Britain ‘bugged’Kosygin during visit

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 32959, 4 July 1972, Page 13

Britain ‘bugged’Kosygin during visit

(By ARTHUR L. GAVSHON. of the Associated Press, through N.Z.P.A.)

LONDON, July 3. In the early hours of Monday, February 13, 1967, Mr Alexei Kosygin telephoned Mr Leonid Brezhnev in Moscow from the elegant luxury of a London hotel suite. But it seemed that the Prime Minister of the Soviet Union did not know every word he uttered was being listened to by his British hosts. Disclosure of one of the most sensational British intelligence operations of modem times came from Washington with the publication of the latest volumes of the Pentagon Papers. Today, behind a facade of calm unconcern. British authorities are angry with their American friends. They are embarrassed, too, that their bugging of a Soviet leader has exposed them to Moscow’s attack. And they are also bitterly remembering how lapses in their own security system were assailed by Americans who, for whatever reasons,

have been instrumental in compromising British intelligence operations. “Every head of government who visits London,” one high source remarked, “will assume that he is being bugged.” It is, of course, possible that most important states, men assume their conversations and activities are monitored anyway. But British authorities see a distinction between an assumption and something that has been confirmed, however inadvertently. Mr Kosygin, to the evident surprise of Washington at the time, had agreed to send certain proposals handed him by Mr Wilson on to Hanoi. These proposals promised an advance to peace talks. The Pentagon Papers in a crucial passage commented: "On February 13, he—Kosygin—was overheard (by telephone intercept) to tell Brezhnev of ‘a great possibility of achieving the aim, if the Vietnamese will understand the present situation that we have passed to them. They will have to decide. All they need to do is to give a confidential declaration’.” The Kosygin telephone call

was made to supplement—and elaborate on—a revised statement of the United States position on a bombhalt.

This had been delivered to him by Mr Wilson on an unscheduled post-midnight call at his hotel. Mr Wilson, himself, had only just received it on the hotline from the White House.

Against this background, several questions arise. How could so hardened a Communist as Mr Kosygin allow himself to be bugged? Who carried out the operation?

Had it been going on for long? Political and other British authorities involved, in the episode and in the talks at the time, answering a reporter's questions, have come up with some of the answers. Mr Kosygin was a guest of the British Government from Februarv 6 to February 13, 1967. when Mr Harold Wilson was Labour Prime Minister.

Their week-long exchanges covered many matters, but the main focus was on a search for a basis of ending the Vietnam war. As Mr Wilson told the

story in his memoirs, peace was “in his grasp” but the response of then President Johnson’s Administration to his initiative proved disastrous.

As the authors of the Pentagon Papers told the story, the late President Ho Chi Minh seemed to display as little interest as Mr Johnson appeared to in negotiations. But in general outline the Pentagon Papers broadly supported Mr Wilson’s detailed narrative.

The informants, who insisted on anonymity, reported: Mr Kosygin, who had his own security men with him, could not have known he was being overheard. His telephone was not tapped. The British assume his men would have “swept” his suite for listening devices. Almost certainly the intercept was an electronic gadget sited in a building near Claridges Hotel and beamed into Mr Kosygin’s suite. The gadgets are sensitive enough to pick up conversations half a mile away, through windows. They were worked bv intelligence specialists specially assigned to monitor Mr Kosygin when ‘he was in London. A trans-

script of Mr Kosygin’s remarks to Mr Brezhnev that cold winter’s night was on Mr Wilson’s desk at 10 Downing Street the next day. Mr Kosygin was monitored throughout his week-long stay in this country, though obviously only in certain places. Much of his time was devoted to ceremonal occasions or to official talks with Mr Wilson. But about the only time he was totally “safe” from electronic eavesdroppers was when he was inside the Soviet Embassy. There, certain rooms are known to be impenetrable.

The British Government expressed its concern to the United States in the summer of 1971 when the first batch of Pentagon Papers was published.

British worries were related to the use of various secret messages that had passed betwen London and Washington over Vietnam. The new disclosures this week plainly have deeoened that concern, although no Government Minister or Foreign Office snokesman! would comment publicly. Mr Wilson himself is

known to be less than pleased with various interpretations of his motives offered by the authors of the papers. At one point they suggested that he wanted to make political capital out of his role as a peacemaker.

The eagerness of the British leaders to participate with maximum personal visibility in bringing peace to Vietnam —in early February alone, Mr Wilson proposed travelling personally both to Washington and Hanoi —was sometimes embarrassing to the United States which greatly preferred confidential dealings “with a minimum of participants,” the papers said.

But someone close to the former British Prime Minister retorted: “There can be times when insistence on secrecy can cover a multitude of sins. The Presidential expressions of appreciation to Mr Wilson for his efforts certainly do not support the views expressed in the Pentagon Papers. “Perhaps peace in Vietnam 'will be achieved only when [United States policy is subjected to ‘maximum visibill ity