Maurice Oldfield
Encyclopedia
Sir Maurice Oldfield GCMG
, CBE
(16 November 1915 - 11 March 1981), was a British
intelligence officer
and espionage
administrator
.
, near Bakewell
, Derbyshire
, the first of eleven children of Joseph Oldfield, a tenant farmer, and his wife, Ada Annie Dicken. Oldfield went to school at the local Lady Manners School in Bakewell.
In 1934 he won a scholarship to Manchester University and specialized in medieval history. After the award of the Thomas Brown memorial prize, in 1938 he graduated with first class honours in history and was elected to a fellowship. However, the Second World War upset his plans for an academic career.
headquarters of SIME (Security Intelligence, Middle East) where his talent was spotted by Brigadier Douglas Roberts. Oldfield finished the war as a lieutenant colonel
with an MBE
. Immediately after the war Roberts was made the head of counter-intelligence in the Secret Intelligence Service
(SIS), more commonly known as MI6: Oldfield became his deputy from 1947, a post he held until 1949. Oldfield was posted to Singapore from 1950 to 1952 as deputy of SIS's regional headquarters and then from 1956 to 1958 as SIS’s regional head, covering south-east Asia and the Far East. In 1956 he was appointed CBE
.
Following a short spell in London from 1958 to 1959, Oldfield was selected for the key post of SIS representative in Washington, where he remained for the next four years, with the main task of cultivating good relations with the Central Intelligence Agency
(CIA), a task he had started during his Singapore posting. In 1964 he was appointed CMG
. His close ties with James Jesus Angleton
, the head of the CIA's counter-intelligence branch, were reinforced by their shared interest in medieval history. But Angleton also persuaded Oldfield to believe without question the product of KGB
defector, Anatoliy Golitsyn
, who was claiming, amongst other things, that the Sino-Soviet split
and President Tito
of Yugoslavia's breach with Moscow were clear cases of Soviet disinformation. Soon after leaving Washington, Oldfield withdrew his belief in most of Golitsyn's more creative stories.
On his return to London, Oldfield became director of counter-intelligence and in 1965 C's deputy. He therefore had reason to feel aggrieved when he was passed over in 1968 in favour of Sir John Rennie from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office
, whom he later succeeded as C in 1973. This made Oldfield the first member of the post-war intake to reach the top post. Under his leadership, SIS benefited from the good relations he cultivated with both Conservative
and Labour
ministers at home and from its improved standing with friendly foreign intelligence services with which he kept in personal touch. Oldfield personally liaised with Lord Carrington
at the time of the Littlejohn Affair in 1972 and mounted the black propaganda campaign against the Littlejohn Brothers, Kenneth and Keith, in the world media. His support enabled Lord Carrington to survive as the Secretary of State for Defence in the Heath government. Oldfield was privately a great admirer of the Littlejohn brothers and admitted that he reluctantly agreed to their sacrifice when a swap was arranged with the government of Jack Lynch in the Republic of Ireland for another agent John Wymann and an Irish Special Branch officer Patrick Crinnion.
Oldfield was appointed KCMG in 1975 and GCMG on his retirement in 1978: the only C so far to have received this award. He was also the first to cultivate chosen journalists at meetings in the Athenaeum Club
. This led to the smile on his pudgy face behind horn-rimmed glasses appearing in the press when he became the first Director General of SIS to disclose his identity to the public when he gave an interview to the Daily Express in August 1973 to deny that the SIS had armed the Littlejohn brothers. He later admitted they had us on the ropes so we had to fight dirty. The Littlejohn brothers, serving 20 and 15 years penal servitude in Mountjoy Prison, Dublin, were unlikely to have viewed the events of the period in the same light hearted manner of the man who had given them their orders and then reneged on his obligations to them. Pamela, Countess of Onslow, who was a close friend of Oldfield, and of Keith Littlejohn, confused the previously known account of the Littlejohn Affair by stating shortly before her death that the two were known to each other for two years before the events in Ireland took place. She described a typical Oldfield machiavellian manoeuvre in which the information Keith Littlejohn had passed to her about Kenneth's discovery of Russian arms in the Republic of Ireland, was firstly given to Oldfield who requested that she passed it to Lord Carrington. Carrington then involved himself by contacting Oldfield. It was Oldfield's way of protecting the SIS and himself from any serious consequences from the involvement of a loose cannon like Kenneth Littlejohn. He created a political buffer between SIS and the subsequent furore and the earned kudos for assisting Carrington. To the credit of the brothers, they never revealed the fact that Carrington was the patsy in the affair.
