"The last week in July." I read the CIA account of Sniper's debriefing. It stared out at me from the page. It seemed so innocuous a phrase. I checked back. Lonsdale was first seen by MI5 meeting Houghton on July 2. He was positively identified on the 11th. We began following him on the 17th. Allow a week for the news to filter through to the Russians. A day to get across to the UB. That takes you to the last week in July!
The Lonsdale report was the most painful document I have ever written. My triumph turned to ashes before my eyes. I remember going off sailing in the Blackwater estuary, near my home in Essex, the weekend before submitting it in May 1961. The clouds scudded across the flat landscape, the wind filling my lungs and cleansing my mind of stress and turmoil. But no matter how I turned the boat, no matter how I adjusted the rigging, I came down to the same conclusion. The Russians knew we were onto Lonsdale from the beginning; they had withdrawn him, and then sent him back. But why?
There was only one explanation which covered all the inconsistencies of the case: a leak. If the Russians possessed a source inside MI5, he would alert them to the existence of Sniper, which would explain why pressure mounted on Goleniewski from the last week in July, although of course, like us, the Russians could only guess at Sniper's real identity. That would explain why the Russians knew about our bank operations. Once they realized Lonsdale was blown, the Russians recalled him to Moscow, but once I alerted the management to the LIONSBEARD information, and Furnival Jones began his inquiries, the source would contact the Russians in a panic. The Russians were then faced with a simple choice. Lonsdale, or the MI5 source? The only way of forestalling the hunt inside MI5 was to send Lonsdale back, hoping that he could extract some last intelligence from Houghton before we rounded the ring up. But before sending him back the Russians took the precaution of switching his other spies to alternative secure communications via the Krogers. If this was the case, the Russians had severely misjudged the sophistication of the new D Branch team they were facing. Despite their advantages, we managed to outplay them and capture the Krogers, a significant additional part of the Soviet team. As for the source, it could only be one of a dozen people at the top of MI5. This was no Watcher, or peripheral source. The Russians would never sacrifice anyone as valuable as Lonsdale for a low-level source. The evidence of continuous interference throughout the Lonsdale case pointed much higher up - to the very summit of the organization.
I submitted my report to Furnival Jones in May 1961. He passed my report on to the Deputy Director-General, Graham Mitchell, with a short accompanying minute which read: "It should be borne in mind when reading this analysis, that the Lonsdale case was a personal triumph for Peter Wright."
For months I heard nothing. I sat in on dozens of meetings with Mitchell and Hollis on other matters, and often hung back, expecting that they would call me in to discuss what, at the very least, was a disturbing hypothesis. But there was nothing. No minute, no letter, no threats, no casual conversation. It was as if my report did not exist. Then, in October, I was finally called into Hollis' office late one afternoon. He was sitting at his desk, with Mitchell to one side.
"Graham will handle this discussion, Peter," said Hollis in a distant manner. He fingered my report with evident distaste. I turned to face Mitchell. He was sweating slightly, and avoided looking me in the eye.
"I have read your Lonsdale analysis," he began, "and I am bound to say that a lot of it passes over my head. In my experience espionage has always been a simple business..."
I bridled at this.
"I will gladly explain any of the anomalies I have detailed in the report, sir, if that will help. It is often difficult to put technical matters into lay language."
Mitchell went on as if I had made no interruption.
"The simple fact is, we have arrested and convicted three professional Russian illegals - these are the first Russian nationals to be brought before the courts here for generations. We arrest two immensely dangerous spies inside the country's most secret underwater research establishment. By any measure that is success. What on earth is the advantage to the Russians of allowing us to do that?"
I began to plod through the sections of my report, pointing up the ambiguities, and trying hard not to draw any conclusions. But Mitchell attacked every point. How did I know? How could I be sure? The bank could have been a coincidence. The Russians might not have known we were following Lonsdale, even if they did listen to our Watcher radios.
"They're not ten feet tall, you know, Peter!"
I went through the change in radio operations. But Mitchell brushed it aside, saying he was not a statistician.
"You say there were more spies, you speculate that the Russians deliberately sent Lonsdale back. But you've got no proof, Peter, that it went like that."
"But you've got no proof, sir, that it went as you think it did. We are both hypothesizing."
"Ah yes," cut in Hollis, "but we have them in prison."
"But for how long, sir? We have faced this problem persistently since Tisler, and every time we leave it, it reemerges..."
"The Deputy and I have discussed this whole matter very carefully, and I think you know my feelings on that point."
"So, am I to understand there will be no further investigations?"
"That is correct, and I would be grateful if you could keep this matter entirely confidential. The Service has been tremendously boosted, as you have been too, Peter, by this case, and I should not like to see progress set back by more damaging speculation."
Hollis smiled at me oddly, and began to sharpen a pencil. I stood up abruptly, and left the room.
Despite the secret doubts expressed inside MI5 about the provenance of the Lonsdale case, it was hailed as an outstanding triumph in American intelligence circles. Never before had an illegal network been monitored while it ran, and there was great interest in Washington in the work of the Radiations Operations Committee, which had coordinated the new range of techniques.
The U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) had already learned about ROC's work from GCHQ and was envious of the close relationships being forged between GCHQ and her sister clandestine services, MI5 and MI6. However bad the problems had been in Britain, they were infinitely worse in Washington. Hoover vehemently opposed the establishment of the CIA after the war, and maintained open hostility to it throughout the 1950s. The CIA, its senior ranks mostly comprising Ivy League graduates, treated the G-men with arrogant disdain. The only policy which united the two organizations was their shared determination to thwart the NSA wherever possible. They both claimed NSA was an insecure organization, an accusation given substance in 1959, when two NSA cryptanalysts defected to the Soviet Union, betraying vital secrets.
Louis Tordella was the deputy head of NSA, and effectively ran the organization for nearly twenty years. (The head of NSA is a rotating Armed Services appointment. ) He knew full well that the real reason for FBI and CIA hostility was resentment at NSA's control of SIGINT. He knew also that both organizations were busy challenging his monopoly. The CIA had begun its own ultra-secret SIGINT operation, STAFF D, and the FBI were also active in the same field. In May 1960, just as the Lonsdale case was getting under way, Al Belmont visited London, and I took him down to Cheltenham to demonstrate the ENGULF operation against the Egyptian cipher, and the STOCKADE operation against the French cipher, which was in its early stages. Belmont was much impressed, and immediately sent over Dick Millen, who spent a fortnight with me learning the technical details of STOCKADE. Shortly after, the FBI conducted a similar successful operation against the French Embassy cipher machine in Washington.