Chapman Pincher

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Henry Chapman Pincher (born March 29, 1914) is a British journalist and novelist whose writing mainly focuses on espionage and related matters.

He joined the Daily Express in 1946 as a science and defence correspondent, and is probably best known as the author of "Their Trade is Treachery" which alleged that former director-general of MI5 Roger Hollis had been a spy for the Soviet Union. The book also revealed that Sir Anthony Blunt (whom it referred to under the code-name 'Maurice') had confessed to spying.

Pincher is noted for his strong support for the work of the intelligence agencies and for Conservative politics. He was at one point close to Peter Wright whom he knew suspected Harold Wilson to have been a Soviet agent, and according to the biography of Wilson written by Ben Pimlott, Pincher was trying to get information from Wright so that he could accuse Wilson in public.

Pincher was convinced that, alongside Wilson, many other members of the Labour Party were Soviet agents. Critics claimed that his greatest delusion concerned Tom Driberg. Pincher claimed that Driberg was an active double agent for MI5 and the KGB despite his well founded reputation for total indiscretion. Lord Brockway characterised Driberg as "utterly indiscreet...could never keep a secret". In 1999 KGB archives revealed that in fact Driberg was a spy for the Soviet Union, with the codename LePage [[1]].

EP Thompson described Pincher as "a kind of official urinal in which, side by side, high officials of MI5 and MI6, Sea Lords, Permanent Under-Secretaries, nuclear scientists, Lord Wigg, and others, stand patiently leaking in the public interest".

The veracity or otherwise of his leakers appeared to be of little concern to Pincher so long as they leaked in the interests of the right wing.^{[citation needed]}