The Rest Is Classified - 196. Kim Philby: A KGB Spy in Washington (Ep 1)

Episode Date: September 20, 2026

The greatest traitor MI6 has ever seen - a Soviet mole at the heart of the British Secret Service. Kim Philby is now heading to Washington but can he keep his cool as the net begins to close around him? Listen as David and Gordon begin the final instalment in their journey into the extraordinarily treacherous life of Kim Philby. ------------------- Sign-up for our free newsletter where producer Becki takes you behind the scenes of the show: therestisclassified.com/newsletter ------------------- Join the Declassified Club to go deeper into the world of espionage with exclusive Q&As, interviews with top intelligence insiders, regular livestreams, ad-free listening, early access to episodes and live show tickets, and weekly deep dives into original spy stories. Members also get curated reading lists, special book discounts, prize draws, and access to our private chat community. Just go to ⁠⁠therestisclassified.com⁠ or join on Apple Podcasts. ------------------- Get a 10% discount on business PCs, printers and accessories using the code TRIC10. Visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://HP.com/CLASSIFIED⁠⁠⁠⁠ for more information. T&C's apply. ------------------- EXCLUSIVE NordVPN Deal ➼ https://nordvpn.com/restisclassified Upgrade your online protection with an all-in-one security app! It’s risk free with NordVPN’s 30-day money-back guarantee 🌍 ------------------- Email: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠[e-mail]⁠⁠⁠ 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

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. Philby is born in 1912 in a bungalow in India's Punjab. His real name is Harold, but he's nicknamed Kim after the Rudyard Kipling novel, in which an orphan boy blends in anywhere and becomes part of the great. game of spies. How apt. His father is Sinjin Filby, a bizarre character, explorer, Arabist, advisor to the founder of Saudi Arabia, a man who crosses the empty quarter by camel, converts to

Islam and spends most of his son's childhood thousands of miles away. Now young Kim is a quiet boy at Westminster school bookish, not many friends, a bad stammer. As his oldest friend, Tim Milne puts it, He's a rebel looking for a cause. And he finds his cause at Cambridge University. He arrives in 1929. It's the year of the Wall Street crash. Capitalism looks Finnish. The Labour Party looks broken.

And when he travels Europe, he thinks he sees what's coming. Fascism. He sees a Nazi torchlight rally in Munich. Hitler speaking. He's on a balcony in Berlin in 1933, watching a parade. And so the young Philby makes a decision. alone in an armchair in his Cambridge room in the summer of 1933. Communism was calling.

Next he heads to Vienna where there's street fighting, artillery shelling workers' housing blocks, a thousand are killed. And he meets Lixie, a communist two years older, already divorced. They marry within days and he gets her out of the country on his British passport. He will tell people he did it purely to help her, to protect her, but almost nobody believes him. He was smitten. Back in London, a friend of Litsy takes him on a two-hour walk, taxi tube bus and leaves him on a bench in Regents Park, next to an Austrian called Arnold Deutsch, who invites Philby to secretly work for the cause of international communism. He's given

the code name Sunny. One of his first missions is to spy on his own father. His second is to write a list of his friends from Cambridge, the serious Donald MacLean, the wild Guy Burgess, as well as others. The Cambridge spy ring is born. And then a slow march to the centre of power. Litsy and his outward communism are abandoned. Off to Spain as a correspondent for the Times. There's a bizarre mission to try and kill the nationalist leader Franco, but there's a shrapnel wound which nearly kills Philby and he becomes a hero and gets a medal from Franco. Back home it takes some lunches, a bit of help from his friends and family, and as the Second World War starts, Kim Philby is inside the British Secret Service, MI6. By 1944 he's in a complicated relationship with a woman

called Alien, but he's a rising star within MI6, overseeing intelligence operations against the Soviet Union, whilst all the time secretly feeding secrets back to Moscow. But Moscow at times doesn't even trust him. They think he's a plant by the British. And when a defector in Istanbul threatens to give him away, Philby's position means he can make sure the man is dealt with first, tipping off the Soviets and ensuring the man is spirited away on a stretcher wrapped in bandages. And we left him with news of a promotion. He's to be the head of station in Washington liaison with the newly formed CIA. He's just 37 years old and tipped to run potentially the Secret Service one day.

He is at the absolute heart of the Cold War. And this is where it starts to come apart. The greatest trader that MI6 has ever seen, a Soviet mole at the heart of the British Secret Service. Kim Filby is heading to Washington, but can he keep his cool as the net closes around him? Well, welcome to The Rest is Classified. I'm David McCloskey. And I'm Gordon Carrera. And welcome in this series, we are going to look at a time when Kim Filby reaches the peak of his powers and influence. We're going to look at how mole hunts inside the Secret Service eventually take him down.

But how long can he stay ahead of the people who suspect him? That's right. We're going to come to the dramatic conclusion of the Kim Filby story. his rise but also his fall and all the people he betrayed along the way. But first, a word from our sponsors at HP. This episode is brought to you by HP. In intelligence, you quickly learn that you are only as strong as the network around you. It's rarely a single major event that undermines an operation. It's the gaps between systems.

