Portland Spy Ring


The Portland Spy Ring was a Soviet spy ring that operated in England from the late 1950s to 1961, when the core of the network was arrested by the British security services. It is one of the most famous examples of the use of resident spies, who operate in a foreign country without the cover of their embassy. Its members included Harry Houghton, Ethel Gee, Gordon Lonsdale, and the Americans Morris and Lona Cohen.

Tracking the spy ring

In 1959, the CIA received letters from a mole, codenamed Sniper. Sniper said information was reaching the Soviets from the Admiralty Underwater Weapons Establishment and HMS Osprey at Portland, England, where the Royal Navy tested equipment for undersea warfare. The CIA passed the letters to MI5, the British domestic counter-intelligence and security service.
Suspicion fell on Harry Houghton, a former sailor who was a civil service clerk at the base, as his spending seemed to have an unusual pattern. He had just bought his fourth car and a house, and was also a heavy drinker who would buy rounds at the local pubs. Houghton's expenses were far beyond his meagre salary.
MI5 put Houghton under surveillance. They also watched his mistress, Ethel Gee. She was a filing clerk who handled documents to which Houghton did not have access. They often went to London, where they would meet a man identified as Gordon Lonsdale, a Canadian businessman. During these meetings, Lonsdale and Houghton exchanged packages.
Lonsdale purportedly dealt in jukeboxes and bubble gum machines. He often travelled abroad and was known as a ladies' man. MI5 promptly put him under surveillance. They learned that Lonsdale often went to 45 Cranley Drive, Ruislip in Middlesex to visit an antiquarian bookseller and his wife at home, Peter Kroger and Helen. The Krogers were also put under close but discreet watch.

The arrests

On Saturday 7 January 1961, Houghton, Gee, and Lonsdale were meeting in London when they were arrested by Special Branch Detective Superintendent George Gordon Smith. Gee's shopping bag contained huge amounts of film and photographs of classified material, including details of, Britain's first nuclear submarine, and the stalling speed specifications of the Borg Warner torque converter.
Smith and two colleagues then went to Ruislip to see the Krogers. Claiming to be investigating some local burglaries they gained entry to the house. Once inside, they identified themselves as Special Branch officers and said that the Krogers had to accompany them to Scotland Yard for questioning. Before leaving, Mrs Kroger asked to be allowed to stoke up the boiler. Before she could, Smith insisted on checking her handbag first. It was found to contain microdots, the photographic reduction of documents to make them small enough to be smuggled more easily. Smith, a veteran spy catcher, had guessed her intention to destroy these microdots.
The microdots found at the Krogers' home were letters sent between Lonsdale and his wife, who lived in the Soviet Union with their children. These included things like money matters and how the children were doing at school. Kroger had used the print in his antique books to hold the microdots and smuggle them between Britain and the Soviet Union. They would have included the secrets passed on by Houghton and Gee.
The Kroger house was full of spying equipment, including large sums of money, photographic material, code pads for coding messages and a long-range radio transmitter-receiver for communicating with Moscow. It took several days to unearth all the equipment, and other items, including fake passports, were not found until after the police had left. The MI5 intelligence officer Peter Wright stated that the Krogers' radio transmitter was not located until after nine days of searching. Over the years, during subsequent renovations, several other radio transmitters were unearthed. Large amounts of money were also found in the homes of Houghton, Gee and Lonsdale.

