Newly unsealed secret files have revealed how one of Britain’s most well-known spies deceived Czech agents spying on during the 1970s.
Sir Richard Dearlove was posted to the Czech capital, Prague, as MI6 station commander during the height of the Cold War.
While portraying himself as living a normal family life as a diplomat behind the iron curtain, communist spies went to great lengths to track his whereabouts.
But the spy, who went on to be the head of MI6 and known as ‘C’, was well-aware of his enemies attempts to put tabs on his activities and even fed them disinformation and repeatedly met with a KGB-trained double agent.
In documents newly declassified by the Czech government, Dearlove was portrayed by the Czech secret police, the StB, as ‘inexperienced’, ‘clueless’ and ‘timid’.
The files paint a picture that the communist spies believed their target to even be ‘under the influence of his wife’ because she told him off in public.
Richard Dearlove with his wife, Rosalind, in a restaurant in Prague in the 1970s. The pair were often following as the walked around the city by Czech spies
Sir Richard Dearlove was recruited at Cambridge and rose to become head of MI6
An agent identified as Agent Ludek carried out surveillance on Dearlove and befriended him on his arrival in Prague in 1973, when he was appointed station commander in the city.
Another spy worked as a caretaker in his block of flats in order to keep an eye on Dearlove while others posed as ordinary members of the public.
The British spy lived with his wife, Rosalind, and two children, gave off the impression of being a young and inexperienced diplomat, rather than an highly trained secret service officer.
Former director of MI6, Sir Richard Dearlove, at the Cliveden Literary Festival in Berkshire in September 2019
Ludek, who lived in the basement of Dearlove’s block of flats, reported to his supervisors that his mark was ‘an inexperienced diplomat, who is quite clueless, careful, even timid’.
In another report Ludek stated Dearlove, ‘is strongly under the influence of his wife, who has several times publicly given him as telling off’.
However, Dearlove’s Czech adversaries seemed unaware of the plot to deceive them as he pulled off his most daring act of espionage.
During his time in the then-Czechoslovakia, Dearlove handled one of the West’s top double agents, Miloslav Kroca.
The KGB-trained major was head of the British section responsible for spying on British soil.
But Kroca, code-named ‘Freed’, was an MI6 asset, meeting with Dearlove at secret locations in Prague – including a forest on the outskirts of the city.
It was only once Kroca died that the StB realised the extent of his betrayal.
MI6 were said to be aware that Ludek was following Dearlove’s movements and deliberately fed carefully selected information to him.
The recently released documents show some of Dearlove’s deceptions went as far as not spending much money or throwing away large amounts of rubbish.
One Czech report stated: ‘He is most frugal, he hardly drinks any alcohol and his household waste is so small as to be imperceptible.
The compound of the Russian embassy in Prague. Communist spies followed Dearlove when he was MI6 station commander in the city in the 1970s
Another stated Dearlove did not have many visitors and even walked around his flat in a suit.
The report read: ‘He does not admit visitors into his flat….He walks around his flat smartly dressed.’
Dearlove said he ‘lulled’ Ludek and the other at least five agents tracking him he could not possibly be an intelligence officer.
He told the Sunday Times: ‘All the information he [Ludek] gleaned was deliberately disclosed to him and to make him feel that I was a young and inexperienced Czech-speaking diplomat, rather than a highly trained Secret Intelligence Service officer.
‘The whole idea was to lull him [Ludek] and the others of his type in to thinking I couldn’t possibly be an intelligence officer.’
Despite using valuable resources to tail Dearlove during his time in Prague, it was only when he returned to Britain that the Czech were certain he was an MI6 officer, according to the files.
Dearlove, who is the son of Olympic silver medallist Jack, went on to become head of MI6 in 1999 after being posted to lead the Washington station in 1991.
He was in charge when the MI6 HQ at Vauxhall Cross was attacked by a Russian-built RPG-22 anti-tank rocket launcher by Real IRA militants in 2000.
The following year the service was criticised for failing to warn of Al-Qaeda’s attacks on New York on September 11.
The ensuing War on Terror and 2003 invasion of Iraq saw tensions form between the intelligence committee and the government over the so-called ‘Doggy Dossier’ on Saddam Hussein’s alleged weapons of mass destruction.
In a report on a Downing Street meeting about the intelligence justifying any military action, Dearlove said: ‘[President] Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.’
Dearlove was recruited by the secret service while studying at Cambridge and when he rose to chief was known in Whitehall as ‘C’.
Like all British spymasters, he signed his memorandums in green ink – a tradition established by the first director of the Secret Intelligence Service, Sir George Mansfield Smith-Cumming.
Now aged 75, Dearlove has become outspoken on a number national security issues since his retirement.
Ahead of the 2017 general election he described Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn as a danger to national security who would pose a ‘present danger to our country’ if he became prime minister.
He also that Chinese tech firm Huawei posed ‘without question’ a threat to British security.
In 2008, he had to give evidence at the inquest into Princess Diana’s death, denying claims by Mohamed al-Fayed that MI6 murdered her.