Agents and patience
Andrew Lownie INSIDE INTELLIGENCE by Anthony Cavendish
Collins, f12.95, pp. 181
Ilast saw Anthony Cavendish five years ago. He had kindly taken me to lunch at the Cavalry and Guards Club to discuss agenting this book. At the next table was the then Head of MI6, and the then Government Minister responsible for SIS. Given that the Government made several subsequent attempts to ban this book I have always found their close proximity a matter of some irony.
On the way into lunch Cavendish pointed out a distinguished former Intelli- gence colleague, a man who had been a practising Marxist and homosexual. From what he says in Inside Intelligence the man was more the rule than the exeption when Cavendish was in MI6. In his book he mentions one officer sent to prison and another sent home for being caught 'in flagrante' with young German boys. Cavendish himself was merely drummed out of the Service by a former communist after a traffic accident. At least that is his story.
Many homosexuals in MI6, and Caven- dish remembers at least a dozen of them, went on to glittering careers, possibly because they never admitted to their pro- clivities during their positive vetting. One of them, twice his Best Man, was Maurice Oldfield, Head of MI6 from 1973 till 1978 and briefly thereafter the Security Co- ordinator in Northern Ireland.
According to Cavendish, Oldfield, while in the Province, became a victim of a disinformation campaign, an unholy alliance of the IRA and Intelligence Ser- vices, that would have been a credit to the Service if directed across the Iron Curtain and not the Irish Sea.
Among those who joined the fray was Chapman Pincher, that well-known writer of spy fiction, who claimed that 'books and magazines on sexual perversion and photo- graphs of nude young men' had been found in Oldfield's flat. Mrs Thatcher eventually made a statement that begged more ques- tions than it answered. The same could be said of Cavendish's spirited, if unconvinc- ing, defence of his friend in the final chapters of the book.
Essentially, however, Inside Intelligence is Cavendish's own story of how he was recruited into wartime Intelligence, staying on to run operations in Palestine, Latvia and Germany, and a recital of his later career as a journalist and businessman.
It is best when Cavendish recounts the details of his Intelligence work, like agent handling, and points up the absurdities of MI6 organisation and personnel after the war. A former Indian policeman on his training course complained it was 'not cricket' that Cavendish had looked at some secret documents used in a training game. Cavendish was shocked that MI6 personnel were always issued distinctive black Hum- ber Super Snipes and had their own mess at the Control Commission. Nothing could have identified them as MI6 agents more clearly. Sadly, he does not include the story from the 1987 'Christmas card' (which he circu- lated to Members of Parliament, the Press and certain 'designated officials' as a means of circumventing the Government ban on his book) and which for me summed up the different approaches to Intelligence in the period. When an MI6 officer was made Head of Station his wife would ask whether or not they would have servants. The Russian wife in the same situation would wearily enquire whether they would have to pretend to be a chaffeur and cook again. Cavendish could have benefitted from more rigorous and knowledgeable editing. Only passing reference is made to being called out, when based in Berlin, to hunt for Burgess and Maclean after their flight In 1951. If true, the implications about When the British knew and responded to the escape are enormous. Tantalising ref- erences are also made to suspended moles in SIS during the Latvian operations.
It seemed after Spycatcher and the pull- ing down of the Berlin Wall that spook writers could look forward to an uncertain future, perhaps writing the odd obituary for a national paper or cultivating roses in the country. Now all looks set to change with a spate of new spy books, or rather old spy books dusted down. First, George Blake's apologia, now Anthony Caven- dish's compurgation. Oleg Gordievsky has just put forward his candidate for Fifth Man Canonisation, (the six-figure adv- ances the indirect gift of a grateful nation), while the biography of Dick White, former Head of both MI5 and MI6, continues
apace.
I am surprised that given the new Offi- cial Secrets Act the Government has not tried to ban these books. Perhaps in anticipation publishers should be preparing their Christmas cards now.
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