'They think I'm a bloody communist. You must fight like hell.
'I'm offering you a lifeline.'
'I rather thought it would be you.'
- Intuition. - 'Must be.'
The conversation that followed is one of the
most important documents of the Cold War.
A confrontation between two friends and two spies.
The brutal culmination of a deadly game.
'So, to what do I owe the pleasure?'
It's business, unfortunately.
- Unfortunately? - We've new information.
Lord, do we really have to go over that rubbish again?
'Your past has caught up with you, Kim. The game's up.'
So you're here to interrogate me? To persuade an innocent man to confess?
For God's sake, we know you're a Soviet agent, Kim!
Don't you understand?
If you knew what I know...
Kim Philby is the most famous double agent in history.
But a quarter century after his death,
he has become a caricature, the gentleman master spy.
The real Kim Philby was a man of contradictions.
Charming and courteous, but also a fanatic and a ruthless killer.
He deceived everyone around him.
'There's no getting away, Kim.'
'There's no getting, there's no getting away, Kim...
'This is over my head.'
Yes. I suppose it would be.
- I thought I was talking to a friend. - So did I, Kim, so did I!
You took me in for years.
I looked up to you, you know? I was on your side.
My God, I despise you now.
I only hope you have the decency left to understand why.
Philby had lived a double life for decades.
And the key to his success
and his survival lay in his friendship with Nicholas Elliott,
the colleague in MI6 who befriended him, defended him
and unwittingly supplied him with secrets...
until he discovered the truth.
Their showdown in a Beirut apartment marked the final chapter
in an extraordinary story of espionage, murder
and intimate betrayal.
The story began in Berlin in 1939.
The occasion. Adolf Hitler's 50th birthday.
One of the largest military parades in history.
An orchestrated exhibition of Nazi hero worship.
The parade was watched by a 22-year-old Englishman
named Nicholas Elliott.
Standing on the balcony of a Berlin apartment,
he viewed the Nazi celebrations with a mixture of awe and horror.
Elliott was a young man of simple but firm convictions.
He believed in king and country.
But he was also a romantic and an adventurer,
brought up on spy novels and tales of derring-do.
When Elliott left Berlin, he returned home convinced
of two things - that Hitler must be stopped at all costs,
and his best way of contributing to that cause
would be to become a spy.
It was all very easy.
One moment, Nicholas Elliott was standing here at Ascot
watching the favourite, Quashed, come romping home at 7-2...
...and the next he was sharing a drink
with his father's friend Sir Robert Vansittart,
or "Van", who just happened to have been
the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs.
Elliott explained to Van that he thought
he might like to join the intelligence service.
Vansittart had close links with the Secret Intelligence Service,
better known as MI6.
He simply smiled and said,
"I am relieved you have asked me for something so easy."
"And that," as Nicholas Elliott wrote many years later, "was that."
Elliott was born to rule, and membership of the
most exclusive club in Britain
seemed like a pretty good place to start.
By the time war broke out in September 1939,
Elliott was already a member of the British secret service,
and found himself, somewhat to his surprise, in prison.
Wormwood Scrubs, the Victorian prison in west London, had been
adopted as the wartime headquarters of the British Security Service.
It was a bizarre place to work - malodorous and dingy,
with some of the inmates still in residence.
But Elliott adored his new life. He was now running double agents.
These were enemy spies who had been intercepted
and persuaded to spy for Britain.
Elliot was fighting a war that was important,
exciting and deadly secret.
As the Blitz hammered London, Elliott was elated by
the feeling of camaraderie in the bomb-battered city.
One of his fellow intelligence officers
was a man who would define the rest of his life.
His name was Harold Adrian Russell Philby,
better known as Kim.
Kim Philby and Nicholas Elliott
were cut from the same, rather expensive cloth.
Both had been formed by their public schools,
both their fathers had been to Trinity College, Cambridge,
where they became friends, and both sons had obediently followed
in their fathers' footsteps to the very same college.
My father had a very conventional English upper-class upbringing.
His father, Claude Elliott, was a don at Cambridge.
He was raised by nannies, and he was the kind of person who
actually was happiest in an all-male environment all throughout his life.
He loved Eton, he loved White's club, an all-male club,
he loved the gentlemen's pavilion at Lord's.
And at close of play he was 55 not out, and half-cut at that!
