BOOK REVIEWS: MY SILENT WAR, THE PHILBY CONSPIRACY, THE THIRD MAN AND KIM PHILBY: THE SPY I MARRIED

• Document Type: FOIA
• Collection: FOIA Collection
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): 00602147
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: U
• Document Page Count: 8
• Document Creation Date: July 13, 2023
• Document Release Date: August 15, 2022
• Case Number: F-2020-01404
• Publication Date: September 1, 1968

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CIA HISTORICAL REVIEW PROGRAM
RELEASE IN RILL
TITLE: Book Reviews: My Silent War, The Philby
Conspiracy, The Third Man and Kim Philby:
The Spy I Married
REVIEWER: James Lullingstone
VOLUME: 12 ISSUE: Fall YEAR: 1968
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STUDIES IN
INTELLIGENCE
A collection of articles on the historical, operational, doctrinal, and theoretical aspects of intelligence.
All statements of fact, opinion or analysis expressed in Studies in Intelligence are those of
the authors. They do not necessarily reflect official positions or views of the Central
Intelligence Agency or any other US Government entity, past or present. Nothing in the
contents should be construed as asserting or implying US Goverment endorsement of an
article's factual statements and interpretations.
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CONFI TIAL
No Fore n Dissem
INTELLIGENCE IN RECENT PUBLIC LI1ERATURE
Classic Soviet Nets
MY SILENT WAR. By Harold Adrian Rucysell Philby. (New York:
Grove Press. 1968. 262 pp. $5.95.)
THE PHILBY CONSPIRACY. By Bruce Page, David Leitch, and
Phillip Knightley. (New York: Doubleday. 1968. 300 pp. $5.95.)
.THE THIRD MAN. By E. H. Cookridge (pseudonym for Edward
Spiro). (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons. 1968. 281 pp. $5.95.)
KIM PHILRY: The Spy I Married. By Eleanor Philby. (New York:
Ballantine Books. Paperback. 1968. 174 pp. $.75.)
Each of these four books reflects a special attitude toward the most
spectacularly successful spy of our generation, Harold Adrian Russell
Philby, better known as "Kim." His success is in fact frightening to
contemplate; if it had not been for his loyalty to two highly unstable
and risky comrades, Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean, and an un-
anticipated Soviet defection, he might well have been appointed head
of the British intelligence service and would have then perhaps been
able to protect his identity as Russia's greatest espionage agent for the
rest of his life. Though the present books reveal much about Philby,
his British environment, the historical climate within which he lived
and evolved, and MI-6 and MI-5, there is still much left to be revealed
in the future.'
' Philby's book has already generated retrospective contributions by three of
his former colleagues in the service. These, along with earlier articles by the
same authors, are of more than ephemeral interest because they contain factual
detail and appreciation which are primary contributions to an understanding of
Philby the operator. It is probably no coincidence that each of the writers is
himself discussed by Philby at various points in his memoir. The articles appeared
as indicated below.
Graham Greene: ". . Security in Room 51," The Sunday Times, 14 July
196.3; "Our Man in Moscow," The Observer (London), 18 February 1968,
p. 26; "Reflections on the Character of Kim Philby," Esquire, September
1968, p. 111.
Malcolm Muggeridge: "The Case of Kim Philby," Sunday Telegraph, 7 July
1963; "Refractions in the Character of Kim Philby," Esquire, September
1968, pp. 113, 165-170.
Hugh Trevor-Roper: "Espionage, Treason, and Secret Services," Encounter,
April 1968, pp. 3-26, followed by The Philby Affair ( London, 1968).
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In the preface to My Silent War, Philby actually declares that his
book is merely prologue to what will follow at a later date. His
present reticence about his close relationship with U.S. intelligence
and his activities since 1955 suggest that these will be the subjects of
a sequel to appear when the KGB deems it propitious. In an epilogue
he explains the delay:
The compelling reason is that while the British and American intelligence
services can reconstruct prettk accurately my activities up to 1955, there is
positive and negative evidence that they know nothing about my subsequent
career in the Soviet Service.
