Talk:Roger Hollis

Correction: Arthur Martin was not sacked by Dick White, he was sacked by Roger Hollis himself.

At the time of his termination, Arthur Martin was in the employ of MI5, which was Roger Hollis's bailiwick - Dick White was head of MI6 at the time.

Moreover, after his termination from MI5, Dick White himself brought Arthur Martin into MI6 where he worked until retirement.

Source: Peter Wright's 'Spycatcher'.

The above removed from the end of the article. Rich Farmbrough 14:58, 7 May 2005 (UTC)

Given that the only real public domain information abouut this affair came from Peter Wright's book "Spycatcher" this version is a fair synopsis of the book

GraemeSmith 18:39, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

There is additional 'authoritative' information now in CHristopher Andrew's book Defend the Realm which provides some insight into divisions within MI5 between some intelligence officers and the others (called "young turks" (including Peter Wright) who considered Hollis was a soviet agent.

Petrus Magnus (talk) 09:06, 27 June 2016 (UTC)petrus magnus

In my view the material from Spycatcher and West's writing needs to be separated from the biography of Hollis. Ideally the suggestions can be juxtaposed against the supposedly accurate views of Christopher Andrew - as a spokesperson for modern day MI5. Everything within intelligence and counter intelligence needs to be taken with a grain of salt but ultimately it serves the public interest to have a reasonable article about Hollis and an article about the Hollis Affair. There is enough material in the public domain to put together articles that (on the face of it) are correct.

But we always have to bear in mind that some stuff is kept highly secret, while other stuff turns out to be total speculation and wholly incorrect. (The Area 51 stories could be a template for the Hollis story. It might be about highly classified USAAF technology, or about real Alien spacecraft. It can never be proven if those holding the information choose not to release anything.) So, Hollis may not have been a spy. He may have been a double agent. He may have been a triple agent.

We also need to remember that West was being fed selectively by someone in the Young Turks and the Spycatcher book was also by a young turk - who was disaffected because his final MI5 pension did not acknowledge his previous years of military work. Of course other things that may have disgruntled him have not come to light. Nothing is straight forward in the espionage business.

A glaring question (to a certain extent) is why Hollis approached MI6 and then went to MI5. It's probably innocent, i.e. because Marcus was already in SIS but maybe it's because Kuczynski (or someone unknown) pushed him. Maybe he was even in the pay of the Chinese even? Petrus Magnus (talk) 07:20, 30 June 2016 (UT

Stating and tagging this as unreferenced is clearly unmerited. I just read through Nigel West's book and Peter Wright's and it is all there save one item. The only thing not in those two texts is the bit on Hollis not telling Profomo certain details but I could have missed it. I also sorted out an ambiguous bit about Profomo who was involved with C. Keeler, not Hollis

Further details and depth are disclosed in Nigel West"s "Mole Hunt" (1987. Wiedenfeld and Nicolson, London) which came out the same year as Peter Wright's book. The demand for sources placed at the top of the article is unwarranted. This really is a synopsis of what is in Peter Wright's book and this is clearly stated in the article as a source. Nigel West's book substantiates much of what Wright wrote and is in this very brief article.

Malangthon 23:26, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

There need to be page references.--Jack Upland (talk) 10:25, 19 September 2015 (UTC)

I went to a great deal of effort to find proper references, quotes and facts about the life of Hollis. I took them from a number of different sources and developed a reasonable, balanced picture of Hollis' career. But someone has summarily replaced it all with the same old Spycatcher allegations. Very disappointing.

