WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:03.560 Welcome to this custom -tailored deep dive. If 00:00:03.560 --> 00:00:06.320 you're joining us today, well, our mission is 00:00:06.320 --> 00:00:10.279 to construct a, uh... a unique collective biography 00:00:10.279 --> 00:00:12.800 of sort of a completely infamous group. Yeah, 00:00:12.919 --> 00:00:14.880 easily one of the most damaging in modern history. 00:00:15.019 --> 00:00:18.120 Right, exactly. We are unpacking a massive stack 00:00:18.120 --> 00:00:21.539 of historical and encyclopedic sources to trace 00:00:21.539 --> 00:00:23.780 the life cycle of the Cambridge Five. Which is 00:00:23.780 --> 00:00:26.300 just a wild story from start to finish. It really 00:00:26.300 --> 00:00:28.579 is. And, you know, to start us off, I want to 00:00:28.579 --> 00:00:30.600 give you this piece of historical irony that 00:00:30.600 --> 00:00:32.740 is, I mean, it's almost too strange to believe. 00:00:32.880 --> 00:00:34.460 Oh, I know exactly whose part you're talking 00:00:34.460 --> 00:00:37.000 about. Right, so picture this. During the Second 00:00:37.000 --> 00:00:40.560 World War, You have this group of elite, highly 00:00:40.560 --> 00:00:43.539 educated British gentlemen, and they are secretly 00:00:43.539 --> 00:00:46.200 passing thousands upon thousands of classified 00:00:46.200 --> 00:00:49.000 documents to the Soviet Union. The absolute crown 00:00:49.000 --> 00:00:51.219 jewels of British intelligence. Exactly. The 00:00:51.219 --> 00:00:54.000 most sensitive stuff imaginable. But the ultimate 00:00:54.000 --> 00:00:56.640 twist here, the KGB actually suspected these 00:00:56.640 --> 00:00:59.840 men of being double agents. Which is just, it's 00:00:59.840 --> 00:01:02.429 hilarious in retrospect. It is. I mean, the Soviets 00:01:02.429 --> 00:01:05.250 just could not believe that anyone could access 00:01:05.250 --> 00:01:07.969 so many top secret British files that easily. 00:01:08.150 --> 00:01:10.469 Right. They literally tossed a huge portion of 00:01:10.469 --> 00:01:13.269 these stolen documents aside. Yeah, because their 00:01:13.269 --> 00:01:17.049 own institutional paranoia convinced them it 00:01:17.049 --> 00:01:19.870 had to be this elaborate trap. It's a staggering 00:01:19.870 --> 00:01:22.170 detail. I mean, it really tells you so much about 00:01:22.170 --> 00:01:25.209 both sides of the espionage war. You know, the 00:01:25.209 --> 00:01:27.450 Soviets were looking at this veritable gold mine 00:01:27.450 --> 00:01:30.510 of intelligence just handed over by these prominent 00:01:30.510 --> 00:01:32.909 members of the British upper class. And our immediate 00:01:32.909 --> 00:01:35.519 reaction is just total suspicion. Exactly. Total 00:01:35.519 --> 00:01:38.299 suspicion. Because no government machine, at 00:01:38.299 --> 00:01:40.840 least in their minds, could possibly be that 00:01:40.840 --> 00:01:44.120 porous, or just that poorly guarded. OK, let's 00:01:44.120 --> 00:01:46.180 unpack this. Because to really understand the 00:01:46.180 --> 00:01:48.359 story, you have to throw out pretty much everything 00:01:48.359 --> 00:01:51.739 you think you know about loyalty, espionage, 00:01:52.200 --> 00:01:54.900 and, well, how people actually navigate the corridors 00:01:54.900 --> 00:01:57.939 of power. Yeah, you really do. Today, we're tracing 00:01:57.939 --> 00:02:00.359 the spiring from their incredibly privileged 00:02:00.359 --> 00:02:03.640 academic origins, through their staggering infiltration 00:02:03.640 --> 00:02:06.519 of the British establishment, and finally, to 00:02:06.519 --> 00:02:09.379 their dramatic unmasking. The big five. Right. 00:02:09.919 --> 00:02:13.780 Anthony Blunt, Guy Burgess, Donald MacLean, Kim 00:02:13.780 --> 00:02:18.939 Philby, and John Carencross. Five men who effectively 00:02:18.939 --> 00:02:22.370 reshaped the Cold War from the inside out. And 00:02:22.370 --> 00:02:24.689 really, the only way to comprehend how they managed 00:02:24.689 --> 00:02:28.310 to execute this betrayal is, well, we have to 00:02:28.310 --> 00:02:30.629 examine the environment that forged them, right? 00:02:30.650 --> 00:02:32.330 The incubator, basically. Yeah, exactly. We have 00:02:32.330 --> 00:02:34.090 to look at the University of Cambridge in the 00:02:34.090 --> 00:02:36.710 early 1930s. Right, because context is everything 00:02:36.710 --> 00:02:39.169 here. It is. When you look at the broader landscape 00:02:39.169 --> 00:02:41.909 of that specific decade, I mean, the world was 00:02:41.909 --> 00:02:44.490 in a state of severe economic depression. The 00:02:44.490 --> 00:02:46.449 Great Depression was just debondating everything. 