'I think Kim and my father very much did speak other's language,
'because of their similar backgrounds.'
Kim was as close a friend as he ever had.
War is going to play havoc with the averages.
Did you know Eddie Paynter was averaging 60 a test
before Adolf stopped play?
Well, at least there is still some cricket at Lord's.
Jolly good for morale. Was thinking we might set something up ourselves.
- A team? - Yes, what do you think?
I haven't played since prep school, old boy.
In any case, I'm rather suspicious of all that exercise.
Heavy drinkers shouldn't make sudden or violent movements
in my opinion - it upsets the body system and causes headaches.
In addition to Kim's enormous charm, he had a wonderful ability,
actually, to make you feel that you were the most important person
in his world at that time...
to whom he would give his full attention.
- You're a Trinity man, aren't you? - Yes, went up in '30.
Oh, me too, '35. Barely scraped a third.
- Triumph over the examiners. - Sterling effort.
Philby loved to laugh and he loved to listen.
He looked into your eyes with perfect sincerity
and rapt curiosity.
As one contemporary said of him,
"You didn't just like him, admire him,
"agree with him...
"you worshipped him."
Philby's admission into the secret services had been as swift
and easy as that of Elliott, and by much the same informal route.
He simply dropped a few hints here and there
and waited for the old-boy network to invite him into the club.
In the summer of 1940, Philby arrived here
at St Ermin's Hotel, just off St James's Park, in London.
Here he met Miss Marjorie Maxse,
Chief of Staff of Section D. MI6's training school
for propaganda, sabotage and covert paramilitary operations.
The D stood for "destruction".
Young Kim Philby was just the sort of chap Miss Maxse was looking for.
He had been to the right sort of school and the right university.
And she had a watertight guarantee from the deputy head of MI6,
who gave what may be the quintessential definition
of Britain's old-boy network -
"I was asked about him, and said I knew his people."
Philby, like Elliott, was now a member
of the most exclusive club in the country.
The friendship between the two men grew closer when they were
deployed to Glenalmond, a large Victorian house in St Albans
codenamed "War Station XB", some 20 miles north of the capital.
It is now, rather charmingly, a nursery school.
XB was code for "counter intelligence".
Elliott was responsible for attacking German espionage
in the Nazi-occupied Netherlands, while Philby
was in charge of counter-intelligence
in Spain and Portugal.
- In this line of work... - Yes.
- I can imagine. - It goes with the job.
Philby and Elliott, the Young Turks of MI6,
would now be fighting the spy war shoulder to shoulder.
Did you say we'd be sharing an office?
I believe so. It rather depends on the formidable Miss Pettigrew.
So she's the boss, is she?
Philby was adored by one and all, but nobody admired him more
than Nicholas Elliott, who saw him as a role model,
the epitome of the gentleman spy,
a man who played by the most honourable rules.
In 1942, Philby's friend Nicholas Elliott was promoted.
He left the leafy confines of St Albans for
the rather more exotic climes of Istanbul.
Here, he took up a new role - combating German espionage
on the ground in neutral Turkey, and reporting back to MI6...and Philby.
Once in Istanbul, Elliott was technically attached
to the embassy as a junior diplomat.
But in reality, his task was to attack the Abwehr,
German military intelligence, which ran a large
and highly efficient network of agents throughout the country.
The job was dangerous, exciting and unconventional.
It involved a great deal of hanging around in bars and nightclubs,
including the glamorous Pera Palace and the seedy Taksim's.
Taksim's was a restaurant, nightclub, cabaret
and casino all rolled into one.
But it was also the spy centre of Istanbul.
It was run by a Russian who took bribes from everybody
and did his best to seat rival spies
at adjacent tables, to makes eavesdropping easier.
As Elliott wrote, "There are more people involved in skulduggery here
"than any other city in the world."
Elliott fell in love with Istanbul and with his secretary,
a vivacious 21-year-old of impeccable breeding
called Elizabeth Holberton.
My parents both talked about their time in Istanbul with
a great deal of love and affection.
They wound up falling in love and having a romance.
And of course it was the most wonderful romantic milieu,
right out of Casablanca, in a way, with all these dubious characters.
You know, Yaroslav Stenko, Popovski - people,
you know, with marvellous names,
dubious Hungarian countesses,
intrigue, you name it.
I mean, it's paradoxical because the war was being fought.
