by Roland Perry
The articles were a good introduction to Stalin’s worldwide espionage net and did go as far as exposing the Soviet Trade Mission, Amtorg, as a front or cover for the KGB.
“Stalin’s Secret Service has agents planted in all institutions, governmental and industrial,” Krivitsky claimed. “The armed services have them too.”
The exposé revealed communist assassinations in Spain and Stalin’s desire for a pact with Hitler. The latter revelation was derided.
The British Foreign Office (with Guy Burgess putting out the press release) remarked: “On the whole we do not consider that these would-be hair-raising revelations of Stalin’s alleged desire for rapprochement with Germany are worth taking seriously.”5
The FBI’s director, J. Edgar Hoover, was furious. Krivitsky had said that Soviet agents were slipping into the United States on forged passports. He had the affront to write that they were flouting American law by using rolls of counterfeit money. Even worse, from Hoover’s viewpoint, Krivitsky alleged that right under the nose of the bureau, Russian communist hit men from the KGB were moving around in small squads murdering American communists in order to keep the local movement under Soviet control. It was too much for Hoover. He had spent the last decade cultivating the line that because of the patriotic work of the FBI, the United States was free of such atrocities and foreign influence.6
Hoover and others put pressure on the Labor Department to arrest and deport Krivitsky. However, some at State, such as Henderson, wanted to debrief him further. They supported him; Ruth Shipley extended his visa. Hoover saw the whole affair as a conspiracy led by the hated State Department, the FBI’s arch rival, to undermine his power and the image of the FBI.
Yet even he was momentarily silenced a few months later, on August 23, 1939, when Joachim von Ribbentrop and Vyacheslav Mikhaylovich Molotov signed the Sino-Soviet Friendship Pact, which shook the world. The important factor in terms of the politico/military/intelligence worlds was that now the Nazis and the Soviets were united against all others, and their intelligence services would share secrets. Antifascist, left-wing sympathizers in the United Kingdom and the United States for the first time had to reassess their allegiances to Stalin. Everything now done for communism and mother Russia was also a direct service to Hitler.
Krivitsky, once viewed as a paranoid anticommunist troublemaker, was suddenly a prophet. His chances of becoming a U.S. citizen and making a life in his adopted country had increased. If he succeeded in settling in the West, he would disclose more of the deeper secrets he held. They would endanger key Western agents working for the KGB, including Straight and all those in the Cambridge ring.
Straight enjoyed his time with the Roosevelt speechwriting team of Corcoran and Ben Cohen (who was counsel for the National Power Policy Committee), which produced speeches for the president, the cabinet, and the liberal leaders of congress. Once more, Straight had access to a wide range of documents and people when preparing research for speeches. He passed on his analysis to Green when he came to Washington in June and September 1938.7
The Kremlin was being patient in dealing with a young spy for whom it had high regard and hopes, as they were with many agents, who were in place close to the center of power in Germany, the United Kingdom, France, and the United States. Stalin was obsessed with knowing in advance what his opposite numbers in the key world powers were thinking and planning. Over the period of his dictatorship, this intelligence was a key to his and the Soviet Union’s survival. It gave him an edge in negotiation, strategy, and tactics in dealing with his “enemies” and “friends,” depending on the state-of-play.
The Sino-Soviet alliance of August 1939 was an excellent cover for many communist agents to pretend to break from communism. French, British, and American agents entering intelligence areas in their countries as war broke out on September 1 would cite the pact as a reason for breaking their links. The major rings of Soviet agents, almost to a man, did not and could not break away. There was confusion, discussion, and then counseling from their controls, who had some explaining to do.