00:02:46.530 --> 00:02:49.479 Right. And capitalism. at least to many young 00:02:49.479 --> 00:02:51.699 intellectuals at the time, it appeared to be 00:02:51.699 --> 00:02:53.879 in its death throes. You know, millions were 00:02:53.879 --> 00:02:56.879 out of work globally. And at the exact same time 00:02:56.879 --> 00:02:59.800 on the European continent, fascism was aggressively 00:02:59.800 --> 00:03:02.580 rising in places like Germany and Italy. So that 00:03:02.580 --> 00:03:05.099 paints a picture of a massive ideological vacuum. 00:03:05.340 --> 00:03:08.139 I mean, if you're a young, highly educated person 00:03:08.139 --> 00:03:10.719 and you're watching the economic system completely 00:03:10.719 --> 00:03:13.639 collapse around you and authoritarianism is just 00:03:13.639 --> 00:03:16.979 marching across Europe. you are naturally going 00:03:16.979 --> 00:03:19.539 to look for a powerful alternative. And that 00:03:19.539 --> 00:03:21.560 alternative, you know, for many students within 00:03:21.560 --> 00:03:24.400 the walls of Cambridge, was the Marxist -Leninist 00:03:24.400 --> 00:03:28.319 ideology of Soviet communism. The ideological 00:03:28.319 --> 00:03:31.719 battle between capitalism and communism was fiercely 00:03:31.719 --> 00:03:35.139 debated. I mean, in the dining halls, the secret 00:03:35.139 --> 00:03:37.539 societies of the university. We were really hashing 00:03:37.539 --> 00:03:40.639 it out. They were. And from a purely historical 00:03:40.639 --> 00:03:43.000 standpoint, we have to recognize that to these 00:03:43.000 --> 00:03:46.039 specific young men, well, Communism didn't represent 00:03:46.039 --> 00:03:48.060 the totalitarian regime that we recognize it 00:03:48.060 --> 00:03:49.860 as today. Right. They didn't have the hindsight 00:03:49.860 --> 00:03:52.580 we have. Exactly. It appeared to them as the 00:03:52.580 --> 00:03:55.479 only viable mobilized counterweight to the spread 00:03:55.479 --> 00:03:58.219 of global fascism. They really believed they 00:03:58.219 --> 00:04:01.599 were taking a principled, necessary stand against 00:04:01.599 --> 00:04:05.469 this looming global catastrophe. Which brings 00:04:05.469 --> 00:04:08.590 a fascinating dynamic to their eventual recruitment 00:04:08.590 --> 00:04:10.550 because they didn't just, you know, independently 00:04:10.550 --> 00:04:12.789 decide one morning to start mailing state secrets 00:04:12.789 --> 00:04:15.669 to Moscow. No, not at all. There was a catalyst, 00:04:15.789 --> 00:04:18.569 someone who recognized that ideological fervor 00:04:18.569 --> 00:04:20.750 and basically weaponized it. And that was Anthony 00:04:20.750 --> 00:04:22.889 Blunt. Yeah, an older fellow at Trinity College. 00:04:22.930 --> 00:04:24.870 Right. He was slightly older. He was already 00:04:24.870 --> 00:04:27.910 established and he acted as the primary talent 00:04:27.910 --> 00:04:32.110 spotter for the NKVD, which is the Soviet intelligence 00:04:32.110 --> 00:04:35.139 apparatus that would eventually become the KGB 00:04:35.139 --> 00:04:37.680 exactly but I have to push back on the traditional 00:04:37.680 --> 00:04:41.699 Hollywood idea of like recruitment here. How 00:04:41.699 --> 00:04:44.259 do you mean? Well, when I read through our sources, 00:04:44.500 --> 00:04:46.759 Blunt's role feels so much more like a modern 00:04:46.759 --> 00:04:48.899 corporate headhunter. Oh, that's an interesting 00:04:48.899 --> 00:04:50.959 way to look at it. Right. He's like a scout for 00:04:50.959 --> 00:04:53.959 a massive tech firm just roaming an elite university 00:04:53.959 --> 00:04:56.980 looking for the brightest minds. Except instead 00:04:56.980 --> 00:04:59.819 of headhunting for a lucrative startup, Blunt 00:04:59.819 --> 00:05:02.500 was, you know, headhunting for treason. Right. 00:05:02.579 --> 00:05:05.459 Yeah. But how does someone in that position spot 00:05:05.459 --> 00:05:07.779 the potential for espionage among the British 00:05:07.779 --> 00:05:10.250 elite without exposing himself to the authorities. 00:05:10.649 --> 00:05:12.569 I mean, asking someone to betray their country 00:05:12.569 --> 00:05:15.089 isn't a casual conversation you just have over 00:05:15.089 --> 00:05:18.769 tea. No, it's not. But what's fascinating here 00:05:18.769 --> 00:05:21.949 is that the very structure of British society 00:05:21.949 --> 00:05:25.730 at the time provided his operational cover. Really? 00:05:25.769 --> 00:05:28.850 Like the class system? Exactly. The rigid class 00:05:28.850 --> 00:05:32.170 structures and the absolute unquestioning trust 00:05:32.170 --> 00:05:35.009 within the British upper classes created this 00:05:35.120 --> 00:05:37.160 perfect blind spot. Because they all went to 00:05:37.160 --> 00:05:38.939 the same schools and everything. Right. These 00:05:38.939 --> 00:05:40.819 were gentlemen who attended the right private 00:05:40.819 --> 00:05:43.939 schools. They belonged to exclusive groups like 00:05:43.939 --> 00:05:46.860 the Cambridge Apostles. They spoke with a cultivated 00:05:46.860 --> 00:05:49.759 accents of the ruling class. So they just assumed 00:05:49.759 --> 00:05:52.120 they were all on the same team. The British establishment 00:05:52.120 --> 00:05:54.660 simply could not conceive of reality where one 00:05:54.660 --> 00:05:56.680 of their own would genuinely work for a foreign 00:05:56.680 --> 00:05:59.819 communist power. It just didn't compute. Wow. 00:06:00.040 --> 00:06:02.240 So blunt could probe their political leanings, 00:06:02.600 --> 00:06:05.480 discuss Marxist theory out in the open and slowly 00:06:05.480 --> 00:06:08.399 groom them without raising any alarms to the 00:06:08.399 --> 00:06:10.860 university authorities or any passing observers. 