Christopher Andrew - The Sword and the Shield

Carrying out a Lily on the VAZA could exacerbate relations between Greece and Turkey.

The operation would be carried out in the name of a Greek who had come from Turkey and was dissatisfied with the situation of the Greek minority there (there can also be another variant [pretext] for carrying out the sabotage).

VAZA is a two-storey house in Thessaloniki. The house and its annex belong to the Turkish consulate-general… There is no furniture, only a table, iron troughs and a cooking stove.

On the upper floor of the house there are displays with Atatürk [the Turkish national hero]’s clothes and a photographic portrait of him. Apart from a desk there is no furniture.

Next to the VAZA, about 15-20 m away, there is the two-storey building of the Turkish consulate-general. This house is also used as living accommodation for consulate officials.

The VAZA and the consulate have a common courtyard. (A detailed description of the layout of the houses and the courtyard is attached.)

The most suitable place for planting a Bouquet [explosive device] is in the bushes growing about one meter from the VAZA.

The VAZA is not open to the general public. It can be visited with the permission of the Turkish consulate; a special official is assigned to watch over the VAZA and to accompany visitors to the VAZA.

The VAZA and the consulate are guarded round the clock by two gendarmes. The guard posts are mobile and the approaches to VAZA are restricted. The most convenient time to approach the target is at nightfall.

Specifications of the Bouquet:

The size and weight of the Bouquet must be related to the results which are desired from the attack on the VAZA. Evidently, there is no point in causing serious damage to the VAZA; it is better to achieve a moral and political effect. When calculating the force of the Bouquet, one must bear in mind that the distance from the Splash [explosion] to the consulate living quarters is 15-20 m.

…In order to increase the impact and achieve the desired results, the Bouquet must be wrapped in a newspaper published in Turkey for Greek citizens.

The temperature in Thessaloniki ranges in winter from below zero to 14°C, while in summer it ranges from 24°C upwards. Occasionally there are thick fogs.

The Gardener [saboteur] must be sent to the country as a foreign tourist at the height of the tourist season. The greatest influx of tourists occurs from June to August. According to his identity documents, the Gardener’s identity documents must show him to be a citizen of a country friendly to Greece or a neutral state (the USA, Britain, West Germany, Austria, France, Italy, Canada, Libya), excluding the Scandinavian countries, Denmark, Holland and Belgium.

On arriving in Athens the Gardener can hire a motor car, visit historical sites in the south of the country and some of the islands. Simultaneously, the Gardener is acclimatizing himself and becoming fully accustomed to the situation in the country.

After collecting the Bouquet from the residency via a DLB [dead letterbox], the Gardener travels to Thessaloniki by rail.

The estimated time span for carrying out the Lily and for the Gardener’s activities is as follows:

AFTER ARRIVING IN Athens, the Gardener can hire a motor car the next day, spend one or two days in Athens and its suburbs, then travel the following route by car: Athens-Pátrais-Spártia-Návplion-Epidhauros-Kóinthos-Athens. This route will take the Gardener four or five days. On arriving in Athens, the Gardener books into a hotel. The next day he places a signal indicating he is ready to carry out the DLB operation to receive the Bouquet. The DLB operation takes place next day.

After collecting the Bouquet, the Gardener leaves by the next train to Thessaloniki, having previously booked out from the hotel. A train leaves Athens at 11:42, and arrives at Thessaloniki at 19:29; he travels in a first-class compartment.

At Thessaloniki he does not stay at a hotel. In order to acquaint himself with the situation around the VAZA he walks past the VAZA after checking for surveillance.

As darkness falls, the Gardener goes off on a route of his own choice, but at the final stage goes into the old fort, where he inserts the little flower [detonator] into the Bouquet. From the northern gates of the fort, the Gardener goes down Isail Street which leads to the VAZA and comes out on St. Paul Street. This takes 15-20 minutes.

On coming out on to Isail Street, the Gardener goes from the garage towards St. Paul Street. While moving along the [VAZA] fence, the Gardener causes the Splash [explosion]. The Gardener can throw the Bouquet into the bushes which are close to the VAZA fence or he can drop the Bouquet on the ground inside the VAZA fence. (A diagram of the route and of the location of the installations is attached.)

After completing the Splash, the Gardener goes out on Áyios Dhimitrios Street and moves in the direction of the stadium (20-25 minutes walk). In the stadium area there is some waste ground where the Gardener can bury the TWA or BOAC airline bag used for keeping and transporting the Bouquet. From Thessaloniki, the Gardener can go to Athens by train or air (buying the air ticket 5-10 minutes before takeoff, using any surname).

If the situation does not permit the Gardener to put the Bouquet together, then he can get rid of it… in the area of the stadium where there is some waste ground. If he attracts the attention of the VAZA security guard, he must say that he is a foreign tourist going from the fort to the Delta Hotel, where he intends to spend the night, but that this is his first visit to the town and he is not sure of the way to the hotel. 101

Soviet intelligence operations in Britain from the 1930s onward fall into three distinct phases. First, there was a golden age, begun by the Great Illegals, during which the KGB collected better intelligence (even if it did not always understand it) than any other hostile intelligence agency in British history. Next came a silver age during the 1950s and 1960s, which included fewer—though still substantial—intelligence successes. The third phase, in the 1970s and 1980s, qualifies, at best, as a bronze age, successes. The third phase, in the 1970s and 1980s, qualifies, at best, as a bronze age, with few major successes and some spectacular failures.

The golden age of Soviet intelligence operations in Britain came to an end in 1951 with the flight of Burgess and Maclean to Moscow and the recall of Philby from Washington. 1The files noted by Mitrokhin, however, reveal for the first time that one major ideological agent recruited in the mid-1930s, Melita Norwood (HOLA), continued to operate after the demise of the Magnificent Five. 2From March 1945 onward, while working in the research department of the British Non-Ferrous Metals Association, she had been able to provide intelligence on the TUBE ALLOYS project to build Britain’s first atomic bomb.

After the Second World War there was a recurrence of the wartime rivalry between NKGB and GRU for control of Norwood. Her first post-war controller was an NKGB/MGB officer at the London residency, Nikolai Pavlovich Ostrovsky. During the Committee of Information (KI) period in the early Cold War, however, when the MGB and GRU combined their foreign intelligence services, Norwood had two GRU controllers: Galina Konstantinovna Tursevich and Yevgeni Aleksandrovich Oleynik. In April 1950, following the conviction of the atom spy Klaus Fuchs and the MI5 interrogation of SONYA, the wartime GRU controller of both Norwood and Fuchs, Norwood was temporarily put “on ice” for fear that she might have been compromised. Contact, however, was resumed in 1951. Within about a year, following the demise of the Committee of Information, control of Norwood was reclaimed by the Centre from the GRU. 3