Trial

Two days after their arrest, all five were charged with espionage at Bow Street Magistrates Court. Gee and the Krogers protested their innocence; Houghton tried to turn Queen's Evidence but was refused; Lonsdale maintained complete silence. The trial began on Monday 13 March 1961.
In giving evidence, Gee claimed that as far as she knew, Lonsdale was Alex Johnson, an American naval commander who wanted to know how the British were handling information passed on by the United States. She had had no idea that the information was actually going to the Soviets. She had gone along out of love for Houghton, her first lover after a lifetime of spinsterhood.
Houghton claimed that he had been the subject of threats by mystery men and beatings by thugs if he failed to pass on information. The men had also made threats concerning Gee and Houghton's ex-wife. He too claimed to have known only Lonsdale only as Alex Johnson and tried desperately to minimise Gee's involvement.
Neither Lonsdale nor the Krogers took the stand, but in statements read out in court, Lonsdale took responsibility. He claimed that the Krogers were innocent and that he had often looked after their house while they were away and had used it to hide his spying equipment without their knowledge. Peter and Helen Kroger backed up the claim by saying that Peter was simply an antiquarian bookseller and Helen a housewife. However, they could not explain why fake Canadian passports with their photos were found in the house, and they clearly intended for a possible getaway.
The jury returned verdicts of guilty for all of the accused. Superintendent Smith then took the stand. He announced that through their fingerprints, the Krogers had been identified as Morris and Lona Cohen, renowned spies who had worked with Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, Rudolf Abel, and David Greenglass in the United States. Smith also revealed Cohen's past life in the military and scholastic service.
Lonsdale remained a man of mystery in spite of extensive inquiries by MI5, the FBI, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and other Western intelligence services. They were convinced that he was Russian and a member of the KGB, but so far, his past could be traced back only as far as 1954, when he had first appeared in Canada.

Sentences and later lives

Houghton and Gee were sentenced to 15 years in prison. They were released in 1970 and married the following year.
The Krogers were sentenced to 20 years. In 1969, they were exchanged for the British citizen Gerald Brooke, who had been arrested by the Soviets. As part of the process, the Soviets confirmed that they had been spies.
Lonsdale, the mastermind, was sentenced to 25 years. In 1964, he was exchanged for the British spy Greville Wynne, who had been arrested in the Soviet Union. His real name was revealed to be Konon Trofimovich Molody.
The professor Christopher Andrew has suggested that the ring numbered more than the five who were arrested, possibly the ring included staff at the Russian and Polish embassies who would have been immune from prosecution anyway.. He suggests that the ring may have involved more senior members of staff at the Admiralty Research Establishment who remained undetected. Houghton was a low-grade clerk, and Gee a secretary who would not have necessarily known the significance of the documents that they encountered.

In popular culture

The events were used in the movie Ring of Spies, directed by Robert Tronson and starring William Sylvester as Gordon Lonsdale and Bernard Lee as Henry Houghton.
Hugh Whitemore's stage play Pack of Lies concerns the relationship between the Krogers and their neighbours, whose house was used as a base for British security officials investigating the Krogers in the months leading up to their arrest. It has received several major productions in London and New York. In 1987, the play was made into a CBS television drama starring Teri Garr, Alan Bates, and Ellen Burstyn, though the name "Kroger" was changed to "Schaefer". It was also broadcast as BBC Radio 4's Saturday Play on 9 September 2006, starring Ed Begley, Jr. as Peter Kroger, Teri Garr again as Helen, Alfred Molina as their neighbour and Michael York as the man from MI5. It was directed by Martin Jarvis.
A television movie drama Longford was shown on Britain's Channel 4 on Thursday 26 October 2006. When Frank Pakenham, 7th Earl of Longford first visits Myra Hindley at Holloway Prison, it is announced that Helen Kroger and Ethel Gee are also expecting visitors.
The Spy Game by Georgina Harding uses the Krogers and their cover as a harmless and typical suburban couple as background to her novel, published in 2009.

Information released by National Archives

In September 2019 the National Archives declassified papers relating to the case, including MI5 files and letters that Gee and Houghton sent to one another in prison.
The documents revealed that in 1955, Houghton's wife approached the admiralty about concerns about her husband on three occasions in 1955. In 1956, the admiralty informed the security services that she believed that "her husband was divulging secret information to people who ought not to get it". The admiralty added that "it is considered not impossible that the whole of these allegations may be nothing more than outpourings of a jealous and disgruntled wife". The files also record that Houghton beat his wife and tried to kill her by pushing her off a cliff, only to be disturbed by a passerby. She alleged that when they returned home after the incident, her husband threw gin in her face and told her, "I've got to get rid of you, you know too much".
In March 1961, Martin Furnival Jones, who would later become the MI5 director-general, wrote, "It is clear that we ought to have carried out some investigation in 1956".
The documents revealed that after the ring was exposed, the admiralty and MI5 were concerned that she would speak to the press.