Government and MI5 files from 1963 released to The National Archives reveal how Whitehall handled the unwelcome news that former MI6 officer Kim Philby had defected to Russia.

The circumstances were unprecedented; an MI6 man who the Government had said wasn’t a KGB agent had now admitted that he was and then set off for Moscow to join two of his spy friends from the Foreign Office. It had happened because MI6 had bungled an attempt to do a deal with him. The news had not yet come out but it was bound to leak soon. The question for the Government of Harold Macmillan was how do we spin our way out of this one? Downing Street and MI5 disagreed on what to do and we can read edited documents in those parts of Philby’s MI5 file which have now been released.

Foreign Office official Peter Westlake was optimistic, ‘it seems highly improbable that the reputation of the Foreign Service proper will suffer’. Philby may have been the First Secretaryat the British Embassy in Washington but press reports had said he worked for MI6 or ‘our friends’ in Whitehall jargon. Westlake recalled that ‘the employment of H.A.R Philby as a member of our friends’ service was terminated in 1951 when the circumstances of the disappearance of Messrs Burgess and Maclean cast serious doubts on his loyalty. Since 1956 he has been a journalist in the Middle East residing in the Lebanon and working for the Observer and the Economist. He disappeared on January 23 and subsequent enquiries have shed no light on his present whereabouts.It is known however that a Soviet ship left Beirut for Odessa on January 23 and it is possible that Philby boarded this clandestinely and may now be in the Soviet Union’. 

What Westlake didn’t mention was that MI6 officer Nicholas Elliott, a friend of Philby, had flown to Beirut to confront him with conclusive evidence of his treachery and had given him time to write a confession in return for this not being used in court against him. In the words of another document Philby ‘agreed to submit himself for detailed examination later.’ Instead he disappeared. 

Mr Westlake believed that when the story of Philby’s disappearance broke it would amount to either a presumption or a confirmation that he was the Third Man. ‘In either case HMG’s public posture is good. These events can only serve to confirm that the Government of the day were right to terminated (sic) Mr Philby’s employment in 1951’.  Mr Westlake chose to ignore was that it would also ‘serve to confirm’ that MacMillan, then the Foreign Secretary, had told the House of Commons something very different back in 1955: “I have no reason to conclude that Mr Philby has at any time betrayed the interests of this country or to identify him with the so-called ‘third man’ if, indeed there was one”. 

At the next level up at the FO the Deputy Under-Secretary,Sir Hugh Stephenson, drafting the note that would go to Downing Street toned down Westlake’s words. HMG’s public picture was no longer ’good’ but ‘reasonable’. Stephenson outlined two options for how to handle the news. The first was to take the initiative and make an announcement. This would ‘produce a success story. demonstrating that the tenacity of the Security Service has finally disposed of a long standing case’ .The alternative was ‘to play it long and to deal with the situation as it develops’.

Over at MI5 the Deputy Director-General Graham Mitchell thought there was a third, to ‘announce the substance of the facts’ without the spin. But in an internal MI5 memo he noted: ‘it is not in any case a matter for us to determine and I think we would be wise to make no comment’. 

The very next day, February 22 1963, came Macmillan’s decision: ‘it would be right to do nothing for the time being and to decide later how to handle the case in the light of developments’. Three days later the Arab News Agency in Beirut sent a telegram to Reuters and the world soon knew the story. Macmillan’s Government was forever on the back foot and under attack in the press and parliament. 

At MI5 Graham Mitchell didn’t have much time to say ‘told you so’ and he certainly got no thanks. Later that year he was suspected of being a Soviet agent himself. Macmillan recalled being told Mitchell had been ‘ spotted wandering around the loos in the park,passing things, probably it was opium or something, he seems to be somewhat unhinged. Fortunately he retired before we could do anything about it’.