◆ SpookStack

—. cruitment and = its PHILBY : .The recruiter | Mr Flavell’s interesting letter last lay—supeesting that the spies~Philby, Burgess and Mac- lean-MmEnT have been recruited by some Trinity Don through the Machinery of the Aposties—fails on several grounds. Apart from the fact {hat Donald Maclean was up at Trinity Hall, there is plenty of published information about - this Cambridge saciety. Your own reporters’ book, | “ Philby—the Spy Who Betrayed A Generation,” makes clear that neither Philby nor Maclean were members of it (information based, they claim, on interviews with contemporary members}, although Burress was, Several other references (Jlar- rod’s Life of Keynes, Russell's Autobiography, Hoelroyd'’s Lytton Strachey) make it equally clear that this society was not only not confined to Trinity men, but that a cardinal principle of its re- transactions was that members should both resist the received ideas of the material world in their argu- Inents, and that they should maintain a strict mutual loyalty in not using or referring to the society in their professional lives. Again, Insight’s Philby book repeats the evidence of Harrod's “Keynes ™ that prior commit- ment to Communism ruled out of consideration many bright young men who would otherwise have | PER FOIA REQUEST f been considered. Your reporters ! concur with both Cyril Connolly _ .€° The Missing Diplomats") and Tom Driberg (“ Burgess—a Por- trait with Background") in| “emphasising that Burgess felt a lasting affection for the Apostles, anduimeny of his fellow Rremboos rejurned this. te « 4 ¥ ac M9 Py ~ BIMAR20 1968 Sepieres +t ad aes Mg ace el ee Paine vee on It scems ‘unlikely, in one sp frdiserset and impulsive as Bur- fess, that he would have held the friendship of non-Communist Apostles for so long if in fact he had been a party to the society's exploitation by KGB recruiters. In any case, it is undisputed . that all three of the spies were involved with Communists and Left-wing groups in Cambridge wholly unrelated to the Apostles, Whoever recruited them, it would seem far more likely that the contaci was made in the context of avowedly political discussion and organisation than that it took : Jace within a tiny, private group either devoted to polities no ndeed, open to Philby or Maclea Yan Angell . Gibraltar BY LETTER dele ’ Rosen Mohr Bishop Casper Callahan Conrad Felt Gale Sullivan Taval Trotter Tele. Room Holmes Gandy The Washington Post Times Herald The Washington Daily News The Evening Star (Washington) The Sunday Star (Washington) Daily News (New York} Sunday News (New York) New York Post The New York Times The Sun (Baltimore) The Worker The New Leadér The Wall Street Journal The National Observer — People’s World Date Senda al ffi tt (in Ie5