196. Kim Philby: A KGB Spy in Washington (Ep 1)

The greatest traitor MI6 has ever seen - a Soviet mole at the heart of the British Secret Service. Kim Philby is now heading to Washington but can he keep his cool as the net begins to close around him? Listen as David and Gordon begin the final instalment in their journey into the extraordinarily treacherous life of 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. ------------------- EXCLUSIVE NordVPN Deal ➼ https://nordvpn.com/restisclassified Upgrade your online protection with an all-in-one security app! It’s risk free with NordVPN’s 30-day money-back guarantee 🌍 ------------------- 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.

• 0:19Gordon Corera?

  Philby is born in 1912 in a bungalow in India's Punjab. His real name is Harold, but he's nicknamed Kim after the Rudyard Kipling novel, in which an orphaned boy blends in anywhere and becomes part of the great game of spies. How apt. His father is Sinjin Philby, a bizarre character, explorer, Arabist, advisor to the founder of Saudi Arabia, a man who crosses the empty quarter by camel, converts to Islam and spends most of his son's childhood thousands of miles away. Now, young Kim is a quiet boy at Westminster School, bookish, not many friends, a bad stammer.

• 1:00Gordon Corera?

  As his oldest friend, Tim Milne, puts it, he's a rebel looking for a cause. And he finds his cause at Cambridge University. He arrives in 1929. It's the year of the Wall Street Crash. Capitalism looks finished. The Labour Party looks broken. And when he travels Europe, he thinks he sees what's coming fascism. He sees a Nazi torch-like rally in Munich, Hitler speaking. He's on a balcony in Berlin in 1933, watching a parade. And so the young Philby makes a decision, alone in an armchair in his Cambridge room in the summer of 1933. Communism was calling. Next, he heads to Vienna, where there's street fighting, artillery

• 1:44Gordon Corera?

  shelling, workers housing blocks, a thousand are killed. And he meets Litsi, a communist, two years older, already divorced. They marry within days and he gets her out of the country on his British passport. He will tell people he did it purely to help her, to protect her. But almost nobody believes him. He was smitten. Back in London, a friend of Litsi takes him on a two-hour walk, taxi, tube, bus, and leaves him on a bench in Regent's Park, next to an Austrian called Arnold Deutsch, who invites Philby to secretly work for the cause of international communism. He's given the codename Sonny. One of his first missions is to spy on his own father.

• 2:26Gordon Corera?

  His second is to write a list of his friends from Cambridge, the serious Donald Maclean, the wild Guy Burgess, as well as others. The Cambridge spy ring is born. And then a slow march to the centre of power. Litsi and his outward communism are abandoned. Off to Spain as a correspondent for The Times, there's a bizarre mission to try and kill the nationalist leader Franco. But there's a shrapnel wound which nearly kills Philby and he becomes a hero and gets a medal from Franco. Back home, it takes some lunches, a bit of help from his friends and family. And as the Second World War

• 3:06Gordon Corera?

  starts, Kim Philby is inside the British Secret Service, MI6. By 1944, he's in a complicated relationship with a woman called Aileen, but he's a rising star within MI6, overseeing intelligence operations against the Soviet Union, whilst all the time secretly feeding secrets back to Moscow. But Moscow at times doesn't even trust him. They think he's a plant by the British. And when a defector in Istanbul threatens to give him away, Philby's position means he can make sure the man is dealt with first, tipping off the Soviets and ensuring the man is spirited away on a stretcher wrapped in bandages.

• 3:48Gordon Corera?

  And we left him with news of a promotion. He's to be the head of station in Washington, liaison with the newly formed CIA. He's just 37 years old and tipped to run potentially the Secret Service one day. He is at the absolute heart of the Cold War. And this is where it starts to come apart.

• 4:17David McCloskey?

  The greatest traitor that MI6 has ever seen, a Soviet mole at the heart of the British Secret Service. Kim Philby is heading to Washington, but can he keep his cool as the net closes around him? Well, welcome to The Rest Is Classified. I'm David McCloskey.

• 4:35Gordon Corera?

  And I'm Gordon Carrera.

• 4:37David McCloskey?

  And welcome. In this series, we are going to look at a time when Kim Philby reaches the peak of his powers and influence. We're going to look at how mole hunts inside the Secret Service eventually take him down. But how long can he stay ahead of the people who suspect him?

• 4:57Gordon Corera?

  That's right. We're going to come to the dramatic conclusion of the Kim Philby story, his rise, but also his fall, and all the people he betrayed along the way. But first, a word from our sponsors at HP.

• 5:13Gordon Corera?

  This episode is brought to you by HP.

• 5:16David McCloskey?

  In intelligence, you quickly learn that you are only as strong as the network around you. It's rarely a single major event that undermines an operation. It's the gaps between systems. That's where information leaks.

• 5:28Gordon Corera?

  It's the same in business. Leaders face a constant battle against strict timelines, mismatched tools, and the worry their security isn't as tight as they think it is.

• 5:39David McCloskey?

  Which is why HP approaches technology not as a collection of gadgets, but as an integrated system.

• 5:44Gordon Corera?

  And crucially, that protection is built in at hardware level. It runs quietly in the background, blocking threats without requiring constant specialist oversight.

• 5:55David McCloskey?

  With a team of business advisors, HP helps businesses of all sizes find technology that fits their needs and budget.

• 6:02Gordon Corera?

  To see how HP helps businesses work securely and productively, visit hp.com/classified. Trick listeners also benefit from 10% off HP Business Technology with the code TRICK10.

• 6:20Gordon Corera?

  This episode is brought to you by Wise. It's only when you start moving money between currencies that you really think about the exchange rate, the fee, and what might be hidden away in the small print. Whether you're living abroad, paying someone overseas, or just trying to manage your money across borders, you want a fair exchange rate, an easy transfer and no surprises along the way. Wise keeps things simple. Wise is a smart way to move the currencies you need around the globe. It works in more than 160 countries and with over 40 currencies. Most transfers arrive instantly. Wise uses the mid-market exchange rate, like the one you see on Google, with no markups or hidden fees.

• 7:01Gordon Corera?

  So when money needs to move, you can see the rate, know the fee and get on with it. Join millions saving billions on hidden fees by downloading the Wise app today. Be smart. Get wise. T's and C's apply.

• 7:14Speaker 02

  Are you looking for support in your weight management journey? Zepbound terzepatide may be able to help. Zepbound is a prescription medicine used with a reduced calorie diet and increased physical activity to help adults with obesity, or some adults with overweight who also have weight-related medical problems to lose excess body weight and keep the weight off. Zepbound is approved as a 2.5, 5, 7.5, 10, 12.5 or 15-milligram injection. Zepbound contains terzepatide and should not be used with other terzepatide-containing products or any GLP-1 receptor agonist medicines. It is not known if Zepbound is safe and effective for use in children. Don't share needles or pens or reuse needles. Don't take if allergic to it.

