Peter Dwyer’s Assessment

As head of Canada’s Security Panel, Peter Dwyer grappled with challenges of ensuring government secrecy in sensitive areas and counterintelligence. In October 1952, Dwyer drew on publicly available information and his personal relationship with Maclean to highlight past suspicious behaviour “at odds with Donald’s normal diplomatic personality.” For instance, the Macleans “delighted” in arriving late to a presidential reception, and then-MI6 officer Dwyer “had the strong impression that he had been deliberately trying to spoil the occasion and prick the rather pompous bubble of a White House ceremony.”

Dwyer assessed that Maclean would have been an exceptionally valuable Soviet agent and speculated that he could only have been controlled by a handler of “equal intellectual status.” While Maclean’s defection to Moscow was not officially confirmed until 1956, Dwyer concluded in 1952 that his old colleague was probably a Soviet spy. Burgess would have been a riskier, more problematic intelligence asset because his reputation for alcoholism, indiscretions and debauchery was legendary (CDMB00012).

Later histories suggest that Dwyer was at least half-right. Soviet handler Yuri Modin held Burgess in much higher esteem than the diplomat's foreign office colleagues or Canada's senior security official.