Delivering thousands of classified documents to the Soviets was no mean feat, especially when you had as many personal vices as The Cambridge Five.
In part two of this three-part mini-series, we learn how they did it, and how their messy personal lives got them into trouble on multiple occasions.
[00:00:04] Hello, hello hello, and welcome to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:00:11] The show where you can listen to fascinating stories, and learn weird and wonderful things about the world at the same time as improving your English.
[00:00:20] I'm Alastair Budge, and today is part two in our mini series on the Cambridge Five: a spy ring that infiltrated the upper echelons of Britain’s political and intelligence worlds and leaked state secrets to the Soviet Union.
[00:00:35] On a quick practical note, if you haven’t listened to part one yet, please do go back and do that, as this episode leads straight on from where we left the story last time.
[00:00:46] OK then, let’s get into it and talk about the secrets and spycraft of the Cambridge Five.
[00:00:55] In a central London pub, Guy Burgess finished off his drink.
[00:01:00] The air was thick with the smell of cigarette smoke, sweat and frothy beer.
[00:01:07] Conversation rumbled on in the background, chair legs screeched on the wooden floor.
[00:01:14] As he so often was, Burgess was as drunk as a skunk, he was heavily under the influence of alcohol.
[00:01:22] But he wasn’t in the pub for social reasons, he was there on business.
[00:01:27] Spy business more specifically, and he had just established contact with one of his ‘handlers’ - a Soviet agent managing him and the Cambridge Five.
[00:01:38] Putting down his glass, Burgess stood up and made his way to the door, swaying slightly from side to side, the alcohol now well and truly gone to his head.
[00:01:49] But as he pushed the door open, he dropped his briefcase and several stolen papers spiralled onto the pavement.
[00:01:59] He rushed around to pick them up, paranoid that someone would see.
[00:02:03] Would he be caught?
[00:02:04] Would the first of the Cambridge Five be outed as a double-agent? Would the dominoes begin to tumble?
[00:02:11] A policeman came over to him. Burgess’s spine began to tingle.
[00:02:17] But the policeman didn’t seem interested in the dropped papers, or rather, his main concern was helping Burgess to pick them up and put them back in his briefcase - documents that Burgess had stolen from the British Foreign Office earlier that very day.
[00:02:34] Thanking the policeman and snapping his briefcase firmly shut, Burgess made his way down the street and disappeared around the corner.
[00:02:42] It was a close call - just another example of the sheer luck that helped the Cambridge Five get away with it for so long.
[00:02:53] As I hope you remember from part one, we left the story of the Cambridge Five just as the Second World War had started.
[00:03:01] By then Philby, Burgess, Maclean, Cairncross and Blunt had passed through Britain’s elite private schools onto Cambridge University, and were establishing themselves in the upper echelons of the British state.
[00:03:16] Like many students in the political turbulence of the 1930s, during their time at Cambridge their political views had moved far to the left.
[00:03:26] Unlike most students, however, these five men had been recruited by Soviet intelligence. They were “The Cambridge Five”.
[00:03:37] As the Second World War began, the Five were beginning to get established in their careers, in their ‘covers’.
[00:03:44] As a quick reminder, Burgess was in the Foreign Office, as was Cairncross briefly.
[00:03:50] Philby was in MI6, Blunt in MI5, and Maclean the diplomatic service.
[00:03:57] Clearly, the Soviet’s plan of ‘turning’ high-flying British graduates before they entered the ‘corridors of power’ was coming to fruition, that is, it was really working rather well.
[00:04:09] So, what did they actually do as spies?
[00:04:12] And how did it work?
[00:04:14] Well, essentially, they used their positions of power to pass vast amounts of confidential, classified information East, to the Soviet Union.
[00:04:25] If we take the case of Kim Philby, who is perhaps the most famous of the Cambridge Five, he spent most of his career working for British intelligence, working for the famous MI6.
[00:04:37] If this acronym MI6 rings any bells, yes MI6 is also the workplace of another famous British spy, a fictional spy I should add, James Bond.
[00:04:49] And if you’re wondering what the difference between MI5 and MI6 is, MI5 deals with internal, domestic, threats, and MI6 deals with foreign threats.
[00:05:02] Incredibly, Philby was so deeply embedded in MI6 that he was even made head of the Soviet counterespionage unit.
[00:05:12] That’s right: the Soviet spy was put in charge of Soviet counterespionage, the very unit investigating Soviet spies.
[00:05:22] As you might expect, this was a huge win for the Soviets, it was pretty much the best possible result.
[00:05:31] Thanks to Philby, the Soviets knew most of the names of British agents operating in Europe in the 1950s and they had a constant stream of information on British intelligence gathering.
[00:05:43] But Philby wasn’t the only one on an upward trajectory; Donald Maclean's career had also gone from strength to strength.
[00:05:52] He had become a successful diplomat in the Foreign Office, and enjoyed unlimited access to top secret military and nuclear information, which he leaked to his handlers.
[00:06:04] Guy Burgess had also enjoyed a successful career, working for MI6, the BBC, and the Foreign Office. He rubbed shoulders with spies and politicians, and just like during his time at Cambridge, he was incredibly social and seemingly knew everybody.
[00:06:21] He even mingled with the likes of Winston Churchill, who gave him a signed book.
[00:06:27] During the Second World War the quiet Anthony Blunt worked at MI5, the other arm of the British intelligence services, where he passed on information about German espionage activities in Britain.
[00:06:40] And John Cairncross, the final member and the only one of the five from a working class background, worked in the famous code-breaking facility at Bletchley Park, cracking German communication codes, stuffing papers into his trousers, and passing the information back to his handler.
[00:06:59] Now, though Philby, Maclean and Burgess are perhaps the most famous of the Five, or the most personally interesting, at least, during the war it was actually Cairncross who was doing the most effective espionage, that is, stealing the most valuable information, cracking German coded messages and passing the information back to the Soviets.
[00:07:22] He was even personally credited by the Soviets for playing a major role in its victory at the Battle of Kursk in 1943.
[00:07:30] In terms of just how much information was being passed back, the numbers are quite astounding.
[00:07:38] The information included copies, photographs, codes and original secret documents, with 1,771 coming from Blunt, 4,605 from Burgess, 4,593 from MacLean and almost 6,000 from Cairncross between 1941 and 1945.
