Too Secret Too Long, page 69
James Callaghan, who succeeded Wilson, appeared to continue the policy of ‘making amends’, a move which also pacified the left wing of his party whose support he needed. A further attempt by MI5 to secure the expulsion of more Soviet ‘diplomats’ was rejected and when two Hungarian intelligence officers, spying for the Soviet bloc, were caught taking photographs outside the nuclear weapons maintenance factory at Burghfield, Reading, the incident was played down by the Government.[21] Even the assassination of a Bulgarian dissident, Georgi Markov, on a London street by the insertion of a poison capsule into his body, apparently by means of a trick umbrella, provoked scant reaction from the Foreign Office.[22]
chapter fifty-five
The Public Exposure of Sir
Anthony Blunt
Following a penetrating analysis of the results of Blunt’s interrogations by the woman who had been the research officer in the case, it was decided, in 1972, to cease further questioning unless some specific lead accrued from a defector or other source. It was concluded that while Blunt had given some valuable leads, he had avoided implicating some of his former friends who had been helpful to the Soviet cause and were still in important posts. The case officers agreed that he had not changed ideologically, had expressed no remorse and was still rather proud of his achievements for the Russians. They strongly suspected – and still do – that he had lied about the extent of his contacts with Soviet Intelligence after the war during his service in the Royal Household.
It is unlikely that the case would have raised further interest in Whitehall but for an event, late in 1972, when shortly after his retirement as Surveyor of the Queen’s Pictures a crisis in Blunt’s health threw the Cabinet Office into near-panic. Through one of Blunt’s former friends who had Cabinet Office connections, the Cabinet Secretary, then Sir Burke Trend, learned that Blunt was to undergo emergency surgery for cancer and was talking about leaving a testament of his activities for posthumous publication. The reaction in Whitehall was evidence of the concern that had previously shown itself in MI5. The Attorney-General, Sir Peter Rawlinson, was asked to re-examine the records of the case and confirmed that, if Blunt survived, there was no way of threatening him with prosecution to keep him quiet because the immunity was firm and permanent. Nor could any action be taken against him if, feeling that he had only a few months to live if he survived the surgery, he decided to cleanse his conscience with a public confession – the consequences of which would be extremely menacing.[1]
After meetings between the Attorney-General, the Cabinet Secretary and MI5, the Prime Minister, Edward Heath, was informed about the Blunt case and its dangerous implications for the first time in February 1973.[2] A document was prepared, with Palace approval, to counter embarrassing incidents which the traitor might expose. Meanwhile, in late 1972 several of Blunt’s homosexual friends had been interviewed by Special Branch officers, apparently at the request of MI5 and presumably to acquire damaging material which might deter Blunt, or his executors, from publishing anything, or at least reduce its impact.[3] When Blunt survived the operation and made a remarkable recovery the counter-document remained in the Cabinet Office, bearing the title ‘If Blunt Dies’.
In spite of this new threat Blunt was permitted to continue his prestigious connection with the Palace, having been appointed Adviser for the Queen’s Pictures and Drawings in 1972 on relinquishing his previous position. This post gave him continuing access to the Royal collections and archives, which was of great value in his lucrative work as an art expert. It was terminated in 1978 only because his public exposure seemed to be imminent. This astonishing appointment could be further evidence of some Royal indebtedness to Blunt or it could have been an inducement to him to maintain his silence. My inquiries suggest that the appointment was made on the advice of the relevant authorities, who had been kept in ignorance of his treachery, and to have rejected it would have required explanation. On the other hand, one feels that it could have been rejected on the grounds of age or perhaps on some other pretext which the Queen would not have needed to specify.
