Donald Duart Maclean
Encyclopedia
Donald Duart Maclean was a British diplomat
and member of the Cambridge Five
who were members of MI5
, MI6 or the diplomatic service who acted as spies
for the Soviet Union
in the Second World War and beyond. He was recruited as a "straight penetration agent" (not a double agent) while an undergraduate at Cambridge by the Soviet intelligence service. His actions are thought to have contributed to the 1948 Soviet blockade of Berlin
and the onset of the Korean War
. As a reward for his espionage activities, Maclean was brevetted as a colonel in the Soviet KGB
.
Educated at Gresham's School
, Holt
, and Trinity Hall, Cambridge
, he was the son of the Liberal
politician Sir Donald Maclean, who was Leader of the parliamentary opposition for two years immediately following the First World War.
in the House of Commons whilst the bulk of the Liberal MPs had followed David Lloyd-George into the Coalition Liberal party in the November 1918 election. As the Labour Party
had no leader and Sinn Féin
did not attend, he became titular Leader of the Opposition
. Maclean's parents had houses in London (later in Buckinghamshire
) as well as in the Scottish Borders
, where his father represented Peebles and Southern Midlothian
, but the family lived mostly in and around London. He grew up in a very political household, in which world affairs were constantly discussed. In 1931 his father entered the Coalition Cabinet as President of the Board of Education
.
Maclean's education began as a boarder at St Ronan's School, Worthing
. At the age of 13, he was sent to Gresham's School
in Norfolk
, where he remained from 1926 until 1931, when he was 18. At Gresham's, some of his contemporaries were Lord Simon of Glaisdale
, James Klugmann
(1912–1977), Roger Simon
(1913–2002), Benjamin Britten
(1913-1976) and the scientist
Sir Alan Lloyd Hodgkin
.
Gresham's was then looked on as both liberal and progressive. It had already produced Tom Wintringham
(1898–1949) a Marxist military historian, journalist
, and author
. James Klugmann
and Roger Simon
both went with Maclean to Cambridge and joined the Communist Party
at around the same time. Klugmann became the official historian of the British Communist Party, while Simon was later a very left-wing Labour peer.
When Maclean was sixteen, his father was elected for the North Cornwall constituency
, and he spent some time in Cornwall
during school holidays.
, Maclean won a place at Trinity Hall, Cambridge
, arriving in 1931 to study modern languages. While there, he joined the Communist Party
. In his second year at Cambridge, his father died, and in his last year he was recruited into Soviet intelligence
by Anthony Blunt
, ultimately becoming one of the Cambridge Five
. He graduated with a First in Modern Languages and took the Civil Service exams. At the Final Board, Maclean was asked by one of the Panel interviewing him whether he had favoured communism whilst a university student, ostensibly because the Panel knew of a trip he had taken to Moscow in his second year at Cambridge.
Maclean replied:
rezident, Anatoli Gorsky. Gorsky, who was apppointed in 1939 after the entire London rezidentura was liquidated, used Vladimir Borisovich Barkovsky, a recent graduate of Moscow's Intelligence School as the case officer for Maclean.
The writer Cyril Connolly describes Maclean at this time. He was sandy-haired, tall, with great latent physical strength, but fat and rather flabby. Meeting him, one was conscious of both amiability and weakness. He did not seem a political animal but resembled the clever, helpless youth in an Aldous Huxley novel, an outsize Cherubino intent on amorous experience but too shy and clumsy to succeed. He sought refuge on the more impetuous and emancipated fringes of Bloomsbury and Chelsea.
In 1937, Maclean was put "on ice" by his Russian contact. At meeting after meeting nobody turned up. Then Kitty Harris
arrived in place of his usual controller and gave the recognition phrase. "You hadn't expected to see a lady, had you?" she said. "No, but it's a pleasant surprise," he replied. Harris was told he was the most important spy. Cherish him as the apple of your eye, she was told. Maclean would visit Harris' Bayswater flat, after work, with documents to photograph. He would arrive with flowers and chocolates with those papers, and by May 1938 they had a dinner to celebrate their birthdays. Maclean came with a bunch of roses, a bottle of wine and a locket on a thin gold chain. They ate a take-away and listened to Glenn Miller
on the radio. That was the first night they made love, and loyal to her mission she reported this to her controller, Grigoriy Grafpen.
Over the next two years, 45 boxes of documents were photographed and sent to Moscow. "She was a cut-out
between Maclean and his KGB controller," said Geoffrey Elliott, who wrote a book about her with Igor Damaskin, a former KGB officer.
Kitty Harris was born to poor Russian emigres in London's East End, she had emigrated to Winnipeg
in Canada and then Chicago
where she met and married Earl Browder
, later leader of the American Communist Party. He took her to Shanghai
,where she was recruited by the OGPU as a courier and housekeeper of a safe house when she returned to London after discovering that Browder was already married.
and spent their holidays at Juan-les-Pins in France.
She had enrolled at the Sorbonne in Paris to study French literature. She was introduced to Maclean by Mark Culme-Seymour, in the Café Flore on the Left Bank in January 1940. Culme-Seymour later described her as "quite pretty and vivacious, but rather reserved." I thought that she was a bit prim. She was always well-groomed, lipstick bright, hair permed, a double row of pearls around her neck. Her interests seemed limited to family, friends, clothes and Hollywood movies."
But in the 1950s, Culme-Seymour tracked down the exiled Macleans in Moscow, and another Melinda emerged. She told him that she knew she would be going to Russia right from the beginning, even before Maclean defected. By this time, he looked terrible and was obviously drinking heavily, but she seemed just fine. And when he said something that implied faint criticism of the Soviet Union, she "jumped down his throat".
Soviet archives confirm this view. As Maclean told Kitty Harris, on the evening he met Melinda, he saw more to her "I was very taken by her views. She's a liberal, she's in favour of the Popular Front and doesn't mind mixing with communists even though her parents are well-off. There was a White Russian girl, one of her friends, who attacked the Soviet Union and Melinda went for her. We found we spoke the same language."
Maclean proposed but Melinda was in an agony of indecision. She liked him too well for an outright refusal, and yet she could not bring herself to accept him. She wanted to return to the United States to think it over. But Maclean argued that she would not get back to Europe until the war was over. Finally she decided that she could not marry him. He would drive her to Bordeaux to find a ship. But events overtook them, with the French collapse. Melinda changed her mind. On June 10, 1940, with gunfire sounding
faintly in the distance, they were married at the local Mairie
Maclean came clean about his role as a diplomat, a communist and a spy. It was an outrageous risk, one quite out of character for him at that time, but he reassured Harris that Melinda not only reacted positively, but "actually promised to help me to the extent that she can - and she is well connected in the American community".
Sam Lesser
, the son of Polish Jewish immigrants, befriended Maclean in Moscow, where he was correspondent for the KGB-funded British newspaper The Daily Worker. He annoyed the KGB by revealing that Melinda Maclean had always known about her husband's spying activities.
There is no evidence that Melinda worked alongside Maclean, but she did support him in his dangerous double life throughout their marriage. It was never an easy relationship: Maclean drank heavily, he expressed homosexual desires, they were often on the verge of splitting up. But they stuck together, until she moved in with Philby.
They escaped on a British warship and spent the rest of the war being bombed out of one flat after another in London. For Maclean, who told Melinda's sister Harriet "There's nothing I like so much as the comfortable houses of my rich friends" this was genuine hardship, although his Soviet controllers would not have understood that outlook.
In 1939 Walter Krivitsky
, (born Samuel Ginsberg in Galicia, now Poland) a GRU officer, who had defected after the murder of Leon Trotsky by Soviet agents in Mexico City was interviewed by Dick White and Guy Liddell of MI5. Krivitsky had been head of the GRU network in Western Europe and gave details of 61 agents working in Britain. He did not know their names but described one as being a journalist who had worked for a British newspaper during the Spanish Civil War. Another was described as "a Scotsman
of good family, educated at Eton
and Oxford
, and an idealist who worked for the Russians without payment." These descriptions fitted Kim Philby and Maclean, apart from their education. However, White and Liddell did not follow this up, which suggests that British Intelligence was either aware of or complacent about their activities at this time when Russia was an ally of Nazi Germany. Walter Krivitsky was found dead in the Bellevue Hotel in Washington, D.C.
on 10 February 1941. At first it was suggested that Krivitsky had committed suicide. However, some believed that his hiding place had been discovered and he had been murdered by Soviet agents.
Maclean continued to report to Moscow
from London and signaled on 16 September 1941 that an uranium
bomb
might be constructed within two years. This was after Germany had invaded the Soviet Union which was now a British ally. The chemical problems of producing gaseous compounds of uranium and pure uranium metal were studied at the University of Birmingham
and Imperial Chemical Industries
(ICI). Dr Philip Baxter at ICI made the first small batch of gaseous uranium hexafluoride
for Professor James Chadwick
in 1940. ICI received a formal contract later in 1940 to make 3 kg of this vital material. Some of the secret development work was carried out by ICI at Billingham, Northeast England under a government contract with the code name Tube Alloys
. Maclean sent Moscow a sixty-page report with the official minutes of the British Cabinet Committee on the Uranium Bomb Project. As a member of the Foreign Office Maclean would not have had access to such papers, so it looks possible that the British Government was trying to impress and encourage Stalin, who at this time was contemplating flight from Moscow, ahead of the Wehrmacht advance on the city.
, where Maclean did his most valuable spying work as First Secretary at the British embassy from 1944 to 1948. In the latter period he acted as Secretary of the Combined Policy Committee on Atomic Development.
He was Joseph Stalin
's main source of information about communications and policy development between Winston Churchill
and Franklin D. Roosevelt
, and then between Churchill or Clement Attlee
and Harry S. Truman
. Although Maclean did not transmit technical data on the atom bomb, he reported on its development and progress, particularly the amount of plutonium (used in the Fat Man bombs) available to the United States. As the British representative on the American-British-Canadian Council on the sharing of atomic secrets, he was able to provide the Soviet Union with information from Council meetings. This gave Soviet scientists the ability to predict the number of bombs that could be built by the Americans. Coupled with the efforts of Los Alamos-based scientists Alan Nunn May
, Klaus Fuchs
and Theodore Hall
(who had been identified but was allowed to remain at large), Maclean's reports to his NKVD
controller gave the Soviets a basis to estimate their nuclear arsenal's relative strength against that of the United States and Britain.
The author S.J. Hamrick (alias W.T. Tyler a Foreign Service officer) claims that Philby played a crucial role in a 1949-1950 British disinformation campaign to mislead the Soviets about Anglo-American nuclear capacities and willingness to retaliate against a Soviet invasion of Western Europe. While he admits he cannot prove his thesis beyond all doubt—by definition, so ingenious a scheme would never have left a paper trail—his circumstantial evidence taken from a careful reading of the Venona Intercepts explains much in the public domain that is otherwise is a conundrum.
If there were such a campaign, Maclean may have been working with Philby on this scheme and inflating the amounts of plutonium rather than providing accurate figures. Stalin doubted that the United States would not start a nuclear war against the Soviet Bloc over minor aggressions like the Berlin Blockade or arming North Korea and North Vietnam. Stalin had blockaded Berlin's land approaches in 1948, a move broken by a massive American and British air-lift. He had decided to arm and train Kim Il Sung's North Korean army for the offensive war
. The British Intelligence would have been seeking ways to make him more cautious.
, explains that the tall, blond Briton in immaculate suit and tie felt conspicuous "as a swan among geese." Maclean suggested that, instead of these absurdly dangerous games, Melinda should simply pass the information to the wife of the Soviet resident at the hairdresser. "Melinda was quite prepared to do this," Modin reports.
At this time Britain was the major power in the Middle East with troops in both the Canal Zone and nearby Palestine. So this was an important post, where the Russians were seeking to undermine the Arab Kingdoms, including Egypt, which Britain supported. British policy was one of laissez-faire or non-interference with the corruption surrounding King Farouk. Maclean disagreed strongly and felt that Britain encourage reform which alone, in his opinion, could save the country from communism. "And, except to stress its dangers, that was all I ever heard Donald say about communism." recalls Geoffrey Hoare, the News Chronicle Cairo correspomndent.
By now, the double life was telling on Maclean. He began drinking, brawling and talking about his life as a spy. The second incident was far more serious. In March, 1950, Melinda organised a trip up the Nile to Helouan in a felucca as a treat for her sister Harriet. A ghaffir or armed night watchman challenged them on arrival with an antiquated rifle. Maclean sprang at him, wrested the rifle away and swung it around his head, threateningly. An embassy colleague who tried to restrain him broke his leg in the tussle. After another drunken brawl which resulted in the wrecking of a female embassy staffer's apartment, Melinda intervened. She told the ambassador that Donald was ill and needed leave to see a London doctor.
Maclean went to his local pub in Kent, with Jay Sheers, his brother-in-law. He railed bitterly at his life and his job; he mocked at himself as a sheep among hordes of other sheep, going off to London every day with his black hat and neat black suit and little black briefcase; and he said that he was sick of it all and longed desperately to "cut adrift"
The journalist Cyril Connolly
described him vividly as he struck him in London in 1951. "He had lost his serenity, his hands would tremble, his face was usually a livid yellow ... he was miserable and in a very bad way. In conversation, a kind of shutter would fall as if he had returned to some basic and incommunicable anxiety."
--a dreary, provincial city in 1966. Maclean defected to Moscow in 1951 but there is no record of their meeting, as both would have required permission to travel within the Soviet Union. But around her neck when she died was the locket, engraved "K from D 24.05.37".
was to ensure American economic domination in Europe. Secretary of State
George Marshall
addressed the graduating class of Harvard University
on June 5, 1947. Standing on the steps of Memorial Church
in Harvard Yard
, he offered American aid to promote European recovery and reconstruction.
Russia was an intended recipient as were the countries under Russian occupation. Although initially the US had planned to extract war reparations
under the Morgenthau Plan
, this had been abandoned. and the US simply took over patents and intellectual property worth perhaps $10 billion at today's prices. The Marshall Plan was rejected by Stalin and his collaborators steadily imposed Communist-party rule throughout Eastern Europe, whilst stripping East Germany bare of plant and machinery and scientists. Before the war, Stalin had arrested Western technical experts as spies and Maclean seems to have fed this paranoia over US aid.
Maclean is also reported to have commented on the World Bank created at the Bretton Woods Conference in 1944 and the International Monetary Fund
, a related institution. John Maynard Keynes
a British economist and Harry Dexter White
had devised the plans and rules for these. They were in effect an Anglo-American creation. Both are based in Washington, D.C.
, the World Bank is run by an American, and the IMF by a European. Maclean reportedly suggested to the KGB that they would be under the control of American financial capital. Whilst arguably true, since the bank's initial capital of $7.67 billion was mostly from the US, this was neither secret nor helpful. Now that the Venona transcripts have been published, it is clear that Maclean's 12 cables did not mention such information. In fact, neither he nor his Soviet controller provided any commentary. So this report may have been disinformation from British Intelligence to protect Philby, who was still operational.
The Venona decrypts identified Harry Dexter White as a Soviet agent denoted at various times under the code names "Lawyer", "Richard", and "Jurist". Two years after his death, in a memorandum dated 15 October 1950, White was positively identified by the Federal Bureau of Investigation
(FBI), through evidence gathered by the Venona project
, as a Soviet source, code named "Jurist".
Years later, the Justice Department publicly disclosed the existence of the Venona project which deciphered Soviet cable traffic naming White as "Jurist", a Soviet intelligence source. White was the key American architect of the World Bank and IMF.
The State Department in Washington admitted, after his disappearance that Maclean had been a member of the committee that exchanged information between the partners in the development of the atomic bomb. He added that information about fissionable materials, production processes, weapons technology, and the development of stockpiles of fissionable materials and weapons had ceased in 1946. Maclean had information of Canadian, United States, and British atomic patents for peacetime uses, and amounts of uranium available to the three countries at that time. Some of the information available to him in 1947 and 1948 (when he was Secretary of the Combined Policy Committee concerned with atomic energy policy) was classified and would have been useful at that time to the Soviet atomic energy department and strategic planners. But changes in the rate and scale of the United States program in the intervening years would have made the information obsolete by 1951.
The author S.J.Hamrick (alias W.T.Tyler a Foreign Service officer) claims that Maclean was deliberately exaggerating the size of the stockpile.
and Franklin D. Roosevelt
, which usually bypassed both the State Department and the Foreign Office. Only one such message was discovered in Venona, which was a summary of Churchill's views on Eastern Europe to be put to Roosevelt by the British ambassador, Lord Halifax. Stalin always gave the impression of being already aware of information given to him by the Prime Minister and President at the 1943 Tehran Conference
, the Yalta Conference
in early 1945, and the mid-1945 Potsdam Conference
. He showed no surprise when told that America would drop a bomb of enormous power on Japan.
Most of Maclean's cables published by the US Government in 1999 deal with routine messages between Lord Halifax, British ambassador in Washington and the Foreign Office in London or copies of reports from the British ambassador in Moscow Sir Archibald Clark-Kerr to London. Often they seem to have been drafted by the Foreign Secretary Sir Anthony Eden on behalf of Winston Churchill and voiced concern about Soviet political maneuvers in Poland and Romania. Churchill was trying to coordinate an Allied response to Stalin's imposition of rigid Soviet control. But Roosevelt showed no interest in blocking Stalin's moves in liberated Eastern Europe.
Maclean's role was discovered when the code name GOMER (Russian for HOMER) was discovered in the VENONA decryption carried out at Arlington Hall, Virginia and Eastcote in London between 1945 and 1951. These related to coded messages between New York, Washington and Moscow for which Soviet code clerks had re-used one-time pad
s. The full Venona transcripts were published in 1996 and show a resume of one cable from Churchill related by Maclean, during 1944 and 1945. In 1949, Robert Lamphere, FBI agent in charge of Russian espionage, along with cryptanalysts working as part of the Venona project
, discovered that twelve coded cables had been sent, six from New York from June to September 1944 and six from Washington in April 1945, by an agent named Gomer, Russian for "Homer". The first cable sent but not the first to be deciphered described a meeting with Sergei on June 25 and Gommer's (sic) forthcoming trip to Tyre (New York) where his wife was living with her mother awaiting the birth of a child. This was decoded in April 1951. A short list of nine men was identified as possible Homers, one of whom was Maclean.
The second cable on August 2–3, 1944 was a description, but not a transcript, of a message from Churchill (Boar) to Roosevelt (Captain), which Homer claimed to have decrypted. It suggested that Churchill was trying to persuade Roosevelt to abandon plans for operation Anvil, the invasion of Provence, in favour of an attack through Venice and Trieste into Austria. This was typical of Churchill's strategic thinking since he was always looking for a flanking move. But it was rejected outright by both American and British generals. It may have pleased Stalin who was looking for assistance on the Eastern Front.
Shortly after Lamphere's investigation began, Kim Philby
, another member of the Cambridge Five, was assigned to Washington, serving as Britain's CIA-FBI-NSA liaison. He saw the Venona material, and recognized that Maclean was Homer, which was confirmed by his KGB control. He knew that some of the encoded messages KGB had been sent from New York, which Maclean had often visited to see his family, who stayed there with Melinda's mother.
The pressure on Philby now began to grow. If Maclean admitted sending messages, others of the Cambridge Five would be implicated. Philby had known Maclean at Cambridge and traveled to Moscow with him before the war for a holiday. Believing that Maclean would confess to MI5
, Philby and Guy Burgess
decided that Burgess would travel to London on the Queen Mary
, where Maclean was head of the Foreign Office's American desk, to warn him. Burgess received three speeding tickets in a single day and assaulted a traffic cop in Virginia. The Governor complained to the British Ambassador and Burgess went back to London, in disgrace.
Philby passed this information to the Soviets, and they were desperate for Maclean to get out, fearful that, in his current state, he would crack immediately under interrogation. Maclean shilly shallied, afraid of staying, afraid of going, until he sounded out Melinda about the defection. According to Modin, she responded: "They're quite right - go as soon as you can, don't waste a single moment."
In common with many others, Cyril Connolly was reluctant to accept that Burgess and Maclean had spied for the Soviet Union: "they are members of the governing class, of the high bureaucracy, the “they” who rule the “we”…. If traitors they be, then they are traitors to themselves." he wrote later.
to discuss Maclean's imminent exposure and the need to flee to Russia.
MI5 insisted that Maclean be questioned. He would be confronted with the FBI and MI5 evidence on Monday, 28 May 1951. But there was a major difficulty regarding prosecution since Venona could not be revealed. It looks possible that the British Government preferred that he defect.
The day eventually earmarked for Maclean to make his escape happened to be his 38th birthday: May 25, 1951. He came home by train from the Foreign Office to their house in Kent as usual that evening, and soon after Guy Burgess, who had just been persuaded to get out, too, turned up. After eating the birthday supper that Melinda had prepared, Maclean said goodbye to his wife and children, got into Burgess's car and left. They drove to Southampton, took a ferry to France, then disappeared from view, sparking a media and intelligence furore. It was all of five years before Krushchev finally admitted that they were in the Soviet Union.
