Olga Gray

Olga Gray
Miss X
Allegiance United Kingdom
Service MI5
Active 1931-1938
Rank Agent
Born 1906
Manchester
Nationality British
Occupation Intelligence officer, Secretary

Olga Gray (born 1906, date of death unknown) was a British secretary and typist recruited as an Mi5 infiltration agent by Maxwell Knight of B5(b) section in 1931. She was born in Manchester.[1] Under the instructions of Knight, Gray moved to London and became a member of the Friends of the Soviet Union in 1932.[2] Knight's reasoning behind Gray becoming a member of a soviet friendly organisation but not actually offering to spy on Great Britiain for the Soviet Union, was that the most successful counter-espionage agents were those who were approached by the enemy organisation.

This plan met with success when in 1934 after a period working for the Anti War Movement she was approached by Harry Pollitt and asked to undertake a 'special mission' on behalf of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB).[2] Having accepted this request Gray was sent to Paris on June 6, 1934 where she was to rendezvous with Percy Glading (an officer of League Against Anti-Imperialism and a founding member of the CPGB).[1]

Following this meeting Gray was instructed by Glading to go to India to deliver money and messages to insurgent elements therein.[2] However the cover-story provided to Gray by the CPGB was so flimsy for a woman travelling alone during the monsoon season to India that she would not fail to rouse the suspicion of the authorities. Knight's B5(b) section therefore stepped in and concocted a passable cover-story to enable her to continue to gain evidence of CPGB espionage.[3] On her return from India Gray worked as Pollitt's personal secretary, till dropping all work with the communists in 1935 due to the strain of maintaining a double life.[2]

The Percy Glading Case

On Maxwell Knight's instructions Gray had maintained social contact with both Pollitt and Glading. Glading asked Gray to engage in suspicious activity once more whilst at lunch with her on February 17, 1937.[2] Glading required Gray to rent a flat in London, that the CPGB would subsidise, and make it available for his use.

Gray then rented an apartment at 82 Holland Road, Kensington. Glading then visited the flat on April 21, 1937, with a man whom he referred to as 'Mr. Peters'.[2] 'Peters' was in actuality Theodore Maly a Soviet spy and a principal agent in Britain. A few months Glading later visited the flat with a foreign couple called 'Mr. & Mrs. Stevens' whose real names were William and Mary Brandes, agents of the NKVD who had just escaped from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police having attained fraudulent Canadian passports.[4] The Brandes' then proceeded to bring stolen secret documents (largely from the Woolwich Arsenal) and maps to the apartment to be photographed and developed.[2] The Brandes' did not return to London after November 1937 and Glading took over the photography of documents.[2] On January 21 Gray rang the authorities to report that Glading was to meet a man at Charring Cross station at 8.15pm to receive yet more classified documents.[5] The information provided by Gray who testified under the code name 'Miss X', led to the apprehension of Glading, Albert Williams (a hitherto unidentified spy in the Woolwich Arsenal ), and two other contacts within the Arsenal, George Whomack and Charles Munday.[6]

Later life

After the successful trial of Glading, Williams, Whomack and Munday, which resulted in 6 years penal servitude for Glading, Gray left the Security Service for a new life in Canada.[7] Gray was last heard of living outside of Toronto in the mid 1980s, she felt aggrieved at being 'dumped' by the service with a severance lump sum payment of £500.[8]

Footnotes

  1. 1 2 Christopher Andrew, The Defence of the Realm: The Authorized History of Mi5 (London, 2009), p. 179.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 The National Archives, file no. KV2/1022.
  3. ↑ Andrew, The Defence of the Realm, p. 180.
  4. ↑ Curtis B. Robinson, Caught Red Starred: The Woolwich Spy-Ring and Stalin's Naval Rearmament on the Eve of War (Bloomington IN, 2011), p. 66.
  5. ↑ Andrew, The Defence of the Realm, p. 181.
  6. ↑ Andrew, The Defence of the Realm, pp. 181-182.
  7. ↑ Andrew, The Defence of the Realm, p. 182.
  8. ↑ http://www.grahamstevenson.me.uk/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=230:percy-glading-&catid=7:g&Itemid=108

See also

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