Of Monsters and Men
The following is a condensed version of "Of Monsters and Men" by Richard M. Reinsch II, published at Law & Liberty.
In a web of friendship, class, patriotism, and political ideology lurks the world of the British spies and communist traitors depicted in the MGM streaming series A Spy Among Friends. The series portrays the treasonous activities of real-life intelligence agent Kim Philby (Guy Pearce) and his tight friendship with Nicholas Elliott (Damian Lewis) while both worked for MI6. Elliott never realized until the bitter end that his best friend was a Soviet asset.
Philby worked for MI6, the Secret Intelligence Service, for nearly two decades, joining in 1939 before resigning in 1955 under intense suspicion of spying for the Soviet Union. After formal investigations proved inconclusive, Philby was cleared of these accusations by British Foreign Secretary Harold Macmillan in 1955. A few years later, Philby decamped to Beirut to serve as a correspondent for The Economist and Observer. He was also shockingly reinstated by MI6 during this time to provide reports to the agency on Middle East politics.
The series is built on Ben MacIntyre’s eponymous book (2019) which provides an accurate historical accounting of these events, though it takes certain liberties with the facts, including the creation of a fictional character, Lily Thomas (Anna Maxwell Martin).
A Spy Among Friends begins with a dramatic confrontation in Beirut in 1962 between Philby and Elliott, whose lives and families had been connected for decades. Elliott was sent by MI5 to Beirut to obtain a confession from Philby after Soviet defector Anatoliy Golitsyn and a British woman named Flora Solomon had made it transparent to British authorities that Philby was a Soviet double agent. Philby arrives at an apartment in the Christian Quarter of Beirut unsure of who would question him. When Elliott opens the door, Philby states, “I rather hoped it would be you.” This statement is the crux of the series. Does Philby at some level want to come clean about a life of treachery, one that preyed even on a close friendship?
The series wrestles with Elliott’s decision to not place Philby under arrest or detention in Beirut. And in the end, it remains an open question: many doubted Elliott’s conduct at the time and to this day.
Lily drives home the point. Why, she wonders, “did you not place him under arrest? Did you not want to kill him?” Angered by the full scope of Philby’s treachery, and shocked at Elliott’s coolness, she inquires about the number of people who died because of Philby’s actions. Elliott responds that the lives lost were “hundreds, thousands.” He seems casual about it, but as we will come to learn, he is most certainly not. Lily is the blunt edge of conscience that exposes the aristocratic club world of MI6, which Elliott exemplified. Is this the real explanation for why Philby could move unnoticed for decades in MI6, even rising to the level of Washington Bureau Chief from 1949–51? Only a ruling class so arrogant and convinced that it will always prevail could never think that a traitor could be in its midst.
Philby had previously come under tremendous communist suspicion after the infamous Venona cables revealed Soviet moles. Elliott fully backed Philby during this period, and Philby staged an elaborate press conference protesting his innocence. To this day, MI6 uses the video of Philby’s presser as a master-class demonstration of how to deceive and manipulate opponents.
In the end, MacIntyre’s judgment about Philby seems most apt. He was sympathetic, attentive, brilliant, engaging, and apparently a tremendous friend. Depicted in the series is a friendship, at least on Elliott’s part, that approached the highest level of Aristotelian friendship, a friendship based on willing the other’s good, and not merely predicated on utilitarian or situational needs. And Philby, from Elliott’s perspective, gave every indication that he, too, held their friendship in similar esteem. But was it a friendship of equals? At one point in the series, Elliott describes their friendship as “hero worship” on his part.
Towards the end of the series, Elliott tells Lily that he might visit Philby in East Berlin undercover. She upbraids him scornfully, “You’re your own worst enemy. You’re the country’s worst enemy.” Elliott doesn’t ultimately meet Philby but returns to him a monogrammed umbrella that had been given in an act of friendship. They are friends no more. Elliott was no slouch, but one capable of acting decisively and prudently when the situation called for it. He tells Lily that he let Philby go to Moscow in Beirut not out of carelessness or sympathy, but final justice. The Russians, Elliott explains, would never accept Philby, never give him the adoration he craved. He would be miserable and die in misery.
In the final scene, Elliott outwits Philby. We have no conclusive evidence that Philby calculated like this, but one can hope that he did.
Richard M. Reinsch II is Editor in Chief and Director of Publications for the American Institute for Economic Research, and a Senior Writer at Law & Liberty. He is coauthor with Peter Augustine Lawler of A Constitution in Full: Recovering the Unwritten Foundation of American Liberty (Kansas Press, May 2019). You can follow him @Reinsch84