Petrus Magnus (talk) 12:25, 2 July 2016 (UTC)

@Petrus Magnus: There were multiple reasons for why your edits were removed. Go here to discuss them....William, is the complaint department really on the roof? 13:04, 2 July 2016 (UTC)

No, absolutely not. My personal Talk page is not to be used for this purpose and no-one should assume otherwise. Any comments there will be deleted. The correct venue for comments is on this Talk page. Having said that, the recent changes to the article have completely messed-up the text and I regret that I have not the time to rescue the text. David J Johnson (talk) 12:50, 3 July 2016 (UTC)

Several passages in this article are extemely subjective or slanted. For example:

Hollis was asked to come in and clear up the allegations. Having been the director, Hollis knew all about the procedures of the interrogation and investigation, in fact he was expecting to be called in anyday. He remained calm and composed throughout, denying all allegations. His memory failed when it suited him and he could not account for the inconsistencies the interrogators found. He was a very secretive man and MI5 had very little information about his past.

Not to mention this line:

At the very least, Hollis was one of the most incompetent men that had ever directed a security organization of such a scale as MI5 in the cold war era.

--Osprey39 22:23, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

I agree. As I understand it, KGB archives have proved Spycatcher very out of date. I am surprised so much credence is given to it here.

Sorry, but "KGB Archives" do not prove anything, they could have been made up by anybody. Spycatcher is an eye-witness account by a person who was part of this affair, and should be taken as such. Kraxler 02:06, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Apparently the KGB Archives only prove guilt.--Jack Upland (talk) 10:45, 19 September 2015 (UTC)

Those are direct quotes from Chapman Pincher's 'Their trade is treachery'. There are no reasons to totally trust 'released' KGB archives as is there no reason to trust in Hollis' leadership as Director.

I concur. The KGB as the final word of credibility? The KGB? The NKVD? The GRU? Their archives 'prove' anything? Who came up with that nonsense?

Malangthon 23:55, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

If they are direct quotes then they should appear and be referenced as such. Until they are rewritten and sourced, I am deleting them but placing the content here for ease of use. Pennywisepeter 13:10, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

He remained calm and composed throughout, denying all allegations. His memory failed when it suited him and he could not account for the inconsistencies the interrogators found. He was a very secretive man and MI5 had very little information about his past. The Trend Committee under Lord Trend was entrusted the matter of investigating Hollis later. After a long enquiry it reported the allegations inconclusive, neither denying nor confirming them. At the very least, Hollis was one of the most incompetent men that had ever directed a security organization of such a scale as MI5 in the cold war era.

In it's present form the article is quite neutral enough, references for the accusations are given, and Hollis's only answer was "stout denial", never explaining, never convincing. If this case went to a jury, they would convict him in 5 minutes. But one minor point is lacking: his intorrogating Gouzenko in disguise for fear of recognition. I will add that. Kraxler 03:17, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

Anyway, whatever else he may have done or said, and independant of proof for or against the fact per se, he entered History as the "Man Who Was Accused of Being a Mole", so his biography is necessarily a little heavy on this point. Kraxler 04:17, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

A jury would convict him in 5 minutes? In an English court, the prosecution would have to prove their case beyond reasonable doubt, there would be strict rules of admissible evidence, and Hollis would not have to say anything. The conclusive evidence against him doesn't appear in this article, anymore than it appeared in Spycatcher etc.--Jack Upland (talk) 08:42, 22 September 2015 (UTC)

The "controversies" section should not be the entire article. Provide a biography section first, then you can add that section to the article.Landroo 17:40, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

I agree with Landroo. That entry of his or hers (above) inspired me to look deeply into the matter others noted and find the references where possible. It also caused me to look into the material posted by Ron Morgans.

I think the biographical information is now in chronological order, effectively referenced and should now be accepted as the (more or less) definitive entry for Sir Roger Henry Hollis. There may be one or two other tid bits of information that have not been recorded here, but they can be added later. Also there may be other material that remains classified and could be released later.

The rest of the allegations and suggestions should be placed in a separate article about the "Hollis Affair" (as Pincher dubbed it, I think). Thus all the material by Wright along with additional coloring by Nigel West and others can be set out in a clear way and referenced.

