How supported assassinations overseas until Gorbachev came to power A killing that shook the KGB THE EARLY years of the Gorbachev era saw a change in the KGB's attitude to terrorism. Moscow's growing distaste for some of its Third World terrorist associates was particu- larly evident in the case of Colonel Gadaffi. The turning point in that relationship was the demonstration outside the Libyan "Peo- ple's Bureau" in London in April 1984 when a Libyan intelligence man opened fire and Death that disenchanted Moscow: WPC Fletcher and a tribute where she was killed killed WPC Yvonne Fletcher. which refused to have them followed up. were attacking him in the western media. Pravda's report of the shooting was The KGB residency in Dublin was usually Moscow Centre made available the re- unusually frank, but the KGB knew more reluctant to make contact with any illegal than sources of a secret KGB laboratory. The first Pravda told its readers. The day after group because of what it regarded as the near- target was another Bulgarian emigre living in the shooting, the London residency received impossibility of keeping secrets in the Irish England. While on holiday on the Continent, a telegram" from Moscow saying the KGB Republic. Officers of the KGB claimed they surfaces in the room he was using were had reliable information that the shooting could learn a surprising amount merely by smeared with a poison which, once absorbed had been ordered by Gadaffi. An experi- listening to conversations in public houses 'through the skin, would prove fatal and leave enced hitman from the Libyan intelligence frequented by Sinn Fein supporters. Moscow no trace, according to the laboratory. Though station in East had been flown to was less pleased with the Irish intelligence it London to oversee the shooting. Thereafter the target became seriously ill, he survived. received and, in February 1985, Nikolai A new plan was worked out. The tips of Moscow tended to show some sympathy for Gribin, the head of the Third Department, Ronald Reagan's description of Gadaffi as a some umbrellas were adapted to enable them visited Dublin to try to improve the to inject the victim with a tiny metal pellet "flaky barbarian". residency's performance. By then Moscow Moscow also looked askance at Gadaffi's containing ricin, a highy toxic poison made was making increasing use of Dublin as a from castor oil seeds. Markov, then working willingness to supply money and Soviet bloc training ground for young agents to arms and explosives to the IRA. In the late for the Bulgarian section of the BBC World familiarise them with Irish and British Service, was the first victim. Before he died in Seventies, Moscow took the view that it was life. not responsible for what Gadaffi did with hospital, he told doctors he had been bumped One incident which did involve the KGB into by a stranger on Waterloo Bridge who this material, but by the mid-Eighties it had was the murder of Georgi Markov, a Bulgarian become concerned about the adverse pub- apologised for accidentally prodding him with emigre writer, in London in October 1978. his umbrella. A tiny stab wound and the licity. On a number of occasions, the IRA Some months earlier, the Bulgarian Com- approached KGB officers from London who remains of a pellet scarcely larger than a munist party general secretary, Todor Zhiv- pinhead were found in Markov's right thigh, were in Belfast under journalistic cover. kov, had sought KGB assistance in silencing The approaches were reported to Moscow, but by the time of the autopsy the ricin had emigres like Markov, his former protege, who decomposed. Tomorrow: The spy who came into the cold, or how the KGB shunned 16 THE TIMES MONDAY OCTOBER INSIDE THE KGB Cairncross: the Fifth Almost 20 years of cow, whereethe FCD (the KGB's speculation over the foreign intelligence arm) com- memorates its heroes. identity of the Fifth Deutsch arrived in England with instructions to contact Philby's friend, , a Man in the KGB spy research student at Trinity Coll- ege, Cambridge, who had already ring inside British begun recruiting a secret "ring of five" to join Comintern's under- intelligence ends ground war against fascism. A more doctrinaire and less today in this second imaginative NKVD controller than Deutsch might well have extract from a book concluded that the flamboyant Burgess, who flaunted his homo- co-written by sexuality at a time when it was still illegal, would be a liability rather , the top KGB officer and than an asset Deutsch, however, shared Burgess's contempt for British mole who defected to Britain five bourgeois sexual morality. Through Burgess, Deutsch