Customer Reviews

Deceiving the Deceivers: Kim Philby, Donald Maclean and Guy Burgess

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

S.J. Hamrick's study of an associated trio among the most infamous British 20th Century spies is a major step forward in Cold War history. He starts what may become the cracking of the myth surrounding Harold A. R. (Kim) Philby, the Soviet agent many blame for failures of several paramilitary operations the West mounted within the Soviet empire. Unfortunately, Hamrick offers little hard evidence to back up his attack on this outsized mythical spy.

But the author is also able to turn that lack of evidence into the basis of his assault on Philby's storification. Much of the Philby legend was created by the subject spy himself in his book, "My Secret War". In the mid-1980s, British journalist Lord Nicholas Bethell added to the Philby legend by giving the Cambridge University-educated double agent credit as the main reason a British-American paramilitary operation in Albania failed. Bethell offered little or no evidence besides Philby's book, some comments from retired intelligence officers, and lots of airy speculation that Philby must have been to blame. Hamrick correctly offers a timeline that shows how unlikely that Bethell's thesis was accurate.

"It is impossible to believe Philby had the means for any timely disclosure of OPC (a U.S. psychological warfare agency overseen by the CIA, State Department and military) individual operational plans or that he would even have found it necessary," he wrote. Hamrick echos other observers and participants - British and American - who view the Albanian projects as carrying the weight of their own ultimate failure in the "futility of their numbers and purpose". There were too few bravely enthusiastic, but naive, Albanian mountaineers sent home by air, land and sea to overthrow a nasty Communist regime whose internal security forces were trained by the Soviet NKVD.

Two storm flags must be raised about the Hamrick work. One is the theory he postulates that the U.S. and British militaries used Philby as a conduit to pass disinformation to the Soviets. Thin evidence is the problem. The second is Hamrick's apparent failure to consult several works that contained major materiel germane to the Philby-Albania case, such as those by Burton Hersh, C.L. Sulzberger, Noel Malcolm and Enver Hoxha. He writes about the oft-criticized CIA counterspy James J. Angleton and the Office of Special Operations, a CIA branch that competed with the OPC for foreign agents and resources. But he also misses the most successful Western infiltration of Albania by agents sponsored by the CIA/OSO and Italian Naval Intelligence.

Despite the fact that I cannot get enough on the subject of the Cambridge Spies, it took me nearly six months to plough through S.J. Hamrick's "Deceiving the Deceivers." It is not as if his thesis is not provocative: that SIS, Britain's Secret Intelligence Service, in anticipation, laid a trap for Burgess, Maclean, Philby, and Blunt. However, the author explores so many tangents that I found it difficult to grasp the central thread of his narrative.

Certainly, the possibility that British Intelligence had set a trap for the Cambridge Spies is plausible. Such a scenario would explain why the sequence of events ceases to make any logical sense after the Volkov affair in 1945, when Kim Philby delays his arrival at Istanbul, to such an extent that the would-be Soviet defector, Konstantin Volkov, is apprehended by the Russians and--encased in bandages like a mummy--whisked off to Moscow and apparent oblivion. After this point, one is left with a series of anomalies: 1) Donald Maclean's unspeakable rampage in Cairo results (after a recuperative dose of psychoanalysis) in an appointment to the sensitive American Desk in the Foreign Office. 2) Guy Burgess, after running amok in Tangiers and blowing the cover of SIS officers left and right, is nevertheless appointed as third secretary to the British Embassy in Washington, arguably Britain's most important foreign post. 3) Burgess's drunken rumbustiousness in Washington succeeds in embarrassing his host, Kim Philby--who has hitherto been regarded as a respected first secretary to the British Embassy--so much so that not only Burgess but also Philby is declared PNG and sent home to London ASAP. The upshot is the ruination of one of the NKVD's (KGB's) most valuable agents and the eventual downfall of the entire Cambridge ring. The question that is raised--and not addressed by Hamrick--is whether SIS might have "turned" Burgess with the express objective of bringing down his friend Philby (After all, Burgess, when the going got rough, was reportedly ready to negotiate a hit on another pal, Goronwy Rees, so presumably he would not be adverse to bringing down Philby, if it meant saving his own skin). Despite Burgess' famous espousal of E.M. Forster's maxim, "if I had a choice between betraying a friend and betraying my country, I hope that I would have the guts to betray my country," Burgess could well have been promised an unimpeded escape with Maclean if he would embarrass Philby in Washington, which he certainly did. Of course, one will never know due to the British Official Secrets Act.