[00:08:02] In fact, often the Cambridge Five’s information was so good, so plentiful, that the Soviets were suspicious, believing that the men’s seemingly unlimited access to British state secrets was reason not to trust them.
[00:08:16] It was simply too easy, something smelled fishy.
[00:08:21] Even Stalin feared it was too good to be true: that they were, in fact, long-term double, or triple agents sent to infiltrate Soviet intelligence.
[00:08:33] They were particularly paranoid about Philby, thinking that his public communist sympathies as a young man would have made it unlikely that he would have become so senior in MI6.
[00:08:44] How could it be possible, they thought, that someone who had been so openly communist in the past could become the head of anti-Soviet espionage?
[00:08:54] It didn’t seem to make any sense.
[00:08:57] But what they probably hadn’t appreciated was the fact that the British class system made this possible; Philby came from a good family, had gone to the right schools, he could get away with practically anything.
[00:09:12] As the Second World War ended and the Cold War began, the nature of the Cambridge Five’s work began to change.
[00:09:20] With Nazi Germany and fascism defeated, they were no longer spying for an ally but an enemy.
[00:09:27] This was, as you can imagine, an altogether different proposition.
[00:09:34] With Nazism defeated, the Cambridge Five could no longer justify their spying as part of a broader anti-fascist fight, but they were now spying directly against their homeland.
[00:09:46] And they became even more important, even more valuable, to the Soviets.
[00:09:53] As you will know, the Cold War was dominated by paranoia of nuclear war, and as they moved towards the 1950s, some of the Five began leaking secrets about Britain’s nuclear programme.
[00:10:06] Cairncross is considered by some to be the first ‘atomic spy’, and while working at Britain's Scientific Advisory Committee he leaked incredibly sensitive information about Britain’s uranium bomb capabilities.
[00:10:21] It's even thought that the Soviets used information sent to them by Cairncross to begin building their own atomic bomb.
[00:10:29] Similarly, in 1944, Maclean had been posted to the British embassy in Washington D.C where he had access to both British and American nuclear secrets. As such, he became one of Moscow’s primary sources of information on the West’s nuclear development.
[00:10:48] Just think about that for a minute.
[00:10:50] Two British citizens, experts working on building up the West’s nuclear armoury, could be responsible for giving the Soviets their own bomb… during the Cold War.
[00:11:02] It almost goes without saying, but this was some serious stuff, some pretty impressive spywork.
[00:11:09] Now, the actual spywork of the Cambridge Five is very different to any kind of spywork you might be thinking about from, let’s say, a James Bond movie.
[00:11:19] The spywork of these five men was all about information, about sharing confidential, highly classified, information with the enemy.
[00:11:27] So, how did the men actually leak their information?
[00:11:32] Having bits of paper stuffed into your trousers is one thing, but how did they actually get that information to their Soviet handlers?
[00:11:40] Clearly, it was a risky procedure. Every time a document was handed over, there was the possibility of being caught, with life-threatening consequences.
[00:11:51] Up until 1946, people were still executed in Britain for treason, and in fact it wasn’t until 1998 that the death penalty was completely abolished.
[00:12:02] It was scary stuff, so how did they do it without being caught?
[00:12:07] The Cambridge Five, and indeed all spies whether British, American, or Soviet, mostly used a system known as a ‘dead drop’ to pass on information.
[00:12:19] A dead drop is essentially when a spy leaves information - whether photos or documents or codes - in a public but hidden place, and their handler picks it up later.
[00:12:32] The idea was that the spy and handler would never be caught in the same place at the same time, though when it was absolutely necessary to speak in person these meetups were often done in busy public places so they could blend, and disappear if necessary, into the crowd.
[00:12:50] Just like when Kim Philby was first recruited in Regents Park back in 1934 and this whole story started, or when Burgess dropped his briefcase in the pub.
[00:13:01] So, where did the Cambridge Five meet their handlers and where did they do these ‘dead drops’?
[00:13:08] Well, according to Philby’s own words in a written confession from January 1963, “Our meetings always took place in outlying districts of London… and almost always in the open air.”
[00:13:22] “The regular drill consisted of synchronising watches with a neighbouring clock, appearing at the rendezvous on the dot, taking at least three taxis both to and from the rendezvous to ensure that no one followed. At each meeting a time and a place was fixed for the next one.”
[00:13:41] We’ll hear more about that confession in part three, and it's worth noting, here, that we can’t take anything the Five say too literally.
[00:13:50] For all we know, Philby’s supposed ‘confession’ could have been a ruse, a distraction, and should be taken with a ‘pinch of salt’, not completely believed.
[00:14:01] But this method of meeting in public places, being punctual and being careful not to be followed, certainly fits in with what we know of the Cambridge Five and spycraft more generally.
[00:14:13] They, of course, had to be incredibly careful not to be followed or caught out.
[00:14:19] Philby, especially, as he was heading the anti-Soviet division of MI6.
[00:14:24] If he was caught, it was possible that the entire Cambridge Five spy ring would fall apart because he had been the first to be recruited and had recommended some of the others. He could join the dots.
[00:14:38] But as time went on and the Five became more comfortable in their double-lives, being promoted and becoming firmly established in their careers, they were sure they’d never be caught.
[00:14:50] As you might imagine, this caused several of them to become complacent, to not take as much care as they should to cover their tracks.
[00:15:00] The Cambridge Five - in particular the now hopelessly alcoholic Burgess - became increasingly sloppy, careless over time.
[00:15:09] And pubs and alcohol more generally played a big role in the rise and fall of the Cambridge Five.
[00:15:16] All of the men were known to be heavy drinkers. Burgess in particular, who would have met any modern definition of being an alcoholic.
[00:15:26] According to Philby, though he had recommended Maclean to Otto as a potential recruit he had actually warned against Guy Burgess because he was known to be a heavy drinker and incredibly sociable, even during his university days.
[00:15:42] Burgess was witty and charming, and known as a ‘man about town’, we might say, meaning someone sociable and well connected.
[00:15:50] Just as he had bragged during his time at university, Burgess, it seemed, knew everyone and mingled with high-society figures like Winston Churchill’s niece, the famous economist John Maynard Keynes, respected writers and a whole host of MI5 and MI6 spies.
[00:16:09] Talk about hiding in plain sight.
