122. Kim Philby: An Assassin In Spain (Ep 2)

for exclusive interviews bonus episodes ad-free listening early access to series first look at live show tickets a weekly newsletter and discounted books join the declassified club at the rest is classified.com kim philby being recruited ends up going to cambridge and then he goes to vienna he was drawn into communism by the soviet intelligence service mutually assured destruction in a way there because Stalin could go after his family and he's got the secret. The Second World War proper, as we think of it, starts when Hitler invades Poland at the start of September 39. And then finally, Germany attacks France and the Low Countries. Germans make this rapid advance through Belgium and France. And, you know, very quickly, of course, those countries collapse. This episode is sponsored by HP. Most people are not counter-espionage experts, but that won't stop them getting targeted by cyber criminals seeking to extract their secrets. 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If I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friends, I hope I should have the guts to betray my country. Well, welcome to The Rest is Classified. I'm David McCloskey. And I'm Gordon Carrera. And that is, I think, a quite famous Lion Gordon written by E.M. Forster in what I believe in other essays. And it is very, I'd say, apropos of the story we are telling, really continuing today because we are deep into the world of the young Kim Philby. And last time we looked at how Kim, who's this son of a very, very unusual father, to say the least, I think ends up going to Cambridge and then he goes to Vienna. He was drawn into communism. Gordon, throughout the episode, expressed great sympathy for this young hero's journey into the warm embrace of Soviet communism. And eventually, we left last time with Kim Philby being recruited by the Soviet Intelligence Service, the NKVD, forerunner to the KGB. And he has been given, as a young man straight out of Cambridge, with really no access, he has been given the task of penetrating the British state. but unfortunately gordon um this this man who will go on to be the most important one of the most important traders of the 20th century and build an entire spy ring he's unemployed is it which is a bit of a problem for his soviet handlers yeah that's right i mean he's been given this mission on the park bench of you know penetrate the bourgeois institutions but he is you know he's back fresh from vienna and this kind of grad student you know who's just kind of not really got a job and not quite clear how he's going to do it and and it is interesting because it is actually going to take him years to to be successful it's not a straightforward journey that we think about but you know the message goes back to moscow with the news of this recruitment of an interestingly enough deutsch describes him as a kind of insecure and shy young man and deutsch describes him as someone whose father was some kind of british agent in the middle east and Deutsch codenames him Sonny, a reference, you know, to almost certainly to his more famous father. So I find it kind of funny for Philby, even then he's in his father's shadow. Even at the moment he's recruited into the Soviet secret service, he's being referred to in the context of his dad. And I think Deutsch, even though he's a brilliant psychologist, doesn't quite realise how determined and independent minded Philby himself is. And Deutsch really just says, well, he comes from a peculiar family. His father is considered to be an expert on the Arab world. Interesting enough, Deutsch says, the father is an ambitious tyrant and wanted to make a great man out of his son. He repressed all his son's desires and his son was ready without questioning to do anything for us and has shown all his seriousness and diligence in working for us. Interesting kind of portrait of how his recruiter sees Philby. I guess he sees him as a bit of a blank slate that he can write upon, I guess, is the way he's describing this here, that the father had sort of made his attempt. And yet he, in doing so, had repressed what Philby had desired. And now Deutsch, I guess, to put it differently, and maybe in the language of a recruiter, Deutsch can give Philby what he actually wants. Yeah, make him his own man. Yeah. And they pay him, I guess. Yeah, but four pounds a week. Paltry amount. Pretty much. I mean, but you definitely don't get the feeling Philby's doing it for the money. I mean, that's not the motivation. But what it's interesting as well, his instructions, his first instruction in terms of spying, because obviously, as we said last time, he's got no access to secrets at this point. His first instruction is spy on your father, because they're so convinced that his dad, Sinjin, is British intelligence agents. You know, they're so convinced that because of the way he's manoeuvring around in the Middle East, around Ibn Saud, that he must be a spy that they say to you know young kim can you look at your dad's papers um but beyond that the other thing that i think is the most famous thing about philby is is that it's not just him there is going to be a ring of spies and it's because philby had said there were other sons of functionaries which is the kind of communist translation i think for sons of people who are people are important who are at cambridge and who share philby's views so philby has clearly said to deutsch i've got communist friends whose fathers are functionaries or you know bureaucrats senior people and they say well can you draw up a list of contacts of people who you know who might be interesting and this is what creates you know the famous cambridge spiring and the fact it's cambridge and not you know the far superior oxford is is basically just because it's philby who's the initial recruit and he puts maybe 17 names on the initial list i think we still don't know who all of them are right presumably that that list did not survive uh survive sort of in the in the soviet archives yeah and it's interesting because and of course some of the people on the list might well have been approached and turned it down so it doesn't mean there were 17 spies but he's you know he's he's drawn up that list of who could they approach and top of their list is donald mcclain who is a kind of brilliant academic uh son in the sons of functionaries language he's the son of a former liberal cabinet minister from from a very good family but also crucially a serious communist at cambridge so he is approached by philby over dinner in philby's flat to sound him out he agrees he's introduced to a soviet recruiter at a cafe he gets codenamed orphan because his father had died a few years before and donald mcclain tells his mother he's gone off communism and he's like a drug yeah i'll be through my phase um and you know my communist phase