KISLITSYN, FILIP• 289KING, CECIL.A powerful newspaper magnate, proprietor of the
Daily Mirrorfrom 1951 to 1963, and later chairman of the Newspa-
per Publishers Association, Cecil King was a long-termMI5agent
with access to Fleet Street gossip. It was King who first alerted MI5
to a story circulating thatChristine Keelerwas attempting to sell
proof of her adulterous relationship with the minister of war,John
Profumo.
KING, JOHN.Captain John King was of Irish birth and fought in
World War I in the Artist’s Rifles. After the war he became a Foreign
Office cipher clerk but was dissatisfied with the level of pay he re-
ceived for handling some of the government’s most sensitive docu-
ments. In October 1934 he began selling copies of secret telegrams
to the Soviets to support his wife and son, a grown-up student, but
he lost contact with his handler in 1937 whenTheodore Mallyleft
England. King was arrested in September 1939 as a result of informa-
tion supplied in the United States byWalter Krivitsky, and sepa-
rately byConrad Parlantiin The Hague, and was sentenced to 10
years’ imprisonment.
KING DAVID HOTEL.The headquarters of the British Army inPal-
estine, the King David Hotel in Jerusalem was the target of a bomb
packed into seven milk churns and detonated under the hotel’s south
wing, killing 19 and injuring 110. The attack was undertaken by the
Irgun, the Jewish terrorist organization headed by Menachim Begin,
apparently in retaliation forbroadside, the arrest of 3,000 terrorist
suspects who were detained and interrogated at Rafiah.
KING’S MESSENGERS.British diplomatic mail is carried by couri-
ers, usually retired military personnel, who are employed by the For-
eign Office and known as king’s or queen’s messengers. Before
World War II, severalSection Dofficers were enrolled as king’s mes-
sengers to carry explosives and other sabotage mate ́riel into the Bal-
kans under diplomatic protection.
KISLITSYN, FILIP.A junior member of theNKVD’srezidenturain
London during World War II, Filip Kislitsyn was identified by the
defectorVladimir Petrovas the source of his information, gleaned