Talk:Roger Hollis

message: Correction: Arthur Martin was not sacked by Dick White, he was sacked by Roger Hollis himself.
At the time of his termination, Arthur Martin was in the employ of MI5, which was Roger Hollis's bailiwick - Dick White was head of MI6 at the time.
Moreover, after his termination from MI5, Dick White himself brought Arthur Martin into MI6 where he worked until retirement.
Source: Peter Wright's 'Spycatcher'.
The above removed from the end of the article. Rich Farmbrough 14:58, 7 May 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: From spycatcher

message: Stating and tagging this as unreferenced is clearly unmerited. I just read through Nigel West's book and Peter Wright's and it is all there save one item. The only thing not in those two texts is the bit on Hollis not telling Profomo certain details but I could have missed it. I also sorted out an ambiguous bit about Profomo who was involved with C. Keeler, not Hollis
Further details and depth are disclosed in Nigel West"s "Mole Hunt" (1987. Wiedenfeld and Nicolson, London) which came out the same year as Peter Wright's book. The demand for sources placed at the top of the article is unwarranted. This really is a synopsis of what is in Peter Wright's book and this is clearly stated in the article as a source. Nigel West's book substantiates much of what Wright wrote and is in this very brief article.
Malangthon 23:26, 14 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: There need to be page references.--Jack Upland (talk) 10:25, 19 September 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: No, absolutely not. My personal Talk page is not to be used for this purpose and no-one should assume otherwise. Any comments there will be deleted. The correct venue for comments is on this Talk page. Having said that, the recent changes to the article have completely messed-up the text and I regret that I have not the time to rescue the text. David J Johnson (talk) 12:50, 3 July 2016 (UTC)
thread_title: Unreferenced

message: Several passages in this article are extemely subjective or slanted. For example:
:Hollis was asked to come in and clear up the allegations. Having been the director, Hollis knew all about the procedures of the interrogation and investigation, in fact he was expecting to be called in anyday. He remained calm and composed throughout, denying all allegations. His memory failed when it suited him and he could not account for the inconsistencies the interrogators found. He was a very secretive man and MI5 had very little information about his past.
Not to mention this line:
:At the very least, Hollis was one of the most incompetent men that had ever directed a security organization of such a scale as MI5 in the cold war era.
--Osprey39 22:23, 10 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Sorry, but "KGB Archives" do not prove anything, they could have been made up by anybody. Spycatcher is an eye-witness account by a person who was part of this affair, and should be taken as such. Kraxler 02:06, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Apparently the KGB Archives only prove guilt.--Jack Upland (talk) 10:45, 19 September 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  NPOV 

message: Those are direct quotes from Chapman Pincher's 'Their trade is treachery'. There are no reasons to totally trust 'released' KGB archives as is there no reason to trust in Hollis' leadership as Director.
I concur. The KGB as the final word of credibility? The KGB? The NKVD? The GRU? Their archives 'prove' anything? Who came up with that nonsense?
Malangthon 23:55, 14 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: A jury would convict him in 5 minutes? In an English court, the prosecution would have to prove their case beyond reasonable doubt, there would be strict rules of admissible evidence, and Hollis would not have to say anything. The conclusive evidence against him doesn't appear in this article, anymore than it appeared in Spycatcher etc.--Jack Upland (talk) 08:42, 22 September 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  NPOV opposed 

message: The "controversies" section should not be the entire article.  Provide a biography section first, then you can add that section to the article.Landroo 17:40, 1 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Incorrect Format 

message: Not to complain, but while the allogations against the man are very interesting, and could be true, to date there has been no verification of the fact that he is a spy... shouldn't there be a bit more in here regarding the rest of the man's career?  I mean, what if he was innocent?  A lifetime of service rewarded only by the question of his loyalty?
:Certainly he was a spy, what is disputed is if he was a MOLE. If not, he was INCOMPETENT to the nth degree. Evaluate the possibilities and make your choice..... Kraxler 02:11, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The claim that he was a mole is the most famous thing about him, but that doesn't mean that it should dominate the article in this way. Almost all the sources are sources which claim he was a mole. But the claim that the head of MI5 was a Soviet mole is really a fringe theory.--Jack Upland (talk) 08:37, 22 September 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  More Fact 

