REPRODUCED HERE COMPLETE: http://www.angelfire.com/dc/1spy/Burgess.html    

This is a dead link 404 in Anglefire- I retrieved through the "cached option - Seems to been a valuable and extensive site on spying. All related pages (Philby etc) are down and others. (I will remove upon request. (Philby etc) - dead)     

Guy Francis De Moncy Burgess    Soviet Spy Against Britain  (1911 - 1963)

A flagrant traitor, a flamboyant drunk and a notorious homosexual, Guy Burgess was anything but the ideal Soviet agent. He nevertheless proved to be one of Russia's most effective spies at the beginning of the Cold War. He had considerable help in achieving his treasonable ends from others sharing his offbeat lifestyle, particularly Donald Maclean, Kim Philby and, as was much later exposed, the celebrated British art historian, Anthony Blunt.

The Devonport-born Burgess had, from early youth, always wanted to join the Navy. His father had been an officer in the Royal Navy and the lore and legend of the sea became a family tradition. To that end, Burgess first attended Eton, then the Royal Naval College at Dartmouth. It was later claimed that he dropped out of Dartmouth because an eye problem disqualified him from Navy service but the real reason was that he had attempted to seduce some other youths, an affair that was hushed up.

Burgess graduated from Eton in 1930, going on to Cambridge. There, at Trinity College, he fell in with the left-wing set, the sons of well-to-do men who got drunk at poshy clubs almost every night while toasting the lower classes and vowing that Communism was the only salvation for the oppressed of the earth. In reality, none of these young men, ever had anything to do with the working class and their brand of Marxism was bottled in imported brandy. The group to which Burgess attached himself was also decidedly homosexual. His roommate and the fellow classmate who recruited him into the Soviet ranks was Anthony Blunt who became Burgess' lover.

Other on-and-off homosexual lovers included Donald Maclean and Kim Philby. All of them would lead well-pampered lives as they first played at being spies for the KGB which early on recruited them through Blunt. Later, their traitorous espionage became serious and deeply damaging to Great Britain. Burgess, like Blunt, sought to convert any active Communist at Cambridge into a KGB spy. He was unorthodox in his approach, selecting the most handsome of young men and then attempting to sexually seduce them.

In 1934, Burgess, David Maclean, Kim Philby, and the others from Cambridge took a trip to Moscow, more for social than political reasons. The tourist jaunt did not agree with Burgess who found the Soviet city dreary and depressing. He remained drunk during most of his Russian stay. At one point, Moscow police found Burgess dead drunk in the Park of Rest and Culture. Inside of his coat pocket were letters of introduction to prominent Russian scholars and politicians from members of the Astor family.

Guy Burgess, like the rest of his clique, lived and prospered through his social and academic connections. Upon his return from Moscow, Burgess seemed to lose interest in Marxism. He drifted to the right (or so it appeared, although Burgess' actions in the early 1930's may have been a planned KGB scenario, for, according to Blunt's later confession, Burgess was by then a KGB spy.) He joined the right-wing Anglo-German Fellowship and applied for a job with the Conservative Party.

The Conservative Party rejected him, despite the fact that his academic sponsors at Trinity had described Burgess as the most brilliant young talent of the day. He next tried to enter civil service but was told that he had started at Cambridge to late and was too old to have a bright future in that field. Burgess worked for a while as a personal assistant to conservative Member of Parliament Jack Macnamara and accompanied him to visit the Germany of Adolf Hitler. This job, too, ended abruptly when Burgess got drunk and passed out at a political dinner. Then came journalism. Through a friend, Burgess got a job as a writer for the London Times, a position he hated.

Then through his connection with the historian, G. M. Trevelyan, he went to work in 1936 for the British Broadcasting system. He produced for the BBC a chatty and inconsequential political program called The Week at Westminster. Again, Burgess used his position to further his career, befriending many politicians who were to later help greatly in advancing his career. Among those who Burgess cultivated at that time was Hector McNeil, a future Minister of State at the Foreign Office.

