Les grandes oreilles servent-elles à rien ?

Tout écouter, ou presque, tout savoir sur tout, ou presque, telle était paraît la capacité des services d'écoutes occidentaux dans l'Union soviétiques des années postérieures à la Seconde Guerre mondiale.

Des conversations entre des citoyens ordinaires, celles du chef de l'Eglise orthodoxe ou celles des responsables de la distribution de vodka dans une province éloignée se retrouvent consignées dans les épais dossiers contenus dans les archives récemment ouvertes du grand centre britannique d'écoutes à Cheltenham.

Cet article de Cahal Milmo dans les colonnes de l'Independent rapporte les étonnantes découvertes des historiens dans ces cartons de rapports d'écoutes. Toutefois, le journaliste ne pose pas la question qui dérange : à quoi ont-elles servi ?

How GCHQ kept tabs on Soviet vodka supplies

The lives of ordinary people under Stalin are revealed as Britain's spying secrets are finally made public

Thanks to the latest technology and some clandestine chicanery, GCHQ is renowned for its ability to listen to the conversations of the leaders of Britain's enemies and, occasionally, its friends. Less known is the shadowy agency's unblemished record in gaining information on the average duration of a Soviet tyre and plans for celebrating Stalin's 70th birthday.

Thousands of pages of intelligence intercepts from the early days of the Cold War were made public yesterday, showing how British intelligence not only tapped into communications from deep inside the Kremlin but also built up a vast bank of data dealing with the minutiae of life in the Soviet Union as Britain's wartime ally rapidly became the "Red Menace".

The documents, released by the National Archives in Kew, west London, reveal how Britain struck a top secret deal with the United States in 1946 to formalise the sharing of secret intelligence between the two countries which had developed during the Second World War. It helped cement the "special relationship" .

The result was a wholesale effort by the Government Communications Headquarters, which moved to Cheltenham in 1951, to tap phone lines, bug offices and electronically eavesdrop on conversations to plug a gap in Britain's understanding of life behind the Iron Curtain.

From a ban on "pseudo and inartistic" folk songs in the furthest eastern provinces of Russia to an exhortation by Moscow to resolve a vodka shortage in Dagestan, a comprehensive trawl of conversations across Soviet government was laid before British and American intelligence chiefs to try to gauge the stresses and strains in Russian society.

Dr Ed Hampshire, the head of specialist records at the National Archives, said: "This material was provided to the heads of intelligence to build up military, political, economic and social intelligence. There was a need immediately after the war to change intelligence priorities and develop a better understanding of the Soviet threat."

A typical intercept was the revelation in 1947 that two Soviet scientists, named as professors Klyueva and Roskin, had been arrested by the KGB for discussing their findings in cancer research with their American counterparts. GCHQ diligently noted a resolution by the Communist youth wing condemning the "anti-patriotic" actions of the academics and vowing to "wage ceaselessly a merciless fight against all signs of cringing and servility to foreign ways of life and survivals of capitalism in the mentality of young people".

The files, which amount to 3,000 separate reports between 1946 and 1948, each headed with the instruction "Top Secret: to be kept under lock and key never to be removed from the office", show that GCHQ penetrated to the highest levels of the Soviet system.

Personal messages to Stalin were intercepted along with details of plans by the head of the Russian Orthodox Church to celebrate the dictator's 70th birthday with "solemn prayers for the preservation and long-life of our State and its leader".

But it was the nitty gritty of life in the Soviet system that particularly fascinated Britain's eavesdroppers – and which should now prove a treasure trove for historians.

Although GCHQ refuses to discuss the methods used to intercept material gathered more than 60 years ago, the agency somehow managed to record conversations between ordinary Russian citizens. One exchange records how a woman told a friend not to sell her fur coat, while another message discusses the average life of a Soviet car tyre – 15,000km.

