
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, August 18, 1993                   TAG: 9308180081
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: CONCORD, N.H.                                LENGTH: Short

HERBERT PHILBRICK, AUTHOR, FBI INFORMANT, DIES AT 78

Herbert Philbrick, who chronicled his years of spying on the Communist Party for the FBI in the best-seller autobiography "I Led Three Lives," is dead at age 78.

He died Monday at his home in North Hampton.

As a top member of the New England chapter of the Communist Party, Philbrick fed the FBI information on the party's efforts in the United States.

The name of his book was inspired by his separate, parallel lives as a family man working in advertising, a spy and a Communist. It was turned into a popular syndicated television series during the mid-1950s, height of McCarthyism and the Red Scare.

In recent years, Philbrick had served as president of a nonprofit educational organization and lectured occasionally. He also wrote a monthly news bulletin and kept up to date on Communist and totalitarian government actions.

In the 1940s, Philbrick joined the Massachusetts Youth Council, an organization he thought advocated peace. He later recognized the group as a front for Communists and went to the FBI.

At the FBI's request, Philbrick stayed in the organization, underwent indoctrination and special training, and over a decade rose through its ranks.

Philbrick once described himself as "one of the most hardworking Communists in New England."

by CNB