One would, however, like to have a bit more solid evidence to support Mr. Hamrick's hypothesis. Furthermore, from all that one reads about SIS and its serial blundering, one wonders whether it would have been clever enough to have accomplished such a coup (especially when it continued to employ Philby as an agent in the Mid-East until 1963, when he defected to Moscow). Nevertheless, the Cambridge Spies were brought down (Anthony Blunt was being questioned in 1964, the year after Burgess died and Philby defected, and eventually John Cairncross was revealed to be a Soviet agent).

Hamrick certainly raises some of the important questions, even though he does not--and likely cannot--provide the answers.

The provocative ideas in this book have been cogently analyzed by other excellent reviewers. Here, I will add to the complaint that Hamrick's argument is extremely disorganized. Hamrick's rambling narrative should have been better reined in by the editors at Yale University Press. As a result of discursive and mostly scattered narrative, reading this book was as enjoyable as trying to run 10 miles after a full meal. Only the book's intriguing thesis saves this book from a one star review.

Good material and critical thinking, poorly arranged. The author has one basic point, which he reiterates in each chapter as either conclusion or thesis (sometimes both). And that point is, the British security services succeeded brilliantly for a half-century in misleading the public about the Burgess-Maclean-Philby case. To break it down to its most salient arguments:

1) Burgess and Maclean did not "jump" when they took that night boat to St-Malo in May 1951. They were "pushed"--by MI5. MI5 had been watching them for years, playing with Maclean as a cat plays with a mouse, delaying overt investigation while gradually inciting a sense of panic throughout the spy ring.

2) Kim Philby was neither head boy nor master spy. He was a bibulous blowhard, a second-rater whose utility to the Soviets expired long before 1951. When he was stationed at the embassy in Washington, DC in 1949-51, he did not even have a regular Soviet contact. (When he finally ended up in Moscow, the KGB had no use for him: he was under constant surveillance and suspicion.) Philby was mainly useful to the British security services, first as a useful fool whose contacts could be monitored, later as a straw-man who could be portrayed as a sort of Prof. Moriarty of espionage, thereby allowing the security services to hide how they much they actually knew about the Soviet apparatus.

The arguments are based on the author's review of the so-called Venona transcripts, decryptions and counterintelligence documents that accumulated in the American security services from the 1940s and 50s. This book serves as a sort of bibliographic introduction to what can be pulled out of those files, but it is itself too confused and sprawling to be the final word itself. The thing is just difficult to read. It needed an editor and proofreader, to give it clarity and shape, and to catch the author's more obvious errors. At least twice Hamrick speaks of Heath being Prime Minister in 1963, and I can't tell whether he really means Macmillan or Lord Home, or means minister Heath in the cabinet.

I like a James Bond spy thriller replete with the latest technology as well as the next guy. Le Carre's Cold War-inspired George Smiley series. Even better. So when I expected to get the real `scoop' on the actions of the Kim Philby-led Ring of Five in England that performed heroic spy service for the Soviet Union I found instead mostly skimpy historical conjecture by Mr. Hamrick. The central premise of his book that the Ring of Five was led by the rings in their noses by Western intelligence made me long for one of Mr. le Carre's books. Apparently the only virtue of the opening of Cold War archives has been not to bring some clarity about the period but to create a cottage industry of conjecture and coincidence that rival the Lee Harvey Oswald industry. Interestingly, the New York Review of Books (April 26, 2007) in its review of Mr. Hamrick's book brought in the big guns. The review by Phillip Knightley, who actually has done some heavy work sorting out the Philby case, politely, too politely, dismisses the claims as so much smoke. No disagreement there from these quarters.

If the British Intelligence had indeed set a trap for the Cambridge Spies, then the deceiving plan was poorly managed that eventually led to disasters.

