A Brief History of the Spy

by Paul Simpson

  A Brief History of the Spy

  Paul Simpson

  This brief history offers a concise overview of “the Great Game” to uncover the true world of espionage beyond such fictional agents, with a clear focus on 1945 onwards, from the height of the Cold War to the War on Terror.

  Paul Simpson

  A Brief History of the Spy

  In memory of my mother, Mary Howden-Simpson, who introduced me to Simon Templar, James Bond and so many other fictional heroes.

  ‘The one thing you can bet is that spying is never over. Spying is like the wiring in this building — it’s just a question of who takes it over and switches on the lights.’

  John le Carré, 1996

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  The invading army is coming up on the defenders’ stronghold. It’s heavily fortified — a high wall surrounds the city, which appears, at first glance, to be impregnable. The army commanders know that there is no option: they must take the city, and quickly, or their campaign will lose momentum.

  Two spies are ordered to find out the lie of the land. They infiltrate the city, but are nearly captured. One of the locals, a prostitute who has been harbouring them, sends the army off in the wrong direction, while the spies manage to escape back to their own lines. With the information they have retrieved, the commanders make a successful plan of battle — and take the city.

  A scene from the Iraq War, or perhaps one of the Balkan conflicts of the late twentieth century? No, this is a reconstruction of events surrounding the capture of the town of Jericho, as described in the Book of Joshua, one of the early books of the Bible, which can be dated to somewhere around the fourteenth century BC. Modern spies might be able to transmit information to their superiors using hi-tech equipment, but the core demands of the espionage world have hardly changed in thousands of years. Men and women (from ancient times, spying has always been an equal opportunity profession) have to put themselves at risk in order to obtain information that other people simply do not want them to have.

  There can be few people who haven’t seen a spy film, especially one of the score of movies made featuring Ian Fleming’s fictional secret agent, James Bond. The suave, debonair, tuxedoed Roger Moore incarnation of that character belongs firmly in the realms of fiction, but the more gritty, determined agent, as embodied by Daniel Craig’s twenty-first century version or the screen interpretation of Robert Ludlum’s Jason Bourne, is a far more accurate account of life in a world of treachery and deceit. Many of the spies whose deeds are examined in this volume carried out feats that would be dismissed as pure fiction, were they not fully documented.

  This Brief History of the Spy focuses on the period from the Second World War up to the present day, the time of the Cold War and the War on Terror. Even within that comparatively short time, the world in which spies operate has changed almost beyond recognition. The threat from terrorism is today perceived as much stronger than the fear of the Russians or the Chinese — but with events unfolding in the Middle East, will that continue to be the case?

  Some of the changes have occurred for pragmatic reasons. ‘The enemy of my enemy is my friend’ is a precept that applies in espionage as much as it does in diplomacy. One jaded CIA officer sarcastically observes in the 007 film Quantum of Solace, ‘You’re right, we should only deal with nice people’, but who are the ‘nice people’? That line resonates when considering the debate over the use of ‘extended interrogation techniques’ (what most would regard as torture) by the CIA in the War on Terror.

  One of the most fascinating things about researching and writing this overview has been the discovery of so many cases that never really entered the public consciousness. I’ve been intrigued by spies since reading my first Bond novel and being given The Master Book of Spies with its pictures of secret cameras and other cool equipment as a youngster. My first book was a history of James Bond, so I feel in a way I’ve come full circle, chronicling the exploits of those who labour on the real battlefields, facing imprisonment, torture or worse. To those unsung heroes this book is also gratefully dedicated.

  A note on spellings: names translated from Cyrillic or Arabic languages into English can appear in many different forms. The most common (particularly Osama bin Laden, and al-Qaeda) are adopted here, but where original documents are quoted, the spellings and abbreviations within are retained (notably UBL for Usama Bin Ladin). Original newspaper and magazine articles have been referenced where possible, along with declassified documents released by the FBI and the CIA. A select bibliography is provided at the end of the book.

  Paul Simpson

  January 2013

  PREFACE

  Surprising as it may be to those of us brought up on a diet of spy books and films, at the end of the Second World War most of the government agencies whose acronyms and names have become so familiar did not exist as we know them today. There was no CIA. The letters KGB didn’t instil the terror that they would from the fifties onwards. There was no state of Israel, so its intelligence organizations Mossad and Shin Bet didn’t exist either. The South African espionage group nicknamed BOSS wasn’t around. Pre-Communist Germany had no Stasi.

  The geopolitical shifts at the end of the war, set down in agreements between the leaders of America, Great Britain and the Soviet Union at Yalta and Potsdam in 1945, meant that the intelligence communities were dealing with a very different landscape to the one between the World Wars and during the conflict itself.

  Displaying the paranoia for which he is justly remembered, Soviet leader Josef Stalin was already spying on his allies — his muted reaction to US President Harry S. Truman’s hints about the atomic bomb indicated to many that he was already well aware of the American progress, and, indeed, may even have known more than his counterpart. Soviet agents were already part of the British intelligence service hierarchy, and in place in strategic locations around the globe.

