The Gangster and the Poet – Kim Jong Il and Vaclav Havel

By HOLMES

This week, we have been treated to odd bits of news from the North Korean state media machine. According them, Kim Jong Il died of a heart attack on Saturday, December 17, 2011. The “news” that has been broadcast from North Korea has been rather interesting.

image from theweek.co.uk

One of my young coworkers took the time to read and analyze some of the very odd claims that were made for North Korean consumption and for those imaginary North Korean admirers that the NK government likes to pretend exist in large numbers across the world. Here are a few of the recent outlandish claims from a nation that is so crippled it can produce little more than outlandish claims.

Kim Jong Il lived for five thousand years. Kim Jong Il did not urinate or defecate because he was a higher being that didn’t need to do those lowly human functions. It’s not often that Westerners or anyone living outside of North Korea agrees with the NK media, but based on that particular claim, Westerners were apparently being fair and accurate when saying that Kim was “full of shit.”

We are now being told that a mountain peak in North Korea that was named after Kim Jong Il glowed for an hour after he died. As absurd as it seems, that claim might be accurate. It could be that the insects hiding beneath the frozen surface were so overjoyed at the death of the despised dictator that they glowed like glow worms and fire flies in celebration of his departure from their ecosystem.

The nonsensical and amateurish propaganda that flows from North Korea would all be nothing more than cheap comedy if not for the fact that it tells us something about the current state of their tortured society. Even in authoritarian police states like China, Cuba, Syria, and Iran, there are limits to how outlandish the propaganda can be. Neither North Koreans nor Cubans would believe that their respective crime syndicate leaders were five thousand years old, but the difference is that the Cubans would loudly refuse such asinine statements. It’s a sad comment about the lives of the victims of the North Korean crime state that they feel compelled to pretend to believe such absurdity.

Kim Jong Il had announced that his third son, Kim Jong Un, would inherit the family crime syndicate, but not all is going as planned. Today, North Korea announced that Kim Jong Un’s aunt and her husband would share power with him, and that the military would have more power than they did under Km Jong Il.

My impression is that the North Korean military hates Kim’s sister and her husband and will wrestle for control of the country. At least in the short term, it seems unlikely that the people of North Korea can expect much improvement in their lives. Chronic malnutrition and a complete lack of freedom will continue. Kim Jong Un has a long way to go to gain complete control of North Korea, but the undeserving victims of the ongoing Kim family crime spree have even further to go to reach freedom and human rights.

Kim Jong Un – To show their loyalty, all North Koreans are required to get bad haircuts before Friday. (That’s actually a joke. So far.)

While the news is filled with the farcical proceedings in North Korea, another important world leader left us on December 18, 2011. A brilliant poet who I admired.

On October 5, 1936, a boy, Vaclav Havel, was born in Prague, Czechoslovakia. That boy would one day prove instrumental in leading the nation of Czechoslovakia out of the dark ages of forty-nine years of brutal Nazi and Soviet occupation.

Vaclav Havel was the son of a theater owner father and a wealthy mother. During the Soviet occupation, he was not allowed to attend secondary education because of his “bourgeois” parents, and he was shunted to industrial training. He worked full time and attended night school. Then, he dropped out of economics school and found work as a laborer in theater productions. From that humble beginning, he went on to become one of Europe’s most respected writers, admired poets, and esteemed world leaders.

While living under constant police surveillance and suffering through multiple prison internments, including a five-year stint, Havel managed to write popular plays and was able to see them produced in spite of sabotage by the Czech secret police. What did he have to say after years of abuse? “Truth and love will prevail over lies and hate.”

In 1989, as the Soviet lead Warsaw Pact began to unravel, Havel became the de facto leader of the Velvet Revolution. The Czech secret police and the Soviet KGB had long seen Havel as a dissenter. It is my belief that the Czech police state and the Kremlin decided Havel was just a poet and playwright and would never be able to successfully lead a revolution. They denied permission to their field operatives to assassinate him. They likely feared that killing Havel would have left less known and less visible leaders in charge of the resistance.

Vaclav Havel became president of Czechoslovakia on December 29, 1989 and served in that office until July, 1992. He later served as Prime Minister of the Czech Republic from 1993 until 2003.

