Exposing the mole

Phillip Knightley, journalist who helped expose Kim Philby as Soviet spy, dies at 87

Phillip Knightley, an Australian-born journalist who helped reveal that British spy Kim Philby was a double agent of the Soviet Union and who later interviewed Philby in Moscow, and who wrote compelling books about journalism and the history of spycraft, died Wednesday in London. He was 87.

His death was first reported by the London Times. The cause was cancer.

Mr. Knightley had a colorful past that included sojourns in Fiji and India before he settled in London in the 1960s as an investigative reporter with the Sunday Times. In 1968, he was instrumental in exposing Philby’s duplicity, which became Britain’s most infamous spy scandal of the 20th century.

In his book “The Master Spy,” Mr. Knightley called Philby “the most remarkable spy in the history of espionage.”