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Subject: Anthony Blunt's Soviet spying 'a mistake'
Written By: Philip Eno on 07/23/09 at 1:15 am
Full report on BBC News Online
The memoirs of former spy Anthony Blunt reveal how he regarded passing British secrets to Communist Russia as the "biggest mistake of my life".
He supplied hundreds of secret documents to the Soviets while a wartime agent for MI5.
Blunt was part of the infamous Cambridge spy ring, with Kim Philby, Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean.
His manuscript, at the British Library in London, says a "naive" desire to help Moscow beat fascism motivated him.
Blunt wrote the 30,000-word document after former prime minister Margaret Thatcher exposed his treachery in 1979.
However, Burgess - who had already begun working for Stalin's Comintern - persuaded him not to join the party but instead to work undercover.
"What I did not realise at the time is that I was so naive politically that I was not justified in committing myself to any political action of this kind," says Blunt.
"The atmosphere in Cambridge was so intense, the enthusiasm for any anti-fascist activity was so great, that I made the biggest mistake of my life."
Blunt's memoirs reveal little about his espionage activities during World War II, during which he passed on top-secret material decoded from German radio traffic.
He claims he later became disillusioned with Moscow, wishing only to "return to my normal academic life".
However, he says his knowledge of the others in the ring made this impossible.
By 1951, Philby had become head of the counter Soviet section of the Secret Intelligence Service, MI6.
The revelations had led to a man who had worked as Surveyor of the Queen's Pictures being stripped of his knighthood.
His version of events was given to the library in 1984, the year after his death, on condition that it was not displayed for 25 years.
In it, he describes his recruitment by Moscow: "I found that Cambridge had been hit by Marxism and that most of my friends among my junior contemporaries - including Guy Burgess - had either joined the Communist Party or were at least very close to it politically."
Subject: Re: Anthony Blunt's Soviet spying 'a mistake'
Written By: Philip Eno on 07/23/09 at 1:16 am
Full report on BBC News Online
The memoirs of former spy Anthony Blunt reveal how he regarded passing British secrets to Communist Russia as the "biggest mistake of my life".
He supplied hundreds of secret documents to the Soviets while a wartime agent for MI5.
Blunt was part of the infamous Cambridge spy ring, with Kim Philby, Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean.
His manuscript, at the British Library in London, says a "naive" desire to help Moscow beat fascism motivated him.
Blunt wrote the 30,000-word document after former prime minister Margaret Thatcher exposed his treachery in 1979.
However, Burgess - who had already begun working for Stalin's Comintern - persuaded him not to join the party but instead to work undercover.
"What I did not realise at the time is that I was so naive politically that I was not justified in committing myself to any political action of this kind," says Blunt.
"The atmosphere in Cambridge was so intense, the enthusiasm for any anti-fascist activity was so great, that I made the biggest mistake of my life."
Blunt's memoirs reveal little about his espionage activities during World War II, during which he passed on top-secret material decoded from German radio traffic.
He claims he later became disillusioned with Moscow, wishing only to "return to my normal academic life".
However, he says his knowledge of the others in the ring made this impossible.
By 1951, Philby had become head of the counter Soviet section of the Secret Intelligence Service, MI6.
The revelations had led to a man who had worked as Surveyor of the Queen's Pictures being stripped of his knighthood.
His version of events was given to the library in 1984, the year after his death, on condition that it was not displayed for 25 years.
In it, he describes his recruitment by Moscow: "I found that Cambridge had been hit by Marxism and that most of my friends among my junior contemporaries - including Guy Burgess - had either joined the Communist Party or were at least very close to it politically."