Assassin Among Friends

 Assassin Among Friends 

After noticing some key associations between the British spy drama Spy Among Friends and the assassination of President Kennedy, my feelings were reinforced by viewing the full six segment series. 

For starters I'd like to include the uncovering of Philby and the Cambridge Spy Ring among the Deep Political Events in the Peter Dale Scott sense. Although there wasn't any sudden, decisive and significant event like Pearl Harbor, Dealey Plaza, Watergate, Iran-Contra or September 11, 2001, the revelations that came out of the Philby affair certainly altered our mutual perceptions of reality as this story has done, despite the duration of it. 

I don't think Ben MacIntyre's book "Spy Among Friends" was the best source to produce a film of this story, that they tell you at the beginning stems from "the imagination" of MacIntyre, and that it is a work of fiction with invented characters (Lily Thompson for one), when the true story is so amazing and more exciting than anyone could make up, yet MacIntyre manages to make it boring and in such a film noir style that it should have been shot in black and white and I almost expect Robert Mitchem to make a cameo appearance. 

The basic theme of the story is that Kim Philby and his Cambridge cohorts managed to fool their families, friends and government and Secret Intelligence Service associates for decades, much like Lee Harvey Oswald did, if in fact he did kill the President. 

While most of those who study the assassination of President Kennedy who believe that he was killed by Oswald alone tend to invent some psychological motive as the reason why he would do such a horrifying thing. Jean Davison comes to mind as one of the best of this genre, who knows the facts of the case and has studied Oswald. She makes a good pitch in establishing that case, and calls her book "Oswald's Game," but after reviewing the same facts I have come to a different conclusion - that Oswald was playing "The Great Game," as they call espionage, the same game James Jesus Angleton, William Harvey, David Atlee Phillips and the anti-Castro Cubans were playing. 

Even a brief review of the accused assassin's background, as it was quickly made available by CIA psychological warriors - David A. Phillip's media assets, George Joannides' DRE Cubans, NANA correspondents, et al., we see a clear picture of the man. 

Born in New Orleans, well read but somewhat of a juvenile delinquent, astronomy club, Civil Air Patrol (CAP) cadet, high school dropout, enlisted in the US Marines after his older brother as soon as he was legally able to, trained in electronics, communications and radar, stationed at Atsugi U2 base and San Diego, tested in the Russian language, given an early but honorable discharge, defected to the Soviet Union, sent to Minsk, married a Russian women and returned to USA with her and their daughter, fit in with a number of rabid anti-Communist White Russians in exile, worked on U2 maps at Jaggers/Chiles/Stoval, purchased rifle and pistol under an alias, moved to hometown of New Orleans for the summer of '63, arrested with DRE Cubans while passing out Fair Play for Cuba leaflets, did radio debate with CIA trained psycho-warriors, visited the Cuban and Russian embassies in Mexico City in a failed attempt to get a visa to Cuba, returned to Dallas where his wife lived with Ruth H. Paine, whose husband worked for Bell Helicopter and who obtained Oswald a job at the Texas School Book Depository (TSBD), from where the fatal shots were taken. And Oswald was only 24 years old. 

After consuming that basic info, without knowing what we have learned since, every intelligence analysist in the world knew that Oswald could have been a covert intelligence operative and that whatever occurred at Dealey Plaza it was a covert intelligence operation. 

Like Philby and the Cambridge spies in retrospect, Oswald was branded a communist, though like Philby, from being there he realized that the Soviet Union was not the worker's paradise that they had envisioned. 

Although Philby is the primary subject, Spy Among Friends focuses on Philby's best friend and close SIS associate Nicholas Elliott, who was also a close friend and SIS associate of spy fiction author Ian Fleming. While the association between Elliott and Fleming is only hinted at in Spy Among Friends, it was much closer, and I believe was the reason Fleming wrote the 007-James Bond spy novels - to boost the sagging morale of the SIS and create a new identity for it. 

As mentioned in Spy Among Friends, it was not the intention of the MI5 investigation of Philby to enforce the law or prosecute him for his treason, but to uncover the truth. That's the difference between the FBI and CIA - as the FBI looks for evidence of a crime and brings those responsible to justice, while a Counter-Intelligence investigation attempts to uncover the truth. 

And with the assassination of President Kennedy, there will be no justice, but by recognizing the assassination as a covert intelligence operation, and conducting a Counter-Intelligence operation ourselves, we can determine the truth, though justice will never be served.