123. Kim Philby: Communist Double Agent In London (Ep 3)

Summary

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The Rest Is Classified

Episode 123: Kim Philby: Communist Double Agent In London (Ep 3)
Release Date: February 2, 2026
Hosts: David McCloskey (former CIA analyst & novelist), Gordon Corera (security correspondent)

Episode Overview

In this third episode of the Kim Philby series, David McCloskey and Gordon Corera dive into Philby's infiltration of British intelligence—specifically MI6—during World War II. The hosts map out Philby's ascent inside the organization, his relationships (both professional and personal), his interactions with American intelligence, and the lingering suspicions—even from his Soviet masters—about his true loyalties. The episode vividly depicts the culture of MI6 during the war, the bureaucratic maneuvering that advanced Philby’s career, and the early Cold War’s shifting landscape, ending with an ominous view of Philby’s growing influence and the devastation in his wake.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Setting the Scene: Philby’s Arrival at MI6

[03:05 – 07:32]

• Philby’s Background: Recruited by Soviet intelligence during his time at Cambridge; reputation already shadowed by his father’s eccentricity and his own political leanings.
• MI6 in Wartime: Described as “full of slightly posh types and slightly old colonial types. It's a touch amateurish, it's fair to say. Not up to their opponents, I think, in many areas.” (B, 04:41)
• The MI6 Chief (Stewart Menzies): British establishment to the core, doing much of his work at exclusive clubs like White’s.
• “Every night at White's is a big night, Gordon. You haven't lived until you've consumed a cheese board the size of a bed.” (A, 07:10)

2. Culture & Dynamics Inside MI6

[08:55 – 13:01]

• Amateurism and Expansion: The “amateurish” culture left room for new, smart recruits like Philby, especially as the service ballooned during the war.
• Philby’s Section: Placed in Section 5 (Counterespionage), focusing on German operations in global hotspots like Spain and Portugal.
• Colorful Colleagues: Shared office space with figures such as novelist Graham Greene.
• Philby’s Strength: Noted for charm and strategic alliances across MI5, the Foreign Office, and among colleagues.
• “He strikes me as being a pretty solid bureaucratic operator... there’s value to his Soviet handlers if Philby can kind of move in a lot of different circles.” (A, 13:01)

3. Personal Life & Bureaucratic Strategist

[15:20 – 17:10]

• Personal Entanglements: Philby remained married to his first wife Lizzy (separated, not divorced), while living with and having children by his new partner, Aileen.
• Professional Ascent: Philby positioned as a modernizer, socially adept and seen as a rising star within MI6.

4. Collaboration and Tensions with American Intelligence

[17:10 – 21:24]

• OSS Arrives: The American Office of Strategic Services (OSS) sets up next door in Ryder Street. British view Americans as naïve newcomers.
• “Malcolm Muggeridge...describes the arrival of the Americans as like a bunch of innocent young maidens who are about to be deflowered in the old intelligence brothel that was MI6. All too soon they were ravished and corrupted.” (B, 18:50)
• Philby’s Role: Responsible for tutoring American officers (including James Jesus Angleton, future CIA counterintelligence chief)—an ironic and tragic linkage.
• Philby’s Attitude: Masked British resentment of American ascendancy.

5. Espionage Tradecraft & Security Lapses

[21:24 – 27:09]

• Philby’s Access: Shockingly able to walk out of MI6 HQ with a briefcase of classified files; security relies almost entirely on character vetting at recruitment.
• “You could print off documents, you just walk out of the building with them in your bag. We all think of these elaborate security checks...the reality is...you just walk out with stuff.” (A, 22:45)
• Night Duty: Volunteered for overnight shifts, granting even more unsupervised access.
• Moscow’s Concerns: Soviet handlers suspicious about Philby’s “too good” access and lack of info on British anti-Soviet operations; suspect he may be a British double agent.

6. Soviet Suspicion & Mirror Imaging

[25:19 – 34:23]

• NKVD Analysis: Soviet analyst Elena Modzrinskaya (“the female Mini McCloskey”) embodies Soviet unease, highlighting the danger of mirror imaging and analytical bias.
• Internal Debate: Within Soviet intelligence, a split between those who believed Philby was too good to be true and those who saw the Cambridge spies as genuine.
• Agent Surveillance: Eight Soviet surveillance operatives sent to London to determine if the Cambridge spies were double agents—unsuccessfully.
• Eventually, Philby wins back full Soviet trust as the value of the intelligence he delivers outweighs the doubts.

7. Philby's Promotion: Head of Section IX

[34:52 – 41:54]

• Section IX: Created in 1943 to spy on the Soviets themselves—Philby’s Soviet handlers immediately push him to secure this role.
• Career Maneuvering: Philby subtly sabotages his boss (Felix Cowgill)’s chances at the job by leveraging poor relationships with MI5, the Foreign Office, and the FBI.
  • “Philby arranges to make sure everyone making the appointment knows how bad Cowgill’s relationship with MI5 is, without Philby’s fingerprints being on that. So he does it quite subtly.” (B, 36:10)
• Tim Milne’s Reflection: Highlights the cultural normalcy of youthful communism at Cambridge and rationalizes not alerting superiors to Philby’s past.
• Bureaucratic Irony: The man now running all British operations against the Soviets was himself a Soviet agent.

8. The Cold War Looms & Philby’s Damage

[41:54 – 46:18]

• Integrated Intelligence Sharing: The Americans are eventually informed about Section IX, and astonishingly, are told to coordinate all anti-Soviet operations through Philby.
• Human Cost: The hosts discuss the delicate balance Moscow had to achieve in using Philby’s intelligence without exposing him, acknowledging the very real deaths of agents—at that moment mainly Germans, but foreshadowing greater future losses.
• Recognition: Philby receives both the Soviet Order of the Red Banner and the British OBE, as well as a medal from Franco—an unmatched collection.
• End of WWII: Philby and Tim Milne’s visit to ruined Berlin, nearly poisoned by insecticide on Eva Braun’s cooker, receive news of Hiroshima being bombed, symbolizing a shift into the Cold War and Philby’s continued ascension.
  • “You get this sense of the Second World War closing, but also the dawn of what will be and become known as the Cold War, in which Kim Philby is going to play this absolutely pivotal role in its early years.” (B, 46:17)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Kim Philby (from his own reflections):
  “I have always operated at two levels, a personal level and a political one. When the two have come into conflict, I've had to put politics first. This conflict can be very painful. I don't like deceiving people, especially friends, and contrary to what others think, I feel very badly about it.” (A, 02:39)

• On MI6's culture:
  “It's full of slightly posh types and slightly old colonial types. It's a touch amateurish, it's fair to say. Not up to their opponents, I think, in many areas.” (B, 04:41)

• On office camaraderie and the “old guard” vs. “new guard”:
  “Philby is part of a new generation... and will be amongst the best of them.” (B, 09:09)

• On security “vetting”:
  “A lot of the security is done at the front end, where you figure out if you can trust somebody and then… it becomes this system of, well, everyone inside has sort of been vetted.” (A, 22:45)

• On mirror imaging:
  “It's a mindset and analytical trap that is very easy to fall into... you just think, well, we're doing this, the other side must be doing the same thing. And here it just wasn't true.” (A, 28:58)

• On the absolute triumph of Soviet penetration:
  “You don't get better than that, do you? Their man is running operations against them.” (B, 41:54)

• On the ominous aftermath:
  “You get this sense of the Second World War closing, but also the dawn of what will be and become known as the Cold War, in which Kim Philby is going to play this absolutely pivotal role.” (B, 46:17)

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Key Segment Timestamps

• Philby enters MI6 and the inner workings of the Service: 03:05 – 08:55
• MI6 internal dynamics and Philby’s early rise: 09:04 – 13:37
• Philby’s blend of work and social life, and his friendships: 13:01 – 17:10
• Arrival of OSS and British–American intelligence dynamics: 17:10 – 21:24
• Security practices and Philby’s unrestricted access: 21:24 – 27:09
• Soviet suspicion, mirror imaging, and internal debates: 25:19 – 34:23
• Philby’s manipulation to become head of Section IX: 34:52 – 41:54
• The beginning of the Cold War and evaluation of Philby’s legacy: 41:54 – 46:18

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Tone & Style

The conversation blends sharp wit, dry British humor, and deep historical context. The hosts leap between clever asides, personal anecdotes (e.g., White’s cheese boards, Aileen from Marks & Spencer), and lucid analysis—maintaining both intellectual rigor and an accessible, conversational tone.

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Next Time

The episode closes with the promise of a thrilling finale, exploring the dangers and human cost of Philby’s infiltration during the early Cold War—his increasingly precarious tightrope walk as a Soviet double agent at the heart of British intelligence.

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Listeners gain a vivid sense not only of Philby’s spycraft and psychological burdens, but of the tragic impact and almost farcical, bureaucratic lapses that made his betrayal possible.

Transcript

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[A]

I have always operated at two levels, a personal level and a political one. When the two have come into conflict, I've had to put politics first. This conflict can be very painful. I don't like deceiving people, especially friends, and contrary to what others think, I feel very badly about it. Well, welcome to the Rest is classified. I'm David McCloskey.

[B]

And I'm Gordon Carrera.

[A]

And that dear listeners was not Gordon Carrera's final confession. That was Kim Philby reflecting on his life as one of the greatest spies and most infamous traitors in espionage history. And we have spent the last two episodes, haven't we, Gordon, looking at Kim Philby's early life, his time really in the shadow of his extremely eccentric and overbearing father. Philby's time at Cambridge. Who doesn't get radicalized at Cambridge? Right, Gordon. And then his ultimate recruitment by Soviet intelligence as a penetration agent. And we also spent a good amount of time looking at kind of the making of Philby as a journalist in Spain covering the Spanish Civil War, his travels in Europe into Nazi Germany. Before finally where we left him, Gordon was passing a very rigorous background investigation to join the British Secret Intelligence Service, often known as MI6, just as the Second World War is beginning.

[B]

That's right. The vigorous testing of him, an assessment included a lunch at a club with his dad and the number two of MI6.

[A]

And the question to Philippe's father, when Philby used the bathroom, which basically was, Guy was a bit of a Communist at Cambridge, wasn't he? And his dad says, oh, it's, you know, just youthful indiscretion. It was a phase and it's done. And then he's in.

[B]

That's right. We left him in the inner sanctum of MI6 proper. And it is worth maybe painting a little picture of MI6 at the start of the Second World War. The headquarters are these quite dingy buildings at Broadway by St. James's park tube. The buildings are in a bad way, but also MI6 is in quite a bad way. At the start of the Second World War, it had had a series of disasters. One the biggest happened at a place called Venlo, where a couple of MI6 officers had been lured over the border, thinking they were going to meet some Germans for talks and perhaps to gain some intelligence and perhaps even see if they defect. And then instead they're lured into a trap. They're arrested, they spill all the beans about MI6 operations and who's who across the whole of Europe. It's a huge disaster at the start of the war and more generally, all the kind of agent networks they have are blown. All the embassies, of course, in Western Europe and Eastern Europe. Eastern Europe are closed because the Nazis have occupied those countries. And so they're having to start from scratch pretty much as an intelligence Service. Also inside MI6, believe it or not, David, it's full of slightly posh types and slightly old colonial types. It's a touch amateurish, it's fair to say. Not up to their opponents. I think in many areas, the Chief. Now, this is back to one of our British pronunciations, Stuart. Looks like Menzies, but it's pronounced Mingies.

