Agent ZEMLIAK: The Spy Who Stayed in the Cold.

Agent ZEMLIAK: The Spy Who Stayed in the Cold

By Mark William Doyle

Copyright 2015 Mark William Doyle

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Cover Image: VENONA documents appearing in the cover image and information from VENONA decrypted messages throughout courtesy of the US National Security Agency (NSA).

Acknowledgements

For my beloved family: Kathy, Brendan, Mavis, Cathy, Annemarie, Jim, Paul, Ros, Chris, Ella, Connor and Issy. Without their kindness and patience this work would never have been completed.

Table of Contents

Key Personalities

Introduction

1. VENONA

2. Network

3. Defection

4. Youth

5. Father

6. Accused

7. Verdict

8. Spy

9. Aftermath

Appendices

About Mark William Doyle

Connect with Mark William Doyle

Key Personalities:

i

The Australians

Rex Chiplin

Journalist at the Australian Communist publication ‘Tribune’.

Walter Clayton

Australian Communist Party member. Known to the MVD as agent KLOD. Ran the KLOD network.

Allan Dalziel

Private Secretary of Dr. H. V. Evatt, Australian Labor Party leader.

Dr. H. V. Evatt

Australian Labor Party leader in opposition. Former minister responsible for the Department of External Affairs.

Rupert Lockwood

Australian Communist. The Royal Commission on Espionage judged Lockwood to be the author of ‘Document J’, which he provided to the Soviets.

Fergan Skinnider O’Sullivan

Agent code-named ZEMLIAK by Soviet intelligence (MVD). Press Secretary to Dr. H. V. Evatt, Australian Labor Party leader. Admitted to being the author of ‘Document H’, which he provided to the Soviets.

Christopher Michael O’Sullivan

Fergan O’Sullivan’s father. A journalist with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) who had previously worked at the Irish Times.

Ron Richards

Senior Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) officer who worked on Vladimir Petrov’s defection and debriefed Mr. and Mrs. Petrov after they had defected.

Charles Spry

Director General (DG) of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO).

The Russians

Victor Antonov

Covert MVD Rezident at the Soviet Embassy, Canberra, Australia

Ivan Pakhomov

Covert MVD Rezident at the Soviet Embassy, Canberra, Australia

Evdokia Petrov

Covert MVD officer at the Soviet Embassy, Canberra, Australia. Wife of Vladimir Petrov. Defected in 1954 and became a key witness at the Royal Commission on Espionage.

Vladimir Petrov

Covert MVD Rezident at the Soviet Embassy, Canberra, Australia. Husband of Evdokia Petrov. Defected in 1954 and became a key witness at the Royal Commission on Espionage.

The British

Kim Philby.

Senior MI6 officer who covertly worked as a Soviet agent for decades. One of the Cambridge Five circle of Soviet spies recruited at Cambridge University in the 1930’s. Conscious of the VENONA program.

Sir Percy Sillitoe

Director General of MI5. Conscious of the VENONA program.

Courtney Young

MI5’s Security Liaison Officer (SLO) with ASIO. Conscious of the VENONA program.

The Americans

Meredith Gardner

Senior US code breaker (cryptanalyst) who achieved initial success at breaking into Soviet communications in the program that later became known by the code name VENONA.

William Weisband

US soldier working in US military signals intelligence (SIGINT). Covertly recruited as a Soviet agent in World War Two. Conscious of the VENONA program.

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Introduction

Landmark intelligence breakthroughs tend to be down to a very well placed spy or a new top secret technology or methodology. The story of Fergan Skinnider O’Sullivan, codenamed agent ZEMLIAK, relates to the latter. The highly secret methodology in this case was a new code-breaking program.

The closely guarded secret US signals intelligence program known as VENONA decrypted intercepted Soviet diplomatic and intelligence communications, transmitted between 1940 and 1948. Within the decrypted radio traffic to and from the Soviet Union were messages between Moscow and Canberra. The VENONA decrypts of these transmissions revealed a Soviet spy ring operating in Australia. This spy-ring was run by an agent known to the MVD (Soviet ‘political’ intelligence)ii by the codename KLOD. The VENONA program and the KLOD network it revealed, which launched the British and Australian security services on a complex investigation eventually uncovering Soviet agents in Australia, are the subject of chapters one and two.

Agent ZEMLIAK, who was known to MVD officers in Canberra but purposefully kept away from the KLOD network, had been the subject of coded Soviet communications between Moscow and Canberra, but these transmissions occurred after the messages decrypted in VENONA. As a result, agent ZEMLIAK was not positively identified until the 1954 defection of the senior MVD intelligence officer at the Soviet Embassy in Australia, Vladimir Petrov. Once safely in an Australian security service safe house Vladimir Petrov and his wife Evdokia Petrov (who had also defected) identified ZEMLIAK as a former journalist named Fergan O’Sullivan. The circumstances of the Petrov’s defection, and their subsequent identification of agent ZEMLIAK are the subject of chapter three.

The road Fergan O’Sullivan took to becoming agent ZEMLIAK, including his early life and time in Ireland, is the subject of chapter four. His father, Michael O’Sullivan, a well know journalist with radical views, no doubt influenced his son’s development and life choices. The extent to which Fergan O’Sullivan may have been influenced by his father to become involved with the Soviet’s and connected with Soviet intelligence is considered in chapter five.

Fergan O’Sullivan’s contacts with the Soviet MVD intelligence agency, and their development of him as a potential agent, were revealed by the defecting Mr. and Mrs. Petrov. Their revelations led to O’Sullivan being called to appear before the hastily assembled Royal Commission on Espionage, events examined in chapter six.

