This communist activity had been foreseen by the moderate Labour government under Clement Attlee in 1950. Attlee set up a secret committee, under the late Field Marshal Sir Gerald Templer, to forecast what the British communists would do after they had failed so miserably to secure representation in Parliament through the ballot box. The Templer Committee questioned many witnesses, including the heads of MI5 and the secret service. Its report, which has never been published, concluded that the communists would concentrate on surreptitious means to achieve influence, and eventually power, through three main targets – the unions, the media and higher education, meaning the universities and technical institutes. In thirty years, their penetration of all three has progressed inexorably to the point where they can be quite open about it.
There are particular aspects of trade union activity that are causing special concern to the defence chiefs. While the loyalty of the armed forces has never been in doubt, there is less certainty about particular sections of the civilian backup to the nation’s defences. The successful reaction by Britain and NATO to an emergency situation would greatly depend on a few crucial establishments, such as GCHQ intercept stations and decoding sections. These are obvious targets for KGB infiltration, and a few ‘dissidents’ at a critical moment could cripple them. As the employees are members of unions, some dispute could be concocted to give the dissidents an excuse for ‘downing tools’ or ‘going slow’.
The strength of the union in the defence field was demonstrated in the early months of 1981, when civilians employed in the maintenance of Polaris submarines and their warheads walked out at crucial times in furtherance of pay disputes. The unions involved then took widespread retaliation when naval personnel were used to ready the submarines for their essential patrol duties. At the time of writing, three out of the navy’s four Polaris submarines are virtually locked in their bases.
Unions responsible for certain workers at the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment at Aldermaston in Berkshire have delayed the production of nuclear explosives there for almost two years, a situation that the Russians must be aware of and appreciate. This is what happened.
After a scare about working with plutonium, the men who operated in the radioactive area refused to enter it unless they were paid special danger money. The civil service refused to pay it because the work was not dangerous, if the precautions were observed, and other workers would have demanded the same increase. To break the deadlock, Margaret Thatcher forced through a deal whereby the men in the radioactive area would receive an extra £15 a week – half of what they had been demanding. The men wanted the money, but their union officials declined the offer because the initiative had come from the government and not from them. In defiance of the Aldermaston shop stewards, the men took the money and returned to work but, in deference to their union, have ‘gone slow’ on the backlog of weapons maintenance work, further delaying the resumption of production.
Fortunately, this has not affected the efficiency of the nuclear deterrent yet because there is enough slack in the program to improve and update the Polaris missile warheads, but it could prove to be serious if the ‘go slow’ continues, and the issue raises doubts about the effects of union action in an emergency.
There is also concern about those post office workers who are involved with security issues, particularly in the event of an emergency, when cable communications would be crucial. Of course, the great majority are loyal, but there are known to be some militants, who may be communists, among those in key technical positions. Some years ago, men of the post office security unit required to record the telephone conversations of suspects were vetted, and some were found to have close links with the Communist Party. They were duly ‘purged’, but it is far more difficult for the post office to take that action now for a reason that was not appreciated when the government took the steps that created it.
All members of the post office were previously classed as civil servants; as such, those in sensitive positions could be required to undergo positive vetting. With the split-up and reorganisation of the post office, they are no longer civil servants, and the unions to which they belong are opposed, on principle, to positive vetting.
The defence chiefs have considered the building of a ‘hard’ communications system under non-union control for use in an emergency, but the cost has proved prohibitive. As things stand now, communications could be brought to a halt at the height of an emergency by a few post office engineers staging an ‘industrial dispute’.
This situation, and the communist penetration of the trade unions in general, has greatly stretched the resources of MI5, which has the responsibility for countering them. Also, with the inroads made by the terrorist problem both in Northern Ireland and on the mainland, MI5’s resources are now too slim to cope effectively with the KGB.
Incidentally, no member of MI5 or the secret service is allowed to belong to a union because of the danger of disruption and infiltration by union officials, who would require access to details of the organisations. Nevertheless, MI5 did once stage what was virtually a sit-down strike.
During Anthony Eden’s premiership, a delegation from the Argentine was in London to discuss supplies of meat. The meeting was being held in Lancaster House, and Eden suggested that the anteroom where the Argentineans were to hold their private discussions should be bugged by MI5 to provide some indication of the cheapest price at which they were prepared to settle. Several officers refused to comply on the grounds that the project had nothing to do with the security of the state, and the bugs were never inserted.
CHAPTER 23
SHOULD THERE BE AN INQUIRY?
