Minister as it did to her daughter, and caused her to overlook him for a ministerial post. (As a woman of traditional customs, Mrs. Thatcher may well have wanted to ask Aitken if his intentions towards her daughter had been honourable. Charles Moore wrote that she ‘deliberately overlooked his talents’ after he dumped Carol.) Thus the bold approach could be interpreted in different ways: as a cold-blooded gesture to remind his boss of his independence and imaginative ways; as an innocent and sincere initiative, since he might have supposed that romance was inevitably a messy business, but outside the realm of politics; or as a means of trying to ingratiate himself with her by genuinely alerting her to a real and present exposure. In any event, one might have expected Thatcher to have responded to his unsolicited advice with disdain.

Indeed, some years later, when confronted by Aitken again on the need for parliamentary oversight of MI5, she replied (as Tate records, citing Aitken’s biography of Thatcher): “What rot! That would mean people like you poking their noses into security matters they know nothing about!” It is a shame that she did not respond that way back in February 1980, although, with her rather two-dimensional view of the world, she was as much a novice in the world of intelligence as Aitken himself was. Outwardly, that was what happened. The letter nevertheless found its way to Sir Robert Armstrong (as Tate reports), who advised her to ignore Aitken’s recommendations, and a few weeks later Aitken received a curt response, indicating that Thatcher knew about the allegations.

The Plot

Yet Martin continued to leak. Aitken later told Tate that he was not concerned about the Official Secrets Act. Jonathan Penrose and Chapman Pincher were reported to be working on new embarrassing stories. It was probably Pincher’s approach to the Attorney-General Sir Peter Rawlinson, indicating that he was writing a book about Hollis, and was looking for some government help, that provoked the fateful decision by Armstrong and Thatcher. On June 10, 1980, Armstrong wrote to Thatcher, suggesting that Pincher, as a friendly right-wing journalist, might be relied upon to defuse the coming Hollis scandal by declaring that he had been found innocent, by the original investigation as well as by Sir Burke Trend’s lengthy analysis. Thatcher soon agreed to the scheme, although the cut-out of the Attorney-General was used to provide deniability about an official government leak. As Tate writes, the move was not only probably illegal, but also naive. “Armstrong grossly underestimated Pincher’s willingness to cause mischief and his genuinely extensive contacts among the group of dissident molehunters who fervently believed in Hollis’s guilt.”

Robert Armstrong

Thus the conspiracy to try to exploit Pincher as a way of muffling Martin – and Wright – has to be seen in a new light. Tate presents the parallel negotiations between Wright and Rothschild as completely unrelated to the Armstrong/Thatcher dealings with Pincher. “By a remarkable coincidence,” he writes, “Rothschild’s plan for publishing Peter Wright’s dossier involved the same intelligence muckraker.” Yet Rothschild had been in contact with Wright for some years, he had been keeping MI5 informed of Wright’s grievances and plans, he had been feeding Pincher with juicy tales from MI5 for some time, he had been in regular contact with Dick White on intelligence matters, he had his own ambitions for playing a dominant role in the Intelligence Services *, and he was on close terms with Armstrong. Furthermore, he had experienced that visit when in hospital (almost certainly by White: see https://coldspur.com/the-still-elusive-victor-rothschild/ ) where he had been encouraged in the plan to dismantle the Wright detonator by transferring the authorship elsewhere. He later requested cover when Wright planned to reveal his role at the trial, and warned Armstrong that he would disclose the names of other conspirators, prominently Maurice Oldfield #, if the Law continued to harass him. He was the ideal candidate to be the medium for the Armstrong-Thatcher plot.

[* Tate reports, using Moore’s biography of Thatcher, that Rothschild had in June 1979 recommended himself to the Prime Minister for the post of overseer of both Intelligence Agencies.

# Later in this report I debunk the notion that Oldfield would have been involved.]

Dick White is noticeably absent from Tate’s account of this period. Indeed, he has fewer entries in Tate’s Index than does Nigel West. Yet it is difficult not to see him as the ghost in the machine. As I wrote in my August posting, a few years later White told his biographer that he had warned Rothschild not to get involved too deeply with Wright. But Rothschild was dead then, and it was a typical example of self-serving mendaciousness from the man who for decades had been pulling the strings behind the scenes to protect his own reputation. I am confident that White and Rothschild were as involved with the plot as deeply as were Armstrong and Thatcher.

Before long, however, things began to turn sour. Pincher turned out not to be the compliant and sympathetic supporter Armstrong had judged him to be. For some reason, Rothschild was sluggish with his payments to Wright, who became impatient. When the first reactions to TTIT were somewhat quashed by Thatcher’s denials, Pincher wrote to Wright requesting new stories. Wright believed that he should be receiving royalties from the serialization of TTIT in the Daily Mail. Wright was angered by the way that Thatcher had evaded the challenges in her public statement, and wanted to renew the battle. He started to seek new outlets and fresh collaborators. Meanwhile, Armstrong and Thatcher had constructed a huge future hole for themselves by not taking any action to censor TTIT. The file PREM 15/591 shows the level of confusion reached, as memoranda are exchanged offering reminders that they were not officially supposed to have seen TTIT yet, and disingenuous questions being lobbed around as to who Pincher’s informant could possibly have been. And that error would turn out to be the vital factor that made the ‘Spycatcher’ trial such a disaster for Her Majesty’s Government.

One of the triggers that prompted Wright’s ire was the statement that Thatcher made to the House of Commons on March 26, 1981. Tate categorizes all three of her major points as ‘substantially false’, but I think he is being a bit shallow. Thatcher was careful to state that the leads gained by MI5 suggested that there ‘had been a Russian intelligence agent at a relatively senior level in British counter-intelligence in the last years of the war’, and she reduced the pressure on Hollis by stating that the leads could have pointed to Philby or Blunt. Wright, on the other hand, recalling the conclusions of the Fluency Committee, in his later affidavit asserted that the evidence of penetration had occurred ‘throughout the fifties and early sixties’, which would probably exclude Blunt *, and, since the betrayed operations were carried out by MI5, would presumably take a by now much less influential Philby out of the picture. His point on timing was no doubt correct, but no one who was hearing these statements for the first time knew exactly what Fluency had reported. On the other hand, Thatcher was essentially correct in the way she described how Burke Trend had examined the evidence in the files, and how he had offered a corrective to the shaky accusations made by Wright and his team. When Tate writes: “Her account of Trend’s verdict was the clearest evidence of her willingness to lie to parliament”, I believe he picks the wrong target.

[* I should point out that, in PREM 16/2230, John Hunt reports that Blunt had admitted providing information to the Soviets up until 1956. Of course, Blunt may have been lying, and he was probably involved with Philby’s escape in 1963.]

The ‘Spycatcher’ Trial

The account of the trial is where Tate really gets into his stride. Readers may be familiar with the broad outlines from Andrew’s history, from Malcolm Turnbull’s The Spycatcher Trial, and Richard Hall’s A Spy’s Revenge. They can cheerfully skip Chapman Pincher’s mendacious account in The Spycatcher Affair: A Web of Deception (although Tate lists it in his ‘Selected Bibliography’.) The trial in which Thatcher sent out Armstrong on a fool’s errand is the prime focus of Tate’s attention, and drives his story of how MI5 was placed into a proper statutory position (’Brought in from the Cold’) after the experience. The vital – and winning – point in the argument of the defence was that the government had taken no suppressive action in the cases of TTIT and Nigel West’s MI5: A Matter of Trust, even though both works had shown clear evidence of the leaking of secrets by intelligence insiders. What makes Tate’s narrative outstanding is the fact that he has carefully exploited files that have been declassified in the last few years, and, what is more, has identified several critical passages derived from secret archival material that was made available to Charles Moore, the authorized biographer of Thatcher (in particular Volume 3, 2019), and to Ian Beesley, who wrote a monumental Official History of the Cabinet Secretaries (2017), but which were removed from the files before they were released for public inspection (if the relevant file has not been permanently ‘closed’).

The government was in a bind in trying to ban the publication of Wright’s book. It had not seen the full text, of course, but it had to claim that the complete story was too confidential to be dissected and discussed, in order that it not be required to disclose secret documents in court. Otherwise it would have had to resort to discussing individual passages, which would have been embarrassing. Broadly, the contents would have fallen into five categories: 1) items that were known to be true, and dangerous, such as the accounts of ‘bugging and burgling’ across London; 2) items that were known to be true, but harmless, such as Wright’s description of his early career; 3) items that were known to be untrue, but dangerous, such as Wright’s more outlandish claims about Soviet penetration; 4) items that were untrue, but harmless, such as his account of explaining Blunt’s confession to Tess Rothschild; and 5) items that the authorities were really in the dark about, such as the accusations against Hollis, and MI5’s campaign against Harold Wilson – suspicions of whom, as Wright later admitted, had been harboured only by himself and one other colleague.

The trouble was that Robert Armstrong was ill-equipped to understand the context of any of these issues, and, while his resorting to the ‘too confidential to be discussed’ argument enabled him to conceal his ignorance, the reluctance of the government to enter into any challenges to Wright’s text contributed to the propaganda fall-out. The more energetically that the government tried to ban the book, the more Peter Wright was believed. The fact that the defence had to imply, for legal reasons, that Wright’s allegations were essentially valid, and did not offer any discrimination of them, gave even more power to the ‘Hollis is guilty’ chant.

The most significant item uncovered by Tate is clearly the idea expressed by Armstrong in June 1980 that the government should use Pincher as a way of controlling the narrative. While Charles Moore was allowed to see that memorandum, it was not released until December 2023, as part of PREM 19/591. Moreover, it was of course not divulged to Wright’s legal team, so that Armstrong was able to perjure himself quite shamelessly in the witness-box, claiming that Turnbull’s claims of complicity were just an ‘ingenious conspiracy theory’. Tate covers all this deception in his Epilogue [see below], where he justifiably lambasts the repeat of the policy of selectively releasing sensitive information to certain ‘approved’ writers, and then enforcing some level of control over what they are allowed to say.

It is worth recording some of the most important ‘bootlegged’ findings that, if they had been known at the time of the trial, would have had a very dramatic effect. They include Rothschild’s bid to become intelligence czar, and his discussions with Thatcher on the subject (p 116); the recognition by the Cabinet Office in the summer of 1980 that Rothschild and Wright were already acquainted (p 141); Armstrong’s warnings to Thatcher about being indulgent in allowing former intelligence officers to be indiscreet (p 151); and Thatcher’s subsequent deep concern, in June 1983, about the disclosures. Immediately after the trial, Armstrong started voicing deep concerns that MI5 should be brought under statutory control, and the debates and arguments that followed were heated (pp 275-278). One noticeable exception is the revelation that Armstrong recommended to Thatcher, in June 1980, that Chapman Pincher could be used to defuse the situation: the memorandum was included as part of PREM 19/591, although that file was not declassified until December 2023, which is why the item is such hot news now. Another important item (in PREM 19/1592), which I think Tate overlooks, is the statement made by Sir Anthony Kershaw, the head of the House of Commons Select Committee, in a letter dated November 29, 1986, that the government knew that Wright was the source of information for Pincher’s book. He wrote that two MI5 officers had read the text, and had come to that inescapable conclusion. He thus undermined the case that the government was making about not prosecuting the publishers of TTIT because it appeared not be reliant on an insider source.

The Epilogue

I believe the most significant chapter in the whole book is Tate’s Epilogue, where he describes the scandalous way in which archival material on the ‘Spycatcher’ case has been withheld – but very selectively released to a couple of writers. As stated above, the beneficiaries were Beesley, and Moore, whose Volume 3 of the authorized biography of Margaret Thatcher is the more important. Both writers describe, without any apparent sense of shame or unease, how they were allowed access to papers which had not yet been released to the public, or in fact would never be released at all (or which, individually, were removed from files before they were packaged for declassification, and, in some cases, digitization). What is outrageous, as Tate unequivocally spells out, is that this egregious behaviour is a carbon-copy of the original Thatcher-Armstrong plot. Civil servants have been making judgments about how to propagandize history, and try to ensure that the correct spin is put on events, without any apparent understanding that their highly improper actions would eventually come out in the wash.

‘The Official History of the Cabinet Secretaries’

Tate uses both Beesley and Moore, although in a rather chaotic and uneven manner. Despite being an ‘Official History’, Beesley’s work has been very poorly edited, with multiple typographical mistakes and a chaotic set of indexes. Beesley is a bit out of his depth in intelligence matters, makes several mistakes in his nomenclature, and fails to gain insights into the intrigues going on. As an example, in his chapter on John Hunt, he fails to make any mention of the coming crisis over Blunt in the late 1970s, where Hunt was intimately involved, an astonishing oversight given the evidence shown in PREM 16/2230. Yet he offers a wide range of items – primarily from ‘Cabinet Office Archives’ (or ‘papers’: the distinction is not clear) and from ‘Prime Minister’s Papers’ – hardly any of which boast an official file identifier, and are referenced solely by date. It is somewhat surprising that Beesley was not able to provide any file numbers, unlike Moore, since their research was roughly contemporaneous. Tate quotes thirty of these items, and they cover an assortment of Armstrong’s and Thatcher’s communications on how to handle the impending crisis, including evidence that Armstrong clearly spoke perjuriously in the witness-box in Australia.

Charles Moore

As for Moore, Tate invokes him more cautiously, offering only about a dozen references. Moore, however, does supply file numbers in his supporting Endnotes, and Tate has thus been able to inspect the files that have subsequently been declassified, primarily PREM 19/2506, which was released in December 2023. He claims that he has been able to determine that all the important documents that he cites from Moore have been removed from the relevant file. He is thus dependent upon Moore’s interpretation for what he read, and investigative historians like me cannot verify the sources. (Moore’s Endnotes are dotted with the rubric ‘DCCO’, namely ‘Document Consulted in the Cabinet Office’.) In Moore’s Chapter 8 of Volume 3 (‘Spycatcher: Wright and Wrong’) appear several documents described in this way [see Appendix 2], although it would take another extensive project to discover which of the items in Moore that are not specifically annotated by Tate, but catalogued with a file name (such as PREM 19/591, which was also declassified in December 2023), have been promulgated, and which had been removed beforehand. One very significant item that Moore was allowed to browse – and which he quotes from – is PREM/2500, which covers discussions about the Official Secrets Act, but it is still firmly closed.

I do not believe that all of Tate’s assessments are accurate: for instance, the document described in Note 92 of Chapter 8 in Moore’s book, which is among those that Tate says were removed, appears to exist on page 10 of the digitized version of PREM 19/2006. He makes a reference to Moore’s use of PREM 19/2500 on page 251 of the Thatcher biography, but that file is not listed in the relevant Endnotes. He attributes the reference to Rothschild’s ambitions to lord it over both intelligence services to Moore (p 234), but fails to mention that Moore’s Endnotes indicate that the two items cited came from PREM/2843. The descriptor of that file at TNA indicates that it covers meetings with the heads of the three intelligence services, as well as correspondence with Rothschild. Moore was able to ‘consult’ it, but it has been ‘closed and retained by the Cabinet Office’. This must be one of the most significant partially ‘bootlegged’ files. I thus do not have complete confidence in his process. A rigorous re-evaluation of Moore’s sources needs to be made.

‘Margaret Thatcher’ (Volume 3)

Moore has written a much more engaging book than Beesley’s, and has a sharper nose for the political nuances. Unfortunately, he has also been susceptible to the interview with participants, and Lord Armstrong – as he was when interviewed – was probably as notoriously deceptive in speaking to Moore as he was when appearing in New South Wales. Why should one expect otherwise? And he is also very indulgent with Wright’s character, describing him (in a footnote on page 237) in the following flattering terms: “  . . . his knowledge of the facts was strong, his experience at a senior level in MI5 lengthy and his record of zeal in pursuing treachery unblemished.” In one respect, however, Moore sheds greater light on the machinations behind the dealings with Pincher, when he describes Rothschild’s role. Yet, for some reason, Tate ignores Moore’s very detailed coverage of Rothschild (pp 241-246), where the author, having set up the rather ingenuous statement made by Armstrong to Thatcher in March 1981 that ‘Pincher is known to be acquainted with Lord Rothschild’ (an item acknowledged by Tate), goes on to explore Rothschild’s movements behind the scenes, and his desires to be publicly exonerated.

Moore grasps at Rothschild’s close involvement with the protagonists, but, possibly because of Armstrong’s input, fails to connect the dots. He justifiably raises the important rhetorical question: “If such a person as Lord Rothschild, so close to the world of secrets, had been orchestrating Pincher and Wright to disclose things illegally, why were he and Pincher not being chased by the authorities?”, and goes on to mention the probable conclusion with the government that Christopher Mallaby in the Cabinet Office had pointed out. Yet he fails to drive the point home, leaving the question unanswered, since his primary focus is Thatcher, not the wannabe Spycatcher.

Tate’s studied overlooking of these crucial passages is bizarre, however – almost as if he did not want to undermine his prominent claim that the Wright-Rothschild-Pincher arrangements were coincidental to what Armstrong and Thatcher were plotting. Readers will recall that I recorded two months ago how, according to Bower, both Armstrong and White were convinced that the sick-room adviser to Rothschild had been Maurice Oldfield. Yet the evidence from Moore (including an exchange that the author had with Armstrong) indicates that Rothschild’s introduction of Oldfield into the saga was the first and only time his name had been mentioned. Armstrong apparently did not believe Rothschild’s claim. I suspect, again, that Armstrong was covering up for White. The undeniable fact remains: Armstrong and Thatcher were planning to use Pincher in June 1980, just as the Rothschild-Wright negotiations were about to heat up.

Miscellaneous

I do not like the way that the supportive collateral information has been packaged. I have referred earlier to the arduous exercise of tracing Tate’s connections. It starts with his Endnotes, which lack clear associations with the pages to which they refer. Unlike, say, Andrew’s ‘History’, or Volumes 2 & 3 of Moore’s biography of Thatcher, the Endnotes lack any page header information concerning the pages or chapter to which they refer. I had to inscribe the relevant series of pages at the top of each Endnote page, in order to keep track. When Tate makes a cross-reference to either Beesley or Moore, instead of providing a link to the page number and relevant Endnote number, he simply enters a page number and a date of the minute or letter. Thus I had to turn to the relevant text, take note of the range of Endnote numbers on that page, and check Moore’s and Beesley’s Endnotes to identify the item of interest by its date. All too often, an item for that date could not be found on the page. It seems that the entries were not made by a dedicated professional. All this represents some unnecessary clutter that could have been prevented by the attentions of a qualified Editor.

The ‘Selected Biography’ is very sparse, and while excluding several books mentioned in the Endnotes, does list four volumes written by the notorious fabulist Chapman Pincher. The Endnotes themselves are messy. Apart from the regrettable practice of not providing page numbers above them to guide the reader, the notes themselves are very cluttered, with much repeated information. Each time Beesley’s or Moore’s book appears, for instance, the whole title and publication details appear within the Endnote itself. It is as if the Notes had been prepared by a well-intentioned intern who has not been guided in the correct use of ‘op. cits.’ and ‘ibids.’ The space saved could have been diverted to a structured list of archival sources and descriptions. I created such an inventory myself, finding over forty individual files, or sets of files, that Tate refers to, and which are described on the website of the National Archives. They range from KV (MI5) through HO (Home Office) and FCO (Foreign and Colonial Office) to CAB (Cabinet Office) and PREM (Prime Ministerial) items. A brief description of each would have been invaluable for the occasional researcher: I attach this list as Appendix 1.

Tate’s judgments are sometimes suspect. As I explained in my analysis of his Introduction, I am very critical of his consistent faith in what Wright wrote in his book and in his testimonies. He is in my opinion a bit too trusting of his conversational sources – rather as Moore was with Armstrong – thanking in his ‘Acknowledgements’ Lord Neil Kinnock, Jonathan Aitken and Nigel West, who were all ’refreshingly frank’ about their experiences. He makes an odd judgment that the surveillance of the union leader Jack Jones (who had been in Moscow’s pay, and was later recognized as one of its agents) ‘demonstrated that MI5 had abandoned any pretence of political neutrality’. MI5 did indeed engage in some dubious decisions about perceived threats, but it seems to me that the notion of ‘political neutrality’ should not extend to rejecting surveillance of confirmed subversives intent on overthrowing the constitution. (Jones turned out to be in the pay of the KGB.) He echoes unquestioningly legends such as that of ‘Gibby’s Spy’ (see https://coldspur.com/gibbys-spy/ ), which shows that a reading of coldspur archives might have benefitted him.

The author is rather cavalier about dates. Several times, when I wanted to pinpoint the timing of a statement or event, I turned to his Endnotes only to find that none was offered, and it would require access to Beesley or Moore to discover exactly when the episode occurred. That is a luxury that should not be demanded of curious readers. His style tends to be journalistic and clichéd (especially at the beginning of the book), a characteristic that is shown by the rather melodramatic presentation of personalities involved in the background to this story.

I also believe that he could have exploited to a greater extent recently declassified files. From my initial inspection, they are quite rich, and show the extraordinary lengths to which Armstrong, Thatcher and their minions went to conceal the deceptions, and to spin their messages for outlets such as the House of Commons. Certainly, the PREM 1951-1953 series offers more than appears from Tate’s references, and I judge he could have raided them more deeply instead of relying so heavily on Beesley and Moore. PREM 19/1634, on the Security Commission, and especially the instructions given, in April 1981 – shortly after her statement about the inquiry into Roger Hollis – to Lord Diplock and his team to ‘review security procedures and practices’ is also a very revealing file. Given that the report ascribed the impulse for the inquiry as being the revelations displayed in TTIT by Pincher, and that the Commission had no idea that Thatcher and Armstrong had facilitated that publication, the irony is heavy. Perhaps it was no surprise that the Cabinet Office and the Prime Minister could well have been hoist with their own petard, and did walk into a minefield.

One of the troubling outcomes was another secret story that had been carefully protected. At the time the Security Commission issued its report in December 1981, Robert Armstrong, with some alarm, informed the Prime Minister that, because of the written evidence that Chapman Pincher had given the Commission, it was probable that a person identified as ‘FOLIO’ would soon be exposed. Pincher had claimed to know FOLIO well, and that he had visited him shortly before he died. Armstrong’s hint was that FOLIO was a spy, but Thatcher must have known to whom the Cabinet Secretary was referring. It was certainly Maurice Oldfield, an admitted homosexual who had died in March of that year. (She had been shocked and disbelieving when she learned the truth.) A faint handwritten inscription on Armstrong’s note confirms my conclusion by indicating that the memorandum should be copied to the ‘Oldfield’ file.

Maurice Oldfield

Yet the anecdote would reinforce the fact that it would have been very unlikely that Oldfield was the mystery person who had advised Rothschild in hospital, since he had lost his security clearance by then. Tate continues to assert that the ‘former MI6 chief’ was Oldfield, not White. If Tate had inspected Moore’s biography more closely, he would have discovered that another file, PREM 19/2483, also ‘closed’, but to which Moore had access, would show that Oldfield’s homosexual activities had been reported to Thatcher as early as November 1979, and that Thatcher wanted him out of his job by June 1980. By then, Oldfield was already dying from cancer. He would hardly have been in a position to advise Rothschild what action to take on the emerging Wright problem. Furthermore, his reputation would scarcely have been harmed by Rothschild’s naive threat to Armstrong, in January 1987, that he would expose ‘Oldfield’ for conspiratorial work on the Hollis case. He was conveniently dead, and could thus be maligned. On April 23, 1987, Thatcher informed the House of Commons that Oldfield’s security clearance had been cancelled in March 1980 because he had admitted to homosexual activities.

The reason that this possible exposure was embarrassing was the fact that the Commission’s Report had strongly made the point that homosexuals should not be recruited to sensitive government posts because of the risk of blackmail, and the outing of Oldfield would have been a difficult case to explain. (The report had also stressed that, during Positive Vetting, two of the characteristics that should disqualify a candidate were that the subject i) ‘has grossly infringed security regulations’, and ii) ‘has shown himself by act of speech to be unreliable, dishonest, untrustworthy or indiscreet’. Ironically, those exclusions would well apply to Armstrong’s own behaviour through the whole Pincher-Wright-Spycatcher business.) Armstrong also expressed the fear that Pincher might reveal the identity of Oldfield in the coming paperback version of TTIT, showing that he recognized what an unreliable medium the journalist had become. In fact, in the re-issue of TTIT, Pincher was guarded in his references to Oldfield. He did state that, on being posted to Washington, Oldfield had agreed to undertake a CIA polygraph test to confirm that, though a bachelor, he was not a homosexual, and, in his fresh Postscript, Pincher remarked that after Oldfield’s death, MI6 officers had carefully combed his living quarters to look for dangerous evidence. It would have taken a very sharp observer to put two and two together.

The initial leak, as Moore reports, actually came via the editor of the Daily Express, John Junor, who had himself been told by the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, Sir David McNee. It was McNee who had earlier advised the Home Secretary, William Whitelaw, of the evidence found at Oldfield’s flat. Somehow, the actions that MI5 took in confronting Oldfield discouraged Junor from printing anything about the scandal, his rivals did not get wind of it, and Oldfield’s rapidly failing health may have induced a measure of sympathy. Thus the story lay buried for a few years. Whether Rothschild was responsible for the fresh rumours in the press that provoked Thatcher’s statement is another open question. The timing is very provocative, but what Rothschild had to gain from it is obscure, unless it was another collusion between him and Armstrong to distract attention from his role in the Wright business.

I noticed a number of errors that the author might want to correct should the book be considered for a re-print. It should be ‘Richard V. Hall’ (p 371). Auberon Waugh’s article (‘Lord Rothschild is Innocent’) appeared in the Spectator, not in Private Eye (p 354). The biographer of Harold Wilson was Philip ‘Ziegler’, not ‘Zeigler’ (p 347). The reference in Note 19 on p 345 should be to PREM 19/120, not to PREM 19/12. It is ‘Anthony’, not ‘Antony’ Blunt (p 352). On the other hand, it should be ‘Sir Antony Duff’, not ‘Sir Anthony’ (p 380). Victor Rothschild was not recruited by MI5 in the autumn of 1939, and his second wife was an ‘alumna’, not an ‘alumnus’, of Cambridge University (p 61). Tate means ‘orally’, not ‘verbally’ (p 175). The Oxford college should be identified as ‘Christ Church’, not ‘Christ Church college’ (p 213). ‘Peter Wright’s’ appears as ‘Peter Wight’s’ on page 145. In his review of the book in the Times Literary Supplement of September 16 (which I read after completing the first draft of this bulletin) Richard Davenport-Hines points out that Stanley Baldwin was never a member of the Cambridge Apostles (p 46), that David Footman did not study at Oxford in the 1930s (p 63), and that it was Macmillan’s Conservative administration of 1962-63, not Wilson’s Labour government in 1964, which appointed Stuart Hampshire to review the operations of GCHQ (p 62).

Conclusions

The primary message behind Tate’s book, with its subtitle ‘How the Spycatcher Affair Brought M5 in from the Cold’ would appear to suggest that the embarrassing events in Australia were a critical trigger in putting MI5 on a proper statutory footing. Yet that is hardly news: Christopher Andrew’s chapter ‘The Origins of the Security Service Act’ (Section E, Chapter 11) covers the events very logically, and attributes the courtroom debacles as being a strong provocation for such legislation, with Armstrong quickly getting behind the move, and Thatcher eventually being persuaded. Yet, in the promotional description within the covers of the book, this aspect is ignored. The text instead focuses on Peter Wright: “This is the story of Peter Wright’s ruthless and often lawless obsession to uncover Russian spies, both real and imagined, his belated determination to reveal the truth [is there a missing comma here?] and the lengths to which the British government would go to silence him.”

Tate does not deliver on that mission, in my opinion. I see so much tension in the proximity of ‘obsession’, ‘real and imagined’, and ‘reveal the truth’ that cries out for some more profound examination. Until the FLUENCY Committee reports are released, I imagine that a close inspection of the claims of Soviet infiltration will be difficult to assess, but it should be possible to examine more critically the assertions as they are outlined in Spycatcher. I have started that exercise in my analysis of Wright’s double-agents, and of the ELLI controversy, in my debunking of ‘Gibby’s Spy’, and in my comments about the Lonsdale/Cohen case, and I hope some day to pick up the remaining pieces. While Tate has delivered strong and impressive new evidence about the conspiracies and cover-ups within the Cabinet Office, he has carefully avoided tackling the intriguing topic with which his flyleaf entices his readers. He characterizes Wright’s behaviour as ‘obsessive’, but spectacularly fails to analyze how that mania may have affected the accuracy of his accusations.

Another important comment concerns the role of conspiracy theories in intelligence historiography. Christopher Andrew has been quick to deride those unsatisfied by official explanations of puzzling events as ‘conspiracy theorists’ who live in a world unrooted in reality. This saga proves, however, that, when inexplicable events suggest a conspiracy at work, a theory should perhaps be developed for them. That is what Malcom Turnbull did, and challenged Robert Armstrong in court over it. Under oath, Armstrong told Turnbull that his theory was ‘totally untrue’. Baron Armstrong died in 2020: Moore’s devastating description of the deceit appeared in 2019. I wonder whether Armstrong read it, and whether a mischievous civil servant had judged that it was only proper that the secret be leaked before he died . . .

I should also record an important impression. To Catch a Spy led me to reading all three volumes of Moore’s biography, and that exercise clarified for me what enormous pressures Margaret Thatcher was under at the time the ‘Spycatcher’ business required her attention. In her struggles to make her economic policies concerning inflation and the reduction of the annual deficit work, she underwent strong resistance within her own cabinet. She had to deal with militant unions and growing unemployment. There was severe unrest in Northern Ireland, and she faced the ongoing challenge of defining a nuclear defence capability to deter the Soviet Union. It was an enormously onerous time for a new Prime Minister: while she had good instincts, and a solid eye/ear for loose or sloppy thinking, she was not a strategic thinker or a good delegator. Thus I think Robert Armstrong was very foolish to have encouraged her to enter picaresque games with Chapman Pincher. He should have been wise enough to steer her away from such intrigues rather than putting such ideas in her head.

Finally, what about the still unreleased files? In his Epilogue, Tate produced a stirring statement of outrage about the failure of the Cabinet Office to declassify so many important items – including the thirty-two files on the Peter Wright/Spycatcher case. Even Armstrong’s successor, Robin Butler – who declared that he knew what they contained – believes that they should be released. It is difficult to judge how anybody could in this decade be harmed by what they might divulge. Malcolm Turnbull already knows that he was cruelly deceived. The withholding of these important items represents a shocking evasion of responsibility, and a great insult to the intelligence of the public. Someone should make a fresh FOI request for all those items that were exceptionally shown to Charles Moore.

Appendix 1:

Kew Archives referred to by Tate:

Legend: ! = closed; # = declassified; * = digitized

BT 11/2835                 #         Sale of jet aircraft to Russia

CAB 21/3761              #          Publication of Sillitoe’s biography

CAB 21/4971              #         Minelaying in the Gulf of Bothnia

CAB 63/192-193        *          Hankey’s investigation into Security Service

CAB 164/1870-1901 !           Peter Wright: ‘Spycatcher’ case

CAB 301/30-31          #          MI5 Postwar Organizational Issues

CAB 301/270             *          John Cairncross

CAB 301/855              #          Prime Minister’s 1974 visit to Paris

CAB 301/861              *          Allegations about possible coup in 1968

CAB 301/927-2          *          Notes on Philby (1967-68)

FCO 30/7004              #          European Parliament & ‘Spycatcher’ extracts

FCO 40/2343              #          Publication of ‘Spycatcher’ in Hong Kong

FCO 158/28                *          Philby (PEACH) File 2

HO 287/145                #         Police Pensions

J 157/76                      #          Attorney-General vs. Newspaper Publishing PLC

KV 2/1420-1428         *          Gouzenko

KV 2/4607-4608         *          Goronwy Rees

KV 2/4393-4397         #         Flouds

KV 2/1543-1544         #         Clarks

KV 2/1555                  *         Cockburn

KV 2/1636-1646         *         Marshall

KV 2/3030-3031         *          Zuckerman

KV 2/3221-3222         *          Bernstein

KV 2/3444- 3448        *          Petrovs

KV 2/3993-3995         #          Dewick

KV 2/4531-4534         *          Rothschilds

KV 2/4601                  *          Rudolf Katz

KV 4/88                      #          Petrie’s 1941 Report on MI5

KV 4/466-467             *          Liddell’s Diaries

PREM 11/2800           #          1959 leak on space research

PREM 16/2230           #          PM briefings on Blunt

PREM 16/2230-1        !           Notes to briefings on Blunt

PREM 19/120             #          Blunt and Security

PREM 19/120-1          !           Notes to Blunt and Security [open 2032]

PREM 19/591             *          ‘Their Trade is Treachery’

PREM 19/918             !          Activities of Leo Long

PREM 19/1621           !           Publication of book by Bloch and Fitzgerald

PREM 19/1634           #          Review by Security Commission

PREM 19/1951-1953 *          ‘Their Trade is Treachery’ & Hollis

PREM 19/2500           !           Reform of Official Secrets Act

PREM 19/2504-2511 *          ‘Their Trade is Treachery’ & Wright

PREM 19/3942           *          Blunt & Home Affairs Select Committee

Appendix 2:

Moore’s DCCO Sources in ‘Spycatcher: Wright or wrong’

Additional Legend: % cited material removed before release (acc. Tate)

PREM 19/591 *%

PREM 19/1951 *%

PREM 19/1952 *

PREM 19/1953 *

PREM 19/1954 *% John Bettaney

PREM 19/2074 ! Defence: Zircon satellite Project Part 1

PREM 19/2483 ! Security: Sir Maurice Oldfield

PREM 19/2500 ! OSA [cited erroneously by Tate]

PREM 19/2505 *

PREM 19/2506 *%

PREM 19/2507 *

PREM 19/2508 *

PREM 19/2509 *

PREM 19/2510 *

PREM 19/2843 ! Security: Prime Minister’s Briefing

PREM 19/3530 ! Reform of OSA: Part 3

Appendix 3:

Directors General of MI5

1941-1946       David Petrie

1946-1953       Percy Sillitoe

1953-1956       Dick White

1956-1965       Roger Hollis

1965-1972       Martin Furnival-Jones

1972-1978       Michael Hanley

1978-1981       Howard Smith

1981-1985       John Jones

1985-1988       Antony Duff

1988-1992       Patrick Walker

Appendix 4:

Prime Ministers

1945-1951       Clement Attlee

1951-1955       Winston Churchill

1955-1957       Anthony Eden

1957-1963       Harold Macmillan

1963-1964       Alec Douglas-Home

1964-1970       Harold Wilson

1970-1974       Edward Heath

1974-1976       Harold Wilson

1976-1979       James Callaghan

1979-1990       Margaret Thatcher

Appendix 5:

Cabinet Secretaries

1947-1962       Norman Brook

1963-1973       Burke Trend

1973-1979       John Hunt

1979-1987       Robert Armstrong

1987-1997       Robin Butler

Appendix 6:

Chiefs of MI6

1939-1952       Stewart Menzies

1953-1956       John Sinclair

1956-1968       Dick White

1968-1973       John Rennie

1973-1978       Maurice Oldfield

1979-1982       Arthur (‘Dicky’) Frank

1982-1985       Colin Figures

1985-1989       Chris Curwen

Appendix 7:

Attorneys General

1945-1951       Hartley Shawcross

1951-1951       Frank Soskice

1951-1954       Lionel Heald

1954-1962       Reginald Manningham-Buller

1962-1964       John Hobson

1964-1970       Elwyn Jones

1970-1974       Peter Rawlinson

1974-1979       Samuel Silkin

1979-1987       Michael Havers

1987-1992       Patrick Mayhew

Appendix 8:

Home Secretaries

1940-1945       Herbert Morrison

1945-1945       Donald Sorrell

1945-1951       James Chuter Ede

1951-1954       David Maxwell Fyfe

1954-1957       Gwilym Lloyd George

1957-1962       Rab Butler

1962-1964       Henry Brooke

1964-1965       Frank Soskice

1965-1967       Roy Jenkins

1967-1970       James Callaghan

1970-1972       Reginald Maudling

1972-1974       Robert Carr

1974-1976       Roy Jenkins

1976-1979       Merlyn Rees

1979-1983       William Whitelaw

1983-1965       Leon Brittan

1985-1989       Douglas Hurd

1989-1990       David Waddington

Appendix 9:

Foreign Secretaries

1940-1945       Anthony Eden

1945-1951       Ernest Bevin

1951-1951       Herbert Morrison

1951-1955       Anthony Eden

1955-1955       Harold Macmillan

1955-1960       Selwyn Lloyd

1960-1963       Alec Douglas-Home

1963-1964       Rab Butler

1964-1965       Patrick Gordon Walker

1965-1966       Michael Stewart

1966-1968       George Brown

1968-1970       Michael Stewart

1970-1974       Alec Douglas-Home

1974-1976       James Callaghan

1976-1977       Anthony Crosland

1977-1979       David Owen

1979-1982       Peter Carrington

1982-1983       Francis Pym

1983-1989       Geoffrey Howe

1989-1989       John Major

1989-1995       Douglas Hurd

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An Anxious Summer for Rees & Blunt

Goronwy Rees
Anthony Blunt after his exposure

[I had been intending to study closely Goronwy Rees’s files at Kew ever since they were released in October 2022. My correspondent Edward M. prompted me to bring forward my analysis when he recently drew my attention to MI5’s tentative idea about offering immunity to Anthony Blunt soon after the abscondment of Burgess and Maclean. I thank him for his percipience. Here is my analysis. In short, Blunt should have been nailed in 1951  . . .  Now read on.]

Contents:

Introduction

Players and Predicaments

The Sources

Phase 1: May 7 to May 25

Phase 2: May 25 to June 2

Phase 3: June 4 to June 12

Phase 4: June 13 to August 27

Conclusions

Envoi

*          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *

Introduction

When Donald Maclean disappeared in May 1951, while it was a setback and an embarrassment to MI5, the Service could hardly have been shocked. After all, Maclean was shortly to be brought in for interrogation after a confident conclusion had been made, arising from the VENONA decryption project, that he was the spy HOMER who had passed on confidential material to the Soviets from Washington in 1944. The surveillance on him had been very obvious, but not comprehensive. On the other hand, his accompaniment by Guy Burgess by all accounts astonished and perturbed Guy Liddell and Dick White. Burgess was a troublesome character, but he was apparently not suspected of any treacherous activities. While he had had meetings with Maclean since his return to the UK in April, MI5 did not believe that the couple maintained a longstanding relationship. Yet Burgess had resided with Kim Philby, already under some suspicion, in Washington, and if a maverick like Burgess could have been a Soviet agent, what others might be lurking?

Moreover, the escape carried a strange twist. According to Burgess’s long-time friend, and former conspirator, Goronwy Rees, whose account of the events has been allowed to dominate the histories, MI6 and MI5 were alerted to Burgess’s disappearance – and maybe to the suspicion that he might have fled to the Soviet Union – the day before Maclean’s absence was officially noted by his employer, the Foreign Office, namely Monday May 28. (It may amuse some readers to learn that on Tuesday, May 29, J. D. Roberston of B Division applied for a Home Office Warrant to intercept Maclean’s mail. It was granted the same day.) The reason that Rees was ahead of the game was because Burgess had carried on a long and rambling telephone call with Margie, Rees’s wife, the morning of his escape, and her husband decided to inform MI6 and MI5 of his hunches when he returned home on Sunday, May 27, and learned about the conversation. Why would the academic draw unnecessary attention to his own dubious past, and his association with the traitors, at such a perilous time? And how could he have been so sure, after Burgess had been absent for just a couple of days, and before he knew that Maclean had also disappeared, that he had absconded to Moscow? This report explains the story that other accounts have overlooked. As with many of his cohorts and contemporaries, Rees left behind him a deceitful memoir, but his main adversaries in MI5 also showed a false trail.

Players and Predicaments

The action takes place between May 7 (a Monday), when Guy Burgess returns in disgrace from Washington, and August 31, when MI5 takes a closer look at Goronwy Rees’s collusion with Anthony Blunt. The key figures are Burgess, Blunt, Rees, David Footman (an MI6 officer), Guy Liddell (deputy director-general of MI5), and Dick White (head of B Division).

Burgess: Guy has been sent home in disgrace, and he is shortly facing dismissal from the Foreign Office. He thus needs to find a new job. With the net closing around Donald Maclean, he must quickly assess his own vulnerability, and ascertain from his fellow-spy Anthony Blunt what plans are in place to exfiltrate Maclean. He realizes that events in recent years, including his residing with the Philby household in Washington during his spell there, will provoke suspicions about his integrity. He must also check whether he can rely on his old friend and recruit Goronwy Rees, who had disastrously changed sides at the time of the Nazi-Soviet Pact, and whom he wanted killed at the time, not to denounce him. He has thus set up early assignments with Blunt (who, according to some reports, meets him at Southampton), and with Rees, at whose house in Sonning, Berkshire, he arrives later on the day he landed, May 7.

Blunt: Anthony Blunt, who left MI5 at the end of the war, has been kept informed of the progress on the HOMER case by his handler Yuri Modin, fed via Moscow Centre by the communications of Kim Philby, who, as MI6’s representative in Washington, has been privy to the investigation, and has passed on information to his handler. Contrary to many accounts, Moscow was thus not dependent on the arrival of Burgess to learn that Maclean indubitably fitted the profile of HOMER, identifiable by his trips to New York. Blunt is nervous: he had been recruited by Burgess in the 1930s, and he has a more obvious shadow hanging over him because he was known to have had communist sympathies in the past, and to have been caught passing on military information to the Soviets in 1944. That misdemeanor appears, however, to have been forgiven as a case of exuberant solidarity with the wartime ally, and he remains good friends with Liddell and White. Yet the possibility of a chain of disclosures, what with Philby coming under deep suspicion in the preceding years, and Burgess’s closeness to him in Washington, seriously unnerves him.

Rees: Goronwy Rees has three dark clouds hanging over him: i) in the late 1930s, he had agreed to supply Burgess with information (to the extent that he was given a cryptonym by the NKVD), although he knew that his friend was working for the Comintern; ii) he knew that Blunt had fulfilled the same role, since Guy had told him so; and iii) he has never disclosed any of this information to MI5, out of loyalty to his friends. The longer that time passes, the more awkward it would be to explain away any of these embarrassments. Since the breach with Burgess in 1939, he had restored his friendship with him, and after the war seen him frequently, to the chagrin of his wife and relatives, but he is grateful that Burgess has recently been an ocean away. He assumes that Blunt made a similar breakaway in 1939, but he is not certain.  A recent chance encounter, and a verbal assault by a drunken Maclean, accusing him of ‘ratting’, has caused him to think that Maclean may have been a Burgess recruit, as well. Thus, when Burgess writes to him from the U.S.A., requesting to visit, it fills him with some anxiety, even though he knows nothing about the revelations gained from the VENONA project. Rees had been working alongside David Footman in MI6 – though only part-time – at least until September 1949.

Footman: David Footman is a minor player, but as a friend of Burgess, Rees and Blunt, and as a vital conduit from MI6 to MI5, plays an important role in the scenario. When Burgess was working at the BBC in 1936, Footman had recruited him to report on communist activities in the universities. He is a novelist, and an intellectual historian of some stature in MI6, but also not utterly trusted because of his left-wing views. Indeed, items in Goronwy Rees’s file explicitly state that MI5 suspected that Footman had himself at some time been an agent of the Russian Intelligence Service. This testimony may have been supplied by Stuart Hampshire, whose identical claim can be seen in the Personal File of the Rothschilds.

Liddell: The deputy director-general of MI5 has had an uncomfortable time under Percy Sillitoe, a figure out of his depth and little respected by his subordinates. Liddell is not closely involved with the day-to-day counter-espionage projects, since the more politically astute Dick White has kept the HOMER investigation under his wing. As Blunt had been his personal assistant during WWII, Liddell retains a close admiration for him, and treats him as a consultant, meeting him frequently. One critical aspect of the case is that Liddell is away on leave in Wales from June 3 to June 12, a fact that is vital for verifying some of the claims made by Rees.

White: Dick White, the head of B Division, has steered the HOMER investigation, sometimes in ways that indicate that he would prefer the whole project be abandoned, yet he has been pushed to the climax by the growing evidence. He struggles in trying to control his sister intelligence organizations, GCHQ, which has exclusive control over some vital decrypts, MI6, which is overall protective of Philby, as well as the Foreign Office, which wants to prevaricate. He is, however, a more commanding figure than Sillitoe in the multiple meetings that take place. His main concern is that the FBI should not find out about the identity of HOMER before MI5 can inform them, and he is intent on controlling the damage when the news does come out. While he judges that Maclean is acting alone, he has for a few years held, alongside Liddell, strong suspicions about the possible treachery of Kim Philby, but he has been reluctant to speak out because of the entrenched support for him held by senior MI6 staff. He has, however, recently instructed his team to create a dossier on Philby for passing clandestinely on to the FBI, and this package contains suspicions about Burgess, partly owing to his close companionship with Philby in Washington. Yet White’s failure to act earlier means that he might later be held partially responsible for Philby’s disastrous posting to Washington.

(For further background reading, see https://coldspur.com/dick-whites-devilish-plot/ and  https://coldspur.com/dick-whites-tangled-web/.)

The Sources

The primary sources are the memoirs (as personally written, or as described to biographers) of Goronwy Rees (A Chapter of Accidents, 1972), Dick White (The Perfect English Spy, 1995), and Yuri Modin (My Five Cambridge Friends, 1994). Rees’s contribution is extended by the reflections of his daughter, Jenny (Looking for Mr. Nobody, 1994 & 2000). Yet all these volumes must be treated with some caution, as each participant had reasons for disguising his exact role, and thus for omitting certain events, or for providing misleading information. A faulty memory (especially in the case of Rees, who drank more heavily than most of his colleagues and friends) may play a part.

‘A Chapter of Accidents’

Also important is Andrew Boyle’s Climate of Treason (1979), the revelations of which largely derived from what he was told by Rees. Conspiracy of Silence, by Barrie Penrose and Simon Freeman (1987), is a noble endeavour to unravel the complexities of the Blunt case, but relies too much on oral testimony, and the authors fail to resolve the multiple contradictions that their narrative throws up. John Costello’s Mask of Treachery (1988) offers a solid couple of chapters on the events: Costello brings some very useful analysis of the FBI files to the case, and is good on the American connection, but he is less insightful on the aspects of the case concerning Rees. Boyle and Tom Bower (who took over the biography of White after Boyle’s death) conducted multiple interviews with persons who knew, or who were associated with, Blunt, Maclean and Burgess in 1951: these individuals occasionally provided dates to encounters that can probably be regarded as reliable, but The Perfect English Spy is overall a very untrustworthy guide to the events of this period.

‘The Spy Who Knew Everyone’

Two biographies of Burgess are useful. Andrew Lownie’s Stalin’s Englishman (2015) and, even more so, The Spy Who Knew Everyone (2016) by Stewart Purvis and Jeff Hulbert, bring some important background research to the table. For example, Purvis and Hulbert’s research into David Footman is particularly enlightening. Miranda Carter’s profile of Blunt, Anthony Blunt: His Lives (2002), is insightful, though now much out-of-date. The most significant source, however, is the set of files on Rees released to the National Archives in October 2022 (KV 2/4603-4608), which were obviously not available to Purvis and Hulbert when they wrote their book. KV 2/4603 is the most relevant to this inquiry, although some of the interrogations and interviews carried out in the 1950s and 1960s shed important light on the accuracy of statements made in 1951. (I hope at some stage to analyze in depth the five other files.) This resource is complemented by a rich timeline detailing the activities of Maclean and Burgess in the critical weeks of May 1951, which can be inspected at serial number 607P in KV 6/145, one of the files concerning the investigation of the ‘Leakage of Top Secret Foreign Office Telegrams in the U.S.A.’

A last, but problematic, resource is Nigel West’s Cold War Spymaster (2018), which contains a long (ninety-page) chapter on the Burgess-Maclean business, and how it contributed to Liddell’s decline. It offers a rich array of facts and background material, but it is densely packed with long extracts from Liddell’s Diaries, and from the archival material on MI5’s investigation, and is short on proper integrative analysis. Rather alarmingly, West cites as a source Goronwy Rees’s files (which he erroneously lists as KV 2/3102-4106), yet they were not released until October 2022, four years after his book appeared. Whether West was given privileged access to this material, or whether he was simply advised of its existence and future release, is never stated. In any case, he fails to exploit the files and the contradictions implicit in them, or to compare the ‘facts’ in them with other accounts, as I have set out to do.

One of the most significant aspects of this timeline is the detail concerning Burgess. Whereas Maclean was under constant surveillance (and thus his encounters with Burgess reliably recorded), and Maclean told Burgess that he knew about it, Burgess was officially not under suspicion. Yet the chronology shows many of his May 1951 activities when he was not in Maclean’s company. Regrettably it rarely indicates the source of each datum: while some may have been compiled from interviews with his friends and associates after the disappearance of the duo, many would suggest that Burgess himself was under surveillance from the time he landed at Southampton docks. (And he admitted to Blunt that he believed he was, a claim that Blunt passed on to Robert Cecil.) For example, the first entry upon his arrival on the Queen Mary on May 7, 1951, states that he was met at Victoria Station by Blunt and Burgess’s boy-friend Hewit, and that he or Hewit then telephoned Rees. This is contrary to other accounts that assert that Blunt met Burgess in Southampton, including statements made by Peter Wright. It strongly suggests that he was immediately being closely surveilled, even to the extent of a phone warrant. If the story about the telephone call had come from Rees, he surely would have recalled who it was on the other end of the line? Moreover, Burgess’s visit to the Reeses the same day is attributed to ‘Rees’s signed statement’, suggesting that the other information was gathered by less conventional means.

The last vital source consists of the Diaries of Guy Liddell. Since they had immediacy, being written up almost exclusively every night, they are probably very accurate – although Liddell certainly dissimulated occasionally. Moreover, much critical information has been redacted. Yet the journals show unfailingly Liddell’s attitudes, especially towards Blunt and Burgess, and help pinpoint some critical meetings.

There are many accounts of this period in the literature, but I believe all are flawed by relying too much on the testimony of Rees, Philby, Blunt, Burgess (via Driberg), and Modin, all of whom probably distorted the facts deliberately. The stories told by Costello, and by Purvis and Hulbert, are probably the most comprehensive. Overall, so many contradictions are evident, such as in the multiple claims that were made as to whose idea it was that Maclean should escape to Moscow. In my analysis, I shall not attempt to reconcile all the conflicts, but instead concentrate on summarizing the evidence as it relates to Rees’s behaviour. I shall occasionally present parenthetical comments to identify some common traps into which writers have stepped.

Phase 1: May 7 to May 25

The village of Sonning, Berkshire

Burgess did not immediately seek out Maclean when he arrived in England: his first encounter was with Blunt, whom he had telephoned from the Queen Mary to request to be met at Victoria Station. He then went that afternoon to stay with the Reeses at Sonning. In his memoir, Goronwy described how he had received letters from Guy outlining his speeding incidents, and the fact that he was being sent home in disgrace. Burgess wrote that he would probably have to resign from the Foreign Office, and he added that he wanted to discuss a job opportunity with Goronwy. Strangely, Rees wrote that he arrived ‘after a night in London’, a timing that does not tally with the surveillance record. After some spirited debates, Guy explained that he had received an offer as diplomatic correspondent to a national newspaper (the Daily Telegraph). He was also on his best behaviour, to the degree that Rees invited him to stay the following weekend (presumably that of 18-21 June).

That did not turn out: Rees (who had been ill) called off the invitation by telephone. During that call, Burgess told him that he had since shared with Maclean a contentious memorandum he had shown Rees, which came as a surprise to Rees. He stated in his memoir that he never saw Burgess again, but in his interrogation by Peter Wright in March 1965, he told him that he did in fact meet Burgess again a few days later, and that it was then that Burgess told him about the exchange with Maclean over his memorandum. (Whether that was a lie, or a failure of memory, is not clear: the surveillance reports do not indicate a second meeting.) Rees wrote that he ‘later’ [unqualified] heard from friends that Burgess had relapsed into erratic patterns of behaviour again, drinking heavily and taking lots of medication of various kinds. Indeed, Burgess seemed intent on being visible in the company of his friends at regular drinking-haunts: he had lunch with David Footman at the Reform Club on May 8; he lunched with Cyril Connolly the next day, and with Footman again on May 11, and was noticed at the Reform Club the following day.

Yet, by then, moves to exfiltrate Maclean had quickly developed. (The Mitrokhin Archive, as cited by Christopher Andrew, indicates that it was at Philby’s insistence: I have not been able to inspect the original note.) According to Yuri Modin, his Soviet handler, Blunt had passed on to him news from Burgess, the day Burgess left Sonning, and Modin was perturbed enough to contact his superiors in Moscow. (Much has been made of the fact that Burgess’s role was to deliver news about Maclean from Washington, but that is clearly absurd given the time it took him to make his passage, as I have explained elsewhere.) On May 10, Modin met Burgess and Blunt, accompanied by the rezident Korovin. Moscow had approved a strategy for Maclean to escape, and Burgess was instructed to prepare Maclean for the process. If the two met soon after, surveillance failed to pick up the encounter, although a telephone watch recorded that they spoke on May 14. Yet two provocative events occurred on May 11: Burgess was noticed telephoning Rees – a conversation that Rees did not record in his memoir – and that was the same day that Burgess had lunched with Footman. Had he perhaps confided in his two friends what was actually going on?

It would not be surprising that Burgess was under surveillance. In the past few years he had drawn undue attention to his behaviour and affiliations. It went back to 1940, when he was shown to be in touch with the Comintern when he embarked on an eventually aborted mission to Moscow with Isaiah Berlin. MI5 had opened a file on him in 1942, although Liddell wrote in his Diary, on June 15, 1951, that the Foreign Office had first referred his name to MI5 only in January 1950. He had misbehaved in Gibraltar and Tangier in December 1949, and soon after he was detected leaking information to Frederick Kuh, an American journalist with dubious connections. His misdemeanours, including other drunken incidents were investigated, but he was merely ‘admonished’, not ‘reprimanded’. He was, however, considered a security risk because of his association with Moura Budberg and the Halperns. Yet, despite this track-record, in 1950 he was posted to the highly visible and important Embassy in Washington, as second secretary, where Kim Philby agreed to have him as a lodger, in the belief that he could ‘control’ him better that way. But Burgess misbehaved there, too, and the association just confirmed the suspicions.

On May 15 (Tuesday), Burgess went to see Maclean at the Foreign Office, and lunched with him at the RAC Club. According to Modin, Maclean was depressed when Burgess had to tell him of the escape-plan, Burgess giving Korovin a report after the meeting. Maclean was judged to be in such a frail state that Moscow decided that Burgess should accompany him for part of the way, and then return to Britain. But this plan was quickly rejected as impracticable, and Burgess was set up to disappear for good. The availability of the weekend ferry from Southampton to St. Malo was discovered (by Blunt? Burgess? Modin?), and a plan to exploit it on May 25, the weekend before Maclean was originally due to be brought in for questioning, was developed. Some accounts have claimed that the day of escape was accelerated because of the imminence of the interrogation, but that is not borne out by the evidence. In addition, the stories about Kim Philby’s assumed role as the ‘Third Man’, and his supposed ability to warn Burgess so late in the day by sending him a coded message, ignore the impossibilities of his passing information from Washington to London, and the fact that the logistics of the escape, involving reception parties and transport in Europe, would not have been able to be adjusted at such short notice.

What is certain is that the Foreign Secretary approved the interrogation on May 25, but the actual date had been postponed until at least June 18, to allow time for Maclean’s wife to have her child. During that last week before the abscondment, the investigating committee continued to dither, with Sillitoe expressing extreme caution lest the FBI not be suitably informed first, but with further evidence mounting against Maclean. Burgess continued to lead a busy social life, being seen at several clubs, and lunching or dining with Maclean, and again with Footman, and meeting Tomás Harris, Halpern, Miller (his pick-up from the Queen Mary), Blunt, Pollock, Kemball-Johnston, and even his one-time headmaster at Eton, Robert Birley. His solitary drinking was recorded, which proves that a watch was being maintained on him. It was almost as if he was keen to gain attention, and to drag as many of his friends into the whirlpool that would be created when he left the country. One has to wonder what this garrulous individual said about his emotional stress and predicament to these close friends.

The S.S. ‘Falaise’

Burgess and Maclean made their infamous escape when Burgess, on the evening of May 25, picked up Maclean at his house, in Tatsfield, Surrey, and drove to Southampton, where they boarded the Falaise. The official MI5 account claims that Maclean’s absence was not noted until May 28. In his 1989 book, Molehunt, Nigel West, relying on MI5 insider information, asserted that a watchful Immigration Officer had noted Maclean’s identity when he passed through the port, and had alerted Leconfield House. The lack of acknowledgment of that tip might encourage theories that MI5 were in no haste to prevent the duo’s departure. West’s account is useful, although he is mistaken over the timing of the interrogation plans for Maclean, and he is also adamant that Burgess had not come under suspicion before he absconded – something we now know is not true. West includes the feeble White Paper written by Graham Mitchell concerning the defection, issued on September 23, 1955, as an Appendix to his book. He identifies multiple errors of fact in Mitchell’s text.

Phase 2: May 25 to June 2

Goronwy Rees had left for Oxford on May 24, to attend a meeting at All Souls, where he was the Estates Bursar, and he consequently missed some important action. Burgess had started the day on Friday May 25 by calling Footman, and then speaking to Blunt, where he gave his listeners a false alibi, telling them that he would be helping a friend over some difficulties during the weekend, but looked forward to having dinner with him the following week. After trying to contact W. H. Auden at the Spenders’, Burgess then apparently called the Rees household, wanting to speak to Margie. (He presumably knew that Goronwy would be away.) The events were recalled by Rees in his memoir, and were later described to his MI5 interrogators. There is an incongruous aspect to the account.

Margie called her husband on the morning of May 26 (Saturday), asking him whether Guy had come to Oxford to see him. She posed this question because Blunt’s boyfriend, Jimmy Hewit, had just called her in some agitation, as Burgess had not returned to the flat on Friday night. When Goronwy expressed only mild surprise at such an absence, she then informed him that Guy had telephoned her on Friday morning, but had rambled on in a very incoherent fashion. Rees again was not much perturbed, but it was not until he returned home on Sunday evening that his wife told him more about the conversation, which, rather oddly, Rees states occurred ‘the previous Friday’. Guy had implied that he was about to perform some startling act, and that he would not see the Reeses for some time.

