Cambridge Five

The Cambridge Five (also sometimes known as the Cambridge Four) was a ring of British spies who passed information to the Soviet Union during World War II and into the early 1950s. It has been suggested they may also have been responsible for passing Soviet disinformation to the Nazis. Proven members included Kim Philby, Donald Duart Maclean, Guy Burgess and Anthony Blunt. Several other persons have been suggested as probably or possibly belonging.

"The Fifth Man"

Due to Golitsin's information (or was it disinformation, or even just incomplete?), speculation raged for many years as to the identity of "the Fifth Man". It is now widely accepted that the spy ring probably had more than five members, possibly many more, since three other persons are known to have confessed, several more were nominated in a confession, and strong circumstantial cases have been made against still others. The extent to which the following suspects can be regarded as being members of "the Ring", of just a list of Soviet spies, depends on the degree to which they knew each other and cooperated with one another. Except for Philby, Burgess and Maclean, this degree of cooperation remains largely unknown.

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• John Cairncross (1913 - 1995), confessed in 1951; this was publicly revealed in 1990.
• Sir Roger Hollis (at the time Director of MI5) accused by Arthur Martin (head of MI5's Soviet counter-intelligence section at the time), Peter Wright (MI5 officer assigned to investigate Hollis) and Chapman Pincher (investigative journalist who produced several exposés of failures in British counter-intelligence).
• Guy Liddell (1892 - 1958), a close friend of Burgess and Rees, was accused of being a spy by an anonymous informer in 1949. This was eventually written off as Soviet disinformation, but permanently harmed his career. He was accused specifically of being a member of the Cambridge Spy Ring in the death-bed confession of Goronwy Rees in 1979.
• Goronwy Rees (1909 - 1979), a close friend of Burgess and Liddell, admitted under interrogation in 1951 that he had known Burgess was a spy; then made a death-bed confession of being one himself in 1979, also accusing Guy Liddell of having been a member of the Ring.
• Victor Rothschild (1910 to 1990) (better known as the third Baron Rothschild), accused by Roland Perry, in his book, The Fifth Man (Roland Perry, The Fifth Man, Pan Books London 1994). Rothschild was a member, along with Blunt and Burgess, of the Cambridge Apostles.
• Accused by Anthony Blunt during his confession in 1964:
• Peter Ashby
• John Cairncross
• Leo Long
• Brian Symon