message: I added an insight on Hollis' son Adrian's chess training in the Soviet Union when he was still a young, promising player. This is mentioned in "Spycatcher", by Peter Wright, page 200, as being volunteered by Hollis himself to Wright. It was virtually unheard of in the 1950s and 1960s for any young Western-based chess player to travel to the Soviet Union to compete regularly or for training. The Cold War was on, remember, and the standards of Soviet chess were the best in the world, for example in the mid-1950s, it can be argued that the USSR had 15 of the world's top 20 players. Britain was very far behind Soviet standards in chess at that time. The unwritten implication is: how did Adrian and / or his father manage to arrange this!? Perhaps a new angle of inquiry here. I also added Chapman Pincher's claim from his 1981 book "Their Trade is Treachery" that Hollis was recruited in China in the early 1930s by Richard Sorge to spy for the GRU. User:FrankEldonDixon January 8, 2009 (UTC)
:Postcards containing Cold War spy messages unearthed might explain why chess is an important skill for both spies and spy catchers. JRPG (talk) 14:16, 30 July 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: I notice someone has added " Again, no evidence has been advanced to support these assertions." I once had a copy of Pincher's Too Secret Too Long (which I can't quote from because unfortunately I seem to have lost it), and I seem to recall hundreds of pages of evidence. Much of it came from fragments of Shanghai police records that managed to be evacuated to the US just a few hours before the Japanese invasion, but didn't get un-boxed and examined until decades later. IIRC, Shanghai police had started following Hollis around after he kept turning up at private parties run by a known communist agitator, and found he occasionally co-habited in a flat rented by Agnes Smedley, a communist activist, probable communist agent, and at the time one of Richard Sorge's two girlfriends. Pincher also found evidence that when Hollis returned to England, he ended up living in the country a very short walk from another girl suspected of being a Soviet agent (don't recall the name, as I say this is all from memory.) All of it circumstantial, and far too weak for a criminal prosecution, but my goodness, if Hollis hadn't managed to conceal his Shanghai activities from MI5 they certainly would never have employed him. Taken together with the "is he a traitor or just plain incompetent" results of most of his operations, it certainly looks pretty suspicious. -- Securiger (talk) 04:24, 27 June 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: There appears to be nothing particularly suspicious at all. We are all (more or less) six degrees of separation from everyone else. According to her article, Agnes Smedley was correspondent for Frankfurter Zeitung and the Manchester Guardian in China. And the English-speaking community in Shanghai wasn't that large. It would be strange if Hollis didn't have some association with her. To say people are a security risk because they have broad interests and experiences is stupid. It was an intelligence service, not an unintelligence service.--Jack Upland (talk) 10:36, 19 September 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: I suggest that Jack Upland actually reads the various works that refer to Hollis in China. There is strong suspicions on his activities there and after. Had this been known at the time of his joining MI5, it would have rung alarm bells then. David J Johnson (talk) 10:49, 19 September 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: And when Donald Maclean joined the civil service, he admitted to a dalliance with Marxism. Did that exclude him? Should it have excluded him? I have read Spycatcher, and was impressed by the lack of logic. But I didn't realise that Hollis had stayed overnight in an apartment owned by an acquaintance who might have had sexual intercourse with the journalist, Richard Sorge - incidentally, a trusted initimate of Japanese officials. I didn't realise that Hollis had later lived a "very short walk from another girl". The evidence is mounting!!! But, unfortunately, in the words of my late father, it is "evidence of nothing in particular".--Jack Upland (talk) 11:55, 19 September 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: Similarly, they were aware of Kim Philby's leftist youth when he joined MI6.--Jack Upland (talk) 08:35, 22 September 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: Exactly, but the authorities didn't seem to be aware of Hollis's leftist associations. It was only when investigative reporters looked into his background that they came to light. Please also keep your comments to the article subject and stop totally unnecessary comments and POV regarding your late father. Thank you, David J Johnson (talk) 08:48, 22 September 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: So why would alarm bells have rung? Hollis seems to only be accused of "associations", "mixing in circles" - not of beliefs or activities.--Jack Upland (talk) 10:06, 22 September 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: Frankly you seem to be making comments without reading all of the relevant material on the case. Hollis was suspected as a possible mole because of the number of cases that went wrong, that could not be attributed to any of the other defectors. Only when this occurred did the joint MI5/MI6 investigators, and later investigative journalists, start looking into his early life.  I would also remind you that the Trend Report, looking at case long afterwards, could not come-up with a definitive answer - one way or the other. There was no final evidence that Hollis was guilty or innocent. I believe the article and Talk page as it stands is neutral and mentions all known details and is certainly not in need of some of the silly and POV comments recently made here. David J Johnson (talk) 10:39, 22 September 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: Claiming that I have introduced POV comments to an otherwise neutral talk page is absurd. Let's look at a few of these "neutral" comments: "If this case went to a jury, they would convict him in 5 minutes."..."Certainly he was a spy, what is disputed is if he was a MOLE. If not, he was INCOMPETENT to the nth degree."..."If Peter Wright was such a fool, why did Margaret Thatcher have his book prohibited in the UK?"..."it certainly looks pretty suspicious"...And so on. What's silly is claiming the head of MI5 was a Soviet mole and then saying you don't need to provide proof.--Jack Upland (talk) 10:59, 22 September 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Fleshing out a few aspects 

