My Silent War: The Autobiography of a Spy (3 page)

His character studies are admirable if unkind. Don’t talk to me of ghost writers: only Philby could have been responsible for these. Anyone who was in Section V will agree with his estimate of its head, Felix Cowgill, whom he was to displace. “Cowgill revelled in his isolation. He was one of those pure souls who denounce all opponents as ‘politicians.’” The Deputy Chief of the Secret Service is immediately recognizable. “Vivian was long past his best—if,
indeed, he had ever had one. He had a reedy figure, carefully dressed crinkles in his hair, and wet eyes.” To C himself, Brigadier Menzies, Philby is unexpectedly kind, though perhaps the strict limitations of his praise and a certain note of high patronage will not endear the portrait to the subject. For Skardon, the MI5 interrogator who broke Fuchs down, he has a true craftsman’s respect.

If this book required a sub-title I would suggest: The Spy As Craftsman. No one could have been a better chief than Kim Philby when he was in charge of the Iberian section of V. He worked harder than anyone and never gave the impression of labour. He was always relaxed, completely unflappable. He was in those days, of course, fighting the same war as his colleagues: the extreme strain must have come later, when he was organizing a new section to counter Russian espionage, but though then he was fighting quite a different war, he maintained his craftsman’s pride. He was determined that his new section should be organized better than any other part of the ramshackle SIS. “By the time our final bulky report was ready for presentation to the Chief, we felt we had produced the design of something like a service, with enough serious inducements to tempt able young men to regard it as a career for life.” He set about recruiting with care and enthusiasm. “The important thing was to get hold of the good people while they were still available. With peacetime economies already in sight, it would be much easier to discard surplus staff than to find people later to fill in any gaps that might appear.” No Soviet contact this time would be able to wonder whether he had penetrated the right outfit. A craftsman’s pride, yes, and of course something else. Only an efficient section could thoroughly test the security of the Russian service. It was a fascinating manoeuvre, though only one side knew that it was a mock war.

The story of how, to attain his position, he eliminated Cowgill makes, as he admits, for “sour reading, just as it makes sour writing”—one feels for a moment the sharp touch of the icicle in the heart. I saw the beginning of this affair—indeed I resigned rather than accept the promotion which was one tiny cog in the machinery of his
intrigue. I attributed it then to a personal drive for power, the only characteristic in Philby which I thought disagreeable. I am glad now that I was wrong. He was serving a cause and not himself, and so my old liking for him comes back, as I remember with pleasure those long Sunday lunches at St. Albans when the whole subsection relaxed under his leadership for a few hours of heavy drinking, and later the meetings over a pint on fire-watching nights at the pub behind St. James’s Street. If one made an error of judgement he was sure to minimize it and cover it up, without criticism, with a halting stammered witticism. He had all the small loyalties to his colleagues, and of course his big loyalty was unknown to us.

Some years later, after his clearance by Macmillan in the House of Commons, I and another old friend of Kim were together in Crowborough and we thought to look him up. There was no sign of any tending in the overgrown garden and no answer to the bell when we rang. We looked through the windows of the ugly sprawling Edwardian house, on the borders of Ashdown forest, in this poor man’s Surrey. The post hadn’t been collected for a long time—the floor under the door was littered with advertising brochures. In the kitchen there were some empty milk bottles, and a single dirty cup and saucer in the sink. It was more like an abandoned gypsy encampment than the dwelling of a man with wife and children. We didn’t know it, but he had already left for Beirut—the last stage of his journey to Moscow, the home which he had never seen. After thirty years in the underground surely he has earned his right to a rest.

G
RAHAM
G
REENE
(1904–91), one of the greatest and most widely read English writers of the twentieth century, was the author of, among many novels,
The Man Within, England Made Me, The Power and the Glory, The Quiet American, Our Man in Havana
, and
Travels with My Aunt
. He was, as well, a noted short-story writer, essayist, film reviewer, and occasional playwright.

