Washington, D.C.
In September 1949, the Philbys arrived in the United States.
Officially, his post was that of First Secretary to the British Embassy; in
reality, he served as chief British intelligence representative in Washington.
His office oversaw a large amount of urgent and top secret communications
between Washington and London. Philby was also responsible for liaising with
the CIA and promoting "more
aggressive Anglo-American intelligence operations". A leading figure
within the CIA was Philby's wary former colleague, James Jesus Angleton, with
whom he once again found himself working closely. Angleton remained suspicious
of Philby but lunched with him every week in Washington.
A more serious threat to Philby's position had come to
light. During the summer of 1945, a Soviet cipher clerk had reused a one-time
pad to transmit intelligence traffic. This mistake made it possible to break
the normally impregnable code. Contained in the traffic (intercepted and
decrypted as part of the Venona project) was information that documents had
been sent to Moscow from the British embassy in Washington. The intercepted
messages revealed that the embassy source (identified as "Homer") traveled to New York City to meet his Soviet
contact twice a week. Philby had been briefed on the situation shortly before
reaching Washington in 1949; it was clear to Philby that the agent was Maclean,
who worked in the embassy at the time and whose wife, Melinda, lived in New
York. Philby had to help discover the identity of "Homer", but also wished to protect Maclean.
In January 1950, on evidence provided by the Venona
intercepts, Soviet atomic spy Klaus Fuchs was arrested. His arrest led to
others: Harry Gold, a courier with whom Fuchs had worked David Greenglass, and
Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. The investigation into the embassy leak continued
and the stress of it was exacerbated by the arrival in Washington, in October
1950, of Burgess—Philby's unstable and dangerously alcoholic fellow spy.
Burgess, who had been given a post as Second Secretary at
the British Embassy, took up residence in the Philby family home and rapidly
set about causing offence to all and sundry. Philby's wife resented him and
disliked his presence; Americans were offended by his "natural superciliousness" and "utter contempt for
the whole pyramid of values, attitudes, and courtesies of the American way of
life". J. Edgar Hoover complained that Burgess used British embassy
automobiles to avoid arrest when he cruised Washington in pursuit of homosexual
encounters. His dissolution had a troubling effect on Philby; the morning after
a particularly disastrous and drunken party, a guest returning to collect his
car heard voices upstairs and found "Kim
and Guy in the bedroom drinking champagne. They had already been down to the
Embassy but being unable to work had come back".
Burgess' presence was awkward for Philby, yet it was
potentially dangerous for Philby to leave him unsupervised. The situation in
Washington was tense. From April 1950, Maclean had been the prime suspect in
the investigation into the embassy leak. Philby had undertaken to devise an
escape plan that would warn Maclean, in England, of the intense suspicion he
was under and arrange for him to flee. Burgess had to get to London to warn
Maclean, who was under surveillance. In early May 1951, Burgess got three
speeding tickets in a single day—then pleaded diplomatic immunity, causing an
official complaint to be made to the British ambassador. Burgess was sent back
to England, where he met Maclean in his London club.
The SIS planned to interrogate Maclean on 28 May 1951. On 23
May, concerned that Maclean had not yet fled, Philby wired Burgess, ostensibly
about his Lincoln convertible that had been abandoned in the embassy car park. "If he did not act at once it would be
too late," the telegram read, "because
[Philby] would send his car to the scrap heap. There was nothing more [he]
could do." On 25 May, Burgess drove Maclean from his home at
Tatsfield, Surrey, to Southampton, where both boarded the steamship Falaise to
France and then proceeded to Moscow.
Public denials
Burgess had intended to aid Maclean in his escape, not
accompany him in it. The "affair of
the missing diplomats," as it was referred to before Burgess and
Maclean surfaced in Moscow, attracted a great deal of public attention, and
Burgess' disappearance, which identified him as complicit in Maclean's
espionage, deeply compromised Philby's position. Under a cloud of suspicion
raised by his highly visible and intimate association with Burgess, Philby
returned to London. There, he underwent MI5 interrogation aimed at ascertaining
whether he had acted as a "third
man" in Burgess and Maclean's spy ring. In July 1951, Philby resigned
from MI6, preempting his all-but-inevitable dismissal.
