Jimmy Burns’ biography of Walter Bell, charts the life of one of Britain’s most successful and influential intelligence officers. The fact that Bell is so little known outside of intelligence circles testifies to this success.
Walter Bell appears to have been a classic grey man in the background. Unseen but involved in everything, the faithful spy who ultimately took his secrets to the grave. Burns explains Bell’s life against the backdrop of the decline of the British Empire and the development of Britain’s special relationship with America, through WW II and the start of the Cold War.
Bell’s first assignment was to New York, where he worked for William Stephenson the Head of British Security Coordination, a front for MI6. He was heavily involved in a propaganda war against Germany to secure the support of America and also in curtailing German espionage operations. Stevenson was a strong personality who clashed with the FBI director, J. Edgar Hoover, who resented foreign intelligence organisations operating on US soil. Bell’s roll was to liaise behind the scenes smoothing out the problems between the two men and eventually won the trust of Hoover.
Bell continued this liaison role between British and American intelligence services into the Cold War and is credited with helping to foster the special relationship linking the two countries. There is a particularly interesting chapter on the debate between US and British intelligence around whether to help the opposition in Nazi Germany. The Americans wanted to aid the assassination plots against Hitler and the British felt it better to leave, ‘the regime to implode from within.’ A decision which haunted Bell for the rest of his life.
Bell eventually joined MI5 and served in Jamaica, India and Kenya as they gained independence. There is a great deal of insight into this period, in particular Bell’s work with Jomo Kenyatta, the African nationalist leader, and the Mau Mau rebellion.
However, any discussion of British intelligence in the Cold War period will always be dominated by the Cambridge spy ring. Bell knew Burgess, Maclean and Philby but was not thought suitable for recruitment as a double agent. When the Cambridge spies were eventually uncovered, an investigation was carried out into how far Soviet penetration had gone. The MI5 director general, Roger Hollis came under suspicion and Bell spent a lot of time refuting allegations that his friend Guy Liddell a former MI5 director of counter-espionage, was a Soviet mole. The finger of suspicion was also rather tenuously pointed at Bell himself.
Burns discussion of this ‘dense web of conspiracy’ is the centre piece of what is an absorbing book. A Faithful Spy is written by someone who knew Bell, giving authenticity to the book, rather than speculation about motives that biographies can be prone to. There are no “big reveals” about the intelligence world, but its examination of the seismic changes of the mid twentieth century from the perspective of an Intelligence officer, at the heart of them, offers a fresh insight into the period.
A Faithful Spy: The Life and Times of an MI6 and MI5 Officer by Jimmy Burns is out now and published by Chiselbury. Alan Bardos is the author of the Johnny Swift thriller series.
