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Campus Files: Scandals, Secrets & Crimes at American Universities
The Cambridge Five: From Students to Soviet Spies
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- [00:01]
Margot Gray
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- [02:49]
Shauna Morris
They were recruited from Cambridge University and went on to the highest levels of government to do great damage to the West.
- [03:03]
Margot Gray
I'm Margo Gray. This week on campus, how five Cambridge University graduates went on to become Britain's most damaging spies. Walk across almost any American college campus and you'll find familiar landmarks a grassy quad, a chapel spire, maybe a stone tower draped in ivy. But those iconic landmarks aren't actually American inventions. They're imports from Cambridge and Oxford, Britain's oldest universities. So why the imitation? It's because Cambridge and Oxford aren't just universities, they're symbols of prestige.
- [03:52]
Shauna Morris
Cambridge and Oxford are the two powerhouses in elite education and you'll sometimes hear them called Oxbridge when you talk about them together.
- [04:03]
Margot Gray
That's Shawna Morris. She's the author of the Cambridge Spy, the Treachery of the Five who Got Away. She's also a scholar of 1930s Britain.
- [04:12]
Shauna Morris
If you look at the levers of power in British society at that time, anyone in the government, in the foreign service, in the secret service, they came out of Cambridge and Oxford. And what went into Cambridge and Oxford were young men with elite boarding school backgrounds. They came from very well established families. So it's very much what you might call an old boys club.
- [04:39]
Margot Gray
That old boys club wasn't just a saying, it was how things actually worked in Britain. Your class status determined your future. If you came for money, you got to attend elite schools and walk into positions of power. If you didn't, those doors rarely opened. And in the wake of the Great Depression, that divide was especially stark.
- [05:02]
Lloyd Lockridge
It was panic. Sixteen and a half million shares of stock sold in a single day sold, hopelessly desperate, at any price.
- [05:13]
Margot Gray
The 1929 Wall Street Crash had rippled across the Atlantic and hit Britain hard. Britain's industrial backbone, coal mining, shipbuilding, steel, completely collapsed. Working class families struggled to put food on the table. Men stood in endless lines outside unemployment offices, waiting for work that never came.
- [05:33]
Shauna Morris
For the students at Cambridge University, there was a great deal of guilt involved in watching these things because financially, the upper class wasn't really affected by it. We might today call that white liberal guilt. And there were a lot of students participating in hunger marches in solidarity with the working class.
- [05:58]
Margot Gray
To these Cambridge students, their government seemed to be failing on multiple fronts. At home, the working class was drowning. Abroad, the situation looked even worse. Fascism was spreading across Europe. Mussolini in Italy, Hitler in Germany.
- [06:15]
Shauna Morris
You had the students seeing kind of scary rhetoric rising up and kind of the attitude of a lot of people at higher levels of power in the west was that it wasn't really a threat to the British, wasn't really a threat to the United States. And a lot of governments didn't take this rise of fascism real seriously at first.
- [06:38]
Margot Gray
While Britain was on its heels, one country looked like it had the answers to both the economic Crisis and the threat of fascism. That country was the Soviet Union.
- [06:49]
Shauna Morris
The Soviet Union did take the threat of fascism very seriously. And also the Soviet Union, first of all, didn't have a depression during the 1930s. And it's not because they were doing anything right economically, but they were isolated from trade for the most part with other countries. With the west, their currency wasn't tied to the dollar, so they didn't have the same impact from the ripple effect. The US Stock market crash.
- [07:17]
Margot Gray
The Soviet Union looked like it was thriving. New factories were popping up everywhere. Production was up. And officials were celebrating their new five year plan to industrialize the whole economy. The gulags, the famine, the purges, all of that was still hidden. So from the outside, if you were just reading the news and looking at the numbers, the Soviet experiment looked like it might actually be working.
- [07:42]
Shauna Morris
And so there is a feeling of perhaps the Soviets have it right and perhaps communism and central planning is the answer.
- [07:52]
Margot Gray
Socialism had always been popular with a subset of Cambridge students. But during the 1930s, communism was on the rise too.
- [08:00]
Shauna Morris
We kind of talk about them interchangeably nowadays, but they're different things. Communism, it's not just welfare programs, it's more central planning of the economy, which is a big jump from socialism.
- [08:15]
Margot Gray
Cambridge students were increasingly flirting with communist ideas. They distributed pamphlets, joined hunger marches, and held reading groups to talk about Marx and Lenin. And it was exactly this kind of atmosphere that caught the attention of a Soviet agent named Arnold Deutsch. Deutsch worked for Soviet secret intelligence, what we'd call the KGB today. By the age of 24, he was an impressive academic who had completed a PhD in chemistry in just five years. But his true passion was something else, the Soviet cause. In the early 1930s, Deutsch arrived in Britain with a mission to recruit spies for Soviet intelligence. His approach to finding these spies was unconventional. Typically, you'd target insiders, government officials with access to secrets who could be turned into double agents. But Deutsch had a different approach.
- [09:10]
Shauna Morris
He went to this elite university, Cambridge, where he hoped to find people that were what you'd call high flyers, that had great potential, from good families that were going to accomplish something great, were going to get into a government ministry close to the levers of power. So he's playing the long game. This could take years. He's not getting anything back right away. He's going to plant a seed and wait for it to grow.
- [09:37]
Margot Gray
His first recruit was a Cambridge graduate named Kim Philby. Philby had been active in socialist groups on campus, but his Plans for after graduation were pretty conventional. He wanted to work for the British Foreign Office.
- [09:50]
Shauna Morris
One of his professors refused to write him a letter of recommendation. He said, your politics are a little out there. Because Philby had belonged to the socialist society, he had been running around with a lot of communists. So it looked like, hey, he might be a little too leftist, a little too radical for the Foreign Service.
- [10:13]
Margot Gray
Philby withdrew his application and changed course. Instead, he traveled to Austria, where he helped socialist and communist refugees fleeing Nazi Germany. While he was there, he met an Austrian Communist, fell in love, and married her. When the couple returned to Britain, Philby was lost. Then his wife got a phone call. An old friend in her communist network had a suggestion. Philby should meet a man named arnold Deutch. On June 1, 1934, Philby and Deutch met on a bench in Regent's Park. Deutch introduced himself by his codename, Otto, and he made his pitch.
- [10:54]
Shauna Morris
And he convinces him that, yeah, you could hand out leaflets, you could teach people about Karl Marx, you could do all these things, but you could do a lot more if you were in the government and working for us.
- [11:11]
Margot Gray
In that moment, Philby found the sense of purpose he'd been looking for. That single meeting would change the trajectory of Philby's life. It would also set the gears in motion for one of the most devastating intelligence breaches in British history.
- [11:26]
Lloyd Lockridge
Foreign.
- [11:31]
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- [12:20]
Margot Gray
as a listener of campus files, you already know that the truth is rarely as simple as it seems. Every story has layers, whether it's what we're told publicly or the private histories passed down through our own families. And sometimes the version we inherit isn't the full picture. That's exactly where the new podcast Family Lore comes in. Each episode looks at a story that a family has always believed about itself and starts to pull at the edges, not to tear it apart, but to understand it and uncover the hidden histories and nuances that may have been lost over time. Family Lore is available now wherever you get your podcasts. Stick around until the end of this episode for a preview. I am your host, Stassi Schroeder. Welcome to Tell Me Lies, the official podcast. What's the most unhinged thing of season three? Steven because he's so, so evil.
- [13:17]
Shauna Morris
I do think he is misunderstood. You see everyone face consequences.
- [13:21]
Margot Gray
It's intoxicating. The writers just know how to trick you.
- [13:25]
Shauna Morris
There's always a twist in this show, so nothing you would expect.
- [13:27]
Margot Gray
Tell Me Lies, the official podcast now streaming and stream the new season of Tell Me Lies on Hulu and Hulu on Disney. Kim Philby was a year out of Cambridge, and his life looked nothing like his classmates. His boss was a Soviet spy. Philby's first task was to cut all ties to leftist politics, to make himself look like a typical member of the upper class. Then came his first real assignment. To find more recruits, other Cambridge boys who might want to join the cause.
- [14:04]
Shauna Morris
And he makes a list of about seven people. We don't know all seven, but the top of his list, number one, is a fellow named Donald McLean.
- [14:15]
Margot Gray
Donald McLean came from a prominent family. His father was a cabinet minister in the British government, and maclean had spent his life in that shadow. When his father died, McLean was finally free to express his leftist politics. As an undergraduate student at Cambridge, he joined the Socialist Society and wrote reviews for the student Marxist journal. He was such a true believer that after graduation he was considering moving, moving to the Soviet Union to teach English. But Kim Philby had other plans for him.
- [14:48]
Shauna Morris
Thought he was a perfect candidate for Arnold Deutsch. And he invites him over to his house and gives him basically a lot of the same talking points that Deutsch gave him, that you're not going to make a big difference in the world by teaching English to people already in the Soviet Union. Why don't you do something here in Great Britain that will make a change in our country and you're perfectly positioned to do it. Everyone knows your father. You can ride on those coattails a real long time. And MacLean was convinced. He didn't take much convincing. He was a true believer in Marxism.
- [15:26]
Margot Gray
The next man on Philby's list was Guy Burgess. He was also a member of Cambridge's Socialist Society.
- [15:33]
Shauna Morris
He's definitely down for the struggle. He's definitely a true believer. He'd want to do this, he'd probably be good at it. But he drinks too much, he talks too much, he's a gossip, and he's openly homosexual at a time when that was kind of a rare thing.
- [15:50]
Margot Gray
For all these reasons, Philby wasn't going to recruit Burgess. It was just too risky. But Burgess soon forced his way in. He'd become suspicious when Both Philby and McClain had suddenly vanished from the socialist circles they used to lead.
- [16:05]
Shauna Morris
He said, this doesn't make a lot of sense. What are you guys up to? And he bothered them and he badgered them. And so meanwhile, they're trying to figure out what to do with Burgess.
- [16:15]
Margot Gray
In the end, they decided Burgess flaws might actually be his greatest assets. His charm and social connections gave him access to London's elite. And his recklessness made for the perfect cover. No one would ever suspect him of being a spy. And that gamble paid off. Burgess would turn out to be a remarkably effective agent. And he also helped bring two more Cambridge graduates into the fold Anthony Blunt and John Cairncross. Together, these five men would come to be known as the Cambridge Five. They would surpass Moscow's wildest expectations. And the payoff came sooner than anyone imagined. Almost immediately, Donald Maclean, the son of the powerful Cabinet minister, landed a job at the Foreign Office, which is Britain's equivalent to the American State Department. His family name had opened doors when
- [17:10]
Shauna Morris
he was testing for the Foreign Office. He went before a panel and these are all people that knew his father. It was very, oh, hey, how's it going, old friend?
- [17:20]
Margot Gray
You'd think his membership in Communist groups as an undergraduate student might have raised some red flags, but apparently it didn't.
- [17:27]
Shauna Morris
They asked him about his radical phase in college. They said, well, you know, I was. I had some radical ideas, haven't totally shaken him off. And everybody just had a good laugh and it was fine. And so credentials carried him.
- [17:42]
Margot Gray
In his new role at the Foreign Office, McLean had access to all sorts of confidential diplomatic reports. And he wasted no time proving himself to his new boss.
- [17:52]
Shauna Morris
He was filling up his briefcase every day at the end of work and just walking out. And Deutch was taking it and having it to be photographed bringing it back a couple hours later. And he was actually bringing home so many things that Deutsch had to ask him to slow down so his photographer could keep up.
- [18:12]
Margot Gray
The other members of the Cambridge Five soon landed valuable jobs too. And by the start of World War II, Arnold Deutch had spies securely positioned Inside the British establishment, in the Foreign office and in MI6, which is Britain's foreign intelligence agency. It's worth remembering, for most of World War II, Britain and the Soviet Union were allies, both trying to defeat Hitler. So to the Cambridge Five, sharing information with Moscow didn't necessarily feel like a huge betrayal. They were still supporting the fight against fascism. But when the war ended, everything changed. The alliance between the two countries quickly fell apart and the Soviet Union became the new enemy.
- [18:56]
Shauna Morris
Once the Soviets became the main adversary, particularly to the Americans, but also to the British, that became very dangerous, particularly in the atomic age.
- [19:06]
Margot Gray
Take Donald McLean, for example. After the war, he was stationed at the British Embassy in Washington, D.C. where he got access to the headquarters of the Atomic Energy Commission. This was the hub of US atomic policy.
- [19:20]
Shauna Morris
And he could go in after hours and just look at everything, take things out, bring things back. So that was very dangerous because there were things that the Soviets did not know. Policy wise, we didn't have as many bombs as they thought we had. So there's a lot of information that was really high level that McClane had that was meaningful to the Soviets.
- [19:43]
Margot Gray
McClain made frequent trips to New York to pass it all along to his Soviet handler as cover. He told his colleagues he was visiting his pregnant wife who lived there. Burgess, meanwhile, was secretary to a high ranking official in the Foreign Office. This gave him direct access to intelligence on everything from NATO strategy to allied coordination against the Soviet Union.
- [20:05]
Shauna Morris
He was actually able to give the Soviets a little advance notice of the British position on things and even the American position on things. So it's kind of like a poker game when people are doing negotiations. It helps a lot if you know what the other side is holding. And that's a lot of what Burgess did in those early days of the Cold War.
- [20:27]
Margot Gray
But perhaps the most damaging of the five spies was Kim Philby. After World War II, he was serving as MI6 liaison to the CIA, meaning he handled intelligence sharing between Britain and the United States. This gave him access to top level US Intelligence.
- [20:45]
Shauna Morris
That's where he really does some damage. He was briefed on the Venona project. Venona was a very secret program. Even Truman didn't know about it. The Army Signal Corps had a code cracking department and they were working just on Soviet cables and they actually were able to crack the KGB cables. So Philby was briefed on that and they immediately told the Soviets. So they quit sending cables. And that kind of deprived US intelligence of possibly limitless intelligence from the kgb.
- [21:19]
Margot Gray
By all accounts, Arnold Deutch's recruits were outperforming expectations in Moscow. Officials couldn't believe the sheer volume of intelligence they were bringing in.
- [21:28]
Shauna Morris
The Soviets thought, how could their supervisors be so stupid? How could British intelligence, how could the diplomatic wing of the government be so stupid to let all of this information, all this valuable intelligence, just walk?
- [21:44]
Margot Gray
The Cambridge Five had proven themselves. So much so that the Soviets dropped their old condescending nickname for the group, the Interns, and gave them a new name, the Magnificent Five. But their success was about to catch up with them.
- [22:07]
Lloyd Lockridge
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- [22:25]
Margot Gray
Switch upfront payment of $45 for 3 month plan, equivalent to $15 per month required intro rate, first 3 months only, then full price plan options available, taxes and fees, extra fee, full terms@mintmobile.com looking for the best place to shop this Mother's Day? Go with the brand. That makes it easy to send something thoughtful to everyone on your list. 1-800-flowers.com right now at 1-800-flowers. Order one dozen roses and get another dozen free. More flowers mean more smiles. All backed by the quality, ATT detail and trusted delivery experience that make 1-800-flowers my top choice. To send something beautiful mom will love. Make Mom's Day at 1-800-FLowers.COM Spotify. That's 1-800-FLowers. COM Spotify. The Cambridge Five got away with it for years. Five spies at the highest level of British diplomacy and intelligence. All living double lives. Their secret weapon might have been Cambridge University itself. Those diplomas had opened doors and deflected suspicion. At the end of the day, the establishment trusted its own. But their cover didn't last forever. Remember the Venona project? The American effort to decrypt Soviet cables? The Soviets had stopped sending cables after they'd been tipped off. But the Americans continued working through older transmissions. And buried in those messages was a revelation. There was a British diplomat living in Washington, D.C. who'd been feeding secrets to Moscow. His codename was Homer.
- [24:02]
Shauna Morris
They had some trouble figuring out who it was. But they knew that they did have a very real mole. And so the FBI is working on it. Mi5 is working on it hard. And they're closing in on him using these clues.
- [24:16]
Margot Gray
In the cables, one specific clue finally cracked the case. A 1945 cable mentioned that Homer's wife was pregnant. In New York, only one British diplomat fit that description, Donald McLean. When Philby learned of the discovery through his intelligence network, he quickly passed it along to Moscow. And the Soviets sent urgent instructions. Maclean was to defect and Burgess was to help him. Which brings us back to May 1951, the night these two men boarded a ferry to France and disappeared into the Soviet Union.
- [24:56]
Shauna Morris
Word didn't reach back for days, so they got all the way to Switzerland before anyone even knew they were gone. You know, MI6 realizes that McLean's missing, and he got away with it for a day or two because he had such a huge drinking problem. Everyone assumed he was on a weekend bender and hadn't come back yet. And then when it became apparent that Guy Burgess also was missing, it was a big panic. And the Foreign Office tried to suppress the news that two of their diplomats had gone missing. And they did not succeed. A French outlet actually leaked the story.
- [25:34]
Margot Gray
The story broke fast. A New York Times headline blared, british Hunt. Two missing diplomats ranked as high in trusted aides. The Americans were furious. How could Britain have missed not one, but two moles? And their anger only grew when it became clear that someone must have tipped off Burgess and McLean. Meaning there was another mole still on the inside. All eyes turned to Kim Philby. He'd been close with Burgess. They'd even lived together for a time.
- [26:06]
Shauna Morris
It really didn't look good. Philby was questioned repeatedly and he simply refused to confess.
- [26:14]
Margot Gray
The investigation into Philby dragged on for years, becoming an embarrassment for the British government. Finally, in November 1955, four years after Burgess and Maclean had defected, the Foreign Secretary decided to end it. He stood before Parliament and publicly exonerated Philby. The next day, Philby held a press conference from his mother's apartment.
- [26:38]
Lloyd Lockridge
Would you still regard Burgess, who lived
- [26:41]
Margot Gray
with you for a while in Washington?
- [26:42]
Lloyd Lockridge
Would you still regard him as a friend of yours?
- [26:43]
Margot Gray
How do you feel about him now?
- [26:45]
Lloyd Lockridge
I consider his actions deplorable. On the subject of friendship, I prefer to say his little apostles.
- [26:52]
Shauna Morris
And Philby, famously, he had a little stutter. It wasn't huge, but from childhood he had a stutter and it was crazy because he doesn't stutter once and he tells one lie after another about how he's innocent. And, yeah, he knew Burgess, but had no idea. And it was something to behold.
- [27:12]
Margot Gray
But Philby could only keep up the facade for so long. A few years later, a high ranking KGB officer defected to the west, he brought with him a stunning revelation. There hadn't been just two or even three moles inside British intelligence. There were five. And that revelation set off a scramble within Western intelligence to identify the rest. The net was soon closing in on Philby and in January 1963, he fled to Moscow. Days later, a Russian newspaper greeted him. On its front page. The headline read, hello, Comrade Phil B.
- [27:52]
Shauna Morris
So that was a bad look for everyone involved that had said, oh, he's never been a spy. Case closed, nothing to see here. And then here he turns up in Moscow.
- [28:03]
Margot Gray
The last two members of the Cambridge Five, Anthony Blunt and John Cairncross, never fled. They stayed in Britain, hiding in plain sight. Anthony Blunt actually went on to become a trusted figure within the Royal household. He was the Queen's personal art advisor. All the while, the British intelligence knew the truth about his history. But they said nothing to avoid national embarrassment. Eventually, though, the truth surfaced. In 1979, none other than Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher broke the news.
- [28:35]
Shauna Morris
In the early part of last week, Professor Blunt was publicly identified as having been a suspect Soviet agent. I thought it right to confirm that Professor Blunt had indeed been a Soviet agent. Professor Blunt has admitted that he was recruited for Russian intelligence when he was at Cambridge before the war.
