Talk:John Vassall

RAF Officer

I have never heard of such a post as a commissioned RAF photographer and so I doubt that John Vassall should be included in the category of RAF Officers. Any information on his RAF rank would be useful. 217.34.229.213 18:29, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

• Changed to RAF airmen category. 88.105.140.200 13:50, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

Exposure

Is there good authority for his throwing "lavish parties"? It seems most unlikely to me. He wasn't the type to do that, or to have friends to come to the parties. This may have been one of the many fabrications of the press, what one of them once called "journalistic licence". Also, I think the word "close" in describing his relationship with Galbraith is tendentious. He was merely a clerical officer who was posted to Galbraith's office to help the Private Secretary. He sucked up to Galbraith a bit by trying to get a better sort of china allotted to his office, to offer visitors tea with, etc., and used to write to him when he was out of he office telling him how his efforts were going. Galbraith was nice and polite to him. I suggest "close relationship" should be replaced by "relations". Seadowns (talk) 15:10, 30 April 2018 (UTC)

I'd certainly have no objection to more neutral language, though I don't think the present phrasing is wildly out. Vassall clearly thrived on social interaction (ideally with the great and the good), and was an enthusiastic party-goer, if not necessarily a party-thrower. His autobiography reports that in 1955 (when he was in Moscow, and after he had begun spying), "On the eve of my birthday, I gave a party for twenty personal friends and at midnight my maid Elizabeth brought in a wonderful iced sponge cake filled with layers of ice cream. We drank Russian champagne out of Russian tube-style glasses that I had bought for the occasion. On the actual evening of my birthday, I invited a further forty-five friends from many different embassies." I can't see anything quite as explicit from his London years, but when he first acquires his Dolphin Square flat, he writes: "It was a great pleasure at last to have a place of my own, where I could entertain my friends from abroad and return some of the generous hospitality I had received"; and he subsequently makes much of the MPs and others who visited him there. Regarding Galbraith, I think the point is that the relationship does seem to have been rather closer and friendlier than one would expect between a minister and a junior member of his staff (though much of this was no doubt the result, as you suggest, of Vassall's own "sucking up"): for example (again from the autobiography), when Galbraith left the Admiralty in a reshuffle, he gave Vassall a silver penknife engraved with his (Vassall's) initials, and Mrs Galbraith gave him some white linen handkerchiefs. But I'd be happy with your proposed change to "relations". The "lavish parties" can perhaps also be scrapped (pending explicit evidence), but I do think it's reasonable to emphasise that he was leading an expensive lifestyle that far outstripped his official income: his Guardian obituary (Richard Norton-Taylor) says that he was spending about £3,000 a year when his earnings were £750; and his Telegraph obituary refers to "holidays in Capri, New York, Florence, Brussels, Rome, Vienna, Geneva, Cairo, the Riviera and Spain", and says that he was alleged to own 36 Savile Row suits. GrindtXX (talk) 15:01, 1 May 2018 (UTC)

Thanks. I've not read his book. Amazing that he could boast about costly party-giving in Moscow or elsewhere, paid for with the wages of treason. I don't suggest that the bit about his lavish parties should come out, but one wonders, all the same, if they were real, not fantasy. One would think that at least some of the purportedly many guests would have provided independent evidence.

As to Galbraith, perhaps the phrase "close relations"" would do? I think it's fair to say that he got a bit closer than others in the same office position, eg in the First Lord's office. The Civil Lord's job was connected with shore infrastructure, which would probably have involved travel to bases and dockyards. Vassall may have helped with problems caused to the Galbraiths by such absences, doing more than strictly called for, and so earning good marks from them.

There are truly monstrous remarks about Galbraith by Leitch in the Independent article to be found online, but I gather that by the time he wrote that he had succumbed to alcoholism. Seadowns (talk) 10:45, 2 May 2018 (UTC)

I have made some adjustments in line with the above, which I hope you'll be happy with. His autobiography is well worth a look, if only for its unintentional hilarity. His self-absorption and obliviousness to the bigger picture shine from every page, and the name-dropping of upper class or "establishment" friends and contacts – all of whom appear to have found him delightful – is incessant. Even when he's describing his time in prison, he makes much of his encounters with other celebrity prisoners (George Blake and Frank Mitchell), and how well they got on together. There's undoubtedly a great deal of fantasy involved in the telling, but presumably the encounters were genuine. Regarding Galbraith, he tells how, when Galbraith was in his Glasgow constituency, he sometimes needed papers sent up at short notice: they could have gone unaccompanied, but Vassall declared his "willingness" to take them up on the night sleeper, and then insisted, because of their importance, on travelling first class. GrindtXX (talk) 14:07, 3 May 2018 (UTC)

