Ring of Five

   The Soviet intelligence service referred to Donald Maclean, Guy Burgess, Kim Philby, Anthony Blunt, and John Carincross as the Ring of Five or the magnificent five. These five agents had penetrated the inter sanctums of the British establishment and over more than two decades produced tens of thousands of British, American, and NATO classified documents. Their damage to the West, however, far exceeded this production: they sowed deep distrust between the American and British security and intelligence services and disrupted all intelligence efforts against the Soviet Union in the critical first years of the Cold War.