There were two ways of playing Golitsin. One was to accept his methodology, and allow him to dictate the entire thrust of counterintelligence policy. The other was to continue the frustrating task of trying to prize out from him the nuggets of fact, such as the sorts of information contained in the reports he had seen, the approximate location of an agent, and so forth, which could then be investigated by orthodox counterintelligence methods.
Where Western counterespionage services succeeded in obtaining from him these kinds of factual leads, Golitsin was of enormous help. This was how we finally put the finger on Vassall, and how Marcel Chalet was able to identify Georges Paques. It was the same with Golitsin's political intelligence. Where he stuck to what he saw and what he heard, he was impressive and believable. There is no question, for instance, that he attended Shelepin's famous conference at which Directorate D, responsible for Disinformation Operations, was established. But where Golitsin extrapolated from what he knew to develop broad theories, such as his forty-year grand disinformation program, or where he attempted to fit events which occurred after his defection into his theories, as he did with the Sino-Soviet split, he was disastrous.
Most of the Golitsin acolytes in MI5, of which I was one, soon broke with Golitsin's wilder theories and strict adherence to his methodology. Only Arthur, and more junior officers like Stephen de Mowbray, who was responsible for Golitsin during a spell of duty as an MI6 liaison officer in Washington in the early 1960s, remained loyal.
But in Washington the situation was very different. Angleton swallowed the "methodology" hook, line, and sinker and allowed Golitsin to range freely across the CIA's files, picking traitors apparently at random, and often unable to justify his decisions on anything other than the flimsiest of grounds. The results were disastrous, and led to the worst excesses of counterintelligence misjudgment. A string of senior CIA officers, most notably Dave Murphy, the head of the Soviet Division, unfairly fell under suspicion, their careers ruined. In the end, the situation became so bad, with so many different officers under suspicion as a result of Golitsin's leads, that the CIA decided the only way of purging the doubt was to disband the Soviet Division, and start again with a completely new complement of officers. It was obviously a way out of the maze, but it could never justify the damage to the morale in the Agency as a whole.
Although MI5 avoided the excesses of the CIA, Golitsin was still badly handled. He was allowed to think himself too important. All defectors should be treated at arm's length, and made to earn their keep, and as little feedback as possible should ever be given to them, so that they are never able to assess their own significance in relation to the rest of the Intelligence Service's activities. Right from his first visit to Britain in 1963, we opened up to Goltsin, and I was responsible for that as much as anyone. When the Mitchell case got under way Arthur and I shared everything with him, with Hollis' and F.J.'s agreement. He even chose the code name for the case, SPETERS, after a famous old Chekhist intelligence officer. He knew from the start that we were hunting a high-level spy, and inevitably that must have colored the intelligence he gave us. In the tense and almost hysterical months of 1963, as the scent of treachery lingered in every corridor, it is easy to see how our fears fed on his theories.
But there is no question that he knew of many penetrations in the West. The record in Britain, Norway, and France proves it. But in our haste we were never able to get an uncorrupted version of all his leads, and this, I am sure, is still costing the West dear.
The tide finally turned against Golitsin in 1967. He was invited to address the first CAZAB conference in Melbourne, Australia. His appearance was eagerly awaited by all those present, since so much of the previous five years had flowed from him. Golitsin was cocky as ever, and soon launched into a lengthy oration on the failures of Western intelligence services to interpret his material correctly.
"I know of more spies," he boomed, "why are you not willing to cooperate with me?"
He laid special emphasis on Britain, and the many penetrations which, he claimed, were as yet undiscovered, and which only he could locate. F.J. was smiling the smile he reserved for particularly tiresome people. He always hated his linen to be washed in public. Finally his patience snapped.
"What is it you want?" he asked. "The files... access to your files," replied Golitsin. "All right, you can have them - anything you want. We'll see if you've got anything to give us."
Golitsin came over in spring 1968. I initially pressed him to come over straightaway, but it was winter in London, and he told me darkly that he had already seen too much snow in his life. He was set up in a safe house near Brighton, and Michael McCaul and his wife lived with him to keep house and provide him with company. Every week I came down from Leconfield House with a briefcase of files for him to study.
When I first gave him material I warned him that he could not take notes. Both F.J. and I were worried that part of the motivation behind his "methodology" was so that he could amass as much intelligence from each Western service as possible for some unknown future purpose.
"But of course," he replied huffily, "I am a professional, Peter, I understand these things."
For four months Golitsin roamed across the most secret files in MI5, and every month Michael McCaul went to Glyn Mills Bank and drew out 10,000 pounds in cash, placed it in a small suitcase, and brought it down for Golitsin.
But for all the money, there was little that Golitsin had to give. F.J. had called his bluff. There were some useful things, of course. He studied the VENONA, and was able to fill in a few groups using his knowledge of KGB procedure. He spent a long time studying the files of the Joint Services Language School in Cambridge, looking through the curriculum vitaes of candidates to see if any caught his attention. We even conducted voice tests with some of those he was particularly interested in, to see if Golitsin could detect, from the idioms they used, whether or not they were picking up Russian words from KGB controllers. It was artful, but it never paid off, and in the end we decided that the only safe thing to do was to close the school down.
But in the crucial area - whether or not he could shed any light on the penetration problem - he was a complete loss. He filled in some more details in the Skripkin allegation and he did have one totally bizarre theory. He spent weeks studying the VENONA traffic to see if he could help us identify the unknown cryptonyms. There were two in particular which interested him - David and Rosa - who from the message already broken were obviously working together, probably as man and wife, or perhaps brother and sister. Golitsin asked for the files of all MI5 officers who had served during the time the VENONA traffic was taken. One day he announced he had an answer.
"Your spies are here. My methodology has uncovered them," he intoned darkly, pointing his finger like the witch-finder at two files on the table in front of him. I knew the files well. They belonged to Victor and Tess Rothschild.
"Don't be totally absurd, Anatole," I said. "Victor is one of the best friends this Service has ever had... how on earth did you jump at that conclusion?"
"They are Jewish. David and Rosa are Jewish names..."
It sounded like KGB anti-Semitism to me, and I could not help thinking that if this had been the CIA and I had been Angleton, Victor and Tess would almost certainly have been listed as spies on Golitsin's groundless interpretation.