The Rest Is Classified - 124. Kim Philby: Britain’s Most Notorious Traitor (Ep 4)

Episode Date: February 4, 2026

A Russian agent is trying to defect to Britain, but there’s only one person in his way: Kim Philby. Will the communist double agent at the heart of MI6 sell his comrade down the river to save himself, or spare his life at the risk of giving the game away? As David and Gordon reach the end of their first foray into the infamous life and career of Kim Philby, they ask: can you ever feel sympathy for a traitor? ------------------- 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 Try it risk-free now with a 30-day money-back guarantee  ------------------- Email: [e-mail] Instagram: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@restisclassified Video Editor: James Clayden Social Producer: Emma Jackson Producer: Becki Hills Head of History: Dom Johnson Exec Producer: Tony Pastor Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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 the Rest is Classified.com. This episode is sponsored by HP. Most people are not counter-espionage experts, but that won't stop them getting targeted by cybercriminals seeking to extract their secrets. HP understands that approximately four in ten UK businesses have reported cyber breaches in the past 12 months alone. That's why HP business laptops,

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worth it. Shop L'Oreal-Paris panorama mascara on Amazon now. A penetrated secret service is not just a bad one. It is an appalling liability. In place of an all-seeing eye, it becomes a credulous ear and a misleading voice, innocently deceiving its own customers in every sphere of the national security. diplomatic, strategic, and economic. This was the condition in which SIS functioned at a charitable estimate for 10 years. Well, welcome to the rest is classified. I'm David McCloskey. And I'm Gordon Carrera.

And that is former SIS officer, a minor spy novelist, John LeCorey, writing in 1968 about Kim Vilby, of course, Le Corre, giant of the genre, who wrote wonderful, incredible novel called Tinker Taylor Soldier Spy that really is in many ways about Filby, about the British class system, about the sort of turning inside out of a secret service, as he's describing it here. And we're now, Gordon, in episode four, the finale of our four-parter on the rise of Kim Filby. And a reminder that we are not doing the entire Kim Filby story in this series. we were going to come back to this later on. Doubtless, Gordon,

we'll probably have 30 or 40 episodes when all is said and done on Kim Filby. Is that right? Less than that. But more than four. More than four. We're going to come back and do the kind of downfall of Philby later on. But we left Philby last time, Gordon,

at the end of the Second World War, he had been poisoned by insecticide by a German cook. He was in the streets of Berlin when news of the the use of the atomic bomb at Hiroshima came through and sort of were now entering this new world of what is soon to become the Cold War. And Kim Filby is in the astounding position of being a Soviet intelligence agent who is running all of SIS's operations against the Soviet Union. So he is doing this high wire act that is incredibly important to the Soviet Union. but also extremely risky for Kim Filby himself.

Yeah, that's right. This period, I think, really from 1944, when he takes over this Section 9, dealing with the Soviet Union, is the period in which he's going to do the greatest damage to Western intelligence, but it is also the most stressful and the most difficult for Philby to manage.

Because as we'll see, he's basically having to walk this tightrope. Things are getting harder because he's not working with the, Soviet Union and Britain against a common enemy, the Germans, but he's working in British terms against his bosses in Moscow. And he's supposed to be undermining Soviet intelligence. And so the question becomes, how successful do you want to be in that job? Because also, you can't be totally unsuccessful. You can't screw everything up in operations against the Soviet Union, or it's going to be pretty obvious. You know, your career is going to be over and

people are going to ask questions. But equally, if you're really good at your job, you're doing damage to Moscow and to your true masters. So, you know, there is this kind of constant question and tension you've got if you're Filby now, which is what operations do you sabotage, what operations do you let run, do you even tell your Moscow handlers everything for fear of what they might do? So he's got this amazing access and this amazing opportunity, you know, details of what the UK and the Allies are doing to the spy on the Soviets, the bugging, the agent running, you know, the liaison with the Americans who he knows what they're doing, he knows what communications they're intercepting, he's constantly having to kind of weigh in his mind how to deal

with it. And I think the place where, as we'll see in these years, it gets really hard is when you get defectors from Soviet intelligence. I mean, this is the really challenging bit. The first incident here that becomes problematic for Philby is September of 1945, a cipher clerk in the Soviet embassy in Ottawa named Igor Guzenko shows up, first in a newspaper office and then the Canadian Department of Justice with a whole bunch of secrets that he's taken. And classically, Gordon, what do you do with a Soviet defector, right? I mean, you turn him away initially, right? Get out of here. We don't want this stuff. Get lost. But eventually, they see the light and Guzenko starts talking. Yeah, exactly. I mean, it's funny,

isn't it? Because they turn him away. The Soviets start hunting for him and he goes into hiding. And then, you know, the kind of the West suddenly, right, Zachich, actually, maybe we need to get this guy. And they bring him in. Probably worth us doing a story on him sometime. Because his intelligence is so important because he basically reveals how much spying the Soviet Union is doing on Western countries. Because, of course, they've been allies through the war. Thanks to Guizenko, the Western intelligence agencies, going like, hang on a second, they're spying on us this much from Moscow. And so in many ways, this kind of Guzenko defectionist, the kind of starting gun for the Cold War in terms of intelligence.

