v Primary Sources v

Graham Mitchell was born in 1905. Educated at Winchester School and Oxford University, Mitchell worked as a journalist and later as a statistician in Conservative Central Office. Mitchell was recruited into MI5 in 1939 via a contact within the Conservative Party. Although he suffered from polio he became a well-respected field officer.

Mitchell, an expert on fascist organizations, he eventually became head of F Branch (Domestic Subversion). In 1953 he was placed in charge of D Branch (formerly B Division), the unit responsible for counter-espionage. His staff of 30 officers monitored over 300 Soviet intelligence officers working under diplomatic cover. In 1956 he was appointed as Deputy-Director of MI5 under Roger Hollis.

In January 1964 Arthur Martin interviewed Michael Straight, an American who had studied at Trinity College, Cambridge. While at university he became friends with Kim Philby, Donald Maclean, Guy Burgess and Anthony Blunt. Straight claimed that Blunt had tried to recruit him to become a Soviet spy.

Arthur Martin and Jim Skardon had interviewed Blunt eleven times since 1951. Martin, now armed with Straight's story, went to see Blunt again. This time he made a confession. He admitted being a Soviet agent and named John Cairncross, Peter Ashby, Brian Symon and Leo Long as spies he had recruited.

Arthur Martin was disappointed when it was discovered that Roger Hollis and the British government had decided not to put Anthony Blunt on trial. Martin once again began to argue that there was still a Soviet spy working at the centre of MI5. Hollis thought Martin's suggestion was highly damaging to the organization and ordered Martin to be suspended from duty.

After his suspension had ended, Arthur Martin, along with Martin Furnival Jones and Peter Wright, went to see Dick White, head of MI6. They told White that they were convinced that either Hollis or Mitchell were Soviet agents. White contacted Hollis and it was agreed that Mitchell should be kept under constant surveillance. Hollis was also investigated but no evidence was found against either men and they were both officially cleared of being a spy.

As a result of the investigation, Mitchell decided to retire early from MI5 in 1963. Graham Mitchell died in 1984.

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(1) Peter Wright, Spycatcher (1987)

The head of D Branch, Graham Mitchell, was a clever man, but he was weak. His policy was to cravenly copy the wartime Double Cross techniques, recruiting as many double agents as possible, and operating extensive networks of agents in the large Russian, Polish, and Czechoslovakian emigre communities. Every time MI5 were notified of or discovered a Russian approach to a student, businessman, or scientist, the recipient was encouraged to accept the approach, so that MI5 could monitor the case. He was convinced that eventually one of these double agents would be accepted by the Russians and taken into the heart of the illegal network.

The double-agent cases were a time-consuming charade. A favorite KGB trick was to give the double agent a parcel of money or hollow object (which at that stage we could inspect), and ask him to place it in a dead letter drop. D Branch was consumed every time this happened. Teams of Watchers were sent to stake out the drop for days on end, believing that the illegal would himself come to clear it. Often no one came to collect the packages at all or, if it was money, the KGB officer who originally handed it to the double agent would himself clear the drop. When I raised doubts about the double-agent policy, I was told solemnly that these were KGB training procedures, used to check if the agent was trustworthy. Patience would yield results.

(2) 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.