Chapter 7 chapter Five

A few days after my lockpicking class, I made my first move. "Getting ready for a third man," said Hugh Winterborn. "MI6 is interrogating one of their officers, a guy named Philby. They want us to provide the microphone." On my first visit to Leconfield House in 1949, I met Kim Philby on the fly.I was in Cumming's office at the time, discussing the work that Cumming had arranged for Brundett.Philby peeped in the doorway, and then he apologized for disturbing us. "Never mind, come in, Kim," Cumming said to Philby with his usual enthusiasm, "here's someone you should meet."

Cumming introduced to him that I am the newly appointed special technical consultant.Philby shook my hand warmly.His face was wrinkled, but he still looked young. "Oh, yes," he said, "that's Brundett's committee. I think the Americans are interested in it." I fell in love with Philby right away.He was dashing and personable, and had the same misfortune as mine—a stammer.He had just been appointed MI6 station chief in Washington, and was coming to the building to say goodbye to his friends in MI5 and wanted to get all the information from them before he left.Philby had close ties to MI5 during the war and was one of the few MI6 officers to get into trouble.It seemed typical of his hard work that he had come to say goodbye to Cumming.Only later did it become clear what his real motive for coming to the building was.Philby asked me insinuatingly about my technical assumptions.I explained to him that the intelligence services should begin to study the Russians like a scientist studies a subject, using the Russians as subjects for experimental study.

"The more experiments you do, the more you will learn, even if things go against your wishes, it doesn't matter." I said. "But how do you solve the financial problem?" Philby asked me. I argue that the war has taught us that scientists do not necessarily need a large number of new instruments, but they can also solve intelligence problems.Of course, some instrumentation is required, but what is more important is the use of existing materials in new ways. "Do operations research," I said, referring to the first anti-submarine research program in the Navy during the war, "and that makes all the difference. What we scientists do is use all the equipment the Navy has more efficiently .”

Philby seemed deeply skeptical, but he said that when he was in Washington he would not forget these assumptions of mine when he considered the American point of view on the subject. "I will definitely come to visit you when I come back to see how you are doing." He said with a modest smile, and then left. Two years later, Burgess and McClain rebelled.It was some time before Cumming mentioned the incident.In 1954, I learned bits and pieces from Cumming and Winterborn that the "third man" who had hinted at the two traitors, Burgess and McClain, might be Phil. Than, he is the most suspect.MI6 reluctantly fired him in 1955, although he admitted nothing.On September 23, 1955, three weeks after I joined MI5, the long-awaited white paper on the Burgess-McLean affair was finally released.The press gave so much misrepresentation that for a time Philby's name was well known on "Fleet Street."It was only a matter of time before the case was debated publicly.

By October, MI5 and MI6 had been informed that the matter of a "third man" might be brought up when the Commons resumed, and the Foreign Secretary had to issue a statement on Philby's situation.MI6 was ordered to draw up a case report and Philby was summoned again.They took turns to come to the Second Section of Division A of the Security Bureau and asked for the recording equipment used for this interrogation. Winterborn and I took a taxi to the MI6 safehouse near Sloane Square, where Philby was to stand trial.The room MI6 had chosen contained only a few pieces of furniture: a patterned sofa, a small table with chairs around it, and an antique sideboard against the wall with a telephone on top.

It's important to get the highest quality recording possible.With this in mind, we decided to go with quality BBC microphones.Without a premium microphone, speech coming from the earpiece would not be clear.Philby will be sitting by the fireplace, and we'll open up a floor there and put the mic under the floor.We also installed an amplifier so that the signal from the microphone could be fed back to a telephone receiver, and the post office would feed the signal back to Leconfield House. The Translation Center is concealed behind an unmarked door at the other end of the corridor from the MI5 staff canteen.All officials who enter this gate are carefully selected.There is an electric bell and an iron bar next to the door.Hugh Winterborn identified himself, and the automatic lock clicked open.Directly opposite the entrance was a small door, which opened into a large square room.Post office workers are inside taking notes.Once the material was recorded, the Post Office handed it over to MI5 collation staff.It is against the law for MI5 to tap the telephones of the post office (although this is not often the case, especially when it comes to me and Winterborn. It should only be done if it is absolutely necessary and the stakes are high).What the telephone listened to was recorded on the dictaphone, and the signal from the microphone line was recorded on the phonograph record.This room is MI5's Babel.All recorded things were sent to be sorted in those small rooms off the central corridor.

