Britain's Old Spies' Network

...Why has Britain been so vulnerable to Soviet intelligence activities during the last 30 years...

...Philbyite influence persuaded Mideast specialists in the FO to exploit diplomacy in a dialectical, almost Stalinist, manner—subordinating it to propagandist opportunism, for example, or exploiting it to discredit the few democratic parties that sought a middle way between disintegrating traditionalism and extremism of the Right and Left...

...Even when Iberian affairs were ostensibly his sole concern, Philby was able to read SIS "source books" and files on Soviet affairs...

...But if Russia promoted an attack on Israel it would be extremely difficult to obtain Right-wing support for effective counteraction...

...Elite English colleges, notably at Cambridge, provided Soviet intelligence not only with its most fertile Western seedbed but with superb conduits for information and mutual aid—their influential "old boys' networks...

...Consider, forinstance, their hostility to the American-sponsored Camp David peace agreement between Egypt and Israel (in all its years of influence in the Near East, Whitehall never achieved anything of this importance...

...He confirms that both MI5 and the SIS had known of Philby's Soviet links for some years before 1963 when they allowed him to "flee" from his SIS post and journalistic cover in Beirut to Moscow—where, in due course, he became a general of the KGB and helped the late Yuri Andropov reorganize it...

...I don't think we could defend the near East and Persian Gulf oil fields without Israel...

...In the European Community, where Britain's future lay, a crop of mistrust was sown that Whitehall is still harvesting...

...while he was running the Soviet desk he briefed himself on SIS activities in the Near East...

...Its members do not give documents to the KGB...

...Some were younger people who, like most members of the diplomatic, intelligence and other strongly hierarchized services, studied their bosses' prejudices, inhaled the departmental atmosphere, and adjusted their opinions accordingly...

...British official media also sneered at the efforts of France, Germany and their democratic neighbors to form a European Economic Community—which Britain later joined, cap in hand...

...The extent of even his contacts and influence has generally been underestimated...

...Another professional blames the "nonchalant attitude" of successive British governments—especially Labor's failure when in office to broaden the recruiting base—for the fact that the Security Service (MI5) and the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) became the chasse gardee (game reserve) of a group of men vulnerable to Soviet influence and highly skilled at protecting their own...

...Other European countries have had spy scandals, but not es-pionitis on the British scale...

...They appear to believe that Western—in particular British—society needs a salutary shock, to be provided by Russia, that would persuade it to "cleanse" itself...

...Euro vista BY RAY ALAN Britain Old Spies' Network A British security policy committee, whose membership is secret, is urging Margaret Thatcher's government to grant amnesty to "all British agents still working for the Soviet Union...

...Most were anti-American because of McCarthy, Vietnam or simply envy of America's vitality and health...

...An aristocratic Englishman who has advised Conservative ministers on international and security problems told me recently of his conviction that what he calls a "Russian party" still exists within the British establishment...

...Another SIS appointee, a Left-wing oddball whose previous post had been in Moscow, endangered the lives of British and French servicemen and intelligence officers during the Suez crisis by broadcasting to Egypt a warning of AngloFrench invasion plans...

...and to American action to save Grenada from domination by a Marxist clique...

...And the Russians are, after all, white and believe in a disciplined society...

...Perfidy there was, in nauseating excess, except the interests it harmed were British...

...An earlier Foreign Secretary, Ernest Bevin, had lied to Parliament when questioned about mischief-making by an SIS unit...

...It would not be the first time that extremes of Right and Left have collaborated...

...Who can say...

...to American efforts to lessen the influence of the Soviet-backed Syrian regime of Hafez el-Assad in Lebanon and elsewhere (dur-ingavisitto Damascus not long ago, the British Foreign Secretary, Sir Geoffrey Howe, declared that he agreed with Syria on Lebanon...

...The French authorities were restrained from denouncing him as a liar only by the Suez crisis...

...Another specimen, from a BBC World Service commentary (an FO-inspired editorial) by Peter Mansfield in 1969: "If Saudi Arabia is sincere in its support of the Arab cause it should begin by casting off its special relationship with the United States of America...

...Back in the mid-1950s, British Foreign Secretary Selwyn Lloyd had assured the Quai d'Or say that no service for which he was responsible was indulging in anti-French propaganda...

