by Roland Perry
Waldman consulted police and held a press conference. He called for an FBI investigation. But J. Edgar Hoover made it plain that there would not be one. He resented Krivitsky for daring to suggest that the United States was riddled with Soviet agents. As director of the bureau, he was not about to support that statement by looking for a gang of Stalin’s killers.23
Krivitsky was as unwanted in death as he was in life. The press furor that followed saw the coroner retract his suicide finding. Journalists converged on the Doberts’s farm. Eitel was sure he had committed suicide because he had written notes on Friday night. Yet he had not seen them. Mrs. Dobert hesitated at first, then agreed with her husband about the thought that he must have been planning to kill himself. It was enough for the police and the vacillating coroner, who once more issued a suicide finding.
The original notes—on plain paper headed “Charlottesville, Virginia”—were never delivered to the three intended recipients: Tonya, Waldham, and writer and journalist Suzanne La Follette. Instead they received translations. Waldham challenged the translations and had them revised.
The longest letter was in Russian addressed to Tonya and Alex:
It is very difficult. I want very badly to live but I must not live any longer. I love you, my only one. It is hard for me to write but think of me and then you will understand why I must go. Don’t tell Alex yet where his father has gone. I believe that, in time, you should tell him, because that would be best for him. Forgive me. It is very difficult to write. Take care of him and be a good mother to him and be always calm and never get angry with him. . . . Good people will help you but no enemies of the Soviet People. My sins are very great.
I see you, Tonya and Alex, I embrace you.24
These lines were typical of forced false confessions by countless Russians during the purges. The secret police branded them enemies of the Soviet people.
The letter to Waldman, in English, was briefer but added a strange postscript explanation for his actions:
Dear Mr. Waldman,
My wife and boy will need your help. Please do for them what you can.
The postscript ran:
I went to Virginia because I knew that there I can get a gun. If my friends get in trouble, please help them. They are good people and didn’t know what I got the gun for.
The last letter, in German, to Suzanne La Follette read:
Dear Suzanne,
I trust that you are well. I die in the hope that you will help Tonya and my poor boy. You were a good friend.25
All three recipients said that the syntax, postscripts, and general tone did not seem at all like Krivitsky’s style.
In 1996, Yuri Modin suggested in our interviews what many had suspected since 1941: Krivitsky had been murdered. Modin’s remarks to me were the first by a senior KGB operative admitting as much. He was supported by another ex-Russian spy who did not wish to be named. This is backed up by hints in secret Russian cables from Washington, which show that the death of Krivitsky was used as a warning to a defector, Viktor Kravchenko, from the Soviet Government Purchasing Commission. A message from the KGB in New York to Moscow remarks: “KOMAR [Kravchenko’s code name] is well informed about KRIVITSKY case.”26
Philby also gave some indication of foul play in his interviews with Genrihk Borovik. An exchange in his 1994 book, The Philby Files, is revealing: “We can assume that the OGPU [absorbed into the NVKD— the KGB’s forerunner—in July 1934] finished him off,” Borovik remarked when comparing Krivitsky to another defector, Orlov, who “was not harmed.”
“Krivitsky, unlike Orlov, betrayed many people, including me,” Philby responded with indignation. “It did not have tragic consequences for me, since he did not know my name or the paper where I worked. But if he had he would have betrayed me totally.”27
A possible scenario of the events of the night of February 9 is this: Bruesse; Mink; and a third man, Jack Parilla, a known assassin with the nickname “the Hunchback,” came to Washington on Friday, February 7, after a tip-off from Straight of Krivitsky’s movements. They did not need to follow him to Barboursville. If they knew of his plans to catch the last train to New York at 6:30 p.m. on Sunday, they only needed to watch Union Station.
They tailed him to the Bellevue and entered his room in one of several possible ways. They could have used a passkey kept in a closet on each floor, or they could have forced their way in. Bruesse was an expert locksmith who could have picked the lock to room 522. The three killers, under orders to make an assassination look like suicide, forced Krivitsky to write suicide notes by saying that if he did not obey, Tonya and Alex would be murdered too. (That seemed to fit the tone of the note to them, especially the contradictory comment: “I want very badly to live, but I must not live any longer.”)
No patrons or staff at the hotel heard a noise, but a weapon with a silencer could have been used. There was no solid proof (proper ballistics were not carried out, nor were fingerprints taken thoroughly) that the gun found by Krivitsky’s side had been the one fired at him. Whichever way it happened, no sound of a shot is further evidence that it was not suicide.
Although there were no reported sightings of Bruesse in Washington, an FBI report said Mink was involved in stalking and killing Krivitsky. In addition, Parilla was reported there (by a witness to the senate subcommittee on security a few years later) from February 7 and through the weekend.28
Parilla was back in New York by February 13, drinking with merchant seamen at National Maritime Union headquarters.
“He loafed around for quite a while,” the witness reported. “He got drunk, became very vicious, and dropped a hint of murder to several of the trusted seamen, who were comrades at the time.”29
Despite all the questions about the death, and the many incoming reports to the FBI from agents suggesting foul play and evidence of it, Hoover refused to investigate. He used his autocratic power to shut down any attempts to portray it as other than suicide. It suited his political purposes at that time to brook no suggestion that the U.S. public was other than well protected against infiltration by foreign assassins. Meanwhile, three killers were free to roam the United States and the world, committing more mayhem.