[A]

What, Stuart?

[B]

Mingus.

[A]

Really? Yeah. Mingus.

[B]

That's how you pronounce it, Mingus.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

Because, of course, because he's posh, he pronounces his name in a different way, basically. Posh people do that to kind of confuse normal people. That is one of the problems. But anyway, that Mingus is how you pronounce it.

[A]

And he is. This is spelled just so everyone understands, just so Americans understand my confusion. This is spelled M, E N Z I, E, S. And this is pronounced Mingus.

[B]

Mingus, yeah. Let's just say the Chief. Classic establishment figure, eaten in the military. Like most MI6 at that time, he hadn't been to university, often found in his club Whites, which I've never been to. David.

[A]

I have been to Whites. Gordon. Can you believe this?

[B]

I just thought we'd jump that in. You're more of a frequenter. For all your jibes at the British Establishment, you're the one who's been to White's and I haven't. All I remember is you telling me it was a big night in White's. I think it's fair to say every.

[A]

Night at White's is a big night. Gordon. You haven't lived until you've consumed a cheese board the size of a bed. Yeah, they brought. At the end of the meal, they brought this cheese board out that was honestly, almost too large for the table. And I remember seeing there was a piece of cheese that was the size of a trash can that was on this cheese board.

[B]

Wow.

[A]

Great gin and tonics.

[B]

I think this is giving us an insight into the world of that Chief Mingus, because I think this is exactly his world. This was his club where I think he did quite a lot of his work and spent a lot of his time. I don't think he's the most dynamic figure. And really the only thing that's going to save his and Mi6's reputation in the Second World War is the fact that Bletchley park and the code breakers breaking German codes sit institutionally underneath him, reporting to him. So he's able to kind of keep the Prime Minister and others happy by delivering those secrets. Now, he's got two deputies. One is Valentine Vivian, who we met last time, who's the man who had that wonderful lunch with Philby and his dad, to vet him, known as Vivi. He's a rather dour former Indian policeman and head of security. And then there's another great character called Claude Dansey, who's the kind of operational chief. The two men, of course, absolutely loathe each other and purely communicate via memo, which I think is the only way to communicate in a bureaucracy. My favourite description of Dansey is from one of his officers, Hugh Trevor Raifber, who works at MI6 at this point. And he describes Dancy as an utter shit, corrupt, incompetent, but with a certain low cunning, which I think is a kind of pretty good description. So this is the world Philby enters.

[A]

Why is it so atrophied in terms of the talent, though, obviously it must not be seen as a desirable sort of sexy place to go work.

[B]

No, it was. I mean, we talked about this many. You know, back when we did Mansfield coming and the founding of the service, it was small, it was amateurish. It tended to be kind of have a lot of naughty schoolboys. Not famously. Someone said, you know, I'd never knowingly employ a university man because you don't want anyone who's too smart, you know, it had a kind of very amateurish feel to it right through the 20s and the 30s, which, you know, at that time you could kind of get away with, but against the better enemies it's facing now wartime, it's definitely underpowered. And I think that is the key to understanding Philby's rise, because he is basically smarter than most of the people around him. He is part of a new generation and Mi6 is expanding fast. There's new recruits, there's kind of amateurs, authors, professors, all these kinds of things, and Philby will be amongst the best of them. Now Philby goes into the Counter espionage section, section 5. This is responsible for counterespionage, so dealing with foreign intelligence services in the rest of the world, but stopping German spies effectively in wartime, trying to work out where German spies are, what they're up to, what they're planning. Are they planning to sabotage British ships? What agents are they trying to recruit? What plans have they got to Spy on the UK? And then you would pass that information on to MI5, who actually do the protecting the UK. And it's about 20 officers or so at the start in this section, based not in Broadway, but actually north of London in St Albans, partly because they'd moved quite a lot out there. The fear of bombing at the start of the war. And in the summer of 1941, when Philby's joining. They're particularly worried about the Iberian Peninsula, so Spain and Portugal, essentially, and what the Germans are up to there. And it's a real hotspot, Spain and Portugal, because they're places where both sides are operating because it's neutral territory. So Lisbon in particular is a kind of absolute hotbed for spies. It's a place where kind of both sides can get up to operations, they can meet. You've also got kind of Gibraltar and the gateway into the Mediterranean. So it's actually the hotspot if you're doing this work. And Philby is going to be put in charge of the Iberian section, of the counterest Beardenage section. And obviously because he's got that experience in Spain, you know, he's done the Spanish Civil War, so it makes sense. And he gets his old school friend, we remembered from the first couple of episodes, Tim Milnen there. And Tim, for instance, underneath Philby will be looking through Bletchley park intercepts of German codes, looking to see what they can then learn about the movement of German intelligence agencies and, and feeding it around and other, you know, there's kind of crazy characters there because at one point Milne shares a room with Graham Green, the famous novelist, you know, who writes, amongst other things, the screenplay the Third man, the Human Factor, you know, the Quiet American, all these kind of great novels and stories. And Graham Green is assigned to the Portuguese desk. So it's a kind of rich cast of characters, including the head of Section Five. So Philby's boss is this character called Felix Cowgill, another former Indian police officer who'd infiltrated kind of communist groups in India. He's not an easy man, I think, and he gets quite a hard time in the press and in all the books that are written about Philby. I mean, I read the monograph by someone who tried to kind of reassess Felix Cowgill because he gets such a bad write up as being difficult and saying maybe he wasn't actually that bad. But the essential problem with him, he makes lots of enemies because he doesn't want to share information with other people. He doesn't want to share the kind of Bletchley decrypts with MI5. He doesn't want to talk to other people, he's just difficult.

[A]

And I guess that is a great counterpoint to Philby, right, because Philby has many wonderful talents. One of them is he's pretty good at getting along with people and seems to make friends and allies in MI5, also at the Foreign Office. I Mean, Philby kind of strikes me as. As being a pretty solid bureaucratic operator. Yeah, he understands where the system is in, and in part because of who he is, but also because there's value to his Soviet handlers. If Philby can kind of move in a lot of different circles and doesn't just jealously hoard the information that Mi6 has on its own.

[B]

Yeah, that's right. He's got that kind of charm. He's good at making friends and. And not just with MI5 and the foreign Office. He gets on. You know, his colleagues really like him. You know, they think he's like one of the Young Turks, the kind of modernizers different from the old military types who used to run the place. He wears a tweed jacket with elbow patches. He's a bit more casual and even in his dress rather than a kind of bowler hat. You know, he goes out drinking with his friends, with his colleagues, you know, long lunches. He works hard, but he also kind of drinks hard and socializes. It's interesting because he's. You know, everyone remembers going out drinking with Philby at this point, but no one remembers him talking about politics. And everyone kind of feels like they knew him and he was their friend, but later when they look back, they realize they didn't know him. I think, you know, it's. Again, it's telling that he's got an element of control over that relationship. And I think the view is that he is a man on the rise and the Chief Mingus, views him as one of the rising stars. Although the view of the Chief from Philby. There's a great story where Tim Milne says Philby told him that ideally, the chief of the Secret Service should be an absolutely smashing girl with no other qualifications for the job. After all, he said one has to see the Chief every now and then, and it's usually a waste of time that way. At least you'd enjoy the occasion. So a sense of the slight sexism of the. Of the era. But he's got friends, and we maybe come back to some of the friends, as we'll see through the. Through the story, because they kind of play an interesting role. But then, I guess, his private life. I think we'd last seen Lizzie heading off to Paris, hadn't we, as he'd headed off to Spain for the Civil War.

[A]

They were separated, right? Not. Not formally divorced at that point.

[B]

Yeah. Which is, I find kind of interesting that he doesn't divorce her. And it goes back to the kind of question that I have, which is how much did he really love her? And I think he did. And I. I don't. It doesn't quite make sense. And it will cause him a little bit of problem later that he doesn't divorce her because he's now got a new partner called Aileen, who had worked in Marks and Spencer's, which is a big store in London. She's kind of fun, patriotic, good looking, till Milne remembers her at not being particularly political. She was just a kind of easy person to get along with. They had a lot of fun together. And Milne, again, you know, is his friend, says it vaguely registers at the back of his mind that they never speak about a wedding day and, you know, there's no talk about a wedding. And yet they start having kids. Kim Philby and Aileen from 1941. And they'll go on to have kind of four kids in the kind of coming year. And she changes her name to Philby and uses the name Philby, but they've actually not got married, which is a bit of a secret at this time. And she's got another secret, which we'll come to a little bit later. So Philby's kind of got this home life as well, looking a bit more stable. And then summer 1943, as things are going pretty well, the next kind of big move is that the section is going to move down from St Albans to London, to central London to a place called Ryder street, which Kim really wants to do, for obvious reasons. Cowgirl is not keen because he's going to kind of lose control of his little empire. But wonderfully, at this point, who else enters the story but the Americans?

[A]

Oh, good, we can all breathe easy now. Yeah, I'm sure the Americans are going to get to the bottom of this. This rotten trigger at the heart of ML6.

[B]

Spot him straight away, won't they? Those cunning Americans.

[A]

Yeah, exactly. Nothing more cunning than an American intelligence officer in the 1940s. Right, Gordon?

[B]

Well, as we know from having. From our series on Bill Donovan, this is Bill Donovan's oss. This is the glorious amateurs that he's created. And, you know, as we did in the Donovan story, didn't we? Donovan spends a lot of time in London and there's a massive London station for oss, Donovan.

[A]

Donovan's just hold up at Claridge's for most of the. Yeah, right.

[B]

I mean, yeah, so popping between seeing the chief at Whites and Donovan at Claridge's, it's, you know, wartime life. But OSS has a counterintelligence section which is called X2. I like that name. It's kind of.

[A]

That's good.

[B]

I know it's good. It's a good name. And they're going to be. X2 is going to be based next to Philby's Section 5 at Ryder Street. And the Americans start off, I mean as we discussed, I think in our Donovan series, pretty fresh to the game. So another MI6 officer who goes on to become a writer, Malcolm Muggeridge, has a description of the arrival of the Americans as again, this is pretty sexist language, excuse us, but this is the language of the time and I think does give you an insight into the, the way it was way people talk back then. But he describes the arrival of the Americans as like a bunch of innocent young maidens who are about to be deflowered in the old intelligence brothel that was MI6. All too soon they were ravished and corrupted.

[A]

I mean, it's pretty gross.

[B]

It's pretty gross, isn't it? I mean, but it's clearly how the MI6 kind of crew look at it. It's like here come the fresh faced Americans. We're going to show them the game. I think that's what you get from the quote, don't you think?

