Too Secret Too Long, page 26
When plans for the escape were being discussed in advance at the Moscow Centre two reasons for Burgess’s defection would have been evident. While he might be a stronger reed than Maclean, he had become addicted to drugs as well as drink and so might crack if interrogated harshly, a possibility which had to be entertained. Since Operation Bride had uncovered that ‘Homer’ was Maclean, as the Centre knew from Philby’s reports, it might also reveal that ‘Hicks’ was Burgess. The danger of permitting Burgess to be questioned by MI5 was also publicly stressed by Blunt in his Times interview when he declared that he ‘was very nearly round the bend under the strain’. The second and much more pressing reason was Maclean’s reluctance to leave Britain without his family, who could not accompany him because of his wife’s physical condition. Even if Maclean could be forced, by threats, to leave Britain alone there was no certainty that he would complete the frightening journey and he could well end up drunk and incapable in the hands of the police in France. He had to be accompanied and Burgess was not only on hand and a trusted agent, but could be spared, as he was out of contact with prime source material and unlikely to resume contact with it.
The exact time when Burgess first knew that he might have to go with Maclean is unknown. It is not impossible that he knew before he left Washington, for as a successful agent of long standing, he might have been at the meeting with Philby and the controller when it was decided to use him as the messenger to Maclean. Indeed Burgess’s main purpose in returning to Britain may have been to accompany Maclean out of the country.
Philby’s claim in My Silent War that he remarked to Burgess, ‘Don’t you go too’, does not ring true in the circumstances and is probably a touch of disinformation to continue the fiction that Burgess was not a spy.
It must have been foreseen that the disappearance of Burgess would inevitably focus suspicion on Philby. That could be a major disaster for the K.G.B. because, while he could be relied upon to brazen his way through interrogation, it had been hoped that he would continue inside MI6 for many years, even, possibly, becoming its Director-General. Nevertheless the risk had to be accepted because Philby would probably be totally exposed if either Maclean or Burgess were subjected to hostile questioning. Philby’s controller must have discussed the prospects with him, and if Philby knew that Burgess would be defecting before he himself left Washington, he had some time to prepare his position.
It was certainly realized by the Moscow Centre that the defection of Burgess would also throw suspicion on Blunt, his close friend, as will shortly be seen.
On receipt of the warning Burgess clearly knew exactly what to do and that it was his duty to flee with Maclean and see him to safety. It is possible that he had been lulled into believing that he could then return home but, as events showed, he was required to remain in the Soviet Union until the end of his short life. While defection was a huge sacrifice for Maclean, it was equally so for Burgess, who hoped and believed that the Soviet Union might convert Britain to a communist state but had no wish to live in Moscow. He, too, must have appreciated the risk of being killed or imprisoned by Stalin.
Nevertheless, he moved swiftly and not in panic. Wisely, he made no effort to contact Maclean in London, where he knew he might be observed. He did, however, take a risk by telephoning the wife of Goronwy Rees from the Reform Club, and in the course of the twenty-minute conversation saying that he was about to do something that would ‘shock many people’.[57] She thought that he was incoherent but Rees later recorded that when she told him about the call he surmised that Burgess had fled to Moscow.
Later in the day, using a hired car, Burgess drove out towards Maclean’s home at Tatsfield, where he must have been confident that he would not be observed. Insufficient attention has been paid to this confidence. K.G.B. watchers keeping MI5’s watchers under surveillance might have been able to inform Burgess and Maclean that the latter was not normally under surveillance once he had left Charing Cross station, but after the decision to interrogate Maclean had been taken, the K.G.B., in line with its own practice, should have assumed that this might no longer be the case. Yet Burgess must have been advised, presumably by Modin, that it was safe for him to visit Tatsfield. How would the K.G.B. have known this? The only plausible answer is that the K.G.B., or Burgess directly, had been assured that Friday that Maclean and his home were still free from MI5 surveillance. Again, the number who knew this was very small, and Hollis, as Director of Security, was one of them.
