Last of the Cold War Spies

by Roland Perry

  Straight thought about mentioning his undergraduate communist days in England in a self-deprecating, offhand way, but he didn’t want to sow any seeds of doubt in the minds of the bosses with the chubby-faced smiles of welcome. A communist student past, if presented as a vague juvenile aberration, would have been acceptable up until the beginning of 1945. But by the end of the year it would have caused frowns. The Cold War was at its frosty beginning. The glacial shifts of world geopolitics had changed allegiances. Former enemies were now friends, and vice versa. “Reds” were now the target in the popular press. The Pentagon, not wanting its postwar budgets diminished more than necessary, was making the communist threat more menacing than fascism had ever appeared. The FBI and J. Edgar Hoover, although not yet acknowledging foreign infiltration of Russian espionage agents and killer squads, were concentrating on “the enemy within”—the domestic spread of communism. It had become entangled in the director’s mind with true liberal values that had little or nothing to do with Marxist doctrines.

  Unfortunately for the bright new prospective candidate, others sowed those seeds of distrust and uncertainty. Laughlin called Straight back to Tammany Hall4 and told him he had a call from the vice-chairman of the Democratic National Committee, Oscar Ewing. He had been told that Straight had been a communist in England.

  Straight felt a knot in his stomach, but he showed no outward reaction. His training with Burgess, Blunt, and Green had prepared him for such an eventuality. Instead, he tried to dismiss the statement as irrelevant and went into the well-rehearsed lines that he would use well into old age: it was in his youth. He was just a raw, impressionable kid. Communism was all the rage then. So many at the London School of Economics and Cambridge were “reds.” There was good reason. Europe was different. The fascist threat was real. . . .

  Laughlin sympathized but said Straight couldn’t be supported without Ewing’s agreement, especially on a matter so important. An indignant Straight said he would see Ewing and straighten out the matter. Ewing was less sympathetic. Imagine, he suggested, what “Joe Baldwin de Turd” would do with that kind of information, no matter how distant and irrelevant it was. How would the reporters at the Daily News handle it if it were ever leaked to them?

  Straight protested that he had long forgotten and buried his undergraduate, youthful views. Ewing was not swayed. The matter had to be cleared up before the party would endorse him. Straight wanted to know who said he was a communist. Ewing told him it was the financial columnist, Eliot Janeway. Straight was stunned. He knew Janeway and regarded him as a friend. Later, when alone, he rang Janeway, who had joined the British Communist Party in the early 1930s and was expelled for reasons unknown. He knew Straight had joined the U.K. Party. Straight asked him if he had been spreading stories about his communist youth. Janeway replied that the question was not who spread the story, but how Straight would respond to it. Straight asked how he should respond to it. Janeway said that was for him to decide.

  The phone discussion ended. Straight had some thinking to do. He worried about just how much could be uncovered by probing reporters and jackal-like opposition politicians eager for a “red kill.” Better to back out now and perhaps wait for a more propitious moment to enter politics. With this reaction, and from the more liberal side of the spectrum at that, his known record was against him. Even a hint of the secret past now would extinguish any hope he had ever had of a political career.

  After pumping himself up for the decision to run, this was a bitter, depressing realization, which at his age could mark a major turning point in his life. It was the shocking moment when his hopes and dreams about moving into big politics in the United States evaporated. The undermining by Janeway and Mike Ross—an English adviser to the CIO—as well as others was responsible. Straight rang Laughlin to tell him he would not be running against Baldwin.5 The KGB had pinned him to the past like a butterfly in an entomologist’s lab. There was no thought of his fighting on and admitting his communist background. He had his family to think about: Bin had her career. Her sister was married to Gustavo Duran, who was under pressure. Joe McCarthy had named him as one of his top six enemies. Straight also used his sister Beatrice as an excuse for not coming clean. She was married to another KGB agent, Louis Dolivet. If he stepped forward, all his relatives and associates would suffer. The links to Blunt and Burgess would have been uncovered. Overriding all this was Straight’s continued agency for the KGB. He would be committing suicide figuratively and probably literally had he crossed his Kremlin masters this way and at this critical time. They were uneasy about his moves and motivations as it was, and there would have been some relief among the KGB hierarchy that his ambition to be a politician had been crushed. It was not the time for a confession, which he might use as a last resort if he felt confident it could be part of a KGB disinformation campaign.

  This was yet another occasion, if he needed a stimulus, to “admit,” even in a nondamaging partial sense, that he was somehow mixed up with the KGB. But once more the impulse, or need, was not there, as it had not been during the war.

  Despite the serious problems associated with admitting he was a spy, there was also a little matter of pride. A major fear was what his ideological enemies would do with the juicy revelation that such an upmarket figure, and a member of the family that ran The New Republic, was a KGB agent. During 1945, the commencement of the Cold War, his confessional, the FBI, was a sieve. People such as McCarthy, for whom he had been gunning via The New Republic, would have received a leak. He would have loved it. Straight would have been the highest profile catch yet.

