MI5 was baffled by ‘enigma’ Kim Philby, records show

MI5’s top interrogator was baffled by Kim Philby, admitting he could not determine whether he was a Soviet spy, according to newly declassified intelligence files.

Jim Skardon, a former Metropolitan Police Special Branch detective, was renowned within MI5 after obtaining a confession from Klaus Fuchs, who betrayed the secret of the US-British Manhattan Project to build the world’s first atomic bomb to the Russians.

But files released to the National Archives at Kew, west London, show that when he came up against Philby he drew a blank.

Philby, who was then a high-ranking MI6 officer, first came under suspicion in 1951 when two fellow Cambridge spies, Donald Maclean and Guy Burgess, fled to Russia to escape exposure.

He was initially subjected to a bruising four-hour interrogation at MI5 headquarters by barrister Helenus “Buster” Milmo, who began by telling him not to smoke and accusing him of telling “a lot of half truths … downright falsehood”.

But while the session left many in MI5 – including Mr Milmo himself – convinced of Philby’s guilt, it failed to produce the conclusive evidence needed to take action against him.

So MI5 turned to Mr Skardon’s more subtle interview techniques in the hope that Philby would give himself away, but he proved no more successful.

At the conclusion of their interviews he admitted he found Philby to be “more of an enigma than ever”.

“He did say at one stage that the suggestion that he is guilty of espionage is an insulting one, but even in saying that he did not react as strongly as one would anticipate an innocent man would in such circumstances,” Mr Skardon noted.

“On the other hand I suppose it must be a fact that his training and association with SIS (MI6) have given him some ability to maintain face, even a poker face, in circumstances when his motives and conduct are being attacked.

“For all practical purposes, his reactions to the things that I thought would worry him most … did not have anything like the effect I anticipated. He really does maintain calm in the most extraordinary way, and possibly this is due to complete innocence.”

Another MI5 officer, Anthony Simkins, reluctantly admitted Philby had given “no hint that he might be guilty” and they could do nothing without fresh leads.

“Although we shall continue to pay attention to Philby’s activities while he is in the United Kingdom, we think it very unlikely that this will advance the case in any way, and the final verdict will probably have to await the discovery of new evidence,” he wrote.