Spycatcher

by Peter Wright

  I checked what we knew about the movements of known Soviet intelligence officers in London over that weekend. On the Sunday night, when news of the arrests first broke on the television bulletins, an illegal KGB resident, Korovin, and Karpekov, the KGB legal deputy resident, had dinner together. Our probe microphones picked up every part of their conversation. We heard them listen to the news. They made no comment, and no move to contact the Embassy.

  I then looked at the beginnings of the case, and made a shattering discovery which convinced me that the case must have been blown to the Russians. In its early stages, the case was handled by D2 when it was suspected that Lonsdale was Polish. Checking the records, I discovered that D2 were not indoctrinated into RAFTER. They had no knowledge of the fact that the Russians were listening to our Watcher radios, and therefore, prior to the case's being handed over to Arthur, they used Watchers on each of the seventeen occasions they followed Lonsdale in July and August.

  Ever since the beginning of LIONSBEARD, all Watcher communications were recorded by MI5 and retained, so I organized a test. I gave Evelyn McBarnet, who worked with Arthur as a research officer, the tape of the Watcher communications during the day that D2 followed Lonsdale to the bank for the first time. I also gave her a London street map book, similar to that used by the Watchers, and asked her to mark out the route she thought the Watchers were following, based solely on listening to their radio communications. Evelyn McBarnet was not experienced in traffic analysis, and had no previous access to the case, but within three and a half hours, she reconstructed the movements flawlessly. If she could do it, the Russians, who had been analyzing our Watcher communications for years, were certainly capable of it too. They must have known from the beginning that we were onto Lonsdale.

  By the time I was writing my report, Sniper was safely in a CIA safe house near Washington, where he identified himself as an officer in the Polish Intelligence Service named Michael Goleniewski. One fragment of his story seemed devastating in the context of the thread of ambiguity which ran through the Lonsdale case. He told the CIA that in the last week of July a senior officer in the UB told him the Russians knew there was a "pig" (a spy) in the organization. Goleniewski said that initially he was deputed to assist in the search for the spy, but eventually, by Christmas, realized that he himself was falling under suspicion, so he defected.

  "The last week in July." I read the CIA account of Sniper's debriefing. It stared out at me from the page. It seemed so innocuous a phrase. I checked back. Lonsdale was first seen by MI5 meeting Houghton on July 2. He was positively identified on the 11th. We began following him on the 17th. Allow a week for the news to filter through to the Russians. A day to get across to the UB. That takes you to the last week in July!

  The Lonsdale report was the most painful document I have ever written. My triumph turned to ashes before my eyes. I remember going off sailing in the Blackwater estuary, near my home in Essex, the weekend before submitting it in May 1961. The clouds scudded across the flat landscape, the wind filling my lungs and cleansing my mind of stress and turmoil. But no matter how I turned the boat, no matter how I adjusted the rigging, I came down to the same conclusion. The Russians knew we were onto Lonsdale from the beginning; they had withdrawn him, and then sent him back. But why?

  There was only one explanation which covered all the inconsistencies of the case: a leak. If the Russians possessed a source inside MI5, he would alert them to the existence of Sniper, which would explain why pressure mounted on Goleniewski from the last week in July, although of course, like us, the Russians could only guess at Sniper's real identity. That would explain why the Russians knew about our bank operations. Once they realized Lonsdale was blown, the Russians recalled him to Moscow, but once I alerted the management to the LIONSBEARD information, and Furnival Jones began his inquiries, the source would contact the Russians in a panic. The Russians were then faced with a simple choice. Lonsdale, or the MI5 source? The only way of forestalling the hunt inside MI5 was to send Lonsdale back, hoping that he could extract some last intelligence from Houghton before we rounded the ring up. But before sending him back the Russians took the precaution of switching his other spies to alternative secure communications via the Krogers. If this was the case, the Russians had severely misjudged the sophistication of the new D Branch team they were facing. Despite their advantages, we managed to outplay them and capture the Krogers, a significant additional part of the Soviet team. As for the source, it could only be one of a dozen people at the top of MI5. This was no Watcher, or peripheral source. The Russians would never sacrifice anyone as valuable as Lonsdale for a low-level source. The evidence of continuous interference throughout the Lonsdale case pointed much higher up - to the very summit of the organization.

