Bernie Reeves - of Metro Magazine & Raleigh Spy Conference - to track down American KGB agent

Bernie Reeves is a man determined to get to the bottom of things, and he is now on the track of an American KGB agent, who was recruited in London in 1978 by the KGB officer Viktor Oshchenko. This is an episode that was cut out of Christopher Andrew's recent "official" history of MI5, for the obvious reasons that this was an intelligence failure.

Bernie Reeves - the man behind Metro Magazine and the Raleigh Spy Conference

I am certain that Bernie Reeves will discover the truth, and reveal the details of who this KGB agent was at the next Raleigh Spy conference in March 2010.

Raleigh Spy Conference website

This is a copy of my recent correspondence with Bernie Reeves:

From: Mike Smith
Sent: Monday, November 09, 2009 4:14 AM
To: Bernie Reeves
Subject: An important public question for Christopher Andrew

Dear Bernie,

I have just noticed that Professor Christopher Andrew will be your guest at a Raleigh event on the 14th November, when he will be promoting his new book “Defend the Realm”. John Symonds would like to ask if you would consider putting a question to Professor Andrew on his behalf.

In the original Mitrokhin Archive publication there were five full pages devoted to John Symonds’s story (pages 559-563 inclusive), which were designed to create a media frenzy. However, in this latest book all reference to John Symonds has completely disappeared, despite large chunks of the new book being almost identical to what is in the Mitrokhin Archive.

John has his own theories about why his story has been “disappeared”: either MI5 are avoiding embarrassment, or Andrew fears a further libel case against him leading to yet another public apology (see attached). John suggests that this question is sprung to surprise Andrew (for public effect).

If you can help John get to the bottom of the reason for the deletion, then he will be prepared to offer himself for cross-examination by your audience at the next Raleigh Spy Conference if you so desire.

Kind regards,
Mike Smith

On Mon, Nov 9, 2009 at 12:44 PM, Bernie Reeves wrote:

I will certainly look into the matter…I heard from Symonds after he was included in the keynote address by Nigel West.

Best
Bernie Reeves
Editor & Publisher
Raleigh Metro Magazine
Founder: Raleigh Spy Conference


From: Mike Smith
To: Bernie Reeves
Date: Thu, Nov 26, 2009 at 6:43 PM
Subject: The mission to Portugal and the secret American recruited to the KGB

Dear Bernie,

I didn't hear any more regarding the question about John Symonds. I guess there was a good reason why Professor Andrew left John out of the History of MI5, despite Nigel West's claim that he was the "World's Greatest Spy"?

With your interest in intelligence matters through the Raleigh Spy Conference, I wondered whether you would be as puzzled as I am about an unidentified US citizen recruited by the KGB in London in 1978, who was being groomed to spy against the USA. For some reason, which I cannot understand, this American is not referred to at all in Professor Andrew's book, and I know about him only because he was a witness at my trial in 1993.

I wrote to Gary Powers Jnr and he published a piece I wrote about this American, who was referred to as "Mr E" at my trial. You can read it here at page 16 of the November 2006 issue of Cold War Times.

I have passed the American and British Secret Service documents (made available to my Defence lawyers) to Cryptome for publication here.

I would have thought that it is quite rare for a US citizen to be recruited by the KGB in London, but it seems nobody now wants to talk about it, or to refer to it in the MI5 history - for the obvious reason that MI5 failed to observe what was going on under their noses. However, this mysterious "Mr E" also raises an important point about how evidence is fabricated at an espionage trial, because he was called as a witness to prove that the KGB (especially KGB officer Viktor Oshchenko) had recruited people in London, and that he had been sent on a mission to Lisbon to deliver a letter to another KGB officer.

In 1977 I had been on a perfectly innocent holiday to France, Spain and Portugal with a friend of mine - we drove around in my car and stayed in camp sites and cheap hotels. Purely because I had kept a tourist map from Oporto, which had been marked with bus stops and a restaurant by a camp-site attendant, I was accused during my trial of being sent to Oporto on a similar KGB mission as "Mr E" had participated in. This was not only a completely fabricated story but had no connection to the evidence presented. In fact a Portuguese journalist, Frederico Duarte Carvalho, has taken an interest in my case and published details about the story in the magazine he works for.

The original article in Portuguese.

An English language version of the article.

All the main evidence at my trial is available in the External Links on my Wikipedia page.

This is where I want you to see how devious are the people who support Professor Andrew. This is what actually happened:

(1) As I said above, it was claimed at my trial in 1993 that I had been sent on a KGB mission to Oporto in 1977

(2) In 1995 the Security Commission published a report on my case (Cm2930). There was no reference in the report about me visiting Portugal, or being sent there by the KGB.

(3) In 1999 Christopher Andrew published the Mitrokhin Archive, and in the book it was claimed that I had been sent to Lisbon on a KGB mission in 1979. You will note that this is now a completely different place and time from the evidence used to convict me at my trial in 1993. I have published the pages about my case from Andrew's book on my blog.

