Cambridge Spy Ring on:  
[Wikipedia]  
[Google]  
[Amazon]
The Cambridge Spy Ring was a ring of
spies
Spies most commonly refers to people who engage in spying, espionage or clandestine operations.
Spies or The Spies may also refer to:
* Spies (surname), a German surname
* Spies (band), a jazz fusion band
* Spies (song), "Spies" (song), a song by ...
in the
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the European mainland, continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotlan ...
that passed information to the
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...
during
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...
and was active from the 1930s until at least into the early 1950s. None of the known members were ever prosecuted for spying. The number and membership of the ring emerged slowly, from the 1950s onwards.
The general public first became aware of the
conspiracy
A conspiracy, also known as a plot, is a secret plan or agreement between persons (called conspirers or conspirators) for an unlawful or harmful purpose, such as murder or treason, especially with political motivation, while keeping their agre ...
after the sudden flight of
Donald Maclean (
cryptonym
A code name, call sign or cryptonym is a code word or name used, sometimes clandestinely, to refer to another name, word, project, or person. Code names are often used for military purposes, or in espionage. They may also be used in industrial c ...
: Homer) and
Guy Burgess
Guy Francis de Moncy Burgess (16 April 1911 – 30 August 1963) was a British diplomat and Soviet agent, and a member of the Cambridge Five spy ring that operated from the mid-1930s to the early years of the Cold War era. His defection in 1951 ...
(cryptonym: Hicks) to the Soviet Union in 1951. Suspicion immediately fell on
Harold "Kim" Philby (cryptonyms: Sonny, Stanley), who eventually fled the country in 1963. Following Philby's flight, British intelligence obtained confessions from
Anthony Blunt (cryptonym: Johnson) and then
John Cairncross
John Cairncross (25 July 1913 – 8 October 1995) was a British civil servant who became an intelligence officer and spy during the Second World War. As a Soviet double agent, he passed to the Soviet Union the raw Tunny decryptions that influ ...
(cryptonym: Liszt), who have come to be seen as the last two of a group of five. Their involvement was kept secret for many years: until 1979 for Blunt, and 1990 for Cairncross. The moniker Cambridge Four evolved to become the Cambridge Five after Cairncross was added.
The term "Cambridge" refers to the recruitment of the group during their education at the
University of Cambridge
The University of Cambridge is a public collegiate research university in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1209 and granted a royal charter by Henry III in 1231, Cambridge is the world's third oldest surviving university and one of its most pr ...
in the 1930s. Debate surrounds the exact timing of their recruitment by
Soviet intelligence
This is a list of historical secret police organizations. In most cases they are no longer current because the regime that ran them was overthrown or changed, or they changed their names. Few still exist under the same name as legitimate police fo ...
. Blunt claimed that they were not recruited as agents until after they had graduated. A
Fellow
A fellow is a concept whose exact meaning depends on context.
In learned or professional societies, it refers to a privileged member who is specially elected in recognition of their work and achievements.
Within the context of higher education ...
of
Trinity College Trinity College may refer to:
Australia
* Trinity Anglican College, an Anglican coeducational primary and secondary school in , New South Wales
* Trinity Catholic College, Auburn, a coeducational school in the inner-western suburbs of Sydney, New ...
, Blunt was several years older than Burgess, Maclean, and Philby; he acted as a talent-spotter and recruiter.
[The fourth man speaks: Last testimony of Anthony Blunt](_blank)
''The Independent'' McSmith, Andy. 23 July 2009.
All of the five were convinced that the
Marxism–Leninism
Marxism–Leninism is a communist ideology which was the main communist movement throughout the 20th century. Developed by the Bolsheviks, it was the state ideology of the Soviet Union, its satellite states in the Eastern Bloc, and various c ...
of
Soviet Communism
The ideology of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) was Bolshevist Marxism–Leninism, an ideology of a centralised command economy with a vanguardist one-party state to realise the dictatorship of the proletariat. The Soviet Un ...
was the best available political system, and especially the best defence against the rise of
fascism
Fascism is a far-right, authoritarian, ultra-nationalist political ideology and movement,: "extreme militaristic nationalism, contempt for electoral democracy and political and cultural liberalism, a belief in natural social hierarchy an ...
. All pursued successful careers in branches of the British government. They passed large amounts of intelligence to the Soviet Union, so much so that the KGB became suspicious that at least some of it was false. Perhaps as important as the intelligence they passed was the demoralizing effect to the
British Establishment of their slow unmasking, and the mistrust in British security this caused in the United States.
Many others have also been accused of membership in the Cambridge ring. Blunt and Burgess were both members of the
University Pitt Club, as well as the
Cambridge Apostles
The Cambridge Apostles (also known as ''Conversazione Society'') is an intellectual society at the University of Cambridge founded in 1820 by George Tomlinson, a Cambridge student who became the first Bishop of Gibraltar.W. C. Lubenow, ''The Ca ...
, exclusive secret societies at Cambridge University.
/ref> Other Apostles accused of having spied for the Soviets include Michael Straight
Michael Whitney Straight (September 1, 1916 – January 4, 2004) was an American magazine publisher, novelist, patron of the arts, a member of the prominent Whitney family, and a confessed spy for the KGB.
Early life
Straight was born in New Yo ...
.
Membership
The following five supplied intelligence to the Soviets under their controller Yuri Modin
Yuri Ivanovich Modin (8 November 1922 in Suzdal – 2007 in Moscow) was the KGB controller for the "Cambridge Five" from 1948 to 1951, during which Donald Duart Maclean was said to have passed atomic secrets to the Soviets. In 1951, Modin arran ...
who later defected to the West. Modin said that Moscow did not really trust the Cambridge double agents during WWII. The KGB had difficulty believing that the men would have access to top secret documents; they were particularly suspicious of Philby, wondering how he could have become an agent given his Communist past. One report later stated that "About half the documents the British spies sent to Moscow were never even read" due to the paranoia. Nonetheless, the Soviets accepted a great deal of secret information, 1,771 documents from Blunt, 4,605 from Burgess, 4,593 from MacLean and 5,832 from Cairncross, during 1941 to 1945.