[00:16:12] But there was another reason that Philby cautioned against Burgess, that he warned Otto not to recruit him. A secret that he shared with Blunt in fact.
[00:16:23] Both men were gay, they were homosexual, and there is even a theory that the pair had been lovers at one point.
[00:16:30] Homosexuality was still a crime in Britain in the 1930s, and Philby thought that someone could use their sexuality against them, using it to blackmail them and extort secrets.
[00:16:45] But when it comes to Burgess, his main problem wasn’t his sexuality, it was his drinking.
[00:16:52] According to Soviet files released years later, Burgess was, and I'm quoting directly, "constantly under the influence of alcohol,” and considered loud and theatrical.
[00:17:04] As one MI5 official put it in 1949, “Burgess appears to be a complete alcoholic and I do not think that even in Gibraltar I have ever seen anyone put away so much hard liquor in so short a time as he did.”
[00:17:20] A loud drunk with a tendency to draw attention to himself might not strike you, or seem to be, the ideal spy.
[00:17:28] Yet it was actually Burgess’ alcoholism and overly-confident demeanour that served as his cover. People looked at him and thought “a loud and overly confident drunk, surely he would make a terrible spy!”
[00:17:43] How could a man, according to one biography known as a “smelly, scruffy, lying, promiscuous, drunken slob,” position himself in the high-ranks of the Foreign Office while being a Soviet spy?
[00:17:55] Indeed, it was precisely this cover that made him, for so many years, an incredibly effective double-agent.
[00:18:04] Hiding in plain sight, he delivered 168 documents to the Soviets in December of 1949 alone.
[00:18:12] Maclean too, according to Soviet files, was "constantly drunk," and known to be "not very good at keeping secrets.”
[00:18:20] In fact, it's believed that several of the men - certainly Burgess and Maclean and likely Philby - actually confessed that they were working for the Soviets when they were drunk.
[00:18:31] Now, it’s worth spending a little more time talking about Blunt, the oldest of the five, as his career went in a slightly different direction.
[00:18:41] After his brief stints in the army and MI5 during the war, he explored other interests and he did far less spywork than the others.
[00:18:50] Instead, he had a career in academia and became a leading art historian with expertise in French art and architecture.
[00:18:59] In his memoir, he explained that after the war he just wanted a quiet life: " In fact I was disillusioned about Marxism as well as about Russia. What I personally hoped to do was to hear no more of my Russian friends, to return to my normal academic life. Of course it was not as simple as that, because there remained the fact that I knew of the continuing activities of Guy, Donald, and Kim."
[00:19:27] In 1945 he even became Surveyor of the King's, and later the Queen’s, Pictures, which is considered one of the most prestigious jobs in the art world.
[00:19:39] This meant that he was in regular contact with the Royal Family, even staying and travelling with them, and advised the Queen on her personal art collection, all while being a Soviet spy.
[00:19:51] Like Philby leading the anti-Soviet programme, Blunt hid in plain sight: a double-agent camouflaging himself, or hiding, in the palaces of royalty.
[00:20:03] But as the expression goes, all good things must come to an end.
[00:20:08] By the late-1940s the Cambridge Five had stolen such a huge amount of information that the intelligence communities on both sides of the Atlantic began to suspect that there was a mole, that there was someone leaking information.
[00:20:23] After years of being behind, both British and American intelligence were beginning to catch up to the Cambridge Five.
[00:20:31] With the net tightening around them and many unravelling on a personal level, it all started to go wrong across the Atlantic, in the United States, where Philby and Burgess were working after the war.
[00:20:44] But would the two working in Washington D.C be able to warn their fellow spies back in Britain in time, before the authorities got to them?
[00:20:53] What would they do, once they were ‘busted’?
[00:20:56] And why did the responsibility for all of this fall on the shoulders of the erratic drunk who dropped stolen papers on the pavement, Guy Burgess?
[00:21:05] And why do many think that, at the end of the day, they actually “got away with it”?
[00:21:11] We’ll get into all that, and much more, in part three, the final part of this mini-series on the most successful spy ring in British history.
[00:21:23] Ok then, that’s it for part two.
[00:21:26] Next up it will be our final part, part three, where we’ll start to see everything unravel, secrets to be revealed, escapes to be made, and beer to be drunk at breakfast.
[00:21:37] You've been listening to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:21:42] I'm Alastair Budge, you stay safe, and I'll catch you in the next episode.
[END OF EPISODE]
[00:00:04] Hello, hello hello, and welcome to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:00:11] The show where you can listen to fascinating stories, and learn weird and wonderful things about the world at the same time as improving your English.
[00:00:20] I'm Alastair Budge, and today is part two in our mini series on the Cambridge Five: a spy ring that infiltrated the upper echelons of Britain’s political and intelligence worlds and leaked state secrets to the Soviet Union.
[00:00:35] On a quick practical note, if you haven’t listened to part one yet, please do go back and do that, as this episode leads straight on from where we left the story last time.
[00:00:46] OK then, let’s get into it and talk about the secrets and spycraft of the Cambridge Five.
[00:00:55] In a central London pub, Guy Burgess finished off his drink.
[00:01:00] The air was thick with the smell of cigarette smoke, sweat and frothy beer.
[00:01:07] Conversation rumbled on in the background, chair legs screeched on the wooden floor.
[00:01:14] As he so often was, Burgess was as drunk as a skunk, he was heavily under the influence of alcohol.
[00:01:22] But he wasn’t in the pub for social reasons, he was there on business.
[00:01:27] Spy business more specifically, and he had just established contact with one of his ‘handlers’ - a Soviet agent managing him and the Cambridge Five.
[00:01:38] Putting down his glass, Burgess stood up and made his way to the door, swaying slightly from side to side, the alcohol now well and truly gone to his head.
[00:01:49] But as he pushed the door open, he dropped his briefcase and several stolen papers spiralled onto the pavement.
[00:01:59] He rushed around to pick them up, paranoid that someone would see.
[00:02:03] Would he be caught?
[00:02:04] Would the first of the Cambridge Five be outed as a double-agent? Would the dominoes begin to tumble?
[00:02:11] A policeman came over to him. Burgess’s spine began to tingle.
[00:02:17] But the policeman didn’t seem interested in the dropped papers, or rather, his main concern was helping Burgess to pick them up and put them back in his briefcase - documents that Burgess had stolen from the British Foreign Office earlier that very day.