message: I found it unusual that there is are no details of his death. Derekbd (talk) 17:29, 17 December 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Death?

message: Just looked at the article for the first time in a while. Sorry to see some interesting material missing. As I don't have time to fight it back in I put it here for other editors to argue over:
::Hollis's grave is notable. According to journalist and author Ron Morgans,Ron Morgan's author page on Amazon, accessed 8 August 2014 who researched the matter for the national press in the 1970s, Hollis's ashes are buried in an unmarked grave, inside the wall of his local churchyard at Catcott. Morgans asserts that this anonymous and unconsecrated burial is the Establishment's sign for a traitor.Ron Morgans blog, accessed 8 August 2014
Testbed (talk) 21:25, 11 August 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree with Testbed, it is interesting material. I believe the reason for the information on the Hollis grave was that it was taken from a blog and a blog is not considered a reliable source. However, the author of the "blog" is a respected writer on many subjects.  My view is that it should re-instated, especially if the information appeared in a newspaper of record - plus, if true, it is important information in the whole Hollis story. David J Johnson (talk) 09:43, 12 September 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks. It has been more than a month without any comment in the other direction so I have reverted. Testbed (talk) 06:03, 12 September 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: Definitely should NOT be included, as it's original research by a self-published, self-proclaimed author, that no one has heard of. But then, I guess, you knew that. 31.54.33.43 (talk) 17:31, 21 October 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks for your efforts. Absolutely agree that this information should be included. Regards, David, David J Johnson (talk) 09:46, 12 September 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: The source is a blog by a mystery novelist who used to be a picture journalist. This is not a reliable source and the information he provides is not notable. His source of information about the grave is an old man in a pub. He has apparently made no attempt to check the facts with the Hollis family, the church, or the "Establishment" that he claims somehow organised the funeral. Many people who are cremated do not have marked graves. They have their ashes scattered, etc. However, Morgans uses this to argue that Hollis was a traitor, and compares him to Heinrich Himmler etc. Morgans was obviously on the hunt for anything incriminating, and even thinks that the fact that Hollis lived in "Primrose Cottage" is suspicious.--Jack Upland (talk) 02:22, 23 September 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: And Morgans returns...--Jack Upland (talk) 08:20, 27 June 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Grave - legitimate edit/s? 

message: *While in China, Hollis apparently associated frequently with the noted left-wing activist Agnes Smedley.
Well, they were both foreign correspondents in Shanghai. So what? How many conservatives did Hollis apparently associate with in his life? Why aren't they noted???
*After Kim Philby's flight to Moscow in 1963, rumours began to circulate that Hollis had alerted him to his impending arrest.
Rumours. The fact that Nicholas Elliott had gone to Beirut to confront Philby was apparently irrelevant.
*During the 1950s and 1960s, a large number of MI5 operations failed in circumstances that suggested the Soviets had been tipped off.
Really??? Is that the best explanation???
*He was a very secretive man and MI5 had very little information about many aspects of his past, particularly his years in China.
How suspicious!!! Let's forget that he left China in 1936!!!
*Peter Wright in Spycatcher asserts that Hollis and his secretary Val Hammond were carrying on a long-standing affair while both were at MI5. Hammond, according to Wright, was eligible for promotion at many points during her long service, including non-clerical positions related to intelligence analysis, but she consistently refused the opportunity to move to higher positions in MI5 to stay close to Hollis.[not in citation given] It was also theorised that Hammond was a lesbian who was involved in a relationship with an attractive one quarter Russian clerical worker at the agency. Examination of Hammond's journal years later only gives the name of "Natalia," who, Hammond wrote, "was irresistibly insatiable, and kept me at the agency." Hollis and Hammond were married after Hollis divorced his first wife, Eve, in 1968.
That's just racy gossip. Maybe Hollis had sex with his wife. I'm not sure.
*Hollis's grave is notable. According to journalist and author Ron Morgans, who researched the matter for the national press in the 1970s, Hollis's ashes are buried in an unmarked grave, inside the wall of his local churchyard at Catcott. Morgans asserts that this anonymous burial is the Establishment's sign for a traitor.
OK, so did Morgans have a seance with a black cat and a blind owl before coming up with this revelation??
To sum up: A lot of this article is speculation, rumour, and innuendo. Much of it has no references at all. Some of it has incomplete references (without pages numbers) to Spycatcher and other sources that raised the unsubstantiated allegations. While obviously intended to show Hollis was a mole or a dupe, much of it is irrelevant gossip. Maybe Hollis was a Soviet spy; maybe he was a Chinese lesbian Martian. This farrago gives no convincing evidence either way. And, really, Wikipedia is not supposed to be a courtroom for bizarre allegations.--Jack Upland (talk) 11:35, 19 September 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  More POV Issues 

message: The following comes from the Institute of World Politics report cited in the article (p 15). It illustrates the logic of the arguments that these sources use. Elli is the codename of a Soviet mole who is identified with Hollis.
:Here is where, if I were attempting a defence of Hollis, I would attempt to draw a line, by arguing that ELLI may have been in place up to 1945, but that there is scant evidence of his having operated after that time, while Hollis’s career went on for another 20 years. The place to start would be by attempting to show where Pincher’s reasoning is flawed, regarding the sourcing of these highly classified strategic documents to a GRU mole in the UK. It won’t do to merely brush this set of claims aside and assert that it does not point unambiguously to Hollis. Either it points to a GRU mole at a very high level or it doesn’t. If it does, either that mole was ELLI or some other very high-level GRU mole operating in the five years after the end of World War II. Up to the end of the war, just possibly, that mole could have been James McGibbon, but he withdrew from both government service and work for the GRU in mid-1945. The only GRU mole known to have been in place during the war years for which there is no evidence of his or her retirement in 1945 is ELLI; and in the years 1945-50, if ELLI remained in place, he would very likely have had access to these kinds of documents, given his position within MI5. Hollis was in place and would have had such access in those years. How, then, to ringbark the attack and demonstrate that it cannot have been him who leaked these documents? One way could be to obtain the original documents and their distribution lists. Another would be to gain access to the GRU archives and establish once and for all who supplied them to Moscow. Both lines of inquiry are difficult, but no credible defence can be made that does not make clear reference to them.
The onus of proof in this argument is clearly on a defender of Hollis. Even though there is "scant evidence" of Elli operating after 1945, the accusers don't need to deal with this anomaly. No, the defenders have to "demonstrate that it cannot have been" Hollis. Otherwise the defence isn't "credible". Not only is this biased, it is also the kind of argument used by Ufologists and other conspiracy theorists. The government and any opponents of the conspiracy theory are treated with utmost scepticism. But the theory itself is given the benefit of any doubt. And like any conspiracy theorists, the accusers of Hollis are obsessional about the details, but ignore the big picture. This is a fringe theory.--Jack Upland (talk) 09:44, 22 September 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree that it will be a "massive effort" to put the article into appropriate shape. However, an awful lot of dross has been removed recently. Perhaps a examination of the strange coincidences relating to the life and service of Hollis that are listed in Chapman Pincher's last book and the US Think Tank researches need further explanation to a Wikipedia reader. Incidentally, West is not the official MI5 historian - Christopher Andrew is. Mistakes like that do not bode well for your efforts. Regards, David, David J Johnson (talk) 19:09, 24 August 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Fringe Theory with a Presumption of Guilt 

message: "Later life" and "Death and legacy" should be one section.--Jack Upland (talk) 06:48, 26 June 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Later life