Spycatcher

by Peter Wright

  I traveled to Washington in 1968 to brief Angleton on the results of the HARRIET case. We had a businesslike meeting. I outlined the course of the investigation, and told him we were unanimously of the view that Hanley was in the clear. Angleton then took me to see Dick Helms and explained to him what my mission was. Helms said that he did not wish to hear anything more, if I said that Hanley was in the clear, he unconditionally accepted my word. But the clearance of Hanley solved very little.

  After we left Helms, Angleton said that he wanted to discuss with me the question of Goleniewski's being a plant. The HARRIET fit was so perfect that it did not need a suspicious man to believe the KGB had deliberately planted the allegation to discredit him. Angleton and Helms already suspected that Goleniewski had fallen back under Russian control shortly before he defected. Repeated analysis of the intelligence he provided showed a distinct change in its character from Polish to Russian matters, as if the Russians were deliberately feeding out barium meals of their own intelligence in order to isolate the leak. This analysis was shared by MI5, and was the main reason why Goleniewski's middling-grade agent story was ignored for such a long time. The clearing of HARRIET raised a major question mark over the validity of the middling-grade agent, and the validity of Goleniewski's information, particularly after he defected. The middling-grade agent story did not appear until November 1963. Goleniewski defected in January 1961. Now for the KGB to concoct the story in the detail they did, they would need access to Hanley's record of service. With his position, the only person who could acquire this would be Roger Hollis.

  But if Goleniewski had been turned, or was the unwitting vehicle for disinformation, what were the implications for the other assets MI6 and the CIA held in Poland, which since the war had been the West's most consistently fruitful sphere of Eastern Bloc operations? I did some preliminary work on this subject during the HARRIET investigation. I found, to my horror, that for a long period all agents run by MI6 were met at a flat rented by a secretary in the Warsaw MI6 station. Over ninety meetings had taken place there. I speculated that perhaps the reason why the UB and the KGB apparently failed to detect this astonishing series of meetings was that they were planting false agents on us. MI6 hackles were raised again, as they had been over the Penkovsky affair.

  The belief that defectors were being sent to deceive Western counterintelligence during the sudden flood of arrivals in the early 1960s obsessed all of us. Golitsin's central contention was that the KGB had embarked on a systematic disinformation campaign, and that false defectors would be sent to the West to discredit him. Almost immediately Yuri Nossenko arrived on the CIA's doorstep, appearing to deflect many of the leads Golitsin gave about Soviet penetration of American and British Intelligence.

  Nossenko threw the CIA into turmoil. He told them he had seen the file belonging to Lee Harvey Oswald, the alleged assassin of President Kennedy. He claimed the KGB had no involvement in the assassination, and had made no contact with Oswald in Russia, despite the fact that he had worked on a Top Secret U2 surveillance base shortly before defecting. To many officers in the CIA, Nossenko's story was too pat, especially when it was found that he had lied about his rank and status in the KGB. But why had he been sent? The CIA set about trying to break Nossenko using methods of imprisonment and physical pressure which would never have been tolerated in MI5. But even by 1967 they were no nearer to solving the riddle.

  Suspicions were also growing about the FBI sources Top Hat and Fedora, who were passing information while still in place, but refusing to disclose their provenance. They provided bona fides for Nossenko, as if to assure the Americans that he was genuine, even to the extent of supporting Nossenko's claim to a false rank. But if Top Hat and Fedora were phony, what of the leads they gave to penetrations of British security?

  Fedora had given the tip which led to Martelli, albeit that it resulted in the disastrous prosecution and his acquittal. Top Hat passed copies of documents detailing American weapons guidance systems to the Americans which, he claimed, the Soviets were obtaining from a source in Britain. After investigation we were able to catch Frank Bossard, an officer in the Missile Guidance Branch of the Aviation Ministry. He was arrested in 1965, and sent to prison for twenty-one years. If Fedora and Top Hat were plants, then the Russians were prepared to sacrifice huge assets in order to build up their bona fides. It must be taken into account that had it not been for the skill of GCHQ we probably would not have obtained the evidence which proved that Bossard was working for the GRU.

  We were in the place Angleton called "the wilderness of mirrors," where defectors are false, lies are truth, truth lies, and the reflections leave you dazzled and confused. The idea of false defectors is a hard one to accept, unless you read the history books and learn how MI5 did it with the Double Cross System throughout the war. It is now an unfashionable theory. But there are very few intelligence officers who lived through those years of the 1960s who do not believe that during that period we were the victim of some kind of Soviet ploy involving defectors. Some may dispute whether it was successful, or debate the limits of its scale, but few would doubt that such a game was being played. Furthermore, it could be played only if the Russians had good feedback from MI5 of intelligence about the game.

  Twenty years later the truth of those years is still impossible to tie down. Goleniewski, Penkovsky, Nossenko, Fedora, and Top Hat - all had signs of interference in one way or another. I do not mean that each was a conscious false defector, although Fedora and Top Hat certainly were, as even the FBI were forced to conclude in the 1970s, long after I retired. But I do think they were being used at various times - Penkovsky to influence our perception of Soviet missile technology; Nossenko to influence the American attitude to the Kennedy assassination. Goleniewski, Fedora, and Top Hat, I believe, were part of a systematic attempt to rupture the all-important Anglo-American intelligence alliance, and also to support the deception about the performance of the Soviet ICBMs until the mid-1970s.

