◆ SpookStack

Gutyess. 1 shared very tew ! 4 testes, very few of his friends, and few of his intellectual interests. The essentini bond between us was, of rouryad, PO itieal, and that was a aint tha: sad to be blurred to the tec. ef sy ability, To a certain ex- ten. georcaphy helped, While I was ‘a Austria he was at Cambridge; “hile I was in Spain he was in Lon- aon; much of the war period he was in Loi:don, but Iwas in France, Hampshir. ond Hertfordshire; then I went to Turkey, and he only caught up with me in Washington after a veo... I could therefore show that ro.. intimacy never had a chance t crow; he was simply a stimulating but occasional compan- jon. Evoa che fact that he had stayed with me in Washington could be turned to advantage. Would I be such a complete fool as to advertise | my connection with him shared a deep secret? if we Another difficulty was the actual course of my career. The more I -cozidered it, the less I liked it. ‘".a02@ were the known left-wing as .ocintions at Cambridge, and sus- ;«cted Communist activity in Vien- u- «the complete break with eay x4 Suunist friends in England, fellow zior <2 czas in London and Berlin; ti... ot. crvice (of all places) of Bou oJ. aitic career; then the entry . ‘ue Seeret Service with Bur- pits aale and my emergence in the wirvice 2s an expert on anti-Soviet end anti-Communist work; and fi- naily 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 ine capablie concjusion that I could not hupe to prove my innocence. "“4et conclusion did not depress unduly. 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 “1 gircumstantial 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 2." too closely by cultiva- - "4a In which to carve out . 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 | 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 1 am jess 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 take 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 _gtill 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 Maciean, but the fact that they had gone together made it a wholly reasonable assumption.) The arrival of Burgess, of course, would solve Maclean’s since Burgess, through Ais contact, problem, ° oi 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 Burgess was washed up in the Foreign Of- fice, and pretty near the end of his | tether in genera!. 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 Jook a gift-horse in the mouth. The position with regard to the CIA was more indefinite. It was an FBI case, and ] could not discuss its intricacies with the CIA without running the risk of irritating Hoo- ver and Boyd, beth of whom I 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, I was to be puzziecd by President Kennedy's mistake in taking him seriously over the Bay of Pigs. But Bedeli- Smith was a different matter. He had a cold fishy eye and a precision- tool brain. At my first meeting wi:': him, I had taken a document cf twenty-odd paragraphs on Angl.- American war plins for hia seruti: and comment. He had flipped ...: the pages casually and tossec v. aside, then engaged me in close dis-