00:06:11.199 --> 00:06:13.319 It just looked like young intellectuals having 00:06:13.319 --> 00:06:16.779 spirited harmless political debates. That is 00:06:16.779 --> 00:06:20.220 wild. And once blunt had them on the hook, the 00:06:20.220 --> 00:06:22.360 next logistical hurdle was getting them into 00:06:22.360 --> 00:06:24.759 positions where they could actually do some damage. 00:06:24.819 --> 00:06:26.959 Right. They needed jobs. And because of those 00:06:26.959 --> 00:06:29.660 exact same pedigrees you just mentioned, The 00:06:29.660 --> 00:06:32.019 doors to the British government essentially just 00:06:32.019 --> 00:06:35.259 swung wide open for them. Their ascent into the 00:06:35.259 --> 00:06:38.519 highest echelons of state power is just mind 00:06:38.519 --> 00:06:40.600 boggling when you look at the timeline. It really 00:06:40.600 --> 00:06:43.000 is. I mean, their career trajectories perfectly 00:06:43.000 --> 00:06:46.019 illustrate how deeply embedded they became. Walk 00:06:46.019 --> 00:06:49.199 us through it, because it's crazy. Sure. So Donald 00:06:49.199 --> 00:06:51.870 McLean went into the Foreign Office. which placed 00:06:51.870 --> 00:06:54.129 him right at the heart of diplomatic secrets. 00:06:54.870 --> 00:06:57.790 Guy Burgess navigated through the BBC, and eventually 00:06:57.790 --> 00:07:00.290 landed in the Foreign Office as well. Okay. Kim 00:07:00.290 --> 00:07:02.529 Philby ascended to become a senior officer in 00:07:02.529 --> 00:07:05.550 MI6. And then John Carencross, who was often 00:07:05.550 --> 00:07:08.149 referred to as the Fifth Man, he navigated through 00:07:08.149 --> 00:07:10.670 the Treasury, the Cabinet Office, and even Bletchley 00:07:10.670 --> 00:07:14.009 Park. Wait, Bletchley Park? As in the absolute 00:07:14.009 --> 00:07:16.389 epicenter of British code -breaking during the 00:07:16.389 --> 00:07:19.449 war? The very same. That is insane. And to make 00:07:19.449 --> 00:07:21.230 sure we're completely clear on the scope of this, 00:07:21.329 --> 00:07:24.290 we really need to distinguish between the intelligence 00:07:24.290 --> 00:07:26.529 agencies they infiltrated. Yeah, that's an important 00:07:26.529 --> 00:07:29.089 distinction. Right. Because Philby was in MI6, 00:07:29.389 --> 00:07:31.569 which is Britain's foreign intelligence service. 00:07:32.129 --> 00:07:35.050 His job was to run spies overseas and gather 00:07:35.050 --> 00:07:37.889 intelligence abroad. And the deep irony here 00:07:37.889 --> 00:07:40.209 is that Philby was eventually put in charge of 00:07:40.209 --> 00:07:43.670 the anti -Soviet section of MI6. You really can't 00:07:43.670 --> 00:07:46.829 make this up. No. The Soviets literally had their 00:07:46.829 --> 00:07:49.220 own man running the department designed to catch 00:07:49.220 --> 00:07:52.240 them. Right. And meanwhile... Anthony Blunt, 00:07:52.399 --> 00:07:55.120 the recruiter, he ended up in MI5. Which is the 00:07:55.120 --> 00:07:58.120 domestic security service. Yeah. MI5's mandate 00:07:58.120 --> 00:08:01.139 is to catch spies operating within the United 00:08:01.139 --> 00:08:03.519 Kingdom. So you have one member of the ring gathering 00:08:03.519 --> 00:08:05.639 foreign intelligence and another member sitting 00:08:05.639 --> 00:08:08.519 in the domestic agency whose sole job is to hunt 00:08:08.519 --> 00:08:11.379 down the very spy ring he helped create. It's 00:08:11.379 --> 00:08:13.920 the ultimate invisible shield. It really is. 00:08:14.139 --> 00:08:16.660 But my absolute favorite detail about Blunt. 00:08:16.680 --> 00:08:18.560 Well, if you can have a favorite detail about 00:08:18.560 --> 00:08:21.360 a colossal national security failure. is that 00:08:21.360 --> 00:08:24.060 he was also appointed as the surveyor of the 00:08:24.060 --> 00:08:26.899 King's pictures. Oh, yes. The art collection. 