Too Secret Too Long, page 47
The next development was to savour of farce, had it not been so serious for national security.
MI5 needed to search Burgess’s flat with minimum delay. Since Blunt had a set of keys to it he was asked to accompany two officers as this would avoid the necessity of securing a search warrant and forcing an entry. As a former MI5 colleague he offered to assist in the search and did so. The untidy, three-roomed flat contained scores of letters, some in a desk, others in old shoe-boxes, which Burgess had also used to stack the banknotes he received at intervals from his Soviet paymasters. The letters were to give leads to some of his homosexual friends, who were to curse him when eventually visited by MI5 officers.[38]
None of the letters removed to MI5 headquarters for study was to give any lead about the defectors but, as Blunt was to confess some thirteen years later, there had been one letter of great significance, which the MI5 officers had missed as a result of their stupidity in allowing Blunt to assist in the search. Burgess was an insatiable reader and his flat was full of books, each of which had to be shaken for possible hidden documents. While shaking one book, Blunt found and pocketed a letter to Burgess from Philby which told him that if ever he was in great difficulties he could be assured of help from Mrs Flora Solomon of the Marks and Spencer organization. Mrs Solomon, who published her memoirs in 1984, knew that Philby was a communist and a possible Soviet agent because he had tried to recruit her, as described in Chapter 32. Had she been interrogated then, as she would have been had the letter been found by the MI5 men, the remaining members of the Ring of Five and their associates might have been rounded up in 1951.
When Mrs Thatcher made her statement about Blunt to Parliament in 1979 she said that he had originally been questioned as a result of a belated statement (by Rees) that Burgess had named Blunt as a secret Comintern agent.[39] In fact the prime reason for the investigation of Blunt was his close association with Burgess inside MI5 during the war, a situation still being concealed by the security authorities.
An MI5 file was begun on Blunt, under the code-name ‘Blunden’, but Arthur Martin, the case officer assigned to the inquiry, did not interview him formally until 1952 when he became suspicious of his guilt, though he was unable to get much out of him. Ten further sessions of questioning were what Blunt himself has described as ‘comfortable conversations’ usually beginning, ‘Anthony, we are still investigating Maclean and Burgess leads…’ As Philby had done during his interrogations, Blunt kept talking in a way which convinced his questioners that he was trying to discover how much was known about him. As the questioners knew – and as Blunt was to admit years later – this was done on the advice given to him by his Soviet controller. This insistence on talking, rather than treating the questions with anger or contempt, convinced Martin and White that Blunt was an agent. Another officer, Courtenay Young, who had sat opposite Blunt in the MI5 office, was so sure that Blunt had been a spy that he said so to friends of mine, but no action could be taken.
After Philby had been forced to resign from MI6 in 1951 the K.G.B. ignored him, partly in his own interests but also to satisfy themselves that he had not been ‘turned’ by British Intelligence. Blunt, however, continued to see him and they discussed their chances of surviving exposure. In 1954, by which time the K.G.B. had satisfied itself of Philby’s loyalty, it wished to contact him again and used Blunt to do so. Blunt was delivering a lecture on art and after he had finished speaking a group clustered round him to ask questions. Among them he was surprised to see his old controller ‘Peter’ – Yuri Modin – who had organized the defection of Burgess and Maclean and had then returned to Moscow. Modin handed him a postcard of a painting and asked his opinion of it. Written in a semi-circle, in handwriting which Blunt recognized as being Guy Burgess’s, was the instruction, ‘Meet me at 8 o’clock tomorrow night. Angel, Caledonian Road.’ When Blunt attended only Modin was there to ask him to set up a meeting with Philby, which was soon accomplished.[40]
In 1961 Blunt saw Philby, though apparently by chance, while visiting Beirut. As he was eventually to tell his interrogators, Philby had remarked, ‘I have been asked by our friends to make contact with you, Anthony, but I told them that you were not in a position to do anything useful.’ Blunt says that he had answered, ‘That is so, Kim.’[41] If true, this indicates that Blunt was out of touch with Soviet Intelligence at that time but the K.G.B. had its methods of making contact if necessary, as the previous experience with Modin in 1954 showed.