[00:02:34] Thanking the policeman and snapping his briefcase firmly shut, Burgess made his way down the street and disappeared around the corner.
[00:02:42] It was a close call - just another example of the sheer luck that helped the Cambridge Five get away with it for so long.
[00:02:53] As I hope you remember from part one, we left the story of the Cambridge Five just as the Second World War had started.
[00:03:01] By then Philby, Burgess, Maclean, Cairncross and Blunt had passed through Britain’s elite private schools onto Cambridge University, and were establishing themselves in the upper echelons of the British state.
[00:03:16] Like many students in the political turbulence of the 1930s, during their time at Cambridge their political views had moved far to the left.
[00:03:26] Unlike most students, however, these five men had been recruited by Soviet intelligence. They were “The Cambridge Five”.
[00:03:37] As the Second World War began, the Five were beginning to get established in their careers, in their ‘covers’.
[00:03:44] As a quick reminder, Burgess was in the Foreign Office, as was Cairncross briefly.
[00:03:50] Philby was in MI6, Blunt in MI5, and Maclean the diplomatic service.
[00:03:57] Clearly, the Soviet’s plan of ‘turning’ high-flying British graduates before they entered the ‘corridors of power’ was coming to fruition, that is, it was really working rather well.
[00:04:09] So, what did they actually do as spies?
[00:04:12] And how did it work?
[00:04:14] Well, essentially, they used their positions of power to pass vast amounts of confidential, classified information East, to the Soviet Union.
[00:04:25] If we take the case of Kim Philby, who is perhaps the most famous of the Cambridge Five, he spent most of his career working for British intelligence, working for the famous MI6.
[00:04:37] If this acronym MI6 rings any bells, yes MI6 is also the workplace of another famous British spy, a fictional spy I should add, James Bond.
[00:04:49] And if you’re wondering what the difference between MI5 and MI6 is, MI5 deals with internal, domestic, threats, and MI6 deals with foreign threats.
[00:05:02] Incredibly, Philby was so deeply embedded in MI6 that he was even made head of the Soviet counterespionage unit.
[00:05:12] That’s right: the Soviet spy was put in charge of Soviet counterespionage, the very unit investigating Soviet spies.
[00:05:22] As you might expect, this was a huge win for the Soviets, it was pretty much the best possible result.
[00:05:31] Thanks to Philby, the Soviets knew most of the names of British agents operating in Europe in the 1950s and they had a constant stream of information on British intelligence gathering.
[00:05:43] But Philby wasn’t the only one on an upward trajectory; Donald Maclean's career had also gone from strength to strength.
[00:05:52] He had become a successful diplomat in the Foreign Office, and enjoyed unlimited access to top secret military and nuclear information, which he leaked to his handlers.
[00:06:04] Guy Burgess had also enjoyed a successful career, working for MI6, the BBC, and the Foreign Office. He rubbed shoulders with spies and politicians, and just like during his time at Cambridge, he was incredibly social and seemingly knew everybody.
[00:06:21] He even mingled with the likes of Winston Churchill, who gave him a signed book.
[00:06:27] During the Second World War the quiet Anthony Blunt worked at MI5, the other arm of the British intelligence services, where he passed on information about German espionage activities in Britain.
[00:06:40] And John Cairncross, the final member and the only one of the five from a working class background, worked in the famous code-breaking facility at Bletchley Park, cracking German communication codes, stuffing papers into his trousers, and passing the information back to his handler.
[00:06:59] Now, though Philby, Maclean and Burgess are perhaps the most famous of the Five, or the most personally interesting, at least, during the war it was actually Cairncross who was doing the most effective espionage, that is, stealing the most valuable information, cracking German coded messages and passing the information back to the Soviets.
[00:07:22] He was even personally credited by the Soviets for playing a major role in its victory at the Battle of Kursk in 1943.
[00:07:30] In terms of just how much information was being passed back, the numbers are quite astounding.
[00:07:38] The information included copies, photographs, codes and original secret documents, with 1,771 coming from Blunt, 4,605 from Burgess, 4,593 from MacLean and almost 6,000 from Cairncross between 1941 and 1945.
[00:08:02] In fact, often the Cambridge Five’s information was so good, so plentiful, that the Soviets were suspicious, believing that the men’s seemingly unlimited access to British state secrets was reason not to trust them.
[00:08:16] It was simply too easy, something smelled fishy.
[00:08:21] Even Stalin feared it was too good to be true: that they were, in fact, long-term double, or triple agents sent to infiltrate Soviet intelligence.
[00:08:33] They were particularly paranoid about Philby, thinking that his public communist sympathies as a young man would have made it unlikely that he would have become so senior in MI6.
[00:08:44] How could it be possible, they thought, that someone who had been so openly communist in the past could become the head of anti-Soviet espionage?
[00:08:54] It didn’t seem to make any sense.
[00:08:57] But what they probably hadn’t appreciated was the fact that the British class system made this possible; Philby came from a good family, had gone to the right schools, he could get away with practically anything.
[00:09:12] As the Second World War ended and the Cold War began, the nature of the Cambridge Five’s work began to change.
[00:09:20] With Nazi Germany and fascism defeated, they were no longer spying for an ally but an enemy.
[00:09:27] This was, as you can imagine, an altogether different proposition.
[00:09:34] With Nazism defeated, the Cambridge Five could no longer justify their spying as part of a broader anti-fascist fight, but they were now spying directly against their homeland.
[00:09:46] And they became even more important, even more valuable, to the Soviets.
[00:09:53] As you will know, the Cold War was dominated by paranoia of nuclear war, and as they moved towards the 1950s, some of the Five began leaking secrets about Britain’s nuclear programme.
[00:10:06] Cairncross is considered by some to be the first ‘atomic spy’, and while working at Britain's Scientific Advisory Committee he leaked incredibly sensitive information about Britain’s uranium bomb capabilities.
[00:10:21] It's even thought that the Soviets used information sent to them by Cairncross to begin building their own atomic bomb.
[00:10:29] Similarly, in 1944, Maclean had been posted to the British embassy in Washington D.C where he had access to both British and American nuclear secrets. As such, he became one of Moscow’s primary sources of information on the West’s nuclear development.
[00:10:48] Just think about that for a minute.
