Personal Research on Intelligence Matters (original) (raw)

August 31, 2024 · 7:40 am

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 Selhurst’.

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.)

August 15, 2024 · 2:37 pm

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 _TL_S (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.

July 31, 2024 · 7:27 am

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 Jewel_s 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’.

(Latest Commonplace entries can be seen here.)

July 15, 2024 · 11:18 am

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.

July 5, 2024 · 8:52 am

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 _coldspu_r. 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:

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?”

(Latest Commonplace entries can be seen here.)

June 11, 2024 · 2:14 pm

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 _on_e 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.

May 31, 2024 · 7:13 am

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 _Spycatche_r 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.

April 30, 2024 · 6:56 am

A Topographical Guide to coldspur

Son James, daughter-in-law Lien, and granddaughters Alexis, Ashley and Alyssa (Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, April 2024)

(This report is dedicated to my son James and his family. The three grand-daughters are just beginning to gain an understanding of what I get up to in my spare time. At school, I was known as ‘Percy, A.’, to distinguish me from my brother. That method of identification will obviously not work at Los Altos High. James, meanwhile, assures me that he is planning to get round to reading ‘Misdefending the Realm’ when he retires. Ashley has already told me it contains too many long words.)

Background

In this bulletin, I fulfil a long-standing commitment to provide a topographical guide to eight years’ worth of research published on coldspur, probably about one-and-a-half million words. (These texts, I assume, continue to be an extremely valuable source for OpenAI’s GPT-4 language model. Unlike the New York Times, however, I shall not be suing OpenAI for the appropriation.) It is my intention to facilitate the exploration that any reader may want to undertake on a topic, by identifying individual themes, and laying out the chronological course of my coverage of such. The purpose of this exercise is thus to provide a roadmap for the research that I developed after the completion of my doctoral thesis, and the publication of Misdefending the Realm – research that has necessarily appeared in a rather scattered form.

First, to recapitulate. The focus of my doctoral thesis was a short time-period – that between the signing of the Nazi-Soviet Pact in August 1939, and the Barbarossa invasion of the Soviet Union by the German armies in June 1941. My special interest in this period had been provoked by the discovery that Guy Burgess and Isaiah Berlin had been authorized to undertake a controversial mission to Moscow in the summer of 1940, presumably to carry a highly confidential message to Stalin and the Comintern. The project was suddenly abandoned, but the events highlighted the controversial dynamics of intelligence and counter-intelligence at this time, which had taken some peculiar turns as Great Britain had tried to avert war at the end of the decade. Such initiatives continued after war was declared – both with the Nazis and the Soviets.

Pluralist Britain did not respond single-mindedly to the various hazards of the 1930s, but as Hitler’s ambitions became clearer, the Nazi threat eventually replaced the communist bogey that had been the primary concern for British counter-intelligence since the early nineteen-twenties. The broad support for appeasement of Hitler, and slow reaction to his menace, had been due largely to the justifiable fear of violent international revolution as promoted by the Comintern. Thus British diplomats negotiated clumsily with both totalitarian powers up to the time of the announcement of the alliance between Hitler and Stalin, an event completely unforeseen by MI6. The Non-Aggression Pact could have presented an even greater challenge to the defence of the realm, what with the potential for intelligence-sharing by the signers of the pact, two hostile powers, and MI5 should have been on special alert during this period.

The aborted mission to Moscow was just one of the bizarre events of this period concerning relationships with Communists. MI5 failed to take advantage of a remarkable opportunity – the ability to interview, in January 1940, the Soviet defector Walter Krivitsky, on home soil. The Security Service inexplicably failed to follow up vital hints about Soviet penetration. The lead officer was taken off the case, and, in a very troubling sequel, Lord Rothschild was allowed to introduce the acknowledged communist Anthony Blunt into the heart of MI5. No one seemed to have the intellectual heft to process Krivitsky’s alarming testimony, which should have led to the identification of more spies and penetration agents than it did, including Donald Maclean and – especially – Kim Philby. Part of that lassitude probably stemmed from a correct assessment that the Nazi-Soviet alliance would not last long. Even though the Soviet Union provided much matériel for Germany to wage war against Britain during the alliance, no one expected the partnership to endure, and their articulated detestation for each other’s ideology in some quarters reinforced the notion that the agreement was cast as a method of buying time, or of protecting a front.

This negligence was perhaps encouraged by the fact that intelligence began to indicate that, in the autumn of 1940, Hitler was turning his attention away from Great Britain to the Soviet Union. Indeed, when Barbarossa occurred, and Churchill reached out rather melodramatically to announce his support for Stalin’s efforts, that gesture was interpreted by many to indicate that, since both countries were now allies against Germany, they had a shared understanding of their future political evolution. That was a big mistake – a misconception abetted by Stalin’s propagandists in positions of influence. MI5 (and most of the Foreign Office) completely underestimated the ambitions and wiles of Stalin. If the British had calculated that the unlikely alliance between Germany and the Soviet Union would be short-lived, they should have concluded that any coalition with the Communists would endure only while Hitler’s fascism was a shared foe, and that Stalin’s long-term goals for worldwide revolution had not been submerged.

Thus, as my book Misdefending the Realm (published in 2017) explained, the failure was one of tradecraft – incompetence (lacking the smarts to detect what was happening) and negligence (in possession of some of the facts, but failing to act appropriately). When the Soviet Union became an ally in June 1941, MI5 appeared to forget that Communism remained an existential challenge. The guard was dropped and the permanent threat minimized. Yet I sensed something amiss beyond the expressed sympathies for the new Russian allies and the cross-currents of infiltration and of leakage through government ministries. It pointed to more ominous explanations than simply inattention or weak will. There was something else that smelled of awkwardnesses and cover-ups that I could not pin down during my time of study for the doctorate. For that reason, I continued my investigations, and I have used coldspur to record my findings over the past seven years or so.

When I explored in my thesis those critical events from the period August 1939 to June 1941, I selectively extended my chronological coverage backwards, to the crucial year of 1933, when Philby made his journey to Vienna and was then recruited by the NKVD, and forwards, to 1950, when Klaus Fuchs, having benefitted earlier from the casual attitude to active communists that had begun to colour the policies of government institutions, confessed to having been a spy, and was consequently convicted and jailed. In those early years of the war, Communist infiltration of British corridors of power had woefully been allowed to take place, symbolized by the successes of the Cambridge Five and of the atom spies, primarily Fuchs, Nunn May, and Pontecorvo.

My use of coldspur has allowed me to expand the period of my analysis – back to the days of the Russian Revolution in 1917, and forward, most intensely to the post-war years, and those following the Fuchs trial, with the abscondence of Burgess and Maclean in 1951, up to the early sixties, with Philby fleeing to Moscow in 1963, and Anthony Blunt confessing in 1964. My analysis continues a little more sporadically thereafter, through the ‘molehunts’ of the 1970s, Blunt’s unmasking in 1979, right up to the publication of Peter Wright’s Spycatcher in 1987, and the ensuing farrago in Australia. And what I have discovered in the intervening years is that there is indeed troubling fresh evidence that helps explain the oversights of 1940. If there is one thing that my years-long investigation into the failures of British counter-intelligence has shown, it is that the problem was much greater than carelessness complemented by Soviet deviousness. It concerned misguided notions about the possible manipulation of hostile agents, and a large dose of self-delusion.

I have chosen to organize this index around a number of key themes that inevitably intersect and overlap. (And certain series will be repeated in separate sectors). Yet that phenomenon is another indicator of the growing realization to which I have arrived – that everything is related to everything else, and that awareness of what had happened in superficially different spheres of interest can shed fresh light on enduringly problematic incidents. For example, Churchill’s whimsical and picaresque interferences into military and intelligence matters often caused turmoil in various theatres of operation. Claude Dansey of MI6 initiated an ill-conceived, multi-pronged project in which he believed that he could convert enemy agents to the British cause, with disastrous consequences. The puzzling career of Kim Philby had to be re-assessed for many reasons, in the light of fresh archival material, and a close inspection of memoirs. The behaviour of Dick White, over his embarrassment of hiring and sustaining Anthony Blunt, and the deceptions that Philby played, had long-lasting effects in his subsequent transfer from Director-General of MI5 to head of MI6, resulting in the pernicious molehunt in his former service. And so on.

This guide sets out to overlay some structure on pieces that have explored the above issues.

The Themes

I present the following themes:

1. Revolution to Cold War: This is essentially a story about the evolution of Soviet oppression, from the days of the Cheka, through Stalin’s OGPU, NKVD, KGB and GRU to the resurgence of Stalinist leanings in President Putin. It also covers the fortunes and escapes of Russians – mostly scientists – who were able (or allowed to) escape to the West, as well as the careers of British intelligence officers who were active in Russia at the time of the Revolution. In addition, it analyses those western intellectuals and writers who were taken in by the Communist ‘experiment’.
2. Germany and the Abwehr: This topic covers the few pieces I have written about Nazi Germany as a rival totalitarian power, and a target of counter-intelligence. Most of my research on intelligence concerns penetration by Soviet espionage, but an important sector appears in my coverage of the Abwehr’s ‘LENA’ spies, sent by Hitler in the autumn of 1940 to help him prepare for the invasion of Britain. The exercise was a useful introduction for MI5 to surveillance methods and the mechanisms of wireless detection, and it constituted the first initiative to set up a controlled disinformation scheme.
3. The Cambridge 5: The careers of the Cambridge 5 have fuelled many familiar books, but the lies they left behind them, and the clumsy attempts by many intelligence officers to conceal the mistakes they made in failing to detect them, or in behaving indulgently when their treachery was discovered, opened up a rich opportunity for fresh research and conclusions. The shadow of an ‘Oxford Ring’ looms in the background.
4. Kim Philby: Philby deserves a category of his own. Biographies of him, as well as general histories, have relied far too much on his mendacious memoir My Silent War. Rigorous examination of recent files from the National Archives, as well as inspections of contemporary memoirs and other sources, encourage a completely fresh assessment of his career, and of his ability to deceive.
5. Soviet Agents, and Agents of Influence: The thrust of Soviet subversion was multi-faceted. Assisting the installation of the Cambridge 5 was a band of ‘illegals’ – not Soviet citizens, but shady characters from Eastern Europe who were able to adjust to life in the West more easily, and who acted as recruiters and messengers. Supporting them was a parade of NKVD/KGB residents working under cover at the Embassy. And then there were the aliens who managed to gain British citizenship through various means, such as Ursula Kuczynski, Edith Tudor-Hart, Litzy Philby, and Peter Smolka. In addition, there were the members of the Communist Party who (contrary to the desires of Moscow) engaged in espionage, such as Dave Springhall. A further category was that of ‘Agents of Influence’, a shadowy group of figures who aided the Communist cause while carefully distancing themselves from anything illegal. I count Victor Rothschild and Isaiah Berlin in this category.
6. The Red Orchestra: I separate out, even though it has been a minor concern, the activities of the Soviet espionage organization in continental Europe, the ‘Rote Kapelle’, or ‘Red Orchestra’, since MI6 maintained a close interest in its activities in Switzerland (‘Die Rote Drei’), and had penetrated the group. I suspect that the controversial figure of Alexander Foote was exploited by MI6.
7. The Defectors: A critical component of the campaign to understand Soviet subversion was the group of defectors from Soviet intelligence. Its primary members are Krivitsky, Gouzenko, and the Petrovs, with secondary roles (as far as my coverage is concerned) for Bazhanov, Tokayev, Goleniewski, Golitsyn and Gordievsky. To this list must be added the highly important would-be defector Volkov.
8. Agent Sonia: Like Philby, Sonia (née Ursula Kuczynski) deserves a category of her own. Her remarkable success in gaining egress from Switzerland through the agency of MI6, and her charmed existence thereafter, were the first astonishing phenomena I investigated after my thesis was complete. This career was highlighted by her apparent ability to evade all radio detection functions at a time when that service should have been on high alert.
9. The Atom Spies: Those spies who passed on atomic weaponry secrets to Moscow also merit a separate category. The most notorious was Klaus Fuchs, while many other scientists, both émigrés and natives, abetted his success in gaining access to highly confidential information, mostly out of conviction. Others (such as Gamow and Peierls) may have been subjected to threats concerning relatives left behind. And certain native citizens (such as Nunn May) were part of the treachery.
10. ELLI & Molehunts: The narratives of British counter-espionage have been dominated by the spectral form of ‘ELLI’, a supposedly highly effective mole who undermined MI5 and betrayed its operations to the Soviets. Yet this entity was really a phantom created by Chapman Pincher and Peter Wright, founded on a misunderstanding of a hint dropped by the defector Ivan Gouzenko, and amplified through distortions and untruths. A whole cavalcade of molehunts was thus initiated, which resulted in utterly inconclusive speculation and wasted effort.
11. Special Operations Executive: SOE has always maintained a special fascination for me, as its subversive and violent goals so often clashed with the traditional task of intelligence-gathering by MI6. My interest was intensified by Patrick Marnham’s publication of War in the Shadows, a revisionist account of the betrayal of the PROSPER circuit of the F Division of SOE. This led me into a deeper analysis of the driving forces behind SOE’s sorties, not just in France, but elsewhere in Europe, and provoked a re-appraisal of some its leading lights.
12. GCHQ: The Government Communications Headquarters (formerly Government Code and Cypher School) has been much of a second-tier interest to me, but the career of Alastair Denniston and the important decryptions of Comintern traffic he managed when he was removed from leadership at Bletchley Park have always intrigued me. The relationship of Peter Wright’s ‘HASP’ traffic to ‘VENONA’, which was critical in leading to the identification of Maclean, had also been noteworthy. I cover MI6’s distribution of ULTRA material (decrypted German ENIGMA and other traffic) here.
13. Wireless Detection: My study of Sonia’s ability to evade detection led me into a deeper study of the mechanics and practices of the Radio Security Service, the history of which has not always been represented correctly. I engaged in a comprehensive study of the history of the RSS, and compared its mechanisms with those of the Abwehr, which led me to some conclusions about the deception plans for the Normandy landings in 1944 that I do not believe have been articulated anywhere else.
14. World War II: Some major aspects of World War II, not directly associated with intelligence or espionage, have caught my attention, including the Soviet Union’s clumsy adjustments during the Nazi-Soviet Pact, and the parallels between the Warsaw Uprising and the cessation of advances in Italy in 1944. The character and decisions of Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin have come under my analysis – especially the disastrous manner in which the former two allowed themselves to be manipulated by the last.
15. Tradecraft, including Double-Cross and Double-Agents: The practice of successful espionage and counter-intelligence is permanently fascinating, and the dissemination of disinformation is one of its most interesting aspects. The XX Operation, by which the Germans were misled over the location of the re-occupation of France, has been subject to much mythologizing. The general notion of using such techniques of disinformation by using alien agents who have been ‘turned’ has been greatly misrepresented in the literature, but was also misunderstood by allied practitioners who thought they could replicate the success against the Soviets. ‘Double-agent’ is perhaps the most abused term in intelligence literature.
16. MI5 (Organization and Leadership): MI5’s inability to form a successful policy for handling detected spies, as well as its failure to come to grips with its own recruitment lapses, was a major topic in Misdefending the Realm. Under its several leaders, MI5 always struggled to create a proper structure and set of procedures for handling counter-intelligence against Soviet assaults and infiltration, and the authorized history is notably lax in describing its organization, and how it worked (or did not work).
17. MI6: The authorized history of MI6 comes to a stop in 1949, but even that account struggles to provide a convincing narrative, and no records (apart from the occasional correspondence found in MI5 files) are at hand. Other histories therefore have to be regarded cautiously, because of the unreliability of memoir. Yet the Secret Intelligence Service plays a vital role in post-war intelligence and counter-intelligence, with constant interaction with MI5 required, and assessments have to be made, sometimes using those flawed memoirs.
18. The FBI and CIA (also OSS): MI5 and MI6 had dealings with the two American services, intensely so after the war, when the discovery of the atom spies, and the collaboration over the VENONA material, required some careful negotiations. These were never easy relationships, they involved much distrust as well as hard-gained co-operation, but also a measure of manipulation. The USA and Canada had their share of Communist spies, and the investigations overlapped.
19. Methodology and Historiography: A constant plea on my behalf has been the necessity for a rigorous methodology in the analysis of events in the world of intelligence, and I presented such in my thesis. I have regularly returned to this theme in my writings, deploring some of the practices of the authorized historians. I have also scorned the habits of many writers and biographers who are not qualified historians, who frequently display an alarming trust in the memoirs and oral testimony of participants, but also regularly show disdain for even the exercise of constructing a coherent chronology.
20. Archives: I include a final category concerning the arrangements and policies surrounding the National Archives at Kew, with occasional reference to archival material in the USA and elsewhere.

I should point out that these classes are not inclusive, but instead point to my primary research into the respective subject matter. For example, MI5 appears in probably every category, but my listings on the Security Service concentrate on broader aspects of its leadership, organization, mission, policies, and execution.

The Topography

1. Revolution to Cold War

One of my constant assertions has been that terror was built into the Communist apparatus from the beginning, and that the Red Terror of 1918-1922 was simply a symptom of an ideology that needed to eliminate anyone who opposed it, or who were merely members of a ‘class’ that was, by definition, assumed to be exploitative, and hostile to the Revolution. I drew on recent works by Beevor, Shmelev and Rayfield in https://coldspur.com/an-armful-of-history-books/ to provide some background and analysis of those times, while conceding that terror was not a practice exclusive to the Reds. Yet contact with Lenin’s organs at that time turned out to have ominous implications later.

For example, the Red Terror itself was a factor in the career of the émigré atomic scientist Rudolf Peierls, whose wife, Yevgenia, was the cousin of the murderer of the head of the Petrograd Cheka, Leon Uritsky. I explored all the ramifications of this saga at https://coldspur.com/the-mysterious-affair-at-peierls-part-1/. Another linked to the Peierls couple, and likewise probably blackmailed by Stalin, was the physicist George Gamow, who managed to emigrate under unusual circumstances (see https://coldspur.com/mann-overboard/). Lastly, the enigmatic cipher clerk for MI6 in the Soviet Union in World War II, George Graham, who was born as Serge Leontiev in St. Petersburg, was another exile tortured mentally by the NKVD and NKGB, and his story can be seen primarily at https://coldspur.com/the-strange-life-of-george-graham/.

The Terror affected many Englishmen who had been present in Russia at the time of the Revolution, and several of these ended up working for MI6. MI6 believed, accurately of course, that their knowledge of Russia, and of the Russian language would make them useful. Of course Moscow understood that dynamic, and was quick to identify persons with that profile, and thus played to undermine or suborn them. Thus you can read about some of the prime candidates: Paul Dukes at https://coldspur.com/the-strange-life-of-george-graham/, Stephen Alley and George Hill at https://coldspur.com/who-framed-roger-hollis/, and Harold Gibson at https://coldspur.com/gibbys-spy/. More recently, I have added to the cavalcade an analysis of Charles ‘Dick’ Ellis, at https://coldspur.com/four-spy-books/.

Other commentaries address the truths about the Soviet tyranny, mythologies about it, and the often craven way that the West has handled it. I described the indulgent attitude often expressed towards Stalin’s Russia as early as 2016, in https://coldspur.com/revisiting-smiley-co/, when I covered John le Carré’s apparent political philosophy. In May 2020 I recorded another foolish bit of commentary from a very prominent journalist, who had recently expressed some absurd opinions about the supposed liberalism of Stalin after the war, at https://coldspur.com/late-spring-round-up/. While my research is scattered with references to Stalin’s ‘useful idiots’, I made close studies of two irresponsible actors, Isaiah Berlin (who received close attention in Misdefending the Realm) and Stephen Spender, in https://coldspur.com/isaiah-in-love/ and https://coldspur.com/hey-big-spender/, respectively.

In writing about Appeasement, I explored the misguided way that Churchill tried to please Stalin in https://coldspur.com/on-appeasement/, and analyzed the misjudgments that Stalin made over borders and ‘buffer states’ in https://coldspur.com/on-appeasement/. I described Roosevelt’s weak assessment of the Soviet threat in https://coldspur.com/soviet-espionage-transatlantic-connections , and wrote about the ambiguities involved in Britain’s sharing with the Soviet Union the results of the Ultra decryptions, and the mistrust it engendered, in https://coldspur.com/sonias-radio-part-iv/ and https://coldspur.com/sonias-radio-part-5/.

On the topic of Soviet mythology, I also explored the woeful attempt by Lenin and Stalin to create a new ‘Soviet Man’ at https://coldspur.com/homo-sovieticus/. Recently, in a review of the memoirs by Lariss Bukharin, I have re-inspected the claim that her husband, who was killed in the Great Purge, was some kind of western ‘liberal’ He was not: indeed, he did plot against Stalin, but he was a fervent Bolshevik (see https://coldspur.com/a-wintry-miscellany/). And I also reminded readers of the facts behind the Katyn massacre, facts that Putin is again trying to bury, in my 2022 review of Surviving Katyn at https://coldspur.com/an-armful-of-history-books/) . Finally, I should mention my review of Svetlana Lokhova’s Stalinist book The Spy Who Changed History, which appeared in August 2018 as one of the features in the posting at https://coldspur.com/four-books-on-espionage/.

2. Germany and the Abwehr

I have contributed one major assessment of pre-war Germany, and Great Britain’s hesitant response to Hitler’s increasing belligerence, in https://coldspur.com/on-appeasement/ of September 2019, where I suggested that the right time to stand up to him would have been when he invaded the Rhineland. I also discussed the confrontations between Hitler and Stalin in 1941, and Hitler’s ability to exploit Stalin’s pretensions to ‘buffer states’, later that year in https://coldspur.com/border-crossings-coldspur-stalin/ Thereafter, apart from tangential references to Hitler’s aggressions, my main coverage of Germany has been on the Abwehr, and how MI5 and MI6 dealt with its intelligence initiatives in 1940.

I started to analyze the activities of the LENA agents when I began my series ‘The Mystery of the Undetected Radios’ in May 2018. I had been provoked by Chapman Pincher’s claims that Sonia might have been used in some kind of ‘double-cross’ operation against the Soviets (see https://coldspur.com/double-crossing-the-soviets/, in April 2018), where I developed a comprehensive framework for what the disposition of ‘double agents’ meant, and how the exercise was run successfully. This led me to the strange phenomenon wherein the infamous Double-Cross agents used against the Abwehr during World War II had been able to escape detection. This mirrored the apparent ability of the GRU’s Agent Sonia (Ursula née Kuczynski) to evade radio-detection methods throughout her time in Oxfordshire. I was encouraged to learn how radio detection worked.

While my analysis was spread across eight chapters, between May 2018 and September 2020, the Omnibus edition can be seen at https://coldspur.com/the-mystery-of-the-undetected-radios-full/. (I shall cover this thread in the relevant Chapter 13.) In the first chapter, I wrote about the controversial Agent SNOW, and then tracked the arrival and capture of SUMMER and TATE. Chapter 3 (https://coldspur.com/the-mystery-of-the-undetected-radios-part-3/ ) described the very strange story of ter Braak, who managed to survive undetected in Cambridge for several months. This post caught the eye of a Dutchman, Jan-Willem van den Braak, who was writing a biography of ter Braak, and that encounter led to my helping him publish the version in English titled Spy Against Churchill. I expanded on our discussions in my piece in February 2019, https://coldspur.com/two-cambridge-spies-dutch-connections-2/, where I laid out our very calm reasons for disagreeing on the circumstances of ter Braak’s death by shooting in a Cambridge air-raid shelter. I introduced the publication of his book in my 2021 Round-up, at https://coldspur.com/2021-year-end-roundup/.

I wrapped up my joint Sonia/radio-detection analysis in April 2021, in https://coldspur.com/on-radio-active-decay/, but returned to the Abwehr and the Sicherheitsdienst in my coverage of the PROSPER disaster, where a prominent SOE circuit in France was betrayed through the treacherous Henri Déricourt. As with Sonia, the full story will be outlined elsewhere, in this case in my SOE segment (Chapter 11), so I will simply direct interested readers to the main item on Déricourt’s role at https://coldspur.com/dericourts-double-act/, and the concluding episode in the series https://coldspur.com/the-demise-of-prosper/, from August 2022.