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and told that he is going to be promoted. And it's not just any job, but it is to one of the most important jobs in the service. He is told he is going to be the MI6 head of station in Washington, liaising with the newly formed CIA. So he doesn't even ask his Moscow handlers whether or not to take the job, because he just knows how good it is. It takes him just half an hour to say yes, because he knows this job will take him to the heart of the action

at the start of the Cold War. He is just 37 years old. Now, before he goes to America, he's going to spend a whole month inside MI6 headquarters, which is then at Broadway buildings near St. James's Park, Buckingham Palace, being briefed on pretty much everything that MI6 is up to, which is pretty useful. It's helpful for his Soviet handlers to understand that, because the Cold War is just getting going, and we'll look at some of the specific operations in a minute. But also during this time, and he talks about this, later,

is he gets all the gossip from MI6 because everyone wants to see him. They all have something that they want help with. Maybe they want Washington's help with. There's something they want to complain about. And there's also, I find it's quite interesting. There's a bit more of a selfish desire from all these MI6 officers. Because he notes that over port and coffee, they're all basically saying, can you invite me out to stay in Washington?

You know, can I come out and visit you? Because they all want to go to Washington. But it's also, while he's back in this period, September 1949, you also get this sense that the Cold War is really picking up steam because it's that month that Western intelligence confirms that the Soviets have just tested their own atom bomb. And that is a disaster for the West because they thought they had the advantage

with having their own bomb and the Soviets not having one. And there is this question, which is, how have they got it much faster than anyone realized? Why have the Soviets made this leap forward quickly? And that's going to be something that becomes one of the key questions for Philby. We talked about that a little bit in the series we did a while back now on Klaus Fuchs. Who we'll come back to in this series. Who will come back to and how it is truly astonishing at just how penetrated the Western sort of military industrial establishment was by Soviet intelligence in this period.

And they are just learning this because there's one briefing which Philby gets during this month, which causes him real anxiety. and it's on counterintelligence. So what the Soviet intelligence services have done against the West. And it comes from an MI6 office called Morris Oldfield, who later becomes chief of MI6, and he's going to reveal to Philby that they are investigating a series of penetrations into the West. So a joint US-UK investigation has suggested a couple of things.

One is that there been a leakage from the British Embassy in Washington, 1944 to 45, and another that there had been a leakage from the atomic energy establishment at Los Alamos, where the American atom bomb had been developed. So the details are so far fragmentary, Oldfield is saying, but this is something that you, Kim Filby and Washington, are going to need to keep your eye on. We don't have the answers yet he's saying, but keep an eye on it. And Philby's like, I might have the answer. Yes, I might be able to help with that.

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

film is over, heads to a cafe, sees his Russian handler and says, you know, there is an investigation going on. And they agree. This is something to keep an eye on. It's kind of astounding that he's able to meet in a cafe with his Russian handler. Yeah. But, I mean, in London, kind of obviously discreetly. Yeah. He's done these counter-surveillance routes. Then his last call before he heads to Washington is with the chief of MI6, Stuart Mingus. And the chief, you know, I think... That's pronounced Mingus? We talked about this in the last time, yeah.

These pronunciations... I'm sorry, David, but we'll get to trouble if we call it, Menzies. And so the chief, Mingus, shares his stories of dealing with the Americans, you know, during the war and, you know, how to do it. And his advice to Philby is keep on the right side of Jay Edgar Hoover, the FBI. Very good advice. but also build contacts with this new organisation, the CIA. So it's interesting because Mingus certainly sees Philby as one of the rising stars. And it's thought that Mingus has this plan, which is, you know, the next chief is going to be his number two, John Sinclair, then another guy, Jack Easton.

And then after him, so kind of third in line, maybe Philby's going to become chief. That's what they think. So with all these briefings undertaken, October 49, Philby is on. So he heads to New York, and he goes, of course, by ship. And in classic, I guess, Philby style, he's boozing pretty heavily along the way. He enjoys a crate of champagne on his journeys that had been delivered to his cabin by Victor Rothschild, who was a rich friend of his. And he's actually greeted in New York, isn't he by the FBI?

Yeah. The FBI, an FBI representative comes out in a pilot's launch to meet him as he's coming off the boat. And it's one of those weird details. Philby gives the FBI guy a glass of Tio Pepe, which I didn't know what this was. I don't. I know. I had to look it up, but it's a very fine sherry with notes of savory almond. Continues the tradition inside the special relationship of offering the other party sherry when they arrived.

Yeah. As it happened in a bloodshly park. Yeah, which we talked about in our series there. But it's funny, Philby says, the FBI man sips it unhappily because the febes, it turns out, aren't sherry drinkers. They're more, I think they're more whiskey guys. Yeah, these are, you know, muscular red-blooded Americans, Quora. Yeah. They're not drinking sherry, sipping on sherry.

