◆ SpookStack

Myclean coolly went on] working as if nothing had | happened, caught the trdin home to Tatsfield, Ke said |good-bye to his wife, lame back by train to London, and joined the waiting Burgess outside his club,: Bul the White Paper is wrong when it says that they drove together from Tatsfield to Southampton. * The evidence about the car being hired from a garage near Baker-street, London, is quite definite. Bt, Malo, in France. . How were they able to get clear without being stopped? gre White Paper ia ‘unconvine- ing. It 1s true. as any detective knows. that it is pretty well im- possible to keep a 24-hours-a-day watch on anybody. But wibt sbout Southampton? NO_ WARNING w+, Prue,,they were legally free to gq abroad. But why had the t authorities not been waged? hy were their names, since they were suspecis, not in the Diack list book which every Pass- port Control Officer has? It would have been quite pos- sible to detaln and delay them on one pretext or another, In any case, the fact of their bolting would have been known at once. As it was, they were lucky. May 25 was a Friday. Maclean was not missed until the Mbn- y. Burgess was on leave. |. . By the time ‘the alarm was Bken, ell trails were cold. a fut that ts only one item thy record of inefficient security By midnight they were aboard the Falalse anq sailing fgr 5 s ACLEA CONTINUED FROM PAGE ONE work which the White Paper dis- closes. ~ First reports of a leakage {rom the Foreign Office to the Soviet authorities had come in Janua- ary, 1948. ‘The “highly secret but wide- spread and protracted inquiries” were started then. Protracted they certainly wae. Two years passed before suppicion fell on the two. “FANTASTIC | at seems fantastic. Both men had personal records which should have suggested un- reliability. ~ Burgess had already been reprimanded for” “indiscreet talk about secret matters.” Their Communist affiliations while at Cambridge should have been known, What was MI6 about? No wonder that, as @ result, Mr. Morrison set up & committee to consider the security checks plied to members of the reign Service, and that the ctpcks haye since been tightened yy jut two remarkable horses “FULL DEBATE IN — PARLIAMENT had left the stablo—after yea: of activity inside it—before the door was shut, ONE HOPES IT REALLY Is. ‘The White Paper is coyly dis- ereet about one point, It records that Burgess’ first Government job, from 1939 to 1940, was in “one of the war propaganda organisations.” $ Why try to suppress the fact ‘that it was a branch of Military Intelligence? @ last night the Foreign Office dropped an offpial curtain on the Maclean-Burkess affair for the next month, It announced that Mr, Hatbid. Macmillan, the Foreign tary, had decided that no. further information should be‘ given and no questions answered . about it until Parliament has - had the opportunity to discuss the White Paper, 4 INVESTIGATION ‘Time will be made avatlable for @ full debate as soon as MPs reassemble at the end of October. Lieut.Colonel Marcus Ligton, Labour MP for Brixton, & to ask the Prime Minister on. October 25 to set up a Stect ~ Committee to investigate, Me