◆ SpookStack

whey keep an eye on him. He seemed C) py that there was someone else wiio was ready to share the responsi- bility. In the licht of what was to come, my decisivn to fall in with Burgess’ suggestion iooks like a bad mistake. Thave indeed given it much thought in the past fifteen years. It will not do to plead that the twist events were to take a few months later were utterly unforeseeable; security precautions are designed to give protection from the unforeseeable. _ But, on reflection, I think that my decision to accommodate Burgess . speeded by a few, weeks at most the » focussing of the spotlight on me. It also lent vigour to the letter which Bedell-Smith sent the Chief insisting on my removal from the scene. It may even have been lucky _ that guspicion fell on me premature- ly, in the sense that it crystallised “before the evidence was strong enough to bring me to court. Burgess’ arrival raised an issue that I could not decide by myself. Should he or should he not be let into the secret of the British Em- bassy source which was still under investigation? The decision to ini- tiate him was taken after I had made two lone motor trips to points outside Washington. I was told that the balance of opinion was that Guy’s special knowledge of the prob- Jem might be helpful. I therefore took Guy fully into our confidence, briefing him in the greatest detail, and the subject remained under con-, stant discussion between us. My dif- ficulty ws: that 1 had only seen Maclean tvvice, and briefly, in four- teen years, I had no idea where he lived, how he lived, or indeed any- '' thing et ci about his circumstances. iv is now time to turn to the .. to explain how it stood, and preblemss {t involved. ‘ ‘ie ¢:velopment of the affair was Geep anxiety, It was be- nderables, the assess- tua: gaceswork, We had received some dozen reports referring to the sgurce, Who appeared in the docu- ts under the code-name Homer, > little progresa had been made was still sending us reams about thé Embassy charladies, and the enquiry into our menial personne) ‘ was spinning itself out endlessly. To me, this remains the most in- explicable feature of the whole af- fair. There was already evidence that the Foreign Office had been , penetrated. Both Krivitsky! and Volkov had said so. There was, of course, nothing to suggest that the three sources referred to the same man. There is still no basis for that supposition. But if the assumption “had heen made, if in particular the Krivitsky material had been studied ‘in relation to the Washington leak, a search among the diplomats would have started without loss of time— “perhaps wven before I appeared on | the scene. But another feature of the case was even more puzzling. I must con- “fess to,having enjoyed a great ad- vantagein that I was pretty certain from the beginning who was in-: volved, But, even discounting that - advantage, it seemed to me quite obvious, from the nature of the re- ‘ ports, that we were not dealing with “the petty agent emptying waste- paper baskets and snatching the odd carbon, Some of the reports dealt with political problema of some complexity, and on more than one occasion Homer was spoken of with respect. There could be no real doubt that we were dealing with a | oman of stature. The reluctance to initiate enquiries along these lines ‘can only be attributed to a genuine mental block which stubbornly re- sisted the belief that respected members of the Establishment could do such things. The existence of such # block was amply borne out by the commentaries that followed the disappearance of Maclean and Burgess—and for that matter, my own. Explanations of extraordinary silliness were offered in preference to the obvious simple truth. Yet I knew quite well that this bizarre situation could not go on forever, One day,.any day, some- * body in London-or Washington * ABoviet intelligence officer Walter Kri- , Yiteky defected to the West in 1940, . bringing with him secret information about identified Soviet agent in “Britain's Foreign Offce—Ede. ' #64 find inspiration there. Once in- vestigation of the diplomats started,” it would certainly yield the right | answer sooner or Jater. The great © question was: how soon? how late? From discussion with my frienda at meetings outside Washington, two main points emerged. First, it ‘was essential to rescue Maclean be- fore the net closed in on him. That ~~ was accepted eas an axiom. No ques- © tion was raised about his future \ potential to the Soviet Union in the “event of his escape. It was quite _ enough that he was an old comrade. . Some readers, prisoners of preju- dice, may find this hard to swallow. T do not ask them to do so. But they cannot blame me if they suffer un- ” pleasant shocks in future cases. Sec- >.” ond, it was desirable that Maclean should stay in his post as long as possible. After his departure, it was said blandly that he was “only” head of the American Department of the Foreign Office, and thus had. little access to high-grade informa- tion. But it is nonsense to suppose that a resolute and experienced op- ~ a erator occupying @ senior post in the Foreign Office can have access" | only to the papers that are placed ‘on his desk in the ordinary course. : of duty. I have already shown that * I gained access to the files of Brit- ish agents in the Soviet Union when I was supposed to be chivvying Ger- - Mans in Spain. In short, our duty was to get Maclean to safety, but * not before it was necessary. But there were two further com- plications. I had been sent to the United States for a two-year tour of duty, and I could therefore ex- “pect to be replaced in the autumn . of 1951. I had no idea what my next _ posting would be; it could easily have been Cairo or Singapore, far - out of touch with the Maclean case. — Groping in partial] darkness as we were, it seemed safest to get Mac- - lean away by the middle of 1951 at © the latest. The second complication arose from Burgess’: position. He was emphatically not at home in . the Foreign Office, for which he had neither the right temperament nor the right personality. He had been thinking for some time of get- ()iid took into bis shaving-mirroy on