by Peter Wright
After Hollis retired and Furnival Jones became Director-General, I went to F.J. and said I was paying a visit to the USA and asked whether I should tackle Angleton on the Oatsheaf information, with a view to getting more details. He said that I could, but again insisted that we could not give Angleton any guarantee about any information which he gave us. I tackled Angleton in Washington. He put up a vintage performance. There were dark mutterings about "clandestine meetings" with the Russians. But when he was pushed for details, there were none, and I knew from bitter experience that Angleton was more than capable of manufacturing evidence when none existed.
But if the Oatsheaf affair was nothing more than a diversion, by the end of the 1960s information was coming to MI5's attention which suggested that there almost certainly was Soviet penetration of the Labor Party. First the Czechoslovakian defectors, Frolik and August, arrived in the West and named a series of Labor MPs and trade unionists as successful recruits. Then we received the most damaging information of all from Oleg Lyalin. While Lyalin was still in place, he told MI5 about a friend of his called Vaygaukas. Vaygaukas was a KGB officer working under cover in the Soviet Trade Delegation in London. Lyalin told us that Vaygaukas had claimed to him to be in contact with a man called Joseph Kagan, a Lithuanian emigre who was a close friend of Harold Wilson's. Kagan had helped finance Wilson's private office, and had even lent him an aircraft during elections, and Wilson had been much photographed wearing Kagan's raincoats, which he manufactured in a factory near Leeds.
Inevitably MI5 were extremely anxious to discover whether or not Kagan had any relationship with Vaygaukas. We placed him under intensive surveillance and attempted to recruit agents inside his factory. Then, following the expulsion of the 105 Soviet diplomats in 1971, we finally got the opportunity to discuss the matter with both men. Harold Wilson, by then out of office, approached Sir Arthur Young, head of the City of London police and a consultant to one of Kagan's companies. Wilson asked to be put in touch with MI5 because he wished to discuss Kagan. Furnival Jones thought this approach bizarre, but agreed to send Harry Wharton, who was then handling Lyalin. Wharton briefed Wilson on Lyalin's information about Kagan's alleged dealings with Vaygaukas. Wilson told him bluntly that he knew nothing about it and had never discussed confidential matters with Kagan at any time. Kagan himself later admitted meeting Vaygaukas for chess games, but strenuously denied that any espionage was involved.
Wilson interpreted MI5's interest as a crude attempt to smear the Labor Party and him. But once the Conservative Government came into power they began to take a great interest in the material as well. Victor often used to complain to me about the quality of the intelligence reports No. 10 received from F Branch.
"They pull their punches all the time," he would say, "can't you give us something better?"
In 1972 he told me that Heath had been appalled at a recent Cabinet meeting, which was addressed by Jack Jones and Hugh Scanlon, the two powerful trade union bosses of the early 1970s.
"Ted thought they talked like Communists," he said. "I asked F Branch if they had anything, but of course they've got nothing substantial."
He knew from gossip that the recent Czech defectors were providing material about trade union and Labor Party subversion, and began pumping me for the details. I told him to minute me formally with a request and I would see what I could do. Later that day I got Victor's minute.
"The Prime Minister is anxious to see..." he began, in typical Victor style.
I sent Victor's note to F.J. for guidance. He returned it to me with a handwritten message in the margin: "Tell him what he wants to know!"
I drew the files, and began patiently to compose a lengthy brief on the intelligence provided by Frolik and August. I drew no conclusions, but neither did I leave anything out.
The whole of Whitehall came thundering down on my head. I was summoned by Sir John Hunt, the Cabinet Secretary, who asked what on earth I thought I was doing passing material about an opposition party into the government party's hands at such a delicate time.
I defended myself as vigorously as I could. It was not a question of politics. The head of the Central Policy Review Staff had requested a briefing, and I had given it to him and it had been approved by DOSS. It was not my fault if the material was unpalatable or embarrassing.
"If we refused to circulate intelligence because it was embarrassing, there would be little purpose in our sending anything at all!"
Both F.J. and Victor supported me loyally throughout. Victor relished the row and composed a series of elegant memorandums which winged their way through Whitehall defending the Security Service's right to provide intelligence requested of it by No. 10 Downing Street. Philip Allen was outraged by this flagrant flouting of Home Office prerogative, and refused to speak to me for years. To Victor he sent a terse note which he showed me gleefully. "Keep off the grass," thundered Allen ominously.
