HOLT-WILSON, SIR ERIC• 245had been disobeyed, had fired SIS’s ineffectual chief,Sir John Sin-
clair. His replacement by White left a vacancy in the Security Ser-
vice, which was filled, on White’s recommendation, by Hollis.
Hollis was able to impress Whitehall with sanctioningengulf,a
surveillance technique which paid instant dividends. For the next
nine years, he was to give the Security Service uninspired leadership
during a period of unprecedented crisis. No less than three major
government inquiries were conducted into serious lapses of security,
which left MI5 lacking in confidence and credibility. The spy scan-
dals at Portland and the Admiralty were compounded by thePro-
fumo affair, which left Hollis desperate to avoid any further
exposure, even at the risk of harboring a Soviet spy within his own
organization.
In 1963 several senior MI5 officers became convinced that MI5
had experienced hostile penetration. The clues ranged from specific
allegations made by defectors to more intangible evidence of opera-
tional failures that might have had other, perhaps innocent explana-
tions. There followed a series of inconclusive mole-hunting exercises
that cast suspicion on a range of possible culprits, among whom was
Hollis himself. Now retired, married to his secretary with whom he
had conducted a lengthy affair, and living in New Street, Wells—
where he occasionally called onDavid Cornwell, who had rented a
house nearby—Hollis was interrogated in 1970.
Naturally the fact that a director-general of MI5 had himself fallen
under suspicion was a closely guarded secret even within the Security
Service, but news of the investigation leaked when Wright, on the
instigation ofLord Rothschild, decided to divulge details of his ca-
reer to a Fleet Street journalist. By the time the Hollis affair became
public knowledge, Hollis himself was dead, having died of a stroke
at his home in Catcott, near Bridgewater in Somerset, in September
1973.HOLT-WILSON, SIR ERIC. Deputy director-general of the Secur-
ity Servicefrom 1912 to 1940, Sir Eric Holt-Wilson was dismissed
byWinston Churchillin May 1940, together withMI5’s long-serv-
ing director-general,Sir Vernon Kell. Born in August 1875 and edu-
cated at Harrow and Woolwich, Holt-Wilson was decorated with a
DSO in 1900 and was an instructor in military engineering until he