A strange reunion

IN the twilight world of espionage, the idea that spy chiefs from rival East-West intelligence agencies could actually meet, swap jokes and become chummy would have been unthinkable 10 years ago.

But it happened when dozens of veteran former spooks — once big shots in the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the Soviets’ KGB, Britain’s MI6 and Germany’s Bundesnachrichtendienst —gathered in Berlin recently for a strange reunion.

While a host of amusing stories were told, old rivalries weren’t forgotten as exchanges took place over the role of "the CIA, Berlin and the end of the Cold War’’ at the former allied spy facility and listening post on the city’s Teufelsberg (devil’s mountain).

The spies clearly relished being able to speak freely, but often needled one another with claims that their particular post-war intelligence gathering was the best in terms of efficiency and reliability.

Peter Sichel, a former CIA station chief in Berlin, recalled that friendly contacts which western Allied representatives built up with Russian officials in the aftermath of World War II, soon soured.

"Initially we would meet socially for drinks in Berlin but gradually the political climate got frostier,’’ Sichel said, adding that western officials soon found themselves redefining their intelligence gathering.

"It became increasingly important for us to keep an eye on troop movements in the East, which was no easy task in the pre-satellite era,’’ Sichel said, and added that ‘’the fear we would be overrun and that at the end the whole of western Europe would be conquered was ever present.’’

Oleg Kalugin, a former KGB general chief of directorate, irritated by claims that western intelligence had proved more efficient and reliable than that of its Russian counterpart, both during and after World War II, told that he had corrected ‘’misleading impressions’’ given at the Berlin conference.

‘’During the first Berlin crisis — the blockade in 1948-49 — the KGB had some 200 agents inside the USA, operating in every federal agency.

‘’We were aware of all the difficulties and problems within the US military and political establishment on the question of how to deal with the Berlin problem.

"Stalin was testing the West’s resolve at the time. He thought maybe if we pressure them (the USA) a little, they will abandon Berlin.

"It turned out that the Americans found enough resolve to stand firm. But Stalin knew this from the intelligence he was getting, and that’s why he retreated from his earlier tough stance. Russia wasn’t even a nuclear power at the time.’’

Asked about the recent disclosures in London that Melita Norwood, an 87-year-old English woman, had spied for the Russians for more than 40 years, Kalugin told that he’d heard some time ago that, ‘’a British woman had given us information on atomic secrets’’.

But he emphasised he’d never been involved with the case.

"The revelations about her do not come as a surprise,’’ he said, adding that at the height of Soviet intelligence activity in Britain there were ‘’dozens of agents run by the KGB’’.

British Professor Christopher Andrew, co-author of ‘’The Mitrokhin Archive,’’ a new book exposing Mrs Norwood’s spy activity, was besieged by journalists at the Berlin conference. The London-based Times began serialisation of his book this week.

Mrs Norwood passed British nuclear programme secrets to the KGB while employed as a secretary at a hush-hush research institute in London shortly after World War II. She was code-named ‘’Hola’’ by her Russian controllers.

Professor Andrew said her actions were ‘’appalling’’. The fact that she was a long-time Communist and had acted from the most decent of motives was not the point, he said.

"In the mid-1930s she entered the service of one of the vilest regimes of the 20th century, and I think most people would agree that is a fair description of Stalin’s Russia".

"What she had in mind was a mythical image of this extraordinary society — the first run for and by working people.’’

She had felt it was the first society which could ensure that working people would not suffer as they had in Britain in the 1930s from the horror of mass unemployment, and an atmosphere of excruciating class snobbery.

"I think her motivation was probably the same as the motivation of the so-called ‘magnificent five’ from my university, Cambridge University, of Kim Philby and his friends. They believed in exactly the same mythical image.

"In one sense, Hola was really better than them. They failed to keep their secrets. By 1951, all of them were under suspicion, even if there was not a provable case against them.

"Had it not been for this unparalleled success in exfiltrating to Britain the contents of the most secret documents from KGB files we still would not know about Hola today.’’

The author said what he found most extraordinary about Mrs Norwood, who lives close to London, is that knowing now what the Soviet Union was like she still believed she’d acted correctly.

"That’s really extraordinary,’’ said Andrew. "I don’t find it extraordinary that she did it in the 1930s. I do find it extraordinary that with 50 years’ hindsight, she says she would still do the same today.’’

The Cambridge Professor claimed Mrs Norwood was the most important female agent the KGB had ever had in Britain, but said it was sad to find her "so unaware of the reality of the country and intelligence service for which she had worked". — DPA