Why had Margie waited until she saw her husband to describe the essence of Guy’s call? And, why, given what Guy told her, would she imagine that he might have sought her husband out in Oxford? Her behaviour simply does not make sense. Goronwy does not comment on the irrationality of her communications, but instead jumps to a highly controversial conclusion, interpreting Guy’s implied departure in the following terms: “ . . . having got so far I suddenly had an absolutely sure and certain, if irrational, intuition that Guy had gone to the Soviet Union.” Well, yes, intuitions are by definition irrational.

I believe Rees loses much credibility here. According to the book, he knows nothing about the Maclean investigation and threat to him, he believes that Burgess had probably given up his espionage some years before, and he recognizes only a vague friendship between Burgess and Maclean. He has recently dismissed Burgess’s absence as trivial. And then simply because of a puzzling speech by Guy to his wife, he makes an enormous conceptual leap in concluding that his friend has fled to Moscow – something he tells his wife. It seems to me far more likely that Burgess had confided in Goronwy (and probably in Footman, as well) what was afoot, and that Rees had concealed from Margie what Guy had told him.

In any event, Rees jumped into action. He claimed that, late on that Sunday night, he phoned ‘a friend, who was also a friend of Guy’s and a member of MI6’ [in fact, David Footman]. (A few years later, in March 1956, as his scandalous disclosures were starting to appear in The People, he would recall that these initiatives did not occur until the Monday morning.) He told Footman that Burgess had apparently ‘vanished into the blue’, said that he might have defected to the Soviet Union, and that MI5 should be told. Footman was incredulous, but promised to inform MI5 of what Rees had said. The following morning, Rees received a message from Footman saying that he had done as requested, and that MI5 would be contacting him. Before that, however, Rees wrote that he told another friend of Guy’s, ‘who had served in MI5 during the war’ [i.e. Anthony Blunt] what he had done, and that this person, ‘greatly distressed’, insisted on coming to see Rees the next day at Sonning, and there made a convincing case to him that his accusations concerning his friend were based on very flimsy evidence. He pointed out that Rees had not done anything when Burgess had told him, a long time before, that he was a spy. Rees nevertheless was determined to tell the authorities what he knew and thought, much to Blunt’s chagrin.

One can imagine Blunt’s consternation at this time. Rees believes that he is doing his friend a favour by declaring that Blunt had terminated any information-passing to Burgess in 1939. Yet Blunt must know that his ‘indiscretions’ of 1944, treated then as a foolish but well-intentioned act in reaching out to the Soviet ally, will be interpreted very differently if MI5 discovers that his unauthorized disclosures had in fact started in pre-war days. It is no surprise that he is ‘greatly distressed’ and wants to talk Rees out of his plan.

Rees’s story then goes astray, however. He wrote that he went to MI5 the next day (i.e. May 29) and saw an unnamed MI5 officer, to whom he poured out his story, being rather surprised that he was listened to with utter seriousness. The officer then startled him by saying that Burgess had not departed alone: he had been accompanied by Maclean, which made Rees think matters were even worse than they were. He completes his chapter by saying that he stepped out of the office, and immediately saw the newspaper headlines announcing that two British diplomats had vanished into the air. A few pages later in his memoir, he repeats the timing of his meeting: “When I first told them I believed Guy had gone to Moscow, it was largely out of a sense of desperation and urgency. Guy had hardly been two days gone . . .”

There are several things wrong with this story. First, Guy Liddell’s diary states that Rees came to see him on June 1. Second, Rees would later make much of the fact that, when Peter Wright questioned him in 1965 why he had not informed MI5 earlier about his suspicions, he had to wait ten days until the Security Service invited him in: see KV 2/4607. Third, the news that two diplomats were missing did not appear in the British press until June 7, when the Daily Express had a scoop. * Fourth, while a record of the meeting does occur in Rees’s file (at KW 2/4603, sn. 3H), and Dick White refers to it in his recollections to Bower, Peter Wright was completely ignorant of this June 1 meeting between Liddell and Rees. Wright reminds Rees that he came to Leconfield House on June 6 to see Dick White, and Rees agrees with Wright’s statement.

[* Newspapers.com does not maintain Daily Express issues from that time. I instead present a Daily Telegraph item from a few days later.]

‘The Daily Telegraph’, June 11, 1951

Now it is possible that, in 1972, when Rees was completing his memoir, with his memory possibly impaired by drink, he might have conflated two meetings, but the circumstances are such that it appears he wanted – or was instructed – to bury the June 1 encounter with Liddell. It was definitely White who informed him, on June 6, that Burgess had been accompanied by Maclean, at which Rees feigned such surprise, but the build-up to those conversations was so extraordinary (as I shall explain in the next section) that it stretches the imagination to think that Rees could have got the details so wrong. He incidentally also dithered evasively to Wright in 1965 concerning the truth of whether he had called Blunt immediately after phoning Footman, something he had no trouble affirming when he wrote his memoir.

Rees also claimed to Wright at that time that all that he had told Footman on May 27 was that Burgess was missing, and that he had definitely not told him the whole story. It makes Rees’s claims in his memoir look even more threadbare. Yet Rees persevered with his original assertions, no doubt thinking that any MI5 records would remain secret. Indeed, Andrew Boyle, in The Climate of Treason (which relied very much on Rees’s disclosures to him) reported that Rees told him that he had informed Footman of his suspicions about Burgess and Moscow, and that Footman confirmed that Rees indeed told him that over the telephone. Boyle also reinforces the account that any meeting that Rees held with MI5 did not take place until much later (he actually states June 7), thus implying that Rees tried to conceal his June 1 meeting with Liddell from the author.

Liddell’s diary entry is perfunctory, and not very useful, but it shows little sign of shock, given that, at the time, Liddell and White knew only that Burgess and Maclean had disappeared in France, and, perhaps surprisingly, harboured no hunches that they might have moved on to Moscow. He wrote: “Garonwy [sic] Rees came to tell me about a conversation his wife had with Burgess before the latter’s departure. I said that I would very much like to have as accurate an account as possible. He promised to do this in conjunction with his wife and let me know. He thought the conversation sinister.” Either Liddell was being very deceptive and cagey, or Rees had backed off at the last minute from his intuitions, or perhaps he had even invented his description of them to Footman for the purposes of spicing up his memoir. What is also very suspicious is that accounts of the exchange that appear in Rees’s file in April 1956 state that Liddell ‘received a message’ from Rees that day: for some reason, somebody was anxious to conceal the fact from the officers in B Division that a meeting between the two had actually taken place. That misrepresentation was echoed in R. T. Reed’s note to file on June 6, where he states that ‘Geronwy [sic] Rees telephoned Captain Liddell last week to say that REES’ wife, MARGIE, had a very ‘alarming’ conversation with BURGESS the day before he left this country.’

Liddell’s diary entry was a verbatim reproduction of a memorandum that Liddell posted in Rees’s file that same day, which proves that Liddell’s fellow-officers (e.g. White, Reed, Robertson, and much later, Wright) should have known about the conversation. It does not display any element of outrage, which one might have expected if Rees had related his full story, including his own, and Blunt’s, transgressions, and his strong belief that Burgess had fled to Moscow. Of course, he was not supposed to know of Maclean’s disappearance (and maybe he did not), and, if he had leaked that, he would surely have raised the alarm, and would have been brought in for sharper questioning. Liddell’s note has been delivered in a very low-key manner, although Reed the same day imaginatively interprets Rees’s statement that Burgess’s comments were ‘alarming’ that it ‘presumably means that he intended to go to Russia’. This is a very paradoxical entry: was Reed much sharper than Liddell, or was he merely echoing what the Deputy Director-General had hinted to him orally? Liddell’s opinion about Burgess, expressed a couple of weeks later, might indicate the former, even though the March 1956 entry (see above) attributes the statement about Russia to Liddell himself. In any event, Dick White’s team in B Division was further along in the investigation than White later claimed.

The initial conclusion might be that Rees had been persuaded by Blunt to restrain his disclosures, and stick to the bare facts, which immediately casts doubt on how much Rees told Footman on the Sunday evening, and how little Footman in turn passed on to Liddell. Yet events were a little more complicated, I suspect. I judge that Blunt was not aware of Rees’s meeting with Liddell on June 1, and that he believed that his successful later insertion into the interview with Dick White was part of the first encounter that Rees had with MI5 officers.

[As an aside, Tom Bower presents an utterly incongruous account of the events of this week. He has Blunt calling Liddell on the morning of May 29 (the reason not given), when we know from Liddell’s diary that Blunt had been out all day, and that Liddell had called Blunt that evening. According to Bower, Liddell then confided in Blunt that Burgess had disappeared, and Blunt feigned surprise. Bower’s other illogical observations concern Rees’s lunch meeting with Liddell ‘later that week’. He declares that one outcome of that meeting was that Liddell ‘fell under suspicion as a Soviet agent’. That would imply either that Rees at the time expressed that view to other MI5 officers, or that Liddell learned of that belief from Rees himself, and passed it on to White and company. It is all very nonsensical. Rees did much later voice his concern (to Wright) that Liddell might have been a Soviet agent, but Liddell had been dead for several years by then.]

As Liddell’s diary entry confirms, however, he had instead, on the evening of May 29, asked Blunt what he knew about Burgess’s disappearance – perhaps as a reaction to Footman’s message, wanting to consult his friend before he met Rees. Blunt volunteered to him that he knew that Hewit had reported Burgess missing. The next day, Blunt and Tomás Harris (the MI5 officer who had been GARBO’s minder, and who was later also suspected of being under the control of the Soviets) came to see him, and Liddell (rather irresponsibly) told them that Burgess had left the country with another Foreign Office official. Thereupon Blunt asked whether that official was Maclean. Liddell confirmed that it was, at which Blunt gave his thumbnail sketch of Maclean, saying how astonished he had been at returning to Cambridge in 1934 to find that he and Burgess, as well as Cornford and Cornforth, had drifted into the Communist camp.

Blunt and Harris then shifted gears. They explained that they had come to their supposition about Maclean because Burgess had told Blunt that he would, that weekend, be having to help a friend who was in some sex trouble and was being blackmailed. The pair had speculated that the friend might have been Maclean, since he was known to be a homosexual. The three of them then discussed the money that Hewit had found in Burgess’s luggage when he returned from America, and pondered over its source – from the Russians? Lastly, Liddell gained an assurance from the two of them that they would not disclose to anyone that Burgess had been accompanied by Maclean. Yet the naive Liddell had already gone too far, disclosing such information to outsiders. His action in seeking out Blunt, and speaking confidentially to him, suggests to me that he had no inkling of the seriousness of Rees’s charges at the time. Moreover, Blunt and Rees must surely have discussed the matter in depth by then.

Liddell was also to enjoy a long discussion with Harris on the night of May 30, since Harris and his wife had the previous Wednesday entertained Burgess, who had apparently become quite emotional. Burgess had burst into tears when asked about Kim Philby, avowing how wonderful Philby had been to him. Liddell showed how out of touch he was with the whole situation by writing in his diary: “There may possibly be some significance in this, in spite of everything the Philbys had done to keep him straight, he had betrayed Kim through getting to know something about the MACLEAN case and acting on the information. There is no doubt that Kim Philby is thoroughly disgusted with BURGESS’s behaviour both inside his house and outside it.” Thus did the finest mind in British counter-intelligence work, with his firm belief in the good nature of those persons he liked: hoodwinked by Blunt, Burgess, and Philby, and even forgetting his recent (1947) suspicions about Philby, Liddell seemed to lag the insights then held by his protégé, Dick White, about the menace represented by him.

Dick White returned from Paris on June 1, and Liddell was able to tell him that Blunt had been ‘helpful’, and to describe his meeting with Rees earlier that day, explaining that he had asked Rees to provide a written account of the Burgess phone-call. But how much did he tell? He surely did not let White know that he had revealed to Blunt and Harris that Maclean had been the official who had accompanied Burgess (see below). My belief is that Rees had communicated to Liddell his serious accusations, but that Liddell had instructed Rees to write a much less incriminating report, and instead to save his critical exposures concerning Blunt and Burgess in 1939 for his session with White. Liddell thus posted a harmless note on file, failed to give White the full details, and tried to wash his hands of the whole business. It was all too painful for him. Yet the record of the ‘meeting’, not just a telephone conversation, endured.

Saturday June 2 was a working day: Liddell also engaged Blunt to explore possible places in France and Italy where Burgess and Maclean might have stayed. Then Liddell left for his week’s holiday in Wales, delegating the management of the case to White, having advised Sillitoe on his coming visit to Washington to appease the FBI. It was not the most auspicious time to take leave, but, as readers may recall when Philby explained the dalliance over the Volkov business in 1945, leave arrangements were treated with a high degree of respect in the intelligence services. Liddell felt he probably needed a breather, given what Rees had told him, but to absent himself while Rees was creating his report was very eccentric. He was nevertheless much more comfortable delegating everything to White, and letting him sort out the Blunt problem.

Phase 3: June 4 to June 12

Monday June 4 was a busy day for White, having to deal on his return to the office with a clumsy memorandum from Philby attempting to distance himself from Maclean, and to set about organizing the final dossier on Philby and Burgess. Arthur Martin took over preparing a brief for Sillitoe should his planned trip be finalized. Obviously pre-occupied, White agreed that no further interviewing of Rees should occur until his report had arrived and been digested. Little happened on June 5, although plans were being made to recall Philby, and MI6’s Drew left for Washington with a letter to be handed to him. Telephone intercepts allowed Blunt and Hewit to be overheard discussing how depressed Goronwy and Margie Rees were.

‘Looking for Mr. Nobody’

The next day (June 6) Rees handed his statement to Footman, who delivered it to White at 2:30 pm. The formal interview could now take place. Yet again, Rees’s account (as he passed on to his daughter) does not hold water. In Looking for Mr. Nobody, Jenny Rees writes: “When Rees met Guy Liddell, on 7 June [sic], he was surprised to learn that the meeting was not to take place in an office, but at an informal lunch. When he arrived, he was even more surprised to find Blunt there, too.” This is absurd, since Liddell was of course in Wales at the time. And in fact it was White who experienced the surprise. Rees’s MI5 file suggests that White was taken aback when Rees turned up for his interview (on June 6, incidentally) accompanied by Blunt! What is also outrageous is the fact that, in March 1956, after Rees had had his scandalous stories about Burgess published in The People, provoking fresh interest in him by MI5, he told Reed that, on the morning of his interview (on May 29!), he had dropped by at Blunt’s flat, and Blunt had insisted on accompanying Rees to the meeting . . . (See KV 2/4605 sn.165a)

A very amateurish recording of the meeting was made. White had hardly had time to read Rees’s report, since the time-stamp on the meeting reads as 3:10 pm. Yet what Rees put together was underwhelming. Far from spilling the beans on Burgess’s shady past, and Rees’s suspicions of him, Goronwy had put together an anodyne document that hardly touched on the dynamics of the Margie-Guy conversation as he represented it in his book. The report is spent largely describing Burgess’s professional problems, saying nothing about any communist links. Contrary to how Margie had characterized Guy’s demeanour beforehand, Burgess comes across as coherent, almost sensible. Only in the last sentence is a suggestion of turmoil hinted at: “M. said that during the conversation she had the impression that, if G. had come to some decision, he had only just made up his mind and had not made any definite plan.” This was a very timid performance by Rees, and sharply shows that the testimony he later provided in his memoir was an undignified show of braggadocio. If his report did truly correspond to what he had told Liddell a week beforehand, it is no wonder that the Deputy Director-General did not get excited. On the other hand, as I have suggested, Liddell had probably instructed Rees to turn in a very subdued account.

White made several mistakes in trying to interrogate Blunt and Rees at the same time. He should have rejected their group approach and insisted that they be interrogated separately. He should have prepared himself for the encounter, so that he knew what questions to ask, and would not have been caught out in so many mistakes of memory or ignorance. And he should have arranged for a proper transcription of the exchanges. As it is, the record is a technical failure, and an intelligence disaster. One outcome, however, of Rees’s stumbling effort to describe Burgess’s experience with the Comintern in the 1930s, and Rees’s and Blunt’s involvement with him in 1937, is that Rees was obliged to write up a more coherent account of what he admitted during the interview. And he did so immediately afterwards.

While it is difficult to unscramble the flow of the discussion from a very garbled transcription, White’s lack of reaction to what Rees (who dominates the briefing) says is extraordinary. He does not appear to be unduly perturbed when Rees describes Burgess’s association with the Comintern, and Blunt’s involvement in passing information to him. When Rees states that ‘Anthony was of course working for him’, White merely interrupts mildly, saying: “Can we stop a second – Were you consciously doing that, Anthony?”. When Blunt replies ‘No’, White simply echoes the ‘No’, but Rees then carries on in full flow before White can pick up the thread. White must have recalled the Comintern connection from Burgess’s aborted trip to Moscow with Isaiah Berlin in 1940 (see Misdefending the Realm, Chapter 4), and Blunt’s being detected passing on secrets to the Soviets in 1944. At this juncture, White should have reacted with horror at the news that Blunt had a possible espionage track-record going back over a decade, and had been helping Burgess in the 1930s. Either he was simply very slow on the uptake, or it came as no real surprise to him, since Liddell had already confided in him, and he concealed his horror. I suspect the former: he was simply overwhelmed, and his head was in a spin.

White does not give a very poised performance. He appears confused over the list of names of furtive Burgess cronies given to him by Rees (e.g. Katz, Arnesto, Pfeiffer). In any event, White suddenly discloses that Burgess was not alone when he disappeared, saying, with a Bondian flourish: “He’s not alone. He’s with a man called Maclean. Donald Maclean”, as if his two interlocutors would not have known who that person was. A few minutes earlier, Rees had even mentioned Maclean’s name alongside that of Blunt as one of those ‘who always worked with Burgess’, but White could not have been thinking clearly. Moreover, he was also unaware that Liddell had already confided in Blunt (and Harris) that Burgess had been accompanied by Maclean. So much for close cooperation: Liddell had not told him all.

At the close of the meeting, Rees was then instructed to provide a write-up of what he had just said. I do not believe that his report has been reproduced anywhere: it should be. I extract from it the following main points:

  1. Rees knew Burgess as an active Communist in 1932-1933. He left the Party in 1935, an action that offended many of his friends.
  2. After the rift, Rees became friendly with Burgess again in 1937.
  3. Burgess told Rees that he had left the Party under direction, and was now working for the Comintern.
  4. Burgess sought help from Rees, and stated that Blunt was also assisting him with information.
  5. Rees believed that Rolf Katz and Edouard Pfeiffer were two of his Communist associates, and he thought that Burgess was acting as an intermediary between Daladier and Chamberlain.
  6. Burgess told him that he passed on information to a Russian whom he met in small cafes.
  7. After the Nazi-Soviet Pact was announced, Rees told Burgess that he wanted nothing more to do with his organization. Burgess said that Blunt was of the same mindset.
  8. Burgess pleaded for silence over the relationship: Rees told him (untruthfully) that he had deposited a statement about it in his bank.
  9. Rees nevertheless said that he believed that Burgess had given up his pro-Soviet commitment at the time of the Pact.
  10. Since then, and especially recently, Burgess had expressed anti-American views.
  11. May 7 was the last time that Rees saw Burgess, but the latter had a strange and long conversation with his wife on May 25, on which Rees had reported elsewhere.

I believe that Numbers 4 and 7 are the most important items in this statement  – Rees’s explicit incrimination of Blunt as a communist sympathizer like himself, who had similarly been assisting Burgess in his criminal endeavours, but who reputedly had abandoned his ideological commitment in September 1939. This should have been a red flag to White. It was the outstanding fact that Liddell did not want to deal with.

Yet it was this confession that White later stated brought him to apoplexy, in the way he described it to his biographer. White claimed that he challenged Rees on why he had not come forward beforehand, to which Rees responded that he thought that MI5 knew all about Burgess’s background. Both men were distorting what happened to aid their particular mission: Rees to conceal his moral dilemma, White to assert his individual ignorance about Burgess’s accepted misdemeanors, and to blame someone else for MI5’s institutional failure. What is important to underline, however, is that this statement was not made by Rees when alone with Liddell soon after the disappearance, as Rees claimed, but to White, in the company of Blunt, who must have been compliant in the story Rees told. (Bower’s account is muddled and chronologically wrong, by the way. For instance, he introduces Rees’s accusations against Hampshire and Liddell being made at this time, which is patently untrue.)

Unfortunately, Jenny Rees is responsible for further confusion surrounding these events, mixing up the chronology. She has her father meeting Stuart Hampshire ‘shortly after Guy and Maclean had disappeared’ at a party, where Rees expressed his terror over a meeting he was soon to have with Jim Skardon. (Yet Rees had no planned meeting with Skardon at this time.) Rees had confided in him that Blunt had been an agent, too, and Hampshire, to his eternal shame, admitted to Jenny that he had advised Rees to do nothing, and let MI5 sort it out for themselves. Yet Jenny places this before the June 7 meeting, and associates it with Rees’s accusations against Zaehner and Liddell, which happened much later. She also quotes what Rees reputedly wrote after the June 7 meeting with Liddell [!], in which Rees claimed that Liddell and Blunt tried to talk him out of his delusions about Burgess. (I cannot trace this passage: it is certainly not in A Chapter of Accidents, and Jenny Rees provides no sources.) Rees claimed he dug his heels in, and then, a few days later, kept a further meeting with Liddell and White. It is another sorry mess.

Yet there was a June 7 meeting, this time between White and Rees alone, which was also recorded – and with greater quality than that of the previous day. This time, White and Rees chat as if they were old friends, and they try to identify the roots of Burgess’s alienation, discussing Burgess’s friends and associates, and, after a tortuous discussion, coming up with the name of James Klugman as a probable recruiter. Rees also voices his suspicions about Footman. The whole exchange is very rambling, and does not reveal much, except to point out that White and Rees obviously enjoyed a collegial relationship, and the exchange was not at all antagonistic in the way White framed it later. White was far more perturbed about Blunt than he was angry with Rees.

Nothing dramatic concerning Rees happened for a few days. White was busy arranging for Martin to accompany Sillitoe to Washington, charged with taking the dossier on Philby and Burgess with him. The same day that Sillitoe and Martin flew out of London, Philby was in the air returning to Britain, and White prepared to interrogate him immediately he arrived, on July 12. Liddell had returned from his leave on June 11 (Monday), and he started catching up with what had happened in his absence. White updated Liddell on the meeting with Rees and Blunt, indicating that he had gained an unfavorable impression of Rees, who seemed very nervous, but White apparently did not tell Liddell about the more amiable discussion the following day. Liddell would surely have mentioned it in his diary if he had.

Liddell did record that King George VI had shown an interest in the case, and had requested that Liddell speak to the King’s secretary, Tommy Lascelles. Liddell said there was not much more to tell than could be read in the newspapers, and that the disappearance of the pair was probably due to blackmail or ‘to some espionage past’. He went on to write: “I was a little inclined to fear the latter, only there was no firm evidence on which to do beyond the fact that both parties had gone through a period of Left Wing activities while at the University. It seemed to me unlikely that a man of Burgess’s intelligence could imagine that he had any future in Russia, and I was rather forced to the conclusion that he might have thought that his past was catching up with him and the alternative was a stretch in Maidstone gaol.”

Yet this assessment was contradicted by a later diary entry for that day. After describing White’s experiences in interrogating Philby, and positing that Burgess may have had access to secret files on Philby’s desk, Liddell brings up the Volkov incident, and how badly it reflected on Philby’s role. He then records having dinner with Blunt, who felt he was being hounded by the Press – a revealing declaration that proves that the Burgess-Blunt association was public knowledge. “No new facts emerged”, Liddell wrote, “except that I feel certain that Anthony was never a conscious collaborator with BURGESS in any activities that he may have conducted on behalf of the Comintern (vide Rees’s statement).” At least White had informed Liddell about the Comintern connection, but it was a very lazy and unimaginative conclusion by Liddell, who was too trusting of what Blunt told him, and still reluctant to face the truth.

Phase 4: June 13 to August 27

Meanwhile, Rees was undergoing further setbacks. His ‘confession’ prompted Reed, on June 14, to submit a Home Office Warrant request to tap his telephone. When Burgess’s flat was searched on June 7, hundreds of letters addressed to him had been found in a guitar-case at the bottom of his wardrobe, including a few from Rees, which might have been incriminating. (Source: KV 2/4605, sn. 177a). And an enterprising journalist had uncovered telephone records from the Reform Club, which showed that Burgess had called the Reeses at Sonning just before he absconded. The Reeses’ house was soon besieged, and Goronwy and his family were severely harassed.

Yet Rees in fact enjoyed a brief respite from MI5’s attentions. The tranche of letters discovered in Burgess’s flat prompted a broader large-scale inquiry, with multiple new files opened and acquaintances interviewed, with the Rothschilds in particular becoming a focus of attention. Martin and Sillitoe were still in Washington, and the ruse to plant the dossier on Philby and Burgess was proceeding satisfactorily: they returned to London on June 18. White’s interrogation of Philby was inconclusive, but Menzies was persuaded that Kim would have to resign from MI6. Liddell reported that awkward questions had been asked in the House of Commons concerning the lack of screening of Burgess, and on June 23 Prime Minister Attlee agreed to set up a committee, under Alexander Cadogan, to investigate Foreign Office security.

Rees then drew unnecessary attention to himself. He gave an interview to a reporter from the Daily Mail, which resulted in a story headlined: ‘Burgess: One of the Nicest Men I Know’ appearing on June 18. Starting by saying ‘To my knowledge he is not a communist’, Rees went on to offer a grovelling defence of Burgess as a patriotic Englishman who would never harm his country. He attributed any eccentricities of his conduct to a fracture of the skull he incurred a few years before when he fell down some stairs. Why Rees volunteered this hypocritical nonsense is unclear: the malfeasance of Burgess and Maclean was becoming very public, and MI5 knew that Rees had given strong evidence incriminating Burgess. It made Rees look very foolish, and MI5 eventually decided to haul him in again.

On June 19, Robertson noted that Rees had been suspected of helping the Soviets acquire equipment for making penicillin from America, something the USA had been trying to ban. (This was an extraordinary series of incidents, involving the defector N.M. Borodin, that merits detailed coverage. Rees was not honest about his business relationship with the writer Henry Green, and the Pontifex company, at a time when Rees was working for MI6. I plan to pick up this story in my November bulletin.) The same day, John Lehmann, in an interview by Jim Skardon, criticized Rees and Blunt for not notifying the authorities of the politics of Burgess and Maclean. Around this time, Lehmann’s sister, Rosamund, had informed MI5 of the fact that Rees had told her in the late thirties that Burgess was working for the Comintern: Skardon interviewed her in October 1951 to confirm her story. Rees had told Reed and Robertson on July 24 that he had confided in Rosamund. MI5 maintained the telephone check on Rees: when his wife phoned Hewit on June 27, they learned that Rees had been ‘in an awful state over Guy’, not sleeping, and weeping every night. Following some ‘unusual’ conversations between the Reeses and Blunt, on July 6 Reed requested a re-imposition of telephone checks on Blunt.

Liddell continued to come to Blunt’s defence. On June 27, he reviewed a report on Philby that MI6 was about to send to the FBI. He deemed that it was too sympathetic to Rees’s claims concerning Burgess and the Comintern, he trusted what Blunt had claimed about ignorance of Burgess’s affiliation, and he judged that Blunt would have been very unlikely to get involved in such political activities. Moreover, he expressed his disbelief that Burgess could have been ‘a Comintern agent or an espionage agent in the ordinary accepted interpretation of these terms’. So what had Burgess been running from? And, if Maclean, why not Burgess or Blunt? Liddell does not examine such ideas.

Nevertheless, the interest in Blunt increased. On July 7, Owen O’Malley, a retired Foreign Office diplomat, informed Sir William Strang, the Permanent Under-Secretary, that Blunt had been a Communist at Cambridge alongside Burgess. And Dick White asked Liddell to arrange an interview with Blunt in the light of correspondence found in Burgess’s flat. Liddell took the opportunity to have lunch with Blunt, and quiz him about his communist activity at Cambridge. Blunt finessed the issue, stating that he had taken an intellectual interest in Marxism, but had never been attracted by the Russian implementation of it, and reiterated his belief that Burgess had been working for British Intelligence. Liddell seemed impressed enough with this testimony to pass it on immediately to White and his lieutenants, recording that what he told them appeared to ‘dispel their suspicions’ on a number of points. Robertson and Martin accordingly interviewed Blunt on July 14, when he gave them an utterly mendacious account of his association with Burgess, suggesting that the disciplines of the Communist Party were objectionable to Burgess, and, again, that any information that he had given him was in the belief that Burgess was working for British intelligence.

Yet sharper counter-espionage officers would have asked more penetrating questions. How could it be that Blunt received such a different impression from that of Rees, never believing that Burgess was working for the Comintern? Why would Rees have implied that Blunt was assisting him in that goal? Had Blunt not been a communist himself? (It seems that Robertson and Martin had not been informed that Blunt had been suspended from an Intelligence course at Minley Manor in 1940 because of his communist sympathies.) And why would Burgess have been ‘stunned’ by the announcement of the Nazi-Soviet pact, if he had simply been working for British intelligence? Had Blunt really not worked everything out only when Rees recently told him that Burgess’s active work for the Russians had ceased?  In that case, when had Blunt believed that Burgess had really been working for the Russians? Yet the opportunity was missed.

On July 18, Dick White wrote a letter to Rees, asking him in a friendly fashion whether he could ‘look in’ at the MI5 office for an hour or two the following week. The outcome was that Rees underwent a more searching interview by Robertson and Martin on July 24. Yet he immediately tried to control the process, refusing to provide a full account of his knowledge of, and association with, Burgess, but stating instead that he would simply answer direct questions. What ensued was not a very revealing exercise: overall, Rees stuck to his guns, although he tripped up occasionally, describing Burgess’s attention to security in contradictory fashion, and letting some facts slip out about which he had previously expressed ignorance. His representation of Burgess as ‘the most complete Marxist he had ever known’, while expressing doubt as to whether Burgess would have considered spying after 1939, was, to me, a very flabby argument, but was not picked up by his interrogators. Robertson and Martin concluded that Rees was holding something back, instead revealing a part of the story as an insurance policy against MI5’s discovering the facts on their own. They also made the significant observation that ‘he may also have conferred with BLUNT before making his statement in order to give BLUNT the opportunity of producing his own denial’. They also noted that Rees had been very keen in trying to elicit from the two of them whether his statements concerning Burgess had been confirmed by any other source.

After reflection, Robertson wrote a note to White concerning the interview, in which he repeated some of the frustration arising from Rees’s evasiveness and contradictions. He pointed out the curious manner in which Rees and Blunt had presented themselves at the office to volunteer a statement, and then he turned the spotlight on Blunt, who seemed to him to have much more to lose because of his public position. “It seems to me very possible”, he wrote, “that, REES having informed BLUNT that he could no longer withhold from the proper authorities at least a part of what he knew about BURGESS, the two men came to an agreement whereby each would make a mutually agreed statement. This agreement would include an understanding that REES, in implicating BLUNT in Burgess’s activities, would do so in a manner that would not prevent BLUNT from denying it convincingly.”

This was a shrewd observation from Robertson, but his follow-up was less than stellar. He had suggested to Liddell himself that the latter ‘attempt to draw’ Blunt on the subject before the latter left for Greece, but the opportunity had not arisen. How a softball approach from Liddell, Blunt’s crony, might extract any breakthrough insight is not clear, but then Robertson himself displayed a similar indulgence towards Blunt. Addressing his boss, White, he wrote: “I should be grateful if you could now reconsider the matter yourself, with regard to the possibility of our telling BLUNT, on his return to this country, that we do not accept the truth of his statement unreservedly, at the same time guaranteeing to him (if you think we can go so far), that he will not suffer in his career or reputation, if he tells us with complete frankness of his knowledge of BURGESS’s espionage.”

This was a dramatic conceptual leap: suddenly considering immunity from prosecution for someone who had apparently been treated as a loyal ally up till then. Thus did the steely minds of MI5 deal with potential traitors in their midst. White could not have been happy that his junior officers were now starting to suspect Blunt. Maybe he had put Robertson up to this suggestion: White referred the memorandum to Liddell, and asked whether the Deputy Director-General would be prepared to interview Blunt. But nothing happened for a while. By the time Blunt returned from Greece, Liddell had left for the USA, being absent for the whole of September. Nevertheless, Liddell had time to issue a more disciplined riposte to White, who, on August 27 (having just returned from leave himself) reported to Robertson that Liddell had firm objections to giving Blunt open assurances without any considerations of the consequences of what he might say. (Liddell’s lack of expressed surprise at this initiative is telling: it was a canny attempt to cover his back.) White minuted to Robertson that they would have to re-think their strategy. It is clear that White again would have preferred that the whole matter be hushed up. Thus did the days of summer wind down, and the intensity of the investigation fade away. Not long afterwards, an officer in MI5 was present at a cocktail party also attended by Rees, and the latter was notably relieved to learn that the officer’s interpretation of events was that the BURGESS/MACLEAN case was being dropped.

Conclusions

Guy Burgess created havoc before he absconded. Aware that he was being watched, he drew in as many of his friends and associates as he could, leaving an obvious trail behind him. The cause of this may have been a degree of spite, not seeing why he should be singled out for banishment, but it may have taken place with the objective of causing MI5 to spend an inordinate amount of time and effort in chasing down his links, and in that way distract attention away from Blunt. In this project, the Security Service may have trawled up one or two confirmed miscreants (such as Alister Watson), but they also interviewed at length a number of misguided leftists from the 1930s who were now reformed characters, and no danger to the nation. The fact that the Foreign Office had not sacked Burgess earlier, but instead searched to find him a comfortable job, is shocking.

Anthony Blunt played a wily game, but he should have been doomed. Even Goronwy Rees’s reduced accusations should have been enough to condemn him. He believed that he had shrewdly manipulated Rees, and for most of the summer of 1951 appeared to be able to exploit his good relationships with Guy Liddell and Dick White to present himself as a useful consultant rather than a potential candidate for conspiracy. He was able to gain some respite because of their absences, and the welter of other events. That situation would not last, of course, but he surely persuaded his Soviet controllers (who had ‘ordered’ him to defect as well) that he was more useful keeping a watchful eye on matters back in London, and frustrating MI5’s inquiries. The insinuations made against Blunt at the end of this summer confirm the fact that he was by then already under grave suspicion as a Soviet agent of some long standing.

MI5 itself was dysfunctional. It was led by an ex-policeman, Sillitoe, who had to cable back to London from Washington for instructions on sensitive matters. His deputy, Liddell, largely stayed out of the picture, recording his private impressions and thoughts in his diary, and failing to take a leadership role in the investigation of Maclean and Burgess. A single man again, he could not even consider cancelling his summer holiday at a time of great intensity for the project. That was possibly because he keenly wanted to adopt a low profile. He did not communicate regularly with White, head of B Division, who himself did not show the discipline appropriate for a mature counter-intelligence officer. White had started to guess as to the enormity of the errors that MI5 had committed in its indulgence to communist sympathizers, and he feared that any public acknowledgment of the recruitment disasters that MI6 and MI5 had undertaken would probably destroy his career, as well as the independence of MI5.

The problem was that MI5 had no strategy in place for proceeding after the probable guilt of Soviet agents had been established. VENONA evidence could not be brought to any trial, and a confession from the subject was thus a necessity. The latter tactic worked in the case of Fuchs and Blake (who were not true-blooded Englishmen anyway, and thus should not have been trusted), and with Nunn May, but the thought of bringing Maclean to trial, after he had confessed (as he was surely about to) must have filled the hearts of White and his colleagues with extreme nervousness, when the indulgences over (for instance) Maclean’s abject behaviour in Cairo would have been received derisively. The theory that Maclean had been allowed to escape should not be discarded completely, as it was a pattern with Philby and Smolka, among others. Moreover, the skills of the interrogators were inadequate. They did not have the historical training to understand fully the political background to the events. They ambled into their sessions unprepared, they were not briefed properly, they were too deferential, and they were outwitted by university graduates who demonstrated sharper mental acuity. Dick White was a poor role model.

The other aspect was the pretence that such suspects should be allowed off scot-free on the condition that they told their inquisitors everything they knew. It probably started here, with Blunt. Of course, this policy of granting immunity from prosecution was based on self-delusion. How would they know that the candidate would tell them everything, or that what was divulged was true? Yet the indulgence was considered, for the benefit of a quiet life. John Cairncross was encouraged to resign at this time when confidential notes from him were found in Burgess’s apartment, while MI5 at this stage had no idea about the duration, breadth and depth of Cairncross’s espionage. Liddell’s cautiousness in this regard was praiseworthy (thought it may have been a ruse), but it was not authoritative enough, and he was not to last much longer in MI5.

The most troublesome, but also revealing, event is the meeting between Rees and Liddell, which Rees stifled in his memoir, and the existence of which was later concealed from junior MI5 officers, being downgraded to a ‘telephone conversation’. Indeed, soon after the meeting, on June 6, Reed confirmed it as such, but indicated that Liddell had used the word ‘alarming’. My suspicion is that Rees did indeed tell all to Liddell, who demanded that he downplay his suspicions in his immediate report, and that he reserve his full disclosures for his future interviews with MI5, namely with White. Liddell sanitized the essence of the discussion in his diary entry and his posting to Rees’s file, gave a careless hint to Reed, but withheld the frightful news from White, preferring that White discover it for himself. If Liddell now began to harbour severe misgivings about Blunt, he did not share them, but his laconic response when reading White’s suggestion for immunity for Blunt indicates to me that he understood the severity of the problem. It took Michael Straight to accuse Blunt, and prompt his confession, over a decade later, but Rees’s fury over the lack of action undertaken against him would lead to the eventual exposure of the art historian.

As for Rees, he comes out of this adventure with his reputation even more tarnished. It is difficult for me to understand how someone reputedly so smart as he (he was awarded a Fellowship at All Souls, after all) could be so gullible and impressionable. A mild flirtation with communism in the early 1930s was perhaps pardonable, but for him to reject Stalinism only in 1939, at the time of the Nazi-Soviet Pact, shows a cavalier and obtuse blindness to the evils of Stalin’s oppression and purges. (The photograph below shows Rees at the May Day Parade in 1935.) Moreover, Rees had visited the Soviet Union in 1935, and he could have seen for himself what Communism meant in practice.

Rees on May Day 1935 (from ‘Looking for Mr. Nobody’)

His admiration for those two charlatans, Burgess and Blunt, is also astounding. Apparently impressed by Burgess’s brilliant mind, and his vivid and convincing explanation of Marxism, he was equally attracted to that woeful humbug, Blunt.  And that breach in 1939 did not allow him to reset his opinion of Burgess, despite the latter’s admission that he had broken with Communism, and taken up the fascist chant, on Moscow’s orders. Thereafter, Rees showed, in his mendacious and self-serving memoir, that he himself was a humbug who could easily be manipulated by Blunt, and he did not have the courage to tell a consistent story. He lived and died in the belief that the archival records would never appear to disprove his story.

Five years later, his world would fall apart when he was reckless enough to sell his story to The People, in which he pointed the finger closely at Blunt, without naming him, but brought down bitterness from his former friends for making such outrageous accusations. By that time, he was furious that Blunt had managed to escape undamaged and protected while Philby had been hounded and expelled from MI6. That outburst leads me to believe that he at some stage learned much more about Blunt’s long-standing espionage and treachery. He may have shared this with Liddell alone, but he had to soften his accusations when he underwent his formal interrogations, since Blunt was present. He set out doing what he did what he did out of a desperate attempt to salvage his honour, and to protect him and his friend from criminal charges, but he ended up feeling betrayed by Blunt.

Envoi

This article was prompted by my correspondent’s noticing the initiative to offer immunity to Blunt as early as 1951, and that episode is the main driver of this revision of history. When I wrote about the dissimulation over Blunt’s confession three-and-a-half years ago (see https://coldspur.com/the-hoax-of-the-blunt-confession-part-1/ and https://coldspur.com/the-hoax-of-the-blunt-confession-part-2/ ), I noted that Arthur Martin had been credited with the idea of offering Blunt immunity, but regarded the gesture as highly dubious. The evidence in Rees’s file proves that the idea had been simmering for thirteen years.

Moreover, while other Prime Ministers had inquired of their Cabinet Secretaries the circumstance of the Blunt immunity deal (with Jim Callaghan perhaps being the most perspicacious), it was Margaret Thatcher who was obliquely required to draw attention to it. I quoted in my first piece part of her statement to the House of Commons in November 1979, and I reproduce the key paragraphs here:

It was early in 1964 that new information was received relating to an earlier period which directly implicated Blunt. I cannot disclose the nature of that information but it was not usable as evidence on which to base a prosecution. In this situation, the security authorities were faced with a difficult choice. They could have decided to wait in the hope that further information which could be used as a basis for prosecuting Blunt would, in due course, be discovered. But the security authorities had already pursued their inquiries for nearly 13 years without obtaining firm evidence against Blunt. . . .

They therefore decided to ask the Attorney-General, through the acting Director of Public Prosecutions, to authorise them to offer Blunt immunity from prosecution, if he both confessed and agreed to co-operate in their further investigations.

Yet I believe I accepted too much of what Thatcher said, and I misrepresented the facts back in February 2021. I wrote: “Straight was invited over to the UK in October [1963], where he briefed Hollis and White, and a highly confidential immunity agreement for Blunt was made with the help of Cabinet Secretary Trend, Home Secretary Brooke, and Attorney General Hobson.” I am now certain that the deal was not arranged until April 1964 – but was done in haste. When John Hunt, the Cabinet Secretary, in December 1978 described to Prime Minister Jim Callaghan the events, he declared that MI5 had approached the Deputy Director of Public Prosecutions on April 18, with a following exchange of letters, and that it was all set up for the ‘interrogation’ of April 23. A similar (but not identical) account, given by Robert Amstrong in November 1979, appears in PREM 19/120. Everything was performed with a speed uncharacteristic of the wheels of bureaucracy.

John Hobson

It was all part of the hoax. As the Times reported in July 2020: “The distinguished art historian was offered complete immunity if he confessed, a sordid deal with no legal basis that was agreed by the then attorney-general, Sir John Hobson.” Hobson was presented with a fait accompli, and he had to agree to it. An astonishing nugget from the Prime Minister’s folder on the case, PREM 16/2230, contains the following statement from the same John Hunt, written on July 3, 1974, and addressed to Harold Wilson, which carelessly confirms what happened: “Following his confession [my italics!] the case was referred to the Attorney General of the day (Sir John Hobson) who decided that the public interest lay against prosecution.” Thus the timing of the confession was staged to reflect Hobson’s approval after the event. The sequence could not have been spelled out any more plainly.

John Hunt

The facts are clear. Thirteen years takes us back to 1951. Blunt was indeed interrogated many times (the first on July 14, 1951), but he refused to confess. It took the testimony of Michael Straight to pin him down in the autumn of 1963. MI5 was not authorized to offer immunity, but it had done so without approval in December 1963, when Roger Hollis was still under the influence of his sponsor and colleague Dick White, now chief of MI6. It was White who had floated the idea of conditional immunity back in 1951. The decision whether to prosecute or not, however, was the responsibility of the Attorney General. The framed event of the April 1964 ‘confession’ was set up because the real confession had been made several months earlier before the Attorney General, John Hobson, even knew about it. Blunt should, however, have been nailed in 1951. It was primarily the pusillanimity of Liddell and White that allowed him to escape.

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The Still Elusive Victor Rothschild

‘Elusive Rothschild’

(My original plan was to publish this essay at the end of September, since I had a few weeks ago completed a study of the problems of Goronwy Rees and Anthony Blunt in the summer of 1951 that was ready for the August coldspur issue. I thus started work on a piece on Victor Rothschild, targeted for September. And then a correspondent alerted me to the fact that Tim Tate’s new book, To Catch A Spy, enhanced with the subtitle How the Spycatcher Affair Brought MI5 in from the Cold, was going to be published in August. I immediately pre-ordered the item from amazon.uk, but decided that I needed to put my stake in the ground on Rothschild, Wright, Pincher and the Spycatcher business before I was influenced in any way by what Tate wrote. Thus I accelerated the development of this month’s piece: Rees and Blunt will now appear at the end of September. My copy of To Catch A Spy arrived a couple of days ago: I shall start reading it today. I shall dedicate my October bulletin to a review of Tate’s book, and to an update on the Borodin affair – which is turning out to be even more sinister than I earlier described.

P.S. This piece was created in some haste. I intend to re-structure it at some stage to give it a more logical flow. I hope that my readers will be indulgent, and will understand my desire to lay out the facts of my story promptly.

P.P.S. I have just noticed a report in the Times dated August 16 that describes Margaret Thatcher’s collusion with Sir Robert Amstrong, using Rothschild and Pincher, to promulgate the Hollis accusations that derived from Wright. See: https://www.thetimes.com/uk/history/article/margaret-thatcher-approved-leak-m15-rml5xdgrd .I imagine this matter is covered comprehensively in Tate’s book, and shall comment in my October posting.)

Contents:

Introduction

  1. Molehunting:

‘The Climate of Treason’

Rothschild and Wright

‘Their Trade Is Treachery’

An Impossible Delivery

Manipulation and Misinformation

Pincher’s Version

2. Agent of Influence

3. Zionism

4. MI5 & MI6 Postwar

5. The Kew Archive:

Introduction

Surveillance

Investigations (1)

Investigations (2)

Disclosures and Explanations

Rothschild’s Self-Importance

Burgess as Financial Advisor

Tess and Blunt

6. Conclusions

*          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *

Introduction

What was Lord Rothschild up to at the end of World War II? And why was he so inextricably involved with the intelligence leakages of the 1980s? The questions about his loyalties, his connections with the Cambridge Five, and his activities in support of the Israeli effort to build an atomic bomb continue to float around in various memoirs and articles. Yet it is hard to pin down a reliable account of his life: what one might expect to be the gold standard of accuracy and integrity, the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, has not updated its entry since 2010, and it is based largely on Kenneth Rose’s generally favourable but shallow biography of him, Elusive Rothschild. Since then, both Russian and British archival material has appeared (with several large files having been deposited at Kew by MI5 in 2022), yet no authoritative new account has appeared, so far as I know. The Wikipedia entry is a little more exploratory, but likewise deficient: it was updated recently, but apparently only because of the death in February of Jacob Rothschild, Victor’s eldest son. The Andrew Lownie Agency has recently announced that Weidenfeld & Nicholson has acquired the rights to Roley Thomas’s biography of Victor, titled The Spy and the Saboteur: the Untold Story of Victor Rothschild (see https://www.andrewlownie.co.uk/authors/roley-thomas/books/the-spy-and-the-saboteur-the-untold-story-of-victor-rothschild). In what way Rothschild was a ‘spy’ or ‘saboteur’ (as opposed to a counter-espionage officer responsible for detecting sabotage attempts) is undeclared: I shall have to watch out for the publication of this volume, which is not due until late next year.

The most damaging claim against Lord Rothschild is that he had been a Soviet agent of some kind – perhaps simply an ‘agent of influence’, but also, in a more imaginative leap, the ‘Fifth Man’, at a time when Cairncross’s role had not been established. (Roland Perry’s assertion that Rothschild was the ‘Fifth Man’ can be quickly rejected, even though Perry dug out some intriguing ‘facts’ about his Lordship.) I dedicated a chapter in Misdefending the Realm to the phenomenon of agents of influence working in the shadows to assist Soviet objectives, and included Rothschild as the leading figure in that category. That same claim appeared from the Russian side, with the recollections of Ivan Serov, one-time chairman of both the KGB and the GRU (who died a month before Rothschild in early 1990), revealing through his posthumously published memoirs that Rothschild had for a short while been a valuable agent of influence.

In this piece I explore several critical aspects of Rothschild’s career. First of all, I examine closely the extraordinary role he played in the molehunting sagas of the 1970s and 1980s, as one in a triumvirate of deceptive characters. I consider this period very significant, because it brought parts of Rothschild’s hitherto private career into the public eye, and he began to realize that he could no longer control the narrative of his life. I believe that that recognition buffeted his ego, and his sense of prestige, and he never recovered from it. I next delve into other dimensions of his roles, using a variety of archival sources, that highlight some of the major conflicts in his life. Lastly, I offer a detailed analysis of the MI5 Personal Files on him and his wife (KV 2/4531-4534), recently released, which I believe are revealing as much for the inertia displayed by MI5 over the Rothschilds’ prevarications as they are for the intrinsic accounts that the couple gave of themselves.

I shall not cover in detail Rothschild’s career in his official capacity at MI5 during the war. He notably set up the B18 counter-sabotage section (in 1941 renamed B1c), and displayed some courage in his dismantling of bombs, although the self-aggrandizement of his feats, leading to the award of a George Medal, did not endear him to his colleagues. His other remarkable achievement was to introduce Anthony Blunt to Guy Liddell, who subsequently recruited him as his personal assistant, with disastrous consequences. He was also responsible for helping Eric Roberts set up the ‘Fifth Column’ to penetrate a group of Nazi sympathizers. (For a comprehensive account of this operation, see Robert Hutton’s Agent Jack, and my comments at https://coldspur.com/a-thanksgiving-round-up/ ).  At the end of the war, Rothschild successfully recommended to Liddell that his assistant, Tess Mayor, be awarded an M.B.E. for gallantry in Paris, but the objectivity of his judgment was somewhat tarnished by the fact that in 1946 he divorced Barbara and married Tess in August of that year. Overall, his reputation within MI5 – and outside – was good, to the extent that Duff Cooper even suggested that he should be appointed Director-General when Petrie retired.

  1. Molehunting:

‘The Climate of Treason’

Victor Rothschild’s problems started when he gained some unwelcome attention after the publication of Andrew Boyle’s Climate of Treason in 1979. Not only did a prominent photograph of the noble lord appear under one of a set of ‘Apostles’ from the 1930s (which included Blunt, ‘a close companion of Burgess and an ardent Marxist’), Rothschild was also described in potentially damaging ways in the text. He was presented as ‘the amiable Trinity neighbour’ of Burgess at Cambridge, who ‘professed sympathy with Socialism, but took no noticeably active part in proceedings of the non-Communist rump of the Labour Club to which Philby and Lees both belonged’. That was in fact a distortion of the politics of the Cambridge University Socialist Society, but the juxtaposition was nevertheless a little embarrassing. Furthermore, Boyle explained that Burgess had received Rothschild money for services rendered, and that he had been a tenant of Rothschild’s flat in Bentinck Street during the war.

Apostles and Rothschild (from ‘The Climate of Treason’)

A more serious incident reported by Boyle occurred during the winter of 1944-45, when Philby, Burgess and Malcolm Muggeridge were staying at the Rothschild mansion in Paris. Rothschild (as described by Muggeridge in his 1973 memoir Chronicles of Wasted Time) was provoked to criticize the withholding from the Soviets of Bletchley Park secrets concerning the German order of battle. That was a sensitive matter, as it suggested that Rothschild (and the others debating with him) knew for certain that such material had been withheld, as if they had all been privy to the highly secret way in which intelligence had been passed on to the Soviets. One could pose the questions: had any members of the group been told by Moscow that it was not receiving unrefined ULTRA transcripts through official channels, and how did the NKVD come to that conclusion? If that was indeed the case, whom did Moscow tell?

This gathering of anecdotes had started a buzz of chatter, which the journalist Auberon Waugh picked up in an article in the Spectator in June 1980. This piece was even significant enough to be copied into PREM 19/3942, a file curiously titled ‘Security of the Secret Service – Professor Blunt: Terms of Reference of the Home Affairs Select Committee with regard to the Security Service’. The whole text of the article (‘Lord Rothschild is Innocent’) can be seen on page 101. Of course it is a provocative title, since it implies that the subject had perhaps in some quarters been regarded as guilty, and Waugh is out to vindicate him. Yet Waugh had a notorious gift for irony, and the attention given to Rothschild surely displeased Waugh’s subject.

Auberon Waugh in the ‘Spectator’, June 1980

What Waugh had done was to identify that the anonymous hereditary peer who (according to Boyle) had been one of those persons questioned by MI5 after the defection of Burgess and Maclean was in fact Lord Rothschild, and Waugh qualified his revelation by stating that it would be very surprising if MI5 had not asked him to help in their investigations. Furthermore, ‘any suggestion which implied that Lord Rothschild could even have been under suspicion by MI5 as a Soviet agent or witting concealer of Soviet agents is so preposterous as to belong to the world of pulp fiction. . . .’. Waugh skillfully avoided any libel suit with this wording, but, according to Roland Perry in The Fifth Man (1994), Rothschild was very worried, and sensed trouble ahead. Perry’s mission was, however, to prove that Rothschild was indeed the ‘Fifth Man’, and he was as wrong about that as he was in underestimating John Cairncross’s contribution.

Chapman Pincher later went on to defend Rothschild’s reputation in Too Secret Too Long (1981), where he stressed Victor’s war-record, his working for MI5, and his award of the George Medal for bravery in anti-sabotage activity (something that the vainglorious lord had promoted a bit too eagerly). Pincher expanded on the Bentinck Street charivari, but absolved his lordship since he asserted that he could have had no knowledge that the residence he had sub-let had been harbouring two spies. “Innuendoes about his loyalty are completely groundless as his part in the exposure of Philby alone showed”, he wrote, an ingenuous statement that in its dubious logic downplayed the role of intrigue. Moreover, Pincher failed to mention Rothschild’s close association with the communists at Cambridge, and their memberships of the Apostles.

In 1980, Rothschild’s reputed contribution in exposing Philby was almost certainly not broadly known. Flora Solomon’s From Baku to Baker Street, in which she described her encounter with Rothschild in Israel, in 1962, where she informed him of her strong belief that Philby and Tomás Harris had been spies, was not published until 1984. (Did anyone make note of Pincher’s insight at the time?) By this time, however, Rothschild was beginning, in a defensive manoeuvre, to become involved in a curious triad consisting of himself, Chapman Pincher, and Peter Wright, an arrangement that would cause some enmities and jealousies, but which eventually led to the highly successful publication of Wright’s controversial Spycatcher in 1987. Pincher probably became acquainted with Rothschild in the mid-1970s. In Treachery, he describes how Rothschild had introduced him to Dick White ‘several years before’ 1982, and he also states how he had been in regular touch with him ever since the exposure of Blunt in 1979. In 1980, Pincher had been giving Rothschild advice concerning a possible libel action over the media speculation that he might have been a Soviet agent, even the infamous ‘Fifth Man’ of the Cambridge quintet. The Auberon Waugh article was a major irritation. Suddenly, on September 4, Pincher received a telephone call from Rothschild asking him to come and meet an ‘overseas acquaintance’ of his – who turned out to be the disgruntled Peter Wright. Pincher emphasized the unexpectedness of this call. But how did the participants arrive at this strange encounter? Sadly, the testimonies of all those involved – including Dick White – are riddled with untruths.

Rothschild and Wright 

The association between Wright and Rothschild went back much further. As Wright explained in Spycatcher (1986), Roger Hollis had introduced Wright to Rothschild in 1958, when Wright was trying to set up a scientific department in MI5, and Rothschild’s enthusiasm for what Wright was doing started a long period of admiration for Rothschild in the frequently under-appreciated MI5 officer. (One has to be wary of relying on what Wright wrote in Spycatcher, but these anecdotes sound authentic.) The pair maintained a supportive relationship, and Wright was asked to install Special Facilities (i.e. microphones) in Rothschild’s flat when Arthur Martin interviewed Flora Solomon there in the autumn of 1962. Rothschild was nervous about this, and sceptical that the devices would be disabled afterwards. As Wright wrote: “Victor was always convinced that MI5 were clandestinely tapping him to find out details of his intimate connections with the Israelis, and his furtiveness caused much good-humored hilarity in the office.” Rothschild would presumably have been shocked to learn of the surveillance carried on against him in 1951 when he and Tess were in regular contact with Anthony Blunt. In his 1979 book, Inside Story, Chapman Pincher refers to an unnamed ‘dissident’ MI5 officer (who must have been Pincher’s informant) who sought help from ‘a senior Whitehall personality’, known as ‘Q’. There is now no doubt about their identities.

A very stagey and melodramatic episode then followed, according to Wright’s largely apocryphal account. As he told it, shortly after Blunt had confessed (in 1964), he (Wright) was summoned to Hollis’s office, where he also found Rothschild and Furnival Jones. Hollis had just informed Rothschild about Blunt’s recent confession, and Rothschild looked ‘devastated’. The upshot was that Rothschild wanted Wright to be the bearer of the news to his wife, Tess, who had been very fond of Blunt (and had some sort of an affair with him, if what Pincher wrote in Treachery, based on what Kenneth Rose told him, can be trusted). “To her,” wrote Wright, “Blunt was a vulnerable and wonderfully gifted man, cruelly exposed to the everlasting burden of suspicion by providence and the betrayal of Guy Burgess.” Why Rothschild did not feel capable of taking the news to his wife, and why he thought that she would think better of him for delegating the task to the technical officer from MI5 (who admittedly had come to know Tess very well), was not explained. The mission was accomplished. Wright went with Evelyn McBarnett. Victor left the room. Tess was incredulous, and went ‘terribly pale’ as Wright told the whole story. The story is assuredly untrue, as the Rothschild Personal File reveals [see below]. It was a ruse to absolve Rothschild and his informer (Dick White) of breaching confidences, and Victor of recklessly informing his wife about the confession. In his account recorded in the Rothschild file, Wright knew that Tess had already been told about Blunt’s confession.

Martin Furnival Jones

Wright had kept up his association with Rothschild over the years. Rothschild would help him in his molehunts, dropping hints, and arranging another meeting with the reluctant Flora Solomon, who gave a lead to Sir Dennis Proctor, whom Wright believed had leaked information to Burgess. Rothschild had been appointed head of the Central Policy Review Staff (CPRS) by Edward Heath in 1970, and thus had useful connections in government. Wright’s account of the events seems somewhat inflated, although the records in the Rothschild archive show a close level of familiarity. Rothschild soon addresses his letters to Wright as ‘Dear Peter’. On the other hand, Wright received some antidote to his enthusiasm for Rothschild: he wrote that the defector Anatoliy Golitsyn had told him in 1968 that the agents DAVID and ROSA named in the VENONA transcripts were in fact Victor and Tess Rothschild. Wright probably did not pass on this insight to his idol.

Sir Dennis Proctor

Thereafter Rothschild was involved with Wright in MI5 Director-General succession planning, using his influence to thwart Civil Service preferences. (Wright’s claimed position of influence here is not convincing.) And in 1975, when Blunt was dangerously ill, Rothschild expressed some nervousness as to what he might reveal in any testament to be made available after his death. He pressed Wright to provide a full briefing on ‘the damage Blunt could do if he chose to tell all’, indicating some serious alarm. While Rothschild ingeniously presented this as a concern for the reputation of current politicians and members of the government, he was surely holding his own interests paramount. In any event, Wright agreed that a full outline of the Ring of Five and their sympathizers should be compiled, listing all names even if no proof were attachable, and he duly composed it. It apparently pleased Robert Armstrong in the Cabinet Office (a close chum of Rothschild’s through the CPRS connection, and at first glance perhaps a surprising participant in this scheme), but how this project related to the possible exposure by Blunt, or whether Rothschild’s name appeared among the forty names listed, is not made clear. Spycatcher concluded when Wright said ‘farewell’ to Rothschild, and left for Australia. It would be left to others to describe the messes that followed.

