1970s PRIVATE LIFE
0395 - SIS 1 – Secret Intelligence Services
I don't know to what extent most people are exposed to the Secret Intelligence Services (SIS) in the West. We always knew that in communist countries they pervaded every aspect of life, but it has always been assumed that they only deal with the lunatic fringe in western democracies. Yet, I seem to have attracted contact with the security services, in one form or another, for most of my life.
I guess the first time my file opened was when, at the age of 19, and went to work at the Royal Aircraft Establishment (RAE). Although I didn't know it, I was positive vetted by the security agencies, I guess MI5, who visited my neighbours and asked questions such as "Have you ever seen him anything other than sober?" This was perhaps understandable, since the Royal Aircraft Establishment undertook very high level research for the military. I was supposedly working on guidance systems for Black Knight, which was then the uppermost stage of Britain's Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM).
We were all security conscious at the RAE. Not least, we had to show our identity cards as we entered the place. Having said that, during the Farnborough Airshow which was held on the airfield, it was rumoured that people managed to get out through those gates with whole forests of conifers stolen from the exhibitors’ stands.
I had signed the official secrets act, though what I didn't know was that there were several levels of secrecy in such research establishment. The ludicrous aspect was that, although I presume I had been signed off at the lowest level, I was charged with distributing the internal reports which, for instance, gave very secret performance figures for the rockets. Incidentally, they were more than twice the level then claimed in the press. But we really were security conscious. Thus, it was announced in the press one-day that Blue Streak, the very large first stage of the ICBM, was at Farnborough. It only then emerged that each and every one of us had walked through the area in which was being held and yet we hadn't told anyone else.
The most secret area of the RAE, however, was where they worked on nuclear triggers. In this area of the RAE there was an armed guard on the front door who required that you state the password which was changed each day. Another one was needed before you could get into the laboratories themselves. Inside the laboratories everything was covered with dust sheets until actually in use, and the files were kept in bank vaults. The fact was that this was the place where the real secrets of the atomic-bombs were kept. Electronic triggers were the real secrets. Having said all that, although I knew about it, I never came anywhere near it.
MI5 must have had kittens when I got to Imperial College immediately afterwards, since Pat and I were a very friendly with students who were members of the Communist Party. Two of our friends John Cox and his wife went on to lead the Communist Party in the late 1960s. My particular friend, Robin Ellams, actually joined the Communist Party while he was at Imperial. It was strange, since he seemed to change overnight -- from being a very open person to someone who had almost a hunted look. They used to boast about the fact that their telephones were tapped and their mail opened, and I believed them - since they had found letters in their mail which had been intended for others. Whatever truth, it certainly had a psychological impact on them.
I didn't really come into contact again with the security services until I joined IBM, and even there it was only peripheral. One of my friends there told me about his work with naval intelligence working out of Singapore. I learned, for example, that he used to send his agents into China armed with fairly large cameras rather than the small ones spies are supposed to have. When I asked why this was, his answer was "Well it was cheaper to recruit new spies than to buy very expensive cameras"! He also told me that the CIA had a radio array on top of the IBM building in west London, which was intercepting all the local electronic messages.
Indeed, Sigint -- Signals Intelligence -- is now the main source of intelligence. It is said that Cheltenham run through the OU electronic database at least once a week, and I believe that is probably the case. In later years I assumed that my telephone was tapped for much of the time. Certainly it was, by the government there, when I was in Ethiopia. While I was there they also regularly looked at the files on my computer -- I once came back early from lunch and discovered that the files have been totally rearranged.
While I was at IBM I was also a borough councillor, and my fellow councillor - Gwen Barber - had a husband who was in the Special Branch. He told me some hair-raising stories about Special Branch, not least in that they indicated that its operatives totally ignored the law of the land. He, however, was in the protection squad for the Northern Ireland Secretary -- the most dangerous job in the Special Branch. But, put at its simplest, his job was to get in the way of the bullet intended for the Northern Ireland Secretary. Eventually he got promotion to Inspector within the Special Branch, something that was very rare. I realised just how important this promotion was when he explained that, in this new job, he had to point to the person who would get in the way of the bullet. That was a really worthwhile promotion! Incidentally he was one of the few people I've known who slept with a loaded revolver under his pillow -- since he was a prime target of the IRA.
At a rather different level, a boyfriend, and then husband (and godfather of our son, Miles), of one of our great friends at the Imperial College was in the army intelligence services; but in his case in the intelligence services which operated at the battlefield level. He was in the parachute regiment, and his great joy was jumping into the Malayan jungle and then hacking his way back to civilization. This was the 1960s and we all thought that he was something of an anachronism. As I said, he married Jenny, then divorced her, then married and divorced her yet again! He reappeared couple of decades later, when he became the head of the British Army (Chief of the Defence Staff, Sir Michael Jackson!
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