200. Kim Philby: Unmasking MI6’s Greatest Traitor (Ep 5)

Has the past finally caught up with MI6 officer and KGB spy Kim Philby? His best friend has been sent out to confront him - but who will win out? Listen as David and Gordon reach the penultimate episode in the wild life of MI6’s greatest traitor, Kim Philby. ------------------- Sign-up for our free newsletter where producer Becki takes you behind the scenes of the show: therestisclassified.com/newsletter ------------------- Join the Declassified Club to go deeper into the world of espionage with exclusive Q&As, interviews with top intelligence insiders, regular livestreams, ad-free listening, early access to episodes and live show tickets, and weekly deep dives into original spy stories. Members also get curated reading lists, special book discounts, prize draws, and access to our private chat community. Just go to ⁠⁠therestisclassified.com⁠ or join on Apple Podcasts. ------------------- Get a 10% discount on business PCs, printers and accessories using the code TRIC10. Visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://HP.com/CLASSIFIED⁠⁠⁠⁠ for more information. T&C's apply. ------------------- Email: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠[email protected]⁠⁠⁠ Instagram: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@restisclassified⁠ Video Editor: Joe Pettit Social Producer: Emma Jackson Assistant Producer: Alfie Rowe Producer: Becki Hills Head of History: Dom Johnson Exec Producer: Tony Pastor Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:03David McCloskey?

  For exclusive interviews, bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, first look at live show tickets, a weekly newsletter, and discounted books, join the Declassified Club at therestisclassified.com.

• 0:25David McCloskey?

  As the past finally caught up with MI6 officer and KGB spy, Kim Philby, his best friend has been sent out to Beirut to confront him. But who will win the showdown? Well, welcome to The Rest Is Classified. I'm David McCloskey.

• 0:38Gordon Corera?

  And I'm Gordon Corera.

• 0:40David McCloskey?

  And we left off last time with MI6 officer and Kim Philby's friend, Nicholas Elliot, arriving in Beirut to confront Kim in this, feels like a final bid to extract a confession from his friend about his past and about his work for Soviet intelligence. Now, Philby has been in tight spots before. He's been brought in for questioning, as we discussed in several of the episodes in the series. In London, he has dodged the law up to this point. And the question now is, will he be able to wiggle his way out of this one? We left off at the very end of the last episode

• 1:24David McCloskey?

  with the door opening to the apartment where Philby is going to meet his friend, Nick Elliot. And he has these amazingly interesting, kind of ominous words, where Philby says, "I rather thought it would be you." And we'll come back to those. But first, a word from our sponsor, HP.

• 1:49Gordon Corera?

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• 1:51David McCloskey?

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• 2:38Gordon Corera?

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• 2:56Speaker 02

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• 3:41Speaker 02

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• 4:15David McCloskey?

  So, let's set the scene.

• 4:17Gordon Corera?

  The two men shake hands. Nicholas Elliot asks about the bandage. Because remember, Kim's got this bandage on his head from the-

• 4:23David McCloskey?

  He fell into a radiator.

• 4:24Gordon Corera?

  Yeah, so it's an obvious question. They sit down. It's tea rather than booze at 4 o'clock.

• 4:30David McCloskey?

  Ominous.

• 4:31Gordon Corera?

  Ominous. Peter Lunn, who is the new MI6 station chief, taken over from Nicholas Elliot. Peter Lunn is sitting next door with headphones on, listening to the recording. Now, they are recording everything, but they've opened the window to the apartment, which means there's going to be a lot of traffic noise. And this is going to annoy some people later because it means that bits of the tape are going to be indistinct. But we know quite a lot of what was said.

• 4:56David McCloskey?

  Was that on purpose?

• 4:58Gordon Corera?

  Good question. But we do know quite a lot of what was said. And it's interesting. We've got bits of Elliot's account. We've got the official account from notes of it, which have only recently been declassified by the British government in the last kind of year or two, start of 2025. And we've got some of Philby's accounts. So this is pieced together from those different accounts. But Elliot says, "I'll get right to the point. Unfortunately, it's not very pleasant. I came to tell you that your past has caught up with you." Philby laughs. "Have you all gone mad once again? You want to start all that after all these years? You've lost your sense of humor. You'll be a laughingstock." You can see what Philby's there doing. You know, "We've been through this before. We haven't lost anything," says Elliot. "On the contrary, we found additional information about you, and it puts everything in place."

• 5:43Gordon Corera?

  What information, Philby says? What is there to put in place? Elliot stands up. He paces the room, goes to the window, looks out, and without turning, he says, "Listen, Kim, you know I was on your side all the time, from the moment there were suspicions about you. But now there is new information. They've shown it to me. And now even I am convinced, absolutely convinced, that you worked for the Soviet intelligence services. You worked for them right up until 1949."

• 6:14David McCloskey?

  Interesting date.

• 6:15Gordon Corera?

  Very interesting date.

• 6:16David McCloskey?

  Not chosen randomly.

• 6:18Gordon Corera?

  No, that, it's so interesting because we're going to get into the complexities of this conversation because there's so much to unpack. But this is already interesting. Why 1949?

• 6:28David McCloskey?

  Well, that is when Philby became head of station in Washington.

• 6:33Gordon Corera?

  Exactly. And so if he worked for the Soviets until 1949, but stopped, then he wasn't spying for them when he was in Washington, which would be quite helpful because it stops the risk of the Americans coming after him and prosecuting him and wanting to get him for spilling their secrets.

• 6:54David McCloskey?

  It also seems, on the face of it, totally implausible-

• 6:58Gordon Corera?

  Yeah.

• 6:59David McCloskey?

  -that he would have somehow stopped working for Soviet intelligence on the cusp of taking a role that would have been exceptionally valuable to them.

• 7:07Gordon Corera?

