Their Trade Is Treachery_the Full Unexpurgated Truth About the Russian Penetration of the World's Secret Defences

by Chapman Pincher

  It was because of the Foreign Office assurance that Maclean would not flee that MI5 did not bother to have live monitoring of his home, which they had managed to bug with several hidden microphones. The table conversation when Guy Burgess turned up at Tatsfield, in the guise of ‘Roger Styles’ to confuse Mrs Maclean concerning his true identity, was all recorded but was not heard until the following day, when the tapes were run. As it turned out, the omission was of no consequence because Maclean and Burgess had given no indication that they were going abroad. They may well have assumed that the house was ‘miked’ even if they had not been told so.

  It is not impossible that, but for the ‘Operation Bride’ breaks, Maclean could have become a very senior official at the Foreign Office after serving in ambassadorial posts. Philby would then not necessarily have come under suspicion and could have eventually become director general of the secret service. What a combination they would have made for their friends in the Kremlin!

  While ‘Operation Bride’ led to the detection of Maclean and others, there was one high-level agent mentioned in the radio traffic who has never been identified. One deciphered message from Moscow showed that the Russians had managed to insinuate a spy into a meeting in Washington in 1942 attended by Churchill, Roosevelt and his aide, Harry Hopkins, to discuss the opening of the Second Front to take some of the German pressure off Russia. The spy, alluded to only as ‘Agent 19’, had reported that Churchill, whose cryptonym in the traffic was ‘Bear’, had said that he wanted both the Germans and Russians to take more casualties before any invasion of Europe, though the main difficulty preventing the early opening of a Second Front was shortage of transport ships.

  Strangely, no British record of this discussion, part of the so-called Trident Talks, exists. Searches among Cabinet papers, Churchill’s private papers and diary records produced nothing, though the meeting undoubtedly took place. No effort was made to consult the US records because the likeliest man to have been called into the discussion was a most eminent American, and it was decided that no mention should be made of the possible suspicion against him.

  • • •

  When Foreign Office officials are asked why they give the KGB such splendid opportunities by having Russian chauffeurs to drive their diplomats in Moscow and Russian servants in the embassy and in the residences there, they plead the needs for economy. The cost of taking over British drivers and servants would be prohibitive, especially when the fares for their holidays were taken into account. The rouble exchange rate is deliberately fixed by the Soviet government to be extremely adverse to foreigners, as a means of securing foreign currency and for other purposes.

  The KGB is swift to take every advantage of opportunities. The way in which William Vassall was suborned by a KGB agent, infiltrated into the British embassy in Moscow as an interpreter, is already on record. So now is the KGB’s attempt in 1968 to blackmail a British ambassador, Sir Geoffrey Harrison, through the wiles of an attractive maid infiltrated into His Excellency’s residence, as I indicated in Inside Story.

  It may be difficult to believe that a career diplomat senior enough to be appointed to head the Moscow embassy could fall for the oldest trick in the world, but that, sadly, is exactly what occurred. The lady, called Galya, indicated her availability for casual sexual encounters, and the ambassador could not resist it, as he admitted. Sure enough, she soon confronted him with photographs of their intimate moments, taken by a hidden KGB cameraman. She said, tearfully, that she was under pressure and that the only way either of them could escape exposure was by providing the KGB with information of value to them.

  With a sudden rush of good sense to the head, the ambassador reported his predicament to a senior friend at the Foreign Office in London and was quickly recalled for questioning by MI5’s head of counter-espionage. His Excellency insisted that he had submitted to only one encounter with Galya, which had taken place in the laundry of the residence on the spur of the moment. He apologised for his stupidity and pleaded ‘a lapse of his defences’.

  Understandably, the security men were horrified by the prospect that the KGB had been able to infiltrate a cameraman into the well-guarded residence, where he could take a whole series of pictures. The entire residence was therefore searched but with no result.

  The ambassador, who had remained in London, was interrogated again. He persisted in his story until the MI5 officers produced a letter that in spite of his predicament he had just written to Galya in Moscow and that had been intercepted there. It was a letter confessing his infatuation for the housemaid in spite of all that had happened.

  He then decided that he had better tell the truth and admitted that he had been having a regular affair with Galya. On one occasion, when he had visited Leningrad, he was surprised to find her outside his hotel. She had explained that she was there purely by coincidence to see her brother, who, as luck would have it, had a flat just around the corner. It so happened, Galya had said enticingly, that the flat would be free for a couple of hours that afternoon if the ambassador was interested. He was.

  The flat was a KGB setup, and it was there, not in the laundry, that the pictures had been taken.

  The Foreign Office lodged no formal protest with the Kremlin concerning this heinous attempt to blackmail an ambassador. Nor, in spite of his stupidity and lies, did it take any action against the erring envoy, who retired on full pension with the inevitable honours. He must, however, have spent anxious hours wondering whether the KGB might suddenly issue the pictures to the world’s press, as they had done in the past to destroy the career of a British Member of Parliament.

