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Liddell served in the field artillery during World War I, earning the Military Cross. In 1919, he went to work for Basil Thompson head of the Special Branch. His assignment was to identify political extremists living in England, chiefly communists. Liddell worked closely with MI5 and the SIS, which since the Revolution of 1917, had been conducting widespread espionage operations in the Soviet Union. In 1927, after MI5 aggressively identified Soviet spies in the celebrated Arcos raid, Liddell joined MI5 in 1931 going to work in its "B" Branch, which was responsible for counterintelligence.
At the onset of World War II, Liddells Counterintelligence Branch was successful in picking up virtually very agent the Germans had managed to plant in Britain. With the firing of Kell by Churchill in May 1941 Liddell became Director of MI5's B Branch. Liddell was ably assisted in his wartime duties by Maxwell Knight. The two organized a vast network of MI5 agents mounting surveillance operations on possible German agents or Nazi sympathisers.
Following the war Liddell was expected to take over control of MI5 and it is often argued that the Labour Prime Minister Atlee was distrustful of the 'old-school tie background of MI5's senior officers and chose instead the Police Officer, Sir Percy Sillitoe to head MI5. However, Herbert Morrison, the Home Secretary had apparently been warned that Liddell may not be 'suitable' for political reasons and therefore he was passed over for that reason. Liddell was still made Deputy-Director General in 1946. He continued his close friendship with Philby, Burgess, Blunt and the artist Tomas Harris, who was later to die in mysterious circumstances in 1964. By the time Burgess and Maclean defected in 1951, Liddell was already under investigation, but this was quickly hushed up. He was allowed to continue to serve in MI5 until 1953 when he accepted a post as the Atomic Energy Authority's Head of Security at Harwell.
It was Blunt who warned Burgess in 1951, that Maclean was about to be arrested as a Soviet agent. Blunt had been passed the information probably by an informant inside MI5 or perhaps by Philby in the United States, as a result of seeing one of the VENONA transcripts mentioning Homer, Macleans Soviet espionage code name. Both Philby and Liddell were to be investigated, Liddell in particular. While Philby later confirmed his guilt by defecting, Liddell escaped probable exposure as a major Soviet spy by dying in 1958 of a heart attack. |