  Yeah, and it's so interesting because it's Nicholas Elliot suggesting this to Philby. "We know you stopped in 1949." And a lot of people will think this is one of many suspicious parts of this conversation. And there are many parts which people think are suspicious. And this is one of them. Because if he stopped in 49, then basically, the Americans can't try and extradite him to the United States and prosecute him there.

• 7:32David McCloskey?

  Would the Americans have tried to do that?

• 7:33Gordon Corera?

  They could have, at least in theory, have said, "Well, you know, you're not prosecuting him, but he spied while in the United States, so we want to put him on trial." So that might have made the offer that's coming of immunity more valuable if that had been the case. So already, you've got this thing because Elliot's brought this up. It's almost like Elliot is suggesting, "Wouldn't it be useful if you said you stopped in 1949?"

• 7:55David McCloskey?

  Yeah.

• 7:55Gordon Corera?

  And it's so interesting because, you know, Philby, and we've said this before, haven't we? That he's the guy who doesn't crack under pressure. He kind of holds his nerve. And in his head, he must be thinking, "Well..."

• 8:07David McCloskey?

  What do they have?

• 8:08Gordon Corera?

  What do they have?

• 8:09David McCloskey?

  They have something new, maybe, probably?

• 8:11Gordon Corera?

  But what is it?

• 8:12David McCloskey?

  He'd have to think it's a defector, right? That someone came over and pointed the finger directly at him or gave yet another piece of circumstantial evidence that gets them a bit closer.

• 8:23Gordon Corera?

  So Philby says, "Who told you this nonsense? It's totally absurd." Elliot, "Kim, if you were in my place, if you knew what I knew..." Classic line.

• 8:33David McCloskey?

  I believe we've heard that line from intelligence officers we've interviewed on this very show.

• 8:37Gordon Corera?

  "Only you knew what I knew." And he says, "I wouldn't talk to you the way you're talking to me. And how would you talk to me?" And Philby says, "Well, I'd offer you a drink instead of this lousy tea." He's like, "Why are we drinking tea?" And then again, Elliot, "Do you want me to give you my version of your work for the Russians?" It's kind of curious, isn't it? And then he says, such a weird Elliot line, "I understand you. I've been in love with two women at the same time."

• 9:04David McCloskey?

  It's an interesting starting point for the conversation.

• 9:07Gordon Corera?

  I mean, and I'm certain you were in the same situation in politics. You loved England and the Soviet Union at the same time.

• 9:14David McCloskey?

  And then again, you stopped working for them in 49.

• 9:16Gordon Corera?

  He says that again, yeah. "I'm absolutely certain of that," Elliot says. And he says, "I can understand people who worked for the Soviet Union, say, before or during the war, when of course, you know, the Soviet Union was an ally of the..." You know, so he's basically saying, "We can excuse it during the Second World War in the 30s because, you know, that we weren't enemies then. But by 1949, a man of your intellect and spirit had to see that all the rumors about Stalin's monstrous behavior were not rumors, they were the truth. You decided to break with the USSR." I mean, again, he's, it's this suggestive bit of... And Philby shrugs and says, "You came here to interrogate me, and I keep thinking I'm talking to a friend." And then Elliot explodes. "You took me in for years." Now, there's a line around here where,

• 10:01Gordon Corera?

  which Elliot recalls, but Philby never recounts when he's recalling this conversation. Perhaps it cuts a little too close to the bone, even for Philby. Because Elliot says, "I once looked up to you, Kim. My God, how I despise you now. I hope you have enough decency left to understand why." It's quite interesting, isn't it, that Philby doesn't want to recall that line?

• 10:24David McCloskey?

  Hurts too much, or...

• 10:25Gordon Corera?

  I think Philby liked his friends, even though he's betraying them, you know? In a weird way.

• 10:30David McCloskey?

  And then I find this line interesting. Elliot, after exploding...

• 10:35David McCloskey?

  Seems to kind of come back down to earth a bit and he says, I'm sure we can work something out. And then he gives Kim some options. Says, well, if you reveal everything, give us every contact, every other Soviet penetration you're aware of, every piece of information and report you passed. And then I can give you my word, and that of Dick White, who's the head of MI6 at this point, that you will get full immunity, you will be pardoned, but only if you tell it yourself.

• 11:03Gordon Corera?

  Yeah, that is the offer. And if you don't play ball, then your passport is gone. You're never going to come back to Britain. Your children are going to have to leave their schools, they're going to be disgraced. You'll be a leper. That's the word Elliot uses. And he says to him, you've got 24 hours to decide what to do. I'm going to come back. Four o'clock tomorrow. And as Philby leaves, Elliot says, I'm offering you a lifeline, Kim. And it's interesting. So, you know, that, in his mind, I think Elliot thinks it's gone quite well. Because Elliot goes to Peter Lund, who's been in the kind of room next door, listening, saying, everything's okay. Kim's broken. And he telegrams Dick

• 11:46Gordon Corera?

  White in London to say, he's going to break, he's going to break. But the question is, you know, does Philby come back?

• 11:51David McCloskey?

  Yeah, I mean, he's got a whole day he could split.

• 11:53Gordon Corera?

  Yeah.

• 11:54David McCloskey?

  But he comes back.

• 11:55Gordon Corera?

  Yeah, next day, four o'clock, he's back. This time they had brandy, bit more relaxed. He gets a proper drink. And it's interesting, because Philby starts with flattery. He says, I wouldn't have spoken to anybody else. You know, he's kind of playing into the, you know, the Nick Elliot thing. And, and when you said you believed the evidence, that really did it for me, Philby says. And he says, I've had this particular moment in mind for 28 years. And he talks for a couple of hours. And he's going to write a document, mix of truth and fiction. Basically, it suggests he worked for the Soviets from 1934 until 1946, he's going to say. And he basically says, at that point, he became disillusioned

• 12:40Gordon Corera?

  with, with communism and more of a believer in socialism. He says, he only tipped off McLean as a friend in 51. And he's had no contact with the KGB and he's got no contact with them now. And there's a kind of two-page summary, a kind of narrow admission, which he's going to sign. We'll come back to some of the strange bits of this, but some people will think it's a pretty well-written document for someone who only had 24 hours' notice to think about what he was going to admit to or not.

