In the annals of espionage, one name towers above all others: that of H. A. R. "Kim" Philby, the ringleader of the legendary Cambridge spies. A member of the British establishment, Philby joined the Secret Intelligence Service in 1940, rose to the head of Soviet counterintelligence, and, as M16's liaison with the CIA and the FBI, betrayed every secret of Allied operations to the Russians, fatally compromising covert actions to roll back the Iron Curtain in the early years of the Cold War. Written from Moscow in 1967, My Silent War shook the world and introduced a new archetype in fiction: the unrepentant spy. It inspired John Le Carre's Smiley novels and the later espionage novels of Graham Greene. Kim Philby was history's most successful spy. He was also an exceptional writer who gave us the great iconic story of the Cold War and revolutionized, in the process, the art of espionage writing.
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This is a hard book to evaluate. The author, Kim Philby, was the most notorious traitor in the modern history of spycraft. During World War II, Philby joined MI5 - the British counter-espionage department working on British soil - then moved to the SIS (the former MI6) doing counter-espionage work on foreign soil. In that capacity, he became the head of the division responsible for all counter-espionage relating to the Soviet Union. After a stint in Turkey, Philby was assigned to Washington DC to work in the heart of American intelligence.
He did all this while serving as a secret Soviet intelligence officer, a mole, loyal to the Soviet Union, whose trafficking of information risked the safety of his family and friends in the interest of a country he had never visited.
The difficulty of this book is that Philby is still playing the “mole game”; he discloses nothing that is not already known and he misdirects attention simply to stay in practice. Philby offers virtually nothing about his inner life; his wife gets a single mention, and it is only about four pages from the end that he mentions his mother is still living in England. What they thought about his secret life or how he viewed their fates if he were uncovered or the Soviets prevailed, he offers not a clue.
The book starts around the start of World War II when Philby is brought in to MI5. Philby mentions that Guy Burgess was present in one of his recruitment meetings, but he fails to mention that he and Burgess were friends in Cambridge where Burgess was instrumental in Philby's recruitment to the Soviet cause. We get no information about how that took place. The only idea of Philby's motivations is that he believed that the Soviet revolution represented a way to a better world. He maintained that belief despite the atrocities committed by the Soviet Union because he believed that ultimately despite short-term failures, ultimately the Revolution would be vindicated. Besides Philby viewed himself as a soldier and soldiers did their duty even when they disagreed with national policies.
I had always been impressed with Philby's rise to power, thinking that it must have been the result of some singular mental power he had as a spy. That turned out not to be the case, although Philby had spent time acting as a spy in the field in Franco's Spain. In the book “Mine Were of Trouble” by Peter Kemp, Philby gets mentioned as one of four journalists in Spain hit by a bomb, killing the other three and seriously injuring Philby. Kemp and Philby were friends at Cambridge with obviously different political views since Kemp went to fight for the Nationalists in Spain. In this book, Philby mentions Kemp as a friend who described a run-in with Spaniards trained by Philby (working on behalf of SIS) in Kemp's book “No Colour nor Crest.” Small world, indeed.
Philby's true gift lay with office politics. Philby rarely worked in the field when he was in MI5 or SIS. This book is filled with Philby's concerns with the quotidian world of administration, setting up an office and getting it properly staffed. Philby's keen interest was in the personalities around him. His descriptions of those personalities rival the best of John LeCarre, which is good for a reader interested in the staffing of SIS circa 1940 to 1950, but there is not a lot of nourishment to be gotten from the text.
The other effect of the book is to take down one's professional respect for the spy profession. Philby is often slighting about the abilities and intelligence of those around him, although there are some that he respects. But there was a lot of deadwood. The fact that Philby got into MI5 without a background check is notable as is the ease with which he was to get access to SIS files.
In the midst of these quotidian details, the chapter on the “Volkov Affair” stands out. Shortly after the end of the War in Europe in 1945, a Soviet diplomat, Volkov, presented himself at the British station in Istanbul with an offer of information about Soviet spies in Britain's Foreign Office and one who was the head of Britain's counter-espionage department. This information was handed to said spy. Philby looked at, agreed that it needed to be investigated, and then proceeded with all deliberation to head to Istanbul to vet Volkov. However, by the time that Philby got to Istanbul, Volkov had mysteriously disappeared.
Philby hints that he tipped off his “Russian friends,” who put a bullet in Volkov's skull, but he doesn't admit it. It also becomes clear that Philby deliberately dragged out the process of getting to Istanbul so that the deed could be done before he got there, but Philby nowhere admits this.
In 1950, things came apart for Philby. He didn't know about the Venona Intercepts, but he was told that a Soviet spy in the Foreign Office under the code name of Homer was being investigated. The FBI had made a thorough hash of the investigation, but Philby knew it was a matter of time before Donald MacLean was identified as Homer. MacLean had been recruited at Cambridge by Burgess, but Philby had only met MacLean twice before. Since Guy Burgess was rooming with the Philby family, Philby had Burgess tip MacLean off, and the two ended up fleeing to the Soviet Union.
Attention then turned on to Philby - again, thanks to the unknown to Philby, Venona Intercepts. Philby was able to remain calm, knowing that MI5 did not have actionable legal evidence to use against him. He was terminated from SIS with a $4,000 pension but remained free and able to continue to work for the Soviets until 1963 when he finally came in from the Cold. Philby offers several scenarios for why he defected at that time, so his answer is unclear.
Ultimately, this book is frustrating for a variety of reasons. First, I developed a feeling like I have had with recent revelations of FBI corruption involving the abuse of FISA warrants during and after the 2016 election. It seems that the professionals consider themselves a class above the average person. In 1950, Philby received an indirect warning from a supervisor about his arrest, as if that was intended to cause him to defect. In 1955, the British government vouched for Philby's government career. Finally, in 1963, Philby was permitted to remain free while government agents were receiving his confession. It's almost as if “professional courtesy” extended to letting Philby go. All of this tends to show the incompetence of the Deep State long before our age. Either the Deep State wanted to give Philby every opportunity to escape, and thereby relieve them of their embarrassment, or its members are incompetent.
Second, there is Philby's attitude toward his service. In this book, Philby often says things that seem to token pride in the work he did for the British, work that he betrayed. He also expresses his respect for some of his superiors, people whom he was betraying. Philby allows that an undercover operative has to live his cover persona, but this is psychopathic.
Finally, there is the attitude of his friends, like Grahame Greene, who writes the foreword and finds in the memoirs the voice of his friend. Greene visited Philby several times after Philby fled to Moscow.
Friendship and loyalty are difficult things to give up, but Philby endangered the lives of every friend and family member that Greene had. Philby sent British agents into the Soviet Union knowing that they would be captured and shot. Philby worked for the victory of one of the most savage tyrannies in human history. Philby's life was a lie; he simply was not the person that Greene thought he was.
But what the heck, upper-class people have to stick together and what does a little genocide matter?
The ultimate mystery remains, why did Philby become a traitor? His explanation was that he expected the Revolution to bring in some utopia, despite the evidence to the contrary. Interestingly, we don't see any concern for the poor or hatred for the West or for capitalism anywhere in the book. In the end, as in the Hiss case, some mysteries remain.
