The Registry always fascinated me. Just being there filled me with anticipation, an irresistible feeling that inside the mass of dry paper were warm trails waiting to be followed. Potter explained to me the correct system for signing on and off a file to show that it had been received and dealt with. He had designed the filing system so that each file read chronologically, with papers and attachments on the right, and the index and minutes placed on the left for quick access.
The whole system depended on accurate and disciplined classification. When an officer wished to file something, it had to be approved by one of Potter's staff. Very often file requests were rejected as being too generalized. When an officer wished to draw a file he filled in a request form. These trace requests were always recorded, and if a trace was requested on an individual more than once, a file was automatically opened on him. There were three basic categories in the Registry. The first category was Personal Files, or PFs, which were buff-colored files arranged in alphabetical order. There were about two million PFs when I joined the Service in 1955. That figure remained fairly static and began to rise dramatically only in the late 1960s and early 1970s with the onset of student and industrial militancy. Then there were subject files, or organizational files, such as for the Communist Party of Great Britain, Subject files very often ran into several volumes and were elaborately cross-referenced with the PFs. The final main category was the duck-egg-blue List File. This generally comprised material gathered during a particular case which could not easily be placed within either of the two previous categories. There were also Y-Boxes. These were a means of separating particularly sensitive files from general access. For instance, all suspected spies were Y-Boxed, as were most defectors. An officer could obtain the material from a Y-Box only by obtaining indoctrination into its contents from the controlling officer or sometimes from the Director-General himself.
"The integrity of the file is vital," Potter told me, and warned me that under no circumstances could papers be removed from a file without the written consent of a senior officer. The sanctity of files was something which, quite rightly, was drummed into every officer from the very beginning of his service.
Files were located by using the card indexes. Potter had devised a system of mechanically searching these indexes. Each card was classified with a series of punched holes to identify the category of files to which it belonged. To search a category of files, for instance to find a Russian intelligence officer using several aliases, an officer drew a master card corresponding to that category. Long needles were placed through the holes in the master card to locate any other cards which fitted the same constellation. These could then be searched by hand. It was old-fashioned, but it worked, and it meant that MI5 resisted the change to computerization long after it should have happened.
The concourse of the Registry was always busy with trolleys transporting files from the Registry shelves to special lifts. The trolleys ran on tracks so that files could be shifted at great speed up to the case officers working on the floors above - F Branch on the first floor, E Branch on the second, D on the third and fourth, and A Branch on the fifth. The Registry employed enormous numbers of girls to maintain efficient delivery of files within the building, as well as the massive task of sorting, checking, and filing the incoming material. In Kell's day the Registry Queens, as they were known, were recruited either from the aristocracy or from the families of MI5 officers. Kell had a simple belief that this was the best vetting of all. The debutantes were often very pretty, as well as wealthy, which accounts for the large number of office marriages, to the point where it became something of a joke that the average career expectancy of a Registry Queen was nine months - the time it took her to get pregnant.
By the early 1970s the staffing of the Registry had become a major problem for MI5. There were more than three hundred girls employed and with the surge of file collection at that time the pressure for more recruits was never-ending. Openly advertising was considered impossible. Yet it was becoming very difficult to recruit this number of girls, let alone vet them properly. In at least one case, the Communist Party managed to infiltrate a girl into the Registry, but she was soon discovered and quietly sacked. This problem, rather than dissatisfaction with the increasingly antiquated filing system itself, finally pushed MI5, belatedly, into accepting a computerized Registry.
Underneath the Registry were the Dungeons. They were actually a collection of storerooms and workshops run by Leslie Jagger, who worked under Hugh Winterborn in A2. Jagger was one of Cumming's famed contacts. He was a huge, broad-shouldered former Sergeant Major who had served with Cumming in the Rifle Brigade. Jagger always wore a black undertaker's suit.
Jagger was the MI5 odd-job technical man, and must have felt slightly apprehensive when I joined, but he never showed it and we soon became good friends. Jagger had an extraordinary array of skills, of which the most impressive was his lockpicking. Early on in training I attended one of the regular classes he ran for MI5 and MI6 in his lockpicking workshop. The cellar room was dominated by a vast array of keys, literally thousands of them, numbered and hung in rows on each wall. Jagger explained that as M15 acquired or made secret imprints of keys of offices, hotels, or private houses, each one was carefully indexed and numbered. Over, the years they had developed access in this way to premises all over Britain.
"You never know, when you might need a key again," explained Jagger as I stared in astonishment at his collection.
"The first rule if you are entering premises is only pick the lock as the last resort," said Jagger, beginning his lecture. "It's virtually impossible to pick a lock without scratching it - and that'll almost certainly give the game away to the trained intelligence officer. He'll know the premises have been entered. What you have to do is get hold of the key - either by measuring the lock or taking an imprint of the key."
Jagger demonstrated how to attack various locks. Burmah locks, used for diamond safes, were by far the most difficult. The pins move horizontally through the lock and it is impossible to pick. The Chubb, on the other hand, although billed as being unpickable, was fair game for Jagger.
"This is the one you'll have to deal with most often."
He picked up a demonstration Yale mechanism mounted on a board and explained that the Yale consisted of a series of pins sitting in various positions inside the barrel of the lock. The bites in the Yale key acted on the pins to push them up and allow the key to be turned in the barrel. Jagger produced a small piece of wire with a hook on one end. He inserted it into the keyhole and began to stroke the inside of the lock in a steady, rhythmical action.
"You just stroke the first pin until" - Jagger's wrist tensed and suddenly relaxed - "it goes a notch, and then you know you've got one up into line."
His big hands moved like a concert violinist's with a bow, tensing as each pin pushed up in turn.
"You keep the pressure on until you've got all the pins up..." He turned the piece of wire and the Yale sprang open. "Then you're inside... Course, what you do inside is your business."