and arguably, still is the capital bay root would play host to the most successful communist known to penetrate the british secret services. kim fil, be a new book about his time in may route, not only expose the life and loves of the legendary double agent, but also scrutinizes the role class played in britain's cold war defeats. and it's all the former deputy editor of the independent on sunday or in britain, james hanning joins me now. james, welcome to going undergrads and tell me about what's new. i mean, i thought everyone knew about kim fil, be the most famous a british spy after james bond. well, i thought i thought we all know that ho, restore it's been done to death, but actually i, i looked into the pit because i got some credit. some stuff from a former colleague, bron soule i about about the circumstances in which will be left perry and i started looking into it and actually i didn't do this. i didn't know this about the american wife. i didn't, and there was loads of stuff i thought, and he's one of those figures who's in the sort of public consciousness. but actually one once i've, i certainly i find, i'd forgotten an enormous amount about it. mindful there was so many new elements

to it, especially on a brown soule and former odd critic of london paper who knew entity blunt. so you have the queen's a hanger of pictures as it were. but i mean, we had andrew lonnie on about his book on philby and his as reasonable recently. and you echo his view and other views. this is a huge class dimension to this. he was protected, defacto, protected as a soviet age into the highest echelons of britons intelligence services because of his class. well, that's right. yes. of course they didn't know he was. he was ever since by bed, but everybody assumed that he was a nice chap and his father had been, was well established and been to cambridge. and he'd known lots of people to cambridge the song. and it was assumed he was a nice guy and he was very likable, very polite, very kind or quite charismatic. i think very charismatic, is women loved him? certainly. i mean, he was, for somebody said he had an order of sexual suggestiveness about it when you walked

road. and just to remind us about why he turned to communism, i think many people will have seen books if they know about philby, about him being a traitor. and it's full of vitriol against the people that died because he was us by for the soviet. i don't think i've ever read in the british book about phil b. he had a social conscience loads his parents boss, close friends, be corrupted out of them by money had seen other social democratic left vacillated, shrank. a failure to confront fascism and the moderation of principles of his youth with the selling out just as the labor party had done. the ramsey mcdonnell left. i do know some people i say the kissed armor left austerity affairs of yeah yeah. there was, there was, britain went through so well and most of europe went through a terrible time in the late twenty's early thirty's. and he was horrified that the labor party, which was the convention regarded by then as the conventional way of opposing capitalism july. and he was horrified,

that is the level of what he sold out in effect. it went into a national coalition. government of national unity as it was cold. and he thought that the left had sold out. and a soon after he went to to austria. ah, he that later went to spain and he was just very fond up and he thought democratic so for democracy doesn't, doesn't do the job. and he saw that the rise of hitler in germany and a cosmo saline and franklin's initially and franco in spain. and he did see the soviet union as a bulwark against coming against against fascism and that whole block later life. he visited cuba when he they were defected by that. well yes he indeed indeed, but i think he, he, he was an idealist. he was an ideological zealot. ah. and he had no, you know, he just old democratic politics is not gonna is not going to stand up for the

working close to no less ideological. then the people that say, theoretically, were his best friends, although he was cheating on that, as it were, who were involved in the qu, against monster that can iran who were involved in all sorts of intelligence activities to destroy the parties in the global self. yeah, he was, well, he was on the on the site. i think i think the other thing that the cannot should not be forgotten about him was he, he did have an extraordinary capacity deceit. he was brute. he was a brilliant liar. now it seems to me there's no reason why people who have that talent, if you regard as a talent, why they should be excluded from having higher aspirations for society. and so if you can still be an idea, idealist and be a liar. i mean, i, you know, i don't know, journalist i well, i mean arguably you, one of britain's top experts on the excesses of oligarch own journalism in this

country. and it's very depressing for any journalist to read the capture of journalism at the time in the fifty's and sixty's, later on to the sixty's, i by the intelligent services in by the united states intelligence as and the british ones tell me about the how he ends up in the observer and the economist in beirut. well i, that's your tongue. the capture. i'm not sure i'd use that term. i believe the woman that he marries for the last time, the ex husband sam brewer. you don't miss him. he worked for the new york papers. yes. and he sam brewer was sambro, had worked in the war for the, the forerunner of the cia, and also been a journalist. and when he left the paper, he was with them and joined the new york times. new york times said you've got to cut all your links with them with the security services. and he said yes here. sure, i'll do that. but i didn't think anybody believes he did, i,

