Things Gordon Says on Podcasts

for her, I mean, it would be a disaster. I mean, they've got children. They've got, you know, kind of five kids. I mean, imagine if he is a traitor. What's she going to do? I mean, it's a disaster to the family. But she starts to share some of her fears about him, including with Nicholas Elliott, this friend at MI6. And Nicholas Elliott says, no, there's nothing to worry about with Kim. You know, it's rubbish. There's nothing to these suspicions. She's drinking more. Her mental health is suffering again. She's staging these accidents as part of her kind of breakdown. Philby is having an affair with a woman in London. There's big rows at dinner parties. You know, she does seem to be suspecting things. She's got a psychiatrist, and she tells her psychiatrist that she thinks Kim Philby: Interrogated husband, is trying to get her to commit suicide. This psychiatrist then tells MI5, which seems to be a bit of a break of confidence. And at one point, she dramatically calls Nicholas Elliot and she says to Nicholas Elliot, Kim's gone to Russia and he's left a note. And Elliot is like, what? You know, you can understand because Elliot's his backer. He freaks out and he starts to, you know, put out alerts. Elliot then calls the house back and Philby picks up the phone. You know, she's made it all up. I mean, Aileen's story is so sad because she is right about her suspicions. Right. But people don't believe her because she's got these mental health problems and people attribute her suspicions to her mental health problems. And then the fact that her husband is treating her shabbily and no one believes her makes her mental health problems worse. Even worse. So it's a kind of desperate cycle for her as she's kind of descending in these years amidst fear, suspicion and breakdown. Philby himself is under surveillance and he knows that, but of course he knows how MI5 works. He's not in contact with his Soviet handlers really at this point. You know, he's kind of broken off. I

it. And so there's a really interesting fact. It is a kind of masterclass in deception and therefore in acting. In acting, in acting. And it's so good that the husband of Judy Dench, who's an actor himself, and Judy Dench, of course, plays M in the James Bond films. But her husband actually tells young actors to watch this video of Philby because he's like, that is how you do it. That is a performance. I mean, it is that good. I just think, you know, it's fascinating as a study of kind of duplicity, basically.

Yeah. And so, without that penetration of al-Qaeda, the problem is they do not spot that something is brewing inside al-Qaeda, which is going to become 9-11. And so, here we go back to 9-11 and to bin Laden and his role in it, because it's very interesting, isn't it? Because even though this attack will be associated so closely with Osama bin Laden, 9-11 wasn't actually his idea.