Harold Adrian Russell " Kim " Philby ( 1 January 1912 – 11 May 1988 ) was a high-ranking member of British intelligence who worked as a double agent before defecting to the Soviet Union.

In 1963, Philby was revealed to be a member of the spy ring now known as the Cambridge Five, the other members of which were Donald Maclean, Guy Burgess, Anthony Blunt, and John Cairncross.

Philby was an Officer of the Order of the British Empire ( OBE ) from 1946 to 1965.

Philby was born at Ambala in the Punjab while it was a province of British India.

His father, St. John Philby, a well-known author, orientalist, and convert to Islam, was a member of the Indian Civil Service and later a civil servant in Mesopotamia and advisor to King Ibn Sa ' ud of Saudi Arabia.

It is possible that it was a Viennese-born friend of Friedmann's in London, Edith Tudor Hart – herself, at this time, a Soviet agent – who first approached Philby about the possibility of working for Soviet intelligence.

" Yuri Modin, one of the KGB controllers of the Cambridge Five, agreed: " Contrary to received opinion, it was neither Guy Burgess nor one of our own agents who lured Philby into the toils of the Soviet espionage apparatus.

" So as to assist in Franco's assassination, Philby was instructed to report on vulnerable points in Franco's security and recommend ways to gain access to him and his staff.

However, such an act was never a real possibility ; upon debriefing Philby in London on 24 May 1937, Maly wrote to the NKVD, " Though devoted and ready to sacrifice himself, does not possess the physical courage and other qualities necessary for this attempt.

In December 1937, during the battle of Teruel, a Republican shell hit just in front of the car in which Philby was travelling with the correspondents Edward J. Neil of the Associated Press, Bradish Johnson of Newsweek, and Ernest Sheepshanks of Reuters.

As a result of this accident, Philby, who was well-liked by the Nationalist forces whose victories he trumpeted, was awarded the Red Cross of Military Merit by Franco on 2 March 1938.

" When Britain declared war on Germany in September 1939, contact with his Soviet controllers was lost and Philby failed to attend meetings.

On his first meeting in her office, Philby was surprised to see his old friend from Cambridge, Guy Burgess, who was already working there.

Burgess was fired for " irreverence ", and Philby was appointed as an instructor in the art of clandestine propaganda at the SOE's training establishment in Beaulieu, Hampshire.

Philby was originally a Section D officer and is so noted in a letter of 24 September 1940 written by Lt. Col. Valentine Vivian, the head of Section V at that time.

By September 1941, Philby was working for Section V of MI6, responsible for offensive counter-intelligence.

In late 1944, Philby was chosen to replace Cowgill as head of Section. Charles Arnold-Baker, an officer of German birth ( born Wolfgang von Blumenthal ) working or Richard Gatty in Belgium and later transferred to the Norwegian Swedish border, voiced suspicions of Philby but was ignored.

Philby was given the task of dealing with Volkov.

Amani Hamdan argues that the attitude of Ibn Saud towards women's education was encouraging, since he expressed his support in a conversation with St John Philby, where he stated “ It is permissible for women to read .”

In November 1917, Philby was sent to the interior of the Arabian peninsula as head of a mission to Ibn Saud.

Philby secretly began to favour Ibn Saud over Sherif Hussein as " King of the Arabs ", a difference with British policy, which was promising support for the Hashemite dynasty in the post-Ottoman world.

On return Philby completed the crossing from Riyadh to Jeddah by the " backdoor " route, thus demonstrating Ibn Saud was in control of the Arabian highlands, whereas Sherif Hussein could not guarantee safe passage.

Philby argued that Ibn Saud was a " democrat " guiding his affairs " by mutual counsel " as laid out in the Quran ( Surah 62: 37 ), in contrast to Lord Curzon's " Hussein policy ".

Philby was able to advise Ibn Saud on how far Saud could go in occupying all Arabia without incurring the wrath of the British government, then the principal power in the Middle East.

By 1925, in the words of Philby, Ibn Saud brought unprecedented order into Arabia.

After Ibn Saud's death in 1953 Philby openly criticized the successor King Saud, saying the royal family's morals were being picked up " in the gutters of the West ".

