The Defence of the Realm

by Christopher Andrew

  83 Security Service Archives.

  84 In the 1920s Masterman was also reputed to be the best squash player in Oxford University. ‘Times Portrait Gallery: J. C. Masterman’, The Times, 10 Oct. 1958.

  85 Masterman, Double-Cross System, pp. 90, 114.

  86 See below, p. 298.

  87 Security Service Archives.

  88 Masterman, Chariot Wheel, ch. 21.

  89 Masterman, Double-Cross System, pp. 58–9.

  90 See above, pp. 245–6.

  91 Masterman, Double-Cross System, p. 51.

  92 Major Dixon (RSLO Cambridge) to Dick White, 14 Jan. 1941, TNA KV 2/60.

  93 Captain P. E. S. Finney, ‘re Mills’ Circus’, 9 April 1941, TNA KV 4/211, s. 23a. Hotel details (subsequently amended) in ‘Accommodation Plan’, s. 38a.

  94 B2a, ‘Suggestions for dealing with Double Agents in case of invasion’, 1 Feb. 1941, TNA KV 4/211, s. 1a.

  95 Masterman, Double-Cross System, pp. 90–92.

  96 B2a, ‘Suggestions for dealing with Double Agents in case of invasion’, 1 Feb. 1941, TNA KV 4/211, s. 1a.

  97 TNA KV 2/448.

  98 Unsigned letter to G.W., 12 March 1941, marked ‘Handed to G.W. on 24.3.41 and memorised by him’, TNA KV 4/211, s. 4a.

  99 New Scotland Yard to T. A. Robertson, 25 March 1941, TNA KV 4/211, s. 19a.

  100 T. A. Robertson to Major Stephens, 12 March 1941, TNA KV 4/211, s. 10a.

  101 DG, ‘Orders for Mr Atkinson’, 3 April 1941, TNA KV 4/211, s. 22a.

  102 No legal opinion by the Service Legal Adviser or any other lawyer appears to survive on this controversial subject.

  103 Security Service Archives.

  104 Alcázar had successfully deceived both the British ambassador in Madrid, Sir Samuel Hoare, who recommended him to the Foreign Office in what seemed to MI5 ‘the most fulsome terms’, and the British press attaché, who described him as ‘anti-German to the core’. Security Service Archives.

  105 Security Service Archives.

  106 West and Tsarev, Crown Jewels, p. 140.

  107 Ibid., p. 141.

  108 Security Service Archives.

  109 Guy Liddell diary, 1 Jan. 1942.

  110 Churchill was informed about this activity by a Security Service report on 1 June 1943. Security Service Archives.

  111 Security Service Archives.

  112 Though GW could no longer be used as part of the Double-Cross System, his loss was more than compensated by the expanding recruitment of other double agents.

  113 Security Service Archives.

  Chapter 2: Soviet Penetration and the Communist Party

  1 Cadogan diary, 4 Sept. 1939, CCAC ACAD 1/8. Andrew, Secret Service, p. 606.

  2 Washington embassy to Foreign Office, telegram, 3 Sept. 1939 (received 4 Sept. 1939), TNA KV 2/802, s. 7a.

  3 Cadogan diary, 21, 25 Sept. 1939, CCAC ACAD 1/8. Andrew, Secret Service, p. 606.

  4 Liddell noted on 20 September, ‘It is doubtful if we shall prosecute.’ Guy Liddell diary, 20 Sept. 1939.

  5 On MI5 opposition to physical brutality in interrogation, see above, pp. 251–2.

  6 Andrew, Secret Service, pp. 606–7. Cadogan to Treasury, 2 Dec. 1939, TNA T 162 574/E40411. Cadogan diary, 26 Sept., 30 Nov. 1939, CCAC ACAD 1/8. Dilks (ed.), Cadogan Diaries, p. 235.

  7 Harker to Gladwyn Jebb (Foreign Office), 8 Nov. 1939, TNA KV 2/802, s. 13ax.

  8 On Sissmore’s marriage see above, p. 220.

  9 Archer to Vivian, 10 Nov. 1939, TNA KV 2/802, s. 13a.

  10 Harker to Gladwyn Jebb (FO), 20 Nov. 1939, TNA KV 2/802, s. 16a.

  11 Guy Liddell diary, 20 Jan. 1940, TNA KV 4/185.

  12 ‘Information obtained from Krivitsky’, TNA KV 2/805, s. 55x. This document is published in West, MASK, appendix 2.

