Customer Reviews

Spycatcher

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

From the end of WWII until 1965 when Roger Hollis left as head of MI-5, British counterintelligence was almost completely compromised. The Soviets outmaneuvered them continuously with a flood of diplomatic and illegal agents. This was a constant source of embarrassment as people like Kim Philby, Burgess and McLean defected to the USSR. The agents defecting in the opposite direction were frequently clever disinformants sent as ploys creating a "wilderness of mirrors." As former assistant director of MI5 the author was directly responsible for investigating the infiltration and gives a blow by blow account of how morale suffered as one by one potential moles were grilled and either cleared or ousted. Many interesting and authoritative asides keep interest high throughout the work.

Peter Wright presents an astounding personal history of his experiences within MI5, together with his exploits in conjunction with counterparts in the USA and Canada. The book is so well- written, with amusing escapades blended with potentially explosive international incidents and foreign political intrigue, that it is difficult to place the book down until it has been completely read. Perhaps the most amusing narratives are those in which Wright, the first Physicist employed by MI5, placed a "bug" in the London's Eygptian Embassy to gather secret messages ; also the random numbering from #1 to #20 of merely (8) sophisticated hidden microphone wires during the erection of a new Russian Embassy in Canada, under the auspices of the RCMP; and his personal scrambled message system with an American counterpart because they didn't trust their own contemporaries. On a more serious note, the author persistently contends throughout the entire book, that his former boss was the ninth (unidentified mole) in the complicated networks of international spies within the OSS, CIA, MI5, and the KGB. While detailing the exposure of eight "moles", including defectors such as Kim Philby, Wright makes many accusations against his former boss, and that is perhaps the major reason for the Spycatcher book being banned in the UK. On a sad note, several prominent people killed themselves shortly after being interviewed by the author. Evidently because many of them were cronies and had attended Oxford during the early 1930's, some were "gay", others had personal experiences which they were afraid would become public knowledge and they did not want to cope with the consequences. I believe that this is a "must read" book for all adult readers, especially those who enjoy the suspense of Agatha Christie, Erle S. Garner, & autobiographers such as William Manchester. rings

I'd been dying to read this book since I first heard Rosselson's song Ballad of a Spycatcher (basically the plot and best lines of Peter Wright's book). The book more than lived up to expectations. Although the style is sometimes dry and methodical, for the most part Wright takes the reader from the early "flying-by-the-seat-of-your-pants" stages of his work in counterintelligence as his branch of MI5 takes on a Soviet spy network 15 times its size, through the middle years when brilliant inventions and tactics are leaked to the Russians by an unknown, high-level source, through his heartbreaking autumn years when proving or disproving suspicions means long interrogations that can ruin the reputations of good men or let traitors slip away. Wright is a great guide through the arcane world of real MI5 work, and he has a splendidly British sense of humor that breaks the tension when needed. This book totally changed the way I thought of the British Secret Service.

After the first hundred or so pages, this book is non-stop thriller- similar to the best investigative journalism. This is the sort of specific insight history that prefigures the current global standoffs. As such it speaks reams to how the two former cold war superpowers continue to function on outdated paradigms for intelligence and espionage. We are not really certain if the former Soviet Union and its subparts are indeed, as they urge, our allies. The current state of global affairs indicates our lack of adequate information and comprehension of the dynamics of the so-called `New World {dis?} Order.'