Because they're realizing, well, we've not been spying on them, but they are spying. on us, and often it's people who've been communists. And some of the people, Gwazenko will point to, you know, including spies in the atomic bomb program, there's one Alan Nune, you know, he's going to be important. And the reports, though, the reports of what Gwazenko is revealing, of course, where did they come in London? They come to Section 9. They come to Philby. You know, he gets the reports. And he's agitated when he meets his Soviet handler. But at least he can pass it on. And then the Soviets were able to warn some of these agents, not to go to some of their agreed rendezvous and meetings where they might be caught and kind of incriminate themselves. I mean,

Alan Numbay will eventually be, you know, arrested and prosecuted. But Philby's got to kind of manage this. And he's kind of also managing it within the office. So there's a very interesting woman called Jane Archer who's come over from MI5, who is like the leading expert on communism. And again, Philby is really kind of worried by her because he's like, she knows what she's talking about. She's actually interviewed Soviet defectors who've talked about communists, spies and agents inside the British system, and might she have some suspicions about me. So he's got to kind of manage the inflow of defector information, manage some of his own staff and keep them away from the details that are sensitive. But then we get, I think the big one for Philby, Volkov, Constantine Volkov,

this defection. And this, you know, you were talking about John LeCarray and the fact that he basically fictionalises the Philby story. And the Volkov story, I think, is at the heart of Tinker Taylor Soldier Spy and the Carreys book really does take this story and use it as the kind of dramatic pull into the mole hunt in Britain. So Volkov, short stocky man, nominally the Soviet Vice Consul in Istanbul, approaches the British Consulate General in Istanbul in Turkey in August 1945 and leaves a letter asking for an urgent appointment. Again. No response.

No response. A bit like the Gwesenko. It's like, really good agent. Yeah. We'll just leave it. He gets nothing. It's a prank. They think it's a prank and they ignore it.

So then he turns up in person with his wife. He's taken into the British Vice Consul's office and he's kind of clearly nervous. His wife even more so. The British Vice Consul brings in another diplomat who's a Russian speaker to help. And Volkov, of course, reveals he is actually a Soviet intelligence officer. And crucially, he previously worked on the British desk in Moscow. So he knows about operations against Britain by the NKVD, the forerun of the KGB. And he's offering to defect in return for 50,000 pounds. He's had a row with his ambassador.

And he says he's got a ton of intelligence. He's got everything from kind of keys to get into the buildings of the Soviet missions, two, and this is the crucial list of 314 agents in Turkey that they're running, and 250 agents in Britain, including some of the documents they've handed over. And there's a teaser, so in advance, you know, on what he's got, because he's obviously smart enough not to just all hand it over until the deal is agreed. He knows the kind of way these works. He says, without giving names, there are two spies inside the British Foreign Office. and seven inside the British intelligence system, but one of them fulfilled the function of the head of a section

of the British counter-espionage service in London. It's very precise words, you know, fulfilled the function of the head of a section of the British counter-espionage service in London. And he says, if the Brits are going to offer him, you know, a new identity and the money, he will provide their identities. And he also says all communications between Istanbul and London should be by diplomatic bag because the Russians have agents inside the mission, the British mission, and the Russians

had broken some of the British codes. So he doesn't want any of the details to go back by telegram because he fears the Russians will be able to read them. I mean, that's a big deal. Yeah, we glossed over the fact that he asked for 50,000 pounds, which I presume is... A lot of money. I don't know what that translates to today, but it's... a good chunk of change. It seems, I guess the specific words you read would have related to

Philby's time when he was running Section 5. What's so interesting about them is they are not very precise words because the British counter espionage service, technically that is MI5. You know, MI5 is the spy catcher service. So your initial assumption on reading that, would be that the person Volkov is talking about is the head of a section of MI5, because he talks about the counter-espionage service. What he really means is a counter-espionage section in the intelligence service. But he's slightly muddled the words or deliberately or not, but he's slightly got that wrong. And it's dated, too.

