The Rest Is Classified - 198. Kim Philby: Interrogated by MI5 (Ep 3)

Episode Date: October 4, 2026

Two of the Cambridge spies have fled to Moscow and now the finger of suspicion is pointing at the Third Man - Kim Philby. But will the top MI6 officer crack under pressure as the claims against him become public? Listen as David and Gordon tell the story of Kim Philby’s unravelling. ------------------- 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 isclassified.com. Two of the Cambridge spies have fled to Moscow, and now the finger of suspicion is pointing at the potential third man, Kim Filby. But will the top MI6 officer crack under pressure as the claims against him become public? Well, welcome to the rest is classified. I'm David McCloskey.

And I'm Gordon Carrera. Well, last time we looked at this incredibly intricate episode in the life of Kim Filby in which the web around him and the Cambridge spy ring is beginning to tighten. His friends, contacts Donald McLean and Guy Burgess have fled to Moscow. And now Kim Filby, who's connected to these guys, is beginning to face maybe the first little bits of suspicion that he might be involved, so he has been called back from his post as head of station in Washington back to London, and he is going to be interrogated to see if he is connected to these Cambridge spies. But first, a word from our sponsors at HP.

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and the link is in the episode description. So, Philby is back in London now to face, I think really for the first time in his career, real suspicion and interrogations around whether he is involved in what is going to be soon called the Camberd Spirate. That's right. He first goes to his mother's flat as he comes back to London, calls MI6 and they say, can you come to MI5 now on Curzon Street? never a good sign. They are, of course, the spy hunters, the counter-espionage service.

They've already put his mother's flat under surveillance. So they're already very suspicious about it. And the first of what are many interrogations are about to begin. Now, it's interesting because they are different in character. The first interrogation is by a very capable MI5 officer called Dick White. He's a very important person in British intelligence because he starts in MI5, ends up running MI5 and ends up running MI6, MI6, he's the only person to ever do that. But this first meeting is a little bit light. Philby's

a cool customer. And we spoke about this last time a little bit. He knows what the evidence is against him. He knows that there are just going to be these fragments, you know, the fact he was left wing at Cambridge. He's admitted he was married to Litsy Friedman, who was a communist in 1934, but, you know, he's always said that was just a, you know, get her a passport, youthful indiscretion. There'd been some little leads in the system about the Soviets sending a British journalist to Spain. He knows that could point to him. And he knows his other Cambridge friends, Burgesson MacLean, have gone bad. But he also knows none of that is proof. You know, it's all circumstantial. None of it is actually hard evidence that he is a spy.

It's just little indications that there's something suspicious about him. And he knows the way they work is they need a confession. Without a confession, almost no one gets convicted of espionage. and so if he knows that the only problem for him is if he cracks because maybe there's some new evidence that he doesn't know about so that's his question is

is there something new that they've got because if all they've got is just these fragments he's going to be okay you know he knows burgess and mcclain are a bit of a problem but mclean he barely knew you know hadn't had much contact with him burgess is obviously a bit of a problem

Burgess was the house guest but then if you really were Are both Soviet agents? Would you put him up in your house? Yeah, yeah. It's almost too stupid, isn't it? It is interesting, isn't it? Because obviously, the Soviets would have never wanted Guy Burgess to be living

with Philby in Washington. And yet, it works out so that it's actually kind of helpful to him in his defense. Yeah, because it's like, no way would I, you know, I was just helping out this kind of roguish Burgess as a friend. So when he's asked about these things, he's got an answer for all of them. And with Burgess, he could say, I was just trying to do my. best to keep an old friend out of trouble by putting him up. So, you know, when he's having this initial, I think it's more of a chat than an interrogation, frankly, with Dick White. That's

what he's saying. And he can tell pretty quickly, as this first conversation comes, that they don't have any new evidence. He can sense from the questions they ask him, what they know and the fragments they've got, because they're putting to him, well, what about, you know, what about your marriage, what about your travel, what about Guy Burgess? But there's nothing new. And, you know, he says he can't believe. I can't believe Guy Burgess is a spy. But after all, the foreign office employed him. The foreign office is sending him to Washington. It's not my fault.

I put him up. Yeah. I mean, that's their decision to put him up. And he's like, I barely knew this McLean guy. So he's got his defense worked out pretty well. The Americans, though, have got to be really impatient, really keen to see if the Brits have gotten to the bottom of this. Because, of course, we talked about this a little bit last time.

It has to be obvious that there is at least a third man. Yeah. Because somebody has tipped off. Tipped off Burgess and McClein. Yeah. And it's interesting because the Americans are going to be a theme, I think, throughout this investigation, this mole hunt. Because they are on Britain's back and on MI5's back saying, you've got a problem. You need to identify it.

The Brits are also kind of, you can see there's notes in the archives when you look in the files. The Brits are worried about the pressure from the Americans. And for instance, there's one note going, oh, if the Americans find out that, We knew Philby's first wife was a communist. They're going to go nuts. You know, let's not tell them. They agree. So these chats, interrogations with Dick White continue, they get a little bit trickier.