  Truman came to realize that the Soviets were not to be trusted, and under his presidency the American intelligence community was reorganized to deal with the threat as the Cold War grew ever chillier. The British Secret Intelligence Service (popularly known as MI6, a designation used in this book for avoidance of ambiguity) also focused its attention on Russia and its satellites. The Cold War heated up and cooled down through successive regimes, with proxy wars fought around the world.

  Of course, the threat from the Soviet Union wasn’t the only danger that the various spy agencies in the Western world had to deal with — nor were the capitalists of America and Britain Russia’s only enemies. Many countries faced domestic foes: the British in Ireland; the South Africans against those who opposed apartheid. The creation of the state of Israel added to the volatility of the Middle East, with the Israelis, unsurprisingly, expecting attack from those who vehemently objected to the Jews returning to their ancestral home: Mossad gained a reputation for ferocity and determination that continue to make it feared.

  But when glasnost came, the Berlin Wall fell, and the Communist experiment proved to be a failure, those in the intelligence world slowly began to realize that there were new global threats. The World Trade Center bombings in 1993, and then, most dramatically, the events of 11 September 2001 (forever after simply known as 9/11) meant that the enemy wasn’t as easy to identify, although, as the expulsion of Russian agent Anna Chapman and the other spies working for the KGB’s successor, the SVR, in 2010 proves, some old enemies may not be dead, simply dormant…

  1

  EVERYTHING CHANGES

  The end of the Second World War marked a sea change for the world’s intelligence agencies. In some countries, such as the United States, it would lead to a major reorganization of the way in which they worked; in others, i
ncluding the Soviet Union, it would mean that some operations, which had perhaps been of lesser significance during the war against Hitler, took higher priority, as former wartime allies became enemies.

  In the United Kingdom, those in charge of MI6, the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), saw the close of hostilities as a chance to put the service on a better footing, in much the same way that their colleagues at the Security Service, MI5, had needed to do at the start of the war.

  * * *

  Organized intelligence gathering has taken place on behalf of the English state ever since Tudor times: Thomas Cromwell, chief minister of Henry VIII, was in charge of agents reporting back from across Europe, while during the period Henry’s daughter, Elizabeth I, was on the throne, her private secretary, Sir Frances Walsingham, ran a network of fifty agents, and developed a highly effective system of interception — the precursor of both MI5 and MI6 today.

  The perceived threat from Germany in the early years of the twentieth century led to the creation of a Secret Service Bureau by the Committee for Imperial Defence in 1909. There were multiple reports of German agents working in Britain, often covered in a very sensationalist way by the newspapers of the time. As the MI5 website recounts, the Weekly News offered £10 to readers to provide information on German agents to its ‘Spy Editor’; it was quickly overwhelmed with letters! Nor was it any secret that Kaiser Wilhelm was expanding the German military machine. The Bureau was therefore instructed to counter foreign espionage in the UK (the Home Section) and to collect secret intelligence abroad on Britain’s potential enemies (the Foreign Section). The Home Section was led by Army Captain Vernon G.W. Kell, while the Foreign Section was headed initially by Commander Mansfield Smith-Cumming RN — his habit of initialling his correspondence ‘C’ led to the use of that single letter for the head of the service, a fact which author Ian Fleming adapted when creating his fictional head of service, M, for the James Bond novels.

  When they were requested by the Government to investigate the growth of the German Imperial Navy, Kell and Cumming agreed to split the Bureau into two different organizations: the Home Section became the Security Service (known as MI5 from 1916 onwards) and the Foreign Section became the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6). While MI5 operated against German spies in Britain — arresting over twenty agents before the outbreak of the First World War in August 1914 — MI6 set up networks in France and Belgium that would prove highly important during the four-year conflict.

  With the German menace seemingly removed following the Treaty of Versailles, which ended the war, MI6 turned its attention to a troubling development: the rise of a new political creed following the 1917 Russian Revolution — Communism. Cumming saw the rise of international communism as a major threat to the security of Great Britain, and a lot of MI6’s attention during the twenties and thirties was devoted to the Comintern, the Soviet-dominated Communist International organization. The Comintern was established in 1919 to work by all available means, including armed force, for the overthrow of the international bourgeoisie and for the creation of an international Soviet republic as a transition stage to the complete abolition of the State. (The Soviets would also target MI6 in return, embedding one of their most important agents, Kim Philby, into the service: he would prove to be one of their best assets in the period immediately after the Second World War.)

  MI5 was renamed the Defence Security Service in 1929, dropping the word ‘Defence’ from its title in 1931. Around the same time it was given responsibility for assessing all threats to the security of the UK — with the exception of Irish terrorists and anarchists, which stayed part of the police remit. (The service itself continued, and still continues, to refer to itself in shorthand as MI5, a convention adopted here.) During the period leading up to the Second World War, despite limited personnel, they dealt with the spy ring created by left-wing journalist William Norman Ewer (which led to the dismissal of various sympathizers at Scotland Yard), and leading member of the Communist Party of Great Britain and official of the League Against Imperialism, Percy Glading’s spy ring based at the Woolwich Arsenal in south-east London, which was sending blueprints to the Soviets.

