Posted by Phil Tomaselli on July 25, 2002 at 20:21:33 from 212.211.100.64 user Phil_T.
In Reply to: Re: Arthur Ransome - A Spy, again posted by Alan Hakim on July 25, 2002 at 17:16:47:
Herewith my defence that Arthur Ransome was a spy. Please note that my original article, as Duncan I trust will agree, made no spectacular claims about Ransome as a spy but tried to tease out some of the connections he undoubtedly had and to detail some of his relationships with SIS, Foreign Office, War Office, Special Branch & MI5.
Yes I have been through all the FO file sat the PRO with ransome's name in the index but I've also been through very many more and have a knowledge of SIS in Russia that I suspect is second to none. This is not an idle boast.
On Ransome in Russia during 1918 there is no definite evidence I have found to say he was working with any of the intelligence services. His behaviour is suggestive and his connection with Robert Bruce Lockhart is too. Lockhart had more connections with SIS (or MI1c as it was then known) than he later avowed. MI5 commented "(Ransome) was first encouraged to get in touch with the Bolsheviks by (Lockhart). Subsequently Mr Lockhart encouraged him to continue, AND MANY OF HIS ARTICLES WERE WRITTEN IN ORDER THAT HE WOULD NOT BE COMPROMISED WITH THE BOLSHEVIK LEADERS" (Capitals mine PT).
Ransome first appears as S76 in a CX report number CX 062390 dated 9th December 1918 coded at Stockholm and sent as part of the Passport Control Office traffic. Passport Control was already a cover for SIS operations (Cf Nigel West's "MI6", Christopher Andrew's "Secret Service"). The passport Control Officer in Stockholm was Major Scale, a friend of Ransome's since February 1917 (cf "Russia in 1919")who was SIS chief and working under cover as Assistant Military Attache. The CX report is essentialy an interview with Litvinov on the consequences of further Allied Intervention in Russia and the prspects of revolution in Germany. I readily admit that this could be a journalistic interview (no doubt Litvinov thought it was) but in that case why send it through SIS sources under an SIS CX number. I also admit that this is the only S76 CX I've found but, of course, they're not meant to be found and drift into the WO, FO and ADM files at the PRO by accident.
Duncan raised the perfectly valid question of whether Ransome might not have known that he was S76. After much thought I have to say that this is unlikely. Every SIS agent I have been able to identify by their code name was perfectly well aware of it (sidney Reilly ST1, Boyce ST2, Paul Dukes ST25, Lt Agar ST34 etc etc) wereall aware of their designations, used them between themselves and even referred to themselves by them 40 years later. Litvinov (who seems to have been beset by spies and appears in innumerable reports as a source) is always just Litvinov. I don't think sources that weren't SIS agents werte given these designations.
That Ransome was S76 is proven by a set of signals between Major Scale and London in February 1919 in a CX 066368 from Stockholm "From our reprentative in Stockholm": S76 suggests that if he should fail to get out of Russia by March 3rd......it might be desirable to send him a wire ordering "British subject Ransome to come home". Such a wire could be addressed to Chicherin.........and...might come from the Foreign Office". S76 would take receipt of such a message to mean that the way was open for him to return ie that we could help him through the Finnish frontier".
on 11 March "our representative" CX'd from Stockholm "No news of S76. Please therefore, send the wireless message (vide CX 066368)". "Mrs Ransome has telegraphed here in great anxiety. Tell her he is all right. We should know if he were nor".
Later Foreign Office file notes mention that "Ransome is working for our Secret Service, but that he is not trusted", "Ransome obtained a visa quickly at request of MI1c".
I have no definite evidence that ransome continued to work for MI1c after his return from Russia in early 1919 though the letter to ernest Boyce quoted in the Observer suggests that links were maintained. certainly he met Lt Agar (SIS agent ST34) in Dorpat in december 1919, a meeting arranged by SIS agent Arthur Cotter and facilitated by SIS agent William Goode (S73). I suggest that this is suspect.
He certainly maintained relations, whilst a Guardian reporter, with FO representatives in the Baltic and provided them with information from Russia. I have little doubt that there was a flow of information the other way and think that there is almost certainly a lot to come out of the Russian archives that will illuminate this period.
As a supporter of the "Ransome as honest broker" camp I have to admit that I am very worried by the approach the R made to the War Office in 1920 through their representative, Colonel Tallents, offering to supply information. Foreign Office I can understand, politics and all that, but War Office is different. he provided the WO with a draft article for the Guardian on the condition of Russia railways and told the WO that he'd already provided the FO with a detailed list of "old egime" officers serving in the Red Army. This is strategic stuff and not something, I suggest, that the Russians would have wanted providing to the War Office of an opponent.
there is much more but alas I now must to my bed. My contention that ransome was a "secret agent" is, I trust, proved for at least the period of late 1918/early 1919 and i am prepared to argue that it probably extended backwards and forwards from that period.
Look forward to the replies.
Phil Tomaselli