3. The Cambridge 5

So much had been written about the Cambridge Five (Philby, Maclean, Burgess, Blunt and Cairncross), with little new archival material released at the time my book was published, that I at first believed there was little new to discover. Indeed, I wrote little on Philby to start with, but then gradually came to the conclusion that most of his biographers trusted too completely what he wrote about in My Silent War, and that a rigorous cross-examination of sources, complemented by the inspection of related material from Kew (i.e. Tudor-Hart, Honigmann, Solomon, Smolka, Philby pêre, as well as the 1951 Foreign Office files) might lead to a dramatic re-assessment. That turned out to be correct, and I have thus extracted Philby to a separate section.

I made some early references to the contributions of the Five during World War II, and how some historians had strangely understated their role, in https://coldspur.com/sonias-radio-part-5/, published in January 2017. I followed this up in April 2018 with a profile of Basil Mann, who had rather provocatively in 1982 published a memoir titled Was There A Fifth Man?, attempting to exonerate himself, even though Cairncross had been outed by then. In this piece (see https://coldspur.com/double-crossing-the-soviets/) I also inspected Cedric Belfrage, and dissected the quite absurd theory that some members of the Cambridge 5 and their brethren had been deployed in a successful double-cross operation against the Soviets. This campaign concluded in the ridiculous phenomenon of the distinguished historian Sir Michael Howard explaining (in a letter to the Times) that Anthony Blunt had been protected because he was being used in such a role.

Donald Maclean then caught my eye again, when two books on him and the Five came out in 2018. I reviewed Roland Philipps’s A Spy Named Orphan, and Richard Davenport-Hines’s Enemies Within in my August 2018 bulletin https://coldspur.com/four-books-on-espionage/. I was not greatly impressed by Philipps’s rather apologetic and indulgent portrayal of his subject (’Maclean as victim’), despite the lengths of research he had gone to, and I offered my own analysis of the malignant influences at Gresham’s School, Holt. Davenport-Hines was a familiar figure – a prolific author of books on social history, but he chose an odd line in Enemies Within primarily blaming the journalists for the lack of confidence and prestige in MI5. He rather pompously defined a gender-bias within MI5 as the cause of the failure to detect the spies, and believed that intellectuals like him should be trusted more. Yet he got many things wrong, missed a lot of openings, and was too easily influenced by persons he should not have trusted.

Still, some fresh anecdotes in Philipps’ work led me to dig further into Maclean. In https://coldspur.com/donald-macleans-handiwork/ I uncovered some contradictions in the accounts of Goronwy Rees’s behaviour, and the work of Andrew Boyle (who effectively unmasked Blunt in The Climate of Treason). I tried to follow clues about capes, de Gallienne, artistic circles, bohemian habits, and Maclean’s photocopying in a Pimlico flat, or whether Edith Tudor-Hart had been his photographer. I also came across the mysterious ‘Barbara’, a mutual friend of Rees and Maclean, another photographer. Philipps informed me that she was in fact Barbara Key-Seymer, and I followed up with some research on her, as well as on Maclean’s connections with the Dutchman, Pieck in February 2019, in https://coldspur.com/two-cambridge-spies-dutch-connections-1. It was a fascinating exploration, but rather inconclusive, as readers can testify afresh.

My next foray was into the events preceding the abscondment of Burgess and Maclean, where I hypothesized that Dick White fed information to the CIA in order to distract attention from his own oversights in the affair. My investigation started in April 2019, with my report https://coldspur.com/the-importance-of-chronology-with-special-reference-to-liddell-philby/ : readers should skip the first section to get to the meat, where I inspect the roles of Boyle and Cookridge, and explain how the background to the inquiries developed. My next report appeared two months later, as https://coldspur.com/dick-whites-devilish-plot/, where I explained that Dick White set out on a bizarre deception exercise, feeding tips about Philby to the FBI, so that the Americans could make a case against Philby. And my last major project was the investigation into the veracity of Blunt’s ‘confession’ at the Courtauld. I explained in December 2020 (https://coldspur.com/year-end-wrap-up-2020/) how I suspected that this was another device conceived by Roger Hollis and Dick White. A further deep study of the records led me to expand on this idea in two long pieces in January and February of 2021, https://coldspur.com/the-hoax-of-the-blunt-confession-part-1/ and https://coldspur.com/the-hoax-of-the-blunt-confession-part-2/, which also exposed that the Cairncross confession in the United States was similarly a staged event. That was my last significant commentary on the Five, although I should record here my review of Hannah Coler’s book The Cambridge Five (in German), which appeared at the end of last year (https://coldspur.com/a-wintry-miscellany/). I shall cover my fresh analysis of the events of 1951, in which Burgess and Maclean of course featured prominently, in the following section on Philby.

In passing, I note that I have made only very scanty reference to the Oxford Ring (in March 2023, at https://coldspur.com/litzi-philby-under-the-covers/) – a deficiency that needs to be remedied.

4. Kim Philby

The mythology of Kim Philby – especially of his recruitment by the NKVD – occupied a big chunk of Chapter 2 (‘Missing Links’) of Misdefending the Realm, where I explored the multiple conflicting accounts of that event that have been published. For the first few years of coldspur, I did not pay him much attention: he had been written about by so many persons that I was not ready to stick my own oar in, although I was puzzled by how many historians and biographers appeared to accept unquestioningly what the traitor wrote about himself and his career in My Silent War. I had dabbled further into his adventures and connections when writing about Stephen Spender back in 2016 (https://coldspur.com/hey-big-spender/), and returned to him next only in April 2019, where I picked up the question of leaks to E. H. Cookridge, possibly by Guy Liddell (https://coldspur.com/the-importance-of-chronology-with-special-reference-to-liddell-philby/). It was here that I picked up the strange and alarming story about Eric Roberts, and his claim that he had been told, in 1947, of a traitor working high-up in SIS, and also pointed out some chronological anomalies in the accounts of the investigation into HOMER (Maclean) concerning events in Washington, and raised my suspicions that far more was known about Philby’s exploits than was ever admitted.

That article constituted the first airing of what I termed a plot by Dick White to obfuscate the issues, and, after further research, presented, two months later, my more confident outlining of the plot, in https://coldspur.com/dick-whites-devilish-plot/. Here I explained how Dick White had successfully transferred the attention of the Burgess/Maclean investigation into a focus on Philby, and his role as informant to Maclean, and manipulated the files to make it appear that the CIA had been the agency that forced Menzies’s hand at MI6. In May 2020, I picked up the stalemate with Roberts and Christopher Andrew in https://coldspur.com/late-spring-round-up/, but was otherwise consumed with Sonia and ELLI at this time. In fact, I covered Philby’s reactions to the Gouzenko and ELLI business in March 2021, in https://coldspur.com/on-philby-gouzenko-and-elli/. In my year-end round-up I analyzed some recent biographical material on Philby, and provided some facetious commentary of my own (https://coldspur.com/2021-year-end-roundup/). In May 2022 I made a brief reference to Philby’s contribution to the molehunts in the light of the Volkov incident in https://coldspur.com/peter-wrights-agents-double-agents/, and showed at the end of the year, through my communications with Keith Ellison, that some recently released Kew files might shed some significant new light on Philby’s activities (https://coldspur.com/2022-year-end-round-up/).

This all led to a very intense re-assessment of Philby’s life and career in 2023 and early 2024. By inspecting closely the files on Edith Tudor-Hart, Georg Honigmann, Philby Senior, Peter Smolka and others, I engaged in an six-month series of bulletins that explored closely the dynamics of Philby’s marriage, recruitment, his work for MI6, the controversial events of 1951, and his later unveiling as a spy. This was supported by a closer reading of much of the Philby literature (e.g. Borovik), as well as an assessment of a new book by Helen Fry on the MI6 representative in Vienna, Thomas Kendrick. These pieces, in which I confidently presented a hypothesis that Philby had performed some deal with MI6 in 1939 whereby he pretended to close out his Soviet connections and allegiances, can be seen at https://coldspur.com/litzi-philby-under-the-covers/, https://coldspur.com/kim-philby-always-working-for-sis/, https://coldspur.com/kim-philby-in-1951-alarms-and-diversions/, https://coldspur.com/kim-philbys-german-moonshine/, https://coldspur.com/the-folly-of-solomon/, and https://coldspur.com/summer-2023-round-up/, where I summed up the status of my researches on him. I have provided a consolidated omnibus edition of these pieces on coldspur, at https://coldspur.com/kim-philby-a-re-assessment/.

The project carried on. I reviewed a somewhat fanciful book about Philby’s actions in the Middle East (in https://coldspur.com/four-spy-books/), and delved more deeply into the Honigmann story (Honigmann being Litzy Philby’s partner in London during the war) in https://coldspur.com/the-tales-of-honigmann/ in November 2023. The next month I questioned the facts about Kim’s divorce from Litzy (https://coldspur.com/a-wintry-miscellany/), and in January and February used my re-assessment of the life of Peter Smolka to cast fresh doubts on Philby’s testimony of his life from his memoir (https://coldspur.com/peter-smolka-background-to-1934/ and https://coldspur.com/at-last-the-1948-show-smolka-the-third-man/). Finally, I inserted an item about the missing two chapters of Philby’s memoir that MI6 managed to spirit away from Sotheby’s before they were put up for auction.

5. Soviet Agents

There remains a motley collection of pieces about Soviet agents and influencers of various kinds who are outside the Cambridge 5, Philby, Sonia, the Atom Spies, and the Lucy Ring categories. My whole body of research started off with Isaiah Berlin, and his bizarre relationship with Guy Burgess, and, in August 2015 I re-presented my History Today article on him, at https://coldspur.com/the-undercover-egghead/. Stephen Spender’s clumsy contribution was covered a few months later, in https://coldspur.com/hey-big-spender/, and I expanded my analysis of Berlin’s life and career, with some of his dubious associations, in Isaiah in Love (see https://coldspur.com/isaiah-in-love/). In January 2018, I branched out to cover a number of transatlantic agents, both American and Canadian, in https://coldspur.com/soviet-espionage-transatlantic-connections/, resumed a study of Wilfred Mann and Cedric Belfrage in April of that year (https://coldspur.com/double-crossing-the-soviets/), and introduced the phenomenon of errant Rhodes Scholars in my review of a biography of Duncan Lee in August (https://coldspur.com/four-books-on-espionage/).

Early on, I had investigated, while analyzing Sonia’s wireless activity, the strangely ignored and unprosecuted Soviet spy ring led by Oliver Green in Birmingham, which account can be seen in https://coldspur.com/sonias-radio-part-viii/, from June 2017. In December 2018, I switched to an inspection of the controversial Goronwy Rees, and his role in the Blunt saga, and then covered some of the figures behind the Krivitsky defection – Kitty Harris, Maly, Deutsch and others, all in https://coldspur.com/donald-macleans-handiwork/. I introduced my coverage of Rudolf Peierls in October 2019 (https://coldspur.com/the-mysterious-affair-at-peierls-part-1/): Peierls is on the borderline of being an ‘atom spy’, but he certainly misrepresented his background, and was probably being held hostage by the Soviets, as was another questionable person, George Gamow. I described the activities of other possible Soviet sympathizers, such as Mott and Skinner, and other émigré scientists, in the second part of my Peierls research the following March in https://coldspur.com/the-mysterious-affair-at-peierls-part-2/.

In May 2020, I covered the career of David Springhall (https://coldspur.com/late-spring-round-up/), and a few months later, in October 2020, I had a chance to offer my opinions of the Portland Spy Ring (Houghton & Gee, Lonsdale/Molody, the Cohens) as well as of Richard Sorge, when I reviewed books by Trevor Barnes and Owen Matthews (https://coldspur.com/five-books-on-espionage-intelligence/). I provided what I considered to be useful extra insights on Barnes’s inadequate analysis in my year-end piece at https://coldspur.com/year-end-wrap-up-2020/. In 2021, my attention switched to Gouzenko and ELLI: ELLI of course has a category all of her/his own, as do ‘Defectors’, but Desmond Uren (who was briefly considered a candidate) was covered in https://coldspur.com/what-gouzenko-said-about-elli/, in July. It was almost a year later, in May 2022, that I returned to the story, analysing the contribution that Volkov made to defector lore, and the hints that suggested that MI5 or MI6 had been penetrated (https://coldspur.com/peter-wrights-agents-double-agents/). I thus covered Milne, Macgibbon, and Klugmann, as well as Uren, again, but my main concern was trying to ascertain exactly who those Soviet ‘double-agents’ were that Peter Wright claimed existed.

The saga of ‘Gibby’s Spy’, the supposed ‘agent in the Kremlin’ who never existed, probably belongs here: see https://coldspur.com/gibbys-spy/ in October 2022, as does my review of David Burke’s study of the ghastly Kuczynski family and network the following month (https://coldspur.com/an-armful-of-history-books/). Lastly, my extended coverage of Philby and his associates in 2023 (see above) includes much information on the various couriers and fellow-travellers in London during the war, such as Tudor-Hart and Honigmann, and this section has been rounded out by my two-part segment earlier this year on the odious Peter Smolka, at https://coldspur.com/peter-smolka-background-to-1934/ and https://coldspur.com/at-last-the-1948-show-smolka-the-third-man/.

6. The Red Orchestra

This sector describes the entire Soviet-controlled body of spies, assisted by wireless operators, that worked in western Europe against the Germans. The Germans named them Die Rote Kapelle, the Red Orchestra, and the unit in Switzerland, out of reach of direct surveillance and direction-finding, was known as Die Rote Drei, the Red Three, although the enumeration rather inaccurately represented the cell as its leader, Sándor Radó, and two of his assistants.

My main focus was on the Swiss section, since the so-called ‘Lucy Ring’, which overlapped with the Red Three, had been infiltrated by Alexander Foote, who worked for a while for Sonia, aka Ursula Beurton, née Kuczynski. The most relevant parts of the story can be seen at https://coldspur.com/sonias-radio-part-vii/ (January 2017), and, two months later, in https://coldspur.com/sonias-radio-part-vi/. A couple of years later, I explored the implications of Germany’s defensive manœuvres against generic hostile wireless communications in Europe, and introduced the background to the Red Orchestra, at https://coldspur.com/the-mystery-of-the-undetected-radios-part-4/, in January 2019, with two later segments following that year at https://coldspur.com/the-mystery-of-the-undetected-radios-part-5/ and https://coldspur.com/the-mystery-of-the-undetected-radios-part-6/.

7. The Defectors

The defector who consumed most of my attention was Walter Krivitsky, since it was his testimony that MI5 badly mismanaged, which inattention gave me the title of my book. I devoted Chapter 3 of Misdefending the Realm to the Krivitsky affair, so there is little to add from coldspur, apart from the recurring references to ‘the Imperial Council Spy’ (i.e. Maclean) and ‘the journalist in Spain’ (i.e. Philby). Thus Krivitsky appears in https://coldspur.com/two-cambridge-spies-dutch-connections-1/ (February 2019), where I undertook some deeper investigations into Krivitsky’s memories of Maclean’s handiwork when the GRU officer was in Moscow in 1937. Thereafter Krivitsky turns up regularly in my coverage of Philby, most notably in https://coldspur.com/dick-whites-devilish-plot/ (June 2019), and my recent piece that analyzes how Krivitsky’s report was accepted and used in the USA (https://coldspur.com/dick-whites-tangled-web/), in March of this year.

While I had briefly recorded the fierce insights on Philby made by Ismail Akhmedov as early as May 2016 (see https://coldspur.com/revisiting-smiley-co/), the next defector to gain my focused attention was Igor Gouzenko, the cipher-clerk who defected in Canada in August 1945. I started to develop greater interest in him in May 2020, as I was processing the thoughts of Chapman Pincher and Peter Wright about the identity of ‘ELLI’, whom Gouzenko had named as a spy somewhere in British intelligence (see https://coldspur.com/late-spring-round-up/). I followed up with a deeper analysis in March 2021 (https://coldspur.com/on-philby-gouzenko-and-elli/), and more two months later (https://coldspur.com/who-framed-roger-hollis/), where, after undertaking a careful inspection of chronology and geography, I concluded that Roger Hollis had been framed. Lastly, I determined to take a very close look at exactly what Gouzenko’s testimony had been, and how it had changed over the years, in https://coldspur.com/what-gouzenko-said-about-elli/ (July 2021).

Konstantin Volkov was another defector (this time, only a would-be specimen, since he was betrayed by Philby and executed before he could escape) whose testimony has been misunderstood and distorted. I analyzed his case in https://coldspur.com/peter-wrights-agents-double-agents/, in May 2022, when I also provided a brief review of Gordon Brook-Shepherd’s important study of post-war Soviet defectors, The Storm Birds. I also offered a detailed analysis of Volkov’s file, which had been released to the National Archives in October 2015, and critiqued some recent literature on defectors, from Kevin Riehle, William Hale, and Nigel West. I next reproduced some of Guy Liddell’s observations in his diary on Volkov, and pointed out that companion file on Volkov (FCO 158/194), which might explain some of the conundrums behind the business (especially those surfacing in West’s uneven commentary), has been retained by Foreign Office.

I can point to little more of substance on defectors. In July 2023, I did examine Anatoliy Golitsyn’s role in unmasking Philby in https://coldspur.com/the-folly-of-solomon/, and was able to disclose earlier this year that Golitsyn (bearing the cryptonym KAGO) had appeared in a minute-sheet on Peter Smolka, thus pinning his disclosure of that Soviet spy a few weeks before he was able to defect at the end of 1961 (see https://coldspur.com/at-last-the-1948-show-smolka-the-third-man/). I have occasionally written about Oleg Gordievsky. For example, I had reviewed Ben Macintyre’s book on him, The Spy and the Traitor, in November 2018, at https://coldspur.com/four-more-books-on-espionage/, and see also https://coldspur.com/late-spring-round-up/), but his period lies outside my primary domain of coverage. I have only rarely touched on the defection of Vladimir and Evdokia Petrov (see https://coldspur.com/the-importance-of-chronology-with-special-reference-to-liddell-philby/), but their important contribution remains as one my most significant areas of future study, involving the inspection of a massive archive that I have not yet explored properly.

8. Agent Sonia

As part of my coverage of Klaus Fuchs, I had remarked upon the very puzzling aspects of Ursula Beurton’s (née Kucynski’s) marriage to Len in Switzerland and subsequent remarkable escape to the United Kingdom in Chapter 9 of Misdefending the Realm, but I was at that time largely relying on what Chapman Pincher and John Costello had written about her. I was provoked by Professor Glees’s questions about her ability to evade radio detection-finding while working from the environs of Oxfordshire to engage in a thorough study of her activity, a saga that was released in ten segments between April 2016 and September 2017, and was compiled into an omnibus edition, available at https://coldspur.com/sonias-radio/. My primary conclusion was that her radio activity was, after some desultory starts, probably non-existent, but that, in any case, MI6 directed the Radio Security Service to ignore her. (One useful by-product of this exercise was to start a project on wireless deception in World War II generally, as I explain below.)

There was more on Sonia, however. In February 1918, I started to unravel some of the myths that Chapman Pincher had woven about Sonia in his unremitting quest to show that Roger Hollis had been a Soviet mole. Thus, in https://coldspur.com/sonia-and-the-quebec-agreement/ I applied my technique of defining a precise chronology to show that Sonia could not have revealed details of the 1943 Quebec Agreement to her Soviet bosses. Sonia hummed on in the background: there were rumours of films being made about her, and of fresh disclosures from the Soviet archives. In May 2019, in https://coldspur.com/the-mystery-of-the-undetected-radios-part-5/, I reported that a colleague had alerted me to the fact that Ben Macintyre was writing a book on Sonia, and I was able to reveal that I had sent a letter to Macintyre at the end of 2018, suggesting that the agent might be a suitable topic for him to exploit in his next book, and pointing him to my work! He never replied to me, but I laid out an important marker with my own research.

And then in February 2020 I published a guest piece from a coldspur reader, Denis Lenihan, who questioned some of my analysis, in https://coldspur.com/special-bulletin-denis-lenihan-on-sonia-quebec/. Lenihan came up with some valuable observations about other persons who might have been involved, but his startling and Pincheresque conclusion was that it was Hollis who leaked the information to Sonia. Naturally, I had to respond vigorously to this thesis, and did so a month later, in https://coldspur.com/special-bulletin-response-to-denis-lenihan/, where I also introduced John Anderton, who had shared lodgings with the Beurtons in Oxfordshire. I also reviewed the memoir written by Sonia’s daughter, Janina, in a conventional round-up of my activities in May 2020, in https://coldspur.com/late-spring-round-up/. At this time, I included an account of some rather alarming aspects of the roll-out of Macintyre’s book ‘Agent Sonya’.

That train of thought was quickly interrupted, however by a startling discovery in one of the Kuczynski files that I had only superficially looked at before (KV 6/41), which disclosed an extraordinary communication from the MI6 station in Geneva, Switzerland, to Len Beurton, now ensconced with Sonia safely in Kidlington (see https://coldspur.com/special-bulletin-the-letter-from-geneva/). This demonstrated that Len was seen as some kind of asset by MI6, and, with Professor Glees’s help, a piece appeared in the Mail on Sunday highlighting this intelligence. I provided the link to it, and some initial commentary, in a Special Bulletin at the end of June (see https://coldspur.com/special-bulletin-sonia-and-the-mail-on-sunday/). Not entirely happy with the _Mail on Sunday_’s account of the events, I then (in July 2020) wrote a fresh report explaining carefully what the new intelligence meant, at https://coldspur.com/sonia-mi6s-hidden-hand/. While recapitulating much of what I had written before, this piece provided a fresh history of Sonia’s career in nine chapters, and it set out to show that Sonia’s fortunate rescue from dangers in Switzerland had been engineered by Claude Dansey of MI6, in one of his misguided efforts to manipulate Soviet spies to Britain’s advantage.

Before this time, as indicated above, I had heard rumours that Ben Macintyre was writing a biography of Sonia. And I was invited by the Journal of Intelligence and National Security (I forget the exact mechanism whereby) to provide a review of his Agent Sonya. I was keen to counter some of the hyperbolic encomia that his book had received in the press, and was pleased that the Journal published my piece, promptly, in December 2020. It can be seen at https://coldspur.com/special-bulletin-review-of-agent-sonya/. I am gratified by the number (several hundred) of readers who have accessed the piece on the Journal website – all, presumably, having paid for access individually, or through institutional membership. I added a few comments in my year-end wrap-up, at https://coldspur.com/year-end-wrap-up-2020/.

In April 2021, I took the opportunity to integrate much of my research around wireless, Sonia, Peter Wright and HASP, and related matters, into a summary about Sonia’s possible wireless activity (see https://coldspur.com/on-radio-active-decay/. This was undertaken partly to refute Ben Macintyre’s somewhat absurd claims, but also to explain my precise logic in identifying the paradoxes of non-detection, and what it would require to identify unexplained radio signals as originating from Sonia, but have them hushed up (as Pincher claimed). Since then, the affaire Sonia has gone comparatively quiet. In November 2022, I offered a review of David Burke’s weak book on the Kuczynskis – something that the Journal of Intelligence and National Security had asked for, but which project they then mangled unnecessarily. It can be seen at https://coldspur.com/an-armful-of-history-books/. My on-line colleague Brian Austin had been prompted by my coverage of Sonia (to which he had contributed) to write a detailed technical article on Sonia’s wireless equipment and operation, and I republished it in https://coldspur.com/signal-sonyas-wireless/ in December 2022. I do not know whether Ben Macintyre has been chastened by my review: I had heard that a film based on his book was going to be made, but I have noticed nothing about it lately.

9. The Atom Spies

Misdefending the Realm included a deep rather than broad investigation into the purloining of secrets by scientists working for the Allies. In my thesis I had focussed on Klaus Fuchs, since he was the prime example of a candidate who had come under suspicion early, but then was allowed into the most secret halls of the Manhattan project. Yet, just before the submission of my thesis, I had already stepped into the world of Fuchs’s associates, sponsors, and hangers-on, starting with an examination of Basil Mann and George Gamow (see https://coldspur.com/mann-overboard/), which appeared in October 2015. Gamow had made an extraordinarily impossible escape from the Soviet Union, which immediately raised my suspicions. Moreover, he was a close friend of Yevgenia Kannegiesser, the future wife of Rudolf Peierls, who helped Fuchs in his unillustrious career.

I picked up the Fuchs story in September 2016, where I described the relationship between Peierls and Fuchs when the latter was released from internment (see https://coldspur.com/sonias-radio-part-3/), and I revisited Sonia’s dealings with Fuchs a year later, in https://coldspur.com/sonias-radio-part-ix/. I later described the events surrounding the Quebec Agreement in September 1943 (which involved the transfer of Fuchs and others to the USA) in https://coldspur.com/sonia-and-the-quebec-agreement/, dated February 2018. Two months later, I reported on the very insightful and provocative findings of Mike Rossiter (who had written a biography of Fuchs) concerning records on the physicist that had been withdrawn from the National Archives (see https://coldspur.com/double-crossing-the-soviets/).

Yet it was not until the end of 2019 that I engaged on my intense study of the highly dubious Rudolf Peierls and his wife with their tainted past, owing to Yevgenia’s family relationship with an assassin of a prominent Chekist. Peierls did much to conceal the story: he had successfully caused a book by Richard Deacon to be pulped, and I explored his career in two segments, namely https://coldspur.com/the-mysterious-affair-at-peierls-part-1/ and, in March 2020, https://coldspur.com/the-mysterious-affair-at-peierls-part-2/. In the latter piece_,_ I investigated how the network of physicists in Britain in the 1930s helped to enable Klaus Fuchs to thrive, and I explored how Peierls tried to explain away Fuchs’s ability to spy under his watch. I thus introduced a number of prominent émigré scientists at the University of Bristol, as well as the native left-leaning Mott and Gunn, and the mysterious Herbert Skinner. I had recorded my exchanges with Frank Close (who had written a comprehensive biography of Fuchs), and my attempts to contact with Sabine Lee (who had published much on Peierls) in my Round-up of November 2019 (see https://coldspur.com/a-thanksgiving-round-up/). I commented on Close’s rather cautious presentation on Fuchs at the Bodleian inhttps://coldspur.com/late-spring-round-up/, dated May 2020: he did not reply to my questions.

My last flourish in this arena was to investigate the puzzling policy of AERE Harwell after the war regarding suspected spies (i.e. Pontecorvo, Peierls, Fuchs, Skinner, Skyrme, Davison). This exercise enabled me to apply my chronological methods to the activities of the spy and absconder Bruno Pontecorvo, and to the investigations into his behaviour. Rather than face the realities head-on, the authorities apparently preferred to try to shuffle such persons to a quiet post at Liverpool University, and I explored these initiatives in August 2020, in https://coldspur.com/liverpool-university-home-for-distressed-spies/. I brought both Herbert Skinner (whose wife, Erma, had been having an affair with Fuchs) and Boris Davidson under the microscope, since they had been rather neglected in previous histories. This was not an honourable period for those responsible for the security of the United Kingdom.

10. ELLI and Molehunts

It appears that I did not pick up the ‘ELLI’ story until February 2018, when I referred to Chapman Pincher’s claim that Hollis was ELLI (whom I coolly described as ‘the spy within MI5’) in https://coldspur.com/sonia-and-the-quebec-agreement/, ELLI being a mole identified by the defector Ivan Gouzenko. I then described what William Tyrer had reported in his 2016 article in the International Journal of Intelligence and Counter-Intelligence, ‘The Unresolved Mystery of Elli’, where the author cast doubts that ELLI was either Hollis or Leo Long (as Christopher Andrew had claimed). At this stage, I was still floundering around in the dark, as I had not inspected the sources. It was not until couple of years later, in May 2020, where I provided an update, chasing down a lead from Pincher, and digging out the claims of the defector, Akhmedov, that ELLI had in fact been a woman (see https://coldspur.com/late-spring-round-up/). Here I also showed how the Vassiliev papers were misleading in their references to ELLI: I showed my confusion over the way that Pincher, Wright and Tyrer (and probably others) had been misled by a faulty interpretation of what Vassiliev transcribed.

I determined that I would have to approach this mystery in a more disciplined fashion, and in March 2021, in https://coldspur.com/on-philby-gouzenko-and-elli/, I applied my methodology to studying exactly what Gouzenko had said and written. I also was able to exchange emails with Vassiliev himself, now living in Harrow, outside London. I studied the Vasiliev papers carefully, and then went over in detail the precise chronology of the movements of Hollis and others in the autumn of 1945, after Gouzenko’s escape from the Soviet mission. This investigation also presented the fact that there was another spy with the cryptonym ‘ELLI’, but in Ottawa, one Kate Willsher, which muddied the waters. Moreover, my study of the Liddell Diaries suggested that the appearance of ELLI may have been a misunderstanding provoked by Stephen Alley over the existence of a spy working for George Hill (of SOE/MI6) in Moscow, or that ELLI may have been an occasional agent providing information to Chichaev, the KGB representative in London – even Alley himself. That was something that Liddell himself hinted at.

I returned to the story two months later, in https://coldspur.com/who-framed-roger-hollis/, where I returned to Gouzenko, and also showed how Peter Wright introduced some spurious nonsense about VENONA and HASP into the mix, thereby aspiring to incriminate Hollis more. I renewed my attention to the SOE link to ELLI (as espoused by Liddell). Liddell’s researches went annoyingly cold, but he thereafter gave the impression that the ELLI problem was solved. My conclusion was that a bevy of MI6 officers had tried to frame Hollis as ELLI. Somewhat frustrated, in July 2021, I carried out a very detailed analysis of what Gouzenko said about ELLI (in https://coldspur.com/what-gouzenko-said-about-elli/), and, after a very long and involved study, concluded that MI5 preferred to keep the ELLI story under wraps since its disclosure and explanation would have brought to light even more embarrassing facts about the George Hill/George Graham fiasco in Moscow (q.v.)

As I reported in May 2022 (https://coldspur.com/peter-wrights-agents-double-agents/), the belief – even among coldspur readers – that ELLI had been a serious mole in MI5, and that Hollis had been the culprit – died hard. Here I went back to try to understand what the evidence was that a mole had been at work, primarily Peter Wright’s claim that several double-agent cases against the Soviets had gone awry. I thus re-read Nigel West’s Molehunt, explored the Volkov evidence, and tried to determine what Wright was talking about. There were many threads and paradoxes in this story, but I repeated my scepticism about the possibility of ‘turning’ some communist sympathizers into ‘double-agents’ for the Soviets, a myth that Nigel West encouraged, and I lamented the lack of discipline shown by historians of the case, as well as the feeble desires of the authorities, wanting to hold back on releasing vital documents. Finally, I should report how the existence and identity of ELLI endured as an item of controversy between the British and the Americans, as shown in my March 2024 piece at https://coldspur.com/dick-whites-tangled-web/ . And there my research stands, although I do want to return some day to the claims that Wright and Pincher made about Hollis’s interfering with the Portland Spies case.

11. Special Operations Executive

The Special Operations Executive (SOE) was a comparatively short-lived organization (1940-1945), but it demanded my attention for several reasons: i) its generic role in wireless communications and detection-finding; ii) the relationship its French Section (‘F’- British-controlled) had with MI6 and Claude Dansey, especially as it concerned management of so-called ‘double agents’ in deception campaigns; iii) The murky circumstances of the Russian-born cipher-clerk George Graham being inserted into the MI6/SOE establishment under George Hill in the Soviet Union; and iv) my special investigation into the disaster of the Lancaster bomber crashing in southern Norway with Soviet agents aboard, in September 1944. Alongside these projects, I undertook some intensive reading of biographies and memoirs of notable SOE figures, especially of its chief in the latter stages of the war, Colin Gubbins, who, in my mind, merited some more rigorous analysis.

I started my investigation into SOE wireless techniques in January 2019, in https://coldspur.com/the-mystery-of-the-undetected-radios-part-4/, where I surveyed the very fragmented literature, including M. R. D. Foot’s sometimes inaccurate depiction of events. It seemed to me that the role of detection-finding was overstated, and that arrests were as often due to careless operations and betrayals. I picked up SOE’s struggles to free itself from MI6’s controls in communications, and the mistakes in made in the disastrous Englandspiel in the Netherlands, in https://coldspur.com/the-mystery-of-the-undetected-radios-part-5/, in May of that year. SOE was slow to learn lessons from the field, and it was inexpertly led. I resumed coverage in August (https://coldspur.com/the-mystery-of-the-undetected-radios-part-6/) , writing more about some of the myths of detection-finding, and concluded that the German initiatives in this area were more of a threat than a reality.

It was not until May 2021, in https://coldspur.com/who-framed-roger-hollis/, that SOE entered my research again – this time in connection with ELLI. Guy Liddell’s Diaries had shown that ELLI was believed to be a member of SOE, but that the known spy Desmond Uren had been eliminated. My focus thus turned to the inclusion of George Graham in the SOE/MI6 mission to Moscow and Kuibyshev under George Hill. My conclusion was that the Stephen Alley-ELLI events were hushed up because of the greater embarrassment concerning Graham, who had been subject to a honey-trap, with a resulting exposure of SOE ciphers being stolen. Almost immediately, however, my interest in SOE was sprung by a fresh happening – my reading of a review of a book by Patrick Marnham, who had claimed in War in the Shadows that the SOE F section had been wilfully betrayed in the cause of deceiving the Germans.

Following up this intriguing notion took up much of my time over the next year or two. I introduced the story, highlighting the connection with Claude Dansey, in June 2021 (see https://coldspur.com/claude-danseys-mischief/). That led me to an investigation of the mysterious TWIST committee, and getting in touch with Robert Marshall, who had written about the debacle of the betrayal of the PROSPER circuit some decades ago – all in https://coldspur.com/special-bulletin-lets-twist-again/ in August 2021. Thereafter I applied my space-and-time methodology to the movements of the culprit and probable traitor, Déricourt. Deep analysis followed in October (https://coldspur.com/the-prosper-disaster/) and November (https://coldspur.com/dericourts-double-act/), and my studies took me into the deliberations of the General Staff, and how the activities of SOE related to Allied military strategy.

Ater an interlude in January 2022, where I returned to a long analysis of the SOE agent George Graham (https://coldspur.com/the-strange-life-of-george-graham/), I returned to PROSPER the following three months (https://coldspur.com/all-quiet-on-the-second-front/, https://coldspur.com/bridgehead-revisited-three-months-in-1943/, and https://coldspur.com/feints-and-deception-two-more-months-in-1943/, where I presented my theory for what had actually happened. I indicated at the same time how unreliable M.R. D. Foot’s history of SOE in France had been, and how he had been misled by the Foreign Office Adviser. Then, in June 2022, I switched to a re-assessment of Colin Gubbins, the SOE chief, in https://coldspur.com/gubbins-turn/. Having read three biographies of him, and some related memoirs, I became more disenchanted with his track-record, judging that, in the eagerness to celebrate some key achievements of SOE, writers and memoirists had played down its rather woeful list of failures and disappointments.

After providing some confirmation of my ideas in my summer round-up in July, where I also offered reviews of some related books on SOE (see https://coldspur.com/summer-2022-round-up/), I then summarized the whole sad PROSPER story in August, in https://coldspur.com/the-demise-of-prosper/. My introductory text described the piece as follows: “The denouement of the story of the betrayal of Francis Suttill and his PROSPER network, caused by SOE’s spineless behaviour when caught between the wiles of the TWIST Committee and the demands of the Chiefs of Staff for deception operations, in the shape of the absurd COCKADE plan.)” I also reviewed Halik Kochanski’s epic new book on European Resistance in November, at https://coldspur.com/an-armful-of-history-books/.

Yet I had to return to the subject early in 2023, where I took pains to explain in great detail what I had proposed concerning PROSPER’s (Francis Suttill’s) multiple journeys back to the UK in the summer of 1943 (see https://coldspur.com/prospers-flit/). By this time, I had tried to engage by email with Suttill’s son, who was taking a very obdurate stance on the accuracy of his version of events. He had meanwhile managed to have a very weak article published in the Journal of Intelligence and National Security, and, since Patrick Marnham and I were unable to make any headway in rebutting it through the offices of Mark Phythian, the Editor, I published our joint letter, refuting Suttill’s arguments in my Special Bulletin of February 2023 (https://coldspur.com/special-bulletin-prosper-the-letter-to-jins/ .

Lastly, I record the saga of ‘The Airmen Who Died Twice’, since it is intricately bound up with SOE in Norway. I introduced this topic back in June 2022, in https://coldspur.com/special-bulletin-the-airmen-who-died-twice/, but it has taken almost two years to complete the research, originally in partnership with Nigel Austin, but performed single-handedly by me over the past year. I have now revealed the whole story about the infiltration of Soviet agents onto an RAF Lancaster bomber, diverted intentionally over Norway in September 1944 in https://coldspur.com/special-bulletin-the-airmen-who-died-twice-part-1/, https://coldspur.com/special-bulletin-the-airmen-who-died-twice-part-2/, https://coldspur.com/special-bulletin-the-airmen-who-died-twice-part-3/, and https://coldspur.com/special-bulletin-the-airmen-who-died-twice-part-4/. The plane crashed with all on board being killed, and the tortured investigation and ensuing cover-up are a disgrace. I completed the project in time for the British Ministry of Defence to make a complete apology to the relatives of the victims before the eightieth anniversary of the dreadful events of 1944. That it will do so is not yet clear.

12. GCHQ

My main interest in GCHQ (Government Communications Headquarters: before 1945 GC&CS, the Government Code and Cypher School) has been the role it played when it collaborated, in a not completely transparent fashion, with the USA’s Army Security Agency and Armed Forces Security Agency in decrypting Soviet communications, in the project that came to be known as VENONA. (The National Security Agency was not created until 1952). This exercise led, notably, to the conviction of Klaus Fuchs, and the identification of Donald Maclean. Yet I had covered aspects of GC&CS’s mission before then: in https://coldspur.com/sonias-radio-part-ii/, in June 2016, I covered the evolving relationship between GCCS and the Radio Security Service (RSS), and three months later explored GCCS’s continuing role in intercepting and deciphering Soviet communications, as well as its rivalry with RSS (see https://coldspur.com/sonias-radio-part-3/’. I here also echoed the notion that Britain actually used the LUCY network in Switzerland to feed camouflaged ULTRA information to the Soviet Union.

My bulletin of November 2016 (https://coldspur.com/sonias-radio-part-iv/) was dedicated to the murkily reported accounts of GC&CS’s inspection of Soviet traffic, including Churchill’s renowned (but maybe fabricated) order that such work should stop after Barbarossa. I also offered a report on the ISCOT project set up under Alastair Denniston at Berkeley Street in 1942, when Eastern European Comintern traffic was successfully unravelled. The following April (https://coldspur.com/sonias-radio-part-vii/) I returned to the political challenges at GC&CS, including that of Denniston’s demise, and expanded on the role of ULTRA distribution. In August, I explored the complex rules of wireless interception, and how GC&CS tasked RSS with setting targets for interception (see https://coldspur.com/sonias-radio-part-ix/).

My research into Sonia led to the new series of ‘The Mystery of the Undetected Radios’ (see below) in 2018, with further examination of turf wars between GC&CS and RSS, in https://coldspur.com/the-mystery-of-the-undetected-radio-part-1/, and I stepped back to relate some of GC&CS’s experiences at the outset of the war, in https://coldspur.com/the-mystery-of-the-undetected-radios-part-2/ (July 2018). The next venture into GCHQ affairs was my description of Dick White’s attempt to divert accusations against Philby as coming from the CIA, in June 2019, in https://coldspur.com/dick-whites-devilish-plot/, where I laid out the contributions made by GCHQ and the American agencies in slowly decoding the cryptonyms form VENONA transcripts. And then, when re-assessing what Peter Wright claimed about the mysterious HASP messages, I returned to a full examination of VENONA, what it meant, and how HASP related to it (see https://coldspur.com/hasp-spycatchers-last-gasp/, in June 2020.

One of the items that was missing from the historiography was an authorized history of GCHQ (to embellish what West and Aldrich had written), and John Ferris’s volume with that insignia (Behind the Enigma) came out in the summer of 2020. In my year-end round up (https://coldspur.com/year-end-wrap-up-2020/), I offered a brief review of the work: its 832 pages were so disappointing that I did not waste energy on a comprehensive review. I revisited some of Peter Wright’s nonsense concerning HASP in May 2021 (https://coldspur.com/who-framed-roger-hollis/), and provided a thorough review of How Spies Think, the book by a sometime head of GCHQ, Sir David Omand, in https://coldspur.com/four-books-on-mi5/, in my August 2021 posting. It was another very mixed concoction. Lastly, I explored what had been a long-lasting conundrum to me – the rather shabby demotion of Alastair Denniston, the long-serving and largely successful head of GC&CS, and the reason that he did not receive a knighthood. This item, which covered a lot of the secondary literature concerning Denniston and GC&CS, appeared as https://coldspur.com/enigma-variations-dennistons-reward/ in February 2023.

13. Wireless Detection

Fortunately, I have compiled the bulk of my analysis of wireless-detection (RDF, or Radio Detection Finding) into an Omnibus edition, visible at https://coldspur.com/the-mystery-of-the-undetected-radios-full/. I believe, therefore, that I need not enumerate the contents of the bulletins issued between May 2018 and September 2020, where I uncover many of the myths surrounding the subject, from the ownership of RSS to the exaggerated claims about the efficiency of German detection of clandestine SOE and MI6 wireless operators, primarily in France. There were themes more expressly related to Sonia’s activities that I had covered under Sonia’s Radio, in April, June and September 2016 (see https://coldspur.com/sonias-radio-part-1/, https://coldspur.com/sonias-radio-part-ii/, and https://coldspur.com/sonias-radio-part-3/, as well as in later segments in 2017, namely https://coldspur.com/sonias-radio-part-viii/ and https://coldspur.com/sonias-radio-part-ix/.

I applied some of the lessons learned from RDF techniques, and the Double-Cross System to an inspection of how they applied to attempts to disinform the Soviets (see https://coldspur.com/double-crossing-the-soviets/, in April 2018. I next provided a major integration of multiple lines of research, including my coverage of Sonia, and her success in being undetected, the bizarre way that MI5 and the War Cabinet imagined that German agents would be able to work from the British mainland unnoticed, as well as Peter Wright’s illogical claims about HASP, in my April 2021 piece, https://coldspur.com/on-radio-active-decay/. Lastly, I presented some observations related to radio interception in my study of the doomed SOE cypher-clerk George Graham, in https://coldspur.com/the-strange-life-of-george-graham/, which appeared in January 2022, while my guest contributor, Brian Austin, supplied an article on Sonia’s wireless that he had written for a technical journal, in December 2022 (see https://coldspur.com/signal-sonyas-wireless/).

14. World War II

World War II clearly dominates much of my sphere of interest, but I have elevated a few incidents that were not exclusively intelligence-related, but which attracted my attention because I sensed that the accounts of them appeared to me to be missing something significant. An early example of such was Churchill’s reaction to the German invasion of the Soviet Union, and how it discombobulated many. In https://coldspur.com/sonias-radio-part-iv/ (November 2016) I pointed out the illogicalities of what happened when Churchill was reputed to have GC&CS stop work on collecting and decrypting Soviet traffic – something Stalin might have considered very foolish, even from a new ally. I suggested that the whole story may have been a myth. I explored further Churchill’s rather craven attitude to Stalin a year later, where I suggested that the whole notion of ‘partnering’ with such a monster (which inspired the Foreign Office for quite a while) was a disastrous policy (see https://coldspur.com/krivitsky-churchill-and-the-cold-war/), and I debunked the notion of ‘co-operation’ that some hoped would endure beyond the war. I showed how Stalin had been able to manipulate Churchill and Roosevelt, and drive a wedge between them, and I criticized Churchill’s sense of strategy.

I picked up the theme that Stalin, because of his well-placed spies, often knew more about Allied strategy than some of the prominent officers in the democracies in my coverage of the Quebec Agreement (https://coldspur.com/sonia-and-the-quebec-agreement/), explaining what it meant for the Tube Alloys project, and also highlighting the hollowness of the Atlantic Charter, which Stalin would exploit later. In my May 2019 bulletin (https://coldspur.com/the-mystery-of-the-undetected-radios-part-4/) I compared the different strategies of Britain, Germany and the Soviet Union in preparing for intelligence wars, and three months later explained the really bizarre dynamics of the double-cross operation and its success in FORTITUDE (see https://coldspur.com/the-mystery-of-the-undetected-radios-part-6/).

Yet a major new thrust appeared in September 2019, when I was prompted by a generally well-received, but in my opinion rather naïve book On Appeasement, by Tim Bouverie, to make the claim that the West’s appeasement of Stalin was as bad as that by Chamberlain & co. of Hitler (of which I made a detailed retrospective assessment). In this piece, at https://coldspur.com/on-appeasement/, I pointed out how hollow and shabby were Bouverie’s complaints that Britain and the USA failed to create enduring ‘alliances’ with the Soviet Union. The next month (after a long personal digression, which the reader should perhaps bypass), I took a fresh look at the geographical implications of the Soviet-Nazi Pact, in the belief that the factors of buffer states, and that of offensive and defensive barriers, had been sadly misrepresented in the histories. Here, in https://coldspur.com/border-crossings-coldspur-stalin/, as I examined Maisky’s Diaries, and Gabriel Gorodetsky’s presentation of the Letters between Churchill and Stalin, I even inserted maps of the Stalin and Molotov Lines, to show what I meant.

Another startling insight came to me soon afterwards, when I read Michael Howard’s memoir (Captain Professor), being puzzled by the fact that an illustrious intelligence officer and historian had apparently become confused about military strategy in Italy in 1943 and 1944 (see https://coldspur.com/war-in-1944-howards-folly/, from February 2020). Here I noted that Howard made invidious comparisons of the fate of the Italian resistance with that of the Poles at the same time, in the late summer of 1944. I thus examined closely events such as the Warsaw Uprising and the Monte Sole Massacre, severely criticized Howard’s account of what happened, and drew some strong lessons about the mismanagement of expectations by the Chiefs of Staff. I next returned to the perennial problem of misreading Stalin in May 2020 (https://coldspur.com/late-spring-round-up/), quoting some misguided topical opinion-writer, as well as Tokayev’s memoir from 1951, Stalin Means War.

In November 2020, I took a diversionary step into new territory, exploring the circumstances behind MI5’s Camp020R at Huntercombe (see https://coldspur.com/camp-020r-at-huntercombe/), but still had two major thrusts to make. The first was the PROSPER disaster, and in a series of posts, I examine closely the tribulations of Churchill and the Chiefs of Staff in trying to establish a strategy for re-entering Europe that would be late enough to ensure success without too severely upsetting Stalin (who had been demanding a ‘Second Front’ ever since 1941). The whole charivari can be seen in a series of reports from 2021 and early 2022: https://coldspur.com/claude-danseys-mischief/, https://coldspur.com/special-bulletin-lets-twist-again/, https://coldspur.com/the-prosper-disaster/, https://coldspur.com/dericourts-double-act/, https://coldspur.com/all-quiet-on-the-second-front/, https://coldspur.com/bridgehead-revisited-three-months-in-1943/, and https://coldspur.com/feints-and-deception-two-more-months-in-1943/. (I have recently compiled these into an Omnibus edition, at https://coldspur.com/the-fall-of-prosper-omnibus-edition/.) They show that there is strong evidence that Churchill sacrificed PROSPER and his network in order to mislead the Germans about an imminent invasion, and to appease Stalin.

