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    MI6 traitor George Blake has died. The KGB’s penetration of British Intelligence may have gone far deeper than the public has ever been told. It may still be deeply compromised by Russia.

    By David Burke. George Blake has just died aged 98 at his dacha outside Moscow where Putin’s overseas intelligence service, the SVR, was protecting him from Covid-19. Blake was held in high esteem by the Russians. Putin has said that the “memory of this legendary person will be preserved forever in our hearts”. Putin awarded him a medal in 2007. Blake was arrested in London in 1961 and sentenced to 42 years imprisonment but escaped from Wormwood Scrubs in 1966 with the aid of Sean Bourke from Limerick. He then spent two months in London before making his way to East Germany. The story of his escape and the time he spent in hiding in London is astonishing. Blake may have been helped by Soviet agents inside the British Establishment. The Director-General of MI5, Roger Hollis, 1956-65, was believed by many to be one such agent. He retired the year before Blake made his escape, something which gave him four years to help the KGB prepare a plan to break Blake free. Roger Hollis, another traitor? Roger Hollis was investigated on an official basis on a number of occasions by MI5 and MI6 officers for treachery. The evidence against him was compelling. At the very least, if he was not a traitor, there must have been another very senior mole inside MI5. Outside MI5, Christine Keeler was adamant that he was a traitor. Keeler was at the centre of the Profumo spy scandal involving Stephen Ward. Keeler revealed that Hollis and Ward were part of a spy circle involving a confirmed MI5 traitor Sir Anthony Blunt. Further details can be found here: Keeler Concealer: the British Establishment’s severe embarrassment at the depth of the Soviet Union’s penetration of MI5 and MI6. If Hollis was indeed a traitor, he would have installed other agents inside MI5 to keep the red flag flying behind closed doors after he left. One possibility is that it was these who could have helped move Blake from London to East Germany in 1966. One thing is clear: it is inconceivable that the KGB would have let Blake rot in jail for 42 years if there was any chance to spring him. At the very least, his severe sentence was a deterrent to all of its agents and potential recruits in Britain. If Hollis was a traitor, it is obvious that the KGB would have relied heavily on him to help them plan Blake’s escape. Even if one allows that Blake’s escape from the confines of his goal in London was something he and the Irishman Bourke achieved on their own, there is still the difficult question of how he managed to hide in London for two months and then made it to East Germany. According to the official narrative, we are meant to believe that he had no help from MI5 traitors or the KGB, merely two CND activists, Michael Randle and Pat Pottle, who took him across Europe in a camper van. The allegations of Patrick Meehan The only evidence that MI5 – or a faction within it – wanted Blake to escape emanates from the late Patrick Meehan, a criminal from Scotland. He produced a book in 1989, ‘Framed by MI5’, in which he claimed that in 1963 he was approached by a man he dubbed ‘Hector’ to spring a ‘spy’ in an English prison. The man portrayed himself as a Soviet sympathiser but Meehan reckoned he was an MI5 officer. ‘Hector’ had known that Meehan had briefly been a member of the Communist Party in 1950. Nothing of substance emerged from the approach but it alerted Meehan to the possibility MI5 was prepared to stage an escape. Whether ‘Hector’ was a KGB officer who knew about Meehan’s communist past or an MI5 officer with the same knowledge, what is important is that Meehan concluded he was from MI5. After Blake escaped, he began to talk about this and circulated the theory that MI5 had wanted to spring Blake. Meehan was not involved in any way in the later 1966 escapade involving Sean Bourke. For his part, Blake has always maintained that Bourke acted without any outside help. The implications of Meehan’s Book Let’s give Meehan the benefit of the doubt and see where it takes us. For a start, this involves accepting that ‘Hector’, was indeed from MI5 and therefore acting on the orders of D-G Roger Hollis. This scenario raises one question MI5 should be made to answer: why did they never ask Meehan to help them in any sort of an inquiry into the mysterious ‘Hector’, the man who knew of