St. John Philby

Harry St. John Bridger Philby CIE (April 3, 1885 – September 30, 1960), also known as Jack Philby, also Sheikh Abdullah, was an Arabist, explorer, writer, and British colonial office intelligence operative. He was born at St. John's, Badulla, Ceylon and educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he studied oriental languages under E. G. Browne and was a friend and classmate of Jawaharlal Nehru, later prime Minister of India. Philby's son Kim Philby became famous for being a British intelligence agent who was a double agent for the Soviet Union.

Philby Plan

At a February 1939 meeting in London with Ben-Gurion and Weizman, Philby offered substantial Jewish immigration to Palestine if they would support Ibn Saud's son and eventual successor, Faisal, as King of Palestine. Months later, accompanied by Saudi foreign affairs official Fuad Bey Hamza, Philby proposed to Weizmann and Moshe Shertok (later Sharett) that they pay Ibn Saud £20 million to be used to resettle Palestinian Arabs. Weizman said he would discuss the plan with President Roosevelt. Kim Philby also was present at this meeting.

Related Topics:
Faisal - Moshe Shertok - President Roosevelt

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According to Philby the Zionist leadership accepted the "Philby Plan" in early October. However because of the kingdom's special status as home of the Islamic holy places, the plan was denied when Philby leaked it. The matter was not taken up again for another three years.

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Meanwhile Philby ran for election to the House of Commons for the British People's Party declaring, "no cause whatever is worth the spilling of human blood" and "protection of the small man against big business". He lost and soon thereafter the war began. Because of his activities he was arrested when he travelled to Bombay on 3 August 1940 under Defence Regulation 18B, and was taken to England.

Related Topics:
House of Commons - British People's Party - Bombay - 3 August - 1940 - Defence Regulation 18B

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Friends such as John Maynard Keynes intervened, and after seven months he was released without prosecution. It is not known precisely who arranged for release. Shortly thereafter Jack Philby recommended his son Kim to Valentine "Vee Vee" Vivian, MI6 deputy chief, who recruited him into the British secret service.

Related Topics:
John Maynard Keynes - MI6

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When Harold Hoskins of the U.S State Department visited Ibn Saud in August 1943, he asked if the king would be willing to have an intermediary meet with Chaim Weizmann. In anger Ibn Saud responded he was insulted by the suggestion that he could be bribed for £20 million to accept resettlement of Arabs from Palestine. Hoskins reports the king said Weizmann told him the promise of payment would be "guaranteed by President Roosevelt." A month later Weizmann, in a letter to Sumner Welles wrote: "It is conceived on big lines, large enough to satisfy the legitimate aspirations of both Arabs and Jews, and the strategic and economic interests of the United States; . . . properly managed, Mr. Philby's scheme offers an approach which should not be abandoned."

Related Topics:
U.S State Department - Sumner Welles

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When the war ended he returned to Arabia. In 1945 at the age of sixty he purchased his second wife, a 16-year-old girl, from the slave market at Taif, about forty miles south of Mecca. He continued work with ARAMCO. Talk in the king's circle was that Philby was an agent of British Secret service, a Zionist spy, and a communist. Philby began to provoke a series of spectacular arguments with the king. He claimed the disagreements were caused by the corruption and decadence that oil money brought the kingdom.

Related Topics:
Slave - Taif - Mecca - Communist

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ARAMCO learned from Philby a great deal about Arabia framed in a manner to strike a sympathetic response in the American people. ARAMCO and the CIA at the time were a revolving door for the same personnel. There were no other sources of information about Saudi Arabia available to the American public. It was portrayed as "a mirror image of the Old West, a wide, unfenced land where nature was unsubdued, religion was simple and fundamental, and the law of the gun prevailed—the desert of Arabia, as America's last frontier." Little was said of the fanatical nature of Wahhabism or its dark and bloody excesses.

Related Topics:
American people - CIA - Wahhabism

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