[00:10:50] Two British citizens, experts working on building up the West’s nuclear armoury, could be responsible for giving the Soviets their own bomb… during the Cold War.
[00:11:02] It almost goes without saying, but this was some serious stuff, some pretty impressive spywork.
[00:11:09] Now, the actual spywork of the Cambridge Five is very different to any kind of spywork you might be thinking about from, let’s say, a James Bond movie.
[00:11:19] The spywork of these five men was all about information, about sharing confidential, highly classified, information with the enemy.
[00:11:27] So, how did the men actually leak their information?
[00:11:32] Having bits of paper stuffed into your trousers is one thing, but how did they actually get that information to their Soviet handlers?
[00:11:40] Clearly, it was a risky procedure. Every time a document was handed over, there was the possibility of being caught, with life-threatening consequences.
[00:11:51] Up until 1946, people were still executed in Britain for treason, and in fact it wasn’t until 1998 that the death penalty was completely abolished.
[00:12:02] It was scary stuff, so how did they do it without being caught?
[00:12:07] The Cambridge Five, and indeed all spies whether British, American, or Soviet, mostly used a system known as a ‘dead drop’ to pass on information.
[00:12:19] A dead drop is essentially when a spy leaves information - whether photos or documents or codes - in a public but hidden place, and their handler picks it up later.
[00:12:32] The idea was that the spy and handler would never be caught in the same place at the same time, though when it was absolutely necessary to speak in person these meetups were often done in busy public places so they could blend, and disappear if necessary, into the crowd.
[00:12:50] Just like when Kim Philby was first recruited in Regents Park back in 1934 and this whole story started, or when Burgess dropped his briefcase in the pub.
[00:13:01] So, where did the Cambridge Five meet their handlers and where did they do these ‘dead drops’?
[00:13:08] Well, according to Philby’s own words in a written confession from January 1963, “Our meetings always took place in outlying districts of London… and almost always in the open air.”
[00:13:22] “The regular drill consisted of synchronising watches with a neighbouring clock, appearing at the rendezvous on the dot, taking at least three taxis both to and from the rendezvous to ensure that no one followed. At each meeting a time and a place was fixed for the next one.”
[00:13:41] We’ll hear more about that confession in part three, and it's worth noting, here, that we can’t take anything the Five say too literally.
[00:13:50] For all we know, Philby’s supposed ‘confession’ could have been a ruse, a distraction, and should be taken with a ‘pinch of salt’, not completely believed.
[00:14:01] But this method of meeting in public places, being punctual and being careful not to be followed, certainly fits in with what we know of the Cambridge Five and spycraft more generally.
[00:14:13] They, of course, had to be incredibly careful not to be followed or caught out.
[00:14:19] Philby, especially, as he was heading the anti-Soviet division of MI6.
[00:14:24] If he was caught, it was possible that the entire Cambridge Five spy ring would fall apart because he had been the first to be recruited and had recommended some of the others. He could join the dots.
[00:14:38] But as time went on and the Five became more comfortable in their double-lives, being promoted and becoming firmly established in their careers, they were sure they’d never be caught.
[00:14:50] As you might imagine, this caused several of them to become complacent, to not take as much care as they should to cover their tracks.
[00:15:00] The Cambridge Five - in particular the now hopelessly alcoholic Burgess - became increasingly sloppy, careless over time.
[00:15:09] And pubs and alcohol more generally played a big role in the rise and fall of the Cambridge Five.
[00:15:16] All of the men were known to be heavy drinkers. Burgess in particular, who would have met any modern definition of being an alcoholic.
[00:15:26] According to Philby, though he had recommended Maclean to Otto as a potential recruit he had actually warned against Guy Burgess because he was known to be a heavy drinker and incredibly sociable, even during his university days.
[00:15:42] Burgess was witty and charming, and known as a ‘man about town’, we might say, meaning someone sociable and well connected.
[00:15:50] Just as he had bragged during his time at university, Burgess, it seemed, knew everyone and mingled with high-society figures like Winston Churchill’s niece, the famous economist John Maynard Keynes, respected writers and a whole host of MI5 and MI6 spies.
[00:16:09] Talk about hiding in plain sight.
[00:16:12] But there was another reason that Philby cautioned against Burgess, that he warned Otto not to recruit him. A secret that he shared with Blunt in fact.
[00:16:23] Both men were gay, they were homosexual, and there is even a theory that the pair had been lovers at one point.
[00:16:30] Homosexuality was still a crime in Britain in the 1930s, and Philby thought that someone could use their sexuality against them, using it to blackmail them and extort secrets.
[00:16:45] But when it comes to Burgess, his main problem wasn’t his sexuality, it was his drinking.
[00:16:52] According to Soviet files released years later, Burgess was, and I'm quoting directly, "constantly under the influence of alcohol,” and considered loud and theatrical.
[00:17:04] As one MI5 official put it in 1949, “Burgess appears to be a complete alcoholic and I do not think that even in Gibraltar I have ever seen anyone put away so much hard liquor in so short a time as he did.”
[00:17:20] A loud drunk with a tendency to draw attention to himself might not strike you, or seem to be, the ideal spy.
[00:17:28] Yet it was actually Burgess’ alcoholism and overly-confident demeanour that served as his cover. People looked at him and thought “a loud and overly confident drunk, surely he would make a terrible spy!”
[00:17:43] How could a man, according to one biography known as a “smelly, scruffy, lying, promiscuous, drunken slob,” position himself in the high-ranks of the Foreign Office while being a Soviet spy?
[00:17:55] Indeed, it was precisely this cover that made him, for so many years, an incredibly effective double-agent.
[00:18:04] Hiding in plain sight, he delivered 168 documents to the Soviets in December of 1949 alone.
[00:18:12] Maclean too, according to Soviet files, was "constantly drunk," and known to be "not very good at keeping secrets.”
[00:18:20] In fact, it's believed that several of the men - certainly Burgess and Maclean and likely Philby - actually confessed that they were working for the Soviets when they were drunk.
[00:18:31] Now, it’s worth spending a little more time talking about Blunt, the oldest of the five, as his career went in a slightly different direction.
[00:18:41] After his brief stints in the army and MI5 during the war, he explored other interests and he did far less spywork than the others.
[00:18:50] Instead, he had a career in academia and became a leading art historian with expertise in French art and architecture.
