rilain's Spies: Meddling Through rcond of a .tirrie• others half naked through the By Bernard Nossiter Other Cloaks, Other Daggers—II streets to prison. A parallel WalhoniiIcIl Pest Per.iiin Service plot a few days later to LONDON—British notable hits. The overthrow of victory after 10 years' assassinate Lenin misfired Intelligence stage-manages Messadegh in Iran has been struggle against Communist - only because Dora Kaplan's coups, burgles safes, black- popularly but wrongly supported tribes. The triumph pointblank shots somehow mails the vulnerable and credited to the CIA. According reflects a combination of failed to prove fatal. practices most of the other to the best sources here, It was forces from London and A long line of admiring curious arts familiar to well- a joint exercise with the Teheran. British journalists, some of endowed agencies with ov- British and their superior There have been some them undoubtedly on the erseas interests. Persian contacts playing the remarkable misses too. Bruce agency's payroll, have They have been at it here in senior role in selecting Lockhart, the British envoy to painted the Secret Intelligence a systematic way at least General Fazoltah Zahedi, Moscow and "Master Spy" Service (SIS), as the British since the 17th Century when father of the present Iranian Sidney Reilly used lavish foreign intelligence agency is Sir Francis Walsingham ambassador to Washington, to r bribes to buy up the now known, as the world's recruited bright Oxford and lead the "popular" revolt. Lithuanian regiments in 1918. greatest. When the U.S. got Cambridge clerics to spy for Just recently, Sultan Qaboos But they still failed to seize the into the business in World War the first Queen Elizabeth at of Oman, who owes his throne Bolshevik Party Central II, OSS officials sat ad- the French court. to a British-staged coup Committee and, as planned, See SPYING, All, Col. 1 There have been some against his father, claimed march Trotsky, Lenin and the 1111-1■. up with Foreign Office advice. A former British ambassador SPYING, From AI politics, at least since 1924. with an excellent entree to miiingly at the feet of SIS and But that one makes Watergate intelligence operations said he used it as a model. Look like the fumbling of was "satisfied that competent But the tarnish has long amateurs. SIS (or MI-IC as it political authority would be since corroded that shine. SIS Was known then/ planted, and clued in entree to intelligence was painfully damaged when probably created, the forged two of its most valuable of- operations said .he was "Zinoviev Letter." ficers, Kim Philby amd "Satisfied that competent ' It purported to come from George Blake, turned out to be political authority would be the Kremlin and urged the Soviet agents all along. In clued in on any intelligence thiniscule British Communist 1965, the agency endured the operation." party on to sabotage and supreme humiliation. .11 was This is not to say that free- subversion. entrusted to a new Chief or wheeling field officers would With the collaboration of not hold back on their bosses, "C" Sir Dick Goldsmith MI-5, top Foreign Office civil White, who came over from If I was instructed to report Servants and the Conservative the rival "firm", the counter- on,Swiss banks attacking the Party, the letter was made espionage agency MI-5). pound,"+ a former spy public on the eve of an elec- Today, "C" is Sir Maurice recalled, "I certainly would tion. It had the desired result, omit the' bank that was Oldield, 60, a widely respected crushing Ramsay career spy-bureaucrat. He has laundering the payments to MacDonald's first Labor displayed remarkable success my agents, particularly if I Party government and in battle of Whitehall, ex- had bribed a clerk there." stopping cold proposed panding SIS budgets at a great The most notable modern treaties with the young rate while everyone else gaffe came in 1956 when an Bolshevik state. There was suffers cuts. How good the insouciant SIS asked an never any serious inquiry into information his agency oVerweight and middle-aged this fraud, partly because the frogman, Lionel Crabbe, to produces is another question. 