When Five Cambridge University Students Became Soviet Spies | Secrets Of War | Timeline

one of the great privileges of working at history here and making films together with our team at timeline is the access we get to extraordinary historical locations like this one stonehenge i'm right in the middle of the stone circle now it is an absolutely extraordinary place to visit if you want to watch the documentary like the one we're producing here go to history hit tv it's like netflix for history and if you use the code timeline when you check out you'll get a special introductory offer see you there it was a scandal that shook great britain and sent shockwaves through the corridors of the intelligence community in america harold kim filby guy burgess donald mclean john cairncross and anthony blunt would become known as the cambridge five they were well-bred highly educated members of great britain's ruling elite between 1940 and 1951 they penetrated the highest ranks of britain's most important secret and political institutions they played a secret game of cat and mouse as they procured the most sensitive secrets of the crown and handed them over to soviet agents from this building the kgb received crucial information from the group they called the magnificent five forwarding it to the kremlin where joseph stalin received up-to-the-minute information about british and american activities on matters of critical importance to this day there is considerable debate about their movements their methods and their motivation but there's little argument that they were the most successful spy ring in history the five all attended cambridge university 60 miles outside london it was the early 1930s and cambridge was synonymous with academic excellence and social ritual the best minds from the best families walked the halls competing for intellectual honors and learning the subtle social skills necessary to succeed in british society familiar was one of privilege fine education they all joined various political clubs mcleans actually briefly a member of the communist party in cambridge you know one of the great oversights of british counterintelligence was not to have realized this but he convinced them that this was a youthful aberration and he changed his mind donald mclean was the son of a well-respected diplomat kim philby was also the son of a full-time diplomat and arab scholar john kern cross came from a working class background but distinguished himself early on as a gifted linguist with a brilliant mind guy burgess was philby's close friend he was brilliant excessive and sought out for his ability to entertain with a biting wit burgess was one of those english quote characters unquote of the 30s he was gay outrageous love shocking people drunkards but he was tolerated because he was absolutely brilliant for different reasons all were considered the best that british society could produce when the five men entered cambridge in the early 1930s the revolutionary ideology of communism was gaining worldwide attention communism promised to cure social ills that cambridge students could witness close to home they'd seen the way that the depression had devastated the british working class they'd watched the hunger marches pass through cambridge they'd watched the rise of nazi germany and they all came to the conclusion that a capitalism was not going to be able to cope with the coming crisis and that b the democratic nations weren't being able to stand as a bulwark with the rise of fascism and that the only possible hope against this rise of fascism was moscow a young idealistic professor lectured the students on the benefits of communism few knew that the professor was working for the soviets the man who was chiefly responsible for recruiting first kim philby and then the other members of the cambridge magnificent five was probably the ablest controller the kgb ever had his name was arnold deutsch arnold deutsch fanned the flames but the sparks of their rebellion were lit by travel in europe between semesters in places like vienna a hotbed of political intrigue and action in vienna communist ideology was often fused with a philosophy of sexual independence and rebellion that appealed to the cambridge five what tends to be forgotten is that the magnificent five were all of them sexual rebels as well as political rebels two of them were gay let's say burgess and blunt at a time when gay sex even between consenting adults was illegal one of them donald mclean was bisexual and the other two kim philby and john carecross were heterosexual athletes cambridge was a place where important social contacts were made these contacts would sweep the cambridge five into positions of influence this social network also gave the soviets entree to britain's ruling class they all knew each other all the cages we had to do was recruit one and then asked them ask that one person to recommend somebody else and of course in no time they had a whole cambridge ring for many europeans the 1930s were a terrifying time dictators like mussolini hitler franco began tightening their stranglehold on their countries and created alliances that threatened both the soviets and the british the cambridge five believed they were recruited by the soviets to fight fascism not to betray the crowd the soviet recruitment pitch was really quite subtle quite shrewd they rarely declared themselves to be soviets they declared themselves quite often to be working for peace a pitch was would you like to work for peace are you a committed anti-nazi and the answer to that was an enthusiastic guess it was not would you now like to work for a