In the result, Blunt continued to live as an honoured and privileged person, being in demand as a lecturer, writer and professional connoisseur in establishing the authenticity of paintings, especially those of the French artist Poussin. He lived in a London flat with a man to whom he was devoted. In 1975 he sold one of his own Poussin paintings to the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts for £100,000, certifying its authenticity himself. Having bought it for £20,000 in 1964, the year in which he had been granted immunity, he made a fair profit.[4]
In 1978 the security authorities and the Labour Government of the day became aware that the author Andrew Boyle had been told that Blunt had confessed to having been a traitor and had been granted immunity. Expecting publication at any time and also fearing that Goronwy Rees, the former friend of Burgess and Blunt, might expose the truth, as he was near death, the Cabinet Office counter-document was brought up to date at the behest of Merlyn Rees, the Home Secretary, so that the Prime Minister, James Callaghan, could read it to Parliament if the Blunt affair became public. The Queen was asked to approve it and did so.[5]
Blunt’s exposure did not occur until the following year, when Boyle’s book, The Climate of Treason, appeared.[6] Boyle’s wife has told me that when her husband set out to write his book it was to be no more than a study of the political and emotional climate in which certain young undergraduates had become ideological communists and had then been recruited as active agents for Soviet Intelligence. In the process of his researches, however, Boyle had learned two facts which were entirely new to the public and to Parliament – that Blunt had been a Soviet spy throughout his wartime service in MI5 and, having confessed, had been granted immunity to prosecution, with the result that the entire affair had been suppressed. His information was confirmed and extended by the other man who, it was feared in Whitehall, might expose the truth – Goronwy Rees, the former friend of both Burgess and Blunt. Boyle had managed to interview Rees on his deathbed.
Boyle did not name Blunt in his book but gave sufficient indications that the ‘Fourth Man’ of the Cambridge Ring was the former Surveyor of the Queen’s Pictures to enable other publications to name him, which led to a question in Parliament. It was decided that Mrs Thatcher should make a confirmatory statement and when this was completed the Cabinet Secretary, Sir Robert Armstrong, telephoned Blunt’s solicitor and called him to the Cabinet Office to see it in advance. This was later explained as being in fairness to Blunt, but it was done at the suggestion of MI5, which had other reasons. The immediate purpose was to warn Blunt to take refuge with some friend so that he could not be besieged by the media. Understandably, MI5 was totally averse to any interviews of Blunt which it could not control, indicating that there were still many things it was determined to suppress. The advance warning, which may not have been the first, was also calculated to reduce the provocation which might anger Blunt into saying more than he should.
In answering a written question from Edward Leadbitter, a Labour M.P., on 15 November, Mrs Thatcher confirmed that Blunt had indeed been a Soviet agent and had been granted immunity in return for a confession. In giving what appeared to be a remarkably frank account of Blunt’s activities, the Prime Minister drew almost entirely on the statement prepared by the previous Government, as described. Later it fell to Merlyn Rees to remain silent while Tory M.P.s praised their leader for the statement which, they alleged, Labour would never have had the courage to make.[7] The unwritten rule that politicians who know the secret facts of security disasters must not make political use of them is an integral part of the established system of cover-up. Neither has Mrs Thatcher declined the praise poured on her then and since for so courageously exposing Blunt when, in fact, the statement, the decision to make it and the Palace approval of it all derived from the previous administration.
Immediately after the Prime Minister’s statement Buckingham Palace announced that Blunt would be stripped of his knighthood, the first time that had happened since the execution of Sir Roger Casement for treason in 1916. This additional disgrace, which also involved the loss of Blunt’s C.V.O., must have caused some concern in MI5, in view of the previous fears that Blunt might be provoked into making a statement, but it was unavoidable. I have been informed by a close friend of Blunt that the traitor fully appreciated that the Queen had no option and that he did not feel bitter about the removal of his honour. He may have been given advance warning of the move in view of the Cabinet Secretary’s concern to advise him about the Prime Minister’s statement.
On 20 November, after further consultations with MI5, Blunt was permitted to give a limited interview to The Times in a bid to end further media harassment and reduce the risk of further disclosures. It proved to be a blatant example of Whitehall news management. Blunt told deliberate lies and evaded difficult questions by hiding behind the Official Secrets Act, indicating that while his conscience had induced him to give all the secrets he knew to the Russians he could not reveal them to the British public. He claimed that he became aware that Philby was a Soviet agent only during the war, which was completely false.