  13 ‘Report re interview with Krivitsky’, 23 Jan. 1940, TNA KV 2/804, s. 1a. Contrary to the initial expectation of Harker and Archer, Vivian took part in only the first few sessions of the debriefing.

  14 Ibid.

  15 Guy Liddell diary, 2 Feb. 1940.

  16 Security Service Archives.

  17 ‘Information obtained from Krivitsky’, TNA KV 2/805, s. 55x.

  18 West and Tsarev, Crown Jewels, pp. 88–9.

  19 Andrew and Mitrokhin, Mitrokhin Archive, p. 119.

  20 A point first persuasively made in Quinlan, ‘Human Intelligence Tradecraft and MI5 Operations in Britain’, pp. 290–97.

  21 ‘Report re interview with Krivitsky’, 23 Jan. 1940.TNA KV 2/804, s. 1a. Emphasis in original.

  22 ‘Note to B. re secret document seen in Moscow by K.’, 3 Feb. 1940, TNA KV 2/804, s. 29a.

  23 The supposedly aristocratic breeding of the Cambridge Five became so deeply embedded in KGB mythology that Yevgeni Primakov, first head of the post-Soviet foreign intelligence service, the SVR, referred to Maclean, whom he knew personally, as a ‘Scottish lord’, and made the absurd claim that he gave up a family fortune large enough to pay the running costs of Soviet foreign intelligence. Andrew and Mitrokhin, Mitrokhin Archive II, p. 484.

  24 ‘Information obtained from Krivitsky’, TNA KV 2/805, s. 55x.

  25 ‘B.4 note re F.O. Document’, 10 Feb. 1940, TNA KV 2/804, s. 41a.

  26 ‘Mally, Theodore’, in ‘Information obtained from Krivitsky’, TNA KV 2/805, s. 55x.

  27 See below, p. 343.

  28 Andrew and Mitrokhin, Mitrokhin Archive, p. 87.

  29 Security Service Archives.

  30 Security Service Archives.

  31 Security Service Archives. On King’s arrest and trial, see above, p. 264.

  32 Security Service Archives. Hooper did not admit to having worked for the Russians before the Second World War until 1957; Security Service Archives.

  33 See above, p. 246.

  34 In February 1941 Krivitsky was found dead from a gunshot wound in a New York hotel room. Despite the suicide note by his side, it is possible that he had been killed by a Soviet assassin.

  35 See above, p. 185.

  36 Security Service Archives.

  37 On Blunt’s visit to the Soviet Union, see Carter, Blunt, pp. 131–8.

  38 Security Service Archives.

  39 See above, p. 173.

  40 Report by Blunt on his life and work for Soviet intelligence, submitted to the Centre in February 1943; cited by West and Tsarev, Crown Jewels, p. 133.

  41 West and Tsarev, Crown Jewels, p. 134.

  42 Security Service Archives.

  43 West and Tsarev, Crown Jewels, p. 135.

  44 The official reason for not keeping him on at Trinity after the expiry of his Research Fellowship was that there was ‘nothing for Blunt to teach’; Security Service Archives. It is often supposed that Cambridge University in the 1930s was full of uninhibited homosexual coupling. In reality, much of Cambridge was as prejudiced against gays as the rest of Britain.

  45 West and Tsarev, Crown Jewels, p. 132.

  46 Security Service Archives.

  47 Rose, Elusive Rothschild, p. 232.

  48 Security Service Archives.

  49 Penrose and Freeman, Conspiracy of Silence, p. 251.

  50 Recollections of a former Security Service officer.

  51 Recollections of a former Security Service officer.

  52 Carter, Blunt, pp. 262–3.

  53 Security Service Archives.

  54 Security Service Archives.

  55 Unpublished memoirs of J. C. Curry, who does not refer explicitly to Burgess’s homosexuality, noting euphemistically instead that ‘there was reason to think that he belonged to a medical category which made him likely to be unstable and unreliable.’ Security Service Archives

  56 Blunt was also aware of Krivitsky’s (correct) claim, excluded from the report, that Jack Hooper was a former Soviet agent. Security Service Archives.

