Before you take Philby's comments at face value, a few things to note: 1) Philby gave this speech under the auspices of the Soviet Union, a totalitarian state

Before you take Philby's comments at face value, a few things to note: 1) Philby gave this speech under the auspices of the Soviet Union, a totalitarian state where communication was heavily controlled and censored, with art required to be politically acceptable, with neighbors spying on each other and family members reporting disloyal statements to secret police, and with copy and fax machines requiring licenses (IIRC); where saying the wrong thing could get you killed, imprisoned in a mental hospital or sent to Siberia; and where propaganda was omnipresent. He said no more than what was allowed and likely, I think, what he was told to say. 2) In the recording the audio doesn't match the video. The BBC attributes that to equipment issues; but maybe his speech was edited or dubbed. The Soviets seemed to do things like that regularly; for example, leaders who later became unpopular with the regime were reputedly removed from historical photos with an 'airbrush' (this was before digital imagery) and from all other historical records. 3) At least one aspect of his speech sounds clearly like Soviet propaganda: He attributes a large part of his success to being in the 'governing class' in England; that is, Philby is blaming UK's the class system for their intelligence incompetence. A foundation of Soviet ideology was that they were a classless system, superior to the West where the masses were oppressed by the elite. It would be surprising to me if Philby's comments were a coincidence.