in journalist will tell you the world over intelligence people talked to journalists and vice versa. and they, there's a sort of symbiotic relationship, whether it's quite capture. i'm not sure i degree me. the observed david aster was happy with all his journalists in effect, rather than speaking truth to power or whatever the free as they were. they were. i think he was still over. i'm not an expert, i'm not an expert. and david, as to i, my sense is that he was a bit naive. it was pretty naive actually. and there was a genuine sense that philby had been done wrong. that he'd been, he'd had a raw deal. he'd been accused of being a russian spy and the government in the end, the british government, in 1955, had cleared him. and his friends said, well, we told you, we told you no to russians by. we've got to look after this guy. he's a good guy, he's straightforward and so we've got to find him a job. so they, as you say, they found him a job with the observer and the economist,

and they sent him off to beirut. i mean, well, since you were at the evening standard, i have to ask this because christopher steele, the discredited m. i. 6 agent, interviewed recently with great fanfare, saying, boris johnson made the son of the owner of the standard. now he had done the standard, actually, the russian guinea levered if he made him appear in the house of lords. if now, boys johnson, equally from that class is a russian spy. i mean, you said, i mean, will you around spies of the evening? standard, the london? no, it, i was a world i was, i was told that jack the cartoonist. i don't remember him, but jack was said to be on a list of assets. now, this is a very murky area and as i say, a lot of journalists taught to talk to some intelligent people and they exchange information. and they're useful to tell them where the money changes hands, which is seems to me crossing a line, i'm not sure. so i don't know, but on boris yes could. i'm sure you could paint one could come up with

a great scenario about boris. his father, who was said it has been reported to be, have been in a my 6 and boris went to wheaton and therefore probably could put $2.00 and $2.00 together. this sounds like a conversation at the st. george bar and may really describe this place nice amount in a lot of cuz it sadly in the news because of what's happening in lebanon right now . but what happens in evidence happens everywhere in the middle, in the effects, the middle east, and therefore the whole world, arg here. yeah, this and george's was, was the place. i mean, bit, barret was a, was the new kero in away. a lot of people were moving away from cairo. this is intelligence people, journalists, businesses and so on. because they were a bit nervous about about nasa and they thought lebanon was a safer place to bring up, bring up children and so on. so, and that was a very, essentially, a very happy place. it seems at least if you were had a bit of money and were you was a u. s. proxy american government?

yes. me was it was and i the, the saint george's, the, the bar of the saint george's hotel was the place where the diplomat spies, the journalist would all meet her in the evening. or sometimes indeed in the morning, i spent all day there. and it was the place where you were, you know, if you wanted to know what was going on, you got plugged into the saint george's and you would be sure to meet some senior member, the government or some senior spy or whatever. and that was a place to be sent, at least that was better than press releases or in the amount of alcohol that flows through this book. the 10 o'clock you tell us what the 10 o'clock club is it? yes, and your telephone sub was what was that the 2 chairman of that were sam pope brewer, who, whose wife ended up marrying philby and a friend of his who was a senior cia man. and they would arrive at 10 o'clock for pick up their po. but the

newspapers under their arm and go sit at the bar and just chat. and i have the 1st martini the day at 10 am and they would discuss what that what the new york times might be going to right and the following day. and sam brewer became rather over reliant on that on his, on his official sources and, and which is, which is a sad thing actually in later life. yeah, i mean, i think we're all familiar with journalist who become over reliant on, on a thursday so, so we'll over here there is a week scanned over this integrity initiative institute of state crime. they listed journalists that were people that were favored to leak to that, that document itself leaked out. i was a dollar, i don't know whether you know, and i get no information or no one tells me no of all but i, b, m, c, i a are incredibly annoyed by all of this quite rightly that they're giving