00:08:27.000 --> 00:08:29.920 He was literally curating the royal art collection, 00:08:30.379 --> 00:08:33.440 just walking the halls of Buckingham Palace while 00:08:33.440 --> 00:08:37.200 actively passing intelligence to Moscow. It perfectly 00:08:37.200 --> 00:08:39.419 illustrates the duality of their existence, doesn't 00:08:39.419 --> 00:08:42.399 it? They were completely insulated by the establishment 00:08:42.399 --> 00:08:46.460 they were dismantling, and the volume of intelligence 00:08:46.460 --> 00:08:49.289 they compromised is just staggering. Give us 00:08:49.289 --> 00:08:51.470 the numbers, because they are huge. Well, from 00:08:51.470 --> 00:08:56.549 1941 to 1945 alone, combined, Blunt, Burgess, 00:08:56.909 --> 00:08:59.570 McLean, and Cairncross handed over more than 00:08:59.570 --> 00:09:02.549 16 ,000 highly classified documents to their 00:09:02.549 --> 00:09:05.470 Soviet handlers. Over 16 ,000 documents in four 00:09:05.470 --> 00:09:07.669 years. Yeah. I mean, that requires an explanation 00:09:07.669 --> 00:09:09.549 of the mechanics. How on earth do you physically 00:09:09.549 --> 00:09:11.750 move that much paper? They couldn't just, you 00:09:11.750 --> 00:09:13.470 know, walk out of the foreign office with filing 00:09:13.470 --> 00:09:15.909 cabinets. Oh, no. Our sources indicate they were 00:09:15.909 --> 00:09:18.210 constantly stuffing briefcases with files at 00:09:18.210 --> 00:09:20.129 the end of the day, taking them to clandestine 00:09:20.129 --> 00:09:22.970 meetings or spending hours photographing documents 00:09:22.970 --> 00:09:25.730 with those tiny little minox cameras late at 00:09:25.730 --> 00:09:27.970 night. Right. And then returning the files before 00:09:27.970 --> 00:09:31.129 morning. Exactly. It was industrial scale theft 00:09:31.129 --> 00:09:33.549 happening right under the noses of British security. 00:09:33.870 --> 00:09:36.090 But here's where it gets really interesting for 00:09:36.090 --> 00:09:38.610 me. OK. What's that? Well, when you think of 00:09:38.610 --> 00:09:41.110 a spy operating at that volume, you think of 00:09:41.110 --> 00:09:44.990 a flawless. highly disciplined professional like 00:09:44.990 --> 00:09:47.750 James Bond or something. But the reality of this 00:09:47.750 --> 00:09:51.309 spy ring, especially guys like Burgess and McLean, 00:09:51.629 --> 00:09:54.710 was just completely chaotic. Oh, they were walking 00:09:54.710 --> 00:09:57.049 disasters in their personal lives. Completely. 00:09:57.450 --> 00:10:00.049 The KGB controllers actually frequently complained 00:10:00.049 --> 00:10:02.450 about their behavior. They viewed Burgess and 00:10:02.450 --> 00:10:06.460 McLean as hopeless, unreliable drunks. There 00:10:06.460 --> 00:10:09.179 is a specifically documented incident where Guy 00:10:09.179 --> 00:10:11.919 Burgess was leaving a pub, highly intoxicated, 00:10:12.279 --> 00:10:15.500 and he literally dropped top secret foreign office 00:10:15.500 --> 00:10:18.220 files onto the pavement. Out in public? He just 00:10:18.220 --> 00:10:20.120 dropped them in the street. And McLean was known 00:10:20.120 --> 00:10:22.799 to go on these wild drinking binges and openly 00:10:22.799 --> 00:10:25.720 blab about his secret Soviet affiliations to 00:10:25.720 --> 00:10:27.399 his brother and his friends. Yeah, they were 00:10:27.399 --> 00:10:30.379 breaking every single rule of basic tradecraft. 00:10:30.549 --> 00:10:33.370 Which forces us to ask how they survived for 00:10:33.370 --> 00:10:35.889 so long? I mean, how did no one catch on? Well, 00:10:35.889 --> 00:10:38.490 they survived because the institutional prejudice 00:10:38.490 --> 00:10:41.690 of the British intelligence services meant that 00:10:41.690 --> 00:10:44.090 investigators were looking for spies who fit 00:10:44.090 --> 00:10:47.490 a specific profile. In that era, the security 00:10:47.490 --> 00:10:50.870 services assumed a Soviet spy would be, you know, 00:10:51.570 --> 00:10:54.129 a foreigner, a working -class agitator, or someone 00:10:54.129 --> 00:10:56.309 openly affiliated with radical labor unions. 00:10:56.450 --> 00:10:58.590 So they weren't looking inward. Exactly. They 00:10:58.590 --> 00:11:01.570 did not have the cognitive framework to suspect 00:11:01.570 --> 00:11:04.129 people from their own elite social circles. I 00:11:04.129 --> 00:11:06.110 mean, think about it. If a working class quirk 00:11:06.110 --> 00:11:08.649 dropped a secret file outside a pub, he would 00:11:08.649 --> 00:11:10.669 be detained and interrogated immediately. Oh, 00:11:10.730 --> 00:11:13.090 absolutely. But when Guy Burgess did it, his 00:11:13.090 --> 00:11:15.169 colleagues just brushed it off as an eccentric 00:11:15.169 --> 00:11:17.389 gentleman having a bit too much sherry. That 00:11:17.389 --> 00:11:19.450 affinity bias, that tendency to trust people 00:11:19.450 --> 00:11:21.230 who share our background and social markers, 00:11:21.850 --> 00:11:24.110 it just blinded the entire security apparatus. 00:11:24.350 --> 00:11:27.269 That blind spot was incredibly effective. But 00:11:27.269 --> 00:11:30.090 eventually, the sheer volume of their theft created 00:11:30.090 --> 00:11:32.929 a trail. And that trail leads us to the turning 00:11:32.929 --> 00:11:35.549 point in our collective biography, which is the 00:11:35.549 --> 00:11:38.009 defection in the summer of 1951. Right. The House 00:11:38.009 --> 00:11:41.509 of Cards starts to fall. Exactly. But the unraveling 00:11:41.509 --> 00:11:44.309 didn't actually start in London. It started across 00:11:44.309 --> 00:11:46.769 the Atlantic in the United States with something 00:11:46.769 --> 00:11:50.049 called the Venona Project. Yes. The Venona Project 00:11:50.049 --> 00:11:53.210 was a highly classified joint effort by American 00:11:53.210 --> 00:11:57.070 and British intelligence to decrypt Soviet diplomatic 00:11:57.070 --> 00:11:59.629 and intelligence communications. Okay. And how 00:11:59.629 --> 00:12:01.610 did they manage that? Well, during the immense 00:12:01.610 --> 00:12:04.149 pressure of the Second World War, Soviet code 00:12:04.149 --> 00:12:07.110 clerks made a critical cryptographic error. They 00:12:07.110 --> 00:12:10.210 were using one -time pads, which are meant to 00:12:10.210 --> 00:12:12.269 be unbreakable because each encryption key is 00:12:12.269 --> 00:12:14.669 used only once and then destroyed. OK, hence 00:12:14.669 --> 00:12:17.570 the name one time pad. Exactly. However, due 00:12:17.570 --> 00:12:20.149 to wartime shortages and just massive logistical 00:12:20.149 --> 00:12:22.649 strain, the Soviets occasionally reuse pages 00:12:22.649 --> 00:12:25.570 from these pads. Oh, wow. Which gave the code 00:12:25.570 --> 00:12:27.750 breakers at Bonona the tiny wedge they needed 00:12:27.750 --> 00:12:29.789 to start recognizing patterns and decrypting 00:12:29.789 --> 00:12:33.490 the messages. Precisely. And through those painstakingly 00:12:33.490 --> 00:12:36.230 decrypted messages, Allied intelligence realized 00:12:36.230 --> 00:12:39.169 there was a highly placed mole operating inside 00:12:39.169 --> 00:12:41.210 the British embassy in Washington. And what did 00:12:41.210 --> 00:12:43.450 they call him? The communications referred to 00:12:43.450 --> 00:12:46.190 this mole by the code name Homer. Right. And 00:12:46.190 --> 00:12:48.549 sitting right there in Washington, working as 00:12:48.549 --> 00:12:51.970 the MI6 liaison to American intelligence, looking 00:12:51.970 --> 00:12:53.769 over the shoulders of the people hunting this 00:12:53.769 --> 00:12:56.669 mall, is Kim Philby. Yeah, the irony is thick. 00:12:56.789 --> 00:12:59.690 He is reading the Venona decrypts in real time. 00:12:59.809 --> 00:13:03.509 He is. And Philby looks at the evidence, you 00:13:03.509 --> 00:13:05.330 know, the dates of the leaked information, the 00:13:05.330 --> 00:13:07.649 locations involved, and he quickly deduces that 00:13:07.649 --> 00:13:10.649 Homer is his old Cambridge associate, Donald 00:13:10.649 --> 00:13:13.970 McClain. The mechanical problem Philby faces 00:13:13.970 --> 00:13:16.850 here is intense. I mean, he knows the net is 00:13:16.850 --> 00:13:19.169 closing around McLean. And if McLean gets interrogated 00:13:19.169 --> 00:13:21.230 by British security, he might crack under the 00:13:21.230 --> 00:13:23.070 pressure. And then the entire Cambridge network 00:13:23.070 --> 00:13:25.309 comes tumbling down. Exactly. So Philby has to 00:13:25.309 --> 00:13:28.330 warn him. But Philby is in Washington, and McLean 00:13:28.330 --> 00:13:31.509 is in London. He can't just use secure diplomatic 00:13:31.509 --> 00:13:33.710 channels. And he can't make a phone call without 00:13:33.710 --> 00:13:36.350 risking interception. So he uses Guy Burgess. 00:13:36.730 --> 00:13:39.679 Right. Burgess was also stationed in the United 00:13:39.679 --> 00:13:42.000 States at the time. So to bypass the communication 00:13:42.000 --> 00:13:45.360 blockade, Burgess deliberately engaged in just 00:13:45.360 --> 00:13:48.019 outrageously bad behavior. Worse than dropping 00:13:48.019 --> 00:13:50.700 files outside a pub. Oh, definitely. Racking 00:13:50.700 --> 00:13:53.360 up speeding tickets, causing diplomatic embarrassments, 00:13:53.980 --> 00:13:56.200 just acting totally out of control until the 00:13:56.200 --> 00:13:58.399 British embassy fired him. and recalled him to 00:13:58.399 --> 00:14:01.379 London. So it was entirely a fabricated excuse 00:14:01.379 --> 00:14:03.720 to get Burgess physically across the Atlantic 00:14:03.720 --> 00:14:06.200 so he could warn McLean in person. Exactly. It 00:14:06.200 --> 00:14:09.179 was all a ruse. That is incredibly clever. So 00:14:09.179 --> 00:14:12.299 in the summer of 1951, Burgess delivers the warning. 00:14:12.799 --> 00:14:15.059 And just as the authorities are finally preparing 00:14:15.059 --> 00:14:18.919 to confront McLean, both McLean and Burgess completely 00:14:18.919 --> 00:14:20.659 vanish. They just slip right out of country. 