  The rise of Nazism unsurprisingly became an important part of both services’ remit during the thirties, with MI5 keeping a weather eye on British fascists, including Sir Oswald Mosley and his blackshirt organization, the British Union of Fascists. MI5 underwent a massive reorganization in April 1941 under the aegis of Sir David Petrie. Although it was discovered post-war that only 115 agents were targeted by the Nazi regime against Britain (all bar one of whom were captured by MI5, the exception committing suicide), there were thousands of vetting requests flowing through the service’s hands, as well as all the reports of potential ‘Fifth Column’ sympathizers who might assist the expected German invasion.

  MI6 also had to carry out some drastic rethinking. Many networks of its agents were lost during the Nazi domination of Western Europe after the start of the Second World War, but subsequently many more civilians volunteered to cooperate with the service, providing invaluable information for the Allied forces. During this period, the service was formally known as MI6 (it had briefly been MI1(c) during the First World War, but had rid itself of this title post-war), partly as a flag of convenience and partly to emphasize the links with MI5.

  The secret service was also responsible for the vitally important code-breaking work carried out at the Government Code and Cypher School at Bletchley Park, 40 miles north of London. The Germans believed that their vaunted Enigma code machine produced signals unreadable by anyone not in possession of a copy of the device, but in fact the experts at Bletchley Park were able to do so, and provided information, code-named ULTRA, which proved invaluable to the prosecution of the war.

  A third organization was involved in covert (and not-so-covert tasks) during the war: the Special Operations Executive (SOE) carried out sabotage, bombing and subversive actions behind the enemy lines. Where MI6 provided the raw intelligence about troop movements, the SOE were actively haranguing the enemy. MI6 head Sir Stewart Menzies regarded them as ‘amateur, dangerous, and bogus’ but because they were the brainchild of Prime Minister Winston Churchill their operations continued. Some of their actions led to terrible revenge being wreaked by the Nazis: the assassination of SS deputy Reinhard Heydrich led to the extermination of 5,000 people as a reprisal. The life expectancy of an operative may have been judged in weeks, but they became feared by the forces in Occupied Europe. General Eisenhower would even comment that ‘The disruption of enemy rail communications, the harassing of German road moves and the continual and increasing strain placed on German security services throughout occupied Europe by the organised forces of Resistance, played a very considerable part in our complete and final victory.’

  * * *

  As the tide of the war began to turn in the Allies’ favour, the Foreign Office began to consider post-war plans. One suggestion in 1943 was that a unified Secret Service could be set up that combined MI5, MI6 and SOE into one organization, with branches covering Information, Security and Operations. Churchill didn’t approve of this, and after many discussions between the various interested parties, the Bland Report, formally titled ‘Future Organisation of the SIS’, suggested that the secret service ‘must start to build up a really secret organisation behind its existing, much too widely known, façade’.

  The Bland Report covered all aspects of the service, including recruitment (‘If… the SIS does not succeed in attracting the right men, first-class results cannot possibly be forthcoming’), and stated bluntly that the main task was ‘to obtain by covert means intelligence which it is impossible or undesirable for His Majesty’s Government to seek by overt means’. The report also emphasized the need for clarity in the division of responsibility between MI5 and MI6, and suggested that SOE be wound up and operations handled by MI6. (The SOE weren’t made aware of this, since it was already clear they envisaged a role for themselves in peacetime Europe.) />
  The draft of the Bland Report did suggest that MI6 ‘should not direct its energy to investigating the activities of political organisations, e.g. Communists, Anarchists, &c’ but Sir Stewart Menzies pointed out that they were dealing with this sort of work already — and indeed had set up a department, Section IX, specifically to do so. The Foreign Office ‘desiderata’ in regard to Europe (the guidelines by which the service operated) made it clear that while keeping an eye on any attempts by Germany to revive activities was the first priority, observing ‘Russian activities… and the activities of national parties or groups in different countries who look to Moscow for leadership or support’ came a close second. After further discussion, the non-political nature of MI6 was emphasized in the final version: the service didn’t investigate people ‘because of their political ideology’ but only when there was ‘prima facie evidence that [the] organisation in question may be used as instruments of espionage, or otherwise when specifically requested to do so… C would always be well advised to seek guidance from the Foreign Office as to what political parties in foreign countries need special watching, and for how long.’

  And it became abundantly clear that the countries that would need watching would indeed be those from the Soviet Bloc.

  * * *

  During the years leading up to the start of the Cold War, the intelligence agencies of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics were as concerned with spying on their own people as they were with counter-intelligence against foreign agents. This would continue to be the case throughout the twentieth century until the break-up of the Soviet Union, and in fact was nothing new in Russia.