• 7:58Speaker 02

  Or if you or someone in your family had medullary thyroid cancer, or if you've had multiple endocrine neoplasia syndrome type 2. Tell your doctor if you get a lump or swelling in your neck. Stop Zepbound and call your doctor if you have severe stomach pain or a serious allergic reaction. Severe side effects may include inflamed pancreas or gallbladder problems. Tell your doctor if you experience vision changes before scheduled procedures with anesthesia. If you're nursing, pregnant, plan to be, or taking birth control pills. Taking Zepbound with a sulphonal urea or insulin may cause low blood sugar. Side effects include nausea, diarrhea and vomiting, which can cause dehydration and worsen kidney problems. Talk to your doctor. Call 1-800-545-5979 or visit zepbound.lily.com.

• 8:45David McCloskey?

  So he's been summoned back to MI6 headquarters and told that he is going to be promoted. And it's, it's not just any job, but it is to one of the most important jobs in the service. He is told he is going to be the MI6 head of station in Washington, liaising with the newly formed CIA.

• 9:05Gordon Corera?

  So he doesn't even ask his Moscow handlers whether or not to take the job, because he just knows how good it is. It takes him just half an hour to say yes, because he knows this job will take him to the heart of the action at the start of the Cold War. He is just 37 years old. Now, before he goes to America, he's going to spend a whole month inside MI6 headquarters, which is then at Broadway Buildings near St. James's Park, Buckingham Palace, being briefed on pretty much everything that MI6 is up to, which is pretty useful.

• 9:38David McCloskey?

  It's helpful for his Soviet handlers to

• 9:39Gordon Corera?

  Pretty helpful.

• 9:40David McCloskey?

  Understand that.

• 9:41Gordon Corera?

  Because the Cold War is just getting going. And we'll look at some of the specific operations in a minute. But also during this time, and he talks about this later, is he gets all the gossip from MI6 because everyone wants to see him. They all have something that they want help with. Maybe they want Washington's help with. There's something they want to complain about. And there's also, I find it's quite interesting. There's a bit more of a selfish desire from all these MI6 officers. Because he notes that over port and coffee, they're all basically saying, can you invite me out to stay in Washington? You know, can I come out and visit you? Because they all want to go to Washington. But it's also while he's back in this period, September 1949, you also get this sense that the Cold War is, is really picking up steam. Because it's that month that Western intelligence confirms that the Soviets

• 10:26Gordon Corera?

  have just tested their own atom bomb. And that is a disaster for the West because they thought they had the advantage with having their own bomb and the Soviets not having one. And there is this question, which is, how have they got it much faster than anyone? One realise, why have the Soviets made this leap forward quickly? And that's going to be something that becomes one of the key questions for Philby.

• 10:49David McCloskey?

  We talked about that a little bit in the series we did a while back now on Klaus Fuchs.

• 10:54Gordon Corera?

  Who we'll come back to in this.

• 10:55David McCloskey?

  Who we'll come back to and how it is truly astonishing at just how penetrated the Western sort of military industrial establishment was by Soviet intelligence in this period.

• 11:06Gordon Corera?

  And they are just learning this because there's one briefing which Philby gets during this month, which causes him real anxiety and it's on counterintelligence. So what the Soviet intelligence services have done against the West. And it comes from an MI6 officer called Morris Oldfield, who later becomes Chief of MI6. And he's going to reveal to Philby that they are investigating a series of penetrations into the West. So a joint US, UK investigation has suggested a couple of things. One is that there'd been a leakage from the British Embassy in Washington, 1944 to 45. And another, that there'd been a leakage from the atomic energy establishment at Los Alamos,

• 11:49Gordon Corera?

  where the American atom bomb had been developed. So the details are so far fragmentary, Oldfield is saying, but this is something that you, Kim Philby and Washington, are going to need to keep your eye on. We don't have the answers yet, he's saying, but keep an eye on it.

• 12:02David McCloskey?

  And Philby's like, I might have the answer.

• 12:04Gordon Corera?

  Yes, I might be able to help with that. So it's interesting because Philby immediately suspects the name of the Washington mole of those two. Because he goes to the MI6 library and he checks who was in Washington at the time. And he recognizes a name because one of the people in Washington, in the embassy, 1944 to 45, was Donald McLean, one of the other Cambridge students who he'd suggested to the KGB that they should recruit him. So he, he immediately realizes, well, this, I know who this is, they don't in British counterintelligence, but I do. So Philby thinks at this point, I'd better tell the Russians. So he goes to a cinema, sits near the back, leaves before the film is over, heads to a cafe,

• 12:48Gordon Corera?

  sees his Russian handler and says, you know, there is an investigation going on and they agree. This is something to keep an eye on.

• 12:55David McCloskey?

  It's kind of astounding that he's able to meet in a cafe with his Russian handler.

• 13:02Gordon Corera?

  Yeah.

• 13:03David McCloskey?

  But, I mean, in London, kind of.

• 13:05Gordon Corera?

  Yeah.

• 13:06David McCloskey?

  Obviously, obviously discreetly.

• 13:08Gordon Corera?

  Yeah, he's done his counter surveillance routes. Then his last call before he heads to Washington is with the chief of MI6, Stuart Mingus. And the chief, you know.

• 13:17David McCloskey?

  That's, that's pronounced Mingus. We talked about this in the last series.

• 13:21Gordon Corera?

  Yeah.

• 13:22David McCloskey?

  These pronunciations.

• 13:23Gordon Corera?

  I'm sorry, David, but we'll get into trouble if we call it Menzies. And so the chief Mingus shares his stories of dealing with the Americans, you know, during the war and, you know, how to do it. And his advice to Philby is keep on the right side of J Edgar Hoover.

• 13:38David McCloskey?

  Good advice.

• 13:38Gordon Corera?

  FBI, very good advice, but also build contacts with this new organisation, the CIA. So it's interesting because Mingus certainly sees Philby as one of the rising stars. And it's thought that Mingus has this plan, which is, you know, the next chief is going to be his number two, John Sinclair, then another guy, Jack Easton, and then after him, so kind of third in line, maybe Philby's going to become chief. That's what they think. So with all these briefings undertaken, October 49, Philby is off.

• 14:11David McCloskey?

  So he heads to New York and he goes, of course, by ship. And, and in classic, I guess, Philby style, he's boozing pretty heavily along the way. He enjoys a crate of champagne on his journeys that had been delivered to his cabin by Victor Rothschild, who was a rich friend of his. And he's actually greeted in New York, isn't he, by the FBI?

• 14:33Gordon Corera?

  Yeah, the FBI, an FBI representative comes out in a pilot's launch to, to meet him as he's coming off the boat. It's one of those weird details. Philby gives the FBI guy a glass of Tio Pepe, which I didn't know what this was.

• 14:48David McCloskey?

  I don't, I know.

• 14:49Gordon Corera?

  I had to, I had to look it up, but it's a very fine sherry with notes of savoury almond.

• 14:57David McCloskey?

  Continues the, the tradition inside the special relationship of offering the other party sherry when they arrive.

• 15:03Gordon Corera?

  Yeah.

• 15:04David McCloskey?

  As it happened at Let's Live.

• 15:05Gordon Corera?