foreign totalitarian regime by 1937 each of the cambridge five had graduated from cambridge university at the time the looming threat of war provided opportunities for them to distinguish themselves in 1937 kim philby landed in spain to work as a journalist francisco franco a nationalist general was struggling to take power fighting to overthrow republican rule joseph stalin didn't trust franco and wanted him assassinated this was to be philby's first mission but with tight security how could philby get close to franco as would happen so many times in the story of the cambridge five luck provided a means that no amount of planning could ever have matched while philby was traveling close to the front a republican shell landed near his car gravely wounding the other passengers the wounded philby became an instant hero in spain philby was decorated uh for gallantry and one of those curious ironies it was in fact general francisco franco who awarded philby with his medal fortunately for philby the capricious stalin changed his mind about killing franco an act that would obviously have ended philby's spying career as the clarion call to arms began to sound neither the cambridge five nor their soviet handlers had any idea that the tumultuous events ahead would catapult them into positions of authority giving them access to the most important secrets of world war ii as philby made a name for himself overseas the other members of the cambridge five were busy back in london gaining access to the corridors of power guy burgess landed a job in radio where he had daily contact with powerful and influential political leaders he amongst other things worked for the bbc as a talks producer that is sort of documentary or interview programs and because he was in that position he was able to invite really quite remarkable people onto the program and he then had an opportunity to ingratiate himself to entertain them and to make some pretty impressive connections british leaders like winston churchill thought burgess epitomized the best of the young british aristocracy by 1939 it was clear britain was nearer to war that year stalin betrayed western leaders entering into a pact with his enemy adolf hitler many ardent supporters of communism then turned away from the soviet union recognizing stalin's opportunism as a sign that perhaps the soviet union didn't embody the utopian ideals it espoused but the cambridge men couldn't admit they had been wrong it's never admitting they were wrong they simply persisted they were also intellectually arrogant to an extraordinary degree and in the end that was their undoing by the spring of 1940 the cambridge five found themselves in the middle of the greatest military enlistment in britain's history overnight top secret organizations like mi5 and mi6 the domestic and foreign divisions of the secret service were expanded the sudden need to staff newly created war agencies provided opportunities for two of the cambridge five to enter the clandestine world of british intelligence donald mclean entered the foreign office the diplomatic core of the british government mclean had access to top-secret political plans but guy burgess would be the first soviet spy to compromise the british secret service guy burgess was effectively recruited both by the secret intelligence service as a propagandist and who had a knowledge of radio and by mi5 who used his homosexual talents to recruit and run agents so he had in effect feet in three different camps the homosexual world the journalistic world and the secret world burgess's contacts were considerable and his intellect highly regarded at first his eccentric behavior was not only tolerated it was valued you would think that such a man who drew such attention to himself was not the ideal person to be a spy but it works both ways people would say burj is a spy you know guy couldn't possibly be a spy i mean look at the way he behaves so his outrageous behavior was was actually you could argue a good cover for being a spy mi6 was britain's top secret agency this secrecy made it easy for burgess to recommend kim philby philby's first assignment in the british secret service was in section d a new division designed to help defeat the germans through secret missions and dirty tricks during the day they'll be trained recruits in the uses of propaganda at night he helped himself to the secret information contained in mi6 files he's able to go through methodically file by file noting all contacts throughout europe and this is goldust for the kgb thanks to kim philby the russians knew the identity of most of the mi6 agents operating in europe throughout world war ii guy burgess kim philby and anthony blunt were stealing intelligence from their peers but it was john cairncross who would give the soviets some of the most important secrets of the war the fifth man the last of the magnificent five of new cambridge graduates to be recruited by the kgb is john ken cross but up until the end of the second world war he's arguably the most important british agent that the kgb has more important even until that point than kim philby why well partly because he runs through such an extraordinary sequence of highly sensitive jobs in 1941 john kern cross's expertise in mathematics brought him to work at this secret government office an old mansion known as bletchley park bletchley park was the home of a top-secret division of mi6 dedicated to breaking the german code the decrypted german communications codenamed ultra by the british were the most closely guarded secrets of the war cairncross had daily access to this critically important intelligence and he