Oreste Pinto (9 October 1889 – 18 September 1961) was a Dutch counterintelligence officer and Lieutenant-Colonel. His activities during the Second World War, in which he worked with MI5 interrogating refugees to England and the Free Dutch Government Polite Buitendienst (Foreign Police Service), resulted in the capture of eight spies.
During the Second World War, Pinto was an MI5 interrogator. [1] He interviewed over 30,000 immigrants to the UK at the euphemistically named "London Reception Centre" in the Royal Victoria Patriotic Building in Wandsworth. [2] [3]
In 1952, Pinto published two books, Spy-catcher and Friend or Foe? These formed the basis of the 1959-1961 BBC television series Spycatcher , and also an earlier BBC Radio series, in both of which he was portrayed by Bernard Archard. A further book, Spycatcher 2, based on the series, was published in 1960. The 1962 Dutch programme De Fuik , in which Pinto was portrayed by Frits Butzelaar, [4] was also derived from them.
Dwight Eisenhower once described Pinto as "the greatest living authority on security". [5] The Daily Telegraph referred to him as a "human bloodhound". [6] Conversely, Guy Liddell stated in 1942 that he had been told by Leonard Burt that Pinto had "a thoroughly bad record". [7]
Pinto's career in intelligence began in 1913, when he was recruited by the Deuxième Bureau. [8]
He characterized himself as basically a generalist, with a knack for learning languages, skill in boxing and shooting ("I managed to reach amateur international standard," [9] ), and being an excellent bridge player and a "local" zoologist.
The Cambridge Five was a ring of spies in the United Kingdom that passed information to the Soviet Union during the Second World War and the Cold War and was active from the 1930s until at least the early 1950s. None of the known members were ever prosecuted for spying. The number and membership of the ring emerged slowly, from the 1950s onwards.
Anthony Frederick Blunt, styled Sir Anthony Blunt from 1956 to November 1979, was a leading British art historian and Soviet spy.
Nathaniel Mayer Victor Rothschild, 3rd Baron Rothschild,, was a British scientist, intelligence officer during World War II, and later a senior executive with Royal Dutch Shell and N M Rothschild & Sons, and an advisor to the Edward Heath and Margaret Thatcher governments of the UK. He was a member of the prominent Rothschild family.
Rupert William Simon Allason is a British former Conservative Party politician and author. He was the Member of Parliament (MP) for Torbay in Devon, from 1987 to 1997. He writes books and articles on the subject of espionage under the pen name Nigel West.
Peter Maurice Wright CBE was a principal scientific officer for MI5, the British counter-intelligence agency. His book Spycatcher, written with Paul Greengrass, became an international bestseller with sales of over two million copies. Spycatcher was part memoir, part exposé detailing what Wright claimed were serious institutional failures he investigated within MI5. Wright is said to have been influenced in his counterespionage activity by James Jesus Angleton, counter-intelligence chief of the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) from 1954 to 1975.
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Sir Roger Henry Hollis was a British intelligence officer who served with MI5 from 1938 to 1965. He was Director General of MI5 from 1956 to 1965.
Bernard Joseph Archard was an English actor who made many film and television appearances.
Henry Chapman Pincher was an English journalist, historian and novelist whose writing mainly focused on espionage and related matters, after some early books on scientific subjects.
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Spycatcher was a BBC television series, starring Bernard Archard, which ran from 1959 to 1961. It was based on the real-life activities of Dutch counterintelligence officer, Lieutenant-Colonel Oreste Pinto, who specialised in the interrogation of suspected spies during World War II and had later published his memoirs under the title Spy Catcher. Each episode showed Pinto (Archard) questioning refugees to England from Nazi-dominated Europe, and eventually exposing them as enemy agents.
Guy Maynard Liddell, CB, CBE, MC was a British intelligence officer.
Spycatcher is a book by former MI5 officer Peter Wright
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The Royal Victoria Patriotic Building is a large Victorian building in a Gothic Revival style combining Scottish Baronial and French Châteauesque. It is located off Trinity Road in Wandsworth, London. It was built in 1859 as the Royal Victoria Patriotic School, by popular subscription as an asylum for girls orphaned during the Crimean War. It is a Grade II* Listed Building designed by the architect Major Rohde Hawkins.
Kathleen Maria Margaret Sissmore, MBE (1898–1982), was known as Jane Sissmore and then Jane Archer after her marriage in 1939. In 1929 she became the first female officer in Britain's Security Service, MI5, and was still their only woman officer at the time of her dismissal for insubordination in 1940. She had been responsible for investigations into Soviet intelligence and subversion. She then joined the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), but when Kim Philby, later to be exposed as a double agent, became her boss he reduced her investigative work because he feared she might uncover his treachery.
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