The Defence of the Realm (97 page)

After the publication during the 1980s of books by several authors, in particular Peter Wright's
Spycatcher
(which appeared in 1987), which publicized the charges against Hollis and Mitchell, a number of Service reports reviewed the earlier investigations. Those reports represent probably the most damaging indictment ever produced within the Service of any of its investigations. An officer in K10R/1, which was responsible for research into old espionage cases, concluded in June 1988: ‘In our estimation the case originally against Hollis which culminated in two interviews with him was so insubstantial that it should not have been pursued.'

It may well be asked why belief in high-level penetration continued so long in the UK, directed first at Mitchell . . . and later at Hollis. The reasons are complex:

(a)  a lack of intellectual rigour in some of the leading investigators . . .

(b)  dishonesty on the part of Wright, who did not scruple to invent evidence where none existed . . .

(c)  the baleful influence of Golitsyn who realised in 1963 that he had told all he knew and set about developing his theory of massive and co-ordinated Soviet deception (‘disinformation') supported by high-level penetration of all western intelligence and security services
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Among the instances of Wright's dishonesty in fabricating or distorting evidence to fit his conspiracy theories which came to light after his retirement in 1976 were the following:

 

  (i)  Wright has quoted an incident in 1961 when the KGB Resident Korovin was said to have been watching television [news] on the evening of the day when Lonsdale and the Krogers etc were arrested – and showed no emotion [the implication being that he had been forewarned]. This is quite untrue. Korovin was having a party with his two deputies and they were not watching television or listening to the radio.

 (ii)  Wright ‘led' his witnesses most unscrupulously in, for example, his interviews of the Petrovs, Elsa Bernaut
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and Blunt (in one interview he suggested to Blunt that Hollis was a spy, causing Blunt considerable anxiety for his own safety).

(iii)  His tendency to select a solution, then tailor the evidence to fit it (as in his 1965 investigation of the fire at the Moscow Embassy in 1964).

(iv)  His standard manoeuvre when worsted in argument of taking refuge in mystery (‘If you knew what I know'). This was a characteristic shared by Angleton in CIA. In both cases this was later shown to be a dishonest charade.
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Though all these points were well taken, the 1988 and other investigations did not address the underlying strategic failures which gave such free rein to the witch-hunts against Hollis and Mitchell. Overawed by the discovery of the atom spies, the Cambridge spies and (to those with access to VENONA) the Soviet wartime penetration of OSS and much of the Roosevelt administration, the Service formed a greatly exaggerated view of the efficiency of the Stalinist intelligence system and paid far too little attention to defector evidence (from, for example, the Petrovs) on its numerous inefficiencies, thus making itself susceptible to conspiracy theories which took no account of the frequency of Soviet cock-ups. Secondly, the Service had no mechanism for challenging the passionately held but intellectually threadbare conspiracy theories of a disruptive minority – particularly one which was so willing to fall back on claims of superior information (‘If you knew what I know') which it refused to expose to critical examination. Thirdly, the lack of such a mechanism was ultimately the result of a managerial failure – particularly by FJ, who, despite his deep scepticism about the DRAT investigation, failed to appoint a Team B from within the Service to review the deeply flawed evidence on which it was based. Fourthly, the introverted work culture of the Service made it deeply reluctant to call in an experienced, senior figure from Whitehall to provide a second opinion. But that, in the end, a decade too late, is what it was forced to do.

There was thus one long-term gain from the decade of otherwise futile and disruptive FLUENCY investigations. In 1975, at the suggestion of the cabinet secretary, an independent ‘assessor' was appointed to oversee all current and future investigations of alleged penetration of the Security Service or SIS. Having completed his inquiry into the Hollis and Mitchell cases, the first incumbent continued as assessor until his death in 1987. Successive incumbents have been appointed by the home secretary, with the agreement of the prime minister and the foreign secretary.
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Had such a system been in place at the beginning of the 1960s, it would doubtless have brought to an early conclusion the witch-hunts of the Service's conspiracy theorists.