  Consider the timing of key pieces of intelligence from these three defectors. Goleniewski gave his information about the middling-grade agent in late 1963, nearly three years after his defection. This was at the time of Hollis' visit to Washington to brief the FBI and CIA on the results of the Mitchell investigation. Nothing could be better designed to precipitate the final breach in relations between British and American intelligence than another apparently undetected spy in MI5. Luckily, Angleton's doubts about Goleniewski ensured that the story did not have the drastic impact it might otherwise have had, and in fact only served to strengthen Anglo-American suspicions of both Goleniewski and Hollis.

  Almost immediately Fedora made contact with the Americans, and gave the lead which led us to Martelli. Discovery of another nuclear spy was guaranteed to create the maximum possible strain between London and Washington, though the KGB could never have dreamed that MI5 would botch the prosecution as badly as they did.

  Months later, as if part of a coordinated campaign, Top Hat led us to Bossard. Once again, American weapons technology was involved, which automatically meant that the American armed forces would take an active role in protesting at British security weaknesses. When we made the damage assessment for Bossard, we concluded that virtually the entire advanced American guidance systems had been betrayed. Patrick Stewart sent an advance copy to Angleton with a one-word memorandum attached. It read simply: "Help!"

  Luckily for Britain, Angleton was able to protect us from the onslaught. But it was a close-run thing, and few realize today that the exchange came nearer to breakdown in the early years of the 1960s than at any time since the war.

  The night before I returned to London, Angleton and I went to dinner at a small Chinese restaurant in Alexandria, where his son ate regularly. It was one of Angleton's favorite haunts when he felt the need to talk. We could be assured of privacy, he told me, because the Chinese kept the Russians out.

  Angleton was at the zenith of his power, although the strain was beginning
to tell on him. For years he had been waging a covert bureaucratic war with the Soviet Division of the CIA, to ensure the independence and expansion of his counterintelligence empire. He had been successful beyond all expectations, and achieved virtual veto influence over all operations and personnel within the Agency. He controlled the Israeli account, and made the CIA station in Tel Aviv redundant. He ensured that all important communications with British Intelligence went through him personally, bypassing the London station. He even succeeded in establishing his own counterintelligence cipher independent of CIA communications, which he claimed were insecure, although we all believed that the real reason was empire-building.

  The CAZAB conferences were his outstanding achievement. The best, the brightest, and the most senior officers in Western intelligence came together once every eighteen months to discuss his agenda - the Soviet threat, the role of counterintelligence - and to conduct doom-laden future scenarios. In Angleton's mind, not unreasonably, the CAZABs were the first decisive step in creating a unified Western intelligence command capable of challenging the Soviet Bloc.

  The CAZAB conferences suited Angleton's temperament perfectly, and he always seemed at his most relaxed in their super-secure, electronically swept environment, grappling with the endless ambiguities of the wilderness of mirrors. I fully supported these meetings, which were very important.

  Gambling was always a major feature of CAZAB conferences. Each daily session would usually end with a poker school, a game at which Angleton excelled, although I was sometimes able to "take him to the cleaners." Horse racing was also an occasional diversion. I remember at the New York CAZAB in the late 1960s-early 1970s, Angleton became the bookmaker for CAZAB for the Washington International horse race, featuring horses from all over the world, which was scheduled for the first afternoon. Before the meeting I asked Angleton to put $100 on the nose of the British horse. Lester Piggott was riding him and had ridden the winner the previous year. The British horse was unfancied, but the MI5 and MI6 contingent, anxious to be seen to fly the flag in even the most secret chambers, soon wagered around $500 between them.

  That afternoon, as Angleton delivered a long paper on long-range Soviet disinformation techniques, most minds, on the British side at least, were down at the racetrack. After an hour Angleton's secretary walked in and nervously handed him a slip of paper. She handed him two chits; the first said, "How much do you want for your house, Jim?" and the second said, "The British horse won!"

  "Jesus Christ!" cursed Angleton. "I forgot to lay the bets off, and that goddamn British horse has come in at 11 to 1!"

  That night, as we flew back to Washington in a small CIA propeller plane, Angleton crawled around the belly of the fuselage, paying off his debts from a huge wad of $100 bills.

  "The sacrifices I make for the West..." he said, as he paid me my whack.

  But the humor could not mask the fact that he was making enemies throughout the CIA - in the Soviet Division, among other directors jealous of his power, and among those officers whose promotion prospects he had adversely affected. He was safe while Helms was Director, but the war in Vietnam was rapidly altering the face of the Agency, and the gathering political fashion for detente was beginning to undermine the foundations of Cold War suspicion upon which his empire was built.

