WILLIAM JOHN CHRISTOPHER Vassall was born in 1924, worked as a photographer for the RAF during the Second World War and afterwards as an Admiralty clerk who became attached to the naval attaché’s staff in Moscow in 1952. Vassall was befriended by a Polish man named Mikhailsky, who worked at the embassy, and was introduced to Moscow’s homosexual underworld. In 1954, he was lured to a party secretly organised by the KGB, encouraged into drunkenness and was then photographed in compromising positions with a number of men. Homosexuality was then illegal and Vassall was blackmailed into becoming a spy for the Soviet Union. He transferred details of several thousand classified documents relating to British radar, torpedoes and submarines that contributed to modernising the Soviet naval fleet.
In 1961, Anatoly Golitsyn defected to the USA and revealed the existence of a spy in the Admiralty. Another Soviet defector, Yuri Nosenko, also reported the existence of a spy, but was unable to identify him, and this information led to the inquiry that ended with Vassall’s arrest.
After months of surveillance by MI5 and Special Branch, Detective Superintendent George Smith intercepted Vassall on his way home from work on 12 September 1962 and searched his flat. Information led Smith to concentrate on searching the bookcase, which was found to contain a secret cache of incriminating film. Vassall made a full confession of his activities, pleaded guilty and received eighteen years’ imprisonment.
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Bomb planted at Ludgate Hill station by Irish Republican Brotherhood