Fissionline 62

FISSIONLINE

Fissionline 62 1 November 2021

Fissionline 62 International Bulletin of Atomic Veterans November 2021

The Spy Who CameInto The Bedroom

How Knighted ex-spy secretly joined Britain’s Nuclear Test Veterans with a mission to destroy it

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FISSIONLINE SPECIAL INVESTIGATION

Fissionline 62 2 November 2021

Ex-SOE Agent went undercover to plot their downfall

By Alan Rimmer

Aformer senior British intelligence officer,

explosives expert, Fellow of the Royal

Society and government adviser, infiltrated the British Nuclear Tests Veterans’ Association posing as a scientist with a grudge, we can reveal. Sir Ernest Gordon Cox KBE, FRS, an ex- Lieutenant Colonel in Winston Churchill’s WW2 private army of saboteurs and assassins, the Special O p e r a t i o n s Executive (SOE), said he was a former assistant trials officer with the Atomic W e a p o n s R e s e a r c h E s t a b l i s h m e n t a t Aldermaston, when he joined the organisation. He told BNTVA members he had been injured during an H-Bomb test off Malden Island in the Pacific in 1957 and had to be sent home early. He said he was annoyed because when he tried to get his medical files from his former employers he was told they had been destroyed. He made no mention of his colourful past, his links with the British government, much less the fact he was a close colleague and friend of Sir Victor Rothschild 3rd Baron Rothschild GBE, GM, FRS (pictured right) a high-ranking British intelligence officer in MI5 and adviser to Margaret Thatcher. During the war they had roughly comparable positions in SOE and MI5. In the last year of the war they worked together in counter-sabotage and “related matters”, and Cox had “enjoyed Rothschild’s hospitality in Paris.” Later he was asked to lead an advisory group on explosives for the Ministry of Supply, which later became the Ministry of Defence, concentrating on

the hazards of static electricity in the manufacture of explosives. How this elderly spy, he was 76 at the time, was pictured in New Scientist magazine in the Onslow Court Hotel, London, at the bedside of Anthony Guarisco, the leader of America’s nuclear veterans, alongside the chairman of Britain’s nuclear veterans is like a story from a John le Carre spy novel. It appears Sir Ernest, who resided in well-heeled

Hampstead in North London with his wife who, like Sir Ernest formerly had a high-ranking job in the civil service, was enticed out of his comfortable retirement to join the BNTVA in the Summer of 1983. He set himself up in a onebedroom flat in Shrewsbury and joined his local branch of the BNTVA in Birmingham. He very quickly became a leading figure in the branch and came to the notice of McGinley and his colleagues on the national committee. Posing as plain Ernest Cox, he met with McGinley and several colleagues in London in March 1984 ahead of a meeting with MPs concerned about alarming rates of cancers in ex-servicemen who witnessed A-bomb tests in the 1950s. Cox said he was sent to the Pacific in 1957 as part of the AWRE team in charge of scientific instruments used to measure radiation and blast effects. After witnessing one explosion off Malden Island, he developed a skin condition causing him to be sent home early. The scientist told the veterans he wanted his medical records to see how doctors had diagnosed his skin condition, and was angry on being told his files had been destroyed. He now

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Fissionline 62 3 November 2021planned to make trouble by giving an interview to the New Scientist magazine. The veterans had enthusiastically welcomed Cox as an adviser to the 3000-strong group which was growing daily thanks to massive publicity generated by a BBC Nationwide programme. The BNTVA was attracting worldwide attention and International Greenpeace, the powerful American lobby group, had invited McGinley to London along with Anthony Guarisco, director of the American Alliance of Atomic Veterans to the meeting with the MPs. The plan was to follow this up with a 16 city, sixweek tour of the States ending with a press conference in the Senate. There they would meet up with Australian and Canadian atomic veterans to form an International Alliance of Atomic Veterans. Greenpeace would fund the tour. At the same time, McGinley was being supported by eminent scientists like Professor Alice Stewart

McGinley, Guarisco with colleague in London March 1984

from Birmingham University, who made her reputation warning of the dangers of X-rays in pregnant women, and radiation expert Dr Rosalie Bertell, President of the International Institute of Concern for Public Health (IICPH). The night before the meeting with MPs, McGinley booked into the Onslow Court Hotel in Kensington along with three or four other nuclear veterans. As they sat down to dinner that night they were joined by the unobtrusive figure of

