Mole suspicions

After Kim Philby's flight to Moscow in 1963 rumours began to circulate that Hollis had alerted him to his impending arrest. He was also criticised for not alerting John Profumo to the fact that he might have been involved with a Soviet spy ring through his friendship with Stephen Ward, and his affair with Christine Keeler.

During the 1950s and 1960s, a large number of MI5 operations failed in circumstances that suggested the Russians had been pre-warned. Although many such failures were subsequently blamed on the actions of self-confessed agents Burgess, Philby and Blunt, so many occurred after all three had lost their access to secret information that some in MI5 concluded that the Russians must have an agent in a very senior position within the organisation. Peter Wright, Arthur S. Martin and others became convinced that either Hollis or his deputy, Graham Mitchell, could be the only ones responsible, eventually confiding their suspicions to their former DG, Dick White, by now DG of MI6.

According to Nigel West (Mole Hunt, chapter 2, "Operation PETERS") White instructed Martin to inform Hollis that Mitchell was a suspect and Hollis told Martin (after due consideration) to keep Mitchell under surveillance. Nigel West implies that this was a deliberate ploy to keep tabs on both Mitchell and Hollis.

Martin eventually became so disgruntled and outspoken about Hollis's attitude toward the investigation (Hollis had, for example, reduced the size of the department and had sent one of Martin's best men on an overseas assignment) that Hollis suspended Martin for a fortnight and the case was turned over to Peter Wright. Much of the investigation was centred around the interviews with Anthony Blunt at that time and Peter Wright had amassed a sizable amount of taped evidence from Blunt when Martin returned from suspension.

Eventually the PETERS operation wound down. By then, suspicion had lifted from Mitchell and focused solely on Hollis himself. However, the then Director-General, Martin Furnival Jones refused to sanction an investigation into Hollis. (Mole Hunt, Chapter 3, page 45, "Operation Fluency") noted that the investigative team known as FLUENCY (chapter 3 of Mole Hunt) had been disbanded before any conclusions had been reached.

Martin and Wright and the team were unable to convince anyone else in MI5 or MI6 that they were right about Hollis. Wright retired, by his own account (in Spycatcher) enraged at being denied a pension for his 30 years of service, on highly legalistic and technical grounds. He emigrated to Australia, and there wrote an account of his work at MI5. Despite attempts by Margaret Thatcher and her government to suppress the publication and distribution of the book, Spycatcher, it was finally published in 1987. In the book Wright claimed that Hollis had been a Soviet agent. (Among the evidence for this claim is the Igor Gouzenko defection. Hollis was sent to Canada to interview Gouzenko. Gouzenko had provided Hollis with clear information about Alan Nunn May's meetings with his handlers; all these meetings were immediately cancelled. Gouzenko also noted that the man who met him seemed to be in disguise, not interested in his revelations and discouraged him from further disclosures. In face of this circumstantial evidence, Wright became convinced that Hollis was a traitor. Wright alleges in Spycatcher that Gouzenko himself deduced later that his interviewer might have been a Soviet double agent and was probably afraid that he might recognize him from case photos that Gouzenko might have seen in KGB files—the reason for the disguise.) Peter Wright had given a televised interview during the dispute with Thatcher's government. Following Peter Wright's TV interview in 1984, Arthur Martin wrote a letter to the Times and it was published July 19, 1984. Martin stated that while Wright exaggerated the certainty with which they regarded Hollis's guilt, Peter Wright was justified in saying that Hollis was the most likely candidate for the reasons Wright had given.

Under his successor Sir Martin Furnival Jones, the higher management of MI5 expressed indignation and loss of morale about the Hollis affair. Hollis was asked to come in and clear up the allegations. Having been the director, Hollis knew all about the procedures of the interrogation and investigation. He remained calm and composed throughout, denying all allegations. He was a very secretive man and MI5 had very little information about his past. Later, in the 1970s, the Trend Committee under Lord Trend was entrusted the matter of investigating Hollis. After a long enquiry it reported the allegations inconclusive, neither denying nor confirming them.

In her 2001 autobiography, Christine Keeler (Profumo's mistress), alleged, without supporting evidence, that Hollis and Ward were part of a spy ring with Sir Anthony Blunt. He has also been accused by Arthur S. Martin (head of MI5's Soviet counter-intelligence section at the time), and Chapman Pincher (investigative journalist who produced several exposés of failures in British counter-intelligence) of being a Soviet agent, though entirely separate from the famous Cambridge Five spy ring. Again, no evidence has been advanced to support these assertions.

His son, Adrian Swayne Hollis (born August 2, 1940 in Bristol), is a chess grandmaster and was British Correspondence Chess Champion in 1966, 1967, and 1971. Philosopher James Martin Hollis (1938-1998) was his nephew.

The Yes, Prime Minister storyline in which former MI5 chief John Halsted is exposed as a Soviet spy was based on the rumours about Hollis.