Too Secret Too Long, page 59
Ellis’s sudden departure for Australia on the grounds of nonexistent heart trouble in 1953 immediately appeared to have an explanation. Ellis knew, from his position in MI6, that the MI5 inquiries into Philby were gathering momentum and he may have feared that he would come under suspicion or he may even have been warned to get out of the country by a Soviet controller, who had been tipped off by a pro-Soviet source inside MI5. Once in Australia, Ellis would be safe from prosecution or interrogation because a suspected spy cannot be extradited for offences under the Official Secrets Act. But why had he returned to Britain so precipitately? The possible answer supported the suspicion that Ellis had been a K.G.B. agent.
Soon after his arrival in Australia he had called on Sir Charles Spry, the Director-General of the Australian Security Intelligence Organization (A.S.I.O.), at his headquarters in Melbourne. Spry had every reason to believe that he could trust Ellis, and in return for information about the Philby case told him that an important member of the Soviet Embassy in Canberra, who was a K.G.B. agent, might be about to defect. The K.G.B. man’s name was Vladimir Petrov and Spry said it was hoped that he would bring out documents and other information about K.G.B. agents operating in Australia, Britain and other countries.
The Fluency Committee realized that Ellis had decided on his quick return to Britain only a few days after he learnt about the Petrov case. Petrov, who turned out to be the head of the K.G.B. in Australia and had worked in headquarters in Moscow, might well have known of Ellis’s involvement had he been a Soviet spy. In that case Australia would have been a more dangerous place to be in than Britain, from which defection to the Soviet Union, if it became necessary, would be much easier. Further, by signing his contract with A.S.I.S., Ellis had put himself under Australian law. It was also appreciated that Ellis might have thought that Petrov was none other than Waldemar von Petrov, who had first-hand knowledge of his previous espionage activities.
When Ellis informed A.S.I.S. that he was returning to Britain he was asked by A.S.I.O. to brief the top management of both MI5 and MI6 on the latest situation regarding Petrov as this seemed to be a secure way of achieving that. At that stage A.S.I.O. expected that Petrov would defect in April and Ellis arrived back in Britain in March, taking with him the motor car he had bought on his arrival in Australia – further evidence that he had intended to remain there. He is on record in documents as having briefed both the MI5 and MI6 leadership on the Petrov operation. In return, and probably because he made inquiries about it, Ellis was briefed on the state of the Philby case by Maurice Oldfield, an old friend in MI6. Oldfield put this briefing on record together with his instruction to Ellis that he should not see or speak with Philby, who had been out of MI6 for three years.
In fact, Ellis was found to have taken immediate steps to contact Philby, leaving a note on Travellers Club paper for him at the nearby Athenaeum, which Philby still used. Philby did not pick up the message for more than a week but then telephoned Ellis to fix an appointment. This is known because Philby was under telephone surveillance but, as he was not being watched, it is not known what transpired when the two met for lunch.
What is known is that on that same afternoon Philby telephoned his current girlfriend and told her that he had received some good news over lunch. He then added, ‘The clouds are parting’, a significant remark in view of what he was to write in My Silent War in a chapter entitled ‘The Clouds Part’. He recorded how, after the K.G.B. had remained out of touch with him for two years following his dismissal from MI6, he received ‘through the most ingenious of routes a message from my Soviet friends conjuring me to be of good cheer and presaging an early resumption of relations. It was therefore with refreshed spirit that I watched the next storm gather. It began with the defection of Petrov in Australia…’
Confirmation that Philby had advance information about the Petrov defection eventually came from Blunt in his confessions. The Fluency Committee therefore inferred that Ellis had not only warned Philby about the coming defection, which could incriminate them both, but also put him back in touch with the Russians.
If Philby and Ellis had known about Petrov in advance why did the Russians fail to prevent the defection? The answer is that they did take steps to prevent it and bungled them. The Russians expected Petrov to defect several days later than he actually did, being convinced that he would not flee the Embassy without his wife, another K.G.B. officer, to whom he was known to be devoted and was still under Soviet control in Canberra while her husband was visiting Sydney. According to Golitsin two strong-arm men were sent from Moscow to Canberra to take the Petrovs back by force if necessary and were penalized on their return for their failure, though they very nearly managed to abduct Mrs Petrov. Sir William McMahon, a former Prime Minister of Australia, has told the Australian Parliament that he knew that the Russians had been tipped off about Petrov’s impending defection.[20] Petrov himself knew that a safe, in which he kept some documents, had been searched by the Soviet Ambassador who was looking for evidence against him, this being the event which precipitated his early flight.[21]
Ellis always claimed to be short of money and after he had hurriedly returned to Britain his old firm, MI6, helped him to live on his pension by taking him back on the payroll, part time. He was employed ‘weeding’ the MI6 archives, that is the removal and destruction of files considered by the weeder as being of no further value. Ellis’s supporters have insisted that this appointment was proof of his innocence, for MI6 would never have used him had serious MI5 suspicions really existed. The fact is that they did employ him in that sensitive capacity just as they were to employ Philby as an agent-runner in the Middle East when MI5 was certain that he had been the Third Man. If Ellis was a Soviet spy at the time he might have had opportunities to destroy documentary evidence of his own misdemeanours and those of others whom he knew or thought to be Soviet agents or sympathizers. Fortunately there were documents which never reached him.
