PHILBY THE LESSONS BY GEOFFREY MCDERMOTT

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP70B00338R000300220013-7
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 20, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 17, 2007
• Sequence Number: 13
• Publication Date: October 29, 1967
• Content Type: NSPR

~-P,~l i~. rr3 y J-I ARot, D
Approved For Relea 7/ XX ~I DP70B00338R000300220013--~
29 October 1967
Former Foreign Office.'
Adviser to the Secret Intelli-
gence Service
IS PHILBY really all that,
important? Do his activities,
past, present and future,
justify a long newspaper
probe and ravaged soul-
searching by the authorities?
Or is the Bond and Dolly
Dolly syndrome warping the
Judgment of serious people?
For a start, it is worth
recording the opinion of those
inside the intelligence world.
I have been able to do this.
There is no doubt ? in the
minds of the Secret In-
telligence Service. Up to 1951,
Philby had solid hopes of
becoming head of that organi-
sation: and, as they later dis-
covered, he was doing max-
imum damage in those same
years. Equally the K G B (the,
Russian intelligence service)
risked keeping him in the
West for a dozen years after.
he came under suspicion as
the Third Man, because of
his continued usefulness to
them.
His use was not merely in
the provision of disconnected
,
to a
detail. By luck and judgment, subject the service to a Philb hantasma oria
..,--- ---- - roanlnr ir,o.~.,n4;..... ....a :t :I y p g ,
traitor was able to supply
Moscow not only with S I S's'
deployment in the field, but
with information on .the state
of their intelligence on Com-
Blake, he was able, in fact, to more and more into use in
influence policy, both .British the Government machille,
and Soviet. . , and in the United States they
The picture of Philby's are co-opted into the 'White
survital given in Insight's House itself to advise on,
report is a shocking one. On secret matters ? of global
four separate occasions he got policy. A group here consist-
away with the benefit of the ing of, for instance, a suitably
doubt: on the last he simply . high -powered businessman,
got away. The reasons are two- scientist, journalist, don,
fold. One was that he had judge, and woman might well
proved himself, to the .Ameri produce a valuable increase
cans as well as the British, a in public confidence.
very high-class operator who
11 one of us." The other was
eben' more serious: the-poli-
ticians' ''reluctance tow's deal i
with a very unsavoury ques-
tion on its merits.
Any assessment of possible
reforms must begin with what
has already been done. While
Philby and his friends were
double-crossing us, we were
pulling in good numbers of
high-grade defectors from
the other ?id One could
name at least fifteen in the
past two decades who have
entered with equal zest into
the double game and given
us 'critically valuable informa-
tion. Great credit for this
goes to Sir Dick White, by far
the best head of S I S we .have
had. As a former head
of M15, he has defused the
pernicious rivalry between
these two services and,
equally important, got, rela-
tions with the C I A back on
a good footing.
Ile has also improved S I S
practice in security and re-
cruitment. Socially the service
is now considerably more
heterogeneous than ' t h e
Foreign Office.. They also treat
security against enemy pene-
tration very seriously.
My ' own main reservation
about the top 'SIS echelons
is that they. are too gentle-
manly in ' 'a , deadly game
where that is' ra definite
disadvantage. Nevertheless, I
think that the great value of
Insight's. report is the ques-
tion' it raises about S I S's
ppolitical- and public accounta-
bility. I believe that the
present' dispersal of power
between the Foreign Office
.and the Prime Minister ex-
poses S I S to , a dangerous
'degree ' of autonomy. To my
mind there, is a strong case
for a new body, quite outside
Whitehall and Westminster
in inbred little Commis-
sion .exists at the moment,
but no one seems to pay any
attention to its reports. True
outsiders are already coming
though it is true, shows that
we need them. We can dis-
miss the .tired joke that we
have no secrets. worth the
keeping. The K.G B do not
seem to think so, The day,
we can relax will be the day
the last KGB ,agent gets the
train for Moscow.' There is
no sign of a slackening of
KGB activity in Britain;
quite the contrary. We can be
certain that hidden in the
recesses of the Western body
politic there are other poten-
tial Philbys. And in his K G B
office Kim is hard at work
right now on the best method
to recruit and, exploit them.
was also a charming fellow, . a 1 r 1?i= C
irnuPd Fnr Release 2007/01/17: CIA-RDP70B00338R000300 -