While Russia and the Ukraine were in the grip of a post-war famine in 1946, Moscow was concerned about the lack of a different sort of sustenance in the Caucasus. Officials complained that "only 30,000" litres of a 170,000-litre vodka consignment had reached Dagestan. Among the more obscure diktats picked up by GCHQ was a requirement from Moscow's Directorate for the Control of Entertainments and Repertory that mine workers in Siberia should stop singing a number of pre-Soviet folk songs on the grounds that they were "inartistic and trivial". The banned ditties included "The Stoneman and the Midges", "My Mother Once Sent Me To Gather White Mushrooms" and "Why Do You Destroy Me, You Foolish Woman?".

Espions, les Anglais s'y mettent aussi !

Les secrets de famille du futur patron du MI6, sir John Sawers, révélés sur Facebook par son épouse.

Récemment, nous avons mentionné la démission du patron des espions espagnols, accusé d'avoir financé avec de l'argent public ses pêches au gros au sénégal et des dépenses somptuaires dans son domicile particulier.

Mais, voilà, les Anglais ne sont pas bien plus malins comme nous le révèle Jason Lewis dans le Daily Mail de ce matin, ici.

MI6 chief blows his cover as wife's Facebook account reveals family holidays, showbiz friends and links to David Irving The new head of MI6 has been left exposed by a major personal security breach after his wife published intimate photographs and family details on the Facebook website.
Sir John Sawers is due to take over as chief of the Secret Intelligence Service in November, putting him in charge of all Britain's spying operations abroad.

But his wife's entries on the social networking site have exposed potentially compromising details about where they live and work, who their friends are and where they spend their holidays.

Amazingly, she had put virtually no privacy protection on her account, making it visible to any of the site's 200million users who chose to be in the open-access 'London' network - regardless of where in the world they actually were.

There are fears that the hugely embarrassing blunder may have compromised the safety of Sir John's family and friends.

Lady Shelley Sawers' extraordinary lapse exposed the couple's friendships with senior diplomats and well-known actors, including Moir Leslie, who plays a leading character in The Archers. And it revealed that the intelligence chief's brother-in-law - who holidayed with him last month - is an associate of the controversial Right-wing historian David Irving.

Immediately after The Mail on Sunday alerted the Foreign Office to the astonishing misjudgment, all trace of the material – which could potentially be useful to hostile foreign powers or terrorists - was removed from the internet.

The move suggests that MI6 or the Foreign Office, which is also responsible for the GCHQ electronic eavesdropping centre in Cheltenham, had not vetted what sort of information Sir John and his family were distributing over the internet.

Nor does it appear that the new intelligence chief - who will be codenamed 'C' once he takes up his post - had considered the potential risks of what his family was revealing to the world.

Foreign Office staff are warned about their use of social networking sites when they join the department but MI6 expects its agents to maintain an even tighter secrecy, telling them not to reveal their true role to all but their closest family.

Sir John Sawers, currently Britain's Ambassador to the United Nations, where he sits on the highly sensitive Security Council, began his working life in MI6 but has spent the past 20 years building a career as a diplomat rather than a spy.

Senior politicians said the security lapse raised serious doubts about Sir John's suitability to head the intelligence service - and raised questions over whether an outsider should have been appointed to such a sensitive role.

On June 16, the very day Sir John's MI6 appointment was announced, she posted 19 pictures of the couple on holiday with their friends in the West Country earlier that month.

The following day, she added a further 26 pictures, including one of Sir John playing on the beach in his swimming trucks, posing with his wife and children and chatting with friends and his mother.

Among those who joined the Sawers on the break were actors Moir Leslie, who plays both Sophie Barlow and vicar Janet Fisher in Radio 4 soap opera The Archers, and Alister Cameron, a character actor who has appeared on The Bill and Footballers' Wives.

Lady Sawers' Facebook 'friends' have also used the account to send messages of congratulations to Sir John on his new job, with one relative joking that he will now be known as 'Uncle C'.