Donald Maclean and Guy Burgess
Donald Maclean studied at the University of Cambridge in the early 1930s where he met Guy Burgess
Guy Francis de Moncy Burgess (16 April 1911 – 30 August 1963) was a British diplomat and Soviet agent, and a member of the Cambridge Five spy ring that operated from the mid-1930s to the early years of the Cold War era. His defection in 1951 ...
. They both disagreed with the idea of capitalism. Later they were both recruited by Soviet intelligence operatives and became undercover agents for the Soviet Union. Maclean began delivering information to the Soviet intelligence operatives as a member of the British Foreign Office in 1934. Soon after, Burgess also began supplying information to the Soviet Union in 1936 from his position as a BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC
Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board exam. ...
...
correspondent up until 1938, then as an active member of
MI6
The Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), commonly known as MI6 ( Military Intelligence, Section 6), is the foreign intelligence service of the United Kingdom, tasked mainly with the covert overseas collection and analysis of human intelligenc ...
intelligence continued to supply classified information up until 1941, and then finally as a member of the British Foreign Office up until 1944.
Maclean and Burgess were reportedly seen by their Soviet handlers as the "hopeless drunks" due to the fact that they had a hard time keeping their secret occupations to themselves. It is said that one time, while highly intoxicated, Burgess risked exposing his second identity. He was leaving a pub where he accidentally dropped one of the secret files he had taken from the Foreign Office. Maclean was also known to have loose lips and said to have leaked information about his secret duties to his brother and close friends. Although they struggled to keep secrets, that did not stop them from delivering information. It is said that Burgess handed over about 389 top secret documents to the
KGB
The KGB (russian: links=no, lit=Committee for State Security, Комитет государственной безопасности (КГБ), a=ru-KGB.ogg, p=kəmʲɪˈtʲet ɡəsʊˈdarstvʲɪn(ː)əj bʲɪzɐˈpasnəsʲtʲɪ, Komitet gosud ...
within the early part of 1945 along with an additional 168 documents in December of 1949.
Between 1934 and 1951 Maclean passed numerous secrets to Moscow. The lack of detection was due to the refusal of the Secret Service to listen to warnings from the US, "even after the FBI had established that an agent code-named Homer had been operating inside the British embassy in Washington during the war", according to a review of MacLean's biography (in 2018) by author Roland Philipps.
Philby, when he was posted in the British embassy in Washington, DC, after the war, learned that US and British intelligence were searching for a British embassy
mole
Mole (or Molé) may refer to:
Animals
* Mole (animal) or "true mole", mammals in the family Talpidae, found in Eurasia and North America
* Golden moles, southern African mammals in the family Chrysochloridae, similar to but unrelated to Talpida ...
(
cryptonym
A code name, call sign or cryptonym is a code word or name used, sometimes clandestinely, to refer to another name, word, project, or person. Code names are often used for military purposes, or in espionage. They may also be used in industrial c ...
Homer) who was passing information to the
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...
, relying on material uncovered by the
Venona project
The Venona project was a United States counterintelligence program initiated during World War II by the United States Army's Signal Intelligence Service (later absorbed by the National Security Agency), which ran from February 1, 1943, until Octob ...
.
Philby learned one of the suspects was Maclean. Realizing he had to act fast, he ordered Burgess, who was also on the embassy staff and living with Philby, to warn Maclean in England, where he was serving in the
Foreign Office headquarters. Burgess was recalled from the United States due to "bad behaviour" and upon reaching London, warned Maclean.
In early summer 1951, Burgess and Maclean made international headlines by disappearing (they had taken a ship from Southampton to St. Malo, France, a train to Paris, and a flight to Moscow). In 1952-1955 they lived covertly in
Kuybyshev. However, their whereabouts were unclear for some time and the suspicion that they had
defected
In politics, a defector is a person who gives up allegiance to one state in exchange for allegiance to another, changing sides in a way which is considered illegitimate by the first state. More broadly, defection involves abandoning a person, ca ...
to the Soviet Union turned out to be correct later (that did not become public knowledge until 1956 when the two appeared at a press conference in Moscow). A warrant was not issued for their arrest until 1962.
It was obvious they had been tipped off, and Philby quickly became the prime suspect due to his close relation with Burgess. Though Burgess was not supposed to defect at the same time as Maclean, he went along. It has been claimed that the
KGB
The KGB (russian: links=no, lit=Committee for State Security, Комитет государственной безопасности (КГБ), a=ru-KGB.ogg, p=kəmʲɪˈtʲet ɡəsʊˈdarstvʲɪn(ː)əj bʲɪzɐˈpasnəsʲtʲɪ, Komitet gosud ...
ordered Burgess to go to Moscow. This move damaged Philby's reputation, with many speculating that had it not occurred, Philby could have climbed even higher in the
Secret Intelligence Service.
[''The Philby Files'' by Genrikh Borovik, edited by ]Phillip Knightley
Phillip George Knightley (23 January 1929 – 7 December 2016) was an Australian journalist, critic, and non-fiction author. He became a visiting Professor of Journalism at the University of Lincoln, England, and was a media commentator on the ...
, published by Little, Brown and Company
Little, Brown and Company is an American publishing company founded in 1837 by Charles Coffin Little and James Brown in Boston. For close to two centuries it has published fiction and nonfiction by American authors. Early lists featured Emily ...
, 1994
In 2019, Russia honoured Burgess and Maclean in a ceremony; a plaque was attached to the building where they had lived in the 50s. The head of the SVR foreign intelligence service, praised the duo on social media for "having supplied Soviet intelligence with the most important information for more than 20 years,
akinga significant contribution to the victory over fascism, the protection of our strategic interests and ensuring the safety of our country".