and and he heads into the foreign office and he'll be the kind of first one in now the at the bottom of philby's list at the bottom so mclean was at the top at the bottom is guy burgess it's worth a moment on guy because this is a kind of crucial friendship from cambridge for philby which will define his life and i mean burgesses i should i should also note for listeners that there will be a tendency to to think as gordon tells all of these various guy burgess stories that they're made up uh but they are not guy burgesses i think guy burgess is a comm a communist but more importantly he's a lunatic right that's the he's the most amazing character i think i think he really is Yeah, he is, because kind of Kim Philby is this kind of kind of quite dedicated, determined, maybe even repressed characters, whereas Burgess is wild. I mean, you know, back to daddy issues. So there is one story and it's in Andrew Lowney's book on Burgess, Stalin's Englishman, as well as others, that Burgess's daddy issues might come from when he's 13 because he says he is screaming from his parents' bedroom. he finds when he goes in that his 43 year old father has died while making love to his mother and guy young guy has to separate the bodies now whether that's true or not but that's that's a story that guy burgess i don't understand why his mother couldn't have done that why did guy have to be involved he goes to trinity cambridge he's been to eton and also dartmouth naval college And I guess the things about him is he is he is very, very clever. I mean, really smart, smarter than Philby, actually. Very good looking, very charismatic, very hard drinking and very openly gay. You know, I mean, does not really hide it. Openly gay in the 1930s. Well, I think you could be. I think, yeah, I mean, that's a pretty. It is illegal. Courageous, courageous thing. Yeah, until the 60s. It's illegal. It's illegal. And yet there was, you know, kind of gay subcultures which were quite open and actually within the upper class, quite common at points. So he it was very open. And so he's this kind of once he can be a kind of clownish over the top drunk and yet can also get, you know, deep into kind of establishment circles and close to powerful people. I mean, because he's just so, you know, kind of charismatic and interesting. I mean, one person who visits Burgess's Cambridge room finds that he has two things on his bookshelves, a collection of pornography and Marxist writings. Yeah, you're just you're just missing the you're just missing the gin. And then you have the three loves of Guy Burgess's life there, right? All there. Sex, alcohol and Marxism. That's the that's the Guy Burgess way. And of course, Philby knows him as a Marxist. But also, you know, the point is he's at the bottom of Philby's list because he's so flamboyant. I mean, you can see Philby is smart enough to go. This guy is wild. And he actually on the list puts a question mark after Burgess's name. And, you know, Philby's right, because in the long run, actually, Guy Burgess will help play a role in Philby's downfall. But they actually also clearly enjoy each other's company. You know, they kind of get on. But the problem is McLean and Burgess are friends. And when McLean, Donald McLean, seems to give up on communism, pretend it's a phase, Burgess is too smart to buy it. I mean, he's just immediately suspicious. And he starts to pester Donald McLean and Philby. Come on, I know what's going on. I know something's happened. You're doing this for a reason that you're giving up on your communist past. Just tell me. And so they basically go, we're better in than out. We're going to tell him because it's too risky for him to keep asking questions. I mean, all of these characters will, I mean, despite all of the various insanities, they'll end up serving as very long-term penetrations into the British establishment and become known eventually as the Cambridge Five. Or maybe we prefer, Gordon, now that you're very sympathetic to these people, as you've expressed in multiple occasions throughout this podcast, we should refer to them by the name they are known by in Russia, which is the Magnificent Five. the magnificent five yeah we should round off the five shouldn't we because um you've got philby as the first he's suggested burgess and mclean at cambridge burgess was part of this intellectual society called the apostles where they discuss ideas very high-minded philby hadn't been smart enough to get in interesting enough but another of the apostles was anthony blunt um and so burgess will go on to recruit anthony blunt in turn anthony blunt becomes a brilliant talent spotter for more communists and leads to another agent who will be john can cross or from cambridge so these will be the kind of five penetration agents who are magnificent magnificent five as the kgb calls them and there are other recruits as well we should say that you know they were not the only five recruits at this time um or agents being run but because they are the five who who basically last the course and get into the establishment and see it through, you know, they will become known as the Cambridge Five and the Magnificent Five. I love this quote from Christopher Andrew writing about the Five in the Matrokin Archive. He writes that all of the Five were rebels against the strict sexual mores as well as the antiquated class system of interwar Britain. Burgess and Blunt were homosexuals. McClain, a bisexual. Philby, a heterosexual athlete. Karen Cross, a committed heterosexual, later wrote a history of polygamy. So these guys, in some ways, they're all kind of rebels, I guess, looking for a cause, aren't they, Gordon? Sexpole rebels. They're all sexpole rebels. They're not being recruited to be rebels outwardly. So, I mean, Philby is told to essentially get rid of all of his communist associations to be able to burrow into these supposedly bourgeois institutions Yeah and that was you know as we heard last time this is the recruiter the brilliant recruiter arnold deutsche strategy find the i find the idealistic young men um but but then have them dismiss their time at university as kind of youthful nonsense you know when they're into communism you know ditch their contacts tell people they've given up on those ideas, have nothing to do with the Communist Party of Great Britain and move into the establishment. Now, for Philby, this is actually quite hard. It makes things difficult with Litzy as well, you know, his wife, who he's brought from Austria, because he's not supposed to talk to her about what she's doing. But she and he have to kind of cut themselves off from their friends, you know, the kind of left wing circle. She moves him, the exiles, the activists. But he's made his choices now you know he's he's he's become i think emotionally dependent on his relationship with his you know hand or in the