If you have ever been addressed by a communist, then you may have been referred to as comrade. It’s an awkward greeting, as I for one am completely freaked out by how someone can align themselves to one ideology, but that’s how the world has used language to divide us.

So it’s no wonder that a defected British spy would use such rhetoric to prove his alliance with the other side – like Kim Philby, who gave a secret lecture to the Stasi, the East German Intelligence Service, in 1981 explaining his career as a Soviet agent.

The video has been uncovered by the BBC, and is the first time the ex-M16 officer can be seen talking about his life as a spy from his recruitment to his escape.

An hour long address, it was unearthed in the official archives of the Stasi in Berlin. Philby boasts about being 30 years in the enemy camp, how he was first drawn to communism at Cambridge and how he was recruited to the Soviet intelligence services, later know as the KGB, after he returned from working with activists in Austria.

“It was made perfectly clear to me that the best target in the eyes of the Centre in Moscow would be the British Secret Service.”

Philby details how he spent years trying to work his way in – turning to journalism, working for The Times newspaper, covering the Spanish Civil War, building up contacts in the establishment and then as war came dropping hints about his desire to work for government.

At last, he was interviewed and accepted in to the inner sanctum of the British state – the Secret Intelligence Service – SIS (or as it is popularly known MI6).

In one of the most remarkable sections of the talk, Philby then reveals just how easy it was to steal secrets from Britain’s secret service.

If you’re not up for watching the whole video, check out the full account HERE.

[source: bbc]