10. Maclean and Burgess vanished without a trace, according to the Foreign Office
The immediate reaction of the British Foreign Office included putting a lid on the entire affair, as they tried to ascertain the whereabouts of the pair. The secret held for only a few days. On June 7, 1951, the Daily Express presented the story of the two missing diplomats. The Foreign Office confirmed they were missing, but did not confirm speculation that either had defected to the Soviet Union. The latter entity said nothing whatsoever. Consequently, rumors swirled around diplomatic and intelligence circles in Europe and in the United States. Members of the American intelligence community expressed concern that the British concealed the two Englishmen to protect them from further investigation. In Washington, Philby cleaned Burgess’s former office of classified materials and tools of spycraft and buried them in a park.
By the end of June, London newspapers offered substantial rewards for information on the whereabouts of the two missing diplomats. The Daily Mail offered a reward of £10,000, an amount equal to about $433,000 in 2021. There were no takers, though claims of false sightings occurred in Britain, the continent, and even in the United States. Meanwhile, the subjects of the search and speculation remained in Moscow for interrogation by the Soviets. By October, both were established in Kuybyshev, with new identities and Russian citizenship. Burgess continued to drink heavily, while Maclean occupied himself with learning to speak Russian. In London and Washington, pressure to discover the presumed “third man” who had warned Maclean of the CIA’s interest in him as a spy centered on Kim Philby.