John Cairncross

John Cairncross    ( spook)
Born	25 July 1913  Lesmahagow,  Lanarkshire,  Scotland,  UK
Died	8 October 1995 (Age 82)  Herefordshire,  England,  UK
Nationality	British
Alma mater	•  University of Glasgow •  Sorbonne •  Trinity College (Cambridge)
Member of	Cambridge Five
British civil servant who became an intelligence officer and spy during the Second World War. He was confirmed to be the fifth member of the Cambridge Five.

John Cairncross was a British civil servant who became an intelligence officer and Soviet spy during the Second World War. As a Soviet double agent, he passed to the Soviet Union the raw Tunny decryptions that influenced the Battle of Kursk. He was the fifth member of the Cambridge Five. He was also notable as a translator, literary scholar and writer of non-fiction.

The most significant aspect of his work was helping the Soviets defeat the Germans in major World War II battles; he may also have told Moscow that the US was developing an atomic bomb. Cairncross confessed in secret to MI5's Arthur S. Martin in 1964 and gave a limited confession to two journalists from The Sunday Times in December 1979. He was given immunity from prosecution.

According to The Washington Post, the suggestion that John Cairncross was the "fifth man" of the Cambridge ring was not confirmed until 1990, by Soviet double-agent Oleg Gordievsky. This was also stated by former KGB agent Yuri Modin's book published in 1994: "My 5 Cambridge Friends Burgess, Maclean, Philby, Blunt, and Cairncross" by their KGB controller. However, defectors are never 100% reliable, and may be pressured by the MI5.

 

Related Documents

Title	Type	Publication date	Author(s)	Description
Document:The Cambridge Five	Wikispooks Page	2 July 2021	Tariq Aqil	No other spy or agency has done so much damage to Britain and America and provided such valuable intelligence to the Soviet Union as the Cambridge Five

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