British MI6 agent Kim Philby was a spy for the Soviet Union and one of the great liars in human history, right up until his retirement in Moscow where he lived out his days as a national hero.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Chapter 1: Who was Kim Philby and why was he called England's greatest liar?
Yeah, we could have changed the name of the show to things that you might find interesting. But then again, you might not as well. But that doesn't have a ring.
Yeah, there's no implied dummy in the title of our podcast, okay? No, no, no.
We're the dummies.
So I'll tell you somebody who wasn't a dummy as far as it comes to being a world-class liar. Maybe England's greatest liar ever. It was a spy. from the World War II beginning early Cold War era named Harold Kim Philby. And if that name rings a bell, well, just sit back and enjoy this episode on a British spy. If you don't know who Kim Philby is, sit back and enjoy this episode on a British spy.
Your voice is going up like you're going to say something else. Is that it?
I just wanted to replicate it perfectly.
So big thanks to Dave who helped us with this. But Dave also wanted us to shout out and we want to shout out a book by Ben McIntyre, A Spy Among Friends, colon, Kim Philby and the Great Betrayal. And also a miniseries that I have not watched that I think I probably will now, a six-parter on Amazon, MGM.
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Chapter 2: What was Kim Philby's early life and political beliefs?
called A Spy Among Friends from 2023, starring the winsome Guy Pearce as Kim Philby or Harold Adrian Russell Philby as he was born in India in 1912 because his dad was a colonialist. I can never say that word right.
I think you nailed it. Philby, Kim, he was nicknamed Kim because there was a Rudyard Kipling story, a book, I think, about a street urchin raised on the streets of India who becomes a spy. Isn't that crazy?
Yeah, it really is. Because he got this nickname as a kid, like before he knew he was going to be a spy.
Right. He wasn't out in there like we're going to call you Kim from now on. Yeah, he grew up to be a spy and he was nicknamed after a boy who grew up to be a spy. So it is pretty interesting. But everyone called him Kim Philby and he was born in India in 1912. His dad was a colonialist, like you said. His sympathies actually lay with India actually.
He eventually quit the service and went to become, I think, an advisor to the king of Saudi Arabia eventually.
Oh, wow. Well, at any rate, he was born to a well-heeled family. His parents were gone a lot. He was raised by his Indian nanny. He went to Cambridge. So he was sort of on that track of not, you know, royalty or anything, but probably aristocracy, you could say. And when he went to Cambridge, it was the early 1930s. Pretty, pretty rocky time. The Great Depression was happening.
And that's when the fascists, especially in Germany and Italy, saw their sort of opportunity when people were wrecked by poverty to step in and start controlling things.
Right. So communism became a thing among young Cambridge intellectuals at the time. And communism was viewed as the antidote to fascism, which was on the rise at the time in the late 30s. And the reason I was like, why? I don't understand that because my geopolitics is seen through the view of an 80s American kid who lived through the end of the Cold War. Yeah.
But communism is all about class and social equality. One of the defining characteristics of fascism is a rigid hierarchy. So, of course, the aristocracy of Great Britain would be fully on board with a kind of ideology that said, yes, you're at the top. You deserve to be at the top. You should stay at the top.
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Chapter 3: How did Kim Philby become a Soviet spy?
a co-revolutionaries and they, you know, hooked up also in, you know, in a more romantic way, hugging and kissing that kind of thing. Okay. And Dolphus, the, uh, the fascist dictator said, all right, we got to get rid of these communists and we will do so by whatever means we need to. And that Litzy, uh, woman was on that list.
She was pretty well known or, you know, well known as far as the, the insider fascist dictators go. Yeah. And they said, all right, we got to get out of here. They realized the writing was on the wall. So they got married. They fled to England.
And in London, he finally, Kim Philby, got in touch with a real Soviet operative at a secret meeting in Regent Park that was arranged by one of Litzy's communist friends. And it was game time. It was on from that point forward.
Yeah, so this real-life communist was a Czech academic who was undercover for the Soviets as basically a spy master. His name was Arnold Deutsch, or at least that's what he told people. I guess that's where Germany comes up in this one. His codename and what he used to communicate with people was Otto, O-T-T-O. Apparently, it was huge on security.
He would make Philby take like three taxis at least before they would meet. And this guy was like, OK, I can do something with you. You're like an aristocratic. You're a member of the upper crust of British society. And right now, the upper crust of British society is if you're from them, you have total trust across the board. Let's take advantage of that.
Yeah, he was pretty ideal for that position. But he was like, how good of an actor are you, though? Because that's what really matters if you're going to get into this. And Philby said, well, let's just say this. One day Guy Pearce is going to play me in a streaming series. And he was like, what does that mean? That makes no sense at all.
He said, OK, I'm a pretty good actor and a good actor will eventually play me. He's really got to fall into this part, you know, in such a perfect way that obviously no one's going to find out. That's the ultimate goal of being a mole is to be a great liar. And he was really, really good at it. One of the things he had to do, though, was find a job to, you know, as cover.
And he's like, the perfect job for this would be a journalist.
Yeah. But one other thing he had to do, too, was he had to he had to become at least outwardly what he despised the most, which was the quintessential English aristocrat.
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Chapter 4: Why was journalism the perfect cover for Kim Philby's espionage activities?
So he could spy on them for the Soviets, who would then in turn tell what agents to do what to undermine the fascist side of the Civil War.
Right. Do you think there was ever any confusion about those two leaders?
Oh, I made that up. I thought you did.
Very subtle, though.
Thank you.
I was trying to like sniff you off the case, but in a way that made me look as least dumb as possible.
Well, that's why you're the best all-around boy. Man, stop it.
so uh we should mention you know sort of neither here nor there but he and litzy had been divorced by this time he was married four times total but um he would do things like strike up affairs in order to get into uh the places he needed to be in this case uh he he had an affair with an older woman franco's inner circle but while he was there he uh his his car was was bombed essentially not a car bombing but just hit by a shelling uh during a bombing raid and all three passengers
in the car that were not named Kim Philby died, and he just had minor injuries. So he was actually awarded the Red Cross of Military Merit from Franco himself, gave him this award.
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Chapter 5: What role did Kim Philby play during the Spanish Civil War?
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Chapter 6: Who were the Cambridge spies and how were they connected to Kim Philby?
I have not seen that. Oh, it's so good, Chuck. I would have remembered that.
You're going to love it.
You've become quite a horror movie guy over the past years. Yeah. I mean, you like all kinds of stuff. Right. Is Yumi into these scary movies?
Oh, no. She'll hang out on the couch with me and watch them, but she's not. She doesn't watch them. Although I think she would even like talk to me. It's just so well done. And there's only a few parts that are like scary, scary. Yeah. It's just a really well thought out horror movie. It's really cool.
Well, and you've got an A24 tattoo on your lower back, so I know you're an adherent.
Yeah, they really are great.
All right, where were we? We were at Hugh Grant.com. And we were talking about the drinking. All right. I guess let's talk about what was going on then with the Cambridge Three. This is a very successful. Well, all the Soviet spies combined were really successful, including the Cambridge Three.
They over the course of their work, they sent the Soviets more than 10,000 documents during World War Two.
Just World War Two.
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Chapter 7: How did Kim Philby infiltrate British intelligence (MI6)?
Yeah, I don't know if they're military intelligence or not. I guess we'll find out when we do our MI6 episode. Exactly. Great point. But they came to MI6. Some of these resistance leaders came to MI6 and they said, hey, we want to make friends with you because we think the allies are going to win. We're fighting to make sure the allies win.
And afterward, we want to build a Christian democratic Germany that's going to be super friendly with the West. So let's work together after the war. OK, see you. Ta-ta for now. And Philby, as a member of MI6, found out about this, told the Soviets and basically the names and addresses of these people.
The Soviets went and killed them all because the Soviets wanted Germany to be communist afterward, not open and democratic and Christian. So after the war, when MI6 went looking for these Catholic resistance leaders to help rebuild Germany, they were gone. They'd all been killed during the war thanks to Kim Philby.
Yeah. So that's just one example of many where lives were lost due to his intelligence gathering. After World War II, this is when obviously the Americans and the Brits sort of turned toward the Soviet Union and the threat of communism as the main enemy. And, you know, kind of pre-Cold War stuff.
And you would think that this would be a tough thing all of a sudden because Philby is really the enemy. But he was so good at what he did, he just had an inside position. So it was not easier, but all of a sudden he was really in the mix.
Yeah. And he was so good at lying. He was so good at playing this part, sleeping with the enemy, like you said, year after year after year. That even when the Soviets were the enemy now, like he just coasted right through it like it was nothing, like there had been no change whatsoever for him. So he actually had a stroke of genius.
In 1944, he said, hey, we really need to start worrying about these Soviets. I'm worried that there's Soviet spies in MI6, and I think we need to create a counterintelligence section for MI6 dedicated to rooting out Soviet spies.
Oh, man.
Do you know the huevos it takes?
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Chapter 8: What were the consequences of Kim Philby's espionage during World War II?
i mean he was always one step ahead of things uh so much so that you know the the soviets eventually thought that he might be like a triple agent or double crossing them or something um because you know they were like how's this guy moved up so quickly and all of a sudden he's running the department mi6 that's to like it's pretty genius comrade but it's all very suspicious to them and they were a pretty paranoid bunch uh at that point they probably still are
And they always wondered what the deal was. But like his information always checked out. It was always golden. So they they really had no choice but to go along with things. He would eventually go to America. He was assigned MI6 chief in D.C.
So if he was like a charming guy in England with that accent and his drinking ability, he was like just multiply that times 100 in the United States as far as the charm factor goes.
Right, exactly. So yet again, he's done some amazing maneuvering. He's in D.C. He's hanging out with the most connected, embedded members of the CIA, the FBI, the diplomatic circuit from the State Department, like everybody who's anyone in D.C. this guy's partying with. And you said that he was well-known as just like a – he had a hollow leg. He was just such an amazing drinker.
He could drink as well as anybody. Like Marion from Raiders of the Lost Ark, you said. Apparently, he could get so drunk that he couldn't engage in a conversation – But he was always listening, and he could still type up a pretty great report the next day for his handlers based on the stuff he'd overheard while he was blackout drunk, essentially. So this really jibed with America.
Like, the Americans at the time, they loved drinking like that, just like the Brits, maybe even more so.
So he would just drink with everybody.
Okay. But close to tied, at least you can agree. So he would just drink with everybody. And that's how he became a trusted confidant. Apparently, also, he was a genuine friend. Like he met some people along the way that he really became friends with. And I think later on, he said that he missed some of them. But that combination of being one of them.
in the intelligence community, being able to drink as well as anybody so he can have fun at cocktail parties, being charming, and then also being a legit friend. He really got his hooks into people over in the U.S. as well.
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