• 13:08David McCloskey?

  It's only two, it's only two pages.

• 13:10Gordon Corera?

  It's only two pages, but it's a well-thought-out two pages, I think. And I think the problem that he's realizing, Philby, is that Elliot wants names. You know, Elliot's going to push him for names of, of other traitors. And, and if he doesn't get those names, he's kind of saying to Philby, if we don't accept your confession is accurate and complete, then you can still be prosecuted.

• 13:33David McCloskey?

  Because again, at this point, it's probably worth reminding listeners that through defectors, Soviet defectors, MI6 knows that there is a spy ring of at least five members, two of whom have fled to Moscow, McLean and Burgess. Philby is the third, but there's at least two more. And he probably knows who they are.

• 13:56Gordon Corera?

  Exactly. And Philby says, that's why I've got to spend time thinking about it. You know, it's all or nothing. He says, I know that. But then he says, he says something interesting, which is in the farce. He says, I'll say everything within the dictates of my conscience, and without damaging anyone who matters to me. It's a strange phrase, isn't it? Because it's suggesting there's limits. It's not exactly full and complete. But Elliot still seems to believe Philby has cracked.

• 14:23David McCloskey?

  He sort of has, because this is the first time he's admitted.

• 14:27Gordon Corera?

  Being a spy.

• 14:27David McCloskey?

  To actually working for Soviet intelligence.

• 14:29Gordon Corera?

  And I think that's what's so interesting, is that Philby, Philby doesn't do what he's done before, which is deny everything, or say, I don't know. And I think that's one of the interesting things about this moment, is he does crack. He does give away things. He does partially confess, which is something he later says, never confess, you know, always bluff it out. And so you do wonder, what is Philby thinking at this moment?

• 14:54David McCloskey?

  I think it's because of Jackie.

• 14:56Gordon Corera?

  He's still tortured by these dead fox.

• 14:58David McCloskey?

  It's the fox.

• 14:59Gordon Corera?

  It's the dead fox.

• 14:59David McCloskey?

  The dead fox, the dead father.

• 15:01Gordon Corera?

  Dead father, dead fox. I mean, I guess, apart from the fox and the father, I suppose the question is, do we think he's even thinking about taking the deal?

• 15:11David McCloskey?

  Yeah.

• 15:13Gordon Corera?

  I mean, is he, is he thinking, maybe I could do this? It's strange, because he's not bluff, Elliot. He is giving something. He probably doesn't know how much they know.

• 15:23David McCloskey?

  Yeah.

• 15:24Gordon Corera?

  See, of course, Philby would never confess this later, but I do wonder if there's a bit of him which is thinking, maybe this is, you know, is this an option?

• 15:32David McCloskey?

  Yeah. I mean, he's seen the, what was it, the 42-year sentence that George Blake got?

• 15:36Gordon Corera?

  Yeah.

• 15:37David McCloskey?

  And obviously, he wants to avoid that. So this is potentially a way out. I mean, I think, though.

• 15:43Gordon Corera?

  Keep your life, you know, keep your family immunity, maybe live on in Beirut. I don't know.

• 15:47David McCloskey?

  I think what is, what's hard for me to imagine is, he's just, he's such an ideological guy.

• 15:54Gordon Corera?

  Yeah.

• 15:55David McCloskey?

  His political ideals are, I mean, he's essentially a religious zealot.

• 16:00Gordon Corera?

  Yeah.

• 16:00David McCloskey?

  For communism. You know, because the thing he can trade are two names.

• 16:05Gordon Corera?

  Yeah, at least.

• 16:06David McCloskey?

  At least, at least two.

• 16:07Gordon Corera?

  Yeah.

• 16:08David McCloskey?

  I'm skeptical that he would have ever really considered it. What it does seem like is someone who's playing for some time.

• 16:13Gordon Corera?

  Yeah.

• 16:14David McCloskey?

  And trying to work out what his options might be. But he, he can't, maybe he felt like he had to give a little bit to get this process going, to draw it out. And then he could, he could work out, as we'll see with the Soviets, what his options might be.

• 16:31Gordon Corera?

  Yeah, I think that, that is plausible, I think. I mean, Elliot, that day thinks Philby's finally broken. They agreed to dinner. And, I mean.

• 16:39David McCloskey?

  That seems bizarre.

• 16:40Gordon Corera?

  Which, you know, and, and at one meal, Elliot finds Philby unconscious and he's drunk a whole bottle of whiskey and he and Eleanor take him to bed. They meet again socially. They act in front of Eleanor as if nothing's happened, but she can see that they're both anxious. They go to the urinals and Philby hands over another document, you know, a further kind of confession.

• 16:59David McCloskey?

  Hmm.

• 16:59Gordon Corera?

  So they, they're going to keep meeting. Elliot has a list of names to put to Philby. Blunt and Cairncross are on it, who are the fourth and fifth men.

• 17:09David McCloskey?

  Hmm.

• 17:10Gordon Corera?

  But there are also some others. So there's Tim Milne, who's a current MI6 officer and an old school friend of Philby. And it's interesting, because Philby, when he's given names, tries to muddy the waters. He says, nah, nothing, you know, don't worry about Blunt, but Milne, maybe. So, you know, it's like, my old school friend, yeah, maybe you should look at him. So he's, he's, he's not being honest.

• 17:29David McCloskey?

  Well, and Milne is, is not working for the KGB.

• 17:32Gordon Corera?

  Well, he is a spy, but not a Soviet one. So I think Philby, as this process goes on, realizes, this is going to be hard, because if he's going to play this game with them, he's going to have to give people up. You can't just say, I was a spy and walk away.

• 17:48David McCloskey?

  No.

• 17:48Gordon Corera?