It was a wonderful time in their lives.
The war made it impossible
for Philby to get to Istanbul for the wedding.
But within months,
the two old friends were working together again
on what would turn out to be
one of the greatest intelligence breakthroughs
of the Second World War.
In 1943, a young German Catholic, Erich Vermehren,
decided to take a personal stand against Adolf Hitler.
He believed that the Fuhrer was destroying his beloved homeland.
As an officer in German military intelligence,
based in Istanbul,
Vermehren had access to a treasure trove of Nazi secrets.
Now, after months of soul searching,
he decided to hand this cache over to British intelligence.
Two days after Christmas,
at about seven in the evening,
Erich Vermehren made his way here,
to an apartment in a smart residential area
of central Istanbul.
Nicholas Elliott was about to pull off
the biggest coup of his career.
Vermehren was understandably nervous
but Elliott and handled him with skill and patience.
He reassured him that defecting
was an act of supreme moral courage
that would inflict a devastating blow on Nazism,
but arranging his escape to Britain would take time.
Under Elliott's direction,
Vermehren began to gather every scrap of damaging information
in the files of German intelligence,
including a complete description of the German spy network in Istanbul.
But time was running out.
The Germans already suspected Vermehren of disloyalty
and they were closing in.
On 27th January,
Erich Vermehren and his wife attended a cocktail party
at the Spanish Embassy in Istanbul.
As they were leaving,
they were seized by two men and bundled into a waiting car.
The scene was stage-managed by Nicholas Elliott,
to buy time by making it seem as though they had been kidnapped.
The couple were driven to a remote point on the Turkish coast
and transferred to a fast motor launch.
Within hours they were in Cairo,
still wearing their party clothes.
From there, they were flown to London
where they were greeted by none other than Kim Philby,
who had offered his mother's flat in South Kensington
as the ideal spot to debrief Vermehren.
For the next fortnight,
Kim Philby and Nicholas Elliott extracted every detail
from this high-level German defector.
This is an absolute treasure trove!
- If it's all true. - If?
What if he's a double agent?
Hasn't it occurred to you? If this is a set-up...
You've looked in his eyes the same as I have, Nick.
What did you see there?
Conviction.
That man would do anything to stop the Reds taking over his country
as soon as this is all said and done.
And who can blame him?
This is an absolute bloody triumph, Nick.
It's your triumph.
Hitler exploded with rage when told of Vermehren's treachery.
He was now convinced that the German intelligence service
was riddled with traitors.
In a matter of weeks,
the German secret service was dismantled
and its leaders ousted,
leaving Germany vulnerable at a critical moment,
with just three months to go before D-day.
Elliott was now the darling of MI6.
But Nicholas Elliott's great triumph
was not really a triumph at all.
Philby had a secret
that his friend knew nothing about.
Two years earlier,
Kim Philby travelled from St Albans to London
carrying a bulging briefcase.
After completing a round of visits to MI5 and MI6,
he descended into the depths St James's Park Tube.
He let the first train leave without boarding.
Then he waited until every other passenger
had boarded the next train,
before slipping on just as the doors closed.
Two stops later,
he alighted
and caught a train in the opposite direction.
When he was certain that he was not being followed,
Philby made his way to Regent's Park.
Here, a stocky, fair-haired man was waiting for him on a bench.
They shook hands,
Philby handed over a bundle of papers
and then returned home to St Albans.
Had his good friend Nicholas Elliott examined the papers,
he would have been first shocked and then mortified.
Here was a detailed description of British counter-intelligence,
its personnel, operations, aims, successes and failures,
all written out in Kim Philby's neat, tiny handwriting.
But there was one passage in particular
that would have left Elliot aghast.
"Mr Nicholas Elliott. 24, 5' 9",
"brown hair, prominent lips, black glasses.
"Ugly and rather pig-like to look at.
"Good brain, good sense of humour.
"Likes a drink but was recently very ill and now,
"as a consequence, drinks little."
Elliott would have been still more astonished
to discover that his so-called friend
was an agent of Stalin's intelligence service,
an experienced Soviet spy of eight years' standing,
with his own codename - "Sonny."
So, while Philby and Elliot may have seemed like brothers,
they couldn't have been more different.
Kim Philby led a life that Nicholas Elliott,
his dear friend and closest colleague,
knew nothing about.