be- came the controller of Donald years ago, and Dr Christopher Andrew Maclean, who entered the Foreign Office in 1935, and of the art histo- he KGB called the five rian , then a fellow Cambridge-educated of Trinity College, Cambridge. British agents who It was Blunt who talent-spotted worked for the Soviet the Fifth Man — the Trinity Union "the magnificent undergraduate . Tfive", a title given them after the But for the conspiracy theories release of the film The Magnifi- surrounding the career of Sir cent Seven. Guy Burgess, Donald Roger Hollis, and the other false Maclean, Kim Philby, Anthony trails which confused the media Blunt and the Fifth Man - molehunt in the Eighties, Cairn- identified for the first time today as John Cairncross — formed the most valuable group of moles in KGB history. Kim Philby was the first to begin work for Soviet intelligence. After graduating from Cambridge 15 1990 in the summer of 1933, he spent most of the next year in Vienna, working with the Comintern underground. There he was re- cruited to the NKVD (as the KGB was then known) by the Hungar- ian Teodor Maly, a defrocked Catholic priest turned NKVD illegal- In spring 1934 Philby returned to Britain with instructions from an revealed Maly to penetrate the intelligence services, however long it took him. To act as Philby's controller, Maly sent Arnold Deutsch, an illegal who bad worked for him in Vienna, to live in London posing as a university lecturer carrying out research. Today, portraits of Maly and Deutsch hang in the secret "Memory Room" in Mos- cross might well have been un- injustices of the Depression, he masked as the Fifth Man even entered Glasgow University before Gordievsky provided the where, for two years, he studied clinching evidence. French, German, political econ- Had the KGB been less addicted - omy and English. to the conspiracy theory, it might He then moved to the Conti- have welcomed the confusion nent to improve his languages, generated by the molehunt and the gaining the licence es leitres from damage done by it to the reput- the Sorbonne and winning a ation of MI5, which became the scholarship to Trinity College, butt of numerous jokes suggesting Cambridge. By the time Cairn- 'it was an outstation of the KGB. cross arrived at Trinity to read Instead, there were frequent French and German in October suggestions in Moscow Centre 1934, he was an open communist. that the whole molehunt was some His licence from the Sorbonne sinister British plot. allowed him to skip the first part By the end of the Eighties the of the modern languages degree hunt for the Fifth Man had begun course and graduate with first- to resemble Monty Python's quest class honours and a Cambridge for the holy grail, but throughout BA in only two years. that decade, when a string of One of Caimcross's college books and newspaper stories were supervisors in French literature suggesting Hollis and was Blunt, who gave various others as the him a series of in- Fifth Man, Gordiev- dividual weekly tu- sky already knew his `Cairncross torials (known as identity through his penetrated supervisions). Blunt's researches for the patrician manner and 1980 official history more Marxist intellec- of the KGB, which tualism, apparently gave him access to corridors of aloof from the harsh material showing that power and realities of the class Cairncross was the struggle, jarred on the missing link. intelligence passionate young Although Cairn- than any of Scottish communist. cross is the last of the "I didn't like him," five to be publicly the others' Caimcross said later, identified, he success, "and he didn't like fully penetrated a me." Blunt, however, greater variety of the corridors of talent-spotted him for Burgess, power and intelligence than any of who met Cairncross during one of the other four. In less than a his visits to Cambridge and estab- decade after leaving Cambridge, lished an immediate rapport with he served successively in the him. Foreign Office, the Treasury, the Forty years later, in an inter- private office of a government view in which he concealed most minister, the signals intelligence of his KGB career, Cairncross (sigint) agency GC&CS (the fore- acknowledged that he had found runner of GCHQ), and the SIS. Burgess "fascinating, charming Gordievsky recalls Dmitri Svet- and utterly ruthless". Burgess anko, while head of the British recruited Cairncross as a Corn- desk in the FCD, speaking of intern agent during one of his Cairncross with "awe, admiration visits to Cambridge in 1935 and and respect". Svetanko said; put him in touch with Deutsch. By "Cairncross's achievements were 1936, Cairncross