  They're going to kind of come at him with names, and he's going to have to decide what to do. But at this point, Elliot thinks that they've got him. We'll come back to this kind of slightly odd mystery. Elliot says he's leaving for a trip to Africa, because he's technically running Africa operations. Peter Lund's going to take over and finish the debrief with some more questions. Some would come from the Americans who are being informed. So back in London, the head of MI5, a guy called Roger Hollis, has written to Hoover at the FBI to say, there was no evidence, but that Philby had worked for the Russians after 1946. So don't worry about your secrets. But they're saying to the Americans, you know, Philby's in poor health, he's emotionally, you know, under pressure.

• 18:29Gordon Corera?

  He shouldn't be aware that the Americans are cognizant of this confession and this process, because that might, you know, kind of throw him over the edge or cause problems and might prejudice this kind of process of drawing out the confession.

• 18:42David McCloskey?

  It's a very convenient stance to take, isn't it?

• 18:44Gordon Corera?

  It's a very convenient stance, say to the Americans, like, leave it with us.

• 18:46David McCloskey?

  Leave it with us. And in fact, if you get more involved, it'll be counterproductive for both of us.

• 18:51Gordon Corera?

  Yeah, don't come storming into Beirut and, you know, kind of try and confront him, because we're handling this, say the Brits. But feel free to send any questions. If there's anything you'd like us to ask, you know, then please do send it on. But here's the problem. Philby has decided he wants out. Now, the timeline of this is interesting, because there's quite a few days of meetings. And if you read the accounts, it's unclear, including from Philby's own account and the Soviet accounts, when exactly he gives a signal to the Soviets. And I think that's interesting, because, you know, some of the accounts say it's after the very first meeting.

• 19:26David McCloskey?

  Which would be logical.

• 19:27Gordon Corera?

  Which would be logical.

• 19:28David McCloskey?

  Yeah.

• 19:28Gordon Corera?

  Although, if, on the other hand, you think maybe Philby is thinking about it, it might not be after the first meeting, it might be a bit longer. So that's why I think that detail is interesting. But at some point, very early on, Philby goes to his balcony, and he describes this actually on the tape, which club members can hear, which is Philby himself talking about this confrontation, this experience. So do join the club at therestisclassified.com if you want to hear Philby himself discussing this. But he talks about it being immediately after the first, you know, meeting with Elliot. He holds a book rather than a newspaper on his balcony. That means it's urgent. And a few hours later, he's meeting his KGB handler and explaining what's happening. Messages go back to Moscow.

• 20:11Gordon Corera?

  When they meet again, his KGB contact says, I think your time has come. There's room for you in Moscow, but it will take a few days to organise getting you out. And he will signal by walking past Philby's balcony. And if he's holding a book, it's time to go.

• 20:27David McCloskey?

  And as he's waiting, Lund, who's the MI6 station chief in Beirut, calls because remember, Nicholas Elliot's gone to Congo. So Lund says, are you, are you ready to talk to Philby? And Philby basically says, I need some more time.

• 20:43Gordon Corera?

  Yeah, yeah. He's buying time at this point. There's lots of interesting mysteries here because Philby hears from one of his contacts in the embassy that Peter Lund is going skiing for four days in the mountains. Now, this sounds very weird until you know firstly that Peter Lund is an obsessive skier who'd actually skied for Britain in the Olympics. So there's this talk that Peter Lund's going off because there's been some good snow in the mountains. We'll come back to this because it may or may not be true that Peter Lund's disappearing. But Philby supposedly is told this during this period as he's waiting to see Lund again for the kind of next stage of the confession.

• 21:25David McCloskey?

  So the crucial day is Wednesday, the 23rd of January, 1963.

• 21:31Gordon Corera?

  That's right. Kim Philby and his wife, Eleanor, they're due to go around to friends from the British Embassy for dinner. A violent storm has swept into Beirut that day. It's winter. Now, late in the afternoon, Philby takes his raincoat and tells his wife he's got a meeting and he'd be back at six o'clock, time to head for the dinner party. He goes to the bar at St George's Hotel, has a drink or three, uses the phone. He calls home. His 13-year-old son, Harry, who's staying there, you know, it's kind of holidays, answers the phone and he tells Harry to tell Eleanor that he's running late and he's going to meet her at the dinner party around eight. Eleanor goes alone to the dinner party.

• 22:13Gordon Corera?

  She apologises for her husband's lateness, promising he'd be there soon. The hours pass, gets to past nine 30, everyone's eating without him, gets later, no sign of Kim. What's happened to him? Eleanor must be quite upset at this, heads home through the storm. At midnight, she calls Peter Lund. No answer from Peter Lund. Strangely, Peter Lund has gone to the embassy already, even though it's midnight. Eleanor gets a message to Lund's wife. Eventually Lund calls. Would you like me to come round? I'd be most grateful, she says. She's worried that Philby, who's not turned up for dinner, has been in a car accident, maybe.

• 22:54Gordon Corera?

  And also, she suggests maybe he's gone for one of his lost weekends, basically a booze, you know, a boozy bender, as he sometimes did.

• 23:03David McCloskey?

  That's a romantic way to describe, to describe having 200 drinks in two days.

• 23:09Gordon Corera?

  But Lund seems calm.

• 23:10David McCloskey?

  A literal black hole of a weekend.

• 23:12Gordon Corera?

  But Lund seems calm and he says, let's wait till the morning. He cables London. The sun rises over the mountain the next day. Eleanor knows he's gone. It is their wedding anniversary. I mean.

• 23:26David McCloskey?

  Unbelievable.

• 23:27Gordon Corera?

  Unbelievable.

• 23:27David McCloskey?

  Unbelievable.

• 23:28Gordon Corera?

  Only Philby.

• 23:29David McCloskey?

  Well, so I guess this is the big question is what happened to Philby in Beirut?

• 23:35Gordon Corera?