He did not know that Philby had joined MI6
not as an eager patriot like himself
but in Philby's own words
as a "penetration agent in the Soviet interest".
Did you say we'll be sharing an office?
I believe so. It rather depends on the formidable Miss Pettigrew.
Oh, so she's the boss, is she?
He didn't know that during their long, convivial evenings together,
Philby was hard at work,
absorbing his friend's secrets as fast as the gin,
and passing it all on to Moscow.
Elliott had spent his time at Cambridge enjoying himself,
immune to the violent political currents which swept up Philby
and many other clever, angry, ideological young men.
Among them was Guy Burgess,
a flamboyant homosexual with a streak of devilry,
who had also wormed his way into British intelligence.
And Donald Maclean,
a highly strung and highly intelligent linguist
who had already distinguished himself at the Foreign Office.
With Fascism on the march across Europe,
to many, communism seemed the only viable alternative.
Philby and his friends believed
they were taking a moral and ideological stand.
At least, that is how their secret revolution began.
These three men left Cambridge
secretly and entirely committed to communism.
They were the most unlikely of revolutionaries,
members of the British Establishment hellbent on destroying it.
The recruitment of Kim Philby
was straight out of a cheap spy novel.
In June 1934, he came here, to Regent's Park,
to meet a man he knew only as Otto.
Otto would induct him into the Russian secret service
and set him on the path to high treason.
Otto's real name was Arnold Deutsch.
He was short and stout, in his early 30s,
with curly fair hair and piercing blue eyes.
He would become the prime architect
of what would later be known as the Cambridge spy ring.
Otto instructed Philby in the art of spy craft -
how to arrange a meeting, where to leave messages,
how to detect if his telephone was bugged.
Otto also presented Philby with a new camera to copy documents.
Philby memorised Deutsch's lessons like poetry.
His double life had begun.
One of his first jobs was to spy on his own father.
St John Philby was a noted explorer and scholar
who the KGB wrongly believed was also in intelligence.
But if asking Philby to spy on his father
was a test of his resolve and commitment,
Philby passed it easily.
He did whatever was asked of him.
He even reported on his wife Aileen.
"Her views are like the majority of the wealthy middle class,"
he wrote, "bourgeois and philistine."
"She believes in upbringing, the Royal Navy, personal freedom,
"honour, the constitutional system and democracy.
"I am sure I can cure her of these confusions."
This, then, was Kim Philby,
a man who was happy to spy on his father, his wife
and his best friend.
- This is an absolute treasure trove! - If it's all true.
When, in 1943, Elliott brought in the German defector Erich Vermehren,
all was not quite as it seemed.
This is an absolute bloody triumph, Nick.
And it's your triumph.
One of the most important items of information
passed on by the Vermehrens to Elliott and Philby
was a list of influential Germans who opposed communism
and were determined to build a new Germany
without Soviet influence.
With the Red Army poised to march into Germany from the East,
MI6 did not pass this list on to Moscow.
But Philby did.
He supplied a ready-made shopping list of undesirables
to be liquidated as the Red Army advanced.
After the war, Allied officers went in search
of these anti-communist activists
and found none of them.
The Vermehrens believed they were alerting MI6
to the men and women who would save Germany from communism.
Unwittingly, they handed them over to Moscow's death squads.
Thanks to Kim Philby's betrayal,
Elliott's moment of greatest triumph
was a secret, sordid tragedy.
With the Allied defeat of fascism in 1945,
Philby and Elliott,
like so many others who had come of age in the war,
began to wonder what they would do with their lives
now that it was all over.
They decided to remain in the intelligence game
and make a career of it.
Both had distinguished themselves in the arcane arts of espionage,
both were destined for rapid promotion.
And both saw their ambitions realised
when a new war, the Cold War, began.
From Stettin in the Baltic
to Trieste in the Adriatic,
an Iron Curtain has descended across the continent.
The West's new enemy lay behind the Iron Curtain.
The game had changed.
But Kim Philby's allegiance had not.
To cope with the looming Soviet menace,
MI6 set up a new section, Section IX.
Philby, the Soviet mole,
set to work to ensure that HE was chosen to run it.
Everybody spoke well of him,
people who worked with him,
and he would be an obvious choice.
He was very quick and very vocal, he could talk well, you know?
He could put his ideas into words and be convincing.
