by Roland Perry
The final leg of the tour was through New York. Straight celebrated his 21st birthday on September 1, 1937, en route as Baldwin delivered militant speeches at meetings in several cities. He attacked corporations for violating their employees’ civil rights; Straight was impressed and stimulated. At the end of the trip he saw the communist cause in the United States as different from that in the United Kingdom.
Straight thought that the tension encountered at strikes and civil rights meetings was far greater than anything that John Cornford could point to in his efforts to convince him that the class struggle was the central and enduring characteristic of English society.1 Straight’s communist vision— undiluted over sixty-six years—was that the strikes that he witnessed were part of an industrial struggle, not a class struggle.
While Straight was sorting out his Marxist terminology, Stalin was carrying on the great purge in Russia of those who adhered to Marxist/Leninist ideals. The leading figures of the 1917 Bolshevik revolution, such as Nikolai Bukharin, Lev Kamenev, Grigori Zinoviev, and A. I. Rykov, were charged with treason and espionage. Then they were put through the public “show trials,” forced to confess to crimes, and then shot. Soon, apart from Stalin himself, only Trotsky was left alive from Lenin’s original Politburo. He was in exile and top of Stalin’s hit list. These eliminations were the most notable, but the dictator did not stop with his key opponents. He went on to liquidate more than half of the 1,961 delegates to the Seventeenth Communist Party Congress. Not satisfied, Stalin moved out from the center of power to destroy a further 400,000 of the Soviet Union’s professional class, which included teachers, professors, scientists, and doctors. Then he turned on the elite of the military and exterminated 35,000 leaders, including 90 percent of the generals in the services.
While this butchering was in full swing at home, Stalin’s assassins in Europe were culling those in the Comintern (such as Maly) who obeyed orders and returned to Moscow—unwittingly—for execution, and those who did not. One who decided to run was Ignaz Reiss, a Jewish Russian agent who worked for Nikolai Smirnov, the Paris head of the KGB. Smirnov had dutifully returned to Moscow in the summer to “make a report.” He never returned to Paris and was shot along with thirty other key espionage chiefs and their wives.
Reiss, until then a loyal servant of Stalin, had had enough. He wrote a letter to him protesting the murders. Stalin responded by ordering that he be tracked down and eliminated. Reiss defected from his Paris post and headed for Switzerland. His mistake was to let a close German communist agent friend, Gertrude Schildbach, know his whereabouts. She told Moscow and was ordered to meet him for dinner in Chamblandes on September 4, 1937. After the meal, they went for a stroll. They ran into two assassins who bundled Reiss into a vehicle at gunpoint. Schildbach came along for the ride to a nearby forest. Reiss struggled as they dragged him from the car. Schildbach helped hold him down, then he was machine-gunned to death. His bullet-riddled body was dumped by the roadside between Chamblandes and Lausanne.
Reiss’s good Jewish friend, Samuel Ginsberg—better known as Walter Krivitsky—who was in charge of KGB military operations in Western Europe, read about the killing of “Hans Eberhardt” in Paris Matin the following day. Krivitsky was stunned. Eberhardt was Reiss’s false passport name. They had known each other since working in the communist underground during the Russo-Polish war. Krivitsky and his strikingly attractive blonde wife from St. Petersburg, Tanya, decided they would defect. Krivitsky turned to a contact, Paul Wohl, a Russian Jew who had taken American citizenship and was living at that time in Paris. They worked out a plan. Wohl rented a hide-out in the South of France, while Krivitsky proposed to the Moscow Center that he return home for consultation. On October 5, Krivitsky pretended to board the train for Le Havre where a Russian ship was waiting. He, Tanya, and their son Alex got off after a couple of stops and took another train to the hideout.
Krivitsky was given police protection over the next year while he went through a thorough debriefing by French intelligence. The debriefing filled eighty volumes. Krivitsky divulged the structure of Soviet intelligence across Western Europe. This included the broad setup of the network in the United Kingdom, for which Straight had become the most promising recent recruit.