Stalin’s move (for it was he rather than Hitler who sued for a peace, which he had wanted ever since the German dictator took power in 1933) was presented as a ploy. It was designed to feign the appearance of appeasement, which would in the end defeat fascism. How controls reconciled this with intelligence gathering being passed to Hitler’s agents was tricky. But in a well-prepared plan, the Moscow Center managed to convince their agents they should maintain their belief in Stalin and that they were not forsaking their ideals. The pact was portrayed as temporary and expedient for the eventual dominance of world communism. The expert indoctrination of Stalin’s most effective espionage network—the Cambridge ring—in the early 1930s by the urbane and intellectual Comintern representatives, such as Maly, had paid off.
Not one of them had a serious thought about stopping their work for Stalin, although Burgess blustered about it, and Blunt was at first distraught about projected consequences. Apart from these two, the ring’s key agents included Donald Maclean, Kim Philby, and John Cairncross. Then there was Victor Rothschild—Lord Rothschild, as he had become in 1937. He was still not technically an agent reporting directly to a control, but he was vital for his access to key research institutes and for his connections. They allowed him to place others in key positions within the British scientific, diplomatic, and intelligence community when war broke out.
Rothschild was cautious about the pact but remained convinced that Hitler would turn on Stalin. Most of the main members of the Cambridge ring, including Tess Mayor (recruited in mid-1938 by her very close friends Blunt and Burgess), John Cairncross, and Alister Watson, also remained steadfast in their support for Stalin.8
In fact, the brainwashing about Stalinism had been carried on so impressively by Blunt and Burgess that later recruits into this premier group stiffened their resolve to continue spying. Even in the light of the horrific accounts of Stalinism as told by Krivitsky (which they had all read), these agents had been drilled into believing it was all part of the grand plan for the cause, which would dominate in the end.
On the off chance that agents wavered in their belief, they knew the consequences: they would be hunted down and killed. In the wake of Stalin’s purge and murder of upward of a million “waverers,” the threat was not just implied. It was a cold-blooded promise, an inevitability. Instead of the mass bludgeoning of 1935 to 1938 in Russia and worldwide, Stalin and his KGB heads were now selective, and they moved with the precision of surgeons. There was a brutal logic in their thinking. All who left the cause carried with them secrets that were a real danger. If they were interrogated willingly or otherwise by the FBI or British intelligence, they might be turned, or they might divulge whole networks. This would impede the vital flow of data to the Kremlin.
More than anyone in the Cambridge ring, Straight was upset by the pact. He refused to see Green for a month. He would not accept the argument that it was all part of Stalin’s grand plan to defeat fascism. Green came to Washington in late October, two months after the pact, when the Red armies were advancing into Finland.9 Straight and Green sat in a restaurant below Washington’s Union Station. The control was gleeful about Soviet soldiers acting as liberators and triggering revolution, which would spread across Germany and France.
Then Straight gave Green a memorandum with his views on the Nazi-Soviet pact. It was not a note of protest as seen from the principled but foolhardy and courageous Ignaz Reiss, who signed his own death warrant by defying Stalin. Straight’s memo, as explained by him, conceded that the pact had been a military necessity, given the refusal of the British and French governments to join in a common front against Hitler. (Read: Our Great Leader Stalin had no choice. He just had to have a pact with the devil.)10 Straight went on to plead that the pact should not be extended from a military alliance to a political one. This was as unrealistic as it was unlikely. Stalin would never have contemplated a political linkup.11 Yet it was Straight�
�s way of making a protest without wanting to upset the Moscow Center or Stalin. Green assured him the memo would reach the Kremlin.
Straight now wondered about the fate of his control, who had been trained abroad before Stalin started his purges and who was at the end of 1939 about to return to Moscow.12 (In fact, Green would return for a second tour of duty in 1942 and go on operating with his wife until 1946, when he received a tip-off that a former American Soviet agent, Elizabeth Bentley, was about to divulge his identity.)13
Straight found time apart from his dedicated Soviet secret work to keep his romance going throughout 1939 with Bin Crompton, which was often by correspondence. In early September, Corcoran gave him three days off from his White House research duties to marry her. They exchanged vows under an oak willow in Nantucket and went house-hunting in Washington.
