Authors: Nick Barratt
Another official was sacked as a result of the inquiry – Major Francis John Quarry (as opposed to Grange, as per Liddell’s diary entry mentioned above), who had only worked at the Communications Department since January 1938 and made a voluntary statement on 25 September when the affair first came to light. In Vivian’s opinion:
It is considered that Quarry is unlikely to have had any criminal connections with Foreign Office leakages…On the other hand, he is of an unsavoury type which we consider should not be engaged in a key position, such as that of a cipher officer; he has been closely associated with members of a criminal conspiracy… He has been suspended and we do not feel he should be permitted to return to duty.
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A range of other names associated with Pieck were investigated, later referred to as the ‘cipher boys’.
In the course of inquiries it was ascertained that J Russell, R Kinnaird, Captain HBW Maling and CB Harvey, all of the Communications Department, had known Pieck. They were therefore interrogated in the course of 26 and 27 September.
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Russell was the closest to following Oake and Quarry out of the door and it was left to the discretion of the Under-Secretary of State to determine whether he stayed. However, as Vivian noted at the end of his report, a decision was taken to remove all staff in the Communications Department to other posts, and replace them with new men:
So far as the Communications Department of the Foreign Office is concerned, the Under-Secretary of State’s action in making a clean sweep of the existing staff of this Department will at least have secured that Department from any dangers latent in its personnel of which we have not become aware through this investigation. Our uncertainty as regards other Departments of the Foreign Office and other government offices, owing to the indications we have had of recent leakages, remains unrelieved.
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Agent X’s testimony also enhanced the credibility of Krivitsky’s earlier statement, which until this point had been open to question. There was also
the concern that further leaks had occurred since 1937 to the Italians and Germans, as well as the unidentified ‘second source’ higher up in government – ‘an ugly, unsolved puzzle’ in the words of Vivian.
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Inquiries were made to see if more information could be obtained from the former Soviet agent in person.
Eventually, Krivitsky agreed to visit the UK in January 1940, travelling under the pseudonym ‘Walter Thomas’. Arrangements were made for him to be interviewed by Vivian, Harker (on the verge of taking over from Kell as Head of MI5) and Jane Sissmore, now Mrs Archer following her marriage the previous autumn. Archer conducted an extensive series of interviews, compiling an 85-page report that became the bedrock of British understanding of the Soviet intelligence network. She expected to be told about the activities of King, but throughout the evening of 23 January and throughout the following morning, Archer was startled by revelations about an earlier Soviet mole, none other than Ernest Oldham.
Full transcripts of Krivitsky’s testimony were noted at the time and then written up over the next few weeks and added to Oldham’s file, in line with standard practice to cross-reference information on named individuals. For the first time, the full extent of Oldham’s treachery was revealed to the British security services, although it is not clear whether the significance was realised at the time. Krivitsky’s account was somewhat confused, mixing up dates and important details while switching from vagueness to precision within moments. For example, he claimed not to know Bystrolyotov’s real identity but then described in great detail his earlier career. He also stated that Orlov was originally assigned to Oldham. The final report compiled by Archer is worth noting in full, as it shows just how much information the security services had at their disposal by February 1940.
At some date which Kritivsky cannot remember but believes was about 1930 or 1931, a man called Oldham, employed in the cipher department of the British Foreign Office, called at the Soviet embassy in Paris offering to sell British diplomatic ciphers and other secret material to which he had access.
At that time Valovitch, Deputy Chief of the Operod [Operations Department] of the GUGB [Headquarters Staff of the OGPU] was in Paris working at the embassy under the name of Yanovitch. Yanovitch at first refused to see Oldham believing him to be an agent provocateur. A month later Oldham called again, bringing specimens of material to which he had access. On this, though still suspicious of Oldham, Yanovitch arranged with him for further supplies of Foreign Office material in return for substantial money payments. He gave Oldham the ‘service’ name of ARNO.
