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Kim Philby

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Harold Adrian Russell "Kim" Philby or H.A.R. Philby (1 January, 1912 – 11 May, 1988) was a high ranking member of British intelligence who led a lifelong career as a spy for the Soviet Union.

Philby was revealed as a possible member of the spy ring known as the Cambridge Five, along with Donald Maclean, Guy Burgess, Anthony Blunt and John Cairncross.

Born in Ambala, India, Philby was the son of St. John Philby, the British diplomat, explorer, author, and Orientalist who converted to Islam and served as an adviser to King Ibn Sa'ud of Saudi Arabia. He was nicknamed after the protagonist in Rudyard Kipling's novel Kim, about a young Irish-Indian boy who spies for the British in occupied India in the 19th century.

Contents

Espionage

After leaving Westminster School in 1928 at the age of 16, Philby went on to Trinity College, Cambridge, where he was introduced to, and became an admirer of, the ideals of Communism.

Philby was not recruited into espionage; rather, he volunteered. He asked one of his tutors, Maurice Dobb, how he could serve the Communist movement. Perhaps ignorant of the possible consequences, Dobb referred him to a Communist front organization, which passed Philby in turn to the Comintern underground in Vienna. The front organisation was the World Federation for the Relief of the Victims of German Fascism in Paris, France. The World Federation was one of the innumerable front organizations operated by the German Communist Willi Münzenberg, who was one of the leading Soviet agents in the West. The Soviet intelligence service itself (at that time known as the OGPU) recruited him on the strength of his work for the Comintern. Anatoli Gromov, the London Resident, was his case officer.

His first job as a Soviet spy was under cover of working as a journalist for The Times, first in Austria, then during the last two years of the Spanish Civil War. On 31 December 1937, Philby was involved in a freak war incident in downtown Seville where at least two other international newspaper correspondents lost their lives. As the only survivor, he became better known in media and other circles, to the point of being decorated a few weeks later by General Franco himself. The latter incident, for obvious reasons, thwarted the Soviets' original plan for making use of the then-unknown Philby in Spain, which was for him to organize, and perhaps execute himself, a plot to kill Franco.

After the Franco forces overcame all resistance, Philby returned to England via France, and was even one of the hundreds of thousands evacuated from Dunkirk. Once in Britain, and thanks to his friend and fellow soviet conspirator Guy Burgess, Philby was recruited in the spring of 1940 by Col. Valentine "Vee Vee" Vivian of the British Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), later becoming part of the Special Operations Executive, and coming into contact with Office of Strategic Services agents. Immediately after World War II Philby was assigned to Istanbul.

Washington

In January 1949, the British Government was informed that VENONA intercepts showed nuclear secrets were passed to the Soviet Union from the British Embassy in Washington in 1944 and 1945 by an agent code-named HOMER, later identified as Second Secretary Donald MacLean. 
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In October 1949 Philby arrived in Washington as British intelligence liaison to the newly created U.S. intelligence agencies under the National Security Act of 1947. Philby received VENONA material which the U.S. was sharing with the U.K. He shared a house in Washington, at 4100 Nebraska Avenue, N.W, with his personal friend from the Cambridge days, fellow British diplomat, intelligence officer and Soviet penetration agent, Guy Burgess.

When MacLean was identified in April 1951, surveillance commenced to obtain evidence independent of VENONA, as the U.S. and U.K. did not want to reveal the existence of VENONA. MacLean defected to Moscow with Guy Burgess a month later in May 1951. Philby came under instant suspicion as the third man who tipped them off.

That year, Philby resigned under a cloud, and was denied his pension until an internal investigation failed to come up with definitive proof of his treachery. On 25 October, 1955, against all expectations, he was 'cleared' by Foreign Secretary Harold Macmillan in an ill-timed statement made in the House of Commons: "While in government service he carried out his duties ably and conscientiously, and I have no reason to conclude that Mr. Philby has at any time betrayed the interests of his country, or to identify him with the so-called 'Third Man,' if indeed there was one."

Beirut

Thus, in 1956 Philby was again in the employ of SIS as an "informant on retainer". He was supposedly given the position of second-in-command to the point man for Operation Musketeer, the British, French, and Israeli plan to attack Egypt and depose Gamal Abdel Nasser. However, given Philby's sympathies, it can only be supposed, if this truly occurred, that his role was less one of support, than of subversion.

Better attested is his role as Middle East correspondent for the British newspaper The Economist, which also led to his exposure. Sometime in late 1962, a British-Jewish woman, Flora Solomon, was attending a cocktail party in Tel Aviv and made a comment about how Philby, the journalist in Beirut, displayed sympathy for Arabs in his articles. She said that his masters were the Soviets and that she knew that he had always worked for them. The comment was overheard by someone at the party and was relayed to the offices of the MI5 in London, which sent Victor Rothschild to interview her. Mrs. Solomon declared that she would never testify against Philby, though she later admitted that he had told her he was a spy and that he had tried to recruit her to the Communist cause.

Although MI5 and MI6 could not immediately agree on how to deal with Philby, it was eventually agreed that a personal friend of Philby from his MI6 days, Nicolas Elliott, would be sent to confront him in Beirut. There seemed to be a constant leak of information and it is alleged that there was a high-level mole in MI5 those days. Although it is unclear whether Philby was aware of the developments against him vis-a-vis Flora Solomon or whether he knew about the defection of Anatoly Golitsyn (which led to the arrest, escape, and defection to Moscow of fellow MI6 officer and Soviet agent George Blake), there is evidence that in the last few months of 1962 Philby began to drink heavily and his behaviour became increasingly erratic. Philby may have also been warned by Yuri Modin, a top Soviet handler who had served in the Soviet embassy in London who travelled to Beirut in December 1962.

It is reported that the first thing that Philby said upon meeting with Elliott was that he was "half expecting" to see him. When told that there was fresh evidence against him, he learned what the evidence was; as it turned out, it was nothing worthwhile, and he continued insisting that the claims were ill-founded. He denied everything, claiming that any witnesses against him were false, and he displayed further indifference toward the allegations of KGB ties. Although a further interrogation was scheduled in the last week of January 1963, Philby disappeared on 23 January. Soviet records later revealed that a Soviet freighter was called to port in Beirut on this date.

Moscow

Philby later surfaced in Moscow, and was given a make-work sinecure as a KGB consultant on the activities of Western intelligence services which he held until his death. He had severe bouts of alcoholism and aside from a role as a propagandist for the KGB he was given no significant responsibilities. He married a Russian woman, Rufina Pukhova, 20 years his junior, with whom he lived until his death in 1988 at age 76. His autobiography "My Silent War" was published in the west. Only after his death did he receive the praise and appreciation which had escaped him in life, being awarded a hero's funeral and numerous posthumous medals by a grateful USSR.

Philby was a close friend of the novelist Graham Greene, who reportedly left MI6 rather than become involved in exposing Philby.

Chronology

Philby in fiction

Philby on film and television

Philby in music

External links

References

 

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