A book review in ''
The Guardian
''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...
'' of Stewart Purvis and Jeff Hulbert's biography of Guy Burgess included this conclusion: "
eavingus all the more astonished that such a smelly, scruffy, lying, gabby, promiscuous, drunken slob could penetrate the heart of the establishment without anyone apparently noticing that he was also a Soviet masterspy".
Andrew Lownie's biography of Burgess ''
Stalin's Englishman: The Lives of Guy Burgess'' argues that he was perhaps the most influential of all the members of the Cambridge Five.
Harold "Kim" Philby
Harold "Kim" Philby was a senior officer in Britain's Secret Intelligence Service, known as
MI6
The Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), commonly known as MI6 ( Military Intelligence, Section 6), is the foreign intelligence service of the United Kingdom, tasked mainly with the covert overseas collection and analysis of human intelligenc ...
, who began his work for the Soviet Union as a spy in 1934. He went on to serve the
KGB
The KGB (russian: links=no, lit=Committee for State Security, Комитет государственной безопасности (КГБ), a=ru-KGB.ogg, p=kəmʲɪˈtʲet ɡəsʊˈdarstvʲɪn(ː)əj bʲɪzɐˈpasnəsʲtʲɪ, Komitet gosud ...
for 54 years. He was known for passing more than 900 British documents over to the KGB. He served as a
double agent
In the field of counterintelligence, a double agent is an employee of a secret intelligence service for one country, whose primary purpose is to spy on a target organization of another country, but who is now spying on their own country's organ ...
.
Investigation of Philby found several suspicious matters but nothing for which he could be prosecuted. Nevertheless, he was forced to resign from
MI6
The Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), commonly known as MI6 ( Military Intelligence, Section 6), is the foreign intelligence service of the United Kingdom, tasked mainly with the covert overseas collection and analysis of human intelligenc ...
. In 1955 he was named in the press, with questions also raised in the
House of Commons
The House of Commons is the name for the elected lower house of the bicameral parliaments of the United Kingdom and Canada. In both of these countries, the Commons holds much more legislative power than the nominally upper house of parliament. T ...
, as chief suspect for "the Third Man" and he called a
press conference
A press conference or news conference is a media event in which notable individuals or organizations invite journalists to hear them speak and ask questions. Press conferences are often held by politicians, corporations, non-governmental organ ...
to deny the allegation. That same year, Philby was ruled out as a suspect when British Foreign Secretary Harold Macmillan cleared him of all charges.
In the later 1950s, Philby left the secret service and began working as a
journalist
A journalist is an individual that collects/gathers information in form of text, audio, or pictures, processes them into a news-worthy form, and disseminates it to the public. The act or process mainly done by the journalist is called journalis ...
in the
Middle East
The Middle East ( ar, الشرق الأوسط, ISO 233: ) is a geopolitical region commonly encompassing Arabia (including the Arabian Peninsula and Bahrain), Asia Minor (Asian part of Turkey except Hatay Province), East Thrace (Europ ...
; both ''
The Economist
''The Economist'' is a British weekly newspaper printed in demitab format and published digitally. It focuses on current affairs, international business, politics, technology, and culture. Based in London, the newspaper is owned by The Eco ...
'' and ''
The Observer
''The Observer'' is a British newspaper published on Sundays. It is a sister paper to ''The Guardian'' and '' The Guardian Weekly'', whose parent company Guardian Media Group Limited acquired it in 1993. First published in 1791, it is the ...
'' provided his employment there. MI6 then re-employed him at around the same time, to provide reports from that region.
In 1961, defector
Anatoliy Golitsyn
Anatoliy Mikhaylovich Golitsyn CBE ( Russian: Анатолий Михайлович Голицын; August 25, 1926 – December 29, 2008) was a Soviet KGB defector and author of two books about the long-term deception strategy of the KGB lead ...
provided information which pointed to Philby. An
MI6
The Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), commonly known as MI6 ( Military Intelligence, Section 6), is the foreign intelligence service of the United Kingdom, tasked mainly with the covert overseas collection and analysis of human intelligenc ...
officer and friend of Philby from his earlier MI6 days,
John Nicholas Rede Elliott, was sent in 1963 to interview him in
Beirut
Beirut, french: Beyrouth is the capital and largest city of Lebanon. , Greater Beirut has a population of 2.5 million, which makes it the third-largest city in the Levant region. The city is situated on a peninsula at the midpoint o ...
and reported that Philby seemed to know he was coming (indicating the presence of yet another
mole
Mole (or Molé) may refer to:
Animals
* Mole (animal) or "true mole", mammals in the family Talpidae, found in Eurasia and North America
* Golden moles, southern African mammals in the family Chrysochloridae, similar to but unrelated to Talpida ...
). Nonetheless, Philby allegedly confessed to Elliott.
Shortly afterwards, apparently fearing he might be abducted in
Lebanon
Lebanon ( , ar, لُبْنَان, translit=lubnān, ), officially the Republic of Lebanon () or the Lebanese Republic, is a country in Western Asia. It is located between Syria to Lebanon–Syria border, the north and east and Israel to Blue ...
, Philby defected to the Soviet Union under cover of night, aboard a Soviet freighter. For the first seven years in Moscow, he was under virtual house arrest since the Soviets were concerned that he might defect to the West. According to an article in ''
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...
'', he was given no rank nor an office. In fact, "for the most part, Philby was frozen out, his suggestions ignored" ... This ruined his life". After his death, however, Philby was awarded a number of medals by the Soviets.
