On 2 June 1982, in stark contrast to the latest stage in the Arab–Israeli conflict (the murderous attack on the Israeli Prime Minister by Arab terrorists the following day), Pope John Paul II returned to his home in the Vatican after a six-day visit marked by remarkable demonstrations of love and reconciliation between Roman Catholic and Protestant leaders.
The Pope’s visit was possibly the most unusual VIP protection responsibility that had ever been undertaken by the Branch and caused six days of headaches for Detective Chief Superintendent Geoff Craft, who was head of the Special Branch team responsible for the Pope’s well-being during the visit and who has provided most of the details for the following narrative.
Pope John Paul II was a contentious figure, having been a catalyst in the breakup of the Soviet Empire; he had been the victim of an assassination attempt the previous year, following which there were concerns that his poor health might cause the visit to be cancelled. The ongoing Falklands War between Britain and Argentina presented another obstacle to overcome. But overcome it was, together with numerous other problems which necessitated frequent changes to the itinerary. Instead of the usual immaculately prepared programme presented to all the interested parties before official or state visits, the Special Branch protection team was provided with what Geoff Craft refers to as ‘Draft Itinerary No.40a with manuscript amendments’ just before His Holiness arrived at Gatwick Airport.
Security problems were compounded by the fact that this was a ‘pastoral’ visit, as distinct from a ‘state’ or ‘official’ visit which would come under the auspices of the Lord Chamberlain’s Office or the Protocol Department of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. They were accustomed to organising such events according to a tried and tested procedure, at the conclusion of which an official printed programme would be produced in which all those involved would have their roles clearly defined. In this case it was the Roman Catholic Church, which had comparatively little experience of such matters, particularly one of such enormity, upon whom the onerous task of organisation fell. The only people involved in the numerous planning consultations who had any experience in delivering and safeguarding such occasions were the Metropolitan Police, specifically Special Branch and ‘A’ Department. The Special Branch Technical Protection Unit (TPU), formed in 1979, performed a discreet but vital role in security arrangements; it played a major part, together with the manufacturers and engineers, in the development of the four armoured vehicles (including the so-called ‘Popemobile’) used at the outdoor events attended by the Pope and also the bullet-resistant lectern employed at Westminster and Southwark Cathedrals, when he would have been particularly vulnerable. All official cars were driven by police drivers from ‘B’ Department, who had all passed the stringent police driving tests. Apart from its personal protection role, Special Branch was also responsible for overall transport arrangements and, in conjunction with the army, venue bomb searching. Detective Superintendent Colin Colson (head of the TPU) rode as ‘motorcade supervisor’ in a smaller version of the ‘Popemobile’. (The development and role of the TPU is described in detail in Chapter 27.)
The visit was extremely wide-ranging and included not only Roman Catholic locations but also Canterbury Cathedral, as well as non-secular sites in England, Wales and Scotland. The Pope met HM Queen Elizabeth II; the Prince of Wales; the leader of the Roman Catholic Church in this country, Cardinal Basil Hume; the Archbishop of Canterbury, Robert Runcie; and the Chief Rabbi of the United Kingdom, Sir Immanuel Jakobovits. Apart from a few small, perfunctory protests by supporters of the late Rev. Ian Paisley, the visit was well received and passed off with no major problem. That is, except for one amusing interlude which occurred in Roehampton at a gathering of the local religious community – nuns, brothers and priests. Geoff Craft recalls:
We had been warned in advance by Archbishop Marcinkus, who organised papal visits, ‘to be careful of a phalanx of flying nuns’. Everything went fine until we’d got him into the papal vehicle at the end, whereupon we had a phalanx of flying nuns led by a tiny contemplative nun. She was kicking the shins of my biggest protection officer while desperately trying to get on the Popemobile.
The overall policing arrangements were the subject of highly favourable comments in the official Vatican Annals for 1982, and the Home Secretary, William Whitelaw, wrote to the Commissioner afterwards:
Now that the Pope has left Great Britain after his visit, I wanted to express to you my admiration for the professionalism and coolness with which your officers provided his personal protection. We often say that our police are the best in the world but it is not always easy to prove it. Television has now provided a basis for direct comparison of the methods of protection employed during the Pope’s visits all over the world in the last three or four years. My impression is that no other country has achieved such a good balance between safety and accessibility. The protection was always in place but never unnecessarily obtrusive.