You know, how did he pay for some of his trips to Spain when he was a young journalist and he was supposedly broke? Philby says he sold some of his personal possessions. Of course, actually, he'd been funded by the KGB. So it's getting a bit trickier. He says, how was McLean tipped off? Well, maybe when he's, you're going to be. He's the foreign office stopped giving him sensitive documents. And McLean spots surveillance on him, then he's going to realize, you know.

And we know McLean could see the surveillance on him. So trying to concoct a scenario where there isn't a third man. And McLean just realized that he was, the game was up and it was time to go. Yeah. So he's kind of toughing it out at this point. But here's the problem. It's the Americans. Because he's summoned to see the chief of MI6.

And the problem is that the Americans have been leaning on the Brits to say, we think this guy's bad. And who is it? Who is it who is leading the charge against Philby? Bill Harvey. Bill Harvey. The man whose wife Burgess insulted and caricatured over that dinner in 1951. It's why it's the worst dinner party ever, because it's the most fateful dinner party. It all goes back to a lewd caricature.

It does. is going to obsess Bill Harvey. And I guess it kind of, I mean, he must have been so enraged. I mean, it was such a chaotic and insane anecdote, that party. But it really does. I mean, here, we're in the third episode of this series. And it's still, the ripple effects are still going on. Are still going on.

Because June 1951, Bill Harvey has written a five-page memo. He's obsessed. Yeah, outlining the case. that Philby is a badden, that Philby is a traitor. And it's actually bang on. I mean, Harvey has got it absolutely right. He says, Philby knew about Venona, so therefore knew about the investigation in McLean, you know, that it suggests Burgess might have been Philby's career and contact with the KGB,

and that Philby's treachery could explain why all these CIA and MI6 operations are going wrong. So, you know, Harvey is on his case, and he sent this memo to the direct. director of the CIA and bypassed Angleton. He's just gone straight to the top. And meanwhile Angleton's written his own memo at the CIA and Angleton's memo basically goes, Philby's

probably okay. And the logic. What is the logic for Philby's probably okay? In a way, I think there's an emotional logic which from Angleton's side, which is... They're close friends. Which is their close friends and where Angleton is thinking to himself,

if he is bad, I've shared so many secrets with him. This is a disaster for me. I don't want to believe he's bad. Whereas Harvey is like, he insulted my wife. He is bad. You can see emotionally these two guys, Harvey and Angleton, are starting from different positions. And they write different memos.

And, you know, Angleton basically says it's circumstantial. There's no proof, Philby is a traitor. Angleton also at the dinner party. Yeah, exactly. And Angleton had to actually physically restrain. Bill Harvey from hitting Burgess. And actually this is going to start a feud between Harvey and Angleton because they're on different sides of the Philby argument. But the Harvey memo has gone to the director of CIA and CIA appears convinced enough to say to MI6, we don't want Philby back.

Yeah. You know, we do not trust Kim Philby anymore and we do not want him not just in Washington. but we don't want him in MI6. And so I think it's a really interesting case of the Americans, you know, for the first time, I think, squeezing British intelligence. Because they're effectively saying, you know, if you don't pull the plug on Philby, we are going to pull a plug on you. And we can't share with your service. We can't share with your service. You know, we can't trust you with secrets if someone like Philby, who we think is a traitor is inside MI6.

So you better stop. And the Brits are worried about this. The head of MI5 flies out to see J. Gahoover of the FBI, you know, to try and avoid this collapsing the intelligence sharing relationship. MI6 are not convinced Philby is a spy, but the Americans are. And that is enough for them to be forced to act. Or even if they're not, because Angleton obviously doesn't think he is, it's, you know, seen from the standpoint of the CIA director, it's kind of like why take the risk. Yeah. You know, even if you're not convinced, maybe he's not, you say, well, in the

off chance, perhaps, that he actually is compromised by the KGB or working for the KGB. Like, why? Why take the risk? So just get him out. And so it works because chief of MI6 summons Philby and Philby will say that the chief of MI6 looks visibly distressed. So all of this suggests that the chief of MI6 is doing something he doesn't want to do. But he's been forced to do by the Americans. And he says to Philby, we're going to have to let you go. I'm really sorry,

but it's because of those Americans. So July 1951, Philby has paid off with about $4,000 in compensation. It's quite a lot of money, I think. Trying to work out. It's more than $100,000 today. Yeah.

But it's partly because Philby doesn't have a pension or anything else because he's not qualified for that yet. And it's almost apologetic from MI6. It's like, really sorry. Americans have... Those nasty men.

Those nasty Americans. Yeah. But you've got to leave. So Philby is, you know, it's 1951. He's kind of a drift at this point. Moves to a house in Rickman's Worth. He's out of work. He hasn't got much money despite this payoff.