had broken all the equal of any of the five except overt contact with the Communist Philby." party and applied to join the Caimcross was born in 1913 Foreign Office. He passed top of into a modest but intellectually the FO entrance exam, 100 marks gifted Glasgow family. His elder ahead of a brilliant young fellow of brother, Alec (who had no connec- All Souls, Tom O'Neill (later a tion with the KGB), was a leading British diplomat), and distinguished economist who be- joined as a came head of the government's Soviet agent in the Foreign Office. Economic Service, Master of St Over the next two years, Peter's College, Oxford, and Cairncross worked in the Ameri- Chancellor of Glasgow Univer- can, 'League of Nations, Western sity. Like Alec, John won a and Central departments of the scholarship to Hamilton Acad- FO without finding a real niche for emy, near Glasgow. In 1930, at the himself. He quickly gained access age of 17, probably already in- to what he described as "a wealth fluenced by the political traditions of valuable information on the of Red Clydeside and the social progress of the civil war in Spain". The Fifth: John Cairacross, now aged 76 and living in France

Cairncross, however, lacked when Cairncross became private Maclean's easy charm and social secretary to Lord Hankey, a form- graces. Though he tried to cul- er cabinet secretary who had tivate a wide range of contacts longer experience of both the within White all, he did not make cabinet and Whitehall committees friends easily. Sir John Colville, ...than anyone else in British public assistant private secretary to Nev- life. On the outbreak of war in ille Chamberlain and subsequent- September 1939, Lord Hankey ly private secretary to Winston had become minister without port- Churchill, found him a "very folio in Chamberlain's war cabinet, intelligent, though sometimes in- numbering among his responsibil- coherent, bore . . . He was always ities the intelligence services. asking people out to lunch . . . he When Churchill succeeded ate very slowly, slower than Chamberlain in May 1940, Lord anyone I've ever known." Hankey lost his place in the war Cairncross made detailed notes cabinet (initially only five strong) of his lunchtime conversations in but retained his ministerial rank Whitehall which he passed on to as Chancellor of the Duchy of the NKVD. After Cairncross's Lancaster, continuing to receive first year in the Foreign Office, all cabinet papers, to chair many Maly suggested to him that he secret committees and to oversee think of transferring to the Trea- the intelligence services. sury, a department which, unlike Too many government papers the Foreign Office, the NKVD had passed through Cairncross's hands yet to penetrate. He finally did so for him to pass on more than a in October 1938. The Foreign minority to the NKVD. But Office was probably glad to see Dmitri Svetanko, head of the him go, having concluded that his British desk at Moscow Centre in awkward manner made him un- the late Seventies and early Eight- suitable for a diplomatic career. ies, told Gordievsky that Cairn- In September 1940, the NKVD cross provided "literally tons of acquired a remarkable new insight documents". One of the first was into British government policy probably the third of Lord The Four, photographed in the Thirties (from left): Kim Philby, Guy Burgess, Donald Maclean, Anthony Blunt

enabled it to provide probably the the help of Cairncross's intelli- most valuable intelligence in Brit- gence. This series of three massive Hankey's six-monthly "War ish history. Cairncross was the air raids was to be remembered as Appreciations", dated September only member of the magnificent the greatest operation of the red 1940, which correctly forecast that five to penetrate GC&CS. In air force in the Great Patriotic German plans to invade Britain March 1942, Lord Hankey was War. Caimcross received Mos- would fail and give way to a U- dropped from Churchill's govern- cow's special commendation for boat war against British shipping. ment. A few months later Cairn- the intelligence he had supplied. Among the committees chaired cross entered . By now, however, the strain of by Lord Hankey which must have Anatoli Gorsky, Cairncross's transporting intelligence been of particular interest to the wartime controller, whom he knew from Bletchley to London had NKVD was the scientific advisory as Henry, gave him money to buy become too much for Cairncross committee, composed of some of and run a cheap car to bring docu- to bear. On the eve of the battle of Britain's most distinguished sci- ments to London on his days off. Kursk, despite Gorsky's