One afternoon, at the height of the row, I was in Victor's room in the Cabinet Office when Ted Heath put his head around the door.
"Prime Minister," said Victor, "I think you should meet Peter Wright, he is one of the stranger phenomena in Whitehall..."
Heath looked humorlessly over in my direction, and asked me where I worked.
"The Security Service, sir," I replied.
He grunted.
"Peter is responsible for the briefing on subversion which is currently causing the problem," said Victor cheerfully.
Heath immediately fixed me with a steely glare.
"You should not be indulging in politics," he glowered, "there are mechanisms for this sort of material."
He turned on his heel and stalked out.
"Christ, Victor," I said.
"Don't worry, " replied Victor, "Ted's always like that. I'll talk to him later."
The following day Victor rang up. He told me Heath had devoured the briefing that night.
"Is this true, Victor?" he asked in amazement, and when told it was, redoubled his crusade to remain in power.
But not all the requests for information were legitimate. One evening Victor invited me around for drinks at St. James's Place.
"There's a businessman I think you should meet," he told me. "He is a wealthy industrialist."
I had been discussing retirement with Victor at the time. In 1972 I finally learned that the promise MI5 had made to me in 1955 about my pension was not to be honored. In order to join the Service I had been forced to give up fifteen years of pension rights with the Admiralty. At the time Cumming had talked smoothly of ex-gratia payments, and ways the Service could iron out these problems. But in the new, gray MI5 a gentleman's agreement was a thing of the past. According to the rules, I had no case for a pension, even though every scientist who joined the Intelligence Services after me (some fifty in number) was able to transfer his pension, largely through my pressure to rectify the inequity.
It was a bitter blow, and did much to sour my last few years in the Service. Inevitably I thought about the possibility of security work. It did not greatly appeal to me, but it seemed a stable way of propping up my savagely depleted pension. At first Victor and I discussed my joining N.M. Rothschild, but Hanley was unhappy about the proposal, so when Victor heard that this businessman was looking for someone to do security work, he suggested a meeting.
I took an instant dislike to the man. It was clear to me that he was on the make. Over drinks he talked loosely about needing advice and guidance from someone "in the know" without quite spelling out what he meant, or how much he was prepared to pay for it. Eventually he suggested I lunch with him and some colleagues at a London hotel to discuss his proposition in more detail.
His colleagues were a ramshackle bunch. They were retired people from various branches of intelligence and security organizations whose best years were well behind them. There were others, too, mainly businessmen who seemed thrilled to be in the same room as spies, and did not seem to care how out of date they were.
This time my w
ould-be employer came straight to the point.
"We represent a group of people who are worried about the future of the country," he intoned.
He had something of the look of Angleton on a bad night about him. He said they were interested in working to prevent the return of a Labor government to power.
"It could spell the end of all the freedoms we know and cherish," he said.
The others nodded.
"And how do you suppose I can help?" I asked.
"Information," he replied, "we want information, and I am assured you have it."
"What precisely are you after?" I inquired.
"Anything on Wilson would be helpful. There are many people who would pay handsomely for material of that sort."
"But I am a serving member of the Security Service..." I began.
He waved his hand imperiously.
"Retire early. We can arrange something..."
I played along for the rest of the evening, but gave nothing away. The following day I went to see Hanley and told him what had happened. I suggested that I continue to monitor the group's activities as an agent, but Hanley thought discretion was a better policy.
"Leave it alone, Peter," he said, "it's a dirty game, and you're well out of it."
Hanley knew little about the material which had been gathered on Wilson and the Labor Party during the 1960s, so I encouraged him to study it. Elections were in the offing, and it could become relevant again, I told him.
"It's like FLUENCY," he said when he had read the files, "there's lots of smoke, but not a lot of fire."
Nevertheless, he agreed that it was prudent to re-examine the material. Angleton, in particular, was beginning to badger us constantly about Wilson, and I told Hanley it would be politic to be seen to be doing something.
As events moved to their political climax in early 1974, with the election of the minority Labor Government, MI5 was sitting on information which, if leaked, would undoubtedly have caused a political scandal of incalculable consequences. The news that the Prime Minister himself was being investigated would at the least have led to his resignation. The point was not lost on some MI5 officers.
One afternoon I was in my office when two colleagues came in. They were with three or four other officers. I closed the file I was working on and asked them how I could help.
"We understand you've reopened the Wilson case," said the senior one.
"You know I can't talk about that," I told him.
I felt a bit lame, but then I did not much enjoy being cornered in my own office.