  Yeah. And Philby sees the signal from his KGB officer that day, although it seems like the KGB officer maybe mistakenly used a newspaper rather than a book, meaning when they meet, he doesn't realise this is it and they're going. Picked up by a car with diplomatic plates, Philby is in the back, KGB man in the front. They go to the harbour at Beirut. Car pulls up alongside a Soviet freighter. He has to walk just a few steps in the open, steps on board. The captain looks tense, shakes hands with Philby. Philby goes to his cabin, there's cognac on the table. He's been given the identity of a Latvian sailor who was aboard the ship, but he was now getting very, very drunk, I think, in a Beirut bar.

• 24:17Gordon Corera?

  The ship leaves suddenly and it leaves before all the cargo has been loaded on this freighter ship. It's leaving in a hurry and the storm means it's a rough night. Now, what we know, and we only find this out much, much later, is there's a long journey. Philby eventually will arrive at Odessa, which is now Ukraine. So at first, no one has any idea what's happened to him. And it's, it's kind of interesting because you'd think if he disappears, it would be immediately news, like in Beirut. But actually, I think one of the things you realise is he's a journalist who's travelling all the time.

• 24:55David McCloskey?

  And he has lost weekends.

• 24:56Gordon Corera?

  And he has lost weekends. So I think people think, well, he's either on a bender or he's off on a story. I mean, Beirut police are kind of a bit curious about it. At one point, it seems like they wonder if Eleanor has killed him. She's trying to cover it up. There's a note about that in the archives.

• 25:12David McCloskey?

  Lord knows she'd have motive.

• 25:13Gordon Corera?

  But then Eleanor in, in Beirut starts getting hand-delivered letters. One on February the 2nd, so kind of week and a half afterwards. It's from Kim and it says, I've been called away on short notice. Tell everyone that I'm on a tour of the region. And he says, there's some money hidden in a Latin dictionary. P.S. Please destroy this as soon as you have found the cash. And the city is starting to come alive, I think, with rumours of where's Kim? But still no one's sure. A few weeks later, someone else knocks on Eleanor's door and hands over another letter from Kim. This one tells her to buy a plane ticket to London, but also more quietly to Prague and go to an alleyway in Beirut and write in white chalk the date and time of that flight

• 25:57Gordon Corera?

  to Prague and then burn the letter after reading. She instead tells Nicholas Elliot, who's now come to Beirut. For Eleanor, it, it's weird. I mean, your husband has vanished. I don't think she knew he was a spy. I mean, she takes the kids to London that summer and she's meeting with like Nicholas Elliot, she's making with head of MI6 even. And, you know, they're trying to convince her that actually, you know, he might have been a wrong hand. And they're worried that she's still a bit of a loose cannon and actually is still in love with him, which she is. And in September, she's going to get another letter from Kim. And this time, and we'll come back to her story, she's actually going to go and follow his route, but that's going to be way off in September.

• 26:40Gordon Corera?

  Interesting enough, Nicholas Elliot also gets a letter, hand-delivered, you know, like these ones to Eleanor, and it's from Kim. And this is so interesting. It says, I'm more than thankful for your friendly interventions at all times. And he suggests, this is Kim to Nicholas Elliot, who's still in MI6, that we meet on neutral ground, perhaps Helsinki or Berlin to talk. The tone of the letter is if nothing has really happened. Now, Elliot thinks this is all an attempt to kind of implicate him. And instead, of course, he goes to tell MI6. So he sends a message back and includes a great line. Put some flowers for me on poor Volkov's grave.

• 27:21Gordon Corera?

  Volkov, of course, was the defector who Philby betrayed.

• 27:26David McCloskey?

  Yeah, and led directly to his death.

• 27:28Gordon Corera?

  Yeah. But there's one more line in the letter that's really interesting from Philby to Elliot. And it says, our last transactions were so strange that I cannot help thinking that perhaps you wanted me to do a fade, a fade meaning a runner.

• 27:47David McCloskey?

  Well, and this raises an absolutely massive question, which is, did Philby really escape? Or did MI6 actually encourage him to flee? Let's take a break and we'll come back. We'll see which one it was.

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• 29:38David McCloskey?

  Well, welcome back. I mean, I think this is the big question, and it's still debated today, which is, was Philby allowed to run?

• 29:47Gordon Corera?

  Yeah. Was he allowed to run? Was he even encouraged to run? Or did he just escape from a kind of hapless Nicholas Elliot? I mean, there are so many interesting elements to this story. It is worth unpicking because it is one of the big ones in the Philby story. I mean, it's worth saying, when they learn in America, you can imagine the FBI Hoover are furious. You know, the Brits have let him get away. Angleton at the CIA, James Jesus Angleton, his friend is is shell shocked. The FBI had been informed of that in a short confession and these contacts going on. But Angleton is absolutely furious and, you know, we're going to look at the Angleton legacy in in our bonus series on mole hunts and the Philby legacy.

• 30:30Gordon Corera?

  So do sign up for the club for that because Angleton is going to burn all the memos at this point of his meetings with Philby because it's so bad. But some Americans later say, well, of course he ran. That's what we'd expect someone to do in this situation. That's what spies do when you confront them. Why didn't MI6 think that he was going to run? And the Americans seem a little bit confused about this. It's interesting as well because, I mean, there are also reports that the Americans were spying on him in Beirut at this time. I mean, there are even reports that Philby was told by one of his Soviet handlers and contacts that there was a CIA hit team in Beirut. I find that a bit implausible.

• 31:14David McCloskey?

  That seems implausible, yeah.

• 31:15Gordon Corera?

  But I can believe, I mean, he was worried, Philby, about being followed and that there were Americans around asking questions about him. So, you know,

• 31:24David McCloskey?

  That seems plausible.

• 31:25Gordon Corera?

