Too Secret Too Long, page 14
Evidence that while Sonia and her brother were operating so effectively under MI5’s nose, MI5 remained tasked to prevent Soviet espionage in Britain, in spite of the wartime alliance with the Soviet Union, became public in July 1943 with the sentencing of Douglas Frank Springhall, a well-known British communist, to seven years’ penal servitude under the Official Secrets Act.[21] Springhall, then forty-two and described in the contemporary newspaper reports as ‘thick-set, broad-shouldered and clean-shaven with a florid complexion’, was accused by the judge of ‘worming secrets from a Government department by means of a little woman clerk’. The woman was Olive Sheehan, a clerk in the Air Ministry who had given Springhall information about jet propulsion developments on the understanding that it would be passed straight to Moscow. She was sentenced to three months’ imprisonment and agreed to testify against Springhall when his case was heard in camera.
A ‘Strictly Confidential’ document passed by MI5 to the U.S. Embassy in August 1943 and released in 1983 makes it even more clear that MI5 was fully aware of the treachery being perpetrated by Russians and by British communists on their behalf. It reads: ‘Our friends stated that they were aware that the Soviet Government was actively engaged at the present time in obtaining espionage information concerning the British Government. It was stated that the Soviet espionage organisations seemed to operate in two channels: One, directly through the Communist Party of England, utilising the Party organisation and English Communists who are employed in the armed services and the Government to collect espionage data. According to our friends, the second Soviet espionage group is apparently completely separated from the Communist Party of England and operates on what he described as a diplomatic level. This, of course, would include the Russian Embassy in London, as well as their various consular offices throughout the United Kingdom and the various Russian Trade Commissions which are accredited to the British Government and enjoy a pseudo-diplomatic immunity.’[22]
This documentary evidence surely disposes of any suggestion that MI5 was encouraged by the Government or by the circumstances to relax its interest in Soviet espionage once the U.S.S.R. became an ally and that the ineffectiveness of people like Hollis was, therefore, understandable and excusable. On the contrary, a further statement by MI5 to the U.S. Embassy, released in the same document, reads: ‘Our friends further advised the Legal Attaché [of the American Embassy] that it was the intention of the Security Services and the British Government to prosecute these Communists for violation of the Official Secrets Act and not as Communists engaged in subversive activities against the British Government.’
This alleged determination makes it even more difficult to understand why so few traitorous communists and their Soviet controllers were detected. Springhall was detected only because his activities as a communist organizer and close links with Moscow were so well known that he was under regular surveillance and was seen visiting Mrs Sheehan’s home.
Springhall had been a G.R.U. agent for years and had not only come to the notice of MI5 after being expelled from the Navy for sedition but had been sent to prison for two months during the 1926 General Strike when he was a Young Communist League agitator, having been a delegate to a Communist Congress in Moscow two years previously. As a political commissar to the British Battalion of the International Brigade in Spain he recruited Alexander Foote, Sonia’s trainee radio operator, to the G.R.U.[23] He had visited Moscow again in 1939, almost certainly on G.R.U. business, for he was to run a G.R.U. network of agents of whom Mrs Sheehan was only one.[24] As is now appreciated, most of the rest, who went undetected, were part of the British section of the ‘Red Orchestra’. In common with G.R.U. practice at that time Springhall was essentially an illegal agent-runner but had some connections with the Soviet Embassy, being in touch with Simon Kremer (‘Sergei’), of the G.R.U. Military Attaché’s office.