The death meant that the biggest threat to Straight and the fellow members of his spy ring had been eliminated. Straight gave the impression that the event preyed on his mind to the extent that when an intruder tried to break into his house, he thought that the KGB was after him. But this was misleading. He was a member of the Cambridge ring and had helped in the assassination of Krivitsky. The KGB would have been pleased with his work.
Straight made out in his autobiography that he was fearful of the KGB because of what happened to Krivitsky.30
This was part of a cover for any Straight connection to the death. At no time had he made a serious attempt to leave the KGB. At this point he was deeply involved; he had nothing to fear from the KGB if he did his job.
Once Krivitsky had been eliminated, the assignment was over. Straight wasted no time in leaving State; his job was done. Only three days after Krivitsky’s body was found—on February 13—he landed this time at The New Republic, which was always going to be a safe haven. Not long after taking up his job as a journalist, a short article appeared in the February 24, 1941, edition of the magazine, two weeks after Krivitsky’s demise:
Here was a man who had exposed the misdeeds of the worldwide Soviet organization. There is little doubt that Stalin would like to have seen him murdered. . . . At once his [Krivitsky’s] friends, who naturally for this purpose included all of Stalin’s enemies, declared he was a victim of a GPU [KGB] assassination. The press, always looking for anti-Russian items, gave great stress to this interpretation. The Washington Police, however concluded that Krivitsky died by his own hand. . . . To be sure, it is still possible to argue that, in a sense, Stalin killed him. He was so hounded and harried by the memory of what he had done and by fear of reprisals by his former comrades that he could hardly be called san
e and responsible. . . .
To that point the item would have suited the sentiments of Stalinist agents. The irresponsible and insane traitor to the cause betrayed his comrades. The article could even have been construed as a warning to all those agents working for the KGB not to consider leaving Stalin’s service. But the next paragraph was more definite. It warned not to become involved in the KGB’s secret world: “We are beginning to learn that anybody who enters the secret service of a totalitarian ruler has already in a sense committed suicide. He is a dead man from the moment he takes the oath.”
After his meeting with Guy Burgess on July 8, 1940, Straight informed his wife Bin of his secret work and his links to KGB agents Blunt and Burgess. Bin Straight said she was very disturbed by the news. She asked him to break off contact with Green by early the next year.31 (Bin never had anything to do with his underground activities.) This disclosure was an added pressure. The Krivitsky affair drew Straight deeper into the KGB net.
Was it getting enough out of this very special agent? There was always a feeling, first allegedly expressed by Theodore Maly, that Green was not up to the task of nurturing this exceptional recruit. The thought gained currency at the Moscow Center.
Arguably the best controller of personalities as such, Yuri Modin, who handled the varying characters of the Cambridge ring with the natural aplomb of a man twice his age (he was 24 when he first met Cairncross and Blunt in England in 1947), would have dealt with Straight in a more lateral, sophisticated way.
His psychology in manipulating the childlike Cairncross, the cynical Blunt, the outrageous Burgess, and the tough-minded Philby was outstanding. Yet Straight was another individual altogether. In our interviews, Modin indicated that he would have done a better job than Green. “Straight was not handled well,” he said. “It should have been done far, far better.”32
All controls in the Comintern and after were encouraged to study the psychology of their charges and to know every detail about them. But following Maly and Deutsch, who had chosen Straight, there was a lapse in attitude of later Russian controls. Anatoli Gorsky, Ivan Milovzorov, and others had been too brusque with Burgess, Blunt, and Cairncross, even to the point of bullying them. While Straight never complained about Green this way, there seemed to be an emphasis on drilling rather than encouraging him. Green was efficient and friendly enough yet more concerned with his own point-scoring in Russia than playing psychological games. He had his own career to worry about, not to mention a score of other spies supplying data. These were low-key types who were more ideological than ambitious. They received enough stimulation from a stolen document here and piece of equipment to be photographed there. It was all for the cause and against fascism. That was incentive enough.
Yet even given a control like Modin, it is doubtful that Straight’s political ambition would have been sated by any amount of praise, cajoling, encouragement, and ego-soothing. Straight had drives that had to be met. They went beyond being a small-time thief and research analyst for a foreign power. If he could, he would manage all his aspirations.