  That seems plausible, that, you know, maybe Angleton and some of his people were were trying to keep tabs on Philby and work out what's he up to? Is he a spy? Is he going to flee? And there are definitely reports of CIA teams coming into Beirut after he flees, looking for him. In Britain officially, there's just despair, particularly at MI5. But is that really the whole story? I mean, Dick White, the head of MI6, tells Nicholas Elliot, what a shame we reopened it, just trouble. You know, which is a crazy way of describing, you know, what a shame.

• 31:59David McCloskey?

  Should have just kept him on at the observer.

• 32:00Gordon Corera?

  Yeah. I mean, that's basically what he's saying is it would have been better to not go there again with this confrontation. And some of his colleagues are going to think, ah, this is all part of the cunning MI6 master plan that he's actually been sent to Moscow. But of course,

• 32:15David McCloskey?

  Oh, implying that MI6 is still is running him.

• 32:19Gordon Corera?

  Still running him, yeah.

• 32:20David McCloskey?

  Run him into Moscow.

• 32:21Gordon Corera?

  Yeah. And, you know, the official story, of course, was that MI6, you know, tried to draw him in for immunity and it didn't work and it goes wrong. But there are lots of strange elements to this story. And it's worth just kind of exploring these briefly. I mean, people raise questions of like, why was he not under any kind of surveillance? Why does Elliot leave?

• 32:43David McCloskey?

  Yeah, I do find that odd.

• 32:45Gordon Corera?

  What's this talk about Lund going skiing? Did he really go skiing or didn't he? Some people say he's furious. Other people say he's not as panicked as you might think when he learns Philby has fled.

• 32:56David McCloskey?

  And just unpack the skiing bit. The idea there would be that Lund tells people that he's going skiing to give Philby enough time to arrange the ex-Phil with the Soviets.

• 33:08Gordon Corera?

  And so this all kind of feeds into this question of, did MI6 actually confront Philby with a view to basically saying to him, best thing for you to do is to just get out of here? Because of course, there is this dilemma for MI6 all along, which is one thing they don't want is a trial. You know, they do not want this coming out publicly because, you know, you've had all these spy scandals already. You haven't necessarily, even with a confession, you haven't necessarily got that much evidence in court. But even if you have got a confession, do you want, do you want it coming out that this MI6 officer was a spy? I mean, do you want, and do you want everyone knowing the guy the Foreign Secretary cleared

• 33:52Gordon Corera?

  a few years ago, oh, he really was a spy?

• 33:55David McCloskey?

  You definitely don't want a trial. You don't want it public. But what you absolutely do want, if you're MI6, are the additional names that he knows of other Soviet penetrations. And it, to me, I mean, I don't know what you think, but to me, that would suggest that they didn't want him to run.

• 34:15Gordon Corera?

  Yeah.

• 34:15David McCloskey?

  That the ideal scenario is one where he actually does cooperate, gets immunity, comes back to Britain, lives quietly and gives them the information that they that they need and want. That feels like the best case scenario.

• 34:31Gordon Corera?

  That is probably the best case scenario for them. I mean, it's interesting because some MI6 officers, and also Philby himself, Philby himself wonders if he'd been allowed, even encouraged to flee. I mean, so James Hannings got this very good book on Philby in Beirut, Love and Deception. And he reports that Elliot later tells someone, many years later, that he'd said to Philby, you've got 24 hours head start. Now, this is not the official line. And there were, you know, Elliot's been a bit vague on the offer of immunity. He's not not actually been that clear about what it is and how good it is.

• 35:11Gordon Corera?

  So there is one possibility, which is MI6 basically want to get rid of him.

• 35:19Gordon Corera?

  And getting him to Moscow gets him away. No difficult questions about, you know, why it's taken so long to find him, who'd covered it up. I think one view, which I think is also plausible,

• 35:32Gordon Corera?

  is that the preference would be for a full confession. As you said, that would be the dream outcome would be Philby tells everything. But if you kind of are saying to him, give us that, but if you're not going to give us that, go. I mean, it's hard to tell. And I mean, Elliot's role is very complicated. And in later years, kind of people will hint, well, Elliot was playing this game and he was encouraging him to go. And of course, some people think, you know, that's quite convenient for Elliot because it almost makes him out to be quite clever. And he was actually, all along, he was playing a clever game.

• 36:07David McCloskey?

  Yeah.

• 36:07Gordon Corera?

  Rather than,

• 36:08David McCloskey?

  Rather than essentially you failed, you got played and you lost.

• 36:12Gordon Corera?

  Yeah. And you trusted Philby and he ran out on you.

• 36:15David McCloskey?

  Yeah.

• 36:15Gordon Corera?

  So there's a bit where it's almost useful for some people, you know, for Elliot and people to suggest, ah, maybe there was a kind of subtle messaging being sent.

• 36:24David McCloskey?

  Certainly useful for MI6.

• 36:26Gordon Corera?

  Yeah.

• 36:26David McCloskey?

  Because it, again, it looks like you're playing, you know, four dimensional chess as opposed to yet another kind of ineffectual, kind of ham-fisted attempt to get this confession that just totally backfires.

• 36:39Gordon Corera?

  Yeah.

• 36:39David McCloskey?

  Do you think that it was part of the plan that he might go or that he might be encouraged to flee?

• 36:49Gordon Corera?

  I've feared on this over the years, actually. Because at first I thought, I think Elliot just got outplayed. You know, I think he was naive. I think he was the wrong person to send as Philby's friend. He's too emotionally involved and, you know, Philby knew him too well and was playing him. I do wonder whether the plan was a mix, whether whether they were kind of trying to push Philby to see what he would give up.

• 37:13David McCloskey?

  Yeah.

• 37:13Gordon Corera?

  Will he give up names? Will he, will he kind of own up to everything? And I think they realized pretty quickly that Philby isn't doing that and won't do that. And, you know, he's only going to give a partial confession according to his conscience. And so I do wonder at that point whether they go, maybe it's better you go. And you signal that to him subtly. You know, you go, off you go.

• 37:37David McCloskey?