  Let's Live Park, yeah, which we talked about in our series there. It's funny, Philby says, the FBI man sips it unhappily because the Thebes, it turns out, aren't sherry drinkers. They're more, I think they're more whiskey guys.

• 15:16David McCloskey?

  They're whiskey guys. Yeah, these are, these are, you know, muscular, red-blooded Americans. They're not, they're not drinking sherry, sipping on sherry.

• 15:24Gordon Corera?

  Whereas Philby says, unlike the cosmopolitan CIA types, who he says would discuss absinthe and serve burgundy above room temperature.

• 15:32David McCloskey?

  Does that make you cosmopolitan?

• 15:34Gordon Corera?

  I don't know, but I think compared to the Thebes, that's clearly how it feels in 49. And there's this detail, he goes to a hotel in New York overlooking Central Park. He gazes out of the 25th floor window and he feels sick and breaks into a sweat. He doesn't like heights, but this is a man who has been walking a tightrope of deceit for years now. And the strain is growing and it's going to get even more intense in the coming months. Next day, Penn Station, he boards a train for Washington DC.

• 16:04David McCloskey?

  And he's going to become what is called in the service H Washington.

• 16:08Gordon Corera?

  Head of.

• 16:08David McCloskey?

  Head of Station Washington.

• 16:10Gordon Corera?

  Yeah.

• 16:10David McCloskey?

  I think there's an interesting compare and contrast with the, the US, UK intelligence and in particular the human relationship today. Because my understanding is that today, most of it is run out of London. So the CIA's station in London is kind of the beating heart of the transaction between CIA and SIS or MI6. Whereas it feels in the late 40s, it's actually the opposite. That Washington is where a lot of the commerce is happening inside that relationship. So it feels like the role Philby is taking is essentially the intelligence manager of the global partnership between the CIA and MI6.

• 16:53Gordon Corera?

  Yeah.

• 16:54David McCloskey?

  And it's, and I guess it's, it's happening at a time where CIA is two years old.

• 16:59Gordon Corera?

  Yeah, it's brand new, isn't it?

• 17:01David McCloskey?

  It's brand new. It's brand new. It is, I think it is worth talking, maybe setting up the CIA in this period a little bit because this is a CIA that is, that has not yet undertaken the covert action splurge of the 1950s. It's a very male, pale and Yale group of largely guys who, you know, many of whom were OSS veterans, Office of Strategic Services veterans during the Second World War, many serious Anglophiles.

• 17:30Gordon Corera?

  Yeah.

• 17:31David McCloskey?

  As a result, because most of them spent time in London, learning from the Brits. It's also, I mean, this is, this is pre Langley. So Langley isn't even open yet, doesn't open until 1961. So the CIA and kind of a sign of, I think, how embryonic it is, is kind of scattered around this shabby collection of buildings in Washington DC. I mean, they're so bad that it's, you know, they smell of like wet paper, they're damp, the heating doesn't work because they've just been shoved into these kind of temporary accommodations. It's, it's all new. I mean, it's, it's not even, it's not even really a coherent organisation yet.

• 18:05Gordon Corera?

  Yeah. And it's interesting because I think the Brits see themselves almost as like big brothers and the teachers to the new kids, the CIA, about how to play this spy game. Because the Brits have been doing it for decades, including against the Russians. And so there's this interesting dynamic and Philby is going to meet with a lot of top FBI and CIA officials. Official records show he visits CIA headquarters 113 times. So that gives you, you know, in a couple of years, so he's in and out of there almost every day. Alan Dulles, future director, will become.

• 18:40David McCloskey?

  Friend of the pod.

• 18:41Gordon Corera?

  Will become one of his good friends, got lunches with him. He's got a pass which allows him to wander around at will CIA and FBI headquarters. And he makes a point of going to Dulles's office at the end of the afternoon for a kind of gossip and a chat. So that then we can just go for a drink afterwards, come on and talk more.

• 19:01David McCloskey?

  Maybe this is Dulles's office where he had the anteroom off of it, where he supposedly had sex with the Queen of Greece.

• 19:06Gordon Corera?

  I don't think that's the same office, but it could be.

• 19:08David McCloskey?

  Could be a different office.

• 19:09Gordon Corera?

  Could be a different office.

• 19:10David McCloskey?

  Yeah.

• 19:11Gordon Corera?

  But Philby was a great charmer. James Macaga, one of the CIA officers at the time, says, you know, he came to us with an enormous reputation. He was known as a young Turk and the American bureaucracy admired that kind of thing. He's got a big house, 4100 Nebraska Avenue, lots of late night parties, we're going to come back to that. Lots of booze, pitchers of martini, bottles of whiskey. Macaga says, you know, the, the parties were long and very, very wet. We really were all afloat on a sea of drink. So he is kind of socializing as well with the American spies and, you know, trying to get the gossip from them. And although interestingly enough, he'd been warned by his predecessor that Hoover and the FBI also bugged his house.

• 19:54Gordon Corera?

  But so there's a kind of, you know, it's like, have a drink, but also be aware you're being bugged. But these relationships are going to be really important for Philby's story. But actually, I think in some ways for the story of the whole of the Cold War. Because some of these relationships he builds are going to have massive repercussions.

• 20:12David McCloskey?

  And one of the most important relationships that he will build in Washington is with a very interesting and shadowy figure who is going to be absolutely critical to the creation and formation of the modern CIA, and that is James Jesus Angleton. Angleton, where to even start with this guy? I mean, at some point, and we've, I think we've talked about this from, I mean, really the early days of the show, that we will do an Angleton series because he is himself an extraordinary character. But he's this kind of brooding, wiry guy who's got thick glasses.

• 20:49David McCloskey?

  He grows orchids. He ties his own fly fishing flies and lures. He studies poetry. He is, he's kind of cadaverous, I think, in his looks. And again, serious Anglophile, because he'd actually been educated, I think, at Malvern.

• 21:08Gordon Corera?

  Yeah.

• 21:09David McCloskey?

  In England and at Yale, of course. He'd known Philby during the war in London and I think in Rome as well, where Angleton had been stationed. So he's, he's kind of, in some ways, I think, looks up to Philby and looks up to the Brits as the big brother.

• 21:26Gordon Corera?

  Yeah, he'd worked on the double cross system with Philby and others in London during the war, where there were German agents coming in and turning them back against the Nazis. And it will teach him the ways of counterintelligence, also deception, and what can be done. And it will also make him think of Philby as something of a mentor. So when Philby comes back to Washington, and actually, there's some evidence that Angleton might have pushed for Philby to get that appointment because he was so keen on his friends coming to Washington. The friendship inevitably deepens. You know, they drink martinis, they eat lobster at Harvey's Restaurant, best in town, every week. Although I noticed that, I was reading about Harvey's, ladies had

• 22:08Gordon Corera?

  to enter by a separate entrance and were not allowed in the main dining room at Harvey's during the time. And this is, this is old school. They're going to dine all the time and lunch. Philby goes to Angleton's house for Thanksgiving dinner, you know, and he notes that Angleton seems to eat enormous amount and yet be this really thin guy. And Philby, like I think a lot of Brits who goes to America, realizes he's going to need to go on a diet because.

