197. Kim Philby: Under Threat from the FBI (Ep 2)
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Who was Kim Philby and what was his role in Washington?
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Kim Philby is MI6's man in Washington, and he's also working for the Soviet KGB. But he's about to discover that investigations by Western intelligence could lead directly to his demise. Well, welcome to the rest is classified. I'm David McCloskey. And I'm Gordon Carrera. And Gordon, last time we left off with Kim Philby working for MI6 in Washington as the head of station. He's working directly with his CIA counterparts. He's also compromising all manner of covert action operations, in particular, covert action operations that are being undertaken by the CIA and MI6 into Eastern Europe, places like Albania. where exile networks that are being smuggled in, Philby is compromising to his Soviet handlers.
He's also got this very Chaotic personal life going on at home, drinking heavily, of course, partying. He's got his friend Guy Burgess, an unwelcome house guest who has arrived in Washington and is living in Kim Philby's basement. Guy Burgess, of course, also working for the Soviet KGB. And Kim Philby is beginning to realize that there are investigations ongoing into penetration. demonstrations of the British Foreign Office in particular, and these are investigations that could lead directly to him. But first, a word from our sponsors at HP. This episode is brought to you by HP. In intelligence, you quickly learn that you are only as strong as the network around you. It's rarely a single major event that undermines an operation.
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So, Gordon, these investigations, what what are they and how are they beginning to alarm
Philby? Well, if you remember when he was on his way out to Washington, September nineteen forty nine, at MI six headquarters, he's briefed about a very, very secret operation to look for leaks to the Russians during the war. And these investigations are going to be continuing in the background as he arrives in Washington, but picking up pace. And he's going to be given a pretty unique and special insight into it because it's one of the deepest secrets that the West have. And it's something called Venona. And it's so secret that the existence of Venona was only declassified in nineteen ninety-five. That's why. So that's fifty years basically after it starts. And actually, as for reasons we'll come to, many in the CIA and even the president of the United States, President Trum at the time, are not told about Venona because of its sensitivity.
Why would the president?
Need to
know, right? Why would the president need to know? So what is it? During the war, there were telegrams sent by Soviet spies back to Moscow, and they'd been intercepted. Now they were encrypted, they were in code, and the Soviets used something called one-time pads to encode the messages, which is supposed to be unbreakable.
And I I will note that I actually, as we were preparing this, went deep into how one time pads work and in and wrote down a bunch of notes and helpful examples of how they work. And Gordon said Too much. I think this is too much. So we will include some of that detail in our newsletter.
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Chapters
4 chapters
1
Who was Kim Philby and what was his role in Washington?
0:03–13:21
2
What was the Venona project and how did it expose Soviet spies?
13:21–23:32
3
How did the Venona decrypts lead to suspicion of Donald McLean?
23:32–38:09
4
Why was Donald McLean under intense pressure and surveillance?
38:09–53:55
Speakers
2 identifiedMore from The Rest Is Classified
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