Christopher Andrew - The Sword and the Shield

One of the FCD’s most successful eavesdropping operations against a British target was directed at the chief SIS station in the Middle East, which was located in the British embassy building in Beirut (codenamed OVRAG, “Ravine”). 13During the early 1960s a Lebanese maid in the embassy, Elizabeth Aghasapet Ghazarian, was talent-spotted by a bishop in the Armenian Orthodox church, codenamed OLAF, who had been recruited as a Soviet agent in 1947. 14In 1964 Ghazarian was herself recruited as agent ZOLUSHKA (“Cinderella”). 15By January 1966 she had successfully planted a radio microphone (STEREO-1) in the office of the ambassador, Sir Derek Riches. On February 4 ZOLUSHKA succeeded in concealing another radio microphone (STEREO-2), about the size of a matchbox, behind the desk of the Old Etonian SIS head of station, Peter Lunn (codenamed PHOENIX), who worked under diplomatic cover as the embassy first secretary. 16

The Centre was briefed on Lunn’s background and career by his former colleague Kim Philby, who had worked in Beirut as a journalist and SIS agent from 1956 until his defection to Moscow in 1963, soon after SIS obtained proof of his treachery. 17Lunn was one of Britain’s leading skiers; he had been captain of the British team at the 1936 Winter Olympics and was the author of a series of well-known skiing manuals. 18He and Philby joined SIS at almost the same moment in 1941. 19After his defection Philby informed the KGB that Lunn had been awarded the CMG (the highest decoration then given to any SIS officer save the Chief) for his success in the planning and operation of a 500-meter tunnel under East Berlin which in 1955-6 tapped Soviet and East German telephone lines. The Centre rather admired Lunn’s professionalism and calm, self-assured manner. According to a report on operation RUBIN in 1967:

Peter Lunn has many agents, who collect information on intelligence services of socialist countries and their representatives in the Middle East, on the activities of the intelligence service of the United Arab Republic [the short-lived union of Egypt and Syria], on oil policy (via a fluctuating agent network), on relations between Arab countries and the USSR and carry out the cultivation of Egyptian intelligence officers. In his agent work Lunn shows caution, experience, puts a high priority on security with agent contacts. With those agents who do not know that Lunn works under embassy cover he used the assumed name Joseph and met either at a clandestine rendezvous or at the flat of his secretary… For meetings with agents who are personally known to Lunn, he used his flat or business premises in the city. Lunn is demanding, strives to give his agents set tasks and to ensure they are carried out clearly. He is very economical when paying rewards to his agents, he adheres strictly to the rule that, firstly, it is only necessary to pay for information when it is unobtainable without paying and, secondly, that payment is only for that information which can be used actively.

Lunn’s only major weakness, in the Centre’s view, was his relaxed attitude to station security. The KGB eavesdroppers overheard one of his staff suggest extra security measures. They must have been relieved to hear Lunn reply that no further measures were necessary. The bugging of the office of the Beirut head of station, codenamed operation RUBIN, continued for three and a half years after Lunn was recalled to a post at SIS headquarters in November 1967. 20

The deputy head of the FCD, Mikhail Stepanovich Tsymbal, reported to Andropov in 1967 that RUBIN had identified over fifty British agents in the Middle East and Europe: “Of the greatest interest is the identification of an SIS agent group consisting of a courier and two agents in the highest government circles of Iraq.” SIS was also alleged to have “an important agent” in Egypt “with access to President Nasser,” and “sub-sources” who included the foreign minister of one Middle Eastern country and the army chief-of-staff of another. 21

Operation RUBIN also revealed that SIS had penetrated the Lebanese Communist Party. Its most important penetration agent was a lawyer who was a member of the Party’s Politburo and a personal friend of its general secretary, Nicolas Chaoui. On September 27, 1967 the Centre informed the Soviet Politburo that, in addition to keeping SIS well informed on the affairs of the Lebanese Communist Party, the lawyer had provided intelligence on contacts between the Party leadership and the retiring Soviet ambassador, and on Soviet involvement in the affairs of the Lebanese and Syrian peace movements and of the Cairo Peace Conference. The Centre, however, was reluctant to warn Chaoui that one of his closest associates was an SIS agent, probably for fear that he would confront the agent, who in turn would alert SIS to the penetration of its operations.

In 1971, a year after SIS had discovered the bugging of its Beirut station, the Soviet Politburo gave permission for Chaoui to be briefed during a visit to Moscow. At a meeting in the international department of the CPSU on December 25, Pavel Yefimovich Nedosekin, a senior FCD officer, informed Chaoui that the lawyer was regarded by SIS as “one of its very valuable agents” and had given it secret information about the Lebanese Communist Party and two of the most important Soviet front organizations, the World Peace Council and the Afro-Asian Solidarity Committee. Though doubtless somewhat shocked, Chaoui admitted that, as early as 1949, he had received a report of a confidential meeting between the lawyer and a British consul; he added that since 1968 the lawyer had twice been to London, ostensibly for treatment to a cataract. Chaoui acknowledged that he had no intelligence department capable of protecting Party security, and promised to take immediate action to set one up. 22

Among other unwelcome revelations of operation RUBIN was the discovery that SIS had succeeded in planting six agents in the KGB, the GRU and the Czechoslovak StB. The most important appears to have been SHAUN, the owner of an advertising bureau in Damascus, who was discovered to be a double agent run by Lunn’s deputy, BARITONE. A Centre damage assessment concluded that SHAUN had compromised a series of KGB operations in which he had taken part, among them the recruitment of the Spanish cipher clerk GOMEZ (arrested after his return to Spain); the attempted recruitment of an unidentified member of the West German embassy in Damascus; and contacts between the Soviet military attaché and the chief of the Syrian general staff. SHAUN had also reported to SIS on an affair between the KGB resident in Damascus and the wife of a Soviet doctor. Andropov was tersely informed that “measures have been taken to neutralize the consequences of SHAUN’s treachery.” 23

In January 1967 ZOLUSHKA also succeeded in placing a bug in BARITONE’s office in the SIS Beirut station. In addition to running SHAUN, he was discovered to have sixteen agents inside the Lebanese Communist Party and other left-wing organizations. A detailed study of the SIS officers in Lebanon, Jordan, Syria and elsewhere identified through the bugging of the Beirut station led the Centre to draw a number of general conclusions which, surprisingly, it does not seem to have fully grasped before. The report on operation RUBIN concluded, correctly, that the cover posts occupied by SIS officers in British embassies were rarely as high as counselor and never higher; most were first, second or third secretaries, and seldom headed any of the main embassy departments such as trade and information. SIS personnel did not keep to the daily diplomatic routine, spent more time outside the embassy, lived in worse accommodation, drove older cars and gave fewer large receptions at their homes than British diplomats, but had higher expense allowances and arranged more meetings in restaurants and other public places. Philby had doubtless made such points before, but KGB debriefers still tended to seek only detailed classified information from agents and defectors and failed to use them to add to their general understanding of the West. By the late 1960s Philby was, unsurprisingly, deeply depressed and drinking heavily, convinced that the KGB had “no idea” of how to profit from his vast experience. 24