Last of the Cold War Spies

by Roland Perry

  The diminutive, bearded Selassie, befitting his imperial status, deigned not to respond beyond a few words in his reedy voice. Instead, he presented the union with a gold-framed photograph of himself. Then with a regal grin, he signed the minute book and bowed. He straightened to see glowing red rockets’ flickering light through the chamber’s Gothic windows.

  The fireworks came from Rothschild’s home, Merton Hall, on the other side of the Cam River. Barbara was throwing a lavish party for Straight and his fellow union officers. Straight and others jumped in his sports car and roared over Magdalene bridge to the party. It was a warm spring night and a vodka and caviar supper was being served on the terrace. A Hungarian band was in the floodlit garden. Rothschild was there, cool as ever, smoking his favorite Balkan Soubranie cigarettes and playing duets with jazz pianist Cab Calloway. Straight was greeted with a sensual kiss from the radiant Barbara, who had been informed by Blunt that Straight was still infatuated with her.

  They had had a few assignations during the past year. One had been by the Cam on a balmy spring night. They were passionate under a blanket after a dizzying champagne picnic. Barbara returned home, got into bed, and by candlelight started reading passionate poems by the sixteenth-century English poet John Donne, which Straight had given her. Rothschild came home and flew into a jealous rage. The scam had been set up by Blunt, who was still trying to help Rothschild facilitate a separation. Barbara later told Straight about her husband’s behavior and Straight did his best to avoid both of them. However, he was curious to find that Rothschild’s demeanor toward him remained the same. Blunt wondered why Straight had stopped seeing her and urged him to meet again because she may have been suicidal.24

  Straight agreed to meet her again, but in London. He feared a confrontation with Rothschild.

  Now, at her party for him, Barbara and Straight were near each other once more; it was unnerving for him. Barbara met Straight on a secluded garden seat. After an hour, Straight became concerned that her husband would stop his jazz playing and come looking for them. He departed before any speeches in his honor were made. Barbara was left to explain that Straight was exhausted after the union meeting and that he must study for his finals. Blunt was not so squeamish; he got drunk. During the evening he was discovered by Charles Fletcher-Cooke (who had been on the 1935 boat trip to Russia) in the garden in passionate embrace, first with a male undergraduate, then later with the wife of a don from Jesus College.25

  Next morning, the hung over union members met for a photograph with Selassie, which Straight would treasure for the rest of his life. Many of the students in it were fellow communists, including Leo Long; Gerald Croasdell; Hugh Gordon; Leslie Humphrey; Peter Astbury; Jakes Ewer; Pieter Keuneman, who became leader of the opposition communist party of Ceylon; and S. M. Kumaramangalam, who was sent to prison as a communist in India. John Simonds and Maurice Dobb also featured, as did Abba Eban, later deputy prime minister but then foreign minister of Israel; Fletcher-Cooke; and Philip Noel-Baker, who would start the World Disarmament Campaign.

  Blunt was conspicuous for his absence. He was stricken with a stinging hangover and, not surprisingly, fatigue. Yet he recovered in time to give Straight some final tips about how he might approach the cramming for his desperate bid to succeed in those final exams. Straight realized he could not squeeze a year into five weeks. He compiled a list of all the questions that had been given in the final examinations of the economic tripos (Honors) over the previous decade and then made a calculated guess as to which would be most likely to come up again. He studied responses to these and was confident enough to tell his family that his examiner was a political enemy of his. This, Straight figured, would work in his favor because the examiner would go out of his way to be fair. He did, giving Straight first-class honors in economics. His “miraculous” recovery from a nervous breakdown pleased his parents. They were now even more content to support his plan to find a career in the United States.26

  On June 9, Maly sent a memo to Moscow about his instruction to Straight to join the U.S. National Resources Board, without explaining that Straight himself had been recommended to it by Roosevelt. Maly considered Straight immature politically in the sense that he was not yet fully indoctrinated. He needed to be pumped with more ideology. The astute Maly also was unsure about the capacity of the U.S.-based KGB agent (with the anglicized pseudonym Michael Green) to handle Straight. Without saying it, Maly would have been thinking that only someone with his (Maly’s) intellectual depth and background could meet Straight’s high-minded expectations about a “new world order.”

  Blunt and Straight met for the last time in Blunt’s rooms in New Court in mid-June 1937. He had cleared his desks and was disgruntled. The university would not be reinstating Blunt as a don. It meant that both were prematurely leaving an environment they loved. The Moscow Center had wanted Blunt to stay on recruiting the best and brightest for the cause. But his stubbornness in repeating in almost all his art analysis the communist dictum that art had to be socially useful (and then attempting to reinforce it with nonsensical deductions) had upset too many of the established academic hierarchy.

  Blunt, however, still had to carry on as a recruiter for Burgess and Maly and his ultimate employers in Moscow. It was time for Straight to be introduced to the 32-year-old KGB control Arnold Deutsch. Straight, it was hoped, was ready for his first step into the demimonde of espionage for the cause.

