Kim Philby: Soviet Spy in the West

recently we told the story of donald mclean one of the most famous spies of the cold war he was a part of the infamous cambridge five aspiring recruited out of cambridge university in the 1930s this week we're going to talk about another famous member of this gang kim philby the men who after being recruited as a soviet spy went off to become well a british spy i'm your host david and this week let's talk about the famous double agent this is the cold war herald kim philby was born on january 1st 1912 in imperial india his father was a famous explorer and so he spent his young years bouncing around south asia and the middle east despite moving around kim who got his nickname from a spy novel of the same name by richard kipling had all the posh upbringing of the upper crust of british society which sets them up for financial success and the occasional miserable personality he went to a fancy prep school westminster school and eventually went on to cambridge on a scholarship it appears philippe's radicalization came from work he did after graduating while working for a group called the world federation for the relief of the victims of german fascism which helped those opponents who had escaped germany and its fascist government this work took philby to vienna where he met and fell for austrian communist leitzy friedman when the fascists took over austria in 1934 he married her and used his british passport to escape to the uk with litzy so he had seen the horrors of fascism firsthand and was literally in love with a communist a brew which would turn many people to communism also keep in mind as we mentioned in our episode on don mcclain many people like philby turned to communism as the great depression and lack of response to fascism from capitalist countries were seen as capitalism itself being a failed project this predisposition to the communist cause brought him to the attention of the soviet union and in 1934 he met with soviet agent arnold deutsch deutsch was recruiting as part of a project to turn the uk's best and most promising into nkvd assets then as they moved up in society they'd have valuable spies so philby began his career as a journalist one paper he worked for was a publication dedicated to trying to rebuild anglo-german friendship this was of course during the nazi regime so questionable choices were being made but as a spy philby attempted to use the position to reach out to higher level german officials to obtain information in 1937 he worked in spain for the times covering the spanish civil war there he worked on a top-secret mission for the soviets to find out about the leader of the spanish fascists francisco franco the mission involved scouting franco's security detail and those people close to him in preparation for an assassination attempt though obviously that plan fell through and franco ruled spain until the 1970s then in 1937 philby was the sole survivor when a shell hit a car he was traveling in with other war correspondents earning him respect and access with the fascists there he covered the war with excellent access until his return to london in 1939 but then a whole new war was about to begin once the second world war broke out philby lost his connection to his soviet handlers early on he covered the war effort on the british expeditionary forces in a period known as the phony war divisively known as the sits creek where not much happened until it did of course evacuated from bologna back to england kim went back to france almost immediately to serve as a war correspondent until just before the french surrendered to germany in june of 1940 when he again returned to england it was after that he was recruited into the british intelligence organization mi6 specifically he joined section d trying to find ways to conduct asymmetric warfare attacking the enemy indirectly not necessarily on the battlefield more or less he became a saboteur the program didn't last long though and soon he found himself teaching sabotage to future agents this new position made his higher-ups in moscow more interested in his ability to sabotage and teach sabotage they decided to re-establish contact asking him for a list of names of british agents going to the ussr to which he replied there weren't any which the nkvd were understandably skeptical of but he did provide advance warning of operation barbarossa the nazi planned to invade the soviet union given the soviet response or black thereof perhaps it's safe to say that they remained skeptical however when another of philby's reports indicated that japan didn't have plans to invade the ussr was later confirmed it did result in stalin moving troops out of the east which very well may have saved the war effort then later in 1941 filby received a promotion into section 5 a counter-intelligence unit of mi6 there he ran a spy network in spain and portugal he was now officially a soviet spy working as a british spy he was a double agent the next year his network expanded to italy and north africa and he became the deputy director of his section we should point out though that things were not going perfect for him there was one situation where an oss agent suspected philby of failing to pass on information regarding the execution of a british agent in germany who also happened to be passing information back to moscow but these suspicions fell on deaf ears on the other end discrepancies in the information coming from philby to moscow compared with other agents started to raise their suspicions but philby's fortunes would turn in 1944 when the uk began to ramp up intelligence work against the soviets in preparation for the end of the war following soviet instructions philby worked his way into the head of the new section now the soviet spy working as a british spy was in