(4) In 2009, in Christopher Andrew's latest book, he has now removed all reference to Portugal, no doubt because I have exposed that matter as false evidence. That Portuguese "evidence" was vital to the Prosecution to secure my conviction, but now it seems that the Oporto episode, like "Mr E", has been edited out of the "official" history of MI5. I have published the pages relating to me from Andrew's latest book here.

Whether you choose to believe my version of events or Andrew's, you must admit there is something very odd and unethical going on here. Perhaps the "Mr E" case would make a suitable topic for your next Raleigh Spy Conference?

Regards,
Mike Smith

From: Bernie Reeves
To: Mike Smith
Date: Mon, Nov 30, 2009 at 4:03 PM
Subject: RE: The mission to Portugal and the secret American recruited to the KGB

I am behind the curve on this…Let me catch up.

Bernie Reeves
Editor & Publisher
Raleigh Metro Magazine
Founder: Raleigh Spy Conference


I am sure that Bernie Reeves is the right man for this task, and that the truth will be revealed in his Metro magazine.

Professor Christopher Andrew - a Parkinson's mover & shaker

Professor Christopher Andrew has just appeared on ITV in a programme about Inside MI5: The Real Spooks. I couldn't help noticing the way that Christopher Andrew was shaking ... or trembling.

Was it fear that he knew he was lying about what he had read in MI5 files? Was he scared that his research and book The Defence of the Realm was a pack of lies? Or is his brain finally falling apart as a result of Parkinson's disease? What a bullshitter and official supporter Christopher Andrew is for the likes of MI5 and MI6. Andrew is nothing more than a paid liar - a prostitute - a compiler of compendiums for the powers that rule us from above.

How much money have the British Public paid to produce a programme designed to deceive like this one?

Professor Christopher Andrew with another arsehole parrot amongst parrots

Christopher Andrew & Vasili: The Mitrokhin Archive

Christopher Andrew

The Mitrokhin Archive

Pages 550-553
The most important British S&T agent recruited during the decade after operation FOOT was, almost certainly, Michael John Smith (codenamed BORG), a Communist electronics engineer.(35) The secretary of the Surrey Communist Party in the early 1970s, Richard Geldart, recalls Smith as an ‘out-and-out Tankie’ - a hardline supporter of the crushing of the Prague Spring by Soviet tanks: ‘Not to put too fine a point on it, he was the total nerd. There was socializing going on, but he was not part of it.’(36) A Line X officer at the London residency, Viktor Alekseyevich Oshchenko (codenamed OZERO V), made initial contact with Smith in a pub near Smith’s flat at Kingston upon Thames after a trade union meeting held in May 1975 before the referendum on British membership of the EEC. On instructions from Oshchenko, Smith left the Communist Party, ceased trade union activity, became a regular reader of the Daily Telegraph, joined a local tennis club and - as his operational file quaintly puts it – ‘endeavoured to display his loyalty to the authorities’.

In July 1976, helped by bureaucratic confusion in MI5, caused by the remarkable coincidence that the Surrey Communist Party contained another Michael John Smith, he gained a job as a test engineer in the quality assurance department of Thorn-EMI Defence Electronics at Feltham, Middlesex. Within a year he was working on the top secret project XN-715, developing and testing radar fuses for Britain’s freefall nuclear bomb.(37) The KGB passed the documents on project XN-7I5 provided by Smith to N. V. Serebrov and other nuclear weapons specialists at a secret Soviet military research institute codenamed Enterprise G-4598, who succeeded in building a replica of the British radar fuse. Smith’s intelligence, however, seemed too good to be true. Serebrov and his colleagues were puzzled as to how Smith had been able to obtain the radio frequency on which the detonator was to operate. This information, they believed, was so sensitive that it should not have appeared even in the top secret documents on the design and operation of the detonator to which Smith had access. Armed with a knowledge of the radio frequency, Soviet forces would be able to create radio interference which could prevent the detonator from operating. One possibility which occurred to the specialists was that the frequency supplied by Smith might be merely a test frequency which would not be used in actual military operations. But they remained suspicious of the extent of the detailed highly classified information which Smith had been able to supply.(38)

The Centre also seems to have been suspicious of the ease and speed with which a well-known pro-Soviet Communist had been able to gain access to one of Britain’s most highly classified nuclear secrets so soon after going through the motions of leaving the Party and switching from the Morning Star to the Daily Telegraph. Its suspicions that Smith’s intelligence on the radar fuse might have been a sophisticated deception seem to have strengthened when he told his controller in 1978 that he had lost his security clearance and, for the time being, could no longer provide classified information. (Though Smith did not realize it at the time, MI5 had discovered its earlier error and secretly informed Thorn-EMI of Smith’s Communist past.) (39)

To try to resolve its doubts the Centre devised a series of tests to check Smith’s reliability. The first test, which Smith seems to have passed, was to remove two packets of secret material from a dead letter-box in Spain. The second, more elaborate check on Smith, personally approved by Andropov and termed in KGB jargon ‘a psycho-physiological test using a non-contact polygraph’, was conducted in Vienna in August 1979 by Boris Konstantinovich Stalnov and two OT (operational-technical support) officers. Stalnov began with a brief prepared speech, duly entered in Smith's file:

I am personally satisfied with the way things are going and with our mutual relations and I am therefore extremely glad to congratulate you. From today you are a full member of our organization. This means that the organization will take care of you. Believe me, you will have gained friends who are ready to come to your help in any circumstances. Your participation and help to the organization will be duly recognized. The organization is based on two principles: voluntary participation and sincerity.