Three days before his interrogation, Maclean fled. Yuri Modin
, the controller at the time, had made arrangements for Maclean's arrival in Moscow and presumably given him a false passport. Maclean was extremely nervous and reluctant to leave alone. Modin was willing to travel with him, but KGB Central demanded that Burgess escort Maclean across the Iron Curtain
. Maclean and Burgess left his home in Kent by car, abandoning it at Southampton where they took the St Malo ferry and then trains to Paris and on to Moscow. This was very awkward for Philby who would now be implicated as the Third Man.
The following Monday, Melinda Maclean telephoned the Foreign Office to ask coolly if her husband was around. Her pose of total ignorance convinced them; MI5 put off interviewing her for nearly a week, and the Maclean house was never searched. No doubt their readiness to see her merely as the ignorant wife was enhanced by the fact that she was heavily pregnant at the time - three weeks after Donald left, she gave birth to a daughter, their third child. Francis Marling, Melinda's father, flew from New York to help. Friends in the State Department, gave him Foreign Office contacts who proved unhelpful. He returned to New York with a low opinion of Foreign Office officials. He felt then, as others felt later, that no serious effort was being made.
The author Miranda Carter
, in her award-winning 2001 biography of Blunt, Anthony Blunt: His Lives, has a different version of the escape. She suggests that Burgess visited Blunt first, and that Blunt designed the escape plan for Maclean and Burgess. This is referenced to Modin's account and also confirmed in the 1999 book The Mitrokhin Archive
. It is possible that Burgess and Maclean had selected Friday to flee whatever the situation. Both Modin and Philby assumed that Burgess would deliver Maclean to a handler, and that he would return. But the Russians insisted that Burgess accompany Maclean the entire way, realising that he was a serious security risk to them. Author Miranda Carter writes that the KGB had no intention of letting Burgess remain behind or return to London, as he was likely to crack under interrogation. Blunt himself in his public confession on BBC television denied this and claimed that Philby had warned Maclean. He also said that his Russian controller had ordered him, too, to join the pair in their flight to Moscow but that he had refused.
As he left, Maclean tore a postcard in half, giving Melinda half, and telling her only to trust someone who could produce the other. A year later, Yuri Modin overtook Melinda's Rover returning from the school run. "She burst out of the car like a deer breaking cover, yelling abuse at us for our bad driving." When Modin had recovered, he drew the half postcard from his pocket. Melinda immediately fell silent, reached across for her bag in the car, and produced the other half.
and the Order of Combat. His Soviet name was Mark Petrovich.
Melinda Maclean and their children joined him in Moscow, more than a year later. Before slipping away from her mother's home in Geneva, she spent hours at a salon having her hair and nails done. The next morning she returned from shopping to tell her mother that she had bumped into an old friend who had invited her to spend the weekend with the children at his villa in Territet, a village close to Montreux. After lunch, at which she seemed preoccupied, she left in her mother's Chevrolet wearing a blue Schiaparelli coat over black skirt and white blouse. They continued by train from Lausanne oddly dressed for the drab, dull Soviet Union.
An American colonel on the Arlberg Express remembered the two fair-haired little boys in grey flannel suits who told him they went to school in Geneva, the large suitcase and the two raffia carry-alls from Majorca and Melinda wearing a cheap boy's watch. They left the train before the Austrian border on the morning of Saturday, September 12 and after a quick breakfast were driven off in an American car by a man with an Austrian accent. Melinda was aware of her risks as a collaborator to her husband. Two months earlier, the Rosenbergs had sat in the electric chair for spying. But Melinda usually concealed her thoughts behind an expressionless look. "I will not admit that my husband, the father of my children, is a traitor to his country", she would say in outraged tones.
While living in Moscow, Maclean spoke up for Soviet dissidents, and gave money to the families of some of those imprisoned.
Eleanor Philby provided a rare glimpse of the Macleans' life. Melinda hadn't accepted Soviet penury: she and her children cut incongruously elegant figures in Moscow, dressed from parcels sent by her family. When the Philbys and Macleans sat in their dismal Moscow apartments getting drunk on Georgian champagne, Melinda and Donald would talk wistfully "of the good times they would have in Italy and Paris 'when the revolution comes'. Eleanor found this fantasy unnerving." Perhaps the Macleans knew that the apartments were bugged.
The three Maclean children all married Russians, but left Moscow to live in London and the U.S, as they still had the right to British or American passports. Fergus the eldest son enrolled at University College London
in 1974, prompting a question in Parliament.
In May 1970 Hodder & Stoughton
published Maclean's book British Foreign Policy since Suez which he wrote for a British readership. Maclean told journalists that he set out to analyse the subject rather than to attack it, but criticised British diplomatic support for the United States in the Vietnam war. He stated that he would donate the English royalties to the British Committee for Medical Aid to Vietnam. He foresaw a strengthening of British influence in the 1970s and 1980s as a result of economic recovery. Interviewed live by a BBC Radio reporter who detected a nostalgia for Britain in the book, Maclean refused to be drawn on whether he would like to return to London, for further research for his next book. Doubtless he knew that the KGB was listening.
Maclean was reported seriously ill with pneumonia in December 1982, and was housebound after his recovery. He died of a heart attack
in 1983, at the age of sixty-nine. He was cremated and some of his ashes were scattered on his parents' grave in the churchyard of Holy Trinity Church, Penn
, Buckinghamshire
, United Kingdom.
Donald's son, Donald, married Lucy Hanna. They had a son. Donald Duart Maclean's only grandson, who resides in the UK.
Melinda Maclean lived out her years in New York.
She died in Feb., 2010.
Diplomat
A diplomat is a person appointed by a state to conduct diplomacy with another state or international organization. The main functions of diplomats revolve around the representation and protection of the interests and nationals of the sending state, as well as the promotion of information and...
and member of the Cambridge Five
Cambridge Five
The Cambridge Five was a ring of spies, recruited in part by Russian talent spotter Arnold Deutsch in the United Kingdom, who passed information to the Soviet Union during World War II and at least into the early 1950s...
who were members of MI5
MI5
The Security Service, commonly known as MI5 , is the United Kingdom's internal counter-intelligence and security agency and is part of its core intelligence machinery alongside the Secret Intelligence Service focused on foreign threats, Government Communications Headquarters and the Defence...
, MI6 or the diplomatic service who acted as spies
SPY
SPY is a three-letter acronym that may refer to:* SPY , ticker symbol for Standard & Poor's Depositary Receipts* SPY , a satirical monthly, trademarked all-caps* SPY , airport code for San Pédro, Côte d'Ivoire...
for the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
in the Second World War and beyond. He was recruited as a "straight penetration agent" (not a double agent) while an undergraduate at Cambridge by the Soviet intelligence service. His actions are thought to have contributed to the 1948 Soviet blockade of Berlin
Berlin Blockade
The Berlin Blockade was one of the first major international crises of the Cold War and the first resulting in casualties. During the multinational occupation of post-World War II Germany, the Soviet Union blocked the Western Allies' railway and road access to the sectors of Berlin under Allied...
and the onset of the Korean War
Korean War
The Korean War was a conventional war between South Korea, supported by the United Nations, and North Korea, supported by the People's Republic of China , with military material aid from the Soviet Union...
. As a reward for his espionage activities, Maclean was brevetted as a colonel in the Soviet KGB
KGB
The KGB was the commonly used acronym for the . It was the national security agency of the Soviet Union from 1954 until 1991, and was the premier internal security, intelligence, and secret police organization during that time.The State Security Agency of the Republic of Belarus currently uses the...
.
Educated at Gresham's School
Gresham's School
Gresham’s School is an independent coeducational boarding school in Holt in North Norfolk, England, a member of the HMC.The school was founded in 1555 by Sir John Gresham as a free grammar school for forty boys, following King Henry VIII's dissolution of the Augustinian priory at Beeston Regis...
, Holt
Holt, Norfolk
Holt is a market town and civil parish in the English county of Norfolk. The town is north of the city of Norwich, west of Cromer and east of King's Lynn. The town is on the route of the A148 King's Lynn to Cromer road. The nearest railway station is in the town of Sheringham where access to the...
, and Trinity Hall, Cambridge
Trinity Hall, Cambridge
Trinity Hall is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge, England. It is the fifth-oldest college of the university, having been founded in 1350 by William Bateman, Bishop of Norwich.- Foundation :...
, he was the son of the Liberal
Liberal Party (UK)
The Liberal Party was one of the two major political parties of the United Kingdom during the 19th and early 20th centuries. It was a third party of negligible importance throughout the latter half of the 20th Century, before merging with the Social Democratic Party in 1988 to form the present day...
politician Sir Donald Maclean, who was Leader of the parliamentary opposition for two years immediately following the First World War.
Childhood and school
Born in London, Donald Duart Maclean was the son of Sir Donald Maclean and Gwendolen Margaret Devitt. His father was chosen as chairman of the rump of the 23 independent MPs who backed Herbert Asquith in the Liberal PartyLiberal Party (UK)
The Liberal Party was one of the two major political parties of the United Kingdom during the 19th and early 20th centuries. It was a third party of negligible importance throughout the latter half of the 20th Century, before merging with the Social Democratic Party in 1988 to form the present day...
in the House of Commons whilst the bulk of the Liberal MPs had followed David Lloyd-George into the Coalition Liberal party in the November 1918 election. As the Labour Party
Labour Party (UK)
The Labour Party is a centre-left democratic socialist party in the United Kingdom. It surpassed the Liberal Party in general elections during the early 1920s, forming minority governments under Ramsay MacDonald in 1924 and 1929-1931. The party was in a wartime coalition from 1940 to 1945, after...
had no leader and Sinn Féin
Sinn Féin
Sinn Féin is a left wing, Irish republican political party in Ireland. The name is Irish for "ourselves" or "we ourselves", although it is frequently mistranslated as "ourselves alone". Originating in the Sinn Féin organisation founded in 1905 by Arthur Griffith, it took its current form in 1970...
did not attend, he became titular Leader of the Opposition
Leader of the Opposition
The Leader of the Opposition is a title traditionally held by the leader of the largest party not in government in a Westminster System of parliamentary government...
. Maclean's parents had houses in London (later in Buckinghamshire
Buckinghamshire
Buckinghamshire is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan home county in South East England. The county town is Aylesbury, the largest town in the ceremonial county is Milton Keynes and largest town in the non-metropolitan county is High Wycombe....
) as well as in the Scottish Borders
Scottish Borders
The Scottish Borders is one of 32 local government council areas of Scotland. It is bordered by Dumfries and Galloway in the west, South Lanarkshire and West Lothian in the north west, City of Edinburgh, East Lothian, Midlothian to the north; and the non-metropolitan counties of Northumberland...
, where his father represented Peebles and Southern Midlothian
Peebles and Southern Midlothian (UK Parliament constituency)
Peebles and Southern Midlothian was a county constituency of the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom from 1918 to 1950...
