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Civil servant Arthur Wynn revealed as recruiter of Oxford spies

A Soviet mole who recruited a network of communist spies at Oxford before and during the war has been unmasked as Arthur Wynn, a distinguished former civil servant who was also “Agent Scott” of the KGB.

Historians have speculated for years about the true identity of “Scott”, a British spy known to have recruited the Oxford Ring of spies and informants in parallel to the better-known Cambridge Ring of Soviet agents.

Agent Scott first came to light when the KGB briefly permitted access to its files in 1992, but his true identity has been revealed after the discovery of a document written by the KGB’s former head of counter-intelligence. The double life of the British former bureaucrat was exposed in the American Weekly Standard magazine by the historians John Earl Haynes, Harvey Klehr and Alexander Vassiliev, a former KGB officer who gained access to the Soviet archives in the 1990s.

Related Links

  • How members of Oxford spy ring were exposed by MI5's Peter Wright
  • Read entire article at Times (UK)