What the Philby files says about the establishment that protected the Cambridge spies

In 1962, a tip-off by a KGB defector resulted in MI5 bugging the flat of John Vassall, an admiralty clerk who had access to sensitive state secrets while based in the British embassy in Moscow. Philby confessed he had betrayed Konstantin Volkov, a KGB officer who tried to defect to the West by offering details of nine Soviet moles inside MI6 and the Foreign Office. open image in gallery A report of Philby's meeting with Nicholas Elliott in Beirut which led to his confession, inside one of the files MI5 has made available to the National Archives in Kew, west London But perhaps the most shocking revelation in the newly released files is that the Queen was not told for almost 10 years that Blunt had confessed to being a Soviet double agent. As Graham Greene, himself a former MI6 agent, wrote in the preface to Philby’s memoirs, My Silent War: “ betrayed his country. In Philby’s own eyes, he was working for a shape of things to come from which his country would benefit.” This view that friendship overcomes patriotism was articulated in even more stark terms by EM Forster, who wrote: “If I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend, I hope I should have the guts to betray my country.” Philby and Blunt – arguably the most successful and effective double agents in espionage history – were fortunate to have such friends in high places.