Too Secret Too Long, page 74
The Potential Value of Oversight
The Security Commission excelled itself in the thoroughness of its inquiry into the Prime case and in the robustness of its report but it remained another ‘stable-door-locking operation’. General security at G.C.H.Q. was shown to have been weak and irresolute, indicating a need for oversight by some outside body. Successive governments have ruled that each department must be responsible for its own security, and independent inquiries, like those of the Radcliffe Committee in 1962, have endorsed that principle. Nevertheless, MI5 is charged with advising other departments on the nature and scale of the threats to their security and on defence measures against them. So that department shared some of the blame, especially as it failed to detect the Soviet agents who so blatantly delivered espionage equipment to the home of Prime’s sister. (Inevitably Fifth Estate figures rose to MI5’s defence claiming that it should be praised for catching Prime when it had had nothing whatever to do with his detection.[12] It only remains for some future prime minister to list the case as one of MI5’s unsung triumphs.)
The fact that a character as weird and, in some ways, as inept as Prime should have been able to spy for fourteen years and then to have been detected only by the fluke circumstances of his sexual activities exposed disgraceful weaknesses across the whole security field, which the K.G.B. and G.R.U. will continue to exploit. What seems to be needed without further delay is some degree of oversight to ensure that security precautions have not only been introduced on paper but are being properly applied. The record shows that it is not safe to leave security entirely to the initiative of the departments. Whether the task should fall within the responsibilities of a general oversight body is a matter for debate but it would seem that the existence of some outside checking system could help to ensure that security procedures are rigorously applied before another terrible incident like the Prime treachery reveals that they are not.
Mrs Thatcher and her ministers could hardly have been advised more ineptly concerning the handling of the deunionizing of G.C.H.Q. The advice originated from intelligence chiefs, known in Whitehall as ‘The Friends’. Commenting on it, a retired ambassador with much experience told me, ‘The Friends should never be consulted in such circumstances because they will always give priority to their own cover.’ It is not unreasonable to suggest that if ministers had access to the views of an independent oversight body less committed to unnecessary secrecy the case could have been presented more effectively and with less damage to the public interest.
chapter sixty
Payment Deferred
In the early winter of 1982 MI5 and the Government were to be responsible for the conviction of a traitor who had spied for the Soviet Union over a period of about thirty years and, though previously exposed, had not only escaped prosecution but had openly boasted about his treacherous activities and his immunity to retribution.[1] This was Hugh Hambleton, by then a full professor in a Canadian university, whose recruitment by the K.G.B. and subsequent espionage in N.A.T.O. have been outlined in Chapter 29. He had moved back to Canada after securing his Ph.D. at the London School of Economics in 1964 and was to claim that he had been out of contact with the K.G.B until reactivated in 1967 by Colonel Rudolph Herrmann, a Czech-born professional K.G.B. officer who specialized in the reactivation of sleepers.[2] Through Hambleton’s growing reputation as an economist, and his worldwide travel, he was able to continue his services, having been supplied with some of the most advanced espionage equipment. In 1975 he was smuggled into Moscow for clandestine discussions, when he met Andropov.[3]
Meanwhile Herrmann had moved into the U.S. as an ‘illegal’ operator to service other Soviet agents, organize dead-letter boxes and perform other subversive tasks. In the autumn of 1977, however, the F.B.I. found out his true role and he agreed to act as a double agent. In the course of debriefings he named Hambleton as a ‘long-term and trusted Soviet agent’ and revealed details of his treachery. In a joint operation by the F.B.I. and the R.C.M.P., code-named ‘Red Pepper’, Hambleton was put under surveillance and was filmed in contact with Soviet bloc agents.[4] His home and his mother’s home, where he had hidden his transmitter and other equipment, were raided in November 1979 and, while he confessed to having assisted Soviet Intelligence, he claimed that he had not damaged Canadian security, though Canada is a member of N.A.T.O., on which he had spied.[5]
For reasons which have never been satisfactorily explained, Hambleton was not prosecuted. The Canadian legal authorities may have decided that a case would not succeed under the weakly worded Canadian Official Secrets Act or they may have gone too far in offering Hambleton inducements which made him immune. The F.B.I. was so angry at his escape that, in March 1980, it issued a press statement revealing that Hambleton had been exposed by Herrmann.[6] The Canadians still declined to move even when Hambleton gave interviews describing how exciting his traitorous activities had been. In that same year he visited Britain and was interviewed by Special Branch, though no action was taken.
In June 1982 the R.C.M.P. learned that Hambleton planned to fly to Britain again and warned him that he might receive a ‘hostile reception’.[7] Such was his confidence, however, that he completed the journey and was astonished when he was arrested. He was refused bail because of the fear that he might defect. His trial took place in late November and December and, after protesting his innocence, he admitted his guilt and was sentenced to ten years in prison. The charges related to the period between 1 January 1956 and 21 December 1961 and were stated to be within the jurisdiction of the Central Criminal Court. Hambleton had British as well as Canadian citizenship; without that, it might not have been possible to prosecute him.
