WITH PHILBY IN THE FOREIGN OFFICE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP75-00149R000600330058-0
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 9, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 21, 2000
• Sequence Number: 58
• Content Type: MAGAZINE

,erw distinguisneu insn man ox
.iny wife and myself to see the
oo !Taxa of the Ny prb ep Poe
_cicd in the most scientific way, for
cology is now very good (so I
a. But the 'indomitable Irishry,'
n brought up on Moores Melodies,
nought 'Tara's Halls' were the halls
.af a highly advanced society. Some
bought they were rather like Burn-
rs seemed to think that they were
an Odeon cinema, and so on. Of
results from this point of view were
disconcerting: a lot of holes in the
-here wooden structures had been
iis was not what they came forth to
than that. we were told that the first
artefact discovered was a very phallic
inbol, an insult to Irish chastity.
-alls to me the time I was taken over
.i)rated Indian antiquities?by a plump
young woman from the local univer-
before we entered the temple, asked
anxiously, 'I suppose you know what
symbol is?' I replied that I did. But
-entered the temple, I discovered I had
n.ived: these were not phallic symbols,
uses. 'long standing' like those which
1 reported on in picture palaces in the
merick.
_ye, of course, the ingenious frauds.
an gullible collectors. The.type of The
is not confuted to Scotland, still less
to SC:Wind in 1110 lifelinIG of if
cott. After all, it was in this ecatury
el was launched, one of the boldest of
took a great interest in this since it is
area where my wife was conducting.
Nations, and we were in close relations
local erudits. One of them, a very
man indeed, told me that the forger
Glozel pottery had known very
en he started on his nefarious career,
-.earned a great deal from his numerous
_.nd was a .much better forger and a
niter archaeologist by the time the boom
.own. But the only way he could be
ith by French law was by prosecuting
- charging an entrance fee to his dis-
Twhe? he had no entertainment licence.
deserved better than that.
e, of course, no scientific authority for
ng that recent discoveries about the
in Oklahoma are fraudulent. Still, one
vows. have learned to note a great deal
indercurrent of critical scepticism in the
ly world. For example, not everybody is
zed of the authenticity of the Vinland
licit Yale has bought. It is perhaps I./n-
ate that it was bought by Yale when Yale
.;1 bought a number of extremely interest-
zutnents from a Spanish collection. The
-a collection turned out to have been in the
r library of Saragossa Cathedral and the
of Saragossa?and the chapter as a body
ate?had no recollection of selling them.
.lkind theory that one of the canons had
them on to a dealer, was widely accepted,
tood firm and refused to name the dealer .
igh his name was in general circulation
New Haven) and, at any rate when I
st abreast of the controversy, was hanging
StAIU, VVV1.11t1
DUI a great university, perhaps, ought at teast centre or trio Slimy ul
004107112p113tAaktfiltmorpoigke000003gojegitycn Yale will not buy the men
nevthis leading article was a masterpiece discoveries from Oklahoma.
pLc:114-C R. co_ co SPIES
With Philby in the Foreign Office
CPYRGHTCPYRGHT
GEOFFREY
In his (uric* on spies last week Geoffrey
McDermott referred to Kim Philhy as 'the big-
gest fish of the lot . undoubtedly Blake's spy-
master . . I feel in my bones that we shall he
hearing a good deal about him before long.'
We did.
Philby, the spymaster, and George Blake,
the master spy, came together from the ends of
the earth. There was nothing peculiar about this
in that generation, when we were farflung. But
?. Kim's upbringinn was conventional upper class
t'? British where I , Kes was not. They came to-
gether in the worldwide cause of communism.
? When I first met Kim and his parents in
Cairo just after the war, old St John Philby was
? far from being the 'normal member of the
Indian Civil Service who had sent his Son to
Westminster and Cambridge. He was a great
Arabist, and had become a Moslem and the
'confidential counsellor of King ihn Saud. He
lmd ttdvind him early in lh War Mai Orilain
could not possibly win, and had been depriVed
by HMO of his British passport for his pains. I
asked his wife, this agreeable English country
lady, whether she minded putting on the veil
and retiring to the harem when they went to
? Mecca. She replied that it did not bother her at
all. The relations of these unusual parents with
? their son were ambivalent. 1 have no doubt that
Kim was 'fired by his impressive father's
example to, outdo him, shall we say, in origin-
ality. On the 'number of wives Kim has achieved
about level pegging. In every other way he has
scored a clear victory.
Blake was quite another kettle of fish, though
also with Middle Eastern connections. He was
born in Egypt, son of a naturalised British Jew
and his Dutch wife. His education was ift a
local school in .Holland and in the anti-Nazi
.".resistance.
I was at Cambridge with Kim, Maclean and
Burgess in the early 'thirties, though I ran into
none of them until later. The political atmo-
sphere there was complicated. It was fashion-
- able either to be, or claim to be, a?communist,
McDERMOTT CPYRGHT
You enjoyed all your privileges as a member o
the upper classes, exploited them when it came
to getting jobs, and abused them---and often
your parents?at the same time. The complica
tion was that, while most of us did not meat
it too seriously, young men like this merry trio
were so deeply revolted by their heritage tfit
they were prepared to make a life's work of
sapping its foundations. A bit of sodomy ort
the side, at any rate where Maclean and But-
gess were concerned, was an " addition
heterodox bond,
None of these people went so far as to vis,
the Soviet Union and see how things were worl.
ing out under communism. But they saw die
rottenness and smugness of conservatism r.
d
those days, the ineffectiveness of socialisr
and the power of communism which manifest
itself particularly when the Lissa became our
ally in the war. Many of us felt the same, 110
to a point. In varying degrees they disciplined
llIstfilhglY0 DS PPITInillniS! sPics; Philby
MOO effieletit) iturgeso the lemi. Mona with
thousands of others who knew Philby, but
particularly well, I had no suspicions of what
his easy social manner concealed. But it is
markable that a close friend of both his a
mine could never make up his mind that t
0-
td
truth could be as it is until Philby confesed
in 1963, though he had mulled the questiOn'
over ever since 1951 when Philby was fii it
accused of being 'the third man.'