Anthony Blunt
Anthony Blunt was a former
Surveyor of the King's Pictures and later Queen's Pictures for the royal art collection. He served as an
MI5
The Security Service, also known as MI5 ( Military Intelligence, Section 5), is the United Kingdom's domestic counter-intelligence and security agency and is part of its intelligence machinery alongside the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), G ...
member and supplied secret information to the KGB, while also providing warnings to fellow agents of certain counterintelligence that could potentially endanger them.
In 1964, MI5 received information from the American
Michael Whitney Straight
Michael Whitney Straight (September 1, 1916 – January 4, 2004) was an American magazine publisher, novelist, patron of the arts, a member of the prominent Whitney family, and a confessed spy for the KGB.
Early life
Straight was born in New Yor ...
pointing to Blunt's espionage; the two had known each other at Cambridge some thirty years before and Blunt recruited Straight as a spy.
Blunt was interrogated by MI5 and confessed in exchange for immunity from prosecution. As he was—by 1964—without access to classified information, he had secretly been granted immunity by the
Attorney General, in exchange for revealing everything he knew.
Peter Wright, one of Blunt's interrogators, describes in his book ''
Spycatcher'' how Blunt was evasive and only made admissions grudgingly, when confronted with the undeniable.
By 1979, Blunt was publicly accused of being a Soviet agent by
investigative journalist
Investigative journalism is a form of journalism in which reporters deeply investigate a single topic of interest, such as serious crimes, political corruption, or corporate wrongdoing. An investigative journalist may spend months or years rese ...
Andrew Boyle
Andrew Philip More Boyle (27 May 1919 – 22 April 1991) was a Scottish journalist and biographer. His biography of Brendan Bracken won the 1974 Whitbread Awards and his book ''The Climate of Treason'' exposed Anthony Blunt as the "Fourth Ma ...
, in his book ''Climate of Treason''. In November 1979,
Prime Minister
A prime minister, premier or chief of cabinet is the head of the cabinet and the leader of the ministers in the executive branch of government, often in a parliamentary or semi-presidential system. Under those systems, a prime minister i ...
Margaret Thatcher
Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher (; 13 October 19258 April 2013) was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990 and Leader of the Conservative Party from 1975 to 1990. She was the first female British prime ...
admitted to the
House of Commons
The House of Commons is the name for the elected lower house of the bicameral parliaments of the United Kingdom and Canada. In both of these countries, the Commons holds much more legislative power than the nominally upper house of parliament. T ...
that Blunt had confessed to being a Soviet spy fifteen years previously.
The term "Five" began to be used in 1961, when
KGB
The KGB (russian: links=no, lit=Committee for State Security, Комитет государственной безопасности (КГБ), a=ru-KGB.ogg, p=kəmʲɪˈtʲet ɡəsʊˈdarstvʲɪn(ː)əj bʲɪzɐˈpasnəsʲtʲɪ, Komitet gosud ...
defector
Anatoliy Golitsyn
Anatoliy Mikhaylovich Golitsyn CBE ( Russian: Анатолий Михайлович Голицын; August 25, 1926 – December 29, 2008) was a Soviet KGB defector and author of two books about the long-term deception strategy of the KGB lead ...
named Maclean and Burgess as part of a "Ring of Five", with Philby a 'probable' third, alongside two other agents whom he did not know.
Of all the information provided by Golitsyn, the only item that was ever independently confirmed was the Soviet affiliation of
John Vassall
William John Christopher Vassall (20 September 1924 – 18 November 1996) was a British civil servant who spied for the Soviet Union, allegedly under pressure of blackmail, from 1954 until his arrest in 1962. Although operating only at a junior ...
. Vassall was a relatively low-ranking spy who some researchers believe may have been sacrificed to protect a more senior one.
At the time of Golitsyn's defection, Philby had already been accused in the press and was living in
Beirut, Lebanon, a country with no extradition agreement with Britain. Select members of MI5 and MI6 already knew Philby to be a spy from
Venona project
The Venona project was a United States counterintelligence program initiated during World War II by the United States Army's Signal Intelligence Service (later absorbed by the National Security Agency), which ran from February 1, 1943, until Octob ...
decryptions. Golitsyn also provided other information, such as the claim that
Harold Wilson (then
Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
The prime minister of the United Kingdom is the head of government of the United Kingdom. The prime minister advises the sovereign on the exercise of much of the royal prerogative, chairs the Cabinet and selects its ministers. As modern ...
) was a KGB agent.
Golitsyn's reliability remains a controversial subject and as such, there is little certainty of the number of agents he assigned to the Cambridge spy ring. To add to the confusion, when Blunt finally confessed, he named several other people as having been recruited by him.
Blunt wrote his memoirs but insisted they not be released until 25 years after his death. They were made public by the
British Museum
The British Museum is a public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is among the largest and most comprehensive in existence. It docum ...
in 2009. The manuscript indicated that he regretted having passed information to the Soviets because of the way it eventually affected his life, that he believed that the government would never reveal his treachery and that he had dismissed suicide as "cowardly".
Christopher Andrew felt that the regret was shallow, and that he found an "unwillingness to acknowledge the evil he had served in spying for Stalin".
John Cairncross
John Cairncross
John Cairncross (25 July 1913 – 8 October 1995) was a British civil servant who became an intelligence officer and spy during the Second World War. As a Soviet double agent, he passed to the Soviet Union the raw Tunny decryptions that influ ...
was known as a British literary scholar until he was later identified as a Soviet
atomic spy
Atomic spies or atom spies were people in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada who are known to have illicitly given information about nuclear weapons production or design to the Soviet Union during World War II and the early Cold W ...
. While a civil servant in the
Foreign Office, he was recruited in 1937 by
James Klugmann
Norman John Klugmann (27 February 1912 – 14 September 1977), generally known as James Klugmann, was a leading British Communist writer and WW2 Soviet Spy, who became the official historian of the Communist Party of Great Britain.
