The Smell of Treason

Since a homosexual Admiralty clerk named John Vassall was sentenced to 18 years in prison last month for selling secrets to the Russians, the House of Commons has buzzed with rumors that the case might involve the government in the biggest scandal since Burgess and MacLean eloped to Russia in 1951. Last week the most sensational version of the Vassall saga to date was unfolded in the House of Commons by the very man whom the Opposition had accused of trying to whitewash the whole affair: Prime Minister Harold Macmillan.

Rising in the tense, hushed chamber, Macmillan declared dramatically: "On Friday last, a situation developed of which I hesitate to tell the House--but I must tell the House." Then, in a voice that quivered with cold rage, the Prime Minister said that according to a story confided to him by an M.P., Vassall, 38, was actually planning to defect to Russia when he was arrested last September. Grimly, but without judging the accuracy of the story. Macmillan told the rest: Vassall had intended to go first to Italy, where he was to join his former boss, Thomas Galbraith, who had been Civil Lord of the Admiralty until three years ago. Then, said Macmillan, recalling the case of a nuclear physicist who defected to Russia by way of Italy in 1950, Vassall supposedly planned to "do a Pontecorvo." Moreover, "the clear implication" of the story was that Galbraith "also intended to defect to Russia or to assist Vassall to do so."

McCarihyite Innuendo. While Galbraith listened stony-faced from the Tory benches, Macmillan added: "It was also said that my honorable friend was believed to have spent holidays abroad with Vassall before." Explaining that his informant had heard this account of the case from "a leading member of the press." Macmillan declared: "This story, if it were true, would amount to something akin to treason."

Earlier, Macmillan had denounced "speculation and innuendo" arising from a series of 25 fairly innocuous letters from Galbraith that had been discovered in Vassall's apartment (TIME, Nov. 16). Now he declared that, "however preposterous, however wicked and however vile" the charges, it was his "duty" to appoint a judicial tribunal to investigate the story --though hitherto he had brushed aside persistent Opposition demands for such a tribunal. This, Macmillan concluded, was "the only machinery open to us for the defense of innocent men if they be innocent, but for their condemnation if they be guilty."

In one of the stormiest sessions that Commons had seen in years, the Prime Minister returned to the attack by suggesting that the press and Opposition leaders had tried to "destroy private reputations from motives either of spite or gain." He concluded with a pious warning against "the spirit of Titus Oates* and Senator McCarthy."

Borgian Penumbra. Brilliant, left-wing Laborite Richard Grossman retorted caustically that McCarthyism "arises in countries when people outside suspect that the security arrangements required of the small fry are not maintained so severely at the very top." Citing the Burgess-MacLean case, Grossman charged that the government had shied away from a thorough investigation in order to "cover up" higher officials who, "if the truth had come out, would have had to go." Said he: "Now exactly the same thing seems to be happening in the Admiralty."

Despite Macmillan's frequent attempts to minimize the effectiveness of Soviet espionage, a disquieting account of Russian spying in Britain was volunteered by Charles Ian Orr-Ewing, who succeeded Galbraith at the Admiralty. "There are thousands of them. They are all trained to detect weakness in character, weakness for drink, blondes, drugs and homosexuality."

Viscount Hailsham, the government's leader in the House of Lords, described the Communist conspiracy in memorable phrases that might possibly lodge in top Britons' memories. "In matters of security," he said, "we live in the penumbra of a ruthless and diabolical war, the like of which has scarcely been seen in Europe since the time of the Borgias."

* A 17th century informer whose tales of imagined plots against Charles I led to a reign of terror.

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