He's got a growing family. Things don't look great. It's interesting because he's also perhaps not aware of just how much is going on in the background at this point. Because while MI6 are like, okay, we'll let you go. the Americans are unhappy and still unhappy that he's not been brought to book and they're still pressing the Brits and MI5 are still after him

at MI5 and this is interesting because you get to a kind of cultural difference between MI5 and MI6 MI6 is kind of some people think Philby's actually entirely innocent few might think he's guilty but you know there's quite a lot of support from him MI5 are now more and more convinced that he's

he's bad and that MI6 have been covering their own guy up and protecting one of their own people so they are going to be convinced that they still want to get their man and go after him. Did the Harvey memo get shared with MI5 as well? Or MI6? Yeah, it goes through the system

but they're also these spy hunters in MI5 who are convinced about it so they actually start to watch Philby and keep watching him now even though he's been booted out of MI6 to try and see if they can find him. I mean, there's surveillance on him. He's going through a bad patch, right, because he's been kicked out. So at one point, they see him coming out of a pub so drunk, he vomits in the toilets of Piccadilly tube station. I mean, so, you know, this is Burgess like, yeah, he's having, it's a little bit of a rough patch.

Yeah, we've, yeah, not something I've done. There's also another kind of bizarre bit to this, where he buys a decommissioned London black cab. a taxi, which he then drives round him and his drunk friends, including to Highbury to watch Arsenal Football Club play. Arsenal, why does Arsenal come up all the time? All the time. Bin Laden's football club? Yeah. The deposed Prime Minister Keir Starmer's favorite football club.

And Kim Filby. And Kim Filby. And Kim Filby. And Kim Filby. And Kim Filby, big Arsenal, man. Sorry to any Arsenal fans out there. It's funny, the watches from MI5 are following this black cab. And they're like, he can't even spot us because the wing mirror on this taxi is broken.

It's from driving drunk and smashing it into things and breaking the mirrors off. There's a weird patch, 1951, but they're still on to him. And 1951 end of the year, he's summoned to be interrogated again. But this time, it's much more serious than the previous Dick White interrogation. This guy called Helenus Milmo on behalf of MI5. Is that a real name? It is. It is.

He's quite a famous. Gravis Scott. Barrister lawyer, MI5 investigator. He was known as Buster. Buster Milmo because he was like a tough interrogator, big round face, you know,

he broke German spies in World War II. So, you know, this is going to be a tougher gig for Philby. What's new at this point? What's new is, I think, the pressure from the Americans in MI5. It just, they keep squeezing.

They just keep squeezing. And this time, it's a three-hour interrogation. Now this is interesting because Milmo is doing the interrogation, but sitting to his left, there's a quiet MI5 officer. And his name is Arthur Martin. And he's important, Arthur Martin, because he is going to become Philby's chief pursuer. He's going to become effectively the leader of the mole hunts in the UK. Philby can remember Martin sitting there, Arthur Martin, silent watching his movements, Philby says.

So Martin is the kind of intense, focused, detailed man. And, you know, there's an element of class to this because, you know, Martin is not, if you like, officer class. He's not posh like Phil being the Cambridge spies. You know, like a lot of MI5 people, they come from more normal backgrounds than the kind of, you know, the fancy establishment backgrounds of the Cambridge spies. And they dislike, I think, the socially superior MI6 types. And people like Arthur Martin hate the idea that these people, might be traitors and they're getting away with it. I guess essentially the idea would be

Philby has been protected by his kind of social peers who have said, well, you know, maybe he's committed some indiscretions along the way. But it can't possibly be bad. He can't possibly be bad or it'll just be so embarrassing for us if he turns out to be bad. So let's just let him

drive around in his black cab. And he's not hurting anybody. And Martin will not let it, right. He will not. let it lie. And I think the element of class to this, that great British kind of obsession, is definitely there. And Martin is a different class from Philby. And he's been investigating, he's been investigating, you know, Litsy, Philby's first wife. He's been investigating those contacts in the 30s who helped recruit Philby, people like Edith Tudor Hart. He's pulling people

in who know them. He's trying to kind of pick apart that the origins of the Cambridge spiring in the early 30s. He's kind of onto that. And we should say Edith Tudor Hart introduced Philby to his first handler. Exactly, yeah. And she'd become a photographer and she'd taken pictures of Philby back in the 30s. She gets kind of mysterious phone calls around this time and she destroys some of these pictures. They're aware that Martin, Arthur Martin particularly is just digging back into the 30s and into the origins of this. But here in this interrogation, they're trying to push Philby.

and it's a really different interrogation from the kind of gentle chat with Dick White. Milmo takes a different attack. He won't let Philby smoke. He's banging the table. He tries to dial up the pressure. And in the tape of Kim Filby, which I uncovered from the archives

of the East German Security Service in which club members can hear as an exclusive bonus episode. So do join the Declassified Club if you want to hear that. He talks about what it was like to be interrogated and what it was like to say.

sit through these interrogations. It's fascinating because he can talk about the different ways of different methods interrogators use, but how always he focuses on keeping his nerve. It's a really interesting account of what it's actually like to be interrogated. Philby is, I think, increasingly worried, though, about some of the facts that they're hitting him with, right? Because there's this very interesting case where in 1945, There had been this spectacular rise in the volume of Soviet radio traffic at, shockingly, just the moment that Philby had been informed about a Soviet KGB officer attempting to defect to the West in Turkey. Volkov.