The Soviets underestimated the poet and the people of Prague. Now, that poet is gone, but his memory and the freedom that he helped create lives on. The world was a better place with Vaclav Havel in it. It remains a better place for his having passed here.

image from Life Magazine, February 1, 1990

To his family and to the courageous people of the Czech Republic who defeated brutal tyranny with little more than reason and moral conviction, I offer my sincere condolences and my deep admiration. May reason and moral conviction reign forever in the Czech Republic. May truth and love always prevail over lies and hate.

Tonight, in North Korea, the notions of freedom and human rights appear to be beyond all hope. Only 25 years ago, we would have said the same about Czechoslovakia.

Kim Philby – Forced to Lie in the Bed He Made

My spy novel writing partner, Holmes, is a man with experience in intelligence and covert operations. As such, he is a great student of history. In his first post, Holmes tells us about one of the most successful British traitors of all time, Kim Philby.  The second post continues with Philby’s role in WWII, and the third tells us about Philby’s Cold War years. Today, we learn what became of the most infamous traitor among the Cambridge Forty.

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Kim Philby – Forced to Lie in the Bed He Made

By Holmes

Philby was questioned multiple times, and, for a while, managed to avoid confirming suspicions. But besides the mounting evidence, Philby was in trouble for another reason. MI-5 and MI-6 were both changing. Many of the wartime newcomers to British intelligence had been from outside of the traditional “old boys network.” The new breed of serious, less connected, less arrogant, and more dedicated intelligence professionals were influencing the culture in British Intelligence. Being a “good old boy” was no longer an adequate alibi.

Philby’s case could not be proven without “burning” valuable assets that the British had acquired from within the Soviet government, so he was quietly shunted aside, isolated from sensitive information, and forced out of MI-6. He took up a full time job as a journalist.

Moscow Central assumed that Philby was under full time surveillance and was being dangled as bait to help capture his controller. They apparently decided to break off contact with him. Members of Parliament remained loudly concerned about possible Soviet moles, and they routinely demanded “action.”

In 1955, British Foreign Secretary Harold McMillan reported to Parliament that Kim Philby had been cleared of any wrongdoing. This was, of course, complete and utter nonsense, but momentarily quieted the Parliament and the press.

Philby moved to Lebanon and lived with his father, Saint John Philby, and Saint John’s second family for a while. He worked as a correspondent for The Economist and The Observer. Philby also busied himself in Beirut by seducing the wife of a New York Times correspondent.

Saint John Philby’s high-level contacts in Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and the Gulf states likely made Philby a more valuable correspondent for his employers. Those contacts would have also made Philby valuable to the KGB. (The NKVD became the KGB in 1954.)

In 1957, Philby’s second wife, Aileen, died in England. In 1959, after his apparently gullible lover, Eleanor, obtained a divorce from her husband, they married.

In 1961, Soviet KGB Major Anatoliy Mikhaylovich Golitsyn defected to the United States with his family from Helsinki, Finland. James Jesus Angleton had by then risen to the position of Director of Counterintelligence at the CIA, and he personally interviewed Golitsyn upon his arrival in the United States. Golitsyn brought with him more evidence against Philby. MI-5 now felt that it had sufficient exposable evidence with which to prosecute Philby.

Eleanor Philby, image from life.com

Philby’s wife, Eleanor, noted that in 1962 that Philby’s heavy drinking became worse, and that he suffered from episodes of severe depression. Philby might have been informed by a Soviet operative that Golitsyn would expose him, or he may have simply assumed that Golitsyn or other defectors were bound to do so.

In 1962, MI-6 dispatched an experienced officer by the name of Nicholas Elliot to Beirut to offer Philby a return to England and protection from prosecution in exchange for Philby’s cooperation. When Elliot arrived, he found Philby ”too drunk to stand up.” Philby at first denied the obvious, but then agreed to take the deal and to meet with Elliot in a sober state to arrange for his travel to England.

On January 23, 1963, Philby failed to show up at a party where he was supposed to meet his wife. Later, Philby claimed that he departed on a Soviet freighter for Russia. Other theories have been presented including an overland trip through Syria and Iraq.

I have always wondered if perhaps the Soviets had placed surveillance on Philby once Golitsyn defected. It’s possible that Philby was already acting as an “agent of opportunity” for the Soviets in the Mideast, and that he was already in routine contact with a Soviet controller. It may be that Elliot had been observed approaching Philby, and that the KGB decided to invite him for a visit to Moscow with or without his cooperation. Philby knew MI-6 and MI-5 well enough to know that they would keep their word, and that he would live comfortably in England. It would seem that, at that point in his life, Philby would have had more dread of traveling to Moscow than he would have had for life in England under immunity.