`Spycatcher' reveals how extensively the KGB infiltrated the government and secret services of post WWII Great Britain. Much of the second half of the twentieth century's divided loyalties were born in the 30's and 40's when many of the Western intelligentsia in Britain and to some degree in the states supported Marxist ideals and the Soviet system. The most dramatic recruitment occurred in the 30's at Oxford. There, a group of `Apostles,' an elite, upperclass group of homosexual males insinuated themselves into the government to become the scourge of the reputation of the once-superior British secret service. Three of the infamous Oxford 5 would defect to the Soviet Union; Maclean and Burgess in the early 50's, and Philby, who prevailed through one interrogation, that was really nothing more than a cover up according to Wright, defected later. The 4th spy, Sir Anthony Blunt, the Surveyor of the Queen's Pictures, was `outed publically' in 1979, after having been granted immunity decades earlier. He was unrepentant throughout his lifetime and in retrospect, treated uncommonly well for the sparse information he supplied. Indeed, the high regard by which these British spycatchers upheld the law, not bending it as their American counterparts would do, was at once frustrating and laudable. Those were the years when Britain was racked with scandals; the other famous one, the sex/spy game of the Profumo Affair. The government and the crown were terrified of another embarassment and thus were easily used by the highly placed moles within the system to obstruct investigations. This, to the great chagrin of the United States and to Peter Wright. Wright spent many thousands of hours in grueling research, looking for the 5th spy that had been variously revealed through several Soviet defectors and captured spies. Wright, and then others, was convinced, following the glaringly obvious failures in their top secret operations, that the spy was none other than the Director of the Department, M15, Sir Roger Hollis. Wright pursued evidence doggedly for over twenty years. His tactics, his tenacity and his brilliance were remarkable; his actions, heroic.

This autobiography is a narrative of the murderous espionage game of that period where massive military takeovers went hand in hand with atomic weapons secrets and the ever-present threat of nuclear war. The time was also marked by the end of British Imperialism, where the home rule would be restored to various former colonies. In that too, many agents and plans were covertly put in place for the primary reason that should the new government not be well fortified, the respective militaries would grab power, destabilize the country further and remainder it vulnerable to Soviet interference. Philby's last assignment to the Middle East was one of this nature. Some, but by no means all of the foreign policy makers understood the need for a smooth transition to democratic government in order to retain a global balance of power. It was through the British Raj, after all, that spawned the country of Pakistan and Kashmir, the current hottest spot on the globe. Separated from India at Independence, the division has witnessed hundreds of thousands dead and the potential of a nuclear nightmare.

We were often gullible in the West, and falsely convinced that everyone wanted to defect to "better lives." Amazingly, the Eastern bloc defectors were still Russian agents. The CIA and the FBI even then were at odds. These were the halcyon days of Richard Helms, J.Edgar Hoover, whose number Wright had, and the maven or maniac whichever way you look at it of James Jesus Angleton. He practically went mad when the former intimate Philby defected. Because of that treachery, Angleton imprisoned and some say tortured innocent defectors. There were quite a few cowboy operatives in the U.S., big time drinkers and often running their own little shows. Some speculate that things in that regard remain the same. But others, insist that the CIA has become too risk aversive. History will no doubt tell. in the 60's, the CIA questioned Peter Wright about methods for assasinating or, the `wet' areas. Wright said the British were out of that game and they should submit the question to the French who were involved in that manner in Algeria among other places. We do know for certain that the CIA got heavily involved in what was `wet.' American secret services even tried to foment a revolt in the M15 to leak some information on Labor PM, Harold Wilson that they hoped would bring down his government. This was post-Bay of Pigs when the `Agency' was struggling, and Labor was too far left for comfort, no matter where it was. It was also a time of reckoning for many older British who had flirted, as did so many of their peers, in their youth with Marxism. Unfortunately, the labels, were often damning and the fear that McCarthyism would spread across the Atlantic was ominous- although as it happens, it didn't.
There were suspicious deaths that mimic current Anthrax scares and even some James Bondesque devices for recording that were created largely by Wright himself. Ian Fleming, Bond author, had of course worked in British Intelligence.

The book was unsuccessfully censored in England, with a stolen copy printed anonymously. It was most absorbing to read as a non-citizen so I can only imagine the excitement it engendered where the players were all well known. I highly recommend Spycatcher as both a historically incisive and entertaining book. I can't help but feel that as much as we can learn about the various secret information agencies will help us in our understanding of the current state of affairs.