  The other angle to this, which I find quite interesting is,

• 37:42David McCloskey?

  let's say Philby had totally cooperated. He's devastated after the death of Jackie and his father. And, and he's, he's a different man and he's not, the nerve that he had in past interrogations is gone and he confesses to everything and goes back to to Britain. If he ends up sitting in front of Arthur Martin at MI5 and he gives up other names, and if those names happen to be other officers of MI6, you end up with a situation in which MI5 might ransack the service.

• 38:19Gordon Corera?

  Yeah.

• 38:20David McCloskey?

  So if you're Nicholas Elliot,

• 38:21Gordon Corera?

  Yeah.

• 38:22David McCloskey?

  you're thinking a narrow confession and one that we continue to control the information that comes out of that, that's good. If we don't get that, maybe you go.

• 38:32Gordon Corera?

  Yeah.

• 38:33David McCloskey?

  Because it's going to create a massive political headache for us back in London.

• 38:37Gordon Corera?

  And it's interesting because you bring up Arthur Martin and there is another theory of why he runs though. And let's go back to Arthur Martin, our MI5 mole hunter, middle class mole hunter.

• 38:50David McCloskey?

  Throughout the series, you've tagged him as middle class consistently when,

• 38:55Gordon Corera?

  Well, it's a contrast, a contrast to to our upper class Philby.

• 38:59David McCloskey?

  There's no posh mole hunters.

• 39:01Gordon Corera?

  Well, there might be, but not him. So he'd been supposed to go to Beirut, of course, to confront Philby and use the evidence he'd built up. And he's annoyed because, of course, they sent Elliot instead. He wants Philby, you know, brought to book. He's so angry because even the tapes of their interrogation are not good enough. Because remember, they left the window open, deliberately or not, which drowns out. And there's this account where Martin screws up his eyes and he pounds his knees with frustration as he listens to the tape because he can't hear it all. And he says, it was no contest. He says, you know, by the end of these conversations, Elliot and Philby sounded like two rather

• 39:43Gordon Corera?

  tipsy radio announcers, BBC radio announcers, no doubt, their warm classical public school accents discussing the greatest treachery of the 20th century. So Martin now comes to think about this and think,

• 39:59Gordon Corera?

  How, how did Philby react so coolly under pressure? How did he come up with his summary of what he was going to say so well? And crucially, this line, which we flagged earlier. Philby opens the door, Elliot standing there. And he, Philby says, I rather thought it would be you. Which Martin and some others come to think is a sign that Philby knew a mole hunt had closed in on him and that Elliot had come out to interrogate him. And that at that moment, when he'd been summoned by Peter Lund to a flat, that it wasn't going to be Lund, but it was going to be someone else to interrogate him.

• 40:44Gordon Corera?

  So suddenly this, for Arthur Martin and others, raises a massive question, which is, just as Burgess and McLean had been tipped off, just before McLean's going to be interrogated.

• 40:57David McCloskey?

  Maybe Philby was tipped off too.

• 40:59Gordon Corera?

  Maybe Philby was tipped off too. Did Philby know they were coming for him? Had he had time to prepare? And Martin starts to look at this and he goes, in the past, Philby would have called their bluff of, of, of interrogators. And yet Philby confesses, or at least partially confesses. Why does he do that? When he doesn't, you know, he doesn't know about the new evidence. This isn't how he's acted before. This is out of character. You know, he seemed to have the answers already for the confrontation. The papers he hands over, he's written those very well and very kind of carefully, when he's only had 24 hours to think what he's going to confess. So suddenly there is this thought, what if there is another mole who tipped off Philby?

• 41:42David McCloskey?

  And that thought is going to be, it's a small thought, massive consequences inside British intelligence.

• 41:50Gordon Corera?

  I mean, because they will start to think, these mole hunters, well, who knew about the plan to tip off Philby? Very few people knew about it, about this plan. But amongst the people are the head and deputy head of MI5, his own bosses. And so suddenly he's thinking, hang on a sec, are they, could they be traitors? And this leads Arthur Martin and another chap called Peter Wright, who's going to work with him, to spin out of control into this mole hunt. And this question of, of who tipped off Philby? Because they think there was a tip off. I mean, there doesn't necessarily have to be for this confrontation. And, you know, that's another theme of this mole hunt series we're doing.

• 42:34Gordon Corera?

  Because, you know, Peter Wright, Arthur Martin are going to kind of dig deep into this. And it's interesting, one of the interviews we've got in this series for our club members is with a very interesting person who ghostwrote Peter Wright's book, Spy Catcher, which is all about the mole hunts that come out of Philby. And the guy who ghostwrote this book is Paul Greengrass, who is best known as a very successful Hollywood film director.

• 43:04David McCloskey?

  That's right, Bourne films.

• 43:05Gordon Corera?

  The Bourne films, United 93 and others. But who actually was originally a journalist working with Peter Wright on this question of the mole hunts that come out of Philby? And this question of whether Philby had been tipped off in Beirut in 63. So, you know, all of that spins out of control. That's, you know, something that club members will be able to listen to. So do sign up for that. But yeah, the impact of this is just enormous.

• 43:30David McCloskey?

  So Philby's gone and this information on this kind of leaks out slowly, doesn't it?

• 43:36Gordon Corera?

  Yeah, because, you know, word gets around, he's not in town. There's a brief statement from the Foreign Secretary that yes, you know, Philby has gone missing. He was a mid-ranking civil servant until 1951. And since then, he's had no access to any information. So, you know, no one still knows he's worked for MI6. So the secret of how serious this is, is actually kept. Even though he's disappeared from Beirut, there's a damage assessment done within MI6, which is, you know, at this point now he's fled, which of course has never been made public. But which I, I know people who, who know what's in it and who say, it is unbelievable, the damage assessment by Philby.

• 44:18David McCloskey?

  And you can't even imagine. I mean, he was, he was head of station in Washington.

