I defended myself as vigorously as I could. It was not a question of politics. The head of the Central Policy Review Staff had requested a briefing, and I had given it to him and it had been approved by DOSS. It was not my fault if the material was unpalatable or embarrassing.
"If we refused to circulate intelligence because it was embarrassing, there would be little purpose in our sending anything at all!"
Both F.J. and Victor supported me loyally throughout. Victor relished the row and composed a series of elegant memorandums which winged their way through Whitehall defending the Security Service's right to provide intelligence requested of it by No. 10 Downing Street. Philip Allen was outraged by this flagrant flouting of Home Office prerogative, and refused to speak to me for years. To Victor he sent a terse note which he showed me gleefully. "Keep off the grass," thundered Allen ominously.
One afternoon, at the height of the row, I was in Victor's room in the Cabinet Office when Ted Heath put his head around the door.
"Prime Minister," said Victor, "I think you should meet Peter Wright, he is one of the stranger phenomena in Whitehall..."
Heath looked humorlessly over in my direction, and asked me where I worked.
"The Security Service, sir," I replied.
He grunted.
"Peter is responsible for the briefing on subversion which is currently causing the problem," said Victor cheerfully.
Heath immediately fixed me with a steely glare.
"You should not be indulging in politics," he glowered, "there are mechanisms for this sort of material."
He turned on his heel and stalked out.
"Christ, Victor," I said.
"Don't worry, " replied Victor, "Ted's always like that. I'll talk to him later."
The following day Victor rang up. He told me Heath had devoured the briefing that night.
"Is this true, Victor?" he asked in amazement, and when told it was, redoubled his crusade to remain in power.
But not all the requests for information were legitimate. One evening Victor invited me around for drinks at St. James's Place.
"There's a businessman I think you should meet," he told me. "He is a wealthy industrialist."
I had been discussing retirement with Victor at the time. In 1972 I finally learned that the promise MI5 had made to me in 1955 about my pension was not to be honored. In order to join the Service I had been forced to give up fifteen years of pension rights with the Admiralty. At the time Cumming had talked smoothly of ex-gratia payments, and ways the Service could iron out these problems. But in the new, gray MI5 a gentleman's agreement was a thing of the past. According to the rules, I had no case for a pension, even though every scientist who joined the Intelligence Services after me (some fifty in number) was able to transfer his pension, largely through my pressure to rectify the inequity.
It was a bitter blow, and did much to sour my last few years in the Service. Inevitably I thought about the possibility of security work. It did not greatly appeal to me, but it seemed a stable way of propping up my savagely depleted pension. At first Victor and I discussed my joining N.M. Rothschild, but Hanley was unhappy about the proposal, so when Victor heard that this businessman was looking for someone to do security work, he suggested a meeting.
I took an instant dislike to the man. It was clear to me that he was on the make. Over drinks he talked loosely about needing advice and guidance from someone "in the know" without quite spelling out what he meant, or how much he was prepared to pay for it. Eventually he suggested I lunch with him and some colleagues at a London hotel to discuss his proposition in more detail.
His colleagues were a ramshackle bunch. They were retired people from various branches of intelligence and security organizations whose best years were well behind them. There were others, too, mainly businessmen who seemed thrilled to be in the same room as spies, and did not seem to care how out of date they were.
This time my would-be employer came straight to the point.
"We represent a group of people who are worried about the future of the country," he intoned.
He had something of the look of Angleton on a bad night about him. He said they were interested in working to prevent the return of a Labor government to power.
"It could spell the end of all the freedoms we know and cherish," he said.
The others nodded.
"And how do you suppose I can help?" I asked.
"Information," he replied, "we want information, and I am assured you have it."
"What precisely are you after?" I inquired.
"Anything on Wilson would be helpful. There are many people who would pay handsomely for material of that sort."
"But I am a serving member of the Security Service..." I began.
He waved his hand imperiously.
"Retire early. We can arrange something..."
I played along for the rest of the evening, but gave nothing away. The following day I went to see Hanley and told him what had happened. I suggested that I continue to monitor the group's activities as an agent, but Hanley thought discretion was a better policy.
"Leave it alone, Peter," he said, "it's a dirty game, and you're well out of it."
Hanley knew little about the material which had been gathered on Wilson and the Labor Party during the 1960s, so I encouraged him to study it. Elections were in the offing, and it could become relevant again, I told him.
"It's like FLUENCY," he said when he had read the files, "there's lots of smoke, but not a lot of fire."
Nevertheless, he agreed that it was prudent to re-examine the material. Angleton, in particular, was beginning to badger us constantly about Wilson, and I told Hanley it would be politic to be seen to be doing something.
As events moved to their political climax in early 1974, with the election of the minority Labor Government, MI5 was sitting on information which, if leaked, would undoubtedly have caused a political scandal of incalculable consequences. The news that the Prime Minister himself was being investigated would at the least have led to his resignation. The point was not lost on some MI5 officers.
One afternoon I was in my office when two colleagues came in. They were with three or four other officers. I closed the file I was working on and asked them how I could help.
"We understand you've reopened the Wilson case," said the senior one.
"You know I can't talk about that," I told him.
I felt a bit lame, but then I did not much enjoy being cornered in my own office.
"Wilson's a bloody menace," said one of the younger officers, "and it's about time the public knew the truth."
It was not the first time I had heard that particular sentiment. Feelings had run high inside MI5 during 1968. There had been an effort to try to stir up trouble for Wilson then, largely because the DAILY MIRROR tycoon, Cecil King, who was a longtime agent of ours, made it clear that he would publish anything MI5 might care to leak in his direction. It was all part of Cecil King's "coup," which he was convinced would bring down the Labor Government and replace it with a coalition led by Lord Mountbatten.