Unusually, Springhall used his overt communism as the Party’s national organizer as cover for his numerous communist contacts. He lived in a Communist Party flat almost next door to its London headquarters and was therefore an easy subject for regular surveillance by Special Branch police. When it was decided to arrest him MI5 had hoped to induce him to give leads to his other agents and controllers. True to his training he declined any help whatever, gave no evidence at his trial, and after his eventual release died in exile in Moscow, after a sojourn in China. The Communist Party also behaved according to standing instructions. It expelled Springhall ignominiously, claiming to know nothing of his espionage.[25]
Only one of Springhall’s other sources was identified, again as a result of routine surveillance. This was Ormond Uren, a 23-year-old officer in the Highland Light Infantry working in the Special Operations Executive in London. He had secretly joined the Communist Party in 1940 after being commissioned and had volunteered to supply the Party with information about his secret work. He was seen talking to Springhall and was kept under surveillance after Springhall’s conviction. When confronted two months later he confessed all he knew. In October 1943 he was court-martialled, cashiered and sentenced to seven years’ penal servitude. Ill-advised attempts have been made to link Uren and Springhall with the Cambridge Ring of spies. Both, in fact, were G.R.U. agents and there was no connection with the Cambridge group or any other K.G.B. ring.[26]
Further evidence that the Government was alert to the Soviet threat, in spite of the current alliance, originated from Churchill himself in April 1944 when he ordered a purge of communists in secret establishments.[27] He probably had weapons research and development mainly in mind, but if MI5 and MI6 were supposed to be included they either ignored the edict or did nothing that was effective, and the Soviet spies in those agencies continued to prosper.
A chance event which would have greatly disturbed Sonia had she heard of it, and Hollis even more so if he was a spy, occurred at Blenheim early in 1945 when Jack Tilton, former Detective Inspector with the Shanghai Municipal Police, called there. His purpose was to pick up some secret papers concerning his recent appointment to an R.A.F. security post. He wished to join MI5 and while he was there he took the opportunity to hand in testimonials and an eight-page record of his Shanghai activities, including his operations against communists there. As with a further attempt to join MI5 soon after the war, Tilton found his application completely ignored without even an acknowledgement. Understandably, he wonders why.[28]
Though communists of several nationalities continued to spy or serve as agents in Britain throughout the war, no more were prosecuted until early in 1946, when MI5’s hand was forced through an event over which it had no control – the defection of a Soviet member of the G.R.U. in another country.
chapter fourteen
A Mole Called ‘Elli’
On the night of 5 September 1945, one month after the atomic bomb had ended the Second World War, Igor Gouzenko, the G.R.U. cipher clerk defected from the Soviet Embassy in Ottawa with more than 100 carefully selected secret documents and a mass of memorized information.[1] He had been posted there from Moscow in June 1943 as code cipher clerk and translator to the G.R.U. chief in the Embassy. In the desperate hours after his defection, when he was being hunted by strong-arm men from the Embassy and could find no Canadian to listen to his story, Gouzenko told his wife, Swetlana, three things which she was to tell the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (R.C.M.P.) if he was captured. One of them was the existence of a G.R.U. spy, code-named ‘Elli’, inside MI5 in Britain. [2]
Gouzenko was nearly handed back to the Soviets because the jittery Canadian Prime Minister, Mackenzie King, was more concerned with preserving relations with the Kremlin, but wiser counsels prevailed and Gouzenko was interviewed at length by the security authorities who were then part of the R.C.M.P.