  What had driven the KGB to take this risk? Presumably, they had reason to believe that their subject was susceptible, as they had with Vassall. But they may also have been encouraged by the previous success that they had enjoyed with a Canadian ambassador to Moscow, John Watkins.

  Watkins, who was a close friend of the then Prime Minister of Canada, Lester Pearson, was so well known for his homosexuality that Khrushchev was able to mock him about it at a rather drunken dinner party given for visiting Canadian dignitaries in the Crimea. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police were told by two defectors that the KGB had successfully blackmailed Watkins, but they felt unable to move against him until the more direct evidence from a third might become available.

  This happened in 1963 when a Russian film script writer, Yuri Krotkov, defected in London while on a visit with a group of Soviet writers. Under interrogation, he confessed that he had been involved in setting up blackmail operations for the KGB, involving both homosexuals and prostitutes. He told how Watkins had been seduced by another man in a room that had been fitted with hidden cameras. The KGB had then shown the incriminating photographs to the ambassador, who was due to return to Canada to a high-level post in Ottawa, as assistant undersecretary of state, where he could influence foreign policy.

  After a further foreign assignment as ambassador to Denmark, Watkins, already suffering from high blood pressure, retired to live quietly in Paris. Then, when MI5 reported Krotkov’s allegations, he was taken to London for questioning.

  The interrogation showed that Watkins had been seen by none other than the ubiquitous Anatoli Gorski, the controller whom Blunt had known as ‘Henry’ and who had been retired from service overseas to Moscow, where he had a cover job as ‘Professor’ Nikitin of the Institute of History. Gorski had explained to Watkins that his masters’ requirement was simple. ‘Use your influence to assist the Soviet Union whenever you can. Steer things our way. We shall be watching.’

  Watkins admitted his homosexuality but denied that he had been recruited to Soviet intelligence. It may be true that he had not, in the sense that he had agreed to work for the KGB, but he had been seriously compromised and warned what might happen to him if he failed to comply.

  There is no evidence that Watkins had ever done much to help the Russians, but he was taken to Montreal for further questioning by a tough Welsh-born interrogator, Jim Benn
ett. The attempt to extract a confession there ended prematurely in October 1964 with the death of the 62-year-old ex-ambassador from a heart attack during a break between interrogation sessions.

  Bennett had recently sued for libel against a Canadian writer, alleging that a spy novel suggested that he had been retired early from Canadian security because he himself was suspect. The case was settled out of court.

  Krotkov has also been involved in a complicated, if prosaic, plot to ensnare a French ambassador to Moscow by introducing him to leading Soviet actresses who are required to serve as whores, if the KGB so demands. The ambassador, Maurice Dejean, a highly sophisticated gentleman, succumbed, but the rewards were never reaped because Krotkov told the story to MI5 after he defected in London. Dejean had been set up by the KGB in the most determined way. His chauffeur and his wife’s maid were KGB agents. His embassy and private residence were comprehensively bugged, the whole operation being under the control of Gen. Oleg Gribanov, whom I have already mentioned in connection with the Vassall and Nosenko cases. Eventually, Dejean fell for the oldest trick in the blackmail book – the situation in which a husband returns ‘unexpectedly’ to find his wife in a compromising circumstance with her lover.

  Soon after Krotkov defected, Dejean, who had been in Moscow for eight years, was recalled to Paris. He was interrogated thoroughly, but no evidence that he had betrayed his country could be established. Nevertheless, he was called to the presence of his friend President de Gaulle and summarily dismissed with a bleak ‘So, Dejean, you enjoy the women do you?’

  There is no evidence that the French Foreign Office complained about this attempt to blackmail a senior ambassador and personal friend of the President. So there is little incentive for the KGB to desist from such activities, which often pay rich dividends.

  The most surprising aspect of such cases is that men of eminence and experience should fall victim to obvious and pedestrian ploys. But, given congenial circumstances, sex can cut right across both intellect and ambition. So often does this happen that, when important businessmen, and particularly those with access to defence secrets, travel behind the Iron Curtain, the Foreign Office or some other ministry may ask them to submit to a briefing by MI5. This usually includes a specific warning about the dangers of sexual compromise.

  One such tycoon, a chief of one of Britain’s biggest industrial concerns, promised that not only would he take care but he would report any attempts to compromise him and even try to pick out the temptress from the rogues’ gallery of Soviet seductresses built up by MI5. When he returned from Moscow, where he had stayed in the National Hotel, he reported his experience to his MI5 mentor.

  ‘It was exactly as you predicted. At 11 p.m., there was a knock on my bedroom door, and there standing in the doorway was a blonde so luscious that I couldn’t resist her. But it was all right. I diddled them!’

  ‘What do you mean, you diddled them?’ the MI5 man asked, aghast at such complacency.

