"Spy Catcher," by Peter Wright

Spy Catcher by Peter Wright, (New York: Viking Penguin, 1987), 392 pages.

As the title suggests, Spy Catcher is a book written by someone who used to catch spies. This particular spy catcher was Peter Wright, the former MI5 operative who spent nearly all of his working life in the intelligence and counter espionage business from the 1930’s through to the 1970s. Wright was a self-taught acoustics engineer who, like his father, worked for the English electronics company Marconi M.D. Wright was a particularly gifted self-taught engineer whose expertise was used in many World War II projects, post-war naval communications research, and eventually as MI5’s first scientist. While working in MI5, Wright put his skills to great effect in development and implementing MI5’s communications interception system that included the detection and deciphering of clandestine Soviet spying transmissions and conversations. He explains his role in MI5’s communications interception or signals intelligence counter-espionage activities, MI5’s collaboration with other intelligence agencies in the United States, and how signals intelligence and new technologies along with old fashioned human surveillance methods were used to detect both Soviet agents and British traitors.

Wright’s account of his career is notable for it covers two distinct types of work. The first was his role as a scientist/engineer and his invention of new technologies used to intercept, transmit, and monitor communications across London and various embassies throughout the world. His experiences are at times astounding for they show the great lengths gone to by MI5 to monitor and detect and counter the large scale Soviet infiltration of English intelligence, political, and military institutions. The second part of Wright’s career focused less on his development of scientific and engineering devices, and centered on the signals intelligence material obtained by those devices to identify Soviet agents as well as the famous English traitors such as Burgess, Blunt, Maclean and Pilby.

The strength of this book is its portrayal of successful Soviet infiltration of Britain’s establishment by a generation of men (mostly) educated at Oxford and Cambridge Universities in the 1930s, and the great difficulties faced by The West in detecting it and countering it. Wright shows just how complete the Soviets compromised the British military, intelligence agencies (such as Wright’s own MI5) and even parliament. So successful was this infiltration that Wright believes that it included his boss, the head of MI5 itself, Sir Roger Hollis.

This book is a first-rate account of the life of a spy catcher. It is a serious and well written account of the actual life of an actual Cold War era intelligence industry insider. In Peter Wright’s world, spying is a deadly serious business where people were put in life or death situations as players in the very real struggle between the Soviets and The West during the Cold War. This book is a both a damning indictment of The West for the ease at which it was compromised, but it is also a fascinating exposé of the business of spying during the Cold War. It’s a very entertaining and worthwhile book.