Guy Burgess

Well, last time we looked at this incredibly intricate episode in the life of Kim Philby, in which the web around him and the Cambridge spy ring is beginning to tighten.

His friends, contacts, Donald Maclean and Guy Burgess, have fled to Moscow, and now Kim Philby, who's connected to these guys, is beginning to face maybe the first little bits of suspicion that he might be involved.

So he has been called back from his post as head of station in Washington back to London, and he is gonna be interrogated to see if he is connected to these Cambridge spies.

But first, a word from our sponsors at HP.

He's admitted he was married to Litzi Friedman, who was a communist in 1934, but, you know, he's always said that was just a, you know, get her a passport, youthful indiscretion.

There'd been some little leads in the system about the Soviets sending a British journalist to Spain.

He knows that could point to him, and he knows his other Cambridge friends, Burgess and Maclean, have gone bad.

But he also knows none of that is proof.

Hiroshima bomb was built from Cuba.

congolese uranium so they just thought let's let's get rid of this guy and and they did you know it's quite when you look at the 60s and that kind of uh the kind of ruthless hegemony of uh of the west um it's it's kind of extraordinary you know that's They, we felt we could do anything we wanted.

Happened in Iran, regime change as well, when he tried to, when Prime Minister Mossadegh tried to privatize the oil wells, they just got rid of him, you know, and put the shale in.

We're still reaping the whirlwind that we created.

There's no doubt his kind of spy craft is getting better and better.

And he's, because of the experiences he's been through, and he's been in real jeopardy and had all manner of kind of fraught experiences, you know, working for Faith Green, And he's no fool.

He's a smart guy, Gabriel.

So he's beginning to learn what to do if he finds himself in a particular situation.

... personal life going on at home, drinking heavily, of course, partying.

He's got his friend, Guy Burgess, an unwelcome houseguest, who has arrived in Washington and is living in Kim Philby's basement.

Guy Burgess, of course, also working for the Soviet KGB.

And Kim Philby is beginning to realize that there are investigations ongoing into penetrations of the British Foreign Office in particular, and these are investigations that could lead directly to him.

But first, a word from our sponsors at HP.

And Philby, it, it seems that he may have actually tried to warn Fuchs-

Yeah

... that he was, he was compromised, maybe using Guy Burgess as a, as a courier.

Many of the future meetings were conducted here, on a park bench in Kensington Gardens.

Guy Burgess, whom he knew well from Cambridge days, was brought along to the second meeting.

The organization was called the SIS, Secret Intelligence Service, widely known also as MI5.

Sherlock Holmes is said to have visited pumps here on Baker Street in London.

Kim Philby, third man.

Donald McLean, first man.

Guy Burgess, second man.

The fifth man we'll talk about later.

I do think they do a good job.

But yes, it was first of all, really through archives that I became radicalized, working on the Guy Burgess book and being denied access to papers which should be open.

And of course, documents are the lifeblood of historians.

That's how we tell the story of the past.

One of his first missions is to spy on his own father.

His second is to write a list of his friends from Cambridge, the serious Donald Maclean, the wild Guy Burgess, as well as others.

The Cambridge spy ring is born.

And then a slow march to the center of power.

[laughs] We do.

We've all got those friends, but Philby's is particularly disruptive.

Summer of 1950, Philby receives a letter from his old Cambridge friend, Guy Burgess, currently working for the Foreign Office.

Burgess, of course, had been another of the Cambridge friends that Philby had suggested be recruited by the Soviets, and Burgess writes in his letter, "I have a shock for you.