SPY VERSUS SPY
Great Britain’s fascination with the spy tradecraft has not diminished, as is evident in the latest media stories on a likely Chinese spy at the highest echelons of the government. Maj. Gen. Ajay Sah is the CIO at Synergia Foundation, with experience in conflict resolution, peacekeeping & counter-terrorism.
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reat Britain has been an eager participant in the great game of spying since its heydays as the ‘Empire on which the sun never set’. Then it was the Tsarist Russian Empire spreading its wings across Central Asia into the guts of the British Empire - India, which Rudyard made legendary in his books on the ‘Great Game’. The four decades of the cold war was the apogee of the espionage duel when both sides let loose a bevvy of domestic and foreign agents to mine information. Many such shady personalities have today become subjects of legends perpetuated by popular fiction and Hollywood. Therefore, the delight of the British press was not at all surprising when the contents of a drably worded ‘security services interference alert’ (SSIA) issued by counter-intelligence agency MI5 was leaked to the press. The SSIA drew attention to one Christine Lee working for the United Front Work Department (UFWD) of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) ‘seeking to covertly interfere in UK politics through establishing links with established and aspiring parliamentarians across the political spectrum.’ The name of Labour MPs started making the rounds, and it was alleged that the Labour party had been the benefactor of funds donated by the UFWD. Reportedly, Ms. Lee has been a long-term Labour funder, especially of its MP, Mr. Barry Gardiner and over half a million pounds have been allegedly transferred to the Labour party since 2005. It sounds straight out of the 1960s press which was regularly full of such scandalous allegations and rumours.
Blind political belief based on idealism, bitter disillusionment with their own political system, greed and the allure of glamour and romance have been cited as obvious motivations for spies to turn against their country. SPIES AND POLITICIANS
The UK political scene has been a hotbed of sleazy scandals involving politicians and spies with dazzling beauties thrown in for good measure. Blind political belief based on idealism, bitter disillusionment with their own political system, greed and the allure of glamour and romance have been cited as obvious motivations for spies to turn against their country. Cold war Britain appeared riddled with moles, many of whom were exposed, some fled to USSR, and many obviously remained undetected. The Cambridge Five (Donald Maclean, Guy Burgess, Harold “Kim” Philby, Anthony Blunt and John Cairncross) are the most famous. Three Cambridge undergraduates were recruited by the Soviets in 1934 through their Cambridge professor Ludwig Wittgenstein, and two more joined them later. With their redoubtable Cambridge degrees, they were able to infiltrate the British government and intelligence agencies during World War 2 and after it with little effort during the Cold War. Maclean, Burgess and Philby fled to the USSR, while Blunt and Cairncross were not detected till 1970 and 1990, respectively. None of them were ever prosecuted; Blunt working for the Royal household, was stripped of his knighthood. The most famous of them was Kim Philby, who worked
