Too Secret Too Long, page 22
Cambridge was a particularly fruitful area for recruitment in the 1930s because there were several influential dons, like Maurice Dobb, who were openly inducing their students to join the Communist Party or, at least, to embrace Marxism.[18] I can find no hard evidence that these dons were in touch with Soviet Intelligence, but the K.G.B. was quick to latch on to the potentialities. The chain seems to have been recruitment to communism and Marxism through the influence of dons and fellow-undergraduates, recruitment to working for ‘peace’ through the Comintern by fellow-students already in the net, and commitment, unwitting at first, to service to Soviet Intelligence through contact with professional Soviet officers. The danger and excitement of clandestine work was stressed in this last stage and, apparently, had additional attraction for many ardent young men anxious to help ‘the cause’.
This, assuredly, was the way that Blunt was recruited, though he could contribute little at first. He appeared in the K.G.B. traffic under the code-name ‘Johnson’.[19] The recruits were never to know their code-names but those who had assisted in the recruitment of others knew that their conquests were spies – a situation unusual in conspiratorial practice where spy-masters prefer to run their agents separately so that one cannot betray another.
When Blunt was interrogated by MI5 he was able to describe how he had been involved in the recruitment of Maclean to the K.G.B. Some time before the spring of 1935 Philby’s controller, after reference to Moscow, gave him instructions to pass on to Burgess with the purpose of recruiting Maclean to Soviet Intelligence without delay. In March 1934 Maclean, an open communist playing a leading part in anti-Government marches, had written a letter to Granta, the university magazine, urging that something had to be done about ‘the capitalist, dictatorial character of the University’.[20] This, together with Burgess’s talent-spotting reports, demonstrated Maclean’s susceptibility and the Russians may have become concerned that he was exposing his beliefs too forcefully for him to gain entry to a Whitehall establishment unless checked, as he could be if recruited. Burgess brought Blunt into the act by asking him to invite Maclean to stay with him, with Burgess being a chance fellow-guest. The recruitment, along the usual lines, went through without much difficulty and Maclean became the fourth member of a ring of spies all known to each other. When Blunt made a statement to The Times following his public exposure in 1979 he said that he did not learn that Philby and Maclean were spies until during the war. That was either a senile lapse of memory or, more likely, a lie.
The recruitment of Maclean bore fruit for the K.G.B. with remarkable rapidity. He sat the examination for the Diplomatic Service in 1935, no doubt on the advice of his Soviet controller or, at least, with his enthusiastic support. According to Foreign Office records Maclean was granted a certificate as a Third Secretary in October 1935.[21] Like all ministries the Foreign Office is responsible for its own security and for such vetting of entrants as it considers necessary. In those days no positive vetting system existed. While there must have been several people already in the Foreign Office who knew of Maclean’s open communism at Cambridge, the fact that he was the son of a former Cabinet minister would have been sufficient qualification as regards reliability. In September 1938 Maclean was posted to the Embassy in Paris, no doubt also being assigned as a K.G.B. operative in that city. His eventual K.G.B. code-name was ‘Homer’, though he may have had a different cryptonym in his early days.[22]
The insertion of Maclean into the Foreign Office was a major step, though not necessarily the first, in a determined Soviet operation to penetrate the main British institutions. According to Michael Straight, a Cambridge contemporary of Maclean, students who were prepared to burrow in Moscow’s interests in their places of professional work were already known as ‘moles’.[23] Their purpose was not only to supply secrets but to influence policy and so undermine the foundations of capitalism in a process which, in communist circles, has become known as ‘the long march through the institutions’. When it was realized in Moscow that communism would make little impact in Britain either through the ballot box or through revolution, the ‘long march’ through the Whitehall departments, the unions, education, the media and even the Church, was conceived and is still in progress.
