WHITE, SIR DICK• 577eral, but he was completely out of his depth. MI5 was run by the
triumvirate of Sillitoe’s deputy Liddell, White, and the plodding bu-
reaucratRoger Hollis, a member of the prewar intake who had made
himself an expert on Communism. The three even persuaded Sillitoe
to lie to the prime minister when MI5’s competence was challenged
in the aftermath of the Klaus Fuchs affair. MI5’s triumph in identify-
ing Fuchs and persuading him to confess and plead guilty to breaches
of theOfficial Secrets Act, for which he was sentenced to 14 years’
imprisonment, turned to ashes when MI5 was criticized for not hav-
ing caught him earlier. When MI5’s original Fuchs file was exam-
ined, it was found to contain an entry from 1945 that suggested he
was probably a spy and merited an immediate investigation. This em-
barrassment was reported to Sillitoe, who reluctantly agreed under
pressure from Liddell, White, and Hollis, to conceal the true facts
‘‘for the good of the Service’’ from Clement Attlee, who then assured
the Commons, based on a briefing from the director-general, that
there had been no slipup and that MI5 had followed up every lead
diligently. Appalled at his own behavior, Sillitoe then gathered MI5’s
senior management together in the canteen on the top ofLeconfield
House, MI5’s postwar headquarters, and explained what had hap-
pened, vowing never to mislead a prime minister ever again. Stung
by this very public rebuke, White contemplated resigning, but was
persuaded that he would find it hard to find another job. Still smarting
with indignation and guilt, White succeeded Liddell as deputy direc-
tor-general when the latter moved to head the Atomic Energy Author-
ity’s security division.
Whenvenonarevealed in May 1951 that the spy codenamed
homerwas almost certainly the head of the Foreign Office’s Ameri-
can Department,Donald Maclean, and the foreign secretary gave
his consent for Maclean to be interviewed, MI5 held a conference of
case officers on Friday afternoon to discuss how the interrogation,
set for Monday, 31 May, should be handled. Just as the meeting was
breaking up, shortly before midnight, the night duty officer,Russell
Lee, reported that an alert immigration officer at Southampton had
spotted Maclean embarking on theFalaise, due to sail at any moment
for St. Malo. Instant action was required, and those assembled agreed
that White should fly to France and intercept Maclean in the hope of
persuading him to return home, but when White reached the airport