KIM PHILBY, DOUBLE AGENT

“The privately educated Englishman is the greatest dissembler on earth"...

Kim Philby, Britiah intelligence, hoodwinked his colleagues, family, and friend for decades, then bailed for Russia.

I just finished, in two long sittings, A Spy Among Friends: Kim Philby and the Great Betrayal (2015), by Ben Mcintyre. With Good Friday just around the corner, comparisons to Judas Iscariot seem apt.

Philby (1912-1988) was the notorious M16 agent who turned out also to be working for the KGB. He fooled his closest friends, and two wives, for decades and as the net closed in, defected for Russia.

Apparently as a college student he’d pledged himself to Communism. He never again spoke of his beliefs to anyone. (Just contemplat that for a moment).

The Stalinist purges affected his allegiance not one whit, nor did the fact that he betrayed and sent to their deaths scores of people whose secrets he had charmed out of them over drinks and cigars; some for whom he laid actual traps.