University of Virginia Library

The Philby Affair

For all his titillating adventures, as a
spy James Bond pales into mediocrity when
compared to Harold Philby, the Soviet agent
whose finesse and dedication achieved one
of the greatest coups in the modern history
of espionage.

In his startling case, the full details of
which are just being revealed to the public,
it was almost as if Ian Fleming's inscrutable
"M" had turned out to be a top SMERSH
operative.

While Mr. Philby never became head of
British intelligence, he came frightfully close
as chief of the Soviet section and later as
liaison man between the British Secret Intelligence
Service and the U. S. Central
Intelligence Agency.

Mr. Philby was the perfect spy. He had
impeccably upper middle class origins, his
father being a distinguished officer of the
Indian civil service. He was educated at
Cambridge. He fitted in perfectly with the
rich, charming young men of the Establishment
who were recruited from the City
banks and brokerage firms and who ran
the secret service from White's Club.

He earned the admiration of women, the
devotion of his subordinates, and the trust
of his superiors, including Sir Stewart
Menzies, the model for Bond's "M." He
even affected a no-fascist stance that included
a decoration from General Franco
in the Spanish Civil War.

But in the early 1930's, in his university
days, Mr. Philby had moved philosophically
leftward. In 1933 he visited Nazi Germany
and what he saw made him a determined
Communist.

He was recruited into Britain's MI-6 in
1941. Three years later, his greatest opportunity
came when he was asked to reactivate
the defunct counter-espionage
operation against the Soviet Union.

There are several conclusions-and more
than one lesson for our own CIA and FBI-to
be drawn from the Philby affair.

First, there is the shattering blow to
British prestige. Combined with the related
cases of Guy Burgess and Donald MacLean
and the escape last year of master
spy George Blake, the revelations about Mr.
Philby destroy the high regard British intelligence
has enjoyed since 1914. Serious
doubts have been cast upon the amateurism
of Establishment politics, the belief that if
you could not trust the members of your
club, whom could you trust?

Second, there is the embarrassing strain
on Anglo-American intelligence links, necessary
in trapping spies but seriously compromised
by the Philby affair.

Third, and most important, there is the
insight into the new espionage, not the Mata
Hari sort based on love or money, but on
ideology. Mr. Philby succeeded, the London
Observer remarks, because the system of
personal contacts and trust which formed
the traditional structure of MI-6 failed to
take into account the fact that "the events
of the thirties had eroded the loyalties of
the younger intelligentsia."

As Anthony Lejeune concludes:
"Espionage, in the great struggle which
divides the modern world, is not a question
of sinister foreigners sneaking through the
long grass and sketching gun emplacements.
Its vital battles, its fatal subversions,
take place in the mind."