Volkov. Yeah, and this famous defector where Volkov offers his services, Philby is working on Soviet counterintelligence in London and goes, oh, oh, this could betray me. So he betrays Volkov by telling the, you know, Soviet. and delaying going out to see Volkov and Volkov eventually gets caught taken back to the Soviet Union and the investigators have worked out

Arthur Martin and others that there is this moment when radio traffic picks up from the Soviet embassy in London at the... Immediately after Philby is told about it. That is the inspiration for the beginning

of Tinker Taylor Soldier Spy where essentially this exact scenario he lifts and fictionalizes and that is the thing that tips off smiley or convinces smiley up front that someone inside the circus has gone bad. Yeah, and it's a really interesting example of where this real-life mole hunt feeds into fiction. Again, that's something we're talking about in the bonus episodes for club members,

and we're doing one on fiction and spy fiction and how it's inspired by real-life mole hunts. And this is an example of that. So do join the club if you want to hear that as well. But yes, I mean, so that's one of the examples where this, this, great suspicion. There's also been a spike in radio traffic in Washington just after Philby's told about the investigation leading to McLean. And this is interesting because the interrogator, Milmo, kind of says to Philmy, how can you account for this? You know, what explains this? Philby has worked out. The way to deal with that is to just go, I can't. I don't know. I don't

know. I can't account for it. And leave it there, rather than try and kind of bluff. And Philby's good at that. Recently, the transcript of this interrogation has been released into the National Archives. I was reading it the other day. And you can see Philby is actually on the rack. You know, he's being asked these questions which he can't answer. He doesn't give an answer and he can't answer them. And his stammer comes back during the interrogation. Remember, Philby's got this stammer, which the stammer comes. comes and goes. You know, you wonder if it's deliberate. But it goes on for three to four hours and then it's over. Philby hasn't cracked in the sense he hasn't confessed. But Milmo, the interrogator, writes a note which has a devastating but difficult conclusion. It says, I find myself unable to avoid the conclusion that Philby is and has for many years been a Soviet agent and that he was directly and deliberately responsible for the least leakage, which in fact occurred, and leakage is the Burgess and McLean tip of.

So Milmo is telling people, basically, I think Philby's guilty. But the problem is Philby's not cracked. And I guess it's worth pausing on why Milmo has become convinced, because, again, the evidence is all circumstantial. But I suppose the analysis of the radio traffic and the comparison of that timing versus when Philby knew things, Again, it is circumstantial, but that is relatively new. Yeah, that's new. That is not, that was not out there when Philby has recalled from Washington to go back to London. And this is really Arthur Martin having kind of chased down these leads.

And now they've got enough questions that they can put to Philby, which put it this way, he can't answer them. And I think that is enough, the fact he can't answer them, for them to conclude he's a spy. But that is not enough to prosecute someone. I mean, you can't prosecute someone. It's hard to prosecute people for espionage, isn't it? It's really hard. And so, you know, the view is, well, okay, he's bad, but there's nothing we can do. But this is, again, really interesting part of the story.

Because, you know, Milmo has said, I think he's a Soviet agent. What is the MI6 response to the Milmo report? I mean, the official note to the Prime Minister in the National Archives from the chief of MI6 at the time says, we feel that the case against Philby is not proved. and moreover is capable of a less sinister interpretation than is implied by the bare evidence. I mean, it's basically you've not proved it. You're saying he's a spy. MI6 are like, you've not proved it.

So we're not going to take that. Well, and furthermore, he's not employed anymore. He's not employed anymore. So, you know, the foreign secretary says, well, okay, you know, we can't prove it. Give him back his passport. If you want to surveil him, MI5, you can do that. So you have this difference now, which is going to be important, which is MI5 is like, we're sure he's guilty. And MI6 is many of them will continue to defend him over the years.