The first means that, having joined the organization of your own free will, you may leave it at any time if you think it necessary, without any [adverse] consequences for yourself, provided you give prior notice.

As for the second principle, sincerity, you must inform us of all details which directly or indirectly affect the interests of our organization. This is understandable as the security of both sides depends on it. Joining the organization is also in a certain sense a formal act. In connection with this I am required to put a number of questions to you. I regard this as a pure formality. You should do the same.

It will simplify the task and save time if you simply answer ‘yes’ or ‘no’.

Smith was then asked over 120 questions and his replies secretly recorded. Subsequent analysis of the recording and Smith’s response to each question persuaded the Centre - doubtless to its immense relief -that he was not, as it had thought possible, engaged in a grand deception orchestrated by British intelligence. Though Smith had been led to suppose that the ‘psycho-physiological test’ was a routine formality, it had never been used before by the KGB outside the Soviet Union. The Centre was so pleased with its success that it decided to use the same method to check other agents. It none the less decided to give Smith a third (and apparently final) test of his ‘sincerity’ by instructing him to remove a container holding two rolls of film from a DLB in the Paris suburbs and to deliver it to a KGB officer in Lisbon.(40) The KGB would doubtless have been able to detect any attempt by Smith or another intelligence agency to open the container.

From 1979 onwards Smith was paid a 3oo-pound monthly retainer by the KGB. His file also records additional payments for documents supplied by him of 1,600 pounds, 750 pounds, 400 pounds and 2,000 pounds. Though Mitrokhin’s notes do not record the dates of these payments, they probably relate chiefly to Smith’s two years in Thorn-EMI Defence Electronics.(41) The excitement of working for the KGB, copying highly classified documents, emptying DLBs and going to secret assignations with his case officers in foreign capitals seems to have rescued Smith from his earlier existence as a ‘total nerd’. A hint of the exotic began to enliven a previously drab lifestyle. In 1979 he got married, took up flamenco dancing, began experimenting with Spanish and Mexican cuisine, and gave dinner parties at which guests were served his home-made wine.(42)

Smith was so taken with his life as a secret agent that he made strenuous efforts to recover the security clearance he had lost in 1978, even drafting a personal appeal two years later to Margaret Thatcher to intercede on his behalf. ‘There is a cloud over me which I cannot dispel,’ he complained to the Prime Minister. ‘I have been wrongly suspected and have lost my position most unjustly.’ Though Smith seems never to have posted his letter to Mrs Thatcher, in June 1980 he succeeded in putting his case to an MI5 officer. Smith began by denying that he had ever been a Communist, was confronted with evidence that he had, then apologized for lying and said he had joined the Party only to find a girlfriend.(43) Amazingly, Smith’s campaign to recover his security clearance survived even this setback. More amazingly still, a few years later it succeeded.(44)

The Mitrokhin Archive page 550

The Mitrokhin Archive page 551

The Mitrokhin Archive page 552

The Mitrokhin Archive page 553

Page 567-568
The greatest known success of KGB operations in Britain during the Gorbachev era was the reactivation of Michael Smith, probably the most important British Line X agent since the retirement of Norwood. When Mitrokhin last saw Smith’s file in 1984, he had been trying for six years without success to recover the security clearance which had made him such a valuable agent in the Thorn-EMI Weapons Division in 1976-8. By now, the Centre was close to writing him off. The last contact with Smith noted on his file was in March 1983. In 1984 it was decided to put him ‘on ice’ for the next three years.(111) In December 1985, however, Smith was taken on as a quality assurance engineer by the GEC Hirst Research Centre at Wembley, in north-west London, where seven months later he was given limited security clearance for defence contracts on a need-to-know basis.(112)

In 1990 Line X at the London residency renewed contact with Smith, arranging meetings either in the graveyard of the church of St Mary at Harrow on the Hill or in the nearby Roxeth recreation park at South Harrow. Security procedures were devised at each site to warn Smith if it was under surveillance. At St Mary’s church he was told to look for a white chalk line on the vicarage wall near a fire hydrant. If the line was uncrossed, it was safe for him to enter the graveyard. He was also told to look at the church noticeboard. A small green dot, usually on a drawing pin, indicated that the meeting with his case officer was still on; a red dot was a warning to leave immediately. Though Smith had originally been an ideological agent, his motives had become increasingly mercenary. At meetings between 1990 and 1992 he was given a total of over 20,000 pounds for material from GEC defence projects, some of which he spent on an expensive flamenco guitar, a musical keyboard and computer equipment. Smith became increasingly confident and careless. When he was arrested in August I992, the police found documents on the Rapier ground-to-air missile system and Surface Acoustic Wave military radar technology in a Sainsbury’s carrier bag in the boot of his Datsun.(113)

The Mitrokhin Archive page 567

The Mitrokhin Archive page 568

Page 725
The reactivation in the early 1990s of the leading British Line X agent Michael Smith was one sign among many of the continued priority given to S&T collection in the Yeltsin era.(49)

