Cambridge spy Kim Philby said ‘I would probably have done it all again’, files reveal
Cambridge spy Kim Philby declared after confessing to being a Russian agent that “if he had his whole life to lead again, he would probably have behaved in the same way”, newly-declassified intelligence files reveal.
He owned up to his treachery in January 1963 after being confronted by his oldest friend, and fellow MI6 officer Nicholas Elliott, and it is vividly captured in a transcript of their conversation released to the National Archives in Kew.
But while Philby admitted working for the Soviets since the 1930s, his confession is littered with lies and evasions – including a false claim he had severed contacts with the KGB after the Second World War in 1946.
In fact, he had never stopped working for the KGB and soon after the encounter with his old friend in Beirut, he slipped away on a Russian steamer and eventually reappeared in Moscow.
Philby had been a high-flying MI6 officer tipped as a future chief of the service – C – but was forced to quit after coming under suspicion when his fellow spies, Donald Maclean and Guy Burgess, recruited by the Russians along with Anthony Blunt and John Cairncross while or after studying at the University of Cambridge in the 1930s, fled to Russia in 1951.
In 1956 he was quietly readmitted after MI5 was unable to prove his guilt, and he moved to Beirut under the cover of being the Middle East correspondent for The Observer.
By 1963, fresh evidence had emerged, and C, Sir Dick White, dispatched Elliott to confront him, despite objections from some in MI5 who thought he would be too soft on his friend.
After an inconclusive meeting at an MI6 flat, where Elliott told Philby he had seen new information which convinced him of Philby’s treachery, they met again on 9 January – with MI6 secretly recording them.
Philby immediately declared he was ready to open up, saying: “I think Dick White’s psychology on this occasion has proved good.
“I certainly would not have spoken to anyone else and when you yourself told me you believed the evidence against me, that really did it. Here’s the scoop as it were.
“I have had this particular moment in mind for 28 years almost, that conclusive proof would come out. The choice actually is between suicide and prosecution. This is not in any sense blackmail, but a statement of the alternatives before me.”
In the interview, he admitted betraying Konstantin Volkov, a KGB officer who tried to defect to the West bringing details of traitors operating in British intelligence and the Foreign Office, which would have inevitably led to Philby’s exposure. But as a result of Philby’s intervention, he was abducted by the Russians in Istanbul, drugged, taken to Moscow and executed.
Philby acknowledged he had tipped off Maclean, whom he had recruited in the 1930s, that he was about to be arrested – “the least thing I could do was to get him off the hook” – but said Elliott could give White his word he had had no other contacts with the Russians since 1946.
He claimed his change of heart was due to the advent of Clement Attlee’s Labour government, which had brought in many things he believed in, and that confessing had been a “tremendous relief”.
“I am beginning to understand Catholics and all that,” he said.
“The only major doubt actually I had in my mind is ought I… in 1946 having broken off contact, to spill the whole beans and I very nearly did and I thought to myself, ‘Oh to hell with it, why should I?’”
He described his life in MI6 as a time of “controlled schizophrenia”.
“I really did feel a tremendous loyalty to MI6, I was treated very, very well and I made some really marvellous friends there. But the over-ruling inspiration was the other side,” he said.
As the meeting drew to a close, Elliott recalled a conversation they had once had when Philby said he considered loyalty to friends more important than to one’s country.
He said it was clear from Philby’s comment that in practice “idealism could bitch the friends”. Philby agreed adding that “if he had his whole life to lead again, he would probably have behaved in the same way.”
In a meeting two days later, Philby handed over a six-page typewritten account of his recruitment and work for the Russians.
Elliott quizzed him about suspected Soviet agents, including Cambridge spy Anthony Blunt, but Philby insisted “Blunt did not, and would not, have worked for the Russians” although he had “no hard information”.
The file also includes a letter, intercepted by MI5, which Philby wrote to his wife, Eleanor, following his flight from Beirut when his whereabouts were unknown.
Addressing her as “my beloved”, he said he been “called away at short notice” and had left some Lebanese pounds for her in the “big Latin dictionary” among his father’s books.
“I am sorry I cannot be more explicit at the moment but my plans are somewhat vague. Don’t worry about anything. We will meet again soon. Tell everyone that I am doing a tour of the area,” he wrote.
In a PS, he added: “Please destroy this as soon as your have found the cash.”