Kim Philby slips his loose noose
Or, Interrogating “Peach”
The UK National archives has done the near-unthinkable and released some of the key records surrounding the MI6 interrogation of Kim Philby in Beirut in 1963. Note to all government archives and intelligence agencies who hoard dusty files—no secret is eternal!
Does anyone not know the story of Kim Philby by now? He was the greatest betrayer of British intelligence secrets of all the “Cambridge Five,” the Cambridge educated, young Marxists who were recruited into Soviet intelligence in the 1930s, but also joined British intelligence and other sensitive government departments during the war. Their penetration and access to secrets was extraordinary. Philby went into MI6; Anthony Blunt to MI5; Guy Burgess enjoyed time at both MI6 and the Foreign Office; Donald MacLean was a foreign office man and one-time diplomat high-flyer before drink got the better of him; John Cairncross had a wide-ranging career in the intelligence services and Cabinet office. I have always thought Cairncross (a.k.a. the “Fifth Man”) gave Philby a run for his money in terms of betrayal, including sending information to the Soviets about British intelligence decoding of encrypted German military communications (the “Ultra secret”) and the British contribution to the Manhattan project to build the A-bomb.
Collectively, they were the ultimate set of double-agents.
That Philby might be “bad,” hitherto unthinkable, began to dawn on British intelligence because of his suspected role in the defection of Donald Maclean and Guy Burgess to the Soviet Union in 1951. At this point he was released from MI6, where he had once been headed for the top job, and subject to deepening suspicion, interrogation (tough but unsuccessful) and lengthy surveillance. Philby returned to a previous career as a journalist, and based himself in the Middle East, the former stomping ground of his illustrious pere, St. John Philby, an Arabist and adviser to the Saudi monarchy.
In 1963, MI6 decided to try once more to extract a confession from Philby about his Soviet espionage career after new information about his treachery from multiple sources, including a Soviet defector, Anatoly Golitsyn, had come to light. The then head of MI6 (“C”), Sir Dick White, sent a senior MI6 officer, Nicholas Elliott, to Beirut to try to extract a detailed confession in exchange for a promise of immunity from prosecution. It seemed a clever ploy.
The Elliott mission and its outcome have long been known. What the UK National Archives has now released for the first time (available to all in a digitised, though sometimes hard to read, format) is the transcript of the interrogation sessions conducted by Elliott, plus some miscellaneous material.
Paper file records are typically messy; intelligence records are no different. The National Archives file relating to the Philby interrogation (KV2/4737) is—fair warning—a jumble. If you are of a mind, you can read it here:
Its 171 pages. Hint, the Elliott interrogation transcripts come at the end.
In my long-ago days as a researcher at the National archives (then called the PRO (Public Record Office), or simply ”Kew” for its location) there was no such thing as KV records (intelligence services records). If you were after information about British intelligence reports you had to search through other departmental files, as I did in my research for a book , The Ultimate Enemy: British Intelligence and Nazi Germany 1933-1939. [1] It was great sleuthing, but how jealous I am of researchers these days!
Even if I never had a chance to lay eyes on something like KV2/4737, the contents look entirely familiar. Frail paper records, their print vanishing, out of sequence, of varying degrees of interest from zero to high, written mostly by long-lost personalities acting from long-lost offices. But a record none the less, of a kind unlikely to be survive in today’s digital age of transient record-keeping.
Before I get to the Elliott transcript (excuse the tease) let me say a bit about what else is in the file. Amidst the dross (Philby appointments diaries, list of contact names, bank records, an occasional telephone intercept) there is some gold. This includes anguished efforts to figure out an appropriate communications strategy around Philby’s disappearance. The government was in a bind because of a statement that Harold MacMillian had made to Parliament in 1955 denying any knowledge that Kim Philby could have been the so-called “third man,” as a Soviet spy after Maclean and Burgess. There is a firm note in the file reminding all Cabinet Ministers that “the line taken of not admitting to our knowledge that PEACHES (code-name for Philby) was the “third man “ should thenceforward be stuck to through thick and thin.” [2] Nice. It turned out pretty thin.