Meehan’s communist past and wanted to recruit him to spring a ‘spy’ in an English prison. Meehan wrote the book in revenge for being framed for the murder of Rachael Ross in Ayr, Scotland in 1969. Although innocent, he was convicted but received a Royal pardon in 1976 after years in prison. He also received £40,000 in compensation after a campaign by the likes of Ludovic Kennedy. This, however, was not enough to assuage his anger and he had his revenge – as he saw it – by producing his book in 1989 while the Peter Wright ‘Spycatcher’ book storm was still raging. It was an expansion of an earlier book he had written in 1978 called ‘Innocent Villain’ (Pan books Limited 1978). Meehan’s conviction had been secured by ‘rigging’ an identification parade, the planting of evidence and the committing of perjury at his trial by high-ranking detectives. According to Meehan, “In the conspiracy to frame me high-ranking detectives, acting on the instructions of MI5, found it necessary to suppress evidence that would have led to the arrest of the two men who did in fact commit the Ayr murder; namely, William McGuinness and Ian Waddle. Framing me for the murder was an exercise calculated to put me out of circulation.” Waddle admitted his guilt. McGuinness was murdered in Glasgow. Meehan’s pardon was followed by a report by Lord

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    Keeler Concealer: the British Establishment’s severe embarrassment at the depth of the Soviet Union’s penetration of MI5 and MI6.

    By David Burke The BBC’s lavish Christine Keeler drama concealed her claim that the Director-General of MI5 was a Soviet mole and ignored what she knew about the infidelities of Prince Philip. The real story is one of treachery, depravity, judicial corruption and the sexual abuse of children by VIPs such as Lord Mountbatten. The six-part BBC drama, ‘The Trial of Christine Keeler’,  has just come to an end. It was meant to be an accurate and comprehenisve portrayal of the notorious Profumo Affair during which a teenager, Christine Keeler, slept with Captain Eugene Ivanov, a Russian naval attaché at the Soviet Embassy in London, while also having a relationship with the much older John Profumo, the high-flying Conservative MP who was Secretary of State for War. Profumo, who met Keeler in July 1961, dramatically denied a relationship with her in the House of Commons but later admitted he had lied and, in June 1963, resigned in disgrace. Stephen Ward, the artist and society osteopath who had introduced Keeler to Profumo, was subsequently put on trial for living off the immoral earnings of prostitutes. He took an overdose of medication before the jury returned a verdict against him and died shortly thereafter. He was found guilty on two charges. 1. THE WIMPOLE MEWS SPY RING. The puzzle that lies at the heart of the BBC’s production is that it ignored the most significant claim Keeler made about the affair: that Sir Roger Hollis was a Soviet mole who was part of a network consisting of Stephen Ward and Sir Anthony Blunt. Hollis served as the Director-General of MI5, 1956 – 1965. Blunt was a KGB mole who penetrated MI5 during WW2. Keeler made the claim in her book, Secrets and Lies (2001). Keeler says she told Lord Denning about D-G Hollis in 1963 while the latter was carrying out his controversial inquiry into the affair and that he made notes of what she said. Hence, there is one straightforward way to resolve the question of D-G Hollis’ loyalty: declassify Denning’s files. Clearly, Keeler could not have known that D-G Hollis was a suspected Soviet mole until the 1980s when this allegation emerged into the public domain, except from her observation of him at Ward’s residence at Wimpole Mews where she had lived with Ward for a while. She said she was witness to a string of meetings between D-G Hollis and Ward at the address. There is a way to resolve the question of D-G Hollis’ loyalty: declassify Denning’s files. 