80 • BURMA
plying information to the Security Service. TheNKVDgave Burgess
the code namemadchen(‘‘Maiden’’) and considered him volatile
but valuable. ToMI5, he was a useful agent-runner; Burgess re-
cruitedorange, a Swiss journalist namedEric Kessler, who worked
in the Swiss embassy throughout the war and proved an important
source. Burgess moved from the BBC to the Foreign Office and in
1945 was made private secretary to the new Labour government’s
minister of state, Hector McNeill.
Although always a controversial diplomat, constantly in trouble for
his predatory homosexuality and drunken behavior, Burgess was
posted to Washington, D.C., where he stayed with his friend Philby.
In May 1951, having been returned to London in disgrace, Burgess
defectedto Moscow with Maclean. Burgess remained in Moscow
until his death in 1963, always faithful to the Communist cause but
never able to conform to a lonely, isolated life in the Soviet Union,
dependent upon occasional visitors from England for news and com-
pany.BURMA. Special Operations Executive’s Oriental Mission and India
Mission played a large role in preparingstay-behind networksin
Burma in anticipation of the Japanese invasion and participated in
the liberation of Rangoon in 1945. Operationsmanual,nation, and
characterwere mounted in support of the British offensive to re-
capture the country, anddragoonassisted in the attack on the cap-
ital.
BURT, LEONARD.At the time of his invitation to joinMI5in Sep-
tember 1940, Chief Inspector Leonard Burt was a Vice Squad detec-
tive. He and a colleague, Detective SergeantJim Skardon,had
worked on the Willie Clarkson Will case withWilliam Charles
Crockerof the Security Executive. Burt moved his offices to MI5’s
temporary headquarters in Wormwood Scrubs, together with his dep-
uty, Reginald Spooner, and Detective Inspectors Smith and Donald
Fish. There, under the command ofLord Rothschild, they created
MI5’s first specialist antisabotage section.
Burt’s transfer to MI5 took him first to Aberdeen, to investigate a
case of suspected sabotage that had sunk a freighter in the harbor,
and later toGibraltarwhere, in February 1942, he supervised the