I also liked the display of schadenfreude and CYA from Foreign Office (FO) officials, who were quick to point out that the scandal was all about the “friends” (MI6) and had nothing to do with the FO, as Philby was only acting under cover as a diplomat when posted after the war to Istanbul and Washington. [3]
Speaking of Washington, MI6 worked hard to ensure that the FBI director, J. Edgar Hoover, was kept in the picture about what had been learned from the Elliott interrogations. Hoover pronounced himself officially grateful. [4] Whether the FBI bought all of what Philby told his old MI6 pal is another story. But in the traffic to Hoover the British were intent on conveying two messages: one was that that while Philby had confessed to serving for Soviet intelligence from 1934 to 1946, no evidence had surfaced that he had continued his betrayal after 1946, ergo “it follows that damage to United States interests will have been confined to the period of the Second World War.” The other was that MI6 didn’t want the CIA mucking about in Beirut, because it might “prejudice our continuing talks with him.” Poor Kim was portrayed as in a “highly emotional state and in poor health.” [5] Actually he was just drunk a lot of the time and British intelligence probably feared what he might spill to their American counterparts if cornered.
And now we come to the transcripts of the Elliott interrogation, drum roll…
Nicholas Elliott was a former MI6 station chief in Beirut and long-time friend of Kim Philby. He was asked by the head of MI6, Sir Dick White, to return to Beirut, meet Philby and try to arrange for him to confess. It was felt by White that if Philby was confronted by a friend who knew and believed the story of Philby’s betrayal, that this would ease the path to a confession. Elliott rented an apartment in Beirut as a safe house and met Philby there on two occasions, on January 9 and 11, 1963. Their conversation was recorded and a transcript produced.
Let’s start with the January 9 transcript and Philby’s initial confession. [6] It would have alarmed the hell out of any counter-intelligence officer. Philby explained to Elliott that he passed to the Russians typed copies of pretty well all the intelligence reports he had access to at MI6, including the names of British agents working in neutral countries and information about British code-breaking against the Germans. He described his Russian case officers as very competent and professional, though they kept pressing him for the names of non-existent British spies in Russia and wondering about a more hidden secret service that Philby was not telling them about.
But Philby was also trying to cover his tracks, arguing that he broke it off with the Russians in 1946 because the world was changing and Britain had a new, progressive Labour government under Clement Atlee. However, he tripped himself up in an answer to a question from Elliott about whether he had told the Russians about the “special material” which he knew about when he was in Washington. Philby was stationed in Washington as the MI6 liaison officer from 1949 to 1951. The “special material” was a massive US-led, but British assisted, signals intelligence effort to crack Soviet and Comintern communications during the war, called project VENONA. Philby told Elliott that “of course” he had told the Russians about it, then gave out a phoney code name for the project, which he called “ISCOT.” Elliott had not been read into it so was unclear on the details.
It was on the basis of his knowledge of the VENONA project that Philby was aware that the US was closing in on Donald Maclean as a Soviet agent. He arranged to get a warning to Maclean, though he told Elliott he did this not on the basis of any intelligence commitment to the Russians, but because of a felt personal responsibility to Maclean, who he had recruited. Maclean skedaddled to Moscow before MI5 could arrange his interrogation. To Philby’s great shock Guy Burgess went with him, clearly exposing Philby to suspicion.
British intelligence was doubtless anxious to accept the story that Philby had broken off his spying for Russia in 1946. This was convenient both for them and in conveying the story of Philby’s career to the Americans. But it was never believable. Philby tried to add spice to it by suggesting that he had really struggled with his conscience in 1946 to “spill the whole beans and I very nearly did.” There is a touching moment in the January 9 interrogation when Elliott asks Philby ,“I can give Dick White your word that you had no contact with the Russians since 1946?” Honour among spies and British gentlemen.
The first interrogation session ended with an agreement that Philby would produce a written statement by January 11 and that “any subsequent problems and questions would be followed up.” Elliott dropped the suggestion, resisted by Philby, that he might come to London for further debriefing.
