Bruce McKenzie's link in downfall of British Prime Minister

Editor Joseph Odindo and I were the first local journalists to tell the story of Bruce McKenzie’s double life as a Kenyan cabinet minister and nominated MP, but also a secret agent of the British intelligence outfit, MI6, the Israel spy agency Mossad, and the apartheid South Africa Bureau of State Security (BOSS).

We published the story in the Echo magazine which has since folded, and later as a four-part series in the Daily Nation.

Our story only touched on McKenzie’s activities inside Kenya, which included the Nairobi connection in the famous Entebbe hostage rescue in Uganda that became stuff of international blockbuster movies. His other exploits in the shadowy world of espionage extended to Uganda, Zimbabwe (then Southern Rhodesia), and South Africa.

When white settlers in colonial Zimbabwe unilaterally declared independence from Britain, McKenzie had proposed they be punished by secretly introducing an untreatable streak of anthrax to wipe out cattle in the colony, which at the time was the country’s economic lifeline.

HAROLD WILSON

McKenzie’s most sensational assignment outside our soil is perhaps his role in the intrigues that led to the downfall of British Prime Minister Harold Wilson in April 1976.

South African born McKenzie and a former pilot with British Air Force settled in Kenya after World War II to do extensive farming at Solai near Nakuru town.

The extensive farm he owned has since changed hands to the family of retired President Mwai Kibaki who are now developing it into a giant real estate venture.

Towards independence, McKenzie had dabbled into politics joining the Kenya African Democratic Union before hopping onto Kenya African National Union.

There he gained quick trust of the Prime Minister and later first President Mzee Kenyatta who appointed him independent Kenya’s first Agriculture minister.

LAND TRANSFER

He was to play a leading role in the successful but controversial land transfer from the white settlers to Africans at independence.

He resigned as Cabinet minister six years later to concentrate on what he called “personal pursuits” but remained a nominated MP.

He wouldn’t appear in Parliament for as long as eight months but still got away with it, thanks to his good connections where it mattered.

But wherever he was, in or outside government, McKenzie’s influence remained deep to an extent a Nigerian political commentator, Prof Zeeky Rukari, in a paper entitled “Who rules Kenya?” described him as “the leader of the invisible government.”

FRIENDLY LIAISONS

Did the Kenyan authorities know McKenzie to be an agent of foreign spy agents and at what point? Also were his secret liaisons harmful to the country’s best interests?

When I first put the question to Geoffrey Kareithi, a long-serving Head of Civil Service and Secretary to the Cabinet in Mzee Kenyatta’s government, in the 1990s, he categorically denied McKenzie was a spy and dismissed it as a conspiracy theory by international media and espionage writers.

At the time Kareithi was an assistant minister in President Daniel Moi’s administration, perhaps tied by the usual bureaucratic stone-walling and tendency to deny even the plain obvious.

Much later when I met a retired and aged Kareithi, he readily admitted that the Kenya government was aware of McKenzie’s “clandestine connections” but didn’t mind because they were not harmful to Kenya’s interests.

He told me that except for the apartheid South Africa, Britain and Israel had, then as now, deep intelligence partnership with Kenya on matters of mutual interest like counter-terrorism and in blocking communist influence, a major preoccupation of Western spy agents in the cold war era.

FREQUENT VISITORS

He disclosed that Kenyan authorities knew one of McKenzie’s frequent visitors in Nairobi to have been then head of the British intelligence unit MI6, Sir Maurice Oldfield.

The latter would sneak in and out of Kenya “black”, which is the intelligence term to mean without going through mandatory checks at the airport.

Kareithi, too, revealed that when McKenzie died, Kenyan authorities secretly facilitated travel to Israel by his widow for a function to honour her late husband organised by the Mossad, an indication of how valuable the Kenyan was to the spy agency.

In the book: British Intelligence and Covert Action, British first High Commissioner to independent Kenya, Sir Malcolm McDonald, is quoted as saying McKenzie was recruited by the MI6, just before or immediately after Kenya’s independence.

He says McKenzie was brought on board by one David Stirling, a fellow officer in the British military during the World War and who had since been engaged by the MI6 to befriend leaders in the former British colonies.

MI6 OPERATIVE

McKenzie must have been a good catch given his friendship with President Kenyatta, and the fact that he sat in the Kenya cabinet and parliament.

Recruited with McKenzie was one George Young, another MI6 operative privy to machinations leading to Prime Minister Wilson’s fall from grace.

Kareithi told me MI6, in turn, could have introduced McKenzie to the Mossad in the spirit of what is called brotherhood of intelligence. The South Africans didn’t need any introduction as it was McKenzie’s country of origin.

In the period 1973/74, Britain was a country in turmoil, fuelled partly by the global oil crisis, and an unprecedented labour unrest at home. The miners had downed tools almost bringing the country’s industrial jugular to a standstill.

Never since the World War 2 had Britain got to such low that cynic commentators mocked that there was no longer anything “great” in Great Britain and nothing “united” in United Kingdom.