Whereas Philby says, unlike the cosmopolitan CIA types, who he says would discuss absinth and serve burgundy above room temperature. Does that make you cosmopolitan? I don't know, but I think compared to the Thebes, that's clearly how it feels in 49. And there's this detail. He goes to a hotel in New York overlooking Central Park. He gazes out of the 25th floor window and he feels sick and breaks into a sweat. He doesn't like heights. But this is a man who has been walking a tightrope of deceit for years now.

And the strain is growing and it's going to get even more intense in the coming months. Next day, Penn Station, he boards a train for Washington, D.C. And he's going to become what is called in the service, H. Washington. Head of station, Washington. I think there's an interesting compare and contrast with the US-UK intelligence and a particular human relationship today. Because my understanding is that today, most of it is run out of London. So the CIA's station in London is kind of the beating heart of the transaction

between CIA and SIS or M.I.6. Whereas it feels in the late 40s, it's actually the opposite, that Washington is where a lot of the commerce is happening inside that relationship. So it feels like the role Philby is taking is essentially the intelligence manager of the global partnership between the CIA and MI6. Yeah. And I guess it's happening at a time where CIA is two years. old. Yeah. It's brand new, it's brand new. It's brand new. It is, I think it is worth talking

maybe setting up the CIA in this period a little bit because this is a CIA that is, that has not yet undertaken the covert action splurge of the 1950s. It's a very male, pale, and Yale group of largely guys who, you know, many of whom were OSS veterans, Office of Strategic Services, Veterans during the Second World War. many serious Anglophiles as a result because most of them spent time in London learning from the Brits. It's also, I mean, this is pre-Langley. So Langley isn't even open yet. It doesn't open until 1961.

So the CIA, and kind of a sign of, I think, how embryonic it is, is kind of scattered around the shabby collection of buildings in Washington, D.C. I mean, they're so bad that it's, you know, they smell of like wet paper. They're damp. The heating doesn't work because they've just been shoved into these kind of temporary. accommodations, it's all new. I mean, it's not even, it's not even really a coherent organization. Yeah. And it's interesting because I think the Brits see themselves almost as like big brothers and the teachers to the new kids, the CIA, about how to play this spy game. Because the Brits have been doing it for decades, including against the Russians. And so there's this interesting dynamic. And Philby is going to meet with a lot of top FBI and CIA officials. official records show he visits CIA headquarters a 113 times.

So that gives you, you know, in a couple of years. So he's in and out of there almost every day. Alan Dulles, future director will become one of his good friends, got lunches with him. He's got a pass which allows him to wander around at will CIA and FBI headquarters. And he makes a point of going to Dulles's office at the end of the afternoon for a kind of gossip and a chat. So then we can just go for a drink afterwards. Come on and talk more. Maybe this is Dulles' office where he had the ante room off of it,

where he supposedly had sex with the Queen of Greece. I don't think that's the same office, but it could be. Could be a different office. Could be a different office. But Philby was a great charmer. James McCargo, one of the CIA officers at the time, says, you know, he came to us with an enormous reputation. He was known as a young Turk.

And the American bureaucracy admired that kind of thing. He's got a big house, 4,100 Nebraska Avenue, lots of late night parties. We're going to come back to that. Lots of booze. Pictures of martini, bottles of whiskey. Macaga says, you know, the parties were long and very, very wet. We really were all afloat on a sea of drink. So he is kind of socialising as well with the American spies and, you know, trying to get the gossip from them.

And although, interestingly enough, he'd been warned by his predecessor that Hoover and the FBI also bugged his house. But so there's a kind of, you know, it's like have a drink, but also be aware you're being bucked. But these relationships are going to be really important for Philby's story. But actually, I think in some ways for the story of the whole of the Cold War, because some of these relationships he builds are going to have massive repercussions. And one of the most important relationships that he will build in Washington is with a very interesting and shadowy figure who is going to be absolutely critical to the, creation and formation of the modern CIA. And that is James Jesus Angleton. Angleton, where to even start with this guy?

I mean, at some point, and we've talked, I think we've talked about this from, I mean, really the early days of the show, that we will do an Angleton series because he is himself an extraordinary character. But he's this kind of brooding, wiry guy who's got thick glasses. He grows orchids.

He ties his own. fly fishing flies and lures. He studies poetry. He is, he's kind of cadaverous, I think, in his looks. And again, serious Anglophile, because he'd actually been educated, I think, at Malvern. Yeah, in England. And at Yale, of course. He'd known Philby during the war in London, and I think in Rome as well, where Angleton had been stationed. So he's kind of, in some ways, I think looks up to Philby and looks up to the Brits as the big brother. Yeah, he'd worked on the double cross system with Philby and others in London during the war where they were German agents coming in and turning them back against the Nazis.

