Spycatcher

by Peter Wright

  Cumming ordered quails' eggs and asked a little about my life history. He listened in an uninterested way over lunch until finally he ordered two brandies and turned to the purpose of his hospitality.

  "I wanted to ask you, Peter, about how you felt things were going in the Service, technically speaking?"

  I had half anticipated his approach and decided it was time to speak my mind.

  "You won't get anywhere," I told him flatly, "until you appoint a problem-solving scientist and bring him fully into the picture."

  I paused while brandy was served.

  "You've got to let him have access to case officers, and he has to help plan and analyze operations as they happen."

  Cumming cupped his glass and gently rolled its contents.

  "Yes," he agreed, "we had rather come to that conclusion ourselves, but it's very difficult to find the right person. Jones [1] has been making a play for the job, but if we let him in, he'll be wanting to run the place next day."

  I agreed.

  For a while I had been indicating to Winterborn that I would be interested in joining the Service full-time if a suitable vacancy arose.

  "I suppose Hugh has told you that I am interested in joining?" I asked.

  "Well, that's just the problem, Peter," he replied. "We have a no-poaching agreement with Whitehall. We simply can't recruit you from there, even if you volunteer."

  Cumming drained his glass with a flick of the wrist.

  "Of course," he went on, "if you were to leave the Navy, things might be different."

  It was typical Cumming, he wanted me to make the first move. I raised the problem of my Admiralty pension. I would lose all fourteen

  years of it if I left, and unlike Cumming I had no private income to fall back on. Cumming tapped the side of his brandy glass gently and assumed an expression of surprise that I should even raise the subject.

  "I am sure you're well aware that this would be a tremendous opportunity for you, Peter," he said.

  He paused and returned to one of his favorite themes.

  "We're not Civil Service, and you have to be prepared to trust us. There is always the secret vote. I don't think we could make any written undertakings, but I am sure when the time comes we will be able to arrange something. We don't like to see our chaps suffer, you know."

  After lunch we emerged from the rich leather and brandy of the In and Out Club to the watery brightness of Piccadilly.

  "Do let me know if you decide to leave the Admiralty, won't you, Peter," said Cumming, "and I'll take some soundings among the Directors."

  We shook hands and he strode off toward Leconfield House, his umbrella tucked under his arm.

  Cumming's approach was fortuitous. The antisubmarine project was coming to an end. The Admiralty were anxious to move me to new work in Portsmouth which I was not keen to do. The Marconi Company, meanwhile, had a contract to develop the Blue Streak project in conjunction with English Electric. Eric Eastwood, deputy head of the Marconi laboratory, offered me the job of engineering the Blue Streak guidance system. Within a month I had resigned from the Admiralty and joined the Marconi Company as a Senior Principal Scientist.

  I found missile research utterly demoralizing. Partly it was because I was hoping I would soon be joining MI5. But I was not alone in realizing that the missile system was unlikely ever to be built. It was a folly, a monument to British self-delusion. In any case this kind of science was ultimately negative. Why spend a life developing a weapon you hope and pray will never be used?

  I telephoned Cumming and told him. I had left the Admiralty and waited for his next move. Finally, after six months, I received another invitation to lunch. Hospitality was noticeably less generous than the last time and Cumming came straight to the point.

  "I have discussed your proposal with the Board and we would like to have you. But we will be in difficulties with Whitehall if we take you on as a scientist. We have never had one before. It might complicate matters. What we suggest is that you come and join us as an ordinary officer, and we'll see what you make of it."

  I made it clear to Cumming that I was not very happy with his proposal. The only difference, so far as I could see, was that he would be paying me at the Principal Scientist (or Ordinary Officer) level, rather than at my current Senior Scientist level - a difference of five hundred pounds a year. There was also an issue of principle which my father had raised when I discussed the matter with him.

  "Don't go unless they appoint you as a scientist," he told me. "If you compromise on that, you'll never be able to operate as a scientist. You'll end up being a routine case officer before you know it."

  Cumming was surprised by my refusal but made no further attempt to persuade me. He soon left, claiming a pressing appointment at Leconfield House.

  A month later I was in my laboratory at Great Baddow when I received a summons to Kemp's office. Cumming and Winterborn were sitting there, Winterborn grinning broadly.

  "Well, Peter," said Kemp, "it looks as if I am finally losing you. Malcolm wants to take you on as MI5's first scientist."

  Winterborn later told me that Cumming had gone to see Kemp to ask what he would have to pay to get me, to which Kemp, familiar with the extraordinary lengths to which Cumming would go to save a few pounds of government money, had replied: "The same rate I would join for - a fair wage!"

  "Of course, there will be a Board," Cumming told me, "but it's just a formality."

  I shook hands with everyone and went back to my lab to prepare for a new life in the shadows.

  - 4 -

  Four days later I went to Leconfield House for my selection Board. The frosted-glass partition in the alcove slid back and a pair of eyes scrutinized me carefully. Although I was a familiar face, I still had no pass. I waited patiently while the policeman telephoned Cumming's office to arrange for my escort.