Even after his departure from MI6, suspicion towards Philby
continued. Interrogated repeatedly regarding his intelligence work and his
connection with Burgess, he continued to deny that he had acted as a Soviet
agent. From 1952, Philby struggled to find work as a journalist, eventually—in
August 1954—accepting a position with a diplomatic newsletter called the Fleet
Street Letter. Lacking access to material of value and out of touch with Soviet
intelligence, he all but ceased to operate as a Soviet agent.
On 25 October 1955, following revelations in The New York
Times, Labour MP Marcus Lipton used parliamentary privilege to ask Prime
Minister Anthony Eden if he was determined "to
cover up at all costs the dubious third man activities of Mr Harold
Philby..." This was reported in the British press, leading Philby to
threaten legal action against Lipton if he repeated his accusations outside
Parliament. Lipton later withdrew his comments. This retraction came about when
Philby was officially cleared by Foreign Secretary Harold Macmillan on 7
November. The minister told the House of Commons, "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." Following this, Philby gave a
press conference in his mother's London flat in which—calmly, confidently, and
without the stammer he had struggled with since childhood—he reiterated his
innocence, declaring, "I have never
been a communist."
Return to journalism
After being exonerated, Philby was no longer employed by MI6
and Soviet intelligence lost all contact with him. In August 1956 he was sent
to Beirut as a Middle East correspondent for The Observer and The Economist.
There, his journalism served as cover for renewed work for MI6. He wrote under
his own name and under the pen name "Charles
Garner" when writing about subjects he considered too "fluffy"(distasteful), for
example the subject of Arab slave girls.
In Lebanon, Philby at first lived in Mahalla Jamil, his
father's large household located in the village of Ajaltoun, just outside
Beirut. Following the departure of his father and stepbrothers for Saudi
Arabia, he continued to live alone in Ajaltoun, but took a flat in Beirut after
beginning an affair with Eleanor Brewer, the wife of New York Times
correspondent Sam Pope Brewer. Following the death of his second wife in 1957
and Eleanor's subsequent divorce from Brewer, the two were married in London in
1959 and set up house together in Beirut. From 1960, Philby's formerly marginal
work as a journalist became more substantial and he frequently travelled
throughout the Middle East, including Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait and
Yemen.
Defection to Russia
In 1961, Anatoliy Golitsyn, a major in the First Chief
Directorate of the KGB, defected to the United States from his diplomatic post
in Helsinki. Golitsyn offered the CIA revelations of Soviet agents within
American and British intelligence services. Following his debriefing in the US,
Golitsyn was sent to SIS for further questioning. The head of MI6, Dick White,
only recently transferred from MI5, had suspected Philby as the "third man". Golitsyn
proceeded to confirm White's suspicions about Philby's role. Nicholas Elliott,
an MI6 officer recently stationed in Beirut who was a friend of Philby's and
had previously believed in his innocence, was tasked with attempting to secure
his full confession.
It is unclear whether Philby had been alerted, but Eleanor
noted that as 1962 wore on, expressions of tension in his life "became worse and were reflected in
bouts of deep depression and drinking". She recalled returning home to
Beirut from a sight-seeing trip in Jordan to find Philby "hopelessly drunk and incoherent with grief on the terrace of the
flat," mourning the death of a little pet fox that had fallen from the
balcony. When Elliott met Philby in late 1962, the first time since Golitsyn's
defection, he found Philby too drunk to stand and with a bandaged head; he had
fallen repeatedly and cracked his skull on a bathroom radiator, requiring
stitches.