passed it along to his soviet handlers john cancross was able to supply ultra intercepts that were directly relevant to german troop movements on the eastern front and he is widely credited as having made a very significant contribution to the battle of kursk at kursk six thousand tanks and four thousand airplanes took part in what would go down in history as the largest tank battle of the second world war now it is the german intercepts provided by king cross which tell the russians where the german airfields are on the eastern front and before the battle of curse the radar force is able to bomb them and even by contemporary russian analysis that makes a really important difference thanks to john kern cross the intelligence the russians had on the germans were some of the best of its kind in the history of modern warfare but stealing the secrets was only half the challenge methods had to be devised to transfer the information to their soviet handlers there were two theories about this one is it's a good idea to meet in an isolated spot where you can see for miles around that there's nobody near keeping an eye on you other theory is that it's best to meet in a very crowded place where the idea of people chatting and exchanging papers and talking and being busy and everything like that is that you lose yourself in the crowd kim philby often preferred to take important papers home copy them and then arrange to leave the copies in a secret location one method of communicating was with the thing called a dead drop and as the name implies it's a drop where the agent will leave material for the kgb officer to pick up after the agent had left it there hoping that nobody else would accidentally pick it up it would be collected very shortly afterwards by the kgb officer despite the risks of meeting in london guy burgess preferred to meet the soviets in public occasionally things went wrong he met one of his controllers in a pub in london carrying secret papers that he smuggled out of the office that day and in the process of handing them over to the russian he dropped them and they were scattered all over the floor of this pub and there was a policeman having a drink off-duty drink at the time who actually bent down and helped them pick him up and put them back in the folder again in communicating with your contact it's not only important to obtain information from him but also periodically to hold personal meetings face-to-face meetings it's very important from the point of psychology because an agent he's alone with his secret he has nobody to share it with and his contact his intelligence officer he's the only person who can discuss most things with him while the russian military used the secrets provided by cairn cross joseph stalin didn't trust some of the information coming from the cambridge 5. stalin's paranoia infected the agency charged with evaluating the intelligence supplied by the cambridge five why the russians asked didn't the british secret service have major operations directed towards the soviet union they didn't believe the truthful answer found in philby's reports there was a war on britain didn't actually have time for major operations in russia as well as against the enemies germany in particular kgb can't believe that i mean there is a paranoid mindset which is not limited to one or two officers but which is the politically correct attitude in the kgb at that point so when philby says that there are no major operations against the soviet union which was the absolute truth they think that this is deception during the war joseph stalin had unparalleled access to the military and political secrets of both his enemies and his allies more importantly thanks to members of the cambridge five the soviets had meaningful information about britain's atomic program they had joined forces to beat a common enemy but by 1946 western leaders were already casting a weary and nervous eye towards the soviet union the cold war was heating up and the cambridge five were soon to feel the pressure of spying not for an ally but for an enemy during much of world war ii the cambridge five had been spying for an ally but the cold war heightened the danger of their actions by the late 1940s mclean burgess and cairncross held important positions in governmental agencies kim philby was the only one who stayed in the british secret service philby's wartime service brought him to the attention of stuart mengis so impressed was mengies that in 1946 he put philby in charge of section 9. it was a new division of mi6 charged with planning counter-espionage activities against the very country philby was spying for the soviet union it was a remarkable coup for the russians all the time that philby was head of the anti-subject section of british intelligence every single operation they mounted aggressive intelligence gathering operation they mounted against the kgb had been betrayed beforehand one of those operations was the ill-fated albanian mission during world war ii secret commandos had been used to fight the germans behind enemy lines many in the west felt that the same strategy could be used behind the iron curtain to liberate the countries of eastern europe held hostage by communism albanian freedom fighters were trained in malta and sent into their mother country only to be immediately picked up by officials who were already aware of their arrival philby manages to betray those albanians who are being infiltrated in by sea by land across the frontier and by air they came like lambs to the slaughter and philby was responsible for the slaughter just after the war while philby was working his way