FOLLOWING OFFICIAL DISCLOSURES about the treachery of Anthony Blunt inside MI5, and, previously, about Philby’s activities inside the secret service, there were demands in Parliament for some form of inquiry into both organisations. MPs of all parties felt that Parliament and the public had need of reassurance concerning the loyalty, efficiency and accountability of the two services. I suspect that, following the disclosures in this book, there will be renewed demands for an inquiry of some kind, though after the debate on the Blunt case it was decided that none was necessary.
To anyone who has the genuine interests of MI5 and the secret service at heart, as I hope I have, there are basic objections to an outside inquiry of any kind. As regards MI5, it is an ‘illegal’ organisation, in that it has no basis as a government department that has ever been authorised and properly funded by Parliament. Although there is an official secret service vote, the secret service is largely in a similar position. So, insofar as their activities are concerned, especially in the field of counter-espionage, the security service can function with effect only by illegal acts, such as entering premises to search for incriminating documents or for objects that they can then photograph. Embarrassing legal problems could be set if they were caught perpetrating a ‘burglary’ even though, through the judicious use of watchers, communication devices and other means, this has never happened and is unlikely to.
On rare occasions, the services need to resort to the hiring of professional pickpockets to secure keys or documents. Caretakers and others may have to be bribed to facilitate the planting of microphones. They may have to exploit the facilities of customs to secure access in luggage to documents which they wish to photograph. They have frequent need for false pretences, purporting perhaps to be mechanics to gain entry to a foreign aircraft.
Governments of both the right and the left have seen advantages in retaining this degree of illegality, anomalous though it may seem. So long as MI5 remains ‘illegal’, it cannot be given powers of arrest, so there is no danger that it could become a secret police force and an agency of political repression like the KGB – which has powers of arrest and interrogation exceeding anything available to the British constabulary. As case records described in this book demonstrate, MI5 cannot force or require anybody to be interviewed, much less interrogated. This has enabled people to escape retributi
on for treachery, for the police cannot be called in to make an arrest until there is evidence of the kind that can be brought into a British court of justice, and, all too often, this is lacking. This inevitably reduces MI5’s capacity to catch spies or even to stop known spies from continuing with their activities against the national interest. MI5 is often powerless to prevent a spy leaving the country. It is doubtful, for example, whether it could have stopped Maclean and Burgess from going to France had they been approached and declined to remain in Britain. When these traitors reached Moscow, they drew money from their British bank accounts because, apparently, there were no powers to prevent them from doing so.
My attention was drawn to a further weakness of MI5’s position shortly before the big British trade exhibition staged in Moscow in 1961, a weakness that must continue so long as the service remains ‘illegal’. There was considerable concern – justified as it turned out – because MI5 knew that the KGB would do all it could to suborn young technicians, mainly from electronic and engineering firms, attending the exhibition. The firms they represented were for the most part involved in defence projects, and there would be a fair chance that anyone who could be recruited would, one day, find himself concerned with some secret contract. MI5 was therefore most anxious that the visitors to Moscow should first be warned, in as vivid a way as possible, of the dangers of blackmail through gifts and sexual indiscretions, which might be made easy for them. I asked an MI5 officer, who sought my help, why his organisation could not warn the visitors or their employers directly. He assured me that this was not feasible because, officially, MI5 did not exist.
To overcome this problem, I was asked to give prominence to a series of actual, and then secret, cases that showed how the KGB operated and how, by making a clean breast of matters at an early stage, its threats could be countered. This seemed a roundabout and uncertain way of issuing a most important official warning, for it was to be limited to the pages of the Daily Express, which, in spite of its large circulation, might not be read by those for whom it was intended. Apparently, though, it seemed to work to MI5’s satisfaction.
Such weaknesses have been considered preferable to the creation of a legalised security service with greater powers, and this remains the view of the government and of MI5 itself.
Over recent years, MI5’s powers to carry out routine procedures, such as tapping telephones, have been greatly reduced and controlled, contrary to sensational reports that they have been intensified. While any secretary of state can issue a warrant for the tapping of a suspect’s telephone, in practice this is now restricted almost entirely to the Home Secretary and the Foreign Secretary. Each time MI5 puts forward a case for the surveillance of a suspect, the Home Secretary in person has to read the case file, and, if he agrees with the proposal, he signs a warrant giving legality to the procedures, which do not include entry to private premises. The Foreign Secretary is required to observe the same process with regard to surveillance requests made by the secret service. Each case is reviewed monthly and only if the counter-espionage authorities can substantiate their continuing need is a further warrant issued.
Previously, the security authorities did not require warrants to tap the telephones of foreign diplomats or Soviet bloc embassies, but now they do. Blanket warrants covering organisations rather than individuals are issued for this purpose, but they still have to be reviewed and reissued monthly.
