A Spy Among Friends (28 page)

Philby was nervous. This would be his fourth formal interrogation. Despite Modin’s reassurances, he feared Petrov might have armed the investigators with some damning new clue. Philby had told MI6 he ‘welcomed the chance to clear his name’, but in truth he was tired, and worried. He braced himself for another flaying.

Instead, what he experienced was closer to a fireside chat than an inquisition, an interview utterly different from any that had come before. A committee of inquiry, set up by Macmillan, had formally ruled that this round of questioning should be the responsibility of MI6, not MI5. This would not be an inquisition, in the manner of Buster Milmo, but an internal review of the situation carried out by two of Philby’s former colleagues ‘who knew him well’. It seems probable that one of them was Nick Elliott.

As the conversation started, and the recording machines began to spin, MI5 officers listened with mounting fury as Philby was given the lightest possible grilling by his friends. ‘To call it an interrogation would be a travesty,’ one MI5 officer later wrote.

It was an in-house MI6 interview . . . they took him gently over familiar ground. First his communist past, then his MI6 career and his friendship with Guy Burgess. Philby stuttered and stammered and protested his innocence. But listening to the disembodied voices, the lies seemed so clear. Whenever Philby floundered, one or other of his questioners guided him to an acceptable answer. ‘Well, I suppose such and such could be an explanation.’ Philby would gratefully agree and the interview would move on.

Philby was sent home with a friendly handshake and a not-guilty verdict: ‘You may be pleased to know that we have come to a unanimous decision about your innocence’. Philby was jubilant. ‘The trail had become stale and muddy,’ he wrote. ‘The fact that I had made no attempt to escape over a long period was beginning to tell heavily in my favour.’ When Dick White read the transcripts, he was ‘livid’; the MI5 transcribers formally put on record their ‘belief that one of the questioners was prejudiced in Philby’s favour, repeatedly helping him find answers to awkward questions and never pressing questions which he failed to answer’. The Robber Barons had launched a highly effective counter-attack. But Philby was not yet safe.

Just over a week later, on Sunday 23 October 1955, the Philby family awoke to find their home surrounded by a pack of journalists in full hue and cry. That morning in New York, the
Sunday News
had run a story naming Philby as the ‘Third Man’, the ‘tipster’ who had helped the defectors to flee. This was the work of Hoover, who had leaked Philby’s name to a tame journalist, to force the British into launching a full judicial investigation. For more than four years Philby’s name had been kept out of the newspapers, despite being common knowledge on Fleet Street. Now the hunt was on. ‘The house at Crowborough was besieged,’ reported Elliott, who advised Philby to hold off the press as long as possible. If British newspapers repeated what the
Sunday News
had reported, they could be sued for libel. But Philby’s name was now in print, and everyone was talking about the Third Man. It took two days more before the dam burst.

See Notes on Chapter 12

13

The Third Man

Colonel Marcus Lipton MP, the Labour member for Brixton, was a stuffy, old-fashioned trouble-maker, who distrusted government and loathed modern music, which he believed would bring down the monarchy. ‘If pop music is going to be used to destroy our established institutions, then it must be destroyed first,’ he once declared. He specialised in asking awkward questions. No one ever accused Lipton of being subtle, but he had a firm grip on political procedure, and in particular ‘parliamentary privilege’, the ancient right of MPs to make statements in Westminster without danger of prosecution.

On Tuesday 25 October, he rose to his feet during Prime Minister’s Questions, and dropped a bombshell:

Has the Prime Minister made up his mind to cover up at all costs the dubious third man activities of Mr Harold Philby who was first secretary at the Washington embassy a little time ago, and is he determined to stifle all discussions on the very great matters which were evaded in the White Paper, which is an insult to the intelligence of the country?

This was raw meat for the press: a feeding frenzy erupted.