It is highly unlikely that Philby would be promoted to such a high position to post at Washington DC as a liaison between SIS (MI6), CIA and FBI had his true identity as a Soviet agent been exposed to the MI5. The success of such a bold counter-intelligence plan need at least
(1) a highly motivated and efficient British security service. MI5's inexcusable incompetence in the Klaus Fuchs' investigation during the same time period showed the exact contrary,
(2) complicated and delicate co-operations among the three giants which unfortunately history has proved non-existence even between CIA and FBI in 1950s.

The reality is cryptically simple, Philby compromised many of the three agencies' intelligence or counter-intelligence operations whether domestic or international, Albanian Operation for example, and possibly the sensitive Venona Secrets. Philby successfully deceived the three powerful giants, not the other way as the author expected. Even worse, Philby involuntarily created a long-term mistrust between American and British intelligence communities.

This book has unusually larger amount of comments and imaginations than necessary supporting facts.

This was a long slow read. The authors intended conclusion nearly gets lost because of the minutiae that he delves into to prove it. Also, way too many acronyms and various points repeated numerous times. Maybe interesting to an early cold war/spy historian, but otherwise I would avoid this.

I picked this book up at a yard sale for 25 cents, and I think I got my money's worth. It contains the kind of revelations about the "Cambridge Threesome" (Kim Philby, Donald Mclean, and Guy Burgess) that simply makes for irresistible reading.

The story is about how the three infamous spies hoodwinked British intelligence for the better part of three decades, and how once they defected to Moscow, British authorities, in an embarrassing tizzy, were then forced to cover-up the magnitude of their treachery.

At least that is the version we always thought was the final truth. However, the author drawing on recently released documents in the U.S. and Russian archives, (supplemented by a trickle released by the UK) comes to a very different conclusion. Basing his argument primarily on the above sources, the author exposes a number of contradictions that have, over the years, effectively debunked MI5's claim that British Intelligence had identified Mclean as a Soviet agent only as late as in the spring of 1951. It turns out that this was not the truth after all, but part of an elaborate cover-up that was both designed to "save face" for MI5 and involved a counter-deception disinformation operation against the threesome by MI5.

Not only did British intelligence know about the treachery of Mclean (and then very quickly afterwards of the other two) far earlier than 1951, but also - and this was the crowning revelation in the book -- concealed this knowledge so as to use it as part of a counterespionage operation in which both Philby and Burgess were deceived into transmitting disinformation back to their Russian handlers.

On the U.S. side, the reader will discover about as detailed an examination of the Venona files as has ever been carried out - one that is used here mostly to expose the long-standing UK cover-up. The period of most concern is that from 1947 to 1951, when, decoding of Soviet cables through the Venona Project first revealed the treachery of Mclean, whose code-named was "homer." Cables on Winston Churchill (going between London to Moscow, via New York) were among the first to be decoded and flagged due to their alarming nature. It was an elementary exercise in logic to "zero-in" on Mclean as the perpetrator. Once Mclean was fingered, Philby and Burgess were used for the disinformation operation, and later apparently even allowed to defect unmolested.

In a way, this bit of counter-deception was the coup de grace and the final insult to the reputation of the infamous threesome. But it was especially a bitter pill forever tarnishing the bloated, almost mythical reputation of Kim Philby, the most infamous of the threesome.

The book goes into great detail about Philby's mental and physical deterioration in his wanning years. Under virtual house arrest for most of those years, Philby had nothing to hold on to but his bloated reputation as the world's greatest spy. In perhaps the greatest irony of all, once in Moscow, Philby was distrusted by his KGB handlers -- most probably due to the KGB's discovery that Philby's "takes" were (unwittingly) tainted disinformation. Quite a read. Three stars

I'm giving this book two stars for the general reader and four stars for people with a great interest and understanding of the subject of Allied intelligence in the late 1930s and the 1940s.

Overall, an extremely complicated and at times disappointing book. The complicated part is that the author explores hundreds of data points in extreme detail but also seemingly without a roadmap which would have helped the reader put the pieces together.