  I submitted my report to Furnival Jones in May 1961. He passed my report on to the Deputy Director-General, Graham Mitchell, with a short accompanying minute which read: "It should be borne in mind when reading this analysis, that the Lonsdale case was a personal triumph for Peter Wright."

  For months I heard nothing. I sat in on dozens of meetings with Mitchell and Hollis on other matters, and often hung back, expecting that they would call me in to discuss what, at the very least, was a disturbing hypothesis. But there was nothing. No minute, no letter, no threats, no casual conversation. It was as if my report did not exist. Then, in October, I was finally called into Hollis' office late one afternoon. He was sitting at his desk, with Mitchell to one side.

  "Graham will handle this discussion, Peter," said Hollis in a distant manner. He fingered my report with evident distaste. I turned to face Mitchell. He was sweating slightly, and avoided looking me in the eye.

  "I have read your Lonsdale analysis," he began, "and I am bound to say that a lot of it passes over my head. In my experience espionage has always been a simple business..."

  I bridled at this.

  "I will gladly explain any of the anomalies I have detailed in the report, sir, if that will help. It is often difficult to put technical matters into lay language."

  Mitchell went on as if I had made no interruption.

  "The simple fact is, we have arrested and convicted three professional Russian illegals - these are the first Russian nationals to be brought before the courts here for generations. We arrest two immensely dangerous spies inside the country's most secret underwater research establishment. By any measure that is success. What on earth is the advantage to the Russians of allowing us to do that?"

  I began to plod through the sections of my report, pointing up the ambiguities, and trying hard not to draw any conclusions. But Mitchell attacked every point. How did I know? How could I be sure? The bank could have been a coincidence. The Russians might not have known we were following Lonsdale, even if they did listen to our Watcher radios.

  "They're not ten feet tall, you know, Peter!"

  I went through the change in radio operations. But Mitchell brushed it aside, saying he was not a statistician.

  "You say there were more spies, you speculate that the Russians deliberately sent Lonsdale back. But you've got no proof, Peter, that it went like that."

  "But you've got no proof, sir, that it went as you think it did. We are both hypothesizing."

  "Ah yes," cut in Hollis, "but we have them in prison."

  "But for how long, sir? We have faced this problem persistently since Tisler, and every time we leave it, it reemerges..."

  "The Deputy and I have discussed this whole matter very carefully, and I think you know my feelings on that point."

  "So, am I to understand there will be no further investigations?"

  "That is correct, and I would be grateful if you could keep this matter entirely confidential. The Service has been tremendously boosted, as you have been too, Peter, by this case, and I should not like to see progress set back by more damaging speculation."

  Hollis smiled at me oddly, and began to sharpen a pencil. I stood up abruptly, and left the room.

  - 11
-

  Despite the secret doubts expressed inside MI5 about the provenance of the Lonsdale case, it was hailed as an outstanding triumph in American intelligence circles. Never before had an illegal network been monitored while it ran, and there was great interest in Washington in the work of the Radiations Operations Committee, which had coordinated the new range of techniques.

  The U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) had already learned about ROC's work from GCHQ and was envious of the close relationships being forged between GCHQ and her sister clandestine services, MI5 and MI6. However bad the problems had been in Britain, they were infinitely worse in Washington. Hoover vehemently opposed the establishment of the CIA after the war, and maintained open hostility to it throughout the 1950s. The CIA, its senior ranks mostly comprising Ivy League graduates, treated the G-men with arrogant disdain. The only policy which united the two organizations was their shared determination to thwart the NSA wherever possible. They both claimed NSA was an insecure organization, an accusation given substance in 1959, when two NSA cryptanalysts defected to the Soviet Union, betraying vital secrets.

