On July 1st, 1963, the BBC reported that Harold ‘Kim’ Philby had been finally identified as ‘the third man’ of the Cambridge Spy Ring, which also included Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean. Philby had been working for the Soviets during his entire time with the British Foreign Office, which included an assignment at the British Embassy in Washington, liaising with the CIA. Ironically, in the late 1940s, Philby had worked as Britain’s head of Anti-Communist Counterespionage.
Lord Privy Seal, Edward Heath, told the Commons that while working for MI6 in Washington (around 1950-51), Philby had used his inside knowledge to warn Burgess and Mclean that they had been rumbled, allowing them time to escape to the Soviet Union. At that time Philby’s involvement was suspected, although not proven, but he was ousted from the Foreign Office on the orders of then Foreign Secretary, Anthony Eden, and the investigation remained open.
According to BBC reporting in July 1963;
"…British authorities had always suspected there was a "third man"…Mr Philby, often known as Kim, had been working as a journalist in Beirut when he disappeared four months ago…"
Philby subsequently turned up in Moscow, from where he denied that he had tipped off Burgess and Mclean, and said that Maclean had actually been alerted to the fact that the security services were onto him when the M15 agents tailing him got a little carried away and accidently bumped into his car.
Philby became a Russian citizen, a KGB General, and was awarded the Order of Lenin. He died in 1988 and was buried with Soviet military honours.
The Cambridge Spy Ring consisted of a group of 1930s university students who were recruited by Soviet agents. The motivation, according to the BBC, was ideological rather than financial, prompted by the belief that capitalism was corrupt and life beyond the Iron Curtain offered a ‘better model for society’.
“…The Cambridge spy ring was informally led by Harold 'Kim' Philby. He and his friends later moved into jobs in British Intelligence and the Foreign Office where they had access to top secret information. They spent their working lives passing valuable information to the Soviet Union…”
The identities of the fourth and fifth Cambridge Spies were not revealed until much later. Anthony Blunt was named in 1979, and John Cairncross in 1990. Cairncross had tipped off the Soviets in time for them to change their codes before Bletchley Park had cracked them, and it was believed the information he passed on about British and US atomic weapons programmes laid the foundations for the Soviets' nuclear capabilities.
There’s a little more on the Cambridge Spies in this 1999 BBC Report ( a classic piece of vintage internet);
