Smith, Michael. "Russians Had Third Major Spy Network in Britain."
Electronic Telegraph,
14 Jan. 1998. [http://www.telegraph.co.uk]1. "Green Ring"
2. Hugh Hambleton
3. Kitty Harris
4. Jenifer Hart
5. John Herbert King
6. Geoffrey Prime
7. Profumo Case
8. Third Wartime Spy at GCHQ
9. Vassall
10. X Group (GRU)
Smith, Michael. "Russians Had Third Major Spy Network in Britain."
Electronic Telegraph,
14 Jan. 1998. [http://www.telegraph.co.uk]
KGB files made available to The Telegraph "show that Soviet intelligence had a third major spy network in Britain, separate from the Cambridge and Oxford rings. The so-called Green ring was run by the GRU, Soviet Military Intelligence...
"The Green Ring was built up by Oliver Green, a printer who was recruited by Soviet military intelligence while serving with the International Brigade in the Spanish Civil War. He began recruiting the network after returning to Britain in 1938....
"[Although] Green's network never achieved the spectacular success of its KGB rival, it was well-trained and highly professional.... All the agents recruited by Green were British subjects. They included [a] government official, a number of soldiers, a worker at an aviation plant, a merchant seaman and a pilot."
Heaps,
Leo. Thirty Years with the KGB: The Double Life of Hugh Hambleton.
Hugh Hambleton, Spy: Thirty Years with the KGB. Toronto: Methuen, 1983. London: Methuen, 1983.
Milivojevic, I&NS 2.2, finds this to be a "convincing account of how Hambleton was recruited and controlled over a long period of time." Hambleton, a Canadian citizen, spent 10 years in a British prison after his trial in 1982 for espionage in NATO in the 1950s.
Elliott,
Geoffrey, and Igor Damaskin. Kitty Harris: The Spy with Seventeen Names.
London: St Ermin's, 2001.
According to Michael Smith, Electronic Telegraph, 16 Mar. 2001 [http://www. telegraph.co.uk], Harris was a "Soviet spy [codenamed Norma] who slept with Donald Maclean while acting as an intermediary between the British diplomat and his KGB controller."
Hart, Jenifer. Ask
Me No More. London: Peter Halban, 1998.
Clark comment: Hart was identified by Peter Wright, Spycatcher (1987), pp. 264-266, as a member of what he labeled the Oxford Ring of pre-World War II Soviet spies. This book is Hart's response, in spirit at least, if not directly. She essentially denies being a Soviet spy, while admitting her links to the Communist Party and clandestine meetings over a sustained period of time.
West, IJI&C 12.2, points up the dilemma by noting that Hart "has come tantalizingly close to conceding that almost everything Wright said about her is true, but she balked at the last fence, the identification of her English contact." From what we know today, the gaps in Hart's tale are "altogether too big to sustain."
See IJI&C 13.3/402-403 for Hart's response to West's review and West's rejoinder.
Thurlow, Richard C. "Soviet Spies and British Counter-Intelligence in the 1930s: Espionage in the Woolwich Arsenal and the Foreign Office Communications Department." Intelligence and National Security 19, no. 4 (Winter 2004): 610-631.
"The management of the spies Percy Glading and John Herbert King, and their discovery by British counter-espionage, were interesting examples of the contest between Soviet intelligence and the British security authorities."
Watt, D. Cameron. "Francis [Thurlow (above) uses John] Herbert King: A Soviet Source in the Foreign Ministry." Intelligence
and National Security 3, no. 4 (Oct. 1988): 62-82.
King was "arrested in 1939, convicted of espionage on behalf of the Soviet Union, and sentenced to ten years' imprisonment." The author identifies "four sets of episodes which probably can be traced to his influence."
Cole, D. J. Geoffrey Prime: The Imperfect Spy. London: Robert Hale, 1998.
Northcott, I&NS 14.1, notes that Cole is the Detective Chief Superintendent who led the inquiry into Prime's activities. Consequently, the author's book "contains much useful information and many unique insights from his interviews with Prime." In addition, Cole "writes with an easy-flowing, almost conversational, and highly readable style." Nevertheless, this is a personal memoir "not a scholarly work," and does not have the trappings of the latter.
