Have Russian SPIES infiltrated Cambridge again 70 years after infamous Philby ring?

Ought to the honeyed partitions of Cambridge College discuss, how a lot they may reveal. It was right here within the Thirties that Kim Philby, Man Burgess and Donald Maclean have been recruited to the Communist trigger.

A lot concerning the Cambridge spies continues to be hidden within the Kremlin's archives: what number of there have been and who recruited them.

We do know that these traitors betrayed Britain's prime secrets and techniques. A whole bunch of our brokers suffered agonising deaths consequently. And now, treachery could also be afoot once more.

Veruscript, which is owned by Gleb Cheglakov, left, is sponsoring the weekly intelligence seminar held in Corpus Christi School in Cambridge which not too long ago was often attended by the previous head of MI6 Sir Richard Dearlove, who has stopped going over the Russian menace

Corpus Christi school in Cambridge hosts the weekly intelligence seminar 

The sensational allegation, reported first by the Monetary Occasions, is that Britain's main tutorial occasion for the examine of intelligence might have been topic to Russian espionage.

The weekly Cambridge Intelligence Seminar is held in Corpus Christi School, an historical institution with its personal mysteries, together with a rumoured community of tunnels constructed to be used within the occasion of a Nazi invasion. However for individuals who attend the Friday afternoon conferences within the oak-panelled New Mixture Room, it's espionage that's up for dialogue.

Not one of the info chewed over on the seminars is classed. The purpose is to enhance tutorial understanding of spycraft — its historical past, its interplay with the regulation and public coverage, the consequences upon it of technological change.

Current seminar attendees embody Basic Michael Flynn, former head of the U.S. Defence Intelligence Company and now nationwide safety adviser to Donald Trump. Amongst main Brits is Sir Simon Fraser, a not too long ago retired Overseas Workplace luminary.

Donald Trump's proposed Nationwide Safety Adviser Basic Michael Flynn not too long ago attended a Cambridge intelligence seminar 

A typical lecture this Michaelmas time period was on 'The transfer in the direction of attritional counter-insurgency in opposition to the IRA in 1971' by Huw Bennett, a professor from Cardiff. One other was titled 'Intelligence chiefs in long-term perspective: from Queen Elizabeth I to Putin, Obama and Theresa Could'.

James Bond would possibly discover all this somewhat dry. Sherry, not Martini, is the favoured tipple. Corduroys somewhat than dinner jackets are the gown code. However it's a spot the place serving and retired spooks rub shoulders with specialists, senior figures in personal safety and even the odd journalist. That makes them a goal for hostile spies.

Such gray zones are the place spotters — intelligence officers on the lookout for recruits — can sense the weaknesses and pursuits of potential candidates. A style for alcohol, skilled frustration, cash issues or ideology comparable to anti-Americanism: all might be exploited by a wily spymaster.

So the suggestion of Russian involvement within the seminar is in a single sense no shock.

Senior figures have left attributable to fears of Russian affect. Foremost amongst them is Sir Richard Dearlove, the previous 'C' (chief) of MI6, till not too long ago grasp of Pembroke School, just some minutes' stroll from Corpus Christi.

Kim Philby, left and Man Burgess, proper, have been two members of the Cambridge spy ring

One other is Stefan Halper, a former senior White Home adviser within the Nixon, Ford and Reagan administrations. He advised the FT he had stepped down due to 'unacceptable Russian affect on the group'.

Peter Martland, a number one historian of espionage, has stop the seminar, too. Conservative MP Dominic Grieve, the chair of the Intelligence and Safety choose committee, advised the Telegraph he didn't need to touch upon the explanations for Sir Richard's departure, however added that Russian involvement was 'potential'.

Although no wrongdoing has been proved, the story revolves round a brand new sponsor: Veruscript, a publishing enterprise based mostly in London, however with Russian connections.

The FT asserted that Sir Richard and his colleagues concern Veruscript could also be a entrance for Moscow's intelligence companies. They're stated to be involved that the Russians would possibly use the seminars to affect the opinions of the army and intelligence communities.

