Kim Philby: The Unknown Story of the KGB's Master Spy
Tim Milne
Language: English
Pages: 352
ISBN: 1849546991
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Kim Philby, the so-called Third Man in the Cambridge spy ring, was one of the Cold War's most infamous traitors. He was a Soviet spy at the heart of British intelligence, joining Britain's secret service, MI6, during the war, rising to become head of the section tasked with rooting out Russian spies and then head of liaison with the CIA. Philby betrayed hundreds of British and US agents to the Russians and compromised numerous operations inside the Soviet Union.
Protected by friends within MI6 who could not believe the service's rising star was a traitor, he was eventually dismissed in 1951, but continued to work for the service surreptitiously until his defection in 1963. His admission of guilt caused profound embarrassment to the British government of the day and its intelligence service, from which neither fully recovered.
Tim Milne, Philby's close friend since childhood and recruited by him into MI6 to be his deputy, has left us a memoir that provides the final and most authoritative word on the enduring and fascinating story of Kim Philby the legendary Soviet master spy. It is a riveting read, with new detail on Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean, two other members of the Cambridge spy ring, and on Konstantin Volkov, the would-be KGB defector who was betrayed by Philby, one of several hundred people who died as a direct result of Philby's treachery.
Tim Milne retired from SIS in October 1968 and never spoke publicly of his friendship with Kim Philby.
Philby, including the chief character’s own account.1 Much of the story has been laid bare. But from my long friendship with him I believed that, although I had no startling revelations to make, I could fill a few gaps in the published record and perhaps correct one or two misconceptions, as I saw them, and having now retired from government service I would like to contribute my recollections. This is not a researched book. I have no documents or letters, and no access to unpublished material.
time, with occasional passages of hindsight. The period 1941–45 and the Iberian subsection of Section V of the Secret Service, in which he and I worked, are treated in some detail. I have freely discussed wartime intelligence matters, as have many others; but post-war intelligence, for the most part, is mentioned only in passing. Chapter 12, without pretending to be a deep analysis of Kim Philby, man and spy, offers some thoughts on his motives and personality. I do not agree with several
the idea of going back to Glenalmond and telephoning, in the hope that this might wake Felix. Then I faced what I had known all along: that I was only trying to push on to someone else a judgement which in the last resort I was in the best position to make. All that Felix – or Kim – could have said was, ‘Well, you’re supposed to be the expert; what do you think?’ I drove back to Glenalmond and signalled Gibraltar to let the ship go. All through the next day I held my breath, but there was no
GC&CS, but for the first week or two, as so often with newly broken cyphers, the decoded messages reached us in random order and with many gaps. Evidently something big was being planned, involving a specialist commando under Otto Skorzeny.2 But one or two vital earlier messages were missing, and it was not until after Skorzeny and his men had landed on the Gran Sasso and ‘rescued’ Mussolini that Bletchley manage to unbutton them. Had they broken the SD cypher a few days earlier, or had Skorzeny
just as well it all turned out to be a false alarm. A week later when the real thing began, we caught the ferry like any commuter. By that time Guy had gone. We never saw him again. It had not been a good summer for Kim. For the first time since I had known him things had begun to get him down. He was as hospitable and generous as ever, but often rather morose, more easily given to irritation, even anger. Once I came back from the hospital at six in the evening to find him almost incoherently