Kim Philby

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Philby, Harold (‘Kim’) (1912–88),member of British Secret Intelligence Service (see MI6) who, from the early 1930s, worked for the Soviet Intelligence Organization NKVD and its successor the KGB. His association with other Soviet agents such as Donald Maclean and Guy Burgess began at Cambridge University, and his friendship with Burgess resulted in his recruitment into SOE in 1940 as a propaganda expert. In September 1941 he transferred to the counter-espionage section of MI6 and in November 1944 was promoted to head its newly reconstituted section for counteracting Soviet communism in the post-war world. This was very damaging to British interests because, by initiating plans to penetrate Soviet intelligence defences, he was able to ensure that these would fail; and he also had the opportunity to betray anti-communist resistance, particularly in the Baltic States, and potential Soviet defectors.

The most destructive phase of his spying career ended in 1951 because of his association with Burgess who defected that year. However, nothing had been conclusively proved against him before his own defection twelve years later. In 1968 he wrote his memoirs, My Silent War, which contains much disinformation. In particular, his charge that the foreign office and MI6 began, as early as 1943, to divert efforts from defeating the Nazis to menacing Stalin is untrue, and he greatly exaggerated the wartime friction between MI5 and MI6.

Robert Cecil

Kim Philby (Harold Adrian Russell Philby), 1912–88, British double agent; son of Harry St. John Bridger Philby, better known as Kim Philby, worked for many years as a Soviet spy within the British intelligence service. He came under suspicion when two of his associates, Donald Maclean and Guy Burgess, defected to the USSR in 1951, but his activities were not fully exposed until he himself defected in 1963. The case later received wide publicity.

Bibliography: See G. Borovik, The Philby Files (1995); A. C. Brown, Treason in the Blood (1995).