Spycatcher (48 page)

The Working Party Report found an extraordinary and persistent level of appalling security inside the Embassy, and every member of the committee endorsed a highly critical conclusion, which demanded the installation of an MI5 officer to work full-time in the Embassy on security. I circulated the trenchant report to F.J., who was then Deputy Director-General, and asked for his approval before I sent it to the Foreign Office. F.J. suggested I show it to Simkins as a courtesy, since he was Director C, responsible for Protective Security, and technically the Working Party covered his area. I sent Simkins a copy, and was surprised, a few hours later, to receive an angry summons to his office.

"You can't possibly send anything like this to the Foreign Office," he said, is if I were suggesting sending inquisition implements as a gift to the Pope.

"Why ever not?" I asked. "It's about time the bastards received a blasting. The whole place is a shambles!"

'"Well, I'm sorry. It's the Foreign Office. It's a most important department of state, and you simply have no business sending them reports like this. I don't propose to approve it!"

To my amazement, he defaced the report with a blue pencil. I took the report to F.J. and showed him what Simkins had. done. F.J. grunted, and told me to type it up and send it unchanged.

"Bloody Foreign Office," he growled, "I've had the bloody lot of them..."

The report was sent and a young MI5 officer, Tony Motion, was sent out to Moscow, but from then on I knew Simkins was an enemy for life.

Shortly after F.J. took over as Director-General the FLUENCY Working Party submitted its first report to him and to Dick White, as chief of MI6. The report was in two sections. The first half listed each of the twenty-eight allegations which we were sure were true bills and investigatable but which could not be attributed to any known spy. The second half of the report contained the allegations written up as a narrative, starting with Gouzenko's Elli in 1942, and ending with Golitsin's information in 1962, to show the more or less continuous nature of the penetration. This report was submitted to both chiefs.

But it was six months before the report was discussed again. Then we were told to resubmit our findings, listing only those allegations which we felt could be investigated, and giving the candidate who, in our judgment, best fitted the allegation.

The FLUENCY Working Party decided that Gouzenko's Elli and Volkov's "Acting Head" should both be investigated, and that because of their closeness in time, they should be considered together. The candidate was typed neatly at the bottom of the page. Stripped of title, stripped of rank, it was just a name: Roger Hollis.

The third allegation we included in our report was Goleniewski's "middling-grade agent," and it was potentially as damaging as the first two pointing toward Hollis. The "middling-grade agent" story began in November 1963. Goleniewski, Sniper as he was previously known, finally agreed to meet MI5 to clarify some of the details of the allegations he had made in anonymous letters from Poland. Previously Goleniewski was unwilling to meet anyone directly from MI5 because of our failure to catch Lambda 1, George Blake. But with Blake in jail, Goleniewski was seen by the head of the Polish section, who was himself half Polish by descent.

By the time MI5 saw Goleniewski, the CIA suspected he was going clinically insane. He began to have delusions that he was descended from the Tsar, but despite that, his recall of intelligence remained remarkably accurate. One morning during the course of his interviews, Goleniewski announced that he had a story to tell which he had never told before. He said that he had not mentioned it before because the British had made such a mess of detecting Blake, but he knew there was a middling-grade agent inside MI5.

Goleniewski said he knew about the middling-grade agent because he, a friend, and his former superior, had a serious discussion in the 1950s about whether to defect to the West. Deciding between Britain and the USA was difficult. All three agreed that Britain was the better place to live because of the large Polish emigre community, but MI6 was obviously impossible to approach because of Lambda 1. Goleniewski suggested to the other two that they try to contact MI5 through the emigre community in London, which he knew was monitored extensively by D Branch. Goleniewski's chief said that this plan was equally dangerous, since he knew the Russians also had a spy inside MI5.

This spy had been recruited by the Third Chief Directorate of the KGB, responsible for the armed services. The Third Chief Directorate had been allowed to keep the agent because he was so important to them, and he was not transferred to the First Chief Directorate, which was the usual practice. The agent had served in the British Army, and held rank as a British officer when he was recruited. Goleniewski thought the recruitment had taken place in Eastern Europe, and named the Russian KGB colonel who had carried it out. The spy had provided the Russians with valuable Polish counterintelligence, probably because he worked in the Polish section of MI5.

