TRICKS, DIRTY TRICKS AND BLUNDERS

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000605640002-2
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: May 1, 2012
• Sequence Number: 2
• Publication Date: February 17, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/05/01 : CIA-RDP9O-00965ROO0605640002-2
e :. F'CE YFa G.7 I
`,Z~` Baek h `viE NEW YORK TINES
17 February 1.985
ricks, Dirty Tricks and B1~nders
MIG:. - ?
British Secret Intelligence
Service Operations 1909-45.
By Nigel West. . -
Illustrated. 266 pp. New York:
Random House. $16.95.
TOO SECRET
TOO LONG
By Chapman Pincher.. _ _
. "Illustrated. 638 pp. New York:
St. Martin's Press. $19.95. -
modest job of sketching the his- that Sir Roger Hollis, an M.I.5
tory of M.I.6 up to the end of officer who served as chief of the
World War II. Sparely written, organization for the nine years
his book is a straightforward pre- up to 1965 and who died in 1973,
sentation of the organization's was a long-term Soviet agent.
changing structure, leadership Mr. Pincher's 30-year career of
and relations with both Conser- . investigative reporting "-on the
vative and- Labor governments. British services reaches its
He analyzes its__ headquarters climax here. In over, 60 episodic
sections and its field stations, de chapters; he -presents a circum= -;
scribing functions and giving or- stantial case based on the thesis 1,
ganizational charts and the
names and assignments ? of offi-
cers, each with a capsule biogra-
phy. Assisted by many old hands
who- were willing to fill the au-
By Harry Rositzke - thor in on events some 40 years or
more in the
ast
he has done a
p
,
meticulous job of research.
, .-Western There is, however, little here -
ISTORIES of-
secret services. by out for the spy buff. The well-known
ciders range -from--me- cases are only briefly treated -
thodical bureaucratic - Sidney Reilly's plots against
analysis to -sensational exposes Lenin; the kidnapping of two.
of their incompetence and im M.I.6 officers by the Germans at -.
rn;;rality. "M16" and "Too- Se- Venlo, the Netherlands, in 1939;
cret Too Long," both written by the SovI t networks operating
British journalist-historiaAs who. against Hitler in Switzerland;
have devoted their careers "-to and 'Cicero, code name for
systematic investigation of Brit- Elyesa Bazna, the valet who was
ish `intelligence, mark the two paid by the Germans (in forged
ends of the spectrum.- pounds) for stealing documents
Between them Nigel West and from his master, the British Am-
Chapman Pincher have written bassador .to Ankara. There are
nine books'on a' subject that ap-- cameo appearances by Somerset
pears to have an irresistible ap- ::. Maugham and Graham Greene.
peal to the British appetite-arid` M.I.6 began-the war with an
with good reason. The-wartime odd disregard for counterespion-,
and postwar history of both the age work, and the German serv-
domestic Security Service . ices were able to penetrate some
(M.I.5) and the Secret. Intelli- - " of its overseas operations. Yet it'
. gence Service (M.I.6) are filled not only came to grips with the
wth dramatic episodes involving German security forces in the
agents and double agents, course of the war, but displayed.
treachery in high places and real foresight in the summer of
sensational exposures and cover- 1944 by establishing - a special
ups far exceeding the meager section to deal with Soviet espio-
Federal Bureau of Investigation nage and subversion. Unhappily,
and Central Intelligence Agency Kim Philby, a long-term Soviet
malpractices recorded in S nate agent, was placed in charge.
investigatiinsln the mid-1170.'s. -Men like Kim Philby and his
Nigel _ West; has taken .' i the colleagues, Guy Burgess) Donald
Maclean and Anthony Blunt,
Harry Rositzke, a . former playa key role as well in Chap-
operations officer for the Central man Pincher's. "Tao Secret, Too
Intelligence Agency, has written Long," which deals with the his-
numerous books, including the tory of M.I.5. One of tha service's
recent - Mruiaging Moscow: tasks is to protect the security of
G_-.s or Goods?" . M.I.6, and Mr. Pincher's thesis is
that M.I.5 could not have per-
formed so miserably over the
years without a "protective
hand" in its Tanks working for
the Russians. This mole would
have tipped off-the K.G.B. on
current investigations of Soviet
-agents in-the-British-establish-_-
ment, purposely bungled the in-
terrogation of Soviet intelligence
'defectors from Igor Gouzenko (a
code clerk for the Soviet military
attache in Ottawa who defected
in 1945), to Yuri Nosenko .(a
K.G.B. officer who turned him-
self over to the Americans in
Switzerland in 1964), and throt-
tled investigative actions against
suspect members of both M.I.5
and M.I.6.
R. PINCHER builds
up his case by ascrib-
ing each-instance of
M.I.5's ineptitude to
Hollis's personal- intervention.
Almost every Soviet "success" is
a British "failure"; every case of
British bungling, a Soviet con-
trivance; every coincidence, evi-
dence of conspiracy. Mr. Pinch-
er's indictment is built on coinci-
dences of time and place ranging
from China in the late 1920's to
the Oxford suburbs in the 1940's,
on, actual and possible personal
associations, and on a generous
approach to 'probabilities - his
analysis is replete with hypothet-
icals like'"may have been" or
"could have been."