That description is dated like he doesn't know that Philby is actually in charge of the Soviet section inside SIS. Yeah, but he clearly knows. the names because he's offering to give them. But he's insisted the deal has got to be done first. So the Russian-speaking British diplomat is told, you contact me, Volkov says, on routine business to pass messages. And he wants to hear ideally within 21 days by September 25th or the latest by October the 1st or else then he'll go elsewhere. So that means then they have to send word back to London about this approach because they clearly realise this is kind of serious. And it's got to go back by the diplomatic bag, which of course is a, literally a bag where you can put in documents

in which is, I think, technically not supposed to be searched by postal authorities. Is that right? Right. That's right. Yeah, exactly. You should, you could put anything in a diplomatic bag. You could put weapons, you could put documents, you could put a person, and it's not supposed to be searched by the host country on its way in and out. But of course, the problem is that because it is literally a bag, rather than the telegram going, it's got to get from Istanbul to London in those days. I mean, in all, it's going to take 10 days. So the clock is already ticking on his deadlines for it to arrive at Broadway at MI6 HQ, where it goes straight to the chief. And then who would, you know, if you're the chief of MI6, who would you summon to discuss this amazing

offer? You're a Soviet guy, right? Yeah, Kim Filby. It's Kim Philby. Kim Filby. Kim Filby is summoned into the chief's office on September the 19th. And he's shown this letter from Istanbul outlining Volkov's offer. And it's amazing because you just think about it. He is sitting there in front of the chief of MI6 reading what could be effectively his death warrant and also realizing, no doubt, when it talks about two spies within the foreign office, it's Guy Burgess and Donald McLean who are there at that point. His friends, which would also point to him. And of course, Philby's such a kind of cool customer. He's reading it in front of. the chief lie. And he's got to show nothing on his face. No shock, no suspicion. It is memoir. He says,

I stared at the papers rather longer than necessary to compose my thoughts. I bet he did. I mean, he plays it cool because he basically knows the thing not to say is to go, oh, well, this is nothing. This is, you know, it's a joke. We should ignore it because he knows that also will be suspicious. So he says, oh, this looks very important. Let me come back to you to tomorrow morning with a plan. That's the smart thing to do, isn't it? Kind of by time, basically. Obviously, at this point, the chief of SIS, Mingus, how could he possibly think that it's Philby? He's just going to upfront, probably not even consider that possibility, right? That Philby is one of the, one of the Soviet spies that Volkov refers to. And of course, then, that gives Philby time.

So that evening, the 19th, I mean, he goes and what do you do? If you're Philby, you alert the Russians immediately, I guess via Burgess, right? So he goes and sees Burgess at the foreign office and then gets him to pass a message and then Philby meets his handler. I guess if you're Philby, you'd like to be the person talking to Volkov, wouldn't you? Yeah, exactly. So next morning, he goes, Philby goes back to see the chief. You know, he says, yes, this is potentially of great importance.

And of course he says, someone who knows what they're talking about should be sent out to debrief Volkov and get him out safely. Now, we talk about this a few times. Philby again and again is lucky. And here again, he's lucky because initially he isn't the first person and the obvious person to be sent out. Because there is someone who's slightly better place. There's a guy called Brigadier Douglas Roberts, who's based in Cairo for British intelligence. And he's closer in Cairo and he speaks Russian. So it kind of makes sense.

And Philby can't be seen to go, no, no, don't send someone else. But later in the day, Philby is summoned back to the chief's office to be told, unfortunately, Roberts is afraid of flying. Oh, good grief. I mean, he's got, and supposedly Robert says, don't you read my contract, I don't fly. I mean, he's got in his contract that he won't fly when he's asked to go to Istanbul. This is kind of brilliant luck for Philby, isn't it? I mean, it's so lucky because then he can go to the chief. Well, maybe, you know, if Roberts can't go, maybe I should go.

Maybe me, you know. And of course, you know, the chief is like, oh, Philby, would you? Would you be so kind? You know, I mean, it's mad, isn't it? You would think that an intelligence officer faced with the prospect of being able to debrief a true blue NKVD defector. You would think people would be jumping at the chance to get there. But it's kind of treated like a irritating errand for these intelligence officers to carry out, right?

Well, it is a long way to go. And I mean, this is the other thing I kind of realize again, kind of looking back at this, as we'll see, it's not quick to go out there. It's not as easy as today where there's kind of multiple direct flights to Istanbul. I mean, and Philby has also got this problem. Now he's been told he can go out. You want to go out slowly because you've informed. the Soviets, you're hoping they're dealing with it. But equally, you can't be seen to be slow-balling. So he does have to do a kind of crash course in wireless coding. So he has to be

kind of reminded how to do coding from the field. He doesn't rush, but neither does he slow things down. Because he doesn't want to tip things off too much. But it's now around September the 25th when he's actually going to go to Turkey. And then again, he gets lucky because he writes this. he goes towards evening. My rising spirits were given another boost. So he's on the plane first, and the pilot announces on the intercom that owing to electrical storms over Malta, we were being diverted to Tunis, and then subject to improved weather conditions, they'd eventually get to Cairo via Malta the next day. That's another 24 hours. And then he misses his next connection to Istanbul from Cairo.

