Investigating soviet espionage and subversion: the case of Donald Maclean
This essay sets out the dimensions of investigating Soviet espionage and subversion, highlighting how Maclean's image as a Soviet agent has developed over the past 50 years. It will then consider to what extent new documents at the Public Record Office alter his image. Maclean's crime was treachery but what exactly is the intellectual challenge in investigating espionage? Just what can be achieved? Sir Dick White former head of MI6 offered this advice: Espionage is a crime that often leaves no trace of evidence. The investigator relies upon intuition for coincidences. After considering the circumstances, he might reach the moment of epiphany when all the facts added up to one conclusion1
The Historiography and Source Materials in the Study of Internal Security in Modern Britain (1885–1956)
The passing of the Freedom of Information Act, and the decision to declassify selected historical documents from the MI5 archive in 1997, has significantly increased the documentary evidence for historians about the evolution and operation of the Security Service during the first half of the twentieth century. Although the MI6 archive remains closed, and Special Branch have released little material, historical briefings and the declassification of some intelligence files by the Foreign Office have provided important material which helps to illuminate some of the gaps in the documentary record. Historians have still to assimilate much of the new information, but already there are important debates developing and significant differences appearing about the value of such censored sources. At the very least, however, they provide intriguing information about state policies over the development of political surveillance of the Communist Party of Great Britain and the British Union of Fascists, internal security, counter espionage against the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, the evolution of public order policies, and counter subversion in British society, and the debate among the state authorities about national security and civil liberties particularly during the first and second world wars.
New spy claims meet firm denial
Outraged members of the family of the late Sir Rudolf Peierls have leapt to the defence of the theoretical physicist following claims in a magazine article that he was a Soviet spy. The family say that allegations made by the journalist Nicholas Farrell in the 29 May issue of The Spectator are false. Farrell writes that Peierls, who died in 1995 after a long and distinguished career at Birmingham and Oxford universities, spied for the Soviet Union during the Second World War. Meanwhile, another eminent physicist has just cleared his name following similar allegations in the US (see box).