The Straights rented a home in cobblestoned Prince Street, a former red-light district of Alexandria. He and Bin played host to a list of left-wing visitors over the new year and through the winter. In early 1940, Straight began doing some work with the Soviet-leaning American Youth Congress, which was supported by Mrs. Roosevelt. His efforts endeared him to the First Lady, and he and Bin were invited to the White House for dinner with her and the president.
This reinforced Straight’s liberal façade. If he dined with Roosevelt, then he must surely be a liberal. The letters to the family all bolstered the image he wanted to present as a male incarnate of his mother: the selfless doer of good deeds concerning social issues, such as those that occupied the Youth Congress’s forum. Dorothy controlled the family purse strings. Straight could not afford to let her think he was a dilettante communist, and definitely not the full-blown Soviet spy that he was. His share of the invested income from the trust she set up in 1936 was inviolate. It was in equal proportion for her other children: Whitney, Biddy, Ruth, and William. Even if she discovered he was a KGB agent, she could not change that. But she could decide to stop him becoming a trustee, if ever he wished to be one, and also stop his influence over how various trust monies were invested and spent. (For instance, trust money supported certain communist front organizations springing up regularly in the United States.)
Krivitsky’s 1939 articles in the Saturday Evening Post provoked a frightened American defector from communism, Whittaker Chambers, into meeting him. Chambers had started as an editor of the Daily Worker. His ring’s leaders decided he should go underground as a clandestine agent shuttling between New York and Washington with top secret documents supplied by the networks operating inside the major government departments. Chambers took the perilous step of leaving Stalin’s service in April 1938.
The meeting—arranged again by Don Levine—saw a brainstorming session between two of Stalin’s key deserters. They found they could help each other with some of the puzzles of communist treachery over the past decade. Chambers gleaned most. He had been part of a ring that had been controlled by Moscow. He was intrigued to be told which branch of the Soviet intelligence service employed him and who his bosses were. As the two furtive, suspicious men began to trust each other, they went deeper into operations. Chambers would mention the case of a murdered colleague; Krivitsky would explain the hows and whys of a Soviet operation. At the end of it, Don Levine was inspired to alert the State Department. He organized a meeting for Chambers with an assistant secretary, Adolph Berle. Chambers, now with a far deeper comprehension of the scope of Soviet penetration of U.S. government, was able to furnish Berle with a detailed picture right down to the communist rings’ chains of command and divisions of responsibility. He could even put names to top spies at State. He named six people, including Alger Hiss. Berle was stunned.14
Don Levine was not finished. He had learned from Krivitsky that the Soviets had penetrated the key government arms of the United Kingdom, the United States’ most vital ally. Levine realized that any secrets passed by U.S. intelligence to the British would end up in Moscow and then Berlin. He thought the rot should be stopped. Krivitsky informed him that he had already outlined to the French the extent of infiltration and recruitment in the United Kingdom, but nothing had been done. Krivitsky feared that Soviet agents inside the French government may have sabotaged the information he had given them. There were even rumors, Krivitsky had heard from his contacts in Paris, that the eighty volumes of his debriefing had gone missing—sunk in a barge on the Seine where they were supposedly being stored for safekeeping.15
Don Levine acted again and went to the British embassy on Massachusetts Avenue to see the ambassador, Lord Lothian. Over tea in the elegant study of the ambassador’s residence, Levine outlined the Krivitsky story. Lothian listened, his face frowning more as the revelations unfolded.
“The Kremlin has managed to plant two spies in the heart of Whitehall,” Levine said.
“No, I can’t believe that,” Lothian replied. “You’d have to be more specific . . . ”
“There’s a Soviet agent working for the Foreign Office code-room as a cipher clerk.”
“What?”
“He has been providing the Russians with cables.”
“For how long?”
“A long time.”
Lothian was skeptical. Like most in the British establishment, he could not bring himself to believe that one of them could possibly spy for the other side.
“Can you name him?” Lothian challenged.
“King,” Levine replied.
