The Secret History of Espionage

The Secret History of Espionage

Spies continue to hold fascination for their intrigue, secrecy and sometimes glamorous image. But what international political influence did they have, and what consequences can result from their actions? In this interactive, you'll delve deeper into the history of espionage over generations, from the Cambridge Spies to the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the closing years of the Cold War, played out under the threat of nuclear conflict.

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The Secret History of Espionage

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SPYING IN THE 1930s

The 1930s were dominated by the rise of fascism and the consolidation of communism in Eastern Europe. It was a decade which brought conflicts of loyalties from some who felt the British government was not doing enough to oppose fascism – including those who joined the International Brigades to fight Franco in the Spanish Civil War -and others who backed the Soviet Union as an alternative. Chief among these were the Cambridge Five, a group of spies who went on to hold leading positions in MI6, MI5, and the Foreign Office. Unsuspected because of their privileged backgrounds, they passed crucial documents to their Moscow controllers, including details of counter agents, the development of nuclear weapons, and aspects of foreign policy.

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1930s

SPYING IN THE 1980s

The early 1980s arguably saw the greatest tensions between East and West of the entire Cold War. While the 1960s and 1970s had been marked by détente and greater dialogue between the Eastern and Western blocs, by the early 1980s East-West relations were fraught following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, the election of President Ronald Reagan in 1980, and decisions on both sides to deploy new nuclear weapons across Europe. In this context, spies sought to influence developments on the other side of the Iron Curtain, while double agents such as KGB agent Oleg Gordievsky, who secretly shared intelligence with MI5, provided invaluable insights to Western decision makers.

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1980s

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SPYING IN THE 1960s

This was the decade that brought sex, glamour, scandals and ‘the establishment’ to the world of espionage. Tensions around the Berlin Wall, put up in 1961 to prevent people escaping to the West, became a focus for intelligence agencies and Cold War spies on both sides. Checkpoint Charlie between East and West Berlin was dramatized in many spy novels and films, including John le Carre’s The Spy Who Came in from the Cold published in 1963 (with the popular film version released in 1965), followed by a series of James Bond films. From the beginning of the 1960s, there were several arrests of double agents following a more vigorous campaign of surveillance by the security services, while a series of scandals involving spies went to the heart of the British establishment, involving ministers and civil servants.

1960s

MI5, Britain’s domestic counter-intelligence security service, responsible for combatting terrorism and espionage was established in its modern form at the beginning of the First World War. During the 1930s, with the rise of fascism and communism in Europe, MI5 was concerned at the threat from foreign agents, and with the help of Special Branch, employed watchers to observe left-wing and far right activists. This included attending meetings and demonstrations, opening mail, and following targets in their daily activities. They had a particular interest in communists which intensified in the build-up to the Second World War. They managed to insert microphones into the Communist Party HQ to monitor the Party’s activities.

MI5 – Britain's Security Service

However, the Cambridge Five were not members of the Party and went undetected, protected by what many saw as a privileged elite. MI5 was later criticised for incompetence and for being an ‘old boy’s network’ who ignored the Cambridge Five as most of them had similar backgrounds.

Kim Philby, Donald Maclean, Guy Burgess, Anthony Blunt and John Cairncross – were the most successful spy ring in British history. Philby rose to the top of MI6 – the Secret Intelligence Service – where, as head of its Soviet Counter-intelligence section, he betrayed many agents. Donald Maclean, who became First Secretary in Washington passed the Soviets details on the development of the Atom Bomb. Guy Burgess was a BBC producer, MI6 agent and Foreign Office diplomat who passed confidential documents on foreign policy to his Soviet controllers. While employed by MI5, Britain’s security service, during the Second World War, Anthony Blunt passed material on British military operations to the Soviets; as Professor of Art History and Keeper of the Queen’s Pictures, he rose to the heart of the British establishment before being exposed by Mrs Thatcher in 1979. While serving at Bletchley Park, John Cairncross, the Fifth Man in the Cambridge spy circle, revealed decrypted military details to his Soviet Controller.

The Cambridge Five

Edith Suschitzky played a key role in the recruitment of the Cambridge spies. An Austrian Jewish communist and talented photographer, she left Austria after her family was persecuted under the Nazis, and she continued to work underground against fascism. Escaping to England, she married Alex Tudor-Hart, an English doctor and left-wing activist. It was through her friend Litzi Friedmann (Kim Philby’s first wife) and Arnold Deutsch, both fellow Austrian communists, that she helped to recruit Kim Philby to Soviet intelligence by setting up a clandestine meeting between Philby and Deutsch in Regent’s Park.