On 14 November 1994, Eurostar rail services began operating between Waterloo International Station in London, Gare du Nord in Paris and (later) Brussels-South Station in Brussels. This event was the culmination of years of planning (since the early ’80s), involving not only the operating companies of the countries involved but, on the British side, the Home Office, HM Immigration, HM Customs, British Transport Police, Metropolitan Police, Kent Police and numerous other interested parties.
The original intention was to run a roll-on/roll-off car ferry service via the Channel Tunnel (completed in 1993), but European Passenger Services (EPS) soon decided to utilise the tunnel for passenger-only services as well. This meant that a new purpose-built terminal at Waterloo International would see thousands of passengers a day passing through immigration controls and naturally a sizeable Special Branch presence would be required. DCI Peter Gardner was delegated to safeguard Special Branch interests throughout the discussion period and was able to influence the committee on a number of factors that would affect the Branch.1
A feature of the negotiations was the manner in which the various parties involved seemed anxious to co-operate with each other, which made a complex task less difficult. It should be pointed out that there were two services under discussion, both using the Channel Tunnel: the roll-on/roll-off car ferry from Cheriton in Kent to the Continent and the passenger-only service from Waterloo and Ashford (Kent) to Frethun (Calais), Gare du Nord (Paris), Lille and, later, Brussels. The Kent Special Branch would have responsibility for coverage of the car ferry at Cheriton and the passenger trains at Ashford International Railway Station.
EPS were anxious for checks on passengers to be carried out on board the moving trains before it was realised that at some point under the Channel police officers, whether French or English, would be outside their jurisdiction. Foreign Office legal advisers were now brought in to the discussions and, together with their French counterparts, devised an ingenious plan in which a ‘control zone’ was proposed, in which police officers could act as if in their own country. The ‘control zone’ was construed as including the Eurostar train, the lines it stood on when stationary, the platform at which it stopped, the police authority’s office and the direct route to it. This clause was written into the appropriate British, French and Belgian law.
Another problem to be overcome, and was, concerned the necessity for some provision for facilities when police/immigration officers were operating controls on the moving train. EPS undertook to provide necessary facilities for all three countries concerned, both on the train and at stations. This included, in the case of MPSB, sizeable office space sufficient to accommodate sixty-four officers, which was the initial establishment, proposed by Gardner and approved, of the Waterloo port unit.
Although it attracted most of the headlines, the investigation of terrorism represented only a minor part of Special Branch work. Another aspect of the department’s activities that always aroused the public’s interest, but not so frequently, was its involvement in investigation of breaches of the Official Secrets Acts. Although the Security Service has traditionally been responsible for detecting cases of espionage, its officers have no power of arrest and it has always been the Special Branch who ‘merely arrested and questioned spies at the request of MI5, when the latter organisation, which had detected them, considered that the time for arrest had arrived’.2 It is doubtful whether SB officers involved in some OSA cases would agree that the adverb ‘merely’ accurately defines the bringing of a case of espionage to court – as the two cases described below illustrate.
Erwin Van Haarlem first attracted the attention of the Security Service quite fortuitously during their surveillance of a suspected GRU (Soviet military intelligence) agent on Hampstead Heath in April 1986. This man, a member of the Soviet Trade Delegation, was ‘behaving in a generally furtive manner’ before entering the Old Bull and Bush public house. About half an hour later, a second man appeared to be searching an area of ground before he too entered the public house. On leaving the premises, the second individual was followed to an address in Friern Barnet which proved to be his home; he was identified as a forty-year-old Dutch national named Erwin Van Haarlem. Investigations proved him to be an illegal (an agent working under deep cover) who had assumed the identity of one Erwin Van Haarlem, the illegitimate son of a Dutch mother and a German soldier. He was a self-employed art dealer, an occupation that was merely a cover for his espionage activities, which consisted of providing his controllers with intelligence about British supporters of the Jewish ‘refuseniks’ who were prevented from emigrating from the Soviet Union to Israel. After extensive investigations, MI5 concluded that the Czech intelligence services, who controlled his activities, passed to the Russians all the information he gave them, although he himself had no direct contact with the KGB.3
This was the information that was passed to the MPSB with a request that he should, if possible, be caught in the act of transmitting information and sufficient evidence produced to prosecute him. This was achieved, although it was by no means a matter of ‘merely arresting and questioning’. The following narrative has been provided by Kevin Kindleysides, who was the Special Branch exhibits officer in the case.
