MI5 and the Wilson Plot
The MI5 website (www.mi5.gov.uk) has a section called ‘myths and misunderstandings’, which features, among other things, ‘the Wilson Plot’. The paragraph it devotes to this episode is worth studying. It refers the reader to Spycatcher and Peter Wright’s allegation that ‘up to 30 members of the Service had plotted to undermine former Prime Minister, Harold Wilson’. MI5 say that the allegation was ‘exhaustively investigated and it was concluded, as stated publicly by Ministers, that no such plot ever existed’. In the end, they continue, Wright admitted on Panorama in 1988 that ‘his account had been unreliable and only one other member of staff had been involved in any serious discussion regarding a plot’.
Clearly MI5 want readers to infer from this that Wright himself and the ‘one other member of staff’ were the villains of the piece, and that the allegations were mostly based on fantasy. This is misleading. What is true is that MI5 has never admitted to any wrongdoing during the Wilson premierships and that it was officially cleared of plotting in Parliamentary statements made by two Prime Ministers – James Callaghan in 1977 and Margaret Thatcher in 1987. But in fact the accusations, first made by Wilson himself and published in The Pencourt File, (1) nearly ten years before the appearance of Spycatcher, (2) caused considerable private turmoil in MI5; and they were based on fact not on imagination.
What browsers of the MI5 website do not learn is: first, following the appearance of Wilson’s own interviews with the authors of The Pencourt File, Prime Minister Callaghan set up an enquiry into the Service which produced disturbing results; and second, that the existence of a plot has been confirmed. The source for both of these stories is a top-level insider from Wilson’s last term at No. 10 – the Cabinet Secretary of the day, Sir John Hunt. Interviewed for Channel 4’s Secret History documentary on Wilson (Harold ‘Wilson: the Final Days’, first broadcast on 15 August 1996), Hunt said that the enquiry revealed an ‘inbuilt reactionary bias’ in MI5, with recruitment into it ‘all done very much on an old boy basis’ (a finding which prompted efforts to open up the Service to a more meritocratic ethos thereafter). As far as the conspiracy was concerned Hunt admitted ‘There is absolutely no doubt at all that a few, a very few malcontents in MI5, a lot of them right wing, malicious…..were spreading damaging and malicious stories about some members of that Labour Government’.
This may very well not be the whole story. How many were ‘a few, a very few’, especially when ‘a lot’ of these had extreme opinions and were leaking black propaganda about their own government to the press? But despite the uncertainties still left in the wake of Hunt’s admission (what the American call a ‘limited hang-out’), there is no doubt that his version is closer to Spycatcher than to whatever Panorama had Wright saying in 1988, nor that it squares with Colin Wallace’s revelations concerning Operation Clockwork Orange. (3) Historians still have plenty to learn about the scope and size of the Wilson Plot – but there can be no doubt that one existed, that it involved more than two people, and that it was regarded by Wilson’s successor in Downing Street as no joke. When it comes to the Wilson Plot we can now say that MI5 are more guilty of ‘myths and misunderstandings’ than their critics.
The USA and Chile
During General Pinochet’s recent detention in this country a good deal of newsprint was rightly devoted to his brutal treatment of political opponents. Rather less was said about the role of the Nixon administration in facilitating the downfall of democracy in Chile via the destabilisation of Allende’s administration. This was strange because the Pinochet affair erupted here in the late autumn of 1998 – not long after the release of documents which show beyond doubt Washington’s determination to intervene in Chilean politics during the early 1970s.
Two documents are especially interesting. The first of these dates from 17 September 1970, shortly after Allende had defeated his right wing opponent, Jorge Alessandri, in the Presidential elections. There was then a short interval before the Congress was due to meet to confirm Allende’s election on 24 October. The record (‘Genesis of Project FUBELT’), of a CIA meeting called by Director Richard Helms ‘in connection with the Chilean situation’, shows a US determination to undermine Allende. It shows that Helms told those present:
‘That President Nixon had decided that an Allende regime in Chile was not acceptable to the United States. The President asked the Agency to prevent Allende from coming to power or to unseat him. The President authorised ten million dollars for this purpose, if needed. Further, the Agency is to carry out this mission without coordination with the Departments of State or Defense…..’
The policy was clear and had to be kept super-secret. But it also had to be implemented – and the second paper provides a glimpse of the relevant operational guidelines. It begins by reaffirming that ‘It is firm and continuing policy that Allende be overthrown by a coup’. Even if this could not happen by 24 October ‘efforts in this regard will continue vigorously beyond that date’, on a clandestine basis ‘so that the USG (US Government) and American hand will be well hidden’. It called for selective contact with military leaders wanting to strike against Allende (interestingly, Pinochet is not one of those named): the most likely candidate at that time, General Viaux, was promised ‘our full support’ but warned against premature action liable to backfire. Meanwhile the CIA agents and their friends in Chile were to deploy ‘propaganda, black operations, surfacing of intelligence or disinformation, personal contacts, or anything else your imagination can conjure’ to secure the downfall of the Allende regime.(4)
Of course Allende’s left-wing government, the first Marxist regime both to be democratically elected and to observe the principles of liberal democracy, had many enemies in the Chilean business and land-owning communities as well as in the Church and the military. The Right and the social forces it represented worked against Allende from the start. But Allende’s opponents received considerable assistance from Washington. Thus aid programmes funded by the World Bank dried up while at the same time military training programmes which strengthened ties between the Chilean and US armed forces were intensified. Officials in Allende’s Socialist Party were bribed to make mistakes. Truck drivers twice brought the economy to a standstill and helped to generate waves of panic buying in the shops which in turn led to shortages of consumer goods. While the population suffered the hauliers prospered – and openly thanked the CIA for their abundant supplies of food and wine. At the same time the press launched a hysterical campaign against the government, predicting the arrival of social and political catastrophe if it were to stay in power.