• 22:31David McCloskey?

  Does that happen to Brits who go to the States?

• 22:33Gordon Corera?

  I've done it. When I've gone over there, you're like, quite quickly go, I can't, I can't continue my previous eating habits here. So the two men, friends, talk about intelligence, treated as a gossip. One of the interesting facts, though, is, so they're gossiping together as friends, but then Angleton goes back to his office and writes everything up as notes.

• 22:52David McCloskey?

  That makes sense.

• 22:52Gordon Corera?

  Yeah. So he keeps notes on his conversations with Philby. Philby, of course, is doing the same, but the difference is Philby's notes are also going to Moscow as well as to MI6.

• 23:03David McCloskey?

  So there's, there's, there's three governments that are learning a lot from these lunches.

• 23:08David McCloskey?

  I, I found a very interesting phrase when I was researching London Station, which was deep chat. And the, the concept is basically you're not working each other to recruit.

• 23:19Gordon Corera?

  Yeah.

• 23:20David McCloskey?

  But you might be sharing things that are slightly beyond your brief in kind of a mutually beneficial way. And it's, it's deep chat. It's a kind of slightly liaison plus kind of conversation where it's not, you know, money's not changing hands or anything like that.

• 23:37Gordon Corera?

  You're trading information, inside gossip about people, about what's going on, about who's up and who's down. That's what Philby was doing and was good at. And Angleton is going to become a great friend and protector of Philby, even though there are warning signs in this period. So one day Ted Colick, who's a visiting Israeli official, and Angleton deals with the Israelis a lot, bumps into Philby in the CIA headquarters. And afterwards, Ted Colick, this Israeli, goes to Angleton. He says, what is Philby doing walking around CIA headquarters? And Angleton goes, well, Kim's a very good friend of ours. And Colick goes, well, I was at his wedding in 1934 in Austria to a communist. And he goes, maybe you shouldn't

• 24:19Gordon Corera?

  trust him. But Angleton kind of ignores it because, you know, this guy's his friend and he trusts him.

• 24:25David McCloskey?

  This was, just to remind listeners, this was the root of your sympathies for the young Philby throughout our prior series, which was that he had a sort of youthful.

• 24:35Gordon Corera?

  Dalliance.

• 24:35David McCloskey?

  Dalliance with communists.

• 24:37Gordon Corera?

  Romantic dalliance with Lizzie Friedman, which draws him in through this wonderful romance, admittedly into being a communist agent who then betrays his country and his friends and secrets. But yes.

• 24:46David McCloskey?

  Everyone at Cambridge in the early 30s was basically a communist, right?

• 24:51Gordon Corera?

  Now, that is actually true. I mean, not quite literally all of them, but that's one of the problems.

• 24:56David McCloskey?

  Just like today.

• 24:58Gordon Corera?

  Not like today. So actually, maybe. But I think part of the problem was because so many people have been communists in the early 30s.

• 25:06David McCloskey?

  Exactly.

• 25:06Gordon Corera?

  Driven by anti fascism and the depression, all these other things going around. The fact that someone had been a communist in the early 30s doesn't quite count against them in the way you'd think. Because it kind of goes, everyone went through a phase, everyone goes through that kind of communist phase in the 30s. So it doesn't quite land some of these warnings in a way that I think, looking back, we're like, oh, well, that's a sign.

• 25:27David McCloskey?

  Well, and it's, because it's, it's pre-Stalin's terror.

• 25:31Gordon Corera?

  Yeah.

• 25:31David McCloskey?

  There isn't much information in the 30s on what's going on inside the Soviet Union. Cold War hasn't started. And so it's much more socially acceptable to be a communist. And I think that is exactly the defense that Philby will fall back on over and over again. And so, you know, sort of youthful indiscretion, youthful dalliance that's done. And I have to suspect that when this Israeli comes up to Angleton and says, well, you can't trust him because he married a communist, Angleton could fall back on this exact same thing and say, everybody at Cambridge was a communist in the early 1930s. And that shouldn't make me mistrust him any more than anybody else. And of course, Angleton is going to pay an incredibly heavy

• 26:14David McCloskey?

  price for trusting Kim Philby. And in fact, we'll be looking in much more detail at the impact of Philby's betrayal on Angleton in the CIA in our very special club offering for members that we're doing alongside the series. And you can, of course, go and join the Declassified Club at therestisclassified.com to hear that. But this dramatic impact that Philby will have on the CIA comes out of people like Angleton essentially saying, he's good, we can trust him.

• 26:42Gordon Corera?

  And so there are individuals that Philby betrays, but there are also secrets and operations. And after the break, we'll look at one of those.

• 27:02Speaker 03

  We assess Prime Minister with high confidence it was Russian.

• 27:06Gordon Corera?

  Holding the Russians accountable is World War III.

• 27:09Speaker 04

  They took down a British passenger jet containing 350 people.

• 27:12Speaker 05

  Man in the Kremlin is playing, Alex. Got to ask yourself, you want to play or not? You're the Prime Minister. You've done nothing. We would need to understand the policy context. All the relevant context will be structured as a framework today. Kill the President of Russia? Yes.

• 27:35Speaker 05

  Who is going to be able to pull this off? Sergeant Tom MacDuff. Devized as a technically rigorous geopolitical action thriller.

• 27:44Speaker 04

  Where Britain plays its strongest arm. He's the best. Against its strongest foe. Bear Hunt. Available now in full wherever you get your podcasts.

• 27:56Speaker 04

  Ulcerative colitis and Crohn's disease symptoms don't pause for the moments that matter. That's why understanding your treatment options matters. Discover what's possible with Trimpaya. Guselkamap. Trimpaya is a prescription medicine used to treat adults with moderately to severely active Crohn's disease and adults with moderately to severely active ulcerative colitis. Serious allergic reactions, increased risk of infections, or lower ability to fight them, and liver problems may occur. Before treatment, get checked for infections and tuberculosis. Tell your doctor if you have an infection, flu-like symptoms, or need a vaccine. Talk to your doctor and explore what's possible, or call 1-800-526-7736 to learn more about Trimpaya and visit trimpayarradio.com.

• 28:42Speaker 04

  This episode is brought to you by Petivity. Cat parents are basically mealtime detectives. Who actually ate? Did they finish? Was that less than yesterday? The new Petivity Smart Feeder for cats turns everyday meals into meaningful health.

• 28:55David McCloskey?

  Insights, helping you identify changes in your cat's habits and be more proactive about their health. Plus, you can feed them from anywhere. Take the mystery out of mealtime. Visit petivity.com, P E T I V I T Y dot com slash cat feeder to learn more.

• 29:12David McCloskey?

  Well, welcome back. Kim Philby is installed as head of station in Washington. And it's interesting, isn't it, that he's going to reflect later on that it was more useful to his Soviet handlers to have him in Washington than it had been even when he was running Soviet counterintelligence inside MI6.

• 29:32Gordon Corera?