The full extent to which the Cambridge spy-ring influenced policy is uncertain and should, one day, be the subject of academic investigation. There is a belief among certain former officers of MI5 that Maclean, Burgess and those who assisted them, like Dennis Proctor, carried some responsibility for the outbreak of the Second World War, or at least its timing, because of their influence on Stalin’s decision to make a non-aggression pact with Hitler. When the pact was being signed British officials were still in Moscow hoping to conclude a triple alliance of Britain, the Soviet Union and France which should have effectively curbed Hitler in 1939 because he lacked the capability to fight on two fronts. It is suspected that the British spies in Whitehall assured Stalin, through their K.G.B. controllers, that the Foreign Office was not to be trusted and had no real intention of concluding an effective treaty and were playing for time to re-arm. Once the Soviet Union became an ally, in 1941, advice to the Foreign Office given by people like Philby, Blunt and especially Maclean may have carried considerable weight and assisted Stalin in his highly successful bid to win the peace.
On 10 June 1940 Maclean married Melinda Marling, a petite American four years younger than himself, who was already pregnant by him. They were married hurriedly in Paris and with other refugees escaped from the German advance into France, reaching Britain about three weeks later. There is no doubt that Donald and Melinda Maclean were a devoted couple and it is my belief that this mutual love and dependence was a much more important factor in the circumstances of the sensational defection than has hitherto been realized.
Meanwhile, there had been little that Burgess could do, apart from helping to recruit others. He had suffered a nervous breakdown in his third year at Cambridge and his degree examination had, in consequence, been disappointing.[24] Still an open communist, he returned to Cambridge as a post-graduate student in 1934 with the object of securing a fellowship. He was soon ordered to appear to turn against communism and to leave Cambridge to insinuate himself into some important organization. Though disappointed, Burgess accepted the instructions and moved to London where he started supplying MI6 with scraps of information about the Nazis on a freelance basis. This ingratiated him with secret service officers and through it he even managed to meet Winston Churchill. In 1936 he fulfilled a K.G.B. requirement by joining the B.B.C., remaining there until 1938 and working in the Talks Department, where he came to know many M.P.s who were keen to appear in a programme called Week in Westminster.
Two years later he graduated, in K.G.B. terms, by insinuating himself into Section D, a branch of the War Office set up for training saboteurs for the war with Germany which seemed inevitable. He achieved this through social contact with the man running it and thereby became an effective ‘mole’.
Blunt, too, found his clandestine activities limited by his circumstances at Cambridge but following the departure of Burgess he took on the role of recruiter. Among those whom he drew into Soviet espionage were a rich young American called Michael Whitney Straight and Leo Long, a linguist of working-class origin. Both were members of The Apostles. In 1936 Blunt widened his interests by becoming art critic for the Spectator and, in the following year, left Cambridge to take up an art appointment with the Warburg Institute. He was then aged thirty.
Having steadily enhanced his reputation as an art historian and connoisseur, Blunt left the Warburg Institute in 1939 to become Reader in the History of Art at London University and Deputy Director of the Courtauld Institute of Art in Portman Square. He was allotted a room at the Institute and was able to use it in the interests of the K.G.B., as I shall relate.
At the outbreak of war Blunt volunteered for army service and was commissioned. He remained in touch with his Soviet controller who suggested that he should apply to attend a five-week military intelligence course at Minley Manor, Camberley, in Surrey. His application was accepted, for Blunt was fluent in German as well as in French and Italian, but the Commandant, Brigadier John Shearer, received information from the War Office that Blunt had a Marxist past and he was therefore judged to be a security risk. His application was rejected ‘by the same post’, as Blunt recalled it.[25] It has been assumed that the War Office’s evidence about Blunt’s link with communism was obtained from MI5 but I have been told by MI5 officers involved in investigations into Blunt that there was no such information on Blunt’s file. So if the information ever existed there it was removed by some friend or fellow-spy. Alternatively, the War Office may have been better informed on that issue than MI5.
