The Secret History of MI6 - Keith Jeffery [220]
One example of how swift and informal the recruitment process could be (especially when the Service was responding to urgent wartime needs) is that of Commander Roy Kendall in December 1941. As a result of the Japanese offensive in South-East Asia which followed the attack on Pearl Harbor, there was suddenly a much heightened need for intelligence in the region. Kendall, a very experienced sailor who had been serving as Commodore of Convoys in the Channel and North Sea, was selected to be SIS representative in Australia ‘for the purpose of penetrating the Japanese Mandated Islands or other areas in the Pacific’. He was clearly well qualified for this. In the 1930s, based at Rabaul in New Britain, he had served as a master mariner in the Papua New Guinea inter-island trade. Although born in London, his family were in Australia. He had a ‘very good record there’ and was ‘vouched for’ by the Australian Director of Naval Intelligence. Asserting that these recommendations were ‘far better than anything M.I.5 can produce’, and that ‘the state of affairs in the Far East does not leave room for any red tape’, Section G.2 wanted to take on Kendall without further ado.
But a fastidious secretary in Personnel (as G.2 explained to her head of section) ‘was a little doubtful’ because this was ‘contrary to your orders’. Personnel had their way and the following day a ‘trace enquiry’ on Kendall was telephoned to MI5, who replied a day later that there was ‘nothing recorded against’. Even though the correct procedure was apparently followed, it was not much of a vetting process. Kendall had completed the standard application form (in use since 1938) on which the first entry was ‘Recommended by’, with space provided for the names and addresses of three referees. But Kendall filled in none of these. By mid-January 1942 his recruitment was complete: on 30 December he had signed the Official Secrets Act; on 8 January he had ‘seen the doctor’, and the following day he completed the ‘secrecy form’ relating to pay (‘Disclosure to any person of emoluments received, will lead to instant dismissal’).49 The security risks which accompanied the sometimes rather casual wartime checks were inevitably magnified when able recruits were taken on trust, a factor which enabled the Cambridge-educated Soviet spy Kim Philby to slip into the Service, initially to work in the Iberian branch of the counter-intelligence Section V in September 1941.
Naturally the Service was always on the lookout for suitable candidates and from time to time individuals with unusual specialist skills were recommended. In November 1942 an MI5 officer passed on to SIS a letter from Detective Superintendent Westland of the Aberdeen city police concerning a thirty-seven-year-old man called John Ramsay. Ramsay had been born in Scotland of Lithuanian parents named Ramensky, but had changed his surname at the start of the war. As Westland described him, Ramsay was a ‘clean living’ kind of man: he did not swear, smoke or drink and was ‘an excellent specimen of physical fitness’. But, more to the point, he was ‘the most neat and tidy safe breaker in Britain to-day . . . His safes are all opened by means of explosives and, from a professional point of view, to see them after he has finished the job is a treat in itself, because the work is so neatly done.’ Although Ramsay had twice been sentenced to five-year prison terms, the policeman went on to give him a remarkable character reference: ‘In spite of his convictions, I look on him as a real gentleman and a person who would not do a mean action nor commit a