Background ...
to become a Soviet spy. He moved to the Treasury in 1938 but transferred once again to the Cabinet office in 1940 where he served as the private secretary of Sir
Maurice Hankey
Maurice Pascal Alers Hankey, 1st Baron Hankey, (1 April 1877 – 26 January 1963) was a British civil servant who gained prominence as the first Cabinet Secretary and later made the rare transition from the civil service to ministerial office. ...
, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster at that time. In May 1942, he transferred to the British cryptanalysis agency, the
Government Code and Cypher School
Government Communications Headquarters, commonly known as GCHQ, is an intelligence and security organisation responsible for providing signals intelligence (SIGINT) and information assurance (IA) to the government and armed forces of the Uni ...
, at
Bletchley Park
Bletchley Park is an English country house and estate in Bletchley, Milton Keynes ( Buckinghamshire) that became the principal centre of Allied code-breaking during the Second World War. The mansion was constructed during the years followin ...
and then, in 1943, to
MI6
The Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), commonly known as MI6 ( Military Intelligence, Section 6), is the foreign intelligence service of the United Kingdom, tasked mainly with the covert overseas collection and analysis of human intelligenc ...
. Following World War II, it is said that Cairncross leaked information regarding the new NATO alliance to the Soviets.
On the basis of the information provided by Golitsyn, speculations raged on for many years as to the identity of the "Fifth Man". The journalistic popularity of this phrase owes something to the unrelated novels ''
The Third Man
''The Third Man'' is a 1949 British film noir directed by Carol Reed, written by Graham Greene and starring Joseph Cotten, Alida Valli, Orson Welles, and Trevor Howard. Set in postwar Vienna, the film centres on American Holly Martins (Cotten ...
'' and ''
The Tenth Man'', written by
Graham Greene
Henry Graham Greene (2 October 1904 – 3 April 1991) was an English writer and journalist regarded by many as one of the leading English novelists of the 20th century. Combining literary acclaim with widespread popularity, Greene acquir ...
who, coincidentally, worked with Philby and Cairncross during the Second World War.
Cairncross confessed to having been a spy for the Soviets, in a 1964 meeting with MI6 that was kept secret for some years. He was given immunity from prosecution.
The public became aware of his treachery in December 1979, however, when Cairncross made a public confession to journalist
Barrie Penrose
Barrie Penrose (26 January 1942 – 5 July 2020) was a British investigative journalist, interviewer and trainer.
Life and career
Born in Croydon, Penrose was educated at John Ruskin Grammar School and later at the London School of Economics.
...
. The news was widely publicized leading many to surmise that he was in fact the "fifth man"; that was confirmed in 1989 by KGB agent
Oleg Gordievsky
Oleg Antonovich Gordievsky, CMG (; born 10 October 1938) is a former colonel of the KGB who became KGB resident-designate (''rezident'') and bureau chief in London, and was a double agent, providing information to the British Secret Intelli ...
who had defected to Britain.
His designation as the fifth man was also confirmed in former KGB agent
Yuri Modin
Yuri Ivanovich Modin (8 November 1922 in Suzdal – 2007 in Moscow) was the KGB controller for the "Cambridge Five" from 1948 to 1951, during which Donald Duart Maclean was said to have passed atomic secrets to the Soviets. In 1951, Modin arran ...
's book published in 1994: ''My Five Cambridge Friends: Burgess, Maclean, Philby, Blunt, and Cairncross''.
Cairncross is not always deemed to have been part of the 'Ring of Five'. Though a student at the University of Cambridge, he only knew Blunt, who was by then teaching modern languages. By 1934, when Cairncross arrived at Cambridge, the other three members of the ring had already graduated.
This reference suggests the KGB itself recognized Cairncross as the fifth man (found by Gordievsky while doing research on the history of the KGB).
A few sources, however, believe that the "fifth man" was
Victor Rothschild, 3rd Baron Rothschild
Nathaniel Mayer Victor Rothschild, 3rd Baron Rothschild (31 October 1910 – 20 March 1990) was a British banker, scientist, intelligence officer during World War II, and later a senior executive with Royal Dutch Shell and N M Rothschild & Son ...
. In his book ''The Fifth Man'', Roland Perry asserts this claim. After the book was published, former KGB controller Yuri Modin denied ever having named Rothschild as "any kind of Soviet agent". Modin's own book's title clarifies the name of all five of the Cambridge spy group: ''My Five Cambridge Friends: Burgess, Maclean, Philby, Blunt, and Cairncross by Their KGB Controller''. Since Rothschild had died prior to publication of the Perry book, the family was unable to start a libel action.
In a 1991 interview with ''
The Mail on Sunday
''The Mail on Sunday'' is a British conservative newspaper, published in a tabloid format. It is the biggest-selling Sunday newspaper in the UK and was launched in 1982 by Lord Rothermere. Its sister paper, the ''Daily Mail'', was first pub ...
'', Cairncross explained how he had forwarded information to Moscow during WWII and boasted that it "helped the Soviets to win that battle (the
Battle of Kursk
The Battle of Kursk was a major World War II Eastern Front engagement between the forces of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union near Kursk in the southwestern USSR during late summer 1943; it ultimately became the largest tank battle in history ...
) against the Germans". Cairncross did not view himself as one of the Cambridge Five, insisting that the information he sent to Moscow was not harmful to Britain and that he had remained loyal to his homeland. Unlike many other spies, he was never charged for passing information to Moscow.
Attempted coverup
For unknown reasons, Prime Minister
Alec Douglas-Home was not advised of Anthony Blunt's spying, although the Queen and Home Secretary
Henry Brooke were informed. It was only in November 1979 that then-PM
Margaret Thatcher
Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher (; 13 October 19258 April 2013) was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990 and Leader of the Conservative Party from 1975 to 1990. She was the first female British prime ...
formally advised Parliament of Blunt's treachery and the immunity deal that had been arranged 15 years earlier.
