Layout 8 - Winston Churchill

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C H U R C H I L L A N D I N T E L L I G E N C EAdventures in Shadowland, 1909-1953Churchill valued secret intelligence more than any other politician of his century.Without him, the modern intelligence community might never have developed as it did.D A V I DS T A F F O R DCÓNSUL BRITÁNCO MADRIDPHILLIPE HALSMAN, 1950CHANCE ENCOUNTER of a cryptic1949 telegram from Alan Hillgarth inSpain to Churchill in London led to apreviously unknown, privateintelligence mission conducted byChurchill while out of office: keepingtrack of Soviet spies in Europe.In early 1995, after a week’s intensive work in theChurchill Archives at Cambridge, researching my bookChurchill and Secret Service, I opened yet another file ofdocuments. I had reached that dangerous stage, rarelyadmitted by historians, of secretly hoping it would containnothing that demanded more tedious note-taking.It was marked “Private correspondence, 1949.” Thiswas promising for my unworthy hopes. After his triumphsin the Second World War, everyone wrote to Churchill, agreat deal of it inconsequential. With luck I might finishthis file quickly.Speeding through a bizarre miscellany of invitations tolectures, garden fetes, school prize-givings, even the blessingof babies, I came upon a telegram from Spain. It wasaddressed to Churchill at his London home at 28 HydePark Gate. There were only four lines. This is what it said:MESSAGE RECEIVED VERY LATE AS WAS TRAVELLINGAPOLOGIES STOP NUMBERS INCLUDING MINOR PARTS ANDATTACHMENTS IN BOTH CASES ARE NOW TWO HUNDRED ANDTHIRTY SIX THEIRS AND ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTEEN OURSWhat did it signify? Crates of sherry consumed bySpanish and British Cabinet members? Comparative advantagesof rival cigar-rolling devices? My eye was suddenlycaught by the name of the sender: Alan Hillgarth.I instantly knew that I had stumbled on someunknown episode in Churchill’s adventures with the secret____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________Dr. Stafford, of Victoria, B.C., was for many years project director at Edinburgh University’s Centre for the Study of the Two World Wars andLeverhulme Emeritus Professor in the University’s School of History, Classics and Archaeology. A preeminent intelligence scholar, his books includeCamp X: Canada’s School for Secret Agents, 1941-1945 (1986); The Silent Game: The Real World of Imaginary Spies (1988); Spy Wars: Espionageand Canada, with J.L. Granatstein (1990); Churchill and Secret Service (1998, reviewed FH 96); and Roosevelt and Churchill: Men of Secrets (2000,reviewed FH 110). His latest book is Endgame, 1945: The Missing Final Chapter of World War II (2007, reviewed FH 139). This article is excerptedfrom his paper, “Churchill and the Secret Wars,” 13th International Churchill Conference, Ashdown Park, East Sussex, England, October 1996.FINEST HOUR 149 / 12
world. I recognised Hillgarth’s name from my book aboutthe top secret agency Churchill created in 1940 to “setEurope ablaze” with the fires of sabotage and subversion,the Special Operations Executive (SOE).Hillgarth was just the sort of maverick adventurer towhom Churchill was magnetically drawn. Wounded as a16-year-old Royal Navy midshipman at the Dardanelles, hehad, he hinted, smuggled guns during the 1920s Riff rebellion—whentribal insurgents in Spanish Morocco dealtSpain one of the most severe reverses ever sustained by aEuropean colonising power at the hands of natives. LaterHillgarth went broke sinking a gold mine in Bolivia, andwrote a rollicking cloak and dagger novel of adventure andintrigue which even caught the eye of Graham Greene.The Spanish Civil War found him as British Vice-Consul in Majorca. By 1940 he was in Madrid for thatanxious period when Churchill feared that neutral Spainunder General Franco might join forces with Hitler.Nominally the British naval attaché, in reality Hillgarthhelped supervise Britain’s secret intelligence, sabotage, andsubversion operations in Spain.Churchill, who had met Hillgarth in Majorca in the1930s, regarded him with particular trust, interviewing himpersonally in London and circulating his reports to the WarCabinet. He also employed him on at least one particularlysensitive mission. In September 1941, Hillgarth visitedChequers to discuss ways of keeping Spain out of the war.As a result Churchill stage-managed the unblocking of $10million secreted in a Swiss