a story. they're giving information to it. why is it that the americans didn't? i mean, you mentioned one theory that they were going to kill him. the americans went very well and the, soon as they found out he was a spy. d. and then you go into a long explanation of different theories as to whether the intelligence services here basically rescued him in a way and got him out to moscow because they didn't want a public trial here that would embarrass intelligent services in front of the world . i don't believe they went to more to, to be route to in order to encourage him to go to moscow. i think, i think they still believed even when they were pretty certain that effective. they were certain that he missed 5, the russians. they still believed that they could turn turn in. this is one of the secrets, one of the key fact, it seems to me about philby that everybody underestimated the strength of his ideological commitment. including from, as i said,

the russians. but the british still believes that good old came underneath it, all was one of us. and that if they confronted him with his what they regarded as his youthful folly of his, his anti fascism and so on. and they said, look, we can do a deal, we'll come back to us, tell us who else was involved. we can clean the whole thing up. and once they had the confession and they did have a sort of confession, i know this is not comfortable news for some people, but they did have a form of confession from him. and once they had that with some fake information in it, oh, which certainly was some fake information and quite what he was doing is not clear, but he was at the very least plain for time. but they that the british believed it seems to me the british believe that once they had that confession, they thought okay, came is back with us. he will tell us he can stay in beirut and so on. and he

will tell us what's been going on. and that is why nicholas elliott felt comfortable in, disappearing back to london. and i think better off to africa where his next job is to seem surprising, the dick quite even way. 5 for the building next door to the studio would think of to decades with so much information and secret stuff was being leaked to the k g b at some suddenly turn one new element because he didn't, i was, he's to me because he didn't want to he didn't want to go, i think he, he did miss brittan when he, when he got, when he got to moscow he was, this is, this is a very mercury and i can't tell you for sure. he was madly in love with elena because nobody really knows what was going on. he filled his mind, but to teach to me he was very, very fond of eleanor. he was having a, an okay time in beirut. he was drink, you know, a lot. but this is, life is usually what she did on the american,

it almost will need to fact that it's that's right. that's right. but i think, i think ultimately he didn't particularly want to go to moscow, but he ended up, he ended up doing so for reasons i go into in the book, james, i'll stop you that more on the cold was most famous british by after this break. ah, who all this room inviting, shaped by center senators with there's sinks, we dare to ask in

you are told it was that your eyes and your posture that it would stop you from having real friends and finding a girlfriend. but what they fail to mention is that you can make thousands of dollars every weekend by simply playing video games, a dentist, they should be using a couple of them, but it's always wanted to push in a while. so it's a little under faith as it was originally. it was near okay, much more to do except there's no sooner course to make video games a high paying job. you have to be gifted and quick with it. i'm going to open up with spike tippins to little bit mr. lithium bottom in this santa with webpage, but here from young booth but even started yet, glove voice. when you mouth storm you my video it out you me. i was at kneels fewer guy of the owner, but the outside vehicle it will still be se it's hard to do. i also use

mm. welcome back. i'm still here with james having author of phil b in beirut. the one problem here is that they're not releasing papers because eliot, his best friend of the intelligence services were to memoir the intelligence of his . he was in 2021, the publish it. why? well, one spy experts said to me, am i 6 never reveals anything because it's bad for business. it's just, it sets a bad precedent. if you release anything, then you are undermining the face in off potentials when they do selectively stuff, gets to journalists and so on. there is a bit of that. yeah, no, i agree. i agree. i gave the height. no, i didn't quite know why they went release, specifically why they weren't released nicholas elliott's version. equally. i'm not certain that nicholas elliot knew the full story. i think, i think,

as i say in the book, i think antony blunt had a major role that a lot of people did not want to get on to this because i was, i wasn't aware of that at all. no, this is a one of britain's most famous say, arts critics hanger, the of the queen's pictures of friend the queen for long. yeah, i'm related in fact to the queen, mother. and he has to do distance. i mean there's so much in the book, john kerry comes out terribly wanting to kill phil b. but tell me about blunt why? yes, he him be rude around the same normally be in london in the center london of the quarter all deck exactitude for art. exactly. it seems to me and i'm, there's a degree of speculation in this, i confess. but i, i think i proved that anthony brown was in bare root for 3 or 4 weeks before phil. b was interviewed by elliott and i think antony blunt,

