432 • PRIME, GEOFFREY
served briefly in the Gold Coast (now Ghana). In 1952 he was se-
conded to the army for a year in the Suez Canal Zone, and in 1953
was appointed director of intelligence and security in Kenya. In 1958
he was sent to Cyprus as chief of intelligence and in 1960 became
Hong Kong’s director of Special Branch. In 1966 he was posted to
Aden as director of intelligence, and he then retired in 1967, return-
ing in 1973 to establish and run the Independent Commission
Against Corruption (ICAC) inHong Kongfor five years with the
rank of deputy commissioner and director of operations.
Prendergast’s experience directingSpecial Branchoperations
during the Mau Mau Emergency in Kenya, theEOKAcampaign in
Cyprus, and the British withdrawal from Aden was unrivaled, and his
reputation as a tough but efficient operator made him a natural choice
to root out the corruption endemic in the British-run Hong Kong Po-
lice.PRIME, GEOFFREY.Arrested in April 1982 at his home in Chelten-
ham on child molestation charges, after having been denounced to
the police by his wife Rhona, Geoffrey Prime was convicted in No-
vember 1982 on charges under theOfficial Secrets Actand sen-
tenced to 35 years’ imprisonment. Under police interrogation Prime
admitted that during the years he had been employed byGCHQhe
had spied for theKGB.
Having trained as a Russian linguist, Prime left theRoyal Air
Force(RAF) in 1968 and was posted to theGCHQ’sJoint Techni-
cal Language Servicebefore joining the Soviet section of J Divi-
sion. In September 1978 he resigned to work as a taxi driver but
became obsessed about young girls living in his neighborhood and
was suspected of pedophilia. In his confession Prime admitted that
he had volunteered to spy for the Soviets while stationed at Gatow
with the RAF, and more recently had held meetings with his contacts
in Vienna in 1980 and in East Germany in 1981.
PRITT, DENIS.The Labour MP for North Hammersmith between
1935 and 1950, D. N. Pritt, QC, was also aGRUagent. Born in 1887
and called to the bar in 1909, Pritt had been educated at Winchester
and London University. Always a Soviet apologist, he was chairman
of the Society for Cultural Relations with the USSR and the author