Blunt’s confidence that he would go to his grave with his reputation unsullied must have strengthened as the years sped by and but for a completely chance event in 1963 his belief would, most probably, have been justified. I have mentioned how, early in 1937, Blunt had recruited a rich young American called Michael Whitney Straight who was a contemporary at Cambridge. Both had been members of The Apostles and when Straight was emotionally devastated by the death of a communist friend in the Spanish Civil War Blunt had recruited him to the Soviet cause.[42] Straight has told me that he tried to buy himself out of his commitment before returning to the U.S. but Blunt told him that the Kremlin had rejected his plea. When he became a speechwriter for President Roosevelt he was soon approached by a K.G.B. officer in Washington who demanded reports. Straight claims that during the eighteen months while he remained in touch with the officer, who called himself ‘Michael Green’, he gave him only information that would not damage American interests.[43]
On two occasions when ‘Green’ was otherwise engaged the K.G.B. behaved in its usual way and sent couriers to see Straight, having first telephoned him. One of these appeared to be a Jewish student from the New York region while the other could have been a Czech. Straight insists that he told them nothing.[44]
According to an F.B.I. report, recently declassified, Straight attempted to warn the British Embassy in Washington in 1948 that both Burgess and Blunt were members of the ‘Russian International’ but if the information reached anyone of consequence it was ignored.[45] He also told the F.B.I. that he warned Burgess in 1951 that he would expose him unless he resigned. As he confirms in his memoirs he failed to take advantage of other opportunities to expose Blunt, Burgess and Long, which could have prevented damage to British and American interests, but when called to the White House in June 1963 to discuss a possible appointment as the Presidential Adviser on the arts he was told that he would be subjected to a security check. He decided to reject the post but to confess his communist past to the F.B.I. Straight, then aged forty-seven, provided William Sullivan, the F.B.I. officer responsible for espionage cases, with a full account of his connections with the K.G.B., revealing that he had been recruited by Blunt, whom he knew to have been a Soviet agent. During many days of interrogation in June 1963 Straight told the F.B.I. that he knew that Blunt had been in MI5 during the war and that he realized that he must have been an active spy there. In 1949 he had attended the annual dinner of The Apostles in London and, following arguments that evening, had been admonished by Blunt and Burgess for deserting the Soviet cause – further evidence that Blunt, who was then fully installed in the Royal Household, was still at least an active agent of influence. When asked by Sullivan, in July, if he would repeat his allegations to MI5 Straight agreed to do so. At that time Blunt was performing another sensitive service for the Royal Family. Stephen Ward, of the Profumo case, had been committed for trial on what looked like a trumped-up charge of living on the earnings of prostitution and arranged for a sale of his drawings to raise money for his defence. The exhibition included portraits of members of the Royal Family and Blunt appeared at the gallery and bought them all.[46]
chapter thirty-seven
The Fixing of Blunt’s
Immunity
While Straight was still being occasionally debriefed in August 1963 Blunt was in the U.S. at Pennsylvania University. It is not known whether the F.B.I. had Blunt under surveillance. What is known is that while he was there he tried to get a Slavonic girl on to the Courtauld Institute staff on the false pretext that the Russian section of the library needed reorganization.[1]
It was normal practice for the F.B.I. to carry out some inquiries into Straight and his American contacts at Cambridge, as its records show, but there should not have been an untimely delay before alerting MI5 to its discovery about Blunt. An MI5 liaison man was on hand in Washington, but officers involved in the Blunt case claim that the F.B.I.’s information about him did not reach London until November – a gap of five months – when John Minnick, the Legal Attaché at the U.S. Embassy who was also the resident F.B.I. officer, delivered a letter to Hollis marked ‘Personal to the D.G.’.[2] It will be remembered that Hollis had been in Washington two months previously, in September, to see the F.B.I. chief, Hoover, among others, about the suspicions surrounding Graham Mitchell. Why was he not told about Straight’s evidence then?