I think no-one (i.e. outsiders) can be certain of anything in an espionage setting - especially in the context of the cold war. A lot of the well intentioned leaking and exposes may be unprovable. A lot of the mystery about undetected spies will remain hidden. We must also remember that the enemy agencies are more than happy to sow disinformation to side track the opposition.

Many of the former soviet spies who published in the west may sow disinformation, quote from flawed memories, or refer to incomplete records. They may not have had the level of clearance to see the whole picture; and the agency may have expunged material.

As I noted about Andrew's access to MI5 records - he can put his hand on his heart and say nothing he wrote is contradicted in the higher classified files he saw but could not use. Firstly he may not have seen the most highly secret stuff. Secondly, contentious files may have been destroyed or never even committed to a paper record.

Now I would be glad for others to put together a Hollis Affair file and I can help reference and cross reference it.

Petrus Magnus (talk) 09:27, 27 June 2016 (UTC)petrus magnus

The link for Arthur Martin goes to the article for North Tyneside Council

Not to complain, but while the allogations against the man are very interesting, and could be true, to date there has been no verification of the fact that he is a spy... shouldn't there be a bit more in here regarding the rest of the man's career? I mean, what if he was innocent? A lifetime of service rewarded only by the question of his loyalty?

Certainly he was a spy, what is disputed is if he was a MOLE. If not, he was INCOMPETENT to the nth degree. Evaluate the possibilities and make your choice..... Kraxler 02:11, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

The claim that he was a mole is the most famous thing about him, but that doesn't mean that it should dominate the article in this way. Almost all the sources are sources which claim he was a mole. But the claim that the head of MI5 was a Soviet mole is really a fringe theory.--Jack Upland (talk) 08:37, 22 September 2015 (UTC)

I added an insight on Hollis' son Adrian's chess training in the Soviet Union when he was still a young, promising player. This is mentioned in "Spycatcher", by Peter Wright, page 200, as being volunteered by Hollis himself to Wright. It was virtually unheard of in the 1950s and 1960s for any young Western-based chess player to travel to the Soviet Union to compete regularly or for training. The Cold War was on, remember, and the standards of Soviet chess were the best in the world, for example in the mid-1950s, it can be argued that the USSR had 15 of the world's top 20 players. Britain was very far behind Soviet standards in chess at that time. The unwritten implication is: how did Adrian and / or his father manage to arrange this!? Perhaps a new angle of inquiry here. I also added Chapman Pincher's claim from his 1981 book "Their Trade is Treachery" that Hollis was recruited in China in the early 1930s by Richard Sorge to spy for the GRU. User:FrankEldonDixon January 8, 2009 (UTC)

Postcards containing Cold War spy messages unearthed might explain why chess is an important skill for both spies and spy catchers. JRPG (talk) 14:16, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

I notice someone has added " Again, no evidence has been advanced to support these assertions." I once had a copy of Pincher's Too Secret Too Long (which I can't quote from because unfortunately I seem to have lost it), and I seem to recall hundreds of pages of evidence. Much of it came from fragments of Shanghai police records that managed to be evacuated to the US just a few hours before the Japanese invasion, but didn't get un-boxed and examined until decades later. IIRC, Shanghai police had started following Hollis around after he kept turning up at private parties run by a known communist agitator, and found he occasionally co-habited in a flat rented by Agnes Smedley, a communist activist, probable communist agent, and at the time one of Richard Sorge's two girlfriends. Pincher also found evidence that when Hollis returned to England, he ended up living in the country a very short walk from another girl suspected of being a Soviet agent (don't recall the name, as I say this is all from memory.) All of it circumstantial, and far too weak for a criminal prosecution, but my goodness, if Hollis hadn't managed to conceal his Shanghai activities from MI5 they certainly would never have employed him. Taken together with the "is he a traitor or just plain incompetent" results of most of his operations, it certainly looks pretty suspicious. -- Securiger (talk) 04:24, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

