The Greatest Traitor (2 page)

Over in Moscow the ‘honorific’ certainly sits well. Recent years have seen a full-length dramatization of his life and a special documentary to celebrate his 90th birthday. In the pantheon of Soviet spies, he commands a seat at the top table, along with the likes of Second World War heroes Richard Sorge and Rudolph Abel.

It is true, of course, that Blake’s nine years as a mole for the KGB never involved giving away the ultimate secret – the atomic bomb – as Klaus Fuchs did. It is arguable too that Kim Philby, in his more exalted position within SIS, caused greater quality of damage – if not quantity – than the middle-ranking Blake. Moreover, it has never been proven that his betrayal led to loss of life.

From this perspective then, his sentence might appear more a vindictive punishment than a carefully measured one; a late act of retribution borne out of the frustration of the political class at yet another in a long line of traitors who bedevilled British Intelligence in the 1950s and 1960s.

In that scenario Blake becomes something of a scapegoat. A confessed traitor, but also an outsider made to pay for the failings of a secretive establishment then in its death throes. As we shall see, there were certainly those who reached – and were prepared to act on – this interpretation at the time.

George Blake’s life has touched many in the intelligence world and beyond it, for good or ill. Despite the passing of time I have managed to talk to a number of those who knew him, and there are two to whom I am especially indebted.

Lord Hutchinson of Lullington – then Jeremy Hutchinson – represented Blake at his trial in 1961, and details of his eloquent defence that day in May can be read for the first time in this book. He was most helpful in his recollections of Blake, and also described vividly to me the forces arraigned against him as a new QC fighting his client’s case in the Old Bailey more than half a century ago.

Michael Randle, a longstanding peace campaigner, believed Blake’s sentence to be inhumane, and the remarkable story of how he assisted
his former prison companion is told in detail here. His own riveting book,
The Blake Escape
, was one of those that helped guide my chapters on Blake’s time in prison, in hiding, and then of course on the dramatic journey across the Iron Curtain. Randle generously gave me access to some of his private papers and to a gripping chapter in another of his books, the as yet unpublished
Rebel Verdict
, an account of his 1991 trial on charges of helping Blake escape.

Michael’s wife Anne was also most helpful, especially with memories of those days in the winter of 1966. The Randles may not share all my conclusions about their friend but I trust their own actions and views are faithfully represented here.

I also owe a special debt of gratitude to Tom Bower, acclaimed investigative journalist and writer, who was one of the first to interview Blake in depth back in 1990. The results were broadcast in an absorbing BBC
Inside Story
documentary, ‘The Confession’. Not only did I watch the film, but buried away in a couple of boxes in Tom’s garage were several hours of ‘raw’ tapes – a good deal of the interview with Blake, and others with his colleagues and friends, that had to be left on the cutting room floor. I have made full use of those recordings in this book, and they have provided invaluable insights into my subject and his times.

Ben Birnberg represented Blake for a while in his battle for his book royalties against the British Government. He was most generous in giving me access to all the legal documents associated with the case.

Leopold Van Ewijk talked to me very movingly and compellingly about the role his wife Greetje played in the Dutch underground and, in particular, the vital part she played in ushering young George Blake (then Behar) across the border and on the first leg of his journey across Europe.

Louis Wesseling learned Arabic alongside Blake on a course in Shemlan, Lebanon, in 1960–61, and his very clear memories of their association and their conversations are recorded in these pages.

There are also several former SIS officers who have been most helpful with their recollections of Blake and his times, but they have asked to remain anonymous.

While researching and writing this book, I regularly attended the stimulating seminars hosted by Professor Christopher Andrew, an authority on intelligence and espionage, at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. I am most grateful to him. Through the wisdom of the guest speakers and the quality of the ensuing conversation, those sessions helped me build up a far deeper knowledge of the intelligence world.

Also from Cambridge University, I must thank Professor Jonathan Haslam, an expert on the Cold War – especially from the Soviet side – who has been a source of valuable suggestions and insights into some of the characters and events depicted in this book.