The Translation Center is run by Evelyn Glaster.She is a difficult woman to deal with.She has worked here since the day MI5 was established.She has an allegiance to Vernon Kyle.To this day, she still complains about the toll Churchill took on the Security Service after he fired Kell in 1940.In her opinion, the Security Bureau has been going downhill since Kyle was fired. Hugh Winterborn took a relay to a nearby house and we got everything set up and sat down to wait for the interrogation to begin.In fact, calling Philby's interrogation an "interrogation" is an exaggeration. It was nothing more than an internal MI6 meeting.Philby came in and was greeted friendly by three former colleagues who knew him well.They talked politely with him on subjects familiar to him.First he was asked about his communist history, and then he talked about a period in MI6 and his relationship with Guy Burgess.Philby protested stammeringly that he was innocent.But his panicked, incoherent voice suggested he was lying.Once Philby lost his mind, the interrogator could inspire him to a satisfactory answer.

"Well, I think this, this should explain." Philby would nod gratefully and the conversation would move on.Then the slickness became more and more blatant, and Winterborn called Cumming.Cumming walked into the room with an angry face.He listened for a while, slapped his thigh and cursed: "These bastards are absolving him!" Cumming immediately sent a memo to Graham Mitchell, the chief of the counterintelligence department of the Security Bureau, to MI6. This kind of cover-up made a frank and unbiased evaluation, but it didn't help at all.A few days later, Macmillan cleared Philby in the House of Commons.At this moment, for the first time, I realized that I was in a world where right and wrong were turned upside down.Here, an unpleasant but extremely simple fact can be denied.Over the next two decades, this phenomenon happened repeatedly.

The Philby interrogation gave me my first glimpse of the MI5 surveillance centre.In fact, the eighth floor is only part of the device network.The most important outstation was at the headquarters of the Post Office Special Investigations Unit near St. Paul, where MI5 had a second-floor suite under Major Denman.Denman is an old-fashioned military veteran with a great sense of humor.With the approval of the postal authorities, he specialized in intercepting mail and installing phone bugs.At the same time, he was also in charge of MI5's laboratories, mainly for technical processing of methods for tracking and transmitting secret documents.The laboratory house was provided by him.The sub-offices of the major post offices in the UK and the domestic telephone bureaus all have offices of special investigation teams whose main tasks are to install bugs and intercept mail, which are directly controlled by Denman.We then moved to our laboratory at the Post Office Experimental Center in Martle Sam, Suffolk.If a letter is opened in St Paul's, it means it needs further inspection, so it is sent to Suffolk by a courier on a motorbike.

Denman's main office is lined with rows of trestle desks, each with mail organized according to different addresses.Letters from London were put on one side, letters from Europe on the other, and there was a dedicated place for letters from behind the Iron Curtain.About 20 post office technicians were busy opening pieces of mail at the table.They all wore rubber gloves to avoid fingerprints on the letters.Each had a bright lamp and a steam pot on his desk.Sometimes the traditional bamboo cutter technique is also used.Although this method is old, it is still one of the effective methods.The technician first takes the envelope and shines it on the strong light, and then inserts the bamboo cutter from the corner of the envelope. As the bamboo knife turns, the letter paper is rolled on the bamboo knife. out the envelope.

