Kim Philby the double agent

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome back, everybody. Today's story is going to be the
double Agent Kim Philmy. Before we get to Kim Philby,
what I wanted this to promote a little bit is
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(00:21):
then Dog Psychology by doctor Carlos is the book for you.
All right, let's go to the Enigmatic betrayal the Double
life of Kim Philby. The reason I brought this podcast
up is because there's a great show on Prime called
Spies Among Friends, and it was a great story about
Nicholas Elliott and Kim Philby. Some of it is not accurate,

(00:43):
which is what they tell you ahead of time anyway,
but it was still a great spy show. It I
think it's six episodes, but an hour apiece. So Harold Philby,
known to the world as Kim, was born on January first,
nineteen twelve and am Bala, India under the shadow of
the British Raj. His father, the renowned explorer Harry Saint
John Philby, instilled in young Kim a fascination with Asia,

(01:05):
but it was the turbulent inter wars years that forged
his path. Was one of history's most notorious double agents.
Philby was educated at Westminster School and Trinity College, Cambridge.
Philby emerges a brilliant but restless intellect. He was drawn
to left his causes amid the rise of fascism in Europe.
In nineteen thirty three, a formative trip to Vienna exposed
Philby to the brutal suppression of socialists during the Australian

(01:29):
Civil War. The Austrian Civil War, he married a woman
by the name of Litzi Friedman, an Austrian communist firebrand
twenty years is younger, in a hasty union that facilitated
his escape. But that wasn't it. This clandestant marriage, rarely
discussed in biographies, marked the inception of his covert existence.
You see back in London, Philby was recruited by Soviet

(01:50):
agent Arnold Deutsch in a dimly lit rendezvous orchestrated by
his wife Friedman herself. By the nineteen thirties, phil had
infiltrated the British establishment, suggesting fellow Cambridge graduates for Soviet
recruitment does birthing the infamous Cambridge five, spiring his audacious
foray into the Spanish civil wars of freelance journalists for

(02:12):
the time consumed a darker mandate, which was to assassinate
General Franco. Lacking the resolve for direct action, Philby instead
survived the Republican shell explosion in nineteen thirty seven that
obliterated his car and fellow reporters, but it earned him
an unlikely medal from Franco. In an entrede of fascist
in his circles. The near death exp episode, coupled with

(02:35):
a fleeting affair with pro Hitler aristocrat Francis Dobel, revealed
his chameleon like contradictions and character. Philby's assent in six
during World War Two was meteoric and ironic. In nineteen
forty four, he was appointed head of Section nine, the
Anti Communist Division, a position from which he sabotaged operations

(02:56):
in Albania. He dispatched British agents to certain doom, betraying
them to Soviet handlers without remorse a lists or non
narrow escape. In nineteen forty five, when he neutralized the
threat of defector Konstantine Volkoff, who held most secrets that
could have unmasked the ring, but by ensuring Volkov's swift
rendition to Moscow, suspicions mounted. In nineteen fifty one, after

(03:19):
colleagues Guy Burgess and Donald McLain defected, prompted by Philby's
cryptic telegram urging Burgess to move his convertible. Cleared by
a British inquiry and astonishing lapse and vigilance, Philby resumed
duties in Beyroute. Were there he married an American by
the name of Eleanor Brewer amid another affair. Yet in
nineteen sixty three, cornered by mounting evidence, he fled to Moscow,

(03:43):
leaving behind a trail of shattered lives, including five children
from his bigamous union with Eileen Firs. In the Soviet Union,
Philby indulged in heavy drinking and further entanglements, notably an
affair with Melinda McLain that's right, the wife of his
former comrade, and his handlers grew where Yelena Mortshkinskaya, a
Soviet intelligence chief, long suspected of him being a triple

(04:06):
agent loyal to Britain due to his uncanny successes. Philby
died eventually as a disillusion figure in drab Moscow flat
in nineteen eighty eight. His legacy is a testament to
ideological fervor's corrosive toll. And that's the story of Kim Philby,
at least part of it. It's a big story. There's
a lot of books out there that cover much more

(04:27):
than we covered today. I just wanted to give you
a brief story for your week to enjoy, and that's
it for now.