Guy Maynard Liddell was born in 1892. A gifted cellist he was studying in Germany and was destined to become a professional musician until the outbreak of the First World War. He served with the Royal Field Artillery and during the war won the Military Cross.
In 1919 Liddell joined Scotland Yard. Later Liddell became the liaison man between Scotland Yard, the Special Branch and the Foreign Office. In this role he was involved in exposing the spying activities of the All Russian Cooperative Society, a spy ring based in London.
Liddell joined MI5 in 1927. He worked closely with the Special Branch and was eventually placed in charge of B Division, a unit concerned with counter-espionage and became Britain's leading expert on subversive Bolshevik activities in Britain.
In 1935 Liddell recruited Dick Wright as his private secretary and MI5's thirtieth officer. Liddell told Wright that he was needed to help prepare for the inevitable war with Germany.
Another agent employed by Liddell was Maxwell Knight, who became head of B5b, a unit that conducted the monitoring of political subversion. One of Knight's most important agents was Joan Miller, a member of various right-wing organizations. Miller eventually became very close to Archibald Ramsay, the leader of the Right Club.
After the outbreak of the Second World War Miller began to suspect that Ramsay was a German spy. Miller also believed that Anna Wolkoff, who ran the Russian Tea Room in South Kensington, the main meeting place for members of the Right Club, was also involved in espionage.
In February 1940, Anna Wolkoff met Tyler Kent, a cypher clerk from the American Embassy. He soon became a regular visitor to the Russian Tea Room where he met other members of the Right Club including Archibald Ramsay. Wolkoff, Kent and Ramsay talked about politics and agreed that they all shared the same views on politics.
Kent was concerned that the American government wanted the United States to join the war against Germany. He said he had evidence of this as he had been making copies of the correspondence between President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill. Kent invited Wolkoff and Ramsay back to his flat to look at these documents. This included secret assurances that the United States would support France if it was invaded by the German Army. Kent later argued that he had shown these documents to Ramsay in the hope that he would pass this information to American politicians hostile to Roosevelt.
On 13th April 1940 Anna Wolkoff went to Kent's flat and made copies of some of these documents. Joan Miller and Marjorie Amor were later to testify that these documents were then passed on to Duco del Monte, Assistant Naval Attaché at the Italian Embassy. Soon afterwards, MI8, the wireless interception service, picked up messages between Rome and Berlin that indicated that Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, head of German military intelligence (Abwehr), now had copies of the Roosevelt-Churchill correspondence
Soon afterwards Wolkoff asked Joan Miller if she would use her contacts at the Italian Embassy to pass a coded letter to William Joyce (Lord Haw-Haw) in Germany. The letter contained information that he could use in his broadcasts on Radio Hamburg. Before passing the letter to her contacts, Miller showed it to Maxwell Knight.
When Winston Churchill sacked Vernon Kell as head of MI5 Liddell was promoted to the director of B Division. A few days later Maxwell Knight told Liddell about the Right Club spy ring. On 18th May, Liddell had a meeting with Joseph Kennedy, the American Ambassador in London. Kennedy agreed to waive Kent's diplomatic immunity and on 20th May, 1940, the Special Branch raided his flat. Inside they found the copies of 1,929 classified documents including secret correspondence between Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill. Kent was also found in possession of what became known as Ramsay's Red Book. This book had details of the supporters of the Right Club and had been given to Kent for safe keeping.
Anna Wolkoff and Tyler Kent were arrested and charged under the Official Secrets Act. The trial took place in secret and on 7th November 1940, Wolkoff was sentenced to ten years. Kent, because he was an American citizen, was treated less harshly and received only seven years.
Another agent employed by Liddell was Dusko Popov. He discovered information suggesting that the Japanese Air Force planned to attack the United States at Pearl Harbor. Surprisingly he did not notify the White House or the US Office of Naval Intelligence about this plan. Instead he sent Popov to J. Edgar Hoover, the head of the FBI. Hoover did not take the necessary action and the United States forces were not prepared for the attack on 7th December, 1941. Liddell was later blamed for not telling President Franklin D. Roosevelt about this information.
Liddell was expected to succeed David Petrie as chief of MI5. However, Ellen Wilkinson, who served under Herbert Morrison, the Home Secretary, had heard rumours from Europe that Liddell was suspected of being a double-agent. As a result, Liddell did not get the top job and instead became Deputy-Director-General.