Philby seemed as good as his word. He turned up at the safe house on January 11 at the appointed hour, “sober and cheerful.” He brought with him a typed statement which he said he did not have time to complete, promising to finish it that evening. Elliott and Philby agreed that Philby would hand over the remaining typescript at a restaurant that evening, They would rendezvous in the “Gents” for the transfer. Good tradecraft!
In the recorded conversation on January 11, Elliott pressed Philby on his truthfulness, while dulling the dagger by saying that he found Philby’s confession believable “as far as it
went.” [7] For his part, Kim produced a rather Jesuitical response, saying that he had decided “to tell us [MI6] everything he knew within the dictates of his conscience without damaging anyone who mattered to him…” Elliott then asked Philby about various people who might have spied for the Russians during the war. Philby gave up some obvious names, but demurred when asked about Anthony Blunt. On people he might have suggested to Russian intelligence for recruitment, Philby was vague, but promised to think about it. He was unusually straightforward with Elliott in telling him that he passed “all the British information on the Guzenko [Gouzenko] case to the Russian intelligence service.”
All the British information on Gouzenko was practically all the information gleaned from his debriefing following the cipher clerk’s defection from the Soviet embassy in Ottawa in September 1945. Because the RCMP security service had very little experience with debriefing Soviet intelligence officers, they called on British intelligence for help, and they duly responded by sending experienced MI6 and MI5 officers up to Ottawa from the embassy in Washington, led by Peter Dwyer [Dwyer’s subsequent career in Canada is a story in itself, first serving in Canadian intelligence before becoming the director of the Canada Council in 1970]. [8]
The rest of the newly released bits from the Philby file consist of his [unfinished] typed statement given to Elliott on January 11 [warning, the legibility is bad]. [9] It begins, “This memorandum deals with events which occurred a long time ago. It cannot, therefore, be taken to be 100% accurate, especially with regard to dates. With that caveat, it is to the best of my knowledge true in all particulars.” But what particulars were divulged?
Philby’s typed statement recounts his involvement with Communism at Cambridge, though he was never a CP member. It talks about his brief spell of activism while in Austria in 1933, which led to his marriage to Lizzy Friedmann, a devout Communist, and to his subsequent introduction in London to the Russian intelligence service, in the form of a clever Czech case officer, Arnold Deutsch, who called himself “Otto,” who recruited him. Philby subsequently led Russian intelligence to two recruits, also with Cambridge pedigrees, Donald Maclean and Guy Burgess. Philby told Elliott that the Russians steered him into a career in journalism and urged him to get himself off to Spain, where a civil war had erupted, with the Soviets backing the Republican side against the Franco insurrection. That he did. With the outbreak of war, Philby found a position for himself with SIS—he learned it was thanks to his fellow recruit, Guy Burgess.
Philby skips over his wartime career, writing that he was “running out of time” in typing his statement. He instead tells the story of his decision at the end of the war to pack it in as a double-agent, suggesting he had several agonising discussions in early 1946 with a new case officer, code-named Max. According to Philby, Max, “fought hard against it, using every argument in the book,” but never resorting to bribery or blackmail. This little fairy tale ends with Philby saying that he and “Max” parted as “good friends” sometime in the summer of 1946.
Philby ends his statement by saying that the Soviets, though Guy Burgess, twice tried (unsuccessfully) to get him to return to the fold, the second time during Burgess’s disastrous visit to stay with Philby in Washington. He refused but wrote about his effort to warn MacLean through Burgess that US intelligence was on to him, allegedly without telling Burgess the details.
There the typescript ends. There also ended the interrogation effort by Nicholas Elliott, who returned to London. There was no further memo passed in “the gents.” Philby instead disappeared on the night of January 23. A search of his apartment revealed that his passport was gone (though Philby forgot his reading glasses). British intelligence decided against issuing any alert on his disappearance, fearing that the press would get a hold of the news. Despite efforts on the part of Philby to cover his tracks through some fake messages to his wife, supposedly sent from Cairo, it was fairly quicky surmised that Philby had boarded a Soviet freighter that docked in Beirut on January 23, and that he had made his way to the home of the revolution.
