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Bee ae toa pene ee oF ee nea atl al aay j (Mount Cilpping jn Space Below) N Ser es a oe that he vsed very firm language more than once to two of the “ geporters concerned. with the mation to the West. Names such as Oleg Penkovsky, Vladimar Petrov, Nikelal Khokhlov {licensed to kill with bullets fired from the hinge on opening ¢igarette-case}, Evgeny Runge, and Irog Gouzenko are but a few of the Soviet agents wha have betrayed their country to . the West, This catalogue is many times longer, especially if Russian diplomats, scientists and writers are added, than that sordid little collection of British traitors and defectors -—— Philby, Maclean, Burgess, Blake, Nunn May and Fuchs. . ‘ If we are to learn the lessons of the Philby case we must keep a sense of proportion, To exagrerate our mistakes could be almost as dangerous ag to cover them up. Anthony Nutling The authors reply; To deal with Mr Nutting's lesser point first: It appears that Mr Nutting has misread the reference of Philby and SIS during the Spanish Civil War. We did not write that there is “little - doubt” that Philby becama a member of SIS as carly as 1037. We wrote (p. 92): “So there seems little doubt that it was in Spain that Philby made his first careful, tentative. contacts with the intelligence spervice he was later to domin- -. fate.” Hardly the same thing. iAnd on p. 109 we say when #Phitby did join S1§.—"in ‘August, 1940, Philby became a member of Section D«of the British §1S,.” Mr Nutting’s mare secrtous point comes as a surprise in 3 : oC : Pa ie oe Et a . Pr ad - Philby inquiry. On the final , occasion he described a briefing he had received on coming to the Foreign Office after the elec- tion in October, 1951, This con- , sisted of an account of the FO position as regards Philby, over whom there had been fierce :. Jnter-departmental disputes dur- ing the summer. The reporters pressed Mr Nutting several times on the question of whether his understanding was that Philby was still employed jn the S78 in October, 1951. He registered surprise that the question should be in doubt, and concluded: “J would almost go to the stake on the fact.” - This suggestion cross-checked with another authoritative source, an official connected with S15 during the relevant years of the fifties, that is, prior te 1955. It alsa checked with a further source, a political one, familiar with the circumstances ef Mr Macmillan’s actions in 1955. It should also be noted that in this period Philby made no serious attempls to make an- other career but made several curious trips outside Britain. Mr Nutting writes, “I have. * pow checked the record and am completely satisfied that Philby was asked ta resign from S75 and did so in 1951 as was subse- quently stated in Parliament by Macmillan and Heath.” This is a strange thing to write because ‘ane of the most important points about the controversy is that neither Macmillan nor Veath said any such thing.. Heath, in 1963, elaborately avoided men- tioning anything about Philby's S15 work. Mr Nutting montions “ the records,” but in this kind of situation it is difficult to know which records he means, and _who wrote them. During our in- quiry. into the Philby affair we were given numerous conflicting assurances of what “tha re- cord” said, only to find time and time again that peeling another skin from the onion changed the picture entirely. Despite our high regard for Mr Nutting we do not fee: shaken jn our essential belief that Philby maintained some kind of SIS links during the 1950s —a version we have had from several sources. uo = a ne | ra ne Ves ete Foe SE mittee ci etme f ATs eee ee Nm ee wee mentee . ——- 7 . —~ . . . : Doel (Indicate page, name of Bewspoper, city and state.) Bate: Edition: Author? Editors Tithe: Character: orf Classifications Submitting Office: Oo Being Investigated