560 • VERNON, WILFRED
of the other material. Altogether 2,900 messages were decrypted,
some of which proved to beNKVD,GRU, and Naval GRU traffic
that was of immense interest and value toMI5and theSecret Intelli-
gence Service. Information gleaned from the often fragmentary de-
crypts incriminated Klaus Fuchs,Donald Maclean,Ivor Montagu,
J. B. S. Haldane,Cedric Belfrage, and Ian Milner, among many
others. References were later found toAnthony BluntandKim Phil-
by, but too late for the information to be used against them. The only
texts solved almost contemporaneously were intercepted in 1948 to
and from the Canberrarezidentura. Thevenonatexts were declassi-
fied in July 1996 by the U.S.National Security Agencyover the
opposition of GCHQ.VERNON, WILFRED.A Soviet spy convicted of unauthorized pos-
session of classified information in October 1937, Major Wilfred
Vernon had been an official in the Air Ministry, and in 1945 was
elected the Labour MP for Dulwich. Vernon had commanded a Royal
Naval Air Service Squadron during World War I and in 1923 was
appointed chief draftsman of the Bristol Aeroplane Company. At the
time of his arrest,MI5did not realize he had been an activeGRU
agent for years and accepted his assertion that he had overlooked the
documents he had brought home from the Royal Aircraft Establish-
ment at Farnborough, where he had worked since 1925. Vernon was
found to have accumulated a quantity of classified documents, and
this led to his prosecution and dismissal in October on a charge of
unauthorized possession of government papers. At his trial, Vernon’s
counsel was another GRU agent,Denis Pritt.
VERSCHOYLE, DEREK.Born in County Sligo and educated at Mal-
vern and Trinity College, Dublin, Derek Verschoyle was for eight
years before the war the literary editor of theSpectator. He was close
toArchie Lyall,Goronwy Rees, andGraham Greene, all of whom
contributed to the magazine and later gravitated toward theSecret
Intelligence Service(SIS). In 1939 Verschoyle joined the Royal Air
Force and spent much of the war in Bomber Command. Later he flew
in the Mediterranean theater, and this brought him into contact with
SIS.
In 1946 Verschoyle was appointed to the SIS station in Rome