Though Boyle and his publishers had avoided any contact with the security authorities, MI5 had managed to secure a copy of the book in advance and had advised Blunt on how to react when exposed. As a result, Parliament and the public were further misled about Blunt’s activities, and newspapers drew many false conclusions, much to MI5’s satisfaction. In particular, Blunt had been told not to name Straight as the man who had exposed him to MI5 and he did not do so.
On 21 November the Blunt affair was debated in the Commons and, when opening the discussion, the Prime Minister took the opportunity to expand on her original statement.[8] She said that while the spy’s activities had seriously damaged Britain’s interests it was unlikely that British military operations or British lives were put at risk. Yet for all Blunt knew, the detailed information about the D-Day deception plans and the material passed to him by Leo Long, all of which Blunt transferred to the Russians, might well have put both at risk. The specific reference to British lives was also misleading because there was no doubt that Blunt had threatened, and probably ended, the lives of agents who were serving Britain, though they were not British nationals, the agent in the Kremlin being just one example.
Mrs Thatcher said that the Government did not know exactly what information Blunt had passed on. Unless MI5 had failed to tell the Government of Blunt’s confessed activities that was not true either. The statement had the effect of deterring specific questions about those activities and this may have been its intention. At that point the MI5 officers who had been involved in drafting the Prime Minister’s brief were confident that details of Blunt’s confession, such as were revealed two years later in Their Trade is Treachery, were never likely to be made public.
Mrs Thatcher’s brief also caused her to say that ‘it was Philby who warned Burgess to tell Maclean that he was about to be interrogated’. As I have pointed out, this was most unlikely to have been true and I suspect that MI5 knew it. One possibly intentional result of landing Philby with that particular act of treachery was to divert suspicion from another spy, perhaps in MI5.
As I have explained in Chapter 37, the information given to Mrs Thatcher regarding MI5’s failure to interrogate Blunt without an offer of immunity in 1964 does not stand serious examination. She told Parliament, ‘Blunt had persisted in his denial at eleven interviews [between 1951 and 1959]; the security authorities had no reason to suppose that he would do otherwise at a twelfth.’ In fact there was every reason to suppose that he might do otherwise because the whole situation had changed with Straight’s evidence that Blunt was a Soviet agent and his offer to confront the spy in London. Further, Long could have been questioned and could have provided hard evidence. Mrs Thatcher’s brief compounded this misleading comment by stating, ‘To this day there is no evidence which could be used as a basis for prosecution against Blunt.’ This was true only because the possibility of using Long’s evidence had been vitiated by the immunity deal for both spies, initiated by Hollis.
Every effort was made in Parliament by Mrs Thatcher, Heath and others to support Hollis’s decision to press for Blunt’s immunity, but M.P.s knew nothing about Long and it seems most likely that the Prime Minister and Heath were ignorant of it at that stage. Politicians are very sensitive to the term ‘cover-up’ but the highly significant facts about the Long case were certainly covered up in the Blunt debate.
The brief read by Mrs Thatcher went out of its way to stress that ‘The Director-General of the Security Service followed scrupulously the procedures that had been laid down.’ This diversion seemed somewhat gratuitous but the D.G. concerned was, of course, Sir Roger Hollis, and MI5 and a few senior people in Whitehall were aware that the case against him might break one day. The Prime Minister’s statement did what it could to show him up in as good a light as possible if ever it did break. All that Hollis had done scrupulously was to ensure that he did not lay himself open to censure by failing to obey the rules when it suited him to obey them. I suspect that Mrs Thatcher had not been told of his unprecedented suspension of Blunt’s case officer, Arthur Martin, for the crucial fortnight after Blunt’s first confession, and I have established that the Attorney-General, Sir Michael Havers, had certainly not been told of it before he made his statement in the Blunt debate.
