The Vassall spy case now promises to become a cause celebre. In his effort to avoid dangerous speculation the Prime Minister, Mr Macmillan, on Wednesday unexpectedly released the letters that one of his junior ministers and his wife wrote to William John Christopher Vassall, the self-confessed spy undergoing eighteen years’ imprisonment. It is likely that the minister will resign though he is held to be free from the charge of having run a security risk.
Vassall had already been assured of a place in the annals of the “secret war” which has become one of the principal features of our age. Now he has a fighting chance to be ranked among the master practitioners of this age-old profession. In the bargain he has provided a powerful argument to “reformers” who have since the time of Oscar Wilde unsuccessfully pleaded for the removal of homosexuality from the list of punishable offences and for a popular acceptance that since this form of perversion is fairly widespread it is no longer worthy of moral censure.
The Threat
Vassall’s story is almost classic in its simplicity. He was posted as a clerk in the office of the naval attaché in the British embassy in Moscow in 1955. A Polish fellow employee invited him to a restaurant and introduced him to some Russian friends. From this point on events moved with remarkable logic. He was invited again by his new friends to a party, plied with strong drinks and then taken to a private chamber. Months later he suddenly found himself confronted with two Soviet officials who showed him photographs of himself in a compromising position and told him that under the law he could he detained in Russia for this offence. He agreed to pass on secrets under the threat that the pictures would be shown to embassy officials and the wife of the ambassador.
It goes without saying that he was rewarded for these services though the prosecution put the payment during his stay in Moscow at a paltry sum of 2,000 roubles (about £50) and £500 to £700 a year subsequently in this country. The way Vassall lived both in Moscow and London would however suggest that the amount could well have been much bigger.
On his salary of £700 a year he lived in Dolphin Square, one of the most fashionable areas in London. The rent of the flat and the rates alone cost him £500. Among the furniture in the flat was a Queen Anne wardrobe costing £400 and a Persian carpet costing £150. During the trial it came out that he bought his suits at shops like Jaegers costing nothing less than £40 each. He had over a dozen of them. He went to some of the exclusive clubs and ate at fashionable restaurants. In Moscow in the first 18 months of his stay he attended about 150 social events.
Vassall returned to London in July 1956 and worked for one year as personal assistant to the Deputy Director of the Naval Intelligence Division. It was in this capacity that he is believed to have done the greatest damage to Britain’s security. From June 1957 to October 1959 he was employed in the office of the Civil Lord of Admiralty. This office was then held by Mr Thomas Galbraith, now junior minister in the Scottish office. His relations with Vassall then and later are now a subject of criticism and wild speculation. Vassall continued to work in the Naval headquarters till his arrest in September last.
Apparently no one paid the slightest attention to the fact that the man lived far beyond his means. Day after day he was able, on his own statement, to extract secret papers from files, take them home and return them after photographing them without causing suspicion. The then Civil Lord of Admiralty visited his flat presumably to sympathise with him on his mother’s death and did not find it strange that a poorly paid clerk should be living in such style. What is still more surprising is that Vassall was able to go on with his espionage work when it was known for about 18 months that a spy was working in the Naval headquarters itself.
This last knowledge was the result of another spy case last year known as the Portland spy case. Let me recall some of the facts. When in January the special branch of the Scotland Yard raided a house it took three days to find the underground radio transmitter capable of sending information to Moscow. This elaborate communication had clearly been set up to transmit secrets that one of the accused in this case, Mr Harry Houghton, brought from the Dorset Naval Base on his monthly visits to London. Also among the microfilms found in the house one was of a highly secret document which had not been circulated to any naval base. The authorities believed that the document had in fact not gone out of the strong-room of the Admiralty.
Vital Secrets
Vassall has himself confessed that he was the spy in question. On orders from his masters he lay low for months after the Portland case trial in March 1961. They wanted to make sure that no suspicion had been cast on him. He resumed his activities in January this year. According to the chief crime reporter of The Daily Express, in March last British agents in Moscow were reporting the arrival there of vital naval secrets. It was in the investigations that followed that Vassall was caught.
The suspicion got fixed on men in the military division of the Admiralty which deals with the organisation of combined military and naval plans for emergencies and venues of proposed exercises at sea. Still it took the security men some time to trace the possible culprit and another three weeks to effect the arrest of Vassall. The evidence in the shape of films of secret documents seized from his place was foolproof. He made an immediate confession and was convicted and sentenced to 18 years’ imprisonment on October 22.
Mr Macmillan was alive to the explosive nature of the issues involved in the case. On the same day as the judgment was delivered he appointed an inquiry committee of three officials. He wanted to forestall the demand for an independent inquiry by the Labour party. Parliament was then not in session. He knew that such an inquiry could prove highly embarrassing particularly in view of the fact that only six months ago Lord Radcliffe had made far reaching proposals for tightening security arrangements. This was one of Mr Macmillan’s gimmicks which could not go unchallenged.
The Question
The challenge came on November 2 within days of the reassembling of Parliament. Mr Gordon Walker, a former minister in the Labour government, asked difficult questions. How was it no one noticed Vassall’s extravagant style of living? Why did the charges against him not relate to the period when he worked in the office of the Civil Lord? Was it normal for a junior clerk to take confidential papers to the minister in Scotland? Did he have a key to the box in which he carried the confidential papers? If he did how did he acquire it? These were some of the questions he and other MPs pressed.
The Defence Minister’s reply has been described here as flippant. Everyone lived beyond his means these days, he said, and added that men would not be employed as spies if it was easy to catch them. Similarly one could not tell from a man’s face that he was a homosexual. It was no crime for the junior minister to visit his flat and to invite him to lunch when he carried secret papers to Scotland.
The matter would have rested there till at least the officials had completed the inquiry if the Labour party had not gained some new information. The information related to the letters the minister and his wife had written to Vassall. On Tuesday last the Deputy Labour leader, Mr George Brown, dropped the bombshell. He said: “This is a matter which involves ministers. Is he (Mr Macmillan) willing to discuss with us the evidence which he and we know to be available and discuss with us what we should do about it, or does he wish it to be open to the public in the House?”
Mr Macmillan responded to the challenge by publishing the “My dear Vassall” letters with an interim report from the inquiry committee that “we have not yet seen Mr Galbraith in connection with our investigations and we have many inquiries still to make. Prima facie, however, the letters in themselves do not appear to us to contain any implication of a relationship constituting a security risk”. This does not answer the question that the relationship was so close that it casts doubt on the minister’s “judgment”. Names of Burgess and Maclean are being freely mentioned in private discussions of this unsavoury business.
The Times of India, 10 November 1962