What I also find interesting is the timing of this, because in the U.S., for example, this is when we're getting really the start of what becomes known as the Red Scare, which then goes way beyond. The McCarthy witch hunts. This is when you have the Rosenberg spy case, Ethel and Julius Rosenberger are convicted of spying for the Soviets and then I think become the only Americans to be executed for espionage outside of wartime. But then, of course, the Redscare kind of, it goes wild. And it loops in, roaps in people who, you know, Hollywood people. Any Democrat. anyone who kind of, you know, been vaguely left wing. And so you can kind of see how

Philby, looking at this from London, could kind of say, well, I'm being caught up in the same, the same which on MI6 could say the same thing of, you know, you're just sort of, you're tarring us with this, you know, this circumstantial case. Red scare. It's red scare. And you guys are blowing this out of proportion. I think that's exactly right. The context is important because, of course, some of the pressure is coming from the Americans where there are these kind of witch hunts. And so Philby's defenders in MI6 are able to kind of go, look, you know, there are just all these wild accusations being thrown around in Washington and elsewhere about communists and people who knew communists.

And, you know, it's, it's wild stuff. This poor guy, Philby, being caught up in that. And he's entirely innocent. He's a victim of a witch hunt. And that seems to be the line of MI6. And I think there's a bit of that. There's a bit of he's one of us. You know, he can't be bad.

It's the classic British establishment thing. We should mention Philby's biggest backer in MI6 at this time is his best friend in MI6. And it's a guy called Nicholas Elliott, who's going to be important for the story. Son of the provost, the head of Eaton, the British establishment school. Nicholas Elliott is your classic establishment man. I mean, one person who knew him who I knew, you know, said he was, everything you would expect a Newtonian to be. What does that mean?

I mean, I think kind of very erudite and smart and confident. Thin man, you know, round glasses, you know, look over them in a kind of donnish academic manner, but you still love telling dirty jokes. Like lots of the new generation of MI6 officers, he looked up to Philby. You know, I think it's really interesting. And he and others think Philby is kind of smart, charming guy who's been screwed over by the Americans and others. And that is their view. And those knuckle-draggers at MI5.

Yeah, exactly. Those middle-class types that, you know, middle-class policeman at MI5. So immediately after the kind of big interrogation by Milmo, Philbby goes around to dinner at Elliot's house. And actually, Philby says to Elliot, oh, you know, for Christ's sake, don't get yourselves involved in any of this. Whether that means he's trying to keep Elliot away, but whatever it is, they remain very, very close friends. And Elliot actually thinks eventually Kim's going to get back into the MI6. You know, we'll just let this blow over for a few years. He's so talented, eventually we'll bring him back.

But that is not going to be the end of the whole affair. So let's take a break. And when we come back, we'll look at how Kim Filby's involvement in the spy rig and the question of whether he is the third man goes public. The great game, strategic struggle between Britain and Russia. We assess 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? You're the Prime Minister. You've done. Nothing! We would need to understand the policy context. All the relevant context will be structured as a framework today. And disseminated into an operation order, or Fraggo. A Fragor that says to kill the president of Russia.

Yes. New from Goldhanger. Who is going to be able to pull this off? You're my soldier, are you? Sergeant Tom McDuff. Duffy. An audio drama journey like Noah. Men like Duffy, they are our most valuable weapons.

Devised as a technically rigorous geopolitical action thriller. We have two types friendly key. Where Britain plays its strongest hand. He's the best. Against its strongest foe. Bear Hunt. Available now wherever you get your podcasts. Well, welcome back.

It's 1952 and Kim Filby has purchased a London black cab to drive around the city aimlessly and drunkenly. And he's survived these interrogations, kind of. But he's still out of a job and really purposeless at this point. Yeah, he is. And he floats around, you know, looking for work, looking for freelance journalism, kind of other things he might be able to do. It's a pretty dreary life.

He borrows money from Nicholas Elliott, his friend at MI6, who helps out with school fees for the kids. He moves to Krober in Sussex. And this is partly paid for by his mother-in-law, by Aileen's mother because they can't afford it otherwise. The garden is soon overgrown. Alien, it's very interesting.

We've talked a bit about Aileen in the past. Some of the challenges she faces, including mental health challenges, drinking. Also, she realizes something is going wrong. I mean, he's lost his job at the foreign office. He's been recalled. She knows that there are suspicions around him. She doesn't know all the details.

But she knows him better than anyone else. And you do start to wonder, is she beginning to see that it's plausible that he's abandoned and there's something wrong? Because we should say, I mean, he hasn't brought her in on this at all. No, right? She doesn't know. Yeah. I mean, but she may suspect. And I think this is the period where she may start to suspect.

But again, you know, she's actually a very similar impulse to many of his MI6 colleagues where you almost don't want to look at in the look at in the. Well, for her, I mean, it would be awful. You know, I mean, they've got children. They've got, you know, kind of five kids. I mean, imagine if he is a traitor. What's she going to do? I mean, it's a disaster to the family. But she starts to share some of her fears about him, including with Nicholas Elliott, this friend at MI6.