If the name and address on the envelope are typed, the envelope is sometimes torn open and, after inspection, replaced with an envelope with the same name and address.But until the end of my espionage career, we never surreptitiously opened a letter sealed on all sides.In this case, MI5 often has to make such a decision: either simply disassemble it for inspection and then destroy it, or let it retain the traces of being dismantled and still send it out.After the letter was opened, the content was photographed with a pedal-operated microfilm camera, developed and then sent to the archives by the officials responsible for intercepting and checking the letter. On the wall of Denman's office is a framed mirror that contains an envelope, one of Denman's proudest keepsakes.It was addressed to a prominent Communist whose letters were always intercepted by us.After the letter was opened, the technicians at the post office thought it was amused. It turned out that it was addressed to MI5.Inside was a curt, typewritten page: "To MI5, if you open this letter with a steam pot, you are a bunch of disgusting sodomites." Denman listed the letter as "indecent mail" processing, which means that he is under no obligation to deliver it to the address on the envelope. In fact, Denman's activities were strictly bound by the authorization of his superiors.In the absence of authorization from his superiors, and only when he knew for sure that he would get it soon, he could install bugs or intercept emails.MI5 can request some form of inspection of letters without authorization.We can write down everything written on the envelope: where it was sent, where it was received, the date it was dispatched, etc., as long as we don't open it all the way.Denman and those in the know at the post office feared being found out about their tampering with the phone calls and mail.They are not worried about international mail, because such mail, even if it is delayed for a few days, will not arouse suspicion.When they deal with domestic letters, they are simply vigorous and resolute, so that the letters can be delivered to the recipients on time. Request authorization is the responsibility of the Deputy Director of MI5.If an official wants to tap a phone or intercept a mail, he has to write a brief report to the Deputy Director, who sends it to the Under-Secretary in charge of MI5 at the Home Office.The deputy minister commented on the submitted application report to see if it would cause trouble.The Home Secretary reviews all application reports every month.Like the post and telecommunications department, the Ministry of the Interior is very sensitive to intercepting letters and tapping telephones, so it has strict controls in this regard. In addition to St. Paul's, an ugly Victorian building in north London called "Dollis Hill" was the research headquarters of the postal service in the 1950s.A small laboratory run by John Taylor for MI5 and MI6 was housed in the basement here, with the door marked "Post Office Special Investigations Laboratory".The rooms here are dimly lit and cramped, totally unsuitable for such work. When I first joined MI5, Taylor's lab was busy working on Operation Berlin Tunnel.In February 1955, a joint team sent by the British Secret Intelligence Service and the US Central Intelligence Agency dug a tunnel underground in the Soviet Union's Berlin defense zone, installed bugs in the tunnel, and tapped the communications of the Soviet military command center.This eavesdropping device is an electronic bug made by the technicians of the post office. The large amount of information collected from the tunnel shocked the British Secret Intelligence Service and the US Central Intelligence Agency.This influx of raw intelligence from the East caught Britain and the United States by surprise in terms of translation and analysis.MI6 maintains a dedicated translation center at Earls Court.Seven years later, they discovered that George Blake had tipped off the tunnel plans to the Russians from the very beginning, and they were still copying and printing the material.There are also many technical problems in this action plan, the main problem is that the line is damp. In order to solve these problems, Taylor almost exhausted his efforts. Taylor's lab was also busy making technological modifications to a special device called "taxi driver."It works by firing a strong radio beam at the phone and is mainly used to operate the phone outdoors.Trials were successful, but only at close range. They are also developing a device called a "mop," which is still in its infancy. The "mop" causes the cable to do two jobs at the same time - transmit the audio signal it receives and receive power.Although this work has just begun, but the prospects are very optimistic, it will bring about a huge change in the activities of MI6.Its generation can replace many redundant wires, which can further increase the security level, because those redundant wires can leak secret wiretapping operations.During my first few years in MI5, I spent a considerable amount of time figuring out the correct specifications for the mop. The "mop" was eventually manufactured by MI6 at its factory in Boulham Forest. Shortly after the MI6 interview with Philby, I started looking for ways to improve and equip the eighth floor.Wiretapping must follow a set pattern: the wiretapping case officer first submits a written