00:14:20.779 --> 00:14:22.960 On a ferry, leaving their families and colleagues 00:14:22.960 --> 00:14:25.840 entirely in the dark. For years, their whereabouts 00:14:25.840 --> 00:14:28.340 are a complete mystery to the public until they 00:14:28.340 --> 00:14:31.740 resurface in 1956 at a press conference in Moscow 00:14:31.740 --> 00:14:34.299 after living covertly in a closed Russian city 00:14:34.299 --> 00:14:37.919 called Kubyshev. But how did one single decryption 00:14:37.919 --> 00:14:40.720 in Washington manage to completely blow apart 00:14:40.720 --> 00:14:43.759 a spy ring that had successfully operated in 00:14:43.759 --> 00:14:47.080 the shadows for nearly two decades? Well, if 00:14:47.080 --> 00:14:50.120 we connect this to the bigger picture, the defection 00:14:50.120 --> 00:14:53.200 reveals the profound vulnerability of their operation. 00:14:53.879 --> 00:14:56.659 You know, the very interconnectedness that made 00:14:56.659 --> 00:14:59.860 the group so successful in their espionage became 00:14:59.860 --> 00:15:02.519 the instrument of their downfall. How so? They 00:15:02.519 --> 00:15:05.039 were a tight -knit network. They shared information, 00:15:05.240 --> 00:15:08.019 covered for each other, and lived together. But 00:15:08.019 --> 00:15:10.080 that meant they were inextricably linked in the 00:15:10.080 --> 00:15:12.179 eyes of an investigation. Because Philby and 00:15:12.179 --> 00:15:14.519 Burgess were notoriously close. I mean, they 00:15:14.519 --> 00:15:16.580 even shared a house in Washington. Right. So 00:15:16.580 --> 00:15:18.500 by trying to protect the network, they illuminated 00:15:18.500 --> 00:15:21.990 the entire web. When Burgess unexpectedly defected 00:15:21.990 --> 00:15:24.850 alongside McLean, the intelligence services suddenly 00:15:24.850 --> 00:15:26.789 had to look at Philby. They couldn't ignore him 00:15:26.789 --> 00:15:29.590 anymore. No. They had to ask how a known Soviet 00:15:29.590 --> 00:15:32.389 spy was living in a house of their top anti -Soviet 00:15:32.389 --> 00:15:35.070 intelligence officer. Their shared social circle, 00:15:35.090 --> 00:15:37.470 which had protected them for decades, suddenly 00:15:37.470 --> 00:15:40.429 became a roadmap for investigators. Which brings 00:15:40.429 --> 00:15:43.110 us to the aftermath, the long shadows of the 00:15:43.110 --> 00:15:45.549 story, and the incredible lengths the British 00:15:45.549 --> 00:15:47.769 government went to in order to cover it all up. 00:15:47.990 --> 00:15:50.370 And they really tried. They really did. Because 00:15:50.370 --> 00:15:53.389 after Burgess and McLean disappear, a massive 00:15:53.389 --> 00:15:56.440 spotlight hits Philby. But he doesn't immediately 00:15:56.440 --> 00:15:58.820 go down, does he? No. Philby was a master of 00:15:58.820 --> 00:16:02.379 deception. He endured intense interrogation by 00:16:02.379 --> 00:16:05.220 MI5. But because the evidence from Venona was 00:16:05.220 --> 00:16:07.500 highly classified and couldn't be used in a public 00:16:07.500 --> 00:16:10.440 court, there just wasn't enough hard, actionable 00:16:10.440 --> 00:16:13.519 evidence to legally prosecute him. That's frustrating. 00:16:13.820 --> 00:16:17.480 Very. He was forced to resign from MI6. But amazingly, 00:16:17.779 --> 00:16:20.620 in 1955, the British Foreign Secretary, Harold 00:16:20.620 --> 00:16:23.159 McMillan, stood up in Parliament and publicly 00:16:23.159 --> 00:16:26.279 cleared Philby of all espionage charges. He officially 00:16:26.279 --> 00:16:28.659 clears a man who is responsible for the deaths 00:16:28.659 --> 00:16:32.240 of numerous allied agents. It's wild. So Philby 00:16:32.240 --> 00:16:34.659 eventually moves to Beirut to work as a journalist. 00:16:34.840 --> 00:16:36.559 And in another display of that lingering class 00:16:36.559 --> 00:16:39.120 trust, MI6 actually starts using him again. He 00:16:39.120 --> 00:16:42.100 is a freelancer. Right, to file freelance intelligence 00:16:42.100 --> 00:16:44.759 reports from the Middle East. But his luck finally 00:16:44.759 --> 00:16:47.980 runs out in 1961 when a Soviet defector named 00:16:47.980 --> 00:16:52.100 Anatoly Golitsyn provides fresh, undeniable information 00:16:52.100 --> 00:16:54.740 pointing directly at Philby. The net was finally 00:16:54.740 --> 00:16:59.480 closing. Exactly. So by 1963, MI6 sends an officer 00:16:59.480 --> 00:17:02.580 to confront him in Beirut. Philby confesses, 00:17:02.600 --> 00:17:04.920 and shortly after, fearing he is about to be 00:17:04.920 --> 00:17:07.880 abducted or arrested, he slips away on a Soviet 00:17:07.880 --> 00:17:10.150 freighter bound for Russia. His arrival in the 00:17:10.150 --> 00:17:12.390 Soviet Union, however, was a tragedy of his own 00:17:12.390 --> 00:17:14.410 making. See, I'm genuinely confused by something 00:17:14.410 --> 00:17:17.150 here. Philby gave the Soviets his entire life. 00:17:17.369 --> 00:17:19.910 He handed them the keys to the kingdom for decades. 