In October 1950 Kim Philby warned Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean that they were being investigated by MI5. Burgess returned to London and in May 1951 he defected with Maclean to the Soviet Union. This created serious problems for Liddell as Burgess was a close friend and they were often seen together at parties, clubs and the opera. Liddell had also been seen drinking with other suspects Kim Philby and Anthony Blunt in a pub in Chelsea. Liddell once again came under suspicion. After the investigation held by MI5 Liddell was demoted and given the job of Chief Security Officer at Harwell.
Guy Liddell died in 1958.
In November 1979, Goronwy Rees, gave a deathbed confession that he had been a Soviet spy. He also claimed that Liddell was also a traitor and had been part of the Kim Philby, Guy Burgess, Donald Maclean and Anthony Blunt spy ring.
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(1) Kim Philby, My Secret War (1969)
He (Guy Liddell) would murmur his thoughts aloud, as if groping his way towards the facts of a case, his face creased in a comfortable, innocent smile. But behind the facade of laziness, his subtle and reflective mind played over a storehouse of photographic memories.
(2) Peter Wright, Spycatcher (1987)
Liddell was a towering figure in the story of MI5. He joined in 1927, from the Special Branch, where he almost single handedly ran a Soviet counterespionage program. He controlled MI5 counterespionage throughout the war with determination and elan, and was the outstanding candidate for the Director-General's chair in 1946. But Attlee appointed a policeman. Sir Percy Sillitoe, instead, almost certainly as a snub to MI5, which he suspected of engineering the Zinoviev letter in 1929. Liddell soldiered on under Sillitoe, barely able to contain his bitterness, only to fall foul of the Burgess/Maclean scandal in 1951. He had been friendly with Burgess for many years, and when Burgess went, so too did whatever chances Liddell still had for the top job. He retired soon after, heartbroken, to the Atomic Energy Commission.
(3) Joan Miller, One Girl's War (1970)
It infuriated M (Maxwell Knight) when his assessments of a situation were dismissed as unimportant by people who ought to have known better. One of his papers, for example, entitled 'The Comintern is not Dead', predicted with great accuracy the developments in Russia's policy with regard to Britain after the war, as well as underscoring the harmful character of her current subversionary activities. Roger Hollis, to whom the paper was first submitted, sent it back with the comment that it was over-theoretical. It-then went to Guy Liddell and various other Soviet-experts, all of whom expressed the opinion that M was allowing his personal distaste for Communism to swamp his judgement. M, undaunted, got the paper off to Desmond Morton, Churchill's private secretary, who was also a personal friend of his, with the plea that it should be passed on to the Prime Minister.
(4) George A. Carver, The Fifth Man, Atlantic Online (September 1988)
If there actually was such a fifth man, the pool of serious candidates, with the requisite access and seniority, is very small. Indeed, it probably consists of no more than three people.
One is Guy Liddell, who was the deputy director general of MI5 from 1947 until he retired, in 1952. He, Burgess, and Blunt were friends, and Liddell was very much a part of the hothouse wartime circle revolving around Victor Rothschild's 5 Bentinck Street flat, in which Burgess and Blunt both lived. During the war Liddell ran MI5's counterespionage division, where Anthony Blunt was his personal assistant. Philby had a high regard for Liddell, whom he described in My Silent War - with Empsonian ambiguity - as "an ideal senior officer for a young man to learn from." In 1944 Liddell assisted Philby in the successful bureaucratic knifing of Philby's then superior, Felix Cowgill, so that Philby could become the head of SIS's expanding counterintelligence effort (which Philby terms his "Fulfillment"). Liddell, however, was greatly admired, professionally and personally, and has many staunch defenders. These include Sir Dick White, Philby's nemesis in both MI5 and MI6, both of which White headed, and Peter Wright (of Spycatcher fame), one of the most avid of all mole-hunters.
The two others are Graham Mitchell and Sir Roger Hollis. In 1951 Mitchell was in charge of counterespionage; he became deputy director general of MI5 (under Hollis) in 1956 and retired in 1963. He drafted the patently mendacious, demonstrably erroneous 1955 white paper on the Burgess-Maclean defection. On the strength of that document the Foreign Secretary, Harold Macmillan, gave Philby what the latter would call the happiest day of his life by publicly affirming Philby's innocence in the House of Commons - declaring, in a statement that Mitchell helped draft, that Philby was not the third man ("if indeed, there was one"). Hollis became deputy in 1953 and moved up in 1956 to be director general until his retirement, in 1965. Mitchell and Hollis were the subject of a series of investigations during the 1960s. Both were eventually declared innocent of any wrongdoing.
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