In spite of this experience Blunt gained entry to the Intelligence Corps and went with the British Expeditionary Force to France as a field security officer, eventually being evacuated from Dunkirk. According to Lady Llewelyn-Davies, Blunt was popular with his men. He saw all his troops safely aboard a ship bound for England and remained behind, sheltering under a railway wagon, while he destroyed secret papers. Apparently his sergeant was so concerned about him that he returned to France on a destroyer and brought Blunt out.[26]
Once back in Britain Blunt was put under pressure from his controller to secure entry to an intelligence organization of a more fruitful kind, preferably MI5. Such a target should have been impossible for a person with a communist background, but Blunt succeeded with the help of a friend in MI5. The man who was instrumental in getting Blunt in was a wealthy art dealer and artist called Tomas Harris, his name indicating his half-Spanish origin. Harris had been recruited to the Iberian section of MI5 because of his linguistic ability and wide knowledge of Spain and Portugal, which were both heavily infiltrated by German agents. While there is no firm evidence that Harris was a Soviet agent, and Blunt was later to insist that he was not, Harris was fully aware of Blunt’s Marxist views and support for the Soviet Union, which was then a virtual ally of Hitler.[27]
Within only five years of being recruited to work for ‘peace’ Blunt had achieved the top priority target set for him by the K.G.B. – membership of MI5, the Security Service, as a trusted officer right inside headquarters, then at 57 St James’s Street.
Philby’s path to a similar position in the heart of the sister service, MI6, was to be different but equally rapid. The K.G.B. had decided to send him to Spain to infiltrate the Franco side of the Civil War there and to service other Soviet agents. After intelligence training in Paris he reached Spain early in 1937 under cover of being a freelance journalist and with instructions to get as close to the hub of the Franco administration as possible. The operation was, of course, financed by the K.G.B. To improve his cover, which was thin, Philby began sending articles to The Times. He hoped to become its accredited correspondent, which would provide a better explanation of how he was managing for money, if questioned; it would also fulfil one of the priority targets laid down by his controller and, with The Times cachet, greatly improve his status. The Times hired him and he quickly secured the confidence of some of the Nationalist commanders in Spain, and was thereby able to supply useful information to Moscow which had heavy stakes in the other side. He eventually left the country in August 1939 having, meanwhile, parted from his too overtly communist wife, Lizi, who went to live in Paris.[28]
Philby continued his career as a war correspondent for The Times in France and was evacuated from Dunkirk following the French collapse. His controller then instructed him to seek an opening in the intelligence or security services, which were still expanding. First, he applied for a post at the Government Code and Cipher School but was rejected.[29] He then decided to try the branch of the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) which had been set up to conduct sabotage operations abroad and which already had Burgess on its staff. Burgess arranged an interview for Philby, for whom he vouched, and in June 1940 another dedicated Soviet spy was eased into the organization, for if any check was made with MI5 it came back with the negative ‘N.R.A.’ – Nothing Recorded Against. No attempt was made to check out his communist wife, Lizi, to whom he was still married, though separated.
When the sabotage organization was disbanded Burgess became redundant. Philby, who looked entirely reliable, moved to a new sabotage training establishment set up as part of the newly formed Special Operations Executive (S.O.E.) at Beaulieu where, given that he was a former journalist, he specialized in the preparation of propaganda.
Though Philby had done well to gain admission to any branch of the Secret Intelligence Service, number two on the K.G.B.’s priority list, he was in something of a backwater as far as secret information was concerned, so his controller urged him to secure a transfer to a department in or near headquarters. Once again Tomas Harris was the effective instrument. He introduced Philby to an officer in MI5 called Dick Brooman-White who was head of MI5’s Iberian section. MI6, which was responsible for espionage and counter-intelligence operations abroad, also needed an Iberian section, and because of Philby’s experience in Spain Harris suggested him as being highly suitable. By the autumn of 1941, with Brooman-White’s support, Philby was taken on the strength of MI6 with little or no check on his background.