urging entists, which met for the first Though Caimcross spent less than him to remain at Bletchley, time in October 1940 to co- a year at Bletchley, his time there Caimcross accepted a job in the ordinate the application of science coincided with both the turning of SIS. For the next two years, he to the war effort. For a time the tide on the eastern front and worked successively in Section V Caimcross served as joint sec- the point at which the Russians (counter-intelligence),. the same retary of the committee. He kept began to gear good intelligence to department as Philby, then in careful watch over Lord Hankey's the conduct of operations. Section I (political intelligence). continued access to top-secret war Cairncross believed that the fin- Like most wartime intelligence cabinet papers. When new war est hour of his 15 years as a Soviet recruits, Cairncross was demobil- cabinet regulations in June 1941 agent came before the battle of ised at the end of the war. Unlike limited the circulation Kursk in the summer of 1943, Philby, he had not got on well with of diplomatic tele- when the faced Opera- his secret service colleagues. Hisi grams to Lord tion Citadel, the last great German department chief during the last Hankey, both he and `Throughout offensive on the eastern front. On year of the war, David Footman, Cairncross com- April 30 the Britiih sent Moscow a head of political intelligence in plained personally to the media warning of an impending German SIS, found him an odd person, the Foreign Office. molehunt, attack on the Kursk salient, com- with a chip on his shoulder". After The restrictions were bined with German intelligence the war, Cairncross returned to the quickly lifted. Gordievsky assessments of Soviet forces in the Treasury, providing The most import- already area derived from the Enigma intelligence to Boris ant scientific intel- intercepts. But Caimcross pro- Krotov and Yuri Mo- ligence to which knew who din, his post-war case Cairncross had access the Fifth vided the text of the intercepts and officers, at monthly concerned the Anglo- the unit identifications which intervals. In 1947, American decision to Man was' were always omitted from the Cairncross was closely build an atomic sanitised official version of Ultra - concerned with the bomb. If, as is prob- intelligence — the product of passage of the Radio- able, Cairncross was the first to breaking wartime enemy codes - active Substances Act. warn the NKVD, he ranks as the sometimes supplied by Whitehall. Two years later he first atom spy. The intercepts most appreciated chaired the Treasury The key section of the wartime by the NKVD were a series which sub-committee which intelligence community was the identified the disposition of Luft- dealt with Nato fi- sigint agency GC&CS, based at waffe squadrons before the battle. nances. Meanwhile, Bletchley Park, in Buckingham- Fearing that a German offensive Philby remained in shire. Bletchley's success in break- might begin on May 10 (it actually SIS. Two other mem- ing the Enigma machine ciphers started on July 5) Soviet bombers bers of the magnificent five, used by the German armed forces made a pre-emptive strike against Burgess and Maclean, continued 17 German airfields, selected with careers in the Foreign Office until their flight to Moscow in 19)1. The myth has spread that the Fifth- Man provided the final warning of Maclean's impending interrogation, which led to his . In reality, Cairncross had nothing to do with the flight of Burgess and Maclean. The crucial tip-off came from Philby, then in Washington, who learnt of plans to interrogate Maclean from the MIS liaison officer. Shortly after the flight of Bur- gess and Maclean, a lapse by Blunt effectively ended Caimcross's career as an active Soviet agent. While searching Burgess's flat for incriminating documents, Blunt failed to notice a series of unsigned notes describing confidential dis- cussions in Whitehall. Cairncross was later identified as the author. MI5 began surveillance of Cairn- cross, and intercepted a summons to a meeting with his case officer. Cairncross turned up, but Modin did not. During subsequent inter- rogation by MI5, Cairncross admitted passing confidential notes to the Russians, but denied being a spy. He resigned from the Treasury and worked in North America for several years before joining the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the UN in . Cairncross finally confessed to MI5 after further interrogation by the security service in 1964. KGB: The Inside Story of its Foreign Operations from Lenin to Gorbachev is published on Thurs- day by Hodder & Stoughton (£24)