No outsider can measure the
truth of the Hollis case, but after
a series of investigations the offi-
cial British verdict appears to be
.,not guilty, not innocent," a frus-
trating judgment for any coun-
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/05/01 : CIA-RDP9O-00965ROO0605640002-2
 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/05/01 : CIA-RDP90-00965R000605640002-2
terintelligence officer but one
that will probably stand unless
hard evidence is found from the
decoding of old cable traffic or a
new Soviet defector.
Mr. Pincher.pays lip service to
the professional acumen of the
Soviet services in recruiting an
impressive roster of spies, but
-finds -the secret of their success
,in the "rot" within the British -
services themselves; kiis recom-
mendation for the' ills of British
intelligence is simple: oversight.
He appends to many of his case
discussions long footnotes .'. on -
what any oversight body outside
the services might have contrib-
..uted to avoid the--failures he
cites, and closes his book with a
chapter on "The Outlook for
Oversight." -
He should perhaps have given
Soviet competence at least.equal
credit; and he might also have
asked, for purposes of compari-
son, why -the American services
have been immune to this `rot.
During the interwar years
Britain was Moscow's main
enemy, and Its secret services a
major target: The Central Intelli-
gence Agency did not come into
being until 1947, and the intensity
of American postwar anti-Com-
munism, unique among the
Allies, had emotional and pa-
triotic overtones that motivated
many of its recruits, creating a
climate in which trading with the
enemy was unequivocally trea-
sonable. The-C-.I-.A started off in
the Truman "loyalty" years with
a rigorous -weeding out of Corn-
munists and homosexuals from
its ranks. Communism - in the
1930's thrived at Oxford and
Cambridge, -not at Harvard or -
Yale. Homosexuality was consid-
ered an invitation to blackmail in,
Washington, not- in London.
Both books naturally deal,with
the American connection, with
Chapman Pincher emphasizing
the steady-- loss of -C.I.A. and
F.B.I. confidence in their scan-
dal-ridden British cousins: Nigel
West's brief analysis of the Of-
fice bf Strategic Services-British
relationship highlights one factor
that was to play a crucial role in
the evolution of .: the C.I.A.
Churchill's decision to "set Eu-
rope ablaze" by unconventional
means (mainly sabotage) led to
the creation of the Special Opera-
tions Executive as an instrument
for covert action separate from
M.I.6. The O.S.S. became a jun-
ior partner.-
- both the British and
American "special operations"
folded with the end of the war, a
-separate unit for action opera-
tions was - re-created in 1948
under the aegis of the State De-
partment and formally inte-?.
grated into the C.I.A. structure
-four years later. This combina-
tion of secret intelligence and
covert action under one roof is
unique among major services to
the C.I.A. and the K.G.B.
R. PINCHER'S 'faith
in the potential effect
of an outside commit-
tee on espionage and
support for rebel groups in An-
gola or Nicaragua, but no outside
body can handle with compe-
tence the far more secret and-
highly complex issues raised by
the handling of Western agents in
a' Communist regime, by the
proper exploitation of a Soviet
-defector, or by the search for a
-mole: Operations like these are
the core of any Western service,
and even leakp -f outsiders are
in no position to judge a profes-
sipal competence. of., their per/
sonnel. They will make their
tai%es, as all professionals do, but
evOn_in a suspicious society they
mt, like war planners and mis-
silt resea
the rchers, :be.-left to do.
r jobas well as they can. 0
counterespionage operations Is
far too sanguine., Congressional
oversight, as in Washington, can
deal more or less effectively with
such covert.action operations as
Disaster In the Netherlands -
badly wrong. -A young Royal
Netherlands Navy officer,
Lieutenant Lodo van Hamel,
was parachuted into occupied
Holland near Leyden on 28 -
August 1940 with a . -,
transmitter and instructions
to link up with one of the
organizations. Vas Hamel arrived.. safely and proceeded to
create ao less than four local rings, each equipped-with home-
-made transmitters. However, two months later, when he was-
-summDned to his rendezvous with a seaplane on the North Sea
coast for his flight-back-to;England, he was denounced to the
Germans and arrested near Zurig. The Germans also managed to arrest three of his travelling companions, all of whom were
-
connected to an embryonic Dutch resistance cell. Professor
Becking, one of the leaders of the Orde Dienst resistance group,
survived the ordeal, as did his two couriers, but van Hamel was
tried by court-martial and executed the following June.
This disaster served to confirm to the Dutch that the British
were thoroughly unreliable, and relations went from bad to
worse. By December 1941 Rabagliati and van t'Sant-had
infiltrated five agents into occupied Holland, but only one, Aart
Alblas, was left at liberty. He too was soon to be arrested and
executed at Mauthausen in 1944. - From "M16. "
,JZ~~g
Unfortunately, the very
first joint SIS/Dutch F
j operation attempted went
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/05/01 : CIA-RDP90-00965R000605640002-2