briefing to the translation department, detailing the types of material he may obtain from the wiretapping, and then the translator looks up the wiretapped conversations .When I was first in MI5, overheard conversations were usually recorded on gramophone records, not tapes.First put the record on the record player, choose a few places to play, and get a general idea of ​​the content of the conversation. Once you find something relevant, the translators will mark the appropriate places with chalk, and work according to these chalk marks.This processing method was inefficient and time-consuming, but it was more efficient than the standard magnetic tape recording method of the time. Most of the translators were recruited from the émigré community when Kell was in charge.They all fled to England at the end of the First World War.Most of the people are old Russian nobles who have turned the eighth floor into a small czarist Russian domain.White Russians firmly believe that one day they will return to those lands that were confiscated after the revolution.For them, the KGB was not a National Security Council, but the Cheka of the Bolsheviks of the past.Most of them are fanatical religious believers, and even hang religious icons in their rooms.They have eccentric tempers and are well known throughout the security bureau.They see themselves as artists or divas in operas.If an experienced case officer wants to go to the eighth floor to verify a certain translation, he has to be careful, for fear that his request will cause trouble.This tense atmosphere cannot be avoided.Day after day, year after year, these women listened to the incomprehensible slurs and labyrinthine plots of Russian diplomats, and spent their lives searching for bits and pieces of information in those worthless conversations ( The jargon is called "finding the prince in the cabbage pile").For any one person, this is inevitably a very annoying thing. The first thing I'm going to do is give these women a hearing test.It turns out that many of them are unfit for this kind of work because of their age.I encourage these hard of hearing people to engage in telephone monitoring material processing, and leave the work of microphone monitoring and material translation to younger people.The best of these was undoubtedly Anne Allewin, who later followed me as an assistant in the counterintelligence department.Microphone monitoring recording and translation is difficult, because often a single microphone carries the signal of several people talking.I decided to design a device to alleviate this contradiction.I went to the Olympia Electronics Fair and bought a two-head tape recorder.The second head can delay the sound by a few milliseconds, so that the sound effect is fuller.The effect is that of simulated stereo, making even the worst tapes easy to hear.I installed it on the eighth floor, and Evelyn Glaster was very grateful and became a lifelong friend. This is my first small success in science.But below the eighth floor, the huge antique showroom of MI5 is still neglected. The four departments in Division A are the ones that most urgently need to be paid attention to, but are the least determined to modernize technology.Since the outbreak of the war, the number of surveillance personnel in Section A and Section 4 has suddenly exceeded the number it should have, but it is still unable to deal with the increasing number of Soviet diplomats and diplomatic entourages on the streets of London.My first point is to take a comprehensive look at the working methods of the supervisors. I arranged a mission to visit an MI5 observation post.It was set up in a house opposite the Russian embassy in Kensington Park.The observation site was chosen in an upstairs bedroom.There is an observer on either side of the window.There was a camera on a tripod with a telephoto lens mounted on it, and it was fixedly aimed at the street below.Both observers, wearing only shirts and binoculars around their necks, looked very tired.It was almost time for them to change shifts, the cigarette butts in the ashtray were almost overflowing, and the coffee cups were scattered on the table. Every diplomat who came out of the gate of Kensington Park was carefully observed by observers with binoculars. Once identified, the observation station used a five-digit password to report the person's name to the observation headquarters by radio.To anyone who came out of Kensington Park, the radio called out their number in place of their name.Each watchman and each car is dedicated to tracking a certain number.As soon as the number he was following came over the radio, he automatically followed the person without having to answer the radio call.The person being followed does not know if he is the target or not. As the diplomat was out of sight from the observation post and heading west, the radio blared intermittently, ordering surveillance cars parked on a nearby street to keep an eye on him. The staff who conduct surveillance and observation at fixed observation stations have been doing their work conscientiously for many years. This kind of work has largely cultivated their memory of people's appearance.A KGB officer who had been away from Britain for many years was instantly recognized by them.To help them identify, the Observatory had three volumes of manuals identifying every Russian intelligence officer who had been to