STEWART, SIR FINDLATER• 525corded sound from another CPGB building in Great Newport Street,
but both sources were to be betrayed byAnthony Bluntin 1940
when he gained access to the relevant MI5 files in 1940. Instead of
ripping out the wiring and maybe demonstrating the fact that the
party had discovered the covert equipment, Stewart pretended he was
unaware that his office contained a bug and carried on business as
usual. This led MI5 to spend fruitless hours making transcripts of his
exchanges with another Scottish Communist, Jimmy Shields, the
long-serving head of the CPGB’s International Department, who
held that post until his death in 1949. Shields was responsible for
supervising Moscow’s financial support for the party, and much of
what was heard over the microphones consisted of Shields counting
thousands of U.S. dollar bills, donated by the Soviets. In addition,
Stewart’s home telephone was tapped and all his mail was inter-
cepted, photographed, and tested forsecret writing.
Stewart was considered a target by both MI5 and SIS, and his Se-
curity Service file includes a memorandum, dated 20 December
1934, from a Special Branch detective in Folkestone who reported
his departure for Boulogne to MajorValentine Vivian, then SIS’s
director of counterespionage. Assisted by his wife Margaret, daugh-
ter Annie, and an assistant, Agnes Aitken, Stewart provided the link
between the CPGB’s overt and legal political organization, and the
clandestine cells run on behalf of theNKVD, taking instructions
from Moscow. Blunt revealed Stewart’s pivotal role while under in-
terrogation by MI5 in 1964 and revealed that in the absence ofAna-
toli Gorskyin 1940, Stewart had run Blunt,Kim Philby, andGuy
Burgess.STEWART, SIR FINDLATER.A member of the Wireless Board, Sir
Findlater Stewart had spent his career in the India Office. On the out-
break of World War II, when he was permanent undersecretary of
state for India (a post he had held since 1930), he was appointed di-
rector-general of the Ministry of Information. In November 1939 he
moved to the Home Defence Security Executive, where he remained
until the end of the war, representing the body on theTwenty Com-
mittee. In November 1945, assisted by John Drew, he completed a
review of the British secret services and recommended thatMI5and
theSecret Intelligence Service(SIS) be amalgamated in one build-