Last of the Cold War Spies

by Roland Perry

  MacArthur scorned the Panikkar report as propaganda, saying that the Indian ambassador was a Beijing stooge. He cabled Truman, telling him that Chinese troops would not enter the war. He asked for authority to cross the 38th Parallel and put an early end to the conflict.

  Their vital communications were being picked up in Washington by the KGB’s two top-line British agents, Kim Philby and Guy Burgess, who were working overtime sending information on the Korean conflict to Moscow. They used two channels, through their Washington control and through Blunt in London, who passed information to Yuri Modin. Burgess had obtained a posting from the foreign office to be first secretary at the British Embassy in Washington, D.C. He arrived on August 4, 1950. The Russians had a daily monitoring of the conflict from him and Donald Maclean (now on the American desk at the British Foreign Office) in London since the June 25 invasion.

  Burgess had built an expertise on events even before that. In April, he had sent Modin a long, hand-written account taken from a report by British intelligence detailing the extent of Soviet aid to the Chinese and Korean forces. This way the Russians knew exactly what the West knew about Russian cooperation with the Chinese and Koreans. This intelligence gave Moscow an idea of how much or how little the United States was prepared for a surprise attack by Moscow’s “proxy,” the North Koreans.1 Burgess’s KGB assignment was to assist Philby in gathering espionage material on every level—diplomatic and military—of the conflict.

  Now the Russians wanted to know just how far the United States was prepared to go “down the road to world-war.”2 Every detail on the intentions of MacArthur and Truman would be valuable, as well as any intelligence on the advance of the UN troops.

  The plan to cross the 38th Parallel and “lock up” the whole Korean peninsula was worked out by the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff and passed on for acceptance to its allies. Philby and Burgess at the British embassy were privy to the details, which were dispatched to their controls. By October 15, when MacArthur met Truman at Wake Island, the stated plan was to send only South Korean soldiers north of the 38th Parallel. The Chinese said that the presence of UN troops north of the line would cause them to intervene. However, MacArthur had no intention of parking victorious U.S. troops on the boundary line and sending the less proficient South Korean divisions north into battles and probable defeat. Stalin’s intelligence sources informed him of this. It was no surprise to the Russians when MacArthur sent all the troops under his command pushing into North Korea.

  By mid-November, the allied forces were nearing the North Korean/ Manchurian border marked by the Yalu River. Truman ordered Mac-Arthur not to cross the Chinese border and not to contemplate the use of atomic weapons.

  Stalin had been pressuring Mao Tse-tung to intervene, but Mao was reluctant. He didn’t want the war to spread to China, especially as he was unaware of U.S. intentions. Would MacArthur use the bomb? It was a very real possibility in the minds of Mao and his high command. They, like all world leaders, had been stunned, although not unhappy, by how Truman had ended the Japanese war with the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Mao saw MacArthur as a leader with dangerous ambitions. After the Japanese precedents had been set, there was always the potential now that atomic weapons would be used again. There was enough pressure from the hawks in the Pentagon and the far-right wing in the United States for Truman to feel compelled to make it perfectly clear to his general that he must not use nuclear weapons.

  As Straight was composing New Republic stories while on tour in Asia, China’s leader was waiting for the intelligence on the firm intentions and orders from Truman to MacArthur. Stalin was receiving almost daily assessments from fellow members of the Cambridge ring, Philby, Burgess, and Donald Maclean (via Modin and other controls). Vital intelligence received at the Kremlin was passed on to the nervous Chinese leader.