  57 West and Tsarev, Crown Jewels, pp. 144–6, 161–2, 170. Few of the reports and MI5 documents provided by Blunt to his Soviet case officers still survive in Russian intelligence archives.

  5
8 West and Tsarev, Crown Jewels, pp. 159–61.

  59 Hinsley and Simkins, British Intelligence in the Second World War, vol. 4, pp. 36–7, 81, appendix 2.

  60 Recollections of a former Security Service officer and Security Service Archives.

  61 Recollections of a former Security Service officer and Security Service Archives.

  62 Hinsley and Simkins, British Intelligence in the Second World War, vol. 4, pp. 284–5.

  63 Recollections of a former Security Service officer and Security Service Archives.

  64 MI5 to Colonel Allen (GPO), 19 May 1942, TNA KV 2/1177, s. 142b, F2A to Hunter (B6), 1 July 1942, TNA KV 2/1177, s. 143e. F2A note, 12 June 1942, TNA KV 2/1177, s. 144d.

  65 Recollections of a former Security Service officer and Security Service Archives. On Mrs Grist, see below, pp. 336–7.

  66 Recollections of a former Security Service officer and Security Service Archives.

  67 Security Service Archives.

  68 Blunt’s report in KGB archives is undated. West and Tsarev, Crown Jewels, pp. 154–5.

  69 Security Service Archives.

  70 Security Service Archives.

  71 Security Service, p. 350. ‘Note of interview with Oliver Charles Green at Brixton Prison on 11 Aug., 1942’, TNA KV 2/2203, s. 69a. On the Green case, see Walton, ‘British Intelligence and Threats to National Security, 1941–1951’.

  72 Chief Constable Birmingham to MI5, 2 Dec. 1935, TNA KV 2/2203, s. 2a.

  73 ‘Oliver Green’, 30 Oct. 1942, TNA KV 2/2204, s. 125a. Security Service, p. 362.

  74 Security Service, p. 350. ‘Note of interview with Oliver Charles Green at Brixton Prison on 11 Aug., 1942’, TNA KV 2/2203, s. 69a. Guy Liddell diary, 11 Aug. 1942, TNA KV 4/190. My analysis of the Green case draws on Walton, ‘British Intelligence and Threats to National Security, 1941–1951’.

  75 ‘Oliver Green’, 30 Nov. 1942, TNA KV 2/2204, s. 125a.

  76 ‘K.S. [King Street] microphone conversation between Green and Robson’, 7 Oct. 1943, TNA KV 2/2206, s. 4a.

  77 ‘The present state of the Green Case’, 19 Oct. 1942, TNA KV 2/2203, s. 10a. M. Johnstone to H.J. Cleeve, 29 Nov. 1942, TNA KV 2/2233, s. 17a. W.J. Skardon ‘Alan Ernest Osborne’, 18 March 1953, TNA KV 2/2235, s. 183a. Home Office Warrant on Alonzo Elliott, 4 Feb. 1942, TNA KV 2/2236, s. 20a. ‘Typewritten copy of statement made after caution by Alan Ernest Osborne to C. A. G. Simkins’, 15 Dec. 1952, TNA KV 2/2205, s. 265z.

  78 David Clarke, ‘The case of D. F. Springhall’, 25 Aug. 1943, TNA KV 2/1596, s. 300a.

  79 Security Service, p. 363.

  80 ‘Leakage of information from the Air Ministry’, 16 June 1943, TNA KV 2/1596, s. 271bc. ‘Court proceedings against Douglas Frank Springhall, ‘Preliminary observations by MI5’, 21 June 1943, TNA KV 2/1596. Guy Liddell diary, 17 June, 28 July 1943, TNA KV 4/192. ‘The Springhall case’, March 1950, TNA KV 2/1597, s. 388a.

  81 Memo by Edward Cussen (MI5 Legal Adviser), 7 Oct. 1943, TNA KV 2/1598, s. 28a. ‘The Springhall case’, March 1950, TNA KV 2/1597, s. 388a. Guy Liddell diary, 1 Nov. 1943, TNA KV 4/192.