According to the flat-mate, Hewitt, Burgess received a telephone call from a person whom Hewitt later believed to have been Maclean. It could, however, have been from someone else with further information, including the assurance that it was safe to visit Maclean at Tatsfield.
The precise details of how and when Burgess arrived at Maclean’s home and whether or not he first met up with Maclean earlier at the station, or elsewhere, are unknown. The most commonly recorded account, which derives mainly from the subsequent questioning of Mrs Maclean, alleges that Burgess arrived about half an hour after Maclean, at about 6.30 p.m., and introduced himself to her as ‘Roger Styles’, a colleague from the Foreign Office.[58]
Mrs Maclean is not supposed to have known who ‘Styles’ was or anything about the planned escape, beyond the fact that her husband had told her that ‘Styles’ was coming to dinner. In view of her later behaviour, culminating in her own surreptitious flight to Moscow, nothing she said should necessarily be believed. She was almost certainly fully aware of what was about to happen and of ‘Styles’s’ identity and was acting on instructions to ‘muddy the waters’.
Eventually, so her story went, Maclean left with ‘Styles’, simply telling his wife that they had a pressing engagement and that he would be taking an overnight bag in case he could not get back. Whatever the true circumstances, the evening must have been dramatic in the extreme. Even if Mrs Maclean had been told of the inevitability of eventual defection the shock of knowing that the time had now come and that she would be left alone must have been great. The conspirators said nothing within sound of any hidden microphones that gave any indication of their plans. In any case, their conversations would not have been processed until the following day.
Those officers in MI5 associated with the Maclean and Burgess case now believe that Mrs Maclean’s account was a concoction and that she not only knew about the coming defection but had also been assured that she would be able to rejoin her husband after her baby had been born. One such officer has assured me that MI5 never really ‘bought’ her story suspecting, from the start, that she was a communist herself, probably having been converted by her husband. There is evidence to that effect in the form of a statement by Gordon Young, a highly reliable journalist, who was told by a former communist wartime internee that Maclean had told his controller, ‘Theo’, early in his espionage career that he had taken his wife into his confidence and that she was helping him in his work.[59]
I have been unable to discover any collateral evidence to support Mrs Maclean’s story, which seems to be the sole basis for the belief that Burgess went to Tatsfield to pick up Maclean. They may, in fact, have met elsewhere. MI5 would appear to have accepted the story and possibly there was some evidence in support of it from the ‘bugs’ which had been planted in the house, though I have been told that they yielded nothing. The White Paper which MI5 subsequently prepared for the Government stated that it had been established that the two defectors left Tatsfield together by car.
The fact that Mrs Maclean did not report her husband’s disappearance until 10 a.m. on Monday morning, by which time the defectors were safely out of reach, intensified MI5’s suspicion. It would have been routine for the K.G.B. to have kept an eye on Mrs Maclean to ensure that she did not disobey instructions and alert the Foreign Office sooner.
Burgess and Maclean arrived at Southampton dock at 11.45 p.m. on Friday night just in time to rush aboard the midnight boat, Falaise, to St Malo. It would, of course, have been prudent for them to have arrived as late as possible to reduce the chances of their being recognized before the boat sailed. It has been accepted as an odd coincidence that two days previously Burgess happened to have booked two berths on the S.S. Falaise for that evening, ostensibly to take him and the American who he had met on the Queen Mary. Being suspicious of such coincidences, I would suggest a different explanation. It seems unlikely that the K.G.B. would have permitted Burgess to drift off to France, purely for a jaunt, at such a time. It is possible that he was being sent there for a purpose, the American providing his cover for the visit. Defector evidence was to reveal that the defection plans were being partly directed from France, so Burgess may have been required to go there to meet a contact.[60]
The two traitors left the ship at St Malo, abandoning suitcases and some of their clothing. It was reported, though never established, that they took a taxi to Rennes and thence a train to Paris, where they disappeared. (The K.G.B. defector Petrov was to say that they had reached the Soviet Union via Berne and Prague.)