  That's right. And that's because he can see everything that the US and UK are doing as the Cold War starts. And the US and UK in this time are going to decide on carrying out some pretty aggressive covert operations against the Eastern Bloc. So the Iron Curtain has come down through Eastern Europe with all of these countries now occupied, controlled by the Soviet Union. And the plan from Britain and the US is to try and undermine that, not just to spy on them, but actually to run operations, putting people behind the lines into the Iron Curtain countries, into the Eastern Bloc, and do things a bit similar

• 30:14Gordon Corera?

  to what Special Operations SOE did for Britain in World War II in occupied Nazi Europe, which is do things like sabotage, building up local networks, propaganda. They're trying to kind of use those World War II methods in this early Cold War period. So both countries are kind of thinking, this is how we can undermine the Soviet grip on these countries. And Philby's relationship here will be with a particularly interesting officer. So on kind of the intelligence gathering side, it's with Angleton. But on the covert action side, it's a guy called Frank Wisner, the whiz.

• 30:51David McCloskey?

  The whiz. And Wisner, the whiz, runs what was then called the Office for Policy Coordination, which I think has one of these great

• 31:01Gordon Corera?

  Euphemism.

• 31:01David McCloskey?

  Anecdotes, bureaucratic names is actually, this is the covert action arm. So these are the people who are actually doing some of the most exciting stuff in government. They're actually not coordinating policy, as the name suggests. And again, it's this fascinating era where both CIA and MI6 are kind of finding themselves

• 31:22Gordon Corera?

  Yeah.

• 31:23David McCloskey?

  in the early years of the Cold War. And I mean, they are going to start planning, both CIA and MI6 are going to start planning operations independently, but very quickly realize that it's more helpful, more useful, more efficient to do it together in many cases.

• 31:40Gordon Corera?

  Yeah. And the operations they're looking at are to try and effectively destabilize communist regimes in an arc from the Baltic States in the north, right down through Ukraine, what's now Ukraine, then still part of the Soviet Union, and then down to Albania in the south of Europe. And they want to drop agents behind enemy lines. And each side is thinking of doing this, whether by parachute or by boat. And of course, if you're going to both do it, it makes sense to coordinate.

• 32:11David McCloskey?

  I had a conversation with a former CIA chief of station in London, and just about the job. And this person told me that essentially, a massive part of it today, I think, you know, as in Philby's day, is deconfliction. It's helping to understand where the two services might bump into each other, where they might be running the same operations, targeting the same people, and making sure that everyone plays in the sandbox well together. Because there's such a convergence of geopolitical interest, that it makes no sense to have the two services bumping into each other.

• 32:46Gordon Corera?

  Yeah, you don't want your agents literally bumping

• 32:48David McCloskey?

  Literally bumping into each other, or having case officers going and trying to recruit the same networks.

• 32:52Gordon Corera?

  Yeah.

• 32:53David McCloskey?

  So Philby's job is kind of schoolmarm of the sandbox, in a way of making sure that the two services play nicely.

• 33:00Gordon Corera?

  Yeah, that's right. And it's going to be a four man team, two Americans and two Brits, who are going to oversee these covert operations, navigate disputes. For instance, which exiles do you back? The British tend to like the monarchists and the Americans, the Republicans amongst the exiles, what a surprise. And, you know, the Americans have the money, but the Brits think, well, we've got kind of, we've got more experience, particularly in Europe, we've got the brains, the background, but also something else of value. Because one day Frank Wisner, the whiz, turns to Philby and says, whenever we want to subvert any place, we find that the British own an island within easy reach.

• 33:35David McCloskey?

  And this came up constantly in the series we did back in August on The Five Eyes, where the geographic spread matters, the footprint matters for signals intelligence, and in this case, for actually planning and, you know, staging paramilitary operations.

• 33:52Gordon Corera?

  And so when it comes to the operations against Albania, the British island was Malta. And by the time Philby arrives in 49, both agencies, CIA and MI6, have started sending agents into Albania. And for MI6, it's Operation Valuable, didn't turn out that way. For CIA, Bee Geef Fiend.

• 34:11David McCloskey?

  The CIA, as is always the case.

• 34:14Gordon Corera?

  Better names.

• 34:14David McCloskey?

  Better, better code names.

• 34:15Gordon Corera?

  I'm going to give you that. So, you know, to give you one example of what they were doing, moonless night, 3rd of October, 1949, a boat called the Stormy Seas lies 200 yards off a cove on the Albanian coast. A group of men climb into a rubber dinghy, row ashore to a remote ravine at the bottom of cliffs. A goat track leads up the scrub covered mountain. A British marine brings a second group up from the dinghy to the shore. He finds the first group still waiting because they're unsure of what to do. But then he eventually says, they just mooched off up into Albania. And their, their objective is to kind of get a local feel for what the mood is of the population as to whether they can topple

• 34:56Gordon Corera?

  the Albanian government, which is communist. So the, these two groups of Albanian exiles who've been sent in by the Brits, split into two, but within hours, one group's ambushed, and three of its four members are killed. The others made contact with villagers, and the villagers tell them that soldiers had been in the area for several days, as if they were waiting. Meanwhile, at a radio station in Corfu, the MI6 team running the operation begin to panic because there's no contact. These and other drops by MI6, by boat of agents into Albania, keep going wrong. But it's interesting, because one MI6 officer recalls that the culture at the times was to meet every setback with the cry, not to worry, bash on regardless, just keep going.

• 35:41David McCloskey?

  I guess also seen from MI6, Albanian exile agents are not, yeah, you probably consider them to be pretty expendable resources, unfortunately.

• 35:53Gordon Corera?

  And that's what happens. Because sitting in a secure office in the Pentagon, monitoring these drops, one American angrily says, there must be a leak, something's going wrong with these operations. And meanwhile, he's saying this to his counterpart, who's the newly arrived liaison from MI6, who is Kim Philby. There must be a leak, Kim Philby. And when the, when the, when the American, so that was a British operation with the boat drop. The American operations also start to go wrong in Albania. And Wisner, Frank Wisner, turns to Philby and actually apologizes to Philby and says, we'll get it right next time. And you're like, oh, I mean, it's.

• 36:30David McCloskey?

  I mean, Philby is in a very interesting structural position. And it's quite valuable to the KGB. And I think it's valuable for Philby to be able to obfuscate where the leaks are coming from. Because he kind of sits at this scene, as we've discussed, he's the, he's passing information between the CIA and MI6. And so if the Americans are wondering why something went wrong, and point fingers at the Brits, Philby is in, in some ways, in charge of who on the British side is getting information. So he can expand what we'd call like the bigot list, you know, the list of people who are cleared for information. He can point and say, well, you know, there's 30 people

• 37:07Gordon Corera?

  Yeah.

• 37:08David McCloskey?

  over in MI6 who might have been responsible for this. And then vice versa. So he can kind of

• 37:13Gordon Corera?

  He's in the center.

• 37:13David McCloskey?

  He's right in the center, and he can exploit the information asymmetries that the headquarters of either agency really don't see.

• 37:22Gordon Corera?