Bank account in New York.Shortly afterwards the “Knights of Saint-George,” otherwiseknown as British gold sovereigns, were riding to war, liningthe pockets of Spanish generals willing to argue the neutralitycase with General Franco. Hillgarth, like Churchill,had had “a good war.” Ian Fleming, a close friend, calledhim “a useful petard and a valuable war winner.”But what was Hillgarth doing sending a telegram toChurchill in 1949?In fact, the telegram’s mysterious figures referred tothe number of intelligence officers, British and Soviet, inMoscow and London respectively. During this period, theCold War in Europe was becoming glacial. In 1945 IgorGouzenko, a junior cypher clerk, had walked out of theSoviet mission in Ottawa a month after Hiroshima andNagasaki, carrying beneath his coat documents that exposeda massive Soviet intelligence offensive against the West. Sixmonths later Churchill had delivered his “Iron Curtain”speech in Fulton, Missouri. In 1948 Prague fell to theCommunists and the Russians imposed their blockade ofBerlin. Churchill, in opposition since 1945, was anxious toexpose Soviet and Communist misdemeanours and calledfor vigilance against Moscow’s spies and Fifth Columnsaround the globe.In 1949 Hillgarth was retired and living in Ireland.But he travelled, and kept valuable contacts with old intelligenceand military friends in London. Even while out ofoffice, Churchill relied on private information to keep himinformed...right up to October 1951, when WSC returnedto Downing Street.Throughout his life Churchill relished the hands-oncontact with agents normally reserved to case officers.The Second World War—as my book demonstrated—is littered with examples of Churchill listening spellboundto the exploits of heroic young agents returned from behindenemy lines. Hillgarth was part of a long tradition.Sir Martin Gilbert’s official biography has revealed indetail how in the 1930s, a voice crying in the wildernessagainst the threat of Hitler, Churchill turned Chartwell intoa massive private intelligence centre. His best knowninformant was Desmond Morton, an officer in the SpecialIntelligence Service and head of the Industrial IntelligenceCentre. Morton became the Prime Minister’s official adviseron intelligence during the Second World War. Yet his namenever once appears in the Chartwell visitors book. Indeed itseems extraordinary that while still in opposition, Churchillcould calmly invite an SIS officer to Chartwell to chatabout intimate secrets of state over lunch.Only within the last two decades or so has it becomepossible for scholars to write intelligence history. And as theshadows have lifted, we can see with increasing clarity >>“Even while out of office, Churchill relied on private sources ofinformation to keep him informed....Sir Martin Gilbert’s officialbiography has revealed in detail how in the 1930s, a voice crying in thewilderness against the threat of Hitler, Churchill turned Chartwell into amassive private intelligence centre. [We are] littered with examples ofChurchill listening spellbound to the exploits of heroic young agents....”FINEST HOUR 149 / 13
Page 1: THE JOURNAL OF WINSTON CHURCHILLWIN
Page 6: T H E M E O F T H E I S S U EThe Va
Page 9 and 10: History, Bob Pettengill, CB 17.Chur
Page 11: Painted Lady: A North Africanvisito
Page 15 and 16: They Owed Churchill—and He Owed M
Page 18 and 19: “Churchill exploited intelligence
Page 20 and 21: C H U R C H I L L A N D I N T E L L
Page 22 and 23: GOLDEN EGGS...When he was in Britai
Page 24 and 25: GOLDEN EGGS...attack across the Wes
Page 26 and 27: GOLDEN EGGS...called “American Wa
Page 29 and 30: MedmenhamIn July 1943 I was posted
Page 33 and 34: The SIGSALY SystemTo operate this c
Page 37: W I T A N D W I S D O M“Unsinkabl
Page 40 and 41: C O V E R S T O R YWhen the Twain M
Page 42 and 43: WHEN THE TWAIN MET...“I was thril
Page 44 and 45: Twain aged 72, in the robes of Oxfo
Page 46 and 47: ,E D U C A T I O NJames Muller's pa
Page 48 and 49: E D U C A T I O NBelow: We enjoyed
Page 50 and 51: Books, Arts& CuriositiesChurchill C
Page 52 and 53: R E V I E W S“A1” RETURNS...Eas
Page 54 and 55: C O H E N C O R N E R“Uganda Is D
Page 56 and 57: AFRICAN TRAVELOGUE...Churchill earn
Page 58 and 59: R E V I E W SThe Least of the Lot
Page 60 and 61: FIFTY YEARS HENCE...As a writer, Ch
Page 62 and 63:
Churchill QuizJAMES LANCASTEREach q
Page 64:
Alan Turing OBE FRS (1912-1954): He
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