Once this was known I felt more sure than ever that Elli did exist, and that he was run by Sonia from Oxford, and that the secret of his identity lay in her transmission, which inexplicably had been lost all those years before. The only hope was to travel the world and search for any sign that her traffic had been taken elsewhere.
Over the four years from 1972 to 1976 I traveled 370,000 kilometers searching for new VENONA and Sonia's transmissions. In France, SDECE told me they had no material, even though Marcel told me he was sure they had taken it. Presumably one of the SAPPHIRE agents had long since destroyed it. In Germany they professed total ignorance. It was the same in Italy. Spain refused to entertain the request until we handed back Gibraltar. I spent months toiling around telegraph offices in Canada searching for traces of the telex links out there. But there was nothing. In Washington, extensive searches also drew a blank. It was heart-breaking to know that what I wanted had once existed, had once been filed and stored, but somehow had slipped through our fingers.
In 1974 Hanley and I began making preparations for the next CAZAB conference, which was due to take place in London in May. I told him he would likely face pressure from the Americans and the Canadians for some kind of statement about the Hollis case. We had successfully stalled any comment since the interrogation, but Angleton for one was determined to have something on the record.
"What shall I say?" asked Hanley.
I told him to play things low-key.
"Tell them the facts. There was a series of old allegations, and a number of candidates were possible starters. Hollis was one, and probably the best, but in the end, although we interrogated him, we were not able to form a firm conclusion."
The 1974 CAZAB conference was a far cry from the high-spirited gatherings of the 1960s. Too many faces around the table had disappeared. Spry had gone; Jim Bennett from the RCMP had gone, himself a suspect in a paralyzing mole hunt inside the RCMP with which I was peripherally involved (I believe that, despite Bennett's peculiar behavior under interrogation, he was not a spy); Helms had gone; and Angleton was clearly living on borrowed time. In Washington the Watergate scandal was at its height, and already the cupboard full of CIA skeletons was inching open.
Hanley made his short statement about the Hollis case. It was greeted silently. Most people had suffered the same traumas themselves, and knew just what pain and damage a case like that would have done. Hanley ended diplomatically by inviting the services represented to make whatever damage assessments they felt necessary in the light of his statement. It was a classic Whitehall ploy. Lay out the difficult ground, but always let the other man draw the decisive conclusion!
I saw Angleton only once more after the CAZAB conference in Washington at the end of the year. He knew he was being forced out. A new Director, William Colby, was determined to unseat him. Angleton and Colby had quarreled about the conduct of counterintelligence in Southeast Asia for several years. When Colby became Director the opportunity to get rid of Angleton came when THE NEW YORK TIMES published a story naming Angleton as the mastermind behind a massive domestic mail surveillance program. Within a few days Angleton and all his senior men had resigned.
When I saw Angleton he was raging.
"Two hundred years of counterintelligence thrown away," he cursed, when he realized that the whole of his senior staff was departing. It was obvious that THE NEW YORK TIMES story was only the first shot in the war. Within six months the CIA was submerged in a welter of Senate hearings, exposes, and mire. The year when the reckoning began was 1974. In Canada and Australia inquiries began into the past iniquities, alleged or real, of their intelligence services. We were the modern pariahs - hated, distrusted, hunted.
Oldfield and Hanley were terrified by the pace of events abroad, fearful above all that some of the revelations would spill over onto their own services. They realized, too, that the newly elected Labor Government might just be prepared to encourage such developments. It was in this context that Stephen de Mowbray finally decided that he had to act. In mid-1974 he approached a friend of his, Philip de Zuluetta, a former private secretary to Alec Douglas-Home when he was Prime Minister, and outlined his fears about the penetration of MI5, and the method of appointing service chiefs. Zuluetta suggested he approach Sir John Hunt, the new Cabinet Secretary. After telling Maurice that he could restrain himself no longer, de Mowbray made his appointment with No. 10 Downing Street.
"What's that bloody de Mowbray doing now?" roared Hanley one morning.
It was the first I heard of the news.
"Bloody Maurice interfering again. How can he let one of his officers prance around to Downing Street and wash all our linen without asking me... it's intolerable!"
I told Hanley that I felt it was inevitable. In the end de Mowbray was always determined to make an approach over the heads of MI5 and MI6, and we ought to be thankful it was to No. 10 Downing Street, rather than through a parliamentary question.
The outcome was a review - a classic maneuver. At the time they always seem so hopeful; it is only afterward you realize they are designed to achieve the answer desired by those who set the inquiry up. This one was to be conducted by Lord Trend, the former Cabinet Secretary. He was to have all the papers, and as much time as he needed, to decide which of the two faiths was believable.
Trend first appeared in Leconfield House in late 1974. He was given an office, a safe, and a secretary, and left alone on the fifth floor. After a few weeks he telephoned me and asked me to come to his room.
He appeared a typical Oxford don, an aesthetic-looking man with a wide forehead and fairish gray hair.
"I don't want to talk about the case," he began, "I simply want to get a picture of how it was all done. Then I am going to go off and study and see people, and I will see you again at the end."
All ten volumes of the FLUENCY Working Party were stacked neatly on the desk in front of him, and for the rest of the morning we went through them.
"How did it all begin?" he wanted to know.
It was a question I had often asked myself as I sat in the evening poring over those same files. How did it all begin? Did it start in 1945, when Blunt left? Or did it start when Volkov and Gouzenko made their approaches? Perhaps it was much earlier, when a frail man with TB stepped off the boat from China and tried to get a job in British Intelligence. Or later, much later, when Tisler told us about the spy in MI5, or when Golitsin talked of spies, hundreds of them, thousands of them, everywhere. Or was the Mitchell case the first decisive moment, the first time we looked, and could not find the spy in our midst? How do you define the moment when a fear becomes a tangible presence? It is just there. It was always there, from the beginning to the end.
The FLUENCY files looked curiously distant. They bulged with unseen hours of work. Minutes from every secret department were carefully recorded, tracing the distribution of this document and that document. Each allegation was carefully broken down; each suspect allotted a code name. At the end of the last file was the famous minute signed in my own hand, giving the names of those who needed urgent investigation.
On more than one occasion Trend asked about the delays in dealing with cases.