[A]

I agree. And I guess this is where I think this is also interesting about Philby. Philby kind of he's involved in this effort to collaborate with and to some degree train and influence the Americans. But he also doesn't really like the Americans, does he, Gordon?

[B]

No, I think all through his life he seems to be. I think he's got that definitely that attitude which is quite British kind of. I mean Philby's a child of empire, isn't he? And I think even if his dad is quite anti colonialist, there is also that kind of slight resentment of the rising power of America from a certain section of the British kind of establishment at this time. So some are kind of on board with the rise of the Americans and others are resentful. And I think secretly Phil becomes from the kind of resentful world, but hides it very, very well and will hide it all through the following years. But that definitely is a factor beneath the surface. But Philby's there. He gives talks to these new Americans, the OSS guys and how to turn agents and double them back against the Nazis. Gets to know David Bruce, who will become the London chief of OSS and who ends up on the beach at Normandy with, with Donovan. Famously, as we heard last time he.

[A]

Was with Donovan when they had the realization that they had left their suicide pills back at Claridge's. Right.

[B]

At Claridge's, exactly.

[A]

And had not brought them for the landing and were concerned that perhaps some of the clergy's staff needed to be warned about. I think Donovan described it as the dangerous medicines in my bathroom.

[B]

Exactly.

[A]

Put a call in back to the porter at Clerge's. Philby's also connected with James Jesus Angleton, who will become the head of the CIS counterintelligence staff and very nearly come close to wrecking the place from the inside out because of his exceptional paranoia. But at this point is really, you know, a very serious Anglophile and gets close to Philby. Philby kind of tutors Angleton.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

In the craft of intelligence, which I find very ironic. And that will be a friendship that the CIA will pay very dearly for in the coming decades.

[B]

Yeah, that's right. I think the legacy of that friendship between Angleton and Philby and the betrayal of Angleton by Philby is, you're right, going to. Absolutely. I mean, it's going to shape the CIA during a significant part of the Cold War. So it's, again, one of the kind of reasons why Philby is such a kind of consequential character. I mean, Philby all this time, I guess, is still meeting his handlers. And the advantage now is, I mean, we talked last time, didn't we, about how he'd at some point lost a bit of contact with them and the relationship was kind of, you know, tricky and breaking down and he's the one pressing to meet them again. And of course, he's now back in touch with them. Germany has invaded the Soviet Union, so the Nazi Soviet package is over. So at least now he's kind of can tell himself he's working by working for the Soviet Union, he's working actually for an ally of the uk. I mean, maybe helps him psychologically a bit. And he's meeting them, meeting his handlers every, you know, 10 to 12 days. I mean, what I find fascinating is he just can take files out of the office. I mean, on this very interesting tape, we're going to hear for members where you hear Philby talking about his career and what he does. I mean, he describes this. He basically said, I just walked out the office, office with a briefcase of documents, you know, files, and takes them home. This is.

[A]

This is even true today. A lot of the security is done at the front end, where you figure out if you can trust somebody and then. Right. And then it becomes this system of, well, Everyone inside has sort of been vetted. But at the CIA, if you wanted to, I mean, you could print off documents, you just walk out of the building with them in your bag. We all think of these like, elaborate, you know, security checks as you're walking out the door. The reality is, you know, you just walk out with stuff you really can. Yeah, it's harder to bring electronics in or out, but, like, if you just want paper, I mean, it's just. It's just not that hard.

[B]

Yeah, it's interesting, isn't it, because I think it. It is surprising to think how easy it is. And Philby takes advantage of that. And he also volunteers for night duty at Broadway hq, where he can kind of get access to even more material. So he's got. He's got details of plans, intentions, personnel, capabilities of the German intelligence agencies who he's obviously spying on, because that's his job, you know, his official job. He's got details of the British Intelligence Agency's operations and personnel and what they're up to, because that's where he's working. And because he's liaising so closely with the Americans, he's got that. And you can pass all of that, you know, to his. His Soviet handlers and, you know, there's tons of stuff. But it's so interesting because the Soviets, what they're interested in, actually partly are signs that the Brits and the Americans might be reaching out to the Germans to make a separate peace from them, you know, to kind of lock out the Soviet Union. That's their. What they're worried about. But I just think this is the wild bit about the Philby story, you know, so many wild bits about it. But the reality is, you know, they. They are not getting the most out of this agent with the most astonishing access because they don't trust him and they're not asking the right questions. I mean, there's one early sign of that when he's back in the kind of training school, before he joins MI6 proper, he tells them that the Soviet Union is only the 10th country on the priority list for agents, and they're not training any to be sent there. And the Soviets go, that can't be right. You know, we're the top priority, surely, for the Brits, for MI6. So the kind of, you know, the officer who gets that report underlines that passage and puts two large red question marks in the margin. But now, in the middle of the war, what's even crazier is that there are some in Moscow who are going to be convinced that Philby is a double agent, you know, that he has been planted by British intelligence. November 1942 in the NKVD, which is the kind of forerunner of the KGB.

[A]

The.

[B]

There's this female analyst called Elena Modzrinskaya. I think I've got that right. That's good. Yeah, it's not bad. Was it who I'd like to think is a kind of female Minnie McCloskey?

[A]

Yes.

[B]

I mean she's a kind of blue eyed blonde, but apart from that she's a kind of, she's an analyst. She's a kind of, you know, in the nkvd. Her job is to kind of look at the files so you can, you can sympathize with, with Elena. I mean maybe even you can summarize why, you know, why she'd think Philby might be a bad un.