Lastly, I must include here another extraordinary tale, that of ‘The Airmen Who Died Twice’. I introduced this topic in June 2022 (see https://coldspur.com/special-bulletin-the-airmen-who-died-twice/), and provide the whole gruesome story of how an ill-conceived plan to infiltrate Soviet agents into Norway on an RAF Lancaster in September 1944 turned out in disaster. All eight chapters of the saga were published in four installments earlier this year, at https://coldspur.com/special-bulletin-the-airmen-who-died-twice-part-1/, https://coldspur.com/special-bulletin-the-airmen-who-died-twice-part-2/, https://coldspur.com/special-bulletin-the-airmen-who-died-twice-part-3/, and

https://coldspur.com/special-bulletin-the-airmen-who-died-twice-part-4/. I timed this publication in order to provide ample time for the British Ministry of Defence to offer, before the eightieth anniversary of the crash in September 2024, its apologies to relatives of the British airmen needlessly killed.

15. Tradecraft

Misdefending the Realm highlighted one critical dimension to tradecraft: the NKVD’s scheme to infiltrate British institutions through illegals and deep recruitment well away from the Communist Party, and the weak and unimaginative response to Krivitsky’s hints of such a scheme. Over the years I have commented on other aspects of espionage and counter-intelligence.

An early example of disinformation, for example (or perhaps, more accurately, correct information presented clandestinely) was the scheme by MI6 to pass ULTRA decrypts to the Soviet ally via the Rote Drei in Switzerland, in a way that would not jeopardize the source. I wrote about this in https://coldspur.com/sonias-radio-part-5/ and https://coldspur.com/sonias-radio-part-vii/, in January and April 2017. Of course, this stratagem rebounded ungracefully, as the Soviets were receiving real ULTRA information from their network of spies, and distrust of their ally thus increased. The reverse of this technique is the double-cross – the feeding of disinformation through the enemy’s own channels, which received its apogee in the famed XX Operation of WWII, where the Abwehr was reputedly hoodwinked by false information concerning the location of re-entry to Europe by Allied forces.

Since much was being made of attempts to repeat this success with Soviet agents, I took pains to develop structures comparing and assessing the espionage strategies and successes (or failures) of Great Britain, Germany and the Soviet Union in World War II, in https://coldspur.com/double-crossing-the-soviets/, dated April 2018, where I also developed a schema for categorizing moles, agents and double-agents, according to their original recruitment and motivations. My conclusion was that it was nonsensical to believe that you could control what a known agent would tell his or her masters unless you had exclusive control over the communication system used (as happened with the XX Operation). Thus claims made (by such as Michael Howard) that Blunt was used as a ‘double-agent’ were absurd.

My research then led me on to a deeper study of the Double-Cross Operation itself, in the epic ‘Mystery of the Undetected Radios’ (see the Omnibus https://coldspur.com/the-mystery-of-the-undetected-radios-full/, and, for a special examination, https://coldspur.com/the-mystery-of-the-undetected-radios-part-8/, from September 2020). After a long study of the processes and decisions made, I concluded that there was a massive amount of self-delusion in the British pretence that agents would be able to transmit for such long periods in densely populated England, only matched by the (partial) stupidity of the Abwehr in accepting the same premise. There was obviously a book to be written on this topic, but Christopher Andrew’s Secret World , which I reviewed in November 2018 (see https://coldspur.com/four-more-books-on-espionage/), was a disappointment.

The reality was that MI6, in the form of Claude Dansey, was indeed trying to suborn known Soviet agents to work for it, and in April 2020, in https://coldspur.com/special-bulletin-the-letter-from-geneva/, I showed how Ursula and Len Beurton were introduced into this naïve scheme, which I echo in the epic chapters about Sonia, visible again in the presumably now familiar Omnibus edition of Sonia’s Radio (see https://coldspur.com/sonias-radio/). Another example of failed tradecraft was to pretend that identified spies did not matter, and they should simply be shuffled away instead of being publicly prosecuted: I explored this phenomenon in August 2020, in https://coldspur.com/liverpool-university-home-for-distressed-spies/. It re-occurred with Dansey’s attempts to use the traitor Déricourt, in June 2021 (see https://coldspur.com/claude-danseys-mischief/, and successive posts on PROSPER), as well as in the murky dealings of the TWIST Committee, a shadow operation to the XX endeavour (see https://coldspur.com/special-bulletin-lets-twist-again/) .

I have returned to these themes occasionally, and close out by identifying some key chapters. The review of David Omand’s How Spies Think (from https://coldspur.com/four-books-on-mi5/); I returned to double-agents in my 2021 Year-end Round-up, at https://coldspur.com/2021-year-end-roundup/; I explained the dangerous practice of using officers with a Russian background against the Soviet Union, as their histories would be very obvious to the NKVD and KGB, and thus liable to be exposed to corruption (see https://coldspur.com/the-strange-life-of-george-graham/ in January 2022 and https://coldspur.com/gibbys-spy/ from October 2022). I had also re-inspected Peter Wright’s dubious stories about Soviet double agents in May 2022, at https://coldspur.com/peter-wrights-agents-double-agents/.

Finally, I covered the profile of successful intelligence officers in https://coldspur.com/summer-2023-round-up/, in August 2023, while my recent research on Kim Philby, starting with https://coldspur.com/kim-philby-always-working-for-sis/ in April 2023, show how absurd it is ever to trust anyone who has made a commitment to the Kremlin. This was echoed in my analysis of Peter Smolka, in January and February of this year – see https://coldspur.com/peter-smolka-background-to-1934/ and https://coldspur.com/at-last-the-1948-show-smolka-the-third-man/, and I also had to issue a reminder about the correct use of ‘double agent’ and ‘triple agent’; in my review of Jesse Fink’s Eagle in the Mirror, an assessment, incidentally, that was praised by Nigel West. That appeared in https://coldspur.com/four-spy-books/, in October 2023, where I also issued a corrective to Mark Hollingworth’s deployment of the term ‘agents of influence’.

16. MI5

I focus here on aspects of MI5’s a) organization, and b) mission and leadership. The literature on MI5’s evolving organization is very paltry: Andrew’s authorized history shows no interest in the details; Curry’s internal history is more useful, but it stops in 1944; Nigel West’s coverage is skimpy and vague. Yet there is much to be gleaned from various archives, and my project is incomplete.

I explored the mis-steps that MI5 undertook over wireless interception and the failure to absorb MI8c, the snubbing of Colonel Simpson, the disorder that resulted from the overlaying of the Security Executive, and the creation of Section W, under the controversial Malcolm Frost, in two episodes of Sonia’s Radio’, in https://coldspur.com/sonias-radio-part-1/ and https://coldspur.com/sonias-radio-part-3/, from 2016, and further developments can be seen in later episodes of this saga. I reprised and extended this analysis in May 2018, in https://coldspur.com/the-mystery-of-the-undetected-radio-part-1/, and following bulletins in that series. My further studies of WWII counter-espionage caused me to pause and take stock, out of confusion, and I then presented a detailed analysis of MI5’s structure in a Special Bulletin of November 2018, at https://coldspur.com/special-bulletin-b2b-or-not-b2b/, which shows how flat and unmanageable MI5 was for most of that period. (This piece was well-received, and I think remains a significant contribution.)

Chronologically, my next major piece was re-assessment of Guy Liddell, who, I felt, had been rather generously treated by Nigel West, as can be seen in https://coldspur.com/guy-liddell-a-re-assessment/, from March 2019. Here I also explained how Dick White out-manipulated his colleague for the top job when Sillitoe retired. In June of that year, I introduced the scheming by Dick White to divert accusations against Philby to the CIA, visible at https://coldspur.com/dick-whites-devilish-plot/, and, in January 2020 I returned with fresh insights into MI5’s organizational struggles with RSS, and the arrival of the valuable Sclater, at https://coldspur.com/the-mystery-of-the-undetected-radios-part-vii/. November 2020 showed a change of pace, when I reviewed the history of MI5’s Camp020R, at Huntercombe (see https://coldspur.com/camp-020r-at-huntercombe/.

Soon I was exploring the frequently misrepresented role of Roger Hollis’s F Division, and presented its evolution in https://coldspur.com/who-framed-roger-hollis/, in May 2021. Further observations on MI5 after the war were prompted by my reviews of three books on MI5 in August. These included the somewhat jaundiced but rich offering by Ewing, Mahoney and Moretta, which had the positive attribute of carrying a useful (but incomplete) guide to MI5 organization after the war – a topic I vow to return to when I have studied the relevant files on my desktop. A fresh area of research opened up thereafter, when I became involved with Patrick Marnham, and his War in the Shadows, and my investigations into how the traitor Déricourt had been vetted led me to another detailed examination of MI5’s structure (see https://coldspur.com/dericourts-double-act/, from November 2021), where I concluded that MI5’s multiple discrete sections kept tripping over each other, and led to an inevitable lack of effectiveness.

In May 2022, I returned to MI5’s assumed problems with ‘double-agent’ operations that failed, and to the ‘Watchers’ organization, when I analyzed Nigel West’s book on molehunts, and Guy Liddell’s role (see https://coldspur.com/peter-wrights-agents-double-agents/). And I revisited the bizarre relationships between various MI5 sections trying to track various suspicious aliens in https://coldspur.com/litzi-philby-under-the-covers/, from March 2023, and in https://coldspur.com/kim-philby-always-working-for-sis/, the following month. My renewed interest in Philby led me to back to his role in the events of 1951, and I gave another breakdown of Sillitoe’s and White’s flawed leadership of MI5 at the time (with Liddell already being pushed out of the mainstream) in https://coldspur.com/kim-philby-in-1951-alarms-and-diversions/, dated May 2023. In turn, this line of research encouraged me to reflect on the desired skills of intelligence officers, and I endorsed the contribution that J. L. Austin had made during the war, openly acknowledged by such American heavyweights as Bedell-Smith (see https://coldspur.com/summer-2023-round-up/).

Finally, I provided a detailed explanation of the evolving counter-espionage organization of MI5, from Petrie until 1952, in https://coldspur.com/life-with-the-honigmanns/, from September 2023. I believe that this is a unique contribution, and that it is very important for understanding the dysfunction that perpetually plagued MI5 in trying to come to grips with a vast array of potentially hostile entities. I added to this in February 2024, where I highlighted the bizarre way in which Peter Smolka was observed (or ignored) by MI5 sections in https://coldspur.com/peter-smolka-background-to-1934/. I also expanded on the dishonourable way in which MI5’s efforts in handling the after-effects of the Burgess-Maclean abscondences were executed when I studied more closely the deceptions of Dick White, a report that appeared as https://coldspur.com/dick-whites-tangled-web/, which I published last month.

17. MI6

Archival information on MI6 is scarce, since the service has issued no material, and readers are thus reliant on what Keith Jeffery wrote, biographies and histories by such as Cave-Brown and Dorril, the occasional items that appear in correspondence between MI5 and its sister service, and the various memoirs and interviews that have percolated down from SIS officers. Yet MI6’s role and importance are indisputably significant, and I have frequently tried to read between the lines in an attempt to offer a more credible hypothesis of what actually happened.

Of course the whole saga of Sonia represents a chapter, not publicly recognized, of MI6’s dismal attempt to take her under its wing, and I merely mention the Omnibus edition again here (https://coldspur.com/sonias-radio/), since so much what MI6 did is covered by those segments, as well as those on GCHQ, and, of course, Kim Philby. I do, however, draw attention to the evidence that Alexander Foote was employed by MI6, as displayed in https://coldspur.com/sonias-radio-part-vi/, from February 2017, and I reprised Claude Dansey’s schemes in https://coldspur.com/double-crossing-the-soviets/, dated April 2018. MI6’s role was picked up again in my coverage of the Undetected Radios, since RSS’s transfer to MI6 was an event of vital political significance, and I highlight especially https://coldspur.com/the-mystery-of-the-undetected-radios-part-2/ (July 2018), and I attempted to liven up the story by describing an imagined conversation between Gambier-Parry and Menzies over the adoption and proposed leadership of RSS in January 2020, in https://coldspur.com/the-mystery-of-the-undetected-radios-part-vii/.

July 2020 featured a major new piece on MI6’s attempt to control Sonia (https://coldspur.com/sonia-mi6s-hidden-hand/), and March and May 2021 saw some description of the role of Menzies and MI6 in the Gouzenko/ELLI story, at https://coldspur.com/on-philby-gouzenko-and-elli/ and https://coldspur.com/on-philby-gouzenko-and-elli/. In August, I covered the secret TWIST committee, operated with MI6’s remote guidance (see https://coldspur.com/special-bulletin-lets-twist-again/), and MI6 features largely in the PROSPER story, to which I simply refer to the respective Omnibus edition (https://coldspur.com/the-fall-of-prosper-omnibus-edition/). The last major story concerning MI6 was the disastrous recruitment of George Graham a cipher-clerk to George Hill, ostensibly as a SOE unit, but affecting MI6’s operations in the Soviet Union as well, which can be read at https://coldspur.com/the-strange-life-of-george-graham/, dated January 2022.

Finally, a flourish of pieces in the past couple of years has identified alarming anecdotes about MI6’s security and policy. I debunked the notion that MI6 had valuable spies within the Kremlin, as well as its dubious policy of flaunting officers with Russian backgrounds, in https://coldspur.com/gibbys-spy/ (October 2022), with a follow-up two months later, at https://coldspur.com/2022-year-end-round-up/. I took a breather to recognize the death of Geoffrey Elliott (the only MI6 officer that I have knowingly been in contact with) in that same year-end bulletin, and my 2023 campaign involving Philby obviously expresses a fresh new set of accusations about the duplicity and foolishness of MI6 in defending him, visible at the Omnibus edition (https://coldspur.com/kim-philby-a-re-assessment/). This theme was expanded in my writing about Peter Smolka earlier this year (see https://coldspur.com/peter-smolka-background-to-1934/ and https://coldspur.com/at-last-the-1948-show-smolka-the-third-man/). Lastly, I should mention the controversy over Charles ‘Dick’ Ellis, the shadowy MI6 officer who had been accused of working for the Soviets. In https://coldspur.com/four-spy-books/, from October 2023, I offered a detailed review of Jesse Fink’s rather shrill but very insightful biography of him, The Eagle in the Mirror, and this is a story to which I shall be returning before very long.

18. The FBI and the CIA

While my research has concentrated on the British intelligence services, the American equivalents have frequently appeared, largely because of the affairs of Walter Krivitsky, found dead in a Washington hotel, and the fact that three of the Cambridge Five were working in the United States at the same time, in 1950 and early 1951, and also because of the transatlantic considerations of the 1945 defection of Igor Gouzenko, in Canada. My coverage has, admittedly, been a bit choppy.

An early foray into CIA exercises was made in April 2018, when I investigated the claim that the CIA had tried to exploit Basil Mann as a ‘double agent’ (https://coldspur.com/double-crossing-the-soviets/), which I interpreted as a rather forlorn aspiration by first the OSS, and then its successor organization, the CIA, to apply the lessons learned by the British in the wartime XX Operation against the Germans to a fresh initiative against the Soviets, thereafter taken up by Norman Pearson. I next turned to reviewing two books about Soviet spies in the United States, Duncan Lee and Stanislav Shumovsky, in August of that year, in https://coldspur.com/four-books-on-espionage/. I introduced J. Edgar Hoover, and his frustrations over Philby’s remaining unpunished, in April 2019, in https://coldspur.com/the-importance-of-chronology-with-special-reference-to-liddell-philby/, and in June 2019, undertook a major investigation into the activities of the FBI, the CIA, as well as the AFSA (the Armed Forces Security Agency), the last body cooperating very closely with GCHQ over the VENONA decrypts, culminating in the breakthroughs in early 1951 (see https://coldspur.com/dick-whites-devilish-plot/). Two months later, I switched to the activities in wartime France of the OSS, focusing particularly on Virginia Hall, in https://coldspur.com/the-mystery-of-the-undetected-radios-part-6/.

The USA came striding back in my coverage of the Gouzenko-ELLI business in March 2021, which involved some delicate negotiations with the FBI (see https://coldspur.com/on-philby-gouzenko-and-elli/). All these events provoked an enduring interest from the Americans in the identity if ELLI, which would turn out to be a lasting embarrassment for MI5 and MI6. I expressed some disappointment in Justus Rosenberg’s account of OSS resistance in France in my review of his book The Art of Resistance, issued in July 2022 in https://coldspur.com/summer-2022-round-up/, and in the same bulletin, while, questioning some of the assertions made in Sonia Purnell’s biography of Virginia Hall, A Woman of No Importance, found the work thorough and well-written, though unnecessarily hagiographic.

The interaction with between MI5 (primarily) and the FBI and the CIA was an inevitable aspect of my return to Kim Philby and the events of 1951, in my May 2023 report, https://coldspur.com/kim-philby-in-1951-alarms-and-diversions/, and in August I reviewed a rather plodding biography of Edgar Hoover by Beverley Gage, which I thought was far too generous to the very controversial but long-lasting FBI chief (see https://coldspur.com/summer-2023-round-up/). Finally, I wielded another flourish on the strange behaviour of Robert Lamphere of the FBI, and his relationship with the CIA, when I explored in more detail the deceptions and inconsistencies in Dick White’s attempt to hoodwink both the CIA and his own allies in MI5 and government during the supposed investigation into the Burgess-Maclean disappearances. This item was published in https://coldspur.com/dick-whites-tangled-web/, in March of this year.

1. Methodology

When I started writing my thesis, my supervisor encouraged me to include what methodology I was applying to the study of my material. I was a bit taken aback at first: surely every historian applied the same methodological rules? Nevertheless, I complied, and what I composed appeared (in abbreviated form) in the text of Misdefending the Realm. Its key elements were: i) a strong discipline of chronological and geographical analysis; ii) a rigorous cross-checking of archival sources and personal memoirs, based on an implicit mistrust of their reliability; iii) vertical and horizontal integration (i.e. setting an accurate context with military and social events) iv) an attempt to divine motivations from participants, in the light of their situation, knowledge, and probable ambitions; and v) the treatment of controversial episodes in intelligence history as plausible crimes to be investigated. The full explanation can be seen at https://coldspur.com/reviews/the-chapter-on-methodology/.

Yet, as I read various works on intelligence, I learned that such techniques were far from being a standard approach, and that, indeed, the ‘authorized’ historians, who certainly should have known better, were among the worst offenders. In May 2017, in https://coldspur.com/officially-unreliable/, I took to task those professionals – Gowing, Hinsley, Jeffery, but especially Christopher Andrew – who had allowed themselves to be shackled, provided sloppy and often useless references, and indiscriminately cited sources (such as Philby’s memoir, or Peter Wright’s Spycatcher) that should have been approached very warily. I provided a number of recommendations for how such work should be undertaken, which presumably fell on deaf ears (although I did get a very encouraging response from one notable historian).

My disappointment was echoed when I reflected on the overall lack of curiosity in the next tier of qualified historians, as well, of course, as the potboiler/journalists, in the sordid aspects of the Sonia affair, and lamented that fact in https://coldspur.com/sonias-radio-envoi/, which appeared in September 2017. Chapman Pincher and Peter Wright have a tremendous amount to answer for, but their works have had a deleterious influence on public opinion, their paradoxes, contradictions, and outright fabrications not being inspected or tested properly. This phenomenon caused me to write about conspiracy theories a year later, in https://coldspur.com/confessions-of-a-conspiracy-theorist/. That previous August, I had criticized Christpoher Davenport-Hines for criticizing the media, when the intelligence services had been so reclusive, and here I defended my role as a ’conspiracy theorist’, a necessary role at times, but one which Christopher Andrew has conspicuously derided.

Over time, I have criticized several other authors of books on intelligence – most notably, Ben Macintyre – for their casual treatment of the facts, but I have also regretted the policy of the intelligence services to leak stories to friendly writers as a way of bolstering their reputation, or of countering a harmful rumour. My review of Andrew’s Secret World in https://coldspur.com/four-more-books-on-espionage/, from November 2018 was also a response of frustration at the ability of experts to pontificate so vaporously. And I reinforced my emphasis on Chronology in April 2019, showing excerpts from my detailed register of events, which, including the source used, now tallies exactly 400 pages. That bulletin, https://coldspur.com/the-importance-of-chronology-with-special-reference-to-liddell-philby/, also described my perspective on how government institutions set out to control the narrative of their often dishonourable exploits.

I returned to Andrew and his scorn for conspiracy theorists when I discussed Agent Jack in November 2019, in a piece available at https://coldspur.com/a-thanksgiving-round-up/. And thereon, the topic has lain rather silent. In August 2023, I did present some further thoughts on the value of creating plausible hypotheses when studying paradoxical events, and the necessity for admitting previous mistakes, or false conclusions during that exploratory process (see https://coldspur.com/summer-2023-round-up/). That is something that many find a very difficult task – especially if they have committed such previous opinions to published material. As I stated, the final version of the history of an event is never written. And, as a final reminder of the occasional folly of professional historians, and their all too frequent arrogance and self-esteem, I refer to my analysis of the anonymous (for now) self-assessed expert on Smolka, whose antics I described last month, in https://coldspur.com/dick-whites-tangled-web/.

20. Archives

While I have also visited The Bodleian Library, and the archives of Balliol College, Oxford, and Churchill College, Cambridge, my research has relied almost exclusively on material examined at the National Archives at Kew, or from a steady stream of photographs that I commission from my researcher in London. I have also benefited from information presented on-line by the FBI and the CIA, as well as a few select items provided by helpful amateurs around the world. All such material is analyzed alongside the copious notes I have made from intelligence books that I own or have read.

One phenomenon that irks me the most has been the practice of authorized historians (most notably Christopher Andrew) deploying references (without any individual identification) to ‘Security Service Archives’ when only he or his research assistants have been allowed to examine. Moreover, he appears to have maintained no system whereby such references could be checked if such files were ever opened. I disparaged this practice in https://coldspur.com/officially-unreliable/, in May 2017. Of course, I cannot blame Kew for this, and overall, I believe that the National Archives do a very creditable job, even though I am sometimes unsure of their methods. I offer some examples.

In https://coldspur.com/the-mysterious-affair-at-peierls-part-2/, from March 2020, I drew attention to the mysterious way in which files were sometimes withdrawn or retained, sometimes temporarily, sometimes permanently, but rarely with any proper explanation offered. (This may well be at the behest of the relevant government department, with Kew having no say in the matter.) Two months later, in https://coldspur.com/late-spring-round-up/, I listed some further examples where important material had been withdrawn while some review went on. I also reported on the provocative findings of Mike Rossiter (who had written a biography of Fuchs) concerning records on the physicist that had been withdrawn from the National Archives (see https://coldspur.com/double-crossing-the-soviets/). Yet Kew is tantalizingly open on some material. I find it odd that it will list multiple items, obviously of vast interest, but then indicate that (for example) the material has been retained by the office responsible until some year long in the future. Why advertise the items’ existence at all?

That, naturally, leads to Freedom of Information Requests (FOIs), and I described there what my research colleagues had discovered about that activity, while decrying the secrecy of governments wanting to hold on to material so many decades after the events they relate to. It is worth reporting that I was eventually successful in having such a Request satisfied, as I recorded in August 2023 (https://coldspur.com/summer-2023-round-up/). Here can be seen the bizarre but eventually satisfactory exchange of messages between me and the Quality Manager at Kew, which resulted in the release of a Home Office file on Georg Honigmann. The fact that someone had seen fit to retain it was a clue in itself, since the file looked superficially harmless.

One last aspect to be described is my project to ascertain, from incidental information presented in released files, a lot of information about persons whose files have not been released_._ I describedthis process in https://coldspur.com/a-wintry-miscellany/, written in December 2023 under ‘Personal Files at Kew’. By simply registering handwritten or typed references to third-parties in released PFs, I have started to maintain a spreadsheet of overt identities of persons who had at some stage come under suspicion by MI5, but whose records were never released (or were perhaps destroyed). Such included what must be a notorious file on Kim Philby, created in about 1933, clearly identifiable from hand-written notes. And I wrote about the numerous files on Guy Burgess, for instance, with some outrageously late release dates, which must be a topic for a future coldspur bulletin.

* * * * * * * * * *

This has been an exhausting project, and not nearly as much fun as my typical monthly exercise. I hope readers find it useful, and I shall be pleased to revise it should anyone identify segments that escaped my occasionally negligent attention.

(Latest Commonplace entries can be viewed here.)

