Philby, Kim (Harold Adrian Russell Philby), 1912–88, British double agent; son of Harry St. John Bridger Philby, better known as Kim Philby, worked for many years as a Soviet spy within the British intelligence service. He came under suspicion when two of his associates, Donald Maclean and Guy Burgess, defected to the USSR in 1951, but his activities were not fully exposed until he himself defected in 1963. The case later received wide publicity.

Bibliography

See G. Borovik, The Philby Files (1995); A. C. Brown, Treason in the Blood (1995).

Philby, Kim

orig. Harold Adrian Russell

(born Jan. 1, 1912, Ambala, India—died May 11, 1988, Moscow, Russia, U.S.S.R.) British intelligence officer and Soviet spy. He became a communist at the University of Cambridge in the 1930s, and in 1933 he became a Soviet agent. Recruited into the MI-6 section of British intelligence by Guy Burgess (1940), he became head of counterespionage operations. In 1949 he was sent to Washington, D.C., as top liaison officer between British and U.S. intelligence services. He revealed top-secret information to the Soviets and in 1951 warned Burgess and Donald Maclean (1913–83) that they were under suspicion, enabling them to escape. Philby himself came under suspicion and was dismissed from MI-6 in 1955. He worked as a journalist in Beirut, then in 1963 he fled to the Soviet Union, where he worked for the KGB and rose to the rank of colonel. The most successful Soviet double agent of the Cold War period, he was responsible for the deaths of many Western agents.