A 2015 article in ''
The Guardian
''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...
'' discussed "400 top-secret documents which have been released at the National Archives" and indicated that MI5 and MI6 had worked diligently to prevent information about the five from being disclosed, "to the British public and even to the US government". A 2016 review of a new book about Burgess added that "more than 20% of files relating to the spies, most of whom defected more than 50 years ago, remain closed". In conclusion, the review stated that "the Foreign Office, MI6 and MI5 all have an interest in covering up, to protect themselves from huge embarrassment" and that "more taxpayers' money is spent by Whitehall officials in the futile attempt to keep the files under lock and key for ever".
Under the 30-year rule, the 400 documents should have been made available years earlier. It was particularly surprising that 20 per cent of the information was redacted or not released. A news item at the time stated that "it is clear the full story of the Cambridge Spies has not yet emerged". A summary of the documents indicated that they showed that "inaction and incompetence on the part of the authorities enabled Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean to make their escape to Moscow".
Additional secret files were finally released to the National Archives in 2020. They indicated that the government had intentionally conducted a campaign to keep Kim Philby's spying confidential "to minimise political embarrassment" and prevented the publication of his memoirs according to a report by ''The Guardian''. Nonetheless, the information was publicized in 1967 when Philby granted an interview to journalist
Murray Sayle
Murray William Sayle OAM (1 January 1926 – 19 September 2010) was an Australian journalist, novelist and adventurer.
A native of Sydney, Sayle moved to London in 1952. He was a foreign correspondent for ''The Sunday Times'' in the late 196 ...
of ''
The Times
''The Times'' is a British daily national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its current name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its sister paper '' The Sunday Times'' (f ...
''. Philby confirmed that he had worked for the KGB and that "his purpose in life was to destroy imperialism". This revelation raised concerns that Blunt's spying would also be revealed to the public.
Alleged additional members
Some researchers believe the spy ring had more than five, or different, members. Several of the following have been alleged to be possible Soviet spies:
*
Roger Hollis
Roger is a given name, usually masculine, and a surname. The given name is derived from the Old French personal names ' and '. These names are of Germanic origin, derived from the elements ', ''χrōþi'' ("fame", "renown", "honour") and ', ' ...
, the Director-General of MI5 from 1956 to 1965, was accused of being the (then) Fifth Man by his subordinate
Peter Wright in his notorious tell-all autobiography ''
Spycatcher'' in 1987, 14 years after Hollis's death.
Journalist
Chapman Pincher
Henry Chapman Pincher (29 March 1914 – 5 August 2014) was an English journalist, historian and novelist whose writing mainly focused on espionage and related matters, after some early books on scientific subjects.
Early life
Pincher was born ...
had made the same allegation in 1981. These allegations have been dismissed by other journalists and historians.
*
Baron Rothschild
Baron Rothschild, of Tring in the County of Hertfordshire, is a title in the Peerage of the United Kingdom. It was created in 1885 for Sir Nathan Rothschild, 2nd Baronet, a member of the Rothschild banking family. He was the first Jewish mem ...
was named by
Roland Perry
Roland (; frk, *Hrōþiland; lat-med, Hruodlandus or ''Rotholandus''; it, Orlando or ''Rolando''; died 15 August 778) was a Frankish military leader under Charlemagne who became one of the principal figures in the literary cycle known as the ...
in his book ''The Fifth Man''. According to ''Spycatcher'', Rothschild had been friendly with Burgess as an undergraduate, and had originally owned the lease on a house off Welbeck Street, No. 5 Bentinck Street, where Blunt and Burgess both lived during the war. This was supposedly confirmed by
Yuri Modin
Yuri Ivanovich Modin (8 November 1922 in Suzdal – 2007 in Moscow) was the KGB controller for the "Cambridge Five" from 1948 to 1951, during which Donald Duart Maclean was said to have passed atomic secrets to the Soviets. In 1951, Modin arran ...
, the alleged controller of the five, who—according to Perry—had claimed Cairncross was never part of the group. However in reviewing Perry's book, commentator Sheila Kerr pointed out that as soon as the book came out, Modin denied Perry's version of their discussions (having already stated that the fifth man was Cairncross), and concluded that "Perry's case against Rothschild is unconvincing because of dubious sources and slack methods".
* Leonard Henry (Leo) Long was accused by Blunt in 1964. Blunt claimed to have recruited Long to the Communist cause while Blunt was tutor at Cambridge. Long served as an intelligence officer with
MI14
MI14, or British Military Intelligence, Section 14 was a department of the British Directorate of Military Intelligence. It was an intelligence agency of the War Office, which specialised in intelligence about Germany. Originally part of MI3, d ...
from 1940 to 1945, and later with the British element of the
Allied Control Commission
Following the termination of hostilities in World War II, the Allies were in control of the defeated Axis countries. Anticipating the defeat of Germany and Japan, they had already set up the European Advisory Commission and a proposed Far Easter ...
in
Occupied Germany
Germany was already de facto occupied by the Allies from the real fall of Nazi Germany in World War II on 8 May 1945 to the establishment of the East Germany on 7 October 1949. The Allies (United States, United Kingdom, Soviet Union, and Franc ...
from 1945–1952. Long passed analyses but not original material relating to the Eastern Front to Blunt. Blunt also was associated with other Cambridge persons subsequently involved in espionage (
Michael Straight
Michael Whitney Straight (September 1, 1916 – January 4, 2004) was an American magazine publisher, novelist, patron of the arts, a member of the prominent Whitney family, and a confessed spy for the KGB.
Early life
Straight was born in New Yo ...
, Peter Ashby, Brian Symon) but they are generally considered as minor figures as compared to the "Cambridge Five".
*
Guy Liddell
Guy Maynard Liddell, CB, CBE, MC (8 November 1892 – 3 December 1958) was a British intelligence officer.