April 15, 2024 · 7:22 am

Special Bulletin: ‘The Airmen Who Died Twice’ – Part 4

Peder Furubotn

[I present the final segment in my series ‘The Airmen Who Died Twice’, offering a bold but confident hypothesis concerning Stalin’s objectives for the mission of sending agents to Norway disguised as British RAF officers. I have added a page containing the whole report in PDF format at ‘Airmen Who Died Twice’ (PDF), which may make the experience easier. This process is something of an experiment for me. I hope to improve the presentation soon. Feedback and tips appreciated!]

Chapter 7: Resistance in Norway

The overwhelming questions to be answered regarding the Soviet Union’s ability to stow two agents on a British plane, dressed in RAF uniforms, to parachute into southern Norway in September 1944 are: What possible objective could such a mission have had? And why would the RAF agree to such a foolhardy and potentially embarrassing adventure? The assumption must be that, for the mission to be successful, the agents, probably incapable of speaking fluent and unaccented English, would have been deemed capable of carrying out the impersonation of legitimate British officers, and thus of gaining access to the circle of a communist leader in whom Joseph Stalin had a particular interest. His name was Peder Furubotn, and he had for some time been incurring Stalin’s acute displeasure. Yet, if anything went wrong – or, equally astounding, even if the project were successful – the agents’ costume would immediately have implicated the RAF, with highly embarrassing implications.

In the analysis of these conundrums, it is useful to recapitulate the role of Norway in the war, its occupation by German forces, the collaboration or competition between various sabotage organizations and the nation’s governments at home and in exile, and the tenuous and contradictory relationship it held with the Soviet Union, a nominal ally. Norway was separated from Stalin’s fortress only by a thin section of the Finnish Petsamo region, an area rich in minerals, however, and thus bearing strategic importance.

The country had been ill-equipped to resist the German invasion of April 9, 1940. Hitler had designs on Norway’s natural resources, including its hydro-electric power, but he also needed to control the flow of iron-ore from neutral Sweden across the natural land-route. Great Britain and France had been aware of the threat, and they had prepared to send an Expeditionary Force to gain control of the valuable port of Narvik. This was conceived during the war between Finland and the Soviet Union, which started in September 1939. At that time, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union were signatories to a joint non-aggression pact, and control of Finland had been granted to Stalin for purposes of national self-defence. Any communist-inspired resistance movements against the Germans were forbidden – until, of course, the Barbarossa invasion of Russia in June 1941 changed all the rules.

Britain in fact had had to beat a hasty retreat, assisting with the escape of the Norwegian royal family to London to create a government-in-exile in June 1940. It had overestimated the power of its own navy and misread the intentions of the Wehrmacht. Thus Norway fell into the category of occupied territory, and a cowed population had to decide what form resistance to the German invaders should take. In fact, the Nazis were overall more indulgent with the Norwegians than they were with other conquered nations: they regarded the Nordic race as Aryan brothers, and hoped to integrate the populace into the New Order when the war was won. That favouritism, however, did not extend to mercy when violence was exacted against their police and military forces, with some harsh reprisals enacted, and this tension played a major role in the following years.

Routes of Arctic Convoys

Soon after Barbarossa, however, Norway took on fresh significance when Churchill and Roosevelt resolved, in August 1941, to assist the Soviet Union by sending supplies through the Arctic convoy system. This required ships to navigate the dangerous Norwegian and Barents seas to reach, primarily, the ports of Murmansk and Archangel, skirting the northern coasts of Norway, and thus becoming potential prey to German craft berthed in Norwegian ports and inlets, such as the battleship Tirpitz. The convoys continued (with some interruptions) until the end of the war. Stalin kept a close eye on Norway, and he evolved his strategy as the war progressed.

The accounts of resistance in Norway present a contradictory picture: some display ignorance, others practice concealment, and others distort (for political reasons). It is consequently often difficult to pin down the details of events – both their motivations and their outcomes. It seems to me that both London (in the guise of the government-in-exile and SOE) and Moscow (the NKGB) believed that they were controlling the strings, when in fact the agencies on the ground often pursued unlikely alliances to further their goals. I here try to concentrate on the less controversial facts, identifying the main motifs in the plotline.

The British Special Operations Executive trained and prepared a vigorous Norwegian section to carry out sabotage within Norway, which became more intense when the British suspected the Nazis of creating ‘heavy water’ as an important part of the project to build an atomic bomb. Yet fierce reprisals in response to SOE raids alarmed the major resistance organization in place, Milorg, and it resolved instead on a more passive approach, and to focus on preparation to assist invading forces for the time when the Nazis began to lose the war. Milorg was led by a lawyer, Jens Hauge, an enigmatic and controversial figure, who had sought a medical discharge from military service in 1939. He joined in early 1942. The tensions between SOE and Milorg were then resolved by the creation of the Anglo-Norwegian Collaboration Committee in the spring of 1942, and SOE’s independent course was officially halted by October of that year. Yet Milorg did not halt its own sabotage activities, and it pursued a course of assassinations of known traitors.

There was, however, another resistance group, Osvald, which evolved out of the pre-war antifascist Wollweber League, and was led by the more aggressive Asbjorn Sunde. He invoked the assistance of the Communist Party (now strictly underground), and established training centres around the country. Sunde was a tougher character, a sailor who had learned sabotage and assassination in the Spanish Civil War fighting with the Communists for the Republican movement against Franco’s Nationalists, and he was a loyal Stalinist. Thus a pattern familiar elsewhere in occupied Europe emerged: certain resistance groups were set on restoring the pre-war political configuration (such as SOE collaborating with the royalist/social democratic government-in-exile), while others were being directed by Moscow in preparation for a post-war communist takeover. Sunde was ordered to minimize sabotage activity, and to concentrate instead on providing intelligence to his NKGB bosses. Yet the relationships appear to have been very complex: the government-in-exile sometimes gave directions to the Stalinist Osvald group on sabotage projects, and it appears that even Milorg collaborated with it, engaging Sunde’s hitmen to carry out its targeted assassinations.

Added to this recipe was the afore-mentioned Peder Furubotn, leader of the Communist Party in Norway. Furubotn’s organizational skills and connections allowed him to sponsor resistance groups in Oslo, Bergen, and Hallingdal. He was also a controversial figure, known for his independence of thought: he was an outlier, a provincial, with his power-base in Bergen away from the capital centre of Oslo. But he was also a dedicated patriot who desired to bring a domestic Communist regime to Norway after the war through democratic processes, not under the thrall of the Soviet Union (rather like an unauthoritarian Tito). He had in fact spent the years 1930-1938 in Moscow, an experience that included the witnessing of the Great Purge and the execution of some of his friends, which assuredly made him deviate from the solid Stalinist line he had taken up in the 1920s.

Professor Titlestad

According to his biographer, Professor Torgrim Titlestad, who has uniquely been able to inspect Russian archives, Furubotn had long been under the threat of execution, since in Moscow he had aligned himself closely with Bukharin, the executed ‘traitor’, and had refused to declare his public support for the outcome of the show-trials in 1938. Before Barbarossa, the Norwegian Communist party had tried to have Furubotn, who had from Bergen independently undertaken resistance in that period, removed from the Party, but the tables were turned when the Soviet Union became an enemy of the Nazi occupiers. At the time most other important Norwegian communists had either been killed, were in the hands of the Germans, or were refugees in Sweden, and Furubotn was elected General Secretary at the end of 1941. This was in defiance of Stalin’s orders of 1938 (when Furubotn was banished back to Norway from Moscow), that he should hold no senior position in the Party.

Furubotn was able to work independently for many years. He was a survivor. In spite of frequent unsuccessful attempts to bring him in line, during the war Moscow lacked local resources or the military reach to change his behaviour, or to remove him from office. At first glance, the need to have him out of the picture should have appeared less urgent as the war progressed, since Norway (apart from the strategic Petsamo region) did not feature strongly in Stalin’s plans for territorial control of Europe. It was not a conventional ‘buffer state’, hardly a threat to his ambitions, and Stalin accepted that it was part of the ‘western’ sphere of influence. The Soviet dictator did not want to waste resources in trying to control it, although he supported British-American desires to prevent valuable troops from being transferred from Norway to the battle zones in Germany, and he did collaborate with the British and Americans in the plan to oust the Nazis from the Finnmark (the North-east Norwegian territory abutting the Soviet Union).

Sunde’s Osvald group – perhaps surprisingly, given Sunde’s Stalinist aims – gained his funds primarily from the government-in-exile in London, supplemented occasionally by Moscow (through the agency of the Soviet legation in Stockholm, as the VENONA transcripts show). Yet Sunde looked to his rival, Furubotn, for funds, too. In September 1942 he agreed to supply guards at Furubotn’s central camp of the Norwegian Communist Party (NKP) in Hemsedal, in exchange for a continuing supply of money and materiel from the NKP leader. Furubotn had tried to make Sunde sabotage-leader for the NKP, but on the condition that he break his ties with Moscow – something Sunde refused to do, which strained the relationship, and led to severe friction by the end of 1943. Sunde established a training centre in Rukkekdalen in the winter of 1942, and recruited a network of saboteurs in the Torpo-Gol and Nesbyen areas, in the Hallingdal valley. This was the same area used by Milorg to establish its ‘Elg’ base in the early summer of 1944.

Reichskommissar Terboven

Yet the decreasing effectiveness of sabotage, and the costs of maintaining the subversive units, prompted a change of plan. By February 1944, Milorg, alongside the Foreign Office, SOE, and the OSS, had openly disparaged the Communist sabotage efforts, and had applied pressure on Osvald to reduce its aid for Furubotn. The feud between Sunde and Furubotn (which had sharpened when Furubotn had threatened to kill Sunde if he followed through on a plan to assassinate the Nazi Commissar Terboven) intensified. A month later, Sunde did indeed withdraw protection for Furubotn and his network, and he turned his attention to Norwegian exile groups in Sweden. The British increased their operations in support of eventually ousting the Germans: Operation FIRECREST was launched by sea in April 1944, a four-man team landing and then starting to give weapons training. In May, Moscow, through Pavel Sudoplatov (of Special Tasks), ordered Sunde to wind up his organization, and refrain from any further sabotage, Stalin explicitly admitting that the British were in charge in southern Norway, and that the theatre was too far away from Moscow for it to exert any influence. In June, however, Sunde’s network, including Furubotn’s group, came under fresh attack from the Gestapo and the Wehrmacht in Operation ALMENRAUSCH.

Furubotn did not respond well to these moves, and he was increasingly isolated: he had enemies in Hauge and Sunde already, but now, with his autonomous subversion efforts, became an irritant to the British to compound the enmity to him maintained by Stalin. That may have been a fresh pretext for Stalin to want to have him eliminated – as a proven ‘Trotskyist’ defying the policy of the vozhd – and a move against him could represent a useful gesture to his allies. Furubotn had incurred Stalin’s anger by defying his order to stay out of the Party organization when he had returned to Norway, by executing subversive campaigns during the period of the Nazi-Soviet pact (which he had openly criticized), by refusing orders to move to Sweden (where he feared he might be killed), by expressing support for the Norwegian government-in-exile in London, for attempting to wean Sunde away from the NKGB, and for openly publishing anti-Stalinist tracts in the summer of 1944. Others had been killed for less, and Furubotn believed that attempts would be made on his life on his home territory. Professor Titlestad has suggested that Moscow may have recommended to Sunde that he remove his security details from Furubuton’s hideout, thus perhaps allowing the Gestapo to infiltrate the NKP, and to take on the task of eliminating Furubotn. Yet Furubotn had escaped the ALMENRAUSCH assault, despite Sunde’s apparent betrayal, and may thereby have come afresh in Stalin’s sights.

The circumstances of the ALMENRAUSCH operation are puzzling. If a sizeable force assembled by the Wehrmacht with the help of the State Police (the Statspolitiet) did in fact conduct a punitive operation against Norwegian resistance forces (including Milorg, and the two factions of the KPN) on June 13, 1944, it is astonishing how little loss of life there was. The Wikipedia entry (the only account in English, I believe) at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Almenrausch indicates that a force of eight-hundred was deployed, but that the operation was largely unsuccessful, even though it attacked a ‘secret’ hideout. Eight communists were arrested, but only one was executed. That does not sound like a typical Nazi response. Professor Titlestad explains it as a combination of the Nazis not wanting to kill a large number of fellow-Aryans, as well as a degree of nervousness about the chances of survival of the members of this punitive force in a hostile rural region. Yet the Professor also writes that Furubotn had been the Gestapo’s most wanted man, and that it had tortured and killed Norwegians in an attempt to track him down. The decisive outcome for Stalin, however, was that, in July 1944, Furubotn was still alive.

If an agreement solely for the infiltration by air by NKGB agents to Furubotn’s camp, without any explicit goal of assassination, did take place between Stalin and Churchill (which must be the least alarming hypothesis), it occurred at a time when relationships between Great Britain and the Soviet Union were rapidly deteriorating. SOE had grown frustrated with the lack of co-operation in Moscow, and the Foreign Office was infuriated by Stalin’s abuse of its Military Mission there. The Warsaw Uprising, when Stalin refused to allow Allied planes to refuel on Soviet territory, and the Red Army watched what was happening from across the Vistula, contributed to the discord. In addition, the pressure on the War Cabinet to return to the Soviet Union all POWs they had been liberating, and the lack of co-operation from the Russians over the efforts to attack the Tirpitz, conspired largely to an atmosphere of utter distrust. On August 18, Foreign Office Permanent Secretary Orme Sargent even declared that the Soviet Union was the future Enemy Number 1.

What is certain that some intense discussions took place in London towards the end of August, with Milorg’s chief, Hauge, visiting for four weeks, having been authorized to use the ‘bearing ball’ run by Mosquito from Stockholm to Leuchars. One outcome of that visit was that Milorg now became known as ‘Home Forces’. According to one account, sensing that victory was in sight, the ANCC in January had authorized the provision of a large amount of weaponry to Milorg, and in June SHAEF (now having taken charge of SOE projects) approved of attacks on Nazi industries and lines of communication. Professor Færøy, on the other hand, has stated very confidently that these increased shipments did not take place until ‘the autumn’. The scope of military coordination debated then included measures to counter German scorched earth policy, the capture of Gestapo documents, the destruction of the Gestapo HQ in Oslo and (perhaps most provocatively) a list of agreed assassination targets. Hauge’s meetings in Britain to determine these policies were held at senior level with the Norwegian Government in exile, with Special Forces Headquarters, with the Anglo-Norwegian Collaboration Committee, and with Viscount Selborne, the Minister of Economic Warfare in London, as well as with General Thorne in Edinburgh. Thorne was responsible for the deception plan of FORTITUDE NORTH, as well as for the preparation for the liberation of Norway. Yet, because of the sensitivity of the conspiracy, it is hard not to conclude that the meetings in the United Kingdom must have been entirely coincidental to the plot against Furubotn.

More reliable wireless communications were now being established between SOE and Milorg, and, in Operation GOLDEN EAGLE, two more agents were dropped directly in the Hallingdal area on August 28, to help establish the Elg base with improved radio contact, and to enable preparation for further intensive and frequent drops of supplies over the following months. And then, as Britain started to consolidate its hold over subversive operations in southern Norway, in early September 1944 the very sudden and highly momentous intelligence arrived that Stalin had approved the launching of attacks on the Tirpitz from Soviet territory, which caused a sudden flurry of changes to the PARAVANE project.

Whether the planned assassination of Furubotn (which is posited here as the motivation for the infiltration into southern Norway of Stalin’s agents) was related to the permission Stalin gave for British bombers to fly from Soviet airfields is probably unverifiable. The British must have had something important to gain from the arrangement, but any decision taken must have occurred at the highest levels of command. It is possible that Churchill did not know what Stalin’s precise plan for his agents was, but his agreement in allowing them to assume the identities of live RAF officers is extremely incriminating. If any knowledge of the details of the conspiracy did exist, it must surely have been restricted to Churchill and Gubbins, the head of SOE. SOE/MI6 had a direct – but highly insecure – line to Moscow through its representative George Hill, who was on good terms with Stalin, so negotiations could have been carried on through that medium. The relevant archival material shows some intense exchanges between London and Moscow in August and early September of 1944, but nothing obviously attributable to the Furubotn plot.

As for the RAF, it would obviously have known that it was being ordered to mount a highly irregular operation, but the leaders (i.e. Portal, Harris, Cochrane, McMullen, and Bottomley at the Air Ministry) would not have been aware that the objective of the mission was in fact assassination. They were probably informed that the subterfuge was simply part of an extended PICKAXE operation (i.e. one in a series of co-operative ventures between SOE and the NKGB), where Soviet agents had to be infiltrated in disguise in order that they would be welcomed properly by Hauge’s Milorg network. They would not have known that Sunde (probably) would then lead the twosome to Furubotn’s lair.

Stalin and Churchill

On the other hand, it was a low-risk undertaking for Stalin: he did not care about the fate of agents sent abroad on sabotage missions; their lives were expendable, and, since they would be wearing RAF uniforms, it would be difficult to trace anything to him, in any case. But for the British, it was a highly dangerous operation, involving deceit, not just with RAF crewmen, but with the Norwegian government, who, if its members learned of the plot, would not have taken kindly to the phenomenon of murder missions by foreign Communist infiltrators being abetted by their close wartime ally. Even if the mission had been successful, and the perpetrators had in some way been removed without their masquerade being detected, word might have leaked out, because of the packed Lancaster, the airmen who made it back safely, and the knowledge of the impersonated officers returning home. But if it failed – and in such a disastrous and spectacular fashion, as it did – the repercussions could have been tragic and far-reaching. Yet the destruction of the plane, and all inside it, managed to impose an eighty-year silence that has succeeded in exculpating all the perpetrators.

[I thank Professors Titlestad and Færøy for their advice on this chapter. The opinions represented here are of course my own, and I likewise take responsibility for any errors. _coldspur_]

Chapter 8: Conclusions

No documentation to prove that Churchill and Stalin conspired to launch the operation to Hallingdal has appeared, and it probably never will. Yet such a decision, to have NKGB agents dressed up in the uniforms of living RAF officers, and be equipped with their ID-tags, can have been authorized only at the very top. It was assuredly not an SOE operation (although SOE radios and servicemen were certainly employed); nor was it an idea of Bomber Command, which would have been fiercely resistant to the subterfuges and risks associated with such an enterprise. Churchill’s irrational and misguided desires to placate Stalin must have convinced him that the Generalissimo’s demands were worth acceding to. The opportunity to carry out an attack on the Tirpitz from Soviet territory, with a presumed greater chance of success than flying directly from Scotland, must have been irresistible to him.

Lancaster at Yagodnik

One can imagine the strained atmosphere when Lancaster PB416 prepared for take-off at Yagodnik on September 17, 1944. Because of the damaged and unusable planes left behind, their crews had to be allotted to the remaining flightworthy aircraft, resulting in crowded conditions. The mood would probably have been very positive, however, given the (modest) degree of success of PARAVANE, and the prospect of returning home with no loss of squadron life. And yet two Soviet citizens were foisted on this particular team, and the members must have been informed that the couple, equipped with parachutes, was to be dropped somewhere along the flightpath. They might not have known that the agents were masquerading as British fellow-airmen underneath their jackets, but they were probably disconcerted about this irregular deviation from the plans.

Etnedal

PB416 was never blown off course by inclement weather, as RAF reports later claimed. As the last plane in loose formation, it peeled off from the chain ahead of it off the coast of Sweden, and made a course for southern Norway. We know it was expected, because the navigator radioed his co-ordinates over Oystogo in Etnedal when the plane arrived there soon after one o’clock in the morning of September 17. These measures were recorded without alarm, even though the location was over three hundred miles to the north-west of the path on which the rest of the sixteen Lancasters were cruising home.

What went wrong? One can perhaps imagine that the NKGB agents had second thoughts – not that they probably had any first thoughts of their own volition over the exploit. Threats had probably been made concerning their families. They knew that they must be on a suicide mission: even if they were successful in finding Furubotn, and assassinating him, they would not survive long in their British greatcoats, with their British ID-tags, but probably owning only a smattering of English, if any. Furthermore, they had to survive the parachute drop itself. It is highly unlikely that they had had parachute training, let alone from a British bomber, and the prospect of landing correctly on hard ground uninjured, and then meeting up with a friendly reception committee, must have seemed distant.

One could conjecture that they perhaps tried to convince the pilot that he should abandon the drop, and take his ‘stowaways’ onwards to Scotland. But Squadron-Leader Levy had his orders, and he would not have wanted to present himself at Lossiemouth with two illegal NKGB agents in his complement of passengers, with much explaining to do, and no doubt flak to be received from the high-ups. The agents were probably armed. Perhaps some sort of skirmish took place, and the plane circled while attempts to resolve the issue, with Levy trying to convince the agents of their duty, took place. The dangers of the terrain went unnoticed, and the plane hit a treetop on the mountain in the Saupeset valley above the town of Nesbyen.

RAF at Dyce, Aberdeen, which had been tracking the movements of PB416, must have known of the mission, and soon assumed that the plane was lost without any survivors. Yet the details appear, strangely, to have escaped their notice. If the Milorg reception-party, aided by SOE agents recently arrived (and maybe attended by Sunde), were in wireless contact (which they surely were, to have been able to finalize the arrangements), they would have transmitted the facts about the horrific collision with the mountain, and presumably have added that there could have been no survivors. Local civilians quickly erected a cross to indicate the ten bodies discovered, which they promptly buried. And yet this news never reached Bomber Command, or, if it did, was ignored. After the defeat of the Germans in May 1945 locals remembered the dead airmen with a hand-painted plaque in Norwegian.

The fact was that it was more convenient for the full list of crew members to remain unknown and unknowable. The story about NKGB ‘stowaways’ could thus remain a secret for a while: the facts buried in red tape and obfuscation – the fog of war. Yet that calm was disturbed when the initial Graves Report was issued in July 1945, and then altered the following month, after an on-site inspection of the markers in Nesbyen revealed the names of Wyness and Williams among the casualties. By then, of course, Wyness and Williams were dead, and could tell no tales. Some coughing, and shuffling of papers resulted, and by the end of December 1946 the final report was able to declare that one unknown airman (of undefined nationality, but perhaps that need not be explicitly stated) had perished alongside the nine certain casualties. No one seemed to want to pose the question: how could the RAF not know who had boarded PB416 in Yagodnik?

Even in this decade an incurious listlessness governs the attitudes of the War Graves Commission in England. Its representative acknowledges the paradoxes articulated in the records, but he shows no interest in taking the matter further. One could assume, perhaps, that corporate memory in the RAF (and in other departments of the UK government) endures to the extent that its employees and associates are firmly cautioned not to encourage any members of the public to press too hard on certain matters. One can admire the dedication that such civil servants (and volunteers) apply to maintaining histories and records while at the same time one has to challenge their lack of resolve.

617 Squadron Badge

As another example, in 2021, the painstaking Nigel Austin posed a question to the Official Historian of the 617 Squadron Association about the procedures involved in compiling a Flight Loss Card. (There is no mention of the loss of Lancaster PB416 on the Association’s web-page.) Dr Owen patiently explained the roles of the Air Ministry, Bomber Command, and the International Red Cross, and suggested that lines of communication became tangled during the investigations. He implied that the initial reports were confused because it seemed that items of clothing belonging to Wyness and Williams had presumably been borrowed, but he overlooked the issue of ID-tags. It was as if this were the first time that anyone associated with the Squadron has investigate the enigma, and Owen concluded his response as follows: “The more one looks, more gaps and unanswered/unanswerable questions emerge with regard to this loss”. Is the word ‘unanswerable’ telling – a sign of policy? In any case, no follow-up occurs.

Even today, almost eighty years after the events, it would be politically highly embarrassing for the truth to be conceded. First is the fact of the cover-up itself – a betrayal of openness, a disgraceful lack of admission of responsibility to the relatives of those who died in the crash, and a promotion of lies about its cause. Second is the damage it performs to the reputations of those involved – the institutions themselves, of course, but also those who led them, and in particular Winston Churchill, with his sentimental behaviour towards Stalin, and his unforgivable tendency to relish picaresque adventures, and to become too involved in them. That is an aspect that his biographers have touched on, but – alongside his interventions in the betrayal of SOE ‘F’ circuits in France in the summer of 1943 – it merits much greater attention.