charge of british spying on the soviets now you can guess why kim philby was considered such a successful agent what a position to be in from there he managed to do things like catching defecting soviet spies having them recalled to the ussr before they could spill their secrets to the uk likewise he had the power to fight counter-espionage attempts to root out soviet spies like himself in 1946 herald kim philby was awarded the order of the british empire for his work for the country great britain during the war his next career move was to turkey in 1947 to be the head of british intelligence in the country there he tried to make new recruits out of the immigrants from georgia and armenia to soviet republics you'll remember he was largely unsuccessful in this philby also participated in a u.s led program to grow a monarchist opposition to the communists in albania many of these royalists were caught and killed likely due to information leaked by philby in 1949 kim and his family moved to washington dc and philby worked mostly as british intelligence as liaison to the cia here his story intercepts with don mclean's the soviet agent not the folk sinner one agent accidentally used a one-time cipher key a second time and the americans were able to crack the message intercepted as part of their winona intelligence gathering project from that they discovered that someone in the british embassy in washington was an agent codenamed homer philby figured out quickly this was don mclean who regularly traveled to new york to transfer secret documents to the soviets he was now part of the team trying to uncover who homer was while making sure mclean never got caught these winona intercepts incidentally also led to the arrest of julius and ethel rosenberg who we talked about earlier on an episode of the cold war it also ramped up spy hunting fever in washington as it was clear information was still leaking from the british embassy from here philby's position in washington dc began to deteriorate a new soviet spy came to washington a man named guy burgess burgess is another member of the cambridge five and we will be talking more about him in a future video however know that burgess was the driver of the car don mclean used to escape the uk and to defect the ussr but anyways after his arrival in washington dc burgess lived in philby's home for a while and the two were known associates largely because burgess was reckless and philby did not trust to leave him alone for fear of what burgess could accidentally let slip however knowing that counterintelligence was closing in on don mclean burgess arranged to get himself back to london and warren mclean in person after being messaged by philby still in washington knowing he was under severe scrutiny as a possible spy himself philby then resigned from mi6 in 1951 even outside of the service mi6 continued to question and interrogate philby on his connections to burgess he tried to return to journalism for a few years but found life difficult as he had no access to top level sources due to continued official suspicion eventually by 1955 he was no longer considered a potential soviet spy cleared publicly by then foreign minister howard macmillan he began to return to life as an ordinary journalist working as a middle east correspondent in lebanon though this job was little more than a cover after exoneration he resumed work for mi6 but it wouldn't last long as he traveled around the middle east doing journalism a man named anatoly glitzen a high-ranking official in the kgb defected to the u.s he confirmed the suspicions of some people in the cia that philby was indeed working for the ussr on assignment to get a confession out of him philby's friend nicholas elliott confronted him over everything philby confirmed elliot that he was working for the soviets but refused to give a confession in writing in january of 1963 kim vanished in the night aboard a soviet freighter heading to ukraine seven months later it was confirmed that philby had defected to moscow the soviets gave him asylum and citizenship but by then the cat was out of the bag and kim philby's spy career was at an end in the ussr he spent years under house arrest where he wrote his memoirs in 1988 he died of a heart attack and received numerous medals and a fancy funeral by the soviet government the soviets even put him on a stamp in 1990 this is but the life of one admittedly prolific spy the cold war was full of spies from all countries trying to get into the rooms where it happened and transmit information as you can begin to see espionage was rarely a james bond-esque action adventure romp but rather a drawn out long game of trying to remain hidden while in plain sight espionage is a topic we will of course discuss further as we talk about the rest of the cambridge 5 and more in future episodes we hope you've enjoyed today's episode and to make sure you don't miss those future episodes please make sure you're subscribed to our channel and have subverted the bell button we can be reached via email at the cold war channel gmail.com we're also active on facebook and instagram 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Channel: The Cold War

Views: 97,556

Keywords: Tito, Stalin, Cold War, josip broz tito, soviet union, stalin documentary, kings and generals, operation unthinkable, the cold war, soviet, world war II, USSR, US, America, capitalism, west, east, us, ussr, un, reconstruction, pows, hungary, china, vietnam, marshal plan, stalin, france, nato, united states, denazification, uk, malenkov, khrushchev, dulles, eisenhower, Miles Copeland, Egypt, Allen Dulles, Kermit Roosevelt, suez crisis, warsaw pact, east germany, maclean, cambridge five, spy, double agent

Id: mB_wg1YoheI

Length: 12min 56sec (776 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 08 2020