With CIA backing they ran stories that the armed services were to be disbanded and Soviet and North Korean military bases established in the country. It was all garbage but it contributed to the polarisation of politics in Chile and to a middle class panic whose outcome was a climate of opinion in which the idea of authoritarian dictatorship – hitherto anathema in a country with one of the most democratic records in Latin America – became respectable.(5)
The campaign against Allende became known as one of ‘destabilisation’. This was a new term but the tactics were mostly tried and trusted variations on a theme already played successfully for example in Iran, Guatemala, Ecuador, and British Guiana over the preceding generation. (6) For years it has been said that the CIA was implicated in the fall of Allende and Chilean democracy but much of the evidence was based on oral testimony and newspaper reports by well-placed journalists. The released documents, which are referred to by Anthony Summers in his new biography of Nixon and by Chalmers Johnson in his recent study of postwar US foreign policy, make it impossible for even the most unreconstructed and uncritical supporters of Washington’s role in world affairs either to ignore or to minimise the scale of the Nixon administration’s intervention in Chile – and its responsibility for what came after. (7)
Hess: another piece of the jigsaw
An interesting document concerning the Hess affair surfaced last year in the Public Records Office, London. It is a statement by T. A. Robertson of MI5 following a meeting with Air Vice Marshall Medhurst, Assistant Chief of Air Staff (Intelligence) on 12 May 1941. Robertson wrote his report on 13 May. The flight of Deputy Fuhrer Rudolf Hess had occurred on 10 May.
Medhurst started by asking Robertson if he knew anything ‘about the case of Haushofer’. In reply Robertson said that MI5 were aware of a connection between the Duke of Hamilton and (the semi-dissident, well-placed German intellectual Albrecht) Haushofer. This produced from Medhurst the revelation that on 10 May ‘an Me 110 had landed in Scotland and the airman who had been injured had been taken to hospital’. On arrival there this man had asked to see the Duke of Hamilton because he had a message for him from Haushofer. Medhurst had also discovered that on Sunday 11 May Prime Minister Churchill and Air Minister Sinclair had sent for Hamilton. It was as a result of Sinclair’s enquiries that Medhurst was trying to find out what more could be discovered about Haushofer. The Air Vice Marshall added that Foreign Secretary Eden was also interested in the case.
Robertson told Medhurst that he would contact the Regional Office in Edinburgh to discover more concerning the case and in particular the pilot’s identity: as things stood, MI5 had ‘received no information about this man’. After the meeting Robertson returned to MI5 headquarters and told ‘Mr White’ (presumably Dick White, later head of MI5 and then of MI6) before telephoning Edinburgh for information. The Assistant to the Regional Officer spoke to Robertson and said that he would ‘make enquiries about the case and let me know’.
It was only after this, as a result of a German communique reported on the 9.00 evening news bulletin that Robertson appears to have heard for the first time that Rudolf Hess had disappeared; and it was not until the following morning (i.e. 13 May) that the British press claimed the pilot of the aeroplane to be ‘none other than Rudolf Hess’. (8)
This paper has a number of striking features. First of all it confirms one of the most repeated elements in the Hess saga. This is that Albrecht Haushofer, who allegedly gave Rudolf Hess a list of powerful pro-German contacts in Britain, had been in touch with Hamilton (most writers accept that Haushofer had put out a feeler to the Duke during the autumn of 1940). (9) The document does not say why but it is reasonable to accept the official story on this point, namely that Haushofer had known Hamilton since the Berlin Olympics (1936) and regarded him as a senior and influential peer who might be able to rally political opinion in Britain behind a peace campaign.