Edith Suschitzky (Tudor-Hart)

The Cuban Missile crisis of October 1962 was a two-week period of extreme tension between the US and the Soviet Union over the deployment of nuclear weapons by the Soviet Union in Cuba, which followed US deployment of missiles in Italy and Turkey the previous year (though this wasn’t made public at the time). Cuban exiles had also been trained by the CIA for an invasion of Cuba. The deployment of missiles in Cuba, less than 100 miles from Florida, signified the scale of the threat and the most serious risk to date of nuclear war.

The Cuban Missile Crisis

In November 1983, just before new nuclear missiles were due to be deployed across Western Europe, NATO staged an exercise meant to simulate the beginning of a war in Europe. According to Soviet spy Oleg Gordievsky, the Soviets observed the NATO manoeuvres anxiously and believed that they were in fact the beginnings of a genuine nuclear attack on the Soviet Union launched

The Telex Machine

by NATO, and considered retaliating with a real nuclear strike of their own. While historians continue to debate just how close the world came to nuclear war that autumn, Gordievsky’s account highlighted to Western decision-makers just how dangerous tensions with the Soviets had become, and helped encourage Western efforts to engage more constructively with Moscow.

Spy Fever

The character of James Bond, a fictional spy of the British secret service (MI6), was created by author Ian Fleming in the 1950s. Fleming himself had been in Naval Intelligence during the Second World War, where he built up extensive experience and networks across the intelligence community. This influenced his writing, and many of the characters were drawn from people he knew. But it was mainly after Fleming’s death in 1964 that the image of James Bond, depicted by leading actors in big box office triumphs – from Dr No to No Time to Die - would be transformed. While the story-lines broadly followed Cold War narrative and tensions, the dramatization of the events, the use of gadgets, the numerous love affairs (with so-called ‘Bond Girls’) and the capacity for survival by the handsome, risk-taking Agent 007, pushed at the lines of credibility.

The early films had a distinctively ‘sixties’ feel, as the new freedoms of that decade co-existed with the imposition of the Berlin Wall and rising tensions between East and West. The character of James Bond, while inspired by real events, helped to create a whole new fictional genre of the glamorous, adventure-seeking spy.

1963 (June) John Profumo resigned as War Minister after admitting he had an affair with nineteen-year-old model model and Soho showgirl Christine Keeler who was also involved with Yevgeny Ivanov, a Soviet naval attache. This created concern that Soviet agents and espionage had reached the heart of British government. After Keeler went to the newspapers to sell her story and named Profumo (among others), which brought the matter to the wider public. Profumo himself had been asked for an explanation

The Profumo Affair

by the Cabinet Secretary after being alerted by MI5 (who were monitoring Ivanov). Profumo initially denied the claims in a statement to the House of Commons, but a police investigation found that he had lied, while his actions were seen ie as a threat to national security. He subsequently resigned and the ‘Profumo Affair’ along with other scandals of that time heaped pressure on Prime Minister Harold Macmillan who resigned in October 1963.

One of MI5’s chief concerns remained protecting their informants and their identity, even from close allies. While the UK and the US have extensive intelligence sharing, the UK would share intelligence selectively and refused to divulge the exact source of the key information it had gathered.

Transatlantic Intelligence Sharing

Despite such precautions, CIA agent Aldrich Ames succeeded in identifying Oleg Gordievsky as a double agent, jeopardising the latter’s safety and resulting in his exfiltration from the USSR in 1985.

In 1963 (June), John Profumo resigned as War Minister after admitting he had an affair with nineteen-year-old model and Soho showgirl Christine Keeler who was also involved with Yevgeny Ivanov, a Soviet naval attache. This created concern that Soviet agents and espionage had reached the heart of British government, after Keeler went to the newspapers to sell her story and named Profumo (among others), which brought the matter to the wider public. Profumo himself had been asked for an explanation

The Profumo Affair

by the Cabinet Secretary after being alerted by MI5 (who were monitoring Ivanov). Profumo initially denied the claims in a statement to the House of Commons, but a police investigation found that he had lied, while his actions were seen as a threat to national security. He subsequently resigned and the ‘Profumo Affair’ along with other scandals of that time heaped pressure on Prime Minister Harold Macmillan who resigned in October 1963.

