Cambridge Five

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The Cambridge Five (also sometimes known as the Cambridge Four) was a ring of British spies who passed information to the Soviet Union during World War II and into the early 1950s. It has been suggested they may also have been responsible for passing Soviet disinformation to the Nazis. The ring has been proven to have included Kim Philby (cryptonym: Stanley), Donald Duart Maclean (cryptonym: Homer), Guy Burgess (cryptonym: Hicks), and Anthony Blunt (cryptonym: Johnson). Several other persons have been suggested as probably or possibly belonging.

They were originally known as the Cambridge Spy Ring because all known members of the ring were recruited at Trinity College, Cambridge, while members of the Cambridge Apostles, a secret, elite debating society based around Trinity and King's. It is believed they were recruited by Anthony Blunt, who was a Fellow at Trinity while the others were undergraduates and who had also been an Apostle. Another Apostle known to have passed information to the Soviets, John Cairncross, is suspected by many of being the so-called Fifth Man, who has never been formally identified. Michael Whitney Straight was also a Soviet spy and Cambridge Apostle.

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[edit] Known members

In 1951, Burgess and Maclean—both under secret investigation—made international headlines by very publicly defecting to the Soviet Union. It was immediately apparent to investigators that they had been tipped off, and Philby quickly became a prime suspect. Investigation of Philby found several suspicious matters but nothing for which he could be prosecuted, and he was forced to resign. He was named in the Press as chief suspect for "the Third Man" in 1955, and called a press conference to deny it. Nevertheless, he left the secret service and began working as a journalist in the Middle East. In 1961, defector Anatoliy Golitsyn provided information which seemed to point to Philby. An MI5 agent and a personal friend of Philby from his MI6 days, Nicolas Elliott, was sent to interview him in Beirut, and reported that Philby knew he was coming (indicating the presence of yet another mole) but freely confessed. Shortly afterwards, apparently fearing he might be abducted in Lebanon, Philby also defected to the Soviet Union.

By 1979 Blunt was publicly accused of being a Soviet agent by investigative journalist Andrew Boyle, in his book Climate of Treason. In November 1979 Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher admitted to the House of Commons that Blunt had confessed to being a Soviet spy 15 years previously. By that time already in a position without access to classified information, he had secretly been granted a formal immunity by the Attorney General in exchange for telling everything he knew. He had provided a considerable amount of information, and preventing the Soviets from discovering his confession would have increased its value.

The "Five" comes from 1961 KGB defector Anatoliy Golitsyn, who named Philby as a probable, Maclean and Burgess as part of a "Ring of Five" whose other two agents he did not know. However two had already defected to the USSR and Philby would do so in 1963. Of all the information provided by Golitsyn, the only item that was ever independently confirmed was the exposure of John Vassall. Vassall was a relatively low ranking spy whom some researchers believe may have been sacrificed to protect a more senior one. Golitsyn's information was suggestive of Philby being a member, but Philby was already under suspicion—indeed, had been accused in newspapers—and was in a country with no extradition agreement with Britain. Select members of MI5 and MI6 already knew Philby to be a spy from VENONA decryptions. Golitsyn also provided other information that is widely regarded as highly improbable, such as the claim that Harold Wilson (then Prime Minister of the United Kingdom) was a KGB agent. To this day Golitsyn's reliability remains controversial, and as such there is little certainty of the actual number of agents in the Cambridge ring. To add to the confusion, when Blunt finally confessed he nominated several completely different people as among those he had recruited. Altogether, at least twelve persons have been seriously indicated as possible members of Golitsyn's "Ring of Five".

[edit] "The Fifth Man"

On the basis of the information provided by Golitsyn, speculation raged 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 and The Tenth Man, by Graham Greene who, coincidentally, knew the Cambridge spies. It is now widely accepted that the spy ring probably had more than five members, possibly many more, since three other persons are known to have confessed, several more were nominated in a confession, and strong circumstantial cases have been made against still others. The extent to which the following suspects can be regarded as members of "the Ring", or just a list of Soviet spies, depends on the degree to which they knew and cooperated with one another. The degree of this cooperation remains largely unknown; even Philby, Burgess, and Maclean operated largely on an individual basis.

  • John Cairncross (1913–1995), confessed in 1951; this was publicly revealed in 1990.
  • Guy Liddell (1892–1958), a close friend of Burgess and Rees, was accused of being a spy by an anonymous informer in 1949. This was eventually written off as Soviet disinformation, but it permanently harmed his career. He was accused specifically of being a member of the Cambridge Spy Ring in the death-bed confession of Goronwy Rees in 1979.
  • Goronwy Rees (1909–1979), a close friend of Burgess and Liddell, admitted under interrogation in 1951 that he had known Burgess was a spy; then made a death-bed confession of being one himself in 1979, also accusing Guy Liddell of having been a member of the Ring.
  • Victor Rothschild (1910–1990) (better known as the third Baron Rothschild), accused by Roland Perry, in his book, The Fifth Man (London: Pan Books, 1994). Rothschild was a member, along with Blunt and Burgess, of the Cambridge Apostles.
  • Accused by Anthony Blunt during his confession in 1964:
    • Peter Ashby
    • John Cairncross
    • Leo Long
    • Brian Symon

[edit] In fiction

  • A Question of Attribution (dramatising Blunt's term as Inspector of the Queen's Pictures), An Englishman Abroad (dramatising Burgess in Russia), and The Old Country (with a fictional Philby-type spy in exile), all by Alan Bennett
  • Another Country (loosely based on Guy Burgess's life) by Julian Mitchell
  • Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, by John le Carre, is loosely based on the Cambridge Five events.
  • "A Perfect Spy," by John Le Carre (New York 1986). Events in the life of the character Magnus Pym are partly based upont he life and career of Kim Philby.
  • The Untouchable (novel) by John Banville. The character Victor Maskell seems to be a combination of Anthony Blunt and poet Louis Macneice.
  • Cambridge Spies (BBC Drama) with Toby Stephens as Kim Philby, Tom Hollander as Guy Burgess, Rupert Penry-Jones as Donald Maclean, and Samuel West as Anthony Blunt.
  • Philby, Burgess and Maclean (TV show), 1977 Granada Television drama-documentary, recently re-broadcast on BBC 4, with Derek Jacobi as Burgess
  • Escape (TV show), drama-documentary on Philby's defection, recently re-broadcast on BBC 4
  • "Blunt: the Fourth Man," Television drama, with Anthony Hopkins as Guy Burgess and Ian Richardson as Anthony Blunt.

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

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