  Yeah. And lots of operations like Albania are going wrong at this time. Agents are getting captured in the Baltic States when they're being dropped in, in Ukraine when they're being dropped in. And at one point, there's like a massive argument between the MI6 controller for these operations, who's come over to Washington, and Frank Wisner, about who's to blame. And, you know, they're each shouting each other, going like, one of our sides is penetrated, you know, and it must be yours.

• 37:47David McCloskey?

  You know, it couldn't be ours.

• 37:48Gordon Corera?

  Couldn't be ours. And the person taking the note of the argument is Philby. And, you know, he's getting the information from this. Angleton is also supposedly giving him over drinks, some of the drop zone coordinates for some of these operations, and briefing him about others. And he's handing it all over to his Soviet controllers. Now, he's meeting them sporadically at this point. It's interesting, one of the things we've got as part of our bonus offering around this for our club members, is Philby himself talking about his time as a spy in an audio and video recording, which I unearthed from the Stasi archive. And he talks a little bit here about how he is meeting his Soviet handlers. He makes it out as being quite easy, but actually, I think it was quite tricky

• 38:33Gordon Corera?

  at times, and the relationship wasn't easy. But he was meeting Soviet deep cover officers, particularly in towns around Maryland, and able to give them these details, you know, pretty quickly.

• 38:44David McCloskey?

  But I guess what he, Philby, doesn't say is that his success in Washington was probably achieved despite, rather than because of the KGB. Because the KGB's Washington resident aura at this point is kind of in dire straits. It's, it's not a very well organized, high functioning intelligence gathering organization.

• 39:10Gordon Corera?

  Yeah. And, and it's messy. Philby doesn't have very good relationships with them. Here he is at this great position. But as we saw during the war, they're not necessarily making the most of him, or handling him very well. But he's betraying the Albanian operations, he's betraying East European operations. The result is disaster, and they're all going wrong.

• 39:30David McCloskey?

  Big question, but is Philby to blame for all of it? Or is he just one factor among many?

• 39:36Gordon Corera?

  It's an important question, because I think it makes for a good story to blame everything on Philby. And I think there's a tendency somewhere to go, well, it's all because of Philby, the reason that these operations go wrong. Actually, it's more complicated than that. I mean,

• 39:51David McCloskey?

  I was afraid you were going to say that, Gordon.

• 39:53Gordon Corera?

  But it's, it's, you know, it's tempting to blame everything on Philby. And it makes it a very kind of personal story. But actually, the truth is different. Because, you know, the first failures in Albania are before he arrives in Washington. He didn't know all the details of the Baltic operations, which get compromised. Some of the problems will continue after he leaves Washington. And I think the truth is that these were actually pretty poorly conceived and executed intelligence operations. I mean, they didn't really have a good understanding of what the mood was on the ground, what the reception would be for these Exile groups. And crucially, these exile groups are really badly penetrated by the communists. They're gossipy, they're leaky. So the, you know, the communist side know who's coming and what's coming,

• 40:36Gordon Corera?

  even to some extent, without Philby having to tell them all the detail.

• 40:39David McCloskey?

  Well, we do know that in the case of the Albanian operations, for example, that Philby passed that information to his Soviet handlers.

• 40:46Gordon Corera?

  Yeah.

• 40:46David McCloskey?

  We, we can see that now in the record that in some of these cases, he might've been one input among several, but probably a pretty important corroborating source. If you have exile sources of the KGB who are reporting on these Albanian exile groups, and then all of a sudden, your star agent in Washington is saying exactly the same thing.

• 41:05Gordon Corera?

  Yeah. So, I mean, he does betray them. And in all, out of more than 1,500 agents that they drop into Albania, only a third make it out alive. I mean, the rest are captured, killed, or simply give up. So it's a pretty terrible toll. And Philby, interestingly, later would show no remorse for the fact so many were killed. He's going to write, "The agents we sent into Albania were armed men intent on sabotage, murder, and assassination. They were quite as ready as I was to contemplate bloodshed in the service of a political ideal. They knew the risks they were running. I was serving the interests of the Soviet Union, and those interests required that these men were defeated.

• 41:46Gordon Corera?

  To the extent that I helped defeat them, even if it caused their deaths, I have no regrets."

• 41:52David McCloskey?

  It's pretty cold, isn't it?

• 41:53Gordon Corera?

  It is.

• 41:53David McCloskey?

  But he doesn't see himself as a mole. He sees himself as a Soviet intelligence officer, who has penetrated the British establishment.

• 42:02Gordon Corera?

  And is always loyal and working for the Soviet cause.

• 42:05David McCloskey?

  Exactly. The value he's supplying back to the Soviets is enormous. But his life in DC is about to get a lot more complicated because he has a particularly disruptive friend.

• 42:18Gordon Corera?

  We've all got those friends.

• 42:19David McCloskey?

  Who's gonna come to town.

• 42:20Gordon Corera?

  We've all got those friends, but Philby's is particularly disruptive. Summer of 1950, Philby receives a letter from his old Cambridge friend, Guy Burgess, currently working for the Foreign Office. Burgess, of course, has been another of the Cambridge friends that Philby had suggested be recruited by the Soviets. And Burgess writes in his letter, "I have a shock for you. I've just been posted to Washington. Can I stay at your house?"

• 42:45David McCloskey?

  I know.

• 42:45Gordon Corera?

  Uh-oh. I mean, we should probably remind people about the madness that is Guy Burgess. I mean, brilliant, smart, funny, sociable.

• 42:57David McCloskey?

  Hadn't he slept with members of the Hitler Youth to get secrets?

• 43:01Gordon Corera?

  Yeah.

• 43:01David McCloskey?

  Have I mistaken about that?

• 43:02Gordon Corera?

  I think there's something along those lines. I think not many people he hadn't slept with, it feels like, in the 30s and 40s. I, I think the problem is, you know, there was a kind of lovable rogue element to Burgess when he's young. But by this stage, he's getting a bit older.

• 43:17David McCloskey?

  It's less charming.

• 43:18Gordon Corera?

  It's less charming. He's increasingly, I think, dissolute and dangerous. And he's leading this trail of destruction wherever he goes, from Tangiers to Dublin, with just stories of kind of drunkenness, young men, rants against Americans, which is a theme, and occasional boasts about being a spy. I mean, it's great.

• 43:41David McCloskey?

  And, and I, I mean, I find this also kind of humorous, that despite the insane drunkenness, and I figured the homosexuality, which at that point in time would-

• 43:51Gordon Corera?

  Is illegal, yeah.

• 43:52David McCloskey?

  Was illegal. The Foreign Office are, are posting him to Washington as sort of a, a way for other people to keep an eye on him.

• 44:01Gordon Corera?

  As a test, yeah.

• 44:02David McCloskey?

  As a test. Like, maybe, maybe you can kind of have a normal-ish posting for a couple of years and rise above this kind of wild ride that you've been on.

• 44:11Gordon Corera?

  So Philby is shown a letter by a colleague at the embassy, which comes from the head of the security at the Foreign Office in London, informing them about Burgess and his arrival. And it gives a summary of his past peccadilloes and says that worse might be in store. And what does he mean worse? This kind of Foreign Office guy says to Philby, "Goat?" I mean, I just like the way that's, that's like, what could be worse than what we've already heard he's got up to?

