Cambridge Spies: The Untold Story of McLean, Philby, and Burgess

This is the first book to detail the U.S. activities of Kim Philby, Donald Maclean and Guy Burgess. The period covered is 1944 to 1951, when the ``Cambridge spies'' served in the British embassy in Washington, D.C., while conducting highly effective espionage for the Soviets. The dominant figure in these suspenseful pages is Donald Maclean, whom former CIA director Richard Helms described as ``the most valuable known Soviet agent ever to operate in the West.'' Freelance writer/filmmaker Newton reveals how Maclean provided Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin with a direct pipeline to important Western strategy conferences; at the same time he was exhibiting flagrantly self-abasing behavior in Washington social circles. Newton also describes Maclean's sensational escape with Burgess in 1951 as they defected to Moscow. (Philby joined them later.) Newton expertly guages the damage done to the West by this treacherous trio and attempts without much success to answer the nagging question of why they did it. (June)