, but the family lived mostly in and around London. He grew up in a very political household, in which world affairs were constantly discussed. In 1931 his father entered the Coalition Cabinet as President of the Board of Education
Board of education
A board of education or a school board or school committee is the title of the board of directors or board of trustees of a school, local school district or higher administrative level....
.
Maclean's education began as a boarder at St Ronan's School, Worthing
Worthing
Worthing is a large seaside town with borough status in West Sussex, within the historic County of Sussex, forming part of the Brighton/Worthing/Littlehampton conurbation. It is situated at the foot of the South Downs, west of Brighton, and east of the county town of Chichester...
. At the age of 13, he was sent to Gresham's School
Gresham's School
Gresham’s School is an independent coeducational boarding school in Holt in North Norfolk, England, a member of the HMC.The school was founded in 1555 by Sir John Gresham as a free grammar school for forty boys, following King Henry VIII's dissolution of the Augustinian priory at Beeston Regis...
in Norfolk
Norfolk
Norfolk is a low-lying county in the East of England. It has borders with Lincolnshire to the west, Cambridgeshire to the west and southwest and Suffolk to the south. Its northern and eastern boundaries are the North Sea coast and to the north-west the county is bordered by The Wash. The county...
, where he remained from 1926 until 1931, when he was 18. At Gresham's, some of his contemporaries were Lord Simon of Glaisdale
Jocelyn Simon, Baron Simon of Glaisdale
Jocelyn Edward Salis Simon, Baron Simon of Glaisdale, QC, DL, PC known as Jack Simon, was as a Law Lord in the United Kingdom, having been, by turns, a barrister, a commissioned officer in the British Army, a barrister again, a Conservative Party politician, a government minister, and a judge.He...
, James Klugmann
James Klugmann
Norman John Klugmann , generally known as James Klugmann, was a leading British Communist writer who became the official historian of the Communist Party of Great Britain-Background and Early Career:...
(1912–1977), Roger Simon
Roger Simon, 2nd Baron Simon of Wythenshawe
Roger Simon, 2nd Baron Simon of Wythenshawe was a British solicitor and left wing journalist and political activist. He was one of the founders of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament....
(1913–2002), Benjamin Britten
Benjamin Britten
Edward Benjamin Britten, Baron Britten, OM CH was an English composer, conductor, and pianist. He showed talent from an early age, and first came to public attention with the a cappella choral work A Boy Was Born in 1934. With the premiere of his opera Peter Grimes in 1945, he leapt to...
(1913-1976) and the scientist
Scientist
A scientist in a broad sense is one engaging in a systematic activity to acquire knowledge. In a more restricted sense, a scientist is an individual who uses the scientific method. The person may be an expert in one or more areas of science. This article focuses on the more restricted use of the word...
Sir Alan Lloyd Hodgkin
Alan Lloyd Hodgkin
Sir Alan Lloyd Hodgkin, OM, KBE, PRS was a British physiologist and biophysicist, who shared the 1963 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Andrew Huxley and John Eccles....
.
Gresham's was then looked on as both liberal and progressive. It had already produced Tom Wintringham
Tom Wintringham
Thomas Henry Wintringham was a British soldier, military historian, journalist, poet, Marxist, politician and author. He was an important figure in the formation of the Home Guard during World War II and was one of the founders of the Common Wealth Party.-Early life:Tom Wintringham was born 1898...
(1898–1949) a Marxist military historian, journalist
Journalist
A journalist collects and distributes news and other information. A journalist's work is referred to as journalism.A reporter is a type of journalist who researchs, writes, and reports on information to be presented in mass media, including print media , electronic media , and digital media A...
, and author
Author
An author is broadly defined as "the person who originates or gives existence to anything" and that authorship determines responsibility for what is created. Narrowly defined, an author is the originator of any written work.-Legal significance:...
. James Klugmann
James Klugmann
Norman John Klugmann , generally known as James Klugmann, was a leading British Communist writer who became the official historian of the Communist Party of Great Britain-Background and Early Career:...
and Roger Simon
Roger Simon, 2nd Baron Simon of Wythenshawe
Roger Simon, 2nd Baron Simon of Wythenshawe was a British solicitor and left wing journalist and political activist. He was one of the founders of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament....
both went with Maclean to Cambridge and joined the Communist Party
Communist party
A political party described as a Communist party includes those that advocate the application of the social principles of communism through a communist form of government...
at around the same time. Klugmann became the official historian of the British Communist Party, while Simon was later a very left-wing Labour peer.
When Maclean was sixteen, his father was elected for the North Cornwall constituency
North Cornwall (UK Parliament constituency)
North Cornwall is a county constituency represented in the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It elects one Member of Parliament by the first past the post system of election.- Boundaries :...
, and he spent some time in Cornwall
Cornwall
Cornwall is a unitary authority and ceremonial county of England, within the United Kingdom. It is bordered to the north and west by the Celtic Sea, to the south by the English Channel, and to the east by the county of Devon, over the River Tamar. Cornwall has a population of , and covers an area of...
during school holidays.
Cambridge
From Gresham'sGresham's School
Gresham’s School is an independent coeducational boarding school in Holt in North Norfolk, England, a member of the HMC.The school was founded in 1555 by Sir John Gresham as a free grammar school for forty boys, following King Henry VIII's dissolution of the Augustinian priory at Beeston Regis...
, Maclean won a place at Trinity Hall, Cambridge
Trinity Hall, Cambridge
Trinity Hall is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge, England. It is the fifth-oldest college of the university, having been founded in 1350 by William Bateman, Bishop of Norwich.- Foundation :...
, arriving in 1931 to study modern languages. While there, he joined the Communist Party
Communist party
A political party described as a Communist party includes those that advocate the application of the social principles of communism through a communist form of government...
. In his second year at Cambridge, his father died, and in his last year he was recruited into Soviet intelligence
Main Directorate of State Security (USSR)
The Main Directorate of State Security was the name of the Soviet secret police from July 1934 to April 1943. It was run under the auspices of the Peoples Commissariat of Internal Affairs...
by Anthony Blunt
Anthony Blunt
Anthony Frederick Blunt , was a British art historian who was exposed as a Soviet spy late in his life.Blunt was Professor of the History of Art at the University of London, director of the Courtauld Institute of Art, Surveyor of the King's Pictures and London...
, ultimately becoming one of the Cambridge Five
Cambridge Five
The Cambridge Five was a ring of spies, recruited in part by Russian talent spotter Arnold Deutsch in the United Kingdom, who passed information to the Soviet Union during World War II and at least into the early 1950s...
. He graduated with a First in Modern Languages and took the Civil Service exams. At the Final Board, Maclean was asked by one of the Panel interviewing him whether he had favoured communism whilst a university student, ostensibly because the Panel knew of a trip he had taken to Moscow in his second year at Cambridge.
Maclean replied:
- "At Cambridge, I was initially favourable to it" he said, "but I am little by little getting disenchanted with it." with apparent sincerity, which satisfied members of the Panel. Blunt had coached him on how to avoid this and other potentially incriminating traps.
London
In 1934, Maclean started work at the Foreign Office in London. While there, he was under the operational control of GPUrezident, Anatoli Gorsky. Gorsky, who was apppointed in 1939 after the entire London rezidentura was liquidated, used Vladimir Borisovich Barkovsky, a recent graduate of Moscow's Intelligence School as the case officer for Maclean.
The writer Cyril Connolly describes Maclean at this time. He was sandy-haired, tall, with great latent physical strength, but fat and rather flabby. Meeting him, one was conscious of both amiability and weakness. He did not seem a political animal but resembled the clever, helpless youth in an Aldous Huxley novel, an outsize Cherubino intent on amorous experience but too shy and clumsy to succeed. He sought refuge on the more impetuous and emancipated fringes of Bloomsbury and Chelsea.
In 1937, Maclean was put "on ice" by his Russian contact. At meeting after meeting nobody turned up. Then Kitty Harris
Kitty Harris
Kitty Harris was a Soviet secret agent. Born to a poor Russian Jewish family in London that emigrated to Winnipeg, Canada, she became a dedicated socialist, active in the Industrial Workers of the World and a leader of the 1919 Winnipeg General Strike. After the IWW was crushed by the U.S....
arrived in place of his usual controller and gave the recognition phrase. "You hadn't expected to see a lady, had you?" she said. "No, but it's a pleasant surprise," he replied. Harris was told he was the most important spy. Cherish him as the apple of your eye, she was told. Maclean would visit Harris' Bayswater flat, after work, with documents to photograph. He would arrive with flowers and chocolates with those papers, and by May 1938 they had a dinner to celebrate their birthdays. Maclean came with a bunch of roses, a bottle of wine and a locket on a thin gold chain. They ate a take-away and listened to Glenn Miller
Glenn Miller
Alton Glenn Miller was an American jazz musician , arranger, composer, and bandleader in the swing era. He was one of the best-selling recording artists from 1939 to 1943, leading one of the best known "Big Bands"...
on the radio. That was the first night they made love, and loyal to her mission she reported this to her controller, Grigoriy Grafpen.
Over the next two years, 45 boxes of documents were photographed and sent to Moscow. "She was a cut-out
Cut-out (espionage)
In espionage parlance, a cutout is a mutually trusted intermediary, method or channel of communication, facilitating the exchange of information between agents. Cutouts usually only know the source and destination of the information to be transmitted, but are unaware of the identities of any other...
between Maclean and his KGB controller," said Geoffrey Elliott, who wrote a book about her with Igor Damaskin, a former KGB officer.
Kitty Harris was born to poor Russian emigres in London's East End, she had emigrated to Winnipeg
Winnipeg
Winnipeg is the capital and largest city of Manitoba, Canada, and is the primary municipality of the Winnipeg Capital Region, with more than half of Manitoba's population. It is located near the longitudinal centre of North America, at the confluence of the Red and Assiniboine Rivers .The name...
in Canada and then Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
where she met and married Earl Browder
Earl Browder
Earl Russell Browder was an American communist and General Secretary of the Communist Party USA from 1934 to 1945. He was expelled from the party in 1946.- Early years :...
, later leader of the American Communist Party. He took her to Shanghai
Shanghai
Shanghai is the largest city by population in China and the largest city proper in the world. It is one of the four province-level municipalities in the People's Republic of China, with a total population of over 23 million as of 2010...
,where she was recruited by the OGPU as a courier and housekeeper of a safe house when she returned to London after discovering that Browder was already married.
Paris
When Maclean was sent to the British embassy in Paris, Kitty Harris followed him. Their affair continued until Maclean's marriage to Melinda Marling. The daughter of a Chicago oil executive, her parents had divorced when she was a teenager, her mother moving to Europe. In October 1929, Melinda and her sisters went to school at Vevey, near Lausanne, where their mother rented a villa,and spent their holidays at Juan-les-Pins in France.