Exactly what were the interactions between Rothschild, Pincher and Wright is hard to pin down, as much of the testimony comes from Pincher himself, who was duplicitous in attempting to conceal the fact that he had known Wright for some time, and had already been using his leaked intelligence, at the time that he was ‘introduced’ to Wright by Rothschild in September 1980. In Molehunt (1987), Nigel West devoted a chapter (‘The Red Shield Connection’) to the negotiations: it is a rich and fascinating account, benefitting especially from references to many comments appearing in the press in 1986, but impaired by West’s tendency to go off on many barely relevant tangents. West very capably draws out many of the contradictions implicit in the statements made by Pincher and Wright concerning the negotiations. In any event, Rothschild’s strategy in paying Wright’s airfare to come to Britain, and then setting up mechanisms for Wright to be paid royalties from the ensuing book by Pincher based on Wright’s memoirs (Their Trade Is Treachery), was astonishing. Rothschild was essentially encouraging a retired civil servant to breach the Official Secrets Act, and rewarding him for it. This was either a very reckless move, or else had some official blessing. What was Rothschild thinking?

‘Their Trade Is Treachery’

West expressed puzzlement over Rothschild’s motivations in encouraging Wright: he judged that his lordship was surely over-reacting to the Prime Minister’s statement of November 1979 that had justified the immunity arrangement with Blunt on the grounds that he might be able to assist MI5 in investigating Soviet penetration. West hinted at some possible underlying reason for Rothschild’s embarrassment by listing the conventional aspects of his career that may have alarmed the baron: the Burgess connection and payments; the DAVID and ROSA allegations; the Bentinck Street affairs. Yet the first items would have been known only to MI5 insiders, as would the other startling fact that West introduced – Rothschild’s recommendation to Guy Liddell in 1940 that he recruit Blunt to MI5. This was a startling revelation by West, as Liddell’s Diaries had not yet been published, and it should have generated much more interest than it appeared to. It must have been the secret that caused Rothschild the most anxiety. Yet again, his hyperactivity in wanting to control the narrative indicated a measure of guilt rather than innocence.

The precise nature of the communications that occurred between Wright, in Tasmania, and Rothschild, in Cambridge, leading up to Wright’s visit in September 1980 was for a long time unclear. From the authorized corner came Christopher Andrew, in Defend the Realm (2009), customarily exploiting ‘Security Service archives’ without identifying them. He suggested that Wright had written to Rothschild some time between 1976 and 1980 complaining about his pension arrangements and voicing his belief that writing a memoir might bring him in the money he needed. At that stage, Rothschild alerted MI5’s Director-General to Wright’s plans, suggesting that at that time he (Rothschild) was not unnerved by phenomena such as the Blunt confession, and was firmly on the side of the authorities. Yet when Wright wrote again in 1980 – Andrew provides an extract from the letter, but does not date it or source it – his letter explained that he thought he could publish his memoir, but believed he could avoid any penalty under the Official Secrets Act by staying in Australia. Now Rothschild took a different tack: he encouraged Wright, did not inform MI5 of what Wright was planning, and instead paid for Wright’s passage to the UK that summer. This was a shallow analysis by Andrew.

The story was in fact more complex than that. In 2003, Kenneth Rose had in Elusive Rothschild provided a closer breakdown of the events, having been able to inspect some of the correspondence. He stated that the first letter was sent in November 1976, thus confirming that the Director-General was Hanley. In this letter, Wright hinted that he wanted to write about some of the confessions that Blunt had made to him – which must have severely alarmed Rothschild. (Rose does not make that point, but since Rothschild had already expressed to Wright the previous year his concern about Blunt’s revelations, Wright’s intentions should not have been such a surprise to him.) Rothschild accordingly had not been idle, although why he thought that some enhancements to Wright’s pension might deter him from spilling the beans is not clear. Knowing the problem concerning the pension, he followed up with Hanley, suggesting a review of the arrangements. Hanley was unable to get the Civil Service to change its rules, and Rothschild had to inform Wright of that decision in May 1977. Two months later, when Wright expressed his determination to continue writing, Rothschild tried to assume a more active role of caretaker for Wright’s effusions, believing that in that way he would be able to control the narrative. Tess Rothschild also wrote to Wright, referring to the rumours circulating about a projected book by Andrew Boyle, and also mentioning that Anthony [Blunt] was nervous about his possibly being named.

Rose added further twists to the story. Tess wrote to Wright again just before Boyle’s book came out, updating him on developments. Her husband was not unduly harmed when it did appear (apart from the placement of the photograph), but his health suffered badly in the first few months of 1980, and, when the revised edition of The Climate of Treason was issued a few months later (with Blunt named, and three columns of indexed entries dedicated to him), it contained veiled references to two members of the House of Lords who had been questioned back in 1951, and Rothschild was soon identified as one of them. That brought events up to the Auberon Waugh article [see above], and, according to Rose, Rothschild panicked. Having made a vain attempt to ingratiate himself with Margaret Thatcher, he turned again to Wright in the hope that he might be able to produce a paper that would list all his loyal services to MI5, and thus exonerate him. That led to the visit by Wright in late summer, armed with a three-page testimonial and ten chapters of his embryonic book. Rothschild later told Rose that he had destroyed the testimonial. Yet Roland Perry was able to provide a summary of all the achievements that Wright compiled to portray Rothschild’s loyalty in his chapter ‘Victor’s List’ in The Fifth Man.

Auberon Waugh

According to West, when Rothschild saw Wright’s chapters, he changed his plan, and decided to assist in the publication of the book. The essence of the text now consisted mainly of charges against Roger Hollis, and Rothschild believed that it would thus powerfully distract the attention of the world from himself. Wright was quoted in a statement to the press in December 1986 that he showed the ‘true facts’ about Hollis in a paper that he laid before Rothschild. Yet the embryonic story still held troubling information about Rothschild, and probably other MI5 officers. By the time it arrived in print as Pincher’s Their Trade Is Treachery it had been censored: it conveniently did not include a single mention of Rothschild. A whole chapter on the peer had already been removed, at Rothschild’s insistence. It would seem that Wright and Rothschild must have come to some sort of agreement that guaranteed support as a quid pro quo for some excisions from Wright’s text.

In any event, Pincher was then introduced, and a deal was quickly struck, with Wright requesting 50% of any net profits that the book would bring. Rothschild set up the banking arrangements, and then largely absented himself from the proceedings. The correspondence between Pincher and Wright that followed made coded references to what ‘our mutual friend’ was undertaking to pass on revenues. We can see now that in his letters to Rothschild Wright had hinted at some of the possibly embarrassing disclosures he was prepared to make, and that Victor probably alerted his friends in MI5. They probably then all agreed to a deal whereby Rothschild would help Wright in exchange for Wright’s silence over sensitive issues, especially those potentially damaging revelations about Rothschild himself. The story was primarily about Roger Hollis. The point was, however, that any embarrassing revelations could not be restricted to Rothschild alone. Intelligence high-ups were happy to delegate the project to the safe pair of hands – and deep pockets – of Victor Rothschild.

An Impossible Delivery

While it is tangential to the Rothschild story, I believe the delivery of Their Trade is Treachery merits further attention, since the timeline defies credibility. Perry wrote that Pincher had to fly to Tasmania in October to carry out further research with Wright, where he discovered that he would have to ‘discard Wright’s document of nine chapters – 9000 words in all, after the removal of the chapter on Rothschild’. Pincher returned to London, gained the enthusiastic interest of his publisher, William Armstrong, at Sedgwick & Jackson, and set to work. Yet the book was published as early as March 13, 1981. Pincher had managed, apparently from scratch, to compile a book of over 100,000 words, in a few months. Moreover, as Pincher wrote in his ‘Postscript’ to the second edition of the book (the version in my possession), he claimed that MI5 had gained a copy of the script ‘at least a week in advance and probably well before that’, which telescopes the gestation period even further.

My conclusion is that Wright and Pincher must have been collaborating on the book that turned out to be titled Their Trade is Treachery for some time beforehand. Pincher did not inform his publisher of his source, or of the Rothschild connection, and it simply seems impossible to me that he could have put together such a monumental (though wrong-headed) work in that time when he was the other side of the world from Wright, and, according to his account, had had to discard everything that Wright had written. My suspicions were reinforced when I went back to Pincher’s Treachery (2011), where he reported that there was ‘disappointingly little meat in the chapters I saw’, and, extraordinarily, that ‘there was no mention whatever of the Hollis case’. (In November 1986, however, Pincher told the Daily Express that Wright had shown him a list of traitors, including Hollis, with which he proposed to deal.) Pincher said that he had to take notes from the chapters, as Wright would not let him carry with him anything that could be traced to him. He claimed, however, that he was able to extract from Wright all he knew about Hollis in ‘nine long days’. He arrived back home on October 24, and started work on the book immediately. Pincher then claimed that he wrote the book in less than four months, and delivered the typescript on January 13, 1981.

Against this lies a timeline offered by Nigel West that makes the project look totally impossible. In Molehunt, he has Pincher arriving in Tasmania on October 19 for a visit lasting two weeks. Returning to Britain (‘carrying Wright’s draft manuscript’ [!]), Pincher next offered a two-page synopsis to his publishers, and signed a contract with Sidgwick & Jackson on December 12, 1980. Pincher himself wrote, in A Web of Deception (see below) that the contract did not become valid until December 23. On that same date, miraculously, Pincher wrote to his publisher, William Armstrong, that he was ‘nearing the end of my labors’, ‘incorporating Wright’s information with what I already knew’. (Yet, several years later, he was able to state that MI5 had been able to prove that Wright had been a major source for the book.) According to West, Pincher was unaware that a copy of his synopsis had been handed to MI5, but Pincher stated that he knew that the shorter, two-page version of the synopsis had been shown to Sir Arthur Franks, the head of MI6. Pincher continued to work on his manuscript, which he delivered, with required legal changes, at the end of January, 1981. That constituted a very productive effort right through the festive season. The question must also be asked: why was Pincher so quick to agree to dedicate 50% of his royalties to Wright if there was so little that was new, and Wright would not even hand over his notes? It reinforces my view that Their Trade is Treachery had been largely written before Pincher ‘met’ Wright at the Rothschilds in September 1980.

In any event, by my reckoning, the period between October 24 and January 13 is less than three months, so I do not know how Pincher performed his calculations, nor whence he derived his source material, if all he had was notes taken from talking to Wright. He does not explain what happened to the chapters that Wright brought over to show Rothschild. The comment about the lack of coverage of Hollis is bewildering, given what West wrote, the fact that that story was one of the features that provoked Rothschild’s interest, and the obvious truth that Wright had a big grudge against Hollis. (In fact Wright did not publicly denounce Hollis until his Granada TV appearance in July 1984.) In addition, Rose provocatively quotes a letter from Rothschild to Pincher, written in July 1980, where Rothschild was ‘so convinced of Hollis’s innocence’, that he warned Pincher ‘against a small number of people who have got the subject on the brain to the extent of paranoia . . .’.  If Rothschild and Pincher were discussing Hollis the month before Wright was summoned to the United Kingdom, what was their business, and who had already been feeding Pincher with the material for Their Trade is Treachery? Was it Wright’s testimony – and maybe threats – that changed Rothschild’s attitude towards the accusations against Hollis, and make him more supportive of them? It sounds like that to me.

Manipulation and Misinformation

Pincher was obviously duplicitous about the whole affair. He continued to claim that he had not met Wright until Rothschild introduced him that summer, and providing contradictory information about the material he had access to. Yet he needed an intermediary to maintain the fiction that he and Wright had not met before: else Wright could simply have contacted him about assistance with writing and publication. In Treachery, Pincher stated that he had ‘been looking for someone like Wright for forty years’, ignoring the fact that his books must have been dependent on carefully managed leaks from within MI5. In Molehunt, Nigel West wrote that Pincher ‘had few, if any, sources within the British intelligence community’, but then went on to describe incidents that plainly showed he was the beneficiary of multiple leaks. He craftily showed that an episode in Inside Story (p 153), could easily be traceable to Wright as the ‘dissident MI5 officer’ involved in Operation SATYR. If Pincher was already speaking to such dissidents ready to talk to him, why would he suddenly deny their existence when retelling the encounter of September 1980? In any event, a war of words, with Rothschild and Pincher both trying to control the narrative, would erupt after the fall-out from the publication of Their Trade Is Treachery, spilling eventually into the controversial cauldron of the Australian law-courts.

It was the possibility that someone in intelligence had been manipulating and encouraging the publication of damaging accusations against Hollis that aroused these contrary narratives. The case is best couched in retrospect by a discussion between Peter Wright and his counsel, Malcom Turnbull, in pre-Spycatcher trial discussions in late 1986. Wright had argued to Turnbull that he believed that the involvement of Rothschild somehow gave a degree of official approval to his disclosure of information. Kenneth Rose quotes what Wright put on the record:

I knew Lord Rothschild to be an intimate confidant of successful heads of British intelligence establishments. I could not conceive of him embarking on such a project without knowing it had the sanction, albeit unofficial, of the authorities.

I sensed I was being drawn into an authorised but deniable operation which would enable the Hollis affair and other MI5 scandals to be placed in the public domain as the result of an apparently inspired leak.

All I know about Lord Rothschild and the ease with which ‘Their Trade Is Treachery’ was published leads me to the inescapable conclusion that the powers that be approved of the book.

Now this may have been sophistical cant, and Turnbull correctly was cautious. After all, had Rothschild not warned MI5 about Wright’s plan to write ‘vengeful memoirs’? Moreover, Wright was initially reluctant to drag his friend into the morass. Much later, however, Rothschild told his biographer about an influential friend who had visited him in hospital some time between February and April 1980. This visitor suggested to him the plan that culminated in the publication of Their Trade Is Treachery. Rothschild would not say who that figure was. Rose reasoned that it was probably Maurice Oldfield, partly because both Dick White and Robert Armstrong denied their own involvement when he spoke to them about it, and both suggested that it was most likely Oldfield, who had been the head of MI6 between 1973 and 1978. Yet it was perhaps unprofessional and dishonourable of both gentlemen to accept so quickly that there had in fact been such a leak, and to accuse someone who had never worked for MI5, and who was no longer around. Oldfield had conveniently died in March 1981.

Sir Robert Armstrong

I suspect the man was much more likely to have been Dick White himself. He had been a notorious, though vaguely anonymous, informant to Andrew Boyle behind the scenes, as Nigel West describes in Molehunt, in the chapter ‘Cover-up’. He had a dishonorable track-record of diverting attention to Hollis in the series of searches for traitors within inspired by the CIA’s noxious James Angleton, and adopted by Arthur Martin and Peter Wright. In fact he had a habit of casting aspersions on his professional colleagues (e.g. Liddell, Hollis, Oldfield, Rothschild) – but only when they were deceased and thus not able to counter the charges. Be that as it may, Wright’s action in going public with his claims, effectively ‘throwing Victor to the wolves’, in his own words, immediately brought some harsh attention from the press. In addition, Wright coloured his affidavit with so many untruths and misinterpretations that he caused his erstwhile friend a lot of grief. Rose may have been a bit too convinced of Rothschild’s essential innocence, since he deplored Wright’s evidence that Rothschild had thus lured ‘an innocent patriot into disloyalty.’ Wright was by no means an innocent patriot, but Rothschild was certainly one who loved intrigue and conspiracies, and manipulating matters behind the scenes, as Wright accurately portrayed him.

The central question still must be: why would Rothschild expose himself to the very serious charge of abetting someone to break the OSA, simply as a way of gaining publicity for a cause (the denigration of Hollis and the praise for Rothschild) that might distract from the negative publicity that Rothschild was receiving? After all, here was a man of some stature, known to have brought in a real mole into MI5, and now seen to have helped two dedicated molehunters, equally obsessed with unmasking Hollis, in publicizing their philippics! It was that conundrum that prompted Paul Greengrass, a member of Turnbull’s defence team (and the eventual ghost-writer of Spycatcher) to share his suspicions with the CIA that Wright and Rothschild had been encouraged to collaborate by MI5 (i.e. by Furnival Jones), and to use Pincher as the medium. In other words, the British Government wanted Their Trade is Treachery to be published. Yet, if that were true, Rothschild displayed a large amount of naivety in accepting the gauntlet, knowing that the act would be denied should accusations to that effect ever take place. In that situation, however, he would hardly have wanted to encourage and abet the struggling would-be author to bring his thoughts and memoirs to the printed page, and he would probably have preferred to let him fade away in rural Tasmania.

‘Inside Intelligence’ by Anthony Cavendish

A further hypothesis was presented by Anthony Cavendish in his 1990 memoir Inside Intelligence. Maurice Oldfield had been outed by Chapman Pincher in 1987 as a practicing homosexual who had had his security clearance dropped in 1980. According to Cavendish, the only other two persons to whom Oldfield had confided his secret back then were Sir Robert Armstrong and Victor Rothschild. Cavendish speculated that Rothschild may have shared this knowledge with Pincher in an attempt ‘to take the heat off the Wright case’. Yet that strikes me as rather absurd. While it could be interpreted as the mirror-image of Oldfield’s encouraging Rothschild to pursue the Hollis disclosures as a means of diverting attention from his own predicament (see above), such attempts at distraction would probably have only raised the public’s interest in the obsessions of the authorities concerning secrecy, and their clumsy efforts in disinformation exercises. One can hardly imagine Rothschild’s using his friend in such a mean and petty fashion, even if Oldfield had been dead for six years.

The succeeding events can be read in Rose’s chapter ‘Spies and Spycatcher’. As I indicated before, the essence was that Rothschild had been brought to a measure of despair by the criticisms, and by a question in the House of Commons as to whether he had been the ‘Fifth Man’. He perhaps protested too much, looking for someone who might vindicate him, and point to his loyal service. He turned to his old friend, Dick White, but had become estranged from him. It is not a convincing tale. White told his biographer that he maintained close social relations with the Rothschilds in the 1970s, after he retired from MI6, and that he and Victor discussed and dissected MI5 ‘endlessly’ during the Whites’ visits to Cambridge. Why White should have been so indulgent to the Rothschilds, since he must have been familiar with the alarming information held in the MI5 files, is puzzling. He must have been very naïve, or simply complicit. And, if the two of them enjoyed endless congenial discussions about the predicament of MI5, it hardly seems likely that they would have stepped around the emerging Wright business.

White wrote to Kenneth Rose in January 1991 (i.e. the year after Rothschild’s death) that he had warned Victor, in the summer of 1980, to keep out of intelligence matters. “He was too close to Peter Wright. I told Victor that if this continued, Wright might ask him to do things that went too far and put him in danger. He resented my warnings and ceased to consult me.” Yet this was before Rothschild summoned Wright to England. Rothschild might have been trying to help Wright, but he was hardly ‘close’ to him any more. Why, at that stage, would the mighty Rothschild not have been able to resist any requests made to him by Wright? Moreover, since the revelations that Wright was threatening to disclose would embarrass White as much as they would Rothschild, it does not make much sense that White felt that he could simply distance himself from the whole project. White claimed that he had been offended when Victor did not consult him about the plot to bring together Pincher and Wright. Yet he would have had to say that, to protect his own reputation. White was almost certainly involved in the deception.

Later, Rothschild ended up writing a letter to the Daily Telegraph, published on December 5, 1986,requesting that the Director-General of MI5 ‘state publicly that it has unequivocal, repeat unequivocal, evidence that I am not, and never have been a Soviet agent’. That was absurd, histrionic, and illogical. Margaret Thatcher’s statement in response that ‘I am advised that we have no evidence that he was ever a Soviet spy’, was correct, as how could evidence to the contrary ever be collected? (Pincher would foolishly write that a record of Rothschild’s positive work for MI5 would have constituted ‘the unequivocal evidence’ he sought, forgetting that a similar statement might have been said about Philby.) It was not a vindication, but Rothschild had brought it upon himself. And the truth was more complex. Rothschild was never the ‘Fifth Man’. He had been careful never to purloin secrets and pass them on to an adversary, but he may well have been ‘an agent of influence’.

As a coda, Rothschild was required to submit to interrogation between January and April 1987, as a consequence of Wright’s testimony in the Spycatcher trial. The Serious Crimes Squad of Scotland Yard invited him to help with their inquiries in light of the fact it appeared that he had breached the Official Secrets Act. Remarkably, Rose’s account of the process is dependent largely on the records that Rothschild himself kept of the interrogations, and what he subsequently told his biographer of the proceedings. Rothschild did not acquit himself well, but then neither did his prosecutors. The latter had not challenged or inspected closely the truth of what Wright had said, and he was not about to come to the UK to give evidence in any trial. The outcome was predictable: the authorities did not want any further public laundering of their dirty washing. Despite Rothschild’s prevarications over his role, and the reputed introduction of Wright to Pincher, the Director of Public Prosecutions determined that there was no justification in bringing proceedings against Rothschild – or Pincher, who was also a subject of the inquiry.

Pincher’s Version

Pincher had a rather different take on the events. His opinion was coloured by a) the fact that Their Trade Is Treachery had not been quite the success he had hoped for, after Margaret Thatcher in March 1980 effectively dismissed his accusations against Hollis; b) his obsession over the guilt of Hollis; and c) his later irritation that Wright had broken off communications with him in 1984, probably because Wright had demanded some of the proceeds of Pincher’s following book, Too Secret Too Long, and had seemed committed to writing his own account of the affairs. He would probably mull ruefully over the fact that the mixture of truth and lies submitted by an insider (Wright, abetted by Pincher’s rival, Greengrass) had turned out to be commercially more successful than a similar medley by an outsider (himself). First of all, Pincher denied that there had been any secret deception project by which MI5 had conspired with Rothschild and himself to disclose truths that could not be stated publicly. When the publicity about the ‘Fifth Man’ crescendoed, Pincher misrepresented the controversy by first suggesting that the rumours emphasized that Rothschild had encouraged Wright ‘to give Pincher the information about Hollis so that the former MI5 chief would be exposed as the Fifth Man’, and then by demolishing this argument because Hollis had been at Oxford, and thus could not have been the last of the Cambridge Five.

He then disingenuously implied that he had been ignorant of the Hollis claims until Wright came along, claiming that Rothschild had known all about ‘the Hollis case as it unfolded in MI5 because Wright had kept him informed’Rothschild could (he wrote) have simply given the information to Pincher. Yet, as shown above, Rothschild did not believe in Hollis’s guilt, and Pincher had clearly been researching Hollis, with the help of Wright and others, long before the staged encounter in September 1980. Rothschild may have seen an opportunity to distract attention from himself, but it was not because he firmly believed in Hollis’s guilt, or that Their Trade Is Treachery was going to make a solid case about it. Pincher later described (in the chapter ‘Brush with the Police’, in Treachery) how Rothschild and he, while being interrogated separately ‘demolished Wright’s statements with insider table documents and facts’. How he knew how the Rothschild interrogations evolved is not stated.

Pincher had earlier expanded on the saga in his book A Web of Deception: The Spycatcher Affair, (1987) which is essentially a diatribe about Wright’s motives, activities, and pronouncements about the whole business, and a paean to the noble Lord Rothschild. (I discovered, acquired, and read this work only in the middle of August.) He offers a prolonged defence of Rothschild that is naive and misguided. He denies that Rothschild introduced Blunt to MI5, or that Rothschild was under surveillance at all after the disappearance of Burgess and Maclean. He attributes to Wright assurances that ‘Rothschild’s file in the MI5 Registry contained only material to his credit’, when, as my analysis below shows, that is simply not true. (How come your process of verifying what Wright told you did not work here, Chapman?) He is unable to imagine that his friend, with his ‘intellectual brilliance and flair for original thought’, could ever have done anything ignoble.

His main thrust, however, is that the authorities allowed Their Trade is Treachery to proceed out of a muddled concern for secrecy, rather than as an active conspiracy. Yet the volume is itself self-contradictory and evasive: for instance, the author claims that Rothschild was concerned about Wright’s ability to write his book in a professional manner when in fact the reason that Wright came to see him was because he felt physically incapable of writing the book himself. Pincher admits that the only texts that he brought from Tasmania were transcribed notes, and that Wright convinced him to mail them to friends in separate envelopes to avoid security detection. He states that it was Jonathan Aitken who first told him about Hollis, but not until the end of April, 1980. (And Aitken could not have known the whole story.) Pincher boldly declares that neither Arthur Martin nor Stephen de Mowbray had ever met him or given him any information. Dick White, on the other hand, openly stated that Wright had been Pincher’s primary source.

And his account of the final steps does not make sense. He absurdly claims that he was able to use the skills of a professional researcher (namely his son) to confirm most of Hollis’s information when he returned to London, and only then decided to write the book – something that must have taken additional weeks, of course. Elsewhere in the book, however, he sophistically states that, when he decided to write Their Trade is Treachery, ‘It was entirely as a means of placing on public record old history [sic!] which I felt to be in the national interest’ –pure humbuggery. Moreover he slipped up on several matters, such as the investigation by Lord Trend into the Hollis affair. How he was able to verify Wright’s claims, except perhaps by checking back with Wright’s old crony, Arthur Martin, is not stated. The book follows this vein throughout. In summary, A Web of Deception is exactly what the title says – but it was Pincher’s Web as much as it was Wright’s or that of the British authorities.

The conclusion must be that only a very detailed examination of the contrary claims in the testimonies of Wright and Pincher might lead to a clarification of what really happened. Too many lies were being told. Here were two charlatans, at daggers drawn, both with an unhealthily exaggerated and unmerited respect for Rothschild. That is beyond the scope of this article. The paradox is that Pincher’s role as an investigative journalist, in a world dominated by too much secrecy and by rules of confidentiality, is an extremely important one, but such a function has to be carried out with method, discipline and integrity. In that regard Pincher failed miserably. Yet it was Rothschild, after his clumsy and naïve foray into the world of investigative journalism, who was the person most harmed when his two admirers started to bicker and fall out. And White’s constant involvement with Rothschild, his own nervousness about what Wright might reveal, and his known desire to turn attention towards the hapless Hollis, all point towards his close collusion with Rothschild and Pincher. And that was the nub of the defence’s argument in the Spycatcher trial.

  • Agent of Influence

I dedicated Chapter 6 of Misdefending the Realm to the topic of Agents of Influence, focussing on Rothschild, Gladwyn Jebb, and Isaiah Berlin. I explained that such persons were careful never to place themselves in positions where they could be accused of handing over confidential documents, but instead worked behind the scenes to influence domestic policy, or to facilitate the activities of genuine spies. In that role they could in the long run be far more dangerous. In that respect, I outlined how the three gentlemen identified above abetted the progress of Stalin’s Englishmen, especially that of Guy Burgess.

On pages 140-144 of my book I described many of the facts about Rothschild’s career that are sprinkled around this report, including more details about Liddell’s negotiations with him when Rothschild had been working on matters of sabotage and unconventional warfare, as personal assistant to Sir Harold Hartley, for the government department MI/R. I also referred to a letter (cited by Andrew Lownie in his biography of Burgess) that Michael Straight had written to the journalist Michael Costello, claiming that it was Rothschild’s ties with Soviet Intelligence that had driven him to fund Wright’s enterprise with Spycatcher in a way that would totally exclude any such analysis or innuendo. I pointed out that Straight’s accusations should not be accepted unconditionally, although it was his evidence that eventually unmasked Blunt. Yet it was Rothschild’s continued association with and support for former Cambridge ‘Apostles’, primarily Blunt and Burgess, when it should have been apparent that their behaviour was suspect, that would more permanently taint him.

Ivan Serov

Moreover, in recent years, evidence from Russia itself has reinforced the idea of Rothschild’s role as an influential agent of the Kremlin. In 2013, the memoirs of Ivan Serov, who led the KGB from 1954 to 1958, and the GRU from 1958 to 1963, were discovered, and published in 2016 (Zapiski iz Chemodana). Serov had been one of Stalin’s most loyal servants, and supervised many of the repressive measures taken by the vozhd. A vital entry in Serov’s diaries appears from the year 1956, when he accompanied Khrushchev to London, and met Rothschild. It runs (see https://espionagehistoryarchive.com/2018/03/27/victor-rothschild-soviet-spy/ .)

I met Victor Rothschild only once, at the Embassy. This person was well-known from very long ago as an ‘heir’ to the Philby affair and others. He knew perfectly well that these people, having certain inclinations, were connected to us, and used them to pass on information to Moscow, including false information.

Serov was not impressed with Rothschild, possibly because he distrusted the sincerity of his information leakage: he also suggested that the connection to Rothschild compromised the loyalty of the spies in Moscow’s eyes. Moreover, the creation of Israel put an end to his usefulness, since Rothschild started to take up a strongly Zionist stance. In fact, Stalin had initially supported such goals, until he soon realized that the ferment was encouraging separatist and divisionist leanings at home. Zionism and Stalinism were suddenly in opposition, and Stalin quickly turned against any Jewish resurgence in the Soviet Union. Serov finally dismissed Rothschild as a ‘fellow-traveler’, one rung down on the ladder of Communist sympathizers, probably just above ‘useful idiot’, and praised instead such allies as ‘Bernal, Ivor Montagu, and major scientists’. He considered that Rothschild was someone who simply followed his own goals rather than owning loyalty to any group or creed – probably an accurate assessment. That was a line that Jonathan Haslam echoed in his Near and Distant Neighbors (2015), where, using Victor Popov’s 2005 monograph on Blunt, Sovetnik korolevy, he stated that Rothschild provided cover for the Cambridge Five while ploughing his own furrow.

An intriguing footnote is offered in Mark Hackard’s article, namely that Theodore Mally recruited Rothschild at a concert in London in August 1934. That claim was made by a retired KGB officer, Victor Lekarev, who had worked in the London residency. In 2007, he had written an article characterizing Rothschild as the ‘sponsor’ of the Cambridge Five. It can be viewed (in Russian) at https://argumenti.ru/espionage/n40/33679 , and shows how Rothschild, on the recommendation of Kim Philby, was encouraged to accept a free ticket to a concert where he met Mally, and was then recruited for some role with the OGPU. If we can trust what Lekarev writes, it would have been the ‘Cambridge Six’ if Rothschild had been recruited as a penetration agent, but, if only as an agent of influence, it would indicate that he probably knew about the statuses of the original Five. In any event, owing to his connections with the political elite (and eventual membership of the House of Lords in 1937), Rothschild was thereafter privy to much confidential information, and was able to exert his influence even on Churchill, claims Lekarev, who clearly categorizes Rothschild as an ‘agent of influence’. In his profile, he also indicates that Rothschild was actually working at Porton Down on bacteriological warfare when war broke out, a fact that I have not been able to verify, although an entry in Rothschild’s MI5 Personal File does confirm that one of his roles was to advise MI5 on that very topic. Lekarev also stresses how important Bentinck Place was as a rendezvous and location for the passing on of secrets, a claim that is probably exaggerated.

The conclusion might be that Rothschild had such a high opinion of his own ability to manipulate events that he was not a durable ‘agent of influence’ for any institution. His evolving political philosophies (communist, anti-fascist, socialist, Zionist, conservative free-enterpriser) reinforced that unreliability. Yet his undeniable actions supporting and abetting communist infiltrators in the 1930s and 1940s ensured that he did indeed play a malignant role helping Soviet goals in that critical period.

  • Zionism

Rothschild’s reputed support for Zionism has a dubious pedigree. After all, the Rothschilds were a prime example of a well-assimilated family, and Victor in many ways became a quintessential landed Englishman, augmented by his expertise at cricket and golf. He was a non-believer: Rose wrote that ‘he looked on religious belief with the confident agnosticism of a Victorian freethinker, a Huxleyan rationalist’. His first wife, Barbara Hutchinson, was not Jewish, and it was on the insistence of Victor’s grandmother that Victor’s fiancée converted to Judaism before the marriage, so that any offspring would be ‘Jewish’ (that attribute traditionally passing through the mother.) I find that doubly absurd: the notion of some racial-tribal identity being transferred through such an arrangement, and the obvious hypocrisy of a woman’s swiftly changing her religious beliefs to appease a misguided matriarch.

Being assigned the role of some figurehead for British Jews did not always suit Victor. In December 1938, after the assassination of Von Rath in Paris, he did write to the Times about the plight of persecuted Jews in Germany. Roland Perry, citing with apparent authority Guy Burgess’s KGB file No. 83792, declares that Burgess wrote to Moscow Centre in December 1938 to say that his boss in D Section, Lawrence Grand, had given him the task of activating Rothschild in a tactic to split the Jewish movement by creating opposition to the Zionists, who were represented by Chaim Weizmann.

On July 31, 1946, Rothschild gave a noted speech in the House of Lords in the wake of the Irgun terrorism in Palestine, specifically the murdering of ninety-one persons in the King David Hotel bombing. Rose dismisses it in one brief sentence as ‘a courageous but embarrassed attempt on his part to explain the historical background to the Palestine conflict and the murder of British soldiers by the Stern Gang’. Yet it was an equivocal and dishonourable display that calls for deeper analysis.

Rothschild started off by identifying the conflict he felt as a recent member of the British Army. “It was only a few months ago that he was a British Army officer”, he said. Yet he spent the war in MI5, and did not see combat (“even though one may not have been very near the front line”). “No Jew”, he continued, “can fail to feel despair and shame when confronted with the stark fact that his co-religionists . . . should have been responsible for the deaths of British soldiers”. “Co-religionist” is the language of a Foreign Office mandarin, not of a Jew, and in any case Rothschild himself demonstrated that not all Jews are Judaists. He next described his attitude towards Zionism, saying that he had never been a supporter of Zionism, or political Zionism (whatever that meant), and that he had never been associated in any way with Zionist organizations.

Yet he then effectively made a plea for the Zionist cause, assuming that he could accurately generalize about the mentality of ‘the Jews’ in Palestine. “Palestine”, he declared, “is the only country where the Jews, after 2000 years, have been able to get back to their business of tilling the soil and living on the land”, forgetting perhaps that the Rothschilds, in England, if not actually ‘tilling the soil’, had been able to live comfortably on their landed estates, and instead echoing the oversimplified trope about the Jewish diaspora. (Rothschild’s interests in soil-tilling were rewarded by his being appointed chairman of the Agricultural Research Council in September 1948.) Rothschild regretted that ‘the Jews, having found the Promised Land’, find their fields are ‘burnt and ravaged by gangs of marauding Arabs’. His plea sounds like an apology for terrorism and murder, and is unworthy. Moreover, his final statement was to sit on the fence: “I do not entirely share the aspirations of the Jews in Palestine”, as if he conceded that the displaced Arabs, who probably considered that the fields were ’theirs’, might be justified in their grievances about increased immigration, although he did not say so. It was not a very noble performance by the noble lord. It probably derived more from clumsiness than from deviousness, but Rothschild’s opinions were rapidly evolving at this time.

Rothschild’s House of Lords speech was designed as a response to the government’s recent proposal to split Palestine up into four areas, and allow 100,000 European Jews to be settled in the ‘Jewish Province’. In 1947 the United Nations Partition Plan was adopted, and in May 1948 Britain abandoned its mandate. The agency chartered with managing security in Palestine was the cross-departmental unit based in Cairo, SIME (Security Intelligence Middle East), led by an MI5 officer. When Palestine cased to be a British territory, however, responsibility for gathering intelligence in Israel/Palestine shifted uneasily from MI5 to MI6, and that had serious implications for Rothschild as well, in relation to where he tried to exert his influence. His views may well have been evolving to a more pro-Zionist stance: according to Christopher Andrew (p 364) Kim Philby was an energetic supporter of the terrorist campaigns as a way of undermining British imperialism in the region, and Rothschild may have owned a similar perspective. A note in Liddell’s diary dated January 22, 1948, reports that Rothschild had been dealing with Chaim Weizmann, the prominent Zionist publicist, who was becoming frustrated in his attempts to gain access to Attlee. Rothschild had advised Weizmann not to go straight to Churchill instead: furthermore, the Government was much more interested in ‘fixing things up with the Arabs’. (An intercepted conversation between Burgess’s mother Mrs. Bassett and Blunt from 1956 discloses that Weizmann had vigorously tried to convert Rothschild to Zionism, when Burgess had argued strongly against it, but the event was not dated. Blunt told Tess that he thought the debate had occurred ‘during the war’ at the Dorchester hotel.)

Rothschild’s Declaration, from KV 2/4531

For Rothschild had by then very openly changed his political affiliations. On January 20, 1946, he had made a very pompous public declaration (in Reynolds News) that he had joined the Labour Party. “We [ = who?] have come to associate with Conservative rule the following conditions: unemployment, undernourishment, unpreparedness, unpopularity abroad, unequal pay, education and opportunities, undeveloped resources, and lack of opposition to Fascism.” Given that a coalition government led by the Conservative Churchill had just concluded the war against Hitler, and that the United Kingdom had been the only country in Europe not to have been occupied by the Axis powers or to have declared neutrality, this was another ill-mannered, provocative and ingenuous statement that for some reason did not materially harm Rothschild’s reputation among the elite. He was gently rebuked by Petrie, since his political utterances might be in conflict with MI5’s neutrality on such matters, but Sir John Anderson wanted to keep him on, leaving it to his lordship’s judgment. (Why Anderson was influential at this time is not clear, since Churchill’s administration had by then been replaced by Attlee’s.) Rothschild resigned from MI5 on May 7.

  • MI5 & MI6 Postwar

MI6 records are of course not available. In MI6: Fifty Years of Special Operations, Stephen Dorril limits his references to Rothschild to his role as a conduit used by MI6 to pass on payments to the editors of Encounter. Guy Liddell’s Diaries offer a few insights into Rothschild’s involvement with MI5 after his resignation. I recall Peter Wright’s comments about Rothschild’s ‘intimate connections with the Israelis’, and wonder how serious Rothschild’s anxieties were at having his telephone tapped. Maybe MI5 knew of such relationships, and Rothschild was joking. Wright also referred to Rothschild’s work for Dick White and MI6 in the late nineteen-fifties, but these likewise represent murky goings-on. In his testimony in Australia, he stated that Rothschild had been involved in the MI6 plot to overthrow Iran’s Mossadeq. The excerpts available from Liddell are fragmentary, and do not by themselves offer a very cohesive narrative, so I simply record them in sequence.

Even before the war was over, Rothschild seemed to be plotting with Kim Philby for a future with MI6. On March 7, 1945, Kim came to Liddell, saying that he was anxious that Victor should work for Section 9 (his new counterpart-intelligence organization) while in Paris. Indicating that he already had approval for such a scheme (presumably from Menzies), Philby claimed that Rothschild had some very valuable contacts in the French capital, some of which had already proved to be useful. Liddell sounded guardedly alarmed, and promised to look into the matter. Two weeks later, having discussed the matter with Bobby Mackenzie (of the Foreign Office), he told Philby that it would not be a good idea. He minimized the value of Rothschild’s personal contacts (‘French officials’), and pointed out that Victor still had much to do with building up intelligence at home. His final comment was, however, again cryptic: “ . . . It was particularly important that Victor should not run paid agents in France, not because he would not do the job admirably but because it would spoil his usefulness if there was any sort of come-back.”

Whether Rothschild’s changing political views were related to the successful deployment of atomic weaponry, and the subsequent end to hostilities, is not clear. In May 1945, he had been occupied training the British Control Commission in Germany on counter-sabotage techniques, but when he returned home, he immediately started busying himself with scientific research. The Joint Intelligence Committee had proposed that efforts on scientific intelligence-gathering should be increased, and on June 29, Guy Liddell suggested to Stewart Menzies, the MI6 chief, rather cryptically that ‘there might be a place in all of this for Victor, both on the offensive and defensive side’. Liddell discussed the opportunity with Rothschild when he returned on July 31, Victor stating that MI5 had been too passive. In any event, Rothschild became very interested in the Nunn May case (concerning the passing of atomic secrets to the Soviets) when it blew up in September, and managed to join a highly-select committee to discuss security over atomic matters, strongly arguing that such aspects were not being addressed aggressively enough. How sincere his motivations were in getting close to the hub of affairs is not clear: on October 2 he downplayed his interest when speaking to Liddell, suggesting instead that he would tidy up some affairs and then write a history of his B1c unit.

Wallace Akers

On November 1, however, he renewed his vigorous campaign, saying that Wallace Akers, the director of the Tube Alloys project, was not taking security seriously enough. A month later he shifted his position, declaring to Liddell that he would more effectively work informally, exploiting ‘his own personal high-up contacts’, while accepting that such an approach would require the approval of some higher authority. What it appeared he wanted to do was highly irregular – snooping around in the laboratories to find informants who knew the political leanings of scientists like Nunn May. Was this a defensive move prompted by the threats to other spies? Such an idea should not be discarded completely. By mid-January 1946, it seemed that he was being successful. Petrie had approved Rothschild’s idea, and had agreed to write letters to Sir John Anderson and Edward Bridges to allow Rothschild to carry out his inquiries, the subjects of which include some novel uses of uranium that he hoped to learn from Lord Cherwell. And then, on May 9, Rothschild wrote a letter to Harker suggesting that his official connection with MI5 should be severed, while ‘he would of course remain at our disposal as adviser on scientific matters’. That was a generous gesture! He presumably had gained the authority he needed. Indeed, Liddell recorded in his diary on May 22 that the irritating pamphleteer Kenneth de Courcy was suggesting that Rothschild now had some kind of mandate from Menzies, the MI6 chief.

Richard Meinertzhagen

One of the most intriguing incidents at this time concerns Colonel Richard Meinertzhagen, a controversial figure suspected of fraud in many exploits. He was the uncle of Tess Mayor, Rothschild’s assistant (and eventual wife), but he also lived with Teresa (‘Tess’) Clay, a woman much younger, who assisted Rothschild on the ‘Fifth Column’ project with Eric Roberts. Clay was also a close friend of Victor’s sister, Miriam. Thus the connections with the Colonel were tight: Victor considered him a close friend. In November 1946, Clay reported to Guy Liddell that a representative from Irgun had approached Meinertzhagen, saying that the group would not execute any terrorist activities on British soil for fear it would jeopardize its fund-raising opportunities. Liddell noted that Meinterzhagen was known to possess sympathies with ‘Zionist revisionists’, a group which promoted expansion of Jewish settlements – even beyond the Jordan River.

Rothschild’s name does not appear for some time, but on September 24, 1949, when reports arrived indicating that the Soviets had successfully detonated an atomic bomb, he provoked a bizarre entry in Liddell’s Diary, which is worth quoting in its entirety: “Dick [White] saw Victor last night. The latter shares my scepticism about the Russian atomic bomb. He also takes the view very strongly, largely based on communications with Duff [Cooper], that a resurgence of Right Wing parties in Germany is the most serious menace at the moment. He thinks it might well lead to a tie-up with the Russians. Winston, I gather, takes a contrary view.” The ingenuousness and inanity of such utterings are bewildering. Klaus Fuchs’s confession was just about to burst out. On February 21, 1950, Menzies told Liddell (completely off the record) that he didn’t think the Russians had made an atomic bomb – an extraordinary admission from the head of MI6.

Yet Rothschild continued to snoop around, exploiting his previous rank and respectability. On January 27, 1951, he turned up at Liddell’s office, requesting a list of officers involved on atomic research. Liddell noted that ‘he will show it to Hans’ (i.e. Hans Halban, another shady character of dubious loyalty.) And there the record peters out. A few entries concern Rothschild’s behaviour in connection with the Burgess/Maclean fiasco, and I shall incorporate them into my study of Rothschild’s Personal File below. He was also involved with Liddell’s attempt, early in 1953, to find the spy Nunn May a job after the scientist was released from prison, but I do not believe his actions therein are of importance.

Overall, it seems that Rothschild transferred his allegiance to Menzies after his resignation from MI5, but facts about what he really accomplished are hard to find. For instance, rather alarmingly, Wright described Rothschild’s involvement with MI6 in these terms: “He maintained his links with British Intelligence, utilizing his friendship with the Shah of Iran, and running agents personally for Dick White in the Middle East, particularly Mr. Reporter, who played such a decisive role in MI6 operations in the 1950s.” Kenneth Rose, on the other hand, links Reporter, an important middleman to the Shah, to Rothschild only in the late 1960s, when Rothschild was head of Research at Shell, and was pursuing regular commercial opportunities in Iran. It sounds all rather careless and undisciplined to me. I notice that Stephen Dorril offers a contradictory comment about Sir Shapour Reporter, who worked for the Indian Embassy in Tehran, but ‘did not, as has been suggested [?], play a role in any operations’. He also records how enthusiastic a supporter of the Israeli cause Rothschild had been, but offers no details. Liddell’s diary comes to an abrupt close in May 1953 when he discovers that White has been appointed the new Director-General of MI5.

  • The Kew Archive:

Introduction

‘Red Tess’ Mayor

The files on Victor and Tess Rothschild (née Tess Mayor, known at Cambridge as ‘Red Tess’ because of her communist sympathies, whom he married, as his second wife, in August 1946) fall into two primary tranches. The first section primarily covers the period immediately after the abscondence of Burgess and Maclean in May 1951, and gradually peters out in 1956. After a brief flurry because of the Flora Solomon disclosures in 1961, the story picks up in early 1964, after Anthony Blunt’s confession, and exploits Tess’s close relationship with Blunt. This investigation carries on for several years, with new teams of officers brought in, before running out of steam in 1973, with an inconclusive but overall favourable verdict. Thus, if the earnest researcher was hoping to find here a comprehensive description of the Rothschilds’ interactions with the authorities, he or she will be disappointed.

What intrigues me is that the first entry in Rothschild’s Personal File (PF 605,565) consists of a letter created on March 21, 1951, in other words well before the disappearance of the pair who came to be known as ‘the missing diplomats’. It is a relatively harmless item, representing a communication from Victor to Guy Liddell and concerning the suitability of a Professor Collier, whom Rothschild knew as a Communist from his Cambridge days, for a position at the Agricultural Research Council that Rothschild headed. Yet it obviously caught someone’s eye (that of Liddell himself?). The letter could be interpreted as a diversionary exercise by Rothschild, as an attempt to convince his former boss of his anti-communist credentials while the investigation into the leakages in Washington, resulting in the suspicion that HOMER was Maclean, was heating up. The letter was probably inserted into the file when it was created, probably in May 1951. The PF number and the date the letter was written (not when it was received) appear in the structure of a red stamp, with room for a signature, a date, and a target, as well as a note that the letter should be copied into PF 46,567 – that, presumably, of Collier himself, whose file has never been released. Liddell’s rather weak and equivocal response is also included.

This is not the earliest entry in the file: others go back to 1940. Most are simply extracts from Rothschild’s personnel file at MI5, or other Security Service memoranda, recording such events as his introduction to MI5 by Liddell in May 1940, Victor’s own recommendation of Tess two months later, and his resignation in May 1946. His introduction of Anthony Blunt to Liddell is noticeably not included, although an important annotation by John Curry was inserted in September 1969. While Rothschild stated on his personal record form that he had been introduced by Guy Liddell, Curry pointed out that the lead for Rothschild had been orchestrated by a scientist and Trinity College contemporary, A. S. T. Godfrey, a friend of Brian Howard, who had recommended him to Curry. Godfrey was killed in action in Norway in 1942: it is not clear why Rothschild concealed this connection.

Award Recommendation for A. S. T. Godfrey

It is true that two further items from 1940 include the ‘PF 605,565’ stamp, but since the PF numbers were created sequentially, 605,565 belongs to the 1951 era. The two items (on Geoffrey Pyke, PP 983, and Claud Cockburn, 41,685) must have been copied from the original files at the time the Rothschilds’ file was being created. The Pyke item, especially, is of considerable interest, and I shall return to it later in this piece. Some items have been dredged out of much earlier files.

I identify several themes in the material on the Rothschilds:

i) The quite extraordinary level of surveillance, consisting of phone-taps and interception of mail, that was undertaken. It was not authorized against the Rothschilds directly, but they would have been extremely shocked had they learned of it. Yet MI5’s reaction was very sluggish.

ii) The readiness, under gentle pressure, displayed by Victor and Tess to make suggestions about possible Communist sympathizers they knew – especially at Cambridge.

iii) The high degree of self-importance and sense of entitlement shown by Victor, and the unjustified deference paid to him, especially when Peter Wright joins the team.

iv) The contradictory verdicts on Guy Burgess expressed by Victor, deprecating him one moment, the next having to admit that he used him as a financial adviser – a most unsuitable arrangement – and Victor’s highly dubious, even criminal, behaviour concerning investment tips.

v) Tess’s very provocative friendship with Anthony Blunt, and her duplicitous remarks concerning her awareness of his confession.

Surveillance

From what Peter Wright reported (see above) Victor Rothschild may not have been surprised by the fact that some of his mail had been intercepted, and his telephone chats occasionally tapped, but it appears that the surveillance was initiated vicariously. The activities of Guy Burgess were followed carefully in May 1951, and Blunt was one of his regular contacts. Thus a Home Office Warrant was requested for Blunt after the ‘diplomats’ disappeared, and the Rothschilds turned up frequently on the antennae, both in correspondence and on the telephone. This process went on for over ten years, and the warrant should thus have been renewed constantly. Furthermore, letters sent by Rothschild to Burgess from before the war were found in Burgess’s flat, as well as correspondence from Goronwy Rees that mentioned Rothschild, thus encouraging MI5 to believe that Victor and Tess might be able to help them with their inquiries. Kim Philby mischievously brought up Rothschild’s name as a close confidant of Burgess when he was interrogated. So did David Footman, when he was interviewed. It is possible that the Rothschild were on their guard whenever they spoke to Blunt, as Victor would have known how the Watchers operated.

A touch of pathos is attached to the process. Here was MI5, desperately concerned at tracking down what conspirators and colleagues of Burgess and Maclean may have been lurking in various organizations, but relying greatly on the most guilty candidates, Blunt and Rothschild, to provide names for them to investigate. Moreover, their methodology was almost hopeless. In the absence of suspects being caught red-handed, they knew that they would need a confession in order to convict. It had worked for Fuchs and Nunn May, but the highly incriminated Philby was resolute at not conceding anything to White or Milmo, and Blunt managed to avoid admitting anything until Michael Straight unmasked him twelve years later. (A spy, William Marshall, who had worked for Gambier-Parry in RSS, was actually caught passing secrets to a Soviet diplomat early in 1952, and sentenced to prison for five years – who remembers him now?)

The fact that Blunt had a very affectionate relationship with Tess Rothschild meant that they communicated frequently on the telephone, and M5 was able to pick up several hints at shared acquaintances from these exchanges. What is extraordinary is that some very perturbing letters exchanged between Rothschild and Burgess concerning Rudolf Katz were found at Burgess’s flat in June, and on July 17, 1951, Arthur Martin asked his boss, Dick White, whether Rothschild should be questioned about the relationship. On November 29, 1951, Arthur Martin picked up the issue again: apparently no move at all had been taken. Yet a delay at this time should probably not be interpreted as gross negligence: B Division was then very occupied with processing Goronwy Rees’s testimony, interviewing both him and Blunt, and expanding the dossier on Philby. If the records can be relied upon, however, it does not appear that Rothschild was interviewed until 1956, which does constitute an embarrassing lapse.

Investigations (1)

For several years the only entries in the file are extracts from other sources that tangentially mention Victor or Tess. Bentinck Street as a meeting-place began to arouse interest – mentioned by Philby in December 1951, by Cairncross in April 1952, and by Pope-Hennessy, who declared in January 1954 that he had seen Rothschild there with Burgess ‘alongside other curious people’, in the early days of the war. Yet MI5 still showed no interest in following up these leads with the Rothschilds, as if the junior officers had been instructed to hold off. The Katz connection appeared to have been forgotten completely. It was not until Goronwy Rees’s stunning articles appeared in the People in March 1956 that Victor could no longer avoid the awkward questions.

Victor’s first response was to take the initiative – and bluster. He wrote to Dick White, attempting to refute the first article by claiming that he had never known that Burgess had been a member of the Communist Party, that it was he, Rothschild, who had tried to cancel Guy’s visit to Russia in 1940, that he had reported Guy’s poor habits at Bentinck Street to the police, and that he had recorded his doubts about Burgess to the high-ups in MI5. He said that he had passed on to Special Branch and to MI5 his suspicions that there was something ‘fishy’ about Burgess, but not because of his communism. This was a shoddy performance by Rothschild: much later, in 1969, a note was put on his file that he had failed to volunteer any information about Burgess early in the cycle, and now he was putting up a very flimsy smokescreen. It is clear that Dick White (now Director-General) had recommended that Rothschild put his thoughts in writing after the two of them had discussed the matter, and Victor volunteered his availability for interview. Roger Hollis thus sent an invitation to him on May 4.

The result was that Courtenay Young (D1) at last interviewed Rothschild on May 23, 1956, and wrote his report a few days later, five years to the day since the disappearance of the miscreants was noted by MI5. Rothschild confirmed what he had written in his letter, adding a few details, and then, when asked by Young whether he could think of any persons who fitted the profile of similar figures in the Burgess entourage, he came up with Alister Watson and ‘Jennifer Hart’ [sic: actually ‘Jenifer Hart], who ‘used to say quite openly that she had been told to sever her connections with the Party and go underground’. Again, no action appears to have been taken: MI5 was next occupied with Tom Driberg’s recent visit to Moscow, and with his imminent book about Burgess. Blunt and Tess Rothschild discussed it on the telephone, and how it might embarrass Victor, and Blunt again brought up the matter of Katz, and Burgess’s providing financial advice to Victor’s mother. An excerpt from the book describing the arrangement appeared in the Daily Mail on October 19, 1956. MI5 gained all the inside information when Mrs. Bassett called Blunt about it, assisted by follow-up calls that Blunt made to Driberg and to Tess.

Extraordinarily, Burgess was involved with the subsequent negotiations from Moscow, by telephone and telegram. Rothschild was very upset about the claims made that Burgess had helped his mother financially, and denied them. Blunt called Tess again on October 20, and Tess declared that the story about Burgess’s role was essentially true, and that her husband could not reasonably deny it. Yet again, nothing happened. Mrs. Bassett had spoken to Guy on the telephone that morning: Guy could not understand why Victor was so upset. This is the last entry on file for almost a year. If MI5 did follow up on these highly provocative exchanges, there is no record of it. By then, some further personnel changes at the Security Service had probably hindered the investigation.

Investigations (2)

While the Rothschilds moved sedately on, MI5 experienced its discontinuities. Liddell had resigned in 1953, stung by his being overlooked for the Director-General position. White appointed Hollis as his replacement heading B Division. A largely new set of junior officers had to pick up the reins, but it seemed that White was not very eager to pursue an investigation into his long-time pal. Yet a major intelligence disaster had occurred that April, when Commander Crabb was assumed dead after inspecting a Soviet vessel on a diving expedition, and Anthony Eden demanded that the head of MI6 (Sinclair) be replaced. Much to the chagrin of Sinclair’s Number 2, in the summer Dick White was moved over to lead the sister service, and the dull but in no way nefarious Roger Hollis became Director-General of MI5 for a stint of ten years.

Still nothing more was initiated. One reason for the lack of action may have been the fact that the Rothschild file was not generally available to MI5 researchers. In a bizarre twist, a Mr. A. J. D. Winnifrith from the Treasury sent, about a year later, on September 25, 1957, a cautiously-worded letter inquiring whether a certain character involved with the Agricultural Research Council could be trusted not to disclose confidential information. He had to reveal the name of the person in a separate letter. It was Rothschild. This request sparked the interest of John Marriott and Courtenay Young, who of course retained some knowledge of the case from his current position in the reconstituted D Division responsible for counter-espionage. Young took a look at the file ‘which is limited to the head of R.5. and D.1 Mr Whyte’, and made some guardedly caustic comments about Rothschild’s reluctance to come forward concerning his connections with Burgess, and his assumed effort to protect himself. On October 11, John Marriott accordingly replied to Winnifrith that Rothschild ‘is slightly intolerant of bureaucratic red tape, and as he is a man of great wealth and assured position he is certainly no more likely than any other scientist to feel bound by the restraints imposed by the possession of secret information’.

The years went by. In September 1961 Rothschild took on a part-time job as head of Shell Research, and discussed security matters with Hollis, including his own security clearance. A random note on Rothschild’s file was posted by Evelyn McBarnet in D1 (now working alongside Arthur Martin) that drew attention to the financial arrangements with Burgess in 1937, which was now apparently causing some embarrassment to his lordship – although it is not clear how McBarnet learned that. And then Flora Solomon enters the scene, having indicated to Rothschild at the Weizmann Insitute that she believed Philby had been a spy. That provoked Arthur Martin to interview her, and afterwards speak to Rothschild about it. He posted a note on August 7, 1962, that describes relationships between Burgess, Philby, Blunt and Burn in a very confused manner, but it may have started his juices running. (Philby absconded from Beirut in 1963.)

Soon afterwards, however, another significant event had occurred. Blunt had confessed, and was undergoing more intensive interviews. Some desultory discussions took place, and Rothschild’s name came up more frequently in interviews with Blunt’s contacts (e.g. Edward Playfair, Isaiah Berlin, Stuart Hampshire), although without anything decisive occurring. On November 24, Hollis, accompanied by his assistant Director-General Furnival Jones, had a meeting with Rothschild, and it was Peter Wright (D3) who made his entry in the chronicle, reporting that Rothschild told them that he had learned about Blunt’s confession, but not from Blunt himself. He again mentioned Alister Watson and Jenifer Hart, as well as Judy Hubback (Hart’s sister) as potentially sinister figures from the Bentinck Street galère. And 1965 came to a close with Victor generously offering an opportunity for Wright and McBarnet to interview him and Tess. That same year, Roger Hollis had retired, and was succeeded by Martin Furnival Jones.

Disclosures and Explanations

It was only now, in early 1966, that the Rothschilds were essentially forced to open up. Yet the interview undertaken by Wright and McBarnet on January 27 involved, for the most part, only Tess Rothschild, with her husband joining towards the end. She offered dozens of names of leftish associates going back to her Cambridge days: maybe the outpouring was designed to overwhelm her interrogators. A further meeting was held on February 16, in which Victor offered more names, but dishonourably tried to transfer blame to Stuart Hampshire for not passing on to the authorities what he knew about Burgess’s communism. Peter Wright was able to explain that MI5 was now benefitting from the insights of KAGO (the defector Golitsyn), which may have alarmed the Rothschilds. Lord Rothschild also tried to defuse the Rudolf Katz problem by issuing a throwaway line about his mother, ‘who may have made a payment to Katz’. McBarnet instantly knew that Rothschild was concealing the major part of the story.

