The man who came from nowhere

Press, 27 January 1988, Page 16

The man who came from nowhere

The ‘Observer’ profiles the new Director General of MIS

MOST SENIOR British policemen are not of the generation to use too much American slang. In their parlance, intelligence officers are not spooks, they are funnies. The funnies are funny because they are not officially supposed to exist. In 1980, the chief funny in Northern Ireland was the late Sir Maurice Oldfield, whose amiable, owlish features had, by the end of his career, became one of the worst-kept secrets in the history of the Secret Intelligence Service. Sir Maurice had been invited by Mrs Thatcher to become security co-ordinator operating out of an office in Stormont. His task was to persuade four competing intelligence-gathering agencies to make war against terrorists rather than each other. These were the Royal Ulster Constabulary’s special branch, Army intelligence, Ml 5 and his own service, Ml 6.

Among the more junior Ml 5 men under his command was a fair-haired man of medium height called Patrick Walker, who in the Civil Service list for that year is described as an Assistant Secretary in the liaison department. Mr Walker, in his late 40s then and with the taste, recently acquired, for the locally-produced tweed rather than suits, was in fact assistant to Mr David Ransen, who as Director of Intelligence for Northern Ireland was the most senior Ml 5 officer there.

Two weeks ago both the “Guardian” and “The Times” announced that the Prime Minister had chosen the same Patrick Walker to be the new Director General of the Security Service — its D.G.S.S. The “Guardian” suggested that in doing so Mrs Thatcher had skipped a generation tainted by the Security Commission’s report on the failure of senior officers to detect the obvious instability of the drunken Michael Bettaney, the Ml 5 officer jailed for 23 years for selling secrets to the Russians. It was also pointed out that Mr Walker comes from the service’s F branch which is responsible for “domestic subversion” a term which seems to embrace everything from the National Council for Civil Liberties to the Brighton bombers.

F branch used to be the poor relation in Ml 5, mostly condemned to monitoring the daydreams of the ineffectual fringes on both Left and Right. It was K branch that did the glamorous counter-espionage stuff. Now F had overtaken K in importance

because, for perhaps the first time in its history, the security service is more interesed in the activities of those British citizens it deems to be dissident than plots by foreign agents. Unlike most senior intelligence officers, especially those in Ml 6 who have usually served abroad under diplomatic cover, Mr Walker is not listed in “Who’s Who.” A former Irish civil servant who encountered the Ml 5 man from time to time during the course of his duties around Stormont thought he was so low down the scale of things that he hardly paid him any attention. “There has been a rumour going around the service that the person who had the D.G.’s job had a name beginning with W—- — nobody thought of Walker,” a former Mls man explained. The same soure recalled seeing Walker drinking occasionally in he Pig & Eye, the bar on the sixth floor of Mls’s headquarters in Curzon Street which was set up to discourage officers talking shop in pubs. But, in an occupation which probably produces as many alcoholics as journalism or medicine, his drinking was only ever social. “He is a completely featureless sort of person,” said our informant, “I can’t remember much about him. He had so little personality I would not have though it was enough for him to go to the top.” Not surprisingly, perhaps, that dedicted band who are to> Britain’s intelligence community what popular newspapers are to royalty, are equally taken aback.

“He’s the man from nowhere. I have absolutely zippo on him,” admitted Mr Peter Hennessy of the Institute of Contemporary British History. “He’s not even a household name in his own household. It’s almost worth writing a piece saying, crikey his name has come out, he said sharply. Sir Howard Smith, a former ambassador to Moscow who was Director General of Ml 5 from 1979 to 1981, has his home telephone number listed in his entry in “Who’s Who.” “I have nothing to say,” he gigled. “I’m a mathematician by training and in my book nothing means nothing.” Across the Atlantic Mr William Colby, ex-director of the CIA, appeared willing at least to be more helpful. He pondered the name. "Nope,” he said at last, never heard of him. “Good luck!”

We returned to the spy-watch-

ers and tried the young Tory M.P., Mr Rupert Allason, who writes histories of the secret servies under the pen-name Nigel West. “Not my meat,” he sniffed with the air of a man who had been offered supermarket plonk instead of his customary vintage claret. “The elite was always K branch you see. They traditionally supplied the leadership.” We contacted Mr Wright at his horse ranch in Hobart, Tasmania. The millionaire’s wife, Lois, said he had retired to bed early but she would go and ask him. She came back with the reply that her husband had absolutely no recollection any any Patrick Walker. Delighted Commander (rtd) Bill Hucklesby, for many years the distinguished boss of Scotland Yard’s anit-terrorism squad and the sort of policeman whose rank and specality gave him access to the Funnies, did indeed remember Mr Walker and was delighted about his promotion. But when pressed for further details the Commander suddenly remembered Section two of the Official Secrets Act even better. “I was rather surprised they can still keep secrets.” “Not in “Who’s Who?’ How extraordinary,” said Dr Christopher Andrew of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, who two years ago published a muchacclaimed history of the British

secret services from the Boer War to Bettaney. He suggested that we try Mr Hennessy. “I have to tell you I have never heard of him. He has never crossed my path,” confessed Mr Chapman Pincher, whose books have made him almost as much money out of His Majesty’s secret servants as Mr Peter Wright’s “Spycatcher.” “Personally, I though a woman was going to be the new D.G.S.S. I can’t mention her name because she’s the daughter of a friend of mine.” Mr Walker succeeds Sir Antony Duff, a jovial and much decorated World War II submarine commander whose hospitality to visiting rugby clubs when he was High Commissioner in Nairobi in the early 1970 s was notorious.

Sir Antony was one of three outsiders appointed as D.G.s since 1945. The others were Sir Howard Smith and Sir Percy Sillitoe, a former gang-busting chief constable of Sheffield whose son recalls him emerging from the office white-faced with fury convinced, quite rightly as it turned out, that he was being ridiculed by a bunch of ex-public schoolboys who peppered their conversation with Latin epigrams.

Sir Antony, who replaced the miner’s son Sir John Lewis Jones in 1984 after the horror of the Bettaney affair, turned out to be much more popular with the troops, but has been making it

plain to Mrs Thatcher for some >j time now that he wants to go.

The men who should have succeeded Sir Antony were either Walker’s old boss in Ireland, Mr David Ransen, or Mr John Devereux, who ran K branch. Bettaney undid Mr Devereux.

Ml 5 paid a heavy price for his treachery because they were tipped off by their best agent in place, the former KGB station chief Oleg Gordievsky who had returned to Russia. A joint team of intelligence officers from Ml 5 and Ml 6 were running Gordievsky but once they realised he was compromised it was Ml 6 who got him out of the Soviet Union in an intriguing operation the details of which are unlikely to be revealed this century.

And so last week a fair-haired gent, in good shape for his age, arrived at Curzon Street in Mayfair which remains Mls’s headquarters despite the claims from, some spywatchers that they have moved. We can imagine him nodding to the discreetly armed policemen just inside the door, noting the state of the “security alert” on the board displayed by the lifts, showing his identity card to the man behind the bullet proof glass. Perhaps at this stage the man still studies the mug shot carefully. For this is a face people have difficulty in remembering. Enter Patrick Walker — the perfect spy.