[00:18:59] In his memoir, he explained that after the war he just wanted a quiet life: " In fact I was disillusioned about Marxism as well as about Russia. What I personally hoped to do was to hear no more of my Russian friends, to return to my normal academic life. Of course it was not as simple as that, because there remained the fact that I knew of the continuing activities of Guy, Donald, and Kim."
[00:19:27] In 1945 he even became Surveyor of the King's, and later the Queen’s, Pictures, which is considered one of the most prestigious jobs in the art world.
[00:19:39] This meant that he was in regular contact with the Royal Family, even staying and travelling with them, and advised the Queen on her personal art collection, all while being a Soviet spy.
[00:19:51] Like Philby leading the anti-Soviet programme, Blunt hid in plain sight: a double-agent camouflaging himself, or hiding, in the palaces of royalty.
[00:20:03] But as the expression goes, all good things must come to an end.
[00:20:08] By the late-1940s the Cambridge Five had stolen such a huge amount of information that the intelligence communities on both sides of the Atlantic began to suspect that there was a mole, that there was someone leaking information.
[00:20:23] After years of being behind, both British and American intelligence were beginning to catch up to the Cambridge Five.
[00:20:31] With the net tightening around them and many unravelling on a personal level, it all started to go wrong across the Atlantic, in the United States, where Philby and Burgess were working after the war.
[00:20:44] But would the two working in Washington D.C be able to warn their fellow spies back in Britain in time, before the authorities got to them?
[00:20:53] What would they do, once they were ‘busted’?
[00:20:56] And why did the responsibility for all of this fall on the shoulders of the erratic drunk who dropped stolen papers on the pavement, Guy Burgess?
[00:21:05] And why do many think that, at the end of the day, they actually “got away with it”?
[00:21:11] We’ll get into all that, and much more, in part three, the final part of this mini-series on the most successful spy ring in British history.
[00:21:23] Ok then, that’s it for part two.
[00:21:26] Next up it will be our final part, part three, where we’ll start to see everything unravel, secrets to be revealed, escapes to be made, and beer to be drunk at breakfast.
[00:21:37] You've been listening to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:21:42] I'm Alastair Budge, you stay safe, and I'll catch you in the next episode.
[END OF EPISODE]
[00:00:04] Hello, hello hello, and welcome to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:00:11] The show where you can listen to fascinating stories, and learn weird and wonderful things about the world at the same time as improving your English.
[00:00:20] I'm Alastair Budge, and today is part two in our mini series on the Cambridge Five: a spy ring that infiltrated the upper echelons of Britain’s political and intelligence worlds and leaked state secrets to the Soviet Union.
[00:00:35] On a quick practical note, if you haven’t listened to part one yet, please do go back and do that, as this episode leads straight on from where we left the story last time.
[00:00:46] OK then, let’s get into it and talk about the secrets and spycraft of the Cambridge Five.
[00:00:55] In a central London pub, Guy Burgess finished off his drink.
[00:01:00] The air was thick with the smell of cigarette smoke, sweat and frothy beer.
[00:01:07] Conversation rumbled on in the background, chair legs screeched on the wooden floor.
[00:01:14] As he so often was, Burgess was as drunk as a skunk, he was heavily under the influence of alcohol.
[00:01:22] But he wasn’t in the pub for social reasons, he was there on business.
[00:01:27] Spy business more specifically, and he had just established contact with one of his ‘handlers’ - a Soviet agent managing him and the Cambridge Five.
[00:01:38] Putting down his glass, Burgess stood up and made his way to the door, swaying slightly from side to side, the alcohol now well and truly gone to his head.
[00:01:49] But as he pushed the door open, he dropped his briefcase and several stolen papers spiralled onto the pavement.
[00:01:59] He rushed around to pick them up, paranoid that someone would see.
[00:02:03] Would he be caught?
[00:02:04] Would the first of the Cambridge Five be outed as a double-agent? Would the dominoes begin to tumble?
[00:02:11] A policeman came over to him. Burgess’s spine began to tingle.
[00:02:17] But the policeman didn’t seem interested in the dropped papers, or rather, his main concern was helping Burgess to pick them up and put them back in his briefcase - documents that Burgess had stolen from the British Foreign Office earlier that very day.
[00:02:34] Thanking the policeman and snapping his briefcase firmly shut, Burgess made his way down the street and disappeared around the corner.
[00:02:42] It was a close call - just another example of the sheer luck that helped the Cambridge Five get away with it for so long.
[00:02:53] As I hope you remember from part one, we left the story of the Cambridge Five just as the Second World War had started.
[00:03:01] By then Philby, Burgess, Maclean, Cairncross and Blunt had passed through Britain’s elite private schools onto Cambridge University, and were establishing themselves in the upper echelons of the British state.
[00:03:16] Like many students in the political turbulence of the 1930s, during their time at Cambridge their political views had moved far to the left.
[00:03:26] Unlike most students, however, these five men had been recruited by Soviet intelligence. They were “The Cambridge Five”.
[00:03:37] As the Second World War began, the Five were beginning to get established in their careers, in their ‘covers’.
[00:03:44] As a quick reminder, Burgess was in the Foreign Office, as was Cairncross briefly.
[00:03:50] Philby was in MI6, Blunt in MI5, and Maclean the diplomatic service.
[00:03:57] Clearly, the Soviet’s plan of ‘turning’ high-flying British graduates before they entered the ‘corridors of power’ was coming to fruition, that is, it was really working rather well.
[00:04:09] So, what did they actually do as spies?
[00:04:12] And how did it work?
[00:04:14] Well, essentially, they used their positions of power to pass vast amounts of confidential, classified information East, to the Soviet Union.
[00:04:25] If we take the case of Kim Philby, who is perhaps the most famous of the Cambridge Five, he spent most of his career working for British intelligence, working for the famous MI6.
[00:04:37] If this acronym MI6 rings any bells, yes MI6 is also the workplace of another famous British spy, a fictional spy I should add, James Bond.
[00:04:49] And if you’re wondering what the difference between MI5 and MI6 is, MI5 deals with internal, domestic, threats, and MI6 deals with foreign threats.
[00:05:02] Incredibly, Philby was so deeply embedded in MI6 that he was even made head of the Soviet counterespionage unit.
[00:05:12] That’s right: the Soviet spy was put in charge of Soviet counterespionage, the very unit investigating Soviet spies.
