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New Book Explodes Philby Myth

Spy of the century, traitor to his class, betrayer of a generation -- Kim Philby's career as a Soviet agent has inspired dozens of books and reminiscences, particularly in his native Britain.


But what did the Russians, for whom he worked in the West for 30 years before defecting to Moscow in 1963, really think of their prize agent?


A new book by a Moscow journalist given access to Philby's KGB records for the first time answers that question, showing that his Soviet controllers at one point during World War II thought he was a triple agent working for the British.


"The Philby Files" by Genrikh Borovik, a journalist and playwright, skilfully weaves together Philby's own reminiscences, recorded by Borovik on 50 hours of tapes, with extracts from the KGB file that Philby himself never saw.


The tapes fill in parts of the Philby story that the spy's own autobiography in 1968 left blank, such as how he was smuggled to Moscow from Beirut in 1963 on a Soviet ship.


But the real secrets are in the files, which demolish Philby's own story of a seamless and happy partnership with the Lubyanka, the KGB headquarters.


In 1951, when Philby's career as a double agent inside British intelligence was at its height, it was a blunder by Moscow that put him under suspicion and forced him to resign.


Borovik's research shows that it was on Moscow's orders that Philby's fellow agent and close friend Guy Burgess defected to Moscow with diplomat Donald Maclean, leaving a trail of suspicion that quickly led to Philby.


Borovik said it was Philby's old friend, the novelist Graham Greene, who suggested to him after the spy's death in 1988 that he try to get access to Philby's KGB file and compare it with the taped memories.


In the turbulent Moscow summer of 1991, Leonid Shebarshin, head of the KGB's first main directorate handling foreign espionage, told Borovik he could see the Philby file. "But he said, 'Hurry up while I'm still here. If they remove me...'


"They gave me one volume out of 18, a very interesting one from 1934 until the end of the war. I worked in a room in the Lubyanka and dictated into a tape recorder. It was a window of opportunity. Altogether I sat with this volume about five or six times."


After a few months, Borovik's access was cut off after the KGB signed a deal with the U.S. publisher Random House giving exclusive access to its archives. He never saw the other 17 volumes of the Philby files.


Borovik, now 64, got to know Philby well between 1985 and 1988, although the retired spy became irritated at his failure to publish anything from the hours of taped reminiscences.


Philby did not reveal to Borovik all of his secrets but he told him the truth about some matters on which he had told outright lies to his biographer, Australian journalist Phillip Knightley, who also interviewed him extensively before he died.


Philby admitted to Borovik that it was he who directly recruited fellow-spy Maclean for Moscow in the 1930s, something he denied elsewhere.


It was Philby's list of potential recruits among his Cambridge University communist friends that enabled Moscow to build up its famous foursome of upper-class British agents -- Philby, Maclean, Burgess and Blunt.


Philby never breathed a word of criticism of the KGB to Borovik, even about the times when his controllers risked his life unnecessarily.


During the Spanish Civil War, when Philby was a journalist with the London Times, he apologized for failing to carry out a suicidal assignment to assassinate General Francisco Franco.


Years later Philby discovered that the Paris address to which he had sent his letters in code from Spain was the Soviet Embassy -- a mistake that could easily have cost him his life.


The KGB's file on Philby shows that all the skilled Soviet agents who controlled him for the first few years were executed themselves as "foreign spies" in Stalin's 1937-38 purges.


The result for Philby could not have been worse; his new controllers, inexperienced and unimaginative, had no idea who he was. For a while in 1940, Moscow broke off contact with him altogether.


The files record Philby's own disillusionment with Moscow during the 1939-41 Nazi-Soviet pact and show that for 18 months, from 1942 to 1943, his Russian controllers believed he was a triple agent working for Britain.


Philby's problem was that his bosses in the paranoid world of Stalin's Russia refused to believe his reports that Britain had no agents at all in the Soviet Union and was not even training anyone to spy on the Russians.


Finally he was rehabilitated. Borovik believes the Russians eventually accepted Philby's loyalty to them. "You can make up a wonderful scenario under which they didn't trust him from 1942 to the very end, but I don't think it's true."


The final answer remains tantalizingly hidden in the remaining 17 volumes of the Philby files, now held by the KGB's successor, the Foreign Intelligence Service.


In his book, published in London by Little, Brown,


Borovik sees the British defector as an ultimately tragic figure, who was often treated offhandedly by the KGB in his long 25 years on pension in Moscow.


Though he turned to drink, he never complained or confessed to any doubts. "I think Philby was rather unhappy, although he never said so."

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