  While the disqualification from running for high office sobered and deflated him, his next move demonstrated he had not lost his drive. It was one of the few options left. He rang Bruce Bliven at The New Republic and told him he was coming back to the magazine. Bliven’s feelings about this are not recorded. Straight felt that the magazine had reverted to its old ways in his absence. In an understatement that would seem arrogant but for the intent in his comment, Straight said he wanted to liven it up.

  The FBI completed its debriefing of former communist network runner Elizabeth Bentley’s Silvermaster and other spy networks on November 30, 1945. In December, the KGB was informed about the extent of her revelations, which caused a crisis for some of its key personnel. These included Straight’s control, the “illegal” Michael Green, who was not protected by any diplomatic status. He had been unmasked by Bentley and would have to leave the United States. The KGB contacted its agents in the United States in January 1946 and warned them of the danger. It advised them “of what action to take to avoid being implicated.”6

  At about the same time, early in 1946, Straight began working on a special issue of The New Republic to mark the first anniversary of Roosevelt’s death. If he had to make his career at the magazine for the time being, he was not content to be just another editor anymore. Straight wished to take full control of an institution he considered was part of his birthright.

  He could only hint at his plans to his family. He was aware that it would be a major step for Dorothy to allow him, a relative neophyte in the business of journalism, to take over from the professionals that had run the little liberal flagship since 1914. He knew she would be concerned about the reaction to the bumptious son of the owner directing the old hands, some of whom had been around the magazine for three decades. But his plans had ramifications for the family and its financial structures created in 1936 to run Dorothy’s fortune, which then stood at $45 million. Dorothy had set up several trusts to avoid heavy tax burdens and to settle equitably on her five children. One trust was the William C. Whitney Foundation, which was to be directed by her American children— Whitney, Michael, and Beatrice—to make charitable gifts out of its U.S. base in New York. This donated to several communist front groups, among others. A second trust was the Elm Grant Trust, which was to be under the direction of her English children, Ruth and William. It too was to make charitable gifts from its U.K.
base at Dartington. A third trust, known as the Royal Trust Company of Canada, was the biggest of all. It covered money “given” to her children as a principal lump sum, which could not be touched by any of them. They received annual incomes from investments of that principal sum, which they could spend as they saw fit. However, it also covered the running of the family’s American publications, The New Republic, Antiques magazine and other assets. The New Republic had bumbled along for thirty years, and the small losses it made, if any, were covered by the success of Antiques. If Straight became too ambitious and led the magazine to running up bigger losses, it could affect the incomes of each of the children. A complication was found in the relationship between Straight and the 41-year-old American lawyer, Milton Rose, a trustee who oversaw how that principal sum was invested and how the interest generated was distributed. If Straight were to influence Rose, and it were to the detriment of the others, then their relationship could be seen by Straight’s siblings as a conflict of interest.

  Rose and Straight, now 29, landed at Southampton on May 3, 1946, and drove through the New Forest to Dartington. It was Straight’s first trip to England and his old home in nearly a decade—a third of his life—and it was an exciting if not nostalgic time for him. A war-battered United Kingdom had thrown out its wartime heroic leader Winston Churchill in an election in mid-1945 and had turned to Labour, led by Clement Atlee, for the immediate postwar recovery. It had implemented socialist measures, such as nationalization of the Bank of England, coal, electrical power, railroads, road transport, inland waterways, docks, and harbors. Labour continued war legislation for agriculture, guaranteeing prices and markets, and implemented the “welfare state” with a dramatic extension of the state’s services. Such unprecedented socialist measures quickened the heartbeat of communists, who now felt that the step toward a Marxist government was closer than ever.

  Straight enjoyed the atmosphere in a country where ideological demarcation between political parties was clear and where Marxist-approved concepts such as nationalization were acceptable, as compared to the United States, where they were not. In the United Kingdom, nearly half the workforce was state employed, which made dependence on government much more the norm. In the United States, much less of a “nanny state” mentality prevailed. Only one-fifth of workers had some form of government employment.

  Straight found that even in the microcosm of Dartington, communism seemed to have a foothold. Cells had grown up in the school and were tolerated by the staff.7 The network of communists he had grown up with were still in some way connected with the place. His friend Michael Young, who had been in charge of the Labour Party’s research during the war, had been a frequent visitor.

  Straight could talk freely to a wider circle and not be afraid of being branded a red. Rather than being restricted to a small clique in the United States, he could communicate with everyone from sympathizers at Dartington Hall and his old Cambridge companions to Prime Minister Atlee and his government ministers, such as Herbert Morrison, the leader of the Commons. Morrison visited Dartington to see Dorothy and Leonard and met Straight, who impressed him with his grip on world and domestic affairs. After a lengthy chat, Morrison turned to an aide and commented in his vigorous way: “The man’s brilliant. Why can’t I find people like him to work for me?”8

  Straight’s main task, however, was not to win over the government, but rather his mother. He had, with support from his sister Beatrice, persuaded Dorothy to sanction the $250,000 investment in KGB agent Louis Dolivet’s magazine, United Nations World. Then Straight had appealed to his mother’s desire for international peace in a war-free world. The magazine had been going only a few years and was shaky financially. Other investors were threatening to pull out (they did, later in 1946), which would leave the Straight family investment vulnerable. Rose, well-prepared by Straight beforehand, forwarded the pitch for big changes at The New Republic. Straight supposed he knew how to boost circulation from 20,000 to 100,000 and how to make the magazine pay. He envisioned its being far more adventurous, thrusting, and influential.