That afternoon, on a London Underground train heading home, Kim Philby’s eyes idly wandered to the newspaper headline on the front page of the first edition of his neighbour’s copy of the
Evening Standard
: ‘MP talks of “Dubious Third Man Activities of Mr Harold Philby”.’ The newspaper reported Lipton’s words verbatim. After more than two decades in hiding, Philby had been flushed into the open.

Back in Crowborough, Philby immediately called Nicholas Elliott.

‘My name is in the newspapers. I have to do something.’

Elliott was calm. ‘I agree with you. Certainly. But let’s think about it for a day, at least. Don’t do anything for a day, all right? I’ll call you tomorrow.’

Making a statement at this stage would only add fuel to an already raging fire, and ‘might prejudice the case’. If Marcus Lipton had new evidence implicating Philby, he would surely have passed it on to the authorities and MI5 would have acted on it. The MP was simply repeating what had already appeared in the American press, under cover of parliamentary privilege. Harold Macmillan, as the minister in charge of the Foreign Office and MI6, would have to make a statement, either supporting Philby, or damning him: since MI5 plainly lacked the evidence to prosecute, there was a good chance Philby might be exonerated. Elliott’s advice was to stand firm, say nothing, ride out the storm, and allow his friends in MI6 to go to work on his behalf.

‘We’ve decided that you naturally must respond,’ Elliott told him the next day. ‘But it should be done only when the parliamentary debates begin. Please bear up for two weeks.’

The Crowborough house presented a bizarre spectacle, with dozens of journalists camped out on the lawn. They followed Philby to the pub at lunchtime, and then trailed him back again, asking questions which he declined, most politely, to answer. The telephone rang incessantly. The
Sunday Express
posted a letter through the front door, offering £100 if Philby would take part in a public debate with Marcus Lipton. Elliott worried about the ‘additional stress for Aileen and the children’, and helped to spirit them away to stay with a relative. Philby himself took refuge with his mother in her South Kensington flat, where he disconnected the doorbell and stuffed the telephone under a pile of cushions. The press tore off the door knocker in their efforts to gain access. A journalist tried to climb in through the fire escape, terrifying the cook.

The government had promised to make a statement and hold a debate on 7 November. Elliott now set to work ensuring that when Macmillan came to speak, he would say the right thing. The man selected to brief the Foreign Secretary on this tricky issue was none other than Richard Brooman-White, Elliott’s friend from Eton and Trinity, who had helped to recruit Philby into MI6 during the war. Brooman-White had left the secret service for a career in politics, and in 1951 was elected Conservative MP for Rutherglen. Philby, Elliott and Brooman-White had been friends since 1939. When Parliament was sitting, Brooman-White lived in the top floor of Elliott’s house in Wilton Street; Elizabeth Elliott worked as his secretary; Claudia Elliott was his goddaughter; Elliott and Brooman-White even shared ownership of a racehorse. Brooman-White was the parliamentary voice of the Robber Barons, and Philby’s most vigorous defender in the House of Commons. In Philby’s words, Elliott, Brooman-White and his other allies remained ‘absolutely convinced I had been accused unfairly [and] simply could not imagine their friend could be a communist. They sincerely believed me and supported me.’

The brief Brooman-White drew up for Macmillan purported to be unbiased, but ‘leaned heavily in favour of Philby’s innocence’. There was no hard evidence, Brooman-White insisted; his former colleague had lost his job simply because of a youthful dalliance with communism and an ill-advised friendship with Guy Burgess. These views chimed with Macmillan’s own instincts. An aristocratic Old Etonian, Macmillan regarded intelligence work as faintly dirty, and the row over Philby as an unnecessary spat between MI5 and MI6. He dearly wished to avoid a scandal, let alone a trial. ‘Nothing would be worse than a lot of muckraking and innuendo,’ Macmillan told the Cabinet, just five days before Lipton launched his attack. The Foreign Secretary simply wanted this embarrassing, unseemly mess to go away.