Philby was seen as a rising star in British intelligence.
And in late 1944, he was told that he would be in command
of Britain's new anti-Soviet unit.
The fox was now not just guarding the hen coop
but building it, running it and planning its future.
Moscow was ecstatic.
And so was Nicholas Elliott,
still completely unaware that his friend Philby
was playing for the other side.
As the new conflict grew chillier,
Soviet defectors began to flee to the West,
bringing with them some of the Soviet Union's
most precious secrets.
On September 4th 1945,
a senior Soviet intelligence officer named Konstantin Volkov
appeared at the British Consulate in Istanbul.
In a state of terror,
he announced that he wished to defect to the West with his wife.
Here was a potential espionage coup of spectacular proportions,
a treasure trove of secrets
that could alter the balance of power in international espionage
at a stroke.
But there was more.
Volkov also offered to identify
a key Soviet spy inside British intelligence.
The spy in question, he tantalisingly announced,
was currently the head of a counter-espionage section
within MI6.
When Volkov's report arrived in London,
it was delivered to the desk
of the new head of anti-Soviet intelligence operations.
Philby read it with mounting horror
as it sunk in that the spy hinted at by Volkov must be him.
This lone defector had enough information
to expose and destroy him.
"That evening I worked late," Philby later wrote.
"The situation seemed to call
"for urgent action of an extra-curricular nature."
He then arranged a hasty meeting with his Soviet controller
and told him what had happened.
His instructions were, "Stall, stall, stall."
Volkov would be dealt with.
The ruthless machinery of Soviet intelligence
swung into action.
The next morning, Philby was in his boss's office
to discuss what to do about Volkov's extraordinary offer.
The obvious candidate to handle the case was Nicholas Elliott,
who had already extracted one important defector from Istanbul.
But the competent Elliott
was the very last person that Philby wanted to take over the case.
Instead, he suggested that he should go to Istanbul
and handle the defection of Volkov himself.
His boss agreed, and Philby was given the job.
He then did everything he could to drag his feet
and give the Soviets time to act.
For three more days, he dawdled.
He was still packing
when the Turkish consulate in Moscow issued visas
authorising two Soviet diplomatic couriers
to travel to Istanbul.
It was not until 26th September
that Philby finally arrived in Istanbul,
some 22 days after Volkov's first contact.
The city was looking particularly beautiful in the late-summer sun.
Philby reflected that if he could not stop Volkov's defection,
this might be the last memorable summer
he was destined to enjoy.
When Philby was asked why MI6 had not sent someone sooner,
he offered a bland lie.
"Sorry, old man, it would have interfered with leave arrangements."
It was not until many years later
that officials began to question why it had taken Philby quite so long
to get to Istanbul.
We all completely trusted him.
And nobody ever thought anything, nobody had a suspicion.
Even people who'd known him a long time.
He must have been an extremely good actor.
When a call was eventually made to Volkov,
Philby and his colleagues at the embassy were told...
Then there was the sound of a scuffle
and the line went dead.
To Philby, it all made perfect sense.
The case was dead.
And so, by this point, was Volkov.
Volkov left no traces behind.
No photograph,
no file in the Russian archives
and no evidence about his real motives.
Neither his family, nor that of his wife,
has ever emerged from the darkness of Stalin's state.
Volkov was not merely liquidated, he was expunged.
Philby told his bosses back in London that Volkov
had mysteriously disappeared, and the case was closed.
But he knew perfectly well what had really happened.
He later wrote that Volkov was a "nasty piece of work"
who "got what he deserved".
The failure of the Volkov case did nothing to impede Philby's
rise up the ranks.
He was now a prime candidate to run MI6.
In 1946, he was informed
that he was to follow in Elliott's footsteps,
as MI6 Station Chief in Istanbul.
He was briefed by Elliott.
Any tips?
Yes, watch out for the guards on the Anatolian Express.
They're all in Soviet pay.
And spend a lot of time in Taksim's.
It's a rather... exciting place.
Absolutely crawling with spies.
I was there one night.
There was this beautiful belly dancer with jet black hair,
shimmying about and all sorts.
The next thing I know, I look up
and she's collapsed in a heap, must have turned her ankle or something.
Know what she said?
"Bugger!"
Turns out she was from Bradford!
- Well, so much for the exotic East. - Well, quite!
