Philby hatched secret wartime evasion agency as back-up to MI6
THE British traitor Kim Philby set up a secret wartime organisation to replace MI6 in the event it was compromised, a book has claimed.
The infamous Cold War figure, who defected to Moscow in 1963, worked during the Second World War for both MI6 and MI9, the secret escape and evasion agency.
In her book, Helen Fry, an author, says recently declassified files shed new light on the role and purpose of MI9 and suggests it may have been a “back-up plan” in case MI6 collapsed.
Long eclipsed by the much better known Secret Intelligence Service, better known as MI6, Britain’s wartime escape and evasion agency was responsible for helping around 35,000 Allied soldiers and airmen return to friendly lines. Of these, 23,000 were escapers.
It is estimated that 90 per cent of all Allied personnel who evaded capture were successfully rescued by MI9. The success of the escape lines through France and Spain was only properly realised after the war when it was discovered all except 300 of the several thousand soldiers who had not managed to be evacuated from Dunkirk were smuggled back to the UK by MI9.
“I see MI9 as the forgotten secret service of World War Two,” Ms Fry said.
“It’s under-represented but made a massive contribution.”
In the course of her research, Ms Fry discovered intelligence notes sent from Room 900, the most secret part of MI9, had been personally signed by Kim Philby. At the time Philby had been deputy head of MI6’s Section 5, responsible for counter-intelligence.
There should be no reason for MI9 to have been running agents and producing intelligence, unless it had a dual role and powerful backers. “MI9 started as a very small organisation but it quickly becomes very sophisticated,” Ms Fry told The Sunday Telegraph. “I don’t think anything is accidental. When you read the files everything is very carefully planned.”
“MI9 was involved in gathering intelligence and counter espionage on a par with MI6.”
Ms Fry was shocked to find one of the notorious Cambridge Five traitors at the heart of MI9.
“I turned the page and saw these reports are written by Kim Philby! What’s he doing in Room 900?”
MI9 had a very small operational staff including Airey Neave, the future Conservative MP who was killed by an INLA car bomb in 1979 in the car park underneath Parliament.
He and a small number of colleagues have been acknowledged as working for both agencies.
However, Ms Fry’s book, MI9: A history of the Secret Service for Escape and Evasion in World War Two is the first time Philby’s position in Room 900 has been revealed.
Far from having just a liaison function, Ms Fry contends the real role of Room 900 was as an element of MI6 embedded in MI9.
She suggests Room 900, and maybe the whole of MI9, was a cover department for MI6 in case the agency was compromised. Ms Fry has uncovered concrete examples of Philby’s intelligence reports for MI9.
“It does beg the question: why is he writing them from Room 900 and not from within Section 5 of MI6?” she asked. “It throws up more questions.”
Britain’s spy chiefs were worried
MI6 could collapse if it suffered more intelligence failures such as the Venlo incident of November 1939 when two MI6 officers were lured into a trap as they tried to recruit high-ranking German soldiers. After their betrayal, the MI6 network across much of Europe was significantly degraded.
Claude Dansey, deputy head of MI6
– and source of the quote “every man has his price and every woman is seduceable” – was responsible for the escape lines for both MI6 and MI9.
He ensured that the two organisations were kept totally separate so a compromise in one network would not collapse the other.
Ms Fry suggests another reason for keeping lines apart was to allow MI9 to immediately step up as an espionage agency if MI6 was destroyed.
Ms Fry suggests that Philby wouldn’t have been able to set Room 900 on the course that he did without having the support and permission of Claude Dansey.
“I think Philby was setting up an [alternate] organisation and I don’t think he could have done it quietly without authority.”
“If MI6 goes down, you have to have a functioning alternative,’ Ms Fry said.
“Room 900, or even MI9 itself, might have stepped into that role.”
‘Philby was setting up an [alternative] organisation and could not have done it without authority’