Talk:Cambridge Five/Archive 1

Untitled
Several anonyms have been busily adding their pet theories about the identity of "the Fifth Man". Please don't do that! As the article was already trying to explain, the preponderance of current evidence is that the ring contained far more than five members, and Golitsin's "Ring of Five" phrase was a red herring. Furthermore no-one has actually been convicted of it. It would be more appropriate to add a list of suspected members, each with a reason for inclusion, and perhaps noting (where appropriate) any specific public accusations, such as being the subject of a book. Securiger 00:53, 13 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Regarding (in "Known Members" beginning): "Investigation of Philby found several suspicious matters but nothing for which he could be prosecuted, and he was forced to resign." Resign when, and from what post (both nominal and actual, since he was intel)? According to Kim_Philby, he was asked to resign in '51 but it was not until 1955 that "the Foreign Service dismissed him because of his association with Burgess." This must have been an interesting four years, if it's really true he retained MI6 employment even though he knew he was under scrutiny. What's the story here? One or two sentences would solve this article's omission and probably add some interesting spice. Marquess 04:02, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

Gorsky
Perhaps some mention of Anatoly Gorsky, London Rezident 1940-1944 who managed the group should be made should be made; also it's time to do a Gorsky biopage. nobs 18:50, 28 August 2005 (UTC)

Look into Dr. Arnold Deutsch as the principal recruiter. Another member - John Cairncross as the original fifth man.

Gay?
Wasn't the ring homosexual? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 209.206.165.32 (talk) 04:55, 20 January 2007 (UTC).
 * Blunt and Burgess were homosexuals. (Burgess, in fact, was rumoured to have a variety of unorthodox peccadilloes.) The minor agent John Vassall (who was not part of "the Ring" per se) was also homosexual. However, there is little or no evidence any of the others were. Maclean may have been bisexual but the evidence is sparse and he was married (his wife joined him in Russia after he defected), while Philby married four times and also had several heterosexual affairs (including with Maclean's wife.) Michael Straight married twice, Rothschild married twice and produced seven children. Hollis was married and had at least one child, and was rumoured to have had a heterosexual affair in Shanghai. I have never heard anything one way or the other about Cairncross' sexuality. -- Securiger 13:42, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

The WikiP "fairy" has not messed-up this article, yet, with the usual line "...homosexuality was illegal in the UK in those days ...". — Preceding unsigned comment added by 220.244.72.216 (talk) 07:34, 16 December 2012 (UTC)

What was the impact?
The article seems to talk exclusively about who they were, and not what they did. What was the impact? Article should state: Did they inform the Soviets about British nuclear capability throughout the late 1950s; or did they keep the Soviets informed about changes to the Tube schedules? Tempshill (talk) 04:58, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

The main actual impact, I believe, was the USSR getting to know about the Trinity project. The British input here related to critical masses of U and Pu, although its unknown if any of the Five had access to these types of details. Such knowledge would have allowed the USSR to bypass all of the lengthy and expensive experiments to determine the critical values. The USSR Joe-1 test was in August 1949, over 4yrs after Stalin was informed of the Trinity tests, by Truman. It seems unlikely that any technical details were given to the USSR.

Potential unknown impacts related to details of the D-Day invasion, and afterwards. Stalin had strong motivations for D-Day to fail; in which case, he would have owned Europe by himself. D-Day details could also have leaked back to Germany. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 220.244.72.216 (talk) 07:49, 16 December 2012 (UTC)

Mitrokhin reference
The KGB defector Vasily Mitrokhin has in his notes much more information about this subject, including how they were recruited and by whom - Dr. Arnold Deutsch. The notes were used as source for "The Mitrokhin Archive - The KGB in Europe and the West" by Cristopher Andrew and Vasily Mitrokhin. Emilpop (talk) 11:35, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

No Nazis in the body
I have reverted an edit with this summary because the editor seems to have misunderstood the line "may have passed Soviet disinformation to the Nazis" to imply that there were Nazis in the body (presumably that of the Cambridge Five, although that is not clear). The suggestion that they passed such information could do with sourcing, though. Britmax (talk) 09:22, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

The usual suspects
Wasn't Dick Ellis also accused? (Or am I confusing it with Hollis?)  TREKphiler   any time you're ready, Uhura  19:13, 22 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Ellis was interrogated by Peter Wright well after the war for his activities round about the outbreak of war; while Ellis disclosed some information, Wright was unable to break him, according to his account in Spycatcher. Hollis was believed by Wright to have been a fit as the Fifth Man, but was interviewed after his retirement and this proved inconclusive. Hushpuckena (talk) 06:00, 6 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Thx.  TREKphiler   any time you're ready, Uhura  08:00, 6 August 2012 (UTC)

VENONA diagram
Does it merit mention the Sovs had penetrated VENONA (Weisband?)? And knew the U.S. & Britain was looking for spies from the very start? TREKphiler  any time you're ready, Uhura  03:12, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

Out of date
The article is completely out of date I'm afraid. Most of the facts are known now. The sources are obselete also. —Preceding unsigned comment added by KestevenBullet (talk • contribs) 09:58, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

Agreed, this article needs significant updating, citing and improving. I'll make a start.(Lewvalton (talk) 21:15, 22 June 2011 (UTC)).