I mean, what he's effectively done is he's informed the Russians that they've got a problem with Volkov. And so he has, there's two timelines running here. There's the Russians' ability to sort of pull Volkov, convince Volkov to go back to Moscow or to just yank him out. And that is running against Philby trying to get to Istanbul to debrief him. And Philby wants all of these delays. so that he can show up effectively in Istanbul and say, oh, the guy's not here.

Yeah. Or the offer has been rescinded or whatever. So as these delays pile up, it's buying time. Yeah. And he arrives, I think, in Istanbul on a Friday. And the consul general is away and the place closes for the weekend. The foreign office also a bit wary of him. He goes to the ambassador's yacht on the Sunday because, you know, the ambassador wants to meet him.

Finally, I think it's only on the Monday. he goes into the consulate and he gets the first secretary who'd been the kind of the Russian-speaking Brit, who's the kind of the go-between, to call Volkov. And they call Volkov in the Soviet consulate in Istanbul. First time, no answer. Then the next time they try again. Someone does answer and says, yes, I am Volkov, but the first secretary who's met Volkov many times, you know, in person, just knows it's not him. The voice is wrong. And so he says like, this is not again. So they're going to try again.

And a secretary says, you know, Volkov is out. And then the next day, when they call again, a secretary says, Volkov's in Moscow. And then the line goes dead. I mean, you know, for Philby, that is success, isn't it? It is. Yeah. And it's only later that it kind of, it emerges what's happened,

which is the KGB had enough time, thanks to Philby's warning, to send officers out to Istanbul, they drug Volkov and his wife two days before Philby arrived, so just two days before. And then famously, two figures entirely covered in bandages are seen being loaded onto a Soviet aircraft on a stretcher. And that is Volkov and his wife. and they are taken to the Ljbianca, KGB headquarters. They are tortured, they confess, and both Volkov and his wife are executed. Gordon, I think this would be a good point to ask you.

You've spoken throughout the series about your sort of your affection for Kim Filby. Well, not affection. Just revisionist take on Philby. Your empathy for the adventurous spirit of this young communist, idealist. Who didn't dabble in this left-wing stuff when they were at university, right? But now here we are with two dead people. So I'm just kind of curious where you were. Spying's a rough game, David.

Yeah, just in case you didn't realize that. It's a rough game and this is how it gets played. If you're Volkov, if you're Philby, it's survival. It's Volkov or Philby, isn't it? It's as simple as that. If Volkov gets out, Philby is, well, he may not be dead. I guess that is the difference. You know, he's not going to get tortured.

He's just going to go to jail for a long time. Well, would he? No, probably not, yeah. I'm very skeptical at this point that Philby would have seen the inside of a British jail. I agree. My sympathy for Philby begins at this point to be stretched somewhat and become harder to. But anyway, let's pass on that for the moment. Let's move on.

Let's move on. Let's move on. Let's move on. Because Philby heads back on the plane. and he writes a report to his bosses. Speculating. I love this. He has to speculate. What happened to Volkov?

Because they don't know yet about the kind of stretch and advantageous. Perhaps he writes Volkov changed his mind. You know, he had been very nervous in the meetings. Maybe he got drunk and was spotted. Or maybe the embassy, one of the embassies was bugged and they worked it out. Those are the only ways of explaining it. And on the way back to London, he goes via Rome, and he visits James Jesus Angleton, later of the CIA.

They get massively drunk. You know, Angleton expresses great sympathy about what's happened. And Philby will later call it a very narrow squeak. And I think it's more than that because I think it's a very British understatement right there. It is very British, it's very Philby. You know, he now knows that any defector from inside Soviet intelligence could be the end for him. What if Volkov had defected to the Americans or even the Turks and given them the details of who the spy. were in British intelligence. He'd be assuming he had Philby's name. He could have just defected to them

and given them the name. He would have had no chance even to control the situation, Philby then. So again, you know, he was very, very lucky. Maybe Gordon Dare with Philby having come through this very narrow squeak. Let's take a break and we come back. We'll see how the strain of Philby's double life begins to take its toll. With MX Platinum, $400 in annual credit, for travel and dining means you not only satisfy your travel bug, but your taste buds too. That's the powerful backing of Amex. Conditions apply. Local news is in decline across Canada, and this is bad news for all of us. With less local news, noise, rumors, and misinformation fill the void, and it gets harder to

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Find out more at Strathcona.ca slash join S-C-E-S. Welcome back, Kim Filby. Gordon, I think it's safe to say is maybe beginning to show some signs that this whole double-life thing is really wearing him down. And I mean, even his friends start to notice in this period, don't they, that he's a different man. Yeah, Tim Milne's old school boyfriend, who's also with him in MI6, says it's interesting. He says, I scarcely ever saw him much the worse for drink before