The suggestion has been made that Philby actually returned to Moscow to act as a “double of a double” for MI-6. I find this notion highly unlikely. Well, let me be frank. I find the suggestion silly. By that time, Philby had the trust of no one in British Intelligence, and like anyone in Russia, he had the trust of no one in Soviet government. Even if The British had been willing to try to use Philby from inside of Russia, they would have understood that Philby would have no freedom of movement and no opportunity to operate against the Soviets from within Russia.

On July 30, 1963, the USSR announced that Philby had been granted Soviet citizenship. Many in the West have expressed frustration that Philby was allowed to escape rather than face prosecution. Given the conditions in the USSR in 1963, I think that being granted Soviet citizenship constituted a far grimmer imprisonment than the West would have inflicted on him.

In Russia, Philby was given a small apartment (a lavish residence by Soviet standards), and he married his fourth wife, Rufina. Philby was kept under guard. The Soviets explained that this was to “protect him,” even though they and Philby knew that there would be no assassination attempt made against him by the West. He spent his time producing a memoir that no one took too seriously, including the KGB employees who wrote it for him.

His wife, Rufina, explained that he frequently drank heavily. She said he attempted suicide a few times, but that the guards always caught him before he could make his permanent departure from his Soviet workers’ paradise.

In 1988, Kim Philby finally did something that made both the USSR and Western governments happy. He died of a heart attack. Since he was permanently safely beyond the reach of reporters and questioners, the USSR transferred Philby to the “Dead Heroes” division of the KGB. They gave him several cute red medals with little stars, honored him with a hero’s funeral as a general in the KGB, and proclaimed him to be a great warrior in the people’s cause. It’s amazing how much death does for some folks.

In the next episode we will look at Philby’s cohorts. Any questions, comments, jokes or curses in reference to Philby?

Kim Philby: Losing and Regaining His Communist Faith

My spy novel writing partner, Holmes, is a man with experience in intelligence and covert operations. As such, he is a great student of history. In his last post, he began telling us about one of the most successful British traitors of all time, Kim Philby. Today, he continues with the story of Kim Philby’s role in WWII.

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Kim Philby: Losing and Regaining His Communist Faith

By Holmes

In July of 1939, a few months after the Nationalists won the Spanish Civil War, Kim Philby returned to England. A month later, he was confronted with ethical and intellectual challenges to his loyalty to the Soviet Union.

In the 1930s, many of Europe’s communists based their faith in communism on the childish notion that only the Soviet Union could stop what seemed to them like the inexorable growth of fascism. One critical element in maintaining a “Stalin will save us” philosophy was ignorance of the fact that Stalin was far more fascist than most fascists.

Many of Europe’s and America’s true believers in communism maintained their political faith by denying the growing body of evidence that indicated the Soviet workers’ paradise had become a workers’ hell. It was common for European communists to blame the European and American “establishment” for spreading propaganda against communists. The fact that many anti-communists were, at times, willing to disregard facts when discussing communism or the Soviet Union only led to a deeper faith on the part of the devout communists.

In August of 1939, Europe was moving rapidly toward war. British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain attempted to buy  “peace in our time” by accepting German occupation of western Czechoslovakia. Chamberlain traveled to Germany to meet Hitler. He and Hitler signed an agreement that Hitler would not invade any more countries in exchange for Britain accepting German’s occupation of western Czechoslovakia. Czechoslovakia was not consulted about the agreement.

Hitler had no intention of keeping his agreement. But to some Europeans, it seemed that Hitler’s perceived reluctance to engage in a two-front war would prevent the Germans from attacking westward into Belgium or France.

When Moscow and Berlin proudly announced their “non-aggression” pact in late August, many previously devout members of the communist faith decided it was time to find a new religion. Many of them did.

According to witnesses, Philby was among those most stunned by the pact between Stalin and Hitler. Philby probably had rationalized his betrayal of the nation that had treated him so well with the standard “rich boy communist” notion that communism was preventing the spread of fascism and world war. The realization that Stalin and the Soviet Union had done so much to create the coming war must have been devastating for most European communists. By now Philby had to realize that their was nothing ideal about the Soviet communist reality.