As Gouzenko named a British atomic scientist, Dr Alan Nunn May, as a traitor, in addition to making the ‘Elli’ allegation, the nearest available British Intelligence officer was flown to Ottawa to take part in the initial debriefing of the defector, which was led by Superintendent Charles Rivett-Carnac of the R.C.M.P. The British officer was Peter Dwyer who represented MI6 and was, at that time, working on secondment with the British Security Co-ordination Agency directed by Sir William Stephenson – well known through his code-name ‘Intrepid’ – in New York.[3]
Gouzenko could not remember being questioned by Dwyer, an able officer about whom there have never been any official doubts, when I spoke with him. This was almost certainly because he was interrogated by a small group including Dwyer who would ask questions relating to the British interest and would not, necessarily, have been identified as being British. A Russian-speaking member of the R.C.M.P. was present but the cross-examination was greatly facilitated by Gouzenko’s grasp of English.[4]
Dwyer immediately sent a telegram to MI6 headquarters in Broadway, London, summarizing the information relating to the British and including what Gouzenko had alleged about ‘Elli’. The telegram still exists in the MI6 archives. I have been assured by someone who had reason to examine it that it contains all the details about ‘Elli’ which Gouzenko could remember having been given by his colleague Lubimov, as described in Chapter 11. These were that ‘Elli’ was so important that he was normally contacted only through messages left in dead-letter boxes, that he was able to bring out files about Soviet Intelligence officers serving in Britain, and that he had something Russian in his background. The telegram also contained the important clue that ‘Elli’ was operated by the G.R.U., not the K.G.B., and had presumably been recruited by that organization.[5]
During the war years, and afterwards, some degree of rivalry existed between MI6 and MI5 and there was a dangerous tendency for the two agencies to withhold information from each other. The reaction of the MI6 chief, Sir Stewart Menzies, to the telegram was to keep the ‘Elli’ information inside his service and for his own men to continue the inquiries, at least for a while, though MI5, which then had no representative in North America, would eventually have to be informed. Menzies called in the chief of his Soviet counter-espionage section, who was Kim Philby, and suggested that he should fly out to Canada to interview Gouzenko and bring back further, and more detailed, information. Philby would have liked to have gone in order to be able to report everything to his K.G.B. controller, who had no direct information from the G.R.U., which was keeping as quiet as possible about the disaster inflicted on it by Gouzenko’s defection. At that moment, however, Philby was in a highly dangerous situation following the attempted defection of another Soviet Intelligence officer, Konstantin Volkov (see Chapter 21). He therefore played for time and asked Menzies for a couple of days to enable him to decide whether he could spare the time from several other cases which seemed to be of high priority. Menzies deferred to Philby’s judgement, as he usually did.[6]
What Philby really wanted was advice from his K.G.B. controller, with whom he remained in regular contact, either by dead-letter box messages or directly. If the controller decided that it would be unsafe for him to go to Canada then Philby wanted the next best thing – the dispatch of some agent of the controller’s choice or one to whom he did not object.
Significantly, the copy of the telegram from Dwyer which Menzies had handed to Philby is creased as it would have been if it had been folded into four and taken out of the office in somebody’s pocket. Firm evidence that Philby immediately consulted his controller is an urgent radio message which was sent from K.G.B. headquarters in Moscow to the K.G.B. chief in London that week and was deciphered much later. It mentions the original report concerning Gouzenko’s defection which had been supplied by ‘Stanley’, which is now known to have been the K.G.B.’s code-name for Philby. The report was received during the interval when Philby was deciding whether he should go to Canada or send somebody else. The message also confirmed that ‘Stanley’s’ information was correct, suggesting that the K.G.B. chief in London had asked Moscow to verify with the G.R.U. what Philby had told his controller.[7]
In the event, Philby told Menzies that in his judgement he would be more effectively occupied in London and he suggested that his MI5 counterpart on Soviet-espionage, Roger Hollis, shold be sent instead. Clearly, Philby was confident that he could induce Hollis to accept the mission.[8] As he was to record later: ‘We both served on the Joint Intelligence Sub-Committee, which dealt with Communist affairs, and never failed to work out an agreed approach to present to the less well-informed representatives of the Service departments and the Foreign Office.’[9] In this instance Philby’s chief was among the ‘less well-informed’. Menzies concurred with his suggestion and a note from Philby to Hollis suggesting that the Gouzenko case was more in his line of business apparently still exists in the MI5 files.[10]
Supporters of Hollis have suggested that the fact that this note about the hand-over of the case from MI6 to MI5 has remained in the official records is evidence that Philby and Hollis could not have been collaborating because, in that case, one of them would have removed it. The clutching of such a straw makes no sense anyway because it is highly unlikely that if both men were traitors either knew anything about the other in 1945. There is no evidence that they did and while Philby may have suspected that Hollis was a Soviet agent following Moscow’s agreement that he should, if possible, be sent to deal with Gouzenko, it would have been in breach of established conspiratorial practice for him to have been told so.