She had enrolled at the Sorbonne in Paris to study French literature. She was introduced to Maclean by Mark Culme-Seymour, in the Café Flore on the Left Bank in January 1940. Culme-Seymour later described her as "quite pretty and vivacious, but rather reserved." I thought that she was a bit prim. She was always well-groomed, lipstick bright, hair permed, a double row of pearls around her neck. Her interests seemed limited to family, friends, clothes and Hollywood movies."
But in the 1950s, Culme-Seymour tracked down the exiled Macleans in Moscow, and another Melinda emerged. She told him that she knew she would be going to Russia right from the beginning, even before Maclean defected. By this time, he looked terrible and was obviously drinking heavily, but she seemed just fine. And when he said something that implied faint criticism of the Soviet Union, she "jumped down his throat".
Soviet archives confirm this view. As Maclean told Kitty Harris, on the evening he met Melinda, he saw more to her "I was very taken by her views. She's a liberal, she's in favour of the Popular Front and doesn't mind mixing with communists even though her parents are well-off. There was a White Russian girl, one of her friends, who attacked the Soviet Union and Melinda went for her. We found we spoke the same language."
Maclean proposed but Melinda was in an agony of indecision. She liked him too well for an outright refusal, and yet she could not bring herself to accept him. She wanted to return to the United States to think it over. But Maclean argued that she would not get back to Europe until the war was over. Finally she decided that she could not marry him. He would drive her to Bordeaux to find a ship. But events overtook them, with the French collapse. Melinda changed her mind. On June 10, 1940, with gunfire sounding
faintly in the distance, they were married at the local Mairie
Maclean came clean about his role as a diplomat, a communist and a spy. It was an outrageous risk, one quite out of character for him at that time, but he reassured Harris that Melinda not only reacted positively, but "actually promised to help me to the extent that she can - and she is well connected in the American community".
Sam Lesser
Sam Lesser
Sam Lesser was a British journalist and veteran of the Spanish Civil War's International Brigades...
, the son of Polish Jewish immigrants, befriended Maclean in Moscow, where he was correspondent for the KGB-funded British newspaper The Daily Worker. He annoyed the KGB by revealing that Melinda Maclean had always known about her husband's spying activities.
There is no evidence that Melinda worked alongside Maclean, but she did support him in his dangerous double life throughout their marriage. It was never an easy relationship: Maclean drank heavily, he expressed homosexual desires, they were often on the verge of splitting up. But they stuck together, until she moved in with Philby.
They escaped on a British warship and spent the rest of the war being bombed out of one flat after another in London. For Maclean, who told Melinda's sister Harriet "There's nothing I like so much as the comfortable houses of my rich friends" this was genuine hardship, although his Soviet controllers would not have understood that outlook.
London in World War II
By this time the Russians had become suspicious of some of their British spies. Elena Modrzhinskaya, a Moscow case officer, examined Philby's file and pointed to certain suspicious circumstances. The London Station was warned that he and others of the Cambridge ring might be British plants.In 1939 Walter Krivitsky
Walter Krivitsky
Walter Germanovich Krivitsky was a Soviet intelligence officer who revealed plans of signing Nazi-Soviet non-aggression pact before defecting weeks before the outbreak of World War II....
, (born Samuel Ginsberg in Galicia, now Poland) a GRU officer, who had defected after the murder of Leon Trotsky by Soviet agents in Mexico City was interviewed by Dick White and Guy Liddell of MI5. Krivitsky had been head of the GRU network in Western Europe and gave details of 61 agents working in Britain. He did not know their names but described one as being a journalist who had worked for a British newspaper during the Spanish Civil War. Another was described as "a Scotsman
Scotland
Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...
of good family, educated at Eton
Eton College
Eton College, often referred to simply as Eton, is a British independent school for boys aged 13 to 18. It was founded in 1440 by King Henry VI as "The King's College of Our Lady of Eton besides Wyndsor"....
and Oxford
University of Oxford
The University of Oxford is a university located in Oxford, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest surviving university in the world and the oldest in the English-speaking world. Although its exact date of foundation is unclear, there is evidence of teaching as far back as 1096...
, and an idealist who worked for the Russians without payment." These descriptions fitted Kim Philby and Maclean, apart from their education. However, White and Liddell did not follow this up, which suggests that British Intelligence was either aware of or complacent about their activities at this time when Russia was an ally of Nazi Germany. Walter Krivitsky was found dead in the Bellevue Hotel in Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....
on 10 February 1941. At first it was suggested that Krivitsky had committed suicide. However, some believed that his hiding place had been discovered and he had been murdered by Soviet agents.
Maclean continued to report to Moscow
Moscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...
from London and signaled on 16 September 1941 that an uranium
Uranium
Uranium is a silvery-white metallic chemical element in the actinide series of the periodic table, with atomic number 92. It is assigned the chemical symbol U. A uranium atom has 92 protons and 92 electrons, of which 6 are valence electrons...
bomb
Bomb
A bomb is any of a range of explosive weapons that only rely on the exothermic reaction of an explosive material to provide an extremely sudden and violent release of energy...
might be constructed within two years. This was after Germany had invaded the Soviet Union which was now a British ally. The chemical problems of producing gaseous compounds of uranium and pure uranium metal were studied at the University of Birmingham
University of Birmingham
The University of Birmingham is a British Redbrick university located in the city of Birmingham, England. It received its royal charter in 1900 as a successor to Birmingham Medical School and Mason Science College . Birmingham was the first Redbrick university to gain a charter and thus...
and Imperial Chemical Industries
Imperial Chemical Industries
Imperial Chemical Industries was a British chemical company, taken over by AkzoNobel, a Dutch conglomerate, one of the largest chemical producers in the world. In its heyday, ICI was the largest manufacturing company in the British Empire, and commonly regarded as a "bellwether of the British...
(ICI). Dr Philip Baxter at ICI made the first small batch of gaseous uranium hexafluoride
Uranium hexafluoride
Uranium hexafluoride , referred to as "hex" in the nuclear industry, is a compound used in the uranium enrichment process that produces fuel for nuclear reactors and nuclear weapons. It forms solid grey crystals at standard temperature and pressure , is highly toxic, reacts violently with water...
for Professor James Chadwick
James Chadwick
Sir James Chadwick CH FRS was an English Nobel laureate in physics awarded for his discovery of the neutron....
in 1940. ICI received a formal contract later in 1940 to make 3 kg of this vital material. Some of the secret development work was carried out by ICI at Billingham, Northeast England under a government contract with the code name Tube Alloys
Tube Alloys
Tube Alloys was the code-name for the British nuclear weapon directorate during World War II, when the development of nuclear weapons was kept at such a high level of secrecy that it had to be referred to by code even in the highest circles of government...
. Maclean sent Moscow a sixty-page report with the official minutes of the British Cabinet Committee on the Uranium Bomb Project. As a member of the Foreign Office Maclean would not have had access to such papers, so it looks possible that the British Government was trying to impress and encourage Stalin, who at this time was contemplating flight from Moscow, ahead of the Wehrmacht advance on the city.
Washington
Then they moved to Washington, D.C.Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....
, where Maclean did his most valuable spying work as First Secretary at the British embassy from 1944 to 1948. In the latter period he acted as Secretary of the Combined Policy Committee on Atomic Development.
He was Joseph Stalin
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...
's main source of information about communications and policy development between Winston Churchill
Winston Churchill
Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill, was a predominantly Conservative British politician and statesman known for his leadership of the United Kingdom during the Second World War. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest wartime leaders of the century and served as Prime Minister twice...
and Franklin D. Roosevelt
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Franklin Delano Roosevelt , also known by his initials, FDR, was the 32nd President of the United States and a central figure in world events during the mid-20th century, leading the United States during a time of worldwide economic crisis and world war...
, and then between Churchill or Clement Attlee
Clement Attlee
Clement Richard Attlee, 1st Earl Attlee, KG, OM, CH, PC, FRS was a British Labour politician who served as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1945 to 1951, and as the Leader of the Labour Party from 1935 to 1955...
and Harry S. Truman
Harry S. Truman
Harry S. Truman was the 33rd President of the United States . As President Franklin D. Roosevelt's third vice president and the 34th Vice President of the United States , he succeeded to the presidency on April 12, 1945, when President Roosevelt died less than three months after beginning his...
. Although Maclean did not transmit technical data on the atom bomb, he reported on its development and progress, particularly the amount of plutonium (used in the Fat Man bombs) available to the United States. As the British representative on the American-British-Canadian Council on the sharing of atomic secrets, he was able to provide the Soviet Union with information from Council meetings. This gave Soviet scientists the ability to predict the number of bombs that could be built by the Americans. Coupled with the efforts of Los Alamos-based scientists Alan Nunn May
Alan Nunn May
Alan Nunn May was an English physicist, and a confessed and convicted Soviet spy, who supplied secrets of British and United States atomic research to the Soviet Union during World War II.-Early years, education:...
, Klaus Fuchs
Klaus Fuchs
Klaus Emil Julius Fuchs was a German theoretical physicist and atomic spy who in 1950 was convicted of supplying information from the American, British and Canadian atomic bomb research to the USSR during and shortly after World War II...
and Theodore Hall
Theodore Hall
Theodore Alvin Hall was an American physicist and an atomic spy for the Soviet Union, who, during his work on US efforts to develop the first atomic bomb during World War II , gave a detailed description of the "Fat Man" plutonium bomb, and of processes for purifying plutonium, to Soviet...
(who had been identified but was allowed to remain at large), Maclean's reports to his NKVD
NKVD
The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs was the public and secret police organization of the Soviet Union that directly executed the rule of power of the Soviets, including political repression, during the era of Joseph Stalin....
controller gave the Soviets a basis to estimate their nuclear arsenal's relative strength against that of the United States and Britain.
The author S.J. Hamrick (alias W.T. Tyler a Foreign Service officer) claims that Philby played a crucial role in a 1949-1950 British disinformation campaign to mislead the Soviets about Anglo-American nuclear capacities and willingness to retaliate against a Soviet invasion of Western Europe. While he admits he cannot prove his thesis beyond all doubt—by definition, so ingenious a scheme would never have left a paper trail—his circumstantial evidence taken from a careful reading of the Venona Intercepts explains much in the public domain that is otherwise is a conundrum.
If there were such a campaign, Maclean may have been working with Philby on this scheme and inflating the amounts of plutonium rather than providing accurate figures. Stalin doubted that the United States would not start a nuclear war against the Soviet Bloc over minor aggressions like the Berlin Blockade or arming North Korea and North Vietnam. Stalin had blockaded Berlin's land approaches in 1948, a move broken by a massive American and British air-lift. He had decided to arm and train Kim Il Sung's North Korean army for the offensive war
Korean War
The Korean War was a conventional war between South Korea, supported by the United Nations, and North Korea, supported by the People's Republic of China , with military material aid from the Soviet Union...
. The British Intelligence would have been seeking ways to make him more cautious.
Cairo
In 1948, he was appointed head of Chancery at the British embassy in Cairo. As soon as he arrived, however, Maclean had problems with his MGB contact, who arranged their meetings in the Arab quarter. Yuri ModinYuri Modin
Yuri Modin was the KGB controller for the "Cambridge Five" from 1944 to 1955, during which period Donald MacLean was said to have passed atomic secrets to the Soviets. In 1951 Modin arranged the defections of Maclean and Guy Burgess...
, explains that the tall, blond Briton in immaculate suit and tie felt conspicuous "as a swan among geese." Maclean suggested that, instead of these absurdly dangerous games, Melinda should simply pass the information to the wife of the Soviet resident at the hairdresser. "Melinda was quite prepared to do this," Modin reports.
At this time Britain was the major power in the Middle East with troops in both the Canal Zone and nearby Palestine. So this was an important post, where the Russians were seeking to undermine the Arab Kingdoms, including Egypt, which Britain supported. British policy was one of laissez-faire or non-interference with the corruption surrounding King Farouk. Maclean disagreed strongly and felt that Britain encourage reform which alone, in his opinion, could save the country from communism. "And, except to stress its dangers, that was all I ever heard Donald say about communism." recalls Geoffrey Hoare, the News Chronicle Cairo correspomndent.
By now, the double life was telling on Maclean. He began drinking, brawling and talking about his life as a spy. The second incident was far more serious. In March, 1950, Melinda organised a trip up the Nile to Helouan in a felucca as a treat for her sister Harriet. A ghaffir or armed night watchman challenged them on arrival with an antiquated rifle. Maclean sprang at him, wrested the rifle away and swung it around his head, threateningly. An embassy colleague who tried to restrain him broke his leg in the tussle. After another drunken brawl which resulted in the wrecking of a female embassy staffer's apartment, Melinda intervened. She told the ambassador that Donald was ill and needed leave to see a London doctor.
London deskbound
Maclean's career did not seem to suffer from his breakdown, though his spirit remained troubled.Maclean went to his local pub in Kent, with Jay Sheers, his brother-in-law. He railed bitterly at his life and his job; he mocked at himself as a sheep among hordes of other sheep, going off to London every day with his black hat and neat black suit and little black briefcase; and he said that he was sick of it all and longed desperately to "cut adrift"
The journalist Cyril Connolly
Cyril Connolly
Cyril Vernon Connolly was an English intellectual, literary critic and writer. He was the editor of the influential literary magazine Horizon and wrote Enemies of Promise , which combined literary criticism with an autobiographical exploration of why he failed to become the successful author of...
described him vividly as he struck him in London in 1951. "He had lost his serenity, his hands would tremble, his face was usually a livid yellow ... he was miserable and in a very bad way. In conversation, a kind of shutter would fall as if he had returned to some basic and incommunicable anxiety."
Kitty Harris returns
Kitty Harris spent the rest of the war in Mexico; in 1946 she returned to Russia, which she found fell far short of her dreams. "The only thing I know is that I am terribly lonely," she wrote in her diary during her last years. "My life is in pieces." She died in GorkyNizhny Novgorod
Nizhny Novgorod , colloquially shortened to Nizhny, is, with the population of 1,250,615, the fifth largest city in Russia, ranking after Moscow, St. Petersburg, Novosibirsk, and Yekaterinburg...
--a dreary, provincial city in 1966. Maclean defected to Moscow in 1951 but there is no record of their meeting, as both would have required permission to travel within the Soviet Union. But around her neck when she died was the locket, engraved "K from D 24.05.37".
Maclean's information
It has been reported that Maclean suggested to Moscow that the goal of the Marshall PlanMarshall Plan
The Marshall Plan was the large-scale American program to aid Europe where the United States gave monetary support to help rebuild European economies after the end of World War II in order to combat the spread of Soviet communism. The plan was in operation for four years beginning in April 1948...
was to ensure American economic domination in Europe. Secretary of State
United States Secretary of State
The United States Secretary of State is the head of the United States Department of State, concerned with foreign affairs. The Secretary is a member of the Cabinet and the highest-ranking cabinet secretary both in line of succession and order of precedence...
George Marshall
George Marshall
George Catlett Marshall was an American military leader, Chief of Staff of the Army, Secretary of State, and the third Secretary of Defense...
addressed the graduating class of Harvard University
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
on June 5, 1947. Standing on the steps of Memorial Church
Memorial Church of Harvard University
The Memorial Church of Harvard University, more commonly known as the Harvard Memorial Church is a building on the campus of Harvard University.-Predecessors:...
in Harvard Yard
Harvard Yard
Harvard Yard is a grassy area of about , adjacent to Harvard Square in Cambridge, Massachusetts, that constitutes the oldest part and the center of the campus of Harvard University...
, he offered American aid to promote European recovery and reconstruction.
Russia was an intended recipient as were the countries under Russian occupation. Although initially the US had planned to extract war reparations
War reparations
War reparations are payments intended to cover damage or injury during a war. Generally, the term war reparations refers to money or goods changing hands, rather than such property transfers as the annexation of land.- History :...
under the Morgenthau Plan
Morgenthau Plan
The Morgenthau Plan, proposed by United States Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau, Jr., advocated that the Allied occupation of Germany following World War II include measures to eliminate Germany's ability to wage war.-Overview:...
, this had been abandoned. and the US simply took over patents and intellectual property worth perhaps $10 billion at today's prices. The Marshall Plan was rejected by Stalin and his collaborators steadily imposed Communist-party rule throughout Eastern Europe, whilst stripping East Germany bare of plant and machinery and scientists. Before the war, Stalin had arrested Western technical experts as spies and Maclean seems to have fed this paranoia over US aid.
Maclean is also reported to have commented on the World Bank created at the Bretton Woods Conference in 1944 and the International Monetary Fund
International Monetary Fund
The International Monetary Fund is an organization of 187 countries, working to foster global monetary cooperation, secure financial stability, facilitate international trade, promote high employment and sustainable economic growth, and reduce poverty around the world...
, a related institution. John Maynard Keynes
John Maynard Keynes
John Maynard Keynes, Baron Keynes of Tilton, CB FBA , was a British economist whose ideas have profoundly affected the theory and practice of modern macroeconomics, as well as the economic policies of governments...
a British economist and Harry Dexter White
Harry Dexter White
Harry Dexter White was an American economist, and senior U.S. Treasury department official, participating in the Bretton Woods conference...
had devised the plans and rules for these. They were in effect an Anglo-American creation. Both are based in Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....
, the World Bank is run by an American, and the IMF by a European. Maclean reportedly suggested to the KGB that they would be under the control of American financial capital. Whilst arguably true, since the bank's initial capital of $7.67 billion was mostly from the US, this was neither secret nor helpful. Now that the Venona transcripts have been published, it is clear that Maclean's 12 cables did not mention such information. In fact, neither he nor his Soviet controller provided any commentary. So this report may have been disinformation from British Intelligence to protect Philby, who was still operational.
The Venona decrypts identified Harry Dexter White as a Soviet agent denoted at various times under the code names "Lawyer", "Richard", and "Jurist". Two years after his death, in a memorandum dated 15 October 1950, White was positively identified by the Federal Bureau of Investigation
Federal Bureau of Investigation
The Federal Bureau of Investigation is an agency of the United States Department of Justice that serves as both a federal criminal investigative body and an internal intelligence agency . The FBI has investigative jurisdiction over violations of more than 200 categories of federal crime...
(FBI), through evidence gathered by the Venona project
Venona project
The VENONA project was a long-running secret collaboration of the United States and United Kingdom intelligence agencies involving cryptanalysis of messages sent by intelligence agencies of the Soviet Union, the majority during World War II...
, as a Soviet source, code named "Jurist".
Years later, the Justice Department publicly disclosed the existence of the Venona project which deciphered Soviet cable traffic naming White as "Jurist", a Soviet intelligence source. White was the key American architect of the World Bank and IMF.
The State Department in Washington admitted, after his disappearance that Maclean had been a member of the committee that exchanged information between the partners in the development of the atomic bomb. He added that information about fissionable materials, production processes, weapons technology, and the development of stockpiles of fissionable materials and weapons had ceased in 1946. Maclean had information of Canadian, United States, and British atomic patents for peacetime uses, and amounts of uranium available to the three countries at that time. Some of the information available to him in 1947 and 1948 (when he was Secretary of the Combined Policy Committee concerned with atomic energy policy) was classified and would have been useful at that time to the Soviet atomic energy department and strategic planners. But changes in the rate and scale of the United States program in the intervening years would have made the information obsolete by 1951.
The author S.J.Hamrick (alias W.T.Tyler a Foreign Service officer) claims that Maclean was deliberately exaggerating the size of the stockpile.
Detection
Maclean had little access to messages between Winston ChurchillWinston Churchill
Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill, was a predominantly Conservative British politician and statesman known for his leadership of the United Kingdom during the Second World War. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest wartime leaders of the century and served as Prime Minister twice...
and Franklin D. Roosevelt
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Franklin Delano Roosevelt , also known by his initials, FDR, was the 32nd President of the United States and a central figure in world events during the mid-20th century, leading the United States during a time of worldwide economic crisis and world war...
, which usually bypassed both the State Department and the Foreign Office. Only one such message was discovered in Venona, which was a summary of Churchill's views on Eastern Europe to be put to Roosevelt by the British ambassador, Lord Halifax. Stalin always gave the impression of being already aware of information given to him by the Prime Minister and President at the 1943 Tehran Conference
Tehran Conference
The Tehran Conference was the meeting of Joseph Stalin, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill between November 28 and December 1, 1943, most of which was held at the Soviet Embassy in Tehran, Iran. It was the first World War II conference amongst the Big Three in which Stalin was present...
, the Yalta Conference
Yalta Conference
The Yalta Conference, sometimes called the Crimea Conference and codenamed the Argonaut Conference, held February 4–11, 1945, was the wartime meeting of the heads of government of the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union, represented by President Franklin D...
in early 1945, and the mid-1945 Potsdam Conference
Potsdam Conference
The Potsdam Conference was held at Cecilienhof, the home of Crown Prince Wilhelm Hohenzollern, in Potsdam, occupied Germany, from 16 July to 2 August 1945. Participants were the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States...
. He showed no surprise when told that America would drop a bomb of enormous power on Japan.
