Open Secret Read online

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  List of Illustrations

  Acknowledgements

  Preface

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Postscript

  Epilogue

  Afterword

  Index

  Picture Section

  Copyright

  For Sophie and Harriet

  ILLUSTRATIONS

  My parents on their wedding day, 1929

  In my pram, 1935

  On holiday with my mother and my brother, 1938

  Bomb damage, 1941 (© Hulton Archive)

  5 Ilkley Road, Barrow, 1941

  Bulganin and Khrushchev, 1956 (© Press Association)

  Graduation day, 1958

  Interesting historical papers, 1961

  The India Office Library Reading Room, 1963 (By permission of the British Library)

  The Establishment Club (from Peter Cook Remembered, Ed. Lin Cook 1996)

  Queuing to buy The Denning Report, 1963 (© Topham Picturepoint)

  On the voyage to India, 1965

  Received by the President of India, 1968 (© Punjab Photo Service)

  Learning my part, 1968

  Playing in ‘Hotel Paradiso’, 1968

  Up the garden path to my first job in MI5

  On the road to Kabul, 1968

  ‘Our engine boiled …’, 1968

  Mansfield Cumming (photograph reproduced from Secret Service by Christopher Andrew, Heinemann 1985; courtesy Mrs Pippa Temple)

  Vernon Kell (© Hulton Getty)

  From my wardrobe of exotic Indian clothes, 1969

  After my first baby, 1971

  The Ring of Five: Burgess (© Popperfoto), Maclean (© Camera Press), Philby (© Camera Press), Blunt (© Popperfoto) and Cairncross (© Rex Features)

  Viktor Lazine is expelled, 1981 (© Topham/Press Association)

  Georgi Markov (© Topham/Press Association)

  The miners’ strike, 1984: at Corton Wood (© Tony Prime/Camera Press)

  Arthur Scargill at Orgreave (© Camera Press)

  In the garden of Spion Kop, 1978

  With John Rimington, 1983

  Leaving Spion Kop, 1984

  Harriet at Alwyne Villas, 1984

  In my check coat, the New Statesman photo (© Rex Features Ltd)

  Robert Armstrong on his way to Australia (© David Parker)

  The CAZAB kangaroo, cleared for security, 1988

  Provisional IRA shooting in Holland, 1988 (© Topham/Press Association)

  Vadim V. Bakatin (© Novosti, London)

  In Dzerzhinsky Square, 1991

  Sightseeing in Moscow, 1991

  ‘Looking dishevelled on a Saturday morning’ (© Mail on Sunday)

  JAK cartoons from the Evening Standard, 9 March and 19 July 1993 (© JAK)

  John Major opens the new MI5 building, 1994

  Visit to Trinidad with British Gas, 1999

  Playing in The Fifteen-Minute Hamlet, 1999

  With Michael Howard at the launch of the MI5 booklet, 1993 (© Press Association)

  With Jonathan Dimbleby before the Dimbleby Lecture, 1994

  With Louis Freeh, director of the FBI, 1996

  Cartoon reproduced on page x by Blower, 18 May 2000 (© Evening Standard)

  Unless otherwise attributed, all the illustrations are from the author’s collection

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  I would like to thank those who have supported and encouraged me in writing this book. They include one or two of my former colleagues in MI5, whom I will not name to avoid embarrassing them, my husband John, who helped especially with the India episodes; and my two daughters Sophie and Harriet who have unfailingly supported me in this as in everything else I have done.

  Thanks go also to the team at Random House: Gail Rebuck and Simon Master and their colleagues and Sue Freestone and Tony Whittome of Hutchinson, in particular for the way they have handled the sensitive issues connected with publication.

  Finally, I want to thank my successor as Director-General of MI5, Sir Stephen Lander. He and I have been friends and colleagues for years and as I would expect he has kept cool throughout the hysteria which has sometimes surrounded the preparation of this book. He has said that he would rather I had not written it, but in that I did, he has done his best, in difficult circumstances, to ensure that our relationship remains friendly.

  PREFACE

  Reflections on September 11th 2001

  This book was first published three days before the dramatic events of September 11th 2001, when terrorists on a suicide mission, under the direction of a shadowy Islamic extremist grouping with its leadership based in Afghanistan, hi-jacked planes full of passengers and flew them into high-profile targets in the United States, causing the deaths of thousands of people.

  The biggest surprise in all this for me, having spent a good part of my professional life over the last thirty years or so involved in one way or another in fighting terrorism, has been not the terrorist act itself but the reaction to it. The worldwide shock and horror when such a devastating and high-profile attack unrolled in full view of the TV cameras was inevitable and understandable. Terrorist acts until then had been terrible but quick – an explosion, over in a second – with the awful results, in the form of dead and injured and damaged buildings to be dealt with more slowly afterwards. This one took what seemed an age to complete, as the Trade Center buildings slowly collapsed and even as passengers, on the plane that crashed short of its target, phoned their families to tell them what was about to happen. But, from the political reaction, it was as if the fact of an attack had come as a total surprise to the governments and counter-terrorist authorities of the world.

