AMONG THE MASS of information that Blunt gave to the Russians during the latter part of the war were details of the ultra-secret plans for ‘Fortitude’, the codename for the operation to deceive the Germans into believing that the main Allied invasion would be in the Pas-de-Calais area, not in Normandy. This could have been extremely dangerous and could have cost thousands of lives, for at that stage in 1944 the Russians did not want the war to end quickly. Having the Germans on the run, they wanted to occupy as much of Europe as possible so that they could communise it. For some reason, the Russians chose not to inform the Germans of the British–American deception plans, or, if they did, they were not believed.

Blunt managed to fool all his colleagues in MI5 by his imperturbable manner when seemingly in difficulties, and I have discovered only one self-incriminating remark prior to his confession. Col. T. A. Robertson recalled that when Blunt left the service in 1945 he said to him, ‘Well, it’s given me great pleasure to pass on the names of every MI5 officer to the Russians.’ Robertson, who says that he knew that Blunt was a communist and made no secret of it, passed on the information to those who should have taken note of it, but nothing was entered in Blunt’s file.

It may well be asked why, when Blunt was in such a valuable position, the KGB permitted him to leave MI5 and return to the art history world where his value would be minimal. The KGB does not let its agents off the hook out of gratitude, and it could easily have blackmailed Blunt into remaining in MI5 where there was a permanent position open to him with inevitable promotion. It is possible that the Russians thought that there might be some value in having an agent closely connected with the royal household, for Blunt also became surveyor of the King’s pictures for George VI on leaving MI5. But Blunt told his interrogators that he inclined to their opinion that the Russians felt he could be spared from MI5 because they had an alternative agent in place there.

Before I end my survey of Blunt’s activities inside MI5, there is one incident, to which he confessed, that is worthy of record because it demonstrates the incredible lengths to which the Russians will go with deception and false information to achieve a long-term objective, whatever the cost in human life and suffering. Blunt confessed that soon after Russia was attacked in 1941, while he was dealing with signals intelligence in MI5, he betrayed a highly secret interception operation known by the codename ‘Klatt’ (because a Jewish intelligence agent called Klatt was believed to be involved in it).

The British radio-interception organisation (now known as GCHQ, Government Communications Headquarters) had detected a regular stream of radio messages emanating from Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria, which had allied itself with Nazi Germany, and had managed to decipher them. It turned out to be information about Russia’s forces and strategic plans for their use, which was being sent from Sofia, where Klatt was based, to the headquarters of the German secret service, the Abwehr, in Berlin. Furthermore, the British were able to pinpoint the Russian source of this information – a secret transmitter operating near Kuibyshev, on the Volga, where the KGB Intelligence Centre had been evacuated when the fall of Moscow seemed imminent.

As the ‘Klatt’ traffic continued to reach the Abwehr daily, the British could not understand why the KGB was failing to track down the transmitter and silence it. It transpired that an attempt by the Red Army General Timoshenko to retake the key town of Kharkov in May 1942 had been defeated by the Germans using ‘Klatt’ information. The battle had cost the Russians 100,000 men and hundreds of tanks and guns.

As the ‘Klatt’ traffic continued, MI5 reluctantly decided that it must be part of some gigantic double-cross system that the Russians were using deliberately, staggering though the resulting losses had been. This view was still held when ‘Klatt’ information led to the destruction by the Germans of a Russian convoy in the Black Sea. The only explanation MI5 could find was that ‘Klatt’ was a double agent, ostensibly working for the German Abwehr but really operating in the interests of the Russians, who were providing what is known in the disinformation game as ‘chicken feed’ for a greater purpose.

The riddle seems to have been solved near the end of the war by the Allied capture of a White Russian called General Turkhul, who had been a pre-war agent of the British secret service in Paris. He admitted that, after France fell in 1940, he had disappeared and worked for the Germans, becoming the head of a radio-intelligence system with a branch in Sofia responsible for the ‘Klatt’ traffic. The Germans believed that Turkhul, who had been a friend of Himmler before the war – hence his use by the British then – had Russian contacts through whom he was securing his marvellous information about Soviet battle dispositions and intentions. Turkhul told his Allied interrogators that indeed he had such contacts but only because he was, and always had been, primarily a Soviet agent. The Russians had deliberately been feeding him with information for onward transmission to Berlin. The Oriental reasoning behind this, Turkhul explained, centred on an army, said to total about a million troops, that had been recruited by another Russian general, Andrei Vlassov, who genuinely loathed the Stalin regime and was determined to help the Germans overthrow it.

