Spycatcher.pdf

SPYCATCHER

PETER WRIGHT with Paul Greengrass

WILLIAM HEINEMANN: AUSTRALIA

First published in 1987 by

HEINEMANN PUBLISHERS AUSTRALIA

(A division of Octopus Publishing Group/Australia Pty Ltd)

85 Abinger Street, Richmond, Victoria, 3121.

ISBN 0-85561-166-9

be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval

system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means

(electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or

otherwise) without the prior written permission

of the publisher.

TO MY WIFE LOIS

Prologue

For years I had wondered what the last day would be like. In January

1976 after two decades in the top echelons of the British Security

Service, MI5, it was time to rejoin the real world.

I emerged for the final time from Euston Road tube station. The winter

sun shone brightly as I made my way down Gower Street toward Trafalgar

Square. Fifty yards on I turned into the unmarked entrance to an

anonymous office block. Tucked between an art college and a hospital

stood the unlikely headquarters of British Counterespionage.

I showed my pass to the policeman standing discreetly in the reception

alcove and took one of the specially programmed lifts which carry

senior officers to the sixth-floor inner sanctum. I walked silently

down the corridor to my room next to the Director-General's suite.

The offices were quiet. Far below I could hear the rumble of tube

trains carrying commuters to the West End. I unlocked my door. In front

of me stood the essential tools of the intelligence officer's trade - a

desk, two telephones, one scrambled for outside calls, and to one side

a large green metal safe with an oversized combination lock on the

front. I hung up my coat and began mechanically to arrange my affairs.

Having seen too many retired officers at cocktail parties loitering for

scraps of news and gossip, I wanted to make a clean break. I was

determined to make a new life for myself breeding horses out in

Australia.

I turned the dials on the lock and swung open the heavy safe door. In

front was a mass of Registry files stamped Top Secret, and behind them

a neat stack of small combination boxes. Files: over the years I had

drawn thousands. Now these were the last Routine agent reports

circulated routinely to me, the latest reports of the Computer Working

Party, the latest analyses of Provisional IRA strength. Files always

need answers. I had none to give. The Russian diplomat's file had been

sent to me by a younger officer. Did I recognize him? Not really. It

was a double-agent case which had been running off and on for years.

Did I have any ideas? Not really. When you join the Service each case

looks different. When you leave they all seem the same. I carefully

initialed off the files and arranged for my secretary to take them to

the Registry.

After lunch I set to work on the combination boxes, pulling them out

from the back of the safe one by one. The first contained technical

details of microphones and radio receivers - remnants of my time in the

1950s as MI5's first scientific officer. I arranged for the contents to

be sent over to the Technical Department. An hour later the head of the

Department came over to thank me. He was very much the modern

government scientist: neat, cautious, and constantly in search of

money.

"They were just odd things I kept," I said. "I don't suppose you'll

have much use for them. It's all satellites now, isn't it?"

"Oh no," he replied. "I'll enjoy reading them." He looked a little

embarrassed. He and I had never really got on. We came from different

worlds. I was a glue, sticks, and rubber-band improviser from the war;

he was a defense contractor. We shook hands and I went back to sorting

out my safe.

The remaining boxes held papers gathered after I joined the

Counterespionage Department in 1964, when the search for spies in

British Intelligence was at its most intense. The handwritten notes and

typed aides-memoire were packed with the universal currency of spying -

lists of suspects and details of accusations, betrayals, and verdicts.

Here, in the endless paper chase which began so clearly but ended in

mystery, lay the threads of my career.

Eventually my secretary came in and handed me two blue books. "Your

diaries," she said, and together we shredded them into the burn bag

beside my desk until it was time for the final ritual.

I walked along to the Establishments Office. The duty officer handed me

a file containing a list of my current secret indoctrinations. I began

to sign off the small chits. Access to Signals Intelligence and

Satellite Intelligence went first. Then I worked through the mass of

case indoctrinations I held. The acquisition of secrets is such a

personal thing; the loss of them is painfully bureaucratic. Each stroke

of the pen shut the door a little farther. Within half an hour the

secret world which had sustained me for years was closed off forever.