Having heard of the suspicions about Mitchell, Hoover may have been so appalled that he was loath to pass on the information, fearing that Blunt might be warned. Another possible reason for Hoover’s long delay in informing MI5 may lie in his faith in the double agent ‘Fedora’. He might have asked ‘Fedora’ to check out some questions about Straight and Blunt during one of his periodic visits to Moscow headquarters. As ‘Fedora’ was, in fact, a fake double agent, the Moscow Centre would have been informed of Blunt’s exposure and would have delayed any answers until a decision had been taken about the K.G.B. action concerning Blunt. This would almost certainly have involved a warning to Blunt with instructions about the reaction he should make when eventually confronted by MI5. The F.B.I. files on the Blunt/Straight case would be informative but many of them cannot be released without British permission, which is unlikely to be given. Straight has been given copies of a few F.B.I. documents concerning his own case – with various sections blanked out – but others have been refused on the grounds that they might infringe the civil rights of ‘Michael Green’, Straight’s K.G.B. officer![3]
Of course, it remains possible that Hollis was told about Blunt by Hoover when they met in September and kept the information to himself while he made private dispositions, possibly including a warning to his friend Blunt so that requisite action could be taken to prevent publicity. This could have been done surreptitiously or in conjunction with other very senior British officials equally anxious to keep the Blunt exposure secret.
Whatever the extent and reasons for the long time-gap, Hollis decided to introduce a further delay. He allotted the case to Arthur Martin who was already in Washington pursuing the Mitchell inquiries and could easily have seen the F.B.I. about Blunt. Hollis, however, told Martin nothing, insisting that he must first return to London for discussions before either the F.B.I. or Straight could be approached.
As was his wont, Hollis seemed to be playing for time before having to reveal the catastrophe to anybody in the Government or in Buckingham Palace or, possibly, while consulting someone else surreptitiously. Once again, he was faced with a major Soviet spy who had been exposed only because of information from an American source and the fluke circumstance that Straight felt he needed to clear himself. And, once again, the spy had been active for several years and this time was a friend of Hollis from inside MI5 itself.
If it is MI5’s duty to prevent the penetration of the secret services by foreign spies and to detect them promptly when they do breach the defences then, in the Blunt case, it had failed abysmally. As Director-General for seven years and Deputy Director for three and, before that, a long association with operations against Soviet spies in particular, Hollis bore a major responsibility.
He knew that he could not suppress the Blunt case completely because of the Royal connection. The Palace would have to be told that it had a dangerous traitor on its staff. Otherwise, Hollis might well have secured internal support for stifling the case from other senior MI5 managers on the grounds that any exposure would be ‘bad for the Service’, ‘against the national interest’, or would ‘embarrass ministers’. MI5 officers have repeatedly told me that it was regular practice for cases to be brought to an abrupt conclusion to avoid embarrassment to the Service or to ministers.
Correspondence between Straight and Martin in 1982 has established that Martin was not permitted to see Straight until early January 1964 – after a further two months’ delay – when he visited Washington again.[4] The reasons for these delays have been insufficiently researched in the past and could be essential to establishing the truth about the handling of the Blunt case. Straight has recorded that he heard no more about the suggestion that he should talk to MI5 until William Sullivan telephoned him in January 1964 saying that a friend was flying to Washington from London and that Straight could be introduced to him at the Mayflower Hotel, which was duly done.[5] As Martin recalled the situation to an informant recently – relying on memory and with no access to documents – he had not been told of the Blunt issue when sent to Washington and was approached about it by Sullivan while there for another purpose. He seems to believe that the information he then received from Straight, in January 1964, was the first that MI5 had ever heard about it, implying that the F.B.I. had delayed for almost eight months before sharing its knowledge. This does not accord with my information from other MI5 sources.