...During all these years of British spy sagas—some of which have seemed to the public real-life parodies of Ian Fleming's fiction, whose hero, we now know, was a Cossack named Bondski—it was naturally the KGB's Stakhanovites who stood out...

...Some, he said, are undoubtedly Right wingers...

...Take Kim Philby, now the honorary president of the profession...

...Arrested in 1961, Blake was allowed to escape from prison and " flee" toMoscowinl966...

...My informant (I hope he will forgive me this crude label) mentioned a few establishment figures who have recently given discreet support to Soviet policy in the Near East and elsewhere...

...The committee believes the announcement of such an amnesty would "severely damage" Soviet activities in the UK, since the KGB "Resident" could no longer be sure of the loyalty of his British operatives...

...Assuming that the sharks have all been caught (a huge assumption), are the smaller fry still at it...

...All are anti-American and most are anti-Jewish and anti-black...

...Some of them had been influenced by Marxism during the Depression or Hitler's war, had prudently drifted away from Left-wing involvements, but remained sentimentally pro-Soviet...

...Informed Arabs, Israelis and continental Europeans spoke with rare unanimity of "English perfidy...

...they operate by social osmosis, communicating impressions to the Russians and passing ideas and suggestions helpful to the Kremlin along the corridors of Whitehall...

...The upper echelons of the FO and SIS were smaller than they are today: Everyone knew everyone else, and there were fewer compartments...

...Here is a sample of the work of the smaller fish, broadcast by a British disinformation service to Egypt at a time when Britain was still heavily dependent on American support, economic and military: "O Egyptians, the United States is a totally imperialist country populated by mean and cowardly people who terrorize the weak...

...These units were all compact enough for a few determined men to influence them with the same ideas, attitudes and cliches...

...British security authorities have in the past pardoned some KGB agents—including Anthony Blunt, onetime art adviser to the Queen—in exchange for information or in order to spare the government embarrassment, and they offered Kim Philby a deal...

...Philby and his friends, and individuals with a similar outlook, did more to condition the "intellectual" atmosphere in sections and offshoots of the SIS and FO concerned with the Near East in the late 1940s, '50sand'60s...

...Britain's only important Moslem ally, King Abdullah of Jordan, was murdered by an Arab well-known for his anti-British sentiments...

...but it was a British official who appointed the murderer Jordan's representative of the Near East Association (an SIS offshoot), a post that gave him access to the court...

...The fashionable guru in Whitehall was Toynbee, although few there had really read him...

...Between 1949-63 at least four people blew Philby...

...One was George Blake, another SIS officer who moonlighted for the KGB...

...Some years later, when Labor Foreign Secretary George Brown asked for a file on SIS activities he had heard rumors of, the SIS refused to show it to him...

...One can only express astonishment at the line followed by some British officials and the commentators they inspire...

...They are very hostile to Israel," he said...

...A French security officer says: "We have had fewer traitors than the British services because we recruit bright youngsters with modest backgrounds who have every reason to be grateful to the Republic, whereas the British prefer upper-middle-class recruits who are either bored with or ashamed of their easy lives and morally vulnerable...

...A friend of mine who set out two years ago to write a short book tying up a few loose ends of the Philby story has unearthed so much new material that his draft is beginning to read like a Who's Who of the gumshoe set...

...A few months later he discovered that his officials had deceived him...

...But they dislike the idea of a blanket amnesty, for it would limit their scope for negotiation with suspects...

...An authority on intelligence matters who knew him and has closely studied his case says: "The Home Office was told of his intentions but no precautions were taken...

...The Foreign Office (FO), too, is hostile—partly, one of the authors of the proposal suggests, because of "the numbers of FO personnel who might take advantage of the amnesty...

...The Egyptian government accused Britain of trying to "sow confusion and despair among the Arabs and sidetrack their struggle for liberation...

...The Cyprus-based Near East Broadcasting Station and the Arab News Agency, both financed by the British Treasury, incited the Arabs to attack Israel (in 1948 they had urged Palestinian Arabs to leave their villages "so as to make way for the glorious Arab armies," thus contributing to the Palestine refugee problem...

...But they were not singlehanded Bondskis: They had good Soviet backup and allies in and around Whitehall who were able to cover up for them...

...While Philby, Blake, Blunt and other major Anglo-Soviet spies were inflicting shark-wounds on the West, several smaller fish were quietly nibbling away in the British FO and SIS, in overt and covert propaganda services, and in the media...