It is important to appreciate that the timing of entry to Van Haarlem’s flat at 35 Silver Birch Court, Friern Barnet, north London was of the essence to catch him in the act of receiving a transmission from his Czech controllers. It was known that transmissions were made openly in Morse code on shortwave radio on Wednesday evenings and Saturday mornings. After transmission, the message would be repeated until a new message superseded it; the repetition was made to allow the recipient to check his Morse transcription.
On Saturday 2 April 1988, the transmission commenced at 8 a.m. and finished at 8.27 a.m. It was essential that the whole transmission had been received before attempting entry to the premises, so, at 8.26 a.m., a Gallini hydraulic door opener was put in place and at 8.27 a.m. precisely the door to the flat swung open without a sound, allowing the Special Branch team of some seven officers led by Detective Superintendent Nigel Somers to take the occupant by surprise. In the kitchen, perched on a stool at the breakfast bar, sat a man wearing pyjamas with, in one ear, an earpiece connected to a high-quality radio from which sounds of Morse code were being emitted. The man, Van Haarlem, was seized by Detective Inspector ‘Dickie’ Bird and his pulse taken; this was done as experienced operators are known to be able to control their nerves and, consequently, their pulse rate. His pulse quickened when he was first seized but quickly slowed down as he controlled his breathing and calmed down, indicating that here was a seasoned campaigner.
Having been shown the search warrant, he watched quietly as officers with sophisticated search equipment including high-powered drills and fibre optic cameras began to go through the flat; he even assumed a co-operative attitude, handing one of the searchers a bar of soap still in a wrapper which, when cut open, revealed a one-time pad. It was unused and obviously had been produced as a red herring, as the one currently in use was soon discovered concealed with other unused ones in a recess behind a kitchen cupboard. Some of the first items seized were those which Van Haarlem had been using when the flat had been entered – the radio, the earpiece, a sheet of paper with groups of numbers written on it and a piece of glass on which the paper was resting to prevent any traceable impressions of the message being left on any underlying surface. A simple, yet virtually foolproof method of encryption was used, employing letters, numbers, a unique ‘buzzword’ known only to the agent and his controller and one-time pads (destroyed after use). It was later learned that, in the thirteen years of his work as a spy, Van Haarlem had received over 200 messages using this method. After an initial search and preliminary questions verifying his name etc., Van Haarlem was formally arrested and cautioned and a thorough search of the premises was begun – a search that would continue throughout the next seven days. But, before this commenced, the photographers took pictures of everything in the flat for possible use as evidence. While this activity was taking place in the prisoner’s apartment, Royal Navy ships and a land station had obtained a directional fix on the source of the transmissions – situated in a suburb of Prague.
In subsequent interrogation, Van Haarlem revealed the following details of his life. He claimed to be the son of a Jewish Dutch woman, Joanna Van Haarlem, who had had an intimate relationship with a German soldier in occupied Holland towards the end of World War Two. The father died in fighting at Caen and the mother passed the baby, Erwin, to the Red Cross for adoption. That was the last she saw of him. Thirty years later ‘Erwin Van Haarlem’, who had taken on the identity of her son and was travelling on a Dutch passport, arrived in England and secured work at the Kensington Hilton Hotel, where he was employed for ten years, latterly as the purchasing manager. He was not without a sense of humour and on leaving the job declared that he was going to work in a ‘spice shop’ (a ‘spy shop’). In fact, he set up business as an art dealer. When the investigating officers had his books examined by an accountant, it was discovered that over £70,000 had been moved through these accounts in the course of the previous two years, allegedly through the sale of some miniatures, which in fact had never left his possession, being found in the course of the search of his home. It was assumed, though never proved, that many of his other ‘art transactions’ were hypothetical.