[00:05:22] As you might expect, this was a huge win for the Soviets, it was pretty much the best possible result.
[00:05:31] Thanks to Philby, the Soviets knew most of the names of British agents operating in Europe in the 1950s and they had a constant stream of information on British intelligence gathering.
[00:05:43] But Philby wasn’t the only one on an upward trajectory; Donald Maclean's career had also gone from strength to strength.
[00:05:52] He had become a successful diplomat in the Foreign Office, and enjoyed unlimited access to top secret military and nuclear information, which he leaked to his handlers.
[00:06:04] Guy Burgess had also enjoyed a successful career, working for MI6, the BBC, and the Foreign Office. He rubbed shoulders with spies and politicians, and just like during his time at Cambridge, he was incredibly social and seemingly knew everybody.
[00:06:21] He even mingled with the likes of Winston Churchill, who gave him a signed book.
[00:06:27] During the Second World War the quiet Anthony Blunt worked at MI5, the other arm of the British intelligence services, where he passed on information about German espionage activities in Britain.
[00:06:40] And John Cairncross, the final member and the only one of the five from a working class background, worked in the famous code-breaking facility at Bletchley Park, cracking German communication codes, stuffing papers into his trousers, and passing the information back to his handler.
[00:06:59] Now, though Philby, Maclean and Burgess are perhaps the most famous of the Five, or the most personally interesting, at least, during the war it was actually Cairncross who was doing the most effective espionage, that is, stealing the most valuable information, cracking German coded messages and passing the information back to the Soviets.
[00:07:22] He was even personally credited by the Soviets for playing a major role in its victory at the Battle of Kursk in 1943.
[00:07:30] In terms of just how much information was being passed back, the numbers are quite astounding.
[00:07:38] The information included copies, photographs, codes and original secret documents, with 1,771 coming from Blunt, 4,605 from Burgess, 4,593 from MacLean and almost 6,000 from Cairncross between 1941 and 1945.
[00:08:02] In fact, often the Cambridge Five’s information was so good, so plentiful, that the Soviets were suspicious, believing that the men’s seemingly unlimited access to British state secrets was reason not to trust them.
[00:08:16] It was simply too easy, something smelled fishy.
[00:08:21] Even Stalin feared it was too good to be true: that they were, in fact, long-term double, or triple agents sent to infiltrate Soviet intelligence.
[00:08:33] They were particularly paranoid about Philby, thinking that his public communist sympathies as a young man would have made it unlikely that he would have become so senior in MI6.
[00:08:44] How could it be possible, they thought, that someone who had been so openly communist in the past could become the head of anti-Soviet espionage?
[00:08:54] It didn’t seem to make any sense.
[00:08:57] But what they probably hadn’t appreciated was the fact that the British class system made this possible; Philby came from a good family, had gone to the right schools, he could get away with practically anything.
[00:09:12] As the Second World War ended and the Cold War began, the nature of the Cambridge Five’s work began to change.
[00:09:20] With Nazi Germany and fascism defeated, they were no longer spying for an ally but an enemy.
[00:09:27] This was, as you can imagine, an altogether different proposition.
[00:09:34] With Nazism defeated, the Cambridge Five could no longer justify their spying as part of a broader anti-fascist fight, but they were now spying directly against their homeland.
[00:09:46] And they became even more important, even more valuable, to the Soviets.
[00:09:53] As you will know, the Cold War was dominated by paranoia of nuclear war, and as they moved towards the 1950s, some of the Five began leaking secrets about Britain’s nuclear programme.
[00:10:06] Cairncross is considered by some to be the first ‘atomic spy’, and while working at Britain's Scientific Advisory Committee he leaked incredibly sensitive information about Britain’s uranium bomb capabilities.
[00:10:21] It's even thought that the Soviets used information sent to them by Cairncross to begin building their own atomic bomb.
[00:10:29] Similarly, in 1944, Maclean had been posted to the British embassy in Washington D.C where he had access to both British and American nuclear secrets. As such, he became one of Moscow’s primary sources of information on the West’s nuclear development.
[00:10:48] Just think about that for a minute.
[00:10:50] Two British citizens, experts working on building up the West’s nuclear armoury, could be responsible for giving the Soviets their own bomb… during the Cold War.
[00:11:02] It almost goes without saying, but this was some serious stuff, some pretty impressive spywork.
[00:11:09] Now, the actual spywork of the Cambridge Five is very different to any kind of spywork you might be thinking about from, let’s say, a James Bond movie.
[00:11:19] The spywork of these five men was all about information, about sharing confidential, highly classified, information with the enemy.
[00:11:27] So, how did the men actually leak their information?
[00:11:32] Having bits of paper stuffed into your trousers is one thing, but how did they actually get that information to their Soviet handlers?
[00:11:40] Clearly, it was a risky procedure. Every time a document was handed over, there was the possibility of being caught, with life-threatening consequences.
[00:11:51] Up until 1946, people were still executed in Britain for treason, and in fact it wasn’t until 1998 that the death penalty was completely abolished.
[00:12:02] It was scary stuff, so how did they do it without being caught?
[00:12:07] The Cambridge Five, and indeed all spies whether British, American, or Soviet, mostly used a system known as a ‘dead drop’ to pass on information.
[00:12:19] A dead drop is essentially when a spy leaves information - whether photos or documents or codes - in a public but hidden place, and their handler picks it up later.
[00:12:32] The idea was that the spy and handler would never be caught in the same place at the same time, though when it was absolutely necessary to speak in person these meetups were often done in busy public places so they could blend, and disappear if necessary, into the crowd.
[00:12:50] Just like when Kim Philby was first recruited in Regents Park back in 1934 and this whole story started, or when Burgess dropped his briefcase in the pub.
[00:13:01] So, where did the Cambridge Five meet their handlers and where did they do these ‘dead drops’?
[00:13:08] Well, according to Philby’s own words in a written confession from January 1963, “Our meetings always took place in outlying districts of London… and almost always in the open air.”
[00:13:22] “The regular drill consisted of synchronising watches with a neighbouring clock, appearing at the rendezvous on the dot, taking at least three taxis both to and from the rendezvous to ensure that no one followed. At each meeting a time and a place was fixed for the next one.”
[00:13:41] We’ll hear more about that confession in part three, and it's worth noting, here, that we can’t take anything the Five say too literally.