“King?” Lothian said, still unconvinced. “King what? Something King? The King, perhaps?”
“That’s his last name. That’s all I know.”
Lothian scribbled on a writing pad.
“There is another one,” Levine added, making the most of his opportunity. Despite the resistance, he was not going to let the opportunity slip. “This spy has been described as a person of ‘good family.’ He has been assigned to the Imperial Defence Council.”
“That’s an office within the Cabinet,” Lothian responded, his skepticism maintained. “Do you know his name?”
“No.”16
Despite his incredulity, Lothian promised to inform the foreign office.
The reaction in England was unexpected. John Herbert King—the only cipher clerk of that name at the foreign office—was put under surveillance. He was found to be passing information about British foreign policy intentions to Moscow (via an “illegal” KGB contact in a clothing company in London’s East End) as it was being sent to British missions abroad. King was arrested and given a ten-year prison sentence.
The shock at the foreign office was not so much that a Soviet agent had been active, but that the data received would go to the Germans. Hitler’s intelligence service had used its pact with the Soviet Union to squeeze its agents for data damaging to the Allies. It was more productive to use Soviet agents than Nazis, who were under far greater surveillance. Messages coming in from U.S. embassies abroad began to support this by warning of a switch of espionage activity from Nazi to Soviet agents.
The U.S. embassy in Brussels noted in a secret cable to State: “Positive proof that the German and Soviet governments are working together in matters of espionage and sabotage. Soviet agents are being used for most important jobs as they are more likely not to be suspected.”17
Once more, Krivitsky’s credibility increased. He was called before a U.S. House committee, where he drummed home the consequences of the Nazi-Soviet Pact. “Stalin’s pact with Hitler,” he told an attentive group of congressmen, “is really like an alliance of the two armies operating in specific zones. I have no doubt that such exchanges of military secrets and information are indispensable to both Hitler and Stalin.”18
At least some government representatives now had a rudimentary concept of the double threat from Nazi and Soviet spies. Some within the British foreign office also seemed shaken from their lethargy. They wanted Krivitsky in England for a thorough debriefing. He was reluctant to go, especially with his knowledge of Soviet penetration in the United Kingdom, which was as deep
as in the United States. Yet he was still under political pressure from a range of individuals in U.S. government to leave. Some American liberals saw him as a threat to friendly relations with the Soviet Union. His extended visa would expire on December 31, 1939. Krivitsky’s lawyer, Paul Waldman, thought he should use the trip to the United Kingdom as a break so he could return after six months (the minimum time), register as an alien, and recommence his quest for U.S. citizenship.
Krivitsky made arrangements for a boat to England, but White House officials became nervous. They thought that Stalin would find out about the debriefing plan and see it as an anti-Soviet move. The United States was still neutral and did not wish to antagonize Stalin.19 Krivitsky, feeling unwanted and apprehensive, was told he would have to make his way to England via Canada. A few days before he was scheduled to go, two men were seen sitting in a car watching his apartment. The charade of sending him via Canada was unnecessary; Soviet intelligence was watching. They would be more than keen to stop his going to England.
Krivitsky and his family were given an escort to the border by the Radical Squad, a heavily armed New York police unit. They were then picked up by the Canadian Mounted Police and escorted to a hideout near Montreal. There were more threats within ten days of arriving. A KGB squad had located them, and the family was forced to change to a fresh safe house. The Mounties boosted their round-the-clock protection. After three weeks in Montreal, Krivitsky made a move without his family and boarded a Royal Navy submarine. The trip to England took twelve days.
Krivitsky arrived in London on January 19, 1940, and a few days later was ready to commence his interrogation by MI5, which had been briefed by the foreign office. It was to be directed by the deputy director of MI5’s Division B, Guy Maynard Liddell, who controlled all counterespionage investigations. (He was himself later suspected of being a Soviet agent by many, including Maurice Oldfield, a postwar head of MI6. Much circumstantial evidence makes it a possibility.)