  Terrorism did not begin on September 11th 2001 and it will not end there. Though the method of attack was new and the results particularly horrific, September 11th was just the latest stage in a phenomenon that has gripped the modern world since at least the 1960s. The history of terrorism in the 20th-century shows that a ‘war on terrorism’ cannot be won, unless the causes of terrorism are eradicated by making the world a place free of grievances, something that will not happen. Terrorism has proved so effective in catching the world’s attention and even, ultimately, in achieving the terrorists’ objectives, that it will continue to appeal to extremists. However good our counter measures, some of it will succeed, but it can be made more difficult.

  It is important to put the events of September 11th into their historical context, so that the lessons learned in what has already been a long war against terrorism, particularly in Europe, are not forgotten. Otherwise we will get September 11th out of perspective and misjudge the response.

  This phase of terrorism emerged in the 1960s, with small, violent national groups in Europe trying to undermine societies through terror. It continued unabated through the 1970s and early 80s, much of it coming from the various Palestinian groups and from the less high-profile efforts of some states to murder their political opponents abroad. Over the years there has been terrorism in India, in the Punjab and Kashmir, in Sri Lanka and elsewhere, some of it planned and organised from Europe. Spain has fought a long war against ETA and of course in the UK we have fought a thirty-five-year war agains
t terrorism arising from the situation in Northern Ireland. That long list says nothing of the Israeli/Palestinian situation, which has spawned some of the most consistent and horrific acts of terrorism.

  It should not be forgotten either that attacks on high-profile US targets by Islamic extremists had been going on for several years before September 11th. US Embassies in African countries had been blown up and in October 2000 the American warship, USS Cole, moored at Aden, was attacked, causing the death of seventeen US sailors. Those attacks were different in method and effect from the events of September 11th, but identical in intent and probably originating from a similar source. September 11th was not even the first effort by Islamic extremists to blow up the World Trade Center. Previously they had tried to do it from below, from the car park. Those who were arrested then warned that others would return.

  The world’s security and intelligence agencies have been fighting terrorism for years, with considerable success. But though many planned terrorist attacks have not taken place, for example those launched against the allies by Iraq during the Gulf War, thanks to prior intelligence acted on at the appropriate time, it is the nature of intelligence successes that they are rarely seen.

  Clearly there are lessons to be learned from all that activity, though there is one big difference in the al Qaeda threat from much previous terrorism, which makes it particularly unpredictable and dangerous. The preparedness, even enthusiasm, of the terrorists to commit suicide, when most terrorists in the past have planned for their own escape, means that certain forms of attack, the most potentially horrific, for example chemical, biological, and nuclear, can no longer be regarded as unlikely.

  But that does not mean that a totally different approach to countering them is needed or that the old methods are no longer appropriate. It is a case of doing what has been done before but doing more of it and doing it more effectively.

  At the heart of countering terrorism is intelligence and the events of September 11th have focused attention on intelligence work as never before. September 11th was immediately declared an ‘intelligence failure’. The allegation was that had the intelligence agencies been doing their job properly, they would have produced sufficiently precise advance intelligence of the plot to enable it to be thwarted. To blame them for not doing so is totally to misunderstand the nature of intelligence. Although precise intelligence on when and where any terrorist act will take place is the ideal, it is, of all intelligence, the most difficult to obtain. The complete plan for any operation might well be known to very few people indeed, perhaps not until just before an attack begins, or perhaps never. An intelligence agency would need to recruit one of those people to learn it. Though it is sometimes possible to learn enough from well placed human or technical sources for the full picture to be guessed at, there may well be inadequate information for effective preventative action to be taken to forestall an attack.

  The most valuable sources against terrorism are human beings, long term penetration agents, who will stay in place for a long period and work their way into positions where they can provide key intelligence. But they are the most difficult sources to acquire and once recruited are very difficult to keep in place. It is not normally possible to penetrate a terrorist organisation from the outside, to feed in someone with no previous links at all. Terrorist groups usually recruit from a very small pond, from among people who have known each other for years. I speculate that perhaps it might be an easier task to infiltrate al Qaeda, which appears to be recruiting young men from all over the world for training. It might be possible to insert a source at the recruitment stage but it would be a slow process as he built up his cover in the mosque or wherever recruiting was going on, hoping to be selected, as well as very dangerous for the person concerned.

  In the world of espionage, many of the best spies are volunteers, people who offer their services to the other side. Experience in the past has shown that, surprisingly, members of terrorist organisations do volunteer to act as sources of information for the security authorities. Though it seems on the face of it less likely that members of al Qaeda will do so, given that they appear to be motivated by such intense ideological or religious fervour, I have no doubt at all that some will.

