Background on a Journalist

Many journalists take umbrage at being accused of bias.

They are professionals, they claim.

To paraphrase, as some of my best friends are journalists, let me just say that not all journalists are lazy, incompetent and mean-spirited. Not all.

But here's a case of a journalist who became quite famous as a spy.

I've collected four resources (excuse the overlapping) that make for interesting reading about one Kim Philby.


A.

To provide a cover, Philby began openly expressed right-wing opinions. Philby and Guy Burgess, who also renounced his communism, joined the Anglo-German Fellowship, a pro-Nazi pressure group. Philby got himself appointed as a reporter with The Times and on the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War he was sent to Spain. Over the next couple of years he provided articles that were very sympathetic to General Francisco Franco and the Nationalist Army. Franco was grateful for the support Philby gave to the Nationalists and on 2nd March, 1938, awarded him the Red Cross of Military Merit.

These reports convinced those on the right-wing of British politics that Philby had abandoned his former political views. In 1939 Guy Burgess suggested to Marjorie Maxse, chief organization officer of the Conservative Party, and chief of staff of MI6 Section D's training school for propaganda, that she should recruit Philby. Maxse agreed and he was given security clearance by Guy Liddell of MI5.

Later that year Walter Krivitsky, a senior Soviet intelligence officers, who had defected to the West, was brought to London to be interviewed by Dick White and Guy Liddell of MI5. Krivitsky gave details of 61 agents working in Britain. He did not know the names of these agents but described one as being a journalist who had worked for a British newspaper during the Spanish Civil War.

B.

In 1937 he was promoted and given the responsibility to report on the Civil War that was going on in Spain. In the guise of a right wing reporter, Philby reported on the war from the side of the pro-fascist forces of General Francisco Franco (Philby 260). During his stay in Spain he began his first important spying mission for the Russians. No longer reporting information to Deutsch and Maly, Philby would pass information through dozens of different Soviet contacts at various, secret rendezvous points. These contacts would then systematically report their information to a section of the KGB that handled British espionage. For the rest of Philby's double agent career, this was the process in which secret British and American intelligence was passed on to the KGB. Exactly what information Philby gathered in Spain, and if Stalin benefited from this information, is still relatively unknown.

C.

In 1936, on the orders of Moscow, Philby tried to cultivate a conservative background, appearing at Anglo-German meetings and editing a pro-Hitler magazine. In 1937, he left for Spain to cover the Civil War first as a freelance journalist, and then for The Times, reporting the war from Franco's point of view. A shell hit the car he was travelling in, killing three other journalists and wounding Philby. Somewhat ironically, Franco gave him a bravery medal.

and from his own memoirs:

When the World War broke out, The Times sent me to Arras as their correspondent accredited to the Headquarters of the British Army. By June 1940 I was back in England, having been evacuated twice, from Boulogne and from Brest. In London, I had written two or three pieces for The Times, winding up the campaign and pointing its various morals. I have no idea what I wrote and, having just read the pungent comments on the campaign in Liddell-Hart's memoirs, I am grateful for the lapse of memory. I must have produced dreadful rubbish. The main point was that, by the end of June, I was at a loose end. The Times showed no disposition to get rid of me or to overload me with work. Thus I had ample leisure to plot my future, if only I could make a good guess at the nature of the background I had to plot it against.

I decided early to leave The Times, considerate though they had always been to me. Army field censorship had killed my interest in war correspondence. Try writing a war report without mentioning a single place-name or designating a single unit and you will see what I mean. Besides, the idea of writing endlessly about the morale of the British Army at home appalled me. But, in deciding to leave The Times, I had to remember that my call-up was fast approaching.

So, next time you are criticized for casting doubts about a journalist, and he gets all huffed-and-puffed, just say, "you have heard of Kim Philby, haven;t you?".