Economist. Editors. "The Treason of Geoffrey Prime." 13
Nov. 1992, 63- 64.
Prime,
Rhona. Time of Trial. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1984. [Chambers]
Denning,
Alfred Thompson [Baron]. The Profumo-Christine Keeler Affair: Lord Denning's Report. New York: Marc, 1962.
This is the official report on the British spy scandal of the early 1960s.
Irving,
Clive, et al. Anatomy of a Scandal: A Study of the Profumo Affair. New York: Mill, 1963. [Wilcox]
Ivanov,
Yevgeny, and Gennady Sokolov. The Naked Spy. London: Blake, 1992.
Kennedy,
Ludovic. The Trial of Stephen Ward. London: Gollancz, 1964. [Chambers]
Knightley,
Phillip, and Caroline Kennedy. An Affair of State: The Profumo Case and the Framing of Stephen Ward. New York: Atheneum, 1987.
Deac, IJI&C 2.1, says that this is "factual and well worth reading, but it is not without flaws." The narrative is "complex and sometimes jumpy," and Knightley "has the disconcerting habit of fitting the material to his theories."
Rice-Davies,
Mandy. Mandy. London: Joseph, 1980.
The author was one of the centerpieces in the Profumo scandal in the United Kingdom in the early 1960s. Not much intelligence here.
Summers,
Anthony, and Stephen Darril. Honey Trap: The Secret Worlds of Stephen Ward. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1987. [Wilcox]
Smith,
Michael. "Enigma of KGB's Third Man at Bletchley Park." Electronic
Telegraph, 26 Jun. 1997. [http://www.telegraph.co.uk]
According to documents uncovered at the Public Record Office, "Bletchley Park ... was infiltrated by a previously unsuspected third agent run by Moscow.... Two KGB agents were previously known to have passed 'Ultra' material, decrypted from the Nazis' Enigma cipher machine, to the Russians.
"John Cairncross [codenamed Carelian], who joined the Government Code and Cipher School ... in 1943[,] is acknowledged to have given the KGB large amounts of the Ultra material. The only other KGB agent known to have passed on information from Bletchley Park was Leo Long [codenamed Elli], who worked in MI14, the intelligence department that covered Germany. But decrypts of communications between Moscow Centre and the Soviet embassy in London ... show that a third agent, codenamed Baron, was passing on Bletchley Park's intercepts to the Russians....
"The identity of the third agent at Bletchley Park remains unknown."
Vassall was a British Admiralty clerk when he was recruited by the Soviets. His espionage activities were discovered in 1962, and he was tried and sentenced to prison. Vassall was released from prison in 1972, and died in London on 18 November 1996. His obituary appears in the New York Times, 6 Dec. 1996, A19 (N).
Vassall,
William John Christopher. Vassall: The Autobiography of a Spy. London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1975.
Rocca and Dziak call this a "frank autobiographic account of a classic KGB homosexual entrapment and recruitment."
Constantinides comments that Vassall "reveals little of his espionage work and of what information he passed to his Soviet handlers." Nevertheless, the book "has instructional value on how blackmail operations are run ... for intelligence ends, assuming Vassall's version of how he was recruited is correct."
West,
Rebecca. The Vassall Affair. London: Sunday Telegraph, 1963.
Constantinides says that the author "is incomparable and unsparing in her penetrating observations and comments on Vassall the agent and on the British security system as revealed by this case.... The focus of the work is on the Radcliffe Tribunal and an evaluation of its findings on responsibility on the British side rather than details of the Vassall operation itself."
West, Nigel [Rupert Allason]. "'Venona': The British Dimension." Intelligence
and National Security 17, no. 1 (Spring 2002): 117-134.
According to West, the "Venona" texts allow the identification of GRU X Group operatives "Intelligensia" and "Nobility" as J.B.S. Haldane and Ivor Montagu, respectively. There are lots of other codenames still to be revealed.
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