Toward dark I took a taxi over to MI5's old headquarters at Leconfield

House in Mayfair. The organization was in the process of moving to new

offices at the top of Curzon Street, but the staff bar, the Pig and Eye

Club, where my farewell party was due to be held, still remained in

Leconfield House.

I went into the old building. Here, in the teak-inlaid corridors and

corniced offices, Philby, Burgess, Maclean, and Blunt were hunted down.

And here too we had fought MI5's most secret war over suspicions of an

undiscovered mole at the heart of the Service. Our suspect was the

former Director-General of MI5, Sir Roger Hollis, but we had never been

able to prove it. Hollis's friends had bitterly resented the accusation

and for ten long years both sides had feuded like medieval theologians,

driven by instinct, passion, and prejudice.

One by one in the 1970s the protagonists had retired, until finally the

move to new offices signaled the end of the war. But walking the

corridors of Leconfield House I could still feel the physical sense of

treachery, of pursuit, and the scent of the kill.

My party was a quiet affair. People said nice things. The Director-

General, Sir Michael Hanley, made a pretty speech, and I received the

customary cards with their handwritten farewell messages. Lord

Clanmorris, the great MI5 agent runner, wrote that my departure was "a

sad, sad, irreplaceable loss." He meant to the office. But the real

loss was mine.

That night I slept in the flat on the top floor of the Gower Street

offices, woken occasionally by the noise of trains arriving at Euston

Station. Early the next morning I dressed, picked up my briefcase,

empty for the first time, and walked down to the front door. I said

goodbye to the policeman and stepped outside onto the street. My career

was over. A sad, sad, irreplaceable loss.

- 1 -

It all began in 1949, on the kind of spring day that reminds you of

winter. The rain drummed against the tin roof of the prefabricated

laboratory at Great Baddow in Essex, where I was working as a Navy

scientist attached to the Marconi Company. An oscilloscope throbbed in

front of me like a headache. Scattered across the trestle table was a

mass of scribbled calculations. It was not easy designing a radar

system able to pick out a submarine periscope from amid the endless

rolling wave clutter; I had been trying for years. The telephone rang.

It was my father, Maurice Wright, the Marconi Engineer in Chief.

"Freddie Brundrett wants to see us," he said.

That was nothing new. Brundrett had been Chief of the Royal Naval

Scientific Service and was now Chief Scientist of the Ministry of

Defense; he had been taking a personal interest of late in the progress

of the project. A decision was needed soon over whether to fund

production of a prototype system. It would be expensive. Postwar

defense research was an endless battle against financial attrition, and

I prepared myself for another ill-tempered skirmish.

I welcomed the chance of talking to Brundrett direct. He was an old

family friend; both my father and I had worked for him in Admiralty

Research during the war. Perhaps, I thought, there might be the chance

of a new job.

The following day we drove down to London in a steady drizzle and

parked the car close to Brundrett's office in Storey's Gate. Whitehall

looked gray and tired; the colonnades and statues seemed ill suited to

a rapidly changing world. Clement Attlee was still promising "teeth and

spectacles," but the winter had been hard and people grew restless

under rationing. The euphoria of victory in 1945 had long since given

way to sullen resentment.

We introduced ourselves to the neat secretary in Brundrett's outer

office. The annex hummed in that subdued Whitehall way. We were not the

first to arrive. I greeted a few familiar faces, scientists from the

various Services' laboratories. It seemed a large turnout for a routine

meeting, I thought. Two men I had never met detached themselves from

the huddle.

"You must be the Wrights," said the shorter of the two abruptly. He

spoke with a clipped military accent. "My name is Colonel Malcolm

Cumming from the War Office, and this is my colleague Hugh Winterborn."

