Since we now know that Top Hat, the source of the information, was a plant, why did the Russians decide to throw away Bossard? To understand the case, it is necessary to go into various aspects. First, the Russians had succeeded in damaging MI5 through Fedora and the Martelli case in 1963. This had resulted in increased suspicion, particularly in MI5, that Fedora was a plant. In 1964 Top Hat had given MI5 a story about technical eavesdropping coverage of the British Prime Minister's office, which, unless the Russians had a much more sophisticated system than we knew of in the West, was very unlikely. All efforts to find such a system in use had failed. This had led the British to consider that the story was phony, and both MI5 and the FBI had begun to question Top Hat's bona fides.
Top Hat's production of photographs of British documents of the highest classifications not only made it very difficult to believe that he was a plant (people ask the question: Would the Russians throw away such a source?); it would also result in the Americans once again becoming very suspicious of British security and in an outcry in the USA to cut Britain off from their secrets. Now if one had to choose a spy to risk, Bossard was ideal. He had practically no physical contact with Russians. His Moscow radio control was via innocent tunes. If it had not been for GCHQ's detailed traffic analysis, we would have been unaware of the significance of the records and we would not have been able to prove communication between the Russian Intelligence Service and Bossard. He would have been prosecuted only on the illegal copying of classified documents, a technical crime with relatively small penalties. Once again the professional and technical skill of GCHQ and MI5 had caught the Russians out. This success had two major effects. It enabled the American Intelligence Services to protect British interests in the American Government and it increased and did not diminish the doubts about Top Hat.
But the fundamental question has to be asked. Why did the Russians consider that they had to boost the bona fides of Top Hat? He had been operational since the end of 1962 and without a source at high level in either MI5, the FBI, or the CIA, there would have been nothing to alert the Russians that he was a suspect. At the end of 1964, MI5 had become very suspicious. Only Sullivan, the head of Domestic Intelligence in the FBI, had any fears of Top Hat's bona fides and he, Sullivan, was certainly not a Russian spy. In the CIA only Angleton and one or two close associates were suspicious. But the few people in MI5 who knew about Top Hat did not believe he was genuine. Hollis knew that these people had grave doubts about Top Hat.
There were other strains, too, on the alliance. There was deep-seated hostility in the American intelligence community to the accession to power of Harold Wilson and the Labor Government in 1964. Partly this was due to anti-Labor bias, partly to the Labor Government's commitment to abandon Polaris - a pledge they soon reneged on.
Hanging over everything from late 1963 onward, when Hollis made his trip to Washington, was the Mitchell case, and the fear that MI5 itself was deeply and currently penetrated at or near the summit, with the Secret Service apparently incapable of wrestling with the problem. The sacking of Arthur Martin only compounded American suspicions. They knew he was committed to hunting down Stalin's Englishmen wherever they were hiding, and to American eyes it seemed as if a public-school cabal had seen him off.
In mid-1965 matters came to a head. President Johnson commissioned a review of British security from the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB), a committee of retired intelligence notables, bankers, industrialists, and politicians, formed to advise the President on improvements in national security. Two men were given the task of conducting this Top Secret review - Gordon Gray, a former Secretary of Defense under President Eisenhower, and Governor of North Carolina, and the, Secretary the PFIAB, Gerald Coyne, a former senior FBI officer who ran PFIAB for fifteen years.
Gray and Coyne came to London secretly in the summer of 1965 and began reviewing the Anglo-American intelligence relationship, and in particular the effectiveness of MI5. The work was delicate in the extreme. No one in British Intelligence was to be told that the review was even taking place. In any other country the review would be known by a cruder name - espionage. Most of Gray and Coyne's material was supplied by Cleveland Cram, the CIA officer in charge of liaison in London with MI5. Cram was a brilliant and levelheaded CIA officer who had served in London for many years, and knew the weaknesses of MI5 only too well. Cram brought Gray and Coyne into Leconfield House and MI6 headquarters on a number of occasions, introducing them merely as colleagues. At this time CIA officers of Cram's stature had open access to all British Intelligence establishments, and the subterfuge was easy to perform on us.
I first heard about the Gray and Coyne review when I visited Washington in 1965. Angleton briefed me on the contents of the finished report. I was thunderstruck - Gray and Coyne had produced a devastating critique of MI5. They cited the inadequate size of British Counterespionage, and said that many individually talented officers were betrayed by poor organization and lack of resources. The report was especially critical of the quality of leadership inside MI5, particularly that provided by Hollis and Cumming, then the head of Counterespionage. Gray and Coyne concluded that Hollis had evidently lost the confidence of his senior officers (which was true) as well as that of his peers in Whitehall, which was also true.
Angleton was thrilled by the report, and told me that it would form the basis of a new relationship between British and American counterintelligence. He told me that the CIA intended making a direct approach to Harold Wilson, along with the American Ambassador in London, David Bruce, to brief him on the findings.
"Everything'll change now," he said, "we're going to have a beefed-up CIA London station, and half those officers are going to work directly inside MI5. We'll have access to everything, and help you where we can."
Once I had heard about the Gray-Coyne report, I was in an invidious position. Angleton had briefed me in confidence, but I was duty-bound to report the existence of such a document, and the planned approach to Wilson. Angleton's ambitions were obvious: he wanted the CIA to swallow MI5 up whole, and use it as an Agency outstation. I returned to London and told Hollis and F.J. everything I knew. It was one of the few occasions when Hollis showed any visible sign of shock. He ordered a check of records, and within a few hours got confirmation that Gray and Coyne had indeed visited virtually every British Intelligence establishment without ever declaring their true purpose.
Later that afternoon I saw both men sweep out to a waiting car at the front of Leconfield House.
"Thank you for your help, Peter," said F.J. grimly. "Never can trust the bloody Americans to play it by the rules!" I thought this was a touch sanctimonious, but I judged it better to keep clear of the flak which was rapidly building. F.J. and Hollis were off to see the Foreign Secretary to protest at this blatant abuse of the UKUSA agreement, and there was no telling where the row might end.