The Spy and the Traitor

by Ben MacIntyre

  Jones had joined the Communist Party in 1932, and remained a member until at least 1949. He was first approached by Soviet intelligence while recuperating from wounds sustained during the Spanish Civil War. A bugging operation at Communist Party headquarters in London revealed that Jones, according to one MI5 report, was “prepared to pass to the Party government and other information which has been passed to him confidentially in his trade union capacity.” The KGB formally listed him as an agent, code-named DRIM (the Russian transliteration of “Dream”), between 1964 and 1968, when he handed over “confidential Labour Party documents which he obtained as a member of the NEC [National Executive Committee] and the Party’s international committee as well as information on his colleagues and contacts.” He accepted contributions toward his “holiday expenses,” and was “regarded by the KGB as a ‘very disciplined, useful agent,’ ” passing on “intelligence about what was happening in No. 10 Downing Street, about the leadership of the Labour Party, and about the trades union movement.” The Prague Spring in 1968 led Jones to break off his relationship with the KGB, but the files indicated that there had been sporadic contact in the years since. He had retired from the TGWU in 1978, pointedly turning down a peerage, but he remained a forceful figure on the left. Gordievsky noted “clear indications in the file that the KGB wished to revive its association with him.”

  A second dossier was devoted to Bob Edwards, the left-wing Labour MP, another former dockworker, Spanish Civil War veteran, trade union leader, and long-term KGB agent. In 1926, Edwards had led a youth delegation to the USSR, and met both Stalin and Trotsky. Over a long political career, Edwards had proved a willing informant, with access to high-grade secrets. “There is no doubt,” MI5 later concluded, that the MP “would have passed on all he could get hold of” to the KGB. He was secretly awarded the Order of the People’s Friendship, the third-highest Soviet decoration, in recognition of his undercover work. His case officer at that time, Leonid Zaitsev (Gordievsky’s former boss in Copenhagen), met Edwards in Brussels to show him the medal in person, before taking it back to Moscow for safekeeping.

  In addition to the big fish, the files contained a number of smaller fry, such as Lord Fenner Brockway, the veteran peace activist, former MP, and general secretary of the Labour Party. Over many years of dealings with the KGB, this “confidential contact” had accepted a great deal of hospitality from Soviet intelligence without ever, it seemed, producing anything of much value in return. By 1982 he was ninety-four years old. Another file related to a journalist at the Guardian newspaper, Richard Gott. Back in 1964, while working for the Royal Institute of International Affairs, Gott had been approached by a Soviet embassy official in London, the first of several contacts with the KGB. He relished his brush with the spy world. “I rather enjoyed the cloak-and-dagger atmosphere which will be familiar to anyone who has read the spy stories of the Cold War,” he later said. The contacts resumed in the 1970s. The KGB gave him the code name RON. He accepted Soviet-paid trips to Vienna, Nicosia, and Athens. Gott later wrote: “Like many other journalists, diplomats and politicians, I lunched with Russians during the Cold War…I took red gold, even if it was only in the form of expenses for myself and my partner. That, in the circumstances, was culpable stupidity, though at the time it seemed more like an enjoyable joke.”

  Like all spy agencies, the KGB was prone to wishful thinking and invention when reality got in the way. Several of those identified in the files were simply left-wingers, perceived as potentially pro-Soviet. The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament was regarded as a particularly fertile recruiting ground. “Many were idealists,” Gordievsky noted, “and most ‘gave’ their ‘help’ unwittingly.” Every target was given a code name. But that did not make them spies. As is often the case in intelligence work, the political files contained a great deal of material that was simply culled from newspapers and journals, and then dressed up by the KGB in London to appear secret, and therefore important.

  But there was one dossier that stood out from all the others. The cardboard box contained two folders, one three hundred pages thick, the other perhaps half that size, bound with old string and sealed with plasticine. The file was labeled BOOT. On the cover the word “agent” had been crossed out, and “confidential contact” inserted. In December 1981, Gordievsky broke the seal and opened the file for the first time. On the first page appeared a formal introductory note: “I, senior operational officer Major Petrov, Ivan Alexeyevich, herewith open a file on the agent Michael Foot, citizen of the UK, giving him the pseudonym Boot.”

