◆ SpookStack

McDermott ii ior MMe fe as . Former, Foreign , Office Adviser to the Secret Intelli- ‘+ gence Service. - + “ | i ff BIS PUILBY really all that ly ‘4 buportant?. Do his activities, ‘Tt oid past... present and future, . kf justify. a long newspaper 4" og? probe? and = ravaged — saul- @.. °,) | searching by the authorities? cu f_¢ Or 3a the Bond and Dolly os | Delly syndrome warping the “*; [ becoming head of that organi- sation: and, as they later dis- 1 Covered, he Was doing mux Jimum damage In those same cyeurs. Equally the KGB (the Vi detail, By luck and judgment, itis master spy and arch trailor was able to AUPply Moscow not only with $1S's 1 ", + tad toe Judgment of serious. people? /For a atart, it is worth recording the opinion of those inside the intelligence world. l have been able to do this. There, is no doubt in the minds of the Secret In- telligence Service. Up to 1951, Philby chad solid hopes of iussian intelligence service} risked keeping him in the West far-a dozen years after he came under suspicion as the Third Man, because. of his comtinued usefulness to them, og His use was not merely in the provision of disconnected deployment in the field, but with information on the state of their intelligence on Com-, naunist affairs, Unlike George | Blake, he was able, in fact, to , | influence policy, both British I band Soviet. a ar ee woe eo Ce a a? a att Ege , The” pleture : of Philby Survival given “in Insight's report is a shocking one. -On four separate occasions he got away with the benefit of the doubt: on the last he simply of gt away. The reasons are two. | fold. One was that he had proved himself, to the Ameri- |' | cans as well as the British, a . | very high-class operator whe ‘ f was also a charming fellow, * F “one af us." The other was /y Even more serious: the poll- ticiuns’ reluctance ta deal with a yery unsavoury ques- tion on [ts merits, Any asscssinent of possible reforms must begin with what ’t Bes already been done. While 4S Philby and his “friends “were double-crogsing us, we were pulling in goud numbers of ; nigh-prade defectors from the other side. One could name at least fifteen in the past two decades who have entered with equal zest into the double game and given us Critically valuable informa- tion. Great credit for this i goes to Sir Dick White, by far he best head of S15 we have had. As a former head of MIS, he has defused the pernicious rivalry between hese two | services ' and, equally important, got rela- tions with the CIA back on a good footing. To. « He has also improved SIS ‘practice in security and re cruitment. Socially the service Ig now considerably more heterogeneous than Foreign Office. They also treat isecurily against enemy pene tration very seriously.” ~ ‘ My own main reservation .about the top SIS echelons is that they are too gentle. manly “In: a deadly game where that is a definite disadvantage, Nevertheless, 1 think that the great vaiue of Insight’s report is the ques tion it raises about SIS's political and” public accounta- ity." I believe that the present dispersal of power between. the Foreign Office and the Prime Minister ex. poses SIS to'a dangerous degree of autonomy. To my ‘mind there is a strong case for.a new body, quite outside Whitehall’ and Westminster, to subject the service to a regular inspection and, | if Mecessary, overhaul 0 ‘the F Ad “inbred” Tittle” Commits sion exists: at the moment, but no ong seems ‘to pay any attention lo its reports. Trua ] outsiders gre“aireudy coming ¥; more and’ more into uses in b the Government machine, - and in the United States'thes are 0-0 House Becret i+ 4 b oF oe ye i 4 i . 7 haf } . Se pied into the White 7- : Itself to advire on i matters of global _ | policy. A proup here canc{si. “y ite of, for instance, a suitably high: powered . busineass: an, “| scientist, | fournalist, - don. , ge, and wontun might well . duce a valuable increuse i ublic confidence, tp * The Philby phantasmugeria, AL which seems Incredibla even. | though itis trué, ‘shows: Thar we need them, We can dis- jaf miss the tired joke that. we “| have no scerets worth the et jud . pro ° in a Pe ena de -_— Cw | ii keeping. The KCB do ‘not scem to think so. The day we can relax will be ave day the last KGB agent géts the train for “Moscow. ere: is no sign ‘of a slackening of KGB activity in Britain; quite the contrary. Wa can be certain that hidden in the recesses Of the Western body politic there are other poten- , tial Philbys. And in his KGR ofice Kim is hard at work tight now on the best method to recruit and exploit them.. Py | tl eT Pad Me. en ee ee ME ERE ie Re * . + ~ i : ‘ . us -