Philby told Elliott that he was "half expecting"
to see him. Elliott confronted him, saying, "I
once looked up to you, Kim. My God, how I despise you now. I hope you've enough
decency left to understand why." Prompted by Elliott's accusations,
Philby confirmed the charges of espionage and described his intelligence
activities on behalf of the Soviets. However, when Elliott asked him to sign a
written statement, he hesitated and requested a delay in the interrogation.
Another meeting was scheduled to take place in the last week of January. It has
since been suggested that the whole confrontation with Elliott had been a
charade to convince the KGB that Philby had to be brought back to Moscow, where
he could serve as a British penetration agent of Moscow Central.
On the evening of 23 January 1963, Philby vanished from
Beirut, failing to meet his wife for a dinner party at the home of Glencairn
Balfour Paul, First Secretary at the British Embassy. The Dolmatova, a Soviet
freighter bound for Odessa, had left Beirut that morning so abruptly that cargo
was left scattered over the docks; Philby claimed that he left Beirut on board
this ship.[79] However, others maintain that he escaped through Syria, overland
to Soviet Armenia and thence to the Russian SFSR.
It was not until 1 July 1963 that Philby's flight to Moscow
was officially confirmed. On 30 July, Soviet officials announced that they had
granted him political asylum in the Soviet Union, along with Soviet
citizenship. When the news broke, MI6 came under criticism for failing to
anticipate and block Philby's defection, though Elliott was to claim he could
not have prevented Philby's flight. Journalist Ben Macintyre, author of several
works on espionage, speculated that MI6 might have left open the opportunity
for Philby to flee to Moscow to avoid an embarrassing public trial. Philby
himself thought this might have been the case.
Moscow
Upon his arrival in Moscow in January 1963, Philby
discovered that he was not a colonel in the KGB, as he had been led to believe.
He was paid 500 rubles a month (the average Soviet salary in 1960 was Rbls
80.60 a month and Rbls 122 in 1970) and his family was not immediately able to
join him in exile. Philby was under virtual house arrest and under guard, with
all visitors screened by the KGB. It was ten years before he was given a minor
role in the training of KGB recruits. Mikhail Lyubimov, his closest KGB
contact, explained that this was to guard his safety, but later admitted that
the real reason was the KGB's fear that Philby would return to London.
Secret files released to the National Archives in late 2020
indicated that the British government had intentionally conducted a campaign to
keep Philby's spying confidential "to
minimise political embarrassment" and prevent the publication of his
memoirs, according to a report by The Guardian. Nonetheless, the information
was publicized in 1967 when he granted an interview to Murray Sayle of The
Times in Moscow. Philby confirmed that he had worked for the KGB and that "his purpose in life was to destroy imperialism".
In Moscow, Philby occupied himself by writing his memoirs,
which were published in Britain in 1968 under the title My Silent War; they
were not published in the Soviet Union until 1980. In the book, Philby says
that his loyalties were always with the communists; he considered himself not
to have been a double agent but "a
straight penetration agent working in the Soviet interest." Philby
continued to read The Times, which was not generally available in the USSR,
listened to the BBC World Service and was an avid follower of cricket.
Philby's award of the Order of the British Empire was cancelled
and annulled in 1965. Though he claimed publicly in January 1988 that he did
not regret his decisions and that he missed nothing about England except some
friends, Colman's mustard and Lea & Perrins Worcestershire sauce, his wife
Rufina Ivanovna Pukhova later described Philby as "disappointed in many ways" by what he found in Moscow. "He saw people suffering too
much," but he consoled himself by arguing that "the ideals were right but the way they were carried out was
wrong. The fault lay with the people in charge." Pukhova said, "He was struck by disappointment,
brought to tears. He said, 'Why do old people live so badly here? After all,
they won the war.'" Philby's drinking and depression continued;
according to Rufina, he had attempted suicide by slashing his wrists sometime in
the 1960s.
