The Sixth Man?

By Robert Eringer, The Santa Barbara Investigator

British spies Guy Burgess and Donald MacLean were numbers one and two. Kim Philby was The Third Man. Gay blade Sir Anthony Blunt, Surveyor of the Queen’s Pictures, was fourth, and John Cairncross, fifth.

The question nagging espionage buffs for decades is this: Was there a sixth major British spy for the Soviet KGB, and if so, whom?

Some have pointed to Harold Wilson, who abruptly and mysteriously resigned as prime minister in 1976. The Soviets liked Wilson—and cleared the way for him to become prime minister by poisoning Hugh Gaitskell, the erudite Labour leader, who had stood between Wilson and 10 Downing Street. Gaitskell was pro-Europe and tied to the power-elite, a concept the Soviets pegged with one word: Capital.

Mr. Gaitskell had been planning an official visit to the Soviet Union, which required a visit to the Soviet Consulate in London for collecting a visa. The Labour leader gave advance notice so they would be ready and not keep him waiting long.

Boy, were they ready!

The KGB kept Gaitskell waiting just long enough to serve him tea and biscuits laced with Lupus Disseminata—a fatal toxin unknown to Britain.

Gaitskell knew he’d been hit, but had little time to react, as this toxin quickly attacks the organs. He became seriously ill, never went to the Soviet Union, and promptly died—without the commotion of the more recent state-sponsored poisoning of Alexandre Litvinenko, also in London, also death-by-tea. Harold Wilson took Gaitskell’s place as party leader and, soon after, was elected prime minister.

Britain’s Security Service (MI5) knew what had happened. It was for this reason they scrutinized Wilson’s behavior, bugging his phones and intercepting his mail. When the prime minister became aware of the extent to which MI5 kept him in their sights, he went ballistic, and considered making an issue of it in Parliament. But he was convinced to back off--or risk reading in the Sunday tabloids about a steamy affair he was conducting with Marcia Falkender, his long-time secretary, including snippets of pillow talk at Ms. Falkender’s cozy cottage in Buckinghamshire.

But Wilson was not a Soviet spy.

The Sixth Man was quite likely “the Battenberg Buggerer”: Louis Mountbatten, 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma—best known, affectionately, as “Dickie” to his friends—according to a source within the intelligence community.

Lord Mountbatten, a member of the Royal Family, was homosexual, with a passion for young guardsmen. While his wife, Edwina, enjoyed multiple affairs (including one with Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first prime minister), Dickie ran rampant through the Queen’s barracks.

The Earl’s proclivity was not lost on the KGB’s First Directorate (external intelligence) whose job it was to identify and recruit spies.

Homosexuality, in those days, qualified as criteria for targeting an individual for recruitment through blackmail. And that’s precisely what the KGB did to Lord Mountbatten, whose resentment against the British Establishment went way back to his adolescence when, in 1917, the British Government made Louis and his family change their German last name, after forcing Louis’s father to resign as First Sea Lord because he was a natural born German and Britain was at war with Germany.

The British Royal Family is German. Its real name is not Windsor, but Gothe-Saxe-Coburg. During World War I, the British Cabinet felt it unseemly that a family with a German name should rule Britannia while tens of thousands of British lads in the trenches were being mustard-gassed by Kaiser Wilhelm’s army. So it compelled the royals to adopt the name Windsor—chosen only because it sounded so quintessentially English.

At the stroke of a pen, Louis Battenberg became Louis Mountbatten.

Dickie never forgave the Establishment.

Back to the KGB, which had more than just Dickie’s homosexuality in their files. They also had this on Lord Mountbatten’s favorite cousin, the Duke of Windsor, formerly King Edward VIII: The dethroned ex-king had secretly collaborated with Adolph Hitler during World War II.

Even before the war, Edward was partial to Germany, and liked to point out that 100 percent Teutonic blood pumped through his veins. Upon becoming king, Edward shared state secrets from his Dispatch Boxes with the German leadership.

British Intelligence chief Robert Vannistat, whose officers kept a watchful eye on the King, reported this to a horrified Stanley Baldwin, the prime minister. Something had to be done.

PM Baldwin and Mr. Vannistat plotted to part King Edward VIII from his throne. Their gambit?

Catapulting the King’s relationship with Wallis Simpson, an American divorcee, into a national calamity. The intelligence services whipped the media into a feeding frenzy, pushing the King into a corner until the pressure was so unbearable he abdicated “for the woman I love.” Edward VIII’s terribly unprepared brother replaced him.

Re-titled Duke of Windsor, the ex-king went into “temporary” exile on the continent. He soon realized he’d been duped and that he would never be allowed to return to Britain. This deeply embittered him.

The Nazis followed these events with deep interest. They tracked Edward to Madrid, followed him to Lisbon, and cut the Duke a deal: Work secretly for us. Once we occupy Britain, you’ll be king again—and Wallis will be queen.

Wallis badgered her husband into accepting the deal.


Now back to Louis Mountbatten. The KGB threatened to expose his homosexuality--and the Duke of Windsor’s treachery--unless the Earl of Burma played ball.

Dickie was never a fan of the United States--which he despised as “classless”-- or its post-World War II “special relationship” with Britain. So it wasn’t particularly difficult for him to avoid scandal and agree to spy for the Soviet Union.

When sleaze-ball Anthony Blunt confessed his role as a Soviet spy to MI5 interrogators in 1964, he gave up Mountbatten.

Defying protocol, the Queen was informed personally by the Director-General of MI5 to keep the government of the day—especially its suspect prime minister, Harold Wilson—out of the loop. This was an extraordinary arrangement, and out of it was hatched an even more extraordinary deal: Louis Mountbatten would remain free, unaware that he had been compromised; the Queen would assist MI5 supplying cousin Dickie with disinformation for Soviet consumption.

One faction of Britain’s security service was livid. They wanted to see Lord Mountbatten punished for his betrayal. However, the arrest, trial and imprisonment of one of Britain’s most prominent royals was out of the question because of the irreparable harm it would do Britain’s monarchy.

This faction, more powerful a decade-and-a-half later, finally had their chance.

The plan was brilliant in its simplicity: Sit back and watch Irish Republican Army (IRA) terrorists blow Louis Mountbatten to kingdom come. They had earlier learned through their informant inside the IRA’s War Council of the plan to assassinate Lord Mountbatten while he vacationed aboard his yacht in Ireland. All they had to do was nothing.

And in return: Public and political outrage ensured MI5 a grander budget than ever before to fight the IRA.

The Santa Barbara Investigator

http://sbinvestigator.blogspot.com/