- [28:57]
Margot Gray
In the end, neither of the spies who stayed in Britain were ever prosecuted. Pretty crazy when you think about it. The biggest intelligence breach in British history and no one was ever held accountable. Shauna suspects that the British government wanted to minimize public scandal, make it all go away. But it never really has. Over the years, more and more information has continued to come out and every
- [29:23]
Shauna Morris
time a new development would break, it would be a whole new uproar. It was kind of like our Watergate story here, like everybody knows about it, everybody wants to know the new details of it, and any story that leaks out slowly is going to gin up more excitement.
- [29:43]
Margot Gray
As recently as January 2025, MI5 declassified a new batch of files on the Cambridge 5.
- [29:50]
Shauna Morris
MI5 has declassified a trove of files, including equipment, training manuals and first hand accounts from the infamous university students turned agents.
- [30:02]
Margot Gray
Among the files was a transcript of a conversation involving Kim Philby, recorded in January 1963. At the time, Philby was living in Beirut, working as a journalist. It had been eight years since he was declared innocent by the British government, but MI6 had finally obtained proof of his double life. MI6 sent an officer named Nicholas Elliot, who happened to be Philby's oldest friend, to confront him. After decades of denial, Philby confessed to his friend. I've had this particular moment in mind for 28 years. He said that conclusive proof would come out. Then he told his friend something else. If he had his whole life to lead again, he would probably have behaved in the same way. If you've got a story idea, we would love to hear about it. Send us an email@campusfilespodmail.com and if you're loving this podcast, be sure to click Follow on your favorite podcast app so you never miss an episode. While you're there, leave us a review and a five star rating. Campus Files is an Odyssey original podcast hosted by Margot Gray and Ian Mont. Our executive producers are Leah Rhys Dennis and Lloyd Lockridge. Campus Files is produced by Ian Mont and Margot Gray. Sound design and engineering by Andy Jaskowicz and Zach Clark. Legal support by Laura Berman and Melissa Jean. Original music by Davey Sumner. Special thanks to Maura Curran, Josephina Francis, Hillary Schuff, Eric Donnelly, Kate Hutchison, Rose, Sean Cherry, Kirk Courtney and Lauren Vieira. So here is what I want to understand.
- [32:01]
Lloyd Lockridge
Yes.
- [32:01]
Margot Gray
What made you so interested in all this? Ancestral lines and ancestral influences.
- [32:09]
Lloyd Lockridge
So I've been interested in it for so long that I can't remember when it started. But all I can tell you, like in childhood. Childhood?
- [32:16]
Margot Gray
Did you do the DNA test?
- [32:18]
Lloyd Lockridge
I've not done that. I wasn't all that interested in the statistical breakdown of my DNA. I'm more interested in the stories.
- [32:24]
Margot Gray
The stories of your ancestors.
- [32:26]
Lloyd Lockridge
My ancestors and the circumstances that moved them around the planet. Every family has its stories. Your grandparents met on a blind date or your great grandmother passed through Ellis Island. But every once in a while, you'll hear something a little more unusual.
- [32:46]
Margot Gray
I have a really vague memory of somebody saying, did you know your great uncle killed somebody?
- [32:54]
Shauna Morris
I've heard my whole life that she invented the margarita, he gets a patent
- [32:59]
Margot Gray
one month before the Wright brothers. Oh my God.
- [33:03]
Lloyd Lockridge
Some of these stories are hard to believe. Others are hard to imagine. And as these tall tales get passed down through the generations, they become something more than a family story. They become family lore. My name is Lloyd Lockridge, and in this podcast I'm going to have people on to tell stories about their families. And then we're going to investigate those stories and find out how much of it is true.
- [33:27]
Shauna Morris
To go into the archive and find what you think is like, not just the secret of your family's life, but the explanatory secret of your family's life. Wow. You know, maybe this old family story that I overheard in my grandmother's Kitchen is true.
- [33:46]
Lloyd Lockridge
This is Family Lore, a new series from Odyssey Podcasts.
- [33:50]
Shauna Morris
You're always wondering why your dad is a certain way. Well, here's one answer I love when
- [33:56]
Margot Gray
I hear somebody says I have a boring family history. I they didn't do anything. I said it's because you don't know anything about your history.
- [34:05]
Lloyd Lockridge
Please follow and listen to Family Lore on any of your podcast apps.