Peter Wright
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- For other uses, see Peter Wright (disambiguation).
Peter Maurice Wright (August 9, 1916—April 27, 1995) was a scientist and former MI5 counterintelligence officer noted for writing the controversial book Spycatcher (ISBN 0-670-82055-5), which became an international bestseller with sales of over 2 million. Spycatcher was part memoir, part exposé of what Wright claimed to be serious institutional failings in MI5 and his subsequent investigations into it. He was a friend and a poker buddy of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) counterintelligence chief James Jesus Angleton.
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[edit] Father's footsteps
Peter Wright was born in Chesterfield, Derbyshire, United Kingdom, the son of Maurice Wright, who was the Marconi Company's director of research, and one of the founders of signals intelligence during World War I. Despite showing an early aptitude for wireless work, during the Great Depression Peter Wright was obliged to get work as a farm labourer to help make ends meet. During World War II, however, he joined the Admiralty's Research Laboratory. After the war, Wright joined Marconi's research department and, according to Spycatcher, he was instrumental in resolving a difficult technical problem. The CIA sought Marconi's assistance over a covert listening device (or "bug") that had been found in a replica of the Great Seal of the United States presented to the U.S. Ambassador in Moscow in 1945 by the Young Pioneer organization of the Soviet Union. Wright determined that the bugging device was actually a tiny capacitive membrane (a condenser microphone) that became active only when 330 MHz microwaves were beamed to it from a remote transmitter. A remote receiver could then have been used to decode the modulated microwave signal and permit sounds picked up by the microphone to be overheard. The device was eventually attributed to Soviet inventor, Leon Theremin.
[edit] Intelligence
In 1954 Wright was recruited as principal scientific officer for MI5. According to his memoirs, he then was either responsible for, or intimately involved with, the development of some of the basic techniques of ELINT, for example:
- Operation ENGULF, acoustic cryptanalysis of Egyptian Hagelin cipher machines in 1956;
- Operation RAFTER remote detection of passive radio receivers used by Soviet agents through detecting emanations from the local oscillator, in 1958 (a technique now more commonly used to enforce payment of television licences); and
- Operation STOCKADE, analysis of compromising emanation from French cipher machines in 1960.
In addition Wright claimed that he was regularly involved in black bag jobs to illegally install bugs for the government, and that MI5 was so well organised for this they even had expert tradesmen on hand to rapidly and undetectably effect repairs in the event that someone bungled and made a mess whilst installing a bug. He also claimed that MI5 was involved in a conspiracy to remove Labour prime minister Harold Wilson.
[edit] Claims about Roger Hollis
Another of Wright's most controversial claims concerned a later role in pursuing what he believed to be a Soviet mole in MI5, concluding that his own boss, Sir Roger Hollis, was the mole. According to Wright, his suspicions were first raised by Hollis' seeming obstruction of any attempt to investigate information from several defectors that there was a mole in MI5, but he then discovered that Hollis had concealed relationships with a number of suspicious persons, including:
- a longstanding friendship with Claud Cockburn, a communist journalist who was at the time suspected of ties to Soviet intelligence; and,
- an acquaintance with Agnes Smedley whilst Hollis was in Shanghai, at a time Smedley was in a relationship with Richard Sorge, a proven Soviet spymaster.
Later during his investigations, he looked into the debriefings of a Soviet defector Igor Gouzenko and found to his surprise that the revelations of that debriefing were not reported or recorded. After a lengthy check, he discovered that it was Hollis who was sent to Canada to interview Gouzenko. Gouzenko had provided Hollis with clear information about Alan Nunn May's meetings with his handlers. Gouzenko also noted that the man who met him seemed to be in disguise, not interested in his revelations and discouraged him from further disclosures. Gouzenko had not known about Klaus Fuchs, but he had named a low level GRU agent, Israel Halperin. When the Royal Canadian Mounted Police searched Halperin's lodgings, they found Fuchs' name in his addressbook. Fuchs immediately broke off contact with his handler, Harry Gold, and shortly afterward took a long vacation to Mexico. In face of this circumstantial evidence, Wright became convinced that Hollis was a traitor. Wright alleges in Spycatcher that Gouzenko himself deduced later that his interviewer might have been a Soviet double agent and was probably afraid that he might recognize him from case photos that Gouzenko might have seen in KGB files, which would explain why Hollis was disguised.
[edit] Retractions
Peter Wright reportedly did make a retraction of at least one aspect of his memoirs, "Spycatcher." Stella Rimington, a former MI5 director who was in MI5 while Peter Wright was still working there, says that he retracted his statement about the MI5 group of 30 officers who plotted to overthrow Wilson's government.[1]
[edit] Later life
Peter Wright died in Tasmania, Australia on April 27, 1995 aged 78.
[edit] References
- ^ http://www.guardian.co.uk/freedom/Story/0,,549895,00.html Stella Rimington in the Guardian, extract from her memoirs
[edit] Sources
- West, Nigel (1987). Mole Hunt. London: Wiedenfeld & Nicolson. Nigel West is the pen-name of Rupert Allason.
- Wright, Peter (1987). Spycatcher. New York and London: Viking Penguin Inc.
