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Harold Adrian Russell "Kim" Philby or H.A.R. Philby (January 1, 1912 – May 11, 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 (although Cairncross's involvement has never conclusively been established, he and several others, including Sir Roger Hollis, former head of MI5, have been suspected at one time or another to be the "fifth man" of the ring).

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.

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 atomic 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. 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 the 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 October 25 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, Philby immediately confessed without asking what this evidence was. Although a further interrogation was scheduled in the last week of January 1963, Philby disappeared on January 23. 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 within the KGB which he held until shortly before his death. Aside from a role as a propagandist for the KGB he was given no significant responsibilities and his alcoholism became progressively deeper. He had married the estranged wife of fellow defector Donald Maclean shortly after his arrival in Moscow but upon her return to the West he married a Russian woman 20 years his junior, with whom he lived until his death in 1988 at age 76. 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 belatedly grateful USSR.

Philby was a close friend of the novelist Graham Greene, who reportedly left MI6 rather than become involved in exposing Philby. It has been suggested that Greene never really left the intelligence service, but continued to run Philby as a British triple agent in the KGB. However, the hypothesis that Philby was working in the interests of Britain all along is considered extremely improbable, if not fantastic, given that (a) Philby had for a time singlehandedly nullified Western intelligence efforts against the Soviet Union; (b) his exposure had seriously damaged the relationship between the American CIA and Britain's MI5; and (c), what is now known about Philby's life in Moscow.