Philby found work in the early 1970s in the KGB's Active
Measures Department churning out fabricated documents. Working from genuine
unclassified and public CIA or US State Department documents, Philby inserted "sinister" paragraphs
regarding US plans. The KGB would stamp the documents "top secret"
and begin their circulation. For the Soviets, Philby was an invaluable asset,
ensuring the correct use of idiomatic and diplomatic English phrases in their
disinformation efforts.
Personal life
In February 1934, Philby married Litzi Friedmann, an
Austrian Jewish communist whom he had met in Vienna. They subsequently moved to
Britain; however, as Philby assumed the role of a fascist sympathizer, they
separated. Litzi lived in Paris before returning to London for the duration of
the war; she ultimately settled in East Germany.
While working as a correspondent in Spain, Philby began an
affair with Frances Doble, Lady Lindsay-Hogg, an actress and aristocratic
divorcée who was an admirer of Franco and Hitler. They travelled together in
Spain through August 1939.
In 1940, Philby began living with Aileen Furse in London.
Their first three children, Josephine, John and Tommy, were born between 1941
and 1944. In 1946, Philby arranged a divorce from Litzi. He and Aileen were
married on 25 September 1946, while Aileen was pregnant with their fourth
child, Miranda. Their fifth child, Harry George, was born in 1950. Aileen
suffered from psychiatric problems, which grew more severe during the period of
poverty and suspicion following the flight of Burgess and Maclean. She lived
separately from Philby, settling with their children in Crowborough while he
lived first in London and later in Beirut. Weakened by alcoholism and frequent
illness, she died of influenza in December 1957. Through his son John, Philby's
granddaughter is the author Charlotte Philby.
In 1956, Philby began an affair with Eleanor Brewer, the
wife of New York Times correspondent Sam Pope Brewer. Following Eleanor's
divorce, the couple married in January 1959. After Philby defected in 1963,
Eleanor visited him in Moscow. In November 1964, after a visit to the US, she
returned, intending to settle permanently. In her absence, Philby had begun an
affair with Donald Maclean's wife, Melinda. He and Eleanor divorced and she departed
Moscow in May 1965. Melinda left Maclean and briefly lived with Philby in
Moscow. In 1968, she returned to Maclean.
In 1971, Philby married Rufina Pukhova, a 39-year-old
Russo-Polish woman, with whom he lived until his death in 1988.
Death
Philby died of heart failure in Moscow in 1988. He was given
a hero's funeral.
Posthumous awards
The USSR posthumously awarded numerous Soviet medals to
Philby:
Order of Lenin
Order of the Red
Banner
Order of Friendship
of Peoples
Order of the Great
Patriotic War (First class)
Jubilee Medal "Forty Years of Victory in the Great
Patriotic War 1941–1945".
Motivation
In a 1981 lecture to the Stasi, the East German intelligence
agency, Philby attributed the failure of British intelligence to unmask him as
due in great part to these things: British class system - it was inconceivable
that one "born into the ruling class
of the British Empire" would be a traitor, to the amateurish and
incompetent nature of the British organisation, and because of so many in MI6
having so much to lose if he was proven to be a spy. He had the policy of never
confessing; a document in his own handwriting was dismissed as a forgery.
Philby said that at the time of his recruitment as a spy
there were no prospects of his being useful; he was instructed to make his way
into the Secret Service, which took years, starting with journalism and
building up contacts in the British establishment. He said that there was no
discipline there; he made friends with the archivist, which enabled him for
years to take secret documents home, many unrelated to his own work, and bring
them back the next day; his handler photographed them overnight. When he was
instructed to remove and replace his boss, Felix Cowgill, he asked if it was
proposed "to shoot him or something" but was told to use bureaucratic
intrigue. He said: "It was a very
dirty story—but after all our work does imply getting dirty hands from time to
time but we do it for a cause that is not dirty in any way".
Commenting on his sabotage of the operation to secretly send thousands of
anti-communists into Albania to overthrow the communist government, Philby
defended his actions by saying that he had helped prevent another world war.
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