SPYCATCHER is a methodical, but often intriguing read that details Peter Wright's tenure with the British Intelligence Service, M15--similar to the FBI in the United States. I found it a useful book in that it helped me to begin to understand the way that the "Great Game" of espionage was played during the heyday of spy activities. It describes in excruiating detail the sorts of efforts put forth by British intelligence, and what they believed their Soviet counterparts were accomplishing, and there are a number of rather amusing stories toward the beginning of the book that outline efforts to bug buildings, covertly tail diplomats, and do other types of Bond-esque intelligence work. The final two thirds of the book concern Wright's effort to uncover a Soviet agent that he believes has penetrated the highest echealons of M15. This section, while often fascinating, does not have the same sort of flair that the earlier stories have.

There are a couple of major drawbacks to the work, however: Wright's authorial voice (modified by his co-writer, Paul Greengrass) is often pompous to the point where I would become incredulous. According to himself, he is the only person in British intelligence who has the vision or the capacity to get even the most basic assignments right. That's not exactly a fair summation, but it's often pretty close. He certainly has a knack for determining other's faults, but only rarely notices any that he may have. Secondly, and more importantly, Wright never takes a step backward from his work to examine any of the consequences of the spy game. He never asks what the appropriate role for a domestic spy agency is in a democracy; he never wonders if his life's work has had any sort of negative repercussions in international affairs; he seems incapable of feeling remorse even for the innocents whose life he has (or has helped to become) crippled. I guess I was hoping for at least some philosophical justifications from this man who saw, up close and personal, what exactly were the stakes in these information wars. Instead, I received a "just the facts, ma'am" report.

Still, the book is useful for it's description of process, and to begin to see the scope of the unseen battles fought in the Cold War. Informative, but not illuminating.

This is one of those books that I came to late in the game (It all started with the DVD "Cambridge Spies" last fall.), but after perusing the first page of "Spycatcher", I couldn't put it down for three days! One of the reasons that I waited so long was that various espionage writers have criticized the book for its inaccuracies (So he got the date of Philby's interrogation wrong!). I'm beginning to think that they are suffering from an overdose of sour grapes because Mr. Wright made the New York Times Bestseller List and they did not!

I am actually glad that I read other books such as "My Silent War," "The Philby Files," "Anthony Blunt," "Philby: The Long Road to Moscow," "Crown Jewels," etc. first, because by the time I read "Spycatcher," I was thoroughly familiar with the multifarious cast of characters. However, as much as I enjoyed the other espionage books, "Spycatcher" surpasses them in one respect: it gives details of tradecraft that are impossible in an account of Kim Philby or Anthony Blunt who, by necessity, had to keep silent about the finer particulars of their work in intelligence (whether Soviet or British). Peter Wright lets the reader peek over his shoulder as he installs sophisticated bugs behind convincing false doors at midnight. He also gives the reader a good chuckle when such operations go disastrously awry and floors collapse or cables are cut, and the work has to begin all over again.

The author also writes a wry account of brazen Russian agents importuning numerous passers-by in various London parks in an effort to "turn" them into Soviet assets, until the British police, at Wright's instigation, out-brazen the agents by threatening to arrest them for harassing Her Majesty's subjects. He also informs us of MI5's system of Watchers, who were posted all over London and its environs, and whose chief duty was to tail diplomats and cypher clerks from the Soviet embassy. (A memorable moment occurs when 105 Russians are declared PNG and expelled from Britain in 1971--an event I recall seeing on television).

Peter Wright relates a particularly poignant anecdote of Klop Ustinov (actor Peter's father), who had served British Intelligence so faithfully and effectively (at great peril) throughout World War II, and who was living in penury without a pension until Wright brought the matter to the attention of the director (Wright was cheated out of most of his own promised pension at the end of his career, and Desmond Bristow of MI6 also tells of similar ingratitude on the part of the Intelligence Services in "A Game of Moles.").

