ELLIS, CHARLES H.• 171Elliott was switched to SIS’s station in Beirut and later promoted
to regional controller for Africa. During one tour of inspection, in
January 1963, Elliott was asked to make a short detour to the Leba-
non to confront his old friendKim Philbywith the latest evidence
of his treachery. Elliott extracted a partial confession from Philby,
but the latter decamped to Moscow before further action could be
taken. According toPeter Wright, Elliott’s final encounter with Phil-
by had been recorded, but dismayedcounterintelligenceexperts dis-
covered when the tape was played in London that the voices of the
two men had been drowned by the sound of Beirut’s anarchic traffic.
Having placed a microphone close to where Philby was intended to
sit, Elliott apparently opened the windows of the room, thus render-
ing the recording valueless.
Elliott eventually retired from SIS in 1968 and joined the board of
Lonhro. His eagerly awaited autobiography,Never Judge a Man by
His Umbrella, omitted many of the exciting episodes of his life, ap-
parently in respect of SIS’s demand for discretion. For a man who
has participated in some of the most thrilling episodes of Britain’s
secret history, Elliott is remarkably reticent to reveal what he knows.ELLIS, CHARLES H. (‘‘DICK’’).Born in Australia and educated at
the universities of Melbourne and Oxford, C. H. Ellis was recruited
into theSecret Intelligence Service(SIS) after his military service,
which was spent in the Near East. His first posting was to Berlin in
October 1923, where he posed as a Britishpassport control officer
while helping to run the local SIS station. Later he switched to Paris
and, with the help of his White Russian wife’s family, started to col-
lect intelligence from the e ́migre ́community. Unfortunately this also
brought him into contact with theAbwehrand, short of cash, he sold
many of SIS’s secrets. In 1939 he moved to London and was placed
in charge of the illicit telephone tap that had been installed on the
German embassy’s external lines. Strangely, this particular source,
once valued as a window in Joachim von Ribbentrop’s activities, was
compromised soon after Ellis had been indoctrinated into it.
After a brief spell in cable censorship in Liverpool, Ellis was
posted to the SIS station in New York where, for the duration of the
war, he was deputy toWilliam Stephenson, the head ofBritish Se-
curity Coordination(BSC). At the conclusion of hostilities, BSC