Philby, like Elliott before him,
was pleased with his first foreign posting.
He rented a villa on the shores of the Bosphorous
and installed his growing family.
Armed with Elliott's introductions,
he slipped easily into the spy society of Istanbul.
His main task was infiltrating anti-communist agents
into the Soviet bloc along a broad front -
the Ukraine, the Crimea, Georgia,
Armenia and Azerbaijan.
Philby found the work fascinating...
and so did Moscow.
So, with one hand, Philby set up infiltration operations,
and with the other, he unpicked them.
According to his Soviet controllers, they knew in advance
of every operation that took place by land, air or sea.
Philby later wrote,
"I do not know what happened to the parties concerned,
"but I can make an informed guess."
Philby's work for MI6 and the Soviets was going swimmingly.
The same could not be said for his marriage.
His wife Aileen knew nothing of his spy activities.
She thought he was a straightforward diplomat.
But she, too, had her secrets.
In March 1949, Aileen was found lying by a country road
bleeding from a nasty wound to the head.
She claimed she had been attacked by a Turkish man,
who had hit her with a rock.
But Turkish police could find no evidence of the crime
and when questioned, Aileen became increasingly evasive and hysterical.
Her doctors were baffled.
In this moment of crisis, Philby turned to his old friend,
who was now based in the Swiss city of Bern.
Two days to see this chap, this... specialist,
and he doesn't even have the results.
- What did he say? - Nothing that makes any sense.
There's not a doctor here can find a damn thing wrong with her.
I'll find someone, old chap. The clinics here are top notch.
Give me a day or two. You can rely on me, Kim.
Thanks, old chap.
Elliot sprang into action and within days, Aileen was settled into
a comfortable clinic in Bern, while Philby moved in with the Elliotts.
But within days of her arrival, Aileen tried to set fire
to her hospital room and slashed her arm with a razor.
The Swiss doctor quickly established that the head injury
was also self-inflicted.
The story of the attack in Istanbul had been entirely invented.
Philby was livid.
For years, unknown to her husband,
Aileen had been suffering from what we now call Munchausen syndrome,
a severe psychological condition that meant
that she craved the attention that came with illness and injury.
She would often inject herself with urine,
causing her body to erupt with boils.
Philby complained bitterly to Elliott
that Aileen had hoodwinked him, and he could never forgive her.
Elliott believed it was an affront to Philby's professional pride,
that he, an intelligence officer trained to spot deception,
had been tricked, as he put it, by his own wife.
The deceiver had been deceived, and he hated it.
In the summer of 1949,
British intelligence awarded Philby its top foreign posting...
...MI6 Station Chief in Washington DC.
Philby was now at the centre of the international intelligence world,
with access not only to the secrets of MI5 and MI6,
but also those of the CIA and the FBI.
Philby was delighted by what he called
the "unlimited possibilities" for espionage
on behalf of his Soviet masters.
In the US, Philby would be responsible for maintaining
the Anglo-American intelligence relationship,
linking up with the FBI and CIA, and even handling secret
communications between the British Prime Minister and the President.
MI6 could not have given him a more emphatic vote of confidence.
Philby did not even consult Aileen before moving his family
into a large, two-storey house at 4,100 Nebraska Avenue,
which was soon a riot of children's toys,
full ashtrays and empty bottles.
Philby loved Washington, and Washington loved him.
Here was a family man,
the quintessential English gentleman, a man you could trust.
Within weeks he had made contact and, frequently, friends
with just about everybody of note in American intelligence.
Philby's charm was transatlantic.
Philby charmed one CIA officer in particular.
Both Philby and Elliott had got to know him
in London during the war, and they had all got on famously.
His name was James Jesus Angleton.
In intelligence circles, Angleton was thought to possess more secrets
than anyone else, and to grasp their meaning better than anyone else.
Philby saw him as the driving force within the CIA
and couldn't have been happier with their renewed friendship.
Philby and Angleton used to dine in the smartest restaurants
in Washington, to gossip over the starched tablecloths
and full glasses.
Once again, Philby used friendship and charm to extract secrets.
This time, American secrets.
Angleton told him
all about the CIA's covert operations
in Cuba, Chile, Greece, Iran,
but perhaps most significantly, they discussed Operation Valuable.
Operation Valuable was one of the most ambitious.
Cold War missions of them all.
The target was Albania.