  Louis Tordella was the deputy head of NSA, and effectively ran the organization for nearly twenty years. (The head of NSA is a rotating Armed Services appointment. ) He knew full well that the real reason for FBI and CIA hostility was resentment at NSA's control of SIGINT. He knew also that both organizations were busy challenging his monopoly. The CIA had begun its own ultra-secret SIGINT operation, STAFF D, and the FBI were also active in the same field. In May 1960, just as the Lonsdale case was getting under way, Al Belmont visited London, and I took him down to Cheltenham to demonstrate the ENGULF operation against the Egyptian cipher, and the STOCKADE operation against the French cipher, which was in its early stages. Belmont was much impressed, and immediately sent over Dick Millen, who spent a fortnight with me learning the technical details of STOCKADE. Shortly after, the FBI conducted a similar successful operation against the French Embassy cipher machine in Washington.

  Tordella wanted desperately to develop a Radiations Operations Committee of his own with NSA in control, and in October 1961 he invited Hugh Alexander, Hugh Denham, Ray Frawley, and me to Washington, along with Christopher Phillpotts, the MI6 Station Chief, for a special conference to discuss the British cipher breakthroughs. He also invited the CIA and FBI in the hope that by listening to our descriptions of the work of ROC, they would appreciate the benefits of closer cooperation.

  I realized from the start that this conference was a priceless opportunity for Britain's Secret Services to redeem themselves in the eyes of the entire American intelligence establishment. The CIA was, by 1961, the dominant intelligence voice in Washington, and although powerful figures there viewed the Anglo-American intelligence alliance as a sentimental luxury in an increasingly unsentimental Cold War, I was confident that if we could demonstrate to them at working level the technical advances made since 1956, we would convince them we were worth cultivating.

  Hugh Alexander knew, as I did, that we were taking a gamble. There were no guarantees that the Americans would tell us anything in return at the conference; indeed, it was likely they would not. There were obvious security considerations, too. But the potential gains were enormous. At the very least, we could remove the shadow cast over Anglo-American intelligence relations since the Philby/Burgess/Maclean affair. More important than that, Hugh Alexander had plans for developing the cipher-breaking side of ROC, and I for developing the counterespionage side, which would be possible only with the resources and backing of the Americans. As with the development of the atomic bomb in World War II, we needed to persuade the Americans to fund our ideas into reality. In the long run we would gain the benefits, as the intelligence would flow back to us through the GCHQ/NSA exchange agreement.

  The conference was held in specially swept rooms inside NSA headquarters at Fort Meade, Maryland - a vast glasshouse surrounded by electric wire fences, and topped with the tangled arthritic stems of hundreds of aerials and receiver dishes, linking it to the hundreds of NSA listening posts dotted around the world. Louis Tordella and his top cryptanalyst, Art Levinson, attended for NSA. The FBI sent Dick Millen and Lish Whitman; the CIA was represented by Jim Angleton and a bull-like man named Bill Harvey, who had recently returned to Washington to run Staff D, after running the Berlin Tunnel operation.

  Harvey was already a living legend in the CIA for his hard drinking and his cowboy manners. He began his career handling Soviet counterespionage for the FBI, until Hoover sacked him for drunkenness. He promptly took his invaluable FBI knowledge and put it to work for the fledgling CIA, becoming along with Angleton one of the most influential American operators in the secret war against the KGB. Through most of the 1950s he served in Berlin, running agents, digging tunnels, and taking the battle to the Soviets wherever possible. For him, the Cold War was as real as if it had been hand-to-hand combat. But for all his crude aggression, Harvey was smart, with a nose for a spy. It was he who first fingered Philby in the USA after the defection of Burgess and Maclean. Harvey had amazing recall for the details of defections and cases decades before, and it was he, before anyone else, who put together the contradictory strands of the MI6 man's career. While others paused for doubt, Harvey pursued Philby with implacable vengeance, and the incident left him with a streak of vindictive anti-British sentiment.

