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SECURITY SCANDALS AND SPY REVELATIONS 227
squirm under investigation in the House of Commons, Wilson
made a mental note that, once in office, he would toughen up
on security in the hope of avoiding the same fate. He also developed
an unhealthy fascination with security, and with MI5 in
particular. 2 By the summer of 1963 his senior Shadow Ministers
had already detected the emerging Wilson hard line on secret
matters. Tony Benn noted in his diary:
*
Dick Crossman phoned this morning and we had a talk
about security. The Party is making a great fuss about this
over the Vassall, Profumo and Philby cases ... I am afraid
it's giving the impression that we want to institute a police
state. Dick, who worked for Intelligence during the war, is
a fierce security man and said that, as a Minister, he would
think it right that his phones should be tapped and all his
letters opened. This is quite mad. I am terrified that George
Wigg may be made Minister for Security and given power
over all our lives. 3 *
In October 1964 the general election swept Wilson to power
and, much as Benn had predicted, George Wigg was given the
post of Paymaster General, but with a modified remit, serving
as Wilson's intelligence scout and security enforcer. Wigg was
a close friend of the Prime Minister, and his particular task was
to probe the security arrangements of every department of state
in the hope of protecting Wilson from Profumo-like incidents. 4
Wigg soon turned his attention to GCHQ, which he examined
as part of a review of the Foreign Office, although he noted
that it was 'autonomous to a considerable extent'. The first thing
that struck him was the sheer size and complexity of the organisation.
British sigint now employed some 1 L 500 staff, of whom
eight thousand were from GCHQ, while the other 3,500 were
service personnel. Indeed, the sigint personnel outnumbered the
Diplomatic Service. Almost everyone at Cheltenham was now
subject to positive vetting except for a small number of ancillary
staff. Despite the fact that GCHQ had a team of twenty-one