Peter Wright (MI5 officer) facts for kids

Peter Maurice Wright (born August 9, 1916 – died April 26, 1995) was an important scientist who worked for MI5. MI5 is Britain's secret service that protects the country from spies and threats. Peter Wright wrote a very famous book called Spycatcher. It sold over two million copies around the world. In his book, Wright shared his memories and also talked about problems he believed were happening inside MI5.

Early Life and Education

Peter Wright was born in Chesterfield, Derbyshire, England. His father, Maurice Wright, was a director at the Marconi Company. He helped create early forms of signals intelligence during World War I.

Peter went to Bishop's Stortford College, which is a private boarding school. Later, he studied at St Peter's College, Oxford at the University of Oxford.

Working for the Government

Replica of the Great Seal that hid a Soviet listening device.

After finishing university, Peter Wright started working at the British Admiralty's Research Laboratory. This was just before World War II. He stayed there during the war. In 1946, he became a Principal Scientific Officer at another research lab.

Wright began working part-time for MI5 in 1949. He was a Navy Scientist linked to the Marconi Company. His book Spycatcher says he helped solve a tricky problem during this time. The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in the United States asked Marconi for help. They had found a hidden listening device (a "bug") inside a replica of the Great Seal of the United States. This seal had been given to the U.S. ambassador in Moscow in 1945.

Wright figured out how the bug, called "The Thing", worked. It was a tiny microphone that only turned on when special radio waves were sent to it. A remote receiver could then pick up the sounds. This clever device was created by the Soviet inventor Léon Theremin.

Key Intelligence Operations

In 1954, Peter Wright officially joined MI5 as a scientific officer. In his book, he claimed he helped develop important ways to gather electronic intelligence (ELINT). Here are some of the operations he was involved in:

• Operation ENGULF (1956): This involved recording the sounds made by Egyptian cipher machines. By listening carefully, they could figure out how the machines were set up. This is called acoustic cryptanalysis.
• Operation RAFTER (1958): This operation found hidden radio receivers used by Soviet spies. It worked by detecting tiny signals coming from the receivers. This method is now sometimes used to find people who haven't paid for their television licences. The program grew to include planes that could find receivers from the air.
• Operation STOCKADE (1960): This involved analyzing secret signals leaking from French cipher machine cables. MI5 and GCHQ (another British intelligence agency) could sometimes read secret messages from the French embassy in London between 1960 and 1963.

Wright became the first head of the new Radio Operations Committee (ROC) in 1960. This committee helped different British intelligence groups work together better. Before this, they often worked separately.

In 1964, Wright led a joint committee for MI5 and MI6 (Britain's foreign intelligence service). This group, called FLUENCY Working Party, searched for Soviet agents and "moles" (spies hidden deep inside an organization) in Britain. For six years, he regularly spoke with Anthony Blunt, a member of the famous Cambridge Five spy ring. Wright tried to get more information from Blunt about other Soviet agents.

Claims About Spies and Plots

While working at MI5, Peter Wright believed that Soviet spies had secretly joined the British government. He thought some senior people in intelligence, politics, and trade unions might have been recruited by the Soviets long ago.

After Soviet spy Kim Philby left for the USSR in 1963, Wright became convinced that the KGB (the Soviet secret service) had spies at the very top of MI5. In Spycatcher, he claimed that Roger Hollis, a former head of MI5, was the highest-ranking Soviet mole. Wright even started his own unofficial investigations into Hollis.

Wright's suspicions grew because he thought the KGB seemed to know about the arrest of Soviet spy Konon Molody in 1961. He believed Molody might have been sacrificed to protect a more important spy. Wright also felt Hollis blocked investigations into information from defectors (people who leave their country to reveal secrets) who said there was a mole in MI5. He also found that Hollis had hidden connections with suspicious people.

Wright also looked at the statements of a Soviet defector named Igor Gouzenko. He was surprised that Gouzenko's important information was not properly recorded. He found out that Hollis had interviewed Gouzenko in Canada. Gouzenko had given Hollis clear details about a spy named Alan Nunn May. Gouzenko later thought his interviewer might have been a double agent (a spy working for two sides).

The FLUENCY Working Party, which looked into unsolved spy allegations, concluded that Hollis was likely involved in the claims made by Gouzenko and another defector, Konstantin Volkov. However, an investigation into Hollis was not approved after he retired. Later, a review by Lord Trend in the 1970s found that the evidence against Hollis was not strong enough to prove or disprove the claims.

Wright also investigated Harold Wilson, who was the British Prime Minister. Some MI5 leaders suspected Wilson, partly due to information from the CIA. However, MI5's investigation found no clear evidence against Wilson.

When Wright retired in 1976, Wilson was Prime Minister again. Stella Rimington, who later became the head of MI5, said that Wright was "a man with an obsession" and was seen by many as "quite mad." She also claimed he was a difficult and lazy officer.

The claims against Hollis were repeated in a book by Chapman Pincher. However, The Times newspaper later said that Pincher's theory about Hollis being a Soviet spy was incorrect.

Retirement and Spycatcher

When Peter Wright retired in 1976, he was not given his full retirement money due to a technicality. He then moved to Cygnet, Tasmania, Australia, where he raised horses.

In 1985, a publisher announced that Wright's book Spycatcher would be released. The British government tried to stop its publication in Australia. In 1987, the Supreme Court of New South Wales ruled against the British government. Wright was represented by Malcolm Turnbull, who later became the Prime Minister of Australia. Turnbull's questions in court led a British official to admit that a letter he wrote was "economical with the truth," meaning it didn't tell the whole story.

The British government's appeals were rejected in 1988. The High Court of Australia decided that it would not protect the British government's secrets in this case. By then, the American version of Spycatcher was already a huge success. The book sold almost two million copies and made Wright a millionaire.

Documents released in 2015 showed that the Australian government supported Britain's efforts to stop the book, even though Australia's own security was not directly at risk.

According to Christopher Andrew, the official historian of MI5, Turnbull's handling of the Spycatcher case was "brilliant." It embarrassed the British government and led to important changes in the intelligence services. Turnbull later said that Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's strong efforts to ban the book actually made it a global bestseller. The case also influenced a new law about official secrets in 1989. In 1991, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that Britain's attempts to ban the book had violated Wright's right to freedom of speech.

Some people questioned how accurate Spycatcher was. A review by the CIA's Center for the Study of Intelligence said the book had "errors, exaggerations, bogus ideas, and self-inflation."

Peter Wright later published The Encyclopaedia of Espionage in 1991. He was reportedly writing a spy novel when he passed away on April 26, 1995, at the age of 78. The Independent newspaper wrote that no other British intelligence officer, except for Kim Philby, caused more problems for Britain's secret services and politicians than Peter Wright.

See also

• Julia Pirie