英女王、側近がソ連スパイと１０年近く知らされず　機密解除文書で明らかに

【ロンドンＡＦＰ＝時事】エリザベス英女王は、最も高位の廷臣の一人がソ連のスパイであることを認めたという事実を、１０年近くの間、公式には知らされていなかったことが、１４日に新たに機密解除された文書で明らかになった。（写真はエリザベス女王）
　スパイであることを告白したのは、美術史家で、王室美術コレクションを監督する「サーベイヤー・オブ・ザ・クイーンズ・ピクチャーズ」として知られていたアンソニー・ブラント氏。１９３０年代からソ連のスパイであったことを１９６４年、認めていた。
　しかし、英情報局保安部（ＭＩ５）の文書によると、女王がその事実について完全に知らされるまでにはさらに約９年かかった。女王は知らされた際、「非常に冷静に、驚くことなく」受け入れたという。
　ブラント氏はケンブリッジ大学在学中にソ連に勧誘され、ドナルド・マクリーン、ガイ・バージェス、キム・フィルビーの各氏ら他の二重スパイを含むスパイ網に加わった。
　第２次世界大戦中はＭＩ５の上級職員を務めており、旧ソ連国家保安委員会（ＫＧＢ）の要員に大量の機密情報を流していた。
　ブラント氏がスパイだったことは１９７９年、マーガレット・サッチャー首相（当時）によって議会声明で公にされた。ブラント氏はその４年後、死去した。【翻訳編集ＡＦＰＢＢＮｅｗｓ】
〔ＡＦＰ＝時事〕（2025/01/15-17:02）

Queen Elizabeth II was not told officially for nearly a decade that one of her most senior courtiers had admitted he was a Soviet spy, newly declassified British files revealed Tuesday.
Anthony Blunt, an art historian and the Surveyor of the Queen's Pictures overseeing the official Royal Art Collection, confessed in 1964 that he had been a Soviet agent since the 1930s.
However, the queen was not fully informed about Blunt for around another nine years, according to files from Britain's domestic MI5 spy agency released by the National Archives.
She took it very calmly and without surprise, according to the records.
It was decided to tell the monarch when ministers became concerned that the truth would become public when Blunt died.
He had been recruited by the Soviets while he was at the University of Cambridge, joining a spy ring that included other infamous double agents Donald Maclean, Guy Burgess and Kim Philby.
Blunt was a senior MI5 officer during World War II and passed vast quantities of secret intelligence to his handlers from the KGB Soviet spy agency.
He was questioned several times after Maclean and Burgess fled to the Soviet Union in the 1950s.
But without a confession, he was allowed to keep his position at the heart of the British establishment until the early 1960s.
By then, the queen -- who died in 2022 after a record-breaking seven-decade reign -- was not at all keen on Blunt and saw him rarely, the records show.
Blunt was publicly unmasked by former prime minister Margaret Thatcher in a parliamentary statement in 1979 and he died four years later.
The files are being released now ahead of the opening of an exhibition focusing on the work of MI5 at the National Archives in west London.
Exhibits will include a vivid report of Blunt's interview when he finally confessed.