up the ranks at mi6 mclean and burgess worked at the foreign office stealing important secrets of britain's cold war strategies mclean's post at the foreign office had taken him to washington dc during the war at war's end britain and america began planning their strategy to combat and contain the soviet union donald mclean had very considerable important access to political decision-making positions that were going to be taken in negotiations with the soviets contingency plans reactions to the occupation of various different countries treatment of emi grey governments all of which was of very considerable political importance to the soviets mclean made frequent trips to new york to meet his handler turning over important information about the cold war to the soviets as a cover he visited his wife who was an american living with her mother in manhattan but friends and family noticed that mclean was acting strangely the pressure of leading a double life was beginning to show he began to drink heavily and started to raise suspicion with his irrational behavior the heat in the cambridge five was turned up they led secret lives knowing that the punishment for treason could be death anthony blunt was the first to succumb to the pressures at various moments all of the magnificent five with i think the exception of john can cross cracked or came close to cracking the first who really worried uh the kgb was anthony blunt he was so close to a breakdown at the end of the second world war that he was allowed to go part-time he only does the kgb odd jobs but some of them were quite important after the second world war as blunt receded into the shadows donald mclean was sent to washington to work for the foreign office guy burgess had left mi6 and had also taken a job at the foreign office in london in 1950 the first cold war military crisis presented the world with the alarming possibility of another major war this time korea was the country that would ignite a tinderbox of tensions truman and stalin watched the conflict closely british leaders were concerned that america was willing to risk war with china and perhaps the soviets to protect korea from communism britain began working to prevent america from beginning another world war they decided they should hold talks and thresh out all the problems with the americans and they prepared special instructions for their group and all this bunch of documents was passed to stunning it was clear from those documents that the west will not go to war with the soviet union about korea anthony blunt was out of the secret service but he was still helping his friend guide burgess burgesson blunt they worked as a couple plant had left mi5 and was not formally even connected with any secrets so he was outside this circle of suspects beyond suspicion and of course it was much easier for him to meet soviet contacts at the same time he was able to meet burgess because they were lifelong friends and he would take those papers from burgess photograph them secretly and would pass the film to the soviet contract largely thanks to members of the cambridge 5 stalin knew just how far america was willing to go to protect korea but his intelligence didn't stop there among the many soviet agents working to uncover atomic secrets few were as important as john cairncross before his arrival in bletchley park cairn cross had briefly worked for an important adviser to churchill helping with plans to build a new and devastating weapon of war in 1940 he becomes private secretary to one of churchill's ministers lord hanke he headed the scientific advisory committee which considered amongst other things the making of the first atomic bomb and it was via cancross using the minutes of lord hanke's committee that can cross becomes the first of the atom spies they hear it first from cancross by the late 1940s karen cross was once again privy to atomic secrets he was working in the ministry of supply but he had access to a safe during that period which contained all the plans for britain's nuclear deterrent and the expenditure on the armed services information that the soviets regarded as very significant indeed soviet scientists using the accounting ledgers and inventories supplied by karen cross were able to recreate and piece together some of the materials and steps required to build an atomic bomb by 1950 the cambridge 5 were seasoned veterans in a complex game of cat and mouse while the exact nature of many of their transgressions is to this day known only to a few in the british secret service it's now clear that they provided the soviets with volumes of information about the american and british intelligence services for almost 10 years the cambridge 5 had escaped detection but they began to fall prey to a dangerous level of comfort and confidence philby would later speak of the hazards of letting one's guard down i remember philby telling me that first time maybe second time third time maybe a dozen times when you going to meet your contact you always check yourself for surveillance and so so forth but then suddenly you you feel so secure that you don't do it anymore you just walk out of the sas building and in 20 minutes you meet a soviet contact what is under normal procedure one should have spent two or three hours proving himself for surveillance for donald mclean the pressure of leading a double life became more than he could bear transferred from washington mclean was given a post at the british embassy in cairo in cairo mclean finally fell apart donald mclean does have a nervous breakdown although it's of a pretty bizarre kind it reaches a peak i suppose in cairo