[00:13:50] For all we know, Philby’s supposed ‘confession’ could have been a ruse, a distraction, and should be taken with a ‘pinch of salt’, not completely believed.
[00:14:01] But this method of meeting in public places, being punctual and being careful not to be followed, certainly fits in with what we know of the Cambridge Five and spycraft more generally.
[00:14:13] They, of course, had to be incredibly careful not to be followed or caught out.
[00:14:19] Philby, especially, as he was heading the anti-Soviet division of MI6.
[00:14:24] If he was caught, it was possible that the entire Cambridge Five spy ring would fall apart because he had been the first to be recruited and had recommended some of the others. He could join the dots.
[00:14:38] But as time went on and the Five became more comfortable in their double-lives, being promoted and becoming firmly established in their careers, they were sure they’d never be caught.
[00:14:50] As you might imagine, this caused several of them to become complacent, to not take as much care as they should to cover their tracks.
[00:15:00] The Cambridge Five - in particular the now hopelessly alcoholic Burgess - became increasingly sloppy, careless over time.
[00:15:09] And pubs and alcohol more generally played a big role in the rise and fall of the Cambridge Five.
[00:15:16] All of the men were known to be heavy drinkers. Burgess in particular, who would have met any modern definition of being an alcoholic.
[00:15:26] According to Philby, though he had recommended Maclean to Otto as a potential recruit he had actually warned against Guy Burgess because he was known to be a heavy drinker and incredibly sociable, even during his university days.
[00:15:42] Burgess was witty and charming, and known as a ‘man about town’, we might say, meaning someone sociable and well connected.
[00:15:50] Just as he had bragged during his time at university, Burgess, it seemed, knew everyone and mingled with high-society figures like Winston Churchill’s niece, the famous economist John Maynard Keynes, respected writers and a whole host of MI5 and MI6 spies.
[00:16:09] Talk about hiding in plain sight.
[00:16:12] But there was another reason that Philby cautioned against Burgess, that he warned Otto not to recruit him. A secret that he shared with Blunt in fact.
[00:16:23] Both men were gay, they were homosexual, and there is even a theory that the pair had been lovers at one point.
[00:16:30] Homosexuality was still a crime in Britain in the 1930s, and Philby thought that someone could use their sexuality against them, using it to blackmail them and extort secrets.
[00:16:45] But when it comes to Burgess, his main problem wasn’t his sexuality, it was his drinking.
[00:16:52] According to Soviet files released years later, Burgess was, and I'm quoting directly, "constantly under the influence of alcohol,” and considered loud and theatrical.
[00:17:04] As one MI5 official put it in 1949, “Burgess appears to be a complete alcoholic and I do not think that even in Gibraltar I have ever seen anyone put away so much hard liquor in so short a time as he did.”
[00:17:20] A loud drunk with a tendency to draw attention to himself might not strike you, or seem to be, the ideal spy.
[00:17:28] Yet it was actually Burgess’ alcoholism and overly-confident demeanour that served as his cover. People looked at him and thought “a loud and overly confident drunk, surely he would make a terrible spy!”
[00:17:43] How could a man, according to one biography known as a “smelly, scruffy, lying, promiscuous, drunken slob,” position himself in the high-ranks of the Foreign Office while being a Soviet spy?
[00:17:55] Indeed, it was precisely this cover that made him, for so many years, an incredibly effective double-agent.
[00:18:04] Hiding in plain sight, he delivered 168 documents to the Soviets in December of 1949 alone.
[00:18:12] Maclean too, according to Soviet files, was "constantly drunk," and known to be "not very good at keeping secrets.”
[00:18:20] In fact, it's believed that several of the men - certainly Burgess and Maclean and likely Philby - actually confessed that they were working for the Soviets when they were drunk.
[00:18:31] Now, it’s worth spending a little more time talking about Blunt, the oldest of the five, as his career went in a slightly different direction.
[00:18:41] After his brief stints in the army and MI5 during the war, he explored other interests and he did far less spywork than the others.
[00:18:50] Instead, he had a career in academia and became a leading art historian with expertise in French art and architecture.
[00:18:59] In his memoir, he explained that after the war he just wanted a quiet life: " In fact I was disillusioned about Marxism as well as about Russia. What I personally hoped to do was to hear no more of my Russian friends, to return to my normal academic life. Of course it was not as simple as that, because there remained the fact that I knew of the continuing activities of Guy, Donald, and Kim."
[00:19:27] In 1945 he even became Surveyor of the King's, and later the Queen’s, Pictures, which is considered one of the most prestigious jobs in the art world.
[00:19:39] This meant that he was in regular contact with the Royal Family, even staying and travelling with them, and advised the Queen on her personal art collection, all while being a Soviet spy.
[00:19:51] Like Philby leading the anti-Soviet programme, Blunt hid in plain sight: a double-agent camouflaging himself, or hiding, in the palaces of royalty.
[00:20:03] But as the expression goes, all good things must come to an end.
[00:20:08] By the late-1940s the Cambridge Five had stolen such a huge amount of information that the intelligence communities on both sides of the Atlantic began to suspect that there was a mole, that there was someone leaking information.
[00:20:23] After years of being behind, both British and American intelligence were beginning to catch up to the Cambridge Five.
[00:20:31] With the net tightening around them and many unravelling on a personal level, it all started to go wrong across the Atlantic, in the United States, where Philby and Burgess were working after the war.
[00:20:44] But would the two working in Washington D.C be able to warn their fellow spies back in Britain in time, before the authorities got to them?
[00:20:53] What would they do, once they were ‘busted’?
[00:20:56] And why did the responsibility for all of this fall on the shoulders of the erratic drunk who dropped stolen papers on the pavement, Guy Burgess?
[00:21:05] And why do many think that, at the end of the day, they actually “got away with it”?
[00:21:11] We’ll get into all that, and much more, in part three, the final part of this mini-series on the most successful spy ring in British history.
[00:21:23] Ok then, that’s it for part two.
[00:21:26] Next up it will be our final part, part three, where we’ll start to see everything unravel, secrets to be revealed, escapes to be made, and beer to be drunk at breakfast.
[00:21:37] You've been listening to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:21:42] I'm Alastair Budge, you stay safe, and I'll catch you in the next episode.
[END OF EPISODE]
