Slightly libelled?
Sir: Do you mind if I feel slightly libelled by your letting Fred Halliday and Oleg Gordievsky call me (Who are you calling an agent of influence?', 4 March) a 'Conserva- tive contact' of the KGB? I was a 17-year- old Young Conservative way back in 1945, and given the number of pro-communists around in those days, that was perhaps not a bad thing to be; but time eroded the early simplicities, and I have belonged to no party, on paper or in heart, since then.
Fred Halliday's main point, though, is that to have talked to and argued with KGB people, as I did with my friend Mikhail Bogdanov, did not make you a fel- low-traveller. He is right about that. The real test of fellow-travellership was what you said and did in the hard moments of the Cold War.
Brian Beedham
The Economist, 25 St James's Street, London SW1
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