Content deleted Content added
m →Career: Added link to the "numbers station" page for "recieved radio messages" |
Amend connector |
||
Line 30:
As he began his employment with GCHQ in England, Prime received Soviet [[Numbers station|radio messages at night]] and was informed of a [[Dead drop|dead letter drop]] in Esher, Surrey. At the drop, he found £400 and a note congratulating him. He used his Minox camera to photograph documents and sent them using microdots to East Berlin. Other dead letter drops used were in [[Abbey Wood]] in South-East London and the [[Banstead railway station]] in Surrey. Prime would use empty Coca-Cola cans to communicate at the drops as well as chalk marks on trees. Despite his use of drops, he preferred to meet his handlers personally, as the drops were not sufficient for the large amounts of material he produced for them.<ref name="Aldrich, 2011, 372"/>
While at the LPG, Prime was able to tell his Soviet handlers which of their lines were being monitored, and what information had been gleaned from them.<ref name="Rusbridger1991"/> In 1975, he met his KGB handlers in Austria, telling them of LPG's movement to Cheltenham. Prime was paid £800 at this meeting.<ref name="Aldrich, 2011, 373"/> Following his resignation from GCHQ in 1976, he twice resolved to defect to the Soviet Union but did not carry it out.<ref name="Aldrich, 2011, 375" >{{harvnb|Aldrich|2011|p=375}}</ref> At one point in 1977, he went as far as buying a ticket to Helsinki to defect, but turned back en route to the airport.<ref name="Andrew2012"/> He no longer listened for KGB messages and ceased to be an agent to them following his GCHQ resignation.<ref name="Aldrich, 2011, 375"/> Intelligence historian [[James Rusbridger]] wrote that he believed that Prime never stopped working for the KGB between his 1977 resignation and his 1982 arrest,
In April 1980, Prime was contacted by the KGB, who invited him to Vienna, from where they went on a short river cruise. The KGB tried to persuade him to rejoin the GCHQ, but he refused. Before his departure from GCHQ, he had copied over 500 secret documents, and he subsequently gave the KGB fifteen reels of film in Vienna in May 1980, for which he was paid £600, and gave them their last material in November 1981. For the 1981 material, he was paid £4,000, signifying the importance of the material. The 1981 material was later described as most damaging of all by the head of GCHQ's Security Division.<ref name="Aldrich, 2011, 376" >{{harvnb|Aldrich|2011|p=376}}</ref>
| |||