  There was no one to state the case against the proposition. Ruth (just 19 years old) and William (17 years old)—happy with their finances— were too young and inexperienced to have any considered input. Beatrice, in the United States, was in no position to block Straight’s plans, even if she wished to, given that he had backed the large investment for her husband.

  That left Whitney, who had been occupied during the war. While Straight and Beatrice were helping Dolivet start the magazine, ostensibly to assist in creating a voice for a more peaceful world (in reality a KGB propaganda sheet), Whitney, the air ace, was busy actually fighting for it. He was shot down twice over enemy territory in France and each time escaped. By the end of the war Whitney was weighed down with medals (MC, DFC and bar, Norwegian War Cross, Legion d’Honneur, and Croix de Guerre). He became an air commodore and the youngest acting air vice marshall in the air force. His nice income kept coming into his London bank account for play when he wasn’t locked in battle with the Luftwaffe. This was all that mattered during his most distinguished service.

  It meant that Straight was unopposed in his ambitions to fulfill his aims for power and influence, made more urgent by his rejection for political backing a few months earlier. Dorothy agreed to his becoming the magazine’s publisher later in the year, and also to his plans for its expansion bid to gain another 80,000 readers.

  Buoyed by his appointment as publisher-elect, Straight traveled to London to speak with left-wing Labour members of parliament and communists to see, he claimed, if he could gain support for Oppenheimer’s concept of international control and development of atomic energy which had been approved by President Truman.

  He met Margot Heinemann, now well up in the Communist Party, and had a long chat to his old KGB confidant, Harry Pollitt. The British party’s secretary general, to no one’s surprise, including Straight’s, was as hard-line a Soviet mouthpiece as ever. Straight faithfully reported Pollitt’s unilluminating views and filed an article for The New Republic.

  Pollitt, doing the bidding of his Kremlin masters, was putting out the imaginative and improbable line that the United States should share its knowledge so that the Soviet Union could produce a bomb of its own. This was in the interest of restoring the balances of forces in the world. It was where the arms race would head, but both sides were going all out to gain the ascendancy. This was in contrast to the Oppenheimer proposal (supported by Atomic Energy Commission chairman David E. Lilienthal and Dean Acheson, the Truman administration’s secretary of state) for international control of nuclear weapons that had currency during the heady first months after the war.

  Straight had a cover, or alibi, for public consumption after he learned that MI6 and the CIA had been monitoring his numerous meetings with key KGB figure Pollitt in the United Kingdom. He claimed that all he wanted to do was to use Pollitt to reach the Kremlin and the KGB and point out the insanity in opposing the Acheson/Lilienthal/Oppenheimer plan.

  This was an instance of Straight’s attempt decades later to justify to the FBI and others why he kept in contact with yet another KGB operative. His main job was to help retard U.S. bomb manufacturing while the Russians developed their own.

  They were closer now to creating their own nuclear weapon than even Pollitt or Straight could have realized. By May 1946 they had built a nuclear reactor but had trouble with plutonium accidents and could not get the reactor to work. KGB Department S head, Pavel Sudoplatov, was desperate. His first plan was to send a scientist, Yakov Terletsky, direct to the United States under the cover of a peace delegation to ask Oppenheimer, Szilard, and Fermi to inform them on how to fire up the dormant reactor.9 The KGB foresaw FBI surveillance problems. Terletsky was instead sent to see Niels Bohr in Denmark. Bohr was nervous, realizing that the help he and his three U.S. companions had given had finally come to fruition. The Soviets all but had the means to produce the fuel for the bomb.

  B
ohr insisted that only Terletsky, with a translator, was present, but not his KGB bodyguard, before he explained where the Soviet reactor’s problem lay. While poring over diagrams, the Nobel prize-winner pointed to a place on a drawing and declared, “That’s the trouble spot.” His direct help led to the Soviet reactor working by the end of 1946. 10

  Straight used the London trip also to make contact with some of his former Cambridge friends. He learned that Victor Rothschild was about to marry Tess Mayor. Straight may have realized for the first time why Blunt a decade ago had used him to split Rothschild from his first wife Barbara. This created the chance for Rothschild to have a relationship with Tess. As Straight later suspected (and probably knew), the couple proved a most successful team for the KGB at MI5, at Cambridge during the war years, and in the Cold War.

  Straight returned to Washington and began reshaping The New Republic. He upped the magazine’s political tempo in support of hard-left positions and even took ads for “Soviet Records—originals Made in the USSR, and books such as Behind Soviet Power—Stalin and the Russians.”11 The magazine’s layout was improved and made more lively, and front pages became more daring. Yet sales didn’t budge much above 20,000 each issue. Straight and his staff knew that they had to put the “new” into the magazine to attract readers.