And Nicholas Elliott says, no, there's nothing to worry about with Kim. You know, it's rubbish. There's nothing to these suspicions. She's drinking more. Her mental health is suffering again. She's staging these accidents as part of her kind of break. down. Philby is having an affair with a woman in London. There's big

rouse at dinner parties. She does seem to be suspecting things. She's got a psychiatrist and she tells her psychiatrist that she thinks Kim Philby, her husband is trying to get her to commit suicide. This psychiatrist then tells MI5

which seems to be a bit of a break of confidence. And at one point she dramatically calls Nicholas Elliot and she says to Nicholas Elliot, Kim's gone to Russia and he's left a note. And Elliot is like, what? You know, you can understand because Elliot's his backer.

He freaks out and he starts to, you know, put out alerts. Elliot then calls the house back and Philby picks up the phone. You know, she's made it all up. I mean, Aileen's story is so sad because she is right about her suspicion. Right. But people don't believe her because she's got these mental health problems and people attribute her suspicions to her mental health problems. problems. And then the fact that a husband is treating a shabbily and no one believes her

makes her mental health problems worse. Even worse. So it's a kind of desperate cycle for her as she's kind of descending in these years amidst fear, suspicion and breakdown. Philby himself is under surveillance and he knows that. But of course he knows how MI5 works. He's not in contact with his Soviet handlers really at this point. You know, he's kind of broken off. I guess has nothing much that would be useful to share and it's dangerous. And it's dangerous because he's under surveillance. So he feels a little bit abandoned I think although

he's often later in life you won't kind of admit that. Eventually he gets word through Anthony Blunt, the Cambridge spies, you know, that he's hard up and through blunt they will get him £5,000 for Philby to kind of help him out but it's a sign of how desperate

they are. Meanwhile, Arthur Martin, our kind of middle class, semi-5 officer, Our mole hunting hero, I think in many ways, is still on him. He doesn't give up. He doesn't give up, which I think is something about the mentality of mole hunters, isn't it? Once they get someone in their sights, they don't give up, do they? They can become quite obsessive about it.

And, you know, Arthur Martin will become an obsessive later in his career. At this point, I think he's on the right tracks. Later he goes off the tracks, but here he's on it. And we'll also be speaking with a former CIA officer and former mole hunter named Rolf Moet Larson about really the mechanics of how Mollhunt's work. We're doing that in an exclusive episode for club members. So we'll see if we'll see if Rolf has lost his mind. But I find I find this to be fascinating because Martin is working away on the trail slowly. And then in April of 1954, a KGB officer in Australia named Vladimir Petrov, he defects.

and reveals something that is exceptionally interesting. He says, Burgess and McLean, who had fled to Moscow, have been long-term penetration agents, which everyone knows. But then he says that they're tipped off by another person in the same mold,

a so-called third man. So you have, from the horse's mouth, the existence of an on-the-loose third man, another penetration agent somewhere inside the British system. Yeah. And of course that points at Philby, who's going to get questioned again by MI6, but again... It's circumstantial still. It's circumstantial still.

And the Americans are still on the case, because I think they are still obsessed by this, especially the FBI in Hoover, as well as, of course, Bill Harvey. And this is also a very interesting bit of the story, because it's the Americans who don't want Philby, along with Arthur Martin, to get away with it. and actually they start at this point, 54-55, to leak the name Philby in the context of the third man. And it's so interesting that it's an American newspaper, not a British one, which first names Philby as potentially a spy and a third man. And that looks like it's Jay Edgar Hoover of the FBI is doing. You know, he's basically going, I'm going to get this guy.

And I'm going to use the American media To turn up the heat On the Brits and name him And journalists are now starting to turn up at his house And say, you know, are you the third man? Are you involved? Aileen at a party drunk says, I know you're the third man.

And it's interesting, isn't it? Because the third man also has this kind of fictional You know, resonance because of Graham Green. Well, yeah, and it's the title of a 1949 film, a phenomenal film. Yeah, one of the greats. which stars Orson Wells as the third man set in Vienna. It is, I believe the development of it was kind of interesting, wasn't it?

Because it starts off as a screenplay that's written by Graham Green for the film. And then he later novelizes it. And Green had been a colleague of Philbies. At MI6. At MI6. And the third man of the title, the character Wells plays is named Harry Lyme. And he's this kind of charming, roguish guy, you know, sort of Philby-esque. Harry Lime, Harry Philby.

Remember Kim's first name is Harry? And it's crazy the timing because the idea of a third man in the Philby context doesn't really come out until the mid-50s. And that film is from 1949. Yeah. And so you do have this question, which is kind of the fact and fiction merging where you're like, did Graham Green write a screenplay partly based on his relationship with Philby? Did he kind of suspect?

Yeah, did he suspect Philby even? And there are, you know, we'll come back to Graham Green later because he's a very interesting character in Filby's story. But, you know, did he suspect Philby? So he creates him as a character in the third man. And then in real life, Philby gets called the third man, you know, because of the influence of the film. And it becomes this kind of famous statement.

after 1995 when the kind of whispers start about him. So it's kind of fact and fiction bleeding into each other in a really complicated way in this spy world. Which again, we have a very interesting conversation with Tim Shipman's sort of spy fiction, aficionado. We have that conversation as part of our exclusive episodes around the series for club members

in which we sort of look at the kind of literary impact of Philby. But one of the things we talked about, which I find so fascinating, is we're talking. about mole hunting, Arthur Martin would have never described it in the early 1950s as mole hunting. We only call it mole hunting because of Tinker Taylor's soldier spot. John the Carrey, which is based on Kim Filby. It's a mad, it's a mad circular world. So the whispers are starting, you know, is Philby the third man?

