DONALD MACLEAN, A TRAITOR FROM THE UPPER CLASSES

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00552R000404050005-5
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: June 25, 2010
• Sequence Number: 5
• Publication Date: March 12, 1983
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/06/25: CIA-RDP90-00552R000404050005-5
LRT I CL l EV YORK TDB
ON 12 MARCH 1983
'Donald Maclean, a Traitor-From the Upper Classes
By WOLFGANG SAXON A Scholarship to Cambridge
Donald Duart Maclean was a princi-1 Mr. Maclean was the son of Sir Don.
pal actor in Britain's most sensational ald Maclean, a universally respected
and innoP_tt.ntnnina ueninnae- A-me
He fled to Moscow when British coun
terintelligence caught on to his duplici-
ty, becoming a Soviet Government offi-
cial under the alias of Mark Petrovich
Frazer. He was 69 years old.
He had been suffering from cancer
and pneumonia and had been ill for
some time, apparently with prostate
trouble.
The spy scandal involving Establish-
ment figures like Mr. Maclean built for
nearly three decades. It started fur-
tively in 1951 when -Mr. Maclean, a
trusted Foreign Office official of high
rank, and Guy Burgess, a discredited
diplomat, vanished from Britain. Their
espionage work seriously damaged
Western interests in World War II and
at the height of the cold war.
The case riveted the public as a taci-
turn British Government doled out
scant facts under persistent question-
ing. It led to charges that the Establish-
ment, taking refuge in official-secrets
statutes, was bent on taking care of its
own.
Quest for the 'Third Man'
But the likelihood that Mr. Maclean
and Mr. Burgess had been tipped off by
a fellow insider led to a quest for the
"third man." This ended with the
equally abrupt flight in 1963 of H. A. R.
(Kim) P: ilby, a British journalist and
double-dealing former counterespion-
age agent for the Foreign Office who
joined the two in Moscow.
The loudest outcry in Parliament,
however, did not come until 1979. Prime
Minister Margaret Thatcher, hard-
pressed by the publication of a book on
the spy scandal, confirmed the identity
of a "fourth man." He turned out to be a
member of Queen Elizabeth's entou-
rage, Anthony Blunt, an art historian
and former top-ranking official in the
security services.
All the known accomplices in the
Maclean-Burgess scandal had things in
common beyond their ruling-class
background and intelligence. One bond
was Cambridge University, where Mr.
Maclean, Mr. Burgess and Mr. Philby
were students in the 1930's and Mr.
Blunt was a don.
It was a decade, as the historian
A. J. P. Taylor noted, "with mass
unemployment at the beginning and the
menace of fascism at the end." Indus-
tr'al Britain was a sea of misery for the
working class, the Spanish Civil War
loomed on the horizon, and many of the
well-to-do, impressionable young men,
in college saw the only answer in Marx.
ism and its self-anointed workers' para.
dise, the Soviet Union.
was a Cabinet minister in Ramsay Mac-
Donald's Government. The death left
his wife, Lady Gwendolyn Margaret
Maclean, with little financial resources.
Still, the son had won a scholarship the
year before to Trinity College, Cam.
bridge, and was able to finish his stud-
ies with the help of friends.
On graduation in 1935, Mr. Maclean
entered the Foreign Office. He spent
three years in Whitehall before joining
the embassy in Paris as third secre-
tary, the start of what appeared to be a
brilliant career.
In Paris, he toured West Bank spots
and, at the Flore cafe, met an American
student, Melinda Marling. They mar-
ried during the German advance on the
French capital and escaped to London,
where Mr. Maclean returned to the For-
eign Office.
The night of May 25, 1951, his 36th
birthday, Mr. Maclean and his wife
were joined at their home by Mr. Bur-
gess. After dinner, the two men drove to
Southampton, boarded a steamer to St.-
Malo, took a taxi to Rennes, then prob-
ably a plane to Paris, and vanished.
The case of the missing diplomats
grew into one of the most baffling mys-
teries in British history and led to one of
the biggest manhunts by all the West-
ern security services. With Conserva.
tive and Labor Governments sharing
the embarrassment, Downing Street
conceded the results, including the ex-
tent of the damage, grudgingly and
piecemeal when there was no other
Such an occasion arose, for example,'
from the tales told by a knowledgeable
Soviet agent, Vladimir Petrov, who de-
fected in Australia in 1955. His informa-
tion prompted the first coherent, though
far from complete, account of what the'
British Government still portrayed
simply as the Maclean-Burgess affair.
In a break for himself and Soviet es- Third Man Heads East
pionage, Mr. Maclean was assigned to Mr. Maclean and Mr. Burgess sur.
Washington in 1944 as acting first secre- faced in Moscow in 185?, protesting they
-c
head
cha
ce
a-d as
ry acting
of
n
ry
retary of the Combined Policy Commit.
tee on Atomic Development.
Tall, handsome and sandy-haired,
with an attractive wife and conversa.
tional charm, Mr. Maclean seemed the
prototypical diplomat. But the stress of
a double life began to show. He fell to
drinking heavily and, when drunk, often
became physically violent and evi-
denced repressed homosexuality.
At the time, Guy Burgess moved
from the BBC to the Foreign Office in
London before being transferred to the
embassy in Washington in 1950.
Mr. Maclean was posted to Cairo in
1948, where his drinking and fits of vio-
lence became so bad that he was re-
called to London two years later for
psychiatric treatment. He was back at
work after six months, seemingly well,
but soon again turned to the bottle.
The Two Vanish
By 1951 Mr. Burgess had been or-
dered back from Washington because of
his own indiscretions. Mr. Maclean
headed the American Department in
the Foreign Office. Hidden in the dark.
room of a pharmacy near his home in
suburban Kent, he developed microfilm
of the documents he passed on to the
Soviet Union.
The British had found only in 1949 that.
their diplomatic secrets were leaking
eastward. Investigators whittled down
the number of suspects until they came
up with one: Donald Maclean. On the
very day they intended to question him,
he was gone.
purely ideological reasors.Mr. Burgess
died in Moscow in 1963, the year Mr.
Philby, about to be marked as the
"third man," also headed for the Soviet
Union.
An echo of the affair is heard in a
newly published book, "After Long Si-
lence," by Michael Straight. an Ameri.
can who was also recruited by Mr.
Blunt while at Cambridge University.
Mr. Straight, who abandoned his Com-
munist affiliations, writes of meeting
Mr. Burgess in Washington in 1951 be-
fore his flight and warning him, "If
you're aren't out of the Government
within a month from now, I swear to
you, I'll turn you in."
Mr. Maclean, who had been joined in
Moscow by his wife and their three chit.
di-en, went to work for the Soviet For-
eign Ministry as an editor of English
texts.
Living comfortably in an apartment
building fonSoviet officials and intellec-
tuals near the Moscow River, Mr. Mac.
lean preserved his English upper-class
appearance by importing his clothes
from London. His wife left him for Mr..,
Philby after the latter turned up in MW]
cow but she reportedly made up with
Mr. Maclean, returned to the United
States for a long visit with her ailing
mother in 1976 and remained there.
At his death, Mrs. Maclean was be-
lieved to be living in New York along
with their daughter, Melinda, and a
granddaughter. Their two sons, Fergus
and Donald, were believed to be living
in England. 1
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/06/25: CIA-RDP90-00552R000404050005-5