from Hacker News

Kim Philby, Lecturing in East Berlin, Bragged of How Easy It Was to Fool MI6

by samsgro on 4/4/16, 9:30 PM with 67 comments

  • by hackuser on 4/5/16, 3:21 AM

    Before you take Philby's comments at face value, a few things to note:

    1) Philby gave this speech under the auspices of the Soviet Union, a totalitarian state where communication was heavily controlled and censored, with art required to be politically acceptable, with neighbors spying on each other and family members reporting disloyal statements to secret police, and with copy and fax machines requiring licenses (IIRC); where saying the wrong thing could get you killed, imprisoned in a mental hospital or sent to Siberia; and where propaganda was omnipresent. He said no more than what was allowed and likely, I think, what he was told to say.

    2) In the recording the audio doesn't match the video. The BBC attributes that to equipment issues; but maybe his speech was edited or dubbed. The Soviets seemed to do things like that regularly; for example, leaders who later became unpopular with the regime were reputedly removed from historical photos with an 'airbrush' (this was before digital imagery) and from all other historical records.

    3) At least one aspect of his speech sounds clearly like Soviet propaganda: He attributes a large part of his success to being in the 'governing class' in England; that is, Philby is blaming UK's the class system for their intelligence incompetence. A foundation of Soviet ideology was that they were a classless system, superior to the West where the masses were oppressed by the elite. It would be surprising to me if Philby's comments were a coincidence.

  • by contingencies on 4/5/16, 2:35 AM

    These days of course you would be confronted with a lot more that would make it hard to simply deny things:

    (a) Absolute records of your physical movements. (Cellphone, car)

    (b) Absolute records of your communications and social network. (Cellphone, email/social networks)

    (c) Video evidence of activity in almost any semi-formal place of work, carpark, ATM, shop, or similar. (Physical surveillance ubiquity)

    (d) Probable audio recording of your conversations via hacked cellphone.

  • by deepnet on 4/5/16, 2:23 AM

    "Maybe the real state secret is that spies aren't very good at their jobs and don't know much about the world."

    Adam Curtis hilariously documents the 20th centuries near 100% failure rate of the British Secret Services (except when they manufactured a plot).

    And how they were created to hunt fictional spies dreamed up by paranoid tabloid readers obsessed with novels about German spies.

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/entries/3662a707-0af9-...

  • by pinaceae on 4/5/16, 1:38 AM

    well, for anyone who read le carré philby here confirms one of the key failings of british intelligence services - the utter disbelief that anyone from their top-universities/upper echelons could ever be a communist.

    tinker tailor soldier spy is basically all about that. they hired students who had openly joined leftist groups and never really followed up on that.

  • by cup on 4/5/16, 2:32 AM

    Strange how the author slips "said Mr. Philby, whose treachery was responsible for the deaths of hundreds" casually into the final paragraph.

  • by yitchelle on 4/5/16, 8:02 AM

    I read this book a few months back, and was amazed to how easy it was get to the top secret information. Good information as it was easy to read and to understand.

    http://www.amazon.com/Spy-Among-Friends-Philby-Betrayal/dp/0...

  • by draw_down on 4/5/16, 1:40 AM

    Yeah, it's easy, just be a wellborn member of British aristocracy.

  • by signa11 on 4/5/16, 6:14 AM

    i remember reading an excellent book called "spycatcher" which details a first-hand account of peter-wright (employed by mi5) exposing kgb spies in the highest echelon of mi5.

  • by nxzero on 4/5/16, 2:22 AM

    Always thought the first rule was never lie, not deny, deny, deny. Watch interviews with former heads of the CIA when asked a question they don't want to answer to see what I mean.

  • by AnimalMuppet on 4/5/16, 4:08 PM

    A quote from C. S. Lewis seems apropos: "We laugh at honor, and are shocked to find traitors in our midst."

  • by DanBC on 4/5/16, 8:34 AM

    Here's the BBC Radio programme about the tape: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b076v1zq

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00lfylv

    The BBC have had many interesting programmes about Philby and the Cambridge spies. It's really hard to search the BBC website to find these programmes, and many of them are no longer available to listen to. It's odd that the BBC missed the opportunity to have a meta page of all the Philby coverage, linking to the programmes. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0076y5w or this one

  • by petecooper on 4/5/16, 10:51 AM