Colin Coote, Operation Mockingbird and Britain Options

[John Simkin]

The Times is usually considered to be Britain's most important establishment newspaper. However, this title really belongs to the Daily Telegraph. It has consistently been the voice that has protected the status-quo since Joseph Moses Levy took it over in 1855. After a couple of months the Daily Telegraph was outselling The Times and has continued to do so ever since.

Colin Coote became editor of the newspaper in 1950. After leaving university he was employed by The Times. In the 1920s and 1930s he was based in Rome. According to recently released documents, Coote was also part of a spy network established by Desmond Morton of MI6.

During the Second World War Coote headed the Public Relations department at the War Office. In 1942 he joined the Telegraph and by 1950 became editor of the newspaper. During the period he was editor, Coote was a strong advocate of the Cold War and did what he could to undermine all groupings on the left.

My main interest in Coote concerns his relationship with MI5/MI6 and the role he played in covering up two major political scandals.

Colin Coote had suffered from lumbago for many years and on the recommendation of Godfrey Nicholson, the MP for Farnham, he went to see Dr. Stephen Ward. As he later recalled: "To my complete astonishment the pain was tamed and then expelled." The two men became close friends and started playing bridge together at the Connaught Bridge Club in Edgeware Road. Ward was also a regular visitor to Coote's home.

In April 1961 Coote commissioned Stephen Ward to sketch pictures of participants in the trial of Adolf Eichmann. According to the authors of An Affair of State (1987): "Ward duly went to Israel and a series of his drawings appeared in the newspaper. Coote got many complimentary letters about the drawings and decided that when there was another opportunity to use Ward he would do so."

Coote suggested that Stephen Ward should go to the Soviet Union to sketch the leading politicians of the country. However, according to the official story, Ward had difficulty getting a visa from the Soviet Embassy in London. Ward told Coote about his problems and on 21st January 1961, Coote invited Ward to have lunch at the Garrick Club with Eugene Ivanov, an naval attaché at the embassy. Coote later recalled: "I remembered Stephen Ward's difficulty about a visa and thought that this link might be useful." David Floyd, the Daily Telegraph's correspondent on Soviet affairs, also attended the lunch. Ward was impressed with Ivanov's ability to discuss foreign affairs: "I listened with fascination as they argued backward and forward on issues which I had never heard discussed before in an intelligent and informal manner."

Coote, Ward and Ivanov became close friends. As Philip Knightley pointed out: "As Ward's friendship with Ivanov blossomed, the original purpose for meeting him - to get a visa to go and sketch Soviet leaders - appears to have been forgotten. The two men met often and went everywhere together. Ivanov would call at Ward's flat unannounced and the two of them would go out - either to visit a club, to play bridge, or to dine with one of Ward's friends."

Anthony Summers argues that: "MI5's D branch, responsible for counter-espionage, quickly identified Ivanov as a Soviet Intelligence officer using diplomatic cover, a common practice worldwide. According to one source, part of Ivanov's mission may have been to supervise Soviet penetration of the Portland naval base in Dorset."

Keith Wagstaffe of MI5 got to know Ward. On 8th June 1961, the two men went out to dinner before going back to the Wimpole Mews flat. Christine Keeler made the two men coffee: "Stephen was on the couch and Wagstaffe sat on the sofa chair. He wanted to know about Stephen's friendship with Eugene. We knew that MI5 were monitoring embassy personnel so this was quite a normal interview in the circumstances." Wagstaffe asked Ward: "He's never asked you to put him in touch with anyone you know? Or for information of any kind." Ward replied: "No, he hasn't. But if he did, naturally I would get in touch with you straight away. If there's anything I can do I'd be only too pleased to."

Keith Wagstaffe reported back to MI5: "Ward asked me if it was all right for him to continue to see Ivanov. I replied that there was no reason why he should not. He then said if there was any way in which he could help he would be very ready to do so. I thanked him for his offer and asked him to get in touch with me should Ivanov at any time in the future make any propositions to him... Ward was completely open about his association with Ivanov... I do not think that he (Ward) is of security interest."

Ward later introduced Eugene Ivanov to Christine Keeler and Mandy Rice-Davies. Keeler described how Ivanov upset Stephen Ward when he arrived at the Cliveden Estate unannounced. "Stephen was furious with him: he looked so out of place. With his dark suit, he looked like a caricature of a Russian spook, a Soviet spy.... He wanted to buttonhole Stephen but Stephen wasn't having any of it. I saw then so clearly who was the boss. Stephen ordered Eugene to go - and he went. Quickly."

Coote remained in contact with the British intelligence services and was a close friend and golfing partner of Roger Hollis, the Director-General of MI5. In 1962 Coote was given a knighthood.

On 5th June, 1963 John Profumo resigned as War Minister. His statement said that he had lied to the House of Commons about his relationship with Christine Keeler. The next day the Daily Mirror said: "What the hell is going on in this country? All power corrupts and the Tories have been in power for nearly twelve years."

