Cambridge Five

The Cambridge Five (also sometimes known as the Cambridge four) was a ring of Soviet spies in the UK 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), Anthony Blunt (cryptonym: Johnson), and John Cairncross - identified the 'fifth man' in the Cambridge spy ring by Oleg Gordievsky. Several other persons have been suggested as probably or possibly belonging.

They were originally known as the Cambridge Spy Ring because all became committed Communists while attending Cambridge University in the 1930s. There is some conjecture as to when they were actually recruited to Soviet intelligence, but Anthony Blunt claimed that it did not happen at Cambridge. Rather, they were recruited after they graduated. Both Burgess and Blunt were Apostles - a secret, elite debating society based around Trinity and King's Colleges. Philby, Blunt and Burgess were at Trinity. It is not 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. Blunt was a recruiter but in all likelihood did not recruit the other three. 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 been formally identified in 1990. Michael Whitney Straight was also a Soviet spy and Cambridge Apostle.

Known members

All the four were active during World War II, with varying degrees of effectiveness. Philby, when he was posted in the British Embassy in Washington after the war, learned that the US and the British were searching for a mole in the British Embassy, who was passing information to the Soviet Union. The codename of this official was Homer. Philby also came to know that one of the suspects was Maclean. Realizing that he had to act fast, he ordered Burgess, who was in the Embassy and who was staying with Philby, to warn Maclean, who was in England at that time. Burgess was recalled from the States due to 'bad behaviour';deliberately or not, is unknown. Burgess reached London, warned Maclean and then in 1951, Burgess and Maclean 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 due to his close relations with Burgess. Though Burgess was not supposed to defect with Maclean, he did so for some unknown reason. This monumental mistake damaged Philby's reputation, with many speculating that Philby could have climbed even higher in British Intelligence. Investigation of Philby found several suspicious matters but nothing for which he could be prosecuted, and he was forced to resign from SIS. 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, then 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".

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. He was also accused by Anthony Blunt during his confession in 1964.
* Sir Roger Hollis (1905-1973), (at the time Director of MI5) accused by Arthur S. Martin (head of MI5's Soviet counter-intelligence section at the time), Peter Wright (MI5 officer assigned to investigate Hollis) and Chapman Pincher (investigative journalist who produced several exposés of failures in British counter-intelligence).
* 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, 3rd Baron Rothschild (1910–1990) 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.
* Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951), In Kimberly Cornish's controversial book "The Jew of Linz", the author argues that as a Trinity College don, Wittgenstein recruited the Trinity College spies Burgess, Philby and Blunt (and Maclean, from nearby Trinity Hall College) for the Soviet Union.
* James Jesus Angleton is another possible candidate for the fifth man. He had a close friendship with Philby.
* Peter Ashby, accused by Anthony Blunt during his confession in 1964.
*Leo Long (intelligence officer), accused by Anthony Blunt during his confession in 1964.
*Brian Symon, accused by Anthony Blunt during his confession in 1964.

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 Carré, is loosely based on the Cambridge Five events
* "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
* "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 Four, with Derek Jacobi as Burgess
* "Escape (TV show)", drama-documentary on Philby's defection, recently re-broadcast on BBC Four
* "Blunt: the Fourth Man", television drama, with Anthony Hopkins as Guy Burgess and Ian Richardson as Anthony Blunt
* "High Season" (1987 movie) includes a character named "Sharp", an antiquarian fleeing England before being unmasked as a spy
*In Alan Moore's graphic novel "", there appears a Cambridge Five analogue consisting of the Famous Five from Greyfriars School, including Harry Wharton who would become Big Brother, Bob Kim Cherry (named after Kim Philby) who would be also known as Harry Lime and subsequentally M or Mother, Francis Alexander Waverly (possibly formerly known as Frank Nugent) and Sir John Night (possible formerly known as John Bull).
*"The Fourth Protocol", a novel by Frederick Forsyth 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 Adventure novel Endgame dealing with their defection to Russia.

In culture

The bars in the Manchester nightclub The Hacienda were named after the Cambridge Five

See also

* Portland Spy Ring
* Jim Skardon
* Yuri Modin

External links

* [http://www.crimelibrary.com/terrorists%5Fspies/spies/cambridge/ The Cambridge Five at the Crime Library]
* [http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=9337 An award-winning essay on the Cambridge Spy Ring at the Education Forum]