[A]

I guess if you put yourself in the perspective of an NKVD Mini McCloskey in the fall of or autumn, as you would say, Gordon of 1942, if the stuff is too good, if it's really, really good, that weirdly enough can be a cause for suspicion. Flag it, you say, well, how does he have this access? Is this stuff that is being fed to us to get us hooked on it so that the Brits can kind of pipe disinformation into our system? Right. So that's kind of one. I mean, I think the other one is Philby's failure to provide information on British operations against the Soviet Union. And Philby of course is saying, well it's because we're not doing anything. We don't, you know. Yeah, but the other way to interpret that is that that's exactly the kind of stuff that the Brits, if they're using Philby as a double, would be, would hold back. You know, they wouldn't give you anything real about London's efforts to penetrate the Kremlin or the Soviet military or intelligence services or anything like that. And they do push Philby though, don't they, to look at agents inside the USSR and there just aren't any. Right?

[B]

No. So.

[A]

That information could be interpreted by the NKVD many McCloskey in kind of multiple ways. Right.

[B]

It's so interesting because they're convinced there must be. So they say, you know, even though he's obviously not dealing directly with anything to do with the Soviet Union, they say, can you get into the archive? And so Philby gets to know the archivist for MI6. This is up in St. Albans because the archive at that point is up in St Albans. Organs. And him and the archivist, they both like pink gin, which I. Not particularly a fan of. But he persuades the archivist to let him borrow files and it's back to that point where he can suddenly start borrowing them overnight and hand them back the next day. And he gets the files on the kind of source books which are the details of MI6 operations on the Soviet Union, which has got kind of the code names for any agents. Philby nearly panics because at one point there's a investigation because one of them's gone missing. Until the secretary reveals, actually, you know, it hadn't gone missing, she'd combined two of them into one. But he kind of from. There's a moment of panic, but. But, yeah, he kind of looks at these sourcebooks, he feeds the information back to Moscow. And Moscow is like, how can there not be an MI6 station in Moscow? You know, how can they not have a secret outfit running agents in Moscow? Why is there no agent network inside the ussr? Because I think also this is really interesting from the Russian point of view, Mi6 has been the main enemy. It has been the arch plotters back to the great game in Central Asia before the revolution and then after the Bolshevik Revolution. They are convinced. They are convinced, and I mean, they still are today, that MI6 are the kind of arch plotters of the overthrow of the Bolsheviks. So the idea, when Philby said there's nothing there, they just can't believe it, can they?

[A]

Oh, I guess it's classic mirror imaging.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

It's a mindset and analytical trap that is very easy to fall into if you're a human being or if you're a big, you know, state bureaucracy. You just think, well, we're doing this, the other side must be doing the same thing. And here it just wasn't true.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

The other piece of this, though, is that, and I guess why it would be so shocking to the NKVD that the Brits don't have a network or a station inside Moscow, is that from another member of the Cambridge Five, Anthony Blunt. The NKVD knows that the Brits are running this pretty elaborate double cross system to turn German agents to their own purposes. Right. So, yeah, they. There's an understanding that the Brits are capable of this. So you would think, well, if you're doing it against the Nazis, why wouldn't you be running the same kind of system against us? And the reality is they worked.

[B]

Yeah, I mean, it's funny, isn't it, because they also look at the stuff we've looked at, which is like, how did Philby get into MI6 so quickly? You know, especially when he was like, he had an Austrian communist wife, Litzy. How, how did no one spot, you know, the fact he'd been a communist at Cambridge. So they're looking at it and thinking to themselves, hang on a sec, isn't that a little bit suspicious?

[A]

And they actually, they would have shot this guy already. They're like, we would have shot this guy five years ago.

[B]

Yeah, we'd have purged him for that.

[A]

We'd have purged this guy.

[B]

And so they keep ask, it's fascinating, they keep asking Philby questions about his biography. And the reason is because they are just trying to understand how he got where he did. You know, they're trying to check him out still. And they're just so suspicious of how easily gets into MI6. And then as you say, yeah, they, because they know that the Brits are cunning enough to do double agent operations, turning Nazi agents back against them, they think maybe that's Philby. So this elena, the mini McCloskey starts thinking, well, actually Philby is a penetration agent into the Soviet system. In other words, the whole thing in Cambridge of becoming a communist, that was building cover on the orders of British intelligence in order to attract the attention of Soviet recruiters. And of course, you know, the bit that makes sense for this is they have already been convinced that Philby's dad was a British spy, which he wasn't. So it makes absolute sense that Philby's dad is pulling the strings somehow of this master plan of getting his son to go to fake being Communist to get inside the Soviet system, but actually always be a double agent for MI6. I mean, it's a kind of wild plan. But you can also see if you think the Brits are genuinely cunning, if you don't know that MI6 is actually a disaster zone at this point, you can see why you might believe it, can't you?

[A]

Yeah, it's a great example of being able to twist yourself into such sort of intellectual knots that you have, you've essentially mistaken incompetence on the part of a human huge swath of the British system for an elaborate master plan to undermine the Soviet Union. Yeah, right. I mean, that's, that's. But, but the people running the Cambridge spies, the actual handlers, don't ascribe to this view, right? I mean, they, they see Philby and the 5As, as genuine Soviet penetrations of the British system.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, exactly. So we should say that this is the Elena the analyst view, which is kind of one faction. But, but then there's another faction within the nkvd, the kgb, which takes the opposite view, which is, no, no, no, these guys are for real. And particularly the handlers who are dealing with Philby out in London and elsewhere, they all believe he and the other agents are for real. So there's a kind of battle which is ebbing and flowing in the Soviet bureaucracy about how much to believe them. And at one point, you know, late 43, there's kind of caution around them. That's the point where they think most of them might be bad, apart from, weirdly Donald Maclean, who they think is more likely to be for real. And they want to retain contact with the Cambridge spies because they can see they are getting valuable stuff from them, particularly about the Germans. And they're thinking, well, we don't want to cut off because then we might tip off to the British that we know about their double agent operation. I mean, they even send eight surveillance operatives to London to follow the Cambridge spies to see if they're meeting kind of MI5 hands handlers, they're double agent handlers. And these are people who are in Russian clothes, don't speak English and don't find anything because there's nothing there to find. But it's, it's kind of, you know, it's kind of crazy, isn't it? I mean, it's kind of almost Keystone Cop stuff. But of course they're still getting this great information from them and they get top level stuff from John Cairncross and from Bletchley park because he's got access to Bletchley, which actually, you know, it's amazingly valuable, this stuff to the Soviet Union because it helps them at the famous Kursk battle. And the Bletchley decrypts he passes on supposedly help them launch pre emptive strikes on some of the German airfields. So, you know, this is as good intelligence as you get. So eventually that kind of balance of opinion will swing back to the idea these guys are for real. The stuff is just too good to ignore. And so, you know, Philby finally, you know, by force. 44 is back in the good books.

[A]

Also, baby there, Gordon. With Philby now codenamed Stanley, in the good graces of his NKVD Soviet handlers. Let's take a break. When we come back, we'll see how Philby pulls off a massive intelligence coup. Welcome back. The tide is turning in the war, Gordon, and, and the Brits are looking at the Soviet Union in a new light.

[B]

Yeah, that's right. So in the middle of the war, suddenly the Brits start thinking about, well, maybe we should be spying on the Soviets and they're going to start a new section nine and they're going to start that in May 1943, which is super secret, and its aim is going to be to spy on the Soviet Union and penetrate Soviet intelligence. And Valentine Vivian draws up a proposal of how to do this and the kind of methods and techniques which will be used. And of course, this is greeted with much excitement in Moscow because it suddenly confirms their suspicions that they are, of course, the real enemy. Now, initially, the head of this section is someone an expert from MI5. But then the job as the permanent head of Section 9 is opening up in 1944. Now, the logical person to put in charge of it is Felix Cowgill, who's the head of Section five, Philby's boss, he's an anti communist expert. But of course, when Philby tells his Russian handlers about this new section and about the fact that the job is coming up to head it, they are like, get that job. You do whatever it takes to get that job. And you can see why they think it. And in his memoir, this very dodgy memoir called Called My Silent War, Philby implies, you know, he, he does some kind of brilliant maneuvering. I think it's only half true because a lot of it is going to be kind of Cowgill's mistakes that stop him. Because, I mean, the thing is the new job involves working very closely with MI5 and they, of course, as we heard, hate Cowgill because he doesn't share anything with them. And Philby then arranges to make sure that everyone making the appointment, the decision, knows how bad Cowgill's relationship with MI5 without Philby's fingerprints being on that. So he does it quite subtly. And he does exactly the same with the Foreign Office, who also don't like Cowgill. And also Cowgill is in a massive row at that point because he's in a row with everyone, with Hoover, you know, J. Edgar Hoover at the FBI. And again, kind of Philby makes sure, subtly though, that everyone knows that Cowgill just doesn't get on with the partners. So in all the kind of spy novels, David, this kind of bureaucratic maneuvering is the kind of thing that happens. I mean, here it really is happening.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Do you reckon that happens in the, you know, in CIA when a big job comes up? Are people kind of gently, subtly knifing each other in the back.

[A]

I'm sure it happens. I mean the reality is there just aren't that many senior jobs. There tend to be more senior people than there are sort of good jobs. And so there is, there is competition over them or there, there can be. Doesn't this happen in every organization? Yeah, maybe if you have an organization that's got some scale and importance, you're going to have people who fight over the limited number of good spots.

[B]

I mean, never happened to the BBC. Let me just make that clear though before.

[A]

Okay? Yeah. The BBC is a, a very egalitarian, meritocratic or.

[B]

Never anything, never anything like that when I was there. Just.

[A]

That's right. That's the guy Burgess legacy. Right? Gordon at BBC.

[B]

Exactly.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But Phil, I mean Philby, he is kind of a natural choice for this job. Yeah, he's got a reputation as being a hard working MI6 officer. He knows Europe, he speaks many of its languages, well traveled, he, he gets along well with others. So in some ways he's a very natural pick.

[B]

Yeah, I think that's right. And Cowgill is just a bit too difficult. So I mean Philby does do this brilliantly and you know, he will get the job in September 1944. Cowgill is furious and I mean he goes on to resign from being head of Section 5 and actually ends up leaving MI6 shortly afterwards. So, you know, that's it. So Tim Milne, Philby's old friend, then takes over Section five and Philby will still be supervising that. But Tim Milne, it's very interesting because he again in his memoir he says people express surprise, you know, in hindsight that I didn't come forward at the time of Kim's appointment and inform my superiors that he'd held communist views before the war. And Milne says in 1944 it didn't seem at all likely that he stood where he had in 1933. People do change their views, particularly those who form extremist opinions at university. This is all well understood. It's obviously Tim Milne thinking in later life. How did you not point out that the person who's just been appointed to head anti Soviet activities was a communist at Cambridge? Milne is another one who's a friend of Kim, knows it, knows it and doesn't raise it. He'd been with Phil B. It's fascinating, isn't it? All these people who just kind of turn a blind eye to it really.

[A]

I mean, who wasn't a Communist back in 1932 at Cambridge, you know.

[B]

Well, it feels like everyone was.

[A]

I Think, Yeah, everybody was. Many young, well educated people at this time would have dabbled with it in their university days. Right. That would not have been uncommon. So in some ways, Philby's father's comment to VV that, oh, he was. This is sort of youthful indiscretion would have.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Would have resonated the experience of so many other people who were sort of moving into these types of important jobs during the war.

[B]

Yeah, I think that's right. But it is an amazing triumph. Philby is now head of Section 9 and takes on a new title from late 1944 War for a couple of years. He's now in the Broadway headquarters building as a senior officer. He is in charge of running operations into and against the Soviet Union. I mean, the existence of this section is at first really secret and I love this fact. They're told at first not to tell the Americans about it because they're worried it might leak to the Russians through the Americans. You know, little did they know that Philby's kept them. Philby's kept them well informed all the time. And though eventually the Americans are told, and they are told that all American intelligence services working against the Soviet Union are to coordinate their work through Philby. And so now he can pass. I mean, you know, it's just crazy. He could pass on details of all MI6, German, American operations. You know, he's passing on really useful details to the Russians, including about people who are anti Soviet and spying for the Germans, who, when the Soviets then occupy the country at the end of the war, can be picked up and, you know, we know what happens to them. He's also able to protect some of the other Cambridge recruits from MI5's interest. I mean, it's a complete triumph for Moscow because their man is running operations, operations against them. I mean, you don't, you don't get better than that, do you? In kind of in spy terms, it.

[A]

Reminds me of the position that Oleg Gordievsky, who we did a series on last year, he's effectively running the KGB's operations in London while he's working for MI6. I mean, it really doesn't get much better than that. It does make me think at this point, Gordon, do we have a sense of the human cost of Philby's betrayal? Because he's in a position here in Section nine that is very valuable to the Russians, but it's also, it has to be handled very delicately, doesn't it? Because they have to really think very carefully about how the Russians use the information he passes because as an example, and just to kind of illustrate how risky all this is, if the Brits develop an asset, an agent inside the Soviet Union, if the Soviets arrest that person, there will be inevitably an investigation in London about why that happened. And you have to be very careful that investigation doesn't lead back to Kim Philbing. And so you would just have to be very thoughtful about how you balance all this stuff. But my point is there's going to be a human cost to his betrayal here because he is going to be essentially handing over the identities of agents and networks and things like that to the Soviets who can then make a decision about rolling them up. Do we have a sense of how, what that body count is starting to add up to at this point?

[B]

At this point in the war? It's not yet mounting up that much because I think at this point they are still basically conceptualizing how will we do this at the end of the war. And they're not yet into the new world of actually running some of those agents. So I think at this point a lot more of the agents he's giving away are actually German agents who are spying against the Soviets, who he learns about and who then get killed. You're right though, this is going to become the high wire act for Philby as time goes on. But they, you know, from the Moscow's point of view, this is just amazing. And you know, their suspicions have passed, Elena. Billy McCloskey is retired, you know, and has been pushed away. They know they're onto a winner. Basically. Late 45, he's awarded order of the Red Banner. Next year he gets a British obe. And that of course goes with his medal from Franco. I mean in terms of collection of medals, that's pretty good. And then as the war is ending, he goes to Berlin with Tim Milne, just as the kind of war's coming to an end. So it's the two old friends and of course they traveled around Europe in the 30s together. Philby is there planning what new stations MI6 should open across Europe. They know it's hard to penetrate the Soviet Union itself to run agents in there. So they're trying to work out which countries could we open up stations where we can use to send agents into the Soviet Union. And Milne writes, we paid a visit to Hitler's chancellery, badly damaged but not totally destroyed. His office was still littered with broken glass and debris. A light bulb, somehow intact, was lying on the floor. And I threw it at the huge marble top desk where it burst with a satisfying report a cheap and childish gesture for which I felt no shame. And then the two of them go to look at the place at Potsdamer Strasse where they'd seen that Nazi torchlight rally in the early 30s. So it's a kind of weird circle for Philby. They then get cooked. This is a weird detail you find when you read all these memoirs. They have a meal cooked by someone who's using Eva Brauns, who's Hitler's partner, who's now dead, her cooker. And they get nearly poisoned by a cook who serves them insecticide by mistake. And so Philby ends up kind of semi delirious and nearly kind of dying during that trip, which is also the moment that they learned this most dramatic news, that the Americans have dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. A moment when the world changes and you get this sense of the Second World War closing, but also the dawn of what will be and become known as the Cold War, in which Kim Philby is going to play this absolutely pivotal role in its early years.

[A]

So maybe there, Gordon, with Kim Philby hopped up on insecticide and wandering the streets of Berlin at the end of the war. Let's end. And when we come back next time for the thrilling finale of this series exploring the life of the young Kim Philby, we'll see how this tightrope walk that he's managing is going to become much more important and much more precarious.

[B]

If you want to hear that right away, you can by joining the Declassified club, the restis classified.com. and you get more. You get an interview with Antonia Senior, who's the author of a fantastic new book about the Cambridge spies. And you will also get the very special chance to hear from the man himself, Kim Philby. It is an amazingly honest account by Kim Philby about his activities in these years. So it's a really fascinating chance to hear Philby's voice talking about some of the things we've been discussing in these episodes. So that's there for club members that will be there this week and of course, you can [e-mail] but otherwise, we'll see you next time.

[A]

We'll see you next time.