Richard Gott

Richard Willoughby Gott (born 28 October 1938),[1] is a British journalist and historian. A former Latin America correspondent and features editor for the British newspaper The Guardian, he is known for his radical politics and a connection to Che Guevara. Gott resigned from The Guardian in 1994, after senior KGB defector Oleg Gordievsky accused him of having been a Soviet "agent of influence", a tag Gott at the time denied.[2]

For the astrophysicist, see J. Richard Gott.

Richard Gott
Gott in 2013
Born
Richard Willoughby Gott

(1938-10-28) 28 October 1938
Aston Tirrold, Berkshire Downs, England, UK
EducationWinchester College, Hampshire
(independent boarding school)
Alma materCorpus Christi College, Oxford
OrganizationThe Guardian
Known forJournalist, historian, author
Spouses
Josephine Ann Johnson
​
​
(m. 1966)​
    Vivien Jane Ashley
    ​
    (m. 2005)​

    Early life

    Gott was born in Aston Tirrold in the Berkshire Downs in South East England, and is the son of Constance Mary Moon and Arthur Francis Evelyn Gott.[1]

    Education
    Winchester College

    From the years 1952 ("Short Half") to 1957, Gott was educated at Winchester College,[1] a 14th-century independent school for boys in Winchester, Hampshire, where he boarded at House G (Sergeant's).[1] Then, from 1958 to 1961, he attended Corpus Christi College, Oxford at the University of Oxford, as an Exhibitioner, where he obtained a B.A. in Modern History.[1][3]

    Media career

    After studying history at Oxford University, Gott worked at the Royal Institute of International Affairs. In the 1960s he worked at the University of Chile, where he wrote Guerrilla Movements in Latin America.[4] In January 1966, Gott was a candidate in the 1966 Kingston upon Hull North by-election for the "Radical Alliance", running on a platform which stressed opposition to the Vietnam War; he polled only 253 votes.[5]

    In November 1963, working as a freelance journalist for The Guardian in Cuba, Gott was invited to a celebration of the revolution party at the Soviet Union embassy in Havana. During the evening, a group of invited journalists who were chatting in the garden were joined by Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara for a few hours, who answered their questions.

    In Bolivia in 1967, Gott identified Guevara's dead body after the failure of Guevara's Bolivian campaign. He was the only one in the country who had met Guevara.[6]

    In 1981 the BBC's Alasdair Milne and Aubrey Singer sought to appoint Gott to the position of editor of its cultural magazine, The Listener, but as Gott failed to obtain security clearance from MI5, his file was marked and Russell Twisk was appointed instead.[7][8] Gott was then appointed features editor for The Guardian.

    Work for KGB

    In 1994, Gott admitted KGB contacts beginning in 1964 (while working for the Royal Institute of International Affairs), and to having taken Soviet gifts, which he called "red gold". Contact with the KGB resumed in the 1970s under the codename RON, when he accepted Soviet-paid trips to Vienna, Nicosia and Athens, and lunched with Russians.[9][10][11] One of his handlers was Igor Titov,[12] who was expelled by the UK in 1983 for "activities incompatible with his diplomatic status" (espionage),[13] but who left while still denying that he was a spy.[14]

    Resignation

    After his period as features editor, Gott became literary editor of The Guardian, but resigned from the latter post in December 1994 after it was alleged in The Spectator that he had been an "agent of influence" for the KGB, claims which he rejected, arguing that "Like many other journalists, diplomats and politicians, I lunched with Russians during the cold war". He asserted that his resignation was "a debt of honour to my paper, not an admission of guilt", because his failure to inform his editor of three trips abroad to meet with KGB officials at their expense had caused embarrassment to the paper during its investigation of Jonathan Aitken.[15][16]

    The source of the allegation that Gott had been an agent was KGB defector Oleg Gordievsky. In his resignation letter, Gott admitted: "I took red gold, even if it was only in the form of expenses for myself and my partner. That, in the circumstances, was culpable stupidity, though at the time it seemed more like an enjoyable joke". One issue was whether during the 1980s, the KGB would have thought Gott's information worth £10,000. Phillip Knightley, biographer of the KGB agent Kim Philby, highlighted the limited value of outsider Gott as compared to insider Aldrich Ames; Knightley concluded that Gott would have been lucky to get his bus fare back. Rupert Allason pointed out valuable activities such as talent-spotting and finding people who did have highly classified access.[17]

