John Vassall - Spying Career

Spying Career

In 1952, Vassall was appointed to the staff of the Naval Attaché at the British embassy in Moscow. There he found himself socially isolated by the snobberies and class hierarchies of diplomatic life, his loneliness further exacerbated by the fact that he was homosexual (at that time illegal in both Britain and the Soviet Union). He became acquainted with a Pole named Mikhailsky, who worked for the Embassy, and who introduced him to the homosexual underworld of Moscow. In 1954, he was invited to a party, where he was encouraged to become extremely drunk, and where he was photographed in compromising positions with several men.

The party, arranged by the KGB, had been a classic honeytrap. The Soviets used the photographs to blackmail Vassall into working for them as a spy, initially in the Moscow embassy, and later, following his return to London in June 1956, in the Admiralty, where he worked in the Naval Intelligence Division, and then in the office of Tam Galbraith, a Conservative Party politician and Civil Lord of the Admiralty. During his career, Vassall provided the Soviets with several thousand classified documents, including information on British radar, torpedoes, and anti-submarine equipment. His obituary-writer in The Times commented that "Vassall was never more than a low-level functionary, but there was nothing low-level about the damage he was able to inflict". Similarly, Chapman Pincher regarded Vassall as "the classic example of the spy who, while of lowly rank, can inflict enormous damage because of the excellence of his access to secret information". Pincher continued: "I am in no doubt that the recruitment and running of Vassall was a major triumph for the K.G.B. He provided information of the highest value to the Soviet defence chiefs in their successful drive to expand and modernize the Red Navy."