Burgess, Philby, and Maclean in Washington A Comment on Clipper and G.A.K. It is historically indisputable that Guy Burgess, Harold "Kim" Philby, and Donald Maclean were agents for Soviet intelligence. What is far less known is the role that these three individuals played in the U.S.A. and how this related to their access to U.S. secret material. Maclean, at one time, was the Head of Chancery of the British Embassy in Washington D.C. As such, he was the head of the code room at the Embassy and thus had access to *all* encrypted traffic passing through the Embassy. This included everything available through the considerable Anglo-U.S. co-operative ventures during the immediately-post W.W. II period. Guy Burgess was also assigned to the British Embassy where one job was as a liaison agent with the U.S.A. It has been reported during this period that he had a pass from the Atomic Energy Commission that gave him 24-hour-a-day access unaccompanied by any U.S. "overseer." This was a higher level of A.E.C. security than held by J. Edgar Hoover at the time. Kim Philby was the U.K.'s liaison to the Central Intelligence Agency. He was personally close ("a drinking buddy") to then head of C.I.A. Counter-Intelligence James Jesus Angleton. Angleton was, to all accounts, a psychopathologically paranoid individual, seeing Soviet spies and disinformation attempts in almost all areas of life with the exception of his one-time bar companion. He might be likened to one of those hysterical Victorian "feminists" who thought "all men are pigs" with the exception of one real gentleman she knew. (The gentleman would, of course, be Jack the Ripper.) I write this not out of any sense that Key Escrow or Clipper are "communist plots." Far from it, especially during this period. But the presence of Burgess, Philby, and Maclean in Washington shows how unable the governments have been to protect their own secrets. It is unreasonable to suggest -- as do supporters of Clipper and G.A.K. -- that governments will be any better protecting ours. --tallpaul