Vlassov, one of the younger Red Army generals, had been captured by the Germans when the Soviet Shock Army, which he commanded, was defeated in its defence of Moscow. He volunteered to raise a Russian Army of Liberation from Red Army deserters and prisoners of war and, after some resistance from the Nazi leadership, was permitted to do so, operating from a base near Berlin. Until Hitler objected personally, there was a plan to set up a Russian government in exile, with Vlassov as a kind of de Gaulle.

His propaganda squads, operating near the front line, secured thousands of deserters, and the Germans equipped and trained the Army of Liberation for eventual use on the Russian front. Because of this army’s size and success in securing deserters, Turkhul said that Stalin greatly feared the effect it might have if it appeared flying what would look like freedom’s flag. Stalin was therefore pathologically determined to do anything, at any cost, to prevent its use and had instructed the KGB accordingly.

As the prime part of the deception, Turkhul had to convince Himmler and the German high command that Vlassov and his troops would suddenly change sides and fight with the Russians if ever they were taken to the Eastern front. He claimed to have information that Vlassov had been secretly in touch with the Kremlin to this effect.

The wonderfully accurate information that Turkhul continued to send to the Abwehr had been calculated to strengthen his credibility with Himmler and, through him, with Hitler. As Turkhul explained it, the deception, costly though it had been, had paid rich dividends. The Vlassov Army was certainly never used on the Russian front proper, a portion of it, only, being deployed in the last-ditch fighting in Austria.

Previously, following false information sent over ‘Klatt’ after the Russian defeat at Kharkov, the Germans were led to believe that the Red Army was finished, and they pushed on to Stalingrad, which, Hitler insisted, had to be taken. To capture the city, all the Germans had were two Rumanian armies, one Italian, one Hungarian and their own Sixth Army. The Russians knew this from their own radio-intelligence network operating in Switzerland, the Lucy Ring. To combat the overstretched Nazi forces, the Russian high command had mustered thirteen Soviet armies.

In November, the Russians attacked at the junction of the German Army and the Rumanians. The Rumanians were crushed, the Italians and Hungarians fled the field and the German Sixth Army was encircled and destroyed. At that moment, the Vlassov Army might conceivably have tipped the scale for the Germans, Turkhul believed. It is certain that Hitler forbade its use on the Russian front, and, while this may have been partly due to his racial prejudices, the disinformation he had received concerning its loyalty might well have been a potent factor.

Vlassov was eventually captured by the Russians and, along with the other Red Army generals who had joined him and were handed over to Stalin under the Yalta Agreement, was executed.

Blunt eventually provided independent proof that ‘Klatt’ had been a double-cross. He admitted that he had handed the deciphered ‘Klatt’ traffic to ‘Henry’ for a few weeks but had then been told not to bother with it anymore because Moscow knew all about it. From that date, Blunt himself had assumed that the operation was a Soviet double-cross because the ‘Klatt’ traffic out of Sofia to Berlin continued until the battle for Stalingrad.

Such sacrificial ‘chicken feed’ for the long-term objective is not unprecedented in Soviet intelligence. I have evidence of an occasion when the KGB permitted the Germans to sink a heavily laden Russian troopship to establish the credibility of one valuable agent who had given them the necessary information.

The KGB defines disinformation as the use of misinformation to confuse an adversary and, eventually, to make it do the Kremlin’s will. It was considered to have worked so effectively during the war that its use was expanded afterward, a whole new Disinformation Department being created inside the KGB. The defector Golitsin revealed how Alexsandr Shelepin, in particular, laid stress on it while he was the KGB chairman between 1959 and 1961.

Golitsin said that in 1959 the Politburo had taken a consensus decision that, because the risks of a nuclear exchange were unacceptable, the communist aims should be achieved by other means if possible. Shelepin was asked to report on how the KGB could assist and called a meeting of about 2,000 of his chief operators from all over the world. He listened to their suggestions over several days and told them that he would consider their ideas for six months then formulate a policy statement for the Politburo.

In his statement, Shelepin told the Politburo that, while the KGB was an elite force, it could be used more effectively if disinformation and disruption were given prime priority. The Politburo accepted his suggestions and ordered that the KGB should concentrate on discrediting the western nations by spreading falsehoods, deceptions and confusion, a campaign in which the penetration and discrediting of western intelligence services would be crucial. The media, fellow travellers and agents of influence of ‘liberal’ bent were to be used to the maximum extent to spread the false propaganda, which is designed to undermine confidence in the western nations’ own leadership and mode of government.

This policy has been so successful that, to quote James Angleton: