◆ SpookStack

For 30 years before he skipped to _ Russia in 1963, Britain's upper-crust . agent H. A. Philby lived one of the mast Successtul—and treacherous——lies in all sSpydom, and London hasn't recovered yet, - ‘Lonvon, N January, 1963, Harold Adrian Philby, Known to all as “Kim,” + disappeared from Beirut, where he was working as a correspondent of two British weeklies, The Observer and The Economist. Soon afterward. Edward Heath, then the Government spokesman, announced in answer to ‘& question in the House of Commons ‘that Kim had skipped to the Soviet Union. He added that, contrary to what his feliow spokesman Harold ‘Macmillan had said in 1955, Kim was indeed the “third man” who had tipped off his fellow traitors Donald Maclean and Guy Burgess in 1951, enabling them, too, to defect to Russia, 1 was only about a year ago that bits apd pieces of evidence began to add up. ‘The clean escape of still another traitor, George Blake, from ‘Wormwood Scrubs Prison in Landon im 1966 had been a pointer Eleanor Philby. Kim’s last wife in the West, was now separaied from him and ready to talk It looked as if we had underrated his importance as a double agent. The Sunday Times of “London started a worldwide investi- gation and hired me as consultant. ‘Our repart has appeared over the last month and has startled many people fm the United States as well as Britain To judge from Foreign Secretary George Brown's antics at the Savoy Hote] on Nov, J, it has startled him. $o it's worth saying —contrary to Mr. Brown's assertion then to The Sunday Times’ publisher and other diners that the report “helped the Russians’’—that it contained nothing which the Communists did not know already, though it probably had the salutary effect of showing them that we knew more about their subversion ‘than they suspected On the other hand, tt told the public in the West. who are not babies, some serious facts of fife which they have every right to know and to judge them- selves. Of course. the authorities would have preferred to continue to tive a quict life with those facts under the carpet, where they had lain for ‘90 long. My Foreign Office duties in the Nineteen-fifties and eurly sixties had GEOFFREY MeDERMOTT ‘spent 27 yean in the Bitish Diplometic Series, He sow writes on foreign ato =) placed me feirty and squarely in the middle of the Anglo-American intelli- gence community. For some years I chaired the Joint Intelligence Com: mittee, which inchuded representatives ‘of our inteJigence departments. Sir Patrick Dean, now British Ambassador in Washington, was my immediate boss Representatives of the C.LA. sat in on our meetings, and in return the representative of the British Secret intelligence Service, otherwise called MI6, was right in on the American intelligence setup in Wasb- ington. Philby had been that man ‘fram 1949 to 1953. In 1956, 1 became Foreign Office adviser to the chief of the SLS., Sir Dick White. This, as we shall see, was another crucial year for Philby. AS a result of my position 1 was Yess bewildered than some by these chilling developments. 1 knew from experience that deception was one of the cardinal principles of espionage Many of my best friends were spies —but spies in their own countnes’ interest, ‘While the public at large was stunned by the news, the authorities were clamming up. But portentous questions remained. Could this highly Tespected member of MIS really have deen a Communist agent at the same time? If ao. for how Jong? What about security> How did he get away with it ip 1951, when the CLA. and the FBI. as well as his own service were hot on his trait? Finally, what inspired a cultivated member of the British upper classes to do this brv- tally distuptive thing? it aN) made James Bond look like a milksop and his exploits like small beer. As with al’ of us, Kim's parents and upbringing provide some clues. His father, St. John Philby, » scholar of 2 top British school, Westminster, ‘and of Cambridge University, as Kim was also, began life as a conventional member of the Indian Civil Service. Kim was born in India in 1912. But St John became decidedly eccentric as time went on. When J first met him i Cairo in 1946 he had become the personal adviser of King Ton Saud | - and 2 Mosiem. He had been briefly “’ interned in Britain during the war on rounds of doubtful loyalty, and lived by preference im Saudi Arabia. His that she was quite happy to put on the veil and live in the harem 4 . heard old St. John tell his son that be must always carry through to the bitter end whatever he thought right. Kim has certainly done that, and sur- passed his father im outrageousness into the bargain. I WAS at Cambridge im the early thirties with Philby, Maclean and Burgess—what » mob'—though I met them only when I was @ diplomat in later yours and then only casually. Looking back, 1 can see, with an effort, how the atmosphere at the university could lead to pro-Commu- nism among some intellectuals. Brit- Ish society then was stuffy and con- Servative. ‘The ruling Tory party was both pompous and ineffectual; the Labor party just plain ineffectual. Hitler had appeared and no one was doing anything about him. War-was ‘on the way and only the Communists seemed really interested in averting it Consequently, a good few intel- _-dectuals turned to the extreme Seft, y DOMALD MACLEAN He, Burgers and, pormal-looking English wife told me Philby were all together at Cambridge in the cary thirties before going to work for Moscow—in the British Government. ~ masters without, of course, troubling to see how far real conditions in the Soviet Union justified their idealistic hopes. Few turned toward the United States because again out of ignorance, they tended to consider it gemote from European affairs, brash and over-rich Most of these men, having “gone “Communist” in greater of lesser degree, had the good sense to turn away again, but not Philby, He be- came not merely » Communist but ® carefully controlled Communist in- telligence agent in 1933, while stilt at Cambridge. Thus, from the age of 2, life was wholly dedicated to two things: passing on to his Moscow much valuable information as possible about Britain and the ‘United States, and deceiving his friends and colleagues in doing so, It is difficult to say which gave him more pleasure. In other words, for 30 Jong years, Philby lived & lie every moment of (Continued on Page 136) ras