As for the allegations about Roger Hollis, the director of MI5, being a Soviet agent, the criticism of this theory usually cites the fact that Hollis never confessed, and therefore the charges are groundless. The same could be said of Kim Philby, who never confessed (despite Nicholas Elliot's claims to the contrary--with the window conveniently open so that the recorded "confession" was inaudible because of the Beirut traffic noises). Philby even wrote an article stating that a spy should never confess, because the case against him had to be proved beyond a shadow of a doubt in order to be prosecuted under British law. Whether Hollis was a Soviet agent or not (Desmond Bristow, who believed that the British intelligence agencies were riddled with Soviet penetration agents echoes Wright's suspicions in "A Game of Moles."), Peter Wright builds an intriguing circumstantial case against him, noting that the leaks to the Russians and the ruined operations stopped after Hollis had retired. Wright suggests that the Intelligence services had no interest in pursuing the matter to the end because of the embarrassment caused by the discoveries that Burgess, Maclean, Philby, Blunt, Cairncross, Blake, et al, were Soviet penetration agents. As far as Wright is concerned, the case against Hollis was not proven but the suspicion remains.

Having just read Trento's "The Secret History of the CIA", which I also enjoyed, it was interesting in itself to see the two sides of some similar stories. The writing styles also followed along cultural lines. Too often we read novels and think that real life works that way and in many cases, the truth really is stranger than fiction.

Spycatcher provides a real look inside the world of counter-espionage. It isn't sugar coated and doesn't try and hype the spy world. Peter Wright shows how the origin of many technical achievements in the spying world and the tempo increases as he reveals how he suspected a mole inside MI5 and the tension increases as he tries to uncover the Mole's identity. At the same time, as with Trento's book, it shows how good people are left on the side, discarded or reduced. It also shows how lives can seem worthless when dedicated to a lie. In Peter Wright's case, dedicated to fighting the soviets, only to find a soviet agent, highly placed, was undoing everything. Just as Trento's treatise shows how Angleton was undone at every corner as well.

If there's one conclusion from these two books, it really showed that the same intelligence that has allowed the Russians to dominate chess, was well applied to espionage. They were streets ahead of the West. Just as well the wall came down.

Peter Wright's account of his time in MI5 is vivid and shocking! It is a lot to take in--I don't like to set books down, but sometimes you just need to with this one. One of the questions I have to ask myself is--is this real? If it is, then we have no idea what goes on in the world behind the doors of our governments--until we pick up Spycatcher! No movie or TV news could give this kind of detail, unless you'd been apart of it like Mr Wright! The book is dense, and it might be dry for some, but I highly recommend it for those who love spy stories.

SPYCATCHER by Peter Wright is interesting but has some of the typical problems (for Americans) of books by English writers. To much use of acronyms (with which US readers are unfamiliar so have to keep going to the back of the book for the acronym list -- why didn't he just type out the names?) and most of the hostile interaction or lack thereof between what we would call the English secret service (with its own dozens of acronyms for departments whose names and functions could have been made clearer to the reader by simply spelling them out each time) is unfathomable without a history of the behind-the-scenes political maneuvering between what apparently are the departments of "Whitehall" and the departments of MI5 and MI6. I wish I had that history because the story is mysterious without it, and I hope at the end my struggle to understand the things that aren't clear in the book will have been worthwhile.

Reviewers here have done an excellent job describing the story. I think the book is very good so far but I wish it weren't so difficult to understand the many unfamiliarities on each page. In light of that, why should one persist? Because security in Britain is going to hell in a handbasket and something needs to be done!. I want to see exactly what happened because know something about the events but not the fascinating details. There have been some successes for the author but so far the story is about the frustration of the struggle to get knotheads to see that the house is burning, the water's turned off, and the local arsonist is running around the outside of the house with a gas can and match.
I, who usually devour a book in one or two sittings, have only read about 100 pages in four days. I'm engrossed in the story, but it's a tough slog.

As gripping as a novel. This real account of MI5 in the 50s and 60s is entertaining and interesting at the same time. Never boring and gives a good picture of what it was like back then.