Most of Maclean's cables published by the US Government in 1999 deal with routine messages between Lord Halifax, British ambassador in Washington and the Foreign Office in London or copies of reports from the British ambassador in Moscow Sir Archibald Clark-Kerr to London. Often they seem to have been drafted by the Foreign Secretary Sir Anthony Eden on behalf of Winston Churchill and voiced concern about Soviet political maneuvers in Poland and Romania. Churchill was trying to coordinate an Allied response to Stalin's imposition of rigid Soviet control. But Roosevelt showed no interest in blocking Stalin's moves in liberated Eastern Europe.
Maclean's role was discovered when the code name GOMER (Russian for HOMER) was discovered in the VENONA decryption carried out at Arlington Hall, Virginia and Eastcote in London between 1945 and 1951. These related to coded messages between New York, Washington and Moscow for which Soviet code clerks had re-used one-time pad
One-time pad
In cryptography, the one-time pad is a type of encryption, which has been proven to be impossible to crack if used correctly. Each bit or character from the plaintext is encrypted by a modular addition with a bit or character from a secret random key of the same length as the plaintext, resulting...
s. The full Venona transcripts were published in 1996 and show a resume of one cable from Churchill related by Maclean, during 1944 and 1945. In 1949, Robert Lamphere, FBI agent in charge of Russian espionage, along with cryptanalysts working as part of the Venona project
Venona project
The VENONA project was a long-running secret collaboration of the United States and United Kingdom intelligence agencies involving cryptanalysis of messages sent by intelligence agencies of the Soviet Union, the majority during World War II...
, discovered that twelve coded cables had been sent, six from New York from June to September 1944 and six from Washington in April 1945, by an agent named Gomer, Russian for "Homer". The first cable sent but not the first to be deciphered described a meeting with Sergei on June 25 and Gommer's (sic) forthcoming trip to Tyre (New York) where his wife was living with her mother awaiting the birth of a child. This was decoded in April 1951. A short list of nine men was identified as possible Homers, one of whom was Maclean.
Shortly after Lamphere's investigation began, Kim Philby
Kim Philby
Harold Adrian Russell "Kim" Philby was a high-ranking member of British intelligence who worked as a spy for and later defected to the Soviet Union...
, another member of the Cambridge Five, was assigned to Washington, serving as Britain's CIA-FBI-NSA liaison. He saw the Venona material, and recognized that Maclean was Homer, which was confirmed by his KGB control. He knew that some of the encoded messages KGB had been sent from New York, which Maclean had often visited to see his family, who stayed there with Melinda's mother.
The pressure on Philby now began to grow. If Maclean admitted sending messages, others of the Cambridge Five would be implicated. Philby had known Maclean at Cambridge and traveled to Moscow with him before the war for a holiday. Believing that Maclean would confess to MI5
MI5
The Security Service, commonly known as MI5 , is the United Kingdom's internal counter-intelligence and security agency and is part of its core intelligence machinery alongside the Secret Intelligence Service focused on foreign threats, Government Communications Headquarters and the Defence...
, Philby and Guy Burgess
Guy Burgess
Guy Francis De Moncy Burgess was a British-born intelligence officer and double agent, who worked for the Soviet Union. He was part of the Cambridge Five spy ring that betrayed Western secrets to the Soviets before and during the Cold War...
decided that Burgess would travel to London on the Queen Mary
RMS Queen Mary
RMS Queen Mary is a retired ocean liner that sailed primarily in the North Atlantic Ocean from 1936 to 1967 for the Cunard Line...
, where Maclean was head of the Foreign Office's American desk, to warn him. Burgess received three speeding tickets in a single day and assaulted a traffic cop in Virginia. The Governor complained to the British Ambassador and Burgess went back to London, in disgrace.
Philby passed this information to the Soviets, and they were desperate for Maclean to get out, fearful that, in his current state, he would crack immediately under interrogation. Maclean shilly shallied, afraid of staying, afraid of going, until he sounded out Melinda about the defection. According to Modin, she responded: "They're quite right - go as soon as you can, don't waste a single moment."
In common with many others, Cyril Connolly was reluctant to accept that Burgess and Maclean had spied for the Soviet Union: "they are members of the governing class, of the high bureaucracy, the “they” who rule the “we”…. If traitors they be, then they are traitors to themselves." he wrote later.
Defection
The plan was for Burgess to give Maclean a note in the Foreign Office identifying a meeting place. Maclean, now under suspicion and denied sensitive documents, was likely to be bugged at home and in the office. They met at the Reform ClubReform Club
The Reform Club is a gentlemen's club on the south side of Pall Mall, in central London. Originally for men only, it changed to include the admission of women in 1981. In 2011 the subscription for membership of the Reform Club as a full UK member is £1,344.00, with a one-off entrance fee of £875.00...
to discuss Maclean's imminent exposure and the need to flee to Russia.
MI5 insisted that Maclean be questioned. He would be confronted with the FBI and MI5 evidence on Monday, 28 May 1951. But there was a major difficulty regarding prosecution since Venona could not be revealed. It looks possible that the British Government preferred that he defect.
The day eventually earmarked for Maclean to make his escape happened to be his 38th birthday: May 25, 1951. He came home by train from the Foreign Office to their house in Kent as usual that evening, and soon after Guy Burgess, who had just been persuaded to get out, too, turned up. After eating the birthday supper that Melinda had prepared, Maclean said goodbye to his wife and children, got into Burgess's car and left. They drove to Southampton, took a ferry to France, then disappeared from view, sparking a media and intelligence furore. It was all of five years before Krushchev finally admitted that they were in the Soviet Union.
Three days before his interrogation, Maclean fled. Yuri Modin
Yuri Modin
Yuri Modin was the KGB controller for the "Cambridge Five" from 1944 to 1955, during which period Donald MacLean was said to have passed atomic secrets to the Soviets. In 1951 Modin arranged the defections of Maclean and Guy Burgess...
, the controller at the time, had made arrangements for Maclean's arrival in Moscow and presumably given him a false passport. Maclean was extremely nervous and reluctant to leave alone. Modin was willing to travel with him, but KGB Central demanded that Burgess escort Maclean across the Iron Curtain
Iron Curtain
The concept of the Iron Curtain symbolized the ideological fighting and physical boundary dividing Europe into two separate areas from the end of World War II in 1945 until the end of the Cold War in 1989...
. Maclean and Burgess left his home in Kent by car, abandoning it at Southampton where they took the St Malo ferry and then trains to Paris and on to Moscow. This was very awkward for Philby who would now be implicated as the Third Man.
The following Monday, Melinda Maclean telephoned the Foreign Office to ask coolly if her husband was around. Her pose of total ignorance convinced them; MI5 put off interviewing her for nearly a week, and the Maclean house was never searched. No doubt their readiness to see her merely as the ignorant wife was enhanced by the fact that she was heavily pregnant at the time - three weeks after Donald left, she gave birth to a daughter, their third child. Francis Marling, Melinda's father, flew from New York to help. Friends in the State Department, gave him Foreign Office contacts who proved unhelpful. He returned to New York with a low opinion of Foreign Office officials. He felt then, as others felt later, that no serious effort was being made.
The author Miranda Carter
Miranda Carter
Miranda Carter is a British writer and biographer. She was educated at St Paul's Girls School and Exeter College, Oxford.Her first book was a biography of the art historian and spy Anthony Blunt, entitled Anthony Blunt: His Lives...
, in her award-winning 2001 biography of Blunt, Anthony Blunt: His Lives, has a different version of the escape. She suggests that Burgess visited Blunt first, and that Blunt designed the escape plan for Maclean and Burgess. This is referenced to Modin's account and also confirmed in the 1999 book The Mitrokhin Archive
Mitrokhin Archive
The Mitrokhin Archive is a collection of notes made secretly by KGB Major Vasili Mitrokhin during his thirty years as a KGB archivist in the foreign intelligence service and the First Chief Directorate...
. It is possible that Burgess and Maclean had selected Friday to flee whatever the situation. Both Modin and Philby assumed that Burgess would deliver Maclean to a handler, and that he would return. But the Russians insisted that Burgess accompany Maclean the entire way, realising that he was a serious security risk to them. Author Miranda Carter writes that the KGB had no intention of letting Burgess remain behind or return to London, as he was likely to crack under interrogation. Blunt himself in his public confession on BBC television denied this and claimed that Philby had warned Maclean. He also said that his Russian controller had ordered him, too, to join the pair in their flight to Moscow but that he had refused.
As he left, Maclean tore a postcard in half, giving Melinda half, and telling her only to trust someone who could produce the other. A year later, Yuri Modin overtook Melinda's Rover returning from the school run. "She burst out of the car like a deer breaking cover, yelling abuse at us for our bad driving." When Modin had recovered, he drew the half postcard from his pocket. Melinda immediately fell silent, reached across for her bag in the car, and produced the other half.
Moscow
Maclean, unlike Burgess, assimilated into the Soviet Union and became a respected citizen, learning Russian and serving as a specialist on the economic policy of the West and British foreign affairs. After a brief period of teaching English in Kuybyshev (now Samara) at a Russian provincial school, Maclean joined the staff of "International Affairs" in early 1956 as a specialist on British home and foreign policy and relations between the Soviet Union and NATO. He shared a small room with his new Soviet colleagues on the second floor of the journal's Gorokhovsky Pereulok premises. He also worked for the Soviet Foreign Ministry and the Institute of World Economics and International Relations. Maclean was awarded the Order of the Red Banner of LabourOrder of the Red Banner of Labour
The Order of the Red Banner of Labour was an order of the Soviet Union for accomplishments in labour and civil service. It is the labour counterpart of the military Order of the Red Banner. A few institutions and factories, being the pride of Soviet Union, also received the order.-History:The Red...
and the Order of Combat. His Soviet name was Mark Petrovich.
Melinda Maclean and their children joined him in Moscow, more than a year later. Before slipping away from her mother's home in Geneva, she spent hours at a salon having her hair and nails done. The next morning she returned from shopping to tell her mother that she had bumped into an old friend who had invited her to spend the weekend with the children at his villa in Territet, a village close to Montreux. After lunch, at which she seemed preoccupied, she left in her mother's Chevrolet wearing a blue Schiaparelli coat over black skirt and white blouse. They continued by train from Lausanne oddly dressed for the drab, dull Soviet Union.
An American colonel on the Arlberg Express remembered the two fair-haired little boys in grey flannel suits who told him they went to school in Geneva, the large suitcase and the two raffia carry-alls from Majorca and Melinda wearing a cheap boy's watch. They left the train before the Austrian border on the morning of Saturday, September 12 and after a quick breakfast were driven off in an American car by a man with an Austrian accent. Melinda was aware of her risks as a collaborator to her husband. Two months earlier, the Rosenbergs had sat in the electric chair for spying. But Melinda usually concealed her thoughts behind an expressionless look. "I will not admit that my husband, the father of my children, is a traitor to his country", she would say in outraged tones.