From the time of his arrest until his return to Czechoslovakia in 1993, ‘Van Haarlem’ did not reveal his true identity, although it has since been established that he was in fact Vaclav Jelinek, a lieutenant colonel in the Czech intelligence service, STB (Statni Tajna Bezpecnost), who was given the identity of Van Haarlem, which entitled him to a Dutch passport by virtue of the nationality of Joanna, his fictitious mother. During his residence in this country he contacted this lady, who came to visit him several times in London and was convinced that he was her long-lost son, although he was careful not to allow the relationship to become too close. Special Branch officers travelled to Holland in order to obtain samples of her blood, which was compared with that of the prisoner. This proved that the chances of Van Haarlem being her son were at least a million to one against.4
On 3 March 1989, at the Old Bailey, he was convicted of offences against the Official Secrets Acts and sentenced to ten years’ imprisonment with a recommendation for deportation. In 1993, when the Soviet ‘empire’ had collapsed and relations between Britain and Czechoslovakia had improved, Van Haarlem was released from prison and deported to Prague. He had never revealed the nature of his spying although, at his trial, Stella Rimington, the Deputy Director General of MI5, stated that it was unlikely that an intelligence officer of his rank would have been posted here merely to report on refusenik support groups but would probably have been a ‘sleeper’ intended for a more important role in the event of an East–West crisis or other event that prevented embassies operating normally.5
It was later ascertained that he did not transmit messages to Prague but used ‘secret writing’ methods when he needed to send reports back to control. He would use invisible chemicals to write in the pages of UK magazines, which were sent to friendly addresses in Czechoslovakia and subjected to chemical treatment to bring up the invisible writing.
In September 1993, one of the biggest Official Secrets Act trials in recent years went before a jury at the Old Bailey. The case was remarkable as much for the alleged 1970s espionage activities that the defendant, Michael John Smith, was not tried for, as his subsequent acts of treachery in the early 1990s that earned him twenty-five years’ imprisonment (later reduced on appeal to twenty years). The trial lasted eight weeks, parts of which were heard in camera. Full details of the case history, including testimony from a large number of highly qualified expert witnesses in the fields of physics and materials science, defence experts, MI5 officers, police witnesses (including over eleven hours of taped interviews at Paddington Green Police Station) and, what must be unprecedented in terms of public disclosure, hitherto secret MI5 debriefing notes from two former KGB officers, are now in the public domain and available online.6
On 25 July 1992, Viktor Oschenko, a senior SVR (formerly KGB) officer attached to the Russian embassy in Paris, approached British intelligence and asked for political asylum in Britain. In return, he agreed to provide MI5 with a detailed account of his espionage activities while serving as a Line X7 officer at the Soviet embassy in London from 1974–79. Oschenko provided vital intelligence about the identity of an agent whom he claimed to have recruited in 1975 and ran successfully until 1979. This agent was Michael John Smith, a graduate in electronic and electrical engineering from Surrey University and a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain, who resided in Surrey. They initially met at a trade union meeting in Kingston in 1975 and as part of the KGB grooming process there followed regular monthly meetings, during which Smith confided to Oschenko that he was disillusioned with life and could see no future in his employment.
During these meetings, Oschenko suggested he could offer Smith a ‘more adventurous’ lifestyle and as the grooming went on he encouraged him to join a tennis club and even gifted him a tennis racquet. He was also advised to distance himself from his Communist Party and trade union contacts and that he should change his daily newspaper to the Daily Telegraph. He was in effect being encouraged to adopt an overt bourgeois lifestyle.
After about twelve months, Oschenko suggested that he should consider getting himself a better job and together they drew up a shortlist of companies that Smith should write to. The list included Thorn-EMI Defence Research Establishment at Feltham, Middlesex. To the surprise of the Russians, Smith was offered a position as a test engineer in their quality assurance department but, as the salary was less than what he was earning at his previous employment, the Russians offered to compensate him for the difference. Smith commenced employment with Thorn-EMI in July 1976 and the KGB rewarded him with an additional £1,000 for securing the position.
