The Cambridges Spies are Back in the News with Release of Diplomat's Secret Diaries Guy Liddell was the deputy director general of MI-5 (sort of like their FBI, with MI-6 being more like CIA, domestic vs. international work -- but much more overlap over there) in Great Britain in 1951. He was also a very good friend to several men who, though also working for the British government -- though they actually Soviet spies. It was quite the scandal more than 60 years ago -- and it's all in the news again. Names like Guy Burgess, Donald MacLean, Anthony Blunt, and especially, Harold Adrian Russell "Kim" Philby, are familiar to anyone interested in the history of espionage in the Cold War. Their stories read like spy novels -- but, in fact, this stuff is all too true. Kim Philby [Note: I have dealt with these "Cambridge Spies," along with a lesser known ring of spies at Oxford in my novel, CAMELOT'S COUSIN .] Guy Liddell was their friend and started figuring things out way too late. Recently his personal diaries were released to the National Archives over there (Kew, in West London) and they are quite revealing: Spies investigator 'shared his secrets with Russians' The man investigating the defection of two of the notorious "Cambridge spies" was unwittingly confiding in members of the same group of Soviet double agents, newly released records reveal. The personal diaries of Guy Liddell, deputy director general of MI5, have been released to the National