Kim Philby (33 page)

Trevor-Roper quotes a description of Kim in Istanbul after the war, as a voluptuary living a self-indulgent life of lotus-eating ease, and adds that in America his opulent way of life excited comment. Kim liked good food and drink, but most of the time he ate simple fare. Physical comfort never seemed to matter to him. I can testify that his life in Istanbul was a long way from sybaritic, and anyway he preferred roughing it in eastern Turkey. In the years just after the war, people coming out from rationed England and seeing plenty of meat and duty-free drink were often inclined to speak of self-indulgence in the Foreign Service. Trevor-Roper also describes Kim in Rickmansworth as living far above his retirement income of a few hundred a year, and implies that he was dependent on Russian subvention. I doubt this. It would have been extremely dangerous for him to accept much from the Russians – if indeed he had contact with them at the time – and I know that Aileen’s mother was giving help; he also had a job for part of the period. There was no luxury at all and not too much comfort at Rickmansworth; nor it seems in Beirut. In Moscow, to judge from Eleanor, he was plunged back into a life at least as austere as that of wartime St Albans, but I doubt if that particular change in his fortunes greatly bothered him.

Kim kept much of himself to himself, but outside this protected inner sanctum he had a great need for company. He liked to have round him a small familiar circle of friends. Some might almost be described as cronies, one or two were there to be ribbed and joshed in a friendly way. But he also liked the
stimulation provided, in their different styles, by such companions as Dick Brooman-White and Tommy Harris. Friendship was always important to him. When he went to Moscow he gave up many things, but I should be surprised if he regretted any of his deprivations except that of his family and the people he knew best. He was sentimental about and very loyal to friends, even Guy, whom he didn’t really like. The relationship with Guy was equivocal: Kim was intrigued by his peculiar mentality and character, but I had the impression even from early days that Guy was a mysterious cross he had to bear. I put this down to the undoubted fact that Kim could never refuse anything to an old friend. This was certainly part of the reason, but one now sees that he could not completely get away from Guy, for whose introduction into Soviet intelligence he had apparently been responsible, a situation which Guy was probably not above exploiting.

Kim has said in an interview that if he had his time over again he would do the same thing. I wish that were not true, but I do not doubt he meant it. But I do not regret knowing him. He enriched my world for many years and I owed a lot to him. Certainly my association with him caused many difficulties for me but I do not feel bitterness towards him, only sadness. ‘
Corruptis optimis pessima
.’
^†
Let me leave it at that.

Notes

1
. Kim Philby,
My Silent War
, MacGibbon & Kee, London, 1968, pp. 15–16.

2
. Graham Greene, Foreword, in Philby,
My Silent War
.

3
. Eleanor Philby,
Kim Philby: The Spy I Loved
, Hamish Hamilton, London, 1968.

4
. Hugh Trevor-Roper,
The Philby Affair: Espionage, Treason, and Secret Services,
William Kimber, London, 1968.

†
‘The corruption of that which is best is the worst tragedy.’

EPILOGUE
†

F
inally, I must turn to what happened to me after Kim Philby’s defection to Moscow in January 1963.

Initially, nothing whatsoever: I had ten months to go in my Tokyo posting and saw them out without interference or correspondence of any kind. After I returned to London in November 1963 (taking a week’s leave in Hong Kong en route) I was fully questioned, as, of course, was everyone closely connected with Kim. I wrote a long account of our association (which, incidentally, although I did not keep a copy, has formed the skeleton of much of this book). Eventually I appeared before an MI5 officer, who revealed what Kim was supposed to have said about me to Nicholas Elliott in Beirut before defecting. Kim apparently said that he had mentioned me (among others) to the Russians as someone they might find it worth approaching. However, he went on to say that they had turned the idea down. Kim did not suggest, according to what I was told, that I had any knowledge of all this.

I was horrified. I think my immediate reaction was to say something like ‘How dare he? He never said anything to me!’ I
went on to ask when this ‘recommendation’ could have occurred. Probably sometime in the war, I was told. This made a little more sense. Kim must certainly have said something about me to the Russians when I was taken on by SIS in 1941. Kim never sought to find out what my true views were. One might also point out that at this meeting in Beirut – for which he may have been briefed by the KGB – Kim is said to have cleared Anthony Blunt.

According to one author,
¹
Kim named me at the Beirut meeting as a ‘fellow conspirator’. The same author goes on to say that I came under suspicion and was for a while suspended from duty; eventually, he says, I was cleared but had to resign because of American pressure.

This could hardly be further from the truth. First, I was never aware of being ‘suspended from duty’ at any time. I was not even sure at first what period the author was referring to, but I imagine now that it must have been the few weeks after I returned from Tokyo, as described above. I was on normal leave during that time, and returned to take up a new post in the London office when my leave was up. During my leave, I visited the office on several occasions.

I have pointed out to various writers who have sought information the following facts:

1. Kim Philby defected in January 1963. I did not retire from SIS until October 1968.
   
2. About halfway between these two dates I received the CMG.
   ²
   
3. Throughout the period I was in close and candid touch with CIA, as and when needed; and I visited Washington and Langley, Virginia (CIA headquarters) in 1966.
   
4. Subsequently I worked for seven years in the House of Commons as clerk to various select committees.
   

I obviously cannot prove that I visited CIA in Washington,
³
except that I see from an old passport that I entered New York on 23 August 1966; but the rest is a matter of public record. There was not the slightest reason why SIS or the House of Commons should have employed me, or continued to employ me, if my loyalty were in doubt. And indeed, when I left SIS I was told in writing that I was not under any suspicion. This, of course, is implicit in my subsequent employment in the House of Commons.

