The Bletchley Park Codebreakers by Michael Smith Read Free Book Online

sent was the two-man counter-espionage department known as Section V (five). It was led by Major Valentine Vivian, a former Indian police officer. The material was also discussed with B Branch of MI5, which at the time was responsible for Soviet subversion and espionage. J. C. ‘Jack’ Curry, who was in charge of MI5 operations against subversion for part of the 1930s, recalled that the messages dealt with a variety of subjects. ‘The London/Moscow transmissions were part of a large network with a number of stations in different parts of the world and the material dealt with a variety of the affairs of the Comintern and its sections in different countries. Those from Moscow included directions and instructions regarding the line to betaken in propaganda and in party policy generally. They gave, among other things, details regarding subsidies to be paid by Moscow, a large part being allocated to the
Daily Worker
.’
    Many of the messages were obscure and difficult to understand without an appreciation of the context and the cover names of those to whom they referred. Curry said. ‘Major Vivian was, however, able to extract useful intelligence from a number of messages and, in particular, obtained a certain picture of some of the details of Comintern finance and its measures for subsidising its Sections in other countries. Information about the names of couriers and active Communists, including certain British crypto-communists, was obtained from this source.’
    The information culled from the Comintern decrypts appears to have allowed MI6 to recruit a number of agents inside the Comintern in France, Holland and Scandinavia. But the best source it had within the Comintern was a ‘walk-in’, a spy who offered his services to MI6. Johann Heinrich de Graf (Jonny X), was a German communist who was recruited by Soviet Army intelligence, the GRU. He walked into the MI6 station in Berlin to volunteer his services and was run by its head, Frank Foley, who was to become far better known for his work in helping Jews to escape from Nazi Germany. Jonny X had been involved in the organization of the Comintern ‘illegal’ network in Britain and was able to provide vital information not only on the workings of the Comintern but also on its attempts to subvert the governments of Britain, China and Brazil.
    There was often no love lost between MI6 and MI5 during this period, but Curry was full of praise for the ‘close and fruitful collaboration’ on the Comintern. The intelligence from the MI6 agents, and particularly from Jonny X, whom he singled out as ‘very valuable’, was augmented and amplified by the intercepted Comintern messages.
    As Denniston suggested, the Mask operation was also notable as a rare early example of close collaboration between the code-breakers and the Metropolitan Police intercept operators, who during the early 1930s moved to a new location in the grounds of the Metropolitan Police Nursing Home at Denmark Hill, south London. Harold Kenworthy and Leslie Lambert set out to track down the source of the London messages, as they had with the
Daily Mail
’s transmitter. Since the radio messages were always sent at night, their early attempts tohome in on the signal met with suspicion from ordinary police officers and they were handicapped in any explanation by the need to keep what they were doing secret.
    MI6 supplied a van in which they could place the direction-finding equipment while driving around London looking for the transmitter. But Kenworthy recalled that they had to be provided with a special pass after the very act of loading the equipment sparked off a police investigation into an assumed robbery.
    Some exciting moments were experienced – particularly on one occasion, after going round a neighbourhood for some time a police car stopped us. On being asked: “What have you got in that parcel?” – the parcel being a portable short-wave set, Mr Lambert said: “I don’t want to tell you.”