William James Skardon (1904–1987) was a Special Branch officer who joined MI5 in 1940[1] and became an interrogator and head of "The Watchers" (physical surveillance teams).
[2] He was intimately involved with the investigation of the Cambridge Five and the interrogation of Klaus Fuchs.
[3] After rapidly and non-coercively eliciting a confession from Fuchs, Skardon acquired a reputation as a very skilful interrogator.
However his own report of the Fuchs interrogation indicates that Fuchs – apparently in a condition of considerable mental stress – volunteered his entire confession with very little prompting.
Peter Wright also claimed that the success of that interrogation depended mainly on the detailed brief supplied to Skardon, plus the "listeners" who picked Fuchs's lies to pieces.