Mrs Thatcher went on to say, ‘In the light of these events I see no need to change the principles governing the relationship between the Security Service and Ministers.’[9] She changed her mind after she had been told, belatedly, how Hollis had handled the Long case. In a separate statement on Long on 9 November 1981 she assured Parliament that she had instituted changes so that never again could a Director-General of MI5 make effective immunity arrangements, as Hollis had done with Long, without first consulting the Attorney-General through the Director of Public Prosecutions.[10] Clearly, at that stage, she thought that Hollis’s conduct had been reprehensible but care was taken not to refer to him by name.
The most revealing statements in the Blunt debate concerning MI5 were made by James Callaghan who had wider experience of security and intelligence affairs than anyone else in the Commons. As Home Secretary he had been responsible for MI5, as Foreign Secretary for MI6 and G.C.H.Q. and, as Prime Minister, he had made it his business to be close to all three. He told Parliament that Blunt was ‘merely one part of a highly complicated case that the Security Service has spent many years and many man-hours seeking to unravel to find the truth’. This was probably a general reference to the Ring of Five and their associates but he went further when he said that ‘the morale of the Security Service has suffered greatly as a result of what took place when there was deep penetration during the 1930s and 1940s’.[11] Callaghan was well acquainted with the difference between the Security Service (MI5) and the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) but to make sure I wrote to him asking if by Security Service he had meant MI5. He made an excuse to avoid answering the question so I wrote again pointing out that I would assume that he had known what he was saying and had meant what he had said. This produced no disclaimer so it may be reasonably assumed that the former Prime Minister was telling Parliament that not only had MI5 been deeply penetrated in the 1940s, which could be taken as referring to Blunt, but also in the 1930s before Blunt joined. The only MI5 officers recruited in the 1930s who have fallen under serious and sustained suspicion were Graham Mitchell, who was cleared, and Roger Hollis, who remains suspect.
Callaghan added, ‘The matter has never been fully cleared up and may never be.… The truth of the matter will only be known in the deepest recesses of the Kremlin.’[12] He had been told all about the Hollis and Mitchell cases while still Prime Minister when he had called the heads of MI5 and MI6 to Number 10 Downing Street to brief him fully on outstanding problems, following a newspaper article of mine in the summer of 1977. He then went on to suggest that, on his information, MI5 was probably still penetrated in 1979 – ‘because of the effluxion of time those concerned in that penetration of the Service have passed or are passing [my italics] out of active service because of age, ill health or death’. He further admitted, with first-hand knowledge, that in spite of the attempted defence of MI5 by ministers ‘those concerned in the Security Service are in some ways deeply ashamed at what has happened’.[13] In saying that Callaghan was probably reflecting the views of the MI5 chief who had briefed him, Sir Michael Hanley, who has never been convinced of Hollis’s innocence. And, taking his statement in the Blunt debate as a whole, it would seem that having taken the trouble to be thoroughly briefed on the Hollis case he was not satisfied by the so-called clearance given to the former Director-General either by the MI5 management in 1972 or by Lord Trend in 1974. Nor did he seem to approve of Hollis’s action in pressing for immunity for his former colleague. ‘Would Mr Blunt have had the same treatment if he had been a humble corporal in the R.A.F.?’ he asked.[14]
My inquiries suggest that it was, partly, the doubts concerning Hollis that led to a decision by Callaghan and Merlyn Rees to bring in an outsider when a new Director-General of MI5 had to be appointed in 1978. Though there was no specific doubt attaching to the retiring D.G., Hanley, or to his deputy who might have expected to succeed him though he was young for the job, it was decided, as already mentioned, to ‘break the chain’ whereby the retiring D.G. recommends his successor who, customarily, is appointed.
Various back-benchers contributed to the Blunt debate, Mr Leadbitter pointing out that Blunt had been deprived of his knighthood only after his public exposure, leading the country to believe that the ‘immunity and the privileges he enjoyed were all right provided the public did not know’.