The Moscow Center monitored Straight’s movements into New York on September 1 via his correspondence with Blunt. Ten days later it sent the agent assigned to control Straight instructions to contact him. The new recruit was seen as someone who would lead the KGB to “sources of exceptional importance and value.”2
After his Midwest tour, Straight set about securing a job that would give him access to material of use to his Soviet masters. Their preference was the White House or State Department.
He managed to gain another meeting with Roosevelt in October, meeting in the president’s study. Straight told him that cutbacks had stopped his joining of the NRPB. Could he think of any other agencies that might take him on?
Roosevelt, appearing concerned, frowned and thought hard but couldn’t think of one. He was not going to take on someone without a civil service rating and no work experience to speak of. There just would not be a spot for him in tight employment times, even with his impressive degree and training under Keynes. “Why not get some outside experience and then join the government?” Roosevelt finally suggested.
It was not what the driven young man wanted to hear. Forget the White House or the State Department. The president couldn’t even come up with a single agency. Straight decided to pass the time while on the job search by gaining more electioneering experience. He had loved the cut and thrust of Plymouth and so went to Fiorello LaGuardia’s headquarters in New York to volunteer in his mayoral reelection campaign. He worked Manhattan’s East Side on Park Avenue where he was staying in his mother’s apartment. It made his task easier. Straight pushed hard for votes for LaGuardia’s deputy, Thomas E. Dewey.
He enjoyed the experience and was thinking ahead to the day he would fulfill his perceived destiny and run for high office. He felt he had been born to it. In the meantime he waited for that piece of paper with Binny’s blue ink drawing to be presented to him. It was the reason he had returned to the United States. Blunt had taken the drawing from him on August 4, taking his phone number in New York as well. Straight would be there until contact was made.
It was late October. He was becoming apprehensive.
Straight was alone in his mother’s apartment one night in late October 1937 when the phone rang. He answered it.3 A man with a thick European accent said that he brought greetings from his friends at Cambridge. The caller told him the name of a restaurant he was in a few blocks away. Straight said he would meet him and hurried out, remembering to employ the tradecraft Blunt had taught him. An hour later, he entered the restaurant.
A chunky man in a tight-fitting business suit was sitting alone at a table for two and watching the entrance. Straight was a few inches taller than the man, who had a nose like a boxer’s and thick lips.4 Other descriptions of this man, whom Straight would know as Michael Green, added to his portrait. Russian agent Hede Massing, who defected to the FBI in 1947, regarded him as “one of the most pedestrian of my Russian co-workers.” Green was “every inch the Soviet apparatchik or bureaucrat.” This fitted Straight’s appreciation of him over time as someone rather rigid in his approach, uninspiring and without flair.
David Dallin, the Soviet expert, was even less flattering. He spoke of his villainously low forehead “topped with straight, pale, reddish-blond hair.” Dallin described his lips as “puffed” rather than thick, and for good measure added that they were “choked with saliva when in motion.” Completing the sinister characterization, Dallin noted that “his eyes were slightly slanted up and inflamed. They were the small, unpretty eyes of the unimaginative, frightened little man.”
Regardless of Green’s appearance, Straight was in awe at that first encounter. The Russian stood up, smiled, shook hands, and uttered the “verbal parole” or passwords of
prearranged greetings. This ensured he was not an imposter, on the very slim chance that the FBI had set up Straight.
The man shook his hand firmly, saying his name was Michael Green.5 Green, alias William Greinke, Michael Ademic, and other names, had at least two code names for communications back to Moscow—MER and ALBERT.6 His real name was Ishak Abdulovich Akhermov. Despite the efforts of defectors to vilify his appearance and manner, he was the most important and effective “illegal” (that is, not working via the Soviet Embassy and originally an illegal immigrant sent by Soviet Intelligence) KGB control in the United States during his two underground tours of duty from 1937 to 1946. Straight was one of the first agents he would run in the United States and was considered a very important recruit.