Soon after Burgess had been made redundant in the sabotage division of MI6 he was recruited as a wartime supernumerary by MI5, his well-known homosexuality being considered no bar.[30] One of Burgess’s most valuable qualifications as an agent-runner and K.G.B. spy was his continuing access to men and women of distinction. It was through his friendship with Sir Joseph Ball, who was a Director of the Conservative Research Department and wielded influence behind the scenes in Whitehall, that MI5 recruited him in good faith. Ball had served in MI5 briefly after the First World War and was involved in the reorganization of it early in the Second World War. It so happened that the agent in MI5 who was to control Burgess was his old friend and fellow-spy Blunt.[31]
As will be described more fully in Chapter 36, the main MI5 target allotted to Burgess was penetration of the London embassies of the neutral countries such as Sweden and Switzerland with a view to discovering their intentions and activities. He was also required to recruit and run agents to penetrate the pro-Nazi embassies such as Spain’s. This was clearly of assistance to Philby in his work, for both Britain and the Soviet Union in the Iberian section of MI6.
The wartime careers of the four original members of the Cambridge Ring, Philby, Burgess, Blunt and Maclean, testify to the extraordinary ability of Soviet Intelligence to select and train young spies who at the time had nothing but potential but who managed to obtain positions in the most secret departments of state where they secured information of the highest value. In this astonishing achievement – for, as will be seen, others were selected and manipulated with similar success – Soviet Intelligence was greatly assisted by an appalling degree of inefficiency on the part of those responsible for preventing penetration of the secret departments and for detecting the activities of any who might have slipped through the defences. MI6 and the Foreign Office respectively were mainly responsible for failing to counter the activities of Philby and Maclean, but Hollis’s section of MI5, which was charged with countering all Soviet spies during the war, must carry some of the blame. It was totally to blame for failing to counter the depredations of Blunt and Burgess inside MI5. Hollis’s section was also responsible for failing to take any action against the activities of Philby’s wife, Lizi, who had returned to London in 1938, remaining there throughout the war and serving as an ardent agent of Soviet Intelligence. Between the departure of ‘Otto’ in 1938 and the arrival of a replacement from the Soviet Union in 1940, the Ring of Four and others were serviced by Lizi, another refugee who repaid Britain’s hospitality with treachery.[32] She passed information, usually documents, to another courier called Edith Tudor Hart, who gave it to a Communist Party official who had overt reasons for visiting the Soviet Embassy where it reached the K.G.B. ‘resident’.[33]
Philby and Hollis were closely associated in their counter-intelligence activities, being counterparts in the sister services. Hollis appeared to trust Philby, which suggests that he was insulated from the views of both the Director-General, Sir David Petrie, and his deputy, Guy Liddell. Sir John Masterman, who ran MI5’s superbly successful Double Cross operation, has recorded that during the war he was warned by both of them to treat Philby with caution and release as little information to him as possible.[34]
In view of Hollis’s association with Philby, he and his section were at fault for failing to discover that Philby had been married to a Soviet agent, unless a blind eye was turned. An indication that the information had been known but ignored came from MI5 early in 1946 when Philby, who had been cohabiting with a Miss Aileen Furse, who had borne him three children and was about to give birth to a fourth, decided that he should marry her. Having decided to remain in MI6 after the war to serve the K.G.B. there, Philby was keen to secure promotion, possibly even to the top job, and some degree of respectability might be helpful. As he explained to Blunt, he had delayed securing the necessary divorce from Lizi because this might alert the security authorities to the fact that he had been married to a hardened pro-Soviet communist whose activities could not stand serious investigation.[35] By that time Lizi had left Britain to live with a well-known communist in East Berlin, so Philby asked his MI6 chief for leave to discuss the divorce with her in neutral France.[36] Part of his purpose was to disarm his chief by a show of frankness while suggesting that his marriage to Lizi had been just a youthful folly.