A further meeting was held on February 21, and by now the Rothschilds were having a ball, throwing out names and casting suspicions on a whole fresh cast of characters – known communists at Cambridge, or left-wingers who had moved on to posts in the Foreign Office or MI5 or were scientists of repute, such as Solly Zuckerman. The sleuths zealously wrote everything down, seemingly unaware that they were being manipulated. Rothschild agreed to speak to Flora Solomon again, to determine whether she would recall anything more about the Philby connection. And this set the pattern for some time: MI5 officers earnestly following up on these numerous leads, but relying on the Rothschilds too closely as sources. Wright had another intense discussion with Tess about the genuineness of Blunt’s confession. One of the revealing discoveries was that, in May 1939, Rothschild had issued a positive recommendation to the Admiralty that it recruit Alister Watson – one of the scientists he was now urgently denigrating. Blunt also revealed to Wright that he believed Dick White must have been the source who had told Rothschild about his confession, thus confirming my supposition.

Geoffrey Pyke

The discovery of the recommendation for Watson should perhaps have caused MI5 to revisit the Geoffrey Pyke business of 1942. Papers about Pyke, probably written by Peter Smollett, were found in Burgess’s flat in 1951. Rothschild had issued a stern warning about recruiting left-wingers like Pyke in sensitive security positions. Despite ‘the risk of MI5’s being seen as Colonel Blimps’, he had issued in June 1942 the following portentous message: “On the other hand, I feel that someone who combines extreme Left view with an erratic character should not be at Combined Operations headquarters which must, owing to the operational nature of its activities, be one of the most secret government departments. But, apart from PYKE’s erratic tendencies, the authorities may not feel happy at the thought that somebody whose first loyalty may be to Moscow rather than this country is in a position where he may well get information of considerable interest to Moscow and which the Government may not wish them to have at the moment. This latter point affects Professor J.D. BERNAL as well.” This declaration by the man who had succeeded installing Blunt in MI5 a couple of years before was either stupid, hypocritical, or simply devious. It certainly was not honourable. Geoffrey Pyke was an inspired Jewish-atheist scientist (like Rothschild) who committed suicide in 1948. It seems that the entry was not retrieved from Rothschild’s rather inaccessible file until 1973.

In any event, the pattern continued, with Rothschild trying to help as much as he could in identifying further Soviet agents. In July 1966, Rothschild told Wright he was happy to use deception in order to get more out of Stuart Hampshire. After speaking to him at length, Rothschild recommended that Hampshire be grilled by MI5 over his dealings with Blunt and Burgess. The years dragged on. Rothschild’s security clearance was under review. Alister Watson confessed in March 1968. The same month, Rothschild told Wright that he had heard about the ‘PETERS’ inquiry, and alarmingly indicated that he thought Hollis was a better fit, since he matched more closely to the Volkov description. Telephone conversations between Blunt and Tess continued to be tapped. Wright and McBarnet continued to be consumed with essentially fruitless investigations, hoping to find some more Watsons. When H. P. Milmo (the interrogator of Philby) pointed out in May 1969 that Rothschild might be a security risk, B. Palliser shrewdly responded that ‘It also seems to have become almost a legend that he and Tess are above suspicion while others, with lesser “crimes of association” are considered suspect.’

It was not until the beginning of 1970 that someone in MI5 started to reflect that the integrity of the Rothschilds was perhaps not as strong as the service had hitherto believed it to be. The report is dated January 19, but the name of the author (K3) has been redacted. (It was almost certainly B. Palliser). It is a very accurate summary of the prevarications and untruths perpetrated by Victor and Tess, and it points to the possible exposure that MI5 has drawn on itself by entrusting to these two persons so much information about the investigation when the behaviour of the Rothschilds themselves casts a large amount of suspicion on them. Yet still nothing happened. Rothschild continued to pass aspersions on Flora Solomon: other leads, such as Henderson (one-time brother-in-law of Alister Watson) and Professor Jack Plumb were assiduously followed up.

By now, Peter Wright and the Rothschilds were on much more intimate terms, with Victor sending letters addressed to ‘Dear Peter’. Wright may have been shielding the couple from any closer inspection. After Rothschild was appointed by Edward Heath to head the Central Policy Review Staff in early 1971, Rothschild apparently wanted a phone tap placed on a Mr. Jones (PF 41186, not identifiable as such, but no doubt the Communist union leader Jack Jones, who had served in the International Brigades in Spain). Such a move might have caused concern at the Home Office. Wright was able to record, when doubts about his reliability were voiced by the Deputy Director-General: “I am confident that Rothschild is under control, and will not do anything to damage this Service’s relationship with the Home Office. He gave me the most solemn assurance that he would not.” It is astounding that senior MI5 officers would rely on such an informal and personal guarantee from someone such as Wright, who clearly believed he was in a privileged position. In an unnerving and significant aside, in December Tess called Peter Wright to let him know how alarmed she has been on reading the galley-proofs of Goronwy Rees’s A Chapter of Accidents.

Richard Llewelyn-Davies

Thus the last lap started. Early in 1972, Patrick Stewart was introduced to the project. Yet his detailed discussion with Rothschild concerned the Llewelyn-Davieses, about whom the ‘K/Advisor’ (Peter Wright, who had gone on a trip abroad) had expressed concern, since the investigation was moving too slowly. It was a sensitive issue. Richard Llewelyn-Davies had been a colleague of Rothschild and Blunt at Trinity, and a member of the Apostles. His wife, Patricia, had had a short marriage to Rawdon-Smith, was a resident with Tess (then Mayor) at Bentinck Street, and had married Llewelyn-Davies in 1943. Richard had been a habitual visitor at Bentinck Street. But his wife was an important member of the Labour Party, and had been made a peeress in her own right. Moreover, as Rothschild himself declared to McBarnet and Wright, she had had an affair with Anthony Blunt before her divorce from Rawdon-Smith, an experience that she would probably have wanted to be kept secret. Given the imagined resistance of Lady Llewelyn-Davies, Furnival Jones had thought that Rothschild might be the one person who could arrange an interview with Llewelyn-Davies. Rothschild shared the concern about Patricia creating a scene, while stressing the belief that neither he nor Tess believed that Richard had been involved in any sinister activities. No doubt he was happy that the focus of MI5’s counter-subversion investigations was directed elsewhere.

Patricia Llewelyn-Davies

In February, Stewart had to call off the surveillance. Rothschild had spoken to Llewelyn-Davies, who had been hostile and very averse to submitting to an interview. Yet Victor managed to make sway by invoking the wiles of Tess. When E. W. Pratt (K3.0) and another officer (K3.7) visited Tess, she put on a show. After stating that they had agreed with Peter Wright not to discuss the Llewelyn-Davieses, since they were close friends, she confirmed her keenness on the investigation, how important it was to check out those who had been close to Philby, Blunt and Burgess, how wrong they had been over Blunt, and thus could be wrong again, and that such persons would now be at the peak of their careers. She was at her most feline. She dropped a few other hints, and they arranged to talk again in about a month’s time. K7 (his name redacted) did some further digging around on Tess, and re-discovered the duplicitous way that she had shown how she learned that Blunt had been a spy . . .

For some reason (maybe simply because of a passport renewal request), MI5 next investigated Victor’s first wife, Barbara, who had married the left-winger Rex Warner, but then divorced him, and had in 1961 married a Greek named Ghika. In May 1972, after Rothschild’s assistance, Pratt and Stewart did at last manage to interview Llewelyn-Davies, who was deemed to have held back when his own activities were concerned. Only brief extracts have been supplied, in which Llewelyn-Davies was shown to have misrepresented Rothschild’s joining the Apostles, which actually happened while Llewelyn-Davies was still a member at Cambridge. And there the file ends. Nothing from the momentous 1970s, with Goronwy Rees feeding Andrew Boyle for The Climate of Treason, and the further headwinds that Victor Rothschild would face, and nothing about the ‘Spycatcher’ fiasco, which is where my story started.

Rothschild’s Self-Importance

Victor Rothschild’s behaviour consistently showed an arrogance that probably derived from his ill-conceived notion of superior social status, and what it meant in terms of duties and obligations. On October 4, 1957, Courtenay Young, commenting on Lord Rothschild’s selective memory when recalling his associations with Guy Burgess, and especially the matter of financial advice, minuted: “It is possible a fair assumption from paragraphs 4 and 5 above that Lord ROTHSCHILD thinks that the State has responsibilities towards him rather than he towards the State.” Aspects of this egotism can be seen in other significant actions. He is recorded as not responding to requests from Petrie on important matters. When in December 1945 he wrote to Guy Liddell, announcing his proposed resignation from MI5, he attached to the letter certain conditions about his continuing role as part-time Scientific Adviser, including the statement: “None of these proposals requires any explanation”. Liddell replied meekly. Petrie had apparently rejected these proposals already: nevertheless Rothschild sent him a note at the end of the year effectively telling him what he should do. His approach comes across as pompous and superior, but he obviously did not think that normal rules of conduct applied to him.

That incident was followed by his ill-conceived explanation of why he had joined the Labour Party, published in Reynolds’ News in January 1946. Now it was Petrie’s turn to be meek. Instead of sending him scurrying away for his ill-mannered piece of self-promotion – which clearly broke the rules for MI5 officers to be non-political – Petrie discussed the matter with Sir John Anderson, who likewise opted for appeasement. Sir John would have preferred it had Rothschild not become involved in politics, but obviously believed that having him at hand outweighed the disadvantages. Yet they left it to Rothschild himself to judge whether his activities ever conflicted with his MI5 duties: if he judged it so, he should come to Petrie to declare the fact! And if Petrie or his successor ever believed that such a conflict was happening, Petrie ‘would send for him, and deal with him accordingly’. Lord Rothschild was not deterred at all by the prospect of being summoned to the Headmaster’s Study for a beating: he thought this ‘a perfectly fair arrangement’.

A third episode consists of his request for a false passport. As his involvement with Israel became more intense, and his international travel increased, he became more concerned about his personal safety – especially after the Marks and Spencer bombing incidents in 1969. In September of that year he thus asked Peter Wright, during a routine meeting with him, whether he could arrange a false passport for him, so that he could travel around the world incognito. Wright acted on the matter, and took it up with Denis Greenhill, who looked into precedents. R. G. I. Elliott went to the Passport office to help gain approval. The matter eventually reached Sir Stanley Tomlinson, ‘Supt. Under-Secretary of the Immigration and Visa Department of the Foreign and Colonial Office’. The support of Dick White was invoked. Yet in February 1970 the request was turned down. There was no peacetime precedent for granting a false identity to a private person, with multiple risks involved. Surely the matter would have been despatched much sooner if the applicant had not been Lord Rothschild.

The reciprocal of this behaviour is that MI5 overall showed Rothschild far too much deference. Occasionally, as I have shown above, a junior officer such as Palliser or Young would hint at the way he was treated differently from any other individual who deserved investigation, but it was if such initiatives were immediately quashed – perhaps by Dick White, Rothschild’s old crony, as if a member of the House of Lords must be beyond reproach. White may have exerted his influence from MI6. Each time a new semi-crisis struck the Rothschilds (e.g. the Burgess letters, the Driberg book, the Philby defection, the Blunt confession, the Rees articles, the Golitsyn disclosures, the Rees memoir), a flutter of fresh interest occurred, but was swiftly suppressed, and no action was taken. And when Peter Wright came on to the scene, Rothschild immediately gained a devoted admirer who could see no wrong in his impressive lordship. It was like Basil Fawlty fawning over the confidence trickster ‘Lord Melbury’.

Burgess as Financial Advisor

One of the most embarrassing episodes for Victor Rothschild was his engagement of Burgess as a financial advisor to his mother, a fact that he strenuously tried to play down. MI5 apparently gained its first lead in a recorded interview with David Footman, who stated that Rothschild had paid Burgess £200 pounds for some service around 1937. That was on June 18, 1951, just after the Burgess/Maclean escapade. The name of Rudolf Katz came up from testimony by Goronwy Rees, and MI5 was able to establish from Katz (now living in Argentina) that he had claimed to help the French branch of the Rothschild family on banking problems [!], and had known Burgess well in the 1936-1938 years, contacting him several times. A letter found among Burgess’s effects was addressed to Burgess’s mother, dated March 31, 1937, and constituted the first of his ‘reports’ that he had apparently been contracted to supply. He regretted not answering sooner, but stated that he had been waiting for a list of investments. That Victor was involved is shown by a confirming letter that Burgess wrote to him the same day.

Rothschild’s complicity had been proved by another letter, from Victor to Guy, written on February 3, 1937, in which Rothschild approved the arrangement of hiring Katz at £50 Pounds a month. Victor insisted on the utmost secrecy and discretion over the arrangement, and asked that Guy destroy the letter – an instruction that Guy impishly ignored. Victor then mischievously asked Guy (working at the BBC) whether he knew which of two technologies the BBC would be selecting for its television launch – ‘quite an important thing from an investor’s point of view’. Now, in 1937, insider trading may not have been considered as outrageous as it would be a few decades later, but this was a highly unethical move by Rothschild. A further possibly egregious example followed on February 5, where he thanked Guy for some tips on selling Rolls-Royce shares, over which he boasted at having performed well. He enclosed a check for the Rolls-Royce transaction, and warmly signed his missive ‘Love, Victor’ – perhaps an over-cosy manner of greeting to one’s financial advisor.

An extraordinary aspect of these letters is that the files indicate that they were found ‘at the Courtauld Institute of Art by Professor A. F. Blunt in Nov. 1951’. Was Blunt’s negligence in not destroying them, or facilitating their coming to MI5’s attention, a way of dragging Rothschild with him into the pit in which he had fallen? Amazingly, these revelations triggered no action. It was five years later, after Driberg’s visit to Guy in Moscow, and a rumour in the Daily Mail, that Guy’s mother, Mrs. Bassett, admitted in a telephone call to Blunt that the story was true, even confirming the payment over the Rolls-Royce advice. When Blunt alerted Tess Rothschild, she told him they would sue if the claims appeared in Driberg’s coming book about Burgess. Soon afterwards, Blunt again called Mrs. Bassett (who was in regular contact with Guy at the time), and told her that Rothschild was very upset, and had denied there ever having been regular payments to Guy. (Had Blunt actually read the letters?) Driberg had written to her that Guy had assured him that Victor knew nothing about the transactions with Victor’s mother, which comforted Mrs. Bassett, but was an unlikely story. Meanwhile, Tess and Blunt had agreed that silence was the better course: they had convinced Victor of such action, since they reminded him that the story was essentially true.

Tom Driberg

Driberg’s book Guy Burgess: a Portrait with background duly appeared. It recorded Mrs. Rothschild’s delight with the tips of her Marxist financial adviser, including the sale of some Latin-American railway companies, and the investment in Rolls-Royce, from which Victor had also handsomely benefitted, and paid his friend £100. Driberg reported the £100 monthly allowance given to Burgess, but failed to mention Rudolf Katz or any insider information concerning the B.B.C. So Rothschild escaped relatively unscathed. There was no lawsuit.

Again, so much vital information gathered by intercepts, but no action taken. Ten years later, in February 1966, when the Rothschilds were interviewed by McBarnet and Wright, Victor admitted that Burgess had introduced his mother to Katz, and that his mother ‘might’ have made payment for financial advice. It was part of his pattern at this stage to disparage Burgess when he could, such as claiming that he ‘was a failure in everything he did’. It was four years later, however, when the first serious assessment of the Rothschilds’ prevarications and evasion was made, in the famous report by K3 of January 19, 1970. Yet this eloquent report entirely overlooked the Katz/Burgess business. Later that year, in December, the testimony from KAGO (Golitsyn) brought Katz to the forefront again, and a memorandum on expanded ‘rings’ of spies suggested that ‘Rothschild, his wife, and Blunt’ might be members of the ring (the author obviously not privy to the fact of Blunt’s confession several years before). Palliser’s magnificent summarization of the Rothschilds’ casebook in January 1971 included observations to the effect that Victor’s February 1966 evidence was dishonestly presented, but the detail is swamped by more urgent accusations in the report.

Rudolf Katz

Lastly, out of the blue, appears a brief biography of Rudolf Katz, sent on October 13, 1971 by K3 to the Liaison Officer in Washington – presumably forwarded to the FBI. Katz had been a member of the Communist Party in Germany, who had fled the country and met Burgess in Paris in 1935. It confirms that, late in 1936, Katz was introduced by Burgess to Rothschild and his mother, whose financial adviser he became, working through Burgess. Early in 1937, he left for Argentina, but continued to communicate regularly with Burgess on the project. He returned to the UK in 1937, but was expelled in 1940 because of suspicions of espionage. (The bio also mentions that letters between Katz and Burgess were found among Burgess’s letters, but I do not believe they have been released.) Katz misled the FBI when interrogated in New York in 1951.

In summary, the whole Burgess/Katz saga represents a lamentable failure of due diligence – the concealment of records, the constant cycling through of fresh recruits who do not know the whole story, no doubt the careful admonitions from on high not to pursue some matters too energetically. Rothschild was engaging in very foolish, dubious, even illegal, behaviour – and he knew it, to the extent of wanting his correspondence destroyed. The fact that it was not, and that maybe Burgess and Blunt wanted to subtly bring Rothschild into the same hell that they had created for themselves, but were unable to achieve it, is remarkable, pointing toward the inefficiencies of MI5 and the irrefutable advantages of being a peer of the realm.

Tess and Blunt

Lady Rothschild

Tess Rothschild and Anthony Blunt had a very affectionate relationship: at one stage Blunt confessed that she was the only woman he could have married, and they conversed on the telephone regularly. Tess clearly felt warmly about Blunt, too. And when Tess became increasingly under MI5’s microscope late in the cycle, in 1970 and 1971 (if the attentions they directed to the Rothschilds warrant such a metaphor), the junior officers started looking at patterns of activity afresh.

The first report is the famous anonymous K3 report of January 19, 1970, which declares that Tess Rothschild ‘in particular has not been entirely frank with us’. It then goes on to state that, sometime before November 1965, Victor was informed of Blunt’s confession to espionage – by someone whose name he did not disclose, but it was not Blunt. Rothschild added, however, that he had told his wife, who was apparently very upset, and told her husband that she could not have Blunt in her house again. Yet, when she was subsequently interviewed, she claimed not to know about Blunt’s espionage, and displayed her distress afresh. The report then went on to list several other insights that Tess had offered, such as her knowledge about Jenifer Hart’s instructions from the Party, her awareness of Stuart Hampshire’s doubts about Blunt, her knowledge of Cairncross’s confession to espionage, as well as tidbits about other prominent leftists at Cambridge, including Jack Plum.

As I have recorded, little notice was taken of this incisive statement. It was the November 29 1965 memorandum by Peter Wright that explained that Rothschild had had a meeting with Hollis and Furnival Jones a few days before, and had admitted that he had been told about Blunt’s confession. According to Victor, he had passed on the news to Tess, who was ‘very upset’, refused to have him in her house again, and when, a short time afterwards, Blunt invited himself to stay, she fobbed him off with an excuse. It was the alert B. Palliser who picked up the Hollis discussion in his report of January 27, 1971. He recorded that it was just two months later, on January 31, 1966, when McBarnett and Wright interviewed Tess, and she showed ‘utter astonishment’ at Blunt’s guilt. (This account clearly nullifies Wright’s imaginative tale in Spycatcher, which was clearly designed to provide exculpatory cover for the indiscretions of White and Rothschild.)

One might have expected the Rothschilds to have planned their little charade rather more carefully, but the error appeared not to hurt them. Why Rothschild was not pressed to declare who his informant had been, and under what conditions the confidence had been passed on, is also surprising. It is perhaps ironic, and rather sad, that, while junior officers in MI5 could not be trusted to know that a prime suspect, interrogated multiple times over the years, had eventually confessed to his espionage for a hostile power, it was inappropriate for some of the junior officers to be informed of this breakthrough.

  • Conclusions
Lord Rothschild

Somewhere between White’s Club and the Ark of the Covenant, between the Old and the New Testament, between the Kremlin and the House of Lords, he had lost his way, and been floundering around ever since. Embedded deep down in him there was something touching and vulnerable and perceptive; at times lovable even. But so overlaid with the bogus certainties of science, and the equally bogus respect, accorded and expected, on account of his wealth and famous name, that it was only rarely apparent  . . . .  this Socialist millionaire, this Rabbinical sceptic, this Wise Man who had followed the wrong star and found his way to the wrong manger – one complete with chef, central heating and a lift. I think of him in the Avenue Marigny dictating innumerable memoranda, as though in the hope that, if only he dictated enough of them, one would say something; on a basis of the philosophical notion that three monkeys tapping away at typewriters must infallibly, if they keep at it long enough, ultimately tap out the Bible. After the war I caught glimpses of him at Cambridge, in think-tanks, once in the Weizmann Institute in Tel Aviv, still dictating memoranda. (Malcolm Muggeridge, in The Infernal Grove, p 222)

I doubt I have ever met a man who impressed me as much as Victor Rothschild. He is a brilliant scientist, a Fellow of the Royal Society, with expertise in botany and zoology, and a fascination for the structure of spermatozoa. But he has been much, much more than a scientist. His contacts, in politics, in intelligence, in banking, in the Civil Service and abroad are legendary. There are few threads in the seamless robe of the British establishment which have not passed at some time or other through the eye of the Rothschild needle. (Peter Wright, in Spycatcher, pp 117-118)

It was a most monstrous smear of a most distinguished scientist and public servant, then aged, sixty-nine, whose zoological work had earned him a Fellowship of the Royal Society, whose wartime work had merited the George Medal for bravery, who had headed the research team for Shell International, chaired the Agricultural Research Council for ten years, formed and headed the Government’s first ‘Think Tank’, and been chairman of Rothschild’s bank . . .

Because of his intellectual brilliance and flair for original thought, Rothschild was appointed head of the Government’s ‘Think Tank’ in Downing Street by Edward Heath in 1971, with Sir Robert Armstrong as his principal private secretary. He underwent stringent positive vetting for the post, which would give him access to many secrets, with no difficulties whatsoever. MI5’s own list of his contributions to the security of the nation was considered to be a sufficient guarantee of loyalty in itself. But later, when he was under public attack, MI5 was not prepared to state this in his defence, even through the Prime Minister. (Chapman Pincher, in A Web of Deception: The Spycatcher Affair, p 9 & p 144)

A complicated man who had early on rebelled against the burdensome destiny his banking dynasty had defined for him, Rothschild had a somewhat ambivalent attitude towards Moscow: the cause might be just, but everything had to be on his terms. (Jonathan Haslam, in Near and Distant Neighbors, p 82)

He was proud of being Jewish rather in the way Disraeli was; he saw the romantic and tragic history of the Jews as conferring upon them a natural aristocratic lineage. And he regarded the princely role which his family have played among the Jewish people as a source of both pride and responsibility. (Lennie Hoffman, only Jewish eulogist at Rothschild’s memorial service)

For someone as smart as Victor Rothschild (who liked to remind his colleagues of his high I.Q.) to perform so many foolish acts was perhaps a surprising phenomenon. Yet, as the judgments of various MI5 officers recorded in this piece confirm, he regarded himself as unconstrained by the normal boundaries of behaviour, owing to his intellect, rank, wealth, and contacts with the people wielding real power. If any of the above officers had had the opportunity to confront him with the evidence of wrongdoing that they carefully had written up, he might have replied: “Don’t you realize who I am?”, and the wretched underling would have been the victim instead, being sent to the Registry, or some backwater in the dominions. For Rothschild had his protectors, and Dick White was certainly a prominent one.

Yet what could MI5 have done to close out its investigation? So he abetted spies, none of whom had been convicted in a court of law, and two of whom had confessed in a meaningless plea deal. He had not told the truth about his financial agreements with Burgess, and perhaps naively introduced Blunt to MI5. But he had helpfully shopped many other left-wingers, which was what MI5 wanted out of him. There was no point in trying to prosecute him for vague charges of assisting a foreign power, and the investigation at the end of his life initiated by the Director of Public Prosecutions into violation of the OSA concluded that no case could be made for pursuing it with legal charges. There were far too many other skeletons in the closet.

Rothschild frequently did not tell the truth. He was not a congenital or a habitual liar, but he was an occasional one – just like Rees, Blunt, Philby, Berlin, Pincher, Wright, White, Armstrong, and others who believed that some dissimulation was an essential part of preserving their careers and their reputation, and protecting the institutions which they served. And he probably believed that whatever particular underhand venture he was embarking on at any time was an honourable pursuit, with valid goals. He was essentially an intriguer, who gained his excitement from backstage manipulation and deviousness. When in August 1969 J. E. Day of MI5 (K7) interviewed at her home in Shaftesbury Jane Archer (née Sissmore), the celebrated Soviet expert who had worked for MI5, had been dismissed, had worked for Philby in MI6, and had then returned to MI5, she explained that she had been invited once to Rothschild’s home, and felt honoured. Yet all he did was to pump her about her run-in with Jasper Harker, and she felt demoralized and insulted. Rothschild was nothing but an intriguer, she said.

Malcolm Muggeridge, with his mixture of native cynicism and Christian sanctimony, was probably much closer to the truth about the essence of Rothschild than were those two impressionable scallywags Pincher and Wright. Yet the aura that this pair detected was real, and inhibited any incisive action by MI5. By the time Blunt confessed, the important culprits were all sewn up. The damage had all been done much earlier, and the molehunts were largely a waste of time, an exercise in self-flagellation. Rothschild’s misfortune after that was due to his arrogant belief that he would be safe and inviolate above intrigues that he could not control – the wiles and devices of investigative journalism.

(Latest Commonplace entries can be seen here.)

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Special Bulletin: ‘The Conundrum of N. M. Borodin’

‘One Man in His Time’, by N. M. Borodin

In the July 26 issue of the Times Literary Supplement appeared a review of One Man in His Time, a memoir by one N. M. Borodin. Originally published in 1955, the volume has recently been re-issued by the Pushkin Press, and claims to tell the life-story of a Soviet microbiologist who defected in the United Kingdom in 1948, but delayed writing his memoir until after Stalin’s death in 1953. I present the review below: for those with access, it can be read at https://www.the-tls.co.uk/lives/autobiography/one-man-in-his-time-n-m-borodin-book-review-alexandra-popoff/.

Alexandra Popoff’s Review: Spectator, July 26, 2024

The name of a defector ‘Borodin’ was vaguely familiar to me. I recalled seeing his name somewhere in Guy Liddell’s Diaries. Yet it was very difficult to find other published information about him. Nigel West has listed him in a couple of places – but states his place of defection as Vienna in his Dictionary of Cold-War Espionage. Kevin Riehle does not mention him in his definitive work Soviet Defectors. Riehle’s work, however, concentrates on staff officers of the Soviet Union’s intelligence services, and, since Borodin was attached to a trade mission like Victor Kravchenko (of I Chose Freedom), does not meet Riehle’s criteria. I thus decided to order the book forthwith, and started digging around in my electronic archives.

Two weeks later, a letter on Borodin by that tenacious chronicler of early twentieth-century Britain, Richard Davenport-Hines, appeared in the TLS (see https://www.the-tls.co.uk/regular-features/letters-to-the-editor/awkward-posture/) . It added some fascinating insights concerning Borodin’s associations with Britain’s secret agencies, as well as his relationship with an author whom Davenport-Hines classifies as ‘English modernism’s finest novelist’, Henry Yorke, who wrote under the alias Henry Green. (I find Green unreadable, but that is neither here nor there.)

Richard Davenport-Hines’s Letter: Spectator, August 2, 2024

By this time, I had completed a first pass at performing my own research on Borodin, and quickly wrote a letter to the Editor of the TLS, which I emailed on August 7. I present the text here:

I should like to augment Richard Davenport-Hines’s fascinating observations on N. M. Borodin and Goronwy Rees (Letters, August 2). I believe that the events were a little more sinister than represented in the description by Mr. Davenport-Hines.

On January 19, 1948, Anthony Blunt (whose expertise in bacteriology has been a well-protected secret) came to see Guy Liddell, to let him know, based on information coming from Goronwy Rees via Guy Burgess, that an MI5 officer had been clumsily prowling around the premises of Bennett and Shears, the company at which Rees was a director, asking questions about ‘mobilisation in Russia’. It turned out that the officer was MI5’s famous interrogator, Jim Skardon: the outcome was that Liddell met Rees, who told him openly that the Russians were buying penicillin plant from his company.

Thus, on February 4, at a meeting of the Joint Intelligence Committee, the fact that Borodin had been noticed buying penicillin manufacturing capabilities, which could be used by the Soviets to advance their bacteriological warfare capabilities, was reported. Guy Liddell wrote: “If we could satisfy ourselves about his intentions and knowledge, we might consider him as a potential defector and take steps accordingly”. One of those steps was to ascertain whether he had any relatives in Russia who might be harmed. Two weeks later, the ‘Borodin case’ had advanced to the degree that Kenneth Strong and Liddell believed that exploiting Borodin could result in some breakthrough insights on the Soviet Union’s intentions. By March 5, the situation had progressed to the degree that Borodin had to be considered as an exception to the tightening restrictions on Soviet citizens.

It was soon recognized, however, that the British harboured a Communist sympathizer at the heart of their bacteriological warfare planning. On February 23, Liddell and his colleagues discussed the person (whose name has been redacted), expressing their concern about him, who had been a member of the Communist Party until 1943. It is probable that the scientist was Howard Florey, who had been recruited by another notorious Communist J. B. S. Haldane. Florey was well-known for wanting the fruits of penicillin to be made available for all mankind, while his collaborator and fellow Nobel-prize winner Ernst Chain had wanted patents on the process of manufacturing penicillin to be applied for.

On March 11, Liddell had a further discussion with Rees and Blunt about the penicillin business, where, again, the presence of the art-historian, who had retired from MI5 a few years before, might have caused some eyebrows to be raised. Liddell specifically brought up the point that, if the Russians had the technical know-how for making a penicillin plant, it might give them a two years’ advance in creating agents of bacteriological warfare. Why he thought it suitable to share these insights with the pair of one-time (and maybe current) Soviet agents is not clear.

Yet a complete bouleversement of the Floreyan case appeared to occur by the following September, when Professor Florey himself came to see Liddell, alongside Lang Browne, to discuss Dr. Chain. Liddell wrote: “Dr. Chain, who had somewhat improperly entered into a contract with the Trade Delegation (Soviet) to sell them information about penicillin, has now gone on a year’s holiday in Italy. Florey hopes to edge him out, but if necessary would like, at some future date, to inform the appropriate authority at Oxford that we could confirm the Professor’s information about the disreputable conduct of Dr. Chain.”

Other accounts suggest that Chain had gone to Italy to work, not rest and play, and that, frustrated by the lack of commitment from the British Government to fund penicillin-manufacturing capabilities, had found a responsive chord with the Italians. Was Florey trying to cover his own disloyalty by denigrating his ex-colleague in this way? After all, it was clear that the Americans did not want the secrets of penicillin manufacturing to leave U.S. or British shores. Florey may have been successful in his accusations, because Chain was thereafter twice refused a visa to enter the United States.

It is notable that Russian sources credit Borodin with successfully kick-starting the Soviet Union’s industry. In an article from 2022, E. V. Shertsneva profiled Borodin, stating that the scientist ‘while on scientific assignments in England, provided the USSR with important scientific and technical information and producers [sic] for production of penicillin and streptomycin’, and that his contribution was recognized by the Soviet leadership. If, indeed, Borodin did successfully defect, he either did so after he had passed on the industrial secrets, or he ensured that a replacement would perform the work for him. In any event, Borodin was reported as speaking at a conference on Russian affairs held at Oxford University on August 9, 1949, an event at which Guy Burgess also gave an address.

A final twist to the story was provided when Rees was being interviewed about his revelations concerning Burgess and Blunt in June 1951, soon after the disappearance of Burgess and Maclean. An entry in his MI5 file written by J. D. Robertson (B2) states that an MI5 officer ‘will bear in mind the suspicion that Goronwy REES when leaving Government employment for business, may have played a part in assisting the Russians to obtain penicillin equipment from America, of which the Americans were at the time anxious to ban the export to the Soviet Union’. Were they wrong about Rees? Or had he arranged for the dirty work to be completed before he presented himself as a loyal informer?

In any event, Guy Liddell was shown to be an atrocious judge of character, and a very undisciplined protector of privileged information. He managed to share secrets of bacteriological warfare with four very dubious characters: Rees, Burgess, Blunt – and Footman, his previous colleague in MI6. Ironically, Rees’s file later states that Footman was also believed to have been an agent of the Russian Intelligence Service. Whatever Borodin had been up to, and what the terms of his defection were, would all certainly have been relayed to the Kremlin. In Alexandra Popoff’s review of ‘One Man in his Time’ (July 26), she writes that Borodin was able to declare in his memoir that ‘he was neither infected nor liquidated’. But what happened to him? And was his defection real?

I did not receive any communication back from the Editor, but hoped that the letter might appear in the issue dated August 16. When an email announcing the publication of that issue appeared in my email box at 1:30 local time on July 15, I quickly learned that the Editor (Martin Ivens) had regrettably decide not to publish my letter (It was longer than most submissions, admittedly). Yet I must assert that I believe his judgment was at fault, for the following reasons:

  1. My letter was twice as interesting as that of Mr. Davenport-Hines. [Only ‘twice’? Would you not agree that ‘three times’ would be more accurate? Ed.] It could have provoked some exciting new observations.
  2. Martin Ivens missed a great opportunity to position the TLS as a leading vehicle for eliciting breakthrough research in intelligence matters, a topic of unfailing and enduring interest with the reading public.
  3. There exists an odd symmetry between Davenport-Hines and me. I accept that he is a far better-known author (and must be the ‘doyen’ of one particular sphere, I am certain), but we have a shared history. When Misdefending the Realm was reviewed by Mark Seaman in the TLS several years ago, my book shared space with Davenport-Hines’s Enemies Within (see https://coldspur.com/misdefending-the-realm/). That was before Ivens’ time.

I notice also that Davenport-Hines’s most recent book is titled History in the House: Some Remarkable Dons and the Teaching of Politics, Character and Statecraft, which was reviewed in the Spectator of August 3. It consists of a series of essays about ‘a select and self-regulated group of men who taught modern history’ at Christ Church, Oxford in the 19th and 20th  centuries. Despite my affection for the place (I am an alumnus of the college), this compilation sounds only slightly more engaging than Beachcomber’s Anthology of Huntingdonshire Cabmen. Indeed, the reviewer Nihil Krishan opined that ‘it was faintly surprising that such a book found a trade publisher at all’.

But back to Borodin. Meanwhile, I have been extending my research. My copy of One Man In His Time arrived on August 10, and I have read just over one hundred pages so far. (I have other important books on the boil.) I dug around to try and determine the discrepancy in the name of Pontifex, and that of Bennett and Shears, and discovered that the latter company had been acquired by Pontifex back in 1908. I verified that Goronwy Rees had completely ignored his employment by Pontifex and by MI6 in A Chapter of Accidents, and that his daughter had innocently described the firm as ‘brewers’ engineers and chemical plant manufacturers, or in other words, coppersmiths and brassfounders’. Liddell’s Diaries pointed to more strategic and confidential manufacturing processes.

I also discovered one or two further entries in Liddell’s Diaries that had escaped me beforehand, partly because names had been redacted. I overlooked the following entries:

  • On February 26, the penicillin problem was discussed at a meeting of the Bacteriological Warfare Committee. Liddell pronounced that ‘Sir Paul Fildes was the last word in BW’, and recorded the USA’s strict policy for requiring control of the technology for manufacturing the drug.
  • On March 5, a need for making Borodin’s case a special one was discussed in the context of tighter registration requirements for Soviet citizens in the country.
  • On May 18, an apparent conflict between Professor Florey and Professor Fildes emerged. John Marriott reported to Liddell on Florey’s seeming ‘to indicate that there would be no harm in allowing the Russians to purchase penicillin plant in this country. This, in spite of the fact that an entirely contrary view had been expressed by the eminent Professor Fildes, who is supposed to be the last word in B.W.’
  • On July 2, more facts emerged about Borodin. Liddell was told by Dick White that Borodin [though his name is redacted] ‘has turned up at Florey’s at Oxford and has asked him for his assistance. John Marriott is to go down to Oxford to see Florey.’ It might appear that Florey would not be a useful confidant for someone in Borodin’s position.
  • Later that same day, Liddell was able to write: “John Marriott has arrived back from Oxford. Everything has gone extremely well. XXXX is not in the least apprehensive. He has thought out everything very carefully. He does not think that his return to Russia will [sic!] have any effect on the fate of his family either one way or the other, but is certain that he himself will be liquidated. He intends to remain in his department and clear up all his affairs so that there can be no accusation of misappropriation of funds. He says that nobody here can question his visits anywhere as he is master in his own house and would not brook interference from anyone except the Ambassador. He has a great deal to tell us and is willing to co-operate to the full.”

I found these passages very alarming. The last suggests that Borodin at that time intended to return to Russia and face the consequences. His return to Russia is phrased in the future tense, not the conditional, and is reinforced by the words ‘is certain that he himself will be liquidated’. And the duplicity of Florey, at one moment stating that no harm could come from allowing the Soviets to buy penicillin plant, and then, a few months later, denigrating Chain in his absence, is shocking.

I also discovered an article written a few days ago by a Dr. Anthony Rimmington, posted on ‘Medium’, about Borodin, visible at https://medium.com/@t.rimmington/the-spy-who-came-in-from-the-mold-n-borodin-the-first-russian-biological-defector-to-the-west-516d8dfa03b3. Rimmington is a former Senior Research Fellow at Birmingham University. I reached out to him via his publisher, who forwarded my message, but I have not yet heard back from him.

That’s it for now. I noticed that Borodin claimed that he had acquired vital penicillin technology as early as 1946, so there are a lot of questions still to be answered concerning his defection, and what happened to him afterwards. When I have finished his book I shall return to this investigation, construct a proper chronology, and hope that I may have received useful information in the interim.

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The Legend of Edith Tudor-Hart

Edith Tudor-Hart

[A warning: the narrative in this bulletin is quite complicated. So many competing accounts of the events leading up to Kim Philby’s recruitment by the Soviets trip over each other: untangling them is a challenge. I have no wish to oversimplify the story, and I consider it imperative that I leave as full an analysis as possible for posterity.]

Contents:

Introduction

Sources and Method

Edith’s Movements

Acquaintances in Vienna

Recruitment

Kim’s Recruitment

Interim Conclusions

Jungk’s Quest

Russian Archives

The Legendary Edith

*          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *

Introduction

I use ‘legend’ here not in the Westian sense of ‘someone who was occasionally famous or notorious’, but as a way of suggesting that the familiar story of the role of Edith Tudor-Hart as a queenpin in Soviet espionage is largely mythical. Of course, in intelligence lore the word has a secondary meaning. The ‘legend’, a false biography created by the OGPU/NKVD and GRU for agents (primary ‘illegals’, not necessarily using false identities, but without diplomatic cover) in foreign countries was an important part of the deception process, and the Russian Intelligence Service (RIS) generally created false stories in order to confuse the enemy – and, perhaps unwittingly, its own successor officers.

In this bulletin I inspect the assertion that Edith Tudor-Hart was the vital agent responsible for the recruitment of the Cambridge Five – one notably made by Anthony Blunt, who, under interrogation, described her as ‘the grandmother of us all’, despite the fact that Edith was born a year after him. (I would encourage readers to turn back to the June coldspur, at https://coldspur.com/summer-2024-round-up/ for my prologue to this investigation.) The dominant event in this scenario was the reputed recommendation by Edith to Arnold Deutsch, in May 1934, that he, on behalf of Soviet intelligence, recruit Kim Philby. Edith declared that Kim’s potential and reliability could be assured because of her close friendship with Litzi, Philby’s new wife, who could presumably be trusted to have made an ideologically proper marital alliance. This proposal resulted – according to the infamous narrative supplied by Philby himself – in Kim’s meeting the anonymous Deutsch for the first time on a bench in Regent’s Park. Deutsch was impressed, and the ominous relationship and expansion of the group of penetration agents, began. But can this story be trusted?

Arnold Deutsch

I believe that it is best tested through the analysis of the behaviour of the four main actors (Kim and Litzi, Edith and Arnold) in two critical periods, namely in the summer and early autumn of 1933 in Vienna, and in London in May and early June of 1934. Some of the questions that strike me as important are: Did Arnold know Kim from those days in Vienna, or was Kim a stranger to him in Regent’s Park? Did Edith really have an opportunity to meet Kim after her rapid marriage to Alexander Tudor-Hart in August 1933 and before her departure for England a few weeks later? Had Kim already been recruited by Soviet Intelligence when he was in Vienna? What was Litzi’s standing as an agent before she left for England with Kim in the spring of 1934? Which aspects of Kim’s account of the events of that summer are verifiable? I refresh my previous research on this matter with an analysis of Edith’s files at the National Archives (released in 2015), a closer inspection of important works that appeared in the 1990s, as well as a study of other books published in English, German and Russian during the past couple of decades.

Sources and Method

I covered some of the anomalies and contradictions in the tales of Kim’s recruitment in Misdefending the Realm, but only skimmed the surface of the puzzle, since my intention then had been solely to point out the chaotic nature of the accounts of subversive activity in the 1930s, and the danger of relying on the memoirs of untrustworthy persons as a guide to the facts. At that time I barely touched on the role of Edith Tudor-Hart. For those readers who do not have a copy of my book close at hand, I here reproduce the relevant section (pp 37-39):

“One of Philby’s main assertions is that he was recruited by Arnold Deutsch, known as Otto, on his return from Vienna with his new bride, Litzi Friedmann, in the summer of 1934, and only then committed himself to supporting the communist cause. That story has been distorted and misrepresented repeatedly over the years, as the following analysis shows:

  • In My Silent War (1968), Philby elides over his recruitment, merely stating that when he left Cambridge in the summer of 1933, he was convinced his life would be dedicated to Communism. [i]
  • In Deadly Illusions, Costello and Tsarev claim that Alexander Orlov supervised and was ultimately responsible for directing Philby as agent. Because of Soviet attempts to get Orlov back (who had defected and made a deal with Stalin), Philby was not permitted by the KGB to even hint at how he was recruited.)  [ii]
  • In The Third Man (1968), Cookridge says that Philby did not return to London until the end of summer, 1934, where he was recruited by Simon Kremer at the Soviet Embassy. [iii]
  • In The Philby Conspiracy (1968), Page, Leitch and Knightley (who interviewed Philby’s children in Moscow), reported that Philby told his offspring that ‘I was recruited in 1933, given the job of penetrating British intelligence, and told it did not matter how long I took to do the job.’  [iv]
  • In Philby: The Long Road to Moscow (1973), Seale and McConville report an earlier return to London, in early April, but that Philby was not recruited for some months, and still only on probation, the first steps being ‘directed by intelligence officer on the staff of the Soviet Embassy’. [v]
  • In The Fourth Man (1979), Andrew Boyle indicates that Philby was already a novice agent on probation when he went to Vienna in September 1933.  [vi]
  • In The British Connection, (1979), Richard Deacon suggests that Deutsch probably recruited Philby when the latter was visiting Vienna.  [vii] [This actually makes the most sense, as will be explored later.]
  • In The Master Spy (1988), Phillip Knightley introduces the idea of the obvious lie: ‘Litzi said that KP took no part in Communist activities in Vienna – a cover story that KP confirmed to Knightley that they had planned she would say.’ He adds that the Philbys did not leave Vienna until May 1934, and stopped off in Paris on their way back to London.  When he interviewed Philby in Moscow, he was told: ‘My work in Vienna must have caught the attention of the people who are now my colleagues in Moscow because almost immediately on my return to Britain I was approached by a man who asked me if I would like to join the Russian intelligence service. For operational reasons I don’t propose to name this man, but I can say that he was not a Russian although he was working for the Russians.’ [viii]
  • John Costello, in Mask of Treachery (1988) observes that Philby’s expressed intention to sit Civil Service exams (as he told his tutor at Cambridge) reflects Soviet determination to press moles into government, adding ‘That Philby would even consider a Whitehall career after deciding to become a Communist agent suggests that he too had come under cultivation by the Soviets before he left Cambridge.’ [ix]
  • Deadly Illusions (1993), by John Costello and Oleg Tsarev, gives the impression that Soviet Intelligence had successfully stirred the pot. Litzi is reported as not receiving her passport until late April, and the Philbys set off for Paris via Germany. ‘That Philby had approached the CPGB before his first meeting with Reif is itself confirmation that he had not, as previously believed, been recruited in Vienna. This is corroborated by NKVD archival records, and by KPO’s 239-page deposition.’ The authors add that, in the spring of 1934, Philby went to CPGB HQ, to renew [sic] links with the CP before he was approached by Reif, but received a frosty reception at CPGB headquarters. Litzi Philby invited her friend, Edith Tudor Hart to tea, and Edith was impressed by Philby, and thus reported his candidacy to Deutsch, who consulted with Reif. Reif approved Philby’s recruitment in June 1934.  ‘My decision to go to Austria was taken before I had decided to join the Communist movement,’ Philby is quoted as saying.  [x] But Costello and Tsarev are far too trusting of the reliability of Philby’s memoir, and they attribute to ‘faulty memory’ many of the contradictions between Moscow’s and Philby’s account that occur in their flawed narrative.
  • Treason in the Blood (1994), by Anthony Cave-Brown, has the couple leaving Vienna on May 2, and spending a holiday in Paris before arriving in London in mid-May. Philby celebrated June 1 as the day he was approached by Deutsch. [xi]
  • The chronology shifts in The Philby Files (1994) by Genrikh Borovik. Philby decides to continue Party work with Litzi in England, and is back there in time to participate in the May Day parade in London. Again, Philby seeks out contacts at the Soviet Embassy, but this time a man [i.e not Edith Tudor Hart] he met in Austria sought him out, to introduce him to Deutsch. Philby considered ‘it very lucky this chance happening occurred’. [xii]
  • Yuri Modin (the handler of the ‘Cambridge Five’ after the war), admits, in My Five Cambridge Friends (1994) to all the confusion, but clarifies it all for us by saying that the NKVD was not involved, and that, ‘from 1934 to 1940, the Soviet secret service was the last thing on their minds.  What he means, of course, it was the innocent Comintern that was involved: he confirms the meetings with Deutsch, but claims it was another unknown NKVD officer [sic] who directed his work. [xiii]
  • The Crown Jewels (1998), by Nigel West and Oleg Tsarev, has some interesting things to say about Deutsch, but merely repeats the June 1934 recruitment. [xiv]
  • In A Time For Spies (1999), William E. Duff follows the Costello/Tsarev account, but points out the contradictions between Costello and Tsarev, indicates that Costello gives too much credit to Orlov, and observes that Tsarev’s original source material has not been examined. [xv]
  • The Mitrokhin Archive (1999) by Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin suggests that the Tudor Harts had been recruited by Deutsch in London, and given the codename STRELA. The authors cite Deadly Illusions as their main source for the recruitment of Philby. [xvi]
  • Now the unpublished memoirs of Philby are revealed by his fourth wife, Rufina Philby, with Hayden Peake and Mikhail Lyubimov, in The Private Life of Kim Philby (2000). Here again, the Philbys are able to enjoy the May Day march in Camden Town, and then they are visited by a male friend, whom Philby had seen two or three times since returning from Vienna. This friend introduces Philby to Deutsch (i.e. there is no Edith Tudor Hart in this variation). [xvii]
  • Almost a decade later, Christopher Andrew changes his tune, owing to the discovery of an ‘untitled memorandum in Security Service archives’. Thus the official history of MI5, Defending The Realm (2009), allows Andrew to reveal ‘the truth’ about Philby’s recruitment, deposited on the eve of his defecting to Moscow in 1963. “Lizzy came home one evening and told me that she had arranged for me to meet a ‘man of decisive importance. …. Otto spoke at great length, arguing that a person with my family background could do far more for Communism than the run-of-the-mill Party member or sympathizer.” [xviii]

[I have omitted listing the endnote references, as they caused havoc when I tried to copy them in. Please refer to my book for details.]

Nevertheless, I continued my narrative by pointing out that Deutsch himself (whom I shall hereafter simply refer to as ‘Arnold’), in the autobiography he provided to his bosses in Moscow in 1938, claimed that he had recruited STRELA and JOHN in Vienna before moving on to London, where he recruited Edith Tudor-Hart, whom he ‘had already known in Vienna’. Since the heading of the Tudor-Harts’ (i.e. Alexander’s and Edith’s) file at the National Archives confidently states – assuredly based on the evidence of Andrew and Mitrokhin – that STRELA was the cryptonym of the Tudor-Harts, I see a conflict. At least one person is mistaken. I also wrote at that time that, if Arnold had been familiar with John Lehmann and the Tudor-Harts in Vienna, he would surely have encountered Kim Philby there, and thus the story of the first meeting in Regent’s Park was probably inauthentic. That may have been a clumsy conclusion, because of the chronology, as I shall soon explain, but it may have been correct for other reasons.

Even a casual study of the source material copied from my book, above, leads to some serious scepticism and confusion over what happened when. For example, Cookridge places Kim’s return to England at the end of summer 1934. Borovik even gets the year of Kim’s return to Britain wrong. Page, Leitch and Knightley, and then Boyle, refer to Kim’s recruitment of some sort in Vienna, or even earlier, as do Deacon and Pincher. Costello and Tsarev place considerable strains on the chronology by recording Kim’s and Litzi’s passage through Europe, thus requiring a number of events to occur before the park-bench meeting on June 1, a troubling time-line echoed by Cave Brown, who implied that he had inspected the police form in Vienna that gave their date of egress and their destination. Reinforcing Arnold’s claims, Andrew and Mitrokhin apply tight constraints by indicating that Edith was not recruited until Arnold came to London, which would tend to cast doubts on the experience and reputation she was claimed to own when she picked out Kim as a prospect. If, as Cave Brown asserted (and, incidentally, as Andrew and Mitrokhin repeated), Kim and Litzi left Vienna on May 2, they would have struggled to witness the May Day celebrations in Camden Town on May 1, an experience that Borovik, Parker and Lyubimov felt fit to record. As my re-inspection of A Time of Spies reveals, Duff even claims that the newlyweds left Vienna in March for Paris, ‘where they remained for more than a month before Kim brought his new bride in May of that year’. And so forth. My goal now is to unravel these – and other – contradictions and paradoxes.

My primary sources are, in chronological order:

  • Deadly Illusions, by John Costello and Oleg Tsarev (1993). This is the first account that claims access to KGB archival material, and has been the most influential. Yet it should be remembered that this work was provoked by a desire by the FSB (the Федеральная Служба Безопасности, or Federal Security Service, the successor to the KGB for internal security matters, created in 1995) to put a more positive spin on the KGB’s achievements after the disclosures that Gordievsky provided, and that Tsarev’s access may have been carefully controlled – perhaps by the Russian equivalent of a ‘Foreign Office Adviser’. Later in this report I shall examine in detail the authenticity of the sources on which the book relies.
  • The Philby Files, by Genrikh Borovik (1994). This account relies heavily on what Kim told Borovik, and is not enhanced by Borovik’s lack of method, and his rather shaky understanding of intelligence and counter-intelligence matters.
  • Treason in the Blood, by Anthony Cave Brown (1994). Cave Brown’s book tends towards encyclopædism, and his management of dates is disorderly. He has a few fresh insights.
  • The Crown Jewels, by Nigel West and Oleg Tsarev (1998), which applied some further spin, through Tsarev, based on access to KGB files, but also included some erratic observations. It suffers from the same dubious provenance as Deadly Illusions.
  • The Private Life of Kim Philby, by Rufina Philby, with Hayden Peake and Mikhail Lyubimov (1999), which contains two missing chapters from Kim’s autobiography (but not the postulated one that would describe his time in Vienna).
  • The Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB, by Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin (1999), based on the transcriptions taken out of Russia by Mitrokhin.
  • Ein Kapitel aus meinem Leben [‘A Chapter from my Life’], by Barbara Honigmann, the daughter of Litzi and Georg Honigmann (2004).
  • The Young Kim Philby by Edward Harrison (2012), which contains some very shrewd insights but accepts many familiar narratives unquestioningly.
  • The Lawn Road Flats by David Burke (2014), a rather discursive work that presents some revealing research – especially on Edith.
  • Stalin’s Agent: The Life and Death of Alexander Orlov, by Boris Volodarsky (2015), a somewhat chaotic compilation by the ex-GRU officer, which nevertheless contains many useful nuggets.
  • The Tudor-Hart files, released to the National Archives in 2015 (KV 2/1012-1014; KV 2/1603-1604; KV 2/4091-4092).
  • Die Dunkelkammern der Edith Tudor-Hart [‘The Darkrooms of Edith Tudor-Hart’], by Peter Stefan Jungk (2017). Edith’s relative (second cousin once removed) had access to a wide and fascinating range of family letters and memories, but his account relies almost exclusively on works already mentioned for his analysis of Edith’s career in intelligence and espionage.
  • Ким Филби by Николай Долгополов [‘Kim Philby’, by Nikolai Dolgopolov] (2018). Dolgopolov presents some fresh archival material from the Lubyanka.
  • Кембриджская  Пятерка by Владимир Антонов  [‘The Cambridge Five’, by Vladimir Antonov] (2022). A slightly different perspective on the careers of the Cambridge Five.

The method I decided to deploy is to address the primary questions by starting with the key assertions made in Deadly Illusions, and to test and compare them with statements made elsewhere.

Edith and Alexander (probably before marriage)

Edith’s Movements

What were Edith’s exact movements? According to Deadly Illusions: “Edith. . . . arrived in London after escaping prosecution for her illegal Party activities. Like her friend Litzi Friedman, she had sought refuge by marrying an English medical doctor named Alex Tudor Hart [sic], who sympathized with the Comintern. . . .  Her file discloses that she had been active in the Communist underground in Vienna in 1929 and served as one of the trusted ‘cultivation officers’ of the London ‘illegal’ rezidentura. Her job was to spot sympathizers who were potential candidates for recruitment, like Philby. Although short-sighted, which led to her being criticized for not being careful enough, she established a reputation as a very loyal and resourceful comrade who carried out important assignments for Moscow.” The authors add, in Endnote 47: “Precisely when Edith Tudor Hart arrived in Britain is not clear from her NKVD file, but it was 1933 and almost certainly May, the year before Philby set out for Austria.”

This is a complete mess. It strongly suggests that Edith first crossed Britain’s shores only in 1933, when her MI5 file shows that she had resided there on multiple occasions in the 1920s until she was expelled early in 1931. The month of May is ridiculous: that was the month in which she was arrested. It implies that Edith imitated the matrimonial plan of her friend by marrying an Englishman, when she had in fact married Alexander on August 16, 1933, before Kim had first set foot in Austria. Her MI5 file (which is curiously very silent about the movements of Alex and Edith in 1933) indicates, in a Special Branch Report to MI5, that the marriage took place at the Embassy in Vienna, and that the couple left for England a few weeks later. Kim did not set out for Austria in 1934: he arrived in the autumn of 1933, and left the country with his new bride in April (or May) of 1934. The gap between 1929, when Edith had reputedly been active in the Communist underground, and her stated role as a ‘cultivation officer’ is ludicrous. (The suggestion that Edith was only one of many such ‘cultivation officers’ raises the question of who the others were, and why they have not been celebrated.) Edith had been imprisoned in Vienna in the early summer of 1933 for suspicious activity, having been expelled from the UK two-and-a-half years earlier. The idea that she might in 1933 have been a talent-spotter, and the suggestion that she might even have chosen Kim as a potential agent at that time, are palpably absurd. Costello and Tsarev cite the KGB TUDOR HART file, No 8230 Vol. 1, for this, including a profile of her supplied by Arnold, but much of it must be the work of a vivid imagination.

Tsarev and Costello must have been fed this information, since they provide no source documents for her admitted activity in Vienna in 1929. Similarly, the claims about ‘a very loyal and resourceful comrade’ carrying out important assignments lacks documentary support. In fact, the only document cited (the profile by Arnold, in Endnote 47) draws attention to her deficiencies in general, especially her carelessness, although it does not describe the famous occasion in 1937 when she temporarily lost an address book with the names of comrades in it. That would not have endeared her to Moscow Centre. In KGB, Andrew and Gordievsky state that she was used mainly as a courier, and it would appear that the claim about ‘important assignments’ was an exaggeration.

What is astonishing is the lack of surveillance reports by British counter-intelligence on Alex and Edith during this period. Between an MI6 report from Vienna, dated July 8, 1931, which reveals that Edith is working for TASS (the Soviet news agency) and a note on April 23, 1935, indicating that she is running a photography business at Haverstock Hill, there is nothing apart from the Special Branch report of February 21, 1934, which covers Alex’s recent career, and records their marriage in Vienna in August 1933. What it does indicate, however, is that Dr. Tudor-Hart took up a position at St. Mary Abbott’s Hospital in Kensington in June 1933. Given the intense interest in the pair of them, the fact that no reports on their correspondence and movements (such as Edith’s presumed letter of appeal to him to come and rescue her, or his travel to Vienna, or their joint return as a married couple) were submitted to the file, both beforehand and afterwards, is a highly provocative phenomenon.

Dr. Tudor-Hart

Yet evidence elsewhere confirms that MI5 was indeed intercepting correspondence at this time. A report from December 1, 1951, (in KV 2/1604) states that “Alexander paid another visit to Vienna to see Edith in early April 1931, Edith maintaining contact with him by letter until August 1933, when he returned to Vienna to marry her.” (An item in KV2/1603 indicates that Tudor-Hart left in August, but the exact date is obscured, as is the date appending a note indicating that he was a member of the Hampstead Anti-War Committee at some time in September.) Further: “Edith’s letters from this period show that there were certain legal complications and obstructions to her (Edith’s) marriage to TUDOR-HART at this time.” Why were these intercepts not filed?

These observations serve to contradict a later source – Jungk’s account of Edith’s tribulations. For some reason, Jungk has Alexander Tudor-Hart coming to Vienna in the spring of 1932, whereupon Edith moves in with him, although she ‘does not love him in the same way she loved Arnold’. Thus Alex is around at the time Edith is arrested, in May 1933, and is ‘shocked’, like all her friends, who include Litzi Friedmann, long separated from her husband. Yet Jungk’s tale then gets more absurd: he claims that Edith was released one month later, and that she then repaired to Litzi’s flat, where she met a new lodger who had been there a few days, namely Kim. Moreover, she is so taken with him that she confessed that ‘if she hadn’t been so tied to Alexander, she could have fallen in love with him’. The problem is that when such anecdotes so gravely break the rules of time and space, one has to wonder how much of the rest of the cavalcade of reminiscences is delusionary. (I emailed Mr. Jungk about these anomalies: he has not replied.)