  ‘I told her to undress in the sitting room while I undressed in the bedroom. When she came in to join me, I had a pillow slip over my head with a couple of eyeholes I had cut in it. I never took it off, so it doesn’t matter what the hell they photographed. Boy, I diddled them!’

  Since the Vassall case, the Foreign Office has studiously avoided sending homosexuals to Moscow. It might be imagined that, following the damage to British interests in America inflicted by Guy Burgess, it would also be diplomatic to avoid posting known homosexual diplomats to Washington. The Foreign Office appears to disagree. A former British ambassador to Washington told me the tragic story of a young man, known to have been a homosexual but believed to have suppressed his sexuality, who was sent out to him. The young diplomat became engaged to an American girl, and, feeling that he should tell her of his homosexuality, he did so, whereupon she broke off the engagement. He was so upset that he got drunk and was picked up by the Washington police for soliciting a male. The FBI reported him to the embassy, and he had to be sent home.

  Such a man was clearly blackmail-able, and the KGB does not restrict its search for victims to Moscow.

  The contempt for diplomatic privilege shown by the KGB in its attempts to suborn ambassadors and other diplomats has always been outweighed by its insolent attitude toward the foreign embassy buildings in Moscow. The bombardment of the American embassy with microwaves in an effort to overhear conversations inside and the mass bugging of rooms there have been widely publicised, but the incredible attention paid to the British embassy has been largely concealed, for understandable reasons so far as the reputation of the Foreign Office is concerned.

  The alarming extent of the penetration of the most secret parts of the British embassy in Moscow became apparent only after a fire there in the autumn of 1964, when the large room allotted to GCHQ, the radio-interception department of the Foreign Office, was almost totally destroyed. At first, it was believed that the fire had been caused by a malfunction of the fan in an air conditioner, but tests proved that the Russians had started it by introducing an incendiary device into a duct leading to the conditioner.

  A major detective effort was therefore launched to discover how the Russians had gained access to this most sensitive and supposedly most carefully protected section of the embassy. The answer would have been hilarious, had it not been so perturbing.

  The room was screened off by thick steel bars with a door secured by an un-pickable double-lock system. There were no windows through which access could be gained, so it had been assumed that there was no need for a permanent guard at night, a watchman patrolling every two hours to inspect the lock being deemed sufficient.

  Examination showed that the Russians had been entering the room regularly at night in between the watchman’s patrols. They had not needed to deal with the lock because the bolts securing it to the screen had never been properly installed and were only finger tight. Furthermore, the Russians had kept them oiled.

  As a result, the KGB had been able to read highly secret cyphers, probably over a long period. The GCHQ technicians operating various machines in the room were supposed to turn them back to zero each night, but, because of their faith in the security of the room, they had failed to do this, so that the KGB men could see, from the readings showing on the machines, the areas in Russia on which they had been concentrating.

  The KGB’s purpose in starting the fire had been to destroy the room, for, when the Russian firemen gained entry, they set about all the machines and cypher equipment with hammers, destroying them all. The reason for this, which must have been pressing, was never discovered.

  The damage was so great that a new GCHQ room had to be built, and the security authorities urged that it should be located in the geometric centre of the building so that there would be no outside walls and no possibility of tunnelling below it. There was believed to be danger from even a deep tunnel because Soviet technological developments suggested that the KGB might be able to read messages being encoded by cypher machines simply by recording and analysing the clatter made by the machines.

  The ambassador did not like the idea of the room being in the heart of the building, where it would be inconvenient. After taking technical advice, he ruled that it should be in the basement because he had been assured that, if the floor was made of thick concrete, there was no way that it could be penetrated by listening devices. The security authorities pointed out that Russian scientists might develop a magnetic detector to eavesdrop through thick concrete, but they were told that this danger was remote. So the new room was duly built in the basement.

  All appeared to be going well until the impending visit of the British Prime Minister to Moscow, when a team of ‘sweepers’, equipped with the latest electronic devices, arrived from London to make sure that no effective ‘bugs’ could operate in the most secret areas of the embassy, where discussions would be taking place. These areas include a soundproofed security chamber, cantilevered out from the walls, remote from the floor and ceiling, and s
urrounded by an electronic screen.

  One of the sweepers was creeping about inside a wide central heating vent that ran under the new GCHQ room when he saw a tube being slowly pushed through a hole, which had been bored through the side of the vent. He slapped a monkey wrench around it and managed to cut off the head of the tube with a hacksaw while whoever was manipulating it desperately tried to pull it back. The head turned out to be a magnetic detector coil that, as anticipated, the Russians had been using to read the cypher machines through the concrete.

  Examination of the vent showed that a series of holes had been drilled to enable each cypher machine to be read. Clearly, the KGB had been particularly keen to read the dispatches that the Prime Minister would be sending back to colleagues and advisers in London.