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Britain's Most Infamous Spies Were Loose-Lipped and Drunk, Newly Released Files Reveal

Donald Maclean and Guy Burgess, double agents who defected to Soviet Russia in 1951, have always been framed as slick operators. Newly released secret files show that perception is a far cry from reality.
Photo by Katie Englehart

On May 25, 1951, Donald Maclean and Guy Burgess disappeared.

Four days later, Maclean's wife rang the UK Foreign Office, where both men worked, to report that her husband was missing. Security Service investigators would later report that Mrs. Maclean was "rather more annoyed than disturbed" about his departure. Asked why she thought Donald might have fled the UK, she was evasive — "except to say that when under the influence of drink he did the most extraordinary things."

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It would be five years before the two men resurfaced publicly — in the heart of Soviet Moscow.

And so began the greatest real-life spy-thriller in modern British history. Soon after they skipped town, Burgess and Maclean were exposed as Soviet spies: double-agents who had been feeding intel to the Kremlin for years, after being recruited from Cambridge University in the 1930s. The two men, along with three associates, would come to be known as the "Cambridge Spy Ring" or "Cambridge Five."

Back in London, the Foreign Office professed to be dumbfounded. The spies had been slick in their operating. And nobody had seen it coming. So the story goes — or went.

Members of the Cambridge spy ring. (Photo by Katie Engelhart from the National Archives, London)

New documents released today by the UK Foreign & Commonwealth Office, Cabinet Office, and MI5 (the UK's internal security service) reveal that, in fact, intelligence officials had flagged both men as causes of grave concern, and were closely monitoring their movements in the very hours leading up to their disappearance.

The files — reviewed earlier this week by VICE News — strongly suggest that the infamous spies' defection could have been thwarted. And they paint an almost buffoonish picture of MI5's efforts to root out Soviet moles.

Signs of Burgess and Maclean's treachery and ineptitude were manifest and many, and tended to involve inordinate amounts of liquor.

In January 1951, Maclean got wasted a party and admitted to being a card-carrying Communist. "Of course you know I am a Party member," he slurred. "Have been for years."

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Around that time, officials became aware that Maclean had suffered "a sort of nervous breakdown in Cairo," while on diplomatic assignment. He had been involved in a "drunken brawl" and broken the leg of a colleague.

Meanwhile, Burgess had been reported to MI5 for "irresponsible and indiscreet behavior" — and had been pressured to resign from his post after numerous incidents of "loose talk." He had a tendency to leave sensitive documents lying around, unattended.

Nevertheless, the two men were maintained in their high-level posts: Maclean, as head of the Foreign Office's American Department, and Burgess as a diplomat with the Far Eastern Division.

The newly released files, which are now at the National Archives in London, also reveal that, after Burgess and Maclean's disappearance, British officials downplayed how much they had known about the men beforehand, and worked to quiet reports of the scandal.

Similarly, they publicly downplayed the extent to which Burgess and Maclean had access to state secrets, including intelligence about Britain's atomic program.

Related: Margaret Thatcher Wanted to Reinstate the Death Penalty for Northern Irish 'Terrorists,' Show Newly Released Files

"What would… have serious implications," wrote the diplomat Baron Talbot de Malahide, in 1953, "would be the revelation that Mr. Maclean was under suspicion before he left, that we knew he had been a Soviet agent since 1937 and yet allowed him to escape."

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The over 400 new files, most of which cover the 1950s and focus on Cold War investigations, also capture a critical moment in the history of British intelligence: when the secret agencies MI5 and MI6 were growing larger and more unwieldy — and expanding beyond the traditional old boys network of posh Oxford and Cambridge types who had been "tapped" for service by friends of the family.

As the security agencies grew in size and scope, Foreign and Cabinet Office officials expressed an anxiety to maintain oversight of their shadowy colleagues. The spooks, in turn, were hostile to financial oversight attempts — and insistent that their secrets remain theirs alone.

(Photo by Katie Engelhart from the National Archives, London)

In 1934, Maclean and Burgess were recruited by the Soviet scout Arnold Deutsch. They were both young students at Cambridge with strident Communist leanings.

The handwritten minutes of the Cambridge University Socialist Club — later collected by MI5 — reveal that Maclean was eventually elected as a club committee member at a raucous meeting.

Soon after graduating, Maclean was recruited into the diplomatic service, and eventually posted to Paris, Cairo, and Washington DC.

Burgess found work with a Member of Parliament. Later, he became a BBC producer, worked for MI6 (the security service responsible for foreign intelligence), and joined the news department at the Foreign Office.

But while both men maintained top positions they also earned the ire of colleagues.

