Solely because he was the proverbial "perfect fit," FLUENCY unanimously recommended that Hanley be investigated in connection with Goleniewski's allegation, and he was given the code name HARRIET.
Another six months went by before the second FLUENCY report was finally discussed. Another meeting was called after hours in F.J.'s conference room, attended by me, Anne Orr-Ewing, Patrick Stewart, Evelyn McBarnet, Anthony Simkins, and F.J.. It was to be an entirely internal MI5 discussion as each of the three outstanding FLUENCY cases was an MI5 rather than an MI6 matter.
It was the sort of meeting which began quietly. F.J. had a bottle of Scotch on the table. The lights cast dramatic shadows across the room. F.J. was striding up and down, his pipe clenched ferociously between his teeth.
He spun around.
"Do you really stand by these candidates?" he asked. "You realize the implications of what you are saying?"
"Certainly I do," I said, shaken nevertheless by the force of his approach.
"It's grotesque," he muttered, stabbing at the Hollis pages, "you can't expect me to accept that."
He threw the report down onto the desk.
"Where's this going to end, Peter - you've sent me a paper which says that my predecessor and most likely my successor are both spies. Have you thought it through? Have you stopped to think of the damage that will be done if we act on these recommendations? It will take a decade to recover from this, even if there's nothing at the end of it."
"I stand by what we have written, F.J., and what's more, so does every other member of the FLUENCY Working Party, and I can assure you if there were other candidates, you would have had them."
Simkins was sitting at the other end of the table. I could feel him chafing at the bit. He wanted to tear into me. But this was F.J.'s interrogation, and he wanted no distractions.
"You've wanted this on the record for years - you and Arthur, haven't you? Have you any idea what this kind of thing did to Roger?"
"I talked with him about it shortly before he left," I told F.J.. "He was quite calm about it."
F.J. was taken aback as I described my last confrontation with Hollis.
"He must have been a tough man," he said grimly.
Finally, Simkins saw his chance.
"It's simply outrageous," he spat in a shrill voice, his public-school vowels stretching to breaking point, "everyone knows you and Martin had it in for Roger. You go around criticizing the Foreign Office, this person, that person, and then you let fly with accusations, spreading rumors, spreading poison. It's so undisciplined. If there is a criticism of Roger, it's that he let you go too far."
"All I want is the truth, Anthony," I said, trying with difficulty to maintain civility.
"Truth! You don't know the meaning of it. You need a bit of respect! It's scandalous! The man has scarcely set foot outside the office and you blackguard his name and reputation, a man with thirty years' service in the office, who did more for the place than you will ever do."
Luckily, Patrick Stewart rallied back on my behalf.
"It's all very well, Anthony, to sound off, but you've only just come into this."
He gripped the sides of his wheelchair, his knuckles turning white.
"Some of us have been struggling with this problem for years. It's not easy. It's not pleasant, but we all felt that it had to be done, and the least we expect when we have completed a report as difficult as this is a little rational debate."
But Simkins was determined to press on.
"What about America - you spread the poison out there too. When I was out there all they wanted to discuss was bloody penetration. It's intolerable. We'll be made the laughingstock of the world."
"And you don't think we are when Philby goes or Blunt confesses..." I shot back.
F.J. chewed his pipe energetically, occasionally pausing to light it with a match, almost as if he were not listening to the row ebbing and flowing. Then after half an hour he suddenly interrupted.
"Right, here's my decision. I am sure you will agree Peter, that we have to solve the middling-grade agent as the top priority. He's still in here if he exists."
I nodded.
"Well, I want Hanley looked at." He slapped the page with the back of his hand. "He's such a perfect fit, and the Americans know all about the allegation. But I want the others who score highly looked at as well... I want it run down to the ends of the earth, and then we'll tell the Americans. As for the other" - he was glaring at me now - "I won't change my view, it's grotesque..."
F.J. dismissed the meeting, and everyone trooped out, leaving him alone with the cares of office on his shoulders. He was the Pope, trying to reconcile a divided Church.
Hanley was a huge, florid man, with an outwardly bullying manner, which concealed a shy man underneath. Ever since his promotion as Director C in 1960, he was seen as a potential Director-General. He was the right age, mid-forties, with a supple civil servant's mind, which endeared him to Whitehall, and a brusque military exterior which made him popular with the board at M15. By the time the HARRIET investigation emerged he was the crown prince - certain to succeed F.J. when he retired in the early 1970s.
It is always distressing to pursue an investigation into a colleague. With Hollis and Mitchell it was different. They were distant figures, close to retirement by the time the suspicions against them hardened. But Hanley and I knew each other well. We were contemporaries, and although by no stretch of the imagination friends, we had served together amicably on committees for over ten years. His career lay in front of him, and his future was in my hands.
Patrick Stewart, the D1 (Investigations), and I handled the investigation jointly. The first task was to provide a complete picture of Hanley's life. We started backtracking through his family background, his entry into the Service, and his subsequent career. Dozens of people who knew him were interviewed, all under the guise of a routine positive vet.
The most difficult aspect of all in the HARRIET affair was that the investigation soon revealed that Hanley had had a most distressing childhood following the breakup of his parents' marriage. He was left with deep-seated feelings of inferiority, which, according to his record of service, required psychiatric treatment in the 1950s, when he was a young MI5 officer, a fact which Hanley made known to the office at the time.
That Hanley had visited a psychiatrist was not in itself unusual. Many senior officers in MI5 had counseling of one form or another during their careers to assist them in carrying the burdens of secrecy. But inevitably our investigation had to probe Hanley's old wounds, in case they revealed a motive for espionage. F.J., Patrick Stewart, and I discussed the problem, and F.J. wrote a personal letter to Hanley's psychiatrist asking him to lift the oath of confidentiality. I visited the psychiatrist in Harley Street. He knew Hanley's occupation, and showed no hesitation in pronouncing Hanley a determined, robust character who had learned to live with his early disabilities. I asked him if he could ever conceive of him as a spy.