where he was a british diplomat in the spring of 1950 and with one of his friends he goes on an extraordinary mission of destruction to the apartment of two secretaries working at the american embassy after a brief hospital's day mclean was not only reassigned he was promoted and sent back to london far from a rousing suspicion his behavior was attributed to his intense devotion to his work and his long hours of service to the crown amazingly despite complaints from the american embassy he subsequently went on to head the american department in the british foreign office at the end of the 1940s kim philby was sent to washington dc as an mi6 representative it was there that he learned of an alarming secret project a project that would spell the beginning of the end for the greatest spy ring in history by 1950 the cambridge five were beginning to weaken under the intense pressure of living secret lives their days as soviet spies were numbered kim philby and guy burgess had been transferred to washington d.c donald mclean had left washington and despite his unstable behavior had been named head of the american division of the foreign service evidence of serious personal problems notwithstanding the cambridge spies were supported by the very system they were betraying it is truly astonishing the way in which they manipulated the system at the class structure in this country social mores of the time in order to be able to advance their own careers and prevent themselves from falling into some of the most obvious pitfalls the head of mi6 was so impressed with kim philby that he appointed him as liaison to the american secret service by 1950 burgess had also been transferred to washington where he had access to important documents on cold war planning being conducted by the british and americans when burgess arrived in washington he moved in with philby and his family an unwise but necessary decision given burgess's health budget was getting worse and worse i mean his health was suffering he was drinking too much he was on the verge of a nervous breakdown by living under the same roof philby and burgess had broken the first rule of spying and it would soon prove to be their undoing the beginning of the end for the cambridge five came in the early 1950s during the second world war messages from soviet embassies in the west were routinely intercepted by american intelligence but the time-consuming process of decoding these secret communiques made progress slow as the cold war began however the decoding of these old messages became a top priority the effort by the americans to intercept and decipher these secret messages was codenamed venoma in 1944 there was some evidence that there was a leak in the british embassy in washington between 1944 and 1949 an enormous amount of work was done on intercepting and decrypting some of the soviet's most secret telegrams philby's status in the secret service gave him extraordinary access to the progress of the winona project breaking the code was a slow process but soon important clues about soviet agents were emerging an agent with a code name of homer was identified and some important information about his personal life was revealed kim philby knew immediately that donald mclean was homer it became clear from one clue that homer was based at the british embassy in washington and that he had been given permission to regularly visit his wife who was pregnant in new york and that person was donald mclean knowing it was only a matter of time before mclean was discovered philby and burgess had to find a way to warn mclean who was over 3 500 miles away in london any direct communication was out of the question the answer was since burgess hated his posting anyway had fallen out with most of his colleagues in the state department why don't we get him sent back in disgrace so burgess took a car trip in a big ostentatious car and broke the speed limits of say three states and then each case was insulting and rude to the arresting officer claimed diplomatic immunity the governors of the three states complained to the state department who complained to the embassy and burgess was effectively told to go home back in london burgess was able to meet with his old friend maclean and warn him of the investigation but journalists and scholars now question the truthfulness of this plan to warn mclean it's possible that philby told this story because it's what he wanted people to believe there are a few flaws in the story however we dissident spy watchers wonder about if the idea was to get him back quickly why then it would take six weeks before he actually left philby might have told this story to protect another secret agent in mi5 one whose identity remains a mystery to this day what happened next is not disputed burgess understood that mclean would have to defect in his unstable condition mclean would never hold up to interrogation nor could he make the trip and escape alone burgess would help him passage was booked on a weekend cruise across the channel since the ships on this cruise docked for only a day in france passports were rarely checked burgess and maclean quietly slipped into france and then together vanished behind the iron curtain to this day only the kgb knows the exact route they took maclean's defection surprised the secret services of america and britain but burgess's defection shocked everyone including his former housemate kim philby when phil be discovered that donald mclean had escaped i think that he must have been absolutely delighted he was equally horrified to be informed that guy burgess had defected with donald mclean that was never part of