There are many other people who I must thank for advice and assistance and stories about Blake and his times, including Gordon Corera, Alan Judd, Tennent ‘Pete’ Bagley, Phillip Knightley, Ian McEwan, David Cornwell, Anthony Cavendish, Oliver Miles, Colin Cohen, Alain Gresh, Sylvie Braibant, Professor Keith Jeffery, Martin Coubert, Adri Wijnen, and ‘Shorty’ Eastabrook.

I am greatly indebted to Abby D’Arcy Hughes, who unearthed vital new information about Blake’s time in Berlin. Elke Piron’s researches into his early years in Holland were equally invaluable, while Nvard Chalikyan provided immaculate translations of Russian newspapers, books and films in which Blake featured. My friends Conny Loosen and Rita Cillessen contributed some important additional German and Dutch translation.

My agent Andrew Gordon has been a continuing source of encouragement and guidance. Ray Newman was a splendid copy editor, assiduous in locating errors in the text and equally creative when suggesting improvements. Finally, last but certainly not least, Sam Harrison has been the ideal editor, always full of the soundest advice on content and style, all done in the most constructive and helpful manner.

Roger Hermiston,

Cavendish,

January 2013.

‘What do you think spies are: priests, saints and martyrs? They’re a squalid procession of vain fools, traitors too, yes: pansies, sadists and drunkards, people who play Cowboys and Indians to brighten their rotten lives.’

Alec Leamas in
The Spy Who Came in from the Cold
by John le Carré

‘It is the spy who has been called upon to remedy the situation created by the deficiencies of ministers, diplomats, generals and priests . . . we do not have to develop, like the Parliamentarians conditioned by a lifetime, the ability to produce the ready phrase, the smart reply and the flashing smile. And so it is not surprising these days that the spy finds himself the main guardian of intellectual integrity.’

George Young, Vice-Chief of the British Secret Intelligence Service, as reported by George Blake

‘Blake asserted he had yielded to no material pressure or advantages but had been genuinely “converted to Communism while a prisoner of war in Korea”. With the ideological spy, we were faced with a phenomenon such as had hardly appeared in these islands for some four hundred years.’

Harold Macmillan,
At the End of the Day: 1961–63

Prologue

Central Criminal Court, London, 11.40 a.m., Wednesday, 3 May 1961

F
or more than half a century, No. 1 Court at the Old Bailey had been the Grand Theatre of Crime, the stage on which the worst of humanity took a bow. Few who stepped into the dock in this intimate oak-panelled room, representing the fearsome infallibility of English justice, could dare to contemplate freedom when the curtain came down at the end of their inquisition. Its many famous players had included the likes of patent medicine salesman Dr Harvey Crippen, who poisoned his wife and buried her in the coal cellar, and John Reginald Christie, the clerk who strangled at least eight women at 10 Rillington Place.

But in the Cold War, intelligence became the most dangerous weapon, and the court found itself dealing with a different kind of criminal – the betrayers of the nation’s secrets. Klaus Fuchs, the theoretical physicist who gave the Soviets comprehensive plans for the atomic bomb, was one of the first of this new breed, convicted in March 1950 and sentenced to fourteen years imprisonment. Just two months previously, Court No. 1 had played host to the Portland Spy Ring – Gordon Lonsdale, Henry Houghton, Ethel Gee and Peter and Helen Kroger – who had all been handed substantial jail terms for passing details of Britain’s nuclear submarine fleet across the Iron Curtain.

Never in anyone’s memory, however, had such strict security measures been imposed on a criminal trial in peacetime as were put in place at the Old Bailey on 3 May 1961. Outside, dozens of police cordoned off the pavement, allowing no one near the building.

Inside, a 38-year-old ‘Government official’ who had already confessed to his crimes listened intently as the judge, Lord Chief
Justice Lord Parker, brought his summing-up to a conclusion and prepared to pass sentence. George Blake, a handsome man of dark complexion, with his brown hair fashionably long, was dressed smartly in a grey suit, checked shirt and blue silk tie with red dots. His hands gripped the ledge of the dock.

