This writing is designed to
help understand how British national security and law enforcement has needed to
change and adapt to the actions of self-interested, rich and powerful who in
the 1980’s realised that the rapid development of digital technology provided
the opportunity through legitimate and illegitimate international financial and
business corporations to bypass the controls and sanctions of states and their systems
of government, and of political, religious, trade union and other social leaders
and their movements opposed to them.
The ambitions of these
individuals who regard themselves above the law coincided with the
understanding of political and economic
strategists, and of legitimate
international financial and business leaders that future economic development, and therefore of corporate and
individual wealth, was dependent on locating the management and organisation
headquarters in states with stable governments and low corporate and personal
taxation, and of locating production and manufacturing in stable states with no
or restricted trade unions and no or limited anti-capitalist activity. The
decision to widen the European Economic community to include former soviet satellite
countries was taken because of the need to reduce labour costs and further
reduce trade union power and the decision of the German Chancellor to welcome
new migrants from outside Europe on the scale of millions was taken for the
same reason under the political pretence of humanitarian concern. The present
plan to increase the population of greater London by one million is another
aspect this economic strategy,
Political and Military as well
as economic leaders in China, Russia as well as in the USA, Britain and Germany
also understood how digital power could be used in world-wide surveillance and
individual monitoring and in Europe the significance step forward occurred in
2004 when the ‘independent’ Eurospace organisation “aggregated” the
associations covering aeronautics, space and defence industries into one body,
matching the positions in the USA, China and Russia.
Since the so called Arab
Spring and the potential collective civilian power through the use of the
mobile technology and social media was more fully understood, the emphasis and
been on the ability to pull the plug state wise as an offensive weapon as well
as taking control in the prevention of local acts of terrorism, together with
disrupting and influencing what happens on social media and in Britain the
Cameron Tory Lib Dem coalition set up one agency for this purpose followed by
Cameron announcing a new special military based special unit after his 2015 General Election success.
Contrary to the mistaken
belief of some because of my past activism and remaining a catholic Christian
influenced socialist I have always believed it should be the first duty of
government, and it does not matter what form of government, to protect the
governed. This is the justification for an armed force to prevent invasion, for
a police force to prevent crimes against the person within the state, and for
the establishment of intelligence to provide advance knowledge of an assault
against the state or of an assault against the individual governed.
Intelligence also provides government with assessments of the need for the
force required to protect the state and to protect individuals within the
state.
The aspect of my position
which will surprise, and indeed shock some, is that given this duty I believe
it is right that government use whatever means necessary in the prevailing
circumstance and to keep aspects of what it does in this respect secret,
providing lifetime protection for its agents in undertaking what is considered
required. While I believe in the collective power of non-violence and studied
Satyagraha, I am not a pacifist and the only restriction I would place on the
role of the state to defend and protect its people is on the effectiveness of
any measures undertaken. I am also opposed to the use of all forms of offensive
capability which involves mass civilian terror extermination, but it remains
the duty of government as part of defence to investigate and learn how to
counter all such methods. It is for this reason we need to continue with
research and surveillance and intelligence on all forms of mass civilian
extermination while also attempting to limit their manufacture and reach
enforceable international agreements. My early years were spent in an area
where more Germany V1 and VII rockets exploded than any other and where
together with other conventional bombs 5000 people were killed or severely
injured.
The implication of my approach
is that it is legitimate for government to exercise authority, limit freedoms and
use all methods available, and this may involve secrecy, deception and multiple
dealing, and when authorised law breaking and cover up. Mistakes will be made
by those authorised, and when established that the mistakes are genuine protectionism
is also justified This should not be interpreted as a blank cheque and states
will devise their own systems for self-governance and in a democracy, whatever
its form, it is the people through the Rule of Law, Parliament and the media
that should Guard the Guardians.
The world of fictional book,
fictional theatre film, documentary, spying, surveillance, disinformation is
blurred and it is impossible for anyone on the outside, or on the inside who does not have the clearance levels
required, to be able to separate truth from propaganda, from the role of the identified intelligence
officer from those undercover, often
appearing to be key figures in organisations and groups under surveillance, sometimes volunteer informants, sometimes
blackmailed, and where every nation uses its diplomatic service, travelling
business, financial and journalist people to spy on everyone else including its
closest allies for to do otherwise goes against the first duty of government
Clearly if there is a
prevailing law which prevents some action considered necessary by the state
then the use of an arm’s length agency or a sympathetic other nation is an
appropriate option especially if there is no time to change law or it could
prove difficult to change the law without giving away to a perceived enemy what
is proposed. The development of freelance international security and intelligence corporation was a
natural extension of the transfer for political accountability for services
provision health service, energy and
transport and from public to private
local authority provision which
commenced to flourish under Margaret Thatcher and was put into full
throttle by David Cameron with the help of the Liberal Democrat Party in 2010
and where the new Tory Leader has an impossible task in attempting to change
the damage he personally, and George Osborn created with further public service austerity measures in 2015
However, less what I say be
considered fanciful or worse, disclosure of information endangering the good
workings of the state, I am including in this writing information from the
published authorized history of MI5- The Defence of the Realm by Christopher
Andrew, an academic historian who specialised in International Relations and
Intelligence and whose four works on the KGB have a worldwide reputation. The
study which covers the creation of the joint service with what is now known as
MI6 in 1909 ends in the 1980’s when the cyber warfare and intelligence changed the way countries
engaged with each other, and when significantly in 1984 (Orwell) I first grasped the nature of the
changes together with the plans for
global business and finance , attending
one of the leading International
management courses in the world for Directors contemplating or being considered
for the role of Chief Executives. There
is a separate book on the workings of MI6 until just after WW2 (1949)
In part, this writing was
provoked by an interest in the actual life and work of Edward Snowden after
seeing the film Snowden and the documentary about how it is alleged he obtained
temporary asylum in Russia. The extraordinary aspect of Snowden’s former role
is that he devised ways to access the digital records and communications of
anyone, anywhere, anytime, and that within the past weeks it is this ability
which enabled the Russians to hack the digital records of one of the candidates
for the USA Presidency and said to have assisted in the unanticipated victory
of Donald Trump. British intelligence also appears to have passed to the USA which
was then used in a failed attempt to stop the election of Mr Trump and is now
being used to damage his credibility as he takes Office. The source of this development has been
revealed by the Sunday Times as a named former senior British intelligence
officer previously in charge of the Russia desk who now runs one of the
officially separate from government agencies in London but which continues to
work closely with the official intelligence bodies at home and abroad. What the
Chinese are making of all this remains speculation.
Like Snowdon and other
patriots and supporters of good government, understanding the realities, the
shortcomings, failures and mistakes inherent in all systems of governments
occurs over a period, and usually involves gaining senior positions although
presently I don’t know why he choose to become a traitor instead of staying and
attempting to change from within, or resigning and finding some legitimate way
of bringing about change within a democratic framework.
I am still learning although
there were events which culminated in one decision taking day in 1991 when I
knew I had to act which was likely to lead to significant change not just for
myself but for my family. I had spent the greater part of the day alone,
swimming naked in the private pool of a hired villa in the South of France,
enjoying glasses of wine with chunks of French bread, salami and olives,
looking across the vast plain below the hillside, and there was a moment when I
said to myself, “let’s do it.” However,
before taking that decision I systematically went through all the potential
implications which also took account of the law of unintended consequences with
unpredictable outcomes.
This is something which I
wonder if Edward Snowden did or did he just act and run without any notion of
how he would spend the rest of his life, perhaps like George Blake in Russia, a
traitor in the eyes of his country and most of its population. I will write
about Blake, the recent BBC documentary and the book by Michael Randle who had
roles with the Direct-Action Committee Against Nuclear War and the Committee of
100 with which I was associated 1960-1962.
I do not regret the decisions taken in 1961 when I
changed academic courses at Ruskin College, in 1984 when I turned down the offer of a job as local authority
Chief Executive, and then in 1991 and later in 1997 and 2002 and 2003 although
when I stood on my own at the top of the Rock of Gibraltar in 2004 I saw what
my life could have been had my father been almost anyone other than who he was
and became, I experienced a great sadness which has been there since, and which has influenced but not negatively,
what I have considered necessary to do
since. I do have regrets about the way I did things and the resultant
individual and the overall failure(s).
Traditionally the way to
collate intelligence was through the operation of undercover spies and
informants and I am including notes on
the excellent biographical work of the undercover agent under the name of Joe Carter (Undercover Century Press)
but from about the mid 1980’s the ability to use digital became evident and
this opened the door on mass global surveillance and once everything,
everywhere as well as everyone commenced to become digital, the ability to use
aggressively as well as defensively became evident and in 2003 I commenced an
art work project with one aspect that everything we did and said
could be heard, viewed, recorded and revised by anyone, anywhere,
anytime with the technology.
My assumption then was that
this ability would be restricted to identified targets and only later to
appreciate that improved data collation and analysis techniques would enable
comprehensive material acquisition and processing. Without written records, we become
dependent on the limitations of contemporary memories.