But then something happens, which outwardly looks terrible for Philby, but actually is a piece of great fortune. Philby himself says he's strap hanging on the tube, so, you know, hanging, you know, holding on to a strap because the tube's busy, October 1955, as he's going out to meet someone. And he sees a copy of the Evening Standard newspaper. And he reads over the shoulder of someone else that an MP for Brixton in London, a member of Parliament, has asked the Prime Minister whether he is going to continue to shield the dubious third man activities of Mr. Philby. So someone in Parliament has raised Philby's name directly with the Prime Minister as being the third man who's being shielded.

And what's important is he's done it in Parliament because you can't sue under English law. People may not know this in other countries, but if you say something in Parliament, you have privilege. So you can say something without being sued for liable. By one account, that MP later on will say people ask him, well, why did you do it? And he suspects that the information was planted on him, the question, by the CIA. How would that have happened?

I don't know. Through some kind of cutout in London and someone going, you should ask this, you should, maybe you should pose this question to Parliament. You might find it interesting. The dastardly work of Jay Edgar Hoover. But now the press go absolutely nuts because Philby's named in the British press. You know, they're camped outside his mother's flat. He wants to speak out.

He calls him his friend, Nicholas Elliott. Elliot says wait because there's going to be a statement about it and the foreign secretary then Harold McMillan is going to make a statement in the House of Commons in November wait for that that should be the moment to

say something and it's interesting because behind the scenes there's a battle within government about what to say. The chief of MI6 tells the foreign secretary he should say there was no evidence to show that Philby was responsible for warning Burgess and McLean or that he had betrayed the interests of his

country. There's just suspicion, circumstantial evidence. So MI6 are again pushing the idea to the foreign secretary. There's no evidence. Also, it doesn't make sense because, you know, Klaus Fuchs, you know, Philby knew about the Klaus Fuchs investigation and Fuchs got arrested, you know, so he can't possibly be bad, you know. And others in America were caught when Philby knew about them, so he can't be a spy. The foreign secretary, McMillian at this time, really doesn't like spies very much. He's kind of patrician, old school. Tory. And it's quite funny. I think he sees them as

just like kind of bothersome. Yeah. This is frustrating. I wish this would go away. I wish this would go away. And I think he sees it as MI5 and MI6 having a feud, which they are actually over Philby. And he's like these guys, you know, MI5 on my back saying we should call him a spy. MI6

are saying no, he's fine. Just, you know, can we just kind of get rid of this? But based on the MI6 advice, he clears Philby and Parliament. A statement by the foreign secretary saying there is no evidence that Kim Philby is the third man. We've looked into it. He is not. He is innocent. I mean, this is Hoover, whoever was behind it, having thought they could force the issue, have forced Philby's name into the open. But to some extent, it's backfired,

because Philby is now being being cleared. And then Philby makes a very interesting and a very wily decision because he then goes public himself. So I guess he could have just sat back and said, Oh, my name, my name's cleared. Yeah. Done. Low profile. But then he invites journalists to come to his mother's flat in London. He's expecting maybe a dozen or so, but many more turn up.

And you can see this online. There's video of this conversation where for five minutes he kind of sits there and essentially rebuts any evidence that he was ever spy and says, denies everything. Yeah, it's an amazing video. I mean, it is as a piece of archive, to be able to watch Philby actually defend himself and speak out, you get a sense of the man from this video in a really, really interesting way. You see, you know, he's kind of very, there's not much of a stammer. You know, his hair's a little bit, it's all bril-creamed, a little bit out of place. But he's fundamentally got a kind of charm, I think. You can see an element of the Philby charmed to him.

Poise. He doesn't come across as like posh or arrogant. No. He comes across as kind of confident, quite low key. It's interesting, he's very much described as a foreign office diplomat because that's what people, we should say people at this time all think he's a diplomat. No one has any idea he works for MI6. They all think he was a diplomat. And yeah, there's these questions. Were you in fact the third man? No, I was not. Do you think there was one? No comment. Mr. McMillan said you had communist associations. Is that why you were asked to resign? I was asked to resign from the foreign office because. because of an imprudent association with Burgess and the result of his disappearance. So, you know, he's worked out how to answer the questions. Would you still regard Burgess, who lived with you for a while in Washington, as a friend of yours? How do you feel about him now? I consider his action deplorable.

