The National Archives has released declassified MI5 files, including the confession of a civil servant who worked in the Cabinet Office, Treasury and Foreign Office in the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s – and spied for the Soviet Union at the same time.
John Cairncross – known as a member of the famous Cambridge Five spy ring – confessed to having been a spy for the Soviet Union from 1936 to 1951 in an interview conducted in 1964 in the US by MI5 officer Arthur Martin.
The National Archives published the details of his confession – and other Cambridge Five spies: Anthony Blunt, Harold "Kim" Philby, Donald Maclean and Guy Burgess – this week in a release of 100 previously top secret MI5 files.
Cairncross's confession
Cairncross confessed on 16 February 1964 in Cleveland, Ohio – where Cairncross was working as a lecturer in romance languages – and is detailed in notes made by Martin, which he sent to his superiors, as well as the FBI and the CIA.
Cairncross admits that he was recruited by the Russian Intelligence Service in 1936, soon after he had joined the Foreign Office.
The confession details how Cairncross studied at the University of Cambridge from 1934 to 1936, where he “began to move in left-wing political circles” and took part in discussions with prominent left-wingers including James Klugmann, who later recruited him as a Soviet spy.
Cairncross says he did not know Burgess or Maclean at this time, while he “knew of Anthony Blunt but did not move in his circle”.
Cairncross – who came first in both the home civil service and Foreign Office and diplomatic service entry exam competitions in 1936 – tells Martin that he was recruited by Klugmann shortly after joining the Foreign Office in the American Department in London in 1936.
Cairncross was introduced to his first Russian contact, “a small, burly figure called Otto”. They met once a month until 1938 “in conspiratorial fashion”, with Cairncross initially asked to give oral accounts of the work he was doing and the papers he saw. Later he handed over documents which Otto copied and returned. During these two years, Cairncross was transferred to the Western Department of the Foreign Office, where he met Donald Maclean for the first time, but he says he had “no suspicion” that Maclean was engaged in the same espionage.
During his time at the Foreign Office, Cairncross was described as showing “little sign of sound judgement or ability to conform to office routine” and his work as “slipshod, inaccurate and untidy”, according to another of the documents released by The National Archives.
Cairncross transferred to the Treasury in 1938. At around the same time, Otto disappeared without warning. Cairncross tells Martin the move to HMT was a “relief… because he no longer had access to interesting papers” and says Otto had “kept him up to the mark” by threatening his exposure. “The ideological urge which had led [Cairncross] to accept Klugmann’s offer in the first place had given way to fear,” Martin writes.
Following Otto’s disappearance, Cairncross says he received no contact from the Russians for several months and that he began to hope that they had dropped him – until Burgess, who he had “seen a certain amount of” socially since leaving Cambridge, contacted him. Burgess revealed his own involvement with the Russians, as well as his knowledge of Cairncross’s participation, and said Cairncross would now report to him. Their meetings were “overt and no documents were passed” – Cairncross wrote reports for Burgess, one of which was later found among Burgess’s possessions, leading to the suspicion that Cairncross was a Soviet spy.
These meetings continued until the early days of the war, by which time Cairncross had been transferred to the private office of the then-chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, Lord Maurice Hankey (who, incidentally, had been the first cabinet secretary, before going on to become a minister).
Cairncross says he was at this time transferred to a new Soviet controller called “Robert”. They met monthly until 1943 or 1944, covering Cairncross's time as Hankey’s private secretary (1940-1942), working at the Government Code & Cypher School at Bletchley Park as a German translator, and part of his time in MI6.
Cairncross says it was during his time at Bletchley Park that he provided information that “produced for the first time real enthusiasm from his controller”. He says he did not pass copies of decrypts but wrote summaries of their contents and that Robert in particular asked for “anything which revealed German intentions on the Eastern front”. Cairncross also tells Martin this was the first and only time he accepted a sum of money from his controller. In a follow-up interview on 1 March, he “shamefacedly” tells Martin he received £100 for information on a German attack on a Russian town (this influenced the Battle of Kursk).
Robert was “displeased” by his move to Section V of MI6 in 1943 and uninterested in his work, Cairncross says, adding that he passed on no documents in this period but continued to provide summaries of his work. At this point, Cairncross met Philby for the first time but says he “saw little of him” and “neither then nor thereafter” had any idea that Philby was also working for the Russians.
Cairncross had several further controllers during his time at MI6 and says the Russians continued to show “little interest in his product”. He then returned to the Treasury in 1945, where he dealt with largely unclassified work and was assigned to another controller.
Cairncross says he tried to leave the civil service in 1948 and enter industry, “primarily to break the hold which the Russians had over him”, and received an offer from a textile firm. However, “after informing the Treasury of his intention to resign, the offer fell through”. Cairncross says he believes the Treasury was responsible for this.
He was then transferred to the Ministry of Supply and soon afterwards assigned to his last Russian controller. Meetings with the “big and burly man who spoke with an American accent” were rare – no more than three or four per year – according to Cairncross, and the last of these happened shortly after Burgess and Maclean defected to the Soviet Union.
By this point, Cairncross had been interviewed by the security service and was “frightened that he had been compromised”. His controller assured him that he had “nothing to worry about” and that their meetings could go on as before and they arranged to meet a month later, but the controller did not show.
Cairncross married in 1952. Soon after was summoned to the War Office to explain the document in his hand-writing found among Burgess’s possession. He denied he had knowingly written it for the Russians and resigned from the civil service. Now with a wife, no job and no money, he sought help from the Russians, who he had not been in contact with since the no-show. Cairncross called an emergency meeting with his controller through long-standing arrangement where he could ask for a meeting at a prescribed location the following Monday by making a chalk mark on a street pavement near Westbourne Park tube station, but again his controller did not appear. He did not try again.
Shortly afterwards, Cairncross and his wife left the UK for Italy, where he worked as a writer and translator. He later worked at the Economic Commission for Asia and Far East in Bangkok and for the Pakistan Government. He says he was never contacted by the Russians again.
In his notes from this interview, Martin says he did not “feel any doubt” over whether Cairncross had told the whole truth as “he is not a good liar”.
“It seemed to me that as the interview unfolded I could watch the weight lifting from his mind,” he adds.
In the second interview, Cairncross tells Martin that Klugmann recruited him by saying “I want to put you in touch with one of our friends who will keep you in touch with things”. Cairncross says he realised he was putting himself in a “very delicate situation but he did not at the time realise that it was the prelude to spying”. He also says he accepted Klugmann’s invite “of his own free will and that Klugmann exerted no pressure on him and had “no hold over him other than his knowledge that the had fairly deep Communist sympathies”.
Cairncross also said in the second interview that during his time working for Lord Hankey, he handed over some Cabinet papers but did not remember the subject matter.
Cairncross was never prosecuted for his espionage activities, with his confession to Martin deemed inadmissible and Cairncross, in the second interview with Martin, refusing a proposal to return to the UK to provide a statement under caution. The government decided deporting would not be viable as Cairncross could choose to be deported to another country than the UK. He moved to Rome in 1967, where he worked for the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation as a translator. During this time, journalist Barrie Penrose got a public confession out of him.
Cairncross’s status as a member of the ‘Cambridge Five’ was confirmed in 1990 by KGB defector Oleg Gordievsky, although Cairncross has always denied being part of the spy ring.
Cairncross died on 8 October 1995. His autobiography, The Enigma Spy, was published in 1997.
The stories of the Cambridge Five will feature in a forthcoming major exhibition at The National Archives, MI5: Official Secrets, which opens in the spring and is the first time MI5’s secret history will go on display to the public.