Harold Macmillan now wrote to Coote about the Profumo Scandal: "I think I ought to let you know that in my speech (to the House of Commons) I shall refer to the fact that as it happened Captain Ivanov was first introduced to Mr. Ward by you. I shall say expressly that there was nothing whatever unusual or reprehensible in this introduction. It is only that it forms part of my narrative."

Some newspapers called for Harold Macmillan to resign as prime minister. This he refused to do but he did ask Lord Denning to investigate the security aspects of the Profumo affair. Some of the prostitutes who worked for Stephen Ward began to sell their stories to the national press. Mandy Rice-Davies told the Daily Sketch that Christine Keeler had sexual relationships with John Profumo and Eugene Ivanov, an naval attaché at the Soviet embassy.

On 7th June, Christine Keeler told the Daily Express of her secret "dates" with Profumo. She also admitted that she had been seeing Eugene Ivanov at the same time, sometimes on the same day, as Profumo. In a television interview Ward told Desmond Wilcox that he had warned the security services about Keeler's relationship with Profumo. The following day Ward was arrested and charged with living off immoral earnings between 1961 and 1963. He was initially refused bail because it was feared that he might try to influence witnesses. Another concern was that he might provide information on the case to the media.

On 14th June, the London solicitor, Michael Eddowes, claimed that Christine Keeler told him that Eugene Ivanov had asked her to get information about nuclear weapons from John Profumo. Eddowes added that he had written to Harold Macmillan to ask why no action had been taken on information he had given to Special Branch about this on 29th March. Soon afterwards Keeler told the News of the World that "I'm no spy, I just couldn't ask Jack for secrets."

Soon afterwards Colin Coote had a meeting with several men, including Godfrey Nicholson, the Earl of Dudley, Gilbert Laithwaite, Vasco Lazzolo and Ward's legal adviser, Billy Rees-Davies, who told them that he had spoken to Lord Astor who had decided not to give evidence in the forthcoming trial. Rees-Davies warned the men that "this was going to be a very dirty case."

On 7th July, 1963, Colin Coote's Daily Telegraph revealed that a key Soviet defector and one of the CIA's most prized assets, was in Britain. As a result of the story, Anatoli Golitsin was immediately flown back to the United States.

Ward told his defence counsel, James Burge: "One of my great perils is that at least half a dozen of the (witnesses) are lying and their motives vary from malice to cupidity and fear... In the case of both Christine Keeler and Mandy Rice-Davies there is absolutely no doubt that they are committed to stories which are already sold or could be sold to newspapers and that my conviction would free these newspapers to print stories which they would otherwise be quite unable to print (for libel reasons)."

Stephen Ward was very upset by the judge's summing-up that included the following: "If Stephen Ward was telling the truth in the witness box, there are in this city many witnesses of high estate and low who could have come and testified in support of his evidence." Several people present in the court claimed that Judge Archie Pellow Marshall was clearly biased against Ward. France Soir reported: "However impartial he tried to appear, Judge Marshall was betrayed by his voice."

After the day's court proceedings, Ward contacted Tom Critchley, a Home Office official working with Lord Denning on the official investigation. Later, Critchley refused to comment what was said in that telephone conversation.

That night Ward wrote to his friend, Noel Howard-Jones: "It is really more than I can stand - the horror, day after day at the court and in the streets. It is not only fear, it is a wish not to let them get me. I would rather get myself. I do hope I have not let people down too much. I tried to do my stuff but after Marshall's summing-up, I've given up all hope." Ward then took an overdose of sleeping tablets. He was in a coma when the jury reached their verdict of guilty of the charge of living on the immoral earnings of Christine Keeler and Mandy Rice-Davies on Wednesday 31st July. Three days later, Ward died in St Stephen's Hospital.

Colin Coote was completely exonerated by Lord Denning for his role in the Profumo Scandal. In fact, Denning went out of his way not to name Coote in his report: "Stephen Ward often expressed a wish to go to Moscow. He wanted to draw pictures of the personalities there, particularly Mr. Khruschchev. He told this to the Editor of a newspaper who was a patient of his. The Editor happened to have met Captain Ivanov: and invited Stephen Ward to lunch and meet him. This was on 20th January, 1961. Stephen Ward took an immediate liking to Captain Ivanov. He began to enlist Ivanov's help to arrange sittings with Mr. Khrushchev. The Security Service got to know of their friendship and on 8th June, 1961, saw Stephen Ward about it. A few weeks later came the Cliveden weekend."

In April 1964 Colin Coote left his post as editor of the Daily Telegraph. Soon afterwards he was involved in another scandal. Later that year he was on holiday with Lord Boothby when on 12 July 1964, the Sunday Mirror published a front page lead story under the headline: "Peer and a gangster: Yard probe." The newspaper claimed police were investigating an alleged homosexual relationship between a "prominent peer and a leading thug in the London underworld", who is alleged to be involved in a West End protection racket. The following week the newspaper said it had a picture of the peer and the gangster sitting on a sofa. Rumours soon began circulating that the peer was Boothby and the gangster was Ronald Kray. Stories also circulated that Harold Wilson and Cecil King, the owner of the Sunday Mirror were conspiring in an attempt to overthrow the Conservative government led by Douglas Home. Coote used his contacts in the media to discover what was going on.