There appears to be nothing particularly suspicious at all. We are all (more or less) six degrees of separation from everyone else. According to her article, Agnes Smedley was correspondent for Frankfurter Zeitung and the Manchester Guardian in China. And the English-speaking community in Shanghai wasn't that large. It would be strange if Hollis didn't have some association with her. To say people are a security risk because they have broad interests and experiences is stupid. It was an intelligence service, not an unintelligence service.--Jack Upland (talk) 10:36, 19 September 2015 (UTC)

I suggest that Jack Upland actually reads the various works that refer to Hollis in China. There is strong suspicions on his activities there and after. Had this been known at the time of his joining MI5, it would have rung alarm bells then. David J Johnson (talk) 10:49, 19 September 2015 (UTC)

And when Donald Maclean joined the civil service, he admitted to a dalliance with Marxism. Did that exclude him? Should it have excluded him? I have read Spycatcher, and was impressed by the lack of logic. But I didn't realise that Hollis had stayed overnight in an apartment owned by an acquaintance who might have had sexual intercourse with the journalist, Richard Sorge - incidentally, a trusted initimate of Japanese officials. I didn't realise that Hollis had later lived a "very short walk from another girl". The evidence is mounting!!! But, unfortunately, in the words of my late father, it is "evidence of nothing in particular".--Jack Upland (talk) 11:55, 19 September 2015 (UTC)

Similarly, they were aware of Kim Philby's leftist youth when he joined MI6.--Jack Upland (talk) 08:35, 22 September 2015 (UTC)

Exactly, but the authorities didn't seem to be aware of Hollis's leftist associations. It was only when investigative reporters looked into his background that they came to light. Please also keep your comments to the article subject and stop totally unnecessary comments and POV regarding your late father. Thank you, David J Johnson (talk) 08:48, 22 September 2015 (UTC)

So why would alarm bells have rung? Hollis seems to only be accused of "associations", "mixing in circles" - not of beliefs or activities.--Jack Upland (talk) 10:06, 22 September 2015 (UTC)

Frankly you seem to be making comments without reading all of the relevant material on the case. Hollis was suspected as a possible mole because of the number of cases that went wrong, that could not be attributed to any of the other defectors. Only when this occurred did the joint MI5/MI6 investigators, and later investigative journalists, start looking into his early life. I would also remind you that the Trend Report, looking at case long afterwards, could not come-up with a definitive answer - one way or the other. There was no final evidence that Hollis was guilty or innocent. I believe the article and Talk page as it stands is neutral and mentions all known details and is certainly not in need of some of the silly and POV comments recently made here. David J Johnson (talk) 10:39, 22 September 2015 (UTC)

Claiming that I have introduced POV comments to an otherwise neutral talk page is absurd. Let's look at a few of these "neutral" comments: "If this case went to a jury, they would convict him in 5 minutes."..."Certainly he was a spy, what is disputed is if he was a MOLE. If not, he was INCOMPETENT to the nth degree."..."If Peter Wright was such a fool, why did Margaret Thatcher have his book prohibited in the UK?"..."it certainly looks pretty suspicious"...And so on. What's silly is claiming the head of MI5 was a Soviet mole and then saying you don't need to provide proof.--Jack Upland (talk) 10:59, 22 September 2015 (UTC)

I found it unusual that there is are no details of his death. Derekbd (talk) 17:29, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

This has now been addressed. [[User:Petrus Magnus (talk) 06:54, 30 June 2016 (UTC)]]

The GRU and the KGB probably swapped information so the alleged difference between them is mostly not worth speaking of. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.179.38.222 (talk) 16:54, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

Oh and how do you know this? Sorry, but this info is not correct. Regards, David J Johnson (talk) 17:06, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

If anything this correction doesn't go far enough. There is evidence across most espionage histories of the time that the GRU and KGB were deliberately kept separate and in competition and that the KGB and GRU agents wouldn't have been aware of each other. The KGB tried to recruit Klaus Fuchs when he was already a GRU agent, because they didn't know that (as referenced in Chapman Pincher's last version of Treachery and other works). (GesPM (talk) 19:16, 26 October 2011 (UTC))

See the article on Klaus Fuchs. This notes that he was transferred from the GRU to the NKGB. This was in about 1943. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.27.109.117 (talk) 16:27, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

Feklisov seems to have been an NKVD agent, not GRU. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.97.55.83 (talk) 17:37, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

See VENONA #1822, in the article on Alger Hiss. This implies that the NKVD and GRU were well aware of each other.