On the day his appointment was announced, she wrote: 'Congrats on the new job, already dubbed Sir Uncle "C" by nephews in the know!'

Over the past year, Lady Sawers has been regularly updating anyone who cared to read her page - which could be found via internet search engines - on everything from family parties and holidays to the health of their pets and her views on the crisis in the Congo.

She also posted 22 photographs from Sir John's mother's 80th birthday party, showing the future spy chief with his closest friends and extended family, including his 86-year-old father, his two sons, aged 25 and 24, their girlfriends, and the couple's daughter Corinne, 22, a recent Oxford University graduate who is now an aspiring actress.

Corinne recently began touring with Jenny Seagrove in the play Pack Of Lies, coincidentally about a middle-class household suddenly at the centre of an espionage drama when an MI5 spy turns up at their house.

Among those featured in family photographs on the website is Lady Sawers' half-brother Hugo Haig-Thomas, a former diplomat.

Lady Sawers met her husband after visiting her brother when he was posted to Yemen in the late Seventies. She liked the country and decided to stay, landing a secretarial job at the Embassy, where Sir John later succeeded Mr Haig-Thomas.

Mr Haig-Thomas is an associate and researcher for revisionist historian David Irving, who was jailed for three years in Austria in 2006 for 'glorifying the Nazi Party' because he questioned whether the Holocaust took place.

The historian describes Haig-Thomas as 'a researcher who has done fine work for me'. His work includes examining the papers relating to the capture of Heinrich Himmler, the man behind Hitler's plan to exterminate the European Jews.

But Mr Haig-Thomas said he had never considered his views controversial, nor did he regret his connection with Irving.

He said: 'We are not close friends. I am interested in history, particularly German history, and I was engaged to carry out research for Irving. I have also attended several of his talks, but I do not necessarily share his views.

'In my experience, the Foreign Office are very sensible about these things and will see that our connection does not amount to much.'

Edward Davy, the Liberal Democrat Foreign Affairs spokesman, called on Gordon Brown to launch an inquiry into whether the Facebook disclosures had compromised Sir John's ability to take up his MI6 post.

He said: 'Normally, I would welcome greater openness in Government for officials or politicians but this type of exposure verges on the reckless.

'The Prime Minister should immediately commission an internal inquiry as to whether this has breached the security of the incoming head of MI6 too seriously to allow him to take up the post.'

And Conservative MP Patrick Mercer, an adviser to Government Security Minister Lord West, said the MI6 chief had left himself open to blackmail.

He said: 'Sir John Sawers is in a very sensitive position and by revealing this sort of material his family have left him open to criticism and blackmail.

'As a long-serving diplomat and ambassador, his whole family have been involved in his line of business for decades. I would have hoped they would have been much more sensitive to potential security compromises like this.'

The Foreign Office refused to discuss the affair and declined to answer questions, including whether the department warned Ambassadors and other staff about social networking sites; whether the details Sir John's family published on the internet had come up in security checks before he was appointed as head of MI6; and whether he had made officials aware of his brother-in-law's links to David Irving.

A spokeswoman said: 'We have nothing to add.'

Une espionne de la « paix »

Le compagnon de route des communistes Cynthia Roberts photographiée en 1979 quand elle espérait décrocher un siège de député aux Communes sous les couleurs travaillistes.

Cynthia Roberts, espionne communistes en retraite,
photographiée à Prague la semaine dernière.

Le quotidien Daily Mail a sorti ce matin un nouveau scandale de l'espionnage communiste au Royaume-Uni durant la Guerre froide.

D'après des documents extraits des archives de sécurité tchèques, Cynthia Roberts, sous le nom de code de «Marteau», a rédigé des rapports sur d'importantes figures du conservatisme britannique et animé un mouvement pacifiste aux ordres de Moscou.

