'American empire' will disappear, infamous British double agent forecasts

George Blake, a British double agent, has forecast that the "American empire" will crumble, and predicted that every country in the world will one day embrace communism. In a rare interview given on his 88th birthday, the former Soviet agent said he had no regrets and expressed no remorse for betraying Britain or its intelligence service. Blake, who calls himself Georgy Ivanovich in Moscow, said he still had no time for American foreign policy. "The American empire will disappear because everyone who lives by the sword dies from the sword," he told the daily Izvestia newspaper.

Blake was a member of MI6, the British Secret Intelligence Service, from 1944. In 1951, he became an agent for the Soviet Union -- and in the following decade is thought to have betrayed up to 400 of his colleagues. He was arrested in 1960 and jailed for 42 years -- only to escape from Wormwood Scrubs in 1966 before fleeing to Russia. In the interview, Blake admitted that the Soviet Union in which he arrived in the 1960s did not live up to his high-minded communist ideals. But he made it clear he had not lost the faith.

"I understand now that the Soviet project was doomed. The problem was not the Russians but human nature. Humankind was not sufficiently moral to build such a society," he said. He was confident that time was on communism's side. "One day, I believe that the majority of governments will voluntarily choose the communist model. Without violence, revolution or terror. Maybe it sounds like a Utopia, but I believe in it." Sounds like Utopia does it George... it sounds like a traitors' pipedream and maybe that you need to say something nice so the Russians keep paying your pension.