Valentine Vivian

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Valentine Vivian

Born 17 March 1886
Died 15 April 1969
Occupation Indian Police officer; head of SIS Section V; Deputy Chief of SIS
Education St Paul's School

Valentine Patrick Terrell Vivian (17 March 1886 – 15 April 1969) was a British intelligence officer who headed SIS's counter-intelligence Section V from 1925 and was Deputy Chief of SIS in the Second World War.[1]

Valentine Vivian was an MI6 officer.

Vivian was born in 1886, son of the portrait painter Comley Vivian, and educated at St Paul's School. He joined the Indian Police in 1906, becoming assistant director for the criminal intelligence department by 1914. After service with the Indian Army in the Middle East during the First World War, he joined the British intelligence station in Istanbul, initially as a representative of Indian Political Intelligence.[2][3]

Vivian served as deputy head of station in Istanbul in 1919, and head of station from 1920 to 1923.[4] He then became Regional Inspector for Western Europe (the German Group), based initially in Cologne and then in London.[5]

In late 1925, Vivian became head of the MI6 Section V, with responsibility for counter-intelligence and anti-communist work.[6] It acquired responsibility for running a group of UK-based agents known as 'the casuals' some of which had been acquired by Desmond Morton through contacts such as George Makgill.[7]

Vivian toured the Middle East in 1926 and 1927, and reported that Harry St John Philby was championing the interests of Ibn Saud against those of Britain.[8]

Vivian briefed the Foreign Secretary Austen Chamberlain during the Commons debate on 27 May 1927 that followed a raid on the offices of the Soviet trade organisation ARCOS.[9]

Following a 1931 agreement which gave MI5 responsibility for monitoring communist activity in Britain and the empire, Section V developed a role as a circulating section between the two agencies.[10]

In March 1932, Vivian complained that some SIS reporting from New York was too unselective, stating "some of J..M. Keynes tenets coincide with Communist tenets, but we don't keep a file of his students of economics."[11]

After Comintern agent Johann de Graff made contact with British intelligence in Berlin in February 1933, Vivian became his chief case officer.[12] Vivian followed de Graff to Brazil in February 1935, where his information helped to forestall a communist attempt to overthrow the government of Getulio Vargas later that year.[13]

In August 1934, Vivian briefed Sir Paul Dukes, whose touring ballet company was seen as a potential source of intelligence on the Soviet Union.[14]

During the 1930s, Vivian had particularly good coverage of the Lovestoneite movement:

In May 1935 Kathleen 'Jane' Sissmore of MI5 raised with Valentine Vivian 'the poverty of your information with regard to the progress of Communism in the United States', with one notable exception, a network run by Jay Lovestone in New York, which had been comprehensively penetrated by SIS. Lovestone who led the anti-Stalin Communist Party (Opposition), had worldwide contacts, and London was particularly interested in information about those in Britain and the empire. Canadian names were passed on to the Ottawa authorities, while others including the Indian Communist M.N. Roy, the Trinidadian 'rabid Trotskyite' C.L.R. James and the liberal-Marxist British intellectual Harold Laski (who could hardly be described as a 'subversive'), were passed on to Scotland Yard, MI5, and Indian Political Intelligence. Flatteringly for SIS, an October 1935 report quoted Lovestone (who was planning a trip to Europe) as saying 'that the British Intelligence Service was the only thing he had ever been afraid of' and he was fearful of being arrested if he went to England.[15]

In 1938, Vivian informed Guy Liddell that SIS was engaged in air and naval espionage against the United States, complicating Liddell's proposals for increased intelligence liaison. Vivian ordered on 7 June 1938 that espionage against America should stop.[16]

In January 1940, the new MI6 chief Stewart Menzies appointed Claude Dansey as his Assistant Chief of Service (AC/SS) and Vivian as Deputy Chief (DC/SS), setting the scene for a bureaucratic power struggle.[17] A year later, Vivian complained to Menzies that he was being marginalised.[18] As well as retaining overall responsibility for MI6 Section V in this post, Vivian was head of the War Station at Bletchley Park.[19]

In 1943, Vivian was made Deputy Director overseeing security and counterespionage (DD/SP).[20]

In August 1943, Vivian reported to Menzies on Soviet espionage:

Soviet Russia is our friend only while it can obtain benefit from this friendship. It does not trust us and will exert all efforts in espionage activities against us even in years of friendship. When it will obtain everything it can from a friendship, it will inexorably activate all the secret forces against the ideal for which Britain struggles.[21]

On 13 October 1943, Vivian told the Foreign Office's Peter Loxley that he had permission to establish a small unit, MI6 Section IX, to focus on communism.[22]

During the latter years of the war, Soviet mole Kim Philby was able to exploit jealousy between Vivian and Felix Cowgill to advance his position in MI6.[23] In August 1944, Philby was informed that Vivian wanted to make him operation head of MI6's anti-communist work in place of Jack Curry.[24] In February 1945, Vivian and Philby succeeded in imposing their demand for an enlarged anticommunist MI6 Section IX on Foreign Office adviser Robert Cecil.[25]