I would judge that MI5’s record of Alex’s hospital service, and of his presence in England, is more accurate: the testimony of his son, Julian (also a doctor, the offspring of Tudor-Hart’s relationship with Alison Macbeth, b. 1927, d. 2018) confirms his father’s appointment at St. Mary Abbots Hospital. Yet the willingness of the British authorities to sanction the marriage between a suspected communist and a known agitator who had already been expelled from the United Kingdom, and to allow the solemnization of that ritual within the British Embassy in Vienna, suggests some possibly darker objectives at hand, and might explain why all records of the negotiations thereto – such as the letters identified above – have not appeared in the archive.

Acquaintances in Vienna

How well did Arnold, Edith, Litzi and Kim know each other in Vienna? Two passages from Deadly Illusions provide some background: “It was Edith Tudor Hart, who had also known Litzi Friedman in Vienna, who invited her old comrade to tea shortly after the Philbys had returned to London in May 1934. Litzi brought along her husband, since he was at a loose end while waiting impatiently to hear whether he would be accepted into the Communist Party. Over the teacups the couple gave vivid first-hand accounts of action on the Vienna barricades. Philby announced that the experience had made him more determined than ever to find some way of continuing to work for the Party in England, despite, as he told it, the off-hand way he had been treated at CPGB headquarters. Philby’s ardor and the cool manner with which the pipe-smoking young Englishman recounted his missions impressed Tudor Hart”; and “She [Edith] did not tell him at the time, but as an undercover Soviet agent she saw at once that Kim, rather than Litzi, could be turned into a valuable asset for the Soviet underground network to which she belonged.”

But where does this come from? No source is given. Edith had apparently only just been recruited. How would she know anything about the ‘Soviet underground network to which she belonged’? (Individual agents were supposed to be isolated.) If she had only just met Philby, how could she quickly form the judgment that he could be turned into a valuable asset? Was the utterly irrelevant, and hardly unusual, fact that he smoked a pipe a powerful indicator? One could interpret this passage in two ways: i) that Edith was indeed a deeply placed expert recruiter, with shrewd powers of observation, and that her legend was well-earned, or ii) that this was a clumsy item of invention passed on to Tsarev. Given Edith’s very recent return to the UK, and recruitment by Arnold, I would strongly favour the latter, reflecting an official policy of switching the attention from Litzi, who is explicitly presented here as being a strong candidate for espionage, to Edith. (The characterization of Kim has all the hallmarks of having been written by Philby himself.)

Moreover, this is another sloppily crafted excerpt. Previously, Litzi had been described as Edith’s ‘friend’. Now the authors state that she ‘had also known Litzi Friedmann in Vienna’. Well, of course she had. They were not strangers, striking up a friendship in London, since Edith had invited ‘her old comrade’ to tea. Comradeship signified a much closer bond than ‘acquaintance’ or even ‘friendship’. And what does that ‘also’ mean? In addition to Kim? Surely not, if Litzi introduced her husband to Edith. To Arnold? He is not featured in the preceding paragraphs. Certainly the impression given here is that Litzi and Edith had been active agitators in Vienna for quite a while, but that this was Edith’s first encounter with Kim. This flies in the face of what Jungk wrote about Edith’s being bowled over by him when she met him in Vienna. On the other hand, why meet at Edith’s residence? Given the previous surveillance of Edith, and her track-record of having to flee Vienna because of communist agitation, having Litzi and Kim visit her on her domestic territory was highly irregular, in violation of defined tradecraft, and potentially very dangerous. She knew she was under surveillance!

As for the relationship between Arnold and Edith, Deadly Illusions records (using Deutsch’s file 32826 in the Russian Intelligence Service Archive, RISA) that Arnold had known Edith since 1926, and that he had worked with her in the Vienna underground. What it does not report (if Jungk’s account can be trusted) is the torrid affair that they had had back in 1926, and that, when it was broken off by the discovery by Arnold’s fiancée, Josefina (Fini), of love-letters written by Edith to Arnold, the heartbroken Edith fled to England to become a kindergarten schoolteacher. It seems that Arnold thus dangerously lied in the curriculum vitae that he provided to the NKVD in December 1938 (which can be read in toto in The Crown Jewels, pp 104-107). Here he states that he married Fini in 1924, when she would have been sixteen or seventeen years old. Elsewhere in his bio, he wrote that he lived with his parents until he was 24, i.e. in 1927 – a dangerously contradictory disclosure! Other accounts indicate that they did not get married until 1929: Volodarsky even traced the marriage record to March 12, 1929, although he rather ingenuously remarked (p 691) that the statement cited in The Crown Jewels should be considered a ‘slip of memory’. Astute husbands (and wives) do not get wrong the date of their wedding a decade ago – let alone by five years – unless they have a goal of deception.

Arnold’s coyness about his marriage reflects a deep uneasiness concerning his relationship with Edith. His first affair with her (which he fails to mention in his c.v.) occurred while he was engaged, perhaps unofficially, to Fini. Thus Arnold’s statement that he recruited EDITH ‘whom I already knew in Vienna’, was delightfully vague. If he arrived in Vienna in October 1933 (as he claimed), the acquaintanceship to which he referred must have been between January 1931 (when Edith arrived after her expulsion) and January 1932 (when Arnold’s work for the Comintern had been discovered, and he was summoned to Moscow, where he was soon after appointed to the Foreign Department, OMS). He deftly elides over their relationship from the previous decade.

I shall investigate the questions about the recruitment of each to Soviet intelligence in the next section, but note here that Kim made an important observation in the testimony (‘memoir’) that he provided to the KGB in 1985. Costello and Tsarev write (p 135): “Philby, apparently through lapse of memory, alluded to his having met Tudor Hart in Vienna, which the NKVD reports show as another case of his memory being in conflict with the records.” But, of course, the records could not prove a non-event, namely that he had not met Edith in Vienna. All they could do is show that the file on Edith indicated that she claimed that the tea gathering was the occasion on which she had been introduced to Kim. But perhaps that assertion was untrue, since Kim’s testimony is confirmed by Jungk? Sadly, the National Archives reinforce the confusion through a vague and unverifiable statement that appears on the announcement of the release of the Tudor-Hart archive: “Edith was close friends with Litzi Friedmann, who would become Philby’s first wife, and MI5 believed it was through this connection that Philby came to know Tudor Hart [sic] in the early 1930s.” A couple of weeks in August-September 1933 is expanded to a number of years. And whoever wrote this discounts the evidence that Litzi introduced Kim to Edith in London, or else has overlooked it.

What is also astonishing is the translated text of the message that Ignaty Reif (MAR), the illegal rezident, sent to Moscow in June, announcing the positive meeting between Arnold and Kim, and identifying the potential new candidate for cultivation. It is a clumsy and muddled statement: “In future Philby will be called SYNOK [Russian for ‘SONNY’]. Through Edith, who is known to you, who had worked for some time under ZIGMUND in Vienna, we have established that the former Austrian Party member, who had been recommended to Edith by our former Party comrades, has arrived in Britain from Vienna, together with her husband, an Englishman. He is also known to Arnold. Edith has checked their credentials and has received recommendations from her Vienna friends. I have decided to recruit the fellow without delay – not for ‘the organization’, it is too early for that, but for antifascist work [emphasis added]. Together with Arnold and Edith, I worked out a plan to meet with SÖHNCHEN [German for ‘SONNY’] before SÖHNCHEN moved to his father’s flat. Arnold Deutsch’s meeting with SÖHNCHEN took place with all precautions. The result was his full readiness to work for us.”

I note that Costello and Tsarev state that this cryptogram was ‘undated’. That is not surprising, as it shows all the signs of having been faked. The flow is illogical. Reif introduces Philby and his cryptonym first, without explaining the background. Why, having stated that Philby will be called SYNOK, does Reif quickly switch to SÖHNCHEN ? He then suggests that ‘the former Austrian Party member’ (i.e. Litzi) had somehow been recommended to Edith (the implied Big Cheese of the operation) by our former Vienna comrades (why ‘former’?). Yet how had this recommendation been received, and why would it not have been considered by Reif first? Reif then mentions that the unnamed person’s husband is an Englishman, as if Moscow had no idea of what Kim and Litzi had been up to, and were ignorant of the circumstances of their marriage. Moreover, since Party comrades in Austria had already recommended Litzi to Edith, and Edith was prepared to recommend Kim on the basis of his being known by the reliable Litzi, why on earth did she need to check the credentials of both of them?

Furthermore, Kim ‘is also known to Arnold’. Why is Arnold not referred to by his cryptonym, ‘OTTO’? And what does that statement mean? That he has met him, and is acquainted with him? Why would Reif insert that if Arnold has supposedly just met Kim for the first time? Does it not sound as if Arnold had encountered Kim in Vienna? Or could it mean simply that his name is known to Arnold? But again, that makes no sense given the recent encounter between the two. Kim told Borovik that ‘a man he had known in Austria sought him out’, suggesting that Arnold had met Kim in Vienna, and had instigated the meeting. That would tend to undermine any leading role ascribed to Edith. In any case, Edith no longer needed to be protected by the time Philby gave his testimony to Borovik: she died in 1973. (One longs to see the original Russian.)

Tracking Arnold’s movements at this time is difficult. Some sources suggest that he was in Vienna in August 1933, and it was then that he recruited STRELA. At some time after that he moved to Paris, and was told that he would be sent to England for his next assignment. Yet Arnold’s own biography, reproduced in The Crown Jewels, tells a different story, indicating that he was informed in October 1933 that he was going to be assigned to work in Britain, at which time he moved from Paris to Vienna, where he recruited STRELA and JOHN. (I note here that Boris Volodarsky has confidently identified STRELA as Charlotte Moos, who was in England at the time.) If that is true, he would have arrived too late to recruit Alexander Tudor-Hart. Yet, since the MI5 file confirms that Tudor-Hart visited Edith in Vienna in April 1931, Arnold probably met him at that time, and could have recruited him then.

In any event, by the early part of 1934 Arnold had indeed moved to London, ahead of the Philbys. Costello and Tsarev, referring to Arnold’s bio in his KGB file, indicate that he arrived in February; Cave Brown states it was in April (but adds that his wife was with him then, which is wrong); Burke offers May. I referred earlier to my conclusion that Arnold probably met Kim in Vienna because of his acquaintance with Lehmann and the Tudor-Harts. If we trust Arnold’s timeline, the encounter with the latter now seems impossible, given Alex’s short visit to rescue Edith, but Arnold was clearly moving in those same circles after the Tudor-Harts left for Britain in early September 1933, and had ample opportunity to get to know Kim.

The same telegram is introduced in The Philby Files, however, and the paraphrase/transcription generates further confusion. Borovik is, however, a bit more precise about dates and formats, and offers some observations about the text itself. He annotates that ‘documents are presented with the original style intact. The only changes are to orthographic mistakes and typographical errors’. He states that telegram No. 2696 was sent by Reif to Moscow the day after the Regent’s Park meeting, briefly informing the NKVD, rather bizarrely, that ‘the son of an Anglo agent, advisor of Ibn-Saud, Philby, has been recruited’. Later, a long letter was sent to Moscow with the details, dated June 22 (incidentally sent via courier, probably Reif himself, to Copenhagen before routing).

I present the first few sentences of the text, so that a close comparison can be made: “Philby. From now on we will call him ‘Sonny’ or ‘Söhnchen’. Through ‘Edith’, whom you know and who worked at one time for Siegmund in Vienna, we established that an Austrian Party member with recommendations from Viennese comrades to ‘Edith’ arrived on the island with her English husband from Vienna. She is also known to Arnold. ‘Edith’ checked the recommendation and got confirmation from all our Viennese friends. In Vienna the press reported on the happy marriage of a young Viennese woman with a prince of the court of Ibn-Saud (clippings will follow). According to the Viennese friends of Edith and the ‘newlyweds’ themselves no one knows about their sympathies and work for the Party either in Vienna or on the island (with a few exceptions). Sonny was never a member of the Party and tried to hide his sympathies for the Party, since he was planning a diplomatic career after Cambridge. Edith’s references on Sonny are highly positive.”

It is hard to decide who is being deluded here. The first astonishing difference is that Arnold’s acquaintance with a member of the happy couple has shifted to Litzi (‘she is also known’). But here the ‘also’ makes even less sense, as it cannot sensibly be as juxtaposition to Edith, and to claim that Arnold knew Litzi as well as Kim at this stage would suggest that, in Vienna, Arnold had been more closely acquainted with Kim than Litzi! Again, the lack of the original text in Russian is enormously frustrating: it is difficult to imagine how either Tsarev or Borovik could have misconstrued this simple sentence. If there is one thing the Russian language is precise about, it is the gender and declension of personal pronouns. Thereafter the anomalies concern the business of the marriage, and the political sympathies of Litzi and Kim. Why a rezident in London would be informing Moscow of Viennese press reports, and promising to send clippings, when the NKVD was surely digesting them itself, is illogical. Furthermore, the notion that Kim and Litzi had been able to escape attention, and keep their sympathies private, is absurd, given that the whole point of the marriage had been to allow Litzi to escape before she was arrested, and that Litzi had used her new British passport to perform missions to Czechoslovakia in March and April 1934. (This knowledge was revealed by Helenus Milmo to Philby when he interrogated him in December 1951.) Lastly, the idea that they could possibly have undertaken work for the Party ‘on the island’ (i.e. in Britain) is ridiculous, given that they arrived only a few weeks beforehand. And what about those ‘exceptions’? Would Moscow not have demanded an instant explanation? It is all a charivari.

Recruitment

Given that all four could conceivably have known each other, in the short time between Edith’s release from prison and her departure with Alex that overlapped with Kim’s first few weeks in Vienna, when was each recruited by the Soviets?

‘Recruitment’ is a nuanced notion. A candidate could be watched performing useful assistance (perhaps as Kim was when he started aiding Litzi) before being signed up. Various couriers and helpers were used without stringent testing of their loyalty. In Stalin’s Agent, Volodarsky comments on Arnold’s claim of recruiting Edith in London, as reported in The Crown Jewels (p 106). Arnold had written: “In February 1934 I went to London where I recruited Edith, whom I already knew in Vienna.” (Was that a deliberately vague statement, since it must have referred to an earlier period, as Edith had left Vienna before he arrived? And why does Arnold completely overlook the critical encounter with Kim in his biography?) In an Endnote (p 545), Volodarsky writes: “Regarding her [Edith’s] recruitment at the time, it was perhaps a pun rather than an error or slip of memory. In Russian, the expression privlekat k cotrudnichestvu (to co-opt an individual) and verbovat (to recruit) can often substitute one another. Edith was indeed co-opted to carry out Soviet intelligence assignments while in Vienna but was formally recruited as an agent much later (see Appendix II).” This is not all that helpful, especially since Volodarsky in the Appendix clumsily writes that EDITH ‘was recruited by Deutsch in 193? [sic]’. He finesses the whole troubled saga of Edith’s recruitment, suspension, and re-activation.

Be that as it may, and irrespective of whether those two terms were really used interchangeably, any approach concerning a firmer commitment would have been made carefully, normally through ‘false-flag’ manœuvres (for example, Guy Burgess suggesting ‘working for peace’, without mentioning the Comintern; Reif referring to ‘anti-fascist’ activity), and the critical assessment made by someone who will not easily be harmed (e.g. Arnold taking precautions over the interview with Kim). [Costello and Tsarev offer a useful summary of the process in Note 14 on p 451 of Deadly Illusions.] But once a commitment was made, there was no going back. When the Nazi-Soviet Pact was announced, giving an opportunity for hirees like Goronwy Rees to falter, Burgess wanted him killed, lest he betray them all. If they did not receive explicit warnings about apostasy, agents would have been well aware of how Stalin’s organs chased down and killed defectors or traitors.

It seems certain that Edith had become a serious agent during her relationship with Arnold, and before she came to England. Borovik writes that Arnold recruited her in 1929. The Crown Jewels, using Arnold’s KGB file, states that in 1930-31 a girl he knew introduced him to an officer in the (O)GPU [see below], who entrusted him with a few tasks. “Deutsch in his turn introduced the Soviet intelligence officer to EDITH, who later went to Britain.” Arnold should perhaps have presented that information in his c.v., but again may have wanted to suppress any connections because of his affair with her. In any case, that evidence would seem proof that Edith was a fully signed-up member of the Soviet Intelligence Service when she was sent to Britain in 1930. (This reference to EDITH is maddeningly absent from the Index to The Crown Jewels, which also erroneously lists her there under ‘Hart’.)

The comments that Edith expressed in her letters, especially those concerning Maurice Dobb, indicate that she indeed had an important subversive role to play at that time. David Burke has revealed that Edith kept up a correspondence in 1930 with Trevor Blewitt, who was having an affair with Phyllis, the wife of Maurice Dobb, and who eventually married her in 1934. He states that it was MI5’s interest in Blewitt, and in his friendship with Edith, that led to her arrest at the Trafalgar Square demonstration in late October 1930. Yet the clumsy and visible actions of protest in which she and Alex took part in indicate that she was either poorly-trained, or was disobeying instructions. Her being expelled as a known agitator should have prompted Moscow to consider her a permanent liability, since she would obviously be surveilled if she ever returned to the United Kingdom. (Volodarsky provides the link between Arnold’s statement and the Reif telegram by informing us that the officer to whom Arnold introduced Edith in Vienna, namely Siegmund [ZIGMUND], was one Igor Lebedinsky, the legal rezident, who also went under the name of Igor Vorobyov.) One would assume that Arnold knew about Edith’s past problems with the British authorities, and that he was simply recommending her for work in Austria.

Thus Arnold’s claim that he ‘met’ Edith soon after his arrival in Britain, and that she ‘immediately agreed to work for us’ sounds very bogus. Moreover, Edith’s claim about the ‘secret network to which she belonged’ can be seen to be mendacious in the context of her recruitment. It would again have been poor tradecraft for her to know of the existence of a network and its members – and certainly so just after Deutsch brought her in. The arrangement of the rendezvous also reflected poor judgment on the part of this ace subversive. Nevertheless, if he really had been intent on recruiting Edith, he would presumably have had to gain permission from Moscow before re-engaging such a volatile property. I return to the texts: the references to her suggest some subtle distinctions. Costello and Tsarev introduce her as follows: “Through Edith, who is known to you, who had worked for some time under ZIGMUND in Vienna, . . .”, while Borovik offers a slightly different spin: “Through ‘Edith’, whom you know and who worked at one time for Siegmund in Vienna . . .” Yet the original text seems tentative. If Edith is known to Moscow, why does that have to be spelled out? Perhaps it is a suggestion that Edith had been made dormant, but has now just been resuscitated, reinforcing the comment made by Arnold.

Memorial to Deutsch

Given that uncertainty, the attention given to Edith’s prestige and influence is quite remarkable. It is she who checks the recommendation (although the translators differ over ‘credentials’ and ‘recommendation’) and receives confirmation about the genuineness of the two new candidates from her Viennese friends, a fact that both commentators agree on. The charade is maintained that Edith’s friends in Vienna are recommending both ‘the former Austrian Party member’ and her husband as candidates for recruitment, but it is not clear why Litzi cannot be named, unless the custodians of the archive thought that in some way they could disguise her identity, and regarded her anonymity as paramount. Moreover, it would appear strange that, having received written testimonials, Edith would then have to verify them with her erstwhile comrades.

Exactly how Edith managed to communicate with these people in such short order is never explained – as if letters could be safely entrusted to the mails without interception, let alone the fact that the events all took place quite speedily in that hectic May/June period. Telephone calls? Highly unlikely, I would say. Moreover, the telegram asserts that the anonymous Party member (Litzi) had arrived with recommendations for Edith. Again, apart from the fact that we know that they had been acquainted for some time, and had agitated together, it would have been quite extraordinary for such endorsements to be sent to Edith, presumably as ‘letters of credit’ that Litzi brought with her, if Edith had only just been re-recruited by Arnold. What may be significant is that Peter Smolka paid a visit to Vienna that summer, leaving London in early July and returning a month later, so he may have been used as a courier to verify the references.

And then Edith makes an independent decision that Kim is a superior candidate over Litzi for the undercover Soviet network to which she (Edith) already belongs. Was that selection within her authority, or is the narrative an attempt to bury the potential for Litzi to have any role at all? As I have written before, the NKVD considered Litzi a far more important prospect than Kim at this time. This seems to me to be a classic example of disinformation, a rather disingenuous attempt to draw attention away from Litzi to Kim at a time when Litzi was established, and Kim represented a very speculative venture. Again, I refer to Kim’s statement to Borovik that Arnold knew him already and had sought him out – probably a foolish claim designed to amplify his own importance that undermined the whole shaky edifice of the Legend of Edith Tudor-Hart. In KGB: The Inside Story, Christopher Andrew and Oleg Gordievsky, exploiting the latter’s insights, even declare, shockingly, that ‘Deutsch arrived in England with instructions to make contact with Burgess as well as Philby’. That has alarming possibilities, since Burgess had not yet visited the Soviet Union, and his name could hardly be known by the OGPU/NKVD.  Overall, however, it is another sorry mess.

But when did Litzi become a recognized Soviet asset in the West? And when did she become MARY? References are few. Volodarsky writes: “As mentioned, in February 1934 Deutsch went to London alone and Reif joined him there in April. They worked together until June, when Reif left for Copenhagen again. By the summer their network of agents, helpers, talent-spotters, and couriers included Edith Suschitzky (alias ‘Betty Grey’); her husband Alexander Ethel [sic] Tudor-Hart (alias ‘Harold White’); Alice ‘Litzi’ Friedmann, the first wife of Philby, later recruited as agent MARY; Kim Philby himself, then only a candidate for recruitment; agents PFEIL (also GERTA or HERTA, in Russian STRELA, unidentified, . . .”. I should also mention that Christopher Andrew, in his history of MI5, exploiting yet another unidentifiable source in the Security Service archives, cites (p 169) a statement that Kim made ‘on the eve of defecting to Moscow’ – a bizarre construction given that Philby was in Beirut, far away from MI5, at that time: “. . . Lizzy came home one evening and told me that she had arranged for me to meet a “man of decisive importance”. So much for tea and sandwiches at Edith’s place: MARY had been hard at work.

Volodarsky regrettably does not offer here a date for Litzi’s ‘later’ promotion to MARY, although in an Appendix he states that MARY was recruited in 1935 by Deutsch with the help of Edith Tudor-Hart – another illogical observation. On the other hand he implies that a whole bevy of hangers-on could be entrusted with important roles without yet being ‘recruited’. It may or not be notable that he does not credit Edith with being EDITH, yet he confirms that Edith and Alex were ‘recruited’ in some way. (It is simply difficult to imagine Alex as anything but a fully committed agent.) Yet in an endnote he denies that the pair were STRELA: “In both The Mitrokhin Archive and TNA: PRO KV2/1603, Edith Tudor-Hart is said to be sharing a joint code name STRELA/PFEIL with her husband Alexander. However, further research revealed that PFEIL and EDITH were recruited at different times and in different places; besides, in the balance sheet of the London NKVD station of June-July 1935 both PFEIL and EDITH are mentioned as receiving payments for their foreign travel.” What to make of this? Was PFEIL perhaps simply Alex, recruited in Vienna? And did Edith really travel abroad in this period? I can find no record of such movements, either in her MI5 file, or in Jungk’s narrative. And the problem with Volodarsky’s accounts is that he appears sometimes to be as reliant on unidentified sources as do Costello and Tsarev.

Borovik puts his own spin on the process, again showing his haphazard grasp of chronology and geography. On page 301 he writes: “It was she [Edith] who brought him [Kim] to a bench in Regent’s Park. . . . It was that woman who helped form their entire group. Austrian by birth, she had emigrated to England and married an Englishman. Philby thought that Edith had started working with the OGPU either in England or in Austria [a safe guess!].” And Borovik added a note: “From the archives, it seems that Edith Tudor-Hart was recruited by Deutsch (‘Stefan’) in 1929. In 1934 she recruited Litzi Friedmann (‘Mary’) and recommended Philby for recruitment.” Apart from the fact that Litzi had married her Englishman in Vienna, and thus was no longer ‘Friedmann’, and that elsewhere (in Deadly Illusions) Edith had supposedly rejected Litzi as an inferior candidate for agent work, and that there seems to be no other suggestion that Edith had the authority to recruit Litzi (let alone before she recommended Kim), who, as the senior partner, would not have needed recruiting by Edith, this seems an utterly convincing example of NKVD propaganda.

I have previously pointed out a reference to MARY, in my piece from last March, at https://coldspur.com/litzi-philby-under-the-covers/. The British intercepted a message sent on November 7, 1934, from a Soviet agent in the London suburbs to Moscow that reports on MARY’s ‘safe arrival’, suggesting perhaps that the cryptonym MARY had been applied to Litzi when she was in Vienna. Yet the message carries some ambiguity: was six months an inordinately long time to report the ‘safe arrival’ of an agent when the rezidentura had already described her arrival several months before? Moreover, the context and the content of the message, referring to Litzi’s ‘artist friend’, do not appear to make a lot of sense. Nevertheless, I stick to my previous conclusion that Litzi was regarded at this time as much more important than Kim, and that the marriage had been encouraged as a way of facilitating her entry into the country.

Kim’s Recruitment

As for Kim, the story of his recruitment is inevitably riddled with contradictions. Costello and Tsarev point to Kim’s visit to the CPGB HQ, immediately after his return, as proof that he had not been recruited by then, as it would have been a foolhardy venture for any new recruit to be seen near King Street. But of course we cannot be sure that Kim’s account of that visit has any veracity, no matter how colourfully he related it to Borovik. We have the evidence from Knightley that Kim told his offspring that he had been recruited in 1933, and Pincher recorded that Kim had told Nicholas Elliott in Beirut that Deutsch had recruited him in Vienna early in 1934. Moreover, the timeline of Kim’s movements in London in May 1934, as described in the chapter of his biography supplied in The Private Life of Kim Philby needs to come under close scrutiny.

Within a day or two of the couple’s arrival (so Kim wrote), they [sic] visited the CPGB HQ, introducing themselves to Willie Gallacher and Isobel Brown of the communist elite, who were presumably fortuitously both present and available for the encounter. (In a careless, throwaway line, Kim told Borovik: ‘One of my friends, I don’t remember who, warned them that I was coming, and they let me in.’ He thereby indicates that he went to the Embassy alone!) Having been given the brush-off, and told to come back in six weeks, Kim applied himself to completing the forms for his Civil Service application – another couple of days, perhaps. Seale and McConville indicate that he then sent off letters to potential referees in Cambridge, and a flurry of correspondence occurred. The authors are very prodigal with supplying dates, however: it is not clear whether all this happened before the supposed meeting with Arnold – an event of which the authors were totally ignorant. Cave Brown claims it occurred after the meeting with Deutsch.

Then, ‘after a few days with my parents’ (a lie, as his father was absent in Saudi Arabia at this time), he and Litzi moved into a furnished room in East End Lane. He does not state how long it took to find this abode. Here appears another conflict, since Reif’s telegram reported that he had ‘worked out a plan for Arnold to meet with SÖHNCHEN before SÖHNCHEN moved to his father’s flat’. Cave Brown introduces a possibly important factoid here, having apparently had access to the archive of Kim’s father, St. John. He writes (p 182) that St. John had asked his mother, May, to ‘inspect’ Alice, and that she found the couple ‘pigging it’ in a scruffy unfurnished room which they shared with a Hungarian, possibly Peter Gabor, ‘who had introduced Kim to Alice’. Yet Cave Brown cannot be relied upon easily: he backs this anecdote up with the claim that Dora Philby was ‘still on the high seas’ at this time, with St. John present in London, when the situation was in fact reversed.

In any case, Kim resumed his studies in his new accommodation and renewed contacts with old friends – perhaps another week? He visited Cambridge to meet with pals from the Cambridge University Socialist Society. Seale and McConville are again the source for this, but are still distressingly vague about dates. (We do know that Guy Burgess wrote to Isaiah Berlin in May, informing him that Kim had just returned from ‘fighting in Vienna’, so the Cambridge visit must have preceded the Regent’s Park business.) Lastly, Kim claimed that he and Litzi on May 1 went to Camden Town to join the annual May Day march. This is either a sloppy sequence of chronology, or a clumsy invention. If taken literally and logically, Kim’s narrative would indicate that they had been in the country two or three weeks by then, leading to a projected arrival date of about April 10.

Yet Milmo (as I explained in my March 2023 piece at https://coldspur.com/litzi-philby-under-the-covers/ ) had confronted Kim with the fact that Litzi had used her new passport to travel to Czechoslovakia as late as April 14, 1934. (Costello and Tsarev wrote that she had to wait two months after the marriage on February 14 to receive her passport, which obviously cannot be right.) Given that she had to return to Vienna, and that the couple then travelled by motorcycle across Europe, stopping in Paris for sightseeing purposes, the chronology can instantly be seen as utterly impossible. Even if we can trust the statement in the Smolka archive that the Philbys left Vienna on April 28, and that Kim’s account of his activities was not related in chronological order, the key event of May 1 makes the whole edifice crumble. Philby must have concocted a complete fantasy, and presented the sequence of events utterly carelessly. Edward Harrison is right in suggesting that Kim wanted to protect the Tudor-Harts since they had been ‘the central link joining activists from Cambridge, Vienna and London in an international communist conspiracy’. But what he does not state is that the ruse itself must have been fuelled by his Moscow bosses.

Moreover, we have Kim’s inconsistent accounts of the set-up with Arnold to deal with. I referred earlier to the mysterious note in the MI5 files where Kim explained that Litzi came home one evening and told him that she had set up a meeting with the man ‘of decisive importance’. In his autobiography, Kim switches the activity to a male friend whom he had seen two or three times since returning from Vienna. (The implication is that the friend was English.) This friend confided in him that he had been approached by a man who had heard of his Viennese exploits, and was interested in talking to him. He was told not to say anything to Litzi yet, and Litzi was fittingly ‘too disciplined to ask questions’ when he returned home. By the time Kim speaks to Borovik, he casually mentions that ‘a man whom I had met in Austria sought me out’: now it is ‘a very serious person’ who could help with Kim’s career supporting the cause that his acquaintance wants him to meet. When the rendezvous is made, the person who led him there is more explicitly identified as an ‘Austrian friend’. The former ‘man he had met’ has been transformed into a ‘friend’. Kim eventually informed Borovik that this person was Edith Tudor-Hart.

And what about the view from Moscow? Nikolai Dolgopolov claims to have had access to the Russian intelligence archives at Yasenevo, but there are no footnotes or endnotes in his narrative, and his book conventionally does not carry an index. He includes some official telegrams in an Appendix, but none earlier than 1941. He provides a rather shaky chronology, showing that Deutsch arrived in Britain in 1933, not 1934. He does declare that Kim worked as a courier in 1933, but was not recruited until June 1934 – in fact, a somewhat premature assessment. Thus it is not possible to determine whether Dolgopolov is simply using the same sources as conventional western historians and journalists, or whether he had access to some original documents. As an aside, in describing Litzi’s escape to England, he rather coyly introduces the maybe gratuitous comment that ‘Kim did not like working with women. He preferred to socialize with them in other ventures, and different situations’. One can understand the implications of the second part, but the first assertion is not borne out by the facts.

His account of Arnold’s and Edith’s roles in the recommendation of Kim is thus familiar and humdrum. He provides a sketch of Edith, but it is very spotty, and does not perform justice to her complex background. He makes out that it was Arnold who laid before Edith her anointed role as a talent-spotter, but he provides no insight into her connections with Maurice Dobb from some years before, and overlooks completely the story of Edith’s expulsion. His overall message is to attribute to Edith a major role in determining Kim’s destiny as a spy. He assumes that Litzi introduced Kim to her, but allocates Litzi overall a very minor role, perhaps taking on a function parallel to her husband. He records the meeting with Deutsch, but does not quote or discuss any of the infamous Reif telegram. It is all very bland.

Surprisingly, Vladimir Antonov gives a more lively account of Kim’s recruitment than does Dolgopolov. He provides more historical and biographical background information, and declares that he has actually studied the Tudor-Hart archive. Yet his story is very conventional. He does mention one or two western sources (such as Seale’s and McConville’s Long Road to Moscow), but overall follows Philby’s narrative line. He offers more background information on Edith and her hasty marriage to an ‘aristocrat’, and he echoes the familiar claim that she and Kim became acquainted in Vienna, where she was able to assess his potential. He provides one or two clues on chronology, stating that Litzi and Kim left Vienna in May, travelling to London via Paris by motorcycle, without realizing that that assertion drives a coach-and-horses through Kim’s claim that he attended the May Day parade. Antonov allocates an imaginative role for Edith in London, confirming that she quickly met up with Deutsch, was given the task of talent-spotting, and, when she learned of Kim’s visit to the CPGB HQ, she quickly had to set up the meeting. Antonov expresses surprise that the British authorities never arrested Edith, after its intense surveillance, but never explores the paradox of why the NKVD continued to use such a vulnerable and obvious subversive. It seems he is following the Party line.

Interim Conclusions

I draw two major observations from this analysis: 1) that Kim Philby’s mendacious testimony has been accepted and promulgated by too many writers who ought to know better; and 2) that the archival material concerning the events of 1933 and 1934 is distressingly frail.

Philby’s accounts of his activities, in his memoir, in the recovered chapter that was omitted from My Silent War, in the biography he submitted to the KGB, in the interviews he gave to various journalists, from Knightley to Borovik, and in what he told his own family, are notoriously unreliable. I say that because of the obvious chronological impossibilities, but also because of the blatant contradictions. For example, he said he went to the Embassy with Litzi: he also stated that he alone was let in. He identified Litzi as the person who introduced him to Deutsch; he also claimed that it was a male he had known in Vienna; he finally admitted that it was Edith. He claimed that he stayed with his parents in Hampstead – but his father was away in Saudi Arabia. He said he had been recruited in Vienna in 1933. He said he had known Deutsch in Vienna: he presents the Regent’s Park encounter as a first exposure to him.

What surprises me is not that he lied and dissembled so much: that was his métier as a spy. The astonishing aspect for me is that he has been allowed to get away with it. Good agents are supposed to be meticulous in representing the details of their life. All it takes is a careful comparison of his claims, and the construction of a solid timeline, complemented by a correct geographical context, to identify the holes in his story. Of course, analysts can state that, yes, he dissimulated (about Edith, for example), as he needed to protect her. But then one cannot simply accept everything else he wrote simply because it sounds plausible, and adds some romantic glow to his adventures. For there are no third-party confirmations of the claims he made – of the date he and Litzi arrived in the UK, of the visit to the CPGB, of the May Day parade, of his visit to Cambridge (apart from the valuable Burgess-Berlin exchange), of the park-bench meeting with Deutsch. Yet these stories are echoed and solemnly sourced in the biographies and ‘histories’ of the period.

And that leads on to my second observation – that the archival material is very bizarrely silent about these crucial events. Why were there no documents placed in M5’s Tudor-Hart file at the time, reflecting Edith’s anguished letter of appeal for Alex to come and rescue her, Alex’s reply, Alex’s travel to Austria, the procedural challenges to the marriage before it actually took place at the Embassy in Vienna, or their arrival at customs in the United Kingdom? Either side of the critical period, both Alex and Edith were being closely surveilled. Yet interest seemed for some reason to evaporate between 1931 and 1935. That information was being maintained on their activities can be verified by later posts in their files, but the gaping hole in the records for the most critical time in their careers is simply inexplicable according to most norms. For instance, the later posts refer to complications and obstructions concerning their marriage: how were these overcome, who intervened, and why? It is so clumsy that it provokes most searching doubts about the policies and objectives of the intelligence services.

Oleg Tsarev (from ‘Looking for Mr. Nobody’)

And what about the Russian archives that were opened for a few vital years? Costello and Tsarev identify a Tudor-Hart file alongside the multiple extracts from the Deutsch and Orlov files. In Note 48 to Chapter 5, they refer to a profile of her submitted by Deutsch, which can be found in ‘File no. 8230 Vol. 1, p. 52’. Yet this is the only extract that I could find in their book! Surely a file that contains at least one volume, and several dozen pages, should have more useful revelations to disclose? The authors astonishingly note: “Precisely when Edith Tudor-Hart arrived in Britain is not clear from her file, but it was 1933 and almost certainly May, the year before Philby set out for Austria.” If the NKVD/KGB did not keep track of her movements, and were dismally wrong about the timing of her escape to Great Britain, yet dedicated that many pages to her, how important could she have been, and what nuggets could have been found there? The lack of interest displayed by the authors is almost shameful, but unfortunately both are now dead.

Moreover, West and Tsarev failed to grasp the nettle a few years later. Their coverage of Edith is remarkably patchy, and they make some egregious mistakes. In a Postscript, they boost her reputation by crediting her with establishing the Oxford ring through ‘the mysterious’ SCOTT (Arthur Wynn, whom they do not identify), but their evidence is thin, citing a report to Moscow in October 1936 where Edith was simply attributed with the opinion that SCOTT had even more potential than SÖHNCHEN. The biographical information on her relates mostly to her photographical career in England, and uses no fresh material from her KGB file. Moreover, the authors clumsily state that the only link that MI5 was able to establish between Kim and Edith was that her former husband had been a contemporary of Kim’s at Cambridge. But Alex Tudor-Hart attended the university with Maurice Dobb, not with Philby.

Jungk’s Quest

The possibilities of unearthing fresh secrets about his controversial relative consumed Peter Jungk. He wrote to the Moscow authorities. After first receiving a brush-off, and being referred to the Swiss Red Cross for information in Edith, he gained an introduction from a Professor K., at Graz University, to Sergey Ivanov, the director-general of the FSB Archive. The written reply he received stated that the institute had no information to give him, that the public was not allowed access to its archive, and he instead pointed Jungk towards Deadly Illusions! Undeterred, and without speaking Russians, Jungk decided to visit Moscow to seek his fortune.

Peter Stephan Jungk

Quite extraordinarily, he was able to gain access to the Comintern Archive building and present his question, aided in translation by a young American who happened to be undertaking research on Zinoviev. He asked about any files on Edith Suschitzky/Tudor-Hart. The archivist disappeared, returning after twenty minutes to inform Jungk that they had no files on Edith. Jungk could not believe it. He thus contacted by telephone Nikolai Dolgopolov, who had just published his book on Philby. (That dates the events as around 2019, by which time Putin had severely tightened the screws on the availability of intelligence secrets.) When Dolgopolov understood his relationship with Edith, he happily agreed to a meeting: he spoke English perfectly.

The encounter with Dolgopolov was a touch bizarre. Dolgopolov claimed that he had had access to the Philby files in the archive for the purpose of writing his biography, which Jungk describes as ‘durch und durch űberraschende’ (‘utterly startling’ – although how he could make that judgment is not clear). As Dolgopolov read passages from his book, translating as he went along, it occurred to Jungk that they reminded him of what Borovik, who had been able in 1988 to exploit the KGB archives shortly before his death, had written. But Borovik’s book was available only in English. Jungk thus asked him whether he was familiar with The Philby Files, to which he received the slightly uncomfortable reply from Dolgopolov that he had never been influenced by Borovik, attributing the fact that the texts sounded similar to his acquaintance with Kim’s widow, Rufina.

The meeting ended awkwardly. Dolgopolov poured water on any notion that Jungk might be able to gain access to Rufina, or the files, and then made some discourteous comments about Jungk’s father when he realized that his visitor was the son of Robert Jungk. He made some arrogant and tactless remarks about his own residence in Paris in the 1980s: Jungk realized that his interlocutor had been a KGB officer. Moreover, Jungk concluded that even the expert biographer had nothing more to reveal than what could be found in Borovik’s book. He tried to see Borovik, but the latter was too ill to have visitors – or even to discuss Dolgopolov’s biography and research over the telephone. His friend Petrov reminded him how protective and insular the Putin regime had become, and how the group Memorial had been policed and constrained.

In the last chapter of the saga, Jungk was introduced to a former Colonel in the KGB, Igor Prelin, who was a close friend of Sergey Ivanov. Prelin explained to Jungk that, in the early 1960s, he had personally been involved with transferring the files on Edith from the less secure Comintern building to the highly secret KGB archive. If Jungk wrote a letter to him outlining his needs, he would ensure that he received Ivanov’s attention. He even pointed out to Jungk the building where the records of the FSB (domestic intelligence) and the SVR (foreign intelligence) were kept. Jungk thus wrote a simple letter, and handed it to the unreconstituted KGB loyalist (who regarded the break-up of the Soviet Union as a tragedy). Jungk’s spirits were raised: he had to leave Moscow, but eagerly awaited the outcome.

After a few days, he heard from Prelin that his request had been acknowledged. Prelin was optimistic. Jungk then had to wait another three months before he received his answer, again transmitted via Prelin: “Can you get hold of the book Deadly Illusions by John Costello and Oleg Tsarev, which was published by Verlag Crown in 1993? This book contains on pages 133-139, 142, 154, 207 all information on this foreigner that the SVR Archive has released and passed to O. Tsarev.” Jungk decided that he should better laugh than cry, and thanked Ivanov for his efforts.

Russian Archives

So where do things stand? Can these Russian archives be trusted?

First, just because the Russian authorities claim that highly confidential records were transferred to more secure facilities in the 1960s, it does not necessarily mean that files on Edith Tudor-Hart were among them. After all, Ivanov did voluntarily recommend that Jungk inspect Deadly Illusions to ascertain what research was available. Moreover, if the files had been made even less accessible, how was it that Tsarev was able to study any of them? Furthermore, if he did access them, how come that the only item of interest concerning Edith that he reproduced was a very anodyne and equivocal biographical sketch of her by Arnold Deutsch? If Edith had been an agent of some substance and achievement, it would have been far more probable that, during the last few years before the Soviet system fell, the KGB would have highlighted her achievements, as they did with Ursula Beurton (née Kuzcynski), Melita Norwood, and Kim Philby himself.

It seems to me more likely that the NKVD/KGB had very little information on Edith, and did not know much about her career. She was someone whose name occasionally cropped up in telegrams, but did not merit special attention. Indeed, since the only known entry is the biographical detail by Deutsch that disparages her reliability, one might imagine that they discouraged using her at all. Yet that hypothesis immediately has to deal with the paradox of the apparent size of the ‘Tudor-Hart file’, No. 8320, of which Volume 1, with at least fifty pages, is identified. Why, if Tsarev was able to get his hands on it, did he not reveal more of its contents? If it had been filled with junk entries, why did he not draw attention to that fact? Moreover, since Jungk should have been aware of its identity, why did he not describe it accurately in the letter he sent to Ivanov via Prelin?

We must remember that Costello’s and Tsarev’s work was undertaken with the guidance of the KGB, as a propaganda exercise to improve its image. The Chairman of the KGB, General Vladimir Kryuchkov, had made that decision in 1990, as a means of countering what Andrew and Gordievsky had recently published in KGB. The focus of Deadly Illusions was to provide a very positive account of Alexander Orlov, the defector who had challenged and defied Stalin, but who had remained loyal to the mission of the Soviet Union and the KGB by not betraying any of the penetration agents still active in the West. John Costello wrote that Kryuchkov ‘approved the policy of making selected historical records public’, but that careless and inaccurate statement distorts the means by which Tsarev (and he alone) was able to inspect the archives of the KGB. The process of ‘publication’, or ‘declassification’, of archival material normally implies that any researcher can inspect it, and verify sources.

Boris Volodarsky has been quite scathing about the reliability of The Deadly Illusions. In his 2023 book, The Birth of the Soviet Secret Police, he points out that Tsarev had been a KGB operative working in London, until he was expelled in the early 1980s, whereupon he was employed by the Press and Public Relations office of the KGB. Volodarsky also questions Costello’s competence as a historian, suggesting he accepted whatever documents he was given at face value, because of the monetary reward. Volodarsky’s conclusion? “Nevertheless, it became an international bestseller and is still being quoted as an indisputable source by many intelligence writers although it has long been exposed as a fake history, a KGB deception.” Volodarsky’s comments would have been more useful if he had translated that last passive clause into a more active explanation.

Tsarev gives the impression that he was allowed fairly free rein among the rather chaotic sets of documents in the First Chief Directorate headquarters at Yasenevo. (He admitted that the collections could hardly be classified as ‘archives’ in the western sense of the word.) He describes speculative paper-chases that involved looking at much irrelevant material before possibly coming up with reports of value. He writes that many of the documents were undated, or had wrong dates, and that ‘some of the reports in the files are not even stitched into the bound volumes in chronological order’. Thus an immediate paradox appears: if the documents were so chaotic, how come his text and Endnotes regularly include apparently precise identification – such as with the ORLOV, DEUTSCH, PHILBY, MACLEAN et al. files? And that goes for TUDOR-HART as well. Is it possible that these identifiers were created retroactively, in order to offer a stronger impression of authenticity? In these circumstances, the existence of a tidy operational file dedicated to Edith Tudor-Hart seems very bizarre. On the other hand, if the sole identifiable reference was for No. 8320, it may have been because that was the only document on Tudor-Hart that was given to him – or on which he alighted serendipitously, and he (or his minders) decided that it should be given a number.

At a high level, Christopher Andrew described this tortuous process in the first chapter of The Sword and the Shield, the compilation based on documents smuggled out by Vasiliev Mitrokhin, which was published in 1999. These revelations greatly irritated the SVR (the Foreign Intelligence Service), which must have believed that it had been in control of the whole release process. It was, however, very disingenuous of Ivanov to pretend, when responding to Jungk, that these disclosures had never occurred, since a secondary swipe at the material had obviously taken place – without authorization. For some reason, Jungk does not appear to be aware of the Mitrokhin exercise or of this volume: else he would surely have mentioned them, or commented that Prelin’s claims that all highly secret documents had been moved to inaccessible storage some decades before, never to be seen by Westerners, were a hollow sham.

The process is even more mysterious by the time that Tsarev teams up with Nigel West in 1995 (after Costello’s death). In The Crown Jewels West does not offer much insight on the evolution of events, merely stating in his Acknowledgments, with a touch of both naivety and ingratiation: “We are also indebted to the late John Costello for persuading [sic!] the Russian Federation Intelligence Service to open its archives, and to Yuri Kobalaze for supervising our access. Also our gratitude is due to the Chief of the SVR archives, Aleksandr P. Byelozyorov, and his staff for their patient support, and to the members of the SVR Declassification Board.” This had the appearance of being a carefully controlled exercise, initiated to boost the achievements of the KGB and to embarrass the British government. The archives were never ‘opened’ for general public access in the way visitors at Kew might interpret the claim.

Yet West places a different spin on the arrangement in Chapter 17 of his recent book Classified! (reviewed here in May of this year: see https://coldspur.com/some-problems-with-westy/ ). After Costello’s enigmatic death in 1995, it appeared that an unidentified project – that of continuing where Deadly Illusions left off, presumably the coverage in the FCD files of the London rezidentura up until 1960, but West is vague – was in jeopardy. Oddly, however, it is the American publishers who became anxious about the schedule of the project, and expressed concern whether the KGB was supplying genuine texts. West was invited in, with the objective of sending him to Moscow to assess the project, but he was then informed that Random House had cancelled the whole enterprise. Tsarev had not been informed of this decision, and was angry, but also puzzled, as both the SVR and a sestet of authors had already been paid an advance fee. He proposed (by phone) to West that he take over “Costello’s current book, Deadly Illusions”.

This was an odd way of describing a publication that had come out in 1993, with one of its co-authors now dead. West then describes how, over the next couple of years, he made several trips to Moscow, in order to ‘sift through the material already selected from the KGB files by Costello and to look at the huge quantity of papers that had to be assessed’. How Costello, who knew no Russian, had been able to ‘sift through’ such material is not explained: nor does West, who also lacks competence in Russian, describe how he was able to add value to this process. Moreover, the whole exercise has an air of farce, since West claimed that he was able to secrete original documents out of the office he shared with Tsarev so that he could photocopy them at the Marriott Hotel, and then return them furtively back into the office. He then later smuggled the copies out at the airport. To think that such shenanigans could be carried on clandestinely, without the SVR knowing what was going on, defies belief. It surely must have approved the process – or at least condoned it. This is pure melodrama, designed no doubt to boost West’s reputation as a buccaneer.

When The Crown Jewels (and other books reliant on the project, such as Weinstein’s and Vassiliev’s The Haunted Wood) were published, some critics complained. Amy Knight expressed the opinion that the authors had become ‘KGB [sic] dupes, peddling a pro-Soviet perspective’. West responded to this by writing: “While it is true that the KGB management only allowed us to see the documents that had already been scrutinized by the KGB, who obviously had an agenda, propaganda was not one of the organisation’s motives – they were rather more motivated by the money”. Whether these revenues derived from further down-payments, or royalties from the sale of the books, is not stated. The problem is that the whole exercise was unscholarly, a sordid commercial business of backroom deals, with files pre-screened and selected by the SVR, Costello making further extracts before he died, and West and Tsarev vaguely inspecting large quantities of documents that are not precisely described. No one else was allowed to have similar access, and no one can verify the sources or attempt to confirm the accuracy of the published conclusions. Moreover, Tsarev was an employee of the SVR.

Nevertheless, in his memoir West makes ambitious claims about the book that emerged. “The Crown Jewels represented a major step forward in understanding the traitors of the 1930s and 1940s”, he writes, “and explained the crucial talent-spotting and recruiting roles of the illegal residents Alexander Orlov and Arnold Deutsch. It also revealed the contribution made by the NKVD recruiter Edith Suschitzky.” On the recruitment chain started by Philby, with the recommendations to pursue his cronies, that statement is probably true. But, as I have shown in this piece, the claims over the exact roles of Deutsch and Suschitzky (correctly, Tudor-Hart) are very contestable. Indeed, in the relevant chapter from his memoir, West makes no reference to the assertion articulated strongly in The Crown Jewels that it was Edith who was responsible for recruiting the ‘Oxford Ring’. Perhaps he has changed his mind. And, after all, in his letter to Jungk, Ivanov did not mention The Crown Jewels, which made the claim about Edith and the Ring.

Thus one might have expected the SVR, if it had wanted to boost its expertise and achievements through Costello and Tsarev, and considered Edith a noteworthy asset, to have provided a more robust account of her role than it did. Merely allowing the Deutsch biographical sketch to slip through was not an overwhelming endorsement of the Edith legend. To reinforce that supposition, I note that there simply is very little about Edith in the Mitrokhin archive either. (She does not merit an Index entry.) Indeed, the authors show such little interest in her that they resort simply, in an endnote, to pointing out that Deadly Illusions failed to note that EDITH had been recruited by Deutsch. The narrative by Andrew and Mitrokhin is in any case sloppy: for example, it implies that Edith had married Alex ‘after she had taken residence up in London’, which is either an obtuse or grossly careless assertion. Intriguingly, the authors do however remark that Kim and Litzi ‘returned to London’ [not actually accurate, as it was Litzi’s first encounter with the British Isles] in May 1934, thus incidentally exploding the anecdote about the May Day celebrations. It is not an anomaly they pick up on. This work is assuredly not about a valuable lost trove concerning a very special agent.

The Legendary Edith

So what is the true story about Edith?

I once imagined that stories of espionage unrolled in a predictable way. Accurate reports were maintained at the time, but remained secret because of national security concerns, and to protect the living and still active. Careful memoirs might start to emerge, with names concealed. Eventually, archival material would come to be declassified, and authorized historians could get to work, exploiting resources that would be available to less qualified researchers. The public would thus learn the facts about clandestine operations and espionage cases.

Of course, it is nothing like this at all. The records that were created by intelligence organizations (from SOE to the KGB) were frequently deficient, or wrong, and were carefully weeded by the authorities before release (if they were properly declassified at all). Irresponsible participants (such as Buckmaster) were allowed to peddle their own versions of events if it suited those responsible for maintaining the reputation of a service. Independent journalists, speaking to participants who owned a different perspective, would leak stories, and often romanticize them. MI5 and MI6 would assist or ghost-write memoirs (such as Alexander Foote’s Handbook for Spies) and facilitate ‘independent’ histories (such as Alan Moorhead’s Traitors), in order to embellish their reputation. Likewise, opposing intelligence services would sponsor memoirs (e.g. My Silent War, Sonjas Rapport) as a propaganda exercise, and a further response in kind was called for.

The British authorities also realized that they did not have exclusive control of the records, the USA having a less restrictive sense of secrecy in some quarters, and they started engaging in controlled leaks themselves. The administration of ‘authorized’ histories was a useful public relations exercise, but was woefully mismanaged, with historians like Christopher Andrew ignoring professional standards of accreditation, and carelessly treating such creations as My Silent War and Spycatcher as fact. After the fall of the Soviet Union, the successors to the KGB exploited the eagerness for fresh archival material by manipulating foreign journalists, and their low-quality pap was lapped up by a fresh wave of writers unfamiliar with the tortuous history.

In that way has the fog around Edith Tudor-Hart been created, to the extent that even the grand-daughter of Kim Philby has been taken in by it. My belief is that Edith was a relatively insignificant contributor to the Soviet cause, but that she occupied a useful role as a consumer of MI5 attention and time to distract the surveillance organization from more worthy subjects. On Austrian soil she might have been able to execute a more effective function as a courier and agitator, perhaps, but with the more intense scrutiny there, and Edith’s tendency to be less than discreet in her activities, she became a quick prey, and thus had to be salvaged. Earlier, in Britain, her dealings with the Alexander Tudor-Hart/Maurice Dobb axis suggest that she could have been a potentially successful deeply-placed subversive, but, once she had been arrested as an agitator, her cover was completely blown.

The NKVD, knowing of her expulsion, must have concluded that, once she returned to the United Kingdom, her utility would be very constrained, as she would surely be subject to close and constant surveillance. And that is what happened – apart from the very strange interlude before 1935. If, as I have explained elsewhere, the NKVD considered Litzi Friedman a much more important agent, the Edith-Kim association was a sideshow to divert attention, and that is how the archival material in Moscow was framed. Kim Philby was himself tainted by his activities in Vienna, and any attempt to build him up as a deep penetration agent was a long shot. (It took six years for him to obtain an important post in intelligence – much longer than his colleagues Maclean and Burgess.) Later on, at the end of the war, when Litzi’s use was winding down – and she even came under suspicion in Berlin as a Jewish ‘cosmopolitanist’ who had been tainted by Western influences – Kim’s star rose, and the myth-making about his stellar career started to be manufactured.

It was not that Edith was completely inactive. She was watched socializing with known Communists, and she acted as a courier. In particular, she became very intimate with Engelbert Broda, who, while working at the Cavendish Laboratory, provided highly important nuclear secrets that Edith passed on. Moscow Centre must have considered that the use of Edith as a courier carried with it severe risks, but must also have either believed that the link was safe, and that Edith was by then not deemed suspicious, or that they had so many other sources on hand (e.g. Fuchs, Nunn-May, Norwood) that they could afford to sacrifice one pair, if that is what it came to.

Thus I would tend to discount most of the farrago about Edith’s introductions, the serpentine trip to Regent’s Park, the portentous chat on the bench, and the wealth of the recruitments carried out by Reif and Deutsch that summer. The various details offered in memoirs and archival material simply do not add up. For some reason, observers seem to want to pick up these romanticized episodes, forgetting that the descriptions have been offered by notorious liars – including even that great charlatan Anthony Blunt, with his nonsense about ‘the grandmother of us all’.


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Special Bulletin: ‘Two Russians’ – The PB416 Casualty File

PB416 at Saupeset

I reported earlier this month that I was awaiting the Casualty File for Flight PB416 from the Ministry of Defence. PB416 was the Lancaster bomber that crashed near Saupeset in Norway on September 17, 1944, with the loss of life of all on board – the subject of my articles on ‘The Airmen Who Died Twice’: see https://coldspur.com/the-airmen-who-died-twice-synopsis/ for the synopsis of them. The official historian of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office had encouraged me to make an application under the Freedom of Information Act, and, on July 11, the package arrived by email.

It consisted of two PDFs. The first was a standard letter, pointing out some of the security concerns that had occasioned redactions, primarily to disguise the names of relatives. Letters to such persons had also been omitted. It also described what actions I should undertake if I had any complaints about the procedure. The second was a 93-page file containing a variety of documents and photographs. What surprised me was that no restrictions on the use of the material were imposed upon me, so I judge I am free to quote, or even reproduce, freely from the material provided.

The file is very poignant – but also disturbing. It comes home to me that the registration processes shown here, which seemed very singular in relation to my quest over the individual flight that took place almost eighty years ago, must have become a sad routine for the RAF personnel who constantly had to record such mishaps. Yet the collection is also very alarming: it is fragmented, and inconclusive, and is in no way comprehensive. It complements rather the other archival information that I (benefitting largely from Nigel Austin’s predecessor activity) have revealed in my essay on the disaster. I conclude that the Squadron617 ‘historian’ has either never inspected this file, or has chosen to ignore some of its more provocative segments.

The last entry in the file is dated March 31, 1980, in which the author attempts to close out the story once and for all, while ignoring much of the archival record. (I shall return to that item later.) Perhaps a generation of interested contemporaries was dying out. The story was lost, and was relegated to a footnote. It has taken another forty-four years for the investigation to be resuscitated. My impression is that some institutional memory has endured over the decades, and enough knowledge has survived to foster the need for the incident to remain buried. My knowledge of RAF terminology and abbreviations is poor, but I hereby attempt to interpret the various reports contained.

The file starts with a very plain Air Ministry statement, dated the day of the crash (17/9/1944), and simply recording the names of those airmen missing. As a foundation for the evolving story, I list their names here:

F/O Levy, F.

Sgt. Groom, P. W.

F/O Fox, C. L.

F/Sgt. Peck, E. E. S.

F/Sgt. McGuire, G. M.

P/O McNally, H. C.

F/Sgt. Thomas, H. D.

F/O Shea, D. G.

P/O Naylor, J. F.

‘Passenger’ is written under this list, reflecting the knowledge that the standard crew of seven had been complemented by two others, the result of the inability of damaged Lancasters to return from Yagodnik, with their crews consequently allocated to other planes.

An unenciphered telegram, dated September 17, at 4:45 pm, from the Squadron to the Air Ministry follows, recording that the flight was missing, ‘returning to base after an operational sortie’ – an ambiguous phrase with severe implications, as I shall explore later. It provides more details of the crew, listing next of kin (although, surprisingly, only four such connections have been redacted). It states that Levy and Fox were Jewish, a fact that has repercussions later, and confirms that Shea and Naylor were passengers. The next day, the Squadron Leader writes a formal letter to the Air Ministry, confirming the details, but classifying the incident as a ‘battle casualty’, which it surely was not. He adds that a wireless-telegraph message was received at 2:27 am BST, but does not offer the co-ordinates, merely adding that it was ‘over Norway’.