1963 (June) John Profumo resigned as War Minister after admitting he had an affair with nineteen-year-old model model and Soho showgirl Christine Keeler who was also involved with Yevgeny Ivanov, a Soviet naval attache. This created concern that Soviet agents and espionage had reached the heart of British government. After Keeler went to the newspapers to sell her story and named Profumo (among others), which brought the matter to the wider public. Profumo himself had been asked for an explanation

The Profumo Affair

by the Cabinet Secretary after being alerted by MI5 (who were monitoring Ivanov). Profumo initially denied the claims in a statement to the House of Commons, but a police investigation found that he had lied, while his actions were seen ie as a threat to national security. He subsequently resigned and the ‘Profumo Affair’ along with other scandals of that time heaped pressure on Prime Minister Harold Macmillan who resigned in October 1963.

In Britain communists were not the only ‘subversive’ targets for surveillance; peace activists and members of the New Left were also under suspicion as the Cold War intensified and entered a new stage.Towards the end of the decade a more open culture of ‘the sixties’ with a rise in the number of demonstrations, youth activism and social movements presented a new challenge to Western social orders.

The Rise of Activism

Known as ‘Otto’, Deutsch was responsible for recruiting the Cambridge Five to Soviet intelligence. As one of the NKVD’s so-called illegals he worked undercover to recruit double-agents among privileged graduates who occupied influential positions within the Foreign Office, Civil Service or Security Services. Deutsch was an impressive intellectual, a resident of the Lawn Road Flats, a new art deco building in Hampstead, which became the home of a mixture of writers, dissidents, and intellectuals. The design of the building made it attractive to those involved in espionage. Deutsch drew on his intellectual interests in philosophy, literature and psychology to cultivate idealistic Cambridge students.

Arnold Deutsch

In Britain communists were not the only ‘subversive’ targets for surveillance; peace activists and members of the New Left were also under suspicion as the Cold War intensified and entered a new stage.Towards the end of the decade a more open culture of ‘the sixties’ with a rise in the number of demonstrations, youth activism and social movements presented a new challenge to Western social orders.

The Rise of Activism

Edith Suschitzky played a key role in the recruitment of the Cambridge spies. An Austrian Jewish communist and talented photographer, she left Austria after her family was persecuted under the Nazis, and she continued to work underground against fascism. Escaping to England, she married Alex Tudor-Hart, an English doctor and left-wing activist. It was through her friend Litzi Friedmann (Kim Philby’s first wife) and Arnold Deutsch, both fellow Austrian communists, that she helped to recruit Kim Philby to Soviet intelligence by setting up a clandestine meeting between Philby and Deutsch in Regent’s Park.

Edith Suschitzky (Tudor-Hart)

In the 19030s, The Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) had rising influence among intellectuals, artists and writers at the time of the Popular Front against fascism. It supported Popular Front governments in France and Spain, with its members joining the International Brigade to fight in solidarity.

Communist Party of Great Britain

At the same time, faith in the Soviet Union was at its height – despite stories of the Show Trials and famine. The CPGB’s links with Moscow became a subject of major importance for MI5, who managed to install microphones within the party offices and employ their own agents within the organisation in the hunt for subversives. However the Cambridge Five continued to elude them.

In 1985, as a result of intelligence gathered by the British, the Thatcher government expelled 25 Soviet diplomats from the UK on the grounds that they had been engaging in espionage.

A One Way Ticket

This astonishing number of expulsions was matched by the Soviets, who demanded the departure of 25 Britons from the USSR. This purge of the Soviet embassy, informed by espionage, punctuated an especially tense period of the Cold War even as Thatcher sought to build a constructive relationship with the new Soviet premier, Mikhail Gorbachev.

In the 1930s, The Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) had rising influence among intellectuals, artists and writers at the time of the Popular Front against fascism. It supported Popular Front governments in France and Spain, with its members joining the International Brigade to fight in solidarity.

Communist Party of Great Britain

At the same time, faith in the Soviet Union was at its height – despite stories of the Show Trials and famine. The CPGB’s links with Moscow became a subject of major importance for MI5, who managed to install microphones within the party offices and employ their own agents within the organisation in the hunt for subversives. However the Cambridge Five continued to elude them.

In 1963 (June), John Profumo resigned as War Minister after admitting he had an affair with nineteen-year-old model and Soho showgirl Christine Keeler who was also involved with Yevgeny Ivanov, a Soviet naval attache. This created concern that Soviet agents and espionage had reached the heart of British government, after Keeler went to the newspapers to sell her story and named Profumo (among others), which brought the matter to the wider public. Profumo himself had been asked for an explanation

The Profumo Affair

by the Cabinet Secretary after being alerted by MI5 (who were monitoring Ivanov). Profumo initially denied the claims in a statement to the House of Commons, but a police investigation found that he had lied, while his actions were seen as a threat to national security. He subsequently resigned and the ‘Profumo Affair’ along with other scandals of that time heaped pressure on Prime Minister Harold Macmillan who resigned in October 1963.

Known as ‘Otto’, Deutsch was responsible for recruiting the Cambridge Five to Soviet intelligence. As one of the NKVD’s so-called illegals he worked undercover to recruit double-agents among privileged graduates who occupied influential positions within the Foreign Office, Civil Service or Security Services. Deutsch was an impressive intellectual, a resident of the Lawn Road Flats, a new art deco building in Hampstead, which became the home of a mixture of writers, dissidents, and intellectuals. The design of the building made it attractive to those involved in espionage. Deutsch drew on his intellectual interests in philosophy, literature and psychology to cultivate idealistic Cambridge students.

Arnold Deutsch

In November 1983, just before new nuclear missiles were due to be deployed across Western Europe, NATO staged an exercise meant to simulate the beginning of a war in Europe. According to Soviet spy Oleg Gordievsky, the Soviets observed the NATO manoeuvres anxiously and believed that they were in fact the beginnings of a genuine nuclear attack on the Soviet Union launched

The Telex Machine

by NATO, and considered retaliating with a real nuclear strike of their own. While historians continue to debate just how close the world came to nuclear war that autumn, Gordievsky’s account highlighted to Western decision-makers just how dangerous tensions with the Soviets had become, and helped encourage Western efforts to engage more constructively with Moscow.

In December 1984, Politburo member Mikhail Gorbachev arrived in London for a high-level visit with Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Gorbachev was a relatively young member of the Soviet leadership and would become leader of the Soviet Union just three months later. Eager to establish constructive dialogue with Gorbachev, the British government relied on briefings from a double agent: Oleg Gordievsky, a KGB officer based at the Soviet embassy in London who was secretly providing information to the British. His secret briefings helped make the meeting a success, with Thatcher publicly hailing Gorbachev as ‘a man we can do business with’.

Mikhail Gorbachev Meets Margaret Thatcher

In December 1979, NATO decided to deploy hundreds of new nuclear weapons across Western Europe, including the UK, beginning in the autumn of 1983. Public opposition to these deployments led to widespread anti-nuclear activism in the UK, including a women’s peace camp at Greenham Common (where nuclear missiles were to be deployed) and a massive rally in Hyde Park, London, which attracted 300,000 participants. The British government accused the anti-nuclear movement of being orchestrated by Moscow in an attempt to prevent the planned deployment. While Soviet agents in Western Europe did try to influence anti-nuclear activities, they had minimal impact on the grassroots movement.

Anti-nuclear demonstrations

The Cuban Missile crisis of October 1962 was a two-week period of extreme tension between the US and the Soviet Union over the deployment of nuclear weapons by the Soviet Union in Cuba, which followed US deployment of missiles in Italy and Turkey the previous year (though this wasn’t made public at the time). Cuban exiles had also been trained by the CIA for an invasion of Cuba. The deployment of missiles in Cuba, less than 100 miles from Florida, signified the scale of the threat and the most serious risk to date of nuclear war.

The Cuban Missile Crisis

In December 1979, NATO decided to deploy hundreds of new nuclear weapons across Western Europe, including the UK, beginning in the autumn of 1983. Public opposition to these deployments led to widespread anti-nuclear activism in the UK, including a women’s peace camp at Greenham Common (where nuclear missiles were to be deployed) and a massive rally in Hyde Park, London, which attracted 300,000 participants. The British government accused the anti-nuclear movement of being orchestrated by Moscow in an attempt to prevent the planned deployment. While Soviet agents in Western Europe did try to influence anti-nuclear activities, they had minimal impact on the grassroots movement.

Anti-nuclear demonstrations

MI5, Britain’s domestic counter-intelligence security service, responsible for combatting terrorism and espionage was established in its modern form at the beginning of the First World War. During the 1930s, with the rise of fascism and communism in Europe, MI5 was concerned at the threat from foreign agents, and with the help of Special Branch, employed watchers to observe left-wing and far right activists. This included attending meetings and demonstrations, opening mail, and following targets in their daily activities. They had a particular interest in communists which intensified in the build-up to the Second World War. They managed to insert microphones into the Communist Party HQ to monitor the Party’s activities.

MI5 – Britain's Security Service

However, the Cambridge Five were not members of the Party and went undetected, protected by what many saw as a privileged elite. MI5 was later criticised for incompetence and for being an ‘old boy’s network’ who ignored the Cambridge Five as most of them had similar backgrounds.

Kim Philby, Donald Maclean, Guy Burgess, Anthony Blunt and John Cairncross – were the most successful spy ring in British history. Philby rose to the top of MI6 – the Secret Intelligence Service – where, as head of its Soviet Counter-intelligence section, he betrayed many agents. Donald Maclean, who became First Secretary in Washington passed the Soviets details on the development of the Atom Bomb. Guy Burgess was a BBC producer, MI6 agent and Foreign Office diplomat who passed confidential documents on foreign policy to his Soviet controllers. While employed by MI5, Britain’s security service, during the Second World War, Anthony Blunt passed material on British military operations to the Soviets; as Professor of Art History and Keeper of the Queen’s Pictures, he rose to the heart of the British establishment before being exposed by Mrs Thatcher in 1979. While serving at Bletchley Park, John Cairncross, the Fifth Man in the Cambridge spy circle, revealed decrypted military details to his Soviet Controller.

The Cambridge Five

Spy Fever

The character of James Bond, a fictional spy of the British secret service (MI6), was created by author Ian Fleming in the 1950s. Fleming himself had been in Naval Intelligence during the Second World War, where he built up extensive experience and networks across the intelligence community. This influenced his writing, and many of the characters were drawn from people he knew. But it was mainly after Fleming’s death in 1964 that the image of James Bond, depicted by leading actors in big box office triumphs – from Dr No to No Time to Die - would be transformed. While the story-lines broadly followed Cold War narrative and tensions, the dramatization of the events, the use of gadgets, the numerous love affairs (with so-called ‘Bond Girls’) and the capacity for survival by the handsome, risk-taking Agent 007, pushed at the lines of credibility.

The early films had a distinctively ‘sixties’ feel, as the new freedoms of that decade co-existed with the imposition of the Berlin Wall and rising tensions between East and West. The character of James Bond, while inspired by real events, helped to create a whole new fictional genre of the glamorous, adventure-seeking spy.

In 1985, as a result of intelligence gathered by the British, the Thatcher government expelled 25 Soviet diplomats from the UK on the grounds that they had been engaging in espionage.

A One Way Ticket

This astonishing number of expulsions was matched by the Soviets, who demanded the departure of 25 Britons from the USSR. This purge of the Soviet embassy, informed by espionage, punctuated an especially tense period of the Cold War even as Thatcher sought to build a constructive relationship with the new Soviet premier, Mikhail Gorbachev.

One of MI5’s chief concerns remained protecting their informants and their identity, even from close allies. While the UK and the US have extensive intelligence sharing, the UK would share intelligence selectively and refused to divulge the exact source of the key information it had gathered.

Transatlantic Intelligence Sharing

Despite such precautions, CIA agent Aldrich Ames succeeded in identifying Oleg Gordievsky as a double agent, jeopardising the latter’s safety and resulting in his exfiltration from the USSR in 1985.

In December 1984, Politburo member Mikhail Gorbachev arrived in London for a high-level visit with Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Gorbachev was a relatively young member of the Soviet leadership and would become leader of the Soviet Union just three months later. Eager to establish constructive dialogue with Gorbachev, the British government relied on briefings from a double agent: Oleg Gordievsky, a KGB officer based at the Soviet embassy in London who was secretly providing information to the British. His secret briefings helped make the meeting a success, with Thatcher publicly hailing Gorbachev as ‘a man we can do business with’.

Mikhail Gorbachev Meets Margaret Thatcher