Sir Roger Hollis. (1905-1973) Director of MI5.

Born in Taunton, Somerset in the west country of the UK in 1905, went to Oxford at a time when there was a great soviet interest in the intellectuals of Oxford and Cambridge universities. In 1938 he tried to join SIS but was turned down due to health problems, however the very next year he applied to join MI5 and was accepted, they apparently was so impressed by he enthusiasm that any health problem was secondary, and Hollis spent six years on the Russian desk and in 1945 the defection of the Russian Igor Gouzenko who worked in the Russian embassy in Ottawa, Canada, gave Hollis a major break at the big time, it was supposed to have been the job of Kim Philby, but as we now know he was a bit busy at that time trying to cover up the spying activities of his friends from Cambridge. Hollis uncovered through Guenon a vast soviet spy ring and the shocking news that there was a soviet mole deep inside MI5.

By 1963 Hollis was the head of MI5 and the cold war was at it height. Kim Philby had managed to keep his spying a secret but having had a few close shaves he left the service and worked as a journalist in Cairo, Egypt. However Philby’s activities were not completely secret and investigators wanted to speak to Philby about his past and his friends, a team of interrogators were sent out to Cairo. But Philby had already defected by the time they arrived at his apartment, it is the general opinion that Hollis had warned his friend of the imminent arrival of the interrogation team, giving Philby just enough time to escape.

During the same year the Britain and the World watched another story unfold, the “Profumo Affair” brought the British government to its knees and Hollis did not help, by refusing the give the then Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan information on the Russian spy Yeugeny Invanou who was at the centre of the Affair.

A year later the soviet spy and supposedly “Fifth Man” Sir Anthony Blunt confessed his crimes to MI5 officers in return for immunity from prosecution and public disgrace. It was Hollis’s offering support to Blunt that finally pushed the boundarys of suspicion to far and thus made Hollis’s position as director of MI5 impossible to maintain, and in 1965 he retired from the service with a knighthood from the Queen and a pension from the Government.

Go To Page: 1 2