  The Russian dictator had put the highest authority on the ring’s judgment. He had psychological appraisals of Truman and MacArthur, which showed that the general, despite his bellicosity and desire to go down in history as a decisive winner of major battles, would not disobey firm imperatives. The assessment of Truman was that he was a tough leader who would take action if crossed by an army commander. Coupled with this analysis was the categorical conclusion from Stalin’s three agents that the bomb would not be dropped. There would be no invasion of China. This was reconfirmed by Maclean, who accompanied Clement Atlee to the United States. The British prime minister wanted to know Truman’s real intentions, and the president told him, in private, that under no circumstances would the bomb be used.3

  Stalin now had his three best espionage sources and Modin telling him without qualification that whatever MacArthur’s ambitions, he would be restricted at the Manchurian border. In sixteen years of espionage through three major wars—in Spain, World War II, and now Korea— and through countless other incidents, Stalin had never had other than first-rate intelligence from the Cambridge ring. He informed Mao with full confidence that he could attack U.S. troops and invade North Korea without the threat of the bomb.

  At this critical moment, Straight was close to the action. He filed stories from India and then moved on to Hong Kong. From there, on about November 20 (for the November 27 edition of The New Republic), he wrote an article titled, “Will Communism Win in Asia?”

  “Thirty miles inland,” he wrote, “Communist soldiers guard the frontier [to China] with loaded rifles. The traveler, staring across the bare mountains, must remember that Hong Kong is not China, and that it offers no clues to China . . . refugees flood back and forth across the frontier, journalists pass in and out, seamen bring back stories . . . traders keep open lines of communication. From these people the traveler can gather the scattered pieces of a missing picture. . . .”

  According to KGB sources, at this time Mao was not quite convinced about Stalin’s intelligence resources. He needed to hear the information, not via the Russians, but straight from the mouth of one of Stalin’s Western agents. Was Straight the man? Was he one of those journalists who passed “in and out”? Once more, he was close to the action and could easily have slipped across the border for a meeting with the Chinese party chairman.

  Straight or someone else at this time did convince Mao to act. Unlike Stalin, he was yet to think of tens of millions of lives as expendable in the name of communism. But because of information he had received face to face, Mao was now prepared to take a big risk. The Chinese amassed 400,000 troops on the other side of the Yalu, and waited in ambush.4

  MacArthur sent light American columns—the First and Twenty-fourth Cavalries—to the Manchurian border to see if there would be any resistance. On November 24, he announced that U.S. troops would be home by Christmas. The next day, the Chinese struck. Waves of massed troops bore down on the surprised Americans. Guerrillas sprung from behind them and destroyed their communication lines along the west coast. After heavy fighting, thousands of U.S. soldiers were left dead. Many were wounded, captured, and tortured. Over the next month, the United States and its allies were pushed back to the 38th Parallel. The communists began a second invasion of 500,000 troops, but their attack faltered in the face of incessant allied bombing. The U.S. troops held their positions, and the front lines stabilized along the Parallel. Mao’s gamble on Stalin’s advice had paid off thanks in large part to the accurate intelligence from Philby, Burgess, and Maclean. Instead of Mao’s worst fear of atomic bombs dropped on major Chinese cities, there had been a “conventional” conflict against the might of the allies with “acceptable” losses. The end was a bloody stalemate, without communism losing ground in Southeast Asia. If Stalin, and Mao in turn, had not had such precise intelligence, it’s highly probable that the Chinese would not have invaded. Many American and allied soldiers would not have been killed or injured.

  In his book, Straight wrote of another chance meeting with Burgess, in March 1951, a few months after the height of the Korean crisis. Earlier he claimed he had bumped into Burgess in Pall Mall and
that on another occasion Burgess had turned up uninvited at the Savoy. All these instances were concoctions for his (later) FBI interrogations. Straight was still a fully fledged agent in the business of dealing with other fellow agents of whom Burgess was just one of many. Yet Straight persisted with his fabrications. In this “story” he was driving along when he happened to come across Burgess trying to hail a taxi near the British embassy in Washington, where he was working. Burgess hitched a ride. In their brief conversation in Washington, Straight ascertained that Burgess had been in the city during the Korean conflict.

