WAS HE THE MOLE OF MOLES?

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000100440051-0
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: December 28, 2011
• Sequence Number: 51
• Publication Date: February 6, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/12/28: CIA-RDP90-00965R000100440051-0
~T ~ r WASHINGTON WASHINGTON TIMES
6 February 1985
Was he the mole of MOW130
r -1 neBritish domestic counter- the secret services and more
espionage agency, MI5, and accountability to Parliament which, M16.
the espionage and he says, "could greatly improve the However, Prime Minister Marga-
i n t e ll i g e n c e -gathering efficiency of the secret services and ret Thatcher and an investigation
agency, M16, performed brilliantly reduce the risk of their being pen- she ordered exonerated Mr. Hollis.
in World War II. MIS ran Operation etrated by more traitors." Nevertheless suspicion about him
"Double Cross," which detected Ger- By the Intelligence Act of 1980, lingers on, because, Mr. Pincher
man spies as fast as they entered Congress established two select writes, so many MIS operations went
Britain and turned them into double committees on intelligence, one in wrong in the 1950s and 1960s and
agents. M16 was responsible for the the House, the other in the Senate, only the presence of a Soviet agent
Ultra-Enigma coup, which broke the with full-time professional staffs. in M15 could explain these failings.
supposedly unbreakable German Both -.committees have extraordi_ J Whatever the truth is about Mr.
codes, Hollis, the fact is undeniable that
Since the end of the war, Chapman nary powers over the CIA, especially British intelligence suffered mas-
Pincher wri es, "the reputations of over its budget, which is under the sive and damaging penetration from
both services have plummeted ... direct supervision of Sen. Malcom 1939 on. e
following a succession of dis- Wallop. In addition, there are two like Mr. Pincher believe that despite
graceful spy scandals." presidential boards that keep tabs on I arrests, convictions and exposes,
What accounts for so drastic a the CIA and other intelligence agen- Soviet agents still operate within the
deterioration in cies. Something like that system is
performance of what Mr. Pincher wants for Britain. British intelligence community.
these two agencies? As anyone who
has followed events in Britain knows, One big reason for supporting Too Secret Too Long is not an easy
the Germans and their allies independent oversight of the British book to read. One slogs through its
couldn't penetrate the British secret intelligence agencies, says Mr. pages, trying to ignore typos, jum-
services; the Soviets did. The latter Pincher, would be to preclude - bled paragraphs and sclerotic prose.
made treachery to one's native land when spy revelations occur - the Despite these deficiencies, Mr.
~
a moral obligation for some of Bri- usual coverups by the British gov- Pincher has done a magnificent job
tain's intellectual elite. Nor were the ernment, whose ministers depend of research, with a superabundance
intellectual elites of other democra- on the advice of the very intelligence of footnotes, page-notes and appen-
cies immure. officials who could be responsible dices to bolster a case which has
According to Mr. Pincher, whose for the failure to stop Soviet pen- seriously distressed the British
earlier works contained sensational etration in time. establishment.
revelations on the collapse of British Another "heinous" activity on the Thy book has been harshly
espionage, the Soviets "have deeply part of M15 and M16, Mr. Pincher 1 attacked in The Times Literary Sup-
penetrated" not only MIS and M16 charges, is the deliberate mislead- plement because of its indictment of
but Government Communications ing of the CIA about Soviet espi- Mr. Hollis. Yet there is sufficient rea-
Headquarters (GCHQ), the British onage "purely to save the loss of son to regard Mr. Pincher's verdict
equivalent of the U.S. National Secu- professional face" Oversight could sympathetically because for so
rity Agency as well as the Foreign prevent this practice. many decades Britain has been a
Office and the Defence Ministry. land of Beulah for the Soviet KGB
The combined years of treachery of The- dramatic focus of this book and GRU. The Thatcher govern.
all proven major Soviet spies in Brit- is on Sir Roger Hollis, head of b't15 ment,no less than its predecessors,
ain - the number of years they func- from 1956-to 1965, who died in 1973, has yet to tell its own people the com-
tioned before they were exposed - As far as Mr. Pincher is concerned, - plete story of Soviet control - and if
totals 140 active spy-years. Says Mr. Mr. Hollis was a longtime Soviet not control in the days of Mr. Philby,
Pincher: agent, perhaps as far back as 1937, ; what else was it? - of British intel-
"The real reason for the long run the Mole of Moles, second only to ligence. Perhaps such reticence is
of Soviet successes has been the Kim Philby, who defected to the the price of "detente"; otherwise it
ineffectiveness of all the British Soviet Union after years of high- might be difficult to:persuade the
departments concerned with secu- level service in British counterintel- British public.to receive the likes of
rity, and especially of the main _ _ligence. _ -Mikhail Gorbachev as an honored
department, MIS" The evidence for this accusation guest.
Even worse, he says, is the fact is entirely - circumstantial. What
Arnold Beic visiting
that strengthens Mr. Pincher's case scholar at the Hoover Institution,
"peculiar' circumstances in against Mr. Hollis is that it is sup is
Britain 'permitted so many men, engaged in a study of congressional
and some women, to betray their ported by one former director-
general of M15, a former GCHQ I oversight of the CIA. He is a founding
country for long periods before member of the Consortium for the
director
at least two former direc-
bein
detect
d
,
g
e
, and, in too man
t' tors of M16, and several former long- Study of Intelligence, instances, v ithout being brou
ht
g
to
justice when they were detected" Too Secret 'fix) 1A)n
Of particular-interest to Chapman American readers will be Mr. pages,
M. Alarfin'.v, $19.95. 638 Pincher's recommendation of a svs
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/12/28: CIA-RDP90-00965R000100440051-0