The Defence of the Realm

by Christopher Andrew

  Macmillan later claimed that, after Vassall’s arrest, Hollis had called on him to announce, ‘I’ve got this fellow [Vassall], I’ve got him!’ When Macmillan failed to show any enthusiasm for this MI5 success, Hollis allegedly remarked, ‘You don’t seem very pleased, Prime Minister.’ Macmillan, by his own account, replied:

  No, I’m not at all pleased. When my gamekeeper shoots a fox, he doesn’t go and hang it up outside the Master of Foxhounds’ drawing room; he buries it out of sight. But you just can’t shoot a spy as you did in the war. You have to try him . . . better to discover him, and then control him, but never catch him . . . There will be a terrible row in the press, there will be a debate in the House of Commons and the government will probably fall. Why the devil did you ‘catch’ him?49

  In fact, Macmillan’s memory played him false. The news of Vassall’s detection had been conveyed to him not at a personal meeting with Hollis but by a written report channelled through the cabinet secretary, Sir Norman Brook.50 Following Vassall’s conviction in 1963, the Radcliffe tribunal made further protective-security recommendations about the staffing of missions behind the Iron Curtain as well as about the PV process.

  Macmillan’s annoyance at the embarrassment caused by MI5 spycatching seems to have been in striking contrast to his appreciation of SIS’s success in recruiting and running jointly with the CIA perhaps the most important Western agent of the Cold War, Colonel Oleg Penkovsky, deputy head of the foreign section of the GRU. During a visit to Britain as head of a Soviet delegation in April 1961, Penkovsky was secretly debriefed at Mount Royal Hotel near Marble Arch by a team of SIS and CIA officers, whom he astonished by declaring, ‘The great desire which I have carried in my soul . . . is to swear my fealty to my Queen, Elizabeth II, and to the President of the United States, Mr Kennedy, whom I am serving as their soldier.’ In Moscow, London and Paris, Penkovsky provided large quantities of highly classified documents (many photographed with a Minox camera) as well as important insights into Soviet policy and the Soviet armed forces. In April 1961 and again during a further visit to London in July, he had personal meetings with Sir Dick White. President Kennedy was informed of Penkovsky’s role (though not of his name) by the Director of Central Intelligence in July.51 Macmillan was probably briefed personally by White, with whom he had a warm personal relationship. Though Hollis and six other members of the Security Service were fully indoctrinated into the Penkovsky case, the Service remained on the sidelines and had no direct contact with the colonel.52 Despite Penkovsky’s arrest by the KGB in September, his intelligence continued to be of the first importance during the thirteen days of the October Missile Crisis. All the top-secret ‘Evaluations of the Soviet Missile Threat in Cuba’ supplied at least daily to President Kennedy and his advisers carried the codeword IRONBARK, indicating that they made use of Penkovsky’s documents. The Penkovsky case was an extraordinary example of the Cold War Special Relationship, to which Macmillan was deeply committed.53

  The last straw, as far as Macmillan’s relations with Hollis were concerned, was the DG’s warning in the spring of 1963 that his own deputy, Graham Mitchell, was suspected of being a Soviet penetration agent. According to Macmillan’s later, confused recollection of his briefing on the evidence against Mitchell: ‘He’d been spotted wandering round the loos in the park . . . passing things, probably it was opium or something, he seemed to be somewhat unhinged, probably not working for the Communists. Fortunately he retired before we could do anything about it, but it was all a great worry . . .’54 Macmillan’s suspicions about Mitchell’s behaviour were without foundation, but bear witness to his resentment of the scandals in which the Security Service seemed to be involving him. He must have been further annoyed by the humiliation of having to report the investigation of Mitchell to President Kennedy, because of the possibility that the DDG had betrayed American as well as British secrets.55

