GENTLEMAN SPY

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP88-01350R000200120007-4
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 16, 2016
• Document Release Date: September 30, 2004
• Sequence Number: 7
• Publication Date: April 25, 1968
• Content Type: NSPR

Approved For. Release 2004/10/13: CIA-RDP88-0135010 001,~,4-I
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WAS:UIt:3TON, D.C.
WALL STREET
JOURNAL
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U-435,094
APR 25 1968 1
The- Bookshelf
Gentleman Spy.
The reader might be tempted to share his j
amusement, until he reflects that Philby must
have sent scores, if not hundreds, of men to
their deaths by communicating these plans to
his Soviet superiors. Then one's mood
changes to contempt for Philby as a human
being and disgust at the bumbling stupidity
that allowed him to continue his chosen role
of traitorous espionage agent so long, and fi-
nally to get off unpunished.
The British foreign service in the post-
nts
l
t
..
age
i
e
agents kept popping "up in the most. unexpect- there was no evidence that Philby had be. 1
ed places, and with the most Impeccable, gen- trayed the interests of Great Britain. Mean-
tlemanly backgrounds. Three who finally time, Burgess In America was able to warn
went "home" to Moscow, after playing havoc his fellow-conspirator, Maclean, in England
with the supposedly secret operations of-Brit- that suspicion was beginning to gather around'
ain and America, were Donald.Maclean, Guy him. In order to get a pretext for a quick re-
Burgess and Kim Philby. call to London, Burgess got himself arrested
i ' The first two have abided by.the spy's con three times for speeding on Virginia roads. }
vention of saying nothing (unless he passes The governor protested this abuse of dip-
over to the other side). But Philby has com? lomatic immunity and Burgess got the recall.
posed, in "My Silent Mar," a heavily selec- I ? Although the finger of suspicion had been
tive and self censored story of his more than pointed at Philby in several quarters in Eng
30 years as a Soviet secret agent. Since his I land, he went to Beirut, Lebanon, in 1956 on
home address is now Moscow, he is ' mute one of his familiar multiple assignments.-Out- !
about the details of his recruitment by and wardly he was correspondent- for two very
0 contacts with Soviet secret agencies, apart reputable publications, the Observer and the
from the starting date'of 1933, when he left Economist. Covertly he was in the employ of
Cambridge University. the British intelligence service. Still. more
His subsequent career included so many secretly, he remained a highly prized opera-
false fronts, disguises and assumed roles that tive of the farflung Soviet espionage system.
It sometimes seems strange he could have In 1963, his sins almost caught up with him.
kept them all clear in his own mind. One of a He sought political asylum in the Soviet.)
his first assignments was to work with 'pro- Union. And there, in 1965 he received the only
Nazi organizations in Englandi before the out-'; decoration he ever truly earned. He was
break of the war. Later he went to Spain as awarded the Order of the Red Banner "for
correspondent for the Times, of London, with outstanding services over a period of many
Franco's forces and was awarded the Red years to the peoples of the Union of Soviet So
Cross of Military Merit by Franco personally ' cialist Republics."
in 1938. He was recruited by the British Se.
cret Intelligence Service, where he worked in Philby's book is highly interesting, but not
close collaboration with his fellow-communist nearly as interesting as It might have been
sympathizer, Burgess. Philby . must have "s with more explicit information about his So-
nearly set a world record for receiving In. ` vlet contacts., The only Americans for whom
appropriate appointments and endorsements, he has a good word are "the brave Rosen-, .
f * bergs,"-executed after being convicted of nu; I
clear espionage. Allen Dulles is "bumbling," ~v
In 1945, the British SIS placed Philby in' -J. Edgar Hoover ""a bubble reputation." Her.
`charge of a new section charged with insinuates that the CIA was responsible for
anti-Communist and anti-Soviet intelligence. the assassination of t1]`6"krainian nationalist, 1
Later the service sent him on a mission to i Stepan Bandera, although the Soviet agent s
Turkey, where he had an excellent op- who committed this and other crimes made a
! rtunity to study Turkish defenses under the
ulse of surveying the Soviet border.
7
detailed confession in a German court.
What is one to make of this addiction to
Philby went from success to success. In 1' communism on the part of a young Eng-
--1949 he became the British agency's repre- " Tishman of good education and obvious talent?
( sentative in Washington with the job of work- Philby offers a kind of apologia pro vita sua; I
V j ing in liaison with the FBI and the CIA. This but-this does not explain why, his infatuation
made. him privy to U.S. as well as British; with communism, which would have. been
top secret" operations, including the drop-:
,ping of agents by parachute into the Soviet
Ukraine and infiltration of agents into Al-
bania. Philby shows an attitude of impish glee ,
atv~@ re
about his successful pe tration of w9_11&
considered the very i Anglo-American security.
psychologically understandable half a century 1
ago, survived the horrors of Stalinism, and the/
drab realities of Soviet life.
-WILLIAM HENRY CHAMBERLIN
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