Bare Facts

Sad spies and a blast at No. 10

While Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher worked in the upstairs study of her official residence at No. 10 Downing Street, an aide sorting mail in a room below noted a suspiciously bulky envelope. As he warily began to open it, the envelope exploded into flames, burning the man's face and hands. Thatcher, however, was not harmed. According to a note enclosed in the 7 1/2-in. by 5-in. envelope, the attack was the work of a previously unknown environmentalist group, the Animal Rights Militia.

Coming just four months after an intruder entered Queen Elizabeth's bedroom, the incident revived doubts about the safety of British leaders. For Thatcher, it was an unwelcome embarrassment in a week marked by revelations that a number of new leaks had been detected in Britain's sievelike national security system. Only three weeks ago, Geoffrey Prime, a Russian-language expert at Britain's top-secret Cheltenham communications center, pleaded guilty to charges of spying for the Soviet Union. It was enough to give the already rattled British a bad case of jitters. Said a group of Conservative Members of Parliament who called for a judicial investigation of the "parlous" state of British security: "The time for bland assurances is long past."

Most serious was the case of Hugh Hambleton, 60, a Canadian economics professor. Arrested shortly after his arrival in Britain last June, Hambleton is believed to have spied for the Soviets for some 30 years. While working as an economist at NATO's Paris headquarters from 1956 to 1961, he allegedly gave the Soviets copies of more than 80 NATO documents carrying the "cosmic" designation, NATO'S highest security classification. The consequence, Attorney General Sir Michael Havers told London's Old Bailey criminal court, could only have been "exceptionally grave damage" to the alliance.

The graying, impeccably attired Hambleton was apparently recruited by the KGB during the late 1940s in Ottawa, then trained in espionage methods and cultivated as a Soviet agent while he studied in France and Britain. For reasons that remain unclear, Hambleton resigned from NATO in 1961. He returned to study in London and later joined Quebec's Laval University in 1964 to teach economics.

Hambleton continued working for the KGB, occasionally receiving cash payments of up to $5,000. In 1975, he says, he was invited to Moscow, where he had a rare interview with Yuri Andropov, then head of the KGB. Chatting over dinner in fluent English, Andropov pressed Hambleton to enter Canadian politics. "It was a great honor," Hambleton told British authorities. "I got the feeling he wanted me to exert influence on behalf of Russia, rather than spy." In 1979 the Royal Canadian Mounted Police finally raided his house, finding NATO documents and spying paraphernalia, including a high-speed code receiver. But after questioning, Hambleton was released on the grounds that his spying did not directly affect Canadian security. That decision led Hambleton mistakenly to believe he was immune from prosecution when he nonchalantly flew to England for a visit. But in his defense last week, Hambleton unveiled yet another twist to his story. Espionage charges against him were unwarranted, his lawyer claimed, because he had in fact been a double agent working for NATO all along.

In sharp contrast, the case of British Diplomat Rhona Ritchie, 30, was merely sad. She was convicted of relaying the contents of confidential cables to her lover, an Egyptian diplomat, while she served at the British embassy in Israel. Attorney General Havers condemned her indiscretions as "more foolish than wicked," noting that the cables' contents would eventually have become known in any case. Already dismissed from the foreign service, Ritchie received a nine-month suspended sentence.

While the Hambleton trial unfolded, still further security breaches were revealed as an army lance corporal and a government information officer were charged with violations of the Official Secrets Act, apparently for relatively minor offenses. Then last Friday the string of spy scandals took a new turn with the expulsion of the Soviet naval attache, Captain Anatoli Pavlovich Zotov, for unspecified "inadmissible activities," a diplomatic euphemism for spying. No wonder the chairman of a parliamentary investigation concluded last week that Britain's security screening system is a "shambles."

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