MI6 Had 'Blind Faith' In Kim Philby For Years After Soviet Agent Fears

Peter Day and Neil Tweedie at the British newspaper the Telegraph offer a piece on how British intelligence had faith in British intelligence officer Kim Philby, despite the evidence that he was a traitor and a Soviet spy.

MI6 continued actively to protest the innocence of Kim Philby for years after he helped fellow Soviet agents Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean to flee to Russia, according to a newly released Downing Street file. 
 

The head of the Secret Intelligence Service said it would be “un-English” to brand Philby a traitor on suspicion alone, pointing out that the master-spy had helped unmask other Soviet agents, including Maclean.
 

“It is entirely contrary to the English tradition for a man to have to prove his innocence even when the prosecution is in possession of hard facts,” argued Major-General Sir John Sinclair, chief of the SIS in the mid-1950s. “In a case where the prosecution has nothing but suspicion to go upon there is even less reason for him, even if he were able to do so, to prove his innocence.”
 

The blind faith placed in Philby by his old service despite compelling evidence of his treachery is disclosed in documents prepared in 1963 for Harold Macmillan, the prime minister, after Philby’s defection to the Soviet Union from Beirut in January of that year. Sinclair’s defence, dating from 1955, is contained in the previously Top Secret file.     

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

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/defence/10552357/MI6-had-blind-faith-in-Kim-Philby-for-years-after-Soviet-agent-fears.html 

A Look Back At The British Traitor And Spy Kim Philby

Richard Norton-Taylor and Nick Hopkins at the British newspaper the Guardian offera piece on British traitor and spy Kim Philby.

We may think there is nothing whatsoever new to say about the Cambridge spy ring, that exotic group of five (mainly) elitist, public school-educated, individuals who spied for the Soviet Union, or Communism, as they would have preferred.

We may be wrong .

But a BBC 4 documentary, Storyville: The Spy Who Went Into the Cold – Kim Philby, Soviet Super Spy, to be broadcast on Monday,18 November, sheds some new light, and contains a new mystery, about the defection of the "Third Man", Kim Philby.

Philby was protected by former colleagues in MI6 up to the moment he jumped aboard a Soviet freighter in Beirut in January 1963.

Philby was suspected by MI5 and the Americans as being the Third Man who tipped off Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean, two other members of the Cambridge spy ring, that they were about to questioned.

The two fled to France and ended up in Moscow in 1961. Philby was publicly cleared of being the Third Man, partly because of lack of hard evidence, partly because of his friends in MI6.

However, suspicions, notably within MI5 and America's CIA and FBI, grew to the extent that even his friends in MI6 could no longer withstand them

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

http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/defence-and-security-blog/2013/nov/14/mi6-mi5

How Kim Philby Infilrated MI6, With A Lot Of Help From His Friends

Richard Norton-Taylor and the Nick Hopkins at the British newspaper the Guardian offer a look at a new book on British traitor and spy Kim Philby.

So much has been written about Kim Philby and the Cambridge spy ring that people may be forgiven for thinking that's enough. They would be wrong.

There is so much, ranging from the exotic to the banal, which makes the story of the Cambridge spy ring of such perennial interest.

A new account shows how Kim Philby, the "third man" of the Ring of Five, came, partly by sheer luck, to head the counter intelligence branch of MI6 and ended up being responsible for co-ordinating British secret operations in the Soviet Union.

As Edward Harrison, author of The Young Kim Philby, published on 1 October by the University of Exeter Press, points out, this Soviet agent was at the heart of Britain's secret cold war.

How he got there is described in detail, some of it fresh, most of it very telling. It tells you as much as about the British establishment, as about Philby personally.

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

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/defence-and-security-blog/2012/sep/27/espionage-mi6