"Wilson's a bloody menace," said one of the younger officers, "and it's about time the public knew the truth."
It was not the first time I had heard that particular sentiment. Feelings had run high inside MI5 during 1968. There had been an effort to try to stir up trouble for Wilson then, largely because the DAILY MIRROR tycoon, Cecil King, who was a longtime agent of ours, made it clear that he would publish anything MI5 might care to leak in his direction. It was all part of Cecil King's "coup," which he was convinced would bring down the Labor Government and replace it with a coalition led by Lord Mountbatten.
I told F.J. in 1968 that feelings were running high, but he responded in a low-key manner.
"You can tell anyone who has ideas about leaking classified material that there will be nothing I can do to save them!"
He knew the message would get back.
But the approach in 1974 was altogether more serious. The plan was simple. In the run-up to the election which, given the level of instability in Parliament, must be due within a matter of months, MI5 would arrange for selective details of the intelligence about leading Labor Party figures, but especially Wilson, to be leaked to sympathetic pressmen. Using our contacts in the press and among union officials, word of the material contained in MI5 files and the fact that Wilson was considered a security risk would be passed around.
Soundings in the office had already been taken, and up to thirty officers had given their approval to the scheme. Facsimile copies of some files were to be made and distributed to overseas newspapers, and the matter was to be raised in Parliament for maximum effect. It was a carbon copy of the Zinoviev letter, which had done so much to destroy the first Ramsay MacDonald Government in 1924.
"We'll have him out," said one of them, "this time we'll have him out."
"But why do you need me?" I asked.
"Well, you don't like Wilson any more than we do... besides, you've got access to the latest files - the Gaitskell business, and all the rest of it."
"But they're kept in the DG's safe!"
"Yes, but you could copy them."
"I need some time to think," I pleaded. "I've got a lot to think about before I take a step like this. You'll have to give me a couple of days."
At first I was tempted. The devil makes work for idle hands, and I was playing out my time before retirement. A mad scheme like this was bound to tempt me. I felt an irresistible urge to lash out. The country seemed on the brink of catastrophe. Why not give it a little push? In any case, I carried the burden of so many secrets that lightening the load a little could only make things easier for me. It was Victor who talked me out of it.
"I don't like Wilson any more than you do," he told me, "but you'll end up getting chopped if you go in for this."
He was right. I had little more than a year to go. Why destroy everything in a moment of madness?
A few days later I told the leader of the group that I would not get the files.
"I'd like to help you," I told him, "but I can't risk it. I've only got half a pension as it is, I can't afford to lose it all."
Some of the operational people became quite aggressive. They kept saying it was the last chance to fix Wilson.
"Once you've retired," they said, "we'll never get the files!"
But my mind was made up, and even their taunts of cowardice could not shake me.
Throughout the rest of 1974 and early 1975 I kept out of the country as much as possible, chasing VENONA traffic throughout the world. Although the full Wilson story never emerged, it was obvious to me that the boys had been actively pushing their plan as much as they could. No wonder Wilson was later to claim that he was the victim of a plot!
In the summer of 1975 I dined with Maurice Oldfield at Locketts. We regularly met for dinner. He was a lonely man, and liked nothing better than a good gossip at the end of the day. He finally made it to the top of MI6 after two abortive attempts, and I was happy for him. Maurice was a good man, but inclined to meddle. That night I could tell something was on his mind.
He turned the conversation to Wilson. How high had feelings been running in there? he asked. He kept hearing all sorts of rumors.
I was noncommittal.
"Most of us don't like him. They think he's wrecking the country."
Maurice was clearly preoccupied with the subject, because he returned to it again and again.
"You're not telling me the truth," he said finally.
"I'm not with you, Maurice..."
"I was called in by the Prime Minister yesterday," he said, his tone suddenly changing. "He was talking about a plot. Apparently he's heard that your boys have been going around town stirring things up about him and Marcia Falkender, and Communists at No. 10."
He trailed away as if it were all too distasteful for him.
"It's serious, Peter," he began again, "I need to know everything. Look what's happening in Washington with Watergate. The same thing will happen here unless we're very careful."
I ordered another brandy and decided to tell him everything I knew. When I had finished describing the plans of the previous summer he asked me if Hanley knew.
"No," I replied, "I thought it best just to forget the whole thing."
"I want you to go back to the office tomorrow and tell him everything."
Maurice tottered up to bed.
"Don't worry," he called back over his shoulder.