1945, but somewhere around this time there was a perceptible change. Milne wonders, you know, is it the war is over, but he suddenly changes and drink becomes a bit of a bigger factor. And I think Milne will later think maybe it was the Volkov case, which was the turning point for him, because, you know, suddenly he could be sober after a dozen drinks or almost incoherent after two. At this time, 1945, 46, he was more likely to get drunk on private relaxed occasions than in wider company. He was not usually aggressive or unpleasant, just drunk. You know, and it's interesting, he gets drunk in private with his friends. And you feel like he needs that release, doesn't he?

You know, we haven't talked a whole lot about his consumption of alcohol. We talked about it a little bit last week on our club episode when we talked with Antonio Signore about her book, Stalin's apostles. I think it is a fascinating aspect of the way Philby manages his stress because, I mean, it makes perfect sense, doesn't it? I mean, it's a way for him to cope with what must have been a very unpleasant interior psychological reality. You wouldn't want to face it every day. And you would want moments or hours, you know, evenings where you can just turn that volume down. and ignore, frankly, the consequences of your actions. Of your actions, yeah.

I mean, he's on this path now and there is no going back. Even if he'd wanted to, he's, you know, he's too deep in this. It's also interesting because you start to see it playing out in his marriage. Tim Milne recalls that he and Philby and Alien were kind of walking back from a pub in 1946 when Kim announced suddenly that his divorce, that Kim's divorce from Litsy was going through and he'd be free. And then in front of Milne, he's inspired to propose. And he says to Aline in front of Milne, darling, will you be the mother of my children,

Aileen, now pregnant with their force, giggled all the way back to number 18. Now, it's interesting because many friends were surprised when they get married, Kim and Aileen, because they actually assumed they'd already been married, because after they've got all these kids. Philby's taken this kind of decision, I think, to close up some of the gaps in his past and kind of deal with some of the problems. So he actually approaches Valentine Vivian, Vee, at MI6, one of his bosses, and he tells him about Litsy. Because I think he realizes it would be a risk if MI6 found out about Litsy and he hadn't told them.

So he says, look, I just married her to get her out of trouble in Vienna in 1934. You know, I was using my passport. We soon separated, but we never got around to getting divorced. But partly because we were never really married, it was just an act of selfless sacrifice. And they seem to buy that, which I think, you know, again, if you've already bought into the youthful idealism thing. So that allows him and alien to kind of have a massive boozy party and get married. And then, you know, the next stage in his career, he gets offered a chance to go as the station chief, the head of MI6 station in Istanbul. Now, this is kind of interesting because it might sound like a bit of a downgrade from running Soviet operations.

But actually, what it looks like is that the chief, Mingus, is actually trying to push Philby's career on because he's spotted him as a potential future chief further down the line. And actually, one of the gaps in Philby's kind of CV is that he's never run a foreign station. He's been in headquarters all the time in the war. And it does look at this point as if Philby is in the mix to eventually become chief of MI6. Hugh Trevor Roper, who was a kind of war-time colleague in MI6, it's a great quote from him. He says, who else of his generation was there? I looked around the world I had left at the part-time stockbrokers and retired Indian policemen, the agreeable epicureans from the bars of whites,

whites again, and boodles, the jolly conventional ex-naval officers and the robust adventurers from the bucket shop. And then I looked at Philby. And I was convinced that he, He was destined to head the service. If you're the Soviets and you're handling Philby, he's maybe not as useful to you in Istanbul as he is running the head of the Soviet section from London. But if you're playing a long game with Filby, which the Soviets are, him advancing strategically through the service is unambiguously a good thing. Because eventually he'll come back to London in a more senior role.

and he'll have even better access for you. And I guess Istanbul is also, it's not a backwater. I mean, it's a great spy town at this time. It's in a strategically important location. It's kind of just crossroads between the Middle Eastern Europe. She has a border with the Soviet Union. So you can kind of, you can see how this is still going to be very valuable to Soviet intelligence. Yeah, that's right.

And so Philby and Aileen move into a kind of beautiful house, it sounds, on the Asian side of Istanbul. where he can take a boat down to the consulate. Now, this is where I think again, the pressure is starting to tell because things start to go wrong with Aileen when she's there. She is lonely. They've got four kids by now. She is convinced Philby is having an affair with his secretary, which he is. And then even worse, Guy Burgess keeps coming to visit.

