December 18, 2010

By David Freeman

From “Churchill and Intelligence,”

Finest Hour 149, Winter 2010-11.

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What might we learn by comparing the near reverence with which Churchill treated intelligence information—his “Golden Eggs,” he often called it-compared to our modern, lackadaisical approach to it? Why, for example, aren’t more of today’s leaders calling for WikiLeaks to be prosecuted for posting secret documents on the Iraqi and Afghan wars for the whole world, including the enemy, to peruse? What would Churchill think about that? Finest Hour invited David Freeman, Professor of History at the University of California Fullerton, who has the critical faculty and historical perspective to consider that question. He offers herein a reminder that Churchill had actually faced something similar in his own time.

-Richard M. Langworth, Editor Finest Hour

In the summer of 2010 the alleged non-profit website WikiLeaks published 77,000 classified documents snatched from Pentagon computers that related to the war in Afghanistan. Unredacted, the material included the names of Afghan informants that had been cooperating with Coalition Forces. A Taliban spokesman told The New York Times that a commission had been formed “to find out about people who are spying” and report the results to a Taliban court.¹

The founder and proprietor of WikiLeaks, 39-year-old Australian Julian Assange, remained defiant about his decision to publish the documents even as Amnesty International and Reporters Without Borders join the Pentagon (an unusual combination) in criticizing an action that potentially endangers those Afghans whose names were published.

Even other workers at WikiLeaks have publicly broken with their colleague over his behavior. Mr. Assange is now in serious trouble. Presently under arrest in Britain, he is fighting extradition to Sweden to face charges of sexual assault. The US government is also weighing a prosecution under the 1917 Espionage Act, and Australian officials have made it clear to Assange that they will support any such action.

What does all this have to do with Winston Churchill? There are two Churchillian aspects to it, one general and one specific.

The general: The writings of Sir Martin Gilbert, Churchill’s official biographer, and Prof. David Stafford, an expert on Churchill and intelligence (being published this issue in Finest Hour) have shown in detail that Churchill very properly took great care in safeguarding intelligence sources. Whatever the ultimate fate of Assange, surely the overriding concern must be with determining how it was possible for his organization to acquire classified material in the first place.

The specific: As so often the case, Churchill’s story provides an example to study, in this instance a breach of security and how he reacted to it. In the spring of 1951 Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean vanished from Britain. It was five years before Russian leader Nikita Khruschev finally admitted that the two were in the Soviet Union, but suspicion set in immediately that Burgess and Maclean had been spying for the Soviets while employed by the British government.

As Leader of the Opposition in Parliament, Churchill concentrated on essentials. The real question, he said, was not the motivation or ultimate fate of the traitors. “I don’t think he was much interested,” recalled his private secretary Sir John Colville. “In fact I had to press him to ask the Cabinet Office to provide a Note on the incident.”²

That Burgess and MacLean were homosexuals did not trouble Churchill, except to raise his natural sympathy. His personal private secretary, Sir Anthony Montague Browne, recalled that Churchill felt “homosexuals might indeed be a security risk, not so much because they might be subject to blackmail, but because they often feel themselves alien and apart from the mainstream of the country.”³

Nor was there much question as to how Burgess and Maclean had come to be employed by the British government in the first place. “Our vetting procedures in those days were primitive and sloppy,” recalled Montague Browne, himself a Foreign Office veteran. “The Soviets had been our involuntary allies” during the war, he continued, “which made it easier for those concerned to condone a background that would later be considered deeply suspect.”⁴

For Churchill, the real question in 1951 was why Burgess and Maclean not only continued to be employed by the British government after 1945 when relations with the Soviet Union dramatically changed but even received promotion to highly sensitive positions that should have triggered assessments of their job performances up to that time. Burgess in particular was long notorious in Whitehall for his alcohol-induced indiscretions.

Seeking an answer to Churchill’s key point, Peter Thorneycroft put down a question in the House of Commons for the Foreign Secretary, Herbert Morrison, on 9 July 1951. Morrison attempted to evade the issue of when the traitors received postwar promotions by stating the Government had no awareness of the two men having any Communist associations at the time they received their original appointments to the Foreign Office: October 1935 for Maclean and June 1944 for Burgess.

Churchill intervened to say that Morrison had not answered Thorneycroft’s question as to what dates the traitors had received their postwar appointments. Morrison continued to prevaricate so Churchill pressed harder. When Morrison merely repeated the dates of the original appointments, Churchill began moving in for the kill: “We must all profit by the advice of the Rt. Hon. Gentleman. He has given two dates: why can he not give the other two?”

The Foreign Secretary foolishly responded with the legalistic defense that Thorneycroft’s original question as submitted in writing asked for no such dates. Churchill, of course, had been Prime Minister and Morrison Home Secretary in the World War II coalition, when the employment of Maclean had continued and Burgess first received his own appointment. Churchill waved this aside with the observation that “failures may always occur” but that did not mean that Morrison could then “shuffle off all responsibility” and “not give the other two dates”, that is those from the postwar period.

Morrison, however, stuck to his legalistic guns and Churchill closed the trap: “Will the Rt. Hon. Gentleman give the dates of these two specific appointments if a Question is put on the Order Paper?” Having painted himself into a corner, the Foreign Secretary was forced to capitulate: “If a Question is on the Order Paper I shall be most happy to answer it.”⁵

As Opposition Leader, Churchill had the responsibility to force the Government to attend to the point that really mattered: determining when and why there had been a failure in security. Only this could lead to the constructive reforms necessary to prevent future recurrences. Churchill’s impulse is a valuable guidepost for today’s leaders.

The story of Winston Churchill naturally dwells on his time as a Cabinet minister and his opposition to Appeasement during his Wilderness Years, and his own Premierships. In this episode, though, we see that even late in his career, and in a very different sort of parliamentary role, Churchill still had the capacity to look past the sensational and focus on what was most important. In so doing he discharged his responsibilities to the nation while maintaining the highest standards of the Mother of Parliaments.