Thursday, October 16, 2014

Kim Philby, OBE; Konstantin Volkov RIP


Marx must be right; there are clearly unseen forces at work that advance the cause of some cultures, even the staggeringly stupid.
 
Konstantin Volkov was Vice Consul for the Soviet Union In Istanbul when, in 1945, he appeared at the British Consulate and said he wanted to defect. He also confided that he was the head of the local NKVD, the secret police agency that was the forerunner of the KGB. He wanted asylum and money and offered in return astonishing information in its importance and volume: He offered them the names of 314 Soviet agents in Turkey, 250 in Britain and three high level British  spies for the Soviets, two in the Foreign office and one high in the British Counter Intelligence Service. The latter agent was certainly Kim Philby, one of the most damaging double agents in history. Volkov gave them several weeks to decide.
The information went to Menzies, head of the SIS (MI-6) who forwarded it to the head of the Russian Section,......Kim Philby!
Volkov, of course, vanished. He was last seen covered in bandages being put on a plane for Moscow. Philby continued his work as a double agent until 1967, when he defected.

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