The Trudeau Government has remained greatly embarrassed by the prosecution which, clearly, it should have carried out itself in view of the evidence and the admissions which Hambleton made. The F.B.I., on the other hand, was delighted and it is difficult to resist the suggestion that the Government took its resolute action to please the American authorities, especially in view of the damage to the image of British security inflicted by the Prime case. The case also served to demonstrate to the British public that, even if Hambleton had been given some degree of immunity in Canada, the days when that could be done so lightly in Britain – the Hollis days – were over.
In his defence, Hambleton claimed that he had been working as a double for French Intelligence but this was disproved. He also claimed that he had been working in collaboration with the R.C.M.P. security authorities but the evidence that he ever accomplished anything in that direction, apart from telling them what he wanted them to know, is meagre. On balance, therefore, and in view of the sentence there can be no doubt that he was a damaging spy over many years and, once again, was exposed only as a result of information lodged by a defector to an American agency.
MI5’s reaction to the prosecution, which was pressed by the Attorney-General, is unknown, as is the possibility that new evidence about Hambleton’s treachery both in Paris and in London had been secured prior to his arrest. If Hambleton had continued his treachery in London, as seems probable from the wording of the charge and the fact that the K.G.B. would be unlikely to neglect such a recently productive source, then the failure to detect him had been an MI5 responsibility.
The Potential Value of Oversight
The evidence suggests that no oversight body could have heard of Hambleton’s treachery before 1980, when the F.B.I. made its public statement and he visited Britain and was questioned by Special Branch on behalf of MI5. It might have taken an interest from then on but, as Hambleton could not have been extradited under the Official Secrets Act, nothing could have been done before his chance return in 1982, when commendably quick action was taken. An oversight body might, reasonably, have been curious about Hambleton’s complete confidence that he would not be arrested in Britain in spite of the warning given to him by the R.C.M.P.
chapter sixty-one
A Minor with Major Access
The newspaper headline ‘Big Security Shake-up’ has appeared over accounts of incompetence in the face of treachery at least twenty times in my writing career and did so again on 30 March 1984 following another report by the Security Commission, which had been almost continuously occupied since its ‘reassuring’ inquiry in 1981. The report, which had taken a year to compile, in spite of its brevity, dealt with the case of the youngest offender to be prosecuted under the Official Secrets Act, a lance-corporal in the Intelligence Corps, Philip Aldridge, who was nineteen at the time of his offence.[1]
Aldridge was gaoled for four years in January 1983 for abstracting a top secret document and trying to sell it to the Russians. At the time of his trial the security authorities claimed to have no idea just how sensitive the document had been because Aldridge misled them about it. When the truth was eventually established, the young lance-corporal became another textbook example of the axiom that what matters in the security world is not rank but access.
As a new recruit to the Intelligence Corps, Aldridge had been given positive vetting clearance under the routine restriction that, until he reached the age of twenty-one, he would be allowed to handle top secret documents only when under close supervision. Normally he was based at Aldershot but because the Defence Intelligence Staff (D.I.S.) at the Defence Ministry was overloaded with work during the Falklands campaign and in the period after it he was transferred for a fortnight to a section of it working in the Metropole building near Trafalgar Square in London. His job was to maintain a register of classified documents and he was also involved in the assured destruction of those copies which were no longer needed. As he was not quite twenty he should never have been left alone while tearing up documents and placing them in a specially secure bag for incineration but the more senior N.C.O.’s with whom he was working had not been warned about this restriction and probably assumed that Aldridge was over twenty-one. As a result the lance-corporal was allowed to work alone even when extremely sensitive papers were being processed.
Aldridge was cunning enough to appreciate his opportunity and, probably on his first day there, he abstracted seventeen pages of a copy of the weekly assessment of the intelligence position produced for the Prime Minister and other very senior ministers by the Joint Intelligence Committee. When he left the Metropole to return to Aldershot it was believed that the papers had been destroyed.
How Aldridge aproached the Russians has not been officially stated. He may have been foolish enough to visit the Soviet Embassy. He certainly sent a letter there and received a favourable response in the form of an advertisement placed in the Daily Telegraph on behalf of the Russians by a woman and reading, ‘I love you Spider. Love Mum.’[2] The letter was, apparently, intercepted through a routine monitoring operation and telephone calls he probably made may have been tapped. His quarters at Aldershot were searched and his diary was passed to MI5 where it was found to contain Soviet Embassy telephone numbers. By the time the culprit was arrested he had destroyed the document and the security authorities took his word that it was of moderate consequence and had dealt with Exocet missiles, though Defence Ministry officials could not recall any document of that nature at the relevant time. Aldridge told the truth later possibly because he was troubled by his conscience but more likely because he wanted to improve his position in prison so that he could take an Open University course.[3]
The Security Commission’s report was much more an indictment of security precautions at the Defence Ministry than of Aldridge. It makes it plain that officials of the D.I.S. attempted to play down the seriousness of the case and their own deficiences which had made the offence possible. Lack of control over Aldridge was only one of several security weaknesses which disturbed the Commissioners who criticized the department for ‘a general laxity of approach’ and were ‘increasingly concerned about the state of security in the D.I.S. generally’. They were further disturbed by the suggestions of an internal Defence Ministry inquiry conducted into the Aldridge case that hopefully intended to forestall any more searching investigation by an outside body. The Commission therefore recommended that such an investigation should be carried out by MI5, which should aim at a comprehensive overhaul of the existing security arrangements.