made Oldfield a visiting fellow in 1978, where he began a study of Captain Sir Mansfield Cumming, the first C, but soon lost interest in it through lack of material. He therefore welcomed Margaret Thatcher
's proposal in October 1979 to appoint him co-ordinator of security intelligence in Northern Ireland
. In Belfast
he did his best to improve relations between the chief constable and the new general officer commanding, but the strains of office soon told on him. It was not only incipient cancer, but also alleged evidence on his unprofessional contacts that caused his return to London in June 1980. Subsequent interrogation resulted in the withdrawal of his positive vetting certificate, after he confessed he had lied to cover up his homosexuality. In 1987, Thatcher confirmed to the House of Commons that Oldfield was gay
. Oldfield himself had previously admitted that "from time to time [he] engaged in homosexual activities." Former colleagues in MI6 denied this, and there is no evidence that his private life had prejudiced the security of his work at any stage in his career. Among his close friends was Betty Kemp, a constitutional historian at Oxford. He died in London on March 11, 1981.
He was reputedly one of the models for John le Carré
's fictional character George Smiley
, though Le Carré disputes this.
Order of St Michael and St George
The Most Distinguished Order of Saint Michael and Saint George is an order of chivalry founded on 28 April 1818 by George, Prince Regent, later George IV of the United Kingdom, while he was acting as Prince Regent for his father, George III....
, CBE
Order of the British Empire
The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is an order of chivalry established on 4 June 1917 by George V of the United Kingdom. The Order comprises five classes in civil and military divisions...
(16 November 1915 - 11 March 1981), was a British
British people
The British are citizens of the United Kingdom, of the Isle of Man, any of the Channel Islands, or of any of the British overseas territories, and their descendants...
intelligence officer
Intelligence officer
An intelligence officer is a person employed by an organization to collect, compile and/or analyze information which is of use to that organization...
and espionage
Espionage
Espionage or spying involves an individual obtaining information that is considered secret or confidential without the permission of the holder of the information. Espionage is inherently clandestine, lest the legitimate holder of the information change plans or take other countermeasures once it...
administrator
Administration (government)
The term administration, as used in the context of government, differs according to jurisdiction.-United States:In United States usage, the term refers to the executive branch under a specific president , for example: the "Barack Obama administration." It can also mean an executive branch agency...
.
Early life
Oldfield was born on 16 November 1915 in the village of Over HaddonOver Haddon
Over Haddon is a small village in Derbyshire, England. It is located near the small town of Bakewell, near the B5055 road.Over Haddon overlooks Lathkill Dale and the River Lathkill, which may be crossed by a clapper bridge on a footpath running south from the village. It has two churches, a public...
, near Bakewell
Bakewell
Bakewell is a small market town in the Derbyshire Dales district of Derbyshire, England, deriving its name from 'Beadeca's Well'. It is the only town included in the Peak District National Park, and is well known for the local confection Bakewell Pudding...
, Derbyshire
Derbyshire
Derbyshire is a county in the East Midlands of England. A substantial portion of the Peak District National Park lies within Derbyshire. The northern part of Derbyshire overlaps with the Pennines, a famous chain of hills and mountains. The county contains within its boundary of approx...
, the first of eleven children of Joseph Oldfield, a tenant farmer, and his wife, Ada Annie Dicken. Oldfield went to school at the local Lady Manners School in Bakewell.
In 1934 he won a scholarship to Manchester University and specialized in medieval history. After the award of the Thomas Brown memorial prize, in 1938 he graduated with first class honours in history and was elected to a fellowship. However, the Second World War upset his plans for an academic career.
World War II and MI6
Oldfield joined up and became a sergeant in Field Security in Egypt, Palestine and Syria, was commissioned in 1943 and posted into the Intelligence Corps; his service was spent mostly at the CairoCairo
Cairo , is the capital of Egypt and the largest city in the Arab world and Africa, and the 16th largest metropolitan area in the world. Nicknamed "The City of a Thousand Minarets" for its preponderance of Islamic architecture, Cairo has long been a centre of the region's political and cultural life...
headquarters of SIME (Security Intelligence, Middle East) where his talent was spotted by Brigadier Douglas Roberts. Oldfield finished the war as a lieutenant colonel
Lieutenant colonel
Lieutenant colonel is a rank of commissioned officer in the armies and most marine forces and some air forces of the world, typically ranking above a major and below a colonel. The rank of lieutenant colonel is often shortened to simply "colonel" in conversation and in unofficial correspondence...
with an MBE
MBE
MBE can stand for:* Mail Boxes Etc.* Management by exception* Master of Bioethics* Master of Bioscience Enterprise* Master of Business Engineering* Master of Business Economics* Mean Biased Error...
