STEPHEN KOCH
43
prior to the founding of the OSS had its origins in memoranda forwarded
from London and Liddell. He was one of the most beloved and entirely
trusted figures in the British services. For years, the slightest hint of com–
promise attributed to Liddell's name awakened the flashing ire of commit–
ted emeritus members of the service: the late Sir Dick White, for exam–
ple.
Yet it is also true that virtually every significant advance in the British
secret services made by members of the Cambridge group was made
under the patronage of Liddell. His assisting hand can be found in every
significant move they made. Liddell has repeatedly been proposed as a
possible mole within the services: this charge has repeatedly been turned
aside. The most significant such accusation comes from Burgess and
Blunt's college friend Goronwy Rees, who was himself recruited into the
apparatus around this time and broke with it at some uncertain date: pos–
sibly the Nazi-Soviet Pact. Rees considered Blunt's entire career both
before and after exposure to have moved under Liddell's collaborating
protection.
The question of Liddell will only be answered in the archives, and I
predict his mystery will prove even more persistent than that of the Hiss
case. While we wait for the necessary research to be undertaken and
completed, the case against Liddell must rest as eloquently made and then
doubted again by Mr. John Costello. I have little to add, except to say
that I regard the circumstantial evidence against Liddell and in favor of
Rees's accusations to be so massive and so compromising that, once it is
known, it becomes almost impossible to return to viewing Liddell in the
simple light of simple innocence. More investigation is needed. But as
one shrewd observer put it to me: "If Guy Liddell was
not
a Soviet agent,
he was just wasting his time."
On the very long list of compromising truths known about Liddell is
that he was a regular habitue of Burgess's salon on Bentinck Street.
Bentinck Street was a place that a shrewd child could spot as packed to
the walls with security risks. How a senior official in British counter-in–
telligence would have chosen it of all places to let his hair down beggars
inquiry. Liddell was also directly responsible for placing both Kim Philby
and Guy Burgess into their first jobs in the British intelligence services.
This took place shortly after both men had left membership in and service
to a well-known Nazi front, many of whose members were by war-time
directly chargeable with treason. To be sure, by 1936 Philby and Burgess
had dropped their fascist pose. What of it? The gross security risk re–
mained, staring out. Either Liddell didn't know about their old commit–
ment. In which case he was failing in his job. Or he knew they had been
posing. In which case he knew they had been Soviet agents. Or he knew
