POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY DANIEL FINKELSTEIN IN THE TIMES
I don't know how you can rank people much of whose work remains secret to this day. You really do not know how effective or damaging each was.
So far as we know, few spies were more damaging than Maclean and Philby in their top form.
Many of your names of course are the Cambridge Circle.
I actually think - although full revelation of their work could change my assessment - these men served a high cause.
The US was in the turmoil of McCarthyism and the Pentagon contained a number of generals ready and willing to launch a pre-emptive nuclear attack on Russia.
There were actually plans for doing this at one point. After all, the early 1950s were less than a decade after the US used two atomic weapons, on civilians no less.
And MacArthur was ready to use nuclear bombs on the Chinese just at the dawn of the 1950s to clean up the mess he himself created at the Yalu River.
Those were ugly days, fanatical and dark. People today cannot appreciate them fully without reading some good books.
Russia's progress in getting nuclear weapons and in having the details of many US secrets likely saved the world from a catastrophe.
The cold War was nasty, but MAD actually contributed to tolerably peaceful situation.
MISS ATOMIC BOMB IN NEVADA 1950s
HAVING A GAY OLD TIME: WAVING AND SMILING BEFORE OBLITERATING A CITY