• 44:21Gordon Corera?

  Yeah.

• 44:21David McCloskey?

  So.

• 44:22Gordon Corera?

  Yeah. What hasn't he compromised?

• 44:23David McCloskey?

  What hasn't he compromised?

• 44:25Gordon Corera?

  So, you know, but all of this at first is contained within MI6. And it's going to have this, you know, psychological impact. I mean, Stuart Mingus, the wartime head of MI6, on whose watch Philby had recruited, you know, is haunted by this. Because at one point, his son-in-law moves in to stay with Mingus. And the thin walls reveal Mingus is suffering from nightmares. And he has a recurrent theme in these nightmares, which is that there's a Russian defector who's taken up in a helicopter over the English Channel. And given the choice, talk about Philby or be chucked out of the helicopter without a parachute. And they always have to chuck him out. And he wakes up screaming.

• 45:06David McCloskey?

  That is a very specific nightmare.

• 45:08Gordon Corera?

  It's a very specific nightmare. But, you know, the, you know, this is the start of Philby haunting British intelligence. But it only comes out for the public, kind of 1967, you get the first stories.

• 45:21David McCloskey?

  Four years later.

• 45:22Gordon Corera?

  Four years later, that how serious this was, when the Sunday Times and the Observer kind of raced to tell the truth, that actually Kim Philby was not a mid-ranking civil servant, but was an MI6 officer and had been, you know, head of station in Washington, shockingly, head of Soviet counterintelligence during the war. And so, you know, at this moment, it starts to ripple out from MI6 and into the wider popular culture.

• 45:51David McCloskey?

  Yeah. And, and, you know, we've been talking, I think, a lot in this series about class and, and the kind of sense of class superiority and camaraderie that made it very hard for people like Nicholas Elliot to kind of see Philby for, for what he was. And I mean, it, it kind of, the Philby story ripples out into this conversation that's going on in Britain at the time about class and.

• 46:20Gordon Corera?

  And the establishment. And this phrase comes about partly because of Philby, of the establishment, who kind of look after themselves.

• 46:27David McCloskey?

  Is that the upper class?

• 46:28Gordon Corera?

  And that is, it's, it's more than the upper class. It's, you know, it's the people from the right schools, people in the civil service, people at the top of the institutions and who look after each other. And, you know, to some people in the kind of counterculture, which is challenging the establishment, Philby is almost a hero. And it's interesting, but you know, George Blake, who's another traitor inside MI6, he doesn't cut as deep because he was not one of us. He was not one of the establishment, even though he betrays, you know, MI6. But Philby was one of us. And there's this interesting line, Blake was a foreigner because he had a kind of foreign background. But Philby, an aggressive, upper-class enemy, was of our blood and hunted with our pack. Now, the person who wrote that was John Le Carre, you know?

• 47:11Gordon Corera?

  And, and you can see in Le Carre, you know, the influence of, of feeling like someone from within the walls of the establishment and in MI6 had betrayed. And Le Carre, I think, becomes obsessed with this idea of deceit and betrayal, exemplified by Philby.

• 47:29David McCloskey?

  Yeah. Well, and Bill Hayden, who is the, the mole.

• 47:34Gordon Corera?

  Spoiler alert.

• 47:35David McCloskey?

  Oops. Maybe we'll bleep, Becky can bleep that out. Who, Bill Hayden was the mole in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, is an upper-class, posh, public school boy.

• 47:51Gordon Corera?

  Hiding his anti-Americanism.

• 47:52David McCloskey?

  Hiding his anti-Americanism and sleeping with Smiley's wife.

• 47:58Gordon Corera?

  Yeah.

• 47:58David McCloskey?

  I mean, it's very, it's Philby.

• 48:00Gordon Corera?

  Yeah, it is Philby. And so I think, you know, this point when Philby, the Philby story starts to go public, 67, 68, is when it really starts to have an impact on popular culture and on, you know, on novels and thrillers. And that's a, you know, another one of our bonus episodes, isn't it? Is, is looking at the impact of these mole hunts on thrillers. But yes, I mean, Philby's impact begins to be enormous from that point, in the public mind, I think, from the late 60s.

• 48:27David McCloskey?

  But what of Philby himself? What lies in store for him in Moscow? Will there be a reunion with Guy Burgess? I certainly hope so. Are Kim Philby's spying days really over? And is there an even deeper secret at the heart of his story? We'll see you next time.

• 48:45Gordon Corera?

  See you next time.

• 48:53Speaker 06

  Hello, Goalhanger History listeners. This is Marina Hyde and Richard Osman from The Rest Is Entertainment.

• 48:58Speaker 07

  Hello, everybody. Every Thursday and Friday, we are reacting to the pop culture phenomenon that is The Celebrity Traitors. We'll be on YouTube and wherever you get your podcasts. And Marina and I are digging into all the castle's twists and turns, giving our expert opinion on what should happen next.

• 49:13Speaker 06

  Now, which historical figure do we think would be the greatest traitor?

• 49:17Speaker 07

  It's tempting to think of an actual traitor.

• 49:18Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 49:19Speaker 07

  A, a Guy Fawkes or a Kim Philby. But then all of those are traitors who got caught.

• 49:23Speaker 06

  Philby had a great run though.

• 49:25Speaker 07

  He did have a great run.

• 49:26Speaker 06

  I think he could probably see off, you know, Joanne.

• 49:29Speaker 07

  Yes, maybe. And probably it's sort of where he ended up in Moscow is probably roughly like where the contestants have to spend every night as well. So, so maybe there's, there's some sort of equivalent. So if you're watching Celebrity Traitors, don't forget to tune into our reaction episodes every Thursday and Friday night at 10pm.

• 49:45Speaker 06

  Find us on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 49:48Speaker 05

  Hey, Bose here. On your next track, listen for the decisions. Distortion on the bass, the vocal right up front. Every choice deliberate. With Bose, you'll hear it all. Your music deserves Bose.

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