bout de papier, Vol. 8, No. 3 (1991) — Summer 1991 // Été 1991, pp. 47–48
Games of Intelligence, by Nigel West,
Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1989. 248 pp.
$29.95.
The Ultra Spy, by F.W. Winterbotham,
Collier Macmillan Canada, 1989, 258 pp.,
$26.95.
Churchill’s Secret Agent, Codename ‘Jay
Bee,’ by Josephine Butler, Methuen Canada,
1983, 205 pp. $29.95.
Nigel West is the pseudonym for Rupert Allason, a conservative MP for the Home Counties who has written a number of popular but controversial histories of Britain’s intelligence and security organizations. He also has written a spy novel.
West is no stranger to Canada. He participated as a panelist at a conference of the Canadian Association for Security and Intelligence Studies (CASIS) at the University of Windsor in June, 1988. He presented a paper entitled, “Moles – A Counterintelligence Challenge” at the CASIS conference held at Laval University in May, 1989. I marvel that he finds the time to do the necessary research, writing and promotion of his many books, in addition to carrying out his parliamentary duties and various other pursuits.
Although well written, I would be surprised if “Games of Intelligence” has a wide appeal. It will interest those having a professional stake in intelligence and security matters, whether as practitioners or as students, but it is unlikely to attract the average reader. Unfortunately, the book is sprinkled throughout with long, uninteresting lists of espionage agents and cases which make for difficult reading. These should have been placed in the appendix.
It attempts, for some bizarre reason, to grade six of the world’s better-known intelligence services on a cost effectiveness basis: the CIA, the KGB, the British SIS, Mossad, the French DGSE (formerly SDECE), and the Russian military intelligence service (GRU). He rates the last at the top of his list.
While the book contains much that is interesting and entertaining, although not particularly new, the cost effectiveness approach in judging these agencies seems inappropriate. By excluding certain other intelligence services, for example those run by the Chinese, the Indians, the Cubans, the West Germans and others, the picture he presents of international espionage is lacking both in balance and completeness.
West refers to a Time magazine article, dated February 1978, in which an attempt was made to assess the relative performance of the intelligence agencies of fourteen countries, and claims to write about “Canada’s CSIS” — which did not exist until 1984. He also includes what he describes as “a rare picture of Anatoli Golitsyn,” a KGB officer who defected in Helsinki in 1961, at the age of thirty-five. It seems reasonable to assume the photograph published in the book would have been taken when he defected or shortly thereafter. I first met Golitsyn in October 1969, and certainly he did not resemble at that time the man in the photograph. However, I suppose he could have aged considerably in the intervening eight years — or his appearance could have been changed.
The difficulty facing an outsider who attempts to write authoritatively about matters which are secret is pointed up by his reference to CAZAB, which he describes as “a highly secret international co-operative… which included select members of the security and intelligence agencies of Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the United States.” He appears to have drawn heavily on Peter Wright’s book, “Spycatcher,” which I believe contained the first public mention of CAZAB. Regrettably, West’s analysis has not added anything new or informative on the subject, with the result that his confident assertions about CAZAB are rather unconvincing.
On the other hand, I was pleasurably surprised that “The Ultra Spy” was not just another book about spies and spying. The first half of the book deals in a delightful way with the author’s family background and his life until 1929 when, almost by chance, he joined the British Secret Intelligence Service to operate a sub-organization within that agency on behalf of the RAF.
Although Winterbotham was ninety by the time the book was published, there is no hint of his great age in the freshness of his writing or his astonishing powers of recall. Indeed, throughout the book one feels the vigour, the intelligence and the sheer zest for living which marked Winterbotham’s life. He was unquestionably what writers of the 1920’s would have called “a lady’s man.”
His descriptions of his early years as the son of a well-to-do lawyer in the halcyon years leading up to the First World War are evocative of life in upper class England at that time. He contracted measles at the public school he attended (Charterhouse). Because of this and his rapid growth (he was over six feet tall at the age of fourteen), his doctors recommended a long sea voyage. In 1913 he travelled to Canada, the Far East and Australasia. By the time he returned to England, the war had begun and he joined the Royal Gloucestershire Hussars’ Yeomanry. However, since there was little need of cavalry, eventually, the regiment was disbanded. He then joined the Royal Flying Corps, first seeing action in Belgium in 1917. In July of that year he was shot down and made a prisoner-of-war.
At the end of the war he went up to Oxford. After graduating, he went into his father’s law firm but couldn’t stick it. He then married his first wife, Erica, who had inherited a good deal of money, and they farmed until he decided to try his luck in Rhodesia. The African venture was not a success. Eventually, his first marriage collapsed. He remarried in 1945. After the death of his second wife, he married yet again in 1987.
The second half of the book is an account of his years as a member of MI6 and about his fascinating contacts with senior members of the Nazi Party (such as Hitler, Rosenberg, Hess, Ribbentrop, Heydrich, Goering, Wenninger, Kesselring, von Reichenau and Himmler) from 1932 until about the end of 1938. Particularly interesting are his accounts of the different reactions in London to his 1934 reports. These could have left no doubt about Germany’s real intentions and military capabilities, but in some quarters, notably in the Foreign Office and among some Cabinet members, they were not well received
Winterbotham adds a number of interesting personal touches to his close involvement in the development of Ultra, described in his excellent book “The Ultra Secret,” published in the mid-1970’s. Ultra, of course, enabled the allies to read almost all the important German army, airforce and naval signals traffic during the war and to use it for tactical and strategic purposes. Indeed, its successful use probably was the single most important reason for the defeat of Germany.
An older book, but one closely connected to events in the previous two books, is Josephine Butler’s “Churchill’s Secret Agent”, an extraordinary account of her dangerous exploits between 1942 and 1945, while working in France as a member of a very small espionage service established and operated by Churchill. While the book is reasonably well written, it is the almost unbelievable story she tells, and what it reveals about the author and Winston Churchill, that make it so well worth reading.
Born on Christmas Day 1901, she was 41 when she first became a secret agent, and 82 when her book was published. In 1942, while working in the Ministry of Economic Warfare, she was recruited by a mysterious military figure known only as “The Major.”
Shortly after meeting him, she found herself being ushered into Churchill’s underground wartime headquarters at Storey’s Gate in Whitehall, after which she was to become the only woman of a twelve-member “secret circle” working directly for the Prime Minister. Her particular tasks took her (in over fifty flights by Lysander aircraft) into France. Having attended a convent school in Bruges at the age of eight, her first language was French and, since her father had an estate in the south of France and the family went often to France, she had an excellent knowledge of the country, the people and the different dialects. Among her many other notable attributes was an unusual photographic memory, which becomes very evident in the telling of her extraordinary story.
She pays special tribute to those who developed the Enigma machine and the Ultra System, including Winterbotham. Quite apart from her own courageous exploits is the interesting light the book sheds on Churchill’s individual methods and his creation of a personal espionage service which he kept secret from MIS (the British Secret Intelligence Service), S.O.E. (the armed forces), the Foreign Office and the majority of his own Cabinet.
She never identifies “The Major” › and claims not to have seen that individual ever again following their final dinner together at Claridges Hotel in the summer of 1945. However, she does hint at a possible identity later in the Epilogue when she refers to a “Major Holland” who, prior to 1939, had written about a new kind of warfare in which a handful of saboteurs and secret agents could do more damage than hundreds of soldiers. She considers that Winston Churchill was one of the few political figures who had paid heed to Holland’s theories, and that after becoming Prime Minister in 1940, he actually put them into practice.
These are three books on spying and spies. As such they present three fascinating and unique visions of the intelligence game — both past and present.
View the original scanned pages →
Originally published in bout de papier, Vol. 8, No. 3 (1991) — Summer 1991 // Été 1991, pp. 47–48. Read the rest of this issue →
