Date: June 30, 2006 2:44:03 AM PDT
Subject: [ctrl] '[H]oney trap' that made spy of Vassall
30 June 2006 04:41
Home > News > UK > This Britain
Secrets revealed of gay 'honey trap' that made spy of Vassall
By Cahal Milmo
Published: 30 June 2006
Both the brandy and the lighting were unusually strong and it all took
place in a restaurant close to the Bolshoi Theatre equipped with a large
divan bed.
The official account of the gay "honey trap" set by the KGB in 1955 to
blackmail a British naval attaché into revealing defence secrets for
seven years is revealed for the first time today in government papers.
John Vassall, the son of an Anglican vicar who became a junior official
in the British embassy in Moscow and subsequently one of the KGB's most
useful Cold War spies, was photographed taking part in a gay orgy after
he was befriended by a Soviet agent working inside the diplomatic mission
as a young man.
In return for regular payments, the naval clerk, whose codename was Miss
Mary, then passed a succession of classified papers to his KGB minders
after he returned to London, including details of British torpedoes and
anti-submarine devices, until he was finally arrested at his Westminster
flat in September 1962.
In a statement provided to Special Branch after officers raided his flat
in Dolphin Square, the exclusive Thameside apartment complex favoured by
politicians and for several years Princess Anne, Vassall explained how he
had become friends with a Russian interpreter, Sigmund Mikhailsky,
shortly after he arrived in Moscow in 1954.
After three months, Mikhailsky, who was a KGB plant, one night introduced
Vassall, then aged 30, to a group of male friends who invited the Briton
to join them for dinner in a private room at a restaurant two streets
from the Bolshoi Theatre.
Vassall said: "We had drinks, a large dinner and I was plied with very
strong brandy and after half an hour I remember everybody taking off
their jackets and somebody assisted me to take off mine. In one corner
there was a large divan.
"I remember the lighting was very strong and gradually most of my clothes
were removed. I remember two or three people getting on to the bed with
me, all in a state of undress. Then certain compromising sexual actions
took place. I remember someone in the party taking photographs."
The documents released at the National Archives in Kew, west London, come
from Vassall's Old Bailey trial, which was partly heard behind closed
doors to protect state secrets.
Vassall was later approached by more KGB agents who threatened him with
being stripped of his diplomatic immunity and put on trial for breaking
Russian laws banning homosexuality. After giving into the Soviet
blackmail, the civil servant led a double life while working at the
Ministry of Defence as secretary to a junior minister, Thomas Galbraith,
the son of a Scottish peer who eventually successfully sued for libel
over claims that he was one of Vassall's lovers.
In return for his services, which were suspended in 1961 after the
discovery of another Soviet spy ring in London, Vassall was paid by the
KGB between £500 and £700 a year (equivalent to £8,000 to £10,000 today)
in bundles of £5 notes.
The arrest of Vassall following a tip off to MI6 by Soviet defectors
embarrassed the government and an inquiry was held into how he had
managed to operate undetected for so long. The civil servant was
sentenced to 18 years after pleaded guilty to espionage offences under
the Official Secrets Act. He died in 1996.
For his part, Vassall, who insisted he had no Communist sympathies, told
Special Branch that he regretted his actions but insisted he had been
trying to avert conflict between the West and the Soviet bloc.
Alamaine, IVe
Grand Forks, ND, US of A
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