RELAXED, HAPPY AFTER 30 Y YEARS OF SPYING FOR RUSSIA SON TELLS OF MR PHILBY'S LIFE IN MOSCOW

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP70B00338R000300220036-2
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 19, 2016
• Document Release Date: July 15, 2005
• Sequence Number: 36
• Publication Date: October 2, 1967
• Content Type: NSPR

Approved For ReIJ' 2606/b'`` 10 : CIA-RDP70B00338R000300220036-2
October 2, 1967
By HENRY STANFIOPE
He was relaxed, confident,.
happy, an ideological spy who
worked for the Soviet Union for
30 years without taking so much
as a rouble in reward, and had
now cone in from the cold.
This is the image of Mr. " Kim "
Philby, now revealed to be the
most significant Russian agent ever
to pierce western intelligence, pre-
sented iii L6 1186n ycsl :itlay 3y hi9
eldest son, John, the most recent
of the rare visitors to Mr. Philby's
Moscow home.
I spoke yesterday with Mr. John
Philby, aged 23. a photographer, as
he left his modest top-floor flat in an
unfashionable Hampstead ' road,
about the 10 days he spent with his
father to whom he delivered a letter
from The Sunday Times.
Normal life-4
"He lives in a flat in Moscow",
he said, "but I will not say where.
I stayed in my hotel and visited him
just as an ordinary tourist. We saw
each other every day. He works for
the Novosti news agency, writing
features about the Far East. He
writes in English and then the
features are translated and put out by
Novosti in the usual way."
Was he in contact with the Soviet
intelligence network ?
" 1 do not know. I suppose he
obviously must have some contact.
He leads a normal life, goes to work
in the normal way, We talked a lot
about Moscow. He did not give
details about spying activities for the
west. I tried to avoid asking him."
Mr. Philby was quiet, withdrawn.
He said he was in sympathy with his
father's views, but was not a member
of the Communist Party. He is
married to a girl who works as an
animator for cartoon films, and is
now in Canada..
Mr. Philby senior is 55, but
apparently looks younger; his stutter
at one time severe is much better.
' His son laughs at the idea that his
father feels any regret:: ?" He leads
a pretty reasonable life.", he said.
"Ile never went out a great deal
anyway. Now he reads a lot, goes
to the ballet now and again."',-
gain."' ,
Of
Of little use
He did not seem to think Mr.
Philby had much contact with Mr.
Donald Maclean in Moscow. He
asked his father if he had seen Mt.
George Blake but Mr. Phil?by did
not make it clear. "He does not
see many British people in Russia
at all ", he said.
"The Russians seem to treat him
very we-11. The Foreign Office have
rat cfrlttcted mg sync fll rgiupi.
I would like to go back to see my
father again, naturally."
. The disclosure that his father was
a communist had surprised him.
Jerome Caminada, who was in
Beirut as Middle East correspon-
dent of The Times during the last
two years before Mr. Philby left
there for Russia in January, 1963,
writes: -
British reaction to Mr. Philby's
career, or more accurately the last
part of it, makes one think not of
shutting the stable door after the
horse has gone, but of repeatedly
opening it to look for a horse that
was not there.
At the time that Mr. Phil-by was
smuggled on board a Russian ship on
a stormy night in Beirut and disap-
peared I would say that he was about
as little use to Russian Intelligence
as any other British- or American
newspapennan there-and a good
deal more dangerous.
I am referring only to the period
after 1956 when he went to Beirut
as a correspondent for ? British
weekly publications, thour?t pos-
sibly the same could be said about
his previous four or five years in
Britain, when apparently he no
longer served British intelligence,
Mr. Philby's comparative useless-
ness in Beirut springs, I suggest,
partly from his geographic location.
but more from his private habits. He
was in the Middle East which, oil-
producing though it is, and though
then still of some strategic import-
ance to the west, represents only one
region of many round the. world.
Drinking habits
He may have been asked to give
inforrimation on British intelligence
in that region,?but there he could
scarcely have had overall global
knowledge of British or American
operations.
and the exceptionally high consump-
tion of linuor in the Philby apart-
ment is most relevant to Britain's
interests in this story, and is not
thrown in here as personal gossip.
His weakness did not alter hit
habitual courtesy and kindliness, not
chance his deep-voiced stammer, but
it surely made him less and less
reliable as a Russian "customer".
Philby, I suspect, felt this. When,
late in 1962. he was one of a press
party that spent two days bounding
over rocks and sand in royalist
Yemen to die'over that the deposed
Imam was still alive, he persistently
refused to take a drop from the hip
flasks some of us carried. This may
have been because he was in Muslim
country where his father's name was
much respected, or because for once
it might pay to keep his eyes and
cars open.
In rsarut and other towns. how-
ever, Mr. Philby's' way of living was
well known, assuredly as much to
the Russians there as to others.
'When finally he disappeared. it. may
have been at least partly because
they considered that his habits and
his knowledge of the past made hint
Approved For Release 2006/01/30: CIA-RDP?g0_?`~'0* W42#b*A
to be a danger to him in Washington.