2. THE TRUE DEPTH OF THE KGB’S PENETRATION OF MI5 AND MI6 MAY BE UNFATHOMABLE. Anthony Blunt joined MI5 at the start of WW2 and supplied the Soviets with classified and sensitive secrets throughout the conflict. The perceived wisdom is that he cut all links with Moscow after he retired from MI5 after the war ended and became the Surveyor of the King’s Pictures at Buckingham Palace. Keeler’s revelations, however, indicate that he was still an active Soviet agent as late as the early 1960s. Blunt eventually confessed his role as a Soviet agent and hence there is no doubt about his duplicity. If D-G Hollis was yet another traitor, it means that he had over a decade to plant and promote fellow conspirators up the ranks and turn a blind eye to Soviet operations directed against Britain and her colonies. (MI5 is responsible for the security of UK and her colonies; MI6 spies on foreign soil.) The British media has been obsessed with the hunt for the so-called ‘Fifth Man’ inside the Cambridge Spy Ring for decades. For many years D-G Hollis was viewed as a serious candidate for that perch. The Cambridge Ring consisted of Kim Philby, Guy Burgess, Blunt and Donald Maclean. British commentators now generally agree that a man called John Cairncross was the Fifth Man. Yet, there is no logical reason to believe there were only five high level traitors inside the Establishment or that Cambridge was the only campus visited by Soviet talent scouts. If Keeler’s revelations about D-G Hollis are reliable, there is a strong possibility that MI5 was nothing less than a burgeoning nest of traitors. Indeed, D-G Hollis was only one of an array of suspects. A slew of books have been published which make out cases against a variety of suspects including the man D-G Hollis appointed as his deputy, Graham Mitchell. Another senior MI5 officer, Guy Liddell, was also put under the microscope as was Lord Victor Rothschild who served in MI5 during WW2. There is no logical reason to believe there were only five high level traitors inside the Establishment or that Cambridge was the only campus visited by Soviet talent scouts. 3. AND THEN THERE WERE THE BLACKMAIL TARGETS Aside from ideologically motivated traitors, the KGB used blackmail to recruit reluctant informants. Incredible as it may seem, the FBI suspected Lord Mountbatten – who held a senior position in the Admiralty and had access to NATO secrets – was a traitor and monitored his private life. They learnt that he was a paedophile with a ‘lust for boys’. The Provisional IRA, who monitored and attempted to assassinate Sir Maurice Oldfield of MI6 in the mid-1970s, learnt he was a homosexual. If they knew, is it likely the KGB did not? In 2016 MI6 told the Hart Inquiry in Northern Ireland that Oldfield had a ‘relationship’ with the man who ran the notorious Kincora Boys’ Home in Belfast where sex abuse was rampant. If the Soviets knew even a fraction of this, why did they not destroy his career by exposing him? Instead, did they coerce him into spilling MI6 secrets? MI5 carried out an investigation into the possibility he had been blackmailed in 1980 and concluded he had not. Was Oldfield’s reputed successor as Deputy Chief of MI6, Sir Peter Hayman, another of their blackmail targets? Hayman was a notorious paedophile with a conviction for gross indecency in a public lavatory. One of his victims was

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    Maurice The Mole? The Provisional IRA knew Sir Maurice Oldfield, Chief of MI6, was a homosexual. Did the Soviets know too?

    Forty years ago this month Margaret Thatcher sent Sir Maurice Oldfield, the former Chief of MI6, to Belfast to co-ordinate the activities of the various branches of British Intelligence in Ireland. Within a few weeks MI5 was reporting to Downing Street that he was a homosexual and an inquiry was launched to see if he had been blackmailed by the Soviets or any of Britain’s other enemies. He was soon given a clean bill of health. Kieran Conway, the former Provisional IRA Director of Intelligence in the 1970s, has confirmed to Village   that the Provos knew Oldfield was gay. What, if anything, did the Soviet intelligence apparatus, the KGB, know about Oldfield’s homosexuality? More significantly, if the KGB found out, what did they do with the information? The answer is nothing despite the fact it could have destroyed him.  Such inaction makes no sense as Oldfield was reputed to have been a highly effective opponent of the KGB. The notorious MI6 traitor Kim Philby described him as an officer of “high quality” and “formidable” in his memoirs.  In 2017 the Hart Report into child sex abuse published details of an MI6 document which revealed a “small collection of papers in file three which relate to the relationship [Oldfield] had with the Head of the Kincora Boys’ Home (KBH) in Belfast”. The “Head” of Kincora was “Warden” Joseph Mains who abused teenage boys at Kincora and elsewhere. Joseph Mains, according to MI6 records he had a “relationship” and  a “friendship” with Oldfield. PART 1: OLDFIELD AS A SECURITY RISK A DANGEROUS ATTRACTION TO YOUNG MALES Oldfield was in fact attracted to young males. The KGB could have ascertained this through routine surveillance or from its spies inside MI6 such as Kim Philby and George Blake who would have been on the lookout for blackmail material on their colleagues. There is, of course, a world of difference between being a homosexual and being attracted to underage males. However, back in the unenlightened 1970s and 1980s, few in politics would have  acknowledged this important distinction.  