soviet union and he's having to ditch those other relationships and but it also he's still struggling i mean this is the thing that's so interesting about the philby story is you know he he wanted to join the foreign office but he pulls out because he's worried about some of the references he might get might kind of give away too much at this point and his father's very annoyed about that because that's what his father had wanted wanted for him so you know he's having these discussions with his handlers what would be best to do and they say well how else if you're not going to penetrate the institutions as a kind of civil servant what else do you do the best fallback to build access and influence what would it be david journalist oh See, now we see, Gordon, your sympathy, another stinking layer in the onion of Gordon Carrera's sympathy for Kim Filby. The shared love of investigative journalism as sort of the junior varsity team for spying, right? Yes, exactly. Yeah, exactly. That's a brute to influence, yeah. And so he but again, he struggles at first. He writes as a kind of sub editor for some small publications, writes an essay on in German on Tibet. Probably didn't get a lot of readers. No, exactly. You're like starting really at the bottom of the journalism tree. Kind of not pro German, but not anti German. Interesting enough, his his dad visits around this time. moscow's excited that the famous anglo spy sinjin philby is coming and his dad is working you know with standard oil and ibn saudi in saudi arabia and they're convinced he's mi6 philby photographs his dad's letters and papers but there's nothing there he's trying to become more bourgeois he launders or dry cleans his associations by joining something called the anglo-german fellowship which is there to kind of promote trade and understanding between britain and germany He writes for their publications. He visits Berlin with the group, you know, and Philby finds it pretty repulsive hanging out with the kind of Nazis. This is after all what motivated him was hating them. But, you know, he's got to ditch his friends, hang out with Nazis. But that's what he's got to do. And he's kind of cultivating, I guess, this image that he's he's sensible. He's he's not he's not pro-Nazi, but he's anti-war. You know, that's his move through this period. Deutsch is still running him. Right. that's the primary relationship that he's got with with soviet intelligences through arnold deutsch yeah so deutsch is still running him doing kind of surveillance routes to meet him public transport all these things and passing on messages but then others also come into the frame so there's an interesting character called alexander orlov who'd already been posted in america paris austria He comes to the UK in the summer of 34 to be above Deutsch as the kind of head of illegal intelligence. His cover is actually as an American businessman selling imported refrigerators in Regent Street. And Philby and Orlov will meet as well, particularly as there's some worries that Deutsch might be under surveillance. So Orlov starts to meet him after Deutsch, you know, about a dozen times over nine months. Then all of has to leave because his cover is blown because he bumps into someone who knew what he was. Next person, very interesting guy called Theodore Malley, who is kind of also considered another of the great illegals from 36. He's running Philby. He's a Hungarian, originally wanted to be a priest, ends up joining the Red Army. he's again a kind of one of these great recruiters who just has that sensitivity ability to kind of work with with not just Philby but loads of other agents he recruits and there's a kind of very close relationship between the two of them but the problem is for Philby at those this time I mean he's not getting anywhere I mean he's not even making it as a journalist and he's pretty depressed and I mean actually there's a you know for club members there's we're going to hear a really fascinating tape which is a tape of Kim Philby talking about his early career and how he got into it we're going to be kind of listening to the voice of Philby discussing these things and analyzing it but in one part of the tape he Philby says I'd reported to my Soviet contacts in a state of some despondency I had to confess to failure he you know Theodore Malley as usual was extremely sympathetic so he's really you know he's just he's not getting anywhere in penetrating the bourgeois institutions i mean at this point he's probably one of the least successful members of the cambridge five um but the soviets again are very patient they encourage him to keep going the idea that philby go to spain to cover the civil war that had broken out there in 1936 yeah and and it's it it is interesting that soviets are kind of they don't just think let's get rid of this guy Philby he's you know we'll keep looking for a way of playing him long of getting him into the state and this the Spanish Civil War starts in 36 and it you know again it's one of those kind of iconic you know brutal civil wars of the 30s where the battle between left and right in Europe is being played out because you've got the kind of fascist versus communists but also it's the kind of nationalists and monarchists as well as the fascists which have got the kind of establishment of landlords clergy and business at one side against the republicans and the leftists you know the peasants the workers lots of other countries pile in you know as a kind of proxy conflict so the soviet union obviously on the leftist side and you get also the volunteers from the left you get the famous kind of international brigade people like george alwell go out um and on the other side the italian and german governments are helping the fascists including you know using the air force to carry out bombing raids theodore manly just kind of clearly thinks this is a place where philby could be useful so february 37 they send him out as a freelance journalist just with some letters of recommendation and most journalists you know go out to cover the leftist republicans people like ernest hemingway but philby they send out to cover the right-wing forces and it kind of makes sense because if you're the soviets you want to collect intelligence on the right-wing forces. You want him to report back on what he's seeing, developments, the array of forces on one side, support the nationalists are getting from Italy and Germany. Those are the kind of details that they're after. He's also given the mission, which again, it kind of just shows the remarkable things that the Soviets are going to ask him to do over the course of his career. One of his missions is to get close to Franco, who's the nationalist leader. Get close to Franco and collect intelligence that would help with his assassination. So, you know, get into his headquarters, log his security, you