Chapman Pincher - Career

Career

Pincher is best known as the author of the 1981 book Their Trade is Treachery, in which he publicized for the first time the suspicions that former Director General of MI5 Roger Hollis had been a spy for the Soviet Union, and describes MI5's and MI6's internal inquiries into the matter. He was at one point close to Peter Wright, who he knew suspected Harold Wilson of having been a Soviet agent, and according to the biography of Wilson written by Ben Pimlott, Pincher was trying to get information from Wright so that he could accuse Wilson in public.

Pincher used Wright, a retired MI5 Soviet counterespionage officer, as a main source for Their Trade is Treachery, along with British MP Jonathan Aitken and Wright's former colleague Arthur S. Martin. Aitken, using information from retired CIA counterespionage chief James Angleton, wrote a highly confidential letter in early 1980 to British PM Margaret Thatcher, outlining Angleton's suspicions of Hollis acting as a double agent. Pincher then himself became enmeshed in 1986 in the Spycatcher matter, when Wright tried to publish his own book in Australia, in apparent violation of his oath-taking of the Official Secrets Act upon joining MI5. The matter led to prolonged legal wrangling, with the British government mounting a heavy defence, which was ultimately unsuccessful through three levels of the Australian court system. In the meantime Wright published Spycatcher in the USA in mid-1987, where it became a massive best-seller. Pincher was investigated and cleared of any wrongdoing, through a police investigation.

Pincher was convinced that, alongside Wilson, many other members of the Labour party were Soviet agents, among them MP Tom Driberg, who was Chairman of the Labour Party. Pincher claimed that Driberg was an active double agent for MI5 and the KGB despite his well-founded reputation for total indiscretion.

His latest book, published in 2009, brings the known Soviet espionage cases against the U.K. and U.S.A. up to date.