◆ SpookStack

(J) . he Third Man | timing of the new spy scandal in Gr could not have been worse for Prim Minister Macmillan. Whatever lift Mr, Macmill received from President Kennedy's fleeting has been dissipated by the disclosure that Harold Philby was the “third man” who tipped off Burgess and MacLean, thereby enabling the two traitors to elude arrest in 1951. Yet it was Mr. Macmillan himself who exonerated Philby from this charge when it was made Wy @ Labor member of Parlia- ment in 1955. For months, rumors have been circulating about Philby, who was reportedly a British counter-es- pionage agent during World War I. From 1946 to 1951, he held important diplomatic posts, in- cluding assignment to the British Embassy in Wash- ington, where he apparently served as security officer. Until his disappearance in Lebanon last January, Philby had been a correspondent for the Economist and the Londen Observer in the Middle East. Now it develops that Philby was a Soviet spy whe probably served a5 @ double agent during the Second War. If there were any doubts on the matter, this confirms again the energy and persistence of Soviet espionage in reaching inte Western intelligence systems (witness the current attempt in Wash- ington to recruit a CIA employe), But i also strengthens nagging doubts about British seeurity. No one could sensibly maintain that Mr. Mac- milan or his Laborite predecessors are soft on ‘communism. But in the higher reaches of the civil service there is a seeming class bias im assess- ing security reliability. If {as was the case with - Philby} a trusted official comes from a prominent family, went to the right schools and speaks in the approved upper-class manner, there is a dis- position to refuse to believe that he could be a Soviet agent. This tendency is fortified by the | otherwise admirable British reluctance to snoop - into private affairs. In highly caricatured form, the attitude is re- flected in the James Bond stories written by lan Fleming. British agent Bond, forever struggling _ With the sinister SMERSH (the Soviet counterspy _ apparatus) somehow always manages to imbibe the '“pight” wine, to wear impeccable clothes and to ‘tool through London in the smartest roadsters. Bot in the light of Philby-Burgess-MacLean, . Bond’s adventures are a trifle misleading. é unwashed proletariat of SMERSH seem more e ‘ective in Hie than in art. “por EBC OPeEe T. 19i Casper Calighan Conrad DeLoach Evans Gale Rosen Sullivan Tavel, Trotter Tele Room Holmes Gandy a The Washington Post and ——___ Times Herald The Washington Daily News The Evening Star New York Heraid Tribune —— New York Journal-Amersican New York Mirror New York Dally News New York Post The New York Times The Worker The New Leader The Wall Street Journal The Nationa] Observer Date _ 7+ 3:GF ui f _—— 7 Me Na 2 Bas oe The ‘ “ ~ —