Blunt then received an urgent message to meet the Soviet controller, Modin, and he did so in London, which is further evidence of his continuing close connection with the K.G.B. Blunt had already realized that because of his friendship with Burgess MI5 was bound to go through the motions of interrogating him. Modin told him that the Centre was so fearful that he might break and reveal the names of other agents that it had been decided that he should defect as well.[61]
Again, the K.G.B. must have realized that it might be only a short time before Operation Bride revealed that ‘Johnson’ was Blunt. The proposition also held certain advantages for the K.G.B. The defection of Burgess and Maclean was certain to disrupt Anglo-American relations regarding the exchange of intelligence and military secrets. With the added defection of Blunt, a former MI5 officer and trusted servant of the Royal Household, the consternation in Congress and in the American Press could have been catastrophic for the West.
Blunt was told that all the escape routes had been prepared and that there was no time for argument. Nevertheless, Blunt, true to character, did argue and demanded time to think. The last thing he wanted to do was to abandon his international career as an art critic, which looked so promising, professionally and financially. He had some familiarity with the Russian language, having studied it as a diversion during stints of fire-watching during the war, and had visited Leningrad and Moscow briefly, but the prospect of a Soviet-style apartment contrasted rather sharply with his Director’s flat in the Courtauld Institute, where his personal art collection, including a large Poussin – ‘Rebecca at the Well’ – which he had picked up in Paris for £100, was already very valuable. Later he told close friends that he so hated the thought of going to live in the Soviet Union that he would never have gone, whatever pressure the K.G.B. might have attempted to apply.[62]
Sensing the way MI5 was likely to respond to any suggestion that it had harboured a spy and aware that it had no hard evidence against him, Blunt felt confident that he could withstand any interrogation of the kind to which the Surveyor of the King’s Pictures was likely to be subjected. This confidence might have been strengthened by his knowledge of a secret mission he had performed for the Royal Family and which might embarrass them if he revealed it.
Further, if Blunt was aware that the timely warning to Maclean had come from an on-going source in MI5 there seemed to be no reason to doubt that he, too, would receive similar protective treatment. He may even have been assured by a friend in MI5 that while a routine interrogation could not be avoided, it would not be hostile and could be successfully countered by bland denial.
In the event he told Modin, firmly, that he proposed to stay and to rely on the standard K.G.B. advice – admit nothing, deny everything but keep on talking to discover how much the interrogators know.[63] Again, the reasons behind Blunt’s confidence when he was aware that Philby, who was sure to be questioned, and several others, including the American Michael Straight and Leo Long whom he had recruited, knew that he was a spy, do not seem to have been adequately investigated.
Modin must have been concerned about Moscow’s reaction to his failure to induce Blunt to defect, but his success in handling the escape of Maclean and Burgess was to be sufficient for him to be given the responsibility of organizing the defection of Philby twelve years later.
On the Saturday morning MI5 watchers, who had been told that Maclean would be on duty at the Foreign Office, were waiting at Charing Cross to begin their shadowing duty. There was some anxiety when he did not appear, but inquiries at the Foreign Office revealed that he had been given the morning off and officials had forgotten to tell MI5! No inquiries were made at Tatsfield to ensure that he was really there.
Mrs Maclean was interviewed by Foreign Office security officials following a telephone call by her to the Foreign Office on the morning of Monday, 28 May, when she told the ‘Styles’ story and played the innocent so effectively that they claimed to be convinced that she had known nothing about the defection. At that stage it suited the Foreign Office to believe her and, while some MI5 officers thought that she must be lying, it was only later that the organization officially decided that she had misled them.
