WRIGHT, PETER• 589Britain’s national organizer and previously an engineer employed as
an examiner at the arsenal’s Naval Department. In February 1938,
after anMI5surveillance operation lasting seven years, Glading was
arrested and charged under theOfficial Secrets Act, together with
Charles Munday, Albert Williams, and George Whomack. Only
Munday was acquitted when the four defendants were tried at the Old
Bailey in May 1938.WRIGHT, PETER.A radio technician recruited from Marconi in
1955, Peter Wright had attractedMI5’s attention when he had dis-
covered the secrets of the Sovietsatyrmicrophone and transmitter
recovered from the U.S. embassy in Moscow and demonstrated how
it worked. This was a considerable accomplishment for someone who
had left Bishop’s Stortford College without a qualification at the age
of 15. During World War II he had talked his way into a job at the
Admiralty Research Laboratory.
Wright worked inA Branchuntil 1963, when he participated in
the surveillance ofGraham Mitchell, a suspectedmolefor the
KGB. The following year, after thepetersinvestigation had con-
cluded, he was appointed head of D3, the research section in the So-
viet counterespionage branch. Here, he became increasingly
convinced that MI5’s considerable losses over the years could only
be explained by Soviet penetration at a high level. In April 1964,
afterArthur Martinhad extracted a confession fromAnthony
Blunt, Wright replaced him as MI5’s interrogator and pursued doz-
ens of leads to undetected Soviet spies. He interviewedLeo Long,
Jenifer Hart,Alister Watson, and dozens of other spy suspects, al-
though none were ever prosecuted.
When he reached his official retirement, Wright was retained as a
consultant on a part-time basis by the director-general,Sir Michael
Hanley, and he commuted up to London from his stud farm at Blis-
land, near Bodmin in Cornwall. When he left MI5 completely in Jan-
uary 1976, Wright moved to Tasmania but failed to obtain the full
pension to which he believed he was entitled. When Margaret
Thatcher publicly exposed Blunt in November 1979, he was dis-
mayed by her assertion that all MI5’s losses could be explained by
Soviet penetration during World War II, and he embarked on a series
of disclosures—first to journalist Chapman Pincher, who docu-