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Burgess was, according to dozens of secret papers, a notorious drunkard: prone to "disreputable behavior." On vacation in Tangiers in 1949, he once loudly discussed, in front of strangers, "certain facts about the organization of MI5 and MI6" — after getting pissed. He also referred to himself as a "left-wing socialist."

Maclean also liked his drink. In Cairo, he had a nervous breakdown, which the Foreign Office "attributed to prolonged over-work combined with hard drinking and a hectic social life." Once, he broke into the apartment of an American embassy official and trashed the place.

Related: MI5 Spied on a Nobel Prize Winning Author For Over A Decade, New Files Reveal

That the men retained their jobs reveals, in part, the nature of Britain's diplomatic corps at the time: a clique of gentlemen who were loath to nose around too much in other gentlemen's business.

In fact, Foreign Office papers reveal that until 1945, MI5 employees were not given serious background checks before being hired. It was not until 1951 that a procedure for "positive vetting" was put in place, requiring that the "character, background, views, and associations" of job applicants be investigated.

In March 1948, the government decreed that "no known Communist or Fascist should be employed" by any branch of the Government dealing with secret work. But Burgess and Maclean, who had been hired in the 1930s, were never vetted.

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(Photo by Katie Engelhart from the National Archives, London)

Meanwhile, a Foreign Office memo explains, the government and MI5 began to receive "information to indicate that the Russian Intelligence Service had a source or sources in the British Foreign Office." The tip-off came from Russian defectors — but the intel was vague. Only in 1951 was Maclean identified as the possible source of secret cables leaked to Russia.

Maclean and Burgess were then placed under close watch. The day they disappeared, Burgess was observed buying two train tickets — as well as a suitcase and a mackintosh coat that was not his size.

But despite this monitoring, nobody interfered when, at around 10pm on May 25, Burgess and Maclean drove out of London in Burgess's car. Intelligence officials would later reason that the men had been forewarned about the government's investigation into Maclean — by a third spy.

(Photo by Katie Engelhart from the National Archives, London)

By the late 1940s, the "Red Scare" was alive and kicking in Washington — but it took a while longer for British officials to be convinced that US-style vigilance was required in Whitehall. The newly released documents reveal that the case of Burgess and Maclean hurried this change-of-heart along.

A few months after the men defected, the UK government "agreed in principle that some positive steps should be taken to counter the activities of Communism in this country and that, within limits, government agencies may be used for this purpose," according to letter written by Cabinet Secretary Norman Brook.

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Around that time, a committee was also set up to study "the security checks supplied to members of the Foreign Service."

Related: What Does the UK Know About the Mysterious Plane Crash that Killed a UN Secretary-General?

Within government personnel departments, particular was given to the so-called "homosexual question." Both Burgess and Maclean were, at times, suspected of being gay. After they fled, the Foreign Office advised that homosexuals serving in the Foreign Service be "carefully watched," not because they were gay, as such, but because "homosexual behavior carried with it… the danger of scandal," and thus made gay agents vulnerable to blackmailing. The Foreign Office identified "26 cases" of suspected or confirmed "practicing homosexuals."

Other documents released today reveal the internal workings of the British security agencies — at a moment when they were expanding in size and scope.

Though MI5 and MI6 were founded in the early 20th century, the British government did not officially acknowledge their existence until 1989. It was only in 1994, with the passing of the Intelligence Services Act, that the agencies were given a formal legal basis.

In the 1950s, the agencies were in the awkward position of being open secrets. In the wake of Burgess and Maclean's defection, government officials were forced to consider whether that secrecy was justified. MI6, for instance, was keen to expand its operations — to better fight the Soviet threat. But at the same time, an internal report lamented, the service had "considerable difficulties in this matter of recruiting. It cannot advertise for candidates."

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(Photo by Katie Engelhart from the National Archives, London)

That the Burgess and Maclean files ever saw the light of day is somewhat incredible.

MI5 is, theoretically, required to release documents to the public after several decades — according to the UK Public Records Act. But the service is granted generous blanket exemptions, which effectively let it op-out of this duty. Unlike other government agencies, MI5 releases historic documents only when it fancies.

Several times a year, journalists and historians are thrown a few bones — and presented with a small cache of new papers. But academics suspect that the most damning files are never released.

Prior to being released, the Burgess and Maclean documents were redacted and entire pages have been removed under national security exemptions.

In fact, MI5 is open about the fact that it continues to destroy hundreds of thousands of documents, rather than preserving them for public release. By its own estimate, MI5 has destroyed some 200,000 files since the early 1990s; many that are concerned with "counter-subversion."

Follow Katie Engelhart on Twitter: @katieengelhart