The 7th man?
Letter reveals new Cambridge spy suspect but judge rules he can’t be named – as he is still alive
A MAN connected to Britain’s most notorious spy scandal cannot be named, a judge has ruled.
His identity must remain secret even though historians say he could be the ‘seventh man’ in the 1950s Cambridge spy network that included traitor Kim Philby.
Judge Peter Lane ruled that the suspect’s name cannot be revealed as he is still alive and it was ‘quite possible that personal relationships could be jeopardised’ and there was no pressing need to identify Cold War defectors.
The man is named in a letter held in the National Archives in Kew, South West London.
Its existence was traced by historian Andrew Lownie but he was denied the right to see the letter following a Freedom of Information request. That decision was upheld in the publication yesterday of Judge Lane’s first-tier tribunal ruling.
Historians criticised the ruling, saying possible social embarrassment was no reason for shielding a traitor from exposure.
Philby was a high-ranking MI6 official who had been recruited by Soviet intelliand gence in the 1930s. He betrayed Britain for years before defecting to Russia in 1963 and was responsible for the deaths of scores of British agents.
He had come under suspicion after fellow traitors Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean fled to Moscow in 1951 but was officially cleared of involvement in 1955, by which time he had quit MI6. He died in Moscow in 1988.
A series of names have since been associated with the BurgessPhilby-Maclean spy network.
In 1979 Anthony Blunt, a former head of the Queen’s art collection, was revealed as the fourth man and John Cairncross, a Bletchley Park codebreaker and Soviet double-agent during the Second World War, has often been cited as the fifth man in the ring.
Burgess died in 1963, Maclean Blunt in 1983 and Cairncross in 1995. Last year Mr Lownie suggested that physicist Wilfrid Mann, who died in 2001, was a sixth member.
Other names linked to the spy ring have included intelligence officer Leo Long, MI5 deputy head Guy Liddell, academic Andrew Gow and philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein.
Judge Lane did say that the suspect named in the letter is not George Blake, another Soviet double agent who escaped from prison in Britain in 1966. Blake, now 93, still lives in Moscow.
Mr Lownie said: ‘It may be the person who is being protected is an official who gave advice in confidence, but it looks like the National Archives, and then the Information Commissioner, simply refused to reveal details which might be embarrassing, even though there was a strong public interest on an important historical case.’
Professor Anthony Glees, director of security and intelligence studies at the University of Buckingham, said: ‘There is something fishy here.
‘It could well be that this person is a traitor, and if that is so there needs to be an explanation. You should not use official secrecy to prevent embarrassment, and traitors should absolutely not be protected.
‘It is time the facts were out – Philby was not small fry and we deserve the truth.’
‘We deserve the truth’