◆ SpookStack

eR LA could not help growing very forn. od him. Boyd lost no time in letting me know that he disapproved of my close contact with the CIA. He seemed genuinely disgusted with its cosmopolitan airs, “What do they teach them in CIA, son?” he said to me one evening. “Why, how to use knives «ad farks, how to marry. rich wives He also had a deep susp ‘ion of the social graces of the United States Navy. But, as I had ‘tit jy London, 1 got on with ovided that I did not try to - and endured his heavy : time I felt the rough edge of Nis tongue was (very fortunately) just before Peter Dwyer left for Ottawa. It so happened that the MI-5 representative in Washington, Geoffrey Paterson, and we received Parallel instructions from London , to take up a certain matter with the “FBI, Paterson got in first and re- - ceived a brush-off; he was told it was none of London’s business. When Dwyer and I arrived soon afterwards to raise the same ques- tion, Boyd gave us a wicked look. “So that’a the game,” he said, lay- ing down his cigar and purpling. “Geoffrey comes in and I give him a fiea in the ear. Then what hap- pens? You two come, along and try iton...” There followed a ten min- utes’ tongue-lashing against which all protests were: useless. His fury was quite sincere, although out of all proportion to the nature of the issue which we had been told to discuss with him. What enraged him was a simple matter of office Politics. It was his job to play MI-5 and SIS off against one another so as to exploit any differences be- tween us. And here we were, clearly ranging up against him. Yet that ame evening he telephoned to ask me. over to drink bourbon deep into ine night. Not a word was said aboyt the unpleasantness of the morning. A sluggish trickle of information about the Embassy leakage con- tinued to reach us. Apart from Dwyer, who was soon to leave, three members of the British Embassy staff had access to the material: , Paterson, myself and Bobby Mac- kenzie, the Embassy Security Offi- cer, who was an old colleague of mine from Section V days. In the FBI, the officials concerned were Boyd; Lishman, who was then head of the anti-Communist section; and Bob Lamphere, 8 nice puddingy na- tive of Ohio who was responsible for the detailed analysis of the cRse on the American side. We were still far from identifying the source in ‘the British Embassy, but during the winter of 1949-50 the net began to close»round the Los Alamos source. The choice seemed to lie between two scientists of great dis- _ tinction, Dr. Peierls and Dr. Fuchs. It was Dwyer's last direct service to SIS that, by a brilliant piece of analysis of the known movements of the two men, ‘he conclusively eliminated Peierls. Thereafter, the finger¢ pointed unwaveringly at Fuchs. . . The usual trouble arose over the nature of the evidence, which was not valid in jaw. But Fuchs, em- Phatically unlike Judith Coplon, pro- vided the evidence against himself. Shortly after Dwyer had identified him as the Los Alamos source, he set sail for England on a routine visit, He was arrested on arrival and passed to John Skardon, of MI-5, for interrogation. Skardon succeeded in winning his confidence to such an extent that Fuchs not only confessed his own part in the business, but also identified from Photographs his contact in the United States, Harry Gold. From Gold, who was also in a talkative mood, the chain led inexorably to the Rosenbergs who were duly elec- trocuted. It is worth mentioning that Eisenhower explained his refusal to reprieve Ethe] Rosenberg on the grounds that, if he did, the Russians in future would use only women as spies. Jt was an attitude worthy of the most pedestrian of . United States presidents. There was another remarkable casualty of the Fuchs case. Hoover, who had contributed nothing to his capture, was determined to extract ~ maximum political capital from the affair for himself. To that end, he needed to show that he had mate- ..i of his own, and such material could only be obtained through the interrogation of the prisoner by one of his own men. He announced his intention of sending Lishman to London to question Fuchs in his cell. Paterson and I both received instructions to tell him that such a course was quite out of the ques- tion. Fuchs was in custody awaiting trial, and it was just impossible to arrange for his interrogation by anyone, let alone by the agent of a foreign power. I found Hoover in a@ state of high excitement, and in no mood to be impressed by the majesty of British law. He refused to budge. Lishman was sent to Lon- don, with peremptory instructions to see Fuchs, or else. The answer was “or else.” When I heard that Lishman was back, J called at his office,a fairly grand, carpeted affair. . Someone else was in his chair. Lis) man himself I found a few doors further down the corridor, writing on the corner of a desk in a small room tenanted by four junior agents. The poor devil was bloody and very bowed. He looked at me as if it had been my fault. Such was life under Hoover. In the summer of 1950, I received . a letter from Guy Burgess. “I have a Bhock for you,” he began. “I have just been posted to Washington.” He suggested that I should put him up for a few days until he had found a flat for himself. This posed a problem. in norfnai circumstances, it would have been quite wrong for two secret operatives to occupy the same premises. But the circum- stances were not normal. I had scarcely replied to signify my agree- © . Ment when Mackenzie showed me a letter he had received from Carey- Foster, then head of the Foreign Office security branch, warning him about Burgess’ arrival. Carey- Foster explained that his eccentric- ities would be more easily over- looked in @ large embassy than ina smal] one. He gave a summary of his past peccadilloes, and said «at worse might be in store. “What ¢:.0s he mean, ‘worse’?” muttered Muc- kenzie. “Goats?" J told him that I knew Guy well, that he would be staying with me, and that I would AON