The Mitrokhin Archive page 725

Page 868
35. vol. 7, ch. 14, item 12.
36. John Steele, ‘25 Years for the Spy Who Stayed in the Cold’, Daily Telegraph (18 November 1993).
37. Report of the Security Commission (Cmnd 2930) (July 1995), chs. 2-4.
38. vol. 7, ch. 14, item 12.
39. On the information about Smith passed by Ml5 to EMI in 1978, see ‘Phone Call that Trapped a Spy’, Independent (19 November 1993).
40. vol. 7, ch. 14, item 12.
41. The Security Commission later concluded that Smith had held on to some of the classified documents he had obtained at Thorn-EMI and given them to the KGB some time after he lost his security access in 1978. One or more of the payments recorded in his file may thus refer to a period after his loss of access. Since Mitrokhin’s notes end in 1984, the details of KGB payments to Smith cannot refer to his later years as a Soviet agent.
42. ‘“Boring” Idealist Who Spied for Russia Gets 25 Years’, The Times (19 November 1993).
43. Report of the Security Commission (Cmnd 2930) (July 1995), pp. 8-9. ‘Dear Maggie, Please Let Me Spy for the KGB!’, Daily Mirror (21 September 1993). Laurence Donegan and Richard Norton-Taylor, ‘Spy Who Slipped Through the Net’, Guardian (19 November 1993).
44. See below, p. 568.

The Mitrokhin Archive page 868

Page 871
111. vol. 7, ch. 14, item 12.
112. Report of the Security Commission (Cmnd 2930) (July 1995), p. 10.
113. Report of the Security Commission (Cmnd 2930) (July 1995), pp. 13-14, 32-3. ‘Phone Call Hoax that Trapped a Spy’, Independent (19 November 1993); ‘Vital Clues to a Traitor’, Daily Mail (19 November 1993).

The Mitrokhin Archive page 871

Christopher Andrew and MI5 - The Defence of The Realm

The Defence of The Realm by Christopher Andrew is subtitled 'The Authorized History of MI5'. I want to be critical of this book and Christopher Andrew for the errors and disinformation he has set out in its pages about me. A key point of the analysis is the comparison of the information within this latest book with Christopher Andrew's earlier book The Mitrokhin Archive.

I nicknamed Professor Christopher Andrew The Cambridge Parrot because of his habit of mouthing the words given to him by his masters in MI5 and MI6. Unfortunately, once a parrot learns to speak, it has the annoying habit of using the same phrases over and over again. This is the case here, because in Christopher Andrew's new book he has repeated most of what he was taught to say about me in the Mitrokhin Archive. However, the interesting thing are the differences, because this reveals far more about what was in the minds of Andrew's MI5 masters than they probably realised.

The Defence of the Realm

Page 583-586
The intelligence from KGB files provided by Vasili Mitrokhin in 1992 suggests that there were fewer new British Line X recruits during the 1970s than in the decade before Operation FOOT. The most important new recruit was, almost certainly, Michael John Smith (codenamed BORG), a Communist electronics engineer. The secretary of the Surrey Communist Party in the early 1970s, Richard Geldart, later described Smith as an ‘out-and-out Tankie’ - a hardline supporter of the crushing of the Prague Spring by Soviet tanks in 1968: ‘Not to put too fine a point on it, he was the total nerd. There was socialising going on, but he was not part of it.’(97) A Line X officer at the London residency, Viktor Alekseyevich Oshchenko, made initial contact with Smith in a pub near Smith’s flat at Kingston-on-Thames in May 1975. On instructions from Oshchenko, Smith left the Communist Party, ceased trade union activity, became a regular reader of the Daily Telegraph, joined a local tennis club and - as his KGB file quaintly puts it – ‘endeavoured to display his loyalty to the authorities’.(98)

Michael John Smith first came to the attention of the Security Service in November 1971 at the age of twenty-three, when surveillance of the CPGB revealed a membership application from a ‘Michael Smith’ in Birmingham. Both the Service and the local police, however, failed to identify him. In January 1973 the Service received a report that an engineer called Michael John Smith with an address in Chessington had attended a district congress of the CPGB in Surrey. Because the surname was so common and the address was different, no connection was made with the Birmingham Smith. By a remarkable coincidence, the Surrey Communist Party contained another Michael John Smith and the 1973 report, like some subsequent reports, was wrongly placed on his file. In July 1976 the Michael John Smith recruited by Oshchenko began work as a test engineer in the Quality Assurance department of EMI Defence Electronics, a job which required a normal vetting (NV) security clearance giving him access to material classified up to secret. Since C Branch, because of the filing error, had no knowledge of Smith’s Communist background, he was given the clearance. In the spring of 1977 the Service’s earlier filing error was corrected when it was discovered that the Smith working for EMI had been active in the Surrey District Communist Party from 1973 to 1976. The C2 adviser to EMI, a List X firm (that is, working on classified government contracts), did not, however, raise the case with them until February 1978 - a delay understandably criticized in a later Security Commission report. After a series of discussions between the Service, EMI and MoD, Smith’s security clearance was revoked and he was moved to unclassified work.(99)

