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Sex, Spies and Scandal: The John Vassall Affair
Sex, Spies and Scandal is the story of John Vassall, a civil servant who was unmasked as a Soviet spy in 1962. Having been photographed in compromising positions while working at the British embassy in Moscow in 1954, Vassall was blackmailed into handing over secrets from the British Admiralty to his Soviet handlers, both in Moscow and in London, for more than seven years.
There has been a rash of successful recent books and film adaptations on the Profumo, Thorpe and Duchess of Argyll affairs. The story of John Vassall, who was responsible for a far more serious intelligence breach than Profumo, is ripe for retelling. It has got the lot – a honeytrap, spying on an industrial scale, gay affairs with Tory MPs, journalists jailed for not revealing their sources, and the first modern tabloid witch-hunt, which resulted in a ministerial resignation and almost brought down Harold Macmillan's government.
With access to newly released MI5 files and interviews with people who knew Vassall from the 1950s until his death in 1996, this book sheds new light on the neglected spy scandal of the early 1960s. Despite having been drugged and then raped by the KGB in Moscow, as a gay man John Vassall was shown no mercy by the British press or the courts. Sentenced to eighteen years in jail, he served ten years despite telling MI5 everything about his spying. Outside, he found that many of his old friends and lovers had been persecuted or dismissed from the civil service in Britain, the US and Australia. Unlike the Cambridge Five, who courted attention, on leaving prison Vassall had to change his name to avoid the press and lived quietly in London.
Including atmospheric detail on Dolphin Square in the 1950s and '60s – a hotbed of political intrigue but also a safe haven for members of the LGBT community – this is an explosive tale of sexual violence, betrayal, cover-up, homophobia and hypocrisy that blows open some of the British establishment's darkest secrets.
There has been a rash of successful recent books and film adaptations on the Profumo, Thorpe and Duchess of Argyll affairs. The story of John Vassall, who was responsible for a far more serious intelligence breach than Profumo, is ripe for retelling. It has got the lot – a honeytrap, spying on an industrial scale, gay affairs with Tory MPs, journalists jailed for not revealing their sources, and the first modern tabloid witch-hunt, which resulted in a ministerial resignation and almost brought down Harold Macmillan's government.
With access to newly released MI5 files and interviews with people who knew Vassall from the 1950s until his death in 1996, this book sheds new light on the neglected spy scandal of the early 1960s. Despite having been drugged and then raped by the KGB in Moscow, as a gay man John Vassall was shown no mercy by the British press or the courts. Sentenced to eighteen years in jail, he served ten years despite telling MI5 everything about his spying. Outside, he found that many of his old friends and lovers had been persecuted or dismissed from the civil service in Britain, the US and Australia. Unlike the Cambridge Five, who courted attention, on leaving prison Vassall had to change his name to avoid the press and lived quietly in London.
Including atmospheric detail on Dolphin Square in the 1950s and '60s – a hotbed of political intrigue but also a safe haven for members of the LGBT community – this is an explosive tale of sexual violence, betrayal, cover-up, homophobia and hypocrisy that blows open some of the British establishment's darkest secrets.
546 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 23, 2024
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June 13, 2024
The John Vassall affair is often mentioned as a footnote in books about the better-known espionage scandals of the 1950s-1960s (the Cambridge spies, Profumo), usually along the lines of "a gay clerk in the Moscow embassy was blackmailed with compromising photos into copying all documents that came across his desk".
The reality is of course more complicated than that. This is not just a story of espionage, but of the attitudes towards homosexuality in the UK in the 1950s and 1960s, and even more of the social distinctions within the civil service. And I found it interesting that one of the arguments in favor of the decriminalization of homosexuality in the UK was actually that it would remove the most frequent basis for blackmail (not just in the context of espionage).
The John Vassall who emerges from these pages is one of those characters who inspires both pity and irritation. Pity, because he was undoubtedly drugged and raped in Moskow - and then was victimized again by blackmail, ultimately leading to a prison sentence. Irritation, because he comes across as an indefatigable social climber and name-dropper, a wannabe international toy boy with rich friends in glamorous places. Quite naive into the bargain.
The book also focuses on the peripheral damage of the John Vassall affair, most notably in the form of hysterical suspicions of civil servants who had befriended him, or who had allowed themselves to be drawn into his unceasing social rounds. I would have liked to have heard more about what types of information Vassall had passed on to Moscow. It's true that he never ranked higher than a clerk- but clerks have access to a lot of information!
The author of the book allowed himself a digression into the checkered history of Dolphin Square, the apartment complex where John Vassall rented a flat (the expensive furniture and furnishings of which were paid for by his Moscow connections). I hadn't realized that this complex had housed quite so many controversial characters (like Christine Keeler of the Profumo scandal).
The reality is of course more complicated than that. This is not just a story of espionage, but of the attitudes towards homosexuality in the UK in the 1950s and 1960s, and even more of the social distinctions within the civil service. And I found it interesting that one of the arguments in favor of the decriminalization of homosexuality in the UK was actually that it would remove the most frequent basis for blackmail (not just in the context of espionage).
The John Vassall who emerges from these pages is one of those characters who inspires both pity and irritation. Pity, because he was undoubtedly drugged and raped in Moskow - and then was victimized again by blackmail, ultimately leading to a prison sentence. Irritation, because he comes across as an indefatigable social climber and name-dropper, a wannabe international toy boy with rich friends in glamorous places. Quite naive into the bargain.
The book also focuses on the peripheral damage of the John Vassall affair, most notably in the form of hysterical suspicions of civil servants who had befriended him, or who had allowed themselves to be drawn into his unceasing social rounds. I would have liked to have heard more about what types of information Vassall had passed on to Moscow. It's true that he never ranked higher than a clerk- but clerks have access to a lot of information!
The author of the book allowed himself a digression into the checkered history of Dolphin Square, the apartment complex where John Vassall rented a flat (the expensive furniture and furnishings of which were paid for by his Moscow connections). I hadn't realized that this complex had housed quite so many controversial characters (like Christine Keeler of the Profumo scandal).
Displaying 1 of 1 review