know, sort of his pattern of life, who cooks for him, how does he live, what's the daily routine. I mean, Philby even gets in order to actually kill Franco, which, you know, in retrospect, seems absolutely absurd. It's mad, isn't it? Yeah, it's absolutely mad. I mean, he's a Cambridge undergrad with, you know, a year of journalism experience at this point and he's being asked to assassinate franco i know i think theodore mallee when he passes on the order knows it's not realistic but it's clearly come from some you know probably from starlin or someone you know like have we got someone who can do it and it's just getting passed down the bureaucracy but but you know philby comes back from that initial visit in may having not even got close to franco and mallee tells moscow you know he's in a very depressed state because Philby feels like he's failed at this mission but then I think this is so interesting that he gets another shot at it and how does he get the connections to kind of go back out there it's his dad you know it's his dad again because his dad is so well connected you know he's this kind of semi-celebrity explorer of Arabia that you know one of his old friends is is an assistant editor at the Times newspaper which is you know the establishment government newspaper Young Kim is offered the chance to write a piece for it, which is kind of the paper is quite pro nationalist at this time. The foreign editor had been to Westminster School, Old Boys Network, has lunch with Philby's dad and then proposes that, well, maybe, you know, Young Kim could become a special correspondent for us and go and cover Franco and, you know, go to go to go go to Spain. The dad's connections here are pretty important in that, in him getting that break in journalism. And so that's the big break then. So he goes back to Spain under this journalistic cover in June of 1937. And he's there for nearly two years until 1939. And I guess, I mean, poor Litsy, right? Because Litsy's not coming along for this. No. And I do find this sad. this might get my some of my sympathies for kim because i think you know these two young lovers who'd met in the snow um now have to separate you know um because she's she's she's clearly she doesn't know what he's doing right she doesn't know i think she must suspect i think she suspects but she's not she's not kind of in the know of the details um and of course she's so associated with communism that they have to separate and she doesn't like kind of bourgeois life in london so around the time he goes to spain she moves to paris and philby will say well we just discussed it calmly and they i think they both realize they've got to sacrifice the fact they love each other or loved each other for the cause philby he has a charm i mean he has a charm and a way with women we should say um it's very interesting but he you know there's something i think the fact that he's smart idealistic it's got a slight man of action to him as we'll see he's also got the kind of vulnerability of the stammer he he's pretty is he still stammering at this point yeah he does stammering still stammering yeah so pretty quickly he gets into a relationship with another kind of interesting character called lady francis lindsey hogg or uh which who's known to everyone as Bunny uh who is a glamorous divorced Canadian actress 10 years older than Kim but who crucially is very well connected on the royalist side and is quite a fan of fascists and and the two of them kind of shack up together in Spain and she's this kind of glamorous figure who all the kind of fascist leaders love and so you can see that for him hanging out with her and having an affair with her is also pretty useful. I mean, they're a kind of interesting, slightly odd couple. And I guess it allows him to get close to some of the, I guess, press or media officials in the Franco regime. And I guess a way to start putting some questions to those contacts on, you know, I guess, military details, plans and intentions. I mean, he's got to be a bit of an odd duck in the journalistic community in spain right because not now he's he's got this girlfriend named bunny he's getting close to franco he's not covering the republicans so it it does seem i guess a little odd and then especially if anyone knew him they would know that he had been a you know a communist sympathizer back at at cambridge so he's kind of an odd stew seen from the outside right when he's when he's in spain yeah and it's interesting when you read the accounts quite a few of the other journalists just actually think he is a british spy you know they think he's working for british yeah i've been told to to you know to infiltrate the fascist side but yeah he's doing he does quite well you know goes to the press conferences you know you get the permission you get a pass to go by car to the front lines of the of the war six weeks after he arrives on this kind of second big trip he gets an interview with Franco by now the order to kill him has kind of been rescinded but you know he's getting close to people providing pretty useful intelligence and then there's you know an important moment in December of when he's out there in that first trip where he goes out to see the action at the front line there's a convoy of cars you know it's New Year's Eve snowing they approach a village near Teruel if I'm pronouncing it right in East and spain so north of valencia you know they all get out the car the reporters i mean i've done this kind of thing you know places they wander around for a bit two of the journalists go back to the car sit with a bottle of rum to warm up philby comes back to the car and um uh the you know he it had been his seat in the front but someone else is now sat in the front so you know philby says that's fine I'll get into the back of the car they light up some cigarettes open some chocolates as a chocolate is being offered to Philby there's a massive explosion and it's funny because Philby later says he thought it was exploding chocolates but actually the car has been shelled by the Republican side and the other three men in the car one of them a Pulitzer Prize winning America journalist they are all going to die from their you know wounds of that shelling all of them apart from philby will be dead and um you know the fact that he'd taken the back seat is just that crazy bit of luck that the shrapnel from this shell goes you know kills the other three and all the other seats in the car but in his one seat in the back you know he's protecting he gets a slightly bloodied head and that it um and you know next day new year day it his 26th birthday and he will always look back on that day and think he was lucky And I think he was Well it gives him I guess something of a heroic shine doesn it Because he's he's survived. He's been bloodied. He's this kind of brave war correspondent. I mean, I