. Immediately after the war Roberts was made the head of counter-intelligence in the Secret Intelligence Service
Secret Intelligence Service
The Secret Intelligence Service is responsible for supplying the British Government with foreign intelligence. Alongside the internal Security Service , the Government Communications Headquarters and the Defence Intelligence , it operates under the formal direction of the Joint Intelligence...
(SIS), more commonly known as MI6: Oldfield became his deputy from 1947, a post he held until 1949. Oldfield was posted to Singapore from 1950 to 1952 as deputy of SIS's regional headquarters and then from 1956 to 1958 as SIS’s regional head, covering south-east Asia and the Far East. In 1956 he was appointed CBE
CBE
CBE and C.B.E. are abbreviations for "Commander of the Order of the British Empire", a grade in the Order of the British Empire.Other uses include:* Chemical and Biochemical Engineering...
.
Following a short spell in London from 1958 to 1959, Oldfield was selected for the key post of SIS representative in Washington, where he remained for the next four years, with the main task of cultivating good relations with the Central Intelligence Agency
Central Intelligence Agency
The Central Intelligence Agency is a civilian intelligence agency of the United States government. It is an executive agency and reports directly to the Director of National Intelligence, responsible for providing national security intelligence assessment to senior United States policymakers...
(CIA), a task he had started during his Singapore posting. In 1964 he was appointed CMG
Order of St Michael and St George
The Most Distinguished Order of Saint Michael and Saint George is an order of chivalry founded on 28 April 1818 by George, Prince Regent, later George IV of the United Kingdom, while he was acting as Prince Regent for his father, George III....
. His close ties with James Jesus Angleton
James Jesus Angleton
James Jesus Angleton was chief of the Central Intelligence Agency's counterintelligence staff from 1954 to 1975...
, the head of the CIA's counter-intelligence branch, were reinforced by their shared interest in medieval history. But Angleton also persuaded Oldfield to believe without question the product of KGB
KGB
The KGB was the commonly used acronym for the . It was the national security agency of the Soviet Union from 1954 until 1991, and was the premier internal security, intelligence, and secret police organization during that time.The State Security Agency of the Republic of Belarus currently uses the...
defector, Anatoliy Golitsyn
Anatoliy Golitsyn
Anatoliy Mikhaylovich Golitsyn CBE is a Soviet KGB defector and author of two books about the long-term deception strategy of the KGB leadership. He was born in Piryatin, Ukrainian SSR...
, who was claiming, amongst other things, that the Sino-Soviet split
Sino-Soviet split
In political science, the term Sino–Soviet split denotes the worsening of political and ideologic relations between the People's Republic of China and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics during the Cold War...
and President Tito
Josip Broz Tito
Marshal Josip Broz Tito – 4 May 1980) was a Yugoslav revolutionary and statesman. While his presidency has been criticized as authoritarian, Tito was a popular public figure both in Yugoslavia and abroad, viewed as a unifying symbol for the nations of the Yugoslav federation...
of Yugoslavia's breach with Moscow were clear cases of Soviet disinformation. Soon after leaving Washington, Oldfield withdrew his belief in most of Golitsyn's more creative stories.
On his return to London, Oldfield became director of counter-intelligence and in 1965 C's deputy. He therefore had reason to feel aggrieved when he was passed over in 1968 in favour of Sir John Rennie from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office
Foreign and Commonwealth Office
The Foreign and Commonwealth Office, commonly called the Foreign Office or the FCO is a British government department responsible for promoting the interests of the United Kingdom overseas, created in 1968 by merging the Foreign Office and the Commonwealth Office.The head of the FCO is the...
, whom he later succeeded as C in 1973. This made Oldfield the first member of the post-war intake to reach the top post. Under his leadership, SIS benefited from the good relations he cultivated with both Conservative
Conservative Party (UK)
The Conservative Party, formally the Conservative and Unionist Party, is a centre-right political party in the United Kingdom that adheres to the philosophies of conservatism and British unionism. It is the largest political party in the UK, and is currently the largest single party in the House...
and Labour
Labour Party (UK)
The Labour Party is a centre-left democratic socialist party in the United Kingdom. It surpassed the Liberal Party in general elections during the early 1920s, forming minority governments under Ramsay MacDonald in 1924 and 1929-1931. The party was in a wartime coalition from 1940 to 1945, after...
ministers at home and from its improved standing with friendly foreign intelligence services with which he kept in personal touch. Oldfield personally liaised with Lord Carrington
Peter Carington, 6th Baron Carrington
Peter Alexander Rupert Carington, 6th Baron Carrington, is a British Conservative politician. He served as British Foreign Secretary between 1979 and 1982 and as the sixth Secretary General of NATO from 1984 to 1988. He is the last surviving member of the Cabinets of both Harold Macmillan and Sir...
at the time of the Littlejohn Affair in 1972 and mounted the black propaganda campaign against the Littlejohn Brothers, Kenneth and Keith, in the world media. His support enabled Lord Carrington to survive as the Secretary of State for Defence in the Heath government. Oldfield was privately a great admirer of the Littlejohn brothers and admitted that he reluctantly agreed to their sacrifice when a swap was arranged with the government of Jack Lynch in the Republic of Ireland for another agent John Wymann and an Irish Special Branch officer Patrick Crinnion.