Thorn-EMI was a List X company contracted to the Ministry of Defence to carry out secret defence research projects and was a designated ‘Prohibited Place’ under the Official Secrets Act, requiring all employees to sign the OSA declaration. After some months, Smith was moved to the highly sensitive XN-715 defence project on the development and design of radar fuses for the British free-fall nuclear bomb. As a quality control engineer, it was his job to test the fuses. Disclosure of any information relating to this project would have been highly damaging to British national security and would have enabled the Russians to jam or otherwise interfere with the operation of the WE-177 bomb in time of conflict. Oschenko alleged that Smith supplied him with information relating to this project. There is no suggestion that coercion played a part in Smith’s recruitment and all the indications are that he was a willing and compliant recruit for the KGB.
Yuri Andropov, the then head of the KGB who later became the President of the USSR, had concerns about Smith’s recruitment and the possibility that he may have been under MI5 control. It was decided to put Smith through a lie detector test and the KGB made elaborate arrangements for him to visit Vienna, where he was to be tested. As a further test of his commitment, he was asked to bring with him to the meeting copies of classified information from Thorn-EMI. Smith allegedly obliged but it is not known if the information he produced on this occasion related to the XN-715 project or if it was passed over on another occasion. He passed the lie detector test.8
Oschenko also gave details of how, on another occasion, Smith travelled to Oporto, Portugal, to take part in a KGB training exercise for clearing ‘dead letter boxes’ (DLBs), which he carried out to the KGB’s satisfaction. At that time Portugal was a location favoured by the KGB for this type of exercise, as they were not subject to the same level of monitoring by the Portuguese intelligence authorities as was the case in Britain and other parts of Western Europe. When Smith’s address was searched after his arrest, tourist maps with various markings of Oporto were found.
By the late 1970s, British and US intelligence became aware that the Russians had knowledge of the XN-715 fuse technology, compromising the integrity of the nuclear free-fall bomb. Extensive investigations were mounted on both sides of the Atlantic and the source of the leak was eventually identified as the Thorn-EMI Research Establishment at Feltham. MI5 compiled a list of 150 potential suspects, which was eventually narrowed down to around twenty-five, including Smith. Due to the commonness of his surname, MI5 had difficulty in positively identifying Smith and, improbable as it may sound, there were in fact two Michael John Smiths who were members of the Kingston Branch of the CPGB at that time. As there was insufficient intelligence to positively link the Michael John Smith at Thorn-EMI to the leaked secrets and, to avoid alerting him to their suspicions, Thorn-EMI managements removed him from his post and promoted him to a position in the Medical Research Division at another site out of harm’s way. According to Oschenko, even in his new post Smith continued to provide him with company information, albeit unclassified and in the public domain, such was his enthusiasm to please his KGB masters. Later on, when Smith reapplied for a position back in his old department, he became aware that his previous security clearance had been withdrawn at the time of his promotion and transfer.
Keen to establish the reason behind the decision, holding to the view that ‘attack was the best form of defence’ and the unlikelihood that a guilty person would deem to question such a decision, the KGB encouraged him to pursue the matter with Thorn-EMI management. In January 1980, prior to a meeting with a Ministry of Defence Procurement Executive officer, Smith completed a questionnaire inviting him to state whether he had ever been a member of a ‘communist, Trotskyist or fascist organisation’. He denied that he had. In a further interview in June of that year with an MI5 officer (using MoD cover), he again made a false declaration that he had never been a member of the Communist Party and only admitted it after being confronted with the evidence. The KGB still had doubts about Smith and suggested that he should write to the then Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher to protest his innocence while taking the opportunity to criticise Thorn-EMI’s lax security. The letter was never sent, and was only discovered during the search of Smith’s flat following his arrest. The experience surrounding the withdrawal of his vetting clearance had an unsettling effect on Smith and left him paranoid that he was from time to time placed under surveillance; he even admitted as much during the interviews.
For MI5, who had been investigating the leaked information on the XN-715 project for over fifteen years, the Oschenko defection and his allegations implicating Smith was the confirmation they needed that Smith was the source of the leak.