  The five-day conference began inauspiciously. Tordella was anxious for a free exchange of ideas, and discussed one or two laboratory experiments NSA was conducting into possible ways of breaking embassy ciphers in Washington, remarking pointedly that in view of the FBI charter, they were unable to go beyond the experimental stage. The CIA and FBI boys were uneasily silent, neither wanting to discuss technical developments in front of the other, or the NSA, or in the CIA's case, in front of us. Angleton took copious notes, while Harvey slumped in his chair with ill-concealed hostility, occasionally snoring loudly, particularly after lunch.

  "The Company [the CIA] is here in a listening capacity only," he snapped on the first morning, "We do not discuss our secrets in open session!"

  Things began to improve when I read a long paper describing the success of ENGULF against the Egyptians, and the advances we had made since then on the radio illumination of cipher noises and what could be achieved aurally, using our new range of microphones. I went on to give the details of STOCKADE, and at last discussion began to flow. Even Harvey shifted in his seat and began to listen.

  On the third day Richard Helms, then CIA Director of Plans, took the chair for a discussion about ways in which these new techniques could be applied to Russian ciphers. I argued strongly that we had to predict the next generation of cipher machines the Russians would develop, and begin work immediately trying to crack them. The non-scientists present were skeptical, but I pointed out that we had done just this during the war at the Admiralty Research Laboratory, when we predicted the new generation of German torpedoes and mines, and were able to counter them as soon as they came into operation. By the end of the discussion, NSA and GCHQ had committed themselves to begin work against the new Russian "Albatross" class cipher machine.

  Hugh Alexander was much more interested in the implications for cryptanalysis of the new generation of computers being developed in America. He was obsessed by the Ergonomic Theory, which held that the production of truly random numbers, even electronically as in a cipher machine, was a mathematical impossibility. Alexander believed that if sufficiently powerful computers could be developed, no code, no matter how well enciphered, would be safe, and for the next decade a vast joint research program began to investigate the whole area. (According to a 1986 report in the GUARDIAN newspaper, advances in Ergonomic Theory since 1980 have revolutionized cryptanalysis in the way Alexander predicted.)

  As expected, the CIA told us next to nothing about the state of their technical intelligence. They gave the impression that we were not to be trusted with their secrets, but we suspected there were probably other reasons for th
eir reticence. Harvey's Staff D was almost certainly a department designed to bypass the terms of the UK/USA agreement, which specified the total exchange of SIGINT intelligence between NSA and GCHQ. If the Americans wanted to mount a cipher attack and did not wish to share the product with us, or if they wanted to operate against the UK, or a Commonwealth country, as we were sure they were doing, Staff D was the obvious place from which to do it.

  Nevertheless, the conference was a milestone in Anglo-American intelligence relations. For the first time in a decade, all six intelligence services sat down and discussed at length how they could cooperate on a wide variety of problems. Major joint research programs were launched, particularly in the computer field, and we had taken a first step in breaking down the walls of mistrust.

  Before I left London, Arthur Martin had arranged for me to brief the CIA on the technical side of the Lonsdale case and, in particular, the development of RAFTER. There was some embarrassment about this in Leconfield House because, although we had informed the FBI about RAFTER from the beginning, the CIA knew nothing. Hollis agreed that they should be indoctrinated fully as soon as the Lonsdale case was concluded, particularly since it had been their information from Sniper which led us to Lonsdale in the first place. The briefing was scheduled after the end of Tordella's conference, and it was held in one of the huge Nissen huts the CIA occupied temporarily next to the reflecting pool in the center of Washington while their Langley headquarters were under construction. I was taken through into a large conference room by Jim Angleton, and shown to a podium in front of at least two hundred CIA officers.