Mystery's End: A "Fifth Man" Is Unmasked At Last

Who was the "Fifth Man," the British spy for the Soviet Union who worked with Kim Philby, Guy Burgess, Donald Maclean and Anthony Blunt during and after World War II? For four decades, espionage fans have had no shortage of suspects. Last year Soviet defector Oleg Gordievsky published a book, KGB: The Inside Story, in which he fingered a scholarly Cambridge graduate named John Cairncross as the mystery man. Cairncross admitted long ago that he spied for the Soviets, but at the level of a footsoldier and in an effort to aid a wartime ally. The British government believed him and in 1951 allowed him to leave England. Now 78, he lives quietly in the south of France.

Last week Cairncross came clean. "I was made one of the Five during the war," he told the London paper the Mail on Sunday. While working at Britain's code and cipher school, he provided the Soviets with decoded messages that helped them defeat the Germans at Kursk in 1943. Later in the war, while serving in MI6, Britain's secret intelligence service, he told the Soviets about Allied plans for the future of Yugoslavia. Reflecting on his wartime misdeeds, he says, "I hope this will finally put an end to the 'Fifth Man' mystery."