  Agent BOOT was the Right Honorable Michael Foot, distinguished writer and orator, veteran left-wing MP, leader of the Labour Party, and the politician who, if Labour won the next election, would become prime minister of Britain. The Leader of Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition had been a paid KGB agent.

  Gordievsky recalled how, back in Denmark, Mikhail Lyubimov had described his efforts to woo an up-and-coming Labour MP in the 1960s. In his memoirs, with a heavy-elbowed nudge to anyone in the know, Lyubimov referred to the London pub where he did his recruiting as “The Lyubimov and Boot.” Gordievsky knew that Michael Foot had risen to become one of the most prominent politicians in Britain. For the next fifteen minutes he flipped through the file, his pulse rising.

  Michael Foot occupies a peculiar position in political history. In later years, he became a figure of ridicule, mocked as “Worzel Gummidge” for his disheveled appearance, donkey jacket, thick spectacles, and knobby walking stick. But for two decades he was a towering figure on the left of the Labour Party, a highly cultured writer, an eloquent public speaker, and a politician of vigorous conviction. He became that most peculiar of British animals, a national treasure. Born in 1913, he began his career as a journalist, edited the socialist newspaper Tribune, and was elected to Parliament in 1945. His first cabinet appointment came in 1974, as secretary of state for employment under Harold Wilson. The Labour leader James Callaghan was defeated by Margaret Thatcher in 1979 and resigned eighteen months later. Foot was elected leader of the Labour Party on November 10, 1980. “I am as strong in my socialist convictions as I have ever been,” he said. Britain was deep in recession. Thatcher was unpopular. Opinion polls put Labour more than ten percentage points ahead of the Conservatives. The next general election was due in May 1984, and there seemed a good chance that Michael Foot could win it and become prime minister.

  The BOOT file, if it became public, would put paid to that in an instant.

  Major Petrov clearly had a sense of humor, and had been unable to resist the pun on Foot/Boot when choosing a code name. But the rest of the dossier was deadly serious. It described, step by step, how a twenty-year relationship with Foot had evolved since the late 1940s, when the KGB decided that he was “progressive.” At their first meeting with Foot, in the offices of Tribune, KGB officers posing as diplomats slipped £10 into his pocket (worth roughly £250 today). He did not object.

  One sheet in the file listed the payments made to Foot over the years. This was a standard form, with the date, amount, and name of the paying officer. Gordievsky scanned the figures and estimated there had been between ten and fourteen payments during the 1960s, of between £100 and £150 each, so roughly £1,500 in total, worth more than £37,000 ($49,000) today. What happened to the money is unclear. Lyubimov later told Gordievsky that he suspected Foot might have “kept some for himself,” but the Labour MP was not a mercenary man, and it seems more likely the cash was used to prop up Tribune, which was perennially broke.

  Another page listed the case officers who had run Agent BOOT out of the London rezidentura, by both real name and code name: Gordievsky immediately noted Lyubimov, code-named KORIN. “I quickly looked through the list. One of my objectives was to see if there was somebody else I knew, and find out who were the officers able to manipulate such a man.” There was also an index, five pages long, an inventory of every person mentioned by Foot in conversation with the KGB.

  The meetings too
k place roughly once a month, frequently over lunch at the Gay Hussar restaurant in Soho. Every rendezvous was carefully planned. Three days beforehand, Moscow sent an outline of what should be discussed. The resulting report was read by the PR Line chief in London, then the rezident, before being sent on to Moscow Center. At each stage, there was an evaluation of the developing case.

  Gordievsky read a couple of reports in detail, and skimmed another half a dozen. “I was interested in the language and style of those reports and what they reflected of the relationship—they were better than I expected. The reports were not very imaginative, but they were intelligent, well written. This was a very developed relationship, sympathetic on both sides, with confidentiality on both sides, they spoke with cordiality, and lots of specifics, saturated with real information.” Lyubimov had been particularly skilled at running Foot, and paying him. “Mikhail Petrovich would put money in an envelope and put it in his pocket—he had such elegant manners that he could do it in a convincing way.”

  What did the KGB get in return? Gordievsky recalled: “Foot freely disclosed information about the Labour movement to them. He told them which politicians and trade union leaders were pro-Soviet, even suggesting which union bosses should be given the present of Soviet-funded holidays on the Black Sea. A leading supporter of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, Foot also passed on what he knew about debates over nuclear weapons. In return, the KGB gave him drafts of articles encouraging British disarmament, which he could then edit and publish, unattributed to their real source, in Tribune. There was no protest by Foot to the KGB over the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956, and he quite often visited the Soviet Union to a top-level welcome.”

  Foot was exceptionally well informed. He provided details on internal machinations within Labour, as well as the party’s attitude toward other hot topics: the Vietnam War, the military and political consequences of Kennedy’s assassination, the development of Diego Garcia as a US base, and the Geneva Conference of 1954 to settle outstanding issues from the Korean War. Foot was in a unique position to provide the Soviets with political insight, and receptive to the Soviet line. The manipulation was subtle. “Michael Foot would be told: ‘Mr. Foot, our analytical people came to the conclusion it would be useful if the public knew such and such.’ Then the officer would say: ‘I have prepared some material…take it and use it, if you like it.’ They discussed what would be nice to publish in the future, in his own paper and others.” Never was it acknowledged that Foot was being served raw Soviet propaganda.

  BOOT was a peculiar sort of agent, who did not exactly fit the KGB definition. He did not conceal his meetings with Soviet officials (though he did not advertise them either), and since he was a public figure, these were impossible to arrange clandestinely. He was an “opinion creator,” and therefore more an agent of influence (a term of art) than an agent (a specific term of espionage). Foot would not have known that the KGB classified him as an agent, an internal definition. He retained his intellectual independence. He leaked no state secrets (and at that time had no access to any). He doubtless believed he was serving progressive politics and the cause of peace in accepting Soviet largesse in support of Tribune. He may even have been unaware that his interlocutors were KGB officers, feeding him information and passing whatever he revealed back to Moscow. If so, he was stunningly naive.

  In 1968, the BOOT case changed gear. Foot was intensely critical of Moscow in the wake of the Prague Spring. At a protest rally in Hyde Park he declared: “The actions of the Russians confirm that one of the worst threats to socialism comes from within the Kremlin itself.” No more money changed hands. BOOT was downgraded from “agent” to “confidential contact.” The meetings became less frequent, and by the time Foot was running for the Labour leadership they had ceased entirely. But, from the KGB perspective in 1981, the case remained open, and might yet be revived.

  The BOOT file left Gordievsky in no doubt: “The KGB regarded Michael Foot as an actual agent until 1968. He took cash directly from us, which meant we could regard him in good conscience as an agent. If an agent takes money it is very good—a reinforcing element in the relationship.”

  Foot had not broken the law. He was not a Soviet spy. He had not betrayed his country. But he had taken direction and secretly accepted money from, while providing information to, an enemy power, a totalitarian dictatorship. If his relationship with the KGB was discovered by his political rivals (inside as well as outside his own party), it would destroy his career in a moment, decapitate the Labour Party, and ignite a scandal that would rewrite British politics. At the very least, Foot would be sure to lose the next election.

  Lenin is often credited with coining the term “useful idiot,” poleznyi durak in Russian, meaning one who can be used to spread propaganda without being aware of it or subscribing to the goals intended by the manipulator.

  Michael Foot had been useful to the KGB, and completely idiotic.

  Gordievsky read the BOOT files in December 1981. The following month he read them again, committing as much as he could to memory.

  Dmitri Svetanko, the deputy department head, was surprised to find Gordievsky still buried in the British case histories, particularly when he had told him not to bother.

  “What are you doing?” he asked abruptly.

  “I am reading the files,” said Gordievsky, trying to sound matter of fact.

  “Do you really need to?”

  “I thought I should be thoroughly prepared.”

  Svetanko was unimpressed. “Why don’t you write some useful paper rather than wasting time reading those files?” he snapped, and left the office.