the plan but it subsequently emerged that mclean was so shaky at that stage that guy burgess really didn't believe that maclean would be able to make the journey on his own philby's career as a spy was over his friendship with burgess instantly made him a suspect acting quickly he took measures to ensure that there was no proof against him when philby came under suspicion in washington and he thought that the fbi might descend on him at any time to search his house he didn't want to be caught with his minox camera and the other apparatus that he was using for communication and for photographing documents and he had to bundle them in a bag and go out into the woods somewhere near washington or over the border in virginia somewhere and bury them the british secret service had let mclean slip through their fingers but they intended to follow every lead in another ironic twist of fate investigators turned to one of his best friends anthony blunt to gain entry to burgess's home almost fortuitously he accompanied the two officers who went into guy burgess's flat and searched it and he was able to go through guy burtis's desk and retrieve some incriminating material while uh two officers were in the bedroom examining documents inside a trunk that guy burgess had left under his bed but blunt missed one very important clue notes not in burgess's handwriting that documented a lunch conversation with a british civil servant the british security authorities went to that civil servant and said did you by any chance to keep a diary for 1939. he did keep a diary they said would you look up on such and such a date and tell us who you had lunch with he looked it up and he said oh john can cross they went in check came across his handwriting and it fitted so from that moment came cross's career as a soviet spy was ended by 1952 the spying activities of burgess mclean and cairncross had been revealed to the authorities john cairncross was safe from prosecution because british law demanded high standards of proof for treason kim philby was living under a heavy cloud of suspicion but his remarkable luck was about to save him yet again by the mid-1950s the soviet union's most successful spies had been compromised their undercover careers terminated philby was still in london highly suspected by british intelligence blunt and karen cross's involvement was still hidden from the public the press had learned of burgess and maclean's departure for moscow but few in the west knew how they'd been received by the country they'd served so tirelessly as spies from the moment they began to turn up in moscow certain elements in the kgb said wait a minute why suddenly have we got all these agents coming over here defecting when in some cases like burgess in particular wasn't necessary uh could it just be this is one of those devilish long-term plots by british intelligence who they attributed much greater skill and ingenuity and double dealing than actually it ever had after a brief stay in moscow burgess was transferred to a small town on the volga river a place where the kgb could keep a close eye on him his chronic alcoholism began to take a toll on his health throughout the 1950s philby lived in limbo carefully watched by the british secret service he was out of work and drinking heavily officially philby was persona non grata at mi6 unofficially there were those who remain loyal to him unconvinced that he was in fact a soviet spy there were two interrogators who confronted kim philby one was a former mi5 wartime mi5 officer helenus milmo he adopted a rather bullying and blustering approach to philby which philby in his memoirs says that he resented the other approach was jim skarden mi5's resident interrogator who adopted the more fatherly approach armor over the shoulder now come on my boy let's let's talk through what must have happened then as had happened so often in his career luck intervened marcus lipton was a member of parliament acting on a tip from a secret source he accused philby of being a spy that caused a statement to be made by the government in the commons which was extremely unfortunate but it was in effect exonerating philby because at that time there was absolutely no evidence against him the government was obliged to clear him publicly shelby took advantage of britain's libel laws demanding either proof of the charges or an apology since proving the case was nearly impossible the government was forced to exonerate him publicly once again a master spy had gotten himself out of trouble phil b held a press conference and he used that occasion to in effect start again to ingratiate himself in the newspaper community and he was subsequently assigned to beirut as a journalist as a newspaper correspondent for the economist and for the observer in beirut philby spent time with his ailing father and he began to write articles for the new republic remarkably he was again approached by the ghosts of his secret past both british and soviet kim philby's role as a foreign correspondent was to report as a stringer he wrote plenty of articles we also know in fact that he was in touch with the secret intelligence service fairly continuously and may have supplied that organization with some information he was also of course in direct and constant contact with the soviets but filby's luck was about to run out in december of 1962 mi5 discovered evidence that implicated philby as a key member of the cambridge spy ring working together mi5 and mi6 sent a representative to beirut to confront philby this time he finally broke admitting that he had spied for the soviets philby was interrogated on a friday by