find this fascinating. He's given a medal by Franco personally for surviving this attack. I mean, it just gives you the sense, I guess, seen from the perspective of his Soviet handlers. This is a guy who, you know, despite maybe, you know, sort of against all odds, although I guess with a bit of help from his dad and the Times, you know, has actually succeeded in the mission that he's given in Spain of getting close to penetrating Franco's. maybe not inner circle, but penetrating the people around Franco and giving the Soviets actual intelligence about what the nationalists are up to in Spain. So that's a success for Kim Phil. Yeah, he's a kind of successful war correspondent, which gives him, you know, because of this injury, because of the medal, he's got all the access he needs. And that in turn makes him a better agent for the Soviets. You know, he's able to get, you know, some pretty good information which he can you know feed back to his handlers if he meets them in france so so you know philby's reputation is definitely enhanced this is the point where he's no longer a failure and the nationalists as well who he's covering are steadily advancing until eventually they win that civil war and philby's there in barcelona in january 1935 when barcelona falls to the nationalists and reports you know from the front line as it falls and then soon after that madrid will fall and the civil war will be over well i'll be there gordon with with Philby having succeeded at his mission in Spain and with a return to England imminent. Let's take a break. When we come back, we will see how Kim Philby joins the British Secret Intelligence Service and begins to hollow it out from the inside. This episode is brought to you by ATIO, the CRM for the AI era. Now, David, people think that Spycraft is just car chases and secret codes, but an awful lot of it is just idling around, waiting for the action. It's a bit like starting your own business. You think it's going to be as easy as creating and selling a product. But the reality is business owners spend far too long trying to get their CRM to fit a system not built for them. atio's ai driven crm enables you to take control of your platform to build something from the ground up that fits your needs james bond had q's x-ray shades an explosive watch and a pen grenade business owners have atio's real-time customer insights and platform that grows with them all tools relevant for your mission to build a company from the ground up atio even has something called agent collaboration yes but in this case that means giving people the ability to let ai work seamlessly in the background for them try atio for free at attio.com slash trick welcome back it is the summer of 1939 and kim philby has just returned from spain he is back in Britain. He is tougher. He's more experienced. He's more disciplined. He's got a reputation now, Gordon. He's got some experience on the front lines. And I guess you could say he's kind of someone who has had his first taste of success in the spy game. Yeah. And it's interesting. Tim Milne, his old friend from school, definitely finds him changed. He says, it was not just that he'd grown fatter, too fat for a young man but he seemed to have discarded all his previous asceticism and idealism which I had admired now the talk was all about the flesh pots of Spain the booze the marvelous seafood he was more cynical more worldly wise more interested in material comforts more gregarious uh you know that's he also talks about how it's with some glee Philby boasts that a doctor had told him that he then 27 years old had the arteries of a man of 50 i mean that doesn't sound like a thing to boast about to me but he's back he's back in london he's passing his material to moscow but but but this is a really interesting point kind of 39 40 because you know he's actually poorly handled by moscow at this point you know having been brilliantly recruited by an old boy i can't imagine why everything was going so smoothly inside the intelligence apparatus of the soviet union in the late 1930s what could have possibly happened gordon what what possibly happened was that in 1937 to 1938 the great terror of the purges strike moscow i mean yes this mad bit of stalinism isn't it where where you know stalin's purges of the kind of military and of the communist party then extend to you know the nkvd or the kgb itself and you know basically they can't start purging all the spies including all these people who'd handled you know philby and philby's got no idea what's going on but his handlers you know keep getting withdrawn very quickly you know and the reason is because they're getting purged you know theodore mallee this you know this kind of brilliant of the illegals the one who'd sent him to spain gets recalled tortured and shot in 1938 as a german spy which he wasn't others you know there's a couple kravitsky and orlov who knew a little bit about philby who defect but don't you know spill the beans but they kind of leave very interesting orlov is a very interesting case because he he'd handled philby and he he he defects to the west but says to stalin uh or sends a message through to the top going i know lots of secrets and i will agree not to reveal them if you don't harm my family still in the soviet union and the deal basically holds so even though he's defected to the west he never reveals the kind of you know the fact of what philby is doing it's kind of interesting that is kind of a mutually assured destruction in a way there because stalin could go after his family and he's got the secrets that could that could uproot one of stalin's best spies so they just stay quiet that's that's incredible yeah and so you know what about do itch yeah do itch it's a little bit mysterious because he's not we don't think purged so the best guess is he dies during the war it's thought possibly on a on a um uh at sea but it's not it's not entirely clear what happens to him which is a bit of a shame because he's such a kind of interesting character that you kind of like to know a bit more about that but there's there seems to be some mystery to it but the result is all these handlers getting purged moscow is worried the british you know it's it's british embassy has been penetrated there's only one person left they're also a bit suspicious about the cambridge spies because also of course technically the people who recruited and ran them have now been purged as german spies so does that mean that these agents were compromised you know so it's all a little bit kind of actually haphazard for philby And Philby is complaining, you know, to Burgess McLean and the others and kind of going, I'm really struggling to contact, you know, my Soviet handlers. And then you get as well this other big moment, August 1939, which is the Nazi Soviet pact. And I think this is so interesting, isn't it? Because this is when, you know, Hitler and Stalin briefly make a deal that they're going to be allies. And you kind of think to yourself, well, how must that feel to someone like Philby? you know who anti-fascism had been his thing i mean it's wild isn't it what it must have been like when you read that in the news philby and others including burgess will basically say i mean some people just totally walk away from the communist cause yeah you know when this happens but i guess burgess and philby basically say that this is a necessary tactical move on yeah on the sort of march toward the glorious communist future that sort of stalin had to do this um you know to to kind of live to fight another day i guess yeah but even so i mean it's got to be very disturbing to watch yeah yeah and i think i think i think that must be the lowest moment for philby because he's got he's kind of badly handled intermittent contact struggling to talk to them nazi soviet packed i mean he must i think have had doubts about his choice at this point you know and wonder what have i done but what's interesting and i think this is very filby is he doesn't walk away i've made my you know i've made my bed i'll lie i'm going to keep going and and you know he does and he gets this next journalistic assignment from the times which is now the the second world war proper as we think of it starts when hitler invades poland at the start of september 39 and the times newspaper can send one correspondent to be accredited with the british expeditionary force in france the kind of british army in europe and they pick philby you know because he is their star war correspondent having you know done the spanish civil war so so he goes out to the kind of headquarters of the british army in europe you know sits with the british military he's reporting on what's happening i mean it's not that much happening at this point but he's actually in military uniform i mean i hadn't realized this just saw some of the pictures you know he gets a british military uniform to wear but now he is crossing a line because the nazis and the soviets at this point are allies and again against the british i mean it doesn't last long but i think this is interesting because this is the first moment where you know you raised this earlier when when does he when's he really betraying his country really betraying his country but i think this is the first moment where he's he's really crossing a line but very briefly yeah i mean i i guess it's it seems unlikely if even though he'd been in touch with with deutsch and other handlers prior to this point it seems unlikely that if even if all of that had come to light you would have been able to prosecute philby for espionage right i mean there may not have even been a willingness to do it yeah um but there there may not have been enough of a there there to do anything about him at this point i guess you think about it it's you know you're right to this point in time he has not i mean i guess he spied on his own father which is a psychological piece we sort of glossed over but uh but you know he he hasn't spent that much time actually directing his energies at british interests yeah most of his work to this point has actually been you know working to penetrate the franco regime in spain he is passing on information about british military and i think that that is definitely crossing a line but of course you know here's the crazy thing at this point moscow is in a kind of bit of a mess the london residency the london spy base in the embassy of the of the soviet union is in a mess And effectively, they're not, they're pausing contact with him. He's kind of not being handled at this moment where actually he's perhaps doing his most dangerous thing so far. And so it's a kind of odd situation I think he's in. And then finally, Germany attacks France and the low countries. You know, the Germans make this rapid advance, you know, through Belgium and France. And, you know, very quickly, of course, those countries collapse and their militaries collapse. And just ahead of the evacuation of what's left of the British army from Dunkirk on these famous little boats, Filby, you know, heads back to Britain. So, you know, by the summer of 1940, he's back in Britain. But his relationship with the Soviets seems effectively to have broken down. You know, he's struggling to make any contact with them. This is what I this is remarkable, I think. And it shows the extent to which Philby was a sort of self-driven, true believer, because even though his relationship with the Soviet Union is in shambles and even though I mean, even, you know, by this point, the Moscow Center has kind of concluded insanely that the Cambridge network was not actually working for the Soviet Union and had been, you know, sort of of you know controlled by enemies of the people right uh it's philby who patches it back up and restarts the relationship with the soviet union it's not the other way around it's his energy yeah um that that brings it all back together which again is just it's sort of another data point in how deeply committed he is to this cause yeah yeah so he's kind of trying to get mclean others to say can you get me in touch and he and he you know and it he's not getting much back but he keeps the faith because i think it is a faith i think that's the point and it's only actually after a few months that moscow will respond to that and that's because basically filby himself is incredibly successful and it's worth saying at this point until now the other cambridge spies have been doing much much better at penetrating the bourgeois institutions you know donald mclean is at the Foreign Office and he's a rising star. He's passing on tons of secrets, tons of documents to his handler. You know, they're kind of running out of film to photograph it all. Burgess has recruited Blunt, who's in turn recruited others. Blunt is in MI5. He's in the security service. John Cairncross, we talked about, has joined the Foreign Office and then the Treasury and then is the kind of private secretary to a cabinet minister, Lord Hankey. And he has tons of access to secret you know documents and care cross is really important i mean he possibly gives the first information that that about the plan of the allies to develop an atomic bomb to the soviets was definitely one of the first 1935 go back a few years he decided the best way to distance himself from his communist past was to being an aid to a right-wing tory mp and then they go on a fact finding trip around nazi germany where according to guy burgess he has sex with lots of men from the hitler youth which is like again it's just kind of classic guy burgess which is kind of mixing work with pleasure i think on his honest honest and he got this amazing network of friends many of them gave but not all of them in london and famously this will be known as the homintern as opposed to the common turn the kind of uh and it's a kind of gaggle of people who is with his flamboyant you know character he's mixing with where does he join though david in 1936 where's the best that you know on his path to the establishment bbc where else would you go bbc bbc yeah i mean i guess he i it's blazing the blazing the straight path from having sex with tons of men in the hitler youth straight to the bbc yes exactly i don't think that's an option anymore and on the on the career when you're doing your kind of you know previous previous experience that qualifies you for this job but he ends up in the BBC as a talks producer where he's persuading people to come on a talk and again he's so well connected he's so charismatic he gets he's got this just brilliant network and I mean he gets to know Churchill pretty well before Churchill's prime minister Churchill inscribes one of his books to Guy as a present and then in January 39 Guy's left the BBC for a position in something new which is called section D of MI6 what's the d for david the d is for destruction destruction yes i mean these guys i wish i wish we got to name sections this way of intelligence agencies it reminds me uh you know i think we did uh we did those episodes uh this is now over i think almost over a year ago gordon on uh on north korean cyber bank robbers and we talked about the north korean reconnaissance general bureau and they have like a i think they had a unit called like the like the end of the enemy destruction sabotage unit or something like that this is this is very redolent of those kind of uh muscular north korean naming conventions yeah i'm a fan yeah so it's a new section for mi6 focusing on sabotage and destruction but also propaganda um it's a bit of a it's new bit of a sideshow and Burgess is in the bit basically dealing with propaganda because he's got his background in talks at the BBC so he's a kind of liaison between section d propaganda and ministry of information but then of course he's now into it's a it's a new bit it's a kind of adjacent to the main British secret service but it's part of it and of course he lobbies to get Philby into it his old friend and and Philby you can you know you can see why Philby is perfect for it because he's an experienced war correspondent he knows europe he's good at languages he knows about the military you know he's been embedded with the military in france but he also knows about irregular warfare from having covered the spanish civil war and you know philby has also been trying to drop you know hints with all these contacts in the previous months you know journalists and others love to do something for the war and you know and a female journalist i think with intelligence links is is the one he thinks plays a role but definitely burgess is is the one who kind of helps get him in. Philby says, he's talking about this meeting with Burgess, says, I was sitting in the office in the Times with very little to do when suddenly the telephone rang and a voice asked me to go to a certain room in a certain hotel on a certain day. And I asked why. And they said, well, look here, it's rather special work we are thinking for you about. And please be as discreet as you can. Simply come to us and don't say anything. And so this is the connection that I guess Burgess helps facilitate for Philby to the secret intelligence service that is going to really shape all of Philby's romantic life and legacy. Yeah, that's right. So, you know, he has a couple of interview at the St. Ermin's Hotel, which is still there. And he's asked to sign the Official Secrets Act. He's into this Section D and Guy shows him up to his new office. You know, no one knows what it's doing because it's new. It's the start of the war. there's you know reorganization it's all a bit of a mess he's got a vague role Philby helping Burgess of all things and there's a great description in um Philby's memoir and it's I have to say his memoir is pretty unreliable in parts but I do love the title shockingly yeah shockingly helped written partly by the KGB but it is called My Silent War which I think is a great title for his memoir and he says sometimes in the early weeks I felt perhaps that I had not made the grade after all. It seemed that somewhere lurking in deep shadow, there must be another service, really secret and really powerful, capable of Backstair's machination on such a scale as to justify the perennial suspicions of, say, the French. But it soon became clear that such was not the case. It was the death of an illusion. Its passing caused me no pain. You feel like that when you entered in the cia david first time yeah i was gonna i was gonna say i think i think all uh sort of you know intelligence officers and aliens people who joined these secret services must go through some version of this moment because yeah you have been you have been fed this image of these services as being extremely capable omniscient omnipotent in some ways like all seeing and then you get in and you realize that they're organizations that are run by human beings and they're just you know they're they're broken and messed up and insane and all the ways that you know non-secret organizations are and sometimes it's even worse i think i think this is a very common feeling i think it's it's interesting though that um you know for people who are loyal to these institutions in some way shape or form the passing of that illusion does cause some pain because you'd idealized some picture of this thing that is now gone. And I think in Philby's case, because he's an enemy within, he's probably more than happy to see that it's run to some degree as any other organization would where you've got lunatics and incompetents who are staffing some key positions, right? It's a bureaucracy. That's right. So he's in this Section D. he's going to go to a kind of training school and be involved in training exiles in propaganda and he's good at it actually and at this point the soviets finally respond to his contact requests and you can imagine how surprised they must be because like this guy who they thought was a kind of you know he's doing okay and suddenly he's like i'm in mi6 you know i've got into a kind of bit of the british secret service but section d doesn't really last very long because it sits you know they're real this is a kind of period of great change for british intelligence it's the start of a war so soon they're going to create the special operations executive this famous organization to set europe ablaze um and to do sabotage which means that mi6 can therefore focus much more on just intelligence gathering and so this kind of creation of the soe is bad news for burgess because the new bosses at soe can see that he is just not he's not that kind of guy they're a bit more military he's not soe material burges