SUNDAY TELEGRAPH - ARTICLE ON GEOFFREY PRIME

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP96B01172R000300020005-3
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 4
• Document Creation Date: December 16, 2016
• Document Release Date: July 28, 2005
• Sequence Number: 5
• Publication Date: November 14, 1982
• Content Type: NSPR

ARE we better than our,
ll b
main aies,y sheer
luck or good judgment,, at
catching spies ; or are we
simply far worse at breed-
ing. 'then'? Those are the
questions which arise as
",y ''ine jOIIIS the
postwar line 'of, British
traitors: Soviet agents at
first sight seem, to pop, up
wi
h th
t
e remol
rseess regu.r-
larity of the cuckoo coming
out to sing from a Swiss
clock.
We have to admit to sheer
l
k
uc
in th Pi
e.rme case. It
was not MI5 who caught him
but the co'nsta'bulary of
Meroia. The first damaging
evidence was not his one-
time Soviet cypher paid but
his list of the 2,287 young
schoolgirls of the Chelten-
ham area he had logged for
possible molestation' with all
the meticulous thoroughness
of the Civil Service deskman.
'Yet, whatever role chance
o'r skill played in uncover-
ing this a n d earlier
treacheries, that first ques-
tion can be answered only inn
the perspective of t h e
second., At the end of a
week that has seen much
wild factual speculation
(and even wilder comment)
and has presented us, inside
Parliament, with the gro-
tesque spectacle of Left-
wingers joining the chorus
of agitated patriots, it is per.
~peeti,ve, above all, that is
sadly. needed.
The. first thing to look at
,,,ore closely is the British
'ecord itself. Noth;ng that
rollows must he read as play-
'ng down, let alone excusing,
the appalling damage that
treachery has been able to
inflict upon this country.
However, all images, and
especially the dark ones,
need to be got into focus. Of
the 16 British spies for the
Soviet Union unmasked since
he war (beginning with Dr
Alan Nunn May in 1946 and
Funning down to Geoffrey
?rime today), no fewer than
even were prewar or war-
ime recruits, all of them
'uborned in very special
limates.
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3e rtuited in
Korean war
Tv[ fact, for the last occa-
sion before Prime when the
Soviet KGB managed to enrol
a member of the British
intelligence ? community we
have to go back to the
foreign-born George Blake,
who was retruitedduring the
Korean war and who was dis
covered and made to confess'
some 10 years later in 1961.,
Indeed he was the only British)
intelligence official the Bus-'
sians are known to have got)
their hands on in the whole"
post-m?ar?,period, until Prime'
fell into their laps while serv-,
ing with the RAC` in Berlin in
January of 1968. Our other
spies, of the postwar period
held jobs' such as Admiralty
clei-k, electronics engineer,
RAF technician, mino.r civil.
servant and the like.
All this; heaven knows, is
bad enough. But one patrio
tic popular paper-has asked,
apropos the Prime case,
"Can Britain be trusted to
keep any secrets?" (implying
that other Western countries
can); and another paper,
printing our roll-call of
traitors,, categorically stated
that it was worse than that of
any of our allies. Some coni-
par?isons however odorous
may therefore be salutary.
Much stress. has rightly
been laid on the damage. to
American intelligence inter-
ests caused by,Prime, whose
work at the Cheltenham
code-breaking and monitor-
ing unit was part and parcel
of an intricate and inter-
locked Anglo-American oper-
ation. There have been asser-
tions that the Americans
were not fully informed
about the background to
Prime's arrest in the sum-
mer and that, as a result,
Washington has been " wind-
ing down " its own intelli-
gence co-operation with
Britain. Both statements are
wide of the mark.'
The Americans were told
everything that was signifi-
cant in Prime's original 30-
page confession and the way
is clear, now that the case is
no longer sub judice, for
them to take part,'alongside
the. British, in'a much length-
ier and more detailed inter-
rogation of the convicted
man. But essentially, right up
to now'. they have known
what we have known.
There has, I am assured by
both American and British
sources, also been no lessen-
ing of contact between the
two sides as a result of the
Prime case. As for the Ameri-
can reaction, this has certain-
ly been one of dismay, but at
the professional -level the
dismay was tempered with
sympathy, and the general
attitude has been: " There
but for the grace of God, go
we."
That feeling can be under-
stood, for over, the past
20 years ' key American
defence and intelligence
organisations have had the
misfortune to go that way,
and at a greater pace than
their. BniitAsh cou+nterparts.
Their story begins in 1960
with a. purge of some two
-dozen. officials Of the
National Security Agency
(the American counterpart to
our Cheltenham Government
Communications
mem
after two , homosexual
Willilm
bers of the NCA,
Martin and Herron Mitchell,
had defected to Moscow with
a 'suitcase full of secrets.
Hushing up by
the French
Since then there have
been no further espionage
scandals within the NSA.
Rwt a total of nine other
Soviet agents were arrested
and convicted between have
and 1981. These
included personnel from the
TJS Army the US Air Force.
and the ((,-,IA) 1 iIntelligence
tself. The
material handed over
maternal they,
to the Soviet niondes ranged ed
from: top
cyphers to information about
soy satellite systems and the
Titan Two missiles-
C e look at our main
T ^ France,
allies in Europethe , Gaullist
especially durin.,
ht to have
era, is thoug
hushed up its espionage scan-
possible. On
e
?
dals where-
that could 0,,,r of
i
n
the French spy
Pa,,n?es- revealed ill
1962. More e
have been 'three arrests of
;'If for the
Frenchmen SPY
Soviet ? union (.mainly' Oil
French: aerospace', secrets); all
een 197.7. and 1980.
b
etw
GurrraLnne, ~
unmasked while, actually aor .
ivater
Will
y -
Chancelnur
the most sensational catch"
espionage - -
made over the past 30 years
though it must be added r
,litigation that the Federal
.Republic, with its millions of
postwar 'refugees
has ale
Eastern Europe aN,
faced a , uniquely dauntinE
security problem. _,,_. -hl
Britain i5 the oldest
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the Kremlin's intelligence
targets and that we are still
the prime European target,
especially f o r . advanced
technology and communica-
tions, we have no need, to
be stood in the corner of the
Nato room, at least as
regards the' record of the
past 20 years. This does not,
of course, in' any way detract
from the gravity .'of,' the
Prime case as such, or 'from
the desperate need to try
to guard, . alongside ! our
allies, against a repetition.