Those aware of the approach I
took early in 2014 to calls for a national inquiry into past child abuse have a
copy of my letter to government in which I pressed for the collating and
securing of all documentation not already digitalized. In this respect, I was
only saying what government had said to me in 1991 in relation to the one
matter about which I became known in some circles of interest. It was also the basis on which truths about
the Hillsborough were uncovered following the intervention from Andy Burnham,
then a government Minister and the prospective Mayor for the Manchester region.
Recently I checked with a firm of Lawyers which led a successful class action
for damages where one for those involved at the time explained that all the
documentation would have long since been destroyed under the normal scheme
which legal firms had used to avoid the accumulation of vaults of paper in
situations where documents where the papers were not returned to clients who
paid for services or had services paid for them.
Original documentation also
has its limitations and what is written in the past may not have been an
accurate or comprehensive representation of what happened and recently under
Freedom of Information, I acquired via the National Archives what is reported
to have been a signed written statement made to the police and presumably
submitted to the coroner at the Inquest of what remains the unsolved murder of
a friend and alleged Admiralty worker in 1963. In fact, I volunteered an oral
statement to the police in Birmingham where I was taking a Home Office arranged
and financially sponsored child care course and was read over the phone what
was to be passed to the investigating metropolitan police and where the alleged
signed statement fails to include information which I then regarded as
potentially helpful.
However, I am also wary of the
memory when it comes to oral history with one published account of political
activism on Tyneside in 1960, relying on a mixture of memories and the limited
documentation then available for research but where because of additional
contemporary documentation. new research and publications, together with and
online information catalogue, a very different understanding of some issues is
possible.
Because of my experiences
during the period of full time activism 1959-1961 and several subsequent
situations and incidents, I believed I had a good understanding of how MI5
worked, alongside the police Special branch and the intelligence units of the
armed services, and following my attendance at the International Senior
Management Course in 1984, I understood the intelligence operations of global
business and finance. However, it was not until 2009 and the publication of the
authorised History of MI5- The Defence of the Realm, that there was
confirmation of what I had assumed, the placement of undercover operatives in
any organisation considered a threat, including a potential threat to the state
and where one of the key targets was always access to Membership and supporter
lists. There is symmetry about the state using entryism to keep under
surveillance the enterists. In the book,
there are some surprisingly detailed accounts of who was targeted and in broad
terms why, including the Deputy Leader of the Labour Party Harriet Harman and
Patricia Hewitt then of the National Council for Civil Liberties and Neil
Kinnock’s role in combatting the Militant Tendency. I must remind Tom Watson of
this.
The decision of the Service to
create a secret file on a surviving Prime Minister (Harold Wilson) raises the
issue of authorization especially as it is said that Harold was the favourite
chief Ministers of all those who accepted the request to form a government from
the Head of State. I continue to wonder who briefed Margaret Thatcher that the
Keeper of the Royal art, and a distant relation of the Queen Mother, Sir
Anthony Blunt, was a double agent who had worked for the Russians. Per her
former media secretary Baroness Thatcher decided to use a Prime Minister’s
Question from an opposition member of the House of Commons to make public his
treachery, and where because the Royal prerogative he had not and could be
prosecuted, he retreated to social anonymity, because she did not believe in
cover up!
I only recently acquired the reprint
of Hammer of the Left by John
Golding with an important update of Neil Kinnock’s original forward written
before the attempted coup against the official Leader of the Opposition by the
majority of his Parliamentary Party in
which it is evident, his experience then, governed his belief that
history was repeating but in my judgement this lacked appreciation of the
fundamentally different circumstances and how the USA, China and Russia have
been exploiting the digital revolution as a means for aggressive intelligence
as well as defensive or that the rise of the left is essential if the new power
of the right built up by stealth slowly since the mid 1980’s is to be
effectively countered. While my heart is with LoveLikeJo (Cox) my head is
firmly with the state although the role of Parliament, organisation and
individuals to ensure that the means remains committed to agreed values and
standards is also essential, if the individuals or individual in association
with other recognises the right of the state to act if the intention is to
break or go outside the law, whatever the motivation or justification.
I support in principal the
proposed Loyalty oath for all public office holders announced by David Javid
although I believe the way he would describe British values and standards is
likely to be different from mine (Time’s article 18th December
2016).
Recently I have viewed three
films, two for the first time and one an old favourite which cover the dramatic
change that taken place in government intelligence with the digital era- Allied
(WWII), the Ipcress File (the
Cold War) and Snowdon.
The first Allied is a curious concoction set in World War II in Casablanca
and London. Casablanca is the focus of my favourite film of all time, a French
city in North Africa, occupied by the Nazis, a love triangle in which freedom
and opposition to tyranny triumphs over individual feelings and relationships
(our relationship not worth a hill of beans).
Allied begins in 1942 when a
highly trained Canadian (presumably French speaking) operative (Brad Pitt) is
sent to Casablanca to assassinate the visiting German Ambassador with the help
of a trained French resistance worker who had escaped to the city after the rest
of the group she led in Paris had been compromised and killed. The two pose as
husband and wife and fall in love and against the odds the plan to assassinate
not only works but they escape. Whereas Casablanca emotionally engaged with its
great actors and script (Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, Paul Henried, Claude
Raines, Sydney Greenstreet, Peter Lore, Conrad Veidt, Dooley Wilson - you must
remember this - Play it again Sam- and others: such as the night club singer, the
bar tender, the young couple) credible storyline and script) what happens in
Allied appears absurd. The couple then make their home in London with the wife
(Marion Collard) settling down to pregnancy and motherhood homemaking while her
husband (a trained pilot former squadron type leader) appears to be desk bound
at Special Operations Headquarters until summoned to be told that his wife is
an imposter, a German Spy as the Paris resistance worker did not survive. He is
told to carry on as normal while confirmation is established in which instance
he will kill her. The notion that he would be asked to do this is also absurd.
It is believed she is part of a cell and passes on information she gains from
what he mentions and from papers he brings home with him. A trap is set and he
is told to nothing but he persuades someone at the air base to make a contact
on a mission to the resistance in France to get confirmation that his wife is who
she says she is. The young man in question loses his life which is rightly
placed at the door of the character played by Mr Pitt whose suspicions that his
wife is in fact part of a German spy network is such that he then goes to
France where unable to substantiate the death he does gain information which
enables him to test his wife. A test which she fails but such is his love for
her and their child that he deals with the spy network and then plans for them
to escape by air, having been warned that if he fails to execute his wife he
will be treated as a traitor and hanged.
His wife admits she was placed
as an agent in Casablanca posing as the dead resistance worker but went along with
the assassination plan rather than expose him in advance because of falling in
love. She had hoped to disappear through the marriage and domesticity, but she had
been tracked to London and blackmailed. When the escape plan is foiled she
commits suicide rather than see their daughter become parentless. Her action
saves her husband and the audience is left with the feeling that her treachery
and his complicity can be left unpunished, the official record showing that he
carried out the execution. The film closes with a scene of daughter, now a
young woman with her father with the implication that he devoted himself to her
care and remained unmarried another implausibility. It is entertainment and
nothing more.
The 1965 film- the Ipcress File was the second major
film within three years on brainwashing, in this instance using electronic
sounds in addition to a disorientating environment and I could not resist
seeing again when it appeared on the electronic programme guide. The first film
was the Manchurian Candidate (1962) based on the embedded psychological transformation
of a Korean War prisoner which can be triggered subsequent and remade for
release in 2004. The two films which interested me more because they dealt with
the ability to manipulate and control people is the classic George Orwell 1984, a book, film and radio play and
the relatively unknown Control Factor
(2003). The Ipcress File is based on
the book by Len Deighton with Michael Caine in the role of Harry Palmer, an
army soldier blackmailed into becoming a Watcher for the security services
after some unauthorised private enterprise when serving in the army of
Occupation in Germany. He is transferred to a special ops unit after an
alarming number of scientists disappear in circumstances which cannot be
attributed to the much talked about “brain drain” at that time. The character of
Palmer fits the traditional projection of the British low level operative,
single but able to manage a home (he likes to cook with quality ingredients, reprimanding
a senior officer who recommended an inexpensive brand of tinned mushrooms
compared to the original champignons, and he is well read and an educated
musical ear. Another of my favourites of
the genre is Callan with Edward Woodward.
Harry Palmer was intentionally
created not to being the same class or league as James Bond although he has a
roving eye, is creative in his approach and commands loyalty and help from friendship
accumulated along the way. In this instance,
he sees several of his new colleagues murdered and an attempt to frame him for
the murder of a CIA officer at his flat.
The action centres on tracing the person likely to be engaged in the
trafficking of the abducted scientist. When the scientist is recovered for a
ransom payment he is found to have been brain washed and memory cleared. When
Palmer begins to suspect one of this two bosses is a traitor he is abducted
believes he is solitary confinement in a Soviet state and given the treatment,
but managing to retain some self-control and memory by self-injury pain. He and his audience then face a difficult
choice between which of the bosses is the traitor and which to kill. Fortunately,
his judgment is correct. Ipcress stands
for An Introduction into Conditioned Reflex Under Stress. This film is also
entertainment with low level technology reminding of all those large computer frames
with flashing coloured lights to signify brain power processing.
Len Deighton wrote four book
on Harry Palmer with Michael Caine starring in the three made into films
(Funeral in Berlin and Million Dollar Brain. Harry Palmer is said to appear in
two other Deighton Works Spy Story and Twinkle Twinkle Little Spy. Michael Caine two decades later reappeared
as Harry Palmer in two films, not based on the work of Deighton Bullet to Beijing
1995 and Midnight in St Petersburg 1996. I have one Len Deighton novel, a
hardback edition of Close on the Film Industry.
It remains my understanding
that although much is now known about the workings of the brain there are parts
whole role in our lives are still to be understood. I have the 2008 Britannica guide which covers
mind, memory and intelligence, together with the 2009 edition if the guide to
Genetics from Mendal to the Human Genome Project, but Charles E Boklage- How
New Humans Are made remains challenging. What I continue to suspect that that
the computer record disk is more like the brain than presently appreciated and
that everything experienced is recorded and can be remembered and
re-experienced, and that there is also truth in those who have reported the
ability to remember events before their births when under hypnosis or using
regression substances. In our limited human
inhabited earth named planet where nothing is yet proven to be impossible
I like to believe that during the rest
of this century it will be established that
part of the act of human reproduction is the transfer from one
generation to another all the accumulated life experiences of our individual
ancestors. The possibility of this has been explored at length in the books and
video games of the Assassin Creed and where as I found it is essential to have
read up on the story to-date if one is to make sense of the first feature film
of the same name which presently heads the box office top ten. It can also be assumed
that the science of being able to influence and control minds has been developed
since the era of the Ipcress File, the Manchurian Candidate and the Spy who
came in from the Cold.
In contrast to the fictional Allied and Ipcress File, Snowden is about a traitor who betrayed his country
and his colleagues, breaking his oath of allegiance and playing international
politics, attempting to evade justice by taking a transit flight to
Moscow. A harsh judgement which I believe
the available information justifies.
Snowdon was born into a family
of patriotic Americans who became employees of the state. His father served as
a rear admiral in the Coast guard before moving to the CIA and was at the
Pentagon at 9/11. His mother and older sister are lawyers holding important
positions. His intelligence Quotient is
said to be at genius level but his education was interrupted at senior school,
not taking a basic degree. He claims to have worked online for a master degree
from the University of Liverpool concerned with computer studies but the
University says that although he registered he was not active and did not
complete the work. He is supposed to have attended computer training classes at
the John Hopkins University but there is no record of this. He did attend a
summer session at the University of Maryland.
He is said to have become
proficient in understanding Chinese and Japanese and took up martial arts and
went against the American grain by stating Buddhism as his religion because
there was no provision for saying agnostic on the military recruitment
form. I came across this rigidity in
prison so put down Quaker which enabled peaceful breaks with others similarly
registered.
He was accepted for basic
Special Forces Training and in the film, was given an administrative discharge
after breaking both his legs caused by stress fractures. He had wanted to serve in Iraq.
It is accurate that he joined
the CIA where he demonstrated talent in computer technology and was singled out
to attend the top-secret training programme which lasted for six months and the
film suggests he was the brightest of the students completing an early test in
an extraordinary quick time by approaching the task outside the box. The way he did the test, just as Harry Palmer
tracked down the target in the Ipcress File and the hero of Allied risks his
life to protect his wife when revealed to be a German wartime agent, is
indicative of the assessment as a
Creative, that is, people with the ability to create originality and this
assessment is confirmed when it is said he was responsible for ensuring that
everything was backed up in such a way so that if an external assault was made
to the system it did not go down.
The film also discloses his
role in establishing the ability to shut down the systems in other countries
alleging this was achieved unintentionally in relation to Syria and that it
took time to rectify. The ability to suddenly close digital systems in an
emergency has profound implications for things that move at speed on land and
in air as well as those dependent on electronic devices such as in hospitals.
It is also my understanding that because of the implications of complete
switching off with the internet and mobile phones being the main targets, the
focus has been on the ability to target shut down and in the recent TV second
series of Our Girl, the ability of a
terrorist to trigger a bomb via his mobile phone was stopped remotely.
The recent film Eye in the Sky focuses on the
controllable Drone combining the pilotless delivery of a lethal weapon with the
on the ground control of a camera disguises as an insect capable of entering
through a window to check who is inside a building before it is demolished, one
of over 40 of films featuring the remotely controlled devices since 2010 and
with only half a dozen before although interestingly the earliest is Back to
the Future II in 1989.
The film covers something of
the assessment required for someone to gain the highest level of state security
and this includes a polygraph test with the questions designed to establish his
loyalty, honesty and integrity to the state and where later he admits that at
one point he faked a response intended to explain to the audience that he could
cover up something which helps explain what he came to do. This is nonsense
because Creatives especially those at the genius level, have their own sense of
right and wrong and will do whatever is necessary or required for what they
believe in or have committed themselves including self-sacrifice and deceit.
This will have been known and monitored another aspect of Who guards the
guardians? The TV series Blindspot, Sky Living,
explores many of these issues, the nine episodes of the second series are
available on the Sky player.
This brings me to the other
issue of how it is alleged Snowden removed a copy of the information on a micro
disk from such a top-level establishment. I just do not believe that such an
establishment did not explore all the possibilities of how someone might want
to remove stored data or that there would have an instant notifying of any
copying of data information to a 24/7 monitoring and alert system unless of
course they were in the position of responsibility to guard against such
action, but which in turn they would have created or been asked to create a
fail system to ensure that the Guardian is also guarded. It should be
potentially criminally negligent to do otherwise. The film alleges that he
removed the data into a Rubik’s cube which he tosses to a gate guard while he
goes through the scanner and where the guard then tosses the cube back to him
when he has passed through. This is absurd.
The development of digital
technology will have changed the whole approach of the British government to
security and may have led to the decision to change the way the Home Office is
physically structured although my knowledge of the new building comes from a TV
news item. In 2015 I gave thought to my experience of visiting the old Home office
building arising from the national interest in missing Home office files which
were thought to provide important information concerning the cover up and
protectionism which took place in relation to crimes against children in the
past. Despite the presentation of several reports including an independent
investigation and report under all party-political pressure there has never
been a satisfactory explanation why over a hundred Home Office Files could not
be accounted for, although some information was subsequently traced to National
archives and Libraries.
I thought of my own experience
of visiting the former Home Office building in the late 1980’s was instructive
when I had been granted a car park pass for attending a meeting of a national advisory committee and
followed someone else who had exited a car through a doorway into the
building. Previously I had arrived from
the street at the front reception desk which controlled entry to the two parts
of the building with the Ministers and their immediate staff separate from the
rest and which included meeting rooms. I found myself in a corridor with
individual rooms marked by levels of security required and quickly concluded
that I was not sure I should be where I was so I retreated into the car park, through
the entrance gate where the written pass has been shown and into the reception
area from the street where I was escorted as I had been previously to the
meeting room. The point being that I had a brief case with me so that even if
my entry and walk within the building was camera monitored the contents of my
brief case was not and therefore anyone with a car park permit could remove
files/papers from the building without a check.
This was also in the days just
before the lap top computer reduced in size sufficiently to be in transported
within a brief case although I used the Amstrad floppy disk to record my work
at the office to a similar machine at my home.
I have always had problems with my memory and my hand writing is
indecipherable me let alone to anyone else so the development of the word
processor changed my life in many ways.
I will concede that the jumps
in digital storage and communication technology have been such that it will
have been a challenge for all government and other bodies to catch up with the
security implications, but it is not unreasonable to expect that those
responsible for national security would have been at the cutting edge in this
respect, so I still do not understand how Snowden got away with it without
help.
Nor am I really concerned with
why he did it. Motivation may contribute to mitigation of whatever penalty the
justice system process may conclude is merited but being well motivated should
never be the basis for deciding to break the law and expecting the justice system
not to take its course. If you set out to break the law even if the law is a
bad one you should expect to face the stated consequences. Throughout recorded
history individuals because of patriotism, for a religion, to protect those for
whom they have responsibility, for their families and those they love, have
broken the law, sometimes hoping not to pay the price for what they do, but
always in the expectation that a price may be exacted. In simple terms two wrongs do not make a
right.
There are other aspects of his
story which merit scrutiny especially the circumstances which led him to resign
from the CIA and move to a security agency employed by the state. In the film
and the Wikipedia account, he was sent to the CIA office in Switzerland to maintain
computer security, providing him with a diplomatic passport and a four-bedroom
apartment near Lake Geneva. He had been assigned to the U.S mission to the
United Nations and had been responsible for providing support to the US
President when attending a NATO summit in Romania. The film gives the
impression that his interest in working as a field agent was taken up by a
senior colleague in Geneva who had been tasked with finding a way to persuade a
leading banker to become an informant. The film suggests that Snowden was so
shocked by the methods used that he resigned in February 2009 without knowing
what he will do next.
The film suggests that it is
his former training chief who introduces him to a top-level subcontractor
agency for the government and where he is based in Japan near Tokyo to advise
how to defend system from Chinese hacker.
After two years, which one can assume were successful he returns to the
USA and promoted to a more senior position concerned with cyber intelligence
and strategy. It is during this period that the film suggests he became
concerned that the programmes he had
helped to create, if not create, were being used not just to target the digital
communications and records of those under surveillance in accord with
nationally agreed procedures, but were tracking
the records of everyone worldwide and film provides figures about the
scale of the operation and where what is
said to have triggered his rebellion is
the number on USA citizens being surveyed which was against the law and about
which when challenged the government is
said to have lied.
It is alleged that he
commenced to copy records. He moved to the firm’s office in Hawaii which
concentrated on surveillance of China and North Korea. He also moved between
contractors, with a loss of salary, in order, it is said, to continue to
acquire documentation he needed.
Snowden is said to have used
his position and reputation to persuade between 20 and 25 colleagues to give
him their passwords so he could independently monitor their records and copy
those which presumably he decided would provide the evidence required from him
to substantiate what he had decided to do. This story via Reuters is said to
have been rejected by Snowden and that he was responsible for his own for the
copying of documents said to have been be between 50000 and 200000. Instead of
as suggested in the film passing everything out in on one occasion as mentioned
previously with the Rubik cube the possibility of finding a way to transfer
documents via the passwords of his colleagues is the more obvious pathway, even
if they were aware he was hacking them.
However, there are different
accounts of the scale of his treachery.
The Australian government have said he made available to unauthorised
parties 15000 of their intelligence files. The British Government put their
figure at 50000. USA figures have put
the number of their documents at 1.7 million. The clear majority of these
documents were nothing to do with political acts of government but covered
military capabilities, operations, tactics, techniques and procedures. I rest
my case against him.
Dr Kermode in his film review
argues that despite those going to theatres knowing the basics of the story and
his escape from Hong Kong to Russia the documentary about the escape provides a
more engaging experience than the film and on this I, disagree. Both are
effective in persuading the audience to his perspective and make the USA
government the villain. I am surprised that the good Dr did not point this out
and that both works are therefore questionable in this respect.
The world of spying in the
national interest is well documented on film book and documentary. I have been
a great admirer of the work of the writer John Le Carré who until reading his
authorised biography by Adam Sisman, (published by Bloomsbury for £25) I was
unaware that his birth name was David Cornwall and that his half-sister is the
actress Charlotte Cornwall who I first admired in the TV series the Rock
Follies.
I have his books - Smiley’s People (also TV DVD and audio
book), The Honourable Schoolboy and
audio book, Tinker Tailor Solder Spy
(also TV DVD & audio book), The
Russia House with the film DVD, The
Constant Gardener(and film DVD) and The
Mission Song; I have the DVD of the TV series- The Perfect Spy together with the rest of the BBC audio books
collection - The Secret Pilgrim, Call
for Dead, The looking Glass War (with film DVD), The Murder of Quality and The
Deadly Affair (with DVD film), together with that of The Tailor of Panama. I
also saw the TV series of the Night
Porter, and then came A Delicate
Truth which begins with a mission to the land of my parents and their
families, Gibraltar and which I listened to as a book at bedtime on the BBC. I
have seen Our Kind of Traitor and A Most Wanted Man in Theatre and
ordered the DVDs because of this writing and which for me is the most haunting
of all his works because of the performance of Richard Burton- The Spy Who Came in from the Cold where
I have the film DVD and audio book). The BBC has just announced it is to make a
new series based on the book. I have seen all the films in theatre and on TV,
some several times.
One Sunday Times headline on
January 15th (2017) was The
Spy Left out in the Cold. The
article suggests that the Trump dossier is a black ops project of a known but
unnamed wealthy Republican who wanted to stop Tump gaining the Presidential
nomination for his Political Party. He
used a Washington firm of former investigative journalists which sounds more
like Exaro News than Mark Thomas Williams and his Associates, who sub
contracted to a former senior MI6 Russia expert, heading the Russia desk at one
point, and who had established an arm’s length free enterprise service with
another senior colleague. One former CIA chief who has gone through the dossier
is on public record of saying a little of the content appears accurate, some
does not and the majority is unknown but in total it is the kind of initial raw
data based on intercepts, informant’s beliefs, rumours and gossip which then
requires rigorous testing. The Sunday Times article argues that the individual.
who is named and background reported, has gone into hiding and had worked for
the British government in Russia and was head of the Russia desk when
Litvinenko was assassinated in London and has since had a vendetta with
President Putin which one suspects is long standing given the record of other
Cambridge graduates being recruited to the British Service, then working for
the Russians and spending chunks of their lives as political refugees. I now
fear for the man in question given the likely response of the Trump when he
controls the CIA from Friday, although I fear more for Edward Snowden when
Trump has his first summit with the Russian former spymaster leader. I still do
not understand the way Russia has been painted as our number one enemy when
like Trump I believe the long-term threat comes from China, with its economic
as well as potentially offensive military power and an unequalled totalitarian
system capable of world domination at a time and manner of its choosing. While
Trump has British roots, it is at least a decade since the USA wanted out from
its European defence involvement and commitments to concentrate on the Pacific
rim as any military and geopolitical strategist of international renown will
explain if one cares to ask.
It is the issue of fiction
mirroring reality, often revealing more significant truths, that has interested
me since first becoming the subject of MI5 surveillance in 1960 and where I
have always had suspicion that that a female friend whose murder in 1963 has
remained unsolved appeared to possess more information about what happened at
Holy Loch in 1961 than I would expect an Admiralty secretary, as she claimed,
could be expected to know.
The book opens with a quote by
Scott Fitzgerald about writers being different people in search of a single
identity with one implication that if one has a fully integrated personality
one would get on with the business of experiencing life and not sit in a room
living through the creations of the mind.
I approached the reading and writing about David Cornwall John Le Carré
with the question are spies made or created? I have also considered if the implications
of leading one or more lives secretly, and is something which spies have in
common with the actor. I have also tried to remember the changing context of
work and life over 80 eighty years, with David Cornwall born in 1931 and myself
in 1939. A major part of the work deals with the sources for the books and
their characters, the impact of becoming an international literary superstar
and the interesting people this life has brought him into contact. There is also the question can the restless
spirit, the new and frequently exciting experience junkie ever settle to
everyday life, domesticity and the realities of aging?
Adam Sisman is the third
attempt to get Le Carré to disclose the story of his life. One attempt was by
Graham Lord, Literary editor of the Sunday Express for two decades and whose
published work includes the lives of John Mortimer, Joan Collins, David Niven,
James Herriot and Arthur Lowe. Books
about writers, politicians, sports and other personalities tend to attract a
limited audience, divided between those who respect and admire the individual
as a role model and who want to know something of the private person, or hope
to gain knowledge to help in achieving a similar ambition and those who enjoy
reading about scandal and bad example. The available information suggests that
Mr Lord had obtained material which if published would cause upset to those Le
Carré cared about and fortunately he was in position to employ lawyers to
provide protection. Whatever Lord knew he took to his grave when he died of
liver cancer at the age of 73 in 2015, the same year the Sisman biography was
published. I wonder if he lived to the read the book?
The writer Robert Harris
(Fatherland) obtained a contract to write the story on the understanding it
would not be published until Le Carré death and is reported (in the Telegraph
in 2011) to have devoted months, creating 30000 words of notes, spending one
day with David’s first wife returning letters to the author when she died in 2009
Sisman admits he had a grand
time spending several days with David arriving around 11 am, breaking off to
eat and drink at a local Inn and then work on until a “fortifying drink” before
departing and was provided with an extraordinary long list of people to be
contacted which matches that provided by Lady Thatcher coupled with the same
promise not to interfere or exert influence on the work.
When enjoying the brilliant
BBC TV series production of Le Carré’s A
Perfect Spy, I became aware that this was based on his early life, his
engaging but middle class ‘crook’ of a father whose behaviour drove his mother
to abandon her children when they were primary age school boys. Ronnie Cornwall, a superstar conman, appears to
have led one of the most extraordinary lives I have encountered given his life
style and contacts, attractive to women and investors he also appears to have
done great harm to others about which he appears never to have openly repented
and I read with interest to see how his death affected his younger son.
Sisman begins the work with a
cautionary note explaining that it was difficult to substantiate some of the Le
Carré’s memory and family legend about their childhood experiences, but it is
evident that his father’s charm and ability to impress attracted his mother
offering a way out from the restricted and boring life led by many daughters of
the well-off middle classes who were expected to live chaste lives at home
before a suitable marriage could be arranged. The provision of domestic help within
the household and the employment of a nanny to take responsibility for the
chores of upbringing meant that his mother was not equipped to be a wife and
mother expected to undertake all the demanding and tiring tasks herself and it
is there is also evidence that she quickly became aware of his wondering eye
and the willingness of other women to respond.
Whether she would have
accepted her situation if this had remained the position, a common one for many
women between the two World Wars, remains speculation as her husband
established himself as a leading member of the local community, invited to join
the Brotherhood, a member of the Chamber of Commerce and an active Rotarian
also becoming the first President of a local Round Table. He enjoyed a fine lifestyle
of eating out at good restaurants, drank brandy and whisky by the quart, smoked
large cigars, stayed at the best hotels, entertained generously and lavished
presents. The problem was this was based
on other people’s money. When debts
accumulated, he commenced to move his family for fresh starts in new
communities, but eventually he went to prison and became bankrupt and his wife
was forced to return with her sons to her parental home. Eventually the
situation became too much and she ran off and remarried leaving the two boys
with their father. This devastated them leaving lasting scars.
Sisman also reveals,
unsurprisingly it must be said, that the father had a dark side possessive and
controlling but also reveals early on in a footnote that sometimes when he
returned home drunk he would get into bed with his son and start to play with
him as he might with his mother. In a footnote, there is reference to David
raising the issue with his half-sister in later life. It is my expectation that
the present statutory inquiry covering England and Wales concerned with abuse
within and members of national institutions will comment that abuse in a family
domestic situations are more common place than generally appreciated, and
should also not be confused with sexual awareness and development in childhood,
usually involving other children and young people as well as from observing the
more open parental behaviour which developed from the early 1960’s. How any one individual coped with such
experiences and whether everyone is affected in a negative way remains to be
established but there is also no doubt that tens of thousands in the UK, and
millions throughout human world history have been harmed ruining some lives and
the cause of a premature ending.
Children whose parents fail to
show them love and fail to respect their separate identity often muddle their
need to be loved through sexual intimacy with potentially traumatizing
experience for them and for their partners There is reference to David
developing an emotional attachment to a young beautiful nanny, a refugee from
Germany, who he subsequently tried to find when he joined the “Circus” but
without success and to an older schoolgirl being attracted to him but then went
off with someone else leaving him to write about the experience.
One outcome of the departure
of his mother is that David and his older brother found themselves in a typical
authoritarian private bordering school in the era of the forties where
headmasters and other staff could physically assault, hurt and harm pupils at
will and where I suggest being beaten can have as great a negative impact as
being the victim of sexual exploitation by adults and experimentation by peers,
sometimes within a family.
Another aspect revealed about
his father was also of interest to me his political involvement and attempt to
become a Member of Parliament in a wartime by-election, having previously
assisted William Douglas Home to win a by-election and whose aristocratic older
brother was to become Prime Minister. He withdrew just before the election,
under pressure it is suggested by the spokesperson of the Commonwealth Party
(independent socialists in the tradition of the syndicalist and cooperative
movements). The spokesperson is reported as Peggy Duff who as General Secretary
of the CND interviewed me after it was proposed I should become the paid
organiser for the London Region after George Clark decided to give up his
volunteer role and chief marshal for Aldermaston marches. Peggy had been
business Manager at Tribune and on the Aneurin Bevan wing of the Party.
David appears not to have been
directly affected by the horror of the war with mention of seeing bombers
flying overhead while camping, and having escaped call up his father appears to
have viewed the war as a golden opportunity to make money involving his sons
when home in some of his enterprises. But the finances of his father remained
precarious and having sent his sons to Public schools the fees for him at
Sherborne became in arrears. As with many such establishments the emphasis was
on becoming leaders with compulsory sessions twice a week in training to become
army officers. The regime was one of open windows and cold showers and other
character building programmes. A WoW piece of information is that he became
friends with one of my political role models, Robin Cook, whose father, an
Indian civil servant had died suddenly, and was sent to the school as his
mother decided to stay in India. The Labour Minister Roy Jenkins who went on to
found the Social Democrats was invited to give a talk to the small Gateshead
Fabian Society but only would accept if accommodated in the best Newcastle
hotel and provided a meal at the best restaurant. Robin Cook came based on being given whatever
contribution to expenses the group could afford. I had been briefly introduced
to Jenkins and future Prime Minister Callaghan at a social event at the Houses
of Parliament, I had helped organise with the help of a Member of Parliament to
mark the passing of the Children and Young Persons Act 1969.
Financial concerns appeared to
end when Ronnie Cornwall moved into the property market owning 4000 houses at
one point and having and a stated wealth of £13 million in today’s values but
the money was spent as his life style and social status also rose with
politicians, aristocrats and senior civil servants counted as associates
together with underworld figures and police as was typical for that period.
Staggering information was that just before the war he held a party of the
visiting West Indian Team and then did so again in 1948 for the Australians
with Bradman’s last visit where as a nine-year-old I sat on the grass to
witness his last two ball innings at the Oval.
Ration ended just before I left school in 1955, while the boys
participating in some of their fathers lavish holidays, including one visit to
Paris staying at one of the best hotels.
Sisman discussing the issues
with led David to decide to leave Sherborne before his final year, suggesting
that there was conflict between the values of school and those of his father’s
life. He not only left the school, but home and England and freed from the
constraints he became his own man, albeit a young one. He went to Berne in
Switzerland and without qualifications registered at the university where he floundered but persisted and then through a meeting said
to have taken place over Christmas he was recruited by a couple who said they were from the Consular section
of the British Embassy and keen to
prove his patriotism he agreed to attend
meetings of left wing student groups and report back especially on the
involvement if any British subjects attending and there you have it an example
of how the state focussed on the perceived threat from the East, made use of
talents of those on extreme right or who had served the Reich, the subject of
the excellent BBC TV drama Close
to the Enemy directed by Stephen
Poliakoff and with Alfred Molina and Lindsay Duncan in important secondary
roles alongside the brilliant young actor Freddie Highmore among several others
destined for long careers.
The highlight of his year as
an infiltrating informant, in addition to becoming fluent in German, was to
shake the hand of Thomas Mann. In 1949 with help David went to Germany and West
Berlin. One of my uncles served with the army of occupation in Germany at the
same time. His wife came back a nervous wreck. I was evacuated to her home
during the concentration of VII rockets on the area close to Croydon airport
where I lived, staying at their officer’s quarters near Catterick, now the
largest military base in Western Europe.
A temporary illness brought Cornwall home and taken to see Marlene
Dietrich at the Café Royal. It was another decade before I saw Marlene at the
New Theatre Oxford.
In Germany, David had been to
Bergen-Belsen and four years after this I had read the official reports on the
Belsen and Auschwitz War Crimes Tribunal hearings at the reference Library in
Wallington following a recommendation from the Jesuit modern history teacher at
the independent Catholic John Fisher School, Purley. While he was to have
first-hand experience of the reality of a divided and occupied Germany my
experience was in the cinema as I commenced to be taken every Monday and
Thursday to see older release as the local cinema within walking distance,
going with cousins to see more recent releases over weekends. The film with
greatest impact was the Third Man. I have some memory of The Search, the Man
Between, Berlin Express and The Heavens above us.
David next important
development was Officer training after National Service and directed by the War
Office into Intelligence, which he presumed was because of his experience in
Switzerland and where at a subsequent visit to St Moritz he had met his future
first wife. Sisman draws the reader’s attention that while the future writer
was raised at home and school in a male dominating environment his future
wife’s experience was one of female control although interestingly her father
chased other women as did Ronnie
Cornwall although the similarity ends as Ann’s family had several generations
of distinguished service to Britain.
Although lacking basic
educational qualification David then set his sights on going to Oxford the end
of his National Services. His father is estimated to be spending half a million
a year in to-days money and his relationship with Ann progressed with marriage
planned. The reference from the Headmaster predicted he would become either the
Archbishop or a criminal. The young man had many talents, from poetry to
drawing, from fluent German and its culture to a competitive skier and like his
father he presented as confident and articulate, patriotic and loyal but also
with his own sense of right and wrong and of justice.
I still wonder if I would have
been able to have talked myself into reading Philosophy, Psychology and
Physiology at an Oxford college as John Beichon, my tutor in Psychology wanted
before he took his team at the Institute of Experimental Psychology to the USA.
John went on to become Chief Executive at Which, head a London Polytechnic and
play an important role in the development of the Open University. My best
memory is accepting his invitation to the dining club feast with other
university staff who did not belong to a college and where the chief guest a
college Master, walked out before the final courses on hearing another guest, a
Jazz musician, admit to also running girls in Soho. My contribution was to
entertain in the early hours with prison experience stories while he and some
of the others played billiards in a room at the top of the Nuffield College
tower. I returned to my digs and was very sick from the assortment of wines and
other drinks.
It
was at Oxford David was asked by the Government if he would pretend to be left
wing and spy on his fellow students, as he had done before when a student at
the university in Berne. The Official History of MI5 has confirmed the approach
of infiltrating left of centre organisations and spying on politicians and
trade union activists which was given fresh impetus by the Cold War which
developed after armistice 1945. Although the impression given
is that he embarked on this with enthusiasm he looked back on doing this with
regret.
A very interesting and
informative insight into the one aspect of the work of the Infiltration
department of the Metropolitan Police is provided in Undercover published by Century a branch of Random House, (a
building where I worked on leaving school in 1955 as an office junior in a
branch of the Middlesex County Council Finance Department and which is located
close the Vauxhall Bridge with at the other end the iconic HQ building of MI6).
Undercover provides one perspective
on the way British law enforcement attempted to encounter the development of
international crime which as previously mentioned matched the development of
international finance and general business which commenced to be executed in
the 1980’s to bypass the controls and sanctions of individual states and their
government whatever their political systems. The book also provides insight
into many of the same issues in the authorized biography of John Cornwall/John Le Carré so it is an
appropriate point to break from his story to first consider the world of Joe
Carter, who as a new young recruit to the police in London became bored and
jumped at the opportunity to first undertake undercover work in addition to
normal duties after recruitment to the Criminal Investigations department, and
then became full time, whereas in the instance of John Cornwall he quickly
became an international literary superstar, although it is not clear me when he
fully moved from the day to day reality
into the world of fiction or the
extent to which he ever moved from non-fiction reporting into
creative fiction as he used for a time one former service boss to undertake
fact checking for his literary works.
There are several ways to view
Joe Carter’s book the book which in the first part provides insight into the
workings of the police and the ways of policemen and then on the life and
implications of spending a year living with an opposite sex undercover officer
away from his own family and overall the
book can be regarded as an apology to his family, and also to some of
the criminals he befriended and which at times it can be said he enticed into
undertaking more specific wrongdoing and which in turn leads to questions of
means justifying the ends and I have I
said I believe is justified in specific
circumstances involving national security and crime detection.
The present Prime Minister
when Home Secretary established an independent statutory inquiry into
undercover policing at the same time and the Inquiry into past crime against
children involving national institutions and other national bodies was converted into a
statutory Inquiry because of issues arising from the infiltration of organisations which might pose a threat to the state but
which are not involved in criminal activity
such as a political party, a trade union, a protest or pressure group, including those
challenging aspects of police work.
As a new young recruit, Joe
Carter found the assigned duties at the London Chiswick station not what he had
hoped for and he found himself under scrutiny because of his failure to meet
the expected quota of traffic and other minor offences to keep management
content. He was saved by a helping old hand from the Criminal Investigations
Department (C.I.D) and jumped at the opportunity of moving out of uniform
although he admits he decided not to join Freemasonry which he alleges
controlled the CID at that time. He also paints a vivid picture of the drink culture
which started from a cabinet in the office and continued across the way at a
local public house. One senior officer started at lunch time and was known to
regularly consume eight to ten pints.
Joe is also honest that what
attracted him to undercover work was the excitement and this included the
challenges and the personal risks involved. At first the work was in addition
to the day job and one assume overtime rates were paid and having gained
promotion, a wife and a child and moving to an area distant from both sets of
grandparents, his wife was left alone and in the dark about his double work so
that when the opportunity to become full time undercover he lied about family
support, such was the attraction of the role for him. He admits to feeling
guilt especially when the undercover work involved a week away from day job
responsibilities and family. He admits
that the responsibilities of bringing up children as in effect a single parent
were demanding and more challenging than his and gives the impression that his
wife was or became content with her role.
He then describes the first
adventure on the shores of Europe, using the recently opened channel tunnel and
filling the car with duty free drink where the focus was on a group of
professional criminals responsible for the production and distribution of
Ecstasy tablets in Europe. The task involved several trips to Holland and to
Spain where those involved were older men with legitimate businesses but who
appeared able to spend their day drinking and womanizing. On the visit to Spain
they were taken to be entertained at a brothel by very young girls with one
allocated to him Asian and very petite. It was one the criminal associates
which pressed for a way out and in helping him Joe broke one of the golden
rules when working with a colleague, don’t leave that person on their own. The
experience reveals something of the challenges facing those who are required to
adopt the life style of the professional underworld.
The book then covers his
recruitment as a full time officer in days when this appears to have been done
by word of mouth on the basis of previous contact and reputation rather than an open
competitive and rigorous process over a period of time which is presently being
described in a Channel Four documentary series Spies covering the four
weeks of assessment, reminding of the four week residential experience at an
International for existing director level candidates seeking to become general
managers such as chief executives undertaken in the mid 1980’s and where
beforehand there had been thorough
background and personality profiling.
He also gives a vivid account
of the end of the year Christmas social function which used to take place in
most work centres where everyone gets drunk over lunch time or from late afternoon
into evening and where pent up passions become freed and which can turn into
violent and sexual interactions with immediate and longer devastating impact.
Before beginning his work as part of the Infiltration Unit he recounts his
experience of an activity in Northern Ireland which involved buying a quantity
of drugs in a situation where the trade was controlled with guns and
paramilitary power. He makes the powerful point that whereas he could function
in situations involving professional criminals who used physical violence
instinctively as well as calculated the experience in what had become a tribal
totalitarian war was on a different level of horror, nastiness and personal
insecurity. The reality was made clear when in a bar full of Protestant
colleagues in the local force drinking hard at lunch all part of his protection
team which included armed protection he was told in the loo that he would in
fact be on his own because he was known to be a catholic. The source remains
unidentified.
In the same era, I attended a
conference on the prevention of drug misuse in Dublin on behalf of an
association of chief officers in local government and organised by the British
and Irish governments. Such a shadowy figure sat with me at dinner but I
listened to what he had to say and listened to what was said at the conference
while otherwise keeping a low profile.
At a social function attended by fellow
Directors of Social Services and Councillors, but I cannot remember when, I was approached in the loo by a colleague who
I had never met before who introduced
himself and said you are a left footer (which I had been as a child
but was no longer) and I then worked in
an area of Tyneside where at one point
leaflets were circulating advising voters to only support Fenian Labour
candidates, an area where there used to be an annual Orange march and the Order
still shares a building with the Tory Protestant and Unionist Club. Yesterday
while on a search for a business I
drove past the Mosque in South Shields, when Mohamed Ali had a marriage ceremony
in the same month that the Queen visited during her Silver Jubilee year. I
noted for the first time in the forty years that I have worked and more
recently lived in the town the existence of another Unionist club.
It is, of course, all a matter
of degree of threat, and separately I will be writing about published material
on the crime families which engaged in a bloody civil war on Tyne and Wearside
over control, and where family honour and integrity governed as anywhere. In the
first reported assignment, Joe Carter enters the world of Albanian Drug
suppliers where he warned that any form of treachery would be dealt with by the
family and generationally if necessary. There is then disclosure of the impact
of such roles on individuals and the need to have someone independent skilled
and in listening, supporting but also the limitations of this and importance of
building up survival self-reliance and where I suggest that while selection and assessment are
important, those responsible for recruitment have to put the interests of the
state first and that casualties are inevitability, My approach, in the world I
inhabited, has always been to ensure that I was always frank about risks and likely consequences and that if I was
asking someone else to go over the top, the individual knew that I was also leading from the front and taken
the main burden of risk. The author the tells how he told his son aged sixteen
what he did and his son’s relief as a friend had suggested that his dad was not
a detective but had all the appearance of being a drug dealer which is what
became for a whole year at one point.
The book then moves onto a
subject which has become one of the reasons the independent statutory inquiry
into undercover policing has been established- the extent which such individuals
are required or develop sexual attachments which lead to the creation of second
marriages and families, and in this instance to become the partner of another
female undercover officer who worked alone in a challenging environment and
where a criminal boyfriend which provide both security and progress the
project. It is having this point there is need to introduce a reality warning
that clearly anyone writing about such experience will have had the work vetted
to ensure ongoing service methods are not compromised and that the anonymity of
the actual work and convictions cannot be compromised.
I am reminded of my
unsuccessful career as an office equipment salesman for a major international company
where working in central London in the city we had to start work calling at
offices up to 5 business machines then graduated to those up to 25 and over
this a small group attempted to gain contracts with the larger firms. Thus, our
undercover officer was involved in the purchase of a kilo or two of cocaine and
therefore in the middle of the chain. However,
sums of £25000 in cash were required for trading and the flash lifestyle
required involved expenses to purchase the latest fast car, fashionwear, tip
doormen £50 or £100 to get space and be looked after and to buy champagne with
a little discount for getting ready for drinking half a dozen. In terms of the
main operation recounted there was talk of making a million within the year,
which understandably could make some question if they were in the wrong job.
Because of his abilities and
success, he became a leader of others, a trainer and an internationally
appreciated expert. Feeling myself to be different, from early childhood I have
always been interested in how others lived whether, teenagers, couples, parents
and now other oldies, and for a time considered most people normal until through
my work I understood that everyone feels that way at some point and experiences
situations and challenges for which they are not equipped and find themselves tested
after which lives can be traumatised with long term damage and in some instance
destroyed. The most significant aspect of the book comes at the end when having
recounted what his life was about and the impact it had on his family, he
attends the funeral of a colleague who worked undercover in the attempt to stop
and apprehend paedophiles. I have no time for those, especially the politicians
who bear down hard on the individuals who cross the line when working for and
in the interests of state or make mistakes which adversely affect the bystander,
while government, parliament and other
state institutions work with and tolerate those who now make billions
exploiting and destroying people in their thousands and tens of thousands and
as we daily see in places such as Syria and Aden, and a few make billions from millions.
The story of Joe Carter is
important because I suggest it shows
great insight into the reality of the ordinary men and women who join
the police or enlist in the armed services and are recruited to serve their
country by doing unconventional
work behind the scenes working with
those only interested in developing their own power and wealth by any means without disregard for the harm
which they do, using people, destroying
the lives of others and this includes their families. There is no justification for tolerating these
people and while it is often true that if you take down one crime boss or crew
leader others are only too ready to stem in it is essential the state does
focus on stopping a s many as possible while at the same time also looking at
ways to prevent individuals being drawn into this cycle of evil.
There are also similarities
between Joe Carter, (the Undercover Police officer whose book is separately
reviewed) and David Cornwall although the direction in which their lives has
taken appears to be very different and where the individual good they did is
likely to remain secret and they both must spend the rest of their lives living
with the unintended consequences of the roles they performed in the interests
of the state. This is where David
Cornwall has been able to work off his occupational life through his fictional
writings and to have an authorised version of life which attempts to indicate
something of how life and work may have become entwined.
One similarity is restlessness
and a resistance to conventional existence and which we know in the instance of
David Cornwall-Le Carré this comes from the personality and lifestyle of his
father and the devastating impact of his mother walking out on her two
children. David left public school early and his expedition to further
education in another country with a different language was also short term.
There is no suggestion of a military career after national service and that he
was able in effect to buy his way into Oxford University although this is no
different from the majority whose route is the private school and money. At
Oxford, the state came calling and to the surprise of everyone after starting
with the good life of the Tory drinking club fine dining Brideshead good life
which David Cameron and friends made infamous once more with their rise to
power. David Cornwall became an active socialist joining the appropriate
university clubs with the purpose of spying on his new comrades.
He was forced to leave because
of changes in his father’s financial fortunes, although beforehand on a holiday
in Switzerland where it is said he developed a relationship with the priest,
historian and rector of Lincoln College, Vivian H H Green who was used to
create the fictional character of George Smiley. David Cornwall’s first attempt
at earning a living was at a private school in Somerset where the grandfather
of his fiancée and future wife was a member of the teaching staff. The couple
married in 1954 as I was in my last year at private school, struggling with
learning Latin to enter for the sixth form, university and priesthood! David then was keen to return to Oxford and
complete the degree which he did demonstrating the character and determination
of a young man with a wife and not having to pretend being what he was not. But
was he really cut out to be a school master when he took work again at
Eton. This was not to last long and he
was recruited full time to MI5 and then MI6. He was 26 years of age while aged
19 I was coming to end of my spell working in local government in the finance
department of Croydon County Borough Council, occasionally playing chess for
the social club team and playing a washboard at an annual social. Visits to Cy
Laurie and other Soho area Jazz clubs declined and I cannot remember when I
first joined the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. David was best man for Robin Cook and Robin
had been for him and one wonders if he ever spied on him officially.
Interestingly the books author
comments that David quickly found that the technical people at MI5 were the
creatives which begs the question at what point did the service begin the
sophisticated psychological profiling of the 1980’s and at point were tests
evolved for use by international finance and business. When he joined, there
was no formal training and pay was £1100, still substantial more than the team
of ex WW1 and II veterans with whom I had been attached as office junior of
Middlesex House one side of the bridge from what is now the purpose-built spy
HQ.
In those days those foreign
nationals working for the CIA, the Soviets, Mossad who were attached to an embassy
were talked of illegals but were also said to have been identified. There was
no foreign travel for the masses, and those coming in and out of the British
homeland could be monitored, rationing and taking British money out of the
country was still controlled. David is said to have disclosed that the man
responsible for combatting the soviets arrived at ten popped out for breakfast,
returned briefly before a good long lunch with a contact and after a brief
repose in the office teatime marked home time. I was also familiar with this
kind of behaviour which echoed that of the section head at Middlesex House who
also arrived around ten, took long lunches, followed by afternoon naps in his
office and left early.
I was also struck by the
reported comment of Peter Wright who described the 1950’s as the years of fun.
In 1961 when I guess MI5 opened
a proper file on me after I met a range of Home Office and Met people at Scotland yard
with George Clark to discuss the quarter of million people we hoped would make
the last day of the Aldermaston March and I wanted to encourage as many as we
could to join us on the first leg of the Direct Action Committee six week march
through England before Scotland and direct action on and
by Holy Loch, while I and others
suspected that Ralph Scheonman
who appeared to control Bertrand Russell was CIA, planned in secret a demonstration at
the American Embassy. He reappeared again during the so called Arab Spring.
David Cornwall is said to have
reminded that at the time there was a significant difference between the Home
Office led MI5 which was full of middle and some working-class people while the
Foreign Office MI6 was middle class to aristocratic. One also assumes the War Office which carried
on until 1964 when the Ministry of Defence first emerged was also more Officers
and MI6 than Len Deighton’s hero. McClean defected in the early 1950’s with
Burgess while was not until 1963 and the Keeper of Royal Art was not out until
1979 by Margaret Thatcher soon after she came to power with Harold Wilson using
the Royal Prerogative to prevent prosecution and prevent public awareness.
One of
David’s professional interests was the Communist Party of Great Britain where
an agent had infiltrated first as a shorthand typist and worked her way to a
position of trust which enabled her to pass documents and information to the
Service. The bread and butter work
involved vetting those seeking to work directly for government or to or the
in-defence industries, referring to a shop steward making application to work
for Hawker Siddeley. A postman seen reading the Daily Worker was investigated.
It is not clear if David reported his then wife who after seeing the film On
the Beach in 1959 immediately joined the CND.
I cannot now remember if our very small CND
group in Wallington, a handful of married couples, plus a teacher who joined
without his wife, all parents, also picketed the film when it was shown as the
local Odeon although I remember how self-conscious we felt when handing out
leaflets standing with a hold a placard in the High Street. By 1960 as his
first child, a boy was born, David sat the Foreign Office exam required for
joining MI6, while I was in prison at Stafford refusing to enter an oral
recognisance not to undertake further Satyagraha civil disobedience enabling
with Peter C Brown (Smallcreep’s Day) to plan our opposition to locating
Polaris Submarine on the Clyde where a first counter strike would obliterate
Glasgow.
David’s
new office location was secret to the British Public but a succession of
British double agents presumably passed the information to the Kremlin. When
recently it is said a Trident carrying submarine on trial before starting
another prolonged underwater vigil loss contact with the testing fired unarmed
missile understandably sent in the direction east west not to worry the Russia
and had to be destroyed, the Government argued could not disclose any details
to Parliament or to the Defence Select
Committee of the House of Commons in closed session because
it was a matter of national security, the White House was confirming the
problem had occurred, the details of which would become known if the American
Congress or senate set up a committee of
inquiry. The British government decision was in fact political and nothing to
do with national security.
As a
recruit to the service there does appear to have been the kind of training we
have come to now expect from learning to use guns and the ability to kill in
unarmed combat with a single blow as well as the skill in recruiting and
running agents in other lands together with the ability to live without
detection as someone else. This was the sexy spying which evidently David
longed for and has been noted did undercover police officer, Joe Carter admits
he found his work exciting. David arrived in Germany as I was deciding to
either become full time organiser for the London region CND or go to Ruskin
College. No sooner had David joined the service that his first novel was
published and he was on the first phase of morphing into John Le Carré
David’s
role was that of a legitimate Foreign Office representative but interestingly
his work was to detect underground Nazi cells at the same time as the British
and USA governments were continuing to recruit former Nazis because of their
knowledge and skills as well as placing them in positions of power and influence
in what was then West Germany. This is the first time I have come across an
admission that the secret services were also interested in the activities of
the far right as they had been in the left.
This
was also a time when the British Prime Minister came to Germany for support for
joining the Common Market but our recent allies and defeated foe joined forces
to keep us out as they are now wanting to punish when a narrow majority of the
population want us to leave. A picture is painted by the biographer of
diplomats bemoaning their loss of tribal power and status in the days of the
Empress and Emperors with its locked in social life and the winds of sixties
change yet to blow but I wonder was there really no drugs, sex and rock and
roll? Turning page was the answer as David had to turn to Special branch for
suitable addresses when playing host to a group of future German leaders on a
visit to London.
David
also still had time to write and in 1963 came the Spy who came in out of the cold, the Vassal affair. John Profumo -
the Secretary of State for War who brazenly lied to Parliament about his affair
with Christine Keeler, her friend, Mandy Rice Davies, aristocratic house party
weekends and the death of Stephen Ward. Profumo redeemed what the Establishment
considered the great sin of being caught out by withdrawing from public life
and working for the Toynbee Hall Settlement in East London just beyond the
citadel of capitalism.
Meanwhile
I had switched from Politics and Economics at Ruskin to child care social work
at Barnett House studying criminology with Nigel Walker then at Nuffield.
Ronnie, David’s notorious father turned up at his home out of the still murky
blue. A little while later he left the
country and it is suggested perhaps a photo of him and the Krays was a factor.
Th Spy
who came who came in from the Cold rocketed David into international writing
stardom but his marriage was ending, President Kennedy went to Berlin and
committed to American solidarity which continued until the era of President
Obama and we shall shortly know the implications of the election of President
Trump. I went on a college study trip to
Sweden and the land of Summer with Monika, Wild Strawberries a Scenes of a Marriage.
Kim Philby presence in Moscow became public. George Blake was intended to be in
the Scrubs for another forty years.
It was
at this point in his life that David was under pressure to become Le Carré in
more ways than full time when he became teamed up with James Kennaway, the
creator of Tunes of Glory and where the film starred Alec Guinness one of
Britain’s great screen actors who was subsequently to become George Smiley.
Kennaway until his premature death aged 40is portrayed as an indiscriminate a
sex addict and as with all addicts the pressure is put on those around to join
in. This was the aspect of the book which the Daily Mail featured with the
headline emphasis that Le Carré had a relationship Kennaway’s wife and which
involved him allegedly telling her that he had only married under instruction
of MI5, a means of moving in left wing circles! It can be said that while all
power corrupts, the expected lifestyle of those who achieve international
success and fame will destroy unless the individual is particularly strong
willed and self-disciplined.
Whereas
sexual morality remained a subject of strong debate in this period, those with
incomes over £15000 faced super tax of around 90% on both sides of the Atlantic
were free to find ways to limit their liability and which created the new industry
of legitimate tax avoidance. A few years later I attended a social function for
a group of Federal, State and County officials from the USA visiting Britain to
view the new Social Services of 1971 but their main interest was over the fact
that we were dedicated public servants paying our taxation dues whereas they
boasted about not paying any tax with one of the best ways to offset the
liability by making profit from rented slum housing. One aspects for achieving
the same objective was to become in effect stateless, not staying anywhere to
pay the required sums with David making his home in Greece for the Summer and
Austria in the Winter while he worked out how to cope with being in demand and
the money. He became a citizen of the world but a prisoner of the writing
celebrity machine with his wife complaining that everyone commanded his time
and attention apart from his family.
What
interests me in terms of the character of a spy in fact and in fiction is that
his attraction to the ‘fast’ life of others continued with his relationship
with James Kennaway replaced by a new relationship with the then young
conservative politician Alan Clark who was open about his tendency to fornicate
with anyone interested irrespective of age and their relationship. Clark is
also reported to have been friends with the fascist right. There were others
mentioned in the rest of the book whose lifestyle was closer to Ronnie Cornwall
than David. I like the way Sisman reveals something of the catalogue of David’s
history of infidelities without the kind of prurient and detailed accounting
which other contemporaries have compromised under pressure to make their
autobiography/biography commercially attractive to the avaricious media.
A
constant theme throughout the life story is that of man brought up without the
close or in fact any direction from a traditional stereotype mother,
housekeeper/wife and yet and a fascination about those who as adults treated
women with ruthless disregard with their own gratifications and ambitions predominating. Le Carré writes an article about Philby who
by all accounts was a killer sociopath but needed women to accept and adore as
he was. Le Carré is said to have clashed with Graham Green, another spy man writer,
over their respective assessment of Philby, the man and his treachery,
While
it can be said David, Cornwall had quickly become John Le Carré, the
international literary superstar, it is evident he maintained contact with
former secret service colleagues mentioning that his former boss Sir Roger
Hollis, then under investigation visited his home as a safe house, while
another former colleague was used to fact check for several books. While Le
Carré also commenced to be courted my other superstars (although Richard
Burton’s attempt to introduce the couple to Elizabeth Taylor misfired) of greater interest to me
than the invite to join one of the Queen’s get know people in the media eye
lunches, is the information that he had contact with the ex-Sherborne school
boy who became chairman of the Thatcher think tank. (Centre for Policy studies)
whose influence on British economic policy and the balance between public
service and private wealth accumulation has been profound.
Le
Carré was then entertained to a lunch of 24 by the President of Italy with
David having the impression the other guest were members of government and
senior people from the intelligences services. I remember once saying to the
Director of Social Services of Newcastle after he had been appointed the only
non-politician Commissioner to the European Parliament, much to the amazement
of local authority associations who had nominated Chief Executives, if he was
enjoying eating in Europe’s finest restaurants to which he just said Palaces.
In
contrast when Le Carré went to Russia for the first time his suitcase
disappeared for two days, his room was searched whenever he was not there.
Fortunately, after leaving a visit in the early hours, not knowing where he was
or how to get back to the hotel he could wake the surveillance team outside who
got him home. In contrast meeting with
post graduates one asked about defining the boundary between individual
conscience and social responsibility which is an issue throughout his work and
then the students confided they had secretly watched the TV series Tinker
Tailor Soldier Spy. Another event
recalled with lasting pleasure was when he had been invited to lunch with the
Russian dissident Joseph Brodsky who had been imprisoned in a psychiatric
hospital and Siberian hard labour camps just as he was informed he been given a
Nobel Prize.
The
visit and book about Russia (The Russia House) marked the ending of Russia’s
ability to control its empire and like the UK it has taken decades to adjust
and seek its new place in a world where China has become the main challenger to
the self-appointed world power of the USA.
By the mid 1990’s he was being asked what he could not write about,
although as Sisman has pointed out his subject matter while centred on the Cold
War had been wider. Interestingly it is reported that David Cornwall had
prepared a list of countries where he anticipated there would be issues which
would command international attention including Libya, El Salvador, Cambodia
and Angola. Not on the list is what has become the main threat to international
stability the rise of religious fundamentalism between Muslims and everyone
else. This is not to imply he had not considered the subject but he recognised
that for a writer to engage with the subject of religious belief arouses deeper
passions than political ideologies in terms of the hold on most people who will
accept the imposition of a political ideology on the same basis they will
accept the power and its abuse by those who able to take and hold power without
some ideological pretence.
According
to Adam Sisman, David has remained rightly, in my judgement, critical of the
decision of Salman Rushdie to first challenge the fundamental beliefs of some
Muslims and then to make himself into something of a public martyr, whereas since those at Charlie Abdo became physical
martyrs and as I have suggested at the outset of my writing on Spies and the world of
intelligence gathering the motives and subsequent behaviour of Edward Snowden
can be questioned and where his period of stay in Russia has been only recently
extended following the election of President Trump.
Just
when I reached the point in biography of wondering if there is anything more of
interest to me or relevant to my focus Sisman mentions that David consulted his
neighbour Anthony Samson whose books on the changing nature of power in Britain
I have read since his first work on the subject, Anatomy of Britain, was
published and purchased in 1962, with updates in 1965, 1971, 1982, 1992 and
2004. However, these works now appear
parochial in a time of global organisations and global power, especially having
just quickly read through the 200 pages on what is presently known on the
membership of Le Cercle.
David, because of having become Le Carré, moved
legitimately among circles we describe today as fashionable and of the
Establishments of many lands who courted his attention, and the opposite of his
father who used other people’s money in an attempt to gain favour, and although
I believe the book confirms that his inherited personality dramatically
reshaped by the departure of his mother was eminently suitable for the double
dealing life of a spy, and although some may claim that in total his books are
an indictment of the way states of different political structures and values use people for the personal ambitions
and interests of those currently with the power, at the core I gained the
impression of a thinking patriot, a
sincere and important writer and a serious man, a man who understood people and how the world
worked.
David’s
claim, however that he had only spent five minutes in the Service during a
period when a few of those with whom he worked also worked for the Russians and
then spent thirty years using his wits to create books about a service he had
only a lay person’s knowledge is at best I suggest questionable. He continued
to be in demand for social meetings with former and current spymasters from the
Soviets, in the USA and home.
The
book also describes his journey from child, to adventuring young man,
adventuring adult, international literary superstar, and then the challenges
and changes of aging, the funerals of parents, a wife, of friends and
associates and of what to do about the accumulation of written records and
other material, giving hundreds of boxes to the Oxford Bodleian because Oxford
remains his spiritual home. As I read
the book I was struck by the extent of his continuing success and my repeated
failures but also some similarities which I suspect most those of us who reach
the late seventies face, reconciling an increasing long life with the prospects
of oblivion but with still things we would like still to be experience and
questions to be answered. I am wrestling how best to relocate the many boxes of
records and papers acquired overran approaching right decades.
Another
consequence of longevity is meeting people whose impressions are based on a
time past time meetings, a past association or relayed gossip or in the
instance of David confuse Le Carré with being him. Worse still those who have
no idea of what we have experienced or achieved or who suffer from questionable
amnesia.
Because
of my own visits to Gibraltar in 2003 and 2004 and the years of research about
the family homeland I was not surprised by the location of A Delicate Truth and hope David has visited and understood that Gib
has become the Berlin of the Mediterranean although I wonder if the plan for
the Rock to become the new Hong Kong will be adversely affected by Brexit.
The
book concludes with the starling admission that David well into his 80’s is now
writing with as great a belief and enthusiasm as he ever has, and long this may
be so. I hope he will also put pen to paper about the need for the Labour Party
to unite in the face of the rise of the far right in Europe and in the USA, and
it was also interesting to read that he gave up on the Party during the Blair
years voting again in 2015. I wonder what he makes of the approach and policies
of Jeremy Corbyn?
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