582 • WINTERBOTHAM, FRED
ing the sudden death of its leader. At the timeAnatoli Golitsynmade
the claim, the only person who fit the description was Hugh Gaitskell,
who had died of lupus.
Research byMI5suggested that Gaitskell’s death might not have
been accidental. He had contracted lupus soon after visiting the So-
viet consulate in London to obtain a visa, and his doctor had been
sufficiently suspicious to report his concerns. MI5’s dilemma was
whether to pursue an investigation, and the director-general,Sir
Martin Furnival Jones, authorized discreet inquiries to be made by
Harry Wharton andTony Brooksunder the alias ‘‘Henry Worthing-
ton.’’
While superficially there was a circumstantial case to be made
against Wilson, there was absolutely no proof that he had ever en-
gaged in espionage. There was a period, known as ‘‘the lost weeks,’’
when he had been in the Soviet Union negotiating for the timber
magnate Montague Meyer and his exact whereabouts could not be
traced, which seemed curious. Furthermore, his social circle, which
included many dubious Eastern Europeans such as Joseph Kagan and
Rudy Steinberg, was certainly unwise. Kagan, for instance, had de-
veloped a friendship based on chess with Rikardas Vaygauskas, a
member of theKGB’s Londonrezidentura.
The Worthington inquiry was shelved and the file remained in the
director-general’s private safe untilPeter Wrightalleged in 1985
that Wilson had been the victim of a plot to remove him, orchestrated
by his MI5 colleagues. In a further interview, Wright admitted that
the conspiracy had consisted of an approach he had made to Brooks
to leak damaging parts of the Worthington file, but Brooks had re-
garded the suggestion as wholly improper so nothing had come of it.WINTERBOTHAM, FRED.During World War I Fred Winterbotham
served as a fighter pilot in the Royal Flying Corps. In July 1917 his
Nieuport was shot down over the German trenches in France. He sur-
vived the crash and the subsequent captivity in a prisoner of war
camp in Silesia, from which he was not released until January 1919.
Upon his return to England, Winterbotham went up to Christ Church,
Oxford, where he was coached in tennis byJohn Masterman. After
university, he tried farming but when this venture failed he was per-
suaded in January 1930 to join theSecret Intelligence Service(SIS)