For some time Oldham was allowed no contact with OGPU agents in London and was obliged to take his material to Paris himself, although Yanovitch realised the importance of his information. As soon as the OGPU were satisfied that Oldham was not a British double-cross agent it was arranged that a man should be sent to London specially to handle this material and obviate the risk and delays caused by frequent journeys to Paris. Oldham was of a highly nervous disposition and a heavy drinker. Yanovitch accordingly decided that the agent despatched to London to handle his material should have the close supervision of Oldham as his sole responsibility.
Oldham’s OGPU guardian arrived in London on a Greek passport. Krivitsky cannot remember his name but recollects certain details of his earlier career. He was at one time an intelligence officer in General Wrangel’s army. As a Soviet secret agent he did important work in Bulgaria in 1920 when a White Russian force was in process of formation there. During the Stamboullist period he managed to steal three ships lying at Varna and despatch them to Odessa, thereby causing considerable trouble as the ships happened to be French owned.
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There is a note made at this point to explain that Stamboullist referred to Aleksandr Stamboliski, who was prime minister of Bulgaria from 28 March 1920 until he was assassinated on 8 September 1923.
During the period of this man’s role as ‘guardian’, Oldham was dismissed from the Foreign Office for drink. Completely in the hands of the OGPU and in dire straits for money, he continued to obtain Foreign Office material by making use of his previous position there. Krivitsky described how immense was his own astonishment when he heard that in spite of his dismissal Oldham was still allowed free access to the Foreign Office to visit his friends. During one of these visits Oldham took an impression of one of the important keys and thereafter was able to bring away material from time to time. The key in question was made from the impression by the Fourth Department and that is how Krivitsky first came to hear the story.
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The ‘Fourth Department’ was responsible for military intelligence and was run by General Yan Berzin. He too fell victim to Stalin’s purge and was shot in the cellars of the OGPU headquarters on Lubyanka Square, Moscow, on 28 July 1938.
About this time Oldham’s ‘guardian’ was relieved by a second OGPU agent also the holder of a Greek passport. This man’s service name was ‘HANS’. He was here as a representative of the Amsterdam firm of GADA, which firm was specially created by the OGPU to give him the necessary business cover. The surname adopted by ‘HANS’ is believed to have been Galleni or Galeni. Galleni was a cultured and good-looking man. On one occasion, while travelling from London to the continent, he was in the same carriage with a British King’s Messenger, who actually asked him to look after his bags while he left the carriage. Galleni did not try to take the opportunity of tampering with the bags as he could not believe that a diplomatic courier would make such a request to a stranger in good faith!
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Further evidence, if any was needed, of the careless attitude to security demonstrated by members of the Communications Department. It is interesting
that Krivitsky mixed up Pieck and Bystrolyotov, though Oldham did travel to Amsterdam on occasion and may have been involved with developing the cover that was used to great effect with Oake and King.
Galleni had a very difficult time. Oldham had become a confirmed drunkard and drug addict. He was so nervous that only by threats of exposure and the cutting-off of financial supplies could he be persuaded to continue his visits to the Foreign Office. Galleni was constantly at his side. He took him abroad for a holiday and in London stayed with him either in hotels or in his own home. His nerves were in such a condition that on one occasion he created a scene in a cinema because Galleni momentarily forgot to rise for ‘God Save the King’. About this time also Galleni was considerably worried as he had some reason to think that a British Secret Service agent had got into touch with Oldham who had somehow aroused suspicion.
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This last claim was marked in the file and a question mark added. Though it is certainly true that Oldham had aroused plenty of suspicion, claims made by Donald McCormick, aka Richard Deacon, in his book
With My Little Eye
, that ‘it was [Guy] Liddell who used to meet the mysterious Foreign Office cipher clerk, EH Oldham, in a west London public house and who seems to have managed to cover up the involvement of Oldham with the Soviet intelligence service’ can be dismissed on the grounds that there is no supporting evidence.