11

The Wilson Government 1964–1970: Security, Subversion and ‘Wiggery-Pokery'

Labour returned to power in 1964 with many of the suspicions about the Security Service which had troubled it in 1945. Even among the Service's supporters in the government there was a widespread delusion that their correspondence and telephone calls were intercepted. Tony Benn, whom Wilson made postmaster general, noted in his diary after a discussion with his future cabinet colleague Dick Crossman fifteen months before Labour's election victory:

Dick, who worked for Intelligence during the war, is a fierce security man and said that, as a Minister, he would think it right that his phones should be tapped and all his letters opened. This is quite mad. I am terrified that George Wigg may be made Minister for Security and given power over all our lives.
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Wigg, a former colonel in the Education Corps, told journalists in 1963 that he was out to ‘get Profumo' (in his view a bad secretary of state for war as well as a security risk), and gave himself much of the credit for forcing Profumo out of office.
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Benn had good reason to be alarmed about Wigg's future role in a Wilson government. As Wilson's official biographer observes: ‘[Wigg's] passion was secrets, the more malodorous the better. He was at his happiest in the twilight world of spies, counter-spies and Chapman Pincher, and viewed his fellow MPs with the same ferocious suspicion as he would have lavished on an accredited agent of the KGB.'
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What Wilson did not know was that, as well as claiming (with little justification) to be an expert in security matters, Wigg combined prurience about the sex lives of others with the use of prostitutes.
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Ironically, during the Attlee government Wigg had been on the list of ‘Lost Sheep' pro-Soviet Labour MPs marked down for possible expulsion from the Party by its general secretary, Morgan Phillips.
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By 1964, at least as regards the Soviet Union, Wigg's ‘Lost Sheep' days were far behind him.

On Saturday 19 October 1964, the day after Harold Wilson was sworn in as prime minister, the PUS at the Home Office, Sir Charles Cunningham,
phoned the DG, Sir Roger Hollis, to tell him that the new Home Secretary would be Sir Frank Soskice but that Wilson proposed to transfer responsibility for security to George Wigg as paymaster general (in effect minister without portfolio). Hollis and Cunningham both saw ‘substantial objections' to (in other words, were appalled by) Wilson's plan, which would have thrown the whole Home Office Warrant system, on which the Security Service depended, into disarray: ‘It would be impossible for Colonel Wigg, who would not be a Secretary of State, to sign warrants.'
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In the course of the weekend, however, Wilson was persuaded to reconsider Wigg's role – probably by the cabinet secretary, Sir Burke Trend, for whom he had enormous respect.
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On the morning of Monday 21 October, Trend summoned Hollis and Sir Dick White to his room in the Cabinet Office to inform them:

that it had been agreed that the Home Secretary would continue to be the Minister responsible for the Security Service and that [its] charter would be re-affirmed. Nevertheless the Prime Minister did intend to give Wigg a charge to assist him from time to time on questions of security. Apparently what he had in mind was that Wigg should safeguard the Prime Minister against scandals taking him unaware and he did not want to be caught in the position of Macmillan at the time of the Profumo case.
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Wilson sought to justify Wigg's role to the probably sceptical head of the civil service, Sir Laurence Helsby, by claiming that he was to have an important role in strengthening protective security.
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The Security Service file on liaison with the Paymaster General is, however, very thin and contains little of substance – doubtless because, in reality, Wigg made no significant contribution to protective security.
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Roy Jenkins, who was to succeed Soskice as home secretary, later recalled Wigg's role with derision.

