Verne W. Newton: The Cambridge Spies. The Untold story of Maclean, Philby, and Burgess in America. Lanham, New York: Madison Books, 1991. 448 pp. Ill.
I have always been interested in learning what the original impetus was for an author to sit down and undertake the hard work of writing a book, since knowing that might explain a lot about the finished product. Books written simply to make money usually turn out pretty bad, though not quite as bad as those written to get tenure. When it comes to fiction, often the best books are written out of some psychological need that the author cannot explain; they simply yield to a subconscious urge that must be satisfied. Righting some wrong can be a powerful motive, though sometimes this is used as an excuse for taking revenge.
In the present case, Verne Newton was initially inspired by a review he read of Bruce Page, David Leitch, and Phillip Knightley: Philby: The Spy Who Betrayed a Generation (London, 1968), which said the weakest portion of that groundbreaking investigation dealt with Philby’s stay in the U. S. from 1949 to 1951.
Having spotted a gap, Newton sets out to fill it. In the process, plenty of people and organizations come in for censure. First up, the British establishment, who refused to listen to the evidence provided by Soviet defector Walter Krivitsky: “The problem with what Krivitsky was saying was not with his clues, vague or otherwise; rather it was with the incapacity of the British Foreign Office […] to grasp what Krivitsky was telling them: proper British gentlemen can betray country and crown.” Newton devotes careful attention to the translation discrepancies of the four alleged suicide notes left behind in his hotel room.
The Cambridge spies were able to escape suspicion for so long because of their social status. For this, Newton blames both American and British cultural blinkers. “In the United States as in England, it was assumed that only the low-born would accept Soviet bribes to steal.” (pg. 179) His sharpest criticism, though, is reserved for the British. Overall he charges the British government with “infuriating obtuseness.” (pg. 338) He makes a strong case that Whitehall’s desire to save face ensured that the unmasking of Klaus Fuchs failed to lead to the timely uncovering of Donald Maclean, as it should have. “It is little wonder that, to this day, Britain has wanted to conceal the extent of Maclean’s information. Not only had he received intelligence that may have cost large numbers of lives, but he received it even after the Foreign Office later claimed he had been cut off…” (pg. 302)
James Angleton also comes in for criticism. Newton does not buy the story that the CIA’s chief of counterespionage saw through Kim Philby and was manipulating him, much less had turned him. J. Edgar Hoover is accused of “monumental inaccuracy.” (pg. 339) At the level below these leaders, though, the rank and file receive gentler treatment, one of whom offers this defense: “Yes, we were fooled, but we were fooled by the best.” (pg. 341) Perhaps Newton is less harsh in his judgment of these foot soldiers because some of them were his sources?
The bulk of the book is devoted to arguing the case that, of all the Cambridge spies, the one who did the greatest damage was Maclean. Newton shows there was much closer coordination between him and the “constantly bewildered” Alger Hiss than previously known. The information Maclean provided enabled Moscow and Beijing to estimate just how far they could go in the Korean War. They knew that Truman’s threat to use nuclear weapons was empty for the simple reason that at the time he had none that could be delivered effectively. Maclean is thus indirectly responsible for the deaths of many GIs and allied soldiers.
Maclean may have been brilliant; he was definitely dangerous and well-placed to do harm. Few would claim, though, that he was a fascinating personality, much less that he was a winning conversationalist or writer. Which brings us to Newton’s favorite bête noire, Kim Philby, whose treachery he explains with a quotation from John le Carré: Philby was addicted to “the drug of deceit,” that is, he was not motivated by politics or ideology, but simply because he enjoyed his mastery at the game of deception. “Philby never has been able to explain the reason that he became a spy. Instead he described at great length the reason that he became a communist, as if there were a self-evident connection between the two.” “Up to his dotage and death Philby furiously peddled the idea that he became a spy to fight for the underdog. Le Carré rejected the hoax from the start. ‘I do not much believe in the political motive of Kim Philby.’ ” (pp. 42, 47)
Newton starts his indictment by doing his best to implicate Philby in Wladislaw Sikorsky’s death in a plane crash, but lacks hard evidence. (pp. 55-58) He then devotes an entire chapter to the infamous contretemps at Philby’s home on Nebraska Avenue in D.C. in January 1951 Newton claims to have “interviewed everyone who had been at the dinner party who was then still alive, except Philby who did not answer my letters…” (pg. 412 n 9) After dinner had been cleared away and the guests (including Angleton) continued drinking, Guy Burgess showed up uninvited, and before long had drawn an offensive caricature of another guest, the wife of CIA agent Bill Harvey (formerly FBI). A scandal ensued. The host, Philby, first burst into tears and later apologized, though Burgess, ever insouciant, never bothered to. Philby consoled himself with the thought that he had smoothed things over, but in fact he hadn’t – Harvey was bent on vengeance. The whole idea of Philby letting Burgess live in his basement proved a mistake that was not only costly but entirely predictable, given the latter’s personality.
Even more interesting is the story of how a warning was passed to Maclean that the time had come for him to flee. The usually accepted version of events is the one told by Philby in My Silent War. Being part of the embassy information chain, he knew that the hounds were closing in, and came up with an ingenious plan to alert Maclean, who had already been recalled to London. The solution: Burgess was to deliberately flout the law by repeatedly violating the speed limit on a drive down to South Carolina, where he had been invited to speak at The Citadel. Moreover, once there he would insult his hosts and generally make a drunken spectacle of himself – the kind of performance that came easily to him. The ensuing scandal would cause him to be sent home, where he could then pass the message to Maclean in person without leaving a written record.
There proved to be a few hitches, though: Despite his best efforts, Burgess found it impossible be arrested and charged because of his diplomatic immunity, so he enlisted the aid of a shiftless hitchhiker. Over lunch in Virginia, Burgess proceeded to drink a few beers, forcing his guest to take over the driving. With Burgess urging him to hurry, the young man did as he was told until he was stopped by police and ticketed. Burgess paid the fine (which involved him heading off to get a check cashed). He made such a stink about the arrest that eventually judges and even the governor of Virginia got involved.
As a result of the scandal, the State Department lodged a complaint, thus leading to Burgess’ recall – which was precisely the desired outcome. By making his departure seem involuntary, no one would suspect that it had all been a charade designed to get him sent home, where he could pass the vital warning to Maclean just as MI5 was about to close in.
This is a clever explanation of events, but one that Newton terms “a complete fabrication.” As it may well be – the original source is the unreliable Philby, backed up by the “British and Soviet governments [who have] have been working almost as partners on this story.” But what is Newton’s evidence? Determined to gather every bit of data, he went so far as to track down the Virginia State Trooper who had once stopped Burgess for speeding, along with all the retired judges and politicians who were still alive in the 1980s. He claims Philby’s chronology does not fit, saying Maclean was on a list of four possible suspects “by early March” whereas Burgess had already left for his appointment at The Citadel on Feb. 28. (pg. 322) What’s more, the only reason Burgess couldn’t pay the speeding ticket in cash (and thus had to go find someplace that would cash his check) was because he had also had to pay for car repair – surely an unforeseen development, not part of a clever plot. Afterwards, instead of being satisfied that the plan had worked so well, Burgess was for a time furious, then despondent about being recalled. And to top it all off, Burgess did not later abandon his car at the embassy, as Philby claimed, but in Philby’s driveway.
Newton has accumulated a mountain of details, but what do they amount to? One suspects that he lists these and other minor discrepancies less to arrive at the truth than to cast doubt on Philby’s veracity. Convinced that he does not deserve his reputation as a masterpy, Newton takes great pains to undermine it. While he does succeed in poking some holes in Philby’s version, in the end Newton can offer up no more satisfactory explanation as to how and why Maclean knew when to flee, nor why Burgess accompanied him. He quotes Bruce Page et al, now with approval: “One can only say that if the Soviet secret service was relying on Burgess for operation plans … it was a less formidable operation than we have been lead to believe” (Philby: The Spy Who Betrayed a Generation, pg. 269).
Newton seems to think that the two men’s escape was an improvisation on their part, rather than a plan coordinated with Philby and their Soviet handlers. He even suggests that Burgess’s flight, in particular, not only had the effect of implicating Philby, but that that was precisely the point; somebody on his own team wanted to make life difficult for him. Both possibilities strike me as implausible. For the second one, he offers neither a candidate nor a convincing motive. As for their escape being improvised, if the two of them had shown up unexpectedly on the doorstep of the Soviet embassy in Prague and demanded passage to Moscow, how likely is it that they would have been allowed entry? While not impossible, it seems more plausible that they were expected.
If the weakest points for previous studies were the years 1949-1951, for this book it is the period that follows. Once the Oxbridge spies leave US soil, the account quickly turns sketchy. Maclean and Burgess fled in May 1951. Philby decamped from Beirut in 1963 and did not surface again until years later, after his debriefing was completed. The reason these years receive such short shrift? Almost all of Newton’s sources are either American or British. Virtually the only insight he can offer about the period behind the Iron Curtain is gleaned from the memoirs of his American ex-wife Eleanor Philby. “In Moscow, around senior intelligence officers, he was like a puppy starved for attention and affection. The spectacle upset his adoring wife, Eleanor. ‘He sometimes seemed pathetically pleased by the approbation of the Russians,’ she wrote [in Kim Philby. The Spy I Loved – reviewed elsewhere at this site]. ‘Every pat on the back was like a medal or a bouquet of flowers. The Russians understood his psychological need for reassurance…'” (pg. 48)
Speaking of chronology, Newton’s is less than rock solid. As has long been known, Eleanor left her husband, Sam Pope Brewer, to marry Kim and set up a household in Beirut. Newton provides this background information: “Brewer had known Philby when they both were covering the Spanish Civil War (Brewer was then with the Chicago Tribune).” (pg. 328) To this is appended a footnote: “Since the Franco regime was trying to expel Brewer for a series he was doing on corruption, [New York Times managing editor E. L. James] wondered whether the CIA was trying to remove a thorn in Franco’s side.” This certainly seems to imply that Brewer was working as a US spy under cover of being a reporter at that time. But of course the CIA did not yet exist when the Spanish Civil War was being fought – something James should have known. Newton, who does know it, tries to provide cover by adding, “Brewer worked for the OSS during the war.” Alas, that still doesn’t solve the problem: The Spanish stopped warring against each other when Franco’s side won in 1939, and OSS was only formed in 1942. Is this the only time Newton was misled by a source?
In short, while usefully filling in the picture of Maclean’s subversive activities in Washington, the author, in his eagerness to deflate Philby’s reputation, engages in some overreaching, thus marring the overall effect.
Select list of errata: “replaced by taught grimness” –> taut (pg. 240); “if the Allies were forces” –> were forced (pg. 298); “Hjalmer Schact” -> Hjalmar Schacht (pg. 362 n. 19); “less they be taken” -> lest (pg. 389 n. 23); “Philby convinced him Gore-Booth was Hoover” -> was Homer (pg. 413 n. 38)
Update: For a different account of how Burgess and Maclean managed to scamper, see Anthony Glees (The Secrets of the Service. A Story of Soviet Subversion of Western Intelligence [NY: Carroll & Graff, 1987], 360f): Having learned that Maclean’s arrest was imminent, Philby alerted his Soviet contacts in Washington, who passed word to their colleagues in London, who contacted Burgess, who in turn told Maclean that the time to abscond had arrived. This implies that the whole story about Burgess deliberately getting himself declared persona non grata was an invention. The basic chain of events, however, remains intact: It was Philby who passed information to Burgess who tipped off Maclean.
See elsewhere at this site reviews of Kim Philby: My Silent War; Eleanor Philby: Kim Philby. The Spy I Loved; Rufina Philby: The Private Life of Kim Philby; “A Different Loyalty”; Ben Macintyre: A Spy Among Friends
© Hamilton Beck
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