One reason for C2’s lack of urgency was almost certainly, as a later Director K acknowledged, ‘the perception in K Branch that by the 1970s the KGB did not recruit members of the CPGB as agents ... I remember absorbing it myself in my early years in the Branch.’(100) Earlier in the Cold War, following well-publicized cases on both sides of the Atlantic in which Communists had either conducted or assisted Soviet espionage, the Centre had become much more wary about recruiting Party members. Lyalin had reported to the Security Service after his defection: ‘The KGB are not supposed to cultivate or recruit known Communists. If after recruiting an agent they discovered that he was a Communist, they would try to modify his behaviour as far as the outside world was concerned and renounce his Communist views.’(101) But though Directorate K did not realize it for over a decade, Lyalin had been far too categorical. As in the case of Smith, the Centre was quite capable of making exceptions.(102)

For a year before Smith lost his security clearance in 1978, he had been working on the top-secret Project XN-7I5, developing and testing radar fuses for Britain’s free-fall nuclear bomb.(103) The KGB passed the documents on Project XN-7I5 provided by Smith to N. V. Serebrov and other nuclear weapons specialists at a secret Soviet military research institute codenamed Enterprise G-4598, who succeeded in building a replica of the British radar fuse. Smith’s intelligence, however, seemed too good to be true. Serebrov and his colleagues were puzzled as to how Smith had been able to obtain the radio frequency on which the detonator was to operate. This information, they believed, was so sensitive that it should not have appeared even in the top-secret documents on the design and operation of the detonator to which Smith had access. Armed with a knowledge of the radio frequency, Soviet forces would be able to create radio interference which would prevent the detonator from operating. The Centre, like the Soviet nuclear weapons specialists, also seems to have been suspicious of the ease and speed with which an engineer with a previous reputation as a staunchly pro-Soviet Communist had been able to gain access to one of Britain’s most highly classified nuclear secrets so soon after going through the motions of leaving the Party and switching from the Morning Star to the Daily Telegraph. Its suspicions that Smith’s intelligence on the radar fuse might have been a sophisticated deception seem to have strengthened when he told his controller in 1978 that he had lost his security clearance and, for the time being, could no longer provide classified information.(104)

To try to resolve its doubts the Centre devised a series of tests to check Smith’s reliability. The most detailed, personally approved by the KGB Chairman, Yuri Andropov, and termed in KGB jargon ‘a psycho-physiological test using a non-contact polygraph’, was conducted by KGB officers in Vienna in August 1979. Smith was asked more than 120 questions (all ‘yes’ or ‘no’) and his replies secretly recorded. Subsequent analysis of the recording reassured the Centre that he was not, as it had thought possible, engaged in a grand deception orchestrated by British intelligence. Though Smith had been led to suppose that the ‘psycho-physiological test’ was a routine formality, it had never before been used by the KGB outside the Soviet Union. The Centre was so pleased with its success that it decided to use the same method to check some other agents.(105) The excitement of working for the KGB seems to have appealed to Smith. A hint of the exotic began to enliven a hitherto drab lifestyle. In 1979 he got married, took up flamenco dancing, began cooking Spanish and Mexican cuisine, and gave dinner parties at which he served his own home-made wine.(106) Smith also began a campaign to recover his security clearance at EMI, even drafting a personal appeal to Mrs Thatcher, to whom he complained, ‘There is a cloud over me which I cannot dispel.’ He had made little progress in dispelling the cloud by the time he was made redundant in 1985. No doubt because of his lack of access to classified material, the KGB had broken contact with him at least a year previously, though it was later to recontact him.(107) In November 1993 Smith was sentenced to twenty-five years’ imprisonment (reduced to twenty on appeal) for collecting and communicating material in the period 1990-92 while working for GEC ‘for a purpose prejudicial to the safety or interests of the state’.(108)

Despite Line X success in running Michael John Smith and ACE, Operation FOOT had turned the United Kingdom into a hard target for Soviet intelligence. It remained so for the rest of the Cold War. Material smuggled out of KGB archives by Vasili Mitrokhin later revealed that, because of the difficult operating conditions in London, at least six (probably more) British Line X agents either met their case officers outside the UK or were controlled by residencies elsewhere in Europe.(109) Operating conditions were also made more difficult by the C Branch advisers to List X firms. The uncharacteristic error made in the Michael Smith case was an exception which proved the rule - evidence of how important protective security was as a defence against Soviet S&T operations.