Biography
Early life and career
Liddell was born on 8 November 1892 at 64 Victoria Street, London, the son of Capt. Augustus Frederic ...
was an MI5 officer and nearly rose to become director of the service but was passed over because of rumours he was a double agent; he took early retirement from MI5 in 1953 after he was investigated for his personal links to Kim Philby. He was accused of having been the "fifth man" by
Goronwy Rees
Goronwy Rees (29 November 1909 – 12 December 1979) was a Welsh journalist, academic and writer.
Background
Rees was born in Aberystwyth, where his father was minister of the Tabernacle Calvinistic Methodist Church. The family later moved t ...
as part of Rees' confession in 1979. The academic consensus is that he was naïve in his friendships rather than a spy.
*
Andrew Gow: in his memoirs published in 2012,
Brian Sewell suggested that Gow was the "fifth man" and spy master of the group. This suggestion was subsequently refuted by
Anthony Powell
Anthony Dymoke Powell ( ; 21 December 1905 – 28 March 2000) was an English novelist best known for his 12-volume work ''A Dance to the Music of Time'', published between 1951 and 1975. It is on the list of longest novels in English.
Powell' ...
.
*
Wilfrid Basil Mann: Mann had been accused on several occasions of being the "fifth man," based on rumored former work at the Embassy and the resemblance between his name and the "Basil" of Boyle's codename. In his memoirs, Mann argued using contemporary correspondence, publications, and verified passport entries that he was incapable of having worked with Donald Maclean in the British Embassy. As part of his hiring at the Bureau of Standards, Mann underwent intense security screening and received a top-level "Q" clearance from the
U.S. Atomic Energy Commission.
In popular culture
Books
* ''
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
''Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy'' is a 1974 spy novel by British author John le Carré. It follows the endeavours of taciturn, aging spymaster George Smiley to uncover a Soviet mole in the British Secret Intelligence Service. The novel has receive ...
'' (New York 1974).
John le Carré
David John Moore Cornwell (19 October 193112 December 2020), better known by his pen name John le Carré ( ), was a British and Irish author, best known for his espionage novels, many of which were successfully adapted for film or television. ...
's novelisation of his experiences of the revelations in the 1950s and the 1960s which exposed the Cambridge Five traitors.
* ''
A Perfect Spy'', by John Le Carré (New York 1986). Events in the life of the character Magnus Pym are partly based upon the life and career of Kim Philby.
* ''
From Russia with Love'' by
Ian Fleming contains several references to Burgess and Maclean while Soviet characters discuss then-contemporary espionage related scandals. In Chapter 11,
James Bond
The ''James Bond'' series focuses on a fictional British Secret Service agent created in 1953 by writer Ian Fleming, who featured him in twelve novels and two short-story collections. Since Fleming's death in 1964, eight other authors have ...
himself says that what is needed in the atomic age is the 'intellectual spy', before mentioning the treacherous pair directly, though admits to only doing so in order to annoy a superior.
* ''
The Untouchable'' by
John Banville
William John Banville (born 8 December 1945) is an Irish novelist, short story writer, adapter of dramas and screenwriter. Though he has been described as "the heir to Proust, via Nabokov", Banville himself maintains that W. B. Yeats and Henry ...
. The character Victor Maskell seems to be a combination of Anthony Blunt and poet
Louis MacNeice.
* In
Alan Moore
Alan Moore (born 18 November 1953) is an English author known primarily for his work in comic books including '' Watchmen'', ''V for Vendetta'', '' The Ballad of Halo Jones'', ''Swamp Thing'', ''Batman:'' ''The Killing Joke'', and '' From He ...
's graphic novel ''
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Black Dossier'', there appears a Cambridge Five analogue consisting of the Famous Five from
Greyfriars School
Greyfriars School is a fictional English public school used as a setting in the long-running series of stories by the writer Charles Hamilton, who wrote under the pen-name of Frank Richards. Although the stories are focused on the Remove (or l ...
, including Harry Wharton, who became
Big Brother; Bob
Kim
Kim or KIM may refer to:
Names
* Kim (given name)
* Kim (surname)
** Kim (Korean surname)
*** Kim family (disambiguation), several dynasties
**** Kim family (North Korea), the rulers of North Korea since Kim Il-sung in 1948
** Kim, Vietnamese f ...
Cherry (named after Kim Philby), who was also known as
Harry Lime and subsequently
M or
Mother
]
A mother is the female parent of a child. A woman may be considered a mother by virtue of having given birth, by raising a child who may or may not be her biological offspring, or by supplying her ovum for fertilisation in the case of ges ...
;
The Man from U.N.C.L.E., Francis Alexander Waverly (possibly formerly known as Frank Nugent); and
Sir John Night (possibly formerly known as John Bull).
* ''
The Fourth Protocol'', a novel by
Frederick Forsyth
Frederick McCarthy Forsyth (born 25 August 1938) is an English novelist and journalist. He is best known for thrillers such as ''The Day of the Jackal'', ''The Odessa File'', '' The Fourth Protocol'', '' The Dogs of War'', ''The Devil's Alter ...
, uses a fictionalised Kim Philby as a central character, who conspires to smuggle a portable nuclear weapon into Britain.
* Burgess, Maclean and Philby appear in the ''
Doctor Who''
Eighth Doctor Adventures
The ''Eighth Doctor Adventures'' (sometimes abbreviated as EDA or referred to as the EDAs) are a series of spin off novels based on the long running BBC science fiction television series ''Doctor Who'' and published under the BBC Books impr ...
novel ''
Endgame
Endgame, Endgames, End Game, End Games, or similar variations may refer to:
Film
* ''The End of the Game'' (1919 film)
* ''The End of the Game'' (1975 film), short documentary U.S. film
* ''Endgame'' (1983 film), 1983 Italian post-apocalyptic f ...
