“A Spy Among Friends: Kim Philby and The Great Betrayal” by Ben Macintyre is about an upper class Brit who was a respected official in their Secret Service until he defected to the Soviet Union and revealed that he had been a KGB agent for more than twenty years, including World War II and the Cold War. It soon became clear that he was one of at least five who had been college friends and had spied for the KGB. All were considered trusted friends with many others in the British and American governments of the period, who were shock at the disclosures.
How could Philby and the others betray their country and their friends?
How could they have gotten away with it for so long?
The subject of this book has fascinated me for a long time.
I am not the only one. Graham Greene, who knew Philby when they both worked for the British Secret Service during World War II, was shocked when he found out about his friend’s treason. Greene turned the story into “The Third Man.” It is a story about a man who discovers that his boyhood friend who he idolized is really a villain.
David Cornwell, who writes spy novels using the pen name John Le Carré worked for the Secret Service in the early 1950's when Philby and other spies were first exposed. He wrote the Afterward essay for this book, in which he notes that his “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy” was based on the relationship between Philby and Philby’s college chum, Nicholas Elliot. Elliot was later to be a high ranking MI 6 officer and was one of the last to believe that his lifelong friend, who he admired to the point of idolatry, was and had been a Soviet spy who had deceived him completely.
Ian Fleming, of James Bond fame, had also been recruited into Naval Intelligence and had known both Philby and Elliot very well, counted them as friends. His novels were in effect efforts to rehabilitate the image of British intelligence in the Cold War after the scandals involving Philby and the others.
“Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer...”
My reference for this last bit of wisdom is, of course, “The Godfather.” The implication of the advice given by the elder Don to his heir, Michael Corleone, seemed obvious in the context of the devious chess master class being conducted by the father for his son. The warning seemed to be that friends might be as dangerous as enemies. The Don’s trusted inner circle consisted only of family, although eventually Michael sadly learns that he could not even trust his own brother.
Researching the phrase, I now find that there have been other interpretations. Some sources claim that Sun Tsu, the Chinese warrior / philosopher, wrote of the importance of knowing your enemy as well as you know your own self, and Machiavelli agreed with the advice when he wrote “The Prince,” for Italian Renaissance Dons.
The sources put a slightly different spin on the interpretation of these words. Keep your friends close because they are the ones who can be trusted. Keep a close watch on your enemies so that you will always know what they are plotting.
Whatever the twist, the ramifications of this philosophical detail are evident in the history of espionage. Friends, enemies, trust — these are the subjects of Macintyre’s book.
“A Spy Among Friends” analyzes the scandal that rocked the British and American spy communities in the 1950's when it was discovered that five high ranking officials in the British government were Soviet agents and had been turning over secrets to their KGB handlers since the 1930's.
The so-called “Cambridge Five” had been college classmates during the Great Depression when a majority of students in Britain and America ardently advocated anti-fascist, anti-Nazi, leftist, socialist and in many cases communist ideals. Some even joined the Communist Party, attended meetings, shouted, enjoyed the free spirited Bohemian atmosphere that included open minded attitude toward eccentricity and sex, including the then criminalized (but often tolerated) practice of homosexual sex.
That the radicalized students of Britain’s prestigious colleges were sons of the upper classes was not surprising. Rejection of one’s parents is a traditional part of the rebelliousness of growing independence. Every generation goes through the process of questioning and even trying to overturn the assumptions of the previous generation.
Most leave college with some ideals intact but learn to adapt to the realities of life in “the real world.” A few “drop out” and a very few dedicate themselves to undermining the Establishment. Even fewer turn to active treason. In the Viet-Nam era, protesters were wrongly accused of treason — broadly characterized as ‘lending aid and comfort to the enemy’ — but this label has been rejected by law and most of society in a democracy — except for those very few who resorted to terrorism, violent acts of sabotage and rage.
In the atmosphere of the 1930's, Soviet agents were able to recruit a few to not only espouse ideals, pay Party dues, but to become committed spies for a foreign power, to steal their government’s secrets and give them to Soviet Russia. These young men were well-placed to do the deed.
