Declassified UK intelligence files detail confessions of Cambridge, palace spies

Newly declassified documents from the British intelligence agency MI5 reveal that royal officials withheld information from Queen Elizabeth II about her long-time art advisor, Anthony Blunt, being a Soviet spy, fearing it would cause her distress. These documents, released by the UK National Archives on Tuesday, shed new light on a spy ring linked to Cambridge University in the 1930s.

Blunt, who served as the Queen’s Surveyor of Pictures at Buckingham Palace, had been under suspicion for years and finally confessed to being a spy in 1964. He admitted to passing secret intelligence to the Soviet KGB while serving as a senior MI5 officer during World War II. In a newly released document, an MI5 officer recorded Blunt saying he felt "a great sense of relief" after unburdening himself.

In exchange for Blunt’s information, he was allowed to retain his job, knighthood, and social standing, with the Queen apparently kept in the dark. In 1972, the Queen's then-private secretary, Martin Charteris, told MI5 chief Michael Hanley that the Queen "did not know about this and there was no advantage in telling her now," as it would only "add to her anxieties and there was nothing she could do about it."

However, when Blunt became ill the following year, the government decided to inform the Queen, fearing that if Blunt died, the media would report on the matter extensively, no longer bound by legal constraints. Charteris reported that the Queen "took it all very calmly and was not surprised," and "remembered that he had been under suspicion as far back as the early 1950s." Historian Christopher Andrew stated that the Queen had previously been "broadly" aware of Blunt's situation through MI5's official history.

Blunt was publicly exposed as a spy by then-Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in 1979. Though never prosecuted, he was eventually stripped of his knighthood and died in 1983 at the age of 75. Documents from British intelligence agencies are typically kept secret for decades, but these agencies are gradually becoming more open. Some of the newly released documents will be displayed later this year in London at an exhibition titled "MI5: The Official Secrets."

Two of the Cambridge spies, Donald Maclean and Guy Burgess, fled to Russia in 1951. A third, Kim Philby, despite being under suspicion, continued to work for the foreign intelligence agency MI6. As evidence of his duplicity mounted, in January 1963, his friend and colleague, MI6 officer Nicholas Elliott, confronted him in Beirut.

The declassified documents include Philby's typed confession and a record of his conversation with Elliott, in which Philby admitted that he had betrayed KGB officer Konstantin Volkov. In 1945, Volkov had attempted to defect to the West with detailed information about spies within British intelligence, including information about Philby. Due to Philby's intervention, Volkov was kidnapped in Istanbul and taken back to Moscow where he was executed.

Elliott reported that Philby stated he would likely act the same way if he had to relive his life. According to the transcript, Philby said, "I was really very loyal to MI6. I was treated very, very well there, and I made some very good friends there. But the final pull was the other way." Philby, who fled to Moscow and died in 1988, told Elliott he faced "a choice between suicide and prosecution." The story of the Cambridge spies has inspired numerous books, plays, films, and television series.