The development of Fergan O’Sullivan as a Soviet spy involved a covert request by the MVD to O’Sullivan for biographical details of fellow Australian journalists who worked in the press gallery at the Australian Parliament. O’Sullivan provided some brief profile sketches of press gallery journalists, often far from complimentary, to a Soviet official he had come to know. The controversial document O’Sullivan penned became known at the Royal Commission as Exhibit ‘H’ (or ‘Document H’ more widely). O’Sullivan’s evidence before the Royal Commission on Espionage, where it was publicly established that O’Sullivan was the author of Document H, was sensationally reported in the Australian media, gripping public attention. The highly critical verdict of the Royal Commission with regard to O’Sullivan’s penning of Document ‘H’ for the Soviets is the subject of chapter seven.

The Royal Commission on Espionage remained narrowly focused on Fergan O’Sullivan’s contacts with the MVD in relation to his provision of Document ‘H’. Chapter eight evaluates whether evidence the Royal Commission on Espionage perhaps missed at the time, in conjunction with more recently revealed intelligence and information, is sufficient to show that agent ZEMLIAK was far more active as a Soviet spy than the Royal Commission concluded in 1955.

Chapter nine looks at the aftermath of Fergan O’Sullivan’s appearance before the Royal Commission on Espionage, and considers the significant impact the Commission’s findings had on his personal life and career in the years that followed. The Royal Commission on Espionage impacted greatly on other witnesses, institutions and events. How some other people and organizations connected with Fergan O’Sullivan who appeared before the Royal Commission were also affected is also described.

Some of the key documents and extracts of intelligence examined in writing this story are included throughout and as appendices, including the following:

Appendix A - Document H.

Appendix B - Untitled ASIO timeline of Fergan O’Sullivan’s contacts with MVD prepared for the Royal Commission on Espionage.

Appendix C - ASIO Summary of Headquarters Information.

Appendix D - PETROV explains ZEMLIAK code name and ‘system of words’ tradecraft arranged between PAKHOMOV and ZEMLIAK.

As with most real life spy stories little is as clear as black and white, with much intelligence remaining in somewhat of a grey area, not always easy to fit together to establish the truth of events. This can be for a variety of reasons including still secret, redacted and missing intelligence records, deliberate disinformation, selective or failing witness memories and political massaging of the facts. It is hoped that by providing some of the key extracts of intelligence and other records examined in research for this book, including VENONA decrypts, the reader will form their own view of what shade of grey (or black or white) best fits the actions taken by Fergan O’Sullivan, known to the Soviet MVD as agent ZEMLIAK.

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1. VENONA

In February 1943 the United States (US) Army’s Signal Intelligence Service started a project decrypting and analyzing intercepted Soviet diplomatic radio traffic. The project analyzed a series of radio messages broadcast between Moscow and various Russian embassies, consulates and offices around the globe during and soon after the Second World War, messages transmitted between 1940 and 1948.

This radio traffic was left vulnerable to attack by cryptanalysts because Soviet cryptographers had breached the theoretically unbreakable one-time pad protocol on a single occasion. This single error enabled the legendary American cryptanalyst Meredith Gardner to successfully guide his expert team in their endeavors to break the code the Soviets were using at that time.iii This significant Army Security Agency (ASA) code breaking effort was one of America’s biggest and most closely guarded secrets of the entire Cold War and became known by the code name ‘VENONA’. The CIA was not even informed about the top secret US Army VENONA program until 1952.iv

VENONA was a more closely guarded secret than even the ‘ULTRA’ decrypts of German military communications in World War Two, begun by British code breakers at Bletchley Park, their wartime rural base in Southeast England. Unlike the wartime ULTRA program, about which President Franklin D. Roosevelt was aware more or less from the beginning, after World War Two concluded in 1945 incumbent President Harry S. Truman was not informed about VENONA for over three years.v

The US cryptanalysts and US military intelligence staff who traveled to Bletchley Park to assist UK code breakers on ULTRA built a meaningful and lasting relationship with their wartime colleagues at the Government Code and Cipher School, and colleagues in other branches of British intelligence. They shared the VENONA secret with British intelligence almost at once, even before they had informed the CIA about the program.vi

Initially VENONA was an attempt to examine, and possibly exploit, any intelligence dividend from decrypted Soviet diplomatic communications.vii Soon into the project the American cryptanalysts at the Signals Intelligence Service became aware that the intercepted radio traffic contained not only diplomatic messages but also Soviet spy communications, involving the MVD and the Soviet Military Intelligence agencies: Soviet Army General Staff Intelligence (GRU), and Soviet Naval Intelligence Staff (GRU-Naval).

Most interestingly, the Signals Intelligence Service analysts discovered that the intercepted radio traffic included ‘Top Secret’ messages broadcast between MVD headquarters in Moscow (‘Moscow Centre’) and the MVD stations in Soviet Embassy’s abroad, known as Residencies or Rezidentura.viii

The number of intercepted messages analyzed in the VENONA project numbered in the thousands. Of these, approximately 3,000 VENONA message decrypts have been made public to date. The extremely time consuming, resource intensive and complex, but highly valuable, decryption and analysis of the VENONA traffic by various US signals intelligence agencies continued for many years. One US signals intelligence agency or another worked on the VENONA messages right up until the project was terminated in 1980.

Even during the last phase of VENONA, from 1978 to 1980, the National Security Agency (NSA) issued thirty-nine first-time decrypts of Soviet messages, and reissued eight others. Some of these final phase first-time decrypts proved of significant counterintelligence value even then, despite the years that had elapsed since the original transmission of the messages.ix

VENONA decrypts revealed the staggering scale of Soviet recruitment of spies in America in the Second World War, with in excess of two hundred agents being recruited by the various Soviet intelligence services.x

But VENONA also contained