John Vassall
(Picture: Getty Images)Today MI5 is releasing a massive number of its historical files into the National Archives at Kew. Among them are papers telling for the first time the inside story of its investigation of John Vassall — the notorious KGB spy in the Admiralty until his arrest in 1962.
The Vassall files disclose that he was a far more important agent for Russia than previously realised, and the government of the day dared to reveal. He was cleared for access to the most highly classified atomic information and passed these secrets to Moscow.
The papers also reveal how the attitudes of Britain’s spies and media to gay people have, thankfully, undergone a sea change in the past sixty years. Homosexuals have morphed from national security threat to a community whose presence in our intelligence services is cherished.
In the 1950s gay sex was criminal. Homosexuals were demonised in the media in a way we can scarcely credit today. The Sunday Pictorial newspaper ran a three part series in 1952 for example called “Evil Men”. The paper proclaimed it was breaking “the silence over the unnatural sex vice which is getting a dangerous grip on this country” including “generals, admirals, fighter pilots, engine drivers, and boxers. Whatever next?”
Against this background, many gay people in public service were fearful of their sexuality being exposed and being blackmailed. This is what happened to John Vassall.
At the height of the Cold War in 1955 he was posted to the UK Embassy in Moscow to be clerk to the naval attaché. Vassall was caught in a classic KGB honeytrap. Newly released files show a Polish homosexual in the pay of the Russian secret service worked in the Embassy and targeted Vassall.
The Pole introduced 32-year-old Vassall to a group of Russian men. They photographed the Admiralty clerk at an orgy orchestrated by the KGB above a Moscow restaurant. The KGB threatened to send the photos to the Ambassador. Vassall agreed to spy for Moscow.
In early 1962 Vassall was betrayed by a Soviet defector. In September (one month before the first James Bond film, Dr No, was released) MI5 secretly searched Vassall’s flat in Dolphin Square. They found spy cameras and exposed films. Arrested that night, Vassall was ‘panting with fear’ and gave a full confession at New Scotland Yard.
The newly declassified files reveal how various errors by the Foreign Office and the Moscow Embassy might have prevented Vassall’s KGB recruitment. But also how, interestingly, MI5 on the whole did not share society’s homophobic attitudes of the time. Sixty years on, its investigation comes across as objective and professional. It was some of the people MI5 interviewed who referred to “queers” and “pansies” and “the handicap of [Vassall’s] irritating effeminate personality.” Not MI5.
Vassall was sentenced to 18 years in jail. His trial unleashed a media hue and cry about the potential security threat posed by gays. Positive vetting was tightened further. It was MI5 who help fight a rearguard action in 1965 to stop homosexuality being made an absolute block against holding any job that needed positive vetting.
Homosexuality remained a supposed “character defect” which raised a presumption debarring someone from government posts that required positive vetting. But that presumption could be overturned by MI5 if satisfied that national security was not at risk.
Looking back, the Vassall case detonated at the highwater mark of post-War homophobia. Homosexual activity was decriminalised a few years later in 1967. Since then many more milestones have been passed.
Above all gay people in Britain are no longer considered security risks simply because of their sexuality. Britain’s spy agencies now literally fly the flag for LGBT+ equality. The current head of MI6, Richard Moore, started a Twitter account (unheard of even five years ago). He recently tweeted that "Our LGBT+ community are enormously valued in MI6. We’re proud to fly the flag for the whole of Pride Month to celebrate the diversity of our community."
Britain’s spies, media and society have come a long way since September 1962.
