Harry Frederick Houghton was a British Naval SNCO and a spy for the Polish People's Republic and the Soviet Union during the Cold War.
13 Facts About Harry Houghton
1.
2.
Harry Houghton was a member of the Portland spy ring.
3.
Harry Houghton left school at 14 to become an errand boy and later joined the Royal Navy.
4.
Harry Houghton's wife complained of domestic abuse, and there were concerns that he was mixing with the wrong people.
5.
Harry Houghton was appointed to the Admiralty Underwater Weapons Establishment, Portland, where the Royal Navy would test equipment for undersea warfare.
6.
Harry Houghton had his access to secret papers restricted around 1956 after he took secret papers out of the strongroom without the consent of his superiors.
7.
Harry Houghton persuaded Gee, apparently telling her of his connection to the Russians, to assist him in gaining access to documents for which he did not have clearance.
8.
Harry Houghton's drinking did not stop, and he was living far beyond his salary, which brought him under suspicion.
9.
Harry Houghton claimed at his trial that he had been blackmailed by the Poles and the Russians into spying for them.
10.
Harry Houghton claimed that the information that he gave was newspaper cuttings and matters that were already in the public domain.
11.
Mrs Harry Houghton had advised the admiralty in 1956 that "her husband was divulging secret information to people who ought not to get it".
12.
Around this period, Harry Houghton wrote Operation Portland: The Autobiography of a Spy, which was published in 1972 by Hart-Davis.
13.
Harry Houghton died in obscurity in Poole, Dorset in 1985, a year after Ethel.