Against this background, two senior MI5 officers attended New Scotland Yard on 6 August 1992 for a Special Branch briefing chaired by Commander Don Buchanan. The two officers confirmed that the allegations were of a historical nature and that MI5 had no information that Smith was still working for Russian intelligence. They did, however, express concerns that Smith, who had been made redundant the previous week, was making preparations to emigrate to New Zealand. Smith had been employed as a quality control manager at the GEC research laboratory, the Hirst Research Centre (HRC) at Wembley since 1985.
Detective Superintendent Malcolm MacLeod was assigned to the case and, together with his deputy, DCI Martin Gray, put an operational plan in place. Arrest and search warrants were obtained for Smith, his flat and his car and surveillance was mounted on his address with immediate effect.
On Saturday 8 August 1992, as a precursor to Michael’s Smith’s arrest and to test his knowledge and understanding of KGB tradecraft, a sting operation was put in place. An MI5 officer, using the nom de guerre ‘George’ and effecting a strong Eastern European accent, made a subterfuge telephone call to Smith’s home number purporting to be ‘a friend of Viktor’ and requested an urgent meeting. Smith acknowledged ‘George’ and didn’t question him when he gave instructions to go to a local telephone box to await further directions. A short while later, Smith was observed leaving his home address closely followed by the Special Branch surveillance and arrest teams. Due to a communications hitch, Smith missed the follow-up call at the kiosk and the default arrest plan was implemented. As he returned to his address he was arrested by the late Detective Inspector Martin Nicholson. Simultaneously, Smith’s wife Pamela was detained at their flat.
The post-arrest operational plan was for Smith and his wife to be taken separately to the high-security wing at Paddington Green Police Station. After being cautioned and told the reason for his arrest, Smith was being driven in the back of the nondescript Special Branch car, handcuffed to one of the three arresting officers, when events took an unexpected turn. Realising that he was not being driven towards the local police station at Kingston, he panicked and became violent in the back of the car, struggling and shouting that he was being ‘kidnapped’ and that he knew who ‘they’ – the arresting officers – were. The arrest team was forced to make an emergency stop in Kingston High Street to call for urgent uniformed police assistance. To the bemusement of the early-morning shoppers outside John Lewis’s store, Smith was unceremoniously transferred to a marked police van and, escorted by a police traffic car, continued the journey in convoy to Paddington Green. In the grand scheme of things, this incident would not ordinarily merit mention and its significance wasn’t immediately apparent, but as the investigation progressed, the relevance of Smith’s erratic behaviour became clear. What no one in MI5 knew at the time was that, two years previously, Smith, a ‘sleeper agent’, had been reactivated and was still spying for the Russians. His imagined ‘kidnappers’ must have been the Russians.
By the time MacLeod and Detective Sergeant Steve Beels embarked on the interviews late on the Saturday afternoon, they believed they were dealing with events that occurred seventeen years previously and rated the likelihood of obtaining evidence against Smith to be negligible. This notwithstanding, MacLeod instructed the arresting officers to advise Smith to make use of the free legal advice services provided by the duty solicitor, which he took up. The duty solicitor, Richard Jefferies of Tucker & Co., was present throughout the interviews. In the initial interviews MacLeod didn’t have much in the way of evidence to put to Smith other than asking him to account for his movements just prior to his arrest. From the outset, Smith adopted a belligerent attitude, fudging questions and being generally aggressive. He denied receiving a telephone call that morning and it was only when he was presented with the taped telephone conversation with ‘George’ and the photographic evidence from the surveillance operation showing him on his morning jaunt to and from the local telephone kiosk that the seriousness of his situation registered with him.
During the four days of interviews that were to follow, Smith repeatedly lied and obfuscated as details emerged that he had in fact been actively engaged in espionage activities for the Russians from 1990 to the time of his arrest, evidence which was substantiated by the plethora of incriminating items discovered in the course of the search of his flat and car. In the boot of his car the search team found plastic bags with numerous documents and electrical components, all relating to projects being carried out by GEC’s Hirst Research Centre at Wembley. Like Thorn-EMI, GEC was also a List X firm contracted to the Ministry of Defence and a designated ‘Prohibited Place’ under the Official Secrets Act. Late in the evening of Sunday 9 August, DCI Gray and DI Nicholson requested an urgent meeting with Dr Stephen Cundy, the Director of the Hirst Research Centre. He was shown all the exhibits seized from Smith’s car and his initial assessment was that there had been
a systematic attempt to obtain details of manufacturing procedures and parts to delay lines for the Rapier missile; similar efforts were made in respect of surface wave acoustics devices. The collection of documents included stolen material classified ‘restricted’ and an effort had been made to summarise the objectives and aims of company confidential projects.
