Donald Maclean (spy) - Defection

Defection

The plan was for Burgess to give Maclean a note in the Foreign Office identifying a meeting place. Maclean, now under suspicion and denied sensitive documents, was likely to be bugged at home and in the office. They met at the Reform Club to discuss Maclean's imminent exposure and the need to flee to Russia.

MI5 insisted that Maclean be questioned. He would be confronted with the FBI and MI5 evidence on Monday, 28 May 1951. But there was a major difficulty regarding prosecution since Venona could not be revealed. It looks possible that the British Government preferred that he defect.

The day eventually earmarked for Maclean to make his escape happened to be his 38th birthday: May 25, 1951. He came home by train from the Foreign Office to their house in Kent as usual that evening, and soon after Guy Burgess, who had just been persuaded to get out, too, turned up. After eating the birthday supper that Melinda had prepared, Maclean said goodbye to his wife and children, got into Burgess's car and left. They drove to Southampton, took a ferry to France, then disappeared from view, sparking a media and intelligence furore. It was all of five years before Krushchev finally admitted that they were in the Soviet Union.

Three days before his interrogation, Maclean fled. Yuri Modin, the controller at the time, had made arrangements for Maclean's arrival in Moscow and presumably given him a false passport. Maclean was extremely nervous and reluctant to leave alone. Modin was willing to travel with him, but KGB Central demanded that Burgess escort Maclean across the Iron Curtain. Maclean and Burgess left his home in Kent by car, abandoning it at Southampton where they took the St Malo ferry and then trains to Paris and on to Moscow. This was very awkward for Philby who would now be implicated as the Third Man.

The following Monday, Melinda Maclean telephoned the Foreign Office to ask coolly if her husband was around. Her pose of total ignorance convinced them; MI5 put off interviewing her for nearly a week, and the Maclean house was never searched. No doubt their readiness to see her merely as the ignorant wife was enhanced by the fact that she was heavily pregnant at the time - three weeks after Donald left, she gave birth to a daughter, their third child. Francis Marling, Melinda's father, flew from New York to help. Friends in the State Department, gave him Foreign Office contacts who proved unhelpful. He returned to New York with a low opinion of Foreign Office officials. He felt then, as others felt later, that no serious effort was being made.

The author Miranda Carter, in her award-winning 2001 biography of Blunt, Anthony Blunt: His Lives, has a different version of the escape. She suggests that Burgess visited Blunt first, and that Blunt designed the escape plan for Maclean and Burgess. This is referenced to Modin's account and also confirmed in the 1999 book The Mitrokhin Archive. It is possible that Burgess and Maclean had selected Friday to flee whatever the situation. Both Modin and Philby assumed that Burgess would deliver Maclean to a handler, and that he would return. But the Russians insisted that Burgess accompany Maclean the entire way, realising that he was a serious security risk to them. Author Miranda Carter writes that the KGB had no intention of letting Burgess remain behind or return to London, as he was likely to crack under interrogation. Blunt himself in his public confession on BBC television denied this and claimed that Philby had warned Maclean. He also said that his Russian controller had ordered him, too, to join the pair in their flight to Moscow but that he had refused.

As he left, Maclean tore a postcard in half, giving Melinda half, and telling her only to trust someone who could produce the other. A year later, Yuri Modin overtook Melinda's Rover returning from the school run. "She burst out of the car like a deer breaking cover, yelling abuse at us for our bad driving." When Modin had recovered, he drew the half postcard from his pocket. Melinda immediately fell silent, reached across for her bag in the car, and produced the other half.