  One Cold War veteran, Bill Harvey, had already gone, driven into retirement by alcoholism. Angleton, too, was drinking far more than was good for him, and had begun to look not merely pallid but genuinely ravaged. His mood changed too. He became increasingly introspective, and the dry humor became less and less visible. He seemed pent-up and aggressive, trusting fewer and fewer people, who were turning more and more against him.

  Drinking, smoking, and fishing were Angleton's main releases. Barry Russell Jones told me in amazement of accompanying him on a fishing trip to a stretch of river he owned in Idaho, and finding that Angleton had buried bottles of Jack Daniel's under the water at hundred-yard intervals, so that he could never be caught short. Back in Washington he found relief in growing exotic orchids (he was a world expert), crafting leatherwork, gold-beating, or making fishing lures for his friends and admirers.

  Angleton and I talked until 4 A.M. We examined every possible scenario of the defections. Who was true, and who was false? Who defected, and who was sent? The lines were embedded like poetry in a child's mind. We were both on the rack. So much depended on making the right assumptions about the defectors - for him, the assassination of his President; for me, the next move in the hunt for the mole. Eventually we walked back through Alexandria toward the 44th Street bridge. Angleton had parked his car down behind the Okinawa Memorial, near the National Cemetery. Angleton was highly patriotic in that unique American way which expresses itself in reverence for the flag, and symbols of national heritage, like the Okinawa Memorial, fascinated him. He paused to look across at it. The cars swished past behind us on the freeway.

  "This is Kim's work," he muttered. It was one of the few times I ever heard him mention his old friend Philby.

  If there was a plot to deceive the West using defectors in the early 1960s, we were easy prey to it. Throughout those years there was a conscious policy in both London and Washington to do everything possible to attract defectors. They were seen as the secret weapon which could disrupt the smooth machine in Dzherzhinsky Square. In part this policy grew up through feelings of guilt. Early defectors like Gouzenko and Von Petrov had been poorly rewarded for their services, and felt bitter at the treatment they had received. They were paid a fee, and then pushed back out into the cold, and expected to make lives for themselves as best they could. Most failed. There was guilt, too, at the inadequate security arrangements which led to the deaths of Volkov and Krivitsky, and we feared that unless a conscious effort was made to show the benefits of defection, word would get back East and inhibit further approaches.

  By the time Golitsin came over, the policy had hardened. Any means to secure defections were authorized, starting with immense payments, but including other methods also. I remember one particular operation which began in the mid-1960s involving a senior KGB officer named Sergei Grigovin (a pseudonym) which illustrates the lengths we were prepared to go to. Grigovin was already known to us, because he had served in Denmark, and the Danish intelligence service had alerted us routinely to his identity. They also provided us with a few snippets of intelligence about him - one in particular was that he had a reputation for enjoying the company of women. The source report was circulated through to D4, the agent-running section of D Branch, and they were instructed to keep an eye out for Grigovin's indiscretions, since he had left his wife in Moscow.

  Any Russian, and especially a KGB officer, who is caught liaising with women in the West by the KGB security division, the "SK," is in serious trouble, and the case had distinct possibilities. A year later a D4 agent runner received the first tip. An agent of his, a senior executive at the DAILY MIRROR newspaper, was in the habit of occasionally meeting Grigovin at dinner parties. A woman friend of his told him that Grigovin was having an affair with a friend to whom she had introduced the Russian. D4 raised the matter at the weekly meeting with D1 (Operations) and it was agreed that a much closer eye would be kept on the situation. The agent runner was told to encourage his agent gently to keep an eye on the evolving romance.

  Eventually Grigovin finished with the girl, and when he next met the woman who had introduced them, he asked if she knew any other friends. The D1 realized immediately this was our chance. If we could introduce our own girl to Grigovin we would be in a perfect position to begin an entrapment operation. The plan was put up to F.J., who gave his consent, although the operation was kept secret from the Foreign Office, on the grounds that they would very likely veto it. D4 were instructed to produce a woman suitable for the job. They had a number of high-class call-girls they used for entrapments, and eventually one was successfully introduced to Grigovin at a party. He took the bait perfectly, and was soon engaged in an affair with her.


  Events began to move toward their climax. He was placed under intensive surveillance, and we analyzed the various possibilities. It was obvious from the surveillance that Grigovin was purely interested in the girl for sex, and there was thought to be little chance of playing on his heartstrings. It had to be straightforward entrapment.

  The plans for a defection are complex, and require weeks of careful planning. First a room was hired, and a two-way mirror and camera equipment installed. Then safe houses, and transport arrangements were made to safeguard Grigovin should he decide to defect. He had a family in Moscow, and checks were made on them in case he bargained for them to be exfiltrated as well.

  Finally the day came. The D1 took charge of the operation himself. Grigovin and the girl arrived, and we ensured we had a good ten minutes of film of them in bed before the D1 and two burly MI5 officers opened the door with one of Leslie Jagger's keys.

  "One of ours, I'm afraid..." said the D1, as the girl was hustled out of the door.

  Grigovin looked momentarily stunned. The D1 pointed to the mirror. For a moment the KGB man looked straight into the camera. Then he understood.