Labour was rocked by a Cold War spy scandal last night over allegations that a Party activist linked to two members of Tony Blair's Cabinet spied for the Czech Government when the country was controlled by the Soviet Union.
Left-wing activist Cynthia Roberts, who stood as a Labour Parliamentary candidate, worked for the Communists under the codename Agent Hammer, according to documents obtained by The Mail on Sunday.
The files, held by the Czech security service, state that she wrote secret dossiers for the communist regime on Tory politicians including Margaret Thatcher and ex-Cabinet Minister David Mellor after moving to Prague in 1985. She also gave the Czechs details of a British arms factory.

Mrs Roberts moved to the Czech capital from London, where she used a House of Commons office to run the controversial Labour Action for Peace (LAP) group, which opposed nuclear weapons, and had links to Soviet Moscow.
Labour MPs involved in the group, which still exists today, included two politicians who went on to serve in Mr Blair's Cabinet, Foreign Secretary Robin Cook and Transport Minister Gavin Strang.

Other prominent Labour MPs linked to LAP include Tony Benn, Dennis Skinner and Jeremy Corbyn.
The disclosures are a reminder of how close some elements of the Labour Party were to the Soviet Union before the fall of communism 20 years ago.
Russia's KGB and its allies in other Eastern bloc nations such as Czechoslovakia targeted Labour politicians and other Establishment figures known to have Left-wing sympathies in an attempt to unearth information that could be used against the West.
The Cold War led to a series of major spy scandals in Britain, most famously the spy ring of Guy Burgess, Anthony Blunt and Kim Philby.
Astonishingly, Mrs Roberts's activities, including her move to Prague, appear to have escaped the attentions of British security services.
As honorary secretary of LAP, much of Mrs Roberts' work was conducted from the Commons office of Scottish Labour MP Willie McKelvey, who is thought to have provided her with a Parliamentary pass.
In 1983, when Mrs Thatcher had enraged the Russians by allowing the US to base nuclear missiles in Britain, Mrs Roberts accompanied Mr Cook and Mr Strang on a five-day trip to Moscow.
The files held by the Czech secret service state her role was 'to contribute towards the downfall of capitalism'. They say she boasted of working for the East Germans and was sent on 'missions' by her Czech handlers.
In one report, Mrs Thatcher was referred to by the codename ‘Sako’, which means ‘jacket’ in Czech.
Roberts' file on David Mellor, written in 1988 when he was a Foreign Office Minister, said she did not know if Mr Mellor 'has any weakness for women.'
Asked yesterday if she considered herself a traitor, Roberts, who still lives in Prague, said: 'I have nothing to say. I was not a spy.'

L'agent Marteau, un espion bien particulier

With her headscarf tied tightly against the November chill, she looks like any other pensioner going about her daily business in Prague. But this 72-year-old, who once worked in the heart of Westminster alongside such leading Labour Party figures as Robin Cook, is at the centre of extraordinary claims that she spied for Eastern Bloc regimes under the codename Agent Hammer.

L'espionne communiste à la retraite Cynthia Roberts
sort de son HLM déposer ses ordures.