  Straight was nervous at the prospect of meeting his first major KGB contact. Blunt added to the drama by explaining that strict methods had to be followed before they made a rendezvous with Deutsch. A few days later they went to London, Straight in his car and Blunt by train.

  Straight was instructed to make his way to a location on Oxford Street mid-morning. On the way, he felt excited, but there was also a sense of foreboding.27 What if he were followed and apprehended? Blunt had assured him that nothing would happen if they followed detailed procedures to avoid detection. Even if they were tailed, Blunt had explained, they were not giving the Russian anything, nor were they receiving written information. A meeting as such was not against the law; in any case, Blunt would have a cover story should anything happen. Despite his mentor’s calm, Straight could not alleviate the fear of the unknown as he picked up Blunt near Oxford Circus.

  It was crowded and a stiflingly hot day. Traffic was heavy, which was just what Blunt wanted. It would be more difficult to follow them. Straight was ordered on a circuitous route. Blunt monitored the side- and rearview mirrors, watching for “watchers”—the name for MI5 agents assigned to follow suspects. Blunt was aware that his art criticisms and communist sympathies may have been drawn to the attention of British intelligence. He could be tailed for a while just to see what his movements were now that his Cambridge days were over.

  Straight was a more prominent target, especially with his recent support for Selassie. He had been marked down as a radical student to be watched since his LSE days. His postuniversity activities in England would most likely also be of interest to British intelligence. It was, in fact, a reason for Moscow’s pushing Straight to the United States.

  After an hour’s drive around the roads of London’s western outskirts, they stopped at a roadhouse on the Great West Road where Heathrow is now located. They parked the car and were met by the solidly built, dark-haired Deutsch. He had become the senior controller for the Cambridge ring after Theodore Maly had been ordered back to Moscow during Stalin’s purges.

  Deutsch was introduced to Straight as “George.”28 He suggested they go for a swim at a nearby public pool and have a drink and talk. Blunt and Straight sat in silence and watched as “George” went swimming in the crowded pool. After drying off his ample frame, he ordered beers and lit up a cigarette.

  He looked Straight up and down. He did not seem interested as Blunt explained that Straight would be going to the United States. He would be working in Washington, D.C., George was informed. His disinterest may have been because the ne
w recruit would not be under his control. George was not like the urbane, cultured Hungarian Maly. His manner was gruff, and he did not choose to reason with his agents. He gave orders and expected results.

  The agent complained about the heat and jumped in the pool again while the others waited. Later George started explaining tradecraft—the way an agent should behave when making contact, phoning, keeping appointments, avoiding a tail, and so on. Blunt would later write a book on procedures for British intelligence, which would also be used by their Russian counterparts. He had already been through the basics with the new recruit. Straight’s attitude had moved from awe to surprise and disappointment at being treated in such an offhand and patronizing manner.

  He left the meeting with Blunt feeling let down. This agent had not been the expected urbane individual full of verve and ideals. Straight thought he seemed more like a small-time smuggling operator than a representative of a new international order.29 Blunt sensed his disappointment at the time and explained that the meeting was an administrative detail—a formality to establish contact and to see that the new recruit was acceptable. A brief assessment would be recorded, passed back to Moscow, and placed in a Russian intelligence vault.

  That assessment from Deutsch demonstrated that they had a mutual loathing for each other. The agent wrote:

  [Straight] differs very much from people we have dealt with before. He is a typical American, a man of wide-ranging enterprise, who thinks he can do everything for himself. . . . He is full of enthusiasm, well-read, very intelligent, and a perfect student. He wants to do much for us, and, of course has all possibilities for this. . . . But he also gives the impression of being a dilettante, a young guy who has everything he wants, more money than he can spend, and therefore in part who has a restless conscience. . . . I think, under experienced guidance, he could achieve a lot. However, he needs to be educated and to have control over his personal life. It is precisely contact with people in his future profession which may turn out dangerous for him. So far, he has been an active member of the party and constantly surrounded by his friends.30

  Straight gave Deutsch £500 for the Daily Worker, and for Deutsch this confirmed his needing “education” in order to be a fully fledged underground agent. Straight was still clinging to his former interests in open support for communism.

  “In my opinion,” Deutsch wrote in one of his two reports on Straight, “it is very important to take this money from him, since in his eyes, it speaks to his contract with the party which is very important to him.”31

  After their final meeting in August (the day before Straight left for the United States), there was a report from Deutsch that noted his lack of experience and his sometimes-exhibition of a childlike romanticism. “He thinks he is working for the Comintern [now on the way to being completely destroyed by Stalin] and he must be left in this delusion for a while.”

  Straight seemed to contradict Deutsch’s assessment of his naïveté and beliefs. Before Straight’s recruitment, Blunt had drawn him in with the use of the term “the internationale,”32 but as explained earlier, Straight claimed to be aware that the Comintern was tightly controlled by Stalin.