You know that friend. I've missed Guy Burgess. We haven't talked much about him in the last. couple episodes. Yeah, it's good to have Guy back. And Guy's now in the foreign office with tons of access. And he's also kind of, Philby's kind of conduit sometimes to get messages to Moscow. Burgess is also kind of cracking up, I think, under the pressure. He's also becoming kind of riskier in his activities, both the drinking and the casual sex. I mean, McLean is also feeling the pressure and kind of cracks up at one point. But Burgess is getting wilder.

I mean, he was wild before. And alien hates Burgeon. I'm just visiting, you know, because she thinks he kind of encourages Kim's heavy drinking and carozing and they go out a lot with the secretary with whom Kim is having an affair. And one evening, they supposedly go out to a yacht club and there's four of them and they drink 52 brandies. I mean, that's what the receipt shows. That seems like a lot. That seems almost impossible.

Yeah, although with Purgis and Philby. Burgess goes missing sometimes, doesn't he? after these nights of drinking and there have to be these kind of desperate searches. At one point, Burgess dives off the balcony of Kim's house into the, into the Bosphorus, like Rex's back. I mean, this guy is just, I'm glad Guy Burgess is back. I mean, I don't like what he's doing, spying for the Soviets, but he's an entertaining sort of gremlin. Although I also love, he's also got this kind of very emotional side because Tim Milne's there

during one of Burgess's visits. And he remembers this kind of sentimental side because Burgess starts telling the story. story of Mansfield Coming, the first chief of MI6, and it's a story we tell where he crashes his motor car in the First World War and his son dies and Manseville coming has to cut off his own leg and Burgess, as he tells the story,

bursts into tears with emotion. It's just like, it's so Guy Burgess. And at this point also, Eileen becomes ill and we should have a trigger of warning because we're going to talk a bit about self-harm here because Eileen starts engaging in self-harm. Now, what Philby doesn't

know, she's done so since she was a teen, teenager. This isn't new, but it really starts to increase now. Is it the affair? Does she suspect something about her husband keeping more than even normal secrets about her? It's hard to know, but she injects herself with urine. She sets fire to things. Again, Milne remembers one story that Eileen sets out alone in her car at one point, and then she arrives at someone else's house in a terrible state, badly bruised about the head covered in dirt. with the story of having been held up on a narrow road and attacked by a man who hit her on the head with a rock and tried to steal her back. And she goes into hospital.

And years later, she admits she actually kind of faked that incident. And then she prolongs her stay in hospital by reinfecting her wounds. Now, it's pretty dark, you know. And she goes actually, I mean, she gets taken to a clinic in Switzerland on a stretcher, I mean, which has got these kind of awful. of Volkov being taken on a stretcher, you know, out of Istanbul as well. And, you know, while she's away, Philby drinks himself under the table. But then six weeks later, she's back, but then she sets fire to things. But then eventually she seems to get back on an even keel. But Philby, it's very interesting. Philby is kind of worried about her, but also just angry. And he

seems especially angry when he learns that she had this history of self-harm, going back to her early years and that he'd not known about it. Do you think he's angry because he cares about her? Or is it that he's angry that he somehow didn't understand this part of her? Like it's something about him and his inability to sort of see her that makes him question his ability to, I don't know, to understand what's going on around him. I interpreted it in kind of a more selfish way, but that's because I have a very uncharitable view of Kim Filby. No, no, no, no. And even I, with my Philby sympathies think actually this is about him being angry, Aileen is making his life difficult.

Yeah. And angry that also she'd kept a secret from him. You know, he's supposed to be the guy who keeps secrets. And it goes back to our initial maybe conversation about Philby, you know, for him's secrets are power. Secrets are a kind of means of having one up on someone. And the idea that Aileen has had one up on him by having a secret that she didn't know, I think that kind of challenges probably his masculinity and his kind of spy tradecraft, perhaps.

Yeah. Well, Becky, our intrepid producer, has said here, you know, this feels like a very narcissistic response. And that's right. But it's a word we haven't actually used a lot in this series when we talk about Philby, but maybe it just goes without saying that he is an absolutely raging narcissist. Right. So everything around him is getting kind of circled back to him, right? in some way, shape or form.

I mean, does she know, do we think Eileen suspects that he's working against SIS? I think at this point, less likely. Yeah. I mean, because already he spends a lot of time out boozing with Guy and with other people. So meeting his Soviet handlers, you know, wouldn't be suspicious that he's away at various points in evening. So, I mean, I think she might realize there are secrets from her. So his personal life is hard at this point. But his work is going really well.

I mean, because he's looking for ways to penetrate the Soviet Union. So he's still doing the kind of anti-Soviet work. He goes on tours of the border with the Soviet Union, plans kind of long-range photography, debriefs defectors from Soviet military intelligence, and can check there are no leads there for him. And this is also a kind of big moment because the Cold War is starting, and CIA and MI6 are moving to this new policy, which is rollback against communism. And the idea is you're going to try and roll back the Soviet Union's ability to impose control on its own borders and neighboring states. And one of the ideas they've got is they're going to send emigrays back into the Soviet border states and occupied countries who are then going to build resistance networks for meant trouble, often use nationalist separatist groups.

They're going to do this all around the kind of periphery of the Soviet Union. so, you know, the Baltic states, Ukraine, Albania, lots of places, and they're going to do it in Turkey as well. They're going to try and send people from Turkey into Georgia, which is one of the Soviet republics, so part of the Soviet Union. And MI6 kind of codenane these operations, Clymer. And they, you know, for instance, train two operatives in London to go in via Turkey into the Soviet Union. They arrive in Istanbul and Philby is helping them. He's the one getting them prepared to cross the border. And, you know, they're two really young Georgian men.

You know, they're like 20 years old. And one of them, you know, seems very subdued because he knows the risks. Philby takes them to the border. And of course, they're never seen again. You know, that's it for them. And Philby is asked about this years later. And, you know, he says it was an unpleasant story, of course. The boys weren't bad, not at all.

I knew very well that they would be caught. that a tragic fate away to them. He says, on the other hand, it was the only way of driving a stake through the plans of future operations. He does what he has to do at this point. He does what he feels he has to do. But again, Philly is interesting, isn't he? Because he's kind of squeamish around death himself.

I mean, there's great instance where, you know, is he young. He hated seeing the maid kill mice around the house. But he's now dealing out death himself, isn't he? in an effort to protect himself, and I guess as he sees it, his project to penetrate these bourgeois institutions that are opposing the Soviet Union. Now we have at least four people that he has played a very direct role in killing. Yeah. And it is interesting because I think he is involved in death, but it's kind of at a distance.

You know, in later life he does claim that he feels bad about, you know, having to do this. But then, as he puts it, you know, later in life, he says, a decent soldier would feel badly about the necessity of killing the enemy in wartime. So he basically sees these young Georgians or Volkov as, you know, soldiers who are working for the enemy and he's working for his side and in a war you kill him. It's brutal. I agree. I'm not going to kind of pretend it's not. You know, but at one point in Turkey, he goes right up to the Soviet border and it's marked by the crest of a hill and a border post. and he approaches the border post, he touches it, and then he puts his foot over the line.

And of course, it's the first time he's, you know, set foot on Soviet territory and only for a moment. I mean, it's this weird thing where he is serving this cause and this country, which he doesn't really know, but which he's now killing for. He's now doing that. But it's about to change because climber is only really a kind of taste, I guess, of what Philby is about to do because Turkey is not the end of his career. In Turkey, he gets a telegram asking for him to come back to London to discuss a new post. Now, every time, like all kind of traitors, you know, when they get that telegram, they think, ah, being summoned back to headquarters, you know, Gordievsky thinks this, doesn't he?

You know, is it because I'm blown? Yeah. Is it really for a new job? Or is it because I'm, you know, a defector has kind of given him away? But this time, he goes back to London and it's the best possible news. because he's being offered a promotion. And not just any job, but like the job for a rising star, because they want him to be the head of the MI6 station in Washington and the liaison with the newly formed CIA,

putting him at the absolute heart of the Cold War. And what's astonishing is he is just 37 years old. He's 37 years old. And some of his colleagues believe, you know, this is. the next step on his future to become, you know, the head of the British Secret Service and see. Well, I guess in Washington, I mean, he'll be able to do more damage there, perhaps, than anywhere else. But it's also a place in Washington where his past, his decisions, his friendships, the choice that he made years earlier is really going to catch up with him and lead to his downfall. And I guess a reminder that we are not done with Kim Filby on the rest is classified.

be coming back to tell the story of that downfall in another series. But I guess at this point, Gordon, maybe it's worth coming back to the opening challenge that you kind of delivered in episode one, which was when you said, you know, you have a spot of sympathy for Kim Filby. Yeah. And I guess, you know, it's the question that maybe that hangs over this is at this point in the story, now that we've gotten Philby to Washington, do you still have a measure of sympathy for Kim Filby and the choices that he has made.

David, you're pushing me a little bit to be, to give up on my sympathies for Philby. And I am, I am. We have hit the point where I think it gets harder. I get the early Philby, that period in late 20s, Cambridge, early 30s, rise of fascism, seeing the failure of the political system turning to communism as the answer. I think is, I'm not saying I'd have done it, but I think it is understandable or acceptable or explicable, you know, in its own terms. And then, you know, the Soviet Union at that point is not an enemy.

But I think that point where he keeps going in the Nazi Soviet pact, you're starting to think, and then they're allies in the war so you can get away with it. But now I think it's different. But I do think part of the point is it is too late. He's started on this path. And of course, you know, all through his life, he'll say, well, I, you know, I never wavered from the past. But I think he does.

But I think once you've gone in that deep, I think it is pretty hard to turn back, isn't it? I think you can understand his Cambridge experience. You know, that makes sense to me. I mean, 1930s, he'd seen a lot of the ugliness of Dotsieism and fascism up close in Germany itself, in Austria. He had fallen in love with a young woman who had been brutalized by fascism, you know, and let's see. So you can understand the sort of. anti-fascist impulse that would lead you to think that communism is a better way or the antidote

to fascism, especially a scene from the early 1930s, that makes a lot of sense. Where I find Philby to be disgusting, Philby has this line, he actually says in reference to portraying some of those exile operations like the Georgians we just talked about, where Philby says, I've always operated on a personal and a political level. when the two have come in conflict, I've always put politics first. And anybody who's putting politics above friends, family, children, I find that to be very icky. No, I agree. I sort of get why he puts it that way, but I also just think this is a story at the end of the day about a guy who's inside, totally twisted up and wrecked.

That's one way of seeing it. Let me give you another term, which is we prize, and I'm not criticizing this, you know, loyalty to country very highly. I think ultimately Philby never felt very English or British or loyal to his country. He was loyal to his ideology, which meant betraying his country. And many years later, he's asked about this. He said, didn't you betray your country? You know, didn't you betray your colleagues?

Didn't you betray, you know, Britain by doing this? And Philby has a very interesting line. He says, to betray you must first belong. I never belonged. Yeah. I mean, I think it's a really interesting line because I think it does to me unlock quite a lot of Philby. And it goes back to the kind of father, the weird upbringing,

the fact the father is kind of in the British class system, but not really part of it. Philby again never quite fits in. He's never quite a member of the British kind of establishment or elite, even though he's seen, you know, in later years he'll be seen as emblematic with his kind of Westminster and Cambridge background as part of that elite. But he was never part of it. He never felt he belonged. So he never felt he was betraying that. He was never turning against it because he was never part of it. That is in his own mind, his justification, I think, for what he did. He was a, you know, a communist all the way through.

and he remained kind of, he didn't betray anything because he remained pure to that cause since he was a student all through his life. Yeah, but that's just where I think like an authoritarian or totalitarian despot, who sort of aligns the interests of the state with their own personal interests, like those two things and their psychological needs, that all of that stuff just gets kind of merged together. I think Philby does something similar with his quote-unquote ideology. It becomes a vehicle for a personal, very interior crusade against this system that he felt he never belonged to.

And there's a great Le Coray quote about Philby where he says, behind the inbred upper-class arrogance, the taste for adventure, lies the self-hate of a vain misfit for whom nothing will ever be worthy of his loyalty. So again, I think it's this idea that none of this stuff that Philby was betraying

was ever worthy of him. So it's this very self-centered narcissistic response to the world that I think ultimately triggered so much of his betrayal, really. Yeah. I mean, I think he was vain, self-absorbed, and as I said,

shaped perhaps by that father. But I think in his mind, he would have seen himself as just loyal to a single cause. So I am going to moderate my pinko sympathies for Philby at this point before. I think various people will never speak to me again if I sound like I'm a big Philby fan. So for those people out there listening. That's true. Actually, for the sake of the pod, Gordon, for the sake of the pod, yeah, I just want to be clear. I do not endorse betraying Britain, you know, disclaimer. This host does not endorse betraying Britain or signing up for the communist cause and becoming a penetration agent for Moscow. That is a bad thing to do, kids. If you're thinking of doing that, if you're at Cambridge right now, thinking about, you know, communism and

Moscow, don't do it. Let me just be absolutely clear on that. We're at the tail end of the almost the fourth hour, Gordon, of this series. And I feel like this message could, we're just sort of burying the lead here, wouldn't you say? Yeah. This is the equivalent of a deathbed confession, Gordon. It's too late. It's too late. It's too late. It's too late. to save my reputation. I guess on that note we should finish our story of the rise of Kim Filby, as you said. We'll come back and we'll look at the fall, which is also fascinating. And, of course, involves Guy Burgess, you know, very involved in the fall. We'll do that a little bit further down the line. But just a reminder, members of the Declassified Club are going to hear something fantastic

because we've got Kim Filby himself on the Declassified Club talking in this amazing tape about Volkov, about Cowgill, about joining the Soviet Secret Service, about joining MI6. So you can hear from the man himself and you can join the club at the rest is classified.com. But otherwise, we'll see you next time. We'll see you next time. Farming is rewarding. But it isn't always easy. The Farmer Wellness Initiative is here to help. Call 1-866-267-625 to access-free, unlimited counseling. Funded in part by the governments of Canada and Ontario under the Sustained.

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