Spy Vs Spy

In the past, the British intelligence was never well-disposed towards the Labour Party and other political leaders and intellectuals to the left of the political spectrum. During the Cold War years, it used to project the Labour Party as riddled with KGB agents. It even reportedly suspected that former Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson was a KGB agent. It was never able to prove its allegations or corroborate its suspicions. And then, in 1992, when the Conservative Government headed byMr. John Major was in power, Vasili Mitrokhin walked in with tonnes of notes kept by him, allegedly showing that many of the Labour leaders whom the British intelligence suspected in the past of being KGB agents were, in fact, KGB agents. 

One would notice that Mitrokhin hardly named any Conservative leader as being in touch with the KGB. It is significant that the MI6 and the MI5, the internal Security Service, did not prosecute any of the persons named by Mitrokhin as KGB agents. Not even a woman civil servant, whom he accused of helping the Soviet Union 's nuclear programme, was prosecuted. They did not even consider it necessary to interview or question them in order to get their comments on the allegations leveled against them by Mitrokhin. Instead, the MI-5 and the MI-6 proposed to Malcolm Rifkind, the then Foreign Secretary in the Major Government, in 1996 that the notes brought by Mitrokhin should be given to Prof. Christopher Andrew for joint publication with Mitrokhin after suitable editing. 

The MI-6 justified its proposal on the ground that Mitrokhin had agreed to hand over his voluminous notes to the MI-6 on the condition that it would help him in getting them published in the UK . Its commitment to him had to be kept. Moreover, the publication would educate the public on how the Russian intelligence operated. He approved the proposal and Mitrokhin's notes were handed over to Prof. Andrew. Rifkind, however, imposed a condition that no one against whom there was not sufficient evidence to warrant a prosecution should be named in the book, a condition which was violated by the agencies and Andrew.

In the elections held in 1997, the Conservative Government was defeated and a Labour Government headed by Mr.Tony Blair came to power. The MI-5 and the MI-6 were put in an embarrassing position. In October 1997, they casually mentioned about the case to Mr. Robin Cook, the new Labour Foreign Secretary, without giving him the relevant details. They gave him the false impression that the new Home Secretary, Mr.Jack Straw, had been kept fully informed. For more than a year, they avoided telling the Blair Government about the Mitrokhin papers, which made allegations against many Labour leaders and about their having handed them over to Andrew for publishing them in the form of a book on the activities of the KGB in the West.

Only on March 22, 1999, a few months before the publication of the book, did the MI-5 send a detailed note to Mr.Cook requesting for a re-confirmation of the permission given by the Conservative Government for publishing Mitrokhin's papers. Mr.Cook was given a false impression that Mr.Jack Straw had already agreed to this Thereupon, Mr.Cook permitted the MI-5 and the MI-6 to go ahead with the publication. When the book ultimately came out, the Labour Home Secretary and Foreign Secretary were taken by surprise because they were not aware of many of the details of the allegations contained in the book. They were also not aware that many of the allegations were against members of their own party. They were also ignorant of the fact that while the MI-5 and the MI-6 did not consider the allegations voiced by Mitrokhin strong and credible enough to warrant action against anybody, they chose to have them disseminated in public through a book written by an academic, who was alleged to be the embedded analyst of the intelligence agencies.

The Parliamentary Intelligence and Security Committee to which the matter was referred by the Tony Blair Government did not question the decision of the agencies to have the papers published or their decision to hand over the task to Andrew. It accepted the contention of the MI-6 that it had to honour its commitment to Mitrokhin to help him in having his papers published in the UK . But, it severely criticised the intelligence agencies for the manner in which they handled the case and for their failure to brief the new Labour Government fully on the case. Annexure A gives the text of the "Conclusions and Recommendations" chapter of the enquiry report as placed before the Parliament by the Blair Government after some editing.

Attention particularly needs to be drawn to the following observations of the Committee: 

"The submission sent to the Foreign Secretary on 22 March 1999 requested authorisation to proceed with publication. It stated that the ''Security Service are clearing the detail contained in those chapters [on the UK ] with the Home Secretary (who was briefed on the project in 1998, and is supportive) and the Attorney General.'' This was not accurate. The Committee believes that it was a failing of the system that allowed the Foreign Secretary, under the false impression that the Home Secretary had been consulted, to authorise the publication of a book containing allegations about spies in the UK who had not been prosecuted by the Security Service. The Committee believes that the Security Service and Home Office in particular failed to ensure that working group decisions were carried out, noting that on two occasions the Home Secretary was not consulted in the manner the working group had agreed. The Committee believes that the above points were serious failures by officials either to inform ministers of the true situation or to ensure that agreed actions were being carried out. The working group also failed to ensure that the Rifkind criteria were met. These failures by officials, some at senior level, caused Ministers to make decisions on the basis of incorrect information."

What has been the role of Christopher Andrew in the controversy following the publication of the first volume of his book in 1999?

In the meanwhile, Richard Tomlinson, the MI-6 officer, who had played a role in the clandestine transfer of the notes kept by Mitrokhin from Russia to London , fell out with the agency and started making allegations that the MI-6 had tried to have Col.Khadaffi of Libya assassinated. He also started levelling allegations about the role of the MI-6 in the supply of chemical weapons to the Saddam Hussain Government during the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s, its role in the balkanisation of Yugoslavia etc. The MI-6 tried to have him arrested. He fled to Switzerland and from there to Italy , where he started working in a bar. He opened a web site in which he exposed the identities of many MI-6 officers. On coming to know that he was planning to publish a book containing his allegations against the MI-6, the agency exercised pressure on Western publishing houses not to publish his book, threatening them with prosecution under the Official Secrets Act, if they did so. Finding that no Western publisher would touch his manuscript, he approached a Russian publisher (Kirill Chashin) , reportedly with the help of Mr. Nick Fielding of theSunday Times. Ultimately, the book titled The Big Breach was published by the Russian publishers in January, 2001.

The MI-5 and the Mi-6, with the assistance of the ever-obliging Christopher Andrew, embarked on a campaign to discredit Tomlinson and his book, which leveled serious allegations against MI-6. The British agencies disseminated stories denying any role by Tomlinson in the clandestine transfer of the Mitrokhin notes from Russia .The Big Breach was projected as a crude attempt by the Russian intelligence to discredit the MI-6 in retaliation for the publication of the Mitrokhin Archive by the MI-6 with the help of Christopher Andrew.

Andrew himself under his name wrote an article on the subject titled "Russia 's Revenge" in the LondonTimes of February 15, 2001. Anticipating this campaign by the MI-6 against them, the Russian publishers had included in the last chapter of Tomlinson's book a detailed statement on the circumstances leading to the publication of the book. This is at Annexure B.

Thus, we have two books before us--one written by Christopher Andrew jointly with Vasili Mitrokhin, a former low-grade clerk of the KGB archives, accusing the KGB of unethical practices and leveling serious allegations against various people and the other by an ex-MI-6 officer, who had reportedly played a role in helping Mitrokhin get out of Russia, with the help of a Russian publishing firm, accusing the MI-6 of equally serious unethical practices.

Whom to believe? 

B. Raman is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, and Distinguished Fellow, International Terrorism Watch Programme, Observer Research Foundation (ORF), and Convenor of its Chennai Chapter.