The granting of a warrant for a combined bug and tap, that is, the tapping of a telephone in such a way that it also serves as a live microphone in the room so that conversations there can be recorded on tape even when the telephone is hung up, has been made more stringent.
The installation of taps and microphones is carried out by a special security division of the post office, where controls have also been tightened. The post office invariably refuses to carry out any surveillance work without a warrant except in very rare cases where an immediate tap is necessary before there is time for a warrant to be obtained. In such cases, the warrant still has to be produced within forty-eight hours.
Because it has no powers of arrest, MI5 has to work closely with its arresting arm – Special Branch, the police department that shares with it responsibility for protection of the royal family, as well as counterintelligence against the IRA and other terrorists. Being a ‘legal’ organisation, Special Branch has powers to require the post office to tap the telephones of suspected criminals simply by applying to a senior post office official. This power has been given to them because the requirements of the police as a whole in this respect may be so great as to put an impossible administrative burden on the Home Secretary. In theory, this substantially widens the scope of the security authorities, of which Special Branch must be considered to be a part in any inquiry.
Lord Denning was almost lyrical about the harmony and cooperation between MI5 and Special Branch in his report on the Profumo affair. No doubt this varies with the personalities involved, but in talks at Scotland Yard I have been given to understand that there is frequent friction. Special Branch complains about having to do too much of the ‘leg work’ in counter-espionage operations when its own resources are also overstretched, particularly because of the terrorist threats to the lives of the royal family, senior politicians and other prominent people.
In its work, MI5 shares with police the power to intercept and read letters, which again can only be done, as a rule, in collaboration with the post office. I am told that the legality of this derives from a royal prerogative dating from the days of Elizabeth I’s great secret service chief, Sir Francis Walsingham.
In the United States, the clandestine opening of mail is, of course, illegal and, when the counter-intelligence section of the CIA was discovered to be opening letters from and to the Soviet Union, this led eventually to the departure of James Angleton and others from the CIA, following contrived publicity about it in 1974.
In the United Kingdom, the task imposed by the authorised opening of letters in the interests of security is enormous, especially when they have to be searched for microdots – photographed messages reduced to such a minute size that they can be camouflaged as punctuation marks. In the past, letters were steamed open and competent ‘flaps and seals’ operators – women being more adept – could open and reseal envelopes without leaving a clue at quite remarkable rates. The operation is now largely automated, the envelopes being slit open, then resealed by a machine that ‘stitches’ the envelope back together again, using the fibres of the paper to do so.
Enshrined in the British Official Secrets Act is the further legal right to intercept and read telegrams and cables in the interest of national security. The author was responsible for drawing the public’s attention to this in 1967 with extraordinary consequences in Parliament. These led to the setting up of a committee of inquiry under three of the Queen’s privy councillors to decide whether I and my newspaper had transgressed a semi-official arrangement between the government and the press whereby certain secret matters remain suppressed. The inquiry reported that we had done no such thing and revealed that the regular practice of reading cables had gone on for forty years. Its report also revealed that senior Whitehall officials had instructed junior officers to lie about the practice in an attempt to preserve its secrecy and make the public believe that I was in error. (Similar decisions may have been taken to discredit the publicity about the much more serious matter of the Hollis affair.) The security authorities’ main purpose in reading private cables is to detect instances where the cable offices, including those of free-enterprise companies like Western Union as well as branches of the post office, are used by foreign embassies and others for sending intelligence messages.
The security authorities are forbidden to tamper with the mail of Members of Parliament, including the lords, under the rules introduced by Wilson, which also forbade the tapping of their telephones even when they might be suspect. This has limited their recent activities, particularly in Northern Ireland, where MI5
is deeply involved, along with the secret service. One American senator has long been in the habit of sending packages to a certain Ulster politician, and MI5 was curious to ascertain the contents, suspecting that they might be money. It was decided, however, that this would not only be a contravention of the rules but that the resulting political uproar, if the intervention was discovered, was too dangerous to risk.
In the United Kingdom, and I would guess in most other countries, the security authorities obtain maximum assistance from the customs and immigration control officers, who can so easily manufacture excuses to search baggage and packages in privacy, especially on the grounds of examining them for concealed weapons and explosives. Documents can be quickly photographed and replaced.
The secreting of microphones and other eavesdropping devices unconnected with the telephone system in private homes, offices and hotels used to be a facility freely available to the counter-espionage authorities, but a warrant is now required. (In the case of hotels, ships, aircraft and similar locations, the permission of the owners is invariably sought and is rarely refused.)
Their Trade Is Treachery: the Full Unexpurgated Truth About the Russian Penetration of the World's Secret Defences Page 31