Little had been known about Blake before he entered the courtroom that May morning. A number of brief appearances in magistrates’ court had disclosed something of the gravity of the charges facing him, but details of exactly who he was and what he had done remained scant and obscure. The newspaper reporters in court learned precious little more. The details of his profession were skirted around in open session, and the prosecuting counsel, Attorney-General Sir Reginald Manningham-Buller, merely referred to the fact that until his arrest Blake had been ‘employed in the Government’s service both in this country and overseas’. Fleeting mention was made of his five-year service in the Royal Navy. Although those present with sharp memories might have recalled that, back in April 1953, he had been one of the first prisoners set free by the Communists towards the end of the Korean War. They might also have remembered the sight of he and his fellow captives arriving to a heroes’ welcome in front of the TV cameras at Brize Norton airfield.

At 10.40 a.m., the court had gone into closed session, and Lord Parker had ordered No. 1 Court to be locked and the shutters to be put up on the glass-panelled doors. What there was to know about George Blake – his life story, the details of his career – was laid out by his defence in private, only adding to the air of mystery surrounding him.

The court had been open for the prosecution speech and was re-opened for the Judge’s summing-up. Of the detail of his offences, there was only the broadest outline but, in Blake’s own words, the enormity of his crimes was made abundantly clear. Manningham-Buller had quoted the heart of Blake’s confession back at him: ‘I must freely admit there was not an official document of any importance to which I had access which was not passed to my Soviet contact.’

Lord Parker’s opening remarks in his summing-up offered little comfort: ‘It is clear your case is akin to treason. Indeed, it is one of the worst that can be envisaged other than in a time of war . . . your conduct in many other countries would undoubtedly carry the death penalty. In our law, however, I have no option but to sentence you to imprisonment, and for your traitorous conduct extending over so many years there must be a very heavy sentence.’

Blake feared the worst – fourteen years in prison, as had been handed down to Fuchs. He fervently hoped it might be ten, perhaps eleven, but he had few grounds for optimism. Throughout the trial to that point, he had felt more like a spectator, or a filmgoer, content to sit and watch as others played out another man’s drama. Now, though, Parker’s ominous words demanded his attention: ‘The court cannot, even if so minded, give you a sentence of life imprisonment . . . there are, however, five counts to which you have pleaded guilty, each dealing with separate periods in your life during which you were betraying your country, and the court will impose upon you a sentence of fourteen years imprisonment on each of those counts.’

Even then, Blake and everyone else in No.1 Court had no reason to expect what was to come. In the natural order of these matters, surely the sentences would run
concurrently
, meaning he would serve fourteen years. Parker delivered the hammer blow: ‘Those in respects of counts one, two and three being
consecutive
, those in respect of counts four and five concurrent. Accordingly, the total sentence upon you is one of forty-two years imprisonment.’

A communal gasp sounded from the spectators in the gallery, followed by a moment of shocked silence. As they glanced towards the prisoner in the dock for his reaction, they noticed a flicker of a smile play across his lips as he stood still, uncomprehending, gazing directly at Lord Parker. After some seven or eight seconds, Blake turned around slowly, taking in the faces around the court, first those on the press bench, then those on the solicitors’ table, and finally those with a professional interest who gazed down from the prime seats in the gallery.

Then, escorted by a warder, Blake hesitantly crossed the wooden floor of the dock. He leaned over and whispered courteously to his defence team: ‘Thank you.’ He then disappeared from view, descending to the cells below.

Forty-two years in jail: a record. The previous longest consecutive sentence in British criminal history dated from 1887 when a man was jailed for twenty-nine years for demanding money with menaces and robbery with violence. The severity of the punishment led Prime Minister Harold Macmillan to reflect in his diary: ‘The Lord Chief Justice has passed a savage sentence – forty-two years in prison! Naturally, we can say nothing.’

Forty-two years, and almost no one knew exactly what Blake had done to deserve it.

Among the friends and colleagues with whom he had endured the miseries of the Korean prison camps, there was disbelief. To them, he had been the epitome of bravery and defiance; a man worthy of implicit trust. Commissioner Herbert Lord of the Salvation Army told the
Daily Mirror’s
reporter: ‘I find it almost impossible to believe that the George Blake I saw kneel nonchalantly in the snow as a North Korean guard beat him with a rifle butt could have turned into a traitor . . . For that was only one of many times the young vice-consul, who was my fellow prisoner for thirty-four months, showed contempt for the Communists.’