And it will teach him the ways of counterintelligence, also deception and what can be done. And it will also make him think of Philby as something of a mentor. So when Philby comes back to Washington, and actually there's some evidence that Angleton might have pushed for Philby to get that appointment because he was so keen on his friends coming to Washington. The friendship inevitably deepens. You know, they drink martini's. They eat lobster at Harvey's restaurant, best in town, every week. Although I noticed that I was reading about Harvey's, ladies had to enter by a separate entrance

and were not allowed in the main dining room at Harvies during the time. And this is old school. They're going to dine all the time and lunch. Philby goes to Angleton's house for Thanksgiving dinner, you know, and he notes that Angleton seems to eat enormous amount and yet be this really thin guy. And Philby, like I think a lot of Brits who goes to America, realizes he's going to need to go on a diet. Does that happen to Britain? Yeah, it does. I've done it. When I've gone over there, you're like quite quickly, go, I can't continue my previous eating habits here. So the two men,

friends talk about intelligence, treated as a gossip. One of the interesting facts, though, is so they're gossiping together as friends, but then Angleton goes back to his office and writes everything up as notes. That makes sense. Yeah. So he keeps notes on his conversations with Filby. Philby, of course, is doing the same, but the difference is Philby's notes are also going to Moscow as well as to my six.

So there's three governments that are learning a lot from these lunches. I found a very interesting phrase when I was researching London Station, which was deep chat. And the concept is basically you're not working each other to recruit. Yeah. But you might be sharing things that are slightly beyond your brief in kind of a mutually beneficial way. And it's deep jack. It's a kind of slightly liaison plus kind of conversation where it's not, you know, money's not changing hands or anything like that. You're trading information inside gossip about people, about what's going on, about who's up and who's down.

that's what Philby was doing and was good at. And Angleton is going to become a great friend and protector of Philby, even though there are warning signs in this period. So one day, Ted Collick, who's a visiting Israeli official, and Angleton deals with the Israelis a lot, bumps into Philby in the CIA headquarters. And afterwards, Ted Collick, this Israeli, goes to Angleton. He says, what is Philby doing walking around CIA headquarters? And Angleton goes, well, Kim's a very good friend of ours. And Collick goes, well, I was at his wedding. in 1934 in Austria to a communist. And he goes, maybe you shouldn't trust him. But Angleton kind of ignores it because, you know, this guy's his friend and he trusts it. This was, just to remind listeners, this was the root of your sympathies for the young Philby throughout our prior series, which was that he had a sort of youthful dalliance. Dallions. Romantic dalliance with Litsy Friedman, which draws him in through this wonderful romance admittedly into being a communist agent who then betrays his country and his friends and secrets.

But yes, everyone at Cambridge in the early 30s was basically a communist, right? Now, that is actually true. I mean, not quite literally all of them, but that's one of the problems. Just like today. Not like today at all. Actually, maybe. But I think part of the problem was because so many people have been communists in the early 30s, driven by anti-fascism and the Depression, all these other things going around.

The fact that someone had been a communist in the early 30s doesn't quite count against them in the way you'd think. Because it kind of goes, everyone went through a phase. Everyone goes to that kind of communist phase in the 30s. So it doesn't quite land some of these warnings in a way that I think looking back, we're like, oh, well, that's a sign. Well, because it's pre-Stalin's terror. Yeah. There isn't much information in the 30s on what's going on inside the Soviet Union. Cold War hasn't started.

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

And in fact, we'll be looking in much more detail at the impact of Philby's betrayal on Angleton in the CIA in our very special club offering for members that we're doing alongside the series. And you can, of course, go and join the Declassified Club at the Rest is Classified.com to hear that. But this dramatic impact that Philby will have on the CIA comes out of people like Angleton, essentially. saying he's good. We can trust him. And so there are individuals that Philby betrays, but there are also secrets and operations. And after the break, we'll look at one of those. We assess a prime minister with high confidence it was Russian. Holding the Russians accountable is World War III. They took down a British passenger jet containing 350 people. Man in the Kremlin is playing, Alex. Got to ask yourself, you want to play or not?

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He's the best. Against its strongest foe. Bear Hunt. Available now wherever you get your podcasts. Well, welcome back. Kim Filby is installed as head of station in Wye. Washington. And it's interesting, isn't it, that he's going to reflect later on that it was more useful to his Soviet handlers to have him in Washington than it had been even when he was

running Soviet counterintelligence inside MI6. That's right. And that's because he can see everything that the U.S. and U.S. and U.S. and U.S. and U.S. and U.S. in this time, are going to decide on carrying out some pretty aggressive covert operations against the Eastern Blocs. the Iron Curtain has come down through Eastern Europe, with all of these countries now occupied, controlled by the Soviet Union. And the plan from Britain and the US is to try and undermine that, not just to spy on them, but actually to run operations putting people behind the lines into the Iron Curtain countries, into the Eastern Bloc, and do things a bit similar to what Special operations, SOE did for Britain in World War II in occupied Nazi Europe, which is do things

like sabotage, building up local networks, propaganda. They're trying to kind of use those World War II methods in this early Cold War period. So both countries are kind of thinking, this is how we can undermine the Soviet grip on these countries. And Philby's relationship here will be with a particularly interesting officer. So on kind of the intelligence gathering, side, it's with Angleton, but on the covert action side, it's a guy called Frank Wisner, the Whiz. And Wisner, the Whiz, runs what was then called the Office for Policy Coordination, which I think has one of these great, euphemistic names that's actually, this is the covert action arms. These are the people who are actually doing some of the most exciting stuff in government.