  The Profumo affair, however, was a far greater worry. Its combination of sexual and spy scandal made this the most difficult episode of Macmillan’s premiership. The element of sexual scandal, despite the enormous media coverage of it, was in reality very small. Though the Secretary of State for War, John Profumo, had an affair with a prostitute, Christine Keeler, the affair was quickly over. Had he not lied to the Commons by denying the affair and instead simply refused to comment on his private life, many in the Chamber might have hesitated to throw the first stone. The brief affair with Christine Keeler by a GRU officer in London, Evgeni ‘Eugene’ Ivanov, operating under cover as assistant Soviet naval attaché, also never came close to threatening national security. Keeler was never in any position to obtain state secrets from Profumo and pass them on to Ivanov. A later Security Service investigation plausibly concluded that it must have been obvious to Ivanov from the outset that Keeler had no information of significant value to him: ‘Although undoubtedly attractive, Keeler was vacuous and untruthful. Ivanov had no need to sleep with her to discover that.’56 The Service was aware that Ivanov had been arrested for drunkenness during a previous posting in Norway and it seemed likely by early 1961 that the Admiralty would be asking the FO to make a strong protest to the Soviet embassy about his behaviour in London.57 The Director of Naval Intelligence reported to the Security Service on 18 January that Ivanov’s ‘Character weaknesses are apparent when under the influence of alcohol, notably his lack of discretion and loss of personal control, his thirst for women and his tactless bluster.’58

  The history of the Profumo affair has been distorted by claims that Stephen Ward, a sexually eccentric society osteopath and portrait painter who introduced Profumo to the nineteen-year-old Keeler at a party around the swimming pool on the Cliveden estate of Lord (‘Bill’) Astor on 8 July, was later ‘framed’ by the police and driven to suicide, and that the Service used Keeler as a ‘honey-trap’ to try to lure Ivanov into defection. In reality, Ward was of interest to the Service only because of his involvement with Ivanov. He first came to the attention of MI5 early in 1961 when intelligence disclosed that a man called Ward was trying to strengthen his acquaintance with Ivanov by boasting of his society connections.59 Ward later claimed that he had introduced Ivanov to the highest in the land and that they became ‘close friends’: ‘Eugene [Ivanov] also met Jack Profumo with me socially and on another occasion he met Princess Margaret. He admired her lovely hair and she was furious when he pretended he did not think it was her real colouring.’60 It took several months for MI5 to track down the right Stephen Ward. The Special Branch initially directed the Service to another Stephen Ward, who, on being summoned to a meeting with a D1 operations officer who used the alias ‘Keith Wood’ on 29 May, said ‘that there must have been some mistake since he had never met a Russian in his life . . . He was at present engaged in writing a history of the Durham Light Infantry. He was not, and never had been, an osteopath.’ ‘Wood’ apologized and offered him a cup of coffee.61

  A member of the Service was able to provide ‘Wood’ with information about the right Stephen Ward obtained through an acquaintance:

  the information was that Ward was a difficult sort of person, inclined to be against the government. This attitude stemmed from the war years, when the Army refused to recognise his American medical degree. At some time or other Ward had been declared a bankrupt and he is also believed to have been involved in a call-girl racket.62

  ‘Wood’ met Ward on 8 June, noting afterwards: ‘Ward, who has an attractive personality and who talks well, was completely open about his association with Ivanov. Despite the fact that some of his political ideas are certainly peculiar and are exploitable by the Russians, I do not think that he is of security interest. . .’ ‘Wood’ also reported that Ward had introduced him to a girl who ‘was obviously sharing the house with him. She was heavily painted and considerably overdressed and I wondered . . . whether this is corroborating evidence of the allegation . . . that he has been involved in the call-girl racket.’63 Since Ward’s alleged involvement with prostitutes appeared
to have no relevance to national security, however, the Service made no attempt to investigate it.

