The DG's office was bright and airy. Antique walnut furniture and leather-backed chairs made it feel more like Bond Street than Whitehall. Portraits of the three previous Director-Generals stared austerely across the room from one wall. On the other side the full Board of MI5 Directors sat behind the polished conference table. I recognized Cumming and Hollis, but the rest were unknown to me.
The Director-General, Sir Dick Goldsmith White, invited me to sit down. I had met him before on one of the many visits to Cumming's office, but I could not pretend to know him well. Ironically, he had also been at Bishop's Stortford College, where he had held the record for the mile, but it was well before my time. He was tall with lean, healthy features and a sharp eye. There was something of David Niven about him, the same perfect English manners, easy charm, and immaculate dress sense. Indeed, compared with his Board, he was positively raffish.
When we were seated he opened the interview on a formal note.
"I hear you wish to join us, Mr. Wright. Perhaps you could explain your reasons."
I began by explaining some of the things I had already done for the Service. I stressed, as I had done earlier to Cumming, that it was impossible for me to do more unless I was brought inside, and fully trusted.
"I think I speak for all my Directors," he replied, "when I assure you that we would not contemplate bringing in a scientist without providing him with the access necessary to do the job. You will be fully indoctrinated."
Cumming nodded.
"However," White went on, "I think I should make it clear that the Security Service is not like other Whitehall departments with which you may be familiar. If you join us, you will never be eligible for promotion."
He explained that entry to the Service was generally at an older age than to the Civil Service, and followed a set career pattern involving general officer training in a wide variety of MI5 branches. Few of these ordinary officers made the next step to the limited number of Senior Officer posts (later Assistant Director), and fewer still had any realistic chance of aspiring to one of the six Directorships. By entering at the Senior Officer's grade to do a highly specialized job, I effectively precluded any chance of a Directorship. I told the Board frankly that, since I was by nature a lone furrower rather than one of life's bosses, this did not worry me at all.
We talked briefly about integration with Whitehall, which was something I felt needed urgent attention in the technical field, and after twenty minutes the questions began to dry up. Finally Dick White summed up.
"My view, Mr Wright, is that I am not sure we need an animal like you in the Security Service." He paused to deliver his punch line: "But if you are prepared to give it a try, so are we."
The stiffness melted away. The other Board members got up from behind the table and we chatted for a few minutes. As I was leaving, Dick White beckoned me over to his desk at the far end of the room.
"Peter, I am going to start you off in A2 with Hugh Winterborn, and obviously Malcolm will be responsible for tasking, but I have told him I anticipate that you will be spending most of your time on D Branch matters - the Soviet problem."
He drummed his fingers lightly on his desk diary and gazed out of the window in the direction of the Russian Embassy complex in Kensington.
"We're not winning that battle yet by any means." He snapped the diary shut and wished me luck.
After lunch I made my way back along the fifth floor for the routine interview with the Personnel Director, John Marriott. During the war Marriott had served as Secretary to the Double Cross Committee, the body responsible for MI5's outstanding wartime success - the recruitment of dozens of double agents inside Nazi intelligence. After the war he served with Security Intelligence Middle East (SIME) before returning to Leconfield House. He was a trusted bureaucrat.
"Just wanted to have a chat - a few personal details, that sort of thing," he said, giving me a distinctive Masonic handshake. I realized then why my father, who was also a Mason, had obliquely raised joining the brotherhood when I first discussed with him working for MI5 full-time.
"Need to make sure you're not a Communist, you understand."
He said it as if such a thing were impossible in MI5. In the weeks before Cumming's final approach I was aware that a retired policeman attached to the DG's secretariat had made a routine inquiry about me at the Marconi Company. But apart from this interview I was not subject to any other vetting. Indeed, although this was the period when MI5 were laying down strict vetting programs throughout Whitehall, it was not until the mid-1960s that any systematic vetting was brought into MI5 at all.
Marriott's desk was empty, and I assumed the interview was being taped for inclusion in my Record of Service. Marriott took the session seriously enough, but asked only a few questions.
"Expect you were pretty left-wing when you were young?"
"Mildly. I taught in the Workers' Educational Association in the thirties."
"Fairly Communist, was it?"
"Not in Cornwall," I replied.
"Voted Labor in 1945, did you?"
"I thought most people in the services did."
"Pretty middle-of-the-road now, though?"
I told him I abhorred Nazism and Communism. He seemed pleased at the lengthy speech I made. We moved onto my personal life. He danced around the subject until finally he asked:
"Ever been queer, by any chance?"
"Never in my life."
He studied me closely.
"Have you ever been approached by anyone to do clandestine work?"
"Only by you."
He tried to laugh, but it was clearly a line he had heard a thousand times before. He unlocked his desk drawer and gave me a form to fill in with details of next of kin. I was vetted. No wonder it was so easy for Philby, Burgess, Maclean, and Blunt.
Before formally joining A2 as the Scientific Officer, I underwent two days' training together with a young officer joining MI5 from university. The training program was the responsibility of a tough, no-nonsense officer named John Cuckney. We got on well. Cuckney could be downright rude, but I soon realized that he was just tired of knocking into shape young MI5 recruits of generally poor caliber. He was altogether different from the average MI5 officer. He refused to submit to the monotony of the dark pinstripe, preferring bolder styles. Cuckney was his own man and had broad horizons beyond the office. It was no surprise to me when he left MI5 to pursue a successful career in business, first with Victoria Investments, and later with the Crown Land Agents and as Chairman of the Port of London Authority. Today, Sir John Cuckney is Chairman of Westland Helicopters.
Cuckney began our training with a routine lecture on the legal status of MI5.
"It hasn't got one," he told us bluntly. "The Security Service cannot have the normal status of a Whitehall Department because its work very often involves transgressing propriety or the law."