Of course they were aware of each other, but GRU were a military organisation and the NKVD were not. There is no evidence that they shared all their agents or activities. See GesPM above. Regards, David J Johnson (talk) 23:04, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

Indeed for proper security KGB & GRU would have kept their agents secret from the other organization - they did so even from other departments of the same agency. Petrus Magnus (talk) 02:02, 2 July 2016 (UTC)

I have added additional tags to the article to reflect serious issues in need of immediate attention. this article should not be considered neutral, fair or balanced until these issues are addressed, including the reliability of the sources apparently used to smear Hollis. Please see this BBC source for their measured opinion of Hollis's critics: "BUGGER - Maybe the real state secret is that spies aren't very good at their jobs and don't know very much about the world" - Thursday 8 August 2013, 17:31 - by Adam Curtis :

The leading MI5 dissident who was leaking the information to Pincher was called Peter Wright. He was one of the most senior members of MI5 but he was also somewhat paranoid.

To get a sense of Peter Wright and how he saw the world I have put together some bits of him being interviewed in the 1980s about another of his conspiracy theories. This was that the Prime Minister - Harold Wilson - had also been a Soviet agent.

In Wright's mind much of the British establishment had been directly or indirectly taken over by the Soviet Union. He had no hard evidence for this - but he was driven by an underlying mind-set that was going to spread throughout much of the intelligence agencies - and journalism - over the next twenty years.

This said that if you imagined the other side was doing something devilish and deceptive - then they probably were. It meant that in the dark world of intelligence, imagination was more powerful than obvious facts. Because if you couldn't find the evidence it proved how clever the enemy had been at covering their tracks.

It was a fevered romantic view of the world that would both entrance the readers of newspapers - but would also lead the intelligence agencies into the disaster of the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq in 2003

Here is the grandaddy of that conviction - Peter Wright. The person called Angleton he refers to was an even odder American equivalent of Wright who was high up in the CIA - and who also was convinced Wilson was a Soviet agent.

The tone of Wright's plaintive child like statement about Angleton - "he believed it - he did" tells you a great deal about the emotions driving these strange men in their spy-bubbles. But as in all organisations - egos started to come into play. Other MI5 agents started leaking other names to other journalists. Pincher's main rival was a writer called Nigel West.

Nigel upped the stakes. He began to publish books and articles alleging that all sorts of other people had been traitors. Here he is on Nationwide in 1981 in full flow. He says that a man called Leo Long was a traitor, and then goes on to suggest that others - including even the former Governor of Uganda, Sir Andrew Cohen - might be traitors.

It's worth looking closely at what Nigel West says about Sir Andrew Cohen - because it shows how weird this paranoid outpouring from the secret world was becoming. When he was an undergraduate at Cambridge in the 1930s Cohen had been a member of an intellectual society called The Apostles. So had two of the spies - Burgess and Blunt.

The interviewer asks Nigel how he knows Sir Andrew might be a traitor. Nigel says:

"I haven't named him (Sir Andrew) up to now because it's not known whether he was a Soviet agent. But I think it's worth saying that anybody, if you are talking about the Apostles, many of them were Soviet agents. And he would undoubtedly have been questioned since he rose to a very senior position in the Department of Overseas Development"

That's it. But Nigel does have a fabulous haircut...It became farce. The journalists who had started the mole-hunt went to war. Nigel West wrote a whole book announcing that he had discovered that the 5th man wasn't really Hollis, but was actually Hollis' deputy. He was a man called Graham Mitchell who in his spare time was a grand master in correspondence chess.