Kim Philby’s father was a famously eccentric British diplomat who served in India, later converted to Islam and became an adviser to King Ibn Saud of Saudi Arabia. He recommended his son to the British Secret Service. When asked about his son’s communist leanings, he downplayed it as a natural and normal student fling.
According to Nicholas Elliot, Philby was accepted into the Secret Service because he was “one of us.” That means he had the right family, the right education, the right name, the right friends.
Donald Maclean’s father had been an important member of Parliament. After college, Maclean worked for the Foreign Office, eventually stationed in Paris, London, Washington, Cairo. All the time he was spying for Moscow, turning over secret documents and intelligence. He began this in the critical pre-World War period, including when the Soviet Union had signed a non-aggression pact with Germany, and into the war era when they were our allies, and then the Cold War.
Anthony Burgess also settled into the Foreign Office during the war. Son of a naval officer, he was recruited to be a Soviet agent as early as 1932. Having gained a position of trust, he was able to provide the KGB with secret documents relating to NATO and the Marshall Plan. He too served in the British Embassy in Washington during the Cold War, and was privy to American secrets, which he relayed to his handlers.
Anthony Blunt was a bit older than the other Cambridge spies. He was an upper class intellectual, an art history professor who later advised the Queen on matters of art. He was a distant cousin of the royal family. He was teaching French at Cambridge when the others were students, and is suspected of being a spotter for his Soviet spy contacts, pointing out potential recruits, including Burgess and Maclean.
During the war, Blunt was one of many intellectuals brought into the British intelligence agencies. He worked in MI5, (Britain’s FBI) and was privy to secrets code-named “Ultra” which involved products from the ultra-secret Enigma machine that broke the German code. Blunt then relayed secrets to the Russians.
The fifth member of the circle is said to be John Cairncross, who relayed Bletchley Park secrets to the Soviets during the war and later, NATO secrets. Actually, there were other members of the British upper classes who betrayed their country for what they deemed to be the higher ideal expressed by the Soviet Union.
Kim Philby is the most notorious of the Cambridge spies because he was the most highly placed to do the most damage to his country. He went into MI 6, the British Secret Service, which preceded and influenced America’s OSS and later CIA. Philby befriended agents of the newly formed American spy agency while in London. These included James Jesus Angleton, who adored and tried to emulate Philby, in dress, style, alcoholism, eccentricities. Later, when Philby was sent to Washington as liaison to the CIA, Angleton was then high in the administration. Over long alcoholic lunches Angleton shared secrets, which Philby shared with the KGB.
Philby turned over secrets to his KGB handlers which resulted in the deaths of hundreds, possibly thousands, including many within the Soviet Union and other Eastern Bloc countries who had been spying for Britain and the United States. Once his treason was revealed, the harm was even greater because an extreme reaction set in, including Angleton’s obsessive and futile search for other “moles” which resulted in purging from the ranks of the CIA many experts on Russia, China, and other communist countries due to suspicion that their interest made them potential traitors. Combined with the McCarthy era paranoia, this purge left us without competent intel and analysis for a long time.
The author spends a good deal of time trying to analyze Philby’s motives. He was a complex personality, full of contradictions and flaws, of which an enormous ego and a sense that he reveled in his secret life as a spy, that he kept from everyone who thought they knew him, seem to be the most psychologically significant. He fueled his sense of his superiority to everyone because he knew something they didn’t and he was fooling them all.
But the author not only tries to answer how such a person could betray his country, his family and his friends. He is also interested in the corollary: How could he have gotten away with it, especially within a community of professional spies? After all, common sense would hold that spies would be the most cautious, most vigilant, most precise people when it comes to vetting agents, keeping secrets.
