WAS HE THE MOLE OF MOLES?

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• 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
• Publication Date: February 6, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

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