ESPIONAGE LESSON

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP70B00338R000300220056-0
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 20, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 17, 2007
• Sequence Number: 56
• Publication Date: November 27, 1967
• Content Type: NSPR

W*414 Lpvegl,Jj se 2007/01/17: CIA-RDP70B00338R000300220056-0
For the first time since his flight
from Lebanon to Russia four years ago,
Britain's has emerged
from the-Soviet dark and talked with
Western newsmen in Moscow. What he
had to say becomes him. Boastful,
self-satisfied, unrepentant, arrogant and
morally atrophied, he made clear both
by his words and his bearing that he
was, and still is, a super-traitor whose
spying for the Kremlin did incalcula-
ble harm to his own country, to the
United States and to the free world at
large. And he is glad of it.
The Philby career began at Cam-
bridge in 1933 when he became a Com-
munist and a Soviet espionage agent. His
rise in the British Secret Service was
spectacular, as was the role he played
here in Washington, from 1949 to 1951,
as Britain's representative with ready
access to American intelligence agencies
-and to an appalling amount of the
most highly classified information.
There were times when Philby almost
got caught. Almost but not quite. In 1945,
for instance, some of his colleagues had
fleeting suspicions about his conduct in
a cloak-and-dagger incident involving
the death of a defecting Russian. Later,
in the course of his Washington assign-
ment, the FBI and the CIA developed
grave doubts about him, and they were
certain in. 1951 that he was the man
who had tipped off his fellow-traitors,
Burgess and Maclean, in time to enable
them to escape from Britain to Russia.
Still, despite this, he was left free to
continue working for the Soviets in the
"cover" job of foreign correspondent.
Not until 1962 were the British ready
to crack down on him-too late to pre-
vent his flight to safe Soviet haven.
Certain questions nag the mind. How
did this living lie manage to get away
with his crime for so long? Why did the
British and American espionage people
fail to make swift and thorough tests of
the validity of the suspicions they felt.
every now and then, from 1945 on? A
fearful degree of official laxity and slip-
shod security seems to have been
Philby's salvation.
We must hope the lesson has been
learned. Memories of the excesses of
McCarthyism should not inhibit in any
way quiet, complete, systematic, con-
tinuous vigilance against treason such
as Philby's. The threat is not imagi-
nary. It can happen here.
CD~
Approved For Release 2007/01/17: CIA-RDP70B00338R000300220056-0