The Defence of the Realm (92 page)

Just as the discovery of the atom spies had prompted the early Cold War transformation of protective security, so the spy cases of the early 1960s led to its further development. The conviction of George Blake and the Portland spy-ring in 1961 prompted the appointment of the Radcliffe Committee, which carried out a comprehensive review of the protectivesecurity system. The Security Service was to be responsible for advice on security training and technical education in the public service and step up security education in industry. C Branch's lead role in protective security thus received official recognition.

In the ‘Night of the Long Knives', Macmillan's major cabinet reshuffle of July 1962, Rab Butler was promoted to the post of deputy prime minister and first secretary of state, and was succeeded as home secretary by the accident-prone Henry Brooke. Though more supportive of the Service than Macmillan, Brooke caused some anxiety by requesting a list of the names and addresses of those individuals and organizations in his Hampstead constituency which had HOWs authorizing the monitoring of their post and telephones. The Security Service reluctantly provided the details but remonstrated with Brooke's PUS, Sir Philip Allen, over the Home Secretary's request. According to a note by the DDG, Graham Mitchell: ‘Allen said that the Home Secretary felt that he needed it because he meets a lot of people in his constituency and would be fortified in knowing if he had any one of them on check. I said I thought this was a rotten reason.'
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The arrest of another Soviet spy, John Vassall, an Admiralty clerk,
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only a few months after the convictions of the Portland spy-ring and George Blake, was greeted with further irritation by Macmillan. The initial lead in the investigation was one of the few provided by the troublesome KGB defector Anatoli Golitsyn, later supplemented by further intelligence from another Soviet intelligence source. The case officer, as in the Portland spy case, was initially Charles Elwell. An eavesdropping operation against Vassall's Dolphin Square flat, A4 surveillance of his journeys to and from work on the Number 24 bus and searches of his desk at the Admiralty uncovered no evidence of espionage. However, a search of his flat in September 1962 revealed two cameras and exposed film concealed in a hidden compartment. Vassall was arrested later the same day. An A4 veteran, who accompanied the Special Branch officer making the arrest, recalls during the car journey to Scotland Yard that Vassall was ‘panting
with fear' and confessed his guilt. Since his recruitment in Moscow in 1955, he had operated continuously as a Soviet agent, save in the aftermath of the Portland case, when he had been told to lie low. He was later sentenced to eighteen years' imprisonment.
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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?
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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 . . .'
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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.
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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.'
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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.
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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.'
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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.
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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.'
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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.
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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.
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‘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.'
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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.'
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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.
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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.'
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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'.
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Adams confirmed that suitably tailored FO material had been channelled to Ivanov via Ward.
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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',
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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'.
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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: