-Caveat Lector-
>From the Independent (UK)
> AN EPIDEMIC OF RED SPY FEVER - BUT HAVE THESE SPOOKS AND SNEAKS REALLY DAMAGED
> BRITAIN?
>
>
> BRITAIN IS in the grip of spy fever, a peculiar epidemic that has everyone
> looking under their beds for old Reds. For the past 10 days, one spy scandal has
> followed another and if it continues much longer journalists will be reduced to
> seeking out the only academic or politician who was not working for one secret
> service or other during the Cold War.
>
> The tabloid press has had possibly the most fun. The Sunday Mirror claimed
> yesterday that two royal aides were KGB agents - with not much in the way of
> evidence. The News of the World interviewed the former Scotland Yard detective
> John Symonds, who was said to have worked for the KGB as a "Romeo" agent paid to
> befriend women who might be able to provide information. In the article,
> headlined "Traitor romped for Russia", he claims to have given "200 women best
> sex ever".
>
> Newspapers of the political right, with The Sunday Telegraph to the fore, are
> settling old scores with CND by implying that Communist agents in its midst made
> it a tool of Moscow.
>
> When the dust settles some questions will be asked: Does it all matter? Did it
> tell us something we didn't know? The answer in broad terms is "no".
>
> But first let's clear up a few misunderstandings. It is easy to apply the term
> "spy" to anyone who has a KGB file, but the reality is not so simple. Certainly
> many people recruited by the KGB or the East German HVA or any other Communist
> spy service were engaged in full-on espionage against their country.
>
> Melita Norwood, aged 87, was a prime example, feeding classified information
> from her workplace back to the Soviet Union. She was engaged in treachery,
> whether she is prosecuted or not. She had a bulging KGB file and a codename -
> Hola. Like Philby, Burgess, Maclean and the rest of the Cambridge spy ring she
> did it for ideological reasons. Many other spies did it for the money or even
> the sex.
>
> But not all the people named in the past few days are "spies". All secret
> services use different types of agents. The second most important is the "agent
> of influence". This would ideally be a politician, journalist or academic -
> someone who can influence public thinking.
>
> The Mitrokhin Archive, by Professor Christopher Andrew and the KGB defector Col
> Mitrokhin, reveals that in 1977 the KGB residency gave an annual report to
> Moscow in which it claimed 190 successful "acts of influence".
>
> It claimed it had initiated 99 discussions, which allegedly "influenced"
> politicians, journalists and other opinion formers, and claimed to have
> successfully prompted 26 public announcements, 20 publications, the sending of
> more than 20 letters and telegrams, nine questions in Parliament, five press
> conferences, four meetings and demonstrations and three television and radio
> broadcasts.
>
> In the mid-1970s the London KGB residency hatched "probably its most ambitious
> scheme" - to recruit Dr Mervyn Stockwood, the socialist Bishop of Southwark. An
> approach was to be made by a KGB official at a party in London, hosted by Gordon
> McLennan, the general secretary of the Communist Party in Britain. Mr McLennan
> asked Dr Stockwood why the Church of England did not attend progressive meetings
> and demonstrations, to which Dr Stockwood replied: "We don't see you at
> demonstrations at the Soviet embassy." With that the KGB gave up.
>
> According to Col Mitrokhin, the KGB viewed the agent codenamed Dan as probably
> its most reliable agent of influence during the 1960s. But when he was put on
> ice after the expulsion of 105 KGB agents from London in 1971, he refused to
> resume contact. Dan is now alleged to be Richard Clements, a former Tribunite
> writer and aide to Neil Kinnock, the former Labour Party leader.
>
> Vic Allen, a former economics professor at Leeds University, is also alleged to
> have been an agent of the East German secret service, the Stasi. His views were
> well known as being left of Arthur Scargill, the miners' leader. But he was on
> the national council of CND, and is said to have made CND less hostile to the
> Soviets. If that is true he would have been an excellent "agent of influence".
>
> The KGB Moscow Centre was always suspicious that its foreign residencies were
> exaggerating their own influence. KGB field officers, like most in the spy
> world, were not above claiming an occasional contact was a full agent. Many
> British "agents" would probably be mortified to discover they have a KGB or
> Stasi file and codename after a few conversations with a Soviet "diplomat".
>
> Agents proper may also make things up either to keep their controllers happy or
> to milk them of money. Graham Greene brilliantly demonstrated the dangers of
> believing everything your agents tell you in Our Man in Havana and John Le
> Carre, less successfully, in The Tailor of Panama.
>
> Academics were recruited because they were very useful for gathering research in
> the defence, computing and commercial areas in which the East lagged behind the
> West.
>
> Professor Childs, emeritus professor at the University of Nottingham and a
> leading expert on the former German Democratic Republic, says: "The East Germans
> liked to recruit foreign academics because they often had access to research
> information. They also regarded them as opinion formers. They could get into
> government service or spy on other academics." A fellow British academic
> reported on Professor Childs to the Stasi, the files now reveal. This is another
> category of agent - the informer. The East Germans were legendary for their use
> of informers to report back on anyone not agreeing with the Communist line. They
> ran thousands of informers both domestically and internationally.
>
> At the centre of the new revelations is The Mitrokhin Archive: The KGB in Europe
> and the West. Col Mitrokhin was enormously courageous in smuggling notes of the
> KGB files out of Russia. But although these documents portray a KGB every bit as
> evil, duplicitous and ruthless as was popularly believed, the book reveals
> nothing in broad terms that we did not already know. The new details are often
> fascinating but ultimately that is what they are - details. If anything, towards
> the end of the Cold War, the KGB sometimes looks decidedly inefficient.
>
> In 1973 Phil Agee, a former CIA officer who had been fired by the agency,
> approached the KGB residency in Mexico City. But the suspicious KGB resident
> found Agee's offer too good to be true, concluded it was part of a CIA plot and
> turned him away. Undaunted, Agee made contact with the Cuban intelligence
> service, the DST, which did take him seriously and received vast quantities of
> classified information about the CIA agent network in Latin America.
>
> The KGB did much the same when Michael Bettaney, a drunk who had become
> disaffected with his work for MI5, tried to approach the London KGB - only
> finally realising it was not a MI5 set-up after several aborted contacts.
>
> Any student of KGB history is taught that the KGB had thousand of spies and
> agents in the West. It is known that many were not identified. From previous
> intelligence books we already know many agent codenames. The Mitrokhin Archive
> has put some more codenames in the arena and named a handful of spies.
>
> What of Mrs Norwood? Professor Andrew said the Russians considered Mrs Norwood
> one of their most important spies. But, paraphrasing a remark in the spy scandal
> known as the Profumo affair, "they would, wouldn't they?" Mrs Norwood clearly
> did provide useful information to the Soviet Union, but claims that she advanced
> Russian atomic-bomb research bythree years are ludicrous. At the time,
> scientists at the centre of the research were leaking information to Russia.
> Some were even unmasked and jailed, such as Klaus Fuchs.
>
> I suspect that by the end of the year The Mitrokhin Archive will be merely
> another book filed on the shelves under Andrew, Prof C; no one will be
> prosecuted and Melita Norwood will still be delivering the Morning Star to her
> comrades in Bexleyheath.
>
> NAMED BY THE SPYHUNTERS: EIGHT BRITONS CAUGHT UP IN THE AFTERMATH OF THE COLD
> WAR
>
> Melita Norwood
>
> Hola
>
> KGB
>
> Named by Vasili Mitrokhin as supplying information that helped the Soviet Union
> to develop the atom bomb. Worked for the British Non-Ferrous Metals Research
> Association
>
> Mrs Norwood, now 87 and living in Bexleyheath, south-east London, admits to
> passing information and support for the Soviet Union, but claims her role has
> been much exaggerated
>
> Helped the Soviet nuclear effort, but not on the scale of Western atomic
> scientists such as Fuchs, May etc. But the image of the "granny" spy was simply
> too much for the media to resist
>
> John Symonds
>
> Scot
>
> KGB
>
> The corrupt policeman was recruited by the Russians, while on the run from his
> former colleagues at Scotland Yard, to bed women to get secrets, according to
> Mitrokhin
>
> Not only does Symonds, now 64, not deny this, he is keen to tell how he was
> taught the techniques of seduction by Russian agents to become a "Romeo Spy" who
> bedded "hundreds of women"
>
> Easy to be sceptical of his claims of romping for Russia in four continents. No
> clear evidence of what he actually obtained by way of intelligence in return for
> all his efforts in bed
>
> Raymond Fletcher
>
> Peter
>
> KGB
>
> According to the Mitrokhin archives this Labour MP, whose main claim to fame was
> helping write the lyrics for Oh! What a Lovely War, was a long- standing Russian
> agent
>
> His widow, Dr Catherine Fletcher, maintains he was not a KGB agent, but carried
> out missions for MI6. Margaret Thatcher asked him to prod Bettino Craxi to stand
> for the Italian premiership
>
> No evidence in the Andrew-Mitrokhin book of what service he provided for the
> Russians. He was not in a position to pass on secrets of any significance
>
> Robin Pearson
>
> Armin
>
> Stasi
>
> The Hull University lecturer is said to have informed on academics and students
> to the Stasi foreign intelligence arm for 12 years to 1989 as well as "spotting"
> potential agents
>
> No public statement so far from Mr Pearson, 44. Colleagues say his left-wing
> views were well known, but they express surprise that he could be considered a
> spy of any importance
>
> Not known what damage, if any, was done to those upon whom he allegedly
> informed. Interviewed by MI5 in 1994; no legal action as there was no "usable
> evidence". No access to state secrets
>
> Vic Allen
>
> Not known
>
> Stasi
>
> Professor of economics at Leeds University, he is said to have been an "agent of
> influence" who promoted unilateral disarmament and deflected criticism of the
> USSR in CND
>
> In a television interview, Mr Allen, aged 77, admits he provided information to
> East Germany but denies betraying Britain, acting in any way illegally, or
> receiving any payment for his activities
>
> CND denies that Mr Allen was a senior figure in the group, saying that his
> pro-Soviet views were no secret and that unilateral disarmament had universal
> support in the organisation
>
> Richard Clements
>
> Dan
>
> KGB
>
> According to Mitrokhin, the KGB believed that it had managed to "turn" the
> editor of Tribune, an influential shaper of Labour policy
>
> Mr Clements, 71, laughs off the notion that he had been manipulated or
> recruited. "I suspect they [the agents] exaggerated their reports to Moscow.
> Perhaps they were boosting their expenses"
>
> Mr Clements' Tribune sometimes backed Soviet disarmament proposals, but it was
> also often highly critical of the Soviet Union. No evidence that he was an agent
> of a foreign power
>
> Fiona Houlding
>
> Diana
>
> Stasi
>
> The 36-year-old mother from Leeds is said to have been seduced and trained as an
> East German agent in Leipzig in the mid-1980s. The claims come from Stasi files
>
> There has been no public comment from Ms Houlding, who has since changed her
> name
>
> No evidence that she provided anything of value. The Stasi's plans for her
> involved going to Brussels to work as an interpreter, but there is nothing to
> suggest that even this took place
>
> Gwyneth Edwards
>
> Not known
>
> Stasi
>
> Ms Edwards, a former lecturer in German studies at the University of
> Loughborough, is claimed, in Stasi files, to have informed on British and
> dissident East German academics
>
> She denies the charges
>
> Could have caused problems for dissident East Germans, hindering, for example,
> their chances of travelling in the West. No evidence she passed on any secrets
A<>E<>R
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