Kim Philby: Interrogated by MI5 (Ep 3)

David McCloskey (0:07)

Two of the Cambridge spies have fled to Moscow, and now the finger of suspicion is pointing at the potential third man, Kim Philby.

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.

Gordon Corera (0:25)

And I'm Gordon Corera.

David McCloskey (0:26)

Well, last time we looked at this incredibly intricate episode in the life of Kim Philby in which the web around him and the Cambridge spy ring is beginning to tighten.

His friends, contacts, Donald McClain and Guy Burgess have fled to Moscow. And now Kim Philby, who's connected to these guys, is beginning to face 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. 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 the, what is going to be soon called the Cambridge spy ring.

Gordon Corera (1:21)

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 Cursin 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. He's the only person to ever do that. But this first meeting is a little bit light. Philby is a cool customer. And we spoke about this last time a little bit. He knows what the evidence is against him. He knows 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 Litsi Friedman who was a communist in 1934 But he's always said that was just to 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, Burgess and McClain have gone bad. But he also knows none of that is proof. None of 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. 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 McClain, he barely knew, you know, hadn't had much contact with him.

Burgess is obviously a bit of a problem.

David McCloskey (3:21)

Burgess was the house guest.

Gordon Corera (3:22)

Burgess was the house guest. But then if you really were both Soviet agents, would you put him up in your house?

David McCloskey (3:27)

Yeah.

Gordon Corera (3:28)

It's almost too stupid, isn't it?

David McCloskey (3:29)

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.

Gordon Corera (3:43)

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.