The next item is startling. It comprises a translation of a letter received via the Norwegian legation, in which a Norwegian describes how a local party of citizens was assembled to provide a ceremony for the dead airmen, and how they prevailed upon the Germans to allow them to lay a wreath on the rude grave that the local (Quisling) police had dug in the mountains, by arrangement of the Nazis. The writer describes the location of the crash, and then adds: “The entire crew, consisting of two Russian, two Australian and seven British airmen, was killed, and their identity plates were found.” He ends his script by asking whether the Red Cross could provide them with the names of the airmen’s mothers so that they might learn that some Norwegians tried to give them their last honours.

The Grave on the Mountain

I found this astonishing – for the confidence that the writer expressed in the identification process, as well as for the insouciance over the presence of Russians among the crew. Yet it is also puzzling: if all identity plates were found (presumably the only way to determine that two were Russians), why did the local authorities conclude that two of the crewmen were Australian? A photograph of Shea’s ID-tag provided later in the file, in which all information is clearly visible, indicates name, rank (OFFR), number, and religion (C E), but no clue towards nationality. (It happens that one member was Canadian, and one Rhodesian, which leads me to believe that perhaps their status as a ‘colonial’ was included: perhaps the Germans assumed that all colonials were Australian. I seek guidance.) Nevertheless, the uncompromising assertion that there were eleven identifiable bodies, and two of them were Soviet citizens, supports my hypothesis about these authorized ‘stowaways’.

The Report from Stockholm

On October 30, the Air Attaché in Stockholm formally presented in a letter the same information to the Assistant Chief of Air Staff (Intelligence), and he requested that a copy of his report be sent to the Imperial War Graves Commission. The Attaché bewilderingly expressed no surprise that a pair of Russians could have been companions of the RAF airmen. Yet he went further: he was, however, explicit that the tally of the crew, seven British, two Australian, and two Russian, was derived from the identity discs found. This provocative report prompted a stern message from the Director of Personal Services at the Air Ministry, in a letter to the Commanding Officer at Woodhall Spa, dated December 4. He cites the report from Norway, adds some details about items recovered at the scene, but also shows a large degree of disingenuousness in his attempt at detective work.

The most surprising aspect is that he had up till then not recognized or confirmed the identity of the crashed plane. He lists a few scraps of clothing that the Germans had left behind, and uses the fact that one item marked ‘511 Peck’ leads to the conclusion that ‘despite certain discrepancies, it is thought that the crash is that of Lancaster P.B. 416’. How such bureaucratic stodginess could occur when a confident statement about the identity of the sole missing plane had been made the day of the disaster is incredible. Moreover, he refers to the squadron’s report about the crew of seven, and two passengers, so he must have been familiar with the details. He highlights the anomaly of the recorded eleven victims, stating: “The reference to Russian occupants may be due to the fact that the aircraft had taken off from Archangel and might have been carrying some Russian souvenirs.” He leaves unexamined the evidence (though not verifiable) from the Germans that two Russian identity discs had been found, or how the presence of a few souvenirs could have caused the Germans to lead the Germans to identify two corpses as Russian.

The officer adds a couple of perplexing details. He writes that the Germans removed everything of value from the site, leaving only four items. Apart from the Peck item (and an anonymous clothing tab), he lists ‘a clothing label in marking ink marked 544 T (?) Smith’, and ‘the remains of a pocket book marked 225/2 marked Ormestad or Ormestond’. His final request is for the Commanding Officer to verify that the co-ordinates received by W/T concerning the location of the aircraft correspond to the site of the crash, and for the mystery of the Smith/Ormestad clothing to be resolved. “Possibly one of the occupants was wearing someone else’s flying clothing.” Indeed. But the overall impression is of someone not overdosed with intelligence, concentrating on exactly the right protocol so that the office can inform the next of kin.

In his reply, dated December 12, the Wing Commander crisply tries to dispense with any anomalies. He confirms the coordinates, and echoes the vague conclusions about the challenges of identification, and the probability of the existence of souvenirs, while using the passive voice (‘it is believed’), rather than admitting to a formal judgment. Yet he completely ignores, or tacitly views as irrelevant, any suggestion that there could have been more than nine persons on the crashed plane.

The fragmented and discontinuous nature of the file is shown by the next item. It appears to be an internal memo within P.4.CAS, dated December 19, 1944, and makes it official that the Canadian member of the crew, McNally, was on the flight. In recording the burial ceremony, however, the anonymous writer concludes: “The next of kin of the R.A.F. occupants have been informed.” That strikes me as a very bizarre form of words, implying that not all of the occupants were members of the R.A.F. Otherwise, why qualify the statement with ‘R.A.F.’?

The next letter, apparently by the same writer in P.4.CAS, with the same date, is also revealing. It is directed to A.I.1, presumably Air Intelligence. It records the facts of the flight of PB416, but carelessly notes that the plane took off from Archangel ‘to return to base after having carried out an operational sortie’. This is the first occasion in which a report has openly stated that the sortie was scheduled after the plane had left Archangel, and it directly contradicts the claims that I have listed elsewhere that the plane had probably been blown off-course. I believe this statement constitutes further proof (alongside the unsurprised checking of co-ordinates) that PB 416 was on a mission to southern Norway. The writer then dismisses any notion that there could have been more than nine persons on the plane, and he lists the nine, as given above. He judges that souvenirs must have been taken as identity discs, thus pretending to counter the assertion of eleven passengers.

On December 19, the Director of Personal Services felt comfortable enough with the investigation to inform the Director General, Graves Registration and Inquiries that, indeed, there were only nine members in the crew, not eleven, and he attached the previous letter for details. On January 11, 1945, a ‘Missing Memorandum’ (no 5889) was issued, in which the status of the nine was changed from ‘Missing’ to ‘Missing believed Killed’ (MBK). The Air Ministry passed on this decision to the HQ of 5 Group, 617 Squadron. On January 8, the RAF Casualties Officer had challenged this reclassification to MBK (and to WBK – the meaning of which is not spelled out), however, and awaited further justification in a letter.

Another letter from a Group Captain, acting for the Director of Personal Services, and dated February 6, confirms the status of the dead, but allows a separate process for the presumption of death to be taken by the Canadian section in the case of McNally. This letter extraordinarily still records that ‘The entire crew, believed to comprise eleven personnel, were all killed’, without making any commentary on this enduring enigma. The letter confirms the reality of the operational sortie. Following the letter, photographs of fragments of clothing, of the cross constructed at the crash-site, and of the airplane itself, are provided.

A new twist is next provided by an undated memorandum from an address in Oslo (the identity of its owner redacted). It repeats familiar information, but comments: “Eleven men were buried accoring [sic: ‘according] to the Germans, but the Norwegians say it was only ten.” This development may reflect the testimony of a Norwegian present at the time, who was reported on social media over a decade ago as saying that he had seen a body transported from the site. The file then reverts to October 28, where the Air Attaché in Stockholm writes to RAF Intelligence that the crew was believed to consist of eleven or twelve men! Where the twelfth person came from is not explained.

German list of Booty

The file takes another sharp turn when some German documents are revealed. It is not clear when these were discovered, but it must surely have been after the war. The first is dated as early as September 21, 1944, and consists of a list of ‘loot’, or ‘booty’ retrieved from the site. Notable among the effects are a ‘Zettel mit russicher Schrift’ [scrap of paper with Russian writing on it], ‘2 sojwetische Sterne und 1 Ankerabzeichen’, [2 Soviet stars and 1 Anchor medallion] as well as ‘4 russiche Geldscheine’ [4 Russian banknotes]. While the latter two items could conceivably be interpreted as being souvenirs (although foreigners taking Soviet money out of the country was strictly forbidden), the scrap of paper would point indisputably to the presence of a Soviet citizen on board. The anchor medallions would suggest that at least one of the pair was a member of the Soviet navy.

A brief report from an Oberleutnant, dated September 27, refers to the fact that the personal papers of seven crew members of the Lancaster will be handed over soon to the Air Command. It is followed by the shocking first revelation of the phantom members of the crew, Wynes [sic: ‘Wyness’] and Williams. On an official form for reporting British airplane crashes, dated January 24, 1945, ten crew members are listed, comprising the standard roster (but without McGuire), but including Squadron Leader Wyness and Flight Lieutenant Williams. Yet the latter two, as well as Fox, are listed without their ID-tag number, which is a surprising phenomenon, given that earlier reports had indicated that all the IDs had been found. This report appears to have been picked up on November 2, 1945, and is reproduced, with no apparent challenge. Yet the absence of McGuire is not noted, while two crosses appear against the names of Wynes [sic: unchanged, as if the writer is not familiar with the real Wyness] and Williams.

German report of crewmen found

The Director of Graves Registration and Inquiries is confused. On October 16, 1945, he writes to the Under-Secretary of State, Air Ministry (Casualty Branch), informing him that ‘the Graves Registration Service, Norway, have been alerted to visit the location and register the grave of the nine members of the crew’, who have been interred at the top of the mountain. Yet he adds that the names of Wynes and Williams have been included, without declaring the anomaly in count, or even checking his own records, where he would have found that the two airmen were already deceased. He ends his letter by asking if the two might be correctly identified, and their ‘full Service particulars furnished’.

Wynes [sic] and Williams from German records

The request for clarification is echoed in a letter from the Squadron Leader in Oslo, the officer commanding Section 6 in 88 Group. He is addressing the Casualty Department of the Air Ministry, and requests full information so that he may supply the Graves Registration Unit with accurate information. The quota of the crew has been restored to eleven, with McGuire present again, and Wynes and Williams still in view. He adds that the GRU wants the graves to remain where they are for the time being.

This causes a flutter with the Director of Personal Services. Without offering any evidence, in a letter back to Norway, dated January 2, 1946, he asserts that the aircraft carried only nine men, and notes that ‘the inclusion of Squadron Leader Wyness and Flight Lieutenant would appear to be an error on the part of the German authorities’. I notice that this is the first time that Wyness has been spelled correctly, and the Director has obviously done his homework, as he relates how the pair went missing in October 1944. His proffered explanation is that other members of the crew had somehow been carrying some of Wyness’s and Williams’s effects with them, as if that resolved all the issues. He then sends a shorter letter conveying the same message to the Under-Secretary at the War Ministry. Meanwhile, the Director of Graves Registration is getting impatient. On January 3, 1946, he reminds the War Office that he is still awaiting a response to his October 16 letter. If he received a reply, it has not been filed.

The scene then switches back to Norway, and the gravesite. An undated report explains how the bodies have been re-interred in the graveyard at Nesbyen Church, probably in April 1946. “Local reports say that eleven bodies were buried but only the remains of ten could be found,” it runs, continuing: “These were badly burned and mutilated and in all cases only parts of each body were found.” The evidence from the ground would tend to reinforce the notion that one body had been removed, while it fairly conclusively indicates that ten separate bodies could be recorded, though not confidently matched to the known crew members. The result is that some guesses had to be made.

I show below the summary of the allocation of graves to victims. One extraordinary supporting note for the body placed in Row H, Grave 1, states that one of its markers was ‘part of collar bearing the number 1435510.’ Someone has inserted the name of the airman holding this number, but it has been redacted. Next to it appears the rubric: ‘Not a casualty’. A quick search on the Web reveals that Pilot Reg Payne of the same Squadron held that number, but his name does not appear in the Operations Book of the PARAVANE mission. Why his id-tag should appear in the remains is yet another mystery. What the summary does tell us, however, is that only Levy, Groom, Thomas, Fox, McNally and Shea could be confidently identified, leaving Peck, Naylor and McGuire perhaps incorrectly identified on the eventual tombstones, with the possibility (not evident to the authorities) that McGuire’s body had been removed, and that one of the Russians had taken his place. And, of course, the tenth man is the extra whose existence could not be recognized by the R.A.F.

First Analysis of Gravesites

The details concerning the body interred at G2 are fascinating: “This body was very badly burned and only part of civilian type [missing] with blue and white stripes could be found.” Whether the pattern of this clothing could lead to clearer identification was apparently never investigated, but was it perhaps a Soviet prison uniform? Why would the authorities choose to ignore this unusual but discomforting factoid?

In any event, on May 2, 1946, the Squadron Leader of the Oslo RAF mission passed on the report to the Casualty Department at the Air Ministry, pointing out the discrepancy between the ten bodies and the nine names supplied, and asking for the Ministry’s findings on the matter. The Director of Personal Services replied on July 27, seeking to close out the business. He concurred with the identification of the six above, and then wrote: “It is not possible to identify the occupant of grave 2, row G, from the civilian wearing apparel, and it is suggested [that passive voice again!] that the remains be concentrated [sic: ‘consecrated’?] to one of the unidentified graves.” Further, he recommended that the unidentified graves be registered collectively in the names of Peck, McGuire, and Naylor. He finally attempted to wipe away all controversy about the number of bodies found by referring to the general state of mutilation, which must have made counting difficult, and requested the Graves Registration Unit to accept what he had decreed.

Initial Internment at Nesbyen

There then follow a number of identical photographs of the graves and their markers, on which the names can be clearly viewed. These were taken in October 1946 by an unnamed tourist from Leeds who happened to be in the area. There are two St. David’s Stars (for Levy and Fox), eight Christian crosses, and, very curiously, an unmarked grave to the left. That is provocative, because photographs taken recently at Nesbyen Church, with new granite headstones provided, indicate that the number of graves has been reduced to ten. This anomaly caught the eye of the officer in CAS, and he wrote to the submitter, on February 18, 1947, that ‘the arrangement of the graves shown thereon does not tally with the arrangement quoted in the exhumation reports’, and that he would not be able to forward the photographs to the next of kin until the discrepancies were cleared. The fact that these sixteen photographs still sit in the file suggests that those discrepancies remained unresolved.

There were several problems, and the officer had to send a sharp note to Oslo the same day, pointing out that the location of the graves as displayed by the private photographer contradicted the findings issued by his office. He did not describe the conflicts in detail, but it is obvious that the presence of not only a tenth, but an eleventh, grave disturbed him, and the locations of the named victims had been moved as well. “In these circumstances”, he writes, “can it be stated please on whose authority the crosses shown in the photograph were erected and inscribed?”.

He was not to receive any useful answer. On March 1, the Air Attaché in Oslo wrote back that the addressee, ‘No 14. M.R.E.S’, had left Norway five months earlier, taking all his files with him, and he routed the inquiry to Headquarters, No. 3. M.R.E.U. In Karlsruhe, Germany. Thus the investigation was tactfully allowed to grind to a halt. The officer issued his final official burial records, all nine of which appear on file, as follows, with precise data about Row and Grave No.:

Levy G1

Groom H3

Fox H2

Peck H4

McGuire G3

McNally G4

Thomas H5

Shea H1

Naylor G5.

His instructions were followed, in the main, except for the fact that a headstone existed at G2, dedicated to an ‘Unknown Airman’ – someone that the Air Ministry did not want to recognize, although the gap would have stood out like a missing tooth. And, of course, the remains described as McGuire probably belong to the second Russian citizen.

Nesbyen Cemetery Today

Nevertheless, the officer received confirmation on November 26, 1947, that the graves had been shifted according to instructions, and that the registrations were correct. Oslo declined to remove the remains of the ‘Unknown Airman’, and London remained in ignorance of their durability. And that was effectively that. Apart from corrections to the named rank of Naylor and Fox, the case was closed on December 7, 1950, with the list of the dead stubbornly remaining at nine. The last entry, dated March 31, 1980, shows that one inquisitive private sleuth was trying to decipher the mystery, having seen the grave for the Unknown Airman at Nesbyen. A letter to him from the Ministry of Defence confirms that there were only nine passengers on board the flight, and the author observes: “Unfortunately we have no knowledge of the identity of the airman who occupies the grave in the churchyard which is marked ‘Known Unto God’”. That in itself reinforces the paradox: if there were only nine on board, how is it that a real but unidentifiable tenth airman could be implicitly acknowledged?

Conclusions:

This was a sad and ignoble project. The file, while straining to provide its own narrative, omits many other significant items, such as those I have displayed in my analysis. It desperately cries out for an integrated assessment of all intelligence. It is characterized by a petty, bureaucratic lack of imagination and curiosity, and a failure of anyone to take proper responsibility for resolving the many conflicts. The question cries out for attention: Why was a Special Inquiry into this tragedy not carried out at the time?

Of course, that may have been the intention – to maintain the investigation in such a state of confusion that the bureaucrats would eventually tire of its twists and turns. Someone in authority surely knew the whole story, and how volatile it would be if the truth came out, and issued clear instructions that the anomalies were not to be pursued with any diligence. And the obstruction was successful.

Yet, some irrefutable clues persist as to the nature of the deception. The last flight of PB416 is more than once described as an operational sortie over Norway, and its unorthodox course can thus not be attributed to the weather. The Germans were able to identify two of the bodies as Russians (although their technique for doing so is not clear), and the markers erected on site (which the Report does not reproduce) clearly indicate the presence of the remains of airmen bearing the markers of Wyness and Williams. Effects showing Russian heritage, including handwritten notes, which could not have been created by any of the R.A.F. crewmen, and banknotes to the tune of 70 rubles, were recorded by the Germans. Unexplained anchor medallions and ‘civilian clothing’ were found. A suggestion remains that not all occupants were R.A.F. members. The count of eleven corpses endured, despite all the efforts of the Air Ministry to quash it. It is time for the Ministry of Defence to acknowledge the patent errors and oversights that characterized the investigation of its predecessor Ministry, conduct a proper inquiry that considers all the evidence, and prepare to apologize to the relatives of all those who died.

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Filed under Espionage/Intelligence, General History, Geography, Management/Leadership, Politics, Travel

Summer 2024 Round-Up

Los Altos, CA

Contents:

Introduction

‘The Airmen Who Died Twice’

The coldspur Archive

Helen Fry’s ‘Women in Intelligence’ (2023)

The Darkrooms of Edith Tudor-Hart

‘Nothing Short of a Scandal!’

Guy Burgess at Kew

A Death in Nuremberg

Holiday Reading: Volodarsky et al.

Coldspur under stress

News from Academia

Similarity and Identity

*          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *

Introduction

Readers can probably imagine the flurry that takes place in the days just before the publication of the monthly coldspur. After I have submitted my copy, my team of fact-checkers goes over it, verifying names, dates, titles, and professional positions. Thelma, my lead grammarian and Sensitivity Reader, goes over my text with a toothcomb, looking for dangling participles and ensuring that the subjunctive mood is deployed properly, checking nounal and verbal agreements, and verifying that colons and semicolons have been used correctly. She also has an eye out for any offensive remarks I may have made concerning disadvantaged minorities. (She is not certain whether the category of ‘authorized historians’ comes under that rubric.) My Editor next reviews the overall style of my piece, and analyzes it for any opinions or assertions that may have legal implications: we discuss them, and make any necessary changes. Meanwhile, my Graphics Editor has been scouring the Web for suitable images to decorate my pallid prose. Lastly, cross-referenced urls have to be reconciled and verified, and the posting properly indexed for optimization by search engines. On the last day of the month, before breakfast my time, the piece goes into Production status, and eager readers, from Memphis to Murmansk, from Montevideo to Melbourne, can pick up their monthly fix.

Thus my absence in California at the end of June, accompanied by my wife and daughter to visit our son and his family, caused a fair measure of disruption at coldspur HQ. We did not return until the early morning of July 3, and the staff had to interrupt their Independence Day plans in order to meet the new deadline. I thank everyone for their sacrifices and noble efforts. Life will be so much easier when Conspirobot© takes over completely.

‘The Airmen Who Died Twice’

Memorial Panel

I was relieved to have completed writing the saga of the 1944 crash at Saupeset, and to be able to publish it, by the end of March. I have had several complimentary messages from coldspur readers around the world, and it has been my intent to drum up interest in the story in time for the eightieth anniversary of the incident in September of this year. I strongly believe that the relatives of the sacrificed airmen deserve a full explanation and apology from the Ministry of Defence. I also believe that my story is strong, and very defensible, with incontrovertible evidence about the impersonated airmen and their subsequent tragic deaths, even if the documentation behind the conspiracy is sadly missing. I also feel it is appropriate, among all the celebrations surrounding the liberation of 1944, that honest appraisals of mistakes be made as well. For example, several recent books have disclosed the massive French civilian casualties that were caused by RAF and USAAF bombing after the D-Day landings, in places like le Havre, and the manner in which such slaughter was given justification, in the context of the objective of destroying German units, is receiving fresh attention from historians.

One of the early converts to my story was Professor Torgrim Titlestad, who has a very special interest in Peter Furubotn, the Norwegian Communist who defied Stalin. He has spent a large amount of time in updating a biography of Furubotn, one first published in Norwegian in 1997, but not yet published in English (A synopsis of his life is available through his website at https://furubotnarkivene.no/en/about_peder_furubotn/index.html). The Professor believed that what I wrote shed fresh light on Furubotn’s career – and on his avoidance of an early grave. Moreover, he had a close connection with Furubotn, as his father had been Furubotn’s security officer in 1944, and had accompanied him in his escape from the Gestapo. If any academic were to be sceptical about theories of assassination plots via RAF aircraft, it would have been the Professor.

At one stage earlier this year, Professor Titlestad even invited me to speak on the subject at a conference in Oslo later this year. I jumped at the opportunity, and started planning possible speaking events in the United Kingdom to leverage my presence in Europe, believing that I had interesting stories on such as Philby and Smolka to relate, as well as the ‘Airmen’ saga. I very much enjoy public speaking, and dug out my passport to see if it needed renewing. The Professor even asked about my expenses, and how I thought they should be met. I responded promptly –and generously, I think – but then the Professor went quiet. I did not go begging to him to determine what happened, but am dismayed by his behaviour. I do not know whether a political dispute interfered with the invitation (the Norwegians are still at loggerheads over some aspects of the wartime resistance), or whether the Professor decided he did not care for my revisionist views of Furubotn. As the conclusion of my piece clearly states, I am dismissive of the Professor’s attempt to present Furubotn as some kind of ‘Eurocommunist’ liberal, and found the references to Bukharin ill-advised. In any event, I had to withdraw my preliminary approaches for other speaking events, which was very annoying.

I thus turned my attention to media outlets who I considered might be interested in the story. My on-line colleague Keith Ellison had kindly converted the web pages of the story into PDFs, so I now had a version I could distribute rather than simply referring addressees to coldspur. I saw two classes of outlet – a) institutions with some responsibility for, or ownership of, the case, and b) investigative journalists with a penchant for uncovering breakthrough stories. In the first category, I picked the Squadron 617 Association and the magazine RAF News (‘the official voice of the Royal Air Force’). Neither entity even acknowledged my email. As for the second, I wrote to Private Eye and the Mail on Sunday (who had used material by Anthony Glees and me on Sonia a few years ago). Again, neither even acknowledged my message.

I had to change tack, obviously, and approach individual names. Having exchanged emails with the historian Andrew Roberts a few years ago (before he became Baron Roberts of Belgravia), I had joined his distribution list for updates on his new books. I thus tried to invoke his help. He responded very promptly, said the domain was however outside his sphere of interest, but immediately copied in a journalist at the Daily Mail, one Andrew Yates. I never heard back from him, either. I contacted a couple of historians with whom I had become acquainted via the SOE chat-site: they were both very enthusiastic about my research, but they could not offer any leads to further promotion. At about this time (early May) I also reached out to the journalist Mark Hollingsworth, with whom I had created a friendly rapport after I had reviewed his book Agents of Influence on coldspur.

Mark was very supportive (he was impressed with my research on Smolka), and he suggested that I create a synopsis of the material, in order to enable easier assimilation of the rather complicated story, and that I contact historians and journalists with expertise or interest in the war in Norway. I thus boiled the story down to 2000 words (see https://coldspur.com/the-airmen-who-died-twice-synopsis/) , and prepared to search out a list of likely candidates. I disagreed, however, with part of Mark’s guidance. He felt that no journalist or historian would touch the story without documentary evidence of the major plank in the story – that Churchill and Stalin must have exchanged messages of some kind in order for the flight and impersonations to have occurred. As my conclusion boldly stated, I felt it extremely unlikely that anything would appear, given the extraordinary circumstances of the enterprise. I could quickly list multiple events from World War II that have been discussed in serious terms when primary documentary material was not available. The authorized historians Foot, Hinsley and Andrew had all made categorical statements about events that had no documentary back-up. There were enough established facts about the case to warrant its broader promulgation. Besides, everyone likes an aspect of mystery. So I continued.

I picked out the names of six prominent historians whose books related to the subject I had read: Tony Insall, Ian Herrington, Richard Petrow, Patrick Salmon, Olivier Wieworka, and Max Hastings. Sadly, Petrow has died. I then tried to find email addresses for them, but such figures normally hide behind their agents and publishers. Apart from Insall, this was the case, so I had to craft individualized messages to those who represented them, asking for my package of synopsis and PDFs, with a brief explanation of what I was trying to achieve, to be forwarded to the relevant author. That was on May 16. The same day I made a separate approach to the Chairman of the Squadron 617 Association. Soon after, I sent personalized emails to journalists Ben Macintyre (of the Times), and Ben Lazarus (of the Spectator), both of whom I had exchanged messages with – concerning Sonia, of course – a few years ago, and suggested that they might be interested in promulgating the story. I never heard back from either of them. At the end of the month I posted a piece on FaceBook that drew attention to the new Synopsis now available on coldspur.

And then, at the end of May, I had two glimmers of light. None of the other historians responded to my approach, but Professor Patrick Salmon, who had edited Britain & Norway in the Second World War, published almost thirty years ago, responded with interest. He regretted that he was no longer close to Norwegian affairs, but he would try to help. He is now Chief Historian at the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, which sounds like an influential position. Shortly afterwards, I received a long email from Dr. Robert Owen, Official Historian, 617 Squadron Association, to whom my message had been routed. A few days later I responded in kind, with a polite and thorough analysis of his points. The outcome was, however, tremendously disappointing. I felt that our communications deserved greater publicity, and I accordingly posted the exchange as a Special Bulletin on coldspur on June 11 (see https://coldspur.com/the-617-squadron-association-historian/).  

Professor Salmon, meanwhile, has continued to be very helpful. He recommended that I contact the Air Historical Branch of the RAF, and make a request for the Casualty File for Flight PB416 under the Freedom of Information Act. This I performed on June 13: Professor Salmon told me that the Branch has to provide a reply within twenty business days. On June 15, I received a confirmation of my request, and an indication that I should receive a reply by July 15. On the other hand, disappointments still occur. Mark Hollingsworth recommended that I contact a prominent historian of RAF matters, Paul Beaver. Through his publisher, I made contact, and he responded promptly, and with apparent interest in my story. After ten days, I had heard nothing, so I emailed him again, and he disappointingly wrote that he had been too busy to read it . . . And Nigel Austin, the man who initiated this whole project because he had a relative who was killed in the crash, expressed great enthusiasm when I completed the project, and vowed to promote the story. Yet he has now disappeared from the scene, and no longer responds to my emails.

I am finding this tepid response not only demoralizing, but also a little eerie. As one of my coldspur colleagues wrote to me, my story would make a great documentary. It has everything: mystery, disaster and tragedy, war, Nazism and communism, institutional confusion and cover-up – as well as a very timely anniversary. Yet several experts do not even show any interest in its potential or topicality, let alone engage in debate to challenge my hypothesis. It is almost as if a celestial D-Notice has been placed on my research. My mission at coldspur has been to reveal when government institutions – in my domain of interest, primarily MI5, MI6, the Home Office and the Foreign Office – have covered up the facts out of a desire to protect themselves, in the belief that the British public cannot be trusted to know the truth. Thus my investigations into (for example) the concealment of knowledge over Klaus Fuchs, the cover-up over Kim Philby, the refusal to divulge the clumsy attempt to manipulate Agent Sonia, the colossal mis-steps over Peter Smolka, the censorship of activities behind the demise of the PROSPER network, and the improper release of rumours to journalists to discredit officers like Hollis were all prelude to my research into the shenanigans with the disaster of PB416.

In the past few months there have been resounding echoes of such governmental misbehaviour in the willful mishandling of the Post Office HORIZON project, the revelations concerning the tainted blood fiascos of the 1970s (of which my sister was a victim, I believe), and, very recently, the investigation into the cover-up of Nazi crimes on Alderney. Not solely in the world of intelligence and military history are the issues too important to be left to the authorized and official historians to analyze and report on, and I shall continue to plough my furrow without concerning myself about upsetting anybody in authority, or the repercussions therefrom.

The coldspur Archive

As I reported a few months ago, I successfully arranged a home for my library of books and archival material (see the press release from the University of North Carolina, Wilmington at  https://giving.uncw.edu/stories/new-special-collection-to-make-randall-library-a-destination-for-researchers-worldwide.). This is an important agreement, since it relieves me of the distress of fearing that my collection might be dispersed or even destroyed when I go to meet the Great Archivist in the Sky. (By the way, I shall not ‘pass’: I shall die.) I believe the value of the complete set, and its availability for researchers from near and far, greatly exceed the usefulness of the individual volumes. I suspect that, as an assemblage of books on intelligence and twentieth-century history and literature, primarily British but also American, it may be unmatched by even the most learned institutions. The University, as part of our deal, has committed to providing administrative support to catalog properly the whole collection, and to provide enhanced capabilities for an electronic portal to all my coldspur research, and the documents and systems that have supported it, such as my epic 400-page Chronology (my Crown Jewels and secret sauce), and notes made on a vast number of books and archival material.

The transfer of books will probably start at the end of this year. This will be a wrench, as I dread the idea of losing direct access to all the volumes that I have become accustomed to exploiting each time I create a coldspur posting. The Library at UNCW is about forty miles away, so I shall have to plan my visits very carefully if I am going to continue with my conventional research. I suspect, however, that I shall have to cut back the depth of my investigations, and gradually wind down to a more routine and less dramatic series of postings. Thus I shall spend the remainder of this year reviewing what important commitments I still have, and identifying what files I have on my desktop that have not been processed properly. I also have a lot of work to do in cleaning up electronic files and references, as well as documenting carefully the various paper items (letters, printed reports, sets of old magazines, many of which contain important articles, clippings, etc.) that will constitute an important part of the archive.

Meanwhile, the project to register all the books continues. Every Sunday morning I allocate a couple of hours to entering another hundred items on LibraryThing. I am now approaching 5,000 volumes recorded in my private on-line library, with a lot still to be processed. This can be an easy task, if the book contains an accurate ISBN, but the older volumes require some digging around to find the correct year and publisher, and some of the more antique items have to be entered completely manually. It has turned out to be a revelatory exercise, in which I have encountered books I had forgotten about – or even lost. (Some have been retrieved from obscure niches, having fallen down behind others.) There have been some duplicates, some deliberate, as I had purchased newer editions, but others by mistake, such as when I had acquired an item in a second-hand book-shop, and did not recall that I owned it already. Some I bought because the title was different – as often happens when a publication appears under a different name when it is released in the USA.

And there have been several interesting finds. Titles that I only skimmed, and shall probably never read cover to cover. (I am sure no other bibliophile has this problem.) Some classics that I should have read years ago: I think that, in my declining years, I would prefer to re-read Raymond Chandler or Kingsley Amis than tackle Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. And all those Trollopes! I enjoy him, but they simply take too long. Items that I had carelessly overlooked, and should have read long ago, such as E. P. Thompson’s account of his brother Frank’s death in Bulgaria on an SOE mission – which oversight was remedied last month. A few gems revealed, such as a very old guide to Oxford bequeathed to me by my father, in which he has written ‘1775?’ in the margin. And a few books that I had thought lost, such as the paperback of Raymond Williams’s Keywords, which I had been searching for a few months back. (It had been woefully misplaced in the Travel and Mountaineering section: members of staff have received a reprimand.) This had been a useful, though very earnest and cautious, guide for me back in the late 1970s, and had comprehensive entries on such concepts as ‘Class’, ‘Progressive’, ‘Status’, and ‘Imperialism’ (but not ‘Colonialism’). But it had no room for ‘Equity’, ‘Diversity’, ‘Inclusion’, ‘Identity’, or even ‘Populism’, ‘Race’ or ‘Ethnicity’– let alone ‘Intersectionality’! How did we manage to interpret social trends accurately and engage in intelligent discourse in those days, I wonder? [I was not aware that you tried, coldspur. I thought you were too busy playing cricket and having a thrilling social life. Ed.]

Helen Fry’s ‘Women in Intelligence’ (2023)

I did not have high hopes with this book, published last year, as I have found Fry’s approach to writing history lacking in discernible method and suffering from a very sloppy style. Yet I considered this item a necessary part of my reading agenda. As it turned out, I was pleasantly surprised in some ways. Fry has performed her usual diligent research, reveals a host of new facts, and someone has obviously given her some guidance on how to write more crisply and less elliptically. (In one of the blurbs, Kate Vigurs writes that ‘all is told in her usual inimitable style’. It occurred to me that the comment might not have been intended as a compliment, but I shall instead conclude that perhaps Ms. Vigurs has not been paying close attention.) I must question the whole endeavour, however: while it is important that the contributions from women be given their proper credit (as Jackson Lamb said somewhere: “You won’t find a more ardent feminist than me”), a description of exercises and operations that focuses almost exclusively on the achievements of the fair sex [is that expression still allowed, Thelma?] will be bound to distort the picture.

And so it turns out. Fry offers no explanation of how she approached the subject, or how she made her choices. (She mercifully does not engage in a debate about what ‘woman’ means in this decade, and how that term should be applied retrospectively to simpler days.) The blurb on the cover merely states: ‘The first full history of women in British intelligence across two world wars’. In many aspects, Fry’s work is a remarkable achievement. She has excavated some fascinating stories about women in the various intelligence services that had evaded this particular reader, and we should be very grateful to her. Unfortunately, the text reveals itself as a rather relentless catalogue of female success, and frequently distorts the broader picture, and misrepresents the facts. Along the way, a vast amount of familiar material has to be regurgitated to give the unwary reader context. Moreover, there is little room for records of failure, as one glorious contribution follows another. We are told, for instance (p 265) that ‘Hodgson and Holmes were the “brains” behind all operations into Austria, Yugoslavia and Hungary’, and (p 272) that ‘women such as Holmes, Stamper and Hodgson were the driving-force behind SOE’s success’, yet the incursions into those countries were largely disasters, and the unqualified trumpeting of SOE’s success when it clearly made a large number of mistakes does not contribute to valid and objective scholarship. Fry is also a little too trusting of what Vera Atkins’s personal file states.

Moreover, the history is not ‘full’, or consistently accurate. The author is strangely errant over the career of one of the most impressive of intelligence officers, Kathleen (Jane) Sissmore, who married John Archer (of MI5’s RAF liaison, a fact she does not mention) on the eve of the war. She mistakenly says that Archer was killed in 1943: it was his son who perished. Fry claims that Archer was fired because of her disrespectful comments on the previous MI5 director, Vernon Kell, when it was the acting director Jasper Harker who had been the subject of her derision. She overlooks Archer’s transfer to lead the group of Regional Security Liaison Officers, which task she performed very creditably for several months in the summer of 1940, and she suddenly places her with Philby’s counter-intelligence group in MI6. Archer did indeed move to MI6, but did not work for Philby until his new section was created in 1944. Fry says nothing about Archer’s subsequent return to MI5 at the end of the war, and what projects she was involved with, although the archives mention her occasionally. Nevertheless, Fry is confident enough to assert that Archer ‘would have made a brilliant director-general of MI5’.

And there are some notable omissions and mistakes. Fry writes nothing about the highly important Freya Stark, or Ann (Nancy) Lambton, who both played important roles in propaganda and intelligence-gathering in the Middle East. Since Fry does include a section on post-war activities, one might have expected her to mention MI5’s Evelyn McBarnet, who played a prominent part in the molehunts of the 1960s and 1970s, and had earlier worked on the Robinson papers of the Red Orchestra. (Peter Wright wrote that she had had many years more experience in counter-espionage than he or Arthur Martin, which suggests she was active in the war years.) Fry also neglects Anne Last (actually ‘Glass’), who had a very significant career in MI5, having joined in May 1940, and who later married Charles Elwell, an MI5 officer. Fry’s sketch of Joan Miller fails to mention a vitally significant episode of her career, when she detected the Major (probably but not incontrovertibly Leo Long) stealing information and passing notes to his communist contact in 1944. Ray Milne, the communist agent inside MI6, who was detected and forced to resign, is overlooked (perhaps because she was a baddie).

(I should also mention that, in the September 2023 issue of Magna, the Magazine of the Friends of the National Archives, appears an article by Phil Tomaselli, titled ‘MI5 women spies during WW2’. It is not a very accurate title, since MI5’s charter was counter-espionage rather than espionage –  although it did maintain ‘agents’ who spied on subversive groups – and much of Tomaselli’s text is taken up by women who served during World War I. Nevertheless, Tomaselli lists a number of names who should be added to the roster, including Mary George, and Hilda Matheson of the Joint Broadcasting Committee.)

Fry briefly covers the five years that the highly dubious Tess Rothschild (née Mayor) worked in B18, the anti-sabotage section of MI5, but she presents a very odd interpretation of MI5’s suspicions of her after the Blunt confession. The failure to recognize the important pair of MI6 agents in Bern in WWII, Elizabeth Wiskemann and her sidekick Elizabeth Montagu (aka Scott-Montagu), is particularly egregious. Wiskemann received a prominent biographical treatment by Geoffrey Field last year (see https://academic.oup.com/book/44709/chapter-abstract/378977699?redirectedFrom=fulltext), and I have referred to Montagu in my writings on Smolka. The novelists Sarah Gainham, married to MI6’s Antony Terry, and Helen MacInness, married to another MI6 officer, Gilbert Highet, should perhaps have been covered as well, to give some variety and useful perspective. Of course there were some other notable British subjects, naturalized through marriage, working in intelligence such as Ursula Beurton, Edith Tudor-Hart, and Litzi Philby aka Feabre – and at least two native-born, Jenifer Hart, married to the MI5 officer Herbert Hart, and Melita Norwood – but since they were communist agents working against the interests of the United Kingdom they presumably fell outside her purview. Nevertheless, Nigel West returns the compliment that Fry recently granted him on his recent book: “A fascinating, minutely researched study of women in the espionage business.”

Thus the reader has to wade through a lot of extraneous material to pick out some splendid nuggets about meritorious heroines whose careers have very creditably been brought to light at last. The relentless feminist propaganda begins to chafe. Moreover, Fry can be both very risk-averse and highly provocative. At critical points, she steps back from providing any analysis of controversial incidents. For example, in wrapping up her section on SOE, she writes: “Exactly why Buckmaster and Atkins continued to send their agents into Europe remains the subject of debate.” That is a very cautious insertion that screams out for a more incisive inspection, and invites an examination of the dynamics of the situation, and whether there was any male-female dimension to the disastrous decisions that were made by the managers of F Section. On the other hand (as I pointed out in last month’s bulletin), she can lob a grenade over the parapet, as she does when she gratuitously reports (p 92) that, in 1933, the MI6 head of station in Vienna, Thomas Kendrick, alongside his agents and secretaries was tracking the movements of communist spies and activists ‘through journalists like Eric Gedye and a young graduate, Kim Philby’. This is a much more assertive and provocative statement than she allowed herself in Spymaster, and represents the claim that brought my female academic contact into apoplexy when I mentioned it to her a couple of months ago. So what say you, Westy? Did you spot that?

Because of the repetition, and the lack of valuable new insights, the volume should in my opinion have been better compiled as a biographical dictionary rather than a conventional narrative. It would in that way have been more usable, more concise, and more easily maintained. New histories of SOE, for example – focussing on country campaigns, rather than conventional broad-brushed approaches – are certainly desirable, and in such works the successes and failures of men and women should be clearly explained, as opposed to the romanticized and gung-ho narratives that are so frequently found. I entered in last month’s Commonplace collection what I considered a pertinent observation by a woman called Imogen West-Knights: “Perhaps I am letting feminism down to say it, but just because a group of women organised something, this does not mean that the organisation of that thing is naturally interesting.” Indeed. There should be no ‘feminist’ history – just history that gives comprehensive credit to the contributions of women and men equally.

The Darkrooms of Edith Tudor-Hart

I have always been prepared to admit to erroneous analysis and faulty conclusions displayed in my research. As Keith Ellison has pointed out to me, the Major observed by Joan Miller secreting notes may not have been Leo Long, as I claimed in Misdefending the Realm, and one of these days I am going to have to return to the records to verify the place, the time, and the institution, in order to confirm what was going on. Likewise with Edith Tudor-Hart: I have constantly expressed my amazement that such a transparently subversive, neurotic and muddle-headed woman could have played a major role in Soviet espionage, and I have treated Anthony Blunt’s claim that she was ‘the grandmother of us all’ (when she was in fact born a year later than the art historian) as a sour joke designed to disguise someone else. (Of course, similar doubts and objections were raised over the outrageous Guy Burgess.) And yet the attention swells, what with Charlotte Philby’s very bizarre Edith and Kim, and Edith’s great-nephew (or second-cousin once-removed) Peter Stephan Jungk contributing a biography in German, Die Dunklekammern der Edith Tudor-Hart (2015), which reinforces the myth that she not only led a parallel life to Kim Philby, but was as significant as he was, and that it was really she who was astute enough to identify Philby as a worthy candidate for Soviet Intelligence, and introduce him to Arnold Deutsch. I recently read Jungk’s book very carefully.

Thus I continue to inspect the evidence to check whether I am wrong. (Care is need when treating sources such as Wikipedia and Spartacus, which are very cavalier with dates, and the accounts of Tudor-Hart’s activity in Deadly Illusions and The Crown Jewels, both of which boast Oleg Tsarev as a contributing author, are so riddled with errors, contradictions and anomalies than I am inclined to treat them as disinformation.) What I find extraordinary is that MI5 opened a file on her (as Edith Suschitzky) in 1930, when she was noticed mixing with known communists at a demonstration in Trafalgar Square, and she was expelled from the country. From Vienna, she immediately wrote to Tudor-Hart, asking him to testify that she was a solid communist, as the local cadres mistrusted her! Thus, while the evidence undermined any official authority she might have had, she stupidly drew attention to her subversive objectives.

MI5 (and MI6, when she was in Austria) thereafter kept a close watch on her for over twenty years. She was known to be a communist, she married her lover Alexander Tudor-Hart in Vienna in August 1933 when she got into trouble with the law there, and consequently was able to flee to Britain as a subject through her marriage. She was allowed to have her mother join her in 1937 (her father having committed suicide). In 1938, she was interrogated by MI5 over her undeniable involvement in the Percy Glading case, since a receipt for her Leica camera had been found on Glading’s premises, but the authorities did nothing. Despite the constant surveillance, she was allowed to continue her associations with subversive groups in exile unhindered. MI5 devoted an enormous amount of time tracking her activities – all to no avail. Perhaps it was because they thought that she would lead them to bigger and more dangerous fish, but maybe, since they could not haul her in on any charge, they just wanted her to know that she was under constant watch, in order to frighten her. Yet they overlooked some of her most obvious activities, such as her affair with Engelbert Broda, the atom spy, and her role as a courier.

Yet the burning question remains: Why would the NKVD entrust any clandestine role to a person who so obviously was a communist agitator? She was expelled by the British early in 1931 for that reason. From Vienna she appealed for help from her lover to confirm her communist credentials, she was imprisoned for suspected subversive activity in May 1933 (when another lover Arpad Haasz, left the country in a hurry), and Tudor-Hart, who had at last divorced his wife, arranged their marriage in August 1933 so that she could escape to the UK. Agents of the NKVD normally took instructions from their bosses concerning their marital arrangements, but, if the agency had serious plans for Edith, it surely would have forced her to provide a better cover story than this, and it would have been very wary about the British authorities’ picking up where they left off when Edith had been banished in 1931.

And, indeed, her romantic entanglements were a mess. The management of her affairs tended to be clumsy, and she was often mistreated and manipulated by the men in her life. She fell in love with Arnold Deutsch in the late 1920s, but his girl-friend Josefina, absent from Vienna for much of the time, discovered her love-letters to him, and Deutsch soon married ‘Fini’ in 1929, and then left with her for Moscow. Jungk says that Edith had several other meaningless affairs during this time. When she returned to England, she picked up with the still married Tudor-Hart. After her expulsion to Vienna, she took up with Arpad Haasz, a fellow-conspirator, who fled when the going got hot. After Edith’s marriage to Alexander, he mistreated her, and abandoned her and her young son when he went to work as a doctor helping the Republicans in Spain. During the war, she developed a relationship with Engelbert Broda, but he also left her, in 1945, telling her that he was going back to Austria to marry his girl-friend (a decade older), from whom he soon separated. Edith then fell in love with the psychiatrist, Dr. Donald Winnicott, who was treating her severely autistic son, and they had a very unprofessional relationship. But Winnicott would not leave his wife, and tired of Edith’s clinginess. Edith developed a crush on the architect Baron Holford of Kemp Town, but he had to reprimand her in writing for stalking him.

I shall be writing further when I have completed a deeper analysis of her files, and the stories built around her, but here I simply want to mention two items that caught my eye recently. In his 2012 profile of Philby, Young Kim, Edward Harrison made a very shrewd observation over some text in a letter (in German) that he found in Edith’s file, sent to Tudor-Hart on June 22, 1933, and intercepted by Special Branch. It makes a reference to students at Cambridge, and the need to convert intellectuals to the cause, and asks the question: ‘What is M.D. doing?’. At the time, Special Branch interpreted ‘M.D.’ as referring to Alison Macbeth, who was a doctor, and then married to Tudor-Hart. It was not until December 1951 (in the heat of the Burgess-Maclean-Philby investigations) that MI5 went over the passage again, and decided that ‘M.D.’ stood for Maurice Dobb. So Edith had been acquainted with Philby’s tutor at Cambridge.

This should perhaps not have come as any surprise, since Dobb had written to Alexander Tudor-Hart in December 1930, in dismay, offering sympathy at the detention of Edith after the Trafalgar Square incident, and the subsequent report of her expulsion order. (All letters to Tudor-Hart were being intercepted.) Thus an immediate link between Soviet conspiracy, and the planned contributions of a Cambridge academic, are visible three years before Philby was sent on his way to Paris/Vienna by Dobb. And there is even an attempt by Edith to mask Dobb’s identity – a successful one, of course. What had the three of them discussed, one wonders? Tudor-Hart was a contemporary of Dobb’s, and both had studied under Keynes at Cambridge, so they were natural communist allies. Tudor-Hart had also studied orthopaedics in Vienna in the 1920s, so may have encountered Edith there. 1930 would obviously have been an early date for Philby’s potential to have been recognized (he did not enter the university until October 1929), but Dobb’s interactions with Edith are undeniable.

The other item of interest to me is Edith’s exposure to Philby, and her supposed role in recommending him to her former lover, Deutsch, in May 1934. I find it difficult to pin down the exact relevant dates of the early autumn of 1933, as even Jungk’s account is vague, but the other accounts (which claim to be based on KGB archives) are divided as to whether Edith became impressed with Philby’s potential when she knew him in Vienna, or whether she came to that conclusion when her friend Litzy introduced her to him in May 1934, soon after the Philbys arrived in London. Jungk first tells us that Edith married Alexander on August 16, and that they left for the UK a few weeks later. Yet, later in his book, he informs us that, on her release one month after her imprisonment in May, she went immediately to the apartment of her best friend, Litzy Friedmann, and discovered that Litzy had a lodger named ‘Kim’, who had been there just a few days. This is, of course, nonsense, as Kim did not arrive in Vienna until late August, at the earliest. Moreover, The Crown Jewels asserts that Edith’s famous photograph of the pipe-smoking Philby was taken in Vienna during those precious few days before she left with her new bridegroom, while Jungk asserts that it was taken in Hampstead the day after Philby met Arnold Deutsch in Regent’s Park. It is all an inglorious muddle.

The irony is that Jungk, in his eagerness to find out the truth about Edith, went to Moscow in the 1990s, and tried to chase down historians and archivists to let him see the secret files on her. He was devastated when the officials (including Dolgopolov, the biographer of Philby) directed him solely to Deadly Illusions and Borovik’s Philby Files. Whether they had more which they were not prepared to reveal cannot be determined. But the implication is that the mess that has accumulated and been carelessly echoed over the decades in the western media may be all that there is. There are too many competing narratives tripping over each other, of which I have shown here only a sample. I shall explore all the paradoxes and conflicts of 1933 and 1934 in my end-of-July posting.

‘Nothing Short of a Scandal!’

In my February bulletin I reported that I had located an article by Charmian Brinson on Peter Smolka, titled ‘Nothing Short of a Scandal’, but had been frustrated in my attempts to read it, as neither Professor Brinson nor the Austrian periodical that published it had acknowledged my emails. Thanks to Andrew Malec, I was able to find the complete text at academia.edu (of which I am a member), and, as promised, I am now offering a summary of what Brinson brought to the table. (She is not, incidentally, the mystery female academic who behaved so ill-manneredly to me in the email exchange on which I reported in March.)

I have to characterize Brinson’s contribution as ‘workwomanlike’, but not very imaginative. She has performed a vast amount of relevant research: she has read (almost) all the right books, memoirs and histories, British and German, and gone deep into the archives, from those of MI5 and the Home Office, to the records of Czechoslovakia’s show-trials. She has dug our articles in remote places, located papers from obscure universities, accessed old items from newspapers such as the Times in the 1930s, and recovered interviews with Smolka’s sons. And yet her conclusion is simply the rather bland: “So Smolka was and remains a man of contradictions”, as if that could not be said of countless other persons in intelligence who have left a confusing trail behind them. It is as if Brinson wants to serve up all she can find and leave it to the reader to make a judgment. Each time that she appears to be about to explore a fascinating aspect of his life – such as the confirmation that Smolka was a spy, with the cryptonym ABO – she steps back from providing any penetrating analysis. I believe historians – as opposed to chroniclers –  should go farther than that.

So I simply note here some of the information that was fresh to me, and some observations on her commentary. She exploits the memoirs of Bruno Kreisky, who was the Austrian Chancellor from, and those of Hilda Spiel, the novelist. Both were close to Smolka in his teens. Brinson supplies the background to Smolka’s highly biased view of Siberia evident from his reports in the Times, and his subsequent book, but shows no interest in trying to discover why he received so much good publicity. She does not attempt to explain why he received the degree of support from the Foreign Office in the late 1930, or what the oily Rex Leeper was up to. She leaves the ‘nothing short of a scandal’ incident undeveloped, treating Smolka’s apparent redemption as routine.

On the other hand, her coverage of Smolka’s work for the Ministry of Information during the war is very thorough, although she doesn’t attempt to adjudicate on the tricky question of when Smolka was recruited to Soviet intelligence, and by whom (a topic which I dismantled a few months ago.) She highlights some important questions about Smolka’s energetic pro-Soviet stance, raised by MPs and others, but offers only a lukewarm explanation as to how he was able to get away with it, before moving calmly on to the discovery of papers produced on his typewriter that were found in Guy Burgess’s flat. And then she suddenly jumps from 1951 to 1961, where she briefly covers the Arthur Martin interview, without astonishment. She does, however, offer an insightful anecdote about the extent of Smolka’s anglicisation, sourced from Hilda Spiel, who also expressed surprise that Smolka would want to return to war-damaged Vienna with his young family once he had had a taken up British citizenship. Brinson also offers useful evidence of Smolka’s pro-communist reportage in Vienna after the war, and describes his relationship with Ernst Fischer, the Minister of Education.

One thing that caught my eye was the statement, again from Spiel, that one George Knepler, a musician, had been living in Smolka’s house at this time (1948). Knepler was a name I knew, as it was he to whom Kim Philby had been directed in 1933. Knepler described the lavish parties that Smolka held for leftish acquaintances and public figures. What did surprise me, however, was the fact that Brinson dedicated only one sentence to the complex ‘Third Man’ business, apparently trusting the story that Smolka provided Greene with his anecdotes. She does not explore any of the contradictions of this bizarre chain of events. On the other hand, she does provide more substantive details on the accusations against Smolka at the Slansky trials, made by an unfortunate liar, Eugen Loebl, who had probably been tortured.

Brinson accurately covers the stories of MI5’s vain hopes to convince emigres like Smolka to ‘defect’, but without any attempt to explore the sense or stupidity of such ventures. She appears to trust the accounts of Smolka’s deteriorating health, which did not prevent him from founding and editing, in the 1970s, the journal Austria Today, at Kreisky’s request. Both Kreisky and the Times gave him a generous obituary when Smolka died in 1980, which leads to Brinson closing her piece with the radically different opinions of Siegfried Beer, who deemed Smolka a Superspy, and those of Smolka’s widow and elder son, who perversely continued to claim that he had never been a spy at all. Thus, for the Smolka devotee who wants to hoover up all the bare facts about his life, Brinson’s article will be a valuable contribution, but as a work of historical analysis it is disappointingly sterile.

Guy Burgess at Kew

I have previously drawn attention to the scandalous state of records pertaining to Guy Burgess at Kew. My detailed analysis of the FCO 158 series (“Foreign Office and Foreign and Colonial Office: Record Relating to Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean (known KGB spies) and subsequent investigations and security arrangements”) shows that nearly three hundred separate files are listed, most of which have not been digitized. Many of these are needlessly fragmented: thus we can see, for instance, FCO 158/111, ‘Correspondence with member of the public on Burgess & Maclean’, followed by FCO 158/112, ‘Question from member of the public’. There is no reason why several of such items could not have been collected into one file. The objective must be to make it more onerous for anyone to order these files and trail through them.

Moreover, a large number are closed, without proper justification. For example, FCO 158/15, ‘Guy Burgess Private Papers’ is simply listed as ‘Closed and retained by FCO’, with no release date, as are a variety of other papers on topics such as ‘Foreign Office Key Points 1951’, ‘Security Recommendations at DWS’, ‘Correspondence with Irene Ward’, and dozens of records of individual vetting operations from the 1950s that are described only in terms of ‘Vetting of “name withheld”’, with the relevant year following. A file on Petrov, the defector from Australia, is similarly marked.

Others indicate a release date, sometimes with highly spurious reasons for the retention period. Thus some extracts from the contact of Burgess and Maclean with Foreign Office officials under the PEACH inquiry (FCO 158/30/1) – which sounds very bizarre – has been declared ‘closed for security reasons: open January 1, 2035’). One vetting of ‘name withheld 1951-80’ will be made open on January 1, 2073 [should any of us live that long . . .  And will left-wing academics still be railing against ‘late-stage capitalism’ in the London Review of Books at that time?]. A file titled ‘Allegations against “name withheld” 1948-1955’ has been ‘closed for Health and Personal info’, but will be available the same date. A closed extract from the Cadogan Inquiry (FCO 158/206) will be opened on January 2032. There are many others of similar characteristics: a minute of September 5, 1952 (FCO 158/254/1) has been closed ‘for health reasons, and will be opened on January 1, 2073’. Maybe the frail subject of that inquiry will have recovered by then.

I believe this is all shameful and scandalous. Why the public cannot be trusted with seeing these records of seventy years or so ago, or why the Foreign Office believes that the disclosure of such items would harm national security, is beyond belief. It must point only to an enormous institutional embarrassment, or simply a loss of any expertise with any incumbent officials to know how to make proper judgments about the material. It is just simpler to pretend that no problem exists, and to hope it goes away. Yet the registration of all these incriminating morsels, and the sensitivity of the Foreign Office about them, points to the existence of highly disturbing testimony to the foibles of British intelligence at the time.

What should happen, of course, is that Freedom of Information requests should be made over all these files. I am advised, however, that block requests are unlikely to have the desired effect, which means that individual files would have to be selected. But where to start, and who has the time to do that? Can some sort of mass public protest be mounted? Come on, ye doyens, get weaving!

Lastly, I was intrigued to read, amongst the Rothschild papers (KV 2/4533-1), in a report dated January 27, 1971, that Guy Burgess’s file was created only in 1942! (That note suggests to me that the writer thought it should have been created earlier.) Of course, MI5 has never admitted that it existed, and his Personal File 604529 (one of dozens created during the PEACH investigations of 1951) is the only one recognized in the various letters, notes, reports and memoranda that emerged during the interrogations of Blunt and the inquiries with the Rothschilds. What prompted that 1942 event is something worth considering. It was a fairly quiet year for Burgess, since he was working for the BBC in the Talks Department, arranging pro-Soviet speakers. Was it perhaps his selection of the Soviet agent Ernst Henri, masquerading as a journalist, that triggered MI5’s fresh interest in him?

A Death in Nuremberg

After an important reference somewhere, I was prompted to acquire Francine Hirsch’s 2020 book Soviet Judgment at Nuremberg, since it claimed to provide fresh information on the trials derived from an analysis of Russian government files. I was especially interested because I wanted to know more about Nikolai Zorya, one of the Soviet prosecutors, who was found dead in his hotel room during the trial. This had been judged by Western participants as very suspicious: the Soviets claimed that it had been an accident that occurred as he was cleaning his rifle, but others considered that his mishandling of the episode of the Katyn Massacre had been the event that led to his demise.

I have long been interested in cataloguing the deaths, in mysterious circumstances, of western civilians with possible past ties to Soviet intelligence. While Boris Volodarsky’s 2009 book The KGB Poison Factory provided a solid guide to many prominent cases, I do not believe that enough attention has been paid to other questionable deaths or accidents that occurred when no one was around to witness exactly what happened. (I have just acquired Volodarsky’s follow-up book, Assassins, and shall be writing about it at some stage.) Any occasion in which someone died of a heart attack in a remote hotel room should especially have been investigated with utmost urgency. The unresolved cases of Tomás Harris and Hugh Gaitskell are quite familiar, but what caused Alexander Foote’s early demise (1956)? Has Herbert Skinner’s premature death in a Geneva hotel (1960) been explained? Or Archie Gibson’s death by shooting in his Rome apartment (1960)? What had happened to Hugh Slater when his body was discovered in Spain (1958)? Did Victor Serge really have a sudden heart attack in Mexico (1947)? Was the event that killed Georg Graham’s son truly an accident? Was Paul Dukes’ car crash purely providential? Did John Costello really die from food-poisoning?

Zorya was of course not the only Soviet citizen to be targeted since the war. (The death of Konon Molody, aka Gordon Lonsdale, from eating poisonous mushrooms, has been laid at the door of the KGB.) But the openness of his probable murder was shocking. As Hirsch writes: “It would have been more typical for Stalin to call someone back to Moscow and then have him arrested and shot.” She goes on to write that Zorya’s son maintained that ‘his father had grown uneasy about the Katyn case and had asked to return to Moscow to talk to Vyshinsky about flaws in the Soviet evidence’. In that case, the NKVD might have been concerned enough to decide that no time should be wasted, lest Zorya share his thoughts with members of the American and British delegations – something he may already have done.