  On 12 July Ward invited ‘Wood’ to lunch in order to expound his views about Soviet policy (to which he, but not the Security Service, attached great importance). ‘Wood’ was more interested in Ward’s description of Ivanov’s drunken behaviour at the now celebrated Cliveden weekend a few days earlier when, Ward claimed, Ivanov and Christine Keeler had drunk two bottles of whisky between them. ‘Wood’ noted afterwards: ‘My opinion of [Ward] has not changed. I do not think he is a security risk in the sense that he would be intentionally disloyal, but his peculiar political beliefs combined with his obvious admiration of Ivanov might lead him to be indiscreet unintentionally.’64 The fact that Profumo had also been at the Cliveden party with Ward, Keeler and Ivanov caused some anxiety in Leconfield House. At Hollis’s suggestion, the cabinet secretary, Sir Norman Brook, saw Profumo on 9 August 1961 to warn him that Ward might be trying to pick up information from him to pass on to Ivanov. Profumo wrongly jumped to the conclusion that the Security Service knew of his affair with Keeler. Doubtless as a result of the cabinet secretary’s warning, he broke off contact with Ward.65

  Remarkably, the Foreign Office continued to see Ward, because of his friendship with Ivanov, as a useful intermediary with the Soviet embassy. At a meeting with Ward on 28 May 1962, ‘Wood’ discovered that ‘Without our knowledge Ward was used by the Foreign Office . . . to pass off-the-record information to the Russian embassy.’66 A fortnight later D1, Arthur Martin, wrote to Philip Adams of the Foreign Office Security Department to check the truth of Ward’s claim that he and Sir Godfrey Nicholson MP (a distant relative) had ‘assisted the Foreign Office by passing official reports to Ivanov’.67 Adams confirmed that suitably tailored FO material had been channelled to Ivanov via Ward.68 Ward had been used as an intermediary with the Soviet embassy with the personal approval of both the Foreign Secretary, Lord Home, and the PUS, Sir Harold Caccia. The Security Service warned the Foreign Office that Ward was ‘both naive and indiscreet’,69 thus implying that the FO had also been naive to use him. The Foreign Office paid little, if any, attention to the warning.

  During the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962, Ward was used once again, this time on the initiative of the Russians, as a confidential channel for communications between Moscow and London. MI5 ‘again drew the attention of the Foreign Office to the dangers of using Ward for such purposes’.70 Already fond of boasting about his close contacts with the highest in the land, Ward interpreted his use as a back-channel between Moscow and London at the most dangerous moment of the Cold War as proof that Whitehall had assigned him a major role as an intermediary between East and West. MI5 was informed by a source whom it believed to be reliable:

  Ward says that at the height of the Cuban missile crisis . . . Ivanov brought another Russian official, (Vitalij) Loginov [chargé d’affaires] to see Ward: ‘We had practically a Cabinet meeting one night. That was the night when Kennedy made his famous speech on the radio [revealing the existence of the Cuban missile bases].’ Ward tried to give Source the impression that whatever had been discussed at his flat with the Russians had been passed on to the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary, Lord Home.

  Ivanov, he said, had come to him because he knew that Ward would be able to put information through to the Prime Minister: ‘You should have seen what happened. Eugene rang me up in a very worried state and later brought round this man Loginov. Certain messages they gave me they wanted to go to the Foreign Office. The Prime Minister was informed. It had quite a bearing on what transpired later.’71

  Though Ward’s boasts were characteristically exaggerated, there was a core of truth to them. On 24 October, at one of the tensest moments of the Missile Crisis, Ward passed a message from Ivanov to Caccia at the Foreign Office ‘that the Soviet Government looked to the United Kingdom as their one hope of conciliation’. Caccia forwarded it to the British ambassador in Moscow, who was ‘sceptical about both the information and the initiative’. On the 27th, Ward accompanied Ivanov to the home of a Foreign Office official, the Earl of Arran, in order ‘to get a message to the British government by indirect means asking them to call a Summit conference in London forthwith’. Lord Arran passed on the message to Number Ten as well as to the Foreign Office.72 Next day, however, Khrushchev agreed to remove the missile bases from Cuba and the crisis was resolved.