00:17:20.329 --> 00:17:22.269 And yet the sources say they put him under house 00:17:22.269 --> 00:17:24.490 arrest when he arrived in Moscow. Why on earth 00:17:24.490 --> 00:17:26.390 would they treat their star asset like a prisoner? 00:17:26.549 --> 00:17:28.750 It goes back to that institutional paranoia we 00:17:28.750 --> 00:17:31.269 discussed at the very beginning. The KGB could 00:17:31.269 --> 00:17:33.769 not fathom that an elite British intelligence 00:17:33.769 --> 00:17:36.430 officer would genuinely defect. They still thought 00:17:36.430 --> 00:17:39.519 it was a trick. Yes, they were terrified he was 00:17:39.519 --> 00:17:42.400 actually a British triple agent sent to infiltrate 00:17:42.400 --> 00:17:45.519 their ranks or that he might become disillusioned 00:17:45.519 --> 00:17:48.140 and try to defect back to the West. So they gave 00:17:48.140 --> 00:17:50.539 him no real rank. They ignored his advice and 00:17:50.539 --> 00:17:53.539 they kept him isolated. He lived a pretty miserable 00:17:53.539 --> 00:17:55.980 existence within the very system he had sacrificed 00:17:55.980 --> 00:17:59.380 everything to serve. Wow. Talk about a bleak 00:17:59.380 --> 00:18:01.559 ending. So that's three of them gone to Moscow. 00:18:01.839 --> 00:18:04.059 But we still have Anthony Blunt and John Cairncross 00:18:04.059 --> 00:18:06.359 sitting right there in Britain. Yes. And this 00:18:06.359 --> 00:18:08.880 is where the story shifts from a tale of espionage 00:18:08.880 --> 00:18:11.839 to a tale of systemic institutional self -preservation. 00:18:12.500 --> 00:18:16.440 In 1964, both Blunt and Cairncross secretly confessed 00:18:16.440 --> 00:18:19.839 to MI5. Secretly. Secretly. Blunt was named by 00:18:19.839 --> 00:18:21.720 an American he had tried to recruit back at Cambridge. 00:18:22.079 --> 00:18:23.920 And Cairncross was confronted with new evidence. 00:18:24.200 --> 00:18:26.019 But they weren't put on trial. They weren't publicly 00:18:26.019 --> 00:18:27.970 disgraced. I have another point of confusion 00:18:27.970 --> 00:18:30.549 here. How did the intelligence agencies legally 00:18:30.549 --> 00:18:33.250 justify granting immunity to high level traders 00:18:33.250 --> 00:18:35.490 without Parliament or the public knowing? Well, 00:18:35.609 --> 00:18:37.329 the intelligence agencies were functioning with 00:18:37.329 --> 00:18:39.569 an extraordinary level of autonomy back then, 00:18:39.890 --> 00:18:42.069 largely outside normal governmental oversight. 00:18:42.809 --> 00:18:45.450 They argued internally that extracting a full 00:18:45.450 --> 00:18:47.809 confession and learning exactly what secrets 00:18:47.809 --> 00:18:50.369 had been compromised was more valuable to national 00:18:50.369 --> 00:18:52.829 security than a public trial. But there was a 00:18:52.829 --> 00:18:56.119 secondary motive. Of course. The unstated motivation 00:18:56.119 --> 00:18:58.599 was preventing a catastrophic public relations 00:18:58.599 --> 00:19:03.140 disaster. It makes me think of a major bank discovering 00:19:03.140 --> 00:19:07.160 a massive internal embezzlement scheme orchestrated 00:19:07.160 --> 00:19:09.599 by its own board of directors. You know, instead 00:19:09.599 --> 00:19:11.880 of calling the police and triggering a panic 00:19:11.880 --> 00:19:13.799 that causes shareholders to pull all their money 00:19:13.799 --> 00:19:17.119 out, the bank quietly fires the directors, covers 00:19:17.119 --> 00:19:20.119 the losses, and pretends everything is fine just 00:19:20.119 --> 00:19:22.500 to preserve confidence in the institution. That's 00:19:22.500 --> 00:19:25.099 a perfect analogy. The British intelligence agencies 00:19:25.099 --> 00:19:28.460 were so terrified of the public humiliation of 00:19:28.460 --> 00:19:30.400 admitting to their allies that they had been 00:19:30.400 --> 00:19:32.880 comprehensively bested by their own elite that 00:19:32.880 --> 00:19:35.339 they chose to protect the traitors rather than 00:19:35.339 --> 00:19:38.039 face public accountability. And the damage of 00:19:38.039 --> 00:19:41.200 that coverup extended far beyond mere public 00:19:41.200 --> 00:19:44.359 relations. It deeply fractured the trust between 00:19:44.359 --> 00:19:46.680 Western allies. I can imagine the Americans were 00:19:46.680 --> 00:19:49.680 not happy. Not at all. The United States intelligence 00:19:49.680 --> 00:19:52.000 community watched as Britain repeatedly failed 00:19:52.000 --> 00:19:55.359 to identify spies in their midst and then watched 00:19:55.359 --> 00:19:58.779 as they quietly buried the aftermath. The cover 00:19:58.779 --> 00:20:01.039 -up did as much damage to the relationship between 00:20:01.039 --> 00:20:04.420 US and UK intelligence as the actual stolen documents 00:20:04.420 --> 00:20:08.099 did. It wasn't until 1979, 15 years after his 00:20:08.099 --> 00:20:10.660 secret confession, that an investigative journalist 00:20:10.660 --> 00:20:13.200 