◆ SpookStack

“the carginal principles of espionage. : Many of my best friends Were-tpies | —but spies in their own countries’ interest, { - — : While fthe public at large was: stunned by the news, the authorities | were clainming up. But portentous questions remained. Could this highly respected member of MI6 really have| been a Communist agent at the : ! 1 time? If so, for how long? What about security? How did he get away with it in 1951, when the C.LA. and he F.B.I, as well as his own service were hot on his trail? Finally, what inspired a cultivated member of the British upper classes to do this bru- tally disruptive thing? It all made James Bond look like a miiksop and his exploits like small beer. i As with all of us, Kim's parents, and‘ upbringing provide some clues. His father, St. John Philby, a scholar of a top British school, Westminster,| and of Cambridge University, as Kim! was also, began life as a conventional member of the Indian Civil Service. | Kim was born in India in 1912. But) St. John became decidedly eccentric: as time went on, When E first met ‘him in Cairo in 1946 he had become the personal adviser of King Ibn Saud and a Moslem. He had been briefly ' interned in Britain during the war on grounds of doubtful loyalty, and lived by preference in Saudi Arabia. His’ normal-looking English wife told me: -that she was quite happy,to put on the_ veil “erid—iye_in the harem I heard qld St. John tell hig son that he must a carry through to the bitter end whatever he thought right. Kim has certainly done that, and sur- passed his father in outrageousneéss into the bargain, I WAS at Cambridge in the early thirties with Philby, Maclean and. Burgess—what a mob!—though F met them only when I was a diplomat in ater ycurs and then only casually. Looking back, I can see, with an effort, how the atmosphere at: the university could lead to pro-Commu- nism amotg some intellectuals. Brit- ish society then_was stuffy and con- servatjve.. The ruling Tory party was - both pompous and ineffectiththe* Labor party just plain ineffectual. Hitler had appeared and no one was doing anything about him. War was on the way and only the Communists seemed really interested in averting it. Consequently, a good few intel- lectuals Wabneate the extreme left, without, of coprse, troubling to see how far real conditions in the Soviet Union justified their idealistic hopes. Few turned toward the United States because, again out of ignorance, they tended to consider it remote from European affairs, brash and over-rich. ; Most of these men, having “gone: Communist" in greater or’ lesser degree, had the good sense to turn away apain, but not Philby. He be- ,came not merely a Communist but a carefully controlled Communist in- -telligence agent in 1933, while stil at Cambridge. Thus, from the age of 21, his life was wholly dedicated to two things: passing on to his Moscow ‘masters as much valuable information as possible about Britain and the United States, and decéiving his friends and colleagues in doing so. It ic difficult ta savy which gave him Ai iS CMIICull {0 SRY Which gave mum more pleasure. In other words, for 30 long years, Philby lived a lie every nforment-of the day and night. Ye _mar-, _ ried four wives; he produced five children; he had plenty of mistresses, he drank like a fish. He was handsome, soci- ally easy. The only outward, sign of strain was a stam- mer, which varied in intensity and which some girls found attractive. In all this career of duplicity, he slipped only three times, and in different ways he got away with it each, time. ; Panes tit anigment HILBY’S first assignment. after Cambridge was, typical-: ly, to appear to be a pro-Nazi. He went into journalism and, : like many British enthusiasts, | rushed off to cover the Civil: War in Spain, but with a aif ference from most of his. a DONALD MACLEAN—He, Burgess and Philby were all together at Cambridge in the early thirties before going to work for Moscow—in the British Government. —T . ae _