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A review by mburnamfink
A Spy Among Friends: Kim Philby and the Great Betrayal by Ben Macintyre
5.0
Kim Philby ranks as one of the greatest spies in history, and one of the greatest traitors. Outwardly a charming member of the British establishment and MI-6, privately Philby was a committed Communist and passed every secret he could garner on to Moscow. One of the brightest of the Young Turks, Philby was being groomed for the top slot at MI-6.
Macintyre's book is a story of the friendship between Philby and his greatest defender, Nicholas Elliott, and of a whole British ruling class of the right sort of people: good families, public schools, Oxbridge, government service, and so on. Macintyre quotes C.S. Lewis on the role of the toxic idea of the Inner Circle on British society, that there are ever more exclusive clubs where real power is held, and this inner circleness drove and destroyed Philby, as much as any ideological commitment. After all, spycraft is more exclusive than ordinary government service, and being a double agent is more exclusive than being a spy.
Philby worked as a journalist through the 30s, concealing his true politics and getting close to Franco and prominent Nazis. He was a war correspondent during the Battle of France, and after the fall of France was posted into British intelligence as an expert in propaganda. He befriended Elliott, a true member of the elite (Elliot's father was headmaster at Eton), and began a meteoric rise through the ranks, turning over what he uncovered to his Soviet masters. Philby likely blew the defections of the Volkovs in Istanbul, turned over the names of hundreds of Catholic anti-Nazi and anti-Communist activists in Soviet occupied Germany, and doomed Albanian sabotage missions after the war. He has a lot of blood on his hands.
Philby was posted to America, where he befriended the anglophile James Angleton, the CIA counter-intelligence chief. Well-lubricated parties served him well, until his involvement with Guy Burgess, a more flamboyant and self-destructive Soviet spy in the British foreign office, derailed his career. Burgess was drunk, homosexual, loud, possibly brain damaged, and Philby's close friend and house-guest. When another of the Cambridge Five, Donald Maclean, was under immanent threat of being blown, Burgess was used to organize the escape. Philby fell under an immediate cloud, and while there was plenty of circumstantial evidence that he was also a spy, the Establishment protected its own, and while his career was iced, he remained free.
By 1955, a destitute Philby was back in good enough graces to be offered another intelligence job as an agent in Beirut. His marriage to Aileen Philby had by that point more or less disintegrated under the weight of deception, alcohol, and her mental illness. Philby spent another 8 years in Beirut, drinking heavily and a lackluster reporter (his cover) and agent. According to Macintyre, it was Philby's journalism that did him in. His pro-Arab slant annoyed an old acquaintance, the British Zionist activist Flora Solomon. Solomon had introduced Kim and Ailene, and remembered in the 30s that Kim had made a clumsy effort to recruit her as a Soviet spy. She had the credibility which MI-5 investigators lacked, and Elliott confronted Philby in Beirut, where Philby confessed. But then, incredibly, Philby managed to defect to Moscow, where he lived until dying in 1988. Macintyre convincingly argues this was deliberate, that the public spectacle of another spy trial in London would have so thoroughly discredited MI-6 that defection was a better option, and that a lack of surveillance was deliberately arranged.
This is a thrilling true story of a vanished age, when government was run by "gentlemen", and when being the right sort of person could forgive almost any transgression. The incestuous world of British intelligence is perhaps best revealed by a security briefing between Elliot and another officer.
[paraphrased]
OFFICER: Does your wife know what you do?
ELLIOT: I should think so. She was my secretary for two years first.
OFFICER: How about your mother?
ELLIOT: She does, a member of the War Cabinet told her I was a spy at a party.
OFFICER: And your father, does he know?
ELLIOT: Yes. The Chief told his at White's Club.
With the right accent, the right clothes, the right attitude, it was so impossible that Philby was a double agent that everyone ignored the evidence until it was far too late.
Macintyre's book is a story of the friendship between Philby and his greatest defender, Nicholas Elliott, and of a whole British ruling class of the right sort of people: good families, public schools, Oxbridge, government service, and so on. Macintyre quotes C.S. Lewis on the role of the toxic idea of the Inner Circle on British society, that there are ever more exclusive clubs where real power is held, and this inner circleness drove and destroyed Philby, as much as any ideological commitment. After all, spycraft is more exclusive than ordinary government service, and being a double agent is more exclusive than being a spy.
Philby worked as a journalist through the 30s, concealing his true politics and getting close to Franco and prominent Nazis. He was a war correspondent during the Battle of France, and after the fall of France was posted into British intelligence as an expert in propaganda. He befriended Elliott, a true member of the elite (Elliot's father was headmaster at Eton), and began a meteoric rise through the ranks, turning over what he uncovered to his Soviet masters. Philby likely blew the defections of the Volkovs in Istanbul, turned over the names of hundreds of Catholic anti-Nazi and anti-Communist activists in Soviet occupied Germany, and doomed Albanian sabotage missions after the war. He has a lot of blood on his hands.
Philby was posted to America, where he befriended the anglophile James Angleton, the CIA counter-intelligence chief. Well-lubricated parties served him well, until his involvement with Guy Burgess, a more flamboyant and self-destructive Soviet spy in the British foreign office, derailed his career. Burgess was drunk, homosexual, loud, possibly brain damaged, and Philby's close friend and house-guest. When another of the Cambridge Five, Donald Maclean, was under immanent threat of being blown, Burgess was used to organize the escape. Philby fell under an immediate cloud, and while there was plenty of circumstantial evidence that he was also a spy, the Establishment protected its own, and while his career was iced, he remained free.
By 1955, a destitute Philby was back in good enough graces to be offered another intelligence job as an agent in Beirut. His marriage to Aileen Philby had by that point more or less disintegrated under the weight of deception, alcohol, and her mental illness. Philby spent another 8 years in Beirut, drinking heavily and a lackluster reporter (his cover) and agent. According to Macintyre, it was Philby's journalism that did him in. His pro-Arab slant annoyed an old acquaintance, the British Zionist activist Flora Solomon. Solomon had introduced Kim and Ailene, and remembered in the 30s that Kim had made a clumsy effort to recruit her as a Soviet spy. She had the credibility which MI-5 investigators lacked, and Elliott confronted Philby in Beirut, where Philby confessed. But then, incredibly, Philby managed to defect to Moscow, where he lived until dying in 1988. Macintyre convincingly argues this was deliberate, that the public spectacle of another spy trial in London would have so thoroughly discredited MI-6 that defection was a better option, and that a lack of surveillance was deliberately arranged.
This is a thrilling true story of a vanished age, when government was run by "gentlemen", and when being the right sort of person could forgive almost any transgression. The incestuous world of British intelligence is perhaps best revealed by a security briefing between Elliot and another officer.
[paraphrased]
OFFICER: Does your wife know what you do?
ELLIOT: I should think so. She was my secretary for two years first.
OFFICER: How about your mother?
ELLIOT: She does, a member of the War Cabinet told her I was a spy at a party.
OFFICER: And your father, does he know?
ELLIOT: Yes. The Chief told his at White's Club.
With the right accent, the right clothes, the right attitude, it was so impossible that Philby was a double agent that everyone ignored the evidence until it was far too late.