BURGESS, MACLEAN Reported Plans For Return

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29803, 21 April 1962, Page 11

BURGESS, MACLEAN Reported Plans For Return

(N.Z. Press Association—Copyright)

LONDON, /\pril 20.

The former British diplomats, Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean, who disappeared from London almost 11 years ago, are reported to be planning to return to Britain shortly.

Warrants for the two men issued at Bow Street have been handed over to Scotland Yard’s Special Branch. Scotland Yard said they had reason to suppose the two might be thinking of leaving, or have left. Russia for some other territory. Answer Refused Members of Parliament questioned the AttorneyGeneral (Sir Reginald Man-ningham-Bullerl about the warrants, but he refused “in the public interest” to tell the House of Commons why they were issued. , The Attorney-General said, ’"Rie application for warrants was made by the police officers acting on advice given with my approval by the Director of Prosecutions. It is not in the public interest to disclose the information which led to the application being made.

"In the particular circumstances of this case, I thought it desirable that a statement should be issued explaining why the application was made at this juncture and. in accordance with normal practice. the announcement was made by the Commissioner for the Metropolitan Police.” Declaring that the warrants would increase the chances of securing the arrest of Burgess and Maclean, the AttorneyGeneral added: “If they are arrested they certainly will be prosecuted.” The Opposition Deputy Leader (Mr George Brown) asked whether the AttorneyGeneral really wanted to arrest them or whether the whole operation was io warn them so that they would not come.

The Attorney-General replied that experience had shown that it was almost normal for information to leak out in relation to the issue of warrants and “it was better to make that announcement so as to reduce the area of speculation, if possible.”

It was the warrants that first triggered off the hue and cry. Later reports that one or both of the two former diplomats was due on a flight from Amsterdam sent police and reporters racing to London Airport last night on a wild goose chase.

A Foreign Office spokesman said today he could "shed no light” on the case Flights from Moscow and Amsterdam today revealed nothing, and a "routme” check of the Russian liner Baltika when she docked at Tilbury also proved fruitless.

In Moscow, there was still no sign the two men were preparing to return home. Maclean has apparently “gone to ground” and callers at his flat today received no answer. A friend maintained that Burgess was holidaying and would not be back* for two or three weeks. Left London

Burgess and Maclean, then aged 42 and 40. disappeared from their London home on May 25. 1951, when Maclean was head of the Foreign Office s American Department and Burgess was in London awaiting reposting after ending an appointment as an executive officer at the British Embassy in Washington.

They said they went to Russiu “to work for the aim of better understanding between thi Soviet Union and the West, having both of us become convinced from official knowledge in our possession that neither the British, nor. still more, the American Government was at that time seriously working for that aim.” Mrs Melinda Maclean. Donald Maclean's American wife, joined her husband in Moscow from a flat in Geneva two years after he disappeared. taking their three children with her. A Government White Paper issued in 1955 stated that just before the two men disappeared. Maclean was the chief suspect in investigation into the leakage of Foreign Office information to Russia.

Five years later Burgess attended the trial of the American U-2 pilot, Francis Gary Powers, and later that vear told Western journalists in Moscow: “It comes to everybody to feel that he has made a mistake, and you can quote me on that.” He also said he would like to come back —"but not as long as the cold war lasts.”