The Runaway Diplomats:
MULHEN, NORBERT
The Runaway Diplomats The Missing MacLeans. By Geoffrey Hoare. Viking. 247 pp. $3.75. Reviewed by Norbert Muhlen Foreign correspondent; author, "The Return of Germany" ONE OF the best of the...
...Hoare's report, Mr...
...Both were accompanied by men now known as Communist agents: MacLean by Burgess, John by Dr...
...and Mrs...
...author, "The Return of Germany" ONE OF the best of the cold war's true-life mysteries is the Case of the Missing Diplomats...
...I shall be back soon...
...The long list of disappearing experts—from Bruno Pontecorvo down to Burgess and MacLean—makes one wonder...
...MacLean, whom he had apparently known well for several years before the disappearance...
...It is to Geoffrey Hoare's credit that he has not yielded to the temptation to turn his report on the case into a thriller...
...MacLean in 1953, while the latter still lived in the West, warning her against approaches by Communist agents: On no account should she be persuaded by them to search for or go to her husband...
...Hoare hardly seems to explore: What happened to MI 5, the famed British Intelligence Service...
...The tentative explanation of the MacLean case offered by Mr...
...in England, there was apparently not the slightest suspicion against the man...
...Both men, it would seem, had been involved in Communist underground activities, but in the course of a nervous breakdown (which happened to both with the same symptoms) threatened to be useless, if not dangerous, to the Communists...
...It so happened that on that very day, for the first time in three and a half years, Burgess's mother in London received a mysterious message from her son which thoroughly discredited the newspaper story...
...Both men held high and confidential Government positions...
...Second, there is a striking parallel—and possibly a connection—with the case of Otto John, the West German intelligence chief who disappeared eastward last summer...
...He has succeeded in presenting a comprehensive, blowby-blow account of the case as far as the MacLean couple is concerned...
...That would be the worldwide ramifications of the MacLean case and its connection—in cause and effect, personalities and techniques—with several other, similar cases of disappearance that have occurred in recent years...
...According to Mr...
...Hoare's report is reliable as well as fascinating in all its facts, I wonder if he hasn't supplied the raw material for a greater, more important story which he did not cover...
...Both bought return-tickets before their departure...
...John said: "I am just going down for a quick beer...
...First, is there only a parallel, or rather a connection, with the Field case...
...Wolfgang Wohlgemut...
...At any rate, the details of MacLean's and John's disappearance are strikingly alike...
...As for the disappearance itself, he has collected and presented all the known details and quite a few new ones which he discovered by hard legwork and intelligent research...
...MacLean's past and present leanings, actions and associations of a personal and political nature would have made him a security and loyalty risk in this country...
...Both took no documents with them but their passports...
...The mystery is: Has the British Intelligence Service also disappeared...
...It is a fact, which Mrs...
...It began in 1951 when Donald Duart MacLean, head of the American Department of the British Foreign Office, left his manor near London one evening, was last seen next morning in France, and then disappeared...
...A responsible and able foreign correspondent in the best British tradition, he has dug up a great deal of information on the backgrounds and personalities of Mr...
...Hoare is apparently identical with that of the John case at which this reporter arrived while covering the case...
...nor has he presented conjectures and rumors as facts...
...Four other German refugees besides John, who worked at the time in the same team under Burgess, left the West to accept high positions behind the Iron Curtain—Baron von und zu Putlitz, Karl von Schnitzler, Eberhard Knoebel, Doctor Honigmann...
...the psychologically and factually lucid pamphlet by Cyril Connolly, a personal acquaintance of Burgess, would have supplied him with material to fill the gap...
...Both made no secret of their opposition to the policies of their governments...
...The connecting link is Guy Burgess, who worked on "highly confidential assignments" on the BBC foreignpropaganda desk as well as for the Foreign and War Offices between 1944 and 1946, when Otto John held jobs with the same organizations in the same departments...
...Unfortunately, he rather ignores MacLean's fellow-traveler, Burgess...
...John and the other members of the British propaganda team evidently choose to remain silent...
...The people who might be able to tell us more about the connections between Mr...
...Both left with a casual farewell to their wives, MacLean said: "I am not going far...
...Thus, he avoids the unhappy experience of the London Sunday Pictorial, which on January 9 of this year ran a front-page story headlined: "burgess, mac lean, all is known...
...The mystery continued when, two years later, MacLean's American-born wife Melinda and her three young children also disappeared...
...Both were highly intelligent and emotionally unstable, with tendencies toward homosexuality and frequent public intoxication...
...The list of such parallels could be extended...
...Yet, while Mr...
...Burgess, Dr...
...With him disappeared Guy de Money Burgess, a British official who had served in various diplomatic and secret posts, including the British Embassy in Washington...
...Wisely, Mr...
...There remains another mystery which has not been solved, and which Mr...
...Hoare refrains from presenting any final theories...
...At this moment, a Communist agent acquainted with each pressured or blackmailed him into going east...
...Hermann Field now fortunately can confirm, that she tried to send a message to Mrs...
Vol. 38 • April 1955 • No. 14