Churchill had conflicting motives: to make a bold enough gesture to appease Stalin, but to keep it so secret that he would not offend the Norwegian government. Sadly, his obsession over Tirpitz was misguided: he did not know how sparse were its fuel supplies; he did not realize how cautious Hitler’s plans were for deploying the battleship, in his anxiety to protect his Nordic fleet; and he was unaware of utterly low the morale of the Tirpitz crew had sunk, frustrated by inactivity and the barrenness of northern Norway. Yet he surely could not have imagined that the destruction of the Lancaster aircraft, and all on board, could have been a possible outcome of his reckless agreement. The plane having reached Oystogo, it could have continued its flight, taking the Soviet agents to Scotland, where they would never have been heard of again, without Stalin being any the wiser. Whether the impersonators were anguished that the mission had been abandoned, or whether they pressured the pilot to cancel the drop, and save them, will almost certainly never be known. Yet the ineluctable fact that nothing about the operation ever seems to have leaked out from Norwegian sources who were involved on the ground is perhaps the most remarkable phenomenon of this tragic event.

As for Stalin, it should come as no surprise that he would pursue such an adventure. He was ruthless, exploited weaknesses in his allies (both Churchill and Roosevelt), and single-mindedly hunted down anyone who challenged his authority. Furubotn would have been just another victim in the line of such as Ignace Reiss, Juliet Poyntz, Walter Krivitsky, Leon Trotsky, and a whole lot more. The opportunity arose, Stalin grabbed it, and he formulated the plot in a way that it could not be easily traced to any of his decisions, whether it succeeded or not. Not that any attribution to his scheming would have worried him: everything would have simply been denied.

Peder Furubotn probably never knew about the exploit, or that he had avoided yet another attempt on his life. Did he really deserve the fate that Stalin had decreed for him? Professor Titlestad has devoted a large part of his career to investigating Furubotn, and he has written a biography of him, unfortunately not yet published. The Professor has created, however, a website dedicated to his researches, at https://furubotnarkivene.no/, and the ‘English’ tab introduces the visitor to a very useful article on his subject. What is startling to this writer is that the Professor sets out to rehabilitate Furubotn, describing him as ‘one of Norway’s most colorful and charismatic political leaders of the 20th century’ and that ‘for five years, he fought a life-and-death battle to avoid being killed by the Gestapo in Norway and became a role model for surviving the illegal struggle against the overwhelmingly powerful German occupation and its Norwegian collaborators in the NS [the Nasjonal Samling, the only legal party in Norway from 1942 to 1945]’. That was not how I had initially interpreted his role, but Furubotn’s daring example was converted into significant success for the Communist Party after the war.

Professor Titlestad present some fascinating insights into Furubotn’s post-war career, when he even returned to Moscow and remained unscathed, describing him as a more constitutionally sensitive Communist, perhaps a ‘Euro-communist’ of the kind that excited leftist politicians in the western democracies in the 1950s. While I am in any case unqualified to comment on such analysis, this article focusses on the war years alone, and it seems that the record of Furubotn’s activities between 1940 and 1945 is very hazy. It is difficult to track at what time the revolutionary Communist morphed into the simpler and rather sentimental left-winger that the post-war record shows. What is clear, however, is that Furubotn defied Stalin too many times, and his enemies within the KPN made sure that accounts of his misconduct got back to the vozhd.

I thus have to express some reservations about Furubotn’s heroism and reputation. Furubotn seems rather a sorry figure to me: a man lacking formal education who learned about Marxism only when he went to Moscow, and who, after the war, drifted into a vague socialism that invoked the Bible as often as it brought in The Communist Manifesto. If Furubotn had been a Communist during the war, whether Stalinist or not, the mission of a communist was class warfare, authoritarian control (‘the dictatorship of the proletariat’, of course, which was a ridiculous slogan). The institution of Communist power always ended in the incarceration or execution of class enemies, and the abandonment of any constitutional safeguards. The senior resistance organization, Milorg, detested the Communist Party, whether it was Sunde’s or Furubotn’s, and Milorg became the official voice of the people representing the government-in-exile. Yet the Communist message still resonated strongly among major sectors of Norway’s population.

I thus maintain a few doubts about the Professor’s assessment of the integrity of Furubotn and his motives. He writes, also, that the Oslo Harbour sabotage operation orchestrated by Furubotn in the autumn of 1944 was an epochal event. “This activity, which carried the death penalty from the German side, greatly contributed to keeping the hope of liberation alive among Norwegians”, he writes. Yet such an attack went entirely against the grain of what Milorg (and, reportedly the Stalinist rump group led by Sunde) was trying to achieve, and the reprisals could have been severe. Most Norwegians must have realized by then that the Nazis were on the run, and that the Allies were moving inexorably into occupied countries, including Norway. Which Norwegians would have been excited about the destruction of the capital’s port by a subversive revolutionary at that stage of the war?

One last aspect of what appears to me to be a controversy lies in the Professor’s account of Furubotn’s time in Moscow before the war. He somewhat mysteriously writes that ‘Stalin reluctantly allowed him to return to Norway in the autumn of 1938 after 8 years in Moscow’, adding that Stalin kept the family of his son, Gilbert, in the Soviet Union as hostages. I was not aware that Stalin undertook any action ‘reluctantly’, which suggests unrealistically that the vozhd would actually listen to advice from his ministers – and that that group would actually proffer advice to him rather than simply await instructions. (The Black Book of Communism states that Furubotn ‘escaped’ from Moscow.) Elsewhere, Professor Titlestad notes that Furubotn was sent back and essentially demoted to serve a minor role in the Party in his hometown of Bergen, and the Professor has explained to me, having inspected KGB archives in Moscow, that Stalin let him go because he believed that the Gestapo would perform the murderous job for him. Yet Stalin’s ability to recall that he had let Furubotn slip through his fingers would give him additional incentive to extinguish the rebel: the PARAVANE episode of September 1944 was not the first attempt to silence Furubotn for good.

Nikolai Bukharin

The other observation that I found incongruous was the categorization of Nikolai Bukharin, whom Furubotn admired, and whom Sunde had apparently invoked alongside Genrikh Yagoda in denouncing Furubotn. Professor Titlestad writes: “Bukharin had long been one of the leading liberal Soviet leaders after the revolution in 1917, and his trial attracted significant international attention.” I believe that this is a serious misconception. Bukharin was innocent of most of the crimes he was accused of (but perhaps not that of threatening Stalin’s power), but he was no ‘liberal’. He was a Bolshevik who had enthusiastically embraced the revolution, and he was until his death a firm champion of the ‘glorious Cheka’ and its barbarous methods. A too facile equivalence of Bukharin and Furubotn glosses over what Furubotn might have become.

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

Postscript

Lastly, a few observations on methodology. My collaborator on this project, Nigel Austin, has been a determined sleuth, tracking down arcane sources, identifying persons who have some connection with the mystery, and refusing to let go. I know, however, that he was continually on the search for proof of exactly what happened on that night in September, the proverbial ‘smoking gun’, and he might have proceeded forever until he found such. I have occasionally been able to track down such items in my attempts to solve intelligence mysteries, such as with the memorandum about Guy Burgess and the Comintern, the Letter from Geneva concerning Len and Ursula Beurton, and the article in the Viennese newspaper that revealed much about MI6 and Kim Philby, but such moments are very rare.

I decided to explain to Nigel that historiography is frequently an exercise of the imagination, a detective investigation, in which one searches for clues, and then tries to construct a pattern of behaviour and events that can explain what is superficially inexplicable. There is not going to be a solid paper-trail in a case as complex as this. And that is how it was with ‘The Airmen Who Died Twice’. To me, the borrowed uniforms and ID-tags suggested stowaways of some kind. Yet in those conditions the stowaways could not have been furtive: they must have had approval. They could not have been British airmen: that group was completely accounted for. They must therefore have been agents, saboteurs, spies, of some kind. They would not have been Norwegian communists in exile: such persons would not have had to disguise themselves that way, impersonating British RAF crew members. They must have been NKGB agents – Russians. And if they were agents, they must have had a mission. And the obvious mission was assassination. A study of Norwegian resistance quickly came up with the name of Peder Furubotn, who had offended Stalin.

Thus was the theory constructed. It all seemed rather tenuous: had Furubotn really annoyed Stalin that much? And why would Stalin choose that time to set his murder-squad off the leash? And then the encounter with Professor Titlestad’s latest research indicated that assassination attempts had already been made against Furubotn. Stalin could no longer rely on the Gestapo or the Sunde organization to get rid of his foe. So he took on the task himself, and invoked the gullible Churchill to assist him. As the cliché goes: ‘The rest is history’. But in this case it has not been so – until now. And it would be commendable if the British Government, through the Ministry of Defence, made some sort of statement and apology to the public and to the relatives of the dead airmen in time for the eightieth anniversary of the crash on September 17, 2024.

March 31, 2024 · 8:11 am

Dick White’s Tangled Web

“Oh, what a tangled web we weave.

When first we practise to deceive!” (Sir Walter Scott, Marmion)

In this bulletin, I use some correspondence as a trigger to invoke a more detailed analysis of Dick White’s plot to leak information on Kim Philby to the CIA – the exercise that his representative in Washington characterized as an ‘ingenious scheme’ – and to re-assess White’s overall track-record as a counter-espionage officer.

Contents:

An Uncomfortable Exchange

The Letter from Mr. Even-Shoshan

Re-Assessing Dick White’s Plot

Milicent Bagot’s Dossier

The Strange Reactions of Robert Lamphere

Deeper Implications

White’s Predicament

PEACH

Enter ‘Buster’ Milmo

‘The Imperfect English Counter-Espionage Officer’

Postscript: The Lost Philby Chapters

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

An Uncomfortable Exchange

I often reflect on the various email exchanges I have with two groups of individuals. The first I shall call ‘members of the public’, namely amateur enthusiasts for intelligence matters, former intelligence officers, journalists, and writers of histories and biographies with no relevant academic qualifications. The second is simply ‘academics’, professional historians with doctorates or professorships teaching at universities. The messages from the first group are almost uniformly engaging, showing humility, a genuine curiosity and willingness to engage in sensible discussion, patience, and an appropriate degree of scepticism, as well as a readiness to express complimentary remarks about my research. The academics, on the other hand (if they respond at all, of course) are generally – but not always – abrupt, dogmatic, patronising, intemperate, and stingy with any praise.

I was reminded of this contrast during two recent conversations I had with persons I have never met. The first was a female academic (whom I shall not name – unless there is an overwhelming demand for her identification from coldspur readers) whom I had approached concerning Kim Philby. She responded quite pleasantly to start with, and I sent her a late draft of my February coldspur article on Smolka. Her immediate response was ‘Yes, I know the whole Smolka story’, and she described a recent project concerning him that she had worked on. This was a clear message to me that she was the undisputed expert on Smolka, and that she had nothing to learn from any other source. (I do dislike know-alls.)

And then, when I suggested that Edith Tudor-Hart’s role had been greatly exaggerated by such persons as Anthony Blunt (as well as the KGB), she immediately accused me of having male chauvinist tendencies, telling me that I underestimated the work of female intelligence officers. This was an extraordinarily illogical – and faintly insulting – conclusion to come to, and I responded that I was a big fan of Jane Sissmore/Archer, and that I recognized what Daphne Park had achieved. I also mentioned that I had recently read Helen Fry’s Women in Intelligence, and learned much from it. She ignored my response, and then questioned me about the planting of the 1934 press article about Philby, which I had ascribed to MI6, and lectured me that Philby had had nothing to do with MI6 at that time.

It was quite obvious that she had not read the piece I sent her (nor was she familiar with Fry’s book), so I gently drew her attention to it again, asking her whether she had already encountered everything that I had uncovered about Smolka. She quickly wrote back a hot-headed message titled ‘Philby working for MI6 in 1933 is SO NUTS!’, and I quote the full content of her text (which lacked any salutations):

Helen Fry cannot be serious. This is the most ludicrous theory ever.

Christopher Andrew must be laughing his head off (but you will probably say he is establishment and we have to believe in conspiracies instead).

Regarding Smolka: Yes of course he was working for the Russians. That is hardly new (I did not mean you should try to read Russian books. I mean their archive releases. Go to their websites)

Korda and Greene had other things to do in Vienna in 1948 than interviewing the little fish Smolka. (Ever heard of Peter Lunn and his tunnels?)

And one did not need Smolka to learn about penicillin and sewers (yes, I know that Montagu claimed his short story was vital etc) If you read German, go through the newspaper collection ANNO. It is online. They were covering these stories all the time. It was public knowledge.

My first reaction was to wonder whether the lady harboured any inherent prejudices against all female historians, but I quickly put that unchivalrous thought behind me, and turned to the substance. It seemed to me that not only had my correspondent not read carefully anything I had written, but that she also was grabbing the wrong end of the stick with her rhetorical and ill-mannered flourishes. Specifically:

• It did not appear that she had read Helen Fry’s Spymaster, for she would otherwise acknowledge that Fry actually cites a retired MI6 source who made the claim about ‘Philby always working for MI6’, while she (Fry) cast doubts on its veracity. Moreover, Fry withdrew that assertion in the second edition of the book, a move that I ascribed to the fact that she had been ‘nobbled’ by the authorities. My correspondent shows no awareness of these events, and thus her opinion on the ludicrousness of the assertion is ill-directed and lacks any substance.
• Why the reactions (cachinnatory or otherwise) of the ‘great Yoda of intelligence studies’ [M.S. Goodman] had to be invoked was a mystery to me. After all, Andrew is the authorized historian of MI5, not MI6, and his pronouncements on these matters have been erratic. It was he who declared, almost a decade ago, that his findings on the very relevant Eric Roberts correspondence would ‘keep the conspiracy theorists busy for fourteen more years’, but he then suffered from an attack of amnesia when asked to recall the circumstances behind that observation. The woman is clearly an acolyte of Andrew: she echoes the clumsy characterization that anyone who suggests that a conspiracy may be lurking behind any event is an irredeemable (and maybe congenital) ‘conspiracy theorist’, while implying that all the reputable scholars like her and Andrew (the ‘Establishment’, presumably) exclude conspiracies from their analyses as a matter of principle.
• The lecturette on the fact that Smolka ‘of course’ (a typical donnish insertion) was working for the Russians was naive and patronising. The fact that he was a Soviet spy is incontrovertible: the issue at stake was whether he had been recruited by the NKVD in 1933 or 1934, or whether, as Philby claimed in 1980, that it was he who had done so in 1939-1940. One major point of my article was to show how absurd Philby’s claim was, and how it must have been arranged by the KGB on Smolka’s death. My correspondent declined to engage me on this matter. She expresses far too confident an opinion of the reliability of Russian archival sources (a language she does not use, incidentally).
• She continued her bossy lesson with another arrogant remark about Peter Lunn. Indeed, ma’am, I am familiar with Lunn and his project (‘Operation CONFLICT’) to eavesdrop on Soviet telephone communications in the tunnels below the French and British zones in Vienna. Only Lunn – according to Stephen Dorril – did not replace Young as station chief until 1949, and the first recognition of the telephone cable infrastructure did not occur until late 1948, almost a year after the Greene encounter with Smolka. The woman’s insinuation is that Greene and Korda would have been involved with the operation. But Korda did not accompany Greene to Vienna at that time, and, even if the project had occurred earlier, there is no earthly way that Greene, an ex-MI6 officer with no engineering background, would have been introduced to such a sensitive project. With Philby under suspicion at the time, it would have been hugely irresponsible to have exposed any aspects of CONFLICT to Greene, Philby’s old crony in Section V of MI6.
• Lastly, she fails to acknowledge that I myself had questioned the fact that Smolka had been the source of the anecdotes about adulterated penicillin and transport through the sewers, and that I had suggested that the story had been created as a useful distraction from the real reason that Greene was sent to interview him. What she means by ‘they were covering these stories all the time’, or that ‘it was public knowledge’ eludes me. That the Viennese press in 1948 was writing about fake penicillin, and that everybody knew about it? She fails to provide the evidence. It was indeed the ANNO archive that allowed me to re-present the extraordinary article about the Philby marriage in the Illustrierte Kronen Zeitung from May 1934. As for challenging my ability to read German, I actually told her that I studied the language at Oxford: she may not have encountered my translations of Honigmann yet. Yet she chooses to disbelieve me, and thinks that I used Google Translate.

You will notice that this person does not have the graciousness to say one good word about my research, or to admit that she learned anything at all from it. Her whole behaviour was clumsy, waspish, unscholarly, supercilious and offensive. It is as if she wanted to reinforce through her responses the characteristics of donnishness in all their darker aspects, and to teach this upstart a lesson. I did not respond to her outburst, but merely added her name to the List.

The Letter from Mr. Even-Shoshan

On the other hand, some conversations can be very pleasant. A week earlier, I had received an email from a fresh correspondent, one Moshe Even-Shoshan, who lives in Pennsylvania. He had just finished reading Misdefending the Realm, and, after a complimentary comment, wrote:

Yet I still struggle with the crucial question why the original approach, of the 1920s and early 1930s, to Communist/Soviet espionage changed so drastically in the critical period that you study—precisely and ironically on the background of the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact. In the last chapter, you pin the rap, to use detective novel parlance, on Dick White. But on the eve/at the beginning of WWII (for Great Britain, as opposed to the USA), he was just the first university recruit to MI5. So how could one “blame” him? After all, it was Liddell who brought Blunt in and who socialized with characters who should have not have been touched with a ten foot pole.

I look forward eagerly to your comments.

After thanking Mr. Even-Shoshan for his interest, I replied as follows:

I think your question is a very shrewd one, and it is one that has occupied me again of late, since I have started preparing a future edition of coldspur that will provide a topographical guide to my research since I published MTR.

I stand by what I wrote on p 75, as a decent account of the debacle, and how it has shifted since 1940, including Andrew’s rather shameful comments. Yet I believe that some recent research of mine – involving Philby and Smolka, the second installment on whom will appear in a couple of weeks’ time, and will reinforce the points I am about to make – sheds some further light on the passivity of MI5.

The main problem at the time was a lack of intellectual leadership in the Soviet counter-espionage business. Jane Archer was obviously outstanding, but she was a woman in a man’s world, and she fell foul of political intrigues, I suspect. Whether those intrigues were initiated by communist sympathizers, one can only guess. But she was taken off the case, and Hollis was a poor substitute.

I see White’s entry as an attempt to bring more serious intellectual heft into the organization. Some military men have declared that more soldierly than academic skills should have been brought in to counter the communist threat, but my view is that a more subtle assessment of Moscow’s strategies was required. Liddell was sharp, but he was essentially a policeman, and was surrounded by such. The dominant belief within MI5 was that Soviet spies would have to emanate from the CPGB – a policeman’s response, ignoring what Krivitsky said, and Petrie let Soviet counter-intelligence wither on the vine during WWII. The successes of Trevor-Roper (against the Abwehr), Austin (against the Wehrmacht – see https://coldspur.com/summer-2023-round-up/), and, to a lesser extent, Masterman on XX, showed that an Oxford don had a powerful role to play in building up intelligence about an enemy agency. In my piece on Austin, I made the point that his skills and processes should have been applied within MI5 in creating a model of the Comintern, and how it worked. White failed in this exercise, since he did not push for it, and he was in many ways a weak man (and he married a Communist). He failed to see through Burgess, Blunt – even Rothschild – and felt humiliated.

Then there was the problem of leakage. From the Home Office, Jenifer Hart passed on to Berlin and Burgess the details of the Krivitsky business. One must also have questions about Stephen Alley, who translated between Archer and Krivitsky. He is still largely a mystery, with maybe torn allegiances. The NKVD had an opportunity to move, sway MI5 opinion, and stifle any further investigations.

The lack of resolve in tracking down Philby ‘the journalist’ astonished me at the time. If you have read what I wrote about Philby last year: see https://coldspur.com/litzi-philby-under-the-covers/, https://coldspur.com/kim-philby-always-working-for-sis/, https://coldspur.com/kim-philby-in-1951-alarms-and-diversions/ (especially), and https://coldspur.com/kim-philbys-german-moonshine/, you will learn that White clearly ignored much of the evidence in 1951, even though it had been sitting in MI5 files for a long time, and it was left to Milmo to point out the obvious.

And my recent research on Smolka, and his relationship with Philby, introduces a far more important dimension. My hypothesis has been that Philby, when the Nazi-Soviet pact was announced, essentially pretended to break away from the Comintern and offer his services (alongside those of Litzy) to MI6, where Claude Dansey was having his whimsical ideas of ‘turning’ known Communist agents (including Ursula Kuczynski and Smolka) into assets for the Secret Intelligence Service. Philby fitted into that pattern. It was a disaster that MI6 has ever since tried to cover up. But, if Philby had been regarded as a friend in late 1939, it would explain why following up, in January 1940, on his activities in Spain would have not been given much attention. After all, Philby would have explained them away. But one of the reasons he moved when he did was because he knew what Krivitsky was saying in the USA, and probably that MI5 was planning to ask him over . . .

Mr Even-Shoshan was sympathetic to my analysis, responding as follows:

I agree with you totally that a more subtle assessment of Moscow’s strategies was required than a pure policeman’s approach and therefore an academic’s approach and experience would have been appropriate. You mentioned Trevor-Roper’s work at the RSS on the Abwehr. I would add, to make the point sharply, his RSS/RAB colleague Stuart Hampshire’s Nov. 1942 report ‘Canaris and Himmler’, where SH “concluded that this struggle [with Himmler’s SD] for secret intelligence was a symptom of a wider struggle for power between the Nazi party and the German General Staff.” (Adam Sisman, An Honorable Englishman: The Life of Hugh Trevor-Roper_, p. 121). This conclusion of RH is, of course, of crucial importance to the question of whether WWII could have been ended much earlier through a negotiated peace with certain forces in Germany. And this, of course, links to Philby’s baleful impact as a Soviet agent_ – I recall that HTR said Philby prevented this report from going to the British leadership or, perhaps, even just to the top of SIS. It was in the interest of Stalin that the war drag on until Stalin was able to extend his power westward through his eventual “satellite” Communist states–and also to increase his influence in Western Europe through the CPs (especially the French CP), which were able to gain stature as resistance forces. I think you have downplayed Philby’s actual impact on affairs as compared others in the Cambridge Five. But could this one act of Philby have been of great consequence?

This addition of Hampshire to the list of dons was a useful one, and I was able to locate the cited report in a file described, however, as containing exclusively contributions by Trevor-Roper, namely HW 19/347 at Kew, as listed by Edward Harrison in his Introduction to Trevor-Roper’s Secret World. I subsequently commissioned photographs of the file. Yet the result was puzzling: Sisman gets the year of the report wrong (it is dated June 5, 1943), Hampshire’s name is never mentioned, and the tone of the report’s conclusions is much less dramatic than is implied by Sisman. Moreover, the writer offers no sources for his anecdotes outside two references to Philby’s memoir. Sisman’s reliability as a chronicler must be questioned: it is as if Trevor-Roper (or Hampshire, perhaps) wanted to embellish evidence of his colleague’s treachery in order to enhance the record, and distance himself from the mole.

As for my assessment of Philby’s relative influence on military outcomes, I do not recall ever analyzing this topic in detail. I shall simply point out here that Philby started providing intelligence much later than the other members of the quintet, and he was initially distrusted. An interesting matter to be pursued another time, perhaps.

Re-Assessing Dick White’s Plot

One of the reasons why Mr Even-Shoshan’s letter was so timely was the fact that I had been planning to write about Dick White’s very bizarre behaviour during the compilation of his report on Philby in the autumn of 1951. In my Year-End Round-Up published last December, the leading sentence in my ‘Research Agenda’ section ran as follows: “I want to explore more thoroughly where Milmo derived his facts about Kim and Litzy in his December 1951 report, and why White failed to disclose them in his report issued just beforehand.” To summarize the relevant facts concerning White’s activities (as described in https://coldspur.com/kim-philby-in-1951-alarms-and-diversions/ ):a file on Philby had been maintained since 1934 (PF 40408 – and, incidentally, someone has whispered to me that this folder contains over 16 discrete files); Dick White had instructed Milicent Bagot to use this file when preparing the dossier for the FBI/CIA before the disappearance of Burgess and Maclean; and he had had access to it for his summer 1951 report, the release of which was curiously delayed until November. Yet he had used it very selectively.

