(While not intended as a history of Kim Philby, as the Head of the Iberian Desk, and later Deputy Head of Section V, he did have an important role in the Section’s wartime efforts, and the stories below give some indication of the close personal – indeed, almost incestuous - relationships that existed between personnel in MI5 and MI6, especially those involved in the use of ISOS and the running of double agents).
Col Felix Henry Cowgill, a former officer in the Indian police and an expert on penetration of the Comintern in that region, was recruited to join Section V in February 1939, becoming head of Section in January 1941 under Col Valentine Vivian, Deputy Chief of MI6. [3] Cowgill’s appointment in 1939 brought the staff level of the section to three, including Vivian and his secretary! In the prelude to war Vivian began to expand the section, before handing the section to Cowgill in January 1941. At that time much of the recruitment to British intelligence was done on the “Old Boy network”, using contacts, friends and relatives, and people who had attended the same school or university, but checks were – supposedly - done with MI5 on potential recruits. A number of recruits to the section were transferred from MI5, while others came from a Field Security Wing (Intelligence Corps) of the Territorial Army.
HAR “Kim” Philby (most famous for having been a Soviet agent within MI6 from 1940 to 1953) claimed that he put out feelers about employment in the British intelligence establishment through his journalist contacts in June 1940. He had just returned from Europe where he had been a war correspondent with the British Expeditionary Force (BEF). He rapidly secured an interview with a Miss Marjorie Maxse, who recruited him for Section D of MI6, a department created to conduct sabotage and black propaganda. One of the first colleagues he met was Guy Burgess, a friend from Cambridge University, and a fellow Soviet spy, who had worked in the section since late 1938. [4] How much influence Burgess may have had in his recruitment is unknown, though he did claim credit for it. [5] Within a month of Philby’s recruitment, however, the Section was absorbed into SOE, and Burgess was fired.
It was reported that MI5 checks on Philby came back with “Nothing Recorded Against”, despite his prior association both with communism and the Anglo-German Fellowship. At the time of Kim Philby’s initial recruitment by MI6, the MI5 registry was possibly in a little disarray following its move to HM Prison at Wormwood Scrubs, but it did not suffer damage by bombing at Wormwood Scrubs until 24-25 September 1940. It is therefore unlikely that his card - if there was one - was unavailable for checking. [6] At the time of the recruitment of Guy Burgess to MI6 in late 1938, there can be no excuse for a failure to find his records.
Burgess had been an enthusiastic communist at Cambridge until his recruitment as a spy (under the false flag of the Comintern) in 1934, and he had thereafter, like Philby, been associated with the Anglo-German Fellowship and had visited Germany. His employment by MI6 is therefore surprising, unless there were either no vetting enquiry made to MI5, or else the results were disregarded or manipulated. From 1936 Burgess had been used as an agent in a private intelligence network, running messages between the British Prime Minister and French politicians – and copying them for British (and no doubt Soviet) intelligence. Perhaps this work, and his friendship with a senior MI6 officer, David Footman, gave him a back-door entry to MI6.
Burgess had been working for the BBC Talks Department, and had interviewed Footman as a published author. In December 1938 Burgess was recruited to Section D and began working in a semi-overt black propaganda organization, the Joint Broadcasting Committee (JBC). Burgess was therefore the first member of the soviet spy ring known as the Cambridge Five to penetrate the British secret services.
Philby was sent as an instructor to the Section D training school at Brickendonbury Hall, where he met Tommy Harris and his wife, who were employed as cooks (again, on the recommendation of Guy Burgess) [7]. Harris, when seeking to get Philby recruited to Section V, claimed that they had known each other in Spain. According to Chapman Pincher’s book, “Their Trade is Treachery”, he was named by a friend of Philby’s, Flora Solomon, “as having served as a courier during the Spanish Civil War for Philby” (to the Russians). Harris, the son of a wealthy art dealer, later held an open-house in Chesterfield Gardens in London, which became a hang-out for a group of “Young Turks” within the intelligence fraternity, known simply as “The Group”. Members of this group used their positions to help others get employment in the intelligence world.
Harris obtained a job with the MI5 Iberian section. Another acquaintance and soviet spy, Anthony Blunt, was employed from June 1940 as assistant to Guy Liddell, the head of B Division of MI5. Blunt recommended the recruitment of Harris, according to Christopher Andrew's History of MI5, "Defend the Realm" (Alfred A Knopf, 2009, p284). About July 1941 Harris suggested Philby as a possible recruit to Dick Brooman-White, his boss in MI5. Brooman-White, in turn, suggested him to Cowgill. [8] Philby became a member of Section V of MI6 in August 1941, with Brooman-White transferring to Section V’s Iberian Desk under Philby sometime in 1942.
Another version of his recruitment (given by Anthony Cave Brown) claims that Philby was hand-selected by Col Vivian from SOE [9] (Vivian had supposedly arranged his original employment in Section D of MI6, just prior to this being absorbed into SOE in July 1940). Ben MacInyre’s book “A Spy Among Friends” recorded that Vivian merely vouched for Philby on his initial recruitment with the words “I was asked about him, and said I knew his people.”
Vivian was aware of Philby’s communist links [See Footnote a] and questioned Philby’s father (very briefly!) at a lunch with father and son in March 1941, before Kim was hired to Section V. While Harry St John Philby was regarded with much suspicion in the Foreign Office for his anti-imperial views, he was a former colleague of Vivian from colonial India, and had in fact been offered the post of chief of British counter-espionage in the Middle East in 1939, but he had set conditions for his acceptance which the FO would not meet. [10] As such an offer to Philby Senior would have been, at the very least, approved by both the head of MI6 and his deputy for security (Vivian), the influence of the family connection was obvious.
While the second version of Philby's recruitment connects with the March 1941 meeting between Vivian and Philby Senior, the long delay before Kim began work in August suggests that Vivian may still have had doubts regarding his suitability for the job, and Brooman-White’s recommendation (as a member of MI5) may have been the deciding factor. Another may have been the fact that Vivian was in the midst of a battle for power with fellow deputy director Claude Dansey within MI6. Vivian had asked ‘C’ to promote Cowgill to head Section V in order to allow Vivian to spend more time at MI6 HQ in London. ‘C’ in turn had asked for stronger control (“discipline”) of the new influx of non-professional staff within the Section, and particularly the expanding Iberian Section and the Radio Security Service (RSS) which had been transferred to MI6 control. [11] Anthony Cave Brown has suggested in his book that Philby may have seemed the right person to act as conciliator between the factions, [12] though he gives no reason why this would be the case.
The assertion by John Costello (“Mask of Treachery”, 1988) that Brooman-White transferred from MI5 to Section V “to head a separate Iberian group” in the Autumn of 1941 as part of a deal brokered by MI5’s Dick White is contradicted by Tim Milne’s recollection, [13] as well as the diaries of Guy Liddell, which recorded him as an active MI5 officer in October 1942. [See Footnote b]
Once hired, Philby had swiftly arranged the recruitment of his long-time friend into the same organization - Ian Innes Milne (known as Tim) - as well as his own sister, Helena, who was employed in the Section V Registry. Philby was appointed to head the Iberian desk (Vd), and Milne joined his team. Philby at one time considered Milne for recruitment by the NKVD, according to the book "TRIPLEX" (Nigel West and Oleg Tsarev, Yale University Press, 2009, p 107).
