UNITED KINGDOM

Spy Cases

Kim Philby

A - D

Beeston, Richard. "My Friendship with Philby." Telegraph (London), 31 May 1997. [http://www.telegraph.co.uk]

This excerpt about social contacts with Philby in Beirut and Moscow is from Beeston's memoir, Looking For Trouble: The Life and Times of a Foreign Correspondent (London: Brassey's, 1997).

Bethell, Nicholas. Betrayed! New York: Random House, 1978. The Great Betrayal: The Untold Story of Kim Philby's Greatest Coup. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1985. Betrayed. New York: Times Books, 1985.

Hood, IJI&C 1.3, finds Betrayed to be "an excellent text on the vast and probably insurmountable difficulties involved in covert armed subversion in peacetime." One of Philby's assignments while in Washington as SIS representative "was to serve as 'commander' of the British/American committee that would coordinate the joint effort" to overthrow the Albanian government.

Borovik, Genrikh. Ed., Phillip Knightley. The Philby Files: The Secret Life of Master Spy Kim Philby. Boston: Little, Brown, 1994.

West, WIR 13.3, comments that Borovik "has relied on two sources, his taped conversations with Philby combined with his subjective impression ... during dozens of interviews, and access to some documents from Philby's KGB dossier." But he "does not quote from any files dated after August 1945." He has also "accepted many of Philby's assertions that are patently incorrect." For example, Philby was not a "scion of an old aristocratic family," nor would he have become SIS's chief. There are "many minor inaccuracies" and it is "difficult to determine whether the contradictions are deliberate or simply sloppy edit[ing].... Philby's spirit of disinformation is perpetuated."

For Surveillant 4.1, this as "an entirely new portrait of Philby that reveals how much he had previously managed to conceal, and provides a picture of how the KGB recruited and ran its agents.... The focus ... is on the period 1951 to 1956 when Maclean and Burgess had already defected." Economist, 7 Jan. 1995, notes that Borovik "is a novelist, not a historian.... Nor were Philby's reminiscences altogether reliable.... Still, Mr Borovik did get facts out of the files."

Chambers finished the book "still no wiser about the real Philby at the end than at the beginning." According to Kerr, I&NS 11.3, the "main problem ... is to discern where the taped interview or KGB file ends and Borovik's imagination begins.... Borovik was also careless about dates which lessens his credibility, and there are some odd errors which raise doubts about the book."

Brown, Anthony Cave. Treason in the Blood: H. St. John Philby, Kim Philby and the Spy Case of the Century. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1994. London: Hale, 1995.

According to Surveillant 3.6, "Brown, who again has included enough harmless, though glaring, errors that he will take some heat from intelligence literature experts, nevertheless tells an intriguingly up-to-date tale.... Beware, pro-Angleton readers, for Brown shows him here as a dupe who was far too trusting of Philby, and, in one long theory, as even a possible traitor or mole. The knives are out over this one."

Choice, May 1995, says this book "is an innovative dual biography of [Kim] Philby and his father.... The work is based on the author's personal encounters with Kim Philby, whom he met in Beirut in the later 1950s. It is amply documented with several interviews, the private papers of both Philbys, selected photographs, and assorted KGB memoranda."

For Aldrich, I&NS 11.3, the criticisms to which Brown's works have been subjected over time do not diminish the "admirable vigour and singularity of purpose ... in all of [his] research." In this work, the author shows that "he is unafraid to employ his imagination and to engage in historical speculation." Economist, 7 Jan. 1995, notes that the "connecting thread ... is Anthony Cave Brown's strange theory that Kim inherited a treasonous disposition from his father. To believe this it is necessary to misunderstand either the nature of treason, or St John's life and character."

Fein, WIR 13.5, finds this juxtapositional biography to be "provocative but at least partially unsatisfying.... The author unpersuasively asserts a commonality of motivations and scale of treachery.... Cave Brown's assertion that St. John's infatuation with socialism was a driving force seems preposterous.... St. John turned against his country for a simple and sordid cause divorced from any genetic predisposition -- self-aggrandizement. [In the final analysis,] St. John's treacheries seem little more than peccadilloes, at least when compared with the colossal villainies of his son.... Cave Brown's theory that Kim had treason in his blood seems implausible... Kim turned traitor ... because he was evil, not because he inherited bad blood."

Burke, Colin. "Kim Philby, the American Intelligence Community, and OP-20-G; the Fox Built the Hen-House and Took the Keys." Cryptologia 25, no. 2 (Apr. 2001): 88-90.

Burke presents a memorandum dated 17 July 1945 from an ONI representative about a meeting involving Philby, then the head of MI6 Section IX, and Liaison Officers from ONI, G-2, Special Branch, and OSS X-2. It was agreed that on Soviet matters the three services would approach Section IX directly through either Philby or his deputy.

Cecil, Robert. "Five of Six at War: Section V of MI6." Intelligence and National Security 9, no. 2 (Apr. 1994): 345-353.

Cecil states his aim in this article as presenting "Section V [counterintelligence] in a truer light" than that presented by Philby, Trevor-Roper, and official historians of wartime intelligence." He notes that "Philby's ... transfer to Section V in September 1941" occasioned no suspicions on anyone's part. "OSS never echoed MI5's complaints about access to sources." Cecil is particularly bothered by the denigration of Cowgill in later reporting. Cecil died 28 February 1994.

Cookridge, E.H. The Third Man: The Full Story of Kim Philby. London: Barker, 1968. New York: Berkeley, 1968. [Petersen]

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