Both Peter Wright and Nigel West are savaged in this and other sources and it's dubious at best, highly-deceitful at worst to base the majority of this article on Roger Hollis on them, hence why I have added the relevant warning/issue tags and make clear in no uncertain terms that this article is in a very, very poor state. Azx2 17:32, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

You mean a 2013 BBC feature supersedes contemporary published sources? If Peter Wright was such a fool, why did Margaret Thatcher have his book prohibited in the UK? Conspiracy theories have always been a staple of the (yellow) press, but the truth about the Secret Service threatened national security, perhaps? The article, as it is, states exactly what happened in the 1950s, giving the sources with inline citations for all allegations. It's a fact that Hollis was suspected to have been a mole, and was investigated officially. It's a fact that the investigation was "inconclusive", meaning that no positive proof could be found to nail him down, and that no negative proof was found to rule it out, either. The reader is entitled to get as much pertinent info as possible and to make up his own mind. Kraxler (talk) 00:12, 20 September 2013 (UTC)

Absolutely agree with Kraxler's comments above. Chapman Pincher has a long record in exposing shortcomings in the security services and has been proved right on many occasions. The fact that both the heads of MI5 and MI6 felt that the Hollis case was worthy of further investigation is surely proof that there were doubts about his loyalty. That is why he was called back from retirement to face questioning, though the outcome was inconclusive. All sources agree that with the retirement of Hollis the evidence of penetration ceased. It is unfair to single-out Pincher and Wright as the main accusers: Arthur Martin a senior MI5 officer, who later transferred to MI6 raised the same suspicions, as did several high-ranking MI6 staff. Whilst I feel that the article could be tidied-up, the basic facts contained therein are correct and it is left for the reader to decide the pros and cons of the case against Hollis. Finally and frankly, I suspect the motives of the "editor" who has raised the matter, without any further confirmed new information Regards, David J Johnson (talk) 15:09, 20 September 2013 (UTC)

Disturbed to see that this article has been tagged as the result of a single blog post by Adam Curtis (whose journalistic training was on the That's Life! tv show). Curtis, though he has a certain modish following among those who don't know what he's on about, repeatedly gets his facts wrong or the wrong end of whatever stick he's waving at the time (he finds amusing archive film clips though, I'll give him that). I will now check which tags were added as a result and remove them. In the meantime here is Rupert Allason/Nigel West responding to the Curtis blog (from the comments following on from here):

Readers of this site should be aware that it contains many, many factual inaccuracies and the views expressed by Adam Curtis appear to be based on a very superficial understanding of how intelligence agencies work, the limits under which they operate, and even a basic understanding of specific cases. His references to the cases of Anthony Blunt, "Donald McLean" (sic), Arkadi Gouk, Michael Bettaney and Oleg Lyalin in particular are deeply flawed. His often gratuitous comments reveal that his ignorance, for example, of the purpose of positive vetting, which is not to catch spies, but to prevent individuals wit certain disadvantages from gaining access to classified information.

Two central issues arise: Firstly, research of the most recent declassification of MI5 files from before the First World War show that although William le Queux may have exaggerated the scale of current German espionage, there was a major clandestine offensive underway, centred on Mrs Emily Riley and her four daughters. The investigations conducted by Chatham and Sheerness led to the exposure of a very large spy-ring, and Nicholas Hiley is quite wrong in the assessment quoted by Curtis.

Secondly, Curtis's choice of cases, and disparaging analysis, is largely based on a skewed view of episodes that are presented as intelligence failures or breaches of security when quite often they are rather impressive counter-intelligence coups.

I would be happy to provide chapter and verse of the specific errors if requested. www.nigelwest.com

Testbed (talk) 07:55, 8 August 2014 (UTC)