BRITAIN: A police statement from a British civil servant lured by a gay "honey trap" into spying for the KGB in the late 1950s was made public for the first time yesterday.
William Vassall, who died in 1996, aged 76, was sentenced to 18 years in jail - he served 10 - following a trial at the Old Bailey after his arrest in September 1962.
In 1954, Vassall, a former RAF photographer, was posted to Moscow to work as a low-level clerk at the Naval Attache's Office.
While working there he enjoyed Moscow's gay scene, but it was to prove his undoing, he later revealed to police.
Vassall told them that a Polish man he befriended, called Mikhailisky, an embassy official, arranged for a number of associates to get him drunk.
They then photographed him engaged in various homosexual acts. He was then blackmailed into supplying information to KGB officers in return for cash, he said.
The Russians threatened to show the photographs to senior British embassy staff and, in particular, the ambassador's wife, Lady Hayter, Vassall revealed.
For the next seven years, in Moscow initially, then in London, he passed on top secret files.
Detailing the honey trap in April 1955, set up by Mikhailisky in a private room at a Moscow restaurant, Vassall said: "We had drinks, a large dinner and I was plied with very strong brandy."
Everyone, including Vassall, then began taking off their clothes, he told police. At a subsequent meeting, Mikhailisky set Vassall up to be confronted by officials who produced "photographs showing me in various forms of compromising sexual acts", he said.
Of his decision to become a spy, Vassall said: "It was explained to me by Russian Security Service personnel that I was only helping them to protect their own country. If I have done wrong in accepting all that they explained to me in great detail about their country, it was not my intention to do anything against this country."
Police suspicion finally fell on Vassall because of the gap between his modest income - £900 a year (gross) - and his incongruously lavish lifestyle.
As a junior clerk in the Admiralty, he was living in an upmarket flat, wearing Savile Row suits and taking regular foreign holidays.
He was, by 1962, receiving between £500 and £700 annually from his Russian contacts, he told police.