Throughout his time with the BBC, Burgess continued spying for the KGB, receiving information from John Cairncross of the Foreign Office and passing these secrets to the Russians. He went to France in 1937 and in 1939. At both times he met with another part-time lover, fellow drunk and KGB agent, Kim Philby. Philby was then working as a journalist and reporting on the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), and who was sending information to Moscow on all he observed. In ironic fact, when Philby returned to England at the end of the Spanish Civil War, he was interviewed by none other than BBC correspondent Guy Burgess.

There is no doubt that Burgess presented, in the late 1930's, the very image of the well-educated young man in England. He was, when sober, a charming, witty, handsome fellow who made brilliant conversation and always played to the person with whom he was speaking. He had an instinct of when to say precisely the right thing. He kept a detailed ledger in which he listed all of those of political importance or those who might rise to prominent positions in the government.

Burgess made important contacts in England and throughout Europe as a BBC correspondent. He even interviewed the venerable Winston Churchill who gave him an autographed set of his speeches. As war approached, Prime Minister Nevill Chamberlain, who had also been interviewed by Burgess, entrusted the BBC commentator with secret dispatches which he clandestinely delivered to French leader Edouard Daladier and Italian dictator Benito Mussolini. Chamberlain had hoped that these secret messages would help avert the war that Adolf Hitler so eagerly sought. They did not.

But Burgess' much-vaunted help ingratiated him to the British intelligence community, though it had no idea that he was feeding the Russians every piece of secret information—including copies of Chamberlain's private messages—he could obtain. Burgess used his BBC position to develop contacts with important leaders in Europe who might later unwittingly provide him with more information to give to his Soviet masters. From these sources, Burgess obtained information he sent to British intelligence, information for which MI6 paid him well.

In January 1939, Burgess again changed jobs, again through a high-placed connection. He went to work for MI6, working in Department D, a mushrooming section assigned to recruiting new agents to British intelligence. The following year, Burgess recruited none other than Kim Philby, whose impartial reporting on the Spanish Civil War had impressed many government officials. With Philby comfortably ensconced at MI6, Burgess quit the service in 1941 and went back to the BBC where he could better effect communications with his KGB bosses.

In 1944, he joined the Foreign Office with the job of handling all the news. He was able to glean countless secrets from this department for six years and send them on to the Russians. It was Burgess, secret Communist spy, who had the responsibility of releasing or not releasing news, as he saw fit, from the Foreign Office or the British Government. Burgess then moved even deeper into the Foreign Office when he was hired by his old friend Hector McNeil who had risen to the position of Labor Minister of State at the Foreign Office. McNeil remained permanently hoodwinked by the clever Burgess, "dazzled by his brilliance," according to one report.

McNeil was avuncular toward Burgess; he was well aware of his protégés perverted sexual inclinations and he warned him to avoid homosexual incidents in the U.S. He also told him not to discuss racial problems and left-wing aggression. Replied the arrogant, pathologically self-confident Burgess: "In other words, Hector, you mean I mustn't make a pass at Paul Robeson." As a parting gesture, Burgess had his London apartment painted red, white, and blue, then packed his bags and went to Washington, D.C.

Waiting to greet him with open arms was his old lover and fellow KGB spy Kim Philby who was the first secretary at the British Embassy in Washington. The pair worked diligently for the Russians, sending to Moscow not only all the British secrets they could obtain but also all the U.S. confidential memos that came within their grasp. >

At the time, Burgess lived with Philby in Philby's home on Nebraska Avenue. Mrs. Eleanor Philby hated the sight of Burgess. On many times she complained to her husband that Burgess was supercilious, loud, habitually drunk. She also knew and despised Burgess' reputation as a flagrant homosexual. Philby said nothing and Burgess stayed on. Then Philby got word from his old friend, Anthony Blunt, that Donald Maclean, who had been under surveillance by MI5 since 1949, and was suspected as one of the sources leaking information to the Soviets, was about to be questioned. Blunt even provided Philby with the date of the upcoming interrogation—May 25, 1951. Maclean had also worked at the British Embassy in Washington until recently being transferred back to London.