saturday he had disappeared there is some mystery about precisely how kim philby was exfiltrated the most uh likely scenario is that he had a meeting with a soviet handler that he was taken down to the docks that he was put on a soviet ship that then sailed that night to odessa philby believed himself to be a great hero in the eyes of the soviets when he arrived in moscow the reception was much cooler than he'd expected when he goes to moscow in 1963 he finally defects he expects a hero's welcome well he receives a welcome but he then discovers for the first time that he doesn't have officer rank he'd fantasized about being a kgb officer actually he never had more than agent status but it matters so much to him to be important that he spreads amongst british journalists the idea that he's really colonel philby of the kgb the communism he had fought for and the nation he had worked with to betray his mother country viewed him with suspicion and distrust he took a russian wife rufina and struggled to cope with the fact that the kgb wanted little to do with him he was disappointed the most about his work but he was not as high professional and he was working so hard especially for this country and all that and when he came here he suddenly felt useless his kgb handlers made sure that philby had a nice apartment and plenty of food and drink but creature comforts mattered little to philby for 10 years he'd been consumed with his secret work and work was the one thing which the mistrustful kgb refused to give him they didn't know what to do with him they isolated him completely so he was in a golden cage philby was not a man who needed money he didn't love that that was nothing for him he needed some ideology the cambridge five had begun spying at least in part from a desire to improve life and perpetuate freedom in the soviet union burgess maclean and philby found an environment of repression mistrust and fear donald mclean of all of them right to the end of his life was the most highly ideologically motivated and kept on writing pressing letters to the soviet leaders saying why are we behaving in this manner what's happened to the revolution and the ideals of marxist leninism it is now undeniable that much of kim philby's work was ignored or misinterpreted when he first provided it to the soviets philby was one of the great spies of the cold war but often his secrets were dismissed or overlooked the final tragedy of the magnificent five was that the kgb was never really able to use their talents to the full the soviet union actually learned very little from them why because the system simply could not absorb what they were saying even during the cold war the kgb was tremendously politically correct while philby burgess and mclean were in the soviet union anthony blunt had become a respected art critic back in london in the 1960s blunt struck a secret deal with mi5 they were certain blunt was part of the cambridge ring but they couldn't prove it so mi5 offered him immunity if he would divulge the secrets of the cambridge spies it was a decision that would prove controversial once the public discovered blunt's true identity there is a myth that the british intelligence community sought to cover up what anthony blunt and others had done because you know be just too embarrassing if it was discovered that the keeper of the queen's pictures uh sir anthony blunt before he was stripped of his knighthood had actually been working with kgb that's not the case it is simply tremendously difficult to secure a conviction for espionage unless you actually catch somebody doing it in 1979 prime minister margaret thatcher discovered blunt's deal with mi5 she exposed him in the house of commons and the queen stripped him of his knighthood john cairncross lived out his life in italy and france he was the last to be revealed the fifth man when he returned to england time had healed many of the wounds that his treachery had inflicted but his old habit of covering up and avoiding the truth remained intact can you say whether you ever passed any secrets that is a matter in which i i could only reply to a comment uh there were certain accusations against me certain evidence that was examined and no action was taken i am entirely unable to to add to these because certain rather delicate issues are involved but the truth was soon revealed john kern cross had indeed been one of the first atomic spies harold kim philby died in moscow in 1988. the times had changed and along with them the soviet perception about philby's service and contribution he was given full military honors and buried in conceivo cemetery the resting place of many distinguished war heroes and honored citizens in the end the cambridge five risked it all for a system that today lies in ruins and there are still many unanswered questions about their activities pertinent mi5 files remain secret and many of the mi6 and kgb files are still under lock and key the full story of the cambridge 5 may never be known what is known is that the cambridge 5 will go down in history as one of the greatest spy rings of the 20th century

Channel: Timeline - World History Documentaries

Views: 382,098

Keywords: History, Full Documentary, Documentaries, Full length Documentaries, Documentary, TV Shows - Topic, Documentary Movies - Topic, 2017 documentary, BBC documentary, Channel 4 documentary, history documentary, documentary history, soviet spies, soviet agents, cambridge 5, british traitors, cambridge spies, cold war, soviet union, the cold war, double agent

Id: hE8C3w2xFH8

Length: 51min 26sec (3086 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 25 2020