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  2. Kate MacDonald said:

    Transcript:

    ANOTHER MYSTERY DEATH (Daily Express, 27th November 1982)

    Detectives are investigating a second mysterious death linked with the Government’s top secret communications centre at Cheltenham.
    The probe follows the scandal of traitor Geoffrey Prime who spied for the Russians while working at the base.
    The new alert yesterday was over the suicide of 43-year-old Ernest Brockway, a GCHQ radio officer.
    His wife Jeanette found him hanging at their home in Fleckers Way, Hatherley, Cheltenham.
    Last night no connection between the Prime affair and Mr Brockway’s death was being made by the local police.
    Even so, security officials want to know why the father of two took his life.
    Last month they investigated the puzzling death of another GCHQ man, telecommunications officer Jack Wolfenden, who crashed his light aircraft into a Cotswold hillside.
    Ever since the arrest and jailing of Prime security officials in Britain and the United States have been assessing the probability that other KGB agents are working at the Cheltenham centre.
    The Americans in particular are convinced that there is still a spy network buried at GCHQ which is engaged in top secret British and NATO intelligence gathering.
    Ernest Brockway’s wife said that she had been told to say nothing about her husband. But she added: “He was a sick man.” An inquest will be held on Monday. Their son Stephen said: “My father never talked very much about his work but I am sure there is no connection with the Prime business. My father never knew him.”
    Mr Brockway previously worked at a top secret listening post in Yorkshire and lived for several years in Scarborough. He moved to Cheltenham last March.
    Jack Wolfenden, 56, died in a plane crash soon after returning from a mission to the Government’s communications base in Hong Kong.
    Eye-witnesses said it seemed that he had steered a deliberate course into a hillside after carrying out aerobatics.
    Accident investigators from the Department of Trade could find no mechanical fault with the Fournier plane and no sign of any sudden illness afflicting Mr Wolfenden.
    A verdict of accidental death was returned at his inquest in Cheltenham after the coroner warned the jury against a suicide finding because of lack of conclusive evidence.
    An investigation found no link between Mr Wolfenden and any spaying scare. The inquest on him in September was told of his love tangle. He had divorced his wife Pamela so he could marry the woman he was living with, Mrs Judith Pither.
    On his return from abroad, Mrs Pither told Mr Wolfenden that she did not want to live with him although she would like to see him occasionally.
    MPs are concerned at the implications of the two deaths. For the final reports on them may suggest that the two men – both senior staff at GCHQ – were unstable and this could have posed a further threat to security at the base.
    MPs will also want to know why the men’s problems were not spotted by their superiors, who are duty bound by the Cheltenham security system, to report on their staff.