  82 Guy Liddell diary, 7 Sept. 1943, TNA KV 4/192.

  83 Ibid., 29 Sept. 1943.

  84 Security Service, p. 357.

  85 David Clarke, ‘The case of D. F. Springhall’, 25 Aug. 1943, TNA KV 2/1596, s. 300a.

  86 Hinsley and Simkins, British Intelligence in the Second World War, vol. 4, pp. 286–7.

  87 Andrew, Secret Service, p. 619.

  88 David Clarke, ‘Communists engaged on secret work’, 21 Oct. 1943, TNA KV 4/251, s. 3a.

  89 Security Service, pp. 346–8.

  90 Hinsley and Simkins, British Intelligence in the Second World War, vol. 4, pp. 287–9. See above, p. 239.

  91 Guy Liddell diary, 16 March 1943, TNA KV 4/191.

  92 West and Tsarev, Crown Jewels, pp. 149–60, 168–9.

  93 Andrew and Mitrokhin, Mitrokhin Archive, pp. 159–60.

  94 Remarkably, the suspicions recurred among some in the Centre at the beginning of the Cold War. In 1948 Modrzhinskaya, still head of the British department, wrote a memorandum concluding that all the Cambridge Five were British deception agents. Lyubimov, ‘Martyr to Dogma’, pp. 278–9. In the middle years of the Cold War, Lyubimov was the KGB’s leading British expert. Despite the defection of Philby, Burgess and Maclean to Moscow, he recalls being told even in the Gorbachev era by a former deputy head of KGB counter-intelligence: ‘Philby and that whole crew – it was all a fiendishly clever plant by British intelligence.’

  95 West and Tsarev, Crown Jewels, pp. 168–9.

  96 Andrew and Mitrokhin, Mitrokhin Archive, pp. 183–4.

  97 Duff Cooper to Churchill (copied to Roger Hollis), 26 Oct. 1943, TNA KV 4/251, s. 4a.

  98 Security Service Archives.

  99 West and Tsarev, Crown Jewels, pp. 309–10.

  100 Security Service Archives. See above, p. 255.

  101 Security Service Archives.

  102 Hollis, ‘The revolutionary programme of the communists’, enclosed with Petrie to Sir Alexander Maxwell (Home Office), 6 July 1942, TNA KV 4/266, s. 7a. Kerr, ‘Roger Hollis and the dangers of the Anglo-Soviet treaty of 1942’.

  103 Roger Hollis, Minute 145a, 24 Dec. 1942, TNA KV 4/267.

  104 Sir David Petrie, Minute 176a, 31 Jan. 1945, TNA KV 4/267. Walton, ‘British Intelligence and Threats to National Security, 1941–1951’.

  105 Roger Hollis, Minute 52a, 5 Sept. 1945, TNA KV 4/251. Walton, ‘British Intelligence and Threats to National Security, 1941–1951’.

  106 See below, pp. 341–2.

  107 Security Service Archives.

  108 Security Service Archives.

  109 See below, pp. 510ff.

  Chapter 3: Victory

  1 Masterman, Double-Cross System, pp. 8–9, 58.

  2 Howard, British Intelligence in the Second World War, vol. 5, pp. 20–1.

  3 Shelley, ‘Empire of Shadows’. Holt, Deceivers.

  4 Howard, British Intelligence in the Second World War, vol. 5, p. xi.

  5 West and Tsarev, Crown Jewels, pp. 308–9.

  6 Ibid., pp. 317–19.

  7 Holt, Deceivers, p. 43. An inquiry by Lord Gort concluded that Clarke ‘seems in all other respects to be mentally stable’. Wilson, ‘War in the Dark’, p. 193.

  8 Howard, British Intelligence in the Second World War, vol. 5, pp. 26–7.

  9 Ibid., pp. 55–63.

  10 Masterman, Double-Cross System, pp. 17, 109.

  11 Tomás Harris was in B1G (Spanish counter-espionage), based in Jermyn Street, but worked in close co-operation with B1A, which he visited almost daily. Recollections of a former Security Service officer.

