Kim Philby was a British diplomat who betrayed his country and the member nations of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) by providing the Soviet Union with a wealth of information that only a high-ranking insider like himself would possess. In the annals of Cold War espionage lore, he remained one of the most infamous of turncoats. It is said that his treacheries about the identities of secret agents caused hundreds of them to disappear forever behind the Iron Curtain.

Philby was born Harold Adrian Russell Philby in British India, on New Year's Day 1912. His father was a member of the colonial civil service as well as a Middle Eastern expert with ties to the Saudi royal family. But as a young man, Philby came to despise his father's fascist political beliefs and headed in a different direction. Philby began college in 1929 at Cambridge University and quickly fell...