BRITIAIN'S MASTER SPY

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP88-01350R000200280001-3
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 16, 2016
• Document Release Date: September 21, 2004
• Sequence Number: 1
• Publication Date: May 21, 1968
• Content Type: MAGAZINE

Approved For Relea1994A1(Q3ia91A-RDP88-
21 Yy 1968
BOOKS ARTS MANNERS
Britain's Master Spy
ANTHONY LEJEUNE
Four hooks about Kim Philby; the Soviet
spy who worked his way into' the heart
of the British secret service-or, to be
more precise, three hooks about him and
one by him-are rather too many to be
consumed without indigestion; but there's
no denying that collectively they are full
of interest, both human and political. At
the simplest level, Philby performed a re-
markable feat of intellect and self-dis-
cipline, keeping the two sides of himself
apart for thirty years. Picture him, for
example, drafting lectures on the Soviet
intelligence services for the benefit of
British secret service trainees. "it was
frustrating," he says blandly, "to have to
eliminate from my drafts all knowledge
based on personal experience." A poignant
scene indeed.
And to anyone who is at all acquainted
with the fairly small circle of upper gov-
ernmental and professional people in
London, a surprising number of whom
have at one time or another been con-
nected with secret intelligence work, there
is the added fascination of meeting a suc-
cession of familiar names, presented in an
odd and often unflattering light. Many of
these people-clever, responsible people
-knew things about Philby which should
have made them highly suspicious. But
they didn't realize or they didn't care. Can
one blame them? It is hard to believe that
somebody one has known for a long time
might be an active, conscious enemy agent.
For all its brashness and lack of bal-
ance, much the best of the four books is
the one compiled by three young reporters
(Bruce Page, Phillip Knightley and David
Leitch) on the London Sunday Times.
The articles on which the book is based
were a brilliant example of the team-
journalism which the Sunday Times has
pioneered. The research must have been
extraordinarily difficult, expensive and pro-
tracted, but it certainly paid off.
E. H. Cookri e's The rhird -man Is
benefit of some personal experience. He
was part of the socialist underground in
Vienna and met Philby there during the
bloody clashes which took place in the
early 1930s. About other matters, how-
ever, Mr. Cookridge is less accurate. He
indulges in some rather wild guesswork,
suggesting, for example, on quite insuffi-
cient evidence,""chat Maclean was black-
mailed by Burgess, and asserting confident-
ly that Philby's father must have known
his son was a spy-which Philby himself
categorically denies.
Kim Philby: The Spy I Married by
Eleanor Philby, Kim's third wife whom he
has now abandoned for Melinda Maclean,
takes the story several stages further than
the other hooks, starting with the rain-
swept night when Philby vanished from
Beirut and describing the uneasy months
which she afterwards spent with him in
Moscow. She seems to feel very little
bitterness; their marriage, she says, was
"perfect in every way," though she now
realizes that she didn't know her husband
at all.
Philby's own book, My Silent War, is
weirdly two-dimensional. Throughout al-
most the first half, he describes his career
in the British secret service as though that
were his only career. Then he starts drop-
inevitably oversf pXWef 1cgr a QSe
luck, because he too must have done a
lot of research. Being older, he has the
Philby, The Spy Who Betrayed a Gen-
eration
By Bruce Page, Phillip Knightley, and
David Leitch Doubleday, $5.95
The Third Man
By E. H. Cookridge Putnam, $5.95
Kim Philby: The Spy 1 Married
By Eleanor Philby
Ballantine, 75 cents
My Silent War
By Kim Philby Grove, $5.95
ping hints about "my other interests," and
casually mentions that he went out of his
way to study the list of British agents in
the Soviet Union. He never does say
much about his real work, which is not
surprising, since the book must, of course,
have been authorized and vetted by his
Soviet masters. There are traces of what
one acquaintance calls his "quiet cat-like
charm," but it's hard to know which is
nastier-the viciousness with which he at-
tacks people in the British and American
intelligence and security services (includ-
ing, for example, J. Edgar Hoover) whom
he disliked, or the gentility with which he
recalls other colleagues, who were his
friends while he was betraying them.
He seems genuinely to resent those who
were suspicious of him. Like Burgess and
Maclean, he had an anomalous attachment
to the institutions, the way of life, he was
dedicated to destroy. He was fond of P. G.
Wodehouse, and in Moscow constantly
wore his old Westminster School scarf,
just as Burgess wore an Old Etonian tie.
All of them enjoyed good living, and
Burgess and Maclean, Mrs. Philby recalls,
used to talk pathetically about the marvel-
ous times they would have in Italy and
Paris "when the revolution comes."
There are some inconsistencies among
the various books. The Sunday Times
book, for instance, dismisses Burgess as
a minor figure, whereas Cookridge-and,
by implication, Philby-lay great stress on
him. Mr. Cookridge thinks that Philby
escaped from Beirut by ship, Mrs. Philby
thinks he was picked up by a Soviet plane
in Syria, and the Sunday Times reporters
cross the Turkish fron-
a1350R0(iP in 0$$ r ni Tbey disagree
too
,
,
about who first recruited Philby into the -
Soviet service and about which defector