John Caircross Admitted He Was he was "Fifth Fifth Man" in 1991, Denied It In His (1987?) Memoirs, But Named as Atom Bomb Spy by KGB Documents.
(from The Seattle Times 10/9/1995 as retrieved 1/27/2013: http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=19951009&slug=2145983) "Mr. Cairncross, who worked for the British government for 16 years, admitted in 1991 that he was the "fifth man" in a ring of Russian spies. Newspapers had speculated about a fifth man since four others were revealed to have been spying for Moscow." Cairncross died on October 8, 1995, according to that article.

However, "Cairncross denied being the Fifth Man, describing himself grandly as `The Enigma Spy' in an autobiography published last year two years after his death." (http://www.independent.ie/world-news/spy-gave-secrets-of-atom-bomb-to-russians-456966.html 1/12/1998, retrieved 1/27/2013, which gives the source as "Daily Telegraph, London") More importantly, as stated by the leading line of the article, "John Cairncross, the Fifth Man in the Cambridge spy ring, gave the Russians the atomic bomb, according to KGB documents."

I would like to update the list of "the Five" to name Cairncros as "the Fifth" but do not want to contradict the 2004 entry on this talk page about how there are a number of spies that fit this description, since that entry is after the 1998 article. Hopefully, someone more familiar with Wikipedia editing can take the references I give here and do the right thing with them, or I will return to do it after I learn them. -- James McQueston

Blunt as recruiter
It seems from these articles about Blunt's memoir (1 and 2) that it was Burgess who convinced Blunt to join the spy ring rather than the other way around. I am going to update the end of the second paragraph to reflect this. -Martinman (talk) 20:31, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

Allies
These articles need to make it clear that the Soviet Union was Britain's ally during WW2. These guys were not passing information to an enemy. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 193.113.57.165 (talk) 18:22, 22 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Plus one for adding this information, and what the Cambridge Five actually did Jonpatterns (talk) 13:51, 19 November 2013 (UTC)

Peter Wright allegations
If the article continues to include a list of accused "5th men", it should include Roger Hollis in the list. The academic consensus today is that Wright's allegation against Hollis was false, and the article should say so. But the accuracy of Wright's information about other then-secret information (e.g. Venona) still makes Wright a formidable reference in this shadowy subject area. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.43.43.48 (talk) 05:42, 19 December 2013 (UTC)


 * The Wikipedia article on Roger Hollis explores the allegations against Hollis.


 * Reading it, it seems the consensus is a bit less firm than Cambridge alumni would like. It seems there is evidence, but there was never a proper investigation.  I agree Hollis should be mentioned.  But I think the truth or fallacy Hollis's involvement will remain a mystery because the 'powers that were' prevented a proper timely and thorough investigation.  That is the thing with powers preventing investigations.  It prevents conviction, but it also prevents exoneration.  So we're left with a mystery. "Unproven allegations" might be a possible term for it and then a link to the article on Hollis. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Hollis  50.71.210.133 (talk) 04:38, 28 February 2014 (UTC)

Name change
I think the name should be changed to "Cambridge spies" because this is a more popular description and because it is dubious that they were five in number.--Jack Upland (talk) 02:14, 14 October 2014 (UTC)

What happened to the Talk Page?
What happened to the Talk Page?--Jack Upland (talk) 06:56, 8 September 2015 (UTC)
 * The auto-archiving was set to archive everything, that is, it it doesn't leave any conversations behind. Someone just moved this talk page and all the archives got left behind. So the archives are here. Richard-of-Earth (talk) 18:44, 8 September 2015 (UTC)
 * The archives have now been moved as well. Richard-of-Earth (talk) 19:38, 14 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Thanks.--Jack Upland (talk) 10:09, 15 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Oh, well, it wasn't me, I was just commenting that they had been moved. User:Anthony Appleyard moved them. Richard-of-Earth (talk) 18:42, 15 September 2015 (UTC)

Ring?
The name of the page has recently been changed from "Cambridge Five" to "Cambridge Spy Ring". I think plain "Cambridge Spies" would have been better. While they are often called the "Cambridge Spy Ring", they were not a ring. They did not normally work together.--Jack Upland (talk) 08:04, 19 September 2015 (UTC)

Membership Section
The Membership section is slightly confusing to the reader. The first sub-heading, titled 'Maclean and Burgess', talks mostly about Philby. I suggest setting up the article in chronological order by date of major events or a general timeline, as opposed to by member. I think this would help with the flow of the article and give the reader a more in-depth understanding.--Alwhela1 (talk) 06:18, 29 January 2018 (UTC)
 * I agree. It's very badly written. What it deals with is the exposure of the spies. So "Maclean and Burgess" talks about the exposure of Maclean and Burgess, Philby being involved in their escape.The whole article could do with a rewrite.--Jack Upland (talk) 09:16, 29 January 2018 (UTC)