One of the 5 Cambridge Spies 21/2/19
He worked with Sir Roger Makins on top secret atomic matters. The code name Orphan as he was a solitary type and his parents had died. He appeared as a reliable person of integrity who would not let you down. He did his job extremely well in the Foreign office but needed to find a cause and an opportunity. His father was an MP and the family had originated from the Hebrides and he had a Presbyterian upbringing. From his father he learned that you did what you thought right at all costs.. He was at the same school as WH.Auden, Stephen Spender, Benjamin Britten and Alan Hodgkin. He was a high achiever and as such turned inwards and able to maintain 2 lives in balance for decades. Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited is a portrayal of this but in Oxford. 1926 the General Strike was a galvanizing political event caused by mine owners cutting pay and followed by a refusal of the Daily Mail printers to print a column condemning the strike. Over half the undergraduates from Cambridge took up emergency positions rather than side with the strikers. Middle class volunteers who went to work as scab had their eyes opened to working conditions and dispossessed poor. The Communist Party in Britain saw this as the greatest revolutionary advance since the Chartists. 1924 Britain recognized the Soviet Union diplomatically.10 years before the US did. Marxism hit Cambridge in1933 Maurice Dobbs was a pupil of Maynard Keynes. You also had Wittgenstein at Cambridge. Cambridge is made up of 26 collages The Klugman family were the leading Jewish Hampstead liberals. With the chaos of the depression only the Soviet Union seemed to have all the answers. A debate in 1932 declared "This house has more hope in Moscow than in Detroit. The Apostles included GM Trevelyan, EM Forster Maynard Keynes, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Victor Rothchild, Julian Bell(poet). Maclean had no friend but many acquaintances. 1934 Got 1st class degree in French and German. After Cambridge planned to live and teach English in Russia Arnold Deutsch spoke German, French ,Italian, Dutch ,Russian and had been brought up as an observant Jew. His cousin Oscar was a movie theater millionaire ODEON Oscar Deutsch Entertains Our Nation and chairman of a synagogue.. These spies were taken on to be sleepers till they got promotion to positions with access to information. Alan Dulles mistrusted the British from when he was an English teacher in India in 1920. The Spanish Civil War was the last chance to hold back fascism. He worked for the Non- Intervention Committee While he worked in the foreign office from 1935 till he defected in 1951, he had sent pages that filled 45 boxes of 300 pages each. After Stalin Nazi treaty many dropped their support for communism but these 5 were intellectually arrogant. So much information arrived that Stalin did not trust it. It also included his analysis of what was relevant in this information. 2 month before the Russian invasion he Maclean already sent details German plans for the invasion to Moscow. The Soviets received copies of all correspondence between Churchill and Roosevelt. Maclean also sent clear distillation/analysis of the arguments of what was happening. Stalin always had the advantage in bargaining with the allies. Maclean met Katherine Graham , New Dealers in the States. Rebecca West heard that the British Embassy was never as well organized and efficient as when Maclean was there. His handler received a lot of credit. Maclean had access to all information on the US atomic commission. All Wartime telegrams sent by commercial telegraph companies were filed and kept, by Western Union etc. American official were all friendly to Maclean as they believed that it was only a matter of time till he returned to Washington as British Ambassador. He objected to the British Labour Government for kowtowing to the Americans anti Soviet policy. 1945Truman wanted to stop the Soviets from taking the Dardanelles, Stalin being informed put Red Army divisions in Romania and Bulgaria. -------- 1946 Nunn May exposed as a spy giving away nuclear secrets but unlike Fucks had very little information Sept 1948 arrived in Cairo. The Soviets had an ambassador in Tel Aviv before the Americans. The Arab world was on the fault line of the cold war and he encouraged Moscow to get involved there. When Phillip and Elizabeth visited Cairo, the Macleans were at a party they gave and Melinda had come out of her shell. Maclean felt that Communism was not the answer to Egypt's woes. When the American's decoded the material sent to Russia during the war now that they were no longer allies they found Homer worked at the British Embassy but the British were not keen to admit their short comings about somebody who had access to correspondence between Roosevelt and Churchill. They could have started matching name and dates of their staff transfers. Messages had come from Los Alamos Manhattan project and were looking for low down technical staff and not diplomats. 1949 August Russia's first nuclear test followed by Chiang Kai-shek's defeat. Twice from Egypt Maclean asked Moscow to let him defect but they were suspicious of him now and he was worthless to him. He was in the process of having a nervous breakdown and moved back to England for treatment then returned to work in London on American affairs in the empty India dept buildings. The Verona were looking for a spy code name Gomer rather Homer this pointed to Gore as he was a Christian Scientist and Tea totolar. Eventually they found a description of him having his wife's family in NY. Philby sent Burgess the get him out. They took a weekend night ferry to France and got to Russia via Prague. Where they are sent to Samara (Kuybyshev) a dirty industrial city. Maclean in Russia learns Russian and start off working as an English teacher which he had wanted to do before he joined the foreign office. Stalin didn't trust them. MacLean's brother Alan resigned from he foreign office and worked for MacMillan publishes under Harold MacMillan. After Stalins death1953 in Summer Melinda and three children were on holiday in Switzerland and went to Austria which was still under occupation till 1955 and went to the Soviet sector and from their to Moscow. When Dean Acheson heard that Maclean was a spy he said "My God he knew everything" . Later on he joins a research institute and get a doctorate and published as book in England. He said the party had to embrace the intelligent and not send them into exile. He met with Solzhenitsyn and Roy Medvedev. His children married Russians but got visas to leave through his high standing. Melinda lived till 2010 in NY. He predicted that there would be glasnost and convergence of Soviet and Western systems. Died in 1983 his ashes were buried next to his fathers grave.
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