Kim Philby
Kim Philby, byname of Harold Adrian Russell Philby, worked for British intelligence for 30 years and became one of its leading agents. He was also a journalist, writing for well-known papers such as The Times and The Daily Telegraph, and a double-agent for the Soviet Union. Years before Philby became the coordinator of Britain’s anti-Soviet operations, he attended a training school at Beaulieu in Hampshire. Here, as Ben Macintyre writes in “A Spy Among Friends,” Philby specialized in “demolition, wireless communication, and subversion.” He also “gave lectures on propaganda, for which, having been a journalist, he was considered suitably trained.” Kim Philby defected to Moscow in 1963 and lived there until his death in 1988. While Moscow honored Philby with a postage stamp and a portrait in a state art gallery, MI5 and MI6 discussed ways to prevent information about him from being disclosed to the public. In 2015, the National Archives released more than 400 top-secret documents detailing such discussions. In one memo, MI5 says it has covertly obtained an unpublished copy of Philby’s memoir and is debating whether to request that certain information be deleted prior to publication. You can get the documents for free from the National Archives website.