  "In to see the DG today, then, sir?" he said as he pushed the lift bell. The iron gates slid back with a heavy crash. It was an old-fashioned lift, operated by a lever on a brass box. It clanked and wheezed up the building. I counted the floors crawling past until we got to the fifth, where the MI5 senior management had their offices.

  A little way down the corridor we turned into a large rectangular room which housed the DG's secretariat. It looked just like any other Whitehall office - secretaries who had seen better days, tweeds, and clacking typewriters. Only the combination safes opposite the window gave the place away. In the middle of the far wall of the room was the door to the Director-General's office. The length of the outer office was deliberately designed to foil any intruder. It gave the DG time to operate the automatic lock on his door before anyone could burst through. When the green light above his door flashed, a secretary accompanied me across the vast expanse and showed me in.

  The DG's office was bright and airy. Antique walnut furniture and leather-backed chairs made it feel more like Bond Street than Whitehall. Portraits of the three previous Director-Generals stared austerely across the room from one wall. On the other side the full Board of MI5 Directors sat behind the polished conference table. I recognized Cumming and Hollis, but the rest were unknown to me.

  The Director-General, Sir Dick Goldsmith White, invited me to sit down. I had met him before on one of the many visits to Cumming's office, but I could not pretend to know him well. Ironically, he had also been at Bishop's Stortford College, where he had held the record for the mile, but it was well before my time. He was tall with lean, healthy features and a sharp eye. There was something of David Niven about him, the same perfect English manners, easy charm, and immaculate dress sense. Indeed, compared with his Board, he was positively raffish.

  When we were seated he opened the interview on a formal note.

  "I hear you wish to join us, Mr. Wright. Perhaps you could explain your reasons."

  I began by explaining some of the things I had already done for the Service. I stressed, as I had done earlier to Cumming, that it was impossible for me to do more u
nless I was brought inside, and fully trusted.

  "I think I speak for all my Directors," he replied, "when I assure you that we would not contemplate bringing in a scientist without providing him with the access necessary to do the job. You will be fully indoctrinated."

  Cumming nodded.

  "However," White went on, "I think I should make it clear that the Security Service is not like other Whitehall departments with which you may be familiar. If you join us, you will never be eligible for promotion."

  He explained that entry to the Service was generally at an older age than to the Civil Service, and followed a set career pattern involving general officer training in a wide variety of MI5 branches. Few of these ordinary officers made the next step to the limited number of Senior Officer posts (later Assistant Director), and fewer still had any realistic chance of aspiring to one of the six Directorships. By entering at the Senior Officer's grade to do a highly specialized job, I effectively precluded any chance of a Directorship. I told the Board frankly that, since I was by nature a lone furrower rather than one of life's bosses, this did not worry me at all.

  We talked briefly about integration with Whitehall, which was something I felt needed urgent attention in the technical field, and after twenty minutes the questions began to dry up. Finally Dick White summed up.

  "My view, Mr Wright, is that I am not sure we need an animal like you in the Security Service." He paused to deliver his punch line: "But if you are prepared to give it a try, so are we."

  The stiffness melted away. The other Board members got up from behind the table and we chatted for a few minutes. As I was leaving, Dick White beckoned me over to his desk at the far end of the room.

  "Peter, I am going to start you off in A2 with Hugh Winterborn, and obviously Malcolm will be responsible for tasking, but I have told him I anticipate that you will be spending most of your time on D Branch matters - the Soviet problem."

  He drummed his fingers lightly on his desk diary and gazed out of the window in the direction of the Russian Embassy complex in Kensington.

  "We're not winning that battle yet by any means." He snapped the diary shut and wished me luck.

  After lunch I made my way back along the fifth floor for the routine interview with the Personnel Director, John Marriott. During the war Marriott had served as Secretary to the Double Cross Committee, the body responsible for MI5's outstanding wartime success - the recruitment of dozens of double agents inside Nazi intelligence. After the war he served with Security Intelligence Middle East (SIME) before returning to Leconfield House. He was a trusted bureaucrat.

  "Just wanted to have a chat - a few personal details, that sort of thing," he said, giving me a distinctive Masonic handshake. I realized then why my father, who was also a Mason, had obliquely raised joining the brotherhood when I first discussed with him working for MI5 full-time.

  "Need to make sure you're not a Communist, you understand."

  He said it as if such a thing were impossible in MI5. In the weeks before Cumming's final approach I was aware that a retired policeman attached to the DG's secretariat had made a routine inquiry about me at the Marconi Company. But apart from this interview I was not subject to any other vetting. Indeed, although this was the period when MI5 were laying down strict vetting programs throughout Whitehall, it was not until the mid-1960s that any systematic vetting was brought into MI5 at all.

  Marriott's desk was empty, and I assumed the interview was being taped for inclusion in my Record of Service. Marriott took the session seriously enough, but asked only a few questions.

