Sir Richard Dearlove (l), Stefan Halper (c), and Peter Martland (Credit: public domain)
“A group of intelligence experts, including a former head of MI6, has cut ties with fellow academics at Cambridge University, in a varsity spy scare harking back to the heyday of Soviet espionage at the heart of the British establishment.
Sir Richard Dearlove, the ex-chief of the Secret Intelligence Service and former master of Pembroke College, Stefan Halper, a senior foreign policy adviser at the White House to presidents Nixon, Ford and Reagan, and Peter Martland, a leading espionage historian, have resigned as conveners of the Cambridge Intelligence Seminar — an academic forum for former practitioners and current researchers of western spycraft — because of concerns over what they fear could be a Kremlin-backed operation to compromise the group.
Mr Halper said he had stepped down due to “unacceptable Russian influence on the group”.
The seminar, established by Christopher Andrew, the official historian of MI5 and former chairman of the history faculty at the university, is one of the most respected networks in its field.
Recent attendees at its discussions, held every Friday at Corpus Christi College, have included Mike Flynn, president-elect Donald Trump’s choice as US national security adviser, and Sir Simon Fraser, the recently retired permanent undersecretary at the Foreign Office.
Sir Richard and his colleagues suspect that Veruscript — a newly established digital publishing house that has provided funding to set up a new journal of intelligence and to cover some of the seminar’s costs — may be acting as a front for the Russian intelligence services.
They fear that Russia may be seeking to use the seminar as an impeccably-credentialed platform to covertly steer debate and opinion on high-level sensitive defence and security topics, two people familiar with their thinking said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The Financial Times has been unable to independently substantiate their claims — and no concrete evidence has been provided to back them.
The three stepped down as conveners before the start of the Michaelmas term. Sir Richard confirmed his resignation as convener but declined to comment further. Mr Martland did not respond to a request for comment.
Their concerns come against a backdrop of growing paranoia about Russian subversion in the west. With relations between London and Moscow at their lowest ebb since the height of the cold war, Britain’s spy agencies are working overtime to try and counter Russian covert action in the UK. (Financial Times, 12/16/2016) (Archive)