A
UTHOR’S
N
OTE

This short book is an introductory sketch of my experiences in the field of intelligence. More will follow in due course. But already at this stage I must draw attention to a problem by which I am confronted.

The public naming of serving officers whose work is supposed to be secret cannot fail to cause personal embarrassment. I have no desire to cause such embarrassment to former colleagues in the British, American and sundry other services, for some of whom I feel both affection and respect.

I have tried therefore to confine the naming of names to officers whom I know to be dead or retired. On occasion, however, it has proved impossible to write a lucid story without naming officers who are still in service.

To these latter I apologize for any embarrassment caused. I, too, have suffered personal inconvenience through my connection with secret service.

Moscow, 1968

I
NTRODUCTION

This book has been written at intervals since my arrival in Moscow nearly five years ago. From time to time in the course of writing it, I took counsel with friends whose advice I valued. I accepted some of the suggestions made and rejected others. One suggestion which I rejected was that I should make the book more exciting by heavier emphasis on the hazards of the long journey from Cambridge to Moscow. I prefer to rest on a round, unvarnished tale.

When the book was brought to a provisional conclusion last summer (1967), I gave long consideration to the desirability of publishing it, again consulting a few friends whose views might be helpful. The general consensus of opinion, with which I agreed at the time, was that the question of publication should be shelved indefinitely. The main reason for this was that publication seemed likely to cause a rumpus, with international complications the nature of which was difficult to foresee. It seemed unwise to take action that might have consequences beyond the range of reasonable prediction. So I decided to sit on my typescript.

The situation has been completely changed by articles which appeared in the
Sunday Times
and the
Observer
in October 1967.
Those articles, in spite of a number of factual inaccuracies and errors of interpretation (and, I fear, gratifying exaggeration of my own talents), present a substantially true picture of my career. It was immediately suggested, of course, by rival newspapers that the
Sunday Times
and the
Observer
had fallen victim to a gigantic plant. The absurdity of this suggestion has already been exposed in the
Sunday Times
. For my part, I can only add that I was offered an opportunity to vet the typescript of the
Sunday Times
articles before publication and, after reflection, deliberately declined. I felt that the Editor should be prepared to stand by the conclusions reached by his own staff, and that the objectivity of the articles would be open to attack if I, so interested a party, intervened.

As I say, these articles completely charged the situation. The consequences of the truth being disclosed are on us irrevocably, for better or worse. I can therefore offer my book to the public without incurring the charge of wanting to muddy waters. My purpose is simply to correct certain inaccuracies and errors of interpretation, and to present a more fully rounded picture.

The first serious crisis of my career was long drawn out, lasting roughly from the middle of 1951 to the end of 1955. Throughout it, I was sustained by the thought that nobody could pin on me any link with Communist organizations, for the simple reason that I had never been a member of any. The first thirty years of my work for the cause in which I believed were, from the beginning, spent underground. This long phase started in Central Europe
^*
in June 1933; it ended in Lebanon in January 1963. Only then was I able to emerge in my true colours, the colours of a Soviet intelligence officer.

Until quite recently, when the
Sunday Times
and the
Observer
let some large and fairly authentic cats out of the bag, writers who
touched my case in newspaper articles and books thrashed around wildly in the dark. They cannot be blamed for their ignorance since, throughout my career, I was careful not to advertise the truth. But some blame perhaps attaches to them for rushing into print in that blissful state, and for their insistence on looking for complex explanations where simple ones would have served better. The simple truth, of course, crumbling Establishment and its Transatlantic friends. But the attempt to wash it away in words, whether ingenious or just nonsensical, was futile and foredoomed to failure.

