◆ SpookStack

1 shared very few ! 4 es, v few of his friends, and few of his intellectual interests. The bond between us was, of itical, and that was a nad to be blurred to the ability, To a certain ex- , Reogcaphy helped, While I was a Austria he was at Cambridge; «nile I was in Spain he was in Lon- son; much of the war period he was in Lo::don, but I was in France, Hampshir cnd Hertfordshire; then I went to Turkey, and he only caught up with me in Washington after a vei, I could therefore show antimacy never had a crow; he was simply a ” but occasional compan- 2 che fact that he had me in Washington could be turned to advantage. Would I be such a complete fool as to advertise my connection with him if we shared a deep secret? Another difficulty was the actual course of my career. The more I Jered it, the less I liked it. @ were the known left-wing jons at Cambridge, and sus- ¢d Comraunist activity in Vien- the complete break with nist friends in England, too closely by cultiva- » in London and Berlin; ice (of all places) of in which to carve out career; then the entry ‘ue Sseret Service with Bur- ale and my emergence in the vie QS an expert on anti-Soviet ond anti-Communist work; and fi- nally my foreknowledge of the ac- tion to be taken against Maclean and the latter's escape. It was an ugly picture. I was faced with the inewcapabie conclusion that 1 could noi hupe to prove my innocence. "“4et conclusion did not depress onduly. A strong presumption ‘ay guilt might be good enough - an intelligence officer. But it : not enough for a lawyer. What - + needed was evidence. The chain circumstantial) evidence that might be brought against me was uncomfortably long. But, as I ex- amined each single link of the chain, I thought I could break it; and if every link was broken singly, what 30 i i ad ~ ~ remained of the chain? Despite all ' appearances, I thought, my chances were good. My next task was to get out into the open and start scatter- ing the seeds of doubt as far and wide as I possibly could. The next few days gave me plenty of opportunity. In the office, Pater- son and I talked of little else, and Mackenzie joined our deliberations from time to time. I do not think that Paterson had an inkling of the truth at the time, but I am less sure of Mackenzie. He was idle but far from stupid, and on occasion I thought I caught a shrewd glint in his eye."My part in the discussions was to formulate a theory which covered the known facts, and ham- mer it home until it stuck. The opening was given me by the deci- sion of MI-5, which I have already described as foolish, to withhold ‘certain papers from Maclean and to put his movements under surveil- lance® Taking that as a starting point, I made a reconstruction of the case which was at least impos- sible to disprove. It ran thus. The evidence of Krivitsky showed that Maclean had been working for at least sixteen years. He was there- fore an experienced and competent operator. Such a man, ever on * guard, would be quick to notice that certain categories of paper were be- ing withheld from him and to draw disquieting conclusions. His next step would be to check whether he was being followed. As he was being / followed, he would not teke long to: discover the fact. But, while these discoveries would alert Maclean to his danger, they also put him in a quandary. The object of surveillance — was to trap him in company with a Soviet contact; yet without a Soviet contact, his chances of escape would be greatly diminished. While he was still meditating this problem, the act of God occurred. Burgess walked into his room—his old comrade. (1 could produce no evidence that there had been an old association between Burgess and Maclean, but the fact that they had gone together made it a wholly reasonable assumption.) The arrival of Burgess, of course, would solve Maclean’s problem, since Burgess, through his contact, yal make all necessary arrange- ments. This was strongly supported by the fact that it was Burgess who looked after the details such as hir- ing the car. And why did Burgess go too? Well, it was clear to Pater- son and Mackenzie that Burgesa was washed up in the Foreign Of- fice, and pretty near the end of his tether in general. Doubtless, his Soviet friends thought it would be best to remove him from a scene in which his presence might consti- tute a danger to others. Such was my story and I stuck to it. It had the advantage of being based on known facts and almost unchallengeable assumptions, The only people who could disprove it were the two who had vanished and myself. I was also happy to see that the theory was wholly acceptable to: the FBI. Boyd and Lamphere both liked it, and, in a short interview I had with Hoover at the time, he. jumped at it. In his eyes, it had the superlative merit of pinning all the blame on MI-5. I have no doubt that he made a great deal of political capital out of it, both on Capitol Hill and in subsequent dealings with MI-5. Hoover may have got few win- ners on his own account; but he was not the man to look a gift-horse in the mouth. The position with regard to the CIA was more indefinite. It was an FBI case, and I could not discuss its intricacies with the CIA without running the risk of irritating Hoo- ver and Boyd, beth of whom J was, anxious to soothe. So I confined my talks with CIA officials to the overt details of the case which became known through the press, somewhat late and more than somewhat inac- curate, 1 had no fear of the bum- bling Dulles; years later, 1 was to be puzzied by President Kennedy's mistake in taking him seriously over the Bay of Pigs. But Bedeil- Smith was a different matter. He had a cold fishy eye and a precision- tool brain. At my first meeting w him, 1 had taken a document «/ twenty-odd paragraphs on Anpl.- American war plans for his scruti: - and comment. He had flipped .c° the pages casually and tossed .. aside, then engaged me in close dis-