by Peter Wright
I decided to conduct another experiment to resolve the question of whether or not there was a two-legged source operating for the Russians in conjunction with the intelligence they were obtaining from our Watcher radios. I arranged to change all Watcher radio crystals simultaneously while monitoring, by means of RAFTER, the Russian receiver, to see precisely what they did. It was impossible to make a change on this scale without recording the details inside Leconfield House, but I was confident that none of the Watchers would learn of the plan in advance.
We began RAFTER on the Russian receiver on a Monday morning, and chased Russian diplomats normally on our usual frequency. On the Tuesday and Wednesday we closed down all Watcher operations entirely while we switched the crystals. The Watcher force was told that the frequency was being moved up two megacycles, when in fact it was being moved down two instead. We opened up again on Thursday, chasing diplomats normally on our new frequency. We watched the RAFTER readings carefully for any signs that the Russians were searching for our new frequency in the area where we had indicated to the Watchers that it was being relocated. They did appear to check their equipment, as if it was faulty, but remained on the old frequency until the end of the week.
When we opened up again on Monday morning, everything had changed. A Russian receiver was already listening on the new frequency, but from inside the Embassy in Kensington Park Gardens, rather than from the Consulate. We were faced with another riddle. This new receiver had either searched for the new Watcher frequency the previous week, undetected by us as we concentrated on the Consulate, or the Russians had been tipped off to the new frequency during the weekend. It is unlikely that we would have missed the Russians lining up another receiver on the new frequency the previous week.
I discussed the whole investigation at length with Courtney Young, the head of Russian Counterespionage, and we decided to try one more experiment. If there was a human leak, we all assumed that it had to be among the Watcher or peripheral support services. So we decided to feed what is known in the business as a "barium meal", in other words, offer a bait of sufficiently important intelligence that the two-legged source, if he existed, would have to relay it back to the Russians.
Courtney Young had a double agent case running. The agent, code named Morrow, was in contact with the Russian Naval Attache, Lieutenant Commander Lulakov. We decided on a straightforward plan. We briefed the Watchers about the Morrow case as if he were a genuine spy. They were told that the following day Special Branch had been instructed to arrest Morrow in the process of handing over secret documents to Lulakov at a meeting in Hampstead. Full Watcher surveillance of both Morrow and Lulakov was required. If there was a traitor inside the Watcher service, we assumed he would alert the Russians, who would either fail to turn up for the meeting or try to warn Morrow in some way.
In fact, Lulakov turned up for the meeting right on schedule, got into Morrow's car in a quiet street near Hampstead Heath, and swiftly exchanged packages with him. Both men were promptly arrested. Lulakov established his diplomatic credentials and was released, and left the country soon afterward. The charges against Morrow were quietly dropped.
At first sight it seemed as if the Lulakov/Morrow affair proved there was no human penetration. But as with every previous experiment, there were worrying inconsistencies. Lulakov was known from previous surveillance to be infinitely patient in his preparations for meetings. On previous occasions he had taken hours to wend his way around London, by taxi, by bus, in and out of tubes and shops, before finally making his rendezvous with Morrow. On this occasion, he simply left his office, hailed a taxi, and went straight to the meeting. The handover even took place with the car's interior light on. To anyone with a close knowledge of the Russian Intelligence Service, these were inexplicable deviations from their normal tradecraft.
At the end of 1958 I composed a long report on the whole investigation into the Tisler allegations and sent it to Hollis. I went through the items Tisler had learned from his garrulous friend Colonel Pribyl and gave Hollis my assessment of how the Russians might have learned of them.
I was in no doubt from RAFTER, the technique of which I explained in the report at some length, that the monitoring of our Watcher communications was a major source of intelligence for the Russians about MI5, and had been so for a number of years. It definitely explained the Pribyl "driving test" story, and almost certainly accounted for the Russian knowledge of Operation COVERPOINT, although our traffic analysts doubted that the Russians would have been able to deduce that we were following Russians from the Thames bridges so quickly from monitoring our transmissions alone. But the failure of Pribyl to meet Linney, the speed with which the Russians detected the new Watcher radio frequency when we had it changed, and the Lulakov/Morrow affair were all open to varying interpretations. The balance of probability was that there was not a two-legged source in addition to the intelligence derived from monitoring our Watcher communications, but the possibility could not be ruled out.
A day or two after I submitted my report, Hollis summoned me to his office. He was hunched over a file, scratching at it with a fountain pen, when I entered the room. He did not look up. I stood there like an errant schoolboy while he continued to write. The room had not changed much since Dick White vacated it. There was an additional portrait on the wall reserved for venerable Directors-General. A single photograph of Hollis' son stood on his desk alongside the three telephones which connected him to the Cabinet Office, the Ministry of Defense, and MI6. But other than that there was no stamp of personality.
"Thank you for your report, Peter," said Hollis without looking up. He sounded a different man from when he had handed me the Tisler file earlier in the year. The crisis was clearly over. He was back in charge. He went on writing.