MI5, rightly, was praised by the Commission for its prompt detection of Aldridge’s treachery but a less clumsy and more mature operator might have been able to circumvent the routine monitoring of Soviet Embassy activities, and the extent of the improperly supervised access by young people to thousands of documents of the highest sensitivity alarmed the Commission.
The Prime Minister once again and, one imagines, somewhat wearily told Parliament that she had ordered a tightening of security throughout Government departments, the intelligence agencies and the armed forces.
The Russians appear to have derived no direct benefit from the episode but, indirectly, it may have reinforced their belief that young servicemen are worth cultivating and suborning because some of them have access to information of great interest to both the K.G.B. and G.R.U. It is probably a coincidence that, at the time of writing, seven young servicemen stationed in Cyprus have been charged with offences involving the communication of secret information to people believed to have been working for Soviet Intelligence. Soviet agents have targeted on servicemen for many years, even operating blindly in areas like Salisbury Plain, where there are many military establishments, offering lifts in cars and drinks in bars to curry friendships which might be exploited. Nevertheless a volunteer like Aldridge could whet their appetites and intensify their effort, for it was probably a surprise to them that such a young and inexperienced soldier could have had such interesting access.
The Defence Intelligence Staff works in very close liaison with that of the U.S. and other allies and the inefficiency in protective security was yet another bad advertisement for Britain.
The Potential Value of Oversight
The Aldridge case provided clear-cut evidence of apathy and even resignation to the inevitability of security offences within an extremely important department of the Defence Ministry. It also showed that such a department, which is crucially concerned with the gathering of intelligence, will excuse and conceal its incompetence concerning security precautions if it can. The wording of the Security Commission’s report suggests that it was more appalled than it indicated, or was allowed to indicate. So an arrangement to allow any oversight body to question the Security Commissioners about aspects of their investigations into cases could be constructive.
Again, it required a serious breach of security for any improvement to be effected and the lack of confidence on the Security Commission’s part was so great that it believed that only oversight by an outside body, MI5, would ensure that the required measures would be devised and put into practice. How much safer it might be if a standing outside body had the power and responsibility for overseeing such departments on a continuous basis. Without such an oversight body, however constituted, complacency and confidence in not being exposed will continue. And as the next chapter shows, the Defence Ministry is not the only department guilty of such calamitous failings.
chapter sixty-two
Another ‘Good Bottle Man’
The final recommendation of the Security Commission on the Aldridge case was that MI5 ‘should conduct a comprehensive review of protective security arrangements’ in the Defence Intelligence Staff of the Defence Ministry.[1] The wounded feelings of the servicemen and civilians in the D.I.S. at this public rebuke were to turn to broad smiles in the following month, April 1984, with the publication of sufficient details of the trial of an MI5 officer, Michael Bettaney, to show that the department most in need of such a review was MI5 itself.[2]
While the MI5 management was already only too aware, when the report on Aldridge appeared in March, that it was soon to face public castigation, it took some comfort from the Security Commission’s remark that the counter-intelligence service had been seen at its best. That well-deserved compliment was to be quickly swamped, however, by the quite appalling revelations of the Bettaney case. Aldridge had removed one document; Bettaney had removed dozens. Aldridge tried to contact the Russians to sell his document; Bettaney was that most dangerous and most feared of all spies, an ideological ‘mole’ deep inside MI5. Not only had positive vetting and document security failed, Bettaney had been promoted to a far more sensitive position after clear evidence of drunkenness and instability, just as Maclean had in the Foreign Office more than thirty years previously.
Bettaney, who came from a working-class home in Stoke-on-Trent, had needed a more exacting faith and converted to Roman Catholicism at the age of sixteen, after taking instruction. Bright academically, he was accepted into Pembroke College, Oxford, in 1969 to read English, and after his first year was awarded a scholarship. A quiet student, he is remembered as an ardent Catholic; in fact, he considered becoming a priest. His known politics tended to be right wing and he joined the Officer Training Corps. He then began to read widely about the rise of the Nazis. Having no firm ideas about a career he approached the University Appointments Board and was ‘talent-spotted’ as likely material for MI5. His tutor at Oxford was to describe him, after his arrest, as giving ‘a strong impression of dependability and of being a man who was entirely trustworthy’.[3]