They're actually not coordinating policy, as the name suggests. And again, it's this, fascinating era where both CIA and MI6 are kind of finding themselves in the early years of the Cold War. And I mean, they are going to start planning, both CIA and MI6 are going to start planning operations independently, but very quickly realize that it's more helpful, more useful, more efficient to do it together in many cases. Yeah. And the operations they're looking at are to try and effectively destabilize communist regimes in an arc from the Baltic states in the north, right down through Ukraine, what's now Ukraine, then still part of the Soviet Union, and then down to Albania in the

south of Europe. And they want to drop agents behind enemy lines. And each side is thinking of doing this, whether by parachute or by boat. And of course, if you're going to both do it, it makes sense to cool tonight? I had a conversation with a former CIA chiefest station in London and just about the job. And this person told me that essentially a massive part of it today, I think, you know, as in Phobie's Day, is deconfliction. It's helping to understand where the two services might bump into each other, where they might be running the same operations, targeting the same people, and making sure that everyone plays in the sandbox well together. Because there's such a convergence of geopolitical interest that it makes no sense to have the two services

bumping into each other. Yeah, you don't want your agents, literally bumping into each other, or having case officers going and trying to recruit the same networks. Yeah. So Philby's job is kind of schoolmarm of the sandbox in a way of making sure that the two services play nicely. Yeah, that's right. And there's going to be a four-man team, two Americans and two Brits, who are going to oversee

these covert operations, navigate disputes. For instance, which exiles do you back? The British tend to like the monarchists and the Americans, the Republicans, amongst the exiles. What a surprise. And, you know, the Americans have the money. But the Brits think, well, we've got kind of, we've got more experience, particularly in Europe. We've got the brains, the background, but also something else of value. Because one day, Frank Wisner, the Whiz, turns to Philby and says, whenever we want to subvert

any place, we find that the British own an island within easy reach. And this came up constantly. in the series we did back in August on the Five Eyes, where the geographic spread matters. The footprint matters for signals intelligence, and in this case, for actually planning and, you know, staging paramilitary operations. And so when it comes to the operations against Albania, the British island was Malta. And by the time Philby arrives in 49, both agencies, CIA and MI6, have started sending agents into Albania.

And for MI6, it's operation valuable. It didn't turn out that way. For CIA, as is always the case. Better names. Better names. I'm going to give you that. So, you know, to give you one example of what they were doing, Moonless Night, 3rd of October, 1949, a boat called the stormy seas, lies 200 yards off

a cove on the Albanian coast, a group of men climb into a rubber dinghy, row ashore to a remote ravine at the bottom of cliffs. A goat track leads up the scrub. covered mountain. A British Marine brings a second group up from the dingy to the shore. He finds the first group still waiting because they're unsure of what to do. But then he eventually says they just mooched off up into Albania. And their objective is to kind of get a local feel for what the mood is of the population as to whether they can topple the Albanian government, which is communist. So these two groups of Albanian exiles who've been sent in by the Brits,

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

I guess also seen from MI6, Albanian exile agents are not, you probably consider them to be pretty expendable resources, unfortunately. And that's what happens. Because sitting in a secure office in the Pentagon monitoring these drops, one American angrily says there must be a leak. Something's going wrong with these operations. And meanwhile, he's saying this to his counterpart, who's the newly arrived liaison from MI6, who is Kim Filby.

There must be a leak, Kim Filby. And when the American, so that was a British operation with the boat drop, the American operations also start to go wrong in Talbania. And Wisner, Frank Wisner, turns to Philby and actually apologises to Philby and says, we'll get it right next time. And you're like, oh, I mean, it's, I mean, Philby is in a very interesting. structural position. And it's quite valuable to the KGB. And I think it's valuable for Philby to be able to obfuscate where the leaks are coming from. Because he kind of sits at this scene, as we've discussed. He's the, he's passing information between the CIA and MI6. And so if the Americans are wondering why something went wrong and point fingers of the Brits,

Philby is in some ways in charge of who on the British side is getting information. So he can expand what we'd call it the bigot list, you know, the list of people who are cleared for information, he can point and say, well, you know, there's 30 people over an MI6 who might have been responsible for this, and then vice versa. So he can kind of... He's in the center. He's right in the center and he can exploit the information asymmetries that the headquarters of either agency really don't see. Yeah. And lots of operations like Albania are going wrong at this time. Agents are getting captured in the Baltic states when they're being dropped in, in Ukraine when they're being dropped in. At one point, there's like a massive argument

between the MI6 controller for these operations who's come over to Washington and Frank Wisner about who's to blame. And they're each shouting each other going like, one of our sides is penetrated, you know, and it must be yours. You know, they're shouting each other. Couldn't be ours. And the person taking the note of the argument is Philby. And, you know, he's getting the information from this. Angleton is also supposedly giving him over drinks some of the drop zone coordinates for some of these operations and briefing him about others and he's handing it

all over to his Soviet controllers. Now, he's meeting them sporadically at this point. It's interesting, one of the things we've got as part of our bonus offering around this for our club members is Philby himself talking about his time as a spy in an audio and video recording which I unearthed from the Stasiarch And he talks a little bit here about how he is meeting the Soviet handlers.

