Donald Maclean (spy)

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Donald Maclean (spy) : biography

25 May 1913 – 6 March 1983

Shortly after Lamphere’s investigation began, Kim Philby, another member of the Cambridge Five, was assigned to Washington, serving as Britain’s CIA-FBI-NSA liaison. He saw the Venona material, and recognized that Maclean was Homer, which was confirmed by his KGB control. He knew that some of the encoded messages KGB had been sent from New York, which Maclean had often visited to see his family, who stayed there with Melinda’s mother.

The pressure on Philby now began to grow. If Maclean admitted sending messages, others of the Cambridge Five would be implicated. Philby had known Maclean at Cambridge and traveled to Moscow with him before the war for a holiday. Believing that Maclean would confess to MI5, Philby and Guy Burgess decided that Burgess would travel on the Queen Mary to London, where Maclean was head of the Foreign Office’s American desk, to warn him. Burgess received three speeding tickets in a single day and assaulted a traffic cop in Virginia. The Governor complained to the British Ambassador and Burgess went back to London, in disgrace.

Philby passed this information to the Soviets, and they were desperate for Maclean to get out, fearful that, in his current state, he would crack immediately under interrogation. Maclean shilly shallied, afraid of staying, afraid of going, until he sounded out Melinda about the defection. According to Modin, she responded: "They’re quite right go as soon as you can, don’t waste a single moment."

In common with many others, Cyril Connolly was reluctant to accept that Burgess and Maclean had spied for the Soviet Union: "they are members of the governing class, of the high bureaucracy, the “they” who rule the “we”…. If traitors they be, then they are traitors to themselves." he wrote later.

Family

Maclean was married to the American-born Melinda Marling in 1940. They had three children, Fergus, born in 1944, Donald, in 1946 and Melinda, in 1951. (accessed 12 August 2007) In 1965, Maclean’s wife began an affair with Kim Philby and went to live with him in 1966. Donald’s son, Donald, married Lucy Hanna. They had a son. Donald Duart Maclean’s only grandson, who resides in the UK.

Melinda Maclean lived out her years in New York.Melindia Maclean died in February 2010. by Ambassador Richard Carlson and Buckley Carlson in Foundation for Defense of Democracies (accessed 12 August 2007) She died in February, 2010.

Extramarital affairs

Philby had had an affair with the wife of his friend Sam Brewer, The New York Times correspondent in Beirut. Now he showed the same lack of loyalty to Maclean. Philby and Melinda Maclean became lovers during a ski trip in 1964, while Eleanor Philby, Kim’s wife, was on an extended visit to the U.S. Maclean found out and broke with Philby. Eleanor Philby discovered on her return and left Moscow, for good. Melinda moved in with Philby in 1966, but within two years tired of him and left. She returned to her husband, and remained with him until she left Moscow for good in 1979.

London

In 1934, Maclean started work at the Foreign Office in London. While there, he was under the operational control of GPU rezident, Anatoli Gorsky. Gorsky, who was appointed in 1939 after the entire London rezidentura was liquidated, used Vladimir Borisovich Barkovsky, a recent graduate of Moscow’s Intelligence School as the case officer for Maclean.

The writer Cyril Connolly describes Maclean at this time. He was sandy-haired, tall, with great latent physical strength, but fat and rather flabby. Meeting him, one was conscious of both amiability and weakness. He did not seem a political animal but resembled the clever, helpless youth in an Aldous Huxley novel, an outsize Cherubino intent on amorous experience but too shy and clumsy to succeed. He sought refuge on the more impetuous and emancipated fringes of Bloomsbury and Chelsea.Cyril Connolly: The Missing Diplomats: London: The Queen Anne Press, 1952

In 1937, Maclean was put "on ice" by his Russian contact. At meeting after meeting nobody turned up. Then Kitty Harris arrived in place of his usual controller and gave the recognition phrase. "You hadn’t expected to see a lady, had you?" she said. "No, but it’s a pleasant surprise," he replied. Harris was told he was the most important spy. Cherish him as the apple of your eye, she was told. Maclean would visit Harris’ Bayswater flat, after work, with documents to photograph. He would arrive with flowers and chocolates with those papers, and by May 1938 they had a dinner to celebrate their birthdays. Maclean came with a bunch of roses, a bottle of wine and a locket on a thin gold chain. They ate a take-away and listened to Glenn Miller on the radio. That was the first night they made love, and loyal to her mission she reported this to her controller, Grigoriy Grafpen.The Guardian newspaper, Manchester and London, May 10, 2003