Philby immediately conferred with Burgess, telling him that if Maclean was questioned, he, Burgess, would be next. It was time to warn Maclean and the disappear. Burgess then went on a wild rampage. He got roaring drunk and began racing his car at high speeds. Police stopped him and Burgess cursed them, ripping up the speeding tickets and throwing these in the air, hysterically shouting that "I have diplomatic immunity from such nonsense!"

Of course, once he was informed, the British Ambassador immediately dismissed Burgess and ordered him to return to London. This was all brought about according to plan. Burgess needed to get back to England to warn Maclean. How better to achieve this goal than to be sent back in disgrace. Back in London on May 7, 1951, Burgess schemed on how best to warn his friend. He took the simple approach. He dropped by the Foreign Office to see Maclean. He handed him a slip of paper on which was a coded message.

The message told Maclean he was about to be questioned, probably arrested, and that it was time for him to escape. Burgess arranged for the departure. It is unclear whether or not Burgess at the time planned to escape with Maclean. Some reports have it that the Soviets ordered him to leave England with Maclean, others insist that it was Burgess' own idea. Burgess returned to his apartment, packed a bag and then hired a car. He drove to Maclean's suburban home in Surrey. Maclean was waiting for him. His bag was also packed.

It was Maclean's 38th birthday but he had no time to celebrate. He said a hasty farewell to his wife and three children, hopped into the car and he and Burgess drove off at top speed. Their escape route had already been worked out by a KGB spymaster who had been contacted by Anthony Blunt. The two men drove to Southampton. They arrived just in time to catch the 11:45 P.M. cross-Channel boat S.S. Falaise which was sailing to St. Malo, France.

A dockside attendant shouted to both men as they scrambled up the gangplank: "Hey, what about the car?"

Burgess grinned and waved, saying: "Be back Monday."

Neither he nor Maclean would ever be back. Both men went to their cabin and locked themselves inside. They did not leave the cabin when the rest of the passengers disembarked in St. Malo to take the train to Paris, but stayed inside guzzling a case of beer they had ordered from the steward. Some time later both men staggered from the cabin and hired a taxi to drive them fifty miles to Rennes. There they caught a later train to Paris and from there, their KGB contacts arranged for them to fly first to Czechoslovakia, then on to Moscow where they were met by KGB agent F. V. Kislytsin who had been the man to whom they had for years delivered their secrets. Kislytsin had been stationed in the Soviet Embassy in London.

Kislytsin later reported how Burgess had delivered suitcases full of British secrets to the Embassy and that, after the documents had been photographed by the Russians, Burgess lugged the secrets back to the Foreign Office to replace them in the files. Other secrets were delivered verbally by Burgess. Kislytsin coded these messages and sent them by radio to Moscow. Everything Burgess, Maclean and Philby delivered to the Russians had top priority in communication to KGB headquarters in Moscow.

The Kislytsin connection was exposed by Vladimir Petrov, a top KGB official who defected to Australia Australian Security Intelligence Organization (ASIO) in April 1954. Petrov had been for some time one of the "control" officials who had handled Burgess, Maclean, and Philby from the time they decided to join the new world of Communism in the early 1930's. Petrov also disclosed that Mrs. Melinda Maclean and her three children who had disappeared in Switzerland on a holiday more than two years after her husband fled to Russia, was secreted into the Soviet Union to join her spouse.

She is now living with her husband in Moscow, Petrov reported, as he secretly continues with his work for the Soviet Foreign Ministry alongside his fellow spy Guy Burgess. The Russians paraded their star agents before Western journalists in a 1956 press conference. Both Burgess and Maclean denied ever having spied and that they were merely "peace lovers" who had become disillusioned with the West.

Both men worked at espionage in Russia. Maclean appeared to adapt but Burgess continued to drink heavily. His once chiseled handsome face became bloated. He took on weight and seemed to want to talk of his native country. He obviously missed all things British. Miserable at having to live inside a puritanical state, Burgess drank himself to death on August 30, 1963. In that year Kim Philby, the most important spy the Russians had in the West, finally fled to the Soviet Union.