Another stranger came over. "And this is John Henry, one of our friends

from the Foreign Office." Cumming employed the curious code Whitehall

uses to distinguish its secret servants. Whatever the meeting was

about, I thought, it was unlikely to concern antisubmarine warfare, not

with a contingent from MI5 and MI6 present. Brundrett appeared at the

door of his office and invited us in.

His office, like his reputation, was vast. Giant sash windows and high

ceilings completely dwarfed his desk. He showed us to the conference

table, which had been carefully lined with ink blotters and decanters

Brundrett was a small, energetic man, one of that select band, along

with Lindemann, Tizard, and Cockcroft, responsible for gearing Britain

for the technical and scientific demands of fighting World War II. As

Assistant Director of Scientific Research for the Admiralty, and later

Deputy Director of the Royal Naval Scientific Service, he had been

largely responsible for recruiting scientists into government service

during the war. He was not especially gifted as a scientist, but he

understood the vital role scientists could play. His policy was to

promote youth wherever possible and because the Service chiefs trusted

him he was able to get the resources necessary to enable them to

perform at their best.

As a weary and diminished Britain girded herself to fight a new war in

the late 1940s - the Cold War - Brundrett was the obvious choice to

advise on how best to galvanize the scientific community once again. He

was appointed Deputy Scientific Adviser to the Minister of Defense and

succeeded Sir John Cockcroft as Scientific Adviser and Chairman of the

Defense Research Policy Committee in 1954.

"Gentlemen," began Brundrett when we were seated. "It is quite clear to

all of us, I think, that we are now in the midst of war and have been

since events in Berlin last year."

Brundrett made it clear that the Russian blockade of Berlin and the

Western airlift which followed had made a profound impact on defense

thinking.

"This war is going to be fought with spies, not soldiers, at least in

the short term," he went on, "and I have been discussing where we stand

with Sir Percy Sillitoe, the Director-General of the Security Service.

To be frank," he concluded, "the situation is not good."

Brundrett crisply described the problem. It had become virtually

impossible to run agents successfully behind the Iron Curtain, and

there was a serious lack of intelligence about the intentions of the

Soviet Union and her allies. Technical and scientific initiatives were

needed to fill the gap.

"I have discussed the matter in outline with some of you here, Colonel

Cumming from the Security Service and Peter Dixon representing MI6, and

I have formed this committee to assess the options and initiate work at

once. I have also suggested to Sir Percy that he obtain the services of

a young scientist to help on the research side. I intend to submit the

name of Peter Wright, whom some of you may know. He is currently

attached to the Services Electronics Research Laboratory and he will go

over on a part-time basis until we find out how much work needs doing."

Brundrett looked across at me. "You'll do that for us, won't you,

Peter?"

Before I could reply he turned to my father. "We'll obviously need help

from Marconi, G. M., so I have co-opted you onto this committee as

well." (Father was always known in the Navy by the name that Marconi

was known by in the old days. )

It was typical Brundrett, issuing invitations as if they were orders

and bending the Whitehall machine thoroughly out of shape to get his

way.

For the rest of the afternoon we discussed ideas. The MI5 and MI6

contingents were conspicuously silent and I assumed it was the natural

reticence of the secret servant in the presence of outsiders. Each

scientist gave an extempore synopsis of any research in his laboratory

which might possibly have an intelligence application. Obviously a

full-scale technical review of intelligence services requirements would

take time, but it was clear that they urgently needed new techniques of

eavesdropping which did not require entry to premises. Soviet security

was so tight that the possibility of gaining entry, other than through

party walls or when an embassy was being rebuilt, was remote. By

teatime we had twenty suggestions of possible areas of fruitful

research.

Brundrett instructed me to draw up a paper assessing them, and the

meeting broke up.

As I was leaving, a man from the Post Office Technical Department, John

Taylor, who had talked at some length during the meeting about post

office work on listening devices, introduced himself. "We'll be working

together on this," he said, as we exchanged telephone numbers. "I'll be

in touch next week."

On the drive back to Great Baddow, Father and I discussed the meeting

excitedly. It had been so gloriously unpredictable, in the way that

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