As journalist John Pearson pointed out: "By doing nothing he (Boothby) would tacitly accept the Sunday Mirror's accusations. On the other hand, to sue for libel would mean facing lengthy and expensive court proceedings which could ruin him financially - apart from whatever revelations the Sunday Mirror could produce to support its story." Boothby was then approached by two leading Labour Party figures, Gerald Gardiner, QC and solicitor Arnold Goodman. They offered to represent Boothby in any libel case against the Sunday Mirror. Goodman was Wilson's "Mr Fixit" and Gardiner was later that year to become the new prime-minister's Lord Chancellor.

Boothby now wrote a letter to The Times and argued that the Daily Mirror had been referring to him and that he intended to sue this newspaper for libel. He claimed that he had only met Kray three times. However, this had been public events in 1964 (there were published photographs of these meetings and so they could not be denied). When the case came to court, the Daily Mirror decided not to reveal the compromising photograph. Unwilling to defend their story, Lord Boothby was awarded £40,000 and the editor of the newspaper was sacked. This resulted in other newspapers not touching the story. Scotland Yard was also ordered to drop their investigation into Boothby and Ronnie Kray.

In his autobiography published in 1966 Coote tried to distance himself from Ward by attacking him for his interest in helping the Soviet Union to negotiate an end to the Cold War. Coote claimed that Ward's ideas "would have seemed ludicrous to a mentally deficient child... I should doubt whether a more trivial person has ever seriously embarrassed a government." He added that he had little in common with Ward other than he was his osteopath.

It is difficult to work out what MI5/MI6 were up to in the early 1960s. Why did they allow John Profumo to be trapped in this honey-pot operation? Why did they do nothing to protect Ward from criminal prosecution? Why did they refuse permission for Keith Wagstaffe to give evidence in court that would have saved Ward? Who was paying Chief Inspector Samuel Herbert to persecute Ward? (Without Herbert's actions Ward would never have appeared in court.) Why did the Labour Party join forces with the intelligence services, the Tory government and the media, to cover-up the Boothby case?

An interesting aside is that they man who eventually revealed the truth about the Boothby case (for many years the media refused to publish his story) was a journalist called John Pearson. In his early days he worked with Ian Fleming producing the Atticus column in the Sunday Times. Following Fleming's death, Pearson wrote the first biography of his friend.

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/SPYcoote.htm

[John Simkin]

Philip Knightley, An Affair of State (1987)

One of Ward's patients who had become a friend was Sir Colin Coote, editor of the Daily Telegraph. Coote had suffered from lumbago for years and had gone to see Ward on the recommendation of Sir Godfrey Nicholson, MP. "To my complete astonishment ... the pain was tamed and then expelled," Coote said later.

Coote and Ward had started to play bridge together, attending the Connaught Bridge Club in Edgeware Road. Occasionally Coote had asked Ward to his house to make up a four. Then, after the success of Ward's series of portraits for the Illustrated London News, Coote decided to implement a scheme he had been considering for some time. "I had long been pondering whether black and white drawings might not be an interesting substitute for photographs [in the Daily Telegraph]. The trial of Eichmann in Israel was about to begin and I thought I would try the experiment of employing Stephen Ward to do sketches of the personalities in court."

Ward duly went to Israel and a series of his drawings appeared in the newspaper. Coote got many complimentary letters about the drawings and decided that when there was another opportunity to use Ward he would do so. Ward, too, was thinking about an encore. He knew that the impact made by his exhibition, his Illustrated London News series, and his Eichmann trial sketches would not last for ever and that his art career needed another imaginative boost. He had an idea: he would go to the Soviet Union and sketch the Soviet leaders, the whole Politburo if he could get them. He raised the idea with Coote who encouraged him, promising to commission him if the Russians agreed.

Ward realised that trying to negotiate permission to sketch Soviet leaders through the Soviet Embassy in London could take ages. He decided that his best chance would be to go to Moscow with his portfolio of British leaders, somehow show it to Khrushchev and ask permission to draw him. If Khrushchev agreed, Ward reasoned, then other Soviet leaders would prove easy. The only problem was that the Soviet Embassy apparently would not give him a visa, even for a tourist trip to Moscow. The Embassy never actually refused him a visa, but weeks went by and nothing happened.

One afternoon when Coote's lumbago was playing up again, he went to Ward for treatment. Ward took the opportunity to complain about his visa problems and Coote promised to do what he could to help. Two days later an opportunity occurred. The doyen of the naval attaches of the London diplomatic corps, Vice-Admiral Victor Marchal, had earlier asked Coote's permission to bring some of his colleagues on a tour of the Daily Telegraph.

After the attaches had seen over the building and watched the presses begin their nightly run, Coote, as was his custom, invited them to his office for a drink. One of the attaches turned out to be Captain Yevgeny Ivanov, representing the Soviet Embassy. "He seemed to be an agreeable person and spoke excellent English," Coote recalled. "I remembered Stephen Ward's difficulty about a visa and thought that this link might be useful." Coote decided that the way to go about it was to have Ward and Ivanov to lunch and there introduce them.