[Wilson] employed the half-comic, half-sinister George Wigg nominally as Paymaster-General, but in fact as a licensed rifler in Whitehall dustbins and interferer in security matters. Wigg as an unofficial emissary of the Prime Minister used to pay me occasional Home Office visits during which he delivered cryptic messages. As they increasingly came to refer back to previous ones which had passed over my head the crypticism became compounded. Out of a rash mixture of boredom and supineness (for I did not wish to embroil with Wilson over him) I decided to roll with his punch, particularly as nothing ever seemed to follow from what he said. ‘You know that matter I talked to you about last time,' a typical conversation would begin. ‘It hasn't moved much, but I'll keep watching it.' If one nodded sagely he went off quickly away, apparently satisfied, and no harm (or good either)
ever seemed to result. But his activities hardly conduced to a coherent control of security policy.
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Despite Wigg's insignificant contribution to national security, for some time he saw Wilson more often than any other minister – more frequently even than the Chief Whip.
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The frequency of their meetings was due chiefly to what Barbara Castle, who held a series of portfolios in the Wilson cabinet, called Wilson's ‘obsession with “plots” against him'.
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Wigg kept the Prime Minister up to date with plotting within, and sometimes outside, the Labour Party, as well as with sexual and other irregularities on Labour benches which might erupt into public scandals.
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Some of the material which Wigg supplied to the Prime Minister was bizarre. Early in Wilson's first administration, Wigg sent him a large envelope marked ‘Not to be opened by female staff'. Understandably disregarding this curious instruction, the duty clerk, Anne Kiggell, now an Anglican priest, recalls opening the bottom of the envelope and removing from it the photograph of a public figure, whom she was able to identify, in the act of removing the corset of a female companion. She then replaced the photograph in the envelope, resealed it and sent it on to the Prime Minister.
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The purpose of the photograph was presumably to alert Wilson to the possibility of a public scandal involving the man who appeared in it. It is difficult to imagine a more bizarre relationship between a prime minister and his security adviser than that between Wilson and Wigg. A decade later Wilson was to go to the extraordinary lengths of personally hiring private detectives to follow Wigg to the home of his (Wigg's) mistress and illegitimate child.
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Soon afterwards Wigg was stopped a number of times for kerb-crawling, on one occasion – according to police evidence – accosting six women in the Park Lane area of London in the space of only twenty minutes.
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Despite Wigg's unpopularity on Labour benches in the Commons, he caused few problems to the Security Service. At his first meeting with Hollis in October 1964, Sir Frank Soskice assured the DG that he ‘did not propose ever to ask to see Security Service files or their contents, nor to ask for the source of our information'. Wigg gave the same assurance, though adding the self-important claim that he ‘did get a good deal of information about security' from his own sources. ‘All he intended to do with it', however, ‘was to hand it to [Hollis] and he would not expect to be told what action was to be taken on it.'
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At the end of his three years as paymaster general, Wigg wrote to thank the DG (by then Furnival Jones) for the ‘wonderful support' he had received from the Service: ‘You have enlisted me as a
supporter and whenever the wellbeing of the Security Service is an issue I shall be on your side.'
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Wigg's confidence in the Security Service merely served to strengthen the suspicions of some of his fellow ministers. Even the law officers of the Wilson government believed that the Security Service kept files on them as a matter of routine. Lord Gardiner, the Lord Chancellor, had been told by an unidentified and misinformed informant some years earlier that, on joining the cabinet, ministers were allowed to see their own files. On taking office, he therefore asked for his Security Service file, ‘thinking that this would give me a good opportunity to judge the efficacy of MI5. After all, I would be able to judge what they said about me in comparison with what I knew about myself.' When his department failed to obtain the non-existent file, Gardiner went to see the Home Secretary.
²⁰
Despite his legal expertise and personal charm, Soskice was, in the view of his successor Roy Jenkins, ‘a remarkably bad Home Secretary' – ‘extremely indecisive' with ‘practically no political sense'.
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Both these failings were in evidence when the Lord Chancellor asked to see his file. Soskice wrongly assumed that such a file existed but was unwilling to reveal to Gardiner that he had given Hollis an assurance that he would never ask to see the contents of
any
Security Service file. Soskice's response to the Lord Chancellor's request was thus confused. According to Gardiner: ‘Frank Soskice was embarrassed and said that he couldn't agree and that he wasn't allowed to see the files either. When they wanted to show him anything, they photographed a page and gave it to him but he never saw the complete file. He was so upset about it that I just let it drop.'
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