Sir Dick Goldsmith White, KCMG, KBE (20 December 1906 – 21 February 1993) was a British intelligence officer. He was Director General (DG) of MI5 from 1953 to 1956, and Head of the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) from 1956 to 1968.
Dick White | |
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White in 1928 | |
Born | 20 December 1906 Tonbridge, Kent |
Died | 21 February 1993 (aged 86) Burpham, Sussex |
Nationality | British |
Occupation | Intelligence officer |
Awards | KCMG, KBE |
Espionage activity | |
Allegiance | United Kingdom |
Service branch | MI5, MI6 |
Rank | Director General of MI5 Chief of the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) |
Early life
editWhite was born in Tonbridge, Kent, the son of an ironmonger Percy Hall White and Gertrude Farthing and went to school at Bishop's Stortford College.[1]: 29 [2]: 19 He took a First Class Degree in History at Christ Church, Oxford in 1927, and learnt to speak German.[1]: 29 [3][4] He was athletic in his youth and obtained a blue in running at Oxford.[1]: 29 [4] He was described by Peter Wright as resembling David Niven: "the same perfect English manners, easy charm, and immaculate dress sense." He was, said Wright, "tall with lean, healthy features and a sharp eye".[5]
He would qualify for a Commonwealth Fellowship in 1928 which saw him seek further education in the United States at the Universities of Michigan and California.[1]: 29 After returning to the UK, he failed to obtain a position at Christ Church, Oxford and after being rejected by the navy, he obtained work in Croydon as a teacher.[1]: 29 He was spotted by a recruiter in 1935 while on Mediterranean cruise with his students and invited to an interview with Guy Liddell at MI5.[1]: 29
Career
editHe was employed at MI5 in 1936 to monitor the rise of Nazism in Germany and spent a year in Munich attempting to recruit Germans.[1]: 29 When back from Germany, he worked with Jona Ustinov to identify potential recruits. He was a co-creator of the Double-Cross system in 1940, to turn Abwehr agents in the UK and elsewhere.[1]: 29 He would eventually become Liddell's assistant director in B Division.[1]: 29 By 1943, he was seconded to SHAEF as a special advisor on counter-intelligence ending the war as a brigadier.[1]: 29 He was sent to Berlin at the end of the war to investigate Hitler's fate.[1]: 29
He returned to MI5 in 1947 as head of its counter-intelligence division.[4] In 1949, he was warned by the FBI of a Soviet spy at Harwell, the UK's Atomic Energy Research Establishment. Investigation identified Klaus Fuchs who was later interrogated and confessed to being a spy for the Soviets.[1]: 29 White and MI5 were still in denial of the state of the Soviet penetration until the FBI discovered a spy via the Venona project called "Homer" working in British government.[1]: 29 Kim Philby would warn the KGB in 1951, that Donald Maclean, now in the UK, had been identified as "Homer" and Guy Burgess was sent to warn him.[1]: 29 White attempted to track the latter two to France but they had escaped.[1]: 29 Their arrival in Moscow compromised Philby's position. Under a cloud of suspicion raised by his highly visible and intimate association with Burgess, Philby returned to London.[1]: 29 There, he underwent MI5 interrogation by White aimed at ascertaining whether he had acted as a "third man" in Burgess and Maclean's spy ring.[1]: 29 In July 1951, Philby resigned from MI6, preempting his all-but-inevitable dismissal.[6] Philby was cleared a few years later by Harold Macmillan.[1]: 29
By 1953, White was appointed as director-general of MI5 and in 1956 was appointed Chief of the Secret Intelligence Service in 1956 in the wake of the "Crabb Affair", the exposure of which had damaged Soviet-British relations and embarrassed MI6 and clashed with Anthony Eden and Macmillan over their handling of the Suez Crisis.[1]: 29 [7][4] Much as Peter Wright liked White, he felt his move to MI6 was a mistake for both MI5 and MI6: "Just as his work [at MI5] was beginning, he was moved on a politician's whim to an organisation he knew little about, and which was profoundly hostile to his arrival. He was never to be as successful there as he had been in MI5."[8] During his tenure at MI6, he rebuilt the organisation's relationship with Whitehall and the CIA.[1] This was especially true when MI6 recruited Oleg Penkovsky, a GRU Colonel that led to the identification of MI6 officer George Blake in 1963 as Soviet spy.[1]
White had always suspected Kim Philby of being the "third man".[9] When he found out that Philby had been employed as freelance MI6 agent in Beirut, he sent Nicholas Elliott to interrogate Philby and encourage him to return to London.[1] Philby fled to Moscow. By 1964, he was aware of the "Fourth Man" when Anthony Blunt confessed his knowledge of the other three spies for immunity.[10][4]
At the time, the identity of all MI5 and MI6 personnel was kept secret; officially, the government did not even admit to their existence. White's role as head of MI6 came out in 1967, when he was identified by the Saturday Evening Post magazine.[10][2] White would retire in 1968 and became the Cabinet Office's first Intelligence Co-ordinator before retiring for good in 1972.[1]
Marriage
editIn 1945, he married Kathleen Bellamy and they had four children, Adrian, Frances, Jenny and Stephen.[1]: 29 [10]
Honours
editHonoured many times throughout his career, he was given an OBE in 1942, a CBE in 1950, a KBE in 1955, and finally a KCMG in 1960.[1]: 19 [11] Other honours include a Legion of Merit and a Croix de Guerre.[2]: 29
Death
editHe died after a long illness at his home from intestinal cancer,[10] "The Leat" in Burpham, near Arundel in Sussex, on 21 February 1993; his wife, Kathleen, survived him.[10]
References
edit- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y "Sir Dick White". The Daily Telegraph (London). 23 February 1993.
- ^ a b c Pace, Eric (23 February 1993). "Sir Dick White, 87, Ex-British Intelligence Chief". The New York Times.
- ^ "White, Sir Dick (Goldsmith), (20 Dec. 1906–20 Feb. 1993)". WHO'S WHO & WHO WAS WHO. 2007. doi:10.1093/ww/9780199540884.013.u176204. ISBN 978-0-19-954089-1. Retrieved 15 April 2021.
- ^ a b c d e "Sir Dick White obituary". The Times. No. 64575. 23 February 1993. p. 15.
- ^ Wright, Peter, Spycatcher, Stoddart (Canada), 1987, p. 40 (paperback)
- ^ S.J. Hamrick (2004) Deceiving the Deceivers: Kim Philby, Donald Maclean and Guy Burgess. New Haven: Yale University Press. p. 137. ISBN 0300191464
- ^ Turner, Barry, Suez 1956: The Inside Story of the First Oil War, Hodder & Stoughton, 2006, p.171
- ^ Wright, Spycatcher, p. 96
- ^ Carver, Tom (11 October 2012). "Diary: Philby in Beirut". London Review of Books. Retrieved 4 October 2012.
- ^ a b c d e "Sir Dick White, Former Head of MI5-MI6 Secret Services, Dead". AP NEWS. 23 February 1993. Retrieved 17 September 2020.
- ^ "White, Sir Dick Goldsmith (1906–1993), intelligence officer". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. 2004. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/53440. ISBN 978-0-19-861412-8. Retrieved 15 April 2021. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
Further reading
edit- Bower, Tom The Perfect English Spy: Sir Dick White and the Secret War 1935–90, William Heinemann, 1995.