◆ SpookStack

ee tt “ate Arabist who. thopeb he C cate Or niddle-class back- ground, rejected its ordered virtues for the passionate, egotistic culture of the Arablan deserts, St. John Philby, Hke T. E. Lawrence, fought to free the Arab Jands from Turkish rule and later came to share the Arab pelief that Britain reneged on her promises at the end of World War 1. In 1929 Kim Philby entered Cambridge, where he met future colleagues Guy Bur- gess and Donald Maclean. Philby’s political bent was steadily teftwards. His views were expressed more in pri-- vate, although. with great conviction. Philby had traveled in Central and Eastern Europe during university vacations, and after graduation in 1933 - he went for an extended stay to Germany and Austria. It was here and then, in the early days of the Nazi ter- ror, that Philby'’s resolve was hardened, He became a determined Communist, and he was recruited as an agent. A few months after he Jeft Cambridge, Philby was giv. en his lifetime task—to pen- etrate British intelligence. Every piece of objective evi- dence available points to this period in late 1933, and is corroborated by the accounts Phitby has given to his chil- dren who have visited him in Moscow since his defec- tion from Beirut in 1963. On Feb. 23, 1934, Philby married an Austrian Jewish girl, Alice Friedmann, in Vienna. She was an avowed Communist, end now lives in East Berlin with her third husband. Philby and Alice returned to London, where he became an assistant editor on a dying liberal magazine. But Philby was to spend the next five years carefully obscur- ing his left-wing past be- heath a right-wing camou- flaze. Obviously an excellent way- to insulate oneself against charges of commu- nism was to condone Hitler's Nazi- regime, which both Philby and Burgess did by joining the Anglo-German Fellowship. Philby managed to have his picture taken at: a Swastikadecked dinner. This was in 1936, just before the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, which gave Phil-: eat another opportucity ta ais public political Pen ee nen eee eric rm nee aa t position. . Pmity went to Spatn mn February, 1037, and began reporting as a free-lance writer from the Franco side. Recenily in Moscow, Phil- by told his son John: “I ‘wouldn't have lasted a week in Spain ehaving like ascist.” He behaved The 3 Tass fact, thier? eral Franco _awarded him the Red Cross of Military Merit. The First Glimmers When the civil war ended, Philby had completed two years as an undercover Communist in Franco's camp. But was he already spying on the British? There are two bits of evidence. One is that an officer named Pedro Giro recalls that in a cafe in Salamanca a German agent passed a note to him with a warning against two men then in the cafe, According to the Ger- man, these men were Brit- ish agents. Twice subse- quently, Giro saw Philby locked in conversation with: the same two men. Another point was noticed by Sam Pope Brewer, a New York Times correspondent (whose wife, Eleanor, Phil- by was to acquire 20 years later in Beirut), At press conferences, Kim was al- ways the last questioner and the man who wanted to know just which regiment had made just which move. Perhaps at this point Phil- by, anxious to ingratiate himself with British intelli- gence men, was collecting and passing on any tidbits he could get. eo Zany Correspondent When tne British expedi- tionary force left for France to fight the Germans, Kim Philby went with them as the London Times’ No. 1 war correspondent. His colleague, Bob Cooper, thought Philby a wild, slightly drunken and rather brutal young man. Kim, it seems, was ad- dicted to a curious bar game which involved bust- ing people's knuckles. Also, asin Spain, where he had scqutterT Royalist inrstréss; a a” cow he was was rather conspicuous! ously living with a girl, this Lady Margaret "vane-Tem. pest-Stewart. — Other colleagues still saw him as slighily pro-fas- cist. He wore the Franco decoration on his uniform. The disaster of Dunkirk ‘in June, 1940, brought Phil- ‘by back ta London. At last gonditions vire-fenty for: hjscrucjal penetr. British intelligence. These conditions were no- where {better than at the house where young intelll- gence officers set. up rest- dence. Among them were Guy Burgess and a number of homosexuals, heavy drinkers and hangers-on of varying types. Philby was Immediately taken inta the department for sabotage, subversion and propaganda. His particular job was lecturing on propa- Banda leaflet technique. Philby was later transfered to a unit traming for un- armed combat behind en- emy lines, but his stammer and the fact that his work in Spain had made him known to a great many German military people made it seem suicidal to send him into occupied Europe, So in the summer of 1941 Philby was recruited for work in the Secret Intelli- gence Service. This agency, better known as MI46, was and is con- ceTned with espionage and counter-espionage in foreign countries. (M1-5, the home unit of the mythical James Bond, concerns itself with counter-espionage in Britain and the colonies). Both agen- cies had suffered a severe comtraction since the palmy days of World War I. MI-6 had escaped any basic reforms. During the 30a it had done [ts recruiting, in the tradition of the Great Game of the establishment, from the British police force in India and partly among rich, upper-class young men from London’s financial dis- be ‘trict, __fe-war-these men, often