her became aware that philby was going to be confronted. now blunt had lost his faith in communism. i spoke to your remote in in moscow about 2018 years ago. and he talked about how blunted just lost his faith in communism, and he'd never really been committed. he was a marxist in a kind of an aesthetic sense, but he was, he'd really joined up because of his friend god, burgess, and blunts faith in the soviet union. had gone and i think when blunt heard that philby was going to be confronted, that he felt a out of loyalty to philby and b to save his own neck because he, he was void. what philby might tell them, blunt felt he had to go to beirut himself and tell list and tell philby that he was going to be confronted. now blunt person blunt. well exactly. people

said, well, of course, why did he not just bring the soviet embassy in london or ring ring a contact in london? because i think blunt wanted phil b wanted to give phil be the choice himself as to what he did. and blunt was fearful that if he enrolled the russians, phil bes future might be taken out of his hands, that the russians might to sake, right? you're coming with us. so he wanted phil be to have the opportunity of being forewarned himself and making a decision for himself rather than or rather than it being it being decided for him by the russian. why is it that no, i mean you joke about town or eve jokes will be jokes about saying when confronted about being a spicing across. i am initially and actually given the yemen, we been giving yemen quite a bit, the world's worst humanitarian crisis. a when the 962 marxist revel revolution out

there in south human. it's obvious to his friends. i wouldn't be obvious people's, i mean, i think you mentioned how he, in polite conversation towards the end of his life is musing on the spanish civil war on austerity, on the poor analogy. people around him just thought, well, caring man for yes. no, that's right. and, and her one of his for a former phone, corresponded guy from the telegraph. a couple of nights before phil be disappeared in beirut. he said that guy really cares. he's a, he is very motivated by, but by humanitarian concerns. i think that's right. and he's not, he's not well regarded in britain for obvious reasons, and he deceived a lot of people and he cheated. and you can call it a conceit whatever. but i think i think he is owed at least, or some sort of understanding of his motivation of well to them. i think it's like,

i don't exactly, i i yeah. so right now we have a ice was arguable right wing labor leader. we have austerity. are the effects of the 28 crisis, arguably rising inequality of labor and tory governments who have was disastrous was the canister one of his he was recently. or what do you think she'll be would think of her the current situation. ah, my wonder indicates, i wonder, yes, i mean there are, there are a lot of, i mean there are also middle shelves for canoes at a middle class colbin. i'm still around and still feeling, we need something more more extreme, whether philby would ah, i don't know. what can we delete it? well, that, i mean, that's the question. i think, i mean his is arnold deutsche. he who recruited him in the thirty's. he said you could achieve so much more. he go on the cover. now i don't think you can argue with that. i think he, i mean he did

a lot of damage to the west and so on. so by that judgment, deutsche was right. whether philby would do do the same thing again. i don't know. i think he, i, it cost him a lot. i think in terms of personal friendships. i mean, he even say he was asking for it, but all that drinking and stuff. he was not, he was not happy, nobody can pretend he was happy. he may have felt inspired by a higher cause and so on. but he was, nobody can pretend he was. he was a happy bunny. and while over here older, the fifty's and sixty's, we would have anyone reading british newspapers would have seen how evil the soviet union was. from his perspective, the seeing british imperialism dying of his he had, i mean to, with the enemy route. he was the echoes of the nasa to his crisis and still very important. yes. and i think that me, i think we both he and blunt from what i've read a blunts thinking on this. but they both felt certainly philby philby in

1933 also before said war is coming with hitler. there war is coming, you know, and i think he felt he could see the future and i'm not being facetious. i think he felt history was on his side and, and this was, it was part of the whole, the whole analysis of colonialism and so on was, i think he would feel completely vindicated by that. and everything, you know, in the and eden and so on. and it's, i mean, it was, it was a mess. what happened? why was he not impressed by washington? he was the most senior intelligence person from him. i 6 in washington as well as previously heading the anti russia. and you soviet union department was being us of its way here in london. i think he is a, i think she was a bit of a snob a. and i came across some notes which, which nobody's seen before from patrick seals. though from when patrick seal,

