Kim Philby and the woman who made him happy

"Historians still argue why [ Kim] Philby, a British aristocrat and a graduate of the Cambridge University, suddenly chose to work for Soviet intelligence services. Was he a man of no principles who was ready to work for anyone who would pay him well – or did he really believe in the ideas of communism? Well, it looks like the second answer is closer to the truth, for it is known that Philby had a fancy for Marxism when he was a student.

[...] in 1933, Kim Philby started to work for Soviet intelligence services. It is by an order of the Soviet intelligence services that he integrated into the UK secret service in 1940.

Famous writer Graham Greene, known for his pro-Soviet sympathies, who himself used to work for the UK intelligence for some time, said that when Kim Philby was at the top of his career, practically every step and every plan of Western secret services immediately became known to the Soviet services.

“For the last 25 years of his life, Kim Philby lived in Moscow – but, at first, his life here was not simple. The Soviet authorities and Philby himself were afraid that he might be assassinated – and he had to live a very secluded life, until a fair woman appeared"...

More: http://english.ruvr.ru/2011/12/07/61745969.html

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The Tunnel-digging Spy

Peter Lunn, "as a gentleman spy in the early Cold War years, he pioneered the idea of digging tunnels under Soviet-controlled zones to facilitate telephone tapping

After the war Lunn was posted as head of the MI6 station in the divided city of Vienna, with the official title of Second Secretary at the British embassy. Though he was once described by the espionage writer Richard CS Trahair as having a “slight build and blue eyes” and speaking “in a soft voice with a lisp”, every inch the gentleman spy, he also had a razor-sharp mind.

In 1948 Graham Greene, who had also worked for SIS, went to Vienna to research material for the screenplay of The Third Man (1949). He discovered the existence of a force policing a vast network of sewers under the city which allowed agents to pass from one zone of occupation to another.

Lunn too was interested in the city’s subterranean world. According to David Stafford, in his book Spies Beneath Berlin, Lunn realised that “cables linking the Red Army to Soviet units in Austria ran through the British and French sectors [of Vienna]”. If he could tap these communications, “he would be the first to know if Stalin gave the order to invade Western Europe”.

Operation Conflict, as Lunn’s eavesdropping scheme was known, yielded a wealth of intelligence about Soviet operations in Eastern Europe between 1948 and 1951."

More: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/military-obituaries/special-forces-obituaries/8939098/Peter-Lunn.html

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What does it mean to serve "your country"?

Too many people had written reminiscences lately of the Secret Service. Somebody mentioned the Official Secrets Act. Of course they turned on me, but I wasn't going to be cross-examined by that gang. So I spoke out.

I told them even if I'd known I wouldn't have stopped[...] I said you were working for something important, not for someone's notion of a global war that may never happen. That fool dressed up as a Colonel said something about "your country". I said, "What do you mean by his country? A flag someone invented two hundred years ago? The Bench of Bishops arguing about divorce and the House of Commons shouting Ya at each other across the floor? Or do you mean the T. U. C. and British Railways and the Co-op?"

They tried to interrupt and I said, "Oh, I forgot. There's something greater than one's country, isn't there? You taught us that with your League of Nations and your Atlantic Pact, NATO and UNO and SEATO. But they don't mean any more to most of us than all the other letters, U. S. A. and U. S. S. R. And we don't believe you any more when you say you want peace and justice and freedom. What kind of freedom? You want your careers."

A country is more a family than a Parliamentary system.

Graham Greene, Our Man in Havana.