There was one other detail. In the mid-1950s the British successfully exfiltrated the Polish premier, Hanke, to the West. This had resulted in an inquiry in Warsaw, which General Serov, then head of the KGB, conducted himself. For some reason the KGB had failed to gain advance warning of the exfiltration, and Goleniewski learned that this was because the middling-grade agent was "on ice," either because he was under suspicion or because he was abroad and out of contact, or simply because his nerve was shaky. The spy was apparently perhaps on ice for two to three years before resuming work in the Polish section in the late 1950s. Later, when Goleniewski was in Moscow in 1959 he asked a friend in the Third Chief Directorate who was responsible for recruiting the agent, and if the operation was still active. His friend expressed surprise that he even knew of the affair, and advised him to remain quiet.

"This is a very dark affair," he said, "and I advise you to forget all about it."

Goleniewski's allegation was extraordinarily detailed, but because of the overload in Counterintelligence from late 1963 onward, and because of the doubts about Goleniewski's credibility, the allegation was not investigated properly until FLUENCY began sitting. We divided the allegation up into its seven separate indicators, and allotted marks to every candidate who fulfilled each of the criteria. Eight people in MI5 partially fitted Goleniewski's middling-grade agent, but one fitted every single part of it exactly. His name was Michael Hanley, the Director of C Branch, and a man strongly tipped to become F.J.'s successor.

Solely because he was the proverbial "perfect fit," FLUENCY unanimously recommended that Hanley be investigated in connection with Goleniewski's allegation, and he was given the code name HARRIET.

Another six months went by before the second FLUENCY report was finally discussed. Another meeting was called after hours in F.J.'s conference room, attended by me, Anne Orr-Ewing, Patrick Stewart, Evelyn McBarnet, Anthony Simkins, and F.J.. It was to be an entirely internal MI5 discussion as each of the three outstanding FLUENCY cases was an MI5 rather than an MI6 matter.

It was the sort of meeting which began quietly. F.J. had a bottle of Scotch on the table. The lights cast dramatic shadows across the room.

F.J. was striding up and down, his pipe clenched ferociously between his teeth.

He spun around.

"Do you really stand by these candidates?" he asked. "You realize the implications of what you are saying?"

"Certainly I do," I said, shaken nevertheless by the force of his approach.

"It's grotesque," he muttered, stabbing at the Hollis pages, "you can't expect me to accept that."

He threw the report down onto the desk.

"Where's this going to end, Peter - you've sent me a paper which says that my predecessor and most likely my successor are both spies. Have you thought it through? Have you stopped to think of the damage that will be done if we act on these recommendations? It will take a decade to recover from this, even if there's nothing at the end of it."

"I stand by what we have written, F.J., and what's more, so does every other member of the FLUENCY Working Party, and I can assure you if there were other candidates, you would have had them."

Simkins was sitting at the other end of the table. I could feel him chafing at the bit. He wanted to tear into me. But this was F.J.'s interrogation, and he wanted no distractions.

"You've wanted this on the record for years - you and Arthur, haven't you? Have you any idea what this kind of thing did to Roger?"

"I talked with him about it shortly before he left," I told F.J.. "He was quite calm about it."

F.J. was taken aback as I described my last confrontation with Hollis. "He must have been a tough man," he said grimly.

Finally, Simkins saw his chance.

"It's simply outrageous," he spat in a shrill voice, his public-school vowels stretching to breaking point, "everyone knows you and Martin had it in for Roger. You go around criticizing the Foreign Office, this person, that person, and then you let fly with accusations, spreading rumors, spreading poison. It's so undisciplined. If there is a criticism of Roger, it's that he let you go too far."

"All I want is the truth, Anthony," I said, trying with difficulty to maintain civility.

"Truth! You don't know the meaning of it. You need a bit of respect! It's scandalous! The man has scarcely set foot outside the office and you blackguard his name and reputation, a man with thirty years' service in the office, who did more for the place than you will ever do."