• 44:38David McCloskey?

  And, and Philby's like, "I'll keep an eye on him while he's here."

• 44:42Gordon Corera?

  Yeah, I'll keep an eye on him. I mean, and this is the problem for Philby. And this is going to be, as we'll see, the problem for Philby, is that you would normally never have two undercover Soviet agents, both in touch with each other, or living with each other, staying with each other.

• 44:58David McCloskey?

  One of them living in the other's basement.

• 45:00Gordon Corera?

  Yeah.

• 45:00David McCloskey?

  Yeah.

• 45:01Gordon Corera?

  But, but the problem is Burgess, that, you know, it's already known they're friends.

• 45:04David McCloskey?

  Yeah.

• 45:04Gordon Corera?

  Because Burgess actually got Philby into MI6 at the start of the war. It was his kind of introduction which helped him do it. So that it's well established that they're friends, Burgess has been out to Turkey, you know, to see him. So there is a plausibility that Burgess would come and stay with Philby, and that Philby could kind of keep an eye, which is the message from the Foreign Office.

• 45:27David McCloskey?

  But as sometimes happens when great, you know, sort of university friends come to town, Phil, Philby's wife, Aileen, is like, "I hate Guy Burgess and I don't want him in our house."

• 45:42Gordon Corera?

  Yeah. And I think it's worth, worth going back to Aileen here. Philby marries her in 1946, although they'd met at the start of the war. They've got children and they've been together, but they only get actually married in 46 at the end of the war. But she has been suffering, as, as we talked about in the first series on Philby, from quite severe mental health problems, including munchausen's, where she does forms of self-harm and pyromania to get attention. And the fact her husband is keeping secrets from her, vanishing and having various affairs certainly does not help with her mental health. So she is already quite fragile in Washington. And then you hear that Guy Burgess is coming to stay. She's just given birth to their fifth child, who's not been very well. So she's got a lot on her plate.

• 46:28Gordon Corera?

  She's drinking heavily. And she tells a friend, "I know him, Guy Burgess, only too well. He will never leave our house." And you could see her thinking, "He's coming to stay while he looks for a place. He's never gonna leave."

• 46:42David McCloskey?

  So, so hold on, just, just to recap the concoction we have here. Mental health problems at home, five children.

• 46:49Gordon Corera?

  Yeah.

• 46:50David McCloskey?

  Massive bouts of drunkenness, extramarital affairs, espionage, and Guy Burgess.

• 46:57Gordon Corera?

  Yeah. And now Guy Burgess is gonna be in your basement.

• 47:00David McCloskey?

  It's terrible.

• 47:01Gordon Corera?

  So, so Guy Burgess moves into the Philby's basement, which inevitably becomes filthy, with his rubbish kind of strewn around. One of the Philby's kids' train set, which was also set up in the basement. And it's funny, because the Philby kids will remember Uncle Guy, as he's called, as generous but a slightly alarming figure, smelling of alcohol and tobacco. And Burgess is immediately up to his old tricks. So he turns up at a restaurant where James Jesus Angleton is at from the CIA. And Burgess is wearing this kind of stained, dirty naval jacket. And I think he's trying to sell naval jackets as a kind of sideline. So he's drunk, he hasn't shaved, he goes on a rant, he asks for cash from Angleton, and then he walks off.

• 47:46Gordon Corera?

  I mean, you know, he's just, he is trouble. And he leaves classified documents on his desk overnight at the embassy. He's pursuing young men, but he's also acting as Philby's courier with the Soviets. So he's going up to New York and often drops things off or passes on messages to the Soviets. And he buys this kind of 12-cylinder 1941 white Lincoln convertible car, which he's also gonna race around in.

• 48:09David McCloskey?

  And then, as, as listeners probably expect, it, it gets even worse. Because Burgess is gonna be linked in the eyes of official Washington and some very important spy catchers with the person who put him up, Kim Philby. So the two, because, because they're friends, because Burgess is living in his basement and throwing his underpants on the kids' train sets and drinking heavily downstairs, the American intelligence establishment links him up with Philby.

• 48:41Gordon Corera?

  Yeah.

• 48:41David McCloskey?

  As this kind of duo.

• 48:43Gordon Corera?

  Which is gonna have its costs. And there's one particular dinner party, which goes very, very badly. I think it is possibly, because we're gonna go into some detail, I think it is possibly the worst dinner party ever. I don't know, there might be, people know some other candidates for that, please let us know. January 19th, 1951, dozen or so people round for the Philby's at dinner. Angleton and his wife are there, along with the FBI liaison to the CIA. Also, another very interesting and important character in our story, a guy called Bill Harvey.

• 49:15David McCloskey?

  Harvey, listeners may recall, was an Office of Security guy at the CIA, who later on will end up being responsible for the mafia portfolio and liaising with some of the underworld types that the agency enlists in attempts to kill Castro.

• 49:36Gordon Corera?

  Yeah. So that's where he ends up.

• 49:37David McCloskey?

  That's where he ends up. That's where he ends up. But also, very hard-drinking guy.

• 49:42Gordon Corera?

  Yeah. Ex-Feeb.

• 49:43David McCloskey?

  Ex-Feeb.

• 49:44Gordon Corera?

  Ex-Feeb. So he fell out, starts in the FBI, falls out with Hoover, partly because after one party, he slides off the road in his car. And he's so drunk that he doesn't, he doesn't get up, he just sleeps in the car, which is reported missing. And eventually they find, find him the next day, kind of drunk asleep in his car. And I think Hoover, even Hoover is like, "Too much." And so then he goes to the CIA.

• 50:09David McCloskey?

  Goes to the CIA, obviously.

• 50:10Gordon Corera?

  Goes to the CIA. And he's a big guy, big drinker. I mean, people describe him as like something from a Raymond Chandler novel, which I think is a good description. Always carries a, a snub revolver in a holster. He's, you know, he thinks he's a tough guy, doesn't he? And he takes that even to embassy functions. Definitely not Ivy League, not Yale.

• 50:29David McCloskey?

  No.

• 50:29Gordon Corera?

  Like the other CIA guys.

• 50:30David McCloskey?

  He's from Indiana.

• 50:31Gordon Corera?

  He's from Indiana. He doesn't strike me as the kind of guy who'd like posh Brits.

• 50:35David McCloskey?

  No, no, I think he would be culturally predisposed to dislike both Philby and certainly Burgess.

• 50:41Gordon Corera?

  Yeah. So he's been round to Philby's before for dinner. In one dinner party, he falls asleep over the coffee, and they leave him there snoring gently until midnight, when his wife wakes him up saying, "Come now, Daddy, it's time you were in bed," and takes him away. But this time in January, it's gonna be even worse. The evening starts, this worst dinner party ever, with pitchers of martini, which Aileen has made ready for the evening. She knows what's coming. It seems like the CIA guys like- The martinis and the feeb guys like the whiskey after dinner. So that's the kind of, you've got to get the balance because you've got both feebs and CIA people at this dinner.