'Daily Mail and The Times of A former SIS officer of great look at the bottom of the 'London had lent themselves to distinction says "SIS is cruiser bearing Bulganin and the scheme. tremendously amateurish, Khrushchev on a goodwill trip - Now, says a former MI-5 very, very bad. It is to London. Crabbe botched the ease officer, it would be un- irredeemably inefficient." job and died or was killed. The 'thinkable for a prime minister An ex-research officer who Soviet leaders publicly to ramble through that covered a key region from a trumpeted the perfidy of Igency's tens of thousands of desk in the 19-story, L-shaped , Albion and bad will was dossiers for the sake of a office tower that houses the spread all around. bedtime peek at the sexual agency behind Waterloo ,Even on that occasion, SIS p berra lions of the famous. He Station thinks its reports are had gotten clearance from the 'adds, however, that Labor not much better than those a Foreign Office adviser who 'prime ministers are "much skillled journalist could sits in on its secret doings. The more hawkish" than Tories produce. This is not sur- adviser, who is said to have over security breaches and prising. A remarkable been egged on by an over- 'tend to "love all the (security) number of British journalists eager subordinate, demon- `stuff about their colleagues." abroad are reputed to be SIS s:trated incredible .The Tories in contrast, "still officers. misjudgment, but the affair Nave a whiff of the gentlemen There is little evidence that was not one in which SIS ran a :and respect the notion that you SIS wavers from the foreign solo off the rails. don't open other people's policy line laid down by the . There is no solid evidence 'mail" provided, of course, Foreign Office, Even its that the spy agencies have they are of the same class and research projects are drawn interfered in domestic ,nationality. On paper, there is a tidy ..division of labor between the Secret Intelligence Service and the Security Service, or •MI-5. SIS does the spying abroad and organizes sabotage and subversion outside the United ,Kingdom. It is ultimately responsible to Foreign Secretary James Callaghan . and, the highest ranking civil servant in the Foreign Office. The relationship between THOMAS BRIMELOW MAURICE OLDFIELD ...weekly dinner partners the Permanent Under exaggeration. Nevertheless, a Secretary and "C" is crucial. contributing editor at one of "C" not only needs Foreign Britain's most distinguished Office approval for operations journals estimates that more but also its cooperation in than half of the that particular placing officers at British paper's full time foreign embassies abroad. If an SIS staffers are on the SIS payroll. man wants to approach a There is no evidence, foreign official or civil servant however, that this high overseas, tap an Oleg proportion is found elsewhere Penkovsky in Moscow for in Fleet Street. information, he nust get Who is and who Is not, is a Foreign Office approval. game non-British foreign "SIS must go cap in hand to correspondents often play the Foreign Office," says on among themselves. None is authority. "They are fleas on known to have guessed that the FO back." Philby was still working in Until recently, Sir Thomas 1962 for the SIS' Ito say Brimelow was the Foreign nothing of the KGB) when he Office Permanent Under was correspondent in Beirut Secretary and he reportedly for both The Observer and The dined once a week with "C", Economist. The fact that Sir Maurice Oldfield. More Foreign Office intervention recently, Sir Maurice has had had landed him The Observer to rebuild this intimate con- job was successfully con- tact with Brimelow's suc- cealed. cessor, Sir Michael Palliser. SIS London headquarters, a Oldfield is planning to retire characterless office block on soon, reportedly giving way to Westminster Bridge Road, is one of his deputies, thereby labeled only "Century preserving the post of "C" for House." Innocent callers are a career spy-bureaucrat. told it houses the Department Abroad, many SIS officers, of the Environment. But each like their counter parts in morning, a West Indian bus CIA, employ a diplomatic driver piloting the No. 53 for cover, using the title of em- Plumstead Common cries out" bassy first, second or third as he pulls to the stop: "All secretary. Senior officers may right. This where all you be listed as embassy coun- spooks get off." selor in Washington, Paris and The structure is built around Harms end Ewing Bonn. a Mobil gas station, fitting Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald, left, on a visit Other SIS officers use the symbol for the agency's long with Herbert Hoover in 1929, after recovering from cover of businessman. An interest In oil and the Middle electoral defeat attributed to 'Zinoviev letter.' unknown number are posing East, its area of greatest as journalists. expertise. The young Cockney "Fleet Street relies on the woman at the pump says of secret vote to keep its course she knows who her correspondents in the field neighbors are. "CIA, inn't it'?" these days," one authority • The "other firm" or "those insists. The "secret vote" is shits across the river," as they the figure publicly published often refer to each other, is for the SIS budget. MI-5, the Security Service. It This statement is surely an is a gamekeeper to SIS' poacher, as night watchmen to English sense." helped Yemen's royalists in burglar.