'' dealing with their defection to Russia.
* ''
The Innocent'', a novel by
Ian McEwan
Ian Russell McEwan, (born 21 June 1948) is an English novelist and screenwriter. In 2008, ''The Times'' featured him on its list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945" and ''The Daily Telegraph'' ranked him number 19 in its list of th ...
, involves a spy tunnel which the Soviets discover but do not initially expose, similar to the Philby tunnel.
* Philby appears in ''
The Other Woman'' of the
Gabriel Allon Gabriel Allon is the main protagonist in Daniel Silva's thriller and espionage series that focuses on Israeli intelligence. The main characters refer to their employer as 'the Office', although it is not specified that it is Mossad (known internall ...
series by novelist
Daniel Silva
* The plot of
Charles Cumming's 2011 novel, ''
The Trinity Six'', is built on the premise that there was a sixth spy and that his existence is being covered up by MI6.
Television
*
''The Hour'' (BBC TV series)
*
Dennis Potter
Dennis Christopher George Potter (17 May 1935 – 7 June 1994) was an English television dramatist, screenwriter and journalist. He is best known for his BBC television serials '' Pennies from Heaven'' (1978), ''The Singing Detective'' (198 ...
's television play ''
Traitor
Treason is the crime of attacking a state authority to which one owes allegiance. This typically includes acts such as participating in a war against one's native country, attempting to overthrow its government, spying on its military, its diplo ...
'' (1971) is a spy drama television film that features a central character called Adrian Harris (
John Le Mesurier
John Le Mesurier (, born John Elton Le Mesurier Halliley; 5 April 191215 November 1983) was an English actor. He is perhaps best remembered for his comedic role as Sergeant Arthur Wilson in the BBC television situation c ...
) being interviewed in his Moscow flat by western newspaper reporters, eager to get the story on his defection. Harris appears to be a composite of Philby, Burgess and Maclean. Potter later returned to similar territory with ''
Blade on the Feather
''Blade on the Feather'' is a television drama by Dennis Potter, broadcast by ITV on 19 October 1980 as the first in a loosely connected trilogy of plays exploring language and betrayal. A pastiche of the John Le Carré spy thriller and trans ...
'' (1980), inspired by the unmasking of Anthony Blunt, although in this drama the protagonist Jason Cavendish (
Donald Pleasence
Donald Henry Pleasence (; 5 October 1919 – 2 February 1995) was an English actor. He began his career on stage in the West End before transitioning into a screen career, where he played numerous supporting and character roles including RAF ...
) is clearly modeled after Philby. Philby is later name-checked as the sports reporter on ''
The Daily Telegraph
''The Daily Telegraph'', known online and elsewhere as ''The Telegraph'', is a national British daily broadsheet newspaper published in London by Telegraph Media Group and distributed across the United Kingdom and internationally.
It was f ...
'' in Potter's ''
Lipstick on Your Collar'' (1993), and appears to be giving inside tips on horse-races to officials at the War Office.
* The
Channel 4
Channel 4 is a British free-to-air public broadcast television network operated by the state-owned Channel Four Television Corporation. It began its transmission on 2 November 1982 and was established to provide a fourth television service ...
education show ''
KNTV'' features a character called Burgess MacPhilbin, who provides information for teenagers in the form of a spy dossier.
* ''
Philby, Burgess and Maclean'' was a 1977
Granada Television drama-documentary for
ITV, re-broadcast on
BBC Four in 2007, with
Derek Jacobi
Sir Derek George Jacobi (; born 22 October 1938) is an English actor. He has appeared in various stage productions of William Shakespeare such as ''Hamlet'', ''Much Ado About Nothing'', '' Macbeth'', ''Twelfth Night'', '' The Tempest'', ''Kin ...
as Burgess.
* ''
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
''Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy'' is a 1974 spy novel by British author John le Carré. It follows the endeavours of taciturn, aging spymaster George Smiley to uncover a Soviet mole in the British Secret Intelligence Service. The novel has receive ...
'', 1979 miniseries adaptation of John le Carré's novel
* ''
An Englishman Abroad
''An Englishman Abroad'' is a 1983 BBC television drama film based on the true story of a chance meeting of actress Coral Browne with Guy Burgess, a member of the Cambridge spy ring who spied for the Soviet Union while an officer at MI6. The pr ...
'', 1983 dramatisation of Burgess in Russia by
Alan Bennett
Alan Bennett (born 9 May 1934) is an English actor, author, playwright and screenwriter. Over his distinguished entertainment career he has received numerous awards and honours including two BAFTA Awards, four Laurence Olivier Awards, and two ...
and directed by
John Schlesinger
John Richard Schlesinger (; 16 February 1926 – 25 July 2003) was an English film and stage director. He won the Academy Award for Best Director for ''Midnight Cowboy'', and was nominated for the same award for two other films ('' Darling'' an ...
.
Alan Bates plays Burgess.
* ''Blunt: the Fourth Man'', 1987 television drama with
Anthony Hopkins
Sir Philip Anthony Hopkins (born 31 December 1937) is a Welsh actor, director, and producer. One of Britain's most recognisable and prolific actors, he is known for his performances on the screen and stage. Hopkins has received many accolad ...
as Guy Burgess and
Ian Richardson
Ian William Richardson (7 April 19349 February 2007) was a Scottish actor.
He portrayed the Machiavellian Tory politician Francis Urquhart in the BBC's '' House of Cards'' (1990–1995) television trilogy. Richardson was also a leading S ...
as Anthony Blunt.
* ''
Cambridge Spies
''Cambridge Spies'' is a four-part British drama miniseries written by Peter Moffat and directed by Tim Fywell, that was first broadcast on BBC Two in May 2003 and is based on the true story of four brilliant young men at the University of C ...
'', 2003
BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC
Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board exam. ...
...
drama with