    Selected bibliography

    Books
    • Gott, Richard; Gilbert, Martin (2000) [1963]. The appeasers. Orion. ISBN 978-1842120507.
    • Gott, Richard (1968). A future for the United Nations? (pamphlet). CND.
    • Gott, Richard (1970). Guerrilla movements in Latin America. Thomas Nelson.
    • Gott, Richard (2000). In the shadow of the liberator: Hugo Chávez and the transformation of Venezuela. London New York: Verso Books. ISBN 9781859843659.
    • Gott, Richard (2004). Cuba: a new history. New Haven: Yale University Press. ISBN 9780300104110.
    • Gott, Richard (2005). Hugo Chávez and the Bolivarian Revolution. London New York: Verso Books. ISBN 9781844675333.
    • Gott, Richard (2011). Britain's Empire: Resistance, Repression and Revolt. Verso Books.

    Journal articles
    Review of Gustavo Cisneros: Un Empresario Global by Pablo Bachelet.

    References
    1. Winchester College: A Register. Edited by P.S.W.K. McClure and R.P. Stevens, on behalf of the Wardens and Fellows of Winchester College. 7th edition, 2014. pp. 271 (Short Half 1952 list heading) & 275 (entry for Richard Gott). Published by Winchester College, Hampshire.
    2. Donegan, Lawrence. Spy-watchers split on KGB's pounds 10,000", The Guardian, 12 December 1994
    3. "Grammar rules". Times Higher Education Supplement. 18 August 1995. Retrieved 3 August 2021.
    4. New Yorker
    5. McKie, David, "By-elections of the Wilson Government" in Chris Cook and John Ramsden (eds), "By-elections in British Politics", Macmillan, 1973, p. 228.
    6. Gott, Richard (11 October 1967). "US Agent in at the Death of Che Guevara". The Guardian.
    7. Hollingsworth, Mark, and Richard Norton-Taylor (1988), Blacklist: The Inside Story of Political Vetting, London: Hogarth Press, p. 109.
    8. Hitchens, Christopher (12 January 1995). "Gotterdämmerung". London Review of Books. No. 17:1. p. 5.
    9. Macintyre, Ben (2019); The Spy and the Traitor: The Greatest Espionage Story of the Cold War, Penguin Books Ltd., ISBN 0241972132
    10. Gould, Paul (9 December 1994). "UK journalist quits over KGB contacts". UPI. Retrieved 3 December 2016. Gott said he was first approached by a Soviet Embassy official in London in 1964
    11. Williams, Rhys (9 December 1994). "'Guardian' journalist recruited by the KGB". The Independent. Retrieved 3 December 2016. he added, that along with his partner, he went on expenses-paid trips to Austria, Greece and Cyprus, where he met a more senior Soviet figure. Accepting this red gold was, he admitted, culpable stupidity.
    12. Gould, Paul (9 December 1994). "UK journalist quits over KGB contacts". UPI. Retrieved 3 December 2016. former Soviet Embassy official Igor Titov was Gott's first 'controller,' before his expulsion in 1983 for 'activities incompatible with his diplomatic status.'
    13. "A Soviet Embassy official has been quietly expelled from..." UPI. 1 April 1983. Retrieved 3 December 2016. The British Foreign Office said the Soviet diplomats were found 'to have engaged in activities incompatible with their status,' a euphemism usually used to mean espionage.
    14. Mosby, Aline (6 April 1983). "The expulsion of 47 Soviet diplomats and journalists proves..." UPI. Retrieved 3 December 2016. Assistant air attache Col. GennadiPrimakov and the London correspondent of the Soviet magazine New Times, Igor Titov, left for Moscow Wednesday denying they were spies.
    15. Richard Gott, letter to The Sunday Times, 24 September 2000
    16. Williams, Rhys (9 December 1994). "'Guardian' journalist recruited by the KGB". The Independent. Retrieved 5 April 2016.
    17. Donegan, Lawrence (12 December 1994). "Spy-watchers split on KGB's £10,000". The Guardian. p. 17. He would have been of use 'as an agent of influence, as someone who knew people who did have access to classified information. He could also have talent-spotted other journalists and correspondents going out to the Eastern block countries'.
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