Philby disclosed classified British intelligence to Ibn Saud ( King of Saudi Arabia ) during wartime ; he secretly helped secure American oil concessions in Saudi Arabia, double-crossing British competitors ; he created economic partnerships, allied against British interests and in favor of Nazi Germany, with the help of Allen Dulles ( later CIA Director ); and Philby worked with Nazi intelligence to sabotage efforts at creating a Jewish homeland.

Through his advisers St. John Philby and Ameen Rihani, he granted substantial authority over Saudi oil fields to American oil companies in 1944, much to the dismay of the British who had invested heavily in the House of Saud's rise to power in hopes of open access to any oil reserves that were to be surveyed.

Philby passed this information to the Soviets, and they were desperate for Maclean to get out, fearful that, in his current state, he would crack immediately under interrogation.

Following the departure of his father and stepbrothers for Saudi Arabia, Philby continued to live alone in Ajaltun, but took a flat in Beirut after beginning an affair with Eleanor, the Seattle-born wife of New York Times correspondent Sam Pope Brewer.

The Wabar craters are impact craters located in Saudi Arabia first brought to the attention of Western scholars by British Arabist, explorer, writer and Colonial Office intelligence officer St. John Philby, who discovered them while searching for the legendary city of Ubar in Arabia in 1932.

Philby was of the view that both British and the Saudi family's interests would be best served by uniting the Arabian peninsula under one government from the Red Sea to the Persian Gulf, with the Saudis supplanting the Hashemites as Islamic " Keepers of the Holy Places " while protecting shipping lanes on the Suez – Aden – Bombay route of the British Empire.

Philby personally mapped on camelback what is now the Saudi – Yemeni border on the Rub ' al Khali.

In May 1932, Standard Oil of California ( SoCal ) sought out Philby in its quest to obtain an oil concession in Saudi Arabia, ultimately signing Philby as a paid advisor to SoCal.

Philby, in turn, recognizing that competition by foreign interests would get a better deal for his friend, the Saudi King, made contact with Dr. George Lees, Chief Geologist of the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, in order to alert him to SoCal's interest in gaining oil exploration rights in Saudi Arabia.

Philby represented Saudi interests.

Later Philby began secret negotiations with Germany and Spain, concerning Saudi Arabia's role in the event of a general European war.

He had a childhood friend in Kim Philby in Arabia and in Eastbourne, where they were both educated but at different prep schools.

Kim Philby, a Soviet double agent working as a liaison officer between the British intelligence service and the United States Central Intelligence Agency, had leaked details of the infiltration plan to Moscow, and the security breach claimed the lives of about 300 infiltrators.

* 1963 – The British Government admits that former diplomat Kim Philby had worked as a Soviet agent.

Of the five, Philby is believed to have been most successful in providing secret information to the Soviet Union.

Nicknamed " Kim " after the young boy in Rudyard Kipling's novel Kim, Philby attended Aldro preparatory school.

Dobb, a Communist sympathiser, also placed Philby in contact with the Comintern underground in Vienna, Austria.

Whilst in Vienna, working to aid refugees from Nazi Germany, Philby met and fell in love with Litzi Friedmann ( born Alice Kohlmann ), a young Austrian Communist of Hungarian Jewish origins.

Philby admired the strength of her political convictions and later recalled that at their first meeting: " frank and direct person, Litzi came out and asked me how much money I had.

Philby and Litzi Friedmann married in February 1933, enabling her to escape to the United Kingdom with Philby two months later.

According to Genrikh Borovik, who worked from Soviet archives, Tudor Hart recommended Litzi and Philby in 1934.

In London, Philby enrolled at the School of Slavonic languages to learn Russian, helped by his father, a friend of the director.

At this point, Philby and Litzi separated.

Philby engaged in a concerted effort to make contact with Germans such as Joachim von Ribbentrop, at that time the German ambassador in London.

In February 1937, Philby travelled to Seville, Spain.

Philby worked at first as a freelance journalist ; from May 1937, he served as a correspondent for the Times of London, reporting from the side of the pro-Franco forces.

His Soviet controller at the time, Theodore Maly, reported in April 1937 to the NKVD that he had personally briefed Philby on the need " to discover the system of guarding Franco and his entourage.