Carincross, John

(1914–1999)

   A British diplomat of Scots heritage who served in the British Foreign Office, Carincross was recruited by Guy Burgess in 1937. An ideological recruit to Stalinism, Carincross despised the British establishment and embraced Marxism–Leninism as a creed. His Soviet code names were “Moliere” and later “Liszt,” reflecting his Soviet handlers’ respect for his intellect. He passed thousands of pages of classified documents to his Soviet case officers over more than a decade—more than 3,400 in 1941, according to Soviet records. Carincross provided the Kremlin with thousands of pages of decrypted German military telegrams, classified Ultra top secret by London. He also provided Moscow with information about British nuclear research. According to the Soviet archives, it was Carincross’s reporting on the British nuclear weapons program codenamed “Tube Alloy” that initiated research into building a Soviet bomb.

   Carincross was exposed in the early 1960s but avoided prosecution by living outside the United Kingdom. In his later years he wrote his memoirs, portraying himself as a victim of Cold War anticommunism and claiming that he was only a wartime ally of an embattled Russia. The book—like his life—was a half-truth.