Spy story

Master spy Kim Philby discusses life as a soviet agent in secret video

British double agent Kim Philby detailed his life of betrayal and the ease with which he was able to pass secrets to his Soviet controllers in newly discovered video footage broadcast by the BBC.

Philby was one of the Soviet Union's most successful spies who penetrated the heart of the British establishment and passed secrets back to Moscow for three decades, part of a ring of British double agents recruited in the 1930s.

The video, discovered by the BBC in the official archives of the Stasi, the former East German Intelligence Service, and broadcast on Monday shows Philby, who defected to Moscow in 1963 and died there in 1988, lecturing Soviet spies in 1981 about his life as an agent.