On 7 November, Macmillan rose in the House of Commons, and made a statement that might have been written by Nicholas Elliott and Richard Brooman-White, and probably was.

Mr Philby had Communist associates during and after his university days [but] no evidence has been found to show that he was responsible for warning Burgess or Maclean. While in Government service he carried out his duties ably and conscientiously. I have no reason to conclude that Mr Philby has at any time betrayed the interests of this country, or to identify him with the so-called ‘third man’ if, indeed, there was one.

Richard Brooman-White followed up with a rousing defence of Philby – ‘a man whose name has been smeared’ – and a ferocious attack on Marcus Lipton as a McCarthyite witch-hunter, too cowardly to repeat his allegations outside the House of Commons and face the legal consequences.

He [Lipton] is in favour of acting on suspicion, of smearing on suspicion, by directing public suspicion on to an individual against whom nothing at all has been proved. We must leave it to his own conscience to straighten out what that may cost in personal suffering to the wife, children and friends of the person involved. The only thing that has been proved against Mr Philby is that he had Burgess staying with him and he had certain Communist friends. He may not have been very wise in his choice of friends, but what honourable member of this House could say that all his friends were people against whom no shadow of suspicion could ever be cast?

From the Labour benches came grumbling claims of another whitewash. ‘Whoever is covering up whom and on what pretext, whether because of the membership of a circle or a club, or because of good fellowship or whatever it may be, they must think again and think quickly,’ declared Frank Tomney MP, a tough northerner.

Lipton tried to fight back. ‘I will not be gagged by anybody in this House or outside in the performance of my duty,’ he blustered. ‘Say it outside!’ chorused the Tories. Lipton limply responded: ‘Even Mr Philby has not asked for it to be repeated outside.’ He then sat down, visibly sagging.

Philby now went in for the kill. Elliott had tipped him off that he would be cleared by Macmillan, but mere exoneration was not enough: he needed Lipton to retract his allegations, publicly, humiliatingly and quickly. After a telephone consultation with Elliott, he instructed his mother to inform all callers that he would be holding a press conference in Dora’s Drayton Gardens flat the next morning.

_*

When Philby opened the door a few minutes before 11 a.m. on 8 November, he was greeted with gratifying proof of his new celebrity. The stairwell was packed with journalists from the world’s press. ‘Jesus Christ!’ he said. ‘Do come in.’ Philby had prepared carefully. Freshly shaved and neatly barbered, he wore a well-cut pinstriped suit, a sober and authoritative tie, and his most charming smile. The journalists trooped into his mother’s sitting room, where they packed themselves around the walls. Camera flashes popped. In a conspicuous (and calculated) act of old world gallantry, Philby asked a journalist sitting in an armchair if he would mind giving up his seat to a lady journalist forced to stand in the doorway. The man leapt to his feet. The television cameras rolled.

What followed was a dramatic tour de force, a display of cool public dishonesty that few politicians or lawyers could match. There was no trace of a stammer, no hint of nerves or embarrassment. Philby looked the world in the eye with a steady gaze, and lied his head off. Footage of Philby’s famous press conference is still used as a training tool by MI6, a master class in mendacity.

Philby first read a prepared statement, explaining that he had not spoken out before because, having signed the Official Secrets Act, he could not legally disclose information derived from his position as a government official. ‘The efficiency of our security services can only be reduced by publicity given to their organisation, personnel and techniques,’ he intoned, sounding exactly like a Whitehall mandarin upholding the ancient rules of British secrecy. Edwin Newman, an American journalist with NBC, was delegated to ask the questions:

If there was a third man, were you in fact the third man?

No, I was not.

Do you think there was one?

No comment.

Mr Philby, you yourself were asked to resign from the Foreign Office a few months after Burgess and Maclean disappeared. The Foreign Secretary said in the past you had communist associations. That is why you were asked to resign?

I was asked to resign because of an imprudent association.