Secret Life of Bletchley Park - McKay Sinclair [103]
One Park veteran recalled the day when one of the lower-scale administrative staff was apprehended: ‘I remember John Harrington, because he disappeared. When I went into the Accounts Office, I had the shock of my life. There were two burly MI5 men either side of him. He was such a clever man and I had asked Miss Molesworth why someone so clever was doing this sort of job. But he seemed to know a lot about everything, so I told Miss Molesworth and that’s how he was picked up – he was a spy.’
But in general, it appears that if indiscretion was suspected, action was swift and low-key. One gets the sense that the Bletchley method of securing silence was mostly a visit from an Intelligence operative to put the frighteners on the offender. ‘The trouble about taking any drastic action,’ wrote Colonel Vivian to Nigel de Grey, ‘is that it is often likely to draw attention rather than to conceal.’
Despite the intense seriousness and constant tension surrounding all questions of security, isolated cases were in their own odd way slightly amusing. There were accidental indiscretions in the most startling places: in school and parish magazines. Occasionally, famous Old Boys or parish notables would be written up, together with the news that they were working at Bletchley Park.
And the case of one billetor near Bletchley, a Reverend Harry L. Clothier, was brought to the attention of Nigel de Grey. The reason? Unlike most other people in Bletchley, he was constantly trying to catch his younger billetees out for information about what they were up to. At first sight, this looked rather sinister, but it became clear that the reverend gentleman thought he was playing some sort of game. ‘As a host, Reverend Clothier is very kind,’ wrote Colonel Vivian to de Grey. ‘I think the time has now come when he will have to be officially warned to keep his mouth shut. In fact I think he wants a thorough frightening … he is not a bad man, but a foolish one.’
Intriguingly, MI5 became concerned about the possibility of hypnosis being used to extract information about Bletchley’s activities. This was specifically because of one officer who had suffered a nervous breakdown. The officer’s doctor, based on the Isle of Man, came under Intelligence scrutiny when it became apparent that he was using hypnotism as a means of helping the officer to recovery. There was no evidence of anything more sinister than that. But the very idea of this sort of treatment was regarded by some within MI5 as black magic, and the notion of its potential use in espionage undeniably grabs the imagination.
In the directorate, there was a constant concern about the inherent danger of drunkenness. There were flurries of disquiet if, for instance, people were heard to be speaking too loudly at smart drinks parties about subjects which they should not know that much about. Another source of anxiety was what they termed ‘superior persons’ – for example, senior university dons who felt that the stringent confidentiality ‘didn’t apply to them’. Added to this, personal letters were scrutinised and censored as a matter of course. Wrote one intelligence officer: ‘I enclose six letters which I think require looking into.’
There were also discussions about the potential trouble that could be caused by marriage. Nigel de Grey stated that the ‘best plan is to warn young women. Very specially against talking to her future husband on the subject of her work.’7 This precaution proved, across the decades, to be phenomenally successful. Wives said nothing to husbands, and it worked the other way around too. Meanwhile, vulnerable young Wrens were to be warned against ‘confidence tricksters’ – plausible-seeming American soldiers, for instance – who would dupe them into talking with such lines as ‘I know all about