  For his part, Blunt kept on with the pretense that Straight was joining something grand and international. He reassured Straight that “George” was part of an elaborate, most important scheme in historical terms, which would gradually be revealed to him. Straight seemed to accept the explanation, even though he knew that the Comintern and its grandiose ideological aims were pipe dreams. The only explanation is that he would go along with the façade because he wanted communism to rule the world, no matter by what means. Deutsch was his first foreign clandestine contact after recruitment. Even if he was as disappointed in him as he claimed, he would carry on.

  Blunt later briefed Straight about his return to the United States. A new Russian contact would be arranged there as soon as possible, but he would be on his own until then. Anything he discovered of interest to Moscow should be sent by mail (via a mutual friend) back to Blunt, who would have it transmitted to the Moscow Center.

  Blunt asked him for something—a document—he could do without. Straight gave him a drawing done in blue ink by his girlfriend Bin. Blunt tore it in two, and handed one half back. The other half, he informed Straight, would be given to him by the New York KGB agent who contacted him.33

  PART TWO

  OUR MAN IN WASHINGTON

  7

  GREEN SPY

  Straight arrived in the United States early in August 1937 when communist influence was peaking after nearly two decades of growth. The country was in the middle of industrial strife that Moscow hoped would lay the groundwork for the eventual rise and ascendancy of the Communist Party of the United States—CPUSA. The United States had embraced Roosevelt’s New Deal, which had employed Keynesian economics to expand public works in an effort to decrease unemployment and stimulate growth after the Great Depression, which lingered long into the 1930s. The CPUSA had set up a series of revolutionary trade unions to contest the control of workers with the long-established American Federation of Labor (AFL). It was using people and money to increase its influence over the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), which had been newly formed by John L. Lewis. The CIO was pushing to organize mass production industries such as automobiles, steel, and electrical machinery. One-quarter of the CIO’s members were in unions led by communists.

  Straight’s return also coincided with communist infiltration of dozens of U.S. organizations dealing with every aspect of American life. Prominent writers, artists, and intellectuals flocked to communist-dominated groups such as the League of American Writers and the American League against War and Fascism. The American Youth Congress, a federation of the largest youth groups in the United States, was communist-led. The CPUSA was raising substantial money in Hollywood, capitalizing on its role in sending several thousand young men to fight for the Spanish Republicans in the Civil War.

  Communists impressed some liberals in the United States with their support for Roosevelt and antifascism. So-called Popular Front alliances of liberals and communists were becoming political forces in elections. In New York, such a coalition took control of that state’s American Labor Party, which held the balance of power between Republicans and Democrats. In Minnesota, a Popular Front faction took over the Farmer Labor Party, which dominated Minnesota politics in the 1930s. Communists were also a force in Washington state, California, Wisconsin, and Michigan.

  In 1937, nearly 100,000 Americans were CPUSA members. Straight felt inspired that he would be in the vanguard of revolution in the United States. Not yet 21, he could see himself prominent—a leader—in the rising support for the cause in his home country. He began to agree with Blunt’s argument: the United States was a better place for him.

  His first act was to visit Westbury. He had declared his love to Binny at the expense of his German dancer friend Herta Thiele. Straight hoped Binny would join him at his beautiful old home. He wanted to get on with his private life and establish a family, which would then allow him to follow his dreams, as well as instructions from Moscow.

  John Simonds had come with him across the Atlantic and planned to spend two months in the United States traveling with Straight. Simonds, partly under Straight’s considerable influence, had dumped his conservatism. After the U.S. tour, he would be ready to take the next step and embrace communism.

  Straight bought a red convertible in New York, and he and Simonds drove north to the Adirondack Mountains for a fishing holiday before motoring on to Detroit, Michigan, to meet up with Roger Baldwin, the 53-year-old lawyer running the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). Straight’s communist contacts had linked him up with Baldwin. Straight had offered to chauffeur him on a tour of the centers of unrest in the industrial Midwest and to “help while he makes speeches to local civil liberties groups,” if he would let him and Simonds come with him. Baldwin agreed. His union would turn up wherever there was trouble to a
dd comrade support to the communist-controlled unions of the CIO, which was fighting to unionize the big manufacturing plants in such industries as steel and automobiles. The communist aim was first to unionize, then to disrupt in order to weaken the United States’ industrial might. The long-term aim (a decade or more) was to have the union and political base so powerful that a communist revolution would be possible.

  This was Straight’s first observance of communist agitation and disruption in the United States. Later, he would make an art form of latching on to a respectable “liberal” front such as the ACLU and presenting himself as a concerned libertarian.

  The trip was a hands-on education for Straight in political conflict in the United States and gave him an idea of the possibilities for communist advance. It looked more than promising. He was inspired in Pittsburgh when Baldwin introduced him to Philip Murray, the president of the United Steel Workers, and the CIO’s Lewis. Murray was a tough-talking, aggressive figure. He was willing to use violence to gain any form of union base in the big mills. This pleased the communists, although Murray was always uneasy with their support. In Chicago, steel workers had been killed in a fight with company security police.

  In Terre Haute, martial law had been invoked for three months as the result of a labor dispute. Baldwin and Straight visited the local prison where 150 strikers were being held. Straight learned of bombings by unions to intimidate companies that had not unionized.