Editing Kim Philby (section)

===Istanbul===
In February 1947, Philby was appointed head of British intelligence for Turkey and posted to Istanbul with his second wife, Aileen, and their family. His public position was that of First Secretary at the British Consulate; in reality, his intelligence work required overseeing British agents and working with the Turkish security services.{{sfn|Seale|McConnville|1973|p= 187}}

Philby planned to infiltrate five or six groups of émigrés into [[Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic|Soviet Armenia]] or [[Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic|Soviet Georgia]], but efforts among the [[expatriate]] community in Paris produced just two recruits. Turkish intelligence took them to a border crossing into Georgia but soon afterwards shots were heard. Another effort was made using a Turkish [[gulet]] for a seaborne landing, but it never left port. Philby was implicated in a similar campaign in [[Communist Albania]]. Colonel [[David Smiley]], an aristocratic Guards officer who had helped [[Enver Hoxha]] and his communist guerillas to liberate Albania, now prepared to remove Hoxha. He trained Albanian commandos—some of whom were former Nazi collaborators—in Libya or Malta. From 1947, they infiltrated the southern mountains to build support for former [[King Zog]].

The first three missions, overland from Greece, were trouble-free. Larger numbers were landed by sea and air under [[Albanian Subversion|Operation Valuable]], which continued until 1951, increasingly under the influence of the newly formed CIA. [[Stewart Menzies]], head of SIS, disliked the idea, which was promoted by former SOE men now in SIS. Most infiltrators were caught by the [[Sigurimi]], the Albanian Security Service.{{sfn|Smiley|1985}}{{page needed|date=September 2022}} Clearly there had been leaks and Philby was later suspected as one of the leakers. His own comment was, "I do not say that people were happy under the regime but the CIA underestimated the degree of control that the Authorities had over the country."{{sfn|Borovik|Knightley|1994}} Philby later wrote of his attitude towards the operation in Albania:

<blockquote>The agents we sent into Albania were armed men intent on murder, sabotage and assassination ... They knew the risks they were running. I was serving the interests of the Soviet Union and those interests required that these men were defeated. To the extent that I helped defeat them, even if it caused their deaths, I have no regrets.</blockquote>

Philby's wife had suffered from psychological problems since childhood which caused her to [[self harm|inflict injuries upon herself]]. In 1948, troubled by Philby's heavy drinking and frequent [[depression (mood)|depressions]] and his life in Istanbul, she experienced a breakdown, staging an accident and injecting herself with urine and [[insulin]] to cause skin disfigurations.{{sfn|Boyle|1979|p= 344}} She was sent to a clinic in Switzerland to recover. Upon her return to Istanbul in late 1948, she was badly burned in an incident with a charcoal stove and returned to Switzerland. Shortly afterward, Philby was moved to the job as chief SIS representative in Washington, with his family.