He makes it out as being quite easy. But actually, I think it was quite tricky at times and the relationship wasn't easy. But he was meeting Soviet deep cover officers, particularly in towns around Maryland, and able to give them these details pretty quickly. But I guess what he, Philby, doesn't say, is that his success in Washington was probably achieved despite, rather than because, because of the KGB. Because the KGB's Washington resident TORA at this point is kind of in dire strides. It's not a very well-organized, high-functioning, intelligence gathering organization. Yeah. And it's messy. Philby doesn't have very good relationships with them. Here he is at this great position. But as we saw during the war, they're not necessarily making the most of him or

handling him very well. But he's betraying the Albanian operations. He's betraying East European in operations, the result is disaster and they're all going wrong. Big question, but is Philby to blame for all of it? Or is he just one factor among men? It's an important question because I think it makes for a good story to blame everything on Philby. And I think there's a tendency somewhere to go, well, it's all because of Philby, the reason that these operations go wrong.

Actually, it's more complicated than that. I was afraid you were going to say that, Gordon. But it's, you know, it's tempting. to blame everything on Philby. And it makes it a very kind of personal story. But actually, the truth is different. Because, you know, the first failures now, Bainer, before he arrives in Washington.

He didn't know all the details of the Baltic operations which get compromised. Some of the problems will continue after he leaves Washington. And I think the truth is that these were actually pretty poorly conceived and executed intelligence operations. I mean, they didn't really have a good understanding of what the mood was on the ground, what the reception would be for these exiles.

groups. And crucially, these exile groups are really badly penetrated by the communists. They're gossipy, they're leaky. So the communist side know who's coming and what's coming, even to some extent without Philby having to tell them all the detail. But we do know that in the case of the Albanian operations, for example, that Philby passed that information to his Soviet handlers. We can see that now in the record that in some of these cases, he might have been one input among several, but probably a pretty important corroborating source. If you have exile sources of the KGB who are reporting on these Albanian exile groups, and then all of a sudden, your star agent in Washington is exactly the same thing. Yeah. So, I mean, he does betray them. And in all, out of more than 1,500 agents

that they drop into Albania, only a third make it out alive. I mean, the rest are captured, killed, or simply give up. So it's a pretty terrible toll. And Phil be interestingly later, would show no remorse for the fact so many were killed. He's going to write the agents we sent into Albania were armed men intent on sabotage, murder and assassination. They were quite as ready as I was to contemplate bloodshed in the service of a political ideal. They knew the risks they were running. I was serving the interests of the Soviet Union and those interests required that these men were defeated. To the extent that I helped defeat them, even if it calls their deaths, I have no regrets.

It's pretty cold, isn't it? But he doesn't see himself as a mole. He sees himself as a Soviet intelligence officer who has penetrated the British establishment. And he's always loyal and working for the Soviet cause. Exactly. The value he's supplying back to the Soviets is enormous. But his life in D.C. is about to get a lot more complicated because he has a particularly disruptive friend. We've all got those friends.

Who's going to come to town. We've all got those friends. But Philby's is particularly disruptive. Summer of 1950, Philby receives a letter from his old Cambridge friend, Guy Burgess, currently working for the Foreign Office. Burgess, of course, has been another of the Cambridge friends that Philby had suggested be recruited by the Soviets.

And Burgess writes in his letter, I have a shock for you. I've just been posted to Washington. Can I stay at your house? I know. Hello. I mean, we should probably remind people about the madness that is, Burgess. I mean, brilliant, smart, funny, sociable.

Hadn't he slept with members of the Hitler youth to get secrets? Have I mistaken about that? I think there's something along those lines. I think not many people he hadn't slept with it feels like in the 30s and 40s. I think the problem is, you know, there was a kind of lovable rogue element to Burgess when he's young, but by this stage, he's getting a bit older. It's less charming. It's less charming. He's increasingly. I think, dissolute and dangerous. And he's leaving this trail of destruction, wherever he goes, from Tangiers to Dublin, with just stories of kind of drunkenness, young men, rants against Americans, which is a theme,

and occasional boasts about being a spy. I mean, it's great. And I mean, I find this also kind of humorous that despite the insane drunkenness, and I figured the homosexuality, which at that point in time was illegal, yeah. Was illegal. The foreign office are posting him to Washington as sort of a way for other people to keep an eye on him. As a test.