  Straight claimed he thought that if Burgess was in Washington, he would have known of U.S. plans to advance into North Korea. In turn, Straight suggested, Burgess would have sent the information to Moscow. The Kremlin then would have handed it to Beijing. Straight said that in this way, Burgess could have caused the deaths of many American soldiers.5

  Straight’s claims to chance meetings with Burgess are at odds with the testimony of Alan Baker, one of Blunt’s lovers who visited Washington at this time. Blunt was keen for Baker to get in touch with Burgess and give him Blunt’s latest book, The Nation’s Pictures. There is little doubt, according to Yuri Modin, that there would have been a message in the book for Burgess, warning him to get out of the United States. The intelligence services were closing in on him.

  Baker, unaware he was a middleman for key Soviet spies, felt uncomfortable with his mission of delivering a book. Burgess knew which hotel he was staying at, but Baker wasn’t given his address. On his third day in the American capital he had a phone call from Burgess. Burgess claimed he didn’t have time to meet Baker. Instead, according to Baker, he told him that a Mr. Straight would come to his hotel at a specified time, take him to dinner, and collect the book. Baker always assumed that this was Michael Straight. Straight, however, sticking to his version of events at this critical time, could not recall meeting Baker.

  Straight has never denied that he was fully aware of the value of his comrades in the Cambridge ring in the Korean conflict. The ring collectively would have judged its outcome as another vital victory for them and the cause. Straight’s critics construed that if he was taken at his word as being anticommunist at this point, his failure to inform the United States and the United Kingdom about the spying of his Cambridge comrades made him a tacit accomplice.

  Writer Sidney Hook, in a review of After Long Silence in Encounter magazine of December 1983, commented:

  To this day he seems unaware that his prolonged and stubborn silence about his involvement in the Soviet espionage apparatus, long after he claimed to have shed any trace of faith or loyalty in the Communist cause, in effect made him complicit in the hundreds of deaths that were contrived by his erstwhile comrades.6

  William Safire, in a New York Times review, thought Straight’s “greatest contribution to the Soviet spy system” came in this Korean War episode. “Did he turn in his old friends?” Safire asked. “Hardly. . . . ”7

  Raymond A. Scroth’s assessment in the magazine America was that this encounter with Burgess was “the high point of the story.”8

  Straight alleged that on learning of Burgess’s probable involvement in traitorous activity over the Korean War, he became angry and said to Burgess that in 1949 he (Burgess) had told him he was going to leave the U.K. Foreign Office. Straight wrote that he accused Burgess of breaking his word.

  Straight then maintained that he threatened to turn him in if he wasn’t out of the British government inside a month. Sidney Hook, William Safire, and other critics charged that in a decade of opportunity, Straight never got near turning in his comrade and mentor. The apostolic oath, and Straight’s fears of Stalin and the KGB, they felt, seemed stronger than any concern for his country and the people of it.

  If Straight had informed on Burgess in the decade before 1951, it would have had enormous ramifications for many agents on both sides in the Cold War. A big section of the Cambridge ring would have been finished. Blunt, the key postwar “middleman agent,” whom many subagents used as a conduit to KGB controls, would have been in strife, as would Philby, the head of Soviet counterintelligence.

  Other KGB agents such as Leo Long, brought into the Apostles by Straight and then recruited for the Russians by Blunt, would also have been caught. Long worked in intelligence for the British Control Commission in Germany until 1952, where he was meant to be infiltrating Western agents behind the iron curtain. Instead, according to John Costello, “Long was a link in a major Cold War plot to infiltrate Soviet agents in the U.S. intelligence services with the connivance of their other [KGB] moles in MI5 and MI6.” In his position Long may also have been responsible for the “disappearance” of hundreds of agents in East Germany who were sending information to the West.9 Apart from the rolling up of the Cambridge ring, any confession by Straight up until 1951 would have meant momentous arrests in the United States of such people as his control Michael Green and his wife, Helen Lowry. Straight remained outside the major U.S. rings, but he knew the key people involved.

  Yet on all counts, Straight alleged at this time that he was still bound by loyalty to his oath to the Apostles, fear of exposure once he “confessed” his past, or even concern about reprisals from the KGB. For these reasons, he said, he remained mute. But again, none of these claims were true. He had never stopped plotting and consorting with KGB agents.

