Volume 56, Number 16 · October 22, 2009
Digging for Moles
By Geoffrey Wheatcroft
Treachery: Betrayals, Blunders, and Cover-ups: Six Decades of Espionage Against America and Great Britain
by Chapman Pincher
Random House; 679 pp; $36.00
In 1938, Roger Hollis joined MI5, the British internal security service, sister agency (not that sororal relations were always affectionate) to MI6, the Secret Intelligence Service: spy-catchers and spies respectively. He would serve with MI5 for twenty-seven years, rising to be deputy director-general in 1953, and director-general three years later. That was during the height of the cold war, years of acute drama and controversy when his agency was so buffeted by scandal that very dark suspicions were aroused. While Hollis was still head of MI5 a young diplomat called John Cornwell began publishing well-informed novels under the pen name John le Carré, and introduced the public to a shadowy land of betrayal, double agents, and moles. There was already ample evidence of Soviet penetration of the security services; might it have gone to the very top?
Review, 3866 words
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