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Cambridge Five Spy Ring — Part 26
Page 39
39 / 66
nih...
FNday Mat Burgess in Londen ant hie
final warning that “the game's up,”
Philby had risked a phone call from
Washington to alert him?
There was an apparent discrepa
between Mr. Heath's statement that
Phitey had Jived for the last years
“outside British lea] jurisdict’on ”
and Phiiby's recent visits to England
. Speculation was ended, though ©" paid home Jeave arranaed with
friends’ bewiiderment not at all dis- }¥S Paper. Thus is perhaps expiained
pelled, when Mr, Edward Heath
announced to the Commons last week Presumably been re
on July 1 that (choosing his words Squires into the Philby case—have
cautiousty) the security services were 41 no time been in touch with The
“now awafe, partly as a result of an Observer. ‘
admission by Mr. Philby himself, that Mr. Heath was careful to sav only
he worked for the Soviet authorities that “ Philby worked for the Soviet
before 194 and that in 1951 he in, authorities before 1946." There was
fact warned Maclean through Burgess | 0 mention of any evidence of it dur-
that the security services were about’ ing his journalistic period in Beirut,
to take action against him.” “If the evidence was no more than this,
Mr. Heath conceded that this also 4nd if Philby knew that this was all
the j weet Ae bane lf Was) wopld u have hear aan oh
meant drat Philby was tow known [ Was, would it Rave Geen fnougni
to have been the TSird Man, Mrs, 4.case “ partly supported by his own
i
by the fact that M.LS — who have |
Tesppns.ble for _
- “ conf
. . Confession’
“We have been assured’ that Phitby’:
ession ” was not made know
ingly to the British, though this d
* not rule out the possibility, and no
more than that, that he was unknow-
ingly questioned by the British
security services, .
Cocrced or not, how was Philby’s
disappearance so efficient? One
. Means of transport could have been
the 7,26540on Russian moter ship
Dolmatovo, which, ag it happens,
atrived in Beirut from Port Said on
‘ the morning of the day Philby dis-
Philby had received letters from her admission "—to make a charge of trea- _
husband purporting to come from %°? Stick in a courtroom after {7
behind the ron Oa mC » years or more? Would it have been
4 ‘ efrough to persuade him to jump be-
The statement deft many gaps 4: A ‘ ;
unfilled, Phitby had already, 12 yeats hind the Iron Curtain, leaving family
« CacS tabs. in
before (if his own story is to be ee a: ‘, :
believed), admitted having tipped off _ If Philby went entirely without
Burgess about the suspicion on Seetcion, as a fugitive from Western
Maclean—but inadvertently, Was the [Stice, would the Russians readily
Government now saving that the tip- Offer hospitality? It is not the normal
off happened i Same circum- Practice of the Soviet Union to allow
stances but that it was, in fact, done foreigners acting as their agents who
Tl Purpose as one past of present #¢t Caught to seek refuge in Russia,
uBist sympathiser to another? Burgess and Maclean were notable
r i esti exceptions. ut unlike those two,
was it muggesting that on the who had the latest official informa-
tion, Philby (or so it would appear)
had litle of exclusive value to offer.
Much has been made of his oppor-
tunities for spying on the nearby
Shemian Academy, where members of
the British Foreign Service did their
rabic studies. In fact, he never went
ere, Cant
r
appeared. It left for the Black Sea
port of Odessa, four days’ sailing
away, at 845 p.m.—that is, nearly
three hours after Philby was iast seen.
It neither took on nor discharged
cargo, nor loaded oil bunkers. The
ship was berthed about a mile from
his flat.
Oc did Philby for some reason
travel through Cairo after ail, pos-
sibly with false papers? One of his
-early letters, his wife says, made a
specific, derisive reference to a report
in a Beirut newspaper which con-
nected his disappearance with “ the
Burgess and Maclean business.” This
newspaper, while available in Cairo
and one or two other Middle East
centres, was certainly not available
behind the Iron Curtain and it was
not the sort of thing that anyone
would bother to transmit to him
there,
Gr, on the oth
way of drawing
actToss the trail?
er hand, was this a
another red herring
eel?
a
ere,
-:
tye ano
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