is not soe material this drunk and lecherous young man who's basically been trying it on with all the soldiers is not suitable to be in to be training in soe and he's living this kind of wild life at this flat in bentic street and he's also just gets done for drunk driving at this point as well so as a result burges you know who's got philby in is thrown out but what do you do with someone like that you know who's who's been clearly not suitable for this kind of work i know back to the bbc back to the bbc between my legs one day david he goes he does go back to the bbc though only briefly and then he goes to the foreign office yeah of course because he's he's a drunk lecherous dangerous where else would you put him but in the foreign office with access to secrets diplomacy you've got a future in diplomacy yeah but meanwhile philby though of course you know that's Burgess but Philby who's been brought in by Burgess partly but I think they can see he's he looks capable so so here is the crucial moment which is can you get into the real MI6 you know not this offshoot which is being now kind of absorbed but the inner sanctum and there is this chance so MI6 decide they need to check him out before joining up you know there's a quick cursory check of the files nothing found now uh the number two in in mi6 was one of the number two so two deputies one of valentine vivian vivi um kind of head of security decides that to check out philby whether he's you know good enough to to join the british secret service what do you do you have lunch with him and his dad because you know valentine vivian has known his very british very very british gordon singin philby had known valentine vivian back in india when you know vivian had been there 30 years earlier they used to play bridge together philby's mother kim philby's mother is an old friend of you know valentine vivian's wife's so so they decide they're going to meet and of course we'd slightly lost track of the mad singin philby story hadn't we i think where did we leave him last i think he'd converted to islam hadn't he in the 30s he'd converted to he'd converted to islam uh potentially to help secure more lucrative business deals in the kingdom of saudi arabia and also by the kind of late 30s he's very uh anti-war pro-peace with the germans and he becomes a little bit pro-hitler you know not totally stands for parliament in britain for a far-right party and then crucially at the start of the war he's actually encouraging the arabs to stay out of the second world war when it starts and he'd been is clearly kind of sufficiently kind of worried about this behavior that he kind of tells the brits and then and then um sinjin philby gets detained and deported to britain where he's held for months as a kind of risk to public safety this is the bit where you just go this is just so weird and it's so britain so he gets held for a few months then he gets released and yet just after that he's having lunch with the number two of mi6 because they're old friends i mean it's just like it's nuts isn't it i've actually been bottling up this question on the british class system because i think we we americans at least americans like me gordon you know a pretty uh decent middle class guy from a flyover state who isn't part of any sort of establishment yeah ordinary joes like me gordon uh we don't get the class system but i guess this is is this a demonstration of that class system in action here where if you're kind of in and i know singin isn't exactly in the upper class but if you're if you're kind of in or if you know a few people who sort of vouch for you that's that's enough i mean what what is the best way to understand this dynamic that we've just seen here where this guy a bigamist a bigamist who converted to islam and who has actually been deported back to his home country from abroad because he is a threat to safety and security winds up vouching for his son to join the british secret intelligence service like why why does that work i mean for us why does that work so i think it's partly about class although it's worth saying none of these people are like upper class they're not the aristocracy and they are they are kind of upper middle professional class and they're not rich but they are from a certain world where everyone knew each other so i think the way to think of it is partly about class but not as upper class but more as what people call the old boys network which is people who'd been to school together and where if you're one of them and you're trusted by them then you're okay and i mean you see that with you know with this lunch you know this fascinating lunch because it's the three of them having lunch deputy head of you know one of the number twos at mi6 sinjin and kim kim goes to the bathroom and valentine vivian from mi6 turns to the father and says he was a bit of a communist at Cambridge, wasn't he? And Sinjin replies, that was all schoolboy nonsense. He's a reformed character now. And that is it. It's an astounding misjudgment on the part of the father. Exactly. Because he probably actually believes it too. Yeah. Right? I mean, he's not covering up for his son. He genuinely thinks that it was schoolboy nonsense. Yeah. VV's got the stamp of approval. Yeah. And he's been vouched for by one of us. it's clear now he's been told he was once a communist and yet it's fine to employ and valentine vivian later says i mean i love this line as well later he will say he let him in because he was vouched for and he said i was asked about him and i said i knew his people that's what valentine vivian says valentine vivian you know i knew i was asked about him philby and i said i knew his people in other words his father his type of people and i think it's so interesting because that is the kind of old-fashioned British elite and establishment in action. It's a good lunch, someone saying you're a good chap, a good egg, and you're in MI6. Well, Gordon, I think there is the perfect place to stop for right now with Kim Philby about to enter the inner sanctum, thanks to a very good lunch and a completely out-to-lunch father who has no idea what's going on in his son's in his son's life but he is about to join sis and when we come back next time we'll see um how kim philby begins to penetrate this most bourgeois institution the british secret intelligence service but of course just a reminder if you want to hear the next couple of episodes right away you can go join the declassified club at the rest is classifier.com lots more there for you including some bonus material and that tape where you can hear Kim Philby himself talking about being recruited into MI6. So we'll see you next time. We'll see you next time. Do you want to know what really happens inside MI5? Or what we chat about when the cameras aren't rolling? 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