Veruscript is owned by Gleb Cheglakov, a Russian nanotechnologist learning at Cambridge. He insists his firm is solely making an attempt a brand new method to publishing.

Together with Donald Maclean, Philby and Burgess have been recruited by the Soviets within the 1930s

Its start-up capital, he says, got here from his spouse, Nazik Ibraimova, a citizen of the previous Soviet Kyrgyz Republic. She offered a sequence of £50,000 loans in six-monthly instalments. The latest firm data present losses of greater than £400,000 in 2015.

The FT was unable to determine how Ms Ibraimova had come by the cash she lent to the corporate. Mr Cheglakov didn't reply to my request for remark yesterday.

However suspicions linger. Did Sir Richard obtain from his previous intelligence friends a tip-off about Veruscript or somebody near it? We might by no means know. But the row has shattered the consensus round Britain's long-established centre for the examine of intelligence.

The doyen of that self-discipline, Christopher Andrew, a founding father of the Cambridge Intelligence Seminar — who wrote the official historical past of MI5 and co-authored books with KGB defector Oleg Gordievsky — vehemently denies something is amiss. He calls the FT story 'absurd' and says an in depth rebuttal will probably be forthcoming.

Neil Kent is a good friend of Gleb Cheglakov and a lead convenor of the intelligence seminar in addition to being liable for creating hyperlinks between it and Veruscript.

He advised the FT: 'Cambridge is an excellent place of conspiracy theories, however the thought that there's a Machiavellian plot right here is ridiculous.

'The thought any of us can be concerned in something that smacks of Russian affect . . . it is actual Reds beneath the mattress stuff — the entire thing is ludicrous.'

Nevertheless, he did admit he didn't know the place Veruscript's cash got here from.

But if spies did need to attend the seminar, there's little to cease them: Cambridge is awash with overseas college students. And it's onerous to see how Veruscript might affect seminar discussions — even assuming, which I doubt, that they'd need to.

What's past doubt is that Russia's makes an attempt to destabilise the West have dramatically stepped up.

Former Russian spy and defector Alexander Litvinenko, pictured left earlier than his homicide, and proper, after he had been poisoned ,had been very essential of Russian chief Vladimir Putin

Having spent the Nineties in what are actually Nato's frontline states — Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania — I noticed first-hand how Moscow used propaganda, spycraft, financial strain and soiled methods to intimidate its former colonies.

The identical weapons have lengthy been used in opposition to us, too. However we've been shamefully sluggish to understand it.

The homicide of defector Alexander Litvinenko in London in 2006 by Russian brokers was the tip of the iceberg. Russian intelligence operates on such a scale within the UK that our spy-catchers wrestle to maintain up. Cash from Russian oligarchs has flooded into universities, think-tanks, media and politics.

Solely because the brazen Russian intervention within the U.S. election this yr — by means of hacking of Democratic Occasion emails — has the total scale of the menace grow to be plain.

Russia's mixture of hacking, leaking and propaganda strikes on the coronary heart of Western politics.

German spy companies are already warning that Russia will intervene of their election subsequent yr, aiming to topple Angela Merkel and set up a pro-Kremlin leftist.

Our Nationwide Safety Council is scrambling to counter the Kremlin's poisonous cocktail of faux information, cyber-attacks and different mischief-making. An pressing assembly is predicted within the New Yr.

Excessive-stakes geopolitics could seem one million miles from the decorous environs of a Cambridge school, however a former head of MI6 shouldn't be taken frivolously.

One clarification for the occasions could also be rivalry. Sir Richard Dearlove and others who've stop the seminar run the Cambridge Safety Initiative, which serves an identical perform.

Fairly what the fallout of this disagreement will probably be stays to be seen. However for now, the shadow of Moscow is as soon as extra seeping into Cambridge's historical corridors.

• Edward Lucas writes for The Economist.

 

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