Kim Philby

by Tim Milne

  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†

  Finally, 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:

  Kim Philby defected in January 1963. I did not retire from SIS until October 1968.

  About halfway between these two dates I received the CMG.2

  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.

  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

  The 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 p
aper 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.

  Michael Smith

  These documents were released at the beginning of 2014 as a result of a Freedom of Information request. They are contained in the UK National Archives file PREM 11/4457.

  APPENDIX 1

  TOP SECRET

  NOTES ON THE EARLY STAGES OF THE PHILBY CASE

  1. Maclean and Burgess disappeared from the UK on May 25, 1951. Philby was seen by the Security Service but not for formal investigation, on June 12, 14 and 16, 1951. About the end of October, the Foreign Office were told by the Security Service that Philby was under suspicion. On December 8, 1951, the Prime Minister approved a proposal that Philby should be interrogated by Mr H Milmo KC on behalf of the Security Service. The interrogation took place on December 12. The results of this interrogation were discussed at a meeting with the Secretary of State (Sir Anthony Eden) and Sir William Strang (the Permanent Under-Secretary)1 on December 14. It was also known at the time of that meeting that the Director of Public Prosecutions had advised that there was no legal evidence on which Philby could be prosecuted. As a result, the Secretary of State agreed that Philby’s passport should be returned to him and not cancelled and that if the Security Service wished to cease surveillance on him they could do so. This was conveyed by Sir W Strang to Sir P Sillitoe, then Head of the Security Service, with the recommendation that he should inform the Prime Minister.

  2. On January 14, 1952, Sir P Sillitoe2 sent to Sir W Strang a final version of Mr Milmo’s report of his interrogation of Philby incorporating certain amendments proposed by ‘C’ (General Sinclair).3 Mr Milmo’s report contains a report of ‘findings’ in the following words:-

  ‘There is no room for doubt that it was as a result of a leakage of information that Burgess and Maclean disappeared from this country on 25th May 1951. There is no evidence in law to prove the source of the leakage or to establish the identity of the person or persons responsible for the leakage. Subject to this important qualification, I find myself unable to avoid the conclusion that Philby is and has for many years been a Soviet agent and that he was directly and deliberately responsible for the leakage which in fact occurred.’

  3. In comment on Mr Milmo’s report the Security Service said among other things:-

  ‘It is not for the Security Service to pass judgment on a case which it cannot prove. Investigation will continue and one day final proof of guilt or innocence may be obtained. Advice must be given now however on the urgent practical issues which arise and on this aspect the Security Service accepts without qualification the independent judgment formed by Mr Milmo; it must recommend that for all practical purposes it should be assumed that Philby was a Soviet agent throughout his service with SIS.’

  4. The SIS commented on the report:-

  ‘We feel that the case against Philby is not proved and moreover is capable of a less sinister interpretation than is implied by the bare evidence.’

  5. ‘C’ wrote to Sir W Strang on January 17, 1952, commenting further on Mr Milmo’s report that it presented the case for the prosecution against Philby but that there was no comparably full case for the defence. Correspondence about how much of these papers should be shown to the Americans continued.

  6. In a letter to Sir Patrick Dean on September 23, 1955,4 ‘C’ (General Sinclair) referred to a current reassessment by the Security Service and SIS of the suspicions surrounding Philby and gave further views which in his opinion ‘reduced very considerably the suspicion that Philby was a Soviet agent’.

  7. In a reply on September 30 Sir P Dean told ‘C’ that the Foreign Office had always understood that the case against Philby was not conclusive but that all the relevant considerations would have to be put before Ministers in advising them on what was to be said in the House of Commons.

  8. On October 24, 1955 (a fortnight before the debate), ‘C’ wrote to Sir I Kirkpatrick5 enclosing a draft submission for what the Secretary of State should say in the debate about Philby. This submission was agreed by the Director General of the Security Service (Sir Dick White), and with small amendments formed the basis of what the Secretary of State said in the debate on November 7, 1955, i.e. that there was no evidence to show that Philby was responsible for warning Burgess or Maclean or that he had betrayed the interests of his country.

  9. A letter to Sir I Kirkpatrick from ‘C’ on December 21, 1955, enclosed a statement of the considerations ‘for the defence’ of the Philby case which enabled the Director General of the Security Service and ‘C’ to review the existing case ‘for the prosecution’ and to recommend to the Secretary of State the line which he in fact took on the subject of Philby during the debate on Burgess and Maclean. The concluding paragraph of this paper reads as follows:-

  ‘The Milmo Report, which produces no single piece of direct evidence to show that Philby was a Soviet agent or that he was the ‘Third Man’ is therefore a case for the prosecution inadmissible at law and unsuccessful in security intelligence. It is constructed of suppositions and circumstantial evidence, summing up in a circular argument everything the ingenuity of a prosecutor could devise against a subject. It seems likely to remain as a permanently accusing finger pointed at Philby unless some at least of the arguments which were not included in it are given their due weight. Philby was in fact convicted of nothing by the investigation in 1951 and despite four years of subsequent investigation is still convicted of nothing. It is entirely contrary to the English tradition for a man to have to prove his innocence even when the prosecution is in possession of hard facts. In a case where the prosecution has nothing but suspicion to go upon there is even less reason for him, even if he were able to do so, to prove his innocence. But if documents summarising the suspicions are permanently to play a part in our assessment it is only just that others which offset those suspicions should lie beside them. The case set out in this recent paper was sufficient to lead to agreement between the Directors of SIS and the Security Service as to what should be submitted for the Secretary of State’s speech. It is submitted that the argument of this paper should be considered as balancing, for reasons of justice, the material in the Foreign Office’s possession.’

  10. In sending this paper ‘C’ quotes a comment by the Director General of the Security Service on it as follows:-

  ‘I regard the memorandum as a paper worth putting alongside others in the case. I think it brings out a number of points which are fair to Philby and that the effect of it is decidedly to reduce the case of his being the “third man”. At the same time I cannot but note that the memorandum neglec
ts to deal with his early record and consequently does not purport to contain a full intelligence assessment of the case.’

  APPENDIX 2

  TOP SECRET

  Sir Dick White came to see the Prime Minister on February 14 in order to report about a former employee of M.I.6, a Mr. Philby. Mr. Philby was mentioned at the time of the Burgess and Maclean defections. He was at the time the M.I.6 representative in Washington. No evidence was then available against Mr. Philby but he was asked to leave the Service and has since been working as a journalist in Beirut in the employ of The Observer and The Economist. Sir Dick White said that a few days ago Mr. Philby had confessed to a member of M.I.6 that he had in fact been working for the Russians from 1934 to 1946 and had recruited both Maclean and Burgess into the Soviet network at Cambridge before the war. Mr. Philby had signed this confession but had subsequently disappeared and no-one knew where he was. It might be that he was still in the Lebanon, he might have gone to Egypt or elsewhere in the Middle East, or he might be in the Soviet Union.

  Sir Dick explained that it would not have been possible to extradite Mr. Philby from the Lebanon or to prosecute him if he had come to England because the evidence was not sufficiently strong for a Court of Law.

  It was agreed that Sir Dick White should prepare the necessary material in case Press enquiries became embarrassing.

  February 15, 1963

  APPENDIX 3

  TOP SECRET

  CASE OF H. A. R. PHILBY

  AIDE MEMOIRE FOR THE PRIME MINISTER’S TALK WITH MR. HAROLD WILSON