On this day in 1963, the British government finally admitted the unthinkable. Harold Adrian Russell Philby, known to everyone as Kim, one of the most senior officers in British intelligence, had been a Soviet agent the entire time. Philby was the model of the British establishment. Educated at Cambridge, charming and well connected, he joined MI6 and rose quickly through its ranks, eventually serving as the service's liaison with the CIA and FBI in Washington. He was so trusted, and so capable, that some believed he was destined to become the head of British intelligence one day. But he had been secretly recruited by Soviet intelligence back in 1934, while still a young man at university, and for three decades he passed tens of thousands of classified documents to Moscow. His warnings allowed other Soviet spies to escape, and his betrayals are believed to have cost many agents their lives. Suspicion first fell on him in 1951, after two of his fellow Cambridge spies fled to Moscow. Philby was interrogated and forced out of MI6, but never charged. In 1955, when he was publicly named in the press as the so-called Third Man in the spy ring, he did something audacious. He held a news conference in his mother's London flat, looked the cameras in the eye, and calmly denied everything. He was so convincing that he was publicly cleared, and even quietly resumed working for British intelligence as a journalist in Beirut. It could not last. In 1963, fresh evidence finally proved his guilt. His old friend and colleague Nicholas Elliott was sent to Beirut to confront him. Philby admitted just enough to seem cooperative, then bought himself time. One January night he vanished from the city, boarding a Soviet freighter and leaving behind a note to his wife that read only that he had been called away at short notice. Months later he surfaced in Moscow. On the 1st, Britain confirmed he was gone for good. He lived out his days in the Soviet Union and never returned home. Follow @dustycalendar for more moments in history and share with a friend. #historyfacts #onthisday #historylovers #history #coldwar #spy #espionage #1960s #britishhistory - @dustycalendar