Chronology

  • 1912 Birth in India
  • 1919 Attended Aldro preparatory school in Eastbourne
  • 1924 Went to Westminster School
  • 1929 Entered Trinity College, Cambridge at the age of 17 to read history.
  • 1930 Guy Burgess arrived at Trinity from Eton.
  • 1931 Joined the Cambridge University Socialist Society CUSS. Labour government of Ramsay MacDonald defeated 27th October. Philby became a more ardent socialist. After obtaining only a third in his history exams he transferred to economics.
  • 1932 Became treasurer of CUSS.
  • 1933 Left Cambridge a convinced Communist with a degree in economics, then went to Vienna where Chancellor Dr Engelbert Dollfuss was preparing the first 'putsch' in February 1934. Philby became a Soviet agent.
  • 1934 Clash between the Austrian government and socialists in Vienna. On Feb 24 Philby married Litzi Friedman; then in May, after the collapse of the socialist movement in Vienna, he returned with his wife to England. He began work as a sub-editor of a Liberal monthly review, and joined Burgess as a member of the Anglo-German Fellowship. (Philby edited the fellowship's pro-Hitler magazine, supported by Nazi funds). To cover up his communist background he also made repeated visits to Berlin for talks with the German Propaganda Ministry and with von Ribbentrop's Foreign Office.
  • 1937 In February Philby arrived in Spain to report on the Spanish Civil War from Franco's side. 20 May 1937 he became correspondent of The Times with Franco's forces.
  • 1938 Awarded the 'Red Cross of Military Merit' by Franco personally.
  • 1939 In July, left Spain and became war correspondent of The Times at the British Headquarters in Arras.
  • 1940 In June, after the evacuation of British Forces from the European mainland, he returned to Britain. Recruited by the British Secret Service and attached to the SIS under Guy Burgess in Section D. Assigned to school for under-cover work, but later transferred to the teaching staff of a new school for general training in techniques of sabotage and subversion at Beaulieu, Hampshire.
  • 1941 Transferred to SIS, Section V (Five). Philby took charge of the Iberian sub-section, responsible for British Intelligence in Spain and Portugal. Trained James Jesus Angleton in the arts and crafts of counterespionage.
  • 1942 Married his second wife Aileen Furse. OSS group under Norman Pearson arrived in London for liaison with British Secret Service. Philby's area of responsibility grew to include North African and Italian espionage under newly formed counter-intelligence units.
  • 1943 Section V moved from St Albans to London, bringing Philby closer to the centers of power.
  • 1944 Appointed head of Section IX, newly created to operate against communism and the Soviet Union.
  • 1945 In September Soviet intelligence officer Konstantin Volkov based at the Soviet embassy in Ankara seriously threatened Philby's position by offering to defect and provide the names of two agents working in the Foreign Office and one in SIS (probably Philby). The offer was sent to Philby as head of the Section IX, Soviet counterintelligence. Soon afterwards, Volkov was kidnapped by Soviet agents and taken to the Lubyanka in Moscow for interrogation and execution.
  • 1946 Took a field appointment - officially as First Secretary with the British embassy in Turkey, actually as head of the Turkish SIS station.
  • 1949 Became SIS representative in Washington, as senior British Secret Service officer working in liaison with the FBI and the newly created CIA. He occasionally visited Arlington Hall for discussions about VENONA; furthermore, he regularly received copies of summaries of VENONA translations as part of his official duties. He sat in on a Special Policy Committee directing the ill-fated Anglo-US attempt to infiltrate anti-communist agents into Albania to topple the Enver Hoxha régime.
  • 1950 Guy Burgess arrived in Washington on assignment as Second Secretary of the British Embassy, and Philby invited him to stay at his house.
  • 1951 Philby learnt of the tightening net of suspicion surrounding Foreign Office diplomat and Soviet agent Donald Maclean, whose British embassy position at the end of the war had placed him on the Combined Policy Committee on Atomic Energy as its British joint secretary. Burgess's alcoholism caused Ambassador Franks to remove him and he returned to England. On May 25, Burgess and Maclean disappeared from Britain, with help from Philby, having escaped via the Baltic to the Soviet Union. Philby summoned to London for interrogation and asked to resign from the Foreign Service.
  • 1952 In the summer a secret trial took place in which Philby underwent questioning about his activities.
  • 1955 The British Government published a 'White Paper' (report) on the Burgess-Maclean affair. On October 25, questions tabled in parliament asking about the 'third man', Philby. Harold Macmillan, foreign secretary in the Eden cabinet, stated that no evidence existed of Philby having betrayed the interests of Britain. Nevertheless, the Foreign Service dismissed him because of his association with Burgess.
  • 1956 In September British secret service arranged Philby to work for The Observer in Beirut as correspondent of and also The Economist; But that year Dick White, who suspected Philby of working as a Soviet agent, became head of SIS.
  • 1957 Aileen, Philby's second wife, died.
  • 1958 Married Eleanor Brewer.
  • 1962 George Blake unmasked. Philby then confirmed as an identified Soviet agent.
  • 1963 January 23, Philby disappeared in Beirut. The Soviet Union announced that it has granted Philby political asylum in Moscow. On March 3, Mrs. Philby received a telegram from Philby postmarked Cairo, Egypt. On June 3 Izvestia located Philby with the Imam of Yemen. On July 1, the British Government admitted that Philby had worked as a Soviet agent before 1946 and identified him as the 'third man'.
  • 1965 Awarded the Order of the Red Banner, one of the highest honours of the Soviet Union.
  • 1988 Death at the age 76.

Philby in fiction

Philby on film and television

  • Cambridge Spies a 2003 four part BBC drama
  • The 2005 film A Different Loyalty is alleged to be a truthful account of Philby's love affair, and marriage, to Eleanor Brewer, during his time in Beirut, and his eventual defection to the Soviet Union, in late January of 1963. The names of all characters, including the lead characters, have been changed.

Philby in music

  • Philby by Rory Gallagher in which Gallagher draws parallels between his life on the road and Philby's.

External links

References

  • My Silent War by Kim Philby, published by Macgibbon & Kee Ltd, London, 1968, or Granda Publishing, ISBN 0-586-02860-9. Introduction by Graham Greene
  • The Philby Literature by Hayden Peake in The Private Life of KIM PHILBY The Moscow Years by Rufina Philby, Mikhail Lyubimov, and Hayden Peake. St. Ermin's Press, 1999.
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