Cambridge spy Kim Philby said his choice was “between suicide and prosecution” in a confession shortly before the high-ranking M16 double agent fled on a Russian steamer in 1963, according to previously secret documents.
Philby, the “third man” in the Cambridge Five ring, was confronted by his friend, the MI6 officer Nicholas Elliott, who had been sent by the British security services to persuade Philby to confess.
In a transcript of their conversation, released in full to the National Archives, Elliott told Philby that he had seen information that convinced him of his friend’s treachery
“I’ve had this particular moment in mind for 28 years almost, that conclusive proof would come out,” said Philby, in the recorded conversation in Beirut where he was working for the Observer.
“The choice actually is between suicide and prosecution. This is not in any sense blackmail, but a statement of the alternatives before me.”
Philby made a typed partial confession, but fled days later on 23 January 1963 to Moscow, despite being offered immunity from prosecution. While he told Elliott over several conversations “he could now tell us everything he knew within the dictates of his conscience”, his confession was littered with lies.
He also admitted “if he had his whole life to lead again, he would probably have behaved in the same way”.
Philby’s departure was so rapid, he forgot his reading glasses. A letter to his “beloved” wife, Eleanor, written after his defection and intercepted by MI5, 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 postscript, he added: “Please destroy this as soon as you have found the cash.”
For years, Philby had been a high-flying MI6 officer only to be forced to resign after coming under suspicion when his two fellow Cambridge spies, Donald Maclean and Guy Burgess, fled to Russia in 1951. But MI5 never had enough evidence to prosecute.
Philby’s Russian handlers had encouraged him to enter journalism, first covering the Franco-Spain war, where he latterly worked for the Times, then, after his resignation from the diplomatic service, as the Middle East correspondent for the Observer.
His instructions were to send letters, “with every fifth word” to contain the hidden message, and later to write in secret ink, he said.
His confession included the admission he betrayed Konstantin Volkov – a KGB officer who tried to defect to the west, bringing with him details of traitors operating in British intelligence and the Foreign Office, which would have inevitably led to Philby’s exposure. As a result Volkov was abducted by the Russians in Istanbul, drugged, taken back to Moscow and executed.
Philby acknowledged that he had also tipped off Maclean, whom he had recruited in the 1930s. “The least thing I could do was to get him off the hook,” he said. But he insisted, falsely he’d had no contact with the Russians since 1946.
“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 said.
