The Big Breach - Index of

The Big Breach; From Top Secret to Maximum SecurityCompliments of http://www.192.comillegals were caught actively spying in Britain during this period. Thefirst, a KGB officer called Konan Trofimovich Molodi, assumed theidentity of a long-dead Finnish Canadian named Gordon Lonsdale and rana juke-box hire business in London as cover for his spying activitiesfrom 1955 until his discovery and arrest in 1960. The other two, Morrisand Lona Cohen, were actually American citizens, but had been recruitedby the KGB and given false New Zealand identities and spied in Londonunder cover as second-hand book-dealers Peter and Helen Kruger.But MI6's recent KGB defectors NORTHSTAR and OVATION told us that thepractice of running illegals had been stopped. Even the KGB realisedthat the investment in training is rarely paid back by the intelligenceyield. The natural cover committee quickly reached the same conclusion.It would only be worthwhile training an officer up to the requiredlevel, they argued, to run one or perhaps two very productive agentswhose public position was so prominent that it would be too risky formembers of the local station to run them. Russia was the only countrywhere the intelligence requirements were high enough - and the counterintelligenceservices formidable enough - to make the investmentworthwhile, though UKC also made a case for South Africa. Even postapartheid,Britain's interests in the southern cone of Africa were suchthat MI6 was very active there. Also, they had been very successful inrecruiting a network of informers under the apartheid regime and a lotof these agents were now high up in the ANC. As Nick Long explained tome with a touch of sarcasm, `It's amazing how many of them, havingspied for years for `ideological reasons', are now happy to carry onpocketing their agent salaries post-apartheid.'Back at my desk a few days later, thinking over the question ofillegals, it occurred to me that we had been looking at the problem thewrong way round. Instead of labouriously building a false identity andcover legend for an existing MI6 officer, why not find somebody outsidethe service with the right professional and personal qualities,secretly put him through the IONEC under a false name and identity,then post him under his real name to work in his former occupation inthe target country?Russel liked the idea and encouraged me to draft a paper outlining theplan in detail. I did so, and was even able to suggest a suitablecandidate. Leslie Milton, a friend since we'd studied engineeringtogether at Cambridge, had drifted from job to job in the city, got anMBA and was now working as an independent investment consultant inLondon. He was not married, so it would be easy for him to moveoverseas and set up some form of business. Moreover, he was born in NewYork and so held an American passport in addition to his British one,allowing him further to distance himself from MI6.My ideas were accepted and Milton was recruited into MI6 and startedthe IONEC in March 1993. His real identity and destiny were kept secretfrom most of the office, including his IONEC colleagues. He was giventhe alias Charles Derry and was entered in the diplomatic list, theofficial record of FCO officials, under this name. A few months afterhe completed the course, word was spread around the office that hisfather had fallen seriously ill, forcing him to leave MI6 to take overthe family business. `Derry' bade a sad goodbye to his new colleagues,and disappeared.page- 89 - To purchase the original limited edition hardback version of this bookplease call 08000 192 192 or go to http://www.192.com