Philby and some of the disillusioned communists in Western Europe likely would have been even more disappointed in Moscow had they known that Von Ribbentrop-Molotov pact, secretly divided up Poland between Germany and the USSR, and guaranteed that the USSR would sell oil and war materials to Germany. If those communist enthusiasts had discovered that the Soviets had, for several years, been secretly operating training bases for Luftwaffe pilots and German army tank crews (both forbidden to Germany by the treaty of Versailles, which Russia had signed) their shock and depression might have been even deeper.

It appears that Philby might have decided that his life as a double agent was over, but the NKVD was not accepting resignations. He failed to show up to scheduled contacts, and failed to communicate with his Soviet controllers for several months.

Philby went to France to cover the war, and apparently he had no contact with the Soviets during this period. In May of 1940, as France was on the verge of defeat by the German Army, Great Britain quickly evacuated its expeditionary force from France. Philby returned to England.

He was soon assigned to the training staff of Britain’s Special Operations Executive (“S.O.E.”). Winston Churchill charged the S.O.E. to, “Set Nazi Occupied Europe ablaze.”

Unfortunately, the conflagrations envisioned by Churchill and his staff never amounted to more than a smoldering campfire. The German Abwher (military intelligence and counterintelligence) had penetrated the S.O.E. They succeeded in doubling enough of the agents sent by the British to maintain direct communication with the S.O.E. and read the orders to agents in the field as they were transmitted. While the Gestapo was always quick to claim credit for rounding up so many of the agents and infiltrators sent into Nazi Occupied Europe, it was the German Military that scored so many coups against the British S.O.E.

During this early stage of the war, the Soviets re-established control of Philby. The precise details of Philby’s reactivation by agents of the Soviet Communist Party internal police force (“O.G.P.U.”) are not known, but it clearly occurred prior to Hitler’s invasion of Russia in June, 1941. In fact, thanks to British code breaking successes, Philby was able to warn the Soviets of Hitler’s plan to invade Russia. The OGPU understandably doubted Philby’s reliance. Philby had probably unwittingly expressed his doubts about Stalin and the USSR to social contacts who were reporting his activities to their own NKVD controllers.

Nonetheless, the warning of the coming German invasion of Russia had been duplicated by other independent sources, and the British government had directly warned the USSR about German intentions and troop build-ups in the East. However, Stalin remained mistakenly convinced that the information was an attempt by the British government to manipulate the Soviet Union into a war with Germany.

Philby’s warnings were wasted. Stalin did not order the massive Soviet army to defensive positions in Poland and Russia. However, when Philby was proven right, Moscow regained substantial confidence in him. At the same time, when the Germans made such swift gains in Russia, Stalin was left embarrassed with his own senior intelligence staff officers.

To say that Moscow “trusted” Philby would be inaccurate. Stalin trusted nobody. Even the high level henchmen, who he relied on to organize the massive purges of the 1930s, invariably ended up dead, themselves. For Moscow, it was a question of deciding how much credence to place on Philby’s information.

Elena Modrzhinskaya, image from vietnamdefense.com

The chief Soviet analyst assigned to handle information from Philby and his associates was a cliché Soviet female NKVD analyst who resembled the fictional Rosa Klebb of James Bond fame. Her name was Elena Modrzhinskaya. From Elena, we gain a valuable insight into the Stalinist mindset. She was convinced that Philby and his cohorts were withholding information about the identities of British S.O.E. agents sent to sabotage Russia. It was beyond Soviet conception that there were no such British saboteurs working against the Russians while they were allied with the West during World War Two.

The idea that Philby and the rest of the “Cambridge Five” could operate so freely in wartime Britain seemed unbelievable to Soviets accustomed to life in Stalinist Russia. Elena assumed that Philby, Burgess, Maclean, Blunt, and Cairncross were all “triple” agents posing as double agents. However, the weight of valuable and accurate information that the five were able to provide soon convinced her superiors that the Philby and his cohorts were, in fact, good sources.

As Philby continued his work for the Russians, he maintained good cover by working hard against the Germans for both MI-5 and MI-6. Philby was promoted to a position where he worked with allied agents who were providing the UK with information from Spain and Portugal.

In late 1942, a brilliant young American counter-intelligence specialist named James Jesus Angleton passed Kim Philby information about a British controlled agent who had been captured by the Gestapo and executed. Philby was accustomed to being one of the smartest people in any crowd, but in Angleton, he had met his intellectual superior.

