Vickers Spy Trials In Russia Recalled

Press, Volume XCVII, Issue 28552, 3 April 1958, Page 6

Vickers Spy Trials In Russia Recalled

(N.Z. Press Association—Copyright)

LONDON. April 1. The inside story of Russia's most fantastic spy trial, with Stalin’s dreaded O.&P.U. reducing British prisoners almost to brainwashed automatons, is told for the first time today by the British Government. Twenty-five years ago, in March, 1933, O.GJ*.U. (secret police) agents swooped on six British engineers working in Russia for the British firm Metropolitan-Vickers. They arrested them and several Russians on charges of espionage and sabotage. The texts of official messages that flew back and forth between Moscow and London about the case are published in book form today in the latest edition of "Documents on British Foreign Policy—l 929 to 1934."

The accused Britorts were Alan Monkhouse. New Zealand-born manager of Metro-Vickers in Russia, Leslie Thornton, John Cushny. W. H. MacDonald. Charles Nordwall. and A. Gregory.

Mr Monkhouse was taken to the notorious Lubianka Prison in Moscow, and Sir Esmond Ovey, the British Ambassador reported to London:

“His first examination began lat 8 a.m. on March 12 and continued without interruption for 119 hours until 3 a.m. on March 113 ... he was forced to sign a statement that he was engaged in what his examiners contended was espionage.” Later Monkhouse was subjected to a second examination which continued for about 17 hours with one interval of an hour. The Ambassador, later withdrawn from Moscow as a protest, reported that the arrested men were threatened with all sorts of dire consequences if they did not confess. Leslie Thornton wrote such voluminous “confessions” that his colleagues wondered if he had been hynotised, the Ambassador said.

Later. Thornton was released on bail and the British Charge D'Affaires. Mr William Strang (now Lord Strang) reported: “He is worn out ... he has been under interrogation from the day of his arrest, on one occasion for 24 hours without a break . . . “His statement that he and another person had engaged in: offensive and defensive spying; was dictated by the 0.G.P.U.; when he was too tired to care what he wrote.” Another fiction-like disclosure in the documents is that a few months before his arrest, John Cushny was asked by O.GJ.U. agents to act as a Russian spy. When he refused, the O.GJP.U. sent for a Russian woman employee of Metro-Vickers, ordering her to seduce Cushny and persuade him to become a spy. Surprise at Trial At the eventual trial. Thornton surprised the Russians by pleading not guilty despite his “confessions.”

W. H. MacDonald pleaded guilty, but on the second day changed his plea although the President of the Court, according to Mr Strang, tried to bully him out of this.

Tlie Court was adjourned and on the resumption Mr Strang reported to London: “MacDonald was a changed man. He returned to confess more to his original testimony, confirming in a low, toneless voice the truth of former statements of his.” The trial lasted six days. The sentences were: Thornton, three years’ deprivation of liberty: MacDonald two years' deprivation of liberty; Monkhouse. Cushny, and Nordwell to be expelled from the Soviet Union; Gregory acquitted. Ten Russians Were gaoled for varying periods. The surprising lightness of the sentences was probably because Britain had played her strongest card—an embargo on trade with Russia at a time when the Soviet was eager for trade. After three more months of negotiation, Thornton and MacDonald were set free and the trade embargo lifted. Thornton, back in London, said he had at one time asked his Russian examiners to “shoot him and have done with it." The merciless questioning had got him to a stage beyond caring. "Stalin Annoyed”

A later dispatch to London from the British Embassy reported that Stalin had expressed annoyance over being persuaded to sanction the Metro-Vickers arrest and trial without having been warned of the risk of serious repercussions on world opinion and on Anglo-Soviet relations.

Leslie Thornton, now 71, lives quietly in retirement in a village near London still refusing to say anything about his ordeal in Mosicow.

“I’d rather not talk about it,” he told a reporter last night “Since that unhappy episode in Russia. I have lived a very happy and full life.”

Among the others still alive, John Cushny is now chief engineer at Britain’s Royal Aircraft Research Establishment at Farnborough, and Charles Nordwell is still with Metropolitan Vickers