82 • CABINET SECRETARY
nator to the Cabinet, the secure meeting room used by theJoint
Intelligence Committee, and the suite of offices occupied by the
Parliamentary Intelligence and Security Committeeand its clerk.CABINET SECRETARY.The Cabinet secretary chairs thePerma-
nent Secretaries’ Committee on the Intelligence Services, which
recommends the most senior appointments to the three agencies and
is the prime minister’s principal adviser on intelligence issues.
Among those Cabinet secretaries whose names have been most
closely associated with British Intelligence areSir Robert Arm-
strong, Sir Burke Trend, and Sir Edward Bridges.
CAIRNCROSS, JOHN.A brilliant linguist and French scholar, John
Cairncross was a member of theCambridge Fivealthough, unlike
the others, he was unaware that they were spies. Uniquely, he joined
the Foreign Office from Cambridge, having placed first in both the
highly demanding Foreign and Home Civil Service examinations.
Unpopular and socially ill at ease with his contemporaries, he was
moved from the Foreign Office, where he briefly shared a desk with
Donald Maclean, to theCabinet Officeas private secretary to Lord
Hankey. Here he was responsible for passing a copy of theMaud
Committee Report, on the feasibility of developing an atomic
weapon, to his Soviet controllers. Later, when he was moved toBlet-
chley Parkas a German interpreter, he stole thousands ofultra
decrypts, and when he was transferred to theSecret Intelligence
Service, where he worked briefly withKim Philby, he continued his
espionage. After the war, he was moved again to the Ministry of Sup-
ply and gained access to details of Britain’s military budget and plans
for civil nuclear energy.
Cairncross fell under suspicion following thedefectionofGuy
Burgessin May 1951, and when a document in his handwriting was
found in Burgess’s flat, he resigned from the civil service and moved
abroad. While lecturing at Northwestern University in Chicago in
April 1964, he was interviewed byArthur MartinofMI5and a
Federal Bureau of Investigationspecial agent and made a partial
admission of his espionage, forcing him to leave the United States.
For the remainder of his life, he worked in Italy and the Far East for
the United Nations. He died in England after he had completed his