  On April 2, 1982, Argentina invaded the Falkland Islands, Britain’s outpost in the South Atlantic. Even Michael Foot, leader of the opposition and apostle of peace, called for “action not words” in response to Argentine aggression. Margaret Thatcher dispatched a task force to repel the invaders. In Moscow Center, the Falklands War provoked a violent upsurge of anti-British feeling. Thatcher was already a hated figure in the Soviet Union; the Falklands conflict was yet another example of British imperialist arrogance. The “hostility of the KGB was almost hysterical,” Gordievsky recalled. His colleagues were convinced Britain would be defeated by plucky little Argentina.

  Britain was at war. Gordievsky, alone within the KGB, was on Britain’s side. He wondered if he would ever reach the country to which he had sworn secret allegiance.

  Finally the KGB’s Fifth Department gave Gordievsky the all-clear to travel to Britain. On June 28, 1982, he boarded the Aeroflot flight to London, with Leila and their daughters, now aged two and nine months. He was relieved to be on his way, anxious to reestablish contact with MI6, but the future remained murky. If his work for Britain succeeded, he would eventually have to defect, and might never return to Russia. He might never again see his mother or younger sister. If he was exposed, he might well come back, but under KGB guard, to face interrogation and execution. As the plane took off, Gordievsky’s mind was heavy with the accumulated mental baggage from four months of tense secret study in the KGB archives. Making notes of what he had uncovered would have been far too dangerous. Instead, in his head, he carried the names of every PR Line agent in Britain, and every KGB spy in the Soviet embassy in London; he brought evidence of the identity of “the Fifth Man,” the activities in exile of Kim Philby, and further proof that the Norwegian Arne Treholt was a spy for Moscow. And, most important of all, he brought memorized details of the BOOT files, the KGB dossier on Michael Foot—a surprise gift for British intelligence, and an exceptionally volatile lump of political explosive.

  Chapter 7

  THE SAFE HOUSE

  On the outside Aldrich Ames was just an averagely unhappy CIA officer. He drank too much. His marriage was collapsing in a slow and unspectacular slither. He never had enough money. His job, trying to recruit Soviet spies in Mexico City on the fringes of the Cold War, was surprisingly dull, and just unproductive enough to ensure a steady stre
am of chivvying demands from CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia. Ames felt underappreciated, underpaid, and undersexed. He had recently received a number of reprimands: for getting plastered at a Christmas party, forgetting to lock a safe, and leaving a briefcase, containing photos of a Soviet agent, on a train. But there was nothing in his work record to indicate he was anything other than uniformly mediocre, reliably second-rate, and inconspicuously idle. Tall and spare, with thick spectacles and a mustache that never seemed fully confident of itself, he was hard to spot in a group and invisible in a crowd. There was nothing special about Ames—and that, perhaps, was the problem.

  Deep inside Rick Ames was a canker of cynicism, hard and inflamed, growing so slowly that no one had noticed it, least of all Ames himself.

  Ames had once harbored big dreams. Born in River Falls, Wisconsin, in 1941, he had a 1950s childhood that looked like the sort of idyllic suburban dream depicted on cereal boxes, concealing its share of depression, alcoholism, and quiet despair. His father had started life as an academic and ended up working for the CIA in Burma, passing money to Burmese publications secretly bankrolled by the US government. As a boy, Ames read Leslie Charteris’s thrillers featuring Simon Templar, “the Saint,” and imagined himself as a “dashing, debonair British adventurer.” He wore a trench coat to look like a spy, and practiced magic tricks. He liked fooling people.

  Ames was intelligent and imaginative, but reality never seemed to measure up to his hopes or furnish him with what he considered his just deserts. He flunked out of the University of Chicago, and worked for a while as a part-time actor. He resented authority. “If asked to do something he didn’t want to do, he didn’t argue: he just didn’t do it,” according to a contemporary. He finally scraped together a degree, and drifted into the CIA, on his father’s suggestion. “Lying is wrong, son, but if it serves a greater good, it’s OK,” said his father, through an increasingly thick fug of bourbon.