  12 Sir Michael Howard calls their collaboration ‘one of those rare partnerships between two exceptionally gifted men whose inventive genius inspired and complemented one another’. Howard, British Intelligence in the Second World War, vol. 5, p. 231.

  13 Security Service Archives.

  14 Carter, Blunt, pp. 94–5, 257. Harris’s file also describes him as a close friend of Blunt’s flatmate, Guy Burgess. His friendship with them, and also with Philby, led later to an investigation which uncovered no evidence of his involvement in Soviet espionage. Security Service Archives.

  15 Howard, British Intelligence in the Second World War, vol. 5, pp. 62–3.

  16 Holt, Deceivers, p. 268.

  17 Security Service Archives.

  18 Holt, Deceivers, p. 370.

  19 Security Service Archives

  20 Howard, British Intelligence in the Second World War, vol. 5, p. 89. Soon after devising the deception, Cholmondeley returned, for reasons unknown, to the Air Ministry. Security Service Archives.

  21 Security Service Archives.

  22 Macintyre, Operation Mincemeat, chs 9$10. On Ivor Montagu see below, p. 381.

  23 Bevan, ‘Mincemeat’, n.d., TNA CAB 154/67/63; cited by Holt, Deceivers, p. 376.

  24 Macintyre, Operation Mincemeat, ch. 71

  25 Recollections of
former Security Service officers.

  26 Holt, Deceivers, p. 375.

  27 Ibid., p. 374.

  28 Recollections of former Security Service officers. Montagu, The Man Who Never Was.

  29 Macintyre, Operation Mincemeat, chs117–22.

  30 Duff Cooper to Petrie, 9 March 1943, TNA KV 4/83, s. 1a. Duff Cooper was so enthused by MINCEMEAT that in 1950 he published a novel based on it, Operation Heartbreak.

  31 Guy Liddell diary, 10 March 1943.

  32 Duff Cooper to Petrie, 9 March 1943, TNA KV 4/83, s. 1a.

  33 Security Service, p. 231; Chapman’s MI5 file is TNA KV 2/455–63.

  34 ‘The HARLEQUIN case’, enclosed with Petrie to Duff Cooper, 16 April 1943, TNA KV 4/83, s. 9a.

  35 Ibid.

  36 Duff Cooper to Petrie, 9 March 1943, TNA KV 4/83, s. 1a.

  37 Guy Liddell diary, 10 March 1943.

  38 Petrie to Duff Cooper, 13 March 1943, TNA KV 4/83, s. 3a.

  39 Guy Liddell diary, 16 March 1943. ADB1 (White) to DG through DB, 26 March 1943, TNA KV 4/83, s. 5a. The limited number of Soviet espionage cases which came to light were, however, included in the monthly reports.

  40 Zec was not in fact a controversial cartoonist, let alone subversive. After the war, Morrison apologized to him. Kellett, ‘Philip Zec’, pp. 87–95; Zec, Don’t Lose it Again!, pp. 73–81 (I am grateful to Dr Nicholas Hiley for these references.)

  41 ADB1 (White) to DG through DB, 26 March 1943, TNA KV 4/83, s. 5a.

  42 This is confirmed by the recollections of former Security Service officers. Cf. Blunt (B1B) to DB, 13 July 1945, TNA KV 4/83, s. 61a.

  43 Few details are available of how many classified British documents obtained by Soviet intelligence were passed to Stalin personally. It is known, however, that in 1935 these included over a hundred Foreign Office reports (Andrew and Elkner, ‘Stalin and Intelligence’, p. 73). The MI5 monthly reports to Churchill would probably have been, on average, of even greater interest to Stalin.

  44 Arrangements were made for this and subsequent reports to be returned to the Security Service after Churchill had read them. ADB1 (White) to DG through DB, 26 March 1943, TNA KV 4/83, s. 5a.

  45 Duff Cooper to Guy Liddell, 2 April 1943, TNA KV 4/83, s. 8a. Guy Liddell diary, 3 April 1943.

  46 ‘Report on Activities of Security Service’, with minute by Churchill of 2 April 1944, TNA KV 4/83, s. 7a. This report, like its successors, was returned to the Security Service after being read by Churchill.