While living in Moscow, Maclean spoke up for Soviet dissidents, and gave money to the families of some of those imprisoned.
Eleanor Philby provided a rare glimpse of the Macleans' life. Melinda hadn't accepted Soviet penury: she and her children cut incongruously elegant figures in Moscow, dressed from parcels sent by her family. When the Philbys and Macleans sat in their dismal Moscow apartments getting drunk on Georgian champagne, Melinda and Donald would talk wistfully "of the good times they would have in Italy and Paris 'when the revolution comes'. Eleanor found this fantasy unnerving." Perhaps the Macleans knew that the apartments were bugged.
Extra-marital Affairs
Philby had had an affair with the wife of his friend Sam Brewer, the New York Times correspondent in Beirut. Now he showed the same lack of loyalty to Maclean. Philby and Melinda Maclean became lovers during a ski trip in 1964, while Eleanor Philby, Kim's wife, was on an extended visit to the U.S. Maclean found out and broke with Philby. Eleanor Philby discovered on her return and left Moscow, for good. Melinda moved in with Philby in 1966, but within two years tired of him and left. She returned to her husband, and remained with him until she left Moscow for good in 1979.Departures
Melinda returned to the West, in 1979 to be with her mother and sisters; her children soon followed her. She died in New York, in 2010 without saying a single word to the media.The three Maclean children all married Russians, but left Moscow to live in London and the U.S, as they still had the right to British or American passports. Fergus the eldest son enrolled at University College London
University College London
University College London is a public research university located in London, United Kingdom and the oldest and largest constituent college of the federal University of London...
in 1974, prompting a question in Parliament.
In May 1970 Hodder & Stoughton
Hodder & Stoughton
Hodder & Stoughton is a British publishing house, now an imprint of Hachette.-History:The firm has its origins in the 1840s, with Matthew Hodder's employment, aged fourteen, with Messrs Jackson and Walford, the official publisher for the Congregational Union...
published Maclean's book British Foreign Policy since Suez which he wrote for a British readership. Maclean told journalists that he set out to analyse the subject rather than to attack it, but criticised British diplomatic support for the United States in the Vietnam war. He stated that he would donate the English royalties to the British Committee for Medical Aid to Vietnam. He foresaw a strengthening of British influence in the 1970s and 1980s as a result of economic recovery. Interviewed live by a BBC Radio reporter who detected a nostalgia for Britain in the book, Maclean refused to be drawn on whether he would like to return to London, for further research for his next book. Doubtless he knew that the KGB was listening.
Maclean was reported seriously ill with pneumonia in December 1982, and was housebound after his recovery. He died of a heart attack
Myocardial infarction
Myocardial infarction or acute myocardial infarction , commonly known as a heart attack, results from the interruption of blood supply to a part of the heart, causing heart cells to die...
in 1983, at the age of sixty-nine. He was cremated and some of his ashes were scattered on his parents' grave in the churchyard of Holy Trinity Church, Penn
Penn, Buckinghamshire
Penn is a village and civil parish in Chiltern district in Buckinghamshire, England, about north-west of Beaconsfield and east of High Wycombe...
, Buckinghamshire
Buckinghamshire
Buckinghamshire is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan home county in South East England. The county town is Aylesbury, the largest town in the ceremonial county is Milton Keynes and largest town in the non-metropolitan county is High Wycombe....
, United Kingdom.
Chronology
- 1913 Born on 25 May in London
- 1926 to 1931 Attended Gresham's SchoolGresham's SchoolGresham’s School is an independent coeducational boarding school in Holt in North Norfolk, England, a member of the HMC.The school was founded in 1555 by Sir John Gresham as a free grammar school for forty boys, following King Henry VIII's dissolution of the Augustinian priory at Beeston Regis...
in NorfolkNorfolkNorfolk is a low-lying county in the East of England. It has borders with Lincolnshire to the west, Cambridgeshire to the west and southwest and Suffolk to the south. Its northern and eastern boundaries are the North Sea coast and to the north-west the county is bordered by The Wash. The county... - 1931 to 1934 Read Modern Languages at Trinity HallTrinity Hall, CambridgeTrinity Hall is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge, England. It is the fifth-oldest college of the university, having been founded in 1350 by William Bateman, Bishop of Norwich.- Foundation :...
, Cambridge - 1934 Recruited by the Soviet Intelligence Service
- 1934 Started work at the Foreign OfficeForeign and Commonwealth OfficeThe Foreign and Commonwealth Office, commonly called the Foreign Office or the FCO is a British government department responsible for promoting the interests of the United Kingdom overseas, created in 1968 by merging the Foreign Office and the Commonwealth Office.The head of the FCO is the...
- 1940 Married Melinda Marling while working at the British Embassy in Paris shortly before evacuation.
- Relocated to Washington as Secretary in the British Embassy. It was here that he had access to details of the atomic bombNuclear weaponA nuclear weapon is an explosive device that derives its destructive force from nuclear reactions, either fission or a combination of fission and fusion. Both reactions release vast quantities of energy from relatively small amounts of matter. The first fission bomb test released the same amount...
program, eventually becoming the Secretary for the Combined Policy Committee on Atomic Development. - As the pressure of his double life began to mount, he started to drink heavily and became an alcoholic
- 1941 Identified by Walter Krivitsky, a Soviet defector
- 1944 son Fergus born
- 1946 son Donald born
- 1948 Relocated to CairoCairoCairo , is the capital of Egypt and the largest city in the Arab world and Africa, and the 16th largest metropolitan area in the world. Nicknamed "The City of a Thousand Minarets" for its preponderance of Islamic architecture, Cairo has long been a centre of the region's political and cultural life...
and promoted to Head of Chancery in the British Embassy - After a drunken episode he was sent home to London to "recover" from his "nervous breakdown"
- 1950 Promoted to head the American Department in the Foreign Office. Here he had access to top secret information on the atomic development program
- 1951 daughter Melinda born
- 1951 Warned by Philby that he is under suspicion and will most likely be unmasked. Maclean and Burgess both defect to the Soviet UnionSoviet UnionThe Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
- Live in KuybyshevSamara, RussiaSamara , is the sixth largest city in Russia. It is situated in the southeastern part of European Russia at the confluence of the Volga and Samara Rivers. Samara is the administrative center of Samara Oblast. Population: . The metropolitan area of Samara-Tolyatti-Syzran within Samara Oblast...
- 1956 They appear in Moscow, he is made a colonel of the KGBKGBThe KGB was the commonly used acronym for the . It was the national security agency of the Soviet Union from 1954 until 1991, and was the premier internal security, intelligence, and secret police organization during that time.The State Security Agency of the Republic of Belarus currently uses the...
with a Moscow apartment and a dachaDachaDacha is a Russian word for seasonal or year-round second homes often located in the exurbs of Soviet and post-Soviet cities. Cottages or shacks serving as family's main or only home are not considered dachas, although many purpose-built dachas are recently being converted for year-round residence...
outside the city. - 1963 Kim PhilbyKim PhilbyHarold Adrian Russell "Kim" Philby was a high-ranking member of British intelligence who worked as a spy for and later defected to the Soviet Union...
defects to Soviet UnionSoviet UnionThe Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
. - 1970 Published British Foreign Policy Since Suez, 1956-1968 (Hodder and Stoughton, London, 1970)
- 1983 Died of a heart attack in Moscow on 6 March.
- Cremated; his ashes were later returned to the United Kingdom.
Family
Maclean was married to the American-born Melinda Marling in 1940. They had three children, Fergus, born in 1944, Donald, in 1946 and Melinda, in 1951. In 1965, Maclean's wife began an affair with Kim Philby and went to live with him in 1966. However, he later left her for a Russian woman, Rufina Ivanova, and Melinda returned to the US with her children.Donald's son, Donald, married Lucy Hanna. They had a son. Donald Duart Maclean's only grandson, who resides in the UK.
Melinda Maclean lived out her years in New York.
She died in Feb., 2010.
See also
- Cambridge FiveCambridge FiveThe Cambridge Five was a ring of spies, recruited in part by Russian talent spotter Arnold Deutsch in the United Kingdom, who passed information to the Soviet Union during World War II and at least into the early 1950s...
- Kim PhilbyKim PhilbyHarold Adrian Russell "Kim" Philby was a high-ranking member of British intelligence who worked as a spy for and later defected to the Soviet Union...
(1912–1988) - Guy BurgessGuy BurgessGuy Francis De Moncy Burgess was a British-born intelligence officer and double agent, who worked for the Soviet Union. He was part of the Cambridge Five spy ring that betrayed Western secrets to the Soviets before and during the Cold War...
(1911–1963) - Anthony BluntAnthony BluntAnthony Frederick Blunt , was a British art historian who was exposed as a Soviet spy late in his life.Blunt was Professor of the History of Art at the University of London, director of the Courtauld Institute of Art, Surveyor of the King's Pictures and London...
(1907–1983) - James KlugmannJames KlugmannNorman John Klugmann , generally known as James Klugmann, was a leading British Communist writer who became the official historian of the Communist Party of Great Britain-Background and Early Career:...
(1912–1977) - John CairncrossJohn CairncrossJohn Cairncross was a British intelligence officer during World War II, who passed secrets to the Soviet Union...
(1913–1995)
Additional reading
- The Missing Diplomats, by Cyril ConnollyCyril ConnollyCyril Vernon Connolly was an English intellectual, literary critic and writer. He was the editor of the influential literary magazine Horizon and wrote Enemies of Promise , which combined literary criticism with an autobiographical exploration of why he failed to become the successful author of...
. This contemporary account was published by Ian FlemingIan FlemingIan Lancaster Fleming was a British author, journalist and Naval Intelligence Officer.Fleming is best known for creating the fictional British spy James Bond and for a series of twelve novels and nine short stories about the character, one of the biggest-selling series of fictional books of...
's Queen Anne PressQueen Anne PressThe Queen Anne Press is a small private press. It was created in 1951 by Lord Kemsley, proprietor of the Sunday Times, to publish the works of comtemporary authors. In 1952, as a wedding present to his then Foreign Editor, Kemsley made Ian Fleming its managing director. The press concentrated on...
in 1952. - Anthony Blunt: His Lives, by Miranda CarterMiranda CarterMiranda Carter is a British writer and biographer. She was educated at St Paul's Girls School and Exeter College, Oxford.Her first book was a biography of the art historian and spy Anthony Blunt, entitled Anthony Blunt: His Lives...
, 2001. - The Mitrokhin Archive, by Christopher Andrew and Vasily Mitrokhin, volume 1, 1999.
- Encyclopedia of Cold War Espionage, Spies, and Secret Operations, by Richard C.S. Trahair and Robert Miller, 2009, Enigma Books. ISBN 978-1-929631-75-9.