Yeah. As a test. Like maybe you can kind of have a normalish posting for a couple years and rise above this kind of wild ride that you've been on. So Philby is shown a letter by a colleague at the embassy, which comes from the head of the security at the foreign office in London informing them about. Burgess and his arrival. And it gives a summary of his past peccadillo's and says that worse might be in store. And what does he mean worse? This kind of foreign office guy says to

Philby, goat. I mean, just like the way that's that's like, what could be worse than what we've already heard he's got up to? And Philby's like, I'll keep an eye on him while he's here. Yeah, I'll keep an eye on him. I mean, and this is the problem for Philby. And this is going to be, as we'll see the problem for Philby is that you would normally never have two undercover Soviet agents both in touch with each other or living with each other, staying with each other with one of them living in the other's basement. Yeah. But the problem is Burgess, you know, it's already known their friends because Burgess actually got

Philby into MI6 at the start of the war. It was his kind of introduction which helped to do it. So that it's well established that their friends, Burgess has been out to Turkey, you know, to see So there is a plausibility that Burgess would come and stay with Philby and that Philby could kind of keep an eye on, which is the message from the foreign office. But as sometimes happens when great, you know, sort of university friends come to town, Philby's wife, Aileen, is like, I hate Guy Burgess and I don't want him in our house. Yeah. And I think it's worth going back to Aileen here. Philby marries her in 1946, although they'd met at the start of the war. They've got children

and they've been together, but they only get actually married in 46 at the end of the war. But she has been suffering, as we talked about in the first series on Philby, from quite severe mental health problems, including Munchausens, where she does forms of self-harm and pyromania to get attention. And the fact her husband is keeping secrets from her, vanishing and having various affairs certainly does not help with her mental health. So she is, already quite fragile in Washington. And then you hear that Guy Burgess is coming to stay. She's just given birth to their fifth child, who's not been very well, so she's got a lot on on our plate. She's drinking heavily. And she tells a friend, I know him, Guy Burgess, only

too well, he will never leave our house. And you can see her thinking, he's coming to stay while he looks for a place. He's never going to leave. So hold on, just to recap the concoction we have here. Mental health problems at home. Five children. Yeah. Massive bouts of drunkenness. Extramarital affairs.

Espionage. And Guy Burgess. Yeah. And now Guy Burgess is going to be in your basement. Terrible. So Guy Burgess moves into the Filby's basement, which inevitably becomes filthy, with his rubbish kind of strewn around one of the Philby's kids train set, which was also set up in the basement.

And it's funny because the Philby kids will remember. Uncle Guy, as he's called, as generous, but a slightly alarming figure, smelling of alcohol and tobacco. And Burgess is immediately up to his old tricks. So he turns up at a restaurant where James Jesus Angleton is at from the CIA. And Burgess is wearing this kind of stained, dirty naval jacket. And I think he's trying to sell naval jackets as a kind of sideline. So he's drunk, he hasn't shaved. He goes on a rant. He asks for cash from Angleton. And then he walks off. I mean, you know, he's just, he is trouble and he leaves classified documents on his desk overnight at the embassy. He's pursuing young men, but he's also acting as Philby's courier with the Soviets.

So he's going up to New York and often drops things off or passes on messages to the Soviets. And he buys this kind of 12-cylinder, 1941 white Lincoln convertible car, which he's also going to race around him. And then as listeners probably expect, it gets even worse. because Burgess is going to be linked in the eyes of official Washington and some very important spy catchers with the person who put him up, Kim Filby. So the two, because they're friends, because Burgess is living in his basement and throwing his underpants on the kids'

train sets and drinking heavily downstairs, the American intelligence establishment links him up with Filby. Yeah. As this kind of duo. Which is going to have his cost. And there's one particular dinner party, which goes very, very badly. I think it is possibly, because we're going to go into some detail, I think it is possibly the worst dinner party ever.

I don't know. People know some other candidates for that. Please let us know. January 19th, 1951, dozen or so people round for the Philbees at dinner. Angleton and his wife are there, along with the FBI liaison to the CIA. Also, another very interesting and important character in our story, a guy called Bill Harvey. Harvey, listeners may recall, was an office of security guy at the CIA, who later on will end up being responsible for the mafia portfolio and liaising with some of the underworld

types that the agency enlists in attempts to kill Castro. Yeah. So that's where he ends up. That's where he ends up. But also very hard drinking guy. Yeah. X-Fib. X-Fib. Ex-Feeb. So he fell out, starts in the FBI, falls out with Hoover, partly because after one party, he slides off the road in his car and he's so drunk that he doesn't get up. He just sleeps in the car, which is reported missing. And eventually they find him the next day kind of drunk asleep in his car. And I think Hoover, even Hoover is like too much. And so then he goes to the CIA. The CIA. It goes to the CIA. And he's a big guy, big drinker. I mean, people describe him as like something from a Raymond Chandler, which I think is a good description, always carries a snub revolver in a holster. He's, you know, he thinks he's a tough guy, doesn't he?

And he takes that even to embassy functions. Definitely not Ivy League, not Yale. No. The other CIA guys. He's from Indiana. He's from Indiana. He doesn't strike me as the kind of guy who'd like posh Brits. No.