"I've written to Hoover outlining a broad explanation for Tisler's material about the MI5 spy," he went on, "but I think it would be a good idea if you went over and briefed their technical staff on the background to the case, RAFTER, that sort of thing. Make it a useful trip, won't you. Get around and make some friends."
He looked up and smiled suddenly.
"It's good to know we've been one step ahead of them this time. Well done."
He went back to his file, signaling that our brief encounter had ended. I turned to leave the room.
"Oh, and Peter..." he said as I reached the door, "stick to the technical findings, won't you. I don't think we should give Hoover the impression that anything is... unresolved."
"Of course not, sir. I quite understand."
I did not know it then, but the first stone had been cast.
- 8 -
The Capitol building was a giant fresco of pink blossom, blue sky, and white marble, capped by a shining dome. I always loved visiting Washington, especially in the spring. London was so drab; MI5 so class-ridden and penny-pinching. Like many of the younger, postwar recruits to secret intelligence, I felt America was the great hope, the hub of the Western intelligence wheel. I welcomed her ascendancy with open arms.
Ironically, relations between British and American Intelligence in the late 1950s were at their lowest postwar ebb. Collaboration between MI6 and the CIA had virtually collapsed after the Suez Crisis, and they found themselves increasingly in conflict, not just in the Middle East but in the Far East and Africa as well. Many of the old guard in MI6 found it hard to accept that their wartime control of the Anglo-American intelligence relationship had long since given way to junior status.
Relations between MI5 and the CIA were fraught for different reasons. The CIA was a new organization, flexing its muscles on the world stage for the first time. Its aim was to collect intelligence, and although it was not supposed to operate in London without notifying MI5, both Hollis and Dick White believed the CIA flouted this understanding.
Behind all the difficulties lay the simmering distrust created by the defections of Burgess and Maclean, and the public clearance of Kim Philby. MI6 could never be seen in the same light
again, particularly as so many senior officers had been close friends of Philby, whereas MI5's failure to apprehend any of the three made it seem, to American eyes, almost criminally incompetent. Only GCHQ, which had a formal charter of cooperation with its American counterpart, the National Security Agency (NSA), under the terms of the 1948 UK USA agreement, remained relatively immune to the turbulent currents which battered the previously intimate wartime Anglo-American intelligence relationship.
When Hollis became Director-General he tried manfully to improve relations with the FBI. Hoover was famously anti-British, stemming from the war, when British Security Coordination (BSC) was set up in New York under Sir William Stephenson, the so-called Man Called Intrepid. BSC operated against the Germans in the United States, but Hoover vehemently opposed the idea of any organization, let alone one which was foreign controlled, having rights to collect intelligence on American soil. For years he refused to associate with Stephenson's staff. The Burgess and Maclean affair reinforced Hoover's prejudices, and for a while MI6 officers were not even allowed on FBI premises, and MI5 were prohibited access to any FBI intelligence source reports.
In 1956 Hollis visited Hoover in an attempt to improve relations, and persuade him to place MI5 on the distribution list again. Oddly enough, Hollis and Hoover got on rather well. They were both sensitive to any encroachments on their respective empires, yet Hollis had an essential weakness of character which enabled him to play the earnest supplicant to Hoover's blustering bully. Hoover, like many self-made Americans, had a strong streak of snobbery, and his gargantuan conceit was stroked by the sight of an English upper-class spymaster with his cap outstretched.
I became an important peace offering. Hollis claimed my appointment as MI5's first scientist was proof of his intention to modernize the Service and step up the fight against Soviet espionage. Following Hollis's visit, Hoover invited me to visit FBI headquarters to see the range of their technical equipment. I was very keen to make the trip, as I believed from my first day inside MI5 that the key to long-term success lay in restoring relations with the Americans, so that we could gain access to their technical resources. But my views were not popular. Delusions of Empire still ran strongly inside Leconfield House. Cumming, for instance, although Head of MI5's technical branch, never visited the United States, and saw no reason to do so.
My first impression of the FBI was the sheer scale of the technical resources at their disposal, far beyond anything MI5 could ever imagine. But for all their riches, I could not help feeling that they made poor use of them. They relied almost entirely on commercially available equipment, rather than developing their own. Their radios were standard Motorola equipment used in police cars and taxis, although they had an impressive microwave network which connected the various FBI stations across the USA The one really interesting part of FBI technical work was the use they made of fingerprints in espionage investigations. There were no fingerprint records in the MI5 Registry, and I felt it was one area where the FBI's quasi-police identity gave it an advantage.
Dick Millen was the FBI officer who ran their technical research. Millen was a lawyer rather than a scientist by training, which limited his effectiveness, but he put on a splendid show. I was taken down to the firing range in the basement of FBI headquarters, and given a lesson in pistol-firing techniques. Millen proudly informed me that even "the old man himself," Hoover, regularly practiced his prowess. I was taken down to the FBI training depot on the Maryland coast, where an old American Indian taught FBI agents advanced gunslinging. He demonstrated his skills, shooting targets in mirrors, and firing over his shoulder at a ping pong ball perched on the top of a water fountain. It was rugged, all-American stuff, and the FBI's roots in the lawlessness of 1930s America were never far from the surface. But I somehow doubted that it had much to do with modern counterespionage.