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As it appeared that Oldham would shortly break down completely, Galleni concentrated his efforts in trying to obtain from him sufficient details of the private lives of his colleagues to guide the OGPU in their attempts to obtain a future source for the same material. Oldham at first refused to supply the requisite information but after considerable pressure had been brought to bear on him and his wife, he gave Galleni five or six names. One of these names was that of JH King, also employed in the Foreign Office Cipher Department.
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A direct link between King and Oldham was thus established.
Shortly afterwards Oldham committed suicide and Galleni left the country. Later, during November and December 1936, Galleni is known to have been living at a hotel in the Rue Cambon, Paris. There are only one or two hotels in the Rue Cambon, which is a very short street.
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The fallout from the King case and Krivitsky’s revelations was meant to lead to the wholesale removal of existing members of the Communications Department to other jobs, to be replaced by new untainted staff. It seems this was not entirely followed to the letter. According to Antrobus, writing a few months later in 1940:
Shortly after the outbreak of war, the Communications Department as I knew it came to an end. Its typists and duplicator operators remained but most of the male members of its staff became King’s Messengers pure and simple, without the ciphering and coding duties… the new King’s Messengerships were naturally offered to those who had long been cipher officers and an entirely new staff had to be engaged for the coding and ciphering.
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At least security was tightened up considerably:
If you want to get into the Foreign Office today you will have to run the gauntlet of a small army of policemen, doorkeepers and chuckers-out; in fact you will not get in at all unless you make it clear that you have a good reason for doing so and when you are in, you will be shadowed everywhere by a polite and courtly gentleman of unmistakable muscular development.
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Yet despite the thoroughness of Archer’s interview and report, chances were still missed to identify the ‘second source’, or indeed clues that might have
revealed the identities of Maclean and Philby, who were obliquely referred to by Krivitsky. Furthermore, MI5 failed to seize upon some of the suggestions thrown up by Krivitsky’s testimony around Oldham, possibly because it was seen as a cold case rather the cornerstone of the ‘cipher boys’ spy ring. In his original interviews, Krivitsky had provided two pieces of information that seemed to directly implicate Lucy in Oldham’s activities:
She was aware of the USSR people who worked with Oldham, but did not know the names of the British who supplied him with information.
If Mrs Oldham is still alive, she will know a great deal about the Greek. He thinks that if we fail to trace her, we could still find it out because the Greek stayed at a hotel in the Rue Cambon between November and December 1936.
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No attempts to trace her whereabouts were made at the time. The only additions to Oldham’s file came in 1946 and 1947, when a decision was taken to tie up one loose end that had puzzled the British since 1929 – the claims made by Bessedovsky that British ciphers had been offered to the Soviets in Paris by Mr Scott. An opportunity presented itself with the defection of Leon Helfand to the USA in July 1940 whilst working at the Soviet embassy in Rome. A file had been kept on him by MI5 since the late 1920s and his defection generated some interest within British SIS, as a leak from the British embassy in Rome had long been suspected. Interestingly, one of the men involved in reopening inquiries was none other than Kim Philby, who pressed for a further interview with Helfand. Almost as an afterthought, a set of questions relating to the identity of Mr Scott was requested on 14 December 1946 by MI5 officer Michael Serpell:
In addition we would like Helfand to be interrogated about the Englishman who, according to Bessedovsky, was interviewed by Helfand at the Soviet embassy in Paris [with a reference to SIS correspondence dated 6 December 1929] and suggest that the questions might take the following form: ‘We understand that Helfand
was in Paris from 19 March 1926 to 28 January 1930. Did he, during that time, interview an Englishman at the Soviet embassy who offered to sell a British cipher? If so, what was the name of this Englishman and can Helfand give us a description of him? Show Helfand photographs of Ernest Holloway Oldham and William Arthur Scott. Does Helfand recognise either of these photographs as being the Englishman in question?’
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