John Cairncross - As A Spy

As A Spy

Cairncross admitted to spying in 1951 after MI5 found papers in Guy Burgess' flat with a handwritten note from him, after Burgess' flight to Moscow. Some believe that he may have supplied information about the Western atomic weapons programme, the Manhattan Project, to assist the Soviet nuclear programme. It would have been surprising, though, if he had clearance to any useful engineering information, or that he would have understood it. He was never prosecuted, however, which later led to charges that the government engaged in a conspiracy to cover up his role. Indeed, the identity of the infamous 'fifth man' in the Cambridge Five remained a mystery outside intelligence circles until 1990, when KGB defector Oleg Gordievsky confirmed Cairncross publicly. Cairncross actually worked independently of the other Four and did not share their upper-middle-class backgrounds or tastes. Although he knew Anthony Blunt at Cambridge and Guy Burgess in the Foreign Office (and had a personal dislike of both of them), he claimed not to have been aware that they or any of the others were also passing secrets to the Russians.

Between 1941 and 1945, Cairncross supplied the Soviets with 5,832 documents, according to Russian archives. In 1944, Cairncross joined MI6, the foreign intelligence service. In Section V, the counter-intelligence section, Cairncross produced under the direction of Kim Philby an order of battle of the SS. Later Cairncross would suggest that he was unaware of Philby's connections with the Russians.

Yuri Modin, the Russian MGB (later KGB) control in London claims that Cairncross gave him details of nuclear arms to be stationed with NATO in West Germany. He gives no date for this message. But Cairncross was at the Ministry of Supply in 1951 and NATO was established in April 1949. However, there was no such plan at this time and it was only much later that NATO obtained tactical nuclear weapons under US control in Germany. This appears to have been a disinformation exercise.