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Benn civil servant was a spy
Ellen Widdup13 May 2009
A KGB agent who recruited spies at Oxford has been unmasked as a leading civil servant.
Historians have speculated for years on the identity of “Agent Scott”, who was responsible for the Oxford Ring of spies, after the KGB made reference to him in files released in 1992.
Now researchers John Earl Haynes, Harvey Klehr and Alexander Vassiliev have revealed the Soviet mole as Arthur Wynn, a British former bureaucrat who worked as a civil servant in Tony Benn's Ministry of Technology and as a medical researcher and expert on nutrition.
The trio discovered his identity in a document written by the KGB's former head of counter-intelligence Pavel Fitin, to Vsevolod Merkulov, the KGB chief.
The memo, dated July 1941, says “Scott is Arthur Wynn. About 35 years old, member of the CP [Communist Party] of England, graduated from Oxford and Cambridge univs.”
It adds that Mr Wynn, who died in 2001, was recruited by Theodore Mally, a KGB controller based in London, and Edith Tudor Hart, the Austrian-born KGB agent who also recruited the Soviet spy Kim Philby.
The quality and quantity of intelligence provided by the Oxford Ring, and the number and names of all its members, still remain secret.
As Agent Scott, Wynn sent the KGB reports on Oxford members of the Communist Party, possible recruits and at least 25 potential Soviet spies, of whom five were considered highly suitable.
Among those suspected to have been recruited as students into the Oxford Ring were a former Labour MP, a former director of the Victoria and Albert Museum and an Oxford don.
Another was an individual code-named “Bunny” who has never been identified.
It is understood Wynn, a graduate of Cambridge, was recruited in 1936 shortly after meeting Peggy Moxon, a student at Oxford. The couple married in 1938 and had four children. Mrs Wynn, now 96, lives in London but declined to be interviewed.
Reader views (1)
No surprises there, and I just wonder when we will hear the names of the Labour members of Parliament and indeed the Conservative members, who were also spies for the KGB and GRU. There are . . . sorry, were a few, no doubt.
- Eoin Mcgreeghan, Derry, NI, 14/05/2009 00:41
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