According to documents held by the Czech security service, Cynthia Roberts, who stood as a Labour candidate in the 1979 General Election, provided intelligence dossiers on Margaret Thatcher and David Mellor after she, her husband and two teenage children moved from London to Prague in 1985.
Despite being highly unusual, the family’s relocation to the Czech capital appears not to have attracted the attention of the British security services.
In the five years before she emigrated, Roberts was honorary secretary of Labour Action for Peace (LAP), which was then a highly influential anti-nuclear group. Much of her work was carried out from the House of Commons office of Labour MP William McKelvey, who represented Kilmarnock from 1979 until 1997.
The Left-wing pressure group was founded in 1940 and is still active today, describing itself as ‘an organisation of Labour Party members and supporters working for peace, socialism and disarmament, and seeking to make these issues the forefront of Labour Party policy’.
During its heyday in the early Eighties, LAP staged a series of high-profile meetings at party conferences and inside the House of Commons.
Among the prominent Labour figures who were active within the group were Cook, who served as Foreign Secretary during Tony Blair’s administration, and Gavin Strang, who was Transport Minister from 1997 to 1998.
According to a newsletter published by the LAP, Roberts accompanied Cook and Strang on a five-day trip to Moscow in December 1983.
Other leading Labour figures associated with the LAP during Roberts’ tenure include Tony Benn, who wrote an article about Nato for the group in 1985, and former executive committee member Dennis Skinner.
The claims that Roberts worked as a spy will further fuel concerns that leading Labour politicians were sympathetic to communist regimes during the Cold War.
The documents held by the Czech security service Statni Tajna Bezpecnost (STB) and seen by this newspaper reveal that Roberts apparently boasted of working for the East Germans while based at Westminster, and later was sent on ‘missions’ by her Czech handlers.
About 100 pages of the files still exist, although references within them suggest that a further 600 pages are missing – almost certainly destroyed as communist bosses attempted to cover up details of their activities when the country was swept by democratic change.
But the pages that remain paint a damning picture of her role, which, in the words of her STB handlers, was ‘to contribute towards the downfall of capitalism’.
They consist of two reports written in English, apparently by Roberts, and a series of handwritten accounts in Czech prepared by security chiefs detailing their meetings with her and the tasks they set her. The surviving files detail a total of 19 meetings between Roberts and her STB contacts.
Last week, The Mail on Sunday tracked down Roberts to a communist-era block of flats on the outskirts of Prague. The name plate on her letterbox in the entrance hall reads ‘Robertsovi’ and bears the message ‘Please do not post advertising fliers in this mailbox’.

Le communisme ne paye pas. Le clapier à lapins où vit l'espionne. A ces conditions, il vaut mieux travailler pour la CIA.

Mrs Roberts carried out the rubbish from her fourth-floor apartment in the drab prefabricated block, which overlooks the rest of the huge graffiti-scrawled estate on one side and a busy ring road on the other.
Asked why she had spied for the STB against Britain and whether she regarded herself as a traitor, she said: ‘I do not want to talk to you. I do not talk to the Press.’
She refused to discuss whether she had worked for the Soviet intelligence services either in Britain or after she moved to Prague.
When told we had a copy of her file, which stated that she was an STB agent, she said: ‘I have nothing to say. I was not a spy.’
Asked whether she should be prosecuted for her treachery, she said: ‘I have no quarrel with Britain. I am sorry but I am not going to talk to you.’
According to STB files, the Roberts family arrived in Prague on October 19, 1985. Mrs Roberts was accompanied by her photographer husband Denis, daughter Mary, then 19, and 15-year-old Christopher.
Their departure from Britain was mentioned in the 1985 LAP annual report, which says: ‘Cynthia Roberts, who has been honorary secretary of LAP for five years, went with her husband to live in Czechoslovakia.’
She was given a job as an editor with the state-run news agency on a monthly salary of 5,000 Czech koruny (about ?150 at today’s exchange rates) – at least double the average wage. But the files make clear that her main role was to work for the STB.
Initially given the codename ‘Kilburn’, Roberts appears to have so impressed her handlers in the first few months after arriving in Prague that her status was upgraded to ‘agent’ and she was given her new codename, Hammer.

Cynthia Roberts se fait désormais appeler Robertsovi. Sur sa boîte aux lettres elle précise qu'elle refuse la publicité. Le paradis ex-rouge contaminé par le capitalisme.

