466 • ROVER
Wright’s admission that the secret financial arrangement settled be-
tween himself and Pincher, via a company registered in the Cayman
Islands, had been organized by Rothschild.
Always a controversial figure, Rothschild was himself was at one
time under suspicion as a possible Sovietmole. Eventually it was
concluded that the tips he had volunteered to MI5, particularly in re-
gard to Philby’s treachery, probably cleared him, but when the el-
derly peer demanded of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher a formal
statement confirming his innocence of espionage, her reply was ex-
traordinarily ambiguous and unconvincing and haunted the peer until
his death in March 1990.
Documents in theKGB archivesdisclosed in 2003 suggest that
Rothschild may have been attributed the code namesvaletandwal-
letby theNKVDin 1943.ROVER. MI5code name for adouble agentwho was active from May
1944 until the end of World War II.roverwas a Polish seaman who
had been captured by the Germans and after two years of forced labor
had agreed to spy for them in England. They had invested in a year’s
Morse training for him, but when he reached England from Spain in
May 1944 his letters containingsecret writingwent unanswered so
he was returned to the Polish navy. Then, unexpectedly, theAbwehr
tried to contact him by radio so a Radio Security Service (RSS) oper-
ator tookrover’s place and an exchange of signals in October indi-
cated the substitution had been successful. However, the RSS
operator died in hospital the following month, so a second substitute
was required to transmit on his behalf, reporting air raid damage, and
contact was maintained until the end of hostilities.
ROYAL AIR FORCE (RAF).The RAF’s contribution to British Intel-
ligence ranges from the overt role played in aerial reconnaissance
and the processing of photographic imagery—which dates back to
artillery-spotting over enemy lines by the Royal Flying Corps during
World War I—to the more covert collection of signals intelligence
during the Cold War, conducted by 2 Signals Unit at Bampton Castle
and 9 Signals Unit at Boddington. The RAF’s signals intelligence
headquarters is RAF Digby in Leicestershire, which is linked to nu-
merous outstations in Europe and beyond, among the largest being