Queen Elizabeth II wasn’t told about Soviet spy in her palace for nearly 10 years, MI5 files reveal

nypost.com:

BBC, Blunt confessed to the British royals in 1964 that he was a senior officer for the Russians during World War II.However, Elizabeth wasn’t clued in about this until nine years later.

Blunt, an art historian, worked at Buckingham Palace as Surveyor of the Queen’s Pictures for decades. He was under suspicion for being connected to the Soviets for years before he admitted the truth.

The MI5 files, released to the National Archives, reportedly contain Blunt’s full confession.Shortly before he was set to retire at age 65, Blunt came clean in April 1964 to MI5 interrogator Arthur Martin, who promised him immunity for prosecution.The files said that Blunt was not “at ease” as he spoke during his interrogation, and every question “was followed by a long pause” while he “seemed to be debating with himself how to answer it,” per the BBC.Blunt confirmed that he worked with the Soviets during the war and also admitted to being in touch with the Russian Intelligence Service after the war.Elizabeth’s private secretary at the time, Martin Charteris, and his deputy, Philip Moore, were the only people at the palace who knew about Blunt’s confession.“Charteris thought that the queen did not know and he saw no advantage in telling her about it now; it would only add to her worries.” MI5’s then director general, Michael Hanley, reportedly wrote in the files.The queen, according to what Charteris told Hanley, “was not at all keen on Blunt and saw him rarely.”But once Blunt fell ill in March 1973, Elizabeth was officially informed that her former employee was a Soviet spy.