This confidence may he justified to some degree, but on the threshold
of the later period, when he served as correspondent for The Economist
and The Observer, he moved all over the Middle East meeting every
leading statesmen and politician in the Arab world and reporting on
the concatenation of events which were to explode in the Sinai Cam-
paign of 1956. It was logical for the Soviets to instruct him to seek
an assignment in the Middle East: he was the son of that great Arabist,
St. John Philby, and he had recently humiliated perfidious Albion,
qualifications that would give him an enviable entree to a volatile
area high on their target list. A close reading of his dispatches shows
that he made a serious effort to reflect the standards of an objective
"Western" reporter, but through them all runs a subtle condemnation
of imperialism and the American presence, always expressed in the
pronouncements of anti-imperialist Arabs. There is never any criti-
cism of the Soviet machinations which were beginning to manifest
themselves at the time. Knowing the British and American attitudes
as well as the Arab mind, Philby may very well have become one of
the guiding lights of KGB, if not Soviet, policy in the Middle East.
Why would a man of his background and connections sell his soul
to the devil without ever a tinge of Faustian remorse? One of his
first acts in going up to Cambridge in 1929 was to join the Socialist
Society, and he admits that when he left the university he was a Com-
munist. Not long thereafter came his recruitment. His own explana-
tion is:
It is a sobering thought that, but for the power of the Soviet Union and the
Communist idea, the Old World, if not the whole world, would now be ruled
by Hitler and Hirohito.
But that is after-the-fact rationalization, not motivation in the early
thirties.
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John le Carre, the disillusioned British author of The Spy Who
Came in from the Cold, has written a stimulating introduction to the
Page-Leitch-Knightley book. Himself apparently beset with a con-
stant antipathy for the British Establishment, Le Carre makes a big
case for Philby's hatred of the Establishment, derived from his father,
as motivation for his treason:
Duplicity for Kim Philby was something of a family tradition. However
Philby reacted to his eminently distasteful father, whether he wished to
destroy or outshine him, or merely to follow in his footsteps, he could hardly
fail, in the outposts where they lived, to inherit many of his characteristics.
St. John Philby did not hide from his son his contempt for his superiors in
London.
Le Carre believes that Kim acquired from his father the "neo-fascist"
instincts of a slightly beserk English gentleman.
The three authors' Philby Conspiracy is certainly the most ambitious
and comprehensive of these books and reads better than most good spy
stories. Despite their peripatetic efforts, however, and their serious
labors to uncover the clandestine lives of their three unholy subjects,
the fact that they did not have access to official classified information
leaves their work still incomplete and full of gaps. There are also
inaccuracies. Philby's downfall was not precipitated by a Polish
defector. It is questionable that he remained a "field agent" of MI-6
after his dismissal in 1951. Since the authors were youngsters during
the war and not intelligence professionals, they could not be expected
to appreciate Philby's work against the Germans from 1941 to 1945,
but they might have mentioned it. With the confluence of British
and Russian interests against the Germans, it is presumed that he
contributed as much to MI-6 as he did to the NKVD. But his role
in Operation North Pole and his connection with the Communist
resistance in France and the Rote Kapelle are ignored.
Did Philby, for instance, assist the NKVD in the assassination of
General Sikorsky at Gibraltar? Sabotage of the general's plane has
been laid to both the Russians and the British, and Philby was in
charge of MI-6 counterintelligence operations for the Iberian Penin-
sula at the time. The Cookridge book says that he was in touch with
certain Soviet agents possibly implicated in the case, but we do not
know as yet his connection with them, and we cannot suppose that
Cookridge knows more than we do. Yet it is not farfetched to sur-
mise-that Philby' Soviet case officer may have got from him inforrna-
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lion essential to the success of the operation; it was the kind of opera-
tion that needed inside assistance.
E. H. Cooluidge acquired a reputation of "former secret agent" and
"international authority on espionage" from his earlier Secrets of the
British. Secret Service and The Soviet Spy Net, written without benefit
of connection with either British or Soviet intelligence. Like the
present Third Man, they were based on voluminous press clippings
from British, Anierican and continental newspapers and supplemented
by official documents accessible to public scrutiny. All these books
are a curious mixture of fact and wild inaccuracies, made to sound
professional by use of the right jargon.