Many thanks. I'm about happy now. I must find his book! Seadowns (talk) 11:14, 4 May 2018 (UTC)

The British National Archives have released some interesting files on him from start of the investigation that led to his arrest, but don't go as far as his parole and name change. His relationship with his chief interrogator is interesting -- and Wikipedia doesn't have a page for that person, but does have one on the interrogators wife. The files contain Vassall's confession, his statement to the Radcliffe Commission. Apparently the press exaggerated his affluence and spending as his suits, he said were off the rack. The Russians also had to get him a little drunk after the first blackmail meeting to get him calmed down when they met on other occassions. He also said that once homosexual acts were legal, the threat of blackmail would go away. His interrogator didn't agree. The threat wasn't what his family would think (they stood by him throughout and his father was able to visit him in prison every month. The Russians sent him off on his return to the UK with a big group hug. Russian management of him does seem to be very much good cop, bad cop.

Authorities (Home Office?) didn't want both Blake and Vassall together at Wormwood Scrubs. MizOre (talk) 02:53, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

Rebecca West's view

Some space is given to Rebecca West, who did not know Vassall, though I believe she went to his trial. I believe her to be quite wrong in her views, based on guesswork, and that Vassall was exactly what she says he was not. This is OR, I am afraid, but quite well based. Seadowns (talk) 18:12, 29 September 2019 (UTC)

Vassall's accounts give some details that I think make his account more credible than hers. And he was told by other prisoners that he talked too freely to the authorities. The Portland spies didn't self-snitch the way Vassall did. He was also allow out with escorts but no handcuffs to show where he'd met his two handlers, and identified them from photos. These excursions ended with tea and in one case with a meal and drinks. Vassall was very very social apparently, so this was a time outside prison. One comment was that if he'd been a more ambitious spy, he could have taken out many more documents, and done far more damage. His interrogator said someone quipped that he'd have made a perfect valet. One thing that's been common in a number of spy cases is how easy access was for rather low level employees: the two kids in California who sold documents to the Russians, the kid who put a classified file up on his gaming group. The British Embassy was lax in which Russians it hired -- one of whom was the person to introduced Vassall to the honey trappers but only dismissed as a KGB agent later. Vassall was older than those, about 30 when he had the orgy with two or three Russians and was photographed. Declassified files from the National Archives available through a Discovery search on John Vassall, with downloadable as an option. Don't know if working with them would be considered original research or not.

The Sunday Pictoral article and Vassall's confession and statements are in the files. I couldn't find a source that gave much more information about his prison release. MizOre (talk) 03:21, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

These arguments against Rebecca West's views are indeed O.R. Was V. a spy because of blackmail or was the orgy a smokescreen? Only V. and his KGB agents could say with certainty. R. West at least saw the man - she was not a very pleasant person and was despised, she and her views were mocked by Hannah Arendt and Mary McCarthy. But her stance on Soviet espionage was not only unpopular in the then "woke" anti-anticommunist circles, but basically correct, as we now know (Verona files, etc.)

If blackmailed, Vassall could have called the KGB's bluff only with very great cost to himself, to be a homosexual alone was punishable.--Ralfdetlef (talk) 07:16, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

BBC Docudrama

The consequences of the row over non-consultation is tagged as needing a citation. I have not been able to verify this, but Google produces "The first episode, 'John Vassall', which dramatized the Vassall affair, ... The BBC was swiftly forced to apologise to both Lady Hayter and ..." The publication is behind a pay-wall for me: [1]. Davidships (talk) 14:04, 26 September 2022 (UTC)

"According to some" is questioned as a non-sourced statement.

Expansion of the theory that Vassall was sacrificed to protect a superior source shows up in . MizOre (talk) 05:05, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

Also, the KGB did NOT put Vassall on ice when the defector who had seen papers coming out of the Admiralty coming out was in CIA hands. They did have him suspend operations when the Portland Spy ring was arrested. Vassall didn't know about the defector's connection to his (and the other suspected spy's) work, but the Portland Ring arrest was in the British papers. MI5 asked for a phone tap on the other suspected spy but was turned down. The suspected other agent was, however, kept away from classified documents after that.

This article needs a thorough re-doing, but I'm in the middle of a novel and the type is too tiny for my old eyes.

References