Dick White

For a comprehensive background on the events of 1951, I recommend to readers that they return to the second half of my post from April 2019 (https://coldspur.com/the-importance-of-chronology-with-special-reference-to-liddell-philby/) and my account, two months later, of Dick White’s scheming (https://coldspur.com/dick-whites-devilish-plot/). This plot was designed so that MI5 could pass confidential information, via Robert Lamphere in the FBI, to the CIA so that the latter could inform MI6 of their strong suspicions about Philby, thus forcing a breach between MI6 and Philby that would not be attributed to White and MI5_._ Readers should recall that White had communicated his intention to mislead Lamphere and the FBI as early as May 25, the day that Burgess and Maclean disappeared, and that his representative in Washington, Geoffrey Harrison, acknowledged the scheme four days later. The purpose of this month’s bulletin, in the context of my exchange with Mr. Even-Shoshan, is to focus on Dick White’s character, motivations, and abilities as reflected in his very deceptive and discreditable performance in 1951, and to draw long-term conclusions about MI5’s failures in counter-espionage.

I have just re-read those posts of five years ago, and I would hardly change a word. My findings since have only reinforced the conclusions I made then, adding further evidence to support the hypotheses of Dick White’s misplaced ingenuity, and of Lamphere’s conspiratorial support. What I did not cover at the time were the exact circumstances behind the material that Martin released to Lamphere of the FBI when he and Sillitoe visited Washington in June 1951, where that information came from, why some highly confidential facts about Krivitsky were included, why the reaction of the FBI concerning Krivitsky seemed so passive at the time, or why the exact role of the CIA’s Bill Harvey has since been obscured. One major fresh consideration to be taken into account, however, is my recent conclusion that Philby had made a false renunciation of his communist allegiances to MI6 in 1939, just before the Krivitsky interrogations. In my opinion MI5 and MI6 would therefore, in 1951, have had additional reasons for being on guard against possibly traitorous behaviour from Kim and Litzy. The details of White’s plotting come into sharper focus because of the events of 1939.

Milicent Bagot’s Dossier

The MacGuffin in the plot is the dossier prepared by Milicent Bagot at the request of Dick White. While White claimed to his biographer that this was compiled only after Martin and Sillitoe returned from Washington, it is obvious that Martin took it with him to show to the FBI agent Robert Lamphere. And White must not simply have asked for a general trawl to see what could be found: he must have been very familiar with the Philby file where everything relating to its subject had been collected. A very telling detail is released in The Perfect English Spy, Tom Bower’s biography of White, where Jane Archer (who was assisting Bagot on the project, having recently returned to MI5 after her spell under Philby in MI6) is shown to contribute a breakthrough finding. White misleadingly presents its timing as occurring after his interrogations of Philby in June 1951. The passage runs as follows (and was provided to Bower by a confidential insider at MI5):

Shortly after that encounter, White immersed himself in the research prepared by Arthur Martin and Jane Archer about Philby’s past. For the first time, Archer produced a thin MI5 file compiled in 1939 and then forgotten. A report contrasting Philby’s communist sympathies at Cambridge and his sudden espousal of fascism made a deep impression. Alongside was Philby’s own résumé. One coincidence was interesting. Philby mentioned his employment by The Times covering the Spanish civil war. Krivitsky had claimed that among the Soviet agents he controlled from Barcelona was one unnamed English journalist.

Now the significance of this sparkling item from a file that was by then – contrary to how White characterized it – quite thick may not come as a shock to any dedicated coldspur reader, but to the uninitiated, it should have sent out some shrill warning signals. What was Philby doing in 1939, providing details of his career to MI5, and even admitting to his role as a journalist working in Spain? Why was he providing a résumé when he was not being interviewed for a job with MI5? The submission of this data to his file occurred just before Krivitsky arrived in the UK: how could it happen that MI5 failed to follow up at all and make the obvious connection? The reasons for this paradox appear to have eluded all the other historians. Yet the facts fit in perfectly with my theory that, in September 1939, Philby concluded a deal with MI6 and MI5 whereby he admitted his past career working for the Comintern, but agreed to switch back his allegiances to his fatherland, and bring along Litzy with him, while they would both pretend to be working for the Soviets still. In such circumstances, MI5 and MI6 would acknowledge Philby’s journalist role in Spain, but they would forgive it as a youthful mistake.

The reference to Krivitsky is very poignant, since an even more prominent hint was dropped by the defector about ‘the Imperial Council spy’. The placement of these two items by Jane Archer (who wrote the summary back in 1940) is fascinating, and significant in the light of future events: the description of the Imperial Council leakage appears prominently in the Appendix to Chapter 2, concerning OGPU agents in the Foreign Office and Diplomatic Service. Archer qualifies Krivitsky’s suggestion that the candidate attended Eton and Oxford by adding that Krivitsky conceded that he might have got those details wrong. The item about the ‘young Englishman, however, ‘a journalist of good family, and idealist and fanatical anti-Nazi’ recruited by Theodore Maly to assassinate Franco, appears only as a marginal note under Maly’s entry in the list of Soviet Agents mentioned by Krivitsky. It could well have been overlooked by the casual reader – but not by the experts.

I here re-present the seven points in the package delivered by Arthur Martin to Lamphere, as they appeared in my April 2019 bulletin:

1. Maclean, Burgess and Philby had all been communists at Cambridge
2. Philby had become pro-German to build his cover story
3. Philby had married the communist Litzi Friedman
4. Krivitsky had pointed to a journalist in Spain (who was in fact Philby)
5. Philby was involved in the Volkov affair
6. Philby was involved in infiltrating Georgian agents into Armenia
7. Philby was suspected of assisting in the disappearance of Burgess and Maclean.

What is important to note is that most of this list was prepared before Maclean had been officially identified as the ‘Imperial Council spy’, and thence as HOMER. (Item 7 clearly had to have been added after the May 25 debacle.) Yet that conclusion had not been communicated to the FBI, and the relevant datum is not included in the list, which focuses sharply on Philby. Armed with it, Martin flew out to Washington at the same time that Philby was returning to London on his recall.

The Strange Reactions of Robert Lamphere

Robert Lamphere

One puzzling aspect of Lamphere’s account of the briefing is the fact that it is not absolutely clear that all that he describes (on pages 232-237 of The FBI-KGB War) derives from the memoranda that Martin brought with him. The dominant impression given in his narrative was that the whole cavalcade of facts concerning the careers of Maclean, Burgess and Philby came from Martin at that time, but he also hints that he fleshed out his story with information learned since then. (His book came out in 1986.) What he wrote is not precise:

The memoranda that Martin gave to me outlined the lives of all three men as they were then known to MI-5. Over the years since 1951, many details have been added to the portraits of Burgess, Maclean and Philby, but the basic facts of their lives remain substantially the same as when I first learned the details that June.

Thus we cannot be sure how much of what Lamphere reports thereafter derives from the Martin memoranda, and what is later embellishment – or even correction.

In any event, it is salutary to compare his description of how the revelations occurred with that of White. Lamphere described Martin’s visit by recording his own remonstrations about MI5’s lack of honesty over its closing in on Maclean, and then by emphasizing his own suspicions about Philby in the Burgess-Maclean disappearances. The exchange went as follows:

“That makes it doubly hard for me to admit all this. However, I have for you now several memoranda which go into the background of Burgess and Maclean.”

“Where does Philby fit in? Burgess was living with him.”

Somewhat relieved, Martin replied, “Most of what I have to tell you relates to Philby. We now have the gravest suspicions about him.” (The FBI-KGB Wars, p 232)

This strikes me as stilted and artificial. Why, when being offered some surely intriguing morsels about Burgess and Maclean, would Lamphere sharply switch the subject to Philby? And why, if Martin was planning to divulge some critical information about Philby anyway, would he be ‘relieved’ that Lamphere brought the subject up?

Dick White presented it otherwise to his biographer. After reporting how Sillitoe and Martin had experienced their awkward interview with Hoover, in which Hoover ranted most of the time, Bower’s narrative runs as follows:

Arthur Martin’s subsequent conversations with FBI officers, especially Lamphere, were focused upon Burgess. As recollections of the antipathy and outrage they had felt towards the dishevelled diplomat were rekindled, the Americans recalled that that his host, Kim Philby, had been remarkably supportive of him. (The Perfect English Spy, pp 120-121)

Again, this is a strained path of logic, contradicting what Lamphere wrote. In any event, Philby’s behaviour towards Burgess might have been caused by natural loyalty. Burgess had been shown to be a boor, but there had been no evidence that he was a spy. If he had been, and Philby did not know about it, he would have supported him. On the other hand, if Philby were guilty, too, one might have expected him to distance himself. The two accounts are certainly at variance, even though both of them attempt to show a natural progression for the discussion switching rapidly to Philby.

Yet other passages are more precise. For example, Lamphere devotes a paragraph to the Krivitsky affair, although he does get the date of the interrogations wrong, and he inserts an ‘as you’ll recall’ to the reader, suggesting that some of what he writes about is information imparted earlier. He then highlights the claims that Krivitsky made about two agents: one ‘a Scotsman of good family who had been educated at Oxford and Eton’ – erroneous in detail, of course, and corrected by Lamphere in his text; and the other ‘a journalist, a man who had been with the Franco forces during the recent Civil War’. And he cites, as the fourth of the ‘Seven Points’ the fact of Krivitsky’s referring to the journalist in Spain, and that it had been used as one of the arguments pointing suspicion at Philby.

Yet what astonishes me is Lamphere’s reaction. His first (and only) impulse is to express the wish that he would have liked to interrogate Philby on all these matters. (He was unable to, primarily because Philby had already been recalled to England, but the spy would obviously not have agreed to be ‘interrogated’ by a foreign intelligence officer.) If, as Lamphere claimed, this was the first occasion when he had learned of the political leanings and disloyalties of those three prominent persons, one would have expected him to have expostulated, and demanded to know how long the British had known those facts. His passivity is inexplicable: he must have been confided in already. Moreover, it would have been scandalous for MI5 to have passed across highly incendiary documents to a foreign power without very tight safeguards. The whole process had been set up.

Moreover, Lamphere appears utterly unimpressed with the factoid concerning the journalist. One might have expected him, if had encountered the Spanish reference beforehand, to declaim: “What? You can now associate the journalist in Spain with Kim Philby? When did you achieve that?” Yet he is totally unsurprised. And what he did not do was to request a copy of the complete report on Krivitsky, which would appear to have been a much more sensible and professional response. After all, Krivitsky was well-known in the USA, had given evidence to a congressional committee, had published a book, and had been assassinated (almost certainly) some time after his return. Would not any smart, inquisitive intelligence officer have wanted to inspect the primary source material? Is it possible that Martin had brought a copy of the full report with him?

I thought it unlikely. The report was a bulky one. Lamphere refers only to ‘memoranda’. If he had seen the full report, one would expect that he would have written about it. By 1986, its contents of were public knowledge. Gary Kern, in his superb study of Krivitsky, A Death in Washington, credits Gordon Brook-Shepherd with breaking the news about Krivitsky in his Storm Petrels, published in 1977, in which he gave a full account. Brook-Shepherd had clearly been given access to the Krivitsky file by MI5, and authorization to write his book, in an attempt to reverse recent Soviet propaganda claims. It is true that the report (or at least a summary of it) had been circulated to government offices in 1940 by Vernon Kell, as Kern relates, and as I explained in Misdefending the Realm, including the Home Office, where the spy Jenifer Hart saw it. Yet that meant that the beneficiaries would have been the Soviets, not the Americans, and if anyone had passed it on across the Atlantic, I concluded that the revelations would surely have prompted questions well before 1951.

Deeper Implications

On the other hand, why did White, after requesting Milicent Bagot to create the dossier on Philby, and presenting it to Martin to pass on to the FBI (without the knowledge of White’s boss, Percy Sillitoe), include such a provocative and incriminating lead in the package? After all, even if the FBI/CIA had learned through some clandestine source about the tip concerning a journalist in Spain, they probably never knew that Philby fitted that profile, and thus would not have made the connection! True, it might add another brick to the rapidly growing structure of evidence against Philby, but, at the same time, the disclosure opened up the possibility of serious accusations being laid against MI5. If the Security Service had had this factoid in their hands since 1940, why had it not been able to follow up the lead, and identify Philby? There could not have been that many British journalists working closely with Franco in Spain in 1937 – certainly fewer than the number of diplomats who might have had access to confidential material in the British Embassy in 1944-1945 . . .

Either White was behaving remarkably stupidly, or he had come to an agreement with his American counterparts already, or he was trying on a risky bluff. In any case, he received the reaction he wanted. When Lamphere passed on the memoranda to his ex-colleague Bill Harvey, now in the CIA – an action incidentally not recorded by Lamphere, who grants Harvey and Bedell Smith the perspicacity of coming up with the same conclusions independently – Harvey latched on to items 3 and 5 on the list, namely the fact that Philby had married a known Soviet agent Litzi Friedmann, and the circumstances of the Volkov affair. He also introduced the ELLI phenomenon originating from Gouzenko. The exposure of the Krivitsky hints, and the lack of follow-up, appeared to have been forgotten.

And then I recalled vaguely an item in the PEACH archive, from KV 6/142-2, and retrieved it. Serial 351A, dated April 9, 1951, consists of a letter written by MI5’s man in Washington, Geoffrey Patterson, to the Director-General (Sillitoe). The second paragraph runs:

When I visited Lamphere today he asked me casually whether we had ever given the F.B.I. a copy of Krivitsky’s statement about the source in the Foreign Office. I told him I did not know and that there was no copy in my office. He then told me he would make enquiries within the Bureau to see what they had. Patterson continued:

I think we can assume that Lamphere’s mind is running along parallel lines to our own and that it will not be long before he asks us which members of the Embassy fit in with Krivitsky’s description. By a process of elimination he will probably end up with the same conclusions as we have.

This was extraordinary! Lamphere worked for the FBI: why would he be referring to it as a separate entity? He himself was obviously familiar with the (perhaps partial) contents of the Krivitsky report already. He must have been shown it in confidence – no doubt by a colleague in MI5, presumably Patterson. Yet, if had encountered the ‘journalist in Spain’ reference at this time, he would not have seen it as having any relevance to the HOMER investigation. Patterson in turn showed that he was familiar with the material, and that he had surely read the report (and not simply been informed of its contents), since he admitted that there was no copy in his office. He also showed that he thought it quite regular for Lamphere to be familiar with the report, perhaps carelessly forgetting that he had shared it with Lamphere confidentially, and betraying that fact to history. Why would Patterson not be surprised by the fact that Lamphere alone has knowledge not available to the rest of the FBI, and had not passed on the information to his colleagues, unless he and Lamphere were alone privy to the deal? The exchange is all very phony.

In addition, the irony of this episode lies in the fact that Patterson was then working closely with Philby to try to determine who the spy in the Embassy was. Philby would have become aware of this exchange, and of the fact that Lamphere had access to a vital pointer to Maclean. He might thus have also suspected that Lamphere knew about the journalist in Spain, which could have been alarming. Was MI5 trying to put the wind up Philby, to draw him out? Philby knew that Maclean was HOMER, of course, and the current hunch of the British cross-Atlantic team was that Maclean was indeed the prime suspect, with Gore-Booth an alternative. Indeed, Philby pushed the latter theory: Gore-Booth had the unfortunate qualifications of having attended Eton and Oxford, which temporarily placed him Number 1 on the charts in the Foreign Office assessments. Yet MI5 and the Foreign Office did not want to let the Americans know of their conclusions before they were ready to move, and they also did not want the Americans to work it out themselves.

At this time, the British were making careful comparisons between Krivitsky’s description of the ‘Imperial Council Spy’ and Maclean. Was the FBI following similar leads, with inferior information? No result of Lamphere’s investigations has survived, but on April 18, a remarkable letter from Arthur Martin of B2b (yes, him of the FEABRE/HONIGMANN/TUDOR-HART saga) to Patterson appears on file. A critical paragraph runs:

I don’t think we need worry unduly about the F.B.I request for a copy of Krivitsky’s statement. In fact they received from us, through S.I.S., an expurgated version of what KRIVITSKY said which omitted any reference to the “Imperial Council” source. However, they would undoubtedly have heard of this source from Don LEVINE who, you will remember, ‘ghosted’ KRIVITSKY’s book and would almost certainly have received this information during his conversations with KRIVITSKY. If the F.B.I. raise the subject again I think you should simply feign complete ignorance but if they press hard agree to refer the request to me.

This note reflects the fact that, at a meeting in London on April 17, Dick White had reported that the FBI had asked for a fuller [_sic_] version of the Krivitsky material. Lamphere had presumably followed up, discovered that the Bureau had located its expurgated copy, and was now requesting the full Monty.

What to make of all this?

• MI6, whenever they forwarded the Krivitsky report to the FBI, had obviously been sensitive and embarrassed enough about Krivitsky’s references to the ‘Imperial Council’ source to want to conceal the information. (What else did they hide, one wonders? And did they redact it in a noticeable fashion, or merely re-present the harmless sections?)
• Unless Lamphere was dissembling, he was in April unaware that anyone in the FBI had seen the report. And maybe it had been buried and forgotten: certainly he had not been able to rely on his bosses to share its contents with him.
• On the other hand, Lamphere had been confided in by MI5 to the extent that he knew about (some of, maybe all) the expurgated sections, but had apparently withheld the nature of this confidential statement from his colleagues in the FBI. That explains his lack of interest in seeing the whole report, and instead his expressed desire to interrogate Philby.
• Martin (as is habitual) had been kept in the dark. He failed to distinguish between the FBI in general, and Lamphere in particular, and somehow thought that Patterson, if pressed, would be able to feign ignorance if Lamphere were to raise the topic of the ‘Imperial Spy’ with him. This was despite the fact that Patterson’s earlier correspondence indicated irrefutably that he, Patterson, had discussed the topic with Lamphere.
• Martin was again shown as being somewhat slow. He failed to detect the difference between the full Krivitsky material and the expurgated version, or to realize why the FBI might want to see the former.
• Lamphere’s loyalties and sympathies would appear to have been as much with MI5 as they were with his employers, the FBI. (He bore some animosity to the chief of the FBI, Edgar J. Hoover.) Moreover, his first step when Martin arrived with the incriminating dossier was to leak it to his ex-FBI colleague, Bill Harvey, now working for the CIA. Yet he concealed this action in his memoir, and made no mention of Harvey’s report, or its introduction of ELLI. It strongly suggests that Lamphere was a party to White’s Devilish Plot.
• Lamphere may even have been obstructing the official American inquiry, since memoranda on file indicate that he stated, as late as May 1, that he was still undecided as to whether the spy was British or American, and that he wanted attention spent on Halpern. This trend is reinforced by the fact that, as the FBI was reported to be heating up its inquiries, on May 7, the bureau was reported by Patterson to be ‘thinking in terms of HALPERN and FISHER’.
• In his report to Bedell Smith condemning Philby, Harvey of the CIA focused on the Volkov affair, and Philby’s marriage to Litzy, while introducing the Gouzenko references to ELLI in place of inspection of the Krivitsky reference. That was probably because he could not have been expected to know about Krivitsky’s description of a journalist in Spain, let alone that that role could have been linked to Philby. In addition, it helped to distinguish his conclusions from what Martin had passed to Lamphere.
• White’s gesture of help towards Bedell Smith may have arisen from his service with the General towards the end of the war. (White had been appointed deputy counter-intelligence adviser to Bedell Smith, then Eisenhower’s chief of staff.) Bedell Smith had rebuked White for openly opposing USA policy over counter-intelligence issues: at the time, White had not felt confident enough to hold his ground.

General Bedell Smith in Moscow

Yet the most dramatic conclusion must be the fact that some weeks before Burgess and Maclean disappeared, when Maclean had still not been solidly identified, when Burgess was officially not regarded as involved at all, and Philby was not only out of the picture but part of the team working on the leakage, MI5 had been preparing a dossier that essentially presented not just Maclean, but also Burgess and Philby, as long-term Soviet agents. (What information MI5 had gathered on Burgess, and what suspicions the service had about him at this time, are important questions – as some coldspur readers have pointed out – that will have to be deferred for analysis another time.)

White’s Predicament

It is no wonder that White attempted to present the sequence of events as markedly at variance with the facts. He had to pretend that the project of identifying Homer had focused on Maclean, and that MI5 had no suspicions that Burgess was involved – or even harboured any concerns about Philby’s involvement. He had to imply that the first accusations against Philby came from the CIA, and that Philby returned after the visit by Sillitoe and Martin. He had to conceal the mission undertaken by Martin to leak the dossier to Lamphere. He had to claim that it was only after Martin’s return from Washington that a proper investigation into Philby’s past was undertaken, and that, with Bagot’s help, a dossier was then created and passed to MI6’s chief, Stewart Menzies. As I have described elsewhere, White’s description of events, as relayed first to Andrew Boyle and then to his biographer, Tom Bower, is a tissue of lies. Moreover, it is as if Bower, who lists Lamphere’s book in his bibliography, and uses it in his endnotes, did not read it properly, since he fails to identify the contradictions, ignoring completely Lamphere’s account of how Arthur Martin passed him the detailed dossier. It is worthwhile here recapitulating – and slightly expanding – White’s version of events, as essentially displayed in Chapter 5 of A Perfect English Spy.

In the early days of the investigation after Burgess and Maclean absconded (May 28), MI5 was very much reliant on the testimony of Goronwy Rees, who had volunteered information about Guy Burgess, Burgess having left a message for Rees just before he disappeared. Even though Burgess was quickly confirmed as the person who had rented the Austin A40 left on the quay at Southampton, Dick White claimed to his biographer that he could not believe that Burgess had been an accomplice to Maclean. He said that he was astonished at Rees’s descriptions of Burgess’s past, even though Anthony Blunt, a close friend of Guy Liddell, had helpfully suggested that Burgess might have escaped with Maclean. This was all clumsy dissimulation, in light of the contents of the dossier compiled for Lamphere.

Yet, when White described the meetings between Arthur Martin and Lamphere, he indicated that the conversations were focused on Burgess. This is astonishing, as the main part of the dossier outlined by Lamphere – which White does not mention at all – concentrated on Philby. White attempted to explain this outcome by virtue of the fact that the Americans recalled that Philby had been very supportive of Burgess, and that their investigation therefore was re-directed at Philby. This was simply a clumsy effort by White to explain why the coming broadside from Washington was targetting Philby, when White himself had set up Lamphere & co. with the ammunition.

White went on to state that, soon after Sillitoe’s return to London (actually on June 18, alongside Martin, who had held his meetings without Sillitoe in attendance), ‘a long message arrived from Philby’ offering his thoughts about Burgess. That implies that Philby was still in Washington, but in truth he had already been recalled by Menzies, and he arrived the day after the departure from London of Martin and Sillitoe (on June 12). White would also have in mind another infamous message, suggesting that Maclean might be the guilty party, which Philby had sent on April 2 (see KV 6/142). Yet Philby wrote a further attempt to distract attention from himself on June 4, when he indeed wrote to Menzies about some of Burgess’s dubious habits, and his suspected Marxism. That must be the missive to which White was referring, although why a telegraphed message should have taken so long to arrive on White’s desk is highly questionable. His dating of its arrival serves to postpone the timing of Philby’s departure from the USA.

Thus White’s account of the process of interrogating Philby is mendacious. In his recollection, after the return of Sillitoe and Martin (undated, of course, but actually June 18) White approached Jock Sinclair of MI6, and convinced him that Philby would be of use in London in the inquiries. (Philby had already been in London for a week.) Jack Easton then sent a handwritten message to Philby warning him of an imminent recall – which was in no way ascribable to any misdemeanours. And only at that stage, according to White, did MI5 set to work, preparing for Philby’s return:

Over the next few days, White and Martin diligently compiled a record of Philby’s work. There was the discovery that Philby’s first wife, Litzi Friedmann, was an Austrian communist. In 1946, White had been asked by SIS to check on Litzi after Philby had applied for permission to divorce his youthful transgression . . .