Ernest Cox, who said he had come to lend his support to the campaign. McGinley, who had only ever spoken to Cox by phone, was surprised to see him, but welcomed him as a valuable member of the team because of his associations with the AWRE. Cox informed the gathering that he would be giving an interview to New Scientist magazine, which would be good publicity for the BNTVA. He sat slightly apart from the others, listening but saying very little. McGinley recalled: “Me and the lads ordered a meal from the set menu to save money. But Mr Cox ordered al a carte. I remember he had prawn cocktail to start, followed by something like salmon which we thought was a bit extravagant. But we said nothing because he was very well spoken and quite an old guy. I told him he would be able to claim his meal back on expenses.” To McGinley’s surprise, Cox said he would pay out of his own pocket and he also refused travel expenses. “He said he only lived across town and had come by tube, which surprised me a bit because he had given his address as Shrewsbury, 200 miles away.” recalled McGinley. One of the veterans, Mike Doyle, a former AWRE worker, told McGinley privately that he didn’t trust Cox. McGinley said: “Mike said he didn’t remember Cox being with AWRE and when he tried to talk to him about it, Cox just clammed up.” But nothing was said, and all seemed well the following day as the veteran’s group met Guarisco in his hotel room to discuss the days meetings. Guarisco was in bed after suffering a sudden heavy cold on arrival in Britain, but he declared himself fit enough to meet with MPs later that day. Cox sat quietly throughout, saying little but always listening intently. It was later in the day after the veterans had been to see MPs in Parliament that he showed his true colours.

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Fissionline 62 6 November 2021

A ccording to his official Royal Society biography, Ernest Gordon Cox was headhuntedby British spymasters in 1937 at BirminghamUniversity where he excelled in the little-knownscience of Chemical Crystallography, an obscurediscipline with important applications for thecontrol of explosives.In February 1942, Cox was recruited to be SeniorOfficer in charge of the laboratories at the Inter-Services Research Bureau (ISRB), in arequisitioned mansion called TheFrythe in Welwyn, Hertfordshire,which had been given the codename Station IX. The ISRB was thec o v e r n a m e f o r t h e S p e c i a lOperations Executive (SOE), thesecret service whose job it was to support andstimulate resistance in the occupied countries,and in Churchill’s colourful phrase “set Europealight.”.Station IX developed explosives, technicalsabotage gizmos, and camouflage equipment forthe resistance movements. One of Cox’sinnovations was the “Time-Pencil”, a small andcompact delayed-ignition device that could set offa detonator.

Sir Ernest Cox, a Very English Spy

He was also in charge of a super-secret sectionresearching bacterial and chemical weapons. “justin case”, the enemy would fail to comply withinternationally agreed rules on war.In the summer of 1944 Cox went to France asTechnical Staff Officer, with the rank of

Lieutenant Colonel, in the 21st Army Group HQ.He joined local underground resistance fightersto search out V-2 rocket sites, and took part invarious sabotage activities.

Cox and wife Jackie 1954

After D-Day, Cox continued his James Bondlifestyle in Belgium where he joined BelgiumResistance Group ‘G' specialising in detailedinterrogations about highly successful sabotagework during the enemy occupation.The upward trajectory of his life continued afterthe war with a brilliant academic career, becominga professor of physics and chemistry with a stringof honours from several universities, culminatingin a Fellowship of the Royal Society.In 1957 Cox was appointed by Rothschild, withwhom he had maintained a close relationship, tothe Government’s Agricultural Research Council(ARC), eventually rising to be Chief Executive ofthe Council in July 1960. At that time the ARCwas responsible to the Lord President, LordHailsham, as Minister for Science andTechnology. Cox was knighted in 1964,before officially retiring round about 1971.Cox is said to have regularly visited his oldBirmingham and Bristol UniversityAlumni, to give talks and lectures. Butnowhere is there mention of his work with theAtomic Weapons Research Establishment or thathe had attended nuclear bomb tests in 1957.His private correspondence, however, some ofwhich has come into fissionline’s possession,indicate that he was heavily involved in thetechnical side of atomic bomb construction, andoften worked with “hot” instruments recentlyreturned from the nuclear bomb sites. Some ofthose papers show that Cox blamed the death ofseveral colleagues from cancers caused byworking with the instruments.Cox enjoyed his retirement in apparent affluencewith his second wife and fellow academic JackieTruter, in Hampstead in north London. Cox hadtwo children. His daughter Patricia became underSecretary of State for Education in the ScottishOffice, while son Keith became like his father aFellow of the Royal Society.

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