  The Security Service was less well informed about Profumo than it was about Ward and Ivanov. It did not discover that Profumo had had a liaison with Keeler until 28 January 1963, almost eighteen months after their first meeting round the Cliveden swimming pool. At that point, though rumours were circulating round Fleet Street and Westminster, there was still some reason to believe that Keeler would not publicize the affair. On 6 February F4 (counter-subversion agent-running) informed the DG that ‘our newspaper source’ had reported that ‘The courtesan, Christine Keeler, has told source that she has no intention of putting her name to anything that would embarrass Mr Profumo.’73 It was not long before she changed her mind.

  By the end of March the Home Secretary, Henry Brooke, was so alarmed by the wild rumours flying round Westminster that he summoned Hollis to ask him what MI5 was up to:

  He said that . . . the latest story to reach him was that, in 1961, MI5 had been so worried that both Profumo and Ivanov were sleeping with Christine Keeler that they had sent anonymous letters to Valerie Hobson [Profumo’s wife] with the hope of breaking up Profumo’s liaison. The Home Secretary said he felt he ought to know the facts.

  Hollis forbore to ask Brooke how he could possibly have supposed there might be any truth to the preposterous rumour that the Service had been sending anonymous letters to a cabinet minister’s wife. Instead, he replied that MI5’s sole concern had been to ensure that Profumo should be warned that Ivanov was a Soviet intelligence officer out to steal British defence secrets. Hollis handled a very difficult case and an excitable Home Secretary well. The Service stuck to its remit of not investigating political or sexual scandal unless it threatened national security. Despite sometimes hysterical media claims that the Profumo affair posed such a threat, it never did. As Hollis told Henry Brooke on 28 March 1963: ‘Security Service interest in the whole case was limited to Ivanov and his contacts, and it was no part of our business to concern ourselves with what Ward was up to in connection with the girls with which he was associated.’ Brooke agreed.74

  When Profumo admitted lying to the Commons about his relations with Keeler and announced his resignation from the government on 5 June, the combination of sexual scandal in high places (real and imagined) and wide-ranging conspiracy theory produced an extraordinary media feeding frenzy, which in retrospect seems further evidence for Macaulay’s dictum, ‘We know of no spectacle so ridiculous as the British public in one of its periodical fits of morality.’ The evidence in support of Macaulay’s dictum was not diminished by a Times leader, personally written by the editor Sir William Haley, pompously pronouncing: ‘It is a moral issue.’

  On 3 July 1963 Ward was committed for trial on a charge of living off the earnings from prostitution of Christine Keeler and Mandy Rice-Davies in 1961–2. Convinced that only nine months before he had played a crucial role in the Cuban Missile Crisis, he now claimed that he was being framed by an Establishment plot. Though the claim has been regularly repeated since, it is not supported by any evidence in MI5 files. On 31 July he was found unconscious after taking an overdose. Though Ward was found guilty in his absence, he died before sentence could be passed.

  A distressed Macmillan told his diary after Profumo’s resignation, ‘I do not remember ever having been under such a sense of personal strain. Even Suez was “clean” – about war and politics. This was all “dirt” . . .’ Lord Hailsham, Leader of the House of Lords, told the Young Conservatives in a reference to some of the assorted sexual scandals which the media associated with the affair: ‘I am not the man without a head, the man in the iron ma
sk, the man who goes about clad only in a Masonic apron, or a visitor to unnamed orgies.’75 Lord Denning, Master of the Rolls, who conducted an inquiry into the Profumo affair, which became an instant best-seller on its publication in September, later recalled:

  I saw Ministers of the Crown, the Security Service, rumour-mongers and prostitutes. They all came in by back doors and along corridors secretly so that the newspapers should not spot them. Some of the evidence I heard [while preparing the Denning Report] was so disgusting – even to my sophisticated mind – that I sent the lady shorthand writers out, and no note of it was taken.76

  Denning’s Report vindicated the role of the Security Service. His judgment, though challenged by numerous conspiracy theorists, has stood the test of time: ‘This was an unprecedented situation for which the machinery of government did not cater. It was, in the view of the Security Service, not a case of a security risk, but of moral misbehaviour by a Minister. And we have no machinery to deal with it.’