10
NEW REPUBLIC, OLD WAYS
Straight had to have a plausible reason for his sudden departure from State again, especially after using his connection to the president and the First Lady to get in the department both times. His thin explanation was Roosevelt’s decision to replace Joe Kennedy as ambassador to Great Britain with John G. Winant, a former Republican governor of New Hampshire. The appointment was announced in the press on February 10, 1941, and shared the headlines with Krivitsky’s death. Winant toured the State Department soon afterward, where he met Straight and talked about Great Britain for an hour.1
This hour, Straight claimed, inspired him so much that he wanted a job with the urbane, strong Winant. The haste with which he moved to have strings pulled for him had the same resonance as his original effort to enter government via the Roosevelts, along with his more recent bid to slip back into State. The first string to a possible new posting was Ben Cohen, who had joined Winant. Straight also phoned Felix Frankfurter (whom he had contacted in 1933 to help him get into the London School of Economics) at the Supreme Court and told him he wanted to be on Winant’s staff in London.2
Winant was more successful than Jack Hickerson had been at State in blocking the precocious Straight, who again used his family (this time brother Whitney at a Royal Air Force base in the United Kingdom, which Winant visited) and connections to leap over career professionals. Yet if Straight were going to be thwarted, it had to be by the commander-in chief, not a mere diplomat. Roosevelt, he claimed, had vetoed the request because he suspected Straight would resign from the embassy staff and join Whitney at the RAF.3 The perspicacious president, it seems, was wise to Straight’s apparently capricious nature. His basic drive, however, he explained, was that he wanted a challenge.
His mother must have been concerned that he was behaving similarly to his father, Willard. He didn’t appear to have enough staying power for any one job. At the very least, his desire to leave government would have been a surprise. Weeks earlier Dorothy wrote from New York to Miss Hull-Brown, her secretary at Dartington, expressing her pride in Michael’s progress. She noted that Michael had presided over a public event at which key politicians and the attorney general spoke. Dorothy was enchanted by a story of doing the rounds in Washington that said if you wanted something done, you saw President Roosevelt about it because he had “more influence with Michael Straight than anyone else!”4
Straight made sure to keep impressing his mother, and it enabled him to gain her approval for the move to The New Republic. The magazine’s editor, Bruce Bliven, had no choice but to accept Straight’s unabashed use of nepotism. Straight’s view was that Bliven was not quite bright enough for his position. He was, Straight maintained, a working journalist rather than an editor of an intellectual journal.5
According to Straight, Leonard Elmhirst had told Bliven that The New Republic’s approach to the war was callous and timid. The magazine, which had survived for nearly thirty years, suddenly needed something more sensitive and courageous in its makeup. Bliven was in for a shock. The self-styled “loose cannon” Straight had already started work on a 30,000-word article, something new for the magazine. The topic? The U.S. defense program.6 Bliven had no choice but to publish it as a special supplement, which took three weeks to produce.
There was a great deal of overlap while Straight finished his time at State, according to him, about April 24. (The FBI had his resignation from State as February 28, indicating he gave seven weeks’ notice.)
After nearly thirty years of frugal budgets and advances, the magazine spent more—from week one of the brash young Straight’s arrival—which was a sign of things to come. But he still had to justify increased expenditures at the battling, low-circulation magazine. Straight had found a little office for $50 a month in an old brownstone near Connecticut Avenue, coincidentally the place where his mother had been born. He hired writers Helen Fuller, Bill Salant, and Alfred Sherrard, along with two young economists from the Federal Reserve Board who had assisted him on the supplement.
The thirty-two-page report, “Democratic Defense,” was published February 17, 1941. No doubt subscriptions to the magazine went up at the Kremlin and in Berlin. U.S. defense capability was an area of great interest to future enemies of the United States, particularly as it was expected sooner or later to enter the war. Now they could read about it in the Straight family organ.
The published report, for example, gave estimates of essential raw material production of steel and aluminum, which would easily have been extrapolated into defense industry production of, say, fighter aircraft. In one item titled, “Why We Are Falling Behind,” the author noted: “Magnesium is a vital armament production. It is even lighter than aluminum and is equally strong. . . . I. G. Farbenindustrie raised German production in 1940 to 50,000 tons. Our production in 1940 was under 5,000.”7
Another article, “Capacity and Defense,�
� detailed everything from steel production to the military’s copper requirements. And so it went.
Straight and his team were able to get in doors throughout the Washington defense industry on the basis that they were writing about the need to put the nation on a production footing in preparation for a war against fascism. It was a call not so much to arms but rather to massive central government control of essential industries. Fascism had presented an enemy that no liberal or anyone with the facts about its methods and intent could fail to hate. The only way to combat it, according to Straight and his crew, was with a full-blown socialist approach.
The report attacked Roosevelt’s Office of Production Management and the businessmen he had called in to run it with such comments as “We have placed our defenses in the hands of men to whom the defense of democracy means the preservation of profits.”8
The unions loved it. Straight’s friend Felix Frankfurter rang and complained about the harsh judgment of businessmen. But Mrs. Roosevelt was interested enough to invite him to the White House for lunch. According to Straight, she was thrilled and had highlighted parts of the article for the president.9 Roosevelt had never been quite as enthusiastic about Straight as his wife. She was not sure whether he bothered to read the highlighted pieces of the magazine. (On another occasion, when she insisted he read a Straight piece, he complained, “Do I have to?”10)
Straight’s hefty lunge at big business was bold enough, but the supplement also stretched itself into a social treatise and touched on civil liberties. In this section was a full-blooded attack on the FBI. It noted the bureau’s “compilation of a card index . . . listing thousands of individuals and groups, labor unions and labor leaders, writers, publishers, speakers and articulate liberals. . . .”11