No, I think he would be culturally predisposed to dislike books. both Philby and certainly Burgess. Yeah. So he's been around to Philby's before for dinner. In one dinner party, he falls asleep over the coffee. And they leave him there snoring gently until midnight. When his wife wakes him up saying, come now, Daddy.

It's time you're in bed and takes him away. But this time in January, it's going to be even worse. The evening starts this worst dinner party ever with pictures of martini, which Aileen has made ready for the evening. She knows what's coming. It seems like the CIA guys like the martinis and the Fib guys like the whiskey after dinner. So that's the kind of, you got to get the balance because you've got both Fibs and CIA people at this dinner. And so they have both.

So they have both. Yeah. How many drinks do you think people were having at these dinner parties? Because obviously one of the themes of this series is that everyone is boozing all the time. But if you had to put a number on it, how many would you say? How many units of alcohol? Well, because I think, you know, I think most people, today, if you said someone goes out on the weekend and they have three martinis at dinner,

you'd be like, that's a heavy night. I think that is before they start dinner. They'd have done three martinis. Then they're boozing with dinner. And then it's probably three or four whiskeys afterwards, so you think? Yeah. I mean, it certainly does feel that way. And I think it's astounding to think about what their livers must have been like.

Yeah, it is. So Harvey is there. He likes drinking. Libby, his wife is there. She likes drinking. And she's also, you get the sense again, she's a bit awkward. at these fancy dinner parties. This isn't kind of her world. Dinner's coming to an end. It's about 9.30 in the evening. And at that point, who turns up uninvited? Guy Burgess. Because he emerged

from the basement of the film. I think he's been out in a navel jacket. But he just turns up for the dinner party. So he insults various guests, particularly the Americans. And then he pulls out a piece of paper. And one of the things about Guy Burgess is he loves to doodle to sketch. So he's start sketching people around the table. He's a kind of caricaturist. It's one of his party tricks. And everyone's like, well, you know, who is it? And he says, well, it's Harvey's wife, Bill Harvey's wife, Libby. And so, of course, they'll say, oh, show us, because that's what you'd say, wouldn't you? You'd like, let's see how close it is, you know, is it a nice kind of comic picture of Libby Harvey? So, slides it across the table. And, you know, everyone's hoping this might kind of lighten

the mood, a bit of light-hearted fun, she looks at it and she literally screams. One account simply says it was her looking with the face like a dreadnought, like a battleship, like a kind of deformed head. But there is another version, which is, I think, the one we're going to go with, which is that she is pictured with her skirt hiked up, her legs spread, and everything on display caricatured by Guy Burgess. We should say, this is the kind of thing that Guy Verges would do. Yeah, he's not a, he's a cruel guy. He's a cruel guy. So she shrieks at this picture and bursts into tears. Bill Harvey, the big guy, Raymond Chandler guy, he gets up, reaches for the drawing, looks at it, calls Burgess a son of a bitch, and then tries to throw a punch at him. Now,

this is one of the details I love about it, is that James Jesus Angleton holds back Harvey. I mean, Angleton's this like, wiry thin guy. How's he holding back big? Bill Harvey from punching Burgess. I think that this should be one of the paintings on the wall at CIA headquarters of James Jesus Angleton. Holding back Bill Harvey from punching Guy Burgess. Right up there with the picture of like Tony Mendez doing the document work in the Argo story. It's one of the great moments.

One of the great moments in the Anglo-American history. With a crumpled drawing down on the floor that Bill Harvey is thrown aside. So Philby hurriedly takes Burgess down to his basement hovel flat. The Harvey storm out. Philby rushes out to kind of placate them. And Harvey goes, you know, Burgess, he's a deranged pervert, I think is what he says, which again backs up the idea. It was the really bad character and refuses to shake Philby's hand.

Aileen, meanwhile, retreats to the kitchen, broken because her dinner party. This is her dinner party. And this has not gone well. And someone comes back and finds Philby sat with his head in his hands, you know, repeatedly saying to Burgess, how could you? How could you? Who hasn't ended one of their dinner parties with their head in their hands? Just, you know, muttering to yourself. How could you? I mean, it's just, this is the worst dinner party ever. But it's not just a bad dinner party because it's going to have consequences. I think that's what's so important is Bill Harvey is never going to forgive or forgive. get this humiliation of his wife by Guy Burgess and Philby. And he's now, he's got Philby and Burgess in his sight.

They are an enemy. But just when you thought it couldn't get any worse for Kim Filby, it is absolutely going to get worse. Because the investigation into those leaks that we spoke about earlier in the episode, those leaks that came out of the British embassy in Washington in the Second World War are really going to spin out and implicate Kim Filby and his friends. That's right. That investigation is going to lead into a very secret mole hunt. And mole hunts are the theme of our special collection of bonus episodes for club members.

And we're going to be looking at some of the history relating to Kim Filby, but also talk to people who've actually been mole hunters. So if you want to hear those episodes, do join the club at the rest is classified.com. But otherwise, we'll see you next time. We'll see you next time.