The Defence of the Realm page 583

The Defence of the Realm page 584

The Defence of the Realm page 585

The Defence of the Realm page 586

Page 730
During the 1980s Line X (scientific and technological intelligence) in the KGB London residency had greater success than Line PR.(126) The last major success of the residency in the Thatcher era, in the autumn of 1990, was to resume running the electronics engineer Michael John Smith, who had so far escaped detection by the Security Service.(127)

The Defence of the Realm page 730

Page 732
There were of course some able KGB officers who succeeded in slipping through the net. Possibly the ablest was Viktor Oshchenko of Line X, who was responsible for the recruitment of Michael John Smith, probably the most important espionage case in Britain still unresolved at the end of the Cold War.(137)

The Defence of the Realm page 732

Page 957
97 John Steele, ‘25 years for the Spy Who Stayed in the Cold’, Daily Telegraph, 18 November 1993.
98 Andrew and Mitrokhin, Mitrokhin Archive, p. 550.
99 Report of the Security Commission (Cm 2930), July 1995.
100 Security Service Archives.
101 Security Service Archives.
102 Director K wrote in 1994: ‘The message from the defector reports - particularly in the mid 1980s - is consistent: exceptions could be made, there was no ban on former members etc.’ Security Service Archives.
103 Report of the Security Commission (Cm 2930), July 1995, chs 2-4.
104 Andrew and Mitrokhin, Mitrokhin Archive, pp. 550-51.
105 Ibid., pp. 551-2.
106 ‘ “Boring” idealist who spied for Russia gets 25 years’, The Times, 19 Nov. 1993.
107 Report of the Security Commission, July 1995 (Cm 2930). Andrew and Mitrokhin, Mitrokhin Archive, pp. 552-3.
108 Though Smith was tried only on charges relating to his espionage between 1990 and 1992, the Security Commission concluded that ‘the most serious of Smith’s known espionage activities occurred whilst he was working for EMI.’ Report of the Security Commission, July 1995 (Cm 2930).

The Defence of the Realm page 957

Page 975
127 See above, pp. 583-5.
137 See above, pp. 583-5.

The Defence of the Realm page 975

Thurrock Youth Theatre - "East Lynne" reviewed including Sonja Kristina

Thurrock Youth Theatre's production of "East Lynne" was well-received by the audience in December 1966. Although this was a Victorian melodrama, it was presented in such a way to play to the attitudes of the 1960s.

Thurrock Youth Theatre - review of "East Lynne"

Sonja Kristina (aka Sonja Shaw) was also mentioned in this review, as my second wife Barbara Hare. Sonja is still working with the group Curved Air and also working with musician Marvin Ayres under the name Mask. Ockendon Courts History teacher Peter Green produced the play.

Thurrock Youth Theatre - East Lynne - Margaret Morgan

Thurrock Youth Theatre presented a version of the old Victorian melodrama "East Lynne" at Ockendon Courts school, in 1966, in which I played the part of Archibald Carlyle. It was one of those plays that involve a lot of over-acting, but it was a lively production and very well-received by the audience.

Margaret Morgan was also in the play. Margaret was one of those perfect women who we only meet once in a lifetime - I wish I had had the courage to invite her out on a date.

Thurrock Youth Theatre - East Lynne page 1

Thurrock Youth Theatre - East Lynne page 2

Thurrock Youth Theatre - East Lynne page 3

Thurrock Youth Theatre - East Lynne page 4

This is the text we used for the production:

Sonja Kristina played Barbara Hare in East Lynne

Sonja Shaw is now Sonja Kristina and still playing with the group Curved Air. Check out her FaceBook page. Ockendon Courts History teacher Peter green produced the play.

Thurrock Youth Theatre - Sonja Kristina Shaw - Merchant of Venice

Thurrock Youth Theatre created a production of the Merchant of Venice early in 1966, in which I played the part of Salarino. This was a very good production in my opinion, and extremely dramatic. Interesting with the new ideas on Shakespeare - was he Italian, or did he spend time in Italy to understand the way of life in Venice? It was a very exciting time to be playing these roles in a local theatrical group.

Peter Green, the History teacher at Ockendon Courts school, was also the key person who ran the adult group, the Courts Players (now called the Thurrock Courts Players - great to see they are still performing), who performed various plays at the Ockendon Courts School hall in the 1960s. I particularly remember a great production of the "Love of Four Colonels" by Peter Ustinov, which made a big impression on me.

Peter Green also ran the Thurrock Youth Theatre group and he was behind many productions, including the ones I was involved in. In Peter Green's version of the Merchant of Venice, I was particularly taken by the folk-singing of Sonja Shaw - she also played the guitar as well as being a promising actress - and Sonja was later portrayed on the front cover of the BMG magazine that I subscribed to:

Sonja Shaw (Sonja Kristina) on cover of BMG magazine October 1968

... Her name's Sonja - Sonja Shaw. She's nineteen, and a RADA student who specialises in guitar and vocal music over a wide field.

I met her when the Mazda people put on a display of some fantastic new studio lamps they'd just invented. Sonja's job was to sing and play the guitar in front of colour TV cameras and monitors while the lights were demonstrated. She did it superbly well - no easy job, with twenty kilowatts of bright hot light belting down on her for several hours!

I was much impressed. Easy, relaxed, with a sweetly pretty singing voice and a well worked out guitar accompaniment, she showed a remarkable professionalism.

She told me she has plenty of bookings - including, at that time, the Jimmy Logan Show in Scotland.

Here she is on the front cover - a symbol of vitality and youth, and of the ever-increasing interest in the fretted instruments.