  But when you have your human source your difficulties are just beginning. Sources must be directed, to get themselves into a position where they can find out what you need to know, without themselves committing terrorist acts. That involves communication and meetings, not always an easy matter in the places where terrorists operate. But no source will be effective if he never meets his case officer and if he cannot communicate, he cannot provide the intelligence.

  Counter-terrorist intelligence from a human source is not only difficult to acquire, it is often difficult to use. A source is a traitor to the terrorists, his life in danger: once his information is used, the danger to him becomes worse. He may have revealed something that is known only to a very few people and unless it is acted on with great caution, he may come under suspicion. If what he has revealed is an imminent terrorist attack, very considerable ingenuity may be needed to get the balance right between taking action to preserve the lives of the public and not putting the life of the source at risk. Ultimately he may have to be withdrawn, given a new identity and looked after for the rest of his life, and future intelligence from him sacrificed. But extracting him may in itself be extremely difficult if he is in a hostile environment.

  Essential though they are, human sources on their own are not enough. They must be supplemented by technical intelligence. The capacity to gather information in this way is now very sophisticated and many of the techniques that were relied on in the Cold War would look very old fashioned today. But terrorists, like spies, have also become sophisticated and security conscious. There is much information available to them in the public domain about the vulnerability to interception of mobile phones, the internet and other means of communication and about what satellites and other surveillance techniques can do. But they do have to talk to each other, communicate over distances and move around and that makes them vulnerable to technical intelligence gathering.

  Human and technical intelligence gathering must be backed up by long term investigation and assessment, to understand the terrorist organisation, its people its plans and its methods. The putting together of all the pieces of information however small that come in from all sources, the following up of leads, all the classic spy-catching techniques are also necessary against terrorist targets. It appears, looking at it from the outside, that this sort of investigation may not have been done sufficiently thoroughly before September 11th. The nature and extent of the al Qaeda network seems to have escaped observation. Perhaps there were no leads to investigate, though there appear to have been indications of planned activity, however vague, which should have been followed up. But it is easy to be wise after the event.

  Detailed investigation of terrorist organisations is much more difficult than counter-espionage work. In the days of the Cold War our targets, the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact countries, had embassies and intelligence centres in Western capitals. However good their protective security, much valuable information could be learned by close observation, by telephone and mail interception and by following them around. Terrorists’ command centres, if they have them, are likely to be in a country difficult of access and difficult to monitor. Al Qaeda, with its structure of some sort of central organisation, but many small cells free to organise and carry out their own operations, will be particularly difficult to investigate and penetrate.

  In the years since the Cold War, investigation has been made even more difficult by the abolition of monitoring of international frontiers. Travel is increasingly free, particularly in Europe, and it is comparatively easy nowadays to hide among the vast numbers of people who move unchecked legally and illegally around the world.

  If they are to carry out thorough investigations, security agencies must have adequate powers. Of course democr
acies need safeguards to ensure that those powers will be used responsibly but if the security authorities lack those powers, as they do in some countries, those who plot in secret are likely to get away with it. Terrorists, like spies, know the countries where the protections are weakest, where the security regime is lax and the authorities have inadequate powers to investigate.

  Since September 11th, Britain has been accused by some countries of running a lax regime, of harbouring Islamic extremists and allowing certain mosques to be used as recruiting grounds for terrorist trainees. Governments in democracies have constantly to balance the citizens’ right to live their lives in freedom, with minimum interference with their privacy from the security agencies, against their responsibility to protect their citizens from harm. We in the UK hold certain freedoms sacred – freedom of speech, freedom of movement, freedom of religious belief, freedom from intrusion into our private lives. Understandably, unless faced with clear evidence of a present danger, British governments of whatever political colour will lean towards providing maximum civil liberty. To behave differently is to let terrorism win its war against democracy before the first shot is fired.

  But after an event such as September 11th, we see the balance begin to swing gradually the other way, to give more emphasis to our safety than our civil liberties. It becomes more acceptable for the government, as it has since September 11th, to take more powers, for example to detain or deport those suspected of plotting terrorism in other countries. Before September 11th there was greater concern about the quality of the evidence and the nature of the regime alleging terrorist involvement. Before September 11th, it would have been regarded as politically unacceptable for the Security Service to regard mosques as a legitimate target for investigation, now it is not so unthinkable. The same people who would have led an outcry had such activities been revealed are quick to criticise a lack of intelligence after the event. The United States has imposed new border controls, is fingerprinting those from certain countries and has given the FBI investigative powers which were previously regarded as unacceptable, for example, the power to monitor suspected terrorists without prior evidence of criminal activity. Thus rolling back restrictions imposed twenty-five years ago to curb anti-Communist hysteria. The balance of liberty and safety has changed.