Just Another Cold War "Gay Spy" Scandal?

On 19 March 1955, the American Club in Moscow hosted the St Patrick’s Ball. Foreign embassy officials and staff would spend the night drinking in an almost James Bond like manner. No one likely noticed at the time that John Vassall, a low-level British Admiralty clerk, was nowhere to be found, even though he was fond of a good party and enjoyed any excuse to socialize. In another part of Moscow, Vassall was enjoying a smaller social gathering. Vassall’s (male) friend, known only as the “skier” had invited him to a play and then dinner, and Vassall hoped to join the St Patrick’s ball sometime after midnight. Vassall met his friend the “skier,” who introduced him to a third man, a military officer, and the three took a taxi to what Vassall assumed was the agreed upon play. Instead of a theater, however, the taxi dropped the men off at a block of flats. In his autobiography, Vassal recollected that he felt he had no choice but to follow his two companions as he did not know where he was in the city. Once inside, the men enjoyed a nice drink and quiet conversation. Eventually, the “skier” pulled Vassall aside, played match maker, and propositioned Vassall on behalf of the “military officer.” Excitedly, Vassall and his new partner fell into bed together; however, a happy ending was not to be for Vassall and his officer.

Vassall’s lovemaking with the “military officer” was interrupted when the lights abruptly went out. As the lights came back on, there was a knock at the bedroom door followed by a request for Vassall to come out of the room when he was ready. Both men dressed and the “military officer” left first, not to be heard from again. The foreboding scene Vassall described next is reminiscent of Hollywood spy films with “two dark figures [were] standing in large dark overcoats with two others guarding the front door in the hall” as Vassall realized he had been caught in a KGB honey-trap. Vassall’s ominous interrogation with the KGB lasted around 19 hours, and he reported feeling “terribly alone” throughout the entire ordeal. The menacing figures presented Vassall with photographs of his homosexual activities while in Moscow and reminded him that these acts were illegal in the USSR, threatening him with a potential “international incident” and time in a Soviet prison if Vassall did not comply with their requests. Instead of joining his colleagues for the remainder of the Ball as hoped, John Vassall’s spying career began.

Vassall’s spy career was shaped by, and in turn shaped, Britain’s Cold War diplomatic service. Vassall joined the Foreign Office following changes to Positive Vetting (PV) that had been initiated in the wake of the (in)famous defections of Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean in 1951. Ian Fleming’s novels about the fictional, idealized, hypermasculine, heterosexual James Bond were published during (and after) Vassall passed information to the KGB, with the first James Bond film premiering in Britain the same month as Vassall’s trial. And though Vassall’s betrayal was overshadowed in the media with the first stirrings of the Profumo Affair, his case was viewed as confirmation that homosexuality was in and of itself a security threat. This narrative, however,  continues to treat Vassall as a symbol, not a subject.

Interestingly, Vassall’s subterfuge was only discovered when a Soviet defector (KAGO) met with the U.S. Intelligence Agencies in 1962. Although this agent did not know Vassall by name, he was able to share enough information about the type of documents being shared with the USSR to help narrow down a list of suspects. After the American agents learned what they could, they passed that information to M.I.5 for investigation. While observing Vassall in August of 1962, M.I.5 officials noted that “Vassall is almost certainly a homosexual” adding to their suspicions of Vassall being the spy revealed by KAGO. Vassall was arrested on the evening of 12 September 1962 and taken to Scotland Yard. Once there, Vassall confessed everything – from the damning evidence of a camera and roll of film hidden in his apartment to the story and reason for his blackmail. Vassall claimed he “was glad, in a way, to be able to unburden” himself of the triple-life he was living. Vassall’s relief led him to expect at least some sympathy from the Security Services, but he assumed incorrectly. Instead, Vassall was tried a mere six weeks later (during the same tense hours as the Cuban Missile Crisis) with little to no sympathy from his defense attorney, the judge, or the press.

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After Vassall was sentenced to prison for his espionage, the press caused enough of a ruckus about the government’s lack of detection that Parliament opened a Tribunal to identify who knew about Vassall’s sexuality and when. The results of the Tribunal, published in the spring of 1963, claimed that no one in government knew, or could have reasonably known, about Vassall’s sexuality prior to his arrest and trial. In response, the Sunday Mirror ran the (now infamous) article “How to Spot a Possible Homo.” This article, although brief, highlighted not only the disgust towards Vassall (along with the apparent ineptitude of the British government), but towards men who could fit into the same category. The author, Lionel Crane, used a seductive photo of Vassall with the subtitle “Vassall, a spy and homo – a gilt-edged specimen of his type,” and, in big, bold type under said “The Admiralty, the Foreign Office, and M.I.5 don’t seem to know…so the Sunday Mirror offers them some useful advice.” Crane quoted the Tribunal’s assertion that no one knew about Vassall’s homosexuality, and agreed that this was true. According to Crane, the public (especially those in government) needed to be educated on how to identify a possible queer man to prevent yet another spy.

Alex Grant's sympathetic biography has done much to recover the political and sexual dimensions of the Vassall case,  yet the broader question of what it meant to live a secret life as a gay man in Cold War Britain remains open. That question is sharpened by comparison with the American case; unlike the Lavender Scare — the proactive, institutionalized purge of gay federal employees analyzed most fully by David K. Johnson — the British state's characteristically covert response to the homosexual security threat deserves sustained comparative treatment. Scholars such as Matt Houlbrook, Matt Cook, and Helen Smith have mapped the queer subcultures and social worlds of mid-twentieth-century Britain. My research works to build on their important foundations, incorporating the substantial quantity of MI5 files on Vassall, released in 2022, as they offer a specificity and institutional dimension to these realities. What these files have revealed to me thus far is not just the mechanics of surveillance, but the texture of a life lived under compounded secrecies - of sexuality, of espionage, and of a state that treated both as threats to be managed rather than human realities to be understood.

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Kristina Kelehan is a PhD student at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her work focuses on the intersections of diplomacy, gender, sex, sexuality, and queerness in Cold War Britain. Her previous work examined 'militarized masculinity' and its connection to the increase in sodomy trial prosecutions in the late nineteenth century.

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