who wrote a biography, philby and somebody was very close to philby, had spoken to seal and it talked about how unhappy he was in washington. he, he affected to be enjoying it. and so, but he, he really didn't like you. and i think he, i think he just felt the him, they just felt the americans were a bit vulgar. i think. i mean, i knew i knew patrick seal. you say he was an intelligence with the i don't say that i didn't say it was his father. i don't think his father was. it was easily famous for the biographer of acids. father davis, he patrick seal the late late patrick's. yes. but m g think today there is still lingering. ah, there are echoes of that in the corridors of langley in virginia. the ca that quite trust the british there. they're intelligent services. he had class still matters. i don't know, i suspect less than i suspect less than formerly than done was the case. i think,

i mean, the americans were looking around the world in the 10 years after the war and realizing that maybe they needed to get more involved. that isolation isn't, was, was not doing them any favors. and they were looking at the way the british and the french have been running things and thought this isn't great idea. but recently we had the afghanistan withdrawal. and according to, if we believe the press here, i mean, i don't know how close they are to the intelligence services. the government here were taken on the hope about the all afghanistan withdrawal. yeah. thought it wasn't going to happen. and the americans being which withholding information in case it leaks out from my car. and it tells you that maybe the case if you stuff they'd be wearing stuff leaks out and, and if it leaks out, then they can ask her. the journalists will ask questions in washington and embarrass americans of sure i can believe that. i mean, that's a basic need to know i need to know arrangement among, among spooks and i. yeah, the special relationship is always,

always been fairly rocky. i. i think it's difficult to, to generalize that. that's the one thing i would say, i think personal relationships are very important. and in some cases they would override the kind of big picture. but certainly in the case of afghanistan, it does, you know, all the mood music suggests that british were very much taken on the hall and, and this book, i hope it's doing well. but even in the you describe when phil b is trying to write a stuff and serialization in british newspapers how close the intelligence services are to newspaper proprietor saying don't touch this and that eleanor. the, the final wife tries to publish things and the reviews are uniformly poor. yeah. without any element of the complex context, not even just on the political level on the psychological level. i mean, i don't know where that is. the reaction to this book as well. the need to always

go his evil stop thinking about the complexities of the case of came philby. yeah, i mean that's something i mean i, i've said to somebody the other day, most people's reaction to read off. hitler is not anger. it's. it's you want to understand and it seems to me philby is entitled to that as well. but where is an awful lot of people in britain just want to kick phil, but they just did. and i think he did some terrible things. but i think in this, whatever it is, 40 years after he died, that 303233 years old re duck. he is entitled at least to some kind of understanding. now, you know, i don't, i don't see myself as an apologise for him at all. but i, i, you know, i think he think he said that james, having thank you and that's for the show will be back on wednesday, 59 years to the month that soviet double agents are under the blunt queen elizabeth . the 2nd ot advisor visited bay ridge, allegedly,

to arrange shelby's escape to moscow until they get in touch with us. why social media let us know if you think the media and the intelligence services are still in bed with each other ah, ah, with so what we've got to do is identify the threats that we have. it's crazy, even foundation, let it be an arms race is often very dramatic development only personally and getting to resist. i don't see how that strategy will be successful, very difficult. time time to sit down and talk.

the postal service delivers a $155000000000.00 pieces of mail every year. approximately 40 percent of the world's mail right now. the us postal service is in the flight of its life, has surveyed the disruption, bad financial shape now facing default, the postal service as a cash cow. and there was a way to pull money out of the postal service to put into the federal budget. there was a mandate that you're bringing a $100000.00, new revenue every month. the nature of privatization in the us postal service is very much hidden from public view. it's privatization from the inside out. uh huh. that's a big business in money. it's not about the public and given them the service that they deserve. it's not about quality train workers. it's about with

ah, the top stories this are on the chrome, the new coverage, straight from south africa, spreads across the world with nations canceling flights. and even keeping the fully vaccinated in isolation, also this our shoplifting and vandalism is the festive season begins, flash mold, and smash and grabbed robberies. put us authorities to the test. and parents at a school in texas have their personal details posted on line after they speak out against critical race theory and mask mandates. we hear from one of them. he posted our personal information or addresses and told the internet to, to attack us. another guy threatened a bunch of us at a school board meeting ah hello, they're just going to 11 o'clock here in mos.