Britain, complete with photographs.The characteristic materials of Russian intelligence officers who are permanently stationed in the embassy are marked with plastic clips, so that they can be easily consulted.If you notice a strange face entering or leaving the embassy, ​​you must immediately take a picture of the person's appearance and send it to the Research Section of MI5 for a series of identification work.It's a tedious job that requires patience and dedication.None of the work in the Security Bureau is trivial.If the archive room is the central nervous system of MI5, then the observers are the fingertips of MI5, and they must be kept stretched at all times to find out the outline of the enemy's image. The handbook, which contains the characteristics of Russian intelligence personnel, is the culmination of years of meticulous intelligence gathering.The intelligence came from every possible source—visa photos, defectors, double agents.The people in those photos have stern expressions and sharp eyes.Most of them are strongmen in the KGB or the former NKVD, and occasionally there are resident diplomats or military attaches in military uniforms with a high level of education and the appearance of Europeans.But it quickly struck me that the Observatory relied heavily on the passport photos of Russian diplomats to do its work.Although these photos have to be sent to the five places, they are already dilapidated and dilapidated.The Russians sometimes deliberately post unwanted photographs, making it difficult to ascertain whether the identification is reliable. I recommend that spotters expand their range and can choose to shoot sequences of action.Action shots are easier to identify than a head shot.The Claus Fuchs case is a vivid example.Fuchs confessed in 1949 that he had leaked detailed information on atomic weapons and began cooperating with us.MI5 was trying to get details of Fuchs' co-conspirator, the atomic spy Harry Greenglass.They showed Fuchs a passport photo of Harry, but he didn't recognize it at all.Later, he took out a set of action photos to show him, and he recognized it. MI5 has known for years that monitors entering and leaving Leconfield House would be followed and identified by the Russian Counter-Surveillance Task Force, so the monitors were based in an unmarked building in Regent's Park. in a four-story Georgian house.A large street map of London hangs on one wall of the central control room, used to track the progress of surveillance operations.There is a radio console in the center of the room, which is mainly used to maintain communication links with all observation stations and mobile surveillance teams. The office of Surveillance Chief Jim Scaddon was on one of the floors of this building.Skardon used to be a policeman, always neatly dressed, and liked to smoke a pipe.During the war he was an MI5 interrogator.In the early postwar period, he was the lead interrogator in several major cases.Especially in the Klaus Fuchs case, for which he served as chief interrogator.Skardon has a high opinion of his work ability, and people like to work under him.His demeanor was that of a labor representative in a trade union.He thought the watchers had a hard job, and needed to protect them from being exploited by the greedy case officers in Leconfield House.In a sense, this is true.When I joined the Security Service, there were about a hundred monitors, and MI5's activities demanded endless demands on them.It quickly became apparent to me that Skardon hadn't faced up to the modern realities of surveillance on London's streets.It's clear that the Russians employ a great deal of counter-surveillance to keep their men from being followed.I watched the surveillance system for several weeks, wondering if our watchers would have any chance with current technology to track anyone without being detected soon enough. When I first approached Skardon about overhauling the surveillance system, he flatly declined.The divisions of MI5 were like feudal fiefdoms, and Skardon thought I had offended his power and prestige by doing so.However, he later agreed to let Winterborn and I begin testing the effectiveness of existing surveillance technology.We split a surveillance team into two groups and gave the first group a photo of an unknown MI5 officer to follow the person in the photo.We gave the second group the approximate scope of the mission the first group had performed, and told them to go to the first group and identify the person they were following.We did this test three times, and each time the identification result of the second group was correct.We made a movie of the third experiment and showed it to all the staff at the surveillance headquarters, at least to make everyone no longer doubt that our surveillance work is powerless in the face of anti-surveillance activities. We recommend that Skardon should first employ a group of women.A lot of surveillance work requires sitting in small hotels, cafes or parks for a long time to wait or monitor the meeting.A man and a woman act less noticeably than a man or two men alone.Skardon strongly opposed this plan, he was afraid of adultery between men and women.This is more harmful than beneficial to the morale of his team. "Wives will be unhappy," he said sternly. Hugh Winterborn sneered: "What does it matter if they kiss and hug together? It's good for them to cover themselves." Skardon wasn't