• 51:18David McCloskey?

  And so they have both.

• 51:19Gordon Corera?

  So they have both, yeah.

• 51:20David McCloskey?

  How many drinks do you think people were having at these dinner parties? Because obviously, one of the themes of this series is that everyone is boozing all the time. But if you had to put a number on it, how many would you say?

• 51:33Gordon Corera?

  Units of alcohol.

• 51:34David McCloskey?

  Well, because I think, you know, I think most people today, if you said someone goes out on the weekend and they have three martinis at dinner, you'd be like, that's all, that's a heavy night.

• 51:45Gordon Corera?

  I think that is before they start dinner, they'd have done three martinis.

• 51:47David McCloskey?

  Yeah.

• 51:48Gordon Corera?

  Then they're boozing with dinner and then it's probably three or four whiskies afterwards, don't you think?

• 51:52David McCloskey?

  Yeah, I mean, it certainly does feel that way. And I think it's astounding to think about what their livers must have been like.

• 51:58Gordon Corera?

  Yeah, it is. So Harvey is there, he likes drinking, Libby, his wife, is there, she likes drinking and she's also, you get the sense, again, she's a bit awkward at these fancy dinner parties. This isn't kind of her world. Dinner's coming to an end, it's about nine thirty in the evening, and at that point, who turns up uninvited?

• 52:18David McCloskey?

  Guy Burgess. Because he emerged from the basement of the Fovea.

• 52:22Gordon Corera?

  I think he's been out somewhere else. But he just turns up for the dinner party. So he insults various guests, particularly the Americans, and then he pulls out a piece of paper. And one of the things about Guy Burgess is he loves to doodle, to sketch. So he starts sketching people around the table. He's a kind of caricaturist. It's one of his party tricks. And everyone's like, who is it? And he says, well, it's Harvey's wife, Bill Harvey's wife, Libby.

• 52:52Gordon Corera?

  So of course, they'll say, oh, show us, because that's what you'd say, wouldn't you? You'd like, let's see how close it is, you know, is it a nice kind of comic picture of Libby Harvey? So he slides it across the table. And, you know, everyone's hoping this might kind of lighten the mood, a bit of lighthearted fun. She looks at it and she literally screams. One account simply says it was her looking with the face like a dreadnought, like a battleship, like a kind of deformed head. But there is another version, which is, I think, the one we're going to go with, which is that she is pictured with her skirt hiked up, her legs spread and everything on display caricatured by Guy Burgess.

• 53:35Gordon Corera?

  And we should say, this is the kind of thing that Guy Burgess would do.

• 53:38David McCloskey?

  Yeah, he's not, he's a cruel guy.

• 53:40Gordon Corera?

  He's a cruel guy. So she shrieks at this picture and bursts into tears. Bill Harvey, the big guy, Raymond Chandler guy, he gets up, reaches for the drawing, looks at it, calls Burgess a son of a bitch, and then tries to throw a punch at him. Now, this is one of the details I love about it, is that James Jesus Angleton holds back Harvey. I mean, Angleton's this like wiry thin guy. How's he holding back big Bill Harvey from punching Burgess?

• 54:10David McCloskey?

  I think that this should be one of the paintings on the wall at CIA headquarters.

• 54:15Gordon Corera?

  James Jesus Angleton.

• 54:18David McCloskey?

  Holding back Bill Harvey from punching Guy Burgess, right up there with the picture of like Tony Mendez doing the, doing the document work, you know, in the Argo story.

• 54:27Gordon Corera?

  Yeah, it's one of the great moments.

• 54:29David McCloskey?

  One of the great moments in CIA.

• 54:30Gordon Corera?

  Anglo-American history.

• 54:34David McCloskey?

  With a crumpled drawing down on the floor that Bill Harvey has thrown aside.

• 54:38Gordon Corera?

  So Philby hurriedly takes Burgess down to his basement Hovel flat. The Harveys storm out. Philby rushes out to kind of placate them and, you know, Harvey goes, you know, Burgess, he's a deranged pervert, I think is what he says, which again backs up the idea, it was the really bad caricature, and refuses to shake Philby's hand. Aileen meanwhile retreats to the kitchen, broken because her dinner.

• 55:03David McCloskey?

  This is her dinner party.

• 55:03Gordon Corera?

  This is her dinner party and this has not gone well.

• 55:07Gordon Corera?

  Someone comes back and finds Philby sat with his head in his hands, you know, repeatedly saying to Burgess, how could you? How could you?

• 55:17David McCloskey?

  Who hasn't ended one of their dinner parties with their head in their hands, just, you know, muttering to yourself.

• 55:22Gordon Corera?

  How could you?

• 55:22David McCloskey?

  I'm not one of your guests.

• 55:23Gordon Corera?

  I mean, it's just, this is the worst dinner party ever. But it's not just a bad dinner party, because it's going to have consequences. I think that's what's so important, is Bill Harvey is never going to forgive or forget this humiliation of his wife by Guy Burgess and Philby. And he's now, he's got Philby and Burgess in his sights, they are an enemy.

• 55:48David McCloskey?

  But just when you thought it couldn't get any worse for Kim Philby, it is absolutely going to get worse. Because the investigation into those leaks that we spoke about earlier in the episode, those leaks that came out of the British Embassy in Washington in the Second World War are really going to spin out and implicate Kim Philby and his friends.

• 56:09Gordon Corera?

  That's right. That investigation is going to lead into a very secret mole hunt, and mole hunts are the theme of our special collection of.

• 56:19Speaker 04

  Everyone wants healthcare to be simpler and easier. That's why United Health Group is fast-tracking more than 60% of children's procedures that used to need pre-approval, so more kids get the care they need when they need it. And speeding up procedure approvals and payments for more than 1,500 rural hospitals so they can focus on caring for their communities. And that's just the start. Learn more at uhd.com slash access.

• 56:48Speaker 05

  Streaming October 30th on Paramount Plus.

• 56:51Speaker 04

  I'm Dexter Morgan. I've been killing killers for half my life. It gets to you. You're having a midlife crisis.

• 56:57Speaker 05

  I'm not ready for that. He's back. I'm older, I'm wiser.

• 57:04Speaker 05

  And sharper than ever. Things are going to get messy, but if I can't believe in myself, I can't believe in anything. Dexter Resurrection, new season October 30th on the Paramount Plus Premium Plan.

• 57:18Speaker 04

  For marketers, controlling how your brand shows up in AI search is a top priority. That's why a third of the Fortune 100 and companies like Figma, Ramp and Cursor rely on Profound. Profound is a leading AI marketing platform that shows you what people ask AI and what AI says back about your brand. Profound's AI marketer then does the work to improve your brand's visibility, accuracy and strength against competitors in AI search. To control how AI talks about your brand, go to profound.com.

• 57:48Gordon Corera?

  Bonus episodes for club members, and we're going to be looking at some of the history relating to Kim Philby, but also talk to people who've actually been mole hunters. So if you want to hear those episodes, do join the club at therestisclassified.com. But otherwise, we'll see you next time.

• 58:04David McCloskey?

  We'll see you next time.