Cookridge knew Philby in Vienna in 19334934 and subsequently,
a fact that entitles him to s-peak with sorne authority. He says Philby
was a Communist in Vienna, as Philby himself does. But the book
contains many disconcerting discrepancies and outright guesses. It
describes Philby's elegant and luxurious living in Washington, some-
thing denied by everybody who knew him. It calls his second wife
American; she was British. Perhaps this error is forgivable inasmuch
as Philby has had four wives�an Austrian Communist who became
British, a Britisher, and two Americans. But there are many other
mistaken names, dates, places, and facts. The book is definitely less
authoritative than it reads, but it should be read as a complement to
the other two.
Third \vife Eleanor Philby's Kira Philby: The Spy I Married, says
very little about spying and too much about her husband's drinking
orgies. One gets the impression that they had little time for anything
else, though she claims that these were the happiest years of her life.
He obviously was cracking under the strain of thirty years of decep-
tion�even of his wife when he most professed to love her. After he
went "home" to Moscow, he lightly discarded her for Melinda Maclean,
who must be something of a kook too. Her easy desertion of Maclean,
after having followed him to Moscow and lived with him until Philby's
arrival, suggests that he was even more maladjusted in Moscow than
he had been in the West. It does seem incredible that Eleanor never
learned or suspected anything about Philby's true character and that
she could have been so unfeminine as to be personally incurious
about his political attitudes and nocturnal activities. But if he could
fool the British intelligence service for eleven years, I suppose he could
deceive a wife for five. Her book is valuable to the profession 1
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analyst for its psychological insights. Philby's own book avoids the
sensitive areas of personality treated by her and Cookridge.
Why did Philby write his book? To counteract the nonsense and
defamation being published in London, he says. But as he must have
known or at least learned after his arrival in Moscow, nobody, not even
a Hero of the Soviet Union, publishes anything touching on Soviet
state secrets or.activities.without the nihi/ obstat of the. KGB or under
its specific instructions. The book must therefore be looked upon as
a tactic of the continuing cold war�an instrument of blackmail, decep-
tion, and disinformation. If his memoirs had no political purpose,
why did he first offer to withdraw publication of a not yet seen but
assuredly embarrassing manuscript in exchange for a political con-
cession- by the British government�the release from prison of the
Krogers (Cohens), the veteran Soviet agents picked up with Lansdale?
There is a long-term goal in this new Soviet policy of publicizing
intelligence successes. It is an advanced stage of psychological war-
fare intended both to embarrass the West and to undermine the morale
of the intelligence services and the public in Britain and the United
States. Philby did an exceedingly smooth job of denigrating M1-6
and MI-5, past and present. The other half of the same program is
the KCB's defamation of the CIA by all devices, including disinforma-
tion. Philby accuses CIA, for example, of having murdered Stepan
Bandera in Munich, ignoring the fact that a Russian defector, Bogdan
Stashinsky, confessed to having done this murder on KGB insti uction.
The Philby case is a real mystery thriller and will remain mysterious
until some informed defector or defectors reveal unknown facts and
clarify disputed points. It could be and should be a subject of long
study for all young men who have embarked on intelligence careers.
It offers many lessons from several specialized points of view counter-
intelligence, recruiting, psychological and moral assessment, opera-
tional control, security of operations, and security of the service. Above
all it brings home the patient, long-term approach of the Soviet serv-
ices, which their adversaries should never forget.
Philby, like other contemporaries of his, was disenchanted with the
Establishment. Thirty years later our society is experiencing another
period of distaste for the establishment on the part of the youth. Rest
assured that the Soviets, far more sophisticated than they were in 1930,
are already at work in this murky milieu, not for today but for the
1980's and 1990's. The lines and personalities of the Philby case,
inextricably interwoven with the Rote Kapelle, the Rote Drei and
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Operation North Pole, will continue to surface again and again, per-
haps even close to home, for the United States and the CIA are major
targets of the KGB and will be for many years to come.
James Lullingstone
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