I submitted my paper on the Dragon scientists to MI6 in early 1958 for their approval. Brundrett advised me strongly to do this, because the application for resources would carry far greater weight if it came from both Services. When it was countersigned, it was placed before the Defense Research Policy Committee (DRPC), of which Brundrett was Chairman. The paper caused widespread consternation in the DRPC. Never before had KGB advances over the West been so clearly documented. I could prove that the KGB had obtained areas of major technical superiority through the efforts of the Dragon scientists, especially in the field of electronics and surveillance devices, including the use of infrared systems, which had put them in a commanding position since the late 1940s.
Largely through Brundrett's foresight, technical research was already under way through his own ad hoc committee, of which I had been a member since 1949. But we needed to formalize and expand this program of research with more staff and resources. I submitted a further joint MI5/MI6 paper, which came to be known as the Technics Document (which is what the KGB called it), describing what progress needed to be made, and placing much greater emphasis on advanced electronics. As a result of the Dragon paper and the Technics Document, technical research for the intelligence services as a whole, but particularly for MI5, was given a much higher priority within Defense Research Policy. Unfortunately, the DRPC still vetoed the idea of specific resource allocations for the intelligence services, hoping to fill the gap by fitting our requirements into existing Defense Research programs. I still had to go cap in hand, but at least the climate was changing.
In 1958, as the Technics Document was being considered, Hollis introduced me to a man who did more than most to secure the modernization of MI5, Victor Rothschild. Rothschild worked inside MI5 during the war (he won the George Medal for opening bombs), and maintained close friendships with many of the senior officers, but especially with Dick White. At the time I met him, Rothschild was Head of Research for the Shell Oil Corporation, controlling more than thirty laboratories worldwide. Hollis told him of my appointment as an MI5 scientist, and Rothschild expressed an interest in meeting me. He invited me to supper at his elegant London flat in St James's Place.
I doubt I have ever met a man who impressed me as much as Victor Rothschild. He is a brilliant scientist, a Fellow of the Royal Society, with expertise in botany and zoology, and a fascination for the structure of spermatozoa. But he has been much, much more than a scientist. His contacts, in politics, in intelligence, in banking, in the Civil Service, and abroad are legendary. There are few threads in the seamless robe of the British Establishment which have not passed at some time or other through the eye of the Rothschild needle.
Rothschild was fascinated by my plans for the scientific modernization of MI5, and offered me many suggestions of his own. I soon realized that he possessed an enormous appetite for the gossip and intrigue of the secret world, and we were soon swapping stories about some of the more bizarre colleagues he remembered from the war. We talked until late into the night, and I came away feeling for the first time that, with his backing, great achievements were possible.
Rothschild offered to put some of his Shell laboratories at MI5's disposal, and began work on a variety of technical developments, including a special grease which would protect equipment if it was buried underground for long periods. The grease was developed, and both MI5 and MI6 used it extensively. Rothschild also suggested that I approach Sir William Cook, then the Deputy Head of the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment (AWRE), for resources. I knew Cook well, but Rothschild was a close friend, and his well-timed lobbying made my visit much easier.
Cook listened attentively as I outlined my requirements. The essence of my approach to counterespionage was to develop technical ways of attacking Soviet spy communications. Communications are the only vulnerable point in an agent's cover, because he has to send and receive messages to and from his controller. I explained to Cook that RAFTER already provided us with the most valuable weapon of all - an entree into Russian radio communications - but that we urgently needed new techniques to attack their physical methods of communications as well, such as secret writing, microdots, and dead letter drops. Progress on these would vastly improve our chances of counterespionage success.
"Let's solve some of these right away," said Cook, picking up his telephone. He spoke to one of his senior scientists, Dr. Frank Morgan.
"Frank, I'm sending down someone to work with you on a new project. He'll explain when he arrives. You'll enjoy it - he's a man after your own heart."
With typical Cook generosity, he provided a team of two principal scientific officers, as well as junior staff and resources for the sole use of MI5. In all I had thirty people at AWRE, and for two years AWRE carried the entire cost, after which time the Defense Research Policy Committee agreed to continue the funding. Frank Morgan was the most valuable gift of all. He attacked the problems with zest and flair, and within those two years MI5 obtained results far beyond anything dreamed of in the USA.
The techniques of secret writing are the same the world over. First the spy writes his cover letter. Then he writes the secret message on top, using a special sheet of carbon paper treated with a colorless chemical. Tiny particles of the chemical are transferred to the letter, which can then be developed by the recipient. Most developing agents make the chemical traces grow, so that the message becomes legible, and unless the correct agent is known, the message remains undetectable. But Morgan created a universal developing agent, using radioactivity, which transformed the possibilities of detection.
Microdots are another method of surreptitious communication between an agent in the field and his controller. Photographs are reduced down to microscopic size, so that they are practically invisible to the naked eye. Microdots are generally concealed under stamps, on top of punctuation marks in typewritten letters, or under the lips of envelopes. Morgan produced a process for detecting microdots using neutron activation.
A third method of spy communication, and one of the most common, is the dead letter drop. An agent leaves a package, for instance of exposed film, in an arranged place, and his controller collects it at a later stage, so that the two are never seen to meet. The KGB frequently gave their agents hollow containers which were specially treated, so that they could tell if the container had been surreptitiously opened. Morgan developed a soft X-ray technique which enabled us to inspect the interiors of suspect containers without tampering with them or fogging the unexposed film inside.
The last of Morgan's four programs was the development of a number of special X-ray methods for use against advanced combination safes. These were proving more than a match even for Leslie Jagger, but the use of Morgan's X-ray device enabled the combination to be read off from outside, and gave MI5 potential access to every safe in Britain.
Despite the improvements on the technical and research side, MI5's counterespionage record remained lamentable in the 1950s. After Dick White became Director-General in 1953, he recognized the great deficiencies in this area. Most of the talented wartime Double Cross case officers had either left, retired, or moved, like Dick White, into senior management positions. Their replacements tended to be second-rate former colonial policemen with little or no experience of counterespionage, who found it hard to make the adjustment from the wartime superiority over the German Abwehr to the new war against a more skilled and more numerous Russian Intelligence Service. He formed a new counterespionage department, D Branch, and appointed me largely to provide them with scientific and technical advice. But improvements were slow to come. For some long time the D Branch staff resented my access to their secrets. They wallowed in their own technical ignorance. I remember one case officer saving, as I explained some technicality in terms of the Ohm's law: