Spycatcher: The Candid Autobiography of a Senior Intelligence Officer

D.M.L. Farr is a professor emeritus of history at Carleton University in
Ottawa.

Spycatcher has created more controversy, in more countries, than any other book published in 1987. The British Government’s attempt to suppress its publication, successful in the United Kingdom though not outside, has, naturally enough, aroused intense interest in Spycatcher’s contents. It is difficult for a reviewer in Canada, unfamiliar with intelligence activities, to comment on the accuracy of Wright’s account of MI5 (formerly Section 5 of Military Intelligence) during the post-1945 years. It is possible to question Wright’s extraordinary recall of his 21 crowded years in the service, especially since he states that he destroyed his office diaries when he retired in 1976. Did he keep another diary at home? That surely would have been against the rules of the service. Having said this, it must be admitted that Spycatcher is an absorbing read, crammed with exciting suspense, vivid in its portrayal of MI5, CIA, and Soviet agents, and fascinating in its description of counter-intelligence methods. It is surely on the basis of the last feature that the British government wants the book suppressed.

A few general comments might be made about Spycatcher. First, its early chapters are rather technical since Wright, who was a naval scientist, was taken into MI5 to improve its electronic surveillance capability. As the narrative unfolds Wright becomes drawn into the more conventional activities of counter-intelligence and spends much time in liaison with the CIA. But he begins his spy career as a scientist and he seems happiest with this type of work. Second, the account of MI5’s effort to investigate Prime Minister Harold Wilson and the alleged Soviet penetration of the Labour Party takes up only a few pages of the book towards the end. To me, the short section generated more smoke than heat. Wright builds up a sturdy case that MI5 Director Sir Roger Hollis was a Soviet mole, but his circumstantial evidence does not completely convince. Finally, the fact that Wright harboured a grievance against MI5 because it did not award him a pension which took into account his 15 years’ service in the Admiralty is a concern to which the author returns repeatedly throughout the book. The British Government might have saved itself much later trouble and expense if it had dealt more generously with Peter Wright’s pension claims.

For the Canadian reader Spycatcher offers some fascinating glimpses into the RCMP’s counter-espionage activities in the 1950s. Wright has a high opinion of B Branch, which carried out these operations, and of Terry Guernsey, its head in 1955. Under Guernsey, B Branch had been built into “one of the most modern and aggressive counter-espionage units in the West” (p. 61). It contributed a number of important innovations to Western security services, most notably the concept known as Movements Analysis, a computerized logging of the movements of Russian diplomats stationed in the West.

In the summer of 1955, Wright helped the RCMP install microphones in the new Soviet embassy being built on Charlotte Street in Ottawa. Members of the force joined the construction crew and placed microphones and cables in the aluminum windows and exterior wall of the northeast corner of the building. Here, Igor Gouzenko had informed the Mounties, the cypher room would be located. The Mounties dug a tunnel from the outside of the embassy to a safe location next door, where the sounds coming from the wired rooms could be monitored. Operation DEW WORM was a technical triumph but it yielded no intelligence, for the Russians from the beginning carried out their communications from a secured room in the centre of the building. Although the Russians routinely swept their embassy for concealed electronic devices, it was not until 1964 that they discovered the “bugs.” Wright wonders if they had been warned, for the sweepers went directly to the relevant room. This circumstance raised a “worm of doubt” (p. 65) in Wright’s mind that the KGB might have an agent inside the British security service.

Wright’s high opinion of the RCMP security service was not shared by all in the intelligence community. Wright quotes a former FBI figure, now working for the CIA, who was contemptuous of the RCMP’S ability to keep secrets. When told that the Canadians had been given information on a revolutionary electronic breakthrough into Soviet communications, the American agent expostulated, “You might as well tell the … Papuans as the Canadians” (p. 151). Reputations are fleeting in the impressionistic world of espionage.