So what of the future; and
Prime's own. significance?
In her,brief and' necessarily
opaque ' statement ` tia' `the
Commons, Mrs. Thatidher
listed three major quest ions
that the Security Coininis_'
sion would . now have' to
examine. These -we're first,
how Prime's spying activities
were made possible, botlt as
regards. his original recruit-
ment and ' his long years of
undetected treachery, and.
whether , ' defects in proce-
dure " ? were responsible;
secondly, what damage" h'e
had done;, and thirdly,'
whether.. ,he could unmask
.any other Soviet agents still
at work.
cannot be given at this
stage. But some 06es'
are already apparent, and, it
is best to take the points
out of order, because ques-
t?ions two and three seem
somewhat ;less complex than
There is general agreement
in London, for cxampl~, that
the American Defence-
Secre-tary, Mr Caspar Weinberger,
'got it about right when be,
declared, in characteristicallyi
crisp style, that the Prime
case was damaging, " ho??;;h
not a disaster." Mrs Thatcher
has herself.' made clear, fat
the traitor- Was neither in a
.position to-reveal.Nato .order-
of-battle secrets to the Bus-
; sians' let ;alone . nuclear ,tar
ng t~ahd' so on;'~ nor, like
geti
George Blake; would he have
been' . able?~.:to.,,expose the.
identity. of our agents (a
curious phrase this, consider;
service " i s s stud -not officially
admitted' to,' exist).' ' ;
have been purely a, monixor
signals. 'He was not involved
in - the assessment of the
material, which .has; always
Much less was he ever aware
on those 'assessments, which
were the responsibility , of
special committees. - and
But by telling the Russians
over so many years what we
were listening to, and. which
channels and codes of theirs
we -had_ broken, he has obvi-
professional level as~}vell',as,
tin to sdnie of the,,broader
political and '.strategic prob-
lems on 'our minds. On the
Richter scale of espionage
earthquakes, the Prime case
ports appear confident'giat
Prime himself has no akG6om-
network to get hoakecl,da -;to.
while working at Chelten,~
ham) suggest th.atii would
his treachery. Indeed, 'the
incredible muddles he got
into (losing key equipment
he had been given by --his
misfit and a loner iit life; he
was, it seems, a loner also in
fingers) of their conviction
that Prime worked alone. A
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decision to resign and go on
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enun to Soviet , broad-
casts (though this time nor-
mal ones) over a radio in his
taxi-cab is regarded as part
and parcel of the confused
and paniic-stricken- state he
,had worked himself into at
the time. Even so, under
long hours of "questioning
spread over weeks and
months, he might now be
able to dredge up a few
clues, not necessarily con-
fined to Cheltenham.
The Prime Minister's first
point-how to explain the
security .lapse and how to
prevent a repetition of it-
will be the hardest for the
Commission to deal with. A
series of earlier Commis-
sions, to say nothing of the
ceaseless head-scratching of
the professionals all the time,
has failed to come up with
.the answer. " Positive vet-
ting," the 30-year-old system
by which, currently, some
68,000 civil servants in sensi-
tive posts, together with their
referees, are grilled at inter-
vals to establish their reli-
ability, is clearly not enough.
Prime was " P.V.-ed " no
fewer than four times in 14
years and got through, un-
scathed. Are the grillers not
up. to their job? A hard
.criticism, since Prime always
managed to conceal his main
peculiarity-the molesting of
Gloucestershire schoolgirls-
even from his own wife.
And, given the fact that he
had escaped suspicion, it is
even less reasonable to point
with scorn at the times he
was able to travel on his own
passport to Berlin and Vienna
involved, this all brings us
perilously close to the life-
style of Soviet Russia, where
,half the population perpetu-
ally spies on the other half
and where everyone is guilty
unless proved innocent. This
is the exact opposite of
everything that democracies
in general, and Britain in
particular, hold dear.
Before we surrender these
values, one final cautionary
tale of comparisons. Despite
the suffocating pressures of
a police State and despite the
savage penalties against the
individual and his family for
any attempt to change sides
,
to meet his KGB contacts. the KGB has, over the past
West Berlin, his one-time 20 years, itself suffered a
RAF station, and Vienna, a constant haemorrhage of
major tourist centre, were defectors to the West. Over
quite natural places for him the past 10 years Britain
to go anyway, and from each alone has received three
a trip to the other side of the major ones, ending with the
Curtain is child's play to important Major Zuzichkin
make and hard work to from Iran only a fortnight
detect, even if there were ago. And, of course, the
known grounds for surveil- actual defectors, whether
lance. publicised or not, are not the
Extra surveillance is what Whole story.
it comes down to:. body . There are, in fact, no fool-
searches at Government proof security solutions for
buildings; security grillings. any country, because, human-
with lie detectors at least ity being as varied and un-
once a year; perhaps even predictable as it is, there are
special permission for any no fool - proof organisations,
private trip abroad. But quite and organisations ? are all
apart from the vast extra staffed and run by human
sums of taxpayers' money' beings.
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