There was also Philby’s handling of the Volkov defection in 1945. Konstantin Volkov’s offer to defect had been negotiated with John Reed, a first secretary at the British Embassy in Turkey. . . .

Bower notes without comment that no attempt was made to question Reed before Philby’s return from Washington. Of course, it is absurd to accept that MI5, having maintained a dossier on Philby, would acquaint itself with its contents only at this late stage of the game. If White, as he admitted, had been involved with the embarrassing business of Kim’s wanting a divorce from Litzy in the summer of 1946, when her background was well-known, how could he have suddenly ‘discovered’ those facts in 1951? All the work had already been performed for Martin’s and Lamphere’s benefit.

Next followed the interrogations. Easton had been provoked to have suspicions about Philby himself, but why Sinclair did not object strongly to the process, having been told that Philby’s recall was imply for amicable discussions, is not explored by Bower. White was not practiced in interrogation, and did not prepare himself properly: thus he failed to get any admission or confession out of his subject. Philby simply stuck to his guns, and refused to admit anything, or to concede any of White’s points, knowing that without a confession his accusers were powerless. There was a certain farcical aspect to the exchanges, however. As Philby and White jousted over the funding of Philby’s trip to Spain, White knew that the NKVD had been his paymaster, while Philby had to pretend otherwise in order to ward of Jack Easton, innocently attending the interrogations.

Irrespective of White’s mendacious account of the events, and the inability of his biographer to unravel its contradictions, a balance-sheet of White’s situation can be drawn up. On the credit side, Philby had been forced to resign; the FBI and CIA appeared not to be disturbed by the revelations, which could have rebounded harshly on White and MI5 generally; White’s devious tricks had not been picked up by Petrie or Liddell; his cohorts of Martin, Archer and Bagot kept their silence; hardly anyone outside the intelligence services would have ever heard of Philby; and Attlee and his administration were too consumed with other matters to want to stir up trouble with spies On the debit side, MI6 was not unified in its attitude to Philby, with Sinclair, Vivian and Nicholas Elliott stoutly defending him, Easton supportive (until July, when he became a fierce critic), and Menzies forced to sit on the fence; the flurry of documents circulating could well have come to the attention of politicians who might ask why on earth MI5 had been so sluggish; Guy Liddell was pursuing the eponymously named PEACH inquiry into the possible misdemeanours of Philby; the Foreign Office, in the guise of the Washington Security Officer, James Mackenzie, was also revisiting Philby’s behaviour in Washington; and Harvey in the CIA had resuscitated the spectre of ELLI, something White considered a dead issue by then, but one which could have opened a whole fresh disclosure of uncomfortable secrets concerning SOE and the Soviet Union from the war period.

Dick White surely hoped that things would blow over. But unconnected events suddenly changed the rules.

PEACH

After the interrogations, Dick White had reportedly submitted a report to Menzies constituting the case against Philby. It has not come to light. According to what White then told Andrew Boyle and Tom Bower, he then busied himself with an intense study of the connections and affiliations of the Cambridge graduates of the early 1930s, remorsefully admitting that MI5 had not been thorough enough. Yet he also complained that the establishment resented their digging around, and its members in influential places came to their friends’ defence. This was much of a sham show by White: he had had ample time to consider the facts back in 1939 and 1940, when Philby’s malfeasances had come to notice. Moreover, he still showed loyalty to Anthony Blunt, who had also been an Apostle at Cambridge, had visited the Soviet Union in 1934 with Burgess and (despite what Bower writes), had remained friends with him, and had maintained his communist opinions, as was evident when he was recruited by MI5 in 1940. That was an utterly naïve display by White.

MI5’s initial focus during the PEACH inquiry seemed to be on confirming that Philby had been a Soviet agent. Yet what did that mean? The Security Service had no evidence that he had passed on secrets of any kind: he was not trapped from VENONA decrypts. With the Foreign Office investigations, the attention appeared to shift smoothly to another domain: ascertaining whether Philby could have been the man who had alerted Maclean to the imminent interrogation, thus proving his guilt. This line of inquiry was flawed on three counts: the ability of Philby to gain up-to-date information, and then communicate with Maclean from Washington, must have been thin, to say the least; the interrogation was not imminent, but planned for a day a couple of weeks later; and, in principle, Philby might have wanted to save the skin of his friend without necessarily being employed by the NKGB. White and MI5 knew better, of course, but it was a politically more astute strategy to pursue the ‘Third Man’ angle.

White had tried to disqualify himself from the inquiry, on the grounds that ELLI and Volkov were not in his bailiwick – a rather feeble declaration. Thus the substance and the timing of his report are both very bizarre. During the summer (as I have explained elsewhere) matters started heating up, what with the CIA getting antsy again, and demanding more action, Liddell visiting the USA, and getting messages that he could not rationalize because of his exclusion from the plot, and the Foreign Office also stirring the pot afresh. When Liddell returned from leave in August and wrote that things were looking bleaker for Philby, it is not clear what he was referring to, and White’s report (not issued until the end of November) does not reflect any fresh discoveries – not even the quirky letter that reported that H. A. R. Philpott had indeed been a journalist in Spain in 1937. Why would such a spurious item be so prominently added to the archive at that late stage? Now that Jane Archer’s recovery has been publicized, it appears as a clumsy KGB-type spravka inserted in the file to give the impression that vague pointers to Philby in Spain surfaced only in the summer of 1951.

The Philpott Memorandum

Thus White’s report, presented without any fanfare or explanation in FCO 158/27 as being distributed on November 30, may have been a modest revision to what he submitted to Menzies back in June. The tone of the text suggests, however, that more serious investigations of material undertaken during the summer had strengthened the case that Philby was a Soviet agent, but the linkage between that assertion and the desirability of determining who had leaked information to Maclean before he escaped is never made clear. The report is in many ways a re-working of the ‘Seven Points’. It is, however, very superficial on the ties with Litzi. It states that Philby did indeed go to Spain as a journalist (as had been declared to Lamphere back in June), but it does not explain how this information was derived. Without identifying the project itself, it adds the details of the VENONA decryption exercise, and the changes which the Soviets made in December 1949. It does not mention ELLI.

Yet it is also mendacious. White cites the Krivitsky testimony, noting that the plan to assassinate Franco ‘did not mature’, and then adds: ‘but Krivitsky says he is pretty certain that the “imperial council source”, namely Maclean, would have been amongst the friends of the young man sent to Spain’. That is nonsense: moreover, Krivitsky was long dead by then, and the use of the present tense is incongruous. Krivitsky is not on record of saying any such thing (I am not sure what the original Russian for ‘pretty certain’ would have been), and there is no linkage between the two in the Krivitsky report. White goes on to repeat, several times, the vague assertion that Philby and Maclean must have been well acquainted, and he uses this claim to conclude that Philby was ‘the most likely person to have been responsible for alerting Maclean’.

The irony was that, even if Philby had managed to warn Maclean of the impending interrogation from afar in Washington, it would have been the least of his considerable sins. White and Menzies must have come to that conclusion, and dreaded what might come out of the woodwork. If only they could just shuffle him off quietly to the side, and hope the story died down . . .

Enter ‘Buster’ Milmo

What upset their musings was the General Election in October, with Churchill’s Tories returning to replace the Attlee administration, and displaying a traditionally more robust response to the evidence of Soviet penetration. As I explained in my May 2023 piece, both Eden and Churchill were badly briefed, and Churchill, with typical impetuosity, insisted that Milmo’s interrogation of Philby be advanced a week, to December 12, only five days after Liddell had accompanied Sillitoe to listen to Eden’s fears about another scandal, and only two weeks after White’s document had been distributed. The main concern seemed to be that Philby would flee the country (one of the reasons why Churchill demanded haste): the belief was that a confession would be gained from Philby, although the implications of putting him in the dock were not clearly thought through. A vague desire of convincing the Americans that ‘we are resolute in clearing up Soviet espionage in the United Kingdom’ was expressed. What was not planned for was an outcome where Philby denied everything, and in which MI5 and the Foreign Office were left helpless in the stand-off.

Helenus Milmo, Q.C.

Milmo was given his instructions on December 3: he conducted his interrogation on December 12. During that time he studied a dossier (‘a very full one’, though how he knew that is not evident) prepared for him, no doubt by Arthur Martin. Again, I shall not repeat my analysis of Milmo’s report from last May: what intrigues me is the fresh evidence that he turned up – clearly not ‘fresh’ to him, as it must all have been new – but fresh in the sense that White had curiously avoided mentioning it. I listed seventeen items that MI5 had appeared to have dredged up during the summer, all of them relating to events before the outbreak of the war. The most startling are perhaps the details of Litzy’s movements in Europe between 1934 and 1937, and her banking arrangements. I find it impossible to believe that these items were discovered and prepared especially for Milmo’s benefit, considering the short time between his appointment and the interrogations. But neither do I think it likely that MI5 came up with these gems by trawling through previously arcane folders in the summer of 1951, or by making requests to the Immigration authorities about her movements. They must have all been in Philby’s Personal File, and they had been entered there at the time that the events occurred.

So why did Dick White appear unaware of them in his report? It is inconceivable that he was not familiar with the details. After all, he had reported to his biographer the item whereby Philby’s role as a journalist had been ‘discovered’ by Jane Archer – a nugget, by the way, that was noticeably absent from Milmo’s Appendix. First of all, his report must have been written some time beforehand, at a time when he thought matters were settling down, and surely not in the knowledge that Milmo was about to embark on another interrogation. Second, the report must have been pulled out to provide evidence that MI5 had been doing some kind of investigation, but it ran the risk of harming the reputation of White and the Security Service because of its shallowness. Yet the most provocative aspect of the dossier is that it closes in 1939, the time when Philby (as I claim) performed his deal with MI5 and MI6. The file no doubt moved into a ‘Y’ category with special security status at that time, and its contents were not made available to casual researchers in MI5. The intent was to show that Philby had been a careless and subversive operator in his early years, but that there was no evidence of any treacherous activity once war broke out.

The risks were enormous, however. Anyone reading Milmo’s Appendix should have expostulated: “You mean, you had all this information on Philby in the 1930s, and you still employed him in SOE and MI6, and promoted him to high positions, even head of Soviet counter-intelligence??”, and wondered why the routine checks were not made. As I have explained before, it is documented that, on June 18, 1940, MI6 made a telephone inquiry to MI5, requesting a trace on Philby, but all the Security Service came up with was a record of his previous membership of the Anglo-German Fellowship. (For example, the item on his role as a journalist in Franco’s Spain, matching the Krivitsky tip, was conveniently overlooked.)

Certainly, only a carefully doctored subset of Philby’s file would have been presented to Milmo for inspection. Milmo might have been presented with the specially crafted September evidence about Philpott the journalist in Spain, but assuredly not the original 1939 entry, so that it would appear that the Spanish connection was only a recent discovery. Yet, in his report, Milmo refers neither to the résumé information that Jane Archer ‘discovered’ nor to the dubious ‘Philpott’ memorandum, instead writing:

There is no proof that PHILBY was in fact the agent referred to in the above statement but this information fits him like a glove and no the alternative candidate has been found.

The ‘above statement’ cites the phrase attributed to Krivitsky concerning his being ‘pretty certain’ about the friendship between the Imperial Council spy and the journalist, so it is clear that Milmo is merely parroting what White had written. He had had no time to undertake any original investigation: the dossier presented to him was not as ‘full’ as he supposed.

Nevertheless, White’s leaving it to Milmo (who worked for MI5 during the war) to come up with the documentation of all those telling stories is unfathomable. He should have been mortified that Milmo would be allowed to be the first to reveal some of the unpleasant secrets in the MI5 files. One can only assume that he had no choice, and matters were by then beyond his control. Alternatively, he would probably have claimed that he never would have had a chance of viewing the records that Arthur Martin and Jane Archer managed to dredge up from the vaults for Milmo’s benefit. Yet he must also have figured that, if someone were incisive enough to question MI5’s thoroughness in this respect, the matter would come back to rebound primarily on Menzies. Menzies and White knew the score, were both party to the confession and deal that Philby engineered, and protected each other, but no one in authority was smart enough to challenge them.

‘The Imperfect English Counter-Espionage Officer’

‘For he himself has said it,

And it’s greatly to his credit,

That he is an Englishman!’ (W.S. Gilbert, HMS Pinafore)

I have previously pointed out that The Perfect English Spy was one of the worst-selected titles for an intelligence biography. Dick White scored one out of three: he was indisputably English. But he was primarily a counter-espionage officer, not a spy. And his performance was frequently poor. Whatever native intelligence he possessed was too often directed at schemes to confound his rivals and allies rather than towards thinking strategically about the enduring enemy. White was treading very dangerous ground, but he must have calculated that no archival material would be released in his lifetime to undermine his account of what happened. In that respect, he was right, but a more careful analysis by his biographer should have pointed out the contradictions.

Mr. Even-Shoshan is nevertheless correct: few of the errors of 1940 can be laid directly at White’s door. After the opportunity that Krivitsky placed before MI5, the service was in confusion. Jane Archer was pushed aside in bizarre circumstances. Vernon Kell was overwhelmed by the illusory German ‘Fifth Column’ crisis, and then deposed. Liddell was ineffectual. Churchill’s Security Executive caused demoralization. The implications of Krivitsky’s death in Washington were overlooked. Petrie came in to restore order, but completely mismanaged the Soviet counter-espionage effort during the war. It was delegated to the unimaginative Hollis, who was charged with keeping an eye on the Party. Others who spoke up about the Communist threat (Harker, Curry, Knight) did not have enough clout, and were not leadership material. By 1945, when White took over B Section, most of the damage was done.

At the outset of war, however, White had been quickly introduced to some of MI5’s major projects. He had opportunities to break through, and shine, but was at that time guileless, too ingenuous. He was present at some Krivitsky interrogations, but he did not trust the defector since he himself lacked appreciation for the cunning and dissimulation essential for spycraft, and he thus classified all Krivitsky’s pointers as worthless. In dealing with Whitehall over the double-cross operation, White decided to be deferential, and that behaviour let him down when he tried to criticize Beaverbrook’s policy for hiring communists. Indeed, Roger Hollis (who had not completed his degree course at Oxford) was more forceful than White over the communist threat. Bower writes that White’s attitude towards communism at that time was ‘benign’. White never raised any objections to Smolka’s employment: he admitted that communist penetration was a side-issue. When Percy Sillitoe was appointed Director-General after the war, and White took over the counter-espionage B Division from Liddell, Hollis remained more hawkish than White. Again, White kowtowed to Whitehall.

White had been the first graduate to be employed by MI5, which was significant, in that it represented a development away from Special Branch police officers and military men. Yet he did not possess a first-rate brain: he had gained only a second-class degree in history at Christ Church, Oxford, and had been assessed by his tutor as being a little slow to ‘get going’. Thus he was not a ‘don’ with a post-graduate degree: in fact he had been turned down for a university appointment. (His mentor at Christ Church, was another history don, John Masterman, who came to work for him during the war, and led the XX Committee). Moreover, White complained, when he belatedly tried to understand the mechanics and structure of Soviet subversion, that he was constantly thwarted by ‘the intellectuals’. On the other hand, he mixed well with the Oxford group – especially what was known as the Christ Church mafia: Masterman, Gibert Ryle, Hugh Trevor-Roper, Charles Stuart, and Denys Page (MI5’s representative at Bletchley Park). Moreover, given his relationship with Blunt, this was a rather simplistic view of the world, and reflected a lack of toughness, of the keen curiosity that is essential for counter-intelligence work.

On the other hand, perhaps reflecting the mutual admiration society of Christ Church men, Trevor-Roper spoke highly of him:

He was a true professional in his methods, but what we most admired was his intellectual lucidity, his equanimity, his unfailing sense of proportion and humour . . . He believed that all problems are soluble by reason; and he never lost his balance.

That would be a positive assessment for a clubbable civil servant, yet what was required of someone prepared to confront the KGB were steelier qualities: greater cynicism and less optimism; an appreciation of the presence of the irrational and cruel. Dropping that ‘sense of proportion’ might have been a useful guardrail against Stalin’s evils. An echo of that assessment came from Kim Philby, who wrote to Trevor-Roper (in a letter dated April 30, 1968) that his survival from his interrogation had been gained courtesy of the ‘ineffective’ White, who was ‘pretty nondescript besides such colleagues as Liddell, Hart, Blunt, Rothschild and Masterman’.

As Tom Bower points out, there were some sour grapes behind that observation, and he points out that none of the officers named ‘would have been minded to lead the charge against Philby’. He is right: Liddell was cerebral, but lacked confidence and guts; Hart was a very meek and mixed-up personality; Blunt’s reputation for scholarship and clear-thinking was obviously blasted after his exposure; Rothschild was a devious and vainglorious character, with dubious motivations; Masterman was surely equipped to enjoy a quiet life, skillfully organizing the XX Committee. Trevor-Roper acknowledged Philby’s grudge and poorly disguised motivations in a tribute to White in Christ Church Report, 1993, where he disparaged Philby’s letter. Yet Philby was overall on the mark: White blew his opportunity.

As I indicated in my response to Mr. Even-Shoshan, I think the comparison should lie elsewhere. In writing on what makes a good Intelligence Officer, in my piece from last December (https://coldspur.com/a-wintry-miscellany/ ), I wrote:

In conclusion, after reading the biography of J. L. Austin, I realized that it was a figure like him that MI5 (and MI6) desperately needed to coordinate intelligence about Soviet intentions and practice in all their aspects – Leninist and Stalinist doctrine, the Comintern and its successors, Moscow’s relationship with the CPGB, the role of spies, illegals and agents of influence, the use of propaganda and subversion. Austin’s capacity for hard work, his ability to learn, his excellent memory, his historical sense, his patience, his lack of sentimentality, and his synthetic abilities in interpretation all gave him an unmatched capability. Two heads of the CIA, Walter Bedell Smith and William Casey, were both highly impressed with Austin’s work, and tried to bring his disciplines to work in reforming the organization.

J. L. Austin

Thus Bedell Smith, for whom White had served in Germany at the end of the war, thought more highly of Austin. White had had an opportunity to bring his expertise to bear in the immediate post-war years, and to dedicate appropriate analysis to the warning signs. The intelligence concerning Blunt, Feabre, Honigmann, Smolka, Broda, Tudor-Hart, Nunn May, Philby (abetted by Gouzenko and Volkov), as well as Alexander Foote, and Ursula and Len Beurton, followed by the Fuchs case, should have formed a pattern. Yet, facing the unthinkable, he failed to grasp the nettle. He set about concentrating on cover-ups, saving his own career, helping to ensure the survival of MI5 by lying to his bosses, and then persuading Sillitoe in turn to lie to Attlee over the Fuchs business. Afterwards, he felt like resigning when severely rebuked by Sillitoe, yet was convinced by Liddell that he should soldier on, only then to betray Liddell in his quest for the top job. And then, later, when chief of MI6, he undermined his former service by encouraging rumours of Soviet penetration of MI5 – the ‘ELLI’ fiasco. It was a selfish and dishonourable end to his career.

So that is my conclusion about White: on the surface, a heartily good fellow who knew how to deal with Whitehall, but altogether too decent a chap to take on the monstrosities and wiles of Stalin. ‘The schoolmaster’, as Malcolm Muggeridge called him after hearing of his promotion to Director-General. True, he was not immediately responsible for the policies of Section B when he arrived in MI5. He soon had an opportunity to extend a fundamental influence, however, but he failed to do so. He was not comfortable speaking ‘truth to power’. He disbelieved the harsh truths from Krivitsky, but succumbed to the flattery and attention of Blunt. He showed some worldly wisdom, and was not without ingenuity himself, as his plot with the CIA demonstrates, but he quickly wove himself a tangled web which should have been impossible to escape. He did escape for a long time, however, and even received a bountiful biography, and accolades, which have positively enhanced his reputation. The crucial factor was that he was fortunate in that his political bosses were not very smart, either.

Postscript: The Lost Philby Chapters

As a result of another amiable email from a regular correspondent, I followed up a lead on the chapters of Philby’s autobiography that failed to be included in My Silent War. The writer drew my attention to a story published on-line by the BBC, at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-67456282. My informant went on to tell me that Philby’s widow had been trying to sell some of their possessions after the fall of the Soviet Union, yet, shortly before the auction was to take place, MI6 became rather nervous about what might be revealed, and persuaded the auction house to remove the more sensitive portions of the memoir. Money changed hands, and the censored material is now reportedly held in the MI6 vault.

From the photographs of the excerpts, I was able to determine that what was presented by the Spyscape Museum actually represented the extra two chapters that were published in The Private Life of Kim Philby, by Rufina Philby, assisted by Hayden Peake and Mikhail Lyubimov, published in 2000. They appear as ‘Autobiographical Reminiscences’ on pages 206 to 243: the first covers Philby’s early years, while the second starts with Philby’s arrival with his new bride in London in the spring of 1934, and describes his recruitment by Arnold Deutsch. So what might the withdrawn chapters have contained? It occurred to me that Philby’s time in Vienna was completely absent, and that he might well have written a chapter describing his experiences there – the revelation of which would have been very embarrassing for MI6.

I decided to contact Shari Kashani, Head of Collections and Curation at Spyscape. She was very helpful and appreciative. Portions of the two chapters had originally appeared in the Sunday Telegraph, in 1993: she very kindly sent me images of the extracts. But she (and Skyscape) did not even know that the two chapters had appeared in the Private Life book published in 2000! So we know that what Skyscape owns appears to correspond to what Rufina handed over. Yet, as I pointed out to her, it is odd that the memoir would jump from childhood reminiscences to London in 1934, without covering the tumultuous days in Vienna. I wrote to her:

I find it all intriguing, because Philby’s memoir (My Silent War) is judged to have been written with the KGB looking over his shoulder, and is very unreliable. One might think that Philby would perhaps have tried to correct some false impressions, but the second chapter (concerning his recruitment) is probably just as unreliable. For example, he starts off by writing about his return by train via Berlin and Paris, but E. H. Cookridge, who knew him well in Vienna, wrote in his memoir that Kim and Litzy returned to the UK on a motorcycle . . . The fact that he did not write about the controversial time in Vienna (that would have preceded this chapter) is also provocative.

Ms. Kashani replied:

Thank you so much for sharing that very interesting information. When we purchased the memoir, it was specified that the work was unpublished, hence we didn’t know of its inclusion in Rufina’s memoir. You are correct – the work comprises 48 typewritten pages, and then additional pages of edits. Nevertheless, we are thrilled to have the memoir and its document holder as part of our collection, and very happy to know that the public have access to Philby’s words in this 2000 compilation.

Finally, I informed her of the story of MI6’s intervention, and gently pointed out that Spyscape might have been misled over the exclusivity of the chapters the firm did buy (since they were unaware that they had been published in book form), and that it may also have purchased less than was originally described. She had confirmed to me that there were only 48 pages extant, which number matches that stated by Peake in his Introduction in the book. On the other hand, in an article in The New York Times of 1994 (‘Kim Philby and the Age of Paranoia’), Ron Rosenbaum described how he had been able to inspect the consignment of Philbyana received from Moscow when he visited Sotheby’s, and that among the papers he discovered the unfinished biography. “Five [_sic!_] chapters in manuscript pages whose publication the K.G.B. had apparently prohibited”, he wrote. This was apparently news that Spyscape did not want to hear, as she did not respond to my comments: her previously very affable communications ceased over two months ago. She and her bosses were presumably no longer ‘thrilled’. In a way, I was sorry to detect her chagrin, but I had hoped she might follow-up my lead more aggressively.

So it seems there exist two chapters as yet unpublished. Can anyone out there add anything else?

Late News: I have compiled Omnibus Editions of a) the demise of PROSPER, and b) recent bulletins on Kim Philby, that can both be inspected via the Reports and Articles page at https://coldspur.com/reviews/.

(Latest Commonplace entries can be seen here.)