It is, apparently, believed by Martin that Hoover hated MI5 so much that he was not prepared to tell the British about Blunt’s treachery, but that is hardly in keeping with Hoover’s nature. The F.B.I. chief took some delight in pointing out the deficiencies of British security, and the Blunt discovery offered him such an opportunity. Though no doubt appalled at the suspicion still attaching to Mitchell and with bitter memories of the Maclean case, he was friendly enough with Hollis around that time to send him a signed photograph and a set of golfing irons.[6] Further, though Sullivan eventually broke with Hoover in 1971 it is unlikely that he would have gone over the head of such an irascible chief in 1964 by telling Martin about Blunt surreptitiously, when Hoover was bound to hear that he had done so.
It is more likely that there was a previous arrangement between Hollis and Hoover whereby Martin would be given the information casually by Sullivan, the meeting with Straight having been set up in advance, as Straight’s evidence shows that it was. Martin’s return in triumph with the information would cover the fact that Hollis had known about it at least since the previous November, as I have been assured he did. This behaviour would be in keeping with Hollis’s reputation for playing serious cases ‘close to the chest’.
Having introduced Martin to Straight, Sullivan left them to talk alone, though there can be little doubt that the F.B.I. had ‘bugged’ the hotel room in which they spoke. Straight confirmed all that he had told the F.B.I. and gave further details of his association with Blunt. He said that he was prepared to face Blunt in a British court. He has since told me that he heard no more of this offer. When asked for the names of other Cambridge undergraduates who might have been recruited by Blunt he mentioned Leo Long. Straight told me that Martin’s only response at hearing this was ‘a low groan’, an expression which could be of some significance.[7]
When Martin returned to London the results of his mission were immediately discussed with Hollis and other senior members of MI5. In a statement to Parliament, many years later, Mrs Thatcher was to say, speaking from a brief supplied by MI5, that the information which implicated Blunt was received ‘early in 1964’.[8] That was the time when Martin brought it back but Hollis had apparently known about it from the previous November and possibly earlier. In a later statement, also prepared from an MI5 brief, Mrs Thatcher was to tell Parliament that MI5 had not known about Long’s treachery until the same date; this, too, may have been incorrect.[9]
An F.B.I. document dated 25 June 1963 shows that Straight named Long as being a member of the secret Cambridge communist cell during his earliest interrogations by the F.B.I.[10] Straight and I have examined F.B.I. papers relating to a further interview he had with F.B.I. officers in June 1966. Though some names have been blanked out, in deference to British requirements, we are agreed that the documents indicate that when Straight first talked to the F.B.I. in 1963 he also appears to have named Long as a person who might have been recruited to Soviet Intelligence by Blunt. Long’s name, therefore, would presumably have been in the statement sent to Hollis personally by Hoover in November 1963 and Hollis would have known of the implication of Long some two months before Martin’s ‘low groan’.
His groan suggests that there had been discussion about Long before Martin left MI5 headquarters for his trip to Washington. Otherwise I can see no reason why he should ever have heard of him. Long’s name might have arisen marginally during inquiries by Martin into the Cambridge backgrounds of Maclean, Burgess and Philby but it is more likely that the groan was a reaction to the confirmation of suspicions already attaching to Long after an MI5 follow-up of the F.B.I.’s information and Martin’s appreciation of the horrific consequences.
I have been assured that as soon as MI5 formally received the information about Blunt from the F.B.I. he was placed under continuous telephone and letter check. His flat at the Courtauld Institute was surreptitiously ‘miked’, but it was appreciated from the start that as a former security officer instructed in ‘conspiratorial’ practices he was unlikely to make elementary errors such as communicating with the Russians by telephone or by letter. For the same reason he was not put under physical surveillance, the argument being that having once been in charge of the MI5 watchers he would be knowledgeable about their methods. It is unlikely, then, that any part of the delay was due to genuine hope that he might betray himself by a foolish move. Nor does the alleged fear that he might defect if he was told or learned of Straight’s accusation carry much conviction because he was never put under surveillance during his visits to the Continent on art affairs when, of course, he could so easily have contacted K.G.B. controllers.
