201. Kim Philby: Exiled in Moscow (Ep 6)

Kim Philby was perhaps the greatest spy of the twentieth century, but who was he really working for all along? This is the moment the Philby story reaches its dramatic conclusion… Listen as David and Gordon wrap up their exploration 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. ------------------- 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?

  Kim Philby is perhaps the greatest spy of the 20th century. But who was he really working for all along? This is the dramatic conclusion of the Kim Philby story. Well, welcome to The Rest Is Classified. I'm David McCloskey.

• 0:38Gordon Corera?

  And I'm Gordon Corera.

• 0:39David McCloskey?

  And Gordon, last time we left off with Kim having made this dramatic, really a dramatic showdown with his friend Nicholas Elliot of MI6 in Beirut. This dramatic flight from Beirut, we, I think teased a bit where he might have gone. Listeners may have been able to guess. But now Kim Philby is ensconced in Moscow. He is not particularly old, so he'll have much of his life in the Russian capital. And Philby will say later that he has come home in journeying to the Soviet Union. He'll wind up spending a third of his life there.

• 1:23David McCloskey?

  And he's, he's come to Moscow thinking that he'll be treated as a top Soviet intelligence officer. Because of course, he sees himself as a Soviet intelligence officer. But what is life really like for Kim in Moscow? But first, a word from our sponsors, HP.

• 1:44Gordon Corera?

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• 1:46David McCloskey?

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• 1:58Gordon Corera?

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• 2:25David McCloskey?

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• 2:33Gordon Corera?

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• 2:51Speaker 02

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• 3:32Speaker 02

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• 3:46Speaker 03

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• 4:16David McCloskey?

  So Kim's in Moscow. Now, he does have a few friends.

• 4:21Gordon Corera?

  Yeah.

• 4:21David McCloskey?

  Who arrived in the Russian capital many years before him. Does he, does he reach out to Guy Burgess and Donald MacLean?

• 4:29Gordon Corera?

  I mean, you know, first thing you do when you arrive in a new town, you look up your old friends. They'd gone there in 1951. Kim Philby arrives in 1963. It's fascinating, though, because it's going to be very different with the two individuals, Burgess and MacLean. Because Philby will never see Burgess again after their dinner at that Chinese restaurant, as Burgess is about to flee back to London to warn MacLean in 1951.

• 4:55David McCloskey?

  This was a Chinese restaurant in Washington, DC.

• 4:58Gordon Corera?

  By the time Philby arrives in 1963, Burgess had been there 12 years.

• 5:02David McCloskey?

  And, and doing really well, right?

• 5:05Gordon Corera?

  And, and in a Burgess-like way, has drunk himself into oblivion and is gravely ill. I mean, you can imagine for Guy Burgess, this guy who inhabits kind of clubland of London. He loves parties. He likes men. He likes going to, to, you know, the fancy, you know, gentlemen's clubs of London, as we know. And, and he likes causing a scene. These are not things which go down very well, I think, in Cold War.

• 5:29David McCloskey?

  It's frowned upon in the Soviet Union.

• 5:31Gordon Corera?

  Frowned upon in the Soviet Union. So for a while, he's like banished to some industrial city by the Volga, hundreds of miles from Moscow to keep a low profile. He's got no interest in learning Russian. He has problems finding, you know, boyfriends until they eventually give him one. At one point, he goes to a cocktail party at the Chinese embassy and urinates over the fireplace, a kind of marble fireplace which had been sculpted in China, which, again, classic Guy Burgess behavior.

• 5:58David McCloskey?

  Is that why they sent him out to an industrial city on the Volga?

• 6:01Gordon Corera?

  I think that might have been even after he came back. But what's so interesting is Kim Philby arrives early 1963 off the freighter, which has brought him from Beirut. And at that point, Burgess is already in a very bad way, mentally and physically. And they do not meet. Now, there is a little bit of a mystery about why that could be the case. I mean, it could be that the KGB don't want Philby to see Burgess, you know, in this shocking way.

• 6:29David McCloskey?

  Because it's not, it's not a great preview of where Kim himself could be headed.

• 6:34Gordon Corera?

  But supposedly Burgess asks for Kim to come and see him. And the other reason may be that Philby himself does not want to see Burgess. This is interesting because it goes back to 1951. Those last words, you know, just after the Chinese restaurant meeting, where he goes, "Don't you go too." And Philby may well blame Burgess for running with MacLean. And of course, as we remember, that's what pointed the finger at Philby. And it effectively leads to the end of his rise to the top of MI6, as he saw it. So that's the other theory, is that Philby is resentful about it. Although, you know, the truth is Burgess himself may not have wanted to go back to the Soviet Union. It might have been that the KGB forced him.

• 7:17Gordon Corera?

  But if you're Philby, you can't really blame the KGB, blame Burgess. And so Guy Burgess dies August 1963. You know, there were some rumors that maybe they'd been a deathbed meeting, but it doesn't seem like they met.

• 7:30David McCloskey?

  I guess they didn't have much time to meet in the end, just a few months.

• 7:34Gordon Corera?

  Yeah. Now, Donald MacLean, very different. Philby hadn't known him as well as Burgess. They'd kept their distance. We talked about Eleanor, who Kim Philby had met in Beirut, and then she divorced Ambra, become Kim Philby's next wife, along the list. She comes out to Moscow late 1963, which is interesting, I think, loyal to Kim. And she, she and Kim Philby start to hang out with Donald MacLean and MacLean's wife, Melinda, who'd also joined MacLean in Moscow. It's kind of interesting. MacLean speaks Russian, works at a think tank. He's more communist than the others. The four of them play bridge and Scrabble, kind of interesting.

• 8:17Gordon Corera?

  Eleanor at first feels sorry for Melinda MacLean. She can see the men joking about how, when the revolution comes, you know, they're going to go visit Paris and things like that.

• 8:26David McCloskey?

  That revolution never, that revolution never came.

• 8:28Gordon Corera?

  Never quite came. Eleanor tries to fit in, but her and Philby's relationship is a little bit tricky. They're worried because, I think they suspect rightly, she's had some contact with CIA and MI6, that maybe she's out there to, to spy on him. One day, she goes for a walk with, with Philby, and she says to him, "Eleanor, what is more important in your life? Me and the children or the Communist Party?" And he answers without hesitation, "The party, of course." She goes back to the US briefly to renew a passport. By the time she gets back to Moscow, what's happened? Philby is having an affair with Melinda MacLean, Donald MacLean's wife.

