Cambridge spy Kim Philby said he would have done it all again after he finally confessed to being a Russian agent, according to newly-declassified intelligence files.
A transcript of the dramatic moment was released to the National Archives today, where his oldest friend and fellow MI6 officer Nicholas Elliott confronted him over his treachery. Philby was a high-flying MI6 officer – who had been tipped as a future chief of the service – but at the same time he was spying for Russia after being recruited at Cambridge University in the 1930s.
He was forced to quit after coming under suspicion when his two fellow Cambridge spies, Donald Maclean and Guy Burgess, fled to Russia in 1951. But in 1956 he was back in the fold after the security service failed to prove his guilt, and was sent to Beirut under the cover of being a Middle East correspondent for the Observer.
Documents reveal that Elliott attempted to get him to confess to being a double agent in 1963 in Lebanon, with MI6 secretly recording their conversation. According to the transcript, Philby declared he was ready to open up, telling Elliot: “I have had this particular moment in mind for 28 years almost, that conclusive proof would come out.”
He described his life in MI6 as a time of “controlled schizophrenia” – and claimed he felt loyal but the “overruling inspiration was the other side”. Elliott recalled a conversation they had once had when Philby said that he always considered loyalty to friends more important than loyalty to country.
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He said that it was clear that “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.”
Two days later, Philby handed over a six-page typewritten account of his recruitment and work for the Russians. Soon after he fled on a Russian steamer ship, and resurfaced in Moscow, where he remained until his death in 1988.
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