"SLEEPING AT THE WHEEL" HOW A KGB DEFECTOR TERRIFIED BRITISH INTELLIGENCE INTO ACTION

Oleg Lyalin, a dissolute womaniser, pushed MI5 into rounding up over 100 Soviet intelligence agents operating in the UK

- WORDS LOUIS HARDIMAN

As the 1960s drew to a close, MI5 and the CIA were panicking after the KGB defector Anatoliy Golitsyn had convinced intelligence leaders that the KGB had penetrated their agencies and governments. MI5 conducted investigations against its former Deputy Director General Graham Mitchell and Director General Roger Hollis, and Prime Minister Harold Wilson was also under suspicion. The threat from outside seemed less concerning, even though British intelligence had observed a 700 percent increase in KGB officers in the country. It estimated that 30-50 percent of those working for the Soviet diplomatic mission were intelligence operatives.

Outside the dust and peeling paint of MI5’s creaking Leconfield House headquarters, London was swinging. Into the hedonism, bright lights and colourful fashion came Oleg Lyalin, a handsome, charming and endlessly womanising KGB operative. As a younger man in his early 20s, Lyalin’s linguistic skills had earned him a place in the KGB's Academy of Foreign Intelligence. But his promising career had quickly juddered to a halt. "What let Lyalin down was his inclination to party," Richard Kerbaj, journalist, filmmaker and author of The Defector tells History of War. “He was already going through his first divorce, which derailed his plan to go to spy in the US.”