While Philby was flying high in the sec et ,
service hierarchy Blake was coming along s ell
from behind. He had a sizeable chip on his
shoulder about not being quite British up er
class, and also because his service with the
Dutch resistance, his facility in languages and
so on did not 'seem to be fully recogniscc( or:
rewarded. And he, too, did not like what be
saw of the British ruling classes.
Philby and Blake must have come close tO-
gether, on orders from their head office, which
was not in London hut in Moscow, in the late
'forties, Between them they were able from then
on to supply both hot operational and be ad
organisational intelligence over the whole s ec-
trum of our secret service's activities.
But it was worse than this. From the mi Idle
of the war the Soviet government had felt, cor-
rectly, that their most dangerous enemies svOuld
eventually be the Americans. Philby and Blake
were accordingly given the task of penztr. ling
the American clandestine organisation too,
and went to it with a will. Philby particu arly
disliked American capitalism and sudcess.
When Philby was accused in 1951 of being 'the'
third man,' by far his most determined
attackers were the central Intelligence Agency
Approved For Rblease 2001/07/27 : CIA-RDP75-00149R000600330058-0
A
two years in Washington. hey were right, ot
course; but the 'old boy net' in Britain, which
PtIZI Y iit8K4a1g1PrVid
'third man.' It seemed to imply partly that he
was of less significance than the wellknown two,
and partly that he was a jolly buccaneer like
Orson Welles in the film, about Vienna in the
end-of-war days.
You would think that as a result of these
goings-on, confidence between the American
and British sections of the Intelligence corn-
MtiNt httV ri lifittilfldi It was not,
For one thing, the Americans, of course, had
their troubles with their own traitors. Anyway,
throughout the 'fifties a representative of the
CIA continued to sit in on the deliberations of
our Joint Intelligence Committee (I was chair-
man of the deputy director's section) and the
privilege was reciprocated in Washington. In
1958 I went on a trip round the world, unique
of its kind, sponsored by both the Foreign
Office and our secret service, and magnificently
laid on by both those bodies and also by the
CIA representative everywhere. This culminated
in a highpowered lunch given in my honour
by Allen Dulles, then head of the cm
(absolutely My only 'complaint here warr er,e'
choice of drink: milk, water or coffee). Philby's
defection in 1963 was a further strain on SIS-
CIA relations, though Allen Dulles has made it
clear that it was no surprise to him. But these
relations appear to hold up well enough even
today.
For part of the time when Philby was in the
doldrums from 1951 to 1955 Blake was in a
prison camp in North Korea. After his return
he started going great guns, and no doubt kept
Philby informed of progress. After his savagely
successful time in Berlin, from 1954 to 1959,
Blake asked for a rest and was sent to 'Mecas'
(Middle East Centre for Arabic Studies) in
Shcmlan, an agreeable village in the hills above
Beirut. Philby was living in Beirut at the time,
and working again in a small way for the sts,
as well as for the Observer and the Economist.
Some reunion I
But not for Jong. In 1959 statements by
various communist defectors pointed clearly to
Blake's guilt. He was summoned home and
grilled. The record sentence of forty-two years'
imprisonment followed.
The interrogation of Blake was pursued, at
a gentlemanly tempo, while he was in Worm-
wood Scrubs. At last he slipped up and in-
criminated Philby. Philby was confronted?by '
an old chum?in Lebanon and saw the game
was up. As he was not in HMO's service officially
he could not be summoned home; and our
authorities had not the strength of mind to kid-
nap him. This was the 'innocent until proved
guilty' syndrome with a vengeance. At a con-
venient moment a couple of months later he
skipped to what he now calls 'home.'
I-lis son's reports as a result of his recent
visit to Moscow do not reveal much. In Beirut
Philby had removed a great friend's wife, a
goodlooking girl as I remember her. John
Philby docs not reveal that, true to his own
comradely habits, Philby has now removed
Melinda Maclean from her husband Donald,
whom she had followed faithfully through so
many tribulations. Also, while John Philby
indicates that his father is treated with the
respect due to a monumental traitor, he does
, not say what high position he now occupies in '
POtiroviedtfalGResteattte200tit07/27palatA-RDP75
j Which he has served so loyally and for NI; 1_0_4? 8._;
75
British and American society today are of a
different order from those of the 'thirties,
lifitiiippicajgm.,Atti_titrue that the 'cold war'
Vriutreenir Nrn. But the worldwide
contest remains most vigorous and in Some
ways more dangerous than ever. And in the in-
telligence sphere, while there arc master minds
and active bodies like Philby and Blake at work
in Moscow, we had better watch out. If they
have not actually left some time bombs behind
they are considering how to get them into
position now.
00149R000600330058-0
CPYRGHT