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UPI Archives

June 26, 1991

Activists who helped free British double agent found innocent

LONDON -- Two peace campaigners who helped British double agent George Blake escape from prison in 1966
were found not guilty Wednesday, a verdict one of the activists described as 'common sense.'

Michael Randle, 57 and Patrick Pottle, 52, who conducted their case in an Old Bailey Criminal Court without
lawyers, admitted they had helped finance and plan 69-year-old Blake's escape from prison and subsequent flight
to East Germany then to the Soviet Union, but they pleaded innocent, saying their actions were right in principle
and in law.

When asked after the decision why he thought the jury had found them not guilty Pottle said 'I think common
sense, straight forward common sense. This was obviously a political decision.'

Randle praised the jury system saying 'there are certain circumstances in which it is right to break the law and
that's what this jury has shown, but it's finally up to the jury and ... it is the lamp by which liberty shines.'

The two activists who first met Blake in 1962 when they were jailed for occupying an American air base as part of
a peace protest. Blake had been sentenced to 42 years in prison for spying for the Soviet Union while he was in the
British Secret Intelligence Service between 1944 and 1961.

The defendants said they planned the escape because they thought Blake's long sentence was unfair.
Blake, 69, gave video taped testimony in court Tuesday on behalf of Randle and Pottle who traveled to Moscow
last year to obtain the statement in which Blake said neither man was in touch with Soviet authorities at the time of
his escape nor did they receive money.

Blake said he was 'deeply grateful' to Pottle and Randle for 'having enabled me to lead a normal life over the past
24 years.'

'There was never any doubt in my mind that Randle and Pottle acted as they did out of purely humanitarian
concern and specifically because of the length of my sentence,' Blake said.

Blake also admitted in his statement that he had passed on the names of some British agents to the Soviets but
denied that he was responsible for the agents' deaths as it was alleged at his trial.

It was rumored that Blake's long sentence represented a year for the life of each agent killed through his
revelations.

Randle said in court he did not agree with Blake's disclosure of British secrets to the Soviets but described the
sentence as 'monstrous,' saying both he and Pottle would do the same again.

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