Donald Duart Maclean
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Donald Duart Maclean (1913-1983) was one of the Cambridge Five, members of MI5 who acted as spies for Russia in the Second World War. He was the son of the Scottish Liberal politician Sir Donald Maclean.
Like the others in the Cambridge Five, MacLean came from a privileged background. Two of the others were known to be homosexuals, Guy Burgess and Anthony Blunt, and it is sometimes stated that MacLean was too. However, it seems more likely that he was a bisexual. Guy Burgess claimed to have seduced him.
In 1941 he was possibly identified by Walter Kavitsky, a Soviet defector, who was later assassinated by Soviet agents in the Bellevue Hotel in Washington D.C.. It was said that Kavitsky had claimed there was a mole in British intelligence who was a "a Scotsman of good family, educated at Eton and Oxford (sic), and an idealist who worked for the Russians without payment."
His most fruitful period was during his tenure with the British Embassy in Washington D.C. (1944-1948), when he was Stalin's main source of information about communications and policy development between Churchill and Roosevelt, and then Churchill and Harry S. Truman. Although he did not transmit technical data on the atom bomb, he reported on its development and progress, particularly the amount of uranium available to the United States. He was the British representative on the American-British-Canadian council on the sharing of atomic secrets. This knowledge alone gave the Soviet scientists the ability to predict the number of bombs that could be built by the Americans. Coupled with the efforts of Alan Nunn May and Klaus Fuchs, who provided scientific information, MacLean's reports to his KGB controller helped the Soviets not only to build the atom bomb, but how to estimate their nuclear arsenal's relative strength against that of the United States.
His continual monitoring of secret messages between Truman and Churchill allowed Stalin to know how the Americans and the British proposed to occupy Germany and carve up the borders of Eastern European countries. Stalin was forearmed with this information not only at the Yalta Conference, but at the Potsdam and Tehran Conferences as well. In 1948, MacLean was transferred to the British Embassy in Cairo. Undoubtedly, MacLean's information was significant in assisting Stalin in his strategy for the Cold War.
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Detection and defection
The story of the Burgess and MacLean defection, and the subsequent implication of Philby, is a fascinating one of code-breaking, detection, and discovery. In 1949, Robert Lamphere, FBI agent in charge of Russian espionage, along with cryptanalysts, discovered that between 1944 and 1946 a member of the British Embassy was sending messages to the KGB. The code name of this official was "Homer." By a process of elimination, a short list of three or four men were identified as possible Homers. One was Donald Maclean.
Shortly after Lamphere's investigation began, Kim Philby was assigned to Washington, serving as Britain's CIA-FBI-NSA liaison. As such, he was privy to the decoding of the Russian material, and recognized that MacLean was very probably Homer. He confirmed this through his British KGB control. He was also aware that Lamphere and his colleagues had found that the encoded messages to the KGB had been sent from New York. MacLean had visited New York on a regular basis, ostensibly to visit his wife and children, who were living there with his in-laws.
The pressure on Philby now began to grow. If MacLean was unmasked as a Soviet agent, then, were he to confess, the trail might lead to the other Cambridge spies. Philby, now in a very important position in his ability to provide information to the Soviets, might be implicated, if for no other reason than his association with Maclean at Cambridge. Concerned that Maclean would be positively identified, interrogated, and, in the process (because of his highly agitated nervous state) confess to MI5, Philby and Burgess concocted a scheme in which Guy Burgess would return to London (where Maclean was now the Foreign Service officer in charge of American affairs). Burgess would then warn Maclean of the impending unmasking. Burgess managed to receive three speeding citations in a single day.
Before Burgess left, Philby was explicit in his instructions to Burgess. He was not to defect with Maclean.
The Philby-Burgess plan was for Burgess to visit Maclean in his Foreign Office quarters, give him a note identifying a place where the two could meet - it was assumed that Maclean, now under suspicion and denied sensitive documents, had a bugged office - and Burgess would explain the situation. They met clandestinely to discuss Maclean's imminent exposure and necessary defection to Russia. Yuri Modin, the Cambridge spies' KGB controller, made arrangements for Maclean's defection. Maclean was in an extremely nervous state, and reluctant to leave alone. Modin was willing to serve as his guide, but KGB Central demanded that Burgess escort Maclean behind the Iron Curtain.
In the meantime, MI5 had insisted that Maclean be questioned. They had decided that he would be confronted with the FBI and MI5 evidence on Monday, May 28, 1951.
Life in the Soviet Union
On Maclean's birthday, May 25th, the Friday before the Monday that he was to interrogated, Burgess and Maclean fled to the coast, boarded a ship to France, and disappeared. Had Blunt learned of the impending questioning of Maclean, and warned Burgess that the time had come? Blunt never admitted to that, and it is possible that Burgess and Maclean had selected Friday to flee whatever the current circumstances. Both Modin and Philby assumed that Burgess would deliver Maclean to a handler, and that he would return. For some reason, the Russians insisted that Burgess accompany Maclean the entire way. Perhaps Burgess was no longer useful to the KGB as a spy, but too valuable to fall into the hands of MI5.
Maclean, unlike the self-indulgent Burgess, integrated himself into the Soviet system, learning Russian, and eventually serving as a specialist on economic policy of the West, and British foreign affairs. However, when living there, he spoke up for Soviet dissidents, and actually gave money to the families of some of those imprisoned.
His American wife, Melinda joined him in Russia, but their marriage subsequently broke up. He died of a heart attack in 1983.
Chronology
- 1913 Born on May 25th
- Attended Gresham's School in Norfolk
- Read Modern Languages at Trinity Hall, Cambridge
- 1934 Started work at the Foreign Office
- 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 bomb 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 Kavitsky, a Soviet defector
- 1948 Relocated to Cairo 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 Warned by Philby that he is under suspicion and will most likely be unmasked. Maclean and Burgess both defect to Russia
- 1956 They appear in Moscow
- Made a colonel of the KGB with a Moscow apartment and a dacha outside the city
- 1983 Died of a heart attack in Moscow on March 11th
- Cremated. His ashes were later returned to England
- 1985 His ashes were taken to Dayton Ohio by His son Ronald E MacLean Sr. , where his family now lives.
See also
His ashes were turned over to his son Ronald MacLean Sr. ,And taken to Dayton Ohio where his family now Lives.
External Links
- Donald MacLean (BBC) (http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/maclean_donald.shtml)