Menzies’ agreement to the choice of Hollis, which presumably must also have had the support of the MI5 chief, is further evidence that Hollis was actively involved in Soviet counter-espionage. It was, nevertheless, unusual. Former MI6 officers have told me that normal practice would have been for Philby to have suggested somebody else inside MI6. Further, Hollis had no experience in the specialized field of interrogation. Nor was his unfriendly, buttoned-up manner conducive to persuading a defector to talk.
On the other hand, if Hollis was ‘Elli’ then it was completely in Moscow’s interest that he should be sent out to deal, as summarily as possible, with the dangerous situation created by Gouzenko. Gouzenko had already stated that he had no knowledge of ‘Elli’s’ identity so there was no danger of recognition, but nothing is more likely to threaten the safety of a spy than the arrival of a defector who knows anything about him. As will be seen in Chapter 21, when Philby was plunged into what appeared to be a similarly dangerous situation by another defector he took advice from Moscow and ensured that he himself was sent out to deal with it.
Hollis flew to Ottawa via New York early in September 1945 and called first at the headquarters of British Security Co-ordination in New York.[11] Sir William Stephenson has told me that he had been warned by Guy Liddell, then head of MI5 counter-espionage, to be careful about what he said to Hollis who was ‘violently anti-American’. Sir William volunteered that Liddell had given him the impression that he suspected Hollis, and because anyone who was anti-American was dangerous to his organization, he steered clear of him.
Hollis made his way to Ottawa and it is possible that on that first visit he did not see Gouzenko. The defector’s revelations were so astounding and the R.C.M.P. was so afraid that he might be snatched back by the Soviets or assassinated that he and his wife and child were hidden in various cottages for three weeks and then transferred to a safe and secret location, ‘Camp X’, near Toronto, where he stayed on and off foreight months. [12] Because of the involvement of Nunn May, the atomic scientist, who was due to return to Britain to a university post, Hollis found himself immediately involved in discussions with high-level Canadian and British officials regarding the possible arrest of Nunn May and other spies, and the publicity about them. The main meetings were held in the office of the British High Commissioner, the late Malcolm MacDonald.[13] Hollis was always reserved in conversation and his only contribution recorded by Mackenzie King was the statement, ‘The Russians have got a lot of information on the atomic bomb.’[14]
Gouzenko’s disclosures had by that time revealed the existence of a G.R.U. spy-ring inside Canada involving at least twenty non-Soviet residents of Canada, together with leads to a spy-ring in the United States. It so happened that one member of the Canadian ring, Kathleen Willsher, who had been working for the Soviet Union inside the British High Commissioner’s office in Ottowa, also had the code-name ‘Elli’.[15] There was nothing surprising in this because the two ‘Ellis’ were in different rings, operating in different countries and would not be confused in coded radio traffic. The existence of the two ‘Ellis’ was attested by Gouzenko under secret questioning in 1945 and early in 1946 following the establishment of a Royal Commission to examine the whole treacherous effort by the Soviets to subvert one of its wartime allies, which had done all it could to help them. The Royal Commission took its evidence in camera and restricted its report, published in June 1946, to the Canadian spy-ring, so while Miss Willsher, who eventually received three years’ imprisonment, was named as ‘Elli’, there was no mention of the other ‘Elli’ in MI5 in England.
Svetlana Gouzenko has told me that when her husband mentioned MI5 to the R.C.M.P. and to the Commission there was great concern that he even knew of its existence which in those days was supposed to be secret.[16] She also recalls that Gouzenko was advised by the Canadian authorities not to mention the English ‘Elli’ in any public statements he might make, which is why he remained silent about the matter in his book.[17] Because of the tremendous embarrassment felt by the Canadian Government by Gouzenko’s revelations, for which there was then no precedent, he was also advised to restrict his evidence to names which he could substantiate through the documents he had removed from the Soviet Embassy in Ottawa.[18] As he had learned about the MI5 ‘Elli’ before leaving Moscow for Canada he could not produce any documentary proof of it.