Secondly there is the file number of Robertson’s document. In the top left-hand corner there is a handwritten note ‘original in PF 5492 Haushofer 68a Y Box 487’. This suggests not only that there is a bundle of papers about Haushofer in the records (‘Haushofer 68a’) but (please correct me if I am wrong) that the German actually had an MI5 Personal File (‘PF’). Are we to take it from this that Haushofer was a British agent? Robertson’s obvious knowledge of some background at least is suggestive as is his well-known membership of the Double Cross Committee which ran deception operations and turned enemy agents back against Germany. Thirdly, however, whatever the truth about Haushofer’s links with Hamilton and MI5, it seems as if the arrival of the Me 110 caught Robertson (and thus MI5?) by surprise since (a) he heard it first from Air Vice-Marshall Medhurst, two days after the event and (b) seems to have had no idea who the pilot was (neither did Medhurst). All this tends to undermine the theory, advanced by writers like Costello and Padfield, that the Hess flight was part of an elaborate plot by British intelligence. (10)
The fourth and final point concerns the pilot’s identity. The official version of the Hess affair is that when Hamilton met Churchill and Sinclair on Sunday May 11 he told them that the Me 110 pilot was Rudolf Hess. They agreed after looking at a couple of photographs that it looked like him. Most assume from this that they were convinced. But it may well be wrong to draw such a conclusion since Robertson’s report shows that Sinclair still wanted to know, through an ignorant Medhurst, who the flier was. To return to the document: Robertson told Medhurst in reply to the latter’s request for information that he would ask the MI5 Edinburgh office ‘more details about the case and in particular the name of the pilot’ (emphasis added). According to his record this conversation took place on the afternoon of May 12 – the day after Sinclair and Churchill had spoken with Hamilton. It was also after Hamilton had informed Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden and his Permanent Secretary Sir Alexander Cadogan on the morning of 12 May that the pilot was Hess. (11) So why, after all this, did Medhurst, who had been in touch with Sinclair and who knew about Eden’s interest in the case, not know the pilot’s name?
If we believe the official version of the Hess affair Robertson’s story makes very little sense. If however we open ourselves to the possibility that it was not Hess who flew the Me 110 into Scotland then the continuing uncertainty about identity revealed in the document is more explicable. It also becomes easier to understand another apparently odd feature of Robertson’s tale: why was it that the first question Medhurst asked him was not to do with the pilot, supposedly the Deputy Fuhrer of Germany, but about his knowledge of Haushofer? That Rudolf Hess might be in Britain was after all a sensational piece of news of considerable interest to the security and intelligence services if true. So why should Sinclair not have told someone with Medhurst’s rank and clearance that Hamilton had identified the man as Hess unless of course he had reason not to trust this information? It does not seem very likely that the story was held back from two senior intelligence officials like Medhurst and Robertson for security reasons since it appears to have reached the press before they heard it!
The story that lurks below the surface of this document is that HMG suspected the pilot to be an emissary for Albrecht Haushofer rather than the lead player in this strange drama. Whatever the real truth turns out to be, this is another piece of a jigsaw which shows a very different picture from the official story. It remains unfortunate that so many continue to accept this in the face of increasing evidence. (12)
Notes
- Barrie Penrose and Roger Courtier, The Pencourt File (London: Secker and Warburg, 1978). The revelations first appeared in the Observer during 1977.
- Peter Wright, Spycatcher (New York: Viking Penguin, 1987).
- See Paul Foot, Who Framed Colin Wallace? (London: Macmillan, 1988) and Stephen Dorril and Robin Ramsay, Smear: Wilson and the Secret State (London: Fourth Estate, 1991). These are still the fullest and best documented accounts of the Wilson plot. Like Hunt they point out that the Prime Minister was not the only target of the dirty tricks campaign.
- The first document, dated 16 September 1970, can be found at http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB8/ch03-01.htm; the second, dated 16 October, at http://www.seas.gwu.edu/nsarchive/NSAEBB/NSAEBB8/ch05-01.htm
- See William Blum, The CIA: a forgotten history (London and New Jersey: Zed Books, 1988), ch. 34.
- Ibid., chs. 9 (Iran), 10 (Guatemala), 25 (Ecuador), 16 (British Guiana).
- See Anthony Summers, The Arrogance of Power: the Secret World of Richard Nixon (London: Victor Gollancz, 2000); Chalmers Johnson, Blowback: the Costs and Consequences of American Empire (London: Little, Brown and Company, 1999), pp.18 and 71.
- The document was found on the PRO website at http://www.pro.gov.uk/docimages/KV/2_34a.gif .
- Haushofer’s list can be inferred from a memorandum Haushofer wrote to Hitler in the aftermath of the Hess flight to Britain. See pp. 27 and 28 of Eugene Bird, Rudolf Hess: the Loneliest Man in the World (London: Sphere books, 1976 and 80)
- See John Costello, Ten Days that Shook the West (London: Bantam Books, 1991) and Peter Padfield, Hess: Flight for the Fuhrer (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1991; revised edition, 1993).
- See David Dilks (editor), The Diaries of Sir Alexander Cadogan 1938-1945 (London: Cassell, 1971), p. 377, entry for 12 May 1941.
- It is of course Hugh Thomas, with his Hess: a Tale of Two Murders (London: Cassell, 1988) who has done most to undermine the accepted version of the Hess affair by showing that the medical evidence concerning the man who called himself Hess after 1941 does not fit the Rudolf Hess who was Deputy Fuhrer of Germany. Most notably the post-1941 Hess had no scars, internal or external, which were remotely compatible with a serious bullet wound to the chest received by the pre-1941 Hess in 1917. A new edition of Thomas’s book is due out soon.