amused by the remark.Another area we asked him to improve was the desire to check the execution of the surveillance work anytime, anywhere.I found that after the monitors came back from shifts, no one cared about their work and task execution. Sometimes they stayed overnight or even for a week.I pointed out to Skardon that wartime experience had repeatedly demonstrated that, to be correct, one had to keep one's hand in check.If you delay, you can't recall what happened, and you have to use reasoning to think about how it happened. "My kids, after toiling on the streets for eight hours a day, don't want to spend so much time answering questions when they come back. They'll write a report for themselves by then," Skardon growled. with.He finally agreed to let each shift return to the compound fifteen minutes earlier.Later, we often had disagreements about this. The problem of mobile surveillance of fleets is different.One day I went for a run with them outside to see what was going on.MI5's little cars were unassuming, but all had good engines in the Security Service's Badassi garage.Every three months, all the little cars are repainted to avoid being recognizable.Each car has several license plates, which are changed every week. Tracking the vehicles of Russian diplomats through the streets of London is childlike delight.Surveillance cars can run back and forth on the one-way street, everyone has a police ID, and if they run a red light, they can be exempted from fines.The driver of the car I was in happily told me about such a scene: One winter, he was following a Russian car going to Buckingham Palace on Moore Street. The cars all slid into a pile.People from both sides got out of the car, accusing each other solemnly.One of the tricks in mobile surveillance vehicle tracking is to avoid one-way streets as much as possible.Its ultimate success depends on the radio control of the headquarters.They must be able to predict the possible movement of Russian vehicles so that the backup convoy can continue to follow them. The first problem facing mobile surveillance vehicles is fairly simple.There are three people in each car, and because the cars stay outdoors or on the corner of the street for too long, these mobile surveillance cars are very conspicuous like inflamed thumbs.Winterborn and I did another field trip.We went to an area where surveillance was going on and within half an hour we found every vehicle.One car was particularly easy to find. Although a new license plate was installed recently, the driver forgot to replace the old one.I suggested that Skardon reduce the number of people in the car, but he lectured me in true Brit fashion that there must be three people in the car. "One drives the car, one reads the map, and one operates the radio," he said with eloquence, as if he hadn't realized the irrationality of all of this. There's one link that's no joke, and it's the one that worries me the most -- the communications system, which has always been the weakest link in the intelligence organization.Monitors communicate hundreds of times a day with observation stations, mobile surveillance vehicles, and headquarters, but these signals are easy to spot, first because they are never registered on a wavelength.The Russians could identify surveillance communications simply by detecting call signs on unregistered wavelengths.Abroad, the situation of MI6 in this regard is also very bad.For a long time, the best way to identify MI6 personnel in British embassies was to check which diplomats used outside lines that didn't go through the switchboard.Later, MI5 introduced a complex decoding system, which specialized in translating surveillance communication messages into codes.I pointed out right away that it was futile to do so.Because the surveillance communication signals are mixed with the signals of the police, fire trucks and ambulances, it is easier to identify them.Signals from police, fire trucks, and ambulances are not coded signals.But they still don't seem to understand that most of the intelligence of the Russians is searched from the communication itself rather than from the content of the communication.After analyzing the communication, they can know when and where the next operation will be carried out, and then repeatedly check with the records they own, and finally get all the information they want. I lobbied earnestly everywhere, calling for a focus on trying to find out whether the Russians were systematically spying on our surveillance communications.In theory, this is possible.Because any receiving device will generate radiation, this radiation can be measured in a short distance.I presented my plans through the normal channels of GCHQ.But after waiting for several months, GCHQ gave me a so-called "carefully considered" reply: it is technically impossible to conduct such an experiment.Two years later, GCHQ and MI5 realized what a terrible mistake their judgment had made! At the same time, I was constantly worried.If the surveillance communication system is so weak, and the surveillance methods are as backward as I said, then MI5 has to imagine that its counterintelligence work, which has been poorly run for many years, has actually been wasted, or at least part of the surveillance work has been lost to Russia. People have discovered it, so what activities have been discovered, and how many activities have been discovered?