As I have recorded, the F.B.I. was still conducting its own inquiries into Ellis in 1956, when he was busy ‘weeding’, but no action was taken on either side of the Atlantic until the Fluency Committee’s researches produced leads, early in 1966, indicating that Ellis might have spied for the Soviet Union. It then sought evidence of Soviet control both before and during the war. The investigators questioned a former Pole called Elisabeth Poretsky whose husband, also known as Ignace Reiss and by the code-name ‘Ludwik’, had been a Soviet Intelligence officer for the G.R.U. and later for the N.K.V.D., the precursor of the K.G.B. She had already revealed that while her husband had been in charge of intelligence against Britain, operating from a base in Holland in 1928 and 1929, he had managed to place an agent inside British Intelligence, meaning MI6.[22] Interviewed in Paris, Mrs Poretsky assured an investigator that the MI6 officer controlled by her husband had not been Philby. She said that when ‘Ludwik’ had run the spy from Amsterdam, Philby had been a schoolboy. She declined to be very helpful but when shown a spread of photographs she picked out those she knew and also selected Ellis, though saying no more than that he looked familiar. On her advice the MI5 officer went to interview the widow of a Dutchman called Henri Pieck who had run spies in England. She also picked out Ellis’s photograph but refused to supply any details.
MI5 knew that Richard Sorge, the Soviet agent who operated so successfully in China and Japan, had previously visited London briefly in the late 1920s to meet a very important agent, so an officer was sent to question his widow, Christiane, who was living in the U.S. She recalled her husband’s mission to London, which she described as ‘very dangerous’, and said that he had taken her to the rendezvous, which was on a street. When shown Ellis’s photograph she said that he could have been the agent but she was not sure.
After analysing all the evidence in 1966 the Fluency Committee was convinced that Ellis had been a paid agent for the Germans before the war and in its early phases up to May 1940. It was regarded as possible that he had managed to remain free of German control while in New York but that it was most unlikely that the Russians would have failed to blackmail him into spying for them from 1945 onwards. They suspected that his espionage work for the Soviet Union could have extended back into the late 1920s and that he could have been the spy run by ‘Ludwik’. It was therefore decided that Ellis should be subjected to hostile interrogation. Though he was retired he could be required to attend at Room 055 in the War Office because he was in receipt of an MI6 pension. The MI6 Director of Security, Christopher Phillpotts, agreed.
Ellis was then seventy-one but he was fit enough to have found himself a job with a European freelance intelligence agency called the International Documentary Centre (Interdoc), being its British representative with an office in London.[23] Nevertheless, because of his alleged frailty, it was decided to interview him for only a few hours a day. He was put under surveillance by Special Branch to ensure, as far as possible, that he could not defect, and as an additional precaution his telephone was tapped without the formality of a Home Office warrant. The Post Office agreed on the understanding that the warrant would be applied for later when the interrogation was over, as duly happened.
During the interrogations, which were tape-recorded, MI5 arranged electronic coverage of Ellis’s office and discovered that he was in the habit of muttering to himself such remarks as, ‘They did not know about… They can’t possibly know about…’
The interrogators decided to concentrate first on his pre-war activities after he had been told that there was serious evidence impugning his loyalty. The first day, a Monday, was spent going through his life-history and establishing the accuracy, or otherwise, of the MI5 record of his career. The following day he was confronted with the report of the Abwehr officer who had named him as a spy. He maintained that the document must be a forgery, probably concocted by the White Russians and handed to the Germans. He insisted that he had never heard of the secret telephone link between Hitler and von Ribbentrop and that he would never have told Zilenski, or anyone else, about the MI6 ‘order of battle’. On the third day the interrogators took him through the whole matter again and ended by showing him the Post Office list with his name at the top of the translators involved in the tapping operation. He was clearly shaken but claimed that he had no recollection of it, pleading lapse of memory, though he appeared to remember events clearly when it suited him. He was sent home to give the issues further thought and was given to understand that MI5 had more documentary evidence against him.
On the Thursday the ground was covered again but in a more hostile manner. Ellis continued to maintain his innocence complaining that he was too old to defend himself. He blamed all the suspicions on his former colleagues in MI6, denigrating them one by one. When he was sent home at the end of the day he was warned that if he failed to tell the truth he would be confronted with the German officer and that the case would be handed over to Special Branch, the arresting arm of MI5. That, in fact, was a bluff because MI5 did not know whether the officer was still alive and the management had no intention of staging a prosecution, whatever Ellis might confess. The policy of non-prosecution of intelligence and security officers found to be spies, which had been introduced by Hollis, was being continued.
On the Friday morning the interrogation remained deadlocked but, after lunch, Ellis returned with a document which was an attempted apologia for his behaviour. It alleged that after he had begun working for MI6 in 1925 he had been sent into the field in Europe without adequate training or proper briefing to collect intelligence about the Soviet Union as well as about Germany. This complaint was regarded as justified because, at that time, training in MI6 had been minimal all round. The document stated that the intelligence about the Soviet Union that he had produced had been gratefully received in London but headquarters had given him insufficent money to pay his agents. He had therefore started giving them trivial information about British affairs so that they could feed it to the Russians who paid them for it. The Fluency Committee regarded this limited admission as establishing an early connection with Soviet Intelligence.