After nearly a year of illegal activity in Central Europe, I returned to England. It was time for me to start earning my own living. Then something evidently happened. Within a few weeks I had dropped all my political friends and had begun to frequent functions at the German Embassy. I joined the Anglo-German Fellowship, and did much of the legwork involved in an abortive attempt to start, with Nazi funds, a trade journal designed to foster good relations between Britain and Germany.
^*
In spite of my best efforts, this strange venture failed, because another group got in ahead of us. But while the negotiations were in progress, I paid several visits to Berlin for talks with the Propaganda Ministry and the
Dienststelle Ribbentrop
. No one has so far suggested that I had switched from Communism to Nazism. The simpler, and true, explanation is that overt and covert links between Britain and Germany at that time were of serious concern to the Soviet Government.

The Spanish war broke out during one of my visits to Berlin. The Nazis were cock-a-hoop, and it was not until I returned to England that I learnt that General Franco had not taken over the whole country, but that a long civil war was in prospect. My next assignment was to Fascist-occupied territory in Spain with the aim of bedding down there, as close to the centre of things as possible, on a long-term basis. That mission was successful, for within a few weeks I became the accredited correspondent of
The Times
with
Franco’s forces, and served as such throughout the whole heart-breaking war. Again, no one has suggested that this made me a Falangista. The simpler explanation still holds the field; I was there on Soviet service.

In August 1939, when the war clouds were piling up fast over Danzig,
The Times
told me to forget Spain and hold myself in readiness for attachment to any British force that might be sent to the Western Front. It was as good as I could have expected in the circumstances. Any war correspondent with an enquiring mind could amass a huge amount of information which censorship would not allow him to publish; and my experience in Spain had taught me the right sort of question to ask. As it turned out, British headquarters were established in Arras, within easy reach of Paris. I spent most of my weekends in the heaving anonymity of the capital, not only for the obvious purpose of philandering. But, good as it was, the Arras post was not good enough. I had been told in pressing terms by my Soviet friends that my first priority must be the British secret service. Before the press corps left for France in early October, I dropped a few hints here and there. All that I could then do was sit back and wait. This book describes in some, though not complete, detail how this new venture was crowned with success.

In case doubt should still lurk in devious minds, a plain statement of the facts is perhaps called for. In early manhood, I became an accredited member of the Soviet intelligence service. I can therefore claim to have been a Soviet intelligence officer for some thirty-odd years, and will no doubt remain one until death or senile decay forces my retirement. But most of my work has lain in fields normally covered, in British and American practice, by agents. I will therefore describe myself henceforth as an agent.

“Agent,” of course, is a term susceptible of widely different interpretations. It can mean a simple courier carrying messages between two points; it can mean the writer of such messages; it can imply advisory or even executive functions. I passed through the first stage rapidly, and was soon writing, or otherwise providing, information on an increasingly voluminous scale. As I gained in
knowledge and experience, consultative and executive functions were gradually added to the mere acquisition and transmission of intelligence. This process ran parallel to my rising seniority in the British service, in which, from about 1944 onwards, I was consulted on a wide range of policy problems.

Some writers have recently spoken of me as a double agent, or even as a triple agent. If this is taken to mean that I was working with equal zeal for two or more sides at once, it is seriously misleading. All through my career, I have been a straight penetration agent working in the Soviet interest. The fact that I joined the British Secret Intelligence Service is neither here nor there; I regarded my SIS
^*
appointments purely in the light of cover-jobs, to be carried out sufficiently well to ensure my attaining positions in which my service to the Soviet Union would be most effective. My connection with SIS must be seen against my prior total commitment to the Soviet Union which I regarded then, as I do now, the inner fortress of the world movement.

In the first year or two, I penetrated very little, though I did beat Gordon Lonsdale to the London School of Oriental Studies by ten years. During that period, I was a sort of intelligence probationer. I still look back with wonder at the infinite patience shown by my seniors in the service, a patience matched only by their intelligent understanding. Week after week, we would meet in one or other of the remoter open spaces in London; week after week, I would reach the rendezvous empty-handed and leave with a load of painstaking advice, admonition and encouragement. I was often despondent at my failure to achieve anything worthwhile, but the lessons went on and sank deep. When the time came for serious work, I found myself endowed with much of the required mental equipment.