Investigating soviet espionage and subversion: the case of Donald Maclean
This essay sets out the dimensions of investigating Soviet espionage and subversion, highlighting how Maclean's image as a Soviet agent has developed over the past 50 years. It will then consider to what extent new documents at the Public Record Office alter his image. Maclean's crime was treachery but what exactly is the intellectual challenge in investigating espionage? Just what can be achieved? Sir Dick White former head of MI6 offered this advice: Espionage is a crime that often leaves no trace of evidence. The investigator relies upon intuition for coincidences. After considering the circumstances, he might reach the moment of epiphany when all the facts added up to one conclusion1
Soviet Spies and British Counter-Intelligence in the 1930s: Espionage in the Woolwich Arsenal and the Foreign Office Communications Department
Among the recently declassified security documents from the MI5 archive have been files about British counter-espionage against the Soviet Union in the 1930s. The collaboration between Russian archivists and western academics and journalists has produced official and unofficial accounts of such espionage from the Soviet perspective. The management of the spies Percy Glading and John Herbert King, and their discovery by British counter-espionage, were interesting examples of the contest between Soviet intelligence and the British security authorities, which highlighted the strengths and weaknesses of both sides in a basically unequal contest.
A ‘special relationship’? America, Britain and the international order since the Second World War
A fortnight after Pearl Harbor, Winston Churchill arrived in the United States. For much of his three-week visit he stayed in the White House itself, engaged in lengthy and informal conversations with the President. On one occasion, so the story goes, Roosevelt was wheeled into his guest's room only to discover Churchill emerging from the bath-wet, glowing and completely naked. Disconcerted, FDR made as if to withdraw, but Churchill waved him back. 'The Prime Minister of Great Britain', he announced, 'has nothing to conceal from the President of the United States.'1 Sir Winston denied the anecdote, but, true or not, it captures something of what is meant by the concept of an Anglo-American 'special relationship': an intimate, harmonious bond between the two nations celebrated on state occasions with suitably hyperbolic prose. Leaders as diverse as Churchill and Richard Nixon have used the term. Harold Wilson preferred to talk of a 'close relationship' while Margaret Thatcher has reaffirmed the 'extraordinary alliance'. Others, however, have dissented. Max Beloff, for instance, portrayed the notion of a special relationship as an agreeable British 'myth' to help cushion the shock of national decline, while Dean Acheson denounced it as a dangerous intellectual obstacle to acceptance of Britain's largely European role.2 Forty years on from 1945, what meaning, if any, should be attached to the concept of a postwar Anglo-American special relationship?