Where are you now Sonja Shaw, you were such a lovely person ... ? Below is the programme for the Merchant of Venice play from 1966:

Thurrock Youth Theatre - Merchant of Venice page 1

Thurrock Youth Theatre - Merchant of Venice page 2

Thurrock Youth Theatre - Merchant of Venice page 3

Thurrock Youth Theatre - Merchant of Venice page 4

This was the text we used for the production:

Sonja Kristina played Nerissa in Merchant of Venice

OK I just found some new information with the help of Google [April 2012]: Sonja Shaw became Sonja Kristina at some point, and she has been involved in various groups performing folk rock and acid folk. I never knew that Sonja was in "Hair" - there is even a video of her in 1968:

Sonja singing Frank Mills from Hair

Then Sonja became involved with Curved Air and was featured in various videos from the time:


Sonja singing Melinda (more or less) with Curved Air



Sonja singing It happened today with Curved Air

Sonja was also involved in the Thurrock Youth Theatre play East Lynne in which I was a fellow cast member. This was reviewed in the Thurrock Gazette. Sonja's father was the headmaster at Ardale school in North Stifford.

A Midsummer Night's Dream - Ockendon Courts school play

In November 1965 I took part in one of the famous Ockendon Courts school plays. They were produced by our History teacher, Peter Green, who was very keen on drama and who was a main figure in the local acting community within the Thurrock area. Apart from the Ockendon Courts school plays, Peter Green was also a key person organising the Thurrock Youth Theatre and the Courts Players.

Below is a programme of the play I was in while at Ockendon Courts school:

A Midsummer Night's Dream programme page 1

A Midsummer Night's Dream programme page 2

A Midsummer Night's Dream programme page 3

A Midsummer Night's Dream programme page 4

School Report from Ockendon Courts County Secondary School

Who cannot have waited with fear or anticipation at the reading of their school report? My school reports were usually good, but not perfect.

Cover of Ockendon Courts County Secondary school report

I expect that there are many other people out there who also have one of these reports. Treasure it for the experiences that it represents.

Ockendon Courts County Secondary School

Ockendon Courts County Secondary School was where I completed my secondary school education between 1960 to 1967. It was a quite remarkable school in many ways, which was in part due to the vision of the headmaster Mr W. S. Larwood, and other members of staff such as Mr Reuben (Ben) Cohen and Mr Peter Green.

Where would we be without schools such as Ockendon Courts? This was one of the great places on earth, and it is now gone. Long live Ockendon Courts!!!


I remember that there were occasional football or basketball matches with the pupils from nearby Ardale School in North Stifford. The headmaster at Ardale School at that time was Mr Shaw, and his beautiful daughter Sonja Shaw later became the legend Sonja Kristina, who still performs with the group Curved Air and also with Martin Ayres as Mask, and on MySpace.

John Kelsey-Fry QC polygraph lie detector test

John Kelsey-Fry QC should be asked to undergo a polygraph lie detector test to ascertain his role in the evidence at my trial, particularly regarding the witnesses Oleg Gordievsky, Dame Stella Rimington and Professor Meirion Francis Lewis.

Clearly Kelsey-Fry played at least some part in the preparation of these parts of the prosecution case, and he was also responsible I understand for much of the communication of information between the Prosecution and Defence teams - it was the withholding of the Prosecution case and evidence regarding the ALARM missile that was so damaging to the Defence at trial.

The underhanded Prosecution tactics - nothing but a bare-faced "ambush" - were designed to undermine the way in which the Defence had prepared their case. Not only had the ALARM missile never been previously mentioned in the Prosecution case, until Professor Meirion Lewis appeared in the witness box, but the Prosecution had up till that point not made any serious allegations about the relevant exhibit: a 10-year old obsolete and low-level 9-page document.

3 Raymond Buildings & Sir John Nutting QC

I am suspicious that 3 Raymond Buildings is being used by MI5, the Security Service, to handle their cases under the Official Secrets Act. Sir John Nutting QC is certainly a senior member of 3 Raymond Buildings, and he boasts about having won my case on behalf of MI5, despite the fact that it was necessary to use the false testimony of Professor Meirion Francis Lewis to do so.

I was told that 3 Raymond Buildings has for a long time been the chambers used for MI5 prosecutions, and I would be grateful for any comments that can be added to this story.

John Kelsey-Fry QC & Gary Summers

Before and during my Official Secrets Act trial John Kelsey-Fry QC was the Prosecution go-between with the Defence team, talking with my barrister Gary Summers about what was happening in the case. Obviously, one important matter that was not discussed was that the Prosecution were planning an ambush on the Defence over the so-called "evidence" about the ALARM missile.

The evidence of Professor Meirion Francis Lewis was clearly known to the Prosecution prior to my trial in September of 1993, because they had some well rehearsed questions about what would be presented to the jury.

John Kelsey-Fry must have known that this evidence was about to be presented in court - so why did he not tell his Defence counter-part that this evidence about ALARM was likely to be coming up in court? Surely this looks like John Kelsey-Fry is part of some bigger plan to damage the defence case by underhanded methods? This just goes to demonstrate that the legal profession is full of characters like John Kelsey-Fry, who are only too willing to act unethically in order to win a case.

Sir John Nutting QC expert evidence needs polygraph lie detector

Sir John Nutting QC will be asked to undergo a polygraph lie detector test to confirm whether he was involved in conspiring with Professor Meirion Francis Lewis to present false evidence at my trial in 1993 regarding the ALARM missile.

