be described as covert links? Most of it was rather public stuff, of the kind that a good journalist usually reports far better than a secret agent. There may have been a few intelligence dividends, but probably the Russians looked on Kim’s participation partly as an aid to removing the taint of leftism, and partly as a training exercise.
From early in 1937 to the summer of 1939, except for brief periods, Kim was in Spain. Here at last he had something worth reporting on. True, his job gave him no access to British secret information, and possibly no formal access to that of the Spanish Nationalists; but a war reporter attached to the headquarters of one of the combatants inevitably learns much of value to the other. What we do not know is how many other sources the Russians and Spanish Republicans had among the Nationalists. A civil war – or any arbitrary division of a single country into two halves, as for so many years in West and East Germany – gives ample opportunity for the recruitment of agents, because there are so many family and other links transcending the division. Kim’s value to the Russians may have lain not so much in any unique access to information as in the cool analytical mind he brought to his reporting and in the detachment and objectivity he derived from not being Spanish.
Even at this early stage, Kim must have impressed his Russian masters as a case officer’s dream. Agents are always exaggerating their access, wanting more money, reporting what they think you want to hear, getting into scrapes, missing their rendezvous (except on payday), intruding their personal problems, talking indiscreetly and getting cold feet. Relatively few can produce a really literate report. Training, if practicable, can do something to improve performance, but it cannot give a man either brains or background education, nor is it likely to change his character. In Kim the Russians must have found themselves presented with an agent who not only was remarkably free of the faults I have mentioned but could absorb complicated briefing and express himself with unusual clarity and conciseness both verbally and on paper. On top of this he wasideologically devoted to the cause and, apparently, required little or no payment.
So far I have spoken of Kim’s pre-war value to the Russians in terms only of his own intelligence reporting. But he may have rendered other services. At some point before he went to Spain in February 1937 he claims to have suggested Guy Burgess as a possible agent. (Whether this turned out to be a service or disservice to the Russians, not to mention Guy and Kim himself, is of course another matter.) Not only was Guy used as a courier to replenish Kim’s funds in Spain in 1937, but his access to intelligence in this pre-war period, though nothing much, may have been more than Kim’s.
Up to this point it is quite possible that Kim had broken no British law, or at least had done nothing which could possibly have led to a successful prosecution in British courts. As far as I know, he had not had access to confidential British information. But as a Times correspondent with the BEF at Arras he was in an altogether different position. Though still not employed by His Majesty’s Government, he would doubtless have come within the Official Secrets Act. The Soviet Union had a pact with Germany. If it had been discovered that Kim was passing information about British military movements and plans, in wartime, I imagine he could have faced a capital charge. He would have known much about the capabilities, dispositions, defences and weapons of British forces in France, and of some French units as well. He may have had some insight into Allied military plans, such as they were. But the much more important subject of German plans presumably lay hidden. Once the hectic fighting began he can have had little if any opportunity to report to the Russians, and whatever he said would be out of date before it got to
From early in 1937 to the summer of 1939, except for brief periods, Kim was in Spain. Here at last he had something worth reporting on. True, his job gave him no access to British secret information, and possibly no formal access to that of the Spanish Nationalists; but a war reporter attached to the headquarters of one of the combatants inevitably learns much of value to the other. What we do not know is how many other sources the Russians and Spanish Republicans had among the Nationalists. A civil war – or any arbitrary division of a single country into two halves, as for so many years in West and East Germany – gives ample opportunity for the recruitment of agents, because there are so many family and other links transcending the division. Kim’s value to the Russians may have lain not so much in any unique access to information as in the cool analytical mind he brought to his reporting and in the detachment and objectivity he derived from not being Spanish.
Even at this early stage, Kim must have impressed his Russian masters as a case officer’s dream. Agents are always exaggerating their access, wanting more money, reporting what they think you want to hear, getting into scrapes, missing their rendezvous (except on payday), intruding their personal problems, talking indiscreetly and getting cold feet. Relatively few can produce a really literate report. Training, if practicable, can do something to improve performance, but it cannot give a man either brains or background education, nor is it likely to change his character. In Kim the Russians must have found themselves presented with an agent who not only was remarkably free of the faults I have mentioned but could absorb complicated briefing and express himself with unusual clarity and conciseness both verbally and on paper. On top of this he wasideologically devoted to the cause and, apparently, required little or no payment.
So far I have spoken of Kim’s pre-war value to the Russians in terms only of his own intelligence reporting. But he may have rendered other services. At some point before he went to Spain in February 1937 he claims to have suggested Guy Burgess as a possible agent. (Whether this turned out to be a service or disservice to the Russians, not to mention Guy and Kim himself, is of course another matter.) Not only was Guy used as a courier to replenish Kim’s funds in Spain in 1937, but his access to intelligence in this pre-war period, though nothing much, may have been more than Kim’s.
Up to this point it is quite possible that Kim had broken no British law, or at least had done nothing which could possibly have led to a successful prosecution in British courts. As far as I know, he had not had access to confidential British information. But as a Times correspondent with the BEF at Arras he was in an altogether different position. Though still not employed by His Majesty’s Government, he would doubtless have come within the Official Secrets Act. The Soviet Union had a pact with Germany. If it had been discovered that Kim was passing information about British military movements and plans, in wartime, I imagine he could have faced a capital charge. He would have known much about the capabilities, dispositions, defences and weapons of British forces in France, and of some French units as well. He may have had some insight into Allied military plans, such as they were. But the much more important subject of German plans presumably lay hidden. Once the hectic fighting began he can have had little if any opportunity to report to the Russians, and whatever he said would be out of date before it got to
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