A file entry dated April 2, 1986, says Roberts was to be ‘used on the problems of British intelligence services’.
It says she would also be used to ‘gain information on the internal politics of Great Britain [and answer] questions of the peace movement in capitalist countries and in Britain specifically’.
The entry goes on: ‘KILBURN can be evaluated as a person valuable for operational use from the side of intelligence work. To gain her co-operation we can use her satisfaction with her stay in Czechoslovakia ... and her good relations with the whole communist ideology. [Roberts] will continue to be used for British problems.’
One of her first jobs was to complete a report and character assessment on Margaret Thatcher who, the file reveals, had been given the codename ‘Sako’ – which means ‘jacket’ in Czech – by the STB.
This document is missing from the file, but it appears that Roberts completed the report.
A file dated April 15, 1987, returns to the subject of her work on Prime Minister Thatcher. ‘Top Secret.
16.15 KILBURN contacted in Slezka Street, Prague, and taken in a 'company' car to another location, a private flat, named as 'Balt'.
'We then talked to Kilburn about the state of her work on Sako [Thatcher], and she said that she had already finished the report and only had to type it up and make some corrections.
'We told KILBURN we greatly valued her help and said we would like to continue our co-operation and expand it. KILBURN was visibly delighted with our valuing her work.
'We told her we were interested in raising our co-operation to a higher level and that we would ask her for information and character analysis of people she knew from her previous political activities in Great Britain.’
The file adds: ‘We said that we had to have guarantees that she would remain silent on these matters and on our meetings. KILBURN said these issues were clear.’

Cynthia Roberts photographiée avec son époux Denis. Ce cliché a été publié dans le livre qu'ils ont consacré au pacifisme : How To Secure Peace In Europe, publié en 1985, en pleine crise des euro-missiles.

The document adds: ‘At the end after we explained our reasons [for protecting her identity] she chose the codename HAMMER.’
At the meeting, Roberts was told she would meet her handlers at least once a month. She was given a number to contact in case of ‘urgency’ and the password to be used: ‘I have many regards from Vaclav for you.’
She was also asked to produce a detailed report on the then head of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, Meg Beresford.
The STB officer reports that Roberts ‘willingly agreed to co-operate’ and also agreed to ‘recruit help’ – suggesting she actively tried to persuade others to spy for the Soviet Bloc.
But it is Roberts’ typewritten report on Beresford that gives the only clue to her activities in the UK while working at the House of Commons.
In the undated document, Roberts says she suspects that Beresford is a CIA plant and claims Beresford is involved in ‘subversion’ in East Germany, encouraging groups of dissidents to set up ties with churches in the country.
She suggests Beresford also attempted to organise women’s rights groups and was preparing them for mass protests, including calling on soldiers to become conscientious objectors.
The papers add: ‘The most interesting feature of all was that after I reported these facts to the [East German] embassy in London, some time later I was told by the diplomat with whom I used to work that the information had been extremely useful and was found to be accurate.’
This reference is the only indication that she may have been engaged in espionage before she moved to the Eastern Bloc. It suggests that she had regular contacts with an East German diplomat and raises questions about whether she was spying for the feared Stasi. Papers written in Czech by an STB agent and dated October 16, 1986, a year after she moved to Prague, suggest that she had passed on information from her father, a former prison officer, about an unnamed military installation in the West Country.
It states: ‘Meeting took place in a public place ... The source gave information relating to a newly built military arms factory in South-West England near Taunton.’

Les preuves de la trahison. Les archives de la STB, les services ssecrets tchèques, contiennent des rapports rédigés par Cynthia Roberts sur David Mellor, à l'époque ministre des Affaires étrangères britannique.

The files say the information came from her father, who told Roberts he had ‘noticed the new building and the sign "MoD Property" ... He found out from his Labour MP that the MoD bought the land for a plant to manufacture components for warheads and navigation equipment’.
The files claim that Roberts was then used to target various Western officials to try to obtain useful information from them or to identify ways they might be recruited by the KGB.
Among those she targeted were a senior Nato official she met at a Czech trade fair, a businessman from a computer firm based in Windsor and a female British diplomat from the Prague embassy.
Roberts was also used to help build up a picture of British politicians who were visiting the former Czechoslovakia. A file note dated May 19, 1988, says: ‘The source was asked to report on David Mellor, a Minister of State in the Foreign Ministry in relation to his expected visit to Czechoslovakia.’
Roberts' report is written in English. Neighbours in the cramped block close to Prague’s ring-road claim that she and her husband Denis, now 85, have struggled to master the language since their arrival.
Their son Christopher, 38, is said to have returned to Britain, while their daughter Mary, who studied to be a doctor after their move to Prague, is believed to have died last year.
The Mellor report says: ‘He will try, without mentioning a word, to find out any possible way he can of damaging our political and business interests in the Middle East, particularly with Libya and Syria...
‘Dangers also apply to our relationship with Ethiopia. Within two weeks of being first elected to Westminster in 1979, MELLOR was out in Iran advising the Shah how to deal with insurgency both in terms of strategy and weapons.
'Within the last two years he has “given” the Colombian government six British helicopters to deal with their drug problem. He worked extensively with the CIA and the FBI on this issue, among who he has many contacts, as he undoubtedly would have also among the British Special Services.’
The document goes on to describe Mellor as a ‘highly sophisticated cunning politician’ and a ‘slick operator – a smooth-tongued oily character, who is undoubtedly sustained by his image of himself and his own inflated sense of self-importance. His danger is that he is cunning and calculating.
‘He probably drinks brandy at the end of dinner – most Tory MPs do, it’s considered the “done thing” at Westminster. Many a slip of the tongue has been made after several brandies.’
Mellor was later forced to resign from the Government after his high-profile affair with Antonia de Sancha was revealed in 1992. In her report, written four years earlier, Roberts wrote that she was not aware ‘whether he has any weakness for women or not’.
She added: ‘The only place Mellor will speak the truth is when he is in the “safe” room of the British Embassy. The rest of the time ... he will be speaking to an audience [the bugs]
‘I would regard this man, without any hesitation whatsoever, as a most deadly enemy of the Czechoslovak people and their Government.’
Last night David Mellor said he remembered his trip to Czechoslovakia very well as it had hinged on him being allowed to meet the dissident playwright Vaclav Havel, who later became the Czech president.
Of the report on him, he said:

‘I think it shows up the futility of the whole old Eastern European system and the pointless intelligence gathering they engaged in.
‘But the far more important question is how this woman was able to mix with senior figures in the Labour Party, to secure a House of Commons pass and to come close to becoming an MP when she was within an ace of defecting to the Eastern Bloc. It says an awful lot about the Labour Party.’

Gavin Strang said:

‘I remember Cynthia because she was around for a few years at that time with Labour Action for Peace. The one thing I remember is that she struck me as ultra-sympathetic towards the Soviet Union – excessively so at that time.
‘Obviously at that time there was concern about the build-up of medium and short-range nuclear weapons by both the US and Russia. But her excessive sympathy for the Soviet Union was very noticeable and certainly something I remember.
‘But her behaviour was not something I was worried about enough to report or make anyone aware of. Everybody is entitled to their own views and opinions.’

Tony Benn, who is listed as a member of the LAP in the group’s annual report for 1985-1986, said:

‘I do not recall meeting Cynthia Roberts and there is no reference to her in my diary, which I have checked. I became chairman of Labour Action for Peace in the Nineties.’

Dennis Skinner, who is named in LAP documents of the same year as a member of the LAP’s executive committee, said:

‘Don’t know the woman, never heard of her, don’t know what you’re on about. You’d best try Tony Benn.’

Current LAP president Jeremy Corbyn MP said: ‘I don’t know Cynthia Roberts at all. Of course I’m surprised. I didn’t know her and this was long before I was involved in the organisation. I’m not going to be able to comment on people like Cynthia Roberts. The issue of the Cold War is one that has long passed.’
A spokesman for the Czech Embassy in London said: ‘We are not aware of the details of this particular case. The Czech Embassy is not in a position to comment.’
A Czech government source added: ‘This sort of espionage relates to the previous communist regime. It is a thing of the past and not something our country would engage in now.’