It will obvious to any technically minded person that there was something fundamentally wrong with the testimony given by Professor Meirion Francis Lewis at my trial, when he unexpectedly gave evidence that a 10-year old low-level document had been used on ALARM missiles deployed during the Gulf War of 1991.

The facts behind this issue will be available on this blog in the very near future.

John Alexander Symonds - The Romeo Spy website

After many years, John Alexander Symonds has decided to present the truth about what happened in his life, and particularly the method by which he was convicted based on the evidence of a criminal and dubious tape recorded conversations. Read all about it on the new website of the "Romeo Spy".

Sir John Nutting QC & John Kelsey Fry QC

Sir John Nutting QC still brags about the way he achieved my conviction based on lies and legal tricks. See his discredited admission here about the Michael Smith case.

John Kelsey Fry QC is also boasting about his involvement in my case here. Why is he proud to have been connected with a case that shows he was guilty of the manipulation of evidence, that included the culpability of Dame Stella Rimington, Oleg Gordievsky, and Professor Meirion Francis Lewis in framing me?

Why can British lawyers get away with legal fraud? How is it that they are not behind bars for telling lies in court?

E-mail:
from: Mike Smith
to: Sir John Nutting QC , Mr John Kelsey-Fry QC
cc Sir Derek Spencer QC , "DUDDRIDGE MP, James" , “Colin Nicholls QC”
date: Fri, Aug 21, 2009 at 12:24 AM
subject: Thank you for using false evidence at my trial

To: Sir John Nutting QC & John Kelsey Fry QC

It is fortunate for me that you continue to boast about the role that you played in presenting false evidence at my trial:

UK Legal Forum post

I shall now feel quite justified in making you one of the main targets in my campaign to expose the lies that were presented at my trial under your prosecution case. You know what you did, and you do not need me to tell you what a despicable distortion you presented as "evidence" in order to convince a jury that your arguments were valid.

We shall see who was right in the final countdown.

Please reply to this email, because if you do not I shall simply name you and shame you as the liars and cheats I believe you to be.

Yours sincerely,
Michael John Smith

Download the book Open Secret by Stella Rimington

I have been sent a couple of links where Stella Rimington's autobiography "Open Secret" can be downloaded. If you have not read it it is worth reading to see just what she has got up to in her life.

Go here for an English language version or here if you prefer it in Russian.

My job application to EMI Electronics in 1976

I was asked at my trial whether I had lied on my application form in order to get a job at EMI Electronics (Feltham), which gave me access to secret material. I stressed that I had not lied, but the impression was given in court that I had deceived EMI. Strangely, the Prosecution brought no exhibits to court to prove the matter one way or the other.

Where this allegation that I had lied arose from I have no idea - possibly it was one of Stella Rimington’s tricks, to make me look bad in the eyes of the jury. However, it was impossible for me to prove it one way or another without access to my paperwork, which was all in the hands of the Police. My Defence Counsel apparently never saw this as an important enough issue to either contact EMI, or to look for evidence amongst my own papers.

Malcolm McLeod, the Policeman who interviewed me, said shortly after my arrest (during the interviews): "You were successful with EMI because you lied on your application form, about your past connections with the Communist Party."

Later he repeated this claim: "When you filled in your application form for EMI, one of the questions, and it wasn’t too difficult to answer, did you have any connections or affiliations with any communist organisations, but you misled them."

During the investigations before my trial, Police went to EMI Electronics and spoke with staff there. I am certain that my application form was still lodged in their personnel records, and if I had lied on any points I am sure that the form would have been an important exhibit used at my trial. But this ever happened, and it can only be because I spoke the truth, that I did not lie to get a job at EMI Electronics.

I have now found the copy I made of the 3-page application form I signed on 9 May 1976, and apart from removing two addresses I can publish it here to indicate what questions I was asked and what my answers were. I defy anybody to identify that I either lied or tried to mislead the company. I believe I answered all questions truthfully.

EMI Electronics Application Form page 1

EMI Electronics Application Form page 2

EMI Electronics Application Form page 3

Michelle Obama at Elizabeth Garrett Anderson School

I heard on the news yesterday about the big event when Michelle Obama visited a girl's school. It was only today that I realised that it was the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson School in Islington.

I suppose it is no big deal that Mrs Obama would visit a school, but I was especially interested that it should be this particular school. Over several years in the 1980s I visited this school every week to take flamenco dance lessons, and we used this very hall where Mrs Obama was speaking. We worked up quite a lot of passion as we rhythmically stamped on that floor for many hours. Although it all seems a distant memory now, it was one of the most enjoyable times of my life.

Another thing I remembered about this school was that during one of our flamenco dance lessons my car was broken into in the school's car park, the only time I have ever suffered a vehicle robbery. The person who smashed my car window and stole my brief-case probably never knew that there were sensitive papers inside it, associated with correspondence I had had with the Ministry of Defence about my security clearance. Luckily the brief-case was found in the waste disposal chute of a nearby bank, and everything except my electronic calculator was recovered.

Michelle Obama speaking at Elizabeth Garrett Anderson School