Luckily, Patrick Stewart rallied back on my behalf.

"It's all very well, Anthony, to sound off, but you've only just come into this."

He gripped the sides of his wheelchair, his knuckles turning white.

"Some of us have been struggling with this problem for years. It's not easy. It's not pleasant, but we all felt that it had to be done, and the least we expect when we have completed a report as difficult as this is a little rational debate."

But Simkins was determined to press on.

"What about America - you spread the poison out there too. When I was out there all they wanted to discuss was bloody penetration. It's intolerable. We'll be made the laughingstock of the world."

"And you don't think we are when Philby goes or Blunt confesses..." I shot back.

F.J. chewed his pipe energetically, occasionally pausing to light it with a match, almost as if he were not listening to the row ebbing and flowing. Then after half an hour he suddenly interrupted.

"Right, here's my decision. I am sure you will agree Peter, that we have to solve the middling-grade agent as the top priority. He's still in here if he exists."

I nodded.

"Well, I want Hanley looked at." He slapped the page with the back of his hand. "He's such a perfect fit, and the Americans know all about the allegation. But I want the others who score highly looked at as well... I want it run down to the ends of the earth, and then we'll tell the Americans. As for the other" - he was glaring at me now - "I won't change my view, it's grotesque..."

F.J. dismissed the meeting, and everyone trooped out, leaving him alone with the cares of office on his shoulders. He was the Pope, trying to reconcile a divided Church.

- 20 -

Hanley was a huge, florid man, with an outwardly bullying manner, which concealed a shy man underneath. Ever since his promotion as Director C in 1960, he was seen as a potential Director-General. He was the right age, mid-forties, with a supple civil servant's mind, which endeared him to Whitehall, and a brusque military exterior which made him popular with the board at M15. By the time the HARRIET investigation emerged he was the crown prince - certain to succeed F.J. when he retired in the early 1970s.

It is always distressing to pursue an investigation into a colleague. With Hollis and Mitchell it was different. They were distant figures, close to retirement by the time the suspicions against them hardened. But Hanley and I knew each other well. We were contemporaries, and although by no stretch of the imagination friends, we had served together amicably on committees for over ten years. His career lay in front of him, and his future was in my hands.

Patrick Stewart, the D1 (Investigations), and I handled the investigation jointly. The first task was to provide a complete picture of Hanley's life. We started backtracking through his family background, his entry into the Service, and his subsequent career.

Dozens of people who knew him were interviewed, all under the guise of a routine positive vet.

The most difficult aspect of all in the HARRIET affair was that the investigation soon revealed that Hanley had had a most distressing childhood following the breakup of his parents' marriage. He was left with deep-seated feelings of inferiority, which, according to his record of service, required psychiatric treatment in the 1950s, when he was a young MI5 officer, a fact which Hanley made known to the office at the time.

That Hanley had visited a psychiatrist was not in itself unusual. Many senior officers in MI5 had counseling of one form or another during their careers to assist them in carrying the burdens of secrecy. But inevitably our investigation had to probe Hanley's old wounds, in case they revealed a motive for espionage. F.J., Patrick Stewart, and I discussed the problem, and F.J. wrote a personal letter to Hanley's psychiatrist asking him to lift the oath of confidentiality. I visited the psychiatrist in Harley Street. He knew Hanley's occupation, and showed no hesitation in pronouncing Hanley a determined, robust character who had learned to live with his early disabilities. I asked him if he could ever conceive of him as a spy.

"Absolutely not!" he replied with total conviction.

Neither was there any hint of espionage in Hanley's early life. At Oxford before the war he was the model of the sensible, mildly left-wing student. When war came he stayed at Oxford for a year to get his degree and then joined a searchlight regiment in Home Defense as a subaltern, and remained there until 1945. It was important work, but not remotely adequate for someone of Hanley's considerable intellectual gifts. But everyone who knew him at this time remarked on his nagging sense of inferiority, and the consequent lack of ambition.