1917: Soviet security chief Felix Dzerzhinsky founds the 'Cheka', forerunner to the KGB.
1973: Spanish Prime Minister Admiral Luis Carrero Blanco is killed by a Basque terrorist car bomb in Madrid.
1989: The United States invades Panama and overthrows military dictator Manuel Noriega
A world of shadows
The hardest and most bitterly fought confrontation between the Soviet Union and the western democracies during the 50 years of the Cold War was on the espionage front. In this arena the KGB, the 'sword and the shield' of the USSR, pitted its wits against its principal adversaries - the Central Intelligence Agency of the United States (CIA) and the British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS).
...all of whom operated in a world of shadows, where deception and betrayal flourished.
The aim of each was to steal the secrets of the other side, to try to peer inside the mind of the enemy, to fathom his intentions, and to neutralise them before they could be executed. The soldiers in this war were the spymasters, the spies and their agents, all of whom operated in a world of shadows where deception and betrayal flourished.
KGB headquarters, Moscow © During the spy war it was impossible to write authoritatively about it. The present author once wrote that the truth could not be told 'until the files of the KGB, the CIA and the SIS are all opened to public scrutiny' - little dreaming that this would ever happen.
But when Communism collapsed and the Cold War ended, this is exactly what did occur, and thus it became possible to tell the story of the four most remarkable spies of the Cold War, four larger-than-life Englishmen: HAR (Kim) Philby, Guy Burgess, Donald Maclean and Anthony Blunt, all of whom betrayed their country to spy for Moscow.
In the new political climate, it became possible to tell the story both from Britain's point of view and through the eyes of the KGB. And from this tale we can draw some startling conclusions about the nature of espionage and its real value in the modern world.
The early years
Anthony Blunt © In the early 1930s, the democratic world appeared to be in trouble. The Great Depression had caused widespread unemployment. Fascism was on the march in Germany and Italy. To many young students at Cambridge University, privileged though they were, this was worrying and unacceptable.
Four of them - Philby, Burgess, Maclean and Blunt - wanted to do something about it. They believed that the democracies would prove too weak to stand up to Hitler and Mussolini, and they knew that many people in Britain did indeed admire these leaders. They also thought that only the Soviet Union would be powerful enough to defeat Fascism. So, when they were approached by a recruiter from Moscow, the four young men agreed to serve the KGB.
The KGB believed that recruiting clever people from a respected university was a good game plan, because the chances were that sometime in the future these young men would be among Britain's rulers and well placed to betray their country's secrets.
This is how it turned out. By the time World War Two was underway, Maclean was climbing the ladder in the Foreign Office, Burgess was an intimate of prominent politicians, and Blunt was an officer in the Security Service - MI5. Even more astoundingly, Philby was an officer in the SIS. And all the while they were establishing themselves in these positions, these four men were reporting to Moscow.
Put together, their information should have been of inestimable value to Moscow.
It got better for the KGB. Just before the war ended, Philby was appointed head of the SIS's anti-Soviet section, so that the man who was charged with running operations against the Russians, was a Russian agent. Blunt, meanwhile, had been on the distribution list for material from the war's most secret operation, Ultra, decoded German radio traffic.
Then, as the Cold War got under way, Philby became SIS liaison officer with the newly formed CIA in Washington, where Maclean was first secretary at the British embassy, sitting on a committee that dealt with atomic bomb matters.
Burgess at this time was with the Foreign Office news department. Put together, their information should have been of inestimable value to Moscow. But the KGB files on these dedicated Soviet agents show a different picture.
1973: Spanish Prime Minister Admiral Luis Carrero Blanco is killed by a Basque terrorist car bomb in Madrid.
1989: The United States invades Panama and overthrows military dictator Manuel Noriega
A world of shadows
The hardest and most bitterly fought confrontation between the Soviet Union and the western democracies during the 50 years of the Cold War was on the espionage front. In this arena the KGB, the 'sword and the shield' of the USSR, pitted its wits against its principal adversaries - the Central Intelligence Agency of the United States (CIA) and the British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS).
...all of whom operated in a world of shadows, where deception and betrayal flourished.
The aim of each was to steal the secrets of the other side, to try to peer inside the mind of the enemy, to fathom his intentions, and to neutralise them before they could be executed. The soldiers in this war were the spymasters, the spies and their agents, all of whom operated in a world of shadows where deception and betrayal flourished.
KGB headquarters, Moscow © During the spy war it was impossible to write authoritatively about it. The present author once wrote that the truth could not be told 'until the files of the KGB, the CIA and the SIS are all opened to public scrutiny' - little dreaming that this would ever happen.
But when Communism collapsed and the Cold War ended, this is exactly what did occur, and thus it became possible to tell the story of the four most remarkable spies of the Cold War, four larger-than-life Englishmen: HAR (Kim) Philby, Guy Burgess, Donald Maclean and Anthony Blunt, all of whom betrayed their country to spy for Moscow.
In the new political climate, it became possible to tell the story both from Britain's point of view and through the eyes of the KGB. And from this tale we can draw some startling conclusions about the nature of espionage and its real value in the modern world.
The early years
Anthony Blunt © In the early 1930s, the democratic world appeared to be in trouble. The Great Depression had caused widespread unemployment. Fascism was on the march in Germany and Italy. To many young students at Cambridge University, privileged though they were, this was worrying and unacceptable.
Four of them - Philby, Burgess, Maclean and Blunt - wanted to do something about it. They believed that the democracies would prove too weak to stand up to Hitler and Mussolini, and they knew that many people in Britain did indeed admire these leaders. They also thought that only the Soviet Union would be powerful enough to defeat Fascism. So, when they were approached by a recruiter from Moscow, the four young men agreed to serve the KGB.
The KGB believed that recruiting clever people from a respected university was a good game plan, because the chances were that sometime in the future these young men would be among Britain's rulers and well placed to betray their country's secrets.
This is how it turned out. By the time World War Two was underway, Maclean was climbing the ladder in the Foreign Office, Burgess was an intimate of prominent politicians, and Blunt was an officer in the Security Service - MI5. Even more astoundingly, Philby was an officer in the SIS. And all the while they were establishing themselves in these positions, these four men were reporting to Moscow.
Put together, their information should have been of inestimable value to Moscow.
It got better for the KGB. Just before the war ended, Philby was appointed head of the SIS's anti-Soviet section, so that the man who was charged with running operations against the Russians, was a Russian agent. Blunt, meanwhile, had been on the distribution list for material from the war's most secret operation, Ultra, decoded German radio traffic.
Then, as the Cold War got under way, Philby became SIS liaison officer with the newly formed CIA in Washington, where Maclean was first secretary at the British embassy, sitting on a committee that dealt with atomic bomb matters.
Burgess at this time was with the Foreign Office news department. Put together, their information should have been of inestimable value to Moscow. But the KGB files on these dedicated Soviet agents show a different picture.