Kim Philby | Biography

Kim Philby was a British diplomat who betrayed his country and the member nations of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) by providing the Soviet Union with a wealth of information that only a high-ranking insider like himself would possess. In the annals of Cold War espionage lore, he remained one of the most infamous of turncoats. It is said that his treacheries about the identities of secret agents caused hundreds of them to disappear forever behind the Iron Curtain.

Philby was born Harold Adrian Russell Philby in British India, on New Year's Day 1912. His father was a member of the colonial civil service as well as a Middle Eastern expert with ties to the Saudi royal family. But as a young man, Philby came to despise his father's fascist political beliefs and headed in a different direction. Philby began college in 1929 at Cambridge University and quickly fell in with a number of like-minded intellectuals there, including two who became lifelong friends, Donald Maclean and Anthony Blunt. The trio were dedicated socialists, not an uncommon political stance in the 1930s among well-heeled young Britons.

After Philby graduated from Cambridge in 1933, he went to Vienna, Austria, where a fascist government was suppressing the leftist movement; Philby became part of a group that helped smuggle socialists and communists out of the country to safety. He met his first wife, Alice "Litzi" Friedman, in this capacity. Philby's activities in Austria attracted the attention of Soviet agents working in the West, and back in London he was recruited to become a spy. There is also speculation that he may have been contacted by the Russians as far back as his Cambridge days. His assignment was to infiltrate British intelligence services, and so Philby needed to create a credible political background for himself. He joined the Anglo-German Fellowship, a fascist organization, and found work as a correspondent for the London Times.

Philby's great ally was fellow spy Guy Burgess, who had also graduated from Cambridge. In 1940, Philby was hired by MI6, the British Secret Intelligence Service, with the help of Burgess, who was already with the organization. Philby was assigned the task of controlling the double agents working for the British--the Russian diplomats in London who wanted to betray their own government, for instance--and he was also supposed to pass false information on to the Soviets. These duties gave him a rich source of information that he then passed on to the Soviets. His major coup as a spy, however, came when MI6 posted him to Washington, D.C. in 1949 to serve as the British liaison to the Central Intelligence Agency. The job gave him access to American spy operations at a time when Cold War tensions ran high. Western spy networks had placed agents in Soviet-controlled Eastern European nations, and Philby told the Soviets the names and identities of these men and women; hundreds of agents were said to have been killed as a result of his betrayals. He also managed to alert Albanian authorities about an imminent invasion by boatloads of Albanian migr s sent to topple the Communist government there.

By 1951, both Philby and Burgess were in Washington, Burgess as a high-placed diplomat at the British embassy. In May of that year, Burgess informed Donald Maclean that the latter was about to be exposed as a spy; at the time, Maclean was with the British Foreign Office in Washington and spying for the Soviets as well. Burgess arranged for Maclean's escape out of the West, and to the surprise of Philby, went with him. Western intelligence officials believed that a "Third Man" was also involved, a diplomat so highly placed that he had knowledge of the imminent arrest of both. Suspicion fell on Philby, and he was accused of high treason by British intelligence authorities in a secret quasi-trial in November 1952. He was cleared due to lack of evidence. Finally, it was announced on October 23, 1955, that Philby was indeed the "Third Man," and he lost his job with MI6.

In 1956, Philby relocated to Beirut, Lebanon, supposedly under cover as a journalist and continued to work secretly for MI6. He also began to spy for the Soviets again but was closely watched by both sides. Philby began to drink heavily because of the stress. In January 1963, a fellow British intelligence operative in Beirut accused him of being a double agent, and Philby disappeared a few days later. Six months later, Soviet authorities announced that Philby had indeed defected, which brought an international uproar. In Moscow, he was debriefed for weeks by Soviet intelligence agents and was able to provide priceless information about the spy networks in the West. He was given a salary by the KGB and lived well in Moscow, though he continued to drink for many years. His 1968 autobiography, My Silent War, became a bestseller in Britain. In 1971, Philby married for the fourth time, a Russian woman, who urged him to give up alcohol. His turncoat career was said to be the inspiration for memorable characters that appear in the spy novels of Graham Greene and John LeCarre. He died in May of 1988, received a hero's funeral, and was buried in a military cemetery near Moscow.