Even in Death, The Spy Kim Philby Serves The Kremlin’s Purposes

Andrew Higgins at the New York Times offers a piece on how Russia is honoring the British Cold War spy and traitor Kim Philby.

MOSCOW — Bereft of friends in Western capitals since its 2014 annexation of Crimea, Russia is celebrating the memory of the British K.G.B. spy Kim Philby, a stalwart supporter who stood by it through thick and thin – and spent the last 25 years of his life in Moscow, often drunk and miserable but still loyal.

Mr. Philby, a notorious double-agent who defected to Moscow in 1963 and died there in 1988, was recently honored with a portrait in a Russian state art gallery and is celebrated in a soon-to-be broadcast film on state television.

The adulation has now reached a new level with the opening of an exhibition in Moscow on the life and work of the best-known of the so-called Cambridge Five Soviet spies in Britain. It portrays Mr. Philby as an unwavering Russian patriot, and it includes the first public display of some of the more than 900 secret British documents he passed on to the K.G.B., the Soviet-era spy agency.

The burst of tributes to Mr. Philby reinforces an escalating campaign by the Kremlin to burnish the image of the K.G.B., the former employer of President Vladimir V. Putin and many of his senior officials, and to make loyalty to the state the bedrock of Russia’s resurgence as a great power.

Portraying Russia’s secret police officers as selfless public servants rather than lawless goons, however, has sometimes been an uphill struggle. Their public image took a big hit this week when Russian media reported that a Mercedes car driven by an officer in the Federal Security Service, the successor to the domestic branch of the K.G.B., had rammed a traffic police officer at high speed in central Moscow and killed him.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/01/world/europe/russia-kim-philby-spy-defector.html 

You can also read a review of Ben Macintyre's outstanding book on Kim Philby via the below link:

http://www.pauldavisoncrime.com/2014/03/a-spy-among-friends-kim-philby-and.html 

Kim Philby, British Double Agent And Traitor, Reveals All In Secret Video

Gordon Corera at the BBC News offers a look back at British spy and traitor Kim Philby with a newly discovered video..

A previously unseen video of one of Britain's most infamous spies describing his career as a Soviet agent has been uncovered by the BBC.

The tape is of Kim Philby giving a secret lecture to the Stasi, the East German Intelligence Service, in 1981.

It is the first time the ex-MI6 officer can be seen talking about his life as a spy from his recruitment to his escape.

You can read the rest of the piece and view the video via the below link:

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-35943428

You can also read a review of Ben Macintyre's fine book on Philby via the below link:

http://www.pauldavisoncrime.com/2014/03/a-spy-among-friends-kim-philby-and.html

The Spy Files: How Kim Philby And Anthony Blunt Turned On Their Fellow 'Cambridge' Agents

Tom Whitehead and Tom Morgan at the British newspaper the Telegraph offers a piece on the notorious Cambridge spy ring.

Kim Philby and Anthony Blunt turned on their fellow “Cambridge” agents in a desperate attempt to deflect suspicion from themselves as the Soviet spy ring first began to be exposed, files reveal for the first time.

Philby came under immediate suspicion when his associates Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean suddenly fled to Russia in May 1951 as the net closed in on the latter as a Soviet mole.

Burgess had been sent by Philby to tip Maclean off but was not supposed to go with him to Russia and when he did it turned the spotlight on Philby, a senior MI6 agent.

But within days of their disappearance, and with doubts still lingering over Burgess, Philby wrote to the head of MI6 suggesting he had all “the essential requirements of an espionage agent”.

Similarly, Blunt went to see the deputy director general of MI5 on a fishing exercise to see what they knew of Maclean and also pointed the finger at Burgess.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/11949108/kim-philby-anthony-blunt-cambridge-spies.html 

Note: To learn more about Kim Philby and the Cambridge spy ring I suggest you read Ben Macintyre's A Spy Among Friends: Kim Philby and the Great Betrayal. 

Ghost Of British Master Spy And Traitor Kim Philby Returns To Cambridge

Neil Tweedie at the British newspaper the Telegraph offers a piece on the Cambridge Spies conference.

Give me the child and I’ll give you the man, said the Jesuits. The KGB, on the other hand, believed that indoctrination could wait until a little later in life. But there was no disagreement between the two regarding the best place to recruit spies. From the time of Elizabeth I, when Roman Catholic zealots plotted the Protestant queen’s downfall, to the 1930s, when it incubated the so-called Magnificent Five of Philby, Burgess, Maclean, Blunt and Cairncross, the University of Cambridge has been a breeding ground for treason and espionage.
 

This weekend, that tradition will be celebrated – if that is the right word – at the first-ever conference on the Cambridge Spies to be held in Cambridge. An audience of academics, laymen and intelligence officers will gather at Trinity College, which produced four of the five, to listen to Kim Philby lecture on the art of betrayal.
 

The most notorious traitor produced by Britain in the 20th century will speak from beyond the grave on a tape smuggled out of Russia to the West. In a recorded address to an audience of KGB officers, Philby, a long-term Soviet mole at the heart of the Secret Intelligence Service, MI6, instructs them in how to handle agents in the field. Speaking through an interpreter, the man who sent hundreds of agents to their deaths behind the Iron Curtain, even manages a joke or two.
 

“The most important thing the tape does is to provide a possible answer to the biggest unanswered question about Philby’s exile in Russia,” says Professor Christopher Andrew, Britain’s leading historian on intelligence and a keynote speaker at the conference. “Here is this man, a super hero, who even has his face on Soviet postage stamps, and yet he is denied the supreme honour of Hero of the Soviet Union, an award bestowed on KGB agents of much lesser significance. Why?”

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/features/10786005/Ghost-of-master-spy-Kim-Philby-returns-to-Cambridge.html

Note: Ben Macintyre has a good book on the notorious spy coming out soon in the U.S. called A Spy Among Friends: Kim Philby and the Great Betrayal.