Vivian was appointed Menzies' Security Policy Advisor (A.S.P) in November 1945. In February 1947, he was given the title Inspector of Security and a staff officer to assist him.[26]

Vivian remained in MI6 until the 1950s, running the Inspectorate of Security (I/S), although no longer a full Deputy Director.[27]

The Hague and the Hooper affair

After Major Hugh Dalton, the head of the SIS station in The Hague, killed himself in 1936, Vivian and a colleague named Sykes were sent from London to investigate. According to Nigel West, they found that Dalton had been paying off a blackmailer on his own staff, a Dutch-born, naturalised British subject named John Hooper. Confronted by Vivian, Hooper confessed and was taken off the payroll.[28] After the Venlo incident in November 1939, Claude Dansey blamed Hooper and wanted to "eliminate" him. Vivian intervened again, noting that there was no direct evidence that Hooper had been involved. He later planned to send Hooper back to the Netherlands as a double agent, but Dansey vetoed the idea.[29]

The Philbys

In September 1940 Guy Liddell of MI5 sent Vivian the file on H. St John Philby and asked for his comments. In a long reply, Vivian said he had known the elder Philby on and off for about thirty years, since Philby's early days in the Punjab. He described him as arrogant and difficult with his superiors, but no fool, and concluded that he was not disloyal, "merely insufferably arrogant". He added that the son, Kim Philby, was one of the officers of SIS's Section D, and that he had found him "able and charming".[30][31] St John Philby was arrested at Liverpool on 17 October 1940. On 26 October Vivian told Liddell that he agreed a serious blunder was being committed, and warned that the detention could easily be portrayed as political malice.[32] Michael Holzman also reports a story that it was Vivian who brought Kim Philby into SIS, on the strength of having known his father. Holzman notes that this need not contradict Philby's own account of being recruited through Section D.[33]

Deputy Chief

When Maurice Hankey reviewed the service early in the war, Vivian had been confirmed as head of the War Station at Bletchley and as deputy director, a post for which Hankey thought him well qualified.[34] Philip Davies describes a deep incompatibility between Vivian and Dansey. Philby wrote that Vivian was "mortally afraid" of Dansey, but also that he was a stickler for correct procedure, whose lectures taught Philby more about government machinery than the "result getters" such as Dansey or Felix Cowgill could have done.[35] Vivian sent Menzies a memorandum arguing that the Deputy Chief should be a single point of co-ordination below the Chief, to spare him constant references and to turn SIS's collection of independent units into a coherent whole. Davies writes that these concerns were ignored until the reorganisation at the end of the war.[35]

In March 1943, when General Sir James Marshall-Cornwall was appointed Assistant Chief, Vivian's title was changed from Deputy Chief to Deputy Director/SP. He remained in charge of security and counter-intelligence. Keith Jeffery writes that the new title could be read as an effective demotion and undermined any remaining claim Vivian had to be Menzies's number two.[36] Jeffery sees this as an example of Menzies's reluctance to make hard decisions about long-standing colleagues.[37] Philby described the change as being "kicked downward and sideways". Davies notes, however, that according to what Philby told the KGB at the time, the new arrangements confined Dansey to operations abroad and left Vivian in direct control of all counter-espionage and security work.[35] Patrick Reilly later judged that Menzies was never able to impose himself on his two mutually antagonistic chief assistants.[37]

Security and anti-communism

Vivian was a long-standing anti-communist. When Menzies objected to a proposed ban on SIS studying communism abroad, the Foreign Office's Peter Loxley thought his comments "the pure milk of the doctrine of Colonel Vivian". Jeffery comments that this was a fair description of the veteran head of Section V as an inveterate anti-communist.[38] In November 1944 Vivian asked Roger Hollis of MI5 to look into the background of the SIS officer Kenneth Syers. Vivian considered Syers one of several SIS officers who were so far to the left as to be scarcely distinguishable from communists, although Syers's file contained nothing to support this.[39] As Security Policy Adviser from November 1945, Vivian at first had no machinery to carry out his responsibilities. Matters improved after he became Inspector of Security in February 1947.[40] He also dealt with recruitment problems, hoping that the Civil Service Selection Board could be brought into the process.[40]

Notes

  1. ↑ Who Was Who, Oxford University Press, "Vivian, Lieut-Colonel Valentine Patrick Terrel, (17 March 1886–15 April 1969), Indian Police Service, retired", doi:10.1093/ww/9780199540884.013.u50821.
  2. ↑ Keith Jeffery, MI6: The History of the Secret Intelligence Service 1909-1949, Bloomsbury, 2011, p.167.
  3. ↑ Keith Jeffery, MI6: The History of the Secret Intelligence Service 1909–1949, London: Bloomsbury, 2010, ch. 5.
  4. ↑ Keith Jeffery, MI6: The History of the Secret Intelligence Service 1909-1949, Bloomsbury, 2011, p.204.
  5. ↑ Keith Jeffery, MI6: The History of the Secret Intelligence Service 1909-1949, Bloomsbury, 2011, p.207.
  6. ↑ Keith Jeffery, MI6: The History of the Secret Intelligence Service 1909-1949, Bloomsbury, 2011, p.207.
  7. ↑ Keith Jeffery, MI6: The History of the Secret Intelligence Service 1909-1949, Bloomsbury, 2011, p.227.
  8. ↑ Keith Jeffery, MI6: The History of the Secret Intelligence Service 1909-1949, Bloomsbury, 2011, p.208.
  9. ↑ Keith Jeffery, MI6: The History of the Secret Intelligence Service 1909-1949, Bloomsbury, 2011, p.229.
  10. ↑ Philip H.J. Davies, MI6 and the Machinery of Spying, Frank Cass, 2004, p.79.
  11. ↑ Keith Jeffery, MI6: The History of the Secret Intelligence Service 1909-1949, Bloomsbury, 2011, p.252.
  12. ↑ Keith Jeffery, MI6: The History of the Secret Intelligence Service 1909-1949, Bloomsbury, 2011, p.267.
  13. ↑ Keith Jeffery, MI6: The History of the Secret Intelligence Service 1909-1949, Bloomsbury, 2011, pp.269-270.
  14. ↑ Keith Jeffery, MI6: The History of the Secret Intelligence Service 1909-1949, Bloomsbury, 2011, p.754.
  15. ↑ Keith Jeffery, MI6: The History of the Secret Intelligence Service 1909-1949, Bloomsbury, 2011, p.252.
  16. ↑ Keith Jeffery, MI6: The History of the Secret Intelligence Service 1909-1949, Bloomsbury, 2011, pp.254-255.
  17. ↑ Philip H.J. Davies, MI6 and the Machinery of Spying, Frank Cass, 2004, p.101.
  18. ↑ Philip H.J. Davies, MI6 and the Machinery of Spying, Frank Cass, 2004, p.102.
  19. ↑ Keith Jeffery, MI6: The History of the Secret Intelligence Service 1909-1949, Bloomsbury, 2011, p.361.
  20. ↑ Philip H.J. Davies, MI6 and the Machinery of Spying, Frank Cass, 2004, p.157.
  21. ↑ MI6: Inside the Covert World of Her Majesty's Secret Intelligence Service, by Stephen Dorril, Touchstone, 2002, p.9.
  22. ↑ Keith Jeffery, MI6: The History of the Secret Intelligence Service 1909-1949, Bloomsbury, 2011, p.566.
  23. ↑ MI6: Inside the Covert World of Her Majesty's Secret Intelligence Service, by Stephen Dorril, Touchstone, 2002, p.11.
  24. ↑ MI6: Inside the Covert World of Her Majesty's Secret Intelligence Service, by Stephen Dorril, Touchstone, 2002, p.15.
  25. ↑ MI6: Inside the Covert World of Her Majesty's Secret Intelligence Service, by Stephen Dorril, Touchstone, 2002, p.21.
  26. ↑ Keith Jeffery, MI6: The History of the Secret Intelligence Service 1909-1949, Bloomsbury, 2011, p.626.
  27. ↑ Philip H.J. Davies, MI6 and the Machinery of Spying, Frank Cass, 2004, p.180.
  28. ↑ Nigel West, MI6: British Secret Intelligence Service Operations, 1909–1945, Barnsley: Frontline Books, 2019 (first published 1983), ch. 4.
  29. ↑ Nigel West, MI6: British Secret Intelligence Service Operations, 1909–1945, Barnsley: Frontline Books, 2019 (first published 1983), ch. 6.
  30. ↑ Michael Holzman, Spies and Traitors: Kim Philby, James Angleton and the Friendship and Betrayal that Would Shape MI6, the CIA and the Cold War, New York: Pegasus Books, 2021, p. 73.
  31. ↑ Holzman, Spies and Traitors, p. 74.
  32. ↑ Holzman, Spies and Traitors, p. 75.
  33. ↑ Holzman, Spies and Traitors, p. 77.
  34. ↑ Keith Jeffery, MI6: The History of the Secret Intelligence Service 1909–1949, London: Bloomsbury, 2010, ch. 10.
  35. ↑ 35.0 35.1 35.2 Philip H. J. Davies, MI6 and the Machinery of Spying, Abingdon: Frank Cass, 2004, ch. 4.
  36. ↑ Keith Jeffery, MI6: The History of the Secret Intelligence Service 1909–1949, London: Bloomsbury, 2010, ch. 14.
  37. ↑ 37.0 37.1 Keith Jeffery, MI6: The History of the Secret Intelligence Service 1909–1949, London: Bloomsbury, 2010, ch. 22.
  38. ↑ Keith Jeffery, MI6: The History of the Secret Intelligence Service 1909–1949, London: Bloomsbury, 2010, ch. 18.
  39. ↑ Keith Jeffery, MI6: The History of the Secret Intelligence Service 1909–1949, London: Bloomsbury, 2010, ch. 16.
  40. ↑ 40.0 40.1 Keith Jeffery, MI6: The History of the Secret Intelligence Service 1909–1949, London: Bloomsbury, 2010, ch. 19.
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