Sandwiched between Yugoslavia and Greece, the tiny,
sparsely populated country was to become a rather unlikely
battleground in the undeclared war between East and West.
Politically volatile,
Albania had fallen under the iron rule of the hard-line Marxist.
Enver Hoxha,
who set about transforming the country into a Stalinist state.
Hoxha's brutal rule had forced thousands of Albanians into exile.
Many of these were now itching to return to their homeland
and oust the communists.
So, for the spy masters
of Washington and London,
Albania seemed the perfect place to wage secret war on communism.
The idea was simple.
Trained anti-communist guerrillas would be slipped into Albania
to start a civil war that would topple the communist regime.
And the man in charge of passing the details between MI6 and the CIA,
and then on to Moscow, was Kim Philby.
Philby served his two masters with brutal efficiency.
Anti-communist insurgents did indeed arrive in Albania,
but when they did, the Albanian security forces were primed
and waiting, tipped off in advance.
Carnage ensued.
For each guerrilla, dozens of family members were shot
or thrown into prison, where many died.
The precise death toll will never be known.
Operation Valuable was a stunning disaster,
of which the British and American public remained entirely unaware.
But Philby later gloried in what he had done -
"They knew the risks they were running," he said.
"I have no regrets."
Back in London, with the fear of communism growing, there was some
anxiety that official secrecy was not quite as tight as it might be.
Among those called in for a friendly chat was Nicholas Elliott,
who later described the conversation.
Come in, sit down, I want to have a frank word with you.
As you wish, Colonel.
- Does your wife know what you do? - Yes.
And how did that come about?
She was my secretary for two years
- and I think the penny must have dropped. - Ah, quite so.
And what about your mother?
She thinks I'm a member of the Secret Intelligence Service.
Good God!
How did she come to know that?
She was told by a member of the Cabinet,
at a cocktail party.
And what about your father?
Ah, he thinks I'm a spy.
Why should he think you're a spy?
The Chief of MI6 told him at the bar at White's club.
Ah!
And that, once again, was that.
But in America,
code-breakers were closing in on some REAL communist spies.
Due to a single blunder by the Soviets, Russian intelligence
messages sent by wireless during the war could now be read,
at least in part.
What they revealed was staggering, and terrifying -
Soviet spies had penetrated both the US
and the British Government at a senior level.
One name in particular stood out - Homer,
the codename of an agent who had been leaking secrets
from within the British Embassy in Washington in 1945.
The identity of this mole was still a mystery,
but it was assumed that Homer was most probably
an embassy employee - a cleaner, perhaps, or a clerk.
Philby knew better.
Donald Maclean, his old Cambridge friend
and fellow Soviet spy,
had been First Secretary at the Washington Embassy in 1945.
Maclean was Homer.
If Maclean was exposed, Philby knew he would not be far behind.
The net was closing.
Fearing the worse, he discreetly lobbied London to send him
advance notice of any decoding breakthroughs.
But as he prepared for the worst,
Philby received a letter that would change the rest of his life.
"Dear Kim, I have a shock for you.
"I have been posted to Washington.
"Can I come and stay with you, only for a few days,
"while I find somewhere to live?"
The letter was from another of the Cambridge spy ring,
the irrepressible Guy Burgess who, like Maclean,
was now working at the Foreign Office.
Philby and Burgess had been friends for more than 20 years.
They had discovered communism together at Cambridge
and they remained locked in service to Moscow.
Burgess was one of the only people to whom Philby could speak openly.
And, crucially, Burgess was also a friend of Donald Maclean.
But Aileen Philby, still in a fragile state,
hated everything about Burgess,
and the last thing she wanted
was this dissolute drunk as a house guest.
Philby insisted. His old friend must be made welcome.
A furious row followed, duly reported back
by both parties to Elliott.
- I hear Burgess is with you. - Yes.
It's the very least we can do for an old friend.
It's only for few days. Two weeks at the absolute most.
Have you gone raving mad, Kim?
He'll be drunk all the time, and Aileen does detest him.
He's not worth your marriage, is he?
I can keep my eye on him better here than if he's roaming the streets,
and besides, he is rather fun.
Don't you remember our boozy evenings a trois in Pruniers?
If insulting everyone he meets is entertaining,
I suppose you're right, but don't say I didn't warn you.
I've got to Kim.
