Spy’s wife breaks her silence

Press, 7 December 1976, Page 20

Spy’s wife breaks her silence

NZPA London Melinda Mac Lean, who shared her life with two of Britain’s most notorious traitors, has ended her 23-year silence in an exclusive interviewl, the “Daily Express” has reported. Mrs Mac Lean’s husband, Donald, a former member of the British Foreign Office, supplied the Soviet Union with some of the West's topi

military secrets after he defected with Guy Burgess at 'the height of the Cold War lin 1951. The American-born Mrs Mac Lean, now aged 60, subsequently left her husband, a known homosexual and alcoholic, and lived with a double agent, Kim' Philby, in Moscow from 1967 to 1970, the newspaper said. The “Express” said she was at a hideaway with a member of her family in the United States. It was the first time she had been allowed out of the Soviet Union since she went there to join her husband in 1953. The newspaper said that at a clandestine meeting with an “Express” reporter, Paul Dacre, in New York, Mrs Mac Lean spoke of her life and regrets. Dacre reported that Mrs Mac Lean told him she had never considered divorcing her husband, and that “an awful lot” of untrue things had been written about her. I Asked why she had been prepared to endure so much

-lin such a tempestuous relate tionship, she replied that the rjonly answer she could give i was that she made a decis sion to join her husband, - and the father of her childj ren in 1953, and she had - stuck to that decision, i; Questioned about Mac Lean i j now, she said they saw quite ,ia lot of him, and he was as ihappy as he would ever be. »l Asked if she had any t regrets, she replied, that one s always had regrets. ; In the early 1960 s it was i reported that Mrs Mac Lean t would divorce her husband j in order to marry a Russian K.G.B. officer, the “Express” L said. ? It was later revealed that , she had moved in with Kim , Philby the double agent who • tipped off Mac Lean and Burgess that British agents had s unmasked them and who 1 later defected himself. ; Mrs Mac Lean, who has i extended her tourist’s visa 5 to stay in the United States [until February, said he had lino immediate plans to leave lithe Soviet Union.