The document went on to state that he had been hard pressed financially and had had to borrow money from an agent, who suggested that the easiest way out of his problem was for him to povide more information about MI6 which he could sell to the Germans and Russians. Ellis claimed that he realized that he was becoming dangerously involved and therefore insisted that he could supply no more secret information. This was met by a threat to expose him to MI6 unless he continued to supply more and better intelligence for his customers. Ellis said that he needed the money badly because his wife was ill, but the Fluency Committee eventually concluded that he had taken the easy way out through weakness of character.
Ellis’s apologia was regarded as being an abject admission of spying not only for the Germans but for the Russians because at least one of his agents was trading with both and Ellis had known that. He was then asked four questions: ‘Did you hand over detailed charts of MI6 organization just prior to the war which could have been used by the Germans in the interrogations of Steven and Best after their capture in the Venlo incident?’ He admitted that he had done so. When asked, ‘Did you betray our breaking of the von Ribbentrop-Hitler telephone link?’ he answered, ‘I must have been mad.’ To the question, ‘When you were providing the secret material, to whom did you think it was going?’ he replied, ‘I don’t know – the Germans, I suppose.’ Finally, when asked when he was last in contact with Zilenski or his associates he answered, ‘In about December 1939. I sent them an envelope via an MI6 officer who was going to Paris. He brought back a sealed package of money for me.’ This misuse of a brother officer, who had no knowledge of the contents of the packages, was regarded as particularly treacherous.
Ellis was told that he had committed treason in war and that if it had been discovered at the time he would have been hanged for communicating secretly with the enemy. He was told to present himself for further questioning on the following Monday.
When he arrived at 10 a.m. he was asked to give details of his secret dealings with Soviet Intelligence. He denied any direct dealings, claiming that he had always been anti-communist and had published books which proved that. He was told that there was indisputable evidence that the White Russians, with whom he had dealt, had been recruited as agents of the Soviet G.R.U. His response was to describe the White Russians as ‘a double-crossing lot of bastards who would sell intelligence to whoever would pay them.’
On the following day the interrogators concentrated on Ellis’s post-war activities. He claimed that he had hardly known Philby, which was false. When he was asked why he had taken a full-time post with A.S.I.S. after resigning from MI6 on health grounds he had no answer but insisted that his decision to return to Britain had no connection with the Petrov case. He claimed that he had decided to marry a woman whom he had met in England and had to return to do so. When asked for her name he gave it, and an address. Overnight MI5 traced the girl and found that she had married an American serviceman two years before Ellis’s departure for Australia and was living, happily, with her husband in America. When interviewed she said that she had known Ellis but had never had any intention of marrying him. When faced with this Ellis said that he had been so upset by the accusations that he had given the wrong name and then gave another. When this girl was traced it was learned that she too had married before Ellis had left for Australia. Later in 1954 Ellis had, in fact, married a Mrs Alexandra Wood, he did not give her name to his questioners.
Ellis then proceeded to strengthen the suspicions against him with a succession of lies. He denied having met Philby or that Maurice Oldfield had warned him against doing so.
After being questioned repeatedly over several weeks to induce him to admit a connection with Soviet Intelligence he appeared to sense that there was no documentary evidence in that regard. Fearing that he might collapse under the strain, as John Watkins, the Canadian diplomat had done two years earlier, it was decided to ask the Attorney-General to agree to an offer of immunity to prosecution in return for a full confession and co-operation in further inquiries. The Attorney-General agreed, not having been told by MI5 that Ellis had already admitted to spying for the Germans. Appearing to distrust the offer, Ellis maintained his position so far as the Soviet Union was concerned.
After lengthy consideration of the case the Fluency Committee concluded that the circumstantial evidence suggested that Ellis could have been a conscious agent of the Soviet Union for almost thirty years, being first with the G.R.U. and then, after 1945, with the K.G.B. when Philby had alerted his controller about him. While he had spied for the Germans for money, any assistance he had given the Russians had probably been through fear of exposure, though some payment may have been forthcoming.
Both A.S.I.S. and A.S.I.O. were informed of the outcome of the Ellis case in November 1967 because of their close ties with MI6 and they carried out assessments of the damage he might have done to their interests. To maintain secrecy as far as possible the F.B.I. and C.I.A. were not told. Because of the impact of the publicity generated by the Philby affair MI6 was determined to conceal the Ellis case from everyone who did not need to know.
As has recently been explained in Parliament a self-confessed spy can be deprived of his pension rights only if he is prosecuted and convicted.[24] Ellis continued in honourable retirement on full pension in Eastbourne. As I did not discover his treachery before he died in 1975 he was never subjected to any public censure in his lifetime. The secret of his confession had also been successfully held from most of his MI6 colleagues, his friends and relatives. Understandably, most of them continue to disbelieve that he was ever even suspect.