named Andrew Boyle wrote a book that heavily 00:20:13.200 --> 00:20:15.980 hinted at Anthony Blunt's identity. which finally 00:20:15.980 --> 00:20:18.519 forced their hand. Right. That publication forced 00:20:18.519 --> 00:20:20.500 Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher to stand up 00:20:20.500 --> 00:20:22.980 in parliament and finally admit that the former 00:20:22.980 --> 00:20:25.519 surveyor of the Queen's pictures was a confessed 00:20:25.519 --> 00:20:28.940 Soviet spy. And Karen Cross publicly confessed 00:20:28.940 --> 00:20:31.220 to a journalist later that same year. Just an 00:20:31.220 --> 00:20:33.160 unbelievable timeline. And this wasn't just a 00:20:33.160 --> 00:20:36.059 1960s problem either. Even recently, with archive 00:20:36.059 --> 00:20:38.900 releases in 2015 and 2020, we've learned that 00:20:38.900 --> 00:20:41.000 files regarding the Cambridge Five were heavily 00:20:41.000 --> 00:20:44.019 redacted or withheld entirely for decades. Yeah, 00:20:44.019 --> 00:20:45.740 they really kept a lid on it. The government 00:20:45.740 --> 00:20:48.039 intentionally conducted campaigns to keep things 00:20:48.039 --> 00:20:51.380 confidential simply to minimize political embarrassment 00:20:51.380 --> 00:20:54.279 long after the national security threat had passed. 00:20:54.759 --> 00:20:57.240 Like sweeping dirt under a rug until the rug 00:20:57.240 --> 00:20:59.119 becomes a mountain that everyone in the room 00:20:59.119 --> 00:21:01.980 just has to step over. It demonstrates how deeply 00:21:01.980 --> 00:21:05.599 the sting of this spy ring penetrated the British 00:21:05.599 --> 00:21:08.180 establishment. It wasn't just a loss of state 00:21:08.180 --> 00:21:11.160 secrets. It was a devastating permanent blow 00:21:11.160 --> 00:21:14.170 to their self image. So what does this all mean? 00:21:14.569 --> 00:21:17.289 We've traced these five men from the fierce ideological 00:21:17.289 --> 00:21:20.150 debates of Cambridge in the 1930s, through their 00:21:20.150 --> 00:21:23.250 infiltration of MI6 in the Foreign Office, all 00:21:23.250 --> 00:21:25.390 the way to midnight defections, house arrest 00:21:25.390 --> 00:21:28.009 in Moscow, and decades of government cover -ups. 00:21:28.269 --> 00:21:30.640 A massive journey. Yeah. We set out today to 00:21:30.640 --> 00:21:32.539 build a biography of this group, and what we 00:21:32.539 --> 00:21:34.339 found is that the story of the Cambridge Five 00:21:34.339 --> 00:21:37.140 isn't just about stolen documents or broken codes. 00:21:37.519 --> 00:21:40.779 It is the story of a catastrophic betrayal by 00:21:40.779 --> 00:21:43.440 the very people who were built, educated, and 00:21:43.440 --> 00:21:46.539 explicitly trusted to protect the establishment. 00:21:46.880 --> 00:21:48.539 This raises an important question, doesn't it? 00:21:48.640 --> 00:21:51.339 I think so, yeah. When we analyze the 1930s and 00:21:51.339 --> 00:21:54.579 40s, it is incredibly easy to mock the British 00:21:54.579 --> 00:21:57.259 authorities for their blindness. You know, it's 00:21:57.259 --> 00:21:59.849 easy to say they were foolish to trust like Burgess 00:21:59.849 --> 00:22:01.589 and Philby simply because they went to the right 00:22:01.589 --> 00:22:03.710 schools and spoke with the right accents. Right. 00:22:04.190 --> 00:22:07.569 But affinity bias, the subconscious tendency 00:22:07.569 --> 00:22:11.509 to trust people who look and sound like us, who 00:22:11.509 --> 00:22:14.509 share our cultural markers, is a fundamental 00:22:14.509 --> 00:22:17.309 human flaw that transcends that specific era. 00:22:17.549 --> 00:22:19.490 It really is. So if you are listening to this 00:22:19.490 --> 00:22:21.410 right now, we want to leave you with this final 00:22:21.410 --> 00:22:24.099 thought to mull over. If the ultimate threat 00:22:24.099 --> 00:22:26.160 to national security back then came from the 00:22:26.160 --> 00:22:28.960 most privileged, educated, and trusted echelon 00:22:28.960 --> 00:22:31.460 of society, the people everyone assumed were 00:22:31.460 --> 00:22:34.220 inherently safe, how might our current assumptions 00:22:34.220 --> 00:22:36.759 about who belongs in the corridors of power be 00:22:36.759 --> 00:22:38.839 blinding us to the insider threats of today? 00:22:39.059 --> 00:22:41.380 That's a sobering thought. We might not be looking 00:22:41.380 --> 00:22:44.019 for aristocratic art curators passing microfilms 00:22:44.019 --> 00:22:46.720 to the KGB anymore, but we are always vulnerable 00:22:46.720 --> 00:22:49.960 to our own blind spots. Like the Soviets staring 00:22:49.960 --> 00:22:52.900 at 16 ,000 documents and thinking it couldn't 00:22:52.900 --> 00:22:55.339 possibly be real. Sometimes the most devastating 00:22:55.339 --> 00:22:57.259 breaches happen precisely because they are just 00:22:57.259 --> 00:22:58.339 too easy to believe.