DOMESTIC INTELLIGENCE

British domestic intelligence arm, the MI5, as well as the American CIA highly suspected the Russian intelligence, the KGB, to be the secret hand behind the labour unrest in Britain, working in cahoots with the opposition British Labour Party which tacitly supported the miners’ strike.

Rumours were awash in London that the leader of the Labour Party Harold Wilson, then campaigning to oust Conservative Prime Minister Edward Heath, and up to 50 Labour MPs secretly worked with the Russians to sabotage the Conservative government.

Subsequently, the British intelligence, egged on by the CIA, were determined that the Labour Party mustn’t win the Prime Minister elections scheduled for February 1974.

Enemy at Number 10: Enter McKenzie.

Suddenly whispers spread that having Labour leader Harold Wilson elected Prime Minister would be tantamount to having the enemy take over at Number 10 Downing Street, the London address of the prime minister’s office.

COMMUNIST PENETRATION

There was also talk of “the Reds under the beds”, a scare line to exaggerate the extent of the communist penetration in Her Majesty’s country.

Leading espionage writer, Chapman Pincher, would later reveal that Labour candidate Wilson and other top officials in his party were on active surveillance of the MI5 and the American CIA. Part of the strategy was to gather as much dirt on individual candidates in the Labour Party and pass it to the rivals in the Conservative Party.

According to Pincher, as soon as the secret dossier was ready, it was passed to chairman of the ruling Conservative party, Lord Carrington, for onward transmission to Prime Minister Edward Heath. But the latter, discloses author Pincher, wasn’t interested arguing that he was sure to defeat the Labour candidate and didn’t want to have been seen to have used dirty tricks to do so.

But with the intelligence community determined not to leave any chance, a new channel had to be found to have the Prime Minister change his mind.

DIRTY TRICKS

McKenzie came in handy. He happened to be friend of one Lord Aldington who, in turn, was a friend of the Prime Minister. Lord Aldington, who was chairman of a merchant bank in London, happened to have served in the military with McKenzie.

In later life, he would come in handy to do a favour or two for McKenzie’s clients in the world of espionage. According to Pincher, the Prime Minister remained adamant not to use the anti-Labour dossier supplied by the MI5 insisting he was sure to win without resorting to dirty tricks. But he lost the election to give McKenzie and his friends a chance to say: “See now what has happened after you refused to listen to us!”

With Harold Wilson, the “enemy” now sitting at the No 10 Downing Street, efforts to sabotage and bring him down went a notch higher.

An opportunity for a showdown and which roped in McKenzie didn’t take long in coming.

CIVILIAN REGIME

Early in his administration, a military dictator, Augusto Pinochet, with the help of the CIA, overthrew the civilian regime in the South American republic of Chile. It was an ironic madness of the Cold War era that Americans would rather have a ruthless dictator in power and not a fairly democratic civilian administration sympathetic to communism.

A radical wing in the British Labour party came out in the open to oppose the new military junta in Chile and urged Prime Minister Wilson to impose a trade embargo.

Alarmed that Wilson might be pressured to act, the CIA and the MI5 prevailed on him to not only decline the wishes of the radical wing in his party, but push it to the periphery where it wouldn’t have influence on his administration.

To put pressure on the Prime Minister, British intelligence embarked on a media smear campaign against the radicals in Labour party.

According to author Pincher, it’s to McKenzie and his old friend, George Young, to whom MI6 director, Sir Maurice Oldfield, turned to spearhead the smear media campaign on radicals in Wilson party.

ABRUPT RESIGNATION

Eventually, the Intelligence turned its guns on the person of the Prime Minister Wilson. According to writer Pincher, a few months to the Prime Minister’s abrupt resignation, McKenzie had tipped him that the Prime Minister had established beyond doubt that British Intelligence had secretly bugged his office and the cabinet room. McKenzie, in turn, had been told as much by none other than his friend and frequent visitor in Nairobi, MI6 director Sir Maurice Oldfield.

In the book “Web of Deception” Pincher describes McKenzie as “an extra-ordinarily well informed Kenyan politician and close friend of Sir Maurice Oldfield.” Pincher lived in a London neighbourhood where McKenzie owned a flat.

Last word: Under pressure from the House of Commons and the British media, Wilson’s successor as Prime Minister, James Callaghan, ordered an inquiry into allegations of secret bugging and eavesdropping on his predecessor.

STRANGE DEVICE

The report of the inquiry headed by his cabinet secretary Sir John Hunt was never made public. However, a leak in the British media would have it that the inquiry established that a “strange” device had been retrieved from the cabinet room.

According to the 30-year rule on release of records at the British Public Records Office, the report of the inquiry was due for release in August 2008.

But a quick check online indicates no such report has ever been released. If and when it is available, it perhaps shall finally shed light on the issue of “enemy at No 10”, and probably include a sentence or two about “our own” Bruce McKenzie.

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