Incredible as it now seems, the mainstream print media routinely referred to the Kincora scandal as a “homosexual” one when it was nothing of the sort. In the dark days of the 1970s and 1980s those who ran British Intelligence definitely viewed a homosexual in the ranks as a security risk. Hence, when Margaret Thatcher was told about Oldfield’s sexuality, his security clearance was withdrawn while an inquiry was carried out to see if he had been compromised by the Soviets. It determined that he hadn’t. However, inquiries into the loyalty of Kim Philby, another senior MI6 officer,  had failed to expose evidence of his true allegiance to the Soviet Union. Furthermore, MI5 and MI6 had let at least Anthony Blunt, Guy Burgess, Donald MacClean, John Cairncross, George Blake – all Soviet agents – run amok inside Britain’s intelligence community for decades. HER MAJESTY’S SPYMASTER  Who was Maurice Oldfield and what was he capable of? When ‘The Troubles’ erupted, Oldfield was Deputy Chief of MI6. He assumed control of Irish affairs because his Chief, Sir John Rennie, did not share the same experience as he in the dark arts of the secret world. Rennie, who had been a surprise appointment as Chief of MI6, had a diplomatic and propaganda background whereas Oldfield had participated in deception campaigns during WW2; fought terrorism in Palestine after it; monitored the flow of weapons and money to the communist guerrillas fighting the British in Malaya in the 1950s. And, if all this wasn’t enough to square up to the IRA, he had a good idea of what it took to run a paramilitary campaign due to his knowledge of MI6’s guerrilla campaign against Albania, something that happened in the 1950s during his stint as deputy chief of MI6’s counter espionage directorate, R5. The Albanian campaign was a disaster. Most observers believe it was betrayed from the inside. Oldfield was a tubby little man who waddled when he walked, often dressed badly and was allegedly afflicted with occasional psoriasis. He has become more famous than most of his contemporaries, probably because Alec Guinness drew on his bespectacled appearance for his celebrated portrayal of George Smiley for the BBC’s production of John Le Carre’s Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. The glamour of the association with Le Carrie has eclipsed the true nature of Oldfield’s character When Rennie retired prematurely in 1973 after a drug smuggling scandal in Hong Kong involving his son, Oldfield finally secured the top spot he had coveted for so long. Once in the driving seat, he steered MI6 until his retirement in early 1978 under an appropriately misleading title, ‘Head of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Research Department’. Under Oldfield, MI6 HQ continued to be what it had always been: a haven for criminals and the sort of place where a visitor would have been well advised to wipe his or her shoes on the way out of the building. Oldfield’s retirement as MI6 Chief was not to prove the death of his career: he re-emerged from his crypt to become Ulster Security Co-ordinator at the behest of Margaret Thatcher in 1979. By then too many intelligence cooks had congregated in NI and were spoiling the spy broth. Oldfield was asked to knock heads and streamline their work. While he was in Northern Ireland MI5 discovered he was gay. An MI5 report submitted to Cabinet Secretary, Sir Robert Armstrong, on 31 March 1980 revealed that on 28 March Oldfield had after “some preliminaries” admitted he “had first been introduced to homosexuality at university and he admitted having engaged in homosexual practices, intermittently, up till the time of his acceptance of his Northern Ireland appointment. His relationships were, for the most part, with restaurant waiters and the like: he had none, he said, with (MI6) staff or agents”. In other words, Oldfield admitted that he had engaged in homosexual activity throughout his career as an MI6 officer with random individuals. A copy of

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