In college, Philby and the others were known to have been, at the very least, admirers of communism and the Soviet experiment, if not outright members of the Party. How could this have been shrugged off as a disqualifying point? Burgess and Blunt were flamboyant homosexuals. Why didn’t this raise a red flag about their vulnerability for blackmail, at a time when it was a crime. (Alan Turing, the mathematics and computer genius credited with code-breaking at Bletchley Park during the war, was later prosecuted for homosexual acts and hounded into suicide).
Ben Macintyre’s answer involves recounting the complex culture of the British class system, the “Old Boys Network” which valued breeding, family, and friendship. There was and still is a tradition of tolerant amusement at eccentricity and individual foibles within the upper classes of that highly structured society. Behavior, politics, and attitudes that the bourgeois would consider odd, immoral or bizarre are shrugged off as long as the person is deemed to be from an acceptable background. Homosexuality, alcoholism, infidelity, political extremism — no problem.
Then there is also the context of the times.
The restlessness of “flaming youth” between the World Wars is well documented. Evelyn Waugh wrote about the “Bright Young Things,” the wittiest, best educated of their class whose hedonistic frolics became subject of amusement for readers of columns. The disillusionment brought on by the disaster of World War I included distrust of the Establishment and patriotic marches that led to the horrors their elders had wrought and suffered. For many, the Russian Revolution seemed to exemplify an ideology (and for a few the only essential one) that had merit and vitality, especially after the rise of fascism in Italy and then in Germany and in the face of the worldwide Depression.
Now comes the looming crisis of a second war against Germany, this time fascist Germany. The best minds are needed. College radicals who have matured might be considered appropriate choices to fight this threat. And the fact is that they were competent, effective workers for the British government — as long as its interests didn’t interfere with their greater loyalty — to the Soviet Union.
Philby rose quickly in MI 6 because of his talent and brilliance. His anti-fascism was real and he fought the Germans whole-heartedly. The Soviet Union became an ally and then it was easy to justify sharing secrets with them, even if doing so violated overly strict policies of his own government. He and others even have argued that withholding secrets from an ally was “wrong.” After all, the Brits shared intel with the US, why not the USSR?
But after Germany’s defeat, his spying continued and clearly benefitted the Soviets and harmed Britain. Having been made head of counter-intelligence, he knew the names of Russians who spied for Britain and were going to defect. He told the KGB who killed them and their families. In an operation that sounds like a prequel to the Bay of Pigs fiasco in the CIA, a group of armed anti-communists were sent into Albania to try to foment a revolt there. Philby informed the KGB and they were captured and shot as soon as they landed. Another time, he provided the KGB with a list of East German Catholics who wanted to see a post war democracy instead of communism in East Germany. They were eliminated.
Eventually, defectors from the USSR and Eastern Bloc countries who were in the KGB disclosed the presence of “moles” in British secret services. Suspicion, investigation, and then the shock — Burgess and Maclean defected to Moscow. Their ties to Philby were clear and suspicion mounted. Still, he denied, withstood investigations and survived. His survival was due in no small measure to friends within MI 6, especially Nicholas Elliot, who was the strongest advocate of his innocence for years — until even he could no longer deny the obvious.
In a climax suitable to a Le Carré spy novel, Macintyre recounts taped conversations between Elliot and Philby in a hotel suite in Istambul, in which Philby admits his deception although not fully detailing his crimes. Philby is offered a deal: if he returns to England and admits his guilt fully, including a debriefing of all his actions, he will not be prosecuted. The offer is given because it would have been too embarrassing for the government to try him for his crimes. Elliot gives Philby a few days to think about it before deciding.
Instead, Philby contacts his KGB handler, who arranges to smuggle him onto a Russian ship and he shows up in Moscow, along with Burgess and Maclean. They all lived there for years and died there.
The book delves into issues about friendship that often come up in our lives, if not in the dramatic context of treason. A friend whose son passes the Bar Exam will ask if I will recommend his son or daughter to those of my friends who might hire ... or appoint ... or accelerate an application.... Why? Well I’ve known the family for ages. They’re good people....
“No man is a failure who has friends...” (Clarence, in “It’s A Wonderful Life.”)