• 9:07David McCloskey?

  It's, it's almost entirely predictable at this point.

• 9:10Gordon Corera?

  Yeah, it's weird and predictable, given his past behavior. I mean, again, Kim Philby psychology, you could spend days trying to work out what's going on behind that. But, so Eleanor returns. The KGB are suspicious of her. They're kind of questioning her about bottles of whiskey she's bought, thinking maybe this is like a CIA MI6 plot to poison Philby with some of the whiskey. But she realizes that, you know, Philby's having an affair. And she says, you know, "I'm done," basically. And she goes back, back to America. He gives her his most treasured possession, which it turns out is his Westminster School scarf.

• 9:48Gordon Corera?

  It's bizarre. And she, strangely enough, I mean, when you read her memoir, she won't condemn him. You know, she says, Kim had the guts or the weakness to stand by a decision made thirty years ago, whatever the cost to those who loved him most. I mean, slightly weird. And then she dies of cancer. You know, a few years later, nineteen sixty eight. I mean, the women around Philby, most of them does not end well.

• 10:14David McCloskey?

  It is just, it's really hard, I think, even now, I mean, we're, this is the final episode of, of the series to kind of truly understand why he did what he did.

• 10:27Gordon Corera?

  Yeah.

• 10:28David McCloskey?

  It's just, it's so, in, in some ways, it's just so inhuman almost.

• 10:33Gordon Corera?

  Yeah.

• 10:33David McCloskey?

  And, and like a machine.

• 10:35Gordon Corera?

  Yeah.

• 10:35David McCloskey?

  To constantly, to constantly value this relatively kind of abstract ideology.

• 10:43Gordon Corera?

  Over people.

• 10:43David McCloskey?

  Over the actual people who were around him.

• 10:45Gordon Corera?

  Yeah.

• 10:45David McCloskey?

  Children, wives. I mean, it's, it's remarkable.

• 10:49Gordon Corera?

  It is, it is. But here's the problem for him. He's sacrificed all his relationships to the party. Sees himself as a Soviet intelligence officer who has, in his words, come home. And of course, it is the classic problem of the defector, which is, you know, the KGB have first of all, kind of wrung him dry about every detail he knows about MI6, CIA and everything else, down to pension and pay and whatever else. But then, you know, he's done. I mean, this is the classic defector problem, isn't it?

• 11:21David McCloskey?

  And he starts to feel like he's not useful, which then, you know, as, as anyone would, if they don't actually have something to do. You, you feel, you get idle, you get bored, you know, you turn more to, to drinking and, I mean, it's, it's just, it is, it's a classic, a very classic defector profile. The, the other kind of, I guess, question hanging over even just his early days in Moscow is, I think, seen from the KGB standpoint, is he a flight risk?

• 11:51Gordon Corera?

  Yeah.

• 11:52David McCloskey?

  It is, it might he actually, because he's maybe not doing well, because his relationships there aren't going, aren't going very well, because he's not from Russia.

• 12:02Gordon Corera?

  Yeah.

• 12:03David McCloskey?

  Maybe he decides, well, I'm gonna go back. I mean, re, redefections are, are a thing.

• 12:08Gordon Corera?

  Yeah.

• 12:08David McCloskey?

  In, in the Cold War, you know, I mean, it's, it's happened before. So the KGB has got to be wondering about this.

• 12:14Gordon Corera?

  Yeah. And I think there's an intrinsic weariness of him on the KGB side. I mean, he is, he's not, he doesn't fit into their idea of a kind of working class hero, because he's seen a Cambridge man.

• 12:26David McCloskey?

  Westminster scarf.

• 12:27Gordon Corera?

  He's got the Westminster star, you know, and he might talk about being a communist, but you can see them kind of puzzling almost over Philby and, you know, trying to work out, well, what, you know, what is he really up to? They also wonder, well, did the Brits encourage him to go? You know, the, the kind of Nicholas Elliot confrontation in Beirut, they're sitting there going, that was a bit strange. Did, you know, maybe.

• 12:52David McCloskey?

  Maybe the Brits doubled him back.

• 12:53Gordon Corera?

  Maybe the Brits doubled him back. Everyone is kind of so confused by the Nicholas Elliot confrontation in Beirut, that there's this view, could he be a plant? Could he have been either working for the British all along or, or be changed? I mean, remember during the war, there'd been people who thought, the Second World War, when he's providing great intelligence to Moscow, who think he's a plant.

• 13:14David McCloskey?

  Mm hmm.

• 13:14Gordon Corera?

  You know, they don't kind of believe him. So there's always been this slight strain about, maybe, maybe there's something suspicious about him. Maybe he's a double agent. And, you know, one analyst notes this on his file and the head of a security team for the KGB says, you know, maybe we need to be careful about him. And so there is this layer of like, people thinking, is this a brilliant MI6 operation? There will be for many years, I think, people who wonder that. And, I mean, there are people in London who kind of hint at or propagate this story. And perhaps even if he wasn't a conscious double agent, that MI6 had somehow worked out he was a Soviet spy earlier

• 13:53Gordon Corera?

  and were feeding false information through him through the late forties and into the fifties, back to the Soviets. I mean, we now know it's absurd. Prime Minister Winston Churchill's private secretary in nineteen fifty two, who tells one of, one biographer of the chief of MI6, you know, there is one secret left in the Philby case, and that I may not discuss. And, you know, people then start to speculate, well, maybe that secret is, you know, it was all a cunning wheeze by MI6.

• 14:20David McCloskey?

  I mean, I guess it is, it's obviously a tremendous disaster for MI6, but a way to maybe reframe that disaster as a massive success is to hint.

• 14:31Gordon Corera?

  That maybe it was a cunning plan.

• 14:32David McCloskey?

  It has been a cunning plan.

• 14:34Gordon Corera?

  And the result of all of that is that the KGB is wary of him and they bug his flat.

• 14:39David McCloskey?

  Sure.

• 14:40Gordon Corera?

  They read his letters, you know, they listen to his phone calls. And I think you're right, though, the real risk is not that he's a double agent all along, but that he might go back. And, you know, there are, I mean, you know, there are these also stories that there might have been security risks to him. I mean, one former CIA officer cited by a British author says that there had been feasibility studies by the CIA from the fifties through the seventies of going after Burgess, McLean and Philby in Moscow and killing them. I find that a bit implausible, don't you?