It is clear that if Kim had named me as a ‘fellow conspirator’ in January 1963, events would have taken a very different course. First, he would have been pressed at once to give details: when did I begin to conspire, what did I actually do, and so on. It is inconceivable that I would have been left to carry on in Tokyo for nearly a year as though nothing had happened. (Incidentally, the same author says I had only one overseas posting; I had six.
⁴
)

But I have to say that after the
Sunday Times
articles of October 1967 I had become a less desirable SIS property. The articles, while not fully naming me, pointed to me (by clear identification) as a long-time friend and associate of Kim’s.

An SIS officer who is publicly named or identified, particularly if he is serving abroad (I was in Hong Kong at the time, with the Cultural Revolution in full swing in China, and all sorts of local trouble), loses his value. I was already past the official retiring age, and it was thought wise a few months later that I should retire. The Americans, of course, never came into it.

Notes

1
. Nigel West,
The Friends: Britain’s Post-war Secret Intelligence Operations
, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 1987, p. 145.

2
. Milne was appointed a CMG on 12 June 1965.

3
. Milne was controller for all SIS operations in the Middle East at the time of his visit to Washington.

4
. The six overseas postings in order of service were Egypt (Ismailiya), Iran (Tehran), West Germany (Cologne), Switzerland (Berne), Japan (Tokyo) and finally Hong Kong. In the last three posts, Milne was head of station.

†
Editor’s note
: The Epilogue was written in the 1980s, after the exposure of Anthony Blunt as the so-called Fourth Man.

APPENDICES

INTRODUCTION

T
he three appendices which follow reveal the depth of the confusion and denial which continued within SIS even after Philby’s defection in January 1963. The first is a summary of the affair prepared for Harold Macmillan, the then Prime Minister. It details how in 1951, in the wake of the defections of Donald Maclean and Guy Burgess, Philby was suspected of being the ‘Third Man’ who had warned them of Maclean’s imminent arrest. Philby was interrogated by Helenus Milmo, a distinguished barrister and former member of MI5, who concluded that although there was insufficient evidence to secure a conviction, ‘I find myself unable to avoid the conclusion that Philby is and has for many years been a Soviet agent.’ Giving its verdict on Philby, MI5 said it accepted Milmo’s conclusions ‘without qualification’ and that ‘for all practical purposes it should be assumed that Philby was a Soviet agent throughout his service with SIS’.

The rest of the document describes the sustained campaign by SIS to have Philby declared innocent. This began immediately after the MI5 judgement with the insistence of Sir Stewart Menzies, then SIS ‘chief’, that the case against Philby
was ‘capable of a less sinister interpretation than is implied by the bare evidence’. In 1955, amid press speculation that Philby was the ‘Third Man’, the new chief of SIS, Sir John Sinclair, insisted that new evidence threw even more doubt on his guilt and came close to accusing Milmo of having concocted the case against him. Sinclair’s intensive lobbying of the Foreign Office led Harold Macmillan, then Foreign Secretary, to tell Parliament that he had ‘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’.

The second document is a record of the meeting in February 1963 when Sinclair’s successor, Sir Dick White
^†
, had to tell Macmillan, by now Prime Minister, that Philby had admitted spying for Moscow and disappeared, having defected to the Soviet Union. The emergence of new evidence against Philby had led White to send the senior SIS officer Nicholas Elliott to Beirut, where Philby was working as a journalist for
The Observer,
to obtain a confession. Elliott was a surprising choice. He had a poor reputation within SIS, having botched a number of high-profile operations, and as head of station in Beirut had continued to use Philby as an agent − despite the MI5 health warning − so had an interest in playing down the extent of any betrayal. Elliott nevertheless persuaded White that he was the best person to interview Philby since they were ‘close friends’. He was, of course, unaware that in his assessment for Moscow Centre, Philby had described him as ‘ugly and rather pig-like to look at’ albeit crediting him, perhaps surprisingly, with a ‘good brain’.

The third document is a briefing paper prepared for Macmillan
so he could inform Harold Wilson, the leader of the Labour Party, of Philby’s defection. It is notable for the continuing SIS attempts, even now, to cover up the relationship which both SIS and the Russians maintained with Philby during his period in Beirut and the extent to which Elliott botched the interview. If Philby was right about Elliott’s ‘good brain’, it was not much in evidence. Philby ran rings round Elliott, who accepted that he had not spied for Moscow beyond 1946, allowed him to compose and type up his own very brief confession and, to the evident embarrassment of SIS, didn’t even get him to sign it. This only became clear after the Macmillan briefing paper was typed up, when the word ‘signed’ had to be crossed out. Elliott had recorded his conversations with Philby, but had left the window open and the noise from the busy street below ensured that very little of what they said could be heard. It was evidently a shock to SIS when Philby left Beirut bound for Moscow. Despite the document’s claims that Philby cleared up the truth of seven different security issues, it is impossible to see how anyone could have believed a word he said. If, as seems inevitable, he was asked about Anthony Blunt and John Cairncross, the two other members of the so-called ‘Cambridge Five’, both of whom had been under suspicion because of their links to Burgess, Philby would certainly have downplayed any suggestion that they were KGB agents. Equally, he threw suspicion on Milne, arguably his closest and oldest friend, who was subsequently shown to have done nothing wrong at all.