Despite his age and inexperience in espionage, Straight would not be farmed out to one of the local rings, such as that run by Nathan Gregory Silvermaster, the Russian-born Jewish underground leader. Straight was a deep-cover agent who would not be known as a spy to local rings. He would be run direct from Moscow via top Russian controls like Green. Straight would avoid involvement with local communist agents other than by chance or in the normal run of events where the interests of liberals and the extreme left merged publicly. Straight would continue to cultivate his image as an outspoken, concerned liberal that he had projected so well to his mother and the Roosevelts.
He had been informed by Blunt that he was being treated as someone special in the eyes of Stalin and the Moscow Center, and this made him edgy at the first meeting. He wanted to impress Green, who by contrast was at ease. Green apologized for not getting in touch earlier. He had the phone number but not the address, which he needed in order to make an initial meeting. He apologized for not having the other half of the drawing by Bin Crompton, which Blunt had taken from him. The control said he had mislaid it, which unnerved Straight, who kept asking for it. Green ordered a three-course meal; Straight had eaten earlier. He took in everything about the Russian: his English was good despite the accent. He had an affable manner. Straight began to relax. No FBI agents were likely to barge in and arrest him. He stopped asking for the piece of paper with his darling’s drawing on it and began to like his first U.S. control.
Straight discussed his efforts to get work and his contacts, such as the president. Roosevelt had helped but not enough to get him a job. After his tour of the country, Straight floated the idea of working for General Motors in Detroit for a few months. He mentioned the possibilities in the State Department. Green seemed to like the General Motors idea.
The Russian finished his meal with coffee and a monologue on the developing aspects of the peace movement, which would become a regular refrain at other meetings.7 It was part of the continuing preparation so well handled by Burgess and Blunt at Cambridge, who in turn had been earlier seduced by Maly and Deutsch. The lecture completed, Green asked his new agent if there were any questions on the topic. Straight said he had none, which showed unusual restraint. Green asked for his check. He told Straight to memorize the name and phone number of a “friend,” Alexander Koral, in Brooklyn, whom he was to call in an emergency.8
Green said he would be in touch by phone and that the next rendezvous would be in Central Park.9 Straight would follow the tradecraft of avoiding any possible American watchers so expertly taught by Blunt. This meant taking circuitous routes over hours to an appointment location.
An early concern for Green was what he perceived as some circumspection, even caution on Straight’s part concerning his attitude to Soviet foreign policy. The Moscow Center put this down to some Trotskyite friends of Straight, who were still imbued with the concept of the new world order as instigated by the (steadily dying) Comintern—that is, communism outside the Soviet Union.
Green was directed to keep working on his new charge. Moscow reminded its agent that Straight was his biggest assignment in the United States. Green was directed to forget about General Motors in Detroit and to concentrate on getting his new American spy into the State Department.
Straight at last had a specific demand, rather than a general aim. The First Lady could be the conduit to the State Department. He could not approach her at the White House; it was too soon after seeing the president. He had to contrive a “chance” meeting with her, which he did at an unemployed miners’ camp in West Virginia.10
He managed to raise the question of his job-hunting with the First Lady and how much he would like to work for the administration, particularly the State Department. They discussed this for some time. Much to his joy, Mrs. Roosevelt promised to write on his behalf to the undersecretary of state, Sumner Welles. A week later Straight had an appointment. He was briefed on the formidable Welles by the ever-faithful Jonathan Mitchell at The New Republic.
The novice’s lack of experience was against him. Welles told him he had a hard road in front of him and appeared reluctant to help. He was told there were no openings at State.11
Straight waited for his next call from Green, and they met in Central Park. They walked together and discussed the problem of getting into State. Straight thought he should offer to work for nothing. His control appeared to be “appraising him and seemed to have prepared topics and lines of conversation to test his thoughts and points of view, and to shape his mind.”12 Straight found him exceptionally humorous and fond of plays on words.