At that time the British Rapier missile system was still in service with the British military and had been deployed in the previous year in the First Gulf War.
Also in the car the searchers found a single sheet of lined notepaper with a handwritten list of technical subjects which Dr Cundy identified as project work in progress at HRC. This sheet of paper, which was in a transparent plastic sheath, was secreted under a mat in the footwell of the car and was described by the prosecution as a ‘shopping list’ and proof that Smith was ‘spying to order’ for the Russians. When asked in the interviews about this particular document and why it was planted under the footwell mat, Smith initially evaded the question, rubbishing the notes and then, to the incredulity of MacLeod and Beels, he admitted that he had placed it under the mat to ‘stop a leak’.
Further incriminating evidence was found during the search of Smith’s flat including, in a lingerie drawer in the master bedroom:
Smith’s finances were examined by DC Jonathan Say, a qualified financial investigator, who established that Smith had not used his bank accounts for cash withdrawals or to pay food retailers from mid-1991, suggesting that Smith had cash access to resources to the tune of £20,000 between 1991 and ’92.
Before DC Say had an opportunity to question Smith about his financial affairs, the latter announced that there was something he wanted to clear up. What came next was tantamount to a qualified admission, not of espionage, but of ‘industrial espionage’. He claimed that in early 1990 he received a telephone call out of the blue at work from an ‘Englishman’ named ‘Harry’ who, in brief, offered to pay for information relating to projects being worked on by GEC. ‘Harry’ explained that this offer came from one of GEC’s competitors. Over the next two years (until April 1992), according to Smith’s highly improbable narrative, he provided ‘Harry’ with what he described as ‘worthless’ and ‘dated’ information for which he was paid varying sums of money. MacLeod had little doubt that ‘Harry’ and the equally mysterious ‘Williams’ were one and the same person – probably with an address at 6/7 Kensington Palace Gardens (the Russian embassy). Smith in his naivety had hoped that admitting to ‘industrial espionage’ would somehow mitigate his treachery.
Having obtained a partial admission of guilt, MacLeod focused on Smith’s movements on Thursday 6 August, the date on the tradecraft note found at his address which suggested a meeting was to have taken place at or near St Mary’s Churchyard at Harrow on the Hill. Playing on Smith’s paranoia about surveillance, he was taken through the day from the time he left home for a preemployment induction presentation at a company in Basingstoke, to which he had applied for a job, to his subsequent detour mid-day to Harrow town centre to purchase a magazine (which he could have purchased nearer to his home). Labouring under the mistaken assumption that he had been under surveillance that day and, obviously unaware that MacLeod was in possession of the tradecraft note, he admitted to having visited St Mary’s Churchyard at Harrow on the Hill. His highly implausible reason for visiting the area that day was to purchase a computer magazine from WH Smith’s in Harrow and, as his wife wasn’t going to be home until late afternoon and it was a ‘nice summer’s day’, he decided ‘to kill time’ in the area.
What Smith didn’t know was that when his recruiter and mentor Viktor Oschenko defected the previous week, the Russian embassy in London contacted the Foreign Office, who confirmed that Oschenko had indeed defected and was seeking political asylum in Britain. The Russians immediately aborted the planned meeting at Harrow on the Hill and the hapless Smith was dropped like a hot potato; disastrous for him but fortuitous for the police. When Macleod put the evidence to Smith, culminating in the aborted meeting at Harrow on the Hill with his handler, in characteristic arrogance he mocked MacLeod, saying, ‘They’ll laugh you out of court.’ An hour later, Smith was charged with espionage. Had Oschenko delayed his defection by only a few days, the documents and components in the boot of his car would have been handed over to his SVR handler and the Smiths would have been free to proceed with their plans to emigrate to New Zealand. His wife, Pamela Smith, was eliminated from the investigation and released from custody after three days.
