460 • ROBERTSON, T. A.
identified Roberts and Conway as having sold details of Kodak’s
chemical formulas to him for £5,000, and the two men were arrested
in December 1964. At his trial at the Old Bailey, Roberts’s counsel,
Jeremy Hutchinson, QC, undermined Soupert’s evidence and his cli-
ent was acquitted, although Roberts was unable to retrieve his job
with Kodak. He died in January 1994.ROBERTSON, T. A.Known to colleagues as ‘‘Tar’’ because that is
how he initialed documents, Colonel Tommy Robertson was anMI5
officer from 1932 until he transferred in 1948 toGCHQin the role
of security adviser. Robertson joined the Security Service from the
Seaforth Highlanders on the recommendation of John Kell, son of the
firstdirector-general of the Security Service, and his first task was
to assist Colonel W. A. Alexander in an investigation of theInver-
gordon Mutiny. In 1939 Robertson arrested CaptainJohn King
after MI5 received information from the United States that had origi-
nated withWalter Krivitsky.
Robertson was the consummate case officer and ran Arthur
Owens,B Division’s firstdouble agent, acquired from Colonel Ed-
ward Peal of theSecret Intelligence Service’s Naval Section in
1939, when it was clear that the Welshman, later to be codenamed
snow, was working for theAbwehr. Under Robertson’s shrewd
management, his Germancounterespionage section, designated
B1(a), was to develop a large stable of double agents who were ma-
nipulated to act as a conduit for strategic deception. Robertson took
a particular interest intate, who even lived with him and his wife
Joan (who worked as a volunteer in MI5’s canteen) at their home
in Radlett, Hertfordshire. Always modest, and much admired by his
subordinates, Robertson’s role as an MI5 officer was eventually dis-
closed byLily Sergueievin her memoirs,Secret Service Rendered.
ROBINSON, HENRI.Born in 1897 in Germany, his father a Russian
Jew, Robinson studied in Geneva during World War I and became
closely associated with the Communist Youth International. In 1936
he was working alongside the Soviet military attache ́in Paris before
being placed in charge of all theGRU’s French and English networks
the following year. Among his agents in London wasErnest Weiss,
but there is some evidence that he lost Moscow’s confidence during