They parted, planning another rendezvous at the New York Zoo.
Green told the Moscow Center that he and Straight had become friends and that the new young agent listened to his advice and followed it. But Green did not like him to keep the company of the editorial staff at The New Republic. The Soviet control worried that the free exchange of mainly liberal, pro-left views were a bad influence on Straight. How could he indoctrinate him with hard-line, Moscow-centrist Stalinist ideology when he was spending time with “a liberal like Roger Baldwin, outwardly a friend of the USSR but in his soul its enemy with great sympathy for Trotsky. [He] cannot help but exert a negative influence on [Straight].”13
Stalin’s obsession with Trotsky had more than filtered through to his spies worldwide. They too had become paranoid about him and the way the West had romanticized him and his plight in exile.
The subject of Trotsky touched a raw nerve. At early meetings with Straight, Green felt some “ideological hesitation”—that is, uncertainty about Stalinism or Stalinist foreign policy. According to the edited files presented by the KGB, Moscow was alleged to have jumped to the conclusion that this was because he had Trotskyite contacts in the United States.
Straight made out that he was misleading the KGB by telling Green about his anticommunist links. The aim, he alleged, was to cause the KGB to think he was undependable and not to be relied on. He feigned limited interest in Russia and Trotsky. But was this a cover, with KGB connivance, for his attempts to infiltrate Trotskyite organizations, known to be connected to defector Walter Krivitsky?
Summaries of the KGB files again suggest that Straight did not quite comprehend what was expected of his new clandestine life when, according to Green:
[Straight] claimed that he has $10,000 to $20,000 in spare money and does not know what to do with it. He asked whether I need money; he could give it to me. This is his spare pocket money. I said that I do not need money personally; let him keep it or put it in a bank. As for his previous regular donations (to the Daily Worker), I will take them and pass them along accordingly. At another meeting, he gave me $2000 as his quarterly [sic] Party fee and claimed he would be giving me more in the future.14
The Moscow Center was not about to let this example of capitalist largesse slip by. It passed the money to a grateful Harry Pollitt in London and then directed Green to bring up the topic of the pocket money at their next meeting. The cryptic instruction was: “Receive this money [Straight’s spare $10,000 to $20,000] and send it to us.”
Presumably the extra dollars were absorbed into KGB consolidated revenue or shared out to other U.S. agents needing hard cash. One way or the oth
er Straight continued his generous support for all things communist either with his formerly open outlets or in the espionage world.
Straight approached contacts at the State Department again and informed them his services were for free. He would take anything going, assist anyone. He was then taken on a temporary assignment in the department’s Office of the Economic Adviser.
Straight was in. He could now become familiar with the old ornate, gray-stoned State Department with its high ceilings, circular staircases, and long corridors. The KGB expected he could also commence his work as a Soviet intelligence agent.
Straight moved to Washington to live and found a room in the redbrick house on 1718 H Street, which his father Willard and friends had shared as young bachelors. The sitting room was lined with Chinese wallpaper brought back from Beijing by Willard and photos of him and his friends. Also in residence were George Summerlin, the State Department’s chief of protocol; journalist Joe Alsop; and a banker, Major Heath.
In December 1937, Straight met Green at the New York Zoo and informed him of his success at State. Green drew him out on his views about Germany’s rearmament. From this discussion came Straight’s first cover assignment—a report on Hitler’s capacity to wage war, entitled Economic Impact of European Rearmament.
The project was to be Straight’s excuse for accessing documents and views from Washington insiders that would be useful in the Kremlin. “Green was not there to act like a Cambridge don,” Yuri Modin remarked with a hearty laugh when we discussed Straight’s first project during our Moscow interviews in October 1996. “There was no point in him [Straight] handing in a nice analytical thesis for a mark out of ten. We wanted documentation about U.S. intelligence on a wide range of topics, in this case to do with the Nazis and their capacity for war.”15