534 • SYMONDS, JOHN
seeking to research the truth about SOE’s activities, and largely due
to her pressure, Sweet-Escott was allowed to releaseBaker Street Ir-
regular(1965), a sanitized version of his original account. It is mem-
orable for the extraordinary compromise reached with the authorities,
which required all mention of SIS to be excised; accordingly, there
are no references to an organization known as ‘‘Z,’’ nor are ‘‘MI6’’
and ‘‘SIS’’ to be found anywhere.SYMONDS, JOHN.Detective Sergeant John Symonds of theMetro-
politan Police’sCommittee of Imperial Defenceleft England in
1972 to start a new life as a mercenary in Africa. A former army
officer, he had been charged with corruptly receiving £150, and when
two colleagues were given lengthy prison sentences for similar of-
fenses, on equally dubious evidence, he went abroad and prepared a
dossier on police corruption. This caught the attention of the KGB
rezidentin Tangier, who tried to interest him in assassinating a recent
defector,Oleg Lyalin. Symonds’s affair with a German woman
while on holiday in Bulgaria led to his recruitment by theKGBto
undertake a mission that involved Gunter Guillaume, the spy inside
German chancellor Willi Brandt’s private office. Later he was given
sex training in Moscow as aRomeo spyand sent to India by Oleg
Kalugin to seduce the wives of certainCentral Intelligence Agency
officers. However, when his girlfriend in Bulgaria was persecuted by
the secret police, he abandoned his assignment to protect her. Sy-
monds also undertook a mission to Australia to collect authentic
passports for the use of KGB illegals.
After eight years working for the KGB, Symonds returned to Lon-
don, where he still faced trial and was sentenced to two years’ impris-
onment for corruption. Upon his release he was granted immunity
from prosecution for his evidence concerning corruption at Scotland
Yard, althoughMI5disbelieved his claims to have spied for the
KGB.
In 1992 KGB defectorVasili Mitrokhinidentified Symonds as
the KGB’s star British agent, prompting Symonds to write his autobi-
ography. This proved to be an embarrassment for MI5, which had
rejected his offers of information on advice from a Scotland Yard
anxious to bury his allegations of widespread corruption. He was fi-
nally vindicated and was the subject of an inquiry conducted by the
Parliamentary Intelligence and Security Committee.