A disappointing part is that the author seems to make little use of the KGB archives which were also available at the time the book was written. Instead its focus is nearly entirely on a few cables partially decrypted by Venona and included as part of the 1995-1996 public release of Venona decrypted traffic by the NSA.

The book is a combination of scholarly research (the footnotes take 41 pages plus an 11 page index) and seemingly unfounded speculation. I found myself asking over and over "how did he know that?", "what's the source?" You'd think the author was sitting inside the minds of many players to the drama as reactions and thoughts are told from their point of view. This also made the book more interesting to read.

At times I felt I was reading a conspiracy theory tract because while the author used a hypothesis followed by evidence format I got the impression that the author was selective, perhaps unintentionally, in what evidence he included plus how it was arranged and presented. Things were often too neat. Another bothersome aspect is the author's seemingly willingness to be critical of other authors. Large sections are spent shredding the arguments/premise of others while never crediting them for direct hits scored.

The book has several redeeming features. 1) It shows how extraordinarily complex the maze of mirrors are in the intelligence world and in that sense the title is apt. 2) It appears to punch holes in the officially approved, and largely accepted, time line of when British intelligence may have known when Donald Maclean was a spy and that Maclean may well have been used for disinformation. 3) It shows that much of the mythology surrounding Kim Philby may be exactly that - mythology. 4) It's hinted, but never stated, that American intelligence agencies should have full cause to be upset at some of the British deception and disinformation campaigns as the Americans were presented as being at times unknowing pawns rather than peers in the battle against the Soviets.

One bit of new news to me but maybe old news to people interested in the subject is the author's analysis of the early disarray of the CIA, how functions were split among various buildings and campuses, and the resulting internal disorder.

To really "get" this book a reader would need to take their own notes and also to have a good understanding of the background story. There just too much information presented that needs to be sorted, filed, and prioritized for the casual, or even somewhat interested, reader to make sense of the book. This book should be of great value to people with an extreme interest in the subject because there is so much information that could be mined to help researchers locate and possibly fit more pieces into the puzzle.

First off, I would have to agree with a couple of the other reviewers. This book was not very well organised. On the whole, I thought the author might have made a more convincing case if he had organised his material in a more stream-lined manner, and not keep being diverted by a thread of discussion, shooting off to tangent that did not seem to ever come back to the main discussion.

However, I must also say that the author made a rather compelling case. On closer examination, there does seem to be many curious and inexplicable aspects of the careers of the Cambridge spy rings. Not least of which was the fact that Kim Philby seemed to have been promoted at least twice to senior positions, despite not having done much to prove himself, not having run field operations or even having successfully pulled off any intelligence coup. This was often explained half-heartedly as being because of the 'old boys network' or the 'old school tie', yet a gaping hole remains, particularly if we consider that Philby was in fairly minor jobs in MI6 before his sudden elevation in 1944, just after VENONA produced results.

The other inexplicable part of the Philby story was his tenure as MI6 liaison to the CIA in 1948. Yet, in spite of minor successes, the Soviets remained remarkably ill-informed about truly important strategic issues that Philby ought to have been in a position to inform them about. Of particular importance was the number of atomic bombs the US actually had and the deployment of B-29 to the UK. Of equal importance was the anticipated response of the west to the Berlin Blockade. To put it simply, the Soviets miscalculated on those issues.

A third inexplicable part of the story was how Burgess and Maclean in 1951, and then Philby in 1963 managed to slip the close survillance of MI5 and other intelligence services, in spite of the proven track record of those agencies. The net just suddenly seemed to open to allow the spies to escape. Again, this had never been satisfactorily explained.

The author's theory at least had the advantage of giving explanation to these inexplicable episodes within a single framework.

And if his account was true, it certainly would not have been unprecedented. The British, after all, ran one of the most sophisticated deception operation during WW2 in Operation Fortitude. And recent information had surfaced that the British intelligence services were not above sacrificing Dutch agents to deceive the German intellingece services in 'the English Game'.

An operation as described by the author would be completely in character and within the proven competence of the British intelligence services.

And as another reviewer had said, even if it were not true, it's a jolly good yarn!:)