From ‘Warlords, the heart of conflict 1939 – 1945’ by Simon Berthon and Joanna Potts.
Page 20
In his diary, declassified in 2002, Guy Liddell, the wartime head of MI5’s B Division, admitted ‘There is no doubt that the Russians are better in the matter of espionage than any other country in the world.’ Evidence to support this came from the defection in January 1940 of Walter Krivitsky, the former head of Soviet Military Intelligence in Western Europe, who became the most significant defector yet from the elite of the Soviet intelligence services. Krivitsky gave tantalising clues pointing to a network of agents embedded deep in both the British government and the intelligence services. Though he did not know their identities, he was talking about the Cambridge Five, headed by the notorious trio of Burgess, Maclean and Philby.
What if he had known one identities of one or more of the five?
Page 20
In his diary, declassified in 2002, Guy Liddell, the wartime head of MI5’s B Division, admitted ‘There is no doubt that the Russians are better in the matter of espionage than any other country in the world.’ Evidence to support this came from the defection in January 1940 of Walter Krivitsky, the former head of Soviet Military Intelligence in Western Europe, who became the most significant defector yet from the elite of the Soviet intelligence services. Krivitsky gave tantalising clues pointing to a network of agents embedded deep in both the British government and the intelligence services. Though he did not know their identities, he was talking about the Cambridge Five, headed by the notorious trio of Burgess, Maclean and Philby.
What if he had known one identities of one or more of the five?