The obstinacy of the Soviet prosecutors in highlighting the Katyn Massacre as an example of Nazi war crimes was really obtuse. Stalin had gone to enormous lengths to show that the killings of 22,000 members of the Polish military and intelligentsia had taken place when the Germans had occupied Belarussia rather than in the summer of 1940, when it was under the control of the Soviet Union. Churchill and Roosevelt were confident that it had been a Soviet crime, but were shabbily reluctant to challenge Stalin over it. When it came to Nuremberg, Moscow naively believed that the trials would be held like those from the 1930s Purges, with defendants tortured and trained what to say, no proper defence counsel offered, guilty verdicts pre-arranged, and summary executions carried out. The Soviets were then surprised that principles of western democratic justice were to be applied to the Nazi criminals, and the prosecutors struggled to adjust to the process. They somehow wriggled out of the embarrassing situation.  Zorya was the victim: it was not until 1990 that Moscow admitted that the wartime communist government had been responsible for the massacre.

Holiday Reading: Volodarsky et al.

‘The Birth of the Soviet Secret Police’

As my primary serious reading during our holiday/vacation in California, I packed Boris Volodarsky’s recent book, The Birth of the Soviet Secret Police: Lenin and History’s Greatest Heist 1917-1927. Like Volodarsky’s other works, I found it both utterly fascinating and extremely annoying. I had submitted several pages of corrections (mainly typographical) to Volodarsky when his Stalin’s Agent appeared in 2014 – a submission that he eventually thanked me for about two years later. His latest book is very similar, jam-packed with stories of subversion, and profiles of those who carried it out in Europe (mainly), but it desperately needed an editor. Volodarsky has no sense of historical narrative, and owns what I suspect is the inability of someone with a photographic memory to exclude any related facts from his story, which means that he has presented a largely indigestible set of mini-biographies, a compilation of acronyms, aliases, birthplaces, marriages, mistresses, etc. – with the dominant outcome for the participants being a bullet in the head, in the Lubyanka cellars, in 1937 or 1938. Moreover, the text has a woefully large number of typographical and grammatical mistakes, many the mis-spellings of proper names, but also some blunders and direly botched edits that indicate that no one read the final electronic version carefully.

It is not that Volodarsky has the wrong intentions. Halfway through his screed he offers the very sensible guidance: “An absolute sine qua non is that all sources, even primary, must be checked, double-checked and rechecked again. There’s a lot of stuff in the archives that got there by chance, like a forgery accepted as a genuine document, or a report based on a biased interpretation or opinion but nevertheless duly filed. Sometimes a testimony, even of a seemingly credible witness or reliable defector, or a source described as ‘a subject of undoubted loyalty’, may be completely invented and include false claims which later leak into the books and articles. There, as it happens, they are sometimes further misinterpreted or misrepresented.” He uses this method to pass out some harsh words on some of his fellow-historians, such as Helen Fry, whom he chastises for swallowing whole the reputation the SIS representative in Vienna, Thomas Kendrick, had acquired for his provision to his bosses of alleged valuable information, when Volodarsky believed it was totally the invention of money-seeking phoneys. He also has harsh words for dupes like John Costello and Nigel West, being taken in by the wiles of the KGB and its stooge, Oleg Tsarev. Intriguingly, he keeps some of his choicest words of disparagement for Christopher Andrew, whom, while he praises some of the latter’s work (Volodarsky was, after all, a member of Andrew’s intelligence seminar), he criticizes for his naivety in such matters as the Zinoviev Letter, and for his credulity over what Gordievsky fed him.

Yet Volodarsky himself commits similar sins. I was enormously impressed with the author’s encyclopædic grasp of the literature, in books and obscure articles, in multiple European languages, which allowed him to integrate an enormous amount of information. Yet a process of verification must allow not only the primary author to ‘check, double-check and re-check again’ his or her sources: third-party researchers must also have the opportunity to inspect them. Volodarsky frequently refers to (O)GPU (i.e. emergent KGB) files without identifying them. His Endnotes contain acronyms presumably defining Russian archives (e.g. GASPI, GA RF) that are never explained. He cites such sources as the State Military Historical Archives of Bulgaria (an institution probably beyond the reach of most enthusiasts) without explaining why they can be trusted. He refers to documents that exist only in his personal archive, and ‘secret’ files of MI5. (If they have been declassified, they are not ‘secret’). It is as if the rules do not strictly apply to him.

As an example of his style, I quote two passages concerning a subject and period that I have been focussing on recently: “A quick recap: in February 1934 Deutsch went to London and Reif joined him there in April. They worked together until June when Reif left for Copenhagen again. By that time, they already had under Soviet control a considerably large network of sources; agents (in today’s terms – intelligence agents, facilities agents and agents of influence) as well as talent-spotters, confidential contacts, couriers, and so on. In August or September Glading (GOT) introduced Deutsch to an important source whom Deutsch immediately named ATTILA. He usually gave codename to his assets by association . . .” Elsewhere he writes: “Nevertheless, there are reasons to believe that Arthur Willert had evolved from a major source of information inside the Foreign Office in the early 1920s into a fully-fledged Soviet agent named ATTILA while his son was recruited as agent NACHFOLER [sic], translated from German as successor, follower, or replacement. All three definitions pass perfectly. This unsophisticated but quite appropriate code name was given by Dr Arnold Deutsch, the recruiter of Philby and two dozen other Soviet agents in London in the 1930s.”

Apart from the typical misprint (‘NACHFOLER’ should be ‘NACHFOLGER’), I find these assertions about a ‘considerably large network’, developed in such a short time (February-June 1934), utterly preposterous. Philby was interviewed (if his account can be trusted) only in June, and he was not formally recruited until months later. Volodarsky claims that Deutsch recruited two dozen other agents in the 1930s: nowhere does he explain how he is sure of this fact. Nor is the significance of ‘London’, as opposed to Oxford and Cambridge, made explicit. (Moreover, it is not clear why a volume that is supposed to take us up to 1927 dabbles in these events, in any case.) The agent ATTILA, whom Volodarsky in one section confidently identifies as Sir Arthur Willert, is much more tentatively described as unknown in another passage. I find it highly unlikely that Percy Glading, an open member of the CPGB who worked as an engineer at the Royal Arsenal, would move in the same circles as Sir Arthur Willert, or that, if the latter had been a potential agent, he would risk being seen in the company of such a character. Volodarsky suggests that Willert was named ATTILA because he reminded Deutsch of an Austrian actor he knew: it sounds to me as if it were just a simple contraction of ArThurwILLERt’s name.

Amidst all the complexities and muddle one can find many useful insights. Volodarsky performs a solid demolition of the accounts of the Zinoviev Letter. He brings the overhyped Sidney Reilly (‘Ace of Spies’) down to size. He makes an intriguing and provocative identification of PFEIL (‘ARROW’ or ‘STRELA’) as Margarete Moos (who had visited Krivitsky in New York after his story in the New York Post appeared in April 1939). Deutsch wrote, however, that he had recruited STRELA in Vienna, at a time when Moos apparently was in London: more research is needed. Volodarsky offers some very useful notations about the highly suspicious (in my mind) Rex Leeper, who was Willert’s deputy, and later helped Peter Smolka (a story that Volodarsky has not reached yet.) He is rightfully scathing about the propaganda ruse executed against the British in the KGB-controlled Oleg Tsarev collaborations with Costello and West. There are innumerable fascinating leads to be followed up.

Yet he seems so wrong on many points – for instance, in his assessment of Krivitsky, whom he savagely debunks, resurfacing his criticisms from Stalin’s Agent, and in his throwaway claim that GC&CS was able to start decrypting Soviet traffic at the outbreak of war in 1939, a highly controversial assertion for which he offers no evidence. The merciless display of sometimes trivial facts about a host of dubious characters wore this particular reader down. Some day I hope to give the book a more thorough treatment. And incidentally, why the ‘Secret Police’? Policing is a task for internal security forces, not active subversion undertaken in foreign countries. The KGB did both, but the title is inaccurate. A volume for the diehards only.

While I was away, I read five books borrowed from the excellent Los Altos Public Library. Mary Kathryn Barbier’s Spies, Lies, and Citizenship was a weak, unimaginative and poorly-written account of what the Office of Special Investigations did concerning the hunt for Nazi criminals who had been allowed to escape (C+); Scott Miller’s Agent 110, about Allen Dulles’s attempts to go beyond gathering intelligence to forging deals with the Germans in Switzerland was a respectable and restrained integration of several key stories, but revealed little new, and could have benefitted from more rigour in background history (B); Howard Blum’s Night of the Assassins addressed a potentially gripping and important topic, namely the German plot to kill FDR, WSC and Stalin in Teheran in 1943, but Ben Macintyre would have done a better job. Despite an impressive list of primary sources, and a pragmatic approach to truth-telling, Blum provided a long-winded and cliché-ridden concoction – replete with ‘doe-eyed, raven-haired’ mistresses, ‘lantern-jawed, broad-shouldered’ intelligence officers, and too many incidences of ‘Jawohl, Herr Obergruppenführer’ (C+). Sleeper Agent, by Ann Hagerdorn was excellent. The story of how George Koval, born in the USA, went with his parents to their birthplace, the Soviet Union, in 1932, and then was infiltrated back in 1940 to become one of the most important atomic spies for the GRU, was very compelling. He absconded back to the Soviet Union in 1948, just in time to experience Stalin’s renewed persecution of the Jews, but he was not identified by the FBI until decades later, partly because of Solzhenitsyn. A remarkable piece of investigative research by Hagerdorn, free of rhetoric, padding, and cliché, although it is diminished somewhat by the fact that her Acknowledgments list hundreds of persons who helped her (was she a project manager or an author?). The lack of identification of GRU archival material is also a letdown, since she relies too much on Vladimir Lota (A-). Never Remember: Searching for Stalin’s Gulags in Putin’s Russia, an essay by Masha Geesen with photographs by Misha Friedman, is a poignant description of how Putin has undone all the revelatory work that Memorial performed to bring home the horror of the Gulag.

While in Silicon Valley I bought Jason Bell’s Cracking the Nazi Code, a volume that I had ordered some weeks ago from the History Book Club, who informed me, just before we set out for California, that it had no copies left. It’s a misleading title, since it refers to the achievements of Winthrop Bell, the Canadian philosophy professor who was recruited by MI6 at the end of WWI to advise on how to handle a defeated Germany, in interpreting various German political initiatives. It is an extraordinary book in many ways, since the author (no relation) was able to exploit the Bell archive, opened in 2012, to discover how Bell had alerted the British and Canadians to the dangers of nazism well before Hitler’s arrival, in the activities of Ludendorff and the Freikorps in 1919. He echoed these warnings in 1939, when he pointed to the coming mass murders of non-Aryans. I do not believe this story has been told before: I would have given it a higher marking had the author, in the last third of the book, not become so repetitive, or distracted by the story of radar, and not indulged in so many observations about phenomenology. He overall provides decent context, but is a little too consumed with the excellence of his biographical subject (B+).

Coldspur under stress

My friend of many years, Nigel Platts, recently informed me that, while he was on holiday in Cumbria, he was unable to access coldspur, the browsing of which must be a highly desirable diversion in those wild and occasionally bleak parts of the United Kingdom. Sky, his broadband provider, informed him that its ‘shield’ had blocked the site on the grounds that it was associated with ‘hate, gore, and violence’ (or similar wording), which came as a bit of a surprise to us both. Even my invectives against charlatan historians could hardly be described as inflammatory, so I wondered whether my descriptions of Cheka outrages over a century ago could somehow have engaged the censor’s attention. (Of course the exclusion could have been performed by some AI-enhanced mechanism, which would explain a lot).

Yet this was not the first occasion of blocking that I have come across. A long-time correspondent in the Liverpool area used to tell me that he had to deploy some devious tricks to get round a similar prohibition. I recall also that, when I was working at the National Archives in Kew, coldspur was permanently unavailable, which perhaps hints at some more deliberate attempt at security, and at preventing pollution of correct thinking among the country’s elite researchers. Could browsers who have had similar experiences perhaps inform me of them? I shall need to maintain a dossier to provide evidence if and when I take this further.

And then I had to deal with the Chinese. I received a strange email from a businessman in Shanghai, who claimed that one of his clients wanted to use coldspur.cn and coldspur.com.cn for their business. The fellow claimed that he had tried to talk his clients out of it, but they were insistent, and he invited me to register the names myself, so that my ‘business’ could be protected. Of course, I didn’t believe a word of it. He was just trying to collect registration fees from me. According to that logic, I would have to register coldspur with every other national suffix to prevent my hordes of eager browsers from being misdirected.

Oh, the trials of being a website administrator  . . .

News from Academia

In the middle of May I received the following message from the University of Oxford American Office:

Dear Tony, June is LGBTQ+ Pride Month in the US, and this month we are celebrating by highlighting the exciting work being done to teach LGBTQ+ history at Oxford and how you as an alumnus can help. There is an enormous appetite for LGBTQ+ History among graduate students, and scholarships associated with the Jonathan Cooper Chair of the History of Sexualities, the UK’s first permanently endowed Professorship in LGBTQ+ History, will allow these students to pursue their interests and become future thought leaders. 
The Jonathan Cooper Chair   Named after Jonathan Cooper OBE, an expert in international human rights law and activist for LGBTQ+ rights across the globe, the Cooper Chair, held by Professor Matthew Cook since 2023, explores histories of sexual diversity in all their variations, exploring their intersection with categories such as race, class, generation, occupation, education (dis)ability, nationality and community. Professor Cook is the first postholder of the Cooper Chair, made possible by the generosity of philanthropists.   There followed a message from Professor Cook:   “This work matters not only to LGBTQ+ individuals and communities but to us all: histories that look from the margins provide fresh perspectives on shifting norms and enhance our understanding of wider social, cultural and political realms. Scholarships are key to this mission: I see so many talented students diverting away from further study because they lack the funds – an issue especially for those who lack family support. Underpinning their further study is an investment in their talent and in histories which play a key part in the drive for social justice.”    – Professor Matthew Cook

I was astonished, and a couple of days later, responded as follows:

I thought at first that this message must be a spoof, but I then realized you are utterly serious. How can you pretend to any academic excellence when you ascribe such importance to this non-subject?

Whatever “LGBTQ+” means, it is a ragbag of genetic dispositions and behavioural choices (most of which should probably be kept private), a creature of the media and phony academics kowtowing to fashionable notions of ‘exclusion’, ‘victimisation’ and ‘identity’. What about adulterers, asexuals and foot-fetishists? Why are they excluded? How could anyone claim to be able to study ‘histories of sexual diversity in all their variations’?

‘Exciting work’, ‘enormous appetite’, ‘future thought leaders’, ‘LGBTQ individuals and communities’, ‘drive for social justice’, ‘constructs that disempower historically marginalized groups’ – what a lot of pretentious nonsense. It reads like a parody of an old ‘Peter Simple’ column in the Daily Telegraph. How anything useful or insightful could come out of such ‘research’ is beyond me. But I do know that the University has forfeited all chances of my making any further donation to any of its causes, however worthy.

Sincerely, Tony Percy (Christ Church, 1965)

Then, from the other end of the spectrum, on June 14, I noticed that Christ Church Development had posted an announcement on Facebook. It read:

 His Majesty the King has approved the appointment of two new Regius professorships at Christ Church.

We look forward to welcoming Professor Luke Bretherton as Regius Professor of Moral and Pastoral Theology, and the Revd Professor Andrew Dawson as Regius Professor of Divinity in the coming months!

Ye gods! What possible fresh revelations could these two gentlemen come up with? I can understand the study of religion as a topic of interest under Anthropology, perhaps, but Chairs in Gods [and Goddesses? Please verify. Thelma.] and Godliness? I learn, however, that the Regius Professorship of Moral and Pastoral Theology was established by an Act of Parliament in 1840, and the show must therefore go on. But is it not time for a repeal? I also read that Professor Bretherton arrives from Duke University in North Carolina, where he has been Distinguished Professor of Moral and Political Theology. His latest book ‘provides a new, constructive framework for what it means to live a good life amid the difficulties of everyday life and the catastrophes and injustices that afflict so many today’. His role sounds more like a preacher or social worker, to me, rather than an independent and disciplined academic. I hope he will adjust quickly from the difficulties of living in Durham, NC to those of provincial England. I would also suggest Bretherton ought to get together with Professor Cook and work on the ‘social justice’ goals. Dr. Spacely-Trellis, where are you?

But then others will say: a doctorate in Security and Intelligence Studies? Can that really be an academic discipline? Seriously?? Maybe if it took up the ‘social justice’ cause  . . .

Similarity and Identity

The primary objective of our spell in Los Altos, California, was to re-engage with our three grand-daughters, whom we hadn’t seen for a couple of years. The twins, Alyssa and Alexis, celebrated their eleventh birthday just before we arrived, and the photo above shows them with the gifts we had given them. I was struck by the resemblance of Alexis (on the right) to (a younger version of) Emma Raducanu, who represents England – by way of Canada – as a tennis-star. Now I note that Ms. Raducanu has a Romanian father and a Chinese mother. Alexis is 50% Vietnamese, 25% English (whatever that means, with Huguenots, Germans and possibly the Perskys from Minsk in the running), 12.5% Irish (probably), and 12.5% ‘Black’ West Indian (more likely African than Black Carib, the descendants of the original islanders who still live on St. Vincent). Is the similarity not a bit uncanny?

Emma Raducanu

I write this just to show how absurd all tribal identities can be. When I fill out government forms, I am always dismayed by the long list of entries under ‘race’, one of which I am required to fill out (although I can actually cross the ‘Decline’ box). I recall checking ‘South Pacific Islander’ on one fanciful and courageous occasion during my recent Tahiti phase, and, some time afterwards, I received a visit from a Census Bureau officer. He confronted me by suggesting that I had offered an untruth on a government form – rather like Hunter Biden denying that he was a drug user when he applied for a firearms license, or von Bolschwing omitting his membership of the Nazi party in his naturalization application, I imagine. I protested that I sincerely believed, with the current focus on ‘identity’, that a citizen was entitled to make any choice that he or she wanted to. If I could choose my own pronouns, why shouldn’t I pick my own ethnicity? After all, I didn’t see why an indigenous Quechua from Peru, whose forbears had been the victims of the Spanish Conquest, should be encouraged to enter the meaningless term ‘Hispanic’ when he or she applied for food stamps, or a passport renewal, or whatever. As proof of my ethnicity (or denial of any), I could now show any such official the photograph of Alexis. “Doesn’t she have the Percy chin, officer?”

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The 617 Squadron Association ‘Historian’

I am posting this Special Bulletin to record a recent email exchange between Dr. Robert Owen, the official historian of the 617 Squadron Association, and me. As part of my campaign to elevate awareness of the saga of ‘The Airmen Who Died Twice’, I had tried to contact the Squadron through various means, without success. Then, in the middle of May, I found a different email address, and sent my Synopsis (see https://coldspur.com/the-airmen-who-died-twice-synopsis/ ), as well as the supporting PDFs, to it. At the end of the month I received an email from Dr. Owen, and the following brief correspondence ensued.

Dr. Owen to me, May 29:

“Dear Mr Percy,

Your analysis of the crash of Lancaster PB416 has been passed to me for comment.

There are certainly a lot of unanswered questions in respect of the loss of this aircraft, not least the actual number of bodies found at the crash site and subsequently interred.

 In analysing your hypothesis I have also consulted with my counterpart in the IX Sqn Association (an ex RAF Tornado navigator) who has also looked into this incident, hence my rather delayed reply.

My own reading of this work is that it tells two separate stories – Operation Paravane with the loss of PB416 and, if I have understood it correctly, an alleged plot (the explanation of the Soviet/Norwegian element is not easy to follow) for Soviet agents to assassinate Peder Furubotn

 The link between these two lines of enquiry is ascribed to the crash of PB416 in Norway, and the continuing mystery surrounding the number of bodies aboard the aircraft and their identities.

 The difficulty in reconciling the number of bodies is not disputed. Their identities are confused by the initial reports listing personnel allegedly aboard PB416 who are definitely known not to have been on the flight.  This issue of identity can be explained by an administrative error.

The claim that there were more than nine bodies (the official crew/passenger number) cannot be explained with any certainty, but again administrative error, combined with the later exhumation and re-burial might be a contributory factor.  Without exhumation of the remains of the “unknown airman” in Nesbyen cemetery (which seems an impossible scenario) and formal identification by forensic methods this mystery seems likely to remain unresolved.

 It was suggested for a long time that the additional casualty might have been a member of ground staff – but this can be categorically refuted since all RAF members on Paravane – less those known to have been officially on board PB416 are known to have returned safely – including all of the ground contingent.

 The idea that there was a stowaway has also been discounted.  The question was discussed amongst a number of Paravane veterans and they were all adamant that It would have been impossible for a stowaway to conceal themselves aboard the Lancaster without the connivance of the crew.

 Thus the presence of any addition personnel on board would have to have been with the knowledge of the crew.  If this was the case how might this presence be explained?  If, as is suggested the additional personnel were Soviet agents who were to be parachuted out over Norway, how could this action be explained to the crew?

The key to keeping anything a secret is limiting the number “in the know” and, ideally that those “in the know” are of sufficient rank/status to be entrusted with such information. If this is the case (and surely any alleged plan for the despatch of Soviet agents into Norway for an assassination would be seen as having the highest security rating) then why was a relatively junior crew selected for the task.  Frank  Levy was a Flying Officer.  Furthermore, why were these Soviet agents placed aboard an aircraft that was carrying not only its normal crew complement of seven, but an additional two passengers – thus increasing the number of personnel who would have knowledge of the operation?

 It would have been far more logical for any such agents – assuming that there were such – to have been carried aboard a senior officer’s aircraft.  In this case this would be that of W/Cdr Tait, with his aircraft carrying only his normal crew of seven.

 If W/Cdr Tait and his crew were not to be involved, and if these personnel were to be dropped at night over unfamiliar territory, with terrain that by its nature had limited features to assist navigation, then another sensible assumption might be that the aircraft/crew chosen contained an experienced / senior navigator.  The most obvious choice in such an instance would have been the crew of S/Ldr Fawke, a more senior captain, whose navigator, F/Lt Bennett was the Squadron Navigation Officer.

 So why would Levy, relatively junior, whose aircraft was already carrying two additional passengers, be selected for such a task if indeed the scenario is correct? Who might have selected him?  Presumably the Squadron Commander – W/Cdr Tait.

In his later years Tom Bennett, Gerry Fawke’s navigator, became the No. 617 Squadron Association historian  – my predecessor.  I knew Tom well.  As might be expected of a navigator, he was a man of detail, conscientious and diligent.  One of his areas of enquiry was the loss of PB416 and the mystery of the identification of its casualties. He pursued many avenues including Air Historical Branch, the British Embassy in Oslo, the Norwegian War Graves Service and local Norwegians. He also discussed the episode with W/Cdr Tait.

 As Squadron Navigation Officer, he was responsible to W/Cdr Tait for all matters concerning navigation.  He was closely involved with the final navigation preparations for Paravane, to the extent that before the operation he was sent personally to collect the required charts of Scandinavian and Soviet territory from RAF Northolt under conditions of the greatest security.

 Likewise, as Navigation Officer he would have been involved in post-operational navigational analysis – including consideration of possible reasons for the loss of PB416.

 This being so, it seems inconceivable that Tom would not have gained some knowledge (even if only a hint/suspicion) of any covert circumstances, had there been any, relating to this flight, either at the time, or in later conversation with W/Cdr Tait.

 The results of his investigations failed to establish any definitive answer to the mystery of the identification of crew members.  They did however, suggest that there had been several layers of compounded administrative error which can be explained by a number of reasonable factors –the fog of war, poor record keeping or lost documentation.

As for as the reason for the aircraft’s loss:  The location of PB416’s crash clearly places it off the planned route back to Woodhall Spa.  This is sometimes attributed to a navigation error – which might include the “blown off course” explanation quoted.

However, the crash location might also be accounted for if the the aircraft was on an intended route for it to make a landfall in Northern Scotland.  There might be several explanations for this:

 Airfields in the Moray region were acceptable as diversionary airfields. The aircraft may have been making a diversion to Lossiemouth, as did a number of aircraft returning the following night.

 John Sweetman’s “Tirpitz – Hunting the Beast”, p. 116 cites the instance of F/O Watts of 617 Sqn,:

 “..Watts in KC-N hit ‘a huge occluded frontal system’ over Sweden, lost his pitot head and ‘all indicated air speed’, then discovered that fog had closed in over Woodhall causing him to divert to Lossiemouth.”    A number of other aircraft also diverted to Lossiemouth.

 Admittedly, the weather does not appear to have been an issue in the night of 16/17 September.

Levy’s aircraft may have experienced a technical problem which resulted in the crew deciding on a shorter route, with a shorter sea crossing to a diversionary airfield such as Lossiemouth or Kinloss.  There are uncorroborated reports that before the crash an aircraft was heard which sounded as if in trouble / with rough running engines.

 There is no conclusive proof that this was PB416, but it might suggest that the aircraft was experiencing technical issues.  It is known that engine problems were experienced on account of the low grade Russian aviation fuel and that one IX Sqn aircraft was forced to abort its return flight for this reason and return to Yagodnik.

Another consideration is that the aircraft may have been fired upon by flak as they transited across Finland, Sweden or Norway.  This again is given credence by Sweetman (p114):

 “Iveson’s log book shows that KC-F was fired on over Finland”  and on p. 116: “Three 9 (N flown by Harris with a JW bomb load, W & V) and two 617 (E & Z) Squadron Lancasters left on 18 September. Flying in Knilans’ KC-W 17 September, Bell the navigator recalled that ‘our aircraft had a bent frame, was difficult to control, and the starboard outer engine needed a major overhaul’. He failed to mention three extra passengers from a crashed aircraft. Off course near Stockholm, the Lancaster attracted the hostile attention of Swedish anti-aircraft guns. (Hell, I thought these guys were supposed to be neutral’, hollered Knilans.) Like Watts, they found Woodhall fog-bound and diverted to Lossiemouth.”

A Norwegian account attributed to one of the first to reach the crash site states that the wreckage of PB416 showed evidence of battle damage and that the fuel tanks were “torn and empty”.

 If this is correct, then the possibility of PB416 receiving battle damage necessitating a diversion should be factored into the debate.

The question of an additional crew member, or members on board remains enigmatic, but here again the waters are muddied by lack of conclusive evidence. If we accept that there were other(s) on board the aircraft, there is still no proof positive to link them to the alleged Soviet assassination plot. It would make as much sense, to suggest that they may have been additional personnel who were being ferried to the UK.  If so, then unless their origin/identity/purpose can be determined no conclusion can be drawn.

“The work is a hypothesis lacking firm proofs, but offering enough credible evidence to provide as watertight an argument as can be expected.”   Though each separate line of enquiry has been well researched, there is no firm indication of any conclusive link between the Paravane force and a Soviet assassination attempt, or even suggests any such connection. Any hypothesis based on such a claim must be at best conjecture based upon supposition and circumstantial evidence.

 Gaps and inconsistencies in documentary evidence, are not unusual.  Often it is a case of human/administrative error, or the loss of records with the passage of time.  Such omission/inconsistency does not necessarily indicate subterfuge or conspiracy.   Absence of evidence is just that… absence of evidence.

 Without further evidence to link the two directly the enigma must surely remain?

With all good wishes, 

 Rob

Dr Robert Owen

Official Historian, 617 Sqn Association”

I immediately sent a message of thanks, as follows:

“Dear Rob,

Many thanks for your patient and comprehensive reply.

What gratifies me most is that I see at last an admission that the crash at Saupeset represents an ‘enigma’ that clearly needs an explanation. In my investigations, I was dismayed by the lack of any recognition that anything untoward had happened, which led me to believe that the authorities wanted to bury the episode.

Over the weekend, I shall study very carefully your message, and respond with appropriate seriousness in a few days’ time. I am by no means a dogmatist, and developed my theory after intense study of much archival and biographical material. As I am sure you will agree, the final word on any historical event is never written, and I look forward to exploring with you the possible circumstances that led to this extraordinary disaster. 

With thanks again for the considerable time you must have spent on this,

Best wishes, 

Tony.”

On June 2, I sent Dr. Owen my full response:

“Dear Robert,

I am replying to your very thoughtful message, which I very much appreciated.

I have a few general comments, and I shall then attempt to address your more detailed points.

1)      Anonymity and Secrecy: I was puzzled by the apparent secrecy behind the investigations of historians before you. You state that ‘it was suggested for a long time . . ’, and ‘the idea that there was a stowaway has also been discounted’. Yet you give no indication as to who made these assessments, or where and when they appeared. It seems astonishing – even shocking to me – that no proper investigation was undertaken soon after the events at the end of the war, when witnesses were available. (Perhaps it was, but the report was suppressed . . . ) What happened to Tom Bennett’s report (if he wrote one)? Were the results of these investigations ever promulgated so that the public or other historians could discuss them? If not, why not? Why is there nothing on the website that refers to the tragedy?

2)      Administrative Errors: Likewise, you state that ‘the issue of identity can be explained by administrative error’. Who has made that judgment? And how can such an unfortunate  series of circumstances all be laid at the feet of some careless administrator? After all, fifteen Lancasters made it home that night, with a full complement of aircrew and passengers correctly recorded. Thus the error to which you ascribe the identification problem affected the sole aircraft that went off course, resulting in a confusion over who was killed that went on for two years. Surely it was the responsibility of the flight supervisors to be absolutely accurate over the composition of crews of airplanes, so that next of kin could be confidently informed when incidents of this nature occurred? Was the problem characterized as an administrative error at the time, and was remedial action taken?

3)      Breadth and Depth of Research:  You mention that Tom Bennett ‘pursued many avenues of research, including Air Historical Branch (= what?), the British Embassy in Oslo, the Norwegian War Graves Service and local Norwegians’. But when did this happen? And what was he told? Did he have communications with the Commonwealth War Graves Commission? Or the Air Ministry, or its successor, the Ministry of Defence? Do you believe that Wing Commander Tait had been completely open with him? Do you not agree that the investigations that I have carried out concerning SOE and Operation PICKAXE, the military mission in Moscow, the NKVD, Milorg, the Norwegian Communist Party, the Americans at Poltava, etc. etc. are relevant to a proper analysis of the case?

To address your other points:

·         I am surprised that you say that an exhumation of the remains the unknown airman at Nesbyen seems an ‘impossible scenario’. If he is indeed ‘unknown’, no one should be offended, and DNA analysis should reveal vital clues to his identity.

·         It is important that the idea of a ‘stowaway’ be discarded. I have never suggested that any agent could have secreted himself on the Lancaster without his presence being detected, even if in British uniform camouflage! The crew must have known that some special operation was under way. It might have been explained to them as another PICKAXE operation, where RAF bombers were used to drop Soviet agents in occupied territories as part of the SOE-NKVD collaborative project. And the fact that PARAVANE veterans discussed this possibility proves that the idea had been considered. But how was the mystery introduced to these veterans? Were they told about the Wyness/Williams debacle? Did they discuss whether agents might have been infiltrated on board with the approval of the authorities?

·         I would regard the minor distinction between exposing the secret to nine rather than seven, as a risk, as minimally relevant. After all, was not each of the fifteen Lancasters returning that night carrying extra passengers, because of the damaged craft left behind as not being airworthy?

·         I have no insights on the suitability for such a mission of Wing Commander Tait versus Flight Officer Levy, or how Levy was selected. But maybe Tait’s role was to lead the squadron in its loose information, and the chosen plane had to be last in line, so that it could peel off without its deviation being noticed by the crew of any other craft. I agree with you that Tait must have selected Levy for the operation, and again wonder how much he told Bennett. (One could surmise, perhaps cynically, that the least experienced crew was chosen to undertake such a dangerous mission, and that Churchill would not have been too chagrined had it failed.)

·         You suggest that it seems ‘inconceivable’ that Tom Bennett would not have picked up any hint of covert operations, had there been any. Yet the issue of ‘stowaways’ had been raised, which truly suggests some clandestine activity had been suspected. And, if he had indeed picked up such suspicions, might he perhaps have been strongly instructed not to disclose them?

·         You refer to the ‘fog of war, poor record-keeping, and lost documentation’ as possible causes of the mystery of the identification, and treat them as ‘reasonable’ factors. (Though how ‘lost documentation’ could be a predecessor phenomenon in this incident seems hard to believe.) Yet again, I reinforce the fact of the peculiar circumstances whereby these ‘administrative errors’ affected solely one plane out of sixteen – one that had a large number of enigmatic aspects to its flight crew, its adjusted flightpath, and the troubling circumstances of its demise.

·         You again use the passive voice: the location of the crash ‘is sometimes attributed to a navigation error – which might include the “blown off course” explanation offered’. (How could a ‘navigation error’ take place when the aircraft were flying in formation? How easily could a Lancaster be ‘blown off course’ without making a correction, or communicating the problem? And how come no other plane underwent the experience?) Who has submitted these explanations and judgments? Why does no one take responsibility? Moreover, the Flight Loss Card indicates that PB416’s destination was ‘Norway’, and it records the crash site as being near Nesbyen. The plane was reported as having circled the area for some time. Moreover, there was no apparent surprise when the navigator asked Dyce for a QDF reading! Why do you ignore this clearly documented evidence?

·         As for making landfall in Northern Scotland, as I understand it, some of the Lancasters were rerouted to land at Lossiemouth, because of fog at Woodhall Spa, and did in fact land there (as Flight Officer Watts recorded). The maps indicate that the safest route was still to fly over Sweden and north of Denmark, and then make progress towards Lincolnshire or Northern Scotland. Taking that sharp turn to the west across occupied Norway offered no advantage whatsoever. You admit that weather does not appear to have been an issue that night – at least not over Sweden.

·         Could Levy have decided on a shorter route without informing his controllers, or without the controllers noticing that he had diverted? Why, if the aircraft was experiencing technical issues, would it remove itself from the formation, and pass over hostile territory? Moreover, if you look at the map of the route, once a plane reached the Skagerrak in the North Sea, Lossiemouth is actually closer than Lincolnshire.

·         If low-grade Russian fuel was to blame, how come that PB416 was again the sole victim of this misfortune? Presumably all sixteen planes were fuelled from the same source, and fifteen made it back without incident. By the way, you quote Iveson’s log (mentioned by Sweetman) that stated that his crew, ‘like Watts’, found Woodhall fog-bound, and the plane thus diverted to Lossiemouth. Is that Sweetman’s interpretation? Was it really left to the officer to make that determination? If so, how could it have been that Levy, in PB416, knew about the needed diversion when he was over Sweden?

·         Where is the Norwegian account of the crash site held? Can it be inspected? I am not surprised that, if PB416 flew into a mountain, the craft ‘showed evidence of battle damage and that the fuel tanks were “torn and empty”’! Did anyone really expect that they would survive the impact intact? Should we really treat this information seriously?

·         The evolution of the ‘identified’ members of the crew  – and passengers – of PB416 merits special attention, as shown in the following phases:

i)  The September Operations Record Book, showing the original seven listed from the departure on September 11 (without Naylor and Shea), and recording the disappearance of the aircraft on September 18, with an assumption that the crew was the same;

ii) the roster (‘nominal roll’) of those that left Yagodnik on PB416, compiled by Squadron Leader Harman (unavailable, but apparently adding only Shea as passenger);

iii) the recognition on the Flight Loss Report made out at Woodhall Spa the day after the accident that Naylor and Shea had both been passengers;

iv) the numeration of bodies on the ground, made by local Norwegians;

v) the listing of names on the crude memorial in August 1945 (including Wyness and Williams),

vi) the initial Graves Registration Report from August 1945 (which omitted McNally, but included Wyness and Williams);  

vii) the ‘final’ War Graves Commission report in December 1946 (with McNally restored, and Williams and Wyness removed); and  

viii) the ten headstones in Nesbyen Churchyard, including an unknown airman.

·         The public deserves to know about this. While I, in my articles, have done my best to describe and interpret the sequence of events that drove the confusion, I see no evidence that the Squadron has performed any rigorous analysis of the debacle. Yet the fact remains: there is an unknown airman lying in rest in the Churchyard, and neither you nor the Ministry of Defence can explain who it might be, as there is no British (or Canadian) officer missing to be accounted for. I agree that I can offer no solid evidence of the conspiracy, but my hypothesis is much more plausible than the vague claims of human and administrative error that you propose. (The ‘fog of war’ is an inadequate explanation.) Professor Titlestad (whose father was Peder Furubotn’s security officer) is one of several who accept my conclusions. It will remain an enigma only so long as you keep it under wraps, and show no resolve to explore it further. I hope that my endeavours will encourage you to open up, publish your findings, and engage in a further debate about the events. Also, that the Squadron and the Ministry will be ready to offer an apology when the eightieth anniversary of the crash comes up this September.

I respectfully await learning what your next steps will be.

Sincerely,
Tony.”

Dr. Owen’s reply of June 5 was disappointingly terse:

“Dear Tony

I have spent a considerable amount of time considering your hypothesis, and commented as requested.  

I have nothing further to add.

Rob”

This failure to engage was extremely depressing. I am sure that Dr. Owen is a fine man, dedicated to serving the Squadron Association for whom he works, but his behaviour does not display the attributes that a serious historian should regard as essential to his or her craft. It was incurious, unimaginative, obscurantist, selective, insular, and proprietary. It reinforces my belief that history is too important to be delegated to ‘official historians’. To ignore the evidence and resort to identifying causes such as ‘the fog of war’ is simply unprofessional. I therefore issue this posting in the hope that someone else may pick it up and gain the attention of more independent and resourceful analysts.

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Some Problems with Westy

Nigel West

[I report on a recent incident involving a review by Nigel West in an intelligence journal, and then offer a critique of his latest book.]

Contents:

Introduction: Yoda and doyens

The Intelligence Journals

Nigel West and ‘The Eagle in the Mirror’

Controversy at IJICI

Reflections

‘Classified! The Adventures of a Molehunter’

Chapter by Chapter

Conclusions

            *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *

Introduction: Yoda and doyens

If Christopher Andrew is (pace C.S. Goodman) the Great Yoda of intelligence writing, Nigel West is frequently referred to as ‘the doyen’ of the same. I was for a long time unsure who ‘Yoda’ was: I had assumed that he was some figure from Japanese mythology, but my Media Affairs Advisor informs me that he (or it) is a character in a work of the genre known as ‘talking pictures’, a phenomenon which appears to be have been taking the country by storm in recent years. Apparently there exists a film series known as Star Wars, which I have never seen, but must presumably concern rivalries on Hollywood film locations, probably involving such as Olivia de Havilland and Vivien Leigh competing for the attentions of Errol Flynn. Yoda is apparently a so-called ‘Jedi master’ whose role, I assume, is to advise his clients on Stanislavskian techniques and method acting. Yet he seems to have a rather grotesque aspect, reminding me of the Mekon from my Dan Dare days of the 1950s, and I cannot imagine that Christopher Andrew is very flattered to be compared to this wizened and unattractive character.

The Mekon
Yoda

So much for cultural references: they can be a dangerous tool in the hands of the careless or the insensitive. I am much more comfortable with ‘doyen’. I believe it was the author and literary agent Andrew Lownie who first granted West that soubriquet, but Christopher Andrew has also been described as such, and I note that Richard Norton-Taylor of the Guardian has been named as ‘the doyen of national security reporting’. So there is competition. In any event, West’s ubiquity in the world of intelligence-writing is indisputable. He has written dozens of books (many of which I own), he is regularly quoted on intelligence matters, and scores of writers pay tribute, in their ‘Acknowledgments’, to the assistance he has given them. He is also a prominent figure with one of the serious Intelligence journals, and it is one of those roles that I want to examine here, before moving on to critique his latest book, titled Classified!  The Adventures of a Molehunter.

I must declare my interest with Nigel West (the pen name of Rupert Allason). We have been in occasional email conversations for years. I met him originally at a conference at Lancaster House over a decade ago, he kindly agreed to attend my seminar on Isaiah Berlin at the University of Buckingham the following week, and, on my last trip to Britain, I was the happy beneficiary of his hospitality at his house near Canterbury. He apparently reads coldspur, if not regularly, then from time to time, as he has made comments on my texts, sometimes in very complimentary terms. We have helped each other out on research quests, with the most recent (when I shared with him a file on MI5 personnel) occurring only a few months ago. Thus I regard our relationship as congenial. If we both played on the same cricket team, I am sure that I would refer to him as ‘Westy’.

I have been very direct in my writings about him, praising him over projects and books that I believe have been well-executed, but also criticizing him quite harshly when I felt that his research had been lazy or incorrect (such as with ‘Gibby’s Spy’), or actions that I judged were misleading (such as the re-publication of his books on MI5 and MI6, presented as new editions when they were simply re-prints). I find it hard to believe that West has not read these passages, but he has not taken any perceptible offence, or tried to refute my claims. I can only conclude that he respects me for my integrity and independence, not reliant on his goodwill – or that of any other intelligence maven or doyen(ne) – for the promotion of my ideas.

The Intelligence Journals

I shall return to that consideration when I review his book, but the event I want to analyze first is a journal review he wrote of Jesse Fink’s book on Dick Ellis, which I reviewed myself on coldspur a few months ago. (See https://coldspur.com/four-spy-books/).  As a way of providing some useful background, I offer here some brief comments on Intelligence Journals. I am familiar with three prominent entities on intelligence matters published in English: The Journal of Intelligence and National Security (JINS); The International Journal of Intelligence and Counter-Intelligence (IJICI); and The Journal of Intelligence History (JIH). All are owned by the murky aggregator Taylor and Francis, a division of the British company Informa, which might suggest that they are not actually in competition with each other.

JINS was apparently inspired by its founding editor Christopher Andrew, but reflects some confusion in its mission, since the implied focus on ‘national’ security is dispersed in a coverage of all manner of aspects of international relations. It sports an international team, with its editors split between the USA and the UK, and boasts an amazing 56-member editorial board that includes familiar figures such as Andrew himself, Richard Aldrich, Rory Cormac, Philip Davies, John Ferris, Anthony Glees, Michael Goodman, David Kahn (the Codebreakers man, who actually died this last January: one might expect the institution to have picked that up), Christopher Moran, Sir David Omand, and Wesley Wark, as well as several academics from around the world. What this editorial board actually does is hard to say. Perhaps they all get together on Zoom from time to time, but what happens when they disagree on some matter of policy is not disclosed.

IJICI displays a similar schizophrenia. It is based in the USA, and very much CIA-influenced. It states, however, that it ‘publishes articles and book reviews focusing on a broad range of national security matters’. ‘Focus’ and ‘broad’ do not sit well together: neither does the emphasis here on ‘national’ (which nation?), which undermines its title, and the dissonance is the exact opposite of that of its older stablemate. It likewise sports a large Editorial Board consisting of 49 members: these are indeed a much more varied set of international figures, but dominated by Americans, although Michael Goodman and Philip Davies have been graced with an invitation, and Nigel West also appears in their number.

JIH, on the other hand, is the official publication of the International Intelligence History Association (IIHA), another obscure organization that offers no details about how it is run, or who its members are, or how they are elected, but seems to be dominated by German academics. (Woe betide anyone who attempted to issue an unofficial publication on behalf of that body.) It would appear to concentrate on the histories of various intelligence services, which gives it, on the surface, a more precise remit. Its co-editors are Christopher Moran (of the JINS board) and Schlomo Shpiro (of Bar-Ilan University, Israel, who is in fact a member of the IJICI editorial board as well). I trust all their confidentiality agreements are rigorously obeyed. It maintains a smaller editorial board of just seventeen members, but some familiar names turn up again, such as Lock Johnson (on the JINS board), the very busy Michael Goodman, and Mark Phythian, the editor of JINS. It all seems a bit incestuous to me, but finding good intelligence academics to fill all those seats must be tough. I should mention that none of these journals has seen fit to approach me, the unacknowledged and self-appointed doyen of intelligence blogging . . . .

Of course, I may not be at the top of their list of candidates. I have occasionally criticized Taylor & Francis for its exploitative business model, where it packages out subscriptions through institutions, but makes it penally expensive for the individual researcher or historian who has no academic affiliation to access any of the reports they publish. I do not believe that it pays any of its contributors or reviewers, so it relies on (and exploits) those who are willing to put in a lot of effort for reasons of self-advertisement, or because they need to reach a quota of published papers. Furthermore, my experience with the outfit has not been uniformly stellar. I had a very positive experience with JINS when I submitted my review of Ben Macintyre’s Agent Sonya (seehttps://coldspur.com/special-bulletin-review-of-agent-sonya/), but a follow-up on David Burke’s book about the Kuczynski family was frustrating, and a waste of my time.

And then I clashed with Mark Phythian, the editor of JINS, when challenging the Journal’s publication of a loose and deceptive article by Francis Suttill, Jr. concerning claims of the betrayal of his father’s eponymous SOE circuit (PROSPER) in France. Phythian also directly contradicted what Suttill openly declared about an agreement concerning the authorization and publication of his article, and it was not clear that the piece had undergone the peer review that the published policies should have ensured. Furthermore, Phythian then said that it was not the Journal’s policy to publish any letters from the public, whether they were positive, or (in my case) questioned in any way what appeared in JINS. Patrick Marnham (author of War in the Shadows) and I therefore composed a response to Mr. Suttill’s undisciplined article, and I published it on coldspur (see https://coldspur.com/special-bulletin-prosper-the-letter-to-jins/ ). This seemed to be the only way to challenge both the substance of Mr. Suttill’s piece, as well as the inflexible and non-transparent mechanisms of the JINS editorial policy. The very closed nature of its approach to content and debate hardly makes it an exemplar of creative nourishment of intelligence scholarship.

Nigel West and ‘The Eagle in the Mirror’

And now to turn to Nigel West, and his review of The Eagle in the Mirror, which appeared on the IJICI website on December 13, 2023, titled SpyCatcher Legacy (see https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/08850607.2023.2283827, but behind the paywall). It approached Fink’s book in a rambling and oblique manner, and it made some questionable assertions of its own. I shall not examine in detail the technical points of West’s review: it was a typically arch display by West, concealing some of the reasons for his apparent unquestionable authority. On the other hand, as I indicated in my review, I had not been entirely convinced by Fink’s case, and I need to examine closely the sources before offering any informed opinion. I shall instead concentrate on one or two disturbing aspects of the review, and how it passed through editorial channels, and the responses it engendered, first from Fink and then from the IJICI editorial team.

I deem it important here to reproduce the central controversial paragraph in West’s review. He wrote: “The great irony at the center of The Eagle in the Mirror is that the author has undertaken some very impressive research with the declared objective of painting Pincher and Wright (and the author of this review) as charlatans or worse . . . only to discover that, when assessed in toto, it reveals a compelling case for Ellis’ guilt!” This was a strange and highly troubling conclusion to come to. West’s suggestion that Fink had undertaken research with the objective of disparaging all three authors (as opposed to that conclusion being an outcome) could well be considered libellous, since it casts aspersions on the integrity of Fink’s whole research methodology. And nowhere did I read that Fink had declared that his goal was to portray the trio as charlatans! Given Taylor & Francis’s later admonitions of Fink for what it framed as personal attacks, the approval of West’s text was particularly cavalier and hypocritical.

Nevertheless, my judgment was that Fink might have partially contributed to West’s overall misunderstanding by his acknowledged need to market his book with questionable rhetoric that hinted that Ellis could well have been a traitor. The essential lesson from this extract, however, was that West had a personal stake in the resolution of the controversy, but had not declared it when he offered to review the book for IJICI. I should also mention that Nigel West had already read my review of the book, in which I had criticized West’s inconsistent and unscholarly treatment of the case against Ellis. He even wrote to me, congratulating me on my treatment of the ‘double agent’ terminology, but expressed no complaints about my representation of his role in the Ellis affair.

Fink (who has been in regular correspondence with me since the review appeared) seems to have three main complaints about West’s review: 1) that West had requested a copy of the book under false pretenses; 2) that the review itself was superficial, in that it had ignored much of what Fink had written, and misrepresented his opinions; and 3) that West had offended IJICI editorial policy by failing to declare that he had an interest, since Fink had criticized him in his book. He presented his challenges to the Editor of IJICI, Jan Goldman, and for a while received a consistently cold shoulder. He stubbornly persevered, however, and his tenacity was eventually rewarded – to a degree. Yet the saga that unfolded displayed such a combination of institutional dysfunction and managerial incompetence on the part of IJICI that I judge it needs to be described in full. (This saga may not be of broad interest to coldspur readers, but I believe that it is important to lay out for public view how the Journal operates, and the challenges faced by authors whose books are reviewed when policies are either highly unfair, or are casually neglected by those supposed to be exercising them, or both. Otherwise the facts of the matter will remain hidden, since IJICI is determined on control and secrecy.)

Controversy at IJICI

Jesse Fink

West’s review was published on-line on December 13, 2023. The following day, Fink wrote a letter to Jan Goldman, the substance of which ran as follows:

  1. Was there not a conflict of interest in West’s being given the opportunity to review the book, given that he received critical treatment in it?
  2. West conveniently contended that Keith Jeffery did not mention any allegations against Ellis because they were outside his (Jeffery’s) ‘purview’.
  3. What West stated that Jeffery told him privately about the Ellis case tallies with what the historian of MI6, Stephen Dorril, had told Fink, namely that Ellis was involved in some way with co-operation between Nazi Germany and Great Britain over Ukrainian exiles, in the late 1930s. West ignored what Fink wrote about this.
  4. West incorrectly stated that Fink had ignored the judgment of David Horner on Ellis’s culpability, when the author had covered him in an Endnote.
  5. West’s assertion that the testimony of Nelidov in TRIPLEX (2009) ‘might have been adduced [in 1964, by MI6’s Bill Stedman, if he had known about it] as ‘“smoking-gun” evidence that Ellis had been in touch with the Soviets long before the war’ contradicted what West told the Daily Telegraph in 1984, namely that there was only minimal, circumstantial evidence to support the contention that Ellis was ever a Soviet agent. Yet West produced this analysis only when encountering the evidence in the context of Fink’s book, and then used the passages to attack Fink’s integrity.

[This is a very complex, but vitally important aspect of the case. Fink has reminded me that the confessions of Nelidov assert that he conferred with Ellis before passing on information to the Soviets. West, meanwhile, implies in his review that Ellis had been selling German information to the Soviets before Nelidov replaced him in Berlin, whereas the text states that Ellis had at that time simply collected material about the Soviets from German sources. What is also troublesome to me is Nelidov’s claim that, after he arrived in Berlin, and taken over from Ellis, he ‘conferred’ with him about identifying material that ‘might be used to interest Soviet intelligence’. If Ellis had already been transferred to Switzerland to work for the League of Nations, how would such a conference have occurred? The lack of dates in Nelidov’s confession is very frustrating, but, in any case, nowhere does he suggest that Ellis had actually been in contact with the Soviets, unlike Nelidov himself, who admitted that, on his way to Berlin, he had stopped in Vienna to offer material to the head of Soviet intelligence! West distorts Nelidov’s statements to suit his own purposes, and his claim about Ellis’s contact with the Soviets seems utterly spurious. What is more, West had had ample opportunity to explore the implications of Nelidov’s testimony for a re-assessment of Ellis’s reputation when he published TRIPLEX, yet he apparently did not pay attention to the details. His creative re-interpretation of the story in 2024, having discovered it in Fink’s book, is less than honourable. My opinion overall, however, is that both Fink and West grant too much credit to the reliability of Nelidov’s ‘confessions’, and I shall return to this point in a future report. For my own analysis of matters relating to Nelidov, see ‘Gibby’s Spy’ at https://coldspur.com/gibbys-spy/, from October 2022.]

Fink received a prompt reply from Goldman, who wrote:

Thank you for your email. I take these accusations very seriously and will need to investigate them further. We rely on our authors to tell us if there is a conflict of interest. Do I have permission to share your remarks with Mr. West? I would be interested in what he has to say about your comments. We seek to be objective and balanced in everything we publish.

Fink thanked Goldman, and encouraged him to contact West, at the same time drawing Goldman’s attention to my review of the book. Goldman again replied immediately, inviting Fink to write a ‘Letter to the Editor’, in which he should refrain from personal comments, and focus on explaining why he thought the review was not objective.

Fink was not delighted with this response, as he believed that the journal was evading its responsibilities. He thus wrote back:

I’d be happy to write you a letter for the next edition but I’d much prefer this was investigated fully by your editorial board – how does a man who was the subject of much legitimate criticism in the book get to review it? Who fact-checks his review? Who independently reviews his review? Of course he was going to go to town on it. Mr West really should have not been given this book to review. It was a clear conflict. Or if he was going to do it he could have made it very clear I took him to account in it and any review of his should be treated as being badly coloured by his self-interest.
Worse, Mr West reached out to my publicist, Fiona Atherton, on November 1, where she said, “Nigel West has requested a copy for review in the World Intelligence Review.” We were very reluctant to send a copy, knowing full well he is subjected to criticism in the book, yet now it appears he has reviewed it not for World Intelligence Review but for your journal instead. This in my opinion is a misrepresentation. We had no idea it was appearing in your journal or that Mr West was preparing a review for you. If so, I would have made my reservations clear to you before the review appeared. Your journal is highly respected and widely read.

The review was malicious in my opinion, grossly distorted the arguments made in it, slighted my professionalism as an author, and is not befitting a journal of your reputation. I’d be far happier with a review written by an independent, impartial reviewer. That is a fair outcome.

At this stage, exchanges were still cordial. I encouraged Fink, and I gave him what I thought were one or two useful tips on his original message. He accordingly submitted his letter to Goldman, the text of which ran as follows:

Dear Sir

 I refer to Nigel West’s “review” of my book The Eagle in the Mirror in the latest International Journal of Intelligence and CounterIntelligence.

            I find it unusual that a person mentioned critically (but, I believe, very fairly) in the book was granted the opportunity to “review” it. Surely this is a conflict of interest? Your own editorial policies have a section on “competing interests” (https://authorservices.taylorandfrancis.com/editorial-policies/competing-interest/), which include: “Personal, political, religious, ideological, academic and intellectual competing interests which are perceived to be relevant to the published content.”

Did Mr West declare to the editorial board on being commissioned to write the “review” that he was featured critically in the book? That he might have one of the competing interests set out in your editorial policies? Mr West can hardly be missed in The Eagle in the Mirror. A photograph of him is published in it. Could not another reviewer for my book be found?

            Mr West requested a review copy of the book from my publicist in Scotland for World Intelligence Review but his “review” instead appeared in your journal. Is that not a misrepresentation? What safeguards are in place to ensure your book reviewers are impartial? Who is reviewing the reviewer’s work? Where was the “thorough peer review” of Mr West’s “review”? It doesn’t appear that there was any such peer review. If so, any competing interest would have been identified.

            After reading Mr West’s “review”, there were no surprises. In my opinion, Mr West was attempting to deflect what I regard as his deficiencies as an intelligence analyst of Dick Ellis. My book contains multiple criticisms of Mr West’s written work regarding Ellis. His dealing with this fact by briefly mentioning “the author has undertaken some very impressive research with the declared objective of painting [Chapman] Pincher and [Peter] Wright (and the author of this review) as charlatans or worse” is insufficient.

            Mr West’s contention that the late Keith Jeffery didn’t mention the allegations against Ellis in his written history of MI6 (MI6: The History of the Secret Intelligence Service 1909–1949) because it was outside his “purview” is also convenient and, I believe, misleading.

            As intelligence historian Antony Percy remarked to me this week while discussing Mr West’s “review”, “Ellis was decidedly in Jeffery’s ‘purview’. Most of the events happened before 1949.” That is, the bulk of the allegations made against Ellis by Pincher, Wright and Mr West in their respective books in the 1980s are concerned with events that happened in Western Europe prior to World War II.

            I’d wager that Jeffery’s private comment to Mr West that “the Ellis case is not quite what you think it is” tallies with the more cogent, convincing argument of MI6 historian Stephen Dorril, who emailed me a few months back to say, “My information was that there was co-operation [between Nazi Germany and Great Britain] on Ukraine exiles in the late 1930s, which is where I think Ellis comes in.”

            I totally concur. Dorril’s case in this regard (featured in his book MI6: Fifty Years of Special Operations) is presented in my book, as is John Bryden’s case for Ellis in his book Fighting to Lose: How the German Secret Intelligence Service Helped the Allies Win the Second World War.

            Both writers could be described as defenders of Ellis, but neither Dorril or Bryden is mentioned in Mr West’s “review”. Why is that? Quite a glaring omission, when the central argument I put forward in the book completely corresponds with Dorril’s and Bryden’s. Dorril, incidentally, reviewed the book on Amazon and said, “Fink [does] a very good job of showing the inadequacies of certain writers and that there is little or no real evidence that Ellis was an agent either for the Nazis or the Soviets.”

            Also, Mr West puzzlingly seems to think I’ve “overlooked” David Horner, when endnote 5 of Chapter 16 (on page 299) reads as follows:

            Horner misidentifies Von Petrov in The Spy Catchers: ‘In 1984 the investigative journalist Chapman Pincher revealed that in early 1967 [sic] MI5 interrogated Ellis, who confessed to having passed secret information to the Germans before the Second World War, and that Ellis had passed the information via several White Russians, one of whom was named Vladimir Nikolayvich (not Mikhailovich) Petrov [sic].’ In The Protest Years: The Official History of ASIO, 1963–1975, Vol. II (2015), John Blaxland calls him ‘Vladimir Nikolavich Petrov’.

            Yet Mr West writes in his “review”: 

            Fink overlooked Horner’s verdict, presumably based on the same kind of access granted to his counterpart Jeffrey [sic] in London. This is one of several contradictions undermining Fink’s credibility, for he must have wondered if ASIO had vindicated Ellis, why the organization had placed him under surveillance when he visited Sydney in 1974, as proved by his reproduction of ASIO’s covert photographs.

            Whose credibility is being undermined here? Mine or Mr West’s as a book reviewer? Does Mr West not read endnotes? The redoubtable Antony Percy in his review of the book (https://coldspur.com/four-spy-books/) had no trouble consulting the endnotes and said, “Do read the excellent endnotes carefully, and follow up where you can.” How difficult was it for Mr West?

            Moreover, there was no suggestion anywhere in the book that ASIO “vindicated” Ellis, which is why they were monitoring him! I write on page 174, “It is an obvious irony that Ellis, against whom no real evidence of treason was ever produced by the authorities, would be tracked and surveilled in the country of his birth by the very spy agencies he personally set up in Canberra.”

            Regarding Aleksandr Nelidov and the edited quote from his confession, if the supposedly damning full quote from Nelidov from the book TRIPLEX: Secrets from the Cambridge Spies was enough to “implicate” Ellis with the Soviets (as Mr West seems to suggest), why did Mr West say to London’s Daily Telegraph on 4 May 1984, “There is only minimal, circumstantial evidence to support the contention that Ellis was ever a Soviet agent”? Mr West was the co-editor (with Oleg Tsarev) of TRIPLEX, which contains the full Nelidov quote. He should know the material well.

