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Cambridge Five Spy Ring — Part 32
Page 57
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‘
role for 30 years? Was his pronounced stammer a result of
the constant grinding, SOmach-iurning strain of those years?
What unsuspected fanaticism sustained his Communist fervor
through the Stalin years of disillusionment? What inner
Strengths. or weaknesses, enabled Philby to deceive friends
and colleagues, and io live with himself as he set about
destroying a society that had been kind 10 him as only the
British UpperClass Establishment can be kind to its own?
For those whe seeh answers to these questions, Philby's
book offers scant material beyond the comment that “as f look
over Moscow from my study window I can see the solid foun-
dations of the future 7 glimpsed at Cambridge." 11 was then.
in the early 1930s, that he and many of his contemporaries
espoused either socialism or Communism.
Throughout, the book displays an astonishing dichotomy:
on the one hand Philby describes with pride his achievements
for the British SIS, while on the other he was a spy dedicated
to betraving it. He sneers at the British Establishment on one
page, and on the next identifies and categorizes his colleagues
by the schools and universities they attended.
But if Philby reveats little of himself, he does dangle three
fascinating threads for students of what has come io be Known
as the Third Man Affair. There is, of course, the repeated
Aint that there is vera fourth man —— and a fifth, and more.
He seems to believe that he successfully hoodwinked the
SIS into regarding him as an innocent victim of circumstances
in the Burgess-Maclean affair, and that for this reason the
SIS continued to use him as a free-lance agent afier he had
been forced by the scandal to leave the service. In fact, it
seems likely the SIS by then knew he was a Soviet spy, and
used him as a pipeline to send false information to Moscow
Then there's his revelation that he did not know Maclean
personally, and that Burgess, the alcoholic homosexual, should
not have skipped to Russia at the same time as Maclean — in-
deed, in doing so he may have queered Philby's chances of
ultimately pulling off the most stupendous espionage coup in
history, Since they didn't know one another, there was nothing
to connect Philby to Maclean's escape a jump ahead of his
arrest in 195]. Nothing, that is, except Burgess, the friend
they both had in common. ff Burgess had not disobeyed
orders and gone with Maclean, it's likely no one would ever
have suspected Philby. And since Philhy was a young man
on the wav up. Britain's secret service might today have had
a different chiej. Kim Philby, Russian superspy.
As it is, Burgess is now dead: Philby is living with Melinda
Maclean after enticing her away from her husband, and they
have litle or nothing to do with fellow Westerners in Moscow,
other than the occasional dinner with another defecter. Ap-
Parently, they don’! have much to do with the Russians either.
in her book The Spy ] Loved, Kim's third wife. Eleanor, tells
of a dreary existence in a Moscow suburb in which Philby
often drinks himself insensible, and waiiows in a “sea of sad-
ness." She says, “In spite of his discipline, } sense in him @
profound gloom." Perhaps it was better to be a fellow traveler
than to arrive.
AFRIL, 1968
MWB HE First serious crisis of my career was long drawn
¥ Vout, lasting roughly from the middle of 195! to the
end of 1955. Throughout it, I was sustained by the
thought that nobody could pin on me any link with
Communist organizations. for the simple reason that ] had
never been a member of any. The first 30 years of my work
for the cause in which J believed were. from the beginning,
spent underground. This long phase started in Central
Europe in June 1933; it ended in Lebanon in January 1963.
Only then was | able 10 emerge in my true colors, the colors
of a Soviet intelligence officer.
In case doubt should still lurk in devious minds, a plain
statement of the facts is perhaps called for. In early manhood.
IT became an accredited member of the Soviet intelligence
service. ] can therefore claim to have been a Soviet intelli-
gence officer for some 30-odd years. and will no doubt remain
one until death or seniie decay forces my retirement.
In the summers of 1949 [having set up and directed the
British Secret Intelligence Service's! Soviet Section and been
in charge of the S1S station in Turkey) I was offered the SIS
representation in the United States, where | would be working
in liaison with both Central Intelligence Agency and Federal
Bureau of Investigation. The intention was to upgrade the job
for a significans reason. The collaboration between C1A and
SHS at headquarters level (though not yet in the field) had
become $0 close that any officer earmarked for high position
in the SIS would need intimate knowledge of the American
scene.
The lure of the American post was irresistible for two
reasons. Al one stroke, it would take me right back into the
middle of intelligence policy-making and it would give me a
close-up view of the American intelligence organizations.
These, I was beginning to suspect. were of greater importance
from my point of view than their British opposite numbers.
I did not even think it worth waiting for confirmation from
my Soviet colleagues. The event justified my action. No doubt
was expressed anywhere of the unlimited potentialities of my
Hew escienme
mt Tr war o
Rew SSsignmMent
Ik was arranged that I should go for a
London briefing, then sai! to America at the end of October.
In London, 1} found that Air Commodore Jack Easton
[assistant chief of SIS] had the general supervision of relations
between SIS and the American services, and it was from him
that 1 recetved most of my instruction.
My briefing on the counter-espionage side aroused grave
anxiety in my mind. Joint Anglo-American investigation of
Soviet intelligence activity in the U.S. had yielded strong sug-
gestions that there had been a Jeakage from the British
Embassy in Washington during the years 1944-45, and
another from the atomic-energy establishment at Los Alamos.
Thad no ideas about Los Alamos, but a swift check of the
1) The SIS tolherwise M16) is the one British Imellpence group authorized by
the government to gather secre! anformalion abroad by illegal means After an
apprenticeship in SIS counter-mtelligence, Portuguese and Spanish division.
Philby became head of the key Sewer Section sei up toward the end of the war
do keep track of Russian and Communist apices and subversives throughour che
world Two years later he war posted 10 Turkey
15
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