A KGB Vassal

Yesterday Greville Wynne was caught by the KGB stealing Soviet nuclear secrets. I suppose the KGB received a tip off from the Cambridge spies.

John Vassall joined the Admiralty as a clerk in 1948 and remained in that lowly rank all his career. In 1952 he was posted to Moscow as a clerk in the Naval Attaché’s department. The Russians found out from a plant in the embassy that he was gay and the story goes that in 1954 they spiked his drinks over dinner. Usually this ‘honeypot’ ruse involves a beautiful Russian girl and a photographer behind a two-way mirror in a hotel room but they made some adjustments for Vassall. After dinner they stripped him and photographed him with two naked Russian men and blackmailed him. A stronger character than Vassall would have told his ambassador and been recalled to London, but Vassall feared exposure and prosecution as a homosexual. Furthermore he did not have a good relationship with Sir William  and Lady Hayter who looked down their noses at him. He returned to London in 1956 to work in Naval Intelligence until he was caught in 1962 after two Russian defectors identified him. He got an eighteen year custodial sentence but was released after ten years in 1972.

“Rebecca West, in her book The New Meaning of Treason (1964) demurred from the notion that Vassall was “a weak and silly little man … This was unlikely to be the correct view of a man who for seven years had carried on an occupation [espionage] demanding unremitting industry in a skilled craft carried on in clandestine conditions, an endless capacity for dissimulation, and sustained contempt for personal danger.” West termed him, rather, “a professional spy, working within the conventions of his profession, [who] had no more been blackmailed into the exercise of his profession than any lawyer”. West suggested that the claim of blackmail was “putting up a smoke-screen to conceal what he had done.” Observing that Vassall had been well paid by the Soviets for his spying, West wrote: “The drunken party may have taken place, but it was probably engineered so that Vassall might refer to it should his treachery ever be discovered … Only a very stupid and helpless man would have succumbed [to a blackmail threat], and Vassall was not stupid; he was extremely resourceful.”” (Wikipedia)

Alex Grant in his 2024 biography takes a more lenient view and portrays him as a weak man unable to extricate himself from the KGB. To some extent that may be true but Vassall certainly liked the money. He had a flat in Dolphin Square and was thought to be spending £3,000 a year – his salary was £750. Grant mentions a Swedish bank account but does not draw any conclusions. When Vassall died in 1994 aged 72 he left £75,000 to charities in his Will – a lot of money in those days, when £100,000 was enough to be a Name at LLoyd’s and Vassall had stopped spying in 1962.

The Cambridge spies went undetected for so long because they were part of the Establishment. Vassall wasn’t discovered because his lowly status allowed him to operate under the radar and in those days security was lax. How many spies die in their beds, old and contented, surrounded by their children and grandchildren? We will never know because we only hear about the spies who are caught. There must be Chinese and Russian spies operating in the UK today and periodically a few get rooted out.