MacLeod, recently promoted to Detective Chief Superintendent, interviewed Oschenko at an MI5 location. The Russian appeared a broken man and, perhaps not surprisingly, declined to make a statement supporting his allegations against Smith. Consequently it was not possible to charge Smith with the alleged espionage offences while he was employed at Thorn-EMI. There was, however, sufficient evidence to charge him with the most recent spying offences at GEC between 1990 and 1992.
Smith was arraigned before Justice Blofeld at the Old Bailey in September 1993 on four counts of espionage under Section 1 of the Official Secrets Act 1911 relating to his spying activities at GEC between 1990 and 1992. The prosecution was led by the Solicitor General, Sir Derek Spencer QC MP, supported by Sir John Nutting QC and John Kelsey-Fry QC. Smith was represented by Rock Tansey QC and Gary Summers. During the eight-week trial, evidence was taken from a large number of witnesses, many of whom were leading subject-matter experts in their own particular fields of science and technology. On 18 November, the jury returned verdicts of guilty on three out of the four counts of espionage. Smith was sentenced to twenty-five years’ imprisonment.
In 1995, the Court of Appeal varied the sentence to twenty years. In his summing up, the Lord Chief Justice (the late Lord Taylor) spelt out his views on espionage, concluding with the words, ‘Treachery is treachery. It must be deterred and it must be punished.’ Smith made three further appeals, two to the Criminal Cases Review Commission to have his case referred back to the Court of Appeal and, in 1997, to the European Court of Human Rights. All these applications were rejected. A subsequent Security Review Commission’s report on the case criticised MI5’s handling of Smith’s vetting and classified the alleged damage to national security from Smith’s disclosures as ‘serious’.9
At various times during the pre-trial hearings and the trial, the defence counsel criticised DCS MacLeod’s ‘aggressive’ interviewing techniques, but Justice Blofeld in his post-sentencing comments dismissed the criticism, referring to the defendant’s persistent lying throughout the interviews, and commended MacLeod on the manner in which the lengthy interviews were conducted. It was as well that MacLeod had insisted before he and Beels commenced the interviews that Smith should be legally represented, for at no time did his solicitor raise any concerns about Smith’s treatment.
The successful conclusion of the case was the culmination of weeks of investigation by the dedicated team of Special Branch detectives and the two MI5 liaison officers who supported the team at Paddington Green Police Station.
Despite the rejection of his judicial appeals, Smith has consistently used his blog to lampoon the credibility of a large number of people involved in his case, ranging from the trial judge, through the prosecution and defence teams to the many highly qualified and reputable witnesses who appeared for the prosecution. MacLeod did not escape his wrath and found some of his rants outrageously libellous; he chose not to take any action lest it should provide Smith with the oxygen of publicity that he craved.
Smith is a complex character; his egocentricity made him a willing and pliant recruit for the KGB as he relished the thrill of spying and the notoriety of being a convicted spy, while at the same time denying his treachery. His motives for his espionage have been described as ideological and financial but while the financial incentive was clear, the ideological motive may not have been as strong as he’s been given credit for. In his first interview with the late DI Nicholson he gave his reason for joining the Communist Party as an opportunity ‘to meet women for sex’.
Of one thing there is no doubt – his guilt. In his closing speech to the jury, Sir Derek Spencer QC, the Solicitor General, declared that Smith’s guilt ‘ran like a silver thread from the alpha to the omega’.
1 I am indebted to Peter Gardner for his helpful account of the establishment of a Special Branch unit to cover the new Eurostar service
2 Andrew, The Defence of the Realm, citing a document apparently written by Holt-Wilson, DDG of MI5, p. 117
3 Andrew, The Defence of the Realm, pp. 727–8.
4 Recollections of DS Kevin Kindleysides
5 Andrew, The Defence of the Realm, p. 728
6 En.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_John_Smith(espionage)
7 Line X is the science and technology section within the Russian Intelligence Service
8 The drop link MI5/Oschenkodebriefing notes contains details of the elaborate arrangements the KGB put into this meeting