Soon after Burgess was installed in Nebraska Avenue,
Philby told him about the hunt for Homer,
and the increasing risk that Maclean might be exposed and confess all.
Both Burgess and Philby knew that Maclean was a liability.
He'd recently got drunk,
smashed up a flat belonging to two embassy secretaries, ripped up
their underwear, and hurled a large ornamental mirror into their bath.
He'd been sent home and then, amazingly,
promoted to run the American desk at the Foreign Office.
Even drunken, unhinged knicker-shredding, it seemed,
was no bar to advancement in the British Diplomatic Service...
if you were the right sort.
In March 1951, the news that Philby had been dreading came through -
the identity of Homer had been confirmed.
Philby immediately told his Soviet handler and demanded that Maclean be
extracted from the UK and spirited off to Moscow before he compromised
the entire British spy network, most importantly, Philby himself.
But first Maclean needed to be warned
that he was in acute danger.
The ideal messenger, Philby concluded, was close at hand,
in the disreputable shape of Guy Burgess.
The two spies dined in downtown Washington to rehearse the plan.
Burgess would return to London, pass on the warning
and the Soviets would arrange Maclean's escape to Moscow.
"Don't you go too," said Philby, "If you do, that'll be the end of me."
But unknown to Philby, the Soviets
had insisted that Burgess must accompany Maclean to Moscow.
Burgess had at first objected,
pointing out that he had no desire to defect and found the prospect
of life in Moscow quite ghastly,
but finally, he was persuaded to go.
With the news that Burgess and Maclean had disappeared,
the Foreign Office sent out an urgent telegram to embassies
and MI6 stations throughout Europe, with instructions that Burgess
and Maclean must be apprehended "at all costs and by all means".
Elliott gave orders that the Soviet Embassy in Switzerland
also be placed under surveillance.
One of his colleagues prepared a decanter of poisoned Scotch,
just in case the notoriously thirsty fugitives turned up
and needed to be immobilised.
But by that time,
Burgess and Maclean were being toasted by the Soviets...
in Moscow.
Back in Washington, Philby was called to the embassy
by Geoffrey Paterson, the MI5 representative, and told the news.
Patterson told Philby, "The bird has flown."
"What bird?" asked Philby, feigning surprise. "Not Maclean?"
"Yes, Maclean," replied Paterson,
"but worse than that, Burgess has gone with him."
Philby was now genuinely alarmed.
Philby told Paterson he was going home for a stiff drink, behaviour
that anyone who knew him would have considered perfectly normal.
But once back at Nebraska Avenue, Philby headed
not for the drinks cabinet, but for the potting shed.
Here, he extracted from its hiding place a Russian camera,
given to him by the Soviets to copy documents.
Next he got a trowel.
He then placed the camera, a tripod and some film in the boot
of his car, gunned the engine, and drove north up Nebraska Avenue.
Philby knew that his association with Burgess was a time bomb.
Very soon, the FBI and MI5 would come asking questions.
On a deserted stretch of road, with woods on one side
and the river on the other, Philby parked,
extracted the containers and trowel, and headed into the trees.
Philby emerged a few minutes later,
casually doing up his flies, just in case anyone happened to be passing.
Somewhere in these woods, in a shallow hole,
lies a cache of Soviet Spy equipment that has remained buried
for more than 60 years, a secret memorial to Philby's spy craft.
If Philby was going to make his escape
and join Burgess and Maclean in Soviet exile, now was his moment.
But he did not run.
He decided to stay and bluff it out.
He knew that when the mole-hunters started to look into his past,
they would find the evidence was mostly circumstantial.
To his masters in MI6, Philby had always been an exemplary officer
with an unblemished record.
And Philby had one other weapon in his arsenal
and that was his talent for friendship.
He had powerful allies on both sides of the Atlantic who had
known him and trusted him for years.
Philby knew he could rely on his friends to defend him,
and one above all.
Nicholas Elliott.
But friendship and loyalty only stretch so far.
Could a man with so many secrets really carry on
deceiving everyone around him?
In the next episode, the net tightens...
Nick, they think I'm a bloody communist!
...MI5 closes in...
They're calling me "the third man".
...and Philby is out in the cold.
The only mark against you is your association with Burgess.
Thankfully, I have other friends that I CAN rely upon.
Once again Elliott, stands by his friend,
but for how long?