  Straight was still very much one of them.

  18

  FAMILY FEUD

  Whitney forced a showdown during the family meeting at Dartington in April 1951, a year after he learned of his brother’s KGB links. He had done his homework as far as he could and consulted lawyers on where he stood with the family trust. The problems had been compounded by Dorothy’s decision to appoint Straight along with Rose as the trustees in Trust 11, succeeding the Royal Trust Company of Canada.

  Straight could not quite grasp Whitney’s sudden attempt to get out of the trust. He thought it had to be because he was upset, as the oldest child and the only successful businessperson, that he wasn’t given control of Trust 11. But it was deeper than this. Whitney was not going to stand by and watch what he saw as certain destruction of the family fortune, all in the name of communism.

  The technical argument against Whitney taking control was that he was now a British citizen, not American, and therefore was somehow less eligible than Straight for the position. But Whitney’s lawyers did not believe this. He and they were concerned about far too much money being used to prop up The New Republic, which looked to Whitney as nothing more than a Soviet propaganda sheet.

  Straight suggested that money given to the magazine was from an independent corporation, Editorial Publications, which had been set up to administer Dorothy’s holdings (the magazines Asia, Antiques, Theater Arts, and The New Republic). But this was misleading. Editorial Publications was owned by Trust 11, and Straight and Rose were in charge of it. They had total say on what money went to propping up the hemorrhaging New Republic. Before the Henry Wallace episode, Antiques earned enough to keep The New Republic alive. After the Wallace fiasco, not even the profitable Antiques was enough to save the other publication; it needed a big transfusion of money from Trust 11 via Editorial Publications.

  Straight, not his better-equipped brother, was now in control of the family fortune. It was a bitter blow to Whitney, especially coming on top of his secret knowledge of Straight and the way The New Republic had been used and, Whitney thought, financially abused. Whitney had tried to get hold of the magazine’s accounts, but strict trust rules stated that only trustees and not beneficiaries (unless they were one and the same) could peruse them. He had his lawyers send letters full of queries about the running of the trusts, all to no avail as Rose filibustered.

  Whitney knew from snippets of family discussions that The New Republic was in a financial mess and that United Nations World had cost plenty. It was enough for him to make demands and even threats, if need be. His prime bargaining position would be a reque
st for Milton Rose’s head. Whitney’s ultimate “weapon,” which he would use as a very last resort, would be to expose his brother to his mother as a Soviet agent.1

  It heightened the sense of a showdown as Straight, Rose, and Beatrice flew in from the United States to confront Whitney. In essence, Leonard, Ruth, and William were nonparticipants, as was to a lesser extent Beatrice. The real fight was between the other four, with Dorothy in support of Rose and Straight.

  The Dartington Hall meeting started peacefully but degenerated into a shouting match. Whitney, very much on his own in the argument, accused Rose of being criminally negligent in the way he was running the trusts in the United States and especially over the near-collapse of The New Republic. This caused Dorothy much consternation. Whitney went on to threaten he would pull out of the trust. “I will not allow my share to support that magazine,” he told them. “It’s losses are a scandal.”2

  Whitney wanted to say more about Dolivet being a KGB agent but because of Beatrice restrained himself to complaining about the disaster of United Nations World and its $250,000 loss. “I want [Rose’s] resignation,” Whitney said, “otherwise I’ll put him in jail.”3

  With that, he left for London early the next morning before anyone else was awake. He arranged meetings between the family members and their respective lawyers. Dorothy tried once more to heal the breach before the family feud developed into a costly legal wrangle. She, Rose, Straight, and Beatrice took the train to London and the family house there—the Aviary. Whitney came home from a cocktail party to an acrimonious confrontation with his mother. He was most angry about the way The New Republic had been managed and its huge losses. Yet he appeared to hold the whip hand over his threat to sue Rose on the allegation that the trust had been mishandled. Whitney repeated his desire to leave the family trust structure, telling Dorothy that he had no confidence in Straight and Rose.