UNITED KINGDOM

Spy Cases

The Debate

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Bristow, Desmond, and Bill Bristow. A Game of Moles: The Deceptions of an MI6 Officer. Boston & London: Little, Brown, 1993.

Surveillant 3.4/5 notes that this book presents the "part Bristow played within Section V -- the counterintelligence arm of MI6." He spent the "wartime years working for MI6 in Gibraltar and Algiers ... [and] retired in 1954.... [He] remains convinced that Roger Hollis of MI5 was a Soviet spy, that Guy Liddell was in the same category, and that David Footman (chief of MI6's political section for Central Europe) was working for the Russians, too."

For West, WIR 13.4, the author's account of his adventures in wartime Spain is "one entertaining anecdote after another." The book "dovetails with Philby's memoirs,... [as] the only detailed recollections in the public domain of Section V's activities.... [It] offers a fascinating insight into a rather obscure corner of the secret war."

Defty, I&NS 10.1, suggests that Bristow's critical stance toward his former employers may be "in no small part the result of his friendship with Peter Wright.... Bristow digresses rather often, apparently unable to contain his anger at 'how badly many worthy people have been treated by the powers that be....' [T]he charges he makes [against Hollis and Liddell] are largely a reiteration of those of his friend Peter Wright, and they are thankfully largely confined to one chapter." Most of the book "offers an engaging, occasionally revealing, and often diverting insight into some of more successful wartime deception operations conducted by SIS in the Mediterranean theatre."

Cornish, Kimberley. The Jew of Linz. London: Century, Random House, 1998.

West, History 26.4, notes that the author "alleges that [philosopher Ludwig] Wittgenstein was a Marxist and identifies him as a central figure [the 'fifth man'] in the Cambridge spy ring: the talent spotter and recruiter.... The central thesis for The Jew of Linz is that virtually everything Philby and Blunt ever said regarding their controller should be disbelieved, unless it happens to support the author's interpretation. Alas, his research failed to take him to Moscow, where the KGB files tell quite a different story."

Deacon, Richard [Donald McCormick]. The Greatest Treason: The Bizarre Story of Hollis, Liddell and Mountbatten. London: Century, 1990.

According to Surveillant 1.3, Deacon "contends that the real 'fifth man' was ... Guy Liddell and working in the shadows was a very closeted homosexual in the figure of Earl Mountbatten of Burma." The timing of this release was unfortunate, following the different account in Andrew and Gordievsky's KGB. The first printing was caught in a libel suit in 1989 and the "book was withdrawn. This edition deletes the offending passages."

Glees, Anthony. Secrets of the Service: British Intelligence and Communist Subversion, 1939-51. London: Jonathan Cape, 1987. Secrets of the Service: A Story of Soviet Subversion of Western Intelligence. New York: Carrol & Graf, 1987.

Although he believes Glees' writing "is flat and repetitive," Cecil, I&NS 3.2, seems pleased that the author "makes mincemeat of the Wright-Pincher so-called evidence" against Roger Hollis. More broadly, however, Glees is writing in support of "an untenable thesis"; and "in the process he has distorted his evidence."

See Clifton J. Child, "In Defence of 'Tom' Delmer and Dr. Otto John: Notes for the Record," Intelligence and National Security 4, no. 1 (Jan. 1989): 127-136. Child was Chief Political Intelligence Officer with the Political Warfare Executive Special Operations Directorate during World War II. Here, he disputes the suggestion made by Glees that Denis Sefton Delmer was a Communist mole during and after the war.

Kerr, Sheila. "Roger Hollis and the Dangers of the Anglo-Soviet Treaty of 1942" Intelligence and National Security 5, no. 3 (Jul. 1990): 148-157.

Three documents are reproduced here: (1) "a covering letter dated 6 July 1942 from Sir David Petrie, Director General of MI5, to Sir Alexander Maxwell at the Home Office, which accompanied [2] Roger Hollis's letter of 25 June 1942 to Petrie, and [3] his [Hollis'] memo on the revolutionary programme of the Communists." Hollis essentially warned about contradictions between Stalin's adherence to the Anglo-Soviet Treaty of 1942 and the revolutionary aims of Communist doctrine. Kerr sees Hollis' letter and memo as offering "the best available proof that Hollis was not a Soviet agent."

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