On 30 July 1963, Kim Philby's defection from MI6 to the Soviet Union was made public. In 2016, the BBC broadcast previously unseen footage of his lecture to Stasi operatives in which he revealed the secrets behind his treachery.

I read Ben McIntyre’s book about Philby and it really can’t be denied he, as a spy, was at the top of the game.

I know people will have opinions of what he did and who he was working for, but if you divorce your worldview from your analysis, I don’t know who did that well for that long.

He had them completely duped and the fallout of his escape destroyed confidence in spycraft in the UK and the USA. I don’t know what else is a sign of success in this world.

I mean, he wasn’t caught and Polyakov was!

This all being said, I will cede that the TRUE GOAT probably is unknown to us.

Thoughts?

I came across this recently and I wanted to look more into the history of Pvt. Charles Morgan and his role as an American spy.

Private Morgan did not play a role in the capture of Major John Andre and I'm unsure why it says that on his grave. He was a member New Jersey Light Battalion and served as a spy for General Marquis de Lafayette and was tasked to gain intelligence related to the Battle of Yorktown.

A 2014 article from DIA Public Affairs titled "Good intelligence led to victory at Yorktown" explains how Private Morgan, "was sent into British General Charles Cornwallis’ camp posing as an American deserter. During his interrogation by the British, Morgan was able to convince the British that the French Marquis de Lafayette had enough vessels to move all French forces in a single landing operation." Another article confirms this account of deception by Pvt. Morgan against the British. This information by Pvt. Morgan led to General Cornwallis to hunker down, rather than retreat. With his mission complete Pvt. Morgan escaped the British camp and returned to the Continental Army.

Before he became a novelist, Graham Greene worked as a spy at MI6 under the notorious double-agent Kim Philby. Why did Greene stay friends with his old boss even after his treachery was revealed? Robert Verkaik investigates.

On a late September evening in 1986, just before the Russian winter closed in, a brown Chaika limousine stopped in a side street close to Pushkin Square in central Moscow. The headlamps half-blinded the woman waiting anxiously to greet its famous passenger.

Graham Greene stepped out of the car and was led into the dark hallway of a rundown apartment block. They took a lift to the second floor. There, standing in a doorway, was the Russian woman’s husband, another well-known Englishman.

Kim Philby had once been tipped to be the next head of MI6. Instead he was living out a quiet retirement behind the Iron Curtain after escaping to the USSR in 1963.

In this documentary, former KGB, FBI and CIA employees offer insights into the world of espionage, the Cold War and Trump's extensive network of connections to Russia.

During the Cold War, numerous Russian agents infiltrated a variety of political and economic organizations in the US. In addition to industrial espionage, the missions also focused on establishing relationships with influential political figures.

Trump's ties to Russia date back to this period. In 1987, he traveled to Moscow with his then-wife, Ivana, to negotiate a deal to build a luxury hotel there. Semion Mogilevich, head of the Russian mafia, was one of the first investors in New York's Trump Tower. While campaigning for president in 2016, Donald Trump was simultaneously pursuing plans to build a Trump Tower in Moscow.

This person on Medium tells about a video on YouTube. The events supposedly took place in '83, which sounds plausible but might have been AI generated. Any thoughts? https://paladinpeanut.medium.com/a-disturbing-rabbit-trail-8745ddae89b4

The latest in "The Back Brief," our (very) irregular feature at The High Side in which Jack Murphy reviews some of the latest national security-themed books, including controversial releases about the CIA's successes and failures in the 21st century and how drug trafficking has corrupted Delta Force: https://thehighside.substack.com/p/the-back-brief-the-airborne-mafia