Later on the same Monday morning, Hewitt reported the disappearance of his flat-mate, Burgess, to Blunt, knowing that he was another close friend and had been in MI5. Blunt then reported the fact to MI5 headquarters and that, apparently, was its first news that Burgess had left with Maclean.[64]
It may be asked why, if the K.G.B. Centre had required Blunt to defect because he was bound to be suspected, the same did not apply to Hollis, had he been a spy responsible for the final warning to Maclean and other essential leaks to the K.G.B. Hollis was in no obvious danger as he was not, and never had been, associated with the Cambridge Ring in its treachery. If he was recruited in China it would have been on behalf of what quickly became the G.R.U. The Bride breaks which led to the exposure of Maclean and, later, to the code-names of Burgess, Blunt and Philby had been through intercepts of K.G.B. traffic. No G.R.U. traffic was being deciphered. If Hollis was transferred later to control by the K.G.B., as it increased its dominance over the G.R.U., his code-name and any details of his activities would not have appeared early enough for them to have been deciphered by Operation Bride, which was restricted to intercepts recorded over only a short period during the war, as the K.G.B. knew from Philby.
When the disappearance of Maclean and Burgess became public, Sillitoe, who was in France, was recalled to London and ordered by Attlee to fly to Washington to try to placate the American authorities and Hoover, the F.B.I. chief, in particular. Hoover had discovered that Maclean had been allowed unescorted access to the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission building and, as had been anticipated, he was furious that the spy had escaped retribution.
Sillitoe spent an evening being briefed on the case by his lieutenants. His son, Tony, recalled: ‘When my father called for files relevant to the defection before flying to Washington to see Hoover, Hollis failed to produce them saying that they had ‘gone missing’ or were ‘unavailable’. There was something about ‘dear Roger’, as my father called him, that disturbed his policeman’s instincts.’[65]
Arthur Martin, the case officer for Maclean, accompanied Sillitoe to Washington and they flew out on 11 June 1951, Martin being disguised as a chauffeur, ludicrously as it turned out because they were photographed at London Airport.[66] The files they took with them had been doctored to remove the evidence that MI5 had known that Maclean was suspect for many weeks and had withheld the information from the F.B.I.[67] In a farcical attempt to delude the newspapers, airline officials were instructed to tell the Press that Sillitoe and Martin had cancelled their flight, which was untrue. It is possible that Sillitoe was not aware that the files which he showed Hoover and the C.I.A. chief, General Bedell Smith, were deliberately misleading but his efforts to explain why they had been kept in ignorance and his excuses for the failure to apprehend Maclean impressed nobody in Washington. As a result, the Anglo-American interchange of secrets was set back for several years and has never, in fact, been renewed so far as weapons are concerned.
Maclean’s flight had, of course, convinced his would-be interrogators that he was guilty of treason but the embarrassment was so great that everything possible was done to maintain the fiction that he and Burgess were just two drunken dissolutes who had fled the country because their careers were in ruins. Publicly, Whitehall was to continue for four years to pretend that it did not know where they were and that it had no evidence of disloyalty by either of them.
Security officials still argue that they had to remain tight-lipped about their knowledge that Maclean had been a spy to avoid letting the Soviets learn how much they knew and particularly to protect the secrecy of Operation Bride, which was likely to produce more results. If this was so the silence served no purpose for the Soviet penetration of the British secret services was so deep that Philby had been providing Moscow with a running commentary on Bride from its inception.
Internally, the certainty of Maclean’s guilt was sufficient for a damage assessment to be carried out by the Foreign Office.[68] It showed that Maclean had sat on several committees dealing with political information of extreme interest to the Kremlin. This included the Anglo-American exchanges about the North Atlantic Treaty and early meetings which resulted in the eventual creation of N.A.T.O. He had information about uranium requirements and ore availability. Perhaps most importantly, he had access to U.K. diplomatic codes and ciphers so that British diplomatic traffic must have been an open book to the Kremlin. Even after he was on the list of suspects, as head of the American Department, he had been the Kremlin’s ear at meetings of interest to it and particularly on those concerning the Korean War.