I did not relish the prospect of briefing the FBI on the Tisler affair. There was more than a hint, in the way Hoover had handled the case, that he hoped we would fail to resolve the suspicions about a spy inside MI5, so that he could use it as a pretext for recommending to the President that the intelligence exchange with Britain be terminated. I hoped that the previous visits Hollis and I had made would do something to smooth my path.
I was accompanied by Harry Stone, the MI5 liaison officer in Washington. Harry was as genial a soul as you could ever meet. He had once been an Irish international rugby player, and shared with Hollis a love of the golf course and an almost professional handicap. Everyone liked Harry, primarily because he saw his job as basically a social one, but he was unsuited in temperament and intellect for the modern age of satellite and computer intelligence which was dawning in Washington in the late 1950s.
Harry hated meeting Hoover, and took a simple approach when a confrontation could not be avoided.
"Take a tip from me, Peter, old chap, let him do the talking, don't interrupt for God's sakes, and remember to say 'Thank you very much, Mr Hoover' when he's finished. I've booked us a nice table for lunch. We'll need it."
We swept through the archway at the front of the magnificent, triumphalist FBI mausoleum. We were met by Al Belmont, the head of FBI domestic intelligence, and his deputy, Bill Sullivan, who handled the Communist desk. (Sullivan was found dead in the mid-1970s while shooting duck in New England. He is thought to have been murdered. ) Belmont was a tough, old-fashioned "G-Man," as FBI men were once known, who had been with the Bureau from its earliest times. Sullivan was the brains to Belmont's brawn (but Belmont was no fool); both believed in the virtues of the stiletto rather than the Magnum. Belmont had many enemies, but I always got along with him. Like me, he had suffered a difficult childhood. His father was shot in a street brawl, and his mother worked day and night to save enough to put him through law school. Hard work and unswerving loyalty to "the old man" brought him to the top of the FBI.
But for all the outward toughness, and the seniority of their positions, both men were cowed by Hoover. Such unswerving loyalty was, I felt, positively unnatural. Of course, they admired Hoover for his achievements in the early years, when he turned a corrupt and incompetent organization into an efficient and feared crime-fighting force. But everyone knew Hoover suffered from God disease, and it seemed odd to me that they never acknowledged the fact, even privately.
I discussed the Tisler affair and the technical implications of RAFTER with both men for most of the day, until it was time to meet Hoover. We trooped down a maze of corridors, past an endless procession of Identikit young FBI officers, well scrubbed, very fit, well suited, closely cropped, and vacant-looking. The FBI offices always reminded me of sanitary clinics. Antiseptic white tiles shone everywhere. Workmen were always busy, constantly repainting, cleaning, and polishing. The obsession with hygiene reeked of an unclean mind.
Hoover's room was the last of four interconnecting offices. Belmont knocked, and entered the room. Hoover stood behind his desk, dressed in a piercing blue suit. He was taller and slimmer than he appeared in photographs, with wrinkled flesh which hung off his face in small drapes. He greeted me with a firm and joyless handshake.
Belmont began to describe the reason for my visit, but Hoover cut him off sharply.
"I've read the report, Al. I want to hear Mr. Wright tell me about it."
Hoover fixed me with coal-black eyes, and I began to outline the discovery of RAFTER. Almost at once, he interrupted me.
"I gather your Service is now satisfied about the intelligence provided by our Czech source...?"
I began to answer, but he swept me aside.
"Your security organizations enjoy many facilities here in Washington, Mr. Wright."
There was more than a hint of a threat in his voice.
"I have to advise the President of the United States when those facilities raise questions about our national security. I have to take a close personal interest in a case like this, particularly in view of the recent problems the United Kingdom has suffered in this area. I need to know I am on fi
rm ground. Do I make myself clear?"
"Of course, sir, I understand perfectly..."
Harry Stone busily studied his shoelaces. Al Belmont and Bill Sullivan sat to one side of Hoover's desk, half hidden in shadow. I was on my own.
"I think you will find in my report..."
"My staff have digested your report, Mr. Wright. I am interested in the lessons you have learned."
Before I could answer, Hoover launched into a passionate diatribe about Western inadequacy in the face of the Communist onslaught. I agreed with many of the sentiments; it was just the manner of the telling that was objectionable. Inevitably the subject of Burgess and Maclean came up, Hoover sounding each syllable of their names with almost prurient venom.
"Now in the Bureau here, Mr. Wright, that sort of thing could not happen. My officers are thoroughly screened. There are lessons to be learned. Do I make myself clear?"
I nodded.
"Of course, Mr. Hoover," chimed Harry Stone.
Hoover fixed me with a sudden stare.