Oldfield was appointed KCMG in 1975 and GCMG on his retirement in 1978: the only C so far to have received this award. He was also the first to cultivate chosen journalists at meetings in the Athenaeum Club
Athenaeum Club, London
The Athenaeum Club, usually just referred to as the Athenaeum, is a notable London club with its Clubhouse located at 107 Pall Mall, London, England, at the corner of Waterloo Place....
. This led to the smile on his pudgy face behind horn-rimmed glasses appearing in the press when he became the first Director General of SIS to disclose his identity to the public when he gave an interview to the Daily Express in August 1973 to deny that the SIS had armed the Littlejohn brothers. He later admitted they had us on the ropes so we had to fight dirty. The Littlejohn brothers, serving 20 and 15 years penal servitude in Mountjoy Prison, Dublin, were unlikely to have viewed the events of the period in the same light hearted manner of the man who had given them their orders and then reneged on his obligations to them. Pamela, Countess of Onslow, who was a close friend of Oldfield, and of Keith Littlejohn, confused the previously known account of the Littlejohn Affair by stating shortly before her death that the two were known to each other for two years before the events in Ireland took place. She described a typical Oldfield machiavellian manoeuvre in which the information Keith Littlejohn had passed to her about Kenneth's discovery of Russian arms in the Republic of Ireland, was firstly given to Oldfield who requested that she passed it to Lord Carrington. Carrington then involved himself by contacting Oldfield. It was Oldfield's way of protecting the SIS and himself from any serious consequences from the involvement of a loose cannon like Kenneth Littlejohn. He created a political buffer between SIS and the subsequent furore and the earned kudos for assisting Carrington. To the credit of the brothers, they never revealed the fact that Carrington was the patsy in the affair.
After MI6
All SoulsAll Souls College, Oxford
The Warden and the College of the Souls of all Faithful People deceased in the University of Oxford or All Souls College is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England....
made Oldfield a visiting fellow in 1978, where he began a study of Captain Sir Mansfield Cumming, the first C, but soon lost interest in it through lack of material. He therefore welcomed Margaret Thatcher
Margaret Thatcher
Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher, was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990...
's proposal in October 1979 to appoint him co-ordinator of security intelligence in Northern Ireland
Northern Ireland
Northern Ireland is one of the four countries of the United Kingdom. Situated in the north-east of the island of Ireland, it shares a border with the Republic of Ireland to the south and west...
. In Belfast
Belfast
Belfast is the capital of and largest city in Northern Ireland. By population, it is the 14th biggest city in the United Kingdom and second biggest on the island of Ireland . It is the seat of the devolved government and legislative Northern Ireland Assembly...
he did his best to improve relations between the chief constable and the new general officer commanding, but the strains of office soon told on him. It was not only incipient cancer, but also alleged evidence on his unprofessional contacts that caused his return to London in June 1980. Subsequent interrogation resulted in the withdrawal of his positive vetting certificate, after he confessed he had lied to cover up his homosexuality. In 1987, Thatcher confirmed to the House of Commons that Oldfield was gay
Gay
Gay is a word that refers to a homosexual person, especially a homosexual male. For homosexual women the specific term is "lesbian"....
. Oldfield himself had previously admitted that "from time to time [he] engaged in homosexual activities." Former colleagues in MI6 denied this, and there is no evidence that his private life had prejudiced the security of his work at any stage in his career. Among his close friends was Betty Kemp, a constitutional historian at Oxford. He died in London on March 11, 1981.
He was reputedly one of the models for John le Carré
John le Carré
David John Moore Cornwell , who writes under the name John le Carré, is an author of espionage novels. During the 1950s and the 1960s, Cornwell worked for MI5 and MI6, and began writing novels under the pseudonym "John le Carré"...
's fictional character George Smiley
George Smiley
George Smiley is a fictional character created by John le Carré. Smiley is an intelligence officer working for MI6 , the British overseas intelligence agency...
, though Le Carré disputes this.