On the subject of friendship, I'd prefer to say as little as possible because it's very complicated. Oh, yes. That's a very true statement. That is a very true statement. And, yeah, again, that sort of the sense of his nerve and his self-control, which again is kind of astounding for a guy who is living such a duplicitous life and who's drunk all the time. And who's drunk all the time. And who's never been before TV cameras before. Right.

But you can do it. And so there's a really interesting fact. It is a kind of masterclass in deception and therefore in acting. In acting. In acting. And it's so good that the husband of. Judy Dench, who's an actor himself. And Judy Dench, of course, plays M in the James Bond films.

But her husband actually tells young actors to watch this video of Filby. Because he's like, that is how you do it. That is a performance. I mean, it is that good. I just think, you know, it's fascinating as a study of kind of duplicity, basically. Yeah. And then, of course, I guess another running theme in the story is Sherry. He serves Sherry to the assess.

and some beer to the assembled journalists. I know. I mean, I went to so many press conferences in my time. I said, I never got beer and sherry. I mean, served by a guy who's just been accused of being a spy and a traitor. Different times in the 50s, Gordon. Different times in the 50s. He invites this MP to repeat the allegation outside of parliament.

So it wouldn't be under privilege and therefore he could sue him. Exactly. And that's almost the point of the press conferences to say, you know, I'm innocent. You know, say it again. outside of parliament so I can sue you. And of course, the MP can see that he's just been cleared by the foreign secretary, Philby. So he backs down.

You know, he goes, I'm really sorry. I'm not going to repeat it. I apologize. So suddenly, Philby, having been under this huge pressure, can now portray himself as having been smeared as part of the Red Scare. And it's just his friendship with some old friends from Cambridge being used against him to smear him as a kind of spy. He's suddenly got a defense.

Well, and then the next day, friends from MI6 call to congratulate him. Yeah. And a few months later, he's back speaking again with Nicholas Elliott. Yeah, at MI6. So Nicholas Elliott, you know, calls up and he says, can we talk? And Philby goes, something unpleasant again. And Elliot says, maybe just the opposite. Because Philby's now kind of in the clear.

His old chums, like Nicholas Elliott, MI6, feel sorry for him. You know, they know he's been hard up, five children. And so, you know, there's a note in the archives. It says the head of MI6 considered it bad security for a former member of the Secret Service to be destitute. And bearing in mind that an injustice might have been done to him, agreed to give him help in finding a journalistic appointment. So they approached the editor of the Observer newspaper. and they say, would you take Phil Beyond, because of course he'd been a journalist at the 30s,

but not only is he going to be a journalist, he's also going to be back on the salaried books of MI6. I mean, admittedly, this time more is their agents rather than a kind of officer running agents, but they're going to be paying him as well. Now, all of this looks like it's basically a thank you from a friend. Now, there's a kind of theory which is, are they going to, you know, doce, is it a kind of

clever master plan by those who suspect he really is a KGB spy and they're going to give him something useful to do with the observer and then hope that then that forces the Russians to reconnect with him and then they can find him and then they can prosecute him. Do you buy that? That seems overly elaborate to me. And actually now that some of the material has come out in the archives, just in the last year or two actually, it really does look like MI6 are basically going, we want to help him out. Yeah. We want to help this guy out.

So let's give them a job as a journalist. And they're not wrong that it is a security risk to have a totally unemployed kind of penniless former officer just wandering about. It's a security risk. Right. And it's just not what you do to our chaps. Well, he's public schoolboy. Public schoolboy. Went to Cambridge.

Yeah. I mean, one of us. One of us. Why? You can't let this guy drive around in his black cab. is decommissioned black cab for the rest of his days. That's right. And so there, Philby now has a new lease of life, thanks to MI6.

They're going to find a use for him. He's going to go under journalistic cover. And the place he's going to go at the most interesting time is the Middle East and to Beirut. And there, the final confrontation with him and MI6 will come. So do join us next time for that next installment of the Philby story. But of course, a reminder that you can hear it now if you're a declassified club member and you can hear all these great bonus episodes that we've got linked to the Philby series. So do join at the rest is classified.com.

But otherwise, we'll see you next time. We'll see you next time. Hey, David here with some exciting news. My latest novel, London Station, is available now from any good bookstore. The book explores an unsettling question. What if the CIA and MI6 began spying on each other? In the novel, a new U.S. administration has taken office, installing a brash and unconventional CIA director, skeptical of old alliances. When the axe falls on the chief of London station, the agency veteran decides to spy for the Brits, a betrayal uncovered by his replacement, Artemis Aphrodite Proctor.

Caught between a turncoat spymaster and a ruthless new boss back at Langley, Proctor must now navigate a tense environment as old friends become adversaries and no one knows whom to trust. When assets begin dying, Procter and her team in London Station must find out who is leaking the source's identities and why before both agencies go blind. And soon, they'll have to decide whether loyalty to the mission means disobeying the agency they serve. You can purchase London Station now wherever good books are sold. There's also a link in the episode description box.