THE MEMORY OF GORONWY REES

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00552R000100600018-7
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: June 21, 2010
• Sequence Number: 18
• Publication Date: February 15, 1980
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/06/21: CIA-RDP90-00552R000100600018-7
THE NEW STATESMAN
15 February 1980
The memory of Goronwy
Rees
From Andrew Boyle
For the benefit of readers who may have been
misled by Richard Winkler's sn'de criticism of my
conversations with the late Goronwy Rees on his
death-bed (,s 1 February), a few background facts
would not be out of order. First, the articles were
intended by Rees for publication. They duly
appeared in the Observer. Second, they drew partly
on material in Rees's own memoir A Chapter of
Accidents and in their original form the necessary
'quotes within quotes' were given. Rees and I
consulted the book together. He had a copy by him.
Third, Rees was well enough to read and approve,
with minor amendments, the completed text of the
first and rough draft of the second article. Fourth, as
might have been expected of conversations. lasting
many hours, spread over'several evenings, much
more was said than was published. Fifth, it was also
Rees's intention, had he lived longer, to revise A
Chapter of Accidents, and to include in the revised
veision those very passages in my articles to which
your correspondent takes exception as looking sus-
piciously like Boylesque inventions.
I wonder why Richard Winkler failed to acknow-
ledge, incidentally, his own debt to Anthony Bhtnt.
Perhaps he failed to notice that it was Blunt, a
stickler for such bogus textual purity, who first
pointed out the one important time-discrepancy in
A Chapter of Accidents on which your correspon-
dent lays undue emphasis. On p. 209 Rees certainly
did write that his interview with MI5 took place
'next day', i.e. on the day following Blunt's unsuc-
cessful attempt to dissuade him from going (28
May, not Winkler's 29 May). Had Blunt or even
Winkler troubled to read on (p. 211), they would
have found that this interview with M15 could not
have occurred until 7 June at the earliest. For, on
emerging from M15 headquarters, Rees 'saw the
headlines in the evening papers announcing that
two British diplomats had vanished into thin air'. Is
it surprising that Mr Winkler has tumbled into the
trap he laid for me?
c% Hutchinson, 3 Fitzroy Square, London W1
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/06/21: CIA-RDP90-00552R000100600018-7