Kim Philby in Washington

[tallpaul@pipeline.com (tallpaul)]

         Burgess, Philby, and Maclean in Washington 
                  A Comment on Clipper and G.A.K. 
 
It is historically indisputable that Guy Burgess, Harold "Kim" 
Philby, and Donald Maclean were agents for Soviet intelligence. 
 
What is far less known is the role that these three individuals 
played in the U.S.A. and how this related to their access to U.S. 
secret material. 
 
Maclean, at one time, was the Head of Chancery of the British 
Embassy in Washington D.C. As such, he was the head of the code 
room at the Embassy and thus had access to *all* encrypted traffic 
passing through the Embassy. This included everything available 
through the considerable Anglo-U.S. co-operative ventures during 
the immediately-post W.W. II period. 
 
Guy Burgess was also assigned to the British Embassy where one job 
was as a liaison agent with the U.S.A. It has been reported during 
this period that he had a pass from the Atomic Energy Commission 
that gave him 24-hour-a-day access unaccompanied by any U.S. 
"overseer." This was a higher level of A.E.C. security than held 
by J. Edgar Hoover at the time. 
 
Kim Philby was the U.K.'s liaison to the Central Intelligence 
Agency. He was personally close ("a drinking buddy") to then head 
of C.I.A. Counter-Intelligence James Jesus Angleton. 
 
Angleton was, to all accounts, a psychopathologically paranoid 
individual, seeing Soviet spies and disinformation attempts in 
almost all areas of life with the exception of his one-time bar 
companion. He might be likened to one of those hysterical 
Victorian "feminists" who thought "all men are pigs" with the 
exception of one real gentleman she knew. (The gentleman would, of 
course, be Jack the Ripper.) 
 
I write this not out of any sense that Key Escrow or Clipper are 
"communist plots." Far from it, especially during this period. 
 
But the presence of Burgess, Philby, and Maclean in Washington 
shows how unable the governments have been to protect their own 
secrets. It is unreasonable to suggest -- as do supporters of 
Clipper and G.A.K. -- that governments will be any better 
protecting ours. 
 
--tallpaul