Book Reviewlet: Spy Catcher by Peter Wright

How often does the deputy director of major western spy agency write a book about its innards? As far as I know, never. Britain’s MI5 and MI6 are roughly equivalent to America’s CIA. The author, Peter Wright, was a scientist brought in after WWII to modernize MI5.

At first he applied scientific methods and technology to discover how the Russians were spying on Britain during the Cold War. After numerous cases where the Russians seemed to know exactly what MI5 was doing, Wright began hunting for leaks within MI5.

It turned out that MI5 was riddled by Russian spies. Most of the spies, commonly called “moles”, came from Britain’s “upper” class. Worse, the moles were protected by other upper class MI5 members. In case after case, upper class personnel fought mole investigations. Only after a mole had confessed or defected did they believe that one of their own was a spy.

MI5 leaders were more worried about public embarrassment than finding moles. They prefered to have British and American secrets flow freely to the Russians, rather than catch and prosecute moles, which would’ve made for embarassing headlines in the British press. Countless Soviet Bloc citizens who helped western intelligence agencies were caught, tortured, and executed due to MI5 and MI6 moles.

The book’s most stunning revelation was that MI5 was very likely run by a Russian spy named Sir Roger Hollis for more than ten years.

On the bright side, Wright and many of his non upper class collegues worked dilligently for years, against fierce internal opposition, rooting out moles. The book also highlights the impressive British trait of getting the most out of limited resources. Although massively under funded compared to CIA and KGB budgets, MI5 eeked out major intelligence gains through sheer enginutity and cleverness.

Peter Wright did a great service to his country and America by publishing his memoir. The public in both countries needs to know of the treachery and class related dsyfunction that compromised British intelligence during the Cold War. And because America shared all it’s intelligence with Britain at that time, it compromised American intelligence too.

Wikipedia has more info on Spy Catcher. In particular, the British government embarrassed itself and lost a court case in Australia to stop the book from being published.

Worth the read: Yes. I give this book a 5 out of 5 star rating. It’s not a cloak and dagger spy novel. It’s the real thing.

Whistle Blowers

Almost everything I hear about whistle blowers, people who expose government or business corruption, is that they get crushed. In every case I’ve ever heard or read about whistle blowers do a great service to the public. State and federal laws have been passed to protect whistle blowers, but for reasons I don’t understand, these laws don’t seem to work. It’s a terrible state of affairs.

This blog entry will contain whistle blowers articles I come across. Maybe by collecting and studying them, ideas will emerge about how to better protect and encourage the whistle blowers who benefit the public.

• Here’s the story of a man who uncovered willful pollution of the Duwamish River near Seattle.