There we have it. I think the only conclusion that can be drawn from the interrogation is that Philby royally played Elliott and MI6 with the promise of a full confession, which he never intended to make. He just needed enough time to arrange an exfiltration to Moscow, which he made his new home until his death in 1988. [10]
Soviet intelligence never quite got over their suspicion that Philby was too good to be true, darkly wondering if he was some kind of clever British plant. [11] But they eventually put him and his Cambridge education and journalistic skills to work producing, guess what, disinformation. He was also employed in his declining years as an occasional consultant to the KGB. According to his last wife, he died disillusioned, a heavy drinker to the end. [12] Caveat emptor.
As for Elliott, by all accounts he never got over the criticisms directed at him for his part in the Philby escape. [13] He probably wouldn’t have enjoyed the TV series.
[1] Sorry for the plug. Full bibliographic details are as follows, Wesley K. Wark, The Ultimate Enemy: British Intelligence and National Germany 1933-1939 (Cornell University Press, 1985; Oxford University Press, 1986). The OUP version is still in print!
[2] Note by Deputy Director General of MI5, 15 February, 1963, Philby file, KV2/4737, pp. 60-61, https://cdn.nationalarchives.gov.uk/documents/release-2025-01/kv2-4737.pdf?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
[3] Foreign Office memo, “Disappearance of H.A.R. Philby in Beirut,” February 15, 1963, Philby file, KV2/4737, pp. 60-61, https://cdn.nationalarchives.gov.uk/documents/release-2025-01/kv2-4737.pdf?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email; Minute to Hadow (Foreign Office) from Sir Hugh Stephenson, pp. 100-101
[4] Top Secret Letter, J. Edgar Hoover to Sir Roger Hollis, January 24, 1963, p. 113, Philby file, KV2/4737, https://cdn.nationalarchives.gov.uk/documents/release-2025-01/kv2-4737.pdf?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
[5] Top Secret (and Personal) Letter to Hoover, copied to British SLO (senior liaison officer) Washington, sent by diplomatic bag, 18 January 1963, p. 136, Philby file, KV2/4737, https://cdn.nationalarchives.gov.uk/documents/release-2025-01/kv2-4737.pdf?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
[6] Philby file, KV2/4737, pp. 141-154, https://cdn.nationalarchives.gov.uk/documents/release-2025-01/kv2-4737.pdf?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
[7] “Meeting with Peach at 1600 hours on Friday, 11th January, 1963, pp. 155-163, https://cdn.nationalarchives.gov.uk/documents/release-2025-01/kv2-4737.pdf?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
[8] See the account of Dwyer’s career in Mark Kristmanson, Plateaus of Freedom: Nationality, Culture and State Security in Canada 1940-1960 (Oxford University Press, 2003), chapter 4; for Dwyer’s role in the interrogation of Gouzenko [alias “Corby”] see Amy Knight, How the Cold War Began: The Igor Gouzenko Affair and the Hunt for Soviet Spies (Carroll and Graff, 2006)
[9] Document 3, 11 January 1963. https://cdn.nationalarchives.gov.uk/documents/release-2025-01/kv2-4737.pdf?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
[10] The British TV series based on the Elliott-Philby interrogation, “A Spy Among Friends” (2023) offers a twistier narrative around Elliott’s complicity in Philby’s escape and a subsequent CIA plot in Moscow. Its available on Amazon Prime. The series borrows from the non-fiction account by British journalist Ben MacIntrye, also entitled A Spy Among Friends (Penguin Random House, 2014).
[11] Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin, The Miktrokhin Archives: The KGB in Europe and the West (Penguin, 1999), 156-60
[12] “Spy Kim Philby Died Disillusioned with Communism,” The Guardian, March 31, 2011, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/mar/31/spy-kim-philby-disillusioned-communism
[13] Obituary of Nicholas Elliott, The Independent, April 17, 1994, https://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/obituary-nicholas-elliott-1370833.html
wonderful piece. Thanks for this!
Thank you for adding more pieces of the puzzle that has been left unfinished for decades.