LONDON, Nov. 14 (UPI) -- Top-secret U.K. files released Wednesday by the government indicated British spy Kim Philby, who defected to the Soviet Union, may have been recruited by Moscow to assassinate Spanish fascist leader Gen. Francisco Franco.
The files from Britain's MI5 intelligence agency said the plot to kill Franco was believed to have been ordered in 1937 by Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin.
An MI5 summary of the file said "the person selected for the job is referred to as a 'young Englishman, a journalist of good family.' This almost certainly refers to the famous long-term British mole, Kim Philby."
The assassination plot fell apart when a key spymaster was recalled to Moscow, according to the file. Franco ruled Spain for 39 years after his forces defeated the rival communists in 1939.
The file on the plot against Franco was opened by the Security Service in what it said was the eighth and largest release of previously top-secret documents -- more than 200 files in all, on display at the Public Record Office in London.
The plot was disclosed in an MI report written by Gen. Walter Krivitsky, a defector from the Soviet Union, who said details of the attempt were devised by Nicolai Yezhov, the head of the OGPU, a forerunner to the Soviet KGB intelligence agency.
Krivitsky's memo said Yezhov told another agent, Paul Hardt, to find an Englishman to do the job. "He did in fact contact and sent to Spain a young Englishman, a journalist of good family, an idealist and a fanatical anti-Nazi," the general wrote.
In the margin of his report were the words "prob Philby," penned by a British intelligence officer, the security agency said.
Philby, who worked as a journalist covering the Spanish civil war for The Times newspaper in London, was a member of a British-based spy ring which leaked secrets to the Soviet Union. After his cover was blown in the 1960s, he fled to the U.S.S.R., where he died in 1988.