To Angleton, something about Philby seemed insincere, so he checked Philby’s response to the information about the executed agent via another member of MI-5. Angleton discovered that Philby had failed to report the execution to his superiors in London.

James Jesus Angleton, image from bibliotecapleyades.net

Angleton warned MI-5, but his warning fell on deaf ears. The fact that Philby failed to report the information to his superior may indicate that he wondered if the information he was passing on was not being gleamed from the Soviets by Nazi agents in the USSR.

The intelligence community in London prior to, during, and for many years after World War Two, suffered from a debilitating case of institutional overconfidence. The majority of the British intelligence community felt that nothing of any use could come from an “American cowboy” and Angleton’s repeated warnings over the years were ignored.

In the next post, we will look at Philby’s post-WWII activities. Any questions or comments so far?

Sandwich Day:The Day Between Berlin Wall Day and Veterans Day

I call today Sandwich Day because it’s the day that is sandwiched between November 9, the day the Berlin Wall came down, and Veterans Day, formerly known as Armistice Day, which commemorated the end of World War I.

You’ve probably guessed from my blog title that I’m an author. (No, Uncle Fred, I don’t plan to get a “real job.”) Anyway, I write post-apocalyptic science fiction, and I’m working on a spy novel with a partner, Holmes. Holmes has experience in intelligence and covert operations. I would say more, but Holmes is humble, living every moment with the profound awareness that he is only alive because of the sacrifices of others. To me, that’s the perfect attitude for Sandwich Day.

So let’s pause and look at what makes Sandwich Day. . . .

One slice of bread is Veterans Day. On November 11th, 1918, at 11 a.m., both England and France buried an “unknown soldier” in Westminster Abbey and the Arc de Triomphe, respectively, to commemorate the ending of World War I. Thereafter, November 11th became known internationally as Armistice Day. America followed suit in 1921, establishing the Tomb of the Unknowns in Arlington Cemetary. In 1938, Armistice Day became a national holiday in America. In 1954, President Eisenhower changed the name to Veterans Day, a day to thank living veterans for dedicated and loyal service to their country.

The other slice of bread is the day the Berlin Wall came down, signifying the beginning of the end of the Cold War. English author and journalist George Orwell first coined the term Cold War in his essay, “You and the Atomic Bomb,” to describe a world that is at “peace that is no peace.” It was an ideological confrontation between mostly the Soviet Union and its satellite states against Western powers. It shaped our times and our nation more surely than Islamic terrorists are doing now.

Though the USSR and the USA never officially met on the field, we clashed unofficially through the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and the Soviet war in Afghanistan. We also battled through military coalitions, extensive aid to states fighting Soviet-backed terrorists,    espionage, propaganda, the Arms Race, sports rivalry, and the Space Race.

As a kid during that time, I can tell you that the Cold War colored everything in life. Our conversations, our breakfast drinks, our cartoons, our college classes, you name it. Communism was a threat we took too seriously to be concerned about offending communists by calling them the enemy, and we lived 24/7 with the widespread belief that Earth would, inevitably, end in a mushroom cloud. A fated apocalypse. A post-apocalyptic movie with no hope of a ”post.”

The Berlin Wall, built in 1961 to separate communist East Berlin from Western Ally-administered West Berlin, was the symbol of the Cold War and the Cold War state of mind. When it came down, it didn’t just represent our Western victory over communism, it represented the limitless possibilities of the human race to control its destiny. Nothing seemed inevitable any more.

I know I’m unusually serious today — apocalypse can be that way at times — so I’ll lighten up with a bit of info about that most beautiful apocalyptic flower, the red poppy, which has come to symbolize World War I. Long before the Great War, the red poppy was a symbol of death, renewal, and life. That’s because its seeds can lie dormant in the earth for years, and then grow and blossom when the soil is turned over.

With the widespread digging of graves in the fields of Northern France and Flanders, beginning in 1914, poppies began to grow, inspiring Canadian Lt. Col. John McCrae to write the following poem, the most famous of World War I. Click here for a beautiful song inspired by this poem, performed by the boys’ choir, Libera.

My profound thanks to our veterans on this Sandwich Day.  

In Flanders Fields

By John McCrae

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row by row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard among the guns below.

We are the dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe;
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If yea break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

All the best to all of you for a day of humility and remembrance.

Piper Bayard–The Pale Writer of the Apocalypse

“Don’t stall. Don’t commiserate. Pray boldly. . . .  The battle is still in front of you.” — Holmes