• 15:12David McCloskey?

  I mean, given what we know about how difficult it was for the CIA to operate in Moscow in that period and how few.

• 15:21Gordon Corera?

  Yeah.

• 15:21David McCloskey?

  Assets the agency had, the idea of A, actually trying to, I mean, certainly the CIA was doing a lot of roguish stuff in this period, but the idea that you would have.

• 15:32Gordon Corera?

  A hit team.

• 15:33David McCloskey?

  A hit team in Moscow to kill.

• 15:35Gordon Corera?

  Brits.

• 15:36David McCloskey?

  Brits.

• 15:36Gordon Corera?

  Yeah.

• 15:37David McCloskey?

  I don't buy it either.

• 15:38Gordon Corera?

  I don't buy it. Philby is trying to make himself useful. Nineteen sixty eight, he publishes this memoir, My Silent War.

• 15:45David McCloskey?

  Great title.

• 15:45Gordon Corera?

  It's a good title.

• 15:46David McCloskey?

  It's a good title.

• 15:47Gordon Corera?

  Not the most reliable book, but a very good title. And it's score settling, there's big gaps in it. Interestingly enough, Graham Greene, his former MI6 colleague and the author, writes the introduction, compares his old friend to a Catholic who had helped Spain during the wars of religion, who was kind of loyal to his faith rather than his country, which is very Graham Greene. You know, which causes outrage at the time. And people are like furious with Graham Greene, you know, and, and, and thinking like, I can't believe you're defending Philby, because it's still in that, that era. But Greene is, you know, he's interested in the game of intelligence. He's interested in the kind of human side of it. And so I think, you know, Greene can still

• 16:29Gordon Corera?

  separate the, the morality from the man to some extent.

• 16:33David McCloskey?

  We, we talk about this a bit more in the bonus episode we did for club members with Tim Shipman, where we talk about Philby's impact on spy fiction. And in particular, the rendering in Graham Greene's human factor.

• 16:47Gordon Corera?

  Yeah.

• 16:47David McCloskey?

  Of, of the, the really human rendering of, of the traitor in that novel, I think, gives you some insight into how Graham Greene, I, I think Greene perhaps stops only slightly short of essentially, I guess, permitting.

• 17:03Gordon Corera?

  Yeah.

• 17:03David McCloskey?

  Morally what Philby did, but he gets, he, he empathizes. You can tell he empathizes with the position.

• 17:09Gordon Corera?

  And I think writing the introduction to Philby's memoir in nineteen sixty eight is also a kind of public message, basically going, I'm still your friend.

• 17:17David McCloskey?

  Uh huh.

• 17:17Gordon Corera?

  Which I think is interesting. So Philby's in a bad way. And of course, he does what Philby does when he's in a bad way. He just starts drinking, you know, because he's not being used. I mean, there's even stories he might have tried to cut his wrists at one point. I mean, it, it's pretty bad. But then another traitor provides him with an escape raft. So George Blake had been another MI6 officer who had been arrested for spying for the Soviets and he'd escaped prison, which is another wild story, which we'll do when we do the George Blake story, because he escapes Wormwood Scrubs prison. And then in the back of a kind of VW camper van gets driven across Europe and eventually the Soviet Union.

• 17:57Gordon Corera?

  I've met the guy who drove him. Anyway, that's another story. But Blake has somehow popped up in Moscow and the two become friends. And in nineteen seventy, Blake has got a, a wife there and a colleague of Blake's wife called Rufina is introduced to Philby and she's thirty eight, kind of feisty, strong willed redhead. They double date, going to a, I mean, this is kind of bizarre, an American ice skating show, two former MI6 traitors, double dating. And so Philby pursues her, he turns on the charm. They go around to Blake's Thatcher for the weekend. You know, you're a lucky bloke, Philby, Blake remarks to Philby. Philby cooks

• 18:41Gordon Corera?

  for her. And there's a kind of weird scene where. He kind of goes into a bedroom at the Dacha late at night. He's clearly drunk and I think trying it on.

• 18:51David McCloskey?

  He comes into Rafina's bedroom.

• 18:52Gordon Corera?

  He comes into Rafina, this woman's bedroom, you know, and sits at the end of, of the bed. And he says, I am an Englishman. And she says, yes, of course, you're a gentleman. I think kind of implying you're a gentleman, so maybe let's not do anything right now. It's like a kind of, and he, he, he then goes, I am an Englishman. And, and they have this weird drunken conversation, which she finds charming and romantic. And I think, I mean, each to their own.

• 19:19David McCloskey?

  It doesn't sound particularly charming.

• 19:21Gordon Corera?

  No, I have to say, it doesn't kind of.

• 19:22David McCloskey?

  Does that line work for other Englishmen? Where you just, you just sit down on the end of someone's bed and just pronounce your nationality.

• 19:28Gordon Corera?

  I'm an Englishman. I don't suggest anyone listening tries it.

• 19:33David McCloskey?

  But if it has worked, please reach out to us.

• 19:36Gordon Corera?

  With your stories, that's a very different type of podcast we're going down if we start doing, if we start doing those stories. She finds it endearing, they push the relationship on. And, you know, she's actually, she reads dissident literature. She's not a KGB person in any way, but fascinatingly, this becomes the most enduring relationship Kim Philby has and arguably the most successful. Stabilizes him, he's still drinking, but he's worried about losing her. So he, you know, he tones it down enough that, uh, that he stabilizes. And, you know, they do appear devoted to each other, even though, yeah, I mean, there is still a fair bit of drinking.

• 20:16Gordon Corera?

  They live in a flat near Pushkin Square, walls lined with books, I think 12,000 books.

• 20:22David McCloskey?

  Wow.

• 20:23Gordon Corera?

  Including Guy Burgess's library, which he donated on his death. Lots of Len Dayton, John Le Carre and Graham Greene.

• 20:31David McCloskey?

  Do we have any sense of how Philby reacted, for example, to Tinker, Taylor, Soldier's Spy, which is quite obviously about him. Cause in, in one way, you could see that, you could see him being exceptionally proud.

• 20:46Gordon Corera?

  Yeah.

• 20:46David McCloskey?

  That he is the, the main character in what's going to become, you know, one of the best, one of the top espionage novels written in the 20th century.

• 20:57Gordon Corera?

  Yeah.

• 20:57David McCloskey?

  Is essentially about him.

• 20:59Gordon Corera?

  Yeah.

• 20:59David McCloskey?

  Do we know?

• 21:00Gordon Corera?

  No, we don't know. I mean, but he does read the Le Carres. I mean, he doesn't have a relationship with John Le Carre, but he certainly reads all these books. And it's part of, I think as well, his, his continued links back home. So he can't quite let go. I mean, you know, his flat sounds bizarre. I mean, on the wall, there's a large photo of his father in Arab dress. So there's a bit of that, plus two pics of Che Guevara, you know, kind of the communist thing. He sits there listening to the BBC, good man, uh, the World Service on the radio.

• 21:35David McCloskey?

  Yet another Bin Laden comparison.

• 21:38Gordon Corera?

  Bin Laden used to listen to the World Service.

• 21:40David McCloskey?

  Listen to the BBC World Service and an Arsenal supporter, so.

• 21:43Gordon Corera?

  So another Kim Philby and Bin Laden.

• 21:46Gordon Corera?

  His kids visit and come back and forth, and he asks them to bring things like Oxford coarse cut marmalade.

• 21:52David McCloskey?

  Never had that. What is that?

• 21:53Gordon Corera?

  It's like, it's marmalade, but I guess coarse cut because you've got big bits of the peel in it, rather than it being smooth. It's good.

• 21:59David McCloskey?

  Is that jam?

• 22:01Gordon Corera?

  Yeah.

• 22:02David McCloskey?

  It's sort of jam.

• 22:02Gordon Corera?

  Orange jam.

• 22:03David McCloskey?

  It's orange jam.

• 22:05Gordon Corera?

  Yeah, but we call it marmalade.

• 22:06David McCloskey?

  Okay.

• 22:07Gordon Corera?

  He's living this kind of slightly drifting life. But what's interesting is having tried to get the KGB to use him for many years, eventually in the mid seventies, only in the mid seventies, do they start to use him.

• 22:21David McCloskey?

  A decade, so he's been there for over a decade.

• 22:22Gordon Corera?

  He's been there over a decade.

• 22:23David McCloskey?

  Yeah.

• 22:24Gordon Corera?

  There were a couple of KGB officers who, who almost take him under their wing.

• 22:28David McCloskey?

  Hmm.

• 22:28Gordon Corera?

  Who were like, who is this guy? This guy called Oli Kalugan, who does that, but also a guy who we've even met before in some of our podcasts, Mikhail Lubimov, Smiley Mike from our Gordievsky series. And Smiley Mike was, uh, is a specialist on, on the English. And he'd served in Britain as a KGB officer in the sixties. He's written his KGB dissertation on, on British people and, uh,

• 22:54David McCloskey?

  On British people.

• 22:55Gordon Corera?

  British people and how to spy on them. And, and Lubimov, who, you know, I've met many times actually and talked to him about Philby many times. I mean, he loves Philby, you know, he has a kind of absolute kind of love for Philby. And I think it's partly because he, he takes him under his wing and he realizes Philby could have some use to us. And I think, you know, he says Philby can advise us on how to rebuild operations in Britain, which had been knocked back after some expulsions in 1971. And they're struggling, the KGB in Britain. I think in reality, it's actually less about Philby actually providing a lot of hard help and more about just making this guy feel like he's wanted in some way. I mean, it's almost sad.

• 23:35David McCloskey?

  Smiley Mike's KGB thesis was titled, Special Traits of the British National Character and Their Use in Operational Work.

• 23:42Gordon Corera?

  Yeah, I once asked him for a copy and he would, he said it's classified, but I think it was basically how to talk to people in the pub in Britain.

• 23:49David McCloskey?

  That's basically all it is.

• 23:50Gordon Corera?

  Yeah.

• 23:50David McCloskey?

  It glorified conversational manual.

• 23:52Gordon Corera?

  Yeah, I think that's what it is, which is actually in what Philby ends up doing. So there's this thing where people say his most useful role from the mid seventies onwards, which he did for a decade, was running these seminars in a, in a safe flat for young KGB officers who are being posted to Britain.

• 24:11David McCloskey?

  Hmm.

• 24:12Gordon Corera?

  And I met one of them actually in Moscow many years ago, and he kind of talked about it very fondly, but basically you would role play being an English civil servant who you're trying to recruit, or an MI5 officer who's questioning you about what you're up to. And then you, you'd have to role play whether you could get away with it or whether you could recruit the person.

• 24:34David McCloskey?

  It actually would be quite useful.

• 24:35Gordon Corera?

  Yeah, it would be because, I mean, I don't know. I mean, you, you, you've got here someone who's a member of the British establishment. He probably understands it pretty well. Maybe he's a bit dated. So yeah, the students would sit around in the class. That seems to be one of his main contributions.

• 24:51David McCloskey?

  There's a, a line from, from, I think someone who sat in the class, who said that essentially Philby would, he would sit on armchairs in the sofa around the coffee table with a, a simple spread for afternoon tea, a bottle of cognac. He would smoke cheap unfiltered Soviet cigarettes or, uh, Galloazas when a delivery arrived. He would be a British counterintelligence agent. And, you know, it, it does seem like he offered some value to them, that he could then role play and then to these officer superiors kind of grade the students.

• 25:26Gordon Corera?

  Yeah.

• 25:27David McCloskey?

  Before you're posted to Western Europe or to the UK, I mean, that's, that's, that's valuable stuff.

• 25:32Gordon Corera?

  But when it comes to his, the way he's seen by the KGB, and I think the mismatch between how he saw himself, which was as a kind of ranking officer in the Soviet Intelligence Service, and the reality that he faces in Moscow, the, the best example of that is the fact it takes 14 years, 14 years for him to be let in to the headquarters of the KGB after arriving. So he arrives in 1963. It is only 1977 that he's invited in to KGB headquarters to give a lecture. I mean, yeah, I mean, it's kind of, that says a lot, I think.

• 26:12David McCloskey?

  The KGB does not see him as an intelligence officer. They see him rightly as an, as an asset.

• 26:19Gordon Corera?

  As a defector.

• 26:20David McCloskey?

  Yeah, as a defector. He's a, he's a British traitor.

• 26:22Gordon Corera?

  Yeah. And, and this lecture is fascinating that he gives to the KGB because he steps up to the podium and he tries a joke. It has taken me a long time to get here. My journey started in a London park more than 43 years ago. I have had occasion to drop in on quite a few other intelligence headquarters. I've held official passes to seven major intelligence headquarters, four British, SIS, MI6, SOE from the war, MI5 and GC and CS, which is the Code and Cypher School, GCHQ, and three American, CIA, FBI and NSA. So I claim this is the eighth major intelligence organization which I have succeeded in penetrating.

• 27:05Gordon Corera?

  And Lubimov, who's there, says there was a terrible silence because everyone is thinking like, you know, what's he saying? He's like, he was a penetration agent of these places. Is he saying, you know, he's a penetration here? Sure, sure, you know, surely, you know, he's not suggesting. And then Philby kind of adds a line of like, then I was surrounded by wolves, but this time it's comrades, you know, which is, I think the punchline to the joke.

• 27:32David McCloskey?

  So there with Philby kind of accepted in Moscow. Let's take a break. When we come back, we will look at the final chapter of Philby's life and the last great mystery. Who was he working for all along?

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• 29:35David McCloskey?

  Welcome back. Philby's in Moscow, but he does, he does manage to start travelling a bit, doesn't he?

• 29:42Gordon Corera?

  Yeah, he becomes a bit of a communist tourist and gets taken to Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, even to Cuba, out to Cuba, goes by freighter as they think it's too risky to fly him over Western airspace. And when he takes this freighter, he goes through the Straits of Dover, the English Channel, and on the deck, he looks for his old prep school at Eastbourne, where he was a child. But he and Rafina can't make it out. I mean, what a weird moment.

• 30:14Gordon Corera?

  I think most of his time in Cuba is spent on tours of factories and listening to stories of the victory of socialism.

• 30:20David McCloskey?

  Riveting stuff.

• 30:22Gordon Corera?

  My dream holiday. There's one particularly interesting trip, though, which is 1981, he goes to East Germany, and he meets there Marcus Wolf, who is the head of the East German Foreign Intelligence Service, so little known of him at the time in the West, that he's known as the man without a face. And it's there that he gets up on stage in front of the Stasi, introduced by Marcus Wolf, to talk to the Stasi in a similar way as he talked to the KGB staff in 77. And that's a tape which I discovered in the Stasi archives about 10 years ago. And it is amazing because it is Philby talking about his career, the breadth of his career,

• 31:03Gordon Corera?

  about incidents from being recruited right through to that Beirut confrontation, which leads to him to Moscow.

• 31:09David McCloskey?

  Of course, we'll have that tape in a special exclusive bonus episode for club members who can listen more to Philby actually, I mean, talking about his life, talking about the confrontation with Nicholas Elliot in Beirut. I mean, it's absolutely fascinating. It's interesting, though, because in that tape, he gives the Stasi recruits essentially a message, which is, if you are interrogated, never confess, never confess to anything, which I find to be so interesting because he sort of followed that advice. But if you remember in that conversation with Nicholas Elliot, he kind of confesses.

• 31:49Gordon Corera?

  He does, yeah.

• 31:50David McCloskey?

  He doesn't, doesn't take his own advice. I don't think he told the Stasi recruits about his confession, though, did he?

• 31:55Gordon Corera?

  No, I think in his, in his account of it, I, you know, I held out, I bluffed, I, you know, did everything else. But the reality is, we know he did kind of half confess. So, yeah, I agree. It's very interesting. Marcus Wolf, in his memoir, says he admired Philby as a man who supported the Soviet Union as a vehicle for anti-fascist ideas. Marcus Wolf writes this after the kind of end of the Cold War. And he says, you know, Philby's view of the Soviet Union had become more sober over time, and says he wasn't miserable in Moscow, but, you know, maybe he was more clear-eyed about Russia. But, you know, he would complain about the miserable economy and the gap between the rulers and the people. But there is one, I found tantalising detail in Marcus Wolf's memoir about Philby,

• 32:39Gordon Corera?

  because Philby tells Marcus Wolf, when they're in East Germany during this 1981 visit, that MI6 in Moscow had found ways of making several offers to Philby to return to Britain. So clearly, Philby has told this to the Stasi privately, though, that MI6 are contacting him and trying to get him back, which I think is fascinating.

• 33:04David McCloskey?

  If that's true, it would, do you think it would suggest that when Nicholas Elliot confronts him in Beirut, that they don't actually want him to flee? Because we talked about this last time, this ongoing debate, I mean, it's still relevant today, of whether, whether the Plan A or maybe the Plan B coming out of that confrontation was for Philby to go, get him out of here, because we don't want him in Britain. Does it change your view of that, or is it just that enough time has gone by that it would be maybe less embarrassing for MI6 if he actually does return? It's sort of an open wound.

• 33:44Gordon Corera?

  It's almost now a propaganda coup to go, he's come back.

• 33:47David McCloskey?

  He's come back.

• 33:48Gordon Corera?

  I guess that's one possibility. And there is one other very interesting thread about this secret contact, which might have taken place between him and MI6 during these years. And that goes back to Graham Greene, the writer. Graham Greene, you know, worked with Philby during the war, as we talked about, wrote the introduction to Philby's memoir, which may have been a message. Graham Greene eventually comes out to Moscow to visit Philby, comes out 1986. They hadn't seen each other in, you know, decades. So there's lots of mystery around this. And, you know, we talked before about, you know, had Greene suspected him of being the, a spy and written the third man about him. Greene had sent out a draft of the novel you talked about, the human factor about, you know,

• 34:32Gordon Corera?

  which is kind of based on Philby, for Philby to comment on. And Philby had said, the only bit I don't like is the suggestion that life in Moscow is drab, which we know is true. The same year that that book comes out, Greene is asked, what would he have done if he'd have known of Philby's treason in the 40s during the war, when they worked together? And he said, I think perhaps if in a drunken moment he had let slip a hint, I would have given him 24 hours to get clear and then reported it.

• 35:02David McCloskey?

  Which, of course, is the rumour of what Elliot may have done in Beirut.

• 35:07Gordon Corera?

  So it's fascinating. Greene goes out to meet him, others don't. I mean, John Le Carre has offered the chance, when Le Carre visits Moscow in the 80s, to meet Kim Philby. And there's a message sent to Le Carre when he's on a kind of research visit. Philby's a great admirer of your, you know, works. Would you like to meet him? And Le Carre says, it was a horrific suggestion. I couldn't possibly have shook his hand. It was drenched in blood. It would have been repulsive. So there's a really interesting, I think, difference there between Le Carre and Greene, about how they feel about Philby.

• 35:40David McCloskey?

  Would you have been Le Carre or Greene?

• 35:42Gordon Corera?

  Oh, I'd have been Greene. I think I would have, I think curiosity would have got the better of me. The journalist in me would be like, come on, the writer in you, would you not?

• 35:51David McCloskey?

  I mean, you know, I'm thinking of the, you know, I actually don't think these are comparable, but a rough analogue would be Snowden today, for example. I think-

• 36:03Gordon Corera?

  Eddie calls you up, says, hi, David, you're in town?

• 36:06David McCloskey?

  No, no, I wouldn't, I don't, I wouldn't want to see him. I think I'd be more Le Carre in this moment of, of this, this guy turned Philby, turned the service inside out, killed our agents.

• 36:21Gordon Corera?

  Yeah, people died.

• 36:22David McCloskey?

  And I think Greene seems to have this kind of respect for the game.

• 36:26Gordon Corera?

  Yeah.

• 36:28David McCloskey?

  I don't think I'd be able to do it.

• 36:29Gordon Corera?

  Interesting.

• 36:30David McCloskey?

  I don't think I'd be able to do it. I think I'm more Le Carre, although I, I understand Greene as well.

• 36:36Gordon Corera?

  Yeah. So but Greene, you know, agrees to do it, 86, goes up to the apartment, they hug each other, there's vodka, talk about the war, that's what old men do, who've served in the war together. Afterwards, Philby will say, and he'll tell Rafina, his wife, that he realised that there was this bond between them. And the bond is, they're both burdened by doubt. And with, and I think this is really interesting because Greene was a Catholic who'd committed to his faith, partly because of a relationship, but then had lived a, let's say, complicated life. And I think clearly had had, you know, doubts and questions and struggled with his faith. And I think Philby, you know, as a young man, had committed to communism.

• 37:21Gordon Corera?

  And I think what he's saying there is, you know, we both had to live, having made a commitment to an idea, and then having to live with our own internal questioning of what it meant.

• 37:33David McCloskey?

  Greene is roundly criticised in the British press for having met with Philby, though, isn't he? It's, his visit is described as being morally on par with having a holiday with Dr. Goebbels while the country was at war with Nazi Germany. That's the Daily Mail writing that. So, but then Greene, I mean, Greene kind of doesn't care. I mean, he goes back.

• 37:54Gordon Corera?

  He goes back multiple times. And, you know, there's a very good book by Robert Verkeke, The Writer and the Traitor, which looks at their relationship in a kind of double biography. But I think there is this question, which is, is, is it friendship or curiosity which is driving Greene to go to Philby, or is it something else? Because this other tantalising question, which is, was Greene actually doing something on the bidding of MI6? Because only later does it emerge that Graham Greene has kept in touch with MI6 long after leaving MI6 during the war. He does the occasional job for them. He's on a kind of unofficial payroll until he dies.

• 38:36Gordon Corera?

  He's passing on all the letters and postcards he receives from Kim Philby to Maurice Oldfield. Maurice Oldfield is like the counterintelligence officer who briefs Philby on his way out to Washington, where we started this series in 49, and later is chief of MI6. And so-

• 38:55Gordon Corera?

  The question is, is Green a back channel for MI6 to contact and keep contact?

• 39:03David McCloskey?

  Why wouldn't he be?

• 39:03Gordon Corera?

  Why wouldn't he be?

• 39:04David McCloskey?

  Yeah.

• 39:05Gordon Corera?

  Yeah, I find it entirely plausible that, you know, it's a way of keeping tabs on Philby, but also passing messages and having a channel to say, if you want to get out, it's the Markus Wolf point, MI6 has found a way to get hold of Philby in Moscow. I mean, this is a bit later, but you could imagine one of the ways is through people going back and forth. And you can absolutely believe that Graham Greene was this channel or one of the channels of contacting Philby, just in case he wants to go back.

• 39:36David McCloskey?

  And I suppose it would be, to our earlier point, you could see how by the eighties, when Philby's been out for two decades, he's been in Moscow for two decades, why it would be a kind of PR coup for the Brits to get him back.

• 39:53Gordon Corera?

  Yeah, because now you go, I recant, I recant all my allegiance, I made a mistake, I'm sorry.

• 39:58David McCloskey?

  Even if you don't say that, just the mere act of coming back.

• 40:02Gordon Corera?

  Would be a psychological blow, I think, for the Soviets. But by the time you get to Green's visits, you know, Philby is already, you know, his health is failing badly. You know, he's approaching the end. And 11th of May, 1988, Philby dies. For two hours, mourners pass by the open casket at a special KGB hall. Flowers, medals around the casket, George Blake is there, some of his friends in the UK. I mean, actually, some of his children come over for it. Then they hammer the coffin shut and he's buried in a cemetery in Moscow, which is normally reserved for KGB generals.

• 40:43Gordon Corera?

  And I visited there, I've stood outside, stood and paid my respects to Kim at his, at his gravestone, kind of black gravestone with, with very little writing, just basically saying Kim Philby and a picture of him in his old age. But yeah, it's, it's, it's quite a place to be laid to rest, the place he thinks of as home.

• 41:05David McCloskey?

  He also told people that he was a KGB general, right? I mean, he's buried there, but it's not true, is it?

• 41:11Gordon Corera?

  No, he wasn't.

• 41:12David McCloskey?

  But that's the line. The, the Philby lore is that he was a KGB general, but no.

• 41:16Gordon Corera?

  No, and the reactions, I think, to his death are fascinating. So his old school friend, Tim Milne, who'd been at MI6 with him, you know, been at school with him, is asked by his daughter, you know, I suppose you have mixed feelings. And Milne replies, no, for me, he died many years ago. I think that's, you know, for some people, it's like, I don't even want to think about him.

• 41:38David McCloskey?

  Yeah. Now, Miles Copeland, friend from the CIA,

• 41:45David McCloskey?

  is a little bit different for Milne. He says, I differ from my British colleagues who hated him. How could I hate him for being a double agent when we were doing the same thing to the other side? Very Graham Green-esque in that sense. I am truly sorry the old bastard is dead. He was one of the best intelligence officers this century. The way he kept one step ahead of the hounds was masterful. I wish we had some like him operating for us.

• 42:07Gordon Corera?

  That's an interesting one, isn't it?

• 42:08David McCloskey?

  It is.

• 42:09Gordon Corera?

  Because that is, that is the intelligence professional response, rather than the friends going, he was good.

• 42:15David McCloskey?

  He was good.

• 42:15Gordon Corera?

  He was, he was as good as you get at playing the game.

• 42:19David McCloskey?

  What about Nicholas Elliot?

• 42:20Gordon Corera?

  So Nicholas Elliot, I love this, he suggests that they write an obituary for Philby, which mysteriously indicates that he should be thanked for his service, which many may not have fully appreciated. In other words, like Elliot is like, maybe we should make out he was a triple agent all along by like dropping these hints in an official obituary. And I think, you know, it's a last attempt by Nicholas Elliot to kind of play with the heads of the KGB and maybe cover the fact that actually he was the one who got played by Philby. I think there's an element of that. He's still thinking about the game, but also I think of his own betrayal.

• 42:57David McCloskey?

  And but the KGB, even to the end, I, I guess there, there, there's a faction inside of it or a, a theory or a rumor that maybe Philby had fooled them all along.

• 43:10Gordon Corera?

  Yeah.

• 43:10David McCloskey?

  Maybe he really had been a triple agent.

• 43:13Gordon Corera?

  Yeah, because his former KGB controller, Yuri Modin, who was the guy who helps organise the Burgess and McLean Escape 51, says he was never quite sure about Philby. He says, you know, in his memoir, I was reading it, my Cambridge friends, and he says, in the end, I suspect that Philby made a mockery of everyone, particularly ourselves, he says of the KGB. I mean, that is bizarre, isn't it?

• 43:39David McCloskey?

  Do you understand that line?

• 43:42David McCloskey?

  Because I don't, I actually don't think it's true. I mean, Philby made a mockery of MI6.

• 43:47Gordon Corera?

  Yeah.

• 43:48David McCloskey?

  Turned MI6 inside out, stole secrets from the Americans and passed them to the Russians, compromised dozens of operations and, and agents for the Russians, for the Soviets. So.

• 44:02Gordon Corera?

  How can they not? How can they think they've been fooled?

• 44:06David McCloskey?

  Although it, it is interesting that it is, and it may be sort of reflective of that exceptionally paranoid mentality that runs deep in Russian intelligence, that it was really, I mean, this kind of, this lore of Kim Philby and, and Philby lionised as a kind of Soviet hero or Russian hero, doesn't really happen during his lifetime.

• 44:30Gordon Corera?

  Yeah.

• 44:30David McCloskey?

  It happens much later, where now the modern day SVR, the current day, you know, foreign intelligence wing of the, of what had been the KGB, now make him out as this big hero where they have stamps and Kim Philby statues and websites and, and books. And I mean, this is fascinating is that there's an exhibition in 2017 at the SVR about Philby. Rafina, his last wife, is still there, along with the head of the SVR. And she only passes away in 2021.

• 45:03Gordon Corera?

  Yeah, and it's interesting because even in that exhibition, they suddenly kind of shift the Philby story as well to portray him as primarily an anti-fascist. Because of course, you know, this is the narrative in modern day Russia is it's not about communism, it's about anti-fascism. And so they, they, the emphasis slightly shifts on who Philby was as being, which is, you know, has some truth, as being primarily an anti-fascist, which I guess gets us, as we close out this series, you know, to, to, to what we make of Philby, this bizarre character and, you know, what drove him and how, how we, how we see him? What was the core motivation for him?

• 45:43David McCloskey?

  He seems like a truly ideological agent. I mean, I, I tend to just take him at his word when he, I mean, he talks constantly about his political ideals, motivating everything. I mean, the, the mentality, the mental model that he had of himself as a Soviet intelligence officer, not as a, not as a British traitor, although I, you know, I understand that his relationship with his home country is complex, right? I mean, but I tend to just take him at his word, that he's, he, he's obviously didn't do this for money.

• 46:19Gordon Corera?

  No.

• 46:21David McCloskey?

  I'm, there's a whole, you know, I'm sure there's, there's ego and all these other psychological aspects that are wrapped up into it, but it seems like the, that nub, the core of it, was that he was a zealot, he was a communist zealot and political ideologue.

• 46:37Gordon Corera?

  One of his KGB students, Michael Bogdanov, says, the word to understand him is integrity. Now, that sounds quite challenging, but what he means, you know, we think of him as the master of deception, but he says integrity in the sense of he remained the same as he always was, which was an Englishman. So he, he remains an Englishman, you know, eating his marmalade, you know, doing the cricket stores at the end, but not a member of the establishment he'd grown up with, but also a communist, which he'd been since he was a student at Cambridge. And he basically remains true to those things, being an Englishman and a communist to the end of his days, you know, his, his core path is consistent.

• 47:21Gordon Corera?

  He, he had his path and he stuck to it. So what was his favourite song in his later years? I love this fact. It was My Way by Frank Sinatra. Regrets I've had a few, but then again, too few to mention. I did what I had to do and saw it through without exemption. I mean.

• 47:40David McCloskey?

  Also, the first song played at Donald Trump's first inauguration.

• 47:45Gordon Corera?

  Trump, Trump, Trump and Philby.

• 47:49David McCloskey?

  Trump and Philby. They might, they might get on.

• 47:51Gordon Corera?

  Yeah. So I think, you know, because that's the, I think that's the positive view from Macdonough, which is like, this was a guy who, who basically stayed core, you know, stayed true to his core principles all the way through. The other view of him is he was someone who loved deceit and, and treachery and betraying people, of which I think there is also an element, isn't there?

• 48:14David McCloskey?

  Yeah, and that, those are not mutually exclusive positions. I think I'm always, I'm a little, I'm a little suspect of people who, and it maybe Green does this a little bit too, where there's this kind of admiration for someone who just sticks to their ideals and has them. Because if you carry that all the way through, you'd say, well, you know, Adolf Hitler did a lot of bad stuff, but man, he really, you know, he had an ideology and he stuck to it. And, you know, it's just, to me, you have to, you, you can't just evaluate. And again, it's, you know, coming at it from perhaps a moral or ethical judgment, you

• 48:57David McCloskey?

  have to evaluate the ideology as well, that the person has dedicated themselves to. And in this case, you, you have to confront the fact that Philby, and in particular, Philby post Second World War, has decided to throw his lot in with an ideology that has resulted in, that is murderous, that has resulted in millions of people being killed.

• 49:23Gordon Corera?

  Yeah.

• 49:24David McCloskey?

  You know, he is, he's, he's an ideologue. I think he is also, you know, as we've said, psychologically, he has this weird fascination with deceit and deception and does seem to kind of have an addiction to it. But yeah, you can't, to me, you can't separate him from the ideology that he has decided to, to throw his lot in with.

• 49:43Gordon Corera?

  No, I think that's absolutely right. And I think in a way, one of the almost tragedies of Philby's life is that he doesn't last a couple more years and see the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Soviet Union, you know, eighty-nine to ninety-one, that period, where it all comes crashing down. Because you'd almost want for him to have seen the failure of the thing he had dedicated his life to and then see his reaction to that. And he never quite gets to, you know, he doesn't, he doesn't make it there. So I, I, I agree. I think it isn't this thing of like, well, are you a traitor? Are, you know, was he loyal to his ideas? You have to have a moral judgment about what those ideas were as well. And, and you know, I think he has some doubts at some point.

• 50:24David McCloskey?

  Yeah, sure.

• 50:25Gordon Corera?

  I think he must do.

• 50:26David McCloskey?

  You spoke to Smiley Mike, though, about Philby, right?

• 50:30Gordon Corera?

  Yeah, and, and I found it interesting because Smiley Mike, Lubimov, friend of Philby, you know, always said to me like, Gordievsky's a traitor, whereas Philby's a hero. And, you know, I was like, well, what do you mean? He was like, well, Gordievsky changed sides, whereas Philby was always, it's that point about consistency, you know? He was always a Soviet penetration agent. He didn't betray MI6 because he never really worked for them. My favorite Philby quote is actually one that he gives when he's confronted in Moscow by a journalist, uh, who says, you know, you know, didn't you betray your country? And Philby says, to betray, you must first belong. I never belonged. I followed exactly the same line the whole of my adult life.

• 51:14Gordon Corera?

  To me, I think that, I think that unlocks a lot of Philby. Because what he's saying is, I never, it's, it again goes to the kind of upbringing, personality, his father, the establishment, the early life. It looks like he was part of the British establishment, but he never felt he was part of it. And he was never therefore loyal to it. So he, in his own mind, you know, he never betrayed it because he never belonged to it. I mean, we think of him as emblematic of that, but he never did. In the first series we did on Philby, I did express some sympathy for him, uh, which I'm going to qualify now because I think you can understand in the thirties, being an anti-fascist and being drawn to this.

• 51:58Gordon Corera?

  But by the time, I think, you're right, you get to the Stalin period, the later period, the, the failure to adapt to that and change, change it, I, I don't think, I don't think works for me, I'm afraid. Any sympathy I have disappears, not least the way he treated, he treated, you know, the women around him, the way he treated his friends. And I mean, intelligence is a kind of, can be a hard game, but there were a lot of people who died as a result of what Philby did.

• 52:26David McCloskey?

  What do you think explains the continued fascination with him? I mean, I think there's fascination with him in the Soviet Union, Russia, there's fascination with him in the States, in particular, though, there's fascination with him in the UK.

• 52:43Gordon Corera?

  Yeah.

• 52:43David McCloskey?

  The Philby story is, is history at this point. I mean, we're talking about things that happened more than a half century ago, in some cases, but why is it so fascinating to us today?

• 52:55Gordon Corera?

  Yeah, I mean, I kind of pondered that. Why, you know, why do we keep coming back to Philby?

• 53:01Gordon Corera?

  You know, Philip Knightley, who's this brilliant journalist who meets him in Moscow in, in the late eighties, just before he dies, you know, says that Philby for Britain forced us to examine ourselves and kind of attitudes towards patriotism, treachery, class, politics, conviction. So I think there is an element in which he opens up kind of conversations about so many other things because of the, his, the trajectory of his life. But then in turn, I think he fuels a kind of slightly masochistic British obsession with traitors, you know, which is fueled by fiction, you know, and John le Carré and that, and that world.

• 53:40Gordon Corera?

  Uh, you know, I think many individuals exert a fascination over the public, but I think rarely has one individual held a fascination for so many years for a country that they betrayed. You know what I mean? It's, you know, it's a very British thing, I think, to kind of become obsessed with your, with your own traitors, get the spies you deserve as a country. And maybe, you know, you also get the traitors you deserve. And I think Philby is maybe the traitor we deserve because he tells us so much about ourselves in Britain and holds up a mirror to us.

• 54:12David McCloskey?

  Well, and that fascination has even made its way into MI6.

• 54:17Gordon Corera?

  Yeah.

• 54:18David McCloskey?

  And the way MI6 trains new recruits.

• 54:20Gordon Corera?

  Yeah, I was told that new recruits for MI6, this is quite a few years ago, were shown the film of Philby in his mother's flat in nineteen fifty-five, denying that he was the third man. And they would sit in a room and they would be shown this video of their greatest traitor lying. Now, whether it was to teach them what a liar looked like, or whether it was to teach them about the history and what happens when a traitor tears your service apart, as he did, that's what they were shown. And someone told me that when that film runs to the end, there's just silence in the room.

• 55:04David McCloskey?

  Well, I think that's the spot to leave it. Uh, we are finally, we're at the end of our six-part series on Kim Philby. We hope that listeners have enjoyed this incredible journey of regardless of what you think about the man, an incredibly interesting and, and continually interesting character, even decades after his death. Just a reminder, of course, if you have listened to this entire series and not yet joined the club, shame on you, first of all. But second of all, we have an incredible compilation of bonus content that is attached to the series.

• 55:44David McCloskey?

  Couple of deep dives into the, the sort of impact and legacy of Philby in the UK and in the US, conversations about Philby's literary impact, a conversation with a real-life CIA mole hunter. So a lot of great stuff for club members. So do, if you have not, do go and join the club at therestisclassified.com. We should also say that we have a really fascinating and wild series that we are launching next on Watergate. And it may be the case that many people don't know that Watergate is an exceptional spy story with some incredibly colorful characters at the center of it and some good old fashioned breaking and entering.

• 56:26Gordon Corera?

  We're going to reveal whether the CIA was actually, the deep state was behind Watergate because that is something which, you know, it still echoes today. I mean, recently JD Vance, the current Vice President of the United States, was talking about Watergate, says if it happened today, it'd be a 12-hour news story, but he was comparing the deep state taking down Nixon to what's happened to Donald Trump. So that's another thing we're going to be examining in that series for Watergate. So it's going to be a great listen. Do join us for that, do join the club, but otherwise, we'll see you next time.

• 56:56David McCloskey?

  We'll see you next time.

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