            Keith Jeffery characterised Nelidov as a “purveyor of faked intelligence”, which might more accurately explain what Ellis and Nelidov were up to with the Soviets (as my book makes very clear in extracts from Ellis’s spy playbook written for William Donovan; see pages 87–88), but that appears to be irrelevant in this “review”.

            Instead, Mr West casts the missing part of the quote from Nelidov as “smoking gun evidence that Ellis had been in touch with the Soviets”. Can Mr West make up his mind about Ellis’s role with the Soviet Union? Apparently not.

There is no evidence at all, whatsoever, that Ellis was a Soviet agent, as the book makes abundantly clear.

            I’m left wondering why the “review” was written. To treat the subject of Ellis with some objective seriousness or as an exercise in face saving? If it is the latter, are you comfortable with Mr West seemingly using your journal’s “review” of my book in this fashion?

            Does someone as historically important as Ellis, who wrote the blueprint for Office of the Coordinator of Information/Office of Strategic Services, who was awarded the Legion of Merit by President Harry S. Truman for his contribution to the United States during World War II, deserve such a skewed “review” of what amounts to the only existing full account of his life?

            Ellis deserves a lot more and so do your readers. For Mr West to end his “review” by writing that I was hammering more nails into Ellis’s coffin was beyond the pale. I did no such thing.

            If Mr West can be this sloppy and (as I see it) apparently vindictive, by rights the only “lost cause” is his future career as a book reviewer for International Journal of Intelligence and CounterIntelligence

            Yours sincerely

Jesse Fink

This was not what Dr Goldman wanted to read, and Fink had to prod him for a reply. An evasive and temporizing message came back on December 21:

Hi Jesse,

Right now, due to the holiday season, not much will be done. Nevertheless, we do not discuss internal operations. I received your letter, and you will hear from us on it’s [sic] possible publication.

Happy holidays,

JG

Why an intelligence journal has to effectively close down its operations so early, and for so long, was not apparent to Fink or to me. The IJICI machine picked up in late January, however, and the initial response was encouraging:

            I met with the publisher via zoom and your letter was discussed along with other business. The publisher must approve all letters to the editor, but, this is usually not a problem.

I’m waiting to hear from them, and should it be approved, we have enough time to get it in the next issue of the journal.

One would conclude from this tidbit that Goldman was satisfied with the integrity and arguments of Fink’s letter. In fact Goldman had passed the letter to one Amanda Patterson at Taylor & Francis. I looked up her profile on LinkedIn, and discovered that she is Portfolio Manager, Academic Publishing, Journals. Moreover, she declares there that “Through this role, I have been most interested in strengthening the publisher-community relationship by advocating for gender and geographical parity in publishing’, a slice of corporate jargon that I found especially unappealing. What the ‘publisher-community relationship’ is, I have no idea, and why this woman should be focusing on fashionable diversity issues instead of journalistic excellence is likewise beyond me. These were not good signs.

A couple of weeks later (March 5) she wrote to Fink, with the formalities raised a notch, as follows:

Dear Jesse Fink:

Thank you for your patience while the publisher investigated your complaint, assessed it, and actioned a solution. We thank you for bringing this to our attention.

Through the course of our inquiry into this book review, we discovered that the author submitted it to the journal and neglected to include a competing interest disclosure statement either to the journal publisher or to the journal Editor, which violates our publishing policies. All authors of all submissions to all Taylor & Francis journal must disclose if there is a competing interest, or else declare that there is no competing interest present. This was considered to be a major error, and we treated it by publishing a Correction Statement accompanied by the Disclosure Statement that should have been included with the submission.

The Disclosure Statement is visible to the public and appears outside of the paywall. Anyone accessing the piece, whether subscriber or not, is informed that that author of the book review is a subject of the book that he is reviewing, and that he may be affected by that as part of his review.

As far as the publisher is concerned, this completes our inquiry into this case. Separately, you may respond to the book review by writing a letter to the editor, and its publication is determined by Jan (copied to this message). However, since this book review now complies with our ethical policies, and was handled appropriately post-publication, we will not be able to publish anything that disputes these facts.

If you choose to submit a new letter to the editor, please be aware that the author of the book review will have a chance to respond to your letter, and after that, no further discourse may be made.

With best wishes,

Amanda

This letter constituted both a concession that a major error had been committed, as well as a desperate attempt to shed any responsibility for what had happened. Had Goldman not been aware of this policy, or was he simply not paying attention? Readers can inspect the ‘correction’ at the same link given above: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/08850607.2024.2322416. I reproduce Nigel West’s text here:

In accordance with Taylor & Francis policy, I am reporting that I am a party that may be affected by the book that I reviewed in the enclosed paper, and contained within the body of the text I submitted are transparent acknowledgments as such. I have since disclosed those interests fully to Taylor & Francis.

But this is a joke! A retroactive statement of Disclosure, with no apology to Fink, and West implying that the mentioning of Fink’s criticisms of him effectively disqualified him from having to declare his interest, and Taylor & Francis judging that this ‘major error’ had been absolved without any reproof to West, or any public admission that the Journal had messed up as well as West himself! Taylor & Francis did it this way only because they thought they could get away with it. Go hang the ‘publisher-community relationship’!

Naturally, Fink was not happy about this, and sent a rejoinder on March 6, as follows:

Dear Amanda and Jan

The addition of the Disclosure Statement and a Correction Statement doesn’t actually mention the fact it was a ‘major error’, that West violated your own company policies, and that I am the victim here. There is no apology. A review can’t comply with your own ‘ethical policies’ after the fact. The damage has already been done. What does this change for the people who read the review when it came out? They’re not seeing this. 

The fact is, West got to write his hit piece and you published it without any checks and balances. It should be removed online as a basic courtesy to me and you should commission another writer without a conflict of interest to review the book. That would be ethical. 

Jan, you have my original letter to the editor, which you invited me to write, and at the very minimum I expect it to be published. 

Yours sincerely

Jesse Fink

Ms. Patterson tried to wriggle free:

Dear Jesse Fink:

The publication of a Correction in a scholarly text is itself evidence indicative that an error occurred. The error was remedied with a Correction, as is our policy when post-publication errors are discovered.

International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence is an academic journal, and as such, we are unable to remove anything that is published. Book reviews are not subject to peer review (as they are, by their nature, subjective), they are screened by the Editor and published at the Editor’s discretion. The peer review policy is outlined on the journal’s Aims & scope page on www.tandfonline.com/ujic.

The book review by Nigel West has been accessed 46 times (presumably you, me, and some other internal T&F folks who were working on the Correction account for some of these), and has not yet been assigned to issue (in other words, it has not appeared in print, and thus, has not been sent to the journal’s subscribers). When it is printed and assigned to issue, the Disclosure statement will appear alongside it, which is all in line with our policies for publication. At this point, T&F stands by the Editor and the piece, which are all compliant.

I assure you that everything in this case has been done accordingly, and I do thank you for bringing this issue to my attention.

I will confer with Jan, but if, in the meantime, you want to send me the Letter to the Editor, I will be happy to review it.

Thanks,

Amanda

The proper thing for IJICI to have done at this stage would have been to withdraw the review, since only a few dozen persons had seen it. (I do not know whence orginates the law that an academic journal may not withdraw an article once it has been published.) It certainly did not suddenly become ‘compliant’ simply because a half-hearted admission by West had been appended on-line, as Fink patiently explained the same day:

Hi Amanda 

You sent me an email on Jan 24 saying you had received it. It was sent to Mr Goldman in December, on his invitation. I have attached it again. The piece was not ‘compliant’, and the posthumous addendum doesn’t change that because it was already published and accessible. The cat was already out of the bag. I had friends with interest in intelligence matters contact me about it.

Make no mistake, as an author I have no problem with a bad review. It’s part of the business. But this is a different issue: honesty, transparency and accountability. My reputation for accuracy and my dedication to producing quality books is of utmost importance to me. 

So conflict of interest in a reviewer is a serious matter and surely you and your editor can see that a person (West) who comes under heavy criticism in my book for (as I see it) posthumously tarnishing the name of Dick Ellis, a man who did a great deal for western intelligence in the 20th century, is not the best or most impartial person to review the work.

Who is served by such a review? Your journal? Your readers? Are they getting an accurate or fair review of the work? Or is this about West saving his own face?

Yours sincerely

Jesse Fink

Ms. Patterson seemed to be unaware that Fink had submitted his letter to Goldman almost three months beforehand, and she then informed Fink that she and Goldman had ‘re-reviewed’ it. Yet her response was measly and sophistical, claiming that the review itself had been ‘corrected’ simply by virtue of West’s statement, and appearing to condone West’s behaviour (only recently classified as a ‘major error’, recall) of indicating within the review that he had been criticised:

Dear Jesse,

Thank you. I have conferred with the Editor, and re-reviewed your letter.

In light of the fact that we have taken action to correct the review and publish the disclosure statement, the first three substantial paragraphs of the letter have been addressed and actioned.

By way of reminder, book reviews are not peer reviewed as a matter of policy, and Nigel West did identify that he was a subject of the book in the text of the review.

Responses to published work in the journal should be a rebuttal of the text of the original piece, rather than contain any sort of personal attack on any individual or on the journal. Together with the Editor we have identified a few paragraphs that border on personal criticism rather than on deconstructing/discussing the original book review as a published piece itself. 

At this point, I would like to invite you to reconsider submitting the letter again, in light of the actions that we have taken since you originally wrote in to us. Jan has reminded me that the word limit for Letters to the Editor to be published is 1200 words.

Also, by way of reminder, the standard procedure for this process is that Nigel West will have the chance to respond to your rebuttal, and then all responses end. I wonder if you might keep that in mind when refining the Letter to the Editor?

Can you please re-submit your letter, with all of this in mind, to Jan Goldman (copied here)?

Thank you

Amanda

The very feeble Goldman then sent an edited version of Fink’s letter back to him, effectively warning him to toe the line. IJICI was the censor in this situation, and wanted to control the narrative. Fink was not unnaturally aggrieved, and wrote on March 13:

                Mr Goldman, good to hear from you.

No, I don’t approve your edit. It is not an ad hominem attack. You have not once apologised for 1/commissioning West to write that review when he had a conflict of interest, 2/failing to ask West why he wanted to write that review in the first place (after all, he contacted my publicist for a copy and didn’t even mention once that it was for your journal), 3/not getting West to comply with your own policies before the review was published, meaning a correction and disclosure statement was required after it was published. There hasn’t been one iota of actual apology from you or Taylor & Francis, either privately or publicly. We screwed up! We’re sorry, Mr Fink. How can we make it right?

I am the aggrieved party here, who has done nothing more than to dare question West’s repeated ungrounded attacks on Dick Ellis, a dead man who set up the intelligence apparatus of the country you live in. Ellis is an important deal. You call Dorril’s opinion on Ellis hearsay, which it is not – he is a world-renowned intelligence historian specialising in MI6 who is relying on vast reams of information to form an educated opinion and is entitled to express it and for that opinion to be recorded. Ditto Bryden. Both men have written books defending Ellis. You might pick them up and look for yourself. I only have 1200 words to defend my work and an impugned dead man.

Meanwhile, West can freely use a private conversation in his review with Keith Jeffery (‘the Ellis case is not quite what you think it is’) and publish vast books of unsubstantiated hearsay – Ellis was a Nazi double agent! Ellis was a Soviet spy! He was both! – and come to the same conclusion in your journal and you’re happy to publish it without a shred of actual evidence. Imagine if you had applied the same forensic scrutiny you’re applying to my Letter to the Editor to West’s review in the first place? 

Worse, West can breezily state in his review I have no professional credibility when he can’t even consult an endnote and smear me by saying that I have hammered nails into Ellis’s coffin. 

The unedited letter gives background to something that has been going on for four months. It’s not like I just read the review and decided to fire off a letter. This was a ‘major error’, after all. I’ve attached an edited version that I’m happy with. 

Yours sincerely

Jesse Fink

Matters did not become any simpler thereafter. Having heard nothing by April 22, Fink had to remind Goldman about the lack of response to the corrections he had submitted. Goldman confirmed that the letter was currently with the Production Editor. Fink then received

a message from that person, James DiStefano, who showed a complete insensitivity to the dynamics of the negotiations, acknowledging the receipt of Fink’s corrections, but stating that they had been rejected by the journal’s editor. (Why Goldman did not have the courtesy of informing Fink himself of that decision is unclear.) DiStefano proceeded to declare that the letter would therefore be published online without Fink’s amendments, probably around April 29 or 30. Fink pointed out that the ‘corrections’ the journal had made were ‘deletions’, not corrections, and he thus turned back to Goldman to remind him that DiStefano had said that the lines had been cut by him, Goldman, asking:

                Why? Nothing defamatory about them at all. All on point. I’ve been very patient when I was wronged by the journal and by West’s failure to disclose his conflict

Goldman turned very stodgy and formal:

Sir,

Yes the lines were deleted, given they were directed on the review but, rather the reviewer.

jg

to which Fink riposted:

No, they were not ad hominem. I rightly pointed out with evidence that West has made wildly conflicting statements about Soviet links to Ellis and asked why he thinks I painted him as a charlatan. It was the word he used in his review. Perfectly valid. No reason to be removed. 

By this stage it was clear that the Journal was using its exclusive power to find a way out of the debacle, effectively threatening Fink that he could accept the revised letter, or else have it withdrawn. Ms. Patterson rejoined the exchange:

Dear Jesse:

Content editing cannot happen at the point of production. At the production stage, our teams are readying for publication. Therefore, it is not appropriate to insert or delete text at that point.

The final judge on content is the Editor. At this point, you are welcome to withdraw your letter as it was sent to production, or see it published.

I hope this helps.

-Amanda

Fink had done his best, responding promptly, and all that IJICI had done was to stall and prevaricate, pass the buck, and refuse to do the decent and proper thing. It has been a very one-sided affair, with the Journal cravenly allowing West’s illegitimate review to stand, and without apparently censoring West at all.

The letter was eventually published on-line on May 7, with Goldman’s deletions processed. Of course it sits behind the paywall. IJICI did not have the courtesy of informing Fink that it had been published. (It sent an insensitive pro forma message of congratulation to him on May 11, announcing the publication of the letter.) Yet Nigel West was ready, waiting in the wings: he had obviously been shown a copy of Fink’s approved letter, even if Fink had not, and West had had time to compose a reply, which was published the very next day. Its existence can be verified at  https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/08850607.2024.2336788. If you want to read it, and do not have institutional access, it will cost you $53 for a piece of about 500 words. I advise you not to waste your money. Likewise, Taylor & Francis has not sent the text to Fink, nor has it informed him of its appearance.

As I have already declared, I am not going to engage in a substantive analysis of the arguments here. I need to inspect the original documents myself, and shall probably dedicate a coldspur bulletin to inspecting these fascinating items while they are still relatively fresh in my mind. But I know enough about the case to judge that this letter is arrogant, disingenuous, and sophistical. It should never have been published, and Taylor & Francis show that the institution is in thrall to an influential member of its Advisory Board.

Reflections

This has been a very undignified performance by IJICI. It failed to heed its policy of reviewer interest. When it acknowledged that major error, it erroneously claimed that a terse and unapologetic ‘correction’ by West restored its integrity. It failed to detect West’s scandalous claim about Fink’s historiographical objectives, and to advise West to remove it. It never apologized to Fink for that slur, or for its breach of policy. Its treatment of him was cavalier and sluggish. When it came to the publication of his letter, it arbitrarily edited it to suit its own sensitivities, and the presumed ones of its reviewer. It did not communicate to Fink appropriately about the appearance of his and West’s responses. Fink has no further chance of redress: IJICI considers the Reviewer’s Response the ‘final word’. It never provided to Fink the text of West’s reply, and clearly failed to ask for a third opinion on a volatile situation, while showing itself utterly incompetent to provide editorial oversight itself. It delegated many of the processes to persons obviously unqualified for the job. And it spouted corporate jargon about ‘the publisher-intelligence community’ when it has no intention of providing a public forum for debate.

I wonder whether any of its 49-member Editorial Board know anything of this disastrous episode? I think they should be told  . . .

Review of ‘Classified! The Adventures of a Molehunter’

‘Classified!’

I ordered my copy of Nigel West’s latest book with a strong sense of expectation. While I have viewed West more as someone who wrote about molehunts rather than carrying them out himself, the title Classified! The Adventures of a Molehunter, suggested that the doyen would be offering a comprehensive analysis of his involvement with the notorious cases of the past few decades, and presenting some breakthrough judgments. I have for a long time been stating that a forum for clarifying some long-standing intelligence conundrums would be highly desirable, and perhaps West’s book would help initiate such a debate. On the flap of the book, however, appears this very confusing text: “His molehunts have led to the unmasking of spies within MI5, MI6 and the CIA and the identification of numerous others – some of whom were crucial to the Allied victory in the Second World War . . . “ Did West really outperform MI5? Which spies were unmasked by West’s endeavours, and how these would have assisted the victory against the Germans is an enigma left unaddressed: the blurb-writer has clearly lost the plot.

Irrespective of this errant representation, given how the book has been promoted, readers might still be entitled to expect some breakthrough analysis. Would we, for instance, learn some critical facts about ELLI, the person behind the cryptonym divulged by the defector Igor Gouzenko in 1945, which had spawned several investigations, including very solemn projects undertaken by the CIA and academics, provided a prosperous journalistic career for Chapman Pincher, drawn Roger Hollis (and others) into disrepute, saved Peter Wright from penury, excited the Americans, and provoked both MI5 and MI6 into a strenuous hunt for the reputed penetration agent within the Security Service?

But there is no entry for ELLI in the Index of the book, and I found no unindexed reference. Gouzenko receives only two minor mentions. Peter Wright crops up frequently, and a whole chapter is dedicated to Spycatcher, but it is as if the whole ELLI business were irrelevant, or had long been solved. It is like writing about cryptozoology without mentioning Nessie. In his 1989 book, Molehunt, West, after spending many pages speculating on ELLI’s identity, concluded that ‘ELLI probably existed, but the details offered by the defector could have applied to known spies like Blunt and Philby’. The question of ELLI was still alive when West published Cold War Spymaster: The Legacy of Guy Liddell, in 2018. What is going on? Do West’s followers not deserve a better explanation?

A symptom of the malaise is that West seems to lack any serious curiosity about recent research. He recognizes the publication of Andrew’s history of MI5 (2010), and Jeffery’s of MI6 (2011), and offers the briefest of mentions of Ferris’s history of GCHQ (2020), but, apart from his mentioning a few minor works published during this period, his universe is strangely occluded. (He does take the opportunity to criticize Andrew on several counts, however: over his accepting Grenville Wynne’s claim that he and Penkovsky visited the White House, his being taken in by a story about George Blake, on his naivety in stating publicly that he was the first to identify Cairncross as the Fifth Man, on his obstinacy over Canaris and Szymanska, and over his confusion about the identity of INTELLIGENTSIA and NOBILITY from the VENONA transcripts. If West could only show such clarity in the admission of his own mistakes . . .) He makes no mention of all the rich archival material that Kew has released in the past decade and a half, ignores any analysis that has been posted in the serious intelligence journals, as well as the works of such as Helen Fry, and cannot even admit to being stimulated or provoked by coldspur. Admittedly, the latter is not conventionally published material, but if Frank Close (the biographer of Fuchs) and Ben Macintyre can cite coldspur in their Endnotes, one might expect West to engage in the very relevant arguments that I have surfaced there.

The fact is that this is a very indifferent book. It contains glimpses of West’s tenaciousness, analytical skills, and background knowledge, but is nevertheless an ill-conceived and ill-executed compilation. In introducing his chapter on the Falklands Conflict, West writes, with a touch of vanity: “While on the after-dinner lecture circuit, I was often in demand . . .”, and the individual segments have the flavour of such after-dinner speeches gathered here in a compendium. The problem is that this approach results in a large degree of repetition, both internally (we are informed on three separate occasions that Arthur Martin hoped to elicit a deathbed confession from Graham Mitchell), and from West’s previously published books, such as those on VENONA and on molehunts. Moreover, no distinctive theme or narrative emerges across the volume in its entirety, and the reader is left with a series of unconnected vignettes.

Not that these pieces are universally without interest. West adopts an engaging style, although he tends to some lazy journalistic flourishes (which I shall examine later). He has benefitted from a fascinating background, and was steeped in intelligence matters from his teens, because of his father’s occupation, and the friendships that accompanied it. The author has exploited his connections overall very well, and has shown much enterprise in chasing down various leads. Yet being in the thick of the intelligence cliques has its drawbacks, since one has to be very sharp in assessing when one is being fed misinformation of some kind, and West shows a particular frailty in being so much influenced by Arthur Martin, whom he describes as ‘a formidable counter-intelligence officer’. Martin did not join in fact join MI5 until 1947, after a less than distinguished career in the Royal Corps of Signals and GCHQ. That he was recruited and recommended to MI5 by Kim Philby may or may not have ominous implications. Philby was the first to reveal his existence in My Silent War (as one of the investigators in the Maclean affair, and as being present at the Milmo interrogations), but he made no mention of his role in the recruitment process, and no one appears to have questioned Martin’s loyalty and judgment in this episode. I have come to regard Martin as a bit of a buffoon, one easily manipulated by his superior officers, and have documented some of his clumsier exercises (such as the interrogation of Smolka). Moreover, the reputed coups that Martin was supposed to have achieved (such as the confessions of Cairncross and Blunt), were obvious set-ups.

Because of the fragmented state of West’s narrative, I have thus decided to analyze each chapter in turn, spending more time on those sections that are closest to my own research bailiwick.

Chapter by Chapter

Chapter 1: ‘The Venlo Incident’

This is a long, rambling account of how unauthorized intelligence disclosures have encouraged the public’s interest. Why it is called The Venlo Incident I have no idea. It repeats a lot of familiar and well-trodden information about the arrests of MI6’s Best and Stevens in November 1939, and how they passed on hordes of facts about MI6’s organization thereafter. It then introduces Dick Ellis, attributing to him the pre-war selling of secrets to the Germans, and even repeats the bizarre charge that, if Ellis had betrayed MI6 to the Germans before the war, he might well have done the same with the Russians after it. West also questions the date of Ellis’s recruitment by MI6. For some reason he then moves on to Leslie Nicholson’s providing Phillip Knightley with his scoop on Philby, before classifying Philby’s memoir as ‘largely accurate’. From here, he claims that Philby’s book, which revealed aspects of the Double Cross System, provoked a counter-offensive from MI5 and MI6, even though Ladislas Farago had already disclosed that MI5’s secret interrogation centre at Ham Common ‘had persuaded dozens of captured spies to switch sides and act as double agents to deceive their Abwehr masters’ – a gross distortion of what happened. The conclusion of all of this seems to be that there was a public thirst for more disclosures in the 1970s. Why any of this would be considered newsworthy in 2024 is beyond me.

Chapter 2: ‘Spy!’

This chapter describes the creation of the BBC series Spy!, in which West assisted Donald McCormick. Yet this took place forty-six years ago, and the facts of the Venlo Incident (which constituted one of the episodes) are resuscitated. West describes some hitches in the project, which included the unreliable contributions of Montgomery Hyde.

Chapter 3: ‘TATE and the Double Agents’

This is another rambling account, which strays far from TATE (Wulf Schmidt, aka Harry Williamson), to such as Philby and Blunt and Jeremy Cartland, relating also how West was encouraged to write his book on MI5 after interviewing Dick White. It contains some fascinating material, but much is recycled from West’s chapter on TATE in his 1991 book, Seven Spies Who Changed the World. On the other hand, he inexplicably offers no mention of Tommy Jonason’s and Simon Olsson’s Agent Tate: The Wartime Story of Harry Williamson, translated from the Swedish and published in 2011, for which West offered a blurb on the cover. Moreover, West presents a distorted view of the double-agent exercise: he claims that neither Farago nor Masterman ‘had really explained exactly how MI5 had accomplished the extraordinary feat of transforming hardened Nazis into committed supporters of the Allied cause’ (another gratuitous repetition).

But of course MI5 had done no such thing: TATE himself admitted that he allowed himself to be used because he was threatened with the gallows, and it would have been madness to allow any ‘turned’ agents loose in the belief that they had had an ideological change of heart, since they could immediately have informed the enemy of the deception, and blown the whole scheme. And that was what happened later with some German POWs whom the British believed they had turned, and sent into Austria and Germany. As an example of the lack of focus in the chapter, West also throws in the fact that one informant ‘even flew the kite that he [Philby] had always been a loyal MI6 asset’. This is the insight that Helen Fry so mysteriously bequeathed to us a few years ago in her profile of MI6’s Kendrick in Vienna, Spymaster. I note that, in her latest book, Women in Intelligence, Fry boldly resurrects the claim as follows: “Kendrick, his agents and secretaries were tracking their [communist activists’ and spies’] movements through journalists like Eric Gedye and a young graduate, Kim Philby.” Is that a fact? West provided an enthusiastic blurb for her book, complimenting the ‘fascinating, minutely researched study’, so he presumably must have read this passage. His insertion of this gem so casually without analysis is thus vastly disappointing. After all these years, does the episode not truly deserve a more detailed inspection than that?

Chapter 4: MI5 and ‘A Matter of Trust’

The events covered in this chapter occurred over forty years ago, yet West astonishingly does not bring any retrospective analysis to the table to introduce corrections to what is a very dubious memoir, full of errors and misapprehensions. It starts off with an introduction to West by his publisher to a ‘molehunter’, namely Arthur Martin, whom West met on December 1, 1981. He presents him as ‘someone who could truly be described as an authority’, offering West ‘a tremendous experience’. He adds that Martin was married to Joan, who had been Dick White’s secretary, as if that granted Martin more substance: whether this lady was the same secretary with whom White had been having an affair (see p 298) is not explained. On the other hand, West, in his Historical Dictionary of British Intelligence, informs us that Joan had in fact been Guy Liddell’s secretary. While outsiders such as I struggle to accommodate the implications of these relationships, it appears that such romances were part of the fabric of MI5, since we also learn that Graham Mitchell’s wife was the sister of James Robertson (who conducted the investigation into Maclean) (p 86), and are reminded that Roger Hollis had a long-term affair with his secretary (p 94).

West’s major revelation is to describe Martin’s strong conviction that Mitchell was the ‘culprit’: West declares that he found his argument ‘utterly compelling’, and that he was encouraged to support it by the very evasive interview that Dick White gave him about possible moles in MI5. West relates how Martin and his MI6 cohort Philip de Mowbray were so taken in by the claims that the defector Anatoliy Golitsyn made about penetration in MI5 that they even co-authored the latter’s ‘memoir’. What West does not mention is that the CIA officer James Angleton (who had felt gravely betrayed by Philby, and was also taken in by Golitsyn’s bluster) was exerting a baleful influence as well, threatening the British authorities that the USA-UK relationship would be endangered unless the stables were cleansed. Martin felt this pressure severely. (Angleton does not warrant a mention in this chapter, or anywhere else in the book, which is bizarre.) The fact is that West never comes to grips with the substance behind the allegations.

The author then moves on to catalogue the list of supposed intelligence failures that Peter Wright later recapitulated in Spycatcher, including MI5’s failure to run any successful double-agent operations against the KGB. To my mind, such ventures would have been non-starters from the get-go, but West seemed to be impressed. Yet he never identifies these presumably hostile agents who were discovered, then ‘turned’ –  through blackmail, I suppose –  nor does he investigate how in fact it might have been more fruitful for the KGB to have kept these disinformation exercises running than to have each one closed down immediately. Nor does he speculate on what might have happened to these ‘double agents’ when their Moscow bosses learned that they had traitors on their books. He also echoes Martin’s belief that MI5’s inability to trap any spies in the act (e.g. Nunn May, Cairncross) was evidence of deep penetration, and reminds us that those who were identified gained MI5’s attention only because of tips from defectors. But West then starts to drift: he repeats the false claim that Burgess and Maclean made good their escape just hours before a hostile interrogation was scheduled for Maclean – which is simply not true.

He also garbles the facts of the interrogations of Blunt and Cairncross (if he has read my analysis, he appears to ignore it), and then goes on to write that ‘Martin and Wright had pursued dozens of suspected spies, including Bernard and Peter Floud, Christopher Hill, Jenifer Hart, James Klugmann, Bob Stewart and Edith Tudor-Hart, but none had co-operated’. That is simply not true. Apart from the fact that, if they pestered ‘dozens’ of suspected spies (as opposed to communist sympathizers) most of them were surely innocent and would have bristled at any harassment, the names listed did ‘co-operate’ to some extent. Bernard Floud committed suicide when MI5 was on his trail, after the revelations of Phoebe Pool; Christopher Hill confessed to Anthony Glees on the condition that his admission not be revealed until after his death; Jenifer Hart openly admitted to having been recruited by the NKVD and penetrating the Home Office; Edith Tudor-Hart also admitted to espionage at a time when her contribution had become irrelevant. West mentions Ursula Kuczynski, zu Putlitz and Pontecorvo as a trio who had managed to escape MI5’s reach, but the failure to press home in all these cases was the recognition that the embarrassment that would arise from the facts coming out into the open would be so unsavoury that it was better to bury them, and to pretend that they had never happened.

Thus the Molehunt focused on Cumming, Hollis and Mitchell. In a quick aside, West mentions Ray Milne as a spy who had been employed in the MI5 registry. Yet Milne (née Mundell) worked for MI6, not MI5. West then discounts Cumming, before expanding on a long encomium of Martin’s skills and achievements, which turns out to be bogus, as well. I get the impression that West believed everything that Martin told him about his ‘achievements’, including his role as guardian of the NKVD telegrams that compromised Fuchs, and the claim that he had been the ‘liaison link’ between MI5 case officers chasing up leads in the HOMER investigation. I say this because West asserts that Martin was indispensable in the HOMER molehunt, and that in December 1951 ‘he was tasked to collate the evidence against Philby, which was presented effectively to Helenus Milmo’. If West had studied closely the file on the investigation (from which he quoted liberally in ColdWar Spymaster), he would have learned that the project of gathering information on Philby had started back in May 1951, when Martin worked with Jane Archer, under Dick White’s clandestine guidance, before taking the conclusions with him to the USA to show Robert Lamphere of the FBI. No doubt Martin did not tell West about that. On the contrary, “Martin’s assiduous research and highly professional brief effectively demolished Philby.”

After a spell in counter-insurgency in Malaya, Martin returned to London in 1958 to carry on with the investigation into Soviet assets, and was provided with technical support in the shape of Peter Wright in 1962. West lauds Martin’s achievements: “During his MI5 career, Martin would extract confessions from Cairncross, Michael Straight, Leo Long and Blunt.” Yet, as I have shown, the ‘confessions’ of Cairncross and Blunt were carefully staged affairs, Straight confessed to the FBI, not to Martin, and Straight simply volunteered the information that led to Blunt – and Long. Long had been caught red-handed in 1944, was also later shopped by Blunt, and was eager to confess as soon as he was challenged. These were not masterstrokes of counter-espionage engineered by Martin. Oddly, given West’s high estimation of his career, Martin was then transferred to MI6 as he was considered ‘disruptive’. It was only after he had retired, in the early nineteen-eighties, that he engaged West to help him extract a deathbed confession from Graham Mitchell, after the Hollis inquiry ‘had run into the sand’. West then shifts the story to his project to write A Matter of Trust, based on his conversations with Martin, whereupon he received an injunction from the Attorney-General claiming that highly classified information had been passed to him by an ‘unnamed individual’. West avoided this prohibition by having his book published in the USA.

West then uses the publication of his book as an excuse for being unable to settle the issue of whether Mitchell had been a spy or not (the reasoning is not clear), but then ends the chapter by invoking the evidence provided by Gordievsky (who defected in 1985) and Mitrokhin (1992) that there had never been a spy within MI5 after Blunt’s retirement in 1945. He then closes his account with the open-ended rhetorical question: “But does the necessarily incomplete knowledge of Gordievsky and Mitrokhin mean that Martin and Wright had been deluded? Only time will tell.” Since Martin and Wright owned diametrically opposed opinions about the mole, at least one of them had indeed been deluded. When I led a team of analysts at the Gartner Group in the late nineteen-nineties, I forbad them to deploy the following three phrases in their reports: ‘Only time will tell’; ‘The jury is still out’; and ‘In the foreseeable future’. Experts are not paid to waffle. That was a weak and evasive conclusion by West.

It also astonishes me that West makes no reference to the conclusions of the Great Yoda from Defend the Realm. Andrew devotes Chapter 10 of Section D (‘FLUENCY: Paranoid Tendencies’) to demolishing the wild imaginations of the ‘conspiracy theorists’, Martin and Wright, describing how they fell under the baleful influence of Angleton and Golitsyn, and how they poisoned the atmosphere of MI5 to no purpose. (‘Conspiracy theorist’ was an odd term to choose, but it is a favoured term by Andrew for persons he wishes to disparage. There was no doubt that the KGB was ‘conspiring’ against British intelligence: the only point of debate was the depth of the penetration.) Andrew is also very dismissive of Martin’s skills as a counter-espionage officer. Despite the shameful fact that this chapter relies almost exclusively on unidentified material from the Security Service Archives, and thus cannot be verified, it has the ring of truth, as it cannot seriously serve any MI5 propaganda purpose. While Martin and Wright were picked out as the clear culprits, White’s overall responsibility is presented uncompromisingly. West’s silence in the face of this evidence is unfathomable.

What makes West’s analysis doubly ineffective is the fact that in his book Molehunt (published in 1987, i.e. after Gordievsky’s arrival) the author offered a stinging accusation against Mitchell in the final chapter, titled ‘Conclusive Proof’, pointing to Mitchell’s September 1955 White Paper on Burgess and Maclean, and its ‘multiple errors’ (some of which were not in fact errors) as ‘proof’ that Mitchell was responsible for all the penetration and betrayals that had occurred. Moreover, West showed himself to be utterly convinced that such malfeasance had been real, and that there was thus an influential mole to be unearthed. Meanwhile, Peter Wright was still 99.9% convinced that Hollis was the culprit. Yet even Martin, in his retirement working in the House of Commons, eventually voiced his doubts that there had been any mole in MI5, thus leaving West rather high and dry. How could those two brilliant counter-espionage officers have both been so wrong? One explanation is that Martin was in fact rather dim, and that Wright was essentially a technician.

If he had a serious regard for clarifying the facts, West could have used the occasion of a new memoir published in 2024 to bring some cooler assessment of the vain hunts of the 1960s, 70s and 80s, maybe even to make an apology concerning his gullibility and ability to jump to conclusions, and to provide a forum where the turmoil artificially created by White, and willfully stirred by Chapman Pincher, could receive a more rational re-appraisal. But no. It is a very lazy and dishonest offering.

Chapter 5: ‘The Hunt for Garbo’

Most of this story has already been told in the work in which West collaborated with Juan Pujol (the controlled enemy agent GARBO), Operation GARBO: The Personal Story of the Most Successful Double Agent of World War II, published in 1989. In his Introduction to that volume, West explained how he had been able to hunt down Pujol in Caracas, Venezuela, from the flimsiest of clues, and meet him in New Orleans, with the result that Pujol was able to attend victory celebrations in London in 1984, receive his award, meet again some of his wartime colleagues, and visit the Normandy beaches. The main purpose of this update to the story would appear to be to show how the release of GARBO’s Personal File in 1999 to what was then the Public Record Office subsequently caused some embarrassments. This archival material shed light on the somewhat tempestuous relationship between Pujol and his first wife, Araceli, in London during the war, events that Pujol had left out of his narrative. Pujol had neglected to tell his second wife of his first marriage, and the offspring they had, and Araceli had re-married after Pujol had faked his own death. Apart from reminding us that many of our heroes have deep personal flaws, this chapter has little new to relate on the mechanics and outcomes of the GARBO deception.

Chapter 6: ‘Cabinet War Room 2’

A very minor piece about Churchill’s highly secure and well-protected underground citadel known as ‘PADDOCK’, and related trivia.

Chapter 7: ‘Admiral Canaris’s Mistress’

A tale that takes some time to arrive at the subject of its title, with West introducing Nicholas Elliott, and his success in helping the Vermehrens to defect from Istanbul in 1943. The knock-on effect was the degree to which their escape had helped to doom Canaris, as one of the plotters against Hitler’s life. Vermerhen, when West interviewed him, seemed to be unaware of that outcome, and that brought West to address what Elliott had described to him as ‘the fact that Canaris had actively collaborated with a woman he knew to be a British agent, who was also his mistress, was probably ‘the last great secret of the war’. (I know a few more, of course.)

This led West on a fascinating hunt for the woman, Halina Szymanska, whom he tracked through her daughter in London to the unromantic venue of Mobile, Alabama. She gave solid evidence that Canaris had given her messages to pass on to MI6. After Szymanska’s husband had been arrested in 1939 in Berlin at the Polish Embassy, and presumably deported by Stalin, she returned to Warsaw, and ‘quite by chance’ bumped into Canaris, whom she knew from before the war. He subsequently arranged for her and her three daughters to gain the safety of Berne, and the affair and subsequent passing of secrets occurred. Despite the flimsy nature of these meetings and movements, West was convinced by her story, with evidential material in the shape of passports, etc., but his arch-rival Christopher Andrew in 1985 denied that there was any evidence, mysteriously and irresponsibly citing unavailable MI6 archives. That was almost forty years ago. Why do these two not simply get together and thrash it out? As Confucius said: “When the Yoda and the Doyen clash swords, it is the Truth that suffers.”

Chapter 8: ‘Spycatcher’

Readers will not be surprised to learn that Our Hero was at the core of the Spycatcher controversy, and that it was the ‘legendary’ molehunter Arthur Martin who was the source of the saga. Martin had reputedly been influenced, alongside Stephen de Mowbray, recently retired from MI6, by the somewhat excitable defector Anatoliy Golitsyn, who claimed there was deep penetration of MI5. West characterizes Martin in somewhat melodramatic terms: “Martin had dedicated his life to the unpopular cause of sniffing out the clues to treason. Among those he investigated were two former directors general, Sir Michael Hanley and even the revered Sir Dick White. Martin had been a terrier, not driven by instinct or prejudice but by the evidence.” This is all palpable nonsense, of course, as Martin had come rather late in his career to MI5, and he had no direct evidence at all that any MI5 insider had been passing information to the KGB in the post-Blunt era. Rather than a terrier, he had been Dick White’s poodle.

Yet it was not until Martin had retired that he engaged his protégé to ‘follow up the clues he had been unable to pursue himself’. Whether that was because he had been banished to the MI6 Directory by then as a trouble-maker, or was simply incompetent, is not stated. But then West switches quickly to Peter Wright, who takes over centre stage, as he (who had worked for Martin) had been providing privileged information to Chapman Pincher before retiring to Australia. Wright felt himself abused by Pincher over royalties, and decided to publish his own account after Prime Minister Thatcher had, in 1981, effectively absolved MI5 of any further penetration after Blunt.

The resulting Spycatcher affair turned out to be a disaster for the Government, primarily because of the embarrassing performance by Sir Robert Armstrong, but also because MI5 and MI6 had been shown to be selectively releasing information when it suited them –  a point that West only lightly touches, since he had been the beneficiary when Dick White decided that he wanted a history of MI5 published after the Thatcher administration had turned the project down. “The fiasco caused Thatcher much discomfort, but doubtless she would have endured rather more if my unseen role in the affair had become public knowledge”, writes West. What this role had been is not immediately obvious, but it seems that West simply gave Wright’s telephone number to the two Granada TV journalists who had bought the rights to his book A Matter of Trust. How that revelation would have intensified the suffering of the Iron Lady is not explained. West then bounces off this coup to switch to ‘two further cases in which I had played yet another unseen hand’ – the publication of Joan Miller’s One Girl’s War, and that of Inside Intelligence, the memoir of the ex-MI6 officer Anthony Cavendish, ‘with which I was closely associated and encountered significant legal problems’. Since this book was not published by West’s outfit, it is not clear exactly what West’s earth-shattering contribution was.

His conclusion is certainly debatable: that MI5 was responsible for giving bad advice to Thatcher in 1979 by not admitting that ‘there had been a suspicion of hostile penetration up until at least September 1963’. He asserts that MI5 could simply have omitted the offending sentence in her statement (which it prepared for her in 1981), presumably the one where she claimed that all the evidence of hostile penetration could be attributed to Anthony Blunt. West declares with glib omniscience –  but without any evidence –  that ‘every other counter-intelligence officer who had studied the problem’ knew that Blunt could have not have been responsible ‘for compromising so many operations’. But that is not what Margaret Thatcher said. As Hansard reports, she was responding specifically to the mischievous and erroneous assertions made by Chapman Pincher in Their Trade Is Treachery that the now deceased Roger Hollis had been a Soviet mole, and that the Cabinet Secretary, Sir Burke Trend, had confirmed the fact. She correctly admitted that investigations into senior officers had taken place, carefully explaining the context as ‘the last years of the war’, and that the project had included Hollis, but she strongly denied the allegations that Pincher made in his book that Trend had concluded that the leads discovered pointed to Hollis.

Even if MI5’s senior officers had seriously believed that it had suffered from post-Blunt penetration (because of no other evidence apart from ‘failed operations’), it would have been absurd to advise the Prime Minister to discuss such hypotheses in the House of Commons. West could have performed deeper justice to the saga by analyzing the substance and origin of the suspicions with the hindsight of today’s knowledge, and by comparing the need for the defector Golitsyn to earn his meal-ticket with the facts of so-called failed counter-intelligence operations. That would have been more enlightening than the exaggeration of his (West’s) less-than-honourable contribution as a manipulator behind the scenes, and as a facilitator for intelligence officers who wanted to avoid the implications of the Official Secrets Act. He could also have been a bit more open about his infatuation with Arthur Martin, which now all looks rather embarrassing to the outsider.

Chapter 9: ‘Greville Wynne’; Chapter 10: ‘Bill Casey’; Chapter 11: ‘Farzad Bazoft’

All relatively insignificant.

Chapter 12: ‘The Fifth Man’

I am not sure why West dedicated a chapter to his involvement with John Cairncross, as it was not the most illustrious episode of his career. The Fifth Man had revealed to West, in April 1981, that he had confessed to espionage in Cleveland, Ohio, in February 1964. When they met again, in France, on September 30, 1994, Cairncross explained that he had started writing a draft of his memoirs, but was ‘crestfallen’ when West pointed out to him that he would be in breach of his commitment to confidentiality by virtue of the Official Secrets Act. West then proposed that he ghost-write the ‘memoir’, confident that he could persuade MI5 that he and Cairncross would comply with any reasonable request for excisions. Why Cairncross was taken in by this story is uncertain, as it would be crystal-clear that the autobiographical information would have derived from him. Yet, somewhat extraordinarily, MI5 gave permission for the publication to go ahead, and even allowed the exiled and severely ill Cairncross to return to the UK for medical treatment.

Cairncross died in October 1995, a few days after West had delivered the final draft of the book, now titled The Enigma Spy, since Cairncross’s influential brother, the economist Sir Alec Cairncross, had resented any connection with the ‘Fifth Man’. In an elliptical passage, West writes that Cairncross’s partner, Gayle Brinkerhoff (who was behind these negotiations) had engaged a literary agent who wanted to renegotiate the terms of ‘our’ agreement. “We had reached an impasse and, upon the repayment of the St Ermin’s advance, we quietly slipped away”. (St Ermin’s was the publishing house that West set up with Geoffrey Elliott.) But who were the ‘we’ here? And, if the advance had been repaid, had West lost the rights to the manuscript he had prepared? He does not say. And that ‘quiet’ withdrawal carried with it a lot of resentment, as I shall show.

Suddenly, West is in Moscow, trawling through the KGB file on Cairncross. I do not believe that West knows Russian, so he was presumably helped by his collaborator, Oleg Tsarev, and some of the documents were in English. What became clear to him, nevertheless, was that Cairncross had lied about the duration of his espionage. He had previously claimed to West that he had spied only during the war years, yet the Moscow archives showed that he had been active way beyond that, and that he had passed on critical nuclear secrets. West had been able to insert a short item on Cairncross in his 1981 book on MI5, where he reproduced what Cairncross had told him, namely that in Ohio he had made a ‘full statement’ on his role as a Soviet agent. Of course, he had done no such thing, just like Blunt and Philby. (What is it with these people? When they are offered immunity from prosecution, the agreement is that they will give a complete account of their espionage and contacts, and yet they all hold back on critical items! It’s just not right!) West does not explicitly mention that he had been taken in by Cairncross’s incomplete set of assertions.

West now knew that, contrary to what Andrew and Gordievsky wrote in KGB: The Inside Story (October 1990), Cairncross had been a much more damaging spy than he and others revealed, and had accordingly understated his achievements. The KGB archive showed that he had been very productive right up until the summer of 1950, until he was transferred from the Treasury to the Ministry of Supply. Nevertheless, working with Yuri Modin, as late as June and July 1951 (when Burgess and Maclean had decamped) he was still able to pass over a thousand confidential documents. He was eventually trapped because MI5 discovered incriminating information on him in Burgess’s flat, and he was forced to resign. As West points out, ‘the fact that Cairncross was never prosecuted caused much embarrassment to the government law officers familiar with his case’.

But what is West’s conclusion from this fiasco? “To compound the embarrassment, Cairncross outlived the other members of the Cambridge Five and even returned to the UK and published a self-serving web of lies, ‘The Enigma Spy’.” Yet the book was published posthumously, and the text was presumably all West’s, including Chapter Thirteen, ‘Superspy’, where ‘Cairncross’ provides a very expert analysis of why West believed that ELLI was Mitchell, not Hollis. What went on? Brinkerhoff and West must have had a serious falling-out. Gayle Cairncross (as she now styled herself) wrote the Acknowledgements, but there is no mention of West’s contribution as ghost-writer. That other doyen, Richard Norton-Taylor, wrote a mendacious and cringe-making Introduction, where he presented Cairncross as a man of ‘deeply-held convictions’, stated that he believed the integrity of Cairncross’s account, and challenged the Russian government ‘to correct the widespread errors of his association with the KGB’. Pass the sick-bag, Alice. On recently reading that passage anew, I even began to feel a tinge of sympathy for Westy.

All of this must have brought West close to distraction. He had put in all the work, yet received no recognition (for a ‘self-serving web of lies’, of course) –  and presumably no royalties. What happened when that agreement fell apart can only be imagined. Yet the story then turned very sour for him. If we can rely on the Wikipedia entry on him (which quotes from the Independent), West sued Random House in 2001. He claimed that he had written The Enigma Spy in return for the copyright and 50% of the proceeds. He lost the case, however, and had to pay costs of around £200,000. What added to his mortification must have been the opinion of the trial judge, Mr. Justice Laddie, who described West as ‘one of the most dishonest witnesses I have ever seen’.

What is bizarre is that Laddie’s chastisement of West (according to contemporary accounts) appeared to concern his misrepresentation of his role as a director at St Ermin’s Press, which points to more complex layers to the controversy. Yet instead of clarifying what happened, or even attempting to justify himself, West obscures the issues, and overlooks most of the facts in his description of the events. The conclusion, moreover, is equivocal and unflattering to his competence. Why he would want to resuscitate this business when it is quite clear that he is being deceptive is astounding.

It is difficult to think how West could have entangled himself in such a mess unless he had foolishly signed a contract that exposed him dramatically. But ending up slamming a book for being a web of lies when you have written it yourself, and not receiving any reward except high legal costs would be enough to crush even the most debonair adventurer. Two biographies of Cairncross appeared a few years ago: Chris Smith’s The Last Cambridge Spy (2019) and Geoff Andrews’s Agent Molière (2020). They both refer to the lawsuit, and the fact that West was not recognized as the ghost-writer. While The Enigma Spy had benefitted (and I use the term advisedly) from a few other editors by then, West seems to have been hardly done by in one sense, although the inexperience at St Ermin’s Press in contract negotiations turned out to be disastrous. West does not acknowledge the existence of these new biographies in the misleading recollection of his dealings with Cairncross, which omission leaves his ruminations sounding very dated and stale. But the moral of the story is clear: you can’t have ambitions of being a leading intelligence analyst while dabbling with ghost-writing for an established traitor.

Chapter 13: ‘The Falklands Conflict’

I have not studied the intelligence aspects of these events, and they are outside my realm of special interest. They also have little to do with molehunting, so I pass this chapter by.

Chapter 14: ‘George Blake’

I found little new in this account of West’s thoughts on George Blake, including a brief snapshot of his interview with him in Moscow, in which re-tells the story of Blake’s treachery –  including the theory that he was brought to it because the father of the girl he loved, Iris Peake, a secretary in MI6, told him that he couldn’t possibly marry her. Yet West informs us that Blake later married into another MI6 family, and even names the father (Colonel Arthur Allan), but surprisingly not the bride. Blake then betrayed them all. The piece contains a comparison of Blake and Philby, in which the latter comes off better because ‘he did not inflict lasting damage to MI6 in operational terms’ – a subject for possible debate. West also echoes Philby’s dubious claim that his Section IX ‘was studying the NKVD but was not actively engaged in espionage against it. He also throws out some thoughts about defectors in general, but this is overall a lightweight piece.

Chapter 15: ‘VENONA’

I have always thought that West’s book on VENONA (the joint GB/USA exercise of decryption of wartime and post-war Soviet cables, which led to Maclean and Fuchs, among others, being identified) was one of his better compilations. VENONA: The Greatest Secret of the Cold War was published in 1999: has West fresh light to show on the project? Apparently not. This chapter is essentially a re-hash of what he wrote before, with whole chunks of text re-presented, and pages of transcripts reproduced. The main point that West wants to make is that Christopher Andrew, in his authorized history of MI5 published in 2009, resisted West’s painstaking conclusions that the cryptonym NOBILITY equated to Ivor Montagu, and that of INTELLIGENTSIA to J. B. S. Haldane. He also criticizes two books on Haldane, by Tredoux and Campbell, published in 2018, which likewise got the facts wrong. The chapter is thus a valiant and necessary step in setting the record straight, but too long-winded for the reader who has already studied West’s book. West also draws our attention to the fact that certain cryptonyms (such as BARON and MINISTER) have remained undetected, and calls on us amateur sleuths to work on the mysteries.

Chapter 16: ‘Guy Liddell’

Over five years ago I wrote about West’s admiring but still equivocal treatment of Guy Liddell, the competent counter-intelligence officer who was thwarted in his ambition to become Director-General of MI5. (See https://coldspur.com/guy-liddell-a-re-assessment/.) West’s opinion has not changed, and it comes through early: “In many ways, Liddell was the personification of the consummate intelligence professional: wise, unassuming, considered trustworthy by colleagues, occasionally enigmatic and always anxious to prevent others from drawing the Security Service into some nefarious enterprise that would damage the organisation’s reputation or bring it into controversy.” He provides a detailed account of Liddell’s career, from being awarded the Military Cross in World War I, through working for Basil Thomson’s Directorate of Intelligence and the Special Branch, up to his transfer to MI5 in 1931 and subsequent role as deputy to Jasper Harker in the counter-espionage branch.

I believe that West has read my counter to his general encomium of Liddell, and my correction of certain facts (such as the details behind his estrangement from his wife), but he has not reflected any of my points here. And I shall not repeat in detail the reasons why I think Liddell was not well fitted for the top job: too cerebral and flimsy, too trusting of dubious characters (such as Blunt and Burgess), too retiring to promote and argue his views, not politically astute enough. West makes the accurate point that Liddell was seriously outmaneuvered by his one-time protégé and rival Dick White, and West’s last statement in the chapter is to assert that White ‘was hardly a safe pair of hands in which to entrust the defence of the realm’. True. Yet my view is that Liddell severely let down the service at a time when he was supposed to be steering it under the leadership of two outsiders (Petrie, Sillitoe) who did not really understand what the challenges were. West does not perform justice to this dynamic.

Chapter 17: ‘The Moscow Archives’

This chapter satisfies as a moderately intriguing account of West’s collaboration with Tsarev in working on KGB files for the creation of The Crown Jewels, but suffers again from a lot of repeated information – such as that of the Cairncross saga, and the astonishing discovery that he had lied about the extent of his espionage! Further explorations led to West’s book TRIPLEX. It is quite useful as a summary of the disclosures that the study of the files led to, but contains nothing fresh or startling, so far as I could judge.

Chapter 18: ‘St Ermin’s Press’

I learned a lot from this chapter, as West explains that he established St Ermin’s Press with the retired banker Geoffrey Elliott, after the later contacted him for information regarding his father, Kavan, who had been an SOE agent in Hungary in World War II. Coldspur readers may recall my interest in Elliott, who had been taught by my father at Whitgift School (where Dick White was a teacher when he was recruited by MI5), and with whom I later exchanged several emails and telephone calls during my researches. I also compiled an obituary of him a couple of years ago. (See https://coldspur.com/2022-year-end-round-up/.)  Elliott’s very engaging biography of his father, I Spy, was the first book to come off the St Ermin’s production-line.

West provides a fascinating account of the books he and Elliott subsequently published, including the work by a KGB officer named Igor Damaskin, who wrote a biography of Kitty Harris, Donald Maclean’s handler and lover in Paris. Elliott himself translated the book. The tale is a remarkable one, and West should be proud of the coups he achieved. “St Ermin’s Press proved to be a wonderful experience for the authors and publishers alike” . . . , West writes, “. . . and apart from the acrimony over John Cairncross’s memoirs, which would be so comprehensively contradicted by his voluminous KGB file in Moscow [yes, Nigel: we get the message], the books were generally important contributions to intelligence literature.”

This claim puzzled me, as I thought that the whole point of the Cairncross disaster was that The Enigma Spy was not published by West and his crew. Moreover, I suspect that there is more to the story of West and his partnership with Elliott than is written here. When, in one of my email messages to Geoffrey Elliott, I brought up a question about one of Nigel West’s books, he immediately insisted that I never mention that name again, otherwise I would be cut off at the knees. I thus do not believe that the relationship between the two turned out to be as harmonious as West presented it. The conundrum of that fall-out, however, will probably have to remain as elusive as that of the identity of BARON.

Chapter 19: ‘Molehunting in the Twenty-First Century’

So molehunting in the Twentieth Century has been sorted, right? All lesson learned, and all moles successfully trapped? Wrong. This chapter is a strange mixture, and it is not about hunting down today’s moles. It covers a lot of twentieth-century issues, concentrating mainly on Australia, and then relates some details about other unsolved cases, mainly to do with the FBI and the CIA. Yet West’s point in this rambling segment is that dedicated amateurs should keep on the track of moles from the last century, using what archival material is released. “Closing counter-intelligence files, a task accomplished these days by assiduous pursuit of pensioners and access to dusty archives, is immensely gratifying and serves the cause of accurate history”, he writes.

Well, I think I know what he means, although I am not sure what ‘closing’ files represents in this context, I don’t like the idea of pensioners like me being pursued like moles, and the archival material is not ‘dusty’ but served up to a large degree electronically these days. The problem is that there is a lack of complete material to work with: we know that MI5 interviewed dozens of possible moles, couriers, informants, fellow-travelers, agents of influence and communist sympathizers, and kept files on them. The frustration comes from the fact that a large number have not been declassified. Moreover, when MI5 did uncover a mole, all it seemed to do was grant him immunity from prosecution, on the basis that he would then reveal more names for them, which they would investigate and then decide they could do nothing . . .

Conclusions

So there it is. ‘Classified!’ is a strange mélange. I hinted earlier at the smooth journalistic sheen that West applies to his writing, eliding with apparent authority some of the subjects that deserve greater inspection, as if we amateurs should not concern ourselves with such paradoxes. And that lazy style permeates his narrative. For instance, he loves referring to his subjects as ‘legends’. Thus we learn of the following:

P xx Maxwell Knight, a legendary agent-runner

P 20 Steedman was something of a legend in the counter-intelligence world

P 23 the legendary Antony Terry

P 56 Dick White was widely regarded as something of a legend

P 62 Miles Copeland, the legendary CIA veteran

P 96 Martin was part of MI5’s legendary Malaya Mafia

P 149 origins of the Spycatcher saga can be traced to the legendary molehunter Arthur Martin

P 157 the legendary agent handler Maxwell Knight (again)

P 178 Buckley was something of a legend in the CIA’s clandestine service

Now, I don’t know whether by this West means:

A) These characters were mythical, and didn’t actually exist;

B) They tell stories about these fellows in the ‘Coach and Horses’, but I wouldn’t trust the half of them; or

C) These chaps were quite well-known within the services, as they achieved something or other, unlike those not classified as ‘legends’.

Who knows? It probably signifies nothing, but it is an indolent substitute for rigorous thinking, and a good editor would have snipped them out.

Lastly, there are the blurbs – and one review.

The Blurbs

“This book will become a spooks’ bible. . . Nigel West always provides clear thinking and sane, no-nonsense analysis.” (Andrew Roberts, on the cover)

“West masterfully delivered a succession of astonishing scoops . . . Describing his remarkable career with more revelations in this gripping memoir, he rightly claims applause for his triumphs.” (Tom Bower)

“Told with real verve and with the eye of an insider, ‘Classified!’ Will have you gripped.” (Damien Lewis)

“Nigel West offers a unique perspective and research on some of the most fascinating cases in espionage history.” (Helen Fry)

One wonders: Did they actually read the book before they rolled the logs? And were they really qualified to comment on the material?

As for the review, West’s old nemesis from the Cairncross debacle, Richard Norton-Taylor, was invited by the Times Literary Supplement to provide a review, which appeared in the issue of March 29. (I wonder whether Norton-Taylor had to declare an interest, and whether he had a tinge of conscience, and was keen to compensate for his semi-treacherous contribution in the Cairncross business?) It is overall a sympathetic assessment, competent but shallow. The writer has no doubt learnt from his previous dishonourable attempt at analysis. When describing West’s discoveries concerning Cairncross in Moscow, Norton-Taylor unsurprisingly overlooks his own disastrous contribution to the Cairncross memoir. He does add some valuable commentary concerning the government’s breaching of its own rules, but in my opinion he is overall too trusting of West’s judgment and accounts of what happened. Norton-Taylor thus contributes to the lore of West as a first-rate, entrepreneurial but somewhat roguish investigator.

I believe that the problem is as follows: once you become a doyen (or even a ‘Yoda’), protecting the image is everything. You must be seen as an infallible guide, and all earlier errors must be hushed up. (Rather like MI5, in fact.) You must engage your mutual admiration society to burnish the reputation – which is what happened here, of course, with all those blurbs. And then the Public is taken in, and continues to believe, and pay homage. Of course, the whole charade is simply not right and proper. But then Westy is something of a legend, is he not?

Postscript

  • I have posted a synopsis of ‘The Airmen Who Died Twice’, for easier reading. It can be seen at AirmenSynopsis.
  • Owing to personal commitments, next month’s bulletin will appear a few days later than the regularly scheduled last day of the month. Look for it on about July 6.
  • This month’s Commonplace entries can be seen here.

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