  "Expect you were pretty left-wing when you were young?"

  "Mildly. I taught in the Workers' Educational Association in the thirties."

  "Fairly Communist, was it?"

  "Not in Cornwall," I replied.

  "Voted Labor in 1945, did you?"

  "I thought most people in the services did."

  "Pretty middle-of-the-road now, though?"

  I told him I abhorred Nazism and Communism. He seemed pleased at the lengthy speech I made. We moved onto my personal life. He danced around the subject until finally he asked:

  "Ever been queer, by any chance?"

  "Never in my life."

  He studied me closely.

  "Have you ever been approached by anyone to do clandestine work?"

  "Only by you."

  He tried to laugh, but it was clearly a line he had heard a thousand times before. He unlocked his desk drawer and gave me a form to fill in with details of next of kin. I was vetted. No wonder it was so easy for Philby, Burgess, Maclean, and Blunt.

  Before formally joining A2 as the Scientific Officer, I underwent two days' training together with a young officer joining MI5 from university. The training program was the responsibility of a tough, no-nonsense officer named John Cuckney. We got on well. Cuckney could be downright rude, but I soon realized that he was just tired of knocking into shape young MI5 recruits of generally poor caliber. He was altogether different from the average MI5 officer. He refused to submit to the monotony of the dark pinstripe, preferring bolder styles. Cuckney was his own man and had broad horizons beyond the office. It was no surprise to me when he left MI5 to pursue a successful career in business, first with Victoria Investments, and later with the Crown Land Agents and as Chairman of the Port of London Authority. Today, Sir John Cuckney is Chairman of Westland Helicopters.

  Cuckney began our training with a routine lecture on the legal status of MI5.

  "It hasn't got one," he told us bluntly. "The Security Service cannot have the normal status of a Whitehall Department because its work very often involves transgressing propriety or the law."

  Cuckney described various situations, such as entering premises without a warrant, or invading an individual's privacy, where the dilemma might arise. He made it clear that MI5 operated on the basis of the 11th Commandment - "Thou shall not get caught" - and that in the event of apprehension there was very little that the office could do to protect its staff. He described the way liaison with the police was handled. They were prepared to help MI5 if something went wrong, particularly if the right person was approached. But there were very definite tensions between the two organizations.

  "Special Branch would like to be us, and we don't want to be them."

  Cuckney handed us the current MI5 internal directory and explained how the Service was organized. There were six Directorates: A Branch handled resources; B Branch was the Personnel Department; C Branch controlled protective security and vetting throughout all government installations; D Branch was Counterespionage; E Branch ran British Intelligence, in the still lengthy list of colonies and was responsible for the counterinsurgency campaigns in Malaya and Kenya; and finally F Branch was the domestic surveillance empire, which principally meant keeping tabs on the Communist Party of Great Britain, and especially its links in the trade union movement.

  Cuckney talked a little about the sister Service, MI6, or SIS (Secret Intelligence Service), as it was more popularly known in Whitehall. He gave us the standard MI6 directory and discussed the very few departments there with which MI5 maintained regular liaison. In practice this amounted to MI6's Counterintelligence Section, and a small Research Section dealing with Communist Affairs, although this latter was wound up not long after I joined MI5. Cuckney was studiously noncommittal in his comments, and it was only later, when I began to cultivate my own liaison with MI6's technical people, that I realized the depth of antipathy between the two Services.

  At the end of two days we were photographed and issued with our MI5 passes. Then Cuckney introduced a retired Special Branch policeman from C Branch, who gave us a lecture on document security. We were told on no account to remove files from the office, to always ensure our desk was cleared of all papers and our doors locked before going out, even if only for ten minutes. I was also issued with my combination safe number and told that a duplicate number was kept in the Director-General's safe, so that the management could obt
ain any file at any time of the day or night from an officer's safe. It was all sensible stuff, but I could not help contrasting it with the inadequacy of the vetting.

  After the first week Cuckney showed me into an office which was empty apart from a tape recorder on the desk. He took a series of large tape reels from a cupboard.

  "Here," he said, "you might as well get it from the horse's mouth!"

  The subject of the tape was printed on the spool. "A Short History of the British Security Service," by Guy Liddell, Deputy Director-General 1946-1951. Liddell was a towering figure in the story of MI5. He joined in 1927, from the Special Branch, where he almost single-handedly ran a Soviet counterespionage program. He controlled MI5 counterespionage throughout the war with determination and elan, and was the outstanding candidate for the Director-General's chair in 1946. But Attlee appointed a policeman, Sir Percy Sillitoe, instead, almost certainly as a snub to MI5, which he suspected of engineering the Zinoviev letter in 1924. Liddell soldiered on under Sillitoe, barely able to contain his bitterness, only to fall foul of the Burgess/Maclean scandal in 1951. He had been friendly with Burgess for many years, and when Burgess went, so too did whatever chances Liddell still had for the top job. He retired soon after, heartbroken, to the Atomic Energy Commission.