WAS HE THE MOLE OF MOLES?

Document Type: 
Collection: 
Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): 
CIA-RDP90-00965R000604920026-6
Release Decision: 
RIPPUB
Original Classification: 
K
Document Page Count: 
1
Document Creation Date: 
December 27, 2016
Document Release Date: 
December 20, 2012
Sequence Number: 
26
Case Number: 
Publication Date: 
February 6, 1985
Content Type: 
OPEN SOURCE
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PDF icon CIA-RDP90-00965R000604920026-6.pdf132.62 KB
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Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/12/20: CIA-RDP90-00965R000604920026-6 pp _~r FiRT4rl j71 , EC WASHINGTON TIMES ?- 6 February 1985 s he the mole of moles BOOK RENgW4mold Beicwnan he British domestic counter espionage agency MIS, and the espionage and intelligence-gathering agency, M16, performed brilliantly in World War II. MIS ran Operation "Double Cross," which detected Ger- man spies as fast as they entered Britain and turned them into double agents. M16 was responsible for the Ultra-Enigma coup, which broke the supposedly unbreakable German ' codes. Since the end of the war, Chapman Pincher writes, "the reputations of both services have plummeted .. following a succession of dis- graceful spy scandals." What accounts for so drastic a deterioration in performance of these two agencies? As anyone who has followed events in Britain knows, the Germans and. their allies couldn't penetrate the British secret services; the Soviets did. The latter made treachery to one's native land a moral obligation for some of Bri- tain's intellectual elite. Nor were the intellectual elites of other democra- cies immure. According to Mr. Pincher, whose earlier works contained sensational revelations on the collapse of British espionage, the Soviets "have deeply penetrated" not only MIS and M16 but ?Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), the British equivalent of the U.S. National Secu- rity Agency, as well as the Foreign Office and the Defence Ministry The combined years of treachery of all proven major Soviet spies in Brit- ain- the number of years they func- tioned before they were exposed totals 340 active Pincher: spy-years. Says Mr. "The real reason for. the long run of Soviet successes has been the ineffectiveness of all the British departments concerned with secu- rity, and especially of the main department, MIS" Even worse, he says, is the fact 1 that "peculiar" circumstances in Britain "permitted so many men, and some women, to betray their country for _long__periods before being detected, and, in too many instances, without being brought to --justice when they were detected" Of particular interest to American readers will be Mr. Pincher's recommendation of a svs- tem of independent supervision of the secret services and more accountability to Parliament which, he says, "could greatly improve the efficiency of the secret services and reduce the risk of their being pen- etrated by more traitors." By the Intelligence Act of 1980, Congress established two select committees on -intelligence, one in the House, the other in the Senate, with full-time professional staffs' Both _-.committees have extraordi- nary powers over the CIA, especially over its budget, which is under the direct supervision of Sen. Malcom Wallop. In addition, there are two presidential boards that keep tabs on the CIA and other intelligence agen cies. Something like that system is what Mr. Pincher wants for Britain. One big reason for supporting independent oversight of the British intelligence -agencies, says Mr. Pincher, would be to preclude - when spy revelations occur - the usual cover-ups by the British gov- ernment, whose ministers depend on the advice of the very intelligence officials who could be responsible for the failure to stop Soviet pen- etration in time. Another "heinous" activity on the part of MI5 and M16, Mr. Pincher charges,' is the deliberate mislead- ing of the CIA about Soviet espi- onage"purely to save the loss of professional face." Oversight could prevent this practice. The- dramatic focus of this book is on Sir Roger Hollis, head of MIS from 1956.to 1965, who died in 1973. As far as Mr. Pincher is concerned, Mr. Hollis was a longtime Soviet agent, perhaps as far. back as 1937, the Mole of Moles, second only to Kim Philby, who defected to the Soviet Union after years of high- level service in British counterintel- ligence. The evidence for this accusation I is entirely -circumstantial : What .~ strengthens Mr.. Pincher's case against Mr. Hollis is that it is sup- ported by one former director- general of MI5, a former GCHQ director, at' least two former direc- tors of M16, and several former long- serving officers of both M15 and M16. However, Prime Minister Marga- ret Thatcher and an investigation she ordered exonerated Mr. Hollis. Nevertheless suspicion about him lingers on, because, Mr. Pincher writes, so many MIS operations went wrong in the 1950s and 1960s and only the presence of a Soviet agent in M15 could explain these failings. Whatever the truth is about Air. Hollis, the fact is undeniable that British intelligence suffered mas- sive and damaging penetration from 1939 on. Investigative journalists like Mr. Pincher believe that despite arrests, convictions and exposes, Soviet agents still operate within the British intelligence community. 7bo Secret Too Long is not an easy book to read. One slogs through its pages, trying to ignore typos, jum- bled paragraphs and sclerotic prose. . Despite these deficiencies, Mr. Pincher has done a magnificent job of research, with a superabundance of footnotes, page-notes and appen- dices to bolster a case which has seriously distressed the British establishment. The book has been harshly attacked in The Times Literary Sup- plement because of its indictment of Mr. Hollis. Yet there is sufficient rea.11 to regard Mr. Pincher's verdict sympathetically because for so many decades Britain has been a land of Beulah for the Soviet KGB and GRU. The Thatcher govern- ment,.no less than its predecessors, has yet to tell its own people the com- plete story of Soviet control - and if not control in the days of Mr. Philby, what else was it? - of British intel- ligence. Perhaps such reticence is the price of "detente"; otherwise it might be difficult to'-persuade the British public,to receive the likes of -Mikhail Gorbachev..as-an honored - guest. Arnold Beichrrian, visiting scholar at the Hoover Institution, is engaged in a study of congressional oversight of the CIA. He is o founding member of the Consortium for the Study of Intelligence. Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/12/20: CIA-RDP90-00965R000604920026-6