IT IS a tale of secret agents and surveillance that could have come straight out of the BBC's classic John le Carre spy drama, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.
Confidential papers show that the BBC allowed Britain's domestic security agency, MI5, to investigate the backgrounds and political affiliations of thousands of its employees, including newsreaders, reporters and continuity announcers.
The files, which shed light on the BBC's hitherto secret links with MI5, show that at one stage it was responsible for vetting 6300 BBC posts - almost a third of the total workforce.
They also confirm that the corporation held a list of "subversive organisations" and that evidence of certain kinds of political activity could be a bar to appointment or promotion.
The BBC's reliance on MI5 reached a peak in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
The papers show that senior BBC figures covered up these links in the face of awkward questions from trade unions and the press. The documents refer to a "defensive strategy" based on "categorical denial". One file note, dated March 1, 1985, states: "Keep head down and stonewall all questions."
It is only now, after a request by London's The Sunday Telegraph under the Freedom of Information Act, that it has finally been willing to release details of the vetting operation.
Another internal BBC document, dated 1983, confirms: "We supply personal details to the Security Service.
If there is any adverse information known, we receive this information and also, where necessary, an assessment based upon the involvement of the individual. This is presented to us as advice; line management then make the decision as to action."
The documents do not name any of those subjected to vetting.
Senior officials were checked because they had access to confidential government information in relation to their jobs. Thousands of employees were vetted because they were involved in live broadcasts and the BBC was worried about the possibility of on-air bias.
The vetting system, which was phased out in the late 1980s, also applied to television producers, directors, sound engineers, secretaries and researchers and even the spouses of applicants.
The BBC tried on several occasions to be more open about the system, but was blocked by MI5. A memo, dated March 7, 1985, states: "Secrecy of the complete vetting operation is imposed upon us by the Security Service - it is not of our making."
For their part, the security services were increasingly concerned about the number of people being referred to them by the BBC. During the first four months of 1983, they were asked to investigate 619 people.
The BBC declined to comment on the documents.
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As Kim Philby (codename Stanley) and KGB Colonel Oleg Gordievsky (codename Sunbeam) would have told you in their heyday, there is one category of secret agent that is often overlooked … namely those who don’t know they have been recruited. For more on that topic we suggest you read Beyond Enkription (explained below) and a recent article on that topic by the ex-spook Bill Fairclough. The article can be found at TheBurlingtonFiles website in the News Section. The article (dated July 21, 2021) is about “Russian Interference”; it’s been read well over 20,000 times.
Now talking of Gordievsky, John le Carré described Ben Macintyre’s fact based novel, The Spy and The Traitor, as “the best true spy story I have ever read”. It was of course about Kim Philby’s Russian counterpart, a KGB Colonel named Oleg Gordievsky, codename Sunbeam. In 1974 Gordievsky became a double agent working for MI6 in Copenhagen which was when Bill Fairclough aka Edward Burlington unwittingly launched his career as a secret agent for MI6. Fairclough and le Carré knew of each other: le Carré had even rejected Fairclough’s suggestion in 2014 that they collaborate on a book. As le Carré said at the time, “Why should I? I’ve got by so far without collaboration so why bother now?” A realistic response from a famous expert in fiction in his eighties.
Philby and Gordievsky never met Fairclough, but they did know Fairclough’s handler, Colonel Alan McKenzie aka Colonel Alan Pemberton CVO MBE. It is little wonder therefore that in Beyond Enkription, the first fact based novel in The Burlington Files espionage series, genuine double agents, disinformation and deception weave wondrously within the relentless twists and turns of evolving events. Beyond Enkription is set in 1974 in London, Nassau and Port au Prince. Edward Burlington, a far from boring accountant, unwittingly started working for Alan McKenzie in MI6 and later worked eyes wide open for the CIA.
What happens is so exhilarating and bone chilling it makes one wonder why bother reading espionage fiction when facts are so much more breathtaking. The fact based novel begs the question, were his covert activities in Haiti a prelude to the abortion of a CIA sponsored Haitian equivalent to the Cuban Bay of Pigs? Why was his father Dr Richard Fairclough, ex MI1, involved? Richard was of course a confidant of British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, who became chief adviser to JFK during the Cuban missile crisis. So how did Greville Wynne and Oleg Penkovsky fit in? You may well ask!
Len Deighton and Mick Herron could be forgiven for thinking they co-wrote the raw noir anti-Bond narrative, Beyond Enkription. Atmospherically it’s reminiscent of Ted Lewis’ Get Carter of Michael Caine fame. If anyone ever makes a film based on Beyond Enkription they’ll only have themselves to blame if it doesn’t go down in history as a classic espionage thriller.
By the way, the maverick Bill Fairclough had quite a lot in common with Greville Wynne (famous for his part in helping to reveal Russian missile deployment in Cuba in 1962) and has also even been called “a posh Harry Palmer”. As already noted, Bill Fairclough and John le Carré (aka David Cornwell) knew of each other but only long after Cornwell’s MI6 career ended thanks to Kim Philby shopping all Cornwell’s supposedly secret agents in Europe. Coincidentally, the novelist Graham Greene used to work in MI6 reporting to Philby and Bill Fairclough actually stayed in Hôtel Oloffson during a covert op in Haiti (explained in Beyond Enkription) which was at the heart of Graham Greene’s spy novel The Comedians. Funny it’s such a small world!